Urban Legend
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Exorcism of Emily Rose
(Blu-Ray Editions)
Sony

The Blu-ificiation of DVD has finally begun in earnest this year, and although there’s already a death-beat on the horizon (you’ll be emptying your wallets for PC-connected,  digitally streaming televisions within the next five years, apparently) that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t feast on Blu-Ray’s almost-alarming clarity and wealth of bonus features while we can. This trio of recent-ish shockers should please the gore wastrels among us. although Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), the ‘true’ story of a random, un-religious teenage girl’s ‘possession’ by supernatural forces, is more shivery than graphic. It’s a well-done film and features indie fave Laura Linney as the only sane one amidst the hysteria, but be forewarned that it does lean towards actually buying it’s own bullshit. Like Stryper. Special features include three featurettes, director’s commentary, and a deleted scene.

Exorcist be damned! Emily Rose trailer:

Luckily, there is no message to speak of anywhere near Urban Legend (1998) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), two post-hip slashers released in the wake of Scream’s formidable success. Legend tells the stab-happy cautionary tale of Natalie Simon (fire-fox Alicia Witt), who finds herself on the hunt for an elusive, possibly apocryphal coed killer from the halls of legend. But when her friend start turning up dead, legend and reality begin to blur, and the hustle is on. I Know What You Did, the more tongue-in-cheek of the two, is a dead-on Scream cop about a bunch of snarky, photogenic kids (including half of the Scooby Doo team, Freddie Prinze Jr and Sarah Michelle Gellar) who run some dude over once night. And then he comes back to wreak unholy vengeance. Features a lot of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s large, bouncy, and sometimes wet boobs so, well, thumbs up.

 I know you know what they did last summer, but still:

Lotsa special features on I Know, including three featurettes, a short-film, and a Kula Shaker video. They were popular back then. Urban’s SF’s are thinner on the vine: a mere 20-minute making-of and a commentary track.

Poison Sweethearts
Starring various Cleveland-area vagrants
Directed by The Campbell Brothers
Tempe Video

Couple of brothers cobble together a loose, hour-long anthology of women’s-revenge stories, shot, with great effort, to look like gritty 70’s exploitation fare, ala Thriller, Tenement, etc. Unfortunately, the stories ramble and never come to satisfying endings, the acting is mostly-miss, and the whole thing is too wobbly and ass-broke to really look like more than a trumped-up student film. On the plus side, it does show you what a junky mess Cleveland can be on a bad day, and it does, occasionally, slip into moments of high weirdness (evil street-dancers?). Also, the bitchin’, bright-pink packaging is almost worth the price of admission alone. Basically, a great idea and a solid attempt, but the Brothers Campbell shot a bit too high and, like Icarus, melted.

The trouble with girls: Poison Sweethearts' trailer

Hanoi Rocks
The Nottingham Tapes
MVD

Re-release of a set originally available on VHS back in ’88 and even then, it might only have been on PAL. Anyway, here’s a Hanoi gig late in their too-brief career, filmed on the fly in some Nottingham sweat-box when the camera crew from an earlier event left their junk around. There is no doubt that the band is in top-form here, young and skinny and spewing out one classic after another (Don’t Follow Me! Motorvatin’! I Can’t Get It, even!) but the sobering fact is, this was recorded on so-so equipment in 1984 by drunkards, so the visuals are pure eyestrain and the audio is worse. That being said, there’s not a lot of original Hanoi footage floating around out there, so if you’re a fan (and if you’re not, honestly, GTFO), you’ll endure this DVDs misgivings.

Taxi Driver, from the Nottingham Tapes:

Attitude for Destruction
Starring Simon Burzynski, Mike Murga, Jed Rowen
Directed by Ford Austin
MVD

Cheapjack SOV flick about a GN’Rish band on the verge of ‘making it’. Forced by their record label to ditch their singer Drake (Colby Veil, the actual lead singer of Guns tribute Hollywood Roses and sleaze-beasts Dopesnake), they do the sensible thing and kill the fucker, but his witchy girlfriend brings him back from the dead to revenge his unfair ousting from the band and, I suppose, to save rock n’ roll from a really band Guns rip-off. Ketchup splattering mayhem ensues, as does an ear-battering soundtrack and an endless array of bad wigs. Attitude is your basic goofy, screechy, endurance-stretching, no-budget comic-horror production, not far from Thor’s late 80’s messterpiece Zombie Nightmare.

Attitude trailer:

Evil Ever After
Starring Julie Strain, Joe Bob Briggs, Felissa Rose, Brinke Stevens
Directed by Brad Paulson
Crypt Keeper

Bottom feeder junk-horror about a fella named Bernie (Randal Malone), raised by cannibals to become a superhuman people-eating machine. And that’s what happens. Years later, his nutty parents die, he falls in love with the town slut, and Joe Bob Briggs (who plays sad slut’s daughter-slobbering daddy), calls the cops on ol’ Bernie. Said cops rape him with a candle (!), and then, later on, he gets dumped in the desert and peed on by the local punks. I mean, what would you do in such circumstances? He comes back from the grave with a midget sidekick (Mike Murga), and the two get to kllin’. Featuring cameos from Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose and evergreen glamazon Julie Strain, Evil Ever After is kitchen-sink SOV trash, bare-boned and actually quite horrible, like a half-retarded cross between Vulgar and Hard Rock Zombies. There is a chance, however, that it’s simple ahead of it’s time, so maybe sleep on this one for twenty years first. It worked for Blood Feast!

An Evil trailer:

Rock and a Hard Place
Directed by Aaron Wells
Silverbeach Productions

In these wired days, it would be nary impossible for a rock n’ roll scene to bubble away unnoticed; bands post their first fuckin’ rehearsals on Youtube now. But in the 70’s and 80’s, it was quite possible to languish in complete obscurity or, at best, regional-only fame, especially if you hailed from a looked-over area of the country. Like south Florida, for example. Please, name your favorite 80’s era band from the area, besides Rock City Angels. Anything? Right. But that’s not to say that a virile, enthusiastic scene did not exist. Rock and a Hard Place is a fly on the wall documentary that not only maps out South Florida’s by-gone rock scene, but follows its principal players (including Johnny Depp) as they reunite for one last blow-out. The band names will not likely ring any bells (The Kids, Z-Car, Critical Mass, Slyder, Tight Squeeze and others, all of whom play a decidedly regional sort of post-punky power-pop), but the story is timeless, and there’s just something undeniably fascinating about digging up a long-lost music scene. An engaging example of  rock n’ roll archeology.

Rock Hard trailer:

-Sleazegrinder