Hello, dear readers! We’re back with a brand new assortment of horror and sci-fi home media releases this week, and as we creep closer and closer towards Halloween, there are definitely a handful of titles coming out on Tuesday that would be fun to check out as you get ready for the spooky season (admittedly, that is year-round for most of us). Arrow Video is keeping busy with a handful of releases, including a 4K version of Dario Argento’s The Cat O’ Nine Tails and Blind Beast. And speaking of Argento, Blue Underground is showing Two Evil Eyes - his collaboration with George A. Romero - some love with their 4K presentation of the film. Larry Cohen’s A Return to Salem’s Lot is finally getting a Blu-ray, and if you missed the latest Conjuring film in theaters earlier this year, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is headed home on multiple formats this week as well.
Other releases for August 24th include Special Edition releases for One Dark Night, Evil Dead Trap and The Dark, as well as The Cannibal Man, No One Heard the Scream, Frightworld, Funhouse, Death Rink and Red Scream Vampyres.
Blind Beast: Special Edition (Arrow Video, Blu-ray)
Blind Beast is a grotesque portrait of the bizarre relationship between a blind sculptor and his captive muse, adapted from a short story from Japan’s foremost master of the macabre, Edogawa Rampo (Horrors of Malformed Men, The Black Lizard, Caterpillar).
An artist’s model, Aki (Mako Midori), is abducted, and awakens in a dark warehouse studio whose walls are decorated with outsized women’s body parts, eyes, lips, legs and breasts and dominated by two recumbent giant statues of male and female nudes. Her kidnapper introduces himself as Michio (Eiji Funakoshi), a blind sculptor whom she had witnessed previously at an exhibition in which she featured intently caressing a statue of her naked torso. Michio announces his intention of using her to sculpt the perfect female form. At first defiant, she eventually succumbs to his intense fixation on her body and finds herself drawn into his sightless world, in which touch is everything.
Blind Beast is a masterpiece of erotic horror that explores the all\-encompassing and overwhelming relationship between the artist and his art and the obsessive closed world that the artist inhabits, with maestro director Yasuzo Masumura (Giants and Toys, Irezumi) conjuring up a hallucinogenic dreamworld in which sensual and creative urges combine with a feverish intensity.
SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:
The Cat O’ Nine Tails 4K (Arrow Video, 4K Ultra HD)
Following the success of his debut feature, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, distributor Titanus tasked writer/director Dario Argento with delivering a follow-up in short order. The resulting film, granted a greatly enhanced budget and heralded in its US marketing campaign as nine times more suspenseful than its predecessor, was The Cat O Nine Tails.
When a break-in occurs at a secretive genetics institute, blind puzzle-maker Franco Arnò (Karl Malden, Patton, One-Eyed Jacks), who overheard an attempt to blackmail one of the institutes scientists shortly before the robbery, teams up with intrepid reporter Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus, Beneath the Planet of the Apes) to crack the case. But before long the bodies begin to pile up and the two amateur sleuths find their own lives imperiled in their search for the truth. And worse still, Lori (Cinzia De Carolis, Cannibal Apocalypse), Franco’s young niece, may also be in the killer’s sights.
This second entry in the so-called Animal Trilogy found Argento further refining his distinctive style and cementing his reputation as the master of the Giallo thriller. Co-starring Catherine Spaak (Il Sorpasso) and Rada Rassimov (Baron Blood), and featuring another nerve-jangling score by the great Ennio Morricone (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly), The Cat O Nine Tails remains one of Argento’s most suspenseful and underrated films.
4K ULTRA HD BLU\-RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS:
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, 4K Ultra HD/Blu/Digital, Blu/Digital & DVD)
"The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It" reveals a chilling story of terror, murder and unknown evil that shocked even experienced real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. One of the most sensational cases from their files, it starts with a fight for the soul of a young boy, then takes them beyond anything they'd ever seen before, to mark the first time in U.S. history that a murder suspect would claim demonic possession as a defense.
Special Features:
Evil Dead Trap: Special Edition (Unearthed Classics, Blu-ray)
A TV station employee takes a camera crew out to an abandoned factory to investigate a purported murder that was videotaped there, only to end up running for her life. Nami hosts a late-night home video program. She receives a videotape that appears to contain an actual murder. She and her crew investigate the location where she meets a man looking for his brother who warns her to stay away. As she gets closer to the truth, she and her friends are subjected to a brutal nightmare.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
One Dark Night: Collector’s Edition (MVD Visual, Blu-ray)
World-renowned psychic Raymar is found dead after announcing that he had uncovered the secret of how to become even more powerful in death by the use of telekinetic powers. At the same time, two high school girls plan an initiation night for their friend Julie (Meg Tilly, The Big Chill), who is determined to shed her goody-goody image. Her test is to spend the night locked in the crypt – the same one that Raymar has been buried in that very day.
The crypt soon becomes a battlefield of horror involving unmated special effects with vaults cracking and exploding open, coffins sliding out and splintering open to release decayed corpses at Raymar's bidding.
The climactic surprise ending will chill the audience and consume them with terror in this shocking tale of horror from writer/director Tom McLoughlin (Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives) that takes you beyond fear!
SPECIAL FEATURES:
A Return to Salem’s Lot (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
The terrifying tale of Salem's Lot continues in the shocking and satirical A Return To Salem's Lot! Beneath the quaint, picture-perfect exterior of a small New England community lurks an unsettling, undead evil: vampires. When fresh blood comes to town in the form of amoral anthropologist Joe Weber and his son Jeremy, the vampires employ the father to document their story. But when the stakes are raised, Joe must take on the hellish horde or lose his son ... and his soul.
Directed and co-written by genre legend Larry Cohen (the It's Alive trilogy, Black Caesar, God Told Me To) and featuring Michael Moriarty (the star of Cohen's Q: The Winged Serpent), A Return To Salem's Lot is a ghoulishly clever follow-up to the hit miniseries based on master of horror Stephen King's acclaimed novel.
Two Evil Eyes 4K (Blue Underground, 4K Ultra HD/Special Features Blu)
The Masters of Modern Horror - George Romero and Dario Argento - bring you an unprecedented pair of shockers inspired by the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. In Romero's The Facts In The Case Of Mr. Valdemar, a conniving wife (Adrienne Barbeau of THE FOG) and her lover use a hypnotic trance to embezzle a fortune from her dying husband, only to receive some chilling surprises from beyond the grave. Then in Argento's The Black Cat, a deranged crime scene photographer (Harvey Keitel of FROM DUSK TILL DAWN) is driven to brutal acts of madness and murder by his girlfriend's new pet. But will this cunning feline deliver a final sickening twist of its own?
Martin Balsam (PSYCHO), E.G. Marshall (CREEPSHOW), John Amos (THE BEASTMASTER) and Tom Atkins (NIGHT OF THE CREEPS) co-star in this wild horror hit that also features grisly makeup effects by Tom Savini (MANIAC). Blue Underground's acclaimed restoration of TWO EVIL EYES, scanned in 4K 16-bit from the original camera negative, is now presented with Dolby Vision HDR and a new Dolby Atmos audio mix, packed with hours of Extras!
SPECIAL FEATURES:
ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK:
The Cannibal Man (Severin Films, Blu-ray)
The Dark: Collector’s Edition (MVD Visual, Blu-ray)
Death Rink (Wild Eye Releasing, DVD)
Frightworld (Wild Eye Raw, DVD)
Funhouse (Magnet Releasing, DVD)
No One Heard the Scream (Severin Films, Blu-ray)
Red Scream Vampyres (Wild Eye Raw, 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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