Category Archives: Movies

Rake in lots o’ screams in the thrilling flick, “The Rake”

Wanna rake in the terror? Look no further than The Rake, in which a  terrifying urban legend becomes real in the horror-thriller.  The flick spreads fear on DVD and Digital, courtesy of Unified Pictures via Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Shenae Grimes-Beech, Rachel Melvin and Izabella Miko star in this chilling tale of siblings who return home 20 years after the shocking murder of their parents and discover that the horrible crime may have a startling connection to a local urban legend. Directed by award-winning horror filmmaker Tony Wash and co-starring Joey Bicicchi, Stephen Brodie and Joe Nuñez, this scarily entertaining movie features a perfect mix of action, suspense, and scream-worthy moments horror fans won’t want to miss.

Ashley and Ben witnessed the brutal murder of their parents.  Years later, Ashley is still convinced it wasn’t someone, but something that killed her parents and now she’s tormented by the thought of The Rake returning for her and her family.  Is Ashley traumatized . . . or is the creature inside her real?

Action legend Bruce Willis returns to the screen in the high-octane film “Reprisal”

He’s back!

Action legend Bruce Willis returns to the screen in the high-octane film Reprisal, arriving on Blu-ray (plus Digital), DVD, and Digital October 16 from Lionsgate. This film is currently available On Demand.

Jacob (Frank Grillo), a bank manager haunted by a violent heist that took the life of a coworker, teams up with his ex-cop neighbor, James (Bruce Willis), to bring down the assailant. While the two men work together to figure out the thief’s next move, Gabriel (Johnathon Schaech), the highly trained criminal, is one step ahead.

When Gabriel kidnaps Jacob’s wife (Olivia Culpo) and daughter, Jacob barrels down a path of bloodshed that initiates an explosive counterattack, bringing all three men to the breaking point.

Packed with nonstop action from director Brian A. Miller, the Reprisal Blu-ray, DVD and Digital release includes a making-of featurette and insightful cast and crew interviews giving an inside look at what it took to make this thrilling film.

MVD Rewind Collection continues to release camp classics with relish

Since launching in December of 2017 with the Blu-ray release of D.O.A., MVD Rewind Collection has quickly established itself as one of the premiere labels in the home video market.
Already in release are Went to Coney Island on a Mission from God…Be Back by Five. This story about a pair of friends looking for a third childhood friend that they fear may be homeless and mentally ill was co-written, produced and stars ’80s icon Jon Cryer. The plot is loosely based off on a true story involving Cryer and a former classmate he heard was homeless.

Swamp Thing sprouted from the pen of Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson and took root in the pages of his award winning DC Comics’ series. Dr. Alec Holland, noble scientist out to cure the ills of our ravaged planet Earth, is caught in a powerful explosion that coated him with his bio-restorative formula and set him ablaze. Jumping into a nearby swamp for relief from the flames, Alec Holland was transformed into everyone’s favorite muck-encrusted half-human/half plant Swamp Thing. Dick Durock starred as Swamp Thing in both the original movie and The Return of Swamp Thing. Trapped in his monstrous physical form, Alec Holland retained his intellect, emotions, and capacity to love. That love appears in the form of Abigail Arcane (Heather Locklear), step-daughter to the world’s maddest scientist, Dr. Anton Arcane.
The Return Of Swamp Thing
Abby owns a plant store, and is more comfortable talking to her plants than to men in the local singles bar. When she meets Swampy she sees beyond the horror of his physical form and falls in love with Alec Holland. Swamp Thing has to single-handedly battle the evil Dr. Arcane, his security forces, and his army of mutant creatures in order to rescue Abby.  Both BR and DVD were created from a brand-new HD transfer made from the original internegative, released now for the first time ever. Directed by Jim Wynorski.
Pierre De Moro’s Savannah Smiles. In this charming family comedy the young daughter of a politician runs away in an effort to get some attention from her parents. She ends up hiding in a car that belongs to a pair of two-bit criminals and what could turn into an awful nightmares becomes an unlikely bonding experience between the three.
Released in 2006, Abominable is easily the newest film to see entry into the MVD Rewind Collection but don’t let that fool you – all the old-school, retro appeal that you’ve come to expect and love with this collection is very much present in this one.
Abominable (Special Edition)
A paraplegic convinced he was attached by the legendary Bigfoot returns to his cabin in the woods hell-bent on proving all those that called him crazy wrong. This fun monster movie features horror icons Jeffrey Combs, Lance Henriksen and Dee Wallace.
Claude Van Damme appears in the MVD Rewind Collection with the release of 1990’s Lionheart. Van Damme stars as a paratrooper legionnaire that is forced to return home to Los Angeles after his brother is seriously injured. With his brother’s family desperately needed money, Van Damme decides to earn it the only way he knows how – entering an underground fighting circuit.
Lionheart (2-Disc Special Edition)
Often overlooked in the Van Damme catalogue, Lionheart is every bit the action classic as the more popular Bloodsport and Kickboxer films. Lionheart is also notable for being the first time Van Damme showed his signature buns onscreen.
By the mid-80’s Nicole Kidman was well on her way to becoming a star but she was still considered to be a child actor. In 1986, at the age of 19, she started to shed that image as she starred in first film aimed at adults with the romantic comedy Windrider. The film co-stars Tom Burlinson as an enthusiastic surfer attempting to develop a new, high tech surfboard. Along the way he meets and begins to fall in love with a rockstar played by Kidman. MVD Rewind Collection is proud to present Windrider on special edition Blu-ray this July, given the film its debut home video release in North America.

Undercrank Productions goes back in history with “The Kinetophone: A Fact! A Reality!”

Thomas Edison’s “Kinetophone” brought talkie to the theaters in 1913–and now, the Library of Congress has taken surviving films, restored them, and Undercrank Productions (undercrankproductions.com) has just released them on DVD.

That sound you hear? A standing ovation!

The Kinetophone: A Fact! A Reality! is an amazing disc that features eight sound films made by the Thomas A. Edison Company in 1913 that have been newly restored by the Library of Congress. Collectors will want to know the films: The Edison Kinetophone, Musical Blacksmiths, Nursery Favorites, The Deaf Mute, The Edison Minstrels, The Five Bachelors, The Old Guard and Jack’s Joke.

The disc also includes a nifty bonus, a mini-documentary on the Kinetophone. So Amazingly Perfect They Are Really Weird (2018) not only details the Kinetophone films’ history, technology and their restoration, but there’s alsoThe Politician (1913), a Kinetophone film whose sound cylinder is still lost and is presented here with a musical score by Ben Model.

Arthur Housman (left) and Edward Boulden (right) in “Jack’s Joke”

More than a dozen years before Al Jolson proclaimed “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” in the The Jazz Singer (1927), American movie audiences had already experienced synchronized sound in movies. In 1913, the Thomas Edison Company debuted talking pictures whose exhibition lasted for about a year. Showing the films in theaters involved a complex system involving a hand-cranked projector connected by a system of pulleys to a modified Edison cylinder player at the front of the theatre, operated at both ends by technicians connected by head-sets.

The Kinetophone films, like the early Vitaphone shorts, were of theatrical or vaudeville acts, dramatic scenes and musical performances. Of the 200 films made, only eight currently survive with both film and cylinder elements intact, and they have now been painstakingly restored by the Library of Congress.

The Kinetophone films are a unique record of performance techniques of the time, and are each six minutes long, a duration dictated by the maximum recording time of the cylinders used. Made in a pre-microphone era, the performers of the dramatic and comedic sketches or musical numbers speak and project as if they were in a theater. This technique was necessary for the actors’ voices to be picked up by the cylinder recording horn, placed a safe distance to be out of camera range. These techniques are covered in a mini-documentary on the history of the Kinetophone films, technology and restoration process as a bonus on the DVD.

Each of the eight Kinetophone films has been digitized from rare, unique cylinder sound elements preserved by the Thomas Edison National Historical Park and from original 35mm prints or camera negatives preserved by the Library of Congress. Utilizing state-of-the-art digital technology, the films have been restored and synchronized by the Library of Congress to a state that both surpasses their original 1913 presentations and also realizes the effect originally intended by Edison and his technicians. With the exception of Nursery Rhymes, previously available in a decades-old restoration of lesser quality, these Kinetophone films have not available to the public since their original exhibition in vaudeville houses more than 100 years ago.

Undercrank Productions, an amazing new company, that “discovers” rare films

We are bit embarrassed to admit that we only recently learned about Undercrank Productions (undercrankproductions.com). We learned that this marvelous company, the brainstorm of the marvelous historian and Undercrank founder Ben Model, releases must-see, must-have DVDs that we assumed have been long lost.

The Marcel Perez Collection: Volume 2 features eight slapstick shorts that star the largely forgotten silent-era comedian Marcel Perez. The award-winning first volume, released by Undercrank in 2015, has earned Perez a new fan base among classic film buffs and silent comedy aficionados.

Marion DaviesFollowing a 15-year career in movies in Europe,  Perez came to the U.S. in 1915 where he made another 60 comedy shorts as the character Tweedledum or “Tweedy” or “Twede-Dan” for a number of independent studios in Florida, New York and New Jersey. Perez is the only silent screen comedian besides Max Linder to have had this kind of long-reaching career on both continents. Perez’s charming and acrobatic screen persona, as well as his inventive directorial flair, make his short comedies stand out from those made by most of the better-known “second-tier” slapstick comics.  Sadly, only a fraction of Perez’ output, which spanned 1900-1928, survives. In the three years since the release of the first DVD, however, eight more films have either surfaced or become available for this home video release.

“What continues to impress me in seeing more of Marcel Perez and his films,” says Model, “is how inventive the humor, storytelling and filmmaking is considering they’re from 1916-1922. He’s doing stunt work and surreal gags before Keaton or Larry Semon did, and one of the shorts–A Scrambled Honeymoon (1916)–opens with a gag sequence that is nearly directly copied in a Chaplin short made the following year. It’s been a thrill working with the Library of Congress and MoMA on the disc, as well as being supported by fan crowdfunding, to be able to restore Perez’ reputation and renown. Hopefully it won’t take another three years for more of his films to turn up, and I’ll bet there’s more of them out there.”

Marcel Perez and Nilde Barrachi in “Oh! What a Day” (1918)

The films on the The Marcel Perez Collection: Volume 2 were preserved by or were sourced from the Library of Congress and the Museum of Modern Art. The rare archival 35mm copies are presented in new 2K digital scans, with new musical scores by noted silent film accompanist Ben Model.

“An Elephant’s Journey” is a remarkable lessons-to-learn family adventure

We continue to celebrate elephants. The truth is: We believe poachers should have their dicks cut off . . . and left to die.
We love the new film An Elephant’s Journey. It has been released on DVD and Digital by Lionsgate; it arrives On Demand October 23 .

This adventure is family fun. When Phoenix Wilder (portrayed by Sam Ashe Arnold), a 13-year-old orphan, moves in with his Aunt Sarah (Elizabeth Hurley) – his only surviving relative, living in Africa with her husband, Uncle Jack–Phoenix quickly falls in love with his surroundings. However, while on safari with his uncle, Phoenix gets separated from the rest of the group. As the search for Phoenix continues, the boy becomes fast friends with a giant bull elephant he was able to free from a trap. Phoenix names the elephant Indlovu, and, as they begin to bond, he decides to try to stop a band of poachers who prey on African elephants

“Affairs of State” combines love, lust and political scandal and make for sizzling flick

The affairs of the state suck.

But the gripping thriller Affairs of State combines love, lust and political scandal and is hot.

In his quest for power, D.C. aide Michael Lawson (played by David Corenswet) will do anything to take part in Senator Baines’s (David James Elliott) White House campaign, including blackmailing Baines’s shady advisor (Adrian Grenier) and sleeping with the candidate’s wife (Mimi Rogers)

But when he gets involved with the senator’s alluring daughter, Lawson (Grace Victoria Cox) learns his dangerous game could have a deadly payoff. Also starring Thora Birch, this pulse-pounding thriller is a perfect match for today’s turbulent political climate.

“Truth or Dare”: Tell the truth, would you dare to watch the flick?

Truth or dare: Would you do this . . .
Eight college friends head to a “Haunted Rental” in a remote town for Halloween weekend. There, they play the game rumored to have caused the deaths of seven teenagers decades earlier, Truth or Dare. And what starts out as vodka-induced fun, quickly turns serious when the dares become sickeningly dangerous and the truths threaten to tear the group apart. When players attempt to refuse the increasingly challenging tasks, they’re met with deadly consequences, quickly discovering: You must do the dare, or the dare does you.

From the producers of the 2010 remake of I Spit on Your Grave and the Relentless series comes this chilling thriller directed by Nick Simon, which originally aired on Syfy. With an ensemble cast featuring Cassie Scerbo, Luke Baines and Mason Dye, along with a cameo from Nightmare on Elm Street’s Heather Langenkamp, audiences may never play Truth or Dare again.

Save the date of September 4 for the DVD release from Cinedigm.

Get ready for school . . . and a new class of horror film

School starts.
And horror comes to campus in The Row, a modern take on the classic slasher film. The anxiety of rush week turns into sheer terror when sisters of a sorority are slain—and turned into dolls—by a serial killer.

New pledge Riley (played by Lala Kent) and her best friend, Becks (Mia Frampton), must endure late-night hazing rituals as the murderer watches and waits. Can Riley uncover the terrible secret shared by her cop father (Randy Couture) and deceased mother, a former Phi Lambda sister, before becoming a victim herself?
The Row will be available from Lionsgate on Blu-ray and DVD on September 25.

“Saving Faith” is warm and inspirational, and boy! What great gospel music!

Mark your calendar now. It’s important to save the date of September 18, not because it’s a day after my birthday (cards and gifts still accepted), but that’s the day the inspirational and heartwarming gospel drama, Saving Faith, arrives on DVD, Digital, and On Demand.

When the historic Ritz Theater is on the brink of foreclosure, the theater’s owner Faith Scott (played by Jenn Gotzon) and her Uncle Donny (Donny Richmond) decide to host a Christmas themed show, in June, to help save the building.  Even against all odds, Faith and Donny turn to their faith and friends to help pull off the impossible.
And when a local developer decides to sabotage the concert, it’ll take a miracle to make the show go on. Approved by the Dove Foundation for all ages, Saving Faith is a, “film that is balanced for family filmgoers” (The Dove Foundation).

Let us not forget the great music by Donny Richmond and Sunday Drive and appearances by Vince Gill, Amy Grant, Phil Vassar and members of the