Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF April 22nd, 2019

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Hyvää päivää! Another decent mixture of cinema reviewed on Blu-ray this week by Criterion, Masters of Cinema, Kino, Shout! Factory, Vinegar Syndrome... of films directed by William Wyler, Erik Blomberg, Juan Antonio Bardem, Virgil W. Vogel, Joseph Pevney , William Girdler, Gordon Hessler and others. Our Calendar has new updates of films-to-Blu-ray, including July Criterions work by Alan J. Pakula, Spike Lee, Marcel Pagnol, Agnieszka Holland, Josef von Sternberg, Buster Keaton, Claude Lanzmann, Blake Edwards, Jack Arnold, John Woo, Jean-Luc Godard, Sam Peckinpah, Joseph Losey, Chan-wook Park, Delbert Mann, Daniel Mann, Philip Kaufman, Mitchell Leisen, Nathan Juran and more. We also have our Feature Blu-ray posted for APRIL Enjoy!!

LISTING PAGES:

Cinema of Japan, 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-ray chosen for the Month of APRIL!

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ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): William Wyler's The Heiress on Criterion Blu-ray (available in Regions 'A' + 'B') gets top spot this week - Oscar-winning de Havilland's portrayal of a plain-jane spinster who comes to the painful realization that her suitor's intentions are more mercenary than romantic is spine-chilling - even more brilliant in restored 4K HD with over 1.5 hour's worth of extras. A must own. Erik Blomberg's 1952 The White Reindeer is a masterful vampiric fairy-tale set amongst the starkly beautiful fells of Finnish Lapland - now on Blu-ray from the Masters of Cinema in the UK. Pure Gold. Giallo aficionados will rejoice at Juan Antonio Bardem's The Corruption of Chris Miller with Jean Seberg has themes involving murder, disappearance and Lesbianism. An immensely desirable Blu-ray package from Vinegar Syndrome. The Strange Door has an atmosphere soaked with Gothic-era pubs, townsfolk chasing ne'er-do-wells with torches, a creepy mansion with a dank, shadowy, torture-chamber, basement... and it has Charles Laughton and a crouching, wild-eyed, Boris Karloff. The Kino Blu-ray offers a new commentary if you require further encouragement. Infamous The Manitou has a new 4K-restored Shout! Factory Blu-ray with a full bitrate - but it's seems apparent that nothing can save this film from its fate - a bizarre 'campy' effort that only devout Tony Curtis fans and the horror movie's eccentric niche could appreciate. Scream and Scream Again features three icons of the horror genre: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing involved in a bizarre “plot” and a new transfer to Blu-ray from Kino and Tim Lucas does a new commentary which bumps the status significantly. The Land Unknown gets a new transfer to Blu-ray from Kino - a late 50's sci-fi adventure filled with Mesozoic era monsters! Lastly, Grave of the Vampire - a funky vampire-entry on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory. It amounts to a weak horror that doesn't live up to its appealing genre title...

"If anybody doubts my loyalty to my country, I'll punch him in the nose, and I don't care how old he is. I made over forty Westerns. I used to lie awake nights trying to think up new ways of getting on and off a horse. It's a miserable life in Hollywood." William Wyler

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The White Reindeer BD - A newly-married young woman, Pirita (Mirjami Kuosmanen), becomes frustrated and lonely as her husband, a reindeer herder for a small Arctic village, spends much of his time away from home in devotion to his work. Desperate for affection, she visits a shaman who offers a potion that makes her an irresistible object of desire, but there is a terrible cost. Pirita becomes a bloodthirsty shapeshifter who lures men out into the barren wilderness where she consumes them. Blu-ray Release Date: April 8th, 2019

The Corruption of Chris Miller BD - Chris Miller (former Spanish child star, Marisol) lives with her stepmother Ruth (Jean Seberg) in a large secluded mansion in the countryside. Both women have been traumatized by the mysterious disappearance of Chris' father but their isolation is soon interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious young drifter, Barney (Barry Stokes), who they take on as a handyman. All the while, an unknown scythe wielding killer has been stalking the area, leaving an ever growing body count, and it's not long before the women grow increasingly suspicious of Barney... Blu-ray Release Date: April 30th, 2019

Scream and Scream Again BD - Kind of a horror movie, kind of an espionage film, and in some sense a piece of science fiction, Scream and Scream Again (1970) features turns by three icons of the horror genre: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing. All are involved in a wild “plot” connecting Great Britain to some unnamed totalitarian state where torture, murder, and out-of-control “experiments” are the order of the day. Directed by Gordon Hessler from a screenplay by Christopher Wicking, with cinematography by the worthy John Coquillon. Kino Blu-ray Release date: April 23rd, 2019

Grave of the Vampire BD - This dark, violent British production stars Michael Pataki as a brutish vampire apparently lacking in Dracula's powers of seduction, since he finds it necessary to brutally rape a young woman (Kitty Vallacher) in order to sire a child. The product of this unholy mating is a half-human, half-vampire baby boy, bottle-fed on the blood of his now-insane mother (a truly sickening sight) until her eventual death from anemia. Later as a young man, the son (William Smith) is able to spend short periods in daylight, and his bloodlust is considerably lesser than that of his father. Blu-ray Release Date: April 16th, 2019

The Heiress BD - When shy, emotionally fragile Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland, in a heartbreaking, Oscar-winning turn), the daughter of a wealthy New York doctor, begins to receive calls from the handsome spendthrift Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), she becomes possessed by the promise of romance. Are his smoldering professions of love sincere, as she believes they are? Or is Catherine’s calculating father (Ralph Richardson) correct in judging Morris a venal fortune seeker? A graceful drawing-room drama boasting Academy Award–winning costume design by Edith Head, The Heiress is also a piercing character study riven by emotional uncertainty and lacerating cruelty, in a triumph of classic Hollywood filmmaking at its most psychologically nuanced. Blu-ray Release Date: May 7th, 2019

The Manitou BD - What surgeons thought to be a tumor growing on the neck of patient Karen Tandy (Susan Strasberg) is actually a fetus growing at an abnormally accelerated rate. But when Karen reaches out to former lover and phony psychic Harry Erskine (Tony Curtis), she discovers that she is possessed by the reincarnation of a 400-year-old Native American demon. Now with the help of a modern-day medicine man (Michael Ansara), Erskine must survive this ancient evil’s rampage of shocking violence and forever destroy the enraged beast known as The Manitou. Blu-ray Release Date: April 16th, 2019

The Strange Door BD - Screen legends Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff haunt the dungeons of a medieval château in this horrific adaptation of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson story. Laughton, the Sire de Maletroit, is an evil French nobleman, so obsessed with hatred of his own brother that he imprisons him in the castle dungeon. The Sire also tries to destroy the life of his brother’s daughter by forcing her to marry a rogue, but his plans are upset when they fall in love. Aided by Voltan (Karloff), an abused servant, the lovers attempt to escape, but the Sire imprisons them in a cell with closing walls that may spell violent deaths for the young lovers. Blu-ray Release Date: April 23rd, 2019

The Land Unknown BD - Superior special effects make this fantasy adventure a respectable endeavor. Mahoney heads an expedition to the Antarctic, but his helicopter is damaged when it collides with a giant flying bird. The group is forced to land in a place inhabited by creatures from the Mesozoic Era. Also stranded there is Brandon, a scientist from an expedition made 10 years earlier. He has gone insane during his stay, but has somehow managed to survive. Kino Blu-ray Release date: April 23rd, 2019
 

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