Vinegar Syndrome et al.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Great to see 'Arnold' finally getting a release

This is the title that intrigues me the most. Is it as bananas as it looks?

[dwk]

THE PROPHECY 1-3 - 4 UHD/BD BOX SET
D.A.R.Y.L. (VSU) - UHD
FATAL GAMES - BD
VINEGAR SYNDROME'S LOST PICTURE SHOW - 10-FILM BD BOX SET

Included are: Oliver Drake’s forgotten proto-slasher, THE LAS VEGAS STRANGLER (aka No Tears For the Damned), Larry Crane's murder mystery/nudie, BEWARE THE BLACK WIDOW, Joe Sarno’s stirring seaside drama, DEEP INSIDE, Albert Zugsmith’s notorious bad-taste thriller, VIOLATED!, Walter Burn’s underground sexual freakout, BARBARA, James Newslow’s nuclear holocaust scare film, RED MIDNIGHT, Titus Moede’s ode to forgotten Americana, THE LAST OF THE AMERICAN HOBOES, Carlos Tobalina’s “erotic” morality tale, WHAT’S LOVE?, Charles Nizet’s sex and gore frenzy, THE SEX SERUM OF DR BLAKE (the original cut of Voodoo Heartbeat), and finally Donn Greer’s jaw dropping and unnerving, “kiddie film” and musical, THE RARE BLUE APES OF CANNIBAL ISLE (aka The Pirates of Cannibal Isle).

What’s more is that this release also includes Elijah Drenner’s brand new, feature-length documentary AGAINST THE GRAIN, which examines how genre film focused home video companies have taken the charge in preserving, restoring, and releasing so many works which otherwise might have been lost to time.

This massive collection also comes complete with two thick, fully illustrated perfect bound books of newly written essays and historical analysis covering each of the included films.

SECRET RELEASE #1 - 4K UHD/BD
SECRET RELEASE #2 - BD

But that’s not even close to being all as there’s two more titles which we’re not gonna tell you about...perhaps the craziest of the bunch...the Surprise Titles, one of which is will mark the UHD debut of a major work by one of genre cinema’s greatest auteurs and the other is a criminally under-seen gem of early 80s horror. We can basically guarantee that you're not gonna be disappointed...

As we’ve hopefully demonstrated in the past, we often save the weirdest and wildest, and most unexpected films as surprises, and this upcoming duo will be no different, including the world 4K UHD debut of a slimy epic from from one of the greatest genre filmmakers to ever live along with another never-on-disc treasure that will surely satiate those craving squirm inducing carnage.

[What A Disgrace]

Wonder how much I'll regret buying that big box. Because I did. I wish Arrow's American Horror Project had been this massive.

[ianthemovie]

Can anyone vouch for the titles in the box set? The Rare Blue Apes of Cannibal Isle sounds promising; the rest look like a grab bag of run-of-the-mill trash schlock. I'd love to be able to justify splurging on this though.

[Matt]

I don’t think I’ve even heard of any of the films in that set (but a couple of the filmmakers’ names are familiar). That doesn’t mean they’re not worth hearing about, just that even having been steeped in exploitation cinema for 30 years I’m surprised I don’t know about them.

This new generation of home video exploitation revivalists makes Something Weird Video look like The Criterion Collection, and the old guard of barrel-bottom exploitation filmmakers like Andy Milligan and Doris Wishman now appear like Bergman and Varda with their lavish career-spanning box sets.

[furbicide]

Can anyone vouch for the titles in the box set? The Rare Blue Apes of Cannibal Isle sounds promising; the rest look like a grab bag of run-of-the-mill trash schlock. I'd love to be able to justify splurging on this though.

That's where I'm at too – that one looks pretty amazing, and as for the rest, well, who knows? But I doubt anyone is going to be able to help us with this given how obscure the titles are. Very tempted to buy this and find out for myself...

[pianocrash]

With early VS heavy hitters like Zugsmith, Sarno & Tobalina (somehow not an adults-only title!), you probably already know what you're in for, but I'm always impressed at the quality of the packaging for VS' deluxe sets, so I'll pick one up eventually. While I'm forever on the train of restoration and recovery of all films, it's also hard not to imagine the Lost Picture box as being a grab bag of whatever's in the drawer that was too hard to market in the traditional VS line, save The Rare Blue Apes Of Cannibal Isle, which already seems like a future classic in need of it's own lenticular slipcase.

Also, there is now a trailer for this set.

[therewillbeblus]

Please don’t forget to pick up Vengeance Is Mine! It will floor you

This one's power really sneaks up on you - though the first bookend of face-acting from Adams that opens the film is enough to grip you good. The rest plays out as an extraordinarily balanced film that teeters between the monotony and chaos of deep-rooted familial traumas embedded in rural East Coast Americana with appropriately restrained yet probing postures. Yet Roemer's non-interventionist position of absolutist curiosity allows for an objective neutrality to coat the drama, never allowing his film to descend into isolated tones or genre traps. Instead it's a very realistic depiction of messy dynamics, mental health deterioration, and the skewed nature of moral agency - wavering between artifice of melodrama and theatre influences to get there time and time again, pulling back at the exact right moments to make the characters and us sit in that authentic place of intangible conclusions. That latter point of fallible morality is fleshed out by Adams' protagonist, who both acts with a sense of shrewd moral judgment, and still well-oversteps her role through projections of her own traumas into another family, enmeshing with multiple surrogates for her younger self and children-that-could've-been. A lesser film would've painted her in one light or the other, but this is a film devoid of extremist judgment, yet one that's keenly aware of, sympathetic and clinically critical of behavior. It's a supremely emotional film that only arrives at these vulnerable places through its peripheral schematic comprehension of complex humanity, social dynamics, and individualized pain contending with interpersonal triggers in competitive vehicles of agency. Brooke Adams and Trish Van Devere are terrific, oddly complementing one another as necessary forces to incite life and revelation into the other, even if the consequences aren't linear or cathartic. While we eventually seem to gravitate towards an ends-justifying-means answer, the Persona-esque nods ensnaring the two female leads create an almost-surreal Jungian vibe amidst the kitchen-sink realism, and the sobering bubble-popping of Adams' worldview in the last act is fucking brilliant, bold, and exceptionally perverse.

SpoilerShow

I'd love to give a survey for the 'moment' audiences realize Adams is just as problematically complicit in the drama - not that it isn't apparent earlier, but the bait-and-switch tactic is both intelligently-constructed and respectfully non-manipulative. I suspect that for many it'll be the icy passivity of Adams allowing suicide to occur as an obliviously selfish idea of justice. For me it was seconds earlier, when Adams says, "You're not actually crazy" - a line not accompanied by any bombastic music cues to queue arm-hair raising, but a moment that unnerved me as much as any big-twist zenith in a psychological thriller. It reveals so much about what has been going on on the other side, that even though I'd been completely aware of Adams' problematic part in things the entire time, it still packed a wallop as the film affirms that subtext with a pronouncement served as much to awaken Adams to her own issues as to transform subtext into text for us, making the interventionist climax one in step with the character-centric formal choices rather than audience-provoking direction.

I could go on, but mostly I'm surprised that this has been getting hailed - it seems like the type of film that FCE would release, and a small portion of audiences willing to see the magic would flock towards with soft chatter. But I'm impressed that so many viewers tend to 'get' what the film is doing. Not that it's particularly complicated, but it subverts so many small comfortable cinematic conventions (while planting its feet in the familiar sandbox of TV melodrama, which is part of what creates that offbeat, 'surreal' effect) that I'd expect a less uniformly positive response, mixed with a slew of audiences expressing either boredom or frustration. Anyways, looking forward to more people checking out this profoundly mature film.

[ianthemovie]

A few highlights from today's announcements:

- Alain Resnais' La Guerre Est Finie from The Film Desk
- The Godmonster of Indian Flats from AGFA
- Cat CIty from Deaf Crocodile
- Michael Findlay's "Flesh" trilogy from VS/Distribpix
- and a bunch of classic splatter titles coming in 4K from VS, including Mark of the Devil, Mother's Day, and Bloodsucking Freaks

[What A Disgrace]

Cat City looks like a fantastic release. A pity it isn't their rumored first 4K title. If something with as big a reputation as that won't be a 4K release, one wonders what exactly that will be!

[therewillbeblus]

If something with as big a reputation as that won't be a 4K release, one wonders what exactly that will be!

Probably their next Aleksandr Ptushko acquisition

[tenia]

But that’s not even close to being all as there’s two more titles which we’re not gonna tell you about...perhaps the craziest of the bunch...the Surprise Titles, one of which is will mark the UHD debut of a major work by one of genre cinema’s greatest auteurs and the other is a criminally under-seen gem of early 80s horror. We can basically guarantee that you're not gonna be disappointed...

As we’ve hopefully demonstrated in the past, we often save the weirdest and wildest, and most unexpected films as surprises, and this upcoming duo will be no different, including the world 4K UHD debut of a slimy epic from from one of the greatest genre filmmakers to ever live along with another never-on-disc treasure that will surely satiate those craving squirm inducing carnage.

So I guess "a major work, slimy epic, by one of genre cinema’s greatest auteurs to ever live" is Mother's Day and the "criminally under-seen gem of early 80s horror" is Rabid Grannies.

- Alain Resnais' La Guerre Est Finie from The Film Desk

Hopefully, they fixed the restoration's black levels because the Gaumont BD of it was a nightmare.

[What A Disgrace]

I don't think those clues are for the October releases, but for the rest of their November slate.

[dwk]

What A Disgrace is correct, the clues are for two titles going up on Black Friday.

[MichaelB]

Cat City looks like a fantastic release. A pity it isn't their rumored first 4K title. If something with as big a reputation as that won't be a 4K release, one wonders what exactly that will be!

Going from the stills, I'm not convinced that 4K would offer much of a bonus.

[Aspect]

La guerre est finie is major. Like it should be a Criterion release-major. I’m happy it’s finally on the market. I preordered it so fast.

[beamish14]

Anyone here vouch for the quality of Larry Clark’s Marfa Girl films? I guess I’m a masochist, but I keep going back to his films

[therewillbeblus]

I guess I’m a masochist, but I keep going back to his films

Bully rules

[beamish14]

I guess I’m a masochist, but I keep going back to his films

Bully rules

It is. Another Day in Paradise had potential with Vincent Kartheismer as the lead, but it’s ultimately a poor adaptation of an absolutely amazing roman-a-clef. Wassup Rockers is goofy fun

[ryannichols7]

La guerre est finie is major. Like it should be a Criterion release-major. I’m happy it’s finally on the market. I preordered it so fast.

it will also feature an Adrian Martin/Cristina Alvarez-Lopez duo commentary, so that basically makes it a must buy!

[What A Disgrace]

I wonder which of the other films on the Film Desk site will be released by them. The Plot Against Harry is a for sure thing I would think, but several of the films are definitely held by someone else and I'm not sure about the others.

[yoloswegmaster]

One title that could be a future release is The Devil, Probably

[What A Disgrace]

I know that one used to be with Olive, but they no longer exist. One hopes.

[colinr0380]

I guess I’m a masochist, but I keep going back to his films

Bully rules

It is. Another Day in Paradise had potential with Vincent Kartheismer as the lead, but it’s ultimately a poor adaptation of an absolutely amazing roman-a-clef. Wassup Rockers is goofy fun

Seconded on Bully, with one of the late Brad Renfro's best roles. On Larry Clark was there ever a good uncensored release of Ken Park?

[yoloswegmaster]

I know that one used to be with Olive, but they no longer exist. One hopes.

FWIW, it's on playing on the Criterion Channel right now and it opens with the Film Desk Logo. Maybe it'll be announced soon?