I thought I’d never be writing this one.

It comes with a dark, and frequently disgusting, story of an ambitious production studio, dedicated seemingly to churning out as many horrible, disgusting movies as the video store shelves could handle. Brain Damage studios, operating out of Tempe, Arizona, poured tens of sad and sorrowful projects designed to churn the stomach and insult the intelligence, with cheaply produced efforts such as “The Zombie Chronicles,” “Terror Toons,” “Hell’s Highway,” and other such similar fare.

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“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been doing comedy for ten years now, so bear with me as I plaster on a fake smile and plough through this shit one more time”.
Good people, I give you Mr. William Melvin Hicks. This DVD is the perfect excuse for me to sing praise to the best stand-up comedian the world has ever seen. Bill Hicks has been quite controversial by life and continues to do so a decade after his unfortunate demise. He has been compared to peers like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor for his uncompromising “take no prisoners”-comedy with its strong political and social messages. However, no-one was as sharp and brutally funny as Bill Hicks was.

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Dutch Film Works has sent us three luxury steelbook edition DVDs of The Grudge. Being the nice people that we are, we’re more than happy to give them away to our readers. All you have to do in order to have a chance of winning one is send us an email with the answers to three simple questions.

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I feel so used. I walked out of a sneak preview last night and realized that Must Love Dogs is just one big, badly done advertisement for a new dating site called “perfectmatch.com” There were innumerable references to the site and I was handed a coupon for one free month on the site when I exited. The whole thing wouldn’t feel so slimy if the movie had at least been original or entertaining. I’m not even sure I would recommend watching this when it gets to video, cause it really was that bad.
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I know Dario Argento to be a master of atmospheric horror. His best work tends to be dark, moody and suggestive. And this attempt at a thriller is definitely not among his best work. Its premise seems full of promise (particularly considering who the director is), but never delivers on its potential. Think of this as an attempt to make “CSI: Rome”, only longer, much more boring, gratuitously gory and without any of the elements that make the different instalments of that series so good.
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This movie has gotten so much favorable press about the redemptive message conveyed by the story of a gritty, Memphis pimp who wants to make something of his life and break into the rap star business. The tagline states “Everybody gotta have a dream.” Ok, but what happens when the dream is exploitive? I mean Enron executives were probably just following their dreams too. Is being a rap star who makes a ton of money with a song about beating his ho’s really that much more admirable than the being the pimp who actually beats them? The plot disturbed me so much … I could hardly concentrate on any of the truly amazing aspects of this film.
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This award winning Korean film is several things in one. Murder mystery, drama, action-flick, and history lesson for us westerners. Director Park Chan-Wook is juggling a number of things and manages to keep them all in the air. Most of the time, that is.
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The Bloodsuckers Binge: a series of reviews on vampire movies in all incarnations as I look for, and find, any vampire movie I can get my grubby little hands on. The classics, the culty, the really good, the really old and inevitably: movies that suck!

This is German director Werner Herzog’s bid to remake the 1922 classic by Murnau. Rather than mindlessly copying that masterpiece, Herzog makes his own movie, while borrowing from the original. And I am sorry to say that, despite the talented cast (Klaus Kinski!) and the gorgeous images put before the viewer’s eyes, watching this is a good, but not entirely satisfying experience.
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The Asylum, working its way toward being the Full Moon of the new millenium, brings us a murder mystery intermingled with vengeance from beyond the grave in Insight of Evil. First off, I give The Asylum some due credit for making a truly foreboding menu for Insight of Evil. The music is very appropriate, and the distorted nature of the footage running behind the menu options lends that extra note of terror to the proceedings. Even the distorted voice overs in the background force one to wonder, just what IS it we’re about to watch here?

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Mysterious Skin (2004) tells the parallel stories of Neil and Brian who share a secret from their past. The cinematography and soundtrack alone make this film worth seeing, as director, Gregg Araki, [Totally F***ed Up (1993) & The Living End (1992)] take some of Hollywood’s young TV actors and shows off how talented these kids really are.
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