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Directors like Mario Bava are the reason cult movie fans exist. Working under miniscule budgets with fly-by-night foreign producers who distributed the final product under a seemingly endless amount of alternative titles, often just tracking down the muddy lineage of Bava’s work is a genealogical case study unto itself. But it’s the thrill of the chase that fans enjoy most, sifting through the pseudonyms and cinematic dead-ends to unearth something truly special from a man who was 40 years ahead of his time. Well, Kino Classics has done most of the work for you in the form of The Mario Bava Collection, three titles (with more presumably to come) including one of Bava’s most notable and celebrated works: Black Sunday. The director’s most complete vision, Black Sunday (1960) was relatively uncompromised by creative interference or budget troubles, something that would wreak havoc on later productions. And the film’s gothic setting, still in favor at the time by rival filmmakers at Hammer...

There’s an art to making a really good creature feature. You can’t be too silly (like Piranha 3DD or recent Roger Corman / SyFy Channel dreck such as Sharktopus ) or too depressing (like recent remakes of Thing and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark ). It’s a fine line between ludicrous and ludicrously amusing. And even when a film hits the nail on the head, the best it can hope for is pleasing an audience of like-minded weirdos. For those searching for that kind of entertainment, Bait is just such a movie. It starts with a premise so preposterous you have to read it twice. After a tsunami hits a seaside Australian resort, a few lucky survivors stay above water in a flooded supermarket. Yet the underwater aisles are now patrolled by a pair of great white sharks who have their eyes on something fresher than whatever’s left in the deli case! So, just to review, that’s great white sharks eating people in a supermarket. If that synopsis alone makes you want to watch, then you won’t b...

Although Mother’s Day (1980) pre-dates the creative peak of Troma Films - which fans would probably target as 1984’s The Toxic Avenger - it firmly establishes producer Lloyd Kaufman’s sick sense of humor, anything-for-a-buck mentality and all-in-good-fun attitude. And that’s no mean feat considering Mother’s Day , directed by Lloyd’s brother, Charlie Kaufman, features equal amounts of rape, dismemberments and random violence. This ain’t no knock-knock joke, people. Holed up in the New Jersey wilderness, Mother and her two sons – Ike and Addley – take great pride in their murderous pastime. And when three sorority sisters on a reunion vacation fall right into their laps, they proceed with their usual routine of torture, torment and eventual death with great enthusiasm. All with Mother’s seal of approval, of course. The only question is, who will survive…and what will be left of them? If you didn’t catch the reference, that last bit is a tagline from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre...

Prior to the current trend of adapting graphic novels, self-help books and board games into major motion pictures, literary masterpieces used to be Hollywood’s bread-and-butter. One might choose to interpret that as a condemnation of today’s movie-going society as unsophisticated, bottom-feeders. But in all honesty, it’s tough to “do-right” by the classics. And one would be hard-pressed to find a producer today who would take on the challenge of adapting William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury , a multi-layered, multiple narrative monstrosity that had to be practically rewritten from the ground up to make it to the screen – even in 1959. The focus here is on Quentin Compson (Joanne Woodward), the illegitimate daughter of a once-proud Southern family. Although only a small part of the novel’s structure (as liner notes by Julie Kirgo point out), the filmmakers chose a more direct coming of age route as Quentin rebels against small-town life and her controlling step-uncle, Jason, p...

It’s seems redundant and more than a little tiresome to provide a brief history of Hammer Studios yet again, and the impact they had on horror cinema worldwide from around 1957 until the company fell apart during the late ‘70s. Especially considering that from a technical standpoint, most of the creative personnel responsible that success were long gone by the time Hammer House of Horror aired as a British television series in 1980. A classic anthology series featuring a different hour-long story each week, House did feature a few notable appearances from Hammer vets like Peter Cushing, director Alan Gibson ( Dracula A.D. 1972 ) and soon-to-be-famous British actors like Pierce Brosnan and Brian Cox. As is usually the case with shows of this type, the quality of each episode varies depending on the talent involved. Cushing’s role in The Silent Scream is sure to attract the most fan attention as a pet-shop owner who keeps a dangerous menagerie in the back room. But The House th...

Sometime around 1986 (perhaps when Emilio Estevez was shooting a Green Goblin semi-truck with a rocket launcher in Maximum Overdrive ) having Stephen King’s name above a movie title stopped being a good thing. A prolific writer, King’s work has a about a 50/50 failure-to-success ratio. Films adapted from the work: perhaps around 80/20. So that fact that 1991’s Sleepwalkers , based on King’s original screenplay, came and went without much cultural impact is probably to be expected. Yet the fun thing about home video is rediscovering titles you missed, slept through or flat-out ignored. And while Sleepwalkers is certainly no lost classic, there’s more to appreciate than you might think in this story about mother-son shape shifters who share an Oedipal relationship and a strange fear of housecats. The new kid in town, Charles (Brian Krause), pursues a relationship with the cute girl next door ( Twin Peaks ’ Madchen Amick). But his intentions are much more mysterious, involving ...

As you can tell from the title, there’s nothing subtle about Piranha 3DD . That’s “double-D” like the bra size, in case the humor was too sophisticated for you. A quick cash-in on the relatively successful (and equally offensive) 2010 remake whose most memorable moment was the amputation of Jerry O’Connell’s own member, director John Gulager ( Feast) does his best to mix SyFy Channel corniness with Cinemax-style skin. This time around, it’s an “adults-only” waterpark that is invaded by the prehistoric piranha who, according to guest-star Christopher Lloyd, are evolving quickly to withstand chlorinated water and perhaps even life on land (foreshadowing an obvious sequel). The leaves a smart but sexy marine biologist (Danielle Panabaker) and a nerdy waterpark worker (Matt Bush) the only thing standing between a day of family fun and a skinny-dipping massacre! Piranha 3DD is a joke from start to finish. You can laugh with it or at it…but either way those with a suitably sick sense...

Art is of its time. And even though the best examples of cinema are “timeless,” it’s awful hard to reproduce the magic behind those classics in the first place. Actors, writers and directors reach a creative peak, and then fade into the Smithsonian of pop-culture (if they’re lucky) or unheralded anonymity (if they’re not). French director Jean Rollin only enjoyed appreciation for his work decades after it was released. But that late success provided him the chance to return to his favorite filmic themes with Two Orphan Vampires – a film produced in 1995 but existing somewhere in the director’s mid-70s oeuvre. Critics might contend that Rollin never had all the much skill to begin with. But even so, his ability to pick up exactly where he left off in terms of style, ideas and execution is pretty amazing. The film itself is much like his tone-poem vampire entries Fascination and Lips of Blood but more restrained in terms of violence, sexuality and budget. Henriette and Louise a...

Even The Living Dead Girl (1982), probably the closest the director ever came to making a genre film (along with his zombie tale The Grapes of Death) defies any real categorization. There’s gore, but few scares as our undead heroine, Catherine, is brought back to life by some toxic waste dumping grave robbers. Compelled to kill, she meanders through her after-life with little purpose until her childhood friend pledges assistance – which includes securing some very unwilling victims. The flashes of violence likely put this at the top of the list for certain Rollin fans. But they exist in a separate world from our lead character, who commits most of her horrendous acts with no emotion or scathing self-hatred. Some English language scenes and a larger than usual budget hint that this was Rollin’s one last shot for genre success. But that’s like hiring a plumber to fix your car; they’re both experts, but in two separate professions.

Like that A-Team lunchbox that begins life as a utilitarian novelty but becomes a treasured kitsch collectible, Bye Bye Birdie is much easier to appreciate 50 years after the fact. The clothes, the hair, the songs, the moves, the pop culture popularity all combine for a fabulously entertaining cumulative effect showcasing the talents of one Ann-Margret. There are other names in the cast – big ones like Dick Van Dyke, Janet Leigh and even Hollywood Squares regular Paul Lynde – but they are completely eclipsed by her rising star quality and schoolgirl sexuality. Adapted from the Broadway show,

It takes skill to play a convincing psycho. Anthony Perkins was immortalized for it Anthony Hopkins won an Academy Award for it. Then there’s Joe Dallesandro, aka “Little Joe” from Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side. The ex-Andy Warhol factory superstar and crotch model for the Rolling Stones is essentially a slab of beef with basic vocabulary skills. And Madness (1980), an Italian import directed by crime-genre specialist Fernando Di Leo, matches him in terms of presenting crude, raw, unshaped exploitation material. In fact, Madness is so sparse in terms of dialogue, camera angles and visual flourishes that it could have been produced in the Warhol factory. With a steamrolling late ‘70s rock score (complete with jazz flute solos) laid over top of every scene, there’s certainly an effort to make the film seem exciting. But even by exploitation standards, Madness seems desperate. Escaped thief and murderer Joe Brezy returns to an isolated cabin in the countryside to recover hi...

It seems like we’ve been waiting for the second-coming of Bruce Lee as long as we’ve been waiting for the actual Second Coming. There have been so many promises - from unsuccessful understudy Chuck Norris to legit contender Jackie Chan – that we should probably all come to terms with the fact that no one will ever match Lee’s skill, style and on-screen charisma. Meanwhile, films like Indonesian import The Raid: Redemption go for the team approach, showcasing the impressive abilities of its star, Iko Uwais, but surrounding him with what appears to be every able-bodied kung fu artist in Jakarta. The result is a non-stop beat down set against the pulsing music of Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park (replacing the traditional score that played with the film during its festival run). For all the impactful punching, kicking and knifing going on, it’s actually director Gareth Evans smooth visual style that makes the film memorable. Perhaps taking a cue from John Carpenter’s early indie Assaul...

There are gearheads and there are propellerheads. Director Ken Annakin is the latter. He even parlayed that obsession into an epic feature-film comedy – 1965’s Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines , a farcical celebration of early 20th century aviation in which an international cast of pilots compete for the grand prize in a London to Paris air race. Each of the planes is as unique as the competitors themselves, which makes for a whimsically entertaining spoof both in the air…and on the ground. Determined to fly, but forbidden by her high-society father who’s sponsoring the event, Patricia Rawnsley (Sarah Miles) winds up in a love triangle between two experienced airmen: her stuffy fiancé (James Fox) and a rule-breaking cowboy from Arizona (Stuart Whitman). As both men vie for her affections, the other contestants search for ways to get a leg up on the competition…up to and including sabotage. As amusing as the film’s comedic set-ups may be, Those Magnificent Men only...

Although it’s pointless to reminisce about Hollywood’s good ‘ ol days (agents, remakes and $100 million dollar budgets aren’t going away anytime soon), there’s something refreshing about watching Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly sing and dance their way through 1944’s Cover Girl . In a world where Rock of Ages is the best imitation of a classic Hollywood musical you can get, even a lesser-known film without a single recognizable song wipes the floor with it. The rising star of a New York nightclub, Rusty (Hayworth) auditions for a cover model contest on a lark. But when she attracts the attention of the magazine’s editor (who just so happens to have had a thing for Rusty’s grandmother ), she’s catapulted into a world of bright lights, Broadway and worldwide attention. That doesn’t sit so well with her boyfriend , Danny (Kelly), who thinks they’ve got a good thing going right there in Brooklyn. Directed by Charles Vidor (who would reteam with Hayworth for Gilda ) and choreographed b...

While classic horror fans are still waiting for Hammer titles like Horror of Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein to make their Blu-ray debuts, one of the studio’s later productions has sneaked its way onto the hi-def format courtesy of niche label Synapse Films. From 1971, Twins of Evil is the third chapter in a pseudo-trilogy based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampiric story of Carmilla , which predated Bram Stoker’s Dracula by some 25 years. Literary pedigree aside, at this point in the studio’s history, Hammer was only interested in one thing: putting butts in seats. The traditional gothic horror film was an endangered species. Scrambling to up the ante of gore and nudity for a rapidly changing audience and more lenient film censorship, Hammer was quick to embrace the “lesbian vampire” film: The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, Countess Dracula …reworkings of the classic gothic ingredients with an erotic edge. Yet Twins of Evil , despite starring a pair of identical ...

In rock ‘n roll terms, Harold and Maude (1971) is the Velvet Underground of movies: it might not get much play, but those who seek it out are inevitably left inspired. The story of a barely 20-something Goth kid (a full decade before the term Goth was even invented) who finds an unlikely soul mate in an 80-year-old woman, director Hal Ashby’s film stretches the May-December romance well past even Hollywood’s liberal standards. And yet by the time the film is over, even those who initially find the idea of “sagging, wrinkled flesh comingling with a fresh youthful body” morally and physically repugnant will find a surprisingly uplifting life philosophy. What comes first, though, is dark comedy. For amusement, Harold (Bud Cort) stages frequent and elaborate phony suicide attempts to annoy his stuffy, aristocratic mother who casually ignores them. Antisocial and unresponsive to psychotherapy, Harold drives a hearse and attends stranger’s funerals for fun. It’s here that he meets Ma...

There’s a point about 20 minutes into Smokey and the Bandit (1977) in which Burt Reynolds, having just successfully left another inept local cop in the dust, leans halfway out of his tricked-out TransAm convertible, looks up at the camera and cracks an ear-to-ear grin, his famous moustache curled up in smug celebration. That shot encapsulates all one ever needs to know about the appeal and success of the film, which in most other respects is one of the most simplistic, juvenile, sexist and just plain stupid movies ever made. It was also one of the highest grossing movies of 1977, right behind beloved classics like the original Star Wars , Close Encounters and Saturday Night Fever . So what was the appeal? In a word: Reynolds. Already a proven sex symbol (he appeared nearly nude on the 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan ) and a man’s man thanks to roles in Deliverance and The Longest Yard , he was that unique star that appealed equally to both sexes with a country-fried sense of humor...

For mass audiences, Sergio Leone’s legitimization of the spaghetti western begins and ends with his Clint Eastwood Dollars trilogy; more specifically their final collaboration, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly , where Clint’s signature squint and poncho became enshrined in American pop culture. And yet Italian filmmakers found just as much inspiration in the character of Taco (played by Eli Wallach), an egomaniacal outlaw who served as both the film’s comic relief and a self-styled “man of the people,” embodying all the ambitions of the huddled masses. A Bullet for the General doesn’t even register as a blip on the average western fan’s radar, and yet in many ways it’s a much more successful film than Leone’s bloated epic. The film is set during the Mexican revolution and stars Gian Maria Volonte as “El Chuncho” (the savage), a bandit who steals guns from the army and sells them back to the revolutionaries. During a well-choreographed train heist, he crosses paths with a soft-spoke...

European films have never really felt the obligation to provide audiences with a beginning, middle and end; the sort of cohesive narrative that American audiences, by and large, expect and demand. Working off the newfound freedom of the French New Wave, Jean Rollin’s The Rape of the Vampire started life as a quick commercial cash-in, but was expanded and evolved into an experimental art film with leftover gothic clichés. As part of the second wave of Rollin titles released by Kino-Lorber under the Redemption label, Rape isn’t really a must-watch for anyone except those who purchased the previous set which repeatedly referenced the film in the original liner notes. It is less a coherent work than a document of Rollin’s education as a filmmaker. The plot - involving a family of vampires, their queen and some unsuspecting visitors - is broken into two parts, neither coalescing into anything conventionally logical. But the director’s fascination with the science behind the super...

The golden age of Hollywood produced relatively few big-budget fantasy and science fiction pictures. With prohibitive costs for special effects and an audience of mostly children (or so the suits said), genre pictures were left in the low-budget gutter. But from time to time a studio like Fox was adventurous enough to put their full financial and creative weight behind a project like Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth . It certainly helped that Disney had scored a huge hit with another Verne adaptation ( 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ) a few years earlier. Fox even went so far as to carry-over the same leading man – the inimitable James Mason – in this story of a scientific expedition racing to become the first team to reach the Earth’s core. While Verne’s novel is a tough read today, obsessively bogged down as it is with scientific minutia, the film’s screenplay is an expert balance of adventure and wit. Among the subterranean dangers our heroes face are constant t...

By 1973, the venerable Hammer Film studio was headed for disaster. Their patented brand of gothic horror was fast going out of style against more modern films like The Exorcist . It seemed no matter how much blood, how many boobs or how high the budget, nothing would turn the tide. Which probably sealed the theatrical fate of a movie like The Asphyx (1973), which worked within Hammer’s well-defined conventions (science and the supernatural run amok in a Victorian setting) but didn’t have the benefit of a Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing to put on their poster. Yet, as it turns out, the film’s relative obscurity and un conventional menace actually works its favor some 40 years after its release. The asphyx itself is an invisible spirit (brought to life in the film through a combination of practical puppetry and optical effects) that carries away a person’s soul at the time of death. When a pair of scientists discover a way to capture the little bugger and lock it up in a sealed ...

When director Robert Zemeckis decided to shoot both of his Back to the Future sequels back-to-back, industry spin played it up as a risky and revolutionary idea. Risky, maybe ( Part 2 ’s only reason for existence is that cool hoverboard), but revolutionary: hardly. In fact, Demetrius and the Gladiators , the sequel to 1953’s biblical epic The Robe, was shot before its predecessor had even wrapped up production in order to take advantage of the enormous sets and elaborate costumes. The irony is, even though it was a seat-of-your-pants production, Demetrius is a far more entertaining film. Victor Mature plays Demetrius, an original Christian charged with the safekeeping of the robe Jesus wore on the cross. But fate tosses him into the Roman arena where his Christian vows of “Thou shalt not kill” are put to a very serious test. Meanwhile, his beliefs attract the attention of Messalina (Susan Hayward), a morally corrupt temptress who takes pleasure in leading our hero astray and in...

Vampire movies typically fall into three categories: traditional gothic (think cobwebs and capes), modern twists ( Twilight or Lost Boys if you’re old school) and erotic lesbians. No joke, the lesbian vampire film has a long and storied history, about on par with the Nazi zombie sub-genre (what…you’ve never heard of that either? Sheesh!). Yet the work of French director Jean Rollin defies all categorization. Early on you can probably credit that to a lack of filmmaking talent in general. But as his work evolved so did the man behind the camera, leaving behind a catalog of films that exist outside of any typical horror film structure, but resonate in your mind like a half-remembered dream. Dream-like is the term probably most often thrown at Rollin’s work. And Redemption Films and Kino Lorber have put out a dreamy series of five Blu-ray Rollin titles. The Nude Vampire is rough going. Provocative title aside, it’s simply too clumsily made to overlook its faults. But it do...

Whether it’s a sign of the times or a passing fad, staging the end of the world has become de rigueur for all fashionable filmmakers these days. Typically at the hands of some sort of undead zombie horde (see above). But writer / director Cornel Wilde’s No Blade of Grass (1970) is much more environmentally-minded, laying the blame in humanity’s own lap by overdosing the atmosphere with pollutants that destroy most of the plant life on earth. Without the ability to grow food, every country in the world descends into chaos and anarchy. Even in jolly old England, the bloom of civilization fades quickly as citizens arm themselves to survive. Leading his family towards a secret sanctuary, John Custance (Nigel Davenport) must elude soldiers, roving bands of thugs and his own descent into irredeemable savagery. It all sounds much more exciting that it is. No Blade of Grass is the kind of film where the end of the world happens mostly off-screen. That means, other than a few mob sce...

A Darryl F. Zanuck production of a John Huston film - with Errol Flynn in his last significant role – The Roots of Heaven is yet another example of the popular Hollywood expression “the story behind the film is more interesting than the film itself.” Shot in Chad over the course of six months, the perpetual heat and diseases took their toll on cast and crew, requiring a constant stream of replacements. Both Zanuck and Huston’s biographies feature anecdotes about the experience and Flynn’s excessive drinking (the actor would die a year later). How could any fictional movie compete with that sensationalist reality? Roots does have its strong points, but they’re a long time coming. Trevor Howard plays an idealistic elephant defender who uses guerilla tactics to defend the continent’s dwindling herds. A famous media personality (quick cameo by Orson Welles) turns him into an international celebrity and his cause is co-opted by other indigenous revolutionaries who use him for their ...

Last House on the Left , director Wes Craven’s debut feature, made such a stink in 1972 that he was spit on by strangers offended by the film’s overt sadomasochism. But that spit was actually a compliment. In the exploitation game, anything that can generate a reaction - especially outrage or disgust - means big money. And rival producers quick to spot a trend saw lots of potential in Craven’s down and dirty plot. Night Train Murders (1975) takes the same torture porn scenario but adds a few levels of dramatic and technical sophistication that House lacked, making it the superior film…but arriving three years too late to earn the same exploitation immortality. Margaret and Lisa hop a train to spend Christmas vacation with Lisa’s parents in Italy. But during the trip they run afoul of two thugs and a perverse older woman who revels in their sexual degradation. Like Last House, Night Train Murders is not a pleasant film to watch. Its goal is to make you extremely uncomforta...

Whatever ideas you have about DRIVE, I can almost guarantee you won’t get the film you’re expecting. Sure, the synopsis sounds like a typical genre action pic: mechanic / stunt man Ryan Gosling, who moonlights as a getaway driver, takes on a job to help out his next door neighbor (Carey Mulligan). When said job goes bad, Gosling and the girl come under fire from some angry underworld types (Ron Perlman, Albert Brooks) who want to cover their tracks. But director Nicolas Winding Refn doesn’t ever let his movie take the predictable route…for good or bad. From the opening hot pink ‘80s font and corny keyboard score, to the jarring moments of extreme violence, right down to refusing to give his lead character a first or last name; DRIVE is essentially a big middle finger to the Hollywood establishment. And that fits right in with Gosling’s post- Notebook career, which seems to be equal amounts Marlon Brando eccentricity and Steve McQueen cool. Gosling has a chip on his shoulder,...

If you’re interested you can follow Fulci’s trail of blood right on into The House by the Cemetery . Released just a year after The Shining , Fulci’s film lifts many of the same spook house ingredients: blank-faced kid with psychic visions, creepy ghost girls, and (due to budgetary constraints, I’m sure) a small stream of blood rather than a service elevator. I’ll try for a synopsis, but early ‘80s Italian horror paid about as much attention to their plots as a five-year-old in advanced algebra class. It’s not that narrative logic was beyond him, but Fulci seemed to be competing toe-to-toe with rival Dario Argento ( Suspiria ) to see who could make the most non-sensical horror film. House comes awful close to winning the prize; blending ghosts, zombies and mad-scientists with several set-piece gross out effects. An over-the-top bat attack shows exactly how entertaining poor dubbing, rubber wings and gallons of fake blood can be! Blue Underground’s new Blu-ray edition is so scrubb...

Fulci Lives! Never heard the expression? Attend any horror convention across the country you’ll see more T-shirts with this slogan than mullets at a rodeo. That’s because Lucio Fulci, the Italian director behind Zombie, really knows how to impale an eyeball. Zombie is, if not the director’s most accomplished film, certainly his most bankable thanks to the pseudo-sequel tie-in with Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Fulci, though, doesn’t waste his time with social satire or dark comedy but gets right down the bloody business of loosing his zombie horde on the world (or at least, the parts he can afford the location costs). The film opens with a very effective Nosferatu image of an abandoned sailboat drifting into New York harbor. Well, almost abandoned. On board is a decomposing but dangerous zombie escapee from a mysterious South Seas island. This discovery prompts a couple of amateur sleuths – actors Tisa Farrow (Mia’s sister) and Ian McCulloch (not the Echo and Bunnymen singer) – to track d...

OK, I’ll admit it. A 100-foot-tall, firebreathing Japanese turtle isn’t really scary by anyone’s standards. But you’ll be surprised just how effective director Shuseke Kaneko’s ‘90s Gamera trilogy is at realistically staging Godzilla-scale destruction without all the unintentional humor. Particularly the third film, Revenge of Iris , which focuses on the real emotional aftermath of all that monster mashing. A young girl whose parents were killed during one of Gamera’s previous battles finds and raises an orphaned monster with the intent on getting revenge. Very rarely does a kaiju film (Japanese for “monster movie”) even acknowledge that its creatures are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people, let alone build an entire script around the idea. Iris does this with such skill you almost forget you’re watching men in rubber suits. All three films are now out in a handsome Blu-ray box set that you can get on the cheap.

For years, I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen that Evil Dead 2 (1987) is one of the most influential movies of the last 30 years. Like Citizen Kane (yep, I just went there) it showed an entire generation of filmmakers that they could do anything with a movie camera. No tripod, no problem! Just tape the darn thing down on a plank of wood and start shooting. Sam Raimi’s film proved that in the videotape era, the rules of traditional Hollywood filmmaking no longer applied. No one learned that lesson better than Peter Jackson, starting with his underground New Zealand horror productions and culminating with his most unlikely Academy Award sweep in 2004. Dead Alive (his third feature) is a variant on the Evil Dead horror-comedy formula, only with an emphasis on gore and special effects that makes Raimi’s film look like an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba . And it’s most certainly not for everyone. It’s easy to spot Jackson’s talent; he gives the camera free reign to swoop, spin...

Although his career is now Hollywood limbo, you have to give M. Knight Shyamalan credit for delivering the most original ghost story is the past 20 years. It’s easy to scare folks with loud noises and cheap gags, but The Sixth Sense got under your skin with its mix of the supernatural and the spiritual . Which is exactly what The Presence attempts to do, it its own misguided way. Mira Sorvino plays a psychologically scarred writer who isolates herself in a cabin to work on her book deal with her own childhood trauma. But - as the audience is made aware of in the first shot - she shares this space with an uncommunicative spirit (Shane West) who seems equally trapped in his own depressing after-life. Director Tom Provost takes the risky (but ultimately rewarding) approach of shooting his ghost as if he’s just another character in the room. Which makes it all the more jarring when another spirit arrives, one that seems to be whispering nasty thoughts into our heroine’s ear. The P...

As John Carpenter tells it, he was up all night in front of a typewriter trying to come up with some ideas for the contractually obligated sequel to his super successful slasher movie, Halloween . Several hours and half a bottle of whisky later, Laurie Strode was revealed to be Michael Meyers’ sister , explaining exactly why she seemed to be the target of on his homicidal bender through Haddonfield. Carpenter would be the first to admit the whole thing was scarier without an explanation (see Rob Zombie’s horrendous remakes if you need further clarification), but his slightly inebriated plot point works as well as any. The director didn’t return, but Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance and director of photography Dean Cundey did , which means the films looks and feels like a direct continuation of Carpenter’s work. The spooky suburban streets, however, are soon replaced by the sterile corridors of Haddonfield Memorial Hospital where Laurie is admitted as the only survivor of the Mic...

It ironic how much effort Scream 4 puts into critiquing the irrelevancy of all the remakes, re-imaginings and rip-offs of horror classics in recent years, when the franchise itself has been irrelevant for more than a decade. The Wes Craven / Kevin Williamson creation was never as smart as it thought it was to begin with. It’s a lot tougher to make something scary than it is to mock something that’s not. And yet there’s something oddly reassuring about this fourth chapter, which attempts to comment on Facebook (“I don’t want friends, I want fans ,” confesses the killer when finally revealed), Twitter, and an entire generation so out of touch with reality that a live streaming feed is the closest they get to a personal interaction. There’s plenty of material to work with, but the film’s formula remains predictably routine: clever intro, smart-ass teenagers, prank calls, several red herrings and that corny Ghostface mask. But it’s great to see time spent on Courtney Cox and David ...

Hammer Films was single-handedly responsible for the return of classic horror icons in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Their gory, full-color reboots of the Dracula and Frankenstein franchises made all the old gothic haunts bankable again. But the studio also dabbled in comedies, action and suspense thrillers like Hysteria , a sub-Hitchcockian story of an amnesiac who tries to piece together the circumstances behind the car crash that was responsible for his fragile mental condition. It’s obvious upfront that there’s some sort of conspiracy afoot, so the chief viewing pleasure is trying to sort out exactly who is responsible: the innocent nurse, concerned psychiatrist, mysterious femme fatale…or all three? Director Freddie Francis is responsible for some of the most visually sumptuous films ever made. This isn’t one of them. Hysteria is a perfectly flat and dull looking affair, that really only comes alive when bit player Maurice Denham enters the story as a surprisingly street smart priva...

Roger Corman has been responsible for somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 films as a writer, director or producer. Little wonder Shout Factory has resorted to packaging his films as a Quadruple Feature in their latest release Vampires, Mummies & Monsters . This 2-disc special edition sports some pretty obscure titles picked for release by Roger when he started his own company – New World – in the early ‘70s. Lady Frankenstein (1972) is the most interesting, with a classy Hammer Films approach that mixes gothic horror with sex, sadism and necrophilia. Carrying on her father’s work, Tania Frankenstein (Rosalba Neri) takes things to a whole new level of deceiptful depravity, crafting a creature not just out of scientific curiousity, but also to satisfy her physical desires. The Velvet Vampire (1971) has a good time exploring the dark side of the free-love generation’s loose morals, with a young married couple seduced by a swinging vampiress. A good deal of unintentional hum...

It might have been hard to be a Charlton Heston fan at the tail end of his career: polyester and politics will sully almost anyone’s reputation. But during the late ‘50s, he was a close as a movie star could get to God…literally. After playing Moses in The Ten Commandments , Heston followed up his Biblical performance with another religious epic, Ben Hur , the most expensive movie ever produced at the time. Director William Wyler’s film wound up winning eleven Academy Awards (a record that still holds today, tied with Titanic and The Return of the King ) and cementing Heston’s reputation as the go-to guy for studio tent-pole pictures. But Ben Hur is far from a creaky historical record of Hollywood’s golden years; it’s an action-packed, monumental cinematic achievement that served as the model for filmmakers half a century later. The Chariot Sequence alone is the stuff of legend. Utilizing multiple cameras and taking over five weeks to film, the stunts still pack a punch, all ...

After Bernard Goetz shot four muggers in an NYC subway in 1984, most of the life went out of the vigilante movies. It was much more fun to fantasize about old pros like Charles Bronsan punishing criminals with extreme prejudice than to swallow the idea of Goetz - a nerdy, bespectacled milquetoast - as a defender of justice. Reality, and the surrounding controversy, threw cold water in the face of what had been a cinematic hot topic. But The Exterminator (1980) was prescient in at least one respect: its hero (or anti -hero) is just as harmless and frumpy looking as Goetz. John Eastland (Robert Ginty) looks about as dangerous as a high-school English teacher, but after his buddy from the ‘Nam is viciously mugged he tracks down the punks responsible and makes them pay. Not content to stop there, John metes out justice to a whole lineup of gangsters, perverts and street punks, becoming a media sensation. The Exterminator was a staple on the shelf of every “mom & pop” video s...

Low-budget horror hit a peak in the 70’s with films like Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes breaking the barriers of good taste and the heretofore predictable rules of scary movies audiences came to expect. These were the pioneers of the “anti-Hollywood” horror movie. Despite its rabid cult following, Hills isn’t the most accomplished film of Wes Craven’s career. The editing is clumsy, the acting is weak and the make-up is corny (actor Michael Berryman’s misshapen bald skull makes him the only convincing inbred hick in the bunch). At best, Hills is a jury-rigged minor masterpiece, held together by sheer brute force and an overwhelming sense of dread. The film feeds off the momentum of its stripped down story about a family of whitebread vacationers fighting for survival in the desert against a family of cannibalistic madmen (and women). The set-piece scene - and the one that likely earned the film its reputation - is a disturbingly violent at...

When it comes to the serial killer genre, there’s not much left to say (or show) that will shock an audience. We’ve seen elegant cannibals, ingenious tricksters and mindless hulks who strip your skin and wear it like a cheap suit. Been there, done that. So to squeeze something new out of the conventions, you have to tell the story in a different way. Which is exactly what A Horrible Way To Die does. Shy, skittish and borderline paranoid, Sarah (Amy Seimetz) is struggling through her AA meetings and trying to rebuild her life. From what? We’re not sure yet. But as the film cuts to the escape of famous serial killer Garrick Turrell - whose Facebook friend count is disgustingly high - we begin to get the idea that there’s a history between the two. And that history is going to repeat itself. Shot in the casual docu-style of an Office episode, we follow Sarah on dates with her new boyfriend as she begins to open up again. Meanwhile Garrick is coping with his own sick and tw...

Most movies try their best to disguise they era in which they were created. But Brian DePalma’s Scarface embraces the decadence and self-destruction of the 80’s as the backdrop for a re-imagining of the gangster classic with Al Pacino as the dangerously ambitious Cuban immigrant Tony Montana. At the time of its release, Pacino’s over-the-top performance was about the only thing that attracted positive reviews. Oliver Stone’s brutal, profanity laced script hit the screen after fighting its way past an X-rating, only to do moderate business at the box office. But from these humble beginnings a cult film was born. Embraced by the modern gangster culture, almost every rapper’s crib has a shrine dedicated to Tony Montana and his extravagant lifestyle (apparently they missed the none-too-subtle roadsigns of a quick, violent death). DePalma (The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible) reigns in his trademark visuals, but makes the most of the violent set-pieces he has to work with. Tony’s final bl...

Before she became a Blaxploitation queen, and long before Quentin Tarantino tried to resurrect her career in Jackie Brown , Pam Grier was sent to prison by none other than Roger Corman. Always on the lookout to save a buck, Roger produced three “Women In Prison” films in quick succession in 1971 in the Philippines: The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage and Women in Cages . Essentially the same movie with actors swapping parts, Pam Grier was the obvious standout in each production. So much so that she was elevated to top-name status in films like Coffy and Foxy Brown not two years later. Not so much for her acting ability, but her charisma . This is a woman who knows how to shoot a machine gun! The man behind these low-rent but highly entertaining exploitation adventures, director Jack Hill ( Doll House & Bird House ) covers all the obligatories: 1) Naked women in the shower. 2) Women wrestling in mud. 3) Women being tortured. But despite that litany of lurid, misog...

Buddy cops share a special bond: whether it’s reminiscing over that last car chase or seeing how pissed off the Captain is after your last report, it’s a cinematic relationship with roots deeper than most cinematic marriages . So the homo-erotic undertones in Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man are mostly likely unintentional. After all, these guys are locked, loaded and taking names on the mean streets of Rome. And when they’re not hunting down the bad guys as part of their super-secret undercover police squad, they’re interrogating female witnesses with the sort of macho vigor that only exists in “pizza guy” porn movies. So who cares if they sleep in the same apartment and ride the same motorcycle to work? Directed by gore specialist Ruggero Deodato (from a script by Italian crime specialist Fernando Di Leo), with a title like Live Like A Cop, Die Like A Man you’ve got a lot of testosterone to live up to. And the film surprisingly meets expectations, constructing a fast-paced F...

What if Bobby and Cindy Brady were actually homicidal maniacs? That’s essentially the premise behind Bloody Birthday , a 1981 slasher shot with all the style of a Sherwood Schwartz sitcom. Three kids are born at the same time, in the same hospital during a solar eclipse. If you keep up with your horoscopes you’ll know that means they’re destined to be born without a conscience; little Ted Bundys with taped glasses and church pants. For no particular reason they start off-ing horny teenagers, then move on to any family members who become suspicious. Bloody Birthday sports a few recognizable faces, including an extended striptease from ex-MTV personality Julie Brown and Elizabeth Hoy (perhaps better known as the little girl John Belushi offers to “buy” during the restaurant sequence in The Blues Brothers ) as one of the murderous kids. And even with its flat, unflattering look, the movie has a certain late ‘70s appeal, trying desperately to capture just a little of that leftover ...

Prison movies like The Shawshank Redemption always seem to feature men reaching down deep within themselves to persevere in the face of injustice. Meanwhile, women in prison movies are typically just an excuse to provide some T & A. With that in mind let’s go over the top three signs you know you’re watching a women in prison movie: 1) The warden’s office has a hot tub. 2) Instead of drab prison uniforms each inmate is assigned a slinky negligee. 3) In case of emergency the prison bars can substitute for stripper poles! You’ll find all that and more in the Women In Prison Triple Feature , gathering three titles from the ‘80s (two of which spotlight Exorcist child star Linda Blair) for an enjoyably sleazy marathon. Chained Heat (1983) is the raunchiest of the bunch and also the most ridiculous. How seriously can you take a movie when the aforementioned warden not only has a hot tub, but a stuffed cougar with glowing eyes? Baby-faced Linda Blair is the perfect naïve pin...