Chappelle, Joe

Halloween - The Curse of Michael Myers

The series premise continues to stretch so thin it could dissipate. This time, Michael Myers chases his unfortunate niece around, then goes after a family who happen to be living in his former home. This is slasher-ism at its most cynical, and a thoroughly unpleasant, unimaginative, and unredeeming movie. Donald Pleasence, the one holdover from the original film, looks like he'd rather be anywhere than in this thing. --Tom Keogh

For pulse-pounding suspense and relentless thrills, nothing can match HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS -- one of the most frightening chapters in the chilling HALLOWEEN series! In a single horrifying night, Michael Myers' masked reign of terror changed Halloween forever! Now, six years after he was presumed dead in a fire, Myers has returned to kill again -- and this time there's no escape! As the homicidal fury builds to a spine-tingling cliimax, the long-hidden secrets of the screen's most maniacal murderer are revealed ... with shocking results! Starring a thrilling cast including legendary Donald Pleasence (HALLOWEEN, THE ADVOCATE) and Paul Rudd (THE CIDER HOUSE RULES, CLUELESS).

The Twilight Zone - The Complete Series (Season One)

The younger you are, the more you'll enjoy UPN's short-lived revival of The Twilight Zone. Front-loaded with young actors (or marginal celebrities, like Jessica Simpson) and a bone-jarring theme by Korn's Jonathan Davis, the show panders to a teen demographic, which original-series creator Rod Serling would never have tolerated. It's a pale copy of Serling's original, and even the 1985 TZ revival was marginally better, but there are some memorable exceptions in this 43-episode, six-disc set. Not surprisingly, the best episodes are straight remakes of (or sequels to) classic Serling originals, including "The Monsters on Maple Street," "It's Still a Good Life" (with former child actor Bill Mumy reprising his creepiest role, and featuring a series-best performance by Cloris Leachman), and "Eye of the Beholder." Of the originals to this series, highlights include the pilot episode with Jeremy Piven; Jason Alexander in "One Night at Mercy," Amber Tamblyn in "Evergreen"; Lukas Haas in "Harsh Mistress"; Lou Diamond Phillips in "The Pool Guy"; ER's Eriq La Salle as writer, director, and star of "Memphis"; and a few others that capture the eerie quality of "another dimension of sight, sound, and mind."

Woefully miscast as the series' host, Forest Whitaker delivers facile introductions devoid of Serling's literary finesse. More often than not, the writing relies on forgettable characters and thinly-disguised variations on original-series themes; at its worst, the series demonstrates a staggering lack of originality, and the youthful casting frequently results in one-dimensional performances, with a few notable exceptions. It's hit-or-miss at best, but shooting locations in Vancouver, British Columbia, lend the series a visually stimulating variety of settings and atmosphere; production values are consistently high (as they were in the Canadian seasons of X-Files), and Rick Maguire deserves praise for his cinematography on virtually every episode. If you can forget Serling altogether (a difficult challenge for his devoted fans), you'll be able to overlook the flaws and enjoy some occasionally clever trips into The Twilight Zone as it was meant to be. --Jeff Shannon

Modernized version of the classic TV series includes 43 episodes featuring high-profile guest stars.

Hellraiser - Bloodline

Pinhead is back -- and this time, he's out for more blood -- in the fourth and most terrifying chapter of the wildly popular HELLRAISER series! Spanning three generations, this horrifying story chronicles the struggle of one family who unknowingly created the puzzle box that opened the doors of Hell -- setting the diabolical Pinhead free to spread evil here on earth! Now, the family must fight to slam those doors shut again ... but not before Pinhead wages one of his fiercest and most frightening battles ever!

Phantoms

Either Dean Koontz shouldn't adapt his own bestsellers, or his 1983 novel Phantoms was a pack of horror clichés to begin with, or this movie is 15 years past its due date. What might have seemed fresh at the time of Poltergeist now feels like it was made from a derivative script with pages missing. Plagued by reckless leaps of logic, the movie starts with adequately eerie atmosphere and a perversely twisted performance by Scream 2's Liev Schreiber, but decays into a familiar hash of gross-out effects, resulting from the annihilation of a small Colorado town by an evil force known as "The Ancient Enemy." In a dreary role that insults the twilight of his distinguished career, Peter O'Toole plays a paleobiologist whose crackpot ideas have become tabloid fodder, but he holds the key to conquering the beast. Or does he? Sure enough, an obligatory coda leaves room for anticlimactic doubt. Phantoms has a few genuinely creepy highlights, including a devilish beastie resembling an angry flying scorpion, and horror fans will surely find something to admire, but everyone else is advised to proceed with caution and lowered expectations. --Jeff Shannon

A heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat thriller with a hot cast of rising stars, PHANTOMS is the latest from master of suspense, Dean Koontz! Five lone survivors in a devastated town must face the unthinkable: a ferocious force of evil lying below the earth for centuries has surfaced with the power to destroy every human being! Left behind are two sisters, the town sheriff (Academy Award(R)-winner Ben Affleck, GOOD WILL HUNTING), his deputy (Liev Schreiber, SCREAM 2), and a noted tabloid journalist (Peter O'Toole). You're in for a pulse-pounding experience as the survivors race to stop this terrifying threat before it wipes humankind off the face of the earth!

Track Down

A hacker hacks into the computer of a security system and discovers things that place his life in danger.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 5-JUL-2005
Media Type: DVD

The Skulls 2

The Agency

Hellraiser - Inferno/Bloodline

Hellraiser: Bloodline - DVD-Pinhead is back -- and this time, he's out for more blood -- in the fourth and most terrifying chapter of the wildly popular HELLRAISER series! Spanning three generations, this horrifying story chronicles the struggle of one family who unknowingly created the puzzle box that opened the doors of Hell -- setting the diabolical Pinhead free to spread evil here on earth! Now, the family must fight to slam those doors shut again ... but not before Pinhead wages one of his fiercest and most frightening battles ever! Hellraiser: Inferno - DVD -A spine-tingling thriller, HELLRAISER: INFERNO is the next inescapably terrifying chapter in the heart-stopping HELLRAISER series! It's the powerful story of a shady L.A. detective (Craig Sheffer -- THE PROGRAM, A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT) who finds himself lost in a darkly nightmarish world of evil when he solves the mysterious puzzle box that releases the diabolical demon, Pinhead! As those around him begin to meet tragic fates, he sets out to conquer the horrifying Pinhead and escape eternal hell! Also starring popular Nicholas Turturro (TV's NYPD BLUE, EXCESS BAGGAGE), HELLRAISER: INFERNO combines great special effects and relentless thrills to deliver exciting, edge-of-your-seat entertainment!

Dracula - The Dark Prince

The Wire - The Complete First and Second Seasons

After one episode of The Wire you'll be hooked. After three, you'll be astonished by the precision of its storytelling. After viewing all 13 episodes of the HBO series' remarkable first season, you'll be cheering a bona-fide American masterpiece. Series creator David Simon was a veteran crime reporter from The Baltimore Sun who cowrote the book that inspired TV's Homicide, and cowriter Ed Burns was a Baltimore cop, lending impeccable street-cred to an inner-city Baltimore saga (and companion piece to The Corner) that Simon aptly describes as "a visual novel" and "a treatise on institutions and individuals" as opposed to a conventional good-vs.-evil police procedural. Owing a creative debt to the novels of Richard Price (especially Clockers), the series opens as maverick Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West, in a star-making role) is tapping into a vast network of drugs and death around southwest Baltimore's deteriorating housing projects. With a mandate to get results ASAP, a haphazard team is assembled to join McNulty's increasingly complex investigation, built upon countless hours of electronic surveillance.

The show's split-perspective plotting is so richly layered, so breathtakingly authentic and based on finely drawn characters brought to life by a perfect ensemble cast, that it defies concise description. Simon, Burns, and their cowriters control every intricate aspect of the unfolding epic; directors are top-drawer (including Clark Johnson, helmer of The Shield's finest episodes), but they are servants to the story, resulting in a TV series like no other: unpredictable, complicated, and demanding the viewer's rapt attention, The Wire is "an angry show" (in Simon's words) that refuses to comfort with easy answers to deep-rooted societal problems. Moral gray zones proliferate in a universe where ruthless killers have a logical code, and where the cops are just as ambiguous as their targets. That ambiguity extends to the ending as well; season 1 leaves several issues unresolved, leaving you begging for the even more impressive developments that await in season 2.

It hardly seems possible, but The Wire's second season is even better than the first. The "visual novel" concept of this masterful HBO series is taken even further in a rich, labyrinthine plot revolving around the longshoremen of Baltimore's struggling cargo docks, where corruption, smuggling, and murder draw the attention of detective McNulty (Dominic West), who's been demoted to harbor patrol while his former colleagues have been similarly reassigned following season 1. What brings them back together is a series of events which at first seem unrelated (including 13 bodies found in a cargo container), and their ongoing effort to topple the drug empire of "Stringer" Bell (Idris Elba) and the imprisoned Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris), whose business is suffering from short supply, high demand, and disruption of distribution. The dutiful diligence of a Marine Police Patrol Officer and the moral outrage of the longshoremen's union leader are also factored into the suspicious goings-on at the loading docks, and what unfolds in these 12 episodes is an American crime epic easily on par with the Godfather saga. Yes, it's that good.

Detailed synopsis is pointless; The Wire must be seen, heard, and absorbed to fully appreciate the way in which over 40 characters are flawlessly incorporated into a sprawling but tightly disciplined plot that deals, in the larger sense, with the deindustrialization of America and the struggle of longshoremen in a changing economical climate. Offering a privileged and occasionally frightening glimpse of the inner workings of shipping ports and cargo transports, The Wire is also a detailed exposé of organized crime and blue-collar corruption, and an authentic, well-informed study of political maneuvering among police and city officials. There's not a single false note to be found in the cast, direction, or writing of this phenomenal series, hailed by many critics as "the best show on television." With all due respect to HBO's other excellent series, The Wire tops them all. --Jeff Shannon