The War Lord (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV A Medieval drama starring Charlton Heston, The War Lord (1965) is one of the actor's best films, and a personal project he spearheaded for several years before finally getting it made, though its unusualness, coupled with a studio financing it that really wanted a more conventional film, limited its success at the box-office. Those weaned on Heston's historical and biblical epics like El Cid, Ben-Hur and others may at first be nonplussed by its waist-deep efforts at period fidelity, and a story and characters that unfolds in terms of the time and place where it is set, rather than one trying to draw parallels to contemporary times, the usual manner of such films. Further, to get the film made Heston and producer Walter Seltzer agreed to shoot most of it at Universal Studios, much of it on the backlot, giving it a look and feel quite different from the majority of Europe-shot epi...Read the entire review »

Ulzana's Raid (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV One of the best Westerns of the 1970s, Robert Aldrich's Ulzana's Raid (1972) combines elements of John Ford influences, particularly Fort Apache (1948), with Vietnam War allegorical elements like Little Big Man (1970), but from a somewhat more sympathetic U.S. Cavalry perspective. Scottish writer-producer Alan Sharp had an eclectic career, first in the U.K., then in the U.S. where he wrote this and Billy Two Hats (1974), another fine Western. His later credits varied widely, from the awful Damnation Alley (1977) to Sam Peckinpah's muddled The Osterman Weekend (1983), and a long descent into TV movies before reemerging briefly with the fine Rob Roy (1995). He died in 2013. Following abuses by white agency authorities, a small...Read the entire review »

Mon Mon Mon Monsters! (Blu-ray) by Adam Tyner Hey, kids! It's time for another DVD Talk pop quiz. [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] (1) Can you find the monster in the screenshot above? <input type="radio" name="monster" onclick="monsterQuiz('1')">The girl on the left <input type="radio" name="monster" onclick="monsterQuiz('2')">The girl on the right <input type="radio" name="monster" onclick="monsterQuiz('4')">All of the above <input type="radio" name="monster" on...Read the entire review »

The Oscar (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV For a movie this stupefyingly awful, The Oscar (1966) is pretty darn entertaining. A kind of Hollywood All About Eve on steroids, the picture for years was largely buried in obscurity until a screening at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood 20-odd years ago. Present was co-writer Harlan Ellison, atypically contrite, there to literally apologize for the movie the audience was about to see. For years far too much of the criticism was dumped on co-star Tony Bennett, in his first and last acting role in a feature film. Considering that he was never an actor to begin with, he's actually not so bad. Rather, it's the star of the film, Stephen Boyd, who truly dazzles with his wild-eyed, teeth-baring portrait of a cruel, ambitious film star Frankie Fane. His may be the worst starring performance in a major American feature film in the history of motion pictures. Read the entire review »