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 […]
‘ghost’
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The Great Gildersleeve Movie Collection
In other words, think of him as the Frasier of the 1940s. As first glimpsed by us in 1942’s The Great Gildersleeve, Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve is an “overstuffed walrus” with a scary laugh and a deep, singsongy voice. He also serves as guardian to his orphaned niece and nephew (Nancy Gates and Freddie Mercer), but […]
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The Possession
Now that the former has followed the latter onto Blu-ray and DVD, the difference is startlingly clear: The Possession is by far the superior ghost story. I’d expect nothing less from Evil Dead mastermind Sam Raimi, who produced it under his Ghost House Pictures banner, which has brought some of the better entries in the […]
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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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Ghost of a chance
Photo: Krista Spears Most parents aren’t thrilled about their kids playing in punk bands. The mother of Corporate Ghost drummer Max Harris, however, has fostered the entire underground scene by giving fledgling punk and garage rock bands a place to call home while honing their skill. “It’s provided a place for the punk and underground […]
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The Ghostmaker
A little research reveals it was built by an inventor of torture devices — a man considered “an evil version of Leonardo da Vinci. They called him the Devil’s Craftsman.” The coffin is a “ghost machine” constructed to allow its users to safely experience the sensation of death without actually dying. One goldfish test later, […]
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The Pact
Following the death of her mother, an independent-minded waitress named Annie (Caity Lotz, TV’s Death Valley) returns with dogged reluctance to her childhood home — and that’s before her sister (Agnes Bruckner, Kill Theory) and friend (Kathleen Rose Perkins, TV’s Episodes) have vanished there. As made perfectly clear by the cover art, a malevolent force […]
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Casting the Runes
Those working on a TV special on the history of witchcraft have peculiar run-ins with a mysterious, reclusive alchemist known as Karswell (Iain Cuthbertson, Gorillas in the Mist), a man who openly espouses lust, deviance and all-around evil. When one character recalls a co-worker’s fatal brush with Karswell (depicted in the prologue) and says that […]
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Prehistoric powerhouse
Mastodon is great at naming things. Now touring behind its fifth album, The Hunter, Atlanta’s reigning prog-metal act stomped its way to critical-darling status by virtue of more than just formidable song sorcery. One can feel writers’ glee by reading reviews of the band’s sludgy, heady, unrelenting approach to rock that manifests in album titles […]
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‘Ghost’ hunter
The freshman lawmaker also introduced legislation to allow for drug testing for state aid recipients, increased scrutiny of Transportation Security Administration employees and stiffer penalties for dog attacks on police. The patriotic Bennett, known for waving his flag tie, reportedly said he dropped to his knee and gave praise when he learned of the killing […]