This Week on DVD…

Updated on February 10, 2009 By Ken Begg 9 Comments

A good week for old school horror TV fans. The first season of the often quite decent syndicated Tales From the Darkside hits DVD.

Also now available is the second season of Friday the 13th the Series. (Although for syndicated hour-long horror shows of the ’80s having nothing to do with the film series that they swiped their names from, I’m more of a Poltergeist the Series fan.)

Against the Dark Steven Seagal has finally broken down and made a monster movie (he had the script for Submerged, initially about his fighting mutants, changed to a more prosaic plot some years back) in this Blade meets I Am Legend mix about a team fighting vampires in a post-apocalyptic world. Seagal, naturally, plays the “katana master” Blade guy. Man, if this is half as hilarious as it should be, it will be well worth a look.

The Foot Fist Way Speaking of funny martial arts action, this is a sleeper about a Tae Kwan Do instructor. As a warning, it seems to be a “love it or hate it” sort of deal.

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  • The Rev. D.D.

    Minor nitpick–it’s “Tae”, not “Tai.” I might have to give that one a rental and see how it is.

    If I recall corrently, Seagal’s role in Against the Dark is not a major one. I think Foywonder or one of his cohorts reviewed it and said it wasn’t much good. Another disappointment, sounds like.

    I’d like to get that TftD set. I’ve been catching some of the episodes on SFC lately and some of them have held up better than I would have guessed. Granted, others have not…but that’s part of the fun!

    Never saw the Poltergeist series (although maybe I should some day), but the lady of the house and I both rather enjoyed Ft13th back in the day, so I think we need to pick those up as well.

  • Sandy Petersen

    What?! a STEVEN SEAGAL movie that “wasn’t much good”?! What has our civilization come to.

    In other news, I seem to have lost your e-mail Ken. If you don’t mind my having it, please shoot it off to me. (I am still learning my new e-mail system.)

  • Ericb

    Seagal should remake Red Zone Cuba with himself playing Griffin.

  • That would be awesome! Lance Henriksen could appear in the beginning of the film, sing the theme song, and never be seen again!

  • If you go into AGAINST THE DARK looking for campy fun you’re going to be sorely disappointed. The monsters really aren’t even vampires. The whole film is just another “of the dead” retread” with infrequent appearances by Seagal. Here’s a paragraph from my review that covers Seagal’s role:

    “As noted, Steven Seagal’s role is relatively minor despite his being billed as the star. He plays Tao, the bloated leader of a small band of civilian “hunters” that merely walk around slaying the infected with surprising ease given these things have supposedly decimated humanity. Seagal does the bare minimum of swordplay to make his character look like a bad ass while the other hunters around him do the more physical action sequences, primarily a dude best known as “Toa” on the recently cancelled revamping of “American Gladiators”. Even Seagal’s dialogue is bare minimum; he speaks in such a dispassionate, one sentence at a time manner that I began watching to see if I could spot his eyes reading cue cards off-camera.”

    It’s one of those movies that can be best described as competently made but so unimaginative and uninspired it fails to even be much fun on a camp level.

    Here’s a link to my full review that’s mostly spoiler free – http://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/against-dark-dvd

  • fish eye no miko

    About the F13: The Series DVD cover. Would them putting the artifacts in a shape that looks like a face/mask constitute some sort of false advertising…?
    And speaking of F13–FRIDAY! Woo-hoo!

    Ah, Tales From the Darkside… some of the episodes sucked, but there were some really good ones. I like “The Moth”, with Debbie Harry as a witch, and “Sorry, Right Number” (that’s not a typo), which is a somewhat atypical episode. The latter was written by Stephen King, btw.

  • Joe

    Hey. I’m assuming Steven Seagal didn’t make B-Fest. Did you mention him in your recap?

    Jerk.

    Jerk.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    Fish–it looks like a skull to me, not the hockey mask that would constitute false advertising.

    I don’t recall “The Moth”, but “Sorry, Right Number” was very well done. “Inside the Closet” scarred me for a while, and “Anniversary Dinner” has stayed with me to this day despite seeing it only once. Some of my favorites were the darkly humorous ones (“A Case of the Stubborns” being perhaps my favorite.)

  • There you go, Joe, all fixed.