As the ’60s became the ’70s and pop culture began to change, cinema was perhaps most affected. Old studio moguls either died or were put out to pasture, television began bridging the immediate cultural gap and the landscape was changing. In post-McCarthy, post-JFK-assassination and pre-Vietnam America, movies like BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE GRADUATE and EASY RIDER were rapidly bending the rules and giving voice to younger, angrier and more innovative talents, paving the way for a more permissive MPAA.

The title for this remake of Robert Fuest’s 1970 film should be AND SOON THE OBVIOUS… Whether or not you’re a fan of the original, at least it tried for some suspense, tension and mystery. Unfortunately, in first-time feature director Marcos Efron’s redux, none of those elements are present.

Last week, we did a Fresh from the Archives look back at the BLACK CHRISTMAS remake (click here to read that article), and people chimed in with their comments both for and against the redux. Here are Michael Gingold’s thoughts on the film, which he reviewed back when the DVD came out in April 2007.

Synapse Films could never be accused of catering to the mainstream, but even by their standards, a few curiosities get released alongside the classics. So for every masterpiece like their two-disc STREET TRASH DVD, there’s some strange movie that Synapse appears to be sharing with a chuckle and a “Can you believe someone made this?” RESONNANCES, a microbudget French sci-fi/horror flick produced in 2006, falls somewhere between the two.

The legendary blues singer Koko Taylor once recorded a song titled “I Can Love You Like A Woman or I Can Fight You Like a Man.” That could have been the theme song for this cool and gritty homage to both grindhouse movies and revenge flicks, written and directed by Israel Luna and available on DVD from Breaking Glass Pictures. When the film debuted, it set off howls of outrage from the transgender community who felt it misrepresented them. Well, to paraphrase one of the best lines from the very funny script, “Let’s get some balloons for your pity party, bitch.”

EXAM, out on DVD from IFC/MPI, is a slick and astute thriller that’s never dull, but never quite grips us like it should. The premise—eight strangers vying in cutthroat fashion for a high-profile corporate job offering—is intriguing. The setup—an enigmatic man known only as the “Invigilator” stepping in to brief the group on their objective in coded yet concise directions—is intriguing. The possibilities—what might happen between these candidates in what’s seemingly the most definitive 80 minutes of their lives—is damn intriguing. EXAM’s succeeding events, we learn, will revolve around the freshly introduced group’s efforts to answer one question—the catch being that they don’t know what that question is—and my head is nearly about to explode.

It has been a little over a year since Paul Naschy, the beloved King of Spanish Horror, passed away at the age of 75, and so we thought it would be appropriate to look back at two of Naschy’s films—THE NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF (his ninth turn as Polish nobleman-turned-werewolf Waldemar Daninsky) and VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES—that Don Kaye reviewed on DVD back in 2007.