DVD Reviews

One Eyed Monster
Starring: Amber Benson, Jason Graham, Ron Jeremy
Director: Adam Fields
In2Film
Available Now - £5.99 (DVD)
Review by Blake Harmer

The opening disclaimer at the beginning of this movie sets the tone for what to expect: “In February 2007, ten people went to the remote mountains of Northern California to shoot an adult movie. What happened next was something no one expected, but everyone saw coming”. That’s right - those suspicions are correct: this is a monster movie where the monster is...Ron Jeremy’s penis!

(Insert dramatic “dun dun dun” music here if you will)

Whilst filming an adult movie with some other porn stars, the director and film crew, Ron Jeremy has his penis taken over by an alien who then separates from Ron and goes on a killing spree by fucking things to death.

If you thought this premise sounds stupid, you wont be surprised to find that this horror comedy is just that: very stupid and very funny. With good death scenes such as a character being choked to death in a sort of Sausage-from-Red-Dwarf sort of way, and a porn star with a hole in the back of her head, but I’ll let you guess how that happens.

However, despite some good one liners, the film does end up being a bit of a one note joke, which is fine in itself providing you’re aware that you are in for this sort of humour for the next 80 minutes. At the end of the day, this is a fun film, just don’t expect to get a well thought out and intelligent comedy masterpiece, because you’ll just get a load of dick jokes instead.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: Quite gory but not as bloody as some horror movies, the fact that half the deaths are done by a giant killer penis makes up for this though.
Sex/Nudity: A few boob shots, and lots of Ron Jeremy Wang although obviously prosthetic.
Swearing: Lots of swear words, but used in comic fashion.
Summary: One Eyed Monster delivers exactly what it says on the tin, a monster movie where the monster happens to be Ron Jeremy’s penis, in a fun but stupid horror comedy. The film in itself is a bit of a one-note joke, so if the premise doesn’t grab you, the film is unlikely to either. At the end of the day though, One Eyed Monster is fun film, and nothing more. 7/10

Hard Revenge Milly
Starring: Miki Mizuno, Nao Nagazawa
Director: Takanori Tsujimoto
Cine Asia
Available From 5th April - £15.99 (DVD)
Review by Brad Harmer

Written and directed by Takanori Tsujimoto and starring Miki Mizuno as the eponymous heroine, the extreme Japanese splatter action-thriller Hard Revenge Milly and its sequel Hard Revenge Milly: Bloody Battle are bundled together on this DVD.

Hard Revenge Milly

In a near-future, post-apocalyptic Japan, Tokyo has become a wind swept desert while Yokohama City has been taken over by gangs of vicious criminals, the worst among them being the notorious “Jack Brothers”. Butchered and left for dead by Jack and his gang after being tortured and forced to witness the murder of her husband and infant child, Milly awakes in a deserted hospital to find herself miraculously alive and now in possession of a partly mechanised body. With nothing left to live for and driven only by revenge, Milly vows to hunt down the killers and to settle the score. First learning the art of sword combat from a master swordsman, she eventually embarks on a journey that can only lead her straight to Hell.

The first movie sets the bar ridiculously low. Whilst competently acted and directed, the project is hampered with serious technical flaws from the start. The lighting is so terrible that everything looks terribly flat – and some scenes appear to have been shot wholly in natural light. Combined with the terrible film stock, this looks like something a kid would shoot with a camcorder.

Everything moves ridiculously slowly. A good two or three minutes are spent on Milly sitting on a couch looking wistful. Forty-five minutes long, and it still needs padding? That’s not good. The terrible CG and the terrible, irritating dialogue makes this hilariously bad.

The gore work’s not bad, though. 2/10

Hard Revenge Milly: Bloody Battle

Having confronted and tracked down the Jack Brothers, Milly is approached by a beautiful girl named Haru who asks her to help find and kill the person responsible for murdering her boyfriend. Initially reluctant to become involved in any more bloodshed, Milly recognises and identifies with Haru’s passion for vengeance and agrees to train her so she may exact her own revenge. But no sooner have they begun than they are accosted by a gang of Jack’s sycophants who want Milly dead once and for all. Led by a cyborg-armed psychopath named Ikki, they prove not only to be a match for Milly and Haru, they are also found to be in possession of a secret that could drive a deadly stake between the two women.

You know what, after the first movie, I was really worried about this one.

This sequel features much higher production values, a nice anime style feel, and some pretty entertaining and hard-hitting fight scenes. In other words, it’s literally everything that the first movie should have been. Squirting blood, gore and bullets left, right and centre whilst a leather clad woman kicks arse. That’s a fucking splatterpunk movie.

There’s even room for some surprisingly good acting and dialogue. And I don’t mean “good for the genre”, I just mean just good in general. The only thing letting down this movie is that, irony of ironies, the one thing the first movie did right, this sucks balls at. The prosthetics look really cheap and dated. 7/10

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: Evisceration, decapitation, gore, blood sprays, mutilation, torture, gunfire, stabbing and...everything.
Sex/Nudity: Implied rape.
Swearing: Some strong uses, but relatively infrequent.
Summary: A fun, double-whammy of splatterpunk that will satisfy gorehounds, but there’s not enough true substance here to please many others. 5/10

WWE: History of the World Heavyweight Title
Silver Vision
Available Now - £29.99 (DVD Box Set)
Review by Omer Ibrahim

WWE’s history DVDs are confusing. On one hand, they come across as an attempt to portray the glory of wrestling. On the other, they are a confused bunch of lies tied together by some sort of secret McMahon propaganda that I’m not sure anybody understands.

The DVD kicks off with an over-long sequence that makes lots of wrestlers look deformed. I’m sure it wasn’t intended, but it made me drinkspit at the sight of HHH with teeny-tiny arms.

WWE spends a fantastic amount of time covering the early World Champions, tracing it before Carl Gotch, back to The Bible. Heroes such as Lou Thez, “Nature Boy” Buddy Rodgers, “The Amawican Dweam” Dusty Rhodes, and the Funks and Briscoes are given the respect that they deserve. Of course, “Nature Boy #2” Ric Flair’s arse is kissed repeatedly too. (Am I the only person that actually finds a lot of his matches boring? Sure Ric, you wrestled 678 times a day in forty-four different countries, but why use so many of the same spots?)

The DVD fails in the newer era. It glosses over every champion from mid-WCW onwards. Chris Jericho does get to talk about unifying the World/WCW and WWE Championships, but then we see a clip of Eric Bischoff awarding the World Championship to HHH, devaluing Y2J’s accomplishment.

Then there’s the lies.

I understand that old-timers protect the “reality” of wrestling. I agree with it, and think that it’s a vital part of the art. However, Gene Kiniski’s insistence that he lost the belt because he suffered a “temporary memory lapse” and forgot that he wasn't in a two out of three falls match is ridiculous.

And now;

THE MOST CONFUSING THING I HAVE SEEN IN WRESTLING

(Yes, that includes Brock Lesnar’s stomach tattoo.)

It is acknowledged early that the true World Championship is the National Wrestling Alliance Championship. This belt ended up in WCW. “WCW wanted to make a new identity for itself” so walked away from the NWA. The NWA took its belt and WCW created the WCW World Championship. The DVD acknowledges this.

Hold it!

So, the big shiny belt that went through WCW and into WWF/WWE isn't the World Championship? Nope.

So the DVD follows the belt into TNA? Nope.

It ends there and doesn’t corrupt history?

Wrong!

WWE somehow forgets what it just said and starts showing us the WCW belt as if it is the “true” World Championship. Soon, HHH is telling us what an honour it is to hold a belt that can be traced back to Carl Gotch and Lou Thez. Aaaaand, it’s all gone wrong.

The sheer weight of bonus matches is worth noting, but the majority of them are slow, until we get to the later matches (Especially Kurt Angle vs. Undertaker from No Way Out 2006).

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: Blood. Lots of blood.
Sex/Nudity: Men wear pants.
Swearing: None, amazingly.
Summary: Disappointing. Watch the first half, and the matches, and you may enjoy. 5/10

Mystic River
Starring: Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins
Director: Clint Eastwood
Warner Home Video
Available Now - £17.99 (Blu-ray)
Review by Blake Harmer

In the summer of 1975, three kids are playing when one is abducted and sexually abused for several days. Jump ahead to several years later and the three of them are now broken men. Dave, the victim of the abuse, is haunted by his memories and is very protective of his own son. Another one, Jimmy, is an ex-con and father of three, and the third, Sean, is a homicide detective who has become estranged from his pregnant wife. However, when Jimmy's teen daughter dies, Sean investigates, Dave's a suspect, and Jimmy vows to find the killer before the cops - but is Dave innocent? Or is there more to this murder than meets the eye?

Mystic River is an outstanding murder mystery superbly acted by a star cast of Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins & Laurence Fishburne. It is also brilliantly directed by Clint Eastwood. The story is very well written with some great plot twists and revelations. This Blu-ray edition also has more extras over the older DVD release.

However, despite this being a stellar film, and while the Blu-ray transition has cleaned up the movie quite a bit, I think the transition to HD could have been better. There are better examples of older movies making the leap to HD. Also, whilst there are more extras for the Blu-ray release, the fact that you can pick up a copy of the DVD for half the price makes newcomers question whether it’s worth shelling out for it.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: Some, but the violence is quite gritty and realistic.
Sex/Nudity: A reference to child abuse at the beginning of the film but nothing is shown (for obvious reasons) and a clothed sex scene. Not enough boob for an E14 bonus point I’m afraid.
Swearing: Some.
Summary: Mystic River is an outstanding movie and one that should be watched by fans of crime thrillers and Clint Eastwood’s directing. Fans will like the new extras but as the DVD is a lot cheaper, I would recommend newcomers to try that before upgrading. 9/10

E14 Exchange

Brad: Animated dental torture scenes on schoolgirls FTL.
Rob : …What?
Brad: I...really can't be more specific. What extra adjectives could you possibly require? It was a rear molar extraction...She was wearing a school uniform...The dentists kept the tooth and fondled it afterwards.
^ Terrifyingly, all true. We have to declare war on Japan.
Rob : Britain, or us personally?
Brad: I'm good with either. Bearing in mind that they have a culture based on a) sexual depravity (esp. focused on young girls) and b) being foreign; I'm amazed the Daily Mail haven't already started one.
Rob : Bizarrely, their newspapers display nudity, but rape is almost unheard of over there.
Brad: Makes sense. If you can see tits readily enough, you're not going to run the risk of being maced to see a pair.
Rob : Yeah, exactly.
Brad: Now the dentist is a monster who grows dental implement weilding tentacles from his back. I am so envious of you, Blake and Charlie. You don't get shit like this...

---

Brad: I can be online tomorrow, if you want.
Rob : I'll pass tomorrow mate, Liz has got Uni early the next day.
Brad: How does that affect you?
Rob : I tend to stick to recording on nights where she hasn't got Uni. I'm using the net in her room, and she doesn't sleep well without me there for some reason. Bit lame, but ya know...
Brad: You guys...actually make me want to puke at times.
Rob : I know, it sounds a bit corny.
Brad: And cheesy.
Rob : Carroty.
Brad: Spermy.
Rob : The list depends on what you've eaten really.
Brad: Indeed. That was just a typo for...um...er...bacony.

---

Brad: How’s it going?
Rob : Left my job yesterday, but I’m optimistic that I’ll be back in work much quicker this time around.
Brad: Your overconfidence is your weakness…
Rob : Your faith in your fri…oh wait…
Brad: If it’s any consolation, I had February in the “Epic fail” pool.
Rob : The what?
Brad: A few people were taking bets on when the next unfortunate event in your life would happen.
Rob : Oh, that’s a tremendous comfort. Out of interest, who had which other months?
Brad: Dude, I’m kidding, not even I’m that cruel.
Rob : I thought maybe you were, but I can never be sure.
Brad: All right fine, Ronnie had March.

---

Brad: I swear I’m going to do Natalie Portman one of these days.
Rob : If you do it and no-one’s around to hear it, does it still count?
Brad: Computer says “No”.
Rob : Dude, you don’t Google the question!
Brad: Well what other alternative is there? “Hotbotting” it?
Rob : Well…I…Fine.

---

Brad: Got much on at the moment?
Rob : Just job hunting and doing a few bits for Lizzie. Did you see the news by the way? Dennis Hopper's dying.
Brad: I'd like to believe that's not related to Lizzie's "To Do" list.
Rob : Christ no, the star of Super Mario Bros? I'd never be able to live with myself.
Brad: Get bread, milk. Clean bath. Wash up. Poison that guy from Blue Velvet.

---

Rob : I managed to cut my head open in the lamest way possible today.
Brad: Go on.
Rob : Well, what do you consider the lamest way first?
Brad: Smacking yourself in the face with a kitchen cupboard?
Rob : Alright, the second lamest then. I walked into a "To Let" sign that was dangerously low.
Brad: That's not too bad. You're 6'7". Most things are dangerously low. Your blood pressure, for instance.

---

Clash of the Titans

Clash of the Titans
Starring: Gemma Arterton, Liam Neeson, Sam Worthington
Director: Louis Leterrier
Warner Brothers Pictures
In Cinemas from Friday 2nd April
Review by Brad Harmer

Clash of the Titans is a tale of the ultimate struggle for power, pitting men against kings and kings against gods. But the war between the gods themselves could destroy the world. Born of a god but raised as a man, Perseus (Sam Worthington – Every Movie Being Made At The Moment) is helpless to save his family from Hades (Ralph Fiennes – The Avengers, Maid In Manhattan), vengeful god of the underworld. With nothing left to lose, Perseus volunteers to lead a dangerous mission to defeat Hades before he can seize power from Zeus (Liam Neeson – Darkman, Fallout III) and unleash hell on earth.

Perseus sets off on a perilous journey deep into forbidden worlds, leading a daring band of warriors, including Draco, an experienced soldier who encourages the defiant Perseus to make use of his god-given abilities. Battling unholy demons and fearsome beasts, they will only survive if Perseus can accept his power as a god, defy his fate and create his own destiny.

I’m not usually one to flip out and scream “Oh my ever-loving Christ this is awesome!”, but that’s what I felt like doing all the way through this. I loved the original as a kid, and I love this one too, for precisely the same reasons. No, it doesn’t do it in exactly the same way, but they both made me feel excited, entertained, and blown away. The original was slower, and much more epic in scale than this – but the set-pieces, effects and big-bangs in this newer version achieve exactly the same result – it made me feel like a little kid again.

The cinematography is flawless. This isn’t a movie about capturing every nuance of emotion and character development. This is a movie about making everything look big. The view of the statue of Zeus being torn down and into the sea, the scenes in Mount Olympus, the battles with giant fucking scorpions all feel truly immersive. This has taken the original, added a scoop of Star Wars and a pint of Robert E. Howard and created the most fun action-fantasy movie since Stardust.

The CG is nothing short of amazing, the score fantastic, and the monsters are giant fucking scorpions, but it should also be noted that the cast are pretty damn great too. They all know the kind of movie they’re making and ham it up when it needs it, show amazing subtlety during the quieter moments, and – when required – are funny, too. Everyone involved obviously had so much fun making this movie that is blasts off the screen better than any 3D special effect could.

And, there are giant fucking scorpions in it. And they are awesome.

The Kraken is great. It’s not shown until the climax of the movie, but the wait is well worth it. It’s so huge that it’s not really a “monster”, it’s “scenery”, and the action sequence is incredible. The Medusa (I thought her name was Medusa, and she was a Gorgon, but a) I don’t know enough about Greek Mythology to swear to that and b) that really would be missing the point of the movie) looks great, and the scene with her in is tense and scary stuff.

If you’re looking for a movie that’s a fun ride, combining pulp styling with a Hollywood summer blockbuster feel, then this is going to be well worth your time and money. If you want to spend a couple of hours feeling like an excited little kid again, then you’ll love this. This is the most Emotionally Fourteen release so far this year.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: Several scenes of combat, explosions, monsters, burning, giant fucking scorpions, massive damage, mutilation, magical combat and some blood and gore.
Sex/Nudity: None.
Swearing: One “bitch” in reference to the Medusa.
Summary: A spectacular, pulp-fantasy ride of a movie. Sure, it’s brainless, arcade fun, but that’s what it tried to be, and it has succeeded. 10/10