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Dark Star

Sales Rank:6703
List Price: $9.99
Lowest New Price: $4.37
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MPAA Rating: G (General Audience)

Format:

Color
DVD-Video
Letterboxed
Special Edition
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Dan O'Bannon
Dre Pahich
Brian Narelle
Cal Kuniholm
Adam Beckenbaugh

The Dark Star's crew is on a 20-year mission to destroy unstable planets and make way for future colonization. The smart bombs they use to effect this zoom off cheerfully to do their duty. But unlike Star Trek, in which order prevails, the nerves of this crew are becoming increasingly frayed to the point of psychosis. Their captain has been killed by a radiation leak that also destroyed their toilet paper. "Don't give me any of that 'Intelligent Life' stuff," says Commander Doolittle when presented with the possibility of alien life. "Find me something I can blow up." When an asteroid storm causes a malfunction, Bomb Number 20 (the most cheerful character in the film) has to be repeatedly talked out of exploding prematurely, each time becoming more and more peevish, until they have to teach him phenomenology to make him doubt his existence. And the film's apocalyptic ending, lifted almost wholly from Ray Bradbury's story "Kaleidoscope," has the remaining crew drifting away from each other in space, each to a suitably absurd end. Absurd, surreal, and very funny. John Carpenter once described Dark Star as "Waiting for Godot in space." Made at a cost of practically nothing, the film's effects are nevertheless impressive and, along with the number of ideas crammed into its 83 minutes, ought to shame makers of science fiction films costing hundreds of times more. The DVD contains both the original 68-minute release and the director's full version. --Jim Gay

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Doctor Who: The Trial of a Time Lord - Episode 144-147

Sales Rank:8585
List Price: $59.98
Lowest New Price: $42.80
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Format:

Box set
Collector's Edition
Color
DVD-Video
Limited Edition
Original recording remastered
Restored
Subtitled
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Colin Baker
Nicola Bryant

Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 10/07/2008 Run time: 350 minutes Rating: Nr

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Videodrome

Sales Rank:9051
List Price: $9.99
Lowest New Price: $4.42
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

Anamorphic
Closed-captioned
Color
Dolby
DVD-Video
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

James Woods
Deborah Harry
Sonja Smits
Peter Dvorsky
Leslie Carlson

Love it or loathe it, David Cronenberg's 1983 horror film Videodrome is a movie to be reckoned with. Inviting extremes of response from disdain (critic Roger Ebert called it "one of the least entertaining films ever made") to academic euphoria, it's the kind of film that is simultaneously sickening and seemingly devoid of humanity, but also blessed with provocative ideas and a compelling subtext of social commentary. Giving yet another powerful and disturbing performance, James Woods stars as the operator of a low-budget cable-TV station who accidentally intercepts a mysterious cable transmission that features the apparent torture and death of women in its programming. He traces the show to its source and discovers a mysterious plot to broadcast a subliminally influential signal into the homes of millions, masterminded by a quasi-religious character named Brian O'Blivion and his overly reverent daughter. Meanwhile Woods is falling under the spell, becoming a victim of video, and losing his grip--both physically and psychologically--on the distinction between reality and television. A potent treatise on the effects of total immersion into our mass-media culture, Videodrome is also (to the delight of Cronenberg's loyal fans) a showcase for obsessions manifested in the tangible world of the flesh. It's a hallucinogenic world in which a television set seems to breathe with a life of its own, and where the body itself can become a VCR repository for disturbing imagery. Featuring bizarre makeup effects by Rick Baker and a daring performance by Deborah Harry (of Blondie fame) as Wood's sadomasochistic girlfriend, Videodrome is pure Cronenberg--unsettling, intelligent, and decidedly not for every taste. --Jeff Shannon

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The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (2-Disc Collector's Edition)

Sales Rank:14934
List Price: $19.98
Lowest New Price: $11.38
Lowest Used Price: $9.97
MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

AC-3
Collector's Edition
Color
Dolby
Dubbed
DVD-Video
HiFi Sound
Subtitled
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Eli Wallach
Clint Eastwood
Lee Van Cleef
Aldo Giuffrè
Luigi Pistilli

If you think of A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More as the tasty appetizers in Sergio Leone's celebrated "Dollars" trilogy of Italian "Spaghetti" Westerns, then The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a lavish full-course feast. Readily identified by the popular themes of its innovative score by Ennio Morricone (one of the bestselling soundtracks of all time), this cinematic milestone eclipsed its influential predecessors with a $1.2 million budget (considered extravagant in the mid-1960s), greater production values to accommodate Leone's epic vision of greed and betrayal, and a three-hour running time for its wide-ranging plot about the titular trio of mercenaries ("Good" Blondie played by rising star Clint Eastwood, "Bad" Angel Eyes played by Lee Van Cleef, and "Ugly" Tuco played by Eli Wallach) in a ruthless Civil War-era quest for $200,000 worth of buried Confederate gold. Virtually all of Leone's stylistic attributes can be found here in full fruition, from the constant inclusion of Roman Catholic iconography to a climactic circular shoot-out, along with Leone's trademark use of surreal landscapes, brilliant widescreen compositions and extreme close-ups of actors so intimate that they burn into the viewer's memory. And while some Leone fans may favor the more scaled-down action of For a Few Dollars More or the masterful grandiosity of Once Upon a Time in the West, it was The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly that cemented Leone's reputation as a world-class director with a singular vision. --Jeff Shannon

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Doctor Who - Pyramids of Mars

Sales Rank:8308
List Price: $19.98
Lowest New Price: $13.21
Lowest Used Price: $8.88
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Format:

Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Tom Baker
Elisabeth Sladen

The popularity of this Tom Baker-era Doctor Who serial among fans led directly to its release on DVD (it ranked first in a Doctor Who magazine poll about stories to be released on disc), and once again, the WB/BBC DVD doesn't disappoint with a sparkling presentation and a wealth of supplemental features. The third serial in the thirteenth season (1975-1976) finds the Doctor and Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) on Earth in 1911, where an Egyptologist has come under the power of Sutekh, a powerful alien bent on unleashing worldwide destruction. The much-discussed "Gothic" sensibilities that producer Phillip Hinchcliffe and writer Robert Holmes brought to the series during this season are largely in effect here--mummies and sinister henchmen mix freely with robots and alien invaders--as are the quality of writing and acting that helped Doctor Who spike some of its highest ratings to date during this season. One of the series' strongest and most entertaining stories, Pyramids of Mars is undoubtedly a must-have for Baker and Who fans. --Paul Gaita

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Doctor Who - The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Sales Rank:7274
List Price: $29.98
Lowest New Price: $15.49
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Format:

Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Tom Baker
Louise Jameson

"The Talons of Weng-Chiang" is one of the very best Doctor Who stories, a six-part adventure set in a gothic Victorian London inspired by The Phantom of the Opera and Sax Rohmer's tales of Fu Manchu, with nods toward Jack the Ripper, Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes. The final story from the Golden Age of the show, Philip Hinchcliff's three-year tenure as producer, the tale boasts superior production values and a bizarre storyline involving a time-traveling war criminal, giant rats in the London sewers, and a malevolent ventriloquist's doll with the brain of a pig.

Pitted against this flamboyant madness, largely centered on an East End music-hall run by the self-important Henry Gordon Jago (a memorable performance by Christopher Benjamin) are Tom Baker's fourth Doctor, in pre-self-parody top form, and Louise Jameson's Leela at her primal best. There's strong support from Trevor Baxter as the Watson-like Professor Lightfoot, and John Bennett as the villainous Li H'sen Chang. Really helping matters is the first-rate direction from David "Genesis of the Daleks" Maloney, evoking a creepy atmosphere in a fantasy London of shadows and fog. "Weng-Chiang" was the pinnacle of gothic Who and still remains highly enjoyable entertainment. --Gary S. Dalkin

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Doctor Who - The Tomb of the Cybermen

Sales Rank:7465
List Price: $19.98
Lowest New Price: $8.98
Lowest Used Price: $10.99
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)

Format:

Black & White
DVD-Video
Full Screen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Patrick Troughton
Frazer Hines
Deborah Watling

"The Tomb of the Cybermen" brought the Doctor, Patrick Troughton, into conflict with his silver cyborg nemesis for a third time, following "The Tenth Planet" (1966) and "The Moonbase" (1967). The Doctor, Jamie (Frazer Hines), and Victoria (Deborah Watling) join an archaeological expedition to explore the planet Telos, where they encounter death traps, betrayal, and a waiting army of frozen Cybermen. Scripted by Kit Pedlar and Gerry Davis, who would later write Doomwatch (1970-72), many of the essentials of the plot anticipate James Cameron's blockbuster Aliens (1986): the barren planet with abandoned city, the tense wait for a rescue ship, the human traitors, the implacable, more powerful enemy. There are a few flaws, but this is a superior Doctor Who adventure of its time and a thoroughly entertaining piece of classic television. --Gary S. Dalkin

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The Quick and the Dead

Sales Rank:8833
List Price: $9.95
Lowest New Price: $4.46
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

Anamorphic
Closed-captioned
Color
Dolby
DVD-Video
Full Screen
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Sharon Stone
Gene Hackman
Russell Crowe
Leonardo DiCaprio
Tobin Bell

Director Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) tries gamely to recapture the exotic mysteries of spaghetti Westerns in this stylish but empty film, which stars Sharon Stone as a stranger who comes to the town of Redemption in time for an annual shooting contest. Her real motivations for being there are the stuff that might have found their way into a film by Sergio Leone--in fact, much of this film is a pastiche of Leone's greatest hits, including A Fistful of Dollars and Once upon a Time in America--but one can't quite believe Stone in the role. Gene Hackman gives a predictably solid performance as the town tyrant, and Leonardo DiCaprio is good as a lucky young gunslinger who gets to kiss the heroine. But not even the cast can help this failed project. Raimi brings a lot of razzle-dazzle to his camera work, but it doesn't make the film any more substantial. --Tom Keogh

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Zardoz

Sales Rank:8122
List Price: $9.98
Lowest New Price: $4.50
Lowest Used Price: $3.87
MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)

Format:

Anamorphic
Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
Subtitled
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

John Alderton
Daisy Boorman
Katrine Boorman
Telsche Boorman
Niall Buggy

A bewigged Sean Connery is Zed, a savage "exterminator" commanded by the mysterious god Zardoz to eliminate Brutals, survivors of an unspecified worldwide catastrophe. Zed stows away inside Zardoz's enormous idol (a flying stone head) and is taken to the pastoral land of the Eternals, a matriarchal, quasi-medieval society that has achieved psychic abilities as well as immortality. Zed finds as much hope as disgust with the Eternals; their advancements have also robbed them of physical passion, turning their existence into a living death. Zed becomes the Eternals' unlikely messiah, but in order to save them--and himself--he must confront the truth behind Zardoz and his own identity inside the Tabernacle, the Eternals' omnipresent master computer.

A box office failure, John Boorman's Zardoz has developed a cult following among science fiction fans whose tastes run toward more cerebral fare, such as The Andromeda Strain and Phase IV. An entrancing if overly ambitious (by Boorman's own admission) film, Zardoz offers pointed commentary on class structure and religion inside its complex plot and head-movie visuals; its healthy doses of sex and violence will involve viewers even if the story machinations escape them. Beautifully photographed near Boorman's home in Ireland's Wicklow Mountains by Geoffrey Unsworth (2001), its production design is courtesy of longtime Boorman associate Anthony Pratt, who creates a believable society within the film's million-dollar budget. The letterboxed DVD presentation includes engaging commentary by Boorman, who discusses the special effects (all created in-camera) as well as working with a post-Bond Connery. --Paul Gaita

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The Masque of the Red Death / The Premature Burial

Sales Rank:11105
List Price: $14.98
Lowest New Price: $6.82
Lowest Used Price: $6.83
MPAA Rating: Unrated

Format:

Anamorphic
Closed-captioned
Color
Dolby
DVD-Video
Widescreen
NTSC

Director(s):

Actor(s):

Vincent Price
Ray Milland
Hazel Court
Jane Asher
David Weston

The Masque of the Red Death (1964) is Roger Corman's, and most people's, choice as the best of the Edgar Allan Poe pictures. Masque offers the expected creepy atmosphere and violence against peasants, plus metaphysical ponderings and pointed satanic cruelty. (Corman was operating as much under the influence of Ingmar Bergman as of Edgar Allan Poe.) Nicolas Roeg's color cinematography and Daniel Haller's elaborate production design would be stellar in any Hollywood A-movie; the mono-colored rooms of the prince's castle are a startling effect. Vincent Price is in fine fettle as Prince Prospero, the devil-worshipping sadist who throws lavish parties while the countryside is ravaged by the plague.

The Premature Burial (1962) substitutes Ray Milland in the usual Price role. He's a snarky landowner (with a sideline in art--dig those mod paintings) haunted by the fear of being buried alive. This single-minded focus limits the film, but it also adds to the smothering sense of anxiety that prevails throughout its unhealthy scenario. Luscious Hazel Court is Milland's new missus, and old-school cameraman Floyd Crosby proves his facility for photographing women in a classical style. Lots of cobwebs-on-candelabra in the customary Corman-Poe manner, with special emphasis on Milland's crypt, with its supposedly foolproof exit schemes. --Robert Horton

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