SHOCKWAVE

Another Sci-Fi Channel Original Picture comes at our video store shelves via SHOCKWAVE, the story of automated defensive droids gone horribly wrong on a deserted island.  A pack of Navy SEALS is dispatched to shut off the robots, and you almost certainly saw it coming long before you put the DVD in the case that it wasn't going to be easy to do just that.  Never mind that SHOCKWAVE is heavier on the Star Trek alumni than James Doohan's funeral procession, containing Worf, Sulu, and the Emergency Medical Hologram from "Voyager".  Never mind that these super-destructive robots both look and behave, almost verbatim, like the tripods from WAR OF THE WORLDS right down to the heat rays they mount on their fronts. Never mind that the concept of Original Picture in the title Sci-Fi Channel Original Picture means less and less by the movie.  Never mind that the effects in SHOCKWAVE are so monstrously cheesy that they have to resort to lousy CG to take off a human's head, and that somehow, all firearms seem to contain limitless supplies of ammo because I never so much as saw anybody changing a clip on camera.  You know what?  I changed my mind.  Mind it.  Mind ALL of it.  This kind of godawful filmmaking is ruining the video stores.

ABLE EDWARDS

I could start this off with a really convoluted "What do you get when you cross" joke, but frankly, I'd just wind up looking insane. And I have ABLE EDWARDS to blame for that.  Because, you see, ABLE EDWARDS has decided to just completely blow my mind by giving me a retro-science-fiction style version of the Walt Disney story.  See? I already sound nuts.  Imagine what would've happened if I'd gone with the joke.  But anyway, "Able Edwards" basically takes the story of a Disney-esque character born in the late nineteenth century. He grows up, fights in World War One, and eventually gets the idea for Perry Panda, the practical equivalent of Mickey Mouse.  Edwards Studios rises to prominence, and in pretty much every way mirrors the Disney company rise to prominence.

DREAMLAND

There are some movies that let you know very early on what kind of ride you're in for.  Whether it's a whole lot of explosions or a whole lot of dead bodies or a whole lot of laughs, sometimes you just know what you're in for before the whole thing really gets firing up.  DREAMLAND is one such movie.  And what DREAMLAND is letting us in for is the ride of a lifetime -- across the desert.  With a young couple whose primary hobby seems to be squabbling.  After a quick stop at the Little Green Aleinn (sic) for a Beam Me Up Burger and Groom Lake Shake, they get back on the road, and sure enough, all hell breaks loose.

MUSTANG SALLY'S HORROR HOUSE

First, you're not hallucinating.  That name listed first in the credits, Elizabeth "E.G." Daily?  She WAS a Powerpuff Girl.  And that's the start of the uncomfortable fun brought to us by MUSTANG SALLY'S HORROR HOUSE.  Basically, in a move that won't surprise anyone, six twenty-year-old guys decide to go to a whorehouse.  But not just ANY whorehouse -- Mustang Sally's.  Where the girls are just to die for!  And since the movie can be found on the main shelves and not in a back room somewhere, you know that they mean that literally.  From there, we'll get a few killings, some mild cat-and-mouse games, and a couple warmed-over twists.