NEW RELEASES - APRIL 13 2010

Pirate Radio
Dolan's Cadillac
Jordon Saffron - Taste This!
Defendor

TELEVISION:
Dallas - Season 13

BLU-RAY:
The Graduate
Nightmare On Elm Street
Pirate Radio

REPLACEMENT DVDS:
Sh! The Octopus/The Gorilla
The Talented Mr Ripley
Straw Dogs

REPLACEMENT VHS:
Stranger On The Third Floor

JANUARY 19 2020 - NEW RELEASES

Whiteout
Invention Of Lying
Pandorum
Gamer
In The Loop
Like Stars On Earth
Mancora
Pretty Ugly People
The Burning Plain
Departures
Amreeka
I Can Do It All By Myself
Unmistaken Child

TELEVISION:
ER - Season 12
The Simpsons - Season 20
Ally McBeal - Seasons 1-5, Exclusive Bonus Disc
The Super Friends - Season 1, Volume 1
Weeds - Season 5
Dallas - Season 12
Damages - Season 2

BLU-RAY:
8 1/2 (Criterion)
Magnolia
Gamer

REPLACEMENTS AND RANDOM NEW ARRIVALS:
Collision: Christopher Hitchens Vs Douglas Wilson
Swingers
Weekend In Havana
Freedom Deep
The World Is Not Enough (VHS)

NEW RELEASES - JANUARY 12 2010

The Hurt Locker
Fame
Halloween II
The Girlfriend Experiment
Post Grad
Moon
My Learned Friend

TELEVISION:
No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Season 1
Sons Of Anarchy - Season 1
Transformers - Season 1, Volume 2

REPLACEMENTS, REQUESTS, NEW ARRIVALS:
Entourage - Season 5
Mad Men - Season 1
Arrested Development - Season 3
West Wing - Season 1, Disc 1
Wallace & Gromit: A Matter Of Loaf and Death
The Proposition
The Room
Rising Sun
Igby Goes Down
The Hit (Criterion)
Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead
Amadeus
Coma
The Benny Goodman Story
Strawberry & Chocolate
Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster
Rough Night In Jerichio (VHS)

NEW RELEASES - DECEMBER 8 2009

Public Enemies
Julie & Julia
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Cove
Hollywood, Je T'aime
An American Christmas Carol
Rich Little's Christmas Carol and Robin Hood
Johnny Mercer: The Dream's on Me
Silent Night, Deadly Night

Television:
Lost - Season 5
Spectacle - Elvis Costello with... Season 1
Rescue Me - Season 5, Vol. 2
The Donna Reed Show
Saturday Night Live - Season 5
MST3K: Santa Claus
Night of the Blood Beast
The Corpse Vanishes
Warrior of the Lost World

Blu-ray:
Public Enemies
Julie & Julia
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Gremlins

Replacements VHS:
Let's Dance (VHS)
Welcome Stranger (VHS)

NEW RELEASES - AUGUST 4 2009

Obsessed

Fragments

Race to Witch Mountain

Shadowheart

Mutant Chronicles

Delgo

Demon Warriors

The Soloist

The Tigger Movie (10th Anniversary Edition)

Powder Blue

Super Capers

Chocolate (2009)

The Window

Labor Pains

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

The Chaos Experiment

Made in USA (Criterion)

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (Criterion)

Daffy Duck's Quackbusters

Icons of Screwball Comedy, Vol. 1

  If You Could Only Cook / Too Many Husbands / My Sister Eileen / She Wouldn't Say Yes

Icons of Screwball Comedy, Vol. 2

  Theodora Goes Wild / Together Again / The Doctor Takes a Wife / A Night to Remember

TELEVISION:

Psych, Season 3

Flight of the Conchords, Season 2

The Mighty Boosh, Series 1

The Mighty Boosh, Series 2

The Mighty Boosh, Series 3

Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II

Project Runway, Season 4

Project Runway, Season 5

The Love Boat, Season 2, Vol. 2

Petticoat Junction, Season 1

The Lucy Show, Season 1

Silverhawks, Vol. 1

BLU-RAY:

Big Trouble in Little China

Mutant Chronicles

Race to Witch Mountain

The Soloist

Slingblade

VIDEOGAMES:

Prototype (PS3)

DVD REPLACEMENTS: 

Don't Look Now

Foxes

VHS REPLACEMENTS: 

Culture Jammer's Video

Gulf War Illness: Fact or Fiction?

The Love Light (1921)

The Truth and Lies of 9-11

NEW RELEASES -JULY 29 2008

Alice Upside Down: The Movie

The Band's Visit

Classic British Thrillers

Cocaine Cowboys 2: Hustlin' With the Godmother

Dark City: Director's Cut

Doomsday

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Inglorious Bastards

Lost Boys: The Tribe

Never Back Down

The Outlaw and His Wife

Privilege

Puzzle

Rolling Stones: Shine a Light

Wargames: The Dead Code

TELEVISION:

Law & Order SVU - Season 7

Stargate: Continuum

Two Fat Ladies - The Complete Series

 

BLU-RAY:

Dark City: Director's Cut

 

NEW ARRIVALS & REPLACEMENT DVDS:

All the President's Men

All the Real Girls 

Bob la Flambeur

Body Heat

Control Room

Deathtrap

Equus

54

Get Carter (1971)

The Gods Must Be Crazy I & II

How Stella Got Her Grove Back

The Hunted

Jerry Maguire

Lovers and Other Strangers

Magician

Mi Vida Loca

The Moon-Spinners

Mr. Holland's Opus

The Passion of Anna

Pleasantville

Prime Suspect 1

Prime Suspect 2

Revenge of the Ninja

Ruthless People

Soup Dish

South Park - Season 8

The Sting

U2: Rattle & Hum

Hip-Hop Honeys: Tasty Flavors (VHS)

NEW RELEASES - JULY 8, 2008

Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq

Baby, It's You

Batman: Gotham Knight

Blood and Wine

The Busy Body

Chop Shop

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Leonard Cohen: Under Review 1978 - 2006

Mon Oncle Antoine (Criterion)

National Geographic: Dogtown - Second Chances

The Ruins

Sleepwalking

Stop-Loss

Tracey Fragments

The U2 Phenomenon

Welcome to Amish America

TELEVISION: 

Cannon - Season 1, Vol. 1

Jake and the Fat Man - Season 1, Vol. 1

Monk - Season 6

Psych - Season 2

Wild Wild West Season 4

BLU-RAY:

Batman Begins

NEW ARRIVALS & REPLACEMENT DVDs:

American Nudes Vol I

American Nudes Vol II

Before Sunset

The Color Purple 

Gaza Strip

Girl with the Pearl Earring

The Mummy (1959)

Never Die Alone

O. Henry's Full House

Resevoir Dogs/Bad Lieutentant

Slogan

Star Wars Episode One: Phantom Menace

REPLACEMENT VHS:

Aladdin and the King of Thieves

Gladiator

When the Cat's Away

NEW RELEASES - MAY 27, 2008

The Air I Breathe   *   All Hat   *   Cassandra's Dream   *   Cleaner   *   

Come Drink With Me (1965 China)   *   Daphne   *   Darfur Now (Documentary)   

*   Diary of the Dead   *   Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (2008)  *

Final Days of Planet Earth   *   Grace is Gone   *   Grizzly Park

*   The Lather Effect   *   The Long Ships (1964)   *   Rambo   *

A Single Promise   *    Stonewall (1996)   *   The Take

*   Typhoon (2005 Korea)  *   The Walker   *   

What Would Jesus Buy? (Documentary)

NEW SETS AND COLLECTIONS:

Dario Argento 5 Film Collection

Tenebre (1982)  *  Phenomena (1985)  *  Trauma (1993)  *

The Card Player (2004)  *  Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005)

World War: 4 Movie Collection

Angels One Five (1952)  *  The Captive Heart (1946)  *

King and Country (1964)  *  The Sound Barrier (1952)

The H.P. Lovecraft Collection

Vol. 1 - Cool Air  *  Vol. 2 - Dreams of Cthulhu  *  Vol. 3 - Out of Mind

TELEVISION:

Due South Season 1

Gunsmoke Season 2, Volume 2

Invaders Season 1

Rawhide Season 3, Volume 1

BLU-RAY:

Devil's Rejects   *   The King of New York   *   Mrs. Doubtfire   *   Rambo   *

Rocky   *   Sleepy Hollow   *   Stargate   *   Stir of Echoes   *   Young Guns

REPLACEMENTS / CUSTOMER REQUESTS:

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (VHS)   *   Dot the i   *   Latter Days   *   Moby Dick   *

The Office Season 3   *   Outrageous Fortune   *   Point Break   *   

Radiohead - Meeting People is Easy   *

Six Degrees of Separation   *   Species

Frank Langella: Starting Out The Evening

I watched a little indie flick from last year, Starting Out The Evening, which I really enjoyed. It’s a simple setup that we’ve seen before and it never surprises, a grad-student (Lauren Ambrose) writes a paper on a washed up writer (Frank Langella) confronting his own immortality and personal ghosts. 

Though there’s a hoohum subplot about his lame daughter (Lili Taylor) and her dullard boyfriend (Adrian Lester). It has enough stuff to dig... 

I love hoity-toity scripts about writers who talk all fancy like ‘smarty-pants people’ and for some strange reason I really like the idea of a young collage girl wanting a sexual relationship with an older stiff. 

(Man, if only some coed would write her thesis on my brilliant still-unpublished epic novel, The Sensual Saga Of The Shepherd's Two Virgin Daughters). 

But what made the film most watchable was the performance of  Frank Langella, as the sickly snob. It’s a character that could of come off dialogue-wise as one-note. But just through his expressions and body language Langella makes the character (and the film) feel a little more complex then it probably deserves. 

It’s a career making performance for an actor’s actor who has had a fascinating career.

Thinking of Langella, I wonder when did that disco dance floor looking dude of the then-popular 1978 version of Dracula (first playing the fanged one on stage in Edward Gorey’s revival) become the character actor of more recent years. 

The guy is a ultra acclaimed stage actor, winner of  three Tony Awards, most recently  for his performance as Richard Nixon in Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon a role he’s replaying for the upcoming film version  (unfortunately directed by Ron Howard).

He was perfectly cast as Perry White in Superman Returns (2006), as William Paley in Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) and as Clare Quilty in Adrian Lyne’s perfume commercial looking version of Lolita (1997). But best of all, as a cruel lascivious acting teacher, he completely dominated the Clooney/Soderbergh/HBO reality-fiction series Unscripted (2005).

Much of the interesting, younger, pre & post Dracula, Langella canon is not available on DVD (U.S. Region One DVD) and/or is out of print on VHS.

His first flick, the dark social satire Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) has gained a cult following and if it’s ever released on DVD we’ll see if it deserves it’s acclaimed Z-Channel reputation. Offbeat director Frank Perry (The Swimmer) these days is known for the number of his flicks that haven’t seen the DVD light-of-day, including Last Summer (1969), Truman Capote's Trilogy (1969), Play It As It Lays (1972), Man On A Swing (1974), Compromising Positions (1985) and mind-blowingly terrible Monsignor (1982).

Mel Brooks in-between his two now classic, The Producers (1968) and Blazing Saddles (1974) made a movie version of his stale stage bit The Twelve Chairs (1970), needless to say, as to the casting of Langella in a slapstick comedy, he ain’t Gene Wilder.

That forgettable mess is on DVD but his next two interesting flicks are not, nor on VHS. They’re also his only two big screen appearances until Dracula helped to keep him in the movies more consistently.

First he costarred with Faye Dunaway in French director René Clément (Purple Noon) much maligned Hitchcockian thriller The Deadly Trap (1971). Worth a look if nothing else to see Faye in her best-looking period, that is if it was available here in any format.

Much more fun, Langella plays the heavy in the Western The Wrath of God (1972). This little gem stars an aged but still cool Robert Mitchum in another fake Priest/ Con-man role, though now teaming up with.... Victor Buono to take down Langella’s Central American Dictator. The flick may be best known as Rita Hayworth’s last movie. 

But What I'll never forget is the ending (SPOILER). Facing an army of henchmen Mitchum tells Langella “you can never underestimate the power of the Lord” and then kills him with a switchblade cross!

Man, I’d like to see that movie again.

After the success of Dracula, he did another movie I dug when I saw it on TV years ago, but again it's not available on DVD. 

In Those Lips, Those Eyes (1980). Tom Hulce in-between Animal House and Amadeus and obscurity, limply stars as a young actor doing Cleveland summer stock and like all would-be artists, just trying to get laid. Langella carries the picture as a washed up ham actor with dreams of Broadway. The film was destroyed by critics when it came out, but like the British film An Awfully Big Adventure (1995) where Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman are competing letches in small-town theater, it perfectly captures the backstage madness and the dreamy hopes of youth and the cruel lust of the fading older generation (I’ve lived all sides).

In the eighties Langella moved between stage, TV and some forgettable flicks. Playing Skeletor in The Masters of the Universe (1987) didn’t take his career to the next-level, nor did appearing in Roger Vadim’s pointless remake of his own And God Created Woman (1988). Finally in the nineties he starred popping up in supporting roles in mainstream fare like the trilogy of one-named blah titles Dave (1993), Junior (1994) and the awful Eddie (1996) where he hooked up with his unlikely real life main-squeeze of five years Whoopi Goldberg.

Lastly, two more flicks of his that have never made it to DVD...

Peter Medak director of the cult flick The Ruling Class (1972) helped to send a fascinating cast of actors down a peg or so in the eighties with The Men's Club (1986) . An ultra sleazy sounding story about a group of middle aged creeps (Roy Scheider, Harvey Keitel, Treat Williams, Richard Jordan, Craig Wasson and Langella) who get together for a night of  sex talk, hooker hunting and other assorted fun nihilism.

Six years later Langella joined another ansamble of scenery chewers, inclueding hams thespians Armand Assante and Sigourney Weaver in Ridley Scott’s Christopher Columbus epic 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992). It was a major commercial bomb upon release but I would think is perfect for the DVD/Blu-Ray deluxe treatment.

Maybe, later this year if the hype machine gets rolling for Langella’s Nixon, some of his lost films will get a chance at rediscovery.

-sweeneyrules

NEW RELEASES - MAY 13, 2008

There is a slight delay in all of this weeks New Releases arriving. This list will either be updated later or the rest of this weeks New Releases will be added to next weeks list.

Update: We got the rest of our new releases finally... hopefully this won't happen again...

Ever Since the World Ended * Forgotten Noir Volumes 7 * Forgotten Noir Volumes 8 * Forgotten Noir Volumes 9 * Going Under * The Great Debaters * Hollywood Dreams * Mercy (2006) * The Nameless (Spain 1999) * Radiant City (documentary) * Solstice * Walk All Over Me * Untraceable * Frontier(s) * Lost in Beijing * The Insatiable * Youth Without Youth * Autism: The Musical * Botched * Numb * Nora's Hair Salon 2 * The Proud Ones * Guadacanal Diary * Fire Within (Criterion) * You're in the Navy Now * Twelfth Night* On the Town * Take Me Out to the Ball Game * Anchors Aweigh * Step Live By * Kissing Bandit * It Happened in Brooklyn * Higher and Higher * Double Dynamite * The Lovers * Sinatra * Can I Do It Til I Need Glasses? * Tobor the Great * Mad Money * Timber Falls * Cover * A Raisin in the Sun * The Bite * A Good Man is Hard to Find * California Kid

TELEVISION:
Ally McBeal 6 Episode Collection * Burke's Law Collection * Matlock, Season 1 * The Pallisers * The Chase, Season 1

BLU-RAY:
Master and Commander * Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid * Untraceable

CUSTOMER REQUESTS / REPLACEMENTS:
Catch Me If You Can * Conan the Barbarian/ Conan The Destroyer * Exterminating Angel - VHS * For the Boys * Ghosts of Mississippi * Home of the Brave (2004) * Jackie Brown * La Jetee/ Sans Soleil (Criterion) * The Kid (Chaplin) * L'Aberge Espagnol * Life * McCabe and Mrs. Miller * Phantom of the Opera (Musical) * Rory O'Shea Was Here * The Sand Pebbles * Star Trek III: The Search for Spock * Transporter 2 * Tadpole * Age of Innocence * Spiderman 2 * 10 Questions for the Dahli Lama * Heart: Alive in Seattle * Young Lions * The Screaming Skull

I'VE SEEN A BUNCH OF HORROR FLICKS LATELY

I feel like I’ve seen to many Horror flicks of late. That explains my personality, somewhat flaccid.

Always in search of a ‘find’. I always hope to be surprised and see something of quality, but alas, I rarely do.

For the record: If say you love the Saw or Hostile flicks, or if you find Rosemary’s Baby not fast or bloody enough, then you won’t agree with any of my thoughts.

There’s a whole bunch of junk I tried to watch, but didn’t finish, I won’t write about.  

Like just last night, I watched the first half-hour of P2, there was nothing wrong with it and the actress is a knockout, but after a little while I was like, “man, I got All In The Family on my TIVO I could be watching”.  

I also was watching the British kiddie-devil cult flick and enjoying, but haven’t finished yet, Blood On Satan’s Claw (1971). 

Which is playing at The New Beverly Cinema this week with one of my all the favorites, the Christopher Lee/ Peter Cushing slam-bang  Horror Express (1973), costarring Telly Savalas as a whip totting Cossack cop. It’s a sorta Hammer meets The Think with zombies on a Trans-Siberian Murder On The Orient Express.

THE MIST (2007)

I haven’t read the Stephen King book it’s based on, but it shares a lot with The Stand (one of the few King books I have read). Like that epic, a bunch of archetype characters are introduced and as bland as they are King’s force of will ends up  making them compelling. Watching The Mist I experienced the same edge of my seat nail-bitting, I was giddy with anxiety, I couldn’t wait ton see what would happen next.

Briefly the plot, a group of small-towners (and visiting Big City folk) hole up in a grocery store as a mist that seems to be killing people engulfs their town. Nothing is fully revealed but at different times we see giant tentacles and later giant bugs. 

The setup has the same eye witness feel as the attack on the gas station in Hitchcock’s The Birds. Later their are moments out of The Thing and Alien (besides the obvious acid like blood and creature effects. The Mist replicates the famous deleted scene where Ripley discovers Dallas cocooned, mutating in goo and pleading to be killed). 

If the first half of the Stand was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever read, the second half was one of the most disappointing. The first half of The Mist has some of the best horror/adventure elements I’ve seen in a while, the second half has some of the lamest .

Poor Marcia Gay Harden, a really good actress, reduced to channeling her inner Mercedes McCambridge from Johnny Guitar (1954). She plays the town religious kook, unfortunately what looks at first like a superficial supporting character takes over the movie, preaching fire and brimstone, written it’s all one note- mad.  So the Oscar winner becomes the villain and we, like the poor survivors are subjected to her ranting. Credibility is fleeting. It’s completely unbelievable that the majority of the survivors would join her and even follow her whims to kill other survivors (it took the SLA weeks to brainwash Patti Hearst. This nutty lady does it to a bunch of Northern Exposure extras in less then 48 hours). Horrible.

And I won’t even go into the other doubters, like Andre Braugher’s NY lawyer who has some character reactions that make no sense. Or the last ten minutes, (bold, but I could see it coming and I saw the consequences coming. I thought wait tell the danger gets closer before you do anything rash, who know what might be just around the corner) though exciting and yes shocking, it’s shot and scored so self- tragically like it’s the Russian war flick Come And See as opposed to a silly Steven King flick about hungry bugs eating cashiers.

But all that aside....

It’s still a blast, despite itself. 

Director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) almost makes up for the one feature he made without holding King’s hand, his whimsical (gulp) Capra-esqe Blacklisting fantasy The Majestic, which may be my most HATED film of ALL TIME. For once I wanna see a flick about victim of the McCarthyism who isn’t an ‘innocent’ someone who, yeah was a member of the Communist party and proud of it.

The ORPHANAGE (2007) (DVD scheduled release April 22)

Horror and suspense screenwriters should study this Spanish flick's script. In terms of creating mystery and tension it’s so clean. It’s perfect. There is no extra gabbley -goop. It seemed to me that every single shred of plot was carefully put into it’s place and every morsel of horror presented was eventually explained. There were no extra frayed moments that were left unjustified.

My only problem, maybe a compliment.  Perhaps it all felt too clean and cleaver. It’s so slick. And feels so professional, to get the atmosphere right maybe it needed a little dirt, a little more grit. Still it was well done and did have some legitimate scares.

THE SIGNAL (2007) (DVD scheduled release June 10)

How did this ultra low budget flick get a theatrical release? And at the Mann's Chinese 6, no less. I don’t think of that a bastion of 'Indi cinema and it ran there for a couple of weeks. I guess there were no Rush Hour flicks to open up that week.

Three different directors each took on a third apiece of this apocalyptic /disease (zombie) flick. It borrows from about 20 American, Canadian and Asian horror movies sources, as a 28 Days Later/The Crazies/ Videodrome type plague takes over society one woman’s (well played by Anessa Ramsey ) struggles to survive the madness The opening third was great, I was on the edge of my seat and legitimately frightened as mayham slowly took over first her apartment building and then the streets. And then it was all down hill. The second third started out with promise and then degenerated into unfunny absurdism, reminiscent of early Peter Jackson. The last third the cast ends up in some kind of terminal and boredom and clichés ensue. I’m glad low budget southern flicks are getting some play, I just wonder why this one?

THEM (Ils) (2008)

This French flick scarred the shit out of me. There’s not much plot and thankfully not much violence, it’s rather simple. This is what you can do if you have a great location (a big ass crib in the French country side), a great Cinematographer and you stick to the basics... It’s all about what you don’t know, what you don’t see. A couple are terrorized by who or what they don’t know. Proves that little creaky noises are much scarier then big gaudy special effect. One other brilliant thing I noticed: it’s mostly all their POV, their are no little scare moments for the audience, no cheesy noises on the soundtrack that the protagonists don’t hear, if they don’t see it or know it, the audience doesn’t either. 

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974) (AKA Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) 

To The Devil A Daughter (1976). Two cult movies I always kinda wanted to see. The first an overly explained Spanish/ Italian groovy-sorta-zombie flick shoot in England with a possibly drunk American Arthur Kennedy as a Limey police Inspector practically stalking a couple of mod hipsters.

The second a British Wicker Man-esqe sex and the Devil thriller. With Richard Widmark as a occult  author who gets recruited by Denholm Elliott to protect his daughter (the often nude ten year-old Nastassja Kinski) from a a nasty Satan worshipper, intensely leered by Christopher Lee. I also seem to remember Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore herself) popping in there somewhere. 

Both flicks carry some heavy Psychotronic-critical street-cred and I think I enjoyed them but those couple of sentences I jotted down are about all I recall of them.

After Dark Horror Fest: 8 Films To Die For

I’ve watched two of these DVDs and they both were pretty good.

MULLBERRY STREET (2006) was the better of the two. It takes a while to get cooking, But once it does I was fully involved. As a bunch of downtown Manhattan misfits scramble to survive an ‘apocalyptic’ plague (see The Signal (above), The Crazies, Dawn Of The Dead, etc, etc, etc) only instead of boring old zombies, they are turned into... hungry savage rat-people! And it works.

Though likable, this flick may have the most unattractive horror cast since, since, since Freaks. That’s not to say they’re freaky or even ugly. They just look like, um, like normal people, not the usual pretty faces you find in most horror flicks. 

It’s all quite audaciously impressive and all on a micro budget in the most expensive town in America. And how did they score the excellent song The Rat by The Walkmen for their soundtrack? Well worth a look for fans of the genre.

BORDERLAND(2007) Typical 'torture porn' bullshit. But it's done with style and an almost docudrama feel as it’s claims to be based on a true story. As 3 graduates representing a little something for everyone to love: a right-wing A-hole, a goony virgin, and a cheesy pretty boy who wants to chuck collage in order to... join the Peace Corps (or was it Greenpeace? I forget) get stranded down in scary ol'’ Mexico and even while being chased around and/or tortured by a crazy drug dealing, religious cult 

the ‘nice guy’ manages to hook up with the foxiest Senorita in town. Oh and Sean Astin shows up as a fat psychopath. But it was better then it sounds because it was all done with care and some craft.

THE LOST (2005)

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (2007)

I was not familiar with the work of the novelist Jack Ketchum but I gather he’s popular and some sorta brand because his name is all over both of these straight-to-DVD boxes, I also am gonna assume he's some kinda twisted sadist, who loves to torture his characters and his readers.

Already building a mini-cult, from what I can see, The Girl Next Door was a sometimes disturbing little flick. But what is it? Because of the emptiness of the look and the dull 1950’s period detail at first, I thought it was, maybe a made-for Lifetime Channel movie with a some bad-words later put in, until the graphic nastiness got amped up. 

Apparently based on a true story, two girls recently orphaned move in with their drunken white-trash Aunt and her mini-me monster sons. They begin picking on the girls, then molesting them and rapping and torturing them all encouraged by their psychopathic mother. Other kids in the neighborhood join in the basement torture chamber fun. One kid sympathetic to the girls ordeal tries to find the courage to act.

The acting by all the teenage boys is across the board, lame. Blythe Auffarth as the adolescent victim proves to be a pretty believable actress, which is no small feat having to go head-to-head the scenery munching Blanche Baker as the Suburban sadist (the ‘Marcia Gay Harden role’) If this sounds like fun to you, it’s not terrible. Hopefully, a flick based on the same crime, the upcoming An American Crime with Ellen Page and Catherine Keener will be more effective, less explotive.

Maybe worse, but definitely more outrageously entertaining (in a bad-meaning-bad, not bad-meaning-good,

 bad way) another Jack Ketchum crap'tation... The Lost. 

Auteur-director Chris Sivertson honed his ‘tool’ with this lurid junk-epic before making his future candidate for “the worst film of the 21st century”, the Lindsey Lohan disasterpiece, I Know Who Killed Me (2007).

In the aptly titled The Lost, dependable character-actor veterans Michael Bowen and Ed Lauter pursue the town creep they are sure was responsible for a senseless murder some years earlier. A fearless 20-something actor named Marc Senter really goes for it as said town creep, Ray Pye. Even though the mascara wearing sicko comes off  like a cross between John Glover, Crispin Glover and a Robert Palmer video model, the town hotties all throw themselves at him, first usually taking off their tops to give him (and luckily us) a sneak peak.  And there are some potentially talented actresses in the cast, in particular the beautiful Robin Sydney and the very likable Megan Henning (whose character is inexplicably having an affair with the grizzled Lauter). But alas the Auteur-director Sivertson seems to have almost a Brian De Palma -like hatred of women, yes he loves their bodies but, like the “sleezoid-bearded, Hitchcock rip-off king” before him, he seems to really get off on the torture and cruelty his main character inflect on them. And to really play his cool-card a a hard rock soundtrack often blares, a couple of full music videos seemed to break out in the middle of the flick. Oh did I mention sometimes this Auteur- genus switches film stocks and colors and shutter speeds in the middle of a scene... You know man, to like show the different stuff going on in the guy’s head. Whoa, that’s heavy dude.

I rewatched John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing From Another Planet, the gross-out epic THE THING (1982). I hadn’t seen more then bits and pieces in years. I probably  had written it off, as an Alien rip-off, but it holds up well. Actually it was refreshing to see three-dimensional creatures, not flat computer cartoons we usually get in Sci-fi today. The atmosphere and tension is sharp, peaking in the scene where the men, tied up, test their blood to see who is the invader. Kurt Russell is cool as hell in it (I still hope when I grow up I can get a bad-ass beard like that).  He supported by a   really nice cast of 80s character faces, led by the under used Keith David.  

Interesting observation:  If I knew it , I forgot, but I was really surprised to see Ennio Morricone name as the score’s composer. There is barely any music in the flick and what there is sounds like the scores that director, Carpenter had composed himself. I’d be curious if anyone knows any back story on that.

-sweeneyrules