Home Video
New to Blu – Week of 5/24/2016
Each week here at Bloody Disgusting we like to highlight some of the new Blu-ray releases hitting shelves across the world. Please note that this isn’t every release for the week, just a few of the ones that jumped out at us.
Not a ton of releases this week, but some really good ones. Stateside Scream Factory is releasing a Collector’s Editions of Manhunter and Arrow is releasing their Killer Dames boxset, two releases definitely worth picking up. Best of all might be The ‘Burbs making it’s US Blu-ray debut (although personally I think fans of the film need to get the region B Arrow release). Then across the pond, 88 Films is leading the way with three releases, headlined by Man from Deep River. What a time to be alive!
US Releases
Manhunter (Scream Factory, Region A)
Synopsis:
Will Graham is a former FBI agent who recently retired to Florida with his wife Molly and their young son. Graham was a ‘profiler’; one who profiles criminal’s behavior and tries to put his mind into the minds of criminals to examine their thoughts while visiting crime scenes. Will is called out of his self-imposed retirement at the request of his former boss Jack Crawford to help the FBI catch an elusive serial killer, known to the press as the ‘Tooth Fairy’, who randomly kills whole families in their houses during nights of the full moon and leaves bite marks on his victims. To try to search for clues to get into the mind of the killer, Will has occasional meetings with Dr. Hannibal Lecktor, a charismatic but very dangerous imprisoned serial killer …
The ‘Burbs (Universal, Region A)
Synopsis:
An overstressed suburbanite and his paramilitaric neighbor struggle to prove their paranoid theory that the new family in town is a front for a cannibalistic cult.
The Player (Criterion, Region A)
Synopsis:
“Movies. Now more than ever!” That’s the motto of the movie studio where fast-tracking exec Griffin Bell works. But rumor has it a power play could push Bell out. And a rejected writer who’s sending anonymous death threats could push him under.
Killer Dames – Two Gothic Chillers by Emilio P. Miraglia (Arrow, Region A)
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave
Lord Alan Cunningham is haunted by the memory of his dead wife Evelyn. He channels the trauma of his spouse’s past affair by picking up red-headed prostitutes and subjecting them to vicious acts of torture in his decaying castle. He remarries in an attempt to recapture his fading sanity, but the arrival of his new wife spawns a series of sinister events. Bloodthirsty creatures strike at Sir Alan’s family, killing them off one by one. As the violence escalates, Evelyn’s tomb is discovered to be empty. The resurrected corpse descends upon the terrified Baron, beckoning him to join her in death…
The Red Queen Kills Seven Times
When two sisters inherit their family castle, a string of murders committed by a mysterious dark haired woman in a red cloak decimates their circle of friends. Is the killer their ancestor, the “Red Queen” whom legend says claims seven lives every hundred years?
The Land that Time Forgot (Kino Lorber, Region A)
Synopsis:
This film is a sequel to “The Land That Time Forgot”. Major Ben McBride organises a mission to the Antarctic wastes to search for his friend who has been missing in the region for several years. McBride’s party find themselves in a world populated by primitive warriors and terrifying prehistoric creatures, all of whom they must evade in order to get back safely to their ship…
The Chase (Kino Lorber, Region A)
Synopsis:
Chuck Scott gets a job as chauffeur to tough guy Eddie Roman; but Chuck’s involvement with Eddie’s fearful wife becomes a nightmare.
Rise of the Legend (Well Go USA, Region A)
Synopsis:
In 1868 during the late Qing Dynasty, rampant corruption on the Imperial Court inflicts much suffering in people’s lives. For years, the Black Tiger’s fearsome boss Lei Gong has been trying to get rid of the leader of the Northern Sea. One of his latest recruits is Fei, a fearless fighter who takes the Northern Sea leader’s head after a fierce fight. Just as Lei Gong believes he has total control of the port, a new gang called the Orphans rises in power. Led by Fei’s childhood friend Huo, the Orphans are out to eliminate all the criminal power from the port…
UK Releases
Man from Deep River (88 Films, Region B)
Synopsis:
A photographer in the rain forest is captured by wild natives, and after months of living with them, he marries the chief’s daughter and helps protect the village from a vicious cannibal tribe.
Bronson (Zavvi Steelbook, Region B)
Synopsis:
The notorious life of the U.K.’s “most violent prisoner” serves as the subject of this biopic.
Flesh Eating Mothers (88 Films, Region B)
Synopsis:
A venereal disease turns an entire town of two-timing mothers into cannibals!
The Suckling (88 Films, Region B)
Synopsis:
A woman goes to a back alley abortion clinic, only to have her aborted fetus attack her, her boyfriend, and everyone else at the clinic.
Stone Cold (101 Films, Region B)
Synopsis:
Joe Huff is a tough, go-it-alone cop with a flair for infiltrating dangerous biker gangs. The FBI blackmail Joe into an undercover operation to convict some extremely violent bikers, who are angry at the capture of their leader.
There’s something really insidious, in a great way, about setting a horror story in a movie theater. It’s something filmmakers have known for decades, going back to The Blob and beyond, but it never fails to strike a chord because, in a way, it hits us exactly where we feel safest. Seeing a horror movie on the big screen, surrounded by like-minded moviegoers, is a communal experience, one in which everyone screams and laughs together. We are together, and therefore we are much less vulnerable, so when someone punctures that bubble of safety, it’s all the more frightening.
Matinee (also released as Midnight Matinee in some territories) is a movie that understands this from the jump, setting up a stunning opening kill that predates a similar sequence in Scream 2 by almost a full decade. A smart, layered, very stylish Canadian slasher released at the tail end of the 1980s, it’s one of those films that’s spent a lot of time in the dark even among the horror faithful (I’m willing to admit that I hadn’t seen it until recently). Now, a new Kino Cult Blu-ray release is out to change that, and it reveals a slasher essential that, while not perfect, has charm and style to spare.
Two years ago, the Paramount Theater in the small town of Halston closed its doors when, during the theater’s annual horror festival, a young moviegoer was murdered in his seat, mid-movie. Leads in the murder quickly dried up, and the case is cold enough now that the town barely talks about it anymore. Fortunately for local horror fans, that means the Paramount can open again in time for its Halloween horror festival, and they’ve got a hotshot producer (William B. Davis) in town for just such an occasion.
As the festival draws closer, the film introduces us to a variety of characters, including rebellious teenager Sherri (Beatrice Boepple), her boyfriend Lawrence (Jeff Schultz), her overbearing mother Marilyn (Gillian Barber), and the theater’s kindly owner, Earle (Don S. Davis), who’s just hoping he can run a business without more bloodshed. But someone clearly remembers what happened two years ago, and their violent streak is on a collision course with opening night.
Matinee has quite a few things going for it, but what stands out right away, and maintains a consistent grip right up through a wonderful crescendo in the third act, is the film’s visual style. Writer/Director Richard Martin, cinematographer Cyrus Block, and special effects wizard Bob Comer make great use of the film’s limited locations, giving the movie a charming small-town feel reminiscent of Halloween or The Blob while building a self-contained little world inside the theater itself that’ll remind you of films like Popcorn and Demons.
The colors are striking, the framing is clever, and the film clearly has a ball making references to all kinds of other horror cinema moments ranging from The Phantom of the Opera to Friday the 13th. The kills, while relatively sparing with gore, are delivered with style and appropriate tension, creating that sense of unease right in the middle of a place where we as movie fans should be comfortable: The movie theater. Along the way, the Paramount itself becomes a character, and this release definitely dials up its retro splendor.
The Blu-ray upgrade preserves the film’s attention to detail and ambitious cinematography, helping the colors to pop while never letting go of the texture and feel of a relatively low-budget horror film made in Canada in the 1980s. There’s a certain gauziness to many exploitation films of this era, that haloed light you get when the scene is perhaps overexposed just a little too much. It makes the film dreamlike even when it reaches for realism, and Kino Cult’s upgrade preserves that feeling. Throw in a smart script and a whodunit plot that leans heavily into the psychological details of each character, and you’ve got a winner.
There are a couple of things that stick out as slight issues here, including the lack of special features beyond an excellent commentary from film historians and Kino regulars Jason Pichonsky and Paul Corupe. The disc is quite reasonably priced, so it’s not a letdown economically speaking, but I’d love a deeper dive into the film and the Canadian slasher boom in general, particularly for a movie like this that seems to have faded from so many memories, including mine. The sound mix also has some issues, probably left over from previous releases, that might have you playing with your volume settings a little more than you’d like over the course of a 90-minute film, particularly when lines of ADR dialogue crop up.
These are minor concerns, though, and they do nothing to diminish the impact of Matinee, or the joy that’ll come from watching this film for the first time if you’re a slasher devotee in search of something new, or even someone who saw this movie way back when hoping to relive its glories. This is one of those slashers I’ll be talking about with fellow horrorphiles for a long time, and it’s because of this disc.
Matinee is now available on Blu-ray from Kino Cult.
You must be logged in to post a comment.