Original Cinemaniac

Movie Reviews by Dennis Dermody

Three/Three…Extremes

            Out on Blu-ray from Arrow Releasing is a delightfully deranged 2-disc set of two separate trilogies of terror, with short films by well-known Asian directors. Like most omnibus horror-themed collections the entries are hit and miss. But in the second…
Read more

Quatermass II

            One of the best presents I’ve gotten recently was Quatermass II, a staggering box set from British Hammer Studios (famous for bring blood and heaving breasts into cinemas in the late 60s, not to mention the Christopher Lee Dracula movies…
Read more

Shaw-Shock

            Three deranged Asian supernatural-themed excesses from the golden days of Shaw Brothers cinema are unleashed in an impressive box set from Imprint.              Founded by the wealthy Shanghai textile factory owner Run Run Shaw with his male siblings, Shaw Brothers became…
Read more

Four Nights of a Dreamer

            A new 4K restoration of a criminally underappreciated 1971 film by the great French master Robert Bresson.             Adapted from the short story White Nights by Dostoevsky it’s about Jacques (Guillaume des Forets), a lonely artist who wanders the streets of…
Read more

The Deadly Spawn

            This scrappy, gory 1982 sci-fi cult classic, locally made on a low budget but with phenomenal special effects, is about a meteorite that crashes to earth carrying toothy little alien horrors which take up residence in the watery basement of…
Read more