Guyana: Cult of the Damned (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV Falling into a category that might be called "exploitation drama," Guyana: Cult of the Damned (aka Guyana: Crime of the Century, 1979) was the second such work by Mexican filmmaker René Cardona, Jr., whose earlier Survive! (Supervivientes de los Andes - Andes Survivors, 1976) dramatized the disturbing story of passengers and crew aboard doomed Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed into mountains so remote survivors resorted to cannibalism of the deceased until they were eventually belatedly rescued. The bigger-budgeted Guyana: Cult of the Damned explores the 1978 Jonestown Massacre, in which 918 people, most members of Jim Jones's religious cult, were murdered or compelled to commit "revolutionary suicide." It was the first dramatization of the tragedy, though not released in the U.S. until January 1980, three months prior to Guyana Tragedy: The ...Read the entire review »

Crazy Nights (Blu-ray) by Kurt Dahlke Crazy Nights:Billed as ‘The Wildest Mondo Movie Ever", Crazy Nights comes across more like "The Lamest Frankenstein's Monster of a Mondo Movie Ever" and it's probably all down to our beloved Aristide Massaccesi's bungling and being forced to pivot, or lying to people or something. At any rate, what is presented here as a ‘Mondo Movie' about discos or strip clubs, more or less, is both less and more than the sum of its parts. It's an interminably tedious, yet oddly invigorating sexcapade that could only have come out of late 1970s Italy.Crazy Nights gives top billing to Amanda Lear. Lear has had an interesting life to say the least, as a sometimes actor, chanteuse, and muse to David Bowie, the band Roxy Music, and Salvador Dali. (A well-known song from her sultry, languid pop music career is "Queen of Chinatown", a song so fraught with husky, ambiguous vocals it is known t...Read the entire review »

Dreambuilders - Blu-ray + Digital (Blu-ray) by Ryan Keefer The Movie: I've been slowly trying to broaden my kid's cinematic horizons lately, but the window between something that looks silly against something that may be a little too ‘mature' (in the non-romantic context) for his tastes, with the most recent attempt being Dreambuilders, a 2020 animated film from Denmark that could be viewed as a lesser family member to either Monsters, Inc. or Inside Out, two gems within the Pixar stable. From a screenplay by Soren Hansen and directed by Kim Jensen and Torri Zinck, the film looks at Minna, the only child to her father John. When John meets someone, Minna becomes stepsister to Jenny, a caustic, superficial teen preoccupied with popularity and status. When Minna realizes that she has the ability to control the d...Read the entire review »