Salon.com > Straight to DVD http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 13:20:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 So about that nunsploitation movie … http://www.salon.com/2012/03/17/so_about_that_nunsploitation_movie/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/17/so_about_that_nunsploitation_movie/#comments Sat, 17 Mar 2012 22:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12684361 "Nude Nuns with Big Guns" and its 90-minutes of blood-soaked blasphemy couldn't have picked a better time to thunder onto Netflix. With Rick Santorum condemning nonbelievers like Torquemada in a sweater vest, the sight of a lesbian nun blowing away dope-pushing priests becomes downright comforting and sadly believable. The Catholic hierarchy seems willing to kick women to the curb over universal healthcare, so it's not entirely inconceivable that it would go the extra mile and make nuns process piles of cocaine all day in the buff (except for their habits of course) like something out of a cross between "New Jack City" and "The Flying Nun." It's not like the church hasn't covered up worse things recently.

This isn't the first time that "Nude Nuns with Big Guns" has been endowed with a significance beyond the scope of its $85,000 budget. Last year, Camelot Films filed a mass lawsuit against the 5,865 Internet users who'd already managed to torrent the movie even though it hadn't been released yet. The suit quickly came to resemble the kind of shakedown cooked up by the corrupt cardinals in "NNWBG" as the downloaders were offered the opportunity to settle out of court for $2,000-$5,000 or risk mounting legal costs and being exposed in open court as the kind of perv who freeloads naked nun flicks. After the Electronic Frontier Foundation got involved on behalf of the multiple defendants, Camelot dismissed the case in May 2011 rather than face escalating court costs of its own.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/03/17/so_about_that_nunsploitation_movie/feed/ 89 The tragedy of Kevin Sorbo http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/the_tragedy_of_kevin_sorbo/ http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/the_tragedy_of_kevin_sorbo/#comments Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:21:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12207561 Movie reviewers will often say that a film is "painful to watch." It's an expression that gets thrown around quite liberally, but it's actually very rare that a film is so incompetent that it might set off intracranial bleeding. "Tales of an Ancient Empire" is just such a film, and much of its ability to do irreparable damage comes from its near total lack of medium shots and wide angle shots.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/01/22/the_tragedy_of_kevin_sorbo/feed/ 28 Deepak Choprah’s awkward yoga http://www.salon.com/2011/12/10/deepak_choprahs_awkward_yoga/ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/10/deepak_choprahs_awkward_yoga/#comments Sat, 10 Dec 2011 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10306848 I was really dragging my feet on writing this review of Deepak Chopra's new "Yoga Transformation: Weight Loss and Balance" DVD until the Vatican's former chief exorcist, Father Gabriele Amorth, proclaimed that "practicing yoga is satanic" and " leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter" before a screening of "The Rite" (2011) at an Italian film festival the other week. Now all of a sudden my kooky idea to put one of the fitness DVD screeners that get tossed onto my doorstep through the movie critic treatment packed as much occult fun as spinning Iron Maiden records backwards while conjuring spirits with a Ouija board. Thank you Father Amorth. You've inspired me to risk losing my immortal soul while burning calories and restoring my natural state of balance.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/10/deepak_choprahs_awkward_yoga/feed/ 4 The horrifying return of “The Howling” http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/the_horrifying_return_of_the_howling/ http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/the_horrifying_return_of_the_howling/#comments Sun, 23 Oct 2011 03:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10134605 Long before "True Blood" made such things into a weekly television event, "The Howling" (1981) brought us werewolf-on-werewolf boffing in all of its drooling, hairy glory. The low-budget shocker also marked the first time that makeup artists pumped compressed air into masks for monster transformation sequences, beating John Landis' bigger budgeted "An American Werewolf in London" to the screen by four whole months.

But "The Howling" offered far more than even its considerable cinematic werewolf innovations. Up-and-coming auteur John Sayles ("Matewan") laced his screenplay about a pack of werewolves in a psychiatric retreat with biting satire of both the self-help movement and TV newscasts, while director Joe Dante ("Gremlins") was able to strike that crucial balance between laughs and scares.  As an added bonus, the movie also sports the only time that Slim Pickens sprouts a set of fangs on-screen. (Thankfully, good ol' Slim didn't take part in any lycanthrope lovemaking, because Slim Pickens werewolf sex may have been too much for even gore-addled, glue-huffing '80s teens to take.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/the_horrifying_return_of_the_howling/feed/ 8 What to watch instead of “Conan” http://www.salon.com/2011/09/17/solomon_kane_review/ http://www.salon.com/2011/09/17/solomon_kane_review/#comments Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/09/17/solomon_kane_review The world of film distribution can be as cruel as a gang of bored silver miners who throw a longhorn bull into a deep pit with a grizzly bear just to see which will survive -- and just as senseless. That explains why this year's "Conan the Barbarian" was allowed to stink up 4,500 screens, while 2009's far superior "Solomon Kane" hasn't even been afforded the scant dignity of a U.S. DVD release. However, you can already save "Solomon Kane" to your Netflix queue, and it's readily available in all shades of legality through those DVD sellers at book conventions (where I got my copy along with "The Star Wars Holiday Special"). Despite its lack of official US release, this movie is finding its audience like note in a bottle tossed adrift by the ghostly hand of author Robert E. Howard, the suicidal Texan who created both Conan and Kane during the pulp fiction heyday of the 1920s and 30s.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/09/17/solomon_kane_review/feed/ 22 The trippiest martial arts movie ever? http://www.salon.com/2011/08/27/norwegian_ninja_review/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/27/norwegian_ninja_review/#comments Sat, 27 Aug 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/08/27/norwegian_ninja_review When you review straight-to-DVD movies, you see a lot trailers built around Kimbo Slice fighting Rampage Jackson in a cage intercut with shaky cam footage of strippers working the pole. But every so often I run across one full of nothing but sheer, unadulterated WTF. If trailers like these are the precious metals of the video world, then the one for "Norwegian Ninja" is pure gold valued at nearly $1,900 an ounce.

In a little under two minutes, the "Norwegian Ninja" trailer combines the Scandinavian martial arts madness that the title suggests and footage of miniatures set ablaze with flames that look like they're coming out of a Zippo lighter. And there are crazy-looking amphibious assault vehicles and sheep -- lots and lots of sheep -- and a synth score that resembles the repetitive triumphalist theme to the Chuck Norris epic "Delta Force," only more somber and European. "Be one of us," a stern blond man wearing glasses and a black karate uniform urges, "Be a Ninja." I am so there.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/27/norwegian_ninja_review/feed/ 18 How to make a better “Pet Sematary” http://www.salon.com/2011/07/09/hammer_films_returns/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/09/hammer_films_returns/#comments Sat, 09 Jul 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/07/09/hammer_films_returns Much like a corpse stitched together by Dr. Frankenstein or Dracula lying in a crypt with a stake through his heart, Hammer Films never seems quite dead. Starting with "The Curse of Frankenstein" in 1957, this modest British studio infused familiar gothic horrors with ample doses of gore and sexuality, causing film historian Carlos Clarens to describe its output as "a blatant, almost athletic display of sadism and necrophilia" in his seminal "Illustrated History of the Horror Film" (Putnam, 1967). With Hammer, breasts were always on the verge of bursting out of corsets, Christopher Lee's Dracula bit into a maiden's neck with an unrestrained lust, and Peter Cushing never flinched as he sawed off a limb during one of his experiments. What's more, all of this was shot in full-blooded color while American studios were still cranking out giant-bug flicks in black and white.

Hammer became the dominant name in horror in the 1960s through the seemingly unstoppable Dracula and Frankenstein franchises plus such occasional bursts of inspiration as "Kiss of the Vampire" (1963) and "The Devil Rides Out" (1968). By sticking mostly to Victorian period pieces where Englishmen in mauve smoking jackets battled castle-dwelling evils that menaced European sex kittens, the studio was freer to push the boundaries of permissibility than if the mayhem had taken place in contemporary times.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/09/hammer_films_returns/feed/ 6 The other new “Thor” movie http://www.salon.com/2011/05/28/thor_review/ http://www.salon.com/2011/05/28/thor_review/#comments Sat, 28 May 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/05/28/thor_review The new "Thor: Tales of Asgard" animated DVD may be the first film to need a "spoiler alert" warning label stuck onto its cover. The plot of this movie is nearly identical to director Kenneth Branagh's blockbuster take on the comic book Thunder God, which goes a long way in explaining why Marvel and Lionsgate released this effort nearly two weeks after the live-action "Thor" hit theaters. The usual protocol for these budget cartoons is to get them onto shelves sometime before the big summer movie so Marvel can introduce any superheroes who aren't Spider-Man, the Hulk or Wolverine to those kids who don't read comics, but do pester their parents into buying DVDs while on family shopping trips to Target.

Just like in the movie that you either rushed to see or are avoiding entirely, in "Tales of Asgard" young Thor heads off to the realm of the Frost Giants with Loki and the Warriors Three in tow and sparks an inter-dimensional incident. In both films, this totally pisses off Odin, Thor's gray-bearded buzzkill all-father who's always going on about diplomacy and restraint like he's John Kerry or something. This time around, however, Thor isn't out to launch a preemptive strike with faulty intelligence. He's only after the flaming sword of Surtur the Fire Demon so he can impress his dad. Odin also doesn't send Thor to Earth to teach him humility, leaving Thor and his pals tasked with getting the hell out of Jotunheim while being pursued by Frost Giants that are way burlier than those skinny Orc-like things from the theatrical "Thor."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/05/28/thor_review/feed/ 9 Val Kilmer’s dramatic decline http://www.salon.com/2011/04/30/blood_out_review/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/30/blood_out_review/#comments Sat, 30 Apr 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/04/30/blood_out_review There was a time when Val Kilmer was the Lizard King, and he could do anything. He could dance with dead Indians, take a leak in front of Billy Idol, and try to set Meg Ryan on fire while Oliver Stone could only look on in awe from the director's chair. Val was your huckleberry (whatever that means) as he shot it out with Johnny Ringo on the outskirts of Tombstone and then played a Chopin nocturne for the unappreciative rubes in Wyatt Earp's gambling house. During those days of the early 1990s, Kilmer could spout dialogue laced with nearly incomprehensible poetry in "The Doors" and "Tombstone," and STILL land the lead in a Joel Schumacher Batman movie where he gets to swap spit with Nicole Kidman while wearing a caped crusader outfit with disarmingly pert nipples sculpted into the breastplate.

Today Christian Bale is the one getting his face emblazoned on collectable cups for playing Batman in a less embarrassing rebooted franchise, while Kilmer is mired in purgatory of straight-to-DVD action flicks. But Val still has the poetry, and he unleashes a fusillade of it during the 10 minutes that he shows up to collect a paycheck in "Blood Out," a low-grade shoot-'em-up from executive producer Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. This time Kilmer is unhindered by the writings of Jim Morrison as he goes all free-flow/stream-of-consciousness like a beat poet who's smoking today's more potent green bud instead of that '50s dirt weed that Allen Ginsberg had to make do with.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/30/blood_out_review/feed/ 46 The weird world of straight-to-DVD Christian film http://www.salon.com/2011/04/16/straighttodvd_christian_costume_drama/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/16/straighttodvd_christian_costume_drama/#comments Sat, 16 Apr 2011 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/04/16/straighttodvd_christian_costume_drama The straight-to-DVD marketplace isn't made up of just zero-budget horror flicks and an endless supply of thrillers starring the ever-tightening face of Val Kilmer. Every month, more and more screeners aimed at the Christian market get left on my doorstep as Lionsgate looks to cater to a potential audience that makes up at least one-third of the U.S. population. Since the beginning of 2011, I've received "The Miracle Maker," an amazing-looking claymation retelling of the story of Christ, complete with a stop-motion crucifixion, as well as a "Veggie Tales" Blu-ray with box art that sent me into a deep state of despair. As it turns out, there's nothing more depressing than "Veggie Tales" box art.

There are also the Christian documentaries such as "The Case for Christ: The Film" where "atheist-turned-Christian" and former Chicago Tribune reporter Lee Strobel walks around in a trench coat like a pudgy noir gumshoe as he braces "expert witnesses" and uncovers "an avalanche of evidence pointing towards the truth of Christianity." Since I watched only the trailer for this thing, his investigation into the mysteries of the Bible appears to take him no farther than the faculty clubs of several North American divinity schools. The trailer for Strobel's follow-up, "The Case for Faith: the Film," builds false tension through a militaristic score that sounds like it was also used in some later era Van Damme movies. This time, Strobel interrogates megachurch pastor Rick Warren, who likens Our Savior to a love-struck 14-year-old by saying, "When Jesus stretches his hands out on the cross, he was saying I love you this much; I love you so much it hurts."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/16/straighttodvd_christian_costume_drama/feed/ 94 A pro-lesbian movie about women in prison? http://www.salon.com/2011/03/19/sugar_boxx_review/ http://www.salon.com/2011/03/19/sugar_boxx_review/#comments Sat, 19 Mar 2011 14:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/03/19/sugar_boxx_review If a women's prison movie doesn't have an actual prison in it, should we still call it a prison movie? "Sugar Boxx," arriving on DVD this week from Entertainment One, can be described more accurately as a work camp movie because the producers couldn't afford an actual cell or even a few steel bars to throw in front of the camera at any point during the film's 86-minute runtime. Instead, our women in bondage look like they're spending a bummer of a vacation at a public park -- picnic tables and all. As these sultry babes undergo the torments of their shoulder-pad wearing warden (Linda Dona) and her peckerwood guards, I half-expected to see volleyball nets, barbecue pits and horseshoe spikes. Director Cody Jarrett ("Frog-g-g!") manages to shoot around such campground attractions for the most part, but leaves in a few random goats from what must be a nearby petting zoo.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/03/19/sugar_boxx_review/feed/ 7 “Birdemic”: The magic of atrocious CGI, confirmed http://www.salon.com/2011/02/26/birdemic_review/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/26/birdemic_review/#comments Sat, 26 Feb 2011 01:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/02/25/birdemic_review I never thought that CGI could be as funny as that guy stumbling around Bronson Caverns in half a gorilla suit and a diving helmet in "The Robot Monster" or Ed Wood's famous flying hubcaps from "Plan 9 from Outer Space." But just as I thought it was safe to dismiss the unintentional comic potential of computer effects altogether, "Birdemic: Shock and Terror," a film whose widely-mocked trailer went viral last year, has arrived to prove me utterly wrong with its scenes of clip-art turkey vultures badly matted over panicking vacationers. I never knew that bad CGI could be so good.

In fact, there's a scene in "Birdemic" of a computer generated dead eagle on the beach that would've looked more realistic if the filmmakers had just taken a stuffed bird that they won at the San Mateo County Fair and splattered ketchup all over it. But unlike the thrown together Mega Pythons, Gatoroids and Sharktopi that come slithering out of Syfy almost every week, "Birdemic" dares to be a movie with a message. Just as Ed Wood thought that "Plan 9" was picking up where the anti-nuke warnings of "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) left off, writer/director/producer James Nguyen really believes that his "Birdemic" is the ultimate combination of Hitchcock and Al Gore. Not only did I think that CGI couldn't be this funny, but I also never thought I'd see this kind of honest bad filmmaking ever again.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/02/26/birdemic_review/feed/ 18 The “Death Race” prequel that’s better than it should be http://www.salon.com/2011/01/22/death_race_2/ http://www.salon.com/2011/01/22/death_race_2/#comments Sat, 22 Jan 2011 14:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/01/22/death_race_2 In 1975, Roger Corman produced "Death Race 2000," a subversive science fiction satire where David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone race customized muscle cars across the fascist America of the then-future and score points by running people over. Babies are worth 70 points; old people in wheelchairs are worth 100. The movie rattled around the drive-in circuit for years, eventually becoming Corman's most successful film. I saw "Death Race 2000" as a second feature when I was way too young to see Rocky Balboa squishing a guy's head under his steel belted radials. This probably explains a lot.

Three years later, Corman cranked out a sequel called "Deathsport" that was more of a rip-off of "Logan's Run," "Star Wars" and Tolkien than a follow-up to the original. David Carradine was back, but instead of driving a Corvette made to look like a dragon, he runs around in a loincloth and uses a Plexiglass sword to fight dudes on tricked-out dirt bikes. "Deathsport" didn't do as well as its predecessor. Corman blamed the bikes. In 2008, Universal remade the first film as "Death Race" with 21st century action hunk Jason Statham and Ian McShane. The remake had plenty of twisted steel, but nobody ran over any babies. This was mainstream Hollywood entertainment after all. And now we have "Death Race 2" coming to a Redbox or Netflix stream near you, and there isn't a two-wheeler to be found in this prequel to the remake. Yes, that's what we're reduced to in this 21st century gone mad -- prequels to remakes.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/01/22/death_race_2/feed/ 11 “Bitter Feast”: Mario Batali’s straight-to-DVD horror debut http://www.salon.com/2011/01/08/bitter_feast_straight_to_dvd/ http://www.salon.com/2011/01/08/bitter_feast_straight_to_dvd/#comments Sat, 08 Jan 2011 16:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2011/01/08/bitter_feast_straight_to_dvd We've all gotta eat, so you think that food would be the subject for more horror films. We've seen an endless amount of horror movies that deal with sex or death, even though most of us eat more often than we schtup and you only die once. But culinary horror films are few and far between. Sure, there's Renfield munching on bugs in so many productions of "Dracula" or zombies digging into a steaming pile of butcher's scraps, but the horror of those acts isn't really about the kinds of food that you and I eat at the dinner table or buy in the supermarket. The shock value comes from the rejection of a nicely cooked steak or a bag of chips in favor of cockroaches and/or intestines.

What few culinary shockers there are have given us some memorable movie moments however. Soylent Green is people. Hannibal the Cannibal ate the census taker's liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. The Leatherface clan has its award-winning chili in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" (1986). Herschell Gordon Lewis gave us the mad caterer Fuad Ramses in his pioneering splatter flick "Blood Feast" (1963). Vincent Price, himself the author of several popular cookbooks, strays into the realm of food prep as he dispatches of hostile drama critics in "Theatre of Blood" (1973). Price drowns one columnist in a cask of wine and another is tricked into eating his beloved poodles baked in a pie. Yet after 1989's "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover," the Grand Guignol potential of the gastronomic has mostly gone untapped despite how many "Hell's Kitchen" viewers must fantasize about filleting Gordon Ramsay each week.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/01/08/bitter_feast_straight_to_dvd/feed/ 23 Straight to DVD: “Parasomnia” and “Caught in the Crossfire” http://www.salon.com/2010/07/17/parasomnia_caught_in_crossfire_straight_to_dvd/ http://www.salon.com/2010/07/17/parasomnia_caught_in_crossfire_straight_to_dvd/#comments Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:17:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/07/17/parasomnia_caught_in_crossfire_straight_to_dvd It's probably hard to roll out the publicity for yet another straight-to-DVD crime flick starring 50 Cent (or Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as he's billed here), but at least Chris Klein did his part by getting popped for a DUI last month right before "Caught in the Crossfire" was about to drop. Now when the bored masses yearning for slurpees stare at Klein's furrowed brow on the front of their local Redbox machine, they'll likely say, "Wasn't he just in the news for something?" Whether this is enough to get them to select "Caught in the Crossfire" depends on how fondly they recall Klein's turn of the century salad days of romancing Mena Suvari in the "American Pie" franchise or that "Rollerball" remake with L.L. Cool J.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/07/17/parasomnia_caught_in_crossfire_straight_to_dvd/feed/ 11 Straight to DVD: Original “Karate Kid” on Blu-ray http://www.salon.com/2010/06/14/karate_kid_bluray/ http://www.salon.com/2010/06/14/karate_kid_bluray/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:14:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/06/14/karate_kid_bluray "Hey, it's the 80s," says Daniel Larusso, aka Daniel-san (Ralph Macchio), as he hands his car keys to his girlfriend Ali (Elizabeth Shue) in the original 1984 version of "The Karate Kid." And it is the '80s, all right. Daniel-san wears a headband throughout the last half of the movie, his mom is nearly crushed under the burden of enormous shoulder pads and even the evil sensei has feathered hair. When you add a soundtrack populated with cuts by Survivor, Bananarama and Gang of Four (!), you've got a real time-capsule movie on your hands. You can cram "The Karate Kid" into an indestructible canister along with beta tapes of "Top Gun," "The Breakfast Club" and a couple of episodes of "The A-Team" and just wait for civilization to end, knowing that future generations will get what the '80s were all about (providing they can find a working Sony Betamax).

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/06/14/karate_kid_bluray/feed/ 10 The king of the zombies is back! http://www.salon.com/2010/05/28/george_romero_survival_of_dead/ http://www.salon.com/2010/05/28/george_romero_survival_of_dead/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 20:39:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/05/28/george_romero_survival_of_dead An amiable George Romero, the director of six (and counting) flesh-eating zombie movies, sat in the cramped studios of San Francisco modern rock station Live 105 as a line of his most devoted fans got the chance to ask him one question on the air. Among the living dead enthusiasts were a young woman with a decaying corpse tattooed on much of her thigh, another beauty with Betty Page bangs who dolled herself up in corpse paint, a guy who insisted that you had to watch all six "Saw" movies in one sitting to really understand them, and then there was me. Being a morning show contest winner isn't how I usually go about meeting filmmakers these days, but Romero is one of the few figures towering enough to reduce me to being the same slavering gore geek that I was during my freshman year of high school.

At 70 years old, Romero seemed bemused by the adulation still generated by his intestine-munching cadavers so many decades after he first unleashed them on the Pennsylvania countryside. When my big moment arrived, I asked Romero if he wished he'd been more like Walt Disney and trademarked the hell out of all things zombie following the success of "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/05/28/george_romero_survival_of_dead/feed/ 11 Straight to DVD: “Pulling John,” arm wrestling’s holy grail http://www.salon.com/2010/05/15/pulling_john/ http://www.salon.com/2010/05/15/pulling_john/#comments Sat, 15 May 2010 00:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/05/14/pulling_john In the hierarchy of American athletics, professional arm wrestling lies somewhere above backyard wrestling and below pro bowling. Although arm wrestling made for a popular feature on ABC's "Wide World of Sports" during the show's heyday in the 1970s and '80s, the sport lacked either its Tonya Harding kneecapping scandal or the Barnum-like genius of a Vince McMahon to make its stars into, well, stars. Its one near-breakthrough moment came with a piece of Sylvester Stallone cheese called "Over the Top," a 1987 macho weepy where Sly the Guy arm wrestles for his estranged son's love and a massive Mack Truck. John Brzenk, a 20-year arm wrestling champ, won that truck in a tournament sponsored by the producers of "Over the Top" but traded it in for a Corvette.

"The movie brought so much worldwide attention to the sport that I thought that arm wrestling would finally be put on the map," Brzenk says in the documentary "Pulling John." We see clips of "Over the Top" and hear Stallone grunting, "but it didn't work out that way."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/05/15/pulling_john/feed/ 2 Straight to DVD: “The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!” http://www.salon.com/2010/05/08/str82dvd_2/ http://www.salon.com/2010/05/08/str82dvd_2/#comments Sat, 08 May 2010 12:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/05/08/str82dvd Some straight-to-DVD movies come into this world as stand-alone works, destined to become orphaned pieces of flotsam and jetsam getting baked by the sun on flea market seller's tables. Many others are sequels or follow-ups that rely on the faintest glint of name recognition to coax the bored masses into selecting them from the ol' Redbox. These movies require at least a passing awareness of the original film or television series to stave off viewer confusion and maximize entertainment value. A subset of that last category needs both viewer familiarity and a half-bottle of Cazadores Añejo to ensure a pleasurable video experience. After more than a few tequila shots chased by beer, I can safely catalog "The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!" among that last substratum of downloadable knockoffs.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/05/08/str82dvd_2/feed/ 6 Straight to DVD: “The Descent, Part 2″ http://www.salon.com/2010/05/01/str82dvd/ http://www.salon.com/2010/05/01/str82dvd/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 15:31:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/05/01/str82dvd Few things evoke more primal fear than darkness and confinement. The dread of feeling your way through narrow corridors where one misstep could send you plummeting down an unseen pit or plunging into a putrescent pile of goo has been best conveyed by the horror novel or short story. The horror stories of Robert E. Howard, such as "Pigeons From Hell" (silly title, great story), are filled with scenes like these and even his fantasy heroes such as Conan or Solomon Kane often find themselves navigating through tight spaces with little or no light. (Howard was pen pals with H.P. Lovecraft, after all.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/05/01/str82dvd/feed/ 13