Cat People (1942), Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (2007) 2 x DVD and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

In 1942, an enterprising young producer named Val Lewton was named the head of horror at RKO studios. He was given three simple rules to follow: all of his movies had to be made for less than $150,000, they could only run 75 minutes and the titles would be supplied by the studio. Finding creative ways to work under these restrictions, Lewton become an icon of the genre. His first (and arguably, best) RKO horror feature was Cat People, in which he teamed with director Jacques Tournier to create an atypically subtle, elegant piece of psychological horror.
The tale begins as a simple romance. Serbian-born fashion designer Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) and engineer Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) meet at the Central Park Zoo in New York City, where Irena is drawing a sketch of the zoo's black panther (an animal she finds strangely fascinating). They have a pleasant conversation, share an afternoon tea, make arrangements to have dinner together and soon find themselves head over heels in love.
Irena tells Oliver a dark story about her ancestors turning to witchcraft and Satanism, and eventually reveals that she believes an ancient curse has been placed upon her. Irena believes that if she ever dares to indulge her romantic passions, she will turn into a panther and try to kill the person she loves. But Oliver ignores the superstitious warning and assures her that they will have a beautiful life together...

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Femina ridens / The Frightened Woman / The Laughing Woman (1969) DVD9

Wealthy, narcissistic, professional philanthropist Sayer (Philippe Leroy) has a secret life: Every weekend he takes a woman to his isolated country house and subjects her to 48 hours of S&M games. He has a hooker (Mirella Pamphili) lined up for the coming weekend, but she bails at the last minute, leaving him high and dry. And then Marie (Dagmar Lassander) walks into his office. A new employee who works in the press division of his vast business empire, she agrees to come to his home to pick up some files. He drugs her drink and spirits her off to his country lair, a pop-art marvel equipped with dungeons, sliding doors and multi-media equipment galore. While ranting about the evils of liberated women — who, he says, want to emasculate men and run the world without them — Sayer torments Marie physically and verbally, implying that he's going to kill her when he's through. But as the weekend progresses, things do not progress as Sayer planned...

DVD9 | PAL 16:9 | 01:24:33 | 6.10 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Italiano
Subtitles: English, Italiano
Genre: Thriller

Director: Piero Schivazappa
Cast: Philippe Leroy, Dagmar Lassander, Lorenza Guerrieri
Country: Italy
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Short Cuts (1993) 2 x Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

The work of two great American artists merges in Short Cuts, a kaleidoscopic adaptation of the stories of renowned author Raymond Carver by maverick director Robert Altman. Epic in scale yet meticulously observed, the film interweaves the stories of twenty-two characters as they struggle to find solace and meaning in contemporary Los Angeles.
A panicked mother (Andie MacDowell) clutches her injured son in a comfortable suburban bedroom as the camera zooms in on a glass of milk. Somewhere in a trailer park across town, a drunken chauffeur (Tom Waits) watches a television image of milk spilling as his wife (Lily Tomlin) informs him that she struck a child with her car on the way home. An arrogant cop (Tim Robbins) pulls over a children's entertainer in clown makeup (Anne Archer) and begins an obnoxious flirtation. They'll never meet again, but as Archer wonders how her husband (Fred Ward) could keep trying for trout after finding the body of a murdered girl, Robbins snatches a dog from one of Ward's fishing buddies.
It would be possible to watch Short Cuts only to marvel at the ingenious structure created by Altman and co-screenwriter Frank Barhydt, but the film unfolds so gracefully that the structure seldom calls attention to itself. Instead, the attention falls on the characters as they fumble toward occasional revelations that focus their lives, and as they hurt each other in the process.

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La revolution francaise / The French Revolution (1989) 2 x DVD9

La Revolution Francaise is a two-part film made in 1989 for the bicentennial of the French Revolution.
The film tries to tell a balanced story of the French Revolution, from just before the fall of the Bastille in 1789, through the fall of Robespierre in 1794. It focuses on Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette, General Lafayette, and revolutionaries Desmoulins, Danton, and Robespierre.
We follow the internal politics of the revolution and also see the fall of the Bastille, the writing of the constitution and the Rights of Man, the women's march on Versailles, the aftermath of the royals' attempted flight to Varennes, the execution of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, and the Reign of Terror.

2 x DVD9 | PAL 16:9 | 02:45:58 + 02:34:06 | 6.29 Gb + 6.07 Gb
Language: Francais
Subtitles: English
Genre: Drama, History, Thriller, War

Directors: Robert Enrico, Richard T. Heffron
Cast: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Jane Seymour, Francois Cluzet, Peter Ustinov, Claudia Cardinale, Sam Neill
Country: France, Italy, West Germany, Canada, UK
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Island of Lost Souls / The Island of Dr. Moreau (1932) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection and Eureka! Masters of Cinema

Director Erle C. Kenton's pre-code era adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic gothic horror novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, inexplicably renamed Island of Lost Souls, is still considered by many to be the greatest big screen interpretation of the Wells story.

Somewhere in the South Seas, Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) runs afoul of a belligerent sea captain (Stanley Fields) and is dumped on the island doorstep of the reclusive Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton). Alarmed by the strangely misshapen islanders and the screams echoing from Moreau's operating theater, Parker soon discovers that the natives are all former animals -- dogs, pigs, lions -- that have been scientifically "evolved". Wandering into the jungle, Parker hears The Sayer of the Law (Bela Lugosi) lead the beast men in wailing chants about the Doctor's fearful House of Pain. Aided by his alcoholic assistant Mr. Montgomery (Arthur Hohl), Moreau must repeat his surgical horror sessions to prevent his creations from reverting to their original forms. The latest addition to the grotesque menagerie is Lota, a Panther Woman (Kathleen Burke). The Doctor obsesses over the idea of mating her with the handsome new arrival, to determine if Lota is indeed "fully a woman". While Parker tries to make sense of the unnatural happenings all around him, his fiancee Ruth Thomas (Leila Hyams of Freaks) prevails upon the authorities to send a rescue ship. What will Moreau do when they arrive?

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Fiend / Deadly Neighbor (1980) DVD5

The charming opening features a red cartoonish, ectoplasmic demonic looking entity that travels through the night sky and then disappears into a gravesite. Then the corpse digs its way out of the earth and strangles a girl in the cemetery. The corpse touches its face, delighted at the notion of being alive again. The monster simply wants to live a normal – human - existence in suburban Maryland. And so several months later we see the fiend, under the name of Eric Longfellow, moving into the quaint neighbourhood of Kingsville, opening a lucrative music publishing business and even offering lessons from his bungalow. However, there's one problem. The fiend needs to survive by killing others and absorbing their lifeforce (as seen with the red glow emanating from its body upon doing so), otherwise the host body it controls begins to decompose.

DVD5 | NTSC 4:3 | 01:32:20 | 4.00 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: none
Genre: Horror

Director: Don Dohler
Cast: Don Leifert, Richard Nelson, Elaine White
Country: USA
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El verdugo / The Executioner (1963) Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Sometimes considered the pinnacle of Luis Garcia Berlanga's work, The Executioner is a black comedy, a 'farce' and now an intriguing document recording aspects of Franco's Spain in the early 1960s – a period when Spain was beginning to slowly emerge from isolation and grapple with the modernising world of the rest of Western Europe as well as North America.

Carmen is the daughter of Amadeo, the Court of Madrid's executioner. She cannot find a boyfriend because they all run away when they find about her father's profession. Jose Luis is an employee in a funeral parlour who has similar problems with women. One day, their respective professions bring the two men together and Jose Luis end up marrying Carmen. Amadeo's profession entitles him to a subsidised flat, but as he is about to retire he will lose it. In order to avoid this, he convinces his son-in-law to accept the vacant post of executioner. But the boy has a problem: he wouldn't kill a fly...

Through a savagely black humorous tone, The Executioner is a vehement condemnation of the death penalty, which caused the Spanish government to try (unsuccessfully) to stop it being screened at the Venice Festival and later to make numerous cuts (most of them are now reinstated).

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Delusion (1991) DVD9

O'Brien is a Silicon Valley executive going through a career crisis: his company has just been bought out, his design team is about to be disbanded and all he wants is to realize the dream of starting his own company and getting out of the corporate rat race. The takeover emboldens him to embezzle a quarter of a million dollars, and with the money stashed in his car, he takes off for Reno -- via Death Valley -- to start again. Along the way, George is overtaken by a weaving, speeding car that veers off the road and overturns. He picks up its occupants, Chevy (Kyle Secor) and Patti (Jennifer Rubin), and agrees to drive them to the next town, where they can rent another car. When Chevy pulls a gun, it becomes apparent that George has made the classic road-movie mistake: hitchhikers are always disasters of one kind or another, and it doesn't pay to pick them up...

DVD9 | NTSC 16:9 | 01:36:54 | 6.60 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: none
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller

Director: Carl Colpaert
Cast: Jim Metzler, Jennifer Rubin, Kyle Secor
Country: USA
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Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street / Tote Taube in der Beethovenstrasse (1973) Blu-Ray

Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street was a made-for-TV movie by legendary American B-film director Sam Fuller (The Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor, The Big Red One, etc.) that aired in Germany in 1974 as part of Tatort, a popular and very long running cop show.
Tatort (it means "crime scene") is sort of an anthology series, with various teams of detectives from different regions of Germany working to solve crimes.

Fuller somehow managed to convince the show's producers to allow him to write the episode in English and essentially sideline its star, a customs investigator named Kressin (Sieghardt Rupp), in favor of a one-time protagonist, an American private dick named Sandy (Glenn Corbett), who is investigating the murder of his partner (the "dead pigeon" of the title) who, in turn, was investigating a political blackmail ring.

BD50 | 1080p AVC | 02:07:55 | 45.5 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: English
Genre: Crime, Drama

Director: Samuel Fuller
Cast: Glenn Corbett, Christa Lang, Sieghardt Rupp, Stephane Audran
Country: West Germany
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The In-Laws (1979) DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

They are two middle-aged men whose lives could not be any more different. Sheldon Kornpett (Alan Arkin) is a successful dentist with a large and beautifully decorated office in the heart of Manhattan. Vince Ricardo (Peter Falk) is a professional chameleon. Some of the people he works with are convinced that he is a mobster with plenty of powerful friends, but some are under the impression that he is an experienced CIA agent working deep, very deep undercover.

Sheldon and Vince have been aware of each other's existence, but have always been too busy to meet. Now they finally have to do it because Sheldon's daughter (Penny Peyser) and Vince's son (Michael Lembeck) are getting married.

Sheldon's normally peaceful life is turned upside down when Vince involves him in a series of outrageous adventures to foil a plot to wreck the American currency.

Director: Arthur Hiller
Cast: Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Richard Libertini
Country: USA
Genre: Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Thriller, Action

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El Muerto: The Dead One (2007) DVD9

Rechristened The Dead One for its cinematic incarnation, this adaptation of Javier Hernandez's comic book El Muerto stars Wilmer Valderrama (of television's That 70's Show) as Diego de la Muerte, a Mexican-American living in Los Angeles. While on his way to a Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration, Diego gets into an accident. Lying on the side of the road he has what he mistakes for some sort of hallucination, but in actuality Diego has died, and meets up in the netherworld with Mictlanehcuhtli, the Aztec God of the Death. After he awakes on the side of the road, Diego soon learns that while it is still Dia de Los Muertos, an entire year has passed since his accident, and that he has actually risen from the grave for reasons he can not yet comprehend. While our bewildered hero attempts to unravel the mystery of his new existence as one of the walking dead, an ancient evil looms on the horizon, bringing with it the threat of extinction to the entire human race. Can Diego save the day, or is he a pawn in the sinister ploy to rein death and destruction on mankind?

DVD9 | NTSC 16:9 | 01:28:36 | 6.84 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English, Espanol
Subtitles: none
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Thriller

Director: Brian Cox
Cast: Wilmer Valderrama, Angie Cepeda, Joel David Moore
Country: USA
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The Brood (1979), Crimes of the Future (1970) 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Oliver Reed is Dr. Hal Raglan, an ambitious scientist who has developed a groundbreaking new technique called phsychoplasmics which allows him to heal patients with serious emotional disorders. The technique also allows Dr. Raglan to establish direct contact with his patients' minds and partially manipulate the way they think. This way he can direct how their bodies respond to his therapy.
Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar) is one of Raglan's patients. She's been sent off for therapy after abusing her five year old daughter, Candice (Cindy Hinds), who now lives alone with her father, Frank (Art Hindle). Raglan finds her a most interesting case because her emotions are so strong that he gets reactions from her that are considerably different than those of his other patients.
Concerned that Dr. Raglan might be seriously hurting his wife, Frank Carveth meets some of his patients. As he begins learning more about phsychoplasmics, his wife's family is attacked and their daughter's schoolteacher killed. Frank realizes that something very strange is happening at Raglan's institute and that his wife seems to be the catalyst.
The disc also includes a new, restored 4K digital transfer of Cronenberg's early feature Crimes Of The Future. The film explores a world of genetic mutations, in which all adult women have died from the use of cosmetics and the surviving men keep finding themselves reverting to more primitive forms.

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Schneider vs. Bax (2015) DVD9

Schneider is a hit man, willing to do anything to get the job done. On his birthday he receives a phone call from Mertens, his 'employer', who gives him a new assignment. Although Schneider has promised his wife, Lucy, that he will help her to prepare his birthday dinner, he must accept the assignment. The target is Ramon Bax, a writer who lives in isolation in a house in the middle of a swamp. Bax is the standard cliche of a wretched writer: drugs and alcohol are his daily bread. In a rare moment of clarity, Bax remembers that his daughter Francisca, a depressive and at times, paranoid girl, is due to arrive at any moment.
Schneider agrees, but the easy job turns out to have its complications...

DVD9 | NTSC 16:9 | 01:36:30 | 5.94 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Nederlands
Subtitles: English
Genre: Comedy, Thriller

Director: Alex van Warmerdam
Cast: Tom Dewispelaere, Alex van Warmerdam, Maria Kraakman
Country: Netherlands
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Walden: Diaries Notes and Sketches (1969) 2 x DVD9

Poet and hero of the American counter-culture, Jonas Mekas, born in Lithuania in 1922, invented the diary form of film-making. Walden, his first completed diary film, an epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s, is also a groundbreaking work of personal cinema.

"Since 1950 I have been keeping a film diary. I have been walking around with my Bolex and reacting to the immediate reality: situations, friends, New York, seasons of the year. On some days I shot ten frames, on others ten seconds, still on others ten minutes. Or I shot nothing. When one writes diaries, it's a retrospective process: you sit down, you look back at your day, and you write it all down. To keep a film (camera) diary, is to react (with your camera) immediately, now, this instant: either you get it now, or you don't get it at all.

Walden contains materials from the years 1965-69, strung together in chronological order. For the soundtrack I used some of the sounds that I collected during the same period: voices, subways, much street noise, bits of Chopin (I am a romantic), and other significant and insignificant sounds." -- Jonas Mekas

With Jonas Mekas, P. Adams Sitney, Tony Conrad, Stan Brakhage, Carl Th. Dreyer, Timothy Leary, Baba Ram Dass, Gregory Markopoulos, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Jerome Hill, Barbet Schroeder, Jack Smith, Edie Sedgwick, Nico, Velvet Underground, Ken Jacobs, Hans Richter, Standish D. Lawder, Adolfas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Jud Yalkut, Peter Kubelka, Michael Snow, Richard Foreman, John Lennon, Yoko Ono.

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A l’aventure / An Adventure (2008) DVD9

He has been both hailed and condemned as the most notorious filmmaker working in Europe today . And for this third movie in his controversial trilogy on female sexuality, writer/director Jean-Claude Brisseau (THE EXTERMINATING ANGELS, SECRET THINGS) takes you to the outermost edges of passion and transgression. Carole Brana stars as a sexually unfulfilled young woman who embarks on a series of forbidden encounters fueled by hypnosis, desire and complete intellectual and carnal surrender. How far would you go to find the ultimate erotic ecstasy? Etienne Chicot (THE DA VINCI CODE), Lise Bellynck and Estelle Galarme co-star in this startlingly provocative exploration of the female orgasm that continues to shock and seduce audiences around the world.

DVD9 | PAL 4:3 | 01:39:13 | 5.88 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Francais
Subtitles: English
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance

Director: Jean-Claude Brisseau
Cast: Carole Brana, Arnaud Binard, Nadia Chibani
Country: France
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11.22.63 (2016) 2 x DVD9

Based upon the novel by Stephen King, '11.22.63' tells the story of recently divorced schoolteacher Jake Epping (Franco) who embarks upon a journey beyond anything he could have imagined when his old friend and diner owner Al (Cooper) reveals the truth about a seemingly normal, dusty closet within the tin diner that transports anyone that enters back to the exact same moment in the year 1960. Initially reluctant to believe his friend, Jake slowly begins to accept the truth after seeing it with his own eyes and hearing the detailed explanation Al provides. Soon Al recruits Jake to assist him with a longtime plan to travel back and wait three years in order to prevent the assassination of JFK. Eventually accepting the task, Jake soon finds himself adapting to the unfamiliar world he must linger within and even finds a partner to assist with his daunting task. Perhaps the only thing Jake didn't count on falling in love with the beautiful Sadie (Gadon) which creates a new set of problems during his journey as he must simultaneously tackle a relationship with her, while continuing on his task against the ever dangerous past which is intent on fighting back.

2 x DVD9 | PAL 16:9 | 03:45:13 + 03:27:56 | 6.64 Gb + 6.03 Gb
Language: English
Subtitles: English, Dansk, Nederlands, Suomi, Norsk, Svenska
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

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To agistri / The Hook (1976) DVD5

Well made Greek giallo from director Erricos Andreou and starring the beautiful Barbara Bouchet. Kostas (Gunther Stoll) is an all-powerful tycoon living in Greece with his beautiful wife Iro (Barbara Bouchet) but she is cheating on him with a young playboy named Nikos (Bob Behling). The two lovers plan to kill off her husband during the upcoming yachting regatta making it look like an accident. However, unknown to them, Kostas has hired a private detective to follow them and knows of their plans in advance. So starts a game of betrayal and murder that will spell tragedy for them all.

DVD5 | PAL 4:3 | 01:29:19 | 4.05 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Greek
Subtitles: English
Genre: Crime, Thriller

Director: Erricos Andreou
Cast: Barbara Bouchet, Gunther Stoll, Robert Behling
Country: Greece
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Media Magica by Werner Nekes – The Magical World of Optical Wizardry: Media Magica I – Film Before Film: What Really Happened Between the Images? (Was geschah wirklich zwischen den Bildern?) (1986), Media Magica II – Beyond the image (Durchsehekunst) (1995), Media Magica III – Pictures come to life (Belebte Bilder) (1995), Media Magica IV – Multi-Thousand Picture Show (Vieltausendschau) (1995), Media Magica V – The Ambiguous Image and Space (Bildraum) (1995), Media Magica VI – The Magic Drum (Wundertrommel) (1995) 6 x DVD5

Werner Nekes is both filmmaker and media-researcher, but also a collector of historical books, scientific objects and visual toys from the early period of mediaarts. His extensive collection comprises five centuries of rare objects.

In his film series, "Media Magica", he guides us through his unique collection, as through a museum. He shows his historical objects in motion, because it is only in motion that their magic unfolds and that they regain once more, the charm they radiated in bygone days.

The spectator is taken on a fascinating voyage of discovery in the magic land of pictures. He encounters the Camera Obscura, the Magic Lantern, and peep-shows from the seventeenth century, the artistry of shadow theatre and much more. And he discovers how pre-cinema research of perspective, montage and the illusion of movement and space prepared the way for the film.

6 x DVD5 | PAL 4:3 | 345 minutes | 16.8 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English, Deutsch, Francais
Subtitles: none
Genre: Documentary

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Blut und Ehre: Jugend unter Hitler / Blood and Honor: Youth Under Hitler (1982) 5 x DVD9 English and German versions

This mini-series takes place between 1933 and 1939 in a small German town and basically tells the stories of three families, one upper-middle class, with its social ambitions nicely linked to the rise of the Nazis, another lower-middle class, with nervous reservations about what is happening, and the third Jewish, trapped in the expanding horror of Nazi race laws and theories. The film shows very vivid how the political developments, home evenings and Hitler youth infiltration insidiously affect the lives of all. Values and attitudes change through seduction and reprisals. Children and youth are shown as perpetrators and victims at the same time.

Each scene was shot both in English and in German and resulted in two versions of the film which sometimes significantly differ.

5 x DVD9 | PAL 4:3 | 247 + 229 mins | 31.6 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English, Deutsch
Subtitles: Deutsch
Genre: Drama

Director: Bernd Fischerauer
Cast: Marlies Engel, Rolf Becker, Gila von Weitershausen
Country: West Germany, USA
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