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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