Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on November 14th, 2012
There are two films that are on the main disc; an experimental film by Nicholas Ray and a documentary by Susan Ray about the making of said film. They are perfect companions on this release and I feel one is crucial for the other, therefore I’m going to treat neither as simply a “Bonus.”
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on October 28th, 2012
Quick, what cartoon was generally considered to be the first primetime cartoon of its kind, running from 1960 to 1966 with over a hundred and sixty episodes? Give up? Well that show would be the Flintstones, a stone age comedy that imitated the Honeymooners with quick wit and wholesome family jokes. Today, we have a review that brings together a couple of primetime specials that aired during the late seventies. Let’s explore the first volume of Flintstones Prime Time Specials Volume 1 from the Warner Archive.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on August 2nd, 2012
I’ll say this about a program that has remained consistant in quality for twenty seasons…it makes for challenging reviews. Talking about each season of Gunsmoke is difficult in that you either write briefly to try to avoid redundancies, but might seem too hasty, or you have to labour over each episode, in which case, you’re only going to have hardcore fans paying attention.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on August 1st, 2012
Who killed Mr. Boddy? Col. Mustard in the Library with the Wrench? Mrs. White in the Study with the Revolver? Maybe even the butler did it? A talented comedy cast bring the famous board game to life in a slapstick whodunnit where the chuckles mean more than solving the actual mystery.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 16th, 2012
When I was eight, nine years old I remember watching two things on a regular basis. First, was wrestling (think back to the old NWA days) and the second was He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. He-Man is a very fond memory of my youth and I could always count on that show for a good adventure. I even had He-Man and Skeletor action figures and they would do battle for control of Castle Greyskull. However, I am still not exactly sure what Orko was. Perhaps we will find out in Mill Creek’s latest release: The Best of He-Man Season 1 and 2.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on July 13th, 2012
Taking place in the 41st century, an astronaut named Barbarella (played by Jane Fonda) has been ordered to search out a missing Earth scientist named Durand Durand. On this mission, she is forced to land on a Planet called Lythion where she must overcome various erotic obstacles in this psychedelic camp classic.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on June 18th, 2012
There are countless John Wayne Westerns in existence, but a hearty handful stand out above the rest. Hondo is a part of said handful. The story is a somewhat familiar one; that of a lone gunman seeking redemption by helping out a young woman fight off Indians…it just howls “John Wayne Western.” That being said, there are some standout performances and the portrayal of Native Americans is tad more progressive than what was within Westerns of the previous decade.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 6th, 2012
Roman Polanski’s seminal neo-noir finally makes it to Blu-ray. Gino has already handled the previous DVD release, so I’m going to turn the reins over to him for a while, then jump back in.
“Jake Gittes is a Chandler style detective with all of the trappings. From the office to the secretary and the cop friend, Gittes is a cliché. He appears to specialize in tracking down extramarital affairs. When he’s hired to keep an eye on a rich millionaire, the subject turns up dead, and maybe it wasn’t his wife at all who hired him. Gittes now must investigate to save his own hide. His investigation leads him to a corrupt water department taking advantage of a manufactured drought. His client has a dark secret that only complicates Gittes’ efforts.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on February 8th, 2012
First was the play, then came the film, and now we’re 140 episodes deep in Meet The Browns sitcom. Like a lot of Tyler Perry projects, the family dynamic can be a bit bamboozling at times. So…it’s an elderly man living with his daughter and his niece and her husband and their adopted kids, with regular appearances by his neighbour who is also Aunt to…oh heck, let’s just get on with the review…
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 13th, 2011
“‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring…not even a mouse…”
The poem is a popular one. It was originally titled A Visit From St. Nick and has been a holiday staple since the 1820′s. No one knows for sure who wrote it, and there are several schools of thought on its authorship. What is not in doubt is that the lines are about as familiar as Christmas itself. Over the years it has been lampooned and used as an inspiration for many films, plays and songs. In 1974 Rankin & Bass tackled the title, and it has since become a holiday staple.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on December 7th, 2011
At one point or another, most all family friendly television programs air some sort of holiday special. Just one special you say? Well smurf that! How about two?! Taken from their TV show, that ran for nine seasons, we are offered two Christmas (not Holiday) specials starring those tiny blue…whatever they are. The animation quality signifies that one special comes from the earliest seasons, while the other come from somewhere later in the nine year run.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 7th, 2011
A few years back, Paramount released all eight of the studio’s Friday the 13th films in a so-called “Ultimate Edition.” With cut versions of the films and no 3D, it wasn’t really that ultimate. So here we are again, with another Ultimate Edition (also Limited!) and this time, the package is much more worthy of the name, bringing together all the deluxe versions of the series.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 4th, 2011
Having accidentally caused the death of her mother, Helen (Jenny Neumann) develops an unhealthy fixation with broken glass. Now an adult and an aspiring actress, she auditions for a role in an absurdist play. She gets the part, and also the attention of her handsome co-star. But then someone starts killing off the cast and crew of the play. Is it Helen?
Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 1st, 2011
Three children are born at the moment of a total solar eclipse. On the even of their tenth birthday party, we discover that these kids, for astrological reasons, are complete sociopaths, and are having a merry time offing anyone in the community who even vaguely annoys them. The only ones who even gradually suspect that something is going on are high school senior Joyce (Lori Lethen) and her little brother Timmy (K. C. Martel). They soon become the target of the psycho kids’ wrath.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 30th, 2011
Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer) is a social worker with a new case, one that she specifically sought. She has been assigned to the Wadsworth family. It consists of a terrifying matriarch (Ruth Roman), sexpot daughters Germaine (Marianna Hill) and Alba (Suzanne Zenor), and Baby (David Mooney, credited as David Manzy), a grown man with, apparently, the mental development of an infant. But Ann suspects Baby is capable of more, and that there is something fundamentally wrong going on at the Wadsworth residence. The Wadsworths, meanwhile, do not take kindly to Ann’s prying, and will stop at nothing to preserve their way of life.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 6th, 2011
Looking for a something a bit different for you gangster flick fix? Then look no further than this box set of gritty, thematically linked Italian crime pictures from director Fernando Di Leo. Things don’t get much more delightfully 70s than this.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 11th, 2011
Roger Corman has never let an exploitable opportunity slip by. A case in point is what we have here. In the wake of the first two Godfather films came this rise-and-fall tale. And because the Godfather movies were handsome, expensive and classy, then this Corman-produced effort is also a nice-looking piece of cinema, even if the budget-conscious element shows through with the use of leftover footage from The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 10th, 2011
A stern, hectoring narrator laments the state of the Young People of Today’s Modern World, and ascribes their terminal amorality to their having come of age during the World War Two. Having set the stage, he then withdraws until the end, that we might draw the proper moral conclusions from a trio of tales (inspired, loosely, by actual cases) that show the terrible depths to which the Young People of Today’s Modern World have plunged.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 5th, 2011
Three years after her unsettling turn in Dario Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), Mimsy Farmer headlined this giallo-related effort by director/co-writer Francesco Barilli. She plays a successful chemist on the verge of a psychotic break. She has been haunted since her childhood by the death of her father, and she has recurring memories (or are they fantasies?) of her mother in the arms of a sinister man. Her sense of reality crumbles as objects and people from her past appear and vanish.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 25th, 2011
While the warden is away, the inmates of the isolation block break out out of their cells and seize a group of guards and administrators as hostages. Caught, by pure chance, in the wrong place at the wrong time, is Jim Brown, whose sentence is short enough that he wouldn’t choose to become involved. However, before he knows it, he is, along with Gene Hackman, leading the riot. The ruckus is, in fact, a cover for an escape attempt: the inmates are digging a tunnel while, as a stalling tactic, Hackman presents a list of grievances to the authorities.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 7th, 2011
“The man is Richard Kimble, and, not surprisingly, the man is tired. Tired of looking over his shoulder, the ready lie of the buses and freight trains. Richard Kimble is tired of running…”
The elusive “one-armed man” is one of the best-known television icons of all time. The plight of Dr. Richard Kimball has been the subject of numerous imitations and even a feature film staring Harrison Ford as Kimball and Tommy Lee Jones as his pursuer. Tim Daly left the ranks of comedy to fill the shoes of Kimball in a very short-lived revival series.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on January 19th, 2011
“’Have gun, will travel’ reads the card of a man. A knight without armor in a savage land…”
Those words ended every episode of Have Gun Will Travel, sung by Johnny Western in a time that such words could be sung without irony. Outside of Richard Boone’s black-clad, craggy Rhett Butler gone-to-seed gunfighter, that song was all I could really recall about this venerable Western from television’s golden age.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 27th, 2010
Three-time widower Ben Cartwright (Greene) runs his famous Ponderosa Ranch with the aid of his three grown sons from three different mothers. There’s Little Joe (Landon), Adam (Roberts) and Hoss (Blocker). Set some time in the mid 1800’s, this long-running series followed the family’s many exploits. In the late 1950’s westerns accounted for six of the top ten programs on TV. Only Gunsmoke had a longer run than Bonanza. From 1959 to 1973, Ben Cartwright and his boys rode across the small screen.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 21st, 2010
Monte Walsh and Chet Rollins (Lee Marvin and Jack Palance) are two cowboys in an era where their kind is becoming extinct. After a hard winter in the mountains, they discover that most of the ranches they knew have vanished, the land being bought up by Eastern corporations. They find work on the ranch once owned by Jim Davis, though he now answers to accountants back East. And though life, at first, seems all right, bit by bit they witness the end of their era, as a way of life dies, and the men who lived it are pushed to suicide, desperation, robbery and worse.
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Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 20th, 2010
The setting for Gunsmoke was the by-now-famous Dodge City, circa 1870’s. Phrases like “get out of Dodge” would enter the popular lexicon as a result of this resilient series. Marshall Dillon (Arness) was charged with keeping the peace in Dodge City. The only other character to see the entire 20-year run was kindly Doc Adams (Stone). Star Trek’s own Doc, Leonard McCoy, took many of his traits from Doc Adams. He was the humanitarian of the city, always looking to help someone. Like McCoy
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