Well it looks like it’s a stay at home July between the pandemic and the crushing humidity. Luckily for you Arrow Video is ready to keep the cineaste happy in the air conditioning with six Blu-rays that will turn your living room into a great art house. All you have to do is have a few bars of Toblerone near the TV remote to make you feel like deep inside the theater that’s currently shutdown.
Zombie for Sale is a Korean undead comedy about what happens when a pill company introduces a drug that will do what nobody wants a drug to do: make undead creatures move faster. Black Rainbow is a supernatural thriller from the director of Get Carter. Rosanna Arquette speaks with the dead and deals with the living Jason Robards and Tom Hulce. Inferno of Torture is another bit of extreme filmmaking from the maker of Horrors of Malformed Men and Orgies of Edo. This was one of those Japanese films that cult music icon John Zorn would mention in interviews. You didn’t see anything this extreme in your introduction to world cinema class. Hiroshima is a chilling look at those who survived the atomic bomb blast. The Japanese film hasn’t been in circulation for decades. Bloodstone has a couple honeymooning in India get involved in a diamond scheme. Finally Life Is A Long Quiet River is a French comedy from the ’80s about what happens when babies get swapped.
This is half a dozen titles from around the world that will make you felt like you went somewhere for your summer vacation other than the sofa. Here’s the press release from Arrow Video with all the details:
New from Arrow Video US and Arrow Academy US
ZOMBIE FOR SALE [Blu-ray] (7/7)
BLACK RAINBOW [Blu-ray] (7/7)
INFERNO OF TORTURE [Blu-ray] (7/7)
HIROSHIMA [Blu-ray] (7/14)
BLOODSTONE [Blu-ray] (7/21)
LIFE IS A LONG QUIET RIVER [Blu-ray] (7/21)
via MVD Entertainment Group
Arrow’s July Lineup Includes Underseen Classics and Award Winners!
Arrow continues to bring the fire this summer with 6 new July releases that offer a little something for everyone. Korean zombie comedy? Arrow has it. Supernatural British thriller? You bet! Indian-American action-adventure? Yep!
Arrow starts slinging the heat on July 7th with three titles starting with Zombie for Sale. This zom-com from first-time Korean director Lee Min-jae is the story of a giant pharmaceutical company’s experiment gone wrong. The result? A revitalised zombie with the power of youthful life. This hilarious release includes a Q&A with Min-jae, audio commentary, and more.
Also hitting stands on July 7th is the supernatural thriller Black Rainbow from legendary British director Mike Hodges. Rosanna Arquette stars as a medium that witnesses a hitman killing a whistleblower in her latest vision. The hitman becomes aware of this and places the medium on his list. This release features a brand new restoration approved by Hodges.
The final July 7th release is Inferno of Torture. This film from the “King of Cult,” Teruo Ishii is a story centered on the high demand for tattooed geisha and the rival tattoo artists that wage war for their bodies. This release includes an audio commentary with Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes.
On July 14th, Arrow Academy will release Hiroshima. This realistic retelling of the day the bomb dropped from director Hideo Sekigawa has virtually gone unseen since its initial release in 1953. Variety praised the film for its sequence showing the immediate aftermath of the bomb, calling it “a brilliantly staged and photographed quarter-hour which ought to go down as a masterpiece of pictorialized destruction and agony.” The release includes a 2011 documentary featuring survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings now residing in the United States.
Arrow’s July lineup comes to a close on July 21st with two releases – Bloodstone and Life is a Long Quiet River. In Bloodstone a newlywed American couple heads to India to celebrate their honeymoon when they accidentally come in possession of a stolen ruby getting them caught in the adventure of their life. Bloodstone was directed by Dwight H. Little off a script written by Nico Mastorakis. In Life is a Long Quiet River two babies are switched at birth leading to a witty send up of class relations and family ties. This outrageously wicked French comedy from 1988 was nominated for 7 César Awards, winning 4, and became a cult classic.
All 6 release will be available from your favorite video retailer.
Zombie For Sale
An infectiously funny slice of modern Korean cinema where Train to Busan, The Quiet Family and Warm Bodies collide to create a memorable rom-zom-com from first time director Lee Min-jae. When the illegal human experiments of Korea’s biggest Pharmaceutical company go wrong, one of their “undead” test subjects escapes and ends up in a shabby gas station owned by the Park family – a band of misfits spanning three generations who hustle passers-by to make ends meet. When the Park family uncover their undead visitor, he bites the head of their household, who instead of transforming into an undead ghoul becomes revitalised and full of life! The family then hatch a plan to exploit this unexpected fountain of youth, allowing locals to pay to be bitten too, until things go wrong… With a cabbage-munching zombie who prefers ketchup over blood, and a dysfunctional family that gives the Kim family of Parasite a run for their money, Zombie for Sale will warm the deadest of hearts and breathe some new life into the zombie genre.
Bonus Materials
High-Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
Original uncompressed Stereo and 5.1 DTS-HD MA options
Newly-translated English subtitles
Brand new audio commentary with filmmakers and critics Sam Ashurst and Dan Martin
Q&A with director Lee Min-jae from a 2019 screening at Asian Pop-Up Cinema in Chicago, moderated by film critic and author Darcy Paquet
Eat Together, Kill Together: The Family-in-Peril Comedy – brand new video essay by critic and producer Pierce Conran exploring Korea’s unique social satires
Making-Of Featurette
Behind-the-Scenes footage
Original Trailer
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Mike Lee-Graham
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Josh Hurtado
BLU-RAY
SRP: 39.95
Street Date: 07/07/20
Label: Arrow Video
Language: Korean
Run Time: 112 mins
Black Rainbow
Mike Hodges (Flash Gordon, Get Carter) wrote and directed this supernatural chiller as a meditation on the human race’s ability to destroy the world, a gothic tale of suspense and the occult, guaranteed to send shivers down your spine. Martha Travis (Rosanna Arquette, Pulp Fiction, Crash) is a travelling clairvoyant on the road with her sceptic father (Jason Robards, Once Upon a Time in the West, Magnolia). During a séance Martha communicates a message from a dead man to his wife in the audience. Shocked the wife insists her husband is still alive. Later that evening the husband is killed by a ruthless assassin. As Martha foresees more and more tragic events journalist Gary Wallace (Tom Hulce, Amadeus, Animal House) follows the pair in pursuit of a hot story… with catastrophically eerie results. Sent direct to cable by its struggling distributor on initial release, Black Rainbow unfairly never got the exposure it deserved, newly restored from the original negative audiences can now discover the darkness at the end of the rainbow, as never before.
Bonus Materials
Brand new restoration from the original negative approved by writer-director Mike Hodges
Original stereo 2.0 PCM uncompressed audio and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio Surround Sound options
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
New audio commentary by film historians Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan
Archival audio commentary by Mike Hodges
Message in a Bottle: Archival ‘Making of’ documentary
Archival featurettes ‘8 Minutes’; ‘Disasters’; ‘Seeing the Future’; ‘Behind the Rainbow’ featuring interviews with Hodges, Arquette, Robards, producer John Quested including behind-the-scenes imagery
Trailer
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Nathanael Marsh
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Booklet featuring new writing on the film by author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Mike Hodges and more illustrated with stills
BLU-RAY
SRP: 39.95
Street Date: 07/07/20
Language: English
Run Time: 103 mins
Inferno Of Torture
Exploitation legend Teruo Ishii (Horrors of Malformed Men, Orgies of Edo) delivers one of his most extreme visions of violent eroticism in this, the sixth in his abnormal love series. Tattoos and torture await women forced into servitude in Ishii’s Inferno of Torture. Unable to repay a local lender, Yumi (Yumika Katayama) takes up an offer to serve as a geisha for two years with a promise of freedom once her debt is repaid. She quickly realizes that this is less a house of geishas than an extremely cruel brothel specializing in supplying western visitors with tattooed playthings. Taken under the wing of one of the leading tattoo artists vying for a coveted spot in the Shogun’s good graces through his work, Yumi’s body becomes a battleground as a rival artist becomes determined not to lose his spot at the top. When the madam, Otatsu (Mieko Fujimoto) trains her eye on the blossoming relationship between the benevolent artist Horihide (Teruo Yoshida) and his model, she makes sure than her stay is less than hospitable, inspiring the torturous inferno of the title. Following Ishii’s legendary Shogun’s Joy of Torture and Orgies of Edo, the prolific filmmaker still manages to turn up the heat in this incredibly violent and salacious entry in a filmography unlike any other. From the film’s opening scene depicting some of the most perverse violence ever captured on screen, through to the shock ending that will leave the audience’s mouths agape, there’s nothing quite like Inferno of Torture. Tender romance clashes with vile sadism as a sea of tattooed female flesh floods nearly every frame of this film depicting Japan’s Edo period as only Ishii could.
Bonus Materials
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
Original uncompressed mono audio
Optional English subtitles
Audio Commentary by Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes
Erotic Grotesque Nonsense & the Foundations of Japan’s Cult Counterculture – a condensed version of Jasper Sharp’s Miskatonic Institute lecture
Trailer
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Jacob Phillips
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Chris D.
BLU-RAY
SRP: 39.95
Street Date: 07/07/20
Language: Japanese
Run Time: 90 mins
Hiroshima
Hiroshima (1953) is a powerful evocation of the devastation wrought by the world’s first deployment of the atomic bomb and its aftermath, based on the written eye-witness accounts of its child survivors compiled by Dr. Arata Osada for the 1951 book Children Of The A Bomb: Testament Of The Boys And Girls Of Hiroshima. Adapted for the screen by independent director Hideo Sekigawa (Listen to the Voices of the Sea, Tokyo Untouchable) and screenwriter Yasutaro Yagi (Theatre of Life, Rice), Hiroshima combines a harrowing documentary realism with moving human drama, in a tale of the suffering, endurance and survival of a group of teachers, their students and their families. It boasts a rousing score composed by Akira Ifukube (Godzilla) and an all-star cast including Yumeji Tsukioka (Late Spring, The Eternal Breasts), Isuzu Yamada (Throne of Blood, Yojimbo) and Eiji Okada (Hiroshima Mon Amour, Woman in the Dunes), appearing alongside an estimated 90,000 residents from the city as extras, including many survivors from that fateful day on 6th August 1945. Hiroshima was produced and distributed outside of the studio system by the Japan Teachers’ Union following the mixed critical reception to Children of Hiroshima (1952), directed by Kaneto Shindo the previous year, the first dramatic feature to deal directly with the atomic bombing. Although sequences from the film were used in Alain Resnais’ classic of French New Wave cinema, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), it has been effectively out of circulation in Japan and the rest of the world since its original release in 1953 due to the force and political sensitivity of its message. This new High Definition presentation is the complete version, restoring the footage from the international edit that was released in the United States in 1955.
Bonus Materials
High Definition Blu-ray™ (1080p) presentation
Original uncompressed audio
Archive interview with actress Yumeji Tsukioka
Hiroshima Nagasaki Download (2011), 73-minute documentary featuring interviews with survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings now residing in the United States, with an introduction by the director Shinpei Takeda
New video essay by Jasper Sharp
Newly commissioned artwork by Scott Saslow
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Mick Broderick
BLU-RAY
SRP: 39.95
Street Date: 07/14/20
Language: Japanese
Run Time: 104 mins
Bloodstone
A man of action who can fight with the best of them and a cab driver who would give the Transporter a run for his money, pair up to save a young girl from the clutches of an evil criminal magnate in the exciting adventure thrill-ride Bloodstone! The Bloodstone, a priceless stolen ruby, accidentally ends up in the possession of American newlyweds Sandy (Brett Stimely, Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death) and Stephanie (Anna Nicholas, Remington Steele). Now, their honeymoon in India is interrupted as they become the target of international fence Van Hoeven (Christopher Neame, The Prestige) and his evil henchmen. When Van Hoeven kidnaps Stephanie and ransoms her for the jewel, Sandy joins forces with cabby and dormant stunt-driver Shyam Sabu (Rajinikanth, 2.0) to rescue his young bride. Co-written and produced by genre film luminary Nico Mastorakis (Island of Death, The Wind) and featuring a stellar performance by legendary Tamil megastar Rajinikanth in his first English-language role, Bloodstone is an action-packed romp full of thrills, kick-ass one liners and venomous cobras!
Bonus Materials
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
Original 2.0 Stereo PCM Uncompressed audio and 5.1 Surround audio options
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
Optional Greek subtitles
Brand new audio commentary by Bryan Reesman
Keeping it to Myself – brand new interview with producer and co-writer Nico Mastorakis
Brand new video essay on Bloodstone’s star Rajinikanth by Indian cinema expert Josh Hurtado
Trailers
Image gallery
Original screenplay [BD-ROM content]
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Mark Cunliffe
BLU-RAY
SRP: 39.95
Street Date: 07/21/20
Language: English
Run Time: 91 mins
Life Is A Long Quiet River
An outrageously wicked comedy about two families from award winning debut filmmaker Étienne Chatiliez, this fast-paced satire became the most popular French comedy of the decade. The radiantly bourgeois Le Quesnoys with their immaculate children and perfect manners and the grubby, disreputable Groseilles are thrown together in absurd chaos by an act of revenge as they discover that twelve years prior their babies were switched at birth. A witty send up of class relations and family ties, Life Is a Long Quiet River was celebrated with a host of trophies at France’s César Awards ceremony winning for best screenplay, best debut work and acting prizes for Héléne Vincent and Catherine Jacob.
Bonus Materials
High Definition digital transfer
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
Original Mono audio
Newly translated optional English subtitles
Archival interviews with director Étienne Chatiliez, actor André Wilms, co-writer/co-producer Florence Quentin and producer Charles Gassot
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Scott Saslow
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Jonathan Romney
BLU-RAY
SRP: 39.95
Street Date: 07/21/20
Language: English
Run Time: 90 mins
