For this final week of home media releases, June is closing things out on a strong note, as we have plenty of horror and sci-fi offerings to get excited about. For those who may have missed it during its theatrical run earlier this year, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s The Endless arrives on both formats (and is absolutely worth your time).
Arrow Video is keeping busy with a pair of Special Edition releases–The Addiction and Vigil–and Vinegar Syndrome is serving up a double dose of cult filmmaking with their multi-format presentations for Grave Robbers and their Blood Theatre/The Visitants double feature. Scream Factory has put together a stellar Blu for The Curse of the Cat People, and for those in the mood for more feline-themed horror, Cat Sick Blues arrives on DVD this Tuesday. And for those of you Puppet Master fans out there, you’re going to want to pick up Full Moon’s killer new collection of the entire series, which comes packed in a replica of Toulon’s trunk.
The Addiction: Special Edition (Arrow Video, Blu-ray)
The mid-nineties were a fertile period for the vampire movie. Big-name stars such as Tom Cruise and Eddie Murphy flocked to genre, as did high-caliber filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, veterans Wes Craven and John Landis, independents Michael Almereyda and Jeffrey Arsenault, and up-and-comers Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo del Toro. Amid the fangs and crucifixes, Abel Ferrara reunited with his King of New York star Christopher Walken for The Addiction, a distinctly personal take on creatures of the night.
Philosophy student Kathleen (Lili Taylor, The Conjuring) is dragged into an alleyway on her way home from class by Casanova (Annabella Sciorra, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) and bitten on the neck. She quickly falls ill but realizes this isn’t any ordinary disease when she develops an aversion to daylight and a thirst for human blood...
Having made a big-budget foray into science fiction two years earlier with Body Snatchers, Ferrara s approach to the vampire movie is in a lower key. Shot on the streets of New York, like so many of his major works including The Driller Killer, Ms. 45 and Bad Lieutenant¬ ¬ and beautifully filmed in black and white, The Addiction sees the filmmaker on his own terms and at his very best: raw, shocking, intense, intelligent, masterful.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
Blood Theatre/ The Visitants (Vinegar Syndrome, Blu/DVD Combo)
From the damaged mind of director Rick Sloane (HOBGOBLINS) comes BLOOD THEATRE and THE VISITANTS. In Sloane's 1984 debut, BLOOD THEATRE, an old movie house in which a massacre occurred decades earlier, finally re-opens only to be once again targeted by a bloodthirsty maniac intent on murdering anyone and everyone who makes the mistake of buying a ticket. Packed with low rent bloodshed, BLOOD THEATRE exemplifies the no-budget aesthetic Sloane relished and features the one and only Mary Woronov (EATING RAOUL) in a supporting role.
Sloane's second feature effort, THE VISITANTS, is set in the neon colored 1950s and chronicles the hi-jinx which ensue following the theft of a ray gun by a teenage boy from his bizarre neighbors who just happen to be aliens who have embedded themselves within a sleepy suburban neighborhood.
Barely seen since their brief theatrical runs, Vinegar Syndrome presents the Blu-ray debuts of these off the wall, home grown pieces of jaw dropping mutant cinema, both newly restored from their 35mm camera negatives.
Bonus Features:
1. Newly scanned and restored in 2k from 35mm original negative
2. Bonus feature film: THE VISITANTS (1987), directed by Rick Sloane
3. Commentary track with Rick Sloane on BLOOD THEATRE & THE VISITANTS
4. Ensemble introduction from a screening at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with: Rick Sloane, Mary Woronov (actress BLOOD THEATRE), Marcus Vaughter (actor THE VISITANTS), Jordana Capra (actress THE VISITANTS)
5. BLOOD THEATRE, post film Q&A with: Rick Sloane and Mary Woronov
6. Commentary track for BLOOD THEATRE with: The Hysteria Continues!
7. Reversible cover for THE VISITANTS
Cat Sick Blues (Wild Eye Releasing, DVD)
When Ted's beloved cat dies, it causes a mental breakdown. Now he believes that the only way to bring back his pet is taking the lives of nine humans. So Ted dons vicious deadly cat claw gloves and a creepy cat mask, and goes on a murderous rampage. As the butchery escalates, a twisted romance blossoms between Ted and Claire, a young woman who has also recently lost her cat.
The Curse of the Cat People (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
Filled with "wonderful atmosphere [and] fine, moody fantasy", (Leonard Maltin), this continuation of 1942’s Cat People follows Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), now remarried, living in idyllic Tarrytown, New York, and the father of six-year-old Amy. When Amy becomes withdrawn and speaks of consorting with a new "friend, ", Oliver worries that she may be under the influence of the spirit of his first wife. Is it just Amy’s imagination that has manifested the enigmatic Irena (Simone Simon), who long believed herself to be descended from a race of Cat People?
Directors Gunther V. Fritsch and Robert Wise (making his directorial debut), co-helmed a gothic-laced mix of fantasy and fright so astute it was used in college psychology classes. And producer Val Lewton, given small budgets and lurid, pre-tested film titles by RKO, worked with rising filmmakers to emphasize the fear of the unseen, and turn meager resources into momentous works of psychological terror.
Grave Robbers (Vinegar Syndrome, Blu/DVD Combo)
Nora Mae Edwards had always dreamed that a handsome and wealthy man would offer to marry her, but she never expected to find love while working the night shift at a sleazy diner. However, when John Henry Cox proposes to her within moments of their meeting, Nora can't help but say yes. Whisked off to John's home town of Newbury to live in his family's mansion, Nora discovers that her new husband's profession is that of an undertaker, and that the local death toll is disproportionately high. As the joys of marital bliss soon give way to increasingly violent nightmares, she begins to suspect that her seemingly gentle husband may be harboring a dark secret, especially when she learns that she's far from the first 'Mrs. Cox,' but even more terrifyingly, that while her husband desires her body, he'd prefer it cold and dead...
A darkly humorous and vaguely supernatural story of necrophilia, GRAVE ROBBERS is a gruesome black comedy about the meaning of love and lust after death. Written and directed by Straw Weisman (FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE), and the final producing effort from exploitation film tsar, Lew Mishkin, Vinegar Syndrome brings this direct-to-video rarity to Blu-ray, newly restored from its camera negative and fully uncut.
Bonus Features:
1. Newly scanned and restored in 2k from its 35mm original negative
2. Commentary track with writer/director Straw Weisman
3. "Digging Up the Past" - interview with Straw Weisman
4. Director's introduction
5. Original video trailer
6. Reversible cover
The Endless (Well Go USA, Blu-ray & DVD)
Following their Lovecraftian modern cult classic SPRING, acclaimed filmmakers Moorhead and Benson return with this mind-bending thriller that follows two brothers who receive a cryptic video message inspiring them to revisit the UFO death cult they escaped a decade earlier. Hoping to find the closure that they couldn’t as young men, they’re forced to reconsider the cult’s beliefs when confronted with unexplainable phenomena surrounding the camp. As the members prepare for the coming of a mysterious event, the brothers race to unravel the seemingly impossible truth before their lives become permanently entangled with the cult.
BONUS FEATURES:
EXTENDED BONUS FEATURES
COMMENTARY WITH DIRECTORS & PRODUCER
MAKING OF
BEHIND THE SCENES
DELETED SCENES
VFX BREAKDOWN
"RIDICULOUS EXTRAS"
TRAILERS
Puppet Master Collection: Toulon’s Ultimate Collectible Trunk Set (Full Moon Pictures, Blu-ray)
A detailed replica of the mystical Andre Toulon’s travelling case from the Puppet Master franchise, Toulon’s Trunk is a stunning wood and metal-forged box set containing all 11 official Puppet Master films re-mastered on Blu-ray, a twelfth behind-the-scenes bonus disc, bonus disc (Arcana of The Puppet Master with over 6 hours of Behind-the-Scenes footage), a mini Blade figure, collectible booklet and startling new cover artwork for each film!
Contains the following Puppet Master films on Blu-ray:
A Taste of Phobia (Artsploitation Films, DVD)
Of the multitude of fears, A Taste of Phobia delves into some of the weirdest and wildest, each with its own bloody twist. Presenting 14 unnerving segments, featured phobias include caetophobia (fear of hairs), henophobia (fear of young virgin girls), coprophobia (fear of feces), mysophobia (fear of contamination and germs), mazeophobia (fear of being lost), astrophobia (fear of celestial objects), mageirocophobia (fear of cooking) and oneirophobia (fear of dreams).
Vigil: Special Edition (Arrow Video, Blu-ray)
Vincent Ward once described as the Antipodean Werner Herzog made his feature debut with Vigil, heralding his status as one of New Zealand s most distinctive filmmaking talents and paving the way for such equally remarkable and unclassifiable efforts as The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey and Map of the Human Heart.
A stranger appears in a remote New Zealand farmland at the exact time a farmer accidentally falls to his death. The mysterious outsider grows close to some of the dead man s family, to the point where he and the widow become lovers. But her eleven-year-old daughter, Toss, struggling to come to terms with the death of her father as well as her impending womanhood, believes the intruder to be the devil and sets about protecting her family and their homestead.
Propelled by Fiona Kay’s outstanding performance by as Toss, she would earn a standing ovation when Vigil screened at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival the first time ever that a New Zealand feature played in the main competition.
SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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