Before we say goodbye to the month of May, we have one final day of Blu-ray and DVD releases ahead of us, and it’s an eclectic bunch of titles, to say the least. If you missed them in theaters earlier this year, Gaspar Noé’s Climax as well as Neil Jordan’s Greta hit both formats this Tuesday, and for you David Lynch lovers out there, Criterion is showing Blue Velvet some much-deserved love with their brand-new release of the cult classic as well.
Scream Factory is doing the dark lord’s work with their new Blus for both When A Stranger Calls Back and The Alligator People, and Severin Films is bringing home The Uncanny in HD for the first time ever this week.
Other home media releases for May 28th include Double Impact, Near Extinction, Splatter Farm, and a Shark Attack 3-Pack.
The Alligator People (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
Terror in the Bayou! Her honeymoon turned into a nightmare! A young wife (Beverly Garland, Swamp Women, It Conquered The World) is abandoned by her husband (Richard Crane, Mysterious Island, The Lone Ranger) on their wedding day. Distraught, she tracks him down to his ancestral home in the bayous of Louisiana, where, amid the swamps and the deadly undergrowth, she discovers a terrible secret.
Her husband was saved from death by an experimental medical procedure involving serum derived from alligators ... and now he’s developing horrifying side effects. She’ll face any danger to help him including a brute with a hook for a hand (Lon Chaney Jr., The Wolf Man, Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein) but soon discovers her love may not be enough.
Blue Velvet: The Criterion Collection (Criterion, Blu-ray)
Home from college, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) makes an unsettling discovery: a severed human ear, lying in a field. In the mystery that follows, by turns terrifying and darkly funny, writer-director David Lynch burrows deep beneath the picturesque surfaces of small-town life. Driven to investigate, Jeffrey finds himself drawing closer to his fellow amateur sleuth, Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), as well as their person of interest, lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini)—and facing the fury of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a psychopath who will stop at nothing to keep Dorothy in his grasp. With intense performances and hauntingly powerful scenes and images, Blue Velvet is an unforgettable vision of innocence lost, and one of the most influential American films of the past few decades.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
New 4K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray, both supervised by director David Lynch
Alternate original 2.0 surround soundtrack
The Lost Footage, fifty-three minutes of deleted scenes and alternate takes assembled by Lynch
'Blue Velvet' Revisited, a feature-length meditation on the making of the movie by Peter Braatz, filmed on-set during the production
Mysteries of Love, a seventy-minute documentary from 2002 on the making of the film
Interview from 2017 with composer Angelo Badalamenti
Lynch reading from Room to Dream, a 2018 book he co-authored with Kristine McKenna
PLUS: Excerpts by McKenna from Room to Dream
Climax (Lionsgate, Blu-ray & DVD)
A young street dance troupe gather for a celebration that descends into madness.
Greta (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, Blu-ray & DVD)
A sweet, naïve young woman trying to make it on her own in New York City, Frances (Chloë Grace Moretz) doesn’t think twice about returning the handbag she finds on the subway to its rightful owner. That owner is Greta (Isabelle Huppert), an eccentric French piano teacher with a love for classical music and an aching loneliness. Having recently lost her mother, Frances quickly grows closer to widowed Greta. The two become fast friends — but Greta’s maternal charms begin to dissolve and grow increasingly disturbing as Frances discovers that nothing in Greta’s life is what it seems in this suspense thriller from Academy Award®-winning director Neil Jordan.
The Uncanny (Severin Films, Blu-ray)
On Blu-ray for the first time ever! In 1977, legendary Amicus co-founder Milton Subotsky (ASYLUM, AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS) teamed with Canadian producer Claude Héroux (SCANNERS, VIDEODROME) for the anthology shocker CelluloidDiaries.com calls "highly entertaining… the best killer cat movie there is!" Peter Cushing, Ray Milland, Donald Pleasence, Samantha Eggar (THE BROOD), Susan Penhaligon (PATRICK), John Vernon (POINT BLANK) and Alexandra Stewart (GOODBYE EMMANUELLE) star in this grisly portmanteau about a paranoid writer (Cushing) who must convince his publisher (Milland) that all cats are unholy fiends based on three tales of kitty carnage. Directed by Denis Héroux (NAKED MASSACRE) from a screenplay by Michel Parry (XTRO) with cinematography by Harry Waxman (THE WICKER MAN), THE UNCANNY is now scanned from an inter-negative recently discovered in a London vault.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
The Cat's Victim: Interview with Actress Susan Penhaligon
Trailer
When A Stranger Calls Back (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
The Stranger is watching you … again. Five years after her own terrifying baby-sitting ordeal, Julia Jenz (Jill Schoelen, The Stepfather) is trying to put her life together when the past comes back to haunt her. Someone is breaking into her apartment, moving objects around and toying with her. The police think she’s just a hysterical coed, but student advisor Jill Johnson (Carol Kane), similarly victimized thirteen years earlier, is determined to nail Julia’s stalker. Retired detective John Clifford (Charles Durning), who saved Jill’s life before, must find and outwit the culprit before it’s too late in this riveting sequel that reunites writer/director Fred Walton with the stars of the original When A Stranger Calls.
ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK:
Double Impact (MVD Rewind Collection, Blu-ray)
Near Extinction (Infuse Releasing, DVD)
Shark Attack 3-Pack (Wild Eye Releasing, DVD)
Splatter Farm (Bayview Entertainment, DVD)
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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