After cutting the grass today on my new lawn mower I decided to watch something I had not seen in awhile.

Part of the charm of anime is the fractured storytelling, the disjointed style, which is often a result of trying to fit everything from the manga (Japanese comic book) into the movie. Devilman, for example, opens in a wooded paradise where beautiful and naked fairy women fly about and are then attacked by dinosaurs and demons, until a six-armed fairy warrior shoots down explosive balls of light at the demons. Cut to explorers in the caves of Antarctica, not quite surviving a cave-in and the appearance of a demon. Dissolve to rabbits in a hutch that have been killed. What’s going on? It’s hard to say, but it sure is interesting.

The story settles down when Akira is introduced. Akira is your typical schoolkid until his childhood best friend Ryo shows up and pulls him into a web of demons and deceit. As Ryo explains, Dante talks about demons frozen in the ice in The Divine Comedy, and now global warming is melting that ice, freeing them. Akira and Ryo decide to team up and save the world. Devilman is chock full of bizarre explanations about demon existence and behavior, demon-on-demon violence, and a little gratuitous nudity. The best reason to watch it is for all the bizarre explanations, which are too weird not to be entertaining. –Andy Spletzer

Devilman - The Birth/Demon Bird (Vol. 1 & 2)

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)

Plot Outline: Two college friends, Marie and Alexa, encounter loads of trouble (and blood) while on holiday at Alexa’s parent’s country home when a mysterious killer invades their quiet getaway.

Plot Synopsis: Two female college students, Marie and Alexa, set off to Alex’s parent’s secluded homestead in the country to relax and study. Come nightfall, Hell pulls up at the front door when a mysterious killer breaks in and kills Alexa’s father, mother, brother and pet dog. Alex is now bound and gagged, taken off by the killer, with Marie not far behind eluding the intruder. Can she save her friend’s life in time? Or is everything all that it seems…?

Here’s a quote from Amazon about this one:

Home to some of the world’s best food and fashion, the French also have the wonderful habit of producing some of the world’s best movies. With High Tension, French director Alexandre Aja offers up a bloody buffet of terror; a violent concoction of style over substance, with a bloody French twist. Two college girlfriends, Maria and Alex, take a weekend to study at the secluded country home of Alex’s parents. Shortly after their arrival, a mysterious killer appears, and things take a shockingly terrible turn for the worse. As the horror and body count rises, Maria and Alex find themselves fighting for their lives, and it’s revealed that things are not exactly as they seem. Essentially a one-act cat-and-mouse affair, High Tension is an explosive bloody thrill ride that rarely lets up. Oozing style in every color-saturated frame and boasting some intense performances, Aja mainly succeeds in sustaining an intense momentum throughout the film. The plot occasionally suffers from a thin, flimsy storyline, and the abundant graphic scenes of violence will either thrill and delight, or simply disgust. Nonetheless, this adrenalin-fueled addition to the genre gives the American slasher flick a real run for its money. High Tension is high-art horror, and comes highly recommended. –Matt Wold

Do yourself a favor and order a copy of High Tension.

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)

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!

“Dark Water” (search) is the latest American remake of a Japanese horror film hoping to scare up an audience this weekend.

As if the character played by Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly (search) (”A Beautiful Mind”) doesn’t have enough to deal with in a child custody fight, the divorced mom and her daughter move into a disturbingly spooky building.

“She’s faced with that sort of choice between her and her daughter’s being threatened, and she makes that choice — she’ll do anything to protect her daughter and to keep her safe, and as a parent, I think I absolutely recognize that there’s no question,” Connelly told FOX News.

More often than not I find myself wanting to watch old black and white horror movies. And no matter what I find myself craving the classics of Bela Lugosi. The man. The Count Himself.

He was born Béla Ferenc Dezso Blasko on October 20, 1882, in Hungary. He joined Budapest’s National Theater in 1913 and later appeared in several Hungarian films under the pseudonym Arisztid Olt. After World War I, he helped the Communist regime nationalize Hungary’s film industry, but barely escaped arrest when the government was deposed, fleeing to the United States in 1920.

As he became a star in American horror films in the 1930s and 1940s, publicists and fan magazines crafted outlandish stories to create a new history for Lugosi. The cinema’s Dracula was transformed into one of Hollywood’s most mysterious actors. This exhaustive account of Lugosi’s work in film, radio, theater, vaudeville and television provides an extensive biographical look at the actor. The enormous merchandising industry built around him is also examined.

More @ Bela Lugosi Info

There is a sale on all horror movies now on a separate page. Check out the great horror movies, and classics up for grabs. Buy new or used, DVD or VHS.