Odds and Ends Of Cinema Kind Of Week…

Hey guys, another week of titles hitting the shop and to be honest it is truly random stuff but hey…sometimes those are the best weeks. Maybe something you missed out on before or need back in your collection because you lost your old copy might appear. Anyways, here is this week’s list…

The son of a brilliant NASA scientist must enlist in Earth’s final mission to space in the hopes of finding his long-lost father as well as the new home for Mankind. Brett Bentman, 2022. 

ANGST, photographed by legendary Oscar-winning Polish animator/experimentalist Zbig Rybczynski and scored by Krautrock synth god Klaus Schulze (Tangerine Dream), is one hell of a gorgeously stylized and shockingly visceral experience: a forgotten classic on the fringes of the slasher cycle. Cult Epics presents for the first time worldwide since its original release, the Uncut, Uncensored version in HD

BACK IN STOCK! All three Annabelle flicks in one set.

BACK IN STOCK! It’s time for Christmas break, and the sorority sisters make plans for the holiday, but the strange anonymous phone calls are beginning to put them on edge. When Clare disappears, they contact the police, who don’t express much concern. Meanwhile Jess is planning to get an abortion, but boyfriend Peter is very much against it. The police finally begin to get concerned when a 13-year-old girl is found dead in the park. They set up a wiretap to the sorority house, but will they be in time to prevent a sorority girl attrition problem?

BACK IN STOCK! The sleepy little town of Mill Basin is about to get more than it bargained for. The satanic heavy metal rock band “Black Roses” is coming through to raise hell… literally! After making a deal with the Devil himself, the band’s music demonically possesses the kids in the audience, turning them into blood-thirsty demons. The blood flows as they start killing their parents and causing chaos at their local high school. Culminating in a fiery battle between man and ultimate evil, BLACK ROSES is considered a “MUST HAVE metal horror movie from the 80’s”

Tender cannibal romance meets emo horror in this story of pair of poverty stricken insatiable flesh eating outsiders. Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, Luca Guadagnino, 2022. 

After botching an ill-conceived bank robbery in a desolate California town, two wannabe crooks flee the scene with a hostage and lead the local lawmen on a dangerous high-speed chase. Mickey Keating (2016)

BACK IN STOCK! 80’s horror about 8 teenagers trapped after hours in a high tech shopping mall pursued by murderous, out of control security robots. Jim Wynorski, 1986. 

In this blaxploitation classic, a black nurse takes vigilante justice against inner-city drug dealers after her sister becomes their latest victim. Pam Grier, Booker Bradshaw, Robert DoQui, Jack Hill, 1973. 

BACK IN STOCK! This legendary film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in Belorussia, teenage Flyora (Alexei Kravchenko, in a searing depiction of anguish) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camera work and expressionistic sound design. Nearly blocked from being made by Soviet censors, who took seven years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.

BACK IN STOCK! A teenage horror-movie fan is Earth’s only hope when a horde of voracious monsters arrives from outer space.

BACK IN STOCK! Three-time Academy Award® winner* Meryl Streep, Oscar® winner** Goldie Hawn and Golden Globe winner+ Bruce Willis are deathly funny in Robert Zemeckis’ outrageously entertaining comedy about greed, vanity, sex, immortality, life… and death.

In a corporate suburb outside Paris, the community’s new doctor discovers its leading citizens all get their dogs from a wealthy, charismatic trainer (an unsettling performance by Oscar® nominee Gérard Depardieu) – dogs that have a ferocious appetite for immigrants, rowdy youths, people of color and anyone who challenges the status quo.

Adventure comedy where two punks from the big city, traveling across the country in a Volkswagen bug, embrace the western ethos when they must take revenge against a group of rednecks. Penelope Spheeris (1987) 

BACK IN STOCK! David Lynch’s 1977 debut feature, Eraserhead, is both a lasting cult sensation and a work of extraordinary craft and beauty. With its mesmerizing black-and-white photography by Frederick Elmes, evocative sound design, and unforgettably enigmatic performance by Jack Nance, this visionary nocturnal odyssey remains one of American cinema’s darkest dreams.

A lovely blind and deaf teen reaches for a plate she just put on the counter. It’s gone. She reaches again…and it’s back in its original place. Someone is playing a cruel game with her. That someone is the serial killer terrorizing Miami in this terrifying thriller from the production company behind the original Friday The 13th and the director of Shock Waves. Making memorable movie debuts are Jennifer Jason Leigh (Single White Female, Annihilation, Possessor) as that endangered but not helpless girl and Lauren Tewes (The Love Boat) as her TV newscaster sister, whose investigation inadvertently leads the killer (John DiSanti, The Relic) to her home. With a final sequence that will leave you breathless, this Stranger delivers face-to-face fear as few other films can.

A WOMAN’S VENGEANCE (1948) – Charles Boyer (When Tomorrow Comes), Ann Blyth (Thunder on the Hill) and Jessica Tandy (The Birds) star in A Woman’s Vengeance, a gripping noir mystery from acclaimed director Zoltán Korda (The Four Feathers). When his invalid wife Emily (Rachel Kempson, The Captive Heart) dies of a heart attack, it frees Henry Maurier (Boyer) to marry his young mistress (Blyth). Confiding her suspicions that Henry murdered her patient, Emily’s nurse (Mildred Natwick, Against All Flags) is encouraged by a neighbor (Tandy) to tell the police. Suddenly Henry finds himself wrongly convicted and awaiting his fate while the family doctor (Sir Cedric Hardwicke, The Lodger) races against time to find the real killer and save his life. Visionary author Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) adapted the screenplay from his own short story, “The Gioconda Smile.”

I WAS A SHOPLIFTER (1950) – Mona Freeman (Flesh and Fury) stars as the titular kleptomaniac in the sensational crime story, I Was a Shoplifter. Cop Jeff Andrews (Scott Brady, Undertow) agrees to go undercover to shadow the sticky-fingered Faye Burton (Freeman), a judge’s daughter who has been coerced into working for a professional shoplifting ring run by ruthless pawnbroker Ina Perdue (Andrea King, The World in His Arms). Jeff finds himself falling in love with Faye while working to crack the gang of thieves. Directed by Charles Lamont (Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man), shot by Irving Glassberg (Larceny) and featuring Tony Curtis (The Square Jungle), Charles Drake (Deported) and Rock Hudson (The Tarnished Angels), I Was a Shoplifter is a fast-paced film noir treat.

BEHIND THE HIGH WALL (1956) – Tom Tully (The Turning Point) and Sylvia Sidney (Sabotage) star in the riveting prison-break noir, Behind the High Wall. A group of convicts escape from the big house, killing a guard, kidnapping the warden, Frank Carmichael (Tully), and forcing a reluctant inmate, Johnny Hutchins (John Gavin, Midnight Lace), to accompany them. However, when a car crash kills everyone except for Frank and Johnny, the wicked warden steals $100,000 of the escapees’ loot, then accuses the innocent Johnny of the guard’s murder in order to cover up his own crime. Directed by Abner Biberman (The Price of Fear), Behind the High Wall is a crackerjack thriller that plays out to a harrowing conclusion, with fine supporting turns by Betty Lynn (TV’s The Andy Griffith Show), John Larch (Play Misty for Me) and Barney Phillips (Ruby Gentry).

BACK IN STOCK! Maverick writer/director Ralph Bakshi (Heavy Traffic, Wizards) made his feature-length film debut with this audacious foray into adult-content animation, creating one of the most successful animated features of its time! Based on a legendary character created by underground comic book artist/writer R. Crumb, Fritz the Cat is a brilliant commentary on ’60s life and a “snarling satire that stubbornly refuses to curl up in anyone’s lap” (Playboy). It’s the age of awakening and Fritz, one way-cool cat and NYU student, loves to embrace every experimental experience that crosses his path. Embarking on a fantastic journey of self-discovery, he indulges in everything from multiple bedroom follies to a wild joy ride through a dangerous Harlem. But when Fritz joins a group of radically aggressive hippies, he finds himself holding the dynamite that will detonate the ultimate ’60s statement—one that could cost him his life!

Two scientists experiment with suspended animation. Frank insists on being a test subject despite direct orders to the contrary. While working in the lab his wife is killed by gunshot and he’s suspected of her murder. Now the authorities insist he be thawed out immediately and face the consequences!

The BBC gives over a whole evening to an ‘investigation into the supernatural’. Four respected presenters and a camera crew attempt to discover the truth behind ‘The most haunted house in Britain’, expecting a light-hearted scare or two and probably the uncovering of a hoax.

Feverish Japanese film which intertwines the stories of three women grappling with sex for money and murder. Miki Mizuno, Makoto Togashi, Megumi Kagurazaka, Shion Sono, 2011. 

Five-disc set includes: Re-Animator (1985) / Bride of Re-Animator (1990) / Beyond Re-Animator (2003) / Dagon (2001) / Color Out of Space (2019) 

BACK IN STOCK! The Hamiltons deal with the sudden death of their parents, then seem to move on. David, the oldest, tries his best to take charge of the family. Twins Wendell and Darlene become more conniving and dark. Francis, the youngest and most sensitive of the group, finds an old video camera that reveals — beneath the veil of normalcy — something is very wrong with the family.

A HAUNTED TURKISH BATHHOUSE features Nikkatsu star Naomi Tani as an abused wife sold to a brothel to cover her husband’s debts. The deceitful husband is actually behind it all, in cahoots with the brothel madame, who is his lover. Tani discovers the truth and gets tortured to death. However, the dead woman’s soul seeks vengeance from a most unusual quarter.

The film is a bizarre mixture of Japanese erotica, gangster film and “ghost cat” horror movie, all popular genres in the 1960s and 70s. It is a heady cocktail, and makes for an entertaining and unpredictable film that rocks along at a giddy pace. Director Yamaguchi is best known for his DELINQUENT GIRL BOSS and SISTER STREET FIGHTER movies as well as the Sonny Chiba film WOLF GUY.

BACK IN STOCK! A masked serial killer turns a horror-themed amusement park into his own personal playground, terrorizing a group of friends while the rest of the patrons believe that it is all part of the show. Gregory Plotkin (2018)

BACK IN STOCK!

Based on actual events, this controversial and critically-acclaimed horror classic chronicles a few short weeks in the life a serial killer.

Michael Rooker gives a bone-chilling performance as Henry, a solitary drifter who leads his dim ex-jail mate Otis (Tim Towles), on a senseless killing spree through the streets of Chicago. Choosing their victims at random, they vary their methods of execution to avoid detection. Meanwhile, Otis’ unsuspecting sister, Becky (Tracy Arnold), comes to visit and finds herself falling in love with Henry.

Filmmaker John McNaughton directed HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, a provocative portrayal of a mass murderer that continues to shock and disturb twenty years after its debut.

BACK IN STOCK! Indescribable psychedelic Japanse ghost tale that’s equal parts absurd and nightmarish, Scooby Doo and Mario Bava. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977. 

From writer/director Murray Markowitz comes the shocking drama inspired by one of Canada’s most infamous homicides: When a former model (Elke Sommer) is brutally murdered, her wealthy husband (Donald Pilon) is arrested for the slaying. The trial that follows will uncover a lurid saga of illicit lovers, escaped serial killers and enough graphic mayhem to merit its condemnation as a Video Nasty.

LAP DANCER: Passed over for a promotion and running out of money, Natalie bumps into Denise, an old friend who introduces her to exotic dancing. BARE EXPOSURE: When Clancy has a major problem with the mob because he can’t pay a gambling debt, his friends help him out by re-decorating an old building for a wet t-shirt contest.

BACK IN STOCK! THE LAST BROADCAST! In 1995 a four-man team from the cable-access program Fact or Fiction braved the desolate New Jersey Pine Barrens determined to deliver a live broadcast of legendary monster, the Jersey Devil. Only one came out alive. The lone survivor was sentenced to life in prison, but filmmaker David Leigh is convinced that he’s innocent. Could the Jersey Devil still haunt the barrens?

International sensation Michelle Yeoh (Tomorrow Never Dies, Supercop) stars in this incredible adventure set against the backdrop of World War II.Yeoh portrays a wisecracking mercenary pilot with a leather jacket, gun, and bullwhip who sets aside personal greed to defend a small town and free its leader from the clutches of the invading Japanese army!

BACK IN STOCK! When the evil Skeletor (Frank Langella) finds a mysterious power called the Cosmic Key, he becomes nearly invincible. However, courageous warrior He-Man (Dolph Lundgren) locates inventor Gwildor (Billy Barty), who created the Key and has another version of it. During a battle, one of the Keys is transported to Earth, where it is found by teenagers Julie (Courteney Cox) and Kevin (Robert Duncan McNeill). Now both He-Man and Skeletor’s forces arrive on Earth searching for the potent weapon.

This collection features the three action-packed Missing in Action classics starring screen legend Chuck Norris (A Force of One, Code of Silence). Missing in Action (1984) – American servicemen are still being held captive in Vietnam—and it’s up to one man to bring them home in this blistering, fast-paced action/adventure. Following a daring escape from a Vietnamese POW camp, Special Forces Colonel James Braddock (Norris) is on a mission to locate and save remaining MIAs. Aided by a beautiful State Department official (Lenore Kasdorf, L.A. Bounty) and a former Army buddy (M. Emmet Walsh, Blood Simple), Braddock amasses top-secret information and state-of-the-art weaponry. Now this one-man army is prepared to blast his way into Vietnam…but will he be able to blast his way back out? Directed by Joseph Zito (Invasion U.S.A.) and featuring James Hong (The Perfect Weapon) and David Tress (Stone Cold).
Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985) – Chuck Norris returns as Colonel James Braddock in this intense, action-packed prequel to the original runaway hit. Captured during a daring mid-air rescue operation, Braddock and his men are imprisoned by the insane Colonel Yin (Soon-Tek Oh, Good Guys Wear Black), who stops at nothing to break their spirits. Held captive in a godforsaken jungle, death seems the only escape. But like a cunning tiger waiting for the right time to pounce on his prey, Braddock seizes the opportunity to spring into action…and becomes a one-man fighting machine dead-set on freeing his men at any cost. Directed by Lance Hool (Steel Dawn) and featuring Steven Williams (Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday) and Professor Toru Tanaka (Catch the Heat).
Braddock: Missing in Action III (1988) – When Colonel James Braddock (Norris) is told that his wife and 12-year-old son are still alive in Communist Vietnam, he mounts a one-man assault to free them. Armed with the latest high-tech firepower, Braddock fights his way into the heart of the country and ends up battling his way out with several dozen abused children in tow. Struggling to protect the kids while outmaneuvering the sadistic Vietnamese officer General Quoc (Aki Aleong, V: The Series), Braddock ignites the jungles in a blazing race for freedom. This is the final chapter in the slam-bang Missing in Action trilogy, featuring Keith David (They Live) and directed by Chuck’s stunt coordinator and brother, Aaron Norris (Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection).
Newly Remastered in 4K and 2K
| Audio Commentary for MISSING IN ACTION by Director Joseph Zito, Moderated by Filmmaker Michael Felsher
| Interview with MISSING IN ACTION Screenwriter James Bruner
| NEW Audio Commentary for MISSING ACTION 2 by Director Lance Hool, Moderated by Historian/Filmmaker Daniel Kremer
| NEW Audio Commentary for BRADDOCK: MISSING IN ACTION III by Action Film Historians Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
| Theatrical Trailers for all Three MISSING IN ACTION Films

BACK IN STOCK!

A love story in the city of dreams . . .

Blonde Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia (Laura Harring). Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman’s identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project. David Lynch’s seductive and scary vision of Los Angeles’s dream factory is one of the true masterpieces of the new millennium, a tale of love, jealousy, and revenge like no other.

BACK IN STOCK!

On Valentine’s Day, someone always loses their heart. Twenty years ago, this small town lost more than that. When supervisors abandoned their posts to attend the town’s annual holiday dance, a tragedy claimed the lives of five miners. The sole survivor, Harry Warden, was institutionalized, but returned for a vengeful massacre on the disaster’s first anniversary.

Nineteen years later, the town is gearing up for another Valentine’s Day party. Teen sweethearts T.J. and Sarah, along with their friend Axel, are among the excited partygoers. But when a box of candy containing an eerie warning and blood-soaked heart arrive, the townsfolk realize that romance is as good as dead. And so are they …

BACK IN STOCK! Grim, expressionistic classic about a sinister preacher who’s nefarious motives are uncovered by a pair of children. Robert Mitchum, Charles Laughton, 1955. 

One of the final films made by acclaimed cult hardcore director, Shaun Costello, a beautifully produced and gorgeously art directed supernatural sex film with an all-star cast. Jamie Gillis, Annie Sprinkle. 

The Hong Kong 80s flick that was filmed in Edmonton returns to the shop! Be sure to enjoy the climactic fight that happens at West Edmonton Mall!

BACK IN STOCK! A zeitgeist-defining sensation that distilled a global reckoning over class inequality into a tour de force of pop-cinema subversion, Bong Joon Ho’s genre-scrambling black-comic thriller confirms his status as one of the world’s foremost filmmakers. Two families in Seoul—one barely scraping by in a dank semibasement in a low-lying neighborhood, the other living in luxury in a modern architectural marvel overlooking the city—find themselves on a collision course that will lay bare the dark contradictions of capitalism with shocking ferocity. A bravura showcase for its director’s meticulously constructed set pieces, bolstered by a brilliant ensemble cast and stunning production design, Parasite cemented the New Korean Cinema as a full-fledged international force when it swept almost every major prize from Cannes to the Academy Awards, where it made history as the first non-English-language film to win the Oscar for best picture.

BACK IN STOCK! In an abandoned house in Poughkeepsie, New York murder investigators uncover hundreds of tapes showing decades of a serial killer’s work. John Erick Dowdle (2007)

BACK IN STOCK! Filmmaker and music journalist Cameron Crowe pays tribute to the Seattle-based band’s 20th anniversary with interviews and rare concert footage.

John Candy, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, Joe Flaherty star in three bizarre morality tales of robot women, scheming aliens and exploding lovers. John Blanchard (1987)

BACK IN STOCK! A group of American high school students who resist the occupation of America by the Soviet Union and its Cuban and Nicaraguan allies. Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, John Milius, 1984. 

BACK IN STOCK! Satan has a farmhouse showdown with the righteous lead singer (Jon-Miki Thor) of a heavy-metal band.

BACK IN STOCK! Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notorious final film, Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom, has been called nauseating, shocking, depraved, pornographic . . . It’s also a masterpiece. The controversial poet, novelist, and filmmaker’s transposition of the Marquis de Sade’s eighteenth-century opus of torture and degradation to Fascist Italy in 1944 remains one of the most passionately debated films of all time, a thought-provoking inquiry into the political, social, and sexual dynamics that define the world we live in.

BACK IN STOCK! A family moves into a house inhabited by scary creatures and a number of close calls ensue. Howard R. Cohen (1981)

A 16-year-old learns that the monsters lurking in his parents’ new home are actually guardians to the gateway of hell.

BACK IN STOCK! Korean animated prequel to the box office record-breaker “Train to Busan” Several groups of people try to survive a zombie pandemic that unleashes itself in downtown Seoul. Sang-ho Yeon (2016)

SEXUAL IMPULSE: The Bull Moose Club deals with the threat of potential closure until a beautiful new bartender tips the tides of fortune in the club’s favor. SEXUAL ROULETTE: Desperation drives Jed and Sally to take their chances with Sally’s trust fund in Las Vegas during a weekend of risky business and sexual liaisons.

In the middle of a puppy farm, a fugitive alien crash lands and starts mutating people into puppy flesh-eating killer robots. It’s up to political activists, Dylan and Eddie, to defeat the evil Sheborg and save the world.

BACK IN STOCK! From co-directors Paul Donovan and Maura O’Connell comes one of the most disturbing Canadian shockers of the ’80s, inspired by the actual 42-day Halifax police strike: When a local group of right-wing vigilantes massacres the patrons of a gay bar, the sole survivor seeks refuge in a nearby apartment building whose residents must now defend themselves in a night of hate, terror and bloodshed.

BACK IN STOCK! In the sleazy, foreboding world of winos, derelicts and drifters in lower Manhattan, two young runaways – eighteen-year-old Fred (MIKE LACKEY) and his younger brother, Kevin (MARK SFERRAZZA), live in a tire hut in the back of a vast auto wrecking yard. Fred is burnt-out by the forces that destroyed his family life, whereas Kevin, having missed much of their childhood trauma, yearns to get back into society and lead a normal life. The most lethal threat to the boys is the case of Tenafly Viper in Ed’s liquor store window. Ed found the cheapo wine behind a wall in his basement. The stuff’s forty years old, and it’s gone real bad. Anyone who drinks it melts within seconds… and it’s only a dollar a bottle!!

From Freddie Francis, the legendary director of The Evil of Frankenstein, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, The Skull, The Psychopath, The Deadly Bees and Tales That Witness Madness, and Milton Subotsky, the acclaimed screenwriter of Dr. Who and the Daleks, I, Monster, Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror and At the Earth’s Core, comes this fast-paced sci-fi thriller in the tradition of Invasion of the Body Snatchers! When meteorites crash-land in the perfect formation of the letter V, the Ministry of Extraterrestrial Life on Other Planets (MELOP) springs into action! Britain’s leading professor on the subject is in charge of finding out what’s going on before it’s too late. Fortunately, he’s got a metal plate in his head which prevents the aliens from taking over his mind and forcing him into slave labor on the moon! They Came from Beyond Space is an out-of-this-world, out-of-your-mind sci-fi sensation!

BACK IN STOCK! 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 

BACK IN STOCK! With this passion project, screenwriter-producer-director Martin Rosen brilliantly achieved what had been thought nearly impossible: a faithful big-screen adaptation of Richard Adams’s classic British dystopian novel about a community of rabbits under terrible threat from modern forces. With its naturalistic hand-drawn animation, dreamily expressionistic touches, gorgeously bucolic background design, and elegant voice work from such superb English actors as John Hurt, Ralph Richardson, Richard Briers, and Denholm Elliott, Watership Down is an emotionally arresting, dark-toned allegory about freedom amid political turmoil.

BACK IN STOCK! The First five Wrong Turns in one sweet package!

And there we go guys. Some random stuff hits the shop later in the week. We’ll see you soon down at the old videostore!

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