Non-Criterion Boutique Home Video Discussion (Kino, Warner Archive, Arrow, Indicator, Vinegar Syndrome, Code Red, etc.)

I'd argue Escape In the Fog is way too goofy and light hearted to be noir either. The supernatural element is never explained and it feels less like that's the point and more like they couldn't be bothered to find a resolution. Tbf tho Boetticher's westerns are amazing work so perhaps I went in with too high expectations.

The Undercover Man is ok, three stars out of five I'd say.

I don't know whether the market has died or nobody is looking this close to Christmas but I've just managed to snag the two Indicator Harryhausen sets for just over £100 the pair.

Unless they've finally agreed a reissue with the estate and it's leaked? Last I had heard they'd changed their position to 'never say never' but weren't hopeful.

Both the Christopher Lee and Andy Milligan boxes are going to be in the Severin sale for the first time on Black Friday. The former is patchy but will have enough value in it at the discount price (I personally think there's enough in it anyway but ymmv). Andy Milligan is as acquired taste as they come but I love them.

Prime opportunity for Severin to fuck up massively here though, running this sale at the same time as trying to get these orders out at the same time as the nunsploitation and folk horror box preorders (a week apart, I am in for both). They've already said none of the Black Friday stuff might go out until January.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was my experience last year. They release some great stuff but they really need to admit already that they can't handle the other aspects of their business. Which is okay! There are lots of other great boutiques that farm out their ordering and distribution.

I thought there was enough value in the Severin Christopher Lee set even at full import price (I found a very slight cheaper copy on eBay) - none of the films come close to matching something like Bava's The Whip and the Body, but I was pleased to have things like the German Fisher Sherlock Holmes movie in a quality presentation.

I enjoyed The Body Beneath as a bonus on the BFI's Flipside/Milligan set but possibly not enough to spend £200 on more of same. Ditto the Al Adamson set, which I'm sure is interesting but...

Has anyone bought product from the Australian specialist label Imprint? They've got a number of desirable releases - I'm particularly wanting this cool vintage horror set

https://viavision.com.au/shop/silver-screams-cinema-1944-1957/

and this 70s Hammer set

https://viavision.com.au/shop/hammer-horror-four-gothic-horror-films-1971-1972/

but needless to say these things are not cheap on Amazon and elsewhere, and I'm wary about importing directly from Aus.

pvmic but I actually thought the Polish TV series was the highlight of the box (if only tangentially Lee-related). The one-to-one long interview in French was tremendous too.

The Body Beneath is one of the best and very typical so you'll know your own tolerance based on that. The outliers like Nightbirds and Vapours are probably the highlights but they're pretty much exceptions to his house style.

I'm enjoying the Al Adamson set but it's taking a long time to get through. I've never felt like blasting through - in fact it's rare for me to watch him two nights in a row. I'm just about to get into blaxploitation (9 discs down out of 14) so that might change.

I've imported directly from Australia and NZ before (although was pre-COVID) without dramas. In fact, those sets look great so I might get on them myself.

Right, I have ordered them and had the order accepted. Let's see what happens.

The discs are waiting to be loaded on a plane at the moment.

In other news, Hammer have formed a new company with Network to do restoration and then release of the Hammer catalogue. I'm not sure it's particularly a good fit because Network's stuff is often 'do minimum' to get it on sale but the recent reissues of Dark Eyes of London and I Don't Want To Be Born were pretty good (if a little light on extras compared to, say, Indicator) so maybe I'm unfairly judging.

Australian discs took a week to be allocated a flight and still waiting for that flight to take off with no indication of when. Lack of info is frustrating.

Severin seem to have been on top of things and have hit (more or less) all the preorder dates and a big chunk of the way through Black Friday. Good work by them.

That Yokai box set is good fun.

This was good advice, thoroughly enjoyed the original trilogy with the Takashi Miike remake of Spook Warfare to come.

Indicator have announced the first two Mexican films for March, looks like they'll be individuals rather than sets which is disappointing from my perspective but probably not surprising until they've tested the appetite of the public.

I think this is the thread with the right audience for this amazing story from Stephen Thrower.

https://www.facebook.com/1456085621/posts/10224933056421090/

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This new Bob Dylan painting has roots in Andy Milligan’s Fleshpot on 42nd Street. pic.twitter.com/JIA8v2e3mB

— Scott Warmuth (@scottwarmuth1) December 9, 2021

I should remember twitter links work best

Kino Lorber is releasing Ernst Lubitsch's Three Women on Blu-ray in January 2022--hope "The Ernst Lubitsch Collection" means more titles in this vein. (So This Is Paris? Forbidden Paradise? Even an upgrade of the Lubitsch in Berlin box set would be welcome.)

Seriously. I've contemplated buying that box but will definitely wait to see if more upgrades are forthcoming. Oh P.S., they just released a Blu of Broken Lullaby last week, as well.

Has anyone ordered from this place before? This seems to be the only business on earth selling this product. (Well, there are other sites but they’re all named this anonymously.)

https://www.dvdcoming.com/Too-Old-To-Die-Young-Season-1-DVD-1343110.php

blu-ray.com has no listing of a physical release for the series in any country. That and the fact that this is a region-free DVD suggests that it's almost certainly a bootleg.

Not that there's anything wrong with that (I had to get my paws on the Knots Landing complete series somehow, fer cryin' out loud), just know what you're probably paying for.

Thanks for the head’s up. This may just be something I don’t see.

Oh hell yes

https://www.arrowvideo.com/blu-ray/come-drink-with-me/13510132.html

Just US/CA. I'll need to wait for some other stuff to bundle with it.

The Imprint films boxes turned up from Australia. Nice, heavy card boxes with a fitted top (like the Christopher Lee box) although the box art is kind of cheap looking with rudimentary photoshop and poor font choices. Clear full size disc boxes inside with original lobby card/poster art on the outside and stills inside. More when I've watched a couple.

So I'm halfway through both boxes.

Silver Screams Cinema is a lot of fun. The films are very lesser efforts, and are maybe noir efforts with a broad (or sometimes fake) supernatural theme rather than anything more, but the prints are very sharp. Audio is less than perfect though and quite muddy in places on Lady and the Monster - although since that's just thrown in as an extra maybe it's understandable.

Unless I'm very much mistaken after watching two of the films, the Hammer box are the Synapse transfers and given they share extras seems very likely. I didn't actually think they were a huge trade-up from the Carlton versions but ymmv. New extras are good but the Ingrid Pitt doc for example is virtually identical to the Ballyhoo one from the previous release. I would have given my eye teeth for David Huckvale instead.

So not bad, but what you get out of them is down to you.

VCI are releasing an 8 film box of the Santo movies they redubbed for El Rey a couple of years ago. Popular opinion is they aren't fantastic either as transfers or dubs, and anything Indicator does with the films they have will knock them into a cocked hat, but it'll be nice to have them.

Just got my copy of the Shaw Brothers Vol.1 box. Oh lordy, it's a handsome beast, can't wait to dig into all this.

Mine has arrived but is for Christmas.

My Severin folk horror box has been in LAX for 11 days now.

:( Yeah, there are many boutique shipping woes afoot atm (my VS shipment is almost certainly going to get here too late for me to make use of the putative xmas gifts it contains). The folk horror set arrived, though, and it's gorgeous. Must remember to snag the Shaw set asap after the holidays.

Morvern Callar!

https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage-partner-labels/products/morvern-callar-fun-city-editions

good god, about time

Not sure we can count Paramount as a "boutique" label, but they're doing a very boutique move by releasing The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in 4K in April.

I spoke too soon about those Australian boxes, one of the Silver Screams transfers was no better than you'd see on YouTube and the remaining Hammer discs are the Carlton transfers, they even have the idents to prove it.

Halfway through the Shaw Brothers and folk horror sets and both are tremendous, so much so I have other boxes lying unloved because I can't get onto them.

Currently watching The Brute, the Julian Glover domestic violence film. It's a bit challenging.

As a result of reading too many EOY lists I ended up buying both Major Dundee and Mill of the Stone Women and regret neither.

Major Dundee is an absolute Peckinpah epic with a fascinating backstory about how nobody believed in him. Both Harris and especially James Coburn are the acting draws although Charlton Heston is pretty damn good. The Moby Dick narrative really comes through on the non-studio edit buy with a sense of futility not in the book. Both prints are lovely although maybe a bit light on extras.

Mill is frankly astonishing. Like Douglas Sirk made a Hammer Gothic. The picture is so full, the colours so vivid and the plot (even if utterly predictable) is a cracker. If there's one reissue from last year that stands out above all the rest it's this one.

I think Major Dundee is one of the two or three key LBJ films in J. Hoberman's The Dream Life: Movies, Media, And The Mythology Of The Sixties.

Swanky new edition of The Wicker Man from the Aussie label Imprint. Ultimately it's the previously issued Final Cut and soundtrack discs with a new set of extras from various Indicator etc alumni and I instinctively put it in the basket then checked the conversion rate before hitting checkout and I'm not paying £85 for it no matter how nice it is.

Extremley niche comment that might as well be on this thread: lols at the Indicator Sam Fuller box of films written but not directed by him featuring an interview with Tim Robbins waxing poetic about the films he's directed alternating with clips from Power Of The Press, which Fuller has a "story by" credit on but which is an entirely hokey piece of Americana whose end result he almost certainly must have hated.

In terms of niche, Indicator have announced for April a box of Stanley Long's 'Adventures of...' series. I can't say I'm not tempted but I might be able to resist until the next sale.

lol I was just about to post that the Stanley Long boxset might be a step too far even for me ... but then I was looking at that Mary Millington box set in HMV the other day ...

I watched them all on Prime during lockdown so they're familiar in my mind, to the point where I can say Private Eye is definitely my favourite.

But I'm resolute to wait for a sale. Or the Very Low Stock warning.

lol that Robin Askwith boxset is surely just around the corner

I know 80's Sammo Hung/Jackie Chan stuff is a v different flavour but I still wish Eureka would lay off the martial arts releases to give me a bit of time to finish that Arrow Shaw box.

I wonder if/when there will be a Vol.2 of the Shaw boxes, end of the year again perhaps?

it's def a when not if, the liner notes of vol 1 make references to stuff being in vol 2

Yeah one of the debates is whether 8 Diagram Pole Fighter will be in it because Nicky Wire Bananaman put out the UK edition and it's not 100% clear how exclusive their rights are (although elsewhere I'm reading their release of Mardi Gras Massacre means Severin are certain to release it in a box soon so not sure if that's an indication one way or the other).

Thanks! I'd love it if they included one or two of their Bond-style flicks in Vol.2, never seen any, but they look pretty interesting.

I definitely enjoyed their not strictly genre films the most in the box - Mighty Peking Man, the first half of Heroes Of The East which is a straight-up romcom and Dirty Ho (which Tony Rayns confidently declares to be a gay romcom on one of the extras docs).

The book from vol 1 states the following for vol 2:

Invincible Shaolin
Magnificent Ruffians
Kid With The Golden Arm
Ten Tigers of Kwangtung
My Young Auntie

A podcast appearance confirmed 36 Chambers of Shaolin

So that's half the box, assuming it's the same size.

I guess I should read the book!

I was quite interested in hearing about the other films by the King Boxer director, would be nice to see some of that stuff. I never watched Human Goddess but it's cool when that stuff gets imported

Kino putting out Fritz Lang's You and Me on Blu soon.

because Nicky Wire Bananaman put out the UK edition

Cursed phrase.

And yet one you understand

Bad news.

Some followers of the INDICATOR label may be aware that, some years back, we teased Robert Altman’s CALIFORNIA SPLIT for a future release. Sadly, and despite a great deal of time and effort, legal complications have proven too much of a hurdle and we can now confirm that this release will not be happening. We are, of course, as upset with this news as you are, but hope to make up for it with many exciting releases of other great films to come.