Review—Skinned Deep (Severin) Author: Palo Sionoplia In the early 2000s, Fangoria films rode the direct-to-video wave with a spate of films under the company’s newly-minted “Gorezone” imprint. While none of these films broke new ground, they gave young directors the opportunity to develop their craft and release material that was too quirky for the multiplex….
Blu-ray Review – Siege – Severin Films
Review—Siege (Severin)Author: Palo Sionoplia In 1983, Canadian genre cinema gave the world its answer to John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 via the aptly-titled thriller Siege. In hopes of creating a film with strong commercial appeal, co-directors Paul Donovan (who also wrote and produced the film) and Maura O’Connell concocted a lean, mean work of…
Blu-ray Review – Swordgai – The Animation – Complete Series – Sentai Filmworks
Swordgai – The Animation takes place in a world where incredibly violent and powerful weapons exist. These weapons are demonic in nature, and either possess their wielder, or begin to slowly control them. Into this world comes “Gai”, whose Mother had come into contact with one of these weapons “Shiryu” when she was pregnant, but…
Blu-ray Review – Chihayafuru – Season 3 – Sentai Filmworks
Chihayafuru surprised me, I mean, really surprised me. When I looked at the case the artwork looked nice and simple, but reading the back I did not expect to find myself caring that much about an anime that follows a character playing a competitive poetry based card game that I had never even remotely heard…
Blu-ray Review – Overboard – Severin Films
Overboard follows Joanne (Goldie Hawn) and Dean (Kurt Russell). Joanne is a rich heiress, who is currently running around the world in a yacht with her equally snobby husband Grant. Grant and Joanne arrive in Elk Grove, OR. Where Joanne hires Dean to remodel her shoe closet, when she is not pleased with the work,…
Getting Started with Call of Cthulhu – A Tabletop Primer
So you want to get started playing Call of Cthulhu? Maybe you’ve been playing D&D a few years and want a new experience, or maybe you have just been interested in tabletop roleplaying, and horror is more your thing. Regardless of the reason, Chaosium, the publisher of Call of Cthulhu has made getting into the…
Blu-ray Review – Mirror – Criterion
Can I just say FINALLY? I know Mirror has been out via Artificial Eye in the U.K. For years now, but is a relief to have all of Andrei Tarkovsky’s work available on Region A Blu-ray, and sealing up the collection this month is the director’s autobiographical Mirror. Mirror is one of the Tarkovsky films…
Vengeance Trails – 4 Classic Westerns (Arrow Video)
This has been a pretty amazing year for box sets, and next on the chopping block is an Arrow Video entry “Vengeance Trails – 4 Classic Westerns”. This box set takes some lesser known western entries, by some better known directors like Lucio Fulci, Antonio Marghetiri, Maurizio Lucido, and Massimo Dallamano, and puts them together…
Masters of Horror: Vincent Price
The delightfully devious, deliciously devilish Vincent Price is a consummate horror actor, and while he was featured in many non-genre efforts, particularly earlier in his career, like his excellent roles in film noir melodramas and mysteries like Laura, Dragonwyck and Leave Her To Heaven as well as westerns like The Baron of Arizona, he often…
No Time for Love Blu-ray review
Kino Lorber has been releasing a few movies on Blu-ray that are directed by Mitchell Leisen and starring screen legend Claudette Colbert (Arise, My Love). One of those films is the recent release of No Time for Love which the great actress is paired alongside another screen legend in Fred MacMurray (Double Indemnity) in one…