Arrow Video Announces December Releases
HomeArrow Video Announces December Releases
Posted September 24, 2021 05:12 PM by Webmaster
Arrow Video has announced its December batch of Blu-ray releases. They are: My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988), The Last Matinee (2020), Rainer Werner Fassbinder Collection Volume 2, Giallo Essentials, and Shawscope Volume One.
My Stepmother Is an Alien
Description: He married a girl from out of town… Way out of town.
Dan Aykroyd (Ghostbusters), Kim Basinger (The Nice Guys) and Jon Lovitz (Southland Tales) star in a fish-out-of-water comedy with a sci-fi twist that questions whether a romance between two star-crossed lovers who are literally worlds apart can ever work.
When widowed astronomer Steve Mills (Aykroyd) inadvertently causes a gravitational disruption in deep space, a race of hyper-advanced alien lifeforms sends one of their own to investigate, disguised in the alluring human form of Celeste (Basinger). Tasked with seducing the lovelorn Steve in a bid to gain access to his scientific research, Celeste finds herself falling for the man she's been sent to swindle. But they've not counted on Steve's young daughter Jessie (Alyson Hannigan, TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer), who's none too thrilled by the prospect of a new mother – especially not one from another planet.
Funny and touching in equal measure, My Stepmother is an Alien is an offbeat and at times surprisingly risqué comedy that confirms the adage that what unites us is far greater than what divides us… even if what divides us happens to be an entire galaxy.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
UK STREET DATE: DECEMBER 23.
The Last Matinee
Description: A trip to the movies takes a deadly turn in this stylish neo-giallo love letter to classic slashers that will send your popcorn flying and have you diving behind your seat!
A cold, wet day. A declining cinema. All you want is to get out of the rain and watch a good film. But who else is in there, hiding in the dark? When Ana takes over projection duties from her ailing father, she doesn't expect anything worse than a broken reel or a burned-out bulb. But there's a sadistic killer in the auditorium, and soon blood is running in the aisles as he starts picking off the audience members one by one. Can Ana and the few remaining survivors escape the murderous madman, or will they be victims of his matinee massacre?
Uruguayan director Maxi Contenti marks himself out as a talent to watch with a film that Rue Morgue calls "Visually stunning… indulgently violent!" Arrow Video is proud to present The Last Matinee. It's a killer time at the movies!
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder Collection Volume 2
Description: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the enfant terrible of the New German Cinema, wrote, directed, produced and starred in over 40 films in his short but prolific life, before passing away of a drugs overdose in 1982 aged just 37. Rainer Werner Fassbinder vol. 2 brings together a collection of his key works from the mid-section of his career in high definition digital restorations prepared by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation.
Among Fassbinder's best-loved works, Fear Eats the Soul sees the director paying homage to the classic melodramas of Douglas Sirk in its poignant portrayal of a relationship between a widowed cleaning lady in her sixties and a Moroccan immigrant in his thirties that causes an outrage with her family, friends and neighbours. Fassbinder's long-gestating adaptation of Theodor Fontane's classic German novel Effi Briest, his most expensive production to date as well as one of his most ambitious, tells the tale of a seventeen-year-old girl who is married off by her parents to a wealthy Baron more than twice her age.
Fassbinder himself plays the protagonist of Fox and His Friends, a sweet working class soul whose relationship with wealthy industrialist Eugen, he discovers, is based almost wholly on his unexpected lottery win. Chinese Roulette is a tense psychodrama set in an isolated house during a weekend break in which infidelities are revealed and families break down. Fassbinder's international breakthrough film, The Marriage of Maria Braun charts the rise to prosperity of its tenacious and pragmatic central character across the post-war years as she holds out hope for the return of the young soldier she was married to for less than 24-hours before he was dispatched to the Russian front and later reported dead.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Giallo Essentials: Yellow Edition
Arrow Video continues its exploration of Italian cult cinema with this volume of Giallo Essentials, bringing together three more suspense-filled exemplars of the genre!
In Massimo Dallamano's What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974), hot-headed Inspector Silvestri (Claudio Cassinelli, The Suspicious Death of a Minor) and rookie Assistant District Attorney Vittoria Stori (Giovanna Ralli, Cold Eyes of Fear) investigate the apparent suicide of a teenage girl, leading them to a sordid prostitution ring whose abusers occupy the highest echelons of Italian society. Sergio Martino's Torso (1973) helped lay the groundwork for the American Slasher Movie: when a ruthless killer begins to target the female university students of Perugia, Jane (Suzy Kendall, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and her friends flee for the peace of the countryside, only to discover that the threat isn't far behind. Andrea Bianchi's Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975) delivers depravity in droves as ambitious photographer Magda (Edwige Fenech, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) and her on-off boyfriend, love rat Carlo (Nino Castelnuovo, The English Patient), team up to solve the spate of highly sexualized murders that are rocking a prestigious Milanese fashion house.
Featuring grisly murders, amateur sleuths and motorcycle-riding maniacs, these iconic gialli are restored in 2K from their original negatives and are presented alongside a raft of juicy extras!
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Shawscope Volume One
Description : After an undisputed reign at the peak of Hong Kong's film industry in the 1960s, Shaw Brothers (the studio founded by real-life brothers Run Run and Runme Shaw) found their dominance challenged by up-and-coming rivals in the early 1970s. They swiftly responded by producing hundreds of the most iconic action films ever made, revolutionizing the genre through the hard work of top-shelf talent on both sides of the camera as well as unbeatable widescreen production value, much of it shot at 'Movietown', their huge, privately-owned studio on the outskirts of Hong Kong.
This inaugural collection by Arrow Video presents twelve jewels from the Shaw crown, all released within the 1970s, kicking off in 1972 with Korean director Jeong Chang-hwa's King Boxer, the film that established kung fu cinema as an international box office powerhouse when it hit Stateside cinemas under the title Five Fingers of Death. From there we see Chang Cheh (arguably Shaw's most prolific director) helm the blood-soaked brutality of The Boxer from Shantung and two self-produced films in his 'Shaolin Cycle' series, Five Shaolin Masters and its prequel Shaolin Temple, before taking a detour into Ho Meng Hua's King Kong-inspired Mighty Peking Man, one of the most unmissably insane giant monster films ever made. Chang's action choreographer Lau Kar-leung then becomes a director in his own right, propelling his adoptive brother Gordon Liu to stardom in Challenge of the Masters and Executioners from Shaolin. Not to be outdone, Chang introduces some of Shaw's most famous faces to the screen, including Alexander Fu Sheng fighting on the streets of San Francisco in Chinatown Kid and, of course, the mighty Venom Mob in The Five Venoms and Crippled Avengers. Finally, Lau and Liu successfully meld high kicks with humor in two of their masterworks, Heroes of the East and Dirty Ho, both co-starring fan favorite Hsiao Hou.
From kickass kung fu killers to crazy kaiju knockoffs to culture clash comedies, this carefully curated and gorgeously presented selection of all-time Shaw Brothers classics merely represents the tip of the iceberg of the studio's rich output, making it both an ideal starting point for newcomers and a treat for hardcore fans alike.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
UK STREET DATE: DECEMBER 6.
My Stepmother Is an Alien
Description: He married a girl from out of town… Way out of town.
Dan Aykroyd (Ghostbusters), Kim Basinger (The Nice Guys) and Jon Lovitz (Southland Tales) star in a fish-out-of-water comedy with a sci-fi twist that questions whether a romance between two star-crossed lovers who are literally worlds apart can ever work.
When widowed astronomer Steve Mills (Aykroyd) inadvertently causes a gravitational disruption in deep space, a race of hyper-advanced alien lifeforms sends one of their own to investigate, disguised in the alluring human form of Celeste (Basinger). Tasked with seducing the lovelorn Steve in a bid to gain access to his scientific research, Celeste finds herself falling for the man she's been sent to swindle. But they've not counted on Steve's young daughter Jessie (Alyson Hannigan, TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer), who's none too thrilled by the prospect of a new mother – especially not one from another planet.
Funny and touching in equal measure, My Stepmother is an Alien is an offbeat and at times surprisingly risqué comedy that confirms the adage that what unites us is far greater than what divides us… even if what divides us happens to be an entire galaxy.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- Brand new 2K restoration from the original camera negative
- Original lossless 2.0 stereo audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
- Brand new audio commentary by critic Bryan Reesman
- Cosmetic Encounters: Directing My Stepmother is An Alien, a brand new interview with director Richard Benjamin
- Original trailer
- Image gallery
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Colin Murdoch
- First pressing only: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Amanda Reyes"
UK STREET DATE: DECEMBER 23.
The Last Matinee
Description: A trip to the movies takes a deadly turn in this stylish neo-giallo love letter to classic slashers that will send your popcorn flying and have you diving behind your seat!
A cold, wet day. A declining cinema. All you want is to get out of the rain and watch a good film. But who else is in there, hiding in the dark? When Ana takes over projection duties from her ailing father, she doesn't expect anything worse than a broken reel or a burned-out bulb. But there's a sadistic killer in the auditorium, and soon blood is running in the aisles as he starts picking off the audience members one by one. Can Ana and the few remaining survivors escape the murderous madman, or will they be victims of his matinee massacre?
Uruguayan director Maxi Contenti marks himself out as a talent to watch with a film that Rue Morgue calls "Visually stunning… indulgently violent!" Arrow Video is proud to present The Last Matinee. It's a killer time at the movies!
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
- Original uncompressed stereo and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio sound
- Optional English subtitles
- Audio Commentary with director Maxi Contenti
- VFX featurette exploring the special effects of the film
- Interview with director Maxi Contenti
- Killer Attractions: Maxi Contenti & Ricardo Islas in Conversation, discussion between the film's director and star Ricardo Islas, director of Frankenstein: Day of the Beast
- At the Premiere, featurette on the film's premiere
- Music video for 'Espada' by Phoro, directed by Maxi Contenti
- Puppet Pal V, Contenti's first feature film
- Six short films by director Maxi Contenti: The Plastic Kingdom (2011) Popping Eyes (2009) Hobby Metal (2006) Les Escaliers Fruitiers (2005) La Galleta aka The Cookie (2003) Miedo aka Fear (2001)
- Deleted and extended scenes
- Trailers and teasers
- Image galleries including behind-the-scenes and promo stills, concept artwork, storyboards and posters
- Fan artwork image gallery
- Double-sided fold-out poster
- Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Anton Bitel
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Marc Schoenbach
Rainer Werner Fassbinder Collection Volume 2
Description: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the enfant terrible of the New German Cinema, wrote, directed, produced and starred in over 40 films in his short but prolific life, before passing away of a drugs overdose in 1982 aged just 37. Rainer Werner Fassbinder vol. 2 brings together a collection of his key works from the mid-section of his career in high definition digital restorations prepared by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation.
Among Fassbinder's best-loved works, Fear Eats the Soul sees the director paying homage to the classic melodramas of Douglas Sirk in its poignant portrayal of a relationship between a widowed cleaning lady in her sixties and a Moroccan immigrant in his thirties that causes an outrage with her family, friends and neighbours. Fassbinder's long-gestating adaptation of Theodor Fontane's classic German novel Effi Briest, his most expensive production to date as well as one of his most ambitious, tells the tale of a seventeen-year-old girl who is married off by her parents to a wealthy Baron more than twice her age.
Fassbinder himself plays the protagonist of Fox and His Friends, a sweet working class soul whose relationship with wealthy industrialist Eugen, he discovers, is based almost wholly on his unexpected lottery win. Chinese Roulette is a tense psychodrama set in an isolated house during a weekend break in which infidelities are revealed and families break down. Fassbinder's international breakthrough film, The Marriage of Maria Braun charts the rise to prosperity of its tenacious and pragmatic central character across the post-war years as she holds out hope for the return of the young soldier she was married to for less than 24-hours before he was dispatched to the Russian front and later reported dead.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- High definition digital transfers of all films prepared by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation
- Original uncompressed PCM mono 1.0 sound for all films
- Optional English subtitles for all films
- Exclusive 140-page collectors booklet containing archive articles and new writing by Deborah Allison, Geoff Andrew, Margaret Deriaz and Travis Miles.
- Audio commentary by critic and lecturer Mark Freeman
- My Name is Not Ali, Viola Shafik's 2011 feature-length documentary on the life and death of El Hedi ben Salem, star of Fear Eats the Soul
- Interview with director of photography Jürgen Jürges
- Theatrical trailer
- Audio commentary by Ken Moulden
- Interview with actor Ulli Lommel
- Interview with director of photography Jürgen Jürges
- Theatrical trailer
- Audio commentary by Hamish Ford on Fox and His Friends
- Interview with actor Ulli Lommel on Chinese Roulette
- Original theatrical trailers for both films
- Life, Love & Celluloid, a 1998 feature-length documentary on Fassbinder, written and directed by his regular editor, Juliane Lorenz
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1977, a candid 30-minute interview with the director
- The Fassbinder Family, featurette detailing the actors who worked with Fassbinder time and again throughout his career
Giallo Essentials: Yellow Edition
Arrow Video continues its exploration of Italian cult cinema with this volume of Giallo Essentials, bringing together three more suspense-filled exemplars of the genre!
In Massimo Dallamano's What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974), hot-headed Inspector Silvestri (Claudio Cassinelli, The Suspicious Death of a Minor) and rookie Assistant District Attorney Vittoria Stori (Giovanna Ralli, Cold Eyes of Fear) investigate the apparent suicide of a teenage girl, leading them to a sordid prostitution ring whose abusers occupy the highest echelons of Italian society. Sergio Martino's Torso (1973) helped lay the groundwork for the American Slasher Movie: when a ruthless killer begins to target the female university students of Perugia, Jane (Suzy Kendall, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and her friends flee for the peace of the countryside, only to discover that the threat isn't far behind. Andrea Bianchi's Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975) delivers depravity in droves as ambitious photographer Magda (Edwige Fenech, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) and her on-off boyfriend, love rat Carlo (Nino Castelnuovo, The English Patient), team up to solve the spate of highly sexualized murders that are rocking a prestigious Milanese fashion house.
Featuring grisly murders, amateur sleuths and motorcycle-riding maniacs, these iconic gialli are restored in 2K from their original negatives and are presented alongside a raft of juicy extras!
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- 2K restorations from the original camera negatives of What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, Torso and Strip Nude for Your Killer
- Two versions of Torso, the original 94-minute Italian cut and 90-minute English cut
- Original lossless mono Italian and English soundtracks
- English subtitles for the Italian soundtracks
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtracks
- Rigid box packaging with newly designed artwork by Haunt Love in a windowed Giallo Essentials Collection slipcover
- Reversible sleeves for each film featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Adam Rabalais and Graham Humphreys
- Audio commentary by Troy Howarth, author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films
- Video essay by Kat Ellinger, author and editor-in-chief of Diabolique Magazine
- Eternal Melody, an interview with composer Stelvio Cipriani
- Dallamano's Touch, an interview with editor Antonio Siciliano
- Unused hardcore footage shot for the film by Massimo Dallamano
- Alternate English opening titles
- Italian theatrical trailer
- Image gallery
- Audio commentary by Kat Ellinger, author of All the Colours of Sergio Martino
- Video interview with co-writer/director Sergio Martino
- Video interview with actor Luc Merenda
- Video interview with co-writer Ernesto Gastaldi
- Video interview with filmmaker Federica Martino, daughter of Sergio Martino
- 2017 Abertoir International Horror Festival Q&A with Sergio Martino
- Video interview with Mikel J. Koven, author of La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film
- Option to view the film with the rare alternate US opening title sequence
- Italian and English theatrical trailers
- Audio commentary by HORRORPEDIA.com's Adrian J. Smith and David Flint
- Sex and Death with a Smile, a video essay by author and critic Kat Ellinger on giallo and sex comedy icon Edwige Fenech
- A Good Man for the Murders, an archival video interview with actor Nino Castelnuevo
- The Blonde Salamander, a video interview with actress Erna Schurer
- The Art of Helping, a video interview with assistant director Daniele Sangiorgi
- Jack of All Trades, a video interview with actor and production manager Tino Polenghi
- Two versions of the opening scene: tinted and untinted viewing options
- Original Italian and English theatrical trailers
- Image gallery
Shawscope Volume One
Description : After an undisputed reign at the peak of Hong Kong's film industry in the 1960s, Shaw Brothers (the studio founded by real-life brothers Run Run and Runme Shaw) found their dominance challenged by up-and-coming rivals in the early 1970s. They swiftly responded by producing hundreds of the most iconic action films ever made, revolutionizing the genre through the hard work of top-shelf talent on both sides of the camera as well as unbeatable widescreen production value, much of it shot at 'Movietown', their huge, privately-owned studio on the outskirts of Hong Kong.
This inaugural collection by Arrow Video presents twelve jewels from the Shaw crown, all released within the 1970s, kicking off in 1972 with Korean director Jeong Chang-hwa's King Boxer, the film that established kung fu cinema as an international box office powerhouse when it hit Stateside cinemas under the title Five Fingers of Death. From there we see Chang Cheh (arguably Shaw's most prolific director) helm the blood-soaked brutality of The Boxer from Shantung and two self-produced films in his 'Shaolin Cycle' series, Five Shaolin Masters and its prequel Shaolin Temple, before taking a detour into Ho Meng Hua's King Kong-inspired Mighty Peking Man, one of the most unmissably insane giant monster films ever made. Chang's action choreographer Lau Kar-leung then becomes a director in his own right, propelling his adoptive brother Gordon Liu to stardom in Challenge of the Masters and Executioners from Shaolin. Not to be outdone, Chang introduces some of Shaw's most famous faces to the screen, including Alexander Fu Sheng fighting on the streets of San Francisco in Chinatown Kid and, of course, the mighty Venom Mob in The Five Venoms and Crippled Avengers. Finally, Lau and Liu successfully meld high kicks with humor in two of their masterworks, Heroes of the East and Dirty Ho, both co-starring fan favorite Hsiao Hou.
From kickass kung fu killers to crazy kaiju knockoffs to culture clash comedies, this carefully curated and gorgeously presented selection of all-time Shaw Brothers classics merely represents the tip of the iceberg of the studio's rich output, making it both an ideal starting point for newcomers and a treat for hardcore fans alike.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentations of King Boxer, The Boxer from Shantung, Five Shaolin Masters, Shaolin Temple, Mighty Peking Man, Challenge of the Masters, Executioners from Shaolin, Chinatown Kid, The Five Venoms, Crippled Avengers, Heroes of the East and Dirty Ho
- Brand new 2K restorations by Arrow Films from the original camera negatives of King Boxer, The Boxer from Shantung, Challenge of the Masters, The Five Venoms, Crippled Avengers and Dirty Ho
- Brand new 2K master of the longer international cut of Chinatown Kid from original film elements
- Original lossless mono Mandarin, Cantonese (where applicable) and English audio
- Newly translated English subtitles for each film
- Hours of bonus features including brand new commentaries and critic appreciations on selected films, new and archive interviews with cast and crew, alternate credit sequences, trailer and image galleries for each film and more to be announced!
- 60-page book featuring new writing by David Desser, Simon Abrams and Terrence J. Brady, with cast and crew info for each film plus trivia and soundtrack info
- New artwork for each film by artists including Matthew Griffin, Chris Malbon, Jacob Phillips, Ilan Sheady, Tony Stella, Darren Wheeling and Jolyon Yates
UK STREET DATE: DECEMBER 6.