Second Run: Juraj Herz's Beauty and the Beast Coming Soon to Blu-ray

British label Second Run has announced that it will release on Blu-ray Juraj Herz's Beauty and the Beast a.k.a. Panna a netvor (1978), starring Zdena Studenková, Vlastimil Harapes, Václav Voska, Jana Brejchová, Zuzana Kocúriková. The release will be available for purchase on July 26.

Description: From Juraj Herz, director of The Cremator and Morgiana, comes this singular adaption of the classic tale - an altogether darker interpretation than we're used to. Light years from Disney, Herz's Beauty and the Beast (also known more provocatively as The Virgin and the Monster) follows the familiar story - innocent girl presents herself as sacrifice to a cursed man-beast hiding in exile, and learns to live with, and eventually love her captor - but is transformed into something entirely more twisted and terrifying in Herz's macabre re-imagining.

Aided by wonderful set and costume design, superb cinematography and evocative score, this is a fairy-tale-turned-horror story from Czechoslovak cinema's most wryly subversive artist.

Special Features and Technical Specs:

• REMASTERED PRESENTATION OF THE UNCUT VERSION OF THE FILM by the Czech National Film Archive
• A newly-recorded Projection Booth audio commentary with Mike White, Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger.
• František Hrubín (1964): a short film on the Czech writer and poet, and co-screenwriter of Beauty and the Beast
• 20-page booklet with new writing on the film by author Jonathan Owen
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• REGION-FREE