We have one last batch of Blu-ray and DVD releases coming our way before we say goodbye (and good riddance) to the month of March. Scream Factory is keeping busy this Tuesday with their Blu-rays for both Bones and Munster, Go Home! (two titles this writer cannot wait to revisit in HD), and Vinegar Syndrome is showing some love to both Hollywood Horror House and Xtro 3: Watch the Skies this week as well.
Arrow Video has put together a 3-Disc Special Edition Collector’s Set of the Ringu films that fans will definitely want to pick up, and season two of The Purge television series heads home to DVD, too. Other releases for March 31st include Eat Brains Love, Evil River, and Terror in Woods Creek.
Bones (2001) (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
The time is 1979. Jimmy Bones (Snoop Dogg, Training Day) is respected and loved as the neighborhood protector. When he is betrayed and brutally murdered by a corrupt cop (Michael T. Weiss, The Pretender), Bones' elegant brownstone becomes his tomb. Twenty-two years later, the neighborhood has become ghetto and his home a Gothic ruin. Four teens renovate it as an afterhours nightclub, unknowingly releasing Jimmy's tortured spirit. It's thrills and chills when Jimmy's ghost sets out to get his revenge.
Hollywood Horror House (Vinegar Syndrome, Blu/DVD Combo)
Vic Valance (David Garfield) is an enigmatic young man who has manipulated his way into working at the decaying mansion of a once prolific, but now reclusive and alcoholic, movie star named Katharine Packard (Miriam Hopkins). While the rest of the house staff become suspicious of Vic's intentions, the aging movie queen finds in him a companion and, she hopes, a lover. But as Vic begins behaving in more and more erratic ways, it becomes clear that he's far more sinister than his demeanor implies and might in fact be a vicious serial killer who has been murdering and dismembering middle-aged women in Hollywood...
A psychedelic proto-slasher by way of Sunset Blvd, HOLLYWOOD HORROR HOUSE (aka SAVAGE INTRUDER) was shot on and off between late 1969 and mid 1973 by writer/producer/director Donald Wolfe, with funds from his star home bus tour company. Chock full of lurid, candy-colored freak-outs shot by John Morrill (A Boy and His Dog) along with surprisingly grisly murder set pieces, plus a supporting cast including Gale Sondergaard, Virginia Wing (Law and Order), Florence Lake (Welcome to Arrow Beach), and Joe Besser (The Three Stooges) in his final role in a feature film, HOLLYWOOD HORROR HOUSE ramps up its weirdness all the way through it's demented final act and comes to Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome, newly restored in 4k from its original 35mm camera negative.
Bonus Features:
1. Region Free Blu-ray/DVD combo
2. Newly scanned & restored in 4k from its 35mm camera negative
3. Historical commentary track with David Decoteau of RapidHeart.tv and David Del Valle of SinisterImage.com
4. Promotional image gallery
5. Reversible cover artwork
6. English SDH subtitles
Munster, Go Home! (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
America's Funniest Family in their first full-length feature film! Following the wildly popular The Munsters TV series, original cast members Fred Gwynne (Herman Munster), Yvonne De Carlo (Lily Munster), Al Lewis (Grandpa) and Butch Patrick (Eddie Munster) are reunited in this hilarious movie as you've never seen them before ... in spooky color! Herman inherits a mansion in England and moves the family into an estate full of ghosts and other surprises. Also starring Terry-Thomas (The Abominable Dr. Phibes), Hermione Gingold (Bell, Book And Candle), Richard Dawson (Hogan's Heroes), Bernard Fox (Arnold) and horror film legend John Carradine (The Howling), and directed by TV veteran Earl Bellamy who directed episodes of the original series, Munster, Go Home! is a spookily splendid return for the first family of fright!
The Purge: Season Two (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, DVD)
Based on the hit movie franchise, The Purge revolves around a 12-hour period when all crime, including murder, is legal. Season Two explores how a single Purge Night affects the lives of four interconnected characters over the course of the ensuing year, all inevitably leading up to the next Purge. From Blumhouse Television and UCP, the second season of the anthology series opens on Purge Night but dives deeper than ever before into what the Purge world looks like the other 364 days of the year.
Ringu: 3-Disc Special Edition Collector’s Set (Arrow Video, Blu-ray)
In 1998, director Hideo Nakata (Dark Water) unleashed a chilling tale of technological terror on unsuspecting audiences, which redefined the horror genre, launched the J-horror boom in the West and introduced a generation of moviegoers to a creepy, dark-haired girl called Sadako. The film’s success spawned a slew of remakes, reimaginations and imitators, but none could quite boast the power of Nakata’s original masterpiece, which melded traditional Japanese folklore with contemporary anxieties about the spread of technology.
A group of teenage friends are found dead, their bodies grotesquely contorted, their faces twisted in terror. Reiko (Nanako Matsushima, When Marnie Was There), a journalist and the aunt of one of the victims, sets out to investigate the shocking phenomenon, and in the process uncovers a creepy urban legend about a supposedly cursed videotape, the contents of which causes anyone who views it to die within a week unless they can persuade someone else to watch it, and, in so doing, pass on the curse.
Arrow Video is proud to present the genre defining trilogy Ringu, the film that started it all, plus Hideo Nakata’s chilling sequel, Ringu 2, and the haunting origin story, Ringu 0 as well as the lost original sequel, George Iida’s Spiral, gathered together in glorious high definition and supplemented by a wealth of bonus materials.
Special Edition Contents:
Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (Vinegar Syndrome, Blu/DVD Combo)
A group of military personnel have been assembled to, they believe, locate and disarm old active explosives which have been left unattended at a former army testing site on a remote island. But when they arrive at the deserted island, they soon discover that something doesn't seem quite right about their mission. Soon enough, they uncover a strange concrete block which, after accidentally blowing up, unleashes an indestructible, bloodthirsty alien being which will stop at nothing to kill them. As the survivors band together in order to stay alive and try and find a way to outwit the diabolical creature, they realize that their entire mission might have been a trap and that the military is using them as pawns in their own vicious plan...
The third and most violent entry in the XTRO trilogy, Harry Bromley Davenport's XTRO 3: WATCH THE SKIES moves the setting to Southern California while amping up both the action and the gore, through a series of nasty and inventive death scenes. Featuring a talented supporting cast, including Virgil Frye (Easy Rider, Graduation Day), Andrew Divoff (Air Force One, Toy Soldiers), Nigel Gibbs (Pump Up the Volume), and Robert Culp (I Spy) and photographed by Irv Goodnoff (Evilspeak, The Farmer), Vinegar Syndrome presents this underrated slice of 90s action tinged sci-fi/horror on Blu-ray for the very first time, newly restored in 2k from its original 35mm camera negative.
Bonus Features:
1. Region Free Blu-ray/DVD combo
2. Newly scanned & restored in 2k from its 35mm camera negative
3. "Winning and Losing" - an interview with director Harry Bromley Davenport
4. "Acting like a Writer" - an interview with writer/actor Daryl Haney
5. Original trailer
6. Reversible cover artwork
7. English SDH subtitles
ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK:
Eat Brains Love (Gunpowder & Sky, Blu-ray & DVD)
Evil River (Wild Eye Releasing, DVD)
Terror in Woods Creek (Wild Eye Releasing, 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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