Mr.District Attorney is a strange film indeed as it kicks off as a screwball comedy before taking a huge left turn into a vicious film noir. Starring Dennis O’Keefe, Florence Rice and the legendary Peter Lorre this was a cheap b-movie production by the poverty row Republic studios.

Cadwallader Jones (Dennis O’Keefe) is straight out of Harvard Law School and looking to make a name for himself. Having bungled his first assignment at the DA’s office he’s put in charge of reviewing the closed case of bent city official Paul Hyde (Peter Lorre). Seen as a way of keeping Joe away from further courtroom mistakes things start getting a little problematic once bodies start turning up. More

December 7^th is a highly controversial docu-drama made by John Ford for the American war office to capture the attack on Pearl Harbor. Having won the Oscar for short documentary in 1943 the film has always been seen as a visceral classic showing the horrors of the attack. But the film was never meant as a short and actually ran at 80 minutes but due to its controversial content the film was heavily censored by the War Department. Now Odeon has released the full version for the first time on DVD in the UK allowing fans of John Ford the first opportunity to see this lost classic. More

I can still remember seeing the fist Hostel trailer and thinking what a fantastic idea for a horror film. Then sadly I watched the film and further realised that Eli Roth is a pretty horrible director when you consider Cabin Fever as well. Hostel 2 was unbelievably an improvement cutting away all the lads mag fluff and daring to have far more balls about it. Now comes Hostel III, directed by Scott Spiegel and reduced to being a straight to video release. More

Girl on Approval was originally released in 1961 when the British New Wave had taken hold of the country. Storylines became based in a harsh reality and Girl on Approval is an early example of this trend. Sheila (Annette Whiteley) is a 14 year old girl who is taken into foster care by Anne (Rachel Roberts) and John Howland (James Maxwell).  Sheila has been in care for years having been abandoned by her father as a baby and her mother currently serving a prison term. More

The king of stoner comedies is back and he’s taken a sharp left turn into the horror genre with Red State. Having not enjoyed the majority of Smith’s output since his legendary debut Clerks the idea of him moving into a completely different genre is in my opinion a good idea. Bringing together two of America’s favorite extremists the religious and gun nuts Red State is essentially a siege thriller with plenty of brutal violence to keep things ticking along. More

During Tim Burton’s fantasy biopic of Ed Wood the title character is in the editing booth and enthuses that he could make an entire film from out-takes. The Mermaids of Tiburon is just such a film where stock footage has been melded with underwater scenes and of course an endless amount of naked mermaids. More

Having never actually seen Rolling Thunder previously try and imagine my surprise and excitement when I heard that Studiocanal was releasing this cult classic on Blu-ray. The film is exploitation classic that I have been reading about for over 20 years but never had the chance to actually see. Originally released in 1977 the film stars the then lesser known William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones as returning POW’s from Vietnam who find adjusting to normal life slightly problematic. More

Following supporting roles in “A View To A Kill” and “Rocky IV” and a less than stellar turn as He-Man in “Masters Of The Universe”, in 1988 former chemical engineering graduate turned actor Dolph Lundgren (The Expendables) took on the role that would define his career as an action star playing the titular hero in the shoot-’em-up action-thriller Red Scorpion. More

Winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or and the Best Foreign Film Oscar, and adapted from one of the major works of postwar German literature (whose author later won the Nobel Prize), few films have such a powerhouse artistic pedigree.

When Oskar Matzerath (the extraordinary David Bennent, just twelve at the time) receives a tin drum for his third birthday, he vows to stop growing there and then – and woe betide anyone who tries to take his beloved drum away from him, as he has a banshee shriek that can shatter glass. More

Both controversial and relentless in its depiction of suppression and brutality, Punishment Park was heavily attacked by the mainstream press and permitted only the barest of releases in 1971. However, like Haskell Wexler s Medium Cool (1969) and Robert Kramer s Ice (1969), Peter Watkins film has established itself as one of the key, yet rarely seen, radical films of the late 1960s/early 1970s. More