Gothic

[Calvin]

The release date has been moved back 1 week to September 18th and it has been stacked with a delectable selection of extras:

Feature commentary by film historian Matthew Melia and Lisi Russell (2018)

The Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002, 83 mins): Ken Russell returns to gothic themes in this legendarily lurid late video work featuring an all-star cast

A Haunted Evening (2023, 35 mins): Stephen Volk, the writer of Gothic, revisits his earliest feature script

The Sound of Shelley with Julian Sands (2017, 18 mins): the actor reflects upon the making of Gothic

Amelia and the Angel (1958, 27 mins): in this charming early Russell short, a young girl, cast as an angel in the school play, is distraught when her brother damages her treasured wings. Pocket money in hand, Amelia traverses London on the hunt for a new pair in time for the play

The Guardian Lecture: Ken Russell in conversation with Derek Malcolm (1987, 87 mins, audio only): the director reflects upon his career, at the time of Gothic

Original trailer

**FIRST PRESSING ONLY** Illustrated booklet featuring new essays by Ellen Cheshire, Jon Dear, and Matthew Melia and full film credits

Ben has confirmed to me that Amelia and the Angel will be in HD.

The Fall of the Louse of Usher is an interesting inclusion - as above, I had suggested to the BFI that it would be nice to see any of Russell's late 'home' movies as extras but I didn't expect them to end up with that one. One, because it's feature length when that period of his career was predominantly shorts and, second, because it's the only one that has already been available on DVD. I don't want to give off the impression that I'm unhappy (far from it!) but it does make me wonder if there's something preventing a wider release of the shorts.

[M Sanderson]

Nice. Glad to see the inclusion of a Russell film from the "home movie" period.

Definitely, excited for future Russell shorts, late home movies and (hopefully) artist biographies in possible future BFI releases.

[MichaelB]

The Fall of the Louse of Usher is an interesting inclusion - as above, I had suggested to the BFI that it would be nice to see any of Russell's late 'home' movies as extras but I didn't expect them to end up with that one. One, because it's feature length when that period of his career was predominantly shorts and, second, because it's the only one that has already been available on DVD.

Surely it's been included because of its closeness to Gothic in terms of inspiration? (Poe rather than Byron/Polidori/P&M Shelley, but same general ballpark.)

So it actually makes sense on this disc, in a way that A Kitten for Hitler wouldn't.

[MichaelB]

This issue hasn't arisen here, but it's probably worth mentioning that complaints about the BFI edition of Gothic only having a mono soundtrack turned out to be premature - there is a 2.0 stereo soundtrack, and it's apparently noticeably superior (as well as being how the film was initially released).

I gather it was added to the build at the very last minute, which is why you have to access it via the Audio button on your remote control - but it's definitely there.

[M Sanderson]

Thanks for the update.

Got mine yesterday and excited to reacquaint.

I remember years ago wishing on here that Arrow would get hold of it, before the Vestron edition came out; BFI is equally as good and glad a specialist label landed it.