Before 1994 our only real animated Spider-Man fix was the 1981 series “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.” Intent on rethinking the Spider-Man mold for the nineties, FOX forked over a ton of money to New World Corporation (and then Saban) to create Spider-Man: The Animated Series. With a completely different animation style, and small uses of computer animation, “Spider-Man: The Animated Series” premiered in 1994 with the episode “Night of the Lizard” and managed to take off as a ratings boom for FOX in the wake of similar successes like “X-Men” and “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.”
Tag Archives: Crime
Belzebuth (2019) [Cinepocalypse 2019]
It’s stunning that there has never been much stride made in the realm of possession movies. It seems like “The Exorcist” was the beginning and end of the sub-genre, followed by decades of films that ranged from serviceable to downright abysmal. “Belzebuth” further proves that theory as it’s a middling horror thriller that’s densely packed, kind of confusing, and ironically manages to deliver some good scares from the real life atrocities it depicts rather than the images of demons, evil Jesus Christ, and exorcisms.
Belzebuth (2019) [Cinepocalypse 2019]
A man who lost everything in a freak attack must investigate another a few years later. What he finds leads him down a pathway he never expected.
The Last to See Them (Gli Ultimi Viderli Vivere) (2019) [Cinepocalypse 2019]
Director Sara Summa paints “The Last to See Them” as the anti-thriller, it’s the calm before the storm, as four family members living in a remote farm in the Italian countryside are doomed to die horrendous murders in the middle of the night. What we see is the hours leading up to their death as… well nothing happens. Absolutely nothing happens. Director Sara Summa’s “The Last to See Them” has all the ingredients for a brutally creepy, and unsettling thriller but it amounts to a disappointingly empty posturing of the antithesis of the genre.
You Have to See This! Tammy and the T-Rex: The Gore Cut (1994) [Cinepocalypse 2019]
“I was sticking all this shit in it, just to make it work.” – Stewart Raffill on writing “Tammy and the T-Rex”
In the nineties America was obsessed with dinosaurs. For reasons we could never put our fingers on, Dinosaurs were in just about every facet of pop culture you could imagine. Video games, movies, animated series, they were mascots for snack foods, they were the basis for a family sitcom, and yes, they were fit in to movies amounting to cinematic oddities still making movie buffs scratch their heads. We had a family film about miniature dinosaurs, a buddy cop comedy about a female cop and a dinosaur, and yes, we even had “Tammy and the T-Rex.”
Batman and Robin (1997) [4K UHD/Blu-Ray/Digital]
No matter what you feel about “Batman and Robin,” you can’t deny that it almost killed the comic book movie as a sub-genre. It also about killed the careers of Alicia Silverstone, Chris O’Donnell, and Uma Thurman, all of whom took years to recover. Even today with so much nostalgia and looking back on classically bad movies, “Batman and Robin” is still just bad. I understand Warner wanted kid friendly, and Joel Schumacher delivered on kid friendly, but in the process he also delivered a nigh unwatchable sequel that also killed Batman on film for years until Christopher Nolan swooped in to reboot the whole kit and caboodle.
The Universal Horror Collection: Volume 1 [Blu-Ray]
When “The Universal Horror Collection” was originally announced, it was titled the “Boris Karloff/Bela Lugosi Collection” by Shout Factory. One can only assume that they’ve managed to retain the rights to many Universal movies obscure and classic, thus changing their new series to “The Universal Horror Collection.” With that broad a title, the sky is apparently the limit for Shout Factory and what they can do with these volumes. Since this was originally a Karloff/Lugosi four movie set, the whole of the films included star the pair of horror icons. With Volume 1 of “The Universal Horror Collection,” fans will be elated to see that they’re starting us off on the right foot.