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Hostel / Hostel: Part II

From 2005, Hostel drops three collegians into Amsterdam for a debauched vacation of pot and poon, only to accidentally become victims in a bizarre business in which the wealthy pay big bucks to torture the kidnapped in an underground warehouse. Roth spares nothing, leaving viewers to cringe at every slice of the Achilles tendon, snipped […]

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Spiderhole

It’s been such a cliché for decades that the recent comedy “Tucker and Dale vs Evil” may have parodied it (however unlikely) to its well-deserved death. At least the quartet of UK collegians of “Spiderhole” has done something different: Rather than go away for the weekend, these students leave their dreary dorms behind for good. […]

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Torso

First of all, once the disc loaded, it offered the choice between the uncensored English version or the Italian-language director’s cut, both making their home-vid debut. I chose the latter. Then it offered the choice of watching it introduced by Eli Roth. “Hell, yes,” I said to absolutely no one, and was greeted with a […]

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Piranha 3D

It’s a loose remake of Joe Dante’s “Piranha,” which was born in 1978 because producer Roger Corman wanted to cash in on the popularity of “Jaws.” It worked. Things come full circle in “Mirrors” director Alexandre Aja’s version, opening with a prologue that winks back at Steven Spielberg’s shark blockbuster by having Richard Dreyfuss essentially […]

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