How do you stop the city’s most insane criminals when you yourself are on the brink of insanity? Who do the heroes turn to when they’re about to lose their minds? That’s the questions asked during the sequel to “The Depression of Detective Downs” a wonderful closer to an already great saga about Detective Rolando Downs, a well meaning detective who is so at odds with life that all he can do is watch the days fade away all the while witness his luck turn sour with every passing moment.
Bad Teacher (2011)
Assholes are just a part of life. They’re there when we wake up and they’re there when we go to sleep, the only consolation we can take in this revelation is that they’ll likely never learn their lessons and will continue being assholes until the day they die. That’s the moral behind “Bad Teacher,” a veritable “Bad Santa” clone that takes a misanthropic bombshell and plants her in the middle of All American suburbia where she’s forced to interact with kids and positive role models on a daily basis when she seeks only to gratify her own base needs and nothing more.
Transformers: Beast Wars Season 1 (DVD)
Shout! Factory releases one of the finer animated relics of the nineties: “Beast Wars” a veritable buffet of trademark Transformers tropes that pits Autobot against Decepticon except this time they’re in animal form and are now known as the Maximals and the Predacons, two warring races of transformers descendents whom are all marooned on a distant planet from Cybertron where the two races are now fighting for control of the mysterious fossil fuel known as Energon. As a fan boy of the transformers at one time I can very much remember indulging myself in the saga of the Beast Wars.
Doctor Mordrid – Master of the Unknown (1992)
“Doctor Mordrid” is a change of pace for Full Moon. It’s a well made superhero movie that is about one of a kind, if you consider the Full Moon library. Of course everyone knows the story that this was originally supposed to be a Dr. Strange movie, but when Full Moon lost the character trademark from Marvel Comics, Charles Band and his wizards transformed a potential lawsuit in to an original property, Jeffery Combs is good as the heroic Mordrid, a man awaiting his fate from the almighty Monitor harnessing his powers and awaiting the time to use them.
Puppet Master 2: His Unholy Creations (1991)
There’s a new puppet introduced in “Puppet Master 2”: The Torch. He’s a bullet toothed flame throwing foot soldier of Toulon and he’s a force to be reckoned with. For the so-so “Puppet Master” there’s the even better sequel, a mixture of murder mystery and the paranormal that teams a bunch of paranormal investigators with the puppets whom seek to undo their work at every turn. For this sequel’s faults (Toulon was buried outside the famous hotel, why?) there are a lot of pluses, the one being that the puppets are given much more screen time thus much more screen time that allows them to stomp around the hotel and commit their misdeeds.
Director Patrick Rea and his Gallery of Nailbiters
Patrick Rea is probably one of my favorite independent directors at the moment and while all of his films may not be home runs, he’s created a veritable gallery of short horror and darkly comedic films that have stormed the worldwide web and spawned a following of folks just waiting his newest yarn that always ensure surprise twists and turns, sharp storytelling, and top notch performances. Ambitious and enthusiastic about his art, director Patrick Rea first started sending us his short films after we began reviewing the shorts we discovered on the net and since then has remained a contact for Cinema Crazed.
In the midst of directing his new feature length horror film called “Nailbiter,” a film that’s remained under wraps and mysterious to most online entities, Patrick Rea took the time out from his hectic shooting schedule in scorching heat to indulge us in an in-depth interview to learn where Patrick Rea honed his skills and how he went from film school student, to Fangoria filmmaker, to co-founder of SenoReality Pictures. If you haven’t seen any of Patrick Rea’s short film we suggest looking for them as they present a keen eye for detail and dark tones while always ensuring a surprise or two that will leave you wanting more.
The Rite (2011) [Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital]
2011’s “The Rite” is built around the Hollywood doctrine that any movie, big or small, can be made automatically horrifying if including Anthony Hopkins as one of its stars. Unfortunately that’s not the case for “The Rite” a truly terrible exorcism film that dabbles in the religious hysteria of losing faith and includes about as much exorcist crapola to keep audiences watching with baited breath unsure if they’ll get anything even remotely shocking as what was seen in the William Friedkin classic film from the seventies.