Being Human: The Complete Third Season (U.S. Version/2013/E1 Blu-ray Set)/Big Ass Spider! (2013/Epic DVD)/Supernatural (1977 TV Anthology/BBC/BFI Region 2 PAL Import DVD Set)/12 Disasters (2012/Anchor Bay DVD)/Voodoo Possession (2013/Image DVD)

Picture: B-/DVDs: C Sound: B/C+/C/C+/C+ Extras: C/C-/C/D/C- Main Programs: C/C-/C+/C-/C-

PLEASE NOTE: The Supernatural Import PAL Region 2 DVD set is only available from BFI Video, will only run on hardware that can handle that version of the format and can be ordered from the link below.

Here's our latest look at Horror/Disaster genre releases...

What we call the U.S. and also need to refer to as the Canadian version of Being Human: The Complete Third Season (2013) has outlasted the original British BBC version, which folded after five seasons. Some fans find this one more likable and though I find it very average, I do find the show more naturalistic and humorous, but these latest 13 episodes don't do much more than previous shows from previous seasons, so this is for fans only.

With that said, the show still has energy and money in it and the cast has some chemistry. You can find our coverage of previous seasons of both shows elsewhere on this site, but know that E1 has added a Behind The Scenes featurette, Bloopers, San Diego Comic Con 2013 featurette and The Cast On Cliffhangers featurette as the extras.

In an attempt to match the inane success of the goofy Sharknado, Mike Mendez's Big Ass Spider! (2013) tries to up the ante by giving us a silly giant arachnoid and it is done in good fun for the most part, but it does not go anywhere fast or much, relying on visual effects and giving character actor Ray Wise a chance to ham it up as a military official. Taken as a B-movie, it has a few amusing moments, but at a short 80 minutes, needed much more and the writers were just not trying hard enough. The digital work was inconsistent as well.

A TV Spot, Trailer, International Trailer, SXSW appearance featurette and cast interview piece are the extras.

Not to be confused with the Warner TV hit of the same name, the BBC-produced anthology TV series Supernatural (1977) and it only reached 8 episodes, but they are interesting and have their moments if not always successful. The premise is that an old private club of actors get together in an old house (likely mansion) want new members, but in order to become unanimously entered into the club, they must tell a tale of terror that shocks everyone in the room. This is continued in all the shows, but the part about them being actors is eventually sidestepped and the club is apparently The Club of The Damned, but this is not really noted in the episodes.

With that said, it is a way to launch each show, usually written by series creator Robert Muller. Some are better than others and some have aged better than others, but I can say this is worth a look for all genre fans and feature some solid acting work that is a plus for the show.

The episodes are 1) Ghosts Of Venice with Robert Hardy and Sinead Cusack as a man in the early 19800s meets a woman who he is intrigued by, but something is not quite right about her. Countess Ilona and The Werewolf Reunion (2 & 3) with Billie Whitelaw, Ian Hendry and Edward Hardwicke is the only two-parter here weaving a tale of gothic lycanthropic terror that has some good performances and is among the gorier of the shows. Sandor Eles plays the man telling the actor's club all about it 4) Mr Nightingale has a young Jeremy Brett and Lesley-Anne Down in a tale of a man trying to find a better life only to be stalked by an apparent double of himself. These are all on DVD One.

DVD Two continues with 5) Lady Sybil featuring Denholm Elliott telling his shocking tale about the title character (Cathleen Nesbitt) who has two sons and one could be a serial killer, or worse! Elliott is good here, even when the script is uneven. 6) Viktoria has Catherine Schell (Space: 1999, On Her Majesty's Secret Service) is directed by Peter Sasdy and offers a twist on a story about a young lady from a rich family and the new gift she gets to cheer her up. Judy Cornwell and Lewis Fiander also star. 7) Night Of The Marionettes has Gordon Jackson & Kathleen Byron play a couple who visit (with their daughter) an old house turned inn where Frankenstein and John Polidori's The Vampire seem to have been written. Run by an anemic fellow (Vladek Sheybal), they stay only to find the place becoming oder and odder until a marionette show takes place, then things get chilling! Finally we get 8) Dorabella has Jeremy Clyde playing a man haunted by a female vampire he just cannot seem to shake off.

That is more than enough to see the series and make it the best entry on this list.

A booklet on the series is the only extra.

Steven R. Monroe's 12 Disasters (2012) has bad incident after bad incident happening during Christmas, one after another, making for a holiday so bad that it might just be the apocalypse, much like the quality of the script they used. Turns out the Mayan Calendar (yup, that old chestnut yet again!) can reveal why this might offer a real war on Christmas like no other. I was never convinced, the cast of unknowns have limited chemistry and the acting is often flat.

There is a better way to do such a story, but this one is overdone and having 12 bad signs to go with the 12 days of the holiday simply never adds up. Veteran actor Donnelly Rhodes shows up bringing some life to this forgettable work, but it is far from enough to save it. This is a long 90 minutes.

There are no extras.

Walter Boholst's Voodoo Possession (2013) is the tale of a man whose brother goes disappearing in haiti and with a big chunk of charity money, so he goes to investigate and finds out that some ugly supernatural happenings might be behind part of this. It is a good, if not original idea, sounding more than a little like Wes Craven's The Serpent & The Rainbow, but not as believable. Danny Trejo is listed as the star at the top of the box, but he is a supporting character.

When the brother and camera-wielding female friend show up to investigate, they discover voodoo, trouble at a mental hospital, sick people and more oddities that land up adding to the contrived nature of the script here unfortunately and its trivialization of mental health does not help. The acting is mixed and sometimes really bad, the storyline not well thought out and an ending so bad that I wanted to smash the disc with a sledgehammer. This lands up being so lame that the James Bond film Live & Let Die looks like a documentary on the subject.

A Behind The Scenes featurette is the only extra.

As expected, Human is the best picture performer being the only Blu-ray here with a decent if not spectacular 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on all episodes looking good if stylized and with a few flaws here and there. But all four DVDs are really weak in comparison despite three being new productions. We have the 1.33 X 1 episodes of Supernatural from their surviving PAL analog video masters with many video flaws, motion blur and mixed results (the PAL video includes 16mm film transferred at the time for outdoor shots) and it does not hold up as well as the restored PAL tapes for the similarly produced Brian Clemens' Thriller (reviewed in a Complete Series import reviewed elsewhere on this site), but the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Spider and 12 plus anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Voodoo are just weak, sloppy, have motion blur, poor visual effects and bad editing choices hat never help.

As for sound, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Human has the best sound on the list as well, warm, richly mixed and well recorded. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 320 kbps Mono sound on all the Supernatural episodes are compressed, show their age and are sadly the poorest as they have some of the best dialogue and best music. That leaves the rest of the DVDs offering lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes that fall somewhere in between, are not well mixed, edited or memorable. I doubt lossless version would help matters either.

You can order the PAL Region 2 Supernatural DVD set from BFI as noted above at this link:

http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_27235.html

- Nicholas Sheffo