The winner of our Steel Trap DVD giveaway is Jan Bruun, who smotes trolls and giants in the frozen wastelands of Norway. We had one other contest entry from a gent who failed to include his name and address in his e-mail. When I asked him for these pertinent details, he asked if I could “refresh his memory” in regard to the contest itself. Um… the moral of this story is: include your name and address in contest entries, and you’ll stand a better chance of winning fine prizes like this one. Oh, and lay off the pills when you’re sending e-mails.

Spaced: The Complete Series (BBC Worldwide) is the British comedy series that gave us Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, better known as the folks behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and its official American release on DVD is causing a mass pants-wetting by hipsters and nerd boys from coast to coast. Thankfully, the reaction is warranted – the show, about a pair of mismatched ne’er-do-wells (Pegg and Jessica Stevenson/Hynes) who pretend to be a professional couple in order to rent a spectacular apartment, but carry on like attention-deficit-riddled teens in their pursuit of pretty much nothing, is well-acted, crisply written and awfully funny in just about every frame. And its relentless referencing of modern pop culture nuggets (everything from The Sixth Sense to zombie films and Star Wars) is actually amusing and clever, rather than the headache-inducing blare that sort of thing usually produces when heard in American films (maybe it’s the accent). Being a British series, it’s only 14 episodes, which means you can absorb the entire program from start to finish in one lazy weekend, but you’ll probably want to save room for the extras, which include two commentaries per episode by the cast and crew, as well as another whole set of newer commentaries by fans like Quentin Tarantino, Matt Stone, Patton Oswalt and Diablo Cody (cue eyeball roll). There’s also a lengthy documentary about the show’s cult status that features most of the key players as well as “celebrities” like Eli Roth (huge groan) and Harry Knowles (finger and thumb shaped like gun and put to temple). It’s the middle of the summer and there’s absolutely nothing else on television, so if you’re broke as hell (and I know you are), scrape up some pennies and rent this one. Or hell, sell that guitar and buy it. It’s not like you’re gonna figure out how to play that thing.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost face off against each other in this clip from Spaced:

Last Winter (Genius) is the newest from Larry Fessenden, whose movies I should probably like more than I actually do. Their premises are usually great – Wendigo seemed solid on paper, as did Feast. But you know, the pictures always seem a little draggy and self-consciously arty, and the scares a bit too low-wattage for my tastes (but then again, I really like Bruno Mattei, so don’t listen to me). Last Winter seems to have more pep in its step than Fessenden’s previous stuff – it’s essentially a juicy riff on John Carpenter’s The Thing, with Ron Perlman leading an expedition to launch an oil drilling facility in the Arctic, and discovering that global warming has woken up something old and mean and ugly that isn’t too happy about the interlopers. Expect snow soaked in gore, plenty of paranoid breakdowns, and more facial hair than the last time you watched that Midnight Special with Grand Funk Railroad.

The trailer for Last Winter should keep ya cool in the July heat:

Vampyr (Criterion) is one of those horror movies that film professors always toss in your lap to keep your interest from flagging at the halfway point in the semester – “Okay, today we’re watching a HORROR movie!” But you know, it’s not really a horror movie at all – it’s more about dreams and psychological states, specifically that of a young man who believes (or imagines) that he has stumbled into an area plagued by a vampire. Made by Carl Dreyer in Germany circa ’32, it’s consistently touted by smarty-pants horror types as a seminal influence on the Universal horror films of the ‘30s, on the vampire genre as a whole, and as a movie you Ought To Watch If You Love Horror Movies. And you probably should, but keep in mind that it’s also incredibly slow and non-linear and deeply, deeply German. I tell you this so you don’t rent it for Movie Night with your splatter-loving friends, who will beat you about the head and shoulders for doing so. Criterion’s DVD includes commentary (which should explain much of what’s going on in the picture) as well as a documentary about the film and a massive book that combines the shooting script and essays about the movie.

If you’ve got some dough that’s burning a hole in your pocket, and you don’t feel like using it to do something nice for your significant other or pay your rent or the like, consider dropping it on Yokai Monsters: The Complete Collection (ADV), a three-disc set that contains three truly eye-popping ‘60s-era Japanese ghost stories from Daiei, the people who brought you Gamera and Majin. If you dig outrageous monsters from Japan, you’ll be up to your eyebrows in them with the three flicks contained here – Spook Warfare, 100 Monsters and Along With Ghosts. The creatures on parade here hew a lot closer to the rubber-suit beasts from Toho than the long-haired ladies of J-Horror, which should please old-school creature feature fans to no end.

You can also plunk down that long green for the Masters of Horror Season 2 set from Anchor Bay. The Showtime anthology’s sophomore go-round was even more hit-and-miss than its debut season – for me, the best episodes were John Carpenter’s outrageous “Pro-Life,” Dario Argento’s “Pelts” (if only for the sight of Meat Loaf gone completely berserk) and Stuart Gordon’s “The Black Cat,” which was probably the best Poe-related story on film in years. The rest – eh. But the real reason to pick up the set is because the discs are all packaged in a case that looks like a human skull. The thing weighs about as much as the real deal, too, and if you wanna take out the discs, you gotta pop off the skullcap. Boss, if you ask me.

Otherwise, it’s the same old horror movie baloney. Best of the bunch is probably Insanitarium (Sony), a watchable freak fest with Jesse Metcalfe of Desperate Housewives trapped in a mental hospital that’s really run by the crazy people! Nothing you haven’t seen before, but at least it’s done grindhouse-style, with plenty of blood and needles and mean-spirited behavior. Beyond that, you get Bud Bundy aping it up in The Boston Strangler: The Untold Story (Genius), Pacey from Dawson’s Creek tangling with ghosts in an unnecessary remake of Shutter (Fox), a whole dogpile of B-movie types in the mockumentary Brutal Massacre: A Comedy (Anchor Bay), the bland and should-stayed-lost ‘70s thriller The Campus Corpse (Shriek Show), and the Maneater Collection (Genius), which gives you the chance to own Blood Monkey, Maneater and The Spider’s Web in one fell swoop. Whoopee. There’s a lot more of this stuff, but frankly, I can’t get behind any of it. Your mileage may vary.

One “lucky” guy or gal will add Steel Trap (Dimension Extreme) to their DVD collection this week. It’s a 2007 slasher-thriller about a gaggle of unlikable types who are invited to a swank soiree in a high-rise building, only to discover that they’re the contestants in a death game hosted by a masked psycho! Wow, sounds original, doesn’t it? Well, hey, it’s a free DVD, so quit your bitching. Want it? Of course you do – it’s free! So send your name and address to paul.gaita@gmail.com and put Shut Your Steel Trap in the subject heading. First fucker to send me their entry claims it for their very own. End of story.

Shogun Assassin 5: Cold Road to Hell (Animeigo) is an English-dubbed version of Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven and Hell, the last of the ultra-violent Japanese action films starring the formidable Tomisaburo Wakayama as rogue samurai Ogami Itto. This is one of the loopiest of the six-film series (and if you’re familiar with the other entries, that says a lot) – Ogami not only takes on a female assassin with a jaw-dropping sword trick (let’s just say it involves a lot of gymnastics), but also a trio of supernatural killers who can levitate and burrow through the ground in pursuit of the Lone Wolf. And the finale is a pitched battle on a snowy slope which finds Ogami fighting a small army of samurai on skis. As with all of the Lone Wolf/Shogun Assassin titles, the violence is off the charts and soaked in geysers of blood, so wear a bib or some coveralls before watching.

You don’t need to speak Japanese – or French, for that matter – to understand that Shogun Assassin: Cold Road to Hell is packed with violent goodness:

And The Ruins (Dreamworks) is a spectacularly silly adaptation of the Scott Smith novel about killer vines in the Yucatan jungle. A lot of ink was spilled by critics in an attempt to crucify this pic, but my favorite take was by Sleazegrinder himself, who described it as such:

“If you raked up some leaves in your backyard and hid one of your friends underneath, and then made a movie about the leaves coming to life and chasing people, you’d probably look at the resultant footage and think, “Well, that was a dumb fucking idea.” Then you’d erase it and shoot homemade porn instead. Right? Well, (Ruins director) Carter Smith took the idea and tossed several million dollars at it. And now it’s too late to erase.”

Gets to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? The Ruins is available on something like five different DVD versions, one of which is unrated and adds six minutes to the theatrical release. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

The trailer for The Ruins looks something like this:

Oh, and Universal is re-releasing The Mummy Legacy Collection in order to drill into your head the notion that there’s a new sequel to their more recent and amped-up Mummy series with Brendan Fraser (both of the films in that particular franchise are also out on DVD this week in various Collector’s Edition and multi-disc permutations). Those expecting the Indiana Jones-style thrillers of the new Mummy movies are likely to be left scratching their heads at this five-feature collection – the original Mummy, from way back in 1932, is a moody Gothic chiller with Boris Karloff (ask your dad about him) as a revived ancient Egyptian who stalks the reincarnation of his princess lover. It’s slow (natch – it’s a mummy movie) and kinda talky in places, but if you dig the old-school monster shows (or grew up watching them on TV), you’ll dig it. The other four films – The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Curse, The Mummy’s Ghost and The Mummy’s Tomb – are riotous B-movies with Lon Chaney Jr. or cowboy star Tom Tyler wandering around Southern California and carrying out their implacable revenge at the behest of nefarious types like John Carradine, George Zucco or Turhan Bey. Dopey good fun, the lot of them.

Want a crash course in Mummy sequels? Here ya go, Imhotep:

This week’s direct-to-DVD schlockery includes the following: Hybrid (Genius Products), which continues their “popular” Maneater series with this story of a blind guy who turns into a werewolf after receiving a wolf’s corneas from scientist Justine Bateman! I wish I was making that shit up, but I’m not. Bone Eater (Lions Gate) is an equally out-to-lunch monster pic about a skeleton monster (on horseback) that gobbles up the crew of a construction site that has disturbed his grave. Jim Wynorski is behind the camera for this one (which means it’s worth a look-see for a laugh or two) and the cast of unemployed actors is pretty impressive – Bruce Boxleitner, Gil Gerard, Veronica Hamel, William Katt and Walter Koenig. Sound like a Sci-Fi Channel original? Well, that’s because it is… Death on Demand (MTI) dredges up the already-played-out scenario of a haunted house webcast that Goes Horribly Awry for this groaner about the vengeful ghost of a mountaineer who dispatches unwanted guests in his home with a variety of climbing equipment.

Speaking of played-out, Survive This (Regain Records) is a 2005 horror-comedy thing about reality show contestants pitted against the ghosts of pirates – or real pirates. I don’t know and don’t care, but the movie’s unrated and features porn star Gina Lynn in the cast, so the forecast for nudity is good. Same goes for Toxic (Genius), an overheated mix of serial killer thrills and Tarantino-style crime plotting with a few ghosts thrown in for good measure. Ready for the cast? Tom Sizemore, Danny Trejo, Master P, C. Thomas Howell, Ron Jeremy, Cerina Vincent, Susan Ward, Bai Ling (!), Dominique Swain (!!) and Tabitha Stevens. The wrap party must’ve been a doozy.

That’s ex-Jerky Boy Kamal fantasizing about Jill Nicolini and Gina Lynn in this foot-freaky clip from Survive This:

Philosophy of a Knife (Unearthed) is a Russian pic about the notorious human experiments carried out by the Japanese Army on Chinese citizens during World War II. Word on the Internet is that it’s even gorier than Men Behind the Sun, which covered the same subject matter and left most viewers (including myself) wishing that they’d never seen it. If that sounds like your idea of a fun Saturday night, have at it. Me, I’d probably rather spend my wasted hours with Strap-On Motel, another hot-blooded exercise in lesbian love from the fine folks at Bleu Productions. This one’s another noir-influenced story about two exotic dancers who work out their particular ya-yas at the Strap-On Motel, which as far as I know, has not received the praise its due from the AAA Road Guide. It’s classy, sweaty girlporn for upscale freaks and those who prefer their on-screen cocks to be made of latex (and you know who you are).

Should you attempt a double bill of the previously mentioned features, you may be left feeling a bit off your axis. So what better way to deliver the coup de grace to your brain than the Left Behind Collection (Cloud Ten), which compiles all three end-of-the-world features in the popular evangelical movie series? For those that aren’t in the know, the Left Behind series is a trio of low-budget features based on a series of potboiler novels about the Rapture and the fate that befalls those that aren’t assumed up to heaven (one word: Anti-Christ). Kirk Cameron, Brad Johnson, and Lou Gossett, Jr. have the fate of the world in their hands, and if you think that’s funny, keep in mind that for millions of Americans – including our current President – these aren’t corny little B-movies, but an accurate depiction of a future that’s right around the corner.

And on that note, enjoy your week!

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