Drowning his sorrows in drink soon leads Adrián into the warm embrace of a button-cute waitress, Fabiana (Martina García), and they fall in love. All’s well again, but the police suspect something is up with Belen’s inexplicable vanishing act. Something is up in The Hidden Face, a thriller from Spain new to DVD on the […]
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The Cats / Hate for Hate
Proof is in two 1960s obscurities making their MOD DVD debut from Warner Archive, both from Italy: The Cats, which is not about cats, and Hate for Hate, which I did not. One of the most memorable lines in 1968’s The Cats — aka The Bastard — is delivered by Rita Hayworth, whose hot-mess-of-a-mother character […]
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Night Wolf / Hidden
Werewolves are hot right now, but you wouldn’t know it from Night Wolf, a howlingly average and predictable British entry that sadly marks the final film of Simon MacCorkindale, ’80s star of TV’s Manimal and the misbegotten Jaws 3-D. The plot plops a bunch of slackers in a dark and empty family farmhouse on the […]
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Eagleheart: Season One
For Chris Elliott fans, the Adult Swim series is worth rejoicing over. Unlike other shows of the late-night Cartoon Network showcase, this one enjoys well-crafted scripts filled with jokes that come from decades of edgy, experimental comedy experience, and not bong hits. Ostensibly a parody of Walker, Texas Ranger and perhaps a bit Justified, the […]
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The Killing: The Complete First Season
That’s the question posed by the first season of AMC’s The Killing, and also one famously answered — and then infamously not — by its finale (an extended cut of which is on the three-disc Blu-ray set) that incited the Internet equivalent of a riot. Whereas so many viewers were angry, I was elated: Seriously, […]
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The Nurses Collection
Part of the label’s ongoing and hopefully never-ending “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics” line, The Nurses Collection presents a quadruple feature of the sexy, soapy, seriocomic flicks on two DVDs: 1974’s Candy Stripe Nurses, 1972’s Night Call Nurses, 1971’s Private Duty Nurses and 1973’s The Young Nurses. As you may have noticed, they’re not presented in […]
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Outrage: Way of the Yakuza
Here, a member of one crime syndicate unknowingly attempts to rip off a member of the other crime syndicate, via fleecing his nightclub bill. The insult eventually escalates to an all-out war as each side takes its turn exacting revenge, from several sacrificial fingers and a purposely botched act of dentistry to the most cruel […]
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Dark Shadows: Fan Favorites / The Best of Barnabas
It’s de rigueur for the Collins clan of Dark Shadows, the long-running Gothic soap opera from the late 1960s and early 70s, and a cult sensation ever since. Because the TV show is due for a modern reboot as Tim Burton’s take hits the big screen on May 11, MPI Home Video is naturally mere […]
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Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XXIII
As for the four films contained within? Well, they’re all horrible, naturally, which means they’re hilarious when pitted against Joel Hodgson or Mike Nelson and their robot friends, who sit in silhouette at the bottom of your screen, mocking all the way. In this set, we’re treated to a true variety of genres that previous […]
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The Steel Trap
Jim Osborne (Joseph Cotten, Citizen Kane) is an all-American, suit-and-tie family man who commutes to work, where he’s the assistant manager of a bank. To get into the vault, he and his fellow execs take turns entering safe codes as a safety measure … but he’s smart enough to memorize the others’ numbers. That’s because […]