// Category Archive for: Retrovirus

Blu-Ray Review: Anaconda, Last Action Hero, The Legend Of Billie Jean

By Brad Henderson

Mill Creek has blessed us many times with their double packs and some great Blu-Rays. Yes, they come up criminally short of special features, but they do have some decent transfers and their prices are next to perfect. Recently Mill Creek has reissued some classics and I think they look fantastic.

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Music Review: Various Artists, A Classic Rock Salute to The Doors: Light My Fire

By Jeffery X Martin

It’s one of those burning musical questions, the kind of thing that keeps you up at night, losing sleep. What exactly would it sound like if a bunch of classic rock artists covered the songs of a classic rock band they were never members of? It’s a staggering premise, to be sure. I mean, is that even legal? Won’t that push the limits of rockitude past its previously agreed upon limits?

Short answer: no, it won’t. The good news is, it doesn’t completely suck.

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Music Review: Cabaret Voltaire, #7885 (Electropunk to Technopop 1978 – 1985)

By Noreen Sobczyk

#7885 (Electropunk to Technopop 1978 – 1985) continues the fruitful relationship between Cabaret Voltaire and Mute and includes revamped reissues of CDs and DVDs in box set form. These releases were initially broken into time periods, which for Cabaret Voltaire makes a whole lot of sense, because essentially you’re dealing with strikingly different sounds. #7885 is a distilled version of many creative ventures placing the entire era of the band together on one release for the first time.

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Music Review: The Blow Monkeys, She Was Only A Grocer’s Daughter (Reissue)

By Melissa Bratcher

After reissuing The Blow Monkeys’ first two albums, as well as their stellar newest album, Feels Like A New Morning (review), Cherry Red Records has released a deluxe edition of 1987’s She Was Only A Grocer’s Daughter. And a deluxe edition it is—remastered, chock full of remixes and astoundingly good demos, enhanced by an interview with The Blow Monkeys frontman, Robert Howard (Dr. Robert), in the liner notes. It is a boon for completists, collecting all the bits and bobs into one excellent package.

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Music Review: Various Artists, C86: The Deluxe Edition

By Less Lee Moore

“C86 was introduced to the world on 3 May 1986 when the NME revealed that the next tape to be released in its highly-popular and long-running cassette series would be a compilation of indie bands.” So begins Neil Taylor’s extensive, exhaustive liner notes for the deluxe edition of C86, now expanded from its original 22 songs into three discs’ worth of music. If you weren’t around for the original version, The Deluxe Edition should give you hours of listening enjoyment as well as the excuse to delve into the discographies of dozens of bands.

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Blu-Ray Review: Death Bed: The Bed That Eats

By Brad Henderson

Breakfast
Should one try to understand Death Bed: The Bed That Eats? No. Should one watch Death Bed: The Bed That Eats? Yes.

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Blu-Ray Review: Sugar Cookies

By Brad Henderson

I’m in love with many distribution companies—Scream Factory, Cult Epics, Synapse, Arrow, Scorpion Releasing, and many more—but one company that stands out from all the rest is Vinegar Syndrome. It is the one company that is all over the place in terms of genres as well as the one that is releasing everything that is dead or dying. These guys truly believe in film preservation throughout all genres of film and yearn to keep them alive. The only other company that comes close is Cult Epics, who are well on their way to greatness.

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Blu-Ray Review: Death Spa

By Brad Henderson

Ahhh, Death Spa. . .

I felt like I was eight years old all over again when my copy of Death Spa arrived last week. I distinctly remember renting it at the video store one summer while I was visiting my grandmother in Ohio. It was a night I would never forget. Death Spa is the perfect example of a fun, cheesy, straight from the ’80s horror flick that maintains both goofiness and bloodshed until the bitter end.

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Blu-Ray Review: Countess Dracula

By Less Lee Moore

The term “Hammer Horror” evokes a certain feeling. For more than two decades, Hammer Film Productions produced some of the most iconic horror films of all time, movies which implied a distinctive cachet: lush, artful, Gothic. There were also buxom beauties and a lot of vivid red blood.

Countess Dracula was released in 1971 when the studio was starting to lose its grasp on the market and trying different approaches to the Dracula/Frankenstein/Mummy trilogy of terrors. Ingrid Pitt, fresh from Hammer’s The Vampire Lovers (loosely based on J. Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla), stars as the Hungarian countess Elisabeth Nádasdy, herself loosely based on the infamous Countess Elisabeth Bathory, who allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins to maintain a hold on her youth.

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DVD Review: Jungle Blue

By Brad Henderson

Whenever I get mail from Vinegar Syndrome I hold my breath while I open it because I have no idea what I’m getting myself into. Recently I acquired Jungle Blue and holywhatthefuckohmygodwhatthefuck! I still don’t have a clue what I watched. I’ve seen a number of vintage hardcore pornos in the past couple months and I have never seen anything like this.

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