Vinegar Syndrome Reveals New Partner Label Releases
Posted September 2, 2024 10:47 PM by Webmaster
Vinegar Syndrome has revealed nineteen new partner label releases. Amongst them are Wolves, Pigs and Men (1964), Violent Panic: The Big Crash (1976), Disco Boy (2023), Hotel (2004), and When Tomorrow Dies (1965).
FROM PARTNER LABEL CANADIAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES:
Frustrated housewife Gwen James (Rabid's Patricia Gage) feels like little more than a servant to her accountant husband (Strange Brew's Douglas Campbell) and two daughters. Devoting all her time to their needs – and the demands of her cantankerous father – she feels her sense of self-worth slipping. As Gwen wrestles with increasingly despairing thoughts, she escapes into a world of glamorous fantasy and eventually finds a new sense of purpose by enrolling in a university course, where she strikes up a special bond with her young professor (American Nightmare's Neil Dainard). But as Gwen reverts to a more youthful, carefree state, her family descends into chaos.
Arriving on the heels of The Bitter Ash and Sweet Substitute, When Tomorrow Dies concluded Larry's Kent Vancouver Trilogy with a vivid new sense of style and daring. Working with a larger budget and a more seasoned crew, the director fused elements of film noir and the Hollywood melodrama to deliver a lurid – yet compassionate – investigation of the housewife psyche. Applying Kent's preoccupation with youthful disaffection to an older generation, When Tomorrow Dies brought new depth to his approach and cemented his reputation as a maverick of Canadian independent filmmaking.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 4K RESTORATION from the original 16mm A/B negatives by Canadian International Pictures with sound transferred from the original 16mm magnetic final mix
New audio commentary featuring film historian and author Samm Deighan
Archival audio commentary featuring film professor Peter Rist
New introduction to When Tomorrow Dies by Larry Kent
Tomorrow Lives (2024, 9 min.) – New interview with Kent
Independent Evolution (2024, 18 min.) – New interview with Douglas
New audio interview with Heather Whitehead, daughter of star Patricia Gage (2024, 9 min.)
Talking to Larry Kent (2005, 19 min.) – Archival conversation featuring Kent and Rist
Kent on Kent (1965-1967, 20 min.) – Archival audio interviews with Kent
Mothers and Daughters (1993, 85 min.) – Little-seen Kent feature exploring some of the same themes as When Tomorrow Dies
New introduction to Mothers and Daughters by Douglas
Booklet featuring a new essay by film critic and professor Tom McSorley
Dick Miller was the last of the great American character actors. Whether he was sharing the screen with Nicholson, DeNiro, Schwarzenegger or The Ramones, Dick has been stealing scenes since his screen debut in 1955. Every moviegoer knows his face, but few know his name and even fewer know his story - an aspiring writer turned accidental actor. Dekanalog is proud to present the 10th Anniversary Special Edition Blu-ray available for the first time in the U.S., loaded with special features and a special bonus film — "Starhops" (1978) — directed by Barbara Peters and featuring Dick Miller in a (what else?) scene stealing supporting role.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
EXCLUSIVE NEW 2K TRANSFER from the original uncut camera negative available for the first time on Blu-ray
Audio Commentary with Director Elijah Drenner, Producer Lainie Miller and cinematographer Elle Schneider
A selection of Dick's home movies
Theatrical Trailer
Outtakes
Los Angeles Premiere Footage
Special Bonus Film: "Starhops" (1978) Directed by Barbara Peters
Booklet essay by Caelum Vatnsdal, author of "You Don't Know Me, But You Love Me: The Lives of Dick Miller"
Introductions from Elijah Drenner and Lainie Miller
Newly restored in 4k and available for the first time in North America, Austrian auteur Jessica Hausner radically upends genre tropes and preempts the resurgence of folk horror with her second and most formally audacious feature, HOTEL. The deceptively simple premise of a young woman who takes on a job as a night porter at a remote Austrian hotel and encounters unexplained phenomena amounts to a grand treatise on the inhibiting potential of imagination, the fine line between banality and terror and the looming specter of fate.
Allusions to local myth, mysterious disappearances and haunted forests eschew generic conclusions and serve to illustrate and complicate the inner life of a young woman reckoning with the essential ambiguities of defining one's life. "An intelligent fable about fear and desire," (Time Out) Hausner's sophomore feature is a haunting metaphysical horror film unlike any other.
Feeling confined by her well-mannered suburban environment, the pubescent Rita gradually attempts to test and break the expectations made of her. As she skips class to pursue her infatuation for a local bus driver as well as her own desires, her disapproving parents and classmates begin to question the motivation behind her provocations. However, Rita's adolescent rebellions occlude a more sinister intention.
"A deliciously observed, ironic take on middle-class Austrian life," (Variety) Jessica Hausner's debut feature establishes her thematic interest in societal assimilation with a singular portrait of teenage recalcitrance. Newly restored in 4k and available for the first time in North America, LOVELY RITA remains just as shocking as it was during its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001.
This thrilling two-disc set features a double dose of hyperbolic heist movie mayhem directed by the great Kinji Fukasaku (Battles Without Honor and Humanity, Battle Royale), restored to HD, and, for the first time ever, available on Blu Ray in North America.
Fukasaku's 1964 breakthrough Wolves, Pigs and Men finds three brothers pitted against each other as rivals in the Yakuza underworld. Jiro, alongside his girlfriend Mizuhara, devises a scheme to rob his younger brother Sabu's gang. However, when the eldest brother Kuroki learns of this, he seeks to conspire against them to take it all for himself in a treacherous nightmare of unbridled violence.
While lesser known, 1976's Violent Panic: The Big Crash wreaks havoc across the streets of Japan with stylishly nihilistic aplomb. After expert bank-robber Takashi's big job is foiled, he goes on the lam. Trailed by the police, his lover, his partner-in-crime's brother, and countless others, Takashi becomes the target of a manhunt filled with twists, double-crosses, and explosive action that gives the 70's car chase genre a run for its money.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
TWO-DISC SET
Wolves, Pigs and Men:
Audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp
Interview with Fukasaku biographer Sadao Yamane
Interview with co-screenwriter Junya Sato
Interview with Producer Tatsu Yoshida
English subtitles
Violent Panic: The Big Crash:
Audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp
Fast, Furious, Fukasaku video essay by Tokyoscope author Patrick Macias
English subtitles
16-page booklet with New essay by film critic Kenji Fujishima
Afflicted with multiple sclerosis, Christine makes a pilgrimage to the holy site of Lourdes in hopes of a miracle. Among thousands of ailed visitors, she proceeds through the well-oiled machinery of the religious tourist destination until the unbelievable happens: she is suddenly able to walk. As Christine becomes the object of wonder and envy, bolstering and testing the faith of her fellow pilgrims, the question remains whether all is as it seems.
A personal favorite of Martin Scorsese, Jessica Hausner's acclaimed third feature distills the central theme of her filmography: the contentious gray area between faith and fact. Dryly humorous and quietly riveting, LOURDES is the "superbly subtle, mysterious and brilliantly composed film" (The Guardian) that established Hausner as a vital contemporary auteur on a global scale.
It used to be a prison for the criminally insane. Now it's a haunted house, and one of its former residents wants to come home...
Tonight, curious thrill-seekers enter the ASYLUM OF TERROR and travel down "death row" for a frightfully good time. Unbeknownst to them, a serial killer - and former guest of the asylum - has infiltrated the staged carnage and begun his own form of entertainment. The price of admission is your life.
VHSHITFEST is so happy to bring one of the best Halloween-set slashers to blu-ray for the first time with hours of new extras! Asylum of Terror is bound to become an annual viewing tradition for many every October!
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Commentary w/ director George Demick & actor Melissa Young-Zimmerman
Inmates of Asylum (new interviews with George Demick, Melissa Young-Zimmerman, actor Ned Johnstone, actor Taylor Demick, and composer Mark Reynolds)
On September 11, 1973, President Salvador Allende's democratically-elected Chilean government was overthrown in a bloody coup by General Augusto Pinochet's army.
Patricio Guzmán and five colleagues had been filming the political developments in Chile throughout the nine months leading up to that day. The bombing of the Presidential Palace, during which Allende died, would now become the ending for Guzman's seminal documentary The Battle of Chile, an epic chronicle of that country's open and peaceful socialist revolution, and of the violent counter-revolution against it.
Now restored, The Village Voice called it, "The major political film of our time," and the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "A landmark in the presentation of living history on film."
Also included is Guzmán's debut feature, The First Year (El primer ańo), which chronicles the jubilant 12 months following the election of Allende. These two films provide an invaluable opportunity to witness the genesis of Guzmán's body of work and to gain insight into a critical period in Chilean history.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
TWO-DISC SET
NEW 2K RESTORATION
The First Year (a previous film by Guzmán)
12-page booklet with articles by J. Hoberman, Devika Girish and Michael Atkinson
Proving love is indeed the strangest force in the universe, Zach Clark's oddball romance follows a pair of body-snatching aliens across America as they try to find both their place within this odd world and each other. Featuring narration by Sparks legend Russell Mael, this freewheeling science-fiction comedy is filled lo-fi effects and the heartfelt, emotionally astute exploration of what it means to find your own kind. For those familiar with Clark's oeuvre THE BECOMERS is a smart addition; for the uninitiated, THE BECOMERS begs a deep dive into the filmography. A truly one-of-a-kind film that'll make you feel closer to everyone in the cinema by the end.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Deleted scenes
"Happy Birthday" short film
Audio commentary with Zach Clark and composer Fritz Myers, moderated by filmmaker Kit Zauhar
Devi Danger is a music driven cyberpunk thriller about a hard rocking singer coerced into becoming an electronically enhanced new-music diva by her high-tech billionaire patron. Set in the near future, her singing voice is used to control and energize the brains of employees that are being used as external processors for the corporation's high-tech clients. Devi Danger explores the conflict between high-tech and high-touch, and what it means to be human in a digitally enhanced future.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Behind the Scenes & Production Stills for photo galleries
Following a difficult journey across Europe, Aleksei (Franz Rogowski) reaches Paris to enlist in the French Foreign Legion — a highly selective military corp that allows any foreigner, even undocumented, to be granted a French passport. In the Niger Delta, Jomo (Morr Ndiaye) fights against oil companies that threaten the survival of his village. His sister Udoka (Laëtitia Ky), meanwhile, dreams of escaping, knowing that all is already lost here. Beyond borders, life and death, their destinies will intertwine.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Theatrical premiere Q&A with director, cinematographer
Amateur director Alan loses his fiance's dog at a gender reveal party on the day of an important shoot. As he struggles to finish his latest project with the help of a New York critic, the pursuit of the lost dog and the chaos of his film begin to blend and Alan grows desperate for the day to be over.
Worm-like parasites infest the dead, returning them to gruesome half-life as rotting, bloodthirsty zombies. Freed from their jungle hell by a secret research expedition, the creatures soon find their way to modern civilization where they begin their deadly mission to transform the human race into an unstoppable army of the undead. Will they succeed in their gory quest? Will the human race be completely wiped out? Can anyone survive the blood-soaked onslaught of the Flesh Freaks!?
In 1998, a teenage film fanatic named Conall Pendergast followed his parents to Belize to document their participation in a real-life Mayan archeological dig. Stranded in a remote animal and insect filled jungle, the aspiring filmmaker realized he had a great location on his hands to stage a DIY, MiniDV zombie epic. The end result became Flesh Freaks, a micro-budget wonder shot in Central America and Toronto that's part Evil Dead, part mumblecore, and part tropical travelogue. A youthful and rudimentary eruption of slime, rubber monster masks, and geysers of fake blood, Flesh Freaks combines the madcap antics of Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, the exotic locales of Bruno Mattei's Hell of the Living Dead, and gnarly, putrefied zombie mayhem of Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground; all filtered through the vision of a high-spirited and hyperactive high schooler. But that's not all! Flesh Freaks comes paired with the director's sophomore SOV feature Kill Them and Eat Them; Pendergast's 2003 gore-soaked, mutant melee which comes newly restored and accompanied by a wealth of extras of its own!
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Audio commentary with writer / director Conall Pendergast moderated by Justin Decloux of Gold Ninja Video
Archival commentary with writer / director Conall Pendergast
"Kill and Eat the Flesh Freaks" -an interview with writer / director Conall Pendergast moderated by Justin Decloux
Outtakes
Still gallery
Trailers
Reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Kristy Eruhow
BONUS MOVIE: KILL THEM AND EAT THEM (2023)
Audio commentary with writer / director Conall Pendergast and actor Michael Wood moderated by Justin Decloux of Gold Ninja Video
I Used to Be Funny is a dark dramedy that follows Sam Cowell (Rachel Sennott), an aspiring stand-up comedian and au pair struggling with PTSD, as she decides whether or not to join the search for Brooke (Olga Petsa), a missing teenage girl she used to nanny. The story exists between the present, where Sam tries to recover from her trauma and get back on stage, and the past, where memories of Brooke make it harder and harder to ignore the troubled teen's sudden disappearance. Writer/director Ally Pankiw's debut feature is both funny and heartbreaking in its honest and refreshing look at trauma and recovery, and how they affect the relationships and communities that shape us.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Audio Commentary with Director Ally Pankiw
Original Trailer
Behind the Scenes Stills gallery
English SDH subtitles
REIGON-A "LOCKED"
FROM PARTNER LABEL AMERICAN GENRE FILM ARHCIVE (AGFA):
Sarah Jacobson's punk-spirited DIY films from the 1990s combine B-movie aesthetics and riot grrrl feminism, standing as a testament to the vision, determination, and raw talent of the "Queen of Underground Cinema." MARY JANE'S NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE (Jacobson's only feature film) is a vibrant and vital antidote to every phony Hollywood teen picture, bringing lo-fi realness to the coming-of-age genre. I WAS A TEENAGE SERIAL KILLER (Jacobson's underground sensation) is SLACKER meets Valerie Solanas, as a woman responds to catcalls, condescension, and bad sex the only way she knows how: murder. Taking on every major role of filmmaking from production through distribution, Sarah Jacobson was a shitkicker and rulebreaker, finding fans in filmmakers Allison Anders (GAS, FOOD LODGING) and Tamra Davis (CROSSROADS), as well as Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
MARY JANE'S NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE (1996, 95 mins) & I WAS A TEENAGE SERIAL KILLER (1993, 25 mins): Preserved from the only 16mm elements in existence
I WAS A TEENAGE SERIAL KILLER: Commentary with star Kristin Calabrese and Bleeding Skull's Annie Choi
Short: SWEET MISS: THE DISCO YEARS (1988)
Short: ROAD MOVIE (OR WHAT I LEARNED IN A BUICK STATION WAGON) (1991)
Short: SFERIC WAVES (1996)
Short:TECHNICOLOR YAWN (1996)
Short: THE MAKING OF LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FABULOUS STAINS (2000)
Short: BRA SHOPPING (2002)
Ephemera gallery
Booklet with writing from filmmaker Allison Anders, Annie Choi, and AGFA's Alicia Coombs
The idyllic, beach-side life of a retired Triad boss, his daughter Lap (Joey Wong) and her boyfriend Rick (Kenny Bee), shatters when a mob favour turns into a bloody shootout. Trading her freedom for her father's, Lap becomes mistress to Godfather Shen, while Rick goes into exile. Years later, as Shen unknowingly hires Rick as a hitman, Lap sees her chance at escape, while doe-eyed Triad gofer (Tony Leung) completes the doomed quadrangle.
Directed by the foremost stylist of the Hong Kong New Wave (and a mentor to Wong Kar-Wai), My Heart Is That Eternal Rose is the apotheosis of Patrick Tam's time within the strictures of the Hong Kong mainstream. Fulfilling commercial requirements while elevating formula with a lush sense of style, My Heart Is That Eternal Rose sings with the painterly cinematography of Christopher Doyle and David Chung as Tam's dream-like direction bridges the distance between the bullet ballets of a John Woo and the festering darkness of a David Lynch. It the blue jewel in the crown of the Hong Kong heroic bloodshed sub-genre, shining bright to this day.
Presented alongside two episodes from celebrated TV series C.I.D. (1976) directed by Patrick Tam; shot by David Chung; written by Joyce Chan.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 2K RESTORATION
New Cantonese Audio Restoration (2024)
Mandarin Dub
Interview with John Sham by Arnaud Lanuque (2019, 22 minutes)
C.I.D. Season 1, Episode 3: Two Teddy Girls (1976, 49 minutes)
C.I.D. Season 1, Episode 14: Dawn Noon Dusk Night (1976, 49 minutes)
Interview with actor Simon Yam on C.I.D. (2023, 6 minutes)
Mona (Eleanore Pienta) is a mentally unbalanced and very pregnant young woman in a hideous orange coat. Without any friends to speak of and alienated from her hoochie mama coworkers at a crummy Brooklyn supermarket, Mona maintains a strangely close relationship with her campy, recovering alcoholic mother May (Dana Eskelson). Mona's sister Jordan (Molly Plunk) is an unemployable party girl, estranged from May and making life hell for her increasingly fed up girlfriend Sylve (Keisha Zollar). In the final days of her pregnancy, Mona draws her mother, sister, and anybody who happens to get caught in her wake into her hectic life as she drifts further from reality. Featuring a tapestry of diverse characters with varying levels of sanity and awful taste in wardrobe, See You Next Tuesday is a dark comedy the whole family can enjoy cutting themselves to.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Deleted scenes
2024 interviews with Cast
Comentary track by Eugene Kotlyarenko and Drew Tobia
28-page booklet with essays by Zach Clark, Brandon Harris and Drew Tobia
After the tragic death of their parents, two sisters (Summer Greenberg and Amanda Flowers) are torn apart and sent to opposite coasts by a malevolent entity. One sister cannot remember who she is, and the other cannot grasp the fateful task that lies ahead of her. While fighting to make their way back to each other, the sisters encounter many strange characters that could either help them or destroy them.
Prepare for sensory overload from the famously outrageous Dylan Greenberg. For this magnum opus, Greenberg gathered some of her cast regulars regulars in Amanda Flowers (Shakespeare's Shitstorm), Jurgen Azazel Munster (Werewolf Bitches from Outer Space), and Matthew Silver (Glamarus), and joined them with jaw-dropping new faces, including Cherie Currie of The Runaways, an unrecognizable Whitney Moore (Birdemic), Lynn Lowry (Shivers), Kansas and Parker Bowling (Cuddly Toys), rock and roll legend Alan Merrill, Patti Harrison (Together Together), and Gender Outlaw author Kate Bornstein, with narration by Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs).
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Feature-length commentary with director Dylan Greenberg and star Amanda Flowers
"Woman From Mars" documentary about Dylan Greenberg (41 min)
Q&A with director Dylan Greenberg and star Parker Love Bowling
Interdimensional interview with star Kansas Bowling