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Review Anthem Pictures / Microwave Massacre [1983] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Marla Simon
  • Loren Schein
  • Claire Ginsberg
  • Jackie Vernon (II)
  • Wayne Berwick
  • Al Troupe
Release date: 2006-03-14
Run time: 76 min.
Price: £6.11

Review Microwave Massacre [1983] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Anthem Pictures:


Review Walt Disney Video / The Haunted Mansion [Blu-ray] [2004] [US Import]
Actors & Directors
  • Terence Stamp
  • Eddie Murphy
  • Marsha Thomason
  • Rob Minkoff
  • Nathaniel Parker
  • Jennifer Tilly
Release date: 2006-10-17
Run time: 88 min.
Price: £12.51

Review The Haunted Mansion [Blu-ray] [2004] [US Import] / Walt Disney Video:

Lush production design and sparkling special effects make The Haunted Mansion pretty to look at. Terence Stamp, as a malevolent ghost of a butler, provides a suitable air of menace as he dematerialises to and fro. Marsha Thomason is lovely as a real estate agent hired to sell a haunted mansion, but in truth the ghostly owner of the mansion believes she is the reincarnation of his lost love. Wallace Shawn and Dina Waters make a modestly amusing comic pair as a ghostly husband and wife who bustle about. Jennifer Tilly, as a green disembodied head in a crystal ball, glitters appropriately. The movie also features endless clichés, futile attempts at humour, and Eddie Murphy. If you're looking for a movie based on a Disneyland ride, try the very clever Pirates of the Caribbean instead. -Bret Fetzer.

Actors & Directors
  • Ted Nicolaou
  • Ion Haiduc
  • Pamela Gordon
  • Michael Denish
  • Kevin Spirtas
  • Denice Duff
Release date: 2008-03-04
Creator: Richard Kosinski
Price: £15.14

Review Bloodstone: Subspecies 2 [1993] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Wizard Entertainment:


Review Tartan Video / Bride Of Re-Animator [1990]
Actors & Directors
  • David Gale
  • Fabiana Udenio
  • Claude Earl Jones
  • Jeffrey Combs
  • Brian Yuzna
  • Bruce Abbott
Release date: 2003-01-27
Run time: 97 min.
RRP: £19.99
Price: £9.20

Review Bride Of Re-Animator [1990] / Tartan Video:

Brian Yuzna's Bride of Re-Animator (1990) was one of the last hurrahs for special-effects-based horror films before CGI extended the ease with which the impossible could be put on screen. Like its predecessor, Re-Animator, Bride is very loosely based on HP Lovecraft's stories of Herbert West, a scientist with a taste for investigation that knows no boundaries, especially not those of good taste. He and his agonisingly liberal sidekick Cain have discovered an improvement on their original serum-now they can not only bring the dead back to life but also assemble them from parts first. Jeffrey Combs gives a wonderfully dour performance as West, not even cracking a smile when a creature he has concocted from fingers and an eye-ball is running around the room unseen by a pestering detective. This is the sort of film that constantly escalates its macabre elements-the surviving villain of the first film has been left as simply an animated head, but that does not stop him pursuing his revenge on West, nor finding ways of using West's new techniques along the way. It all makes for cheerfully gruesome fun. On the DVD: Bride of Re-Animator is presented in an anamorphic widescreen visual aspect ratio of 1. 85:1, and its Dolby 2. 0 does what little can be done with the muddy soundtrack, but is rather better with the jauntily creepy score. The only special features on this Tartan issue are the trailer, the director's production notes and a reel of trailers for other Tartan horror movies. [+]
-Roz Kaveney.

Review Alpha Video / The Gorilla [1939] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Patsy Kelly
  • Al Ritz
  • Allan Dwan
  • Harry Ritz
  • Anita Louise
  • Jimmy Ritz
Release date: 2002-08-27
Run time: 67 min.
Price: £1.89

Review The Gorilla [1939] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Alpha Video:


Review Troma / The Toxic Avenger [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Jennifer Prichard
  • Cindy Manion
  • Michael Herz
  • Lloyd Kaufman
  • Robert Prichard
  • Mitch Cohen
  • Andree Maranda
Release date: 1998-03-25
Run time: 82 min.
Price: £6.66

Review The Toxic Avenger [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Troma:

The foundation stone of the Troma label's trash-movie empire, The Toxic Avenger introduces the character of nerdy janitor Melvin, who suffers heaps of abuse from local bad-guys and is stuffed into a vat of toxic waste while dressed in a ballerina outfit. He emerges mutated into a Swamp Thing/Hulk-style monster hero who romps around the blighted township of Tromaville, New Jersey, offing the grotesque villains in nastily gruesome ways and mooning over his blind true love. The Troma style is unique, and perhaps predates the anything-gross-for-a-laugh approach of the Farrelly Brothers by a good 10 years, but it sometimes wavers between the good-natured gags and genuinely unpleasant plot images that somewhat spoil the tone. Entry-level filmmaking, but with surprisingly professional head-squashing effects and a degree of enthusiasm that breaks down most resistance. Several sequels have ensued, including The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie. - Kim Newman.

Actors & Directors
  • Philip Bruns
  • Elliott Gould
  • Mabel King
  • Melissa Sue Anderson
  • Mark Moses
  • Malcolm Marmorstein
Release date: 2002-07-30
Run time: 94 min.
Price: £36.72

Review Dead Men Don't Die [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Platinum Disc:


Review Warner Home Video / Eight Legged Freaks [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Jeremy Callaghan
  • Rebecca Hobbs
  • Hamish McFarlane
  • Ellory Elkayem
  • David Arquette
  • Patrick Wilson (VI)
Release date: 2002-10-29
Run time: 99 min.
Price: £4.28

Review Eight Legged Freaks [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Warner Home Video:

Not funny enough to be called a spoof, not scary enough to be outright horror, Eight Legged Freaks is a curious effects-filled pastiche of those mutant B-movies of the 1950s and 60s. The plot is of the standard small-town-overrun-by-giant-spiders variety, after the little critters have been exposed to leaking radiation naturally. Local boy made good David Arquette has returned to the town to make amends with the woman he loves (feisty Sheriff Kari Wuhrer) and to stop the dastardly mayor from selling his father's mine. But before he can sort that out, there is a lot of bug squashing to be done as the CGI spiders cause all manner of havoc and mayhem. Eight Legged Freaks is admittedly a lot of fun, and there are some great set-pieces to enjoy, including a gang of teenage dirt bikers escaping a horde of jumping spiders. It's also quite gory in places, though with only a couple of decent shocks it's hardly likely to induce large-scale arachnophobia. The spiders are impressive but the CGI is painfully obvious and it never feels real. However, if you can suspend your disbelief for an hour and a half you will enjoy this pacey, fun and action-filled popcorn flick. It doesn't ever take itself too seriously and is certainly a lot more fun than producer Dean Devlin's other genre entries, Godzilla and Independence Day. On the DVD: Eight Legged Freaks offers some nice, B-movie poster-style menu screens but little in the way of extras. [+]
There's no making-of, no special effects breakdowns (astonishing given how heavily reliant it is on these to tell the story) and not even any spider-related factoids which seem almost a necessity. What we do get, though, is a fun and sprightly commentary, the theatrical trailer and director's Ellory Elkayem original short film Larger than Life, that formed the basis for its feature-length offspring. Compact, creepy and almost silent, it's a shudder-inducing little movie and far more creepy than the main feature. Technically, the picture is sharp and the bright, comic book colours and cinematography look gorgeous, and the squelching soundtrack is wonderfully crisp. -Jon Weir.

Review Magnolia / The Host [HD DVD] [2006] [US Import]
Actors & Directors
  • Hae-il Park
  • Hie-bong Byeon
  • Ah-sung Ko
  • Du-na Bae
  • Kang-ho Song
  • Joon-ho Bong
Release date: 2007-07-24
Run time: 119 min.
Price: £7.98

Review The Host [HD DVD] [2006] [US Import] / Magnolia:


Review Brain Damage / Demon Seduction [2005] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Greg Lewolt
  • Johnny Legend
  • Brinke Stevens
Release date: 2008-02-05
Price: £5.23

Review Demon Seduction [2005] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Brain Damage:


Review Subversive Cinema / Funny Man [1994] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Matthew Devitt
  • Pauline Black
  • Benny Young
  • Christopher Lee
  • Tim James (II)
  • Simon Sprackling
Release date: 2006-05-30
Run time: 90 min.
Price: £6.78

Review Funny Man [1994] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Subversive Cinema:


Review Anchor Bay / Re-Animator [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Sampson
  • Stuart Gordon
  • Jeffrey Combs
  • Bruce Abbott
  • Barbara Crampton
  • David Gale
Release date: 2007-03-20
Run time: 86 min.
Price: £9.41

Review Re-Animator [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Anchor Bay:


Review New Concorde / Piranha [1978] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Bradford Dillman
  • Belinda Balaski
  • Paul Bartel
  • Bruce Barbour
  • Richard Deacon
Release date: 1999-10-26
Run time: 92 min.
Creator: Pino Donaggio
Price: £40.11

Review Piranha [1978] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / New Concorde:

As a producer, Roger Corman has always loved to make low-budget rip-offs of hit movies, and Piranha is his typically cheeky take on Jaws-and, as so often with Corman, in many ways it's funnier and more entertaining than the original. Directed with gusto by schlock-horror specialist Joe Dante and sharply scripted by John Sayles, it replaces one huge underwater toothy monster with dozens of little ones and ups the body count by a factor of 10 or so. Two hapless teenagers, hiking in a remote mountain region, stumble on a secret US military research lab. They don't last long, but their intrusion leads to the release into the local river system of a huge shoal of super-intelligent piranha, originally specially bred for use in Vietnam. Downstream from the virulent little munchers lie a kiddies' holiday camp and a tacky new waterfront theme park. Lunch time, fellas! Sayles, with his staunch left-wing credentials, slips in some mordant political satire at the expense of the military-industrial complex, and authority figures of any kind come off pretty badly, but the satire never gets in the way of the gleeful black humour. The two leads, Bradford Dillman and Heather Menzies, are fairly pallid, but there are ripe cameos from such cult horror-movie icons as Kevin McCarthy, Dick Miller and Barbara Steele. Pino Donaggio's score impudently borrows aspects of John Williams' famous Jaws theme while never quite infringing copyright. The movie was successful enough to spawn a much-inferior sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning (1982), which marked the inauspicious directing debut of one James Cameron. On the DVD: Piranha on disc comes with just the theatrical trailer as an extra. [+]
The transfer is a respectable job, reproducing the original's full-screen ratio. -Philip Kemp.

Review Tai Seng / Spooky Encounters [1981] (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Sammo Hung
  • Lam Ching-Ying
  • Chung Fat
  • Sammo Hung
  • Chan Lung
Release date: 2000-11-14
Run time: 89 min.
Creator: Chang Yao-Chung
Price: £11.24

Review Spooky Encounters [1981] (NTSC) / Tai Seng:


Review Anchor Bay / Night of the Living Dorks [2005] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Thomas Schmieder
  • Matthias Dinter
  • Tino Mewes
  • Manuel Cortez
  • Sissi Perlinger
  • Collien Fernandes
Release date: 2007-02-20
Run time: 92 min.
Creator: Andreas Grimm
Price: £7.32

Review Night of the Living Dorks [2005] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Anchor Bay:


Review Anchor Bay / Transylvania 6-5000 [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Geena Davis
  • John Byner
  • Inge Apelt
  • Jr. Ed Begley
  • Joseph Bologna
Release date: 2002-04-02
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: Alfi Kabiljo
Price: £3.25

Review Transylvania 6-5000 [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Anchor Bay:


Review Troma / The Toxic Avenger, Part II [1989] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • John Altamura
  • Ron Fazio
  • Jessica Dublin
  • Jackie Cooper
  • Michael Herz
  • Rick Collins
Release date: 1998-02-17
Run time: 95 min.
Creator: Barrie Guard
Price: £6.65

Review The Toxic Avenger, Part II [1989] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Troma:


Review Kowa International/Synapse Films, Inc. / Karaoke Terror: The Complete Japanese Showa Songbook [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Kanako Higuchi
  • Tetsuo Shinohara
  • Hiroyuki Ikeuchi
  • Yoshio Harada
  • Kayoko Kishimoto
  • Masanobu Ando
Release date: 2008-04-29
Run time: 112 min.
Creator: Yorihiro Ike
Price: £8.32

Review Karaoke Terror: The Complete Japanese Showa Songbook [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Kowa International/Synapse Films, Inc.:


Review Image Entertainment / Mixed Blood [1984] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Marília Pêra
  • Paul Morrissey
  • Richard Ulacia
  • Linda Kerridge
  • Geraldine Smith
  • Angel David
Release date: 2006-02-21
Run time: 99 min.
Price: £2.27

Review Mixed Blood [1984] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Image Entertainment:


Review Elite / Re-animator [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Actors & Directors
  • Bruce Abbott
  • Stuart Gordon
  • Barbara Crampton
  • David Gale
  • Robert Sampson
  • Jeffrey Combs
Release date: 2002-04-30
Run time: 86 min.
Price: £25.75

Review Re-animator [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC) / Elite:


Models & Brands:
Microwave Massacre [1983] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Haunted Mansion [Blu-ray] [2004] [US Import], Bloodstone: Subspecies 2 [1993] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Bride Of Re-Animator [1990], The Gorilla [1939] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Toxic Avenger [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Dead Men Don't Die [1991] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Eight Legged Freaks [2002] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Host [HD DVD] [2006] [US Import], Demon Seduction [2005] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Funny Man [1994] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Re-Animator [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Piranha [1978] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Spooky Encounters [1981] (NTSC), Night of the Living Dorks [2005] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Transylvania 6-5000 [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC), The Toxic Avenger, Part II [1989] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Karaoke Terror: The Complete Japanese Showa Songbook [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Mixed Blood [1984] (REGION 1) (NTSC), Re-animator [1985] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

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