Survival Spot

One of the key films of the 1970s, John Boorman’s Deliverance is a nightmarish adaptation of poet-novelist James Dickey’s book about various kinds of survival in modern America. The story concerns four Atlanta businessmen of various male stripe: Jon Voight’s character is a reflective, civilized fellow, Burt Reynolds plays a strapping hunter-gatherer in urban clothes, Ned Beatty is a sweaty, weak-willed boy-man, and Ronny Cox essays a spirited, neighborly type. Together they decide to answer the ancient call of men testing themselves against the elements and set out on a treacherous ride on the rapids of an Appalachian river. What they don’t understand until it is too late is that they have ventured into Dickey’s variation on the American underbelly, a wild, lawless, dangerous (and dangerously inbred) place isolated from the gloss of the late 20th century. In short order, the four men dig deep into their own suppressed primitiveness, defending themselves against armed cretins, facing the shock of real death on their carefully planned, death-defying adventure, and then squarely facing the suspicions of authority over their concealed actions. Boorman, a master teller of stories about individuals on peculiarly mythical journeys, does a terrifying and beautiful job of revealing the complexity of private and collective character–the way one can never be the same after glimpsing the sharp-clawed survivor in one’s soul. –Tom Keogh

Product Description

A terrifying exploration of mans alienation from nature based on james dickys novel. Four men trying to get away from it all get more than they bargained for when they take a canoe trip. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 06/07/2005 Starring: Jon Voight Burt Reynolds Run time: 109 minutes Rating: R Director: John Boorman

Product Details

• Actors:Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox, Ed Ramey
• Directors:John Boorman
• Writers:James Dickey
• Producers:John Boorman
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Subtitles: English, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: June 1, 2004
• Run Time: 110 minutes

Price: $9.60

Inspired by Chris Marker’s acclaimed short film LaJetée (which is included on the DVD Short 2: Dreams), 12 Monkeys combines intricate, intelligent storytelling with the uniquely imaginative vision of director Terry Gilliam. The story opens in the wintry wasteland of the year 2035, where a virulent plague has forced humans to live in a squalid, oppressively regimented underground. Bruce Willis plays a societal outcast who is given the opportunity to erase his criminal record by “volunteering” to time-travel into the past to obtain a pure sample of the deadly virus that will help future scientists to develop a cure. But in bouncing from 1918 to the early and mid-1990s, he undergoes an ordeal that forces him to question his own perceptions of reality. Caught between the dangers of the past and the devastation of the future, he encounters a psychiatrist (Madeleine Stowe) who is initially convinced he’s insane, and a wacky mental patient (Brad Pitt in a twitchy Oscar-nominated role) with links to a radical group that may have unleashed the deadly virus. Equal parts mystery, tragedy, psychological thriller, and apocalyptic drama, 12 Monkeys ranks as one of the best science fiction films of the ’90s, boosted by Gilliam’s visual ingenuity and one of the finest performances of Willis’s career. –Jeff Shannon

Product Details

• Actors: Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, Joseph Melito, Jon Seda
• Directors: Terry Gilliam
• Writers: Chris Marker, David Webb Peoples, Janet Peoples
• Producers: Charles Roven, Gary Levinsohn, Kelley Smith-Wait, Lloyd Phillips
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: May 10, 2005
• Run Time: 129 minutes

Price: $6.49

A strong candidate for the designation of most thrilling action movie ever made (the turbo-charged exhilaration of its full-throttle highway chases has never been equaled), the second part of George Miller’s post-apocalyptic trilogy is also a magnificently imagined movie myth. Like the Star Wars trilogy (by that other George) the Mad Max films draw their inspiration from the works of mythologist Joseph Campbell. In the 1979 original, Max (Mel Gibson) is a policeman, the last guardian of civilization and order in a devastated world reduced to chaos. But when a leather-clad gang of sadomasochistic speed demons mows down Max’s family, his remaining connections to humanity are also permanently severed. After brutally exacting his revenge, Max wanders off into the wasteland alone, “a burned out shell of a man” who (to paraphrase The Searchers) is destined to wander forever between the winds. In The Road Warrior, Max rediscovers a sliver of his shattered humanity, and a spark of redemption, when he helps an embattled colony of pioneers fight off the savages who are after that most precious of all commodities: “guzzline.” Max is transformed into a legendary hero, just as Mel Gibson was catapulted to international movie stardom. With its final stirring images, The Road Warrior transcends its genre (whatever that may be–science fiction? Western? action adventure?) and becomes something timeless. It’s a great movie. –Jim Emerson

Product Description

In a post-nuclear war world, Gibson plays Max, a lone adventurer who drives the roads of outback Australia in an endless search for gasoline. His opponents include Lord Humungus, and they battle over a tiny band of civilized survivors and their horde of fuel.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: 3-FEB-2004
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Actors:Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Michael Preston, Max Phipps, Vernon Wells
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: March 26, 1997
• Run Time: 94 minutes

Price: $9.04

Get mindless for awhile with this 1997 disaster flick, starring the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles as a funky place for lava to spew, plus Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche as the brave souls who know how to shut off the spout. Director Mick Jackson (The Bodyguard) wastes no time getting to the good stuff–it’s happening even before opening credits are over–and neither should anyone in the mood for technical efficiency without the burden of art. –Tom Keogh

Product Description

Something unspeakably chilling is heating up The City of Angels. Beneath the famed La Brea Tar Pits, a raging volcano pushes to the surface, raining a storm of deadly fire bombs and an endless tide of white-hot lava upon the stunned city. Experience the pulse-pounding thrills as the dream capital of the world erupts into the stuff nightmares are made of.

Product Details

• Actors: Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Heche, Gaby Hoffmann, Don Cheadle, Jacqueline Kim
• Directors: Mick Jackson
• Writers: Billy Ray, Jerome Armstrong
• Producers: Andrew Z. Davis, Lauren Shuler Donner, Martha R. Cotton, Michael Fottrell, Neal H. Moritz
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: March 9, 1999
• Run Time: 104 minutes

Price: $8.99

A great big rock hits the earth, and lots of people die. That’s pretty much all there is to it, and most of that was in the trailer. Can a major Hollywood movie really squeak by with such a slender excuse for a premise? The old disaster-movie king, cheese-meister Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake), would have made a kitsch classic out of this, with Charlton Heston, rather than a resigned and mumbly Robert Duvall, as the veteran astronaut who risks several lives trying to blow up the comet that’s headed right this way! As stiffly directed by Mimi Leder, this thick slice of ham errs on the side of solemnity. It may the be most earnest end-of-the-world picture since Stanley Kramer’s atomic-doom drama On the Beach. There are a couple of classic melodramatic flourishes: an estranged father and daughter who share a tearful reconciliation as a Godzilla-sized tidal wave looms on the horizon; and an astronaut, communicating on video with his loved ones back on Earth, who follows whispered instructions from a buddy lurking just off camera–so that his little boy won’t realize that he’s been struck blind. With Morgan Freeman as the president of the United States. –David Chute

Product Description

In DEEP IMPACT, Leo Beiderman (Elijah Wood), joins a field study for his high school’s Astronomy Club and discovers a new comet that unfortunately is headed for Earth. While scientists build a cave to prevent the extinction of the human race, they estimate that only 800,000 people can be selected to survive the “Deep Impact.” The threat of a comet ending the world quickly sends Americans into a panic until the president announces a plan to send astronauts on a mission to destroy the comet before it reaches earth.

Price: $7.49

Twister was a mega-million-dollar blockbuster–helmed by a director (Dutchman Jan de Bont) hot off another scorcher hit (Speed)–that flaunted state-of-the-art digital effects and featured a popular leading actress (Helen Hunt) who would win an Academy Award for her next film (As Good As It Gets). But ask anybody who’s seen it and they’ll tell you who the real star of Twister is: the cow. Not to give anything away, but the cow is one of those inspired little touches (like, say, Bronson Pinchot’s career-making cameo in Beverly Hills Cop) that adds a touch of personality to a gigantic Hollywood production. The story is blown out the window after an impressive prologue in which Hunt’s character, as a little girl, witnesses her daddy being sucked into a tornado. Basically, Hunt and Bill Paxton are thrill-seeking meteorologists chasing twisters in order to study them (and help warn people of them, of course) with a new technology they’ve developed. If you thought the Kansas tornado in The Wizard of Oz was every bit as scary as the Wicked Witch of the West, then this may be the movie for you. –Jim Emerson

Product Description

The house rips apart piece by piece. A bellowing cow spins through the air. Tractors fall like rain. A 15,000-pound gasoline tanker becomes an airborne bomb. A mile-wide, 300 miles-per-hour force of total devastation is coming at you: Twister is hitting home. In this adventure swirling with cliffhanging excitement and awesome special effects, Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton play scientists pursuing the most destructive weatherfront to sweep through mid-America’s Tornado Alley in 50 years. By launching electronic sensors into the funnel, the storm chasers hope to obtain enough data to create an improved warning system. But to do so, they must intercept the twisters’ deadly path. The chase is on!

Price: $8.29

The first of 1997’s volcano disaster movies (the second being Volcano) was arguably the better of the two, but both of them made for passable entertainment with some spectacular special effects to serve as icing on the stale cake. After all, Dante’s Peak doesn’t pretend to be anything more than an updated variation on a whole catalog of disaster movie clichés. Despite all that, it’s reasonably enjoyable. It’s an added bonus that the script is just smart enough to allow Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton to play their roles with straight faces, never condescending to the audience of the formulaic story. He’s a volcano expert from the U.S. Geological Survey, and she’s the mayor of a cozy Washington State town perched beneath a volcano that’s about to blow. Telltale signs are everywhere, so evacuation must be carried out immediately. Of course, not everybody’s eager to leave, and even some of Brosnan’s colleagues think his alarm is premature. This sets the stage for massive ash clouds, rivers of raging mud and molten rock, flattened forests, and death-defying escapes by Brosnan, Hamilton, and some (but not all) of her family, friends, and townsfolk. So what if it’s all pretty flaky… and can a four-wheel-drive vehicle travel over fire and molten lava without bursting its tires? Don’t ask too many questions, and you’ll find Dante’s Peak to be (if you’ll pardon the pun) a total blast. The Collector’s Edition DVD includes a documentary about volcanoes, Getting Close to the Show, in addition to behind-the-scenes footage, exclusive coverage of the creation of special effects, and audio commentary with director Roger Donaldson. –Jeff Shannon

Price: $8.99

Loud, violent, and proudly derivative, the post-apocalyptic action-thriller Doomsday is the latest from UK cult director Neil Marshall, who impressed horror fans with his previous efforts, Dog Soldiers and The Descent. Both pictures established Marshall as a director with a knack for reinventing well-worn genre pictures, but here, he seems more interested in stitching together favorite scenes and elements from established horror and science-fiction films. Escape from New York is the main source for Doomsday, though there are plenty of nods to The Road Warrior and its multitude of Italian-made carbon copies, as well as the zombie/plague subgenre; the lovely but impassive Rhona Mitra is the Snake Plissken-esque loner sent by police (represented by Bob Hoskins) to infiltrate Scotland, which has descended into anarchy following a viral outbreak. The disease has surfaced in London (now a walled city), and Mitra is dispatched to find a scientist who may possess a cure. Marshall’s vision of Scotland in ruins brings together the punk/modern primitive costume design of George Miller’s Mad Max trilogy with some eclectic homegrown elements (knights on horseback defending a gang leader’s castle), and while these touches are novel, the picture as a whole should ring overly familiar to any viewer who’s spent time in the exploitation trenches during the past 25 years. Younger and less discerning audience members will undoubtedly enjoy the plentiful violence and gore, as well as the unbridled performances of the supporting cast, especially stuntwoman/actress Lee-Ann Liebenberg as the heavily tattooed Viper. —Paul Gaita

Product Details

• Actors:Rhona Mitra, Malcolm Mcdowell
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Universal Studios
• DVD Release Date: May 10, 2009
• Run Time: 120 minutes

Price: $7.49

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis belongs to legend as much as to cinema. It’s a milestone of sci-fi and German expressionism. Yet the story makes minimal sense, and the “theme” belongs in a fortune cookie; to experience the film’s pagan power, you have to see the movie. But for decades we couldn’t, not really–not with so many versions, all incomplete, often in public-domain prints like smudged photocopies. This Murnau Foundation restoration changes all that. Some shots, scenes, and subplots may be lost forever, but intertitles indicate how they fit into the original continuity and the characters’ individual trajectories. Most crucially, the images are crisp, vibrant, and three-dimensional instead of murky and flattened. The composite sequences (the Tower of Babel, a sea of lusting eyes) have been restored to their hallucinatory ferocity. And there’s one moment when you can see a bead of sweat roll down a man’s cheek–in medium long-shot. –Richard T. Jameson

Product Details

• Actors: Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, Gustav Frohlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
• Directors: Fritz Lang
• Format: AC-3, Black & White, Dolby, DVD, Limited Edition, NTSC, Special Edition
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: KINO INTERNATIONAL
• DVD Release Date: November 16, 2010
• Run Time: 147 minutes

Price: $24.99