Voss, Kurt

Poison Ivy / Poison Ivy 2 - Lily / Poison Ivy - The New Seduction

Poison Ivy - The New Seduction

The quiet home of a suburban family is suddenly destroyed when Ivy's beautiful but evil sister Violet returns to her childhood home and shatters the life of her former best friend Joy. Using her sexuality as a weapon she seduces both Joy's father and fiancee. No deception is too treacherous no seduction too dangerous and no crime too heinous for this twisted temptress whose young life was torn apart by an ill-fated affair between her mother and Joy's father. Poison Ivy 3: The New seduction is a steamy pulse-pounding erotic thriller and continues the same provocative and chilling tradition of Poison Ivy and Poison Ivy 2: Lily. Year: 1997 Director: Kurt Voss Starring: Michael Des Barres Megan Edwards Greg Vaughn Susan Tyrrell Jamie Pressly Athena MasseyRunning Time: 93 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 794043484827

Joel Silver (48 Hours, Die Hard, The Matrix) has a theory about action movies--you need a good bang-up scene about every 10 minutes. The people who made The New Seduction operate on the same principle, only instead of car chases and explosions, the curvaceous Jaime Pressly takes her clothes off and then, more likely than not, has sex with someone. If Seduction had been made 60 years ago at Warner Brothers, nobody would have gotten naked, but otherwise this gleefully trashy bit of film noir would have fit right in. The plot's a reworking of the original; this time, Ivy's sister Violet returns after 11 years to wreak havoc on the family that turned her mother (the family maid) out onto the street for sleeping with the man of the house. Pressly brings both a smoldering energy and sense of fun to her very-bad-girl part. As the lonely daughter who was Violet's best friend, Megan Edwards is both appealing and strong enough to avoid being simpy. While this movie lacks the relative subtlety of the original, it's a whole lot more fun than the morose first sequel, Poison Ivy 2. --Geof Miller

Body Count

The eternally scantily clad Alyssa Milano (Body Count executive producer as well as star) gives a solid performance as the newest member of a wealthy clan whose constant in-fighting is terminally interrupted by a deadly pack of art thieves determined to add a few more skeletons to the already overstuffed family closet. This well-constructed, dark-edged melding of Die Hard and Peyton Place mostly runs like a dream, despite a few off-putting flashes of lame humor (courtesy of swaggering head killer Ice-T), and a Usual Suspects-inspired ending that, while certainly surprising, doesn't really seem to fit the material. All in all, this is a well-acted, surprisingly artful slice of pulp containing a welcome vein of genuine dread. --Andrew Wright

Justin Theroux is Daniel Beckett, the black sheep son of a wealthy New York art dealer. He and his girlfriend, Suzanne (Alyssa Milano), are meeting his family for Thanksgiving at their sprawling country estate. During dinner, Daniel's domineering father informs him he must join the family business or be cut off from their vast wealth. Daniel and Suzanne retreat downstairs to the basement when... ...screams and gunfire erupt from above! A band of murderous thieves, lead by Jim (Ice T), has entered the house and is killing off Daniel's family. Knowing that the only way to survive is to take the offensive and fight back, Daniel and Suzanne eliminate the killers one by one. With the body count rising, a shocking twist to this deadly game of cat and mouse proves that blood isn't always thicker than water.

Border Radio - Criterion Collection

Before carving out a niche as one of the most distinct voices in nineties American cinema Allison Anders made her debut alongside codirectors and fellow UCLA film school students Kurt Voss and Dean Lent with 1987's Border Radio. A low-key semi-improvised postpunk diary that took four years to complete Border Radio features legendary rocker Chris D. of the Flesh Eaters as a singer/songwriter who has stolen loot from a club and gone missing leaving his wife (Luanna Anders) a no-nonsense rock journalist to track him down with the help of his friends (John Doe of the band X; Chris Shearer). With its sprawling Southern Californian and Mexican landscape captured in evocative 16mm black-and-white Border Radio is a singular DIY memento of the indie film explosion in America.System Requirements:Running Time: 83 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 715515021128 Manufacturer No: CC1661DDVD

As with Jim Jarmusch's Stranger than Paradise, Border Radio may be a small movie, but it marked the arrival of a significant talent. (Both debuts were also shot in black and white.) Co-directed by UCLA film students Kurt Voss, Dean Lent, and Allison Anders, it's a post-punk noir with documentary interludes. Chris D. (the Flesh Eaters) is Jeff Bailey, a name swiped from Robert Mitchum's character in Out of the Past. After the LA cult rocker steals money from a man named Skelley, he sends three hip thugs to collect ("The Clash are the cornerstone of social significance in rock and roll music," one insists. "It's just like dumb heavy metal," counters the other), so Jeff hightails it for Mexico. That leaves wife Luanna (Luanna Anders, Allison's sister) in the lurch. Bandmate Dean (X's John Doe), flaky roadie Chris (Chris Shearer), and Luanna spend the rest of the film trying to track him down. As for Anders, it would take another five years before Gas Food Lodging finally made her rep. With its low budget, four-year shoot, and ramshackle acting, Border Radio may be less technically adept than Repo Man, to name another film set in a similar milieu, but shares its anarchic spirit. And Lent's sundrenched 16mm cinematography and Blaster Dave Alvin's twangy score, fortified by tracks from Los Lobos and Green on Red, make it required viewing for fans of the LA punk scene, as well as the consistently underrated Anders. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Down & Out With the Dolls

Amnesia

Baja [Region 2]

Body Count/Out of Sync

Highway Hitcher

The Heist