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Actors & Directors
  • Connie Mason
  • Herschell Gordon Lewis
  • Mal Arnold
  • Scott H. Hall
  • William Kerwin
  • Lyn Bolton
Release date: 2002-10-28
Run time: 67 min.
Creator: Allison Louise Downe
RRP: £7.99
Price: £2.89

Review Blood Feast [1963] / Tartan Video:

A shocking drive-in sensation when released in 1963, Blood Feast remains a milestone in the exploitation genre. A serial killer is on the loose; women are being killed and body parts are being stolen; the police are stumped (so to speak). Meanwhile, Egyptmania seems to be gripping this small Florida town. Fuad Ramses' "exotic catering" shop is doing a booming business and his book, Ancient Weird Religious Rituals, is being studied by the local book club. Is there a connection between Ramses and the murders? Of course! In this film by the wizard of gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis, plot and suspense take a back seat to the gruesome and bloody murder scenes. The acting may not be very good, the script is weak at best and the effects don't hold up to later standards of Hollywood gore, but there is an infectious enthusiasm that comes through Lewis' desire to shock his audience. The exploitation elements may be dated but that only makes them all the more entertaining. Blood Feast was followed (in what would come to be known as Lewis' "blood trilogy") by Two Thousand Maniacs! and Color Me Blood Red. -Andy Spletzer, Amazon. com.

Review Warner Home Video / Crusade : War Zone & The Long Road [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Gary Cole
  • Tracy Scoggins
  • Tony Dow
  • Peter Woodward
  • David Allen Brooks
  • Daniel Dae Kim
Release date: 2000-03-06
Run time: 85 min.
Creator: Tracy Yates
RRP: £12.99
Price: £1.25

Review Crusade : War Zone & The Long Road [1999] / Warner Home Video:


Review Mosaic Movies / Stephen King's The Night Flier [1997]
Actors & Directors
  • John Bennes
  • Julie Entwisle
  • Dan Monahan
  • Miguel Ferrer
  • Michael H. Moss
  • Mark Pavia
Release date: 2003-01-27
Run time: 93 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £12.89

Review Stephen King's The Night Flier [1997] / Mosaic Movies:


Review Adv Films / Samurai X - Betrayal
Actors & Directors
  • Nozomu Sasaki
  • Junko Iwao
  • Shûichi Ikeda
  • Mayo Suzukaze
  • Kazuhiro Furuhashi
  • Masami Suzuki
Release date: 2001-02-05
Run time: 60 min.
Creator: Nobuhiro Watsuki
Price: £12.99

Review Samurai X - Betrayal / Adv Films:

The peace that reigns over the remote mountain village of Otsu in Samurai X: Betrayal contrasts sharply with the rapid-fire violence of the previous episodes (Samurai X: Trust) set in Kyoto. Working as a farmer, growing crops and savouring the passage of the seasons, Kenshin comes to terms with the discontent festering in his soul. He regrets the death and suffering he has caused, and hopes to find a better life with the mysterious Tomoe. A conventional story would end on this note of self-discovery and moral growth, but Samurai Xunfolds like a Kabuki tragedy: the desire for revenge remains strong, especially among the agents of the last Tokugawa Shogun who are anxious to crush the nascent rebellion led by the Choshuclan. Kenshin was an important agent for the Choshu; Tomoe is just a pawn, but the outcome of a game may hinge on a strategically positioned pawn. Kenshin finally grasps the lessons his master, Hiko, attempted to teach him: the need for inner peace and the possibility of defending the weak without resorting to violence. The exquisitely detailed artwork evokes 19th-century Japan, and director Kazuhiro Furuhashi depicts these understated inner conflicts as skilfully as he does the epic sword fights in the first episodes. Samurai X demonstrates the power of animation to present stories of great emotional depth, earning it a rightful place among the top anime series. -Charles Solomon, Amazon. com.

Review Contender Entertainment Group / Lexx - Vol. 3.4 - 3.08 The Key / 3.09 Gardens [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Stefan Ronowicz
  • Xenia Seeberg
  • Nigel Bennett
  • Jeffrey Hirschfield
  • Stephen Manuel
  • Michael McManus
  • Brian Downey
Release date: 2000-10-16
Run time: 95 min.
Creator: Paul Donovan
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.50

Review Lexx - Vol. 3.4 - 3.08 The Key / 3.09 Gardens [1999] / Contender Entertainment Group:

A "Light Universe" and a "Dark Zone" keep good and bad apart for the characters of Lexx, even though it's often hard to tell the difference between the two in this offbeat and unique sci-fi show that delights in its own nastiness. With flashes of nudity and surgical gore, and a collection of extreme hairstyles and accents, the show's overall look is often akin to a sci-fi Eurotrash. Aboard the stolen 10-kilometre-long spaceship Lexx (designed to look like a dragonfly) are the "Dirty Three-and-a-Half": insufferable coward Stanley H. Tweedle (Brian Downey), the Edward Scissorhands clone and 2,000 years-dead Kai (Michael McManus), decapitated and lovestruck robot head 790 (voiced by writer Jeffrey Hirschfield) and the skimpily wardrobed Zev (Eva Habermann), replaced for Season Two by Xev (Xenia Seeberg). A disregard both for genre conventions and good taste makes the show a constant series of surprises: by the time of the third season, the expression "anything goes" had long passed being understatement. On this tape: Stan has been endlessly teased by Xev. They got it together (in a manner of speaking) in "Love Grows", but here at last they experience the "ultimate in sexual satisfaction". Don't they? "The Key" metaphorically stands for a number of things in this ship-bound episode, which furthers the season's mystery considerably. And as if the sexual tension wasn't high enough already, the lifestyle offered Stan on the Water planet's "Garden" is all too tempting. It even causes Kai to down roots-in a soil box! The biggest lure is the return of beautiful plant gal Lyekka. [+]
As a double act, the episodes on this volume illustrate a lot of what keeps the censors' scissors at the ready. Fortunately they still get away with the line: "The dead do not poo". -Paul Tonks.

Review Mollin Video / Home To Rent - Holiday Heave Ho
Actors & Directors
  • Jeff Bennett
  • Charles Adler
  • Thomas Szabo
  • Danny Mann
  • Maurice LaMarche
  • Olivier Jean Marie
Release date: 2000-11-06
Run time: 65 min.
Creator: Philippe Traversat
RRP: £9.99
Price: £2.69

Review Home To Rent - Holiday Heave Ho / Mollin Video:


Review Paramount Home Entertainment / Star Trek 1 : The Motion Picture [1979]
Actors & Directors
  • George Takei
  • Robert Wise
  • DeForest Kelley
  • Leonard Nimoy
  • William Shatner
  • James Doohan
Release date: 1999-10-01
Run time: 126 min.
Creator: Harold Livingston
RRP: £10.99
Price: £9.98

Review Star Trek 1 : The Motion Picture [1979] / Paramount Home Entertainment:

Back when the first Star Trek feature was released in December 1979, the Trek franchise was still relatively modest, consisting of the original TV series, an animated cartoon series from 1973-74, and a burgeoning fan network around the world. Series creator Gene Roddenberry had conceived a second TV series, but after the success of Star Wars the project was upgraded into this lavish feature film, which reunited the original series cast aboard a beautifully redesigned starship U. S. S. Enterprise. Under the direction of Robert Wise (best known for West Side Story), the film proved to be a mixed blessing for Trek fans, who heatedly debated its merits; but it was, of course, a phenomenal hit. Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) leads his crew into the vast structures surrounding V'Ger, an all-powerful being that is cutting a destructive course through Starfleet space. With his new First Officer (Stephen Collins), the bald and beautiful Lieutenant Ilia (played by the late Persis Khambatta) and his returning veteran crew, Kirk must decipher the secret of V'Ger's true purpose and restore the safety of the galaxy. The story is rather overblown and derivative of plots from the original series, and avid Trekkies greeted the film's bland costumes with derisive laughter. [+]
But as a feast for the eyes, this is an adventure worthy of big-screen trekkin'. Douglas Trumbull's visual effects are astonishing, and Jerry Goldmith's score is regarded as one of the prolific composer's very best (with its main theme later used for Star Trek: The Next Generation). And, fortunately for Star Trek fans, the expanded 143-minute version (originally shown for the film's network TV premiere) is generally considered an improvement over the original theatrical release. -Jeff Shannon.

Review / In Search of Dracula (Video Tape/PAL)
Actors & Directors
  • Calvin Floyd
  • Christopher Lee
Run time: 83 min.
Creator: Tor Isedal

Review In Search of Dracula (Video Tape/PAL):

Yes there really was a Dracula. The legend of Count Dracula the vampire who slep in a coffin by day and sank his teeth into pretty young necks by night. It is based on a real person. The deeds of real men are often more disturbing than those of fictional characters. And so it is with Dracula, a Romanian prince who lived five centuries ago.

Review / Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island
Actors & Directors
  • Jim Stenstrum
  • Mary Kay Bergman
  • Billy West
  • Kazumi Fukushima
  • Hiroshi Aoyama
  • B.J. Ward
  • Scott Innes
  • Frank Welker
Run time: 77 min.
Creator: Glenn Leopold

Review Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island:


Review Tartan Video / Nightwish [1989]
Actors & Directors
  • Artur Cybulski
  • Jack Starrett
  • Robert Tessier
  • Brian Thompson
  • Bruce R. Cook
  • Tom Dugan (II)
Release date: 2002-10-28
Run time: 88 min.
Price: £7.99

Review Nightwish [1989] / Tartan Video:


Review Cinema Club / Wes Craven's New Nightmare / Carnival Of Souls [1995]
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Englund
  • Miko Hughes
  • Wes Craven
  • Wes Craven
  • Heather Langenkamp
  • John Saxon
Release date: 2000-11-06
Run time: 192 min.
Creator: Jeffrey Fenner
Price: £9.99

Review Wes Craven's New Nightmare / Carnival Of Souls [1995] / Cinema Club:

Halfway through A New Nightmare Heather Langenkamp goes to visit Wes Craven to discuss resurrecting the Freddy Krueger series for one last film. Craven's script focuses on a malevolent demon that has escaped from the stories in which he was trapped because they have lost their power to scare. Sound familiar? This script-within-a-film refers, of course, to the real-life fate of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, and is an idea typical of this intelligent movie which successfully blurs the line between this horror film and its real-life production context. Langenkamp plays herself, in virtually her own life: a D-list actress unable to match the success she found in the original Nightmare on Elm Street films. She, like the rest of the cast and crew of the original films (also played by themselves-most notably Craven and Robert Englund, camping himself up as an adored celebrity and part-time "artist"), is haunted by dreams of the Freddy Krueger character. Craven's script reveals that if Freddy is not trapped within a story more powerful than the Elm Street sequels-i. e. this film-he will become real. New Nightmare is an interesting precursor to the Scream series, and it attempts to capitalise on its self-reflexivity in a similar way. The idea is that, having openly revealed that the rest of the Elm Street series were "only films", New Nightmare can then set about scaring your pants off. [+]
The biggest hindrance, however, is the Freddy character himself. Despite the fact that we are told that this is the "real" Freddy, rather than the cinematic incarnation we've seen many times before it is still difficult to shake off a persistent sensation of déja-vu. Freddy just isn't scary any more: his face looks a lot less gnarled than it used to be and even the once-terrifying claw seems to have lost its edge. Similarly, having hammered home the fact that this movie is real, those elements of the film which require a little more imagination-such as Freddy's body-stretching, the surreal scare sequences and the Gothic-fantasy finale-appear absurd. Thus, if certainly not as good as the original, New Nightmare is at least an intelligent, fresh and occasionally scary film: which makes it head and shoulders above most of its genre and certainly better than most of this series. -Paul Philpott.

Review Contender Entertainment Group / Farscape Vol. 1.10 - 1.21 Bone To Be Wild / 1.22 Family Ties [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Jonathan Hardy
  • Claudia Black
  • Lani John Tupu
  • Geoff Bennett
  • Ian Watson
  • Ben Browder
  • Tony Tilse
  • Anthony Simcoe
Release date: 2000-10-30
Run time: 50 min.
Creator: Rockne S. O'Bannon
Price: £12.99

Review Farscape Vol. 1.10 - 1.21 Bone To Be Wild / 1.22 Family Ties [1999] / Contender Entertainment Group:

An international co-production of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, Australia' s Channel 9 and Hallmark Entertainment, Farscape is genre television at its most ambitious, inspired both by the cult appeal of Babylon 5 and the continuing success of the Star Trek franchise. Making extensive use of CGI, prosthetics and state-of-the-art puppetry, Farscape takes a visual leap beyond previous shows. Admittedly, the basic premise may be borrowed from Buck Rogers (American astronaut catapulted to far-flung galaxy populated by strange aliens), while the crew have something of Blake's 7 about them (a motley bunch of escaped convicts pursued by a relentless foe), and ideas like the living ship are borrowed from Babylon 5, but the Farscape concept has a freshness that makes it look and feel completely original. The production design is all bio-mechanical curves and the script never takes itself too seriously (fart jokes and double-entendres pop up when you least expect them). It must have been expensive to make, but it certainly looks (and sounds-in Dolby Digital 5. 1) like every penny made it to the screen. In true Buck Rogers style, Ben Browder plays leading man John Crichton as an all-American astronaut, although with a more believable sense of bewilderment; the supporting cast is a mixture of Australian and British actors, mostly disguised under heavy make-up. On this tape: Two more episodes from Season One: "Bone to be Wild" and "Family Ties", plus a profile of the Australian Creature Shop. -Mark Walker.

Review Contender Entertainment Group / Todd McFarlane's Spawn - Episodes 9 And 10 [1998]
Actors & Directors
  • James Keane
  • Richard Dysart
  • Keith David
  • Frank Paur
  • Dominique Jennings
  • Brad Rader
  • Jennifer Yuh
  • Michael McShane
  • Eric Radomski
  • Chuck Patton
Release date: 1998-08-03
Run time: 52 min.
RRP: £12.99
Price: £2.75

Review Todd McFarlane's Spawn - Episodes 9 And 10 [1998] / Contender Entertainment Group:


Review Entertainment in Video / The Astronaut's Wife [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Joe Morton
  • Rand Ravich
  • Donna Murphy
  • Clea DuVall
  • Charlize Theron
  • Johnny Depp
Release date: 2000-09-25
Run time: 100 min.
Creator: Mark Johnson
RRP: £5.99
Price: £4.99

Review The Astronaut's Wife [1999] / Entertainment in Video:

An intriguingly creepy premise but failed execution marks The Astronaut's Wife, a stylish and ultimately bland thriller about a pretty, young woman whose pretty, young astronaut husband comes back from his most recent space mission a little. odd. Before that fated space trip, Spencer (Johnny Depp) and Jillian (Charlize Theron) were a sunny, happy couple with matching blonde hairdos and a predilection for romping in the sack from extremely clever camera angles. However, after a communications blackout brings Spencer and his partner back down to earth prematurely, things are a little. peculiar. Spencer's partner goes bonkers and has a heart attack; on top of that, the partner's wife takes a fatal shower with a plugged-in radio. [+]
Getting out of the space biz, Spencer accepts a job as a corporate exec in New York, and as a welcome to the Big Apple for his comely wife, he molests her at the company cocktail party. Soon enough, Jillian is pregnant, but as you might expect, this pregnancy (twins, don't you know) is a little. unusual. Writer-director Rand Ravich takes his sweet time getting from extremely obvious plot point A to even more obvious plot point B, stretching out the development particulars in mind-numbing, suspense-killing fashion. Even Joe Morton, as a sinisterly psychotic NASA official, can't liven things up-you know you're in bad thriller territory when the biggest scare comes from a light suddenly being switched off. Theron, sporting a Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby style haircut, sleepwalks beautifully through the movie, but she did this role much, much better in The Devil's Advocate. Depp, with a cornpone Southern accent, is about as realistic as his peroxided hair. Ravich does the viewer no favours with a hackneyed ending straight out of a B-grade paperback horror novel in which the most shocking moment is Theron's sudden emergence as a brunette. With Blair Brown as a jaded socialite who offers to help out Theron by providing do-it-yourself abortion pills, and a lovely Donna Murphy as the suicidal wife who figures it all out before everyone else. - Mark Englehart, Amazon. com.

Review Screen Edge / Vampires And Other Stereotypes [1992]
Actors & Directors
  • Bill White
  • Rick Poli
  • Kevin J. Lindenmuth
  • Ed Hubbard
  • Wendy Bednarz
  • Anna Dipace
Release date: 1997-06-23
Run time: 87 min.
Creator: Tullio Tedeschi
RRP: £12.99
Price: £12.98

Review Vampires And Other Stereotypes [1992] / Screen Edge:


Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Bram Stoker's Dracula [1992] [1993]
Actors & Directors
  • Richard E. Grant
  • Francis Ford Coppola
  • Gary Oldman
  • Keanu Reeves
  • Anthony Hopkins
  • Winona Ryder
Release date: 1993-12-01
Run time: 122 min.
RRP: £14.99
Price: £8.40

Review Bram Stoker's Dracula [1992] [1993] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

With dizzying cinematic tricks and astonishing performances, Francis Coppola's 1992 version of the oft-filmed Dracula story is one of the most exuberant, extravagant films of the 1990s. Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder, as the Count and Mina Murray, are quite a pair of star-crossed lovers. She's betrothed to another man; he can't kick the habit of feeding off the living. Anthony Hopkins plays Van Helsing, the vampire slayer, with tongue firmly in cheek. Tom Waits is great fun as Renfield, the hapless slave of Dracula who craves the blood of insects and cats. Sadie Frost is a sexy Lucy Westenra. And poor Keanu Reeves, as Jonathan Harker, has the misfortune to be seduced by Dracula's three half-naked wives. There's a little bit of everything in this version of Dracula: gore, high-speed horseback chases, passion and longing.

Review Mia Video Entertainment Ltd / Sex And Zen 2
Actors & Directors
  • Loletta Lee
  • Qi Shu
  • Elvis Tsui
  • Ben Ng
  • Man Kei Chin
  • Tat-Wah Lok
Release date: 1998-08-31
Run time: 93 min.
Creator: Jing Wong
Price: £13.99

Review Sex And Zen 2 / Mia Video Entertainment Ltd:


Review Contender Entertainment Group / Lexx - Vol. 3.3 - 3.06 K-Town / 3.07 Tunnels [1999]
Actors & Directors
  • Jeffrey Hirschfield
  • Brian Downey
  • Stephen Manuel
  • Stefan Ronowicz
  • Michael McManus
  • Nigel Bennett
  • Xenia Seeberg
Release date: 2000-10-16
Creator: Paul Donovan
RRP: £12.99
Price: £0.63

Review Lexx - Vol. 3.3 - 3.06 K-Town / 3.07 Tunnels [1999] / Contender Entertainment Group:

A "Light Universe" and a "Dark Zone" keep good and bad apart for the characters of Lexx, even though it's often hard to tell the difference between the two in this offbeat and unique sci-fi show that delights in its own nastiness. With flashes of nudity and surgical gore, and a collection of extreme hairstyles and accents, the show's overall look is often akin to a sci-fi Eurotrash. Aboard the stolen 10-kilometre-long spaceship Lexx (designed to look like a dragonfly) are the "Dirty Three-and-a-Half": insufferable coward Stanley H. Tweedle (Brian Downey), the Edward Scissorhands clone and 2,000 years-dead Kai (Michael McManus), decapitated and lovestruck robot head 790 (voiced by writer Jeffrey Hirschfield) and the skimpily wardrobed Zev (Eva Habermann), replaced for Season Two by Xev (Xenia Seeberg). A disregard both for genre conventions and good taste makes the show a constant series of surprises: by the time of the third season, the expression "anything goes" had long passed being understatementOn this tape: We've seen Xev in the shower, Stanley without his hat, and even the inside of 790's head. So seeing Kai in the nude was only a matter of time. Lost among the schizophrenic denizens of "K-Town", Stan and Xev are eventually found by the dead assassin whose biomechanical systems are malfunctioning. It takes a shock re-appearance of season 2's Universe-destroying Mantrid to make sense of his groin-located repair mechanism. Subsequently split up, Kai suffers the red tape of petty bureaucracy in Hog Town while Stan and Xev descend 39,000 steps to the planet's "Tunnels". Stan bumps into show writer Lex Gigeroff cameoing as insane surgeon Doctor Rainbow, and escape is determined by another death and resurrection from the enigmatic Prince. [+]
Halfway along, the viewer should by now be carefully questioning this season's premise. -Paul Tonks.

Review / Stigmata [2000]
Actors & Directors
  • Thomas Kopache
  • Patricia Arquette
  • Gabriel Byrne
  • Rupert Wainwright
  • Nia Long
  • Jonathan Pryce
Run time: 103 min.
Creator: Tom Lazarus
Price: £4.99

Review Stigmata [2000]:

Gabriel Byrne plays Father Kiernan, a young Jesuit priest whose degree in chemistry makes him a sort of priest/detective as he investigates weeping Marys and the like around the world. Meanwhile, Frankie (Patricia Arquette), a rave-generation Pittsburgher, is afflicted with the stigmata-holes that appear in her wrists, resembling the wounds of Christ. The young woman's symptoms filter back to the Vatican and Father Kiernan is assigned to the case. The priest is puzzled by Frankie's atheism; usually the stigmata only appear on the devout (hence the age-old controversy of miracles vs. hysteria). Other manifestations appear on Frankie, and the priest's cardinal (Jonathan Pryce) is brought in, leading to political manoeuvring within the Church hierarchy. The film owes a large and obvious debt to The Exorcist (at one point, Frankie's bed scoots across the room and she levitates into a crucifix position) but to term it an Exorcist rip-off would be to short-change Stigmata. The premise and screenplay are more cerebral than in the l973 film, and the source of the phenomenon is coming from a completely different place. Unfortunately, amid Stigmata's high-octane editing and slick technique, the chills of The Exorcist aren't there, giving the movie a sort of identity crisis: horror movie or intellectual thriller? Several elements of the film challenge basic tenets of the Catholic faith, hence the brief furore that erupted at the time of the film's release; if nothing else, the internal workings of the Church are shown in a very unflattering light indeed. Byrne excels as the sceptical priest, as does Arquette as the tortured young woman. [+]
All told, Stigmata is a rather uneven effort but one with a thought-provoking combination of theology and thrills served up in a thoroughly modern, stylish package. Fans of TV's Ally McBeal will recognise Portia De Rossi in a supporting role. -Jerry Renshaw.

Review Tartan Video / Nightwish [1989]
Actors & Directors
  • Artur Cybulski
  • Tom Dugan (II)
  • Robert Tessier
  • Jack Starrett
  • Brian Thompson
  • Bruce R. Cook
Release date: 2002-10-28
Run time: 88 min.
Price: £7.99

Review Nightwish [1989] / Tartan Video:


Models & Brands:
Blood Feast [1963], Crusade : War Zone & The Long Road [1999], Stephen King's The Night Flier [1997], Samurai X - Betrayal, Lexx - Vol. 3.4 - 3.08 The Key / 3.09 Gardens [1999], Home To Rent - Holiday Heave Ho, Star Trek 1 : The Motion Picture [1979], In Search of Dracula (Video Tape/PAL), Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, Nightwish [1989], Wes Craven's New Nightmare / Carnival Of Souls [1995], Farscape Vol. 1.10 - 1.21 Bone To Be Wild / 1.22 Family Ties [1999], Todd McFarlane's Spawn - Episodes 9 And 10 [1998], The Astronaut's Wife [1999], Vampires And Other Stereotypes [1992], Bram Stoker's Dracula [1992] [1993], Sex And Zen 2, Lexx - Vol. 3.3 - 3.06 K-Town / 3.07 Tunnels [1999], Stigmata [2000], Nightwish [1989]

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