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With six official follow-ups and a short-lived TV series, one would expect  Tremors  to have the pop culture impact of a sci-fi franchise like  Jurassic Park .  Instead, it became a direct-to-video cash cow for Universal who milked the fanbase with prequels and sequels sets in various exotic locals with survivalist Burt Gummer (Michael Gross) fighting off evolutionary upgrades of the original Graboids.  Despite creative involvement by creators S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, nothing can top the charm of the 1990 original, which is just as much fun as it was 30 years ago.  Ne'er do wells Earl and Valentine (Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon) are just about ready to ditch their backwater hometown of Perfection, Nevada (population: 14).  But instead they're called upon to  defend  it from underground monsters that treat the valley like one long smorgasbord.  Eyeless and insatiable, these "Graboids" aren't quite as dumb as they first appear, sensing the vibrations of their hum

Horror and exploitation fans are blessed with a massive library of genre titles to choose from in just about every decade.  So much so that regional filmmakers like William Grefe, whose mostly Florida shot shockers were relegated to the drive-in circuit during the '60s and '70s, went unnoticed if not completely unappreciated by most home video distributors.  But Arrow Video picks up the baton dropped by niche outfit Something Weird Video and collects seven of Grefe's eclectic features, plus an extended cut of the definitive documentary about his career packaged up in  He Came from the Swamp: The William Grefe Collection. Make no mistake, most of Grefe's work is seat-of-your-pants filmmaking that builds upon whatever trend was popular at the time.   Sting of Death  (1966) is a hilariously entertaining take on the beach party monster movie, pitting bikini-clad teens and heroic scientists against a bubble-headed were-jellyfish that stalks the Florida canals.  Shot in seven

The lurid history of Elizabeth Bathory seems ready-made for cinematic exploitation artists looking to add a little class to their sex and violence.  And  Daughters of Darkness  (1971) pulls off the trick better than almost any other film before or since, picking up with the nocturnal activities of the Countess (Dephine Seyring) and her sexy secretary, Ilona (Andrea Rau), in the nearly abandoned seaside town of Ostend, Belgium, where a pair of newlyweds fall under their spell.  Director Harry Kumel's film is gorgeous from top to bottom, with a flair for the fantastic and a kinky sexual subtext that exemplifies Euro-horror at its finest. Married for only three days after a whirlwind courtship, Stefan and Valerie are already struggling to sort out their relationship.  Stefan seems afraid of introducing her to his family and instead suggests they spend time at a nearly empty resort.  But the delay proves deadly when Countess Bathory and Ilona arrive, using a divide-and-conquer approach

You simply can’t overstate how much Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey revolutionized science fiction cinema.   Almost overnight, a new bar was raised not only for achievement in special effects but for narrative and thematic maturity.   And when the marketing department stumbled upon “the ultimate trip” tagline, an entirely new audience of 18 to 24 year olds under the influence of mind altering substances found a complementary celluloid experience.   So it was probably just a natural evolution to hand the reigns over to special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull for a follow-up, 1972’s Silent Running , an environmentally aware sci-fi opus that, despite an earnest performance from Bruce Dern, lays on the counter-culture message a bit too thick. Drifting through the solar system in an oversized terrarium, the crew of the SS Valley Forge is part of an ambitious - but now nearly forgotten - effort to preserve Earth’s forests for a future re-seeding when the post-apocalyptic condi

Now that playing videogames is an actually career choice, the premise behind  The Last Starfighter  doesn't seem to be quite the fantasy it once was.  But director Nick Castle's take on the Arthurian legend is still drenched in Spielbergian Americana balanced with breakthrough computer effects that might not seem quite as revolutionary today.  But for those of us who shared Alex Rogan's dream of being plucked from obscurity to become an intergalactic hero, the film remains an imaginative bit of pre-teen wish fulfillment that has aged as well as anything from the era when Slurpees and Stargate were the height of pre-teen pop culture. Stuck plunging toilets at his mom's trailer park, Alex's (Lance Guest) dream of escaping to college with his girlfriend Maggie (Catherine Mary Stewart) is crushed when his student loan is denied.  But after breaking the record on the local Starfighter machine, an alien talent scout (Robert Preston) whisks him off to Rylos to take on Xur

In a battle for supremacy over a man's soul, a hedonistic Hollywood lifestyle turns out to be more deadly than lung cancer in director Bernard Rose's adaption of Leo Tolstoy's  The Death of Ivan Ilyich , transposed into the corruptive social circles of the film industry in  Ivans xtc . (2000).  Facing an uphill battle to secure financing, Rose wound up shooting the project on the burgeoning HD video format, which actually works in the film's favor by stripping away the visual artifice of idealized glamour and wallowing in the behind-the-scenes moral decay that really makes Hollywood run.   Danny Huston stars as the titular Ivan Beckman, an ambitious agent whose backstabbing machinations just secured his firm the hottest celebrity in town, Don West (Peter Weller), lured by a script that he single-handedly turned into a hot property.  Unfortunately, his career victory is marred by a doctor's visit that turns up a "suspicious" spot on his lung, a diagnosis th

I've got good news and bad news.  The good news is  Warning from Space  (1956), the very first Japanese sci-fi movie produced in color is finally premiering on home video in a version that does justice to its inventive production design and dramatic color scheme.  The bad news is its really one of the last undiscovered titles in the kaiju / alien invasion Japanese sci-fi pipeline.  With not much left to look forward to, director Koji Shima's film carries a lot of cult classic weight on its shoulders, too much for such a slight, disjointed story to support as it turns out. Mysterious UFO sightings over Japan have the population feeling nervous, especially when those vessels discharge starfish-shaped cyclopean messengers from the planet Paira.  Realizing their appearance is a shock, the Pairans transform one of their crewmembers into the appealing likeness of a popular nightclub celebrity.  But by the time her warning of an impending collision with a rogue planet is delivered, th

As a primer for understanding '90s (sub) pop culture, you couldn't do better than  Mallrats , Kevin Smith's slacker ode to the joys of sex, weed, comic books and capitalism.  Starring a veritable who's who of rising stars at the time, the script does its amateurish best to be an equal opportunity offender, but winds up having its heart in the right place after all. Dumped by their respective girlfriends, Brodie and T.S. (Jason Lee & Jeremy London) head to the mall to drown their sorrows at the food court, sharing their tale of woe with a motley group of post-high school hangers-on:  Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith), a pair of trouble-making doofuses, Gwen (Joey Lauren Adams) the hot chick who got away, and Tricia (Renee Humphrey), an underage sex researcher whose latest subject, Shannon (Ben Affleck), has an eye on Brodie's ex (Shannon Doherty).  Meanwhile, T.S. tries in vain to impress  his  ex-girlfriend's father (Michael Rooker) before he

I have the utmost respect for movies that are snowbound.  Beyond the technical challenges posed by an unexpected thaw or uncomfortable shooting conditions, there is just some sort of mystique created when the flakes starting flying...especially in the horror genre.  While  The Shining  remains the preeminent example, 2019's  The Deeper You Dig also captures some of that "long dark night of the soul" vibe so rare in films produced at this price range.   After accidently running over Goth-teen, Echo, on a dark and lonely road, Kurt compounds the error by suffocating her when it turns out the car didn't quite finish the job.  A quick shallow grave in the frozen ground is his desperate attempt to hide the evidence, but Echo's psychically gifted mom, Ivy, soon comes in search of her daughter.  Kurt's guilt and Ivy's suspicion make strange bedfellows as the pair unexpectedly develops a friendship.  But all the while, Echo's spirit is working its way into Kur

While  Ford vs. Ferrari  provided a slick, entertaining view into the cutthroat tendencies of the auto industry, director Yasuza Masumura's 1962 film  Black Test Car  is an ugly indictment of capitalism at its worst as two rival car companies compete to rush their sports model to market, sabotaging the other at any physical, financial and moral cost.   An industrial espionage thriller with shades of classic film noir,  Black Test Car  is wonderfully stylized, pitch black in tone, and shocking in its portrayal of yakuza brutality by its "salaryman" characters, all of whom are complicit in their corporate crimes.  From bribes to beatings to sabotage, company success is portrayed as a sort of madness that leaks into every aspect of daily life.   Even our ostensible hero winds up pimping out his own fiancé, played with femme fatale appeal by Junko Kano.     It's all played with the same sort of scandalous cynicism as Billy Wilder's  Ace in the Hole , an early critique

The  yakuza  - or gangster - film is more deeply ingrained in Japanese cinema than perhaps any other genre.  Likely because the rise to power in those post-war years is best translated by the gritty, violent stories of outlaws, ambition and family honor.  And the work of director Kinji Fukasaku is most representative of the genre's style and conventions, notably in his epic  Battles Without Honor and Humanity  and its sequel.  Yet his 1975 film -  Graveyard of Honor  - bucks many of those traditions to deliver a yakuza tale that paints a much more severe and nihilistic view of the yakuza lifestyle.   The ambitious but singularly self-destructive Rikio (Tetsuya Watari) refuses to take orders from anyone, even his own godfather.  After being banished from the family, he falls under the protection of a rival gang headed up by his friend Kozaoburo Imai, but even that relationship is strained by Rikio's unpredictable behavior.  Together with his "wife" - Chieko - the pair

Although his career is wrapped up in  The Fast and the Furious  franchise, Vin Diesel’s coming-out party was really the sleeper hit  Pitch Black , director David Twohy's ode to pulp sci-fi novels (specifically the Eric John Stark adventures written by Leigh Brackett) that introduced the world to Riddick, an escaped con with enhanced night vision and a permanent chip on his shoulder.   When a spaceship full of pilgrims crash lands on a strange planet overrun by carnivorous monsters that only come out at night, Riddick becomes an unlikely anti-hero as he attempts to lead the group to safety.  But are his action really altruistic...or just all-for-himself?   The film produced two sequels to date (with  another  installment in the works) that built a complex mythological back-story around Riddick's lone wolf mystery man.  But here we simply get a survival story, populated by characters with just enough personality to make sure we know who was eaten by what.  But Twohy makes sure Ri

A French-Canadian production that played the film festival circuit and runs a scant 73-minutes,  Game of Death  is, at the very least, more edgy and interesting than most of the Blumhouse productions that capture the teen horror market these days.  Built around the concept of a  Jumanji -type board game that forces its players to kill-or-be-killed, it's loaded with gore and expendable millennial characters, staging the resultant murder spree with Tarantino-meets-Tobe Hooper style.   When their house party gets a bit dull, seven 20-somethings discover a piece of retro entertainment called Game of Death.  After a surprising finger poke, an onscreen countdown begins and instructs the players that 21 people must die before time runs out or a sacrifice will be chosen among their group at random.  It only takes a couple of exploding heads for our characters to realize the game means business.  Siblings Tom and Beth plan to survive at all costs, hitting the road in search of easy victims

If the supernatural shenanigans of Damien seemed too subtle to you, maybe the Bad Seed antics of   Mikey   are more in your wheelhouse.     Part of the MVD Rewind Collection, which brings back popular rental store titles in clever VHS-style packaging, the film stars little Brian Bonsall (a late addition on   Family Ties ) as the titular 8-year-old who kicks things off by murdering his entire adoptive family in the first five minutes.     Ridiculous?     Impossible?     Downright comical?      You can call first time director Dennis Dimster-Denk's film a lot of things, but boring definitely isn't one of them. Cleverly cleared of any wrongdoing at his previous home, Mikey is adopted by the Trenton's, who are charmed with his wholesome good looks and warm disposition.  But psychotic cracks begin to show quickly, as Mikey becomes romantically obsessed with his next-door neighbor (Josie Bissett) and downright vindictive towards his suspicious elementary school teacher ( Hellrais

A run-down, renegade cop - complete with trench coat, shades and matching bad attitude - scours the urban underbelly in search of a brutal killer that just might be 'ol Scratch himself.  Oddly enough, that synopsis fits no less that  three  movies from the '90s:   The First Power ,  End of Days  and  Split Second .  All three are guilty pleasures for genre fans, but the latter is likely the most obscure, starring Rutger Hauer and Alastair Duncan as a mismatched pair of heavily armed police officers hunting down a demon through the flooded streets of a semi-apocalyptic London.     Obsessed with vengeance for his murdered partner, Detective Harley Stone (Hauer) is saddled with a straight-laced replacement (Duncan) that specializes in serial killers.  But the by the book approach isn't getting results as the killer leaves a trail of victims - their hearts torn from their ravaged bodies - and promises to add Stone's former lover (Kim Cattrall) to the list.  As the duo stead

  The facade of the American nuclear family was a common target for black comedies in the '80s.   Raising Arizona  mocked the lengths people go to achieve it,  Heathers  revealed its hilarious hypocrisy, and  Parents  suspected the family unit was eating itself alive...quite literally!  Even across the pond, the "me" decade was popping up as a source of socially conscious ridicule in films like the ironically titled  Life is a Long, Quiet River  (1988), the debut feature from French director Etienne Chatiliez.   In a mean-spirited act of romantic revenge, a nurse switches the identities of two babies at birth, with dramatic consequences when the truth is revealed twelve years later.  Momo (Benoit Magimel) has been living in squalor with a slothful family of sluts, miscreants and criminals: the Groseilles.  Meanwhile, Bernadette (Valerie Lalande) is a member of the Le Quesnoy family, a wealthy, well-adjusted gaggle of social climbers happily enjoying their carefree bourgeo

  The disaster movie has been with us since the early days of cinema.  Once filmmakers realized the public's fascination with floods, fires, storms and asteroid-induced apocalypses there was no going back.  But for the man-made apocalypse of  Hiroshima  (1953), director Hideo Sekigawa, finally working without the censorship constraints of U.S. occupying forces, dodges the particulars of the blast itself and deals with the aftermath in a way that makes the emotional impact even more devastating than the physical one.     Structured as a flashback, the film begins with young students suffering from leukemia and assorted ailments from close proximity to the "flash-bang."  The event itself takes up the entire middle section of the film, documenting various survivors as they attempt to gather their families and escape the aftermath, a hellscape of flames, ruins and hideously burned bodies.  And, in the film's final flash-forward, the suffering continues for the next genera

1971's  Get Carter  established the modern British gangster film with a brutal economy of style.  Director M ike Hodges left all the rough edges in his feature directorial debut and reinvented the career of Michael Caine.     But it was a tough act to follow.     And while Hodges attained pop culture immortality with   Flash Gordon   (1980), it wasn't the sort of film to build a career on.   That career was in pretty dire straights by the time  Black Rainbow  (1989) trickled out onto pay cable, bypassing a theatrical release altogether despite a fairly recognizable cast.  Rosanna Arquette has the showiest role as Martha Travis, a reticent medium who plays to gullible crowds anxious to hear from their departed loved ones.  But the thing is, Martha isn't a fake.  And when she starts  predicting  deaths instead of speaking to the previously deceased, she and her father (Jason Robards) become involved in a local conspiracy involving shady politicians, hired killers and a report

After the rather disappointing Godzilla box set released by Criterion last fall, kaiju aficionados were holding their collective breath that Arrow Video's  Gamera: The Complete Collection  would stick the landing.   Happily, it's 10s across the board, from the gorgeous and colorful new transfers to the hours of new and archival bonus features.  If you're a fan of the terrible terrapin, this is  more  than you could have ever asked for!   The only real rival to Toho's kaiju monopoly, Gamera was a tougher sell to American audiences, lacking the early pathos and technical sophistication of Godzilla's shared monster universe.   But the third film in the series finally found a niche to exploit: turning the oversized turtle into "the friend of all children" and making sure each story revolved around a pair of precocious kids.  Once the films made their way onto American television (courtesy of a distribution deal with AIP), Gamera secured his own unique place in

A beloved action superstar in his native India for over 40 years, Rajinikanth is still virtually unknown here in the U.S.   And his English language debut in  Bloodstone  (1988) certainly wasn't the best introduction.  Produced by cut-rate action auteur Nico Mastorakis and directed by Dwight Little (who would eventually do better), the film aspires to be an international adventure / buddy cop movie with a hint of the exotic leftovers from the Indiana Jones series.   The result is closer to an episode of  The A-Team  with hammy acting, racist humor and sub-par stunts.  That said, Rajinikanth emerges pretty much unscathed, knife flips and all!   A newlywed couple gets some extra excitement on their honeymoon when a jewel thief slips a stolen ruby into their luggage.  The hunt for the missing gem involves a Clouseau-esque inspector (Charlie Brill), Dutch treasure hunter (Christopher Neame) and jack-of-all-trades cab driver (Rajinikanth) that fight for possession of this national treas

After proving they could up the international zombie ante with  Train to Busan , South Korea certainly earned enough goodwill to try their hand at a "zom-com."  And, ironically enough,  Zombie for Sale  shares many surface similarities with last year's Best Picture winner,  Parasite , to boot, following a family of ne'er-do-well country bumpkins who make their fortune after discovering their pet zombie is actually a valuable fountain of youth.   The product of a drug experiment gone wrong, Jjong-Bi rises from his makeshift grave and stumbles into the sticks looking for an easy meal.  But his zombie skills aren't quite up to snuff and, after biting the Park family patriarch, he's mistaken for an ordinary hobo and locked up in the garage where he becomes a source of fascination for the equally ostracized daughter, Hae-Gul.   Their budding romance is interrupted by the discovery that Jjong-Bi's bite gives his victims unexpected youth and vitality, prompting t