This is closer to the movie that her original "Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark" should have been. A true modern "burlesque" film, this film is filled with purposely corny jokes, cheesy sets, purposely bad acting, and lots and lots and lots of boob jokes and cleavage flashing.

In a good move, this film in set in the 1800s with Elvira as a traveling cabaret performer hitching rides in the countryside with her hefty servant from town to town until she gets a ride from a gentleman who takes her to his cursed casle (as always tends to happen in those spooky films). Soon she meets the wacky cast of characters that reside behind its walls including Richard O'Brien (Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Picture Show) and his weird looking unfunny sickly niece, and his new wife (played by a reject from Mad TV).

The Good: It's nice to see Elvira on the big screen again. She's a much better character than the scripts she gets. Her valley-girl-like chessy jokes are well in character and she commands the screen (which isn't so hard with the casts she has surrounded herself with). The sets are surprisingly pretty good and harken back to the Hammer Horror films of the 60s and 70s. A few more shadows and cobwebs here and there would have made them perfect.

The Bad: Most of the rest of the cast are really annoying and rarely funny. There are actually a bunch of really funny lines and moments, but most of them come from Elvira herself and also from a stable boy who was dubbed really badly for comic effect. The script just needed a good punching up to get it to where it (and the audience) wanted to go. Still I'd rather see a million screenings of this film before I see any film starring Mandy Moore or the soon-to-be-washout Britney Spears. Oh, and this film employs the ol' "speeding up the film" to make a scene funny, but it really would have been better without it. The lady playing the niece was just kind of uncomfortable to watch. The low point of the film was towads the end when Elvira commented on how they could've afforded to make a particular visual effect and, to be honest, the effect was just a very very lo-tech computer effect. Still with a better script, this could have been a great film instead of just a good-to-ok film. I think she should try to do another film really soon. (Hey Elvira, I'll even write it for you!)

So to sum up, I can definitely recommend this for a midnight screening (check the Elvira website at www.elvira.com to see when it's coming to your town.) They are touring it around kinda like a band (and much like the roadshow pictures from the 50s through 70s) and they definitely need your support to pay for it as it is totally independent. If you can't see it on the big screen, wait for the DVD or video and check it out then. It's worth it, but I wish it was able to go a little further than it did.

When you see this concert film, you will learn waaaaay more about Margaret Cho's sexual life than you could ever even imagine. Seriously, she tells you things about her lower regions that you probably can't even imagine are possible...especially from the star of the ill-fated sitcom "All American Girl". If you saw her last film "I'm The One That I Want" (and if you haven't, it's time to make use of that rental card tonight) then you already know all about her dive into drug use and eventual comeback into being more comfortable with herself the way she is. In this film she updates you on the state of her life today and (THANKFULLY) without getting into all the "Hey, Remember The 80s" stuff she used to do.

I don't remember if I've ever seen a concert film in an actual movie theatre so it was a little weird watching a stand-up act on the big screen. Luckily she makes it so easy by being so funny. Now one thing you need to know about her act... It is VERY "blue" (For those of you who don't know, that means "very adult in its theme"). You are, pretty much, going to find out exactly what has gone in and, yes, come out of her vagina. If the word vagina is offensive to you than you should probably stay away from this film because you are going to hear much stronger words coming out of her mouth.

It may have been the point to begin with, but this is the film that finally puts her up in the ranks of Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and George Carlin (and on my own list Dave Chappelle, and David Cross). It's a sad fact that female comedians tend to have a shorter work-life in comedy than men do, but I really think Margaret is going to be around for a long time. She just seems to be getting better and better and the audience sharing the experience in the Los Feliz theatre we saw this in seemed to be enjoying this film even more that I was. Take your special someone to see this one. If they hate it,...time to get a new special someone.

Released in 1983, this film was based on the manga comic by Kenji Nakazawa inspired by his experiences growing up in Hiroshima during World War II. So I think you know what this movie is about if your history teacher actually taught you something rather than going on and on about stories about his or her own life and how they relate to history in some vague way... Oh, yeah, I'm sure you never had a teacher who did THAT.

Anyway this film starts by introducing us to Gen (pronounced "Gen" not "Jen") who is a young boy and his 5 year old brother who try to have fun even though there is a food shortage in Japan which is affecting everyone in town, especially their mother who is going to have another baby any day. While everyone is upset at America and their contant air-raids, their father is upset at Japan's government who he feels is making things worse than they should be. Anyway things start to get a little crazy when Gen and his brother decide to steal a fish from a neighbor's pond for their mom.

I wont spoil what happens there, but it's all just a prelude to the main point of the story. Gen is just walking down the street when, all of the sudden, the atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. Gen somehow escapes the blast hitting him directly, but everything and everyone around him have been blown to bits. He goes back to his home to find his father,brother, and sister trapped in the wreackage unable to free themselves. Soon Gen is forced to fend for himself and his pregnant mother in a new post-atomic Japan. Along the way he experiences everything you can imagine due to the bomb and its after-effects. Pretty strong stuff. And it's all animated. Yep. It's Japanamation and part of me wants to say it isn't for kids, but I think it's fine for kids in the 6th grade or so. Check it out, but be prepared to get sad-faced. Better buy some jelly-bellys just in case.

Oh, one thing...this DVD doesn't have a lot in terms of extras. Pretty much just the trailer on this one. It's definitely worth a rental, but if you find it at around 12 bucks or under, it's worth a purchase.

Sometimes you see a movie and in your head you're thinking, "What is wrong with you movie? Get better movie! Bad! Movie, Bad!!" Thus is the world of many of the movies released on Something Weird Video...but that's usually the point!

As the tile suggests, this is an adult (not porn, just adult) version of the tale of the man who wears a black mask and vandalizes everything with a sloppy looking "Z". When Don Diego (who looks and sounds an awful lot like a thinner Joe Montana) returns from Spain, he finds that his people are being enslaved for random odd jobs and the ladies are being used for the terrible pleasures of the tormentors (one being sicko movie producer/actor Bob Cresse who you might have seen in "Love Camp 7" or "House On Bare Mountain"...or not).

Don Diego decides that the best way he can make things better is to ride into town on a donky clutching an umbrella with a bitchy attitude that would put most of West Hollywood to shame...seriously. If you decide to see this film beware of a lot of unfunny gay stereotypes.

Anyway, after countless sexual encounters, Don Diego aka "Zorro" decides that he should concentrate all his STDs onto Maria, the daughter of the man behind all the troubles in his town (well besides the director and producers; one of which being cult director/writer/producer David F. Friedman). A bunch of swords fling around, butts get Zs on them, good seems to win over evil, but that is debatable since this film was made in the first place. The box for this film describes the movie as being "the Naked Gun of Zorro flicks." I guess that is just as true as saying that it is the "Six Million Dollar Man of Zorro flicks" or the "E.T. of Zorro flicks."

Extras on the DVD include the trailer (and another trailer from a different film), Commentary by David Friedman (which I haven't listened to yet), a short subject, and the usual "gallery of Exploitation Art". Get this film for when you are feeling very jaded and very very bitter.

It came from out of nowhere...well, we knew it was out there, but never really expected it to be released. (And believe it or not I myself was being considered to design the poster for a possible theatrical release of the film in question.) Well, here it is; "Pandora Peaks"... perhaps Russ Meyer's final pre-mortem opus. And it's either total trash or great genius...or...perhaps a sly combination of both. For those of you who aren't familiar with the name or works of Russ Meyer, he is without a doubt the greatest director/writer/editor/cinimatographer of all time (mind the slashes). His films have inspired filmakers from Fellini to Tarantino with most of his films like "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls" (co-written by film critic Roger Ebert who Russ has called "a tit-man who loves food"), "Up!", "Good Morning And Goodbye" (my personal favorite), and, of course, "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"

So after Russ finished what seemed to be his final film "Beneath The Valley Of The Ultravixens" in the 70s, (and after a false start on directing the aborted SEX PISTOLS movie "Who Killed Bambi?") he started work on his 8 hour epic which he titled "The Breast Of Russ Meyer"...a production that he has long talked about, but most people feel that he will never truely finish in his lifetime. In the meantime, in the mid to late eighties he shot footage of a few of his favorite models and a video for the band FASTER PUSYCAT.

Fast forward to the late nineties. Russ actually comes close to finishing the film he has created around two of the models he has shot. He names the film "Miss Pandora Peaks" after the name taken by the blonde star with the double H chest. Although the film bears her name, it shows almost as much footage of a model named Tundi. Both models are bleached blonde, but Tundi seems to have natural "talent" in an area where Pandora obviously needed lots of medical supervision. But anyone who know Russ Meyer's films knows that the size of the cast in his films isn't the true charm of his work.

Russ shows that he "still has it" in his newest film which runs a lot like his 60s film "Mondo Topless" (only with fewer models), with short quick cuts (no cut being longer than a few seconds), jumps to cityscapes, streetsigns, tape recorders, to jiggling flesh, to Russ shooting the scene and back to another city or sign and so on. But is the dialogue there? A trademark of all his films was the oddly smart narration and it is more than present here with voiceovers over the entire film from Pandora (speaking about her life and what it's like to have "real" breasts like her own (guh?), to Tundi (who I suspect was dubbed by Meyer star Ushii Digard), but mostly by Russ Meyer who gives us virtual history lessons on the towns in California and Germany where the scenes were shot. It is telling (especially in the end) that this film is called "Pandora Peaks" but in reality it is all about Russ, his love of his particular bouncy fetish, and his life and how he came to love filmmaking and making films showcasing the two things he loves most which lay below a woman's chin. It's a tough sit-through as it revisits the same themes over and over and over, but it's still rewarding in the end as you realize it was about him the whole time with Pandora being perhaps little more than one in a thousand muses over his lifetime.

So it goes without saying that if you are a fan of Russ' work, you must hunt down and get this movie. If you are not as familiar with his work I would suggest seeing any of the films I mentioned above first as they are a better introduction to what the bulk of his work is like. Plus the "boobs" in this film are much more frightening than any of the others you would see in his other films. Now all we can hope for is that Russ finishes his 8-hour epic by the end of next year so his life's collection will be complete. And somebody needs to sit him in front of a DVD machine and get him to put these things out on DVD (with commentary of course) before the bootleg market sells him under (and dvd bootlegs are turning up all the time now at conventions and on ebay). Keep making movies Russ! We loves ya!

The first time I had heard about this film was while in Japan seeing posters for the 4th film in this hit film series called "Ring Zero." Soon after, I learned all about the story and only yesterday, after seeing a fan website and learning that the American remake (starring Naomi Watts of Mullholland Drive) will be out this year, I decided to embark on an extensive search by calling every video store in Silverlake and Hollywood until I found it. The first place I called was Jerry's Video in Silverlake and the lady said, "Yeah, we have it." That was easy.

So I had her hold it for me and picked it up after work. David 1X came over and along with Holly-Tron, we watched it while eating bad Thai food. Usually we eat better Thai food, but there was a confusion over menus and we ordered from the wrong place.

The copy that we watched wasn't the greatest as it was a slightly false full-screen transfer (The picture was stretched up and down making everyone look slightly thinner) and it was a little dark (although the subtitles were very bright, although white therefore getting lost a few times in the picture). Still it wasn't the worst (not as bad as the copy of Battle Royale tape we saw not too long ago...luckly I got to see that one on the big screen last year) and it was definitely watchable.

The story: After a neice's mysterious death, a reporter named Asakawa learns about a video tape that she had seen a week before along with some other friends after which she had recieved a threatening phone call saying that she had seven days to live. As it turns out, the friends that she watched the film with were also found dead that same day.

Asakawa tracks down the video and watches it only to recieve a phone call herself. Soon her ex-husband and son are also in danger and they must solve riddle of the video tape's images in order to lift the curse which takes them all over Japan.

I have to say that I went into this film thinking that I was probably going to like it, and as it turns out, I loved it. It was very different and definitely has a David Lynch quality to it. It wasn't the standard killer slashes teenagers kind of film by any means. When we finally see Sadako, the person suspected of being behind the tape, it is a VERY creepy moment that feels like it's right out of a David Cronenberg film

So as I said, there is an American remake coming out in October and it has got a great cast so far and I've seen the Japanese trailer for the film, but you can check out the U.S. website for RING here and take a peek at the teaser trailer, but if you get a chance to see the original, I definitely recommend it cuz you know what big studios like to do with horror films. (shudder!)

The newest film by the director of "Bottle Rocket" and "Rushmore" has many familiar faces for those who have seen his last two films and has many new ones as well.

Director Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums is about a disfunctional family who happen to be geniuses...with the exception of the father, played by Gene Hackman, who is a con-man who gets kicked out of his hotel room and finds out that his estranged wife (Angelica Huston) is thinking of finally making their divorce final in order to marry a longtime friend (Danny Glover). In the meantime, his three adult children have emotional scars of their own after growing up being thought of as child geniuses only to have not lived up to everyone's expectations.

I won't get into all the details (and there are MANY), but they all find themselves living together in the same house after many years having to pick up the pieces of their fractured lives in order to finally move on.

So the summary sounds like a serious drama, but this was a VERY funny movie that I HIGHLY recommend to anyone. There are some serious moments in the film, but it is rounded out so well by the director's ability to see the beauty and quirks of these people in each shot. Each character is treated with dignity and while there are no true "bad guys", you realize that the only "villains" are these people's feelings of guilt and doom.

There is no way to describe the plot without it sounding so heavy, but it is an enjoyable experience from beginning to end and it is my second favorite from last year right after Lord Of The Rings.

I even like this film more than "Rushmore" and if you've seen that movie then you know what I'm talking about. If this film were a bar, I would buy everyone an Oscar. Oscars all around on me!

So as this is a Criterion Collection DVD, there are a bunch of fun extras on the second disc of the set. Interviews, outtakes, hidden extras, but one of the coolest features on this entire DVD is a focus on the artwork of the film. There are galleries of the artwork of Eric Anderson (who was the artist behind Richie Tenenbaum) and Miguel Calder—n (whose crazy paintings you see in Eli Cash's apartment). One of the two booklets that come with the DVDs is a hand-drawn detailed map of the Tenenbaum home (also drawn by Eric Anderson who happens to be director Wes Anderson's brother.) Films in th Criterion Collection are considered to be the best possible versions you can get of them and are known to go "out of print." While I think this one will be around for quite a while, its definitely worth a purchase if you got the cash.

I was introduced to this movie when I purchased a collection of laserdiscs from a yard sale. I asked myself, "a computer animated movie from the early 80's? Will this be any good?" Knowing the success that Disney has had with their computer animated films during the 90's, I knew that I had to watch Tron. I loaded the disc, got some popcorn, and got ready to be transported back to the 80's. Even though the disc had a couple of bad spots where it skipped, the movie was pretty much viewable. Being the computer geek that I am, Tron completely rocked my existance. I then went down to a tiny hole-in-the-wall video store that could find me out-of-print Disney movies and asked them to try to get me a copy. About half a year later, they finally found me a VHS copy of Tron... so I was able to watch it without the annoying skips. The only drawback was that the video had numerous splices throughout it. Knowing that there was no way in hell that it would ever come out on DVD, I just suffered with my bad copies. Then one day I found out that Disney was re-releasing Tron on DVD. I almost nut my drawers! The first chance I had, I went out and purchased it. Beautiful picture, widescreen too! Also includes many extras! If you know and love this film as much as I do, do yourself a favor and trash your old worn-out VHS copy and buy the special edition DVD! You will be sure to nut your drawers too!

This film is a story right out of the headlines (if the only headlines you see are while waiting in line at the supermarket)! Foul mouthed big blue-headed aliens (of the Jewish faith for no known reason) with balloons for ears and know more four lettered words than your grandma are charged with the task of invading Earth to abuct and then impregnate it's women. Why this invasion only consists of two blue headed aliens in blue tights and silver shorts is beyond me (and probably the filmakers as well).

So the first thing you'll want to know about a major science fiction epic such as this is, of course, are there any jokes making fun of gay people? Why yes, young Timmy, you'll find more than a few jokes making fun of the "cursed ones" for your bastard little ears. But what do you expect from a film like this where it's hard to figure out if the balloons in the aliens' ears have more air in them than the heads of some of its actresses?

To be fair, this film does star Dyanne Thorne (star of the infamous Ilsa films) and Ed Wood muse Valda Hansen, both of whom turn in a pretty good performance. Scenes of the aliens walking down a crowded Hollywood Blvd are pretty amusing (especially when you think that this is basically a nudie picture and all the people we see walk up to and around the aliens probably never signed a release to be in this film.)

So the aliens find woman after woman in the midst of lovemaking, beam them to their ship, grow long insect-like tongues out of their face-holes and "pleasure" them for a few seconds before beaming them back to where they came from none-the-wiser. This was the element missing from E.T. that would have it the greatest film instead of just a great film. Now that I think of it, I think Spielberg digitally added a long insect-like tongue to E.T. in the "special" edition last year. I'll have to check when it comes out on DVD this year.

So while this film is no E.T. (I checked the box... It really isn't), it is what it is and it's a silly nudie pic that knows that it's little more than a porno without the real sex. Play this in the background at your next disco party. Just make sure that your friends aren't offended by boobies. Also, as with every DVD released by Something Weird Video, this DVD also comes with extra trailers by other Harry Novak produced films including "A Scream In The Streets" and "The Dirty Mind Of Young Sally." As well as the trailers, there are a couple shorts to keep your guests entertained if they actually stay when they realize that you are actually trying to have an actual disco party. The downside of this particular dvd is that there is no commentary by Harry Novak, the director, or even by any foul-mouthed blue aliens. Also it is presented in full screen instead of the slightly less-than full screen it was probably shot in. In any case, the picture is very clear as is the sound. Sadly this means you can hear every torturous note of it's disco theme song "You're My U.F.O. Romeo." But if you're expecting it, it hurts a little less.