31st May

MGM will release a range of back-catalogue titles in July, including a Soul Cinema collection. 

Here's the full list:

July the 7th: Foxy Brown, Coffy, Black Mama, White Mama, Black Caeser and Truck Driver. These will have an RRP of £12.99, except for Foxy Brown, which is £15.99 for no appreciable reason.

July the 14th - £12.99 RRP: Undercover Blues, The Couch Trip, Fatal Instinct, Sibling Rivalry and UHF.

July the 21st - £12.99 RRP: Harley Davidson and the Malboro Man, At Close Range, The Killer Elite, True Confessions, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Quigley Down Under, A Fistful of Dynamite and Thief.

Sadly, aside from theatrical trailers, it appears that none of these titles will have bonus materials (especially annoying in the case of titles that have bonus features on the equivalent Region 1 versions, like Thief, which has a Michael Mann commentary track, and UHF, which is a full-blown Special Edition).

Stargate SG-1 - Volume 30 is due on July 28th. The disc will, as usual, include four episode in anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, commentary tracks and other bonus features. Episodes on the disc are Disclosure, Forsaken, The Changeling and Memento.

MGM are also releasing The Terminator DVD Collection set on July 21st, which will include two-disc editions of the first two films, with an RRP of £24.99.

VCI's budget label Cinema Club has announced its third quarter titles, including many that are being released on DVD for the first time. 

Here's a breakdown:

July the 14th - £9,99 RRP: Lucky Break, The Stick Up, The Supergrass, Federal Protection, Lone Hero, Chasing Holden, Bent, Gang Related, The Boys, Wil is Style, Babymother, Total Eclipse, King Lear (Laurence Olivier, 1984 Granada TV version) and Lost For Words

August the 11th - £9.99 RRP: Flight of the Navigator, Short Circuit, Raymond Briggs' Ivor the Invisible, Dahmer - The Cannibal, Dead in the Water, One Way Out, Portraits Chinois, Nothing Personal, Trojan Eddie and Down Time

August the 11th - £5.99 RRP: The Sex Monster, Angel's Dance, Taxman, Blood Surf, Let The Devil Wear Black, Subspecies: The Awakening, The Eternal, The Stranger, My Brilliant Career, Emma's War, The Harrad Experiment, Bearskin, Fury at Smuggler's Bay (Peter Cushing), Percy and Thunder, Matilda (the boxing kangaroo movie, not the Roald Dahl one), Fire and Ice (Ralph Bakshi), High Season, Killing Dad, The Breaks, Critical Care, Phat Beach, Zack and Reba, Quicksand, Another Time, Another Place, Somebody is Waiting, Caught Up, The Disappearance, The Calling, Dead Men Don't Dance and Moonbase

September the 15th - £9.99 RRP: American Gun, Black Point, Greenmail, Last Run, Blackadder Back and Forth, The Disappearance of Finbar, Into The West and Where The Heart Is

Cinema Club is also releasing fifteen of the old Republic John Wayne movies, on August 11th, each with an RRP of £5.99.

The 11th of August also sees the release of On The Buses - The Best of Series 3 and 4, a four disc box set with an RRP of £29.99. Episodes on the discs are: First Aid, The Cistern, Busmen's Perks, The Snake, Mum's Last Fling, Radio Control, Foggy Night, The New Uniforms, Going Steady, The Squeeze, On The Make, Brew it Yourself, Nowhere to Go, The Canteen Girl, Dangerous Living and The Other Woman. The four discs will also be available separately, for £9.99 each.

Cinema Club is also releasing a collection of cult movies, including titles by legendary schlockmeisters like Al Adamson and Eddie Romero. The disc are due on July 14th, and will have an RRP of £5.99. Enthusiasts should note that some of these titles may be cut by the BBFC. The collection comprises: The Blood Drinkers, Brides of Blood, Mad Doctor of Blood Island, Blood of the Vampires, Brain of Blood, Horror of the Blood Monsters, Satan's Sadists, Dracula vs Frankenstein, Angel's Wild Women, The Dynamite Brothers, and Raiders of the Living Dead.

Here's a look at the sleeves:

For some reason my Species II DVD review is one of the site's most visited pages. Go figure! I'm reasonably sure it's not based on the merits of the film itself, so I can only guess that it's probably fueled by search engines looking for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation's "Marg Helgenberger" or the gorgeous "Natasha Henstridge". Well, I certainly believe in giving people what they want, so I've added two more pages about the film, originally written in 1998: a lengthy article about its production, and a review of the film itself. I've also added some screen grabs from the DVD to pep things up a bit. Enjoy!

30th May

Tartan Video will add two titles to their Asia Exteme collection on June 30th: Ryuhei Kitamura's Versus and the second film in Miike Takashi's Triad Society trilogy, Rainy Dog. (The first, Shinjuku Triad Society, is already available).

Versus will be presented in anamorphic 1.78:1 format, Dolby Digital 5.1 audio and optional English subtitles. Bonus features include the a documentary, Behind Versus. RRP is £19.99. The Rainy Dog disc will include a Miike Takashi interview, will be presented in anamorphic 1.78:1 format, and will have an RRP of £19.99.

Tartan will also be releasing Bernard Rose's scathing attack on Hollywood, Ivansxtc on June 30th. The film (which was shot on HD video) will be presented in 1.78:1 ratio. Bonus materials will include extended outtakes from the film's party sequence. RRP is £19.99.

Tartan's July 28th lineup will include My Kingdom (Don Boyd's updated version of King Lear, which features Richard Harris in one of his last significant roles), Safe, Todd Haynes' film about a Californian housewife (Julianne Moore) who becomes allergic to modern life, Oxide Pang's urban thriller One Take Only and Ley Lines, the final installment of Miike Takashi's Triad Society trilogy. 

Warner Home Video has changed the lineup on their British New Wave DVDs, (which were only announced a week or so ago - see 21st May, below). The two discs will now comprise The Accident and The Family Way on one disc, and Darling and The L-Shaped Room on the other. RRP (£15.99) and release date (23rd June) remain unchanged.

Fox and Pathé will be releasing sixteen more DVD titles on June 30th, with an RRP of £9.99. They are: Point Break, Body of Evidence, Guilty By Suspicion, Bad Lieutenant, Mystic Masseur, Three Seasons, Family Business, Breaking The Waves, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, Dust, Jane Eyre, Twenty-Four Seven, Love is a Many Spendored Thing, Burnt By The Sun, Journey To The Centre of the Earth and The Funeral / Addiction double pack. 

I've added a new review to the site today. It's for Warner Home Video's disc of Little Shop of Horrors: Frank Oz's 1986 film version of the popular Broadway musical version of Roger Corman's 1960 film. Confused?  You won't be, if you read the review!  The disc is in the shops now. Yes, now, dammit!

29th May

A snippet of news from DD Video, about their forthcoming Survivors DVD season sets. Cast members Carolyn Seymour, Ian McCulloch and Lucy Fleming, and director Pennant Roberts will assemble next week to record video interviews and commentary track for the set. 

Fox will release Steven Soderbergh's psychological science fiction mystery Solaris on July 21st. The $50m film, which starred George Clooney, failed to find much of an audience here or in the US, but deserves to find its audience on DVD. The disc presents the film in anamorphic 2.35:1 ratio, with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (at  448kbps). 

Bonus material includes a full-length commentary track by Soderbergh and Producer James Cameron, an HBO Behind The Scenes featurette (13m), Solaris: Behind The Planet featurette (18m) and the script, in text format. The film will have English HoH subtitles, and the commentary is subtitled in English, too. Click here to see a selection of the disc's menu screens. RRP is £19.99.

24th May

The horror film Deathwatch, set in the German trenches during the Great War, is being released by Pathé Distribution on June the 16th. The disc will feature the film in anamorphic 2.4:1 ratio widescreen  format (not 1.85:1 as the press release claims), with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. Extras include deleted scenes, behind the scenes footage, cast interviews and three commentary tracks. RRP will be £17.99. Read our review of the disc here.

The BFI will release the influential 1966 BBC play Cathy Come Home on DVD on the 30th of June. The play, written by campaigning journalist Jeremy Sandford (who sadly died earlier this month), and directed by Ken Loach, broke new ground by moving out of the studio and onto the streets, creating a documentary-style drama about the desperate circumstances suffered by a homeless young couple (played by Carol White and Ray Brooks). 

The play was watched by a quarter of the population, and the resulting public outcry caused the then Housing Minister Anthony Greenwood to reassess government policy. It was also influential in the formation of the housing charity Shelter (who used a photo' of Carol White in its literature). 

The disc will feature a commentary track by Ken Loach, with extracts from Jeremy Sandford's memoirs, read by James Fox. The disc will also contain biographies of the writer and director, and a short film Housing Problems (1935).  RRP is £19.99.

23rd May

BBC Worldwide has unveiled its plans to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Doctor Who, which is on November 23rd. 

There will be a very special book to mark the occasion: Doctor Who - The Legend, which will include five hundred colour and black and white photo's, some being published for the first time. The 386-page book, written by Justin Richards, will include chapters on the series' make-up and special effects. RRP for the book will be £40. Publication date is November 13th.

A special Doctor Who novel, Deadly Reunion, written by Jon Pertwee era script editor Terence Dicks and producer Barry Letts, will supplement BBC Worldwide's ongoing series of novels. Here's Worldwide's synopses of the book: The Doctor and Jo encounter an unusually high mortality rate in the picturesque village pf Sanctorum Magnus and must discover the link between the murders, the Lady of the Manor and the Brigadier's trip to Greece 30 years before.

This year the last handful of Doctor Who stories are released on VHS, almost exactly twenty years after BBC Video released the first commercially-available story, in October 1983! The remaining stories are The Horns of Nimon (Tom Baker, 2nd June) and a two-tape pack containing the surviving episodes of the 1964 story The Reign of Terror (William Hartnell) and the extant episodes of the Patrick Troughton adventures The Web of Fear and The Faceless Ones. This set will be released on November 24th. The final story, the Jon Pertwee adventure Invasion of the Dinosaurs, doesn't have an official release date yet.

One DVD featuring each of the first seven actors to play the role will be released during 2003, including the already-released Tom Baker disc The Talons of Weng-Chiang and the Patrick Troughton adventure The Seeds of Death. Other titles include The Dalek Invasion of Earth (for details, see the News entry for 10th May, below), Earthshock (Peter Davison, 4th August), The Two Doctors (Colin Baker and Patrick Troughton, 8th September), The Curse of Fenric (Sylvester McCoy, 6th October) and The Three Doctors (Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell, 24th November). The Three Doctors will be packaged with a special Corgi model of the Doctor's car, Bessie!

Eight audio releases, of stories where the original film or video recordings are lost, but audio recordings survive, will be released by BBC Worldwide this year. These will include two Doctor Who discs containing episodes in MP3 format (The Daleks' Master Plan and The Abominable Snowmen / The Web of Fear, both available now). There will be a five-CD box set containing conventional CD versions of The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear on 7th July, which has an RRP of £29.99. The Adventures In History CD box set, (containing two William Hartnell stories, The Myth Makers, The Massacre and the early Patrick Troughton story The Highlanders) will be released on August the 4th, with an RRP of £29.99. The Dalek Tin contains the two Patrick Troughton Dalek stories, Power of The Daleks (Troughton's 1966 debut) and The Evil of the Daleks. A three-disc version of the 1964 William Hartnell historical epic Marco Polo will be released on November 3rd, with an RRP of £16.99.

The BBC Radio Collection will release Doctor Who at the BBC on 1st September. This two-CD set will offer rare gems from the BBC's radio archives, linked by narration by actress Elisabeth Sladen (who played the Doctor's assistant, Sarah Jane Smith, from 1973-1976). This set will include interviews with Jon Pertwee, Douglas Adams and Tom Baker, and the 1993 30 Years documentary. RRP is £16.99.

Finally, BBC Music will release an album containing especially-commissioned remixes of Ron Grainer's timeless theme music.

21st May

I've got all sorts of bits and pieces for you today!

First off, here's the very smart sleeve art for Momentum's next CSI: Crime Scene Investigation box set, which includes episodes one to twelve of the second season. The set is due on July 28th.

Warner Home Video are releasing another Hammer film, as part of their ongoing series of Double Feature discs, using titles from the Studio Canal + library. I've heard several reports about their recent Tony Hancock (containing The Rebel and The Punch and Judy Man), and no-one was very impressed. Hopefully their next batch will fare better. The discs are The Accident and The L-Shaped Room, Darling and The Family Way and  The Blue Lamp and Hammer's The Nanny. The Accident and The L-Shaped Room are both in 1.66:1 ratio, the others are full-frame (1.33:1) All three discs will be released on June 23rd, with an RRP of £15.99.   See update, 30th May, above.

Warner Home Video will also be re-releasing four Agatha Christie films on June the 16th. (Currently they're only available as a box set). They are: Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, The Mirror Crack'd and Evil Under The Sun. All four discs come with the theatrical trailer; Death on the Nile has a 23m featurette, and Evil Under The Sun has a 15m featurette. All four discs are in widescreen format. RRP for each disc is £12.99. 

Warner has three terrific-sounding multi-disc Special Editions coming out in July: Giant, The Right Stuff and The Color Purple. 

If you've bought any of the existing titles in this range (including True Romance, The Wicker Man, Amadeus and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest), you'll know that Warner pulls out all the stops for these releases, and is rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the best studios for supplementary material. The added bonus in the case of The Color Purple and The Right Stuff, is that these discs will replace the existing flipper discs, which, frankly should have been remastered years ago. Here's a breakdown of each set:

Other forthcoming Warner Home Video titles include Masters of the Universe (with director's commentary track and trailer, in 1.85:1 ratio) on June 16th; The Unbearable Lightness of Being (in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, but apparently lacking the commentary track on the now-deleted Criterion US disc) on June 30th; Jennifer Lopez's breakthrough biopic Selena (in 2.35:1 ratio), also on June 30th and Claude Lelouch's acclaimed A Man and A Woman (Un Homme et Une Femme) on July 14th (in 1.85:1 anamorphic ratio, and featuring an all new documentary titled 37 Years Later with Claude Lelouch, and the "vintage" documentary Un Homme et Une Femme). RRP on these titles is a very reasonable £12.99.

Here are a couple of menu screen images from Warner's forthcoming The New Adventures of Wonder Woman DVD, which will be released on the 9th of June:

And finally, mon petits enfants, here are a couple of menu screens from an altogether different type of superhero DVD.... can you guess what it is yet....???

19th May

The BFI is releasing two controversial French films on June 2nd: Jean Genet's Un Chant d'amour (1950) and Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu (1939). 

Un Chant d'amour launches the BFI's Classic Short Film Collection. The disc will feature a new, digitally remastered, full-frame presentation of the uncut version of the film, with a new score by Simon Fisher Turner. The disc will also contain a commentary track by writer Jane Giles and filmmaker Richard Kwietniowski, and biographies of Genet and Fisher Turner. RRP is £15.99.

Renoir's masterpiece La Règle du jeu arrives on DVD after a great deal of tampering by its original distributor (with and without Renoir's cooperation), in a version restored in 1959, after hundreds of cans of original material were rediscovered in 1956. The disc features a 42-minute 1987 documentary on the making of the film, directed by Pierre Oscar Lèvy, made for the series Image par Image, and a text biography of Renoir. The film is presented in 1.66:1 ratio, with English subtitles. RRP is £19.99.

Congratulations to N. Linehan and Heather Barry, who will soon be the recipients of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 6 box set, courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. The competition question was deliberately quite difficult (the answer to "What's the name of Spike's favourite soap opera?" was "Passions"), but there was still a good turn out.

18th May

Fox is releasing a number of titles on the 30th of June with an RRP of £5.99 each. The titles are: Rapid Fire, The Poseidon Adventure, Crying Freeman, Under Pressure, Breakdown, The Plumber, Shining Through, Color of Night, Poison Ivy, Shadow of Doubt , The Full Monty, When Saturday Comes, House!, Honest, Small Faces, The Mark of Zorro, The Blue Max, The Big Trail, North to Alaska, Viva Zapata, Serial Mom, Renaissance Man, Bulworth, Company Man, Mr Accident, Corrina, Corrina, Pushing Tin, If Only, 8½ Women, Exit to Eden, Touch, Nowhere, Matinee, The Blair Witch Project, The Good Son, Cocoon, Brainscan, Zardoz, Jason Goes To Hell, The Legend of Hell House, The Mangler, The Cars That Ate Paris, The Big Blue, My Life, That Thing You Do!, Picnic at Hanging Rock, All That Jazz, Love and Death on Long Island, Darkest Light, Affliction, Basquit, Q & A, All The Right Moves, Showgirls, The Woodlanders, Here on Earth, The Claim, Brokedown Place, The Spanish Prisoner and Phantom of the Paradise. No technical details have been released, but it's probably safe to assume that many of these will be straight reissues of existing discs, which means that many of them will be in their correct aspect ratio. Hopefully that will extend to the titles that are new to DVD in the UK, including gems like Matinee and Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Revelation will release the 1982 Thames TV adaptation of John Mortimer's autobiographical play A Voyage Round My Father, which starred Laurence Olivier, Jane Asher and Alan Bates, on DVD on July 28th. The disc will have an RRP of £15.99. The company will also be releasing Paula Milne's thriller State of Mind, which starred Niamh Cusack and Andrew Lincoln, on July 28th. The disc will have an RRP of £12.99. 

 16th May

It's been a pretty dull week for interesting news, I'm afraid. Work continues behind the scenes here, though. Next week I'll be adding a new section to the site, which I hope fans of little-seen 70s TV drama will appreciate. One of the aims of this site has been to present "material that you'll not find elsewhere". There are any number of websites where you can find oodles of information on stuff like Doctor Who, The Avengers and The Prisoner - or Catweazle, American Gothic and Millennium, for that matter, which is one of the reasons why I've not been in any hurry to expand those sections on the site! - but finding information on more obscure series is practically impossible. 

Speaking of American Gothic, there's a rare chance to catch the series on British TV next week, on Sky One. The first episode is at 10pm on Thursday (the 22nd). It's repeated on Friday the 23rd at 3.55am. The second episode is on the 29th at 10pm, and repeated on Friday 30th at 3.55, and so on. Hopefully the exposure might just give Universal the kick it apparently needs to finally get the series released on DVD!

To keep things ticking over, here are a couple of sleeves that you might not have seen yet: Punch-Drunk Love, The Fast and the Furious - Turbo Edition and Piranha II: The Spawning.

14th May

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment have a number of back catalogue titles due on June 2nd. The press releases don't offer anything more than the basic information that's already listed by some retailers (nothing about aspect ratios, audio formats or bonus materials), and most of the titles aren't listed on Fox's web site. 

These will be double-DVD packs (probably like Fox's existing double bills, like The Fly / Fly II), with an RRP of £14.99. Here's the lineup:

Our Man Flint / In Like Flint

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea / Fantastic Voyage

The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel / The Desert Rats

The Enemy Below / Sink The Bismark

The Young Lions / D-Day The Sixth of June

The Commancheros / The Undefeated

Digging around Fox's website I've also found The Ghost and Mrs Muir (which seems to be missing the bonus materials on Fox's Region 1 Studio Classics version) and Journey to the Center of the Earth, which has a different sleeve design to the US version (will this title ever have a decent home video sleeve?!) I wonder if we'll get the American version of the film, or the British version (which had some alternate shots).....

Eureka Video will release the first series of Chris Barrie's long-running sitcom The Brittas Empire on 21st July, on a two-DVD-5 set. The set will contain a number of bonus features (photo' gallery, etc), the most worthwhile of which is a three-minute Brittas Empire sketch from the Royal Variety Performance show.

Here's the sleeve and a couple of menu grabs:

12th May

My review of 28 Days Later is back online!  Once again, apologies for those of you who were inconvenienced by its absence. The disc is released on Monday the 19th. Click here to read the review.

Congratulations to P.Douglass, who's the winner of the Taken DVD box set, and my thanks again to Universal, who were kind enough to offer the prize. The answer to the question "Which of these Steven Spielberg films isn't about aliens from outer space?" was, of course, Saving Private Ryan.

10th May

The BBC has announced their June titles, which include the belated release of the excellent comedy drama play Cruise of the Gods, about a jaded star of a Blake's 7-style 80's science-fiction show (played by Marion and Geoff's Rob Brydon) who, having fallen on hard times, decides to accept the offer of a convention appearance on board a luxury cruise ship filled with doting fans. The play, which also featured Steve Coogan, arrives on DVD on June 2nd. Bonus material includes a commentary track (by director Declan Lowney, producer Alison MacPhail and writer Tim Firth); a thirty-minute video diary; deleted scenes (with commentary); out-takes; Children of Castor sequence; alternate ending; and a DVD-ROM presentation of the script. RRP is £15.99.

The university days of Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean are dramatised in BBC's current heavyweight drama series Cambridge Spies (Fridays, 9pm, BBC 2), which will be released on  DVD on June 2nd. The disc will feature a commentary track by writer Peter Moffatt, director Tim Fywell and producer Mark Shivas.  RRP is £19.99.

The six-episode 1964 Doctor Who classic The Dalek Invasion of Earth is released on DVD on June 16th.  The story was originally  transmitted at the peak of the Daleks' popularity, when the shops were full of Dalek memorabilia of all description. 

The two-disc set will contain a remastered version of the story, with VidFIRE enhancement, accompanied by a commentary track by actors Carole Ann Ford and William Russell, producer Verity Lambert and director Richard Martin. The disc will allow the viewer to choose between the original presentation of the story, or to watch a version with some of the original model work replaced by CGI effects. Other extras include a production notes subtitle stream; two contemporary trailers; an introduction from the Daleks; Future Visions,  a short feature about the work of the story's designer, Spencer Chapman; Future Memories, the reminiscences of the story's actors; Talking Daleks, about the creation of the Dalek voices; Now and Then, a look at the locations used; Script to Screen, an examination of how the script instructions translate to camera moves; a Blue Peter segment showing Valerie Singleton making Dalek cakes; Whatever Happened to...Susan Foreman?, the 1993 radio production, featuring Jane Asher; a photo' gallery; and some unique rehearsal film, shot by actress Carole Ann Ford. The disc has an RRP of £19.99. The BBC is also releasing the Tom Baker story The Horns of Nimon, on VHS, on June 2nd. 

8th May

The first part of the second season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation will be released by Momentum Pictures on July 28th. The three-disc digipack will contain the first twelve episodes of the season, and will have an RRP of £39.99. 

Bonus features include The Who's Who Are You? music video; a thirty-seven minute Cast and Crew feature; a set walk-through with on-set forensic advisor and criminologist Liz Devine; Executive Producer, Director and cast member commentary tracks on Burked, Alter Boys and Ellie; behind-the-scenes at CSI: music, special effects and make-up; and trailers. 

The discs will be presented in anamorphic 1.78:1 ratio, with 5.1 audio.

Here are the sleeve images for the first volumes in the Wonder Woman and Freddy's Nightmares DVD collections, which are due for release on June the 9th. See the news for 14th April for more details.

6th May

News is filtering in from various sources that the Indiana Jones trilogy will finally be released on DVD on November 4th. The films will be available as a four-disc set (one disc for each of the films, and a disc of extras, which will include a comprehensive documentary created by Laurent Bouzereau, who has created bonus material for other Spielberg DVDs, including Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

There's more good news: although the films have been painstakingly restored (by Lowry Digital Images, the company that worked on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Paramount's Sunset Boulevard), they have not been subject to any revisionist tampering, (although whether this will extend to retaining the original Raiders of the Lost Ark title is not known). 

Sadly the discs will not include commentary tracks. Lucasfilm's VP of marketing Jim Ward: "We felt that because of bandwidth issues and, more importantly, the amount of information provided on the fourth disc, it would be redundant to include a director's commentary track on the title discs." 

The discs will be available in widescreen and pan-and-scan formats. The US discs are expected to retail for about $50.

5th May

No news today, but I do have a great new competition for you! Our friends at Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment have donated two copies of the fabulous Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Season 6 box set, which comes out next week. To enter, click on the banner above.

If you haven't already entered, our Taken competition ends on the 12th of May. 

3rd May

Anchor Bay UK will release Michael Armstrong's notorious Mark of the Devil on June 23rd. The disc will feature a commentary track by Armstrong (moderated by Jonathan Sothcott), Marked by the Devil (an interview with Armstrong), and a comprehensive stills gallery. 

The disc will have a new 16:9-enhanced transfer. The last time the film was submitted to the BBFC (in 1993) it was cut by more than four minutes, so let's hope that Anchor Bay will be re-submitting it, and that the BBFC are a lot more lenient this time around.

Anchor Bay have a box set of the wartime drama series Danger UXB (RRP £29.99) penciled in for the 28th of July. No further details are available. Other future releases include an Evil Dead box set, George Romero's virus movie The Crazies (both due on July 28th), and the excellent vampire movie Near Dark.

Anchor Bay's version of Vampyres (aka Daughters of Dracula), due on June 23rd, appears to be missing a number of bonus features which are on Blue Underground's American version, due on June the 3rd. One thing is certain: the UK disc has a horrible sleeve design which doesn't do the film any favours.

2nd May

Warner Home Video are releasing a two-disc edition of Sergio Leone's epic masterpiece Once Upon A Time In America. 

The film is one of the most eagerly-anticipated catalogue titles, and has apparently been held up while extensive restoration and reconstruction work has been carried out. (A disc of Brazilian origin has been available for some time, but is of poor quality, and dubious legality).

The Region 2 disc offers a rather disappointing array of bonus materials: a full-length commentary by film critic Richard Schickel, a twenty-minute documentary Once Upon A Time: Sergio Leone, a photo gallery and the theatrical trailer. 

The running time listed on the press release indicates it will almost certainly be the 219'48" version certificated by the BBFC in November last year. The disc will carry English and Italian 5.1 audio tracks, and will be presented in 1.85:1 ratio. The disc is currently scheduled for the 23rd of June, and has an RRP of £19.99.  Click on the sleeve image to see an exploded view of the package. 

Columbia aren't terribly good about releasing press information (at least, not to me: I'm lucky if I can get a list of titles out of them!) That said, their July titles have just escaped. There are four new Superbit titles: Men In Black II, Legends of the Fall, Hannibal and The Mummy Returns (all on 7th July). On the 14th of July they have Dawson's Creek - Series 1 box set, the quirky Love Liza and the TV movie thriller Murder in Greenwich. On July 21st they have (the Shannon Tweed, Andrew Dice Clay movie?) No Contest and James Cameron's Piranha 2: The Spawning. Finally, on 28th July they have Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, Lockdown, Sidney Poitier's Biblical parable Buck and the Preacher and Jack Cardiff's Viking movie The Long Ships. No further details are available. 

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April 2003

March 2003

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October and November 2002

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