DVD Reviews

I was in a rented lodge in Park City, Utah, several years ago, and since the snow was really bad (or maybe the Sundance options were really meh), I opted to dig through some screeners from "the other festival," Slamdance. (That's not meant as a knock. I adore Slamdance.) I was in town to review some films, so when I came across one screener that indicated a running time of 47 minutes, I got skeptical.

A 47-minute film, you see, is not a short film, nor is it a feature. So while I'd normally be elated to review a film called The Call of Cthulhu, it just didn't seem like a practical choice for "work." But I watched it anyway. And then I wrote my review about 18 minutes later. Months after that I ordered a copy of the film, and it still holds a firm place in my horror collection. Also, it's probably the finest, coolest, and most "faithful" H.P. Lovecraft adaptation I've ever seen. No disrespect meant to Stuart Gordon, but his awesome Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Dagon are "loose" adaptations, at best, whereas Andrew Leman's The Call of Cthulhu feels like it fell right out of 1931.

So what's all this got to do with you? Well hey, if you happen to be a Netflix subscriber (and I don't feel like a shill for saying you oughtta be), then you can enjoy the 47-minute Lovecraft love letter all by yourself. I'll even include the link: There. Enjoy! And then you can hit the official site and see what sort of lunatic passion inspires folks to make a 47-minute film in a resoundingly "feature friendly" universe. Hats off to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society for putting this fine film together.

[Written by HS staffer Luke Mullen, who isn't in our system but will be soon.]

Horror Squad's own Alison Nastasi alerted eager horror fans to the impending release of a Blu-ray edition of Suspiria first announced way back in November. The new disc was released about a month ago and is currently available in the UK courtesy of Cine-Excess, a new arm of Nouveaux Pictures. I ordered a copy the day it came out and have been looking forward to really digging into it to see what it has to offer. I should mention up front that this Blu-ray disc is region B locked, meaning that it will NOT play in a US PS3 or other standalone Blu-ray players. It will ONLY play in region B machines, which are used in Europe, and in region-free players.

I'm not going to summarize Suspiria, or really talk about the film itself much at all. If you're reading Horror Squad, I would hope you've heard of it even if you may not have seen it. If by some chance you've been living under a rock for the last 30 or so years, though, Suspiria is an Italian horror film set in Germany and filmed in English directed by Dario Argento, a member of the holy trinity of Italian horror masters alongside Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci. Suspiria is easily one of Argento's best, and if you haven't seen it, you really should take the time to check it out.

What follows is a fairly in-depth look at the Blu-ray, feel free to skip to the end for a more succinct summary with less technical jargon.

I don't write nearly as many reviews as I used to. I couldn't begin to tell you why this is, except that once I started covering horror news, I found I didn't have half as much time write longer pieces of film criticism. I still see a lot of movies, but I come from this school of movie reviewing that says if you can't spend a thousand words on a flick, then it's not worth doing. I'm working to get over this mental hurdle of mine, and I think the second step in the recovery process (after the first, which is admitting you have a problem) is stepping outside your comfort zone and confronting your issue head on. So, consider this piece on the three latest films I've watched not only an informative selection of mini-reviews, but also your chance to be my therapist (albeit without me paying you anything for your services--it's a win-win situation!). I'll try to keep the weeping and mother issues to a minimum.

Now that we've cleared that up, jump beyond the break to read my thoughts on Seventh Moon, The Butcher, and Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead.

Mario Bava is credited as the first director to breathe life into the giallo genre with his 1963 work, The Girl Who Knew Too Much. Ironically however, Bava is best known for being one of the most underrated auteurs of Italian horror. Often cited as the Italian Hitchcock, Mario Bava's beginnings as a painter and special effects assistant for his father were a small taste of what was to come. Early in his career, he worked with many of the pioneers of Italian horror including Riccardo Freda, before going solo and gaining popularity for his strong visual style. Though his filmography was plagued by a limited budget, Bava was resourceful and his style has been imitated by many, inspiring generations of filmmakers. His 1971 film Bay of Blood is considered one of the earliest slasher films and a direct influence on the original Friday the 13th.

The same year as Bava's giallo masterpiece, The Girl Who Knew Too Much, he released the horror anthology I Tre volti della paura otherwise known as Black Sabbath. The Italian title translates to The Three Faces of Fear, which is exactly what Bava delivers in three richly atmospheric Gothic tales. The film features horror icon Boris Karloff as the host, who also stars in the story, The Wurdalak. When American International Pictures distributed Black Sabbath in the U.S. they altered the film substantially. They rearranged the order of the stories which changed the climactic point and cut portions of episodes to make them more suitable for younger viewers. The film has since been restored to the original Italian version, which excludes Karloff's segments between stories but does contain his introduction and humorous epilogue. Sadly, they have dubbed his distinctive voice with that of an Italian actor. Also restored is Roberto Nicolosi's minimal ambient score which is a more effective contribution to the haunting storylines. Lastly, the AIP version indicates in the DVD liner notes that Bava's stories were adapted from the works of Chekhov, Tolstoy and Maupassant. It's more likely that the studio was following the same successful model used with Roger Corman and his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations and used the authors as a way to stir up interest.

By Todd Gilchrist

Despite their self-appointed pedigree as "The Criterion of Smut," Severin Films has carved a comfortable niche for themselves over the past few years as a reliable distributor of cult classics and obscure, overlooked gems. Unquestionably, their highest-profile release to date was a domestic DVD (and later Blu-ray) for Enzo Castellari's Inglorious Bastards, which inspired Tarantino's film of the same name (albeit different spelling). But they've released and reissued a number of terrific, highly-anticipated movies, almost all of which appeal to a unique and specific audience, even if they don't always register to mainstream viewers with the same excitement or awareness.

All of which brings us to Hardware, one of the company's latest releases. Though I hadn't seen it since it was first released on home video in the early 1990s, Richard Stanley's science fiction-horror film has been celebrated over the last two-plus decades as a modest masterpiece and a true cult classic, thanks in no small part to its small budget, even smaller distribution and minuscule but fervent fan base. Unfortunately, with mainstream "cult" movies like Paranormal Activity and District 9 occupying the head-space of contemporary genre fans, not to mention a great wealth of superior films throughout movie history that explore the same ideas, Hardware is a worth film to revisit primarily to see how well it fueled our feverish imaginations before it fell to the wayside.

More at Cinematical!

If Hollywood's vast abundance of remakes, spinoffs and sequels weren't enough to kill your appetite for spending money on "new" entertainment, it seems like almost every one of these releases finds its way onto home video in multiple forms. Sometimes the studios issue different iterations of a film all at the same time, in a thankful moment of honesty that at least allows consumers the option which version they want. More often, though, the studios will re-release, expand and double-dip their top earners time and time again in order to wring out a few more dollars from the less dull entries in their back catalogue. And especially now, during the still-early days of Blu-ray, there's even more new and different editions being released in stores, some of which are honest-to-Jah improvements on the presentation and packaging, while others are merely the next generation of mediocrity.

As such, welcome to the third installment of "Making The (Up) Grade," a comparison of some of the more high-profile (or maybe just personally-preferred) Blu-ray releases with their previous home-video iterations. This week, we're taking a look at An American Werewolf in London, which Universal Studios Home Entertainment released late last month in a "Full Moon" edition.

Ten years from now, 95% of the human population has been transformed into vampires, with those few uninfected survivors evading capture as best they can and those already captured being farmed for every last drop of their blood. However, supplies are dwindling, substitutes aren't working, and vampires who are driven by starvation to feed on one another tend to mutate for the worse.

This is the world of Daybreakers, a more ambitious and straight-faced follow-up than anyone might've expected from the Spierig Brothers in the wake of their cheeky low-budget aliens-and-zombies debut, Undead; better yet, it's a smarter and more refreshing take on the vampire genre than most of late, and a solid action flick in its own right.

Horror Squad has just received this exclusive behind-the-scenes clip from The Hills Run Red DVD, which hit stores September 29. And because what else would you feature from a film called The Hills Run Red, the clip we have (watch it after the jump) shows the production team setting up a shot in which buckets of blood are literally poured down a hill. Directed by Dave Parker and starring an excellent William Sadler, here's a brief rundown of the plot from our good friends over at FearNet:

"The Hills Run Red (THRR) is a modestly-budgeted but effective gore fest about the search for a legendary 'lost' horror film of the same title, a movie that was supposedly so notorious and disturbing it was only screened once before disappearing from the face of the earth...as did it's entire cast and iconic director Wilson Wyler Concannon."

Buzz on this one is pretty good, so head after the jump to watch the clip and make sure to pick up the DVD, now available in stores.

From the minute I first met the endearingly maniacal Joe Lynch, I know we'd be pals: We were attending a Horror Convention in Mesquite, Texas. We talked horror flicks for about an hour before he said "Hey, dude, did you know I just directed Wrong Turn 2? It's not done post-production yet, but if you want to come up to my hotel room, I'll show you something really cool."

I figured he was going to try and kill me (or worse), so at least it'd make for a nifty blog post. Instead he showed me the opening kill of Wrong Turn 2 ... and I knew I'd found a friend for life. All of which is my way of saying: When it comes to horror, regardless of what you thought of Wrong Turn 2, Joe Lynch is a man you can trust. Case in point: His latest edition of Body Count for G4 shines a spotlight on three new horror DVDs ... but this guy's not interested in raving about studio flicks or well-established cult favorites. And since I don't want to spoil Joe's surprises, I'll just embed the clip after the jump and let you judge for yourself.