Non-Criterion Boutique Home Video Discussion (Kino, Warner Archive, Arrow, Indicator, Vinegar Syndrome, Code Red, etc.)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/29/archive-reviving-mexican-popular-cinema-permanencia-voluntaria

Amazing news which shows where Indicator are going next.

Wow, yes. This is excellent news! Kino announced and subsequently cancelled a slate of Santo films a while back, so I'd been curious to see where they would end up.

Now to anticipate the Arrow-esque frustration of seeing which releases Indicator will grace the US with and which they will not.

Will WB actually allow Batwoman to be released?

Ahem, I believe you may be confusing Batwoman with La Murcielaga. Certainly no relation there that I can see.

(There are already a couple 'Batwoman' releases floating around out there (including a recent Blu-ray which is unfortunately dubbed-only), so people seem to be getting away with it.)

Talking of getting away with it, my Turkish Star Wars turned up. Yet to find out how it looks.

Mine too, and me neither. It exists, though, which is something!

I watched it, all the soundtrack cues are there and the picture is....as good as could possible be expected.

Now to anticipate the Arrow-esque frustration of seeing which releases Indicator will grace the US with and which they will not.

Surely the demand for Mexican genre cinema will be superior in the US so they'll make sure to include all of those? Unless there's rights issues...

Coming Soon on 4KUHD!
BRAND NEW Dolby Vision HDR Restoration to be Supervised by Brian De Palma!
From a 16-Bit 4K Scan of the OCN!

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— KLStudioClassics (@KLStudioClassic) October 31, 2021

Totally take back what I was saying about underwhelming selection of japanese releases, there's a lot of good coming out. Very curious about Sailor Suit And Machine Gun

That Yokai box set is good fun.

On the third Indicator noir set and boy the batting average with these is not great, so many films that are neither good nor noir. I understand they didn't just put all the obvious greats in one set because they wanted multiple volumes but jeez, it's like an average of one truly good movie per set. For completists only (which I guess I am).

Like so far the third set is:

Johnny O' Clock - Silly crime movie with Dick Powell, was surprised to find out it's not based on a radio serial because that's what it feels like. Marginally noir, endearing three star effort.

The Dark Past - Overcooked home invasion film with Lee J. Cobb as a psychologist and William Holden as the least convincing gangster of all time. Campy psychobabble. Not noir unless you think anything focusing on Freudianism is.

Convicted - Adaptation of a play that had already been filmed as The Criminal Code, dir: Howard Hawks, and there is zero reason for you to see this if you've seen that version (also on Indicator). Noir? Do you think a movie about a good boy getting redeemed by a prison warden is gonna be noir?

oof, I preordered the reprint of the first 2 sets when they were £29.99 each the other week, the reviews I read seemed pretty good as well?
I'll still watch them obv but yr killing my hype!

I mean they do include a couple of great ones per set: in Vol.1 Drive A Crooked Road is an amazing twisted film with Mickey Rooney (!) and The Line Up is Don Siegel already as savage as his later rep would be. Five Against The House is interesting too for its flippant, modern tone, even if it doesn't entirely work. Vol.2 has Murder By Contract, which is a great early hitman film (Scorsese is a fan) and Tight Spot, which despite being p much a filmed play is a lot of fun thanks to Ginger Rogers. Just be prepared that each set will include a fair batch of middling to bad films.

The positive reviews I'm guessing have more to do with the editions - every film gets a commentary track, and they add in some extra stuff that historians are gonna go for. Personally though there's only so many Three Stooges shorts I can take, and I'm not quite auteurist enough to sit through an Israel recruitment film because Joseph H Lewis directed it or a navvy safety film because Budd Boetticher made it.

I just hope ppl aren't buying these as an introduction to the genre. The old Warner Bros DVD boxes, or at least the first three or four, are a much better overview of the genre's essentials.

yeh I couldn't give less of a fuck about the 3 Stooges even tho giving each film a thematic short is a nice idea in theory. I've seen most of the "big" noirs so was hoping this would be a good way to see some of the lesser lights.

at least it's not as bad as that Giallo Essentials set, which looks anything but essential

I very nearly pushed the button on the noir sets in the sale, but feel better about not doing so now.

On the other hand I did overindulge in both the Arrow and Severin seasonal sales - the Japanese exploitation collections were all reduced for Arrow and the Lenzi/Baker set was finally in stock at sales time at Severin.

The slipcase looks lovely in those giallo sets but 'essential' should sue for defamation.

turns out the local hmv has an entire display of arrow film blurays, and 88 and criterion and all sorts of others.

they had the yakuza papers box and all the individual films apart from the one i was looking for, typically.

ended up spending my vouchers on the criterion lone wolf and cub box.

Admittedly I've only watched two of the films in the first Indicator Columbia Noir box, but I think Daniel RF is being a bit harsh here. The two I watched - Boetticher's Escape in the Fog and Lewis's The Undercover Man - were both pretty solid B pictures with plenty of interesting undercurrents. Undercover Man isn't really a noir in the classic sense, despite some spectacular black and white cinematography from the great Burnett Guffey. so I agree that these boxes might possibly have been better named Columbia Crime, but I guess 'noir' makes for a slightly more commercial title.

And as always, Indicator's extras and presentation make the boxes beautiful, desirable fetish objects - even with those unwatchable Three Stooges shorts.

I'd argue Escape In the Fog is way too goofy and light hearted to be noir either. The supernatural element is never explained and it feels less like that's the point and more like they couldn't be bothered to find a resolution. Tbf tho Boetticher's westerns are amazing work so perhaps I went in with too high expectations.

The Undercover Man is ok, three stars out of five I'd say.

I don't know whether the market has died or nobody is looking this close to Christmas but I've just managed to snag the two Indicator Harryhausen sets for just over £100 the pair.

Unless they've finally agreed a reissue with the estate and it's leaked? Last I had heard they'd changed their position to 'never say never' but weren't hopeful.

Both the Christopher Lee and Andy Milligan boxes are going to be in the Severin sale for the first time on Black Friday. The former is patchy but will have enough value in it at the discount price (I personally think there's enough in it anyway but ymmv). Andy Milligan is as acquired taste as they come but I love them.

Prime opportunity for Severin to fuck up massively here though, running this sale at the same time as trying to get these orders out at the same time as the nunsploitation and folk horror box preorders (a week apart, I am in for both). They've already said none of the Black Friday stuff might go out until January.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was my experience last year. They release some great stuff but they really need to admit already that they can't handle the other aspects of their business. Which is okay! There are lots of other great boutiques that farm out their ordering and distribution.

I thought there was enough value in the Severin Christopher Lee set even at full import price (I found a very slight cheaper copy on eBay) - none of the films come close to matching something like Bava's The Whip and the Body, but I was pleased to have things like the German Fisher Sherlock Holmes movie in a quality presentation.

I enjoyed The Body Beneath as a bonus on the BFI's Flipside/Milligan set but possibly not enough to spend £200 on more of same. Ditto the Al Adamson set, which I'm sure is interesting but...

Has anyone bought product from the Australian specialist label Imprint? They've got a number of desirable releases - I'm particularly wanting this cool vintage horror set

https://viavision.com.au/shop/silver-screams-cinema-1944-1957/

and this 70s Hammer set

https://viavision.com.au/shop/hammer-horror-four-gothic-horror-films-1971-1972/

but needless to say these things are not cheap on Amazon and elsewhere, and I'm wary about importing directly from Aus.

pvmic but I actually thought the Polish TV series was the highlight of the box (if only tangentially Lee-related). The one-to-one long interview in French was tremendous too.

The Body Beneath is one of the best and very typical so you'll know your own tolerance based on that. The outliers like Nightbirds and Vapours are probably the highlights but they're pretty much exceptions to his house style.

I'm enjoying the Al Adamson set but it's taking a long time to get through. I've never felt like blasting through - in fact it's rare for me to watch him two nights in a row. I'm just about to get into blaxploitation (9 discs down out of 14) so that might change.

I've imported directly from Australia and NZ before (although was pre-COVID) without dramas. In fact, those sets look great so I might get on them myself.

Right, I have ordered them and had the order accepted. Let's see what happens.

The discs are waiting to be loaded on a plane at the moment.

In other news, Hammer have formed a new company with Network to do restoration and then release of the Hammer catalogue. I'm not sure it's particularly a good fit because Network's stuff is often 'do minimum' to get it on sale but the recent reissues of Dark Eyes of London and I Don't Want To Be Born were pretty good (if a little light on extras compared to, say, Indicator) so maybe I'm unfairly judging.

Australian discs took a week to be allocated a flight and still waiting for that flight to take off with no indication of when. Lack of info is frustrating.

Severin seem to have been on top of things and have hit (more or less) all the preorder dates and a big chunk of the way through Black Friday. Good work by them.

That Yokai box set is good fun.

This was good advice, thoroughly enjoyed the original trilogy with the Takashi Miike remake of Spook Warfare to come.

Indicator have announced the first two Mexican films for March, looks like they'll be individuals rather than sets which is disappointing from my perspective but probably not surprising until they've tested the appetite of the public.

I think this is the thread with the right audience for this amazing story from Stephen Thrower.

https://www.facebook.com/1456085621/posts/10224933056421090/

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— Scott Warmuth (@scottwarmuth1) December 9, 2021

I should remember twitter links work best

Kino Lorber is releasing Ernst Lubitsch's Three Women on Blu-ray in January 2022--hope "The Ernst Lubitsch Collection" means more titles in this vein. (So This Is Paris? Forbidden Paradise? Even an upgrade of the Lubitsch in Berlin box set would be welcome.)

Seriously. I've contemplated buying that box but will definitely wait to see if more upgrades are forthcoming. Oh P.S., they just released a Blu of Broken Lullaby last week, as well.

Has anyone ordered from this place before? This seems to be the only business on earth selling this product. (Well, there are other sites but they’re all named this anonymously.)

https://www.dvdcoming.com/Too-Old-To-Die-Young-Season-1-DVD-1343110.php

blu-ray.com has no listing of a physical release for the series in any country. That and the fact that this is a region-free DVD suggests that it's almost certainly a bootleg.

Not that there's anything wrong with that (I had to get my paws on the Knots Landing complete series somehow, fer cryin' out loud), just know what you're probably paying for.

Thanks for the head’s up. This may just be something I don’t see.

Oh hell yes

https://www.arrowvideo.com/blu-ray/come-drink-with-me/13510132.html

Just US/CA. I'll need to wait for some other stuff to bundle with it.

The Imprint films boxes turned up from Australia. Nice, heavy card boxes with a fitted top (like the Christopher Lee box) although the box art is kind of cheap looking with rudimentary photoshop and poor font choices. Clear full size disc boxes inside with original lobby card/poster art on the outside and stills inside. More when I've watched a couple.

So I'm halfway through both boxes.

Silver Screams Cinema is a lot of fun. The films are very lesser efforts, and are maybe noir efforts with a broad (or sometimes fake) supernatural theme rather than anything more, but the prints are very sharp. Audio is less than perfect though and quite muddy in places on Lady and the Monster - although since that's just thrown in as an extra maybe it's understandable.

Unless I'm very much mistaken after watching two of the films, the Hammer box are the Synapse transfers and given they share extras seems very likely. I didn't actually think they were a huge trade-up from the Carlton versions but ymmv. New extras are good but the Ingrid Pitt doc for example is virtually identical to the Ballyhoo one from the previous release. I would have given my eye teeth for David Huckvale instead.

So not bad, but what you get out of them is down to you.

VCI are releasing an 8 film box of the Santo movies they redubbed for El Rey a couple of years ago. Popular opinion is they aren't fantastic either as transfers or dubs, and anything Indicator does with the films they have will knock them into a cocked hat, but it'll be nice to have them.

Just got my copy of the Shaw Brothers Vol.1 box. Oh lordy, it's a handsome beast, can't wait to dig into all this.

Mine has arrived but is for Christmas.

My Severin folk horror box has been in LAX for 11 days now.

:( Yeah, there are many boutique shipping woes afoot atm (my VS shipment is almost certainly going to get here too late for me to make use of the putative xmas gifts it contains). The folk horror set arrived, though, and it's gorgeous. Must remember to snag the Shaw set asap after the holidays.

Morvern Callar!

https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage-partner-labels/products/morvern-callar-fun-city-editions

good god, about time

Not sure we can count Paramount as a "boutique" label, but they're doing a very boutique move by releasing The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in 4K in April.

I spoke too soon about those Australian boxes, one of the Silver Screams transfers was no better than you'd see on YouTube and the remaining Hammer discs are the Carlton transfers, they even have the idents to prove it.

Halfway through the Shaw Brothers and folk horror sets and both are tremendous, so much so I have other boxes lying unloved because I can't get onto them.

Currently watching The Brute, the Julian Glover domestic violence film. It's a bit challenging.

As a result of reading too many EOY lists I ended up buying both Major Dundee and Mill of the Stone Women and regret neither.

Major Dundee is an absolute Peckinpah epic with a fascinating backstory about how nobody believed in him. Both Harris and especially James Coburn are the acting draws although Charlton Heston is pretty damn good. The Moby Dick narrative really comes through on the non-studio edit buy with a sense of futility not in the book. Both prints are lovely although maybe a bit light on extras.

Mill is frankly astonishing. Like Douglas Sirk made a Hammer Gothic. The picture is so full, the colours so vivid and the plot (even if utterly predictable) is a cracker. If there's one reissue from last year that stands out above all the rest it's this one.

I think Major Dundee is one of the two or three key LBJ films in J. Hoberman's The Dream Life: Movies, Media, And The Mythology Of The Sixties.