Another week, another shipment of goodness coming to the shop. One film specifically the shop is intrigued with is a hidden gen from the 1960s all about a cat that can hypnotize ya. I have heard about the Cassandra Cat for years and now am excited to bring it into the shop. Let’s see what else is coming shall we…
Synopsis: 1900 is an epic film of massive scope, power and controversy. It is both a vast history of the 20th Century Italy and an intimate portrait of two friends, both born on January 1, 1900…the son the socialist peasant farmer (Gerard Depardieu) and the son of the fascist landowner (Robert De Niro). The two young men pass through the upheavals of the modern world, as their personal conflicts become an allegory of the political turmoil of twentieth century Italy. 1900 features and award-winning international cast that includes Burt Lancaster, Donald Sutherland, Sterling Hayden, Dominique Sanda, Alida Valli and Stefania Sandrelli. Photographed by legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now), with a beautiful and haunting score by Ennio Morricone (The Mission).
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor). Presented in its original two-part, five-hour version, this magnificent 3-disc edition also features BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI: Reflections on Cinema, a 2002 documentary spanning the career of the master director.
In this cult-favorite documentary, Mark Borchardt, an aspiring filmmaker from a working-class Wisconsin background, is set on finishing his low-budget horror movie, despite a barrage of difficulties. Plagued by lack of cash, unreliable help and numerous personal problems, Mark wants to complete the film to raise funds for a more ambitious drama. With the assistance of his bumbling but loyal friend Mike Schank, Mark struggles to move forward, making for plenty of bittersweet moments.
Bill Martin has just finished construction on a picturesque new home for his family. But unknown to him, the previously barren property was once the site of the infamous Amityville murder house. After finding a small shed hidden away on the grounds, Bill discovers a beautiful and ornate dollhouse, which he gives to his young daughter as a present. What he doesn’t realize is that this innocent looking children’s plaything contains demonic powers, and it’s not long before ghouls and zombies are invading his home, with their murderous sights set on his family.
The last and most over the top entry in the 90s Amityville franchise, producer Steve White (Cabin Boy) steps into the director’s seat to helm this direct-to-video horror classic. Filled with impressive and plentiful creature and gore effects by Roy Knyrim (A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child), AMITYVILLE: DOLLHOUSE stars Robin Thomas (About Last Night) and Lenore Kasdorf (Starship Troopers) and features inventive photography from Tom Callaway (Demon Wind). Vinegar Syndrome brings this video store favorite to Blu-ray in a brand new 4K restoration from its long lost original camera negative.
Lars Von Trier latest is a grotesque, psychological horror that travels deep into a dark world of sexuality, religious belief and bodily harm. Not for the faint of heart. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe, 2009.
Frank (Hume Cronyn) and Faye Riley (Jessica Tandy) are an elderly New York City couple living in a depressed part of town. There, they run a diner as well as an apartment building, which is home to a poor but friendly group of people. One day, Frank and Faye learn that a property developer wants them to sell the apartment. When they refuse, their diner is vandalized. However, Frank, Faye and their tenants are aided by mysterious flying saucers, which help them repair the diner and fight back.
Charming, low budget sci-fi remake of the Magnificent Seven from Roger Corman. Written by John Sayles. Robert Vaughn, John Saxon, George Peppard, Sybil Danning. 1980.
Kurt Russell stars as Jack Burton, a tough-talking truck driver whose life goes into a supernatural tailspin when his best friend’s fiancée is kidnapped. John Carpenter (1986)
In the Olden Tymes, Count Regula is drawn and quartered for killing twelve virgins in his dungeon torture chamber. Thirty-five years later, he comes back to seek revenge on the daughter of his intended thirteenth victim and the son of his prosecutor in order to attain immortal life.
Lesbian film-noir available once again! Wachowski Brothers, Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon, 1996.
In 1920, one brilliant movie jolted the postwar masses and catapulted the movement known as German Expressionism into film history. That movie was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a plunge into the mind of insanity that severs all ties with the rational world. Director Robert Wiene and a visionary team of designers crafted a nightmare realm in which light, shadow and substance are abstracted, a world in which a demented doctor and a carnival sleepwalker perpetrate a series of ghastly murders in a small community. This authoritative edition of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 4K restoration scanned from the (mostly) preserved camera negative at the German Federal Film Archive.
Oliva (Jan Werich), the seer in a small village, tells a class of schoolchildren and their teacher, Robert (Vlastimil Brodský), of a mysterious acrobat and her cat, Mokol. The cat wears sunglasses that, when removed, reveal the true character and feelings of the people around her. Later a traveling circus arrives in the town featuring Mokul the cat, the acrobat and a magician who’s a dead ringer for Oliva. The cat’s powers delight the children but cause anxiety among the adults.
Young orphan Sheeta and her kidnapper, Col. Muska, are flying to a military prison when their plane is attacked by a gang of air pirates led by the matronly Dola. Escaping from a mid-air collision via a magic crystal around her neck, Sheeta meets fellow orphan Pazu and the pair join forces to discover the mystical floating city of Laputa while pursued by both Muska and the pirates, who lust for the city’s myriad treasures.
It’s Halloween night and a group of bored teenagers decide to pull a ghastly prank (as a means of getting lucky): stealing a corpse from the local morgue and taking it to a nearby cemetery where they perform a Satanic ritual in an attempt to bring it back to life. Unfortunately, they happen to choose the body of a savage serial killer who has just been shot dead by police, ending a recent spate of satanically influenced murders. Unwittingly reviving the bloodthirsty sadist to the realm of the undead, the group of fun-seeking youngsters risk becoming dinner for the devil worshipping zombie, with only occult expert, Dr. Carden (legendary Mexican character actor Hugo Stiglitz), able to try and put an end to the madness.
Chernobyl dramatizes the story of the April 1986 nuclear plant disaster which occurred in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, telling the stories of the people who were involved in the disaster and those who responded to it.
A teenage runaway takes part in a sleep study that becomes a nightmarish descent into the depths of her mind and a frightening examination of the power of dreams. Julia Sarah Stone, Landon Liboiron, Carlee Ryski, Anthony Scott Burns, 2020.
Director Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves) delivers a provocative mix of drama and musical theater in this acclaimed movie that won 2000 Cannes Film Festival Best Picture and Best Actress honors (for lead actress Bjork). Rural factory worker Selma (Bjork) is a single mother losing her eyesight from a hereditary disease. To protect her 10-year-old son from the same fate, Selma saves money to get him an operation. At night, Selma escapes into a world where nothing dreadful ever happens, rehearsing a production of The Sound of Music with her best friend (Catherine Deneuve). But when a neighbor (David Morse) betrays her trust, Selmas life unravels — and the lines between reality and fantasy blur. Peter Stormare and Joel Grey also star in this trailblazing concoction that will make you cry at the same time it makes your heart sing.
Region Free 4K UK special edition release of the original Dawn of the Dead – includes the Argento cut, the Cannes Cut and the theatrical cut.
Deadly Harvest – Digitally Remastered A future where hunger and desperation become a deadly harvest. Catastrophic climate change has thrown the world into chaos; crops are failing and famine is widespread. Clint Walker (The Dirty Dozen, Pancho Villa) plays Grant Franklin, a desperate farmer struggling to provide food for his family. When a group of violent men from the city invade his farm and attempt to steal his supplies, the normally timid Grant is forced to stand his ground and defend his friends and family. Kim Catrall (Sex and the City) also stars in the post-apocalyptic thriller as Grants daughter.
In this black comedy of middle-aged
masculinity gone awry, Academy Award®
winner Jean Dujardin (The Artist) is a recent
divorcee who becomes obsessed with a
vintage fringed deerskin jacket that begins to
exert an uncanny hold on him. Set in a sleepy
French alpine village, he falls into the guise
of an independent filmmaker and befriends a
trusting bartender and aspiring editor (Adèle
Haenel, Portrait of a Lady on Fire) who becomes
his collaborator on a movie that will document
a surprising new goal he sets himself.
Based on a popular manga by “Buronson” (creator of Fist of the North Star), Doberman Cop follows the fish-out-of-water adventures of Joji Kano (Chiba), a tough-as-nails police officer from Okinawa who arrives in Tokyo’s Kabuki-cho nightlife district to investigate the savage murder and mutilation of an island girl who had been working as a prostitute.
The true story of how Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton), a struggling salesman from Illinois, met Mac (John Carroll Lynch) and Dick McDonald (Nick Offerman), who were running a burger operation in 1950s Southern California. Kroc was impressed by the brothers’ speedy system of making the food and saw franchise potential. Kroc soon maneuvers himself into a position to be able to pull the company from the brothers and create a multi-billion dollar empire.
Arguably one of Pete Walker’s best films, an elderly British couple retire to a remote farmhouse, where granny immediately resumes her cannibalistic activities, while her gramps covers up for her. Rupert Davies, Sheila Keith, Pete Walker, 1974.
On a black and unholy Halloween night years ago, little Michael Myers brutally slaughtered his sister in cold blood. For the last fifteen years, the people of Haddonfield have rested easily, knowing that Michael was safely locked away in a mental hospital … until tonight. Michael has escaped and he will soon return to the same quiet neighborhood to relive his grisly murder again. For this is a night of evil. Tonight is Halloween.
Best friends Marie and Alexia decide to spend a quiet weekend at Alexia’s parents’ secluded farmhouse. But on the night of their arrival, the girls’ idyllic getaway turns into an endless night of horror.
A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school remains on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students with nowhere to go. He soon forms an unlikely bond with a brainy but damaged troublemaker, and with the school’s head cook, a woman who just lost a son in the Vietnam War.
Starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, a man begets the ire of Count Dracula after he accepts a job at the vampire’s castle under false pretenses. Terence Fisher (1958)
This first House sequel sees young Jesse (Arye Gross) moving into an old family property where his parents were mysteriously murdered years before. Joined by pal Charlie (Jonathan Stark), the pair soon find themselves with some unexpected guests in the form of Jesse’s mummified great-great grandfather, a mystical crystal skull and the zombie cowboy who’ll stop at nothing to lay his hands on it!
After Roger Cobb is killed in a car accident, his wife and young daughter move into an old house haunted by a Native American curse. Soon they begin to experience scary and unexplained phenomena.
Miriam Blaylock collects Renaissance art, ancient Egyptian pendants, lovers, souls. Alive and fashionably chic in Manhattan, Miriam is an ageless vampire. Although vampire is not a word youll hear in this movie based on the novel by Whitley Strieber (Wolfen). Instead, debuting feature director Tony Scott fashions a hip, sensual, modern-gothic makeover. Catherine Deneuve radiates macabre elegance as Miriam, blessed with beauty, cursed with bloodlust. David Bowie is fellow fiend and refined husband John. In love, in life, in longing, they are inseparable. But when John abruptly begins to age and turns to a geriatric researcher (Susan Sarandon) for help, Miriam soon eyes the woman as a replacement for John. The Hunger is insatiable.
A young drifter comes across a series of bizarre tattoos on a hobo’s body, and is led into a world of fear when the images come to life.
Quentin Tarantino scores with an explosive mix of intense action and edgy humor in his “twisty crime yarn” (Entertainment Weekly). What do a sexy stewardess (Pam Grier), a street-tough gun runner (Samuel L. Jackson), a lonely bail bondsman (Robert Forster), a shifty ex-con (Robert De Niro), an earnest federal agent (Michael Keaton) and a stoned-out beach bunny (Bridget Fonda) have in common? They’re six players on the trail of a half million dollars in cash! The only questions are… who’s going to get played… and who’s going to make the big score?
Fresh off the bus from Iowa, Joe (Jerry O’Connell) is just trying to make it in New York, but he’s got no job, no girl and no place to live. But life changes for Joe as he finds an apartment, along with 50,000 singing, dancing, wisecracking cockroaches. What bugs Joe is how these cockamamie cucarachas meddle with his romance with the lovely Lily. But he’ll eye the world of creepy-crawlies differently when the tiny bugsters turn from hindering to helping – like it or not!
A grandfather takes his two young grandsons on a camping trip for their karate tournament, and the kids use their karate skills to rescue a friend after she is held captive for ransom. 1979 American action-adventure film Long Summary: Brothers, Zack and Woody (portrayed by real-life brothers Chris and Pat Petersen) are young karate students who embark on a weekend camping trip with their grandfather J.J. (Charles Lane). Along the way they meet a new friend, Carol Forbinger (Sally Boyden) and her parents (Rick Lenz and Sharon Clark). When the Forbinger family encounters a tough-talking backwoods mother (Ann Sothern) and her two bumbling sons (Joe Spinell and John Davis Chandler) who decide to hold Carol captive believing they can collect a sizeable ransom, the “karate kids” must find a way to use their martial arts skills to rescue the Forbinger girl with a little help from their grandfather and some new friends they meet along the way. Director: Curtis Hanson Stars: Charles Lane, Ann Sothern, Chris Petersen and Pat Petersen. Cast: Charles Lane as J.J. Ann Sothern as Angel Chris Petersen as Zack Pat Petersen as Woody Sally Boyden as Carol Forbinger Rick Lenz as Dick Forbinger Sharon Clark as Ruth Forbinger Joe Spinell as Yancey John Davis Chandler as Carl Clifford A. Pellow as Sheriff Stephen Young as Lunsford Pat E. Johnson as Karate Instructor Bong Soo Han as Karate Master
Local veterinarian Rack Hansen (William Shatner) and the sleepy little town of Verde Valley soon find themselves right in the center of an eight-legged nightmare when thousands of tarantulas suddenly mutate…and are on the hunt for food!
Hugh Grant stars in Ken Russell’s delirious horror comedy where a Scottish archaeologist uncovers an ancient worm cult, but has he just released the monster himself? Ken Russell (1988)
In 19th-century China, a stranger (RZA) settles in a jungle village and becomes its blacksmith. Radical tribal factions force him to fashion elaborate tools of destruction, and the clans’ conflict soon erupts into a full war. Knowing he must take action, the blacksmith channels an ancient energy to transform himself into a human weapon. Fighting beside iconic heroes, the blacksmith harnesses this incredible power to defend his adopted people from an army of soulless villains.
A miner finds Thaddeus after he is badly wounded and offers him refuge. As he heals, he becomes involved in a conflict between the townspeople and their evil master.
It’s 1968, and the whole world is watching. With the U.S. in social upheaval, famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler decided to make a film about what the hell was going on. His debut feature, Medium Cool, plunges us into that moment. With its mix of scripted fiction and seat-of-the-pants documentary technique, this story of the working world and romantic life of a television cameraman (Robert Forster) is a visceral, lasting cinematic snapshot of the era, climaxing with an extended sequence shot right in the middle of the riots surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. An inventive commentary on the pleasures and dangers of wielding a camera, Medium Cool is as prescient a political film as Hollywood has ever produced.
Comedian Freddie Prinze plays an ex-con who happens to be an electronic genius. Along with four young women, he sets out to rob the Chicago Transit Authority payroll.
After a powerful storm damages their Maine home, David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his young son head into town to gather food and supplies. Soon afterward, a thick fog rolls in and engulfs the town, trapping the Draytons and others in the grocery store. Terror mounts as deadly creatures reveal themselves outside, but that may be nothing compared to the threat within, where a zealot (Marcia Gay Harden) calls for a sacrifice.
When legendary hunter Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea) is shipwrecked on the perilous reefs surrounding a mysterious island, he finds himself the guest of the reclusive and eccentric Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks). While he is very gracious at first, Zaroff eventually forces Rainsford and two other shipwreck survivors, brother and sister Eve (Fay Wray) and Martin Towbridge (Robert Armstrong), to participate in a sadistic game of cat and mouse in which they are the prey and he is the hunter.
Director Gregg Araki’s MYSTERIOUS SKIN, adapted from Scott Heim’s acclaimed novel, is an intensely powerful chronicle of childhood innocence lost. The film features starmaking turns from Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Don Jon, Inception) and Brady Corbet (Simon Killer) alongside outstanding performance from co-stars Michelle Trachtenberg (Eurotrip, Ice Princess), Mary Lynn Rajskub (TV s 24 ) and Academy Award nominee Elizabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas).
At the age of eight, Kansas youngsters Neil and Brian played on the same little league baseball team. Now, ten years later, the two boys couldn’t be more different. Neil is a charismatic but emotionally aloof male hustler while Brian is a nervous introvert obsessed with the idea that he has been abducted by a UFO. When the boys parallel lives inevitably intersect, the pair unearth dark, repressed secrets on a harrowing and unforgettable journey of self discovery.
Haunted by the violent demise of their parents 10 years earlier, adult siblings Kaylie (Karen Gillan) and Tim (Brenton Thwaites) are now struggling to rebuild their relationship. Kaylie suspects that their antique mirror, known as the Lasser Glass, is behind the tragedy. The seemingly harmless reflections contain a malevolent, supernatural force that infects the mind of anyone who gazes into it. As Kaylie gets closer to the truth, the siblings become caught in the mirror’s evil spell.
When a top-secret government project — a creature that’s a hybrid of a human being and shark — breaks free of its environment and eventually finds its way into the sea, no one is safe. Reaking havoc and terror on a small coastal community, its falls to marine biologist Dr. Chase (Craig T. Nelson, TV’s Coach) and Dr. Macy (Kim Cattrall, TV’s Sex and The City) to pursue, capture or kill the creature.
Peter Benchley’s Creature, a terrifying and gripping tale of science gone wrong, features supporting performances by Colm Feore (Thor), Giancarlo Esposito (Do The Right Thing) and Michael Michele (How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days) and a cameo by author Peter Benchley (Jaws, The Deep, The Island).
Brand New 4K Master! Murder Put an End to Their Fears! The phobia-ridden patients undergoing a unique therapy treatment with Dr. Peter Ross (Paul Michael Glaser, Detective Dave Starsky of TV’s Starsky and Hutch) now face a new terror—murder! One by one they’re being killed off, and the finger points to… everyone! Set ’em up. And whittle ’em down. It’s a favorite technique in whodunit suspense-thrillers. And one of the masters is Phobia director John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, Prizzi’s Honor). See if you can identify the killer as the legendary filmmaker propels you into the most terrifying realm of all: your deepest fears. Screenplay by Lew Lehman (The Pit), Jimmy Sangster (Horror of Dracula) and Peter Bellwood (Highlander), based on a story by Gary Sherman (Dead & Buried) and Ronald Shusett (Alien). The top-notch cast includes Susan Hogan (The Brood), John Colicos (The Changeling), Lisa Langlois (Transformations), Alexandra Stewart (Goodbye Emmanuelle) and Kenneth Welsh (The Day After Tomorrow).
Hayao Miyazaki’s delightful animated film about a WWI Italian pilot cursed to look like an anthropomorphic pig. 1992.
Players from different backgrounds try to cope with the pressures of playing American football at a major university. Some turn to drinking and others to drugs as their coach looks the other way.
Hando (Russell Crowe) and Davey (Daniel Pollock) are the leaders of a racist youth gang who spend their nights attacking Asian immigrants in a rough section of Melbourne. On the run after losing badly in a fight against the new Vietnamese owners of their local pub, the pair hook up with teenage junkie Gabe (Jacqueline McKenzie), who suggests robbing the mansion of her rich and sexually abusive father (Leigh Russell). But the girl’s presence begins to drive a wedge between the longtime friends.
In the year 2019, America is a totalitarian state where the favorite television program is “The Running Man” — a game show in which prisoners must run to freedom to avoid a brutal death. Having been made a scapegoat by the government, an imprisoned Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has the opportunity to make it back to the outside again by being a contestant on the deadly show, although the twisted host, Damon Killian (Richard Dawson), has no intention of letting him escape.
Acclaimed director Johnnie To (The Heroic Trio, The Mission) is on top form with slam bang action-thriller Running Out of Time and its equally electrifying sequel.
Jess Franco’s wall-to-wall sexploitation classic about a young woman who travels to the big city only to get involved with homosexuality, drugs, pornography and swingers’ parties. Howard Vernon, 1973.
On the subterranean Mine-World, a band of human worker are treated like slaves under the power of the evil overlord Zygon until one, Orin, unearths the hilt of a mythical sword. Steven Hahn (1985)
All The Starship Troopers you need!
Michael Laughlin directs Strange Invaders, an affectionate homage to science fiction/alien takeover films of the 1950s that stars Paul Le Mat (Hanoi Hilton) as a university professor searching for his ex-wife (Diana Scarwid, Extremeties), who seems to have disappeared while visiting her hometown of Centerville, Illinois. In fact, the place turns out to be a hotbed of aliens, in place since the Fifties and weirdly unaware of how the outside world has changed.
Bizarre West German erotic horror about a trio of sheep herders lonely in the mountains who inadvertently summon a succubus. Georg Tressler, 1989.
An axe-wielding maniac terrorises residents of Plymouth, Massachusetts, after a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy. Picking off victims one by one, the seemingly random revenge killings soon become part of a larger, sinister plan.
In the future, mankind lives in vast underground cities and free will is outlawed by means of mandatory medication that controls human emotion. But when THX 1138 (Robert Duvall) and LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie) stop taking their meds, they wake up to the bleak reality of their own existence and fall in love with each other in the process. But love is also illegal in this Orwellian dystopia, and the act of making love has made both of them outlaws on the run from an army of robotic police.
Tabloid reporters are sent to Transylvania with two choices: find the Frankenstein monster — or find new jobs! Jeff Goldblum, Joseph Bologna, Geena Davis, Michael Richards, Ed Begley Jr., Carol Kane, Jeffrey Jones, John Byner, Rudy De Luca, 1985
On their way through the access tunnel, Paul is attacked by an unknown creature, dragged underwater, and killed. At the midpoint station, the crew sees a 6000 tons drill bit shred to pieces. They believe that humans were not supposed to drill so deep into the ocean and now the ocean is taking back.
Clive Barker writes the script in this horror about a young woman who goes missing and her ex, a hard-nosed detective, is hired to find her. What he uncovers a world of mutants who are in revolt. Denholm Elliott, Art Malik, Miranda Richardson, 1985.
Starring Kathleen Quinlan, Yaphet Kotto, a woman working as a security guard in an agricultural research facility finds herself and her co-worker Schmidt fighting to survive against their former friends. Hal Barwood (1985)
A self-important group of outcasts from Los Angeles realize how worthless their lives are.
The year is 1878, Lincoln County. John Tunstall, a British ranch owner, hires six rebellious boys as “regulators” to protect his ranch against the ruthless Santa Fe Ring. When Tunstall is killed in an ambush, the Regulators, led by the wild-tempered Billy the Kid (Estevez), declare war on the Ring. As their vendetta turns into a bloody rampage, they are branded outlaws, becoming the objects of the largest manhunt in Western history.
After a dispute over a winning lottery ticket turns into a deadly hostage situation, the witnesses must decide exactly how far they’ll go, and how much blood they’re willing to spill, for a cut of the $156 million. Angus Cloud, Elliot Knight, 2023.
And there we go guys…another fine day of cinema coming later in the week. Cheers!
