Blackhat made $19.7 million at the box office against a budget of $70 million, which makes it a bomb, but does how many people came to see a movie on initial release mean it’s a bad movie? Nope.

When a nuclear plant in Hong Kong goes into meltdown and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange gets hacked, it turns out that Captain Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) of the People’s Liberation Army cyberwarfare unit designed the code behind both systems. He asks that his college roommate, Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), be let out of prison to stop the hacker before they further destabilize several companies and governments. This includes a plan to sabotage a large dam and destroy several major tin mines in Malaysia, with the hacker buying into different futures that will profit from these attacks.

What emerges is a mix between art film and Hollywood action; what’s strange is that no person who spends hours typing on a computer — trust me, I know — looks as good as Hemsworth. But you know, only Michael Mann could direct a scene about hacking a PDF into obtaining a password and making it look that sexy and vibrant. That takes an artistic skill that so few directors lack.

Viola Davis, who plays FBI Special Agent Carol Barrett, and Holt McCallany, who is Deputy United States Marshal Jessup, are both really good in this, but they’re both always the best parts of any film they appear in.

I kind of like how by the end of this movie, it’s basically Hathaway and Dawai’s sister Chen Lien (Tang Wei) against the hackers and the world, having only each other to depend on.

The new release from Arrow also has a director’s cut. The changes were explained on the site Kevrania and they include:

Added scenes:

• A brief scene of a cargo ship being denied entry into Rotterdam
• An introduction to FBI Agent Carol Barrett and the Chicago exchange IT Director Jeff Robichaud.
• Nicholas Hathaway, Mark Jessup and Chen Lien are tailed upon arriving in Hong Kong and subsequently lose the tail.

Removed scenes:

• Hathaway is asked by the warden about hacking the prison accounting network. When he refuses to do that, he is put into solitary.
• Barrett and Chen realize they should be searching for soy sellers instead of soy buyers.
• A nuclear power plant worker explains what is happening to the plant.
• Hathaway changing the meet location.

It’s great that Arrow listened to fans and added the director’s cut, which is part of the Arrow Video 4K UHD release of Blackhat. It also has the US and international versions of the film, new audio commentary by critics Bryan Reesman and Max Evry, interviews with cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh and production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, behind the scenes features, an image gallery, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Doug John Miller and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Andrew Graves. You can get it from MVD. There’s also a blu ray version.

Based on the novel by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo De Cataldo, this movie is about the connections between organized crime and politics in Rome. A real estate project is going to turn the neighborhood in Rome into Las Vegas, but it creates a web connecting politicians like Filippo Malgradi (Pierfrancesco Favino) and criminals like neo-fascist terrorist turned crime boss Samurai (Claudio Amendola).

It also doesn’t make things any less dirty when Filippo parties with two sex workers. The underaged one, Jelena, overdoses and the politician has to bring in Alberto “Spadino” Anacleti (Giacomo Ferrara) to dispose of the body. Sapdino begins to blackmail him before he’s murdered by another criminal, Aureliano (Alessandro Borghi), which starts a war between him and Manfredi Anacleti (Adamo Dionisi).

Directed by Stefano Sollima, this has so many characters and so much happens in a little over two hours. It was expanded as two miniseries on Netflix, Suburra: Blood on Rome and Suburræterna, which start on Netflix on November 14, 2023.

It’s also pretty astounding how much of this was based on real life.

The Unearthed Films blu ray of this movie comes with a 2-hour making of feature and a trailer. You can get it from MVD.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Exploitation-film historian A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey. Currently, in addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, and voice-over artist, he is a regular guest co-host on the streaming Drive-In Asylum Double Feature and contributes to the Drive-In Asylum fanzine. His upcoming essay “Emanuelle in Disney World and Other Weird Tales of a Trash Film Lover,” detailing bizarre and hilarious stories about midnight movies, grindhouses, and exploitation films, appears in Drive-In Asylum #25.

If ever they gave out awards to films with the most off-the-wall concepts, Director’s Commentary: Terror of Frankenstein would be at the top of the list. Taking a forgotten film version of the novel Frankenstein, co-writer/director Tim Kirk created something that can best be described as “meta layered upon meta.” But then again, Kirk has a history of being involved in bizarre projects. He was producer of Room 237, the nutty documentary purporting to unveil the hidden meaning in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, as well as producer/co-writer/director of pseudo-documentary Sex Madness Revealed with Patton Oswalt and Rob Zabrecky, and producer of the segment “Q is for Questionnaire” in ABCs of Death 2. Those projects don’t even hint at the lunacy of on display here. I had no clue what to expect.

The film opens on the static DVD menu screen purporting to be for the special edition of Terror of Frankenstein, a Swedish/Irish co-production from 1977, starring Per Oscarsson (The Girl Who Played with Fire), Nicholas Clay (Excalibur), and Leon Vitali (Eyes Wide Shut and Barry Lydon), adapted by Calvin and Yvonne Floyd, and directed by Calvin Floyd (In Search of Dracula). An unseen hand clicks on the menu to scroll through a gallery of a few nondescript photographs that appear to be from the movie’s premiere before turning on the director’s commentary and starting the film.

Up pops the blocky Independent-International logo (which would delight Sam Panico to no end) because Sam Sherman’s company released Terror of Frankenstein in the U.S. And then the commentary track begins. We hear legendary character actor Clu Gulagar (The Return of the Living Dead, Once Upon a Time In…Hollywood and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge) as “the director” and Zack Norman (Romancing the Stone, Cadillac Man and Chief Zabu) as “the writer.” They explain that Yvonne and Calvin Floyd listed in credits were their pseudonyms.

From the outset, it’s clear that there’s some tension between the two. Those expecting a Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Rifftrax version of the film will be surprised. It’s not. The film soon becomes its own original object. Although there is indeed droll humor sprinkled throughout the commentary—I laughed out loud a lot—there are tidbits dropped about “a trial,” “the execution,” and “those suitcases” to foreshadow that something sinister happened during filming. So what you get is a well-mounted, faithful, though somewhat sluggish, version of Frankenstein with a mysterious commentary track that sounds like an episode of the 1940’s radio show Inner Sanctum.

Getting to the revelation of the meta-plot is the fun here, as Gulager and Norman discuss the production, bicker, joke, weigh the virtues of method acting, and make inside-baseball remarks that are clues for the viewer. Eventually, Leon Vitali, one of the film’s actual stars (see the wonderful documentary, Filmworker, about Vitali’s life as Stanley Kubrick’s buddy and go-to guy), shows up in the last twenty minutes. All is then revealed in an existential ending that I can only describe as Ingmar Bergman meets the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature gang at the Monster-Mania Con. In other words, this is a film made by fans of exploitation films for a small group of select fans who would “get it.”

I enjoyed the experiment Director’s Commentary: Terror of Frankenstein. It’s the weirdest, most original thing that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s funny, intellectual, and completely bonkers in conception and execution. Gulagar, Norman, and Vitali understood the film’s universe perfectly, and the technical team did a fine job of mating their commentary to appropriate action in the film. Bless Tim Kirk and company’s twisted little black hearts. I felt like they made a movie just for me. Discerning cinephiles out there will love it.

The film is available with a subscription to Night Flight Plus. I hear you can also order a DVD by contacting the director from the film’s Facebook page.

A group of children embark on a macabre adventure into the jungle of Brazil, one filled with characters from the horror traditions of Brazil: the werewolf, a witch, a ghost, monsters and The Saci. This anthology unites four of the most important names in Brazilian horror: Rodrigo Aragao, Petter Baiestorf, Joel Caetano and Jose Mojica Marins, the eternal Coffin Joe.

In the first story, directed by the brains behind this entire movie Aragão (Dark Sea, Cemetery of Lost Souls), the corrupt mayor of a city dies on the toilet and his blood and bile go directly into the water system he refused to fix, transforming everyone who interacts with the water into zombies filled with the same filth that he was. Talk about starting things off hot, as this is filled with so many gross-out effects.

Petter Baiestorf (Zombio 2: Chimarrão Zombies) directed the second story in which a military presence rules a town through violence, fear and outright racism. Yet when a werewolf starts to be sighted, even their might isn’t enough to stop it. This segment has some of the most gut-churning werewolf scenes I’ve ever seen, moments that look like barbecue-sauced infused blasts of muck, internal organs, peeling skin and always blood.

Marins directed and starred in the third story, a tale of exorcism gone wrong and the monster known as the Saci, which is a one-legged black man, always smoking a pipe and in a magical red hat that leaves behind a smell that never goes away. He appears and disappears in the form of a dust devil and has the power to grant wishes. Any small misfortune — even if a popcorn kernel fails to pop — is said to be caused by the Saci.

The final story is directed by Caetano (Encosto) has the ghost of a woman haunting a school, causing death after death that is hidden by being buried. The woman in charge of the school and this ghost are linked and that story is soon revealed.

I really had fun with this film. The credits are great with everyone seemingly overjoyed to work with Marins and when he is asked what it’s like to make a horror movie in Brazil, he answers, “Terrible.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Carrie Gemmell — who also appeared in director and writer Chris Alexander’s Queen of Blood and Blood for Irina — is She. During the day, she’s merely an office drone. Yet at night, She dreams of another woman (Cheryl Singleton) that she works with, as well as blood, sex and death. And when she wakes up, it isn’t where she went to sleep. And her fangs are growing.

I thought maybe it was all in her head, but then after luring the woman back home, She opens her mouth and reenacts The Company of Wolves with a head emerging from her lips. Or is this her finally coming out? Ah, maybe I just need to remember the words of Georges Bataille. “Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.”

If you haven’t seen one of Alexander’s films, they remain deceptively simple. There’s a moment here where She is looking in the mirror when she wakes up and the white wall creates an effective split screen, juxtaposing her inspecting herself with absolute nothingness. It’s all in camera, not something created in the edit, and so much of this is just art emerging for long takes or color taking control of the screen.

There’s also another woman — Shauna Henry — who was Irina in Blood for Irina, Blood Dynasty and Queen of Blood. Is she playing the same role, lending her vampiric power to this tale of another creature that walks the night — “To walk the night / To feel no love / To know the touch of another kiss / Never more.” — and wakes to wonder if these transformations and desires could be true?

Instead of Samhain, maybe I should have considered The Electric Prunes as a theme for this film. “Last night your shadow fell upon my lonely room / I touched your golden hair and tasted your perfume / Your eyes were filled with love the way they used to be / Your gentle hand reached out to comfort me / Then came the dawn / And you were gone / You were gone, gone, gone.”