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New to Blu – Week of 9/19/2017
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.
Small week of releases but some really good stuff. We’ve got Wonder Woman, a new animated Starship Troopers movie and The Bad Batch. The big one though? John Landis’ Innocent Blood from Warner Archive. That’s a must have for every horror collection and you can snag it just before Halloween!
US Releases
Cartels (Lionsgate, Region A)
Synopsis:
Action legend Steven Seagal headlines this explosive thriller that pits US forces against an Eastern European drug cartel. When crime boss Salazar turns informant, US Marshal Jensen (Luke Goss, Blade II) and his team must guard their luxury-hotel safe-house. But as cartel underboss Sinclair (UFC fighter Georges St. Pierre) and his hit squads descend to murder Salazar, the situation explodes. Enraged, Agent Harrison (Seagal) will stop at nothing to root out the mole that compromised the operation.
Red Line 7000 (Kino Lorber, Region A)
Synopsis:
A glimpse into the lives of three professional car racers as they alternate between competing, their friendships, and time with the women in their lives.
The Bad Batch (Virgil Films & Entertainment, Region A)
Synopsis:
A dystopian love story in a Texas wasteland and set in a community of cannibals.
Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (Sony, Region A)
Synopsis:
Federation trooper Johnny Rico is ordered to work with a group of new recruits on a satellite station on Mars, where giant bugs have decided to target their next attack.
Wonder Woman (Warner Bros, Region A)
Synopsis:
The Amazonian Warrior Princess Diana left her lush tropical island to dwell in our urban cityscapes of glass and steel. Tutored in the ways of the Greek warriors, and outfitted with incredible gifts the Goddess bestowed upon her people, she becomes Paradise Island’s emissary to civilization.
The Lost World (Flicker Alley, Region A)
Synopsis:
Young and adventurous reporter Edward Malone is dispatched by his editor at the London Record Journal to cover a lecture by the boisterous Professor Challenger, who is convinced that dinosaurs are still roaming the earth. While the community thinks him a crackpot, he finds a believer in the esteemed hunter/explorer Sir John Roxton, who befriends Malone. Malone is introduced to Paula White, whose father was left behind in the Amazon outback to contend with the mammoth creatures; it’s the father’s diary, featuring sketches of the dinosaurs, that’s proof positive for Challenger of their existence. Soon a rescue mission is under way and Paula, Malone, Challenger and Roxton are awestruck by the presence of brontosaurs, pterodactyls and allosaurs right before their eyes! The turbulent assaults of these prehistoric monsters, unexpected encounters and a frenzied volcano sequence make this a spellbinding cinematic experience that won’t be forgotten…
Bates Motel: Season Five (Universal, Region A)
Synopsis:
“Bates Motel,” inspired by Hitchcock’s genre-defining film, “Psycho,” is a contemporary exploration of the formative years of Norman Bates’ relationship with his mother, Norma, and the world they inhabit. Viewers will have access to the dark, twisted backstory and learn firsthand how Norma helped forge the most famous serial killer of them all.
Bates Motel: The Complete Season (Universal, Region A)
Synopsis:
Norma Bates loves her son, Norman, more than anything in the world. After her husband dies unexpectedly, Norma and teenage Norman find a new home. This new town is a chance for Norman to start over with new friends, without the specter of his dead father haunting his mind. The property is actually a motel and house situated on a busy, main road. Norma sees this opportunity as destiny as she starts a new business. Norman starts at the local school, and the two seem happy about the change. The new town is not all it appears to be, however. Corrupt policemen and drug deals abound, making business difficult for Norma’s new motel. With Norman acting up more than ever, it is up to Norma to keep the peace with her teenage son while cultivating her business.
The Illustrated Man (Warner Archive, Region A)
Synopsis:
A good-natured drifter meets a tattooed man whose “skin illustrations” inspire terrifying visions.
Innocent Blood (Warner Archive, Region A)
Synopsis:
Marie has two appetites, sex and blood. Her career as a vampire is going along fine until two problems come up, she is interrupted while feeding on Sal (the shark) Macelli and she begins to develop a relationship with the policeman who has been trying to put Sal away. Sal wakes up in the morgue very confused and very thirsty. He goes back to his old haunts and begins to create an organized crime family of vampires while Marie and her policeman lover hunt him…
Adventures of Captain Marvel (Kino Lorber, Region A)
Synopsis:
To protect a magic talisman from being used for evil, a boy is given the power to become an adult superhero with a single magic word.
UK Releases
Journey to the Center of the Earth (Eureka, Region B)
Synopsis:
An Edinburgh professor and assorted colleagues follow an explorer’s trail down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the earth’s center.
Visiting Hours (Final Cut Entertainment, Region B)
Synopsis:
A crazed, women-hating killer attacks journalist Deborah Ballin. When he discovers that his attack didn’t kill Deborah, he comes to the hospital to finish what he started.
Night School, director Ken Hughes and writer Ruth Avergon‘s tale of a headhunting slasher on the streets of Boston, arrived in the early Golden Age of the slasher film and never quite broke through the endurance test that other films in the subgenre, like Friday the 13th, managed to pass with flying colors. Blame it on a more cerebral tone, a crowded market, whatever you like, but saying it’s a shame that the film didn’t break through doesn’t begin to cover it.
Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere.
So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).
Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner.
I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve.
But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.
It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.
Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.
In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking.
That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.
Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
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