The folks at Well Go Entertainment sent out a copy of Helldriver for us to review, and if you were in the mood for a crazy slice of Japanese horror, well, you’ve got it in spades right here. Helldriver’s going to pack some truly bizarre stuff into its lineup, and your enjoyment of this one is going to depend mainly on your tolerance for weird.

Helldriver takes us out to Japan, where a mysterious mist has settled in over the northern half of Japan and animated the dead. Now with the living hiding themselves in armed camps in the southern half–where the mist hasn’t yet reached–and behind a massive wall, and the northern half now a zombie invested wasteland of lawlessness, the Japanese government has a plan to take back the north from the walking dead. And that plan revolves around Kika, a beautiful young lady with a chainsaw sword an an artificial heart. Kika’s been dispatched to take on the queen of the zombies, Rikka, but as it turns out, Kika and Rikka have a lot more history than you might expect.

I’ve seen more than a little Japanese horror, as you probably found out with last weekend’s multi-review, and generally, it falls into one of two classes: the ultra serious and extremely chatty, or the crazy and exciting rock-and-roll horror. Helldriver is much, much more the crazy kind than the chatty kind. It’s preposterous for a bunch of reasons, any of which would make a good movie by itself to explore but gives this one a kind of surrealist quality to it by trying to put all of this in at once. For instance, here, the zombies not only know how to operate chainsaws, but also have a kind of antler-shaped tumor growing out of their skulls that serves as their weak point, as well as as a kind of illicit drug that, once ground into powder, has a euphoric effect on humans.

They tried to put a whole lot of plot in this movie, give them credit, and this adds to an overall feeling of density and confusion, but that’s actually working for this movie. It’s bizarre, yes, but so are the circumstances under which it operates. The whole of Japan has gone insane, and so, it’s for the best that we don’t entirely get what’s going on.

Still, there will be plenty of action and lots of great fight scenes–not to mention a few good laughs thrown in for variety–that make this one just sparkle with wit and excitement.

The Screenhead Ten Scale in turn gives Helldriver a wild, crazy and downright nonsensical eight out of ten for making a terrific, if downright ludicrous combination of laughs and horror.

Sometimes I wonder how The Asylum does it. Considering that, next week, you’ll be getting a look at 11-11-11, directed by none other than Darren Lynn Bousman, it’s no less amazing to see that just five days ago, the folks at The Asylum got a copy of 11 / 11 / 11 on store shelves. And of course, the first question people will ask is, is this version worth watching?

11 /11 / 11 follows Jack and Melissa, a normal couple who head a normal family, much like any other. And considering their son’s birthday is coming up, it’s looking like a good time to be Jack and Melissa. But the closer their son’s birthday, which just happens to be the titular 11 / 11 / 11, well, he starts acting a bit weird. And not just your normal little boy about to have a birthday weird, but full blown crazy. And when Jack and Melissa discover that their son is actually the key to the apocalypse, which will happen on the little boy’s birthday, Jack and Melissa are going to have to try and stop it…without harming their son.

I give The Asylum all the credit in the word for trying, they really did do their level best to put on something that approximates a scary movie here. And in the grandest tradition of little Antichrist movies like Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen, they did really put up a halfway decent job of making the world seem like it was falling apart around our young couple. The problem here comes in the less than stellar acting job put up by the various cast on this one–frankly, Melissa spends half her time in this movie in bed and Jack is basically a giant tool, meanwhile everyone else is trying to put up a vibe of evil and / or insane and it just comes off like some kind of low-rent high school production, which is sad, because with a bit more substance on the cast’s part, they might have been able to leech something of this. But as it is, none of it seems to quite jell together.

However, the last twenty minutes or so are just preposterous and action-packed at the same time. Frankly, the last twenty minutes of 11 / 11 / 11 represents some of the most lunatic filmmaking I’ve seen in quite some time. You’ve got old women screaming in Latin, screaming Bible verses, then just plain old screaming while waving a machete over their heads.

And then from there, it gets weird.

It’s nowhere near as bad as you might think–it may not be anyone’s idea of a great movie, but it will qualify for at least watchable rank–and might make a good movie to get the crew together and make fun of over beer and pizza. A decent rental, but not too much else.

And with that less than ringing endorsement, the Screenhead Ten Scale hands 11 / 11 / 11 about a fifth of what it adds up to, giving it a six out of ten. It may not be the best thing you’ve seen lately, but it likely won’t be the worst.

Sound the alarm! We have a winner for everyone’s favorite bendy-tailed hero comes to the rescue in Wubbzy and the Fire Engine, the latest “Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!” DVD from Anchor Bay Entertainment.

Laurie Hanson is the winner of the DVD. She says, “Both my lil grand kids love Wuzby. It sends a good message so this grandma doesn’t mind them watching this TV show at all.”

That’s great that your grand kids can still watch TV with Wubbzy!

The DVD features Wubbzy and his pals from the Emmy Award-winning Nick Jr. TV series, the new “red hot” release is available wherever DVDs are sold.

“Fire engines and firefighters have long captured the imagination and won the hearts of children,” said Erin Carter, Executive Director of Brand Marketing, Anchor Bay Entertainment. “And, when paired with Wubbzy, another favorite among preschoolers, these universally-popular elements take on a whole new level of appeal.”

Wubbzy and his best buddies, Widget, Walden and Daizy, suit up for six memorable stories in Wubbzy and the Fire Engine. Each episode is engaging and features simple but meaningful lessons about helping out, working together and getting the job done.

Wubbzy is a joy for preschoolers to watch he has a fire engine adventure with Widget in “Wubbzy And The Fire Engine”; delivers Daizy’s doodleberry treats – the Wubbzy way – in “What Would Wubbzy Do?” and helps rebuild a neighbor’s house with a little help from a pro in “Ty Ty The Tool Guy,” featuring the voice of Ty Pennington, host of the popular TV series “Extreme Home Makeover.”

Additional episodes include “Mr. Unlucky,” in which Wubbzy realizes he’s a pretty lucky guy after all; “Wuzzleburg Express,” where Walden uses quick-thinking to save the day from a runaway train; and “Hangin’ With Mr. Gummy,” which reminds preschoolers that fun comes in many different forms!

“Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!” has been a hit with young viewers and their families since its 2006 TV premiere on Nickelodeon, and the show currently airs daily on Nick Jr. Wubbzy is a fun, lovable, curious little guy who just likes to play, play, play with his friends in the eye-popping town of Wuzzleburg. The top-rated series supports preschool social skills – sharing, listening, compromising, helping and appreciating others, self-awareness and the use of humor.

The powers that be are calling The Elephant in the Living Room too big of a movie to ignore. I guess they are right because in the documentary we see a five hundred pound African lion attacking cars on a freeway, a sixteen foot Burmese Python in a restaurant parking lot and a panther running loose in a residential neighborhood.

The Elephant in the Living Room takes viewers on a journey deep inside the controversial subculture where the most dangerous animals on earth are kept as common household pets. Director Michael Webber follows Tim Harrison, a leading authority and the man responsible for the rescue and capture of “domesticated” exotic animals, as he works through the flood of calls he receives of dangerous predators roaming the inner-city and nearby suburbs. Tim deals with a ten-foot alligator walking through the streets of a mid-western town, a gaboon viper lurking in a garage and countless other sightings of cougars, tigers, lions, bears and reptiles.

The lives of two men intersect in the midst of this extraordinary film that brings light to the world of exotic pets. One, Tim Harrison, a police officer whose friend was killed by an exotic pet, and the other, Terry Brumfield, a man who is overcoming depression through a close connection with his pet African lion. Winner of five BEST DOCUMENTARY awards, The Elephant in the Living Room delivers the emotional story with exclusive interviews and never before seen footage of this highly controversial topic.

Screenhead has one copy to giveaway. To enter the giveaway post your name and we will pick the winner November 21, 2011.

U.S. Residents Only

Well folks, we’ve got a doozy for you this weekend, as our weekly multi-review tackles a three pack from a wholly different source. Today we turn to the folks from Synapse Cinema, who sent out a sweet set of three Japanese horror titles: Horrors of Malformed Men, Battle Girl: The Living Dead In Tokyo Bay, and The World Sinks Except Japan.

Horrors of Malformed Men follows a man who may be going insane…or he may have just experienced something too horrifying to be regarded as anything but the ravings of a lunatic. He’ll chase down his own lookalike in a bid to find out why he even exists, but along the way, he’ll find terrifying things, including a man who takes human beings and turns them into the titular malformed men.

Considering we start out in what looks like an insane asylum where a woman is trying to stab a guy while topless women jump around the attempted murder scene, you know we’re in for a real doozy right here. And when you further consider that this is a work by no less than Japanese monster of horror Teruo Ishii (and right now, Japanese horror buffs are either clapping their hands in glee or groaning in resignation at what we’re about to see), you can figure this will be no less than a serious piece of work. Ishii’s work has always been a little on the weird side, even for Japanese horror, and this one will be no exception. Plenty of things won’t make sense, and more will horrify you beyond all reason, but if you want some serious splatter and you don’t mind being bored for large chunks of a movie (or a couple unusual laughs, strange beyond words for an Ishii title), you’ll have all you need and more right here.

Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay is pretty much exactly what the box says, as a meteor lands in Japan and forms a shield of fog around the island, as well as raising the dead on the island. Now a host of zombies is roaming the country, and about to be used for world domination by a corrupt general. But only K-ko, a special agent armed with a bladed, bulletproof leather suit, can shut down the operation and bring life back to Tokyo.

This is one of those great bizarre action / horror hybrids that Japan seems particularly enamored with. Basically, if you liked Junk or Assault Girls, you should find a welcome home right here. If you like your movies to make sense, meanwhile, you may just want to keep right on moving. This is going to strain logic almost gleefully, so take care not to get too deep over your head.

The World Sinks Except Japan gives us an unusual premise–basically, the world has become Waterworld…except now, Dry Land is Japan. With the bulk of the world’s land now under Japanese control, the rest of the world tries to assimilate as best they can, and refugees that fail to blend in sufficiently are arrested. But with another seismic catastrophe in the works, will Japan emerge  near as well as they did previously?

It’s bizarre to say the least–think the John Travolta film White Man’s Burden times a million–and it’s going to really make you think about the nature of geopolitics on Earth. Of course, there’s quite a bit left unexplained (what happened to the various boats out there, for one, though from the look of the destruction they might have been taken out), but what’s here is sufficient enough to spark a whole lot of beer-and-pizza night discussions. It’s weird, it’s wholly unprecedented that I can think of, and it’s something very much worth watching.

And so, there you go–a slate of three great titles from the folks at Synapse Films!

Acclaimed writer and director Terrence Malick brought us Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World. His thought provoking film experience hits a new level with The Tree of Life.

The award-winning movie is about a family and their relationships with each other, particularly the father and sons. The camera work is stunning. The cinematography and raw emotional power Malick’s hymn to life excavates answers to the most haunting and personal human questions through a kaleidoscope of the intimate and the cosmic, from the raw emotions of a family in a small Texas town to the wildest, infinite edges of space and time, from a boy’s loss of innocence to a man’s transforming encounters with awe, wonder and transcendence.
READ ON »

It’s hard to believe, folks, but Christmas is just under two months away now, and as such, it’s not too much of a surprise to see the Christmas movies come out in full force. And we’ve got a look at just one such early riser with Dear Santa, a movie that should leave you feeling your Christmas spirit just a little early. The folks out at Image Entertainment sent over a copy for us to review, and this one will tug all the right heartstrings.

Dear Santa follows Crystal, a go-nowhere socialite whose wealthy parents have just about had it with her constant shopping and layabout lifestyle. They plan to cut her off unless she can show some change in her life, either finding a good man or finding a good job. And since Crystal and work go together like matches and gasoline, she’s planning to go with plan B: find a man. But about that time, she finds a letter from Olivia, a little girl who’s got one special Christmas wish, for a new mommy to replace the one that died two Christmases prior. Crystal gets to thinking that she might be said little girl’s wish come true, which would also keep her in cash from her own, somewhat more live, mommy. But it won’t be as easy as Crystal thinks, no, nowhere near.

Dear Santa watches a lot like a movie you might see on Lifetime, except there, the roles would be reversed, with a little girl writing for a new daddy for Christmas and an irresponsible womanizing jackass gets his life changed by the ultimate virtuous force of a single mother. Here, the woman is the hopeless slackass and the man is the virtuous force, which is totally not what you’d see on Lifetime. But at the same time, it’s great to see lives changed in such a significant fashion by what looks like a whole lot of coincidences combining.

And indeed, from a narrative sense, this is a big pile of schmaltzy sludge that’s got all the structure of pudding. But then, it falls under that grandest of all umbrellas: the Christmas tree. Yes, it’s a Christmas movie in most every sense of the term, and it will behave much like one. Basically, as long as you don’t look too closely at it, you’ll find that the end results are tolerable, at least somewhat heartwarming, and manage to tug the heartstrings in the standard, most efficient way there is.

The Screenhead Ten Scale in turn gives Dear Santa the mark of reasonably good quality, a six out of ten. Nothing special here…nothing even particularly new or interesting…but still, a Christmas movie in every sense of the term.

The Blu-ray/DVD release of Water for Elephants from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will hit the streets today. Screenhead has two copies of Water for Elephants to giveaway.

Take a journey back in time with the romantic tale based on Sara Gruen’s New York Times #1 Best-Seller novel of the same name, “Water for Elephants”, on Blu-ray and DVD.

Starring Academy Award-winner Reese Witherspoon (Walk The Line), Robert Pattinson (Twilight series) and Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds), the film presents an epic tale of forbidden love in a magical place filled with adventure, wonder and great danger.

Showcasing the decadence of a bohemian circus and the majesty of its animals against the backdrop and beauty of a bygone era, Water for Elephants makes the ideal holiday gift idea for your favorite film buff, fashionista or book-lover!

To enter the giveaway, post your name and we will pick the winners* November 15, 2011.

U.S. Residents only

You might think that it’s difficult to write a movie about Russian roulette. Sure, The Deer Hunter had a couple scenes involving it, but a whole movie about people competing in a game where the loser kills himself? Not exactly easy to do. And the folks out at Anchor Bay are going to take the chance on it as evidenced by 13, a copy of which they sent out to us for review. While you won’t be able to get hands on this one until a week from today, you’ll almost certainly want to see it when it hits.

13 follows a young newcomer to this most bizarre of blood sports, in which he’s found himself a participant wearing a number. And while the risk is high, so too is the payout for those who compete…and those who win. It’s entirely too high, in fact, for our boy to resist, being as his father’s in the hospital and the family home is on the line. But while he’s playing the game, he’s also drawing a lot of unwelcome attention, and it’s that attention that may well wind up killing him just as surely as losses in the game would.

Most of the first third of the movie is devoted to the intricacies of getting to be a competitor in the Russian roulette underground, a baffling and downright Byzantine performance featuring mail drops, train ticket chicanery, and more. It may be a bit much, but it really does go to show just how deeply, deeply underground all this is, and it’s impressive, but it does take up a lot of run time.

You might expect this to be an action title, and while there will indeed be gunplay, it’s rather in short supply through most of the first hour. This focuses much more on the dramatic side of things, with the various competitors and their reasons for being involved in a game in which they could all quite easily die. It’s still pretty interesting because, after all, when’s the last time you saw a movie entirely about Russian roulette? I frankly can’t recall the last time I did, so this is at least mostly new territory.

The Screenhead Ten Scale always welcomes new effort, and hands 13 about half its score, a seven out of ten. It’s a little on the dull side, a little too much drama and gambling, but given the nature of the movie itself it’s hard to avoid. That and it being largely untraveled ground gives it that little something extra that should be experienced.

The folks out at Lions Gate sent out another three choice titles for us to review, and as such, we’re going to catch up with a set of three from them: Life Is Beautiful, 40 Days and 40 Nights, and The Conversation.

Life Is Beautiful sets out as anything but, with a Jewish waiter in Italy named Guido, whose imaginative nature lets him pursue and win the heart of a local school teacher. The two marry and have a son, but that doesn’t last long. See, they got married somewhere around 1937. History buffs will know what happens next. But Guido’s imagination is about to make something of a difference, even while father and son alike are in the middle of a concentration camp.

See, the thing about Life Is Beautiful is that it’s actually super duper depressing. Some will find a stark beauty here, much in the same way that a field of snow does, but the beauty is cold and sorrowful at best. And considering that most regular people watch movies to be entertained, this one’s not going to be for most people. The question here is whether or not you’ll have sufficient tolerance for the sheer depressing nature of a waiter and his son living in the same concentration camp to see the up side of it, such as it is.

40 Days and 40 Nights, our next title, follows a young man who’s just had a major breakup with his former girlfriend just ahead of the pre-Easter time known as Lent. In the midst of Lent, some people give things up for the interval, and in our young man’s case, he’s given up sex. All sex. But when he meets someone who seems pretty special in the interval, his forty days and nights are about to seem a whole lot longer than he expected, maybe a bit too long.

This is your typical romantic comedy right here, with a few good laughs tossed into an unlikely storyline for variety. Basically, if you’re not into romantic comedies, there’s not going to really be anything here that’s going to change your mind. But the up shot here is that, should you decide to carry on with this one, you’ll likely be happy here as it sticks to most of the conventions and won’t do anything terribly tragic to throw you off.

Lastly, we’ve got The Conversation, a Francis Ford Coppola thriller that sends a security professional out on what should be a basic wiretapping job. But his surveillance quickly picks up something it shouldn’t have, and the implications of his find are going to be downright profound. So profound, in fact, that his acquisition of said unexpected surveillance is going to put him right in the middle of a conspiracy much bigger than any he’d imagined previously.

This one is some pretty good stuff, actually. Slower in some spots than others, but with a certain menace that’s downright hard to shake. It’s pretty good stuff, especially if you watched the last two and want something to shake the boredom and depression out.

So there you have it, another sweet slate of pieces thanks to the folks at Lions Gate!