Tag Archives: 1998

ARROW VIDEO BLU-RAY AND 4K UHD RELEASE: Dark City (1998)

Posted on by

Directed, co-written, and co-produced by Alex Proyas, Dark City was a bomb, but one that has found its audience. It followed Proyas’ first two films, Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds and The Crow. Maybe the movies that followed — Garage Days, I, Robot, Knowing and Gods of Egypt — didn’t live up to the promise he was showing here, but at least we still have some great stuff to look back on. Perhaps his adaptation of R.U.R. will be excellent.

According to Wikipedia, “Concerned that audiences would not understand the film, New Line asked Proyas to add an explanatory voice-over to the introduction, and he complied.” Nothing good ever comes of that. But perhaps Dark City paved the way for The Matrix to run.

John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a hotel with a ritualistically murdered woman in the next room. A phone call from Dr. Daniel P. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) urges him to run, as The Strangers are on their way. Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) is looking for whoever is killing sex workers, which makes Murdoch a suspect.

It’s always night here, and soon, both Murdoch and Bumstead learn that The Strangers are aliens who can use “tuning” to distort reality. As a group of humans sleep, they are mining them for the data that may save their world. Tracked by a Stranger with his memories, Mr. Hand (Richard O’Brien, Riff Raff in another iconic role), he must find and rescue his wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and stop the aliens from taking over the entire human race, while also getting back to his hometown, Shell Beach, a place everyone knows about. Still, no one knows how to get there.

I love movies shot all on a soundstage, and that’s what makes Dark City feel so unique. It’s a world that could be the 1940s but is also nowhere, filled with spirals, clocks and near-unending darkness. I can and can’t believe that this was released against Titanic but I have also learned that the right films always find their audience.

In 2021, Proyas made a short film in the same universe as Dark City, Mask of the Evil Apparition. 

The Arrow Video release of Dark City has a brand new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negatives approved by director of photography Dariusz Wolski, plus a 60-page perfect bound collectors’ book featuring new writing by author Richard Kadrey, and film critics Sabina Stent, Virat Nehru and Martyn Pedler. It’s inside limited edition packaging featuring newly commissioned artwork by Doug John Miller with a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Doug John Miller, three postcard-sized reproduction art cards, a postcard from Shell Beach and a business card for Dr. Schreber.

The Director’s City disk has five commentaries: a new commentary by director Alex Proyas, another by Craig Anderson, Bruce Isaacs and Herschel Isaacs, co-hosts of the Film Versus Film podcast and an archival audio commentary by director Proyas; an archival commentary by Roger Ebert; and an archival commentary by writers Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer. There’s also an archival introduction by Alex Proyas; Return to Dark City, a new hour-long documentary featuring interviews with director Alex Proyas, producer Andrew Mason, production designers Patrick Tatopoulos and George Liddle, costume designer Liz Keough, storyboard artist Peter Pound, director of photography Dariusz Wolski, actor Rufus Sewell, hair & makeup artist Leslie Vanderwalt and VFX creative director Peter Doyle; Rats in a Maze, a new visual essay by film scholar Alexandra West; I’m as Much in the Dark as You Are, a new visual essay by film scholar Josh Nelson on film noir and identity in Dark City and a design and storyboard gallery.

The theatrical cut has two archival commentaries, one by Proyas, writers Lem Dobbs & David S. Goyer, director of photography Dariusz Wolski and production designer Patrick Tatopoulos and the other by Roger Ebert. There’s also Memories of Shell Beach, a 2008 featurette in which cast and crew look back at the making of the film from concept to reception; Architecture of Dreams, a 2008 featurette presenting five perspectives on the themes and meanings of the film; a theatrical trailer and an image gallery.

While this is currently sold out, keep your eye on Arrow Video and MVD Shop.

CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL 2025: Inertia: Re-Making The Crow (2001)/James O’Barr’s The Crow (1998)

Posted on by

Inertia: Re-Making The Crow (2001): Directed by David Ullman along with Matt Jackson, who in their teen years decided to take an obsession over the film The Crow and recreate it with a version closer to James O’Barr’s original graphic novel. Shot on video and in black and white, this took four years and drove Ullman’s family insane.

The original pitch for this doc was wide in its scope: “I’d like Inertia to be both an examination of how we created our movie and an exploration of the comic from which it came. Using behind-the-scenes footage, photographs, and interviews, the documentary will illustrate the process by which two 14-year-olds successfully adapted a comic of such breadth, texture, and intensity; the challenges their limited resources presented; and the creativity used to overcome them, ultimately showing how passion can overcome adversity.

Additionally, an underlying study of O’Barr’s piece and a character study of the young filmmaker for whom this project became an obsession should be included. The picture should play like Hearts of Darkness meets Looking For Richard.”

The original documentary was attacked for copyright reasons, but over the years, it has played several film festivals and is more than just about the comic book or the movie. It’s about how two young men from Ohio matured as artists and made something together that would inform the rest of their lives.

You can get this movie on VHS from Lunchmeat VHS.

James O’Barr’s The Crow (1998): Created by David Ullman and Matt Jackson over four years, throughout their high school years, this is what SOV is all about: obsessive devotion. When their friends didn’t show up, when their family didn’t understand, they kept making this movie.

On Ullman’s site, he has this quote: “There’s this aura to the book. When you look at it, you feel something. There is blood on the page, and you can sense that. It’s very affecting. I think they captured that beautifully in the Miramax film, and it was our intention at first to make a hybrid of the existing movie and the comic book. But the more serious we became about the project in general, the more we wanted to really delve into the book, explore its themes and characters, create something more of our own.”

Both star in the film, with Ullman as Eric Draven and Jackson as Top Dollar. The sets were in the family bedroom. Over four years, they learned how to take a comic book, transform it into a script and storyboard, and then create art from it.

I get it. I saw The Crow so many times in the theater, I listened to the soundtrack over and over, and there are even Halloween party photos somewhere of me as a chubby Crow, carrying my guitar and a gun. 1994 was a big time for this movie. Here’s to two filmmakers who pushed for this and made it a reality on a budget that’s so much less than Hollywood would ever attempt.

You can watch this on YouTube thanks to Lunchmeat VHS.

You can watch this and many other films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting reviews and articles, and updating my Letterboxd list of watched films.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)

Posted on by

June 16-22 SNL Week: Saturday Night Live is celebrating 50 years on the air, can NBC last for another 50 years??

I have a love/hate relationship with Saturday Night Live. Maybe because it’s me coming from Pittsburgh, because that’s one of the few places where it didn’t air live, because Chiller Theater was such a big deal. Or maybe it’s because I would switch back and forth to the Youngstown affiliate — WMFJ 21 — and watch some of the original cast. I was so into comedy as a kid that while Steve Martin, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, John Belushi (I mean, he dressed as Godzilla!) and others made me laugh, I was raised on Monty Python, SCTV, Benny Hill and Dave Allen At Large, so SNL gradually impressed me less and less while also obsessing me. I couldn’t stay away from its pull for long. Soon, I was watching it every week, finding every movie its cast found their way into and deifying several of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players (and then hating them when they weren’t who I wanted them to really be).

Over the years, I’ve read just about every book and seen every documentary, and I am frankly at odds with how the show is made. Does it have to be live? Why do they write it in such an insane way, staying up all night? Why does it keep getting worse as comedy gets better? Why is there a messiah cult around Lorne Michaels and the casts of this show that is not shared by other groups he worked with, like the Kids in the Hall?

I also love Dan Aykroyd without reservation, despite his white man appreciation for Chicago blues — I get it, I love Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf too — going out of control and getting commodified into the House of Blues and in movies like this, which I blame for scenes where Anthony Michael Hall acts black and an entire club doesn’t stimp him but instead accepts him. But hey, he was Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute, so I will forever love him. Plus, he believes everything in Ghostbusters and initially wrote it under the name Ghost Smashers and Ivan Reitman said,  “It was set in the future…and it took place on a number of different planets or dimensional planes. And it was all action. There was very little character work in it. The Ghostbusters were catching ghosts on the very first page — and doing it on every single page after that — without respite, just one sort of supernatural phenomenon after another. By the 10th page, I was exhausted. By the 40th or 50th page — however many there were — I was counting the budget in hundreds of millions of dollars.” So fuck yeah, Dan Aykroyd, despite this movie.

I’m getting to it.

I also love the myth of The Blues Brothers, a movie made in chaos, fueled by cocaine, that movie theater owners didn’t want to run because it was too black. According to All the Right Moves, “…Mann Theatres (a major cinema chain at the time) then announced they wouldn’t be showing The Blues Brothers in all of their theatres. Owner Ted Mann believed that white people wouldn’t be interested in such a film, explaining his reasons to Landis: “It’s mainly because of the musical artists you have. Not only are they black. They are out of fashion.” This led to The Blues Brothers opening in less than 600 theatres across the U.S., less than half the amount a big-budget movie could usually expect.”

But don’t feel bad. “Despite this setback, it still managed to make $57 million at the domestic box office, and proved even more successful overseas, grossing $58 million.”

It was the kind of movie that my grandfather would watch over and over on HBO, gleeful at the scenes where the Nazis died, joyous at the cars exploding all over the screen, a movie totally not made for him but one that entertained him just the same, he telling all of us in the room to get ready for another part, giving us play by play of what was happening in his raptuous love of a film that was probably only equalled by The Bad Lieutenant and Terminator 2, the only movie — and thing — I ever saw that made that tough old steelworking man cry.

Seriously, a car blew up on him once, and his back had no skin. He barely registered it. I also once saw him get stabbed in the arm, and he took the steak knife out and kept eating breakfast.

I tell you all this to say that I want the sequel to succeed, but it falls victim to all the problems of the first movie, almost karmically being the recipient of that movie’s excesses.

There’s no Belushi, to start. Not even Jim, who couldn’t fit this into his schedule. Instead, we get John Goodman, who I also like very much, as the new member of the band. This is not an even trade.

It’s dedicated to the cast members who died: Belushi, Cab Calloway, John Candy and Junior Wells. While nice to mention, this is what we call a downer.

Anyways, Elwood (Aykroyd) is finally let out of jail, 18 years later, only to learn his brother is dead and no one is there to pick him up. He’s finally given a ride by Matara, who works for his old drummer, Willie Hall. This starts the movie’s idea of getting the band back together, as well as Elwood mentoring a kid named Buster (J. Evan Bonifant) at the suggestion of Mother Mary Stigmata. By the end, we have The Blues Brothers Band, which includes Joe Morton as Curtis’ son Commander Cabel Chamberlain,  Steve “The Colonel” Cropper, Donald “Duck” Dunn, Willie “Too Big” Hall, Tom “Bones” Malone, Lou “Blue Lou” Marini, Matt “Guitar” Murphy and Alan “Mr. Fabulous” Rubin in a battle of the bands against Queen Moussette’s (Erykah Badu) The Louisiana Gator Boys, who are Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Gary U.S. Bonds, Eric Clapton, Clarence Clemons, Jack DeJohnette, Bo Diddley, Jon Faddis, Isaac Hayes, Dr. John, B. B. King, Tommy “Pipes” McDonnell, Charlie Musselwhite, Billy Preston, Lou Rawls, Joshua Redman, Paul Shaffer, Koko Taylor, Travis Tritt, Jimmie Vaughan, Grover Washington Jr., Willie Weeks and Steve Winwood.

So yeah, it’s a 63-car pileup—more than the first movie and everything else—but it also has Blues Traveler in it.

Anyways, director John Landis said to the A.V. Club, “We’d always intended for a sequel with John, but of course when he passed away, it was obvious we weren’t going to do it. But Danny had been performing with John Goodman and Jimmy Belushi and the band, and he said, “You know, this is great, because this music is recognized now—let’s do a movie.” I said, “Great, sure, okay,” and we wrote what I thought was a terrific script. Then Universal Studios eviscerated it. That was a strange experience, because the first thing they said was that it had to be PG, which meant they couldn’t use profanity, which is basically cutting the Blues Brothers’ nuts off. The first movie is an R-rated film, but there’s no nudity or violence in it. It’s just the language. Then they said, “You have to have a child, you have to have…” The bottom line was that the only way that movie was going to get made was to agree with everything they said. You know the difference between a brown-nose and a shithead? Depth perception. That’s the only time I never really fought with the studio, because they didn’t really want to make it. So we did every single thing they said. By the time we’d done that, the script was kind of homogenized and uninteresting. Danny said, “It’s about the music. It’s just about the music, John, so don’t worry about it. We’ll get the best people, and we’ll make a great album, and get these people on film. We have to document these people.” It’s interesting because, as much as I make fun of Danny, three or four of those guys have passed away since we made that movie. People say, “Okay, you’ve got Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown, Cab Calloway, and John Lee Hooker in The Blues Brothers—who’s in Blues Brothers 2000?” The answer? Everyone else. The first movie has five musical numbers, and the second movie has 18.”

He also killed Vic Morrow and made Max Landis, so what the fuck does he know?

A few years ago, Jim Belushi told Cinema Blend that Aykroyd — who makes a marijuana blend with him called Blues Brothers — is constantly pitching new sequel ideas: “Actually, you know, he’s always got ideas. I mean, he’s got this whole thing about, you know, ‘I find Jake’s brother in Albania, you know. I found out there was another brother, a Blues Brother. And I go to Albania and I find him and I bring him out. He doesn’t speak English.’ I mean, he’s got all kinds of ideas. The Blues Sisters, he wants to do one with the Blues Brothers but Blues Sisters. You know, he’s a creative son of a gun.”

There was also a Nintendo 64 game made. It didn’t come out until two years after this, and it made $32 million on a $30 million budget.

At least Paul Schaffer, the guy who got the original band together, finally got to play with them.

APRIL MOVIE 4: Phantom of the Opera (1998)

Posted on by

April 14: Viva Italian Horror—Pick an Italian horror movie and enjoy the pasta sauce and gore.

Dario Argento did Opera and now, Phantom of the Opera, starring Julian Sands as the Phantom, perhaps the best-looking person to play the role. John Malkovich was the original actor for the part, but Sands ended up being in this, and unlike every other movie adaption, he wears no mask.

This is in the period of films where Argento is perhaps thought to have lost it. It’s in-between The Stendhal Syndrome and Sleepless and sadly, starts to look more like a made-for-TV movie (not always a bad thing) instead of the visually rich films that we expect from the director. Then again, it does have a score by Ennio Morricone and the acting isn’t bad. And if you like rats…

The Phantom (Sands) in this one is a telepathic man raised by said vermin, his baby basket plucked from a river and brought to the basement of the Paris Opera where he eventually finds Christine Daaé (Asia Argento), whom he seeks to gain the part of Juliet in a play. She’s also in love with Baron Raoul De Chagny (Andrea Di Stefano), yet she first succumbs to the lovemaking of the man with rat parents. Before you know it, he’s bringing chandeliers down on people and doing all he can for her, even if she winds up choosing the Baron; being flighty, she goes back to the Phantom by the end, but the police end up taking care of that, beating and stabbing him after he shrugs off a gunshot to the stomach by the Baron.

There are some cool dream sequences in this, no small amount of gore, and a sadly muted color pallette that doesn’t seem to even hunt at the rainbow excesses of the past. But you know, directors need to work, and Argento kept trying throughout the 90s, and fans of his- hey, that’s me- kept on hoping for more. I have this in a 4-pack, and that’s how it is available in the U.S., which is kind of sad, but I don’t think anyone is begging for a 4K of this or Dracula 3D. Actually, I am. Throw in Do You Like Hitchcock? and The Card Player, too.

Cinematographer Ronnie Taylor also worked on Opera, Argento’s other Phantom-inspired movie, and Popcorn, which has similar themes. He was also a cameraman on Phantom of the Paradise, so he really got a lot of work out of this story.

Also: I only have Pelts and The Five Days left of his movies to watch.

MILL CREEK BLU RAY RELEASE: The King of Queens (1998-2007)

Posted on by

Premiering on CBS on September 21, 1998, The King of Queens was one of those shows that always seemed to be on. I had never watched it, and all I knew about Kevin James was that he was Mick Foley’s high school wrestling teammate. But when I showed the box set on our weekly “What Came In the Mail” segment on the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature, people were excited and told me that I needed to watch it soon.

It’s a simple set-up. Doug (Kevin James) and Carrie Heffernan (Leah Remini) are pretty much The Honeymooners, a middle-class couple living in Queens, except that her father Arthur (Jerry Stiller) has lost his latest, much younger wife and burned his house down, so now he has to live with them. That’s all there is to it, as it’s about them, their weird friend, and Doug’s schemes to get ahead.

There’s Doug’s straight man, Deacon Palmer (Victor Williams), nerdy mommy’s boy Spencer “Spence” Olchin (Patton Oswalt), cousin Daniel Heffernan (Gary Valentine), dog walker Holly Shumpert (Nicole Sullivan) and even Lou Ferrigno, playing himself. Plus, as you know, I love crossovers; there are four with Everyone Loves Raymond.

The leads are fun, everyone knows their role, and this feels like the kind of show you can just put on and veg out to. I love sitcoms and feel like they’re kind of lost art, so it was fun getting into this for a few episodes. I didn’t like the last season, where Doug and Carrie split, but I could see myself watching more of it.

What fascinates me is that when James started his second show, Kevin Can Wait, his wife, Donna Gable, was portrayed by Erinn Hayes. Yet in the second season, she died off camera and was replaced by Vanessa Cellucci (played by Leah Remini), Kevin’s former rival from the police who becomes his partner in life and at a security company, Monkey Fist Security. Donna’s death is off-handedly mentioned by someone saying, “Ye, it’s been over a year since she died.”

This is where it gets meta.

On the AMC TV show Kevin Can F**k Himself, Allison McRoberts (Annie Murphy) has a man-child of a husband, Kevin (Eric Petersen), who sees life as a sitcom while hers is a drama. Kevin becomes so horrible to her that she begins to plan his death. When people find out, she fakes her passing, and he soon gets another girlfriend who looks and acts exactly like Allison.

She’s played by Erinn Hayes.

I’ve always wondered how we got the beautiful, capable wife and immature husband dynamic ingrained in us and how many relationships it has harmed. It makes me think about how I behave. Then again, as I write this, I am in a basement surrounded by movies and action figures. Hmm.

Mill Creek has released every episode in one gigantic box set. It has extras such as James doing commentary on the pilot with show creator Michael Weithorn; a laughs montage; behind the scenes; a writers featurette; a salute to the fans and the 200th episode celebration. You can get it from Deep Discount.

The Chosen One: Legend of the Raven (1998)

Posted on by

Directed by Lawrence Lanoff — also Lawrence Unger, the name he used to make Playboy home videos like Playboy’s No Boys Allowed 3: Sweet Sensations, Playboy: Best of College Girls, Playboy: Lusty Latin Ladies, Playboy: Girls of Hedonism, Runaway Bay Jamaica, Playboy: Gen-X Girls, Playboy’s Girls of Mardi Gras, Playboy: Best Kept Sex Secrets and Playboy: WildWebGirls.Com in addition to the name K.T. Summer that he used for Club Wild Side — and written by Sam Rappaport and Khara Bromiley, this seems like a comic book movie is about what happens when McKenna Bravenight (Carmen Electra) — in a Troma movie! — must replace her sister Emma (Shauna Sand, Playboy Playmate of the Month May 1996 and ex-wife of Snake Eater Lorenzo Lamas) as the keeper of a mystic amulet and become The Chosen One.

I just have to quote this line from its Wikipedia: “McKenna’s powers include a thirst for milk and tremendous sexual energy, which she unleashes on her former boyfriend, Henry (Dave Oliver), a cop.”

Like, I get the second one, this is a softcore superhero movie, but a thirst for milk in no way seems like a superpower. I guess when you have the raven as your totem, you like milk? You need strong bones? This also leads to a From Dusk Till Dawn like scene — more like Ninja 3: The Domination — where Electra pours milk down her body for Henry to lick, then she laps up what’s on the floor like a cat, except she’s supposed to be a raven and yet I think someone told her that this is kind of like Catwoman in that it’s bad. I mean, worse.

It’s also bad news for Henry’s latest girlfriend, Nora (Debra Xavier), who gets so upset that she gets into meth. That’s how the evil spirits — I See Good Spirits and I See Bad Spirits — find her and these Native American spirit animals are wolves. Did you know I can’t say the word wolf and just say woof?

Neither of these women are Native American, so this culturally appropriates all over the place. There’s also the Route 33 Serial Killer to catch and he’s played by the director, who was kind enough to make rated and unrated versions of this movie. And I love that the heroine’s name is McKenna Bravenight, which is very comic book, even if her costume is kind of lame. And lamé.

This also has one of the most astounding origins ever. Of course, our heroine has been hearing voices from the crescent medal she inherited from her sister but doesn’t put on her costume for some time. Henry’s ex, on the drugs, hooks up with Cole (Michael Stadvee), a drug dealer who attacks Henry, pisses all over him, tosses him in the back of his truck and makes sweet love to his ex-crackhead lover while he’s forced to watch and in pain. When McKenna Bravenight — I feel like from now on, I should use her full name — comes to save him, both she and Nora get shot by Cole. Left to die, the crescent necklace brings them both back to life. This is how Carmen Electra gets a skintight suit and a metallic half football helmet to fight crime as the avatar of the ravens, not unlike The Crow except instead of all that pesky goth stuff, we get a softcore erotic thriller sometimes, a superhero movie the others.

The same director made a possession movie, Temptress, which stars Kim Delaney. You know that as soon as I read that, I got so excited. That’s because this tickles that weird part of my lizard brain that demands that movies aren’t just dumb, but so dumb they cross over into genius before tripping back into abject insanity. Also: For those hoping to see Electra nude, that’s totally a body double. But you probably knew that.

As for my stupidity, I didn’t realize this was on Tubi and watched it on YouTube, where it was edited to only be part of the screen, squeezed into a too skinny shape and the audio chipmunked all to get past copyright and play online. That meant that the dialogue was completely inaudible, the action moved even more stitled and things were so dark I thought that I had developed glaucoma sooner than planner. Imagine my surprise when I went back and watched this on Tubi. It still wasn’t good, but it was at least a movie you could watch. Then again, I recommend the experience.

You can watch this on Tubi.

ARROW VIDEO 4K ULTRA UHD AND BLU RAY RELEASE: A Simple Plan (1998)

Posted on by

Sam Raimi was, at one time, mostly known for horror. Of the novels of Scott B. Smith you would think he’d make a movie of, maybe The Ruins would make more sense. That said, A Simple Plan reminds you that he once lived in the same house as the Coen Brothers when all were new to Hollywood. That said, he makes this movie all his own.

Wright County, Minnesota mostly has a feed mill and lots of snow. Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton) and his wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) are two of the few college-educated people there. Hank’s brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and his friend Lou Chambers (Brent Briscoe) are closer than the two actual brothers are. This is tested when the men find a crashed plane and $4.4 million dollars. Hank wants to turn it in. Jacob and Lou change his mind, saying he should keep it until the snow melts and if no one brings up the money when the plane is found, they can keep it.

They all agree to not discuss the money with anyone except that Hank tells Sarah. She thinks they should take some money back to the plane. On the way, Hank and Jacob are surprised by a farmer on a snow vehicle. In the heat of the moment, they kill him and send his body and vehicle into the icy river.

Sarah believes that the money was a ransom for a kidnapped heiress from Michigan, who was abducted by two brothers by the names of Stephen and Vernon Bokovsky. She tells him that there’s no victim in the crime now, as one of the brothers had to be the dead body in the plane. The plan falls to pieces though when Lou demands his money. He’s been spending too much and might lose his truck. He threatens to go to the cops. Sarah says that they should kill him, a shocking moment as she’s just given birth to their first child.

Sarah says that they should frame Lou for the farmer’s murder by getting him drunk, making him confess and recording it. Jacob is upset that he has to betray his friend and it almost all goes wrong when Lou pulls his gun. It ends up with Lou and his wife Nancy dead and Hank having to spin the story to the police of what exactly happened. The next problem is that Jacob mentioned the plane, so Sheriff Carl Jenkins (Chelcie Ross) makes Hank show him where it is, bringing along FBI agent Neil Baxter (Gary Cole).

This is probably where you should stop reading if you want to watch this movie.

Baxter is, of course, Vernon Bokovsky. Somehow, Hank is able to kill him but now Sheriff Jenkins is also killed. That means that another story has to be told. And that’s when Jacob tells him that he’s tired. He’s either going to kill himself or force his brother to kill him, creating an alibi so that Hank can live free. It turns out that when he tells the story to the real government agents, they tell him all of the money was marked. He burns it in his fireplace, realizing that he will always be haunted by what he has done.

Paxton and Thornton had been scheduled to be in this movie for years. John Boorman was the original director and the film got cancelled. Neither believed they would ever be in the film but luckily, it all came together. This was one of the first movies where Raimi worried more about the performances of his actors instead of the action of the shots.

I miss Bill Paxton. I realize I never knew him outside of the roles he played but I feel like some part of me — I know it’s strange — knew he was a good man. In this, Hank is an ordinary person who somehow becomes a level of evil that he had no idea that he was capable of. Thornton also plays a role that any other actor would treat as a message part. His diminished intelligence is just who he is; he has other smarts that somehow make up for his lack of intelligence.

The Arrow Video release of A Simple Plan has a new 4K remaster from the original negative by Arrow Films, approved by director Sam Raimi. There’s also two new commentaries, one by critics Glenn Kenny and Farran Smith Nehme and the other from production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein with filmmaker Justin Beahm. There are also interviews with cinematographer Alar Kivilo, actors Becky Ann Baker and Chelcie Ross, and on-set interviews with Paxton, Thornton, Fonda, Raimi and producer Jim Jacks. Plus, this set has behind-the-scenes footage, a trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin and an illustrated collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Bilge Ebiri and an excerpt from the book The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi by John Kenneth Muir.

You can order the 4K and blu ray releases from MVD.

CULT EPICS 4K UHD RELEASE: Frivolous Lola (1998)

Posted on by

In a small town in 1950s Italy, a girl named Lola (Anna Ammirati, who director Tinto Brass met when he crashed his car into her as she was on her bicycle; she told him as a joke that if she wasn’t his next leading lady, she would sue him) rules the libido of every boy and man in town, riding her bike with her rear showing and acting as inappropriate as possible. She may be a virgin, but she doesn’t want to be. Her fiance Masetto (Max Parodi), however, is a traditional Italian man who wants to take a pure woman on his wedding night.

Her mother, Zaïra (Serena Grandi), has married Andre (Patrick Mower), a man who has raised Lola as her stepfather, yet she takes every opportunity to try to seduce him. That’s how Lola is with almost everyone, pushing men to their limits and then shocked when they want to be inside her. As for Masetto, he blows up and screams at her just about any time he’s angry, then goes and makes love to sex workers. He has different rules than his bride but she’s unwilling to embrace the past and looks to the future of how women will be treated in Italy.

There’s a great essay that comes with the Cult Epics 4K, “A Committed Brat: The Career of Anna Ammirati” by Eugenio Ercolani and Domenico Monetti. It explains who Ammirati was at the time and the actress she grew to be. I love that she says that she is the opposite of the “bionic blondes” at the time this movie was made; she looks real, feels real and even the song that she sings on the film’s soundtrack, “Mona Monella,” has an edge that you would not expect from someone who is trying with this film to be a sex symbol.

Along with a strong Pino Donaggio score, this soundtrack features plenty of era-appropriate songs, such as Carla Boni’s “Mambo Italiano,” Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” and Curtis King Jr.’s “Let’s Twist Again,” a song that plays on a sweaty night with our couple and three American soldiers all interacting in a small bar.

Cult Epics is doing amazing things with these Tinto Brass releases. They’re like my Criterion collection, as they release the movies that I truly care about. The 4K UHD release of this movie has new audio commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Nathaniel Thompson, trailers, an interview with Tinto Brass, a photo gallery, a double-sided sleeve with the original Italian art, a 20-page illustrated booklet with liner notes by Eugenio Ercolani and Domenico Monetti, a slipcase and lobby cards. You can get this from MVD.

2024 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 11: Bio-Zombie (1998)

Posted on by

12. THE LIVING IMPAIRED: Insert zombie joke here.

Woody Invincible (Jordan Chan) and Crazy Bee (Sam Lee) are mallrats, stealing from stores, gambling and selling bootleg VCDs probably of movies just like this. Actually, the movie starts with them bootlegging the film that you’re about to watch. They flirt with Rolls (Angela Tong), who works at the beauty spa, fight with cellphone store owner Mr. Kui (Wayne Lai) and do small jobs for their gangster boss, like getting his car. Well, on the way back to the mall, they hit a zombie infected government agent and Woody drinks his soda, which has a bioweapon inside it that turns humans into the walking dead. And oh yeah, they try and hide the body of the dead man, who isn’t dead and is soon turning the mall into Hong Kong Monroeville.

Also called Hong Kong Zombie, this has some fun video game moments and the kind of nihilistic ending that Romero would have loved. Directed by Wilson Yip, who co-wrote the story with Matt Chow and Man Sing So, this may not have much new when it comes to zombies, but once it gets the mall filled with them, it picks up steam and goes for it.

This movie worships Dead Alive and shouldn’t every movie nerd? Amazingly, this got a blu ray release before its inspiration.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

VISUAL VENGEANCE ON TUBI: Vampire Time Travelers (1998)

Posted on by

EDITOR’S NOTE: Did you know that Visual Vengeance has a ton of movies on Tubi? It’s true. Check out this Letterboxd list and look for reviews as new movies get added. You can find this movie on Tubi.

I’ve never seen any of the movies that director and writer Les Sekely has made like Night of the Living Date, The Not-So-Grim Reaper and The Alien Conspiracy: Grey Skies, but I have seen this and I totally am hunting for the rest.

This movie feels less like a narrative movie and more like someone made a Dark Brothers or Rinse Dream adult movie mainstream, giving it constant blasts of words and images and a ghost man in a closet and vampires who can move through the timestream and random muscicvideo sequences where people are encouraged to “Bite Her In the Butt.”

Most of the other reviews I’ve read for this film are either beyond angry that they endured it, wondering whether or not the humor was intentional or not, or nearly shut it off but stuck with it and still aren’t sure what they have seen.

As you can imagine, these are the movies that obsess me.

Natalie is a vampire who was killed by Buffy — yes, this is intended to be a reference — which has her call to her sister Lorelei (Jillien Weisz) from beyond the grave and demand revenge by killing Buffy’s sister Sue Anne Marie (J.J. Rodgers) and her fellow pledges to the Alpha Omega sorority. One of them is a talented guitar player — she can play “Eruption” seemingly without fingertapping and sleeps with her axe — who has The Man Who Never Calls Back (the director!) on speed dial, hoping to sign to his label and escape college. Another is a nerdy girl named Jenna (Micky Levy). There’s also another who is impossibly tall.

There’s also a Hooded Man who gets some kids to go to the Old Crenshaw Place, where Lorelei has been trapped in a coffin for five years. They’re promised porn magazines and instead of looking in the woods like every other kid in the 80s and 90s did, they find a coffin and a vampire who comes back but isn’t strong enough to bite necks any longer so she must “Bite Her In the Butt.”

Like I said, some folks are going to watch this and see the budget and that it doesn’t look like movies do today — come on, people — and dismiss it. For others, they will savor moments like when a vampire goes up in flames and says the last line from Ms. 45. “Sister!”

I found an interview with Sekely online about this movie and it notes that he also composed the movie for this and considered it his baby. Of the film, he said, “Vampire Time Travelers, in one word, is … fun. A little scary, mostly campy, and even slightly sexy … fun. (We didn’t have the budget to be serious). It’s Woody Allen meets Stephen King … meets MTV. To sum it up … You know when you have a dream, it’s a bunch of strange scenes and events, one after another, that are not connected. Well, Vampire Time Travelers is a lot like that … except the events are connected. Basically … go with it!”

You can watch this on Tubi.