Luc Von Gore’s Top 10 DVD editions

Today’s post is going to be something different, something new. As I am a huge movie memorabilia and special edition fan I am going to post my favourite Box Sets. Before I start I have to explain a few things. The design, appearance and the making-up of the DVD set is in the spotlight. The movie itself just as the image and sound quality come second even though I try to chose uncut films I appreciate. And last but not least I am aware that there are tons of other nice  editions, so if you are not satisfied with the list, just put you favourite ones in the comments below. To conclude, please note that it is not me in the videos. Enough talking, here we go.

#10 The Fly: Ultimate Collectors’ Edition Box Set [DVD]

Do I recommend this edition –> unsure: This edition made it on the 10th place because it contains all 5 Fly movies, numerous extras and has a great sound and image quality. Furthermore I think that the package looks quite interesting but after I did some research I found out that the Box Set itself is made of cheap plastic and that everything has to be handled with care in order not to break anything. In the end, the box looks good but I am not really sure if I am ever going to buy it or if I just stay with the “normal” DVDs. Check it out and make your own decision.

#09 The Big Lebowski 10th Anniversary Edition

Do I recommend this edition –> yes: A limited edition bowling ball case of The Big Lebowski. It just looks perfect, nothing more to say.

#08 Sleepaway Camp Survival Kit


Do I recommend this edition –> only for fans: Here it is all about you being a 80ies slasher  fan or not. The survival kit contains Sleepaway Camp, Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland. From Amazon: “This very cool box set of the cult classics – The Sleepaway Camp Trilogy has a cute “first aid” motif with bloody handprints on the slipcover. The red paint used on the slipcover for the blood actually FEELS STICKY, like real blood! Open the slipcover up and you have pictures of first aid items like band-aids, first aid cream, gauze, antiseptic wipes and the like with the DVD’s right inside. Utter PACKAGING GENIUS! Also included is a “Sleepaway Camp Diary” that gives the history of all three films and includes addresses for cool Sleepaway Camp fan websites. All three of the features are presented in widescreen with audio commentaries, still galleries, theatrical trailers, outtakes, behind the scenes, deleted scenes and MUCH, MUCH GORE!!!” And that’s where I 100% agree!

#07 Alien Quadrilogy Deluxe Alien Head Limited Edition Box Set [DVD]

Do I recommend this edition –> only for hardcore fans: I was never an Alien fan and I never will be but just have a look at this amazing, detailled Alien head DVD holder.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFXukW3I8X4]

#06 Planet Terror (uncut) 2–Disc Limited Coll.-Edition

Do I recommend this edition –> yes: First of all, Planet Terror is, even though quite modern, one of my all-time favorite grindhouse flicks and this limited and numbered Tin Box does justice to this epic movie on every single level. The flick, with a run-time of 101 mins is completely uncut, the sound and image quality are pin sharp. The extras on the second disc are really interesting and informative. The Planet Terror blood pack just like the odored DVDs are quite useless but the adding of the famous BBQ sauce recipe is a stroke of genius and the sauce is really delicious. If you are a fan of the movie, this is the only edition you should buy! Oh, yeah here is the recipe (sorry but I was to lazy to translate it into english):

4 Portionen
1 Tasse – Tomatenketchup
1 Tasse – Sonnenblumenöl
1/4 Tasse – brauner Zucker
1/2 Tasse – feingehackte Zwiebeln
1/4 Tasse – Worcestershire-Souce
1 TL. – Senf (normalen Schärfe)
2 TL. – Paprikapulver
1-2 TL. – Chilipulver
1 – Messerspitze Zimt
3 – Knoblauchzehen, feingehackt
3- Spritzer Tabasco
Sanft von 1,5 Zitronen
Salz und Pfeffer nach belieben
Zubereitung:
Alle Zutaten in einen Kochtopf geben,
Erhitzen und mindestens 30 Min. leicht köcheln.
Vor Verzehr abkühlen lassen.

#05 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Ultimate Collector’s Edition Blu-ray + 3 DVDs)

Do I recommend this edition –> yes

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rVsW8GkHuY]

#04 Dawn of the Dead: The Ultimate Edition

Do I recommend this edition –> yes There are tons of different editions of Dawn of The Dead out there but this one is by far the best! Disc one is the original unrated director’s cut with George Romero, Tom Savini, and Chris Romero commentaries, theatrical trailers and radio spots. Disc two is the extended edition, some footage, a Richard Rubinstein commentary and some other stuff. Disc three comes with The Dario Agento cut (which was released in Europe) and some commentaries by the stars of the movie. And last but not least Disc 4 contains The Dead Walk and the Document of the Dead documentaries, just as a feature-length one shot during the making of Dawn of the Dead, some home movies and a tour through the Monroeville mall. And now comes the best, you can buy this epic edition on Amazon for only $15.35. What are you waiting for? Buy it now!

#03 Cannibal Holocaust Limited Deluxe Statue Edition

Do I recommend this edition –>only for fans

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUEccUass38]

#02 Battle Royale 1 – Limited Ultimate Edition (5DVD+Blu-Ray+Blu-Ray 3D) (7Discs) – Uncut

Do I recommend this edition –> yes:  Quite the same as with the Planet Terror edition. This Box Set (fabric covering and hot-foil embossing) is utterly perfect. It consists of 7 Discs (Blu-ray and DVD) incl. 3D Blu-ray. Features are: Behind the Scenes of Battle Royale – Making of Battle Royale – Takeshi Kitano Interview – Shot of the  Special Edition – 42 students – Royal problems – Special Effects comparison – Behind the Scenes – At the Set – Trailer, TV-Spots & Commercials – the music of Battle Royale – Promotion & Premieres – The correct way to make Battle Royale [Birthday Version] – The correct way to fight in Battle Royale. Furthermore this edition comes with a  certificate, a poster, 8 postcards, a comic (36 pages) and a booklet (24 pages) and is limited to 5000 pieces! A well-deserved second place.

#01 Japanese DVD-BOX “GODZILLA FINAL BOX” Complete Set 2005

Do I recommend this –> for hardcore fans only: Are you blind? No? So, you know why I recommend this one. If you are not convinced yet, here is the content: Godzilla head with base, booklet, 31 discs in total: Original 30 discs + 1 optional disc (Final Wars) to complete the set covering all 28 episodes (Godzilla 1954 to Final Wars 2004) and 3 archives bonus discs. All are only in Japanese language without subtitle or translation with fucking 16kg in total. I hope I made everything clear now?! Godzilla is the mother/father of all movie monsters and this edition excludes all possibility of doubt about it.

Trepalium – H.N.P.

As teased yesterday, here’s the review of the second opening act that night: the French band Trepalium!

A lot of people have probably heard them before without even knowing it since back in 2006 their song Sick Boogie Murder raised a lot of eyebrows because of its interesting sound. In 2012 the quintet released a new record called H.N.P. which keeps elements of that sound but also adds several new ones.

After the intro is over you’ll notice that it’s still got its groove-laden guitars but they’ve tuned up the heaviness as well as the technicality factors quite a bit. One thing that struck me about them though is that there seems to be one riff that comes back in different variations all throughout the nine tracks, doesn’t bother me personally but some might find it repetitive.

When the drums aren’t insanely grooving they are are pretty much non-stop straight to your face with double bass attacks and occasional blast beats, just as I like them. The only thing that “bothers” me personally are the vocals. They are in no way bad; quite the contrary actually but I’m missing those little surprises, that were present in the above-mentioned song, that add variation to the whole thing. Nevertheless that doesn’t really influence the record itself in a negative way, so it’s probably just a personal gripe.

There is a little surprise as the tenth song on here too…a cover of Pantera‘s I’m Broken! It’s only fitting to end this record with this legendary song and I dare say that they do a very good job at it too!

In closing I’m going to go ahead and say that if you are looking for something in both the groove department as well as the heavier department, you are at the right address with Trepalium‘s H.N.P.! Check out their Facebook page and their music video below!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUMuscbjTpA]

Klone – The Dreamer’s Hideaway

First off: a belated happy new beer to all of you! Let’s start, shall we?

In November last year I went to see Gojira at den Atelier and it was a great show, but something that went unnoticed by many were the two opening acts. One of them was the French band Klone from Poitiers. The sextet plays a style of music that I’m having a hard time to define, so I’ll just go ahead and say that it’s “French metal”. By that I mean that it bares resemblances to other bands from France like Dagoba and Aqme, even though the similarities are only minor.

Immediately after you put in their most recent record The Dreamer’s Hideaway and you listen to the first song Rocket Smoke, you should somewhat know what I mean. The whole thing has a grunge feel to it but with a more modern approach and deeper tuned guitars. There are a handful of parts where the riffs are very dense and create a huge tension but, at least to me, the majority of the time they blend in nicely with the ensemble in order to avoid an overload of your senses during the fifty-four minutes.

The drums follow a similar route, even though I like them a bit better than the string instruments. All throughout the eleven songs they keep a nice groove and at times they simply explode into mayhem. Some passages could almost be from the hands of Tool‘s Danny Carey, and that’s saying something.

I didn’t choose the drum comparison randomly but mainly because in some parts the vocals sound a bit like Maynard’s. I know that it’s never a good idea to compare vocal ranges because a lot of the times people don’t feel the same way as you do but I can’t shake the feeling that they’re alike. There’s not much I can say about the production since it’s exactly how it should be: nice and tight.

All in all, I’d say that Klone is probably not going to be everyone’s cup of tea but if you’re willing to check out something new every now and then, these guys are a good start. Plus they have a saxophone. Check out their Facebook page if you want to get more information and listen to the above mentioned song below and make sure to come back tomorrow if you want to read about the second opening act from the show!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHjjzyqheM0]

Indian Handcrafts – Civil Disobedience For Losers

Bruce Lee jumps on stage already after a few seconds, showing his kicks and punches to everyone in the audience. They all came with that space caravan that has travelled many light-years through the universe full of Spaceballs just to see this show. Here we go with light speed, ridiculous speed, ludicrous speed!

Buy your ticket, because this is not just another two-man-group. Apart from the obvious similarities to bands like Tweak Bird, Indian Handcrafts especially stand out due to their high amount of dirtiness, groovy stoner and psychedelic severity, so that Dark Helmet himself won’t manage to stop this duo from its mission. The first half of the record is a thrilling interplay between head banging and hip grooving. A biting 1:44 minutes punk rock outburst towards the middle of the show isn’t really unexpected anymore, the anger simply has to go somewhere and Major Asshole’s eyes will remain even more crossed. Still, in the end, Civil Disobedience For Losers can’t really be reduced to a 100% sheer brutality, given that also melodious and doomy chapters are included with Coming Home and Truck Mouth.

Nevertheless, the fat and raw sound are the main points that will catch the audience, in case they won’t be too frightened by those relentless vocals, sounding like some alien version of Lemmy, Mike Patton and a yelping Yorkshire Terrier. He definitely has the Schwartz! But after having travelled so far, having combed so many deserted planets and seen creatures like Barf the mawg, they are sure to stay and enjoy this intergalactic rock episode.

This is a very strong two man stoner performance from the beginning to the end, with some awesome breaks, one superb transition (from Truck Mouth to The Jerk) and a groove that won’t let you go.

Recommendations: Bruce Lee, Starcraft, Truck Mouth

P.S.: In case you don’t know what a mawg is, here’s some cultural tutoring for you: click.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgPUWFYErsc]

Trash Monday LI

That’s the stuff our readers send us. On the one hand we are speechless and shocked, on the other hand we are thrilled and proud of you. You are the best. A special thanks goes to Anna Catherine for this beautiful video. Trash Monday at its best! Keep on sending us stuff like that. Watch the parody (?!) of Sam And The Womp‘s Bom Bom (which most definitely kicks ass too) below:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY8JtPwmjxc&feature=youtu.be]

Bikini Blitzkrieg (Fake Trailer)

During the last days I was wondering what happened to the Bikini Blitzkrieg Project. In 2011, Fred Neuen (in co-production with radar and remedia.lu) released a Fake Trailer called Bikini Blitzkrieg;  a Luxembourgish attempt to jump on the modern grindhouse, exploitation, trash bandwagon. Sadly that’s all it was: an attempt.

Luxembourg was never known for its movies or their histoire du cinéma but what is presented with this trailer is quite an impudence. I thought a lot about how I should approach Bikini Blitzkrieg. Should I write something or just ignore it? In the end I decided to do it the honest way by sharing a few of my thoughts with you.

First of all there is absolutely nothing original nor innovative about this trailer. The whole nazisploitation genre died years ago and even modern attemps (especially combining it with the zombie sub-genre) failed 99% of the time. Guns, boobs and blood are the 3 holy ingredients of nearly every B-Movie so I don’t give Fred and his crew credits for discovering and using those. The rest of the ideas and the plot (??) are not even worth mentioning.

In the description of the youtube video, the uploader writes about the help of talented and dedicated friends, which first of all is a massive slap in every actor’s face, and second a simple lie. The people may all be friends, I won’t argue about that. They may also be dedicated, which nevertheless is quite hard to believe and I even bet that none of the actors has ever seen an exploitation or grindhouse movie (to which, after all, Bikini Blitzkrieg wants to pay homage) but they are for sure NOT talented. Ok, you may claim now that I already wrote a lot about trash movies with fucked-up actors (like Troll2, Terror Firmer, Dead Dudes in the House) and that I liked them. You are right, B-Movies do not need talented actors but they have to work with heart, so please do not take your audience for a fool and stop lying.

Furthermore it took Fred and his crew 2 days to film the whole stuff, now you can ask yourself what the hell took them so long. Post-production took them one year and here the result is even worse. In fact, it is the post-production, with the visual effects and the CG 3D models, which ruins everything. If you compare the Bikini Blitzkrieg effects to a SYFY CGI trash pearl like Mega Python vs. Gatoroid the latter one looks like the new Hobbit. To be honest I wonder why they even put that much of this stuff in the trailer but, as I said before, the people involved in this trailer have probably not seen too many grindhouse flicks and have never dealt with the subject and the genres but just copied. Making B-Movies is a life style not a hyped style. The director and co.  should have focussed more on the story and on self-made props rather than on computer stuff because in the end this is some of the worst work I have ever seen.

To conclude, I hope that this project will never become a full-length movie and there is absolutely no excuse for doing such a trailer, even not that they are from Luxembourg and had no fundings. If you, nevertheless, are interested in the trailer, watch it here and now.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCMiGSsLZ9c]
Keep it independent!

Newsted – Metal

Newsted is the first sign of life of former Flotsam and Jetsam, Metallica and Voivod (among many other bands) bassist Jason Newsted in way too long.

The Ep, aptly titled METAL, came out today (January 8) via the stupid medium of iTunes and contains 4 songs that sound like Metallica crossbred with some old school Motörhead. I listened to the whole thing 5 times so far and it is still growing on me but I decided to go ahead and review it anyways because I know I was not the only one waiting for this.

Quite honestly, there is nothing groundbreaking to be mentioned. I mean, what did you expect from the band name and title? It is basic metal which keeps you pumped up without making the mistake of being too long or too repetitive. 4 nice songs. Soldierhead being the fastest one starts off the Ep with a Kill ‘Em All type of riff. The other 3 songs are groovier in nature but also more demanding. At first they might seem boring or too long but after a second or third listen they keep growing on you. As of now, Godsnake seems to be the strongest song on the Ep.

The 4 songs remind me a lot of the Death Angel reunion album The Art of Dying which also was a cross between early speed metal and Motörhead.

Anyways, give it a chance and lets hope that it will be released on a REAL format. Fuck MP3s!

PS: Newsted redoing the Master of Puppets outro on King of the Underdogs creeps me out.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAqdCUkxHJ4]

Z-Town Massiv – Z-Town Massiv

Yo bros and hoes, grab your Wu-Wear out, the 90’s are back! In case you haven’t heard of these guys before, Z-Town Massiv are a hiphop collective from Luxembourg who have been in the game for quite a while now. DJ PC on the decks and N.U&Z.I. (former member from my all-time favourites Eyston) on the mic ensure the exact mix of old school hiphop, just as I like it! The samples / instrumentals are pleasing and smooth, everything is done with a back to the roots approach, abstaining from the annoying blingbling gangsta rap soundscapes.

I personally like the variety of the compositions, they are simple yet groovy. Initially I had a few problems with the way N.U&Z.I. raps, but after a few listens I got used to it and it fits as it should! The sound quality is, as mentioned before, DIY and not the best one would expect but it’s still ok. A very big plus are the topics of the songs, no useless disses of other rappers (big up for that!) but socially critical topics as the stultification of the human kind, greediness and the overall pessimism that surrounds us nowadays.

With 39 minutes playtime this is the right dose to get into fine Luxembourgish hiphop. No offense, T The Boss, please don’t beat the crap out of me, ok?

In case you’re more into chaotic emo-whatever-screamo-core (yeah, music tags are the new shit), you should also check N.U&Z.I’s old band Eyston as the album’s available on archive.org.

Eyston – Discography

Condorman

To be honest, I do not remember how I came across this 1981 Disney action comedy. It is said that Condorman is an adaptation of a book called The Game of X. Well, I have never heard of it but one thing is for sure, Condorman is a spy movie, or rather a James Bond parody. To go on,  I even can’t tell you if I liked it or not but in the end it didn’t bore me at all and that’s something most of the James Bond movies can’t say of themselves.

The movie is all about Woodrow Wilkins a comic book writer and illustrator. His newest invention is Condorman, a secret agent with the awkwardness and dopiness of Inspector Clouseau but the coolness and gadget-amorousness of 007. Woodrow’s goal is to create real-life adventures for Condorman and before he can say knife it is him who, during a civilian paper swap in Istanbul, personally turns into the hero . During the rest of the movie Woodrow tries to rescue the ex-KGB special agent Natalia from her own boss Krokov and his army of pseudo assassins. Supported with a Condormobile, a Condorboat, a Condorsuit, Condorman, Harry (a friend from the CIA)  and Natalia deliver a relentless pursuit with the villans through Yugoslavia, Italy, Switzerland and finally Monte Carlo.

Condorman with Michael Crawford and Barbara Carrera is quite a costly trash movie. Furthermore it is not the James Bond parody itself and the rather corny and flat jokes which make this movie still watchable. Personally I think it is the unintentional gags, the charming movie mistakes and the Disney-naivety. Even though I hold that Charles Jarrott had absolutely no idea of how to handle the budget of the movie (less explosions, less locations, more professionalism) I go with John Corry of The New York Times who wrote in his review: “(…)There are worse things to watch while you eat popcorn.”

Last but not least, is it just me who thinks that the Condorman logo has some similarities with the German WWII Reichsadler or do you know what I mean?!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo5LZmx9Vrg]