Claire (Najarra Townsend) isn’t your average stylist. She’s exceptionally good at her job and once in a while, she drugs her clientele and scalps them so that she can become them. No biggie. When Olivia (Brea Grant), one of her regular clients, enlists her help to give her the perfect wedding look, Claire believes that…
Blu-ray Review – Irezumi – Arrow Video
Knowing that their families won’t approve of their relationship, Otsuya (Ayako Wakao) and her lover Shinsuke (Akio Hasegawa) elope one wintry night. While waiting for a blessing -and some cash- from her father, Otsuya is kidnapped and sold to a geisha house and her beau is nearly murdered by a goon hired by the man…
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 – 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 – The Last Starfighter (Arrow Video)
I feel like I should have been introduced to the Last Starfighter sooner than I was. As a kid in the 80’s I was on a steady diet of the Goonies, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones, adventures movies that would have any young boy excited for more. The Last Starfighter I didn’t get around to…
Massacre Gun (Arrow) Blu-ray Review
Most Japanese gangster movies of the 60’s and 70’s are little more than cleverly-achieved exercises in style over substance, with plenty of lurid violence and salacious sexuality to pleasure their thrill-seeking audiences. Maybe they’re fun to watch, but after your first viewing you might not feel compelled to grant any of them an encore. Massacre…
Mark of the Devil (Arrow Video) Blu-ray
The best exploitation movies, the ones that really stick with you long after the end credits roll, often conceal within their hard-coated shell of violence and sex the sweet, nurturing candy of the ugly truth. That’s how I see it anyway. Mark of the Devil, infamous for its U.S. marketing campaign that promoted it with…
Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of the Shinya Tsukamoto (Arrow) Blu-ray review
Solid Metal Nightmares: The Films of the Shinya Tsukamoto is one of the best home video releases of 2020. It may be a little early to say this (it’s August as I write this), but this is my favorite release of the year. This boxset is a love letter to one of the most transgressive…
Blu-ray Review – Dream Demon (Arrow Video)
Dream Demon is a film I have to admit I had not even heard of when it showed up in my mailbox. I did not do any research on the film prior to watching it, and honestly, have to admit I was none too excited to see it. But that all changed within the first…
Blu-ray Review – Django (Arrow Video)
With the exception of Sergio Leone’s films, spaghetti westerns have been severely underrepresented on Blu-ray. The tide is beginning to change with Blue Underground’s release of Sergio Corbucci’s spaghetti western classic Django. Django is probably Sergio Corbucci’s best known film, and is very likely his best. Sergio Corbucci’s Django is one of the most grim…