Raze
For his entrée into the world of cult filmmaking, Josh C. Waller revives two dormant forms of grindhouse fare: the ’70s-era Women in Cages prison pictures from Roger Corman and the ’80s-era Bloodsport beatdown brawls starring the likes of Jean-Claude…
Hollywood Boulevard
Joe Dante and Allen Arkush directs this story of the glamour, the glitter, the magical allure of Hollywood… and not a speck of it rubs off on Miracle Pictures, where “If it’s a good picture, it’s a Miracle.” This is…
Rumors Abound on Re-Do of Twin Peaks
The rumours that maverick auteur David Lynch might one day return to the world of his seminal TV series Twin Peaks seem to circle and re-surface every few months – the rumours go all the way back to a specific…
More Than A Movie, The Wicker Man
“The Wicker Man” (1973), a famed British dark fantasy based on Anthony Shaffer’s book and long unavailable in a complete version, has arrived in what’s referred to as a “final” form. “The Wicker Man: The Final Cut” ($19.99, Blu-ray Disc;…
Death Of The Video Store
Every day now as I arrive back at Northwood train station from my day job, it sits there staring me in the face. Big, blue, empty and sad, the shell of Blockbuster Video whose bones have been picked clean by…
Death Proof
Given the vast majority of major criticisms levelled at this film, it would appear that a large percentage of the audience has completely missed the joke, or simply, didn’t find it at all amusing. With Death Proof (2007), Tarantino creates…
Run Run Shaw, Dies at 106
Sir Run Run Shaw, one of the pioneers of the 20th century Chinese film industry, has died age 106. Shaw, who co-founded the Shaw Brothers film studio with his brother Runme, had been involved in the film industry in Shanghai…
R.I.P. Bernard Glasser, producer of Day of the Triffids
Bernard Glasser’s life sounds like a fable of a B-movie America gone by: the former substitute teacher at Beverly Hills High School borrowed money from his landlord and became a movie producer. His films included Return of the Fly, A…
Michael Bay, Walks Off Stage At CES
The Consumer Electronics Show may have already provided the viral YouTube moment of the week when “Transformers” helmer Michael Bay imploded onstage. Bay was a surprise guest, recruited to talk about the giant Samsung Ultra HD TVs. Bay started his…
Jackson County Jail
Eternally entrancing firebrand actress Yvette Mimieux scores her best, strongest, most commanding and effective role to date as a smart, classy, fiercely self-sufficient no bulls**t Los Angeles businesswoman who runs afoul of psycho hicks and rapist redneck cops when she…
Bigfoot Slept Here
This commemorative door is the entrance to a Quonset hut which sits right next to the Espresso Chalet up on U.S. Highway 2 in the Sky Valley here in Washington State USA home of the free land of the brave,…
Bounty Killer
The setting is a post-apocalyptic America where the villains are the corporate bosses who are hoarding the world’s dwindling resources. TV and radio seem to have been wiped out, so the impoverished masses now get their kicks following the adventures…
Farewell to the King of Grindhouse
It’s a truly sad week for cult cinema. Mike Vraney, founder of the era-defining Something Weird Video, died Jan. 2 at the age of 56. Vraney’s importance in the preservation and celebration of exploitation, grindhouse, drive-in and z-grade movies can…
Open Grave
If you took the DNA of Alfred Hitchcock and Christopher Nolan, placed it in a centrifuge, mixed it up to perfection, and left it in an incubator to grow, the results would be “Open Grave.” Now, don’t get me wrong….
The Octagon
If there’s one take-home message to be learned from revisiting 1980’s “The Octagon,” is that we should perhaps revisit a lot of the ninja-centric movies we’ve written off over the years. Predating true genre classics such as “Enter the Ninja,”…
Naked Ambition
There were two things that local indie filmmaker Jason Rudy knew he wanted for his eighth and latest film: something that would be easy to shoot and lots of nudity. The resulting film, The Desires of Dawn,premieres on Saturday, January…
Five Quick Questions with Jerry G. Angelo
On January 1, 2002 Jerry G. Angelo left New Mexico for Los Angeles to pursue a career in producing, acting and writing. He is very competitive, hardworking, and ambitious and shortly after working in the industry he started up his…
Dogs of Hell
Dogs of Hell, also known as Rottweiler and Rottweiler: The Dogs of Hell, is a 1982 horror/thriller film starring Earl Owensby, Bill Gribble and Robert Bloodworth. The film was made and released as a 3-D film, with 3-D effects by…
Dixie DeMille
I was cleaning out old files today and came across some press materials I’d gotten for a newspaper article back into the 1980s. The subject was Earl Owensby, an independent filmmaker who built a movie studio in Shelby, NC (pop….
Streamageddon
Bad news for hardcore movie fans, TV bingers, and those of us planning on starting out 2014 hungover on the couch with our Netflix queue. Some 85 movie titles will vanish from the online video site’s instant streaming library at…