FRED Entertainment

TORONTO – I’ve come from the deep South to the Great White North to wear computer monitors on my face.

My involvement in the Virtual Reality world has led me to the Immersed 2014. This is a town built on SCTV, the Kids In the Hall and the dashed dreams of Leaf fans. For two days, it was the entry point for the future of computer technology experience.

The subtopic in nearly every conversation was “How can we make sure VR doesn’t end up in the same wastepile as 3D HDTV and Google Glass.” The big message was that VR needs to make sure it doesn’t have to rely on big companies to control its fate. TV manufacturers were all pumped up about 3D HDTV since it would bring the gimmick of the movies to your house. But they didn’t seem to notice that first consumers had an issue with keeping track of the 3-D glasses. Think of all the times you lose your cable remote. Over half of the time, you find it under your ass. Now this isn’t a great place to find your regular glasses. Consumers weren’t hot on wanting to crack 3-D lense with their butts. And studios and cable channels weren’t hot on creating real 3-D content. Sure ESPN wanted to make 3-D sporting events, but sports have a very limited rerun audience. Their 3-D channel seemed to rerun the same five college football games for the entire year.

What ruined Google Glass? Google. They were overpriced at $1,500 a pair and a monthly fee to stay hooked up. It basically did less than the average smartphone for ten times the price. Plus they quickly became the wearing option of complete assholes. Nothing said “Douchebag Alert!” than a guy with the Google Glass walking up to Starbucks. Only one person at the conference dared to wear Google Glass and it seemed to be an ironic nostalgic statement than cutting edge technology.

VR needs to control its own destiny. Sure Oculus Rift (powered by billions from Facebook) is the big company in the middle of this revolution. But luckily it has made itself open source so outsiders can easily create content. I quickly learned during the Oculus has plenty of competition from other headgear including the Totem. The biggest competition of Oculus is your cellphone. The cellphone seemed to be the most immediate outlet since you could use folded up cardboard to glimpse into an unseen dimension. Most people felt this was a great introductory space for the curious who are overwhelmed at the thought of buying the headgear and getting their PC upgraded to handle the virtual world. While it doesn’t offer the same resolution or eyeball space, it does offer a glimpse. It lets people know the future is coming.

The Oculus Rift will be the Christmas gift of 2015. Judging from the amount of companies creating programming, people will be celebrating New Years Eve in a virtual world. This is going to be bigger than the Christmas your dad finally sprung for AOL. Although it should be less frustrating that five nights of busy signals on the 56K modem.

I already know how much Oculus has come to dominate the conversation since nothing gets ears perked up faster than when I say, “I was playing Alien Isolation in the Rift.” The guy at Game Stop starred in my eyes to get a glimpse of what it’s like to be killed by alien in a 360 degree environment. Games will be truly revolutionized in the environment. Luckily there was also talk about the psychological effect of being attacked in a 360 space. Will there be true PTSD victims from video effects? Will these immersive moments enhance your nightmares? There’s not TV frame to remind you that it’s not real. Some college professors will be making a fortune with their pontifications. But that’s another gravy train.

What was nice about the conference was that it wasn’t too large. I had the chance to meet nearly everyone attending, presenting and demoing over the course of 2 days. Conversations were less product pitches and more questions of how it can be altered to fit another project. This was a place where the word “hack” wasn’t a scare word.

Even though Oculus Rift didn’t send a representative (that we could identify), there were plenty of tales that have leaked out of the new Wonka factory. None of which I can feel safe to report her simply because they might have been in metric. The biggest one was the hint that Oculus was aiming to put out their first consumer headgear before next Christmas. But you never know. This is a project that needs to be near perfect since it can’t end up being ridiculed like Google Glass. The Oculus Rift has the chance to be the most revolutionary addition to your computer since the mouse.

The biggest thing that must be done to make sure VR survives is to keep it away from douchebags wearing Google Glass.

TURNTABLE LUST

This was seen at the Kubrick Exhibit at TIFF. I wiped my drool off the camera lens.

GIVING THANKS ANYWAY

PLYMOUTH, MA – For all the BS about the war on Christmas, conservative media doesn’t seem to give a crap that Thanksgiving has been reduced to a barely existing holiday. Fox News will publicly shame anyone who says Happy Thanksgiving in the middle of November since that’s not “Merry Christmas!” Major retailers have even given up waiting for Black Friday.
They want to open up their front doors before Santa wraps up the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This is wrong!

Thanksgiving dinner should be about enjoying company and not plotting how to hit the Walmart to get cheap plastic crap for ten cents less. Thanksgiving is not Christmas’ starting pistol. Thanksgiving doesn’t have a chocolate in the advent calendar.

Let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving.

Enjoy the day and don’t see it as anything else besides Thanksgiving. Don’t even think about the pilgrims if their history is rather bothersome. They probably wouldn’t enjoy the day since they’re rather be dying of dysentery. Maybe you’ve had a crappy year and are sick of everyone in your immediate circle of family and friends. Then you really need to just find a nice restaurant that’s open on Thanksgiving and tip the wait staff for not making you eat lasagna for one at home. You can be thankful for the fact that you’re not going to care about Christmas during Thanksgiving. One holiday at a time must be your motto.

What are we thankful for this year? Here’s a few things I’m thankful for in 2014:

Miley Cyrus keeping up her weirdness. She has truly taken her Disney image and messed with it until it’s an art project worthy of a MOMA exhibit. Is she drugged out of her gourd? Maybe. But she’s doing more with her messed up mind than 99 percent of the other folks who get stoned on the weekend to blow off steam.

Raleigh’s School Kids Records is a thankful place to visit. How cool is this record store? Along with the vinyl, they have a beer on tap. That’s right, you can browse and booze. Plus on weekends, they have live music acts after dark. I’m thankful this concept didn’t exist when I was in college since I would have flunked out from being drunk while drooling over King Crimson imports from Japan. Is there a King Crimson microbrew? That’d be a cool name for a red beer. Not sure if I’d order the Larks Tongue in Aspic Stout. Owner Stephen Judge tipped me off to the brilliance of Sturgill Simpson’s Metamodern Sounds of Country Music album. Which I passed on the favor by insisting Apple legend Steve Wozniak go see Sturgill in concert. I hope that the Woz will be thankful for me telling him about Sturgill.

Adam West being alive when Batman came out on Blu-ray last week. Getting to see the high definition remasters is a major bliss. There’s so much more detail in the Batcave and Julie Newmar’s Catwoman. It’s like I’m watching Batman with brand new eyes. Plus this is the 20th anniversary of Adam West hosting the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day marathon.

The ultimate way to be thankful on Thanksgiving is to reconnect with the event that made this day so special all those years ago. Naturally I’m talking about the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day marathons that ran from 1991 to 1995 on Comedy Central. Before every channel ran marathons of their most popular show for days without any reason, MST3K was allowed to run like the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon without a donation number. It became an event in my house, to the complete and utter frustration of my mother. What made it extra special was that before each episode, there was a new sketch that tied it all together. This wasn’t just a bunch of shows tossed onto the air to save a programmer “thinking time.” This was a reason to set the VCR to record 10 minutes at the top of every other hour. We didn’t want to miss a segment in case the turkey nap turned into turkey sleep.

Thankfully this Turkey Day (which can include Christmas) can be celebrated with a boxset of MST3K. Here’s some details from Shout! Factory:

The Turkey Day Collection Box Set, available November 25th, features four never before on DVD episodes,Jungle Goddess The Painted Hills The Screaming Skull and Squirm. The set is stuffed with bonus features, including exclusive new Turkey Day episode introductions by Joel Hodgson, a new interview with Squirmstar Don Scardino, new featurettes Undercooked & Overstuffed: Inside the Turkey Day Marathon, Bumper To Bumper: Turkey Day Through The Years, This Film May Kill You: Making ‘The Screaming Skull’ and Gumby & Clokey; as well as four exclusive Mini Posters by artist Steve Vance!

A video with information about all of Shout! Factory’s Turkey Day activities can be seen here:

Let us give thanks to the Mystery Science Theater 3000: XXXI The Turkey Day Collection boxset. It’s more juicy than a Butterball and tasty than sweet potato pie. The big bonus feature is all three of the bonus bits from the Turkey Day marathons that featured Joel, Mike, the Bots and the Mad Scientists. In less than an hour, you can watch an event that took three days to digest in the early ’90s. How come that wasn’t a fact in Cosmos? But it is the reason to buy this boxset and cherish it for every Thanksgiving. Like you mom does with those cheesy pilgrim candles that never get lit up? Although you can get lit up while watching Jungle Goddess. This is a film that make Tarzan look authentic. Basic plot is a white woman’s plane crashes in the heart of Africa. She finds herself being worshipped by the locals. Somehow she still needs to be rescued. This is truly a film about white people problems. Joel and the Bots have a field day with the nonsense on screen. The Painted Hills features Lassie in a revenge flick. He’s out to kill the man who killed a miner. I suspect that Lassie beat Bruce Dern for the role. The Screaming Skull gets plenty of quips thanks to the joy that can come from a skull puppet. It’s amazing how a film that wants to pay tribute to Hitchcock can’t get work its way to a Brian DePalma tribute. Squirm remains the greatest film about what happens when electricity turns worms into killing machines. This should have been prime Oscar bait. The joy of this collection remains its exploration of The Turkey Day marathon. There’s even a documentary about how the brains at Comedy Central actually thought it up. That executive is not the same guy who signed off on Brickleberry.

The ultimate joy of MST3K on Thanksgiving is that it’s about Thanksgiving and turkeys. This isn’t about rushing out to go Christmas shopping. It’s about sharing the rich bounty of badness that these filmmakers once shared with theatergoers.

VINEGAR SYNDROME

Pretty Peaches launched the career of Desiree Costeau as the bubbly fun and curvy superstar. She hit at the right time with her Dorothy Hamill haircut. She’s goes out to Virginia City for her dad’s second marriage. But she loses her cool and hits the road. She wrecks her Jeep and gets a bad case of amnesia. Her rescuers take extreme advantage of the situation . They get her to think she doesn’t own the Jeep. She attempts to get her memory jogged via an enema. When she dances at a club to earn money, things get way out of control. The finale involves Peaches reuniting with her family at an orgy. This film was considered way out there for 1978. A lot of taboos were broken. Over the years, the film has been snipped to avoid certain details that might upset more prudish viewers. The folks at Vinegar Syndrome have an uncut version on their remarkable Blu-ray. Desiree dazzles in 1080p. There’s also a DVD in the set. The bonus features include trailers of other films made by director Alex de Rezny. There’s also a vintage interview with de Rezny as he recounts his adult career. There’s also an interview with a reverend who was part of the San Francisco film scene. He had saved de Rezny’s film archive when his widow was going to dump it all. Vinegar Syndrome has already put out the two sequels that didn’t star Costeau.

Peekarama: Fantastic Orgy & Champagne Orgy is a double feature from director Carlos Tobalina that pretty much are about orgies. The first one has a little plot since it’s about a woman who wants to make adult films. The lack of real structure allows Carlos to use outtakes from Her Last Fling (recently released from Vinegar Syndrome). The big star is John Holmes. Champagne Orgy pops open the bottle when Carlos has finished a film. He invites everyone over for a wrap party that turns out to be a movie unto itself. Amazingly funky soundtrack that will bring out the libido beats.

Christmas Evil is the only holiday themed film that should be watched on Thanksgiving night. That is if your family wants to hear John Waters give the commentary track. Waters is gleeful as he talks with director Lewis Jackson. He’s the number one fan of the film so it’s amazing. The movie is about the horror of what happens when a little boy wakes up early to see Santa Claus. Turns out mom was doing a lot more than giving the jolly man in red her cookies. It’s a nasty scar left on the child, but it’s hard to tell. He grows up to get a job at a toy factory. He loves Santa and wears red pajamas. However all is not well. He’s going to track down the naughty children and make them pay for their sins. The film has the feel of an ’80s art house slasher flick as St. Nick gets his revenge. The ending is brilliantly bizarre. This film is a notch above Silent Night, Deadly Night. This should be part of your Festivus viewing pleasures. There’s plenty of bonus features including interview with director Lewis Jackson and star Brandon Maggart. The audition tapes, storyboards and deleted scenes to show how much work went into the film. There’s even the Comment Cards from test screenings including one viewer who just wrote, “Why?” People weren’t so thrilled at Santa going nuts with killer toys. There’s even a red band trailer. “Christmas Evil, the night he dropped in” is a great tagline. Just a thrilling

Vinegar Syndrome is having a great sale if you order directly from their website vinegarsyndrome.com.

SCREAM FACTORY

Tales From the Crypt & Vault of Horror is a double feature of anthology films made by legendary English horror production house Amicus with directors that also worked for Hammer. Both movies have segments taken from the famous E.C. comics series. They also feature all star casts including a few future superstars. Tales from the Crypt was directed by Freddie Francis (The Doctor and the Devils) back in 1972. Five people are getting a tour of an historic cemetery. Little do they know that they share a common fate. Joan Collins stars in a freakish holiday tale where she kills her husband during Christmas Eve. Things get extra complicated since there’s a madman on the loose dressed as Santa and looking to put heads in his sack. Ian Hendry (from the original The Avengers) has a bad drive with his wife. Peter Cushing (Star Wars) is a garbage man who hates his neighbors. Patrick Magee (A Clockwork Orange) leads a revolt at the home for the blind. The end of this movie features the original version of The Crypt Keeper. The film was a hit so naturally Amicus went back for more with the sister comic The Vault of Horror as the inspiration. Roy Ward Baker (Scars of Dracula) takes the helm for this anthology. Five people in an elevator get off at the wrong floor. What brought them to this point? Their stories will tell all. Terry-Thomas and his gap tooth rule once more. Tom Baker (Doctor Who) is a painter who uses voodoo to get back at art critics and dealers who have been making a fortune off his work. A man goes nuts while trying to figure out the Indian Rope trick. A man finds out that a small town is more than the usual tourist trap. The big bonus of this Blu-ray is an uncut version of The Vault of Horror along with the snipped version that appeared on the old Midnite Movie Double Feature release.

DVD SHELF

The Expendables 3 is so full of major action stars, the cover cast photograph spills over onto the back of the box. Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Antonio Banderas, Jet Li, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren,Kelsey Grammer, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Kellan Lutz, Ronda Rousey, Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz, Robert Davi, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, and Arnold Schwarzenegger all squeeze into 126 minutes of a movie. Thank goodness nobody tried to open up a Planet Hollywood during the filming since they’d only have Scott Baio lingering around to pimp their t-shirts. The story is once more a ripping tale of soldiers of fortune who have no problem taking on an entire country. Mel Gibson plays an evil arms dealer who is arming the worst of the worst. Harrison Ford wants the Expendables to nab Mel and put him on trial at the Hague. Mel must suffer for the sins of The Beaver. This isn’t easy since Mel is inside his heavily armed fortress in Uzmenistan. This is perfect over the top action from a bunch of actors who need quite a few breathers while being chased by bullets. The real star of the movie is tough guy Kelsey Grammer. He’s able to finally let out all his rage that he needed to give that dog on Frazier. There’s no bonus features, but there is access to the Digital Ultraviolet copy.

History Presents The Definitive WWI & WWII Collection is the best way to spend the Thanksgiving holiday if you want to get away from football and remember when fighting wasn’t symbolic and ruled by instant replays. This collection of 20 DVDs pretty much sums up the last few years of History Channel’s focus on the Great War and the Bigger Sequel. There’s 44 hours worth of TV viewing about the explosive years. The boxset includes the specials History of WWI: The First Modern War, Dogfights, D-Day in HD, WWII in HD, The Color of War, Ultimate WWII Weapons, Patton 360° and The World Wars. There’s more knowledge here about both World Wars than what you’ll get in high school history. This is perfect for your dad or even grandfather who has to remind you of the days your ancestors had to fight the Huns. Both wars get brought together in the insightful The World Wars miniseries.

The Hundred-Foot Journey combines my two great passions: food and Helen Mirren. The woman who stole Red and my heart in Caligula plays the owner of an extra fancy French restaurant that’s properly located in France. She’ lives to create the elegant meal in the countryside effort. It’s so French. However her world is about to get rocked when the abandoned restaurant comes alive with the smells of India. It’s a culture class on the street especially since the Indian restaurant has no problem going over the top to promote itself. Luckily they are very colorful in their schemes so it’s not like a Dave & Busters is inside. The Blu-ray brings out the beauty of the food. You shouldn’t watch this film with an empty stomach. The bonus features include The Hundred-Foot Journey With Steven Spielberg & Oprah Winfrey. “The Recipe, The Ingredients, The Journey” – Enter the enchanting world of the film on set with director Lasse Hallström, producer Juliet Blake, author Richard Morais, cast, crew, chefs and composer A.R. Rahman. “On Set With Oprah Winfrey” as she tours the Maison Mumbai and the “Hundred-Foot Journey” to the Le Saule Pleureur. Finally you can learn how to make Coconut Chicken with Chef Anil Sharma. Eat up!

Power Rangers Megaforce: Robo Knight Before Christmas is all the excitement you want for the holidays. Haven’t you had enough of Santa? Don’t you want to see how the Power Rangers celebrate the holiday? This has a fun twist as Robo Knight finds himself donated as a Christmas gift. But this isn’t merely an easy take of a secret Santa gone wrong. Robo Knight is being shipped to Africa. It’s up to Robo Knight to give the holiday spirit to a strange land. He also might need to come home. The DVD had a digital copy included. There’s also two other episodes: “Team Carnival” from Power Rangers Wild Force and “The Spirit of Kindness” from Power Rangers Jungle Fury.

The Jeffersons: The Complete Series – The Deee-luxe Edition brings together all 11 seasons that made George and Weezie live in the sky. The show was a spin-off of All In the Family since George was Archie’s neighbor for several episodes. Even though the two guys had the same dream of making it in America, George really did make it when his dry cleaning business became a major chain. He was able to afford to move out of Queens, cross the bridge and arrive in prime Manhattan. He was a success story, but his story didn’t end with signing the lease. His tale was just beginning as he had a whole lot of new problems. The biggest was how to deal with Mr. Bentley. Why wouldn’t George want to walk on the back of an Englishman? The show proved able to handle issues of race, class and economics while still making people laugh. The first episode is a carefully constructed tale about how the Jeffersons are now different from where they came from. Weezie befriends a maid working in the building. However she hasn’t the heart to tell the maid that she’s also not hired help. What happens when Weezie is told by George to hire a maid is a bit sad and rather hysterical. Yet they also have just good goofy sitcom episodes. The Jeffersons proved that no matter how high you get in a building, you can still have first floor problems. The bonus features include the “original” pilot which was an episode of All In the Family when the Jeffersons made the big move. There’s also an interview with creator Norman Lear about the series. He’s still wearing his goofy hat. There’s the spin-off series featuring Florence the Maid with Larry Linville from M*A*S*H*. Finally there’s the first two episodes of the sitcom E/R that had George Jefferson hanging around the waiting room. This is a great boxset for people who are ready to move on up to a deee-luxe apartment in the sky.

PAWTUCKET, RI – While various media sources mourned the death of Saturday morning cartoons, few seemed to notice the end of The Hub.

What was The Hub? After decades of hearing parents whine about toy companies turning Saturday mornings into their catalogs, Hasbro took over its own cable channel to highlight all their wonderful toys in action for 24 hours 7 days a week. For three years, Hub was the source for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Littlest Pet Shop, G.I. Joe and Transformers. All the toys that I’ve stepped on since my daughter doesn’t get the concept of toys wanting to sleep in their toy house. The channel finally gave The Aquabats a TV series. And The Aquabats TV show was truly the lovechild of The Monkees and Ultraman. They even revived The Animaniacs so new generation could try to takeover the world. Hasbro launched Family Game Night which turned their line of Parker Brothers board games into a new Price Is Right. And now The Hub is gone.

What went wrong? Supposedly there’s just way too many channels aimed at kids. There seems to be at least a dozen variations of Disney and Nickelodeon on the cable box. In my area, the Hub was on an upper tier. But that didn’t prevent kids from going crazy over the new version of My Little Pony. It does sting that they had a channel that didn’t merely run the same repeats as every other channel with one or two original shows to give it identity. Can anyone really tell FXX and Esquire apart with the bug in the corner?

The channel hasn’t entirely vanished. Hasbro sold back the controlling share to their partner Discovery. It’s now known as Discovery Family which sounds about as fun and entertaining as “Your Great Aunt Wants To See You!” And not the fun great aunt who blows your mind with tales of doing too much acid in San Francisco and hooking up with the roadies from the Jefferson Airplane. This is the great aunt who gives you slacks with Bible verses along the zipper to shame you into peeing while sitting down. Discovery Family is still running most of the same shows as The Hub. But as my daughter screamed, “That’s not The Hub!” It’s not as painful as the orbital decay and death of Trio, but it still stings.

BEST COUNTRY RECORD OF THE YEAR

In an odd twist, while Taylor Swift dumps country to embrace an ’80s pop sound, Sturgill Simpson turned an ’80s hit into a country classic. He gets underneath the slick veneer of When In Rome’s “The Promise.” Give it a listen and you’ll swear this was the original that was modernized all those decades ago.

Sturgill’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music is a masterpiece of country music especially for people who don’t like the micro-oxygenated Nashville sound. A blissful mix of heartbreak, determination, nostalgia and now. He’s on tour this fall and early spring so get out there and soak in Metamoderness of Sturgill.

BLU-RAY HEAVEN

Maleficent is Disney’s reworking of Sleeping Beauty that gives quite a bit of sympathy to the evil Maleficent. She wasn’t born bad. Once upon a time she was a winged fairy who flew around the Moors. She had fallen madly in love with a boy named Stephan who ultimately betrays her. He severely stabs her in the back in order to get his name on the list of future King. When Stephan becomes King, he has a fancy party to celebrate the arrival of his daughter named Aurora. So now people understand why Maleficent had a serious issue with the King. But this isn’t merely a fairytale revenge flick with a real motivation. And there are liberties taken with the original Disney movie. Angelina Jolie is perfectly cast as Maleficent. She’s able to alter the mythology of the evil fairy who originally was seen as just ticked off that she didn’t get invited to a party. Elle Fanning holds down her part of the screen when faced with Angelina. Her Princess Aurora is doesn’t come off as snoozy. It’s good to see Sam Riley in a role that doesn’t make him a cult rock star out of Manchester. Far as reworked fairytales go, this one works for me and my daughter.

The Blu-ray comes with a DVD and a Digital HD access to the film. You can take this fairytale everywhere which is good news for a parent. The bonus features include plenty of deleted scenes. There’s short pieces about the special effects and reworking the story to give a little motivation for certain deeds. There’s a whole segment on the various head wraps that Maleficent wears. Here’s Elle Fanning talking about getting to be Aurora.

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks is a more musical sequel to last year’s Equestria Girls. The movie takes us back to the alternate universe where the Ponies look more like real girls even though they still have their various pony characteristics. Turns out there’s trouble in Canterlot high with a trio of musical gals who seem to feed off the anger of others. They’re called the Dazzlings. The Equestria Girls need help from Princess Twilight since they fear something is up with the Dazzlings. The normal school music night has been turned into a Battle of the Bands. If Princess Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and the other Equestria girls don’t win the musical competition, something evil might happen. This one features a lot of songs that are bound to get fans humming along. There’s demonic battle in the third act that frightened my daughter. The Blu-ray includes the DVD and a way to get a digital copy. There’s an audio commentary and six prequel shorts to set up the action. There’s even a sing-a-long for “Better Than Ever,” “Battle” and “Rainbooms Battle.” Here’s Josie’s reaction after seeing the film in the movie theater.

VINEGAR SYNDROME

Raw Force is a brilliant piece of out of control exploitation cinema. The film dares to unit the twin titans of grindhouse superstars Cameron Mitchell (Without Warning) and Vic Diaz (The Big Bird Cage). The Burbank Kung Fu Club is ready to go on a big adventure. They’re heading to Warrior Island in the Pacific. Why? Because according to legend, this is the burial ground of martial arts fighters who screwed up royally. What’s worse for these fatal fighters is that they’ve been brought back to life by cannibal monks. But even before the Club gets to their destination, there’s a lot of action on the high seas. First it’s a throwdown in the Philippines. Cameron Mitchell doesn’t perform his usual three day stint on the shoot. He’s here for the long haul. While on the sea, they get attacked by pirates in all out affair. There’s naked kung fu moments. Jillian Kessner of Firecracker fame plays a cop who uses more than her nightstick to subdue. The voyagers make it to Warrior Island. Little do they know what’s in store when they encounter a group of monks led by Vic Diaz. They are cannibals who only like young ladies. This is turning into the worst package cruise ever, but the most exciting exploitation film of 1982. The bonus features include a phone interview with Not of This Earth‘s Jim Wynorski about re-editing the film before release. Director Ed Murphy explains how he ended up at the helm of this masterpiece. Along with the Blu-ray is a DVD in case you want to watch this while on your own Kung Fu cruise.

Dracula Sucks is an all star version of the X-rated vampire film. This was what people watched before True Blood. Renfield has issues sleeping after the death of his father. So he’s checked into a clinic run by John Leslie and Kay Parker. While recovering, he’s lured to a nearby place to bring back Country Dracula Jamie Gillis) from the grave. Will the vampire suck the county dry? Along for the fun is Annetta Haven, John Holmes and Seka. That’s like an adult version of The Love Boat without pants. Strangely enough, Jaimi Gillis is more seductive with a full beard. The big bonus feature is the recut version that was shipped out as Lust at First Bite. This was put out to take advantage of the release of the more family friendly Love at First Bite mainstream vampire flick. It has a lot of alternate footage so you’re not merely watching a snipped R-rated version of the original. It’s more like a second and shorter pass at making the movie in post-production. An interesting note is that cinematographer Hanania Baer would be behind the camera for Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. Bill Mangold gives an audio commentary that sheds light on this vampire production.

Hot & Saucy Pizza Girls puts John Holmes in charge of the greatest pizza joint ever opened in 1978. He has an all girl staff that delivers hot pies using skateboards to speed up the process. What makes his operation the best in the area isn’t the crust, but the extras that the ladies deliver. Among Holmes staff is the innocent eyed Desiree Cousteau and Candida Royalle. The pizza place has its issues including staff stalkers. But that doesn’t stop Holmes and the ladies from serving up the best deep dish in the region. Along with the trailer is a revealing interview with producer Damon Christian. He tells an amazing story about how John Holmes burned down the pizza joint at the end of the shoot. There’s also tales from doing business with people that might be mobsters. Filmmaking students can learn a lot from Damon’s life experience making this Pizza Girls epic. They also have the trailer on the DVD.

Peekarama: Red Heat, The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire & Peeping Tom is a trio of adult action from director Ray Dennis Steckler. Most people would almost recognize the name since also made The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies which ended up on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. None of this films will be aired on basic cable. Red Heat is an adult murder mystery. While a crew is making an adult feature film, someone is snuffing the cast and Best Boys. It’s a naked Whodunit. Mad Love of a Hot Vampire is Dracula’s brides going out for a drink. But they don’t merely want to suck a few necks. Peeping Tom is about a peeping Tom. The big plus for this film is a lot of footage of early ’70s Las Vegas when the town was losing it’s sixties sheen and gaining that ’70s smut feel. These films carry Steckler’s normal production quality. They’re rather rough affairs. You won’t be seeing Tom Servo cracking wise in the bottom of the screen.

Peekarama: Carnal Haven & Her Lust Fling is another double feature from Carlos Tobalina. He was very prolific in an industry where you didn’t spend Kubrick time making a feature film. Carnal Haven is the classic approach to an adult filmmaking with the theme of education and therapy in order to save a marriage. Sharon Thorpe and Ken Scudder are the Masters and Johnson characters that run their specialized clinic. Their techniques have an amazing success rate. They even cure a couple where he’s a dog and she’s a drunk. How come Dr. Drew doesn’t teach the 69th Step on Couples Therapy? There’s quite a few stars including Joey Silvera, John Leslie and Desiree West. They all learn the secret of the Inca Knot. Her Last Fling is like a really dirty version of Love Story. Sandy Pinney gets the news that she’s got a terminal disease and there’s no hope. So what does she do? She blows her life savings and lives large in Las Vegas. She blows it all and a little more in a debaucherous time. But she also falls in love with a guy in the midst of her carnal cravings. How can she find love when there’s so little time left? Paul Thomas, Desiree West and Candida Royalle are part of this warped Make A Wish moment.

WEIRD AL-MANIA

UHF: 25th Anniversary Edition captures Weird Al Yankovic at his matinee best. He’s a loser with big dreams that won’t be fulfilled in the fast food industry. Through a twist of fate and a family connection, he gets hired to run a UHF station that’s considered the ratings loser in the market. They get constantly slaughtered by the huge network station run by Kevin McCarthy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Al revolutionizes the channel by refusing to compete with the big boys. Instead he comes up with the bizarre and freakish to lure views to channel 62. The first major change is by allowed the station’s janitor (Seinfeld‘s Michael Richards) to host a kiddie cartoon show. The janitor’s warped way of doing things immediately connects with kids and grown ups that are rather childish. This is just the launching point for other creative shows like Wheel of Fish that allows Gedde Watanabe to not merely be a dick joke in Sixteen Candles. How good is this film? You’ll ignore the fact that no man in his right mind would want to hook up with Victoria Jackson. Plus Fran Drescher’s voice isn’t so grating. The movie is a Weird Al overdose of spoofs and satires involving music, movies and TV. Al even does his best Sly. The Blu-ray is loaded with goodies. There’s the recent Weird Al panel at the San Diego Comic-con. It’s like being there without waiting six hours in line. There’s a bunch of deleted scenes although Al spares the ones that were extremely lame. They have the music video for the theme song. There’s lots of promotional materials including pictures of the VHS of UHF.

The Compleat Al was a great way for Weird Al to show off his beloved videos in 1985 under the guise of a bogus biography. This originally aired on Showtime as a special. It came out on VHS to the approval of geeks. But after being out of print since the 20th century, the DVD has arrived with all the nonsense, weirdness, tall tales and an occasional fact. This is more fun than Al’s Behind the Music special. The movie mixes real moments with things like Al’s performance at Monterey Pop that ended with his accordion on fire. We get the inside scoop from Doctor Demento. There’s even quite a few clips from his Al TV takeover of MTV. Al discusses his secret meeting with Michael Jackson that led to “Eat It” getting approval. Amongst the fun are Al’s early music videos including “Eat It,” “I Lost on Jeopardy,” “Like a Surgeon” and “Dare to Be Stupid.”

SCREAM FACTORY

The Doctor and the Devils brings together the unlikely talents of Mel Brooks, Dylan Thomas, Freddie Fisher and Timothy Dalton. The story is based on the morbid tale of Burke and Hare. These two gentlemen discovered amazing paydays in Edinburgh, Scotland. Future James Bond Timothy Dalton plays a doctor at a medical school that’s having a major crisis. There’s an overflow of anatomy students and a lack of corpses. He’s getting sick of cutting up farm animals during classes. Jonathan Pryce (Brazil) and Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) are two low lifes who hatch a plan to get rich by finding corpses to unload at the school. Trouble is that it’s hard to find people who are dead and want to donate their bodies to science. The duo decide to be self-starters and murder their future product. This leads to plenty of gruesome and comic moments. Dalton is torn with his new suppliers. His pal (Room With a View‘s Julian Sands) doesn’t trust him. But he can’t lose students to the rival med school run by Patrick Stewart (X-Men & ST:TNG). Things get extra touchy since Sands is hanging out with a hooker (Twiggy from The Muppet Show) so he gets to know way too much about how the bodies are being located. Where does Mel Brooks come into this? Turns out Mel produced it for his company. That wasn’t too outlandish a project since Mel had made David Lynch’s The Elephant Man. The Doctor‘s director Freddie Francis was the cinematographer for The Elephant Man. Freddie had also directed a few films for Hammer and Amicus so he understood completely how to make this movie appear a touch horrific yet classy. Sadly the film didn’t do amazingly well at the box office since none of these brilliant actors were major stars in 1985 except Twiggy. The bonus features include a 15 minute documentary where Mel Brooks explains how he put it together with the other producers. There’s an audio commentary with Steve Haberman discusses the historical facts of Burke and Hare along with all the movie factoids.

Monkey Shines was George Romero’s attempt to scare moviegoers with a living ape and not a bunch of zombies. Jason Beghe (Californication) is a fit type of guy who gets hit while jogging. This leaves him a quadriplegic. While he can operate his mechanical wheelchair, he needs help for simple things. Along with a nurse, he gets a trained monkey. The two bond fast. However their connection comes with a major price. Turns out the monkey is willing to do Jason’s worst desires. This includes going after his girlfriend (Northern Exposure‘s Janine Turner) among others. Can he stop the monkey? Can anyone believe this is happening? How can such a cute monkey be a rabid killer? Can the monkey take over Jason’s mind? It’s a film that remind you to be careful around service animals. The movie was met with a lot of resistance when it came out from people who dealt with monkey. In the interest of full disclosure, I used to work with executive producer Gerald S. Paonessa at the North Carolina School of the Arts. He brought George to the school where we talked about his films. George was quite shocked at the protests against the film. The bonus features cover this issue along with Romero’s battles with Orion executives. There’s a fine documentary that covers the entire film and its legacy. Romero gives an audio commentary that lets him say more about his movie. Along with deleted scenes, there’s the alternate ending that Orion used on a reissue to make up for them screwing up the original ending. While this isn’t a collector’s edition, it really is. You might not want to watch this with a monkey. You don’t want to give them any ideas.

The Dark Half brought together George Romero with Stephen King. The duo created a movie about a man with dual identities. Timothy Hutton seems to be a likable kinda guy. He has a family. He teaches at a college and he writes a book or two. Turns out Hutton wrote a few more books under the name George Stark. He decides to stop writing as Stark and even hosts a fake burial for the fake writer. Except out from the grave comes the real Stark. He’s not happy that he’s been killed. He’s ready to get his revenge on Hutton. Hutton is great as both the sincere nice guy and the extra slimey Stark. Romero told a group of us that when they made the movie, Hutton had two different trailers to use depending on which character he was playing that day. He really got into the Stark mode. Stark’s trailer was constantly trashed. He even had his girlfriend (one of those 3 named actresses from the ’90s) show up dressed in hooker garb when he was in Stark mode. It helped Hutton’s performance so this method weirdness was worth it. The bonus features include a commentary track from Romero. There’s a documentary that covers the troubled productions. Romero talks about having to alter the ending because the birds weren’t being cooperative. There’s deleted scenes, the original electronic press kit and the storyboards. Once more a collector’s edition from Scream Factory in all, but package art.

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings is the unexpected sequel to Stan Winston’s original horror film. The original didn’t do too well in theatrical release, but was a good renter in the age of video. Thus is made sense for a producer to crank out a straight to VHS sequel. Back when there were videostores in the mid-90s, people would pick up the sequels when they were having movie nights. Whether it be Jaws, Godfather or Where the Boys Aren’t, renting a pile of the same films was not unusual. So Stan Winston’s monster was brought back to life with Jeff Burr directing. The new cast does not resemble the old one. They went extra young on this one with Amy Dolenz (The Monkees‘s daughter) and Soleil Moon Frye (Punky Brewster) in the leads. They’re running with some bad boys of the ’90s. The kids get in trouble and stupidly use the magic to revive a woman not knowing about Pumpkinhead. The creatures arises and has a field day with the new breed. The film was released straight to VHS and even the DVD was full frame. But now you can see it properly framed for 1.85:1. Director Burr’s commentary explains how the production was in full motion by the time he was hired. “Recreating the Monster” as the effects crew discuss working with Pumpkinhead. There’s behind the scenes footage that’s mostly interviews. This is a fun addition to have next to Scream Factory’s Pumpkinhead Blu-ray.

Nightbreed:The Director’s Cut allowed Clive Barker the chance to finally release the version of his 1990 horror film that was butchered by the studio. This isn’t merely extra footage, but entire scenes were recut with alternate takes. It’s not the film you saw on VHS back in 1992. Enjoy.

DVD SHELF

Sgt. Bilko, The Phil Silvers Show: The Complete Series finally delivers all the greatness that was the ultimate hustler show. All four seasons are finally in one boxset so I no longer have to set the DVR to record the show in the wee hours on Me-TV. The glory of Phil Silvers is here for all to worship. His Sgt. Bilko character remains the greatest hustler in the history of the world. Even stuck on a remote base in Kansas, Bilko schemed to control the world and take every penny from his privates. Why? Because if he didn’t, someone worse would rip them off. The show set the tone for military comedies to come. If your only exposure to Bilko is that crappy Steve Martin movie, you have been ripped off. Sit back and enjoy the blissful greatness of Bilko. There are a lot of bonus features including vintage interviews with Phil Silvers. His daughters talk about growing up with a man considered a comic genius who wasn’t a comedian. There’s various specials including an episode of the short lived The New Phil Silvers Show.

The Unauthorized Saved By The Bell Story is tawdry TV biopic madness at its prime. What happens when you give a bunch of hormonally amped up teens their own show, money and attention? A parents nightmare and a viewers dream is what you get. The best part of the film is that you get all the tales of Dustin Diamond without actually having to experience the real Dustin Diamond. The production goes into overdrive with the late ’80s fashions. It’s like an MTV Music Awards exploded on this cast. I’m now awaiting The Untold Hangtime since rumors about that show had most of the cast driving hard on each other.

M Squad: The Complete TV Series – Special Edition is what made Lee Marvin a TV badass before he made the leap to cinema. He plays Lt. Frank Ballinger of the Chicago police’s murder investigation unit. Thus the “M.” He’s completely no nonsense during his investigations. But unlike Dragnet, when Frank meets with resistance, he’ll rough up a suspect. The series ran on NBC from 1957 to 1960. Count Basie ended up doing a swingin’ theme song. There’s a great jazz vibe to the soundtrack to give Frank a sophisticated edge. The boxset has all 117 episodes of gunshots, corpses and intrigue. The Besides Lee Marvin there were guest appearances from cinema tough guys James Coburn, Charles Bronson and Burt Reynolds. The black and white action and Pall Mall cigarettes give it a fine film noir atmosphere. This is a perfect boxset to have with Peter Gunn, The Naked City and Mike Hammer. What’s interesting is that M Squad is what got spoofed into Police Squad! The theme music, the opening credits, the monologue and Marvin’s character being named Frank all played into the short-lived comedy. The bonus DVD features Marvin’s guest spots on Wagon Train, Checkmate, The Virginian and Lee Marvin Presents Lawbreaker.

Annie Oakley: The Complete Series is a touch of classic cowboy action that ran from 1954 to 1957 in syndication. The series wasn’t completely based on the Wild West legend. This Annie Oakley played by Gail Davis isn’t on the road with adventure shows showing off her sharp shooting skills. She’s a good natured gal with pigtails and a few six-shooters. She lives with her brother Tagg (Jimmy Hawkins) and their uncle Deputy Sheriff Lofty Craig. Like all good western characters, Annie had a great horse named Target. Most of the action had her helping out her uncle when it comes to keeping the area safe for law-abiding citizens. Easy to imagine my nana getting into this show when she finally got a television in the house. There’s plenty of great guest stars on the 81 episodes. Alan Hale Jr (the Skipper on Gilligan’s Island) L.Q. Jones (The Wild Bunch), James Best (Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on Dukes of Hazzard), Denver Pyle, Fess Parker, Slim Pickens and Keye Luke all got to ride around with Annie. What makes this collection great and worth grabbing for you TV western lovin’ loved ones is the bonus features that give the show a complete sense of context. The bonus features include the commercials from when the show was sponsored by Wonder Bread and Twinkies. “Pig-tails and Six-shooters” breaks down how the series brought a woman into the TV westerns. They have an audio interview with star Gail Davis. There’s a montage of all the Annie Oakley toys and coloring books that came out during the run. She was the Dora the Explorer of her time.

Quncy, M.E.: Season 7 is the penultimate release from the time when Jack Klugman made being a coroner a sexy job. Quincy lasted long enough on the air that he became the father of the elderly mysteries at this point. He’s Matlock‘s daddy. The show’s big push was exposing little known medical conditions and dangers into the public forum. Remember this was before America was overloaded with cable channels. This season opens with “Memories of Allison” when he finds an unconscious woman at a job fair. “Slow Boat to Madness” features the recent issue of passengers getting sick on cruise ships. Keep your eyes out for a youthful Tim Stack (Son of the Beach), John Riley (Scrubs) and Mimi Rogers. “Dead Stop” has truckers dumping toxic loads in future superfund cleanup sites. “Bitter Pill” has high schoolers popping away. Simon Oakland (Kolchak: The Night Stalker) is part of it. “Guns Don’t Die” puts Quincy on the trail of a murder weapon being passed around by killers. “Smoke Screen” has Philip Baker Hall (Boogie Nights) as a fire chief looking for an arsonist. “For the Love of Joshua” was the big show of the season as it dealt with a kid with Downs Syndrome who might have been allowed to die by a doctor with an agenda. Among the stars are Tyne Daly, Allan Arbus, Clu Gallagher, Colleen Dewhurst and Ellen Travolta. “The Shadow of Death” features a Vietnam vet with PTSD. “The Face of Fear” features the seductively frightening Jonathan Frakes (Dark Shadows). “The Mourning After” focuses on a kid dying as part of a college hazing ritual. This is still an issue in America. This is just another batch of fine murdering mysteries centered around Quincy and Sam (Robert Ito).

Ancient Aliens: The Complete Seasons 1-6 gathers together 82 episodes that ponder if things on Earth were manipulated from above. The show is a bit of In Search Of…. mixed with a major conspiratorial straw. The show covers a wide range of subjects that somehow come back to various alien encounters. Did the Aliens really live on Mars? Did Aliens communicate with Einstein? Did Aliens abduct the real Paul McCartney? Did aliens get squeamish watching Alien Autopsy? It’s all here for those who love their little green men. The series turned Giorgio A. Tsoukalos of Legendary Times Magazine into a superstar with his frazzled haircut and constant feeling that it was aliens. This really does make me wonder if the folks at the History Channel are getting great ratings on alien planets when this is beamed beyond the moon. There’s 23 DVDs packed with more encounters than a church retreat. The best part of the show is that you’ll get a real appreciation for the architecture of the ancient world even if it was all done by aliens.

BEVERLY HILLS – Very often love letters show up at the most inopportune times. Such is the sad fate of Julia Marchese who loved her job as the box office queen at the New Beverly Cinema so much that she made a documentary about the place. Her movie has become historic since by all accounts, Quentin Tarantino is gutting the heart of the revival cinema. The director who at one time was the charitable donor has taken control of the place. Many of the long time people have been shown the door including the original owner’s son. Julia basically got chased off the property by Tarantino’s people screwing with her hours.

Julia has put her documentary online so you can enjoy it at home. It was shot in 35mm so might be able to see it projected. Although probably not at the New Beverly Cinema.

Out Of Print from John T. Woods on Vimeo.

Out of Print is rather frustrating since my immediate reaction is to fly to Los Angeles and spend the weekend hanging out at the New Beverly. But now I know that the cinema magic shown in the film is gone. Tarantino has brought that to an end as he took control of his toy. How does Tarantino let someone go who has written an amazing, passionate love letter about everything Mr. Oscar Winner supposedly holds dear? There’s a report that he has replaced butter with Golden Flavoring. So that ought to be a hint. Who know what the future holds for the New Beverly, but thankfully Julia captured what is now an end of an era.

SCREAM FACTORY

The Vincent Price Collection II arrives just in time for Halloween with another 7 Blu-ray transfers from the Prince of Horror. The films are a mix of AIP and other studio’s that wanted Price to spook people in the seats. First up is The Raven. This was when Roger Corman broke out the comedy during his Edgar Allan Poe series. Price plays a magician who battles with Boris Karloff. Peter Lorre and Jack Nicholson get caught in the crossfire of spells. There’s an introduction and outro made by Price when this was run as part of a PBS movie series. The Comedy of Terrors brought back Price, Lorre and Karloff with the added bonus of Basil Rathbone. Price is an undertaker who is cutting corners by reusing coffins. Business is slowing down so Price schemes for a way to fill his funeral parlor with local corpses. This was directed by Jacques Tourneur (I Walked With A Zombie). The Tomb of Ligeia was the final Price-Corman-Poe film. It’s also the first one shot with a sunny disposition. Price has lost his wife Ligeia. He meets a new woman and falls madly in love with him. Little does he know that his wife doesn’t believe in “Till Death Do We Part.” The dead wife haunts the new wife. Price has an amazing pair of sunglasses in the film.

The Last Man on Earth is essential viewing. This is the film that was recently remade in the rather blah I Am Legend with Will Smith. This is the tale of how Vincent Price is one of the last humans on the face of the Earth. All those that roam at night are a vampire race. Price is holed up in his house and fights them off at night. He does his best to find a cure to restore humanity. But the vampires have had enough. The black and white film was shot in Italy. Price is immortal in the role. Dr. Phibes Rises Again brings back the twisted Dr. Phibes. Price is doing his best to revive his wife (Caroline Munro). He needs to reach a hidden spot under a pyramid. To get there, he has to kill a lot of people in freak ways. This should be considered a precursor to the Saw movies. The Return of the Fly is better than The Fly. There’s a better edge to this film that combines the mad scientist with the crime flick. Price as to worry about his nephew using the transporter device that merged man and fly. Naturally it happens. But to get things ugly, there’s an underworld crime element. So the monster needs to hunt down and kill a double crossing lab assistant. The black and white film is fulfilling. House on Haunted Hill is the classic William Castle tale of people stuck in a spooky place. The Blu-ray transfers of all the films give them new life on home video. Bonus features includes 20 minutes of Price trailers, segments on writer Richard Matheson, biographies on Price, tales of working with him and quite a few audio commentaries. This is another primo Price collection that will allow you to enjoy his fearful legacy.

The Squad is a highly effective military spookfest from Columbia. The film does a fantastic job at creating the unsteady atmosphere as a squad of nine soldiers touch down at an isolated military post to investigate what happened there. Things get tense very fast with the fog and shadows around what appears to be abandoned posts. Even worse for them is they can’t get outside communications going. They fear something is lurking around them. The tension keeps building as their numbers dwindle. Can they really kill what’s out there? The paranoia explodes on the screen. The Blu-ray transfer makes the fog looks dense as the soldiers do their best to see clearly. The bonus features include the trailer and a behind the scenes featurette.

BLU-RAY HEAVEN

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon was one of my favorite films from last year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The documentary takes us through the amazing life of a man whose highlight of his life wasn’t just the fact that Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin got high in his hotel room. He found himself as the manager and mastermind of Alice Cooper. He’s the man who put panties on a vinyl record and tossed a chicken to Alice on stage. The amount of pills and booze he could ingest allowed him to outlive a few of his acts. But he’s not a complete wildman. He made sure Groucho Marx’s final years weren’t a financial nightmare. He revolutionized the way celebrity chefs were treated with his deals at the Food Network. He gave us Anne Murray. He’s just a cool guy. Now you can experience his lifestory thanks to the best movie ever made my Mike Myers (Love Guru). Sadly there’s no bonus feature that lets you relax and enjoy the ocean view of Shep’s Hawaiian house. But I’m working on that detail.

Houdini brings back Adrien Brody in a role that he was born to assume. He really does give off an amazing Harry Houdini vibe in this History Channel biopic. The movie tracks how he went from doing magic tricks in brothels to becoming the greatest escape artist in the World. He is the word for any sort of impossible to conceive escape. The movie does show how he made the locks open. Brody doesn’t try to escape being Houdini. He knows how to bend and twist to achieve Houdini’s greatest stunts. The movie covers quite a bit of territory including his constant battle against those who claim they communicate with the dead. The Blu-ray includes the original version and a cut that’s 20 minutes longer. Odd are that you’ll watch the extended cut instead of the broadcast version. There’s also four featurettes that deal with the real man.

Obvious Child allows Jenny Slate to escape the curse of being a one and done cast member on Saturday Night Live. She stars as a stand up comic who is having a bad time. After her boyfriend breaks it off, she thinks she’s getting lucky with a guy. Except she also gets pregnant. Now here life and career is really in flux. What’s she going to do? Is she going to tell the guy? Can she make this part of her material? This is one of those indie films that allows a young talent to flourish in a role that doesn’t require them to dress as a superhero to show their human side. Slate is amazing in the lead. Polly Draper beings back her thirtysomething charm. The bonus features include the original short film version of the movie. There’s audio commentaries from the director Gillian Robespierre (what a cool last name) and Slate. There’s a behind the scenes featurette.

Thunder and the House of Magic is an animated family film about an abandoned kitty that gets adopted by an usual family. His new owner is a magician with his menagerie of magic critters and toys inside the huge house. Little Thunder is shunned by the old timers, but quickly gets into the family. He has to help stop the magician’s scheming relative that wants to sell his valuable house. It’s going to take a lot of effort and a touch of magic to kill the real estate deal. It’s a fun film for kids with plenty of action moments.

DVD SHELF

WKRP in Cincinnati: The Complete Series is finally out on DVD. Plenty of folks suffered through the butchered first season that Fox put out seven years ago. But Shout! Factory has come to the rescue with a version that might not be musically complete, but is musically competent. “Jennifer’s Date” has Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded” returned to newsman Les Nessman’s transformation moment. That alone makes this boxset a great way to remember the show that was the precursor to MTV as the fictional radio station promoted real musical acts with snippets of songs and posters hanging around the DJ booth. WKRP was an extremely special show since it represented the last great sitcom from MTM after giving us The Bob Newhart Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The show’s ability to mix the dramatic with comic moments makes it more than just a chucklefest like other sitcoms of the late ’70s and early ’80s that have slipped off the playlist over the decades. Having worked at a college radio station and hung out with real radio people, WKRP is more realistic than Hardcore Pawn. The episodes give a great insight to how a radio station worked back then. It also predicted the sad rise of Clear Channel nation that destroyed the soul of so many radio stations. The boxset contains all 88 episodes (two of them were hour long specials) from the four seasons it lasted on CBS.

For those concerned about music replacements, Shout! Factory has cleared about 80 percent of the original songs that played. They were able to replace most of the lost music with genre clones. During “Turkeys Away,” Pink Floyd’s “Dogs” originally played in the studio. Somehow Pink Floyd’s people didn’t want to play ball which is a shame since when was the last time you heard a track from Animals on your Clear Channel monolith? The song gets replaced by a clone with the same tone including a barking dog. Thus Mr. Carlin’s joke makes sense. Rewatching the episodes made me realize how amazing Loni Anderson was in the role of Jennifer. She wasn’t merely eye candy. She had a natural comedic talent that made Jennifer not look like a gold digger, but a woman who knew how to enjoy life and get a lot of blenders from guys. Another revelation was just how great Jan Smithers was at making Bailey such a shy character with grand plans. The duo were more than the new Ginger and Mary Ann on the screen. The bonus features include the cast reunion at the Paley Center where they announced Shout! Factory was putting out this boxset. There’s also time with Gary Sandy as he remembers his time as programming director. He still has great hair. Normally people complain when a boxset comes out that they already bought the first season. You’ll want to replace that first season boxset with WKRP in Cincinnati: The Complete Series. This is a great Christmas present for your uncle who gets cranky that Antenna TV only runs WKRP on Sunday nights.

The Red Skelton Show: The Early Years 1951 – 1955 takes us back to the dawn of network television. Red Skelton was already a comic star of movies and radio when he became a pioneer of TV. The show was a smash success and kept him on the air until the early 1970s. One of the anomalies of Skelton’s career was that he never syndicate his older TV shows. This made sense in that Red didn’t need to compete with his younger self. By the time he was off the air, TV stations were aching for color shows to run as syndication. So for decades his early shows lingered in the vaults. Thankfully his estate has finally brought out several of the episodes to share on DVD. The 11 DVD set includes 90 episodes that appear complete. They show off Red as so completely relaxed in front of the camera that it feels like he just thought up the entire show on the fly. He does all his characters including Clem Kadiddlehopper, the boxer Cauliflower mcPugg, Willie Lump Lump and the clownish Freddie the Freeloader. The half hour shows go fast as Red spends quite a bit of time trying not to crack up. He’s got plenty of guest stars including Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney and Vampira. Peter Lorre creeps up. Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis drop by to yuck it up before their break up. What’s the point of having your own show if Bob Hope won’t arrive? The bonus features include “America’s Clown: An Intimate Biography of Red Skelton” that gives details about the comedy legend. There’s also a special episode that has Walt Disney, Judy Garland and Bing Crosby. This is a fine comeback for a guy who stuck around so long on the TV dial.

The Big Valley: The Final Season brings to an end the Barkley family’s home on the range. This was a great family show with hard edge mom Victoria (Barbara Stanwyck) ruling the family that included Peter Breck, Lee Majors (The Six Million Dollar Man) and Linda Evans (Dynasty). The final season had a good batch of episode including “In Silent Battle” where Adam West (Batman) woes Linda even though he’s got a dark secret. In a weird coincidence, the telegraph operator is played by Olan Soule who would go on to voice Batman in the Super Friends cartoons until Adam West took back the role. “They Call Her Delilah” stars hottie Julie London. She even sings. “Presumed Dead” revives the career of Gavin MacLeod. Riding over from the Ponderosa on “Run of the Cat” is Pernell Roberts. In a Six Million Dollar Man preview, Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman) arrives for “The Long Ride.” “The Prize” features the FDA required visit from Bruce Dern. “Lightfoot” is Joe Don Baker. Anderson and Gavin come back for “Alias Nellie Handley.” “The Royal Road” is graced by Harold Gould, the dean of thespians. The 26 episodes are spread over 6 DVDs. The big bonus TV historian John Griffiths giving background on the series. Big Valley fans should be pleased that they now have all the episodes on DVD. Lee Majors would mosey over to The Men From Shiloh after this series went off the air.

Penny Dreadful: The Complete First Season lived up to the hype as it brought the creatures of the night into a Victorian era Monster Mash. The Showtime series promised to bring a lot of things back from the dead. First we get Timothy Dalton in his meatiest role since James Bond. He’s explorer Sir Malcolm Murray. He’s no longer poking around Africa since he has a major quest. He must find the vampire creatures that abducted his daughter Mina Harker. Helping him on his quest is Vanessa Ives (Casino Royale‘s Eva Green). She’s possessed in more than one way. Vanessa is the most complicated and frightening figure on TV. She goes into trances that will make you cringe in fear of which way she’ll go next. This is a pretty big feat in a show full of vampire creatures and Frankenstein monsters. The biggest resurrection in the series belongs to Josh Hartnett. After vanishing in an abyss of cute films, Josh has returned to the living as a Wild West show shooting expert. He gets hired by Sir Malcolm to plug a few undead critters. He also ends up getting tangled up with a dying hooker played by Billie Piper (Doctor Who). The show nails the proper atmosphere needed for a Victorian era horror story. There’s a lot of flesh on the screen since this is a Showtime series. The biggest shocker is that there’s only 8 episodes for the first season. This is a great show to binge watch before Halloween hits the Witching Hour.

Eternals brings the work of Neil Gaiman (Sandman) and John Romita Jr. to motion thanks to Marvel Knights animation. The comic book was originally started in 1976 by the legendary Jack Kirby. This animated special is from when Gaiman wrote a limited series back in 2006. Eternals deals with a group of eternal superheroes who have forgotten their pasts as they becoming absorbed in modern life. They get woken up to discover that their age old enemies are mounting a comeback. It’s a fine complicated tale with plenty of mythos action along with physical action. The animation once more preserves the original artwork as it gives it a sense of motion. All of Gaiman’s words are spoken by the characters. Will this series get stepped up to become the next Guardians of the Galaxy for the Marvel movies? Do really wish Marvel Knights could be allowed to animate Gaiman’s Sandman series, but that’s with Vertigo. Drats.

The Hercules Collection contains six movies from the ’60s when Italian Cinema was cranking out the barechested hunk epics. After Steve Reeves smashed the international box office with Hercules, every producer with a spaghetti stained tie went into overdrive with tales of ancient times when men were men and women wore sheer sheets. The Loves of Hercules gives us real life couple Mickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield being Hercules and a woman he loves. Jayne does her best to stay in the toga. The Trojan Horse has Steve Reeves not playing Hercules, but anytime the man is shirtless, he’s Hercules. Medusa Against The Son of Hercules looks like an AIP movie when the monster arrives. The Conquest of Mycenae stars former Tarzan Gordon Scott. The Triumph of Hercules pits him against seven guys who look like they escaped from Madonna’s pool party. Hercules Against the Sons of the Sun brings the legend to South America as he must save women from being sacrificed by the Incas. This one might not be based on fact. Overall the six titles are fun to watch when you’re in a Roman mood. It’s sad to think that movies are no longer a great place for bodybuilding hunks to become superstars. The movies are in pan and scan since most were released to American TV.

Mad Men: The Final Season Part 1 marks what seems like the comeback of Don Draper (Jon Hamm). He ended up crashing hard at the end of season six when he gave up his carefully crafted lie of a life to admit to all his childhood in a brothel. This led to him being forced into exile from his advertising firm. As the series returns, Don demonstrates that he’s not out of the game. He’s using a pal as a cover to submit pitches to the firm. What Don doesn’t know is that his sweet office space has been taken over by Lou Avery (Allan Havey). This uptight old Madison Avenue pro is the anti-Draper. He’s drab, uninspiring and a whiner. The guy does have a dream to come up with a cartoon like Underdog. This gets him in trouble. Don discovers that in order to get back into his office, he has to sign a brutal agreement. If he screws up this time, the company will take away his shares and send him packing. Can Don handle this humbling action? The most frustrating part of this split season is there’s only 7 episodes. They’re holding onto the final 7 for the Spring of 2015. Even such a short season is more satisfying than any network show with 22 episodes. The bonus features include historical pieces about what was going on in gay culture in the late 60s and the Chicago Eight trial. There’s even a bit about Robert Morse’s big song and dance moment as Bert Cooper makes a memorable exit from the building.

Perry Mason: Movie Collection Volume 4 is the last full boxset of Raymond Burr playing the iconic defense attorney. Burr was getting close to the end of his life, but he wasn’t going to stop freeing the innocent and getting the guilty bastards exposed. He’s not quite as mobile in these 6 made for TV movies. But he still has Della Street (Barbara Hale) as his secretary. There’s also plenty of murders happening all around him. “The Case of the Glass Coffin” makes Peter Scolari (Girls & Bosom Buddies) a magicians whose worst trick is knocking up his assistant. The now pregnant employee uses this as leverage to screw with the act. During a charity performance, she shows up dead at the end of a trick. Luckily Perry Mason is in the audience and ready to take on a new client. “The Case of the Fatal Fashion” makes Valerie Harper (Rhoda) a mean magazine writer who gets to discover if the Devil wears Prada when she’s murdered. “The Case of the Fatal Framing” fakes the death of David Soul (Starsky and Hutch). He’s an artist who unfakes his death when paintings are falsely attributed to him. “The Case of the Reckless Romeo” features the death of Geraldo Rivera. Talk about a give the people what they want episode. “The Case of the Heartbroken Bride” ruins a wedding party with a homicide. Luckily Perry Mason was at the ceremony. “The Case of the Skin-Deep Scandal” brings Morgan Fairchild on a tale of real backstabbing at a cosmetic company. There’s only two more Burr starring episodes left in the vault along with 4 substitute episodes to wrap things up in Volume 5.

My Little Pony: The Original Series takes us back to a time before Friendship is Magic. This show has a different set up than what kids enjoy on The Hub. The series is more wild with the ponies not exactly living the complete human lifestyle. They roam Pony Estates. They do have plenty of foes including grundles doing their best to ruin the four legged fun. They even have human friends that aren’t Equestria Girls. This series ran from 1986 to 1987. My daughter Josie wasn’t too put off by the changes of this early series. She immediately wondered why Minty wasn’t brought into the new show. The boxset has all 65 episodes spread on 4 DVDs.

The Little Penguin Pororo’s Racing Adventure is a wintertime speed flick. It’s a zippy tale about a little penguin who dreams of hitting it big in the world of snowmobile racing. These are not your normal skimobiles since they are like mini-rockets going across the snow. The movie features the vocal talents of Rob Schneider, Drake Bell, Anthony Anderson, Jon Heder and Jay Mohr. The action looks like it’ll be an amazing Oculus Rift game. A fine little film to watch while waiting this winter’s first snow storm.

NYPD Blue: Season 07 makes Detective Andy Sipowicz an emotional wreck. The previous season had his wife and police partner die. He has to keep it together for the sake of his son. He still doesn’t quite trust his new partner Danny Sorenson (Rick Schroder). Making matters worse is he’s got to go hard on Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) who is a cop that might have killed a suspect. Johnny Drama is in hot water and Sipowicz can’t stick to the Blue Silence. Things get worse at the police department when people attempt to set Sipowicz up on dates. The guy needs a little release in the tense times. There’s plenty of other ongoing stories including how Andrea Thompson’s estranged husband is part of an investigation. But this season’s success is completely on the shoulders of Franz. He completely transforms himself into a man on the edge of losing it with all that life has dished at him.

Alpha and Omega: The Legend of the Saw Tooth Cave is a spooky tale perfect for Halloween fights. A pack of young wolves are eager to be see what’s inside the ominous cave that looks like it has fangs. But their parents aren’t up for them going on such a foolish adventure. Guess who wins this battle of the wills? It’s a fine entry in the CGI series about the little wolfpack. For right now, this is a Walmart exclusive. The DVD includes access to the UltraViolet stream and download.

Lalaloopsy Babies: First Step brings even younger characters to the show about stitched together kids. The dolls flashback to their early days when they were fresh felt and buttons in the nursery. They share their first few adventures when they bonded as friends forever. While this is considered a movie, the action only lasts 45 minutes so you can start this a little bit before bedtime for your young one. My daughter was glued from start to finish and now wants a Lalaloopsy Baby for Christmas or any holiday before Christmas.

SlugtTerra: Return of the Elementals has new characters join the gang. This show dares to expose you to Slug Fu! That’s the slugslinger’s martial arts. This movie is all about the slug action. The Elementals are five slugs that have amazing powers that must be brought together to save Slugterra. There is an enemy that is doing it’s best to eliminate these special slugs. This is a movie that is perfect for the slug freaks in your life.

Pawn Stars: A Very Vegas Christmas Special unites the Rick Harrison empire for one special day. In this case, it’s for the holiday party. Chumlee wants to bring together the casts of American Restoration and Counting Cars with the employees of Pawn Stars. It’s a sweet, well meaning wish. The episode has people remember the best and worst deals from the previous year. The bonus features include Pawn Stars “Another Christmas Story” and American Restoration “One Horse Open Sleigh.”

The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams: Once Upon A Starry Night is the Christmas special that aired after the second season had wrapped up for the mountain man show. Grizzly thinks he’s going to have a quiet Christmas when he finds a lost boy and girl in the woods. He brings them back to his house to feed and shelter them. But now he’s got to head out and find the kids’ parents that are probably lost in the wilderness. Instead of a quiet Christmas, he must risk his lives to save a family. Ken Curtis (Gunsmoke) and Don Galloway (Ironside) guest star.

The John Wayne Collection is a two disc set from Timeless Media Group with five movies starring The Duke. McLintock is Wayne’s version of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Wayne gets to share the screen with Mauren O’Hara and Yvonne De Carlo (The Munsters). One of the ladies gets spanked. Jerry Van Dyke shows up with a banjo. The Desert Trail has Wayne accused of robbing the Rattlesnake Glutch Rodeo. Can he find the real bad guys before he’s hung high? Angel and the Badman is about a gunslinger who gets healed by a Quaker family. Can he give up his life of violence? Or do they need his gun to keep them safe? Paradise Canyon and Rainbow Valley also put Wayne back on a horse. The extras include interviews with Harry Carey Jr, Iron Eyes Cody and Yakima Canutt. There’s a documentary about John Ford. The big thrill is 40 minutes of great John Wayne trailers. This is a great stocking stuffer for dad.

The Soul Man: The Complete Second Season puts more preaching from Cedric “the Entertainer” on the air. “Get Thee Behind Me” starts the season with Cedric fighting a physical that involves a colonoscopy. He doesn’t want anything in his butt. “My Brother’s Keeper” sends their child Lyric to a boarding school. “Love Thy Neighbor” exposes what sort of parties Jamie Kennedy would throw if he lived next door to a minister. “Music and Lyric” puts the family in hot water when daughter puts a wicked rap on the internet. Will the congregation get down with the rap? The 10 episodes of this season allow Niecy Nash to expand as the minister’s wife who wasn’t expecting a holy life.

Life of Crime adapts Elmore Leonard’s The Switch with an all star cast. The book came out in 1978 so it’s predates Ruthless People. This is the tale of Tim Robbins who wants to dump his wife, Jennifer Aniston. Why? Because he’s sleeping with Isla Fisher. He fears the cost of divorce. But then a miracle occurs. His wife gets kidnapped by John Hawkes and others. They want a million dollars or they’ll kill her. As if Tim Robbins is weighing the options. The kidnappers aren’t happy that Tim wants them to do the dirty work. Also in the cast is Mark Boone Junior with all his eyeballs. Will Forte is part of the commentary track. There’s also access to UltraViolet so you can stream or download the film.

LOS GATOS – It’s been nearly a year since I killed my Netflix account and I really don’t miss it as much as others feared. There was a strange pang in my gut when I went online to cut the cord. A deep chill went down my spine from the future pain of not seeing red envelopes in my mailbox every again. But it had to be done.

I was a serious Netflix junky when I joined in the early Aughties. I used the 3 out plan as if it was the 8 out plan. Because of my situation, my mailman would drop fresh titles in the slot around 10 a.m. and I could have 2 or all three in the 5 p.m. mailbox that evening. I had memorized the pick up times for every mailbox within two miles of my house. I became good pals with Teddy the Mailman. We’d talk a bit while he sorted all the deliveries into the apartment mailboxes. He gave me the tip to tape a “Knock Please” directly over the front doorbell so people wouldn’t wake up the newborn daughter. We exchanged Christmas gifts instead of me just leaving a seasonal tip.

Some people used Netflix rentals to burn their own copies of films. That wasn’t me
I was an avid viewer. A cinema and TV junky who lived for his daily fix. Netflix fed my habit like no other and at a reasonable price. After dealing with the $4 a day VHS rental, Netflix’s low monthly price was salvation. It really was an all you can eat buffet of images. I watched more films in those early years than my time at film school. Unlike VHS, DVD promised me proper aspect ratios so I was really seeing the film instead of a pan and scan glimpse. I was finally able to make a huge dent in the Psychotronic Film Guide. It was so easy to dig through an entire director’s work or pick through a genre. I could catch up on TV shows that I’d only heard about, but never glimpsed because of lame local TV programmers. My queue had 300 titles and I could turn those over in months instead of years.

In the beginning of our relationship, Netflix did its best to grab up all the DVDs that were being put out by major and minor distributors. They even had copies of the documentary I associate produced. Once I learned the secret of sending in DVDs on Saturday to ensure the new release titles arrived on Tuesday, it was bliss. This was heaven and the reason why I rarely stepped inside the local videostores to rent anything off the shelf. When all those stores shut down, I didn’t shed a tear. There would be no blues sung for Blockbuster as it went belly up. I was too busy drowning in a sea of red Netflix return envelopes.

But then Netflix CEO Jeff Hastings began to destroy all the things that made his company something I would defend in public. Slowly he stopped stocking all the titles that were coming out on DVD. The fresh cult items weren’t popping up on the queue. The ones he did have started to disappear. The maybe we’ll get it portion of my list grew rapidly as rare DVDs became extinct. He made deals with the major studios to stop offering new titles until a month after their release in retail stores. Somehow he wanted me to think that this was an amazing deal that I would embrace. Even when the new titles were offered, there seemed to be fewer copies offered. It would take months to finally have a fresh title come off the queue. Odds were high it’d arrive the same night of the HBO premiere. Hasting’s big focus was the streaming service.

This was the future of the company since it turned them into a true entertainment machine like Time-Warner, MTV Networks and Starz. You want to watch a movie without commercials, you could cut the cable TV cord (although not your cable modem) and just let Netflix entertain your evening. No longer would you have to wait days to see your movie or TV show. It was instant gratification. Netflix even makes its own shows like HBO and Showtime including “House of Cards,” “Orange Is the New Black” and the new season of “Arrested Development.” The original shows wouldn’t be made available to the Netflix members that just wanted to rent shiny discs. The DVD portion of the company became a burden to Hastings. He had to tolerate those old luddites who weren’t going to leap into the future of streaming. But he didn’t have to love us anymore.

While nobody at Netflix is going to admit it, the company seemed bent on making the DVD renter get frustrated and swap over. The company was sick of paying postage and employees that worked at the warehouses receiving and shipping the DVDs. So they let quality go to Hell. This is the same business strategy employed in the late ’80s by record companies when they screwed with vinyl to make sure we’d be happier just paying a little more to get the album on CD. Netflix would wait an extra day before claiming they’d received a DVD from me. I know that this was being done since I would send 2 discs in the same envelope and yet they arrived a day apart at the warehouse. More and more DVDs would show up looking like they’d been used as a beer coaster or with cracked inner holes. The quality control seemed to be a forgotten element. The lack of new titles became frustrating. Red Box would tease me at what I couldn’t get from Hastings. Netflix just wasn’t fun anymore. Which is the big reason why I went online and killed my membership.

I didn’t go cold turkey. A friend had left their password in my smart TV so I could watch the streaming version. But instead of being my new best friend, Netflix streaming became an annoying neighbor that teased me with promises and only came up with excuses when it counted.

The streaming version of Netflix became equally frustrating as the DVD version. Anytime my kid would ask about a movie that wasn’t in my personal stash, I’d naturally search for it in the Netflix catalogue. Instantly I’d be told that it didn’t exist, but they’d suggest something that the kid never desired as a substitute. Even the grown up titles seemed as frustratingly limited as the OnDemand selections offered by Cinemax. Every day a movie I wanted to watch would no longer be offered. Often I’d try to binge watch TV episodes only to get the second show to refuse to load up. Or the resolution quality would drop to VHS levels. Sure it was enjoyable to catch the new season of Arrested Development and the first season of House of Cards. But the seasons were short and you could watch them all in a day or two. Then what was I supposed to do for the rest of the month? Most of the time was waiting for that stupid “loading” bar to crap out on me. When my friend canceled their streaming account, I didn’t feel the need to even use the free trial month to extend the experience.

Netflix is embraced as the future of entertainment delivery, but for me, the company is in the past. It doesn’t feel like the brave solution for television. Hastints is the lame local TV programmer who acts like he’s so superior in taste when he’s purely pedestrian. But since he’s appealing to pedestrian crowd, Netflix won’t worry about falling down anytime soon. For me, I’ll just now mourn the loss of Dave’s Videodrome because it’s time to realize the destruction that I contributed to happening in a disruptive moment.

NFL SET FOR FALL

The NFL is riding high. The ratings at amazing. They make billions off their TV contracts. There seems to be no limit for growth. Except the ceiling is about to be hit. Think that’s unthinkable? Look at what happened to NASCAR.

The big thing that drives the sport appears to be Fantasy Football. It doesn’t seem like ESPN can do a single real player update without telling the viewers how it’ll affect their Fantasy Football team. Notice that sports announcers won’t reflect how a coach’s decision to go for a field goal instead of a touchdown will affect a betting line. Somehow Fantasy Football where a billion dollars is wagered by fans wanting to win their league isn’t viewed as a gambling operation by EPSN and the NFL Network. But Fantasy Football at its core is all about the money. Instead of picking if a team wins or loses, you get to create a mutual fund of players from different teams that can all be winners even if their team sucks. The person with the winning “team” gets the big bucks. At some point, people are going to tire of the fantasy game. This will happen the same way people tired of Boy Bands, MySpace and Robot Fighting. Their mothers will call them up for tips on who to draft and the game loses all its charm.

The second big threat to cause the league to go downhill is a reluctance for parents to let their kids play football. Mothers are finally understanding that concussions aren’t cool. That overbearing coaches who have the kids practicing in 100 degree weather with the warning that “water is for pussies” aren’t colorful. That junior high kids shouldn’t have the knees of an 80 year old grandmother. If Mom doesn’t want junior to be a football hero, who will be the NFL player 10 years down the road? The concussion business is only going to get worse as research gets clearer. We are now being told of guys who played 10 years in the pros getting brain damage that leads to depression and suicide. A few reports have gotten out about guys who only played in college having Hall of Fame symptoms. But there’s a lot of men who are suffering that merely played in high school. I know a couple men who have the same complaints as the pros of memory loss and depression, but never got a scholarship to a SEC school. They have fond memories of high school where their coach demanded they lead with their helmet during tackles. They had more concussions that dates with cheerleaders. They were told to walk it off when they had their bell rung.

When Robin Williams killed himself, did anybody ponder if his time playing high school football contribute to his depression? The family probably didn’t care about getting Williams’ head scanned for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. But he did play back when coaches didn’t give a crap about the health of students. Remember that most concussion occur during practice when players have to give their all so the coach knows they’re ready to play and not be on the bench.

The NFL is doing its best to make people ignore the whole concussion business by attempting to pay attention to it. The other night Roger Goodell and a few concerned mothers had a lame infomercial on the NFL Network insisting that it’s good to let your kid play football. It had all the in-depth sincerity of Vince pimping the Shamwow. Goodell wants to calm everyone’s fears without having to really do any of that science business. He must keep the feeder chain intact. He needs those Pop Warner kids to keep on coming. How about this, before a parent wants to decide if their kid should play football, maybe they can take a peek at Earl Campbell’s knees.

The Ray Rice ugliness is also causing people to question the point of football players. Goodell thought he was being a badass for suspending Rice for a whole two games after knocking out his future wife in an Atlantic City elevator. During a preseason game, the Baltimore Ravens fans gave Rice a big standing ovation when he hit the field. Who knew throwing a knockout punch at a loved one could make you beloved. The NFL spends so much time and money trying to make women embrace the sport. And yet the sport only suspends a guy for two games for beating up a prime demographic? Then when the inside the elevator footage gets leaked out, Goodell and the Ravens finally take what Rice did seriously. Maybe it was the whole spitting on a woman twice before knocking her out that got to Goodell? Such hypocrisy should be expected for a multi-billion corporation doing its best to protect the brand. Goodell learned nothing from Penn State. He did the least he could do to hide a nasty situation. The Ravens wanted their player back on the field. This is the same team and league that had no problem with Ray Lewis being part of a double homicide. ESPN now has to act like they were duped by their semi-support of Ray Rice. EPSN also had no problem hiring Ray Lewis and letting him talk about Ray Rice. Sure Lewis claims his situation is different. Lewis’ victims didn’t get to marry him.

NASCAR used to think it was never going to stop growing in popularity. It was poised to be the next NFL. Now their ratings are slumping. Fans are no longer coming out to the race track. NASCAR keeps changing their championship to excite the meh fans. And their star racer ran over a driver on a dirt track. Now it’s the NFL’s turn to realize the game can change.

VINEGAR SYNDROME

Graduation Day is an early stab at the slasher genre during the time of Friday 13th and Prom Night. The school year is wrapping up at Midvale High School, but there might be a few less students collecting their diplomas at the commencement ceremony. There’s a killer on the loose and it’ll be a bit of time before anyone realizes that these aren’t independent accidents. Who could have killed the school’s top female track star? There’s a lot of suspects especially ones still wearing leisure suits in 1981. The big star of the film is Christopher George (Rat Patrol) as the school’s driven track coach. The film was produced by Troma who had it originally distributed by Columbia Pictures. The movie was a huge hit back in 1981 when the kids were aching to see fellow students hunted down and killed by mysterious strangers. Today’s teens much prefer The Hunger Games where they get to hunt down and kill classmates. While Vinegar Syndrome has cleaned up the image for Blu-ray release, they’ve maintained the gritty feel to the low budget production. You’ll feel a bit dusty when the killer wanders through the dirty boiler room of the school. The musical moments really get to shine at the dance scene. The bonus features include interviews with star Patch MacKenzie, Director, Herb Freed, producer David Baughn and editor Martin Jay Sadoff. Baughn gives a commentary track along with one from The Hysteria Continues.

Peekarama: Cry for Cindy, Touch Me & Act of Confession is a triple feature from director Anthony Spinelli. The three films have a little fetish for everybody looking for a Times Square flashback. Cry For Cindy copes with the suicide of a call girl. What drove her to such a decision? Her funeral turns into stories about Cindy and the various things she did to make clients happy. Touch Me is a rather feel good story from Spinelli. A bunch of hot couples meet up for their encounter group. Except they do more than sit around in chairs, drink coffee and whine about their day. These people are ready to undress and face their mental issues that prevent them from experiencing total pleasure. This film seems like a great episode of HBO’s After Dark documentary series. Act of Confession is a fine piece of nunsplotation. A young woman gets ready to become a full time nun in the convent. To prepare herself for the major event, she makes sure she’s ready for a life that pays little mind to the libido and the desires of the flesh. Don’t watch this with your Holy Roller Great Aunt in the room. This one was transferred from the only surviving 16mm print so it’s a bit more grainy than the first two films. This give the movie the perfect forbidden feeling. The three films are spread over 2 DVDs to keep them looking better than when they were released in the early 1970s.

Peekarama: Mai Lin Vs. Serena & Oriental Hawaii is a double feature from director Carlos Tobalina. Mai Lin vs. Serena is a rather meta movie. The two starlets are in a competition to see which one of them can earn the right to star in Carlos Tobalina’s next major adult film. The two ladies do their darndest to top each other in how they can heat up the screen. Jade Wong and Herschel Savage get into the various demonstrations of pleasure. The joke of course is that both ladies are going to win since this is Tobalina’s movie. It’s kinda like Survivor except much more interesting than a bunch of unwashed people in the wilderness. Oriental Hawaii is a precursor to AirBnB. And older couple decide to make a little cash renting out the rooms in their house. They tell their grown children to share rooms or else. Well the else turns out to be an orgy with the new renters. They score a couple of college girls in the guise of May Lin and Jade Wong. These two women aren’t afraid of doing more than renting a bed in the house. Both films feature their trailers.

Prisoner of Paradise once more gives us that wonderful Polynesian sets that Bob Chinn gave introduced us to in Sadie. This time the set is being used for completely evil purposes. The new residents are Nazis operating in the Pacific. The only two things that can stop their evil plan is John Holmes and…John Holmes’s johnson. Holmes gets to flex his acting muscle by playing a sailor who ends up stranded on an uncharted island in ocean. He figures he’s just got to deal with the Japanese. But no. There amongst the islanders is an output of Hitler’s dream. Mainly a fat Nazi guy and his two hot assistants including the platinum blonde beauty of the legendary Seka. The things John Holmes has to do to save American in World War II should have given him a Presidential Medal of Something from Bill Clinton. Jade Wong also appears as one of the non-Nazis. Chinn’s wonderful set does its job of making things look more realistic than the normal adult feature period piece set.

BLU-RAY HEAVEN

The World Wars is the History Channel’s interesting way to connect World War I and World War II. The group biography follows how the major figures of World War II were transformed by their experiences in World War I. If you’re like an average student, World War I is the overlooked war. Mainly this is from an education system where American History classes ran out of school days right after the Civil War. World War II was something that always got attention on the weekends thanks to McHale’s Navy and Hogan’s Heroes. But World War I just lacked the public relations push to matter. Part of it can be blamed on the lack of color footage. Trench warfare just never had the same pull like an atomic bomb. But this great conflict which was original as “The War to End All Wars” shaped the men such as George Patton, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Benito Mussolini, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle and Adolph Hitler. This is not a six hour mini-series that will sum up everything you need to know about both Wars. People who were not listed previously will not get that much coverage. It is important to recognize what past experiences allowed Patton to view battles that gave him the attitude that powered his tank corp. There’s an hour worth of bonus footage that was cut from the film so your dad will want to watch it again. It’s good to see the History Channel didn’t try to connect all of these historically significant leaders to items being sold on Pawn Stars.

DVD SHELF

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: The Complete First Season is a rather amazing bit of action television. The series picks up where The Avengers left off. Although this is a semi-alternate universe where the major superheroes are only discussed. The agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. must deal with the up and coming superheroes. The crew is led by Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg). This leads to a major mystery since Agent Coulson didn’t do so well during The Avengers. There are a few cameos from the big Marvel movie stars including Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders). The team hopes around the world in a special plane that includes Coulson’s prize Corvette. The show works because it’s able to get audiences used to characters that just might crop up in the upcoming Marvel major movies. There’s a major geek out moment when Patton Oswald appears. The show allows viewers to get a greater sense of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s work atmosphere when Captain America isn’t in the building. As the season progresses, the office politics grows nasty. Turns out some people at the company might have lied on their resumes and still are working for their evil corporation. The final episodes see Coulson and his youthful crew fighting against other people in business suits for control of their destiny. The show works on the same level as The X-Files and The 4400 when it comes to dealing with the unknown in human form.

Here’s a little behind the scenes action that’s one of the bonus features on the boxset.

Prisoners of War: Season Two is 14 more episodes of the series that Showtime’s Homeland is based on. If you’re a fan of Homeland, don’t avoid this show for the fear that it’ll somehow spoil the adventures of Carrie Mathison. The folks behind Homeland have not been merely translating the Hebrew scripts. Prisoners of War starts out differently with two Israeli military POWs returning home with the remains of their friend who was on a secret mission in Lebanon. The season starts off with the stunning news that the remains don’t belong to the dead soldier. The show focuses on the two men attempting to regain their former life after 17 years away. The duo also have to deal with what they’ve become at the hands of their captors. Are they a threat to Israel? It’s a riveting show that will elevate your Homeland experience. The dialogue is subtitled for those who don’t understand Hebrew. There have only been two seasons produced and aired of the series so you’ve caught up with the viewers in the Holy Land. Supposedly Season three is being written at this time. The bonus features include interview with the actors and a commentary track from the show’s creator Gideon Raff.

Dynasty: The Final Season – Volume One & Volume Two brings to an end the feud between Carringtons and Colbys. How could this have happened? The easy answer was that the Reagan era was coming to an end. The easier answer was that ABC no longer wanted to pay for the expensive production that wasn’t scoring the massive ratings. The sad answer is that Dynasty had one of its best seasons with a producer poached from Dallas figuring out how to make compelling narratives even with major cast issues. Linda Evans had already announced that she was bowing out this season. Joan Collins’ pricetag meant the show could only afford her for 13 of the 22 episodes. The new producer and his crew set to work with these major restraints. They figured out the proper gimmick for Linda’s Krsytle to spend more time in the show without appearing in episodes. John Forsythe (Bachelor Uncle) spends a lot more time with the kids on the show. This is a good move since it means more time with Heather Locklear and Emma Samms. Plus they bring in Stephanie Beacham as Sable Colby to sizzle in Denver. Now that Dynasty has wrapped up, can we see the two seasons of The Colbys get released on DVD?

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella: 50th Anniversary Edition brings the classic TV to DVD. This is a simply lovely production that aired on CBS. This musical is perfect for those who dream of going from scrubbing the floors to being the loveliest girl at the royal ball. Lesley Ann Warren is perfect as both the ashen girl being kept down by her stepmother and stepsisters and the transformed beauty. The music is grand on a Broadway scale. Ginger Rogers and Walter Pidgeon are stellar as the King and Queen. Celeste Holm is magical as the Fairy Godmother. Stuart Damon is so fetch as the Prince. There’s such a joy that comes from the musical that’s still irresistible after half a century. The show was shot on videotape, but looks rather sharp. The DVD’s bonus feature is a featurette with Warren and Damon discussing their magical fairytale romance before the cameras.

My Little Pony – Friendship Is Magic: Spooktacular Pony Tales are six episodes that are perfect for little one wanting equine scares for the Halloween season. “Boast Busters,” “Stare Master,” “Luna Eclipsed,” “Sleepless In Ponyville,” Caste Mane-ia” and “Bats!” will make you shake your hoofs in fear. There needs to be a warning that small kids watching this DVD set will come up with a more complex Halloween costume than originally planned. My daughter is now hinting that she wants to be Rainbow Dash and a vampire at the same time. The big bonus feature is a sing-along song that’s perfect for the kids to scream out when it comes time to go trick or treating.

Perry Mason Movie Collection has released the three double feature DVDs individually that were boxed up for Volume Two. Double Feature 4 includes: “The Case of the Scandalous Scoundrel” puts Perry and Della Street (Barbara Hale) on the cover of a tabloid for an alleged affair. Robert Guillaume (Benson) is the publisher spreading such a lie. When he ends up dead, Perry must find the real killer. William Katt (The Greatest American Hero) is Paul Drake Jr, Perry’s main investigator. “The Case of the Avenging Ace” puts Larry Wilcox (CHiPs) in cuffs for homicide. Erin Gray (Buck Rogers) and Patty Duke (The Patty Duke Show) are tangled in the military intrigue. Double Feature 5 includes: “The Case of the Lethal Lesson” and “The Case of the Lady in the Lake” which busts David Hasselhoff for killing his rich wife. What? The Hoff? There’s more hunk on the screen with the arrival of John Beck (Rollerball). Still it’s the young Hof in serious trouble and not a cheeseburger in sight. Double Feature 6 includes “The Case of the Musical Murder” has a Broadway director dying and an underling behind bars. Somehow Jerry Orbach and Debbie Reynolds might be part of the encore for elimination. “The Case of the All-Star Assassin” has a hated pro sports team owner found dead. Nobody loved the guy. What sort of major sports team owner can be so hated? The star guests include Deidre Hall, Bruce Greenwood (Exotica), Shari Belafonte and Pernell Roberts. Volume 4 with the next 6 cases is due out October 7.

State Trooper: The Complete Series brings the excitement of cases from the Nevada State Police. The show recreates major crimes that get covered by Officer Rod Blake (played by Rod Cameron). The series ran from 1956 to ’59 so it reminds us of all the glorious crime that happened during those Happy Days. Rod gets a little help from local sheriffs played by Robert Armstrong and Don Haggerty. If you’re a fan of vintage crime show, this will be pure law and order bliss over the course of 104 half hour episodes. There’s plenty of guest stars wrapped in the lawbreaking. You’ll get a glimpse of Claude Akins (Sheriff Lobo), Lee Va Cleef (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), Deforest Kelley (Star Trek), Jeanette Nolan, Amanda Blake (Miss Kitty) and Carolyn Jones (The Addams Family). Even though State Trooper had more than enough episodes to keep itself in syndication for decades like Highway Patrol and Dragnet, this is my first exposure to the show. Perhaps it was kept off the air by the Nevada tourism mob. Why would they want America knowing about all the crime about Las Vegas and Reno? The cool bonus DVD gives us various Westerns that had Rod Cameron guesting including Tales of Wells Fargo, The Men From Shiloh and Alias Smith and Jones. Timeless once more has introduced me to a show that TVLand forgot.

The Curse of Oak Island: Season 1 is the History Channels’ series about a small island off the coast of Nova Scotia. Rick and Marty Lagina have bought up most of the island. They’re obsessed with the story of buried treasure on their property. The legend has it that seven people must die on the island for the secret location to be reveled. So far only six people have dropped dead on the rock. Sadly History Channel didn’t go Battle Royale on the Lagina brothers with a Thunderdome edict that only one brother shall live. The brothers do their best to find the treasure without beating to death an unsuspecting hobo either. They explore various landmarks on the island including the mine shaft. They even go to major terraforming extremes to uncover unseen territory. They find out quite a bit about the property during their explorations over the five episodes. The DVD set includes 25 minutes that weren’t shown on TV as the big bonus feature.

Burning Blue is a trip back to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the military. The movie plays out Tarantino’s hunch that Top Gun is gay cinema on the downlow. Two top U.S. Navy pilots get drawn into one military investigation only to have the true nature of their relationship exposed. Can their military conduct breaking forbidden love survive the crash and burn? The movie does a fine job of mixing the dangers of being a military pilot with the fear of allowing others to know their true desires. The bonus features include a commentary track from director DMW Greer. There’s several deleted scenes and a featurette. The DVD includes the ability to access the Ultravoilet stream and download.

Transformers: Beast Machines – The Complete Series is the follow up series to Transformers: Beast Wars. The show ran in 1999 for 26 episodes that deal with Optimus Primal and his crew returning to Cybertron. Instead of getting a hero’s welcome, they find a rather deserted place. What has happened? A deadly virus has struck and they quickly learn has infected them. Thankfully they are saved by a rebooting into technorganic warriors. This is good because Megatron had taken control of the streets using evil robots. Besides the usual battles outside, the Transformers must deal with the organic issues in their technological bodies. The series does its best to be a bit more adult entertainment and less motion catalog for moving more Transformers products. The CGI looks impressive for its time.

The Big Sleep is best remembered by me as playing in the same Twin theater as Star Wars back in 1978. There was not much desire in me to see a remake of a Humphrey Bogart classic. Robert Mitchum (The Friends of Eddie Coyle) was not going to keep me from seeing Han Solo. So I wrote it off. The film received a bit of a revival when Ray Regis ran it one night back at the NC School of the Arts as part of his Film Noir class. I will not fault my younger self for dismissing it. This is a film that requires a bit of age since Mitchum on the cusp of losing his prime. Director Michael Winner is best known for Charles Bronson flicks such as The Mechanic and Death Wish does his best to transfer the plot to England. The movie sticks with Raymond Chandler’s tale of a family being blackmailed and needing private detective Sam Spade to stop it. The cast is star studded. Jimmy Stewart is the father of Sarah Miles and Candy Clark (The Man Who Fell to Earth). Joan Collins (The Bitch) is part of the scam. Oliver Reed (Gladiator) and Richard Boone (Have Gun – Will Travel) might want to trump Spade. The adaptation doesn’t suffer by making the action take place in the ’70s instead of flashingback to 1930s. They also are able to have things be a bit more edgy on screen than what Bogart was allowed. It’s R rated for a reason. The bonus features include a trailer, a vintage behind the scenes and a commentary track from Winner who passed away back in 2013. The movie works well for fans of Film Noir who want to see something more contemporary with a little color.

BERLIN – There’s a comical joy when Me-TV and Antenna TV announce their upcoming Fall season’s schedules and viewers freak out. The two channels run shows from the ’50s to the ’80s so they really aren’t offering anything new. These two channels have done a fine job of attracting the audience that TVLand has ignored. They’re shuffling the deck of classics with a few semi-forgotten titles that deserve a larger audience. Even when they drop a show, odds are that it will return in a few years.

However viewers freak out with every change. Thanks to social media, all the ‘”how dare you mess with my show” complaints are easily accessible. Each tease about a “new” show coming to either channel (and Cozi-TV) are greeted with a mad battle between viewers. It’s a mini-“Save Star Trek” movement when Adam-12 vanishes from the dial (although it’s going to another digital substation). People freak out when their show disappears from Netflix streaming, Hulu or other services as if any of these outlets will contain the same shows until the day you check out of the hospice.

Rarely does anyone chime in with “Guess I’ll have to buy the complete series on DVD.” Which ought to be the proper response to anyone who care enough about the show to whine directly to the station. A lot of times the complete series on DVD isn’t that expensive. All five seasons of Charlie’s Angels currently can be nabbed for $25. If you need your Farrah fix, it’s all ready to be enjoyed without 20 commercials for medical supplies and cheap insurance. Or are you addicted to reverse home mortgages?

It’s understandable that people would be upset at the removal of shows that haven’t been released on DVD. And it’s hard to fault people for not recording all the episodes since the DVR has made that impossible. The replacement for the video recorder won’t record 100 episodes of the same show. Even if it did, they hard drive would crash and everything vanishes at once. You’re stuck staring at a blank screen. It’s painful. I’ve had it happen. All those episodes that have yet to see the light of a shiny disc. But the number of shows that aren’t on DVD will be getting incredibly small in the coming months. A lot of wish list items are pre-order realities before Christmas.

CBS DVD is packaging together a bunch of shows for complete series boxsets including Charmed, Family Ties, Beauty and the Beast, The Tudors, Reno 911! and Taxi are due out before the Christmas rush. Those boxsets alone give you a wider variety of programming than 95% of all cable channels that seem to exist with reruns of their top show.

Batman The Complete Series Limited Edition Blu-ray (Nov 11) is an answer to my prayers since they started putting out Blu-rays. A few people are grousing online that the boxset is priced too high. We’re talking about a chance to see Julie Newmar in high definition. I’m already crying at her impending beauty in a 1080p resolution. Those curves in her Catwoman suit are going to slice apart my TV screen. Don’t call my house when this arrives in the mail. I will be ignoring the world as I worship the feline goddess.

Pee-wee’s Playhouse: The Complete Series (Oct. 21) brings the most insane Saturday morning show to blu-ray. This is the only kid show where I’ve been told by a puppeteer that they were doing drugs while making it. Why doesn’t this get rerun on normal TV channels? The answer is simple: It’s not normal. The Blu-ray promises to bring out all the color insanity and details that couldn’t be exposed on the DVDs.

WKRP in Cincinnati: The Complete Series (Oct. 28) is another set that was screwed up and abandoned after only the first of its four seasons came out a few years back. But now it’s back and Shout! Factory has been doing it’s hardest to clear the various songs that played on the series. The original season one DVDs were chopped up to the point of pure pain. There’s excitement in getting to see the full Dr. Johnny Fever epic. Not to mention the joy that is Loni Anderson in her prime.

Sgt. Bilko – The Phil Silvers Show: The Complete Series (Nov. 4) promises to let my DVR do less work since it’ll no longer have to record Bilko in the wee hours on Me-TV. Bilko was given a compilation and single season release before being backburnered. What a tease for one of the great military comedies. Now all four years will be in a single box. No more waiting to see if the next season will be released.

The Jeffersons: The Complete Series (Dec. 9) gives us all the love of George and Weezie in their deluxe apartment in the sky. This promises to be a heavy box since the show lasted 11 seasons. No news if there will be a bonus feature dealing with Sherman Hemsley’s love of prog rock bands.

Welcome Back, Kotter: The Complete Series is already out so you can get your complete Sweathogs fix. This was also a show that originally had the first season released in 2007 and then was abandoned. Fans were rather upset at the absence of the three remaining seasons. Shout! Factory has stepped in to give it a complete boxset. But cease the whining and bitterness. Welcome Back, Kotter takes us back to a time when Brooklyn was not run by douchebag trust fund kids wearing tiny hats and worshipping Lena Dunham. The Brooklyn of 1975 was a rough affair. Mr. Kotter (Gabe Kaplan) was an aspiring teacher who had his worst nightmare happen by being assigned to James Buchanan High School. This was the same school that he had terrorized as a student. Even after all these years, his old gang the Sweathogs still has memorable members. Vinnie Barbarino (John Travolta) was the handsome goofball in charge of them. Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo) was the class clown with a laugh only Fran Drescher could love. Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington (Lawrence HIlton-Jacobs) was the suave athletic member. Juan Epstein (Robert Hegyes) was the neighborhood threat with a note from his mother for all excuses. It’s funny to think that TV stations and concerned viewers feared this quartet would glorify gangs in school. These guys were lovable lunkheads instead of violent, drug dealing hoodlums. The show became an immediate sensation since they were a little more edgy than the gang on Happy Days.

The boxset has all 95 episodes that were made over it’s four year run. The first three were the glory days. They’d open with Gabe telling a family related joke to his wife Julie (Marcia Strassman). The catchy theme song by John Sebastian would give the flavor of Brooklyn life. Gabe would show up at school and get the business from the Sweathogs and Vice Principal Mr. Woodman (John Sylvester White). Gabe would do his best to inspire the Sweathogs. Eventually something would stick on them to make them better people. It was an entertaining formula.

The fourth season is a portrait on how everything can go wrong to a successful show and kill a shot at the prized fifth season. The first thing that happened was John Travolta becoming a major movie star. He dominated theaters with Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Unlike Michael J. Fox, Travolta wasn’t going to waste a hot year playing Vinnie. He only made it to 8 episodes. Kaplan got into a nasty contract fight with executive producer James Komack which also limited his appearances. For some reason they decided to make Julie work at the school. They also brought on the New Orleans relocated Beau De LaBarre (Stephen Shortridge) to take up Barbarino’s desk space. This was not a good move since Shortridge looked older than Mr. Woodman. Making matters even worse, Komack replaced the entire writing staff. The show was moved from its timeslot to make space for Mork and Mindy. The season was such a disaster that Nick at Nite held back on these episodes when they reran Kotter. But it’s a good thing to watch the episodes since they’re such glorious disasters. It’s easier to watch them on DVD since you don’t have to sit through all the commercials to get to the Brooklyn messes. Unlike earlier boxsets from Shout!, there are few bonus features. Hegyes and Palillo died in 2012 so they weren’t around for commentary tracks. Kaplan was probably busy playing Poker. The two bonus features are from the original season one release. A short documentary interviews most of the cast about the show. There are also the screen tests for the Sweathogs. Delving through the boxset, it’s easy to feel welcomed back.

SCREAM FACTORY

The Legend of Hell House is an impressive haunted mansion flick from 1973. A rich old man wants to know if there’s life after death. He pays scientist Lionel Burnett (Clive Revill) a fortune to spend a week in the “Mount Everest of haunted houses.” Lionel brings along two psychics. Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin) is a spiritual psychic who is new to the game. Ben Fischer (Planet of the Apes‘ Roddy McDowall) is a physical medium who was the only one to escape a previous visit to Belasco House. Burnett’s wife also joins him since she loves him. Turns out that Emeric Belasco was a rich hedonist who had no limits to what he enjoyed in his mansion. He doesn’t want to merely scare the ladies in his house. He wants to ghostly seduce them. This is an erotic possession. The script was written by Richard Matheson based on his book. He gets away with quite a bit of naughtiness for a PG rated film. This isn’t for teens. The film has a great Hammer Horror feel with the fog wrapped around the mansion and the proper amount of cobwebs. The bonus features include an interview with director John Hough and audio of Pamela Franklin talking about being seduced by a ghost. Legend is legendary.

Without Warning dares to show what happens when four groovy teens take their van up to the lake and encounter an invasion of character actors. David Caruso, Lynn Theel, Tarah Nutter and Christopher S. Nelson refuse to listen to Jack Palance (Ripley’s Believe It or Not). They have no idea that Cameron Mitchell and his kid have been attacked by living alien throwing stars. They should have known that Larry Storch (F Troop) and a pack of Cub Scouts were taken over by the alien. The teens just want to have a little fun in the water. But very quickly they learn that sometimes you need to listen to over the top actors. Besides the alien lurking in the woods, the kids have to deal with Martin Landau (Mission: Impossible). He’s in full losing it Vietnam Vet mode. When him and Palance go at it, this is the second coming of King Kong vs. Godzilla. They made Neville Brand (The Untouchables) look like a minimalist performer. The film is great in a cheesy ’80s kids in trouble with aliens mode. What’s amazing is that Palance and Landau would both win Oscars years after their thrilling face off. The film looks fine thanks to the cinematography talent of Dean Cundey. He went on to shoot Back to the Future, Jurassic Park and Roger Rabbit. What’s interesting is that this is the first time Without Warning has been legally released on home video. How can a horror/sci-fi film from 1980 had missed out on Beta, VHS and laserdisc? This is a movie whose cult is based on odd HBO screenings and a lot of passed around hometapes. The film does need a major warning that your HDTV might be damaged by the extremely pasty skin of David Caruso.

Pumpkinhead: Collector’ Edition is what happened when special effects wizard Stan Winston was finally given a chance to direct his own creation. Winston was on a hot streak in the ’80s with his creature creations for Aliens, Terminator and Predator. So people were eager to see his own horrific vision. He brought along Lance Hendriksen (Aliens) to give his vision a good start. Lance is a simple guy living out in the boonies running a gas station with his son in the middle of nowhere. Naturally a bunch of loser kids from the city come out to go nuts on their motorcycles. Something goes wrong and Lance is furious. He wants revenge against the yuppie scum. He goes to a witchy woman to conjure a beast that will do his will. Lance discovers that while Pumpkinhead can do his bidding, there’s a harsh price. Pumpkinhead has a good old time tracking down the kids. The bonus features help elevate the movie. “Pumpkinhead Unearthed” is an hour long documentary about what went into letting Stan finally direct. “A Tribute to Stan Winston” lets his associates remember how he made them part of his team. Stan passed away back in 2008. The screenwriter and members of the effects team contribute the audio commentary. Pumpkinhead has run as part of Cinema Overdrive and was a great crowd pleaser.

Motel Hell: Collector’s Edition is a film about quaint hotels and artisan food. The film has built a great cult following over the years simply because of the amazing title. Who wouldn’t appreciate that spin on the videostore shelf? The film combines the joys of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Psycho which makes sense since both movies are about Ed Gein. The Motel Hello is run by Farmer Vincent (Mr. Burn’s favorite star Rory Calhoun) and his sister (Porky’s Nancy Parson). Beside offering a sweet place to rest your head, Farmer Vincent has the best smoked meats around. What’s his secret? John Ratzenberger (Cliff on Cheers) learns the hard way. The Farmer harvests weary travelers on the road. He just doesn’t go all Cannibal Holocaust on the people. He has his way of getting things just right. Farmer Vincent has trouble when takes a liking to one of his victims (Nina Axelrod) . He nurses her back to health, but this might be the death of the Farmer if she uncovers his secret operation in the barn. Rory is great as the cannibal bed and breakfast links guy. Wolfman Jack does a supernatural job as a tv preacher in a white suit. Director Kevin Connor does the audio commentary to discuss the tone of the film. He also talks on camera for interviews that include the writers, producers and cinematographer. A piece pays tribute to Ida Smith. There’s also chats with actors remembering their time in the barn. The transfer looks so much better than the Midnite Movie Double Feature DVD. Also includes a Blu-ray.

Phantom of the Paradise: Collector’s Edition is the ultimate way to enjoy an amazing musical that deserves its cult following. Brian de Palma and Paul Williams (Smokey and the Bandit) teamed up for a tale of the evils of the rock and roll industry. Winslow Leach (William Finley) is a serious singer songwriter whose musical based on Faust catches the ear of recording wiz kid Swan (Paul Williams). But their partnership ends quick when Swan steals the songs and gets Winslow stuck in prison. Winslow escapes and attempts to stop the pressing of his music. This goes wrong and the disfigured Winslow ends up haunting Swan’s Paradise theater. The only thing he desires is for Phoenix (Jessica Harper) to sing his songs. Swan wants the overpowering Beef (Gerrit Graham) to belt them out. Like all creative differences, this won’t end nice. The Blu-ray gives more bonus feature than a hardcore Winnipeg fanatic would desire. A French documentary covers the film with the key cast and crew. There’s new interviews with de Palma and Williams. There’s an additional interview with Williams done by Guillermo Del Toro. They have alternate takes. They show the original Swan Song footage that had to be covered up after Led Zeppelin’s Peter Grant disapproved. This is a must buy for fans and people who are intrigued by the trailer.

VINEGAR SYNDROME

Drive In Collection: In Search of Bigfoot & Cry Wilderness delves into the ’70s fixation with sasquatch that ended up with him being a regular on The Six Million Dollar Man. And the creature is back with people on cable channels looking for him. This double feature shows where he’d been originally tracked. In Search of Bigfoot is a documentary about Bob Morgan’s three month expedition in the Washington woods looking for footprints, clumps of fur and feces. He talks with people that claim they’ve encountered the hairy creature. But it doesn’t seem like he’ll have a spotting. Cry Wilderness is a fictional account of people meeting Bigfoot. This is a weird film about Bigfoot spiritually linking with a kid. Somehow the creature knows when the kid’s dad is in trouble. The film is weird which makes sense when you realize it’s from the same people who gave you Night Train to Terror. Both films are safe for family viewing if you have bigfoot fanatics in the house.

Peekarama: The Ultimate Pleasure & I Am Always Ready is a double feature from director Carlos Tobalina. The movie has a plot about a couple having relationship issues. She’s rather cold. He gets hot when a guy dies in his cab and leaves behind a suitcase full of cash. He eventually uses it to get them treatment. This therapy mainly consists of her taking a drug and getting freaky with the staff. Who can’t see that sort of care working out for all involved? Paul Thomas (Jesus Christ Superstar) has a role. This film has the strangest moment when the “AIDS Ambulance Service” arrives to pick up a guy in San Francisco in 1977. Talk about a company that needed a new name in a few months. I Am Always Ready sounds like the motto most of the actors on this film told the director to get the part. A rich woman decides to make her own adult movie and top it off with her hooking up with John Holmes. The real highlight of the film is when the Gong Show‘s Unknown Comic pitches in. The woman sounds like Rona Barrett.

Peekarama: Gail Palmer’s Tropic of Desire & Fantasy World brings us back to the question: Did Gail Palmer really make these films? Seems that Bob Chinn was the man behind the woman. Tropic of Desire has amazing sets that appear to have been repurposed from Chinn’s Sadie (also available from Vinegar Syndrome). There’s no real issue with them reusing the sets since they looked good the first time around. Now they’re used to create a brothel on a tropical island. The sailors arrive for a good time. The plot doesn’t overburden the action. There’s intimate scenes with the couples hooking up to swing music. It’s rather sophisticated feel. Fantasy World uses some of the sailors set up to take us on a liberty break in San Francisco. Fantasy World is a dirty theater that lures guests onto the stage to live their fantasies. Paul Thomas sings the theme song. This double feature shows Chinn and his crew cared about making things look good on the screen. The bonus features are trailers for both films.

Peekarama: Purely Physical & Cathouse Fever explores the early ’80s output of Chris Warfield. Purely Physical tells of a young woman who gets a job as the night clerk at a motel. Turns out most of the people checking in aren’t using the beds for sleeping. Fans of the classics will enjoy the scene with Aunt Peg. She does a solo scene after night clerk refuses to join in the fun. Eventually she decides to take advantage of her employee discount. Cathouse Fever is a disease that needs a telethon to help pay for tab at the Bunny Ranch. An update secretary (Becky Savage) quits her job and moves to Nevada to live the dream of being a legal hooker. It doesn’t really look like they left Los Angeles to make the film. There’s some fun with sound effects in a few scenes to pump up the comic moments. The joy in the film is how they rip off Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” in the trailer. The spoof improves the song.

BLU-RAY HEAVEN

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the post-Avengers outing for the military superhero. This movie quickly has become one of my favorites of the recent Marvel outings. Captain America (Chris Evans) is having a bit of an identity crisis. He’s getting frustrated with his work with S.H.I.E.L.D. He doesn’t like how Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) doesn’t give a full picture of their missions. Agent Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johnansson) always has her own orders. Before he can get too frustrated at the organization, someone does an ambush on Fury in the middle of D.C. traffic. A hitman known as the Winter Soldier is in town and means business. He kills Fury and Robert Redford takes control of the agency. It’s a conspiracy film where Redford might be the puppet master instead of the exposing agent as he did in All the President’s Men and Three Days of the Condor. The action is extremely over the top which is great. Captain gets a fighting pal in Sam Wilson. Anthony Mackie). The man knows how to work a wingpack. Eventually he becomes the Falcon. Mackie was at NCSA when I was there. It’s good to see an alumni getting to soar on the big screen. The film is a complete thrill ride with Captain America at the helm. It’s been a good year for Evans between this and Snow Piercer.

Rosemary’s Baby stars Zoe Saldana is the 3 hour miniseries that ran on NBC. This is a good version to watch if you don’t want to explain Roman Polanski to your children. The miniseries changes things around so that Rosemary (Zoe) and her husband (Patrick J. Adams) are now living in Paris instead of New York City. They’re still a young couple eager to make it in an expensive city. They quickly fall in with a rich and powerful couple that are eager to help them in various ways. Of course little does Rosemary know what’s expected in return. She’s excited to finally be pregnant, but gets anxious that their new friends want the baby. Saldana does a fine job stepping into Mia Farrow’s iconic role. The Blu-ray comes with a Digital HD Ultraviolet access so you can watch it from a hospital’s maternity ward.

The Quiet Ones is another spooker from the revived Hammer films. The story takes us back to 1974 when Hammer was still making flicks with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. In place of them we get Jared Harris (Mad Men) as a professor leading a group of students on an experiment. They want to find out if a young girl is possessed, evil or just stuck with an unknown disease. They break out the cutting edge media recording devices of ’74 to capture this on film. It’s got quite a few jolts as the girl gets to unleash on her observers. This is supposedly based on a real event. Director John Pogue gives a commentary track. There’s also a documentary about making the film and the opening. There’s a digital HD ultraviolet stream and download in case you need a fright away from home.

DVD SHELF

Newhart: The Complete Fourth Season marks the first time the show didn’t have any major changes. The cast was set for the rest of its 8 season run. Bob Newhart turns Dick Loudon into a man who runs a rustic Stratford Inn, writes a book and hosts a talkshow on a local TV station. Even with so much to do his wife Joanna (Mary Frann) has time to make changes in their life. Handyman George (Tom Poston) keeps up his strange ways. Stephanie (Julia Duffy) keeps dodging her housekeeping duties. Michael (Peter Scolari) keeps up the trouble with his yuppie ways. Don’t forget frequent visits from Larry, Darryl and Darryl. “Pirate Pete” makes Bob a substitute for the kiddie show host. However Bob’s changes to the format screw things up at the station. “Candidate Larry” puts an unlikely candidate for mayor on the ballot. He promises a critter in every pot. “The Geezers in the Band” reminds Bob that he’s getting old when his wild jazz pals arrive for a timid time. “Write to Privacy” has Stephanie read Michael’s diary. “The Shape of Things” introduces America to Stephancizes. This episode has Mary Frann in spandex. This is another fine season for a sitcom that really does go up there with The Bob Newhart Show.

Martial Arts Movie Marathon 2 includes four more Hong Kong action films that will enhance your Chop Socky diet. The Fate of Lee Khan is the classic tale of fighters during a Civil War having a major throwdown. This is another installment in the Angela Mao Ying retrospective Shout! Factory has been doing. Shaolin Boxers is the classic tale of a school training fighters with the hopes of taking on the goons that are making villagers live in fear. James Tien of Fist of Fury and The Big Boss is the star. The Young Dragons marks the arrival of John Woo as a feature film director. If you forget his recent junky Hollywood pics, this is an exciting thing to see. He’s grasping his bullet ballets that made The Killer and Hard-Boiled amazing masterpieces. A gang terrorizes a small town and kills the cop. His daughter vows revenge on the goons. The Shaolin Plot is about a fighter who lies in order to get his hands on various guides to fighting. He might have gone too far when he arrives at the Shaolin Temple in disguise. Sammo Hung and Tien star in the film. This marathon is a great way to spend the time between weekend football games.

Perry Mason Movie Collection Volume 3 is another 6 episodes from Raymond Burr’s return as the greatest lawyer ever. Secretary Della Street (Barbara Hale) and investigator Ken Malansky (William R. Moses) are his main support team. “The Case of the Poisoned Pen” exposes a bestselling author as a book thief. He’s so evil that even Cindy Williams (Laverne and Shirley) is considered a suspect. “The Case of the Desperate Deception” lets Perry Mason meet Ian McShane (Deadwood) in England. “The Case of the Silenced Singer” puts Rex Smith in a grave his widow as the prime suspect. Angela Bassett and Vanessa Williams get to share the screen. “The Case of the Defiant Daughter” teams up ’60s spy idols Robert Culp (I Spy) and Robert Vaughn (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.). “The Case of the Ruthless Reporter” brings back Philip Michael Thomas (Miami Vice) as the sports anchor who might have killed someone at a TV station. “The Case of the Maligned Mobster” makes Perry prove a kingpin didn’t kill his wife. There’s still two more sets of Perry Mason movies to come. It’s nice to see Raymond Burr bringing the role into the ’90s.

Gunsmoke: The Tenth Season – Volume 1 & Volume 2 brings the show to it’s halfway point since it lasted two decades on the air. They still haven’t reached the time the show used color film. These are still hour long black and white episodes. The 36 episodes from 1964 focus on the major figures of Dodge City: Marshall Matt Dillon (James Arness), Doc (Milburn Stone),Kitty (Amanda Blake), Quint Asper (Burt Reynolds) and Festus (Ken Curtis). “Blue Heaven” has Kurt Russell (Overboard) as a runaway kid coming into town. “Crooked Mile” has Quint bullwhipped by George Kennedy. Why? Cause George doesn’t want his daughter spending time with him. “Hung High” brings Robert Culp to an execution. “Jonah Hutchinson” features Richard Anderson (Bionic Woman) dealing with family issues. As mandated by the FDA, “Innocence” features Claude Akins (Sheriff Lobo). ‘Song for Dying” gives Lee Majors (The Six Million Dollar Man) a chance at Dodge City greatness. Strange to think that there’s still another season of black and white episodes. CBS really didn’t like color televisions.

Escape to Grizzly Mountain isn’t quite a Grizzly Adams movie, but it really is. It’s a time travelling tale about Jimmy (Miko Hughes) wanting to save a baby bear from a circus. He finds a time tunnel that can take the bear back to 1841. Trouble happens though when a woodsman named Jeremiah (Dan Haggerty) comes through to modern times and gets to experience a shopping mall. Remember that Dan Haggerty isn’t playing Grizzly Adams. He’s a whole different character who will appeal to fans of Grizzly Adams.

Home Is Where the Heart Is about two people with wounded dreams uniting down in Texas. A hometown girl returns after her Hollywood dreams don’t turn out. She arrives at her mother’s funeral and gets the shock of a half-sister. Even more traumatic is that she’s now the legal guardian. The only thing making her feel good is an ex-NFL player. The two seem to bond over their fates. They come up with a way to revitalize their town. Except the plan hits a snag when something really goes wrong. John C. McGinley has a supporting role. He still has his Scrubs charm. It’s a fine family drama about broken dreams and saving what means the most to you.

The Men From Shiloh Special Edition wasn’t a new Western series. This was the final season of The Virginian complete with The Virginian (James Drury) as part of the cast. This ninth season has a bit of change in that the Shiloh Ranch has a new owner in Colonel Alan MacKenzie (Stewart Granger). He’s an Englishman so there’s a bit of learning the ropes in his storylines. There’s also an immediate change in the opening titles to reflect the arrival of the Spaghetti Westerns. This show was a bit more able to deal with it since it ran in a 90 minute timeslot. They made 24 feature films for the final season. The producers were able to hire Ennio Morricone to compose a new theme song. Along with keeping The Virginian, Trampas (Doug McClure) was back. In a surprise, they brought on Lee Majors as Roy Tate. Majors had just wrapped up The Big Valley so he knew his way around a horse. He grew a mustache for the role so people wouldn’t confuse him for Heath Barkley. The show dealt with the four figures not quite working together. There were plenty of guest stars. Desi Arnaz appears in “The Best Man.” Janet Leigh arrives for Jenny. Anne Francis makes her mole felt in “Gun Quest.” James Gregory and Ricardo Montalban team up for “Last of the Comancheros.” The show did well in the ratings so there’s no slippage in script quality. The name change without the Virginian riding off made it an odd way to go out.

Locke is a driving film on all levels. Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises) gets behind the wheel and his life completely changes. He plays Ivan Locke, a family man who is well respected in the concrete game. Except in barely 90 minutes, he abandons his job and family to do what he considers is right. He also thinks he can put everything else right. His solitary journey across England has him talking to his wife, boss, son, co-worker and the woman that’s changing everything for him. Hardy does a exceptional job in keeping up the energy in basically a one man show on wheels. This ought to be considered the prequel to Hardy’s upcoming turn in Mad Max: Fury Road. There’s a digital copy so you can watch this while driving the same roadways as Locke. Writer-director Steven Knight contributes a commentary.

The Marx Brothers TV Collection contains what the brothers did in the ’50s and ’60s on television. Groucho, Chico and Harpo weren’t content with just being faces on the late night movie with their classic comedies. They still had plenty to offer on various TV shows as guest actors and just being guests. “The General Electric Theater: The Incredible Jewel Robbery” is the last time the brothers appeared in one show. The special has Harpo and Chico on a confusing crime spree that pays off in the end. Also at the end is a visit from Groucho that blows away the quiet production. The 3 DVD collection has dozens of show that the brothers can turn upside down without much effort. They brothers end up on celebrity sports shows about golf, pool and Bridge. Jack Benny has an episode where he sneaks onto You Bet Your Life to take money from Groucho’s duck. Chico’s failed musical show that featured him owning a hang out next to a college features a young Andy Williams. They dig up the English version of You Bet Your Life. There’s so much here that is fantastical to watch after only reading hints about them in Marx Brothers biographies. If you own all the movie boxsets and the You Bet Your Life collections, this is a must buy.

Decline of an Empire will best be remembered as the final film made by Peter O’Toole. This might also be the final film of Edward Fox (Edward and Mrs. Simpson). In a sense this is the end of empire since there will be no more times for O’Toole to be an ancient ruler. He’s not the lead here. The film follows Constantine (Jack Goddard) who joins the Roman Legion so he can travel the world and locate a missing friend. Turns out he’s good at being a soldier. He quickly rises up the ranks until he’s in control. He discovers his friend is being held hostage by a rival. He braces his army for an all out attack of West vs. East. This is the story of St. Katherine of Alexandria.

They Came Together is a romantic comedy from the director of Wet Hot American Summer. Paul Rudd (This Is 40) and Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation) are a couple that aren’t supposed to fall in love. He works for a giant candy company. She runs a small candy store. He wants to smash and destroy her. But romance gets in the way. The film does its best mock the conventions of the cute meet. The movie has a lot of familiar faces in odd roles. How often does anyone say “romantic comedy co-starring Michael Shannon (Man of Steel)? Women should be warned that the movie dares combine the hunky talents of Christopher Meloni, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and John Stamos. Jack McBrayer might make your date lose interest in you. The bonus features include the table read from the San Francisco Sketchfest. Director David Wain and Michael Showalter laugh it up on the audio commentary.

Tarzan is a CGI and modernized retelling of the Edgar Rice Burroughs tale of the boy raised by apes. This version has the Greystone family visiting Africa in a helicopter. It crashes and only their young son survives. He thrives and becomes a beast in the wilderness. Years later, he meets Jane. She enjoys her new friend. The problem is other humans are also in the jungle. They’ve got major weapons and hard hearts. Tarzan must save his human and animal friends from these outsiders. The CGI looks good. The action isn’t too intense for an elementary school aged child. The bonus features include a piece on making the film and what actors did to play gorillas. There’s also a Digital Ultraviolet copy for streaming.

Mumfie’s Quest the Movie brings back the tale of a little elephant on an awfully big adventure. Mumfie hits the road for kicks, but finds a greater purpose when he meets Pinkey. Her mom is stranded on a rather depressing island. They take that direction to not only reconnect with her, but to bring a little joy to her location. It’s a big mission that’s only slightly smaller than Mumfie’s heart. The film originally came out in 1994 although odds are high that this was long before the target audience was born. This is old hand painted animation which is always fun to share with a little one.

Romance Classics contains 3 BBC-A&E mini-series that made people flock to the cable network. Pride and Prejudice was a major event when it aired back in the mid-90s. Jane Austen’s tale of Elizabeth Bennet (Jennifer Ehle) and Mr.Darcy (Colin Firth) was packed with restraint and passion. This was one of the first VHS sets that people rushed out to buy instead of merely wait to rent the various tapes. Ehle and Firth’s romance holds up after all these decades. Victoria & Albert about the love affair involving Queen Victoria. The production is well cast with Diana Rigg (Game of Thrones), Nigel Hawthorne and Jonathan Pryce (Brazil). Will she be wooed by Prince Albert? Strange to think his name would be linked to prank phone calls and private parts being pierced. Neither of these events are part of the film. Edward & Mrs. Simpson is about the American woman who was able to make King Edward give up the throne. Edward Fox and Cythina Harris bring the unexpected passion to small screen. This is a trio of British lust that will keep your TV set busy for a blustery weekend.

75 Years of WWII contains 4 of the History Channel’s specials about the war that changed the world.D-Day in HD gives a clear view of the day the Allied Forces attacked the French coast. They’ve gone back and found the best footage of this messy and chaotic day. The special gets descriptions from both sides of the battle line. Bloody Santa Cruz delves into to the Pacific theater when the USS Hornet went down. Enterprise Versus Japan focuses on the turning battle when the aircraft carrier took out a large chunk of the Japanese navy. Ultimate WWII Weapons dips into the technological advances created during the battles. It ends with the atomic bomb. This collection is a fine way to grasp an understanding of what went on during these monumental battles of WWII.