Hey, hey! We're back with another month o' fun from the folks at Shout! Factory. Did you grab anything in May worth talking about? I decided to combine my order with a title from early June and ship it all at once, so I'll hang tight talking about the "Danger: Diabolik" and "Exorcism at 60,000 Feet" discs until they land. Let's get into it!
June 2
There are a
ton of titles releasing the first Tuesday of June. I'm most excited for the Shout Select Collector's Edition Blu-ray of
"Glengarry Glen Ross". Without hyperbole, this is one of the greatest movies of the 1990s; a classic David Mamet script (adapted from his play) featuring an incredible cast. Pacino, Lemmon, Arkin, Harris, Baldwin, Spacey, Pryce: every single actor turns in an amazing performance. I've been watching my Artisan DVD for almost 20 years, and I'm quite excited to see how this new 4K transfer looks in comparison. There's a new interview with director James Foley, and an interview with actor Joe Mantegna, who originated Ricky Roma onstage in Chicago. There's also a new cubist-style cover, inspired by Alec Baldwin's monologue in the film. If you haven't seen it before, you've almost certainly heard a reference. Always - be - closing, y'all.
Shout! Factory started reissuing Satoshi Kon's film catalog last year, with outstanding Blu-Rays of "Perfect Blue" and "Millennium Actress". The late Japanese director's third film, 2003's
"Tokyo Godfathers"(東京ゴッドファーザーズ), gets the hi-def treatment this month. "Tokyo Godfathers" gets a 4K scan and a brand new English-language dub for this release, as well as a wealth of extras on this 2-disc combo pack. As of this writing, if you order direct from Shout! Factory, you'll also receive an 18"x24" lithograph of the cover art, which is always a nice little treat. I only know Kon's work from reputation; all four of his films were out-of-print by the time I became familiar with him. So it's nice to have someone new to discover and dive into.
The latest film in the "Sound! Euphonium" (響け! ユーフォニアム) anime series,
"Our Promise: A Brand New Day" also drops this week. The series tells the tale of a Japanese high school concert band and their growth with the arrival of a new faculty advisor. Protagonist Kumiko has entered her second year of high school, and has to juggle playing in the band, building a relationship with long-time friend Shūichi, AND mentoring the new Year One band members. What's a girl to do? This is definitely not in my wheelhouse, but if you're a fan of YA fiction, or have been following the anime and following films, this is a gotta have.
At this point, you're either already sold on the "When Calls The Heart" series, or you're not at all interested. I live in a house that is a sucker for Hallmark Channel productions, so I've seen a few of these over the years. The greatest surprise for me? This has now run seven seasons and five movies! That's longevity, people! These folks are still going strong, despite the loss of Lori Laughlin after season five. If prairie romance with strong family values is your thing, and you're not already into this, then get on board here with
"When Calls The Heart: Finding Home & A Moving Picture". This double feature includes the Season 7 premiere and 2019's Christmas episode.
Hey, let's check out some new Russian sci-fi! Last year's
"The Blackout" (Аванпост) had a great tag line: "SOMEONE OR SOMETHING IS PLUNGING HUMANITY INTO DARKNESS ..." I caught the trailer on YouTube a few weeks ago, and some of the visuals were striking. I'll always give a "humanity's last stand"-type movie a shot, and this low-budget (around $4 million) foreign release looks pretty promising. This is the first of two films, with a sequel due out this year. I'm rooting for this to be a "Night Watch"-style word-of-mouth release.
Normally, I'd totally overlook a film like
"Witches In The Woods". The IMDb reviews are not great, and the whole "college kids get trapped in the snow and flip out" plot seems like something I've seen before. BUT! I see that writer Christopher Borrelli also wrote 2015's "The Vatican Tapes", which I thought was a perfectly cromulent late night watch. I'm also a big fan of shithead college kids getting their comeuppance in horror movies. I think there's a fair chance what you get here. Do you need to own this? Probably not, but I wouldn't complain if someone whipped this out for movie night in the next few weeks.
June 9
Do you like whimsy? Hell yeah you do! I'm pretty certain, unless you stayed home and watched HBO in the mid-90s, that you've never seen 1994's
"Princess Caraboo". Based on a true story from the 19th century, this story tells the story of a woman who impersonates an exotic princess and enraptures British society. It's Phoebe Cates' final lead role, and a cast including real-life husband Kevin Kline, Jim Broadbent, John Lithgow, and Stephen Rea leads you to wonder why more people don't know about this. It's one of those movies that Miramax did really well with in the 90s; sadly, TriStar distributed it to theaters, which probably lead to the DVD going out of print fairly quickly. All that makes this a perfect Shout! Select release this week.
June 16
My boss 10 years ago highly recommended
"The Hills Run Red" over and over again, and, at the time, I took a pass. It looked like some shitty, direct-to-video, aughts slasher b.s. I'll fully admit that I was wrong. It's not shitty, it's not b.s., it's pretty good, especially with the benefit of 11 years of hindsight. The writing is solid, the plot is meta enough to hold my interest, and William Sadler plays a reclusive director. "The Hills Run Red" has gotten a lot of love over the past decade, and gets honored with a massive amount of extras on this first-ever Blu-ray release from Scream Factory.
Jon Avent's
"Three Christs" gets a combo pack release after a reduced theatrical and VOD release earlier this year. This one sat on the shelf for three years after being shot in 2017, despite a cast including Richard Gere, Walton Goggins, and Peter Dinklage. The story of the Three Christs of Ypsilanti is a pretty fascinating chapter in the story of modern psychiatry, and this seems like the kind of dark comedy that'll be a perfect Sunday afternoon watch in my house.
Scream! Factory has been reissuing Paramount's and Universal's back catalog of horror films since last year, and the fifth volume of the
"Universal Horror Collection" comes out this week. In most cases, these films have never been available on Blu-ray, and have been receiving 2K restorations and full film commentaries from historians. These were all B-features, the direct-to-video releases of their day, and most of them are rarely explored by casual fans. Of the four films in this collection, I'm most interested to check out 1943's "Captive Wild Woman", a pre-blacklist sci-fi/horror movie from director Edward Dmytryk. Also included here are 1944's "Jungle Woman", and 1945's "Jungle Captive", the sequels to "Captive Wild Woman", and 1941's "The Woman And The Girl".
June 23
I'm grateful that I grew up during the last time in broadcast history when you could watch a wide range of genre film on over-the-air TV. Alongside Shaw Brothers kung fu and Toho tokasatsu, I watched a ton of Bert Gordon's super-sized monsters on WVEU, WTBS, and WATL as a kid. Scream Factory has returned to releasing Blu-ray reissues with a Blu-ray of 1958's
"Earth Vs. The Spider". It's a fun AIP mockbuster, having been re-titled
"The Spider" before release to capitalize off the success of "The Fly". You get the Season 3 episode of MST3K on this release, new commentary, behind the scenes images, and a new 2K scan of the film.
The final Shout! Select release for June is 1994's
"The Road To Wellville", which adapts a T.C. Boyle novel, which is based on the life and beliefs of
John Harvey Kellogg, who helped popularize corn flakes, and thus cereal, as a breakfast food. Did you follow all that? All I remember about the theatrical release is that Hannibal Lecter and Lloyd Dobler were involved in giving Ferris Bueller an enema and teaching Janet Livermore how to masturbate. That, and that it totally tanked at the box office. Now, as a more enlightened ad-dult, I can tell you that this a super bawdy retelling of health and wellness at the turn of the 20th century, directed and written by the director of "Bugsy Malone", "Midnight Express", and "The Commitments". I've come to discover Alan Parker as a master storyteller, and I'm looking forward to rediscovering this one.
June 30
Scream Factory saved the best release of the month for last. I was obsessed with
"Orca" as a kid; I saw it on late night TV at my grandparent's sometime in the early 80s, and I wasn't allowed to see "Jaws" until I was in my teens. So I drew a ton of man-eating killer sharks in the margins of my notes and all over my notebooks in elementary school. It's a totally insane animal revenge flick: Richard Harris "accidentally" harpoons a pregnant killer whale and murders it, the whale's mate spends the rest of the movie trying to murder Richard Harris. In the interim, Bo Derek, Keenan Wynn, and Robert Carradine all buy the farm in impressively gruesome ways. Charlotte Rampling is the only survivor. This was Dino de Laurentiis' only production in 1977, and it definitely stands out as one of his better late 70s releases. I remember this being kind of campy, in the same, pleasant, earth-toned way as de Laurentiis's "King Kong". This Blu-ray looks to be a little light on extras, but this has never been released in hi-def here in the States, so I'm looking forward to snagging a copy.
And that's it for June. For the record, "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Orca" are my two must-haves for the month. As always, if you don't have a local spot to buy these from, order direct from
shoutfactory.com. Everything releasing in June currently shows some discount, and my experience has been that you get your new release by the Tuesday it's in stores. Don't be surprised if Shout! Factory does some sort of big sale towards the end of the month; with San Diego ComicCon cancelled this year, they'll need to replace that promotion with something new and different.
