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Sweet Kill

Available exclusively from Shout! Factory’s online store, the Roger Corman production suggests that the sexual hang-ups of high school coach Eddie Collins (Hunter, Grease 2) are to blame on him watching his mom undress to her birthday suit when he was just a sneaker-wearing child sneaking peeks from her curtained closet. Which she knew. Discount […]

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Zombie A-Hole

I wish I could say the live-action Zombie A-Hole matched those felt-based shenanigans of Massacre; instead, I must admit being disappointed. While it exhibits flashes of Mills’ indie-minded manic brilliance, three things killed it for me: • amateurish acting, • nudity just for the sake of nudity (to a ridiculously exploitative degree), and • a […]

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The Lucky One

His books sell millions of copies, and Hollywood’s adaptations of them sell millions of tickets more: The Notebook, Message in a Bottle, Dear John, The Last Song, A Walk to Remember, Nights in Rodanthe. Love means never having to say anything of value. Now there’s The Lucky One, a big-boy vehicle for High School Musical […]

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Piranha 3DD

It is there in the prologue where two former Okies (Gary Busey and Clu Gulager) and a farting dead cow get the party started, sending hatched baby piranha to Merkin County, Ariz. — a joke that should calibrate you with the movie’s wavelength … as if the bra-size title didn’t do that already. (I’d like […]

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Shark Week

Patriot Games‘ Patrick Bergin is Tiberon (get it?), a madman who clutches a pearl necklace, has Kick-Ass’ Yancy Butler draped on his arm, and channels John de Lancie. He’s collected these poor souls for reasons unbeknownst until the final five minutes; you can gather it’s for personal revenge. He forces them into his baby shark-infested […]

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Dexter: The Sixth Season

As season six opens, he worries whether his dark traits will take root in his toddler, but the arc of these dozen hours is tracking down the so-called “Doomsday Killer” — actually, killers plural: two end-times zealots (Edward James Olmos and a clench-jawed Colin Hanks) who believe God wants them to bring about the end […]

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The Chapman Report

Based on a novel that itself was based on Alfred Kinsey’s landmark, controversial survey of human sexuality, The Chapman Report — now on MOD DVD from Warner Archive — dramatizes the data-collection efforts of Dr. Chapman (Andrew Duggan, It’s Alive) and his assistant, Paul Radford (Efrem Zimbalist, TV’s The FBI) in one particularly prosperous California […]

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Juan of the Dead

As played by Alexis Díaz de Villegas, Juan is a middle-aged, self-“employed” fisherman in Cuba whose layabout life gets some much-needed excitement when zombies dissidents invade their economically ravaged, crime-ridden village. Ironically, it motivates Juan and his otherwise lazy gang, as they start a dissident-extermination business whose motto is, “We kill your loved ones.” Armed […]

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Lisztomania

Almost a year after his death, Warner Archive brings one of his wildest — and that’s saying something — to a long-overdue American DVD release with 1975’s Lisztomania. Based loosely — in every sense of the word — on the life of Franz Liszt, it’s a musical comedy horror sex fantasy unlike any you’ve ever seen. […]

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One in the Chamber

Gooding is Ray Carver, a fixer who “solves” disputes between mob families. He also narrates from the start, so you know on whose side the movie stands; however, his softly spoken platitudes like “The past is the devil. You can’t run from it. It’s always behind you” put me squarely on the opposite side. Meanwhile, […]

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