ASH VS. EVIL DEAD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON highlights Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Releases for August 23, 2016

By PETER BROWN / Associate Editor

Posted: August 27th, 2016 / 10:02 AM

Movies:

CLOWN | © 2016 Anchor Bay Home Entertainment

CLOWN – Yikes, this one is just an under-the-skin gnarly flick from the outset. First off, everyone hates clown. OK, adults hate clowns. But combined with evil, they are the absolute worst. CLOWN begins with an innocent birthday party where the person they hired as a clown for their son’s party isn’t able to come to the house. So the dad, being a good guy, finds a clown outfit in a house he is renovating and makes everyone happy. The problem is that he can’t get the outfit off the next day. Soon it becomes painful to take it off to the point where he’s bleeding when he tries. His wife tries to help but only ends up ripping off his nose. It only gets worse from there as he learns the clown suit is actually demon skin that transforms the person wearing it into a hideous clown creature. CLOWN is wickedly demented. From the dude bleeding rainbows to the horrible things that happen around him, it is just a brutal horror film and something that is pretty unique out there. Recommended for those who love demented, depressing horror flicks.

WEINER – Anthony Weiner hasn’t had the most brilliant career in politics. Once a rising Congressman, a sexting scandal made him resign. A few years ago, Weiner tried to make a comeback by running for mayor of New York. A documentary crew started following him in order to capture his rebirth into politics considering he was making waves in the polls. However, history repeats itself little less than half way through and once again he is busted for sending penis photos to strange women on the Internet – the exact same thing that got him booted from Congress. WEINER captures all of this awkwardness including his horribly embarrassed wife that at one time worked for Hillary Clinton. The documentary really does a good job of showing how once again a rising Weiner (pun intended?) gets taken down by his own issues and it is extremely cringe-worthy at times as he has to face the public he lied to (again), his wife he lied to (again) and try to salvage his career if possible. Good stuff especially if you like documentaries.

RAIDERS! THE STORY OF THE GREATEST FAN FILM EVER MADE | © 2016 Drafthouse Films

RAIDERS! THE STORY OF THE GREATEST FAN FILM EVER MADE – Speaking of documentaries, here’s another good one this time on a totally different and awesome subject – RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARC. Apparently, a couple of 11-year-old friends saw RAIDERS and loved it so much they wanted to recreate it in a shot by shot version they did themselves. They did pretty good but as the years went by the continued to shoot different scenes making the fan film extremely interesting because they age at different parts of the movie. As they entered adulthood, the friends grew apart but eventually found their way back together and this documents coming back together to film the one scene that they couldn’t make. The airplane scene where Indiana Jones must rescue Marion while battling a big, bald Nazi. After raising funds through Kickstarter, they begin to work on the final scene. The documentary straddles between showing the rise of the film and its cult status to the issue with getting the final scene accomplished. It is a fun movie and one that I didn’t realize had such a fan following. Even Steven Spielberg met them at one time to give his thumbs up on the project.

11 MINUTES – This is an interesting film as it focuses on a slew of characters all interacting and coming together in Warsaw, Poland and takes place in the span of 11 minutes but from the various different perspectives so the film captures 11 minutes of all these characters in a total of 83 minutes. There is a sleazy director interviewing a married actress and her husband trying to stop her from doing anything on the casting couch. There is a drug runner that is seen on his daily routine, a young man planning a robbery, a hot dog vendor that has a dark secret and many more. The plotline is random at times and seems like it doesn’t go anywhere but it all makes sense in the end in a climax that involves them all. However, you are left with wondering what the point of the whole thing was, other than just a slice of individual lives that ends tragically.

MICROWAVE MASSACRE – Arrow Video has been putting out some great retro titles for the past few years including a ton of cool European horror flicks and action titles that have never before seen the light of day on Blu-ray (maybe even DVD). But then they sometimes roll out something like MICROWAVE MASSACRE, which is a supremely low-budget, odd duck horror flick focusing on one man’s quest just to find something decent to eat. See his wife uses their new ginormous microwave (which is the size of a refrigerator here) to make his meals every night and he hates it with a passion. One night she pushes him too far and he offs her and stuffs her into a microwave. He later chops her up and puts her in the meat freezer only to later eat a piece of her. That turns him on to the ways of cannibalism and it rapidly becomes a weird one-liner comedic romp with foam feet and heads everywhere and the worst lead character maybe ever in history of horror flicks. And there is little in terms of microwave massacring going on as it plays no part in the killings really. While I enjoy most of the titles from Arrow, this one might be one of the few I would say you should probably pass on.

Television

ASH VS. EVIL DEAD: The Complete First Season | © 2016 Anchor Bay Home Entertainment

ASH VS. EVIL DEAD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON – I was actually pretty skeptical about an EVIL DEAD television series thinking maybe it would be neutered or it would lose the sense of fun. I was so wrong. ASH VS. EVIL DEAD is everything we expect from a television series in compact episodes that give us just enough but not too much of Ash’s clever one-liners, bravado and goo-filled adventures. Much like the movies, there are plenty of laugh out loud moments, weird and crazy scenes that sometimes make no sense at all, plenty of goo, blood and body parts and, of course, Ash. But now the classic Bruce Campbell character is much older and looking to move on from his tortured days fighting the Deadites, only to find himself once-again helping bring them back from the pages of the Book of the Dead because he just can’t stop himself from making stupid decisions. The first season is just 10 episodes each roughly about a half hour each. This is enough. We get everything we need in this time because there are no commercials (it originally aired on Starz) and luckily no punches are pulled from the gross humor, gross Deadites getting blown to pieces and plenty of harsh language. If you missed it on Starz and are a fan of the series, this is a must-watch.

LUCIFER: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON | © 2016 Warner Home Video

LUCIFER: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON – So the devil isn’t really the terrible most evil being in the cosmos but actually a good-hearted looking-for-a-good-time being that really wants to help humans because he is bored and lonely? Sounds like an interesting concept for a TV show and LUCIFER is an interesting show. After Lucifer sees a murder happen right before his own eyes he starts to have feels and hooks up with a Los Angeles detective to, you guessed it, solve crime. Along the way, he seems to think that maybe he can not only help humanity but maybe, possibly find some sort of redemption of his own. Whether that means earning God’s good graces or not is a different story but it makes for interesting TV. Now, before the second season, you can catch up on all 13 episodes from Season 1.

LEGENDS OF TOMORROW: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON | © 2016 Warner Home Video

LEGENDS OF TOMORROW: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON – The CW has really done a good job of developing its cottage industry of DC superhero TV titles since it began with SMALLVILLE and later ARROW and THE FLASH. They decided to add a third ongoing title to their lineup in LEGENDS OF TOMORROW where a time traveler shows a terrible future of the DC universe and gathers a team of heroes and villains to fight the future. This team includes Atom, White Canary, Prof. Martin Stein, Captain Cold, Heat Wave, Firestorm and Hawkgirl that look to help humanity despite having evil intentions of their own in the past. All 16 episodes are included here and just in time to catch up before the second season begins.

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