A New York city homicide detective is haunted by the night when her mother was murdered by two gunmen, who themselves were killed by a mysterious being. A decade after that night, she finds out that the mysterious being is still around. As this “Beauty” and her “Beast” finally meet, they start investigating the truth behind their secret ties to each other. The similarities between this adaptation of Beauty and the Beast and any others begins and ends at the title. Originally slated as a reboot of the 1987 series that starred Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton, this series trades the romance and battle of misfits for crime investigations and military conspiracies.

The “Beast” of this series is one of the most troubling elements. Instead of a monster (or anything remotely beastly) we have a man who was transformed by a super soldier serum that makes him have super strength and super senses when made mad. As you can already tell, this show is really trying to be a combination of Captain America and The Incredible Hulk. When the Beast goes into mad mode, the only physical change is he gets just slightly uglier…just…slightly. For anyone who recalls the vampire transformations in the Buffy and Angel series….it’s less than that.

Voodoo Black Exorcist (Vudú sangriento), is a bizarre choice to distribute once more in high definition. Some of the imagery in the film is most certainly impressive; however, it doesn’t quite make up for the poor dubbing, editing, and nonsensical story. The film is about ninety minutes long, and realistically, it only demanded my attention for about ten of those minutes before I sank into boredom. Perhaps my greatest disappointment was that it wasn’t really a movie I could have fun with: it was not laughably bad. So where I would normally put some effort into poking fun, I ended up remaining abnormally critical of this old horror film.

Voodoo Priest Guedé Nibo (Aldo Sambrell), is revived accidentally on a cruise ship. As he wanders the ship in the shadows, he is haunted by images of his past: the killers of his lover, the ritual that got him mummified in the first place. Soon he becomes enthralled with the beautiful Sylvia (Eva León) who is the spitting image of his deceased lover, Kenya (Eva León in black face). Nibo continues his path of destruction and, oddly enough, persuasion, to finally reunite with his late lover.

It’s not often that a show can come along that impresses me with its talent in front of and behind the camera; then when the show premieres, it is just bad for a couple of episodes and then manages to bounce back.  There are just so many options that if you don’t come out swinging, your show is going to be passed up for something else. I still feel like we’re in the Golden Age of television despite some of the best series in the past decade having already been retired from the airwaves (Breaking Bad is sorely missed despite Better Call Saul).  There is still so much out there that sometimes good stuff gets overlooked, and it’s not till DVD rolls around that you can discover a show, and that is the case for the new series Ice.

I love a good crime series, and when Ice became available as a title to check out at Upcomingdiscs, well, I felt the need to jump on it. When you have heavy hitters like Donald Sutherland and Ray Winstone headlining the cover and then throw in the vastly underrated Jeremy Sisto, I got even more excited for the possibilities. Then throw in director  Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) directing the pilot, and seriously, what can go wrong?