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A Game of Death
BD - Lured too close to shore by
misplaced channel lights, the yacht carrying noted big game
hunter and author Don Rainsford hits a corral reef and sinks,
throwing its passengers and crew into shark-infested waters.
Rainsford, the sole survivor, swims ashore and makes his way to
a mysterious-looking fortress. Inside, he is greeted by Eric
Kreiger, the master of the house, and his servant Pleshke.
Kreiger, a fervent hunter, recognizes Rainsford's name and
insists that he join him and his guests for dinner. Escorted by
Pleshke as he goes to change his wet clothes, Rainsford is
puzzled by the bars on the windows. At dinner, after introducing
Rainsford to his guests, Ellen Trowbridge and her brother
Robert, Kreiger boasts that he bought the island as a hunting
preserve and has stocked it with the most dangerous game in the
world. Blu-ray Release date: March 21st, 2017
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
BD - A blandly
outrageous and occasionally sharp-toothed musical satirising big
business, with a likeable score by Frank Loesser, which takes
potshots at everything from coffee breaks to advertising
campaigns. Morse, somehow contriving to be horrendous and
endearing at one and the same time, repeats his stage role to
brilliant effect as the all-American boy who employs scientific
knowhow to rise like a meteor, licking asses and trampling heads
every step of the way. Swift's direction is a little stiff and
stagy, and there are dull patches; but with handsome camerawork
from Burnett Guffey, witty Bob Fosse choreography, and the
ineffable Vallee playing the compulsive-knitting, fussbudget
boss, this was one of the livelist musicals of the '60s.
Blu-ray Release date: March, 2017
Peyton Place
BD - Grace Metalious’ scandalous best-seller about
the sordid life of a small New England town is given the
high-gloss Hollywood treatment in Peyton Place (1957), a hugely
successful melodrama produced by Jerry Wald and directed by Mark
Robson, with John Michael Hayes providing the screenplay. A cast
led by established star Lana Turner (then suffering her own
real-life melodrama) is also studded with terrific performances
from relative newcomers including Diane Varsi, Hope Lange, Lee
Philips, and Russ Tamblyn, and further highlighted by an
extraordinary score from Franz Waxman. Blu-ray Release date:
March, 2017
Invasion of the Bee Girls
BD - A classic example of the
crossover genre which thrived briefly in the Sixties and
Seventies, this enthusiastic mixture of invasion horror and
badly shot soft porn focuses on a small American town whose menfolk are mysteriously dying, apparently during the act of
coitus. From the outset, this presents us with two mysteries:
why are the deaths occurring, and who would want to have sex
with these men anyway? To be fair, the bad lighting and orangey
colouration in this film don't flatter anyone, even the genre's
better-known actresses; in places the lighting is bad enough to
create an extra layer of mystery, as it's hard to see what the
characters are doing. Nevertheless, this is a B-movie with a
certain charm, pompous enough to be amusing even in its less
salubrious moments. Blu-ray Release Date: April 4th, 2017
Rumble Fish
BD - In this deeply personal tale of estrangement
and reconciliation between two rebellious brothers, set in a
dreamlike and timeless Tulsa, Francis Ford Coppola gives mythic
dimensions to intimate, painful emotions. The director’s “art
film for teenagers” was his second adaptation of young-adult
novelist S.E. Hinton’s work in a single year, after the more
classically styled
The Outsiders. Graced with a remarkable cast
headed by Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, and Diane Lane; haunting
black-and-white visuals that hark back to German expressionism
and forward to Coppola’s own Tetro; and a powerful percussive
score by Stewart Copeland that underlines the movie’s romantic
fatalism, Rumble Fish pulsates throughout with genuine love and
dread. Criterion Blu-ray Release date: April 25th, 2017
Another Man's Poison
BD - Bette Davis pulls out all the stops as
Janet Frobisher, a devious, selfish vixen who will stop at
nothing to get what she wants in Another Man's Poison, a drama
deliciously full of unexpected twists and turns. Frobisher is a
rich mystery writer who falls in love with her secretary's
fiancé and lures him away. But her happiness is far from
ensured. She first must deal with a long forgotten ex-convict
husband who tries to blackmail her, and then she must scheme her
way out of the clutches of her husband's ruthless partner,
George Bates (Gary Merrill, Davis's husband in real life). Davis
proves why she remains such an acting legend as she dominates
the screen in the kind of part that only she could bring to life
so vividly. Blu-ray Release Date: March 28th, 2017
Tampopo
BD - The tale of an eccentric band of culinary ronin who
guide the widow of a noodle-shop owner on her quest for the
perfect recipe, this rapturous “ramen western” by Japanese
director Juzo Itami is an entertaining, genre-bending adventure
underpinned by a deft satire of the way social conventions
distort the most natural of human urges—our appetites.
Interspersing the efforts of Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto) and
friends to make her café a success with the erotic exploits of a
gastronome gangster and glimpses of food culture both high and
low, the sweet, sexy, and surreal Tampopo is a lavishly
inclusive paean to the sensual joys of nourishment, and one of
the most mouthwatering examples of food on film ever made.
Blu-ray Release Date: April 24th, 2017
Our Man in Havana
BD - Ex-pat vacuum salesman Jim Wormold
(Guinness) is roped into Britain's Cuban espionage division.
Paid per item of intelligence, and desperate to send daughter
Milly (Morrow) to an expensive European school, Wormold
embellishes his reports with daring falsification. But the ruse
has uneasy consequences, especially when his activities arouse
the suspicions of police chief Captain Segura (Kovacs)
suspicion. Guinness plays his part to perfection, an Everyman
paddling furiously against the tide, and excellent support comes
from Ralph Richardson (as the obsessive MI6 boss), Burl Ives and
Paul Rogers (as rival agent). But Coward steals the show as his
patrician spymaster. Blu-ray Release Date: March, 2017
Black Magic
BD - Few Eastern frighteners build up quite as much
menace and mania as 1975's masterpiece of Southeast Asian
eeriness BLACK MAGIC. One of the first horror shockers to be
shot in the sun and cityscapes of Malaysia, and its picturesque
capital Kuala Lumpur, BLACK MAGIC is a sordid story of sex,
sleaze, slime and spells - with an ancient magician able to
bring lonely spinsters together with their ideal partners thanks
to some good old fashioned witchery. Of course, this is not say
such demonic antics do not sometimes go wrong and with BLACK
MAGIC viewers are exposed to some of the most sublime scares
ever dreamed up by the Shaw studio! Blu-ray Release Date:
October 31st, 2016
L'innocente
BD - Visconti returns to the stunningly lavish 19th
Century sets of his Cannes Winner,
THE LEOPARD, in this, his
last film; a deplorably overlooked brooding masterpiece...
Presented here from restored HD materials, for the very 1st time
doing justice to the film's cinematography, rich sets and story.
Finishing where
THE LEOPARD left off, we follow the
disintegration of the aristocracy into moral decadence and
sexual taboos, personified by a career-defining, powerhouse
performance by Giannini whose antihero displays hitherto
uncharted monstrosity. Giannini is the aristocrat who leaves his
wife for his latest mistress Jennifer O'Neil, but his morbid
need for domination makes him want his wife back when she
becomes pregnant by another man… Blu-ray Release Date: April
10th, 2017
The Mighty Peking Man
BD - King Kong comes to Hong Kong in
The
Mighty Peking Man, a uniquely Shaw Brothers spin on the ageless
theme of beauty and the beast. The beast, seven stories high and
hailing from the Himalayas, makes his way to the jungles of
India in the wake of a violent earthquake. The beauty is Swiss
starlet Evelyn Kraft, a sexy blonde Tarzanette who is the Mighty
Peking Man's best friend. Both are discovered by Danny Lee, a
handsome young explorer who brings the odd couple back to Hong
Kong, where Evelyn is almost raped and the monster runs amuck.
Instead of the Empire State Building, the special effects laden
climax takes place at the Connaught Centre, then Hong Kong's
tallest building. Plenty of action, location shooting in India,
and an inter-racial romance make this one of Shaw Brothers most
unique motion pictures. Variety's verdict: High camp, Chinese
style. Blu-ray Release Date: March 13th, 2017
Zombie Lake
BD - In a small lakeside town, young women are
disappearing without a trace. The superstitious locals blame
''The Lake of Ghosts'', because of the lake's haunting past, but
the town's mayor (Howard Vernon) seems reluctant, or powerless
to take any action. When another woman is found dead near the
lake, with her throat ripped out, a reporter comes to town and
soon discovers that the lake harbors a terrible secret dating
back to World War II. It is then a group of local Resistance
fighters take action against a troop of Nazi zombie soldiers
invading their town, as they have come back from the dead. And
now, whenever the waters at ZOMBIE LAKE are disturbed, the dead
will rise! Blu-ray Release Date: February 26th, 2013
Prozzie
BD - An English child sees an American soldier kill her
mother, a prostitute; years later, the girl grows up and gets
married and begins to hear her dead mother's voice, instructing
her to start killing. Blu-ray Release Date: February 13th,
2017
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
BD - Sanna (Victoria Vetri), a
beautiful blonde woman, is condemned to death when she is blamed
for a sudden aberration of the sun. Fortunately, the girl is
rescued by fisherman Tara (Robin Hawdon), a member of the nearby
Sand Tribe, but Sanna's presence infuriates Tara's girlfriend
Ayak (Imogen Hassall). While others run from the carnivorous
dinosaurs, Tara trains one of the beasts who believes she is one
of her offspring. A typhoon leaves four survivors to fight for
survival. Blu-ray Release date: February 28th, 2017
Demon Seed
BD - Susan Harris is alone in the house when,
suddenly, doors lock, windows slam shut and the phone stops
working. Susan is trapped by an intruder - but this is no
ordinary thug. Instead, the intruder is a computer named
Proteus, an artificial brain that has learned to reason. And to
terrorize. Blu-ray Release Date: March 14th, 2017
Lifeboat
BD - Hitchcock goes to sea in this Oscar-nominated
character piece. Tallulah Bankhead is among the survivors of a
Nazi torpedo attack on a cruise ship, but tensions on board the
rescue craft are as lethal as the German threat. Based on a John
Steinbeck story, this taut, tense psychological thriller, set
entirely on a lifeboat following the bombing of a luxury liner,
anticipates the claustrophobic atmosphere of both
Rear Window
and
Rope. A simple premise tightens the dramatic focus and the
film explores the delicate balance of power among the survivors
as they suffer the consequences of their own and one another's
folly. Kino Blu-ray Release Date: March 21st, 2017
Beyond the Darkness
BD - Focusing on a
PSYCHO-style
story of a young loner, under the authority of a besotted but
blood-thirsty matriarch, who enjoys bouts of human taxidermy,
bodily mutilation and cannibalism - this crimson-ridden splatter
caper might just be D'Amato's crowning achievement. Starring the
legendary Cinzea Monreale (THE BEYOND) as a beautiful blonde who
is lured into the killer's premises, BEYOND THE DARKNESS also
features a sublime score from prog-rockers Goblin (TENEBRAE) and
a sick, but nonetheless satisfying, sense of humour.
Blu-ray
Release Date: February 13th, 2017
The Delinquents
BD - The Delinquents, maverick filmmaker
Robert Altman’s feature film debut, is the ultimate in the
kids-gone-bad film genre. Pre-Billy Jack actor Tom Laughlin
stars as Scotty, a young man drawn into a potentially deadly
friendship when he inadvertently becomes involved with “the
wrong crowd.” Naiveté will lead Scotty and his girlfriend,
Janice (Rosemary Howard) into dangerous waters when adolescent
fun escalates into robbery, assault and kidnapping.
Blu-ray
Release date: March 21st, 2017
Short Night of Glass Dolls
BD - "The corpse of reporter
Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel) is found in a Prague plaza and
brought to the local morgue. But Moore is actually alive,
trapped inside his dead body and desperately recalling how the
mysterious disappearance of his beautiful girlfriend (Barbara
Bach) led to a terrifying conspiracy of depravity. Can a
reporter with no visible signs of life solve this perverse
puzzle before he meets his ultimate deadline?" Blu-ray
Release Date: November 21sr, 2016
Massacre in Dinosaur Valley
BD - When their plane
crashes in the dense Amazon jungle, anthropologist, and
all-round ladies man, Kevin Hall (Michael Sopkiw, Blastfighter),
is left to protect a bevy of model bombshells who were along for
the ride; including the gorgeous Eva (Suzane Carvalho, Women in
Fury). On their journey back to civilization, they battle the
harsh elements of the Amazon and clash with terrifying jungle
creatures, not to mention a run in with local slave traders.
They eventually find themselves deep in cannibal territory and
fighting to save their skins. Blu-ray Release Date: March
13th, 2017
Taxi Driver (4K Remastered)
BD - Travis' state of mind
and his work allow Scorsese to show a side of New York that's
progressively darker and darker, with the help of Michael
Chapman's gorgeous photography and Bernard Hermann's haunting
last score, from the classy campaign HQ to the dirty streets
where 12-year-old hookers (young Jodie Foster, incredible) are
beaten up by their pimp (Harvey Keitel, amost unrecognizable).
Travis becomes more and more self-centered, destructive and mad
(the famous "You talking to me ?" scene is a powerful example of
it) and finally decides to act and to kill the ones that prevent
him from being happy with the girls of his life. Sony (4K
Remastered) Blu-ray Release Date: May 14th, 2013
Into the Night
BD - - Besides Ron Koslow’s deceptively
brilliant script, the two lead performances are outstanding.
Goldblum’s regular guy insomniac is fantastic. He’s so good,
it’s hard to believe Michelle Pfeiffer is even better as the
sort of mystery woman who takes over his life. Koslow never
gives pay-off scenes showing how Goldblum’s life has changed
because of the encounter because there’s just no time for it. A
pay-off scene would break the realism of the timeline Koslow and
Landis create. Into the Night’s not real time and doesn’t
attempt it. Blu-ray Release date: June 1st, 2016
Claire in Motion - Three weeks after Claire's husband
has mysteriously disappeared, the police have ended their
investigation and her son is beginning to grieve. The only
person who hasn't given up is Claire. Soon she discovers his
troubling secrets, including an alluring-yet-manipulative
graduate student with whom he had formed a close bond. As she
digs deeper, Claire begins to lose her grip on how well she
truly knew her husband, and questions her own identity in the
process. Claire In Motion twists the missing person thriller
into an emotional take on uncertainty and loss. DVD Release
Date: April 11th, 2017
Death Passage - A couple of Australians introduce three
American backpackers to the local legend of Lemon Tree Passage,
where the ghost of a motorcyclist warns young drivers to slow
down. After seeing the ghost firsthand, they uncover a
malevolent force that possesses the area, and threatens to wreck
havoc on the final days of their vacation. Isolated and ten
thousand miles from home, the tourists find themselves caught in
the clutches of an evil force much more heinous than that of
local myth. DVD Release Date: March 21st, 2017
Somewhere in the Middle - Four lovers collide into each
others' lives as one marriage morphs into several intertwining
affairs. SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE was born out of a year
long improvisational process in which the actors and director
mutually crafted an ensemble drama. Structured like a jigsaw
puzzle, no character fully grasps their current dilemma as
interwoven stories are retold from varying viewpoints. DVD
Release Date: February 14th, 2017 |
