Mill Creek Entertainment announced this past week
its first wave of priced-to-collect DVD and Blu-ray product offerings for
delivery during the month of May.
Topping the list is the May 14 Blu-ray release of
director Irvin Kershner’s 1978 suspense thriller, Eyes of
Laura Mars.
Priced at just $14.98 (and that’s before discounts at retail), this giallo-inspired thriller was a full-two
years in the making and was Faye Dunaway’s first film after winning the Oscar
for Network
(also nominated for both Chinatown and Bonnie
and Clyde).
None other than John Carpenter started on the
screenplay in 1976, with Jon Peters acting as the producer — who had become a
wunderkind of sorts with his joint-production with then “girlfriend” Barbra
Streisand of A Star is Born. This too would be a star vehicle … it took
awhile from concept to screen, which included a director change, additional
screenwriters and a nearly two-month long filming shoot in New York City.
The film was also marked, during both the shooting
and film editing process with cloak and dagger type secrecy … Peters didn’t
want competitors to know what his film with superstar Faye Dunaway was
about. This ended up pushing the
theatrical date back from early summer of 1978 until August (about two months).
Dunaway was spot-on perfect as the world-famous
fashion photographer, Laura Mars, who is celebrating her latest triumph when
she has a vision that her editor (played by Meg Mundy) is about to be murdered. And then she is!! She has another vision, then one of the
gallery-owners (Rose Gregorio) being murdered … and she is, murdered.
You can’t keep “seeing” murders and then having them
actually happen without the police getting just a little bit curious. Enter Detective John Neville (played by a
relative newcomer by the name of Tommy Lee Jones … Coal
Miner’s Daughter would follow two years later).
There are plenty of suspects to be sure. A member of her crew (Brad Dourif), her
ex-husband (Raul Julia), her agent (Rene Auberjonois) — who wants her to keep
quiet about the visions — and maybe even Laura Mars herself!
Eyes of Laura Mars is a
terrific whodunit that will keep you guessing right up until the end … and with
such a terrific cast there are plenty of high-profile suspects to choose from.
Also getting a May 14 Blu-ray launch from Mill Creek
Entertainment is writer/director John Carpenter’s 2001 sci-fi chiller, Ghosts of
Mars.
In one of those oddities, Carpenter wrote the script
for the aforementioned Eyes of Laura Mars, which didn’t get released
theatrically until early August of 1978.
Just two month later came Halloween, so
1978 was a very good year for John Carpenter.
Ghosts of Mars,
starring Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge, Jason Statham, Pam Grier and others, was
savaged by the critics and was not all that successful when released
theatrically during the summer of 2011.
But a funny thing has happened in the years since it was first screened
… it has become something of a genre fan favorite. At just $14.98, Mill Creek Entertainment
will be pleasing many a fan come May 14.
Rounding out the selection of mid-May releases is
the Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack release of Luis Llosa’s Amazon thriller, Anaconda,
teaming Ghosts of Mars’ Ice
Cube with Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight and Eric Stoltz. The SRP for the Combo Pack is also just
$14.98.
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