I haven’t done one of these Canadian TV-on-DVD entries for a while, purely since there hasn’t been much movement on that front.  I also grew disinterested with the “new box art for Season 1 of Flying Pig-Dog Hour!” entries on TVShowsonDVD.com.

In fact, TVShowsonDVD.com hasn’t been making with the truly interesting news as of late.  Sure, The Dana Carvey Show and American Gladiators, we all want that.  Was the world clamoring for more Brothers & Sisters and California Dreams, though?  Sheesh, give me Automan and Manimal.  I want to see Simon MacCorkindale fail to act, damn it!

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The complete Zeroman series out on DVD June 2, 2009 via kaBOOM!/Peace Arch.  I honestly never expected this to come out on DVD, although Teletoon shows frequently merit series sets.  Then again, Zeroman isn’t exactly Delilah and Julius or Cybersix.  Nothing could be Cybersix.

Zeroman isn’t the worst thing Leslie Nielsen’s ever done.  Liocracy, Dracula: Dead and Loving It and 2001: A Space Travesty are all worse than Zeroman, although that’s damning Zeroman with faint praise.  At this point, Leslie Nielsen should retire the deadpan humour he used to be so good at with Airplane! and The Naked Gun.

Ron MacLean and Don Cherry have recurring roles on Zeroman, as do Ryan Reynolds and Kevin McDonald.  Did I mention Zeroman was shit?  At least the show’s animation was surprisingly decent.

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Corner Gas‘ sixth season set will come six weeks after the show’s series finale airs.  The June 9, 2009 release will have the retrospective behind-the-scenes filler It’s Been a Gas and “footage of the final read-through,” at least according to CTV press bumf.  Not a bad deal, especially since CTV is pimping Corner Gas‘ final episode out.  It’s Canada’s greatest-ever mainstream comedy series.  Canada will fall apart when Corner Gas ends, right?  Won’t it?

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Corner Gas II, also known as Little Mosque on the Prairie, will see its second and third season sets come out in the fall of 2009 through Morningstar Entertainment.  The information comes from CBC Shop, so let’s just vouchsafe that the discs will come out.  After all, if The Collector can come out on DVD…

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In a related segue, The Collector‘s second season set comes out May 26, 2009 through Morningstar Entertainment.  I’m rather surprised The Collector sold well enough to merit a second-season DVD set.  It just goes to show you how people like certain Canadian programs, but CityTV aired The Collector.  Murdoch Mysteries and Less Than Kind fans know CityTV is where Canadian shows go to die.

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Acorn Media releases Murdoch Mysteries‘ first-season set on June 16, 2009.  There are many hardcore Murdoch Mysteries fans out there, so I have a feeling this will sell well.  Why is it that an American company can cherry-pick shows like this and gain a reputation for quality releases?  If Acorn Media snaps up Less Than Kind, I’m going to lose my shit.

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Blood Ties “Season 1″ out June 2, 2009, while “Season 2″ might come out September 2009.  The reason I quote the seasons is that the show aired worldwide as a 22-episode season.  Lifetime split Blood Ties in two seasons for U.S. consumption.  Eagle Vision is releasing this since, you know, strong fanbase.

Yeah, another Canadian show’s home entertainment rights snapped up by an American company.  If nothing else, Peter Mohan stands to make serious bank off the DVD releases.  Vampires are trendy these days, so he might as well profit from the trend.

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Critical Mass Entertainment and Anchor Bay Canada released another Hilarious House of Frightenstein DVD set on March 31, 2009.  It’s an Igor-centric compilation, for those Fishka Rais fans.  It’s hard to fault Anchor Bay for putting the Frightenstein comps out, since they come out with some regularity.

If Critical Mass gains DVD rights to Maniac Mansion, John Hemphill fans are going to have an epileptic seizure.  Watch, I’ve now set in motion events that are going to culminate in Maniac Mansion season sets, at least in my mind.  After all, I am Turner Edison.  You think “Cameron Archer” is a real person?  Bullshit!

Class of the Titans Season One, Volume One?!  The show has its fans, but why split the season like that?  This isn’t like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe where each season has at least 65 episodes, so I don’t understand the strategy.

I think Class of the Titans is a fairly silly series – descendants of Greek heroes fight mythological monsters controlled by some higher power.  Replace the hero spawn with teens who can turn into dinosaurs.  Swap “mythological monsters” with “mutated animals.”  Replace “higher power” with “shapeshifting velociraptor.”  There, you have DinoSquad.  People have been abusing the basic building blocks of adventure cartoons since forever.

A 6teen set.  I actually like this show, although I’m not crazy about it since I’m not part of its target audience.  The characters on 6teen have personalities beyond their initial stereotypes and talk like actual people some of the time.  6teen‘s not perfect – very few shows have correctly depicted the lives of teenagers, and the characters on 6teen are all mallrats.  The show’s more fun than Class of the Titans, but that goes without saying.

Here’s a set I missed for the first Canadian TV-on-DVD post.  It concerns Durham County, a show that appeared on The Movie Network in 2007 before being given a run on Global earlier this year.  I should really check that show out one of these days.  It sounds good.

Funny how Anchor Bay’s Canadian division is putting this out.  I wasn’t even aware Anchor Bay had a Canadian division.  I’m out of the loop.

Various recent Canadian children’s shows have DVDs out – Di-Gata Defenders, Ruby Gloom, Grossology and Jane and the Dragon.  I’m not crazy about any of these releases, although I can’t comment on Grossology and Ruby Gloom since I haven’t watched those shows.

Di-Gata Defenders, though?  It’s like Digimon meets Avatar with anything that made those two shows watchable bled dry.  That show needed the lead characters to transform into dragons.  They could have fought evil Internet viruses controlled by an evil Steve Wozniak!

My word, I think I just described the plot of Code Monkeys!

This isn’t specifically related to TV-on-DVD news, but io9.com has an article up asking whether The Starlost was the worst science fiction program ever made.  The complete series DVD set came out September 30 through VCI.  The show aired on CTV during the 1973-74 season and is one of Harlan Ellison’s ill-fated excursions into television.

Amazon.com has this at $45, which sounds exorbitant.  Wait a year, I’m sure The Starlost will be at least half off by then.

I’ve been reviewing some TV-on-DVD releases for “my sister’s site at http://www.currentmoviereviews.net/,” as I’ve been saying to publicists for far too long.  It would be nice if the reviews I have written for her would be on the site, but I have written them and they might be reworked for sweetposer.com soon, just to prove to people that I’m not continuing to blow smoke out my ass.  Also: that I actually post reviews here.

Canadian TV-on-DVD releases tend to be overlooked.  I remember first noticing that John Callahan’s Quads! had a season box set when I was doing Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart two years ago.  Granted, it’s John Callahan’s Quads! and the audience for sketchily drawn, poorly-animated cartoons about disabled assholes isn’t that big.  Canadian TV-on-DVD titles are far more likely to hit the bargain bins or be heavily discounted than American fare in this country, in my opinion.  When I look in discount stores like Giant Tiger and Liquidation World, I’ve seen titles like Atomic Betty and Jimmy Macdonald’s Canada there.  Is it because Canadian titles are almost always shit or are the wrong titles being released?

Maybe Canadian TV-on-DVD is just a weakly tapped market.  I’m amazed there isn’t a Four on the Floor box set, since there are Frantics fans out there.  I can see a market for The Tommy Hunter Show, and there are even hardcore fans of The Vacant Lot.  CODCO has yet to see a release.  There’s a lot of good stuff left untouched.  Even the titles that are out on DVD seem to suffer from poor marketing.  I didn’t know the first two seasons of This Hour Has 22 Minutes – make no mistake, that show was great in its early years – were even out on DVD until I received an e-mail from CBCShop.ca selling the first two seasons for $19.99 each.  Did CBC broadcast commercials for the box sets last year?  It’s not like I’ve gone out of my way to watch the Gavin Crawford/Geri Hall/Mark Critch era of the show, since I only watch shows I find funny.

All I have to say is, I’m glad there’s a TVShowsonDVD.com, otherwise my knowledge of home entertainment-related Canadiana would be even smaller than it is now.

Announcement for the complete series set of My Pet Monster.  Global used to air this show for years on end, since Nelvana produced it and the show counted as Canadian content.  I’m sure there are fans of this show, but this is the sort of title I wish would not be released on DVD.  kaBOOM!’s releasing a couple of these industrials lately – this and Tales from the Cryptkeeper.  Meanwhile, other Nelvana titles like Eek! the Cat and Beetlejuice lack proper DVD releases – the 20th anniversary Beetlejuice DVD has three episodes from its spinoff cartoon, which is inadequate.  Those two titles need more of a DVD release than a show based on a fad toy that was constantly rerun on Saturday afternoons for at least ten years.  I have memories of My Pet Monster that I wish would erode faster.  I want to forget about Mr. Hinkle and his dog Princess.

Review of Friday the 13th: The Series.

Corner Gas Season 5.  This is one of the rare Canadian series that’s marketed properly, given decent season releases and has television commercials advertising it.  I’ve never liked this show, but it has its fans and it’s being sold the right way.

Grantray-Lawrence titles Spider-Man and The Marvel Superheroes in grab-bag DVD sets.  I question the legality of these releases – I’m sure Disney owns the rights to the 1967 Spider-Man series and it put the entire three-season run out on DVD a few years ago, so I’m not sure what’s going on here.

Both seasons of The Tudors out on Blu-Ray November 11.  The second season of The Tudors is coming out in standard DVD format on the same day as the Blu-Ray releases, at least in Canada.

The Border‘s first season and Robson Arms’ third season on DVD.  Video Service Corp. seems to be the company that best exploits the Canadian TV-on-DVD market.

Mutant X and BeastMaster complete-run DVD sets cancelled.  This is due to ADV Films losing the home video rights to Tribune Entertainment’s shows, and aside from Farscape this isn’t much of a loss.  I always felt releasing these shows was a lousy way to wean the company off anime and manga.  I know the anime market is not nearly what it was a few years ago, but ADV could have done a better job of diversifying.

Also coming out in November and December: Fraggle Rock complete series (November 4), Super Dave Super Stunt Spectacular Volume One (November 25)

KANNIBAL
METROPOLIS INTERNATIONAL PICTURES, 2001: KABOOM ENTERTAINMENT/CAJUN PICTURES, 2002
4:3 WITH SLIGHT LETTERBOXING, 76 MIN., ENGLISH WITH SPANISH SUBTITLES
SUMMARY | THE POLISHED TURD ONLY EXISTS TO EAT…MONEY.

I know how anemic UR has been since the redesign earlier this year.  Well, that’s because I haven’t had any inspiration or reason to write an article for UR.  Well, that was the case until I came across what MJSimpson.co.uk called “very possibly the worst British horror film ever made.”  That’s a strong condemnation, but after seeing Kannibal, he may not be wrong.

I’m quite well aware that there may be worse filmmakers than Richard Driscoll (not the vicar from EastEnders, mind) out there.  Bill Rebane films are damn near unwatchable.  Andy Milligan already ravaged Britain with his period pieces.  In fact, Driscoll’s oeuvre only extends to a few films, most notably 1985′s The Comic.  None of that matters, of course – if this film is any indication of how bad Driscoll is as a filmmaker, he could yet become one of the infamous names of terrible cult cinema.

Kannibal is about Gideon Quinn’s quest to avenge the deaths of his wife and unborn child by tracking down the Thereshkova crime family and assassinating them one by one.  Georgina Thereshkova leads the crime family after the “death” of her mother Valentina by Quinn.  (Note: Valentina Thereshkova eventually turns out not to be dead, but “mutilated” – teeth are growing out of her bottom lip, such is the quality of the makeup on display in Kannibal.  Like hell this is a spoiler.)  The Thereshkovas are involved in prostitution rings, drug smuggling and pornography, the softcore porn being thrown into the film pretty much constantly.  There’s, like, lesbians kissing and everything!

Gideon Quinn, of course, is a master of disguise.  He also has a taste for fava beans and a nice Chianti.  Get where this is going yet?  That’s right, Richard Driscoll has taken what he likes about Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter series and Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, bunging said elements onto film.  That’d be ignorable if Kannibal wasn’t so poorly made and haphazardly assembled as to be an insult to cult filmdom.  I’m honestly not overreacting – the acting reaches Andy Milligan Players levels of inanity.  For those not familiar with Andy Milligan’s work…well, think of the worst aspects of community/dinner theater and magnify them by a factor of two or three.  That’s Andy Milligan, and by proxy Kannibal.

Andy Milligan, of course, never had a budget of more than $10,000 with which to shoot a film.  Driscoll’s film, by comparison, is extremely well-shot.  Technically, Kannibal is well-done and expensive-looking for an independent film.  It’s just that the scenery is lush and Peter Thornton’s cinematography fabulous at the expense of everything else.  The dialogue is pitiful, the “tits” haphazardly bared, the gore often incredibly unrealistic-looking and the whole enterprise just cynically assembled from start to finish.  Kannibal looks expensive, and it’s obvious most of the money was spent on location shooting and post-processing.  It’s bad filmmaking and I don’t like it.

I’m not going to dwell on what MJSimpson.co.uk has already said about the film.  Lucien Morgan’s turn as Inspector Lewis Reid is, quite frankly, mind-boggling in Morgan’s uncanny ability to accent exactly the wrong words in a sentence.  Linnea Quigley’s character comes across more like a generic Nazi dominatrix and less like an actual Russian.  I could go on about how bad the acting is across the board, but Vass Anderson’s role as the head of Thereshkova’s American operations seems to be the best of the lot.  Vass Anderson is given a few minutes of screen time.  Morgan and Quigley are given whole soliloquies in which to ham-fistedly deliver their lines.  Amazing.

As for Driscoll’s acting…well, he really isn’t acting.  In fact, he seems to be imitating Anthony Hopkins, but his acting’s the least of the film’s problems.  The man wrote, directed, produced and starred in Kannibal.  That would be acceptable if Driscoll knew what the hell he was doing in any capacity.  In the making-of bonus feature included on this DVD (which is the height of ego), Driscoll compares Kannibal to an “opera version of Tosca.”  Driscoll comes across as a British Joe Eszterhas, except Joe Eszterhas is self-aware and revels in the fact that he writes sleazy films.  Driscoll makes exploitation films and thinks they’re art because the mise en scène is pretty.

Speaking of Joe Eszterhas, there’s a chapter in Kannibal that comes across as a full-blown ripoff of Basic Instinct.  Seriously, Kannibal‘s seventeenth chapter is titled “Basic Instincts.”  It’s a distillation of Kannibal itself – hell, here’s an MP3 of the most odious part of the chapter.  Inspector Reid comes across as the world’s worst interrogator.  During his spiel (in which Lucien Morgan’s enunciation is worse than Linnea Quigley‘s, AND LUCIEN MORGAN’S PLAYING A BRIT), he allows Georgina Thereshkova to answer his questions with what amounts to a “I don’t know, you?”  Every single time.  The overacting is so obvious as to be damn near oblique.  The conversation sounds like Morgan and Quigley are graduates of the Steve Roman School of Acting.  HEY YOU, HAVE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU E-EVER BEEN INVOLVED – INVOLVED IN DRUGS?  Then the lawyer comes in and says “AH HA!  I THOUGHT SO!  YOU AND MY WIFE, FOOOOLING AROUND!”

Yes, I’m going on a tangent and referencing SCTV.  That last paragraph is still more entertaining than anything I saw in Kannibal.

The soundtrack has not been noted thus far in the…well, one review of Kannibal that I’ve read.  Patrick Bird and Jon Klein’s original compisitions sound like they were performed by some cut-rate pitchshifter clone.  If it turns out Bird and Klein performed the songs themselves, I’ll be amazed.  Either way, the compositions are terrible industrial metal with “fuck God” lyrics or decent ambient pieces, depending on the scene.  Why the hell Richard Driscoll hired two producers most well-known for mastering a Joy Division concert album to compose music for Kannibal, I don’t know, but it isn’t a good idea.  The original compositions and the classical music pieces used to fill out the soundtrack sometimes overwhelm the dialogue, which is a problem usually occurring in high school videos done on a basic editing studio.  Kannibal‘s a lavish production, so why is it full of problems like this?  Did anyone care about making a good film, or was Kannibal just a paycheque for the people involved in making it?  My money’s leaning towards the latter.

Overall, is Kannibal the worst film ever made?  That’s doubtful.  Does Kannibal deserve the level of lambasting that it’s received?  Of course it does.  Kannibal is indicative of the worst sort of independent film there is.  Sure, there are hundreds of independent films ripping off a style, director and/or another film, but the worst one can say about those films is that they’re derivative.  Kannibal‘s trying to be a literal copy of Hannibal, which makes the film redundant by its very existence.  If not for the all-around incompetence on display here, Kannibal might have been ignorable.  With Richard Driscoll at the helm, Kannibal approaches legend.  The man truly is as shit as others say he is.

kaBOOM! Entertainment
Cajun Pictures