A Pain in the Ass (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV A Pain in the Ass (L'emmerdeur, "The Troublemaker," 1973) is a very funny French comedy built around a premise as old as the movies, though rarely done this well: a character with a pressing engagement encounters a well-meaning stranger whose actions foul everything up spectacularly. Another recent Kino release, Clockwise (1985) with John Cleese, builds from the same idea, and A Pain in the Ass itself has been remade multiple times, none remotely as good as the original. The best-known of the remakes is Buddy Buddy (1981), the last film of director Billy Wilder. Wilder himself disowned the film, and despite the presence of two big stars, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, it's hard to come by on DVD and yet to be released to Blu-ray. I've never seen it, but watching A Pain in the Ass some of the reasons for its failure are immediately clear.

The Mary Millington Movie Collection (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movie:Mary Millington, born Mary Ruth Maxted in 1945, passed away from an overdose in 1979 but she remains a popular counter culture figure in her native England and beyond thanks to her run as a model and actress in various adult magazines and films made in conjunction with publisher/producer David Sulluivan. British Blu-ray distributor Screenbound Films gathers together a selection of some of her better remembered films and has released them, with a load of extra features, as The Mary Millington Movie Collection.Disc One: Come Play with Me (1977)irected by George Harrison Marks, this first film tells the story of an aged criminal named Cornelius Clapworthy (played by Harrison Marks himself) who makes his money as a forger. He and his partner in crime, Maurice Kelly (Alfie Bass), have been passing fake banknotes around London with quite a ...Read the entire review »

Tower of Evil (Blu-ray) by Ian Jane The Movie:1972's Tower Of Evil, also known as Horror On Snape Island and then later as Beyond The Fog (to cash in on the success of Carpenter's movie), begins with a fantastic scene in which the father and son team of John (George Coulouris) and Hamp Gurney (Jack Watson) take their rickety old boat ashore and set about exploring a creepy island enshrouded in fog. They come across an old lighthouse tower and after poking about discover three naked corpses, one of which is missing its head. The only survivor of what appears to be a massacre is Penny (Candace Glendenning), who runs out of her hiding place naked, screaming, and brandishing a very big knife which she uses to stab John to death on the spot.From here we cut to a hospital where Dr. Simpson (Anthony Valentine) tries to use some sort of wacky hypnotherapy to pick through Penny's memories and f...Read the entire review »