British distributors Eureka Entertainment will add three new titles to their Blu-ray catalog in August: Charles B. Pierce's
The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), Nagisa Ôshima's
Cruel Story of Youth (1960), and Haskell Wexler's
Medium Cool (1969).
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
When two young lovers are savagely beaten and tortured on a back country road in Texarkana, local police are baffled. Three weeks later, two more people are slain in a similar setting and Deputy Norman Ramsey fears a pattern might be developing. Texas Ranger J.D. Morales (Ben Johnson, The Wild Bunch) is brought in to help.
The two officers must find "the Phantom Killer" before he can kill again. Also starring Andrew Prince (Grizzly) and Dawn Wells (Gilligan's Island), directed by Charles B. Pierce (The Legend Of Boggy Creek), and based on one of America's most baffling murder cases, this horrifying suspense thriller is a shocking experience you'll never forget. STREET DATE: AUGUST 24.
Cruel Story of Youth
Nagisa Oshima's groundbreaking film opens with young, attractive Mako and her friend hitching a ride from an old man. After her friend leaves, the man tries to rape her, and she is saved only by the handsome Kiyoshi. Later, against the background of the tumultuous 1960 U.S./Japan Security Treaty demonstrations, Kiyoshi and Mako walk along a grungy seaside lumberyard while talking about sex. He attempts to kiss her, she slaps him, and he throws her in the water. She cries out that she can't swim. When she continues to refuse his advances, he steps on her fingers as she clings to a log. Kiyoshi then saves Mako from a trio of seedy pimps looking to impress her into working for them, but after rescuing her, he forces himself on her again. With this unlikely beginning, Kiyoshi and Mako form a passionate though doomed romance. Soon she stops going to school and moves into his flea-ridden dive of an apartment. Utterly disillusioned with all trappings of societal convention, the two get cash by blackmailing businessmen and by shaking down Kiyoshi's middle-aged sugar mama. Tension with this Bonnie and Clyde duo builds after Mako has an abortion in a run down clinic, performed by an alcoholic doctor. ...Naked Youth ( Seishun zankoku monogatari ) ( A Story of the Cruelties of Youth ). STREET DATE: AUGUST 17.
Medium Cool
The time: 1968. The place: Chicago, setting of the Democratic National convention and a hotbed of political and social change. As protesters and police face off in the streets, fate brings together an unlikely pair: John (Robert Forster), a dispassionate TV news cameraman, and Eileen (Verna Bloom), a warmhearted Appalachian raising her son in a Chicago ghetto. Their relationship deepens and so does the impending danger, as John and Eileen are swept into the maelstrom of fear of violence that has captured the attention of an entire nation.
Filmed against the backdrop of the '68 convention by Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler, Medium Cool captures the soul of a turbulent era and takes a penetrating look at America's continuing fascination with sensationalism and violence. STREET DATE: AUGUST 24.