Description: Some see VHS as worthless plastic, but Adjust Your Tracking shows a vibrant world of collectors and movie fans who are keeping the format, and the movies, alive. Over 100 collectors, filmmakers, producers and video store owners express how VHS changed their lives. Travel back to the days of video rental stores with those who still buy, sell, rent and trade the format that will not die — VHS. Now more relevant than ever, VHSHITFEST is proud to present the 10th anniversary blu-ray debut of Adjust Your Tracking with countless hours of new and archival special features.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
TWO-DISC SET
New audio commentary with the filmmakers
Two archival commentaries
Hours of extended interviews
New retrospective interview with the directors
New updates with the collectors
New interview with James Rolfe (Cinemassacre)
Behind the scenes
Short films
Deleted scenes
English SDH subtitles
REGION-FREE
FROM PARTNER LABEL CANDIAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES:
Description: After a raucous visit from the wealthy Uncle Arthur (The Death of a Lumberjack's J. Léo Gagnon), working class Montreal couple Roland (O.K. ... Laliberté's René Caron) and Berthe (Mustang's Luce Guilbeault) are left feeling slighted by his meager gift of $500. Hungry for more, Berthe hatches a plan to descend on Uncle Arthur's remote country house and steal his small fortune with the help of her delinquent brother and cousin. When the robbery spirals out of control, allegiances shift, blood is spilled, and Roland's dimwitted lodger Ernest (J.A. Martin Photographer's Marcel Sabourin) takes center stage in a harrowing battle for Arthur's stolen cash.
Three decades before winning the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for The Barbarian Invasions, Denys Arcand started his fiction filmmaking career with an informal trilogy (Dirty Money, Réjeanne Padovani, and Gina) that remains the high-water mark for Canadian crime cinema. Loosely inspired by the B-movies of the '40s, while anticipating Blood Simple and other neo-noirs of the '80s, Dirty Money is an unforgettable blend of pastiche and provocation. Shot through with pitch black humor and grounded by a cavalcade of memorable performances, Arcand's fiction debut announced the arrival of a major Canadian filmmaking talent.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 4K RESTORATION FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE by Éléphant - mémoire du cinéma québécois with sound transferred and restored from the original 35mm magnetic final mix
Audio commentary featuring Paul Corupe of Canuxploitation.com and film historian Jason Pichonsky
Making Money (2023, 20 min.) – New interview with director Denys Arcand
Building an Industry (2023, 23 min.) – New interview with Cinémathèque québécoise director Robert Daudelin
New audio interviews with cast members Gabriel Arcand (19 min.) and Marcel Sabourin (17 min.)
Trailers for Arcand's Dirty Money (1972), Réjeanne Padovani (1973), and Gina (1975)
Restoration trailer for Dirty Money
Booklet featuring a new interview with screenwriter Jacques Benoit
Descirption: Director Jiří Barta's stop-motion animated masterpiece, based on The Pied Piper of Hamelin, is set in a dark and twisted medieval village of narrow streets and weird Gothic arches, half-CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and half-Jan van Eyck. The money-obsessed citizens, carved out of wood blocks and speaking in an onomatopoeic babble, are like George Grosz caricatures, literally spouting coins from their mouths instead of words. The rats are far more organic and sympathetic, made of real fur and whiskers, constantly tunneling and burrowing under the towering arches and cobblestone streets above. (In one of the film's many surreal moments, a rat emerges from a gargoyle's gaping maw.) Fans of fellow Czech animation legend Jan Švankmajer and the Brothers Quay will adore Barta's eerie, Expressionist gem, recently restored for its first-ever U.S. Blu-ray release through Krátký Film Praha, Deaf Crocodile and Comeback Company. "Barta's mastery of all aspects of filmmaking are evident: staging, production design, lighting, animation, editing, sound and music combine into dark worlds of repression and revolt with ironic conclusions." – Phil Tippett (MAD GOD).
Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW RESTORATION of THE PIED PIPER from Krátký Film Praha and Craig Rogers of Deaf Crocodile
NEW RESTORATION of rare short film: Jiří Barta's "The Vanished World Of Gloves" (Zaniklý svět rukavic), a marvelous and eccentric tour through cinema history told through animated gloves (1982, 16 min.)
"Chronicle Of The Pied Piper" (Kronika Krysaře), a behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Barta's masterpiece (1985, 13 min., dir. Miroslava Humplíková) – in Czech with English subtitles
New video interview with director Jiří Barta, moderated by Dennis Bartok of Deaf Crocodile.
Audio commentary by Czech film expert Irena Kovarova of Comeback Company and film critic & historian Peter Hames
Booklet essay by Czech film expert Irena Kovarova
New artwork by Brian Level
Blu-ray authoring by David Mackenzie of Fidelity In Motion
Description: "There's a helluva lot more action and crashes just in the trailer for MIDNITE SPARES than there is in the first two FAST AND FURIOUS movies put together!"- Quentin Tarantino
They didn't get angry… they got even. Set against a background of high-risk sprintcar driving, MIDNIGHT SPARES tells the action-packed story of a motley team of grease monkeys and speedway freaks who take on a massive car stealing and stripping racket in the west of Sydney.They quickly discover that they're not only battling a tough and highly organised auto crime cartel – but also the bent cops who protect them.Packed with jaw-dropping crashes and smashes, bitumen-burning chases and adrenaline-pumping speedway action, MIDNITE SPARES features scene-stealing performances from Ozploitation superstars Bruce Spence and David Argue, alongside Gia Carides (in her film debut) and spunky Amanda Dole (1983 Playmate of the Year).
Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW RESTORATION BY UMBRELLA ENTERTAINMENT
Never before released uncut alternate soundtrack
Audio commentary with producer Tom Burstall moderated by filmmaker Mark Hartley
NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD interview with producer Tom Burstall
Cannes promo reel
Stills and poster gallery
Original theatrical trailer
Deleted Scene
THE RELUCTANT AUTEUR – a visual essay on director Quentin Masters presented by author and film historian David Del Valle
Description: Steeped in controversy, unflinching, unforgettable. Dekanolog is proud to present Asia Argento's adaptation of J.T. Leroy's best selling novel The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, a searing exploration of trauma and survival in the underside of America's heartland. Headlining one of the most intriguing casts of the 2000s, which includes Peter Fonda, Ornella Muti, Jeremy Renner, Lydia Lunch, Ben Foster, and Winona Ryder, Argento stars as Sarah, a woman who rips her son (played at various points by Jimmy Bennett, Dylan, and Cole Sprouse) out of foster care and throws him into her transient life as a sex worker at truck stops. Leroy was later revealed to be a fabrication of author Laura Albert and her sibling-in-law Savannah Knoop, a story that broke the year after The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things was released. Argento's blistering second feature finds real pain in a historic hoax, traveling to dark places most directors fear to tread.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Audio Commentary with Director Asia Argento and Producer Chris Hanley
"Lot Lizards & Meth Labs" - Behind the scenes featurette
Description: Richie Bravo, once upon a time a successful Austrian pop star, chases after his faded fame in wintry Rimini, Italy. He funds his dissolute lifestyle and addiction to gambling with concerts for busloads of German-speaking tourists and sexual favors for his female fans. His world starts to collapse when his adult daughter suddenly breaks into his life and demands money from him that she feels he owes her. Meanwhile his elderly father, who suffers from dementia, goes round and round in circles in an Austrian nursing home as his condition steadily declines.
Description: Nora Aunor stars, in what is often deemed her finest performance, as Corazon de la Cruz, a Filipina nurse. Living near the US Clark Air Base on Luzon Island, she dreams of a better life in the United States… until the unspeakable happens.
Directed by Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara, Once A Moth is a long-lost, rarely-seen landmark of Filipino cinema, here miraculously salvaged and restored despite weather-worn elements and a missing first reel. A timeless, galvanising, anti-imperialist classic conceived as a protest film against the unending occupation of the Philippines by foreign powers, it gives their wings back to those attracted and irrevocably burned by the flame of the American Dream.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
2K RESTORATION BY ABS-CBN
Featurette on the restoration (9mins, 2023)
Before and After (1min, 2018)
Restoration Trailer
Booklet with Archival Photographs courtesy of the Mowelfund Library and Audiovisual Archives
New writing by scholars Jose B. Capino and John Labella
Interview with Digna Santiago
Interview with Marina Feleo Gonzalez by critic Aaron Hunt
Description: Let chaos take you to a place beyond the hills, where thunder echoes off the canyons and choirs of coyotes pierce the midnight sky.
Deep in the Mojave desert, under a scorching blood-red sun, four travelers have set up camp. They came to make art. They came to commune with nature. They came to laugh and sing and love. They came….to vanish!
One fateful night, the group is thrust into a feverish tornado of flayed flesh and mind-boggling monstrosities, the likes of which mere humans simply cannot fathom. In a stretch of land once covered by shallow, Paleozoic seas, what horrors might surface?
An owl's cry… The rattlesnake's hiss... A wail in the darkness… This is no mirage. This is really happening.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Essay Booklet
"Card Zero" Prequel Short Film
"File VL-624" Epilogue Short Film
Theatrical Teaser Trailer
Theatrical Trailer
4 Trailer Spots
4 Character Clip Spots
Audio Commentary Track by the Mojave County PD
Michelle May "All the Pretty Little Horses" In Memoriam Music Video
Description: Julie (Laure Calamy, Call My Agent!) is a single mother who can't catch a break. Raising two children in the Paris suburbs and commuting to the city daily, the train is her lifeline -- until it's suddenly severed by a transit strike. Without the train, Julie struggles to make it in time to her job at a five-star hotel, to the interview for a better job she's tied her hopes to, or back home to pick up her kids from childcare. Before long, Julie is at her breaking point and as her responsibilities pile up, she finds herself bending the rules to stay afloat in a cutthroat society. Anchored by Calamy's dynamic performance, Full Time is a race against the clock and a kinetic real world thriller about the obstacles working parents face every day.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
New Feature Audio Commentary by critic Samm Deighan
Description: At a secluded exclusive summer camp in the Mexican countryside, under the watchful eyes of their adult guardians, boys from a prestigious private school receive physical, moral and religious training to turn them into tomorrow's elite. The discovery of a hole in the fence sets in motion a chain of disturbing events as the boys devolve into a Lord of the Flies-like mob mentality that creates and spreads hysteria in this profoundly disturbing coming-of-age drama that unravels like a horror movie while drawing on actual events.
Description: When her oldest friend is plagued by horrific nightmares from the beyond, Monique is forced to travel to NYC. On the first night of the visit, Monique learns the dreams are contagious – and so is the HARBINGER, the plague mask-wearing demon who not only feeds on its victims' souls, but warps reality itself to remove any trace of their existence.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Audio commentary with Andy Mitton & Gabby Beans
Deleted and extended scenes
Exclusive essay with Author Paul G. Tremblay (CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD, A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS, SURVIVOR SONG)
Description: Fake it So Real follows a ragtag group of wrestlers in North Carolina over the course of a week leading up to a big show. The film explores what happens when the over-the-top theatrics of the wrestling ring collide with the realities of the working-class South. The wrestlers aren't paid for their passion, but they treat wrestling like any artist treats their work. Fake It So Real shares the triumphs and heartaches of an often under-appreciated American art form.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
A look at the NYC Rooftop Films NYC premiere
MWF Mixtape
Wrestling promos by indie film luminaries including: Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel and Listen Up Philip), Michael Tully (Ping Pong Summer and Septien), Lawrence Michael Levine (Wild Canaries), The Ross Brothers (Western and Tchoupitoulas), Michael Bilandic (Hellaware), Jarred Alterman (Convento), Mark Elijah Rosenberg, Tom Hall, Daniel Metz, Aaron Hillis, Adam Shartoff and Craig Butta.
Talking Documentary Podcast Interview with Robert Greene by Scott Lacy
Commentary track with Robert Greene and wrestling journalist David Shoemaker
Looking back conversation with Chris Solar and Robert Green
Booklet with an Interview with Robert Greene by Nadine Smith and essay by Sean Price Williams
Description: A scarcely seen and distributed regional SOV slasher saga, the Tortured Soul trilogy is the masterwork of legendary Minneapolis, Minnesota filmmaking madman Michael W. Johnson (Serial Killer Massacre, Blood Kiss, Tales From The Cannibal Side), whose features were notorious for pushing the boundaries of extreme violence and graphic sexual content far beyond that of his '90s SOV contemporaries. Featuring performances by horror legend Kyra Schon (Night of the Living Dead), scream queen Stephanie Beaton (Eyes of the Werewolf, The Evilmaker), & AVN nominated porn starlet Avy Scott, Saturn's Core is proud to present the first ever, director's approved release of the Tortured Soul trilogy; freshly packed with an abundance of new and archival special features. It's our most exhaustive and comprehensive set to date with over 9 hours of content spread across 2 fully-loaded Blu-Ray discs!
In Tortured Soul (1992), a psychotic cannibalistic serial killer named Stevie and his equally demented, dim-witted brother Ike are terrorizing Minnesota's Twin Cities; savagely eviscerating nude young women in their homes and devouring their remains. When an innocent cyclist is kidnapped and murdered, her vengeful boyfriend Mike Hamilton (Michael W. Johnson) becomes determined to track down the killers and exact a bloody vengeance of his own.
In Tortured Soul II: Ike & Mike (1994), the stocking-clad killer Ike returns and continues his murderous rampage! Goaded even further into insanity by the spectral voice of his deceased brother Stevie, Ike begins slaughtering the family and friends of his nemesis Mike; culminating in a barbaric creekside fight to the death!
In Tortured Soul 3: The Willing Flesh (2004), a buxom criminology student (Stephanie Beaton) attempts to interview Mike for her thesis on the Black River slayings. As the pair becomes romantically entangled, the murder of nubile females begins anew. Is Ike still alive? Is there a copycat killer on the loose? Or was it all just the hallucination of a delusional, psychotic mind?
Special Features and Technical Specs:
DISC ONE
Tortured Soul (1992 / 52 min.)
New & archival introductions by writer / director Michael W. Johnson
Audio commentary with writer / director Michael W. Johnson
"Capturing the Underbelly of America": New 2023 featurette with writer / director Michael W. Johnson
Tortured Soul 2: Ike & Mike (1994 / 79 min.)
Audio commentary with writer / director Michael W. Johnson
"God Forbid….Tortured Soul 2!": New 2023 featurette with writer / director Michael W. Johnson
Archival cast party & outtakes
Trailer
DISC TWO
Tortured Soul 3: The Willing Flesh (2004 / 73 min.)
Audio commentary with writer / director Michael W. Johnson
"Everything Old is New Again": New 2023 featurette with writer / director Michael W. Johnson
"Meat's Meat…and Man's Gotta Eat" -Michael W. Johnson's 1990 SOV cannibal themed short film (36 min.)
"The Smell of Death" -Michael W. Johnson's 1991 SOV zombie themed short film (45 min.)
Michael W. Johnson memorabilia tour
Nightmare Productions trailer vault
"Ike, Mike, Slashes, & Strikes": a 28-page booklet featuring rare archival material plus new writings by author Vincent Albarano (Aesthetic Deviations: A Critical View of American SOV Horror), film journalist Art Ettinger (Ultra Violent), & writer / filmmaker Johnny Dickie (Slaughter Tales)
REGION-FREE
FROM PARTNER LABEL AMERICAN GENRE FILM ARCHIVE (AGFA):
Description: The feature film debut from writer-director Lindsay Denniberg and co-writer Chris Shields, VIDEO DIARY OF A LOST GIRL is a hypercolored dreamland that combines a love for genre film history with a gorgeous handmade aesthetic. Louise (Pris McEver) works in a video store. But she's also a demon. A descendent of biblical demon-mother Lilith, Louise fulfills her predestined obligation to have sex with a man—and then kill him—every full moon. When she meets Charlie (Shields), a reincarnated partner from her past, Louise struggles to not do what she does best. Meticulously crafted with the use of repurposed art materials and green screen, VIDEO DIARY is a valentine to the VHS aesthetic and an exploration of personal themes via the guise of body horror. The movie was influenced by everything from LIQUID SKY to ROCKULA, from HEATHERS to DEAD RINGERS, resulting in an absurdist, experimental horror-comedy that was years ahead of its time.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Preserved from the original digital video master
Commentary with director Lindsay Denniberg, star Pris McEver, and film programmer Cristina Cacioppo
Commentary with Lindsay Denniberg, co-writer and star Chris Shields, and star Casey Puccini
Behind the scenes featurette
Outtakes
Trailers
Short films
Photo gallery
English SDH subtitles
REGION-FREE
FROM PARTNER LABEL AMERICAN GENRE FILM ARCHIVE (AGFA):
Description: Welcome to Wakaliwood, Uganda: home of "DA BEST OF DA BEST MOVIES!" and the vanguards of DIY commando cinema! Under the guidance of writer-director-producer Nabwana Isaac Godfrey Geoffrey (IGG) and with producer-star Alan Ssali Hofmanis, this crack crew of self-taught filmmakers and martial arts aficionados produce dozens of gonzo action films in the Kampala ghetto with budgets that rarely exceed $200 USD. Utilizing scrap parts to build computers, machine guns, and a full-sized Huey helicopter, these real-life superheroes inspire more heart, imagination, and soul than a thousand Hollywood blockbusters. AGFA is proud to bring two of the most reckless brain-blasts in the Wakaliwood canon to home video—WHO KILLED CAPTAIN ALEX (2010) and BAD BLACK (2016)! And in Uganda's finest storytelling tradition, the films are complemented by the acerbic wit of narrator/VJ (Video Joker) VJ Emmie, who sums up the Wakaliwood experience with a single sentiment: "It is a love story . . . LOVE OF ACTION!"
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Description: Older male lust for tender young flesh lovingly pervades these two early films by the Spanish director Eloy de la Iglesia who specialized in many genres of films including the legendary Quinqui films, but is least credited with directing the first two openly homosexual films in Spain: Hidden Pleasures & Confessions of a Congressman.
A highly controversial film upon its release in Spain as the first feature narrative with homosexuality openly discussed, Hidden Pleasures follows Eduardo, a wealthy banker who has a pastime for hiring young street hustlers to keep his bed warm, yet ignores requests from a friend to join the social gay movements. One day while cruising around town he spots Miguel, an extremely handsome teen who has a penchant for women and motorcycles. Eduardo offers Miguel a job and eventually gets closer and closer with him. Eduardo's building lust and the jealousy of others in their lives creates havoc for all.
Fighting for liberty, love, and your secret teenage lover are the themes of Confessions of a Congressman and our protagonist Roberto Orbea is a leader and follower of the ideals of his radical leftist opposition party, but he's hiding a secret from the party and his wife Carmen: he can't resist the cheap beautiful street teenagers that bad-boy Nes throws his way for various pleasures. Eventually the fascists find out about his proclivities and hire the blonde and angelic-looking Juanito to infiltrate Roberto's life. But after a while Juanito starts to find his place with Roberto, with politics, and even with Carmen. With the elections fast approaching all three members of this strange throuple will have to decide how much they're willing to lose to avoid revealing the truth.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
'Smiling at the Door: Eloy de la Iglesia's Hidden Pleasures' - A Video Essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
'Sex Post-Franco: The Queer Sensibility of Eloy de la Iglesia' - A Video Essay by Lee Gambin