I never like to read too much about the movies I am going to watch before I do, so I can just see it and get it over with. Last night, I was surprised, and caught some old performances from two greats. Michael Berryman, famous for The Hills Have Eyes, and Lawrence Tierney, of Reservoir Dogs fame, and it also happened to be a Troma flick.

The title you ask? Wizards of the Demon Swords (1992). I know, I know. Laugh. But if you haven’t seen it, you’re missing some great sword play and one liners you’ll never forget. In addition, some great scenes and spliced in “dragons” that are actually Stegosaurus clay animations. Funny.

I also really enjoyed the crystal dagger, and the moment two goon run to a cliff (which looks more like a ten foot drop) and say “she must’ve jumped.” LOL It will keep you on the edge of your sofa, and laughing. Those looking for ladies in their horror are in for treats, I believe its not intended for minors.

Trust me, order your copy of Wizards of the Demon Swords now, it will definitely be a great addition to your horror collection.

Sure it’s cheesy. The acting is pretty bad, but who watches these for the plot? Pretty girls, guys with swords, and silly fight scenes. Invite a friend over though, may be too much to watch alone.

The Omen Remake sucks.

All remakes are needless, but this update of “The Omen” is especially so.

Not only was there nothing wrong with the 1976 horror classic, in which the Antichrist wreaks havoc on Earth as an innocent-looking 5-year-old boy, but the original stands as one of the most frightening movies. Ever.

It’s so ingrained in our pop culture, all you have to do is say the name Damien and everyone instantly knows you’re talking about a demonic child.

So why mess with it?

Thirty years later, the makers of “The Omen” barely have. They’re exceedingly faithful to the original — too faithful, actually — including having “Omen” screenwriter David Seltzer return to tweak his own script.

It’s not a shot-for-shot remake like Gus Van Sant’s pointless “Psycho” from 1998, but it’s close. The structure, characters, setting, events and even giant chunks of dialogue are all the same. One can only assume the intention was to appease the purists, but in doing so, director John Moore (”Behind Enemy Lines”) has breathed no new life into the material.

Tiny changes here and there inevitably contemporize the film. It takes place in the modern day, so the characters have cell phones.

When Julia Stiles — filling in for Lee Remick as Damien’s unsuspecting mother — begins to think there’s something wrong with her child, she immediately goes into therapy.

And Liev Schreiber — standing in for Gregory Peck as the father who surreptitiously brings the demon spawn into their lives — cries way more than Peck ever would have dreamed. Peck’s Robert Thorn choked up a little when he learned his wife had died, but mostly he held it together; here, as troubles mount, Schreiber is wiping away tears half the time. It’s the sensitive-man remake of “The Omen.”

But in the most feeble effort at modernizing the material, this “Omen” vaguely attempts to be politically relevant. A montage of photographs at the start suggests that the devil is everywhere, all the time — on Sept. 11, at Abu Ghraib, etc. — and we just don’t know it. The visit to an ancient biblical city toward the end of the film features flashes of flags, both Israeli and Palestinian. Such references feel tossed in.

More important, though, it isn’t even scary. It’s so similar to the original that we already know what’s coming. And because it adheres so closely, it only serves as a reminder of the superiority of Richard Donner’s original.

Not to be confused with the band White Zombie, but this is a great horror flick if you have not seen it.

Check it out!

White Zombie

A young man turns to a witch doctor to lure the woman he loves away from her fiance, but instead turns her into a zombie slave.

Young couple Madeleine and Neil are coaxed by acquaintance Monsieur Beaumont to get married on his Haitian plantation. Beaumont’s motives are purely selfish as he makes every attempt to convince the beautiful young girl to run away with him. For help Beaumont turns to the devious Legendre, a man who runs his mill by mind controlling people he has turned into zombies. After Beaumont uses Legendre’s zombie potion on Madeleine, he is dissatisfied with her emotionless being and wants her to be changed back. Legendre has no intention of doing this and he drugs Beaumont as well to add to his zombie collection. Meanwhile, grieving ‘widower’ Neil is convinced by a local priest that Madeleine may still be alive and he seeks her out.

Wait, there’s more:

Bela Lugosi followed up his star-making role in Dracula with this ambitious low-budget horror film from the Halperin brothers, who effectively transplanted the misty gothic mood of the Universal horror films to their poverty-row studio. White Zombie drips with atmosphere from the opening, as eerie chanting accompanies the credits and Madeleine (Madge Bellamy) arrives at midnight to witness a mysterious burial before coming face to face with the satanic looking Murder Legendre (Lugosi with goatee and searing eyes), a hypnotist and voodoo master who has been supplying the local mills with an army of zombie laborers. Madeleine’s nightmare is just beginning. Having landed in a world of almost perpetual night, where hollow-eyed zombies lumber through the sugar mill and the ghostly town is eerily bereft of living souls, she becomes the object of desire for Legendre, whose plan to possess her involves her initiation to the world of the undead. This first zombie movie is also one of the best, with Lugosi’s archly sinister performance dominating the film (thankfully obscuring a lot of overacting by supporting players), and astounding sets and gorgeous matte paintings creating a wondrous sense of poetic doom. –Sean Axmaker

Order White Zombie

Starring: Terry Potter, Pete O’Herne Director: Peter Jackson Yes, Peter Jackson from Lord of the Rings

Bad Taste - The population of a small town disappears and is replaced by aliens that chase human flesh for their intergalactic fast-food chain.

Could a title be any more direct? New Zealand maverick Peter Jackson made a splash (well, more of a splatter) with this film debut, a slapstick gross-out comedy about an alien fast-food franchise that turns a small town into a cheap source of meat. All that stands in the extraterrestrials’ way is the Alien Investigation Defense Service (yes, it’s a tasteless gag), a bunch of would-be Rambos who take on the aliens with axes, rocket launchers, and chainsaws. Jackson mines vomit jokes, dismembered corpses, and brain-spattering gore for over-the-top laughs and succeeds with inventive low-budget effects, crack timing, and sheer exuberance. Not bad for a film made on weekends with homemade props and a bunch of energetic mates. Jackson topped himself a few years later with the even more outrageous and hilarious bloody gut-buster Dead Alive.

The limited-edition two-disc set also includes the documentary featurette “Good Taste Made Bad Taste,” a revealing “making of” shot at the time of production and featuring behind-the-scenes footage of Jackson’s home-made special effects, and a 16-page booklet with cast interviews. –Sean Axmaker

A must for the horror maniac!

Add this great movie to your collection: Order Bad Taste DVD

Starring: Robert Behling, Jane Lyle Director: Nico Mastorakis Released: 1975

- Also Known As: A Craving for Lust / Devils in Mykonos
- Filming Locations: Mykonos, Greece

Order Island Of Death

Set on the island of Mykonos. A young couple (Christopher and Celia) arrive on this quaint Greek Island for a winter break. They rent a house, and initially seem like ordinary, swinging thrill seekers, who enjoy having sex in a phone booth. But all of these rather innocent, initial impressions are shattered when Chris wanders outside one sunny morning, stumbles across a lost lamb, has sex with it, and then slaughters the poor creature with a handy knife! Celia seduces a local house painter, and screws him in a field as Christopher captures a few Kodak moments from afar. And together, they torture the poor guy by nailing his hands to the ground, urinate on him and force feeding him a bucket of paint. Then they invade the home of a gay shop keeper (a “filthy creature”), while a middle-aged lesbian slut gets torched from Chris and winds up decapitated by a bulldozer! There’s also a black private eye on their trail, a creepy crime novelist, and a pair of degenerate hippies who rape Celia in her bathtub. One amusing scene is where Chris invades a gay party wielding a sword. Chris chases one of the guys through the middle of town with a sword and no one else in the town seems to notice. These two don’t simply kill somebody–they also have to burn their faces off by lighting a handy aerosol bottle. The couple believe they are helping God punish the perverse by torturing and killing visiting (and local) sexual deviants. Or as Christopher puts it, “I am his angel, with a flaming sword, sent to kill dirty worms”.

One of the most shocking films ever made finally comes to DVD with every appalling image intact! A jaded couple staying on vacation at a Greek island wreaks havoc on the inhabitants, indulging in every depraved act imaginable until events spiral to a twisted surprise ending you’ll never forget!

See cover and price: Island Of Death (1975)

Tonight, I think I’ll just put on Cube. Fear… Paranoia… Suspicion… Desperation

7 complete strangers of widely varying personality characteristics are involuntarily placed in an endless kafkaesque maze containing deadly traps.

Here’s another opinion:

If Clive Barker had written an episode of The Twilight Zone, it might have looked something like Cube. A handful of strangers wake up inside a bizarre maze, having been spirited there during the night. They quickly learn that they have to navigate their way through a series of chambers if they have any hope of escape, but the problem is that there are lethal traps awaiting if they choose their route unwisely. Having established some imaginative and grisly punishments in store for the hostages, cowriter and director Vincenzo Natali turns his attention to the characters, for whom being trapped amplifies their best and worst qualities. The film is, in fact, similar to a famous episode of Rod Serling’s old television series, though Natali’s explanation for why these poor people are being put through hell is a lot closer to the spirit of The X-Files. Cube has some solid moments of suspense and drama, and the sets are appropriately striking: one is tempted to believe at first the characters are lost inside a computer chip. –Tom Keogh

If you haven’t seen this one yet, check it out soon.

Order it: Cube

Bubba Ho-Tep (Limited Collector’s Edition) (2002)

Don Coscarelli directs and Bruce Campbell stars as the King of Camp in this intentionally over-the-top schlockfest. Bubba Ho-Tep is partially about Elvis Presley and partially about the title character, an Egyptian cowboy zombie, but mostly it is about camp. The movie is equal parts story and back story. We learn through narration and flashback how Elvis didn’t really die, ending up instead in a rest home in East Texas with JFK (played by Ossie Davis), who was dyed black and had his brain removed, presumably for reasons of national security. Campbell and Davis realize that something strange is going on when their rest-home compatriots start dropping off suspiciously. The whole movie leads up to a final showdown to the death with the Egyptian cowboy zombie who has been sucking the souls of their fellow residents because he thought no one would notice. The movie unfolds a bit slowly; it is, after all, a geriatrics-fight-Egyptian-cowboy-zombie movie. However, one wishes this self-conscious movie’s pacing took its cue from the atypically fast-moving zombie instead of from the senior-citizen Elvis and JFK. In the end, though, Campbell is flawless as the aged King; his accent, intonations, glasses, and trademark karate are at the same time sincere and over the top. –Brian Saltzman

Bubba Ho-Tep may have the most substantial and most worthwhile bonus features of any single-disc DVD release. “The Making of Bubba Ho-Tep” focuses on effects, make-up, and the musical score (which includes Don Coscarelli interviewing the composer, Brian Taylor). While the focus isn’t on the filmmaking itself, the 45-minute, four-part documentary (which can be viewed in segments or in its entirety) is an insightful exposé with lots of screen time for Bruce Campbell and Don Coscarelli discussing the success of the film on the festival circuit and the financial and industry challenges of making an “Elvis and JFK aren’t dead Egyptian zombie” movie that is set in Texas. The making-of is the heart of the bonus features, but there are also a couple of deleted scenes, a photo gallery, TV and theatrical trailers, and two commentary tracks, one by Campbell and Coscarelli and one by Campbell playing Elvis (”the King”). The limited edition also includes a small scrapbook liner note insert with photos and a brief letter from Bruce Campbell. –Brian Saltzman

Bubba Ho-Tep (Limited Collector’s Edition)

Submitted for your approval: The Twilight Zone’s inaugural season, all 36 episodes complete with Rod Serling’s original promos for the following week’s episode, not seen since their original broadcast. To discuss television’s greatest anthology series whose title has become pop culture shorthand for the bizarre and supernatural is to immediately become like Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd in Twilight Zone: The Movie; a can-you-top-this recall of famous shocks and favorite twists. Several essential episodes hail from this season, among them, “Time Enough at Last” starring Burgess Meredith as a bespectacled bookworm who is the lone survivor of an atomic blast; “The After-Hours” starring Anne Francis as a department store shopper haunted by mannequins; and the profoundly disturbing “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” in which fear and prejudice turns neighbor against neighbor (and, by the by, whose alien observers inspired Kang and Kodos on The Simpsons).

From an unsettlingly persistent hitchhiker to a malevolent slot machine, The Twilight Zone’s first season did plumb “the pit of man’s fears.” One forgets how moving the series could be. Three of this season’s most memorable and enduring episodes are the poignant and primal “stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off fantasies, “Walking Distance,” “A Stop at Willougby” and “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine,” in which desperate characters seek refuge in a simpler past. Serling’s few stabs at comedy (”Mr. Bevis,” “The Mighty Casey”) have not aged well, but the series finale, “A World of His Own,” starring Keenan Wynn as a playwright whose fictional characters come to life, has a brilliant capper. The episodes are more deliberately paced than one might remember. Less patient younger viewers might be anxious to get to the payoffs, but once they settle into the rhythm, they will savor the literate writing and the performances by such veteran actors as Ed Wynn, Everett Sloan, and Ida Lupino, and newcomers such as Jack Klugman. The extras, including the unaired version of the pilot episode, “Where is Everybody?”, audio commentaries and recollections, and a Serling college lecture, truly take this six-disc set to another dimension. –Donald Liebenson

# Episodes include: Where Is Everybody?, One for the Angels, Mr. Denton on Doomsday, Sixteen Millimeter Shrine, Walking Distance, Escape Clause, The Lonely, Time Enough at Last, Perchance to Dream, Judgment Night, And When the Sky Was Opened, What You Need, The Four of Us Are Dying, Third from the Sun, I Shot an Arrow into the Air, The Hitch-Hiker, The Fever, The Last Flight, The Purple Testament, Elegy, Mirror Image, The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, A World of Difference, Long Live Walter Jameson, People Are Alike All Over, Execution, The Big Tall Wish, A Nice Place to Visit, Nightmare as a Child, A Stop at Willoughby, The Chaser, A Passage for Trumpet, Mr. Bevis, The After Hours, The Mighty Casey, A World of His Own
# Remastered from new high-definition film transfers using the original camera negatives and magnetic soundtracks
# Audio commentaries by Earl Holliman, Martin Landau, Rod Taylor, Martin Milner, Kevin McCarthy, Ted Post and William Self
# Vintage audio recollections with Burgess Meredith, Douglas Heyes, Richard L. Bare, Buck Houghton, Anne Francis and Richard Matheson
# Rod Serling audio lectures from Sherwood Oaks College
# Isolated music scores featuring the legendary Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith and more
# Rod Serling promos for “Next Week’s” show
# Original unaired pilot version of “Where Is Everybody?” with Rod Serling’s network pitch
# Rare Rod Serling blooper

The Twilight Zone - Season 1 (The Definitive Edition)

Product Description:

The complete first season of Rod Serling’s classic, groundbreaking series exploring the fantastic and the frightening.

“Now you see it. You’re amazed. You can’t believe it. Your eyes open wider. It’s horrible, but you can’t look away. There’s no chance for you. No escape. You’re helpless, helpless. There’s just one chance, if you can scream. Throw your arms across your eyes and scream, scream for your life!” And scream Fay Wray does most famously in this monster classic, one of the greatest adventure films of all time, which even in an era of computer-generated wizardry remains a marvel of stop-motion animation. Robert Armstrong stars as famed adventurer Carl Denham, who is leading a “crazy voyage” to a mysterious, uncharted island to photograph “something monstrous … neither beast nor man.” Also aboard is waif Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and Bruce Cabot as big lug John Driscoll, the ship’s first mate. King Kong’s first half-hour is steady going, with engagingly corny dialogue (”Some big, hard-boiled egg gets a look at a pretty face and bang, he cracks up and goes sappy”) and ominous portent that sets the stage for the horror to come. Once our heroes reach Skull Island, the movie comes to roaring, chest-thumping, T. rex-slamming, snake-throttling, pterodactyl-tearing, native-stomping life. King Kong was ranked by the American Film Institute as among the 50 best films of the 20th century. Kong making his last stand atop the Empire State Building is one of the movies’ most indelible and iconic images. –Donald Liebenson

More King Kong 1933

DVD features
Not surprisingly, the eighth wonder of the world’s DVD treatment is nothing short of spectacular. The newly restored, digitally mastered print of the 1933 version of King Kong is sharp, well balanced, and given that this film is seventy years old, has very few scratches or blemishes. The restoration is nothing short of amazing. What may frustrate some is the audio. Though crystal clear, it is still in 2.0 Mono. The soundtrack on Kong is such an integral part of the film you really wished they could have pulled it out to at least 2.0 Surround; but this is a minor criticism. The bulk of the commentary track is by visual effects veterans Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston joyfully discussing the special effects of the film and discussing why King Kong is such a favorite and important film to the community of visual effects artists. Spliced between their commentaries are colorful and humorous anecdotes from director from Merian C. Cooper and Fay Wray. The two documentaries on disc two run over three and half hours long. I Am Kong! The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper is an engaging documentary on the renegade, Hemingway-like director. It is fascinating to learn that Cooper was every bit the adventurer that the fictional director Carl Denham in King Kong was in the film. RKO Production 601: The Making of Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World is a two and a half hour documentary broken into 7 parts: “The Origins of King Kong,” “Willis O’Brien and Creation,” “Cameras Roll on Kong,” “The Eighth Wonder,” “A Milestone in Visual Effects,” “Passion, Sound and Fury,” “The Mystery of the Lost Spider Pit Sequence,” and “King Kong’s Legacy.” Also included is complete footage of the legendary “The Lost Spider Pit Sequence.” Presenting the segments are various film historians and filmmakers including Rudy Behlmer, Cooper biographer Mark Cotta Vaz, the Chiodo Brothers (of Team America: World Police special effects fame), and directors John Landis and Peter Jackson. Here you will learn everything you would ever want to know about the making and importance of King Kong, including that the producer/director team of Cooper and Schoedsack played the pilots who shoot Kong off the Empire State Building. The highly anticipated, long-awaited release of King Kong will meet most viewers’ expectations, and exceed everyone’s else. –Rob Bracco

King Kong (Collector’s Edition)

Audio Commentary:Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston with Merian C. Cooper, and Fay Wray
Documentaries:RKO Production 601: The Making of Kong, Eighth Wonder of the World (7-Part Documentary) 1. The Origins of King Kong, 2. Willis O’Brien and Creation, 3. The Filming of King Kong, 4. The Visual Effects of King Kong, 5. The Sound and Music of King Kong, 6. The Mystery of the Lost Spider Pit Sequence, 7. The Legacy of King Kong. Plus, I’m Kong: The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper (2005 TCM documentary) and Hollywood The Golden Years: The RKO Story- Birth of a Titan (1987 BBC documentary).
Other:Creation Test Footage with Optional Commentary by Ray Harryhausen
Theatrical Trailer:Merian C. Cooper Trailer Gallery

Now this is a Horror Movie. At least one with some creativity! If you have not seen this yet, do yourself a favor and order it as soon as you can.

I ordered Dead Alive a few weeks ago because a friend recommended it. For some reason it was not readily available at my local shop so I ordered it online. Well worth it.

Throw out all your preconceptions about the limits of horror! A new standard has been set with Dead Alive - The Mother of All Horror Films.

On a quiet street, in a small town, pure evil has come to stay. Lionel, an innocent young man, is forced to care for his domineering mother and finds the task a whole lot more demanding after she’s bitten by the cursed Sumatran rat monkey. Passing the point of death, Lionel’s mother sucks friends and family into her gruesome existence among the living dead and Lionel is sent spiraling into a ghoulish nightmare.

now a crazed zombie, she soon infects enough people to make it difficult for Lionel, still the faithful son, to keep the neighbors from suspecting that something is terribly wrong.

Dead Alive is dripping with state-of-the-art special effects that feature mutilations, rock ‘n roll dismemberments and household appliances, combining into the most bizarre ending ever filmed.

In case you forgot, Peter Jackson is also the director of The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers, and The Lord of the Rings - Return Of The King.

I highly recommend Dead Alive for the gore loving splatter fiends!