Hello!

We’ve got a raft of interesting disc announcements — some are for January, which not long ago was a calm month for new product.

↑  First up is a pack of winners from KL Studio Classics, a list that begins with several classic noirs: Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow, Alfred Werker’s He Walked by Night and a 4K of Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street. We’ll be looking close to judge improvements on earlier releases, although the announced extras — commentaries with Imogen Sara Smith, David Kalat, Alan K. Rode might be motive enough to jump in. Kino also has a 16th iteration of its ‘Dark Side’ noir series, with The Mystery of Marie Roget, Chicago Deadline and Iron Man.

Kino continues with Douglas Sirk’s Has Anybody Seen My Gal?, Robert Wise’s Run Silent, Run Deep, the ‘Dirty Dozen’ clone The Devil’s Brigade, and Hal Ashby’s Coming Home. The dependably entertaining Michael Schlesinger adds commentaries to reissues of The Road to Hong Kong (with Stan Taffel) and The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (with Mark Evanier).  →  Some of the discs appear to be Kino re-issues, adding commentaries, etc., to titles previously released without extras. Plus slip covers!

Jacques Deray’s unusual neo-noir The Outside Man  ←  arrives in two separate language versions. Joseph Sargent’s The Hell with Heroes (Rod Taylor!) is billed as a new remaster. Ditto for a disc set of TV’s Monk, The Complete Third Season.

And two more Kino 4K releases — the unfamiliar 1981 horror The Boogens, and the Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy Kindergarten Cop.

 

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Meanwhile, Severin Films continues to release quality remasters of some of the weirdest fantastique of the film sanglant et érotique. We’re about to review their new box of Peter Cushing Curiosities — like, I’ve only seen one of its titles. Severin is also bouncing more releases up to the 4K format. Not a month goes by that something strange isn’t uncovered in a vault — almost always uncut and from original printing elements.

I’m interested in the recent releases of Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte, Dellamore (4K) and Barry Mahon’s The Dead One.  Just out the door are two shockers we didn’t expect to see in the top-end format, Jess Franco’s Count Dracula with Christopher Lee, and the extreme gore entry Zombie Holocaust, aka Dr. Butcher, M.D..  ↑  These are high-end releases, loaded with extras — gore fans can chow down.

Much stranger, and showing Severin’s embrace of a different cinematic extreme, is their Blu-ray double bill of avant-garde Pere Portabella features. Cuadecec, vampir (1971) is a strange experimental documentary, which is a way of saying we don’t know what it is. Filmed on the set of Franco’s Count Dracula, it’s a free-form montage printed on hi-con stock that makes everything look like a 4th generation copy of a silent picture. Christopher Lee is present near the end, reading from Bram Stoker. Some of the BTS filming is quite fun, even when filtered through the endistancing images. We enjoy Jonathan Rosenbaum’s critique of Caudecec, but we can’t say we come away understanding more about the picture or its supposed comment on classic screen horror.

On the same disc is Pere Portabella’s Umbracle (1972), an even more absurd avant-garde piece combining a protest against Spanish Fascism with a scattershot treatise on cinema, with episodes as variable as an entire clown act, and Christoper Lee walking through Barcelona.

 

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And last but not least, tipped off by Gary Teetzel four days ago, Vinegar Syndrome floors us with an announcement of a 4K of Riccardo Freda’s The Horrible Dr. Hichcock. Ever since the early DVD days, we’ve been waiting for decent discs of the show. The nowhere-to-be-found title remained out of reach until just a few weeks ago, when the good people at Radiance came up with a sensational disc — only available in Region B.

Last Tuesday we reported that a Region A disc of The Whip and The Body had just been announced, not long after a Region B release had frustrated U.S. collectors. Just for fun I joked that I wished Hichcock was on the way in Region A. Not two hours later came the Vinegar Syndrome announcement of the 4K.

Gary T. marveled at my seeming ability to make dreams come true with just a frivolous CineSavant announcement. He immediately suggested that I continue with wish-fulfillment jokes — ‘Gee, I sure hope we get a Region A for London After Midnight, the uncut  The Magnificent Ambersons, an uncensored  Blood and Roses,’ etc’

Heck, we’re optimists.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson