Mill Creek Entertainment Expands Its January Of 2017 Blu-ray And DVD Release Slate

Mill Creek Entertainment “teased” its first home entertainment product offering for 2017 last week — and it was a pretty “big” tease — with the Jan. 3 DVD debut of the five-part look at the mysterious creatures known throughout the world by such names as Yeti, Sasquatch or just Bigfoot.   The release is titled Chasing Bigfoot: The Quest for Truth.

This week that early January “footprint” grew even bigger!   

Also hitting retail shelves on Jan. 3 is the restored Blu-ray presentation of filmmaker H.B. Halicki’s 1974 independently produced action blockbuster, Gone in 60 Seconds.

Henry Blight Halicki — aka “Toby” — saw what Tom Laughlin had accomplished by taking back control of Billy Jack after Warner Bros. had bungled the initial 1971 film release.  

As a result of Laughlin’s success, four-walling theatres (renting the theatre at a guaranteed price) became all the rage in the early 1970s and H.B. Halicki was right there in the vanguard with Gone in 60 Seconds as writer, director, producer, star and distributor!   He turned a reportedly $150,000 investment into $40 million in box office receipts!

While he is the human star of the film — even doing his own stunts — the real star of Gone in 60 Seconds is the elusive “Eleanor,” a 1973 Ford Mustang, which is part of a 48-car shopping list that Maindrian Pace (Halicki) and his crew must steal in just five days.   

The climax of the film, which is still one of the best stunt sequences ever put to film, is a 30 minute-plus chase sequence that required the destruction of close to 100 automobiles … and our anti-hero got away clean (cleverly so, we might add)!  

Mill Creek Entertainment will be releasing this Blu-ray action gem with a SRP of just $9.98!   Bonus goodies include footage of Eleanor going through her paces and video sessions with drivers Parnelli Jones and J.C. Agajanian Jr. (who both had small roles in the film) as well Lee Iacocca and Bobby Ore.

The following week, Jan. 10, Mill Creek is back with the Blu-ray debut of actor-turned-director Paul Michael Glaser’s 1986 film release of Band of the Hand.   

Five teenage thugs are given a second chance by agreeing to participate in a “unique” survivalist program.   They are turned over to “Indian Joe” (Stephen Lang), a Vietnam vet who runs an Everglades program that makes the desperate group work together to    

survive!

In the process they become a fighting machine and decide to clean up the streets that made them the young criminals that they had become … of course when drug lord “Cream” (played by Laurence Fishburne) learns of this it is all out war!

Also heading home on Jan. 10 from Mill Creek Entertainment are three priced-to-own DVD film collections.

The first of these is 80's Beat, a double disc collection featuring eight films showcasing the talents of the hottest new stars from the 1980s … the SRP is just $14.98.

Included in the mix are True Believers (Robert Downey Jr.), The New Kids (James Spader), Little Nikita (River Phoenix), The Legend of Billie Jean (Helen Slater and Christian Slater), Private Resort (Johnny Depp), Like Father Like Son (Sean Austin, Kirk Cameron), Side Out (C. Thomas Howell) and Flatliners (starring everyone … Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt).

The next collection, priced at just $9.98, is the single-disc, four-film set titled Don't Forget About Me.   This includes The Freshman (1990, teaming Marlon Brando with Matthew Broderick), Immediate Family (1989, starring Glenn Close, James Woods and Mary Stuart Masterson), Fresh Horses (1988, stars Andrew McCarthy and Molly Ringwald) and No Small Affair (1984, finds Demi Moore teamed with Jon Cryer).

And last, but not least in this first wave of 2017 DVD and Blu-ray product offerings from Mill Creek Entertainment is the double-disc, 11-film collection titled Strange Things.   The SRP for this sci-fi and horror blend is just $14.98. 

On the sci-fi side of the ledger are Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, Krull, Slipstream and Alien Contamination.

For horror fans, Mill Creek has included Pulse, My Mom’s a Werewolf, The Hearse, Lurkers, Mutant, Death Warmed Up and Eternal Evil (aka: The Blue Man).