Scream/Shout! Factory Archives - Page 2 of 5

The Dungeonmaster (1984)/Eliminators (1986) [Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

February 1, 20161980s, 2016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller, Zombie

Ragewar
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C+
starring Richard Moll, Leslie Wing, Jeffrey Byron
written by Allen Actor
directed by Rosemarie Turko, John Carl Buechler, David Allen, Steven Ford, Peter Manoogian, Ted Nicolaou, Charles Band

ELIMINATORS
**½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Andrew Prine, Denise Crosby, Patrick Reynolds, Roy Dotrice
written by Paul De Meo & Danny Bilson
directed by Peter Manoogian

by Bryant Frazer Shout! Factory’s program of disinterred but well-preserved artifacts from producer Charles Band’s genre-flick factory Empire Pictures continues with this platter of aged cheese. I’m generally resistant to nostalgia and suspicious of claims that anybody’s low-budget crapfest is so bad it’s good, but the twofer on offer here is surprisingly engaging, juxtaposing a sloppy but fast-paced horror anthology with a silly but earnest action pastiche in a celebration of a bygone age of guileless indie filmmaking. While some of Scream Factory’s excavations from that era are simply depressing (The Final Terror, anyone?), this highly-derivative double feature makes up for its lack of artistry with a generous helping of vintage latex creature masks, boggling non sequiturs, and 1980s signifiers that generate–at least for movie buffs of a certain age and proclivity–a strong sense memory of sticky floors, stale popcorn, and battered 35mm projection.

Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight (1995) [Collector’s Edition] + Tales from the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood (1996) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

November 30, 20151990s, 2015, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller, Vampire

Demon Knight
***/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A
starring Billy Zane, William Sadler, Jada Pinkett, Brenda Bakke
written by Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris & Mark Bishop
directed by Ernest Dickerson

Bordello of Blood
*/**** Image B Sound C+ Extras A
starring Dennis Miller, Erika Eleniak, Angie Everhart, John Kassir
screenplay by A.L. Katz & Gilbert Adler
directed by Gilbert Adler

by Walter Chaw I didn’t have HBO as a kid. Didn’t even have cable. When I went over to friends’ houses, I would spend a lot of time wanting to watch MTV to try to catch up on all the popular culture I was missing. “Remote Control”, the first Jon Stewart show, “Dream On”, “The Kids in the Hall”–each of them represent gaping holes in my pop education. Lump in the Walter Hill-produced “Tales from the Crypt” anthology program with that group of things I knew about but only by title and reputation. My first exposure to the EC Comics-inspired/adapted-from show was through reprints of “Tales from the Crypt” and “Strange Tales” comics during the early-’90s industry boom. Then Ernest Dickerson’s fantastic Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight (hereafter Demon Knight) satisfied every single expectation I had of something seeking to honour the ghoulish, sometimes puerile depravity of William Gaines’s seminal source material. It’s as gory as it is corny and smart as hell for recognizing that those were the only requirements. Doesn’t hurt that the practical-effects work is goopy and inventive. Oh, and the cast is exceptional.

Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut (1990) [Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack] + Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions (1995) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

November 1, 20151990s, 2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

Clive Barker’s Nightbreed
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Craig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, David Cronenberg, Charles Haid
screenplay by Clive Barker, based on his novel Cabal
directed by Clive Barker

CLIVE BARKER’S LORD OF ILLUSIONS
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C+
starring Scott Bakula, Kevin J. O’Connor, Famke Janssen, Daniel Von Bargen
written for the screen and directed by Clive Barker

by Walter Chaw Clive Barker’s too-brief directing career, capping his time as the Stephen King-anointed prince of horror (“I have seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker,” went King’s famous endorsement), produced three cult classics: Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Lord of Illusions. His Hollywood trajectory traces the familiar tale of enfant terrible allowed full reign on his first project, only to find subsequent efforts bowdlerized by non-believers. Director’s cuts of Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions have circulated in some form over the years, with fans claiming–particularly in the case of Nightbreed–that masterpieces had been corrupted, hidden from sight. It’s the kind of intrigue that forms the basis of much of Barker’s work: the hidden grotto, arcane knowledge secreted away, art too beautiful for human eyes. There’s something of the fury of H.P. Lovecraft’s cult of personality in this–something more of the cosplay phenomenon. Each of Barker’s movies evokes the absolute acceptance that outsiders encounter at genre conventions: they are explosions of the internal, actings-out of repressed desires. Find in this explanation of the coda, surprisingly sticky despite the bad pun, to his short-story anthologies: “Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red.” Clive Barker is the Douglas Sirk of splatter.

The Sentinel (1977) – Blu-ray Disc

October 28, 20151970s, 2015, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Disability, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory

Sentinel771

*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Chris Sarandon, Cristina Raines, Martin Balsam, John Carradine
screenplay by Michael Winner and Jeffrey Konvitz, based on the novel by Konvitz
directed by Michael Winner

by Bryant Frazer Death Wish director Michael Winner tried his hand at a boilerplate horror flick with The Sentinel, another in the long-running cycle of American horror films that doubled as scary religious propaganda, with the faith of Catholic priests the last bulwark against harrowing incursions by Satan himself on our mortal realm. It’s not a good movie, but it has a hell of a supporting cast–Christopher Walken, Eli Wallach, and Ava Gardner, just for starters–and that specific, vaguely gritty time-and-place authenticity that you could only get by shooting on location in New York City in the 1970s. For this type of genre piece, that ensures a small kind of immortality, but Winner, indifferently adapting a best-selling novel and barely directing a lead actress who hates him, brings to it a certain je ne sais quoi that pushes it over the line into the sleazeball hall of fame.

The Food of the Gods (1976)/Frogs (1972) [Double Feature] + Empire of the Ants (1977)/Jaws of Satan (1981) [Double Feature] – Blu-ray Discs

October 26, 20151970s, 1980s, 2015, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

THE FOOD OF THE GODS
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Marjoe Gortner, Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker, Ida Lupino
screenplay by Bert I. Gordon, based on a portion of the novel by H.G. Wells
directed by Bert I. Gordon

FROGS
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Ray Milland, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark, Adam Roarke
screenplay by Robert Hutchison and Robert Blees
directed by George McCowan

EMPIRE OF THE ANTS
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C-
starring Joan Collins, Robert Lansing, John David Carson, Albert Salmi
screenplay by Jack Turley, story by Bert I. Gordon, based on the novel by H.G. Wells
directed by Bert I. Gordon

King Cobra
***/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C-
starring Fritz Weaver, Gretchen Corbett, Jon Korkes, Norman Lloyd
screenplay by Gerry Holland, from a story by James Callaway
directed by Bob Claver

by Jefferson Robbins If THE DISSOLVE had lasted, Keith Phipps’s fine recurring genre feature “The Laser Age” might have gotten around to the SF subcategory of Nature Gone Wild–the movies that set animals against humanity, such as The Swarm, Night of the Lepus, Squirm, and Prophecy (The Monster Movie). Distinctly a 1970s phenomenon, as we fretted over the northward migration of killer bees and the health of our DDT-soaked bald eagles, the films usually boasted critters who turned on us bipeds after stewing too long in our toxic effluents, perhaps gaining bestial superpowers as a result. They were cheapies, by and large, although with The Swarm director Irwin Allen tried to pull off the same broad settings and large aging-star cast he’d managed in his previous disaster flicks. As a trope, humanity vs. nature works best in isolation, when solitary heroes or groups of victims are besieged in the sticks, with no outside help forthcoming.

The Legacy (1978) – Blu-ray Disc

October 20, 20151970s, 2015, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Mystery, Scream/Shout! Factory, UK

Legacy1

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Katharine Ross, Sam Elliott, Roger Daltrey, John Standing
screenplay by Jimmy Sangster, Patrick Tilley and Paul Wheeler from a story by Sangster
directed by Richard Marquand

by Bryant Frazer One in a spate of post-The Exorcist, post-Rosemary’s Baby potboilers about ordinary people confronting ancient evil in the modern world, The Legacy has an enduring reputation as a big slice of horror cheese and not much else. Certainly, it’s derivative–just another old-dark-house yarn set in the English countryside, spiced up in ’70s fashion with a sinister, Satanic backstory that never quite clicks together. It’s one of the last horror movies to come out in the handsomely-mounted classic style favoured by Hammer before contemporary slashers and body-horror changed the game completely in the 1980s, but what it lacks in originality and coherence it makes up for in comfy genre atmosphere. Co-scriptor Jimmy Sangster was one of the top dogs at Hammer Film Productions (his writing credits include Horror of Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein) and Welsh director Richard Marquand was a BBC documentarian making his fiction debut (he would go on to direct Return of the Jedi). That’s not a world-beating combination, but if you like your occult thrillers played straight, The Legacy‘s workmanlike style is an asset.

Ghoulies (1985)/Ghoulies II (1988) [Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

October 7, 20151980s, 2015, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory

GHOULIES
**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelikan, Michael Des Barres, Jack Nance
screenplay by Luca Bercovici and Jefery Levy
directed by Luca Bercovici

GHOULIES II
***/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Damon Martin, Royal Dano, Phil Fondacaro, J. Downing
screenplay by Charlie Dolan and Dennis Paoli
directed by Albert Band

by Jefferson Robbins Not rip-off, not homage, but something in the water. Luca Bercovici’s 1985 Ghoulies, from the lo-fi film factory of Charles Band, felt on release like a ploy to frack cash out of Joe Dante’s Gremlins from the year before. In fact, it had a parallel development, launching pre-production in 1983 under the working title Beasties and formally premiering in Britain in November of 1984. It also boasts a far weirder strain of presentation than Dante’s peak, something Lynchian that goes beyond the mere presence of Jack Nance. It has its passel of ’80s “teen” types harassed by horrors, sure: the stoner(s), the ladykiller, the nerd–not to mention their attendant ladies, none of whom are given much personality, resulting in a deeply uninteresting film debut for young Mariska Hargitay. But their mannerisms, in large part, are so outré and alienating that it’s at times like watching an underfinanced dinner-theatre preview of 1986’s Blue Velvet. And then the dead warlock bursts out of the ground to be attended by a clutch of grody puppets.

Nomads (1986) – Blu-ray Disc

September 21, 20151980s, 2015, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Mystery, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Lesley-Anne Down, Pierce Brosnan, Anna-Maria Monticelli, Adam Ant
written and directed by John McTiernan

by Bryant Frazer Director John McTiernan’s film debut is a true ’80s oddity. Pierce Brosnan sports an ersatz French accent in his first big movie role. He’s billed opposite Lesley-Anne Down, riding the downhill slope of her post-Sphinx career, but the two have only one scene together. McTiernan’s script, to date his only screenwriting credit, is some superficial fluffernutter about restless inuat (spirits of Inuit mythology) haunting the L.A. living–except when it’s a diffuse meditation on the stateless qualities of Angelenos and California in general. Even the score, an improvisational guitar-and-synth freakout by Bill Conti and (I shit you not) Ted Nugent, is genuinely weird.

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988) [Collector’s Edition] + Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Packs

August 12, 20151980s, 2015, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory

SLEEPAWAY CAMP II: UNHAPPY CAMPERS
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B+
starring Pamela Springsteen, Renée Estevez, Brian Patrick Clarke, Walter Gotell
written by Fritz Gordon
directed by Michael A. Simpson

SLEEPAWAY CAMP III: TEENAGE WASTELAND
½*/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B+
starring Pamela Springsteen, Tracy Griffith, Michael J. Pollard
written by Fritz Gordon
directed by Michael A. Simpson

by Bryant Frazer Say what you will about the original Sleepaway Camp–you can’t accuse it of lacking ambition. All writer-director Robert Hiltzik had to do to sell a movie with that title in that era was cast a bunch of teenagers in a wan Friday the 13^th knock-off and splash some Karo blood around in the woods. Yet he made something dark and unique, with queer undertones: the first gender-identity horror film. The story goes that Hiltzik’s script for a follow-up was rejected by producer Jerry Silva, who thought it was too dark. Instead, he forged ahead with plans to shoot two overtly-comic sequels back-to-back in Georgia under the direction of local talent Michael A. Simpson. A 24-year-old writer named Fritz Gordon got the gig on a recommendation from U.S. distributor Nelson Entertainment.

Miami Blues (1990) – Blu-ray Disc

June 23, 20151990s, 2015, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

***/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B
starring Fred Ward, Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nora Dunn
screenplay by George Armitage, based on the novel by Charles Willeford
directed by George Armitage

by Jefferson Robbins Remember when handheld camera was a technique deployed to signal disorientation, estrangement, and vulnerability and not simply “the way we shoot movies now”? In George Armitage’s Miami Blues, the otherwise-steady camera first comes unhinged when ex-con Frederick “Junior” Frenger Jr. (Alec Baldwin) orders newly-requisitioned hooker Pepper (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to roll over on her belly, presumably so he can employ her the way male prisoners employ each other sexually. He can’t, though, because there’s something different there, and an afternoon’s purchased pleasure becomes an affair. Armitage’s use of the camera is a punctuation, a chapter break in Junior’s story, reassuring us that while Junior is malevolent and unpredictable, Pepper won’t immediately meet the same fate as the Hare Krishna that Junior (kind of accidentally) murdered an hour before. Still, you should probably worry for her.

New Year’s Evil (1980) – Blu-ray Disc

June 14, 20151980s, 2015, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Roz Kelly, Kip Niven, Chris Wallace, Grant Cramer
screenplay by Leonard Neubauer
directed by Emmett Alston

by Bryant Frazer Every 1980s slasher movie needed a gimmick, and New Year’s Evil has two: a Halloween-inspired holiday tie-in and a youth-culture exploitation angle. A Hollywood-based serial killer promises to murder a victim at the stroke of midnight in each of the four continental U.S. time zones, announcing his intentions by calling “Hollywood Hotline”, a New Year’s Eve countdown TV show hosted by Roz Kelly (the erstwhile Pinky Tuscadero on “Happy Days”) that features live performances by punkish new wave acts. The results are surprisingly watchable. The psycho-killer story is actually a bit twisty as these things go, with a mid-film reversal of fortune aiming to give audiences a rooting interest in the villain. And though the bands on screen (Shadow and Made in Japan) seem to be employed mainly to help pad out the film’s 86-minute running time, their proto-Guns N’ Roses sounds are not entirely disagreeable.

Brazilian Western (2013) – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

June 2, 20152013, 2015, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Brazil, Crime, Drama, DVD, Romance, Scream/Shout! Factory, Western

Faroeste caboclo
**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Felipe Abib, Antonio Calloni, César Troncoso, Marcos Paulo
screenplay by Marcos Bernstein and Victor Atherino
directed by René Sampaio

by Jefferson Robbins If a few things fall too neatly into place in René Sampaio’s Brazilian Western–like beautiful Maria Lúcia (Isis Valverde) jumping into bed with fugitive João (Fabrício Boliveira), who just held her at gunpoint in her own bedroom–well, it’s a fable. That’s meant literally, since the film is adapted from a megahit ballad of roughly the same name: Legāio Urbana’s nine-minute barn-burner of calamity, bloodshed, love, and redemption spoke to something in the Brazilian psyche in 1987, charting João de Santo Christo’s fatal misadventures with the corrupt forces that kept a boot on the underclass. Sampaio’s adaptation has a lot to live up to in that respect, as well as in honouring the western genre to which the title nods. It winds up a Leone-ian Scarface of sorts, although the stakes are different–pot instead of coke, infatuation rather than the will to power, with imbalances of class and race at the forefront.

Mad Max (1979) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

May 31, 20151970s, 2015, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Revenge, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

***½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Steve Bisley, Hugh Keays-Byrne
written by James McCausland and George Miller
directed by George Miller

by Walter Chaw George Miller’s films are warnings against dehumanization, against valuing machineries over intuition and emotions. It’s what drives the Holocaust parable at the heart of his masterpiece, Babe: Pig in the City; what made him the perfect match for Twilight Zone: The Movie‘s remake of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Though terms like “visionary” and “auteur” are as overused as they are misused, Miller is both. He’s a rarity in the modern conversation: an aging director who shows no signs of a slackening energy or diminished focus. See also in Miller’s work an unusual sensitivity to physical deformity set up against a righteous offense at spiritual blight. (He began his career as a trauma physician.) His films seek to do no harm, but sometimes you need to cut out some healthy tissue to get at the disease. All of it–the work as a doctor, the scrappiness, the impulsiveness that led to his strapping an airplane jet on a car and hoping no one would die (no one did)–is part of a creation mythology for Miller that’s as fulsome as Herzog’s. Testament to Miller’s enduring influence and outsider status: he’s a sainted figure, for good reason.

Herzog: The Collection [Blu-ray Disc] – Stroszek

May 13, 2015****/****, 1970s, 2015, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Werner Herzog, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Germany, Scream/Shout! Factory, West Germany

Stroszek

****/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Commentary A
BD – Image B Sound A- Commentary A
starring Bruno S., Eva Mattes, Clemens Scheitz, Wilhelm von Homburg
written and directed by Werner Herzog

by Walter Chaw I love this film. I’m enthralled by it. And every time I revisit it, it has a new gift for me. Bruno S. plays the titular Stroszek, a street performer released from a two-year institutionalization and left to his own devices with hooker girlfriend Eva (Eva Mattes) and pal Mr. Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz). There’s a transparency to the performances that transcends naturalism: you sense that the actors are not only playing themselves (more so than usual), but also that they’re playing themselves as allegorical figures in a metaphor for their lives. It’s Spider, but it’s at once more and less expressionistic than David Cronenberg’s film–and while the long, quiet, empty reaches of living in the giant abandoned warehouse of a mind in flux is a constant melancholy the two films share, there is something in Stroszek, crystallized in the haunting image of a premature baby pawing at its bedding, that does more to traumatize the human condition. When the film’s heroic triumvirate flees Germany for the gilded shores of Wisconsin (“Everybody’s rich there”), in a migration that reminds a little of Aguirre’s doomed hunt for El Dorado, Stroszek is suddenly a picture about pilgrimage to a holy land that exists solely in the windy spaces conjured by the promise of westward expansion.

Vampire’s Kiss (1989)/High Spirits (1988) [Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

May 5, 20151980s, 2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, Nicolas Cage, Romance, Scream/Shout! Factory, Vampire

VAMPIRE’S KISS
***½/**** Image B Sound B Extras A
starring Nicolas Cage, Maria Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Beals, Elizabeth Ashley
screenplay by Joseph Minion
directed by Robert Bierman

HIGH SPIRITS
**/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Daryl Hannah, Peter O’Toole, Steve Guttenberg, Beverly D’Angelo
written and directed by Neil Jordan

by Walter Chaw Delightfully, extravagantly bizarre, Robert Bierman’s Vampire’s Kiss houses arguably Nicolas Cage’s most peculiar performance in the service of a piece the contemporary in every way of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street and the precursor, in every way, to Mary Harron’s American Psycho. It excoriates the boy’s club of the executive boardroom, treats sexual harassment and assault like real things with real consequences, and has something to say on the subjects of race and the economic caste. It’s a canny satire of the vampire genre even as it’s an honourable addition to it, exploring those metaphorical elements that transformed vampirism in the ’80s into the equivalent of being the “cool kid” (The Lost Boys), the rock star (The Hunger), and the eternal demon lover (Fright Night). Working from a script by Joseph Minion, who not only wrote Martin Scorsese’s brilliant (and in some ways similar) After Hours but also the Scorsese-helmed episode of “Amazing Stories” called “Mirror, Mirror” (itself an antecedent to David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows), Bierman proves himself an able navigator of Minion’s liminal cartography. Vampire’s Kiss is about the spaces between and the things that fall in there.

Escape from New York (1981) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc|Escape from New York [Special Edition – DVD Collector’s Set] – DVD

April 13, 20151980s, 2015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: John Carpenter, DVD, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory

John Carpenter’s Escape from New York
***½/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence
screenplay by John Carpenter & Nick Castle
directed by John Carpenter

The below was written a dozen years ago, definitely in a crunch (I remember being among the first to receive a review copy of that DVD and wanting to scoop other sites) and, consequently, probably in a crabby mood. New reviews of John Carpenter movies, particularly the early ones, tend to read like fetishism as opposed to criticism. Indeed, over the years, Carpenter’s aesthetics have become a shorthand for cool, such that some modern horror filmmakers seem to believe that by co-opting them they’ll gain instant credibility. Still, I think I resisted the pleasures of Escape from New York a little too vehemently–this must be the most negative 3.5-star review I’ve ever written. Yes, that rape scene, or would-be rape scene, is troublesome, but for Snake to intervene would’ve been even more offensive, because it would mean the situation was cynically contrived to give him a moment of glory. Snake’s heroism isn’t pandering, and while his laconic machismo fits a certain Eastwood mold, he finally emerges as more of a countercultural badass who uses his carte blanche audience with the President to ask him the kind of impertinent rhetorical question one wants to say to every bureaucrat valued more than the soldiers doing his bidding: “We did get you out. A lot of people died in the process. I just wondered how you felt about it.” The President’s ineffectual condolences, phrased as boilerplate and expressed with squirm-inducing hesitation as he mentally scans for a lifeline (then and there, Donald Pleasence exonerates his miscasting), justify Snake’s final act in a way that makes me regret ascribing the “moral evasion” of The Thing–say what?–to this picture as well. Carpenter isn’t ducking anything here: Snake sees that this world is rotten from the head down and so he lights the proverbial fuse. God bless him, he’s an asshole. (But not a dick.)

Blacula (1972)/Scream Blacula Scream (1973) [Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

April 7, 20151970s, 2015, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller, Vampire

Blacula1

BLACULA
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring William Marshall, Denise Nicholas, Vonetta McGee, Charles Macaulay
screenplay by Joan Torres and Raymond Koenig
directed by William Crain

SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM
*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras D
starring William Marshall, Don Mitchell, Pam Grier, Richard Lawson
screenplay by Joan Torres & Raymond Koenig and Maurice Jules
directed by Bob Kelljan

by Bryant Frazer It takes some nerve to turn an exploitative, possibly racist script treatment from a low-budget movie-manufacturing plant like Samuel Z. Arkoff’s American Independent Pictures (AIP) into a tragic meditation on the legacy of slavery in contemporary urban society, but that’s what director William Crain and actor William Marshall damn near pulled off with Blacula. Originally conceived as a blaxploitation programmer with the ersatz jive-talking title Count Brown Is in Town, the project that would become Blacula took on some gravity when Crain cast Marshall, a trained Shakespearean actor, in the title role. Marshall insisted on alterations to the script that gave the film a subtext: he would play the lead as an 18^th-century African noble who, while touring Europe in an attempt to persuade the aristocracy to oppose the slave trade, was turned into a vampire and imprisoned for more than 100 years by the rabidly racist Count Dracula. In Marshall’s imagining of the story, it was Dracula who, seeking to demean the uppity foreigner, saddled him with the dismissive, derivative moniker Blacula.

Dolls (1987) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

November 26, 20141980s, 2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory

Dolls1

***/**** Image B+ Sound B- Extras B-
starring Stephen Lee, Guy Rolfe, Hilary Mason, Carrie Lorraine
screenplay by Ed Naha
directed by Stuart Gordon

by Bryant Frazer A cross between “Hansel and Gretel” and The Old Dark House, Dolls is director Stuart Gordon’s idea of a family-friendly horror movie. That is, it puts a little girl in peril from square one and admires her serenity and good-heartedness in the face of danger all around. The dark house belongs to the Hartwickes, an adorable elderly couple with an extensive collection of murderously ambulatory dolls. The little girl is 7-year-old Judy Bower (Carrie Lorraine), and the peril comes not from the old folks or their killer figurines but from her lousy parents–a loveless father and stepmother who have brought her on vacation only because joint custody keeps the child-support payments low. Joining the unhappy family at Hartwicke Manor on a dark and stormy night are fellow travellers-in-refuge Ralph (Stephen Lee), an earnest but overgrown man-child, and Isabel (Bunty Bailey, best-known from A-Ha‘s “Take on Me” music video) and Enid (Cassie Stuart), the shifty rocker-girl hitchhikers he picked up. Naturally, the guests start to disappear one by one. Who will be left at the end of the night?

Motel Hell (1980) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

October 22, 20141980s, 2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

Motelhell1

**/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Rory Calhoun, Paul Linke, Nancy Parsons, Wolfman Jack
screenplay by Robert Jaffe and Steven-Charles Jaffe
directed by Kevin Connor

by Bryant Frazer SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. If you give Motel Hell credit for anything, score it full marks for its infamous abattoir-set climax, in which an overalls-clad farmer wearing a grotesque pig mask and wielding a chainsaw battles the local sheriff–also wielding a chainsaw–over the body of a damsel in distress bound to a conveyer belt feeding an industrial meat slicer. Motel Hell wasn’t particularly original, even in the annals of American B-movies of the era, and it’s not especially scary or creepy–director Kevin Connor doesn’t have much of a taste for horror. But he was certainly able to recognize a spectacle. During a long career, Connor directed Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Mickey Rooney in a fantasy called Arabian Adventure, shot on location in Japan another horror film starring Susan George, and even helmed a TV biopic of Elizabeth Taylor starring Sherilyn Fenn. It’s the signature image of Farmer Vincent wearing a hog’s head and brandishing a power saw, though, that has followed him through the decades.

Phantom of the Paradise (1974) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

October 5, 20141970s, 2014, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Brian De Palma, Drama, Esoterica, Musical, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A-
starring Paul Williams, William Finley, Jessica Harper, Gerrit Graham
written and directed by Brian De Palma

by Bryant Frazer When did Brian De Palma become Brian De Palma? Some of the director’s pet themes were already taking shape in his earliest films, and–following his abortive, disowned studio debut, Get to Know Your Rabbit—Sisters proved he could make something out of a lurid, over-the-top indie thriller. But only Phantom of the Paradise suggested the real scale of his outré ambition. Mixing slasher-movie tropes into a supernatural romantic fantasy with elements of rock opera, in collaboration with an actual star singer-songwriter? In 1974, apparently Brian De Palma believed he could do anything.