The Corner Penthouse

This is one of an ongoing series of reviews that looks at various Blu-ray compilations of movie trailers and TV spots, most notably Umbrella Entertainment's Drive-In Delirium series and Garagehouse Pictures' Trailer Trauma series. Today's review details Drive-In Delirium (5): With A Vengeance. Read on to find out more...

As the title implies, this release contains trailers from the 1950s through the 1980s, with the main focus being films in the horror, thriller, blaxploitation, action, adventure, western, martial arts, crime, sci-fi, fantasy, and erotica genres. Blacksplotation, action/crime, and western are the most prevalent genres here. Surprisingly, there is a Charlotte's Web (1973) trailer in the VHS section, which is the ONLY "family film" on any of these Drive-In Delirium compilations. There is a fair amount of mainstream Hollywood motion pictures, though the majority is still B-movie fare. As with the other releases, there is a great amount of nudity and mature content, which would garner this disc a R rating, if it were rated in the U.S. None of the blue/green/red "bands" are included before the trailers, which is fine with me. I couldn't imagine sitting through them before each and every trailer.

The trailers are not shown alphabetically or chronologically. I'm really not sure what the order is, though some similar-themed films are kept together. For the most part, there is one trailer per chapter. However, some trailers are grouped together under one chapter, and those are noted with forward slashes in the trailer/chapter lists that follow this review. All of the movie years come from the IMDB and are assumed to be correct. Most of the trailer lists included inside the cases of these Blu-ray releases don't list the years, or they may give one that differs from the IMDB. I looked EVERYTHING up in the IMDB and used that.

The image and sound quality is very good, with 95% of the trailers being in great shape. There are only a few that were sourced from film prints with scratches and dirt in them.

All of the vintage TV and theater ads shown in the Pre/Post Show and Intermission segments are framed inside a black round-edged border or on a drive-in theater screen, with cuts from various angles. They are not shown fullscreen like the trailers. This makes them useless from a "collector's" perspective. You might as well just look for them on YouTube and download the videos from there and save them for your collection.

One thing I've noticed on all of these Drive-In Delirium compilations, but never mentioned in any of my previous reviews, is that a lot of the trailers seem to be either missing the end credit screens, or those screens seem to be cut short. I can't confirm this, but I find it odd that a lot of the trailers either don't have these screens, or the trailers fade to black really quickly once these screens come up, with the music seeming to fade abruptly, too.

Also, the 100 Rifles trailer (part 2, chapter 36) plays very jerky, like it's missing frames or the frame rate is incorrect. This is the only trailer in any of these Drive-In Delirium releases that suffers from this. The volume on the Savage Streets trailer (part 1, chapter 42) is noticably lower than the others.

-- SPECIFICATIONS --

The total (Play All) trailer runtime is 6:28:23, though they are also available in two themed "parts". The full chapter/trailer list is below, following this review. All content is presented in English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, but I should warn you that the volume is quite loud, though not as bad as Drive-In Delirium 3. It doesn't sound like any of the high peaks are clipped on this release. There are no subtitles, but were you really expecting any?!? All trailers are shown in full 1920x1080 high definition, with various aspect ratios per each film. Although this is an Australian import, the disc is region-free and plays fine on U.S. Blu-ray players.

-- SPECIAL FEATURES --

There's a Son of VHS Delirium section (1:30:34) (detailed below, after the review) that consists of Australian VHS trailers (and lots of promos for the Australian "Video Classics" company), presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio, pillarboxed into a 16:9 frame. Although they come from a standard definition VHS source, and the quality is as such, I don't know if they are in SD or have been upscaled to HD. The VHS trailers are each in their own chapter, though one chapter accidentally contains two different trailers. The volume is a littler lower than the HD movie trailers, though a lot of tape hiss is present, of course.


-- PACKAGING --

The single disc comes inside a standard 14mm blue Blu-ray case, which is slightly thicker than what's typically used here in America (aside from Criterion and PlayStation 3 games). The reverse/inside of the case artwork is an ad for the previous Drive-In Delirium releases on the left side and on the right, under the disc, is an accurate trailer/chapter list (which includes the film years). There is no chapter list for the VHS trailers.

-- CONCLUSION --

I thought this was a big step down from previous compilations. The blaxploitation trailers are nice - I do love me some Pam Grier - but I was bored to tears with all of the westerns that took up a good portion of Part 2. As previously said, I still wish there were more mainstream Hollywood films and more genres represented on these trailer compilations. Ideally, I would love it if these releases could replace all of my old self-made trailer compilation VHS tapes. I also have to wonder why there are no trailers for films past 1989 on these compilation Blu-rays. Could copyrights have something to do with it?

• Drive-In Delirium (1): '60s & '70s Savagery
• Drive-In Delirium (2): Maximum '80s Overdrive
• Drive-In Delirium (3): The New Batch
• Drive-In Delirium (4): Dead By Dawn
• Drive-In Delirium (5): With A Vengeance
• Drive-In Delirium (6): The Final Conflict
• Drive-In Delirium: The Ultimate Dusk-Till-Dawn-Till-Dusk Trailer Marathon (contains all six discs in one set)

The Blu-ray set was purchased with my own money and was NOT provided to me by anyone involved in the production or distribution of it.

PART ONE: CRUISE CONTROL (3:16:15) 01. Pre Show - Title / Welcome (with star photos) / Mego Happy Days Fonzie Figure (1976) / Graham Kennedy's Blankety Blanks Lemonade / Drive-In Hot-Shot Electric In-Car Heaters / We Are Proud To Present Previews Of Our Coming Attractions. 02. Shaft (1971) 03. Super Fly (1972) 04. Hammer (1972) 05. Hell Up in Harlem (1973) 06. Blackenstein (1973) 07. Coffy (1973) 08. Foxy Brown (1974) 09. The Human Tornado (1976) 10. Drum (1976) 11. Penitentiary (1979) 12. Kiss Me Deadly (1955) 13. Never Take Candy from a Stranger (1960) 14. Underworld U.S.A. (1961) 15. The Candy Web (aka 13 Frightened Girls) (1963) 16. The Killers (1964) 17. Harper (1966) 18. Cop-Out (1967) 19. The High Commissioner (1968) 20. Bullitt (1968) 21. Otley (1969) 22. Get Carter (1971) 23. Revenge! (1971) 24. Dirty Harry (1971) 25. Magnum Force (1973) 26. The French Connection (1971) 27. French Connection II (1975) 28. The Seven-Ups (1973) 29. The New Centurions (1972) 30. Serpico (1973) 31. Busting (1974) 32. The Destructors (1974) 33. The Gauntlet (1977) 34. Sweeney! (1977) 35. Sweeney 2 (1978) 36. The Big Sleep (1978) 37. Saint Jack (1979) 38. The Long Good Friday (1980) 39. The Salamander (1981) 40. 48 Hrs. (1982) 41. Deadly Force (1983) 42. Blue Thunder (1983) 43. Savage Streets (1984) 45. Naked Vengeance (1985) 46. Tenement (1985) 47. Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985) 48. The Park Is Mine (1985) 49. Cobra (1986) 50. Best Seller (1987) 51. Shakedown (1988) 52. Messenger of Death (1988) 53. The Presidio (1988) 54. Blue Steel (aka R.O.T.O.R.) (1987) 55. Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects (1989) 56. Lock Up (1989) 57. Road House (1989) 58. The Camp on Blood lsland (1958) 59. Ten Seconds to Hell (1959) 60. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) 61. Dark of the Sun (1968) 62. Ice Station Zebra (1968) 63. Hornets' Nest (1970) 64. Three Days of the Condor (1975) 65. The Eagle Has Landed (1976) 66. Force 10 from Navarone (1978) 67. Seven (1979) 68. Firefox (1982) 69. WarGames (1983) 70. The Package (1989) 71. The Italian Job (1969) 72. The Hot Rock (1972) 73. The Getaway (1972) 74. The Great Train Robbery (1978) 75. Le Mans (1971) 76. White Lightning (1973) 77. Gator (1976) 78. The Gumball Rally (1976) 79. The Blues Brothers (1980) 80. The Stunt Man (1980) 81. Intermission - Intermission "Goodies Machine" Ad.

PART TWO: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT (3:12:08) 01. Pre Show - Title / Kool-Aid "Amusement Park" feat. The Monkees / Mego KISS Figures / And Now On With The Show. 02. The Stranglers of Bombay (1959) 03. The Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960) 04. The Colossus of Rhodes (1961) 05. The Pirates of Blood River (1962) 06. Mozambique (1964) 07. The Vengeance of She (1968) 08. The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967) 09. The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969) 10. Wonder Women (1973) 11. Terminal Island (1973) 12. Gold (1974) 13. The Wilby Conspiracy (1975) 14. Raise the Titanic (1980) 15. The Wicked Lady (1983) 16. Frog Dreaming (aka The Quest) (1985) 17. Firewalker (1986) 18. Flesh+Blood (1985) 19. River of Death (1989) 20. The Yakuza (1974) 21. Force: Five (1981) 22. Kill and Kill Again (1981) 23. Enter the Ninja (1981) 24. Revenge of the Ninja (1983) 25. Comanche Station (1960) 26. The Magnificent Seven (1960) 27. Fistful of Dollars (1964) 28. For a Few Dollars More (1965) 29. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) 30. Navajo Joe (1966) 31. Django (1966) 32. Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot! (1967) 33. Return of the Seven (1966) 34. Hang 'Em High (1968) 35. Once Upon a Time... in the West (1968) 36. 100 Rifles (1969) 37. More Dead Than Alive (1969) 38. Barquero (1970) 39. Duck, You Sucker! (1971) 40. Lawman (1971) 41. Hannie Caulder (1971) 42. The Revengers (1972) 43. The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) 44. Billy Two Hats (1974) 45. Get Mean (1975) 46. Mad Dog Morgan (1976) 47. The Return of a Man Called Horse (1976) 48. It Came from Outer Space (1953) 49. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) 50. Village of the Damned (1960) 51. The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960) 52. Gasss (aka Gas!) (1970) 53. Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) 54. The Omega Man (1971) 55. The People That Time Forgot (1977) 56. Time After Time (1979) 57. The Chain Reaction (1980) 58. Alien 2: On Earth (1980) 59. Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) 60. Galaxy of Terror (1981) 61. Forbidden World (1982) 62. Heavy Metal (1981) (animated) 63. Looker (1981) 64. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) 65. Brainstorm (1983) 66. Strange Invaders (1983) 67. Yor, the Hunter from the Future (1983) 68. Dune (1984) 69. The Last Starfighter (1984) 70. Supergirl (1984) 71. Desert Warrior (aka Wheels of Fire) (1985) 72. Hercules II: Adventures of Hercules (1985) 73. Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989) 74. Highlander (1986) 75. Masters of the Universe (1987) 76. Innerspace (1987) 77. Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) 78. The Sisterhood (1988) 79. Leviathan (1989) 80. Post Show - Clean-Up & Replace Speaker / Good Night. 81. Also Available - Drive In-Delirium Volumes 1 and 2 Trailer / Drive In-Delirium Volume 3 Trailer.

01. Faux VHS Tape / Title. 02. Video Classics Intro 03. Video Classics Preview 04. Beyond Evil (1980) 05. Superstition (1982) 06. Maniac (1980) 07. Evil Dead (1981) 08. Sweet Sixteen (1983) 09. Mutant (aka Night Shadows) (1984) 10. Vampyres (1974) / Torso (aka Carnal Violence) (1973) 11. Amityville 3-D (1983) 12. The Dead Zone (1983) 13. Tattoo (1981) 14. To Kill A Clown (1972) 15. Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981) 16. The Bounty (1984) 17. Caged Heat (1974) 18. The Retrievers (1982) 19. Raw Force (1982) 20. Conan the Destroyer (1984) 21. Loving Couples (1980) (on Video Classics) 22. Splitz (1982) 23. Hollywood High (1976) 24. Gas Pump Girls (1979) 25. Hot T-Shirts (1980) 26. Gosh! (aka Alice Goodbody) (1974) 27. The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (1980)

28. Charlotte's Web (1973) (animated) 29. Follow The Sun (1983) 30. Master of the Game (1984) (miniseries) (on Video Classics) 31. Flying High (1978) (tv series pilot movie) 32. The Keeper (1976) 33. The Intruder Within (1981) 34. Video Classics Compilation 35. Trailers Rated "R" / Secrets of a Super Stud (aka It's Getting Harder All the Time) (1976) 36. Sweet Savage (1979) 37. The Yum Yum Girls (1976) 38. Girls at the Gynecologist (aka Teenage Sex Report) (1971) 39. Mustang: The House That Joe Built (aka Mustang: House of Pleasure) (1977) 40. Incoming Freshmen (1979) 41. French Nympho (aka Candice Candy) (1976) 42. Spermula (1976) 43. Flesh Gordon (1974) 44. Diary of a Space Virgin (aka The Girl from Starship Venus, aka The Sexplorer) (1975) 45. Fairy Tales (1978) 46. Fantasm (1976) 47. Fantasm Comes Again (1977) 48. Love You (1979) (on Video Classics VHS) 49. Video Classics Contact Information

THE END