Independent U.S. distributors will add three titles to their Blu-ray catalog in January: Val Guest's
The Weapon (1956), R.G. Springsteen's
The Track The Man Down (1955), and Alain Robbe-Grillet's
La Bell Captive a.k.a.
The Beautiful Prisoner (1983).
La Belle Captive
One of the last important works by visionary filmmaker and celebrated novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet (
Trans-Europ Express,
Last Year at Marienbad), La Belle Captive is a mesmerizing erotic fantasy, set in a world in which film noir and horror converge—an alternate reality governed by the fractured continuity of a nightmare. After encountering a mysterious woman (Gabrielle Lazure) at a smoke-filled nightclub, secret agent Walter Raim (Daniel Mesguich) finds the woman lying bound and semi-conscious on a country road. He takes her to an isolated mansion, where a group of mysterious men have gathered. In the morning, Walter awakens to find bite marks on his neck, and embarks on a one-man crusade to unravel the mystery. But his detective work is thwarted by leather-clad, motorcycle-riding femme fatale Sara Zeitgeist (Cyrielle Clair), who commands a squad of black-shirted goons to keep Walter from attaining the object of his quest. Inspired by the imagery of René Magritte and the episodic melodramas of Louis Feuillade, La Belle Captive is a playful homage to the erotic allure of cinema, filled with fetishistic imagery that has become Robbe-Grillet's trademark. STREET DATE: JANUARY 20TH.
Track the Man Down
After the robbery of a dog-racing track goes awry, a hoodlum (George Rose) scrambles to evade the police and a gang of criminals, while maintaining control of a satchel of stolen funds. The loot falls into the hands of his girlfriend (Ursula Howells), then her sister (Petula Clark), who carries it on a long bus trip. Along the way, her path converges with that of an aging actress (Renee Houston), a snitch (Kenneth Griffith), and a story-hungry reporter (Kent Taylor). They end up confined in a deserted boathouse, where the fate of the money and the people pursuing it are resolved. STREET DATE: JANUARY 20TH.
The Weapon
When a young boy (Jon Whiteley) accidentally shoots a playmate with a pistol found in the rubble of a bombed-out building, he runs away from home and wanders the streets of postwar England. Ballistic analysis connects the weapon to the unsolved murder of a military officer ten years earlier. A gruff American captain, Mark Andrews (Steve Cochran), attempts to track down the missing gun, while trying to appease the boy's anxious mother (Lizabeth Scott). The search for the missing boy (and the weapon he's carrying) leads Andrews into the seedy London underworld, where a series of unsavory characters attempt to divert him from his quest. As depicted by director Val Guest the decayed urban setting resembles the Vienna of Carol Reed's The Third Man, permeated by grime and shadow, and shot through with an oppressive sense of despair. STREET DATE: JANUARY 20TH.