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Tom Holland’s ‘Fright Night’ Gets Blu-ray Release
Why they would wait this long is beyond me, but it looks like Tom Hollan’s 1985 vampire classic, Fright Night, is finally coming to HD Blu-ray.
Specialty label Twilight Time has struck a deal with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to license and release classic films from the Sony-owned Columbia Pictures library in high-definition Blu-ray editions. In line with Twilight Time’s innovative limited series concept, just 3,000 units of each title will be produced, aimed at the collector/classic film aficionado market, and available exclusively online through Screen Archives, the nation’s largest independent distributor of specialty soundtracks.
The November 8th Blu-ray debut of director Cy Endfield’s and special effects master Ray Harryhausen’s 1961 science fiction/fantasy classic, Mysterious Island, will be followed by a new release on the first Tuesday of each month. Scheduled follow-up on December 13th is the original Fright Night (1985), the horror/comedy cult favorite written and directed by Tom Holland and starring Chris Sarandon and Roddy McDowall.
Twilight Time — the label that has made a recent splash in the classic film home video pond with the release of such titles as The Kremlin Letter, Violent Saturday, and The Egyptian — is the brainchild of 30-year Warner Bros. veteran Brian Jamieson and filmmaker/music restoration specialist Nick Redman. In his long tenure at Warner Home Video, Jamieson initiated and oversaw countless legacy restorations, including the films of Stanley Kubrick, Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One, and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Redman, a film historian and Oscar nominee for his 1997 documentary The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage, is also a prime mover behind Twentieth Century Fox’s pioneering series of limited edition soundtracks, the inspiration for Twilight Time’s release model.
Twilight Time, Jamieson explains, is motivated by a desire “to optimize the film enthusiast’s dream, providing long sought-after collectible and fully restored titles in their original aspect ratios, all manufactured to the highest quality available and at an affordable price.”
Unlike movies-on-demand offerings, each Twilight Time release is a BD or DVD (not a DVDr) properly pressed from a restored transfer. Each is accompanied by a collectible 8-page booklet complete with original essay, stills, and poster art. And each Twilight Time disc provides, whenever possible, that extra most coveted by cinemusic enthusiasts: an isolated score. Mysterious Island offers a particularly high incentive along these lines, featuring music by pantheon composer Bernard Herrmann.
Grover Crisp, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Executive Vice President for Asset Management, Film Restoration, and Digital Mastering, is enthusiastic about his studio’s new partnership with the label. “Our collaboration with Twilight Time will allow us to make available for Blu-ray release some of our library’s most collectible titles in a way fans have been asking for: restored and re-mastered with attention to detail and quality.”
And Jamieson concurs: “Sony and Twilight Time,” he says, “will be serving both the collectible drive of film aficionados, and, in a larger sense, the cause of cinema literacy.“
Scream Factory brought Frank LaLoggia’s 1988 Halloween movie Lady in White to Blu-ray several years back, and now Vinegar Syndrome gives the film a 4K Ultra HD upgrade.
Vinegar Syndrome’s Lady in White 4K release is available now and shipping now!
Watch the trailer below and grab your copy from Vinegar Syndrome today.
This limited edition 4-disc 4K UHD/Blu-ray x 3 set comes with a spot gloss hard slipcase + slipcover combo (designed by Dylan Haley), includes a 40-page perfect bound book and is limited to 8,000 units. It is only available on their website and at select indie retailers.
The full Special Features package includes…
- 4-disc Set: 1x 4K Ultra HD (High Bitrate BD100) / 3x Region A Blu-ray
- 4K UHD presented in Dolby Vision High-Dynamic-Range
- Newly scanned & restored in 4K from its 35mm original camera negative
- Presented in three versions: 126-min Pre-Release Director’s Cut (UHD+BD), the 118-min Extended Home Video Cut (BD), and the 113-min Theatrical Cut (BD)
- New group commentary track with writer/director Frank LaLoggia, alongside actors Lukas Haas, Joelle Jacobi, and Len Cariou for the Pre-Release Director’s Cut
- New commentary track with Frank LaLoggia, moderated by Scott Neumyer for the Extended Home Video Cut
- New commentary track with authors Emma Westwood and Stephen A. Russell for the Extended Home Video Cut
- Archival commentary track with Frank LaLoggia for the Extended Home Video Cut
- “Learning How to Fly” (10 min) – an interview with actress Karen Powell
- “A Snapshot in Time” (9 min) – an interview with actress Lisa Taylor
- “Human Touches” (6 min) – an interview with actress Lucy Lee Flippin
- “Still Relevant” (16 min) – an interview with actress Rose Weaver
- “75% Listening, 25% Editing” (9 min) – an interview with editor Steve Mann
- “Welcome to Willowpoint Falls” (6 min) – a location featurette hosted by Benjamin Scrivens, founder of Fright-Rags
- “Dream Talking: Looking Back” – a visual group commentary for the Pre-Release Director’s Cut with Frank LaLoggia, and actors Lukas Haas, Joelle Jacobi, and Len Cariou (103 min)
- Deleted Scenes with introduction and optional commentary by writer/director Frank LaLoggia (36 min)
- Behind-the-scenes footage with introduction and optional commentary by writer/director Frank LaLoggia (16 min)
- Extended behind-the-scenes footage (73 min)
- Introduction from the 20th anniversary dvd release
- Promotional ‘industry sales’ trailer (7 min)
- 40-page perfect bound book with essays by film historians Molly Henery, Mark H. Harris, and Heidi Honeycutt (limited edition only)
- Multiple radio spots
- Theatrical trailer
- Multiple TV spots
- Workprint trailers (7 min)
- Still gallery
- Reversible sleeve artwork
- English SDH subtitles
1962. Nine-year-old Frankie Scarlatti enjoys a homespun childhood in a rustic Western New York town. The entire community gets into the spirit of Halloween, but then two bullies prank Frankie by locking him in his school cloakroom, leaving him trapped for the night. Alone and afraid, his slumber is interrupted when the ghost of a little girl appears, and Frankie witnesses the specter of her murder by an unseen assailant. Later, while recovering at home, the girl’s ghost appears to him again. With help from his older brother, Frankie begins investigating the circumstances of her death. He soon discovers that her murder was one of several unsolved crimes connected to a local child-killer. As the town’s bucolic veneer fades and long-buried secrets and tensions bubble to the surface, all of the clues to the mystery seem to point towards a huge mansion inhabited by a reclusive woman known as “The Lady in White.”
A nostalgia-driven ghost story wrapped within an intricate murder mystery and coming-of-age drama, writer-director-composer Frank LaLoggia’s passion project Lady in White remains one of the most beautiful and original American horror films of the 1980s. Featuring acclaimed actors Alex Rocco (The Godfather), Len Cariou (Executive Decision), and Sydney Lassick (Carrie, The Unseen), it boasts the first starring role by Lukas Haas (Mars Attacks, Inception) as well as breathtaking photography by Academy Award® winner Russell Carpenter (True Lies, The Lawnmower Man). Vinegar Syndrome is honored to bring this genre masterpiece to 4K UHD, newly restored from its original 35mm camera negative and presented in three versions: its pre-release director’s cut, its extended home-video version, and its original theatrical version, along with an abundance of both new and archival extras.
Paul Lê wrote here on Bloody Disgusting back in 2023, “Over the years, fans have described this film as gateway horror, but they liken it more to The Watcher in the Woods than, say, Hocus Pocus or Casper. There are chilling moments that warrant its PG-13 rating.”
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