Disaster L.A.: The Last Zombie Apocalypse Begins Here (Blu-ray Review)
It’s almost chic to question and call out the over-saturation of zombie/infected flicks on the market. For the last five plus years, in part due to the massive success of The Walking Dead, in part due to the manner in which low budget flicks can strive on the genre, it seems every week there’s another couple movies on the shelves. Every studio is trying to grasp onto the cash cow and ride it into the ground, trying to find the next big low cost, high return feature that can be pumped out annually to line the coffers, and everyone thinks that their idea, their take on the shambling and/or running dead will revolutionize and be forever aped, homaged and called back to in years to come.
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Looking back, See No Evil appears to be one of (if not THE) the last original slasher films to get a wide release. Everything else in the subgenre following it looks to be big studio remakes. This was the earlier days when Lionsgate was all about the horror. The first film managed to almost double its budget, bringing some mild success. However, no sequel came about. Now, eight years later, here we are with the limited engagement but mainly VOD, straight-to-video release of its sequel. Its interesting that Lionsgate was interested in going back after such a long gap from a film that did solid business but isn’t really looked back upon. Maybe this was more WWE’s bidding since they just had another iconic horror villain come back with Leprechaun. The best thing about this movie is that its being helmed by the up and coming Soska Sisters who have been making waves, working to become a powerful horror directing team. This caught my eye actually more than this being the sequel to a pretty solid slasher. 
Life After Beth was a zombie romantic comedy in competition this past year at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was later release in a limited capacity in theaters in the United States back on August 15 (No, it did not topple the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Guardians Of The Galaxy). It stars up and coming, or current indie superstar, Aubrey Plaza who’s mainly made a name for herself on Parks and Recreation. In a recent report from someone at an independent film fair with indies looking for distributors, it was noted she starred in like 80% of the comedies being sold. It seems in the world of low budget indie comedy film making she’s sort of become what Malcolm McDowall has been to low budget independent horror films. Anywho, Life After Beth hits Blu-ray next Tuesday, so let’s take a look at it. 
Kundo: Age Of The Rampant, the international box office hit and Asia’s answer to Robin Hood, debuts on Blu-ray
Within in two months’ time, Scream Factory has brought horror fans two holy grails of their fandom. Last month it was the legendary producer’s cut of Halloween: The Curse Of Michael Myers which had been circulating on ratty VHS bootlegs for almost two decades. This month, its one that fans haven’t really been able to get their hands on but had heard about for years; Clive Barker’s intended version of his critical and box office disappointment, Nightbreed. Scream Factory, along with Barker and restoration producer Alan Miller have got on board to put together the film from recently found elements to put together the definitive cut of the movie. In this review I am only covering the release of the Director’s Cut standalone release. There is also a limited edition (limited to 10,000, still available as of writing this review) that contains the theatrical cut as well as a disc dedicated to more bonus material. 
Summer blockbusters are always a thing to look forward to. Big movies are like events to hit up. Well, the small screen now has its own movie event tradition in the summer. Sharknado took viewers and social media by storm last July. A second film was inevitable. This past July, Ian Ziering, Tara Reid and director Anthony C Ferrante returned for Sharknado 2: The Second One. This time SyFy was ready and had this thing ready to be the social media viewing experience of the year. They even named the film from their contest to tweet them your idea for a title. They went with this one, even though I thought Patton Oswalt’s Shaknadeux was far more fun and clever. For a third go around, I’d like to throw my idea for it to be called Sharknado! Sharknado! Sharknado! into the basket. 
Pee-wee’s Playhouse was very much an integral part of my childhood viewing. I was the prime audience back in the day. Every Saturday morning I would get up, have my marshmallow-y cereal and watch my cartoons. Pee-wee’s Playhouse was always the very last show on in the morning. The networks usually transitioned by having some live action stuff on at the end of the morning, like say Saved By The Bell and California Dreams. Pee-wee’s Playhouse was all sorts of things to me. It was wild, hilarious, fun and even some of the things on the show made me uneasy and creeped me out. It was jam packed and loading me with all sorts of emotion. Watching the show was equivalent to a massive sugar rush. Everybody my age had themselves a Pee-Wee Herman doll with the pull string and we also constantly quoted him and had our own impressions of him finely tuned ready to dial up at the right moment. And now I get to relive all of that through this fantastic new Blu-ray release from the amazing folks over at Shout! Factory. 
Last October, Scream Factory ghoulishly delighted everyone for Halloween with the release of The Vincent Price Collection. Six of the iconic horror actor’s works in one set with some definite gems of bonus features. Of those, there were the introductions and parting words for many of the films from the Iowa PBS archives from the 80s that had price discussing each film before and after it in a haunting library like setting. This year, Scream Factory is back with another volume of Price, up’ing the ante to now seven titles. This box set also has more commercially appealing titles to it as well, as it contains classics like The Raven, The House On Haunted Hill, Return Of The Fly, The Comedy Of Terrors and The Last Man On Earth to name some. It is with great pleasure that I return to these and share my experience. 
Penny Dreadful The Complete First Season is a title that I’m very excited to have received this week to review on Blu-ray. I was able to check out the first episode of Penny Dreadful utilizing Showtime On Demand this summer, but due to my hectic lifestyle and work schedule I was never able to follow up on the rest of the series even though I really wanted to. Life’s not always rainbows and puppies, but I digress. I’m just overjoyed that I finally now have the chance to watch and hopefully enjoy all eight episodes in glorious 1080p on my favorite format. It’s a series that NPR calls “scary, seductive, surprising and smart” and Variety claims that Penny Dreadful is “solidly entertaining, well casted and oozing with atmosphere.” Although I did not need them to make my mind up for me those two critiques alone are encouraging enough to make me want to watch this, but if you need more reasons, try this one on for size. The series stars the wildly popular Eva Green, famous for her sexy wardrobe or lack of in most recent roles such as 
What seems to be little known is that there were actually two versions of Halloween: The Complete Collection back on September 23rd. Most every bit of press and excitement wen toward the Deluxe Limited Edition that came with 15 discs. And rightfully so. There was another, more basic edition, released as well. That one is only 10 discs and is pretty much just the discs with the regular cut of the movie and that’s it. So, gone are your original Anchor Bay release of the original, the TV Cut of Halloween II (1981), The Producer’s Cut of The Curse Of Michael Myers, Rob Zombie’s 4 hour making of documentary from his remake and disc 15 which included the extended cut of the original and the retrospective documentaries on Return and Revenge Of Michael Myers. This edition runs a bit cheaper and I guess is for someone who is more concerned with saving shelf space (its much more condensed packaging) and doesn’t care all too much about alternate cuts or bonus material. Let’s take a look at what it does include. 
Scream Factory’s latest dip into the modern era of horror comes to us from Columbia in the form of the film The Squad. It revolves around a military group in search of what caused some lost communication at a base that has gone dark. I really got to go into this film completely blind, as I really couldn’t find many stats on it in my research. Looking for stats or a production history on this thing sort of came empty from the normal generic information places (Because I’d like to avoid spoilers. But, since its got the Scream Factory brand label to it, you know they saw something in the film and it’ll be pretty much worth the watch. 
