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The release of SHAZAM: FURY OF THE GODS is a sign of good tidings for oncoming showrunner James Gunn -- because there's literally nowhere to go but up after this fiasco.

While the original comic book adventures of Captain Marvel (and Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Junior, The Lieutenant Marvels, Uncle Marvel, and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny) had more than their fair share of comedy, this movie just makes them into a bad joke. The kids are not viewed as heroes but as incompetents. Zachary Levi's Captain Marvel acts more juvenile than does his young alter ego, Billy Batson (Asher Angel), exacerbating the already tiresome concept of a superhero movie trying to remake Tom Hanks' BIG.

All-Star Superman is getting re-released on Blu-ray as part of the ongoing Warner Studios 100th anniversary celebration. As far as Superman animated titles go (not counting the actual ongoing animated series runs), this particular story is a good pick.

Adapting the limited series run by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, the animators manage to stick very closely to the style of the books, while also retaining most of the story elements.

The adventure begins when Superman (James Denton) sets out to rescue a spacecraft from falling into the sun. Now, Superman has flown into and through the sun before, but we're going to forget that because this time the full-on exposure overloads his solar-receptive cells, mutating him to give him some new powers... and also a death sentence. Superman is dying, and that's just how Lex Luthor (Anthony LaPaglia) planned it!

Anyone wanting to see the masterful Max Fleischer studios treatment of Superman has, for years, been able to get a cheap copy, due to the shorts having fallen into the public domain. So why would you want to pick up yet another copy just because it's on Blu-ray?

Because the transfers are infinitely better, cleaner, and brighter. Not only have all the pops, pits, potholes and scratches been cleaned up so that the animation is pristine, but the scans of the master prints take in even more of the artwork.

We tested the new Blu-ray side-by-side with previous releases of the shorts. As an example, the short "Volcano" had an ever-present pit during the opening scenes; this has been removed. Additionally, what we didn't expect to see was more artwork that had been cut off from all four sides in previous releases. So you're quite literally getting more for your money with this purchase.

The acquisition of Rooster Teeth by Warner Brothers Discovery is showing some of its first efforts both in comics and comics-related animation. Over on the publishing side of the house, we are getting a miniseries that teams up the Justice League with the team from RWBY, as the girls chase their monsters over into our world. But on the animation side, it appears to be the opposite -- but with a surprise twist.

When a group of villagers have had enough of a dragon's threat over their village, they seek out a renowned sorceror (Ralph Richardson) to do battle with the beast and free them. It is not long, however, before our troupe's quest is opposed by none other than the king himself, who believes there is no need to confront the dragon and needlessly raise his ire; the dragon has been kept mollified through ritual sacrifice of the virgins of the town, drawn by a lottery of the king's own divising.

Even before the dragon can be found, the quest seems thwarted, when the king's men kill the sorceror. Seeking to take the place of his master, the young apprentice Galen (Peter MacNicol) takes up the charge and, aided with the power of a magical amulet, endures misadventure and romance with one of his traveling companions, Valerian (Caitlin Clark), who travels disguised as a boy.

Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham is, unfortunately, one of the most plodding, soporiphic, and downright boring stories to have ever been committed to animation. The art is great. The voice casting serviceable. The concepts exciting. Yet somehow Jase Ricci's screenplay -- based on an Elseworlds imprint from DC Comics written by Mike Mignola and Richard Pace -- drags its feet as it shoehorns in the Batman characters into 1920s analogs while pitting him against H.P. Lovecraft creations.

The 1969 Jess Franco film Marquis de Sade's Justine is a costume drama wrapped in a sexploitation package that leaves the viewer lost at times while trying to follow multiple different side stories, with multiple characters that do not hold the audience’s attention long enough to care to see the outcome of their tales due to the story going in all different directions at once.

The main story follows the tale of a young girl named Justine (Romina Power), who is exiled from a convent with only the clothes on her back and a small handful of money to get by. It’s a “babe in the woods” story that quickly veers off the path into multiple side stories, all of which have Justine being tortured mentally and physically.

In 1969, Jess Franco created Eugenie… The Story of Her Journey into Perversion. Coming off the heels of his previous adaptation of the Marquis De Sade’s tale, Justine, Franco sets this story of depravity in the modern era, and upon watching this for the fist time in 2023, it eerily predicts the Jeffery Epstein scandal of today.

Christopher Lee opens the movie with a monologue direct from the writings of the Marquis De Sade, standing at a podium in front of a satanic ritualistic killing of a naked woman behind him, while unsavory characters watch the scene. At first thought, it’s an almost Vincent Price way of being our host through the story. It’s only later do we discover his character will play a main role in this depraved tale.

1976’s Creature from Black Lake, directed by Joy N. Houck Jr., finally comes to Blu-ray from SYNAPSE FILMS. This long-forgotten film, produced in the double feature drive-in days, is more of a character-driven story than the gore and exploitation from films of that era, mixing humor and suspense along with very little on-screen horror to create a tale more about the characters rather than an ominous creature lurking in the woods.

Harkening back to the success of films such as The Legend of Boggy Creek, this film was cashing in on the Bigfoot hype and hysteria of the day and was made to be released first on the drive-in circuit, then re-released theatrically in 1982 as part of a multi-film package, 5 Deranged Features.

The South Park Pandemic Special and the subsequent South ParQ Vaccination Special saw our four heroes -- Stan, Kyle, Eric, and Kenny -- struggle (but not so much) with the impositions of the Covid-19 lockdowns. As things got more desperate and reached their apocalyptic conclusions, it resulted in the boys ending their mutual friendships and sharing custody of Kenny.

Now forty years later, the Covid restrictions are being lifted for good -- just as the news comes that Kenny McCormick, famed physicist and futurist, had found the root cause of Covid and a way to prevent it from ever happening. Sadly, this news comes at the same time as the news of Kenny's death. Now Stan is drawn back to the town of his childhood to reunite with Kyle, Tolkien, Wendy, and Rabbi Cartman as the only ones who might understand Kenny's last cryptic message to save the world -- and their broken friendships.

On April of 2022 the Indiegogo campaign of Pandemic Thirst closed to just over $2,000 in funding, with a release date of November or the same year. I took the gamble and backed this project, having been familiar the productions Sleazebox and GatorBlade Films in the past. I am not shy about the fact that I previously purchased films like Deathscort (parts 1 and 2) from them, as well as a host of other titles in their 10-year career, so I knew the level of production I was in for.

 Tomu Uchida’s 1965 masterpiece A Fugitive from the Past has finally been restored to a 183-minute cut of the film that was praised as Japan’s 6^th greatest film of all time. A culmination of 50 years of filmmaking, encompassing a library of over 70 films, Uchida’s ultimate crime and betrayal saga has finally made its way to Blu-ray and into your collections for the first time ever.

There are a number of biopics out the focused on the life of the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. And while it's his name on the marquee and his spotlight throughout the film, this movie isn't really so much about him as what he might have been had it not been for the man behind the manufacturing of his persona: "Colonel" Tom Parker.

1976’s Massacre at Central High, directed by Rene Daalder, is a film that quite took me by surprise. While viewing it for the first time, expecting a typical high school slasher film, it was quite the opposite.

It starts out like any typical exploitation/revenge film of that era. David (Derrel Maury) is a new student at Central High and is mercilessly tormented by the “in crowd” bullies who rule the high school and harass anyone that comes along their path -- going as far as to cripple David by kicking out a jack stand from his car while he was working underneath, shattering his leg.

After healing up, David returns to the school to exact his revenge on the classmates who wronged him and put an end to the bullies’ reign of terror once and for all.

Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone has been an unmitigated success with fans. And with that fandom eager for more content, Sheridan took one of the riskiest moves a franchise creator can ever take -- he produced a spinoff. Specifically, in this instance, a prequel.

Can one dare to dream that JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION is the capstone to the franchise that began almost thirty years ago? From the unique conceit of cloning dinosaurs from genetic material extracted from mosquitos trapped in amber, we have ended with a world where dinosaurs are running about as part of everyday life, as evidenced by children playing with little lizards in the park to pteranodons nesting atop the Empire State Building.

Grab your hall passes and get ready, because Arrow Video brings to Blu-ray the little known 1989 American slasher film HELL HIGH for the first time. Directed by Douglas Grossman, HELL HIGH brings a John Hughes twist to the horror movie genre by blending the ridiculous with the grotesque, and gives us a fun 84-minute ride into madness.

The story revolves around a young biology teacher named Brooke (played by Maureen Mooney) who witnesses a terrible tragedy as a child. She has suppressed those memories until a group of prankster high school kids take a joke too far and send Brooke over the breaking point.

Just the right mix of humor and horror, HELL HIGH delivers, making the whole movie an enjoyable watch for a first timer, or a good way to round out a High School Horror movie marathon with such titles as Slaughter High, Return to Horror High, and Student Bodies to bookend the theme.

After three controversial seasons, CW's Batwoman has finally reached the end of her bat-rope. Having initially lost its leading actress after the first season, the show tried to move in a new direction by having the suit land in the lap of homeless Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie), who took over the duties of the hero while the mystery of what happened to original Batwoman, Kate Kane (Ruby Rose) played out. Later, through an improbably sequence of events, it was found that Ryan had been given up for adoption by her fabulously wealthy CEO mother, Jada Jet (Robin Givens), who went on to have another child, Marquis Jet (Nick Creegan). Suddeny, poor girl Ryan is in charge of Wayne Industries... at least, until she's not.

In 1994 Director Shinichi Fukazawa set out to make an homage film to one of his favorite horror movies, The Evil Dead, and emulate his favorite actor Bruce Campbell by doing the exact thing Sam Rami did way back in the day. Filming on weekends and on his days off from work, the film took over 15 years to complete, and now for the first time ever you can watch on Blu-ray in all it’d bloody glory.

Released in 2012 in Japan under the title of Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell, American audiences that were lucky enough to score a bootlegged VHS or burned DVD quickly gave the film its alternate title of The Japanese Evil Dead, due to the fact most of the story and plot resembles the first two films of Sam Raimi’s epic trilogy.

Scooby-Doo is an icon of animation that people just never tire of. The talking dog and his teenaged friends in Mystery, Inc. seem to always have a new series going, with older shows remaining in syndication.

Growing up, one of my favorite runs was The New Scooby-Doo Movies, because each episode would have a celebrity guest star -- many of whom I knew about -- which somehow made the cartoon just a bit more real to me, or at least made the Scoobyverse a bit broader. This tradition began anew when Hanna-Barbera and Warner Brothers delivered Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? which brought us a new stable of contemporary celebs and fictional characters ready to join in the mystery solving.