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Torture Garden
BD - During
the '60s and '70s, when Britain's Hammer Studios was at the
global forefront of horror cinema, there was an independent
concern slicing a sanguine niche out of the market right in
Hammer's own backyard. The Shepperton-based Amicus Productions
was actually the brainchild of a pair of Yanks--producers Milton
Subotsky and Max Rosenberg. A trained eye was required to
distinguish their output from Hammer's, given the overlap of
talent employed on both sides of the camera, and Amicus' ability
to deliver shock fare on a par with the industry leader. An
earmark of the Amicus style was a preference for the anthology
format, and none of their films may be more exemplary than the
cult-favorite fright flick Torture Garden (1967).
Blu-ray Release date: October 30th, 2017
The Burning Bed
BD - It
came as an enormous shock to the cultural system when Farrah
Fawcett, pin-up supreme of the 1970s, smashed her Barbie Doll
image by playing the smashed-up wife of an abusive husband who
eventually murders him by setting fire to their bedroom as he
sleeps off another drunk. Blondes are supposed to have more fun,
right? Fawcett didn’t see it that way, and her choice to take on
this savage tale that would see her beauty hidden beneath
bruises, blood, and K-Mart clothing was a bold statement about
herself, her art, and perhaps even her view of domesticity. The
Texas belle herself married and divorced one time only and
endured a severe beating at the hands of Hollywood producer
James Orr in 1998 after spurning his proposal of marriage.
Francine Hughes, the character she plays in The Burning Bed,
must have haunted her thoughts in the wake of her own battering.
Blu-ray Release date: November 7th, 2017
The Mercenary
BD - During
the Mexican Revolution, Nero, the mercenary Sergei Cowalski, is
hired to transport silver to a mine in Texas, only to find that
Musante and his co-workers have taken control. Switching sides,
the hired gun finds himself teaching the rebel leader how to put
his revolutionary ideas into practise, but his idealistic
fervour is tested when the men's firepower gathers them a
personal fortune. Plenty of baroque touches in this spaghetti
Western, including Palance as Curly, a white-suited gay gunman.
Blu-ray Release date: November 7th, 2017
Driftwood
BD - Fascinating
and unusual movie about a young, orphaned girl found wandering
in the wilderness by an idealistic doctor, and taken back to be
cared for at his village, a hothouse of political intrigue where
the authorities refuse him full medical facilities, and where
the girl herself provokes outrage among the locals with her
outspoken honesty and strange, biblical morality. At times the
religious allegory is pushed a bit too far, and there's a
certain amount of sentimentality about a dog the girl finds. But
generally, it's an admirably dreamlike and often dark conjuring
up of the way the adult world is viewed by children, in its own
way almost as effective as Curse of the Cat People, made three
years earlier. Blu-ray Release date: November 21st, 2017
Nightkill
BD - Adulterous
lovers Kathy Atwell (Jaclyn Smith) and Steve Fuller (James Franciscus) share a steamy shower room clinch, while unbeknownst
to them a tape-recorder hidden somewhere in the house eavesdrops
on their every word. Kathy is unhappily married to Wendell
Atwell (Mike Connors), a business tycoon in Phoenix, Arizona who
seemingly can’t go five minutes without heaping abuse upon the
poor woman. However, her beauty and popularity earned through
charitable work with local orphans makes Kathy his prized
possession, so divorce is out of the question. To Kathy’s
horror, Steve poisons Wendell then convinces her to stash the
body in her freezer. His plan is to pick up a briefcase with $1
million dollars in dirty money that Wendell stashed in an
airport locker, whereupon he and Kathy will flee the country.
Blu-ray Release date: October 24th, 2017
Dawson City - Frozen Time
BD - This meditation on cinema’s past from
Decasia director Bill
Morrison pieces together the bizarre true history of a long-lost
collection of 533 nitrate film prints from the early 1900s.
Located just south of the Arctic Circle, Dawson City was settled
in 1896 and became the center of the Canadian Gold Rush that
brought 100,000 prospectors to the area. It was also the final
stop for a distribution chain that sent prints and newsreels to
the Yukon. The films were seldom, if ever, returned. The
now-famous Dawson City Collection was uncovered in 1978 when a
bulldozer working its way through a parking lot dug up a horde
of film cans. Morrison draws on these permafrost-protected, rare
silent films and newsreels, pairing them with archival footage,
interviews, historical photographs, and an enigmatic score by
Sigur Rós collaborator and composer Alex Somers. Dawson City:
Frozen Time depicts the unique history of this Canadian Gold
Rush town by chronicling the life cycle of a singular film
collection through its exile, burial, rediscovery, and
salvation. Blu-ray Release date: October 31st, 2017
Miracle Mile
BD -
Miracle Mile starts conventionally enough, with bashful
musician Anthony Edwards going ga-ga over waitress Mare
Winningham. After a pleasant if somewhat quirky day together,
Edwards and Winningham plan a tete-a-tete at the all-night
restaurant where the girl works. While preparing to call her on
a pay phone, Edwards intercepts a frantic call from a soldier
stationed at a Midwestern missile silo. The message: nuclear
warheads have been launched, and it's only 70 minutes to
Armageddon! This unsettling news casts severe doubts over the
future of Edwards' and Winningham's relationship. Arrow
Blu-ray Release date: October 16th, 2017
Seven Beauties
BD - Lina
Wertmüller's harrowing 1976 film stars Giancarlo Giannini as a
petty crook with seven unattractive sisters to support, and it
features a picaresque, World War II-era journey through a prison
asylum, army service, and a Nazi concentration camp. Wertmüller
is more indulgent in highbrow sadomasochism than she is real
profundity, but there's no denying that the film is powerful in
its story of subjugation and survival. A climactic scene in
which Giannini saves his skin at the camp by seducing its
disgusting female commandant is unnervingly honest. Giannini
became a '70s international icon partially on the basis of this
work. Blu-ray Release Date: September 19th, 2017
The Villainess
BD - Bloody
revenge is at the heart of this stylish, kinetic action-thriller
that gives a welcome shot of adrenaline to the classic femme
fatale story. Honed from childhood into a merciless killing
machine by a criminal organization, assassin Sook-hee is
recruited as a sleeper agent with the promise of freedom after
ten years of service - and she jumps at the chance for a normal
life. But soon enough, secrets from her past destroy everything
she s worked for, and now nobody can stand in her way as she
embarks on a roaring rampage of revenge.
Blu-ray Release
date: Release date: October 30th, 2017
Night Angel
BD - A
terrifying centuries-old evil has awakened in the form of the
wicked, voluptuous Lilith (Isa Anderson). Lilith uses her beauty
and her insatiable lust as a potent lifeforce which spreads
death and destruction to all who dare to succumb to her charms.
Posing as a cover girl for a fashion magazine, Lilith becomes
the object of insane desire for all who brave her seductive
gaze. Only true love can withstand her awesome powers and only
one man (Linden Ashby) is strong enough to test them in a
frightening test of will and death tango with Night Angel,
the mistress of hell. Blu-ray Release date: October 24th, 2017
The Indian Runner
BD -
The Indian Runner, Sean Penn's debut film as director (he
also wrote the script, based on the Bruce Springsteen song
"Highway Patrolman") is a brooding tale of two brothers -- one
peaceful and sedate, the other violent and aggressive -- whose
natures, left unchecked since they were children, are set to the
boiling point as they head toward middle-age. David Morse is the
quiet brother, Joe Roberts, who is a deputy sheriff in a small
town. His older brother Frank (Viggo Mortensen) shows up on
Joe's doorsteps, after a recent run-in with the police. Frank
tells Joe that he is coming back home to stay and that he has
given up his criminal life. His wife Maria (Valeria Golino) is
skeptical, but Joe tells her that he is prepared to help Frank
get his life back together. Frank has almost convinced himself
that his future holds real promise and he's ready to start a new
life with his pregnant girlfriend Dorothy (Patricia Arquette).
But, once again, Frank's violent temper explodes, and everyone's
plans for Frank's future crumble into rubble.
Blu-ray Release
date: October 24th, 2017
Le Plaisir
BD - Roving with
his dazzlingly mobile camera around the decadent ballrooms,
bucolic countryside retreats, urban bordellos, and painter's
studios of late nineteenth-century French life, Max Ophuls
brings his astonishing visual dexterity and storytelling bravura
to this triptych of tales by Guy de Maupassant about the limits
of spiritual and physical pleasure. Featuring a stunning cast of
French stars (including Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, and
Simone Simon), Le plaisir pinpoints the cruel ironies and
happy compromises of life with a charming and sophisticated
breeziness. Blu-ray Release Date: October 23rd, 2017
The Vikings
BD - Viking
half-brothers Douglas and Curtis fight it out for the throne of Northumbria. Plenty of pillaging, axe-throwing, hearty quaffing
of ale, storming of castles, heroic jumping into wolf pits, and
manly talk about the glories of entering Valhalla with sword in
hand. Handsomely shot by Jack Cardiff, and directed with muscle
and verve by Fleischer, this thoroughly entertaining historical
epic stands up to umpteen viewings. Blu-ray Release date:
October 16th, 2017
Z For Zachariah
BD - In the
wake of a nuclear war, a young woman survives on her own,
fearing she may actually be the proverbial last woman on earth,
until she discovers the most astonishing sight of her life:
another human being. A distraught scientist, he's nearly been
driven mad by radiation exposure and his desperate search for
others. A fragile, imperative strand of trust connects them. But
when a stranger enters the valley, their precarious bond begins
to unravel. Blu-ray Release date: October 20th, 2015
The Thing
BD - In remote
Antarctica, a group of American research scientists are
disturbed at their base camp by a helicopter shooting at a sled
dog. When they take in the dog, it brutally attacks both human
beings and canines in the camp and they discover that the beast
can assume the shape of its victims. A resourceful helicopter
pilot (Kurt Russell) and the camp doctor (Richard Dysart) lead
the camp crew in a desperate, gory battle against the vicious
creature before it picks them all off, one by one.
Blu-ray
Release Date: November 20th, 2017 |
