Justin Channell’s “Winners Tape All” is a very niche mock documentary about a pair of brothers that became low budget horror filmmakers who went on to direct schlock slashers like “Curse of Stabberman” and “Cannibal Swim Club.” It’s a difficult premise to explain, and sadly it’s not a movie that lends itself to a lot of laughs or even an interesting story. Director Channell and stars Zane Crosby and Josh Lively look like they had a great time making “Winners Tape All,” but even at an hour in length, their premise feels stretched pretty thin. It’s an interesting concept for Channell to evoke the video age and explore cheaply made horror movies that were filmed straight to video.
Space Jam (1996): 20th Anniversary Steelbook [Blu-ray/DVD/Digital]
Your enjoyment of “Space Jam” may depend on your nostalgia factor and your love for Michael Jordan. Ultimately, “Space Jam” is a serviceable kids and family animation hybrid that teams up one of the most iconic sports heroes of the nineties with one of the most iconic animated characters of all time. Michael Jordan’s popularity was somewhat waning in 1996 thanks to his stint playing baseball, and “Space Jam” is something of an image boost that also happened to be a pretty huge marketing success during the mid-nineties. With toys, music, VHS tapes, and everything else, “Space Jam” was a pretty big pop culture storm that built a larger and loyal audience.
Terror 5 (2016) [Ithaca Fantastik 2016]
In this Argentinian horror film, multiple tales crisscross and overlap, creating a whole that shows chaos in a city. Students torture teachers, party goers discuss snuff films, a couple is being spied on in a motel room, men standing watch have an interesting night, and mourners meet creatures in a cemetery. Written by Sebastian Rotstein with collaborative writer Nicolas Gueilburt and co-directed by Sebastian and Federico Rotstein, Terror 5 works these 5 stories together and interconnects them in a way that makes the whole work. The characters are varied but mostly young people, most likely to appeal to their demographic and for parts of the story to make more sense.
Kammati Paadam (2016) [Ithaca Fantastik 2016]
After a friend’s frantic call, Krishnan returns to his childhood and teenage years’ village to find his friend and what happened to him. Through a series of flashbacks, their lives are shown through school age, teen years, early adulthood, etc. With a script written by P. Balachandran with collaborative writing by Ajithkumar and G. Sethunath and directed by Rajeev Ravi, the film weaves back and forth through time showing more and more of lead Krishnan’s live as well as his friends and love’s lives. The way the years are mixed together with different actors for only a section of them requires one to pay attention to film as only details such as more white hair show the time passing. Even with this, the film is fairly easy to follow until the search for Ganga really heats up and more characters are added.
Miruthan (2016) [Ithaca Fantastik 2016]
In the small town of Ooty, India, a toxic spill transforms people into blood-thirsty, fast running, wire-stunt performing zombies. Director Shakti Soundar Rajan takes a fairly typical zombie story, mixes in an unrequited love story, a dash of political observation, a Bollywood musical number, wire-stunts, and a good sense of humor about the whole thing to create a zombie film that doesn’t feel like it’s just hitting the tropes and its marks mechanically, it’s fast paced and fun while adding a special touch to its subject. The idea of mixing Bollywood style film with zombies might not seem like an obvious choice but here it works of course, the humor being quite on point adds to this and to the enjoyment overall.
Fetish Factory (2017)
In a private burlesque parlor in Hollywood, performers and VIP clients face off with a zombie attack. Directed by Staci Layne Wilson from her own screenplay based on a story by Lony Ruhmann, Fetish Factory mixes burlesque dances and performers with end of the world and zombie tropes for a fun result. Staci Layne Wilson takes the zombies sub-genre that is all over the place lately and focuses it by bringing her personal touch to it and adding a varied group of beauties to fight them off. Granted, this in and of itself is nothing new (we’ve seen hotties and strippers fight zombies before) but her usage of actual burlesque performers and actresses adds to this in a way that changes from the usual boobs and blood route these films take.
Hive (2016)
In the end what will win out and be our undoing will be apathy. It’s the willingness to just sit back and allow evil, to apathetically cling to our faith without challenging those that seek to do wrong. It’s our talent for not doing anything, and allowing injustice. It doesn’t matter what we believe, what politics we subscribe to, but when the world comes literally crashing down on us, we’re all just bugs ready to be squashed. “Hive” is set in a world where its breed of insectoid people have been split and divided by beliefs, religion, and class.