Tag Archives: 2006

ARROW 4K UHD RELEASE: Poseidon (2006)

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Wolfgang Petersen made Das Boot and The Perfect Storm, so he was the best person to probably direct the sequel to The Poseidon Adventure. It was filmed on large-scale sets and soundstages and had practical effects and stunts to go with the digitally-enhanced water effects.

Robert Ramsey (Kurt Russell) is a NYC firefighter on vacation with his daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum) and her boyfriend Christian (Mike Vogel). They’re on board the Poseidon with gambler Dylan Jones (Josh Lucas), Maggie James (Jacinda Barrett) and her son Conor (Jimmy Bennett), architect Richard Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss), waiter Marco Valentine (Freddy Rodriguez), singer Gloria (people in the place, it’s Fergie),  Captain Michael Bradford (Andre Braugher), Lucky larry (Kevin Dillon) and a girl who snuck on, Elena Morales (Mía Maestro).

What follows is wholesale movie star destruction and no one is safe. Seriously, an air conditioning unit falls smack dab on Turtle’s head. Fergie drowns. A rogue wave kills almost everyone else before that. This movie doesn’t give two shits if you’re famous. In fact, it demands that. People you don’t expect to get nuked? Watch out.

Roger Ebert said, “Wolfgang Petersen’s heart isn’t in it. He is too wise a director to think this is first-rate material and too good a director to turn it into enjoyable trash.”

The 70s were the best time for disaster movies. This is good enough, but as you would figure, the original is better.

Extras on this Arrow Video release include interviews with director of photography John Seale, production designer William Sandell, visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis and make-up effects on-set supervisor Michael Deak; a retrospective on the film by Heath Holland; featurettes on at the film’s production, featuring interviews with cast and crew, the set design and production assistant Malona Voigt. There’s a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jacey and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Priscilla Page. You can order it from MVD.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (2006)

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Aug 4-10  Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!

Ever since the 2023 Australia incident, where Tenacious D went on hiatus — and seemingly Jack Black buried his friend Kyle Gass — thinking of the D makes me sad. It was hard to watch this movie, made in a time when things were better.

The plot of this film — well, the origin of the band — isn’t far from the truth. Jack Black and Kyle Gass met in Los Angeles as part of a theater company, and Gass felt threatened by Black, as he was the only musician before. Yet the chance to go to Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival — and to climb the volcano, Arthur’s Seat — bonded them. Gass would teach Black to play guitar in return for food, just like this movie. After a three-episode HBO series and a successful album, they went from being a comedy band to being a real band that does comedy. Initially, this was going to be about Tenacious D playing coffee shops and Black becoming fascinated by Atlantis. Black and Gass both fall in love with a girl called Simmeon, who has written books about the fictional island. They later meet Ronnie James Dio, and are sent on a road trip to Miami.” That movie never made it.

This one didn’t do well in theaters. Cult movies rarely do. Black said, “A lot of enthusiastic stoners were like, ‘Yeah, du-u-u-de! Just saw it.”  I was like, “Where were you when the movie came out?” “Sorry, dude, I was hi-i-i-gh!””

Meat Loaf is Black’s dad. Dave Grohl is Satan. Dio is Dio. All is right in this. I mean, any movie that ends with the heroes smoking out of a bong made from Satan’s horn is one I’m going to love.

Their next album, Rize of the Phoenix, starts with the words, “When The Pick Of Destiny was released, it was a bomb. And all the critics said that the D was done. The sun had set, and the chapter had closed. But one thing no one thought about was that the D would rise again.” That album is about Gass losing his mind as Black becomes a Hollywood star.

Luckily, that album and tour were a success.

Here’s hoping they can rise again.

 

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: A Scanner Darkly (2006)

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Aug 4-10  Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!

Written in 1977 by Phillip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly is based on Dick’s life. Between mid-1970 (when his fourth wife, Nancy, left him) and mid-1972, Dick opened his house up to teenage drug users as his amphetamine addiction went out of control. How else do you write 68 pages of books a day? To escape, while in Canada, he went to X-Kalay, a Synanon recovery program. That’s why the book — and the movie — ends with a dedication to the people — including Dick himself — who died or had their lives ruined by drugs, saying that they were “some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did” and informing the audience that “drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to move out in front of a moving car.” It took him two weeks to write and three years to rewrite, a time that his fifth wife, Tes, said that she would find him crying, as the book was so hard to write. As a result, Dick wrote a contract giving Tessa half of all the rights to the novel, as she “participated to a great extent in writing the outline and novel A Scanner Darkly with me, and I owe her one half of all income derived from it.”

Richard Linklater wanted to make Ubik, but couldn’t figure out how to film it, a problem that most people who made Philip K. Dick movies solved by just doing their own thing and just using the title (see Paycheck, The Adjustment Bureau, Next — which is based on “The Golden Man” — as well as Minority Report, Total Recall and nearly every movie made from his books). His daughters, Laura Leslie and Isa Hackett, started looking closely at the scripts and learned that while they didn’t want a cartoon made of their father’s most personal work, Linklater got it.

The process of making this movie involved the actors being involved in the writing process, then making the movie, then 18 months of animating everything, which was way more than the studio thought it would take. The rotoscope process gives this a look beyond anything I’ve seen outside of Waking Life. This is the next level of what Linklater did in that film.

20% of the country is addicted to Substance D. Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an undercover cop living in a house of addicts reporting back to the government agents that police the war on drugs, who all wear scramblesuits so that they have no idea who they are, undercover and masked even to one another, maybe to themselves. He’s in love with Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder), from whom he buys the drugs, and wants to get closer to the supplier. But she is also Hank, his boss, and this has all been a trap to make James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.) get overly paranoid. Or maybe she’s Audrey. Also: Who are the people that Bob has a suburban life with? Is he addicted to Substance D? Whichever, whatever, because Substance D was created by New-Path, a drug abuse clinic, to make money for themselves by creating and curing the supply and demand. Is Bob in the clinic to get help or is he there undercover to stop them?

None of it matters, but it all does in the end. Nothing is everything. Or, as Dick said, “There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be “My phone is spying on me.””

ARROW VIDEO 4K UHD RELEASE: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

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A prequel to 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this movie reminds me that when a franchise has run out of ideas, they always go backward. Back to the well or, in this instance, back in time for a prequel.

Back in 1939, a woman gave birth in a slaughterhouse and died, at which point the manager threw her infant into a dumpster, where it was rescued by Luda Mae Hewitt, who raised the baby as her son Thomas.

Fast forward to 1969,, and Thomas works in the same slaughterhouseunderr the exact manage. When the plants are shut down by the health department, he refuses to leave. So when the manager pushes him, he gets killed by a chainsaw and his adopted brother Charlie  (R. Lee Ermey) kills the arresting officer that comes to their home — Sheriff Hoyt — and takes on his identity.

Thomas eventually becomes Leatherface — are you surprised? — but not before wiping out an entirely different set of teens years before the original movie, including Jordana Brewster from The Fast and the Furious series.

This comes from the days when Platinum Dunes were the Blumhouse of the 2000s, reinventing horror film series like The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street to varying degrees of box office success. Director Jonathan Liebesman was also behind their reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

At this point, even a fan of the character like me — I dressed as Leatherface for more Halloweens than I can count on a severed hand — checked out.

The Arrow Video release of this film has a 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) of both the Theatrical Version and the Uncut Version. Extras include a new audio commentary on the Uncut Version with Dread Central co-founder Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton and co-host of The Spooky Picture Show podcast Chris MacGibbon and an audio commentary on the Uncut Version with director Jonathan Liebesman and producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller; interviews with Lew Temple; special effects makeup artist Jake Garber and special effects makeup technician Kevin Wasner and director of photography Lukas Ettlin; a making-of doc; deleted and extended scenes with optional commentary from director Jonathan Liebesman and producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller and a trailer, all inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea with a double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold.

You can get it from MVD.

Sizzlin’ Summer of Side-Splitters 2025: Who Made the Potatoe Salad? (2006)

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July 21-27 Eddie Griffin Week: This motherfucker is funny!

San Diego cop Michael (Jaleel White, yes, Urkel) goes off to announce his engagement to Ashley (Jennia Fredrique) to her family. It does not go well. Father Jake (Clifton Powell) was a Black Panther who went to jail for killing a job; brother June Bug (DeRay Davis) is a gangster who also hates the police; Uncle Ray Ray (Mark Chalant Pfiefer) is a garbageman who also despises law enforcement officials; Mookie (Daphne Bloomer) is only concerned about potato salad. At least Ashley’s mom (Ella Joyce) is somewhat understanding that her daughter is in love.

Coke Daniels also made My Baby’s Daddy. He directed and wrote this, somehow managing to get Tiny Lister and Eddie Griffin to play cameos. If you’re elated by humor where old people smoke marijuana and are horny, well, good news. This movie is for you.

Why did they spell the title wrong? It never pays off. I need to know, as someone who truly loves potato salad.

There’s also a scene where the dad repeatedly calls Michael a pig and tells him that he will murder him if he marries his daughter. It is a comedy, but it is not played for laughs.

You can watch this on Tubi.

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

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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.

25 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE: Santa Baby (2006)

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I just want holiday movies to be an escape because I’ll be frank, I’m head in the sand about the next few years and I’m trying to use the power of film to hide in my own world until I feel like this one is safe again. Then again, it never was safe and you should avoid any echo chamber, but yeah. I don’t need to put on a Christmas movie and remember how Jenny McCarthy normalized stopping vaccines and look where we are, as polio shots are being on the list of things stopped and people are going to remember what the measles were like again.

But anyways.

She’s Mary Class in this, daughter of Santa, who is played by George Wendt. Why did Santa and Mrs. Claus (Lynne Griffin!) wait so long to have kids? And why did she go into marketing? Why would this bring the real world in to have Santa have a heart attack and why is this a Hallmark movie where Mary has a lost love named Luke (Ivan Sergei) at home in the North Pole?

Somehow, this has Michael Moriarty in it and I wonder, did I cast this movie?

The sequel has Dean McDermott as Luke and Paul Sorvino as Santa. Lynn Griffith was back and that’s really all I care about.

Director Ron Underwood made Tremors. Yes, he also made City Slickers and Hearts and Souls, but The Adventures of Pluto Nash is the reason why he made ABC Family Christmas movies, including Holiday In Handcuffs, Deck the Halls and this movie and its sequel.

You can watch this on Tubi.

SEVERIN BOX SET RELEASE: All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium Of Folk Horror Vol. 2: White Song (2006)

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Directed and written by Katrina Irawati Graham, this uses the ghost known as the Kuntil Anak to tell the story of an artist named Raesita. This supernatural entity is often a pregnant long-haired woman dressed in white that gets her revenge from men by drinking their blood and eating their organs. You can tell that one is close when you hear a baby cry and smell either a corpse or a plumeria flower. She is the ghost of women who have died in childbirth.

After the death of her husband, Raesita meets and makes love to the Kuntil Anak, who wants to take her away from the pain of life. This is what Raesita wants as well, as her grief has become too much for her. However, her unborn baby wants to live and that’s something neither human woman or vampire-like creature dreamt of.

How often does one get to have a sapphic interlude with a demonic force, after all?

Man-Eater Mountain is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.

SEVERIN BOX SET RELEASE: All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium Of Folk Horror Vol. 2: Blood Tea and Red String (2006)

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This film took 13 years for Christiane Cegavske to make and it was worth every second.

The White Mice have commissioned a doll from the Creatures Who Dwell Under the Oak, but once she is created, the artists have fallen in love with her. They place an egg inside her body and have put her into a place of worship. The mice return and steal her away, sending the creatures on a journey to get her back.

Excited at having the doll, the mice become besotted on blood tea. The egg hatches and a bird with the face of the doll emerges, flying away but soon becoming trapped in a web and dying. The artist dwellers take her back and rebuild the dead body, but it’s stolen again by the mice. The battle between them causes it to be torn to pieces, which leads to the creatures giving the mice the doll parts and sending the body of the bird downstream.

Shot on 16mm in stop motion style that had to take forever — or 13 years, but it had to feel like forever to create — the description above will not prepare you for what you are about to experience. With no dialogue, you are free to imagine who these characters are and what they represent. I can’t even explain the vibe of this, as it looks like something for children while feeling occult and forbidden. A must see.

Blood Tea and Red String is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including an introduction director Christiane Cegavske, a Q & A with Cegavske, production stills, concept illustrations, a trailer and a trailer for Seed In the Sand, Cegavske’s work-in-progress.

You can order this set from Severin.

2024 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 7: 666: The Child (2006)

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7. LITTLE DEVILS, BIG SHRIEKS: How much terror can a child really wreak?

Look, sometimes I end up watching devil child movies directed by the same guy who made Wild Things 2. He uses the name Jake Johnson in the credits, but that’s Jack Perez, who was also Ace Hannah when he directed Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. Benjamin Harvey, who wrote this, also made 666: The Beast, which is the sequel where Donald — the child in this one — becomes an adult Antichrist, getting to where Damien Thorn was in three movies in just two.

Scott (Adam Vincent) and Erika (Sarah Lieving) Lawson get to adopt Donald (Booboo Stewart, who was Seth Clearwater in The Twilight Saga) after his parents die in a plane crash. Donald just walked away. And then I realized, oh man, this is The Asylum version of The Omen, released at the same time as the remake.

The flight number? Pacific Airlines Flight 7666.

Erika is the only reporter at the scene, so it just makes sense that she and her husband get Donald. In days, he’s hit by a baseball by Scott’s bad, which sends him to the dentist, who sees the Mark of the Beast on his tongue. He then shoves the drill into the dentist’s face and kills his assistant, then kills the grandfather the next day. No one suspects anything, even after when he was in the hospital earlier, a nurse had sex in the same room as him and died from mushing her head into a pipe.

A crazy nun shows up, as they do.

Lucy (Nora Jesse) shows up as the Satanic Sitter and gets Scott to comply by sneak sucking him off, which only works so long because it’s kind of hard to ignore that your adopted son is the Antichrist.

Does a cop kill the father before he can kill the son? Have you seen this before too? Or have we all seen the same movie?

At the end, Donald is now living with Erika’s sister Mary Lou (Kim Little), who is Martha Stewart and plans on raising the devil child all alone. If you ask your grandmother for The Omen for Christmas, you may get this movie. She still loves you, but she doesn’t know the difference.

You can watch this on Tubi.