Michael Powell, ex-banker and studio contract director who churned out 23 films between 1931 and 1936, and Emeric Pressburger, a well-educated Hungarian whose career as a journalist was cut short by the rise of Nazism causing him to flee to Paris and switch to becoming a screenwriter, may have begun their careers in wildly disparate…
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians & Other Holiday Hallucinations! [AGFA and Something Weird release] Blu-ray review
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (SCCTM) is a notoriously bad movie. The first time I watched it was a Rifftrax Live event where a trio of comedians mocked the film in front of an audience. The event was hilarious. In the recent joint release between AGFA and Something Weird, the movie stands alone, and it…
Sex Apocalypse [Mondo Macabro] Blu-ray release
The year is 1982. The country is Spain. Carlos Aured is shifting from the horror genre to a new genre exploding in popularity, the rated “S” sex film. Under General Franco, Spain had strict obscenity laws and once he passed away, the law became much less censorious. Aured put together a film provocatively titled “Sex…
Infinite Santa 8000 [Synapse Films] Blu-Ray Review
In a desolate post-apocalyptic wasteland a thousand years in the future, in a land where mutants, monsters, robots and crazed killers roam around wreaking havoc on anyone unlucky enough to cross their paths, one man remains with a small shred of hope for the future of the planet, one man who these days is just…
Daiei Gothic: Three Ghost Stories [Radiance Films] Blu-ray Box Set Review
Adapted loosely from the much celebrated kabuki play, The Ghost of Yotsuya finds our lead Iemon Tamiya (Kazuo Hasegawa) destitute, having failed to become a samurai, and living with his wife Oiwa (Yasuko Nakada), depressed and aimless. One day he meets with the daughter, Ume Ito (Yoko Uraji), of a powerful samurai who becomes infatuated with…
The Love Light Blu-ray review
In the past few years, we have seen some of the movies featuring Mary Pickford getting released on Blu-ray. VCI Entertainment along with the UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Mary Pickford foundation have been restoring her silent classics, much to the delight of fans who love the golden oldies. The latest release to…
1982: Greatest Geek Year Ever! [MVD Rewind Collection] Blu-ray Review
The year was 1982. In the wake of the late ’70s blossoming of the blockbuster, we find America in a state of craving big movies in genres previously seen as less than prestigious and only for the low brow grindhouse and drive-in crowds. But these films were doing boffo business at the box office now….
Dogra Magra [Radiance Films] Blu-Ray Review
A man named Kure Ichiro (Yôji Matsuda) wakes up to find himself in a mental institution with no memory of who he is or why he is there. He is told by a Dr. Wakabayashi (Hideo Murota) that Ichiro has killed his fiancée on their wedding day, and his amnesia is caused by his brain’s…
The Cult of AGFA Trailer Show [AGFA] Blu-ray review
The Cult of AGFA Trailer Show is kind of a mixed tape of random clips from movie theaters: commercials, public service announcements, movie trailers, etc. The “movie” itself contains some full trailers but also some clips spliced together for comedic effect, but a lot of them are crazy enough to not need editing to be…
Demon Pond (1979) [Criterion Collection] Blu-Ray Review
Gakuen (Tsutomu Yamazaki) is a teacher and botanist who travels alone through the wilds of rural Japan, eventually stumbling across a drought-stricken village so desperate for water that breast milk is used as a substitution. He meets in this village an old friend, Akira (Go Kato), who is married to a mysterious woman named Yuri…