Horror
Rod Lott
Says a concerned mother in the opening scene, "If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times: Stay away from vans. Only bad people own vans." Truer words, ne'er spoken, especially in the case of Creep Van, an independently funded flick of horror from the heart.

Horror
Rod Lott
For being A Vampire's Tale, the story sure is dominated by an antiquities dealer named Jacob (Doug Bradley, the Pinhead of the Hellraiser series). With his hateful stepdaughter and newly pregnant wife, Jacob moves to the country to live on a farm.

Action
Rod Lott
While not fully lucid, Painted Skin: The Resurrection excels from a standpoint of visuals. Whether that’s worth an entire viewing depends on your tolerance for fantastical whimsy.

Television series
Rod Lott
Four years ago, cable remade the perfectly fine ’70s sci-fi thriller The Andromeda Strain, based upon Michael Crichton’s thriller, but needlessly doubled the running time, thereby cutting its effectiveness in half. 

Documentary
Rod Lott
Peter Gabriel’s 1986 album, So, found the former Genesis vocalist at his commercial and critical peak. Now, to celebrate its 25th anniversary, it’s not only been reissued in a three-disc box set, but is the subject of the Classic Albums documentary series.

Western
Rod Lott
Before Django gets Unchanged this Christmas via Quentin Tarantino, get schooled on the spaghetti-Western bounty hunter through a pair of double-feature discs from Timeless Media Group. (Spoiler: He's neither a slave nor African-American.) That's four films total for those of you who can't do math, and all but one are hitting DVD officially for the first time.

Action
Rod Lott
For the first 10 minutes, I wondered if Kill ’Em All weren’t a movie at all, but a collection of unrelated action vignettes — a bomb hit here, a knife throw there, fists and feet everywhere — as seemingly unrelated characters fight, but hardly speak, with no story given.

Comedy
Rod Lott
Reveals Big Tits Zombie lead actress Sora Aoi in the disc's behind-the-scenes footage, "We have action, nudity, striptease, zombies, and splatter." Oh, you guessed that already? Either way, her eight words could double as a review.

Horror
Rod Lott
Call me crazy, but 3,400 square feet seems like an awfully massive home for a strip-mall veterinarian's assistant and a Geek Squad-esque installer of home-theater systems. Then again, the place does have its drawbacks: doors open on their own, furniture moves mysteriously, mold appears, and then things start to die within its well-mortgaged walls — a Costco cactus here, the neighbors’ dog there.

Documentary
Rod Lott
There's a great story surrounding Stan Lee and Marvel Comics. I know because a month ago, I read all about it in Sean Howe’s new book about the very topic. As for the documentary With Great Power  ...: The Stan Lee Story, however, it's perfectly fine if the only portrait you care to see is superficial, self-laudatory and largely wart-free.

Features
Rod Lott
Not even the black-and-white photography is stark in Stark Fear. There’s little to fear in it, too, except lines of dialogue like “You paunchy dog-eater!” and “Ain’t no such thing as rape.”

Thriller
Rod Lott
London, jazz, neon-lit nights, a posh hotel, a heist, Imogen Poots: Comes a Bright Day has so many elements I love to see in the movies, yet they add up to such a minuscule amount of pleasure. It's like pouring your favorite bubbly beverage all the way to the top of a frosty glass, only to see that once the head has subsided, you're left with so little.

Horror
Rod Lott
For a quarter of a century, Rites of Spring tells us in its opening titles, teenage girls have gone missing, and their bodies never recovered. The two young women abducted from their car in the indie horror film’s first act are sure to be the latest. Sure enough, they’re soon hanging by their bound wrists in a dirty old barn.

Documentary
Rod Lott
Significantly updated from his 1985 documentary, The Definitive Document of the Dead promises to be the last word director Roy Frumkes has to say on his subject of zombie godfather George A. Romero. If not, perhaps it should be.

Action
Rod Lott
It wasn't too long ago you could find crap copies of 1975's Zorro in the dollar-store DVD bins. For a Blu-ray release, Somerville House has cleaned it all up digitally, improving everything but how dull it sometimes is.