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Category:    Home > Reviews > Action > Revenge > Spaghetti Western > Kidnapping > Crime > Comedy > Drama > Thriller > Film Noir > Bank Rob > Comin' At Ya! 3D (1981/MVD Visual Blu-ray)/Home Invasion (2015/Sony DVD)/Kansas City Confidential (1952/Film Detective Blu-ray)/Life Tracker (2013/Olive Blu-ray w/DVD)/MI-5 (2015/Spooks franchise/Lion

Comin' At Ya! 3D (1981/MVD Visual Blu-ray)/Home Invasion (2015/Sony DVD)/Kansas City Confidential (1952/Film Detective Blu-ray)/Life Tracker (2013/Olive Blu-ray w/DVD)/MI-5 (2015/Spooks franchise/Lionsgate Blu-ray)/Terminus (2014/Umbrella PAL Import DVD)


3D Picture: B- Picture: B-/C+/B-/C+ & C/B/C+ Sound: B-/C+/B-/C+/B/C+ Extras: C-/D/D/C/C-/C- Films: C+/C-/B/C-/C-/C



PLEASE NOTE: The Terminus Import DVD is now only available from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment in Australia, can only play on Blu-ray and/or DVD players that can handle PAL DVDs and can be ordered from the link below.


Here's a big helping of the latest genre releases....



Ferdinando Baldi's Comin' At Ya! 3D (1981) is a belated Spaghetti Western with Tony Anthony, who had played The Stranger in four previous such films, but he is a (slightly?) different character here in what is another Revenge Western as his character's newlywed wife is kidnapped by two evil brothers. He's out to get her back and settle all scores in the process, including where new injustices surface.


Well, the script is fairly good, though we've seen this story before as this film arrived when both the late 1960s/early 1970s 3D trend and original Spaghetti Western cycle had come to an end, but this well-promoted film was a surprise hit and launched the a third wave of the 3D craze in Hollywood. The makers go bonkers showing off 3D in every way, shape and form they can squeeze it in, which drives 3D critics crazy to this day. It may be over the top, but it is amusing enough and is almost a spoof of 3D, plus has appreciated in value now that we're in the safe fourth wave of the digital 3D era.


They were having fun here and it shows, Out in time for Tarantino's Hateful Eight, you should definitely see this one at least once, but don't expect a masterwork of any kind.


A new trailer and montage of clips of the film are the extras, plus you can see more about Anthony's Stranger films at these links...


Original trilogy on DVD

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13487/Coffy+(1973/American+International/MGM/Ar


Get Mean Blu-ray/DVD (fourth Stranger film)

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/13849/Get+Mean+(1975/Blue+Underground+Blu-ray/DVD



To show you how tired David Tennant's Home Invasion (2015) is, it is a home invasion film that could not think of a better title as a woman (Natasha henstridge from Species) is having a friend over when they are interrupted, the visiting gal is shot to death and the madness begins. We have seen this all before, it is badly written, actors like Jason Patrick and Scott Adkins are also wasted, but most of all... my time was wasted for Panic Room-ultra lite.


Stuck in the 1980s, if you've seen a few of these films, you know everything that will happen here, so this should not even have been greenlit. Yawn....


There are no extras.



Phil Karlson's Kansas City Confidential (1952 is back on Blu-ray for a second time, this time issued by the Film Detective label. This excellent Film Noir was reviewed in two versions before (Film Chest and MGM) which you can read more about along with the film itself at this link...


http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10822/Kansas+City+Confidential+(1952/HD+Cinema+Clas


This new release is now the definitive version of the film and all the others are obsolete, though there are sadly no extras on this new edition, it is worth your time and the best way to see the film outside of a nice film print.



Joe McClean's Life Tracker (2013) is a science fiction film with too many talking heads, too much bad digital video (on purpose too!) and casts Kyle XY star Matt Dallas in another tale of odd genetic madness, this time with a story about how DNA sampling can predict what will happen to the people tested. An interesting idea on some level, it plays like a bad version of Spielberg's problematic Minority Report and never begins to convince me of the premise very much.


The actors aren't really given much to do either, so this just drags on and on and on, though the extras show us they thought they were doing more than got achieved there. Overall, this is sadly a dud.


Two Behind The Scenes clips, three featurettes and two trailers (long & short) are the extras.



Bharat Nalluri's MI-5 (2015) is the first theatrical film from the BBC hit series also known in the U.K. as the Spooks franchise, a series we've reviewed elsewhere on this site, but one I never particularly liked. Looking like a rushed package deal to get some James Bond dollars, it is just a played-out 'Arab terrorist penetrates the agency' tale that is only for fans of the show if that, but it reminded me also of when X-Files did their first feature film and destroyed their franchise for good. In this case, there's not much to ruin and this is really trite and routine. For diehard fans only!


Digital Copy, Deleted Scenes and a Making Of featurette are the only extras.



Marc Fumire's Terminus (2014) is an Australian sci-fi flick about the U.S./Middle East entanglements getting so bad, a nuclear winter might be coming very soon, with a mechanic (Jai Koutrae) having doomsday visions and possibly extra-terrestrial contact that caused it. The script mixes familiar ideas with prototypical ones and it is none too convincing overall, starting with mixed results in recreating small town USA. The cast and makers are trying, but this never clicks, so at best, it is a semi-interesting failure that's for hardcore genre fans at best. Oh well.


Deleted Scenes are the only extras.



The 1080p 2.35 X 1 MVC-encoded 3-D - Full Resolution digital High Definition image on Ya! has some good 3D moments (overdone or not) and some where you get some ghosting and alignment issues, some of which can be traced to the source material as visible in the 2D version, but a few might be some recoding issues with the 3D itself. Still, this is not bad for an orphan film its age, like so many 3D productions. First used on The Stewardesses (reviewed elsewhere on this site), the SpaceVision 3D system (Optimax III) usually works well for its time, is additionally fun since its real cinemascope and continued to be used for years to come. Maybe a little more work could be done in the future n this film, but both versions play just fine otherwise. Someone ought to try it out now with new film stocks.


The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image transfer on Kansas in a 1.78 X 1 frame can show the age of the materials used, but this is superior to the previous Blu-ray release even with some minor detail issues and improvements in grey scale, Video Black and Video White are most welcome.


The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Tracker is back and fourth between all kinds of problematic (sometime son purpose) video sources and we get our share of 1.33 X 1 video, though it never gels or looks very good overall, so the DVD version is especially hard to watch and the poorest performer on the list.


The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on MI-5 is also a digital shoot that looks better, but is also a bit generic and weak, similar to the unmemorable shooting on the TV series and with so many shots of London, calls attention to how it cannot compare to the recent James Bond films.


The remaining anamorphically enhanced DVDs rank second place for performance with the 1.78 X 1 image on Invasion a mixed bag that has some good shots and some bad ones, which we can also say for the 2.35 X 1 presentation on Terminus that also has some generic sense to it if more style. I would be curious to see if either improved on a Blu-ray.


As for sound, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on MI-5 is better than the same on Ya!, if more generic. The 3D film's soundmaster shows its age and was only so well recorded apparently during production. Tracker has the poorest sound in both format presentations, sometimes with the audio purposely having location audio issues, but other flaws are from production issues, so be careful of volume switching or high volume playback.


The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mixes on Kansas was a surprise in some of the detail it had at times, clarity that outdoes the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono from the older Film Chest Blu-ray and the improvement is even more noticed than the image upgrade. Nice.


The stand-alone DVDs both have lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 that are not bad for action thrillers, but sport inconsistent soundfields, though Terminus' mix is more convincing overall.



To order the Umbrella PAL-format import DVD of Terminus, go to this link for it and other hard to find releases:


http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/



- Nicholas Sheffo


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