3D DVD Blu-ray Movie Review Roundup: Shark Night, Fright Night, & Conan The Barbarian

Watching 3D DVDs at home is kinda cool. The best part is, even though you still get those pressure marks across the bridge of your nose, your aren't in public and nobody sees them.

There are some really good blu-rays out right now (the movies themselves… maybe not so good, but it's like back in the laserdisc days: we gadget-grabbers are simply stoked to watch whatever we can play on our fancy-schmancy systems).

While I can't say I loved Fright Night, it's a fang afar from the twinkly Twilight twits — as Colin Farrell said to us when horror.com visited the set: "Team Jerry!" Indeed. Farrell is, well, feral as the seductive bloodsucker who moves into a suburban neighborhood at sets hell loose on teenage Charlie (Anton Yelchin) and Charlie's pretty blonde girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots). Costarring the always amazing Toni Collette as Charlie's mom, Christopher Mintz-Plasse as the bff/sidekick/comic-relief, and David Tenant as a Las Vegas lounge star who hunts vampires on the side, the flick follows the fray as the mortals and undead battle it out. Played mostly for thrills, chills and a laugh along the way, Fright Night isn't actually frightening. But it's a lot of fun, and watching Farrell flaunt the goods is always a good thing. While he plays the Dandridge role with a little more edge and not as much languid sensuality as was done by Chris Sarandon as the originator, Farrell is in fine fettle nonetheless. And have you seen his abs in 3D?

The Blu-ray offers up some deleted scenes which add a bit more meat to the bones of the parts played by Yelchin, Poots and Mintz-Plasse, plus a making of featurette called How to Make a Funny Vampire Movie and the in-film movie Squid Man: Extended & Uncut (only 3 minutes long). There is also your standard blooper reel and the rather silly Kid Cudi music video, No One Believes Me.

Next up for review is Conan the Barbarian, directed by horror remake maven Marcus Nispel. With that, you can definitely expect the grue, gore and violent aspects to be well in place — in fact, the titular titan is brought into the world via stab-cesarean. The infant terrible is raised by his doting dad (Ron Perlman), becomes the coolest kid in killing class, and graduates to the killing fields with honors in no time. Conan's (Jason Momoa) agenda includes revenge on the baddie who made his dad a single father — but of course, the slippery and oh-so evil Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang) is going to hold out for at least an hour to 90 minutes before he offers up his proverbial throat to Conan's sword of justice. Conan the Barbarian is about on par with Prince of Persia, though a little less goofy and without the Bruckheimer bromance angle.

To sweeten the otherwise bland deal, Conan The Barbarian is available in four formats (digital download, DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D), there are two commentary tracks (I listened to the one with the actors — Momoa and Rose McGowan… buttery, bantery froth, but fun), and about an hour's worth of featurettes. I watched The Conan Legacy, which is a good place to start for newbie, and then there's Robert E. Howard: The Man Who Would Be Conan,a 10-minute rundown on the life and times of Conan's creator (I learned a lot from it, but then again I didn't know much to begin with).

Finally, there is Shark Night 3D, which isn't actually out on DVD yet. It hits the shelves and virtual shopping carts on January 3, 2012. As far as the 3D aspect goes, this is the funnest of the lot — played to the hilt for big set pieces, domino effect death scenes and way out humor (note: director David R. Ellis also did The Final Destination and Snakes on a Plane), Shark Night 3D follows the exploits of seven sexy young-bloods out on a wild getaway weekend that's spoiled by a school of sharks. Extras on the blu-ray (in 3D) are Shark Attack! Kill Machine! (jump to your favorite kills, lickety-split), Ellis' Island (cast appreciation illustrating what their director did to make it so special), plus one called Fake Sharks Real Scares (about the use of both animatronic and CGI sharks and how the unreal predators were made believable).

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson