One lucky so-and-so will win the classic kung fu feature The Magic Blade from Image. If you didn’t miss an episode of Black Belt Theater as a kid, you’re gonna need this 1976 Shaw Brothers movie, which pits superstars Ti Lung and Lo Lieh (Five Fingers of Death) against an arm of killers as they try to retrieve the fabulous Peacock Dart. Here’s a taste of that action:

Want it? Gotta have it? Here’s how it’s done: send your name and address to paul.gaita@gmail.com and put Magic Blade DVD Contest in the subject line. Winner is picked next Tuesday, same as always. Oh, and if you’ve won a DVD from me in the last few weeks, here’s an update on your swag: the Archies DVDs went out this week, so you should have ‘em in the next few days. The Barn of the Naked Dead DVD discs – I’m waiting on Johnny Legend to free up some time so I can get him to sign them for you. Shouldn’t be long.

It’s a ‘70s Eurosleaze explosion this week, with no less than eight amazing titles making their Stateside DVD debut or returning to stores in reissue form. Top of the list for me is The Sister of Ursula (Severin Films), a 1978 Italian giallo (sorta) about two sisters – one named Ursula, natch – whose vacation at an oceanside resort is interrupted by a murderer’s kill spree. Oh, and did I mention that the murder weapon is a giant dildo? You should know that before checking it out. The DVD includes an interview with director Ennio Milioni, as well as the super-sleazy trailer, which you can eyeball here:

Milioni later served as assistant director on the Italian crime thriller Mad Dog Killer, which also streets this week; it’s back in the DVD fold through Blue Underground after a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it release from Anchor Bay a few years back. Super freak Helmut Berger is top-billed as a kill-crazy hood who can’t help but leave a few bodies in his wake after every heist; Richard Harrison is the stalwart cop on his trailer, and foxy Melissa Mell (Danger: Diabolk) is Berger’s captive. Lots of over-the-top violence (including one ugly death in a lime pit) make this a must-see for Eurocrime fans.

Here’s the trailer under its alternate title, Beast with a Gun:

Also back in the DVD fold from Blue Underground is Violent City, a 1970 Italian actioner with Charles Bronson as a Mafia hit man on the road to the straight life – until his girlfriend (Bronson’s real-life wife Jill Ireland) is stolen away by mob chief Telly Savalas. I really don’t think I need to tell you what happens next, but in case you’re not clear, here’s the trailer (and dig that score by Ennio Morricone):

Meanwhile, BCI Eclipse has three Spanish horror titles that are making their DVD debut through the Deimos imprint. Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (with Paul Naschy as a drifter stuck in a house full of homicidal dames) should be familiar to late-night TV habitués, who may have caught it under its American title, House of Psychotic Women, while The Dracula Saga (from regular Naschy collaborator Leon Klimovsky) has Count Dracula urging his granddaughter to carry on the family name – and traditions. Then Naschy’s back as director and star of Human Beasts, a 1980 Spanish-Japanese co-production that has the former Hombre Lobo as a mercenary who catches a bullet after double-crossing his girlfriend, and recuperating in the home of a wealthy doctor and his daughters. Things get weirder from there. As with all of Deimos’ previous Spanish horror DVDs, each of these discs includes the original Spanish soundtrack as well as an English dub, as well as alternate footage (read: reshoots of the nude scenes with the actresses wearing clothes), original trailers, and introductions by Naschy on his movies.

As this trailer clearly indicates, Paul Naschy didn’t pay close attention to the fact that he was in a House of Psychotic Women:

Meanwhile, Johnny Legend and Legend House offers up a gruesome twosome with Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism and Death Smiles on a Murderer. The former (which wins the Title of the Week Award) is a 1967 German chiller with Christopher Lee as nobleman Count Regula (sound familiar?), who’s executed for butchering 12 virgins, only to rise from the grave and start all over again when travelers arrive at his castle decades later; the latter is a 1973 head-scratcher from Joe D’Amato about secret formulas to raise the dead – well, that’s only one part of the picture. The rest involves Klaus Kinski as a doctor with a curious bedside manner, a hunchback killer, lots of Poe references, and Ewa (Candy Aulin) as a girl who can’t stop dying and then coming back to life. Eat your Wheaties before tackling this diabolical double bill, which also includes commentary by former Flesh Eaters frontman turned exploitation expert Chris D.

Go ahead – we DARE you to try and figure out what’s going on in this trailer from Death Smiles on a Murderer:

Oh, and I mentioned a few columns ago that Them (a.k.a. Ils) the French thriller about a couple under siege by… something in a remote Eastern European cottage, was available on DVD from Dark Sky. That wasn’t exactly true – it actually drops this week. I sorta assume you figured that out already. Dark Sky also packaged together their three swell Del Tenney DVD releases into one set, which they’ve cleverly titled The Del Tenney Triple Feature, and includes the always-enjoyable Horror of Party Beach, Curse of the Living Corpse (which marked the film debut of Roy Scheider), and the thriller Violent Midnight. If you missed ‘em the first time around, now’s your chance to right that wrong.

Swing all over again with the Del-Aires in this boss trailer for Horror of Party Beach:

And lastly but definitely not leastly, Fox has a new double-disc extended cut of James Mangold’s superior Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. What’s new in the set? Well, it’s extended by 17 minutes, for one thing, but you also get full versions of many of the musical numbers from the picture and a bunch that didn’t make the theatrical cut, a dogpile of deleted scenes, and a ton of featurettes on the Man in Black. If you’re a hardcore Cash fan, you’re gonna need it.

Here’s Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon’s take on “Jackson”
from Walk the Line:

The Mist… oy vey, where to start? If you were a fan of the Stephen King novella, you’ll love about 95% of Frank Darabont’s film version, which hews closer than almost any other movie adaptation I’ve ever seen, right down to whole pages of dialogue reproduced verbatim from the source material. Casting was pretty solid, tho Thomas Jane seemed more stoic than a guy in his position should be (you’d think that monsters attacking the supermarket you’re trapped in might cause you to break a sweat) – nevertheless, the rest of the players were great, especially Toby Jones and Marcia Gay Harden, who took one of King’s most clichéd religious fanatics and made her almost sympathetic. Creature FX by KNB were solid, tho the tentacles that drag away stockboy Norm looked far too fakey. And Darabont’s minor changes to the plot (no forbidden nookie between Jane and Laurie Holden’s Amanda Dumfries, but an added romance between stockgirl Alexa Davalos and a local soldier boy) were fine… save for that finale. Jesus Christ, where did that come from? I see the point of it, but the picture itself grooves along as a swell little monster picture until Darabont drops a ten-ton block of doom on our laps for reasons I still haven’t figured out. I’m with Sleazegrinder – I like happy endings. And you know, this one didn’t even have to end happy. The original novella has a nice, ambiguous one that woulda done just fine. But no. Anyway, the DVD includes commentary by Darabont (who has his reasons for that bummer conclusion), lots of making-of featurettes, and a version of the picture that’s entirely in black-and-white (and, I’ve gotta say, is worth watching as an enjoyable throwback to Saturday afternoon creature features).  It doesn’t improve the ending, tho.

The trailer for The Mist? Here you go:

The Living and the Dead (TLA) is an unsettling little creepshow from England about a wealthy family on the brink of financial ruin, which requires the father (Roger Lloyd Pack) to leave his sick wife behind at home with his schizophrenic son, who decides that he knows best how to care for Mum after daddy departs. This one’s worth seeing for those tired of the standard scare fare. The DVD includes deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.

Speaking of standard scare fare, there’s a remake of April Fool’s Day (Sony) for some reason. I don’t remember the original being anything to write home about, but I’ve been in the dark about these remakes for the last few years. Well, at least it’s nice to look at – especially star Taylor Cole, whom you can check out in this trailer:

There’s also Fingerprints (Image) which is based in part about an urban legend surrounding haunted train tracks in San Antonio, Texas (the deal is that if you put powder on your car while parked at said tracks, fingerprints from the ghosts of children killed there will appear on your car) and concerns a girl (Leah Pipes) who returns from rehab to discover a similar situation in her home town. Kristin Cavalleri from Laguna Beach is in it, which I think is not a positive sign, but I could be wrong. Here’s the trailer all the same:

And ‘Shrooms (Magnolia) is an Irish-made chiller about five college students who decided to toss back a handful of the title psychedelics while on a camping trip near an abandoned Catholic reformatory (which, it should be noted, is reported to be crawling with ghosts). Naturally, their bad trip is compounded by the appearance of said spooks (or is it?) and what appears to be homicidal local yokels.

James Ellroy’s Feast of Death (Dark Sky) is a suitably grim documentary about the acclaimed crime novelist’s past and present obsessions, which included but are not limited to the Black Dahlia killing and the unsolved murder of his own mother, which sent him spiraling into a teenage career as a break-in artist before discovering an outlet for his fear and anger through writing. It’s a fairly naked look at the writer, who is all too happy to outline the ugly aspects of his life, and how they inform his life and work. Oh, and they make him howl like a dog on occasion, too.

Bonnie and Clyde (Warner Bros.) is far too classy a picture for the likes of a column like this one, but it definitely requires a nod from us as one of the films that helped to break down the taboo against screen violence in the late ‘60s (along with Easy Rider and Night of the Living Dead). Terrific cast too, including Warren Beatty (who got the film made by the sweat of his brow), Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard, Denver Pyle, and Faye Dunaway at her absolute drop-dead loveliest, and it’s funny as hell to boot. The two-disc set includes the digitally remastered version of the film, deleted scenes, and making-of featurettes.

Here’s the trailer:

Also on deck: Mr. Wong – Detective (VCI), a double-disc collection of all six ‘30s-era mysteries featuring Boris Karloff as the Oxford-educated sleuth James Lee Wong. Yeah, they used to cast white guys as Asians back then, but at least Karloff’s interpretation keeps it classy and strays far afield from the pidgin performances by Warner Oland and Sidney Toler in the Charlie Chan series. Now, Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto – he was boss.

Years and years ago, I picked up a copy of Kicks, a magazine devoted to all things slop culture by Billy Miller and Miriam Linna of Norton Records and A-Bones fame. Among its multitude of treasures was an impassioned tribute to Shemp Howard by Greg Prevost of the Chesterfield Kings. Though only a few paragraphs long (at best), Greg’s testimony sold me on the idea that it was Shemp Howard and not brother Curly who was the best and most brilliant of The Three Stooges. Most folks think of Shemp as the guy who replaced Curly in the boys’ shorts for Columbia, but in fact, Shemp was with the Stooges from the get-go, having been the number three stooge after brother Moe and Larry Fine when they were a vaudeville act with Ted Healy in the ‘20s; he later abandoned a successful solo career to join the Stooges after Curly’s health began failing in the late ‘40s. For his small but loyal legion of followers, Shemp represents Stooge behavior at its most berserk – where Curly was childish and petulant, Shemp operated at a barely civilized level until something (either getting slapped by Moe or the fear of getting slapped, but also girls, food, booze, monsters, gorillas, terrible singing and hard work) launched him into a frenzy of flying hair and insane vocal tics (“Eep!” “Hee Bee Bee!” or an explosion of dog barks). But while Curly seemed merely retarded during his apoplectic fits, Shemp actually seemed kinda dangerous – as Greg Prevost points out in his article, Shemp smacks a chorus girl in the ass with a sword in one short, and threatens to carve up Moe with a straight razor in another. Basically, you got the feeling that Shemp could fly off the handle at any moment and bring “Malice in the Palace” or “Sing a Song of Six Pants” or any of his 73 shorts with the Stooges to an ugly, bloody conclusion, which made his participation thrilling (stupid, but thrilling) in a way that Curly could never achieve. I guess you could call Shemp punk before such a thing existed.

Anyway, the whole point of this history lesson is to alert you to a two-disc Shemp-rospective called Shemp Cocktail: A Toast to the Original Stooge (Passport Video, tho you can pick up a copy from Shemp Company, too) Chances are that if you’re a hardcore Stoogephile, you’ve already got most of the material compiled in this set, which includes two full features Shemp did with Abbott and Costello (Africa Screams and Private Buckaroo), a drama called Convention Girl from 1935, two solo shorts from the ‘30s (in Knife of the Party, Shemp leads his own group of pseudo-Stooges), three official Stooge shorts (“The Brideless Groom,” “Sing a Song of Six Pants” and “Malice in the Palace”) as well as Camel Comedy Caravan, a 1950 live TV appearance. What makes this a must-have is the fact that Shemp remains sorely unrepresented in the Columbia Stooge DVDs, and the disc includes home movies from and interviews with his daughter and granddaughters. The whole package runs about five hours, which should be just enough to convince you that Shemp was Thee Greatest Stooge. Seriously.

Don’t believe me? Check out full tilt Shemp in this clip from “The Brideless Groom”:

I’ve never heard of Well Go Usa before, but apparently, they’re an Asian DVD label that’s making inroads to Stateside DVD buyers. As is often the case with companies like these, they’re releasing all sorts of budget titles to generate attention, and they caught mine with Johnny Cash: The Line – Walking With a Legend, a 55-minute documentary about the life and times of the Man in Black with plenty of musical numbers. I wouldn’t expect anything on par with Walk the Line, but the disc promises 22 songs (including “A Boy Named Sue,” “Give My Love to Rose,” and a fairly deranged take/spoof of “Heartbreak Hotel”), and for me, that’s a pretty good reason to pick up the disc.

Here’s Johnny knocking on Elvis and “Heartbreak Hotel”:

Meanwhile, Music Video Distributors has two excellent concert flicks for your perusal this week – first up is Return of the Living Dead Boys – Halloween Night 1986, which captures the Dead Boys’ original lineup in a rare reunion at the Ritz in NYC. Joey Ramone introduces the set, which rips through 17 songs (including two takes on “Sonic Reducer” and a cover of “Search and Destroy”); the DVD includes the video for “Sonic Reducer” and a 1980 interview with Stiv. Get an eyeful:

And for garage creeps, there’s The Inmates: Back in History 1980, which partners two live performances by the UK retro/pub rockers. Their hit cover of “Dirty Water” is included, natch, as well as a fistful of testosterone-and-denim rockers – like this one:

I did not see I Am Legend (Warner Bros.) when it was released to theaters in December 2007, but Sleazegrinder did, and you can read his expert take on it here. Anyway, if you slept on it like I did, you can catch it on DVD in two formats – a single disc with lotsa featurettes, and a double-disc with both the theatrical version of the film and one with an alternate ending. My understanding is that many of the 25 billion people that saw I Am Legend in the theaters didn’t care for the ending, so maybe they’ll be happy with the new wrap-up.

Here’s the I Am Legend “sizzle reel,” whatever that means (I think it’s a compilation of clips)

I also passed on seven of the eight films featured in the 2007 After Dark Horrorfest, but again, Sleazegrinder saw ‘em all, and recounted his opinions on them in a My Kick Ass Life podcast that never saw the light of day due to technical problems (it was a good one, tho). As I recall from that conversation, Sleaze didn’t really dig most of the Horrorfest titles – and neither did the majority of you, since the fest took in something like $15 in spare change at the box office. My guess is that people really don’t need to see another movie about psychotic hillbillies (Lake Dead), Satanic cults (Borderland), post-apocalyptic cannibals (Tooth and Nail), or desert monsters (Unearthed) since there about 600 pictures like that in existence already. But if you do need to see these spookshows (and the other 2007 Horrorfest titles, The Death of Ian Stone, Mulberry Street, Nightmare Man, and Crazy Eights), you can get ‘em all from Lionsgate.

I did mention that I saw one of the films in the fest, and that was Nightmare Man, a supernatural slasher pic from Rolfe (The Hazing) Kanefsky and starring Official Week in Sleaze Lust Object Tiffany Shepis. I caught the movie back in ‘06 (I think) at a special screening, and while the movie’s not Rolfe’s best, but Tiffany gets to tote a crossbow in her underwear, and wraps up the whole picture by undergoing violent demonic possession while writhing topless in a patch of dirt. In short, it’s your kind of picture. Here’s the best part of the film:

You’re welcome.

Speaking of movies I saw years before their release, I covered The Lost (Anchor Bay), Chris Sivertson’s adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s novel about a small town psycho, for Fangoria (never did write that article, tho) in ’05 or ‘06, and as I recall, the location was a swinger’s retreat in the wilds of Malibu (complete with leopard-pattern furniture and curious swing devices), and I enjoyed a very long and surreal conversation with the film’s Michael Bowen (who played Buck, owner of the Pussy Wagon, in Kill Bill). The movie? It’s intense and painful like most of Ketchum’s work, and Marc Senter, who plays the psycho at the film’s center, gives a balls-out performance (how balls out? When I arrived on the set, Senter completed a scene in which he destroyed a cabin by taking a real piss on the wreckage).

Meanwhile, The Sickhouse (Lionsgate) stars Gina Phillips (Jeepers Creepers) as an archaeologist uncovering the truth about a haunted orphanage in London (and is it really haunted? Oh, you bet. And do a handful of dumb twentysomethings go wandering in there with her to get killed off by spooks? Right again), and Trigger Man (Kino) follows three office workers on a camping trip who find themselves targeted by an unseen sniper. Advance word says that this one is pretty suspenseful; the director (Ti West, who did The Roost and is handling Cabin Fever 2) taps his producer, Larry Fessenden (Wendigo, Habit) for a cameo.

Oh, and Bill Zebub has remade his Worst Horror Film Ever Made – according to his web site, which is also where you can buy the thing, the remake features more nudity and violence, and I believe Jesus is in there too, along with crazy rednecks, werewolves, mummies, killer ventriloquist dolls, and lesbian vampires. Toss in Zebub’s penchant for making people very uncomfortable with ethnic/racial/sexual jokes, and you’ve got… well, I don’t know, but it looks a little like this:

And although not a horror film per se, The Long Way Home: A Bigfoot Story (UFO TV) is a low-budget indie from North Carolina about a downtrodden reporter on the trail of Bigfoot sightings in hopes of reviving his career; the documentary-style comedy-drama took top honors at the New York Independent Film Festival last year. Here’s a look-see:

First and foremost, the fine folks at Something Weird Video have just transferred over 250 films from their massive library of exploitation and sexploitation to DVD-R, and among the current batch are dozens of softcore nudies from the ‘60s, nudist camp pics from the ‘50s, and a host of incredible features warning patrons about the dangers of everything from drugs (The Cocaine Fiends) and unwanted pregnancy (Unmarried Mothers) to communism (Nightmare in Red China)! Hot stuff, and each DVD-R is only $10 – you haven’t been able to have fun on a Saturday night on that kinda dough since the Johnson administration. Here’s a little taste of old-school sin, Something Weird style:

Skateboard Kink Freak (Bleu Productions, via MVD), which wins the Best Title of the Week trophy (it’s in the mail) is intense lesbian bondage courtesy director Maria Beatty, who’s not faking the funk when it comes to serious girl-girl BDSM. Michelle Ashton is top-billed as a domme artist who picks up Amber Rayne and puts her through her paces with a variety of ropes, clamps, whips, and strap-ons (there’s a skateboard involved too, which validates the title); yeah, you see this stuff in plenty of disco porn titles, but the action here is real and honest and very heavy, though without the scary-assault side that a lot of guy-centric BDSM offers. The scary is handled by Belgian doomsters Caldera, who provide the soundtrack.

Also from MVD: Richard Kern – Extra Action (and Extra Hardcore), a 60-minute collection of the Evil Cameraman’s latest obsession – getting natural-looking, non-model-type ladies to disrobe in his apartment and “do something interesting.” The Extra Action is set to an original score by Thurston Moore, and the DVD reportedly includes unreleased Kern shorts. Very interesting. MVD also has three Japanese features with heavy kink overtones: Operation Pussycat, a 2004 homage to Russ Meyer about three Bad Girls whose plan to rip off a wealthy gent goes spectacularly awry; Captive Files 1 (middle aged postal worker kidnaps girl in the hopes of making her his slave) and Paradise (shipwrecked man and woman go native on a deserted island). And lastly, Tokyo Shock has a Sukeban Deka Double Feature, which offers the first two feature films based on the popular Japanese manga about delinquent school girls (with razor sharp yo-yos) who are recruited by the police to fight criminals. Here’s the action from the first Sukeban Deka feature in 1987:

One last thing. It’s totally unrelated to DVD, but I hope you won’t mind. Easter is this weekend, and because I’m irreparably damaged by years of watching crap like the movies I cover here each week, the holiday always makes me think of a story I read as a kid in a horror comic (House of Mystery, maybe, though I can’t remember) about two bratty children who get lost in a carnival funhouse during Easter, and encounter a man-sized Easter Bunny, who decides to avenge all the chocolate bunnies that lose their heads every April by biting off the kids’ empty little noggins. Yikes. And then my fiancée sends me this short, which was done by some folks I went to school with:

Happy Easter, everyone! See you at the therapist’s office.

The two happiest people in the world at this very moment are Ohio’s TJ Beckler and Wayne Edmonson of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Why? Because they’re the proud winners of our Archie’s Funhouse: The Complete Series DVD giveaway. And for the record, their answers to our inquiry about whether they favored Betty or Veronica broke down as one undecided vote (TJ) and one for Betty by Wayne. His response is worth reprinting in its entirety:

“Betty, because she wouldn't be embarrassed to ride in my jalopy and she's patient enough to sit through my band practice.  Veronica would just use me as leverage against her dad and Reggie. Plus, she's probably too snotty for anything saucy hijinks.  Betty, on the other hand, would be eager to please.”

If that’s not a winning entry, I just don’t know what one is.

No contest this week, but keep reading this space for your chance to win sleazy swag!

We owe a lot to French filmmaker Georges Melies – a former stage magician, the movie pioneer created some of the earliest special effects spectacles, including 1903’s A Trip to the Moon, which features the most lasting image of Melies’ films – the face of the Man in the Moon, who grimaces in pain from the rocket sticking out of his eye (yeah, the same one that you see in the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight” video). Melies’ work may seem quaint and even primitive by today’s standards (many of the effects are created in camera, such as the woman who becomes a skeleton in a puff of smoke in The Vanishing Lady), but without Melies, all the CGI craziness you enjoy today just wouldn’t exist – facts is facts. Melies destroyed much of his work in the ‘20s in a fit of depression over his failed career, but nearly all the surviving material – 173 shorts and features in all – are compiled in Georges Melies: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913); (Flicker Alley), a massive five-disc set that covers his life and career in detail. Included in the set are all of his best-known films, including A Trip to the Moon, The Haunted Castle (considered to be the first horror movie) and the berserk Conquest of the Pole, which pits an Arctic expedition against a man-eating monster. Wild stuff, and the whole package is bundled with original period music, essays about the man and the movies, and a 31-minute biopic by Georges Franju (Eyes Without a Face) with Melies’ real-life son as his father. Oh, and with the proper menu of comestibles, this box set just might send you on a Trip to the Moon as well.

Georges Melies – Godfather of Gore? Dig the head-chopping action in 1904’s The Terrible Turkish Executioner:

Speaking of special effects, there are plenty on display in The Magic Blade (Image), a 1976 swordplay fest from Hong Kong’s legendary Shaw Brothers Studios. Martial arts superstars Ti Lung and Lo Lieh (Five Fingers of Death) team up to stop an evil warlord who possesses the Peacock Dart super weapon, and isn’t about to give it up anytime soon. To protect his new toy, the warlord dispatches an army of killers, each tricked out with outrageous gadgets and skills; Lung and Lieh also face off against the cannibalistic Devil Grandma, and fight human chess pieces on a life-sized board. And if that’s not enough for ya, Lung’s sword is totally boss, and there’s a lot of blood and nudity. Black Belt Theater types should stop what they’re doing right now and replace that crappy VHS bootleg they picked up in Brooklyn pronto.

But don’t take my word for it - like the trailer for Magic Blade says, “This is another topline production that rocks filmdom”:

13: Game of Death ( Dimension Extreme) seems at first to be a Thai knockoff of Saw – its premise has a working class stiff at the end of his rope taking a chance on salvation by entering a mysterious internet competition, only to discover that the challenges require a serious lack of moral compass – but its willingness to delve into the reasons why its hero has found himself in such a shitstorm place it on a shelf or two above the cornball torture stuff. Don’t think for a second, tho, that this doesn’t deliver the gross goods.

The UK supernatural thriller Outpost (Sony) feels like it was pulled whole from an issue of Weird War Tales – a squad of hard-bitten mercenaries (led by Rome’s Ray Stevenson) discover a bizarre experiment in a forgotten Nazi bunker in Eastern Europe, as well as the undead soldiers still protecting it. The science behind the Nazi ghost/zombies gets a little wonky at times, but the suspense mounts in an agreeable fashion, and the violence is gruesome.

Spoo-kee, man – it’s the Outpost trailer:

Wrestlemaniac (Anchor Bay) sounds like a clever idea for a comedy sketch – a super Mexican wrestler, created from the bodies of former lucha libre champs, puts the sleeper hold on a group of gringo filmmakings shooting  a porn flick – but director Jesse Baget isn’t playing the premise for laughs. The result is an agreeably gross evening of blood-and-guts buoyed by its central premise (in true lucha fashion, you gotta take off the killer’s mask to stop him) and the always-welcome presence of Irwin Keyes as the Stranger Who Knows Far Too Much. And did I mention that the movie-within-a-movie is a porn flick?

In this corner - the trailer for Wrestlemaniac:

The premise behind Sands of Oblivion (Anchor Bay Entertainment) is even more novel than Wrestlemaniac – seems that famed director Cecil B. DeMille used some real Egyptian artifacts while making the original Ten Commandments in 1923, and the resulting plague of curses were buried in the California sands when the set was later bulldozed, only to be discovered by a team of amateur archaeologists – but it quickly devolves into a mess of Mummy-style CGI effects and hambone acting by Adam Baldwin.

Otherwise, you’ve got Showdown at Area 51 (First Look), which originally aired on the Sci-Fi Channel as Alien vs. Alien – that title pretty much sums up the action, which pits good alien vs. bad alien at the “real” Area 51 (it’s somewhere in the Midwest, in case), and Sisters (Image), which is actually a remake of the 1973 Brian De Palma film about homicidal Siamese twins. I don’t recall asking for another version of that movie (seemed perfectly fine as it was), but if you need it, there ya go. Hunting Creatures (Unearthed) is amateur zombie action from Germany about ravers who turn into zombies after being exposed to an experimental gas… waitaminute, isn’t that the latest Return of the Living Dead movie, too? Well, this one’s in German. And Aspiring Psychopath (Sub Rosa) is low-budget splatter with foxy Danielle Donahue who takes her fascination with killers from avocation to fulltime gig.

The trailer for Aspiring Psychopath, if you will:

“Now is when they decide to make the follow-up?” was Sleazegrinder’s accurate response to word of Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation (Fox), the direct-to-video sequel to 1984’s Bachelor Party. Actually, it’s not a sequel, but a remake of the original film – once again, it’s Nice Guy Groom To Be (Tom Hanks in the original, Josh Cooke here) whose attempt to celebrate his last day as a single man is challenged by his semi-retarded friends (among them Greg Pitts from Office Space and Harland Williams), scads of naked girls, and a duplicitous rival. Should be funny, right? Nope – aside from a few gags (one involving a German masseuse who may or may not be related to Hitler), Bachelor Party 2 is filled with endless American Pie-style gross-out gags and some disturbingly hateful riffs on women and children by Williams’ “funny” character. Yes, the first Bachelor Party wasn’t exactly Harvard Lampoon material, but I do recall it making me laugh more and not engage my gag reflex so much.

You might wanna check out a few episodes of Love American Style (Paramount) to get the bad taste of Bachelor Party 2 out of your mouth, though I can’t guarantee that the experience won’t leave you with that queasy feeling you get after eating too much candy. The late ‘60s-early ‘70s comedy-drama (which aired Friday nights in the same ABC block as The Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, and Room 222) gets its second box set with Season One, Volume 2, and like its predecessor, it’s more cornball yucks about straight-laced white bread types (and the occasional soul brother and sister) discovering Just How Funny Love Can Be. Guest stars this round include Burt Reynolds, Kurt Russell (no, seriously), Bob Denver, Jim Backus (again, not kidding), Julie Newmar, and the super-hotcha Phyllis Davis from Terminal Island. I’d love to be able to say that all of those people were in the same episode, but no such luck.

Enjoy a moment of sunshine in your dreary life courtesy the Cowsills’ theme song for Love American Style – and dig that crazy cast! Peter Marshall? Regis Philbin? Andrew Barn of the Naked Dead Prine?!? Far out.

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Hey, weirdoes!

Five lucky freaks will increase their sugar intake by 5000% by winning the three-disc Archie’s Funhouse: The Complete Series set from Genius Products, Classic Media, and Entertainment Rights. All 16 episodes of the 1970-1971 soft-psychedelic animated series are included – which means tons of hokey jokes, but also all of the Archies’ cartoon pop tunes (33 in all, including the #1 hits “Sugar, Sugar” and “Jingle, Jangle”), plus an interview with Ron Dante (Archie’s singing voice), episodes of The Archie Comedy Hour (the Saturday morning series that preceded Archie’s Funhouse), and the special Archie and His New Pals, which brings together the Riverdale gang with Sabrina the Teenage Witch. You love bubblegum pop? You remember ‘70s cartoons with any amount of fondness? You’ll want this set – it’s that simple, my jugheaded friend. For your chance to win one, send your name and address (gotta include that) to paul.gaita@gmail.com. Subject heading: Archie’s Funhouse (let’s keep it simple). If you wanna increase your chances of winning, tell me if you favor Betty or Veronica, and why. Contest ends when I say it’s done.

Hey, gang! Dig the Archies’ “Falling in Love is Fun!”

Shogun Assassin 4: Five Fistfuls of Gold (Animeigo) is the fourth entry in the ‘70s samurai film series also known under its Lone Wolf and Cub or Baby Cart monikers, and like its predecessors (Lightning Swords of Death, etc.), it’s staggeringly ultra-violent – expect plenty of those geysers of blood so popular among Japanese action pics, plus the sight of a sword-slinger cut in half like a redwood, and even a dead kid to up the gross factor. Yow. The complicated back story on this DVD has been chronicled in detail on sites all over the Intraweb (in a nutshell: Animeigo is taking the original Lone Wolf movies and adding the English dub track from the American releases for those viewers who don’t dig subtitles, though in the case of this one, which never had a Stateside showing, they’ve created a completely new dub track), but all you need to know is that this is the original, uncut Japanese version, with all the splat intact. And that’s really what’s important, no?

I slept on the first season of the sketch comedy series Human Giant, probably because it was airing on MTV, which throws its weight behind an astonishing amount of bullshit like Short Circuit and Pimp My Ride. That was my mistake, because as the two-disc Human Giant: The Complete First Season (Paramount/MTV) proves, the show is easily the funniest and weirdest sketch series since Mr. Show. It’s essentially a three-man effort, with co-creators Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer playing the majority of the parts, which range from Criss Angel-style magicians (the Illusionators) to the Shutterbugs, a cutthroat pair of talent agents for child actors, though most of the ideas simply revolve around the trio reacting to a single, very strange notion (Paul’s time machine, which is invariably used for something tragic or stupid; Rob is terrified of the Roomba, which launches into a Terminator-style vision of a future controlled by robot vacuums; Aziz’s failed pizza parlor with Paul leads to him opening the Paul Scheer is a Total Douchebag Pizzeria, and so on). The humor is fluid and freaky in that SCTV/Monty Python way, though it’s also exceptionally ballsy (“Lil 9/11,” which retells the events of that day as an action movie with 6-year-olds as George Bush and Osama bin Laden) and more than a little gross (expect lots of pixilated crotches). There are plenty of guest shots by Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn and Rob Riggle, among others (though Linda Cardellini has the best cameo as a furniture mover who places her child in harm in order to summon up the adrenaline to move pianos and the like), and even more on the commentary tracks, for which the guys are joined by Bill Hader, Bob Odenkirk, Oswalt, and others. All of the episodes are uncensored, too, so turn it down when Mom’s around so she doesn’t get crazy over all the f-bombs. Or maybe she’ll think it’s funny.

Paul Scheer and his time machine meet with a terrible, terrible fate in this clip:

Crypt of Terror: Horror from South of the Border Volume 2 (BCI Eclipse) is, as its verbose title outlines, a collection of horror pics from Mexico, but unlike Volume 1, which bundled together several lackluster ‘80s and ‘90s titles, this three-disc set is full of fright flicks from the ‘60s and ‘70s, which aficionados and shut-ins alike will tell you was the heyday for that country’s weird genre pics. The freakiest of this batch is undoubtedly Night of the Bloody Apes, an all-you-can-eat buffet of bizarre involving an ape monster created by heart transplant, its gore-soaked killing spree, and the attempt by a masked lady wrestler to thwart the creature. Trust me when I say that if you haven’t seen it already, you’ve seen nothing else like it. Also in the set is Spiritism, a Mexican take on “The Monkey’s Paw”; Masterworks of Terror, an anthology of Edgar Allan Poe stories; Curse of the Doll People (you can pretty much figure that one out, but expect lotsa midgets), and the legendary Doctor of Doom and Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy, which combined the horror and lucha elements that later flowered so gruesomely in Night of the Bloody Apes. Each pic can be viewed with the original Spanish language text or with the English dub. Muy, muy bueno, if you ask me.

It’s nothing but Kill! Kill! Kill in this trailer for Night of the Bloody Apes:

Anchor Bay has revived several of its best library titles under the Cult Fiction banner; since most, if not all of these, are now out of print, this series gives you an excellent chance to fill in the gaps in your DVD library. Among the titles in the series are The Man Who Fell to Earth, with David Bowie as an alien who falls for Candy Clark while pining for his waterless home planet; Mario Bava’s claustrophobic crime thriller Kidnapped; the original version of The Wicker Man, with Edward Woodward investigating pagan rituals led by Christopher Lee on a remote English island (and a very sexy Britt Ekland to boot); C.H.U.D., with Daniel Stern and John Heard uncovering mutants in the New York sewers; Werner Herzog’s awe-inspiring Fitzcarraldo, with a possessed Klaus Kinski as an opera fanatic who attempts to bring a whole steamboat over a South American mountain range; the enjoyably crummy youthquake thriller Class of 1984; The Quiet Earth, a contemplative end of the world feature from Australia; Road Games, also from Australia, with trucker Stacy Keach and hitchhiker Jamie Lee Curtis outrunning a psycho on wheels; and the largely unnecessary Night of the Living Dorks and Return of the Killer Tomatoes. That oughta keep you busy for a while, I’d say.

Wanna know what C.H.U.D. stands for? Well, here’s the trailer:

What’s on tap for low-budget creepshows this week? Well, more of the same, it would seem. Zombies? Check (The Forever Dead, Brain Damage; Army of the Dead – though it’s actually about living skeletons – from Maverick Entertainment Group). Giant monsters? Check (Mega Snake, First Look). Gory takes on American folklore and/or urban myths? Check (Suburban Sasquatch, Brain Damage; The Fun Park, Hanover House, about a dead clown stalking an abandoned carnival). Stalker-slasher types? Yep, that too (The Deepening, Phoenix, with Gunnar Hansen and Debbie Rochon). Over-reaching splatter with religious overtones to make it sound deep? You betcha (Satan’s Whip, Brain Damage) Oh, and torture jive? Check and double check, creepazoid (Torment; Brain Damage; Carver, Anchor Bay – the DVD box infers that the film’s highlight is someone getting their nutsack chewed on). If any of that sounds like your new Saturday night thing, well, get down to it.

Chew on this – it’s the trailer for Carver:

Amazons and Supermen (BCI Eclipse) is actually a 1973 Italian-made mix of kung fu, sword and sandal-style action, and broad comedy about three heroes (a martial arts master, a big black dude, and a Greek with a knack for building stuff who save a town from marauding Amazons. If it looks familiar to you, it played here in the States under the title Super Stooges vs. the Wonder Women.

 Yes, this really is the trailer for Super Stooges vs. the Wonder Women:

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