Arrow Video US - July 2020 Release Schedule

New from Arrow Video US and Arrow Academy US ZOMBIE FOR SALE [Blu-ray] (7/7) BLACK RAINBOW [Blu-ray] (7/7) INFERNO OF TORTURE [Blu-ray] (7/7) HIROSHIMA [Blu-ray] (7/14) BLOODSTONE [Blu-ray] (7/21) LIFE IS A LONG QUIET RIVER [Blu-ray] (7/21) via MVD Entertainment Group

Arrow's July Lineup Includes Underseen Classics and Award Winners! Arrow continues to bring the fire this summer with 6 new July releases that offer a little something for everyone. Korean zombie comedy? Arrow has it. Supernatural British thriller? You bet! Indian-American action-adventure? Yep! Arrow starts slinging the heat on July 7th with three titles starting with Zombie for Sale. This zom-com from first-time Korean director Lee Min-jae is the story of a giant pharmaceutical company's experiment gone wrong. The result? A revitalised zombie with the power of youthful life. This hilarious release includes a Q&A with Min-jae, audio commentary, and more. Also hitting stands on July 7th is the supernatural thriller Black Rainbow from legendary British director Mike Hodges. Rosanna Arquette stars as a medium that witnesses a hitman killing a whistleblower in her latest vision. The hitman becomes aware of this and places the medium on his list. This release features a brand new restoration approved by Hodges. The final July 7th release is Inferno of Torture. This film from the "King of Cult," Teruo Ishii is a story centered on the high demand for tattooed geisha and the rival tattoo artists that wage war for their bodies. This release includes an audio commentary with Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes. On July 14th, Arrow Academy will release Hiroshima. This realistic retelling of the day the bomb dropped from director Hideo Sekigawa has virtually gone unseen since its initial release in 1953. Variety praised the film for its sequence showing the immediate aftermath of the bomb, calling it "a brilliantly staged and photographed quarter-hour which ought to go down as a masterpiece of pictorialized destruction and agony." The release includes a 2011 documentary featuring survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings now residing in the United States. Arrow's July lineup comes to a close on July 21st with two releases - Bloodstone and Life is a Long Quiet River. In Bloodstone a newlywed American couple heads to India to celebrate their honeymoon when they accidentally come in possession of a stolen ruby getting them caught in the adventure of their life. Bloodstone was directed by Dwight H. Little off a script written by Nico Mastorakis. In Life is a Long Quiet River two babies are switched at birth leading to a witty send up of class relations and family ties. This outrageously wicked French comedy from 1988 was nominated for 7 César Awards, winning 4, and became a cult classic.   All 6 release will be available from your favorite video retailer.

Collector’s Edition of the Hammer Films Classic 'THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA' (1962) available August 11th, 2020 from Scream Factory

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1962) 

Label: Scream Factory

Region Code: A

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 85 Minutes 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) & (1.66:1)
Director: Terence Fisher

Cast: Michael Gough, Harold Goodwin, Martin Miller, Liane Aukin, Sonya Cordeau, Marne Maitland

Herbert Lom stars as “The Phantom” in Hammer Films’ celebrated production of Gaston Leroux’s horror classic. Arriving on Blu-ray August 11, 2020 from Scream Factory, this Collector’s Edition of The Phantom of the Opera is a new 2K scan from the interpositive, with both 1.85:1 and 1.66:1 aspect ratio options available.

The release of this acclaimed film is loaded with bonus features, including new audio commentary with film historians Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson, new featurette The Men Who Made Hammer: Anthony Hinds, new interview Phantom Triumphant: Edwin Astley and Hammer’s Horror Opera – an interview with author David Huckvale, new featurette Herbert Lom: The Soul Behind the Mask – an interview with film historian/screenwriter/novelist C. Courtney Joyner, a new interview with special effects artist Brian Johnson, the featurette “The Making of Phantom Of The Opera” – narrated by Edward De Souza plus interviews with Richard Golen, Alan Lavender and Edward De Souza, the longer TV version of the film, and more! Fans can pre-order their copies now by visiting ShoutFactory.com

Mysterious mishaps bedevil a London opera house, but when tragedy strikes during an opening night performance, it’s clear that these “accidents” are the deliberate work of a deranged madman – The Phantom. When Christine (Heather Sears), the young star of a new musical is contacted by the shadowy specter, her producer investigates, tracking the ghostly Phantom to his secret underground lair. More than an evil apparition, The Phantom proves to be a brilliant composer. Disfigured and nearly destroyed, he now demands his hellish revenge. Christine, his new star, is his one weakness, and he pays the ultimate price to keep his love alive.

Special Features: 
- NEW 2K Scan from the Interpositive – two aspect ratios 1.85:1 and 1.66:1
- NEW audio commentary with film historians Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson
- NEW The Men Who Made Hammer: Anthony Hinds
- NEW Phantom Triumphant: Edwin Astley and Hammer’s Horror Opera – an interview with author David Huckvale
- NEW Herbert Lom: The Soul Behind the Mask – an interview with film historian/screenwriter/novelist C. Courtney Joyner
- NEW interview with special effects artist Brian Johnson
- “The Making of Phantom Of The Opera” – narrated by Edward De Souza plus interviews with Richard Golen, Alan Lavender and Edward De Souza
- The Longer TV version (in standard definition)
- Theatrical Trailer
- Still Gallery

New Indie Horror Film 'Those Who Deserve to Die' Coming to Blu-ray & DVD 8/18

Kino Lorber Releases New Indie Horror Thriller Those Who Deserve to Die A Film by Bret Wood (Psychopathia Sexualis, The Unwanted) Available on Blu-ray, DVD and Digitally on Kino Now August 18th Blu-ray & DVD Come Packed with Bonus Features Including Deleted Scenes, Promotional Videos, and Bret Wood's Short Thriller Security (2007)

"Bret Wood is one of the most important independent filmmakers specializing in dark subjects working today." -- Tim Lucas, Video Watchdog

Set to street on August 18th, the Blu-ray and DVD both come packed with bonus features including deleted scenes, "Malice of Alice: a Mother/Daughter Portrait" featuring star Alice Lewis, a promotional video, theatrical trailers, and Bret Wood's 2007 short film Security. Those Who Deserve to Die will also be available digitally on KinoNow.com  beginning August 18th.

Synopsis: Two stories unfold in an idyllic Southern town. A series of gruesome murders occur, committed by a caped figure accompanied by a diabolical young girl (Alice Lewis). At the same time, an injured war veteran (Joe Sykes) returns to attend college, and becomes emotionally attached to a social worker (Rachel Frawley), the daughter of a State Supreme Court Justice (Lynn Lowry). As their relationship intensifies, connections between the victims and the veteran emerge, and Margaret realizes she may have the power to both rescue Jonathan and halt the rising tide of death. Inspired by Thomas De Quincey’s novella The Avenger, Those Who Deserve to Die is an elegy to heroism and justice in a time of CGI superheroes and political hopelessness.

Bret Wood is known for twisting the genres in which he works, finding fresh substance in the vampire film (The Unwanted), documentary (Hell’s Highway: The True Story of Highway Safety Films), erotic film (Psychopathia Sexualis), and stage adaptation (The Little Death). Likewise, Those Who Deserve To Die revisits the revenge film and clouds it with moral ambiguity and is injected with the same visual beauty and haunting tone that characterize Wood's other work. He is also the writer/director of the scripted podcasts The Control Group and The Seventh Daughter.

Those Who Deserve to Die Blu-ray and DVD Street Date: 8/18 Blu-ray SRP: $29.95 DVD SRP: $19.95 Director: Bret Wood Starring: Alice Lewis, Joe Sykes, Rachel Frawley, Lynn Lowry  Technical Specs: Horror | Color | 90 minutes | USA | Not Rated English with optional English subtitles | All Region | 1.78:1 Audio: Lossless 2.0 (Blu-ray) Dolby (DVD) Bonus Features: Deleted scenes Theatrical trailers "Malice of Alice: a Mother/Daughter Portrait"

ECHOES OF FEAR (2020) set for UK release On-Demand 7/20 & DVD 8/3 from Second Sight Films

ECHOES OF FEAR (2020) 

Available On-demand/7/20 & DVD 8/3 

Label: Second Sight Films
Release Date: August 3rd  2020
Rating: Cert: 15
Region: 2
Duration: 90 Minutes
Directors: Brian & Laurence Avenet-Bradley,
Cast: Trista Robinson

Creating waves on the US festival circuit and garnering best feature awards galore Echoes of Fear is set to scare the living daylights out of UK audiences as it arrives on digital and DVD this summer from Second Sight Films.

Turning the haunted house genre on its head, this chilling scare-fest, will have you clamoring for a cushion as the horror creeps up to a truly disturbing climax. The supernatural chiller from Brian and Laurence Avenet-Bradley, has garnered huge critical acclaim and arrives on digital formats on 20 July, followed by its DVD release on August 3rd 2020.

When her grandfather dies suddenly, Alisa (Trista Robinson – Purgatory Road) inherits his house and moves in to fix it up. But strange things start to happen, first there’s weird sounds in the night and then she senses a supernatural presence. Looking for answers Alisa starts to investigate her grandfather's mysterious death, uncovering the horrific truth and shocking events of the past. Will they be the death of her?

‘Intricately woven tale full of mystery, intrigue, and gripping suspense...an elaborate labyrinth of twists and turns that keeps you absolutely enthralled from start to finish” - Pop Horror

ANTHOLOGY SERIES 'GHOST STORY' AKA 'CIRCLE OF FEAR' MAKES WORLDWIDE DEBUTS ON BLU-RAY 7/22 FROM VIA VISION ENTERTAINMENT

Horror movie maestro William Castle (The Tingler) and famed writer Richard Matheson (Duel) teamed up for this gripping anthology series of suspense thrillers concentrating on individuals confronted with supernatural occurrences. 

All 23 newly remastered episodes are collected in this complete 5-disc collection in HD for the first time ever. 

Available on DVD & Blu-Ray July 22nd.

SATAN'S SLAVE (1980) (Severin Films Blu-ray Review)

SATAN'S SLAVE (1980)

Label: Severin FilmsRegion Code: Region-FREE
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 92 Minutes
Audio: Indonesian DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1) 
Director: Sisworo Gautama Putra
Cast: Ruth Pelupessi, W.D. Mochtar, Fachrul Rozy, Simon Cader, Siska Widowati, H.I.M. Damsyik, Diana Suarkom, Doddy Sukma

Indonesian supernatural shocker Satan's Slave, directed by Sisworo Gautama Putra, The Warrior), is a spooky slice of horror that marries Western horror tropes with Muslim/Islamic philosophy to significant effect, opening with a mournful funeral and burial of the mother of teenager Tomi (Fachrul Rozy). afterwards it seems that perhaps his mother's spirit is not quite at peace, as he is visited at night by the ghoulish looking corpse of his mother who floats to his window and beckons him to follow her into the woods.  

Both he and his older teen sister Rita (Siska Widowati, Escape from Hellhole) ignore the wishes of their father, Mr. Munarto (W.D. Mochtar, Mystics In Bali), who chastises them for going out instead of staying home so soon after her death, not for religious reasons though as you might think, but the family is depicted as being non-religious people, which works against them. They're young and Rita is too busy dancing into the night at clubs with her boyfriend Herman (Simon Cader, Jaka Swara), while Tomi spends time riding his dirt bike, reading horror mags, and hanging with friends. It's one of these friends that tells him to seek the advice of a local fortune teller - who reminded me a bunch of The Oracle from The Matrix (1999), so much so I have to wonder if it was an influence on The Wachowskis - who tells him to protect himself against evil by arming himself with the black arts, which seems like strange advice non it's face, but maybe when I was a teen I might have gone that route, too.

To that end Tomi goes to a bookstore in the neighborhood looking for more information on black magic and it's practice, but when the shopkeeper sees him looking into the subject matter he pulls him aside and tells him he doesn't need that sort of influence, that he need to pray, to find God, and that any person or household that does not pray and believe in God is only inviting evil to enter that house, and it soon becomes clear that because Tomi's family are not the practicing Muslims that evil has definitely invited itself into their home.

Around this time a mysterious housekeeper arrives at the home, Darminah (Ruth Pelupessi, The Snake Queen), who says she was sent by a friend, and after her arrival things get much worse for their family, and those around them. The family's longtime servant, the asthmatic Karto (H.I.M. Damsyik, The Queen of Black Magic), begins rapidly declining in health, and talks of ending his life to stop his suffering, and the daughters boyfriend Herman, who spoke ill of Darminah and suggests that the family should seek the help of a shaman, is involved in a horrific freak motorcycle accident, and the ghoulish white-skinned, white-eyed mother returns to the house to torment the family.

At some point things get so bad that the skeptical Mr. Munarto seeks the help of a shaman, who arrived and performs a ceremony to rid the house of the evil presence plaguing it. During the ceremony a wind seeps through the house, glass begins to shatter, and the house starts to rumble. During the wild event a glass chandelier breaks free from the ceiling and begins to and the shaman like a flying guillotine. All this while Tomi has been having satanic nightmares that lead him to believe that maybe Ms. Darminah is evil presence in the house, and sure enough he's right, later on he follows her when she leaves the house at night and witnesses her performing a satanic ritual to resurrect his mother at her grave, with the decaying undead Herman and Karto keeping her company at the cemetery.

The film is an enthralling bit of atmospheric horror, it has a mysterious foreign quality about it that I found hard to put a finger on, maybe because of the cultural differences, it certainly feels foreign while still offering plenty of Western style horror tropes. Something that kind of bugged me was the way the characters would under-react to the weird, scary stuff that was happening alla round them. If it were me I would have been shitting my pants, but they kind of nonchalantly go in with their day as if it were no big whup, which if I am being generous about it sort of reminds a bit of Phantasm (1979), which similarly features a family dealing with some strange stuff in a weird way, but if I am less generous it's more likely a reflection of the amateurish acting in the film, either way it still worked it's charms on me.

The films has a lot of generic western horror influences in it, though a few scenes are more specific in their appreciation of specific films, particularly a scene lifted straight from Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot (1979), with the ghoulish ghost of the mom floating up to her son's window on a waft of creepy fog and knocking at the window, but it's still got a vibe all it's own. This is not a gory film by any means, but it's got some cool bloody wounds and ghoulish make-up effects there at the end when it becomes something of a spook-tacular fright show, and it is drenched in atmosphere from start to finish, all of it coming together to make for a rock-solid early 80's fright film.     

Audio/Video: Satan's Slave (1980) arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Severin Films in 1080p HD and framed in 2.35:1 widescreen. Scanned from the original camera negative; The image is dang near pristine with nary a blemish to detract from it, colors are robust and black levels are deep and inky, it's quite a wonderful presentation for this atmospheric Indonesian chiller. Audio comes by way of a serviceable Indonesian DTS-HD MA Mono track with optional English subtitles, is clean and well-balanced, not the most dynamic sounding mono mix but it does the what it needs to.

Extras kick-off with the 9-min 'Satan’s Box Office: Interview with Producer Gope T. Samtani' with the prolific Indonesian producer talking about how Rapi Films started in 1968 by importing American, European and Indian movies before starting their own original productions in 1971, crafting a few action, and horror films, which they then began to export to non-English speaking territories. Eventually they cracked the American and European film markets in the early '90s with the English language film Lady Dragon (1992), which was shot in Indonesia with an American director David Worth (Kickboxer)and American actors, but soon realized that it was an expensive proposition and returned to focusing on Indonesian-language film-making. Years later tastes changed and American audiences were more open to non-dubbed foreign cinema, after the worldwide success of the action film The Raid (2011) Rapi Films saw an opportunity and moved ahead with their remake of Satan's Slave after years of insistence from director Joko Anwar, and are even now in the process of filming a sequel for it.

In the 8-min 'Indonesian Atmosphere: Interview with Screenwriter Imam Tantowi' the writer says he was not a fan of horror films, and in fact had never even watched The Exorcist (1973) because he was too frightened, but enjoyed writing something outside of the mainstream for a change. He says the main gist of the story was his own with some input from both producer Gope T. Samtani and director Sisworo Gautama Putra (The Warrior), saying the film was more influenced by other films than any local Indonesian ghost stories, but says it's got plenty of "Indonesian atmosphere". He's quite complimentary to the visuals achieved by the director, and says actress Ruth Pellupessi was perfect as the evil entity, saying her face was terrifying, attributing that to her plastic surgery.

'Satan’s Slave Obsession: Audio Interview with Remake Director Joko Anwar' is a 10-min audio-only interview with the director of the Satan's Slave (2017) remake, who saw his first horror films at the tender age of five, and would spend his much of his childhood and teens watching horror at the local cinema and on late-night TV. He highlights the career of director Sisworo Gautama Putra, stuff like the Italian cannibal film inspired Primitives (1980), The Warrior (1981), The Snake Queen (1982), and of course Satan's Slave (1980), the latter of which the director says he saw at a matinee showing when he was eight, the experience not only scarring him at the time, but inspiring him to be a filmmaker. He goes into how he spent years trying to convince Rapi Films to allow him to direct a remake of Satan's Slave, but as he hadn't made a horror film yet he was refused many times. Eventually he made a pair of short horror films (both of which are included on this disc as a bonus!) which he submitted to Rapi Films, and they liked the,, but even before then they chose another director to remake it initially, but eventually he dropped out and Anwar got the gig!

The disc is buttoned up with a pair of short films from remake director Anwar. This single disc release arrives in a spiffy-looking black keepcase, the norm for Severin these days, with a cool-looking sleeve of reversible artwork, the disc itself featuring an excerpt of the key artwork on the sleeve.   
Special Features:
- Satan’s Box Office: Interview with Producer Gope T. Samtani ( min) 
- Indonesian Atmosphere: Interview with Screenwriter Imam Tantowi (8 min)
- Satan’s Slave Obsession: Audio Interview with Remake Director Joko Anwar (10 min)
- Short Films Inspired by Satan's Slave by Remake Director Joko Anwar: Jenney (2016) (11 min) and Don't Blink (2016) (1 min)

Satan's Slave (1980) is an eerie little Indonesian chiller with some great creepy atmosphere and fantastic frights, making this a spooky supernatural horror film worth checking out for the world cinema lovers out there. Great to see this get a first-rate Blu-ray from Severin Films with a great set of extras to boot. 

More screenshots from the Blu-ray: