With Halloween just a week away, video companies are promoting everything from "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" (Paramount Home Video, $13) to the new straight-to-video sequel, "Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering," in which Karen Black and William Windom battle a horde of murderous children infected by a mysterious flu (it's rental-priced from Dimension Home Video; see review below).
First Run Features has another straight-to-video release: "Suroh: The Alien Hitchhiker" ($30), the story of a reporter who is hypnotized by an extraterrestrial while he's on his way to a UFO convention in New Mexico. The tone of the film has been described as "an Ed Wood sensibility meets a Sesame Street eroticism."Perhaps the most elegant and unnervingly ambiguous ghost story ever told, "The Innocents" makes its videotape debut this month on Fox Video ($20). Directed by Jack Clayton and based on Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw," it stars Deborah Kerr as an impressionable governess who "can't help imagining things." For $10 apiece, the same company has reissued "The Omen," "The Fury" and "Young Frankenstein."
Another artful horror movie, Ingmar Bergman's "The Magician" (a.k.a. "The Face"), has been remastered with new subtitles by Home Vision Cinema ($30). The 1959 film stars Max von Sydow as a 19th-century mesmerist who uses his full arsenal of creepy, seemingly supernatural tricks to hoodwink the officious people who attempt to prove that he's a fraud.
Another kind of magician is the subject of "Houdini" (Unapix Consumer Products, $20; reviewed below), an hourlong documentary about the illusionist and escape artist, Harry Houdini, who died on Halloween 70 years ago. It makes use of never-before-seen archival footage, interviews with associates and recently discovered papers and memorabilia to tell his story.
MCA Home Video's latest contribution to the horror genre is a made-for-cable item, "It Came From Outer Space II" (rental-priced), starring Brian Kerwin as a photographer who tells the citizens of a desert town (including Elizabeth Pena) that they're being replaced by aliens. It's a sequel to the 1953 film, which was based on a Ray Bradbury story. For $15 apiece, MCA has also reissued several Hitchcock classics, among them "Psycho," "The Birds" and "Rear Window."
Anchor Bay Entertainment has a new restoration of "Dawn of the Dead" ($15), George Romero's sporadically funny 1978 zombies-go-to-the-mall splatter movie. It includes 11 additional minutes (wasn't the two-hour-plus original long enough?), a different soundtrack and several international trailers for the picture.
The same company is also recycling "The Hidden," "Hellraiser," "Horror Hotel" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street," all digitally remastered and priced at $15 apiece, and a two-volume cassette of Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" that includes theatrical trailers and the parody, "Night of the Living Bread."
Fox Video is pushing a collection of $15 cassettes from "The X-Files." Each tape includes two uncut episodes and behind-the-scenes interviews with the show's creator, Chris Carter.
Paramount Home Video has reissued David Cronenberg's austerely horrific 1983 adaptation of Stephen King's "The Dead Zone" ($15), while Columbia TriStar has a $25 gift pack made up of John Carpenter's slick version of King's "Christine" and the clever vampire-next-door comedy, "Fright Night."
Columbia has just released a version of Oscar Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost," starring John Gielgud, Ted Wass and Andrea Marcovicci ($20), and "A Bewitched Halloween" ($10), an hourlong cassette made up of two episodes of the 1960s television series starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Dick York and Agnes Moore-head.
Disney Home Video's new contributions to Halloween include "Winnie the Pooh: Spookable Pooh" and "What a Mess" ($15 apiece). Also available are Disney reissues of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" ($15), "The Dark Crystal" ($15), "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" ($13) and "Hocus Pocus" ($15).
NEW VIDEOS
CHILDREN OF THE CORN IV: THE GATHERING - Yet another trip to the well for this lesser chiller from Stephen King's "Night Shift" collection. What began as a really awful movie has yielded some interesting sequels, and this is one of them. For viewers with darker tastes, "Part IV's" successful shocks, competent performances and imaginative film work make it worth giving a chance. R.
- Michael H. Price
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
DARKMAN III: DIE DARKMAN DIE - Sam Raimi's "Darkman" franchise has the right idea: Take your sequels straight to video, and they'll never have to look like box-office duds. Arnold Vosloo returns for a second turn behind the makeup and bandages as Darkman, a brilliant scientist who has survived a revenge bombing. This time, Jeff Fahey co-stars as an over-the-top villain who will stop at nothing to learn the secrets of Darkman. Not a patch on the original film (with Liam Neeson as Darkman), but not half bad, either. Universal is producing these direct-to-video features with a big-screen attitude. PG-13.
- Michael H. Price
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
HOUDINI - The final curtain lowered on master illusionist Harry Houdini on Halloween night, 1926. Seventy years after the great escape artist's final escape, biographer Ken Silverman looks at the life and death of Ehrich Weiss, a rabbi's son who became the world's most famous doer of life-and-death derring-do. Unapix (1-888-627-0500), $19.98.
- Max McQueen
(Cox News Service
THE LAST SUPPER - Five liberal college grads find it hard to tolerate intolerance in middle America - Ames, Iowa, to be exact. So one by one, they dispose of dinner guests who disagree with their views. Buried in the back yard are everything from rednecks to priests to virgin young Republicans. Although Stacy Title directs Cameron Diaz, Annabeth Gish, Ron Eldard, Jonathan Penner and Courtney Vance with tongue firmly in cheek, this pointed piece of camp will be a little too political for hard-line tastes. R, 1996, Columbia/TriStar (priced to rent).
- Max McQueen
(Cox News Service)