More Arrows In The Air Land Hard This Fall

Posted on July 30, 2015 by geelw

Arrow Video’s North American assault on the senses continues courtesy of US distributor MVD Entertainment Group with September and October’s picks guaranteed to get film collectors and genre fans snapping up each of these new releases. Carlo Lizzani’s 1967 spaghetti western Requiescant is first up. Coming to Blu-Ray/DVD September 22, the film is a somewhat obscure revenge tale also known as Kill and Pray. Next up is the 1985 slasher flick, The Mutilator, one of those films you’ll be watching from halfway under the couch if you’re squeamish. I haven’t seen this one since it came out back then, so it’ll be interesting to find out if it still get me like it did in that dingy theater I caught it in.

Go blindfold the kids and family pet(s) now. Below the jump are some flicks not for the kiddies at all! Continue reading →

A “B” I Need to See: Les Raisins de la Mort

Posted on July 25, 2015 by geelw

Poster courtesy Horrorpedia.com- GO SUBSCRIBE!

I’ve never seen Jean Rollin’s 1978 horror flick Les Raisins de la Mort (The Grapes of Death), but I do vaguely recall discussing the film with a friend a few years back in a conversation about foreign horror movies. I’d forgotten all about it until YouTube user Sleaze-O-Rama posted the trailer below:

(thanks, Sleaze-O-Rama!)

And now, the hunt begins for a DVD as I prefer to borrow or outright own my movies and not stream or steal them. It’s not an urgent “get” at all. But if I see this one in my travels and it’s affordable, I’ll be adding it to the library when I can.

Blu-Ray Review: Spider Baby

Posted on July 22, 2015 by geelw

Jack Hill’s amusing and mildly disturbing 1964 horror classic Spider Baby finally gets the feature-packed Blu-Ray treatment is deserves courtesy of Arrow Video and MVD and it’s a must for fans of the formerly forgotten flick that became a cult classic. “The maddest story ever told” still holds up today as quite the viewing experience as well as on original little low budget flick that still packs quite a kick in a few places.

The story of the Merrye family’s twisted offspring and their strange caretaker Bruno is, for all the creepy, unsettling antics taking place, quite an emotional tale at heart. Three siblings Virginia (Jill Banner), Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn) and Ralph (Sig Haig) live with Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.) in a decrepit mansion well off the beaten path with a few other relatives. Thanks to inbreeding among the family, all suffer from a genetic condition that makes them regress mentally into primitive states that make them more than a little dangerous to be around. Bruno does his best to keep his unbalanced charges in line, but after a mailman (Mantan Moreland) is killed and distant relatives arrive to claim the mansion and surrounding property for themselves, things take a turn for the darkly comedic worse. Continue reading →

Random Film of the Week(end): Bloody Birthday

Posted on July 19, 2015 by geelw

If you’ve never had children and are thinking of bearing your own brood, watching a film like 1981’s Bloody Birthday just might put you off the idea for a while. Like forever. This sort of obscure horror flick isn’t anywhere near as gory as many of the more familiar 80’s “B” movies at all. But the overall tone is more than a tiny bit disturbing as the film is more or less an unfiltered version of The Bad Seed without the tacked-on Hollywood ending.

The funny thing is from the opening moments you’d think the film was going to be somewhat supernatural in nature. But it’s not at all (which turns out to be a really good thing). In 1970, three babies are born to three different mothers at the same hospital during a solar eclipse and ten years later, all three end up as evil pre-teen murder machines. Who just so happen to live on the same block or at least within walking distance of each others homes. Yikes. The kids, Debbie (Elizabeth Hoy), Curtis (Billy Jayne), and Steven (Andy Freeman) manage to whittle down the population of Meadowvale, California while remaining undetected because who’d see such innocent little darrrrrrlings as a trio of mini-Manson family members? Well, perhaps Debbie’s dad, who happens to be the town sheriff? Nope. He’s more clueless than a headless Sherlock Holmes. Faster than you can say “There goes the neighborhood!”, well… you know the rest of that one, right?

Continue reading →

Random Film of the Week: Invisible Invaders

Posted on July 10, 2015 by geelw

Sometimes revisiting an old film can reveal a load of new surprises, particularly if it ends up being a possible inspiration for later and better works. While not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, 1959’s Invisible Invaders managed to actually be a lot more thrilling than I recall from seeing it as a kid.

For one thing, it’s both an alien invasion and a zombie flick, melding sci-fi and horror pretty well despite some rather incredulous plot shenanigans. It’s also an unintentional response to Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space (also released in 1959) because it features more or less the same story executed far more effectively. Well, for a low budget flick, that is.

Continue reading →

Fred Dobbs, You’re Nuts In Any Decade!

Posted on May 12, 2015 by geelw

(thanks, Danios12345!)

Ha. I just realized while watching The Treasure of the Sierra Madre for the zillionth time that the name Fred Dobbs appears in another memorable (but for the wrong reasons) film and is played by a great actor that livens up the proceedings significantly. That film would be 1980’s sci-fi horror(/unintentional comedy) hybrid (They Came)Without Warning and that actor would be the great Martin Landau. The Greydon Clark-directed cult flick is actually one of those great guilty pleasures worth tracking down because of its oddball cast (Jack Palance, Cameron Mitchell, Larry Storch, Neville Brand and a young David Caruso among others) and pre-Predator plot about an alien come to earth to do some hunting.

(thanks, metal4472!)

As I’m a bit off-kilter (and proud of it!) I’d do a back-to-back double feature with these two even though the tone is vastly different between the two films. Or you could go from the first film to Raiders of the Lost Ark with Without Warning and Predator for an all-day marathon of interesting genre flipping and blending. But I’ll leave personal programming choices all to you fine folks out there. Enjoy!

Blu-Ray Review: Island of Death

Posted on May 10, 2015 by geelw

A funny thing happened on the way to me disliking Island of Death, director Nico Mastorakis’ 1975 horror film headed to Blu-Ray/DVD courtesy Arrow Video and MVD Entertainment Group. That would be I ended up liking the film a lot more than I thought. This is in part thanks to the great special features that include interviews with Mastorakis that show he’s just a genial, creative guy with a long and varied career who’s not at all like any of the vile characters in the nasty and brutal film he made very early in his career. I’d heard about how terrible and shocking the film was and I certainly wasn’t disappointed by the assorted scenes of murder, extremely stereotypical characters and loads of exploitative nudity on display. Yes, the film is a hard to watch experience not for the squeamish or easily offended. But it’s beautifully shot nastiness and at the end of the day, Mastorakis did exactly what he set out to do – make a film that out grossed (and out-grossed) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

There’s nothing here even remotely close in plot or even tone to Tobe Hooper’s seminal shocker. IoD’s story about a pair of unbalanced British lovers killing their way through the island of Mykonos before getting their just desserts is merely a showcase for depravity that’s since been outclassed by more modern horror flicks with far more realistic effects. The director even makes this point in one of the commentaries on the Blu-Ray and it’s easy to toss off a bunch of titles from the top of my head that do indeed go for the gusto and blow this film out of the water. That said, by 1975 standards the catalog of perversions on display here certainly got this film in trouble all over the world. Bestiality, murders by an ingested bucket of paint post crucifixion, a phallic pistol, beheading by bulldozer and more are all on display. As terrifically terrible as these crimes are, some viewers may be more upset that one of the murderers is a hypocrite religious zealot out to cleanse the island of evil in the name of religion.

Continue reading →

Yes, Rasputin Celebrates Hump Day HIS Way

Posted on April 15, 2015 by geelw

(thanks, Sleaze-O-Rama!)

I keep meaning to review Don Sharp’s 1966 flick Rasputin, The Mad Monk one of these days for the site or perhaps a blogathon or something. But I also keep forgetting to track down a personal copy so I can watch it whenever I need a good laugh. Waiting for TCM to show it again sometimes pays off in the long run because there’s a decent enough chance they’ll also show something suitably loopy.

This is one of those films that defies proper categorization because it’s kind of all over the map in terms of tone. It’s a biopic, a horror film of sorts, a gold mine of unintentional comic relief and of course, a showpiece for the great Christopher Lee. Yeah, I’d normally have done this up already (and most likely for The Great Villain Blogathon 2015). But it’s been busy as hell here what with the roof being repaired (again!), more work going to happen in the apartment (STRESS!) and some other stuff that’s keeping my productivity lower than usual.

That said, I’ll give ol’ Raspy a two word review for those of you curious types who need to know: SEE IT. You’ll very likely laugh yourself extremely silly and get your cringe on as well because the film can be a bit creepy on a few fronts.

Blu-Ray Review: Mark of the Devil

Posted on March 18, 2015 by geelw

How frightening. I’m actually old enough to remember seeing ads for Mark of the Devil in newspapers as a kid and while far too young to see it, wanting to just because of the free vomit bag handed out to viewers. I recall either a cousin or other relative seeing it and showing off their unused bag while they bragged about how violent the film was. Hey, it was after all “RATED V FOR VIOLENCE”… just not by the MPAA. That snazzy bit of marketing was courtesy Hallmark Releasing, the films distributor that packed houses for years during the 70’s and 80’s by retitling all sorts of sleazy to amazing genre movies.

Flash forward maybe a dozen or so years and I finally got to see the movie thanks to a fairly lousy quality VHS tape copy that had a few other horror flicks on it (one of which was Twitch of the Death Nerve, another Hallmark released flick). I certainly didn’t need a vomit bag, but the film’s overall tone and torture scenes did get under my skin (pun intended). Over time, I’d almost forgotten about the film thanks to only seeing it that one time, but thanks to Arrow Video and MVD, here I am back in front of a television with a superior in every way possible Blu-Ray version.

While not as relentlessly gory as more modern horror films, Michael Armstrong’s classic and controversial film is more of a “you are there” trip back in time than a traditional fright flick. Shot in and around Austria, the film’s lush outdoor landscapes are contrasted by the brutal torture segments that won’t have you tossing your cookies at all, but maybe reaching for a pillow to hide behind or stuff in your ears as you avert your eyes from some onscreen nastiness.

Continue reading →

Mezco’s Talking Mega Scale 15″ Chucky: “Best Friends Forever”… But Not One of the Good Guys

Posted on March 5, 2015 by geelw

Well, now. Chucky’s back in action, this time in a new Mezco Toyz figure bound to scare up some sure sales among collectors when it ships out this September. Be very polite and don’t forget to wave and smile back, now. You really wouldn’t want to get Chucky angry with you, not even a little bit.

Mezco’s latest take on the classic horror villain from the Child’s Play and Chucky films stands 15″ tall and features real cloth Good Guys clothing, 11 points of articulation, a plastic knife and his trademark flaming orange hair. Did I mention he also talks, saying seven phrases from the movies? Well, he does. Nope, “I Can Talk” isn’t from any of the films, but seeing that in the image below made me immediately chuckle and think “Well, I can run away while you talk!” as well as “Exit, Stage Left!”

Anyway, you can pre-order the Talking Mega Scale 15″ Chucky by clicking away on that handy link I’ve provided. It’s $94 worth of scares coming your way, but you knew that from the moment you laid eyes on him. Make some room for him, or he’ll be pretty upset when he arrives and has to lurk about in his shipping box while you clear out that space you should have beforehand. If he starts yapping away in that box before you get to opening it, that’s not a good sign at all…