Jackie and Matt Lawrence (Portia de Rossi and Dean Cain) have moved into a fancy apartment with a view of Central Park thanks to the generosity of some older folks like the Januszes (Hal Linden and Dina Merill) and the Goodsteins (Joseph Campanella and Grace Zabriskie).
If we’ve learned anything from occult movies, it’s that you never trust old Hollywood. This applies to TV movies, so don’t trust Barney Miller, the evil socialite from Caddyshack II, a soap star and Sarah Palmer all that much either, because they’ll take your young body, suck out all the energy and keep themselves young.
This was directed by Craig R. Baxley, who also helmed Action Jackson, Stone Coldand I Come In Peace. He’s working from the words of Gary Sherman. Yeah — the very same director who made Poltergeist III, Death Line, Dead & Buried, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Vice Squad and Lisa.
Hal Linden should be in more horror movies where he plays evil old men who steal souls. Someone has to say it.
A six-year-old Sam watched The Clone Master and wished it’d been a TV series, as he already knew what a backdoor pilot was at that young age and maybe he was a chubby kid with Coke bottle glasses, but he grew into, well, a chubby adult with Coke bottle glasses and a movie addiction.
Art Hindle (Black Christmas) is Dr. Simon Shane, a biochemist who has cloned himself multiple times and sent his selves out into the world to have adventures. So you can totally see how this was destined to be more than just a one and done.
Writer John D.F. Black scripted Shaft, Trouble Man, the TV movie Thief and the Wonder Woman TV movie. And director Don Medford’s directing credits stretch from a 1951 episode of Tales of Tomorrow all the way to a 1989 True Blue series installment.
The kids of today will never know the joy — and potential frustration — of a pilot being burned off as a summer TV movie. Sure, you get to see something new, but you’ll never see the entire series it sets up.
There was a time in the mid 70s when we were going to be killed by insects. Maybe they would be ants. Perhaps they could be killer bees. Or locusts. Always locusts.
Richard T. Heffron — the director who took over I, The Jury which made Larry Cohen so mad that he got Qdone before their movie — as well as the cheaper choice over Kenneth Johnson to make V the Final Battle, as well as man who made I Will Fight No More Forever, Death Scream, Futureworld and lots of TV movies — made this from a script by Robert Malcolm Young, who wrote the Witch Mountain movies, along with The Ghost of Flight 401, Starflight: The Plane that Couldn’t Land, The Crawling Hand and Trauma, a movie he also directed.
Ron Howard is our hero and he’s a kid always battling with his dad, Ben Johnson, who we all know and love from Terror Train. This isn’t really horror as much as it’s a family drama, with Ron’s dad Rance, Katherine Helmond and Belinda Balaski as notable castmates.
If you ever wanted the high action of men spraying down bugs, well — here’s where you find it.
Based on the novel Come to Mother by David Sale, the ABC Movie of the Week for February 16, 1974 tells the story of Caroline Carmichael (Donna Mills), who is frozen when her heart condition can’t be cured. She wakes up a few decades later only to learn that her husband Thomas (Walter Pidgeon) is now an elder gentleman. Even worse, her kids are now Vera Miles from Psycho and Mike Farrell, who are much older than her.
This is kind of a reunion for Miles, as screenwriter Joseph Stefano wrote the aforementioned Psycho, as well as The Naked Edge, Eye of the Cat and The Kindred. Director Richard A. Colla made The Questor Tapes, The UFO Incident, Battlestar Galactica and Something Is Out There.
Back in 1974, everyone was getting frozen. Remember when Walt Disney was supposedly lying all frosty in Cinderella’s castle?
This movie knows how to get a great cast together: Chad Lowe as its hero, along with Patrick Warburton, Tyra Banks, Amanda Plummer and R. Lee Ermey as some of the tenants that he’s watching over.
The last man in his place disappeared and now, after being accused of murder, it feels like Lowe’s Stan Warden is facing the same future. There’s also a fun script, written by Eerie, Indiana and Strange Luck creator — and the man who directed one of the original Fear Street TV movies — Karl Schaefer.
It’s also goofy in all the best ways — the owner’s name is Dr. Caligari, it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s brother Iggy, certain apartments are just missing — and seems like it could have been a series.
I’ve seen some bad reviews on this, but maybe it just hit me right. Or maybe I always cut Tobe Hooper — yes, he directed this! — a break. I wasn’t expecting much and ended up walking away finding somethingh mildly fun.
A direct sequel to Ultraman Tiga, the 13th entry in the Ultraman series finds a new team known as Super GUTS terraforming Mars in the far-future of 2017. Wait a minute…
As the Neo Frontier moves forward and Earth begins colonizing new planets, the Spheres begin to attack and as they land on those planets, they combine with rocks to form new monsters. Luckily, Shin Asuka survives his ship being destroyed by this enemy and joins with a beam of light to form Ultraman Dyna.
This set includes all 51 episodes of the show — including the very dark close — as well as two movies, Ultraman Tiga & Ultraman Dyna: Warriors of the Star of Light and Ultraman Dyna: Return of Henejiro.
Dyna also appears in Ultraman Tiga & Ultraman Dyna & Ultraman Gaia: Battle in Hyperspace, Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy (which resolves the end of this series and shows that Dyna survived) and he’s also the man Ultra in Ultraman Saga. He also makes appearances in Superior Ultraman 8 Brothers, Ultraman Ginga S: Showdown! Ultra 10 Warriors!! and Ultraman Orb: The Origin Saga.
This series looks gorgeous, as you can tell there was a pretty decent budget behind it. The move to Mars is interesting and while Dyna is mistaken for Tiga several times, that gets resolved before its all over. And the monsters are awesome!
The second volume of Lionsgate and A&Es WWE collection of Biography features Shawn Michaels (directed by Joe Lavine, who did the ESPN 30 for 30 “Playing for the Mob and the documentary Namath for HBO), Ultimate Warrior (directed by Daniel Amigone (Chain of Command, The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth), Mick Foley (directed by Thomas Odelfelt, who made the HBO 24/7 Mayweather-Marquez) and Bret “The HItman” Hart (directed by George Roy, who made Mantle for HBO).
It’s great to see these movies made by actual sports documentarians instead of presented as jokes. Sure, the Warrior doc has some of the dirt that you expect, but that came after WWE realized that they would truly be competing with Dark Side of the Ring.
You also get. to hear from the actual stars themselves — when possible — and the people they told these amazing stories with. If you’re a wrestling fan — or know one — this inexpensive set (and Volume 1 as well) are a great deal.
While the majority of the WWE docs are examples of the one that wins the war controlling history, these WWE Legends docs are actually pretty fun. Seeing as how Dark Side of the Ring had their own episode about Randy Savage, WWE decided to go all in on the more sensational sides of the life story of the Macho Man, somehow out scummy-ing — that’s a word, trust me — Dark Side at their own scummy and often bleak for the sake of bleakness game.
Now you can have that doc, as well as “Rowdy” Piper, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Booker T all on one disk from Lionsgate and A&E. Sadly, WWE are discontinuing their physical media after the end of this year, so getting more releases like this probably won’t happen.
There’s some real quality here, as Savage’s was produced by Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman (Screwball), Piper’s was directed by Emmy and Peabody Award-winner Joe Lavine (who has directed for ESPNs 30 for 30 series), Stone Cold’s was produced by Jason Hehir (The Last Dance, Andre the Giant) and the Booker T doc was directed by Emmy and Peabody Award-winner George Roy (The Curse of the Bambino).
If you want to know more about these great legends, this is a great place to get started. And these sets are pretty inexpensive and easy to find at Walmart or on Amazon.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally reviewed this as part of a Video Game Week back on January 30, 2018. But man, that Mill Creek steelbook is so pretty that we had to put it back on our TV. This set comes with new interviews with director Steven E. De Souza, actors Ming-Na Wen and Damian Chapa and producer Edward R. Pressman. Plus, there are features on Van Damme at Universal, the game versus the film, a talk with composer Graeme Revell, a making-of, outtakes, deleted scenes, archival audio commentary from de Souza, storyboards and video game sequences.
Street Fighter features many of the characters from the game and some of them hit the mark. Many of them don’t. And for years, I wrote the film off. I wondered, why did they pick Raul Julia to play M. Bison? After finally watching it, I now know that no one else could have played him.
How much do you really love the game? Then you’ll probably hate how idiotic Ken and Ryu are. You’ll probably dislike that E. Honda isn’t Japanese. And you’ll have trouble with the fact that Dhalsim is a scientist and that Charlie and Blanka have been turned into the same character.
But if you can get away from that, you pretty much get a live action cartoon. There’s a great scene where E. Honda and Zangief (Andrew Bryniarski, Leatherface in the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) have a fight while Godzilla sound effects play. Kylie Minogue is great as Cammy, even if her costumes are a little more modest than the video game. Wes Studi makes a fine Sagat. And the fights are really fun.
Best of all, Julia really makes M. Bison sing. There’s a great scene of him trying to seduce Chun Li in his chambers and he has a portrait done of him by John Wayne Gacy. And he brings a Shakespearean gravitas to a role that a lesser actor would not even think about. trying. The fact that he was suffering from stomach cancer (he died two months before the movie was released) is amazing when you see how much he put into his performance.
Street Fighter was the first movie that Steven de Souza directed. Up to then, he’d been better known as a writer, working on films as diverse as 48 Hours, The Return of Captain Invincible, Commando, The Running Man, Bad Dreams, Die Hard, Die Hard 2 and Hudson Hawk. He was beholden to a really rough schedule while working on the film, as Capcom had a hard and fast date that he had to hit. That said — he succeeds in making a silly take on the franchise. There’s even a Goofy falling sound effect made by one of the enemy soldiers!
This last scene is amazing and worth the price of ordering this movie.
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