MANIAC COP 2 (1990) (Blue Underground 4K UHD Review)

MANIAC COP 2 (1990) 

Label: Blue Underground

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: R

Duration: 87 Minutes 

English: English Dolby Atmos; English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo with Optional English SDH, Français Canadien, Español Latino Americano, Português do Brasil, Español Castellano, Français Parisien, Deutsch, Italiano, Mandarin (Traditional & Simplified), Korean, Japanese, Russian Subtitles 

Video: 2160p UHD Widescreen (1.85:1), 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)

Director: William Lustig 

Cast: Robert Davi, Claudia Christian, Michael Lerner, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Landon, Robert Z’Dar, Clarence Williams III, Leo Rossi, Charles Napier

You Have The Right To Remain Silent… FOREVER!

Matt Cordell the Maniac Cop returns from a watery grave in this action-packed sequel from director William Lustig (Maniac) alongside writer Larry Cohen (Q the Winged Serpent). Having somehow survived being impaled through the chest at the end of Maniac Cop (1989) the big guy is back on the beat and patrolling the streets of NYC with a vengeance. His first order of business is to interrupt a robbery in progress at a bodega where a junkie with the gnarliest teeth you've ever seen is holding a shotgun to the face of the cashier. When he finds that the cash drawer empty the junkie directs the cashier to start scratching off lottery tickets looking for an instant winner. Funnily enough the cashier scratches off a 5 grand instant winner, and that's when Cordell arrives on scene. The shopkeeper cannot believe this fortunate turns of events, and plans to pocket that winning ticket for himself, but things don't go the way he thought they would and the Maniac Cop blows him away, much to the surprise of the disbelieving junkie. As cop cars arrive the undead cop disappears leaving the armed junkie there trying to explain that he's not the one who killed the clerk, but the NYC cops blast him to pieces just the same. It's a great opener and the film rarely let's up from there.

Also returning from the last film are officers Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell, Mindwarp) and Theresa Mallory (Laurene Landon, The Stuff), whom after passing a psych evaluation have been placed back on active duty by Commissioner Doyle (Michael Lerner, Barton Fink). Forrest is happy just to be back on duty but Mallory is convinced that Cordell will return again (and she's right!) and causes quite a fuss about it. For my tastes Campbell and Landon exit the film far too early at the hands of the grudge-holding Cordell, and they're replaced by new protagonists cop psychologist Susan Riley (Claudia Christian, The Hidden) and hard-boiled Detective McKinney (Robert Davi, The Goonies). 

Minor spoiler alert, Forrest is taken out by Cordell with his patented knife-baton, stabbing him through the neck in  brutal fashion, but Campbell deserved better! Afterward Cordell steals a vintage police cruiser and chases after Mallory and Riley, there's a great chase sequence with bare tire rims sending sparks flying off the street with plenty of vehicular carnage. In the aftermath the Maniac Cop snaps Mallory's, neck but only after she attacks Cordell with friggin' chainsaw! With Mallory out of the way Cordell handcuffs the psychiatrist to the steering wheel of the car and sends it careening out-of-control down a busy street!  The action sequences in this first sequel are fantastic, with a bit of a larger budget it's great fun to see what Lustig is able to throw up on the screen! 

There's an weird subplot with a serial killer named Turkell (Leo Rossi, Halloween II) who's murdering strippers around NYC, Maniac Cop shows up during one of his attacks and the two become fast friends, with the serial killer leading Cordell back to his pad for some psycho-bonding between like-minded killers, it's a weird team-up but somehow it works.  I have to hand it to Larry Cohen for a wacky but awesome script on this one. We have this weird buddy psycho-killer pairing and a demented Bride of Maniac Cop subplot here that never gets boring, it's weird as all get out but never dull. When Turkell eventually lands in a jail cell he tells the cops that his buddy Cordell is coming to bust him out and he ain't just blowing smoke up their asses. Maniac Cop arrives and completely destroys the police station, it's a bloody massacre with terrific action oodles of bloodshed and broken glass. Lustig seemed to really enjoy breaking glass in this film, and setting people on fire, but more on that in a minute.

Somehow all the major players end up back at Sing Sing Prison so that Cordell can have his revenge on the death row inmates who fucked-up his face and killed him in prison years earlier. It's during this killing spree that Maniac Cop is bombarded with Molotov cocktails and engulfed in flames, but that does not deter him in the slightest - he just keeps killing the inmates who mutilated him! The man-on-fire stunt work during the last 10 minutes of this film are worth the price of admission all on their own, it's awesome! Manic Cop 2 is a bad-ass revenger, and even when it gets a bit silly it never get's too silly for it's own good, I loved it. 

Audio/Video: Blue Underground previously issued Maniac Cop 2 (1990) on a 2-disc Blu-ray back in 2013, this utilizes the same 4K scan of the OCN with the benefit of Dolby Vision HDR 10 color-grading supervised by Director of Photography James Lemmo. The first thing that struck me was how nice the grain structure looks, with very nicely resolved, details and textures that are more defined and the primaries have a nice HDR pop to them, but not in an overcooked sort of way. Additionally the HDR offers deeper blacks and better more layered contrast, slightly improving depth over the Blu-ray counterpart. 

We get a Dolby Atmos remix that is robust, offering a fully immersive experience that comes to life during the action sequences, plus Jay Chattaway's creepy and atmospheric score sounds great. Also included is an uncompressed DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo with optional English subtitles.  Fans of the score will enjoy the isolated music track on the disc presented in uncompressed DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo. 

Blue Underground carryover the archival extras from past releases beginning with an Audio Commentary with Director William Lustig and Filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, plus the Back On The Beat - The Making Of Maniac Cop 2 making-of documentary featuring director William Lustig, writer Larry Cohen, actors Robert Davi, Leo Rossi, Robert Z'Dar, Michael Lerner, Claudia Christian and composer Jay Chattaway. Davi is great fun as he talks about being hoodwinked into taking on the role by Lustig, while Lerner laughs about playing an Irishman. Director Lustig and actress Claudia Christian sorta take a few jabs at each other during their interviews, neither seem enamored with the other. During the Cinefamily Q&A from back in 2012 Lustig let's loose a ton of great anecdotes about Larry Cohen, Joe Spinell, Leo Rossi and Robert Z'Dar plus the great crew who worked on the film and the possibility of a sequel/reboot. 

Finishing-up the special features we have Trailers, a deleted scene featuring Sam Raimi (Evil Dead), a Gallery of posters and pics plus an uncompressed Isolated Music Track and it's D-Box Motion Code Enabled. Sadly no booklet with words from Michael Gingold celebrating the film or soundtrack CD to accompany this one, but still a great set of archival extras. 

The 2-disc UHD/BD combo arrives in an oversized black Scanavo keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork. It also includes an embossed slipcover, basically the same design as the 2013 Blu-ray edition this with the same artwork on the discs inside. 

Special Features: 

Disc 1 (4K UHD Blu-ray) Feature Film + Extras:

- Audio Commentary with Director William Lustig and Filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn

- Theatrical Trailers: International Trailer (2 min), UK Teaser Trailer  (1 min), French Trailer (2 min), German Trailer (2 min)

- Isolated Music Track (DTS-HD MA 2.0) 

Disc 2 (Blu-ray) Feature Film + Extras:

- Audio Commentary with Director William Lustig and Filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn

- Back On The Beat - The Making Of MANIAC COP 2 (47 min) 

- Cinefamily Q&A with Director William Lustig (29 min) 

- Deleted Scene (2 min) 

- Theatrical Trailers: International Trailer (2 min), UK Teaser Trailer  (1 min), French Trailer (2 min), German Trailer (2 min)

- Poster & Still Gallery

- Isolated Music Track (DTS-HD MA 2.0) 

Maniac Cop 2 (1990) is a fun, violent and kick-ass revenger with some fantastic action, brutal deaths and a finale that's engulfed in flames. This sucker is action-packed from start to finish and a shit-ton of fun, this is definitely a 90's horror entry that doesn't gets it's proper due! As with all of the Blue Underground 4K UHD catalog upgrades this another gorgeous presentation that is to please fans, and hopefully it will earn it some fresh eyes from those who haven't seen it yet. 

IT’S ALIVE TRILOGY (1974-1978) (Scream Factory Blu-ray Review)

IT’S ALIVE TRILOGY (1974-1978) 

Label: Scream Factory
Release Date: May 15th 2018
Region Code: A
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen

For the first time on Blu-ray, and in a new, deluxe box set, the It’s Alive trilogy is reborn! On May 15, Scream Factory will release the It’s Alive Trilogy in a 3-disc set packed with bonus features, including new interviews, and new 2K scans of each film.

IT’S ALIVE (1974)

Rating: PG 
Duration: 91 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen
Cast: John P. Ryan, Sharon Farrell, Andrew Duggan, Guy Stockwell, James Dixon, Michael Ansara

Synopsis: It's newborn and … It's Alive … and murder is what it knows best! A proud couple's bundle of joy is really a newborn terror in filmmaker Larry Cohen's cautionary cult hit that tapped into environmental fears. The horror grows when multiple child monsters rampage in the first sequel It Lives Again as two brave parents try to stop them by becoming the bait for their spree. The now global mutants are rounded up and relocated to a far-flung island in It's Alive III: Island of the Alive. Will a parent's greatest nightmare become the world's gravest fear? Find out ... if you dare.

In Larry Cohen's 70's killer-kid classic we have L.A. couple Frank Davis (John Ryan, Runaway Train) and his wife Lenore (Sharon Farrell, The Premonition) expecting their second child, it was an unexpected pregnancy as she was on birth control, but they are happy nonetheless at the prospect of another kiddo around the house, as is their adolescent son Chris (Daniel Holzman) who will be a big brother. When she goes into labor they head to the hospital and as she begins to give birth while Frank sits in the lobby with the other expectant fathers, as was the tradition back in the day, not like now when father's are almost always in the delivery room. However, the birth is abnormal, and what emerges from his wife's womb is a toothy-mutant offspring that chews through it's own umbilical cord before slaughtering all the medical staff in the delivery room, the aftermath looking a bit like that scene fro Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 when Doctor Ock's sentient tentacles go ape-shit. The wife goes into hysterics as Frank wanders into he bloody aftermath, soon after a manhunt is launched for the ferocious killer-kid with Frank initially being on board with hunting it down and killing it, until his paternal instincts kick in. 

The film is a bit of a slow-mover by modern horror standards but I've always loved it, Cohen made a classic 70's monster movie here with early make-up effects by none other than Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London) who sculpted quite a fearsome kid with a bulbous, vein-y head, fangs and clawed hands. Rightfully they keep the visuals of the kid to a minimum, showing it in fleeting glimpses and among the shadows. There are a lot of killer POV shots from the point of view of the homicidal baby, a double-vision image thing that worked pretty well. The film can be read in several different ways, informed by real issues like abortion, eugenics and the Thalidomide baby-deformities, with this one containing a corrupt drug company trying to erase evidence that their contraception pill which might be the root cause of the hideous mutation to begin with. 

John P. Ryan (Three O'Clock High) as the father really sells the expectant father part of the story as well as the conflicted post-hospital slaughter reality of the abnormal birth and ensuing man-hunt for the demon-toothed kid, he gives it some real depth and layers. While the film is a tiny bit slow and we don't see the killer-kid a bunch the film is very effective, plus it's well lensed with a sweeping score from Bernard Herrmann (Psycho) with loads of blood, particularly for a PG-rated horror film! I'm not totally convinced this will play all that well with a younger audience watching it for the first time, I grew up with it so it has some intrinsically nostalgic appeal, but I will say that my seventeen year old son enjoyed it quite a bit.  

This was Cohen's first time directing a horror film, it's a serious effort that's handled with a modicum of class, it's not quite as oddball and quirky as some of his later genre efforts, and I think that serious tone gives this monster-kid cult classic some legs.

Special Features: 
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- NEW Cohen’s Alive: Looking Back at the It’s Alive Films featuring interviews with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen, actors James Dixon, Michael Moriarty and Laurene Landon and more… (18 min) HD 
- NEW It’s Alive at the Nuart: The 40th Anniversary Screening with Larry Cohen (13 min) HD 
- Audio Commentary with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen
- Radio Spots (2 min) HD 
- TV Spots (1 min) 
- Theatrical Trailer (3 min) HD 
- Still Gallery (4 min) HD

IT LIVES AGAIN (1978)

Rating: R
Duration: 91 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen
Cast: John P. Ryan, James Dixon, John Marley, Andrew Duggan, Eddie Constantine

Synopsis: Is it human? Is it a beast? Whatever it is, It Lives Again in this second film in cult filmmaker Larry Cohen’s Alive Trilogy. Once again, Cohen brings to the screen a hideous threesome of mutant baby monsters that are the evolutionary response to man’s polluted environment. These frightened creatures lash out with deadly claws at what they don’t understand. There are only three, but they could reproduce into uncontrollable millions if someone doesn’t destroy them. Fredric Forrest (Apocalypse Now) and Kathleen Lloyd (The Car) star as the loving parents of one of the monstrous creatures. Parental love, however, is no match for these hell-spawned mutants. Their wild blood binge must be stopped. Will the next stage of their evolution become our last?

After the success of the first film a sequel was hatched, picking up a few years after the original we have John P. Ryan returning as Frank Davis who has traveled to Tucson, AZ (love seeing my city back in the 70's) to warn a young couple, Jody (Kathleen Lloyd, The Car) and Eugene Scott (Frederic Forrest, The Conversation), that their soon-to-be-born kid will most likely be a mutant, which since that last film have been being born at an alarming rate around the country. At first they don't believe him but they come around when they meet a menacing guy named Malory (John Marley, Deathdream) who has put together a death-squad who travel around the country exterminating the mutant kids the moment they're born. With the help of John the couple escape the hospital and she gives birth to the beastly kid in a mobile birthing unit built into the back of a shipping truck, and are taken to a retreat run by a group of scientists,  Andrew Duggan (Doctor Detroit) and Eddie Constantin (Alphaville), who want to study the babies, believing them to be the next evolutionary step of humanity, a sort of underground railroad for mutant babies, where they're kid gets to mingle with two other deformed monster-kids. 

The sequel is a nice continuation of the story, it's not just a simple retread, and it's great to have John P. Ryan back as Davis. Also returning are the special make-up effects of Rick Baker plus we get another score from Bernard Herrmann. While I don't love the sequel they way I do the first it's a solid sequel that expands a bit on the story and we get more moving parts, including the Scott's being betrayed by the wife's mother, ending with the authorities showing up at the facility where the monster kids are being kept. There's a bit more gore this time around too, but not a bunch, so keep those expectations in check.

Special Features: 
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- Audio Commentary with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen
- Theatrical Trailer (1 min) HD 
- Still Gallery (4 min) HD

IT’S ALIVE 3: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE (1987)

Rating: R
Duration: 95 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen
Cast: Michael Moriarty, Karen Black, Laurene Landon, Gerrit Graham, Neal Israel, James Dixon 

Synopsis: In It’s Alive III: Island Of The Alive, Michael Moriarty (Q: The Winged Serpent) and Karen Black (Trilogy of Terror) star as Stephen and Ellen Jarvis, the distraught parents of one of the new mutant children. They’ve watched in horror as government death squads roamed the earth, shooting the humanoids on sight. They’ve suffered through the court hearings that sentenced their child and other surviving mutants to a remote, uninhabited island. And their nightmare continues … because the abandoned creatures are now grown … and they are coming back home to the society that created and rejected them. And no one who stands in their way will live.

The second and final (so far, not counting the remake) sequel in the It's Alive trilogy throws seriousness right out the window in far or of a more humorous approach with the introduction of Cohen regular Michael Moriarty (The Stuff) as Jarvis, who opens the film in a courtroom fighting for the rights of his mutant born son to live, arguing for the death of his son is a lawyer played by Gerrit Graham (Phantom of the Paradise), the over-the-top trial ends with the killer baby busting out of it's steel cage with Jarvis managing to calm it down, showing the judge that it's not pure evil, and thus the judge (MacDonald Carey, End of the World) rules that the five surviving mutant kids known to exist are to be shipped away to an isolated island where they will no pose a danger to society.

The film moves ahead a few years and Moriarty's character has penned a tell-all book about the events, while his ex-wife Ellen (Karen Black, Burnt Offerings) wants nothing to do with him or the the damned kid, living her life out of the spotlight while Jarvis, a former TV commercial actor, has become an outcast of society. There's a great scene where the affection starved Jarvis meets a prostitute played by Laurene Landon (Maniac Cop) who beds him but goes ape-shit when she realizes why he looks so familiar, believing that the mutations gene can be passed by touch, sort of the ways the AIDS epidemic caused hysteria around the same time. 

Jarvis later is recruited to visit the island with a team to study the growth of the monster kids who have now grown into adulthood, and this is where I really started to miss the special effects work of Rick Baker who is not present here, instead we have men in rubber-suits that look real goofy, but there's also some fun Harryhausen-esque stop-motion animation which I enjoyed a bunch.

Jarvis and the team come under attack on the island by the mutants, who apparently miss home, they force him to pilot a ship back towards the U.S. mainland with his son saving his life by throwing him overboard when the other monsters - and their own monster kids - decide that Jarvis looks like a tasty piece of meat - stranding him in Cuba, where more off-kilter shenanigans take place. Eventually the deformed families arrive in Florida - where Ellen lives - and  the carnage begins with the mutants destroying a group of 80's punks down on the boardwalk before homing in on the whereabouts of Ellen, leading to a rooftop encounter/family reunion. 

This one is off-kilter and way more comedic than the first two entries, Cohen bringing in Moriarty guarantees plenty of hammed-up shenanigans which we get in spades, I love this guy, and even though it veers far away from the previous films, it's more akin to The Stuff than It's Alive, there's still plenty of low-budget horror and corny Cohen-Moriarty humor to make it a palatable straight-to-video sequel.

Special Features:
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- NEW interview with Special Effects Makeup Designer Steve Neill (10 min) HD 
- Audio Commentary with writer/director Larry Cohen
- Trailer (1 min) HD 
- Still Gallery (3 min) HD 

Audio/Video: All three films arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen and sourced from new 2K scans of the archival interpositive elements, the 2018 2K scans were performed by Warner Bros. and look great. The first film looks the best of the bunch with finely managed grain, saturated colors and deep inky blacks. There's a surprising amount of fine detail in those 70's textures and facial details. The sequels also look great, they lack some of the deep fine detail and clarity of the first film, but are solid. 

Each films sports an English DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0 audio track with optional English subtitles, all are nicely balanced and clean without any hiss or distortion. The Bernard Herrmann score of the first film is certainly a highlight, if I was to niggle about an extra I would have appreciated it would have been an isolated music score for the films, particularly he first two which are scored by the legendary composer.  

Thankfully Scream Factory carryover all the Larry Cohen commentaries from Warner Bros. previous triple feature DVD set from 2009. New stuff begins with the 18-min 'Cohen’s Alive: Looking Back at the It’s Alive Films' which features interviews with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen, actors James Dixon, Michael Moriarty and Laurene Landon, cinematographer Daniel Pearl and historians John Burligame, FX Feeney. The main attraction here is Cohen who speaks volumes about the films, from the troubled beginning of It's Alive to the success when a visionary WB exec saw the merit of the film and gave t proper distribution, creating the opening credit sequences at his home (where much of the second films was shot), working with the cast and crew, Rick Bakers special effects, getting Bernard Herrmann to score the films. The cast and crew also reminiscence about shooting Island of the Alive, getting sea sick on the open sea, bit Larry using the sick crew as extras on the boat, posing as corpses, typical low-budget Larry Cohen workarounds. The talk here is moistly centered around the first and third film with the second getting short shrift in regard to content, but there's a lot of ground covered.

We also get a 13-min  Q/A from the 40th anniversary screening of the film at the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles from 2014, the audio on this one is a bit choppy and wonky in [paces but it's good stuff, Cohen is a great storyteller and he doesn't disappoint here. 

The last of the new stuff is a 10-min interview with Special Effects Makeup Designer Steve Neill who worked on the third film, he speaks about getting ti know Rick Baker, who offered him the job on this film. He speaks about wanting to create a different type of look for the monsters, but Cohen wanted to go a different route, leading to the rubber-suited creatures which emulate the look of the baby monsters from the previous films, he also discussed Mark Williams sculpting of the masks, and the use of stop-motion animation. 

The first film has a selection of trailers, radio spots, and a gallery, the sequels get a trailer and a gallery minus the radio spots. Onto the packaging we get pretty much the same packaging style Scream Factory offered with The Amityville Horror Trilogy, all three films get their own keepcase wrapped in a flimsy card-stock slipcover. Both It's Alive and It Lives Again feature reversible artwork while Island of the Alive features an image from the film on the reverse side. The discs themselves feature the reversible artwork options, except Island of the Alive which features the home video artwork which also adorns the sleeve. 

The Larry Cohen love continues with this impressive looking three-disc set from Scream Factory, Cohen's made so many great cult-films through the years, it's great to see many of them getting new HD releases from Scream Factory with new extras, I hope this is a trend that continues. I also hope there are kids out there discovering some of these for the first time and loving them, and that it's not just us old farts getting nostalgic cinema-erections every time they announce another one. 

SCREAM FACTORY PRESENTS… THE IT’S ALIVE TRILOGY FOR THE FIRST TIME ON BLU-RAY, WITH NEW BONUS FEATURES, ON MAY 15th, 2018

 IT’S ALIVE TRILOGY (1974-1978) 

Label: Scream Factory
Release Date: May 15th 2018
Rating: PG / R
Region Code: A
Duration: 91 / 91 / 95 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen
Cast: John P. Ryan, Sharon Farrell, Andrew Duggan, Guy Stockwell, James Dixon, Michael Ansara

For the first time on Blu-ray, and in a new, deluxe box set, the It’s Alive trilogy is reborn! On May 15, Scream Factory will release the It’s Alive Trilogy in a 3-disc set packed with bonus features, including new interviews, and new 2K scans of each film.

It's newborn and … It's Alive … and murder is what it knows best! A proud couple's bundle of joy is really a newborn terror in filmmaker Larry Cohen's cautionary cult hit that tapped into environmental fears. The horror grows when multiple child monsters rampage in the first sequel It Lives Again as two brave parents try to stop them by becoming the bait for their spree. The now global mutants are rounded up and relocated to a far-flung island in It's Alive III: Island of the Alive. Will a parent's greatest nightmare become the world's gravest fear? Find out ... if you dare.

It's Alive is the first film of the classic trilogy from writer/director Larry Cohen about murderous mutants – and its birth was chillingly midwived by the crucial contributions of two Academy Award® winners*: makeup master Rick Baker (who created the makeup and "played" the infant monster) and composer Bernard Herrmann.

Is it human? Is it a beast? Whatever it is, It Lives Again in this second film in cult filmmaker Larry Cohen’s Alive Trilogy. Once again, Cohen brings to the screen a hideous threesome of mutant baby monsters that are the evolutionary response to man’s polluted environment. These frightened creatures lash out with deadly claws at what they don’t understand. There are only three, but they could reproduce into uncontrollable millions if someone doesn’t destroy them. Fredric Forrest (Apocalypse Now) and Kathleen Lloyd (The Car) star as the loving parents of one of the monstrous creatures. Parental love, however, is no match for these hell-spawned mutants. Their wild blood binge must be stopped. Will the next stage of their evolution become our last?

In It’s Alive III: Island Of The Alive, Michael Moriarty (Q: The Winged Serpent) and Karen Black (Trilogy of Terror) star as Stephen and Ellen Jarvis, the distraught parents of one of the new mutant children. They’ve watched in horror as government death squads roamed the earth, shooting the humanoids on sight. They’ve suffered through the court hearings that sentenced their child and other surviving mutants to a remote, uninhabited island. And their nightmare continues … because the abandoned creatures are now grown … and they are coming back home to the society that created and rejected them. And no one who stands in their way will live.

IT’S ALIVE TRILOGY SPECIAL FEATURES

IT’S ALIVE (1974):
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- NEW Cohen’s Alive: Looking Back at the It’s Alive Films featuring interviews with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen, actors James Dixon, Michael Moriarty and Laurene Landon and more…
- NEW It’s Alive at the Nuart: The 40th Anniversary Screening with Larry Cohen
- Audio Commentary with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen
- Radio Spots
- TV Spots
- Theatrical Trailer
- Still Gallery

IT LIVES AGAIN (1978):
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- Audio Commentary with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen
- Theatrical Trailer
- Still Gallery

IT’S ALIVE 3: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE (1987):
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- NEW interview with Special Effects Makeup Designer Steve Neill
- Audio Commentary with writer/director Larry Cohen
- Trailer
- Still Gallery

THE LONG-LOST 1980S HORROR-COMEDY FULL MOON HIGH ON BLU-RAY™ APRIL 10th, 2018

FULL MOON HIGH (1981) 

Label; Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: PG 
Duration: 93 Minutes 
Audio: English 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen 
Cast: Adam Arkin, Roz Kelly, Ed McMahon, Elizabeth Hartman, Bill Kirchenbauer, Joanne Nail, Demond Wilson, Louis Nye, Jim Bullock, James Dixon, Kenneth Mars

The ‘80s cult classic Full Moon High comes howling to Blu-ray on April 10, 2018, from Scream Factory. Bonus features include a NEW audio commentary with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen (It’s Alive, Q: The Winged Serpent, God Told Me To), moderated by King Cohen filmmaker Steve Mitchell, as well as the theatrical trailer.

The problem of a typical high-school teenager takes on monstrous proportions in this comical send up of horror movies from legendary cult filmmaker Larry Cohen.

The most important thing to quarterback Tony Walker (Adam Arkin, Halloween H20) is to win the big game against archrival Simpson High. But this plan soon changes when his ultra-right-wing dad (Ed McMahon) drags him along on a spy mission for the CIA. In Romania, Tony is bitten by a werewolf – and that’s when things really start to get hairy! Now, whenever there’s a full moon, he transforms into a growling beast that hungrily chases down beautiful girls. Cursed to live forever as a teenager with uncontrollable urges, Tony realizes he must find a way to the end this cycle of animalistic excess.

Special Features:
- NEW audio commentary with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen, Moderated by KING COHEN filmmaker Steve Mitchell
- Theatrical Trailer

HELL UP IN HARLEM (1973) (Olive Films Blu-ray Review)

HELL UP IN HARLEM (1973)

Label: Olive Films
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 95 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen 
Cast: Bobby Ramsen, D’urville Martin, Fred Williamson, Gerald Gordon, Gloria Hendry, Julius W. Harris, Margaret Avery, Tony King

Tommy Gibbs (Fred Williamson, 1990: The Bronx Warriors), the "Godfather of Harlem," returns in this amped-up sequel to Black Caesar (1973), coming out just a scant 10 months after the first film was a huge hit for distributor AIP. Director Larry Cohen (Q The Winged Serpent) ramps up the violence and the lunacy in this sequel right from the get-go, we have a crooked District Attorney DiAngelo (Gerald Gordon, Ants!) gunning to take-down Gibbs because he's is in possession of a ledger full of dirty secrets. Gibbs is gunned-down in broad daylight, he escapes but is bleeding out fast, desperately he calls his estranged father Papa Gibbs (Julius Harris, Live And Let Die) who comes to the rescue along with members of Gibbs gang who take him to a nearby hospital and hold the docs there hostage while they save his life, also holding off the NYPD in a tense stand-off, the only reason they don't blow a hole in the whole gang is that Gibbs is in possession of the ledger and the crooked D.A. doesn't want to be exposed for the scumbag that he is.

After surviving Gibbs discovers that his kid's mother Helen (Gloria Hendry, Diamonds Are Forever) was the one who set him up, he takes the kid away from her, and she resorts to hooking on the streets, until she is later murdered, which plays into the final stretch of the film. Gibbs and his father rule the streets, reigning supreme in other criminal enterprises while at the same time working hard to eradicate drugs from the streets of Harlem. 

The assault on the drug-peddlers are pretty awesome in a kitschy sort of way, there's a clumsily choreographed kung-fu fight with some Asians and an amphibious frog-men assault on a beach front home with a rather awesome gunfight ensuing after they've beached - it's good stuff, it might not all be executed to the best-degree but it is certainly entertaining, especially when Gibbs and the gang force some super-white dudes to eat soul-food at gunpoint!  

Eventually Gibbs and his father have a falling out when his enforcer Zach (Tony King, Cannibal Apocalypse) inform Gibbs that it was his father who had his former girlfriend Helen murdered. In disgust Gibbs hands his East Coast empire over to his father, who in turn takes out his enemies with brute-force, with Gibbs moving to L.A. with his new gal pal Sister Jennifer (Margaret Avery, TV's Being Mary Jane). However, when Papa Gibbs is betrayed and murdered back in New York by Zach Tommy Gibbs returns to the East Coast to dole out some dynamite revenge, but his murder spree puts his son Jason's life on the line, and we get a sweet murder-montage of Gibbs taking out associates of Zach and DiAngelo, including a sniper kill on a busy street and a particularly fun kill with Gibbs plunging the business end of a beach umbrella into the chest of a sunbather on the beach with a fun animated bloodletting that has to be seen to be believed, an image that deserves to only be seen in a drive-in, it's crazy!  

Fred Williamson offers loads of the effortless charm we love him for, a black criminal with a heart, but ruthless and a skilled killer, his scenes are always a lot of fun, whether he's kicking ass or just looking cool as Hell. Not all the acting is great though, at times both Hendry and Harris are straight up awful, but I love the fist fight with Big Papa and Zach, a street brawl to rule them all! There's also a wild coast to coast chase involving Gibbs and Zach that culminated on a luggage conveyor belt at the airport, total kick-ass awesomeness. Also keep an eye-out for D'Urville Martin (Dolemite, Sheba Baby)as a pimp turned pulpit-pounder, Reverend Rufus! 

Audio/Video: Hell Up In Harlem (1973) arrives on Blu-ray from Olive Film presented in 1.85:1 widescreen in 1080p HD, the source looks solid, some white speckling here and again but nothing stands out in regard to print damage, the colors are nice and bright, depth and clarity are improved from the 2001 MGM Soul Cinema series DVD, but there's not a lot of wow-factor here either, but still a solid filmic transfer with the natural grain intact without a lot of edge sharpening or digital scrubbing. Black levels can be weak at times, more grayish, and the night scenes also show some additional graininess to them, but overall a solid presentation.  

The lone audio option is an English language DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono track, it is nicely clean and crisp, the soundtrack featuring Edwin Starr, singer of the Vietnam War protest song "War" (1970), sounds great, though I must admit I found a few of these songs a bit on the corny side, not one of my favorite blaxploitation soundtracks, but I dig the Big Papa theme. Optional English subtitles are included. 

Onto the extras we get a 2-min HD trailer for the film, and an audio commentary, not the same one from the 2001 MGM DVD either, this is a new commentary with director Larry Cohen, moderated by Steve Mitchell, director of the upcoming documentary King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen. I have always found Cohen's commentaries to me solid, every damn one of them, a spark plug who tells it like it was and is, and it's no different here! My favorite take away was Cohen telling the story of what happened to James Brown's original score for the film and why it was not used, which is too bad, this is Big Payback era James Brown!  

Special Features: 
- NEW audio commentary with director Larry Cohen, moderated by Steve Mitchell, director of the upcoming documentary King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen.
- Trailer (2 min) HD 


Hell Up In Harlem (1973) is not the most stylish blaxploitation movie you will ever see, it can be a bit corny at times with the gangster posturing and near-impossible ridiculousness, but Larry Cohen knows how to make an damn entertaining and kinetic action film, obviously stealing shots on the streets of NYC, which give the film a gritty realism and some added punch, this was a blast and a recommend for fans of action-packed, and slightly ridiculous, 70s cinema.  

SPECIAL EFFECTS (1984) (Blu-ray Review)

SPECIAL EFFECTS (1984) 

Label: Olive Films
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 106 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Larry Cohen
Cast:  Zoe Tamerlis, Eric Bogosian, Brad Rijn, Kevin O’connor

Director Larry Cohen is probably most remembered for his horror movie, a series of seriously entertaining b-movies like It’s Alive (1974), God Told Me To (1976), Q the Winged Serpent (1982) and The Stuff (1985), he is also the screenwriter of William Lustig's Maniac Cop (1988) and the Abel Ferrara's 90s remake of Body Snatchers, the latter of which was just re issued on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive. Horror fans might not be aware of his other non-horror movies, in the 80s he made a handful of thrillers, notably Special Effects (1984) starring Zoe Tamerlis (Ms .45) in a dual-role, one worth re visiting on Blu-ray from Olive Films. 

Wunderkind director Christopher Neville (Eric Bogosian, Talk Radio) s a filmmaker whose career is in fast decline following the box office flop of his latest movie, a big-budget special effects movie. A desperate wanna-be actress named Mary Jean (Zoe Tamerlis) tracks him down at his NYC townhouse hoping to make a connection and to be cast in his next movie. After some short conversation they end up in bed but when the ditsy actress insults he strangles her in bed while secretly filming the whole thing on  a series of hidden 16mm cameras. Afterward he dumps her nude body in her own car on Coney Island. 

Mary Jean's estranged husband Keefe (Brad Rijn) becomes the prime suspect in the murder when he shows up in town looking for her, but the murderous director comes up with the idea of using the snuff footage in his next film, a true-life movie about the murder of the aspiring actress he killed! To that end he bails the husband out of jail and lawyers him up, casting him in the movie playing himself. Neville casts a Mary-Jean lookalike named Elaine (also Tamerlis) to play the ditsy doomed actress opposite her real-life hubby. 

Neville manages to manipulate everyone to his own ends, even Det. Lt. Philip Delroy (Kevin O'Connor) is brought on board as an associate producer on the movie, its a dangerous game but the devious director masterfully casts and manipulates all the players, weaving a web of deceit which will hopefully allow him to incorporate his snuff film into the finished product. 

Cohen wrote and directed a seedy movie right here that is a fun thriller with a decent cast of characters. Zoe Tamerlis of Ms. 45 looks great on screen and shows some decent depth of character both as the ditsy wanna-be actress and the lookalike actress portraying her in the movie, she also look great in her many nude scenes, she definitely didn't mind baring some skin. Brad Rijn is just alright as the hot-tempered husband caught up in the director's movie madness, he seems a bit wooden and one-note. Bogosian is also decent as the self-obsessed director who will do anything to make his snuff film, manipulating everyone around him, unknowingly sewing his own seeds of destruction, this was his first movie, he would next go on to appear in Scorsese's Talk Radio which would really showcase his talents. 

Special Effects is a fun thriller, casting an evil-eye on the underbelly of Hollywood and the dark side of low-budget movie making, how it seems to cast a spell on all involved. I think there are quite a few moments of inspiration here, it is twisted how the prime suspect in the murder is playing himself in the movie, that the real murderer hides his crime within the movie he is making about the murder, that the lead detective would be sucked into the production, this is twisted stuff. My favorite scene is the director strangling someone with length of film stock, that's good stuff. 

Cohen always managed to make his cheap production appear more expensive than they were, the budget is right there on the screen, with some nice atmospheric lighting with luminous moments of red and green light that fill the screen and give it some depth with glowing NYC neon and gritty imagery throughout, even Cohen's cheapest productions looked like they cost a bundle to make, and this is no different. The design and layout f Neville's townhouse is a definite highlight, a very creep place when you get down to it. 

Audio/Video: Larry Cohen's Special Effects arrives on Blu-ray from distributor Olive Films framed in 1.85 widescreen looking nicely consistent. That 80s film stock can be rough but what we get is sourced from good elements with very little in the way of damage to the frame, a few white speckles now and again seems to be the worse. It can be a bit grainy in the darker scenes but nothing too awful, this is a consistent and nicely detailed image. The lone audio option on the disc is a DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo tracks that sounds crisp and clean, nicely balanced with the synth score from Michael Minard (The Mutilator) score coming through nicely. It may not be the most dynamic audio track, but it does the job, optional English subtitles are included. 

Extras on the disc are slim but above average for Olive Films, we get a nicely candid audio commentary with Director Larry Cohen who is always a great listen, a storied director with a storied career who is adept at storytelling when it comes to the making of his movies. The track is moderated by director Steve Mitchell who is making a doc about about Larry Cohen titled King Cohen, which I cannot wait to watch!

Special Features: 
- Audio Commentary with Director Larry Cohen moderated by filmmaker Steve Mitchel
- Trailer

Special Effects is a fun and stylish thriller from Larry Cohen, I prefer his horror movies but was is a fun detour away from his horror stuff, fans who might not be aware of it should check this out, the guy was always an interesting director, and this new Olive Films release looks and sounds good in HD, well worth looking into.