Showing posts with label Rare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rare. Show all posts
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Monday, July 20, 2015
Monday, June 22, 2015
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Episode 30 - Satanic Attraction/Ritual of Death
*Normally I'd add trailer(s) for the films, but as we said in the podcast they're really full of spoilers. Watch at your own risk!*
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Blood Salvage (1990)
To correct this genuinely lazy mistake I've taken to seeking out a few movies that I had never heard anything about, good or bad. Just crossing off more movies to say it's worth a look, or its Curse of the Blue Lights bad. This morning I gave the 1984 flick Dreamscape a watch, and that was pretty damned entertaining. Don't know why I never saw it before, but better late than never. In the same lot of tapes I decided to pick up this silly cover of a junkyard worker holding an eyeball in wrench.
Blood Salvage tells the tale of the Evans family, who attend a county fair in which their wheelchair bound daughter April is a contestant. Jake, a local junkman, takes a shine to miss April, and sets about to have his insipid sons conspire to damage the wheels on the Evans' Winnebago. As the family embarks on their trip back home the wheel magically comes undone, and the camper veers off-road. Along comes Jake to "assist" the Evans, and brings them all back to his home. Unfortunately for the Evans what they don't realize is Jake is a mad doctor who just so happens to be sell the organs on the black market!
Blood Salvage is an absurd movie; let's get that out of the way first. If you're expecting a thought provoking chill fest you're shit out of luck. This is a movie played strictly for laughs, more in the vein of Blood Diner than Hills Have Eyes. The company who released the film, Magnum, has not been my best friend when it comes to quality views. I keep beating the dead horse that is Curse of the Blue Lights, but then there's also the shit-show that is Street Asylum. After viewing those two films I was a bit reluctant, but I'm happy I did. This was the simple, no nonsense type of horror comedy I like. Not as heavy on the slapstick, but black humor in the dialogue and absurdity of the overall situation. The gore was also a fun aspect here, but not played for anything more than comedy.
Another aspect of Blood Salvage that elevated the viewing for me was the inclusion of some familiar faces in John Saxon as the patriarch of the Evans household, and Ray Walston as the seedy head of the black market organ trade Mr. Stone. The rest of the cast is more than acceptable, but my main gripe with the film comes in how predictable the whole thing was, right down to the last scene. Perhaps I'm just too jaded from seeing so many movies. I guess it's easy to blame myself, but honestly, maybe everything was predictable for the sake of adding levity to the plot. That's all a personal thing, and doesn't really detract from the viewing, but something I felt I should share for those who watch a lot of horror movies.
For those of you who look for something a little sillier in your upcoming horror viewings, I suggest giving Blood Salvage a watch. With an engaging plot, solid acting and great gore you’re sure to enjoy it. There are a lot of other crazy backwoods killer movies out there, but due to the humor involved with Blood Salvage I would say it’s one that holds up on repeat viewings more than most. Also, lookout for the random fucking cameo from Evander Holyfield. This must have been some paycheck, champ.
Rating: 4 out of 5 Trash Bags
Blood Salvage is currently not available on DVD, but copies of the VHS are available on Amazon starting at around $10.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Mutilations (1986)
Prior to the CG-laden adventures of a cigar smoking Will Smith in Independence Day, most films dabbling in alien invasion were left to the devices of practical and traditional special effects. Unless you're Ray Harryhausen it's probably pretty hard to show alien spaceships attacking metropolitan areas. Case in point: Plan 9 from Outer Space.
Mutilations takes the approach of most pre-CG alien invasion films, and isolates the action to a central location and group of characters. The benefit here is it would be silly to tackle such a broad story with what is obviously a small budget. With that we're given a pretty run-of-the-mill stalk and slash alien movie, and that's by no means a detraction.
Mutilations tells the story of a group of science students who hear tale of group of townsfolk who have noticed strange lights occurring in, and around the town. On top of that, apparently the cattle and other animals have been found stripped of skin, and partially consumed. Of course being the brazen young group that they are, they venture into the mountains to find out what has been causing all the... Mutilations.
From a technical standpoint however, Mutilations falls into the "So bad, it's good" territory. From one-liners that would make Bruce Campbell balk to actors (a loose term here) inserting far too many "dramatic" pauses between words, the direction of Larry Thomas is that of someone that just wanted to tell a fun story.
Outside of the acting and dialogue, there really aren't too many negative aspects to Mutilations. From a time period of filmmaking where limitations were pushed to the extremes, this is a film that encapsulates what I really love about 80's movies. Silly story, quick-paced and absurdly violent.
Mutilations is a pretty hard tape to track down. It's available from Baron Video, and, if you can find one at a decent price, is totally recommended.
Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 Trash Bags
Mutilations IMDB
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Sunday, December 21, 2014
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Charter Entertainment
Why does one decide to collect something? What is it about one particular brand or look that draws us to act like Ash Ketchum with a duffel bag full of Pokeballs? I'm sure there's some asinine psychiatrist opinion about how we were raised, but I honestly think who gives a shit. Some like baseball cards, some comics. Some records and others with embossed presidential faces on a doily. Regardless this is a post about my journey to collect all the releases from Charter Entertainment.
Charter was a subsidiary of Nelson Entertainment, who was later purchased by New Line Cinema.... Who was later purc
hased by Warner Brothers. My first experience with Charter was Brian Trenchard-Smith's The Quest. My father had seen the movie one random day on TV, and had found a copy for me to see when I was about 8. At the time my VHS collecting consisted primarily of Godzilla, Universal Monsters and big bug movies from the '50s, but this Australian set film captured my imagination.
It wasn't until 2008 when I then saw my next Charter which would be the Larry Cohen oddball God Told Me To. Then I came across the John Stamos/Gene Simmons tour de force Never Too Young to Die, and my love of this company grew. After I started coming across different titles while hunting in the wild, I decided to "Get the whole set".I had no clue how many titles Charter released. Through websites like VHSplatter, Critic Online and VHS Collector I was able to amass a large amount of the product IDs and titles. However, these sites still don't list every title. I have found a few that these sites don't list, and that has begun my quest collect, watch and review every Charter film. I don't know for sure how many titles that is, but as of now I've counted upwards 117 titles. The IDs I've collected so far go up to "90237, which is the Harvey Keitel thriller Blindside.
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Monday, September 29, 2014
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
The Trash Pack: Contest 08/06/14 to 09/26/14
\I've been spotty with keeping reviews and the podcast up to date, but I do appreciate anyone who has taken the time to listen to an episode, read a review or even share my work with someone else. That's why I'd like to show some appreciation to one lucky reader. I've been teasing the thought of a contest on our Facebook page for sometime now, and here's the deal:In order to win over 30 DVDs, 30 VHS, a few action figures, comics and more you'll have to comment below with the name of your favorite video store, existing or not. The only other rule is you have to like our Facebook page. It's that simple! This contest will run until Friday, September 26th. I'll then collect all entries, and figure out a winner at random!
Now, these are all the DVDs that will be included, but more VHS will be added once I find some stuff I highly enjoyed, or a couple of more obscurer titles. Right now there's a stack of Punisher mags I have included, but I'll be putting some more horror comics in.
Make sure to like our Facebook page to stay up-to-date on any additions to the Trash Pack contest!
Thanks for reading!
*New Additions 08/26/2014*
We're a month away from the contest ending, so I've added some more stuff to the pack. Here are detailed images of all that is included!
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Death Nurse (1987)
I've seen and reviewed my share of ridiculous films throughout my time on this earth, but I find that when watching a film shot-on-video (SOV) I tend to be more relaxed with my feelings. While I will always say The Abomination is a wretched film, there is a lot of entertainment to be had with the right inebriation. There's a certain chunk of salt one has to swallow to enjoy these films, and more often than not they're poorly made and convoluted.At the Shady Palms nursing home, Nurse Edith and her brother Doctor Gordon take care of their patients. They give them beds, offer food, and unnecessary surgery and murder. While more patients are brought in for their "exquisite" care, Edith and Gordon take turns either performing surgery or suffocating, stabbing. Soon though they find themselves with more corpses than they can handle. What are a murderous brother and sister to do?
Death Nurse is a pretty baffling movie. At the staggering 57 minute run time you are thrown into one of the most weirdly edited, shot and acted films ever. Again, that's not saying it's bad, but, well... It's bad. In an enjoyable way, but you're scratching your head as to why most of these decisions were made. Long shots of actors doing nothing. Dream sequences that are never explained, also these sequences were taken from the film Criminally Insane, so they obviously needed the padding.
The acting from Priscilla Alden is spot-on with its awfulness. It's wooden and no awards will be given for her performance, but it's endearing. The "production value" of the film was that of probably one weekend, the director's family/friends, 5 VHS tapes, a Panasonic camcorder and two VCRs for editing. It's cheap and it shows, but it's never serious and allows for organic laughs with the dark humor while everything else in the movie provides the unintentional chuckles.
Death Nurse isn't going to win any awards, but it's a movie to throw on with a group of friends. It's under an hour of your life, and most of us paid to sit through Avatar. That shit was like 3 hours. You could watch Death Nurse, Death Nurse 2 and two episodes of the Simpsons in that time frame and be more entertained that tree sex bullshit.
Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5 Trash Bags
Death Nurse is available from Slasher // Video, but it is limited to 1,000 units.
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