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Severin continues their good work in bringing hitherto largely unavailable Russ Meyer titles to home video in glorious new 4K restorations. Their latest releases are Motorpsycho, a gritty genre mashup that’s been unjustly dismissed as merely a “dry run” for the better known Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, and the late-period gonzo comedy Up!, involving, among other things, leather gimp masks and an orgy-loving Adolf Hitler.

Motorpsycho, from 1965, starts off as a rip-roaring exposé of a renegade biker gang led by troubled Vietnam vet Brahmin (Stephen Oliver). He’s joined by Slick (Thomas Scott), who has a fondness for his transistor radio, and Dante (Joseph Cellini), whose major signifier as a character is that he spouts off in Italian when he gets excitable. These two are, in true Meyer fashion, little more than caricatures, but Brahmin actually gets to display some nuance in his role. Mind you, these are far...

A request by suspended CBS producer Robert Joel "Joe" Halderman - accused of attempting to extort $2 million from David Letterman - to have the case dismissed was denied Tuesday Halderman's defense - apparently modeled after the hush-money agreements reputedly brokered for Tiger Woods's mistresses - was that he was simply offering the CBS Late Show host the opportunity to buy a thinly veiled screenplay about his life. But New York City Supreme Court Justice Charles Solomon called the offer just a "hard-driven" business deal and Halderman's behavior a "classic example of an issue that is best left for a trial jury to decide.

In an industry where privacy is hard to come by, celebrities prefer to keep their dirty laundry behind closed doors. But a recent string of extortion plots against Hollywood players has them coming out swinging - no matter the risks of humiliation or hardship. Larry Stein, an attorney who represented actor Rob Lowe and his wife in an alleged extortion plot by their former nannies, says, in fact, more celebrities are willing to face down their blackmailers. "Celebrities have to let people know that they’re not going to be extorted, or that they’re not going to be threatened,...

I'm a Dave Letterman fan. My husband and I TiVo his show and watch it a few nights a week. I happened to be watching last Thursday night when Dave announced that he had done some "very, very bad things." By now, most of you have heard the story. If not, the gist is that a CBS news producer, Robert Joel Halderman, asked Dave to pay him $2 million. The hush money was intended to keep Dave's "very, very bad things" a secret. The secret involved Dave having sexual relationships with female members of his staff. If Dave did not pay up, Halderman was threatening to expose Dave's forays in a screenplay. In other words, according to police reports, this was an extortion attempt. Over the weekend, The New York Times followed up on Dave's announcement with an article on blackmail, and...

One week after he was arrested on charges of extortion against Late Show host David Letterman, colleagues of Robert Joel Halderman are still in shock over the 48 Hours Mystery producer's alleged criminal activities, reports The New York Times.

Marcy McGinnis was Halderman's boss in the 1990s, when she served as the London bureau chief for CBS News. "I said to my mother...

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David Letterman is not done addressing his affair with a staff member that eventually led to an extortion plan. During his "Late Show with David Letterman" monologue for the Monday, October 5 episode, he once again talked about the sensitive issue, revealing that his wife Regina is "horribly hurt" by the story and that he has apologized to her.

CBS in fact released a preview for the episode but decided to exclude the part where he delivered his apology to Regina. "When something happens like that, if you hurt a person and it's your responsibility, you try to fix it," Letterman said on the cut segment. "And at that point, there's only two things that can happen: either you're going to make some progress and get it fixed, or you're going to fall short and perhaps not get it fixed."

He also made an apology to the staff of the show,...

By Wrap Staff

Evidence exists that David Letterman engaged in sexual harassment of staff members on his CBS show, according to the lawyer representing the man accused of trying to blackmail the talk show host.

Gerald Shargel, the lawyer for accused extortionist Robert Joel Halderman, told the New York Times he would "put forward evidence" of sexual harassment and would be "sharing that in a courtroom."

Shargel also told the Times that Letterman "had a relationship with my client’s girlfriend.”

He said that Letterman assistant Stephanie Birkitt has...

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has released a statement to "The Insider" in regard to the alleged extortion case involving David Letterman. The statement reads: "The defendant Robert Joel Halderman, a.k.a. Joe Halderman, [who] is 51 years old of Norwalk, Ct, was indicted on an attempted grand larceny charge. The crimes charged in the indictment occurred between September 9th and September 30th of 2009. "The investigation leading to today’s indictment reveal[s] that Halderman waited outside Letterman's Manhattan home at 6 a.m. on September 9th to deliver a letter and other materials to him as he was leaving for work. "Halderman wrote that he needed to 'make a large chunk of money' by selling Letterman a so-called 'screenplay treatment.' The one page screenplay treatment attached to the letter referred to Mr. Letterman’s great professional success and ... his 'beautiful and loving son.' The document then related that Mr. Letterman...