Blood Money, Vol. 31
By on Aug 20, 2012
Greetings and amputations, dear readers! No, Blood Money isn’t being hosted by the Crypt Keeper, but we’re having a little bit of fun because there’s such a remarkable volume of gratuitous gore to sort through this week.
Not the least of which is Steve Niles’ Remains, a Chiller original which, as its title suggests, comes from the mind of the man behind 30 Days of Night. If the prospect of a post-apocalyptic Reno, Nevada doesn’t scare the pants off of you (especially since it’s tough to tell how it’s different from a pre-apocalyptic Reno), Niles creates a gloriously inventive scenario where a group of survivors take refuge in an abandoned casino and attempt to ward off advancing hordes of the undead, who are evolving even as they’re being put to rest. Available on DVD and Blu-ray, Remains is a fun little bit of nastiness that we hope you’ll soon add to your collection of creepy classics.
Meanwhile, if that doesn’t float your boat, there’s always the sinking feeling you get from Steven Spielberg’s bona fide classic, Jaws. Newly restored to a luster that it quite frankly never had – boasting color corrections and repairs to the original elements that have gone unattended for more than 35 years – the movie’s transfer and audio presentation alone makes it worth buying. But two documentaries, including a new-to-home video feature-length chronicle The Shark is Still Working, and the simple fact that this movie is still scary as balls, makes this an essential grab for any horror fan or filmgoer.
Going backwards in our collective memories, the folks at Pop Flix released the Brains That Wouldn’t Die Collection, a compilation of five vintage films which will make your head spin: The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, The Head, The Indestructible Man, The Amazing Transparent Man, and The Manster, whose title alone makes it worth watching. With more than 500 minutes of entertainment for less than $7 on Amazon.com, this may be the week’s best value. That said, the Dexter: Six Season Pack might cost a few bucks more ($180), but it also includes 18 discs of entertainment that, well, you probably already know you’ll like.
Coffin, on the other hand, unearths the career of the once and future Hercules, Kevin Sorbo, in a tale of two people trapped inside a room where the air will run out after 75 minutes. Ironically, the movie runs 95 minutes, so it remains to be seen how much time is spent outside that room, but with Bruce Davison as Sorbo’s co-star, this could be a terrific little thriller that you probably haven’t heard of before.
Pacific Entertainment continues the bang-for-your-buck trend with not one but two different collections, Extreme Slashers and Extreme Slayers. In Slashers, there are such films as Methodic, Jingles the Clown, Butterfly, The Directors Cut, Carnies, A Four Course Meal, Eden Iowa and Monstrosity; in Slayers, there’s Long Pigs, Mental Scars, Silo Killer I & II, Raymond Did It, The Man and the Maze, Underground Lizard People, Earth Day and Hide. I admit that I literally have never heard of any of these films, so they could all be terrible, or they could be great. But with a run time of more than 750 minutes and price tag of $15 apiece, either (or both) are a great deal.
There’s also Kill List, which we’ve recommended several times before, but now that it’s available on home video, horror aficionados have a real opportunity to check it out and get inside its insane and brilliant story. Ben Wheatley is a force to be reckoned with artistically and viscerally as the writer-director of this incredibly disturbing film about a downward spiral of violence that occurs after two hit men return to their jobs after a disaster-imposed hiatus. But if just one movie isn’t enough for you, there’s always Midnight Horror Collection Volume 11, which includes Haunting of Winchester house, Dollman, In The Dead Of Winter, Ghoulies IV, Children Of The Corn V: Fields Of Terror, Gingerdeadman 2, Autumn and Mothers Day Massacre, all for the shockingly low price of $8. Precisely how you’ll ever get through Children of the Corn V without understanding the mythology of the series up to that point is beyond us, but for that price, you can make something up to make it make sense.
Although Troma’s Father’s Day turns up on Blu-ray this week, we’ve never been big fans of their deliberately z-grade style, so may the buyer beware on that particular title. But check out the Serbian black comedy The Life & Death of a Porno Gang, which follows a troupe of filmmakers who discover that they make more money killing people on camera than making sexytime with them, starting a series of murders that are as hilarious as they are disturbing. The good folks at Synapse Films had the good sense/ bad taste to pick this one up, so you know it’s got a real transgressive edge to it. But With that comedic slant this isn’t just some gross-out or disturbing gauntlet, it’s a sick, twisted and absolutely indelible film that must be seen to be believed.
