This week we have a pretty jammed Horror In Your House as there are loads of great films arriving on DVD at a retailer near you. Anchor Bay Entertainment is unloading on four horror titles (THE VANGUARD, FIVE ACROSS THE EYES, BRYAN LOVES YOU and BREATHING ROOM), while Dimension Films is releasing Dario Argento’s THE MOTHER OF TEARS. Lionsgate is even releasing a special edition of the 19990 cult film SUNDOWN: THE VAMPIRE IN RETREAT. Read on for the full list.

Horror in Your House
September 23, 2008
By: Tex Massacre

BLOOD SUCKING CINEMA: Anchor Bay

The story of the vampire has been told for thousands of years, and the vampire film itself spans the silent era to today’s blockbusters. Why does our fascination with these creatures of the night never seem to die? In this Starz Original documentary, discover the evil, the eroticism and the legends of `bloodsucking cinema’ through interviews that include directors John Carpenter (VAMPIRES), Len Wiseman (UNDERWORLD) and Joel Schumacher (THE LOST BOYS); actors Kristina Lokken (BLOODRAYNE) and Stuart Townsend (QUEEN OF THE DAMNED); special effects artists Stan Winston (INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE) and Greg Nicotero (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN); writers Marv Wolfman and David Goyer (BLADE); critics Leonard Maltin and Harry Knowles, and film clips from the most immortal vampire movies in history.

BLOODY MOON: Severin

As the body-count genre stabbed its way into audiences hearts in the early 80s EuroTrash auteur Jess Franco asked to create his own saga of slaughtered schoolgirls complete with gratuitous nudity graphic violence and gory set pieces. But just when you thought you d seen it all Franco shocked the world by delivering surprising style genuine suspense and a cavalcade of depravity that includes incest voyeurism and roller disco.

BREATHING ROOM: Anchor Bay

Thrown naked into a desolate room with thirteen strangers, Tonya discovers that she is the final contestant in a deadly game. Restrained by lethal electronic collars, the players must utilize hints and tools from a box marked “pieces” to find both an exit and the reason for their abduction. One by one the players are eliminated as their “curfew” begins and the lights go out. With each dead body comes another clue, which they use to discover that one of them is the killer. The question is…which one?

BRYAN LOVES YOU (special edition): Anchor Bay

In the early `90s, a 32-year-old psychotherapist began to suspect that his small Arizona community was being taken over by a homicidal religious cult known as `The Bryans’. His entire ordeal was captured on camcorder footage and security tapes. They are the video musings of a highly disturbed young man. This is what was recovered.

COPYCAT (2008): Lionsgate

Tormented by the desire to find the murderer who took her mother’s life, journalist Laura Nelson investigates the only clue the killer leaves behind at the scene – his diary pages. References in the blood soaked pages to Richard Ramirez, Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein lead Laura to believe the murderer has been inspired by the most infamous of serial killers. Through the readings she learns more than she ever wanted to know about the motives behind these monsters and how this killer is paralleling his mentors. The closer Laura gets to finding him, the closer he gets to finding her. It’s a thrilling cat and mouse game to the deadly end.

DEVIL HUNTER: Severin

When a safari of sexy babes and violent boneheads ventures into native-crazed wilderness Director Jess Franco unleashes a deluge of relentless nudity dubious anthropology and his own brand of cut-rate carnage.

FINAL EXAM: Deimos/BCI Eclipse

At Lanier College, the semester is almost over. Exam week is coming to a close when some upper classmen play a prank by staging a phony terrorist attack. But the next excitement in the school won’t be a prank. It’s something a lot more final than an exam. Students are falling prey to the knife-wielding maniac hell bent on making sure that school is out….forever!

FIVE ACROSS THE EYES: Anchor Bay

On the back roads of Tennessee, there is an isolated area the locals call `The Eyes’. And for five teenage girls on their way home from a high school football game, a foolish detour and hit-and-run accident will soon lead to a night of degradation, torment and raw brutality unmatched in low-budget modern horror.

FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES–The First Season (6-disc set): Paramount

The suspense-drama series that brought back the serial horror genre to television features intense psychological terror and chilling suspense. Each eerie episode centers on two distant cousins who inherit a shop full of rare and mysterious antiques from an uncle who was killed after making a sinister pact with the devil. Joined by an eccentric antiques dealer, the team must race against time and fate to retrieve each diabolically cursed item sold from the hexed store before it unleashes its deadly force.

HORROR EFFECTS WITH TOM SAVINI: SRS Cinema

Tom Savini not only makes dreams real he brings nightmare to life. His effects range from walking corpses to exploding zombies. He has also created some wonderful monsters, like CREEPSHOW S FLUFFY and FFRIDAY THE 13th’s Jason. In this video, he gives you step-by-step demonstrations of how some of his most shattering effects are achieved. If you are a film fan or a budding effects artist, you will gain a firsthand look at how cinematic illusions are created and you’ll be able to do many of them yourself!

IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH: Severin

In a genre defined by shocking violence and psychosexual kink, it remains perhaps the most over-the-top Giallo in EuroCult history: Former MGM starlet and doomed James Dean paramour Pier Angeli – two decades past her Golden Globe award for ‘Most Promising Newcomer’ and just one year before her tragic death – stars in this ultra-lurid epic packed with decapitations, pet vultures, creepy incest, groovy fashions, cyanide baths, swirly psychedelics, inexplicable plot twists, Nazi death camp flashbacks and more.

LAST HOUSE ON THE BEACH: Severin

As European producers raced to top the deviant extremes of 1972’s LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, only one movie dared to combine the genres of sicko-psycho thriller with the unholy depravity of ‘nunsploitation’; Ray Lovelock (LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE fame) stars as the leader of a gang of brutal bank robbers who invade an isolated seaside villa, only to discover five teenage schoolgirls, their nun teacher and a nightmare of sexual assault and horrific revenge.

MOTHER OF TEARS: Dimension Extreme/Genius (TEX’S PICK OF THE WEEK)

The final installment of the “Three Mothers” trilogy. A young American art student, Sarah, “unwittingly opens an ancient urn that unleashes the demonic power of the world’s most powerful witch. As a scourge of suicides plague the city and witches from all over the world converge on Rome to pay homage, Sarah must use all her own psychic powers to stop the ‘Mother of Tears’ before her evil conquers the world.

TEX SAYS: It took almost 30-years for this film to finally get made. I think we owe it to ourselves as ardent Argentophiles to go out and pick a copy up. I mean, we all bought SLEEPLESS so there’s no excuse not to but this one right?

NAKED FEAR: Peace Arch

In a small town a number of strippers have been mysteriously disappearing. Diana, a new arrival to town soon finds out why when a mysterious gun man kidnaps her for a terrifying game of hunter and the hunted. Set free naked in the wild she is forced to try and outwit her captor before she becomes his latest victim.

PATHOLOGY (special edition): MGM/Fox

Ted Grey is a brilliant medical student with a promising future in forensics. But when he joins the nation’s most prestigious pathology program, he unknowingly becomes a pawn in a terrifying game of death and destruction as his fellow students use their razor-sharp skills to commit unthinkable murders. When the pathological secrets of his colleagues begin to unfold, Ted quickly realizes that what he doesn’t know… could kill him.

RE-CYCLE: Image

When a bestselling novelist decides to write a horror novel, she opens up the door to a terrifying realm of the supernatural guided by one of her book’s phantasmagorical creations now come to life. Trapped in a land consumed by everything forgotten and hidden, including the dead, she must now confront a secret from her past to return home.

RED RIDGE: Vanguard

Brandon Matthews must come to the aid of his sister-in-law, who is being held captive in the small Texas town of Red Ridge, in this violent thriller. But all hell is let loose when Matthews arrives at the mysterious Blue House, where two master criminals have lured a number of victims and mercilessly tortured them.

THE SUICIDE SONG: Tokyo Shock/Media Blasters

A high-school girl named Kana suddenly commits suicide in a classroom one afternoon. Her friend Anzu, who at the time hears Kana humming a strange song, is on hand to witness the tragic scene. And while the disturbing event leads to media speculation about bullying at the school, Anzu cannot shake the feeling that something more might be going on. With the mysterious melody still fresh in her mind, she decides to investigate the mystery with her friends.

SUNDOWN: THE VAMPIRE IN RETREAT (special edition): Lionsgate

Count Mardulak, the leader of a group of vampires, has ended their tradition of human bloodletting and placed his followers on a diet of synthetic, bottled blood in an attempt to put aside their monstrous nature and peacefully co-exist with humans. However, when the Harrisons, a human family, move into the town, the natives start to crave “the real thing.” Soon, the Harrisons find themselves in the thick of an escalating rivalry between two vampire factions – one led by peaceful Count Mardulak and the other old-school bloodsuckers who consider Mardulak and his clan traitors to their predatory heritage. The battle for the “right to bite” begins at sundown!

THE VANGUARD: Anchor Bay

The year is 2015. The last known oil fields have been lost to global war. Overpopulation and famine have plunged our planet into chaos. But deep in the wilderness, one desperate survivor now finds himself hunted by corporate kill squads, sought by the Resistance, and pursued by hordes of rage-crazed zombies. In a world ruled by murder, madness and cannibalistic carnage, will humanity’s last hope be measured in bloodshed?

VIPERS: Genius

A group of genetically enhanced vipers are on the loose after a break-in at a medical research laboratory. They don’t just bite. They eat. Reproducing at a rapid rate, they now outnumber the locals of a nearby remote island who have barricaded themselves in an increasingly vulnerable hotel. With help on its way–or not–the lone survivors have one chance to stay alive: make it to the shore–and fast.