Paramount Home Media First Quarter Of 2021 Title Blitz • Love And Monsters (Jan. 05) • Dreamland (Jan. 19) • Fatman (Jan.26) • Elizabethtown (Feb. 02) And More

Wow!   Paramount Home Media spent the Thanksgiving holiday period preparing a release blitz of new DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD titles for release during the first quarter of 2021.   There is a lot here, so let’s get to it.

In chronological order we kick off the New Year with a three-SKU helping of writer/director Michael Matthews’ post-apocalyptic thriller, Love and Monsters.   Lined-up for delivery on Jan. 05 are stand-alone Blu-ray and DVD editions, plus a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack presentation.

The ARR works out to 81 days and the limited (Covid-19) theatrical run generated one million dollars in ticket sales.

The good news, the killer asteroid heading for Earth is destroyed.   The bad news, a chemical rain of debris has turned common insects and such into giant monsters that have ravaged the planet.

An unlikely hero emerges in the form of Joel Dawson (Dylan O’Brien — The Maze Runner, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, Deepwater Horizon), who is not at his best when it comes to battling the new “top of the food chain” creatures that live on the surface.    Everyone he knows is gone, except for his high school heartthrob, Aimee (Jessica Henwick — Game of Thrones, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens), but she’s gone missing.

For seven long years he has lived with other survivors in an underground bunker, but now he’s learned that she too has survived in a similar safe place just 85 miles away.   With the creatures that roam the Earth, that distance might as well be to the moon and back … but there he goes, alone, in search of her!  He had better be a quick learner, or he is going to be lunch!!

Bonus features include deleted scenes and a pair of featurettes — “Bottom of the Food Chain: The Cast of Love and Monsters” and “It's a Monster's World: Creating a Post-Apocalyptic Landscape.”

Shifting to Jan. 19, we have director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s Dreamland, a Depression-era tale of a seductive bank robber on the run who finds an unlikely “partner” in helping her avoid the long arm of the law.   DVD and Blu-ray editions are planned for release.

It’s 1935, Texas, Eugene Evans (Finn Cole — as Michael in the Peaky Blinders cable series) is a teenager living with his mother, step-father and his younger step-sister.   No future, no nothing … he loses himself in those pulp fiction detective novels and the like, until one day he finds in the barn a bank robber on the run.

Not just any bank robber mind you, but the notorious Allison Wells (played by Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood’s Margot Robbie), whose latest job went south and five people were killed.   She’s wounded and all Eugene has to do is summon his step-dad, George (Travis Fimmel — Warcraft), who is a mean-as-a-snake deputy sheriff, and that will be it for Allison Wells.

Teenager, beautiful woman, the thrill of an actual gun moll in his barn … oh, how the mind wanders.   Save her, nurse her back to health and help her get away … that’s the plan!!

The following week, Jan. 26, Paramount Home Media has set for both DVD and Blu-ray one of the funniest “Christmas” films since Home Alone or Elf.   Seriously, the new “Cohn Brothers” have arrived in the form of Eshom and Ian Nelms, who, in any other year would have a breakout theatrical hit in Fatman, but 2020 is not the year for breakout theatrical hits.   Just getting a film into a few theatres these days is a struggle.

Fatman opened for a limited run just prior to Thanksgiving, pulled in about $250,000 in ticket sales and arrives in the home entertainment packaged media marketplace with an ARR of 74 days.   

In a “normal” year, Fatman would have played through the Christmas and the New Year holiday period and well into January, pulling in box office gold, but … well, no point in beating a dead horse.

Mel Gibson is Chris Cringle, who lives in North Peak, Alaska with his wife Ruth (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), who keeps him in check … Chris has a hair trigger and anger issues.   Do something even the least bit stupid and there’s a lump of coal for you … which is exactly what Billy Wenan (Chance Hurstfield — Good Boys) got for Christmas and he’s not happy with that.

Billy is a wealthy, spoiled teenage brat and his solution is to kill Santa Claus.   True, kill Santa Claus.   So, he hires a professional hitman, Jonathan Miller (aka: Skinny Man), played by Walton Goggins, who gets the chance to channel his best Boyd Crowder persona from Justified (perfect casting) and goes on the hunt for Santa.

What Billy and Miller don’t know is that Chris Cringle has a contract with the United States military to help with the manufacturing of hardware (a little extra cash to help make ends meet).   In addition to his elf crew, he has a squad of soldiers stationed at his place … quite an operation.

Circling-back to the Nelms Bros., Fatman is in the same league as the Cohn Bros. and Fargo.  Seriously!!   Funny and violent … Chris and his elves have met their match with Miller and anyone who gets in the middle of this battle can end up dead.   Fatman is indeed one to put on the MUST-SEE list, even if you’ve been naughty, come Jan. 26 … Blu-ray or DVD from Paramount Home Media.

Whoa, whoa … don’t be running off, there’s more!!

The first week of February has a five-film, first-time-on-Blu-ray promotion featuring Ladybugs, Lassie, Mouse Hunt, Small Soldiers and the remake of Yours, Mind and Ours.   Priced-to-own, all five.   Street date is Feb. 2.

Also arriving on Feb. 2 is the newest Paramount Presents Blu-ray release, which is Cameron Crowe’s 2005 romantic comedy, Elizabethtown, starring Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom.

This is a new 4K master of the film supervised by Cameron Crowe.   Bonus features include extended and deleted scenes, four featurettes — “On the Road to Elizabethtown,” “The Music of Elizabethtown,” “Meet the Crew” and “Training Wheels” — and the newly-prepared feature titled “Filmmaker Focus: Cameron Crowe on Elizabethtown.”

 

 

 

Icarus Films Tabs Jan. 19 For DVD Release Of Six In Paris

Icarus Films has a newly restored edition of the 1965 film anthology titled Six in Paris, which will be issued on DVD this coming Jan. 19.

Six filmmakers associated with the French New Wave joined forces with Les Filmes du Cyprès and Les Films du Losange in 1965 to deliver six short films, one each from the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer, Jean Douchet, Jean Rouch and Jean-Daniel Pollet, with the subject being the city of Paris.   The collection opened at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1965 and eventually made its way to these shores in 1969 for a limited arthouse run.

Included in the mix are Jean-Luc Godard’s Montparnasse-Levallois, a story of mixed-up letters — one a “dear john” and the other of ever-lasting-love — but which one did Monica (Joanna Shimkus — The Virgin and the Gypsy) send to Roger (Philippe Hiquilly) and which one did she send to Ivan (Serge Davri — as Plyne in Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player)?  Oh my!!  Oh mon!!

From Claude Chabrol we have La Muette, a jarring little film in which Chabrol and his then wife, Stéphane Audran (Les Bonnes Femmes, Bluebeard, Le Boucher, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, etc.) play husband and wife, who are always bickering about this or that.   Their son (Gilles Chusseau) grows weary of it and shoves wax in his ears … tragically something happens, but he cannot hear the cries for help.

Éric Rohmer’s contribution was the clever short film titled Place de l'Etoile, which features a haberdasher named Jean-Marc (Jean-Michel Rouzière — One Step to Eternity, Captain Blood), who believes that he may have accidently killed a man (Marcel Gallon) and goes into hiding … waiting, waiting, waiting … waiting for his crime to be discovered.   He may be waiting for a while.

Rounding out the collection are Jean Douchet’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Jean-Daniel Pollet’s Rue Saint-Denis and Jean Rouch’s Gare du Nord, which might well be the best of the group as Odile (Nadine Ballot) and Jean-Pierre (Barbet Schroeder, Oscar-nominated for his direction of Reversal of Fortune) begin an argument in their apartment, take it to the streets and it finishes at a fateful encounter with a complete stranger (Gilles Quéant) at a bridge.

Six in Paris is presented in French with English subtitles.

Also heading to market on Jan. 19 from Icarus Films is documentary filmmaker Stuart A. Staples’ Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F Percy Smith, a tribute to silent filmmaker and naturalist F. Percy Smith.  It will be available as both DVD and Blu-ray product offerings.

From the early days of silent films, Smith began making “Urban Sciences” short films about things he found in nature.   This was interrupted during World War I, where he served as a Royal Navy photographer, using his film skills to generate animated maps (likely a first) … his prolific film work continued into the early 1940s.  

F. Percy Smith is also credited as being one of the earliest filmmakers to experiment with time-lapse filming.   Staples has collected a number of his works and presents them here, not so much as short silent films, but as art … the art of filming in nature.   It is very effect.   Staples has created a score to go with the nearly 60-minutes worth of restored footage.

Bonus features, which are limited to the Blu-ray release, include four of F. Percy Smith’s short films.

 

 

 

Mill Creek Entertainment To Release The Net Double Feature On Blu-ray On Feb. 16

Sandra Bullock hit her stride with back-to-back-to-back theatrical hits in 1994 and 1995.   The first was director Jan de Bont’s summer of 1994 thriller, Speed, teaming her with Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper. 

The next arrived in the spring of 1995, which was filmmaker Jon Turteltaub’s romantic comedy, While You Were Sleeping, co-starring Bill Pullman, Jack Warden, Peter Gallagher and Peter Boyle.

The third release in this theatrical hit trifecta was the July of 1995 rollout of director Irwin Winkler’s prophetic sci-fi thriller, The Net, teaming her with Dennis Miller and Jeremy Northam.

Mill Creek Entertainment announced this past week that they have a double-feature all lined up for release on Blu-ray — priced to collect, of course — on Feb. 16.    It is titled The Net Double Feature and it features both The Net and director Charles Winker’s 2006 follow-up, The Net 2.0.

In a world where “Big Tech” can erase you, or at least make you disappear from their respective social media platforms, Sandra Bullock’s Angela Bennett character learned this hard lesson 25 years ago.   That’s right, headlines of today were written in a summer movie from 25 years ago.

Get on the wrong side of Cathedral Software and its “Gatekeeper” computer program and instead of being a well-regarded computer programmer, with a life, you are a wanted felon with a long criminal record; a murderer, who is not only being hunted by the law, but an assassin as well.   Click, click … and your life is in shambles.

Team with this future-seeing thriller is The Net 2.0, starring Nikki DeLoach as Hope Cassidy, a “computer systems analyst, who has taken a job with Suzer International in, of all place, Istanbul.   She arrives there and her life become an instant hell.  She’s a murderer, her identity has been stolen and … well, you get the picture, she’s a pawn; a patsy; expendable.   And you thought Facebook or Twitter were bad!!! 

The Net Double Feature, on Blu-ray from Mill Creek Entertainment on Feb. 16!!

 

 

 

Darkside Releasing Preps Blu-ray Debut Of Director Stefan Ruf's Motorpsycho Maniacs For Delivery On Jan. 05

Darkside Releasing, with sales and distribution support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has an action-packed thriller ready for genre fans to enjoy on Jan. 5.  

There’s a type of film lurking out there that is drawn from the days of double-features and theatres that ran from noon to midnight (and beyond), grinding out show after show.   In the day, it was common to buy a ticket, walk in midway through one of the films and stick around until you got back to where you started three or four hours earlier.   An afternoon well-spent!

The films we are talking that played in these venues were called “Grindhouse” movies and they usually featured action, women, more action, violence, usually a motorcycle or two, drug deals (gun deals) and, of course, women.   The women are not necessarily innocent young things (unless they are being terrorized), they can be as violent and crude as their male counterparts.  

Just keep the action moving … remember those glorious high school tales of drugs and sex with 30-year old teenagers, oh the glory days; the golden years!

Of late, filmmakers have taken to revisiting the 50s, 60s and 70s with throw-back “Grindhouse” films.   An homage to all-things relating to violence, women, sleaze … and so on. 

Filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez took their turns making Grindhouse throw-backs and now comes, from Darkside Releasing, writer/director Stefan Ruf’s Motorpsycho Maniacs (aka: Sex Terrorists on Wheels), which will be making its Blu-ray debut, as mentioned, on Jan. 5.

It has it all, a switch-hitting motorcycle chick who rides her bike in a cute little witch outfit (Jecca Bitner), a biker named Liver-Eating Larson (Gregory Kelly), a drug deal gone bad, violence, a biker chick out for revenge (Larissa Dali), lots of action, gratuitous violence, a little biker chick who wears war paint (Billionna Olivia Reyes) and an old guy with a coyote as a seeing-eye “helper.” 

Darkside Releasing’s Blu-ray of Motorpsycho Maniacs will be ready for genre fans to enjoy on Jan. 5.   Bonus features include commentary from filmmaker Stefan Ruf and video sessions with members of the cast and film crew.

 

 

 

Bayview Entertainment Sets Jan. 12 As The DVD Debut Date For Director Don Tjernagel's Red

Bayview Entertainment celebrates the New Year on Jan. 12 with the DVD debut of director Don Tjernagel’s horror tale, Red.

Back in 2018, Tjernagel got together with screenwriters Joey Loboda and Landon Sheetz and came up with a horror “concept” film idea that was shot in Iowa, with local talent — and yes, on a shoestring budget — and the result was a short film titled Red.  

In 2019, Tjernagel (Bros., Love Struck Sick, The Last Regret) entered his short film in a number of festivals … the buzz was great, it grabbed a few awards and it got everyone to thinking that there’s a feature film here based on the concept pushed forward in the short film.   

The story revolves around young woman who are driven mad by some mysterious force.   In a small town, everyone has an opinion … drugs, something sinister or, perhaps, it has something to do with a mysterious “red” creature that local famers and hunters have reported seeing in the wild.   Maybe it’s a religious thing.   Lots of opinions, very few answers.

This award-winning short film was re-shot late last year, with key cast members, including Destiny Gordon as Tiffany and Abigail Van Patten as Abigail, reprising their roles.  

Same creepy concept — sexy young woman driven mad, suicidal young men and a mysterious “red” creature lurking in the woods.   Red on DVD from Bayview Entertainment on Jan. 12 … eerie, effective and ready to scare audiences in the New Year.

 

 

Full Moon Features Locks Into Feb. 09 For The Release Of Both DVD And Blu-ray Editions Of Director Alfonso Brescia' Naked Girl Murdered In The Park

Full Moon Features, with sales and distribution expertise provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has tabbed Feb. 09 as the street date for both DVD and Blu-ray editions of director Alfonso Brescia’s 1972 giallo thriller, Naked Girl Murdered in the Park.

This rarely seen film will be arriving uncut and remastered from the original 35mm camera negative.  We’ve seen some of the VHS crap that has been floating around (transferred to DVD doesn’t make it any better) on this classic giallo mystery and we can say, with confidence, that — as a giallo fan — if you have one of these knock-offs in your library, trash it.   The Blu-ray edition from Full Moon looks absolutely gorgeous.

The story is about a rich millionaire, found dead and the family assembling to cash in on his estate.   Enter detective Buyer (Robert Hoffman — Angélique, Wake Up and Die, A Black Veil for Lisa), who shows up at the family’s villa and in no time is cuddled up next to the sultry Catherine (Pilar Velázquez — One Dollar Too Many, The Arizona Kid, The Flower with the Deadly Sting, etc.).  

Meanwhile, family members and the occasional staff, start dropping like flies, which should create a bid of conflict for Buyer, but Catherine is so soft and curvy that he is willing to overlook her role, if any, in the ever-increasing body count.

Naked Girl Murdered in the Park is presented in Italian, with English subtitles.

 

 

 

VCI Entertainment Has DVD And Blu-ray Editions Of The Classic Gang Busters Theatrical Serial Ready For Delivery On Jan. 19

VCI Entertainment, with exclusive rights to the venerable Universal Pictures classic serial library, has a new 4K film restoration (from the original fine grain elements) of the directing team of Ray Taylor and Noel M. Smith’s 1942, 13-chapter crime thriller, Gang Busters.   The cliffhangers unfold on both DVD and Blu-ray on Jan. 19.

Based on the popular radio show of the period (which began airing on CBS in 1936), we are introduced to detective Bill Bannister (Kent Taylor — Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die, The Daltons Ride Again, The Crimson Key … and as Boston Blackie in the 1951-1953 Boston Blackie television series) and his partner, detective Tim Nolan (played by none other than Robert Armstrong, known to the world of cinema forever as Carl Denham of King Kong and Son of Kong fame, plus such films as Man of Conquest, The Falcon in San Francisco, Mighty Joe Young), who are facing an organized crime wave.

Evidence leads them to the notorious Professor Mortis (Ralph Morgan — Night Monster, The Monster and the Ape, Weird Woman, The Monster Maker, etc.), who has a gang of dead criminals that he has brought back to life through the magic of chemistry.  

Also on hand are ace reporter Vicki Logan (Irene Hervey — Play Misty for Me, Cactus Flower, Crash Landing), who Bannister has his eye on, and her sidekick Happy Haskins (Richard Davies — The Mad Doctor of Market Street, The Falcon in Danger, Private Buckaroo).

Gang Busters is an action-packed crime mystery, with a twist … blessed with some elaborate sets and a little sci-fi mixed in to keep it interesting.