Five Dolls for an August Moon: Kino Classics Remastered Edition [Blu-ray]

Why Butcher Bava, The Maestro? Have it your way...
I don't really understand folks who claim to love Eurohorror, but won't watch films that are subtitled. Anyone with an 8th grade education can read subs, and seeing these classics dubbed by people who do cartoonish voiceovers is nothing more than insulting - to the viewer, to the director, to the actors involved, to the viewing experience. The entire film's focal point is diverted to the gutter and suffers as a whole. Many casual viewers will disagree, but devotees understand my point completely. The English-dubbed version is wretched to listen to - you will not hear ANY of the actual actors real voices, and the flick suffers as much as the viewer does who wastes his/her time screening it. How do I know this? I've seen it in BOTH languages, and it's like two completely different movies...

First off, these are Bava films, so you either love his late-60's work or hate it, period. The same things that we fans of his later 60's output love are usually the very same things that...
Blu-Ray Revelation
It's extremely unfortunate that Kino has chosen to release this Mario Bava film (as well as others) on Blu-Ray without the option of hearing it in Italian with English subtitles, especially since the release of a number of these works on region 2 has made it clear how readily available such options appear to be. For this alone, it would normally receive a one or two star deduction in my book. If I refrain from doing so in the case of FIVE DOLLS it is because the image quality is absolutely stunning, and the audio commentary by Tim Lucas is also truly first-rate. (One of the highlights: the discussion of Bava vis-à-vis Kandinsky.) In fact, the ideal way to watch this Blu-Ray may be with the audio commentary, since it allows you to focus not on the silly plot or egregious dubbing (neither of which can be attributed to Bava) but on the compositions and overall visual design of the piece. Bava, who spent nearly twenty years as a cinematographer before he directed his first feature,...
Like a Chess Grandmaster People Become Pawns
FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON is another classic film from director Mario Brava. Released in 1970 this film features William Berger (SABATA) who masterfully unfolds his master scheme on his unsuspecting guests like a chess grandmaster. And then there were none? Perhaps and then some. This atmospheric and moody film is very enticing.
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Five Dolls for an August Moon: Kino Classics Remastered Edition [Blu-ray]

Why Butcher Bava, The Maestro? Have it your way...
I don't really understand folks who claim to love Eurohorror, but won't watch films that are subtitled. Anyone with an 8th grade education can read subs, and seeing these classics dubbed by people who do cartoonish voiceovers is nothing more than insulting - to the viewer, to the director, to the actors involved, to the viewing experience. The entire film's focal point is diverted to the gutter and suffers as a whole. Many casual viewers will disagree, but devotees understand my point completely. The English-dubbed version is wretched to listen to - you will not hear ANY of the actual actors real voices, and the flick suffers as much as the viewer does who wastes his/her time screening it. How do I know this? I've seen it in BOTH languages, and it's like two completely different movies...

First off, these are Bava films, so you either love his late-60's work or hate it, period. The same things that we fans of his later 60's output love are usually the very same things that...
Blu-Ray Revelation
It's extremely unfortunate that Kino has chosen to release this Mario Bava film (as well as others) on Blu-Ray without the option of hearing it in Italian with English subtitles, especially since the release of a number of these works on region 2 has made it clear how readily available such options appear to be. For this alone, it would normally receive a one or two star deduction in my book. If I refrain from doing so in the case of FIVE DOLLS it is because the image quality is absolutely stunning, and the audio commentary by Tim Lucas is also truly first-rate. (One of the highlights: the discussion of Bava vis-à-vis Kandinsky.) In fact, the ideal way to watch this Blu-Ray may be with the audio commentary, since it allows you to focus not on the silly plot or egregious dubbing (neither of which can be attributed to Bava) but on the compositions and overall visual design of the piece. Bava, who spent nearly twenty years as a cinematographer before he directed his first feature,...
Like a Chess Grandmaster People Become Pawns
FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON is another classic film from director Mario Brava. Released in 1970 this film features William Berger (SABATA) who masterfully unfolds his master scheme on his unsuspecting guests like a chess grandmaster. And then there were none? Perhaps and then some. This atmospheric and moody film is very enticing.
Click to Editorial Reviews

Read more »

The Devil Bat: Kino Classics Remastered Edition

Perhaps the Definitive Version of This Lugosi Classic
Among horror fans, Lugosi fans, and fans of psychotronic films in general, "The Devil Bat" holds a special place. Made by poverty row studio PRC in 1940, the film is a wonderfully ridiculous chiller about a mad scientist (Lugosi, of course)who takes revenge on his double-crossers (no, not the producers of this movie) by enlarging a normal bat to gigantic proportions through electrical treatments and using a new shaving lotion he perfected as the bait to attract the bat to its victim. ...)...

The film has kicked around the public domain for the last decade or so, with the result that VHS prints of it were either excellent or hardly watchable. DVD versions in general have been clear, but this version beats the others and comes close to being a definitive version of the picture, if one is possible.

Released by the Lugosi estate, "The Devil Bat" is the first in a proposed series of definitve versions of Lugosi films. (The unjustly overlooked "Bowery at Midnight" is the second movie in...
You will do it! Or Dr.Shooveocker I will put a evil course upon you....
The Devil Bat is a great Bela outing. Of course its no DRACULA or MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE but its hard not to get a kick out of this grade Z P.R.C opus about a MAD DOCTOR who develops a breed of giant bat he attracts to his enemies with a special after-shave he advises users to rub"on the tender part of your neck." Loads of cheap fun,with cardboard sets and pathetic special effects;Bela seems to be having a ball and so should you! For those of you who love remakes and sequels(???)see The Flying Serpent and Devil Bat's Daughter
Brilliant Actor - Dull Movie
All too often in his career Bela Lugosi was expected to carry a film all by himself with little or no help from other actors, the director, the script or special effects. The Devil Bat (1941) is such a movie. The sets are cheap, the script is hokey and the "devil bat" is laughably lame. And yet as he always does, Bela makes the movie entertaining. He plays one of his
many mad scientists -- this one a (believe it or not) perfume maker who was monetarily wronged by his partners, now millionaires. These ungrateful boobs rub this in a little too much and so Lugosi creates a giant bat (as perfume makers are so good at doing) that will strike at anyone wearing a certain scent. Predictably the mad doctor ends up wearing his own scent and is killed by the devil bat -- but not before he gets his revenge on several of these boring unknown actors who deserve to die. As expected, Lugosi makes the character sympathetic and yet also fearsome as he tells each of his victims, "goodbye" after...
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Night Tide

Mermaid Nightmares
Great low-budget indy horror film from the 60s inspired by the Val Lewton classic 'Cat People'. Fans of other b/w indy horror flicks like 'Carnival of Souls' should really enjoy it. It stars the great Dennis Hopper ('Giant', 'Easy Rider', 'River's Edge', 'Blue Velvet', etc.) as a naive young sailor named Johnny who falls for a mysterious & beautiful girl called Mora. Mora works as "Mora the Mermaid" in a sideshow during the day on a CA Boardwalk. After they become lovers, Johnny discovers that Mora's last two boyfriends mysteriously drowned and soon he starts wondering if Mora is a real mermaid or one of the spooky "Sea People".

The soundtrack is a mix of great bongo numbers & bad b-movie music, but the real highlight is the eerie atmosphere and great stylized photography. The director tried hard to raise "Night Tide" out of the usual b-movie abyss and it shows. Excellent flick!
Something's happening here....
A haunting, mysterious and magical movie. Marjorie Cameron adds an element of real life magic. Kenneth Anger also had done this when he used her in `The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954)'. Marjorie Easton also adds to the spell, and Dennis Hopper is wonderful. The carnival is the perfect background for a a plot about fantasy and reality. Filmed at the Santa Monica Pier, Venice and Ocean Park, California, where Anton LaVey played organ at strip joints in the late 1940's. The name Mora is found in many parts of the world as the death aspect of the `Triple Goddess', or Night Mare, or female vampire.
A Strange, Moody, Effective Low-Budget Film
"Night Tide" makes extensive use of the Venice, California milieu in which the story is set, telling the story of a lonely sailor (Dennis Hopper) who is attracted to Mora (Linda Lawson), a young woman who enacts the role of a mermaid in one of the sideshows on the pier. Mora, her guardian, and several of the people who make up the sideshow subculture hint at the possibility of a terrible secret about Mora's past loves and perhaps her true otherworldly nature, and the film takes off from there. The streets of Venice (as it appeared in the early '60s when the film was made) are turned into a shadowy, bizarre landscape through the excellent photography and editing, and the colorful supporting characters contribute to the strange, dreamlike mood. Performances are uniformly excellent and right, from the leads to minor characters. Director/writer Curtis Harrington, in his feature debut, has made a low-key suspense/fantasy film that, like the films of Val Lewton in the...
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