IT’S ALIVE TRILOGY (1974-1978) (Scream Factory Blu-ray Review)

IT’S ALIVE TRILOGY (1974-1978) 

Label: Scream Factory
Release Date: May 15th 2018
Region Code: A
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen

For the first time on Blu-ray, and in a new, deluxe box set, the It’s Alive trilogy is reborn! On May 15, Scream Factory will release the It’s Alive Trilogy in a 3-disc set packed with bonus features, including new interviews, and new 2K scans of each film.

IT’S ALIVE (1974)

Rating: PG 
Duration: 91 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen
Cast: John P. Ryan, Sharon Farrell, Andrew Duggan, Guy Stockwell, James Dixon, Michael Ansara

Synopsis: It's newborn and … It's Alive … and murder is what it knows best! A proud couple's bundle of joy is really a newborn terror in filmmaker Larry Cohen's cautionary cult hit that tapped into environmental fears. The horror grows when multiple child monsters rampage in the first sequel It Lives Again as two brave parents try to stop them by becoming the bait for their spree. The now global mutants are rounded up and relocated to a far-flung island in It's Alive III: Island of the Alive. Will a parent's greatest nightmare become the world's gravest fear? Find out ... if you dare.

In Larry Cohen's 70's killer-kid classic we have L.A. couple Frank Davis (John Ryan, Runaway Train) and his wife Lenore (Sharon Farrell, The Premonition) expecting their second child, it was an unexpected pregnancy as she was on birth control, but they are happy nonetheless at the prospect of another kiddo around the house, as is their adolescent son Chris (Daniel Holzman) who will be a big brother. When she goes into labor they head to the hospital and as she begins to give birth while Frank sits in the lobby with the other expectant fathers, as was the tradition back in the day, not like now when father's are almost always in the delivery room. However, the birth is abnormal, and what emerges from his wife's womb is a toothy-mutant offspring that chews through it's own umbilical cord before slaughtering all the medical staff in the delivery room, the aftermath looking a bit like that scene fro Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 when Doctor Ock's sentient tentacles go ape-shit. The wife goes into hysterics as Frank wanders into he bloody aftermath, soon after a manhunt is launched for the ferocious killer-kid with Frank initially being on board with hunting it down and killing it, until his paternal instincts kick in. 

The film is a bit of a slow-mover by modern horror standards but I've always loved it, Cohen made a classic 70's monster movie here with early make-up effects by none other than Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London) who sculpted quite a fearsome kid with a bulbous, vein-y head, fangs and clawed hands. Rightfully they keep the visuals of the kid to a minimum, showing it in fleeting glimpses and among the shadows. There are a lot of killer POV shots from the point of view of the homicidal baby, a double-vision image thing that worked pretty well. The film can be read in several different ways, informed by real issues like abortion, eugenics and the Thalidomide baby-deformities, with this one containing a corrupt drug company trying to erase evidence that their contraception pill which might be the root cause of the hideous mutation to begin with. 

John P. Ryan (Three O'Clock High) as the father really sells the expectant father part of the story as well as the conflicted post-hospital slaughter reality of the abnormal birth and ensuing man-hunt for the demon-toothed kid, he gives it some real depth and layers. While the film is a tiny bit slow and we don't see the killer-kid a bunch the film is very effective, plus it's well lensed with a sweeping score from Bernard Herrmann (Psycho) with loads of blood, particularly for a PG-rated horror film! I'm not totally convinced this will play all that well with a younger audience watching it for the first time, I grew up with it so it has some intrinsically nostalgic appeal, but I will say that my seventeen year old son enjoyed it quite a bit.  

This was Cohen's first time directing a horror film, it's a serious effort that's handled with a modicum of class, it's not quite as oddball and quirky as some of his later genre efforts, and I think that serious tone gives this monster-kid cult classic some legs.

Special Features: 
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- NEW Cohen’s Alive: Looking Back at the It’s Alive Films featuring interviews with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen, actors James Dixon, Michael Moriarty and Laurene Landon and more… (18 min) HD 
- NEW It’s Alive at the Nuart: The 40th Anniversary Screening with Larry Cohen (13 min) HD 
- Audio Commentary with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen
- Radio Spots (2 min) HD 
- TV Spots (1 min) 
- Theatrical Trailer (3 min) HD 
- Still Gallery (4 min) HD

IT LIVES AGAIN (1978)

Rating: R
Duration: 91 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen
Cast: John P. Ryan, James Dixon, John Marley, Andrew Duggan, Eddie Constantine

Synopsis: Is it human? Is it a beast? Whatever it is, It Lives Again in this second film in cult filmmaker Larry Cohen’s Alive Trilogy. Once again, Cohen brings to the screen a hideous threesome of mutant baby monsters that are the evolutionary response to man’s polluted environment. These frightened creatures lash out with deadly claws at what they don’t understand. There are only three, but they could reproduce into uncontrollable millions if someone doesn’t destroy them. Fredric Forrest (Apocalypse Now) and Kathleen Lloyd (The Car) star as the loving parents of one of the monstrous creatures. Parental love, however, is no match for these hell-spawned mutants. Their wild blood binge must be stopped. Will the next stage of their evolution become our last?

After the success of the first film a sequel was hatched, picking up a few years after the original we have John P. Ryan returning as Frank Davis who has traveled to Tucson, AZ (love seeing my city back in the 70's) to warn a young couple, Jody (Kathleen Lloyd, The Car) and Eugene Scott (Frederic Forrest, The Conversation), that their soon-to-be-born kid will most likely be a mutant, which since that last film have been being born at an alarming rate around the country. At first they don't believe him but they come around when they meet a menacing guy named Malory (John Marley, Deathdream) who has put together a death-squad who travel around the country exterminating the mutant kids the moment they're born. With the help of John the couple escape the hospital and she gives birth to the beastly kid in a mobile birthing unit built into the back of a shipping truck, and are taken to a retreat run by a group of scientists,  Andrew Duggan (Doctor Detroit) and Eddie Constantin (Alphaville), who want to study the babies, believing them to be the next evolutionary step of humanity, a sort of underground railroad for mutant babies, where they're kid gets to mingle with two other deformed monster-kids. 

The sequel is a nice continuation of the story, it's not just a simple retread, and it's great to have John P. Ryan back as Davis. Also returning are the special make-up effects of Rick Baker plus we get another score from Bernard Herrmann. While I don't love the sequel they way I do the first it's a solid sequel that expands a bit on the story and we get more moving parts, including the Scott's being betrayed by the wife's mother, ending with the authorities showing up at the facility where the monster kids are being kept. There's a bit more gore this time around too, but not a bunch, so keep those expectations in check.

Special Features: 
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- Audio Commentary with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen
- Theatrical Trailer (1 min) HD 
- Still Gallery (4 min) HD

IT’S ALIVE 3: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE (1987)

Rating: R
Duration: 95 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen
Cast: Michael Moriarty, Karen Black, Laurene Landon, Gerrit Graham, Neal Israel, James Dixon 

Synopsis: In It’s Alive III: Island Of The Alive, Michael Moriarty (Q: The Winged Serpent) and Karen Black (Trilogy of Terror) star as Stephen and Ellen Jarvis, the distraught parents of one of the new mutant children. They’ve watched in horror as government death squads roamed the earth, shooting the humanoids on sight. They’ve suffered through the court hearings that sentenced their child and other surviving mutants to a remote, uninhabited island. And their nightmare continues … because the abandoned creatures are now grown … and they are coming back home to the society that created and rejected them. And no one who stands in their way will live.

The second and final (so far, not counting the remake) sequel in the It's Alive trilogy throws seriousness right out the window in far or of a more humorous approach with the introduction of Cohen regular Michael Moriarty (The Stuff) as Jarvis, who opens the film in a courtroom fighting for the rights of his mutant born son to live, arguing for the death of his son is a lawyer played by Gerrit Graham (Phantom of the Paradise), the over-the-top trial ends with the killer baby busting out of it's steel cage with Jarvis managing to calm it down, showing the judge that it's not pure evil, and thus the judge (MacDonald Carey, End of the World) rules that the five surviving mutant kids known to exist are to be shipped away to an isolated island where they will no pose a danger to society.

The film moves ahead a few years and Moriarty's character has penned a tell-all book about the events, while his ex-wife Ellen (Karen Black, Burnt Offerings) wants nothing to do with him or the the damned kid, living her life out of the spotlight while Jarvis, a former TV commercial actor, has become an outcast of society. There's a great scene where the affection starved Jarvis meets a prostitute played by Laurene Landon (Maniac Cop) who beds him but goes ape-shit when she realizes why he looks so familiar, believing that the mutations gene can be passed by touch, sort of the ways the AIDS epidemic caused hysteria around the same time. 

Jarvis later is recruited to visit the island with a team to study the growth of the monster kids who have now grown into adulthood, and this is where I really started to miss the special effects work of Rick Baker who is not present here, instead we have men in rubber-suits that look real goofy, but there's also some fun Harryhausen-esque stop-motion animation which I enjoyed a bunch.

Jarvis and the team come under attack on the island by the mutants, who apparently miss home, they force him to pilot a ship back towards the U.S. mainland with his son saving his life by throwing him overboard when the other monsters - and their own monster kids - decide that Jarvis looks like a tasty piece of meat - stranding him in Cuba, where more off-kilter shenanigans take place. Eventually the deformed families arrive in Florida - where Ellen lives - and  the carnage begins with the mutants destroying a group of 80's punks down on the boardwalk before homing in on the whereabouts of Ellen, leading to a rooftop encounter/family reunion. 

This one is off-kilter and way more comedic than the first two entries, Cohen bringing in Moriarty guarantees plenty of hammed-up shenanigans which we get in spades, I love this guy, and even though it veers far away from the previous films, it's more akin to The Stuff than It's Alive, there's still plenty of low-budget horror and corny Cohen-Moriarty humor to make it a palatable straight-to-video sequel.

Special Features:
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- NEW interview with Special Effects Makeup Designer Steve Neill (10 min) HD 
- Audio Commentary with writer/director Larry Cohen
- Trailer (1 min) HD 
- Still Gallery (3 min) HD 

Audio/Video: All three films arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen and sourced from new 2K scans of the archival interpositive elements, the 2018 2K scans were performed by Warner Bros. and look great. The first film looks the best of the bunch with finely managed grain, saturated colors and deep inky blacks. There's a surprising amount of fine detail in those 70's textures and facial details. The sequels also look great, they lack some of the deep fine detail and clarity of the first film, but are solid. 

Each films sports an English DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0 audio track with optional English subtitles, all are nicely balanced and clean without any hiss or distortion. The Bernard Herrmann score of the first film is certainly a highlight, if I was to niggle about an extra I would have appreciated it would have been an isolated music score for the films, particularly he first two which are scored by the legendary composer.  

Thankfully Scream Factory carryover all the Larry Cohen commentaries from Warner Bros. previous triple feature DVD set from 2009. New stuff begins with the 18-min 'Cohen’s Alive: Looking Back at the It’s Alive Films' which features interviews with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen, actors James Dixon, Michael Moriarty and Laurene Landon, cinematographer Daniel Pearl and historians John Burligame, FX Feeney. The main attraction here is Cohen who speaks volumes about the films, from the troubled beginning of It's Alive to the success when a visionary WB exec saw the merit of the film and gave t proper distribution, creating the opening credit sequences at his home (where much of the second films was shot), working with the cast and crew, Rick Bakers special effects, getting Bernard Herrmann to score the films. The cast and crew also reminiscence about shooting Island of the Alive, getting sea sick on the open sea, bit Larry using the sick crew as extras on the boat, posing as corpses, typical low-budget Larry Cohen workarounds. The talk here is moistly centered around the first and third film with the second getting short shrift in regard to content, but there's a lot of ground covered.

We also get a 13-min  Q/A from the 40th anniversary screening of the film at the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles from 2014, the audio on this one is a bit choppy and wonky in [paces but it's good stuff, Cohen is a great storyteller and he doesn't disappoint here. 

The last of the new stuff is a 10-min interview with Special Effects Makeup Designer Steve Neill who worked on the third film, he speaks about getting ti know Rick Baker, who offered him the job on this film. He speaks about wanting to create a different type of look for the monsters, but Cohen wanted to go a different route, leading to the rubber-suited creatures which emulate the look of the baby monsters from the previous films, he also discussed Mark Williams sculpting of the masks, and the use of stop-motion animation. 

The first film has a selection of trailers, radio spots, and a gallery, the sequels get a trailer and a gallery minus the radio spots. Onto the packaging we get pretty much the same packaging style Scream Factory offered with The Amityville Horror Trilogy, all three films get their own keepcase wrapped in a flimsy card-stock slipcover. Both It's Alive and It Lives Again feature reversible artwork while Island of the Alive features an image from the film on the reverse side. The discs themselves feature the reversible artwork options, except Island of the Alive which features the home video artwork which also adorns the sleeve. 

The Larry Cohen love continues with this impressive looking three-disc set from Scream Factory, Cohen's made so many great cult-films through the years, it's great to see many of them getting new HD releases from Scream Factory with new extras, I hope this is a trend that continues. I also hope there are kids out there discovering some of these for the first time and loving them, and that it's not just us old farts getting nostalgic cinema-erections every time they announce another one. 

SCREAM FACTORY PRESENTS… THE IT’S ALIVE TRILOGY FOR THE FIRST TIME ON BLU-RAY, WITH NEW BONUS FEATURES, ON MAY 15th, 2018

 IT’S ALIVE TRILOGY (1974-1978) 

Label: Scream Factory
Release Date: May 15th 2018
Rating: PG / R
Region Code: A
Duration: 91 / 91 / 95 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Larry Cohen
Cast: John P. Ryan, Sharon Farrell, Andrew Duggan, Guy Stockwell, James Dixon, Michael Ansara

For the first time on Blu-ray, and in a new, deluxe box set, the It’s Alive trilogy is reborn! On May 15, Scream Factory will release the It’s Alive Trilogy in a 3-disc set packed with bonus features, including new interviews, and new 2K scans of each film.

It's newborn and … It's Alive … and murder is what it knows best! A proud couple's bundle of joy is really a newborn terror in filmmaker Larry Cohen's cautionary cult hit that tapped into environmental fears. The horror grows when multiple child monsters rampage in the first sequel It Lives Again as two brave parents try to stop them by becoming the bait for their spree. The now global mutants are rounded up and relocated to a far-flung island in It's Alive III: Island of the Alive. Will a parent's greatest nightmare become the world's gravest fear? Find out ... if you dare.

It's Alive is the first film of the classic trilogy from writer/director Larry Cohen about murderous mutants – and its birth was chillingly midwived by the crucial contributions of two Academy Award® winners*: makeup master Rick Baker (who created the makeup and "played" the infant monster) and composer Bernard Herrmann.

Is it human? Is it a beast? Whatever it is, It Lives Again in this second film in cult filmmaker Larry Cohen’s Alive Trilogy. Once again, Cohen brings to the screen a hideous threesome of mutant baby monsters that are the evolutionary response to man’s polluted environment. These frightened creatures lash out with deadly claws at what they don’t understand. There are only three, but they could reproduce into uncontrollable millions if someone doesn’t destroy them. Fredric Forrest (Apocalypse Now) and Kathleen Lloyd (The Car) star as the loving parents of one of the monstrous creatures. Parental love, however, is no match for these hell-spawned mutants. Their wild blood binge must be stopped. Will the next stage of their evolution become our last?

In It’s Alive III: Island Of The Alive, Michael Moriarty (Q: The Winged Serpent) and Karen Black (Trilogy of Terror) star as Stephen and Ellen Jarvis, the distraught parents of one of the new mutant children. They’ve watched in horror as government death squads roamed the earth, shooting the humanoids on sight. They’ve suffered through the court hearings that sentenced their child and other surviving mutants to a remote, uninhabited island. And their nightmare continues … because the abandoned creatures are now grown … and they are coming back home to the society that created and rejected them. And no one who stands in their way will live.

IT’S ALIVE TRILOGY SPECIAL FEATURES

IT’S ALIVE (1974):
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- NEW Cohen’s Alive: Looking Back at the It’s Alive Films featuring interviews with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen, actors James Dixon, Michael Moriarty and Laurene Landon and more…
- NEW It’s Alive at the Nuart: The 40th Anniversary Screening with Larry Cohen
- Audio Commentary with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen
- Radio Spots
- TV Spots
- Theatrical Trailer
- Still Gallery

IT LIVES AGAIN (1978):
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- Audio Commentary with writer/producer/director Larry Cohen
- Theatrical Trailer
- Still Gallery

IT’S ALIVE 3: ISLAND OF THE ALIVE (1987):
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- NEW interview with Special Effects Makeup Designer Steve Neill
- Audio Commentary with writer/director Larry Cohen
- Trailer
- Still Gallery

AMERICAN HORROR PROJECT VOL.1 (Arrow Video Blu-ray Review)

AMERICAN HORROR PROJECT VOL.1

Label: Arrow Video
Region Code: Region-Free
Duration: 251 Minutes 
Audio: English PCM Original Mono 1.0 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1), (2.35:1) 
Directors: Christopher Speeth, Robert Allen Schnitzer, Matt Cimber
Cast: Millie Perkins, Lonny Chapman, Janine Carazo, Herve Villechaize, Sharon Farrell, Edward Bell

Synopsis: Everyone knows the classic American horror titles: Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street, to name but a few. But we want to tell you a different story: a story of the unsung heroes of stars-and-stripes terror, films that have remained on the fringes of the genre either through lack of availability or else sheer obscurity. This is where American Horror Project comes in.

Volume One of this series presents three tales of violence and madness from the 1970s. Malatesta's Carnival of Blood (Christopher Speeth, 1973) sees a family arrive at a creepy, dilapidated fairground in search of their missing son, only to find themselves at the mercy of the cannibalistic ghouls lurking beneath the park. Meanwhile, The Witch Who Came from the Sea (Matt Cimber, 1976), stars Millie Perkins (The Diary of Anne Frank) as a young woman whose bizarre and violent fantasies start to bleed into reality - literally. Lastly, every parent's worst nightmare comes true in The Premonition (Robert Allen Schnitzer, 1976), a tale of psychic terror in which five-year-old Janie is snatched away by a strange woman claiming to be her long-lost mother.

MALATESTA'S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD (1973) 

The first in this trio of obscure American horror is the nightmarish carnival terror Malatesta's Carnival of Blood from 1973, the year I was born. Am odd entry that is largely absent of a compelling narrative thread, but more relies on the unsettling imagery and situations to bring the fright. We have a family arriving at the titular circus as financial investors who hope to profit from the carnival attractions, but instead find themselves on the run from the strange cannibal carnies who favor the taste of human flesh. The carnival of ghouls is owned by Malatesta (Daniel Dietrich) and run by his right-hand man Mr. Blood (Jerome Dempsey), a fiendishly awesome presence in the movie. The loose narrative doesn't leave a lot to grasp onto though, so you had best resigns yourself to this fever-dream of a carnie movie, one with blue-skinned ghouls and some inspired set-design, be sure to keep an eye out for a Volkswagen Bug made to look like a gaping, toothed-mouth, if you love it weird and surreal you are gonna have fun with this one. If you're rooted in story and plot you might find yourself lost at the carnival with no way out. 

The movie has quite a cast of carnie weirdoes, we have pint-sized Hervé Villechaize from TVs Fantasy Island as a heavily French-accented killer dwarf, a tranny tarot card reader, and a creepy groundskeeper played by William Preston, who you might remember from those odd segments on Late Night with Conan O'Brien as Carl 'Oldy' Olson - the guy was always creepy, even back in the '70s apparently. The gore is not great, but fun enough, in a way that brought to mind the gore movies of Herschel Gordon Lewis. There's a scene of a carnival goer losing his head on the roller coaster, and some cheap gut-munching, the real horror show are the labyrinth of underground caverns where the blue-skinned ghouls hang out, nightmare stuff that brought to mind Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (1962) by way of the surreal Spanish asylum-nightmare House of Madness (1973), which is a pretty decent analog as to what you can expect from this movie.

This was absolutely my least favorite of movies on this cool underground cinema set, which isn't to say I hated it, but like House of Madness (1973) which I referenced, I probably won't revisit this one anytime soon. I'd sooner re watch the interviews before I sat through it again, though I did get enjoy seeing the now crumbling William Grove Amusement Park during slightly better days. The landmark carnival had been running since 1928 when it closed in 2005, do yourself a favor and check out pics of the abandoned park now, having been slowly reclaimed by the surrounding forest, creepy stuff. 

Special features for Malatesta's Carnival of Blood include a brand new interview with director Christopher Speeth, who speaks about the origins of the story, working with the producer, the various sets and locations used, the unique sound design of the movie and the troubled distribution history, right up to author Stephen Thrower reaching out to Speeth for inclusion in his book Nightmare USA, which spurred renewed interest in the obscure movie. Theres also an interview with writer Werner Liepolt who speaks about his initial script, how it differed from the movie, and his interest in the grotesqueries of the carnival circuit. Art directors Richard Stange and Alan Johnson speak about coming into the project, how they created the nightmare underworld of the carnival. Additionally the disc is rounded off with about three-minutes of outtakes, a gallery of images, and a DVD-ROM of the original script for the movie. Almost forgot the Audio Commentary by film historian Richard Harland Smith, who goes deep into the history of the movie, a nice blend of humor with more academic approach, of the three commentaries on this set, this is the one I can see myself revisiting at some point. 

Special Features: 
- Introduction to the film by Stephen Thrower (4 Mins) HD 
- Audio Commentary by film historian Richard Harland Smith
- The Secrets of Malatesta - an interview with director Christopher Speeth (14 Mins) HD 
- Crimson Speak - an interview with writer Werner Liepolt (12 Mins) HD 
- Malatesta's Underground - art directors Richard Stange and Alan Johnson discuss the weird, mysterious world of Malatesta's underground (10 Mins) HD 
· Outtakes (3 Mins) HD 
- Draft script (BD/DVD-ROM content)
- Stills Gallery (39 Images) HD
- Reversible sleeve of artwork featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by the Twins of Evil

THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA (1976)

Director Matt Cimber's The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976)) is the story of a deeply troubled young woman named Molly, played by actress Millie Perkins. Molly lives along the ocean with her sister and two young nephews, whom she spends her days with wandering the beach and telling them tales of her sea-faring father whom she says was lost at sea years earlier. 

An early scene of her walking the beach watching muscle-bound young men workout evolves into a sick fantasy of the mind, wherein she imagines each one horribly killed. Molly seems to be on the verge of a mental breakdown, and these murder fantasies begin to bleed into reality, literally. When two footballers are found castrated, Molly becomes the main suspect of local detectives. Perkins gives a wonderfully unstable performance as the woman unravelling, damaged by the worst kind of childhood trauma, raped by her own father. The scenes of violence are slightly muffled by the fact that they happen just off screen but they are still shocking just by the nature of the violence, and as a guy I always find castration scenes make my skin crawl. 

The movie is peppered with trippy flashback scenes of the incest and her own murder fantasies, they are well done, though one goes a little too low-rent psychedelic for it's own good. It heps that this was shot in scope by cinematographer supreme Dean Cundey (John Carpenter's Halloween) who even on a shoe-string budget managed to capture some nicely composed widescreen shots, and this one has a nice low-budget artfulness to the composition. 

The original artwork for the movie is a bit misleading, featuring a robed witch with a bloodied scythe in one hand raised overhead, in her other hand is the severed head of a man. Truly a memorable image, but a bit removed from the amount of viscera you will actually find in the movie, though it does capture the essence of the woman protagonist as a man-killer. 

I am not too familiar with the body of Matt Cimber's movies, but from what I gather this is a cut above his usual trashy sexploitation movies, though I have heard his blaxploitation stuff is pretty great, so I will reserve final judgement. Watching this I was reminded of another woman-losing-her-sanity movie, the haunting Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971), a kindred movie with a slow-burn pace and flights of insanity. The Witch Who Came from the Sea was worth the wait, it lived up to the hype, and offered a surprisingly nuanced performance from Perkins, this is incredibly well acted and handsomely shot, well worth seeking out. 

Special features for The Witch Who Came from the Sea include an introduction from author Stephen Thrower, plus an audio commentary with director-producer Matt Cimber, actress Millie Perkins and director of photography Dean Cundey, which was carried over from the now OOP Subversive DVD, as was the thirty-six minute featurette 'A Maiden's Voyage' containing interviews with Matt Cimber, Millie Perkins and Dean Cundey. New to the set is the brand-new making-of doc 'Tides and Nightmares' with new interviews from Cimber, Perkins, Cundey and actor John Goff, plus an additional four-minute interview with Matt Cimber who speaks about the point of the movie, how the original negative was destroyed, and rightfully praising the new restoration from Arrow Video. 

Special Features: 
- Introduction to the film by Stephen Thrower (5 Mins) HD
- Audio commentary with director-producer Matt Cimber, actress Millie Perkins and director of photography Dean Cundey 
- Tides and Nightmares - brand new making-of documentary featuring interviews with Cimber, Perkins, Cundey and actor John Goff (23 Mins) HD 
- A Maiden's Voyage - archive featurette comprising interviews with Cimber, Perkins and Cundey (36 Mins) 
- Lost at Sea - director Cimber reflects on his notorious cult classic (4 Mins) HD 
- Reversible sleeve of artwork featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by the Twins of Evil 

THE PREMONITION (1976)

Robert Allen Schnitzer's The Premonition (1976) is a creepy kidnapper tale about a troubled couple, a mentally-ill piano player named Andrea (Ellen Barber) and her crazed carnie boyfriend Jude, played by the always unsettling Richard Lynch (Bad Dreams). Years earlier Andrea was sent to the asylum, and her infant daughter Janie (Danielle Brisebois ) was was taken away from her and adopted by a nice couple, Prof. Miles Bennett (Edward Bell) and his wife Sheri (Sharon Farrell). Andrea has now been released from the asylum, which is where she met her boyfriend Jude naturally, together the disturbed couple set about to kidnap Janie from the Bennets. The movie is played sort of low-key, the horror is not supercharged, but there's a pervasive sense of eeriness about this one with some unnerving Lynchian moments about it. 

Richard Lynch is always a strong presence in any movie he appears in, he has a unique face and unsettling presence about him. His character is an intense white-faced pantomime who is in love over his head with Andrea, and willing to do whatever it takes to make her happy, but a love this intense is bound to burn you one way or another. Mrs. Bennet begins to have frightening visions about Andrea and her daughter, a series of paranormal visions of Andrea, which unsettle the adoptive mother, who becomes both frenzied and despondent to varying degrees. 

When her fears of losing Janie to the unhinged birth mother are finally it is the psychic visions that connect the opposed mothers, and they are key to the recovery of her young adopted daughter. Surprisingly the supernatural elements aren't overly exploited, but are present just enough to give the movie a supernatural tinge that pushed it from just a tense kidnap-thriller to something a little more creepy. The filmmakers take great pain not to paint Andrea and Jude as wholly evil people, just deranged, but Ellen Barber does manage to stir up some threat, and able to hold her own against Richard Lynch's intensity. A scene of her in Janie's bedroom is menacing stuff, as a parent my heart jumped a bit, I cannot imagine walking into my child's room and finding any one of them in the arms of a deranged stranger. The scene is further bolstered by some nice camera trickery, this is the scene that felt very Lynchian to me, definitely surreal and unnerving stuff. 

Extras created for The Premonition by Arrow Video include a new making-of doc with Schnitzer, composer Henry Mollicone and cinematographer Victor Milt, and an introduction from Stephen Thrower. we are also treated to archival interviews with the late actor Richard Lynch and director Robert Allen Schnitzer. Three Robert Allen Schnitzer early short films are included, which are political in nature, and not my cup of tea, it's not like discovering the early shorts of David Lynch, but they're here if you're interested. The disc is finished up with a trailer and handful of TV and radio spots, plus a gallery of images. . 

Special Features:
- Introduction to the film by Stephen Thrower (3 Mins) HD 
- Isolated Music Score by Henry Mollicone
- Audio commentary with director-producer Robert Allen Schnitzer
- Pictures from a Premonition - brand new making-of documentary featuring interviews with Schnitzer, composer Henry Mollicone and cinematographer Victor Milt (21 Mins) HD
- Archive interviews with Robert Allen Schnitzer (6 Mins) 
- Archive interviews with Richard Lynch (16 Mins) 
- Three Robert Allen Schnitzer short films: 'Vernal Equinox' (30 Mins) HD, 'Terminal Point' (41 Mins) HD and 'A Rumbling in the Land' (11 Mins) HD
- 4 Peace Spots (4 Mins) HD
- Theatrical Trailer (2 Mins) HD 
- 4 TV Spots (3 Mins) HD 
- Gallery 
- Reversible sleeve of artwork featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by the Twins of Evil
- American Horror Project Journal Volume One - Limited edition 60-page booklet featuring new articles on the films from writers Stephen Thrower(Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents), Kim Newman (Nightmare Movies), Kier-La Janisse (House of Psychotic Women) and Brian Albright (Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990: A State-by-State Guide with Interviews)

Audio/Video: All three movies have been lovingly remastered with brand new 2K restorations from the best surviving elements for each film, both Malatesta's Carnival of Blood and The Witch Who Came from the Sea were derived from surviving 35mm prints,while The Premonition came from the color reversal intermediate, which is only one stage away from the original negative, as such it is the best looking of the three. The overall results are of the SK restorations are very pleasing. None are reference quality presentations but they are acceptably clean and finely detailed. Colors are mostly strong for all three movies, there's some minor white speckling and vertical scratching, but the natural roughness of the presentations are kept in check and appear very filmic. I don't mind a grit and grime with my cult-classic, and all three of these look great on Blu-ray. 

All three are presented in their original mono presentation by way of lossless English PCM Mono 1.0 audio tracks, like the prints used for the transfers the audio each have some minor issues, though there's nothing too distracting, and the movies sound just fine. My favorite score of the three films would be Herschel Burke Gilbert's haunting accompaniment for The Witch Who Came from the Sea, but Henry Mollicone's comes in a close second. Optional English subtitles are provided. 

Arrow Video have afforded some fantastic extras for these obscure American slices of '70s horror as detailed above, each receiving an intro from co-curator Stephen Thrower, averaging about four-minutes each. Each film presented in a dual-format release, encased in its own keep case with a reversible sleeve of artwork featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by the Twins of Evil, plus there's a massive 60-page booklet with new writing on each film from writers Stephen Thrower, Kim Newman and Brian Albright, all of it contextualizing the movies and really digging deep into each. Peppered throughout the booklet are images from each movie, plus notes about each of the restorations. 

With the American Horror Project Vol.1 Arrow Video and co-curator Stephen Thrower have set out to document a handful of unsung and throwaway slices of '70s American cult-horror, nuggets of forgotten cinema that didn't get a fair shake on home video, or during their initial drive-in run. When you think about it there are not many banner horror movies left to adorn with deluxe editions these days, the vaults have been plundered and re plundered, so it is great to see these unsung slices of cult cinema getting loving restorations and bountiful extras. What Arrow Video and the crew have put together here is nothing but love for these indie-horrors, and I cannot wait to see what they have in store for future volumes. This something special and is limited to just 3,000 copies, so if you love obscure horror you had best jump on this set fast, this is worth owning, so have at it.