Description: Fiend Disembowels Fourth Young Woman" reports the newspaper. The Ripper is stalking the city, and it's all anyone can talk about. Models all over town are ending up on the wrong side of a razor-sharp blade. Police are baffled by the surgical precision of the corpse mutilation, and their only lead is David, a local photographer who knew a couple of the murdered women. As the beautiful bodies pile up, David's world turns upside down, and the streets run red with blood.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Interview with director Jeff Hathcock
Interview with actor Larry Thomas
Interview with actress April Audia
Full-length commentary by Movie Melt! Grindhouse and Exploitation Podcast
Description: On a Friday evening, four people board the elevator in an office building. After it gets stuck, they soon realize that their cries for help go unheeded. Desperate, they decide to free themselves on their own and climb out through a hatch. When their lives are in great danger, a fight breaks out and the situation escalates completely. With every additional minute in this claustrophobic narrowness, the veil of superficiality lifts and reveals a glimpse into the human abyss that is much deeper than the elevator shaft beneath their feet.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
EXCLUSIVE 4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM COMPLETED IN GERMANY
4K BLU-RAY/BLU-RAY COMBO RELEASE
Interview with actor Hannes Jaenicke (approx 28 Min.)
Interview DP Jacques Steyn (approx 19 Min.)
Alternate version (with SD Inserts)
Isolated music track (DTS-HD Master Audio)
English opening & end credits (silent)
Opening & end credits textless (silent)
German theatrical trailer
Stills Gallery
English subtitles
REGION-FREE
FROM PARTNER LABEL AMERICAN GENRE FILM ARCHIVE (AGFA):
Description: FINAL FLESH is unlike anything you've ever seen—on Earth or other places. In the early 2000s, Vernon Chatman (co-founder of the PFFR art collective, co-creator of WONDER SHOWZEN and XAVIER: RENEGADE ANGEL, and producer of SOUTH PARK) wrote a four-part screenplay about a family who lives adjacent to the Ground Zero of a thermonuclear disaster. Instead of sharing the finished script with Hollywood, Chatman sent each part to four different companies that specialize in custom adult fetish videos. And FINAL FLESH was born. Like the custom song poem craze of the 1970s, this metaphysical brain-stabber is an outsider miracle of Biblical proportions. Filled with nudity, brilliant sight gags, rubber monster masks, inventive toilet humor, and no sex, this is a surrealist spectacle of the highest order.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Preserved from the original digital video master
Video introduction by On Cinema's Gregg Turkington
"Lay and Love" music video by Bonnie "Prince" Billy, directed by Vernon Chatman and John Lee
New alternate score by Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and Comets on Fire
Description: A present-day fable for the increasing disconnect we find in urban life, Hirokazu Kore-eda's Air Doll transports the Galatea myth to present day Tokyo. A life-size air doll (Bae Doona, The Host) lives in a shabby apartment in Tokyo. She cannot speak, nor can she move. But she is the only companion her middle-aged master has. He talks to her, puts her in a bath, and makes love with her every day after he returns from work. This routine life is disrupted when fantasy turns into reality. The air doll suddenly comes to life, filled with a soul. Like a newborn baby, she doesn't understand what is going on around her, but she sees a world waiting to be explored outside the apartment. Eventually venturing to the outside world, the air doll is fascinated by everything she sees, and though she meets many people in all walks of life, they can't seem to provide her an answer to what "being alive" means. When the air doll wanders into a video store, her world is forever changed. She meets Junichi (Arata Iura, After Life), the clerk, and immediately falls in love with him. The air doll begins working in the store and everyday, she and Junichi become closer. They go to the movies and explore the city together…like a couple. Everything is going perfectly for the air doll, until one day when her hand is accidentally cut and she begins to deflate in front of Junichi… A romantic fantasy that explores the complexities of love and loss, joy and pain, fantasy and reality, this bittersweet love story examines the intricacies and frailties of human existence. Adapted from the manga by Yoshiie Goda and featuring breathtaking cinematography from Mark Lee Ping-Bing (In The Mood For Love).
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Q&A with filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, and actors Bae Doona, Arata Iura, and Itsuji Itao at the Japanese Premiere
Footage from the world premiere at the 62nd Annual Cannes Film Festival
Description: An autobiographical comedy about a boy growing up in the collapsing USSR, his mail-order bride mother and their escape to Seattle in the 90s. The film is an immigrant's take on the American Dream, proving that life is often stranger than fiction.
Description: Desperate for cash, young Caroline (Ghetty Chasun) agrees to be injected with an experimental serum by an unscrupulous blood bank doctor. She soon finds herself transformed into a ravenous vampire, stalking the streets of New York City with an unquenchable lust for blood. After killing her doctor and a random string of unfortunate strangers, Caroline crosses paths with Lisa (Michelle Bauer), an innocent woman stranded in the city after a breakup with her former girlfriend. The two broke and star-crossed lovers navigate through the city's desolate clubs and hotels, fueled only by their sexual lust and symbiotic need for companionship. When Lisa finally learns of Caroline's murderous proclivities, she becomes a willing participant in her vampiric crimes, until an unfortunate encounter with an indignant pimp leads to tragedy.
Written and directed by SOV legend Donald Farmer (Demon Queen, Scream Dream), Red Lips marked the onscreen confluence of two iconic scream queens: legendary '80s siren Michelle Bauer (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers) and the awe-inspiring '90s enigma Ghetty Chasun (Gorotica). With an astonishing supporting cast of cult movie luminaries including Kitten Natividad (Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens), George Stover (Nightbeast), Danny Fendley (Deadly Run), Lorissa McComas (Stormswept), Christine Cavalier (Bloody Creek), and Mandy Leigh (Bloodscent), Red Lips quickly gained a reputation as a notorious, sex and gore filled, underground classic that is notable as one of the springboards for the SOV lesbian vampire movie explosion, which dominated video shelves and convention tables throughout the 1990s and beyond.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Audio commentary with writer / director Donald Farmer
"Seeing Red" -an interview with director Donald Farmer
Vintage interview with actress Ghetty Chasun from the 1994 Chiller Theatre Expo
"Distortion is a Woman: The Blood Transgressions of Red Lips" -a video essay by filmmaker / video artist Caroline Kopko
Description: When Marian is on the run, she goes to the only place she knows is safe: her childhood home. She is greeted by her estranged sister, Vivian, a stay-at-home housewife struggling to conceive and on the verge of a failing marriage. Though the two are identical twins, they live opposite lives. Marian's mysterious return disrupts Vivian's small-town routine, and the sisters must learn to reconnect and reconcile. When Marian's haunting past finally catches up to her, their separate worlds collide, catapulting both sisters into grave danger.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Audio Commentary with Erin Vassilopoulos, Alessandra Mesa, Ani Mesa, production designer Allison Pierce and cinematographer Mia Cio Henry
Short film: Valeria
Future of Film is Female post screening Q&A moderated by Caryn Coleman
Trailer
28-Page Booklet including interviews with director Erin Vassilopoulos and editor Jenn Ruf and essays by Erin Vassilopoulos and Lucy Fischer
English SDH subtitles
REGION-FREE
FROM PARTNER LABEL CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES:
Description: In the 1950s, a wave of lesbian pulp literature emerged, exploring a then taboo subject in vivid, sensationalistic detail. While these writers often took a critical, moralistic view of gay life, they provided a jumping-off point for women still discovering their suppressed sexual desires. But with society unwilling to grant them a place in public life, they channeled their passion for these novels into a vibrant underground culture full of distinctive codes, roles, and rituals. Mirroring the shadowy traditions of noir fiction, they also faced violent opposition from police and other protectors of the status quo, resulting in a dangerous, but ultimately liberating path to sexual awakening.
Mixing lively testimonials from unforgettable women at the forefront of mid-century lesbian bar culture with scripted segments that take the Hollywood melodrama in provocative (and sexually explicit) new directions, Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives is an eye-opening cultural history – and one of the most memorable Canadian films of the '90s. With a soundtrack of late '50s and early '60s hits by The Fleetwoods, Connie Francis, Jimmie Rodgers, and The Shirelles, this is a stirring, funny, and ultimately moving portrait of rebellion flourishing in the face of repression.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 2K RESTORATION FROM A 16MM INTERPOSITIVE
Audio commentary featuring directors Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman moderated by professor Jean Bruce
Audio commentary featuring six members of the crew
The Ann Bannon Chronicles (2022, 18 min.) – A new interview with ""The Queen of Lesbian Pulp"" Ann Bannon
Cinema Politica Q&A with the cast and crew (2015, 23 min.)
EPK interview with the directors (1992, 7 min.)
Afterword (2022, 19 min.)
Booklet featuring reflections from subject Amanda White, along with essays by Jean Bruce, Matthew Hays, B. Ruby Rich, and Rebecca Sullivan
Description: What is Time? What is Memory? Are we in the past or present -- or some strange, unknowable hybrid of the two haunted by arsonists, bloodsuckers, serial killers and phantom images of our own selves? The films of Iranian director Shahram Mokri straddle the line between genre and arthouse cinema, whether Moebius strip-like meditations on classic 1970s American slasher films (FISH & CAT), political thrillers (CARELESS CRIME), 1980s New Wave sci-fi/vampire movies (INVASION), or offbeat Jarmusch-meets-Tarantino indie mysteries (ASHKAN, THE HOLY RING & OTHER STORIES). It's small wonder that Abbas Kiarostami in his last film, 24 FRAMES, left a cryptic message onscreen in Persian that simply read: "Shahram Mokri."
Description: A husband and wife open a video store in a new town, and come to find out that the locals only rent horror films and the "occasional triple X'er", and make their own snuff videos.
Description: The first collaboration between Jess Franco and Brigitte Lahaie! Lorna and Tom are a couple of low life hustlers who make a living in the skin trade. Setting their sights on the naive Jenny, they coax the beautiful virgin home from a nightclub for an evening of debauchery, only to drug and sell her into a white slave network. However, they quickly discover that her father is a millionaire and, hoping for an even bigger payday, decide to demand a hefty ransom. But now they're left with a problem, as they must kidnap Jenny back from the pimps who now 'own' her... From the perverse mind of Jess Franco comes Je Brule de Partout, a brutal tale of sexual torment and revenge, set against the picturesque backdrop of Lisbon. Starring the queen of Eurocult and French eroticism, Brigitte Lahaie (Faceless), and one of Franco's most captivating muses, Susan Hemingway, in the role of Jenny, Pulse Video proudly presents the worldwide Blu-ray debut of this borderline surreal and completely sadistic drama, newly scanned in 2K and carefully restored to repair severe technical errors in the negative which have plagued all earlier presentations.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
EXCLUSIVE 2K RESTORATION COMPLETED IN FRANCE
Video interview with Jess Franco biographer Stephen Thrower
Video interview with lead actress Brigitte Lahaie discussing her work with Franco
Description: Aging starlets fight over a gross piece of flesh that inspires sexual devotion, a woman finds inspiration in the animation of dead animals, a certain Walerian Borowczyk makes his way through a cruel life, and a transgressive director keeps searching for films that will make her spectators' hearts turn in their thoracic cages (like a steak on a grill!). From the visionary director of The Wild Boys and After Blue (Dirty Paradise) comes a collection of 3+ hours of short works that will ensnare your senses and leave you desperate for more of the wonderful and weird world of Bertrand Mandico.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Trailers for Altered Innocence and Mondo Macabro Titles
Description: Poly Styrene was the first woman of colour in the UK to front a successful rock band, and a key influence on the riot grrrl and Afropunk movements. But Poly didn't just leave behind a cultural footprint. She was survived by a daughter, Celeste, who became the steward of her mother's legacy and demons, which plagued Poly's life and scarred the pair's relationship. With narration by Ruth Negga, this film follows Celeste's journey to better understand Poly as an icon and mother.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Q&A from SXSW 2021
Selected Scene Commentary with Directors Paul Sng and Celeste Bell
Booklet featuring an essay by Dana Reinoos and intros by directors Paul Sng and Celeste Bell