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viewing 1 To 4 of 4 items
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3xBLU-RAY
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AA 030BR
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"Akio Jissoji created a rich and diverse body of work during his five decades in Japan's film and television industries. For some, he is best-known for his science-fiction: the 1960s TV series Ultraman and 1998's box-office success Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis. For others, it is his 1990s adaptations of horror and mystery novelist Edogawa Rampo, such as Watcher in the Attic and Murder on D Street. And then there are his New Wave films for the Art Theatre Guild, three of which -- This Transient Life, Mandara and Poem, forming The Buddhist Trilogy -- are collected here. Winner of the Golden Leopard award at the 1970 Locarno Film Festival, This Transient Life is among the Art Theatre Guild's most successful -- and most controversial -- productions. The film concerns a brother and sister from a rich family who defy the expectations placed on them: he has little interest in further education or his father's business, instead obsessing over Buddhist statues; she continually refuses a string of suitors and the prospect of marriage. Their closeness, and isolation, gives way to an incestuous relationship which, in turn, breeds disaster. Mandara, Jissôji's first colour feature, maintained the controversial subject matter, focusing on a cult who recruit through rape and hope to achieve true ecstasy through sexual release. Shot, as with all of Jissôji's Art Theatre Guild works, in a radically stylised manner, the film sits somewhere between the pinku genre and the fiercely experimental approach of his Japanese New Wave contemporaries. The final entry in the trilogy, Poem, returns to black and white and is centred on the austere existence of a young houseboy who becomes helplessly embroiled in the schemes of two brothers. Written by Toshirô Ishidô (screenwriter of Nagisa Ôshima's The Sun's Burial and Shôhei Imamura's Black Rain), who also penned This Transient Life and Mandala, Poem continues the trilogy's exploration of faith in a post-industrial world."
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BLU-RAY
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AV 186BR
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"For the third and final instalment in his infamous 'Blood Trilogy', Color Me Blood Red, splatter movie pioneer Herschell Gordon Lewis turned to the world of fine art for this tortured tale of a troubled artist turned homicidal maniac. Painter Adam Sorge has found himself in a bit of a creative lull. But when his girlfriend accidentally cuts her finger, he realizes what his work has been missing all this time -- human blood! With pressure mounting from local gallery owner Farnsworth to deliver his next masterpiece, Adam sets about procuring as much glorious hemoglobin as he can muster -- first from himself, and then from anyone unfortunate enough to pass by his sickening studio of slaughter. The final filmic collaboration between H.G. Lewis and producer/master exploiter David F. Friedman, who collectively delivered the equally demented Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs!, Color Me Blood Red is a crazed creation that truly puts the pain in painting."
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BLU-RAY
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AV 183BR
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"The Possessed is a wonderfully atmospheric proto-giallo based on one of Italy's most notorious crimes, The Alleghe killings, and adapted from the book on that case by acclaimed literary figure Giovanni Comisso. Peter Baldwin (The Ghost, The Weekend Murders) stars as Bernard, a depressed novelist who sets off in search of his old flame Tilde (Virna Lisi, La Reine Margot), a beautiful maid who works at a remote lakeside hotel. Bernard is warmly greeted by the hotel owner Enrico (Salvo Randone, Fellini's Satyricon) and his daughter Irma (Valentina Cortese, Thieves Highway, The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire), but Tilde has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Bernard undertakes an investigation and is soon plunged into a disturbing drama of familial secrets, perversion, madness and murder... Co-written by Giulio Questi (Death Laid an Egg, Arcana) and co-directed by Luigi Bazzoni (The Fifth Cord, Footprints on the Moon), The Possessed masterfully combines film noir, mystery and giallo tropes, whilst also drawing on the formal innovations of 1960s art cinema (particularly the films of Michelangelo Antonioni). A uniquely dreamlike take on true crime, The Possessed is presented here in a stunning new restoration."
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BLU-RAY
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AV 142BR
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"A haunting and dreamlike gothic horror/giallo hybrid, Death Smiles On A Murderer is a compelling early work from the legendary sleaze and horror film director Joe D'Amato (Anthropophagus, Emanuelle In America), here billed under his real name Aristide Massaccesi. Set in Austria in the early 1900s, Death Smiles On A Murderer stars Ewa Aulin, (Candy, Death Laid an Egg) as Greta, a beautiful young woman abused by her brother Franz (Luciano Rossi, Death Walks In High Heels, The Conformist) and left to die in childbirth by her illicit lover, the aristocrat Dr. von Ravensbrück (Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Kill, Baby... Kill!). Bereft with grief, Franz reanimates his dead sister using a formula engraved on an ancient Incan medallion. Greta then returns as an undead avenging angel, reaping revenge on the Ravensbrück family and her manically possessive brother. Presented here in a stunning 2K restoration, D'Amato's film is a stately and surreal supernatural mystery which benefits from an achingly mournful score by Berto Pisano, several shocking scenes of gore, and a typically sinister performance from Klaus Kinski as a morbid doctor."
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