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…
Blu-ray Review – The EuroCrypt of Christopher Lee (Severin)
When I was 12 (well over 25 years ago), AMC showed Hammer’s Horror of Dracula one October evening. I had just read the Stoker novel for the first time, and was originally taken back by the divergence from the source material (Yes, I was that much of a nerd), and then Christopher Lee came onto…
Blu-ray Review Years of Lead – Five Classic Italian Crime Thrillers 1973-1977 (Arrow Video
OK, so this is a contender for favorite box set release of 2021, but there are a crazy bunch of them right now, so admittedly this is kind of hard. But this one has the advantage of containing 5 poliziotteschi from the golden era of the genre 1973-1977. The set consists of 3 discs 2…
Blu-ray Review – Babylon – Sentai Filmworks
Babylon is a 2019 anime series based on a novel by Nozaki Mado, which then was adapted into a manga series, and then got turned into this bizarre and amazing anime series. This is one that has been courting controversy, but since I popped the Blu-ray’s into my player last week, I was immediately hooked….
Blu-ray Review – Strike Commando 1 and 2 (Severin Films)
Am I allowed to just begin and end this review by saying that this stars Reb Brown and is directed by Bruno Mattei, and it’s restored on Blu-ray, so you should probably just go and buy it? No? I guess not. OK, I’ll soldier on then. So what we have here as 2 of the…
Blu-ray Review – Death Has Blue Eyes – Arrow Video
Niko Mastorakis is simply a wild filmmaker. His debut film “Island of Death” is psychotic trash personified”, and his work in both horror and action throughout the 80’s and 90’s in both action, and horror would really just take things off from there. Death has Blue Eyes would be Mastorakis’ second effort as a director,…
Blu-ray Review – Hero Mask – Sentai Filmworks
Hero Mask is the latest Blu-ray release to come from Sentai Filmworks that was a “Netflix Original” anime. I hate to say these have been more miss than hit, but for the most part I feel that way. This one is a Sci-Fi Actioner, with a crime plot running through it, and well it has…
Blu-ray Review – Karakuri Circus – Sentai Filmworks
Karakuri Circus is a 36 episode shonen anime that is conceptually interesting. It is based on a manga that ran for 43 volumes starting in the late 90’s, and ending in 2006. Needless to say that leaves a lot to be left on the proverbial cutting room floor even when the series runs for a…