The giallo was big business in Italy in the early 70’s. Yeah, it got its start in the 60’s, but it seems once Argento took flight with his Bird with the Crystal Plumage the genre really boomed. Hundreds of the films were made just in the 3-4 years after Bird…, and while not everyone took…
Blu-ray Review – Skinned Deep – Severin
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 – House on Sorority Row – MVD Rewind
Horror seems to become popular in waves. Every decade or so some movie seemingly reinvents the wheel of what is scary for the time. This decade for example has seen the rise of Saw inspired “torture porn,” and Americanized versions of foreign (especially Japanese) horror films. In the 90’s it was the pseudo-giallo Scream rip…
Blu-ray Review – Cannibal Man – Severin/Subkultur
Review and Notes on Subkultur Edition by Tyler MillerUpdated Comments on Severin Edition by Scott MacDonald Marcos (Vicente Parra) is a lonely slaughterhouse worker, who seems to be just drifting through life. He dreams of having a higher paying job, and marrying his girlfriend Paula (Emma Cohen). One night after a heated date, the two…
UHD Review – Two Evil Eyes – Blue Underground
In the late 1980’s Dario Argento and George Romero tried to work together to create an anthology horror film based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Initially they were going to get 4 directors together, but ended up just making 2 short films at the length of one hour each between Romero and Argento….
UHD Review – Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Bird with the Crystal Plumage is the debut film by director Dario Argento. It is not the first film in the giallo genre, having been preceded by nearly a decade by Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace and The Girl Who Knew Too Much. That being said the film pretty much put the giallo into…
Severin Films – Mid Year Sale – Blu-ray/UHD Reviews
Twice a year for the last few years, Severin has put together an epic sale for fans of the label to pick up backlog items they have missed at solid prices, while at the same launching an epic swath of amazing cult cinema at a waiting fanbase. This year’s mid-year sale is no different in…
Blu-ray Review – Supernatural Season 15 (Warner)
It’s been an impressive fifteen years and a whopping 327 episodes, but we’re here at last: the final season of Supernatural has landed on physical media. No one saw this coming, I’d wager—least of all me. Who would have expected this quirky WB show to amass such a devoted fanbase, to sustain itself for so…
Blu-ray Review – Grizzly/Day of the Animals – Severin Films
It is animal attack month at Severin Films, well aside from the tremendous 4k Santa Sangre release, and in a way that HAD ANIMALS in it (that elephant funeral kills me every time). Earlier in the month we got an excellent release of the underseen sharksploitationer Deep Blood by Italian exploitation king Joe D’Amato, and…