Synapse Films

[dwk]

And now Synapse has tweeted that they are going to announce a standard edition of The Kindred soon.

[dwk]

Synapse posted that they are going to release Blue Sunshine on UHD sometime next year.

[dwk]

Rumors are that Synapse is going to release Street Trash on UHD (I think Jerry Chandler actually confirmed Street Trash on a recent podcast) and Just Before Dawn on UHD.

[therewillbeblus]

Street Trash is trashy fun, plus how could Synapse resist the urge to restore the infamous game of genital catch scene in 4K

[What A Disgrace]

Just Before Dawn is one of the great horror films of the 80s, and easily among the best slasher films. I believe Jeff Lieberman's Blue Sunshine is also going to come to 4K soon.

[dwk]

Synapse announced they, along with Red Shirt Pictures, will be releasing Trick or Treat (1986) on Blu-ray and UHD. They did not announce a release date.

[dwk]

BLUE SUNSHINE (1977), available now at Diabolik DVD and Synapse Films' site:

TURN ON, TUNE IN AND DROP INTO TERROR WHEN SYNAPSE FILMS BRINGS JEFF LIEBERMAN’S 70s CLASSIC BLUE SUNSHINE TO LIMITED EDITION 4K UHD! Available now exclusively from Synapse Films and DiabolikDVD.com!

“A hippie-era hangover and acid-tongued denunciation of political-commodity fetishism, BLUE SUNSHINE remains an unjustly neglected genre classic that delivers a deft fusion of horror-movie tropes, social satire, and cult-film weirdness.” - Budd Wilkins, Slant Magazine

As the Love Generation of the 60s faded and the Me Generation of the 70s took over, the remnants of the 60s counterculture proved fruitful ground for the horror greats of the 70s, from Tobe Hooper’s THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE to Philip Kauffman’s INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. But none were more precise as writer/director Jeff Lieberman’s BLUE SUNSHINE, a still-potent mix of conspiracy thriller, psychological horror film and social satire that takes viewers on a trip they’ll keep flashing back to, especially on Synapse Films’ new Limited Edition 4K boxed set.

It starts off as a great party—just eight people in a secluded lodge. One of the guests suddenly goes on a shockingly violent, murderous rampage. There is something wrong with his hair, and pure evil in his eyes. What he does to three of the girls there is too hideous to describe. Falsely accused of the brutal killings, Jerry Zipkin (RED SHOE DIARIES’ Zalman King) goes on the run. More bizarre murders occur, and while trying to clear his name, Jerry discovers the shocking truth: The people losing their hair and turning into violent psychopaths may be connected to a drug each killer took a decade before. A drug known as “Blue Sunshine.”

Synapse Films is proud to present Jeff Lieberman’s 1977 cult-classic horror film BLUE SUNSHINE in an all-new 4K restoration presented in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) and loaded with hours of supplemental material. This three-disc set contains a 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray, a Blu-ray (1080p) and a CD soundtrack album, and is strictly limited to 4,000 copies.

Synapse’s exclusive limited edition features hard chipboard slipcase packaging with stunning new artwork by artist Wes Benscoter. Inside is a dual-wall o-card wrapped around a clear three disc Criterion-style case.

MIND-ALTERING SPECIAL FEATURES:
* 4K restoration of the original 35mm camera negative mastered in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible).
* Lossless English DTS-HD Master Audio original theatrical mono and a 5.1 surround sound mix supervised by director Jeff Lieberman.
* Two audio commentaries featuring director Jeff Lieberman.
* New introduction to the film by director Jeff Lieberman.
* Archival 2003 interview with director Jeff Lieberman.
* “Lieberman on Lieberman” video interview.
* Channel Z “Fantasy Film Festival” interview with Mick Garris and Jeff Lieberman.
* Fantasia International Film Festival 4K Premiere Q&A with moderator Michael Gingold and director Jeff Lieberman.
* Anti-drug “scare films”: LSD-25 (1967) and LSD: Insight or Insanity? (1968), courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive.
* Jeff Lieberman’s first film The Ringer, included here in two versions: the original uncut version (from a projection print source) and the final release version (remastered in 4K by Synapse Films from the original camera negative) with optional audio commentary on the uncut version by Jeff Lieberman and moderator Howard S. Berger.
* Theatrical trailers
* Still gallery
* Liner notes booklet by Jeff Lieberman, featuring a chapter on the making of Blue Sunshine from his book Day of the Living Me: Adventures of a Subversive Cult Filmmaker from the Golden Age
* Limited-edition fold-out poster

Order BLUE SUNSHINE from Synapse Films: https://www.synapsefilms.com/product...hine-ltd4kuhd/
Order BLUE SUNSHINE from Diabolik DVD: https://diabolikdvd.com/product/blue...hd-blu-ray-cd/

DISC SPECIFICATIONS FOR FEATURE PRESENTATION
4K ULTRA HD DISC:
2160p Ultra High Definition (1.85:1) Presentation
· DTS-HD MA English 5.1/2.0
· Optional English SDH Subtitles
BLU-RAY DISC:
1080p High Definition (1.85:1) Presentation
· DTS-HD MA English 5.1/2.0
· Optional English SDH Subtitles
CD SOUNDTRACK AUDIO DISC:
44.1kHz/16bit · 13 tracks

RATED R – 1977 – COLOR – 95 MINS. – SFD0224
UPC CODE: 654930324790
SUGGESTED RETAIL PRICE: $49.95

[dwk]

Synapse announced they, along with Red Shirt Pictures, will be releasing Trick or Treat (1986) on Blu-ray and UHD. They did not announce a release date.

Synapse's site is in maintenance page with a picture of an audio cassette getting hit by lightning and a timer counting down to noon EST tomorrow, presumably because they are finally putting this up for ordering.

[Cash Flagg]

The pre-order(s) are ‘live’, but naturally the site (and Diabolik) have been broken the entire time.

[Commander Shears]

This might be a bit of Rubicon for me in some way. I've always liked this movie and wanted to own a good quality version of it - but between the grotesquely inflated price point justified by silly add-ons, it being sold out on Diabolik as you compete with slipcover collectors who need to buy three copies and the Ebay resellers buying copies to sell after the arbitrary 'limited edition' sells out, this whole thing is putting me in a bad mood. I simply like and want the movie, but 4K and boutique labels have morphed home video into such a weird little collector/reseller/paraphernalia headache that seems to have little to do with the movies anymore. I'm obviously old.

[dwk]

Synapse tweeted that they will be announcing the standard release soon.

[Commander Shears]

Synapse tweeted that they will be announcing the standard release soon.

That's promising. They had been saying just days ago that they had no plans for such a release.

[dwk]

Their social media always says that they have no plans for a standard release.

It is ridiculous that people were buying copies of all three covers and that they let people buy all three covers. Should have been limited to one copy and you get a cover at random.

[dwk]

Standard, separate Blu-ray and UHDs of Trick or Treat are coming March 11th 2025.

[dwk]

Diabolik DVD posted on Blue Sky that Synapse's Nikkatsu Roman Porno releases are going OOP.

[colinr0380]

Diabolik DVD posted on Blue Sky that Synapse's Nikkatsu Roman Porno releases are going OOP.

That's a shame, although that was an excellent run of titles over the years, beginning with the introductory trailer compilation DVD in 2010 (one of the indispensible trailer compilation sets up there with the 42nd Street Forever, Trailer Trauma and Ozploitation: Trailer Explosion series) and then covering all sorts of different subgenres over the course of its thirteen year run. I may be wrong but I seem to remember at the outset that Synapse/Impulse stated that they were going to do 25 titles, and they went past that initial number by a long way, with Yasuara Hasebe's Assault: 13th Hour being the 46th numbered release. The series was mostly on DVD (with a few titles even on that format having to put disclaimers on their back cover about the quality of the materials available), but did surprisingly venture into Blu-ray for five titles: Love Hunter; two films by Koyu Ohara with Fairy In A Cage and Zoom Up: Murder Site; Masaru Konuma's notorious S&M film Flower & Snake (which got remade in 2005 by Takashi Ishii and led to a string of sequels for the next decade); and perhaps the most infamous title of all with relentlessly nihilistic sex-horror film Star of David: Beauty Hunting (which was the only entry in the series to feature extra features beyond a theatrical trailer, with a commentary and interview from director Nofiumi Suzuki ported forward from earlier releases)

Although sadly they never reached the most evocative looking title from that trailer compliation DVD, a film called "Race Across The Drenched Wasteland", which I'd love to track down but is not even referenced in Jasper Sharp's "Behind The Pink Curtain" book, so either it is really obscure or it has a different title from the one presented on the disc!

[Thornycroft]

Their release of Hisayasu Satō's notorious Lolita Vibrator Torture was a big deal considering almost all of Satō's films are only available as fuzzy VHS bootlegs with fansubs. I'm still holding out hope that someone will tackle nice releases of his pink films but I fear that a mixture of rights issues, the availability of elements, and the sheer extremity of many of his films (I suspect the BBFC would balk at some of them even today) makes it unlikely. His cold and melancholic portraits of urban alienation and body horror are amongst my favourite films in the entire pinku eiga genre.

[colinr0380]

Absolutely. Artsmagic put out great DVD editions of Hisayasu Satō''s mid-90s pink films Love-Zero=Infinity, Rafureshia and Survey Map of a Paradise Lost (NSFW) in the US in the mid-2000s, but there's a lot of other films that have never had an English-language friendly release. Probably as you suggest because of their dark themes of fusing desperately empty couplings with the inexorable pull towards self-destruction, like an exploitation Peter Greenaway!

[dwk]

Apparently Michael Felscher announced on a live broadcast on Red Shirt's Facebook page that he is partnering again with Synapse to release the following titles:
Fright Night II
Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II
Prom Night III
Prom Night IV
Angel of H.E.A.T.
976-Evil II

[beamish14]

Apparently Michael Felscher announced on a live broadcast on Red Shirt's Facebook page that he is partnering again with Synapse to release the following titles:
Fright Night II
Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II
Prom Night III
Prom Night IV
Angel of H.E.A.T.
976-Evil II

Hello Mary Lou is a masterpiece. Up with Paper House as the most creative horror film of the second half of the 80’s

[jazzo]

I also like it quite a bit, not just because it's quite bonkers towards the ending, but there is a lot of daffy creative energy gurgling through it.

That actually should have been it's tagline: "It's like Paperhouse, but, y'know...with boobs."

Fright Night 2 was a letdown when I rewatched it in a rep cinema last year, with very little of the original (and quite honestly, the remake's) charm, so temper those expectations.

I haven't seen any of the others, but I assume, since Synapse released the first Prom Night, a box set is in order?

[dwk]

I haven't seen any of the others, but I assume, since Synapse released the first Prom Night, a box set is in order?

Doubt it, they are from different licensors and the Prom Night sequels, and the other films mentioned, are Red Shirt Pictures releases, which Synapse is only doing the audio and video work and distribution of.

Synapse did say that they hope to do a UHD of the first Prom Night but that depends on access to, and quality of, the elements.

[beamish14]

I haven't seen any of the others, but I assume, since Synapse released the first Prom Night, a box set is in order?

Doubt it, they are from different licensors and the Prom Night sequels, and the other films mentioned, are Red Shirt Pictures releases, which Synapse is only doing the audio and video work and distribution of.

Synapse did say that they hope to do a UHD of the first Prom Night but that depends on access to, and quality of, the elements.

The second is all you truly need. The four films do have one character who weaves through all of them, but they’re fundamentally independent of each other

[Mr Sausage]

Well you guys made me check it out (I've seen the first one but don't remember it), and while it's not especially good, it does have a gusto to it that won me over. Plus some of the acting is much better than this kind of movie needs or often gets. It's a hodgepodge of a film on a script level, but it has some energy to it that works. Plus the ending just goes for it. I'm not in the masterpiece camp, but I liked this more than I expected.

[domino harvey]

My write up from the Horror list thread:

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (Bruce Pittman 1987) Few things are as frustrating for a filmgoer than a film that has a good premise and decent elements but fails to capitalize on its potential out of laziness, ineptness, or both. This sequel in name only has at the very least an entertaining opening ten minutes set in 1957, where the titular hellcat tears up her high school prom, only to meet a gruesome end at the hands of her jilted ex. Thirty years later her spirit is back to raise literal hell for denizens of the same high school. Great, sounds like an entertaining-enough premise for a fun slasher flick. However, the film, like many slashers that came up in the post Elm Street lottery, fills the running time with nonsensical scare sequences and dream-bound phantasms, and also inexplicably hides its vivacious villain in body possessions and hallucinations for most of the film. There are a couple great little moments that hint at the film this could be, as when Mary Lou invades the body of our boring good girl heroine and has her come onto her doting dad (and the dad's into it!), and the film has a surprisingly nasty anti-religious bent (Mary Lou attacks one of her former greaser boyfriends, who reformed as a priest following her death, by telling him there is no afterlife and then stabbing him in the mouth with a crucifix) that gives it a little something extra. And the film does its best to sidestep the obvious Carrie comparisons. But there's also nonsense kills (death by vote tallying computer?) and the characters all share a rather callous attitude towards each other (the previously likable goofball who forces a Prom Queen hopeful to blow him serves to provide what, exactly, besides an awful sexist punchline?). But when the ghoulish gal of the title finally reemerges, it makes one wish the film had followed through on its promise of a female villain in the spirit of Freddy or Jason-- that would have been actual novelty, though.