V - The Final Battle
by Richard T. Heffron
from Warner Home Video
Though followers of current science fiction television series may dismiss V: The Final Battle as a quaint relic from the pre-computer animation days, the six-hour miniseries about an alien invasion of Earth was a ratings juggernaut for NBC in 1984 and should still provide some entertainment for hard-bitten devotees and fans of '50s-style sci-fi. The Final Battle picks up four months after the shock conclusion of the 1983 prequel miniseries, with a small group of humans known as the Resistance struggling to convince their fellow humans that a fleet of seemingly friendly visitors from space are in fact bent on world domination.
Executive producer Kenneth Johnson (who oversaw most aspects of the first series) only supervised the sequel's script (which underwent several changes before its airing), and the writing occasionally suffers due to the lack of his attention. But the series still delivers its share of action and intrigue, as well as one showstopping gruesome moment involving the birth of interspecies twins. Acting is again a stumbling block, with leads Marc Singer and Faye Grant as bland as any performers from the American International Pictures stable; character actor Michael Ironside makes the strongest impression as a tough Resistance member, and a pre-Freddy Krueger Robert Englund is amusing as a kind-hearted alien. The miniseries was followed by an inevitable weekly series featuring most of the same cast, which was demolished in the ratings by Dallas, but a faithful Resistance-like following remains to this day. --Paul Gaita
Marc Singer, Robert Englund and Michael Ironside in the thrilling sequel miniseries about human resistance to alien invaders - from the birth of the first interspecies child to a harrowing countdown to nuclear doomsday.
DVD Features:
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
Freddy vs. Jason (New Line Platinum Series)
by Ronny Yu
from New Line Home Video
After 11 years in development hell and screenplay drafts by 13 different writers, the long-awaited smackdown of Freddy vs. Jason finally arrives. After making their respective debuts in Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the hockey-masked killer Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger, replacing long-time Jason performer Kane Hodder) and razor-gloved Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) square off in a slasher-franchise combo-deal that only their most devoted fans will appreciate; turns out this is a lightweight match in which nobody wins. It's an average entry in the histories of these horror icons, comparable to half of their previous sequels, and Bride of Chucky director Ronny Yu satisfies purists with plenty of gushing blood and mayhem when Freddy recruits Jason to slice 'n' dice the ill-fated teens who've forgotten Freddy's once-formidable reign of terror. While it logically connects the gruesome legacies of Nightmare's Elm Street and Friday's Camp Crystal Lake, this horror hybrid is shockingly uninspired. It briefly peaks when Freddy gives the unconscious Jason a dream-world pummeling, but their ultimate showdown's a draw. In the immortal words of Peggy Lee, is that all there is? --Jeff Shannon
It's the battle everyone's been DYING to see! Teenagers find themselves caught in the middle of a battle between two legendary boogeymen: Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. Who will win in the bloodiest and goriest showdown in history?
DVD Features:
3D Animated Menus
Alternate endings:Alternate opening and Ending
Audio Commentary:Commentary with Director Ronny Yu, Actors Robert Englund (FREDDY) & Ken Kirzinger (JASON)
Comparison Scenes
DVD ROM Features
Deleted Scenes:18 Deleted Scenes with optional commentary from Director Ronnie Yu and Executive Producer Douglas Curtis
Documentaries:--Behind the scenes coverage of the films development - including screenwriting, set design, make up, stunts and principle photography --Visual effects exploration
Featurette
Full Screen Version:Both fullscreen and Widescreen on one disc
Interviews
Music Video:Ill Nino "How Can I Live"
Storyboards
TV Spot:Lots of TV spots
Theatrical Trailer
Hatchet (Unrated Director's Cut)
by Adam Green
from ANCHOR BAY
Adam Green's Hatchet is a goofy, gory gas that pays tribute to the slasher boom of the 1980s by placing more hapless teens in the path of an indestructible maniac. Said killer is Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder, Jason in many of the later Friday the 13th entries), a deformed Louisiana swamp dweller who returns from an apparent fiery death to lay waste to a mixed bag of tourists and Mardi Gras revelers who've wandered into his turf on a "haunted swamp" tour. Hatchet doesn't exactly surpass the movies it's spoofing; Green's characters are dopey ciphers, and Crowley's indiscriminate killing spree negates his sympathetic origins. But the dialogue is glib and the performances funny (especially Parry Shen as the tour's unlikely guide and Joel David Moore as the lovelorn hero), and '80s horror aficionados will appreciate John Carl Buechler's outrageously gross effects (which get more screen time in this unrated cut). There are also cameos by genre vets Robert Englund and Tony Todd, as well as Joshua Leonard from The Blair Witch Project. The widescreen DVD includes commentary by Green and several of his players, as well as featurettes on the making of the film, its villain and his elaborate makeup, and a scene breakdown of one of the film's most jaw-dropping effects. A gag reel and a conversation between Green and Twisted Sister frontman and horror fan Dee Snider rounds out the commentary. -- Paul Gaita
Get ready for one of the most talked-about red- blooded American horror movies of the past 20 years: When a group of New Orleans tourists take a cheesy haunted swamp tour they slam face-first into the local legend of deformed madman Victor Crowley. What follows is a psycho spree of seat-jumping scares eye- popping nudity skull-splitting mayhem and beyond. Joel David Moore (DODGEBALL) Deon Richmond (SCREAM 3) and Mercedes McNab (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER) star along with horror icons Tony Candyman Todd Robert Freddy Krueger Englund and Kane Jason Hodder in this screamingly funny carnage classic that Fangoria hails as a no-hold-barred homage to the days when slasher films were at their reddest and wettest! Starring: Joel David Moore Deon Richmond Mercedes McNab Tony Todd Robert Englund Kane HodderSystem Requirements:Length: 84 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR/MURDER & MAYHEM Rating: NR UPC: 013131525298 Manufacturer No: DV15252
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane
from 20th Century Fox
The fast-paced and often seamy world of rock 'n' roll is his beat, but even detective Ford Fairlane (Andrew Dice Clay) is stunned when the king of shock-jocks, Johnny Crunch (Gilbert Gottfried), is electrocuted on the air. After all, Crunch was his only paying client! Crunch had hired Ford to track down a mysterious teenage groupie name Zuzu Petals - a search which quickly finds Ford tangled up, and trading insults, with a ruthless record executive (Wayne Newton) and merciless hit man (Robert Englund).
A Nightmare on Elm Street
by Wes Craven
from New Line Home Video
Wes Craven's 1984 horror film is a better movie than it is generally credited for being. Forget the tawdry sequels; this highly original, almost surrealist work stars Robert Englund as a mutilated monster who kills teenagers during their dreams. Craven, who only directed one Elm Street sequel (Wes Craven's New Nightmare), takes the Hitchcockian step of layering in psychological explanations for the terror and then proving them all irrelevant in the face of mindless evil. The horror in the film is emotionally raw, in contrast to the overimaginative set pieces of most of the sequels that followed; and the final scene is as deeply unsettling as anything Luis Buñuel ever committed to film. --Tom Keogh
Digitally remastered, this is the original Nightmare film that started it all. Written and directed by Wes Craven and starring Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, A Nightmare on Elm Street remains an innovative and shocking horror-fantasy.
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Production Notes
Theatrical Trailer
Stay Hungry
by Bob Rafelson
from MGM (Video & DVD)
Arnold Schwarzenegger is a pleasant surprise (Los Angeles Times) in his acting debut opposite Jeff Bridges (Seabiscuit) and Sally Field (Forrest Gump) in this richly comic and sparklingly exuberant (The Wall Street Journal) story of a young businessman who discovers himself in the wild offbeat world of bodybuilding!When entrepreneur Craig Blake (Bridges) buys a small gym he fully expects to demolish the place to make room for a high rise. Instead he finds himself drawn into a world he never knew existed. From a perky gymnast (Field) who wears her heart on her leotard to a philosophizing Mr. Universe hopeful (Schwarzenegger) the freewheeling spirit of the gym touches Craig in a way he never expected and plunges him into a hilarious off-the-wall plot to stop his high rise from ever rising!Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 027616907233 Manufacturer No: 1006559
Quirky is the keyword here--but quirky in a highly entertaining way. Directed by Bob Rafelson, this film stars Jeff Bridges as a not-so-good ol' boy. Wealthy and aimless, he is involved in a real estate deal with a group of high-powered partners--and his only responsibility in the whole shebang is to evict the tenants of one building that needs to be torn down and has a gym filled with body builders. Disconnected from everything in his life, he feels a bond to these outsiders, particularly the surprisingly articulate, fiddle-playing Arnold Schwarzenegger (in one of his first film roles). He also finds himself attracted to the blue-collar gym employee played by Sally Field and so becomes an impediment to his own business partners. Oddly funny and affecting, a sleeper that never had much of a release. --Marshall Fine
Urban Legend
by Jamie Blanks
from Sony Pictures
An attractive young woman is driving her car on a dark country road and singing along to the radio. She's running out of gas and so she pulls into a gas station (run by a jittery, stuttering Brad Dourif), but then flees what seems to be an attack, only to find the real threat in her backseat: a hooded killer with an ax who takes her head off with a well-aimed swing. You've heard the story before? Not surprising, given that it's one of the more famous urban legends borrowed for Urban Legend, a post-Scream exercise in self-referential horror. The students at an ivy-covered New England college are turning up dead, the victims of a serial killer who murders in the fashion of the "apocryphal" modern myths. It's all for the benefit of good girl with a dark secret Alicia Witt, the sole witness to most of the killings. Doe-eyed Rebecca Gayheart, as her gullible best friend, and Jared Leto, the ambitious campus journalist who tracks down the secret that hangs over the school, lead a cast of pretty young women, hunky guys, and campus characters, notably the suspicious professor Robert Englund, a genre legend in his own right as the star of seven Nightmare on Elm Street films. Take away the cheeky remarks and self-awareness and it's a throwback to the 1970s' rash of teen slasher movies, where sexually active teens are sliced, diced, and otherwise slaughtered in elaborate and ingenious ways. The increasingly preposterous film is no Scream, but the modestly stylish production has its moments. --Sean Axmaker
A Nightmare on Elm Street (Infinifilm Edition)
by Wes Craven
from New Line Home Video
Wes Craven's 1984 horror film is a better movie than it is generally credited for being. Forget the tawdry sequels; this highly original, almost surrealist work stars Robert Englund as a mutilated monster who kills teenagers during their dreams. Craven, who only directed one Elm Street sequel (Wes Craven's New Nightmare), takes the Hitchcockian step of layering in psychological explanations for the terror and then proving them all irrelevant in the face of mindless evil. The horror in the film is emotionally raw, in contrast to the overimaginative set pieces of most of the sequels that followed; and the final scene is as deeply unsettling as anything Luis Buñuel ever committed to film. --Tom Keogh
Nancy is having nightmares about a frightening badly-scarred figure who wears a glove with razor-sharp "finger knives". She soon discovers that her friends are having similar dreams. When the kids begin to die Nancy realizes that she must stay awake to survive. Uncovering the secret identity of the dream killer and his connection with the children of Elm Street the girl plots to draw him out into the real world.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: R UPC: 794043104190 Manufacturer No: N10419
Wes Craven's New Nightmare
from New Line Home Video
No Description Available.
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Release Date: 6-SEP-2005
Media Type: DVD
English-professor-turned-horror-auteur Wes Craven brings both careers to play in this ingenious reinterpretation of the Nightmare on Elm Street series as a modern-day fairy tale--a sort of Hansel and Gretel for big kids. Heather Langenkamp, star of the original film, plays Heather Langenkamp, an actress and mother wracked with nightmares as Los Angeles is rocked with unexplained earthquakes. Meanwhile, her son starts sleepwalking and croaking Freddy Krueger threats. Is it a coincidence that Wes Craven (playing himself) is turning his own troubled dreams into a new screenplay, which he calls "a sort of nightmare in progress"? According to his visions, the imaginary Freddy has become the embodiment of ancient evil and is trying to break out of his movie prison and into the physical world. It's a rather literal and glib explanation, but words have never been Craven's strong suit. His central thesis, the cultural importance of stories, is more resonant in the web of imagery arising from dreams, movies, and the subconscious. Robert Englund and John Saxon play themselves and their movie characters (though this Freddy is decidedly less wisecracking and more demonic). It's a thoughtful, imaginative, and often gripping modern horror film that echoes with suggestions of The Exorcist and Poltergeist. Though less of a fun-house thrill ride than previous Nightmares, it's scarier and smarter than any of the other series sequels. --Sean Axmaker
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