Watership Down by James-Masaki Ryan (11th December 2024)
"Watership Down" (1978) Taking place in rural England in a wild rabbit warren, one of the rabbits, Fiver (voiced by Richard Briers) has a premonition that their entire community would perish. His older brother Hazel (voiced by John Hurt) tries to inform the chief (played by Ralph Richardson) of the community, only to be struck down as traitors. Hazel and Fiver decide to escape the warren for a safer place, and they are joined by fellow rabbits Bigwig (voiced by Michael Graham Cox), Blackberry (voiced by Simon Cadell), Pipkin (voiced by Roy Kinnear), Dandelion (voiced by Richard O'Callaghan, Silver (voiced by Terence Rigby), and Violet. On their journey to find a new safe haven, they encounter some allies such as Kehaar (voiced by ... |
Mill of the Stone Women: Standard Edition by Eric Cotenas (10th December 2024)
Assigned to prepare a paper on the centennial of the "Mill of the Stone Women", a macabre carousel of wax statues of statues in a windmill in the village of Veeze designed by the grandfather of local art school professor Gregorius Wahl (Secret of the Red Orchid's Herbert Boehme), young journalist Hans Van Arnim (Sweet Violence's Pierre Brice) catches the eye of (and catches sight of) Wahl's beautiful daughter Elfie (The White Warrior's Scilla Gabel). In spite of warnings from Wahl and mysterious live-in physician Dr. Bohlem (Dr. M's Wolfgang Preiss) that excitement could kill Elfie – along with the withering watchful eye of housekeeper Selma (... |
Schizo by Eric Cotenas (9th December 2024)
No one believes newly married ice skater Samantha (Four of the Apocalypse's Lynne Frederick) when she fears that she is being stalked and terrorized by William Haskin (The Wild Geese's Jack Watson) who was institutionalized for the murder of her mother twenty years previous. Her husband Alan (The Great Escape's John Leyton) and her prank-playing best friend Beth (House of Mortal Sin's Stephanie Beacham) think she is just stressed, Beth's psychologist boyfriend Leonard (Repulsion's John Fraser) is more interested in probing her repressed traumatic memories than indulging her delusions of persecution, but people are beginning... |
The Comeback by Eric Cotenas (9th December 2024)
Pop singer Nick Cooper (singer Jack Jones) has recently divorced his wife Gail (The Omen's Holly Palance) who convinced him to give up singing, and is planning to recording a comeback album in England. His agent Webster Jones (Charlie's Angels's David Doyle) arranges for him to stay in a country house staffed by housekeeper Mr. and Mrs. B (Last of the Summer Wine's Bill Owen and who else but Sheila Keith); which is just as well since Nick's riverside loft is a mess as an old hag with a sickle hacked Gail to pieces on the staircase and left her corpse to decompose. Nick finds further distraction in Webster’s secretary Linda (... |
Crimson Peak: Standard Edition by Eric Cotenas (9th December 2024)
Ever since she was a child, Edith Cushing (Stoker's Mia Wasikowska) has known that ghosts do indeed exist when her mother appeared her days after her death from black cholera with a cryptic warning. An intelligent young woman in 1890s Buffalo, New York, Edith is on her way to spinsterhood having forsaken suitors and mixing with high society in favor of looking after her father Carter (Supernatural's Jim Beaver) and pursuing her own goal of becoming an authoress of ghost stories. Upon hearing of the arrival of an English baronet who made the acquaintance of Eunice (Star Trek: Discovery's Emily Coutts), sister of her childhood friend ophthalmologist Dr. Alan McMichael (Sons of Anarchy's ... |
The Cat and the Canary: Standard Edition by Eric Cotenas (9th December 2024)
Wealthy and eccentric Cyrus Canby West spends his remaining days feeling like a canary surrounded by cats. If he is mad, he believes he has been driven to it by greedy relatives, and he decides to make them wait a while after his death until they can learn of their inheritance; indeed, he makes them wait twenty years after his death until all that remain of his family line are imperious Aunt Susan Sillsby (Orphans of the Storm's Flora Finch), ditzy niece Cecily Young (Stage Struck's Gertrude Astor), grave Harry Blythe (Doctor X's Arthur Edmund Carewe), wily Charlie Wilder (Curse of the Undead's Forrest Stanley), craven Paul Jones (... |
The Primevals by Eric Cotenas (9th December 2024)
Having been kicked out the university doctorate program for submitting a "speculative" thesis about the existence and nature of the yeti as factual, anthropology dropout Matt Connor (Vampirella's Richard Joseph Paul) gets a special invite back to campus by Dr. Claire Collier (Beyond the Door's Juliet Mills) who reveals at a conference the killing of a "Nepalese anthropoid" of immense stature that had killed a number of sherpas in the mountains, unveiling its frozen carcass to the press and colleagues. Claire introduces the miffed Matt to biologist Dr. Lloyd Trent (The Thing from Another World's Robert Cornthwaite) who discovered upon dissection of the creature's brain that its violent behavior might have been caused by a surgical operation as barbaric as it is advanced beyond ... |
Hillbillys in a Haunted House by Eric Cotenas (9th December 2024)
On the road to Nashville for Jamboree, country western singers Woody Wetherby (Ferln Husky) and Boots Malone (Touch of Evil's Joi Lansing) along with their business manager Jeepers (Don Bowman) get caught up in a shootout between local law enforcement and foreign spies. With night falling quickly and a storm coming, the trio are unable to find accommodations in the ghost town that is Sleepy Junction and stumble upon the crumbling antebellum Beauregard Mansion. Locals inform them that the house is supposed to be haunted, and that people who have investigated the strange sounds and lights emanating from the property have never returned. Woody and Boots are not so willing as Jeepers to believe in ghosts and they settle in for the night, and things do indeed go bump. Of course, the haunting is a front for the secret basement operations of spies Miss Wong (Dimension 5's... |
Hollywood 90028 by Eric Cotenas (9th December 2024)
Freelance cameraman Mark (The Doll Squad's Christopher Augustine) is in love with film, believing that only celluloid is capable of showing people as they really are; as such, he aspires to work in documentaries more so than cinema and is honing his skills shooting 16mm pornographic loops for voyeuristic director Jobal (Dick Glass). One one of the rougher S&M-oriented shoots, he meets Michelle (Jeannette Sears then billed as "Jeannette Dilger") and feels like she is a kindred spirit, having compromised her ideals by being a kept woman for an inattentive wealthy musician and feeling that her work in pornography out of economic necessity has tainted any other opportunities she might have had. It is perhaps a good thing that he identifies so closely with her since the other women he meets tend to wind up with their larynxes crushed by his hands as he relives a childhood trauma forever replaying in his brain like a movie. With a body count sparse enough ... |
Off Balance by Eric Cotenas (7th December 2024)
Robert Dominici (Accident's Michael York) seems to have it all. He's young, handsome, engaged to beautiful socialite Susanna (Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice's Mapi Galán), and on the verge of world fame as a concert pianist; however, he has been diagnosed with the late onset of progeria, a rapid aging disease that usually shortens the life expectancy of children. While Robert's aging on the outside seems slow by the standards of the disease, the deterioration of his brain is accelerating and he is finding it harder to control his violent urges; having already brutally murdered his doctor (Tenebrae's Carola Stagnaro) to keep his illness secret. When Susanna is murdered after a fight with Robert that sent her into the arms of his best friend Davide (... |
The Addiction by Eric Cotenas (7th December 2024)
Golden Berlin Bear: (nominee) - Berlin International Film Festival, 1995 Independent Spirit Award (Best Feature): Denis Hann and Fernando Sulichin (nominee) and Best Female Lead: Lily Taylor (nominee) - Film Independent Spirit Awards, 1996 Critics Award: Abel Ferrara (winner) and Best Film: Abel Ferrara (nominee) - Mystfest, 1995 Best Film: Abel Ferrara (winner), Best Actress: Lily Taylor (winner), and Special Mention: Christopher Walken (winner) - Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema, 1997 Sant Jordi (Best Foreign Actress): Lily Taylor (winner) - Sant Jordi Awards, 1998 On her way home from class one night, philosophy student Kathleen Conklin (I Shot Andy Warhol's Lily Taylor) is assaulted by a woman in an evening dress (... |
Beezel by Eric Cotenas (7th December 2024)
An old Massachusetts homestead has long had a reputation in the neighborhood for being haunted by a killer witch; but there was nothing truly concrete until 1966 when the Weems family moved in and wife Jane (Elise Manning) was found in the basement bitten to death and young son Avery (Leo Wildhagen) was discovered in the ground floor bathroom above the basement laundry hatch with his face pulled off. Twenty-one years later, while suspicion officially has stuck with husband and father Harold Weems (Bob Gallagher) despite no evidence while his wife (Kimberly Salditt Poulin) finds joy in scaring off the children who dare each other to creep onto the property and see the witch. Harold is ready to "spill his guts" and hires documentary videographer Apollo (The Hangman's LeJon Woods) to film his account of what really happened. He has cellulo... |
The Convent by Eric Cotenas (7th December 2024)
Audience Award: Mike Mendez (winner) - Fantafestival, 2000 International Fantasy Film Award (Best Film): Mike Mendez (nominee) - Fantasporto, 2000 Narcisse Award (Best Feature Film): Mike Mendez () - Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival, 2000 Chainsaw Award (Best Limited-Release/Direct-to-Video Film): The Convent (nominee), Best Supporting Actress: Adrienne Barbeau (winner), and Best Screenplay: Chaton Anderson (nominee) - Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, 2000 The St. Francis Boarding School for girls has been an attractive nuisance for forty years since sixteen-year-old Christine (The Dead Hate the Living!'s Oakley Stevenson) gunned down the priest and nuns and set the chapel ablaze after they supposedly forcibly aborted her child rumored to have been fathered by the priest. While the exterior of the old mission building and its classrooms have been vandalized, every few years during homecoming, students from the local college attempt... |
Village of Doom by Eric Cotenas (7th December 2024)
Rural Japan, 1938: Residents of the mountain village of Kamo near Tsuyama in the Okinawa prefecture are bidding farewell another group of young men conscripted for the war effort, possibly never to return (especially should they lose). Twenty-one-year-old Tsugio (Female Teacher's Masato Furuoya) is eagerly awaiting his opportunity to serve his country. Living alone with his grandmother (The Inugami Family's Izumi Hara) and self-studying to become a schoolteacher, Tsugio lives a lonely life estranged from the rest of the village due to his family's social position and the resentment it engenders from people who nevertheless borrow money from his grandmother. When he develops a cough, his grandmother insists he sees the doctor who prescribes him three months rest for inflamed lungs. His wastrel friend Tetsuo (Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters' ... |
Midsomer Murders: Series 23 by Eric Cotenas (7th December 2024)
Detective Inspector John Barnaby (Different for Girls' Neil Dudgeon) and his sergeant Jamie Winter (Suffragette's Nick Hendrix) are back for another season of Midsomer Murders with four new cases along with Barnaby's wife Sarah (Ultraviolet's Fiona Dolman), their young daughter, Paddy the dog, and spunky senior citizen coroner Fleur (Angels & Insects's Annette Badland). In "The Blacktrees Prophecy" (89:20), the murder of an extreme survivalist (Aran Bell) in his own high-tech shelter cast suspicion on his long-suffering wife (... |
Bent by Eric Cotenas (6th December 2024)
Award of the Youth (Foreign Film): Sean Mathias (won) - Cannes Film Festival, 1997 Max (Close My Eyes' Clive Owen) is the rebellious son of a wealthy family, living for the nightlife of 1930s Berlin. Although he has a live-in lover in dance student Rudy (Brian Webber), he seeks out others for one night stands at the nightclub of female impersonator chanteuse Greta (Performance's Mick Jagger). One night, Max is drawn to handsome Brownshirt Wolf (Nightwatch's Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) with whom he has an extended affair. Wolf's continued presence drives Rudy to jealousy, but the fractious triangle is exploded on "The Night of the Long Knives" when H... |
L'Innocente by Eric Cotenas (6th December 2024)
David (Best Music): Franco Mannino (winner) - David di Donatello Awards, 1976 Aristocratic Tullio (Swept Away's Giancarlo Giannini) and Giuliana (Simona's Laura Antonelli) have long lived a marriage of convenience, with Tullio repeatedly testing their relationship as "friends" with his affairs; none have been as serious, however, as his infatuation or obsession with widowed Countess Teresa Raffo (The Summer of '42's Jennifer O'Neill). When Teresa bristles at Tullio's reluctance to be too affectionate with her in the presence of his wife, she baits him by entertaining the interest of older Count Egano (Last Tango in Paris |
Heavenly Bodies by Eric Cotenas (6th December 2024)
A clerical assistant by day, Sam (My Bloody Valentine's Cynthia Dale) dreams of opening up her own dance studio. She and her friends KC (Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed's Patricia Idlette) and Patty (Prom Night's Pam Henry) go in on an old warehouse with inexplicably good flooring and canvas the city with fliers and "Heavenly Bodies" becomes an overnight success with working class clients intimidated by bigger health clubs and even a commission training a local football team where she meets love interest Steve (Visiting Hours' Richard Rebiere) who charms her with both practical jokes and home-cooked meals, as well as getting on with her s... |
Seven Samurai by James-Masaki Ryan (6th December 2024)
"Seven Samurai" 「七人の侍」 (1954) Exactly ten years ago this November, I was recruited here to lend my knowledge and services to the Rewind DVDCompare database. It was a fairly tumultuous time in my life, as a divorce was being finalized and I had also received word that my workplace of over a decade was planning to close its doors in about a year’s time. The site was a nice way to use my film and home media knowledge for a good cause, and it helped with some sort of stability for my life when I needed positivity the most. When then-site owner Samuel Scott (who passed away in 2020 at the young age of 36) was asking if any staff members knew people who were looking for writing disc reviews for the site, I asked if we the staff could do some ourselves. I didn't have any credentials to my name as a write, and so in order to establish myself, I had to write reviews from my personal collection of discs, deciding to concentrate on films and discs that were not commonly reviewed titles. Rediscovered gems from the Korean Film Archive, music related titles of some favorite artists, and some indie label titles that deserved a larger notice were a number of early reviews... |
Tomie by Eric Cotenas (6th December 2024)
Photography student Tsukiko (Love Exposure's Mami Nakamura) has moved away from home, the stress of her amnesia after a car accident three years before being a source of tension between her and her mother who seems reluctant to discuss it. She lives with her boyfriend Yuuichi (Moonlight Whispers' Kôta Kusano) who is an assistant chef at a local restaurant with his fellow failed bandmates and is also sleeping with her classmate Kaori (April Story's Rumi). Tsukiko has been seeing hypnotherapist Dr. Hosono (Cure's Yoriko Dôguchi) due to her problems sleeping and recurring nightmares in which she can only remember the image of herself covered in blood. When reclusive student Yamamoto ( |
Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon by Eric Cotenas (6th December 2024)
Housewife Ritsuko (Vengeance is Mine's Kazuko Shirakawa) is left perpetually unsatisfied by her overworked husband Ryôhei (Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards' Tatsuya Hamaguchi) in the bedroom and everywhere else since for him it is "early to bed and early to rise." Her neighbor Yoko (Erotic Liaisons' Makiko Tsunoda), whose husband is constantly traveling abroad, does not have to intuit the signs of Ritsuko's unhappiness since she has bugged the couple's apartment. Yoko scandalizes Ritsuko by gifting her a remote-controlled vibrator but she notices that the unhappy woman is more attracted to her diamond ring. Ryôhei runs into their old college friend Ichirô (Sumikata Sekido), who is fortunate enough to work for his father and ma... |
Knife Under the Throat by Eric Cotenas (6th December 2024)
Erotic magazine model Catherine (Bizarre's Florence Guérin) is the girl who cried wolf, repeatedly bursting into the police station in torn clothes claiming to have been raped only to be greeted with laughter and derision by officers following the example of Commissioner Durieu (Sins of the Flesh's Francis Lemonnier). Not even her roommate Florence (Natasha Delange), her boss Valerie (Calvaire's Brigitte Lahaie), or her photographer J.B. (The Punishment's Jean-Pierre Maurin) believe her stories, dismissing her as a "loony" or a pathological liar. Her latest shoot at a cemetery that has her straddling ... |
Madame Claude by Eric Cotenas (6th December 2024)
To most people, Claude Berger (Belle de jour's Françoise Fabian) is an attractive if rather cold woman. Only her girls and her clients know her as Madame Claude, the proprietor of an elite escort agency that supplies companionship to the wealthy and powerful. Although she is aware that the French government has tapped her phones and are surveilling her moves trying to get her on tax fraud – with Inspector Lefevre (Three Men to Kill's François Perrot) well aware that she has too many connections for them to get her on pimping – she is unaware that the CIA is investigating her on suspicion of being involved in a bribery scandal involving a deal between the Japanese and Lockheed after one of her girls Anne-Marie (The Story of O's Vibeke Knudsen-Bergeron) was photographed in the company of a Japanese bigwig. A bigger bother for Claude is... |
Panic in Year Zero! by Eric Cotenas (6th December 2024)
One weekend, family man Harry (The Uninvited's Ray Milland) drags his wife Anne (Singin' in the Rain's Jean Hagen), son Rick (Horror House's Frankie Avalon), and daughter Karen (Dementia 13's Mary Mitchel) out of bed and into a trailer in anticipation of an idyllic weekend fishing trip. While they are on the road, blinding flashes of light nearly cause them to drive off the road. When they determine that it is neither lightning nor atomic testing, and even the civil defense-dedicated radio stations are off the air, the family first think of heading back home to their family and friends. Upon encountering the reckless mass exodus from Los Angeles and hea... |
Woods Are Wet by Eric Cotenas (16th November 2024)
Accused of murdering her mistress, young servant Sachiko (In the Realm of Passion's Hiroko Isayama) flees on foot through into the mountains where she is picked up by the Rolls Royce of Yoko (Man & Woman Sexology: Private Lessons' Rie Nakagawa), a beautiful and kindly-seeming woman of wealth who intuits that Sachiko has had a hard life and reveals that her own misery doing the bidding of a dreadful husband. Taking Sachiko back with her to her mountaintop inn, Yoko offers Sachiko not a job but half of her estate for the consolation of her company. As soon as Yoko's husband Rynosuke (The Demon's Hatsuo Yamaya) returns, however, the couple's real intentions are revealed. They know well who Sachiko is and are aroused by her innocence and morality. Rynosuke reveals that their inn is a front for divesting gu... |
Night of the Blood Beast/Attack of the Giant Leeches by Eric Cotenas (15th November 2024)
"Executive producer Roger Corman unleashes hideous aqua beasts and horrors from outer space in two of his most memorable thrillers. A mutant stalks the Earth when the body of a dead astronaut is used as an alien incubator in Night of the Blood Beast (1959). Equally revolting is Attack of the Giant Leeches (1958), which stars B-movie siren Yvette Vickers (Attack of the 50-Foot Woman) in a watery scare fest about massive, bloodsucking monsters. The two features were directed by Bernard Kowalski, who went on to be Emmy-nominated for his television work, and they are truly representative of Corman's world: cheap, tasteless, and extraordinarily fun!" Night of the Blood Beast: John Corcoran (Attack of the Giant Leeches' Michael Emmet) is the first man to be launched into space and orbit the Earth; however, things go wrong as he reenters the Earth's atmosphere with the rocket plummeting towards the ground with the instruments no longer responding. The rocket crashes within five miles of the Golden... |
Night of the Blood Beast/Attack of the Giant Leeches by Eric Cotenas (15th November 2024)
"Executive producer Roger Corman unleashes hideous aqua beasts and horrors from outer space in two of his most memorable thrillers. A mutant stalks the Earth when the body of a dead astronaut is used as an alien incubator in Night of the Blood Beast (1959). Equally revolting is Attack of the Giant Leeches (1958), which stars B-movie siren Yvette Vickers (Attack of the 50-Foot Woman) in a watery scare fest about massive, bloodsucking monsters. The two features were directed by Bernard Kowalski, who went on to be Emmy-nominated for his television work, and they are truly representative of Corman's world: cheap, tasteless, and extraordinarily fun!" Night of the Blood Beast: John Corcoran (Attack of the Giant Leeches' Michael Emmet) is the first man to be launched into space and orbit the Earth; however, things go wrong as he reenters the Earth's atmosphere with the rocket plummeting towards the ground with the instruments no longer responding. The rocket crashes within five miles of the Golden... |
Hellraiser: Quartet of Torment - Limited Edition by Eric Cotenas (12th November 2024)
"In the 1980s, Clive Barker changed the face of horror fiction, throwing out the rules to expose new vistas of terror and beauty, expanding the horizons for every genre writer who followed him. With Hellraiser, his first feature film, he did the same for cinema." Saturn Award (Best Horror Film): Hellraiser (nominee), Best Music : Christopher Young (nominee), and Best Make-Up: Bob Keen (nominee)- Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, 1988 Fear Section AwardClive Barker (winner) - Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, 1988 Best Film: Clive Barker (nominee) - Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival, 1987 International Fantasy Film Award (Best Film): Clive Barker (winner) and Critics Award: Clive Barker (winner) - Fantasporto, 1988 Hellraiser: Moving back to England and into the house of his late mother, American-educated Larry Cotton (Dirty Harry' ... |