Hello!

The disc companies have apparently spent their quiet Covid days negotiating for desirable titles. I listed some attention-grabbers last time around, only to be sent another stack of exciting announcements this week.

First up, Severin Films has remastered Barbara Steele’s final Eurohorror film An Angel for Satan, a moody B&W show in which she again plays two personalities. This is the movie that James Ursini and I first saw on a totally mangled Italian VHS tape with no subtitles … and barely understood what was going on. It will be good to have it in both languages — and its arrival augurs well for ALL vintage Italo horror and fantasy to be remastered. Severin’s promo trailer demonstrates the transfer quality. It’s due right before Halloween, on October 26.

Then, Kino Lorber Studio Classics has released their full schedule of Blu-rays for the last two months of 2021. Almost all are new remasters, most by Kino itself. All I can do is name twenty or so titles that immediately appeal, that I’ll definitely want to review:

November:

The Secret of the Blue Room (1933), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), The Mad Doctor (1941), The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946), Homebodies (Larry Yust, 1974), The Old Fashioned Way (W.C. Fields, 1934), It’s a Gift (W.C. Fields, 1934), The Bank Dick W.C. Fields, (1940), The Accused (William Dieterle, 1949), Night Has a Thousand Eyes (John Farrow, 1948), Among the Living (Stuart Heisler, 1941), Deported (Robert Siodmak, 1950), Invasion of the Body Snatchers 4K (Philip Kaufman, 1978), To Hell and Back (Audie Murphy, 1955), Jet Pilot (Josef von Sternberg, 1957), Freud aka The Secret Passion (John Huston, 1962).

December:

Get Crazy Special Edition (Allan Arkush!, 1983), Rich and Strange (Hitchcock, 1931), Number Seventeen (Hitchcock, 1932), Broken Lullaby (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932), Violent City aka The Family (Sergio Sollima, 1970), The Brass Bottle (Harry Keller, 1964), The Long Goodbye remaster (Robert Altman, 1973).

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson