by Malakie Peters

It’s New Release Tuesday! This week we’ve got Tony Danza vs. orangutans, Jane Campion in 4K, Greek vampires, cyborg revenge, a gigantic trove of rarely-seen classics of folk horror, and more. 

ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS: A COMPENDIUM OF FOLK HORROR (2022) (BLU-RAY)

Experience 19 of the best-known, least-known, rarely-seen and thought-lost classics of folk horror from around the world, all restored from the best available vault elements with Special Features that include short films, audio commentaries and exclusive featurettes. 

• WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED (2021)
• WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED explores the folk horror phenomenon and its culturally specific manifestations in international horror, from its first wave in the 1970s to today.
• EYES OF FIRE (1983)
• The seminal American folk horror film, unavailable on home video for decades, now debuts in a new 4K restoration. A rogue 18th century preacher and his followers make their way downriver to establish a new settlement beyond the western frontier and encounter a forest enchanted by strange spirits that will bring apocalyptic madness upon them.
• LEPTIRICA (1973)
• Based loosely on by Milovan Glišić’s 1880 Serbian vampire story After Ninety Years – which preceded Bram Stoker’s Dracula by nearly two decades – Djordje Kadijevic’s adaptation is a subversive, darkly erotic take on Glišić’s pastoral tale of a group of rural villagers beset upon by the infamous vampire Sava Savanovic, who has taken up residence in their local flour mill.
• WITCHHAMMER (1970)
• Otakar Vávra’s film about 17th century witch hunter Jindřich František Boblig and the horrors he visited on the small village of Velké Losiny has been called an Eastern European counterpart to Michael Reeves’ WITCHFINDER GENERAL and Michael Armstrong’s MARK OF THE DEVIL.
• VIY (1967)
• In 19th century Russia, a seminary student is forced to spend three nights with the corpse of a beautiful young witch. But when she rises from the dead to test his faith, it will summon a nightmare of fear, desire and the ultimate demonic mayhem.
• LAKE OF THE DEAD (1958)
• Considered a classic of Norwegian cinema, a group of colleagues venture to a remote cabin to look for a missing friend and are spooked by an old legend: that the cabin had belonged to a man who killed his sister and her lover and then drowned himself in the lake. Since then, it is said that anyone who stays in the cabin will be driven to the same fate.
• TILBURY (1987)
• This made-for-TV film shares the Icelandic lore of the Tilbury, a creature who could be summoned by women in times of financial hardship and starvation. But the gifts of the Tilbury come with their own brand of destruction. Set in 1940, during the British occupation, a country boy discovers his childhood sweetheart is having an affair with a British soldier, but suspects it could be one of the evil creatures.
• THE DREAMING (1988)
• When a group of Indigenous activists attempt to repatriate ancestral artifacts found in a cave on Australia’s Kangaroo Island, one of them is shot evading police and taken to a local hospital. When the patient dies in her care, the doctor attending to her experiences strange visions relating to violent events from the past.
• KADAICHA (1988)
• Though conceived as a commercial horror film, this tale of teens being condemned to death in their dreams by an Aboriginal magician as recompense for a housing development having been built on a sacred burial ground also serves as an admission of national guilt.
• CELIA (1989)
• In 1950s Australia, after 9-year-old Celia hears the disturbing fairy tale of “The Hobyahs” in school, it colors her interpretation of real life conflicts such as her parents’ struggling relationship, the threat of communism, and the country’s plague of rabbits. Ann Turner’s award-winning film paints a disquieting picture of innocence trying to make sense of the harsh and complex world around her through escape into dark fantasy.
• ALISON’S BIRTHDAY (1981)
• Getting its first official release since the VHS era, this Australian paranormal cult is unearthed! During a Ouija board session with her teenage friends, 16-year-old Alison gets a message from beyond the grave not to go home for her 19th birthday. Fast forward three years later to the week of her 19th: she gets a call from her mother that they’re having a party to celebrate and they want her there… alone.
• WILCZYCA (1983)
• A domestic hit in Poland on first release, Marek Piestrak’s stunning wintry werewolf film is a sexually-charged folktale that pits a 19th century Polish patriot against the ghost of his unfaithful wife, who haunts him from beyond the grave as a she-wolf.
• LOKIS: A MANUSCRIPT OF PROFESSOR WITTEMBACH (1970)
• A pastor and ethnographer visits a remote corner of 19th century Lithuania where folk customs associated with the area’s pagan past still have a hold on the population. There he finds himself the guest of a strange old family consisting of a sadistic Count and his mad mother, who—legend has it—was raped by a bear on her wedding night; the Count himself reputed to be the product of this bestial assault.
• CLEARCUT (1991)
• A white lawyer arrives in a remote area in Northern Ontario to defend Indigenous activists who are blocking a logging company’s clearcut of old growth on their land. A pacifist by nature, and perceiving himself as sympathetic to Indigenous concerns, he finds his values shaken when he is paired with an angry, rogue Indigenous activist named Arthur (Graham Greene) who insists on kidnapping the head of the logging company to take him deep into the forest—where he hopes to teach him the price of his destruction.
• IL DEMONIO (1963)
• A stunning story of obsessive love, set in a rural Southern Italian village where Christianity has integrated many of the old superstitious beliefs. Daliah Lavi plays Purif, who is distraught when her lover is betrothed to another. Her erratic behavior is interpreted as demonic possession—leading the villagers to turn against her with physical and sexual violence.
• DARK WATERS (1993)
• In Mariano Baino’s groundbreaking debut, a young Englishwoman is drawn to an island in the Black Sea in an attempt to discover her mysterious connection to a remote convent—a crumbling edifice that has been constructed over a labyrinth of Lovecraftian horrors.
• A FIELD IN ENGLAND (2012)
• During the Civil War in 17th-Century England, a small group of deserters flee from a raging battle and are captured by an alchemist who forces them to help him find a hidden treasure. Crossing a vast mushroom circle, which provides their first meal, the group succumbs to the terrifying energies trapped inside the field.
• ANCHORESS (1993)
• Based on the true story of Christine Carpenter, a 14th-century peasant who becomes transfixed by a statue of the Virgin Mary, and petitions to be walled into a cell attached to the church as a religious hermit. Alone in her cell she receives dark and sensual visions, while in the outside world, her defiant mother (played by musician Toyah Wilcox) is accused of witchcraft.
• PENDA’S FEN (1974)
• Alan Clark directs David Rudkin’s epic tale of myth and identity whereby a sanctimonious Vicar’s son has a spiritual and sexual awakening after being visited by a series of angels, gargoyles, and the ghosts of Edward Elgar and a long-dead Pagan King. Penda’s Fen is the most magical of all British Folk Horror films, what Scholar Sukhdev Sandhu called “A lasting vision of heresy and pastoral horror.”
• ROBIN REDBREAST (1970)
• Veteran British chiller writer John Bowen penned this legendarily terrifying BBC teleplay, now considered a precursor to THE WICKER MAN. Nora Palmer moves to a quiet village in England after a break-up. The locals are warm enough at first, but their sinister intentions are gradually revealed. Is Nora paranoid or is she the center of a wicked pagan plot of indescribable horror?

AMERICAN MASTERS: BECOMING HELEN KELLER (2021) (DVD)

Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind since early childhood, was a passionate advocate for change, using her celebrity and wit to champion rights for women, people with disabilities, and people living in poverty. The film examines the complex legacy of this author, advocate, lecturer, and human rights pioneer.

ARREBATO (1979) (BLU-RAY)

Horror movie director Jose is adrift in a sea of doubt and drugs. As his belated second feature nears completion, his reclusive bubble is popped by two events: a sudden reappearance from an ex-girlfriend and a package from past acquaintance Pedro: a reel of Super-8 film, an audiotape, and a door key. From there, the boundaries of time, space, and sexuality are erased as Jose is once more sucked into Pedro’s vampiric orbit. Together, they attempt the ultimate hallucinogenic catharsis through a moebius strip of filming and being filmed.

ASSHOLES (2017) (BLU-RAY)

Adah & Aaron, two young recovering addicts, meet in their psychoanalyst’s office, fall in love, relapse on poppers, and become the biggest assholes in New York City. ASSHOLES is a debaucherous romantic comedy of excess for the asshole in all of us!

BAD NEWS BEARS (2005) (BLU-RAY)

A fresh take on the irreverent 1976 comedy hit, BAD NEWS BEARS follows a grizzled former minor league baseball player (Billy Bob Thornton) who is recruited to coach a woefully inept Little League team to a championship against their hated rivals, the Yankees.

BEING NATURAL (2018) (BLU-RAY)

Takashi Uno wants little more from life than to play the bongo under the starlight. When his uncle passes, his freshly divorced cousin inherits their traditional country home and tasks the shy slacker with caring for it. Together with the town’s underdog grocer, the three revert to a joyful childhood dynamic. Leisurely BBQ (the cheapest beef!) and cup noodles, it’s all fun and games until a family from Tokyo led by an unhinged patriarch and his enigmatic wife manifest their desire to open a countryside cafe at all costs.

CLOCKSTOPPERS (2002) (BLU-RAY)

A teenager discovers a mysterious machine that allows him to freeze time. Now, he’s using his new found device to get a few things for himself.

DANCING WITH CRIME (1947) / THE GREEN COCKATOO (1937) (BLU-RAY)

Two early Brit Noirs from Cohen Film Collection, digitized in association with the British Film Institute. 

• DANCING WITH CRIME
• Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim, married in real life at the time, put themselves in harms way when they go undercover to investigate the murder of a friend with ties to black market racketeers. Watch for Dirk Bogarde and Diana Dors in uncredited roles! 
• THE GREEN COCKATOO 
• After witnessing the murder of a racketeer, a young woman is pursued by both gangsters and the police. She is aided by a Soho entertainer, who is the brother of the victim. This taut little thriller is based on a Graham Greene story, directed by the American William Cameron Menzies, and featuring a stellar cast and crew!

DETENTION (2019) (BLU-RAY)

Set during the Taiwanese martial law of the 1960s, this shockingly gruesome and terrifying coming-of-age drama based on a hugely popular video game sees two classmates who go looking for their missing friends and teachers, all of whom took part in an illegal book club, only to come face to face with ghosts and deformed monsters that have taken over their school. 

DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD (2020) (BLU-RAY) (DVD)

This playful, profound, and immensely moving docu-fantasia by Kirsten Johnson is a valentine to the director’s beloved father, Dick Johnson, made as she has begun to face the reality of losing him to dementia. Using the language of cinema both to defy death and to confront it head-on, Johnson mischievously envisions an array of ways in which the man she loves most in the world might die, staging a series of alternately darkly comic and colorfully imaginative tableaux interwoven with raw vérité footage capturing the pair’s tender but increasingly fragile bond. Long live Dick Johnson!

DREAMER: INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY (2005) (BLU-RAY)

Ben Crane was once a great horseman, whose gifts as a trainer were wasted on making other men’s fortunes. Sonya was once a great horse, whose promising career on the racetrack was cut short by a broken leg. Considered as good as dead to her owner, Sonya is given to Ben as his severance pay, along with his walking papers. Now, it will take the unwavering faith and determination of Ben’s young daughter, Cale, to bring these two damaged souls together in a quest for a seemingly impossible goal: to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

EMA (2021) (DVD)

After a shocking incident upends her family life and marriage to a tempestuous choreographer, Ema, a reggaeton dancer, sets out on an odyssey of personal liberation in this incendiary drama about art, desire, and the modern family from director Pablo Larrain.

EYES OF FIRE (1983) (DVD)

A rogue 18th century preacher and his followers make their way downriver to establish a new settlement beyond the western frontier and encounter a forest enchanted by strange spirits that will bring apocalyptic madness upon them.

FINDING ALICE: SERIES 1 (2021) (DVD)

For Alice, Harry, and their daughter, Charlotte, moving into their new home should have been a dream come true, but it quickly turns into a nightmare when Alice discovers Harry dead at the bottom of the stairs. Soon, secrets begin to surface.

THE FIRST TEAM (2020) (DVD)

Our story follows three young footballers, Mattie, Jack, and Benji, and their adventures with terrifying team tough guy Petey, mercurial Italian manager Cesare, and eccentric chairman Mark Crane.

GOING APE! (1981) (BLU-RAY)

A rich man’s son (Tony Danza) must baby-sit three pet orangutans for five years to inherit $5 million.

GOMORRAH: THE SERIES, SEASON 3 (2017) (DVD)

At the start of Season 3, there is a void to be filled in the underworld of Naples. The warring factions are exhausted by violence, massive police pressure, and drastic financial losses, and are ready to make peace. But as Genny takes over North Naples and Rome, Ciro has been cast out to Bulgaria, licking his wounds. Upon his return he forms a powerful partnership with the upstart Enzo and together they begin to take what they feel they are entitled to, ambitions which extend beyond Naples and the borders of Italy.

GORBACHEV. HEAVEN (2020) (DVD)

This intimate portrait finds Gorbachev living alone in an empty house outside Moscow, still carrying the burdens of his past.

THE GREAT POSTAL HEIST (2022) (DVD)

Filmmaker Jay Galione tells the story of his father, a 30-year postal clerk who was harassed, threatened, and fired for standing up for fellow employees. The documentary reveals how the USPS has been systematically dismantled and privatized by the trillion-dollar mail industry and its politicians who seek to raise prices and lower wages. 

HER SMELL (2018) (BLU-RAY)

Becky Something is a 90s punk rock superstar who once filled arenas with her grungy all-female trio, Something She. Now she plays smaller venues while grappling with motherhood, exhausted bandmates, nervous record company executives, and a new generation of rising talent eager to usurp her stardom. When Becky’s chaos and excesses derail a recording session and national tour, she finds herself shunned, isolated and alone. Forced to get sober, temper her demons, and reckon with the past, she retreats from the spotlight and tries to recapture the creative inspiration that led her band to success.

KINGDOM OF SILENCE (2019) (DVD)

An in-depth look at Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s life, work, and murder amidst the complexity of U.S.-Saudi Arabia relations. Exclusive interviews explore Khashoggi’s connections with Saudi rulers, Middle Eastern jihadists, and fellow global journalists, as well as his enduring global legacy

THE KINGMAKER (2019) (DVD)

An extraordinary look into the political career of Imelda Marcos. As the former first lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos is best known for her opulent lifestyle, but it was her behind-the-scenes influence of her husband’s presidency that rocketed her to the global political forefront. A journey through the Marcos family’s long history of corruption, extravagance and brutality, this documentary tells a cautionary tale of a powerful female leader whose questionable sense of reality divided a nation.

THE LAST SON (2021) (DVD)

Sam Worthington stars as Isaac LeMay, a murderous outlaw who learns that he is cursed by a terrible prophecy: that he will be killed by one of his children.

THE LOVER (1992) (4K + BLU-RAY) (DVD)

In 1929 French Indochina, a French teenage girl embarks on a reckless and forbidden romance with a wealthy, older Chinese man, each knowing that knowledge of their affair will bring drastic consequences to each other.

MASS (2021) (DVD)

Two couples meet for a painful and raw conversation in the aftermath of a violent tragedy.

MOFFIE (2021) (BLU-RAY) (DVD)

A young man in 1981 South Africa must complete his brutal and racist two years of compulsory military service while desperately maintaining the secrecy of his homosexuality.

MOMENTS LIKE THIS NEVER LAST (2020) (BLU-RAY)

Dash Snow rejects a life of privilege to make his own way as an artist on the streets of New York City in the late 1990s.

NORWAY (2014) (BLU-RAY)

In 1984, a vampire who dances to keep his heart going arrives in Athens and goes on an adventure into the bowels of the Earth.

THE PIANO (1993) (4K + BLU-RAY)

Holly Hunter is achingly eloquent in her Academy Award–winning performance as Ada, an electively mute Scottish woman who expresses her innermost feelings through her beloved piano. When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter (Anna Paquin) to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her ineffectual husband (Sam Neill) and a rugged frontiersman (Harvey Keitel) to whom she develops a forbidden attraction. With its sensuously moody cinematography, dramatic coastal landscapes, and sweeping score, this uniquely timeless evocation of a woman’s inner awakening is an intoxicating sensory experience that burns with the twin fires of music and erotic passion.

REBELS OF THE NEON GOD (1992) (BLU-RAY)

A cab driver’s son (Kang-sheng Lee) quits his college studies to get revenge on two petty thieves (Chou-jun Chen, Chang-bin Jen) that vandalized his father’s car in Tsai Ming-liang’s feature film directorial debut.

SAVAGE HARVEST (1994) (BLU-RAY)

A legend comes to life when campers unwittingly rouse a pack of bloodthirsty tribal demons.

SLEEP [LIMITED EDITION] (2020) (BLU-RAY)

Marlene, a woman plagued by horrific dreams, suffers a breakdown in a remote village. As her daughter Mona follows, she comes upon a well-kept family secret and an old curse that ultimately threatens her life – a never-ending nightmare.

STAGE FRIGHT (1950) (BLU-RAY)

Jane Wyman plays drama student Eve Gill, who tries to clear a friend (Richard Todd) being framed for murder by becoming the maid of flamboyant stage star Charlotte Inwood (Marlene Dietrich).

STEEL AND LACE (1991) (BLU-RAY)

Revived as a cyborg by her scientist brother, a rape victim seeks fitting revenge on lying men.

ZOMBIE COLLECTION (2022) (DVD)

• ATTACK OF THE LEDERHOSEN ZOMBIES (2016) 
• A group of young snowboarders are stuck in a remote mountain ski resort, where an all-night aprés-ski party soon turns into a hellish nightmare of zombie mayhem. 
• GRANNY OF THE DEAD (2017)
• Regular guy Ed awakes one morning to find that his grandmother has become one of the living dead. While trapped in his home, Ed tries to survive the day, keep his house zombie free, stay alive and save the day. 
• ATTACK OF THE KILLER DONUTS (2017)
• A chemical accident turns ordinary donuts into bloodthirsty killers. 
• HAROLD’S GOING STIFF (2011)
• Harold is suffering from a frightening new disease that is turning him into a zombie. After an experimental new treatment fails, Harold’s condition deteriorates, and he ends up on the run from a group of violent vigilantes who are out for blood.