August 18 sees release of the FINAL DESTINATION COLLECTION but is it really anything new? In one word, no. In fact, it’s perhaps even less than the last boxset, FINAL DESTINATION THRILLOGY, which was released 3 years ago – because that was 4 discs and this is only 2. Just 2 discs? They must be double-sided, which would allow them to retain the content of the previous 4 discs. You just know another set will eventuate once the 4th film hits DVD. In the meantime this is just a sort of mass-market release to make the films available when the new film hits theatres.
Final Destination (2000)
His entire high-school class is going to Paris, but Alex Browning (Devon Sawa, Idle Hands) can’t seem to shake his fear of flying. Once aboard the plane, he has a violently disruptive premonition which gets him and five of his classmates including Clear Rivers (Ali Larter, Varsity Blues, House On Haunted Hill) and Carter Horton (Kerr Smith, TV’s “Dawson’s Creek”) kicked off the plane. As the students watch the plane depart, they witness the horrifying disaster that proves the deadly premonition true. Now having dodged death once, the terror begins in full as fate hunts them down one-by-one. Soon the five survivors will discover you can’t cheat death in this bone-chillingly-suspenseful film that critics call “A first class edge of your seat thriller!” -Paul Wunder, WBAI.
Final Destination 2 (2003)
It’s a matter of life and death when eight strangers narrowly escape a catastrophic freeway accident. Only a young girl’s premonition saved them all from a grisly end. But now that they have put a rift in death’s design, there is a price to pay – and it’s going to be painful. Packed with cutting-edge special effects, state-of-the-art gore and enough scares to send your heartbeat into overdrive, Final Destination 2 is a killer sequel to the smash-hit original. Fasten your seatbelts and prepare yourself for one horrifying ride… it may be your last!
Final Destination 3: 2 Disc Thrill Ride Edition (2006)
Strap yourself in for Final Destination 3, the most terrifying thrill ride ever! After Wendy and her friends survive a deadly roller coaster ride, they start being killed in even more gruesome ways. Wendy realizes that the nightmare isn’t over….Death has returned to finish the job. But can she convince the rest of her friends before it is too late?
Talk about mouth watering cover art! These UK releases are bringing back VHS style painted artwork as well as cover design. At first I thought these were fan-doings because companies have generally not been able to correctly implement nostalgia for retro (witness Lionsgate’s awful ‘We Love The 80’s’ releases). Read on for the skinny on these titles plus some theatrical tie-ins.
Arrow Films are taking up the mantle passed on by Shameless Screen Entertainment, and launching a new Masters of Giallo DVD line. The line debuts June 29th with the works of Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and Lamberto Bava and is devoted to showcasing the works of Italy’s genre directors. First to hit the stores will be Argento’s SLEEPLESS, Fulci’s THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY and Lamberto Bava’s MACABRE.
All of Arrow’s releases will be presented completely uncut for the first time in the UK, and will be packaged with double-sided sleeves featuring the original release artwork and brand new exploitation-style artwork, along with posters featuring the latter. There will also be a host of extras, including brand new documentaries. Check out the covers of the first three releases, they look amazing! Brings back memories of the early 80s rental market, where lurid covers were the order of the day.
The specifications:
SLEEPLESS
• Murder Madness and Mutilation: SLEEPLESS and the Modern Italian Giallo docu with Joe Dante, Sergio Stivaletti, & Fango’s Tony Timpone.
• The Making of SLEEPLESS
• Press kit
• Photo gallery
• Trailer
HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY
• Fulci in the House: The Italian Master of Splatter docu with Dante, Stivaletti, Timpone and others
• Exclusive booklet with actress Catriona MacColl interview by Fango scribe Calum Waddell
• Deleted scene
• Photo gallery
• U.S. theatrical trailer
• International theatrical trailer
• U.S. TV spot
MACABRE
• MACABRE and the Golden Age of Italian Exploitation docu with Bava and Ruggero Deodato
• Exclusive booklet with Bava interview by Waddell
• Introduction to MACABRE by Bava
• Trailer
• Photo gallery
Arrow are supporting these releases with a “Weekend of Italian Terror” at Scotland’s Glasgow Film Theatre on Saturday-Sunday, June 27-28th. Tickets are set to go on sale via the GFT website very soon. The weekend’s schedule will be:
HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY June 27th at 9 p.m. CUT AND RUN June 28th at 5:30 p.m., with Ruggero Deodato introducing and a Q&A with Calum Waddell MACABRE June 28th at 8 p.m., with Lamberto Bava introducing and another Q&A with Waddell.
While you’re waiting for Sony Screen Gems to release their reboot of The Stepfather in theaters this October, Synapse Films is offering you the very first look at their DVD release of Stepfather II, due out September 29, 2009. Synapse’s Don May, Jr. revealed that the disc will include the same extras as Miramax release, an all-new documentary produced by Red Shirt Pictures and the previously unreleased theatrical trailer.
Starring Terry O’Quinn from “Lost’ fame, the Stepfather escapes an insane asylum and winds up in another town, this time impersonating a marriage counselor. Now he seems to have found the perfect future wife, with a stepson who loves him. However, other people try to get in his way to marry her. They are interfering! One by one the Stepfather eliminates anyone who stands in his way to a perfect family.
Vinny Durand (Joe Spinell) is a taxi driver with an unhealthy obsession (is there any other kind?) for actress Jana Bates (Caroline Munro). He wants her for a movie he’s making. Of course, like a pre-cursor to 70% of horror fans you meet on the internet, he has no actual plan in place to make his film a reality – he is just more interested in receiving validation from people in the industry, even if he doesn’t realize that himself. Where is his funding? His crew? His call sheet for Bates? In Durand’s fantasy world, all he needs to make his film a reality is a vaseline-smeared camera to aim at his actress. It’d be easy to blame (like in real life) his family for propping him up with that B.S. “all you need is passion to make things happen” mentality, but then you see his mother is the realist of the two, constantly worrying/berating him for his crystal clear nuttiness.
Spinell is either the greatest method actor ever, or the most emotive person ever. Like in MANIAC, his constant whimperings relay a sort of audience see-saw of pity/disgust for the fellow. The character, I mean. I hope. The late Spinell was an interesting guy, an actor with as much textures to his personality as in his pockmarked cheeks.
The other larger-than-life character in the film is… The Cannes Film Festival. Shooting footage of the festival boosts its production value greatly. It’s a blast to slo-mo the DVD during these scenes to catch glimpses of early pre-release artwork for various films.
Intended to cash-in on the success of the Spinell/Munro teaming on MANIAC, THE LAST HORROR FILM is more hardlinked to that earlier film then most realize. Spinell plays a similar mama’s-boy character. The New Yawkness of both flicks. And the fact this was retitled MANIAC 2: LOVE TO KILL in foreign markets. But whereas MANIAC is the slicker, more impacting of the two, THE LAST HORROR FILM has the more interesting conclusion, offering up a slasher-centric twist I didn’t see coming because I had the framework of MANIAC stuck in my mind.
This DVD is billed as THE UNCUT SPECIAL EDITION. “Uncut” is a general term that could take into account, or not, several factors. These include how different countries get different censorings, how the ratings board makes cuts, how sometimes the distributor makes their own cuts at home video format level on purpose or by accident, and then there are times when the term is applied purely for marketing purposes. So, subjective term that “Uncut” is, I was happy to see it ring true in my case. I had no idea how butchered the Australian VHS of THE LAST HORROR FILM was until I saw Troma’s DVD. There’s some pretty heavy gore present, primarily in an aftermath shot, but for this fellah it was a revelation.
Onto the Special Features: There’s the usual assortment of not-directly-relevant Tromatic offerings, which retro slasher fans tend to skip ever since being burned on that GRADUATION DAY DVD. But Troma have come a long way since then in the way they put their DVDs together, and THE LAST HORROR FILM is truly befitting of the Tromapiece Collection banner this and other titles are being released under.
The centerpiece of the fun is My Best Maniac: An afternoon with Spinell’s best friend, Luke Walter. It’s a sobering account of Spinell’s association with THE LAST HORROR FILM and life in general. It breaks the fourth wall at one point, an instance I wasn’t a fan of but realize it was needed to accurately portray the man and the myth. There’s also an Audio Commentary by Walter, moderated by Evan Husney which I must admit, I’ve only combed 1/3rd of so far – my preference is to rip feature length ACs to CD and listen to them on my long and frequent road rides. An Interview with Maniac director William Lustig – now we’re cooking with gas (or whatever you cook with, I’m a microwave guy). Additional information from the MANIAC director further solidifies the linkage between the two films and illuminates more Spinell and BTS background detail. The Introduction by Lloyd Kaufman perhaps is strangely apt, unintentionally drawing parallels between the manic veneers of Lloyd and Spinell. Rounding out the package are the Original theatrical trailer and TV spots which are boilerplate extras, but essential archival materials.
It’s hard to call this a Special Feature as I’d gladly have paid for it on its own disc – Buddy Giovinazzo’s short rarely-seen short, MR. ROBBIE, a.k.a. MANIAC 2, starring Spinell is a holy grail to slasher fans which was once easily accessed until the MANIAC Laserdisc and later DVD it was on went out of print for the longest time. Now it’s back in mass production and also on Troma’s COMBAT SHOCK disc for good measure (due to that film being directed by Buddy G), so this footage isn’t going to vanish anytime soon. I only have the Elite Laserdisc for reference, but the copy included here seems longer and more raw, head/tail scratch reels included. This promotional effort reimagines Spinell as a TV Clown who wreaks vengeance upon the parents of abused children. The only seeming link with the original MANIAC is that, well, Spinell is his usual huffing, sweaty, intense self in the footage. And that is all the sequel would have needed to work – Spinell himself. A pivotal point the inevitable remake of MANIAC will lose on before it even begins.
On July 29, the Criterion Collection will release Roman Polanski’s proto-slasher classic “Repulsion” starring Catherine Deneuve. This 1965 flick features Deneuve as a paranoid psychotic who loses all grip on reality when her sister/roommate goes away for the weekend. Ceilings crack, hands reach out of walls, a bunny corpse starts to rot, and Deneuve finds interesting uses for a straight razor. Polanski’s first English-language film, “Repulsion” is a bonefide classic. Look for the director in a brief cameo.
Disc special features include:
New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray editi
Audio commentary featuring director Roman Polanski and actress Catherine Deneuve
A British Horror Film (2003), a documentary on the making of Repulsion, featuring interviews with Polanski, producer Gene Gutowski, and cinematographer Gil Taylor
A 1964 television documentary filmed on the set of Repulsion, featuring rare footage of Polanski and Deneuve at work
Theatrical trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar and curator Bill Horrigan
On July 28, Blue Underground (what have those guys been up to, by the way?) re-release Sergio Martino’s Giallo TORSO to DVD.
A series of sex murders shock a college campus, and four beautiful young girlfriends head for the safety of an isolated country villa. But as they succumb to their own erotic desires, their weekend of pleasure becomes a vacation to dismember at the hands – and blade – of the lecherous maniac.
Directed by Sergio Martino (Mountain Of The Cannibal God) and starring Suzy Kendall (The Bird With The Crystal Plumage) and Tina Aumont (Salon Kitty), this Euro Horror chiller was originally released in America with much of its controversial violence removed by censors. Now fully restored from the original negative materials, Torso is presented completely uncut and uncensored on DVD.
Looks to be a port of the old Anchor Bay Uncut DVD which BU put together, so you can expect the extras from that too: International CARNAL VIOLENCE trailer, US Theatrical Trailer and English/Italian Language Tracks.
Fangoria’s ace writer Michael Gingold spoke to Don May Jr. of Synapse Films:
“We’re releasing STEPFATHER 2 on September 29 to tie in with the remake of the original scheduled for October,” May tells us, “so we’re putting that one on the fast track. We’re big fans of the movie, and we jumped at the chance to get it. We will be porting over all the supplements from the previous disc,” released by Miramax in 2003, and since discontinued; these bonuses include an audio commentary by director Jeff Burr and producer Darin Scott. “There will also be additional extas, including a featurette from Red Shirt Pictures containing interviews with the cast and crew, deleted scenes and the trailer. We’re looking into doing a new transfer, and checking on the materials now.”
Actor-Director Peter Baldwin was kind enough to grant us an on camera interview for one of our upcoming titles that Peter starred in. Peter also granted us a lively audio commentary/interview with HOSTEL producer Scott Spiegel and our extras producer Lee Christian. The film is an Italian giallo also starring some lovely Euro actresses, a British comedian, and a tough guy Italian star playing against type as a bumbling constable. We have a brand new HiDef master in its original scope aspect ratio (2.35:1). We are trying our hands at some Italian films and this one is ready to go and will be hitting the streets in late July (tentative July 21th). Stay tune for more info.
The secretive company haven’t actually stated what the title is, which makes it a little difficult to talk about, but based on the criteria, many seem to think it’s THE WEEKEND MURDERS (1970) AKA – CONCERTO PER PISTOLA SOLISTA.
Looking forward to the alternate ending, because the one they went with was the only buzzkill on the entire rollercoaster ride for me – specifically talking the final shot of the film here – the very moment they should have used to strengthen the presence of Harry Warden/The Miner, they wasted to set up the decidedly skinny ‘host’ for a sequel.
Lussier reveals that Axel Palmer (Kerr Smith) was the killer in the first draft of the screenplay and that ther will be 30 minutes of deleted scenes and an alternate ending on the forthcoming DVD/Blu-ray release arriving in stores on May 19.
I know it’s overplayed to make a duck joke when discussing NEW YORK RIPPER but where else can we make duck jokes? Too good an opportunity to pass up.
