February 6, 2025

DAFFY DUCK’S QUACKBUSTERS: Something Old, Something New


DAFFY DUCK’S QUACKBUSTERS (Blu-ray)
1988 / 79 min
Available at www.MovieZyng.com
Review by Mr. Paws😼

Though Warner Bros first stopped producing Looney Tunes in the 1960s, they kept all its iconic characters alive through television, where those classics were a Saturday morning staple for a couple of decades (and obviously before the days when cartoons were available 24/7). 

Additionally, the studio began assembling compilation films, though the shorts included were seldom seen in their entirety and new animated sequences were used to bridge one short to another. Sometimes the films were dedicated to the work of a particular director, other times the shorts were selected and reassembled to fit within a “new” plot. The results were always watchable, but hardly the best way to view these classic cartoons…especially if seeing them for the first time.


Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters was the first to be produced without the involvement of any of legendary Looney Tunes directors, with Greg Ford & Terry Lennon creating the wraparound story and new animated sequences, in which Daffy Duck is the benefactor of a millionnaire’s wealth on the proviso that he uses the money to provide a service to the community. So he starts a paranormal extermination service, hiring Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig (and his cat, Sylvester), to do most of the grunt work.


A variety of classic horror-themed shorts are woven into the overall plot, including three of my personal favorites, “Transylvania 6-5000,” “Claws for Alarm” and “Hyde and Go Tweet.” While those toons alone make this film worth seeing, the difference between the old animation and the surrounding segments is jarring (as is the voice of a much older Mel Blanc). 


Daffy decides to swear off the duck sauce.
What made Quackbusters unique among the compilation films was the inclusion of two new shorts, The Duxorcist and Night of the Living Duck, the latter of which was made exclusively for this film and the only one shown in its entirety (as a prologue). Both are also directed by Ford & Lennon, and while the animation ain’t quite what it used to be, the humor is often reminiscent of the sly, satiric playfulness that was a hallmark of classic Looney Tunes.

And speaking of new…the 80s was when Warner Bros began to sporadically produce brand new Looney Tunes shorts, seven of which are included on this disc as bonus features. Dating from 1980-2000, not all of them are gems, but Chuck Jones’ “Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24½th Century” is irresistible. Elsewhere, “Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers” is more horror-themed fun from Ford & Lennon, whose “The Duxorcist” is also presented in its entirety. Conversely, depicting Wile E. Coyote & the Road Runner as kids in “Little Go Beep” is as contrived as Muppet Babies.


Like the other Looney Tunes compilation films, Quackbusters is watchable without ever being wonderful. Hanging out with these characters is always time well spent, even though watching truncated versions of their antics pales in comparison to the original shorts. Still, the inclusion of the newer cartoons make this worth picking up for completists.


EXTRA KIBBLES

7 SHORTS - Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24th ½ Century; The Duxorcist; Little Go Beep; Night of the Living Duck; Superior Duck; Blooper Bunny; Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers.

TRAILER


February 5, 2025

A CERTAIN KILLER / A KILLER’S KEY: Smooth Criminal


A CERTAIN KILLER / A KILLER’S KEY (Blu-ray)
1967 / 161 min (2 movies)
Review by Mr. Bonnie, the Yakuza😽

There’s something about hitmen in movies that’s inherently appealing, especially when they are the protagonist. One of my favorites is 1972’s The Mechanic, with Charles Bronson as Arthur Bishop, a cool, calculating contract killer who frequently does jobs for the mafia.

Watching both of the films on this disc, I couldn’t help but think its main character could have partially inspired Bishop. As played by Ichokawa Raizō, this killer is also a man of few words, emotionally unflappable and exacting in his methods (though he appears to prefer piercing the sweet spots with small daggers). He’s generally hired by the yakuza to dispatch their enemies, though he doesn’t have any particular allegiance to one clan over another.


I guess the biggest difference between these films and The Mechanic is Raizō’s character has small businesses as a cover for his real job. In A Certain Killer, he’s Shiozawa, a bar owner who takes in ditzy tart Keiko (Yumiko Nogawa) to work as a hostess. The film gets off to a dire start by dedicating way too much screen time to her...a supremely obnoxious character. But things pick up when he’s hired by yakuza boss Kimura to get rid of a competitor.


Somewhat hampered by jarring flashbacks, the story is fairly light on action, but Shiozawa is an interesting character who always seems one step ahead of his enemies. This eventually includes Keiko, who conspires with Kimura’s right hand man to betray him during a drug theft, leading to an exciting climax.


A wrong turn at Albuquerque.
Released the same year, Raizō and director Kazuo Mori return for A Killer’s Key. This time, he goes by the name of Nitta and poses as a dance instructor (!) whose “student,” Hideko (Tomomi Sato), tends to side with whoever gives her a financial advantage (sort of making her a femme fatale). Nitta's services are called upon by a mysterious yakuza boss to kill a man who can expose him during an upcoming trial. But once he finishes the job, the same clan tries to eliminate him…which is easier said than done.

With a more straightforward narrative and better supporting characters (Hideko is the pleasant polar opposite of Keiko), A Killer’s Key is an improvement over the first film. It’s far more action oriented and boasts a more intriguing plot, with a tragically amusing final scene. 


Fairly obscure on this side of the pond, neither movie is a lost classic. But their main character is an interesting example of the elite assassin as protagonist, so fans of this sort of thing should certainly check them out. Both films have really good Blu-ray transfers, though the disc is pretty light on bonus features (for an Arrow release, anyway)


EXTRA KIBBLES

NOTE: Free Kittens Movie Guide was provided with a promo disc for review purposes. Physical supplemental material included with the final product (booklets, artwork, inserts, etc) were not available for review.

THE DEFINITE MURDERER - This is a 30-minute appreciation by Japanese film scholar Mark Roberts.

AUDIO COMMENTARY - By Tony Rayns, who provides commentary for both films.

TRAILERS

IMAGE GALLERY


February 4, 2025

AVALANCHE (1978): Roger Corman's Snow Job


AVALANCHE (1978)
Starring Rock Hudson, Mia Farrow, Robert Forster, Jeanette Nolan, Rick Moses, Barry Primus. Directed by Corey Allen. 91 min
Essay by D.M. Anderson💀

In the 1970s, the phenomenal box office success of early disaster movie classics Airport and The Poseidon Adventure prompted studios to keep striking while the iron was hot. Those films begat Earthquake and The Towering Inferno, which in turn begat lower-tier efforts such as The Hindenburg and The Cassandra Crossing. The latter two still boasted all-star casts of fading A-listers and young up-and-comers, but there was a noticeable dip in overall quality, both technically and narratively.

Ironically, the free-spending producer-director responsible for two of the biggest blockbusters in the genre, Irwin Allen, suddenly turned miserly, abusing his “Master of Disaster” moniker to crank out The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. The big casts were still there, but every other aspect reflected a conscious effort to throw them together as fast and cheap as possible.


Speaking of cheap, it was around this time that B-movie mavens Samuel Z. Arkoff and Roger Corman jumped on the bandwagon. Arkoff’s American-International Pictures actually opened their wallets pretty wide for 1979’s Meteor, managing to nab a decent cast (including Sean Connery and Natalie Wood), though the rest of the film was slapdash and silly (but admittedly kind of fun). However, Meteor is The Towering Inferno compared to Avalanche, released the previous year by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures (AIP’s main competition for drive-in dominance during the 1970s).


Roger Corman
And God bless the late Mr. Corman, the prolific mini-mogul who never met a blockbuster he couldn’t rip-off for a fraction of the money. In the wake of Star Wars, he produced Battle Beyond the Stars, a not-half-bad space opera that also borrowed elements of Seven Samurai. Before 1975’s Rollerball was even released, Corman got wind of it and cranked out the daffy Death Race 2000, which was often more entertaining than the film that inspired it. 1978’s Piranha, his inevitable Jaws rip-off, has since become something of a classic itself.

Avalanche isn’t actually Corman’s first attempt to grab a slice of the disaster pie. In 1975, he bought the rights to the Japanese film, Submersion of Japan, added new footage with American actors and released it as Tidal Wave. Predictably, the result was utter shit. More predictably, it made a tidy profit with little real investment.


But even though Avalanche’s budget was bigger than nearly every previous New World picture, it’s still a bargain basement bottom dweller, one of the low points of the entire disaster genre. Its biggest marquee name, Rock Hudson, was yet another one-time leading man whose star had lost much of its luster (though the TV show, McMillan & Wife, briefly resuscitated his career). He plays David Shelby, the controlling, bull headed owner of a new ski resort who refuses to heed warnings from nature photographer Nick Thorne (Robert Forster) that the entire mountain is unstable and prone to avalanches. 


So despite Hudson’s top billing, he is the main antagonist throughout most of the film. It’s a weird, angry performance, and not just because of the character, who’s creepily obsessed with ex-wife Caroline Brace (Mia Farrow). Hudson himself looks resentful to be appearing in such a sloppy cinema suppository, perhaps lamenting that Paul Newman and Charlton Heston got big paydays for The Towering Inferno and Earthquake while he’s relegated to dodging styrofoam snowballs and ogling his topless secretary.


Rock has a word with his agent.

Farrow is far removed from her star making performance in Rosemary’s Baby a decade earlier, required to do little but reject Shelby’s advances and flirt with Thorne, who, by default, is the main protagonist because he’s the only one concerned about impending disaster. Other bland characters exist either to die, hop between the sheets or join Shelby in poo-pooing Thorne’s warnings. Subplots abound…none of them interesting (though Cathey Paine is an unintentional hoot as the insanely jealous girlfriend of a philandering Olympic skier).


The avalanche is triggered when a plane - ordered by Shelby to bring one of his business partners to the resort - crashes into the mountain (I’m not exactly sure where it was expected to land in the first place, since ski resorts don’t generally come equipped with runways). It’s at this point when the viewer might have their hopes up that the disaster itself will make the laborious first hour worth enduring. After all, even The Swarm had enjoyable moments of fiery destruction. However, the chintzy special effects and stock footage are simply a reminder that we’re watching typical cut-rate Corman. But as hilariously bad as the effects are, AIP thought some were good enough to reuse in Meteor when that film ran over budget.


Once the resort is buried, the remainder of the story sees Shelby suddenly turning selfless and heroic as he leads the charge to dig his co-stars out of the styrofoam, including his bubbly mother (Jeanette Nolan), yet another superfluous character who serves no purpose other than to be put in peril. Elsewhere, even rescue vehicles end up crashing & burning in incidents totally unrelated to the avalanche. As for the movie’s presumed hero, Thorne doesn’t actually do anything particularly heroic. Though Forster’s grounded performance isn’t half bad, he’s pretty scarce throughout most of the final act. 


Unlike most of Roger Corman’s other low budget rip-offs, Avalanche was a box office bomb, coming-and-going in theaters in the blink of an eye. Sure, part of the reason could have been the disaster genre’s waning popularity at the time. But mainly, it’s simply a bad movie with a trainwreck quality that's good for some unintended chuckles (it also inspired a pretty good Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode a few years ago).

February 3, 2025

ESCAPE (2024): A Missed Opportunity


ESCAPE (Blu-ray)
2024 / 94 min
Available at www.MovieZyng.com
Review by Mr. Bonnie, the Beastie😾

Korean defection occurs so often that there’s a Wikipedia page on the subject, as well as quite a few movies over the years. I’m sure some of those escapees have been soldiers who’ve had enough of their government’s shenanigans to make a run for the border, and the inherent peril of such a journey would make an ideal action drama.

But Escape manages to waste its sure-fire premise. It begins well enough, with North Korean soldier Lim Gyu-Nam (Lee Je-hoon) preparing to defect to the South once he’s discharged. He’s been mapping out the locations of all the landmines between his base (near the Demilitarized Zone) and the border. Another soldier, Kim Dong-hyuk (Hong Xa-bin), is desperate to defect as well, so much so that he attempts escape on his own, but Lim tries to convince him to wait. Unfortunately, both are caught and sentenced to death. 


Luckily for Lim, childhood friend Lee Hyun-sang (Koo Kyo-hwan) is a high-ranking officer who intervenes, declaring Lim a hero for catching a defector, then giving him a promotion and transfer. However, Lim still wants to defect and uses his new position to not-only save Kim, but retrieve his map of the landmines. Once they go on the run, Lee becomes obsessed with hunting-down and killing them. 


"I told you to gas it up before we left."
This sounds a lot better than it unfolds. First of all, Lim isn’t a particularly interesting character. The only meaningful exposition really offered is his desire to defect. Conversely, Lee is initially a compelling antagonist…superficially friendly and overly arrogant. It’s even suggested that, while a successful officer, he was never permitted to follow his true calling of a concert pianist. Then his disposition changes on a dime, becoming a cold-blooded, sadistic tyrant who just boarded the crazy train.

As for the action…the film takes too long to get things rolling, and when it finally does, we’re expected to swallow some glaring implausibilities and lapses in logic. Despite being armed with machine guns, Lee’s squads are worse shots than Imperial Stormtroopers, unable to hit one guy escaping on foot. And speaking of Star Wars, North Korea is suddenly the tiniest nation on Earth, with Lee repeatedly and instantaneously able to find Lim, no matter how many miles separate them at any given time (or maybe he’s mastered teleportation).


Escape is a forgettable, underwhelming film that offers little beyond the kind of generic time killers regularly served up on Netflix. Good performances help, but considering the real-world relevance of the basic concept, I expected a little more than static characters and dubious action sequences. Ultimately, this is a missed opportunity.


EXTRA KIBBLES

FEATURETTES - Making Of; Character Trailer

MOVIE TRAILER - With Commentary


THE POOP SCOOP: Upcoming Kibbles!

🙀THE LAST OF US: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON is releasing March 18 in a 4K Ultra HD Steelbook Limited-Edition Collectable from Warner Bros.

The Last of Us takes place 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal and heartbreaking journey as they both must traverse the U.S. and depend on each other for survival. In anticipation of the Season 2 premiere of “The Last of Us” on HBO, catch up on all nine episodes of the critically-acclaimed first season, along with nearly 3 hours of special features! Pre-order your copy today HERE.

🐔MOANA 2 is now available on Digital and coming to 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on March 18 from Disney.

Gather your family to experience Moana and Maui’s latest adventure at home when Disney’s Moana 2 arrives to digital retailers (Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and Fandango at Home) today and on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD on March 18. The highly anticipated sequel to the Walt Disney Animation Studios fan favorite is the #3 highest-grossing film of 2024 and recently crossed a billion dollars at the global box office. It is the fourth WDAS film ever to do so (Frozen, Zootopia, Frozen 2). Critics and fans alike have hailed Disney’s Moana 2 as “a fantastic voyage” (Brian Truitt, USA Today), and “a joyous adventure the whole family will love” (BJ Colangelo, Slash Film). The digital and Blu-ray release goes far beyond with hours of exclusive bonus content for the whole family featuring a full-length Sing-Along version of the film, deleted scenes, featurettes and much more. The 4K UHD will be available in a collectible limited edition SteelBook® with custom artwork and packaging.


😺DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA arrives on PVOD Now and 4K, Blu-ray & DVD March 4 from Lionsgate.

Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. reform their unlikely duo when DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA arrives on Premium Video on Demand on January 28 from Lionsgate. Written and directed by Christian Gudegast (London Has Fallen), DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA returns to everything fans loved about the original film, while answering unresolved questions and diving deeper into the lives of each character. Big Nick (Butler) is back on the hunt in Europe and closing in on Donnie (Jackson), who is embroiled in the treacherous and unpredictable world of diamond thieves through the infamous Panther mafia, and their plot to pull off a massive heist of the world’s largest diamond exchange. On January 28, DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA will be available to buy and rent on participating digital platforms where movies are purchased, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, Fandango at Home, and more. On March 4, DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA will be available on 4K Ultra HD (+ Blu-ray + Digital), Blu-ray (+ DVD + Digital), and DVD.


🦈DEEP BLUE SEA Limited Edition on 4K and Blu-ray March 18 from Arrow Video.

On March 18, Arrow Video releases Deep Blue Sea, the blockbuster action/adventure film from acclaimed director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger). The Limited-Edition release features a brand new 4K restoration approved by the director on 4K UHD, packed with special features. There is also a limited-edition Blu-ray. The special features include audio commentaries with screenwriter Duncan Kennedy, filmmaker and critic Rebekah McKendry, archival commentary by director Renny Harlin and star Samuel L. Jackson, interview with production designer William Sandell, visual essay by film critic Trace Thurman, archival Making Of featurettes about the film and sharks, deleted scenes with optional audio commentary by director Renny Harlin, the theatrical trailer, an image gallery, a double-sided fold-out poster, postcards from Aquatica, a 60-page perfect bound collector's book with essays, and unseen production art and designs.


🗓SEPTEMBER 5 Debuts On Digital February 4th And On Blu-ray February 18th from Paramount.

Hailed as “one of the best movies of the year” (Fandango) that “succeeds on every level” (Deadline), the “masterful and heart-pounding” (Awards Daily) SEPTEMBER 5 arrives to purchase or rent on Digital February 4, 2025 from Paramount Home Entertainment.  The film will arrive on Blu-ray February 18. Nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Original Screenplay, the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Drama, Outstanding Producer of a Theatrical Motion Picture by the Producers Guild of America, and Critics’ Choice Awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing, SEPTEMBER 5 is a gripping and visceral thriller based on real events.  The film details the hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics through the eyes of the American sports producers who covered the event live and changed television news forever. Fans who purchase SEPTEMBER 5 on Digital* will have access to nearly an hour of fascinating bonus content that delves into the significance of the historic broadcast from the 1972 Olympics and the extraordinary work that went into meticulously recreating that intense moment in time.