The first film introduces future cop Mad Max Rockatansky and director George Miller’s violent, pedal-to-the-metal world of carmageddon. Its chase sequences are as exciting as anything the action genre had seen, and they still hold up because their influence is ever-present. While Max’s family life slows the middle, it fuels a bang-up final act of […]
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The Bowery Boys: Volume Two
For this four-disc follow-up to 2012’s set, Warner Archive again mined its vaults for 12 of the Boys’ Poverty Row features. The best way to describe their style is that it comes from the “why I oughta!” school of comedy. I’m unsure if it ever graduated, given exchanges like “How can you read in the […]
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Terminator Anthology
Cameron’s The Terminator of 1984 was and is a well-made piece of sci-fi trash that bears the ingenuity-on-a-budget scars of most Roger Corman graduates. If it proved a breakthrough for Cameron (who then earned the Aliens gig as a follow-up), it was arguably double that for its monosyllabic center, Arnold Schwarzenegger, then considered near-inconceivable as […]
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Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXVI
Besides, fans of MST3K only need know that another collection exists, and they’re sold. The latest, Volume XXVI (aka 26, if you don’t like maths), may not have any classics among its four-ep offering, but any episode is worth owning. Among this batch, my favorite is the most recent: 1988’s Alien from L.A., a sci-fi […]
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Boxy, but good
Fill a box with 18 random items. Give it to a team of employees from local businesses. See what happens. Science Museum Oklahoma has done just that with its second Out of the Box exhibition, featuring the creations of 11 local businesses whose task was to take those random items — such as springs, hinges, […]
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Boxed in
Box, a developer and owner of The Greens Country Club, said he has has few alternatives in connection with the sacred dome, which long ago lost its glistening golden look of yesteryear. His top options include the sale of the property or its demolition. Box is losing $10,000 a month on the old, vacant bank […]
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The Tarzan Collection Starring Jock Mahoney and Mike Henry
For Mahoney, that’s 1962’s Tarzan Goes to India and 1963’s Tarzan’s Three Challenges. He may have been a fine father to actress Sally Field, but he makes for one dull Tarzan. This pair of adventures is notable for getting the character out of Africa and into Asia, yet only the latter sojourn is worth watching […]
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Philo Vance Murder Case Collection
Perhaps one reason for the character’s comparative absence among pop culture’s top of mind is that no one actor “owned” the role. In fact, across the six examples in this three-DVD set, not a single actor plays the metrosexual man twice; it’s like a George Lazenby switcheroo each time. Furthermore, two of them are arguably […]
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Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis
While undeniably watchable, the project is a pure puff piece. After all, it counts Lewis among its producers, so no way he’s getting treated with anything with less than kid gloves. Anything in his life that might be considered a boat rocker is absent: divorce, bankruptcy, Hardly Working, The Day the Clown Cried, etc. I […]
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Femme Fatales: The Complete First Season
For the anthology series, Tanit Phoenix (Death Race 2) serves as its comely Cryptkeeper, introducing tales of double crosses and couplings. Eye candy, aside, what makes this approach interesting is that the episodes span a wide range of genres. For example, “Behind Locked Doors,” which concerns a Lindsay Lohan-esque paparazzi magnet, pays homage to the […]