'Karate Kill' (2016) Movie Review

Kurando Mitsutake’s Karate Kill may not have much in the way of plot, but it certainly has an excess of violent martial arts fights, blood, and gratuitous nudity. So that’s something for the Gun Woman director to hang his hat on.

DVD Review: 'The Burning Moon'

Do you like disemboweling? Do you like people being forced to eat their friend’s eyeballs? I knew you did. And because you have such discerning, gore-soaked taste, you’ll probably want to hurry out and pick up a copy of Olaf Ittenbach’s German blood-fest “The Burning Moon”. Seriously, there’s something horribly, and delightfully wrong with this dude. The film is a bit of a mythic figure, circulating on bootleg VHS tapes traded in seedy back rooms by an underground network of hardcore horror fanatics. At least that’s the way I imagine it going down. Given the cinematic mayhem that is now available on DVD, that would be an appropriately sketchy scenario.

DVD Review: 'Bloody Birthday', 'Nightmares', and 'The Baby'

Severin Films kicks this summer season off right, releasing a trio of obscure, little-seen horror films from the 1970s and early 80s, or as I like to call them, three more reasons not to go out in the sun. We get two entries into the slasher movie sweepstakes, “Bloody Birthday” and “Nightmares”, and one, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-people flick, “The Baby”.

'The Hangover 2' Movie Review

You may or may not know this—depending on how much of the advertising blitz for “The Hangover Part 2” you’ve absorbed in recent days—but it seems that the Wolfpack is in fact back. The most common cry across the landscape of the internet has been that the sequel looks exactly like the first film. On a recent episode of “Ellen”—yes, I watch “Ellen” from time to time—Bradley Cooper confirmed as much, and he is entirely correct. Director Todd Phillips and company employ the same “lost night” story-telling technique that worked so well in the original, and “The Hangover 2” is a really little more rehash of “The Hangover”. Which means that it is still pretty damn funny.

'Swedish Sensationsfilms: A Clandestine History of Sex, Thrillers, and Kicker Cinema' Book Review

When you think of Sweden you probably imagine the picturesque Scandinavian countryside, universal healthcare, and buxom young blond women, who, at least as portrayed by every sitcom of the 1980, are ditzy and easy. What you may not know, however, is that Sweden also has a long history of underground, sex fueled, out of control sexploitation films. In 1911 Sweden established the world’s first national film censorship board, which set off a century long battle between proprietors of sleaze and mayhem, the public, and the government.