Movie Review: Where The Dead Go To Die (2012)

Here at the Cinema Head Cheese offices on occasion we get screeners of films directed or produced by auters with bizarre pseudonyms. There’s been Creep Creepersin (Him, Corporate Cutthroat Massacre), Mr.  Creepo ( Driller: A Sexual Driller, Skin Eating Jungle Vampires), both of which have tortured a couple of our reviewers to various degrees. Now it’s Jimmy ScreamerClaus with the obvious pseudonym. This time around it's his vile animated film Where the Dead Go to Die that gets reviewed and you know what folks unlike those other "artists", it isn’t crap.

ScreamerClaus does something unique that I’ve had yet to see in a genre release – an animated horror film using computer technology to create the artificial surroundings. Pixar it ain’t, but ScreamerClaus goes to so many depraved lengths to achieve one of the most disgusting “cartoons” you’re ever gonna see.

Movie Review: My Week with Marilyn (2011)

Directed by Simon Curtis

Reviewed by Greg Goodsell

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure,” Screen Icon Marilyn Monroe confessed in one of her more memorable quotes. “I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.” While this quote would appear to justify bad behavior, it does shed light on the complexity of human beings. It seems that a person’s positives are frequently met with negatives that are either acknowledged and brought to the fore, or ignored. Adolph Hitler, many are surprised to discover, was actually a fairly talented water colorist.

Cinema Head Cheese: The Podcast! #39 - Across the Pond

Kevin and David decide to look around the world this week, and they start off with the brilliant BBC police drama Luther. They also talk about the upcoming Luther prequel books written by the show's writer.

They also discuss a variety of foreign films and television shows including Rubber, Crimson Rivers, Spaced, The Horde, Shaolin Soccer, Dead Snow, Audition, Leon (The Professional), Troll Hunter, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Let the Right One In and High Tension.

They also complain about the blandness of Hollywood acting.

(NOTE: My apologies for the sound issues. I'm working with a brand new sound board, and I didn't hear the problem in my headphones. -Kevin)

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Click on any of the links above to purchase at Amazon.com or click the link to our sponsors below and support Cinema Head Cheese and Abnormal Entertainment!

Movie Review: Machine Gun McCain (1969)

For those of you who think that Italy in the late 1960s and into the 1970s was a place where only gritty westerns, strange Giallo films and rip-off zombie/cannibal films were made can benefit from this. Italy, at the time, was churning out some wonderful genre product tailored to all tastes. The aforementioned zombies and cowboys and zipper-mask killers aside, there were sci fi epics (like Alien 2, hee hee), action films, dramas and even the mobster movie. There is a general misconception that the United States was the only place the mobster genre was popular. There were Mafioso films made worldwide so why wouldn’t the home of the Cosa Nostra, Italy, get in on the act? Using some familiar American names (John Cassavetes and Peter Falk) and international sex symbols (like future Bond girl, Britt Ekland), director Giuliano Montaldo has put together an effective Mafia/crime caper/double cross flick. Thanks to Blue Underground, we can now watch this in glorious 1080p.

Movie Review: Recoil (2012)

Professional wrestlers have never been known to be the most studied thespians - some are downright awful. Hulk "The Orange Golem" Hogan, while being a legend of the squared circle has been notorious for churning out tripe like Santa with Muscles and Suburban Commando that totally negate his amusing turn as "Thunder Lips" in Rocky III. A few others have done ok, like Roddy Piper (They Live), Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (The Rundown, Walking Tall) and amazingly the Texas Rattlesnake himself Stonecold Steve Austin (Condemned, The Expendables). In Austin's recent film from director Terry Miles' titled Recoil, he stars alongside Danny Trejo as vengeance seeking seeker of vengeance.

Recoil is a formulaic ass-kicker very much in the spirit of the better B-movie actioneers coming out of the 80's. It centers around ex-cop, Ryan Varett (Steve Austin) who has every reason to be pissed off following the murders of his family. Varett’s brand of revenge is as brutal and merciless as the men who killed his loved ones. Danny Trejo plays the main baddie, a gun-running, murderous biker named Drayke.

Movie Review: Battle Royale (2000, Anchor Bay)

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku

Starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda and Taro Yamamoto

With the impending release of the much anticipated “Hunger Games” looming near, Anchor Bay Entertainment has thrown its hat into the ring with the strategic release on DVD of the Japanese cult classic from 2000, the movie that started it all, Battle Royale.

Set in the Japan of the future, the country is crumbling from within, under-age rebellion and crime is at an all time high. In a desperate attempt to curtail and discourage youth violence, the government passes into law the “Battle Royale” act. Once every year, a single 9th grade class of 40 students is chosen at random, taken against their will and transported to a remote island where they are fitted with monitoring collar's equipped with an explosive charge. Each student is given a survival bag equipped with a randomly selected weapon, which can beanything from a machine-gun, to an ax, to the lid of a cooking pot. The collars are pre-set to explode in 72 hours, with the only way of
stopping this being if there is a single collar transmitting a signal when time is up. In other words, if there is more then one person still alive at the end of the Battle Royale, then all survivors are
blown up. They soon realize they are the victims of a sick government conspiracy, and the only way to survive is to kill their fellow classmates.

TV on DVD Review: Luther (2010)

I first saw Idris Elba in his short stint as Charles on The Office. He turned out to be the perfect foil for Michael Scott and Jim Halpert, and he wasn't going for any of the tomfoolery that the office staff had to offer. He played the role perfectly straight, and that's what was needed from Charles. Elba has been a part of a slew of movies and TV shows including The Wire, Thor and 28 Weeks Later. When I came across a cop show that starred Elba as title character John Luther, I had a feeling it would be a great fit. Just a few minutes into the first episode, I was hooked into the best police drama I have ever seen.

Buy Luther on DVD at Amazon US or Buy Luther on DVD at Amazon UK

Movie Review: Bong of the Dead (2011)

Directed by Thomas Newman

Starring Simone Bailly, Mark Wynn and Jy Harris

Ok, here's the scenario....Meteors infected with a zombie contagion are falling to Earth, the world is now over-run with the undead. The country has been divided into sections, green zones where the living reside and red zones where the zombies are contained. We have dim-witted Tommy (Mark Wynn), a pot dealers who has somehow discovered that if he liquifies the brains of the undead it makes a pretty bodacious fertilizer for his pot crop.

Buy Bong of the Dead on DVD

Cinema Head Cheese: The Podcast! #38 -The People's Podcast

Jeff starts off with a review of the "Stone Cold" Steve Austin movie Recoil, and that leads him, Dave and Kevin down the rabbit hole of movies starring wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan, Macho Man, Roddy Piper and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

They discuss The Condemned, The Expendables, Damage, No Holds Barred, Rocky III, The Fifth Element, The Scorpion King, Get Smart, Friday, See No Evil, Santa's Slay, They Live, Hell Comes to Frogtown, Wrong Side of Town, The Princess Bride and more.

Who is the greatest wrestler in the movies? Download, listen and find out!


Click here to listen or right click and choose "Save Link As..." to download.

You can always email us at cinemaheadcheese@yahoo.com.

Click on any of the links above to purchase at Amazon.com or click the link to our sponsors below and support Cinema Head Cheese and Abnormal Entertainment!

Movie Review: Ray Harryhausen Box Set (2005)

Before the advent of computers and CGI, movie makers used a variety of approaches to achieve animated special effects. One approach was stop-motion animation, a time consuming process where miniature models were filmed a single frame at a time with slight movements to the models in between the frame shots. It was pioneered by a man named Willis O'Brien and first used in the films The Lost World (1925) and the classic King Kong (1933).

Find Ray Harryhausen at Amazon.com

As he sat in a theater watching King Kong, a young boy named Ray Harryhausen was so amazed by the images he saw that he decided that he would dedicate his life to bringing this amazing art form to the silver screen. And the rest, as they say, is history. His list of credits include some of the most beloved sci-fi and fantasy films of all time, including Mighty Joe Young (1949), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Mysterious Island (1961), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), and the original Clash of the Titans (1981).

Movie Review: White Slave (aka Schiave bianche: violenza in Amazzonia, 1985)

Directed by Mario Gariazzo

Reviewed by Greg Goodsell

In a Brazilian courtroom, wealthy teenage heiress Catherine Armstrong (Elvire Audray) tells of her tale of woe. Vacationing with her parents on her 18th birthday, her family is boating on the Amazon River when her mother and father are gorily dispatched by blow darts. Their ship is overrun by a fierce tribe of Amazonian headhunters, more clean-cut than your average varsity basketball team, all wearing nylon/polyester orange loincloths. Chopping off the heads of Catherine’s parents to keep as trophies, they march the birthday girl through the jungle to their tribal compound. Stripping her of her clothes and dignity, the tribesmen attune Catherine to their savage ways. Weeks turn to months, and after a year Catherine has fallen head over heels in love with the man (Will Gonzales) who decapitated her parents! It is only after a year in the tribe that Catherine learns who the true killers of her family were. (The nonsensical story does explain how two characters at the beginning of the story suddenly disappeared without reason, but little else.) Vengeance on her mind, she paddles across a small pond to civilization – and heads roll.

Movie Review: Nailbiter (2012)

Directed by Patrick Rea

Starring Joicie Appell, Emily Boresow and Jason Coffman

Tornado's strike up a primal fear in just about everyone. Even if your not from the Midwest and experienced them first-hand, we've all seen The Wizard of Oz and know they are serious business. An unstoppable beast that falls from the heavens, leaving a trail of destruction and death. And while most movies will tend to center around the drama of the storm itself, writer/director Patrick Rea has chosen to use it as the perfect backdrop for plunging you into a scenario much more creepy and ominous then any storm.

Movie Review: Bronson (2009)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I love biopics, and I'm loving everything that comes out of Magnet Releasing. When you put those two things together, I'm definitely in. We live in a world where the anti-hero is king. He's not always a villain, but he's usually a mess of a human being. Sometimes his intentions are good, but he just makes the wrong choices. We feel sympathy for his mistakes, but probably because we make mistakes ourselves, and we hope to be forgiven. Charles Bronson is sort of like that, but his intentions are generally not very good. He's just an insane criminal, and that's part of why he's England's most notorious inmate.

Buy Bronson on Blu-ray or DVD

Movie Review: Wound (2012)

Directed by David Blyth

Starring Kate O'Rourke Te Kaea Beri and Campbell Cooley

Before sitting down at the keyboard to write this review, I felt it appropriate to watch this movie a second time, which I am glad I did, because after watching it the first time all I could do was turn to my girlfriend and ask her, “What the fuck just happened? What did we just watch?” The second time around I was able to tune out the visual onslaughts and focus my attention on figuring out the story behind the madness.

Buy Wound on DVD

Wound basically explores the dark worlds of mental illness, incest, revenge and death. We follow two main characters, Susan (Kate O'Rourke) who's mental illness has her trapped in a netherworld which is half dream-scape and half reality. Tormented by a past filled with violence and incest and a present filled with bizarre obsessions and compulsions, sexual fetish's, murder and gory retribution. And then we have Tanya (Te Kaea Beri), the daughter she gave up for dead as a baby who has returned to seek a dark revenge of her own.

"42nd Street Forever" Explodes Onto Blu-ray!

THE ULTIMATE NEW YORK GROOVE!

42ND STREET FOREVER
ON BLU-RAY!

Filth, sleaze, bimbos, and bloody revenge—the way you like it!
A pimpadelic wonderland in your own home!

Bring home more 42nd Street EXPLOITATION AND SLEAZE! The latest installment of 42ND STREET FOREVER is here! Swinging girls, samurais and serial killers, ninjas and nunchuks, crashing cars and burning men, aliens with teeth, and girls, girls, GIRLS!
Now remastered in 1080p high definition!

Synapse Films' loving homage to the greatest theater strip ever, the
42ND STREET FOREVERDVD series is a favorite of grindhouse and exploitation fans around the world. Presented on Blu-ray for the first time, Synapse's colossal best-of collection combines a selection of vintage theatrical trailers from the first two DVD volumes of the series, and mixes them in with some all-new selections! Remastered in true 1080p high definition, this mind-numbing dose of classic original coming attractions will have your Blu-ray player exploding with almost four hours of sex, exploitation, action, horror, and science-fiction advertisements from around the world! Can your brain take all this sleaze in one sitting? A collection so huge, we don't have room to list them all!

Old School Comedy Classics from Cult Collectibles: Jimmy Lynch (April 10), Redd Foxx (May 8), Skillet & Leroy (June 6), + more!

Cult Collectibles is proud to present a series of legendary comedy / adult party albums from the 1960's, 70's and early 80's. These are the records that were stored under the counter in record stores and your parents hid from you. Raw, rude and raunchy, these records sold millions and are still as funny as ever!


Bold, old school humor for fans of Redd Foxx, Rudy Ray Moore, Jimmy Lynch, Richard Pryor, LaWanda Page, Wildman Steve, etc. These are true 'Original Kings of Comedy' that influenced the most popular comics of today; Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, Eddie Griffin, Steve Harvey, Cedric The Entertainer, etc.Largely influential within the rap music / hip-hop community, these old school comedy  classics are revered and frequently sampled / referenced by such notable artists as N.W.A., Dr. Dre, Eazy E, 2 Live Crew, Snoop Dogg, Big Daddy Kane, etc.

Each release will be available on CD and digital download worldwide with new artwork by artist Lou Rusconi. You can hear a sample of each release HERE.

Movie Review: The Deadly Spawn (1983, Blu-ray)

I first discovered Douglas McKeown’s The Deadly Spawn more than two decades ago when I rented the Continental Video horror compilation VHS of Terror on Tape. The Deadly Spawn had several of its goriest scenes featured throughout the running time. It was love at first sight. Not long after I got a hold of the porn box VHS of the feature under the title Return of The Aliens: The Deadly Spawn. John Dods’ awesome gore FX and creature design and the playful schlockiness of the production delighted my wacky monster movie tastes. In 2004 Synapse Films re-mastered The Deadly Spawn and put together one of the best releases in their existence. Now it’s here, on Blu-ray from the folks at Elite Entertainment.

Buy The Deadly Spawn on Blu-ray or DVD

Cinema Head Cheese: The Podcast! #37 - We Love the '80s

As Jeff takes a much needed week off, Dave and Kevin decide to dig into the decade that truly molded them: the 1980s.

Dave gets into a bunch of classic horror that includes Slumber Party Massacre, Nightmares aka Stage Fright and From a Whisper to a Scream aka The Offspring.

Kevin talks about the recent documentary about obsessed Tiffany fans, I Think We're Alone Now. He also checks a must see off his list with Stripes and he and Dave talk the disaster that is Overboard.

They also talk about a great sketch showing Hanna Barbera heroes as The Justice League.

Click here to listen or right click and choose "Save Link As..." to download.

You can always email us at cinemaheadcheese@yahoo.com.

Click on any of the links above to purchase at Amazon.com and support Cinema Head Cheese and Abnormal Entertainment!

Interview: Gary Friedrich, creator of Ghost Rider

Kevin Moyers at Wizard World Chicago 2011 with the great Gary Friedrich

Back in August of 2011, I was able to interview Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich at Wizard World Chicago. He was very gracious and one hell of a nice guy. We filmed it, but unfortunately, the audio is terrible due to the noise coming from the crowd around a two story t-shirt booth nearby. In light of the recent situation with Mr. Friedrich and Disney/Marvel, I figured I should go back and let you hear from the man himself. I did my best to transcribe what we filmed, and this is what I could manage. I hope you enjoy this short little interview.

The comic book creator community is stepping up behind Gary Friedrich, and leading that charge is Steve Niles. If you’d like to assist Mr. Friedrich in his plight, or you’d like to know more about the situation, head over to http://www.steveniles.com/gary.html.

Kevin Moyers: This was my favorite comic growing up. This was the only comic book I ever really read. Now, what gave you the idea for Ghost Rider?

Gary Friedrich: When I was a kid, I was reading several different comics. I went to the movies and saw The Wild Ones with Marlon Brando. That was the first motorcycle gang movie ever, and I immediately thought up the idea of a superhero on a motorcycle.

Cinematic Hell: Zaat (1975)

Director: Don Barton
Stars: Marshall Grauer, Wade Popwell, Paul Galloway, Gerald Cruse, Sanna Ringhaver, Dave Dickerson, Archie Valliere and Nancy Lien

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that my favourite bad movies are the ones that provide the sole entry on the filmographies of almost everyone involved. Career filmmakers, especially low budget ones, often have distinct voices discernible across their entire output, but a need to be at least successful enough to finance their next picture has a tendency to adulterate their personal vision. It's usually an artist's first feature that carries the best mark of who they are and what they have to say and it can be fascinating to see the work of those who never went any further. Don Barton and his Florida creature feature, Zaat, are a great example. Barton was an industry professional, whose Barton Films produced documentaries, commercials and training films. Like most professionals, he eventually succumbed to the urge to try a feature but, while it had a good initial run in the southwest, it never made money and he never made another.