Review: 'Ad Nauseum: Newsprint Nightmares from the '70s & '80s'

As a young child in the seventies and early eighties, I'd flip through the newspaper every day and stop at two sections: the comics and the movies. When I'd come across an ad for a horror movie, I'd inevitably think, "What kind of disturbed, sick individual would want to torture themselves by watching this horrible stuff?" What I should have been thinking when perusing the paper was "Does anyone actually think B.C. is funny?"

Review: 'Pink Floyd: Shine On'

An oral history is of no worth if there is no involvement from the principal players, and the most valuable sort includes original interviews with those characters conducted by the author. So right off the bat, Pink Floyd: Shine On remains true to its title words. 

Mark Blake, who has dedicated a good portion of his career to chronicling Pink Floyd, personally interviewed Roger Waters, Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright over a 33-year period, right up until last year when he completed his oral history. Well, Wright's involvement didn't last quite so long, as the keyboardist died in 2008, and it shows in the relative scarcity of his quotes, but he still gets his say.

Review: 'White Zombie' Blu-ray

White Zombie was the first major zombie film, though today's legions of walking dead devotees might find it bewildering unless they somehow came across a musty box of classic E.C. comics. Victor Halperin's film features the voodoo variety of zombies rather than the shuffling brain-eaters that gave them the bum's rush right out the crypt door. Current sensitivities being what they are, this is probably for the best since the original zombie stories were so entwined with real-world issues of race and slavery. Garnett Weston's script does indeed identify slavery as evil, but it takes the zombification of a white woman to get anyone in his film to do anything about it. Plus there's one highly uncomfortable scene involving a white actor in blackface, which is especially galling considering how many genuine black extras there are in this movie. Welcome to 1932.

Review: 'Mr. Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles'

Brian Epstein lived with a massive secret at the same time that he was one of the most recognizable men of his era. To this day he remains the most famous band manager in pop history. He was also a gay man living in mid-twentieth century Britain, where homosexuality was outlawed and a man caught having sexual relations with another man faced prison or even chemical castration. When he should have been basking in his immense success as the business brain behind The Beatles, Brian Epstein lived under perpetual thunderheads of stress, fear, and self-loathing. That final quality may even account for why he fell in with The Beatles in the first place, as the Beatle that most enthralled him was regularly horribly cruel to him, Lennon casually ridiculing his manager both for being gay and Jewish. Even worse were some of the men Epstein with whom he had romantic and sexual relationships. It was not unusual for him to be robbed, beaten, or blackmailed. 

Review: 'Beasts in the Cellar: The Exploitation Film Career of Tony Tenser'

Tigon Films-founder Tony Tenser didn't produce exploitation movies to satisfy a fetish, like Russ Meyer. He was simply a businessman, more like Roger Corman. So despite some of his dubious accomplishments, like opening a member's only movie theater/men's club and coining the term "sex kitten", Beasts in the Cellar: The Exploitation Film Career of Tony Tenser is only lurid when describing the plots of some of his movies. And along with bringing such smutty stuff as Naked—As Nature Intended and Not Now, Darling into being, he also produced some genuine genre classics, such as Repulsion, Witchfinder General, Frightmare, and The Blood on Satan's Claw. 

Review: 'Bo Diddley' (Chess/Acoustic Sounds Edition)

He didn't have Chuck's knack for storytelling, Buddy's melodic gifts, Elvis's voice, or Little's sheer excitement, but Bo is still probably my favorite Rock and Roll pioneer. His rhythm defined his work—the "shave-and-a-haircut" groove will always be known as "the Bo Diddley beat"—but the artist formerly known as Ellias McDaniel also deserves credit for his spacey atmosphere. He's really the only major early rocker who prognosticated psychedelia, which is my personal fave genre. He was also damn funny.

'Monster Mayhem Collection' Blu-ray

Even in an age when bad movies like Hocus Pocus and Clue achieve classic status there have to be limits. Yet here we are with a special edition set of movies even fans of The Monster Squad will recognize as crappy. According to the ballyhoo for The Monster Mayhem Collection, this two-disc set features four films scanned from 35mm archival prints, maintaining their original aspect ratios, and supplemented with feature commentaries and several featurettes. A presentation fit for Citizen Kane! 

So which classics of Hollywood's golden age were lavished with such cinephile splendor. Well...