News Other News

August releases from Arrow Video! A New Cult Gem, Midnight Movie Classics, Sergio Martino’s Giallos, and a Sci-Fi Epic in UHD

DUNE, JODOROWSKY AND DINNER IN AMERICA

's August films include a brilliantly original American indie comedy, a pair of out-there arthouse masterworks, a rediscovered 70s horror creepfest, a terrifying Korean ghost story, and definitive, collectable editions of an awe-inspiring science fiction blockbuster.
 

The releases will come in limited edition packaging, with beautiful new artwork, pristine restorations giving the films a new lease of life, brand new expert commentaries and feature-length documentaries,reversible sleeves, as well as goodies including fold-out posters, art cards, books and illustrated booklets.


 First in August, Arrow Video presents the mind-blowing ‘acid-western' El Topo, which shocked and bedazzled audiences upon its controversial original release, single-handedly inventing the American midnight movie phenomenon. A countercultural masterpiece which ingeniously combines iconic Americana symbolism with director Alejandro Jodorowsky's own idiosyncratic surrealist aesthetic, El Topo is an incredible journey through nightmarish violence, mind-bending mysticism and awe-inspiring imagery. This era-defining film is now presented in a stunning new 4K restoration with a wealth of newly produced and archival extras. 

August also sees the release of Jodorowsky's most ambitious film, The Holy Mountain. The scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, this is a sprawling phantasmagoria of sacrilegious visual excess and existential yearning. It is presented here newly restored in 4K with a selection of informative new interviews and extras which provide unprecedented insight into this momentous film. 

Then Arrow releases The Sergio Martino Collection, three of the finest giallos from one of Italian cinema's most celebrated and prolific filmmakers: The Case of the Scorpion's TailYour Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, and The Suspicious Death of a Minor. Featuring sensational casts of genre stalwarts, including Edwige Fenech, George Hilton, Anita Strindberg and Luigi Pistilli, with scripts by giallo master Ernesto Gastaldi and sensuous scores by maestro Bruno Nicolai, this is an essential collection for any Italian cult cinema fan. 

Next in August, Welcome to the Dollhouse collides with Napoleon Dynamite – with an added dose of the endlessly quotable dialogue of Heathers – in Dinner in America – a DIY love letter to being authentically yourself, finding your voice, and being punk AF. Skilfully directed by Adam Rehmeier (Jonas, The Bunny Game), produced by Ben Stiller (Zoolander, Tropic Thunder) and Ross Putman (Plus One, The Violent Heart) and set to the beat of brilliant original songs, Dinner in America is an empowering and wild ride through the places and people of suburbia — in all their peculiar and chaotic forms. 

Next up is  – director (A Bittersweet Life, I Saw The Devil) made his international reputation with this richly conceived, stylishly shot, and genuinely scary chiller, one of the key films of the Korean New Wave. Haunting and heartbreaking in equal measure, the film's devastating mix of style, scares and emotive storytelling blurred the boundaries between genres as few other horror films had done before and had a profound influence on a new generation of filmmakers. The release is jam-packed with extras and includes an illustrated booklet.

 is a grotesque portrait of the bizarre relationship between a blind sculptor and his captive muse, adapted from a short story from Japan's foremost master of the macabre, Edogawa Rampo (Horrors of Malformed Men, The Black Lizard, Caterpillar). This is a masterpiece of erotic horror that explores the all-encompassing and overwhelming relationship between the artist and his art and the obsessive closed world that the artist inhabits, with maestro director (Giants and Toys, Irezumi) conjuring up a hallucinogenic dreamworld in which sensual and creative urges combine with a feverish intensity. 

More horror in August, this time with a small rural town and a family of outsiders, both trapped in the demonic grip of… The Brotherhood of SatanProduced by Alvy Moore and L.Q. Jones, a veteran character actor best known for his work with Sam Peckinpah, The Brotherhood of Satan is an atmospheric and chilling tale of terror that provides a crucial missing link between Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Devil's Rain (1975) in the cycle of turn-of-the-seventies shockers involving sinister devil-worshipping cults lurking within the dark shadows of modern-day America. 

Your video shelves will be groaning for mercy by the end of August, as Arrow releases four editions of Dune. Following a notorious aborted attempt by Alejandro Jodorowsky in the 1970s, Frank Herbert's bestselling sci-fi epic finally made it to the big screen as the third film by emerging surrealist wunderkind David Lynch, featuring an all-star cast that includes several of Lynch's regular collaborators. Though its initial reception ensured that Lynch largely eschewed mainstream filmmaking for the rest of his career, Dune has since been rightly re-evaluated as one of the most startlingly original and visionary science fiction films of the 1980s. Its astonishing production design and visual effects can now be appreciated anew in this spellbinding 4K restoration, accompanied by hours of comprehensive bonus features, including a brand new feature documentary, as well as a book, poster, art cards and limited edition packaging. As well as the Limited Edition Blu-ray, there will also be a Limited Edition UHD version, and two Zavvi Exclusive SteelBooks. 

Finally in August, Dario Argento's The Cat O' Nine Tails: following the success of his debut feature, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, distributor Titanus tasked writer/director Dario Argento with delivering a follow-up in short order. The resulting film, granted a greatly enhanced budget and heralded in its US marketing campaign as “nine times more suspenseful” than its predecessor, was The Cat O' Nine Tails. This second entry in the so-called “Animal Trilogy” found Argento further refining his distinctive style and cementing his reputation as the master of the giallo thriller. Co-starring Catherine Spaak (Il Sorpasso) and Rada Rassimov (Baron Blood), and featuring another nerve-jangling score by the great Ennio Morricone (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly), The Cat O' Nine Tails remains one of Argento's most suspenseful and underrated films. It's presented here onLimited Edition 4K UHD, with art cards, a fold-out poster and a collector's booklet.

New Releases

El Topo
Blu-ray 2 August

Jodorowsky's most violent and notorious film sees the director play ‘The Mole' of the title: a black-clad. master gunfighter. In the first half, El Topo journeys across the desert dreamscape with his young son (Brontis Jodorowsky) to duel with four sharp-shooting Zen masters, who each bestow a Great Lesson before they die. In the second half, El Topo becomes the guru of a subterranean tribe of deformed outcasts who he must liberate from depraved cultists in a neighbouring town. 

The Holy Mountain
Blu-ray 2 August

Jodorowsky's most ambitious film sees the director himself play The Alchemist, a guru who guides a troupe of pilgrims, each representing a planet of the Solar System, on a magical quest to Lotus Island where they must ascend the Holy Mountain in search of spiritual enlightenment. 

For more information and images please visit: LINK

The Sergio Martino Collection
 
Blu-ray 2 August

In The Case of the Scorpion's Tail, recently widowed Lisa Baumer is summoned to Athens to collect her husband's generous life insurance policy, but soon discovers others are willing to kill to get their hands on it. In the Edgar Allan Poe-inspired Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, abrasive drunk Oliviero amuses himself by holding drunken orgies and abusing his long-suffering wife… but when a series of grisly murders shakes the local community, Oliviero finds himself in the frame. Finally, The Suspicious Death of a Minor combines giallo and crime thriller tropes as undercover cop Paolo pursues the Milanese criminal outfit responsible for the brutal murder of an underage prostitute, but finds himself up against a killer-for-hire who's bumping off witnesses before they have a chance to talk. 

For more information and images please visit: LINK

Dinner in America
Blu-ray 8 August

In a dreary Midwestern suburb, aggro punk rocker Simon (Kyle Gallner, Jennifer's Body, The Cleansing Hour) finds himself on the run again after a bout of arson and a close call with the police. A chance encounter with the spirited and socially awkward Patty (Emily Skeggs, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Mile 22) provides him a place to lay low. As the two embark on a series of misadventures, they begin to realise they have a lot more in common than they first expected… 

For more information and images please visit: LINK

A Tale of Two Sisters
Blu-ray 16 August

Released from a mental institution, Su-mi returns home with her father and her younger sister, Su-yeon, only to face her cold stepmother's strange behaviour, and the disturbing apparitions that are haunting their house. What dark secret connects them all to the family's past? 

For more information and images please visit: LINK

Blind Beast
Blu-ray 23 August

An artist's model, Aki (Mako Midori), is abducted, and awakens in a dark warehouse studio whose walls are decorated with outsized women's body parts – eyes, lips, legs and breasts – and dominated by two recumbent giant statues of male and female nudes. Her kidnapper introduces himself as Michio (Eiji Funakoshi), a blind sculptor whom she had witnessed previously at an exhibition in which she featured intently caressing a statue of her naked torso. Michio announces his intention of using her to sculpt the perfect female form. At first defiant, she eventually succumbs to his intense fixation on her body and finds herself drawn into his sightless world, in which touch is everything.  

The Brotherhood of Satan
Blu-ray 30 August

Recently widowed Ben, his glamorous girlfriend Nicky and his small daughter K.T. are on a road trip across the Southwest, which comes to a screeching halt when they witness an accident. Heading to the nearby isolated desert town of Hillsboro to report it to the Sheriff (played by L.Q. Jones), they are met with a hostile reaction from the locals, who are gripped by paranoia and fear due to a series of gruesome deaths, as well as the mysterious disappearance of eleven of the community's children. As the bodies continue to pile up around them, Ben and his family find themselves joining the sheriff, a local priest and the town's enigmatic physician Doc Duncan (Strother Martin, Cool Hand Luke) in the midst of a mystery that points towards a deadly satanic cult… 

Dune
Limited Edition Blu-ray 30 August

The year is 10,191, and four planets are embroiled in a secret plot to wrest control of the Spice Melange, the most precious substance in the universe and found only on the planet Arrakis. A feud between two powerful dynasties, House Atreides and House Harkonnen, is manipulated from afar by ruling powers that conspire to keep their grip on the spice. As the two families clash on Arrakis, Duke Atreides' son Paul (Kyle MacLachlan, in his screen debut) finds himself at the centre of an intergalactic war and an ancient prophecy that could change the galaxy forever. 

Dune
Limited Edition UHD 30 August

The year is 10,191, and four planets are embroiled in a secret plot to wrest control of the Spice Melange, the most precious substance in the universe and found only on the planet Arrakis. A feud between two powerful dynasties, House Atreides and House Harkonnen, is manipulated from afar by ruling powers that conspire to keep their grip on the spice. As the two families clash on Arrakis, Duke Atreides' son Paul (Kyle MacLachlan, in his screen debut) finds himself at the centre of an intergalactic war and an ancient prophecy that could change the galaxy forever. 

Dune
Dual Format UHD + BR Limited Edition SteelBook [Zavvi Exclusive in the UK] 30 August

The year is 10,191, and four planets are embroiled in a secret plot to wrest control of the Spice Melange, the most precious substance in the universe and found only on the planet Arrakis. A feud between two powerful dynasties, House Atreides and House Harkonnen, is manipulated from afar by ruling powers that conspire to keep their grip on the spice. As the two families clash on Arrakis, Duke Atreides' son Paul (Kyle MacLachlan, in his screen debut) finds himself at the centre of an intergalactic war and an ancient prophecy that could change the galaxy forever. 

Dune
Dual Format UHD + BR Deluxe SteelBook Limited Edition [Zavvi Exclusive in the UK] 30 August

The year is 10,191, and four planets are embroiled in a secret plot to wrest control of the Spice Melange, the most precious substance in the universe and found only on the planet Arrakis. A feud between two powerful dynasties, House Atreides and House Harkonnen, is manipulated from afar by ruling powers that conspire to keep their grip on the spice. As the two families clash on Arrakis, Duke Atreides' son Paul (Kyle MacLachlan, in his screen debut) finds himself at the centre of an intergalactic war and an ancient prophecy that could change the galaxy forever.

The Cat O' Nine Tails
Limited Edition 4K UHD Blu-ray 23 August

When a break-in occurs at a secretive genetics institute, blind puzzle-maker Franco Arnò (Karl Malden, Patton, One-Eyed Jacks), who overheard an attempt to blackmail one of the institute's scientists shortly before the robbery, teams up with intrepid reporter Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus, Beneath the Planet of the Apes) to crack the case. But before long the bodies begin to pile up and the two amateur sleuths find their own lives imperilled in their search for the truth. And worse still, Lori (Cinzia De Carolis, Cannibal Apocalypse), Franco's young niece, may also be in the killer's sights… 

For more information on these titles, visit the Arrow website

About the author

Adam Symchuk

Adam Symchuk is a Canadian born freelance writer and editor who has been writing for Asian Movie Pulse since 2018. He is currently focused on covering manga, manhwa and light novels having reviewed hundreds of titles in the past two years.

His love of film came from horror and exploitation films from Japan that he devoured in his teens. His love of comics came from falling in love with the works of Shuzo Oshimi, Junji Ito, Hideshi Hino, and Inio Asano but has expanded to a general love of the medium and all its genres.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

>