Poltergeist: Special Edition: Now here’s a special edition that isn’t, and a lack of extras that it is much harder to excuse. Without question one of the finest American horror films ever made, the Tobe Hooper-directed, Spielberg-penned and produced yarn about a typical suburban family terrorized by unruly spirits who abduct their daughter deserves better – a commentary with stars Craig T. Nelson and Jo Beth Williams, maybe, one or two of the production featurettes that ARE out there (you can check YouTube!)? Hell, I’d even excuse a feature on the much-ballyhooed “Poltergeist Curse” surrounding all the actors who subsequently died. All we get on this purported special edition is a mini-doc on poltergeist phenomenon that has nothing to do with the film. Abysmal… still, it’s my second favorite movie of all time, so I can’t not recommend it. At least there’s a restored anamorphic transfer.
Read the rest of this entry »

Caligula: Three-Disc Imperial Edition

I’m beginning to feel as though I’m too often feasting on my own words with regard to double-dipping; a number of my picks over the past several months have been re-releases of stuff that’s already out in non-vanilla editions with decent extras. Sometimes, though, when the circumstances are right you just can’t deny the value in an upgrade, and this week’s triple-disc reissue of Caligula is a prime example.
Read the rest of this entry »

Kindred The Embraced

By Jessica Dwyer

With approach of Halloween and the recent influx of vampire shows on TV this year, I thought I’d go back to an oldie but goodie bloodsucker series that’s available on DVD. And no, I’m not talking about Dark Shadows. Back in 1996 White Wolf, the role playing company, was running strong with its Vampire The Masquerade game. Its popularity is still pretty strong, but back then it was hitting its stride…becoming for some a way of life.

The stories and mythos were amazing and have led to many of the new popular films and takes on the vampire and werewolf legends. But back then, Fox decided to give it a go and capitalize on the new love of this form of entertainment with an hour long drama based off it called Kindred: The Embraced.
Read the rest of this entry »

Cujo: 25th Anniversary Edition

What works on paper doesn’t always necessarily work on screen – it’s a time-proven fact that movie adaptations of successful novels often gauge correctly, and just as often spectacularly fail to grasp. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for example, tweaks the timeline of Tolkien’s books perfectly to sustain the drama that is necessary to make Peter Jackson’s films work; similarly, most of the successful adaptations of Stephen King rely on anything from minor (Carrie) to significant (The Shining) changes for a winning film experience. This week, Cujo is released in a special edition DVD and… well, it swings both ways with this one.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Land of the DVD clone - War of the Worlds

By Jessica Dwyer

You may be asking yourself, “What is a DVD clone?” Well let me explain it to you. A DVD clone is a film with very similar attributes to a theatrical release (sometimes the exact same title) that is released on DVD simultaneously with its bigger budget brother. This happens far more regularly of late, with the independent filmmaker’s piggy backing onto the big studios for a quick buck. And it works apparently since there are MANY of these clones running about at your local Blockbuster.

For this first time out, we’ve chosen War of the Worlds, the many times remade story by HG Wells, but never perhaps with more infamy, than by Tom Cruise. The year was 2005, and Tom Cruise’s career was being overshadowed not by giant alien spaceships, but by his own religion, Scientology. Which…actually…has its own share of alien spaceships, but I digress.
Read the rest of this entry »

Death Proof: It’s frustrating to recommend anything when you know how much greater it could have been. For the time being, however, we might as well give up on the notion of seeing Grindhouse reach DVD properly, with both features and all the trailers intact – after all, Tarantino’s been promising us ‘Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair’ for ages now, so he’d better deliver that first. Instead, we get Tarantino’s neo-slasher opus this week and Rodriguez’s zombie splatterfest Planet Terror in a month or so. Of course, this version of Death Proof is QT’s longer unrated cut, with the “missing reel” reinstated (but that was such a good joke!) and other additional material.
Read the rest of this entry »

Return of the Living Dead: Collector’s Edition

It takes a very special film to impinge upon a classic canon of a genre and wind up as beloved as Return of the Living Dead. In 1985, just as George Romero was concluding his initial zombie trilogy with Day of the Dead, any old upstart that not only sends up the series but trods upon some of its core mythology might have been outright disdained by horror fans everywhere. But Dan O’Bannon’s lovingly gory parody is damned fun, and sick to boot, and this week it gets a brand-new special edition that improves on the previous release.
Read the rest of this entry »