In the 1980s, there was a phenomenon called “Satanic Panic”. The nightly news covered stories of ritualistic abuse at day-cares. People claimed to have uncovered repressed memories of being involved in black masses. Congress held hearings on the evil influence of heavy metal music. It was a strange time and in the midst of this,…
Mask of Satan [Severin] Blu-ray Review
Davide (Giovanni Guidelli) and his friends (including Mary Sellers, Debora Caprioglio and fellow Italian director Michele Soavi) are skiing in the mountains when they accidentally fall into a crevasse in the snow, finding themselves trapped in some kind of ice cave. Inside this cave, they discover the frozen body of a woman with a strange…
The Carpenter [Vinegar Syndrome] Blu-ray release
The Carpenter, released on Blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome, looks like a generic 80s slasher film at first glance. My initial reaction based on the opening in a mental asylum was that this is a comedy. There are strange things in the background that made me chuckle or raise my eyebrows. For example, as the main…
Project Silence [Capelight] Blu-Ray Review
When a dense fog causes a massive car pile-up on a bridge, disrupting the bridge’s structural integrity (a helicopter crash definitely doesn’t help things either), Jeong-won (Lee Sun-Kyun) and his daughter find their plans of heading to the airport to catch a flight completely wrecked to say the least. To make matters worse, amid the…
Antiviral [Severin] 4k/Blu-ray Release
Antiviral (2012) was a sci-fi/horror film directed by Brandon Cronenberg, the son of famous body-horror director, David Cronenberg. Severin released it as a two-disc set on 4k and Blu-ray. The movie has an interesting premise. In the near future, celebrity obsession has reached a level where people are paying for celebrity infections. There is an…
Performance [Criterion] Blu-ray Review
Chas (James Fox) is a gangster who pushes his luck too far by executing a rival and earns the ire of his boss Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon) in a real bad way. Forced to go on the run, he hides out in a Notting Hill basement of a burned out, reclusive rock star named Turner…
Blood Tracks [Vinegar Syndrome] Blu-ray Review
Easy Action was an 80s metal band that was chosen to be in “Blood Tracks”, a slasher film about a metal band and their entourage trapped by an avalanche and hunted by a family of outcasts. Released in 1985, with an 89-minute runtime, the film is one of many 80s slashers. The movie opens with…
Lighthouse (1947 film)
Imagine a woman being in love with a man, but he is married to another woman, and then you decide to marry another man instead. Then you find out the married man that you still love is trying to get a divorce, bur now it’s too late! Well, that’s the situation the 1947 drama Lighthouse…
The Cat [Radiance Films] Blu-Ray Review
A bank heist in Dusselfdorf perpetrated by Junghein (Heinz Hoening) and Britz (Ralf Richter) is underway when things start to go south. They end up surrounded by cops, taking hostages and demanding a ransom of 3 million Deutsch Marks. Leading up the standoff on the cops’ side is a downtrodden schmoe named Voss (Joachim Kemmer)…
Delicatessen [Severin] 4K/Blu-ray Release
I watched Delicatessen many years ago and loved it. When I saw the 4K/Blu-ray two-disc set released by Severin, I was excited to re-watch it. The first thing I noticed were the innovative opening credits. The objects that the names appear on represent the role they had on the film. For example, the music credit…