Asian martial arts and fantasy movies can be exhilarating in their strangeness and invention, unbound by Western insistence on rational explanations. Arrow’s new box set Yokai Monsters Collection presents a world in which supernatural presences exist alongside human reality, while in Eureka’s release of Ching Siu-tung’s Duel to the Death (1983) martial artists defy the laws of physics in elaborately choreographed sword fights.
Vinegar Syndrome’s October package included a stylish but frustrating Uruguayan giallo, a catalogue title about a high school girl’s romance with a T-Rex and a box set of three Italian movies from the early ’70s featuring performances from Camille Keaton.
Vinegar Syndrome’s October releases offer a satisfyingly eclectic selection of occasionally obscure genre titles — from mid-’80s gialli to Southern Gothic crime to mutant bugs and a Mayan death cult.
Indicator add another volume to their series devoted to Columbia Studios films noirs, with an eclectic selection of six moves covering post-war espionage, the activities of organized crime and a cop easily turned to the darkside by an attractive woman. Excellent transfers are supplemented with commentaries, March of Time shorts, featurettes on key cast and crew members … and, of course, half-a-dozen Three Stooges shorts.
Arrow releases the uncanny horror-fantasy The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch (1968), showcasing this mix of Japanese folktale and western fairytale directed by Noriaki Yuasa between episodes in Daiei’s Gamera series in a Blu-ray edition featuring a moody transfer and illuminating extras.
New Blu-ray releases from Arrow revive an effective Satanic panic movie from the early ’70s and unearth a forgotten regional slasher from 1982. The former, Bernard McEveety’s The Brotherhood of Satan, is an atmospheric gem; the latter, David Nelson’s Death Screams, is kind of clumsy, though it does have a few effective moments.
Lynne Ramsay’s emotionally devastating first feature, Ratcatcher (1999), is given a superb new 4K transfer on Criterion’s Blu-ray, which includes all the extras from their 2002 DVD with the addition of new interviews with Ramsay and cinematographer Alwin Küchler.
Criterion showcase a key ’50s sci-fi movie with their extras-loaded Blu-ray of Jack Arnold’s The Incredible Shrinking Man. The 4K restoration makes this the definitive visual presentation of the film, while the numerous special features – commentary, interviews, documentary – cover the production and the critical importance of the movie in detail.
Indicator’s sixth box set of Hammer movies, Night Shadows, is a bit of a mixed bag, with a silly but entertaining Old Dark House throwback in John Gilling’s The Shadow of the Cat (1961), an overwrought psycho thriller in Freddie Francis’ Nightmare (1964), a historical adventure in Peter Graham Scott’s Captain Clegg (1962), and a pseudo-Gothic horror in Terence Fisher’s The Phantom of the Opera (1962).
Thanksgiving weekend brought an excess of eating and drinking (but no turkey!) and three great movies – plus one dud.