DVD & Blu-Ray Release Report: 2020-12-20

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

New DVD • Blu-ray • 4K Ultra HD Additions For The Period Ending December 11, 2020

New DVD Additions

Bayview Entertainment

02/16/21 — Sets Final Payoff (Greek), HNN Presents: Bad Land, Man in the Top Hat (Italian), Manhattan Odyssey (Croatian) and Nuns: An Italian Horror Story (Italian)

Cinedigm Entertainment

12/15/20 — Released The Call (ARR of 74 days; box office: $516,521)

Criterion Collection

03/09/21 — Sets Touki Bouki (Wolof)

03/16/21 — Sets Céline and Julie Go Boating (French) (4 disc set)

03/30/21 — Sets Defending Your Life and Secrets and Lies

Giant Interactive (MOD)

12/08/20 — Released My Darling Vivian and She Dies Tomorrow (ARR of 130 days; box office: $397,068)

Gravitas Ventures (MOD)

12/15/20 — Released Derek's Dead, Don't Look Back, Hello World and Here on Out

Hallmark Channel

12/15/20 — Released Hallmark Collection: Double Feature (2 film set: One Winter Weekend, One Winter Proposal)

Image Entertainment

12/08/20 — Released Secrets She Keeps (2 disc set)

12/15/20 — Released Beach House, Dark and the Wicked (ARR of 39 days; box office: $110,618) and Opening Act

Kino Lorber

12/08/20 — Released My Science Project

12/15/20 — Released 300 Year Weekend, Bodies, Rest & Motion, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Ladybug Ladybug and Puzzle of a Downfall Child

PBS Direct

12/08/20 — Released Garfield Cartoon World (2 film set: Garfield's Film Fest, Garfield Gets Real), Keith Haring: Street Art Boy, NOVA: Secret Mind of Slime and Secrets of Royal Travel

12/15/20 — Released Queen and the Coup and Roadkill (2 disc set)

PCN Productions (MOD)

12/15/20 — Released Pennsylvania's Neighborhoods: Hershey - History and Culture, Volume 1, Pennsylvania's Neighborhoods: Hershey - History and Culture, Volume 2, Pennsylvania's Neighborhoods: Hershey - Politics and Policy and Pennsylvania's Neighborhoods: Hershey – Sports

Shout! Factory

12/15/20 — Released From Up on Poppy Hill (Japanese)

Smart Mark Video (MOD)

12/15/20 — Released Black Label Pro: Threat Level Noon - Indianapolis, IN, Black Label Pro: Turbo Graps 16, Part 1 - Crown Point, IN, Black Label Pro: Turbo Graps 16, Part 2 - Crown Point, IN and Insane Championship Wrestling: No Holds Barred - Pit Fighter X3 - Millville, NJ

Sony Pictures Home Ent.

01/19/21 — Sets The Climb (ARR of 67 days; box office: $232,255)

Stonecutter Media, Ltd. (MOD)

12/08/20 — Released 5th Borough and Shooting Heroin

12/15/20 — Released Couples of Wife Carrying

TLA Releasing

12/08/20 — Released No Hard Feelings (German)

The High School Sports Network (MOD)

12/15/20 — Released 2020 AAA 2A Football Championship: Des Arc vs Fordyce - Little Rock, AR, 2020 AAA 5A Football Championship: Little Rock vs PA - Little Rock, AR, 2020 AIA 2A Football Championships Finals: SCVU vs Benson - Phoenix, AZ, 2020 AIA 3A Football Championships Finals: Snowflake vs Yuma Catholic - Phoenix, AZ, 2020 AIA 6A Football Championships Finals: Chaparral vs Highland - Phoenix, AZ, 2020 AIA Open Football Championships Finals: Hamilton vs Chandler - Phoenix, AZ, 2020 DIAA Div 1 Field Hockey Championship: Polytech vs Cape Henlopen - Dover, DE, 2020 DIAA Div 2 Boys Soccer Championship: Newark Charter vs Indian River - Dover, DE, 2020 DIAA Div 2 Field Hockey Championship: Caravel Academy vs Delmar - Dover, DE, 2020 DIAA Volleyball Championship: Padua Academy vs St. Mark's - Wilmington, DE, 2020 OSSAA Class 4A Football Championship: Clinton vs Wagoner - Edmond, OK, 2020 OSSAA Class 5A Football Championship: Bishop McGuinness vs Carl Albert - Edmond, OK, 2020 OSSAA Class C Football Championship: Tyrone vs Timberlake - Alva, OK and 2020 SCHSL 2A Football Championship: Abbeville vs Marion - Columbia, SC

Universal Pictures Home Ent.

12/22/20 — Sets War With Grandpa (ARR of 74 days; box office: $17,621,195)

12/29/20 — Sets Honest Thief (ARR of 74 days; box office: $13,824,120)

Vision Films (MOD)

12/01/20 — Released Break Even

12/08/20 — Released Acquainted and Ventures: Stars on Guitars

Vision Video

12/08/20 — Released Encounter: Season One and Sons of Thunder: Season One

New Blu-ray Additions

AGFA

01/26/21 — Sets Curious Dr. Humpp

Aniplex of America

12/15/20 — Released Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files (3 disc set)

Arrow Video

02/23/21 — Sets Shogun's Joy of Torture (Japanese)

Artsploitation

12/15/20 — Released Beast Clawing at Straws (Korean)

Blue Underground

12/15/20 — Released Maniac: 4K Restoration Edition (2 disc set)

Cauldron Films

12/15/20 — Released American Rickshaw

Cinedigm Entertainment

12/15/20 — Released Battle of the Bulge: Winter War, The Call and NHL: 2020 Stanley Cup Champions - Tampa Bay Lightning

Criterion Collection

03/09/21 — Sets Touki Bouki (Wolof)

03/16/21 — Sets Céline and Julie Go Boating (French) (2 disc set)

03/23/21 — Sets World of Wong Kar Wai (7 film set: As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, 2046) (Cantonese) (7 Disc set)

03/30/21 — Sets Defending Your Life and Secrets and Lies

Funimation

12/15/20 — Released Ace Attorney, Season 2 (4 disc set) and Paranoia Agent (2 disc set) (with Digital Copy)

Gravitas Ventures (MOD)

12/15/20 — Released Derek's Dead, Don't Look Back, Hello World, Here on Out and Sidemen: Long Road to Glory

Ignited Hashtag (MOD)

12/15/20 — Released World Cup Heist

Image Entertainment

12/15/20 — Released Beach House, Dark and the Wicked and Opening Act

Indie Rights, Inc. (MOD)

12/15/20 — Released There She Is

Kino Lorber

12/15/20 — Released 12Bodies, Rest & Motion, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Ladybug Ladybug, Marseille: The Complete Series (4 disc set) and Puzzle of a Downfall Child

Naxos

12/15/20 — Released Agents are Forever

Olive Films

12/15/20 — Released Nelson Algren Live

PCN Productions (MOD)

Paramount Home Media

02/09/20 — Sets Love Story

Platform Films (MOD)

12/15/20 — Released Burbiszki: An Ode to Nature and Wapping: The Workers Story

Quiver Films

12/15/20 — Released Chick Fight

Relight Films (MOD)

12/15/20 — Released Art of the Prank

Samuel Goldwyn Films

12/15/20 — Released Fisherman's Friends and Waiting for the Barbarians

Sentai Filmworks

12/15/20 — Released Ahiru No Sora: Collection One (4 disc set) and Chidori RSC (2 disc set)

Shout! Factory

12/15/20 — Released Castle in the Sky (Japanese) (Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack), From Up on Poppy Hill (Japanese) (Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack) and Spirited Away (Japanese) (Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack)

Smart Mark Video (MOD)

Sony Pictures Home Ent.

01/19/21 — Sets The Climb

Stonecutter Media, Ltd. (MOD)

12/08/20 — Released Shooting Heroin

Trinity Creative

12/15/20 — Released Audrey

Universal Pictures Home Ent.

12/15/20 — Released Expanse: Season Four (3 disc set)

12/22/20 — Sets War With Grandpa (Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack) (with Digital Copy)

12/29/20 — Sets Honest Thief (Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack) (with Digital Copy)

Vinegar Syndrome

01/26/21— Sets Fade to Black

Warner Bros. Home Ent. (MOD)

01/05/21— Sets Man Who Would be King

01/26/21— Sets After the Thin Man, Good News, Pajama Game and Room For One More

New 4K Ultra HD Additions

Well Go U.S.A.

12/15/20 — Released Ip Man: The Complete Collection (4 film set: Ip Man, Ip Man 2, Ip Man 3, Ip Man: The Finale) (Cantonese) (4 4K Ultra HD/4 Blu-ray Combo Pack)

Love Story Joins "Paramount Presents" Blu-ray Line Of Products With New 4K Restoration On Feb. 09

When you are the head of a studio, what is a cool “gift” that you can buy your girlfriend? In the case of the legendary Robert Evans, — as head of production for Paramount Pictures — he went out and acquired Erich Segal’s script, Love Story, and gave his girlfriend the starring role of Jenny. Of course, that would be Ali MacGraw … they got married just before production began.

Paramount Home Media announced this past week that Love Story is getting a new 4K film restoration and will be joining the studio’s popular “Paramount Presents” line of Blu-ray products on Feb. 09. Just in time for Valentine’s Day!

With the script in hand and MacGraw in place, Evans needed an Oliver Barrett, IV and the likes of Jon Voight, Christopher Walken, Michael York and Beau Bridges were all considered, but we all know that it would end up being Ryan O’Neal.

One of the oddities about the film is that almost a year before Love Story was in production, scriptwriter Erich Segal took his script and converted it into book form and also serialized it for the “Ladies Home Journal.” One month before the film opened, his novel went into paperback circulation and sold nearly five million copies … it is no wonder that it was such a theatrical hit when it opened during the Christmas holiday period in 1970.

Love Story would be nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Arthur Hiller, his only nomination … other films he directed: The Out of Towners, The Hospital, Silver Streak, Tobruk, etc.), Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor (John Marley) and Erich Segal got a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination … ironically, all six of these individuals were nominated for Love Story, one of the post profitable films ever produced, but never received another Oscar nomination for anything else they either directed or acted in.

As to bonus goodies, there is commentary with director Arthur Hiller, an introduction by Ben Mankiewicz, the featurette titled “Love Story: A Classic Remembered” and the newly prepared feature titled “Filmmaker Focus with Film Historian Leonard Maltin.”

MVD Entertainment Groups Selects Feb. 09 For The DVD Debut Of Margaret Atwood: A Word After A Word After A Word Is Power

MVD Entertainment Group has tabbed Feb. 09 for DVD rollout of documentary filmmakers Nancy Lang and Peter Raymond’s Margaret Atwood: A Word After a Word After a Word is Power.

The life and literary works of prolific Canadian author and academic Margaret Atwood is the focus of this arthouse documentary, which had its debut at Canada’s TIFF BELL Light Box in Toronto in November of 2019 and then proceeded to have selected screening throughout Canada during the balance of 2019 and early 2020.

With the exception of the single domestic showcase screening at the 27^th Annual SLO Film Fest in March of this year (yes, March, we all know what that means), the film remains virtually unseen in the United States in theatrical and arthouse venues.

An active writer since the 1960s (now 81 years-of-age and still hard at it), Atwood gained her greatest literary achievement in 1985 with the award-winning publication of The Handmaid's Tale, a visionary work that was converted into the Emmy-winning series by Bruce Miller in 2017.

Land and Raymond have assembled family and colleagues for their look at Atwood’s career, with Atwood also participating in the video sessions. With the Covid-19 lingering on, the only chance for fans of the author to catch this insightful (a year-long filming schedule) look at her writing and personal life could very well come down to MVD Entertainment Group’s Feb. 09 DVD release … Margaret Atwood: A Word after a Word after a Word is Power, look for it.

Vinegar Syndrome's New 4K Restoration Of Director Vernon Zimmerman's Fade To Black Heads To Blu-ray On Jan. 26

Vinegar Syndrome looks to Jan. 26 for the Blu-ray release of a new 4K restoration (from the original 35mm negative elements) of director Vernon Zimmerman’s 1980 surprise indie horror hit, Fade to Black.

This homage to all-things movies, from theatres and exhibition, to the classics and even to where all of the 35mm prints are stored (racks and racks and racks of film cans waiting to be shipped off to cinemas across the land) stars Dennis Christopher, who had scored in both California Dreaming and Breaking Away in 1979, as Eric Binford, a young man obsessed with movies. He absolutely carries it off in both his assured knowledge of the classics and his ability to mimic some of the greats.

Sadly, Eric is living with his shrew of an aunt, Stella (Eve Brent, aka: Jean Lewis — Female Jungle, Forty Guns, Stakeout!, The Todd Killings, etc.), who picks a particularly bad day to ruin his screening of Kiss of Death — Eric had been accidently stood up for a movie night with “Marilyn Monroe” (Linda Kerridge — Down Twisted, Alien from L.A., Mixed Blood) and was not in the mood for Stella to be harping at him. Down the stairs she goes.

Poor Stella. And then an accident follows — all related to Dracula — and once the body count reaches two, well, hell … Eric just snaps, but, to his credit, when he goes in for the kill he is always “in character.”

Fade to Black is one of those guilty pleasures that works and works and works … and get better over time!!

Bonus features include commentary from Dennis Christopher and two additional commentary options, one featuring “The Hysteria Continues!” and the other with film historians Amana Reyes and Bill Ackerman.

Bayview Entertainment Sets The DVD Debut Of Writer/Director Giovanni Aloisio's Nuns: An Italian Horror Story For Feb. 16

There is the Italian film craft of giallo, tales of mysteries, murder and more, unique to Italian Cinema.

And of course, an entire compendium of slasher and horror classics from such Italian filmmaking legends as Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Bruno Mattei and more … you could literally spend weeks, if not months, viewing such treasures as Demons (Argento), Inferno (again, Argento), The Beyond (Fulci), The Whip and the Body (Bava), Blood and Black Lace (also Bava), Black Sunday (directed by Bava with Barbara Steele), and more, a whole lot more.

And, genre fans have their unique collections of film delights that are categorized as Nunsploitation. Horror, sexual repression, strange goings on, naked nuns, violence … Italian filmmaker were keen on this as well with such gems as Killer Nun, Behind Convent Walls, The Other Hell and so on.

Word arrived this week from Bayview Entertainment that Feb. 16 has been carved-out as the DVD debut date for an Italian import that combines all three of these favorite Italian filmmaking disciplines, giallo, slasher/horror and Nunsploitation. This film trifecta would be none other than writer/director Giovanni Aloisio’s Nuns: An Italian Horror Story.

Sister Virginia (Caterina Orlando), Sister Letizia (Celeste Francavilla) and Sister Gratia (Fabiana Cianci) live in a long-forgotten convent in Puglia, with a young caretaker by the name of Bruno (Mattia Galantino), who tends to the place … it is a full-time job (and more). To bring in a little extra income, they rent out the guesthouse to travelers. Everything seems a little odd, but nothing that would jump out at you.

One day this all changes, when a deaf-mute by the name of Helena arrives (Agata Paradiso), which is like catnip for the lonely Bruno. In no time the two are at it sexually (hello, giallo, slasher/horror, Nunsploitation … of course there is going to be nudity and sexual encounters), but the nuns have brought Helena to the convent to serve their own purposes, which will be revealed as the blood begins to flow!!

For genre fans the arrival of writer/director Giovanni Aloisio’s Nuns: An Italian Horror Story on DVD on Feb. 16 from Bayview Entertainment can’t come soon enough!!

Nuns: An Italian Horror Story is presented in Italian with English subtitles.

Director Emilio Vieyra's The Curious Dr. Humpp Arrives On Blu-ray From AGFA On Jan. 26

AGFA (American Genre Film Archive) will be teaming up with Something Weird for the release of a newly-minted Blu-ray edition of Argentinian filmmaker Emilio Vieyra’s The Curious Dr. Humpp on Jan. 26.

This is a new 2K restoration from the film’s 35mm internegative.

The film is odd and its distribution history is a little sketchy. Back in the early 1960s in Argentina, Emilio Vieyra started grinding out films after spending much of the 1950s acting in locally-produced films. He had some success with Stay Tuned for Terror in 1965 and then came his 1966 film, Blood of the Virgins, which raised his visibility.

Enter La Venganza del Sexo, which seems to have been picked and dubbed for domestic theatrical distribution by a fly-by-night indie called Forbes-Unistar (a search of the “Motion Picture Almanac” for the period comes up empty) and then later J.E.R. Pictures picked up the film, which had been titled for domestic consumption as The Curious Dr. Humpp.

The main character, Dr. Humpp, is played by Aldo Barbero, who had done a little television work before making his film debut here. He would team up with the prolific Vieyra again in 1971 for The Naked Beast … eventually Barbero would become a regular in countless Argentine Telenovelas.

The movie, by any standards, had a rather sketchy distribution history (we can’t even confirm that it was actually released theatrically, despite having the two aforementioned distribution companies). In the end, it doesn’t matter. Director Emilio Vieyra, actor Aldo Barbero and their film collaboration, The Curious Dr. Humpp, came to light in 1993 and found a home on VHS courtesy of Something Weird … discovered, savored … a cinematic legend was born.

The story, which seems drug-induced, or at least heavily influenced by drugs, has Dr. Humpp and his minions (grotesque creatures) capturing sexually active couples so that their “sex forces” can be drained in order to keep the evil doctor forever young. There’s more, but it really has to be seen to be fully appreciated. Not always coherent, but definitely a film you will remember.

As to bonus treats, AGFA and Something Weird have both the dubbed version, The Curious Dr. Humpp, and for the first time, the original Spanish-language presentation of La Venganza del Sexo, which literally translates as “Revenge of Sex.”

Other bonus features include commentary from cult filmmaker Frank Henenlotter (Basket Case, Frankenhooker, Brain Damage).