A remake of Yongary, Monster from the Deep, when you look at the poster art for this, you can see that they were trying to get ahead of the Godzilla remake. The 1999 version has never been released in the U.S.; the U.S. cut is taken from the 2001 remix, Yonggary: 2001 Upgrade Edition. Why it wasn’t released under that name—the original played on American TV—is a mystery.

Dr. Campbell (Richard B. Livingston) and Dr. Hughes (Harrison Young) find an alien corpse, a dinosaur skeleton and a diamond inside a cave. A few years after that, a UFO appears and starts destroying satellites. This brings in a soldier named Parker (Briant Wells), General Murdock (Dan Cashman) and a journalist, Bud Black (Brad Sergi), who wants to find out exactly what happened in that cave.

Everyone thought Hughes was dead, but he’s been detained by the government. He appears at a new dig, surprising Campbell and his assistant, Holly (Donna Phillipson). She doesn’t believe his stories of aliens and a reanimated dinosaur until Yongary shows up and kills almost everyone. The rest of the film finds the aliens sending their kaiju all over the world to smash cities and kill humans, which means the U.S government decides to drop nukes on them. Well, they would, but the aliens lose control of Yongary and send another kaiju, Cycor, to fight it. 

If they had two kaijum, why didn’t they just send both?

This was the most expensive Korean movie ever made, but it had plenty of help. Financial support came from Hyundai Capital Corp. and Korean Technology Finance Corp., and technical support from the Korean government, which gave filmmakers access to military bases, hardware, and locations such as the Historic War Museum in Seoul. Initially, they were going to use rubber suits, but they replaced all of that with CGI, then redid that for the 2001 version.

Director Shim Hyung-rae would go on to make an even more expensive kaiju movie, D-War, the first Korean movie released in America in thirty years. There was a plan to have Bud Black create a Mecha Yongary for a sequel, which was never made. As you can see when you watch this, it has nearly all Western actors in it, in the hopes of being a worldwide success. It only offered video and cable in the U.S. and was not well-received.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Based on the Richard Matheson novel and directed and written by David Koepp (who wrote I Come In Peace, Toy Soldiers, Jurassic Park and Carlito’s Way and directed Secret Window, Mortdecai and You Should Have Left), Stir of Echoes is about phone lineman Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon), who can see and speak to the dead after being hypnotized by his sister-in-law Lisa (Illena Douglas). Now, he can see Samantha (Jennifer Morrison), a girl who has been missing for six months and who has been killed.

Koepp was afraid to show Mathson the script, as he was such a hero to him. The author said, “I’m sure he’s done a good job of it. I do know what he’s done before, and it’s quite good. He has a very good touch.”

When this came out, I’m sure many passed it off as a clone of The Sixth Sense, despite being written forty years before. Bacon is incredible in this and no one seems to remember just how good he is in it.

A SciFi sequel, Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming, came out in 2007. It has nothing to do with this movie to the point that if you told me that it was never planned to be a sequel and they stuck the name on it, I would believe you.

The Lionsgate release of this film has a 4K UHD disc and a Blu-ray disc. Extras include an audio commentary with writer/director David Koepp, interviews with Koepp, cinematographer Fred Murphy and director David Koepp, actress Kathryn Erbe, production designer Nelson Coates; making of featurettes; scene comparisons; screen tests; deleted scenes; trailers; TV ads and promos; a music video and more. You can order it from Diabolik DVD.

A lot of people talk down on Renny Harlin. But with his films — Prison, A Nightmare on Elm Street part 4: The Dream Master, Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight and more — you know exactly what you’re getting. A popcorn movie with no brain ready to entertain you until you can’t take it any more.

Witness his take on shark movies. He gets what works and then makes the movie fly so it doesn’t feel like even half of its 1 hour, 45-minute length. This is lean, mean and ready to bite.

Shot in the same tanks that James Cameron used for Titanic, the idea of this movie is absolutely ridiculous. In a deep sea facility, a team of scientists is using mako sharks to reactivate dead brain cells within patients with Alzheimer’s disease. One of those sharks has already escaped and attacked a boat full of partying teens, so the company behind it all sends Russell Franklin (Samuel Jackson) to investigate.

Doctors Susan McAlester and Jim Whitlock (Saffron Burrows and Stellan Skarsgård) prove their research to Franklin by removing protein complexes from the brain of their biggest shark. Bad idea — one shark is all it takes to mess everything up. It eats up Whitlock’s arm and as he’s being evacuated, inclement weather fouls up everything. His stretcher goes into the shark pen and as one of the sharks grabs it, it pulls the helicopter into the tower, killing anyone who could get the word out that things have gone wrong.

Susan, Russell, shark wrangler Carter Blake (Thomas Jane), marine biologist Janice Higgins and engineer Tom Scoggins (Michael Rapaport) then watch a shark use that very same stretcher to smash its way into the lab, flooding the entire base. Susan then confesses that she and Jim had genetically engineered the brain size of the sharks, which let them harvest more protein. It also made them smarter and deadlier. This is why this movie is wonderful; dumb lapses in science and logic that are glossed over so that more people can be devoured by sharks.

Meanwhile, cook Sherman “Preacher” Dudley (LL Cool J) may have lost his parrot to a shark and almost got cooked in an oven, but he knows the shark’s natural movie predator: explosions. He blows one shark up real good and goes to find the rest of the crew.

When we find the crew, they’re arguing and Russell gives a speech about how everyone has to work together. In any other movie, this is where people would pull it through. Here, a shark emerges and decimates the executive. It’s a moment that will make you stand up on your couch and scream your head off in glee.

What I love about this one is that no one is safe. The people you expect to survive — and the ones you don’t — get killed horribly. If you love watching sharks eat people, good news. This one has it all.

There are a lot of cues to Jaws here: the license plate they find in a shark’s mouth is the same as that movie. And the ways the three sharks are killed — blown up, electrocuted and incinerated — exactly play back the way the shark is killed in Jaws, Jaws 2 and Jaws 3D.

You should totally check this one out. I was actually surprised by how much I loved it. That’s after more than twenty shark movies in a few weeks, so that’s really saying something.

PS: The song LL Cool J does in this film, “Deepest Blue (Shark Fin)” is absolutely insipid. I love it. Do yourself a favor and look up the lyrics.

The Arrow Video release of this movie has a brand new 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negatives by Arrow Films approved by director Renny Harlin. There are two new commentaries — one by screenwriter Duncan Kennedy and another by filmmaker and critic Rebekah McKendry — as well as an archival audio commentary by director Renny Harlin and star Samuel L. Jackson. There is also a new interview with production designer William Sandell, a visual essay by film critic Trace Thurman, making of and shark featurettes, deleted scenes with optional audio commentary by director Renny Harlin, a trailer and an image gallery. It all comes inside a reversible sleeve with original and newly commissioned artwork by Luke Preece, a 60-page perfect bound collector’s book containing new writing by film critics Josh Hurtado, Jennie Kermode and Murray Leeder, plus previously unseen production art and designs, a double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Luke Preece and postcards from Aquatica. You can get it from MVD.

Directed by Shinji Aoyama, EM Embalming follows Miyaki Murakami (Reiko Takashima), an embalmer — did you guess from the title? — who assists Detective Hiroka (Yutaka Matsushige) in investigating the suicide of Yoshiko Shindo, the son of a local politician. Yoshiko has jumped to his death from a building. To aid in the investigation, Reiko begins the process of reassembling Yoshiko’s body for preservation. However, she is cautioned by a priest (Kojiro Hongo) that her work is considered evil, and that embalming bodies is a sin.

As the story unfolds, the head of the deceased boy is stolen, and suspicion falls on his girlfriend (Hitomi Miwa) as the alleged thief. But soon, Miyaki discovers that Dr. Fuji (Toshio Shiba), who operates an operating room in the back of a large truck and was also the man who embalmed her mother, is involved in harvesting corpses and selling body parts on the black market.

In Japan, embalming is not as commonplace as in the United States. Miyaki’s skills transform her into an artist, even if her craft is gruesome. The film does not shy away from blood and gore, rapidly shifting between detective work and horror, which aligns it with the Giallo genre. And yes, the pun is intentional—there’s abundant blood.

The film’s narrative is scattered; it moves slowly, intertwining themes of incest and grief within its complex storyline. Yet unlike so many movies made in the J-horror boom, it doesn’t want to be the next anything. It wants to be itself, a strange, headless, desiccated mess of a film.

As the All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2 set takes us throughout not just the world of folk horror but our world itself, it lands in Thailand with Nang Nak, which is based on the legend of Mae Nak Phra Khanong.

A gorgeous woman named Nak once lived on the banks of the Phra Khanong canal with her husband Mak. As he went to battle in the Kengtung Wars, she died giving birth to their child. When he returned from the battles that he barely survived, he found her waiting for him as a ghost. Despite the warnings of others, he lived with her until learning the truth, running in fear as she attacked the villagers who she felt drove him away.

In some versions of this story, the monk Somdet Phra Phutthachan defeats Nak by confining her spirit in the bone of her forehead, which he keeps on his waistband. The Thai royal family was said to still own this magical relic and Admiral Prince Abhakara Kiartivongse, Prince of Chumphon and the father of the Thai navy, also claimed that he had this occult object in his possession.

Directed by Nonzee Nimibutr, this is the thirteenth and by no means the final adaption of this legend. It moves the story forward in time, as Mak (Winai Kraibutr) fights in the Siamese-Vietnamese War, so it takes place in the 1830s. When he returns, he lives with Nak (Intira Jaroenpura) and their child, as the villagers never told him that she died.

Anyone that tries to tell Mak the truth dies at the spectral hands of her ghost. Mak discovers the truth as she drops a comb and her ghostly arm extends longer than it should (the legend often claims this happens when she drops a piece of fruit). Even after her home is exorcised and burnt, Nak still rages.

Buddhist monk Somdej Toh — the most sainted monk in Thailand’s history — finally convinces her to stop and that she will be reunited in the afterlife with her husband and child. He then cuts the center of the forehead of her corpse open, allowing her spirit to leave, and creates a talisman from it that ends up being in the possession of Prince Chumbhorn Ketudomsak, just as the royal man claimed.

As I have gone from spirit land to spirit land through this set, I have seen how many civilizations have tried to make sense of the unknown, which would be love and death. This story sets forth the notion that one of these does not always stop the other.

Nang Nak is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including an audio commentary by Mattie Do, director Of The Long Walk, and Asian gothic scholar Katarzyna Ancuta, an interview with director Nonzee Nimibutr and a trailer.

You can order this set from Severin.

Hinako Myoujin (Yui Natsukawa) has come back to her island home of Shikoku from Tokyo. There, she discovers that her friend Sayori Hiura (Chiaki Kuriyama, Gogo Yubari!) has died and that the girl’s mother, Shinto priestess Teruko (Toshie Negishi), has become lost in her grief.

Sayori’s high school boyfriend Fumiya (Michitaka Tsutsui) has always felt her near him ever since she drowned in a lake. As Fumiya and Hinako find they have a connection, a series of desecrations of the Shinto shrines starts to happen.

It turns out that Sayori’s mother is making the pilgrimage of the 88 Shinto shrines in reverse order, which will weaken the barrier between the living and the dead. This is more of a Japanese folk horror than J-Horror, however, and several mention that not much happens in this movie. I kind of liked its look and pace myself.

Shikoku is one of the films on Arrow’s new J-Horror Rising set. It has extras including commentary by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes, an interview with director Shunichi Nagasaki and actors Chiaki Kuriyama and Yui Natsukawa, making of footage, original trailers, TV ads and an image gallery.

You can buy it from MVD.