This is a heavy-duty week for home-video releases. As usual, there are only one or two new titles making their debut, but Hollywood has become so adept at recycling old material that they could serve as a useful model for the environmental movement: numerous golden oldies make return engagements this week, their resurrection justified by director’s cuts, multi-packing, or new technology, with titles previously released on DVD now appearing on Blu-ray disc and/or on DVDs offering bonus “Digital Copies” that you can download onto your PC.

The most interesting newbie is DOOMSDAY, writer-director Neil Marshall’s homage to post-apocalyptic action-thrillers of the MAD MAX variety. Perhaps because of its derivative nature (plus a promotional campaign that did little to excite fans), Continue Reading »

No Comments »

Alex Proyas’ sci-fi noir masterpiece broods long and hard on the nature of identity. 

“I think; therefore, I am,” said Rene Descartes, in his attempt to find a basic principal of complete certainty, an unshakable foundation on which to build his philosophy. No matter what else one may doubt about the universe—say, the evidence of our senses, which provides our view of the outside world—one could never doubt the basic fact, “I am; I exist.” Nevertheless, even when one accepts this inescapable conclusion, the question remains: Who am I?

This question of what constitutes the basis of an individual’s identity has long been a part of the horror and science-fiction genres. The horror of Dracula is not so much that he will kill you but that he will turn you into something that is a hideously distorted mirror image of yourself Continue Reading »

No Comments »

You can say what you like about Los Angeles, but we have Hollywood, which means we have the movies - and lots of movie-lovers to go with it; consequently, there are actually a handful of theatres, even in this era of home video, that continue to offer repertory and revival programming. This results in wonderful opportunities to re-experience movies on the big screen, where they were meant to be seen. A recent example of this is the “Final Cut” of BLADE RUNNER, which I recently saw at the New Beverly Cinema in L.A. Of course it was interesting to note how this (presumably last) version of the film stacked up against its predecessors, but I could have done that on DVD (or even, heaven forbid, on Netflix Instant Viewing). The real joy of the experience was once again seeing the sights of 2019 Los Angeles splayed out larger than life before my eyes, filling not only the screen but also my brain with an overwhelming rush of visual input that few films ever match. Continue Reading »

1 Comment »

By Drew Fitzpatrick

In an isolated area of the American southwest desert, a small research station has been quickly set up to study some disturbing trends among the ant population. Ants of different species have not only stopped fighting against each other, they have begun to communicate and work together – building geometric ‘ant skyscrapers’ and driving out the human population British biologist Dr. Ernest Hubbs (Nigel Davenport) and “numbers man” James Lesko (Michael Murphy) soon find themselves in a battle of wills with the insects, with each side striking at the other until it becomes clear that science is going to be no match for the ants’ newly supercharged brains.

Downbeat Sci-Fi was all the rage when PHASVE IV was released, coming on the heels of apocalyptic downers like SOYLENT GREEN, SILENT RUNNING, and THE OMEGA MAN. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

Anchor Bay is double-triple-quadruple-dipping back into a famous franchise for this October, offering up yet another special edition of HALLOWEEN, the 1978 sleeper hit from John Carpenter that launched launched not only a franchise but also established the modern sub-genre of the slasher film.

The new six-disc set will features an odd-ball mix: a restored version of the film, two of the sequels, a documentary, the extended television cut of the film (minus the violence but with new scenes added to fill the two-hour TV timeslot), and a Blu-ray disc of the film, so that you can enjoy the grainy low-budget photography in the beauty of 1080 line progressive-scanning full high-definition glory. Street date is October 14.

 Read details from the press release below the fold. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

Columbia Pictures has announced a special 50th Anniversary DVD edition for Ray Harryhausen’s first Technicolor movie, the Arabian Nights fantasy, THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD. It will street on October 7. 2008, well in advance of the movies actual anniversary, when it opened at New York City’s fabulous Roxy Theater (seating 5,800) in Rockefeller Center, two days before Christmas on December 23, 1958. True stop-motion fans will remember that Willis O Brien’s KING KONG also debuted at the Roxy Theater, 25 years before, in March of 1933 (Across the street from Radio City Music Hall, where KONG was also playing.) But sadly, the Roxy, like many of America’s greatest movie palaces, met the same fate as the dinosaurs and was torn down in the early sixties.

Continue Reading »

No Comments »

 Some pictures have legs at the box office; THE DARK KNIGHT has wings. Christopher Nolan’s hard-boiled film noir reinterpretation of the Caped Crusader flew high above the competition, earning over $75-million - an incredibly impressive number for a film in its second weekend of release. That yielded a two-week total of $314.25-million - which is the fastest that any film has ever reached that mark (suprassing the previous speed record set by the second PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN sequel).¹ By way of comparison, over the course of this summer, two other films have managed to reach the $300-million mark, IRON MAN and INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, but has passed both of them up in only two weeks. If the latest Batman film keeps going at this rate, it could see some records. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

by Dan Persons

A couple of undertakers visit a groovy, Tim Burton Hell; a small dog has his dreams of firehouse Dalmatian glory dashed; and over in France, sinister, disco-backed experiments are being performed on hapless human beings. That can only mean one thing: It’s time for the fourth edition of THE ANIMATION SHOW. Programmed by BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD/IDIOCRACY’S Mike Judge, this year’s show places greater emphasis on comedy, and features works by Bill Plympton (25 WAYS TO QUIT SMOKING), Smith & Foulkes (best known for their Coca-Cola GTA commercial), and MAD TV’S Corky Quackenbush. Cinefantastique Online’s Dan Persons spoke with one of the producers, Robert May. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

by Dan Persons

Hey, Oprah, empower this!

You’ll be forgiven for getting that uncomfortable feeling during the first half of LATE BLOOMER. The lead, Masakiyo Sumida, is disabled — he employs a motorized wheelchair to get around (although he apparently can walk for limited distances), uses a digital speech machine to communicate, and seemingly is forced to keep a twisted grin permanently plastered on his face. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

by Dan Persons

What I wanted to believe was that, despite conventional wisdom, one could go home again. What I wanted to believe was that a creative team, given six years to look back and rediscover the passion they once had for a project, would be able to channel that passion into something that would remind us of the best those people have to offer. What I wanted to believe was that the thrill was still there, and the fun. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

This is a misleadingly titled giallo thriller in the tradition of Dario Argento’s THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET, and CAT O’NINE TAILS. Director Antonio Bido also borrows several stylistic tropes from Argento, particularly from DEEP RED: harsh violence; point-of-view shots; a repetitive, insistent main theme performed with a pop music arrangement instead of a traditional symphonic score. Consequently, CAT WITH JADE EYES (known in the U.S. as WATCH ME WHEN I KILL) is too derivative to stand on its own four furry paws, but it has enough feline grace to thrill fans of the form.

The story begins with a pharmacist being murdered. A nightclub dancer named Mara (Paola Tedesco) tries to enter the pharmacy, but a voice inside tells her the store is closed. When she later realizes that the voice belongs to the murderer, she enlists the aid of her boyfriend Lukas (Corrado Pani) instead of relying on the police. Coincidentally, an acquaintance of theirs is receiving threatening phone calls from the same unidentified voice. As the bodies pile up, suspicion initially turns upon a recently released convict - the victims sat on his jury - but later evidence points the amateur investigation in another direction, having to do with a grim secret related to the past. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

The American Cinematheque will soon be launching its eighth annual Festival of Sci Fi, Fantasy, and Horror, which will screen at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. Special events will include the U.S. debut of RE-CYCLE (the new film from EYE-directors Danny & Oxide Pang), a colorized, digitally restored version of FORBIDDEN ZONE (with additional guests not mentioned in our first post about the event here), a live presentation called The Lydeckers: Special Effects Pioneers (including a tour of the Lydecker House in Studio City), the debut of BRINGING GODZILLA DOWN TO SIZE (a documentary by kaiju experts Norman England and Steve Ryfle), the U.S. debut of STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS, a double bill of ALIEN and ALIENS (both of which made their debuts at the Egyptian Theatre), a LORD OF THE RINGS marathon (featuring all three feature films in one day), a tribute to the late makeup effects artist Stan Winston, and a post-apocalyptic weekend (featuring WIZARDS, DAMNATION ALLEY, A BOY AND HIS DOG, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, THE OMEGA MAN, and 12 MONKEYS).

Read a complete schedule of events below the fold. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

This week, everything old is new again, thanks to the magic of home video - in particular, the Blu-ray format. THE MUMMY and THE MUMMY RETURNS were released in two-disc DVD editions only two weeks ago; now they are back again on Blu-ray disc, along with the spin-off title THE SCORPION KING. Also out on Blu-ray are two flicks that helped define formulaic Hollywood horror in the ’90s: I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and URBAN LEGEND. Not on Blu-ray - but still a familiar title revived in a new home video incarnation - is Carl Dryer’s artsy VAMPYR: long considered one of the great achievements in horror cinema, it is now available as a high-class Criterion Collection DVD. There is also a box set compiling Season Two of Showtime’s MASTERS OF HORROR television series. Just about the only new title this week is BRUTAL MASSACRE: A COMEDY, in which David Naughton (AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON) stars as a down-on-his-luck director trying to jump start his career with a new horror film; hilarity, as they say, ensues.

All of these titles and more are available below the fold. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

This movie is so absolutely godawful that it’s almost impossible to know where to begin listing its faults. Perhaps the best place would be its story, which is just an empty rehash of what came before. As bad as I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER was, at least the plot had a bit of an idea built in, with a group of characters haunted not just by a hook-wielding psycho-killer but by their own guilty complicity that has made them targets. Well, the ending of that film pretty much exonerated everyone involved: sure, they’d run somebody over and tried to hide the victim’s body and then tried to kill him when he turned out to be alive-but hey, he was a homicidal son-of-a-bitch even before all that, so what are they feeling guilty about? Continue Reading »

No Comments »

 By Anthony Montesano

By the late 1980s, the slasher genre had run out of blood. It had its roots in Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO (1960) and really got going with the release of John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978) and FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980). But endless sequels and rip-offs (PROM NIGHT, APRIL FOOL’S DAY, etc) churned out all-too-familiar stories, offering nothing fresh or innovative. By the 1990s, the sub-genre had all but died and was regulated to direct-to-video trash. In 1996, director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson took a smart, tongue-in-cheek look at the form with SCREAM, which changed all that and gave the genre its first $100 million hit. Following on the heels of that crossover success, Williamson has teamed with director Jim Gillespie and mined a Lois Duncan novel to create I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. Continue Reading »

1 Comment »