Category: External Movie DVDs (Page 64 of 74)

After three consecutive days of offering Scares of the Day that I’ve legitimately enjoyed watching and talking about, it’s definitely time to take a dip into MGM’s Midnite Movies series. If you’re a fan of cult cinema and you’ve never taken a dip into a Midnight Movies DVD…well, then, frankly, you’re a really, really bad fan of cult cinema, because lord knows it’s one of the best imprints out there. In fact, if there’s any issue to be had with it, it’s that MGM often lets the films go out of print pretty quickly after releasing them, so when you hear that a new disc is coming out, your best bet is always to grab it ASAP.

Of course, like so many Midnite Movies, whether “The Food of the Gods” truly falls into the category of “Must Own” is gonna depend on how well you enjoy the kind of film that’s so bad it’s almost good. While both the cover of the DVD and the actual title screen of the movie would have you believed that it’s based on an H.G. Wells novel, that’s not entirely true; when you get deeper into the actual credits of the film, the actual descriptor is that it’s “based on a portion of the novel by H.G. Wells.”

Man, if that’s not an understatement.

The novel starts off by focusing on two scientists, Bensington and Redwood, who are conducting research into the growth process of living things; they create a chemical foodstuff called Herakleophorbia IV that accelerates and extends the process past its normal cycle, set up an experimental farm, and test the substance on chicks. There’s a relatively brief sequence in the book where a couple who’ve been hired to run the farm slack off and accidentally allow other creatures – wasps, rats, etcetera – to get into the food, which results in a showdown with the other creatures and the destruction of the farm. Beyond that, though, the novel’s scope encompasses several decades, exploring the effects of the food on humans and how human society evolves when some are giants and some are still normal-sized.

If that sounds fascinating to you, you’d best just stick to the book.

In the movie, an elderly couple just kind of happens upon this strange substance near their house. They live on an island, and it seems to have just come into existence naturally, so they feed it to their chickens…and when they’re on the verge of trying to maybe make a few bucks off of it, that’s when they realize that rats, wasps, and even flesh-eating worms have gotten into it as well. It’s still not a bad idea for a horror film (or monster movie, if you’re a purist), but with a budget which appears to have consisted of whatever happened to be in director / producer Bert I. Gordon’s pockets at the time he pitched the flick, the only “food of the gods” on display here is cheese. There isn’t a single sequence involving the giant rats that doesn’t instantly inspire an explosive “BWA-HA-HA-HA-” of laughter; it’s painfully obvious…albeit hilariously so…that the normal-sized rats are going after Matchbox cars, model houses, and so forth. There are Sid & Marty Krofft productions with better special effects than “The Food of the Gods,” but, then, anyone who saw the trailer for the film would’ve known what they were getting into…

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Until “Shaun of the Dead” shambled onto the scene a few years ago, if you’d asked me to name my favorite zombie movie of all time, you’d always have gotten the same answer: “Return of the Living Dead.” I mean, there just wasn’t even a second-place contender.

Why did I enjoy it so much? Well, certainly, Linnea Quigley dancing nude (save for a pair of thigh-high stockings) atop a crypt is always gonna rank pretty high on my list of reasons, but, on the whole, it’s because the film manages to start off feeling like a broad slapstick comedy, then slowly pulls back on the humor while raising the level of tension. By the time the film ends and you think back to what you’ve witnessed, you’ll realize that you aren’t exactly sure when the transition happened. That’s a testament to the abilities of director Dan O’Bannon, who’d already earned a name for himself in Hollywood through his screenplays for “Alien” and “Blue Thunder” but had never helmed a movie ’til this one. Given how successful he was at it, it’s surprising to discover that he’s only directed one other film since then (1992’s “The Resurrected”), but that fact in no way detracts from his successes here.

“Return of the Living Dead” begins in the Uneda Medical Supply warehouse, where Frank (James Karen) is training the company’s new employee, Freddy (Thom Matthews), of the ins and outs of the business before they head out to celebrate the long 4th of July weekend. When Freddy asks Frank the weirdest thing he’s ever seen in his time there, Frank replies by asking Freddy if he’s ever seen the movie “Night of the Living Dead.” Turns out that the events in George A. Romero’s classic zombie flick actually happened, but that the specifics had to be changed up and switched around, and that the basement of the warehouse actually houses some of the (un)dead bodies, which are housed in sealed barrels. (There’s a plot thread which runs throughout the film about how the U.S. Army is still on the lookout for their missing barrels, which pays off handsomely.) Inevitably, Frank feels obliged to show Freddy, and when Frank pounds his fist upon one of the barrels to assure Freddy that they’re sealed up tight, he manages to crack the seal and send 2-4-5 Trioxin gas spewing into the air. The pair pass out, and when they wake up, they realize that the gas has seeped into the warehouse and brought the various cadavers within the building back to life; even worse, it turns out that one of the bits that had been changed in “Night of the Living Dead” is that the zombies can’t actually be killed by a blow to the head! They can, however, be killed by being burned to ashes…but, even then, if the ashes mix with water and seep into the soil of, say, a graveyard, then it’s zombies a go go.

Would it surprise you to learn that that’s exactly what happens? Yeah, I didn’t think it would.

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We get a lot of scary DVDs here at the Bullz-Eye offices…and we’re not just talking about “I Love New York: Season One,” although lord knows that certainly qualifies. No, we’re talking about stuff that falls into the horror genre; sometimes it’s legitimately good stuff, sometimes it’s absolutely excruciating, but whatever the level of quality, it’s all brought front and center whenever October rolls around and spotlighted as part of the festivities surrounding Halloween. Since we’ve got a pretty decent backlog of stuff lying around here, we decided that we’d offer up a Scare of the Day for every day this month…and what better way to start off than with something from the A’s?

I can still remember when “Alligator” played at the Great Bridge Twin, in Chesapeake, Virginia. I didn’t actually see it there – I was only nine years old when it opened – but I definitely saw the trailer for it before some movie or other, and, damn, it scared the hell out of me…and I was still intimidated by the film a few years later, when we finally got cable and it was showing in regular rotation on some premium network or other. Unsurprisingly, watching the film now doesn’t exactly provide the same level of fright (to say the least), but what is surprising is that “Alligator” is actually a highly entertaining flick.

The original goal of “Alligator” seems to have been to parody “Jaws” while still creating a legitimately frightening film. The grade-B special effects means that it succeeds more at the former than the latter, but, for the record, I can still see how a 9-year-old boy, even if he wasn’t as naive as I was at that age, would get freaked out by it. (I mean, come on: a kid gets devoured by a giant alligator in his own pool, for God’s sake! It’s one thing to be scared of sharks in the ocean, but when even your own pool isn’t safe…?) Of course, the 37-year-old me is far more impressed by the fact that the film stars Robert Forster, who played bail bondsman Max Cherry in “Jackie Brown,” and was written by John Sayles, who went on to write and direct movies such as “Matewan,” “Eight Men Out,” “Passion Fish,” and “Lone Star.”

The premise of the film takes the old urban legend about baby alligators being flushed down people’s toilets and growing to gargantuan size in the sewers, then explains away the growth by claiming it’s the work of various scientific experiments with growth hormones; actually, the experiments are being done on dogs, but the dog corpses are being disposed of in the sewers, where the alligators are feasting on them. Forster plays the cop who first sees the giant alligator, but, naturally, no one believes him until the creature goes more public with its dining. Given that the movie is an unapologetic “Jaws” parody, “Alligator” provides a Quint equivalent in Colonel Brock, a big-time big game hunter who vows to catch the beast; Henry Silva plays the character with all the bluster and ego he can muster, even going so far as to hire urban youngsters to serve as aides to the Great White Hunter. Silva isn’t the only great character actor in the film; we’re also treated to enjoyable performances from Dean Jagger (Harvey Stovall in “Twelve O’Clock High”), Sidney Lassick (Charlie Cheswick in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), and Michael Gazzo (Frank Pentageli in “The Godfather Part II”).

Probably the best bits about this DVD reissue are the special features; we’re treated to a lengthy on-camera interview with John Sayles about his experience working on the film, as well as audio commentary from Forster and the film’s director, Lewis Teague, who went on to helm “Cujo” and “Cat’s Eye.” Given this information, it may not surprise you to learn that Stephen King once went on the record in describing “Alligator” as his all-time favorite monster movie…but, frankly, if you don’t dwell on the highly iffy FX or the unabashedly fake blood and instead just enjoy the fun, you’ll totally see where King’s coming from.