American history gets turned upside down in The Washingtonians, one of the latest entries in the “Masters of Horror”
anthology series. Starring Johnathon Schaech and Saul Rubinek, the movie posits that a grisly secret has been kept for more than two centuries by a homicidal, clandestine sect of cloak-and-dagger historians — namely that first American president George Washington’s had a cannibalistic urge for the flesh of children.

The Washingtonians centers on Mike and Pam Franks (Schaech and Venus Terzo, respectively), a young married couple who, along with their daughter (Julia Tortolano), move into an old Virginia home willed to Mike by his late grandmother. While rooting through some of his grandmother’s old belongings in the basement, Mike finds a strange painting of George Washington (Gozer not included), along with a hidden note in the frame that makes mention of eating children and making utensils from their bones. After deducing that the note is from Washington himself, Mike naturally starts casually mentioning it around town, and receives plenty of cold stares and clenched jaws. Mayhem ensues.

Helmed by Peter Medak (Pontiac Moon), whose abundant episodic television experience no doubt helped him when it came to crunching this production’s brisk schedule, and whose arguable comedic experience on Species II no doubt helped, at least in theoretical terms, in striking a balance between black comedy and horror, The Washingtonians has at its core a deliciously goofy concept, the perfect thing for this sort of anthology series. The problem, though, is that the treatment here doesn’t live up to the parallel story a viewer has in their mind, making for a frustrating viewing experience. If done right, the movie could be a cross between, say, The Da Vinci Code, The Wicker Man and some schlocky slice of ’80s-era horror. Schaech and co-writer Richard Chizmar, though, adapting a short story by Bentley Little, don’t have enough interesting set-ups or layered ideas, and so the movie becomes a quite literal (and boring) exercise in pitchfork-type ensemble cover-up and lynching.

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, The Washingtonians
is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions. It comes with superb Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 audio tracks. Multi-hyphenate Schaech and director Medak team up for a joint, feature-length audio commentary track, in which they dole out mad praise to all involved in the production and talk up both the challenges and the exhilaration of tackling such a shoestring-budgeted movie. Similarly effusive cast and crew interviews anchor a 13-minute making-of featurette, and there’s also a seven-minute-plus featurette on the make-up effects of the movie, and its many powdered wigs and bloody teeth. Rounding out the special features are a photo gallery, a DVD-ROM copy of the
movie’s screenplay, and plenty of trailers for other films in the series. C- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

All My Loving is award-winning
filmmaker Tony Palmer’s groundbreaking documentary on music and its effect on
pop culture in the late ’60s, with previously unseen footage from The Beatles,
Cream, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Pink Floyd and many more. Produced for the BBC and
initially broadcast in 1968 only after being nervously shelved by fuddy-duddy
types for six months, the project was born out of a collaboration and challenge
of sorts from John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who tasked Palmer, then a
classical music documentarian, to make a film that encompassed the radical
changes taking place in the music world at that time. Alternately interesting
and hallucinatory, this hour-long title, powered by performances and chats, finally
makes its DVD debut, and while some of the pertinence is dented by time, there
remains an undeniable, slurry time-capsule value to it.

Daily
Express’ James Thomas said at the time, a “hideous, clamorous force” about All My Loving, which leans mightily on
production affectation. And if some of the interview segments are indulgent and
unfocused, they’re almost all compellingly photographed in their own way, and
there’s no denying the worth of the British television debuts of Hendrix, Pink
Floyd (who had just lost Syd Barrett), Frank Zappa, Cream and the Animals’ Eric
Burden. The film passingly examines notions of audiences hero worship, but also
how keen almost all of these musicians are to change the world through the
power of their music. “Pop music is crucial to today’s art,” Pete Townsend
points out.

Palmer’s grand innovation comes in the striking
juxtapositions that he makes of the aftermath of the “Summer of Love” and the
beginning of the peace movement with all the violence that is still raging
around the world. There’s a razor’s-edge, in-your-face defiance to the manner
in which he intertwines gruesome newsreel footage with woozy performance pieces,
and sometimes the metaphorical dots connect and sometimes they don’t. For my
money, it was a Peoria, Illinois
Opera House performance by The Who that stood out as much as anything else,
courtesy of Townsend’s wild head-butting antics and mic stand playing. At the
bit’s conclusion, a fan runs up and furtively grabs a souvenir — as much for
the sheer shock value of what he’s just witnessed as anything else, it seems.

All My Loving is
presented in full-screen, and housed in a clear, regular Amray case. In
addition to a 90-second montage of Ralph Steadman cartoons set to the music of
Cream’s “Born Under a Bad Sign,” the DVD comes with a supplemental extra that’s
quite worthwhile if still a very shaggy, unpruned affair — a new, 40-minute interview with
Palmer conducted by Jon Kirkman, who mostly lobs a few softballs at his subject
and gets out of the way for Palmer’s lengthy, digressive responses. Palmer
talks about meeting Lennon as a student in 1963 at the Cambridge
premiere of A Hard Day’s Night, and also
amusingly details the reactions of BBC management upon his completion of the
movie. For more information, click here, or to
purchase the disc on Amazon, click here.
B- (Movie) B (Disc)

The wave of fright flicks from the east isn’t limited to
movies from Korea
and Japan. Thailand
is getting serious about its scares as well, as evidenced by films like Shutter and Dorm. Most recent on this list is The Victim, a movie inspired by actual criminal events, with many
of the scenes recreated in the film based on real crimes and shot on the actual
locations in Thailand.

The film’s story centers on Ting (Pitchanart Sakakorn), an
aspiring actress who dreams of becoming famous. One day the police ask her to
help solve a murder case by portraying a victim in the reenactment of the
crime. Ting relishes the opportunity, and is quickly asked to recreate fatal
experiences of other victims. Now a local celebrity, Ting is soon invited to
reenact a very high-profile murder case; the victim is a former Miss Thailand
and the murder especially gruesome and peculiar. However, this reenactment is
not like the others, as Ting, to her horror, genuinely feels the terrible pain
and suffering that the murdered beauty queen endured. Frantically searching for
answers, Ting fears she herself is in danger of becoming the next victim.

Directed by Monthon Arayangkoon, The Victim plays with certain tropes of twisted reality programming
in a manner not entirely unlike the recent Captivity. The acting is somewhat
uneven and there are certainly some issues with pacing, but the film does exude
a menace, and is well photographed and pieced together. Housed in a regular
Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Tartan’s DVD release of the
movie comes with a small collection of TV spots and a special making-of
featurette, as well as the original theatrical trailer. Presented in anamorphic
widescreen, it comes with solid DTS 5.1 and Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks in
Thai, and the requisite English and Spanish subtitles. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here.
C+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)