Cheap Thrills, Dracula, the Doctor in Fact and Fiction, and the awful wonder that is Sleepaway Camp

Cheap Thrills is an almost unknown, entirely creepy little film with some really fine actors, including the rather remarkable Sara Paxton from The Innkeepers and Last House on the Left among so many others, Pat Healy, who was also in The Innkeepers, and David Koechner of Anchorman and so much more, who usually goes for the funny but goes for the psychotic this time. It’s a game of double and triple dare, with Koechner as the clown and Sara the blank-faced sociopath at the center of it all. If you want to feel real bad about the state of the human condition…here you go.

Way back in 1974, Dan Curtis – a legend for Kolchak: The Night Stalker if nothing else – went all the way out on a supernatural limb and made Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring the one-and-only Jack Palance. Looking back from forty years in the future, we have to admit: there is absolutely nothing to recommend this version – really, not anything. And we may love Palance – come on, Shane, The Big Knife, Ten Seconds to Hell – but really, seriously: he can’t act. Which makes it kind of a problem when you’re supposed to be the ageless, eternally hungry embodiment of all evil. So let’s stay this one’s only for the Dracula completist, right there on the list under the Frank Langella version that John Badham (Blue Thunder) directed and J.D. Richter (Buckaroo Banzai) wrote. For some reason.
This almost got lost in the big Matt Smith/Change of the Doctor frenzy a few months ago, but Doctor Who: An Adventure in Space and Time really is a gentle little gem. It’s the true(ish) story of an ambitious (and slightly nuts) TV exec for the BBC and his newly appointed quietly ambitious and bright-as-hell female producer who took a half-assed concept for a kid’s show and somehow created Doctor Who, which we all know is the greatest force for good in the civilized world. The film has some beautifully nuanced and understated performances, a huge amount of inside info, and an absolutely charming cameo by Matt Smith himself. Even someone who’s not in love with this odd little series that changed the sci-fi universe will like what they see here (and the woman who plays the producer has gone on to play another quietly brave woman who made history in Call the Midwife). What’s more, this package includes a high-quality copy of An Unearthly Child, the first Doctor Who episode, the one being made in the docudrama. Any Whovian will love every minute.

…and then there’s Sleepaway Camp. What can you say about a horribly made, hideously acted, ridiculously plotted piece of slasher-crap from the Seventies? Except that it has the most twisted, bizarre and just plain insane ending of anything in the genre of the time? You really have to see it to believe it…and this special edition includes a ton of director and actor commentaries and behind-the-scene docs to make it almost worth wading through the film itself. Almost. Actually not a bad deal at less than $25.00 for the horror connoisseur.