Tag Archives: 2002

ARROW VIDEO UHD RELEASE: Dark Water (2002)

Posted on by

Honogurai mizu no soko kara (From the Depths of Dark Water) was directed by Hideo Nakata and written by Yoshihiro Nakamura and Kenichi Suzuki, based on the short story collection by Koji Suzuki. The actual story is Floating Water but they used the name of the book for the movie.

Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) is a single mother trying to see where life takes her next after her divorce. She gets a job as a proofreader and rents a cheap apartment where the roof always leaks. Meanwhile, her daughter Ikuko (Rio Kanno) has to start over again as well, attending a kindergarten close to their new apartment. A young girl named Mitsuko Kawai (Mirei Oguchi) disappeared from their building a year ago and in between keeping her ex-husband from kidnapping their daughter, Yoshimi starts seeing that girl, wearing a yellow raincoat and carrying a red bag.

She believes that the girl died in the water tower above their building and is the reason why everything floods. Yet when Mitsuko comes after her daughter, she has to make a choice to give up everything to save her.

This was the second movie by Sakata to be based on a novel by Suzuki. He previously directed Ring and the sequel Ring 2. As with most Japanese horror, there was an American remake directed by Walter Salles that had Jennifer Connelly in it. At least it has the same doomed ending.

The Arrow Video release of Dark Water has a 4K Ultra HD blu ray presentation in Dolby Vision, along with extras like interviews with director Hideo Nakata, author Koji Suzuki, cinematographer Junichiro Hayashi, actresses Hitomi Kuroki and Asami Mizukawa, and theme song artist Shikao Suga. There’s also a making of, trailers and TV commercials. All inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain with an illustrated collector’s booklet with writing on the film by David Kalat and Michael Gingold.

You can get Dark Water from MVD.

VISUAL VENGEANCE ON TUBI: Scream Queen (2002)

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.

Horror star Malicia Tombs (Linnea Quigley) mysteriously dies after leaving the set of her latest, now unfinished, low budget shot-on-video shocker. Soon, an unseen masked killer is chopping and hacking his/ her way through the cast and crew as punishment for Tomb’s death.

Let’s get meta. This super obscurity was shot in 1998 by indy horror stalwart Brad Sykes, and finally finished in 2002. Just like how Linnea’s character was in a lost movie, this itself was a lost film for some time but now it’s been released by Visual Vengeance.

After she left the set of director Eric Orloff’s (Jarrod Robbins, Evil Sister 2) Scream Queen, Malicia died in a car accident. As Detective Hammer (C. Courtney Joyner, the writer of From a Whisper to a Scream, Class of 1999 and Prison as well as the director of Trancers III) can’t find out who killed her, the entire movie just goes away, taking down several careers.

Or so it would seem, as Orloff and the cast and crew — special effects guy Squib (Bryan Cooper, who also worked on this movie’s effects), Christine (Nicole West), Runyon (Kurt Levee, Evil Sister), Jenni (Emilie Jo Tisdale, Escape from Hell) and Devon (Nova Sheppard) — are invited to a mansion by Malicia, who is not only alive but able to pay everyone as long as they don’t leave the set.

Is she a ghost? A demon? Or did she fake her death and is trying to find out who was trying to kill her with the bomb in her car? And who is the masked killer taking out everyone? And hey — how about Linnea singing “This Chainsaw’s Made For Cutting” in this movie?

The first movie by Brad Sykes (Plaguers, Hi-Death) and it may be shot on video, but you can already see the promise of his work. Make sure to check out the interview I did with Brad too!

APRIL MOVIE THON 3: Kaante (2002)

Posted on by

April 3: Remake, Remix, Ripoff — A shameless remake, remix or ripoff of a much better known movie. Allow your writing to travel the world (we recommend Italy or Turkey).

The first Bollywood film to be completely shot in Los Angeles, Kaante combines The Usual Suspects with Reservoir Dogs and the inspiration of Tarantino’s movie, City On Fire, and becomes its own movie. Director and co-writer Sanjay Gupta said of the movie, “The whole world thinks Kaante is Reservoir Dogs. No, it isn’t. There are a few similarities in the second half of the film, but the genesis of Kaante was the Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri & Sons Jewellers robbery case, which was later made into the film Special 26. Till today, that’s unsolved. My idea was: ‘What if they were six boys from Dagdi Chawl, who conducted the most successful heist in the history of India, go back to Dagdi Chawl, which is suddenly surrounded by cops?”

Six Indian men living in America — all with a criminal record — are arrested by the police and interrogated about stealing laptops. Enraged at being profiled, they work to rob a bank where the LAPD paychecks come from.

They are Jay “Ajju” Trehan (Sanjay Dutt), Yashvardhan “Major” Rampal (Amitabh Bachchan), Marc Issak (Suniel Shetty), Andy (Kumar Gaurav), Bali (Mahesh Manjrekar) and Mak (Lucky Ali). After the bank robbery — during which they have an extended gunfight with a SWAT team — they go back to their secret hideaway. There, Bali goes all Mr. Blonde on a police officer and gets killed by Mak, who ends up being Mr. Orange.

So, yes, imagine Tarantino but add in a near 3 hour running time because, of course, Indian Hindi-language movies need music numbers.

Quentin himself said that this movie was his favorite of all the movies influenced by his work. “I think it was fabulous. Of the many rip-offs, I loved Hong Kong’s Too Many Ways To Be No.1 and this one, Kaante. The best part is, you have Indian guys coming to the U.S. and looting a U.S. bank. How cool is that! I was truly honoured. And these guys are played by the legends of Bollywood. Here I am, watching a film that I’ve directed and then it goes into each character’s background. And I’m like, “Whoa.” For, I always write backgrounds and stuff, and it always gets chopped off during the edit. And so I was amazed on seeing this. I felt, this isn’t Reservoir Dogs. But then it goes into the warehouse scene, and I am like, “Wow, it’s back to Reservoir Dogs.” Isn’t it amazing!”

Tarantino later screened Kaante at his New Beverly Cinema with Reservoir Dogs and City on Fire.

It is amazing as it shows so much more than its inspiration. There’s a lot that explains why the characters are getting involved in the robbery, such as Marc wanting to save his dancer girlfriend from a club owner, Major is trying to save the life of his terminally ill wife and Andy is trying to get custody of his son.

It also has so much influence from other American movies, as Gupta tried watching Reservoir Dogs but found it boring as he loved the movies of  Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. He didn’t want too much talking and instead, you get explosive battles. The arrest and interrogation scenes are very close to The Usual Suspects and the tip of the cap to that movie is that the main officer is named Detective MacQuarrie, a reference to screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie.

How realistic is the idea of this movie? Suniel Shetty, after going back to his hotel after working out, was taken by the police as they suspected he was a terrorist as this movie was filmed right after 9/11.

You can watch this on YouTube.

SUPPORTER DAY: Kung Pow! Enter the First (2002)

Posted on by

Steve Oedekerk helped Jim Carrey with Ace Venture Pet Detective and directed and wrote Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. He’s also known for his Thumbmation parodies. But Kung Pow! is probably what he’s known best for.

Tiger & Crane Fists (also known as Savage Killers) is a 1976 directed by and starring Jimmy Wang Yu, a former Shaw Brothers actor who was “the biggest star of Asian martial arts cinema until the emergence of Bruce Lee” and the star of The Chinese Boxer, a movie that made his name famous and led to Chinese kids wanting to know more about Shaolin Kung Fu. After that movie, he broke his contract with Shaw Brothers, got sued and was banned from making movies in Hong Kong. That led to him going to work for Golden Harvest and making movies in Taiwan.

He also had ties to organized crime and when Jackie Chan needed to get out of his contract with Lo Wei — one also with Triad ties — Wang made it happen. That’s why Jackie is in Fantasy Mission Force and Island of Fire. Wang also associated with members of the Bamboo Union, a Taiwan-based triad, and was even part of their war with the Four Seas triad. He also had a stroke in 2011 and refused to listen to doctors, doing five times the rehab they told him to do, eventually regaining a lot of his muscle and memory. Sadly, he died in 2022, but man, what a life both on the silver screen and off.

So how strange is it to see Steve Oedekerk’s face and voice superimposed over a legit killing machine?

He is The Chosen One — identified by a sentient tongue called Tonguey — who is trained alongside  Wimp Lo (Lau Kar-wing, one of the most important people in Hong Kong martial arts movies and the choreographer of Master of the Flying Guillotine, King Boxer and Armour of God) and Ling (Ling Ling Tse, ). He also has the chance to battle Master Pain — or Betty — his enemy who is played by Fei Lung (Hand of Death), a man he can’t defeat until more training from Master Tang (Hui Lou Chen) and a one-breasted woman named Whoa (Jennifer Tung).

He must also fight Moo Nieu, a cow that knows martial arts, and his need to battle his enemy causes the death of Ling’s father Master Doe (Chi Ma). Then there’s advice from Mu-Shu Fasa — The Lion King Hong Kong version — and learns that Master Pain is powered by French aliens.

Your love for this will depend on how much you like people making fun of kung fu movies. Then again, Odenkirk at least does martial arts. He claims that he wanted to make three of these movies with one being a peplum and the other an Italian Western. Now that I want to see.

VISUAL VENGEANCE BLU RAY RELEASE: Scream Queen (2002)

Posted on by

Horror star Malicia Tombs (Linnea Quigley) mysteriously dies after leaving the set of her latest, now unfinished, low budget shot-on-video shocker. Soon, an unseen masked killer is chopping and hacking his/ her way through the cast and crew as punishment for Tomb’s death.

Let’s get meta. This super obscurity was shot in 1998 by indy horror stalwart Brad Sykes, and finally finished in 2002. Just like how Linnea’s character was in a lost movie, this itself was a lost film for some time but now it’s been released by Visual Vengeance.

After she left the set of director Eric Orloff’s (Jarrod Robbins, Evil Sister 2) Scream Queen, Malicia died in a car accident. As Detective Hammer (C. Courtney Joyner, the writer of From a Whisper to a Scream, Class of 1999 and Prison as well as the director of Trancers III) can’t find out who killed her, the entire movie just goes away, taking down several careers.

Or so it would seem, as Orloff and the cast and crew — special effects guy Squib (Bryan Cooper, who also worked on this movie’s effects), Christine (Nicole West), Runyon (Kurt Levee, Evil Sister), Jenni (Emilie Jo Tisdale, Escape from Hell) and Devon (Nova Sheppard) — are invited to a mansion by Malicia, who is not only alive but able to pay everyone as long as they don’t leave the set.

Is she a ghost? A demon? Or did she fake her death and is trying to find out who was trying to kill her with the bomb in her car? And who is the masked killer taking out everyone? And hey — how about Linnea singing “This Chainsaw’s Made For Cutting” in this movie?

The first movie by Brad Sykes (Plaguers, Hi-Death) and it may be shot on video, but you can already see the promise of his work. Make sure to check out the interview I did with Brad too!

Available for the first time ever on blu ray, Scream Queen has a new director-approved SD master from original tape elements, as well as commentary with director and writer Brad Sykes, behind the scenes documentary, the producer’s cut of the film, new interview with Linna Quigley and Mark Polonia, imagery galleries, script selects, a trailer, six-page liner notes by Tony Strauss of Weng’s Chop Magazine, a limited edition slipcase by Rick Melton and Series 2 video store rental card, a Linnea Quigley mini-poster, a “stick your own” VHS sticker set and a reversible sleeve with the original art. You can get it from MVD.

THAN-KAIJU-GIVING: Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002)

Posted on by

The 27th film in the Godzilla franchise and the fourth film in the Millennium period, this was directed by Masaaki Tezuka and written by Wataru Mimura. In this timeline, the order of movies are Godzilla, Godzilla 2000, Godzilla vs. Megaguirus and Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack before this and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. and Godzilla: Final Wars.

45 years after the original Godzilla attacked the world, maser-cannon technician Lieutenant Akane Yashiro (Yumiko Shaku) struggles to win over her fellow Japan Self-Defense Force soldiers when her failure to stop a new kaiju leads to several soldiers dying. Yet she’s picked to pilot the tool they will use to fight back, Kiryu, which is a cyborg built on the corpse of the first Godzilla. You may know it better as Mechagodzilla. Kikai-ryu means “machine dragon.”

The problem is that the new Godzilla’s roar unlocks memories in Kiryu which cause it to destroy humans. Yashiro must also win the respect of 2nd Lieutenant Susumu Hayama (Yūsuke Tomoi), the heart of Tokumitsu Yuhara (Shin Takuma) and learn how to use the Absolute Zero Cannon to stop the new Godzilla before it destroys Tokyo.

Japanese baseball player Hideki Matsui, whose nickname is Gojira and who played for the Yomiuri Giants, the New York Yankees, the Los Angeles Angels, the Oakland Athletics and the Tampa Bay Rays before finishing his career with the Yankees, shows up in the movie. He’s hitting a home run when Kiryu shows up and also saves some children later in the movie.

Another cameo is Kumi Mizuno. She’s the Prime Minister in this but may be better known as Miss Namikawa in Invasion of Astro-Monster, Dr. Sueko Togami in Frankenstein Conquers the World and the island girl Dayo in Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster.

THE FILMS OF BRIAN DE PALMA: Femme Fatale (2002)

Posted on by

Laure Ash (Rebecca Romijn) is part of a team of diamond thieves pull a con at the Cannes Film Festival. Yes, not just Jess Franco makes movies about diamonds and gorgeous women. A model named Veronica (Rie Rasmussen) is wearing the jewels as part of a snake dress; she’s attending on the arm of actual director Régis Wargnier to the premiere of his actual film East/West. While Laure corners her in the bathroom and begins seducing her, Black Tie (Eriq Ebouaney) and Racine (Édouard Montoute), her team members, run interference.

Laure is conning everyone, as she steals the diamonds and somehow escapes being thrown off a balcony by being confused as a woman named Lily who has just lost her child. Lily’s parents take her in and one evening, when they go out, the real Lily comes home and kills herself, allowing Laure to become her.

Seven years later: Laure/Lily is now the wife of Ambassador Bruce Hewitt Watts (Peter Coyote) and has her picture taken when she arrives in France by Nicolas Bardo (Antonio Banderas). That photo is found by Black Tie, who has been in jail for the last seven years. What follows is deception, sexual mind games and a mid-movie reverse where time goes backward, an audacious move in a film built around water, throwing women off bridges and people being plowed down by motor vehicles. It also returns director and writer Brian De Palma to his theme of twins and dual nature.

It’s also totally worked up, having Laure/Lily get every man in a bar hard before forcing Bardo to fight one of them and instead of the fight, De Palma zooms in on her face as she loves every second. Sure, this movie is filled with male gaze — to be fair, Romijn needs an adjective better than any I can find to describe her beauty — and yet subverted every step of the way by a main character so in front of everyone else in the film that when she gets caught, she can literally rewind time or rewrite reality.

And man, that scene through the bathroom glass with the snake costume and cuts back and forth during the diamond theft? That’s why we watch De Palma.

Chattanooga Film Festival 2023: Dangerous Visions

Posted on by

Dangerous Visions is the horror and science fiction shorts showcase as part of the Chattanooga Film Festival. I’m super excited to check these out!

Tell Alice I Love Her (2023): Directed and written by Jamie Carreiro, this takes place years after a world-changing disaster. A woman on a critical mission through the wilderness is bitten by a zombie, which forces her to make a final choice. I really loved the editing in this and how it took the idea from the Starship Troopers book to its bloody extreme by having a machine that senses contamination and automatically severs limbs to protect its wearer. I’m hoping that there’s more to this story than just this short.

Fetal Position (2023): As pro-life troops amass outside and attempt to shut down the clinic, they have no idea that there’s a man (William Tokarsky, the killer from Too Many Cooks) inside attempting to get the alien out of his body. Directed and written by Joseph Yates, this short is just the hint for a full-length film promised in the credits. This gets wild in a hurry and has a flying insectoid alien baby that feels straight out of Night Train to Terror, which is probably the nicest thing I’ve said about a movie in weeks. I also loved the alien mom’s makeup and the UAP at the end looks pretty odd in the best of ways. I’m definitely all in for whatever comes next from Fetal Position. To learn more, visit the official Facebook and Instagram pages for Fetal Position.

Glitch (2022): While FaceTiming her daughter Emily, a mother (Heather Langenkamp, free from Freddy but perhaps not from supernatural evil if this short has anything to do with it) keeps seeing someone else on screen, as well as getting emails of her daughter sleeping and unaware that something is creeping on her. Even worse, when Emily finally sees it, the creature can only be watched on video. Directed and written by Rebecca Berrih, this has a solid crew of talent, including Charles H. Joslain  (he worked on Weird: The Al Yankovich Story) and Izzy Traub (Ender’s Game) on visual effects, Nancy Fuller (The Hunt, Cry Macho) editing and Marianne Maddalena as executive producer (she’s produced tons of films from Shocker and The People Under the Stairs to the Scream franchise). This is quick and quite effective horror.

No Overnight Parking (2023): Directed and written by Megan Swertlow (who was also part of the anthology Give Me An A), this slasher short has plenty of star power, as the woman being stalked — in the wake of leaving her husband — is Alyssa Milano and the husband is French Stewart. As she walks to her car, located deep in the bowels of a gigantic underground parking garage, she learns that she’s locked in and that she’s not the only person here. Screams soon emerge and she’s suddenly under attack by a masked and gloved killer. I really loved how no matter how much blood and gore Milano gets caked with, she’s still checking. her makeup and teeth in the car mirror. Small touches like that elevate this to more than just a short with stunt casting.

Vexed (2022): When Penelope (Rachel Amanda Bryant) hits it off with Molly (Tiffany Sutton) after they mutually have dates go wrong, you get the idea that this is a meet cute comedy. But when they get back to Penelope’s place, you start to wonder if this will be a murder mystery. Nope. Things get even stranger, if that’s possible. This feels like just one scene from something much larger, but with what we’ve been given, it’s still pretty good. This was directed by Gene Blalock (Seize the Night) and written by Bryant, who has a good ear for dialogue.

Seaborne (2021): A seaside home invasion? That’s what happens to Hannah (Dana Melanie) and her son Lucas (Joshua Weatherby) but what comes into their home is from beneath the ocean and in no way human in director and writer Dylan Ashton’s short. James Ojala’s (Death Rider In the House of Vampires, 2012) practical creature effects are the best part of this film, as is the editing by Daniel Johnson. It’s pretty wild how much this cribs from A Quiet Place and Aliens, but you know, steal from the best. It looks gorgeous and moves well, as well as having lots of suspense as it takes notes from those films. A pretty fun short and this would have been fun to see with an audience; a full length would be interesting if it deviates from the expected and the past.

Mickey Dogface (2022): Now this is how you make a short. On Halloween night, three friends — Colleen (Glori Dei Filippone), Tony (Andrea Granera) and Eddie (Jack Russell Richardson)  — listen to a cassette of a Wolfman Jack-sounding DJ that was recorded on the night that singer Mickey Dogface, once known to the locals as Rooney Mario (Rob Christie), died. As we hear Mickey speak the intro to a song, “When I was just a little boy, my mama would tell me, you’re the most beautiful of all God’s creatures. And I know so deeply in my heart that someday you’ll be a star. Just don’t pay them any mind. They don’t know what you are.” The tapes comes to a stop and Mickey’s house is up in flames as he’s burned alive by three townies who were all killed the next night.

The legend says that Mickey’s ghost still roams the woods and if you sing his song, in the ruins of his house, he’ll come for you. So the girls challenge Eddie to do exactly that while their friend Sean (Matt Weir) waits to scare him all over again, just like the taser on the hay ride.

Except that maybe the legends are true.

Directed and written by Zach Fleming, this has really great costume design by Meredith King and some fun miniatures by Sophie Porter-Hyatt. There’s so much greatness in this — the shot going around the van as it sits in the woods as the girls tell the story is perfect — that I was a little let down by the reveal inside the van. No spoilers but it could have cut before the explosion effect and just had a more subtle scare.

This feels like a short meant for more, so I am dying to get more.

The Inverts (2023): Director, writer and star Evan Jordan has put together something strange and wonderful here, a movie that feels like the kind of odd documentaries I let play all night on Tubi. Jordan also made TS-17: The Truth About V.H.S., another conspiracy-based short, and this one gets very uncomfortable and near Fulci as the chip inside its creator is within his eye, which means self-conducted surgery. Now, the opposite universe feels a lot like Fringe or Counterpart, but you know, this short is so creative that I feel like a jerk for even saying that. Actually, I didn’t say it. My invert version did and he doesn’t watch anything except blockbusters and is a jerk all the time instead of just part of the time.

Splinter (2023): There’s more world-building in this quarter of an hour than in several movies you’ll see in theaters this year. Benjamin (Brooks Firestone) has spent most of his life on an airplane that almost never lands. That’s because when his feet touch the ground, he spreads rage like a virus, a splinter onto the world, controlled only by the Vatican and his caretakers Morgan (Yetide Badaki) and Chris (Moon Bloodgood).

Then a mid-air collision forces the plane out of the sky and while in an airport, people become monsters as soon as Benjamin takes his first steps on the ground.

Directed and written by Marc Bernardin, this is a near-perfect slice of horror and speculative future fiction told beyond effectively.

Stop Dead (2023): Directed by Emily Greenwood and written by David Scullion, this a short and sweet piece of horror. Detective Samantha Hall (Sarah Soetaert) and her partner  Nick Thompson (David Ricardo-Pearce) stop Jennifer (Priya Blackburn) as she walks down a deserted road, telling them that if you stop, you die. Hall stops her with a taser and watches her die in front of her, then her partner, before whatever is in the shadows (James Swanton) emerges and forces her to walk the whole way through the credits, which was an inspired idea.

They Call It…Red Cemetery (2022): Director and writer Francisco Lacerda has seen the same Eurowesterns that I have — there’s a line that directly references Cemetery Without Crosses — and he uses it so well in this story of two men who meet in a cemetery for one last standoff. Rolando (Thomas Aske Berg) has a gun wrapped in rosary beads and Jose (Francisco Afonso Lopes) has one good eye, but they both want the treasure that so many have died for.

I have to tell you that I can make it through nearly anything in any horror movie but my real life terror is seeing someone put money in their mouth. This movie has extended scenes of a man eating silver dollars and I nearly threw up while watching it. There’s no way that it will upset you as much as it did me.

This looks and feels like the movies of the 60s that I love so much and it feels like it’s made with love.

Memento Mori (2022): In 1983, a scientist in isolation resurrects a dead colleague in director and writer Izzy Lee’s short film. And by short, like a minute or so. By the time we get to the end of the scientist (Megan Duffy) learning. that she’s brought back a specter, the film comes to a close. Ah well — always leave them wanting more, right? Seeing as how Lee made Meat Friend, I have plenty of good will for her work and look forward to her next project. If you’ve seen 13 Minutes of Horror: Sci-Fi Horror, this is part of that anthology. I feel strange even rating a number on this because it looks great and is so well-produced, even if it just comes to a big stop.

Keep Scrolling (2023): A young girl scrolls too long and ends up in starring in a haunted live stream in this family production of sorts, as it was directed and written by Luke Longmire, who plays the father. Amelia Longmire plays the young girl and Autumn Longmire is whatever that is on the other side of the internet. This has some great scares — I can only imagine how it played to a live audience — but the end feels like perhaps one beat too many. But man, that face on the other end of the phone that can see you? Horrifying.

Dead Enders (2023): Directors Fidel Ruiz-Healy and Tyler Walker, who wrote this movie with Michael Blake and Conor Murphy, have made some magic in this. Gas station clerk Maya (Skarlett Redd) has pretty much given up once all her friends go off to college. Now she works all night in a Luckee’s in a town that’s always on fire and going through earthquakes thanks to fracking. At least she gets to make fun of her manager Walt (Jeff Murdoch) and get cheap Lone Star at the end of work.

It’d be, well, kind of a pointless existence if it wasn’t for the mind-controlling parasites that the drilling has loosened onto the populace, aliens from inside the crust of our world that have already prepared a sales presentation to show you why you should just give up and give in.

Every moment of this is perfect — the neon lighting, the “Have a Luckee day” voice that greets every customer and the sleazy cops (Joseph Rene and Lilliana Winkworth) — but the best part is that the ending feels straight out of Demons.

Gnomes (2022): Joggers have no idea that they’re about to enter the world of murderous sausage making gnomes who lure them in with mysterious glowing mushrooms. This movie has shocking amounts of gore and I say that lovingly; director Ruwan Suresh Heggelman, who wrote this with Jasper ten Hoor and Richard Raaphorst, knows how to keep things moving as fast as possible. We’re here to watch gnomes eat human beings and we get it. Oh do we get it.

I don’t even want to know what kind of Smurfs movie Heggelman could make. The horror. The horror.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Cheerleader Ninjas (2002)

Posted on by

Four Happy Valley High Hamsters cheerleaders, led by Angela (Angela Brubaker), have been by a church group for everything bad about the internet. They hire a gay teacher named Steven (Jeff Nicholson, who created the comic book Ultra Klutz) to train a group of Catholic school girls to take their place. He’s also working with Mr. X (Donr Sneed) who is turning all internet users into zombies.

The girls turn to the nerds, led by Maverick (Jared Brubaker), who are able to teach the girls how to be ninjas.

Director and writer Kevin Campbell directed an entire series of VHS how-to model kit videos in the 90s like Video Workbench: How to Build Science Fiction Models and Video Workbench: How to Build Car Models. Just last year, he came back to directing and made an internet referencing slasher called Back Slash.

Probably the reason why most guys watched this was because Kira Reed was in it. She’s also in Amityville Witches, Chained Heat 2001: Slave Lovers, Playboy’s Sexcetera and was an early internet adult star. Nearly all of the nudity in this movie comes from her.

As you can imagine, this is one of those films that sets out to be bad and overdelivers.

This is not Ninja Cheerleaders.

You can watch this on Tubi.

MILL CREEK BLU RAY BOX SET: Dawson’s Creek (1996-2003)

Posted on by

I know no bigger fan of Dawson’s Creek than my friend Jim Sloss, who was kind enough to teach me that Pacey’s boat is named True Romance and to write this:

Over the years Sam has asked me many times if I’d like to write something for B&S and I’d always hem & haw and then never get around to it. Then came the box set of all box sets, the show that is like a time capsule to the 1990s and one of my all-time favorites, Dawson’s Creek.

In 1998 when this show came out I can remember vividly watching it on my VCR the following morning (because I had to work the night before) and from the first moment of the pilot to the last I was hooked, the dialogue was nothing that I’d heard before in a teen soap. They took a chance at treating the audience like adults rather than kids and it paid off. So, from that night on I followed the “kids” from Capeside each week for six seasons.

Created by Kevin Williamson, the co-creator of the horror franchise Scream, this series is a fictionalized account of a young film buff from a small town just trying to find his way. Pretty much what Kevin Williamson did was pitch what he knew and so he told a fictionalized version of his growing up in North Carolina. The show was launched on the WB network in January 1998 and was an instant hit with the show being parodied on MTV and Saturday Night Live. Their use of current pop culture and hit music for the time was what kept it relevant each week and talked about on school campuses.

During the late 90s, Dawson’s Creek was considered cutting edge for teen angst, touching on issues that were not talked about on TV and even less so in public. The first season dealt with drug abuse, addiction and infidelity along with every teenage boys dream… the inappropriate relationship with a hot teacher. In 1998 that was a huge story arc for a main character with the teacher just leaving to avoid scandal. These types of stories were becoming more and more common during this time and now leads to the teacher spending long stretches in prison rather than just moving on to another school.

Yet along the way these colorful kids learned from their mistakes and grew into functioning adults just trying to make their way. With the main character Dawson Leery, played by James Van Der Beek, not getting his High School crush Joey Potter, played by Katie Holmes, but instead getting to fulfill his dream of working in movies and TV where he turned his life into a teen drama TV show just like Kevin Williamson.

I would be remiss if I didn’t leave you with the greatest quote and moment of this fantastic tv show. In the finale we find our core characters several years in their future living their lives with little interaction when everyone is reunited for a wedding they immediately learn that one of the main characters, Jen Lindley, is dying of cancer. While Dawson is spending time with his close friend at a hospice facility she has this Hollywood filmmaker record a video for her infant daughter to watch when she’s older. In that video one line she says that gets me every time is “Be sure to make mistakes. Make a lot of them, because there’s no better way to learn and to grow.” While she’s saying that you can see the anguish on Michelle Williams’ face, showing the audience how fragile she is at the end of her short life and how she just wants the best for her child.

This show never shied away from tough storylines and in the end wrapped up everyone’s arc phenomenally.

I would give this series a 10 out 10!!

P.S. The popular Jenna Ortega can be seen watching Dawson’s Creek in Scream 5 out in 2022 and currently on Paramount+.

Thanks again Jim.

The Mill Creek release of the entire series has all 127 episodes across six seasons, along with seven hours of bonus extras, which include Entertainment Weekly‘s 20th Anniversary Reunion, audio commentaries on select episodes, a retrospective featurette and alternate scenes and an alternate ending to the pilot episode.

I watched several of the episodes on this set as, surprise, I never watched this show, despite Jim telling me near consistently — we lived in a house with six people while this show was popular, so I have no idea how I didn’t watch it with him — that I need to watch “The Dawnson,” as he put it.

Surprisingly — as I have often remarked about Williamson’s other work — I really liked what I watched. It felt honest and truthful, nearly lived in. I’ve been watching a few episodes a week now and really enjoying the opportunity to be part of the lives of these characters.

These Mill Creek TV sets are great because they really give you the opportunity to do the same, exploring or binging or however you choose to watch. And unlike streaming, they’re always there for you, not being edited or taken down when you’re in the middle of watching a season.

You can buy the Dawson’s Creek set from Mill Creek at Deep Discount.