DVD Spin Doctor

Top horror DVDs, Blu-rays of 2009

The year's best horror movies on Blu-ray and DVD, straight from the digital dungeons deep beneath L.A. This being DVD Spin Doctor, artistic merit counts: Every decapitation a thing of beauty; every zombie lost in thoughts of Dante and Bosch ...

The William Castle Film Collection (Sony): Night and fog. The Thames River. A shadowy and portly figure greets viewers: "Hello, my homicidal friends." Hitchcock? Nah, it's just William Castle, that P.T. Barnum of American horror films. Sony's slick box set rounds up the director's essential fright flicks, including "The Tingler," "13 Ghosts," "Straightjacket" and "Dr. Sardonicus." Three of the eight films are making their DVD debuts, while the others have been remastered to the studio's high standards. Castle was known for making fright fun, so be prepared to scream and laugh along with these killer Bs from a half century ago. Start with the ace documentary "Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story" and then go directly to "The Tingler," starring Vincent Price and the world's lamest -- but plenty scary -- movie monster.

Audition (Shout!): Japanese director Takashi Miike's masterpiece, renowned for its mixture of mind-bending horror and lonely-hearts drama. Shout! Factory just updated the title, adding an intro and a new feature-length commentary from the bemused director and his screenwriter. "You may regret watching it," Miike humbly warns viewers. Devotees no doubt wanted to go kiri-kiri-kiri (deeper-deeper-deeper) with a definitive 10th anniversary edition, but Shout's DVD and Blu-ray editions are the best to date. (They include more than an hour's worth of cast interviews and a booklet essay.) The tale is of a lonely widower who uses a movie audition as a ruse for meeting women. He's soon obsessed with a long-haired beauty who comes with plenty of baggage -- stuffed full of instruments of torture. Essential, compelling, sick, heartbreaking ... a modern classic of horror. 

An American Werewolf in London (Universal): The studio that first brought us the werewolf does a makeover on Jon Landis' horror-comedy gem from 1981. This was among the last of the makeup horror movies, done by effects wiz  Rick Baker -- the transformation scene is his Oscar-winning masterpiece. "American Werewolf" hasn't aged a bit: the rotting corpse guy is still a hoot, the violence has plenty of kick and Jenny Agutter was never more luminous. Plenty of extras, including a new feature-length documentary. The Blu-ray images look quite good considering the original's softness and grain. The super-crisp soundtrack -- filled with all those lunar songs like "Bad Moon Rising" -- will have you howling along. "Moondance" has never sounded better.

Deadgirl (Dark Sky): Ever wonder what it would be like to have sex with a zombie? Me neither, but you'll get an eyeful in this sick piece of business. In a mostly lame year for new horror films, "Deadgirl" returns us to the days when viewers could be equally repulsed and fascinated by a low-budget shocker. A vaguely hot zombie is turned into a sex slave after a couple of high school guys find her chained up in an abandoned mental institution. Jenny Spain turns in some fierce work as the titular dead girl. Those who are offended by, well, pretty much anything that could be shown in a mainstream movie should steer clear. Directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel belong on any horror fan's watch list.

Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection (Sony): "Mothra" returns, in glorious Tohoscope. This genre trilogy from Japanese director Ishiro Honda stretches from 1958-1961, prime time for radiation meltdowns, alien invasions and giant monsters from the far East. The rarely seen "Mothra" is the big deal here, finally getting a U.S. release that lives up to its reputation. Sure, Mothra the monster looks like a tube sock (see the Tingler), but the film boasts many fine miniatures and effects. The story concerns a gangster who steals singing fairies from a mysterious island. Mothra comes to their rescue, winning hearts as it levels what's left of Japan. The other movies are "The H-Man" and "Battle From Outer Space," both pretty good. Sour note: Sony went all cheap with the packaging, sticking three discs on the same spindle.

Repulsion (Criterion): Madness, murder and a breathtakingly young Catherine Deneuve drive this psychological horror movie from Roman Polanski. Criterion's Blu-ray version delivers exquisite black-and-white images, all the better to capture the awful goings-on in the apartment of a young French woman living in London. "Repulsion" characterizes the anti-heroine's response to men, but get a load of the famous rotting rabbit on a dinner plate that mirrors her deterioration into madness. Another fine Criterion chiller from this year is "Empire of Passion" (1978), an erotic ghost story from Nagisa Oshima.

Timecrimes (Magnet): Slasher meets sci-fi. Spain's "Timecrimes" deals with time travel on a micro scale -- not even a day passes by. The film's budget wasn't much. There are no special effects or splashy concepts. Director Nacho Vigalondo doesn't need them. A well-off suburbanite, Hector, witnesses some odd events in the woods. He rushes off to investigate and finds a naked woman, dead. Hector's soon been stabbed by a frantic man with ghastly pink bandages covering his head. Hector seeks help in a rural lab, where a slacker mad scientist is doing temporal experiments on the cheap. Hector is convinced to hide in a clunky time machine, which transports him back an hour. Thus begins a comically sinister loop that plays like a "Memento"-style puzzle.

Drag Me to Hell (Universal): Life is full of choices, some fateful, some fatal. Your choice here is between the uncut version of Sam Rami's roller coaster of a horror movie and the theatrical. Either will do for the Blu-ray hell-ride to come, fueled by a hyperactive sound mix and sparkling digital images. Bank officer Christine made her choice by evicting a strange old lady from her home, bringing on a curse that's good for 90 minutes of horrific action. Universal's killer presentation includes a lengthy collection of production "diaries," in which we meet the true lady with the evil eye ... and she's a sweetheart. Director Rami was long overdue in returning to his icky roots in horror. Universal also just broke out a Blu-ray of Rami's "Army of Darkness," the fun, dumb and furious follow-up to the two "Evil Deads."  

Underworld Trilogy (Sony): The "Underworld" franchise -- so obsessed with time, lineage and the great ghostly events of the past -- undergoes a resurrection of sorts with this complete Blu-ray box set. Those revisiting the vampire vs. werewolf series can tear into fresh meat by rearranging the three films into a linear chronology. In other words, start with the prequel, "Rise of the Lycans," proceed through the original "Underworld," and wrap with the sequel "Evolution." No one will confuse this series with the "Matrix" trilogy, but "Underworld" has been a satisfying modern series in the Hammer spirit. All three movies look terrific on Blu-ray. Audio is solid, sometimes remarkable. 

Let The Right One In (Magnolia): Hip Hollywood vampires have become a plague this year -- here is the antidote. Yes, it appears this DVD release was botched with the use of substandard subtitles (compared with the U.S. theatrical release). But "Let the Right One In" can't be missed, and there's no point in waiting for the proper DVD (to be marked "theatrical version"). Director Tomas Alfredson turns his cameras on two 12-year-olds, one a sad boy, the other a sad girlish vampire. They live in a crappy part of Stockholm, where life sucks and locals are starting to turn up drained of blood. Among the best horror movies of the decade -- if not the best.

Top 10 horror movie DVDs of 2008

Blu-ray review: 'Underworld' trilogy

The "Underworld" trilogy -- so obsessed with time, lineage and the great ghostly events of the past -- undergoes a resurrection of sorts with the home-video release of its third chapter.

Those revisiting the vampire vs. werewolf series can tear into fresh meat by rearranging the three films into a linear chronology.

In other words, start with the newly released prequel, "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans," proceed through the original "Underworld," and wrap with the sequel "Underworld Evolution." For extra impact, upgrade to Blu-ray with the new box set.

The final shot in "Lycans" feeds right into the original film, whose final sequence runs directly into the sequel.

"Underworld" co-creator Len Wiseman says that's all part of the master plan, the strange fruits of "an eight-year journey" for the filmmakers. The chronological trick works smashingly well, except for one nasty flashback inconsistency that we'll deal with later.

Alas, none of this temporal tomfoolery elevates the "Underworld" series from the genre bog. No one will ever confuse the "Underworld" trilogy with the "Matrix" trilogy. Still, these are well-crafted, above-average horror/monster movies that offer quite a few guilty pleasures.

"Underworld" fans appreciate the slick and gloomy atmospherics, the work of British actors such as Michael Sheen, the special effects and, primarily, the skin-tight "Death Dealer" costume of Kate Beckinsale. 

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans" on DVD and Blu-ray. The film also completes the "Underworld Trilogy" set.  

Wiseman, who directed the first two films, points out that his series is unusual today in not coming from source material such as novels or comic books. The "Underworld" chronicles run on original content, he points out in the feature-length DVD commentary for "Lycans."

True, but quite a few influences run amuck. The first two films owe plenty to "Blade," "The Matrix," John Woo's HK films and even Shakespeare, whose "Romeo and Juliet" theme holds together the trilogy.

In "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans," the mashup includes Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe movies, the classic Universal and Hammer horror films, gladiator pics and even "Alien," whose claustrophobic contributions to the dungeons-and-tunnels scenes are acknowledged with an unmistakable visual gag. (Lycans are werewolves, BTW.)

Most critics who bothered to review "Lycans" found it the weakest film in the series, pointing to the absence of director Wiseman, replaced by effects wizard Patrick Tatopoulos. The series star, Beckinsale, sat this one out as well. A few brave critics, however, declared it the best "Underworld" film. 

"Lycans" was built upon the flashbacks of ancient death and torture used in the first two movies. These are the savage events from 600 years ago that triggered the war between the elegant vampires and the blue-collar werewolves.

The vampire lord Viktor (Bill Nighy) kills a werewolf who seems to have given birth to a human child. The child grows up in slavery at Viktor's castle, with an eye for the vampire leader's daughter, Sonja (Rhona Mitra, left). She and the half-werewolf (Sheen, fresh from shooting "Frost/Nixon") become star-crossed lovers, igniting all sorts of passions and uneven CG effects.

The trilogy's continuity problem concerns the black-haired actress Mitra. The earlier movies portrayed her character as a blonde, which made no sense in terms of the plot. Wiseman, who produced "Lycans," says the issue was known at the time of the original filming, but the production was running on fumes and didn't have enough money to convince the first actress to get a dye job. (Wigs, no doubt, were in short supply in Budapest.) The flaw is being digitally resolved for future projects, according to the commentary.

All three "Underworld" movies look great on Blu-ray. "Lycans" was filmed in high definition, while the first two were shot on film. "Lycans" is the darkest of these dark movies, sometimes descending into murk. The "Underworld" color scheme remains consistent -- gun-metal blues consorting with evil-dead blacks. Like ambitious bruises.

Audio is solid on all three Blu-rays, sometimes remarkable, as the combat rages across the TrueHD 5.1 sonic stages. Some important dialogue is muffled or poorly mixed, especially in "Evolution" and "Lycans." 

The fun and informative commentary on "Lycans" features Wiseman, director Tatopoulos, producers Richard Wright and Gary Lucchesi, and visual effects chief James McQuaide. The upbeat talk provides a good education in the "Underworld" film series and fills in a few gaps in its mythology. 

The filmmakers share some war stories, such as how actor Nighy's insanely blue contacts and vampire teeth kept falling out while the cameras rolled.

The film was supposed to be shot in Romania, spiritual home to vampires everywhere, but various problems prompted a move to New Zealand, inspired by the "Lord of the Rings" production. The werewolves were done by two different effects houses, probably explaining why some of the beasts look cool and others are lame.

There are three featurettes, the best of which is "The Origin of the Feud" (20 minutes). Its talking heads explain that one justification for "Lycans" was to bring back from the dead several of the main characters in the series, notably Nighy and Sheen. (Look out for spoilers if you're new to the series.) There are hundreds of years worth of stories yet to tell, the filmmakers say.

The "Lycans" Blu-ray has a picture-in-picture track that includes on-location footage and interviews, some recycled from other extras. Listen to the commentary first and go from there.

A music video, HD trailers, a digital-copy disc and a map showing where best to meet up with Lon Chaney and his pack complete the package.

Top 10 horror movie DVDs of 2008

Horror movies don't get much play on TV these days, unless it's Halloween. What a loss. 

In the 1950s and '60s, there was always something creepy playing on Saturday afternoons. Any horror show worth watching had a host, the kind of semi-talented local TV guy spoofed by Count Floyd on SCTV.

M.T. Graves was the horror show emcee of my youth, out of Channel 7 in Miami. Graves, some kind of monster, lived in a dungeon and started each show by crawling out of a casket. This, my friends, was ghoul cool -- appointment TV for every boy on the block.

These days, people get their scares from DVDs. And of course there are enough horror discs out there to fill a Blockbuster. Still, I miss M.T.

Update: Read "The Top 10 Horror DVDs of 2009"

The weeks before Halloween signal the end of the horror year for DVD studios, as holiday cheer replaces the dark shadows and fog. And so ... 

Here are my picks for the best horror DVDs of 2008.

10. Black House -- Way-over-the-top entry from South Korea, full of gore, psychological terror and Asian weirdness. An insurance investigator goes off the deep end investigating a claim made in the wake of a teen's suicide. "Black House" inspires a lot of eye-rolling, but go along with the story and it'll prove to be a real hell-ride. The film's great psycho killer put this one on the list. Director Shin Terra has studied his Takashi Miike. (Who? Well, then, go see Miike's "Audition" instead.)

9. The Mummy -- We never tire of Boris Karloff as the Mummy, and Universal never tires of putting out the old "The Mummy" DVDs. The latest double-disc release of the 1932 original came as part of the studio's Legacy Series. While the movie looks the same (pretty good), the upgrade here is in the impressive lineup of extra features. Be sure to catch the profile of make-up master Jack Pierce, inspiring and a bit sad, and the feature-length docu "Universal Horror," which makes the case for "the most European of studios" in its day. A generous trailer gallery tracks the promiscuous series.

8. Sublime -- This one comes straight-to-video, but it's no cut-rate horror show. Part of the Warner "Raw Feed" series, "Sublime" concerns itself with the nature of consciousness and is based, in part, by the Ambrose Bierce story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Instead of a rope, there are sharp shiny instruments. Guy checks into the hospital for a routine procedure, ends up in medical hell. Which of these horrors are real and which come from the hallucinations of a man in a coma? The deliberate pace gives you plenty of time to work on the mystery. Strong presentation on Blu-ray adds to the freak-out factor.

7. Rogue -- Aussie director Greg McLean ("Wolf Creek") revives the beast-from-below genre with this savage tale of a tourists who end up stranded on the turf of a killler crocodile. Scarier than "Jaws." By far. Short on gore and long on terror. You'll even forgive the sucky ending. Radha Mitchell is terrific as the boat tour guide, torn between panic and leadership. Michael Vartan is our reluctant hero. The photography of Australia's Northern Territory is astounding; the filmmakers say some of the land had never been captured on film before. The extras are unusually good; be sure to watch the one on the location region.

6. Brotherhood of the Wolf -- Couldn't get enough of this stylish period horror show from France? Welcome the director's cut, with eight minutes of footage not on the original U.S. DVD. Topped off with 40 minutes of deleted and expanded scenes. "Wolf" is great fun, with exciting fight scenes, a respectable amount of gore, a way-cool monster and lots of soiled villagers to terrorize. A royal taxidermist and his New World Indian companion track a werewolf who's slaughtering the local maidens. The film takes place on the eve of the French Revolution, ensuring lots of old European atmospherics and fog that look magnifique in widescreen.

5. Dark City -- Like "Blade Runner," this nightmarish bit of science fiction debuted in theaters with a studio-mandated voice-over intended to help viewers make sense of the film. Even horror-friendly New Line didn't know what to make of Alex Proyas' tale of a noir city reinvented nightly by alien scientists who act as gods. Proyas finally gets to show his cult classic as it was intended, in a director's cut that adds about 12 minutes. On Blu-ray, the renovated "Dark City" is a thing of terrible beauty. Take it along on your next trip to the beach.

4. The Nightmare Before Christmas -- Gorgeous animated visuals, this time out in anamorphic widescreen, but the star of the show on Blu-ray is the state-of-the art audio. All 7.1 channels of Dolby TruHD encircle the video room, with bold playful signals. Heard this way, Danny Elfman's score can make your heart race. Among the best home video audio I've experienced, if not the best. New commentary from Tim Burton and Elfman (recorded separately, alas). The regular DVD comes with cool seasonal packaging. Both come with "Frankenweenie," of course. Thrill the big kids and terrorize the tots with this truly fine Blu-ray.  

3. The Orphanage -- What's a horror top 10 without a ghost story? Producer/preseter Guillermo del Toro pulls the strings on this haunted house movie directed by Spain's Juan Antonio Bayona. The dark, damp visuals are beautifully rendered on the New Line DVD. The audio packs a wallop with a choice of Dolby Digital 5.1-EX or DTS-ES 6.1. Plentiful extras. "The Orphanage" has a strong emotional pull, making it a great movie to share with kids old enough to absorb a good shock or two.

2. Psycho -- The mother of all horror movies gets all dressed up for Universal's Legacy Series. Two discs cover Alfred Hitchcock's black and white shocker to exhaustion. The film itself seems a bit brighter and less damaged than the previous release (2005's "The Masterpiece Collection"), but maybe not -- the A-B wasn't conclusive on picture quality. Still lots of wear and grain. The excellent hour-and-a-half documentary "The Making of Psycho" returns from the 1997 release, bolstered by the so-so short "Hitchcock's Legacy" and a highly listenable commentary from Stephen Rebello. As on the other two fine new Hitchcock releases, there are movie-specific snippets from the Truffaut/Hitchcock audio interviews. Plus, the shower scene footage with and without music, and the Saul Bass storyboards. And a bonus screening of the Hitch TV classic "Lamb to the Slaughter." The new "Psycho" DVD is pretty much definitive until there's a full restoration.

1. Vampyr -- All the way from 1932 comes the year's best DVD creepshow. The Criterion Collection did its thing on Carl Th. Dreyer's tale of the occult in a distant time and land, making for the best possible presentation. The German movie, as expected, suffers from a great deal of damage, such as scratches, vertical lines, speckling, flashing and even a stray hair or two. In this case, that's not all bad. "Vampyr" plays like a warning of evil afoot from 75 years ago, like shadows from hell picked up on some distant UHF station. One key element in the film's enduring strangeness is the seemingly stoned acting of a minor European aristocrat who plays the hero. "Dreyer makes astute use of his blankness," the extras point out. Special features include a solid commentary, a "video essay" that's an imaginative making-of docu, and a bio of Dreyer. The Criterion set includes the script and a copy of the original book about "the strange history of vampires." Essential horror.

Scorsese tracks Lewton, 'Man in the Shadows'

These days, Martin Scorsese seems almost as valuable as a fan of films as he is as a director of films. Scorsese never tires of hailing the great filmmakers who've gone before him. A while back, for example, he revisited the great directors of his family homeland in "My Voyage to Italy."

The DVDs of "The Departed" included a tribute to Scorsese's gangster pic roots. He just penned the booklet notes for the Beatles' "Help!" The man just loves film.

The director's latest docu tribute is "Martin Scorsese Presents Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows." The "Raging Bull" director produced and narrates this look at Lewton, the great B-movie producer of the 1940s best known for "Cat People." No Scorsese fan could miss Lewton's influence on the famous modern director.

Warner Home Video is updating its outstanding "The Val Lewton Horror Collection" with a new Lewton box set that's identical except for inclusion of Scorsese's docu. (Amazon's price on the new set is a bit cheaper.)

Lewton admirers who own the previous (terrific) box set should buy "Man in the Shadows" separately. Or record TCM's broadcast of the docu Jan. 14, the day before it's released on DVD.

The docu premiered at the AFI film festival last week and was reviewed by the Hollywood Reporter, which found: "The film argues, with psychoanalytic fervor, that the dark, haunted spirit of most of the Lewton films grew out of the producer's own melancholy temperament. In this sense he was more the auteur of these films than their credited writers or directors." On the down side, "The weakness of the film is its overly verbose narration, which is read by Scorsese himself."

The "Lewton Collection," regardless of which version you buy, contains nine B-movie wonders he produced for RKO in the 1940s. Lewton's best-known works -- the stylish and sexy "Cat People" and the voodoo excursion "I Walked With a Zombie" -- staked out the psychological horror genre. Both were done with director Jacques Tourneur, who gave Lewton's works a sophisticated noirish look. The men "were like Lennon and McCartney," horror director Guillermo del Toro says in the extras.

This DVD set, which includes a trio of Boris Karloff thrillers, has the same titles as Image's 1995 laserdisc box. All but two of the films have commentaries by Lewton enthusiasts, which are uniformly good. The carried-over docu, "Shadows in the Dark," tracks the producer from his youth in Russia to his stint with David O. Selznick to his successful run at RKO. Del Toro, George A. Romero and Neil Gaiman are among the horror elite who pay tribute to Lewton.

RKO stole Lewton from Selznick, hungry for monster movies that could duplicate Universal's success. But, film historian Steve Haberman says, Lewton "was thinking about what in reality frightens people: the dark, the unknown, madness, death."

"Cat People" (1942) startled audiences with its brazen marriage of sex and suspense. "Twilight Zone" director John Landis says he's still amazed at "how sexually sophisticated it is." "Cat People" tells of a dark-haired beauty whose belief in "mad legends" makes her refuse to sleep with her new husband, fearing she will morph into a predator cat. Marketed as "stark shockery and killing chillery," the film gave Lewton a hit the first time out.

RKO ordered Lewton to use prefab titles, including the goofy "I Walked With a Zombie" (1943). Like "Cat People," "Zombie" made good use of RKO sets left over from the Orson Welles era, showcasing them in silky black and white. Borrowing from "Jane Eyre" and "Rebecca," Lewton and Tourneur delivered another 70-minute marvel, about a nurse who comes to the Caribbean to care for a woman who appears possessed by voodoo priests. Fast-talking British commentators Kim Newman and Steve Jones are spot on ("The dominant element of this film is Venetian blinds," one observes, deadpan).

Other gems include "The Seventh Victim" (directed by Mark Robson), "The Leopard Man" (Tourneur) and the night-and-fog Karloff starrer "The Body Snatcher" (Robert Wise).

All of these films show their age. They're damaged in varying degrees. Just like the lost souls in Lewton's pictures.

Preorder the new Val Lewton Collection.

Coppola celebrates 'Bram Stoker's Dracula'

#2 in the DVD blog's "7 Days of Halloween" series.
The so-so reputation of "Bram Stoker's Dracula" can be blamed, in part, on the film's noble goal of performing cinematic magic tricks from the days when motion pictures -- and Dracula himself -- were new.

For the first 45 minutes or so, Francis Ford Coppola's horror film felt like a camp, stagey homage to the B-movies of Hammer Studios. The leaden acting of Keanu Reeves and the underwhelming presence of Winona Ryder didn't help (even though they were the hot young stars of 1992).

But as the film darkened, Coppola's brew of sex, gore and the supernatural proved transformative, as did the ying-yang acting of Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman. But what was that vaguely cheesy old-time vibe? Did the fX computers crash?

After release, the production's secrets were detailed for laserdisc owners in an ambitious Voyager box set with several documentaries and commentary from director Coppola. On DVD, there were several releases, including a Superbit, but the back story went untold until last month.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's double-disc rerelease of "Bram Stoker's Dracula" finally gives the production a thorough autopsy in the DVD format. Coppola turns up for a video introduction and then a new feature-length commentary. He admits he hadn't seen the movie since "those days," and seems quite pleased. Coppola calls it "a treasure box of strange effects ... some worked beautifully and some not at all."

The new documentaries illuminate the production using footage from rehearsals and the all on-set filming, as well as interviews from 1992 and now.

"In-Camera: The Naive Visual Effects of Dracula" explores the curious images that were done with techniques from a time when the camera -- not the computer -- incubated the special effects.

"The Blood Is Life" is a new half-hour making-of docu that leans heavily on footage from 1992. We're on the sidelines as Oldman and Coppola clash over what seems to be a simple scene. A costumes/sets short looks at the contributions of designer Eiko Ishioka, who essentially gave the film its look and feel. She saw Dracula as a "man of a thousand faces." "Method and Madness" reveals the visual larceny from noted gothic and surrealistic works of art.

There are 12 deleted/extended scenes, including a thrilling but over-the-top opening sequence with Oldman and some boring voice-overs from Ryder.

Coppola's new shape-shifting Dracula (Oldman) actually was born of a literal adaptation of the novel that the director loved as a youth. The director also leaned on the silent "Nosferatu," John Carradine's Draculas, and the films of Jean Cocteau and Abel Gance. "It is in the great imagery tradition of surrealism," he says. The real-life tale of Romanian hero Vlad the Impaler provided the "Romeo and Juliet"-like suicide angle, in which Ryder appears to be Dracula's reincarnated lover.

The (1.85:1) images are suitably handsome, free of wear and reasonably grain-free except for some night sequences. The darkness and softness come with the territory. There is also a Blu-ray version that reportedly isn't much of a step up from this standard DVD.

"Dracula's" dynamic 5.1 audio soundstage possesses any room it visits. This is a fine, creepy piece of mixing, about as good as it gets in horror films. Listen carefully as we enter the insane asylum to check in with Tom Waits: the walls breathe, water drips, the rats scurry, the lunatics wail. Let's get out of here.

The "7 Days of Halloween" review series: "The Tripper," "Witchfinder General," "The Damned Thing," "Murder Party" and "Hostel" the director's cut in Blu-ray.

'Murder Party' on DVD: Low budget, big fun

#3 in the DVD blog's "7 Days of Halloween" series.

" 'Murder Party' is 'The Breakfast Club' with chainsaws and hard drugs," says director Jeremy Saulnier. He could throw in "After Hours" as well, another tale of confusion and weirdness in the New York night.

The indie horror pic comes from the filmmaking collective the Lab of Madness, a bunch of childhood friends who grew up making odd little camcorder movies. The shorts "usually involved some sort of blood spray," one member recalls. Their greatest VHS-tape hit was "Asskickers," or maybe "MacBeth."

Their film festival success with the 2004 short "Crabwalk" didn't translate to mainstream backing. That didn't stop the mad lads.

"Fuck you, Hollywood, we're going to make our own films," was the motto.

"Murder Party," written and directed by Saulnier, is an act of lunacy, one of those low-budget films like "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" in which the audience feels held hostage -- and any kind of perverse plot twist seems possible. It's a funny, mean and gory movie in which pretty much everyone dies badly.

Our hero Chris (Chris Sharp) is a parking-ticket officer who goes home each night to his unimpressed cat and TV. One Halloween, the nerd finds on the sidewalk an invitation to a "murder party." Uncharacteristically, he shows up, in a knight's costume made out of spare cardboard. He's even baked pumpkin bread.

Chris' hosts turn out to be group of low-rent, bad-karma artists hanging out in a junky warehouse. Anyone stupid enough to show up for a murder party deserves to die, they figure. They're also in Halloween costumes, dressed to kill.

The deadbeats tie Chris to a chair while debating ways to kill him as a work of performance art. Drugs and weapons come into play. A patronizing art patron joins the party, bearing truth serum and crank. Truth or dare ... or homicide.

Viewers won't confuse "Murder Party" with a studio film, but for a cheap-o production it looks pretty good. The acting is appropriately over the top. A digital effects artist and a makeup man sell the plentiful gore.

The Magnolia Home Entertainment DVD includes a commentary from Saulnier and pals. Non-obsessives should skip it and viddie the making-of docu about the collective's curious history -- and what it took to get this piece of indie insanity into theaters and homes.

'Hostel' director's cut Blu-ray: sick and smart

#4 in the DVD blog's "Seven Days of Halloween" series.

There's a new, even creepier ending attached to "Hostel" in the director's cut DVD and Blu-ray. Torture me if you must -- I'm not telling. Let's just say it elicits several interpretations, one of which is about as evil as it gets.

Eli Roth's first film, "Cabin Fever," attracted some heavy-duty fans, including director Quentin Taratino (executive producer of "Hostel") and Takashi Miike (whose brutal movie "Audition" was a major influence). Both men show up in the extras on "Hostel: Director's Cut"to hail Roth as the new king of horror.

Tarantino gives his ultimate compliment: "Hostel" is "extreme entertainment."

Miike says with a grin: "There is no room for me to work in America because Eli Roth is already there." Roth showed his respect by having Miike do a cameo in "Hostel," playing himself as a customer of the torture operation (a killer in-joke).

"Hostel" succeeds so wildly because it is an intelligent film whose elements feel real -- and may be. Roth tells how he saw a mysterious web site supposedly from Thailand in which wanna-be killers could pay for a local victim to torture and slay. The film loses a lot once its secrets are known, but it still works for repeat viewings because so many clever hints and clues exist in the long Hitcockian setup.

Video and audio on the Blu-ray version are quite respectable, not remarkable. The image has occasional speckling (small dancing white spots) and there is a low-grade visual flatness, even in the early daylight scenes in Amsterdam. (This true of the standard DVDs; the flatness could be true to the movie.)

The Blu-ray's Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless audio has its creepy surround moments, as when the hero first enters the killing house, but the mix is surprisingly front-centered for a horror pic. The sound is warm and strong; the extras have a couple of good segments on the soundtrack and its glass harmonica.

Roth talks about how the 1995 film reflects the recent period in which Katrina, 9/11, Iraq and the growing hostility toward Americans turned paranoia into a national pastime. He also discusses the movie's structure, in which the first act shows how men pay money and do whatever they want to the whores of Amsterdam who wait helpless in confining rooms; in the later acts, the men become the paid-for naked flesh awaiting their fates in cells. The film "is about exploitation," he says. He notes that few reviewers picked up on the theme.

The four commentaries were ported over from the initial DVD release. Check out the first one, with Roth and Tarantino. Also repeating is the hourlong documentary "Hostel Dissected." The new "Hostel Dismembered" runs about half that and gets the job done for casual fans.

There are some good deleted scenes, some slight and couple that seem like they should have stayed in the picture. In one, the Dutch torturer breaks out a 17th century tool for locating the mark of the devil. Yuck. Another extends the unnerving talk in the taxi cab between hero Jay Hernandez and beautiful bait Barbara Nedeljakova.

Fans who want to know more about Roth and his work should not miss the audio extra in which Roth is interviewed on Elvis Mitchell's "The Treatment." The director talks with glee about the first screening requiring two ambulance calls, and plenty of clean-up for the viewers' vomit. Of most U.S. horror films, he notes: "Everybody is making horror movies with a safety governor on."

Everybody who succeeds with a horror film also is making sequels. "Hostel: Part II" also debuted in an unrated cut and is available on Blu-ray.

Tomorrow: More fun with men tied to chairs in the wild and funny "Murder Party."

So far in the "7 Days of Halloween" series: "The Tripper," and "Witchfinder General" and "The Damned Thing."

'The Damned Thing': full-force Hooper

#5 in the "Seven Days of Halloween" series.
Ambrose Bierce was a cool guy from the early 1900s best known for writing "The Devil's Dictionary" and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Tobe Hooper is a cool guy from Texas best known for directing the horror genre giant "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre."

Bierce was a darker Mark Twain, a great wit who wrote in many genres. His short stories about ghosts and war could get better rough for the times. In "The Damned Thing," he described an invisible and malevolent force of nature, capable of rendering a man mad, and then ripping him to shreds.

Hooper took on the Bierce tale for Showtime's anthology series "Masters of Horror," in which famed genre directors do hourlong films. The result is a nerve-pounding ram of a featurette that's among the best in the series. The Hooper episode aired last season and was released on DVD as "Masters of Horror: The Damned Thing."

Control freaks should watch their step here. Ultimately this is a monster movie, but it feels more like a hellbent ghost story (Hooper directed "Poltergeist.") The fear card is the utter helplessness of humans when faced with a madness-inducing entity, one that strikes with the force of an earthquake -- an evil that can't be shot or captured or even confronted.

The Damned Thing stalks a town in Texas oil country, where the son of one of its victims is sheriff. He obsesses over the night his father went insane, shotgunned his mother and was gutted by the force that possessed him. The sherrif spends his life waiting for the Damned Thing's return. It doesn't disappoint him.

Many "Masters" pieces work with the traditional horror elements of gore, sex and collegiate humor. Hooper plays this one straight, doing what he does best -- scaring the crap out of people.

Screenwriter Richard Christian Matheson does the commentary; he also worked on Hooper's "Dance of the Dead," one of the great sick "Masters" (from 2005). There's a featurette on building the monster and a decent making-of showing Hooper at work.

Anchor Bay recently unleashed the first season of "Masters of Horror" in a crypt box set that's a steal right now. Next up from season 2 is Norio Tsuruta's "Dream Cruise." I also recommend "The Black Cat" and "The Washingtonians."

Also in the DVD blog's Halloween series: "Hostel" in a director's cut Blu-ray, the political ax-swinger "The Tripper" and the indie English classic "Witchfinder General."

More gore: In this killer year for horror movies on disc, your minion the DVD blog kept track of all the releases. Check out this unholy trio of posts: Halloween I, Halloween 2 and Halloween: The Final Chapter.

'Witchfinder General' swings onto DVD

#6 In the blog's "Seven Days of Halloween" series.

Vincent Price wasn't welcome on the set of the British horror film in which he was starring.

Michael Reeves, the young director of "Witchfinder General," wanted nothing to do with the king of generic horror movies. He'd demanded Donald Pleasence, but had been overruled.

Reeves initially refused to even speak with Price on the set, the new DVD's documentary says. The frigid treatment kept the actor on edge throughout shooting. Reeves made the old pro go through endless takes, until the cold-stare anger came through on film. The result is one of Price's finest performances. It was his 75th movie.

You might recall the film as "The Conqueror Worm," the title AIP used in the U.S. in an attempt to tie it in with its successful Edgar Allen Poe franchise. But "Witchfinder" had nothing to do with Poe or worms, at least not the ones found in the soil.

The more or less true story concerns mass-murderer Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed witch hunter of eastern England during the mid-1600s. His infamy was built on torture, bogus confessions and his patented witch test, in which the accused would thrown into a river. If they sank, they were absolved -- but dead by drowning. If they rose to the surface to breathe, that was proof of witchcraft and it was off to the gallows.

Reeves' camera feels hand-held jerky in the scenes where the terrified victims are prepared for hanging. Combined with quick-cut editing, the scenes offer a truly unnerving sense of what it might be like to dragged away by an insane mob and finished off by professional killers.

"Witchfinder General" didn't cost much but often feels like a bigger-budget film. The movie was quite capably cast and costumed. The locations (some of the actual sites) are gorgeous, photographed with an artist's touch. The production values seem more BBC than Hammer, reminiscent to me of Ridley Scott's "The Duelists."

Paul Ferris' lush but haunting soundtrack, replaced on earlier videos by a Moog synthesizer, returns to complete the film's restoration. The DVD looks quite good and the audio comes across strong and clear.

"Witchfinder" had the marketing tag "The Year's Most Violent Film." Maybe so. The 1968 release came when "violence was making its move" on mainstream movies," one of the film historians says in the extras. "Night of the Living Dead" had just been unleashed and "The Wild Bunch" would ride in the next year.

"Witchfinder" wasn't a typical horror film. Its terrors came from the depiction of physical and psychological torture -- frenzied confusion and despair -- not from the supernatural. The stabbings and shootings are realistic for the era, aside from the candy-apple red blood. All in all, a rough bit of time travel for the squeamish.

The movie debuted on DVD as a "Midnight Movies" title and as part of the "Vincent Price: MGM Scream Legends Collection."

The DVD extras include an ancedote-rich commentary starring leading man Ian Ogilvy, a pal of director Reeves who went on to a long film and TV career. The talented Reeves, sadly, was a drug guy who didn't make it out of the Sixties. He directed three movies. (The biography docu "Blood Beast," about Reeves, appeared on a Region 2 version of the film, but not here.) The look-back documentary on "Witchfinder" is unusually good, fueled by the story of Reeves and Price. A must-see for new fans and old.

Hat tip to Chris Morris for recommending this frightfully (and surprisingly) good film.

Also in the DVD blog's Halloween series: "Hostel" in a director's cut Blu-ray, "The Damned Thing" from Tobe Hooper and the political ax-swinger "The Tripper."

More gore: In this killer year for horror movies on disc, your minion the DVD blog kept track of all the releases. Check out this unholy trio of posts: Halloween I, Halloween 2 and Halloween: The Final Chapter.

'The Tripper' DVD: Gore and Reagan

The calendar commands. I must obey. No escape from "Seven Days of Halloween," this DVD blog's weeklong guide to the most spellbinding horror movies unleashed this fall.

#7. "The Tripper" -- Even back in the Sixties, when every other kid had long hair and a zest for recreational mind expansion, nobody much liked real hippies. You know, the chanting, glassy-eyed, guru-loving dharma bums from another dimension. Bummmer.

In the Eighties, pretty much everyone liked Ronald Reagan to some extent. His policies may have been vile at times, but we got to blame the evil geniuses who worked for him. Ronnie had that befuddled grandfather thing going along with a two-term supply of Teflon. The prez took a bullet for us and cracked jokes while at death's door. Heh-heh-heh.

Reagan vs. hippies. Death match. Yeah.

Put these icons from two decades together and you have "The Tripper," David Arquette's hilarious old-style slasher pic about an ax-wielding Gipper returning to most righteously harvest our current crop of hippies. Arquette's liberal politics are right there to the end, but it's all just good old mean-spirited fun.

Arquette's wife, brother and pals such as Lukas Haas, Jason Mewes and Balthazar Getty populate the woods. Our screamin' hot hippie chick is Jaime King. Lots of entrails and boobs move the exploitation meter to 9.5.

The story begins when a sleazeball promoter (Paul Reubens) brings his American Free Love Festival to redwoods country. The civic boosters are thrilled with the revenue. The cops are cool and bemused, especially our hero Sheriff Buzz (Thomas Jane).

As the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll get under way, a naked hippie finds himself ensnared and filleted. Another guy loses his head. Prime suspect: a local whose life was destroyed by dumb-ass treehuggers back in the day. But then there are those black jellybeans at the murder sites ...

"Ronnie?" a longhair asks just before the ax falls.

Arquette's directorial debut unites the twitchy twosome of horror and comedy, which few films ever got right. Look to it as a great party film for the big night. Just put the flower children to bed early.

The Fox Home Entertainment DVD's images are pop-art colorful and there's a playful 5.1 sound mix. Two hours of decent but routine extras and a commentary with Arquette and pals.

Also in the DVD blog's Halloween series: The English indie classic "Witchfinder General" with Vincent Price, "The Damned Thing" from Tobe Hooper and "Hostel" in a director's cut Blu-ray.

More gore: In this killer year for horror movies on disc, your minion the DVD blog kept track of all the releases. Check out this unholy trio of posts: Halloween I, Halloween 2 and Halloween: The Final Chapter.