Arrow Video Announces April Releases
HomeArrow Video Announces April Releases
Posted January 27, 2023 08:49 PM by Webmaster
Arrow Video has announced its April batch of 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray releases. They are: The Assassination Bureau, The Street Fighter Trilogy, Heart of Dragon, Lovers Lane, and Naked Lunch,
The Assassination Bureau
Description: Anarchy reigns as Diana Rigg and Oliver Reed go head to head in a blackly comic caper that plays out against the colourful backdrop of Europe on the cusp of World War One.
London, 1908. When feisty journalist and women's rights campaigner Sonia Winter (Diana Rigg) uncovers the headquarters of the Assassination Bureau Limited, a clandestine enterprise that has existed for decades by bumping off the rich and powerful - but only if there's a good moral reason for it - she sets on a path of putting an end to its activities. Bankrolled by her press baron boss, Lord Bostwick (Telly Savalas), she commissions the organisation to undertake the assassination of its very own chairman, Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed). Being the gentleman that he is, Dragomiloff responds to the assignment with glee, challenging his fellow board members to complete the contract. Only they'll have to catch him first...
The Assassination Bureau is based on an unfinished novel by Jack London published posthumously in 1963. Shot in glorious Technicolor by Geoffrey Unsworth (2001: A Space Odyssey), this penultimate work from the esteemed directing-producing team of Basil Dearden and Michael Relph (Sapphire, Victim) is a rip-roaring slice of Edwardian-set action-adventure fashioned with the same Swinging-Sixties blend of irony, stylishness and humour as The Avengers and the James Bond films.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Heart of Dragon
Description: If you ever get in this much trouble, you'll wish you had a brother like Jackie Chan.
Lifelong friends since they met as boys at Peking Opera school, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung conquered the Hong Kong film industry side-by-side in the 1970s and 1980s. One of their greatest collaborations sees the two 'brothers' playing actual brothers for a change: 1985's Heart of Dragon, a film that combines heart-rending drama with pulse-pounding action!
Tat (Chan) is a hotshot cop with more stresses than he can bear: if he's not on the verge of getting beaten up on his day job, he's looking out for his mentally handicapped brother Dodo (Hung), who needs constant supervision in case his naïve, kind nature gets taken advantage of. Tat wants nothing more than to escape his obligations and see the world; but when Dodo accidentally winds up in the line of fire, Tat must run into danger and make the ultimate sacrifice to save his brother.
More serious and emotionally driven than many of their prior films, Hung and Chan made sure not to skimp on jaw-dropping stunts and high-velocity violence while showing a broader depth to their talents than audiences had seen before. The result is one of the jewels of 80's Hong Kong action cinema, now restored with additional fight scenes filmed especially for the Japanese market!
Special Features and Technical Specs:
The Street Fighter Trilogy
Description: Sonny Chiba stars as Takuma "Terry" Tsurugi, the animalistic antihero driven by sex, money and brawling in the infamous series that first introduced the name of the martial arts legend to a global audience.
The first film to receive an X rating in the U.S. purely on account of its violence, The Street Fighter sees Tsurugi embroiled in a game of double and triple crosses involving both local and foreign mafia gangs when he is hired to kidnap Sarai (Yutaka Nakajima, The Executioner 1 & 2), the beautiful heiress daughter of a recently deceased oil tycoon. In Return of the Street Fighter, Tsurugi uncovers an extortion racket behind the construction of a new karate dojo and a shadowy cabal whose reach stretches across the whole of Asia. In The Street Fighter's Last Revenge, Chiba is joined by Toei star Reiko Ike (Girl Boss Guerrilla, Sex and Fury) as Tsurugi goes hand-to-hand against an ambitious public prosecutor (Koji Wada) with his own fists of fury over evidence of a corporate coverup involving a chemical spillage.
The Street Fighter films made Chiba a star, so beloved by Quentin Tarantino he had the young lovers of True Romance meet-cute at a Sonny Chiba triple feature and would later cast Chiba himself in Kill Bill. Making its UK Blu-ray debut, Arrow Video is proud to present The Street Fighter Trilogy in all its eye-popping, skull-crushing, throat-ripping glory!
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Naked Lunch
Description: In a career dedicated to seeing the unseeable and filming the unfilmable, perhaps only David Cronenberg could really do justice to William S. Burroughs' controversial novel, Naked Lunch. Weaving together elements of Burroughs' own remarkable biography with the content of the book, Cronenberg's film steps inside the body and mind of an author to depict the dangerous act of imagination itself from the inside out.
Former junkie William Lee (Peter Weller, Robocop) makes ends meet as an exterminator. But when he and his wife Joan (Judy Davis, Barton Fink) discover the hallucinatory properties of the powder he uses to kill bugs, they become hooked, and their world is changed forever. Insects speak, typewriters mutate and talk, interdimensional beings reveal themselves, identities fracture and blur; nothing and no one is quite what it seems. When Bill, under the influence of drugs, or the bugs that have begun talking to him, shoots his wife, he flees to Interzone, at once a place and a state of mind, where things only get stranger.
Winner of Best Picture, Best Direction, and Best Screenplay at the 1992 Genie Awards and featuring an astonishing score by Howard Shore (Videodrome), Naked Lunch is provocative, transgressive, and surreal - a feast for the senses, where nothing is true and everything is permitted.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Naked Lunch 4K Blu-ray
In a career dedicated to seeing the unseeable and filming the unfilmable, perhaps only David Cronenberg could really do justice to William S. Burroughs' controversial novel, Naked Lunch. Weaving together elements of Burroughs' own remarkable biography with the content of the book, Cronenberg's film steps inside the body and mind of an author to depict the dangerous act of imagination itself from the inside out.
Former junkie William Lee (Peter Weller, Robocop) makes ends meet as an exterminator. But when he and his wife Joan (Judy Davis, Barton Fink) discover the hallucinatory properties of the powder he uses to kill bugs, they become hooked, and their world is changed forever. Insects speak, typewriters mutate and talk, interdimensional beings reveal themselves, identities fracture and blur; nothing and no one is quite what it seems. When Bill, under the influence of drugs, or the bugs that have begun talking to him, shoots his wife, he flees to Interzone, at once a place and a state of mind, where things only get stranger.
Winner of Best Picture, Best Direction, and Best Screenplay at the 1992 Genie Awards and featuring an astonishing score by Howard Shore (Videodrome), Naked Lunch is provocative, transgressive, and surreal - a feast for the senses, where nothing is true and everything is permitted.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Lovers Lane
Passions are aroused and old wounds reopened in this sassy post-Scream teen slasher based on the urban legend of "The Hook". Description: A steamy secret tryst that was brutally cut short on Valentine's Day an unlucky thirteen years ago comes back to haunt the teens who linger around the lovers lane where the double slaying took place. The County Sheriff Tom Anderson (Matt Riedy) has just about come to terms with the fact that it was his wife who died in another man's car on that fateful night. His daughter Mandy (Erin J. Dean), who as a four-year-old saw her mother's corpse carried away from the scene, has a different take on things. It doesn't help that her classmate Michael (Riley Smith) lost his father to the same hook-handed homicidal maniac in that night's incident. To cap it all off, as another Valentine's Day comes round, reports come through that the man arrested as "The Hook" has just bust out of his asylum.
Prepare yourself for the ultimate hook up in a scream-a-minute rollercoaster that marked the film debut of Anna Faris (the Scary Movie series; Lost in Translation).
Special Features and Technical Specs:
The Assassination Bureau
Description: Anarchy reigns as Diana Rigg and Oliver Reed go head to head in a blackly comic caper that plays out against the colourful backdrop of Europe on the cusp of World War One.
London, 1908. When feisty journalist and women's rights campaigner Sonia Winter (Diana Rigg) uncovers the headquarters of the Assassination Bureau Limited, a clandestine enterprise that has existed for decades by bumping off the rich and powerful - but only if there's a good moral reason for it - she sets on a path of putting an end to its activities. Bankrolled by her press baron boss, Lord Bostwick (Telly Savalas), she commissions the organisation to undertake the assassination of its very own chairman, Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed). Being the gentleman that he is, Dragomiloff responds to the assignment with glee, challenging his fellow board members to complete the contract. Only they'll have to catch him first...
The Assassination Bureau is based on an unfinished novel by Jack London published posthumously in 1963. Shot in glorious Technicolor by Geoffrey Unsworth (2001: A Space Odyssey), this penultimate work from the esteemed directing-producing team of Basil Dearden and Michael Relph (Sapphire, Victim) is a rip-roaring slice of Edwardian-set action-adventure fashioned with the same Swinging-Sixties blend of irony, stylishness and humour as The Avengers and the James Bond films.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- High Definition presentation
- Original lossless English mono audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
- Brand new audio commentary with authors Sean Hogan and Kim Newman
- Right Film, Wrong Time, a 30-minute appreciation by critic, broadcaster and cultural historian Matthew Sweet
- Original trailer
- Image gallery
- Reversible sleeve featuring two original artwork choices
Heart of Dragon
Description: If you ever get in this much trouble, you'll wish you had a brother like Jackie Chan.
Lifelong friends since they met as boys at Peking Opera school, Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung conquered the Hong Kong film industry side-by-side in the 1970s and 1980s. One of their greatest collaborations sees the two 'brothers' playing actual brothers for a change: 1985's Heart of Dragon, a film that combines heart-rending drama with pulse-pounding action!
Tat (Chan) is a hotshot cop with more stresses than he can bear: if he's not on the verge of getting beaten up on his day job, he's looking out for his mentally handicapped brother Dodo (Hung), who needs constant supervision in case his naïve, kind nature gets taken advantage of. Tat wants nothing more than to escape his obligations and see the world; but when Dodo accidentally winds up in the line of fire, Tat must run into danger and make the ultimate sacrifice to save his brother.
More serious and emotionally driven than many of their prior films, Hung and Chan made sure not to skimp on jaw-dropping stunts and high-velocity violence while showing a broader depth to their talents than audiences had seen before. The result is one of the jewels of 80's Hong Kong action cinema, now restored with additional fight scenes filmed especially for the Japanese market!
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- 2K RESTORATION OF THE FILM from the original negative by Fortune Star
- High Definition presentations of the 91-minute Hong Kong Theatrical Cut and the 99-minute Extended Japanese Cut via seamless branching
- Original lossless Cantonese and English mono audio on both cuts, plus Mandarin on the Theatrical Cut and Cantonese with alternate score on the Extended Cut
- Optional English subtitles for both cuts
- Brand new commentary by Frank Djeng & FJ DeSanto on the Extended Cut
- The Making of The First Mission and The First Mission: Pre-Release Event, two extended featurettes made to promote the Japanese release by Shochiku
- Archive interview with star Jackie Chan
- Archive interview with star Rocky Lai
- Two archive interviews with director/star Sammo Hung
- Archive interview with cinematographer Arthur Wong
- Alternate English credits as The First Mission
- Trailer gallery, including the 'music video' trailer by Su Rui
- Image gallery
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Gilbey
- First pressing only: Illustrated collectors' booklet featuring new writing by Dylan Cheung and David West
The Street Fighter Trilogy
Description: Sonny Chiba stars as Takuma "Terry" Tsurugi, the animalistic antihero driven by sex, money and brawling in the infamous series that first introduced the name of the martial arts legend to a global audience.
The first film to receive an X rating in the U.S. purely on account of its violence, The Street Fighter sees Tsurugi embroiled in a game of double and triple crosses involving both local and foreign mafia gangs when he is hired to kidnap Sarai (Yutaka Nakajima, The Executioner 1 & 2), the beautiful heiress daughter of a recently deceased oil tycoon. In Return of the Street Fighter, Tsurugi uncovers an extortion racket behind the construction of a new karate dojo and a shadowy cabal whose reach stretches across the whole of Asia. In The Street Fighter's Last Revenge, Chiba is joined by Toei star Reiko Ike (Girl Boss Guerrilla, Sex and Fury) as Tsurugi goes hand-to-hand against an ambitious public prosecutor (Koji Wada) with his own fists of fury over evidence of a corporate coverup involving a chemical spillage.
The Street Fighter films made Chiba a star, so beloved by Quentin Tarantino he had the young lovers of True Romance meet-cute at a Sonny Chiba triple feature and would later cast Chiba himself in Kill Bill. Making its UK Blu-ray debut, Arrow Video is proud to present The Street Fighter Trilogy in all its eye-popping, skull-crushing, throat-ripping glory!
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- BRAND NEW 2K RESTORATIONS The Street Fighter and Return of the Street Fighter from 2K scans of the original camera negatives by Arrow Films
- Newly remastered High Definition presentation of The Street Fighter's Last Revenge by Arrow Films
- Original lossless mono Japanese and English versions for all three films
- Optional English subtitles for the Japanese soundtracks and optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtracks
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
- Brand new 2K restorations of the original Japanese and American versions of the film from the original camera negatives
- Brand new audio commentary by Asian film specialists Andrew Heskins and James Mudge of easternkicks.com
- Street Fighting Man, a 30-minute interview with Sonny Chiba
- Cutting Moments, interview with director Jack Sholder discussing his role in creating the legend of Sonny Chiba
- Original Japanese and U.S. theatrical trailers
- Image gallery
- Brand new 2K restorations of the original Japanese and American versions of the film from the original camera negatives
- Brand new audio commentary by Jonathan Clements, author of A Brief History of the Martial Arts
- Original Japanese theatrical trailer and U.S. teaser and theatrical trailers
- Image gallery
- High Definition presentation of the original Japanese and American versions of the film
- Original Japanese and U.S. theatrical trailers
- Image gallery
- First pressing only: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the films by Mark Schilling and Chris Poggiali
Naked Lunch
Description: In a career dedicated to seeing the unseeable and filming the unfilmable, perhaps only David Cronenberg could really do justice to William S. Burroughs' controversial novel, Naked Lunch. Weaving together elements of Burroughs' own remarkable biography with the content of the book, Cronenberg's film steps inside the body and mind of an author to depict the dangerous act of imagination itself from the inside out.
Former junkie William Lee (Peter Weller, Robocop) makes ends meet as an exterminator. But when he and his wife Joan (Judy Davis, Barton Fink) discover the hallucinatory properties of the powder he uses to kill bugs, they become hooked, and their world is changed forever. Insects speak, typewriters mutate and talk, interdimensional beings reveal themselves, identities fracture and blur; nothing and no one is quite what it seems. When Bill, under the influence of drugs, or the bugs that have begun talking to him, shoots his wife, he flees to Interzone, at once a place and a state of mind, where things only get stranger.
Winner of Best Picture, Best Direction, and Best Screenplay at the 1992 Genie Awards and featuring an astonishing score by Howard Shore (Videodrome), Naked Lunch is provocative, transgressive, and surreal - a feast for the senses, where nothing is true and everything is permitted.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW 4K RESTORATION from the original camera negative overseen by director of photography Peter Suschitzky and approved by director David Cronenberg
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx
- Double-sided poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx
- Six postcard-sized reproduction lobby cards
- 80-page perfect bound collector's book featuring new writing by critics Vanessa Morgan and Jack Sargeant, plus select archival material including David Cronenberg's introduction to Everything is Permitted: The Making of Naked Lunch, and a chapter from Cronenberg on Cronenberg
- New 4K restoration from the original camera negative
- High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray™ presentation
- Original lossless 2.0 stereo and 5.1 audio options
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Audio commentary by director David Cronenberg
- New audio commentary by film historian Jack Sargeant and screenwriter Graham Duff
- Naked Attraction, a new interview with legendary producer Jeremy Thomas
- Exterminate All Rational Thought, a new interview with star Peter Weller
- Peter Suschitzky on Naked Lunch, a new interview with the celebrated director of photography
- Naked Flesh, a new interview with special effects artist Chris Walas
- A Ballad for Burroughs, a new interview with composer Howard Shore
- Tony Rayns on William S. Burroughs, a new interview with the renowned writer and critic
- David Huckvale on Naked Lunch, a new interview taking a closer look at one of Shore's most unusual film scores
- A Ticket to Interzone, new visual essay by critic David Cairns
- Naked Making Lunch, archival making of documentary directed by Chris Rodley presented in a new scan from the director's personal 16mm print and viewable with a new audio interview with Rodley discussing his connection to Cronenberg and the process of making Naked Making Lunch
- Concept Art Gallery, a collection of drawings and maquettes for the creatures of Naked Lunch by Stephan Dupuis
- Theatrical Trailer
- Image Galleries, including never before seen stills from the set courtesy of Chris Rodley
Naked Lunch 4K Blu-ray
In a career dedicated to seeing the unseeable and filming the unfilmable, perhaps only David Cronenberg could really do justice to William S. Burroughs' controversial novel, Naked Lunch. Weaving together elements of Burroughs' own remarkable biography with the content of the book, Cronenberg's film steps inside the body and mind of an author to depict the dangerous act of imagination itself from the inside out.
Former junkie William Lee (Peter Weller, Robocop) makes ends meet as an exterminator. But when he and his wife Joan (Judy Davis, Barton Fink) discover the hallucinatory properties of the powder he uses to kill bugs, they become hooked, and their world is changed forever. Insects speak, typewriters mutate and talk, interdimensional beings reveal themselves, identities fracture and blur; nothing and no one is quite what it seems. When Bill, under the influence of drugs, or the bugs that have begun talking to him, shoots his wife, he flees to Interzone, at once a place and a state of mind, where things only get stranger.
Winner of Best Picture, Best Direction, and Best Screenplay at the 1992 Genie Awards and featuring an astonishing score by Howard Shore (Videodrome), Naked Lunch is provocative, transgressive, and surreal - a feast for the senses, where nothing is true and everything is permitted.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW 4K RESTORATION from the original camera negative overseen by director of photography Peter Suschitzky and approved by director David Cronenberg
- DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
- Original lossless 2.0 stereo and 5.1 audio options
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Audio commentary by director David Cronenberg
- New audio commentary by film historian Jack Sargeant and screenwriter Graham Duff
- Naked Attraction, a new interview with legendary producer Jeremy Thomas
- Exterminate All Rational Thought, a new interview with star Peter Weller
- Peter Suschitzky on Naked Lunch, a new interview with the celebrated director of photography
- Naked Flesh, a new interview with special effects artist Chris Walas
- A Ballad for Burroughs, a new interview with composer Howard Shore
- Tony Rayns on William S. Burroughs, a new interview with the renowned writer and critic
- David Huckvale on Naked Lunch, a new interview taking a closer look at one of Shore's most unusual film scores
- A Ticket to Interzone, new visual essay by critic David Cairns
- Naked Making Lunch, archival making of documentary directed by Chris Rodley presented in a new scan from the director's personal 16mm print and viewable with a new audio interview with Rodley discussing his connection to Cronenberg and the process of making Naked Making Lunch
- Concept Art Gallery, a collection of drawings and maquettes for the creatures of Naked Lunch by Stephan Dupuis
- Theatrical Trailer
- Image Galleries, including never before seen stills from the set courtesy of Chris Rodley
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx
- Double-sided poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx
- Six postcard-sized reproduction lobby cards
- 80-page perfect bound collector's book featuring new writing by critics Vanessa Morgan and Jack Sargeant, plus select archival material including David Cronenberg's introduction to Everything is Permitted: The Making of Naked Lunch, and a chapter from Cronenberg on Cronenberg
Lovers Lane
Passions are aroused and old wounds reopened in this sassy post-Scream teen slasher based on the urban legend of "The Hook". Description: A steamy secret tryst that was brutally cut short on Valentine's Day an unlucky thirteen years ago comes back to haunt the teens who linger around the lovers lane where the double slaying took place. The County Sheriff Tom Anderson (Matt Riedy) has just about come to terms with the fact that it was his wife who died in another man's car on that fateful night. His daughter Mandy (Erin J. Dean), who as a four-year-old saw her mother's corpse carried away from the scene, has a different take on things. It doesn't help that her classmate Michael (Riley Smith) lost his father to the same hook-handed homicidal maniac in that night's incident. To cap it all off, as another Valentine's Day comes round, reports come through that the man arrested as "The Hook" has just bust out of his asylum.
Prepare yourself for the ultimate hook up in a scream-a-minute rollercoaster that marked the film debut of Anna Faris (the Scary Movie series; Lost in Translation).
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW 2K RESTORATION from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative
- Two versions of the film: the widescreen 1.85:1 version and the full-frame 1.33:1 version
- Original lossless stereo audio on both versions
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
- Brand new audio commentary with writer-producers Geof Miller and Rory Veal
- Screaming Teens: The Legacy of Lovers Lane featurette with Geof Miller and Rory Veal and actors Matt Riedy and Carter Roy
- Original trailers
- Image gallery
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ilan Sheady
- First pressing only: Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Lindsay Hallam and double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ilan Sheady
