DVD Collectors Online

Gorgo, a review by Rogmeister

Gorgo (1961)  Directed by Eugene Lourie
Cast: Bill Travers, William Sylvester, Vincent Winter, Bruce Seton, Joseph O'Connor, Martin Benson
DVD Extras: Behind-the-scenes mini-documentary, photo gallery, theatrical trailer

A volcanic eruption in the North Atlantic brings to the surface a 65-foot prehistor monster.  Two treasure divers capture the creature and take him to London where he is put on display in a circus.  Little do they realize that the creature is merely an infant and that the creature's mother (all 200-feet of her) will soon be on the way to reclaim its young.

To me, this is a kind of American (or British, to be more accurate) take on the Japanese rubber suit monster movies (such as Godzilla) and they even go so far as to have a youngster who has a special feeling for the destructive creatures.  This is a pretty decent film in that context with lots of destruction.  This DVD came from VCI and the quality is okay but not pristine.  It's a decent print though some night scenes are occasionally a bit hard to make out but overall a pleasant experience.  Interestingly, there is no leading lady in this movie but apart from that I had a good time and the movie, at 76 minutes, moves quickly.   

(From Roger's Random Reviews on July 18th, 2009)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, a review by Jimmy

Title: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

Genre: Horror
Director: Jonathan Liebesman
Rating: NR
Length: 1h36
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 1:85.1
Audio: English
Subtitles: English and Spanish

Stars:
Jordana Brewster   
Taylor Handley
Diora Baird
Matthew Bomer
R. Lee Ermey

Plot:
Take a bone-chilling journey into evil, and witness how Thomas Hewitt became the infamous and deranged serial killer Leatherface.

Born under the most gruseome of conditions, an abandoned baby is found and taken in by the demented Hewitt family. As he grows under their morbid nurtuting, Thomas develops a ravenous appetite for chainsaws and torture. This is unfortunate for four teens captured by the shady local "sheriff" and brought to the Hewitts' sadistic house of horrors. There, the teenagers must fight to surivive as Thomas' murderous desired are unleashed and Leatherface is born.

Typical horror movie made in the years 2000: it's very violent, bloody and over the top. No that it's that much of a negative but more subtlety and restraint is more efficient to create a suspense. Of course this film make the same error than many other recent horror movies do: the killer is misunderstood and he was bullied as a kid so it's not his fault if he is like that (newsflash for you filmmakers, all of us were in their youth and 99.999% of us turn as normal adult. Enough with that it's the society fault not mine crap). I won't say the evidence that this movie had too many characters (I know they wanted to expand the family, but that doesn't work). Anyway this is the R. Lee Ermey show and this is the real reason to watch this film, since he is great in this and bring back his Full Metal Jacket personality. Evidently the film is previsible, but it is called "the beginning" so you know that it won't end well for the protagonists.

It isn't a great film per se, but the film is better than most recent remake.

Rating :

(From Jimmy's - 2013 Ooctober Horror Marathon on October 14th, 2013)

Friends: The One With All Ten Seasons, a review by DJ Doena

In opposition to the early adopters I've always been more of a late adoper. Especially when it comes to trends and hypes. Every time a hype is rolling I am against it per se. And to be honest in most cases the hype doesn't last long and it was a good thing I wasn't being involved in that crap.

Something like that happend with Friends. It was running on TV all the time but I haver felt any connection to that flat sharing community from New York. Over the years I watched a few episodes but I had never the urge to zap in the next week. Since a few months, Friends is running again on the german TV station Kabel 1 and I watched a few episoded again.

When we talked about this show at work, a friend of mine recommended this show wholeheartedly. He watched it during its original run and additionally with the original soundtrack (usually movies and shows are dubbed in germany).

Thus I made the decision to buy this show three years after it ended. And I decided to buy the entire show at once. Unfortunately the german box
And what can I say: I was fascinated from the first episodes on. The facial expressions and the gestures of the actors and the jokes are awesome.

But the most important element of the show is a continuing story telling. As I have stated before, TV shows must have a continuing storyline to be interesting. I grew up in the 80s and (being born in east germany) I watched a lot of "Westfernsehen" (TV stations from west germany). I watched everything the TV stations deemed worthy of broadcasting: Star Trek, The Fall Guy, Riptide, MacGyver and so on. But somewhere in the history of making TV shows they switched to continuing stories. Examples for this are Babylon 5 and later on also Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Both shows, as well as Emergency Room and Friends started in the years 1993/1994. In my opinion these shows had a lasting impact on TV shows.

Some say that Friends was corny and contained many soap elements (especially the Ross/Rachel story and the season cliffhangers) but they always spiced it up with a great pinch of humour.

But let's look on other comedy shows in comparison: Married With Children, Home Improvement and King of Queens. All sitcoms in the classical fashion with a certain set of places (first and foremost the living room) that remain constant throughout the years. The difference is that the characters only change slightly or not at all. Granted, the children get older but other than that very few things change. If you watch an episode of the first or seventh season becomes only clear through the age of the actors. That's my personal reason why I stopped collection these shows. There is no need to watch the next episode. You've had a few good laughs but when the next episode begins everything has been resetted.

On Friends there is the additional element of the relations between the characters. This is through the chosen setting (6 friends). Almost all characters are "combinable", while the classic sitcoms is based upon a family and thus the characters have defined relations among each other.  Just the combinations of who is roomie with whom and situations based on that are simply not doable in other sitcoms.

The next thing is the ensemble. No one of the six is perfectly normal but that is not unusual among sitcoms (Al Bundy, Steve Urquel, Dharma Freedom Finkelstein-Montgomery) but in this show everyone is a bit of a weirdo. And they are well-balanced. Nowadays Jennifer Aniston may be the well-knownst actress but I had never the feeling  one of the characters  was missed out. No character outshone all others nor was anyone over-shadowed. Granted, Joey had the least character developement of all (although he made a great leap forward over the last two seasons) but that doesn't mean the others outshone him.

So I watched The One Where It All Began for the first time on October, 18th and in the night from November 1st to 2nd The Last One

(From Friends: The One With All Ten Seasons on November 2nd, 2007)