Complete your David Arquette collection today

Shout/Scream Factory has been doing an admirable job releasing cult movies on Blu-Ray. The Shout division will soon be releasing the little Western/Cannibal flick Ravenous among their ranks. The Guy Pearce vehicle came out in 1999 and flew under the radar of many, probably since that was the year of The Rage: Carrie 2. Or it might've been The Blair Witch Project. Not really sure.

If you're interested in knowing what kind of extras are on the release, check the source.

I'm sure fans of the movie will be snapping this one up, and if you haven't seen it now's your chance.

Review--Return to Nuke' Em High Vol. 1

Troma is an important staple for any fan of dumb B-movies. To this day, the original The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke' Em High are classics of the genre. There's a lot of crap around that (mostly crap honestly), but the little company-that-could made something of a "comeback" with entries like Tromeo and Juliet (written by the director of the upcoming Marvel flick Guardians of the Galaxy, James Gunn) and Terror Firmer.

This eventually led to the anticipated return of Toxie in the stupidly entertaining The Toxic Avenger IV. So it's not a surprise that Lloyd Kaufman would eventually get around to making a sequel to that other Troma movie people have actually heard of. When it opened with the original theme song I had a big smile on my face. It wasn't soon afterward that my smile turned into a look of flaccid boredom.

The plot--if you want to call it that--has to do with the students eating irradiated food that is being investigated by blogger Chrissy (Asta Paredes). She becomes annoyed by a new rich kid named Lauren (Catherine Corcoran) before they give into their carnal desires and become lesbians.

It's not necessarily that no effort is put into the plot--this is schlock after all--but that it all feels so lazy. Troma movies have always been goofy and filled with low-ball gags, but at this point they're nothing more than a series of bad jokes loosely strung together. Lloyd Kaufman believes that all he has to do for a scene to strike comedy gold is to add a fart sound effect. I never thought I'd be complaining about farts, but this is where we've arrived.

The Cretins themselves are a total afterthought. They begin as members of the glee club (I guess they're supposed to be retarded because that's OUTRAGEOUS) who are transformed by the toxic waste or whatever the fuck is going on. When they become Cretins it causes them to show up arbitrarily at certain points in the movie and sing like a barbershop quartet. Because if there was anything in Poultrygeist we all wanted more of, it was the musical numbers.

Even the lesbian romance is lame. Yes, it's an excuse for the two leads to get naked and make-out (probably the only excuse for this to exist), but we're supposed to still accept lesbians as this wild and crazy thing. It's 2014 and nobody cares anymore. Time for Lloyd to update his taboo rolodex.

It doesn't matter though. Troma makes a product for a niche audience that will still support them. Hell, pretty much everyone in the movie is made up of their fans. You can tell because they look like the people hunched over long boxes in the local comic shop searching for back-issues of Micronauts. Normally I'd be right there with them, but unless Volume 2 knocks it out of the park (the lesson here is to never take advice from Quentin Taratino) it might be time for Lloyd to step back into a producer role and allow the fans who grew up with his movies to take creative control of them.

The Blu-Ray has a few short entertaining extras, but nothing substantial. I'm assuming they're going to save a making of feature for Vol. 2. The full-length making of Toxic Avenger IV was even better than the movie, so hopefully it will be included since that alone will be worth the price.

Hold on a minute while I film my friend being killed by Jason Voorhees

Friday the 13th is being rebooted once again since the last reboot shocked the world by turning out to be a standard Platinum Dunes flick. Since this is being considered the thirteenth installment of the franchise, they probably want to use the original name and emphasize the number 13. That would explain rebooting a five-year-old reboot. It also would explain the type of brain-power that goes into these decisions.

For round two they nabbed David Bruckner, who directed segments in The Signal and V/H/S. What worries me this time is the rumor that they're going for a found footage take. You know, because horror movies can't be released theatrically unless they're about ghosts and/or found footage. Please don't. Source

Eli Roth did something

Eli Roth has a new film coming out called The Green Inferno. I'm pulling for it since cannibal movies have been virtually gone for decades now. A trailer for it was recently released, but since it doesn't really show much here is the trailer for the original. Anything with a leech being pulled from a person's anus gets my seal of approval.

April Ludgate wants to sarcastically eat you

Lately I've been saying to myself, "Why don't they make anything with zombies anymore?" For the past decade it's as if the zombie genre has completely dried up. Well, at least someone is taking a chance on the undead again. Life After Beth is a horror comedy starring the chick from Parks and Recreation. Oh and Paul Reiser, because he's still alive. It'll come out August 15th. Source

Crocodile Dundee IV

His name's Mick Taylor and he's PLEASED TAH MEETCHA. Hey if I was Australia's answer to Ryan Gosling I wouldn't want to get bullwhipped in the face by one of my terrifying countrymen either.

Retro Review--The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is unarguably one of the all-time great horror movies. Tobe Hooper probably never thought he'd get around to making a sequel, but after a career high with Poltergeist (thanks you Steven Spielberg) he blew his good will with the big budget bomb, Lifeforce. I'm sure that had nothing to do with the second act of that film being so boring audiences worldwide had their actual lifeforce removed from their bodies.

Soon he was schlepping back to his old stomping grounds over a decade after the original that made him famous.

To his credit, Hooper wasn't interested in regurgitating what he had already done before. Where TCM was very gritty and real due to its low budget, TCM2 is an over-the-top Black Comedy that uses its higher budget to slap Dennis Hopper in the main (well, main when it came to advertising) role.

The plot kicks off when two of your standard obnoxious Horror douchebags call up a local radio station just to fuck with them. The station is run by a spunky woman nicknamed Stretch, and LG, a man spitting-mad over his eternal status in Stretch's friend zone. Seriously, the dude loves to spit. The annoying goobers are killed by Leatherface & co. while being recorded on the phone, leading to Stretch contacting Lefty (Hopper), a cop who has been tracking the Sawyer clan ever since the events of the first movie. It's the Blow Out of Horror movies.

Before even being released it marketed itself as a different beast from the '74 classic by having a poster parodying The Breakfast Club. Right off the bat there's a much goofier tone, and that tone threw off audiences back then who expected more of the same. History has proven Hooper to be right with the approach he took since it has become more popular over the years. It doesn't hurt that none of the Leatherface films that came after have been particularly good.

Bill Moseley has a scene-chewing role as Chop-Top, the brother of the hitchhiker character who was in Vietnam during the events of the first movie. At first I wasn't sure if he was supposed to be the hitcher-guy or a completely new character, but the magic of the internet helped me solve the most pressing question of my week. He giggles a lot and enjoys scratching at the exposed plate in his head.

Stretch is about to earn her nickname in ways she never thought possible.

Then of course we have Leatherface. He gets a new wrinkle this time out by having a crush on the female protagonist. This comes over him when he gets distracted by her slick legs, causing him to appear to wildly ejaculate in his pants. He also gets a scene fighting Dennis Hopper with dueling chainsaws that is the stuff of fans' dreams. Rounding out the Sawyer clan is Grandpa and only returning cast member, Jim Siedow as The Cook.

If there's one thing that really doesn't work in TCM2, it's the music. The score is credited to both Hooper and Jerry Lambert and sounds like they took a leftover score from a filler episode of the Tales From the Darkside television show. Unfortunately the music is very weak and works against the movie more than it helps.

Other than that it's the most worthy follow-up to the original. Dennis Hopper would go on to say it was the worst movie he ever made.