The Film Detective Reveals 50 Restored And Remastered Films For Release On DVD On July 7

Summer Movie Blitz!

That’s what is coming on July 7 courtesy of The Film Detective … a 50 DVD release package loaded with star power and featuring action films, Westerns, comedies, mysteries and more that have been restored and remastered from original vault materials.

There are a dozen action films counted among the DVD product offering in The Film Detective’s July 7 release mix.

Let’s begin with actor-turned-director Paul Guilfoyle’s 1953 Cold War-atomic bomb thriller, Captain Scarface, starring Barton MacLane as the double-dealing “Scarface” and Leif Erickson as the unlikely hero — a lothario on the run from a local plantation owner who unwittingly boards the disguised Soviet “Trojan Horse” cruise ship.  Its destination is the Panama Canal where an atomic bomb will be detonated!!!

The dangers of diving for sponges in Florida (filmed on location in Key West) are played out in director Robert D. Webb’s 1953 Technicolor (an Oscar nomination for cinematographer Edward Cronjager) release of Beneath the 12 Mile Reef — teaming Robert Wagner with Gilbert Roland as father and son divers.  J. Carrol Naish, Richard Boone, Peter Graves and Terry Moore round out the excellent cast.

Pre-war conspiracies in Japan are on display as newsman James Cagney refuses to kowtow to Baron Tanaka (played by John Emery) in director Frank Lloyd’s 1945 film release of Blood on the Sun (which won the Oscar for Best Set Design).

Director Laslo Benedek’s 1949 film noir thriller, Port of New York, features a young Yul Brynner as narcotics smuggler Paul Vicola, with Scott Brady and Richard Rober as the lawmen out to stop him (shot on location in New York City).

Director William Cameron Menzies Civil War-era conflict, Drums in the Deep South, pits West Point grads Guy Madison and James Craig on opposite sides in the battle of Devil’s Mountain.    

Also plucked from the Civil War period is director R. John Hugh’s 1955 swamp thriller, Yellowneck, starring Lin McCarthy as Sergeant Todd, a Confederate deserter, who together with Stephen Courtleigh as “The Colonel” (and three others) try to make their way through the Florida Everglades (actually filmed on location in the Everglades) and an escape attempt to Cuba.   Only one of the five will survive their ordeal.

Also on the DVD July 7 release calendar from The Film Detective is Susan Hayward, who is driven near-crazy with a lust for revenge in director Stuart Heisler’s 1949 oil boom saga, Tulsa.   An elaborate oil field fire sequence earned the film an Oscar nomination for Best Special Effects.

Other action film offerings include: Daniel Boone (1936, directed by David Howard and starring George O'Brien as Boone, with John Carradine and Heather Angel), director Rowland V. Lee’s 1941 swashbuckler, The Son of Monte Cristo, starring Louis Hayward with Joan Bennett) and “Jungle” Sam Newfield’s 1944 film release of Nabonga, teaming Buster Crabbe with Julie London (in her film debut), Barton MacLane and Ray “Crash” Corrigan as the gorilla.

On the Western front, The Film Detective is right there with three featuring sceen legend John Wayne … these are director Robert Bradbury’s 1934 film release of Blue Steel (with Gabby Hayes, Yakima Canutt and Eleanor Hunt), Bradbury’s 1937 film, The Trail Beyond, featuring both Noah Beery and Noah Beery Jr. and director Charles Barton’s 1937 Western, Hell Town (aka: Born to the West), teaming John Wayne with none other than Johnny Mack Brown (Marsha Hunt co-stars).

Another Western film legend getting some action from The Film Detective on July 7 is Roy Rogers.   He stars in director Joseph Kane’s 1939 film release of In Old Caliente (with Gabby Hayes, Jack La Rue and Lynne Roberts) and director Frank McDonald rodeo action film, Lights of Old Santa Fe (with Dale Evans and Gabby Hayes).

Rounding out this Western stampede is director Robert Springsteen’s 1946 Red Ryder Western, Stagecoach to Denver, starring Allan Lane as the legendary comic strip hero and with Robert Blake as his sidekick, Little Beaver.  And lastly, Mickey Rooney, Robert Preston, Robert Stack and Wanda Hendrix team in director Elliott Nugent’s 1951 film release of My Outlaw Brother (filmed on location in Mexico).

Drama, you want drama?   How about director John Cromwell’s 1934 film adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel, Of Human Bondage, starring Bette Davis and Leslie Howard (they would reteam in 1936 for The Petrified Forest)?   Bette Davis would be nominated for Best Actress — her first of eleven — for her performance here.

Another film adaptation on the July 7 release calendar is that of Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play (1938), Our Town, which was adapted for the screen in 1940 and subsequently nominated that year for Best Picture (losing out to Rebecca).  William Holden and Martha Scott (she was nominated for Best Actress) star as sweethearts George Gibbs and Emily Webb.

Continuing with adaptations from literary sources, we have the remake of the D. W. Griffith’s silent era classic (1919), Broken Blossoms, which was a loose adaptation of Thomas Burke’s short story.   This 1936 remake, being released by The Film Detective on July 7, was directed by John Brahm and starred Dolly Haas, Emlyn Williams and Arthur Margetson.

Another silent remake (also from D.W. Griffith) is director Henry King’s 1935 film release of Way Down East, starring Henry Fonda as David and Rochelle Hudson as Anna, with Edward Trevor as the evil Lennox Sanderson and Margaret Hamilton as Martha, the town’s big mouth gossip.

And then there’s Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, which is also to be found among the 50 films on the July 7^th release calendar.   This one is the 1933 version, directed by William J. Cowen and starring Dickie Moore as Oliver with Irving Pichel as Fagin.  

From the same year, 1933, we have the Best Actor-winning performance of Charles Laughton in director Alexander Korda’s Best Picture nominee, The Private Life of Henry VIII … Merle Oberon, Wendy Barrie, Elsa Lanchester, Binnie Barnes and Everley Gregg co-star as Henry’s fives wives after he dumped Catherine of Aragon.   

On the comedy front, we have director Archie Mayo’s 1946 romantic comedy, Angel on My Shoulder, starring Paul Muni, Anne Baxter and Claude Raines (as the devil),

Roger Corman’s 1960 film release of The Little Shop of Horrors will also be available, as will director John Cromwell’s 1939 comedy teaming James Stewart with Carole Lombard, Made for Each Other.

Others in the comedy mix include Never Wave at a WAC (1953, Rosalind Russell), Private Buckaroo (1942 with the Andrews Sisters, Donald O’Connor, Dick Foran, Joe E. Lewis and Peggy Ryan) and cult filmmaker Edgar G. St. Benny the Dip, starring Dick Haymes, Lionel Stander and Roland Young conmen who become “saints” in the Bowery (filmed on location) … Nina Foch co-stars.

Ulmer’s 1951 film

And then there’s Bill and Coo, which is one of these “specialty films” that doesn’t quite fit in anywhere.  This one — which won an honorary Oscar for its inventiveness — is strictly for the birds.   Released theatrically in 1948, it stars … birds, dressed in costumes as they go about their business in the little town of Chirpendale.

The Film Detective does indeed have a Summer Movie Blitz!  There’s something here for everyone … so enjoy!!!

Around The World With Orson Welles: The Complete Series Gets Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack Push From B2MP, Inc. On July 14

It is as if a long-lost time capsule had been unearthed, opened and the contents therein were once again available after being locked away for a half-century.   

That’s what B2MP, Inc. has done — metaphorically speaking — with the announcement this past week that a restored (from the 35mm interpositive) Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack edition of Around the World With Orson Welles: The Complete Series (Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack) will be available on July 14.

Back in 1955 Welles contracted with England’s newly-launched ITV channel (a counter-balance to the BBC) to produce and direct a series of “high brow” travelogues.  The project quickly blew up and only six episodes ever saw the light of day.

B2MP, Inc. has assembled all six episodes of this series, which includes trips to Spain, including Madrid and the Basque region, plus St.-Germain-des-Prés in Paris and a return to Vienna, where Orson Welles filmed The Third Man.   

As a bonus, the partially completed seventh episode in the series was the subject of documentary filmmaker Christophe Cognet’s 2000 release of L'affaire Dominici Par Orson Welles, which included footage shot by Welles and is presented mainly in French (with some English) and includes English subtitles.

Other bonus goodies include a new essay by film critic Peter Tonguette, the author of “Orson Welles Remembered.”

Mill Creek Entertainment Announces It September 2015 DVD And Blu-ray Release Calendar

Movies galore, plus some history about the U.S. Calvary and the presidents on Mount Rushmore are what Mill Creek Entertainment has planned for DVD and Blu-ray during the month of September.

Kicking off the proceedings on Sept. 1 is the double-disc, seven-part study on the four presidents that were carved into the face of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota by Gutzon and Lincoln Borglum between 1927 and 1941.   

Titled Monument Men: The Road to Rushmore, the seven parts include one each for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, plus three additional segments that are titled  “The Making of Mount Rushmore,” “Mount Rushmore National Memorial” and “Crazy Horse Memorial.”    

Over four hours of material have been assembled here and Mill Creek Entertainment will be releasing it to retail with an SRP of just $14.98.

Also on the history front on Sept. 1 is the five-hour, five part series titled U.S. Cavalry: History of America's Mounted Forces.  

The five segments are broken down as follows: “Origins to America's First Wars,” “Indians, Custer and the West,” “The Rough Riders and a New Horse” “Patton and World War II” and “The Modern Cavalry.”   

The SRP for U.S. Cavalry: History of America's Mounted Forces is also just $14.98 (and that’s before discounts offered at retail).

Rounding out this Sept. 1 trio of new-to-DVD product offerings is director Brooks Benjamin’s family-fun tale (tail), Bandit and the Saints of Dogwood, which is the latest production from Engine 15 Media Group, who are known for their family-friendly canine and kid adventures  — their Designer Pups is also heading to the DVD market place from Mill Creek Entertainment on Aug. 4).

The Dogwood Shores Elementary School (filmed in and around the Rockwood and    With help from her best-buddy Dalton (Makinnon O'Brien), they’ve concocted a plan to “punk” Principal McDougal (Mike Stanley — Attack of the Morningside Monster, Within: Terror Resides ...), which is important to them in that no one in the history of the school has been able to put something over on him.

Kingston communities to the west of Knoxville, Tennessee) is home to Lenna (Katie McNamara) and her close-knit band of fifth grade misfits.

It’s a good plan, as fifth-grade plans go, but as luck would have it, they picked the very same night that a group of inept “treasure hunters” (with an ancient map in hand) plan to rip up the gym floor and unearth a cache of long-forgotten buried gold.  The kids barely escape their encounter with the thieves, but end up being blamed for the destruction that they caused to school property.

Their fate: summer school at the Passive Valley Educational Center!!!

With the help of Bandit, an Australian Shepherd, Lenna and Dalton — along with their cohorts Benji (Skylar Feichtner) and Huggy (Connor Oringderff) — decide that after a few days at Passive Valley that a better plan of action would be to escape and bring the real villains to justice.   Their first plan didn’t go so well, maybe they’ll have better luck with this one!!!

Bandit and the Saints of Dogwood is great family fun (and doggie fun too) and the SRP is just $14.98.

Shifting to Sept. 15, Mill Creek Entertainment has ten new DVD SKUs on the calendar and a pair of new Blu-ray film offerings.

The selections breakdown into three groups — four new additions to the company’s popular “Anniversary Edition” line of retrospective film releases, four ten-film, three-disc DVD selections and a pair of six-film collections spread over two DVD discs.

So let’s tackle them in that order.   The new “Anniversary Edition” releases are: 25th Anniversary Edition: Postcards from the Edge (directed by Mike Nichols and based on Carrie Fisher’s tell-all book … starring Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep), 25th Anniversary Edition: Spaced Invaders (which will be available as both DVD and Blu-ray product offerings — director Patrick Read Johnson’s inspired tale of Martians landing on the very day that Orson Welles did his famous “War of the Worlds” broadcast), 60th Anniversary Edition: Creature with the Atom Brain (director Edward L. Cahn teams with the legendary Curt Siodmak for this summer of 1955 sci-fi gem starring Richard Denning and Angela Stevens) and 80th Anniversary Edition: Crime and Punishment (director Josef von Sternberg’s 1935 film adaptation of the Dostoevsky novel and starring Peter Lorre with Marian Marsh and Edward Arnold).

The SRP for each of the “Anniversary Edition” film releases on DVD is just $9.98, with 25th Anniversary Edition: Spaced Invaders on Blu-ray coming in at $14.98.

As mentioned, there are four three-disc, ten-film collections (priced at $14.98 each) slated for delivery to fans and collectors (and the curious) on Sept. 15.

Attack of the Killer B's features a nifty collection of sci-fi films from mainly the 1950s and 60s that were produced, often quite inventively, on a shoestring budget.   Classics one and all — we begin in chronological theatrical release order with filmmaker Dan Milner’s Christmas of 1955 box office hit, The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (Kent Taylor and Cathy Downs star).

There are five from 1959 — the Baby Boomers were in their early teens and hot for movies of this sort and filmmakers scrambled to deliver them in droves.  From the summer of that year we have writer/director Tom Graeff’s ultra-low budget, but very entertaining, Teenagers from Outer Space, plus writer/director Ray Kellogg’s drive-in double bill of The Giant Gila Monster (a little cheezy) and The Killer Shrews (very effective thriller).   

The Halloween season of that year saw the Roger Corman-produced delight, Attack of the Giant Leeches, starring Yvette Vickers and Ken Clark and the Roger Corman-directed classic, The Wasp Woman, starring Susan Cabot (Sorority Girl, Machine Gun Kelly, etc.) as the youth-seeking businesswoman who overdoses on an experimental drug with stinging results!

Rounding out this collection are: The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962), Eegah! (1962, with Richard Kiel as the run-amok caveman), Night Fright (1967, starring John Agar) and Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973).

The ten-film, three-disc set titled Directors Collection, features ten different films from ten different film directors.   These are: John Ford directing Judge Priest (1934, starring Will Rogers); Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe (1941, Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck); Orson Welles’ 1946 film noir, The Stranger (Welles co-stars with Loretta Young and Edward G. Robinson); John Huston assembles an all-star cast that includes Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Peter Lorre, Robert Morley and Gina Lollobrigida for the 1953 caper comedy, Beat the Devil; Francis Ford Coppola teamed with producer Roger Corman for the 1963 release of Dementia 13, and Corman also produced Peter Bogdanovich’s 1968 reworking of Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (which borrowed footage from an earlier Russian sci-film), Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (starring Mamie Van Doren).

Rounding out this collection are: Richard Donner’s 1971 romantic comedy, Lola, teaming Charles Bronson with Susan George; Paul Verhoeven’s Katie’s Passion (aka: Katie Tippel) and filmmaker Stephen Frears’ 1983 MOW, Saigon: Year of the Cat, starring Judi Dench and Frederic Forrest.

Next up is First Features Collection, which showcases the early talents of ten acclaimed movie stars.   On the female front we have: Marilyn Monroe is featured in writer/director Arthur Pierson’s 1951 release of Home Town Story; Bette Davis is teamed with Pat O’Brien in 1932 film release of Hell’s House; Ava Gardner stars with George Raft in 1946 film noir, Whistle Stop, and Michelle Pfeiffer is teamed with Lindsay Wagner, Jameson Parker and Dabney Coleman in soapish 1981 MOW, Callie & Son.

Leading men featured in the First Features Collection are: Bing Crosby shines briefly (singing “When the Folks High Up Do the Mean Low-Down”) in the 1930 film release of Reaching for the Moon, which teamed Douglas Fairbanks with Bebe Daniels; Clark Gable stars opposite William Boyd (aka: Hopalong Cassidy) and Helen Twelvetrees in the 1931 Western, The Painted Desert (a rare early filmed-on-location “talkie” production); Tommy Lee Jones stars in the 1975 Canadian film release of Eliza's Horoscope (filming actually took place in 1970); Dennis Quaid is featured in the 1978 college-themed comedy, The Seniors;  Keanu Reeves co-stars with Olivia d'Abo in 1986 direct-to-video release of Dream to Believe (aka: Flying) and Jeff “The Dude” Bridges is on view in actor-turned-director Burgess Meredith 1970 production of The Yin and the Yang of Mr. Go (but not released theatrically until 1973 — after Bridges was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in The Last Picture Show).

The final ten-film collection, Man with a Plan Collection, is all-action and features such High Risk — which counts among its cast members James Brolin, Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Quinn, Bruce Davison, James Coburn, Cleavon Little and Lindsay Wagner — director Ralph Nelson’s hard-to-find 1976 sci-fi thriller teaming Rock Hudson with Barbara Carrera, Embryo, and director Lewis Allen’s 1954 assassin drama, Suddenly, starring Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden.

enjoyments as director Stewart Raffill’s all-star film release of

The two six-film collections are both actor-inspired.  The first, Boris Karloff Collection, packs together The Black Room (1935, with Marian Marsh), The Man They Could Not Hang (1939, Karloff is brought back from the dead!), The Man With Nine Lives (1940), Before I Hang (1940, with Evelyn Keyes and Bruce Bennett), The Devil Commands (1941) and the 1942 comedy, The Boogie Man Will Get You (co-stars Peter Lorre).

It’s Western action with the DVD release of Randolph Scott Round-Up.   The six films included here are: A Lawless Street, The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station.

And last, but not least, is the stand-alone Blu-ray release on Sept. 15 of director Christopher Guest’s 1989 romantic comedy, The Big Picture, starring Kevin Bacon as a wunderkind filmmaker.

Paramount Home Media Distribution Selects Sept. 15 For The DVD Release Of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The Final Season

All good things must come to an end … sadly.    

One of the best crime series on TV, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, closes up shop on Sept. 15 when Paramount Home Media Distribution sends home the five-disc DVD set of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: The Final Season.

A decade and a half of Las Vegas crime solving winds to a close with 18 new cases to solve, including an on-going investigation involving the Gig Harbor Killer.   

Some interesting guest stars take a turn with the Las Vegas crime-stoppers that include the likes of Eric Roberts and Patricia Arquette, who stars in the new CSI spin-off, CSI: Cyber.

Bonus goodies for fans to savor include deleted scenes and a half-dozen featurettes — “Cool Cars,” “Girls Gone Gadgets,” “Following The Evidence,” “Killer Crime Scenes,” “All Dolled Up” and “That's All, Stokes.”

Speaking of Patricia Arquette, how convenient is it that Paramount Home Media has also selected Sept. 15 as the DVD debut date for CSI: Cyber: The First Season, the four-disc, 13-episode spin-off of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.  

In this mid-season launch (hence only 13 episodes), Arquette follows in the footsteps of CSI: Miami (David Caruso) and CSI: NY (Gary Sinise), but as FBI Special Agent Avery Ryan she is not locked down to a specific city (her character was introduced in the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode “Kitty” during the shows 2013/2014 season).  Instead, her CSI activities are internet in nature.

Bonus goodies for CSI: Cyber: The First Season include the aforementioned “Kitty” episode, deleted scenes, a gag reel and five featurettes — “It Can Happen To You,” “Welcome to CTOC,” “Encoding CSI: Cyber,” “CGI – Cyber” and “Tech Tools of the Trade.”

Also announced this week is a Blu-ray edition of NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service - The Complete 12th Season, which will street on Sept. 15 (the DVD SKU will be retail-ready on Aug. 18).

Wild Eye Releasing Tags Sept. 29 For Writer/Director Brett Piper’s Queen Crab

One of the most eagerly anticipated independently produced genre releases of 2015 has been given a post-Labor Day street date by Wild Eye Releasing.  This baby will be playing in the major leagues — right there with the Hollywood studios and their big CGI infused summer hits that will dominate the retail landscape after the end-of-summer Labor Day weekend.

So here we go, Sept. 29 will be the DVD debut date for writer/director Brett Piper’s “old school” sci-fi gem, Queen Crab!   With affectionate nods to Roger Corman (1957, Attack of the Crab Monsters) and stop-motion pioneers Willis O’Brien (1933, King Kong) and Ray Harryhausen (20 Million Miles to Earth, It Came From Beneath The Sea, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and many more) comes this old school stop-motion cinematic treat.  

The script is ripped from the pages of the golden era of sci-fi films — the late 1950s and early 1960s — and “old school” filming techniques (three painstaking years in the making) have been employed to serve up this delicious tale (we are talking about crabs you know) of a giant crab that rises from murky waters to go on a rampage of destruction and human carnage.   There could be a new king of the food chain if this scurrying beast can’t be stopped before her offspring are hatched and they overwhelm the local population (filmed on location in and around Ansonia in rural north-central Pennsylvania).

Queen Crab is very cool and a thrill to watch at what can be accomplished with stop-motion on a limited budget.  Bonus features include commentary from filmmaker Brett Piper (They Bite, Screaming Dead, Arachnia, etc.), a blooper reel and a pair of featurettes — “Behind the Scenes” and “Special Effects” — and a sneak peak at Piper’s next film project, Triclops.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Unearths Auteur Filmmaker Samuel Fuller's Run Of The Arrow For DVD Release On July 7

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment continues to surprise with the release of rare film vault treasures.   Last week it was news for Bob Hope (A Global Affair), the week before it was Lucille Ball (Five Came Back) and this week it is the July 7 DVD debut of auteur filmmaker Samuel Fuller’s 1957 Western masterpiece, Run of the Arrow.

Filmed in Technicolor and shot on location in the St. George area of Utah, Run of the Arrow stars Rod Steiger as O'Meara, an ex-Confederate soldier who becomes completely alienated from not only society in general, but his own family.   His mother even smacks him a good one for showing disrespect for the assassination of president Lincoln.

His solution is to renounce the United States and head west to Sioux territory.   His first encounter does not go well and he must survive a life or death test (the title of film), which he does — otherwise Run of the Arrow would have been a rather short film.  

  

Steiger was just coming into his own as an actor with high profile roles in both On the Waterfront (his first Oscar nomination) and Oklahoma, so working with Fuller (who wrote, directed and produced) was a big deal.   This is not a “routine” Western from the period, but a complex narrative that deals with blind hatred, identity (post-Korean War disillusionment) and religion.

These subjects aside, the film also works as an action film, with Steiger falling in love with Yellow Moccasin (Sara Montiel — Vera Cruz, Serenade, etc.), joining the tribe — yes, that’s Charles Bronson as Blue Buffalo — and then, when all hell breaks loose, he is nearly crippled with guilt over divided loyalties.

The film is exceptionally brutal (for the period) — a precursor to the Wild Bunch — with Ralph Meeker’s character literally skinned alive and noted for Fuller’s inventive use of “blood packs” for the first time in a film.

Also making its DVD debut on July 7 is Lawman: The Complete First Season (a five-disc collection), featuring all 39 episodes from the 1958/1959 broadcast season.  

Tough guy John Russell (Fair Wind to Java, The Last Command, Rio Bravo) stars as    His young deputy is played by Peter Brown (Merrill's Marauders, Ride the Wild Surf, Kitten with a Whip, etc.) and Peggy Castle (Miracle in the Rain, Wagons West) as saloon keeper Lily Merrill — after several attempts that failed miserably to cast a female lead (they all come and go during this first season) — settled in as Troop’s love-interest.

Marshall Dan Troop, a laconic, no-nonsense lawman who takes on the vacancy in Laramie, Wyoming when the previous Marshall is murdered.

First season guest stars include Edd Byrnes, Martin Landau, Mike Connors, Dorothy Provine and a young Louise Fletcher.

Also added to the release calendar this week by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment are both DVD and Blu-ray collections of The Leftovers: The Complete First Season.  The street date selected for the debut of this “mystery” series (two percent of the world’s population has simply vanished) is Oct. 6.

Bonus features include commentary for the both the pilot episode and the first-season finale, plus three production featurettes — “I Remember: A Season One Conversation with Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta,” “Secrets of the Guilty Remnant” and “Beyond the Book: A Look Ahead at Season 2.”

Arrow Video Selects Sept. 22 For The Release Of Director Carlo Lizzani’s 1967 Spaghetti Western Requiescant As A Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack

Arrow Video, with sales and distribution expertise provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has selected Sept. 22 for the Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack release of director Carlo Lizzani’s 1967 Spaghetti Western, Requiescant (aka: Kill and Pray!).

This newly restored edition from the original film negative features both the original Italian language track (with newly translated English subtitles) and an English-language dubbed track (also with English subtitles).

Lou Castel (Beware of a Holy Whore, The American Friend, etc.) stars as the title character Requiescant, an orphan raised by a religion man to follow in his footsteps as a preacher.    

All goes as planned until the day that the hero of this tale crosses paths with George Ferguson (played Mark Damon) — a deviant wretch — and the Bible is set aside in favor of the gun (Romans 12:19 - revenge is mine, sayeth the Lord).

Bonus Materials include a newly prepared video session with the film’s star, Lou Castel, and an archival session with the film’s director, Carlo Lizzani.

Cinema Guild To Release Zeitgeist Films 112 Weddings On DVD On July 14

What happens when that guy who you hired to be the videographer at your wedding shows up at your door years later and wants to shoot some additional footage.  You know, “how are things going?” 

That’s the subject of award-winning documentary filmmaker Doug Block’s 112 Weddings, which will be making its DVD bow on July 14 from Zeitgeist Films, with sales and distribution support provided by Cinema Guild.

Doug Block, to augment his income while producing and directing documentaries (The Children Next Door, 51 Birch Street, The Kids Grow Up, etc.), would hire himself out as a wedding videographer.   He was the invisible guy with the video camera at scores of weddings over the years … the finished work product was sort of a cinema verite mini-documentary of the events of that glorious day.

The gist of 112 Weddings is both inspired, and perhaps a little creepy, but the end result is riveting — it is sort of attention-grabber, like that a multi-car wreck on the freeway that has traffic backed up for miles in both directions.   You just have to slowdown and a take a look!

Block tracked down a number of the couples from the wedding videos that he shot and asked them — on camera — how things were going.   This new footage is juxtaposed with the original wedding day footage.   Even though they all started off on the same path — literally, down the aisle — their destinations have been wildly different.   Can you tell from the wedding videos which couples will make their marriages work … and which will not make the effort?  

Bonus features include a featurette titled “Heather & Sam Revisited” and a Q&A session with the director and some of the wedding couples at the HBO premiere party.

20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment's Empire To DVD And Blu-ray On Sept. 15

20^th Century-Fox Home Entertainment has targeted Sept. 15 as the release for both DVD and Blu-ray editions of the surprise ratings-hit dramatic TV series, Empire: The Complete First Season (viewership nearly doubled from the launch in early January to its season-ender in mid-March).

Oscar-nominee Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow) stars as Lucious Lyon, the head of a hip-hop music company — Empire Entertainment — who gets some very bad medical news and must make some harsh decisions as to who will take control upon his demise … internecine fighting and murder follow.

Bonus goodies include uncut music videos, pilot episode commentary and a pair of featurettes.