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The Plague of the Zombies
BD - Within a remote
eighteenth century Cornish village, an evil presence lurks
within the darkness of the witching hour, a mysterious plague
relentlessly taking lives at an unstoppable rate. Unable to find
the cause, Dr Peter Thompson enlists the help of Professor James
Forbes. Desperate to find an antidote what they find instead are
empty coffins with the diseased corpses missing. Following a
series of strange and frightening clues, Thompson and Forbes are
lead to a deserted mine where they discover a world of black
magic and a doomed legion of flesh eating slaves, the walking
dead. Shout! Factory Blu-ray
Release Date: January 15th, 2019
Obsession
BD - Schrader and De Palma's
tribute to Hitchcock's
Vertigo may lack the
misogyny and bloodbath sensationalism of De Palma's later work,
but it's still dressed up in a mortifyingly vacuous imitation of
the Master's stylistic touches. Virtuoso gliding camera
movements do not necessarily a good film make. The main problem
with the film, in fact, is the excruciatingly slow pace;
although if you've seen Vertigo, the story itself - of a
businessman haunted by guilt about his wife's death, and getting
involved years later with her lookalike - will fail to yield the
narrative surprises and suspense required in a thriller.
Shout! Factory Blu-ray Release
Date: January 15th, 2019
Pumping Iron
BD - Arnold Schwarzenegger
works the crowds, plots strategies for defeating multiple
opponents, shares his parents' values with the press, and
inspires legions of admirers with his resolute optimism about
the future. And all of this long before he decided to run for
governor of California, in 1977's hit documentary, Pumping
Iron. Larger than life, though not necessarily larger than
his rivals for the Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia bodybuilding
titles (especially a young Lou Ferrigno, hot on Arnold's
competitive trail but much less interesting), Schwarzenegger
still comes across, at age 28, as a consummate politician,
smart, likable, and crafty about exploiting others'
psychological weaknesses. Blu-ray
Release Date: April 19th, 2018
Waterworld
BD - Centuries of global
warming have caused the polar ice caps to melt, flooding the
earth as civilization is left adrift. The inhabitants of this
once-flourishing planet cling to life on incredible floating
cities, their existence constantly threatened by Smokers--bands
of marauding pirates who roam the featureless surface of
Waterworld. For the survivors, one chance remains: a
solitary hero, known only as the Mariner. Battling the Smokers
and their ruthless leader, the Deacon, the Mariner sets out with
a beautiful woman and a mysterious little girl on a search for a
new beginning. Arrow Blu-ray
Release Date: January 21st, 2019
The Last Movie
BD - With a barrage of
cinematic distancing devices at hand (flashbacks and
flash-forwards, super-imposed titles, missing frames,
projectionist cue-marks placed in the wrong locations in a film
reel), Dennis Hopper concocts a hallucinatory acid-trip
concerning an American movie company making a western in Peru.
In a remote mountain village in Peru, a Hollywood film company
wraps up shooting a western and returns to California. Staying
behind is a young stunt man, Kansas (Dennis Hopper). In the
village, he takes up with the resident whore, Maria (Stella
Garcia). Indicator Blu-ray
Release Date: January 21st, 2019
R.P.M.
BD - Set against the political
turmoil of the late 60's, R.P.M. (Revolutions Per
Minute) stars Anthony Quinn as "Paco" Perez, a free-thinking
liberal college professor whom the campus leftists regard as an
authority figure they can understand. Perez is also
free-thinking enough to have a grad student as a mistress, Rhoda
(Ann-Margret). Blu-ray Release
Date: January 21st, 2019
The Rover
BD - After a wide-ranging life
of piracy and adventure, Peyrol (Anthony Quinn) comes ashore in
the port of Toulon during the bloody aftermath of the French
Revolution to deliver a message to the Port Commander. Wanted by
authorities in nearly every port in the European world, Peyrol
barely escapes arrest and flees to an isolated spot near the
coast. While searching for a way to return to the open sea, he
rescues a deranged girl, Arlette (Rosanna Schiaffino) from a mob
of revolutionary “blood-drinkers.” The sweet girl asks Peyrol to
stay at her house, where she lives with her Aunt Caterina (Rita
Hayworth). Blu-ray Release Date:
February 26th, 2019
Gardens of Stone
BD - Set in 1968, the film
reunites Coppola with
Godfather star James
Caan, who plays a disillusioned army sergeant stationed at Fort
Meyers Arlington Cemetery and views the war in Vietnam as
unwinnable, despairing at the dead arriving daily for burial
from the front lines. This powerful drama from one of American
cinema's most audacious filmmakers boasts a towering performance
by Caan, and a superb supporting cast, including Anjelica
Huston, James Earl Jones, Mary Stuart Masterson and DB Sweeney.
Blu-ray Release Date: January
21st, 2019
Breakout
BD - This Charles Bronson
vehicle isn't one of the star's more demanding roles, but it's
fairly entertaining nonetheless. Breakout is basically a
B-movie with A-movie resources: the plot is old fashioned
adventure stuff tarted up with a nice budget and some name
acting talent like Robert Duvall and John Huston. The script is
a bit wobbly -- the finale leaves some loose ends dangling and
the film's caricatured treatment of its Mexican villains isn't
likely to endear itself to the politically correct -- but it
makes up for these flaws with plenty of action and some amusing
characters. Bronson gives an energetic, surprisingly comedic
performance as the film's hard luck hero and Randy Quaid and
Sheree North add a welcome touch of color as his low-rent
partners in crime. Indicator Blu-ray
Release Date: January 21st, 2019
The House That Would Not Die
BD - Barbara Stanwyck made
her TV movie debut in 1970's The House That Would Not Die.
The setting is an old house in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Stanwyck moves after inheriting the house, but has cause to
rethink her decision. Built during the Revolutionary era, the
house is said to be haunted by the spirits of its original
inhabitants--who are disinclined towards hospitality. House
That Would Not Die was based on a novel by Barbara Michaels
(one of several pseudonyms for author Barbara G. Mertz).
Blu-ray Release Date: January 8th,
2019
Dracula Prince of Darkness
BD - Instead of Van Helsing,
those clever chaps at Hammer invented Father Shandor, a monk
with a mission (and a big gun). Andrew Kier excels in this role
as a big, bearded bully, shouting at backward peasants for their
superstitions, before going right ahead and staking vampires
left, right and centre. It's still the same tale of sceptical
Northern Europeans failing to take heed of the warnings plainly
spelled out to them about Castle Dracula, but this time the
deaths come thick and fast, Dracula's lifestyle sticks very
closely to that detailed by Stoker, and the whole thing is a
class act from beginning to end. Shout! Factory
Blu-ray Release Date: December
18th, 2018
The Glass Key
BD - Playing with his usual
deadpan as he weaves warily through a maze of political
machinations and underworld snares in the service of his boss,
Ladd remains equally frozen whether expressing his love for Lake
or his loyalty to Donlevy. The result is a teasing sexual
ambiguity, considerably enhanced (at least until the copout
ending) by the fact that Hammett's hero - here callous enough to
admit a willingness to let Lake hang if necessary in furtherance
of his aims - has been toughened up by being reduced to a noir
cipher for the film. Shout! Factory
Blu-ray Release Date: January 15th, 2019
Forbidden Photos Of A Lady Above Suspicion
BD - Minou (Dagmar Lassander)
leads a pampered but dull life with her frequently absent
husband, Peter (Pier Paolo Capponi). One night, while out
walking on the beachfront, Minou is accosted by a mysterious
blackmailer (Simón Andreu) who informs her that Peter is a
murderer. Driven by misplaced loyalty to her husband, Minou
gives in to the blackmailer's every perverted whim in exchange
for his silence. But as the blackmailer ups the ante, demanding
that she submit to his increasingly obscene demands, can Minou
hold on to what little remains of her sanity?
Blu-ray Release Date: January 14th,
2019
Desert Fury
BD - Lewis Allen directed this
classic
film noir in
Technicolor, starring Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, John
Hodiak, Mary Astor and Wendell Corey. Eddie Bendix (Hodiak) and
his henchman, Johnny Ryan (Corey), two gangsters in the gambling
trade, return to a small desert town outside of Reno. Years ago,
Eddie had left town under suspicion of murdering his wife and
after running into some trouble in Las Vegas, Eddie now hopes to
get involved with the local gambling house whose proprietor is
his ex-flame Fritzi Haller (Astor). To complicate matters, Eddie
falls for Fritzi’s daughter (Scott), who used to be involved
with the local lawman Tom Hanson (Lancaster), who’s still in
love with her. Desert Fury was adapted for the screen by
filmmaker Robert Rossen from the far racier and more explicit
novel by Ramona Stewart. Blu-ray
Release Date: February 26th, 2019
One Cut of the Dead
BD - A cast of relative
unknowns, a brilliantly disguised low budget and an epic,
37-minute opening single take makes Shinichiro Ueda's feature
debut a bright, breezy and laugh-out-loud hilarious zombie
comedy. A film crew is shooting a zombie horror flick in an
abandoned water filtration plant, allegedly used for human
experiments by the military. Just as the director browbeats his
actors and demands more special effects blood, a real zombie
apocalypse erupts, much to his auteur delight.
Blu-ray Release Date: December 4th,
2018
The Serpent's Egg
BD - In 1977, legendary Swedish
filmmaker Ingmar Bergman teamed up with the equally legendary
Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis for what would be the
director s one and only Hollywood feature. Berlin, 1923.
Out-of-work circus performer Abel Rosenberg (David Carradine) is
living in poverty. When his brother commits suicide, he moves
into the apartment of his cabaret singer sister-in-law (Liv
Ullmann), but the pair soon attract the attentions of both the
police and a professor with a terrifying area of research when
they start to make enquiries about his mysterious death.
Arrow Blu-ray Release Date:
December 4th, 2018
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