The buzz among fans of American psychotronic movies the past few months is that SHOUT! Factory in the US have scheduled to release about 16,000 tons of old Roger Corman movies! Needless to say this is a BIG deal! Many of these films have never been released on DVD before and the ones that have actually been granted a release on one of those shiny wee discs are often in less than brilliant quality - to say the least.
SHOUT! Factory are releasing these old trash favourites in spiffy awesome, restored, uncut, cleaned up, correct format, nicely perfumed, cool DVD-case-sleeve'ed, filled with extras editions!!!!! But, hey, this isn't a blog on psychotronic cinema but on WORLDWEIRD cinema so let's babble a bit about that shall we!!
The very reason I'm brining up these new SHOUT! releases is the simple reason that Roger Corman co-produced quite a few Filipino films ... and SHOUT! are releasing a handful of these! A BIG handful I might add!! In Double and triple sets!!!
Their first double set contains UP FROM THE DEPTHS (directed by Charles Griffith, produced by Cirio H. Santiago, 1979) and DEMON OF PARADISE (produced and directed by Santiago, 1987). Word on the street is they're crappy beyond belief but I don't give a fuck about what the grapevine says, I've already bought the DVD and I'll make up my own mind about them thank you very much (once a punk always a punk, ay).
I haven't watched either of the two films yet (I got the disc on Saturday) but I've checked the quality of the prints and the extras, and these restored prints look juust amazing! And also, and this is very exiting... the disc contains a rare trailer for the Santiago directed FIRECRACKER (aka Naked Fist) which I wrote a little bit about the other day in connection with ANGELFIST (also by Santiago, and both films are remakes of TNT JACKSON - which, incidentally, is also directed by Santiago and will ALSO get a release from SHOUT!). There's no official release date yet.
And further more... in June SHOUT! are releasing a "Women in Cages" triple bill containing THE BIG DOLL HOUSE (1971), THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972) and WOMEN IN CAGES (1971) which all (and I'm sure it's pointless to mention this as I'm sure you all know this already) star the queen of the blaxploitation flicks, the BABETIOUS (which probably isn't even a real word but that's what she is!) Pam Grier!
I'm fully aware these films have been released on DVD before (I can't comment on their picture quality as I don't have any of them; I still watch them on video tape) but this release should blow them all outta the water!
On DVDmaniacs message board SHOUT! spokesman Cliff Mac said about the set in January: "WOMEN IN CAGES COLLECTION includes BIG DOLL HOUSE, BIG BIRD CAGE and, of course, WOMEN IN CAGES. All three films have been re-transferred and look amazing."
By the way, SHOUT! will also be releasing ARENA (also starring Pam Grier) at a later stage but I reckon it's not in this set as it's a co-production with Italy and not the Philppines.
As I mentioned earlier FIRECRACKER is also slated for release and so are SAVAGE! (1973), TNT JACKSON (1974), FLY ME (1973), and TOO HOT TO HANDLE (1977).
Cliff Mac said this about FIRECRACKER on Dvdmaniacs last month: "I just watched our new transfer of FIRECRACKER.... WOW... it looks beautiful....".
There's no release date set for the last four films either but I'm certainly looking forward to them in a BIIIG way! FIRECRACKER and TNT JACKSON on restored DVD!!! O_O
Almost too UNREAL to be true!!! I'm certainly crossing my fingers we don't run into another bloody recession until AFTER we've seen these cool flicks on the street.
