Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF September 24th, 2018

Tiervâ!, Another full week with Blu-ray reviews of packages by Arrow, Warner Archive, Vinegar Syndrome, VCI, Kino Lorber, Shout! Factory, Artificial Eye, Second Sight of films directed by Ted Post, Sidney Lumet, Michael Crichton, Joaquim Pedro De Andrade, John Turturro, Buzz Kulik, William Castle, Irwin Allen, Edward Bernds, Daniel Kokotajlo, Bert I. Gordon and others. Our Calendar has another update of films-to-Blu-ray, including films by Orson Welles, Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., Hirokazu Koreeda, Terence Fisher, Spike Lee, Curtis Harrington, Tobe Hooper, Hayao Miyazaki, John Carpenter, Joe Dante, Gaspar Noé and more. We have our Feature Blu-ray is posted for SEPTEMBER Enjoy!!

LISTING PAGES:

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 SEPTEMBER!

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ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): RThere are some less-typical entries this month. I was impressed with Kino's Blu-ray of Joaquim Pedro De Andrade: The Complete Films - a wonderful introduction to Cinema Novo. Andrade's films are frequently allegorical, funny, educational, and inventive in the backdrop of Brazil's burgeoning national ethos in the 60's and 70's. There is some impressive cinematography showcased evocatively by Kino's restored Blu-ray transfer. What a great surprise. I also found some value in VCI's Television's Lost Classics Volume One Blu-ray with 2 one-hour dramatic programs that feature John Cassavetes and are directed by Sidney Lumet and Buzz Kulik - check out the 'live' commercials. For a third, unusual choice; the documentary D.O.A. - A Right of Passage - Second Sight's Blu-ray impressively captures some dying moments of the punk subculture that was clinging to its aggressive distaste for the mainstream. It's a fascinating cultural journey for anyone - but will have an essential appeal for punk rock, and especially Sex Pistols, fans. Daniel Kokotajlo's Apostasy is a remarkable debut - an excellent dour but layered film on Blu-ray by Artificial Eye. I really enjoyed John Turturro's Fading Gigolo with Woody Allen. A subtly poignant film with themes of sex, shallowness and fear of loneliness on, reasonably-priced, Blu-ray, pretty much, everywhere. I'm a huge fan of 50s-60s science-fiction schlock and Warner Archive Blu-ray bring us both Queen of Outer Space with Zsa Zsa Gabor in a pure camp classic and Bert I. Gordon's sloppy but fascinating The Cyclops filled with transparent 'monster' effects but plenty of late 50's charm. We have two Joan Crawford popcorner's in the Grande Dame Guignol or 'hagsploitation' genre - both directed by William Castle; Straight-Jacket and I Saw What You Did - both on Shout! Factory Blu-ray. More from Warner Archive are Michael Crichton's seductively curious hi-tech sci-fi Looker and Irwin Allen's bottom-of-the-barrel, star-studded, The Swarm - yes, the bees are out to get us. After multiple viewings of Ted Post's The Baby - now on stacked - region FREE - Arrow Blu-ray, I am finally starting to warm to this strange horror - and Ruth Roman's scebes are only a part of that appreciation. Body Melt deserves some love - it has an intelligence behind the realization with suburban parodies, over-the-top gore-effects, a sneaking homage to exploitation - on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. I also I enjoyed 'The House on Tombstone Hill' - an over-the-top, low budget effort, with heapings of obviousness via extensive make-up and blood-related effects. There's some entertainment there - again on Region FREE Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome. The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday shouldn't be the last mention this week - it's a very well made western-comedy with Lee Marvin, Oliver Reed, Robert Culp, Elizabeth Ashley, Strother Martin, Sylvia Miles etc. Thanks for bringing it to Blu-ray Kino! DVDs next week...

"Say, is this the moving-picture ship?"
"The Venture? Yeah. Are you goin' on this crazy voyage?" - opening to 1933's King Kong

Buy a friend a coffee this month. Make DVDBeaver the friend, And do it monthly. Please?

Fading Gigolo BD - In a scheme to make a quick couple of bucks, a New York bookstore owner (Woody Allen) convinces his flower-arranger friend (John Turturro) that a fortune could be made by becoming a professional gigolo, showing a good time to a number of beautiful and wealthy yet lonely local middle-aged women. Blu-ray Release Date: April 2nd, 2016

The Swarm BD - While investigating the bee-sting deaths of Air Force personnel at a missile base near Houston, Texas, an entomologist realizes that the dreaded African killer bees--long expected by scientists--have arrived in the United States. The hallucination-inducing bees derail a commuter train and destroy a nuclear power plant, killing hundreds of people as scientists race against the clock to develop an antitoxin to stop the devastation of The Swarm. Blu-ray Release Date: September 25th, 2018

The Cyclops BD - Lovely Susan Winter organizes an expedition deep into the wilds of Mexico. She hopes to find her aviator fiancé, lost after his plane crashed. Instead she and her three male companions find behemoth bugs, giant battling lizards, mountains practically glowing with uranium, and a 25-foot-tall human beast with a single eye, a melted-cheese-sandwich face and a very scary attitude. If you like nifty ’50s horror, The Cyclops is the kind of over-the-top frightfest that’ll have you spilling your popcorn. Blu-ray Release Date: September 25th, 2018

D.O.A. - A Right of Passage BD - A ground-breaking classic ''rockumentary'' about the origin of punk rock. Centered around the Sex Pistols 1978 tour of the United States which ended with the group breaking up, the tour was the only one the Pistols played in the United States. Director Lech Kowalski (East of Paradise) followed the band with handheld cameras through the clubs and bars of their seven-city U.S. tour. Mixing this with footage of other contemporary bands, trends in the fashion capitals and punks of all shapes and colors, Kowalski captured a grainy, stained snapshot of the punk movement at its peak (which includes the now famous footage of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen in bed) along with rare interview and concert footage of the late seventies punk rock music scene. Blu-ray Release Date: September 10th, 2018

Apostasy BD - As devout Jehovah's Witnesses, sisters Alex and Luisa and their mother, Ivanna, are united in The Truth. Alex looks up to her confident older sister, while striving to follow in Ivanna's footsteps as a ‘good Witness'. But when Luisa starts to question the advice of the Elders, she makes a life-altering transgression that threatens to expel her from the congregation. Unless Ivanna and Alex can persuade her to return, they must shun her completely. This challenge becomes more painful when their family is faced with another heartbreaking test of faith. Written and directed by Daniel Kokotajlo, a former Jehovah’s Witness, Apostasy is a remarkable debut film, providing rare authenticity and insight into faith, family, duty and love. Blu-ray Release Date: September 17th, 2018

Looker BD - A plastic surgeon (Albert Finney) gets suspicious when models he has operated on begin to die in mysterious ways. With the help of Cindy (Susan Dey), the next in line to be killed, he traces the deaths to a mysterious corporation which develops new technologies. Blu-ray Release Date: September 18th, 2018

Queen of Outer Space BD - Breaking news from space! The bad: An intrepid captain and his men have landed on a planet where males are outlawed. The good: Some women there are eager to break the law! Queen of Outer Space is a milestone of movie camp. Eric Fleming plays the granite-jawed leader who shares with his crew the crime of maleness. That's just the start of their troubles. The man-hating Venusian Queen (Laurie Mitchell) aims to destroy Earth once a Beta Disintegrator is operational. But a gossamer-gowned scientist (Zsa Zsa Gabor) and her curvy cohorts eye the men, and they like what they see. Blu-ray Release Date: September 25th, 2018

Joaquim Pedro De Andrade: The Complete Films BD - Hailing from a culturally prominent family in Rio de Janeiro, Andrade grew up in close contact with some of the country’s greatest artists, writers, and scholars. Abandoning his university education to pursue filmmaking, he would soon find himself at the heart of the proliferation of formally and politically audacious filmmaking that comprised Cinema Novo. Like those of his fellow Cinema Novo-associated filmmakers, such as Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Leon Hirszman, Ruy Guerra, and many others, Andrade’s films combined a sophisticated, modernist formal approach with an uncompromisingly political, often outrageous, and uniquely Brazilian sensibility that makes his work every bit as vital today as it was in the 1960s and 70s. Blu-ray Release Date: September 25th, 2018

I Saw What You Did BD - With true William Castle-style flamboyance the advertisements for I Saw What You Did intrigued non-etymologically inclined audiences by warning them that this suspenseful thriller was about uxoricide. He then had some of the theaters where the film was shown equipped with seat belts so frightened audience members wouldn't flee the theater in a panic. It was a spooky film, but wasn't all that scary. The tale begins upon a dark and foggy night as two teenage girls, bored with their baby-sitting job, decide to have a little fun and make some prank phonecalls. Blu-ray Release Date: May 17th, 2016

Straight-Jacket BD - Film legend Joan Crawford gives a terrific performance in this chiller from pioneer horror movie producer William Castle. Crawford plays Lucy Harbin, a woman who goes berserk when she finds her husband in bed with another woman. With her three-year-old daughter accidentally witnessing the grisly act, Lucy axes the couple to death. She spends twenty years in a mental institution for the double murder. After she is released, she moves in with her brother (Leif Erickson), his wife and her own daughter (Diane Baker), now twenty-three. Her nightmare is over ... or is it? Blu-ray Release Date: August 21st, 2018

The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday BD - They weren’t forgotten by history… they were left out on purpose! Screen legend Lee Marvin is Great Scout, Kay Lenz is Cathouse Thursday and with a little help from their friends (and enemies), including Oliver Reed, Robert Culp, Sylvia Miles, Strother Martin and Elizabeth Ashley, they’re out to take over the lusty world of modern Colorado in 1908. In this ribald adventure, Marvin (as a leathery frontier scout) and Reed (as his half-breed partner) try to recover $60,000 stolen by their arch enemy Culp. Blu-ray Release Date: September 25th, 2018

Television's Lost Classics Volume One BD - This is a special series of lost classic programs from the Golden Age of TV. The series has been restored by SabuCat Productions from the best archival film elements available in high definition, some of the programs have not been seen since they were originally broadcast. Volume One features 2 one-hour dramatic programs that feature John Cassavetes. Blu-ray Release Date: September 11th, 2018

The House on Tombstone Hill BD - A group of friends have decided to repair and renovate an old house located in the middle of nowhere in the hope of turning it into their 'cool' crash pad. But shortly after arriving, a strange and seemingly senile old woman is found to be lurking around the premises. Uncertain of her intentions, the group of trendy homesteaders go about their business but soon find themselves up against a very unexpected geriatric evil, hell-bent on keeping them as permanent residents in 'her' house, dispatching them in a series of creatively gruesome ways. Blu-ray Release Date: September 25th, 2018

Body Melt BD - Residents of the placid suburban cul-de-sac of Pebbles Court have started receiving unexpected samples of a new and experimental vitamin, manufactured by a strange health spa named Vimuville. However, shortly after adding the mysterious green powder to their diets, users begin to experience strange and increasingly macabre visions, and worse, their bodies start to mutate, ooze, and eventually melt! As visits from the coroner to the sleepy street become a nearly daily experience, Detective Sam Phillips becomes increasingly suspicious of the goings on at Vimuville... Blu-ray Release Date: September 25th, 2018

The Baby BD - Still traumatized by the loss of her husband, well-meaning social worker Ann Gentry (Anjanette Comer) throws herself into her latest assignment: the case of Baby , a 21-year-old man with the mind of an infant who crawls, cries and has yet to make it out of nappies. But Baby's family the tyrannical Mama Wadsworth (Ruth Roman) and her two demented daughters aren't the only ones with a warped conception of familial relations, and the full horror only begins when Ann sets her sights on liberating the drooling man-child... and in so doing unleashes the wrath of the Wadsworth women. Arrow Blu-ray Release Date: September 24th-25th, 2018
 

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