Month: December 2022

Well, fellow Space Cadets.  It is the last day of 2022.  At least for those of us that live in the West.  For everybody else: Greetings, People of Tomorrowland.  This one’s going to be a little different.  While the average Haul is about 4 movies or more, last one was 3 and this one will be as well.  But what I’m going to do here is highlight some of my favorite Blu-Rays that I picked up throughout the year.  I’m also going to highlight the best boutique Blu-Ray company that truly delivered.  Well, let’s get right to it, shall we?

Double Indemnity – Criterion Collection

Film noir is one of the classic genres of film that started in the 40s.  Casablanca was more of a drama/thriller than a true noir picture, but it had elements.  Double Indemnity is widely considered to be the first true noir in the genre.  With an outstanding cast that includes Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, and Edward G. Robinson, Double Indemnity follows an insurance salesman who gets caught up in a murder conspiracy enacted by the wife of his client.  You usually don’t focus on the bad guys in murder mysteries.  The mystery lies in finding out who did it.  The tension in Double Indemnity is the result of the main characters trying to get away with murder.  The dialogue is corny, but that’s how noir generally goes.  It’s just such a classic example of a genre that are still being tapped into today.

Terrifier 2 – Screambox

Terrifier 2, I think, is going to go down as one of the most brutally gory horror movies of 2022.  The first movie was pretty brutal, but this movie takes it to a whole different level, and it’s all the better for it.  I’m a big gore-hound as much as the next guy, but there were some scenes in this movie that just really go over-the-top.  Art the Clown makes Pennywise look like Bozo.  Seriously, this guy is savage beyond believe and he clearly has fun doing what he’s doing.  David Howard Thornton’s performance could end up being one of the most iconic in the genre.  Not only that, you have a bad-ass final girl, Sienna, played by the lovely Lauren Lavera, who has one of the most satisfying Final Girl moments in a horror movie.  This is NOT a movie for the squeamish, I can tell you that right now.  I can’t wait to see what Damien Leone does with the next movie.  It’s going to be off-the-charts insanity, I’m sure.

Red Scorpion – Synapse Films

I’ve been a long-time fan of Dolph Lundgren.  While I’m not going to say that he’s ever going to win any awards, he’s a hell of a lot fun to watch.  Whether he’s playing Russians or genetically modified super-soldiers, he just has a presence that really can’t be matched.  Not even by Stallone or Schwarzenegger.  Red Scorpion is Lundren’s second movie as a lead actor, and he’s more than able to carry it on those broad shoulders of his.  This movie has a serious anti-Soviet aspect to it that isn’t particularly surprising as it came out towards the end of the Cold War.  A lot of movies including Rambo III made Russians the bad guys, because they really were at the time…and kind of are, still.  This wasn’t quite the movie that I was expecting, but it delivers on the action, as everything is done practically.  No miniatures, no visual effects, nothing.  What you see is exactly what you get.  Even Dolph himself does most of his own stunts.

Boutique Blu-Ray Distributor of the Year: Vinegar Syndrome/Arrow Video

Of all the boutique labels that offer Blu-Rays of classic films, Vinegar Syndrome and Arrow Video have been at the top of their game this year.  Let me tell you why:  It’s not just that they make certain movies available that aren’t available anywhere else, but they go out of their way to re-master the film visually and in the audio department to make these movies look and sound the best.  On top of that, the special features that these two companies put together for most of their releases is extraordinary.  The amount of work that goes into each of these releases is beyond exceptional.  Obviously, not every release is going to get the same amount of features, but Arrow and Vinegar Syndrome do their best to give these films the releases they deserve.  Where Shout! Factory has dropped the ball on some of their stuff, Arrow and Vinegar Syndrome pick up the slack.  Yeah, the discs aren’t exactly cheap, but considering what you get with these movies, is worth shelling out.  I’m talking hours upon HOUR of content.  For example, Vinegar Syndrome recently released Righting Wrongs in the United States.  The release includes THREE different cuts of the movie, along with archival interviews and brand new ones, as well as audio commentary.  Companies like Arrow Video and Vinegar Syndrome are what it’s so good to be a movie collector in this day and age, especially since most of these movies won’t hit streaming.

My Favorite Pick Ups of 2022

Now, we’re going to have a list of my favorite Blu-Ray grabs of the year.  This is just going to be a straight list and in no particular order, but I will include the distributor’s name, if possible.

1. Thriller: A Cruel Picture – Vinegar Syndrome
2. Casablanca – Warner Bros.
3. Star Trek: The Motion Picture Director’s Edition – Paramount Pictures
4. Double Indemnity – Criterion Collection
5. The Virgin Spring – Criterion Collection
6. Black Christmas(1974) – Scream Factory
7. The Beyond – Grindhouse Releasing
8. Righting Wrongs – Vinegar Syndrome

Well, that is it, ladies and gentleman.  That is my final haul AND my final post of 2022.  I hope everybody has a happy new year.  Drink responsibly.  2022 has been an interesting year for movies.  Not the greatest, but it was NOWHERE near as bad as 2020.  2023 looks to be a very big year for theatrical releases.  So, I will be doing a post on what’s coming up in the new year.  Stick around for that my fellow Space Cadets.  This is Major Tom, signing off for the last time in 2022.

UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE!  Remember in the last Recent Blu-Ray Haul that I was thinking about tossing the Black Christmas 2019 disc?  Well, I did.  I know what you’re thinking: If I’m a collector of physical media, why would I throw something out?  There are a number of reasons why that could happen.  A disc could stop working properly or I ended up with more than one copy.  But usually, it’s because a copy just isn’t working anymore.  There’s nothing wrong with doing that.  But that’s not why I tossed Black Christmas.  That movie was so on the nose about its message, it wasn’t fun to watch.  I couldn’t even make it through the commentary.  The movie was absolute trash, you can read my review.  So, yeah, I chucked that fucker into the garbage.  No regrets.  That’s ten bucks that I’ll never get back.  Lesson learned.  Usually, I wait until I pick up 4 or more movies before I do one of these, but I only got three for you today.  I have an eye for certain kinds of garbage that most people would rightfully roll their eyes at.  I don’t always get garbage, but when I do…it’s classy.

Casablanca – Warner Bros.

“Go ahead and shoot.  You’ll be doing me a favor.”  Casablanca is one of the great classics in cinema.  It’s a great story about an American cynic, Rick Blaine who has an old flame walk into his gin joint, bringing up painful memories.  It’s one of those tragic romances that no matter how many times you see the movie, you always hope that Blaine gets the girl, even when he doesn’t.  The characters are interesting and lively, the dialogue is sharply written, and the drama and music are absolutely incredible.  There is NOTHING about this film that I don’t like.  It’s an absolute must-own for any true collector.

Bullet Train – Sony Pictures

Bullet Train is one of the most bonkers action movies I’ve seen in a long time.  It’s so much fun.  As great as Brad Pitt is here, the side characters steal the show, especially Lemon and Tangerine, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Bryan Tyree Henry.  The whole movie takes place on a…well…bullet train that’s headed to Kyoto.  The movie just does things that you really wouldn’t expect.  The action is fast, inventive, and VIOLENT.  I was surprised at how bloody this movie actually is.  But it’s really the interactions between the characters that make this movie fantastic.  That’s what any good movie should do.  If you love action movies, this is one to see.

Blood Beach

Here’s an example of early 80s trash: Blood Beach.  The premise of this movie is that beach goers are being attacked by something that’s under the sand.  That premise is familiar to anybody who has seen Tremors.  But this came out in 1980-81.  You would be forgiven for mistaking this for a Roger Corman movie, except for the fact that Roger Corman puts more effort into his movies.  This is a bad movie, make no mistake about it, but it’s the right kind of bad movie that I love.  It doesn’t take itself seriously at all, especially when John Saxon and Burt Young enter the picture.  It’s so low-budget that it can’t take advantage of its ludicrous premise, and it’s a shame.  One of the tag lines to this movie was a riff on Jaws 2: Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, you can’t get to it.  Even John Saxon’s character says this, so there is a degree of self-awareness that is incredibly amusing.  You don’t actually see the creature until the end, so it’s all POV shots and seeing people pulled under the sand.  It’s bloodless and the main leads are bland, but there’s something oddly charming about this movie.  Also, I’m not entire sure that the copy of the movie I got on DVD is an official copy, as there is no official distribution label on the case, and I got this from Amazon.  It’s weird.  It’s also Region-Free, so you can watch it on any DVD player in the world, so that’s a plus.

Well, it’s a short one today, so three’s all you’re gettin’.  To all my readers in the Mid-West, hunker down and stay safe during Christmas.  To the rest of you, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas.  I might do a thing on Christmas Day, so keep a weather eye on the horizon.

Once again, fellow Space Cadets, I have acquired enough physical media to do another one of these.  I’ve picked up a lot of stuff over the past 21 years.  My first foray into DVD was the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, End of Days and the Criterion version of Michael Bay’s Armageddon(why that movie got a Criterion Collection is beyond me, no matter how much I love that movie).  For the most part, I’ve never regretted picking up a movie on DVD or Blu-Ray.  I’m a collector, that’s what I do.  There have been many moments where I look at a movie and ask myself, “Why did I buy that?”  But at no point did I even think about throwing it out.  I picked up 5 movies for this haul, but I’m seriously considering throwing out one of them.  The film that makes me want to throw it out I will be mentioning LAST on this list.  Let’s take a look at my current haul:

Righting Wrongs – Vinegar Syndrome

Released outside of Hong Kong as Above the Law, Righting Wrongs is one of the biggest highlights of 80s Hong Kong action cinema.  Between Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao, action movies have never been crazier.  Righting Wrongs sees Yuen Biao play an attorney by day, but vigilante assassin by night.  He’s being hunted by a female cop, played by legendary martial arts actress Cynthia Rothrock.  The movie starts off with a bang and it doesn’t really let up.  Between the opening car chase, the audience is bombarded by outstanding fight and stunt sequences.  The Vinegar Syndrome(the version I have)and 88 Films collections feature THREE different cuts of the film, with each one featuring a different ending and new Cantonese-to-English translations.  We also have two different audio commentaries by Cynthia Rothrock, one brand new and another from an older release.  There are also interviews with Rothrock, martial artist Karen Shepard, Melvin Wong, and kickboxer-turned actor Peter Cunningham.  There’s also a bunch of archival footage and interviews.  This is probably my favorite purchase of the year, because Vinegar Syndrome, like Arrow Video, goes all out with their releases.  Great restoration and excellent special features make Vinegar Syndrome releases must-owns.

Smile – Paramount Pictures

2022 has been one of the strongest years for horror movies.  While I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of movies like X, the fact is the response to movies like X, Pearl, Barbarian, and The Black Phone has been incredible.  Smile is another one that deserves to be mentioned.  The movie follows a psychiatrist as she witnesses a brutal suicide by a patient.  Later she begins to see bizarre things, including people that are giving her really creepy smiles.  This is director Parker Finn’s first movie, and it’s a hell of a debut.  While it’s not the most original movie, as it borrows elements from movies like The Ring and Drag Me To Hell, it stands on its own as a really intense film.  The movie was based on a short film which is included on the disc.  The disc also includes audio commentary, behind-the-scenes footage and deleted scenes.  This is a pretty damned good movie.

The Woman King – Sony Pictures

The Woman King is quite possibly my movie of the year.  It’s epic, action-packed, and emotionally charged.  Viola Davis leads an outstanding cast that includes Lashana Lynch, Thuso Mbedu, Sheila Atim, and John Boyega.  The movie is about the African Amazon warriors known as the Agojie.  This is a period in history that I had no knowledge about.  I would put this movie up there with the likes of Gladiator.  It’s that good.  Again, Viola Davis is a force of nature in this movie, but Thuso Mbedu is able to match that intensity with her own fury.  Everything about this film is phenomenal.  It has a pretty good selection of features including audio commentary and behind-the-scenes footage.

Black Christmas(1974) – Scream Factory

Have you heard the name Bob Clark?  No?  Well, what about A Christmas Story?  I’m sure you’ve heard of THAT movie.  It gets played on TBS for 24 hours straight on Christmas day.  I can’t stand it.  But that’s not Clark’s first Christmas movie.  Oh, no.  His first Christmas movie was a horror movie.  Black Christmas was released in 1974 and starred Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, Keir Dullea, and John Saxon.  The story is set around a group of sorority sisters who get disturbing phone calls from a stranger.  Soon, this stranger starts killing them, one by one.  It’s a great horror movie and one that helped establish a lot of the tropes that we see in modern slashers.  Margot Kidder was great as a drunken Barb.  But the sound design and atmosphere are what really make this movie as good as it is.  The best part?  We never figure out who the killer is.  That question is answered in the 2006 remake, but here it’s a total mystery.  The movie got a pretty good physical release from Scream Factory, but it’s not one of their best.  It’s the best the movie’s looked and sounded, though, so that’s a plus.  Unfortunately, Black Christmas brings us to….

May Not Keep It: Black Christmas(2019) – Universal Studios

THIS is probably the one movie on this list that I might just throw out.  I haven’t decided yet.  It’s ANOTHER remake of the 1974 classic.  I know that the 2006 remake had its problems, but it still managed to entertain in all the right ways.  THIS isn’t entertaining at all.  Maybe I’m not the target audience for a movie like this, but after watching it, I can’t imagine who the target audience is except feminazis.  This movie has a message about toxic masculinity that I can understand and get behind.  The problem is that Black Christmas 2019 is a message with a movie in it.  It needed to be the other way around.  It’s so on the fucking nose about its message that any kind of fun to be had is stabbed in the back.  Blumhouse is usually pretty good with their horror movies, this was a complete disaster.  I tried watching it again with the commentary by the director and actress Imogen Poots, but I couldn’t make it through.  Sophia Takal commits the cardinal sin of mistaking feminism with being anti-men.  The acting’s decent enough, but it’s a PG-13 snore-fest that manages to insult half of its audience.  Nobody liked this movie when it came out and now I understand why.  NOT. A. FAN.  Honestly, stick with the original 1974 movie.  It’s the best of the bunch, but don’t dismiss the 2006 remake.  It’s decent enough in its own right.  But the 2019 dumpster fire is…hideous.  That’s 10 bucks down the drain.

There we have it.  With the exception of one movie, this was a pretty decent haul.  Stay tuned when I get more stuff.

Released: December 2019

Director: Sophia Takal

Run Time: 92 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Genre: Horror

Cast:
Imogen Poots: Riley
Aleyse Shannon: Kris
Lily Donoghue: Marty
Brittany O’Grady: Jesse
Caleb Eberhardt: Landon
Cary Elwes: Professor Gelson

There is no shortage of holiday-themed horror movies.  Obviously, Halloween is the BIG holiday for the genre, but we’ve seen stuff for Easter, although the quality of these movies is…highly questionable.  Most of them tend to be micro-budget garbage that you would find on YouTube.  Christmas has a few good ones, but again, most of them are not very good, especially when it comes to slasher movies.  Most of them involve some demented version of Santa Claus terrifying people.  I would think that the idea of Jolly Old Saint Nick constantly staring at kids in bed determining them to be naughty or nice is creepy enough.  Good Christmas-themed slasher movies are incredibly hard to come by.  One of them is an old 1974 film called Black Christmas, starring Margot Kidder and John Saxon.  It’s a pretty intense little thriller that doesn’t have a lot of gore, but it’s unsettling and darkly funny at times.  In 2006, Black Christmas got a remake which added more gore and a bizarre backstory involving the film’s killer.  Well, in 2019, a NEW remake hit the big screen…and…it’s a thing, I guess.

The basic premise of Black Christmas is that a group of sorority girls are celebrating Christmas when they are attacked by a mysterious assailant.  That’s pretty much it.  The 2006 film added in a twisted backstory for “Billy,” the film’s villain, but it still ended up with a bunch of college girls being stalked and murdered by a psycho.  Very original.  Look, when it comes to slasher movies, you really don’t need to be super complex with the narrative.  But you also don’t want to end up thinking you’re smarter than the audience, and that’s where my problem with the 2019 film lies.  The film stars Imogen Poots as Riley, a sorority girl who had been sexually assaulted by a frat boy in the past.  Her claims had been dismissed by the police and the college as attention-seeking, so her friend, Kris started a petition to get a certain Professor Gilson fired from the college.  Soon, some of Riley’s friends start going missing.  I’m okay with horror movies having social commentary.  In fact, most them are nothing but social commentaries, but most have the decency to subtly weave that message in to the film’s narrative.  Somebody needs to have a talk with Sophia Takal about subtlety in horror.  Granted, slasher movies are anything besides subtle, but Black Christmas 2019 takes the blunt nature of the subgenre to a whole new level.  I get it, targeting toxic masculinity is a noble goal, but you have to be careful NOT to paint every man with the same goddamn brush.  This new Black Christmas is so on the nose about its messaging that any sense of fun that the audience might have is sucked out of the room.  The main plot also involves this underground conspiracy against women.  The movie spells it out for you.  That’s how blunt the movie’s message is.  It’s bad.  Also, did I mention this movie treats audiences like they’re morons?  I just thought I should bring that up again.

The writing in this film is legendarily awful.  Ignoring the main plot of the film, the characters are terrible.  The only character that you can actually sympathize with is Riley.  She’s been through a traumatic experience.  However, the way these characters interact with each other is incredibly irritating.  Everybody’s an asshole to each other, and the dialogue, my god.  Welcome to Exposition City, where EVERYTHING is explained to the audience so that in no uncertain terms were anything could be misunderstood.  Even the film’s main villain has this epic dialogue sequence where he explains his master plan.  Sophia Takal says she say the original Black Christmas and is a fan of it.  I don’t believe her, not for one bit.  She clearly missed the entire point of that film.  That film was intense and it didn’t hit the audience over the head with its writing.  Not only was the writing bad, the actual film-making involved here, which includes the cinematography and editing, is among the sloppiest I’ve ever seen in a major studio release.  It doesn’t feel like anything was planned here.  This whole damn movie feels rushed.  Let’s talk about the “horror” in this film.  What horror?  The only real tension that I found was waiting for somebody to finish their exposition dump.  It’s a bloodless movie that cuts away from some shots that could’ve been appropriately shocking and bloody.  This is a PG-13 slasher movie.  I’ve seen PG-13 movies that were far more violent.  Not only that, the “jump” scares are telegraphed a mile away.

I would like to say that the acting is the best part of the movie, but the characters are just so underserved by the writing, it doesn’t really matter.  Black Christmas is what happens when you let the message get in the way of the movie.  If you try to separate the film from the message, you’re going to fail, because you can’t.  The movie IS the message.  This movie preaches about the dangers of toxic masculinity?  Well, this is the kind of movie that men of a certain type will look at and see it as a justification for their misogyny.  That’s really the only effect that this movie is going to have.  You cannot be super obvious with your message if you want your movie to be successful.  This movie was uncomfortable to watch because half the time, I felt like I was being attacked.  It’s so anti-men it’s not even funny.  It doesn’t even hide it.  I avoided watching this movie since it came out, because it didn’t look great, but I ended up watching the original Bob Clark movie from 1974, which is a much better movie.  So, I checked it out.  Anybody who has read this blog knows that I’m a sucker for bad movies.  I LOVE THEM!  But Black Christmas 2019 is bad on a whole different level.