Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: Automan / Cert 12 / Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Desi Arnaz Jnr, Chuck Wagner, Robert Lansing, Gerald S. O’Loughlin, Heather McNair / Release Date: Out Now

Starburst has fond memories of the summer of 1984. The Olympic Games were in Los Angeles and due to the time difference weren’t clogging up the only four channels we had back then. ITV debuted V, and the BBC gave us a double helping of Glen Larson productions. While Manimal was the must-see on Monday nights, Automan dominated the early evening slot on Saturdays.

Automan is the world’s first truly automatic super-hero, you see. He’s a hologram, as explained by an earnest sounding Automan himself in the first few episodes’ opening narration:

“A hologram is a fancy name for three dimensional picture, that when perfected can be made to look real, sound real, and given enough power can even be made to feel real.”

It started as a game by police computer specialist uber-nerd Walter Nebicher (Desi Arnaz Jnr) always at odds with his old school cop boss who doesn’t understand or trust computers. Now, the program has evolved into being a force for good who can be summoned via computer. Far more efficient and cost effective than, say, a bat signal. Naturally, Automan comes with his sidekick, Cursor, and an array of incredible vehicles to fight crime wherever he’s summoned.

Obviously inspired by Disney’s Tron (1982), the series still looks great, particularly Automan’s glowing blue suit, the effect achieved with reflective panels and a travelling matte. The naive and at times child-like hero is played to perfection by Chuck Wagner.

Sadly, in its half season run, this lighthearted series didn’t manage to venture beyond formulaic gangster of the week villains, drug smugglers, and the ensuing undercover operations to catch them. Automan was explained to Nebicher’s colleagues as “an undercover fed” named Otto Mann. It would’ve been cool to see the format widen so the character could battle an evil computer virus counterpart, for instance.

Despite being something of a quaint curiosity to the computer savvy audience of today who’ll smile as Nebicher patiently explains that the term “interface” means “two computers talking to one another” and at the clumsy unwieldiness of the hardware on display, the show has a lot of charm and is never less than great tongue in cheek entertainment.

This set contains all 13 episodes and a retrospective documentary full of fascinating trivia, for example the incredible Autocar was actually a Lamborghini Countach – probably the most expensive superhero car ever seen.

Review: Mission Impossible ’89 / Cert: 12 / Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Peter Graves, Thaao Penghlis, Anthony Hamilton, Phil Moris / Release Date: October 15th

In the late ’80s, ultra-craggy Jim Phelps (Graves) returned with an all-new Impossible Mission Force for two seasons of crime-busting action. Starburst very much enjoyed the first season, and now the second season arrives on a 4-disc boxset. So – should you accept the mission of watching it, or disavow all knowledge?

To recap, the gang under Phelps consists of Nicholas Black (Penglis), master of disguise; Max Harte (Hamilton), pilot and carpenter (not a skill you usually associate with cloak and dagger, but actually of vital importance, as many of the IMF’s operations call for the construction of elaborate sets); Grant Collier (Morris), tech guy (whose gizmos this time round include a device that can forge priceless paintings in a matter of minutes, and a laser printer that can run off perfect copies of ancient Egyptian papyruses); and Shannon Reed (Badler), token girl. In a series of globe-trotting adventures that takes them to all corners of Queensland, Australia, where much of the show was filmed, the team lay low various greedy and power-hungry baddies by entrapping them in elaborate subterfuges.

In a programme as formulaic as Mission: Impossible, even the smallest tweaks and modifications become fascinating, and this series introduces quite a few. The producers must have been worried that the ’88 season had seemed a little staid and old fashioned, because the ’89 season bears signs of a concerted effort to sex things up. It kicks off with a lively two-parter packed with James Bond-style moments, including a tussle high up on Sidney Harbour Bridge and a decent speedboat chase. Phelps (very much the front man of the ’88 season) is relegated to more of a backroom role, allowing the focus to shift to the young guns. And gender equality catches up to the IMF with a bang when, in one Moonraker-ish episode, Shannon Reed gets to fly a space shuttle.

As for the new crop of baddies, they’re a bit more switched on than before, with the team often having to move to plan B or even C before getting their man. There’s also less naivety in the choice of plotlines, i.e., fewer missions implausible in the Eastern bloc (where the native language is always English with a thick foreign accent, thus making it hilariously easy for the team to pose as locals). Instead, the writers cast their net wide, taking in the troubles in Ireland, Far Eastern triads and trade in nuclear armaments. Fezzes and mummy wrappings come out for a colourful tale of an Egyptian death sect, and there’s a brilliant episode dealing with illegal gold mining set among a stone-age tribe who worship a downed aviator as a god. A good final season before the show self-destructed.

Extras: None

Review: Monstro! / Cert: 18 / Director: Stuart Simpson / Screenplay: Stuart Simpson / Starring: Norman Yemm, Nelli Scarlet, Kyrie Capri, Karli Madden, Kate Watts / Release Date: October 22nd

Beretta, Snowball and Blondie, three murderous “crazy vixens” take refuge amongst a small Australian beachside community and party hard, resisting local advice to stay out of the water. They corrupt seventeen year-old Hanna (Capri) who lives next door with her crippled Granddad (Yemm) and, as they sleep through a drugs and alcohol fuelled hangover, something nasty and tentacled is awoken by their raucous activities and feasting gruesomely on the remaining local fishermen before turning its attention back towards the shore…

Monstro, written and directed by Stuart Simpson, is a stunning and accomplished homage to grindhouse cinema, 1970s independent exploitation movies and good old-fashion B-movie monster flicks. This is ‘creature from beneath the sea’ stuff, its shambolic monster being accomplished purely (and cheaply) by practical effects and buckets of blood and there’s no stinting on the gore and violence – heads and limbs are ripped from bodies, bodies are eviscerated, faces are torn off. It’s all deliciously cheesy and lo-fi and the film just oozes sleaziness as our girls happily dispatch their own victims with throat-slitting glee before indulging in an orgy of booze and drugs and ill-advised midnight dips.

Simpson’s direction is as tight as his script is economic. He effortlessly builds up the tension as we wait for the creature to rise up from the deep and he teases us with shots of tentacles writhing through the water and rising up to claim another hapless victim before giving us what we’ve been waiting for with an all-out attack by the whole creature, complete with gaping maw and gnashing teeth and a desperate battle for survival as Hannah and the remaining hellcats fight against a thrashing, unstoppable, inhuman monster.

Monstro has got cult status written right through it and it’s yet another classy example of how cheap indie cinema is running rings around the Hollywood studio system at the moment. Absolutely labour-of-love stuff from start to finish, this has a verve and energy you just don’t find in your summer tent pole movies and, at seventy-odd minutes, it just gets in, gets on with it, gets the story told and the job done. Irresistibly enjoyable and gloriously tacky, Monstro is unmissable if you’re in the mood for some old school monster mayhem laced with scuzzy, lowlife bloody thrills.

Extras: Short films, behind the scenes, deleted scenes, trailer.

Blu-ray Review: Child’s Play / Cert:15 / Director: Tom Holland / Screenplay: Don Mancini, John Lafia, Tom Holland / Starring: Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Brad Douif / Release date: Out Now

For most people Child’s Play needs no introduction. Since its release in 1988, and with the subsequent sequels the homicidal doll has garnered fans of all ages, (often notoriously when those fans are youngsters). It’s easy, however, to forget just how effective this horror film this was. Thanks to this budget priced but feature packed Blu-ray release we can fall for its charms once again. Wanna play?

Charles Lee Ray (Dourif) is a murderer pursued by detective Mike Norris (Sarandon) into a toy store where, dying, he manages somehow to have his soul transported into that of the popular ‘Good Guy’ doll, a large, red headed monstrosity that no self respecting kid would really want. Precocious Andy (Vincent) wants one, however but mother Karen Barclay (Hicks) can’t afford it. That is, until she finds a street peddler with one to sell. When Andy’s babysitter is killed and he blames the doll, Norris gets involved in the case and the death toll increases.

What is apparent from re-watching the film after so long is how much the humour in the later films has diluted the nastiness of the original doll. Chucky became a Freddy Kruger style horror icon, and while the film is not overly scary (unless you have a doll phobia), it is still very creepy and has aged rather well considering its budget and ’80s feel. The HD version on the Blu-ray is taken from the 20th anniversary edition released in the States a couple of years ago, and looks great, and the extras from that edition have made it over the pond, too. A great addition to any horror collection, and if you shop around you can pick it up for as little as £6.99.

Bonus Features: Two commentaries, the first with Alex Vincent, Catherine Hicks, and Chucky designer Kevin Yagher, the second with producer David Kirschner and writer Don Mancini. A third one has Brad Dourif in-character as Chucky but for a few selected scenes only.

Evil Comes in Small Packages is a three-part making-of that runs for 25-minutes. A follow-up focuses specifically on Chucky titled Making of a Nightmare. A Monster Convention is an interview panel shot on video (and as such not HD quality) at Monster Mania 2007. There’s also a contemporary featurette/EPK.

Trailers and a photo gallery, plus some very lame Easter eggs round up the packed disc.

Review: Attack of the Werewolves / Cert: 15 / Director: Juan Martinez Moreno / Screenplay: Juan Martinez Moreno / Starring: Gorka Otxoa, Carols Areces, Secun de la Rosa, Mabel Rivera / Release Date: October 8th

Despite its lurid English-language title, Juan Martinez Moreno’s Attack of the Werewolves is more likely to have you rolling in the aisles than shivering in fear or racing behind the sofa. Like last month’s Kill Zombie! this is agreeably cheery (or cheesy according to taste) low budget stuff which goes some way towards rehabilitating the reputation of the werewolf after the touchy-feely injustices heaped upon our favourite lycanthropes in the Twilight saga and the Teen Wolf TV series.

One hundred years ago the Spanish village of Arga found itself falling under a gypsy curse (long story, naughty graphic novel opening illustrations fill in the blanks). Aspiring writer and former resident Tomas (Otxoa) is invited back to the village by the locals and he returns to the family home to write a book. But his arrival at the village exactly one hundred years after the curse isn’t a coincidence and soon his bloodline puts him and his bumbling old school friend Calisto (Areces) in mortal danger even before the sleeping decades-old werewolf trapped underground gets loose. Blood must be spilled to free the village from the curse… and if it isn’t an even worse fate will befall the village.

Attack of the Werewolves takes a bit of time to get into gear but once it finds its feet (or should that be paws?) it rattles along with some decent knockabout humour (occasionally decidedly black), inventive use of gore and violence and – wait for it – some really quite well-realised werewolves. The creatures here aren’t, happily, mundane CGI creations; welcome back to the men in monster suits, dozens of the furry buggers leaping across the screen with balletic grace and chasing our inept heroes across darkened, misty countryside.

Attack isn’t really concerned with being frightening – despite the monsters and the murderous mayhem there are more broad laughs than hair-raising scares – but with its larger-than-life performances, decent visuals and bouncy storyline (and the inevitable obvious twist ending) it’s very much a fun little romp which will serve as ideal fodder for those who fancy a few moderate thrills and spills this Halloween season.

Extras: None

Review: My Neighbour Totoro / Cert: PG / Director: Hayao Miyazaki / Screenplay: Hayao Miyazaki / Starring: Hitoshi Tagaki, Noriko Hidaka, Toshiyuki Amasaga / Release Date: November 12th

This film is something of a national treasure in Japan, and with good reason. One of the highlights of anime maestro Hayao Miyazaki’s illustrious career, it’s the simple, unassuming tale of two little girls, 9-year-old Satsuki and 4-year-old Mei, who, together with their father, move to a house in the country in order to be close to the hospital where their mother is recuperating from a long illness. To their unbridled delight, they soon discover that the countryside is a magical place.

For starters, the house is haunted by harmless sooty black blobs with blinking eyes called dust sprites (there’s a great moment where Satsuki, having just arrived, flings open the back door and does a double-take as thousands of the critters scuttle out of sight). And even better, the surrounding woods are home to various forest spirits. Mightiest of these is Totoro, who lives in a verdant dell at the foot of a massive, ancient camphor tree.

It’s surprising to note, watching the film again, just how little time Totoro spends on screen, but nonetheless he makes an unforgettable impression. A figure of unutterable strangeness such as only a child’s imagination could conjure up, he’s like a giant bowling pin with ears, claws and teeth. He sleeps a lot, but when he’s awake, he has the upright vigilance of a meerkat. The scene where Satsuki unexpectedly finds him standing next to her at the bus-stop, in the rain, and then lends him a spare umbrella (with the whole episode being watched by a toad who happens to be wandering along) is one of the most thrillingly beautiful pieces of animation ever crafted. And their subsequent encounters capture a spirit of innocent joy that’s all too rare in cinema.

But the movie isn’t without its weighty themes. There’s the constant shadow of mortality, as the girls fret about the health of their mother. The meticulously rendered 1950s setting, with its rickety cars and bikes and endless dappled glades, evokes a green, pastoral Japan in danger of being lost under the modern urban sprawl. And this story of forest spirits is also a celebration of Japan’s pantheistic Shinto religion. Next to the camphor tree is a shrine (one of many dotted about the landscape), signifying that Totoro is something much more venerable than just a jolly cartoon character.

A liltingly nostalgic score by Joe Hisaishi adds to the charm, and the animation is sharply observed, especially the spindly, tomboyish, cartwheeling Satsuki, who makes for an adorable everygirl. Miyazaki has made louder, splashier films, but in this one he distilled his art down to its very essence, and the result is an all-time feel-good classic whose appearance on Blu-ray is cause for a big, toothy Totoro-esque grin.

Extras: Complete Feature Length Storyboards, Creditless Opening Animation, Creditless Closing Animation, Original Japanese Trailer, Studio Ghibli Trailer Reel

Review: The Devil Rides Out / Cert: 15 / Director: Terence Fisher / Screenplay: Richard Matheson / Starring: Christopher Lee, Charles Gray, Nike Arrighi, Leon Greene, Patrick Mower / Release Date: October 22nd

This rather grand occult movie has long been something of a favourite among Hammer fans. Now it’s back, looking more sumptuous than ever in an extensive new restoration. The Duc de Richleau (Lee) meets up for a back-slapping reunion with his old pal Rex Van Ryn (Greene), but their young friend Simon (Mower) is nowhere to be seen. Where can he be? They track him down to his home, but Simon is unwilling to talk, as he has a number of strange guests, among them the smoothly sinister Mocata (Grey). Upstairs, they find a chicken in a basket. No, Simon isn’t opening a gastropub; he’s joined a coven and is dabbling in black magic!

The race is on to save his soul before he’s baptised in Satan, which will happen at a big gathering on the eve of May Day. I say race, but despite Richard Matheson’s terse script, everything moves at a stately place, giving Greene plenty of time to raise a quizzical eyebrow (no scene is complete without some strenuous brow twitching) and the viewer ample opportunity to take in the lavish, highly polished sets.

It’s certainly one of the loveliest looking of all Hammer films. As the plot thickens, the story moves from one splendid English country house to another, and everyone tootles around the countryside in bright, shiny classic cars (although Lee and Greene, both giant men, rather struggle to squeeze into the back of the Duc’s yellow Rolls). Adding to the class is a very nice turn from the reliable Grey as the literally mesmerizing villain.

But it must be said that there’s a certain stiffness to some of the other performances, and a general air of genteel ossification hangs over the whole exercise – it’s heritage horror, really. The film is also let down by some risible optical effects (bafflingly, given the richness of much else on screen). Many of these have been quietly tweaked on this restoration – the rather weedy bolt of lightning that used to strike Mocata’s satanic altar in the last reel now has a much more robust replacement, and the wheezy nag with bat wings that carries the Angel of Death into the Duc’s niece’s living room has been pimped out with some eerie rays of light. Even so, they still can’t help but instil a feeling of bathos.

Hammer fans take this sort of thing in their stride, though, and it all somehow remains cosily satisfying. And the restoration really is quite something, with some of the costumes and sets so vividly coloured you would think they were radioactive. Throw in some informative extras, and you have another fine entry in this ongoing series of Hammer releases.

Extras: Documentaries – ‘Making Of’, ‘Restoring The Devil Rides Out’ and ‘Dennis Wheatley at Hammer’ / World of Hammer Episode ‘Hammer’ / Gallery / Commentary featuring Christopher Lee, Sarah Lawson & Marcus Hearn

Review: The Thompsons / Cert: 18 / Director: Mitchell Altieri, Phil Flores / Screenplay: Mitchell Altieri, Cory Knauf / Starring: Mackenzie Firgens, Elizabeth Henstridge, Cory Knauf, Ryan Hartwig, Samuel Child / Release Date: October 15th

A belated sequel to The Hamiltons (2006), The Thompsons is about a dysfunctional family of vampires left to fend for themselves after the deaths of their parents. Caught doing their whole ripping-off-heads-and-guzzling-blood thing on CCTV and now wanted by the law, the gang light out for ye olde England in the hope of tracking down some distant relations. Good idea. After all, we Brits are known for being friendly and welcoming, right?

Following a lead, Francis (Knauf) drops into a picturesque pub somewhere in the Home Counties. Behind the bar are Father and Mother Stuart (O’Meara and Giles), heads of the local vampire clan, which include their two burly sons and Riley (Henstridge), their nubile daughter, who is soon offering Francis toothy smiles and a free pint. Hooray, time to summon the others so everyone can get together for a jolly old knees-up. But hang on, doesn’t this all sound a bit too good to be true?

The Thompsons aims straight for the True Blood fanbase. As in that show, there is copious bare breastage (courtesy of a Scandinavian backpacker terrorized by the Stuart boys and a naked prostitute who gets thoroughly groped before being sucked dry). Francis, with his puppy dog eyes, is very much in the soulful, sensitive vampire mould, and he sports Eric Northman’s floppy haircut. And, despite sporadic comic book gore, the storyline has a comfortingly soft centre revolving around the themes of family and togetherness.

Which is all fair enough. What lets it down, rather badly, is the English setting. The filmmakers seem to have only a hazy idea of how an English pub works (and an inflated notion of how much a publican might earn, with the Stuarts living it up in style in a stately castle). The dialogue is clunky, with more than a whiff of Dixon of Dock Green between the expletives. And the lack of any even half well-known British thesp’s gives the film a cut-price feel.

Another problem is that there’s precious little sense of a family dynamic. At the start, a number of flashy directorial flourishes are employed to big up Francis’ siblings, but after that they fade rapidly into the wallpaper, stumbling into frame every now and then to service the plot.

On the plus side, Knauf makes for a watchable lead – droopy enough to appeal to the ladies, but not so pretty than men will hate him. And the DVD boasts some generous extras, including an interview with the film’s British co-producer, who explains that the creative talent were inspired by “old English movies like An American Werewolf in London”. Oh, you mean the one directed by Sir John Landis? Great movie.

Extras: None

Review: The Mummy’s Shroud / Cert: PG / Director: John Gilling / Screenplay: John Gilling / Starring: Andre Morell, John Phillips, David Buck, Elizabeth Sellers, Maggie Kimberly, Michael Ripper, Tim Barrett, Roger Delgado / Date of release: October 22nd

Beware the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet! The third entry in Hammer’s haphazard Mummy franchise – and the last of the classic Hammers filmed at the legendary Bray studios – was written and directed by John Gilling in 1967. The year before he had been responsible for both Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile and had demonstrated a surprising flair not only in working to Hammer’s notoriously thrifty budgets but also managing to breathe new life into tired, derivative, catchpenny material. But even Gilling had his work cut out with the Mummy, a series which basically had just one story to tell – long-dead mummified corpse is resurrected and goes on a killing spree, wiping out those who have defiled its tomb. The song remains the same here but Gilling populates his screenplay with a beefy ensemble cast all earnestly acting their socks off in resolutely B-Movie material and while the film offers up nothing new it generates a decent amount of tension and there’s some unusually graphic (even for Hammer) blood and guts.

We’re in 1920s Egypt (looks like a sandpit in Dorset to us) where a bunch of archaeologists are about to uncover the long-lost tomb of boy Pharaoh Kah-to-Bey. Barking Bedouin Hasmid (Delgado) warns them of terrible reprisals but they remove the corpse of the child, his shroud and the mummified body of his manservant Prem and put them on display in a Cairo Museum. Sure enough, before long the expedition members are being picked off one by one by a shambling silent killer and it’s left to Paul Preston (Buck), son of greedy expedition financer Stanley Preston (Phillips) to uncover the truth about the supernatural stalker prowling the backstreets of Cairo.

The Mummy’s Shroud is efficient 1960s schlock, powered by probably the best Hammer performance from genre legend Michael Ripper (outstanding in a beautifully-nuanced role full of genuine pathos as Preston Snr’s underdog servant Longbarrow) and memorable for some inventive death sequences – victims are variously strangled, doused in photographic acid and set on fire, wrapped in blankets and chucked out of a window. Ultimately Gilling’s best efforts are hamstrung by the limitations of the story and the film misses the presence of Hammer stalwarts Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing (although it’s rumoured that Cushing provides the opening narration) but it’s never less than watchable and entertaining even if it’s undoubtedly second-tier Hammer horror.

Special Features: Decent ‘Making of’ featuring contributions from Hammer historians, a touching tribute to late actor David Buck from his widow, Hammer legend Madeline Smith, trailers, photo gallery.

Review: Petty Romance / Cert: 15 / Director: Kim Jeong-Hoon-Il / Screenplay: Kim Jeong-Hoon-Il / Starring: Lee Seon-gyun, Choi Kang-hee, Baek Do-bin, Choi Hee-jin / Release Date: October 8th

Here’s one for all those comic geeks and budding manga-ka out there: a rom-com set in the world of Manwah (Korean comic books). Bet you weren’t expecting that! Jung-bae (Lee Seon-gyun) is widely acknowledged to be talented artist; unfortunately, his works, heavy on philosophy but light on plot and human interest, don’t go down at all well with publishers and readers. When a competition for an adult comic is announced with a cash prize of a whopping $100,000, the earnest young artist reluctantly decides to take on a writer to spice things up.

He turns to the kooky Da-rim (Choi Kang-hee), a virgin with a vivid imagination who has just lost her job as a sex columnist. Loftily assuming that comics are for kids and that it doesn’t take much effort to dream one up, she lazes around his flat, scoffing noodles and slurping down endless cups of coffee and falling asleep. Eventually, however, the stern Jung-bae instils some kind of work ethic in her, and the two of them cobble together a racy story about a female assassin who has kinky sex with her victims.

The film follows the seesawing of their relationship, in which first she, then he, has the upper hand. Inevitably, romance blossoms, but there are obstacles to true love. Da-rim’s bitchy fashionista friend Kyung-sun (Ryu Hyung-kyung) wants Jung-bae for herself. And Jung-bae (who has a complicated backstory to do with his father, a famous artist, and a much-treasured painting of his mother) has problems letting go of his past and moving forward.

These twists and turns are piled on a bit too thick by first-time director Kim Jeong-hoon-Il, and some might gag on the movie’s sugar-coated feel. But this is still a film with a lot going for it. There’s the novelty of the setting, with its simultaneous camaraderie and backstabbing (and a horrendous awards ceremony at the end with all the positive vibes of a crematorium service). And things are livened up considerably by the use of animated cutaways, mounted in a wide variety of styles, which illustrate the characters’ inner fantasies, or snippets of the comic they’re collaborating on, or sometimes a feverish amalgam of both.

Lastly, there are the performances. Lee Seon-gyun does a good job as the long-suffering and stoical Jung-bae, and the lovely Hyung-kyung Rung pouts and struts with the best of them as vicious clothes-horse Kyung-sun. But this is very much Choi Kang-hee’s movie. With rolling eyes, elastic features and any number of quirks and pratfalls, she delivers an appealingly ditzy turn very like Zooey Deschanel’s in New Girl. So if you love comics but you’re also a bit of a softy, this could be the feel-good flick for you.

Special Features: Making of, Interview of lead actor and actress, Korean Teaser Trailer, Stills Gallery