Out on DVD is Born Of Fire, a weird, decidedly surreal 1987 film with Peter Firth (Equus) starring as a British flautist who travels to Turkey to discover the secret of his father's death. A pretty astronomer (Suzan Crowley) follows after him lured by strange sun flare-ups that seem tied to volcanic eruptions in the same area. There they find themselves involved in unexplained mysticism and with a weird bald figure carrying a skull who shoots fire out of his eyes, bent on ensnaring them in his evil web. This oddball film directed by Jamil Dahlavi has the most incredible visuals -- rock pools and caves that make you feel the movie was shot on another planet. I have no clue what this film is about but it was fun watching. It felt like a trippy Nicolas Roeg or Alejandro Jodorowsky film at times. Really, really strange....  

Out on DVD is John Huston's final film, The Dead (Lionsgate). Based on a James Joyce story, this elegant 1987 masterwork is set on a snowy night in 1904 Dublin at a dinner party that stirs the embers of memories and regret. With a fine screenplay by Tony Huston, exquisite camerawork by Fred Murphy, the film is elegiac as it is incredibly moving. And the cast is peerless -- Dan O'Herlihy, Helena Carroll, Donal Donnelly and Anjelica Huston are all extraordinary. There is a moment when Anjelica Huston stops on the staircase while a man is singing upstairs and seems caught in a trance, which she later reveals to be the memory of a young boy who died for her, and it is just mesmerizing. 

Out on DVD are four great new collections courtesy of Turner Classic Movies and Warner Brothers.  The Comedy collection includes the riotous Marx Brothers film A Night At The Opera; the frantic black comedy featuring Cary Grant and his poisonous aunts, Arsenic And Old Lace; Father Of The Bride with Spencer Tracy and the lovely Elizabeth Taylor; and a personal guilty pleasure, The Long Long Trailer with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez on an ill-fated honeymoon with a 40-foot house trailer. Then there's the Hitchcock set, which includes Strangers On A Train, I Confess, The Wrong Man, Suspicion, and the Holiday-themed set with the sparkling comedy Christmas In Connecticut, A Christmas Carol and The Shop Around The Corner. Finally, there's Family, which includes Lassie Come Home, Flipper, National Velvet with a young Elizabeth Taylor, and the bizarre The Incredible Mr. Limpet, starring Don Knotts.

Universal is joining up with Turner Classic movies with a fabulous five-disc set of horror classics from the '30s and '40s: Universal Cult Horror Collection. There's House Of Horrors (1946), starring the amazing Rondo Hatton (whose real life disfiguring disease was used for shock effect in movies). The Mad Ghoul (1943) stars George Zucco who transforms a man into a grave-robbing ghoul. The Mad Monster (1942) also stars Zucco, this time turning farmhand Glenn Strange into a hairy monster. Murders In The Zoo (1933) features Lionel Atwill as a sadistic zookeeper and one man gets his lips sewed together in this grisly pre-Code jem. The Strange Case Of Dr. RX (1942) is a murder thriller with Lionel Atwill wearing coke bottle glasses. Click here for details. Halloween officially begins!

Opening Friday is The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. It's been a long ten year road from director Troy Duffy's first The Boondock Saints film to this energetic, kinetic blast of a sequel. Duffy was Harvey Weinstein's golden boy when his script was first given the green light, but the The Boondock Saints, about Irish Catholic brother vigilantes (Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Redus) being tracked by a wily, gay FBI agent (Willem Dafoe), was barely released in theaters and Duffy's crash and burn odyssey was chronicled in the scathing documentary Overnight (2003). But weirdly, the VHS and DVD of the first film became a giant cult sensation, rented and bought by fervent fans. So here's the sequel, which begins with the death of a priest in Boston that's made to look like the work of the brothers MacManus, who are now safely in Ireland with their father (Billy Connolly). This forces the boys to come back to Boston for revenge, and along the way they hook up with a colorful Hispanic fighter Romeo (Clifton Collins Jr. who's very funny). The real surprise is the new special agent hunting the boys, Eunice (Julie Benz). Benz plays the wimpy wife of Dexter on the Showtime series and is a revelation here as the gun-toting, sexy, hot mama badass. The film is outrageous, over-the-top, violent, stupid, profane and actually lots of fun. With a wild shoot-out finale and many special cameos, this is a real treat for fans.

Out on DVD is Messiah Of Evil (Code Red), a truly memorably bizarre 1973 horror film from the writers of American Graffiti, William Huyck and Gloria Katz. Marianna Hill plays a young woman who arrives in the California coastal town of Pointe Dune to look for her artist father only to find people transformed into cannibalistic ghouls. With gorgeous art direction (by Jack Fisk, longtime spouse of Sissy Spacek) and beautiful widescreen lensing, the film has a dreamy, creepy, stoned quality. There are several extremely chilling sequences -- the gorgeous Anitra Ford chased in a supermarket by bloodthirsty locals; and Joy Bang sitting in a movie theater slowly surrounded by living dead patrons. This is a confusing, strange film which looks great on DVD and is one of those weird little gems -- like Let's Scare Jessica To Death -- that really resonates with its fans. Look for future director Walter Hill (The Warriors) as a young man at the film's beginning who gets his throat slit.

 

Out on DVD now is Monsoon Wedding, a marvelous film from Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay) that vividly illustrates the clash of cultures as family members from all parts of the globe gather in Delhi to celebrate the arranged marriage of Adita (Vasundhara Das) and Hermant Rai (Parvin Dabas). While the girl’s father Latit Verma (Naseeruddin Shah) stresses over the escalating costs and dizzying arrangements, Adita wonders how she’ll tell her fiance about her ongoing affair with a married TV personality. There are revelations, recriminations and surprise romances, and the film bursts with color, music, much heart and many marigolds (the Indian wedding flower). Nair brings this family vibrantly to life on screen with such passion she achieves in two hours what many novelists fail to capture in 900 pages. The Criterion disc comes with several short films by the director also.

Out via a new collector's edition DVD is Audition. The prolific crackpot Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike has put his own inimitable stamp on many genres -- Ichi The Killer (violent gangster movies), Zebraman (graphic novels), Happiness Of the Katakuris (black comedy/musicals), The Great Yokai War (children's movies), Sukiyaki Western Django (spaghetti westerns), but this 1999 ghoulish shocker was what put him on the map and still chills the blood. The film starts out slowly about a middle-aged widower (Ryo Ishibashi) who is encouraged by his teenage son to find a new wife. With the help of a film producer friend they advertise for actresses for a nonexistent movie so he can check out the prospects. When he meets the shy beautiful Asami (Eihi Shiina) he is immediately smitten. But what’s with that twitching tied-up burlap sack in her apartment? The last 20 minutes are so horrifying, hair-raising and outrageous you won’t believe what you’re seeing. This demented gem has been given the special treatment in this wonderful two disc special edition -- with a beautiful anamorphic transfer, audio commentary by Miike and interviews with the female star Shiina, who went on to star in Tokyo Gore Police.

It's finally here on DVD: The William Castle Film Collection. Any kid that grew up in the 1960s thought producer/director William Castle was God. The P. T. Barnum-like showman was the king of the “gimmick” filmmakers. When they showed The House On Haunted Hill with Vincent Price a skeleton was rigged to fly over the audience at a key moment. The seats were rigged to buzz your ass when you saw The Tingler (about a centipede-like creature inside your body). For 13 Ghosts you were given a Ghost Viewer so that if you were too scared you could look through one lens and not see the spooks. There was a “thumbs up”, “thumbs down” punishment poll for the audience to decide the fate of the evil Mr. Sardonicus, and director Castle appeared on screen to tally the votes. At movie premieres Castle arrived in a hearse and jumped out of coffins to startle patrons. There was no one like him and his movies still thrill and chill. This collection includes eight of his classics, including The Tingler, Mr. Sardonicus, Strait-Jacket (where the gimmick was an ax-wielding Joan Crawford), Homicidal (a fabulous homage to Psycho), The Old Dark House (a black comedy with Tom Poston, which played American theaters in black and white but is shown here finally how it was shot -- in color), 13 Ghosts, Zotz! (a bizarre comedy about a magic coin) and the rare 13 Frightened Girls, with a bevy of international young starlets. The disc includes a host of other great extras -- episodes of the Castle-produced TV series Ghost Story starring Barbara Parkins, and also a fabulous featurette: “How To Plan A Movie Murder” with director Castle, Joan Crawford and Psycho author Robert Bloch plotting the murders in Strait-Jacket. This may be the cult DVD event of the year!

“Who can turn the world on with a smile?” It’s time to throw your hat in the air -- the fifth season of Mary Tyler Moore is out on DVD! For fans of the show, it’s been a long road between season four and this one... and now it looks like the final brilliant seasons are finally going to be released. Mary Tyler Moore stars as Mary Richards who moves into a producer position of WJM TV news. With crusty boss Lou Grant (Ed Asner), bombastic host Ted (Ted Knight) and acerbic head writer Murray (Gavin MacLeod), not to mention salacious cooking show host Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White), Mary’s preposterous friend Phyllis (Cloris Leachman) and Ted’s daffy girlfriend Georgette (Georgia Engel) -- it’s a dream cast, and the writing in this season is peerless. The first episode with Mary spending the night in jail for refusing to reveal a news source is a particular riot -- with her deadpan funny cellmate Sherry the prostitute (played by the late great Barbara Colby). It just doesn’t get better than this!

Gnaw, a gruesome British shocker about a bunch of young friends who spend a fun loving weekend at a remote old house in in English countryside, where (natch) they can’t get a phone signal and one by one they start to mysteriously vanish, is now out on DVD. And is someone watching them through a hole in the wall? And what’s in the meat pies the crusty old housekeeper keeps serving them? Well, you know by the title where this film is heading -- but director Gregory Mandry keeps it chainsawing along (with fairly nice fairy tale and nursery rhyme allusions) right up to it’s grisly finale. The manor house where they filmed the movie is pretty spectacular -- if you can see through the arterial spray.

Out on DVD is: Karloff & Lugosi Horror Classics Thank God Warner Brothers is at least acknowledging Halloween with this four-movie salute to two of cinema’s horror giants- Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.
The Walking Dead (1936) is a Warner’s gangster film mixed with supernatural elements. Boris is railroaded for the murder of a judge by a bunch of crooks and goes to his death in the electric chair but is revived by scientist Edmund Gwenn (who would later play Santa Claus in A Miracle On 34th Street). The revived Karloff gets revenge on those who wronged him and somehow kills each without lifting a finger. This was directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca).

Frankenstein 1970 (1958) is about a TV crew filming at the castle of Frankenstein. Boris plays a face-scarred survivor of Nazi torture who is the blood relative of the famous Doctor Frankenstein and uses atomic power in his basement lab to bring a new monster to life. Boris is at his most hammy and there’s fun gruesome bits with a human heart and a spilled jar of eyeballs. Not to mention a beautiful widescreen transfer.

Zombies On Broadway (1945) stars the questionably funny comedy team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney (a D list Abbott & Costello) who head to the islands to find a real zombie for the opening of a gangster’s (Sheldon Leonard) New York nightclub called the Zombie Hut. They run into a mad scientist (Bela Lugosi) and he tries to turn the both of them into undead. The bug-eyed giant native from I Walked With A Zombie also stars in this stupid but fun flick.

In: You’ll Find Out (1940) the annoying Kay Keyser and his band take a bus to a remote gloomy mansion to play for the 21st birthday of an heiress. Meanwhile someone is trying to bump her off. Boris Karloff plays a creepy judge, Peter Lorre- a sinister professor and Bela Lugosi as a turban-wearing psychic all show up to pay their respects.

Out on DVD now: How To Be A Man, How To Be A Woman (http://www.kino.com/) Two fabulous volumes of inadvertently hilarious social guidance films collected by Skip Elsheimer (who says he has over 22,000 in his collection).How To Be A Man includes such shorts as Fears Of Children, Am I Trustworthy? The Show-Off, and my favorite: The Other Person’s Feelings which documents young Jack tormenting fellow student Judy by calling her “stinky”. There are cautionary tales about teen pregnancy, and outbreaks of syphilis, but for the most part these archaic lessons for kids and teens seem scarily funny. How To Be A Woman covers The Wonders Of Reproduction, Improving Your Personality, Pattern For Smartness, You’re the Judge (with a young Bonnie Franklin) a short about self defense Attack and my favorite: Let’s Make A Sandwich which is sublimely stupid.

Out this week is the new, improved DVD release of Happy Birthday to Me (Anchor Bay). This beloved 1980s slasher movie starring Little House On The Prairie’s Melissa Sue Gilbert and directed by The Guns of Navarone’s J. Lee Thompson boasted in the ads that it included some of the most outrageous “kills”. And in actuality, some of them are pretty wild -- death by shish kabob in particular. It all takes place an the snooty Crawford Academy where someone is murdering the popular clique of kids. Everything culminates in a memorably macabre 18th birthday party. I used to have a bone to pick about this movie on DVD because the fabulously creepy score by Bo Harwood and Lance Rubin was missing and replaced with a crappy '80s theme over the credits and filler music. Thanks to Anchor Bay the original score is back and it’s really creepy and great.

Out on DVD is Esther Williams: Volume 2, a six film tribute to MGM’s mermaid Esther Williams, the lovely swimming star who graced scores of Technicolor romantic musicals. What’s wild about these movies is the lengths these filmmakers would go to in order to incorporate water into the films' plots. When was the last time you went to a nightclub to see people swim? Well in This Time For Keeps (1947) Esther plays an aquatic nightclub star who falls for a singing ex-GI (played by the dull but tuneful singer Johnnie Johnston). But there’s Xavier Cugat, an orchestra, a Chihuahua on hand not to mention Jimmy Durante mugging it up.

In Pagan Love Song (1950) Esther is slathered with tan makeup to play a half-Tahitian beauty who comes under the spell of Howard Keel , an ex-schoolteacher who moves to Tahiti and falls in love with the childlike island people and especially the fetching Williams. There’s even a fantasy sequence with Esther swimming in clouds! This disc also includes fascinating whole musical scene outtakes.

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Finally arriving here in the New York area is the cult event of the year: Paranormal Activity. Want to see a really scary movie? Well this little creepy indie chiller by Oren Peli, that freaked out audiences at Slamdance in 2007, is all that and more. When I heard the movie and the director were snapped up by a major studio for a possible remake I feared the worst. But this release is the original -- about the San Diego couple -- Kate and Micah, and Micah’s new video camera recording the paranormal hauntings that have plagued his girlfriend ever since she was a girl. This “entity”, or whatever it is, has followed Kate from dwelling to dwelling. So Micah sets up the camera on a tripod each night in their bedroom to catch any weird occurrences. Unfortunately this only seems to piss off whatever has been hovering over Kate and the nightly disturbances get more strange and exceedingly violent. Like The Blair Witch Project, the simplicity of the conceit and the execution is the trick. Here the couple is immensely likable and what you see on screen while they’re sleeping raises the hairs on your neck. I can’t rave enough about this little terror gem -- it’s smart, perfectly constructed, and genuinely frightening.

Out now are the newest and best batch of DVDs from Ghost House Underground: The Children, Offspring, >The Thaw and Seventh Moon. Sam Raimi’s (Spiderman, Evil Dead) Ghost House Underground DVD series hits an all time high with 4 terrific chillers:

The Children is a remarkable British shocker about families converging for a big Christmas celebration. But some of the children are suffering flu-like symptoms that suddenly become deadly. Expertly directed by Tom Shankland, it’s a pity this never got a decent release in the States because it’s really above average and sensational.

Offspring is based on splatterpunk author Jack Ketchum’s grisly sequel to Offseason about a mutant family of inbred cannibals hiding out in coastal caves of Maine and coming out at night to attack and slaughter locals. The film stars Art Hindle (The Brood) as a bitter sheriff who assumed (wrongly) that he’d killed the entire family years ago, and Holter Graham (John Waters’ Hairspray) as a cop who meets a particularly nasty demise. Outrageously over the top and gory -- but fierce fun.

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The Gate, out on DVD this week, features future hottie Stephen Dorff , who was a little kid when he starred in this imaginative 1986 horror flick directed by Tibor Takacs and written by Michael Nankin. He, along with two friends, accidentally unearth a doorway to hell when a dead tree is uprooted in the backyard. Out pop creepy little demons (beautifully created by special effects designer Randall William Cook). Kelly Rowan (Seth Cohen's mom from TV’s OC) is one of the kids who battles zombies and creatures throughout the house. A kid-friendly, really cool, fright flick, this was a big hit when it opened in theaters and has delighted and freaked out children on VHS and bad DVD transfers ever since. But here it looks spectacular in this “Monstrous Special Edition” and gets the full respect it deserves.

It's finally out on DVD this week: Trick ‘R Treat. This may be the best Halloween horror movie ever and it has been languishing criminally in the Warner Brothers vaults for years. Director Michael Dougherty’s fiendishly fun fright film takes place in an Ohio town on Halloween night, and alternates between four stories weaving in and out while kids are trick or treating, and ghoulies and ghosts roam the night. Dylan Baker plays a creepy school principal who celebrates the holiday in an unorthodox, rather horrific fashion. Brian Cox plays a grumpy old man that lives with his dog and shotgun refusing to offer candy to the children -- which yeilds frightening results. A young girl is taken to a quarry where years ago a bus of disturbed children plummeted to its watery grave. And Anna Paquin plays a girl partying with her sisters in a Red Riding Hood outfit who encounters her own big bad wolf. The genius of the film is the wonderful way these ghoulish tales slide back and forth by each other, all the while a creepy little figure with a burlap sack mask wanders by dragging a dripping bag. It's gorgeous to look at, but I don’t want to ruin the movie for you by telling any more. Just go out and buy it immediately. No tricks -- all treats are in store for you!