DVD Release List: Viva Italy!
Johnny Butane
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Behold the horror offerings coming to DVD this February 27th, 2007…
Autopsy (1975)
Directed by Armando Crispino
One of a numerous amounts of former Anchor Bay releases that Blue Underground is getting back into circulation, Autopsy follows a young pathology student who teams up with a priest to get to the bottom of a series of suicides that are blamed on sun spots (!?), which turn out to actually be murders. Of course the closer they come to the truth, the closer the killer comes to them, but can they solve the mystery before their time is up? Buy it here!
The Bride & the Beast/The White Gorilla (1958/1945)
Directed by Adriean Weiss/Harry L. Fisher
All marriages can be tricky things, but for Dan they’re just plain weird. It seems his new bride, Laura, is more interested in his pet gorilla than she is in him. Turns out she was Queen of the Gorillas in a previous life, something that no amount of counseling will help out. And speaking of gorillas, The White Gorilla is nothing but footage of gorillas interspliced with actor Frank Merrill, the fifth Tarzan, in a tale about a white gorilla who is shunned by his tribe of black gorillas, only for him to fight back and leave the fate of Africa in his big, creepy hands. Buy it here!
Chainsaw Sally (2004)
Directed by Jimmyo Burril
How’s this for taking forever to finally get to DVD? I remember first hearing about this movie way back when I was still running the Creature Corner; why it’s taken this long to finally come to DVD I have no idea. The film is about the titular Sally who, after seeing her parents killed as a young girl (the father is played by Gunnar Hansen) grows up to be a serial killer, a job she learns a lot about by watching horror films. Hey, that’s not fair! Check out my very old review of Chainsaw Sally for more! Buy it here!
City of the Living Dead (1983)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Nice to see this one back on the mass market again. If you’ve missed City of the Dead through your development as a horror fan, now’s a perfect time to remedy that with Blue Underground’s new release of the classic zombie film. Featuring suicidal priests, vomiting guts, head drillings and the oh-so-easy on the eyes Catriona MacColl, City of the Dead is Fulci at his deliriously gory best! No real features outside of some trailers and a Fulci bio are included, but can you really complain when the film is this good? Buy it here!
Count Dracula: Special Edition (1973)
Directed by Jess Franco
Who better to tell the ageless tale of the one and only Count than the master of Spanish sleaze cinema, Jess Franco? Christopher Lee hams it up in this outlandish interpretation of Bram Stoker’s classic novel. Dark Sky is behind this release, so of course it’s packed with features like a featurette on Franco, Christopher Lee reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula (hopefully out loud), essays and a lot more! Buy it here!
Deep Red (1976)
Directed by Dario Argento
Ah, another great one back in circulation; considered to be one of Argento’s giallo masterpieces, Deep Red is the story of a musician who witnesses the murder of a psychic, killed because he picked up the killer’s thoughts while in the audience at one of his shows. The musician teams up with a reporter to try to find and bring to justice the killer, but as soon as he gets close to the truth, there are more murders. Yeah, I could see how that’d be frustrating. Buy it here!
Devil’s Highway (2005)
Directed by Fabien Pruvot
A bus travels through the lonely desert, its destination unknown to passengers. An evil spirit rides among the wary passengers of this particular bus, however, with a plan to steal every soul aboard. One by one the passengers turn on each other as despair overtakes them all. Only a few will remain to tell what really happened aboard that fateful bus ride, and it’d be a good idea to question their sanity, too. Check out Melissa’s review for more. Buy it here!
Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)
Directed by Lucio Fulci
One of Fulci’s most effective attempts at giallo, as opposed to straight-up, gore-soaked horror, the oddly titled Don’t Torture a Duckling is back on shelves this week thanks to Blue Underground. The story follows a reporter and a young woman out to solve a series of child killings that are going down in a small Italian village. Said village protects its secrets by any means necessary, however, and they sure as hell don’t take well to outsiders. Buy it here!
Dreamland (2007)
Directed by James Lay
Featuring one of the clunkiest taglines every put to box (“In the vein of The Twilight Zone and The X-Files!”), Dreamland actually sounds somewhat interesting. Driving through the Nevada mountains, a young couple stop off at a greasy spoon café and learn they’re only a few miles from Area 51. Upon getting back into the car the only thing on the radio is a speech from Hitler, and soon their car breaks down and they’re joined by someone from another place in time. A cool concept, I hope it was pulled off by the filmmakers! Buy it here!
God Memoirs (2007)
Directed by ?
Sorry, could not for the life of me find who directed this one; ah, the joy of indie distributors. Despite the odd title, this is not actually the memoirs of God, which is a shame because I really wanted to hear his explanation for the platypus. Anyway, the film is about a man whose mind is deteriorating, forcing him into a world of violence. But is it violence for him or violence for God? Sounds like it could have Christian under/overtones so be warned if you’re going to blind buy! Buy it here!
Inferno (1980)
Directed by Dario Argento
This sort of sequel to Suspiria, and the second of Argento’s Three Mothers series, finds an American student in Rome, his sister back in New York investigating a series of killings on both continents where the address of the deaths was a suspected home to witch covens. Another former Anchor Bay DVD re-issued by Blue Underground without any notable new features, but at least it’s not part of a two-pack, which is the only way you can really find the originally released Inferno these days. Get it! Buy it here!
The Legend of Bloody Jack (2007)
Directed by Todd Portugal
Wow. You know it’s sad when the official site for the company putting the movie out on DVD, as well as the film’s IMDB page, doesn’t even say what the movie is about. So we’ll make shit up! Since it’s an Asylum release we can only assume it’s ripping off some other film, right? But which one could it be, as there’s nothing out now with Legend in the title… perhaps we can just assume it’s a rip-off of Hatchet since the environment the killer is in looks like swamps. Sort of. If you look really close at the cover you can see that it says it’s based on true events, so that just throws my theory all to hell… ah, well, you’re not going to get it anyway, right? Buy it here!
One Missed Call Collection
Directed by Various
Media Blasters looked at its DVD library and said, “Hey! Look at that! We have both One Missed Call movies; let’s put ‘em out together!” and thus was born the One Missed Call Pack! Who else gives you all this “inside” information on how the DVDs come to fruition? The first, directed by Takashi Miike, is a pretty standard J-horror film about ghosts getting revenge through cell phones. The second is its sequel. Man we’re just full of info here, aren’t we? Seriously though, hit our reviews section for a look at both films. Buy it here!
Prayer Beads (2004)
Directed by Various
A collection of 9 short films that are all tied to a string of prayer beads; one bead for each 30-minute film presented by FX master Masahiro Okano. Featured across two discs, the first DVD comes with five shorts, including the titular “Prayer Beads”, and the second disc contains the other 4. Only features to speak of are trailers and a still gallery (which, as you know, is not a special feature), but for fans of J-horror who are sick of the same old thing, Prayer Beads sounds like a good bet. Buy it here!
The Return (2006)
Directed by Asif Kapadia
Talk about forgettable. Even though I never saw this movie when it was in theaters, I still forgot it even existed until the I saw the DVD crop up on today’s list. Oh yeah, that movie that shows what great career choices Sarah Michelle Gellar is making post-“Buffy”. Right. The story is of a successful loner girl who starts to have terrifying visions of the murder of someone she’s never met and becomes obsessed with finding out who or what is behind it. Yawn. Buy it here!
Shock (1977)
Directed by Mario Bava
A woman returns to the home where her former husband died, and shortly thereafter her son begins to act very strangely. She comes to believe that her son is possessed and out to murder her, but how can she stop him short of killing him herself? Shock was released here in the States as Beyond the Door II but actually has nothing to do with that film at all; it was more of hoping to bank on the success of Beyond the Door, so you see it’s not such an old practice after all! This was Bava’s final film, co-directed by son Lamberto who went on to a pretty good career of his own. Buy it here!
Synesthesia (2006)
Directed by Toru Matsuura
Apparently a very strange fantasy/yakuza/techno-crime thriller, Synesthesia is about a killer and a hunter who cross paths many times, usually online. Unfortunately that is about the only bit of coherent information I could find out about it because apparently the film is so out there, so strange and confused as to what it wants to be, that no one has either been able to fully understand it or, if they have, express that understanding very well. I guess you’ll just have to get the disc tomorrow and find out for yourself! Buy it here!
Vegas Vampires (2007)
Directed by Fred Williamson
Fred Williamson (From Dusk Till Dawn) tries his hand at directing for this supposed horror film and brings a few friends back with him, like Richard Roundtree (Shaft) and Danny Baldwin. It seems he’s almost trying to make a blacksploitation film like they did back in his heyday, but it just doesn’t work on many levels, or so says Foy in his review of Vegas Vampires. Still, though, sexy nuns out to kick ass really do something for me… Buy it here!
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