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 »

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A sense of decorum had engulfed me in a metaphorical Cone of Silence, preventing any unseemly self-promotion, but now it looks like the cat is out of the proverbial bag. A news item at Fangoria.com lists the details of eight upcoming DVDs that Lionsgate will be releasing on October 14 under their Ghost House Underground banner, including:

ROOM 205:

• Audio commentary by director Martin Barnewitz and film critic Steve Biodrowski
• Behind-the-scenes featurette

That’s right: after years of raging against “Access Journalism” (in which journalists lose objectivity by getting too cosy with their subjects), I am participating in an endeavor which will taint anything I write about the Danish horror film ROOM 205. Feel free to call me a hypocrite when you read my positive reaction to the film  (which I saw at Screamfest last year) and my interview with Barnewitz.

All joking aside, both the review and the interview were completed months before the subject of the audio commentary came up; the fact that I responded favorably led to my being asked to do the commentary, not the other way around. Consider this revelation as simply a ”Full Disclosure,” to be taken into consideration when evaluating my coverage of the film.

Read details on the other DVDs below the fold. Continue Reading »

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by Dan Persons

Come to scenic, Mars-based Neo-Venezia, where beautiful, female gondoliers paddle… gondolas and… look beautiful. That’s essentially the gist of the trailer you’ll find here, promoting Rightstuf’s upcoming release of ARIA THE ANIMATION (click the tabs at the left to start the video). Sure looks pretty, in any case.

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by Dan Persons

No, that title’s not a typo. It’s missing an article, maybe as a favor to multiplex managers who have to conserve marquee letters.

For that matter, I’m not sure what “Adventures” is doing in there either, since Johnny (Matthew Twining) doesn’t do all that much adventuring. The son of one-hit singing wonder Jimmy Dow (get it?), whose magic guitar hangs in the museum/shrine at the back of Johnny’s small-town gas station, the kid takes back seat in a number of the earlier fight sequences, while most of the kick-ass onus falls on agile actress Chris Yen, Continue Reading »

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This is an oddball week for home video releases: there is not much that qualifies as great, but if your tastes run toward cult entertainment, or if you are willing to check out something  different from the run-of-the-mill Hollywood fare, then the available offerings might interest you. The week’s high-profile horror release is SHUTTER, the American-Japanese remake of the creepy 2004 Thai film. It is no worse than other Asian-inspired remakes have been, and there are a few decent scares, but overall this is a somewhat mechanical affair. The film is available in three forms: an R-rated DVD, an unrated widescreen DVD, and an unrated Blu-ray disc. Since this style of horror relies on suggestion rather than shocks, the unrated version probably has little more to offer, although perhaps the relatively tame sexual content has been enhanced a bit. Continue Reading »

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by Dan Persons

It’s online, it’s free (until Sunday), and man, is it cool. Spawned from a desire to keep people working during the writer’s strike, Joss Whedon’s serialized, musical, low-budget, love-starved supervillain vs. asshole superhero watchamacallit, DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG is being debuted all this week. Act I is now up, with Act II being released July 17 and Act III on July 19. (Past Sunday, you’ll have to pony up to watch, either through download or eventual DVD release.)

Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day star & sing their hearts out. Catch it here.

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by Dan Persons

One of the more curious entries in the profile-of-a-serial-killer pantheon, They Pushed Him Too Far subcategory. Shot in Denmark¹, CRAIG suffers from some typical, direct-to-video maladies, including time-padding longueurs in the dialogue, sloppiness in the audio mix (room tone, guys — record it, catalog it, cut it in), and an occasional lack of imagination when it comes to a limited budget (a coma victim winds up in a hospital where the staff seemingly feels no need to hook her up to all that pesky monitoring equipment). Continue Reading »

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It’s summer, and that means summer movie blockbusters, and that means old titles arriving on DVD to cash in on the summer movie blockbusters. With THE DARK KNIGHT, THE MUMMY 3, and THE X-FILES looming on the theatrical horizon, we have a flood of related titles arriving on home video. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something new, THE RUINS arrives in three different versions: an unrated Blu-ray disc, an unrated DVD, and a standard DVD. This well received horror film did lackluster business during its brief tour of theatres; perhaps it will find its audience now. In his review for Cinefantastique Online, Lawrence French wrote that the film ” is quite an intelligent re-imaging of an already overworked area, that still manages to deliver some incredibly visceral shocks and tap into some basic primordial fears, which for horror fans, will make it quite a fun movie to watch.” Continue Reading »

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Often I decry the lack of exciting DVD releases on particular weeks, but today represents an all-time low: there is literally nothing worth mentioning. Oh sure, there are a handful of obscure DTV titles, but who cares? There are no high-profile theatrical films, no classics or cult movies. Operating on the feast-or-famine principle, next week will be loaded (THE RUINS, a Blu-ray limited edition release of BATMAN BEGINS, plus several deluxe editions of previously available titles), but until July 8 arrives we must content ourselves with contemplating the impending arrival of DOOMSDAY on DVD and Blu-ray disc, an event scheduled for July 29. The discs will include both the theatrical versions and an unrated director’s cut, plus loads of extras.

Check below the fold for the DOOMSDAY bonus features and a list of next week’s home video releases. Continue Reading »

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An OMEN Blu-ray box set is scheduled for September 9. According to Esplatter.com, this represents the ”first horror movie box set on Blu-ray.” The four-disc set will include the 1976 verison of THE OMEN, DAMEIN: THE OMEN II, THE FINAL CONFLICT, and the 2006 remake of THE OMEN. Not included is the 1990 TV movie THE OMEN IV: THE AWAKENING, which is available as part of the six-disc “Complete Omen Collection” DVD set. The first three films will be authored in BD-J with AVC (MPEG 4) compression on dual-layer 50GB discs presented in widescreen (2.35:1 aspect ratio) with English 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Audio plus English, Spanish, Korean, Mandarin & Cantonese subtitles The 2006 OMEN will be authored in MPEG2 compression on a single-layer 25GB disc presented in widescreen (1.85:1 aspect ratio) with English 5.1 DTS HD Lossless Audio and Spanish/French 5.1 Dolby Surround with English/Spanish subtitles only.

Many of the Blu-ray bonus features will be ported over from the DVD, but there will be some new Blu-ra exclusives, too. Check out these bonus features below the fold. Continue Reading »

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Action-packed Russian fantasy from the director of “Wanted“

By Steve Biodrowski

This is a Russian film, the first of a “trilogy” about an eternal war between the forces of Light and the forces of Darkness, which are perfectly balanced and have forged a truce dictating that neither side interfere with humans, unless humans freely choose to join them. The “Night Watch” of the title are basically a police force that ensures the forces of darkness abide by the truce; their counterparts are the “Day Watch” (also the title of the second film) who ensure that the forces of Light abide by the truce. The members of both groups are known as “Others,” human beings with special powers that vary from person to person. NIGHT WATCH begins with Anton Gorodetsky (Konstantin Khabensky) visiting a fortune teller (actually, an ”Other”) to put a curse on the wife Continue Reading »

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By Dan Persons

You get the sense that this whole thing kicked off when somebody got a look at all the spikes, picks, hammers, crampons, grapples, etc. used by ice climbers and said, “Shit, this stuff’d be great for killing people!” They would, actually, so points to the producers for that. Unfortunately, instead of taking this relatively inspired idea and placing their insane, spectral mountaineer in a suitable setting (and, really, how much would it’ve cost to mock up a tent interior and a couple of snow banks?), the producers have decided just to resurrect the old reality-webcast-gone-horribly-wrong scenario from 2002 and have quit with it. Continue Reading »

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Yesterday’s installment of the weekly Laserblast column (courtesy of the redoubtable Peter McGarvey) focused on reviews of three upcoming DVD releases, crowding out mention of this week’s home video happenings. Hence, we offer this follow-up addendum, to give mention to the many titles now available on DVD and/or Blu-ray for your viewing pleasure. Prehistoric adventure 10,000 B.C.arrives in both formats; now you can enjoy the sights, the sounds -if not the smells - of those cave men fending off sabertooth tigers and other ferocious mammals. THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES is available in four versions: Full Screeen DVD, Widescreen DVD, Two-Disc, Special Edition DVD, and Blu-ray disc. Continue Reading »

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The Weinsten company has announced that it will release THE MIST on Blu-ray on August 5. Although nothing is official yet, presumably the Blu-ray disc will include all the bonus features from the two-disc collector’s edition DVD, which we reviewed here.

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Esplatter reports that Warner Brothers has pulled the plug on releasing Ken Russell’s unrated director’s cut of THE DEVIL ons DVD, even though artwork had been completed in preparation for a May release. Based on Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun, Russell’s 1971 film is a sort of European equivalent of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible - a true-life tale of witch hysteria, in this case starring Oliver Reed as a priest accused of consorting with the Devil. Although filmed with glossy production values, the film’s depiction of torture is on par with - or even exceeds - anything in WITCHFINDER GENERAL, easily placing itself in the horror category despite the story’s roots in historical fact. The original U.S. release was edited to obtain an R-rating, so the DVD would have been a welcome opportunity to see the film in all its gory glory.

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