DVD Report

Jason Katzman

In my mind, the two sequels to The Pirates of the Caribbean are much like the two sequels to The Matrix — nice to look at, but nothing at all compared to the original. In fact, the sequels to each of these movies share quite a bit in common: they were lumbering, bloated, overlong films that relied more on CGI than on a good story yet they made tons of money, amply riding the coattails of the original.

No doubt, this won't matter to the devoted fans of the Pirates series, who’ll rejoice over the two-disc set for The Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which includes a wide range of extras.
Among the nice things to say about this final film is that it's clearly better than the previous one, which seemed so rushed as to be nearly incomprehensible. There definitely is a certain amount of fun to be had with this last one, even if it is mentally trying at nearly three hours in length. The final scene involving a pirate ship battle in a whirpool is quite a sight, and despite being the biggest non-secret in cinematic history, the appearance of Keith Richards as the father of Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is an enjoyable trifle.

There's a reckless abandon that made the first Pirates movie great fun. It ran through the story and affected the performances of everyone in a positive way. The resulting sequels bare the weight of the necessity of success. And while the critics might cry foul, box-office is often the best evidence of success.

Horror fans are a rabid bunch, confounding the critics every time they manage to vault the latest slashfest to the top of the box-office heap. Perhaps more than other film genre fans, horror fans do tend to be interested in the genre’s roots and that makes the release of the Amicus Collection noteworthy.
If they aren’t immediately familiar with it, modern horror film fans have probably heard of Hammer Studios, the most well-known of the horror-producing studios in the ’60s and ’70s. Amicus Studios was a competitor, offering up an excellent slate of their own horror flicks.
The Amicus Collection features three of those films: Asylum (1972), The Beast Must Die (1974) and And Now the Screaming Starts (1973). The best of these is Asylum, an anthology featuring a compelling story that ties its smaller stories together. In it, Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) must figure out which of a group of inmates is Dr. Starr, the man who offered him a job. Dr. Martin goes through four inmates and their stories.