Happy September, guys! This month’s home entertainment releases are wasting no time, as Tuesday looks to be another stellar day of horror and sci-fi titles coming our way. For those of you excited for Blade Runner 2049, Warner Bros. is putting out The Final Cut version of Ridley Scott’s original masterpiece in 4K Ultra HD, and Criterion is giving Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca their trademarked HD treatment with a stunning new release.
As far as new indie horror movies go, both A Dark Song and Raw come home this Tuesday and are well worth your time, and for those of you Winchester brothers fans out there, the 12th season of Supernatural is being released this week, too.
Other notable titles for September 5th include The Spell, The Atoning, The Basement, I Saw What You Did, and a 4K Ultra HD release of The Cabin in the Woods.
Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, 4K Ultra HD/Blu/Digital HD)
Visually spectacular, intensely action-packed and powerfully prophetic since its debut, Blade Runner dazzles in Ridley Scott’s definitive Final Cut, including extended scenes and special effects. In a signature role as 21st-century detective Rick Deckard, Harrison Ford brings his masculine-yet-vulnerable presence to this stylish noir thriller. In a future of high-tech possibility soured by urban and social decay, Deckard hunts for fugitive, murderous replicants – and is drawn to a mystery woman whose secrets may undermine his soul.
Disc 1 – Blade Runner: The Final Cut – 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
· 4K remastered trailer
· Introduction and Commentary by Director Ridley Scott
· Commentary by Executive Producer/Screenwriter Hampton Fancher, Screenwriter David Peoples, Producer Michael Deeley and Production Executive Katherine Haber
· Commentary by Visual Futurist Syd Mead, Production Designer Lawrence G. Paull, Art Director David Snyder and Special Photographic Effects Supervisors Douglas Trumbull, Richard Yuricich and David Dryer
Disc 2 – Blade Runner: The Final Cut Blu-ray
· Introduction and Commentary by Director Ridley Scott
· Commentary by Executive Producer/Screenwriter Hampton Fancher, Screenwriter David Peoples, Producer Michael Deeley and Production Executive Katherine Haber
· Commentary by Visual Futurist Syd Mead, Production Designer Lawrence G. Paull, Art Director David Snyder and Special Photographic Effects Supervisors Douglas Trumbull, Richard Yuricich and David Dryer
Disc 3 – Blade Runner Bonus Disc 1
· Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner – The Ultimate Documentary on the Making of the Film, Culled from Over 80 Interviews with Cast, Crew and Colleagues and Hours of Outtakes and On-Set Footage.
Disc 4 – Blade Runner Bonus Disc 2
· The Electric Dreamer: Remembering Philip K. Dick
· Sacrificial Sheep: The Novel vs. the Film
· Philip K. Dick: The Blade Runner Interviews
· Signs of the Times: Graphic Design
· Fashion Forward: Wardrobe & Styling
· Screen Tests: Rachael and Pris
· The Light That Burns: Remembering Jordan Cronenweth
· Deleted & Alternate Scenes
· 1982 Promotional Featurettes
· Trailers and TV Spots
· Promoting Dystopia: Rendering the Poster Art
· Deck-a-Rep: The True Nature of Rick Deckard
· Nexus Generation: Fans and Filmmakers
A Dark Song (Scream Factory/IFC Midnight, Blu-ray & DVD)
Two broken souls. An unholy alliance.
Grieving Sophia (Catherine Walker) despairs over the tragic loss of her murdered son. Desperate to somehow make contact with the boy she has lost, Sophia believes her prayers are answered when she crosses paths with the reclusive Joseph (Steve Oram, Sightseers). An expert in the occult, Joseph reluctantly agrees to aid Sophia through a series of dark and forbidden rituals in order to bring her child back to the world of the living. Pushed to their physical and psychological breaking points, Sophia and Joseph make a disturbing descent into the most depraved corners of black magic.
The debut feature from rising horror auteur Liam Gavin, A Dark Song sustains an air of quiet, creeping dread, tensely building towards a confrontation with evils unknown to our earthly bounds.
Raw (Universal Studios Home Entertainment, DVD)
At 16, Justine is a brilliant, promising student and a strict vegetarian. But when she starts veterinary school, she quickly encounters a decadent, merciless and dangerously seductive world. Desperate to fit in during the first week of hazing rituals, she strays from her principles and eats raw meat for the first time and faces the terrible and unexpected consequences of her actions as her true self emerges.
Rebecca: The Criterion Collection (Criterion, Blu-ray)
Romance becomes psychodrama in Alfred Hitchcock s elegantly crafted Rebecca, his first foray into Hollywood filmmaking. A dreamlike adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel, the film stars the enchanting Joan Fontaine as a young woman who believes she has found her heart's desire when she marries the dashing aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter (played with cunning vulnerability by Laurence Olivier). But upon moving to Manderley, her groom's baroque ancestral mansion, she soon learns that his deceased wife haunts not only the home, but also the temperamental, brooding Maxim as well. The start of Hitchcock's legendary collaboration with producer David O. Selznick, this elegiac gothic vision, captured in stunning black and white by George Barnes, took home the Academy Awards for best picture and best cinematography.
TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary from 1990 featuring film scholar Leonard J. Leff
- Isolated music and effects track
- New conversation between film critic and author Molly Haskell and scholar Patricia White
- New interview with special effects historian Craig Barron on the visual effects in Rebecca
- Documentary from 2007 on the making of Rebecca
- Screen, hair, makeup, and costume tests including actors Joan Fontaine, Anne Baxter, Vivien Leigh, Margaret Sullavan, and Loretta Young
- Casting gallery annotated by director Alfred Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick
- Television interviews with Hitchcock and Fontaine from 1973 and 1980
- Audio interviews from 1986 with actor Judith Anderson and Fontaine
- Three radio adaptations of Rebecca, from 1938, 1941, and 1950, including Orson Welles s version for the Mercury Theatre
- Theatrical rerelease trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic and Selznick biographer David Thomson and selected production correspondence, including letters between Hitchcock and Selznick
The Spell (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
Her thoughts cast a deadly spell of terror!
15-year-old Rita lives in an ordinary town, attends an ordinary high school and wants to lead an ordinary life … but Rita is far from an ordinary teenager. Overweight and self-conscious, Rita (Susan Myers, James At 16) is the victim of cruel teasing by many of her classmates. Only her mother (Lee Grant, Damien: Omen II) and her gym teacher (Lelia Goldoni , Invasion Of The Body Snatchers) seem to understand her. But their understanding is not enough to contain the rage that wells up within Rita. And when it does, the rage causes a supernatural power inside of her to take over. Those who are against Rita begin to die. There seems to be no way to stop the terror once Rita has cast her spell.
This terrifying television film from 1977 also stars James Olsen (Amityville II: The Possession), Helen Hunt (Twister) and was written by genre writer Brian Taggert (Visiting Hours, Poltergeist III and Omen IV: The Awakening).
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- NEW High-Definition transfer of the rarely-seen 86 minute cut of the film (taken from best available elements)
- NEW audio commentary by Made-for-TV-Movie historian and author Amanda Reyes
- NEW interview with writer Brian Taggert
ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK:
American Psycho 2 (Lionsgate, Blu-ray)
The Atoning (Gravitas Ventures, Blu-ray & DVD)
The Basement (Breaking Glass Pictures, DVD)
The Cabin in the Woods (Lionsgate, 4K Ultra HD)
Guest House (Momentum Pictures, DVD)
I Saw What You Did (Universal Studios Home Entertainment, DVD)
Midnight Fright Show (Cinedigm, DVD)
Supernatural: The Complete Twelfth Season (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Blu-ray & 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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