Fall 2023 viewing, part one

Detective Luigi Mackeroni (Udo Samel) and his cross-dressing partner Babette (Leonard Lansink) face an unusual foe in Martin Walz's Killer Condom (1996)

As always, writing falls behind viewing and I’ve missed mentioning some disks that deserved at least a comment – so here are some quick notes on recent releases from Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome and some smaller labels covering a wide range of genres from spaghetti westerns to East European animation, from low-budget sci-fi to documentary, from comedy to horror to exploitation.

Cauldron Films, round three

Altair (Diana Bovio) stands in the midst of a bird storm in Victor Dryere's 1974: La posesión de Altair (2016)

The latest releases from Cauldron Films are a pair of little-known found-footage horror movies which both have their moments, but suffer from the genre’s frequent shortcomings. Mike Costanza’s The Collingswood Story (2002) was the first movie to use on-line video chat as a storytelling medium, while Victor Dryere’s 1974: La posesión de Altair (2016) goes back to pre-video times, using super-8 home movies to show a young married couple under supernatural attack in rural Mexico.

Year End 2011: video

Not surprisingly, given the amount of time I spend watching movies at home, I came across quite a few worthwhile titles during the year. I’ve already written about many of these in this blog, so will just offer capsule comments here (in no particular order) about ones that I particularly recommend. Dramatic features The World, […]

Found-footage addendum

In light of this week’s post on Matthew J. Avant’s “found footage documentary” Lunopolis, it seems like fortuitous timing that Glenn Erickson over at DVD Savant has just passed on a couple of links dealing with Les documents interdits, a series of found-footage shorts by French filmmaker Jean-Teddy Filippe. For anyone who enjoys the form, […]

DVD of the week: Lunopolis

There are two main types of time travel story. The first treats time as little more than another spatial dimension, with the traveler heading off to see something in the past or future as if going to another country. H.G Wells’ The Time Machine was of this type, the title machine essentially just a device […]

Blasts from the past

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit (2015)

Catching up

Late summer viewing 2014, part two

Sex-Death-Exploitation-Art

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