Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF February 11th, 2019

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Slow week with inclement weather delaying screeners. We have reviews of Blu-rays by Arrow, Kino, Second Sight, Cohen, 88 Films, Scorpion Releasing... of films directed by Joseph H. Lewis, William Friedkin, Tony Bill, Lucio Fulci, Diane Kurys, Luigi Bazzoni, Franco Rossellini, David DeCoteau with such stars as Franco Nero, Nina Foch, Dame May Whitty, Peter Baldwin, Virna Lisi, Jennifer O'Neill, Marisa Tomei, Christian Slater, Laurence Luckinbill our Calendar has the previous week's updates of films-to-Blu-ray, including including work by Martin Scorsese, John Carpenter, Frank Tuttle, Jan Němec, Elia Kazan, Gillian Armstrong, Jim Jarmusch, Jackie Chan, Lewis Gilbert, Sang-soo Hong, Alain Resnais, Billy Wilder, Roy Ward Baker, Steven Spielberg, Peter Sellers, Freddie Francis and more. We also have our Feature Blu-ray posted for FEBRUARY Enjoy!!

LISTING PAGES:

Discs of the Year for 2018, The TOP 100 DISCS, Ingmar Bergman's Cinema, HAGSPloitation, BLAXPloitation, OZPloitation, 'WOMEN IN PRISON' CINEMA, CREATURE-FEATURES (on Blu-ray!), PRE-CODE FILMs (on Blu-ray!), SILENT ERA FILMs (on Blu-ray!), HAMMER Studios (on Blu-ray!) The 100 BEST Neo-Noirs (on Blu-ray!), The GREATEST 100 Westerns (on Blu-ray!), Giallo on Blu-ray!, ESSENTIAL NOIR on Blu-ray!, Shopping Guide for Blu-rays at Amazon.FR (France), Shopping Guide for Blu-rays at Amazon.DE (Germany) and our LATEST ARTICLES: Movies From... the End of the World,  The Beauties of Star Trek (TOS)

Feature Blu-rays chosen for the Month of FEBRUARY!

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ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): I really enjoyed the Luigi Bazzoni's proto-giallo The Possessed on Region FREE Arrow Blu-ray this week. A uniquely dreamlike take on true crime with plenty of extras and a new commentary by Tim Lucas. In the same genre is Bazzoni's The Fifth Cord with Franco Nero as an alcoholic journalist who finds himself on the trail of a murderer after the police make him a suspect in their investigation. It's also on a stacked Arrow Blu-ray with a new commentary. Staying with Arrow, Joseph H. Lewis' My Name is Julia Ross also gets the Region FREE Blu-ray treatment with an Alan K. Rode commentary. Essential 'dark cinema'. One of the great Hollywood tear-jerkers of the 1990s, Untamed Heart gets a Blu-ray release from Kino with a director commentary. Stellar performances by Tomei and Slater. Diane Kurys' debut feature Peppermint Soda comes to Region 'A' Blu-ray from Cohen. It's a wonderfully evocative view of adolescence in 1960s France. Jennifer O'Neill is The Psychic in Lucio Fulci's film of the same name - a twisty, atmospheric Giallo that gets an upgraded Blu-ray edition from Scorpion Releasing. It remains an impressive stylish thriller. William Friedkin's The Boys in the Band has reassembled the original cast for his film adaption of the ground-breaking Broadway hit. Now on upgraded Blu-ray from Second Sight. Best of 80's Scream Queens probably has mostly nostalgia value - direct-to-video type productions, unabashedly exploitive but still fun. On Blu-ray from 88 Films.

"If you're a big Hollywood star, you make one movie a year at the most. I can make five in Europe.." Franco Nero

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The Boys in the Band BD - In 1968, an Off-Broadway play about a birthday party attended by a group of homosexual men made theatrical history by becoming the first play to deal honestly with gay urban life. The party brings together a group of misfits that have become clichés -- the self-loathing alcoholic, the bitchy queen, the flamboyant sissy, the stud-for-hire - for an evening of truth-telling. Blu-ray Release Date: February 11th, 2019

Untamed Heart BD - Marisa Tomei portrays Caroline, a diner waitress who is consistently and miserably unlucky at love. Christian Slater is Adam, the diner’s busboy who harbors a secret crush on Caroline, yet is too shy to speak to her. But all that changes one cold night, when Caroline finds herself in a life-threatening situation on her walk home and Adam appears out of the shadows to rescue her. Intrigued by her unlikely knight in shining armor, Caroline tenderly breaks through to his lonely world. Blu-ray Release Date: March 5th, 2019

The Psychic BD - Jennifer O'Neill is the psychic woman who as a child had a vision of her mother's actual death and who later as an adult has a puzzling vision of a woman being walled up in the same fashion as in Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat. Recently married O'Neill then spends some time at her rich husband's lonely country estate where she discovers the room from her vision, and a dead body behind the wall... Scorpion Releasing Blu-ray Release Date: February, 2019

The Possessed BD - Peter Baldwin stars as Bernard, a depressed novelist who sets off in search of his old flame Tilde, a beautiful maid who works at a remote lakeside hotel. Bernard is warmly greeted by the hotel owner Enrico (Salvo Randone) and his daughter Irma (Valentina Cortese), but Tilde has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Bernard undertakes an investigation and is soon plunged into a disturbing drama of familial secrets, perversion, madness and murder... Blu-ray Release Date: February 4th, 2019

My Name is Julia Ross BD - Cult figure and B-movie auteur Joseph H. Lewis directed this taut exercise in film noir. Julia Ross (Nina Foch), an American receiving medical treatment in London, finds herself short on money and takes a job as secretary for Mrs. Hughes (May Whitty), the matriarch of a large estate. Julie meets Mrs. Hughes' son Ralph (George Macready), a mysterious gentleman with a facial scar, shortly before eating lunch and falling into a deep sleep. When she awakes, she's in a different home with a high fence, and everyone around her insists that she's Ralph's wife, just home after a stay in a mental institution. Blu-ray Release Date: February 18th, 2019

The Fifth Cord BD - Luigi Bazzoni directed this outstanding Giallo thriller starring Franco Nero as a hard-drinking newspaperman who gets involved in a string of brutal murders. After he investigates the first, he becomes a suspect himself but eventually manages to unravel a complex plot involving blackmail, adultery, and private sex shows. Wolfgang Preiss plays a creepy doctor, and Edmund Purdom is around as well. The impressive score is by Ennio Morricone, and the film looks great thanks to cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. Blu-ray Release Date: February 4th, 2019

Best of 80's Scream Queens BD - When people think of VHS-era SCREAM QUEENS three names come to mind: Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer and Brinke Stevens - the threesome of fear that sliced and seduced a generation. This Triple-feature is directed by the legendary Z-movie expert David DeCoteau and with each nostalgic pot-boiler packed with an enthusiastic fondness. Blu-ray Release Date: November 26th, 2018

Peppermint Soda BD - Kurys' impressive feature debut, based in autobiography, is a sensitive account of a year in the lives of two sisters - 13-year-old, introverted Anne, and outgoing 15-year-old Frédérique - in the early '60s. Without ever lapsing into melodrama, the film adopts a decidely un-nostalgic tone, lucidly charting the everyday oppressions of school life and the girls' difficult relationships with their parents - a separated Jewish couple - their friends and each other. Indeed, it's a harsh, unsentimental look at adolescence, with the '60s setting serving primarily to define the social and political context of the girls' rites of passage; at the same time, however, the film is invested with great warmth through Kurys' assured, sympathetic handling of her cast. Cohen Blu-ray Release date: February 12th, 2019
 

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