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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Hopper: A Journey into the American Dream — Tom Folsom
Folsom traces the life of Dennis Hopper through its four distinct phrases: Kansas farm boy, Method actor/James Dean worshipper, pharmaceutical madman, comeback kid. That he had a fourth at all continues to amaze me, especially after reading all the details. The kinder, gentler Hopper was hardly one to shy away from admitting his battles with […]
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Tots entertainment
Credit: Brad Gregg So when the most recent trailer for To the Wonder, his upcoming feature, recently hit the web, we expected the unexpected. That said, we did not expect to see — starring alongside Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams — a Sonic Drive-In and Taco Bueno. Sonic is featured quite prominently, in fact; its […]
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Chiller: The Complete Television Series
And, as with any media in the omnibus format, some episodes clearly work better than others. The irony is that Chiller begins to find its footing as the hours click by, yet it’s all over and done with after five. The two-disc set contains the entire quintet of the supernatural stories. The first, “Prophecy,” […]
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Hypothermia
Essentially a six-person play, the film by writer/director James Felix McKenney concerns two groups of people ice-fishing and a creature lurking underneath that sheet. One is a family fronted by Michael Rooker (TV’s The Walking Dead) and Blanche Baker (Sixteen Candles); the other infringes on their territory, so you know one of them will be […]
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Klown
In order to convince his pregnant girlfriend (Mia Lyhne) that he is indeed “father material,” the goofy, gawky Frank (Frank Hvam) essentially kidnaps her 12-year-old nephew, Bo (Marcuz Jess Peterson), who’s staying with them while his parents are on vacation, and takes the pudgy, timid boy on a planned canoe trip. This comes to the […]
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Twins of Evil
At the quaint European village of Karnstein arrive identical twin sisters Maria and Frieda Gellhorn (real-life sibs and 1970 Playboy centerfolds Mary and Madeleine Collinson). Newly orphaned, the beautiful young women come from Venice to live with their Aunt Katy (Kathleen Byron, The Elephant Man) and Uncle Gustav (the legendary Peter Cushing). Upon seeing them […]
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Bullhead
Hey, guys, you’d feel the same if you had no testicles. Bullhead is not, however, your average chunk of Oscar bait. In fact, nothing about it is average. Its distributor is Drafthouse Films, the theatrical arm of the legendary — among outré-cinema enthusiasts, at least — Austin, Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse, where you can enjoy a […]
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42nd Street Forever: Blu-ray Edition
That adds up to nearly four hours of absolutely outrageous ads. Trust me: Whether you watch in a single sitting or several, it’s a real car-chasing, cycle-revving, bomb-exploding, fist-punching, karate-chopping, foot-kicking, gun-shooting, knife-throwing, laser-blasting, woman-screaming, race-baiting, acid-pouring, eye-gouging, head-chopping, phallus-castrating, breast-squeezing, bed-writhing, succubus-sucking, wrist-tying, drug-injecting, butt-whipping, panty-ripping, bikini-filling, disco-dancing, jail-busting, snake-attacking, robot-battling, voodoo-pinning, slime-invading, dominatrix-singing, […]
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Dark Crimes
Among the 50 titles here — yes, 50 — are some genuine classics, such as 1950’s D.O.A., Edward G. Robinson in 1947’s The Red House and Samuel Fuller’s The Naked Kiss, but I don’t recommend picking up this massive set for those three, as much better prints can be found from, respectively, Image Entertainment, Film Chest […]