News

Hello everyone! We’re back to give you the lowdown on another week of home media releases, and while we don’t have a ton of titles on tap, there are still a few key releases genre fans are going to want to pick up this Tuesday.

If you missed it during its run on HBO, you can finally catch up with the first season of Lovecraft Country, as Warner Bros. is bringing it home on both Blu-ray and DVD. Jay Baruchel’s Random Acts of Violence is also headed to both formats this week, or if you’re in the mood for something a little more old school, both The Unseen and Slithis are getting the Blu-ray treatment on Tuesday as well.

Other home media releases for February 16th include Bad Impulse, Butchers, The Leprechaun’s Game and Mask of Thorn.

Lovecraft Country: The Complete First Season

Based on the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff,...

Tales as old as time, Slashers are. Okay, maybe not as old as time, but certainly as old as me, which is close enough. To say the horror market was saturated by the mid ‘80s would be an understatement; every theatre, drive-in, and video store shelf was oozing content involving implements, pretty people, and the dark secret that comes back to haunt them. Speaking of dark secrets that never fail to return, always faddish 3D made a surprising early ‘80s comeback; franchises such as The Amityville Horror, Jaws, and Friday the 13th all threw blurry stuff at blurry screens in the hopes of enticing viewers with varying degrees of success. Converging at the tail end of both, Silent Madness (1984) crams in so much absurdly wonderful plot you’d think the filmmakers were afraid Hollywood was going to stop making movies altogether.

Distributed by Almi Pictures in late October, Silent Madness...

Not everyone owns a Steinmann, or has seen one for that matter. They are an acquired taste, much like doing a deep scrub on your tongue with a Brillo pad, or massaging pickle juice into your eyes. They’re not for everyone, is what I’m saying. I’m of course referring to writer/director Danny Steinmann, former porn auteur (and still quite dead), helmer of Savage Streets (1984), Friday the 13th: Roy’s Boy (‘85), and today’s topic of discussion, The Unseen (1980). To say that a film about a killer inbred man-baby is his subtlest work is testament to his next level commitment for producing entertaining sleaze. Were it not for bad taste, he wouldn’t have shown any at all.

Released in Japan and Denmark in late ’80 with a September ’81 rollout stateside from World Northal, The Unseen came and went, well, unseen by most. Steinmann himself disowned it; he...

Earlier this month, when Vanilla Ice announced via Twitter that he was boldly defying instructions to evacuate his Florida home in the face of Hurricane Matthew, it not only inspired what had to be the greatest (and possibly also the most depressing) tweet ever made by the Florida Democratic Party, but it also made one hope that it might really be a sneaky promo for an upcoming Weather Channel series wherein the rapper and reality TV star goes head to head with natural disasters.

Alas, "The Ice Storm" (or whatever...

Shout Factory unveils a neglected cult item with its recuperation of Sonny Boy, a tawdry late 1980s obscurity with some awesome Wtf grotesqueries. Although its creators, both then and now, insist on the narrative’s notable subtexts as an allegory on child abuse and toxic familial allegiance, the film is never quite elevated beyond its grindhouse elements. Notably, David Carradine stars as a redneck transvestite (whose gender identity remains undefined) as the caring part of a vicious hillbilly couple who raise a kidnapped orphan to kill and rob members of the local rural community. Its lurid set-up should definitely interest cineastes who can appreciate a bit of tastelessness in their exploitation films, but Robert Martin Carroll’s provocative directorial debut devolves into a surreal fairy tale with an undernourished finale.

In 1970 New Mexico, small time criminal Weasel (Brad Dourif) murders two tourists staying in an isolated motel, not realizing there...

Reviewed by Chris Wright, MoreHorror.com

“The Unseen” (1981)

Directed By: Danny Steinmann

Written By: Danny Steinmann & Michael L. Grace

Starring: Sydney Lassick (Ernest Keller), Barbara Bach (Jennifer Fast), Stephen Furst (Junior Keller “The Unseen”), Karen Lamm (Karen Fast) Lelia Goldoni (Virginia Keller), Douglas Barr (Tony Ross), Lois Young (Vicki Thompson), Maida Severn (Solvang Lady)

“The Unseen” gave me “Psycho” vibes because of the moodiness of the film. It also has backwoods overtones with this messed up family as well. I came across this movie randomly and liked it much better than I thought. This is seemingly an unknown early 80s horror film that deserves some lime light as it is quite sad and disturbing to watch at times.

The story involves three female reporters who are offered cheap room and board by shady museum owner Ernest Keller (Sydney Lassick) since all the local motels are full. This house isn’t...

Jack Nicholson's is not the only outstanding performance in the darkly comic movie. Director Milos Forman drew sensitive yet hilarious turns from a cast with a rich range of facial tics

Why we love … movie computers … the quarry in Breaking Away … the dribbly kiss in Little Women

"I'm not just talking about my wife, I'm talking about my life! I'm not just talking about one person, I'm talking about everybody. I'm talking about form, I'm talking about content, I'm talking about inter-relationships! I'm talking about God, the devil, hell, heaven! Do you understand? Finally?!"

The intellectual, neurotic Harding (William Redfield) lets off steam during one of five "group therapy" scenes in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. It sparks a fascinating set of reactions from other characters – the squealing Cheswick (Sydney Lassick), the taunting, swivelled-eyed Taber (Christopher Lloyd), the stuttering Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif), the ghoulish Fredrickson (Vincent Schiavelli), the grinning,...

With so many cult titles from the Eighties and Nineties making their way to Blu-ray of late, it shouldn’t be too surprising to see a few more obscure titles also getting a digital upgrade. For example, the 1980 fright flick The Unseen. Any of you seen it?

Can’t say I’ve ever seen The Unseen. Good thing Scorpion Releasing will be putting it out on Blu-ray August 13th so I can find out what I’ve been missing.

Synopsis:

Freelance reporter Jennifer and her two friends, Karen and Vicki, accept an invitation for cheap room and board in a large farmhouse offered by a friendly, but shady museum owner named Ernest Keller since all the motels in and around town are booked for a holiday parade fair Jennifer is covering. But unknown to the women, some unseen "thing" has been living in the basement of the house for over...

Cool As Ice

Stars: Robert Van Winkle (aka Vanilla Ice), Kristin Minter, John Haymes Newton, Candy Clark, Michael Gross | Written by David Stenn | Directed by David Kellogg

Alright stop, read this review and listen. Vanilla Ice is back, with a brand new DVD edition – of his one an only star vehicle Cool As Ice that is… Fresh off the back of Ice’s collaboration with Jedward and his appearance at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, Second Sight have released his epic 1991 movie on DVD for the very first time.

Cool As Ice sees bad boy rapper and biker Johnny (Vanilla Ice) ride into a small midwestern town and fall head over heels in love with sweet natured Catherine (Minter). However, like all good romances, their courtship is a rocky one. It transpires that Catherine’s parents, unbeknownst to her, are in the witness protection programme, and the criminals they put...

While MGM’s recent Pumpkinhead DVD celebrates one of Stan Winston’s greatest triumphs outside of his usual role of FX creator, this new disc reveals a chapter in his filmmaking history that has gone, if not unseen, than largely unacknowledged. One reason for that is the fact that while Winston shares a story billing on the actual movie with fellow makeup master Tom Burman and director Peter Foleg, the writing credits in The Unseen’s ad and press material, and thus almost all of the film’s reviews, and even the billing block on the DVD case cite Foleg and three different co-scribes (among them Texas Chainsaw Massacre veteran Kim Henkel). Add the fact that “Foleg” himself is actually a pseudonym for Danny Steinmann, who would go on to direct the fifth Friday The 13th, and there’s the clear suggestion of a creative history as tortured as any of the onscreen victims,...