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We didn’t have particularly high standard back in the VHS era.  Two-for-one rental night meant you could afford to pick up that title with a cheesy cover knowing full well that it could  never  live up to it.  But as long as there was a valiant attempt at delivering Hollywood knock-off quality – and the requisite amount sex and violence – everyone was satisfied.  MVD’s Rewind Collection, featuring slick retro artwork and collectible insert posters, reaches high on the shelf for their three latest titles celebrating ‘80s bad taste. Witchtrap  (1989) comes from director Kevin S. Tenney, who had a ground-rule horror double with  Witchboard  and  Night of the Demons  just a few years prior.  Here he’s working with about half the budget and a quarter of the talent to tell the story of a warlock attempting reincarnation while dodging paranormal investigators out to vacuum up his soul.  Linnea Quigley has a small – and predictably unclothed – role as a video tech while the rest of the cast ar

Who, what, where, when  and  why  provide the structural foundation for most professional writing…even screenplays.  Pull any script off a shelf and you’ll get a formatted breakdown of characters and settings laid out in rather rigid fashion.  But it’s that lingering  why  that separates a by-the-numbers story from a compelling one.  In fact, those films that choose  not  to answer can leave the biggest impression. Like Ruldolf Thome’s  Red Sun  (1970), a film that addresses the shockwaves of the social and sexual revolution but refuses to supply easy answers.  Thomas, an unapologetic layabout and habitual moocher, talks his way into the apartment of an old girlfriend, Peggy, who shares the space with three other women.  Sharing expenses and revolutionary ideologies, the quartet live by a strict set of rules:  any man they date must die within five days.  Thomas, loathe to give up a good domestic situation, takes this shocking news in stride, refusing to believe that Peggy would actual

Let’s be clear, the films of Charles Band – whose companies include Empire Pictures and Full Moon Productions – occupy a special tier of entertainment.  It’s one best appreciated by those willing to overlook the niceties of typical Hollywood productions for an independent spirit, often full of overly ambitious ideas and inventively low-rent execution.  And they were simply  made  for the Mom & Pop video store boom of the ‘80s and ‘90s.  Which explains Arrow Video’s beautifully packaged collection  Enter the Video Store – Empire of Screams , curating five Band productions under the Empire banner.   The Dungeonmaster  (aka  Ragewar)  is an anthology of sorts as our computer programmer hero goes toe-to-toe against Satan in a series of deadly challenges.  Filmed immediately after Band’s second foray into 3D,  Metalstorm , this one recycles the same lead actor but uses five different directors to break up the story into bite-size dramatic chunks ranging from a repeat of post-apocalyptic

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

For the layperson, there seem to be as many styles of kung fu as there are Marvel superheroes. The result – in both cases – is an invigorating blend of action and backstory that can very easily become overwhelming.  But the birth of Wing Chun got a boost from the  Ip Man  saga, which popularized the origin story of what is the most contemporary style of martial arts.  But Sammo Hung actually got there several decades earlier with  Warriors Two  (1978), his third time behind the camera for Golden Harvest, challenging himself and his performers to bring an entirely new form of fighting to the screen.   Anxious for payback against the thugs who murdered his mother, Cashier Wah (Casanova Wong) begs to become a Wing Chun student under Master Tsang.  But his personal vengeance is against the moral code of this exclusive martial art.  After some prompting by a fellow student, Kei Cheun (Sammo Hung), Tsang agrees to pass along his skills…just before he’s killed in cold blood by the same gang o

There were essentially two kinds of sci-fi films popular during the 1950s:  the serious-minded, manifest destiny space dramas and the radioactive, monster-on-the-loose variety.   Rocketship X-M  manages to straddle the line between them  both , following the exploits of a moon mission gone wrong that finds its crew landing on the desolate landscape of Mars instead.  Rushed into production to beat George Pal’s more prestigious  Destination Moon  – which it did – director Kurt Neumann ( The Fly ) sneaks some fun pulpy ideas into the second half the of the picture, making this a low-budget gem in nearly every respect.   Playing up the technical aspects of spaceflight, XM is staffed by gung-ho adventurers (including Lloyd Bridges), one scientist and a female chemist who, of course, suffers from the curse of professional frigidity.  The script – with contributions from the famously blacklisted Dalton Trumbo – gets lost in tech talk for a while until the familiar hazards of outer space pop u

As comedy teams go, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were subtler than most.  Oh, that’s not to say that their humor didn’t rely on pranks, pratfalls and comic misunderstandings.  The formula was much the same as successful solo acts like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.  But Laurel and Hardy had a bit more patience, stretching out a gag with a slower pace for a bigger payoff.  Of course, it’s all a matter of taste.  But those (like myself) who feel the duo never quite got their due,  Laurel & Hardy :  The Definitive Restorations is a set worth losing your **** over! Featuring two features ( Sons of the Desert  and  Way Out West ) and 17 shorts, the 4-disc set offers up a comprehensive look at the Hal Roach Studios’ output, including the home video debut of  The Battle of the Century , a L & H silent reconstructed in its most complete version.  If you’re expecting scratchy, public domain quality prints, think again.  Most of the material has been restored by the UCL

Although Turner Classic Movies catches a lot of flak for its programming quirks, it’s still an important cinematic resource, one that gives a bit of pomp and circumstance to even the most insignificant films.  And their host introductions, usually a five minute or less breakdown of the most salient facts and figures, are a big part of the experience.  On the home video side of things, liner notes serve the same function.  The best of them provides some backstory and historical significance rather than just shamelessly plugging something you’ve already bought.  And on Radiance Films latest release,  Yakuza Graveyard  (1976), those notes are an essential part of appreciating just what the film is trying to accomplish. Kuroiwa is a police investigator with a chip on his shoulder.  Charged with keeping the peace between warring yakuza clans, he finds himself drawn to their honor-code that seems a step up from his own corrupt police force.  In particular, his association with the Nishida cl

As Americans we take our diversity for granted.  Whether its racial, religious or regional, with that much square footage to work with there are bound to be dramatic cultural differences.  But when it comes to other countries, we myopically lump them into one group.  French, Germans, Jamaicans, what have you, it’s a foreign concept to most of us that within these small geographic areas there could be just as many social and ethnic divisions.  But director Luigi Comencini’s  The Sunday Woman  (1975) is a satirical mystery built around that very thing: the sometimes ugly, sometimes comical class distinctions that divide Italian society, specifically in the city of Turin. The murder of a lecherous architect winds up implicating a number of suspects in Commissioner Santamaria’s (Marcello Mastroianni) investigation.  The bored socialite (Jacqueline Bisset), closeted playboy (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and his clingy lover (Aldo Reggiani) all have sketchy alibis and sufficient motivation.  But