The Primevals: 3 Blu-ray Collection by Eric Cotenas (22nd January 2025)
Having been kicked out the university doctorate program for submitting a "speculative" thesis about the existence and nature of the yeti as factual, anthropology dropout Matt Connor (Vampirella's Richard Joseph Paul) gets a special invite back to campus by Dr. Claire Collier (Beyond the Door's Juliet Mills) who reveals at a conference the killing of a "Nepalese anthropoid" of immense stature that had killed a number of sherpas in the mountains, unveiling its frozen carcass to the press and colleagues. Claire introduces the miffed Matt to biologist Dr. Lloyd Trent (The Thing from Another World's Robert Cornthwaite) who discovered upon dissection of the creature's brain that its violent behavior might have been caused by a surgical operation as barbaric as it is advanced beyond ... |
The Speedway Murders by James-Masaki Ryan (21st January 2025)
"The Speedway Murders" (2023) On November 17th, 1978, four employees of a Burger Chef restaurant in Speedway, Indiana were brutally murdered in a robbery. More than forty years later, the case is still unsolved. The corpses of the young employees, Jayne Friedt, 20; Daniel Davis, 16; Mark Flemmonds, 16; and Ruth Ellen Shelton, 17 were found twenty miles away in a rural forest, with Davis and Shelton being shot, Friedt being stabbed, and Flemmonds being bludgeoned. Initially the police and the restaurant management thought that the four youngsters stole some money, abandoned their shifts and went out to party, so the place was tidied up and reopened for business as usual the following day. As there were no crime scene photos taken, and potential evidence being scrubbed clean, it seriously hindered the eventual investigation after the bodies were discovered. “The Speedway Murders” looks at the story of this infamous unsolved case, with interviews from the victims families, investigators, witnesses, and others that were connected to the case, as well as reenactment segments to show what is known and what is still unknown about the tragedy. The debut feature b... |
Love & Crime by Eric Cotenas (21st January 2025)
Coroner Dr. Murase (Goke, The Body Snatcher from Hell's Teruo Yoshida) has seen a lot of corpses come across his slab, but he is particularly disturbed when his wife Yukiko appears on his slab as a suicide with another man's semen still inside her. This leads him to visit the forensic archives to consult cases of crimes committed by women (for some reason) starting with the Toyokaku Inn affair of 1957 in which ambitious hotel maid Kinue has the ear of proprietress Chiyo and the bed of her husband Kosuke. When Chiyo decides to sell up from under her husband and open up a geisha house, Kinue convinces Kosuke that his wife would be better off dead and enlists hunky, younger lover Shibuya to help. With Chiyo having apparently run off, only one other person stands in between Kinue and her dream of owning an inn… or is it actually two people? Murase delves deeper into Japan's past to 1936 when Sada Abe was found wandering the streets with the severed penis of her lover. Murase questions whether she was really crazy or... |
Rampo Noir by Eric Cotenas (20th January 2025)
Edogawa Rampo was a writer of strange tales during the Taishō period (1912-1926), a period between the wars marked by a clash between the traditional and the Western influences in politics and culture. Although Rampo's name is a Japanese transliteration of Edgar Allan Poe, Rampo's weird tales also demonstrated the influence of (or at least the same influences on) the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Gaston Leroux – with more than one locked door mystery for his own recurring detective Kogoro Akechi – as a sort of contemporary to H.P. Lovecraft, contributing to the definition of the era's artistic movement as ero guro nansensu (or "erotic grotesque nonsense"). Rampo continues to be much-adapted in Japanese cinema and is perhaps most familiar indirectly through some of exported adaptations from the pinku eiga/Roman Porno cycles of the late sixties to the eighties like Daiei's Blind Beast, Nikkatsu's Watcher in the Attic (a locked room detective story loosely-adapted a number... |
Love & Crime by Eric Cotenas (20th January 2025)
Coroner Dr. Murase (Goke, The Body Snatcher from Hell's Teruo Yoshida) has seen a lot of corpses come across his slab, but he is particularly disturbed when his wife Yukiko appears on his slab as a suicide with another man's semen still inside her. This leads him to visit the forensic archives to consult cases of crimes committed by women (for some reason) starting with the Toyokaku Inn affair of 1957 in which ambitious hotel maid Kinue has the ear of proprietress Chiyo and the bed of her husband Kosuke. When Chiyo decides to sell up from under her husband and open up a geisha house, Kinue convinces Kosuke that his wife would be better off dead and enlists hunky, younger lover Shibuya to help. With Chiyo having apparently run off, only one other person stands in between Kinue and her dream of owning an inn… or is it actually two people? Murase delves deeper into Japan's past to 1936 when Sada Abe was found wandering the streets with the severed penis of her lover. Murase questions whether she was really crazy or... |
Oddity by Eric Cotenas (18th January 2025)
While her psychiatrist husband Ted (Midsomer Murders' Gwilym Lee) works nights in a mental institution, Dani Timmis (You Are Not My Mother's Carolyn Bracken) spends her days renovating the medieval farmhouse they have purchased in the remote countryside. One night, one of Ted's patients Olin Boole (Boy Eats Girl's Tadhg Murphy) turns up on the doorstep urging Dani to let him inside, claiming that he saw someone else run inside while she went out to the car. Although unnerved by noises inside the large building, she is also too afraid to unlock the door to this stranger. A year later, we learn that Dani was murdered by Boole who himself was subsequently brutally murdered ostensibly by another patient while in custody. Although Ted has started a relationship with pharmaceutical representative... |
Ellis: Series 1 by Eric Cotenas (18th January 2025)
Returning from an extended period of leave, Detective Chief Inspector Ellis (Holby City's Sharon D. Clarke) is saved from desk work by her Assistant Chief Constable Leighton (Allison Harding) who sends her to take over a murder and a disappearance in "Hanmore" (91:54) . Essentially put in charge of the investigation due to the former Minister mother (A Dark Song's Catherine Walker) of the murder victim calling in a favor, the local force give her a frosty reception over the perception that they are lacking, particularly territorial DCI Jim Belmont (Wrath of Man's Chris Reilly) who has already alienated the community by arresting the girl's stepfather (MI-5<... |
Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling: The Criterion Collection by Noor Razzak (12th January 2025)
"Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling" (1986) marks the directorial debut of comedian and actor Richard Pryor, a film that presents a deeply personal and introspective journey into the complexities of identity, addiction, and the pursuit of redemption. While the film certainly benefits from Pryor’s unflinching exploration of his own life experiences, it ultimately raises questions about the balance between artistic ambition and cinematic coherence, offering a work that is both provocative and uneven in its execution. The film follows Jo Jo Dancer (Richard Pryor), a successful comedian who is at the peak of his career when a traumatic accident occurs, sending him into a near-death experience and forcing him to confront the choices and behaviours that have defined his life. As Jo Jo recovers physically, he must also face the emotional and psychological wreckage of a life marred by drug addiction, strained relationships, and self-destructive tendencies. The central theme of Jo Jo Dancer is the tension between fame and personal fulfillment. The film explores how the external validation of success can mask deeper internal struggles, ... |
Evil Does Not Exist by James-Masaki Ryan (8th January 2025)
"Evil Does Not Exist" 「悪は存在しない」 (2023) Takumi (played by Omika Hitoshi) was born and raised in the rural village of Mizubiki, living as a handyman for the community for their everyday needs. He is a single father to eight year old Hana (played by Nishikawa Ryo) and teaches her about the nature surrounding them, through the plants and the animals that they come across. A town meeting is held when representatives of an entertainment company show their presentation of how they will open a glamping site in the town, which would bring tourism and boost the area's economy. The representatives Takahashi (played by Kosaka Ryuji) and Mayuzumi (played by Shibutani Ayaka) are bombarded with comments and concerns from the locals who are afraid that such a place would pollute the water supply, disrupt the deer trail, and bring other problems from outside, with the showcased plans being inadequate. Following the international breakthrough that was ... |
Cheerleaders' Wild Weekend by Eric Cotenas (3rd January 2025)
The annual California high school cheerleading contest is being held in Sacramento and bus seventeen is transporting cheerleading teams from three rival Los Angeles-area schools: the good girls of Pierce High lead by level-headed Debbie (Meatballs' Kristine DeBell), the bad girls of Polk High lead by soul sister Sally (Mean Mother's Marilyn Joi), and the rich girls of Darwell lead by snobby Lisa (Up in Smoke's Ann Wharton), and chaperoned by icy coach Frankie McDougall (Courtney Sands). As night falls, they come across a roadblock and the Highway Patrol steers them to a detour leading to a remote cabin where it is revealed that the cops are their abductors: professional football players Wayne Mathews (... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Pulse by James-Masaki Ryan (1st January 2025)
"Pulse" 「回路」 (2001) Kudo Michi (played by Aso Kumiko) goes to the apartment of her coworker Taguchi (played by Mizuhashi Kenji) who has been absent from work for some time. Entering his unlocked dark apartment, she sees him there seemingly tired and unwell, but a few moments later she finds Taguchi hanging by the neck in the next room. Her coworkers Junko (played by Arisaka Kumiko) and Yabe (played by Matsuo Masatoshi) are able to recover a disk from Taguchi's home computer, which are filled with unusual repeating images of what seems to be of his room and a dark unrecognizable face appearing within the computer monitor reflections. With the three trying to find an answer to Taguchi's suicide, unexplained situations start to plague them as well. Meanwhile there is the case of Kawashima Ryosuke (played by Kato Haruhiko), a university student who decides to try the Internet for the first time. But things do not see... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
Shawscope: Volume Three (Limited Edition) by Eric Cotenas (1st January 2025)
"Before Hong Kong's mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video's best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion." The One Armed Swordsman: Bandit Long-Armed Devil (The Enchanting Shadow's Yang Chi-Ching), his cousin Smiling Tiger (Golden Swallow's ... |
The Keep: Limited Edition by Noor Razzak (1st January 2025)
Michael Mann’s "The Keep" (1983) is a fascinating and enigmatic film that blends horror, supernatural elements, and war drama into an almost dreamlike narrative. Despite being visually striking and conceptually ambitious, the film struggles to find coherence within its own sprawling ideas. Adapted from F. Paul Wilson’s 1981 novel, "The Keep" represents Mann's first foray into genre filmmaking, and while it showcases his signature style and visual sensibilities, it also presents significant narrative and tonal challenges. At the core of film is a story set during World War II in an isolated Romanian fortress that harbors an ancient evil. When a group of Nazi soldiers occupies the keep, they unknowingly unleash a powerful, malevolent entity. As the creature begins to terrorize the soldiers, a Jewish historian named Glaeken (Scott Glenn) is brought in to try to stop it, leading to a confrontation that blends existential horror with mystical elements. While this premise has the potential for a gripping narrative, the film quickly becomes mired in its own complexity, struggling to tie... |
Three Wishes for Cinderella by Eric Cotenas (25th December 2024)
Cinderella (Kolya's Libuse Safránková) lives under the thumb of her wicked stepmother (Bread and Roses' Carola Braunbock) and spoiled stepsister Dora (I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen's Dana Hlavácová). The servants love her and the animals help her in the backbreaking daily chores meted out by her stepmother, but she's really a tomboy at heart. While her stepmother and stepsister prepare for a visit from the King (Mephisto's Rolf Hoppe) and Queen (The Dead Stay Young's Karin Lesch), Cinderella comes across the Prince (singer... |