Movieline Online

A holy-grail of modern found footage horror has finally made its way to Blu-ray!   Ghostwatch  aired on the BBC as a “live event” on Halloween night, 1992, fooling more than a couple of viewers into thinking they were watching the real thing.  Hosted by actual TV personalities who stage an investigation into a haunting in on a quiet London block, director Lesley Manning does a phenomenal job of balancing POV thrills with studio-set talking heads.  This one is  way  ahead of its time! Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene and Mike Smith all play “themselves” as the supernatural goings-on unfold around a single mother and two children whose home is plagued with cold spots, breaking dishes and constant knocking.  The crew arrives and starts digging into the backstory of the home, with callers dropping clues about a series of undocumented deaths.  Soon the “show” is causing a panic throughout the city as the poltergeist activity bec...

The next best thing to living through the Italian cinema boom of the ‘70s…is living through the digital restoration and renaissance   we happen to be experiencing  right now !  And writer/director Fernando Di Leo has been fairly well represented, with many of his seminal crime films – like  Milan Caliber 9  – rising from the celluloid graveyard to claim their rightful place among the most influential genre films of the era.  But  Blood and Diamonds  (1977) finds his career, and that of the poliziotteschi in general, on the wane; so much so that the working title was  Rome Caliber 9 , an attempt to grab the attention of fading audience interest.   But Di Leo’s film is certainly interesting enough to stand on its own.     Set in the familiar criminal underworld, Guido Mauri(Claudio Cassinelli)     is a safecracker pinched on the job by an anonymous tip that sends him to prison for five years.     Upo...

There are filmmakers content to live off the scraps of Hollywood’s bigger, better and bolder ideas and production values.  Then there is Nico Mastorakis, the Greek writer / director / producer who never let ambition get in the way of a low-budget.   From almost unwatchable early exploitation affairs like  Island of Death  (1976) to action-slasher hybrids like  The Zero Boys  (1986), Mastorakis was always trying to stay ahead of the trends and bully his way into the big leagues.  And  Nightmare at Noon  (1988) is the perfect example of his balls-to-the-wall filmmaking approach, desperately trying to capitalize on the ‘80s action boom with all the showmanship of a Barnam & Bailey huckster. Sheriff Hanks (George Kennedy) really has his hands full.  The citizens of his peaceful town of Moab have turned feral after a secret experiment tainted the water supply.  With the help of a snobby tourist (Wings Ha...

Writer / director Eric Pennycoff’s  The Leech  (2022) excels in the art of making its audience uncomfortable.  Mixing comedy, religious angst and (maybe, possibly?) some satanic panic, it’s a film that makes so much of so little you can’t help but root for it to reach that rare cinematic end zone.  But when it finally gets there, all those psychological twists and turns might require further review.  Father David’s flock of parishioners have all but abandoned him.  Making sermons inside an empty church and posting inspirational social media hashtags that no one reads, he finds unlikely inspiration in the form of a vagrant, Terry (Jeremy Gardner), sleeping between the pews.  Invited home as an act of Christian kindness, Terry is quick to take advantage of a good situation, rolling out the red carpet for his now-homeless girlfriend, Lexi (Taylor Zaudtke), to crash the pad as well.  David sees an opportunity to correct their ...

Is it even  possible  to have a bad time while watching a Shaw Brothers movie?  Short of being interrupted by a cancer diagnosis or impending nuclear war, I don’t believe so.  Like an early version of the Marvel Universe, this cinematic kung-fu cornucopia shared superstars, spin-offs and spoofs over the course of two-decades, perfecting a formula that never seemed to cut corners when it came to creativity and showmanship.  And Arrow Video’s  Shawscope: Volume 2  offers up another exemplary collection of films that proves just that. Things start off with  The 36 Chamber of Shaolin , perhaps the best of the fighter-in-training films, starring Gordon Liu as a desperate villager who convinces the reclusive monks to share their kung-fu knowledge in hopes of getting revenge against the evil Manchus.  Liu returned for two sequels (both included) that spun off into a comedic direction will just as satisfying results.   ...

Animal House  (1978) and  Caddyshack  (1980) pretty much perfected the “slobs vs snobs” comedy to the point where nothing more need be said.  But with cheap production values and a horny teenage demographic, the sub-genre cluttered movie screens and video store shelves throughout the 1980s with too many titles to mention.   Ski Patrol  (1990) was very late to the game and, with a PG rating, looked to reach youngsters who loved fart jokes and groin shots, but weren’t quite of age to enjoy bad language and T & A. Snowy Peaks resort is a local institution run by Pops (Ray Walston) and his fun-loving ski patrol, a gaggle of multi-cultural misfits who take nothing seriously except their jobs.  But when a real estate developer (Martin Mull) frames them for several safety violations, the gang is put on the chopping block.  Can they save their jobs and the resort while still pulling pranks, winning talents shows and doing bad Rodne...

On a roll with three consecutive  giallo -inspired hits, Spanish director Eloy de la Iglesia shoehorns all the trappings of the genre into a near-future thriller that openly lifts its style from Kubrick’s  A Clockwork Orange , complete with classical music, copycat droogs and a plan to electronically eradicate aberrant behavior.  The result is, as one might expect, a mixed bag of social satire and slasher tropes that proves there are only so many balls a film can juggle at one time. Ana (Sue Lyon) is a trust-fund orphan and respected healthcare worker who moonlights as a serial killer of young men between the ages of 17 and 30.  Her modus operandi involves seducing victims in various disguises, making love, then stabbing them in the chest with a scalpel.  As luck would have it, David (Chris Mitchum), a disgruntled member of the aforementioned droogs, witnesses Ana disposing of a body and follows her home.  His plan to blackmail her sets ...