Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF October 30th, 2017

Estou sim? Massive week! with Blu-ray reviews of packages by Indicator, Kino Lorber, Warner Archive, Eureka, Arrow, Olive, Twilight Time, of films by Federico Fellini, Blake Edwards, Raoul Walsh, Hoon-jung Park, Kinji Fukasaku, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Ishirô Honda, Terence Fisher, Michael Carreras and others!. Our Calendar has updates of films-to-Blu-ray, including works by Ingmar Bergman, Anthony Mann, Roy Ward Baker, Billy Wilder,David Lynch,Delmer Daves, Kon Ichikawa, Wes Anderson, Bryan Forbes, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, James Ivory, Mario Bava, Wim Wenders, Cheh Chang, Ted Post, Jean Cocteau, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Tom McLoughlin, S. Craig Zahler, Christopher Nolan, Henry Hathaway and more. We have another new listing page (Nature Run Amok) and our Feature Blu-ray and DVD is posted for OCTOBER plus a new CONTEST with a KINO Blu-ray prize. Enjoy!!

LISTING PAGES:

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)

LATEST ARTICLES: Movies From... the End of the World,  The Beauties of Star Trek (TOS)

DVDBeaver has their own store at Movie Zyng - check it out! Many have $1 shipping - even overseas!

Feature Blu-ray and DVD chosen for the Month of SEPTEMBER!

FOLLOW US on TWITTER! (where we post important reviews, contests - prizes, polls, calendar updates - plus much more...)

(Week of) October 30th, CONTEST  identify the still HERE to win a prize of a KINO Blu-ray of The Indian Runner Best of luck!

If there are DVD or Blu-ray titles you'd like us to cover - please feel free to recommend!

Gary at 2ze dot com

Fanatic BD - One of the best of Hammer's psychological thrillers, mainly thanks to Richard Matheson's ingenious and terrifying script (adapted from a novel by Anne Blaisdell) about a religious crank who gradually becomes homicidal. There are plenty of Psycho rip-offs - notably at the climax - but Tallulah Bankhead is great in the title role, and for once the basis of the plot seems disturbingly credible. Admittedly Narizzano (who made the awful Georgy Girl) has little to offer in the way of direction, but then Matheson's scripts tend to be able to look after themselves. Blu-ray Release Date: October 30th, 2017

Maniac BD - The story tells of vacationing American artist Jeff Farrell who becomes romantically involved with an older woman named Eve Beynat, in southern France, while harboring some attraction for her teenage stepdaughter Annette. Eve's husband/Annette's father Georges is in an asylum for, four years ago, using a blowtorch to kill a man who had raped Annette. Believing it will help make Eve his for life, Jeff agrees to assist her in springing Georges from the asylum. Of course, Eve has a completely different agenda in mind. Inspector Etienne sets up a plot to help trap the real killer and the climactic scenes are set at Les Baux-de-Provence in the huge stone galleries dug into the rock of the Val-d'Enfer on the road to Maillane. Indicator Blu-ray Release Date: October 30th, 2017

The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb BD - Greedy American Alexander King (Fred Clark) makes an excursion to Egypt, where he hopes that archaeologist Sir Giles Dalrymple (Jack Gwillim) and young assistant John Bray (Ronald Howard) can help him unearth ancient treasures. But they eventually run into Adam Beauchamp (Terence Morgan), an accursed man with a long family history of hauntings. Adam's mere presence is enough to awaken mummy Ra-Antef (Dickie Owen), putting the entire expedition in grave danger. Indicator Blu-ray Release Date: October 30th, 2017

The Gorgon BD - Many petrified corpses are found in the village of Vandorf in 1910. When Bruno Heitz, an artist, is found hanging from a tree following the death of his girl friend, he is assumed to be the murderer. Attempting to clear his son's name, Professor Heitz visits Vandorf, where he encounters the hostility of Police Chief Kanof, brain surgeon Namaroff, and the villagers themselves, who set his lodgings ablaze. In the ruins of Castle Borski the professor confronts Megaera, the legendary gorgon. Her gaze gradually turns him to stone, but he notifies his elder son, Paul. Accompanied by his mentor, Professor Meister, Paul arrives in Vandorf. When Namaroff refuses to see him, Meister's suspicions are aroused. Blu-ray Release Date: October 30th, 2017

King Kong Escapes BD - It’s King Kong to the rescue when a giant robot threatens to destroy Tokyo in the gripping King Kong Escapes! The action begins when the conniving Dr. Who builds a robot Kong in order to retrieve a highly radioactive element for his mysterious benefactor, Madame X. When the robot proves less than reliable, the devious duo scheme to kidnap the real Kong from his remote island home of Mondo. Interfering with their plans are the heroic trio of U.S. Cmdr. Carl Nelson, Lt. Jiro Nomura, and Kong's current crush, Lt. Susan Miller. It's up to them to outwit the greedy ape-nappers in this sci-fi adventure that takes Kong to unprecedented heights of excitement. Blu-ray Release Date: Release date: April 1st, 2014

The Pirates of Blood River BD - Hammer Studios goes quasi-historical with The Pirates of Blood River (1962), with Kerwin Mathews starring as a Huguenot outcast taken up by a bloody band of pirates led by the elegant Frenchman, Captain LaRoche, incarnated by the great Christopher Lee. Oliver Reed, Glenn Corbett, Michael Ripper, and Peter Arne co-star; other Hammer regulars include director John Gilling and cinematographer Arthur Grant. Blu-ray Release Date: October, 2017

The Illustrated Man BD - A much maligned film, loosely derived from Ray Bradbury's collection of short stories and spinning out a fascinating triangle relationship which ranges disconcertingly through past, present and future, and in which the three participants never meet on the same time plane. A young hitchhiker (Drivas) encounters a stranger on the road (Steiger) whose skin is covered with fantastic tattoos which foretell the future. They were done, he says, by a witch-woman (Bloom) who disappeared 'back into the future', leaving him to roam the earth like the Wandering Jew in quest of vengeance against the woman who made him an outcast. Blu-ray Release Date: October 10th, 2017

Return of the Ape Man BD - Directed by Philip Rosen (Murder by Invitation), Return of the Ape Man stars Lugosi as Professor Dexter, the doctor who put the mad in mad scientist. On the verge of restoring a recently unearthed simian from its frozen sleep, Dexter’s plans for the apesicle will have chilling consequences when he sets about transplanting a human brain into his frozen find. With unwitting (and unwilling) help from fellow scientist Professor Gilmore (Carradine), Dexter hopes to unravel the mystery of the “missing link.” Blu-ray Release Date: October 31st, 2017

The Party BD - Enter Hrundi V. Bakshi. Perhaps the worlds worst actor. An incompetent over polite Indian bit-player, who tries to make a living in Hollywood, and who considers extreme overacting dramatic punctuation. By accident he gets invited to a fancy Hollywood party by the producer, as the studio head writes his name on the guest list, instead of on the “never to work in Hollywood again” list. That’s the setup for “The Party”, a film that divides both fans of Blake Edwards and fans of Peter Sellers, but remains one of the most unique comedies ever made and one of the major cult movies. Blu-ray Release Date: October 16th, 2017

21 Grams BD - It’s a technique founded in the work of Jean-Luc Godard and his fellow European New Wave auteurs, who used experimental narrative structures to highlight the essential artifice of film and unsettle the viewer. But with 21 Grams, Amores Perros director Alejandro González Iñárritu and co-screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga have made a quantum leap, using a fragmented storytelling technique to involve, intrigue and, crucially, move the audience. Universal Blu-ray Release Date: October 31st, 2017

Manina, The Lighthouse-Keeper's Daughter BD - A Parisian student, Gérard Morere, sets off to recover a lost treasure contained in a sunken Phoenician ship near an island off the coast of Corsica. With funds supplied by his fellow students, Gérard convinces a smuggler named Eric (played by Jess Franco favourite Howard Vernon) to be his transportation. Whilst diving for the treasure off the picturesque Lavezzi islands, Gérard gets to know Manina (Brigitte Bardot), the attractive daughter of the local lighthouse keeper... Blu-ray Release Date: November 13th, 2017

The Voice of the Moon BD - The elfin, irrepressible and very popular Italian comic Roberto Benigni and the similarly popular Paolo Villaggio star in this, the last of celebrated director Federico Fellini's films. The film's dreamlike story follows the meanderings of the moon-struck (or lunatic) Ivo Salvini (Benigni). As it opens, Salvini is out in a local wood near his village, appreciating nature, when he spies a group of men standing around looking intently at something. They are watching the window of a house where a portly woman is putting on a striptease for their pleasure. While he watches this, he has a memory of his grandmother. One adventure follows another, but Salvini is never crushed by events which would leave anyone less in love with life in the madhouse - because he is already slightly mad. Blu-ray Release Date: October 30th-31st, 2017

The Green Slime BD - After a perilous mission to a huge asteroid, a crew returns to its space station, unaware a bit of ooze from the asteroid clings to a crewman’s uniform. The green goop grows – into murderous, tentacled monsters. And as station members fight to live, gunk from the monsters’ wounds turns into more monsters! That’s the story. Now enjoy as our heroes fight to preserve Earth and, unintentionally, our own senses of humor with a movie that Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called “one of the funniest made-in-Japan sci-fi monster movies ever.” Kinji Fukasaku, whose later work was championed by Quentin Tarantino, directs. The world would be a far more bleak and joyless place without marvels like The Green Slime. Blu-ray Release Date: October 10th, 2017

Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster BD - When Ryota's brother Yata disappears at sea, the intrepid youth and his friends join forces with a slightly trustworthy bank robber, steal a boat and go after him! Of course, there's the little problem that Yata may be lost on a mysterious island where the evil terrorist organization Red Bamboo has enslaved natives to make heavy water for nefarious purposes. And that means dealing with the island's monstrous, 164 feet tall guardian Ebirah, as well as Red Bamboo's arsenal of super advanced weaponry. On the plus side, help may be at hand in the form of a nubile island girl, two tiny fairies, their giant protector Mothra and the big G himself, the mighty Godzilla. Surviving the results of all that "assistance" may not be guaranteed, but Red Bamboo will never want to tangle with teenagers AND Godzilla at the same time again! Take a South Seas cruise to non-stop mayhem and giant monster destruction with EBIRAH- HORROR OF THE DEEP! Blu-ray Release Date: May 6th, 2014

The Man Who Died Twice BD - After her husband, T. J. Brennon, the owner of the Blue Swan nightclub, is killed in an auto accident, Lynn Brennon returns home from the club one night and sees three men struggling on the balcony of her apartment. After one man pushes a second man over the railing and shoots the other, he runs up the fire escape to the roof and escapes. Meanwhile, two hired killers from Chicago, Hart and Santoni, check in to a local hotel and look up Brennon's address in the phone book. The men killed at the Brennon apartment were narcotics agents searching for heroin Blu-ray Release Date: November 14th, 2017

The Tiger BD - In 1925 during the Japanese occupation, retired top hunter Chun Man Deok (Choi Min Sik) moves to a hut in a mountain with his son Seok (Sung Yu Bin). Obsessed with tiger skins, Japanese government official Maejono (Osugi Ren) decides to kill all the tigers in the country. The extermination is also an act to destroy Joseon's morale since tigers are the symbol of the country's national spirit. However, their plan doesn't go as well as expected because the remaining tiger is still missing. Joined by Seok, Gu Kyung (Jung Man Sik), the leader of the Joseon hunters ruled by the Japanese army, is assigned to find that tiger but it won't be an easy task because Chun Man Deok is determined to protect the last tiger of Joseon. Eureka Blu-ray Release Date: November 6th, 2017

Fragment of Fear BD - This chilling mystery begins when Lucy Dawson (Flora Robson) is found strangled in her apartment. Her nephew Tim (David Hemmings) is the former-drug-addict-turned-successful-author who wrote a book about his experiences. When Tim looks into his aunt's death, people give sketchy answers and the police offer little help. Apparently they think his pleas are simply a drug-addict's ravings. As he investigates he begins to find himself plagued by threatening phone calls, and his own paranoia. The pressure begins mounting until at last he suffers a complete breakdown. As a result, the murder is never solved. Blu-ray Release Date: October 30th, 2017

High Sierra BD - Widely acknowledged as one of the gangster pictures that paved the way for the style and moral complexities of film noir, High Sierra (1941) is the story of Roy "Mad Dog" Earle, a crook sprung from prison to perform a crucial heist. Saddled with inexperienced accomplices (played by character actors Alan Curtis and Arthur Kennedy, a Tony Award winner for his role in the original Death of a Salesman) and a dime-a-dance girl who falls for him (Ida Lupino, who would later become a noted director), Earle awaits instructions at a mountain cabin, planning to go straight after this last robbery. He befriends the family of a lame girl (Joan Leslie) and pays for her operation, orbiting the "pure" life he desires. Starring as the surly tough guy with a decent heart was the breakthrough vehicle for Humphrey Bogart who took the role after George Raft, unwilling to "die at the end", refused it. Blu-ray Release Date: November 17th, 2016

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