Liberation Hall is preparing a Special Edition Blu-ray of Paul Bartel's
Shelf Life (1993), starring Andrea Stein, Jim Turner, and O-Lan Jones. The release is scheduled to arrive on the market on January 21.
Description: On November 22, 1963, Mr. and Mrs. St. Cloud hear about the tragic assassination of the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Consumed with paranoia and believing that WWIII is now inevitable, they take their small children Tina, Pam and Scotty and hide with them in their fallout shelter, never to leave it again.
By 1993, the parents had died but their three adult man-children still live in the nuclear bomb shelter alone without any human contact. They've developed their own rules and rituals based on their fading memories of the life above, their old records that still work and whatever they catch on TV, when some station's signal reaches them now and then, for a few moments. Most of their day is spent in play sessions, in which they act out various common activities like going to school, eating out or staging musical numbers. They love to dance, sing and on occasion wrestle. Sometimes they even play their parents and reenact the parents' speeches to them. At one point, Tina and Scotty even pretend to be boyfriend and girlfriend but in a quite innocent manner.
They play many other bizarre games that only make sense to them and tell each other stories that are amalgams of things they heard about like the Bible, Superman or the Pledge of Allegiance. Scotty even has a make-believe superhero alter ego - Supercar. The movie uses vignettes to tell the story but there's also a thin central plot that revolves around the fact that Mom and Dad gave the only key to the vault with food to Pam.
The story is based on a stage play written by the three actors who play Tina, Pam and Scotty. The movie is quite rare and was never released on VHS or DVD, although some bootleg VHS copies do exist.
Special Features and Techcnial Specs:
- Audio Commentary with O-Lan Jones, Andrea Stein, Jim Turner, Philip Holahan, and Alex Mechanik
- American Cinematheque Q&A with O-Lan Jones, Andrea Stein, Jim Turner, and Alex Mechanik, moderated by Grant Moninger (35:06)
- Q&A with Tina, Pam, and Scotty (2023) (09:15)
- Clip - 'Chain Reaction' (01:20)
- Trailer (01:26)
- Teaser One (00:31)
- Teaser Two (00:40)