Go Go Mania! (Blu-ray) by Adam Tyner <hr /> "Pop Gear &ndash; hey, that's the name of this picture. Well, there's one thing. It doesn't really matter whether you dig it or whether you don't dig it. There's one sure thing, and that's that, in its time, pop music has given lots of pleasure to lots of people, and ever since the minuet was up to the minute did one big pop knot release big energy!" <hr /> [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] Think Top of the Pops, only bigger! <spa...Read the entire review »

Inferno of Torture (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movie: Directed by Teruo Ishii in 1969 and set in the Japan of the nineteenth century, Inferno Of Torture (which is also known as Hell's Tattooers) follows the story of a woman named Yumi (Yumika Katayama) who finds herself in hot water early in the film when she can't come up with the money to pay off a debt to a loan shark. To make amends, she accepts an agreement wherein she will spend two years working as a Geisha Girl and, once her debt is paid off, she'll once again have her freedom. Shortly after her arrival, Yumi quickly comes to the realization that she is, in fact, being forced not to work as a Geisha but as a prostitute in a brothel that caters to a Caucasian clientele. To make their prostitutes more exotic and therefore more profitable, the madam, Otatsu (Mieko Fujimoto) employs a tattoo artist named Horihide (Teruo Yoshida) to create lavish skin art ...Read the entire review »

Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (Blu-ray) by Tyler Foster Within the first few minutes of Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, Dr. Mo Van De Kamp, the character played by director Paul Bartel hears a scathing one-liner and says, "What a horrid, fabulous thing to say!" That statement sums up Struggle's philosophy in a nutshell, a free-wheeling, unusually charming, consistently absurd sex comedy conceived by Bartel and Bruce Wagner, the latter of whom would go on to write the final screenplay. Despite the title, the film isn't a political commentary onthe class divide itself, but rather the fact that whether one is serving or being served, the same basic desire for sex and human connection drives almost everyone. The film concerns two rich and newly-single women, the recently-widowed Claire Lipkin (Jacqueline Bisset), and the recently-divorced Lisabeth Hepburn-Saravian (Mary Woronov), and their respective servants, Juan (Robert B...Read the entire review »

Grunt! The Wrestling Movie (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movie: When this 1985 comedy film, which is dressed as a documentary, begins we flashback to 1979 where Mad Dog Joe DeCurso (Greg 'Magic' Schwarz) challenges Skull Crusher Johnson (Victor Rivera) for the championship belt. Mad Dog gets Skull Crusher's head between the ropes, gets a drop on him and then literally decapitates his opponent in the ring! This sends Mad Dog into a deep depression that results in homelessness and then, ultimately, in his suicide when he jumps to his death from a bridge into the river below. His manager/girlfriend, Lola (Marilyn Dodds Frank), is devastated and the officials take five years to figure out what to do with Skull Crusher's belt, since Mad Dog has been disqualified for killing his opponent in the ring. Five years later and a new wrestling Phenom has arrived on the scene. Known only as The Mask (Steve Strong) and accompanied by a beautiful ...Read the entire review »