The DVD Dump

A few months ago, two DVD distributors have shut down. These distributors were BCI Eclipse (He-Man, She-Ra, Bravestar, Isis, Jason of Star Command) and Central Park Media (Slayers, Utena, Grave of the Fireflies). I really admired both these companies for many reasons.

BCI Eclipse held the rights to a lot of Filmation properties including He-Man. They’d distribute many titles in relatively large sets that came with some incredible extras that would include audio commentary, retrospective interviews, specials, and behind the scenes extras. Navarre Corp, the parent company of BCI, shut them down late last year due to lack of profit for the last two years. I actually live not too far from the original BCI factory and I’ve been noticing a lot of their titles popping up at Half-Price Books in mint condition for super cheap. I picked up Jason of Star Command, Space Academy and Ark 2 for only $10 which had an SRP of $40. At this moment, He-Man (2002 remake) has been picked up by Mill Creek, the cheapest budget DVD distributor out there, who will release the series in more affordable sets.

Interestingly enough, CPM had similar problems except CPM hasn’t released a DVD in two years. Despite their lack producing a new product, the company has been around for over a decade and distributed many anime titles that have actually sold well over the years. They’ve also expanded over the years under such names Software Sculptors and US Manga Corp. The company filed for bankruptcy and shut down in late March. The rights to many of their titles have been bought up by other American anime distributors (ADV Films and FUNimation), however, they’re not making them cheaper nor making smart choices in titles. ADV Films has been very quick to grab these titles and make press releases ASAP. Worst of all, it seems that some of these titles are even MORE expensive than the previous company with no extras if any. Usually when you re-release a title, you change the packaging, add more extras, remaster it, make it cheaper, or ANYTHING. Considering the state of the anime market right now, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out for the other companies.

We’re smart enough not to be swayed by the text and the back of a DVD case to persuade us to watch a movie. We can read between the lines. Let’s pick apart this weeks releases by analyzing the synopsis and interpreting what it really means.

Body Armour

Synopsis: Disgraced bodyguard John Ridley is torn between vengeance and duty when he’s forced to protect Lee Maxwell, the cold-blooded assassin who murdered Ridley’s client. But Ridley wants payback — and he’s determined to get it sooner or later, any way he can.

Analysis: Wacky revenge movie.

Born

Synopsis: Mary Elizabeth goes to bed alone one night, still a twenty-one-year-old virgin, and wakes up the next morning…pregnant. Possessed by the demon fetus growing within her womb, Mary Elizabeth obeys her homicidal cravings to kill…for the sake of her unborn spawn. Mary Elizabeth’s dark transformation is controlled by her unborn demon child’s deadly evil cravings. Once the child is born, there will be hell on earth. From this apparent immaculate conception comes edge-of-your-seat terror.

Analysis: Rosemary’s Baby with a Nightmare on Elm Street 2 twist.
The Cell 2

Synopsis: The Cusp is a serial killer who kills his victims and then brings them back to life; over and over again; until they beg to die; Maya is a psychic investigator who gained her powers after a one-year coma after she was the Cusp’s first victim. Now the Cusp Killer is back and Maya has little time to do what she has never done before, go into the mind of a killer unprotected, and save his latest victim.

Analysis: The Cell Redux.

DVD Dump Pick of the Week

Hydra

Synopsis: Former marine Tim Nolan has been kidnapped — along with three ex-convicts — and forced to participate in a deadly game. Wealthy men have paid a fortune for the opportunity to hunt down men like him in the perfect place: a deserted island. However, this is no ordinary island — it is home to Hydra the Beast. As the hunters track down their prey, the Hydra quickly turns hunter into hunted. With the island crumbling beneath him, Nolan finds himself in a race against time to stop the beast and get off the island alive.

Analysis: Monster Island 2009

Killing Ariel

Synopsis: One night, a female demon attacks Rick, a contentedly married man. Under the spell of the demon, he takes a beautiful young woman, Ariel, off to an isolated house for a weekend fling. There, bizarre and frightening things happen, and accidentally Rick kills Ariel. But she won’t stay dead. He soon realizes that she is the demon that first attacked him. He defends himself by killing her again… And again… But no matter how many times he kills her, she keeps coming back. When he finally escapes and returns home, he discovers that his life has disappeared into a nightmare of madness, lust, adultery, and cold-blooded murder.

Analysis: My Girlfriend is a Demon, Next Maury.

The Perfect Sleep

Synopsis: Against the backdrop of a noirish dreamscape, a tortured man returns to the city he swore he would never return to, in order to save the woman he has always loved yet can never have.

Analysis: Sin City sans style

Skid Marks: The Movie

Synopsis: “SKID MARKS” is the hilarious tale of two rival ambulance companies and their misfit medics; the Bayside Ambulatory Life Services ( B.A.L.S) team and the Downtown Intensive Care (D.I.C.) Unit. When budget cuts strike their quiet town of Bayside, it’s clear one ambulance unit must go. Now with their jobs on the line, these below-average EMT’s (emergency medical technicians) are about to prove they’ll stop at nothing to save their patients, their alter egos and their beer money. Hold on to you seat cushions and take your meds, as the heroes of “SKID MARKS” penetrate a theater near you.

Analysis: Police Academy, Emergency Squad

Tommy and the Cool Mule

Synopsis: Tommy Braxton’s father goes to war and never returns, forcing Tommy to become the man of the house and help support his mom and sister. Tommy makes a friend and finds a way to save his family’s farm when he meets Jackie-A—a talking mule. Against all odds, Tommy and Jackie-A triumph in a race over the older bullies and their horses at the county stock show, in a spectacular display of resolve and determination that caps off a winning family adventure!

Analysis: Ice-T’s latest venture for more money

What Goes Up

Synopsis: When a group of teenage social misfits befriends jaded journalist, who’s on assignment in their small New Hampshire town, they each find themselves searching for meaning and truth in their crazy, mixed-up lives. But as Babbitt gets to know these eccentric kids better—Lucy in particular—their hidden secrets begin to rise to the surface, changing each other’s lives forever.

Analysis: The Hillary Duff Hipster Movie

Just when I thought Blu-Ray was going to be the standard in ridiculous new DVD features, the DVD format surprises me with TellX Active-Video. This new (d)evolutionary technology in needless interactivity works almost as a mini Blu-Ray submenu. Except for the fact that with Blu-Ray you can still watch the movie with the submenu up. In other words, you stop the movie so a dinky menu can appear and offer up extras. According to TellX’s website, here are the ‘key’ benefits.

1. TellX embellishes and extends traditional movie storytelling for directors and audiences alike with on-demand compelling interactive information relevant to the scene being watched.
2. A TellX enabled DVD answers viewer’s questions about anything they see or hear whenever they see or hear it!
3. TellX is available “On-Demand” at the point-of-interest and never gets in the way or distracts from the viewers enjoyment of the movie.
4. TellX is embedded along with the movie on a standard DVD and requires no new player and no new format discs just a standard DVD player and remote control and the excitement of being able to “Touch The Movie” with TellX!

Did you get all that? Unless you’re a SUPER creepy movie geek of the highest/lowest geekdom who really wants to know the EXACT location where a movie was filmed, there is NOTHING of interest here. If they really wanted to show off this new technology, it would’ve helped to have it on a movie you’d actually care about rather than a DTV movie like The Code. Not to mention there is NOTHING new about this point-of-interest technology. It floors me how this technology that’s been floating around for almost a decade is seen as new and revolutionary. What’s even more pathetic is that back in the early 2000’s point-of-interest interactivity was just a gimmicky toy on DVDs like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and AKIRA. Yet I see it touted like incredible technology on new DVDs like The Dark Knight.

To all DVD manufacturers, STOP MAKING FOCAL POINT-OF-INTEREST EXTRAS! If I want to see the featurettes on the disc, I’ll watch the damn featurettes. I’m not going to sit through the movie and watch the featurettes when YOU tells me to. What kind of messed up logic is that?

Besides, why would I want to TOUCH a movie? Do they even read what they write on their website?

Drudging through the glut of direct-to-video/low-budget horror movies that come out every week, it’s easy to lose faith in the horror genre. Even recent theatrical horror movies are proving that the genre is being pushed in the wrong direction. That is really sad because I want horror to be good considering the best theater experiences I’ve had in the last decade have been at horror movies. Snakes on a Plane in 2006 was such a giddy blast and Grindhouse in 2007 was an unforgettable experience that sadly isn’t replicated on DVD. However, while those were essentially horror movies, they were satires of the genre. Finally, Sam Raimi has returned to the horror stage to remind us of what makes a truly great horror movie. Drag Me To Hell is everything that horror should be (and needs to be). Now I’m a 23-year-old guy whose seen a lot of horror movies and none of them scare me. Drag Me To Hell scared me.

Drag Me To Hell follows Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), a loan officer on the verge of becoming an assistant manager, who ends up being cursed by a gypsy for not giving her an extension on her mortgage (which she’s already had two of). Not to give too much away, but the curse involves the Lamia, a demon that tortures you for three days before dragging you to you-know-where. And with that simple setup, Ms. Brown is tortured for the rest of the movie in a variety of ways as she struggles to find a way out. Some hardcore horror movie fans may be put off by the films PG-13 rating, but I assure you this is a HARD PG-13. It’s just one severed finger away from being R-rated. However, all of Raimi’s classic slapstick elements and gross-out humor present in the Evil Dead movies is in full force here. Now, for the easily-scared, there are a lot of jump-scares in this movie. I’ve never been a fan of jump-scares; I think they’re an amateur attempt at trying to scare the audience. However, Raimi finds a way to make them interesting. Never once does Raimi have an oh-it’s-just-you jump-scare. And usually the jump-scare is followed with a laugh of slapstick or disgust. Again, not to give to much away, but if you’re familiar with Raimi’s early work, you can see the ending coming a mile away. However, I cannot stress just how awesome and fun Drag Me To Hell really is. DO NOT WAIT FOR THIS ON DVD! SEE IT IN THE THEATER!

My hope is that after Raimi’s triumphant return, we’ll start seeing a new trend in horror. Hopefully, a return to the golden classics of horror. What kind of horror am I talking about? Well…

EVIL DEAD 2: Chainsaws, shotguns, dismemberment, heaps of blood, crazy camera tricks, need I go on?

DEAD ALIVE: Gallons of blood with incredible practical effects and some of the best gorey humor you’ll ever see.

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: Freddy Kruger is the jackal of the horror genre and also the most dangerous considering he can attack you in your dreams. A serial killer of the surreal world.

FRIDAY THE 13th: Before the ‘cool’ Jason with the hockey mask, Camp Crystal Lake was terrorized by Jason’s mommy. Jason’s crazy obsessed mommy. But, hey, I’d be pissed too if my child died while camp instructors were making out.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: Classic zombie movie with a not-so-conventional ending.

PHANTASM: An old, tall caretaker trying to kill you because he is actually an interdimensional alien is enough to freak me out. And if you’re only 12-years-old, even more frightening.

HALLOWEEN: Proof that you don’t need blood to make an effective horror movie.

CREEPSHOW: You haven’t seen disgusting until you’ve seen Creepshow. Also, one of the rare Lessle Neelson serious roles.

THE COMIC BOOK DIARIES

I’m sure there were at least a couple of people out there who saw the movie Clerks and said “I could do that.” I guarantee that was Clif Campbell’s rationale behind the movie The Comic Book Diaries. And this movie mirrors many of the same elements, yet screws up the more important ones.

CBD follows a small comic book shop struggling to make a profit. Whether this a real comic book shop, I can’t tell. It’s built in an extremely open and horribly painted environment with quite a bit of empty space. Although I COULD imagine a struggling comic book shop in that kind of a setting. The two owners are John and Tom. John is the main character who in addition to financial difficulties is having problems with his lady friend. Tom is supposed to be the more free-spirit who eggs on John to stop being a loser and stand up for himself. Together they face the hardships of breaking-up, farting, an ex-employee fired for smoking pot on the job, shoplifters, and an unsuccessful comic book signing for Nick Levine (not played the real Nick Levine), and, of course, murder.

There is actually a competent script at work here, but there are several elements holding it back from becoming a great movie. The one flaw is visible from the very first scene: the acting. Of all the elements from Clerks that inspired Clif to make CBD, why couldn’t he have focused on the delivery? Yeah, the dialogue in Clerks was well-written, but it was only as strong as the actors delivering it. The majority of the actors in CBD are almost sleep-walking through their roles. I know it’s a low-budget production and that Clif probably couldn’t hire fantastic actors, but an actor is only good as the director motivating him/her. The other biggest flaw is in the production: no lighting, no sound editing, and camcorder video quality. If director Clif Campbell is a film student, this is pretty amateur. If he actually is an amateur, than I’m little impressed it turned out as well as it did.

However, what works in the film’s favor is the story. It takes awhile to get off the ground and get you interested, but it eventually got interesting and ALMOST has you feel something for the characters. There are only two downsides to the script. The first one being there isn’t a real resolution or ending. The movie just short of stops at 1 hour and 25 minutes. The second being that the movie rarely take advantage of the fact that it’s a comic book shop. John and Tom don’t really have any big discussions relating to the nature of their stores content nor do they show any real chemistry in their interests. I mean, the movie is already low-budget and direct-to-video. Why not go for the comic book jokes only comic book geeks would get?

RATING: C-Movie

The Comic Book Diaries is a solid script buried in low-budget filmmaking. If you’re willing to push aside some glaring elements, CBD is an okay movie. Not great, but not unbearable or boring which is more than I can say for a lot of other C-movies.

THE ROGER CORMAN COLLECTION

Roger Corman is considered to be the king of B-movies. He’s produced over 300 movies, many of them on low budgets, and made bank on most of them. The Roger Corman Collection is comprised of eight films he did double duty on by being both a producer and a director. Now don’t be confused by the title. This is NOT the best of Roger Corman’s work. It doesn’t include The Pit and the Pendulum or Death Race 2000. This box is more or less a collection of Corman’s more cult films, some of which have been out of print for years. It’s also an eye opening experience as it features some of the early and later works of such celebrities as Peter Fonda and Shelly Winters.

Gas-s-s-s plays like a Mad Max for hippies. Some sort of gas is released on the world that kills everyone over the age of 25. This leads to a bunch of crazy hippie kids going on a road trip to find utopia which leads them to discovering different people and societies born of the new anarchy. The biggest problem with the movie is the gags that range from painfully obvious social satire to just downright bad jokes. At one point a girl says she’ll eat till she explodes and she actually does explode. Some of the gags are kind of clever, but there is nothing here that actually made me laugh. Unless of course you count the laughter of how bad the jokes were.

The Trip is just that; a drug trip. Peter Fonda does some LSD and we get to witness everything he sees. His visions are quite visually stunning with some interesting camera work and effects. The acting is okay with a good cast including Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper, but the story is very disjointed which I guess was the intent of the film to make it feel like a real drug trip. It’s an interesting exercise in special effects and editing, but don’t be expecting more than that. Otherwise your head will explode at trying to comprehend the ending. It should be worth noting that the film was written by Jack Nicholson.

The Young Riders combines character drama with stockcar racing in an uneven fashion. Two rivals face off against each other in both racing and love. This is certainly Corman’s safest films as the characters are likable and the story holds together. However, that’s also the biggest flaw of the movie; it’s too safe. The characters are too likable to point of being boring and the story is too safe that it is incredibly slow considering it’s an 81 minute movie. The best thing the movie has going for it are the racing scenes which are very well-shot. I’m talking Grand Prix good. But unlike Grand Prix, The Young Riders doesn’t feature nearly as much racing.

The Wild Angels could be seen as the lesser remake of Easy Rider considering they both star Peter Fonda as a biker punk, except for the fact that this movie was made three years prior. The Hells Angels break one of their own out of the hospital and later hold a funeral in his honor in which they trash a church. While not as great as Easy Rider, it’s a pretty good movie for what it is. And what it is happens to be an exploitation movie with some bizarre acting by Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, Dianne Ladd and Bruce Dern. In other words, it’s a bad movie, but an entertaining bad movie.

Bloody Mama is one big star-studded mess of a movie. Shelley Winters plays Ma Barker, the mother of a couple of rednecks boys, one played by Robert DeNiro. They tour the country robbing, raping, and murdering during the Great Depression. It’s hard to enjoy this movie because the characters are so darn unlikable especially in a scene where they rape and drown a girl. The film isn’t a total loss as there are some classics cars of the depression era, an interesting scene with a victim questioning one of the Barker boys, and the final shootout is pretty well-shot. It’s just too bad everything else in the film is hard to watch.

A Bucket of Blood shines as the best movie of the set considering it’s the earliest (1959), the shortest (61 minutes), and the only black and white movie in the collection. Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) is a nervous, social wreck of a busboy working in a Bohemian café. Desperate to be an accepted artist, he becomes popular when he starts murdering people and covering them in clay to be passed off as sculptures. A very effective dark comedy with some good acting, hilarious writing and twice as hilarious dated beatnik slang which only makes the film better. It’s kind of like House of Wax meets Color Me Blood Red.

The Premature Burial is one of Corman’s better productions from his series of films based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe. A painter/medical student called Guy (Ray Milland) becomes obsessed with being buried alive that he builds a special tomb. It’s well-shot, beautifully lit, incredibly well-acted, the sets are impressive, and it feels like a genuine classic horror film. In comparison to the other Edgar Allen Poe films Corman made (The Raven and The House of Usher) this is certainly the weakest considering it doesn’t star Vincent Price, but the film is still quite good with a great performance by Ray Milland.

X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes has cheesy Twilight Zone episode written all over it. Dr. Xavier (Ray Milland) stumbles upon a chemical giving him X-ray vision as well as causing progressive insanity. It’s very cheesy in how he goes about using his power to see naked people, become a freak show attraction, become a psychic healer, and cheat at blackjack. However, the film keeps your attention and the special effects aren’t half bad. Not to mention there is a fantastic cameo by Don Rickles in the role of a scam artist. It’s still a B-movie, but it’s an extremely well-made B-movie.

The bulk of the extras focus on The Trip. Corman shares lots of insight in the Tune in, Trip out featurette about why he made The Trip even going so far as to sharing his acid trip visions. This is balanced by Bruce Dern’s insights about how he didn’t buy into the drug culture. Corman’s audio commentary track for The Trip helps explain just what the heck is going on in the film. In some odd, crazy way, his analysis of filming a drug trip actually makes some sense. The featurette ‘Psychedelic Film Effects’ is an interview with the special effects artist Allen Daviav on the making of the various lighting and editing techniques used in The Trip. Very fascinating stuff considering how much work and knowledge of photography it took to make those effects.  X: The Man with the X-Ray eyes also features an audio commentary, though not quite as insightful as The Trip. There is also an interview with Roger Corman on the making of The Premature Burial. Again, this is a very interesting listen proving that Corman knows his stuff when it comes to directing.

Overall, this is strictly a movie geek only set as these eight films are definitely not for everyone. I’d only recommend picking it up if you’re really into exploitation and B-movies or if you’ve just got to own every Roger Corman film.

Anacondas: Trail of Blood

The 4th movie in the highly luke-warm Anaconda series delaying the inevitable Anacondas versus Python.

Direct Contact

Sorry, Dolph Lundgren, but you’re too creepy to play a hero.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Pay money to watch something you can see online for free: http://www.hulu.com/watch/28343/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog
Elsewhere

Who would’ve thought a story about angsty teenage girls could be so boring.

Razortooth

A giant eel terrorizes Lake Placid, proving that anything giant is evil.

DVD Dump Pick of the Week:

Silent Venom

It’s a dumb title, but Snakes on a Submarine didnt have the same ring to it.

Spring Breakdown

Who says you can’t have a mid-life crisis on SPRING BREAK, WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!