Movie Review: The Wild Geese (Blu-ray / DVD Combo)

More than 30 years before action superstar Sylvester Stallone corralled a bevy of top talent for his smash hit The Expendables, veteran director Andrew V. McLaglen (Chisum, The Sea Wolves) made his own film starring some of Britain's finest actors with his feature The Wild Geese. Severin Films has taken the action classic, remastered it and stacked it with extra features for their own American release that should please fans of balls-out mercenary mayhem.

Richard Burton leads the cast as Colonel Allen Faulkner, the leader of a group of "mature" mercenaries in the unforgiving surroundings of South Africa to track down a kidnapped president played by Wintson Ntshona (Dogs of War, Ghandi). After agreeing with millionaire Sir Edward Matherson (Stewart Granger, The Prisoner of Zenda), to gather a group of his hand-picked men (Roger Moore, Richard Harris, and Hardy Kruger), Faulkner quickly moves forward to prepare his men for the risky mission.

Movie Review: The Assassins (Blu-ray, 2012)

Reviewed By: Rob Sibley

“The Assassins” is the directional debut of Linshan Zhao, starring Chow Yun Fat. Now before you get all excited this isn't a bullet ballet film like “A Better Tomorrow ”, “The Killer” or “Hard Boiled”. The Assassins is a Chinese period piece, a costume drama if you will. Set during The Three Kingdoms era of China. Quick note, if your interested in this time period be sure to check out John Woo's “Red Cliff” films and Daniel Lee's “Resurrection of the dragon”.

In The Assassins, Chow plays real life General Cao Cao ruler of Wu Kingdom. The title itself refers to a group of lovers played by the stunning Liu Yifei (White Vengeance) and Hiroshi Tamaki (Midnight Eagle). They play the lover assassins very well and you can tell from the very start that their relationship is doomed. With Tamaki being a eunuch and Yifei playing a concubine. Their story is truly an emotional one.

Movie Review: Lost Horizon (1973, Blu-ray)

Review by- Rob Sibley

Musicals are hit or miss with me, sometimes I dig em... other times not so much. So I was pretty damn curious when I popped in the Twilight Time Blu-ray release of 1973's “Lost Horizon”. Before seeing the film I already knew that it was a massive failure for the studio and was pretty much a joke in Hollywood. I can happily say I enjoyed this wonderfully inept musical. Yes, it's a bad film but with a lot of good stuff in it. 

LH is a musical remake of the classic 1937 Frank Kapra film which starred Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt. That film by all means is a masterpiece of it's time and still holds up to this day. Sadly the musical remake of which I'm reviewing didn't have the talented Kapra involved. But they did bring in a heavy weight to do the music and it was none other then the legendary Burt Bacharah. On top of that you have the acting... well singing talents of Peter Finch, Liv Ullman, Sall Kellerman, George Kennedy, Olivia Hussey, Michael Yorke, Bobby Van and last but certainly not least the late great British thesp John Gielgud.

Movie Review: They Live (Blu-ray/DVD Combo)

Reviewed By: Rob Sibley

“They Live” will always be one of my favorite John Carpenter films. Shot back in 1988 and starring the almighty Roddy Piper. Shot on a shoe-string budget of 4 million dollars, John Carpenter is able to make every single dollar appear on screen. At first what appears to be a rather screwball concept, a drifter (Piper) wonders into town looking for work. He's a blue collar dude, not a super hero, he's an everyman, a man we can root for. Well it doesn't take long for Piper to figure out somethings going on...

He grabs a pair of shades (Ray Bans no less) and when he puts them on, he sees he's surrounded by aliens and alien propaganda. That's where the film gets really interesting. Now I know if your reading this review, you've seen and love “They Live”. So I don't need to convince you that it's an excellent film. But I won't spoil certain plot points because I'm sure there is still a younger audience out there who love John Carpenter but who haven't seen this film yet.

Movie Review: Strippers vs. Werewolves (2012, Blu-ray)

Directed by Jonathan Glendening

Starring Robert Englund, Lysette Anthony and Lucy Pinder
Run Time: 93 minutes

A private dance at a strip joint gets dicey when an aroused patron begins turning into a werewolf and the panicked stripper is forced to kill him with a silver pen in the eye.  When word of the murder gets back to the werewolves fellow gang members they decide to take out their revenge on the owners and dancers at the Silverdollas strip club. Things get further complicated when one of the werewolves realizes his girlfriend happens to be one of the strippers who is now on his gangs menu for the night. Its then up to the group of air-headed floozies to fight off the fanged fiends and save the club before becoming their next meal.

First, let's get to what was good about this blu-ray.

Movie Review: Creep Van (2012)

Reviewed by: Rob Sibley

Jigsaw drives a van... in a film called “Creep Van”. No it's not Jigsaw, but a fella who has his ride rigged up with various devices of death. The Creep is played by Mike Butler who enjoys riding around picking up hitchhikers consisting of bikers, a beach babe and anyone stupid enough to wanna jack a rusted old van.

The “hero” if you want to call him that of the film is Campbell (Brian Kolodziej) who's pretty much a slacker who gets a job working at a car wash so he can buy a car. The car or in this case van he's interested in purchasing just so happens to be the “Creeps” van. I wish I could say there was more to the movie then this but their really isn't. Campbell is given a love interest in the form of Amy (Amy Wehrell). Sadly they share pretty much zero chemistry despite both actors trying their hardest.

Movie Review: I Heart Monster Movies (2012)

Reviewed by: Rob Sibley

“I Heart Monster Movies” is a seventy five minute documentary which is a true love letter to the horror genre and culture. Let's start off, before I popped the DVD into my player I quickly read the synopsis and took a look at the images on the back cover. On the back cover is Sid Haig, Tom Savini and other horror greats. So I figured “Oh boy, seventy five minutes of stories I've heard before.” Well I was wrong... despite the short running time they pack a lot of great stuff into this documentary. Now if you're reading this, you are a horror fan. So you know that we horror fans have a bad rap with the “mainstream”. Not always, since horror these days is big business. Back in the day, films like Hostel and The Saw series would have played at the drive-ins and would have gotten slapped with NC-17's. Now  torture is mainstream and people pay a lot to watch it. Why? That's another discussion for another time.

Cinema Head Cheese: The Podcast! #78 - The Second Annual Cheesies

Kevin, Jeff and Dave hand out 2012's coveted Cheesies to the best in movies and entertainment for the year. They bring back Rookie of the Year, Most Cringe-Worthy Kill and more while adding a few new awards. they also introduce the 2012 Cinema Head Cheese Hall of Fame inductee.

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

You can always email us at cinemaheadcheese@yahoo.com or tweet us @CinHeadCheese.

Support Cinema Head Cheese and Abnormal Entertainment by clicking the links on our Sponsors page!

This episode is sponsored by the following:

Best of 2012: Blu-ray and DVD

2012 was yet another banner year genre flicks on DVD and Blu-Ray. In the list below you get a little Hammer, a Raro rarity, a micro-budget surprise, a flock of Geese doing some ass-kicking on Blu-ray, a Bible camp that flows in the red stuff and some dandy Asian films among this list of must-have Blu-rays. Even the Silver Shamrock makes it's debut in High-Def. Grab these releases if you haven't yet! Happy New Year!! 

The Night Of The Devils  (Blu-ray, Raro Video)

Movie Review: Mysterious Island - Captain Harding’s Fabulous Adventures! (1952- Cheezy Flicks)

Mysterious Island- Captain Harding’s Fabulous Adventures! (1952 - Cheezy Flicks)

Directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet

Starring Richard Crane, Marshall Reed and Karen Randle
Run-Time: 252 minutes

The year is 1865, the Civil War is raging and a small group of Union prisoners use a military balloon to escape from a Southern Prison camp. The balloon drifts for days and finally lands on a mysterious volcanic island filled with some very strange inhabitants. Also landing, (in a space ship that looks like a tea kettle) is Rulu, a somewhat hot female from Mercury and her band of henchmen. Rulu and her crew are there seeking a radioactive material that will enable them to manufacture an explosive that will destroy the entire Earth. Its up to Captain Harding and his men to not only stop Rulu from accomplishing her evil plans but fight off natives, pirates and a wild-man, as well as dealing with the enigmatic Captain Nemo himself.

Cinema Head Cheese: The Podcast! #77 - Best of 2012

The Cinema Head Cheese crew comes together for a Christmas Miracle. Kevin, Jeff and Dave each give their five favorite films from 2012, and contributors Greg Goodsell and Rob Sibley do the same. From theatrical to foreign to small budget, the crew has the past year covered.

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

You can always email us at cinemaheadcheese@yahoo.com or tweet us @CinHeadCheese.

Support Cinema Head Cheese and Abnormal Entertainment by clicking the links on our Sponsors page!

This episode is sponsored by the following:

Movie Review: Ozombie (2012)

Even with the huge popularity of The Walking Dead it really feels like the constant recycling of the zombie sub-genre has become quite irritating fans in love with flesh-eaters. George Romero can't even do it right anymore and he created this beast.  It's getting to be as bad as the vampire film. Most seem to stay with similar narratives, without really doing anything different which in the end makes them tedious to watch. Ozombie is a zombie flick that does something different: It takes the hunting and murder of Osama Bin Laden and...Well... let's just say it fictionalizes what happened when the Seal team stormed his rat hole.

The movie begins in a very promising way with the raid on his compound. There's some fast action and zombie killing in the mix early. The zombies that Osama has guarding his digs really do nothing to deter the Seals so it's in easy capture and kill for the team. While Bin Laden is scrambling for a hiding spot he injects a serum into himself that makes a zombie not long after he's killed. Once the Seals are done Bin Laden becomes cargo on an airplane that later drops his zombified corpse into the ocean beach-side. Then the carnage begins.

Movie Review: Supernatural Activity (2012)

I often enjoy a good parody film. I guess I should define good, because good parody is extremely hard to come by. To me, a good parody should stand on its own, even if you don't get all of the references to other movies. I want a solid story with fun nods to whatever it's knocking. Outside of the first Scary Movie, the "Movie" movies have been atrocious. There's a good amount of "we have to reference this thing in a ham-fisted way" in each of them. I hate chunks that don't fit, but are there just because. Supernatural Activity doesn't have much of that, but it also lacks in many other ways.

Movie Review: The Faculty (1998, Blu-ray Edition)

Directed by Robert Rodriguez
Starring Jordana Brewster, Clea Duvall and Laura Harris

Some very weird shit is going down at Harrington High School. Shortly after one of the students finds a strange little creature on the schools football field, all hell begins to break loose, as the teachers seem to have been taken over by a mysterious force and not long after, the students themselves begin to become “possessed” by some sort of alien entity that is taking over the minds of everyone in sight. A small group of five students find themselves the only ones left to figure out the mystery and attempt to defeat the alien take-over before they too fall victim to the mind-controlling parasites which are now running their school.

Movie Review: Color of Night / Playing God - Double Feature

How can you go wrong with two solid thrillers for the bargain basement price of $10.00? You can't, the folks over at Mill Creek have recently been releasing a lot of double features on Blu-ray for the first time. Check out Jeff's review for the previous Mill Creek double bill of “Deep Rising” and “The Puppet Masters.

http://cinemaheadcheese.blogspot.com/2012/11/movie-review-puppet-masters-deep-rising.html

Now onto what's on the disk, we have the Bruce Willis/Jane Marsh big budget trash classic “Color of Night”. Very controversial when first released for Mr. Yippie-Ki-Yay showing his package. Yep, Willis bares it all for the ladies, the men get a very attractive and a very naked Jane March to gawk at.

Movie Review: No Clowning Around (2012)

Reviewed By: Rob Sibley

Have you ever seen a balloon animal made out of human intestines? What about a down on his luck clown who's best friend is a talking puppet? Didn't think so. Well that's what makes Rob Dimensions 25 minute short film “No Clowning Around” so special.

Now I'm hard to impress with short films, usually they try to take a clever idea and run with it but even at short running times they rarely impress. This film is not one of those, it's a statement from Rob Dimension that if you give the man a camera and a little coin he can spin a tale with enough substance to warrant a feature film version.

I must admit, before watching this film I had no idea what to expect. The plot concerns a clown by the name of Mumbles... he's a drunk, his girlfriend is a junkie and well... he just doesn't give a shit about life much. Getting by on bottles of hootch and his one friend the talking puppet by the name of Mr. Peepers.

If Kevin Smith &William Lustig teamed up  I could see the final product looking something like this. Rob Dimension not only stars in the film but also is the co-director/writer alongside the equally talented Matthew Burd, who edited and did the cinematography.

Movie Review: Australia After Dark (1975)

Review by Greg Goodsell

Directed by John D. Lamond

In Australia, “Sheila” is slang for woman, due to the preponderance of gals down there who have Sheila for their first name. What do “Sheilas” like to do Down Under? If this Australian mondo-shockumentary is correct, Sheilas like nothing better than to engage of lots of “messy fun.” Said practice is a sexual fetish where the woman finds release in covering themselves – either clothed or naked – in messy foodstuffs.

Australia After Dark begins with a trio of lassies who gleefully agree to have their naked bodies with paint, rubbing themselves on stark, white studio walls before collapsing joyfully on the canvas covered floor. Long before the United Kingdom’s Splosh! Magazine forced this particular kink out of the closet (Splosh! Is championed by director John Waters), Australia After Dark gives this particular byway a strenuous workout. Women cover themselves with honey, treacle, mud, whipped cream and even more body paint, taking up the final half hour of this film’s running time!

Cinema Head Cheese: The Podcast! #76 - Garbage Day

Kevin shares his thoughts on The Hobbit and its place with the Lord of the Rings films. He and Dave discuss their Christmas favorites from film to television. They also watch a ridiculous YouTube clip called Garbage Day. Jeff chimes in with a Blue Cheese review while Kevin interrupts with idiotic comments.

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

You can always email us at cinemaheadcheese@yahoo.com or tweet us @CinHeadCheese.

Support Cinema Head Cheese and Abnormal Entertainment by clicking the links on our Sponsors page!

This episode is sponsored by the following:

FIFTY SHADES OF DE SADE (4-Disc Limited Special) coming April 23 from Blue Underground

MARQUIS DE SADE’S JUSTINE:

Romina Power (18-year-old daughter of Tyrone Power) stars as Justine, a nubile young virgin cast out of a French orphanage and thrust into a depraved world of prostitution, predatory lesbians, a fugitive murderess (Mercedes McCambridge), bondage, branding, and one supremely sadistic monk (an outrageous performance by Jack Palance). It’s a twisted tale of strange desires, perverse pleasures and the ultimate corruption of innocence as told by the Marquis de Sade.


EUGENIE… THE STORY OF HER JOURNEY INTO PERVERSION:

Marie Liljedahl (the luscious star of INGA) is Eugenie, an innocent young woman taken to an island paradise where she is initiated into a world of pleasure and pain controlled by the sinister Dolmance (Christopher Lee). But when she surrenders to her own forbidden fantasies, Eugenie becomes trapped in a frenzy of drugs, sadomasochism and murder. Can a frightened girl in the grip of carnal perversion find sanctuary in the orgies of the depraved?

Movie Review: Wu Dang (Blu-ray)

Reviewed By: Rob Sibley

Wu Dang is the latest offering from director Patrick Leung. A solid director in his own right. His films usually are either light hearted comedy's such as “Good Times, Bed Times “ or light hearted martial art fantasy epics, “Twin Effects II” comes to mind. If you're catching a theme the word is light hearted and that's one of the best ways to describe Wu Dang, a fun rollicking adventure/martial arts fantasy that's part Indiana Jones, part vintage Tsui Hark with maybe a little Doc Savage thrown in for good measure.

Now before I continue I must say Patrick Leung is a good director, but he cut his teeth working as John Woo's main man for second unit directing. He's collaborated with Woo on two of his best bullet ballet films The Killer & Hard Boiled. So you have Leung to thank almost as much as Mr. Woo for those classics. The years of working with Mr. Woo have obviously paid off. Their most recent collaboration was on John Woo's epic Red Cliff.