"Actor: John Apicella"

• Catchfire | DVD | (13/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Previous UK releases of Catchfire have listed the pseudonymous Allan Smithee as director, but this version proudly opens with "a Dennis Hopper film". Also known as Backtrack, it offers a plot that advances by illogical leaps and bounds while whole scenes seem to go astray. With prominently billed actors getting almost nothing to do while major players go un-credited, a bland music score that might have been laid in from another film entirely and an ending that makes a lot of noise without actually resolving much, the film certainly has its bad points. However, it's also one of Hopper's more eccentric films, and more fun than Colors or The Hot Spot (which he had no trouble owning up to), partly because the director also takes a quirky lead role and his own personal interests are stirred by the modern art frills of the chase plot. The film opens with LA-based conceptual artist Jodie Foster, looking chunkily terrific just before her adult career took off, suffering a minor breakdown on the freeway and happening on a gangland execution. Pint-sized mob boss Joe Pesci sets his killers on her but the crooks ineptly murder Foster's boyfriend (Charlie Sheen, taking a very early bath). Pesci calls in Hopper, a professional hitman who immerses himself in Foster's life and art in order to track her down only to develop an obsessive crush on the woman. When he finds her, he gives her the choice between getting rubbed out or becoming his property. Hopper retains the knack for finding odd-looking byways of rural America, but is uncomfortable with helicopter chases and shoot-outs. The leads, despite great chunks of missing story, are both interesting--Foster sexily vulnerable and Hopper doing a wry New York drawl as the sax-playing hit man. Catchfire also offers an amazing supporting cast of the director's friends, including Dean Stockwell, Vincent Price, Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich), Tony Sirico (The Sopranos), Bob Dylan (with a chainsaw), Helena Kallianotes (Five Easy Pieces), Julia Adams (The Creature from the Black Lagoon), and John Turturro.On the DVD: the film itself comes in a good-looking widescreen transfer, but the lack of special features let the disc down, with only feeble notes for three cast members (and no Smithee filmography). --Kim Newman

• Mind Ripper | DVD | (05/09/2002) from £15.40   |  Saving you £-9.41 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Shot in Bulgaria and Canada, with a "Wes Craven Presents" caption--that doubtless has something to do with the producer being Craven's son--Mind Ripper started out as The Hills Have Eyes, Part 3 but turned into yet another re-run of the plot about the genetically-engineered super-being-cum-brain-eating-monster who gets loose in an underground research station and slaughters scientists one by one in grisly fashion. After most of the original cast members are killed, craggy Lance Henriksen turns up with his family to provide a fresh set of characters to be chased, menaced, jumped on, cranially sucked and splattered. The monster, acronymed THOR (Dan Blom), is a would-be suicide volunteered for a new serum created by the sinister GenTec Corporation. He turns into a bald steroid case with yellow contact lenses and a Cronenbergian brain-leeching tentacle tongue, and meagre attempts are made at wringing pathos out of his plight (uniquely, the monster has an irrelevant dream sequence in which he is killed by the heroine). It's competent but formulaic stuff, with reliable Henriksen carrying more than his weight at the head of a cast of then-unknowns, some of whom (Giovanni Ribisi, Natasha Gregson Wagner) have gone on to improve their careers. On the DVD: there are frame captures passed off as a photo gallery and the trailer; and the picture is fullscreen. But what else can you expect?--Kim Newman

• Mind Ripper | DVD | (25/09/2006) from £8.07   |  Saving you £-2.08 (-34.70%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A scientific experiment designed to create a superhuman being has gone wrong. The creators become trapped in a remote desert outpost pursued relentlessly and mercilessly by their own creation. James Stockton the scientist whose research was used despite his protests to create the monster is called the outpost to help undo the horror that now lurks somewhere within the dark halls. James together with his son and daughter soon find themselves trapped inside with the others trying desperately to survive. And with the outpost sealed from within there is no way out...

• Mind Ripper | DVD | (28/06/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Shot in Bulgaria and Canada, with a "Wes Craven Presents" caption--that doubtless has something to do with the producer being Craven's son--Mind Ripper started out as The Hills Have Eyes, Part 3 but turned into yet another re-run of the plot about the genetically-engineered super-being-cum-brain-eating-monster who gets loose in an underground research station and slaughters scientists one by one in grisly fashion. After most of the original cast members are killed, craggy Lance Henriksen turns up with his family to provide a fresh set of characters to be chased, menaced, jumped on, cranially sucked and splattered. The monster, acronymed THOR (Dan Blom), is a would-be suicide volunteered for a new serum created by the sinister GenTec Corporation. He turns into a bald steroid case with yellow contact lenses and a Cronenbergian brain-leeching tentacle tongue, and meagre attempts are made at wringing pathos out of his plight (uniquely, the monster has an irrelevant dream sequence in which he is killed by the heroine). It's competent but formulaic stuff, with reliable Henriksen carrying more than his weight at the head of a cast of then-unknowns, some of whom (Giovanni Ribisi, Natasha Gregson Wagner) have gone on to improve their careers. On the DVD: there are frame captures passed off as a photo gallery and the trailer; and the picture is fullscreen. But what else can you expect?--Kim Newman

• Catchfire | DVD | (18/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Previous UK releases of Catchfire have listed the pseudonymous Allan Smithee as director, but this version proudly opens with "a Dennis Hopper film". Also known as Backtrack, it offers a plot that advances by illogical leaps and bounds while whole scenes seem to go astray. With prominently billed actors getting almost nothing to do while major players go un-credited, a bland music score that might have been laid in from another film entirely and an ending that makes a lot of noise without actually resolving much, the film certainly has its bad points. However, it's also one of Hopper's more eccentric films, and more fun than Colors or The Hot Spot (which he had no trouble owning up to), partly because the director also takes a quirky lead role and his own personal interests are stirred by the modern art frills of the chase plot. The film opens with LA-based conceptual artist Jodie Foster, looking chunkily terrific just before her adult career took off, suffering a minor breakdown on the freeway and happening on a gangland execution. Pint-sized mob boss Joe Pesci sets his killers on her but the crooks ineptly murder Foster's boyfriend (Charlie Sheen, taking a very early bath). Pesci calls in Hopper, a professional hitman who immerses himself in Foster's life and art in order to track her down only to develop an obsessive crush on the woman. When he finds her, he gives her the choice between getting rubbed out or becoming his property. Hopper retains the knack for finding odd-looking byways of rural America, but is uncomfortable with helicopter chases and shoot-outs. The leads, despite great chunks of missing story, are both interesting--Foster sexily vulnerable and Hopper doing a wry New York drawl as the sax-playing hit man. Catchfire also offers an amazing supporting cast of the director's friends, including Dean Stockwell, Vincent Price, Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich), Tony Sirico (The Sopranos), Bob Dylan (with a chainsaw), Helena Kallianotes (Five Easy Pieces), Julia Adams (The Creature from the Black Lagoon), and John Turturro.On the DVD: the film itself comes in a good-looking widescreen transfer, but the lack of special features let the disc down, with only feeble notes for three cast members (and no Smithee filmography). --Kim Newman

• Mind Ripper | DVD | (10/10/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A scientific experiment designed to create a superhuman being has gone wrong. The creators become trapped in a remote desert outpost pursued relentlessly and mercilessly by their own creation. James Stockton the scientist whose research was used despite his protests to create the monster is called the outpost to help undo the horror that now lurks somewhere within the dark halls. James together with his son and daughter soon find themselves trapped inside with the others trying desperately to survive. And with the outpost sealed from within there is no way out...