SCENES ON SCREEN

The latest releases coming to cinemas and home media

Scenes on the big screen

Following its premiere at the BFI Film Festival 2022, Pretty Red Dress will be released theatrically on the 16th of June. It is the debut feature from writer/director Dionne Edwards and stars Natey Jones, Temilola Olatunbosun and the first film role of Alexandra Burke.

Travis (Jones) has just been released from prison and is trying to reconnect with his girlfriend Candice (Burke) and his family but the decision to buy Candice a new dress for an upcoming audition unwittingly reveals a host of secrets and desires.

The Rob Knox London Film Festival has announced the shortlist of eleven short films that will compete across nine categories on the 8th of July.

The festival, which has been running for 14 years, is held in memory of Rob Knox. Knox was a young actor who had a role in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince but lost his life in a knife attack shortly after filming wrapped. His father, Colin Knox, established the Rob Knox Foundation as well as the festival and has been supported by actors such as Ray Winstone and Jim Broadbent.

This year, the films competing at the event are:

• Yellow Dove Aftermath. Dir: Rony A. Abovitz

• Spoken Reference: One Punch to Break Free. Dir: Antony Popov

• Daisy Chain. Dir: Phoebe Azario

• Total Quarantine. Dir: Sebastian Vaina

• Ghanimah. Dir: Sai Karan Talwar

• The Red Ball. Dir: George Morgan

• Bilderflut: Flood of Pictures. Dir: Kathy Janet Wieczorek

• One for Sorrow. Dir: Benny Watson

• Sound of the Lake. Dir: Cale Green, Johnny Holder, Daphne Wong

• A Digital Sense. Dir: Thomas Hogge

• Black Canvas. Dir: Kaye Tuckerman

Documentary specialists Dogwoof will release the directorial debut of two-time Grammy Award-winning producer, singer and songwriter D. Smith on the 4th of August.

Kokomo City follows the stories of four Black, transgender sex workers in New York and Georgia. Shot in black and white, it offers an unfiltered, frank look at their day-to-day lives, paired with commentary on race, capitalism and gender.

Universal Pictures will release the upcoming horror comedy The Blackening in cinemas on the 25th of August.

Written by Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins, and directed by Tim Story, the film follows a group of friends who find themselves trapped in a remote cabin and forced to play along with a killer’s twisted game.

It features an ensemble cast of Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Perkins, Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, and Yvonne Orji.

Scenes on the small screen

June is Partners Only Month at Vinegar Syndrome, with the company celebrating the range of partner labels. June will see thirteen new releases across the site.

From Dekanolog, The Adam Rifkin Film Festival is limited to 2,500 copies and brings together the short films of Adam Rifkin (The Last Movie Star, Detroit Rock City). 22 films are included, totalling 122 minutes and extras include interviews with Rifkin and the various actors he worked with.

Another collection of shorts comes from Altered Innocence, a label dedicated to LGBTQ+ and coming of ages films. Altered Innocence Vol. 2 features eleven films, split into Altered and Innocence categories.

The Altered programme is more transgressive, with virtual love dolls out for revenge, twinks eager to be annihilated and a lesbian director obsessed with big boobs. Innocence is more tender and subtle, with stories of brotherly love, modern transgender life, intergenerational relationships and boys testing the limits of traditional masculinity.

Bringing genre-defying Asian cinema to North America, Kani will release Lawrence Lau’s 2000 picture Spacked Out, an update of his 1988 film Gangs about an all-female, underage group of Triads as they navigate drug use, bad boyfriends and pregnancy.

The newly-scanned release includes interviews with the director, the assistant director Tse Loh Sze and actress Angela Au, as well as a booklet with writing from Margaret Barton-Fumo.

The American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) brings the DIY horror film Effects to UHD and Blu-ray with a new 4K restoration. Directed by Dusty Nelson, it follows a group of coked-up filmmakers (Tom Savini, Joe Pilato, and John Harrison) who set out to make a new slasher film.

The release is limited to 2,000 copies and includes a documentary about the film, an archival commentary from the cast and crew, a booklet with an interview with Nelson and a series of short films.

At Dawn They Sleep, from New Jersey oddity label Saturn’s Core Audio & Video, follows best friends Ian and Stephen who find themselves turned into vampires and use their newfound powers to take revenge for a drug deal gone wrong.

Directed by Brian Paulin, this is presented alongside the director’s shot-on-video debut Reap of Evil, alongside new featurettes, audio commentaries and newly commissioned artwork by Eerie Crypts.

Factory 25 will bring out a very limited (1,000 copies) release of Andrew Bujalski’s 2002 film Frances Ha Ha. Shot on 16mm, the film follows Marnie navigating her way through young adulthood, on the search for romance and employment.

The release includes a 2023 restoration of the film, and a series of interviews, as well as a 28-page booklet with essays by Chuck Klosterman, Tao Lin and notes by Bujalski.

Focused on boundary-pushing cinema, Yellow Veil Pictures is releasing the 1963 film How To Be Loved, directed by Wojciech Has and based on the novel by Kazimierz Brandys. It follows an actress travelling from Warsaw to Paris, while reflecting on her life during the German occupation.

It will feature a series of notes and written essays about the film, from writers such as Annette Insdorf, Film Professor at Columbia University, and film critic Sebastian Smoliński, as well as new artwork by Aleksander Walijewski.

ETR Media is a new distribution arm of Enjoy the Ride Records and brings Graveyard Alive: A Zombie Nurse Alive to Blu-ray. Directed by Eliza Kephart and starring Anne Day-Jones, Karl Gerhardt, and Samantha Slan, the 2003 film follows a young nurse, who is bitten by a zombie and becomes a flesh-eating sex-kitten.

It’s limited to 2,000 copies and offered with a booklet featuring writing from Fangoria editor Mike Gingold, producer Patricia Gomez Zlatar and Kephart, as well as an audio commentary track from Kephart, Zlatar and producer Andrea Stark.

Focused on genre and cult films from the 80s and 90s, Culture Shock Releasing will put out the double bill of Virgin High and Hot Under the Collar, both directed by Richard Gabai.

Both films are presented as 2K transfers from the original 35mm prints and come with introductions and audio commentary from the director, a series of archival pictures and footage, and the uncut version of Pray and Mediate.

From cult distribution label, Deaf Crocodile, Prague Nights is a little-seen anthology in the vein of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath. Directed by Miloš Makovec, Jiří Brdečka and Evald Schorm, it is a supernatural look at ancient and modern Prague, filled with magic, rituals, Golems, automation and satanic visitors.

The release includes a new video interview with Czech critic and screenwriter Tereza Brdečková on her father, Jiří Brdečka, as well as a new audio commentary and two short animated films by Jiří Brdečka. It’s limited to 2,000 copies with new artwork by Beth Morris.

Coming from Utopia, Therapy Dogs is directed by Ethan Eng, who also stars alongside Justin Morrice, Kevin Tseng and Kyle Peacock, and follows the last year of high school of two friends dedicated to making the ultimate senior video.

Dark Star Pictures will bring out the 2017 release The Queen of Hollywood Boulevard, directed by Orson Oblowitz, which sees the 60-year-old owner of an LA strip club spiral into violence and revenge as her debt to the mob gets her into hot water.

Australian label Umbrella Entertainment will bring the 1988 rape-revenge film Shame, directed by Steve Jodrell and starring Deborra-Lee Furness, Simone Buchanan and Tony Barry.

Limited to 2,000 copies, the release includes a new interview with the director, alongside writers Michael Brindley and Beverley Blankenship, star Simone Buchanan and producer Paul Barron. There’s also a 25-minute interview with Deborra-Lee Furness and a booklet with writing from Alexandra Heller-Nicholas.

Cult Epics will release the first in a series of Marleen Gorris releases on the 13th of June. A Question of Silence (De Stilte rond Christine M.) is widely considered to be a feminist classic and follows three women who - despite being strangers - kill a male shopkeeper with no premeditation.

The release includes a 2K transfer and restoration of the film, an audio commentary with film scholar Patrica Pisters, interviews with the director and actress Cox Habbema and the trailer. The first 100 copies will also include an English Promo Brochure.

Skinamarink, the Shudder original from writer/director Kyle Edward Ball, is coming to Blu-ray and DVD through Acorn Media on the 3rd of July.

When two siblings wake up in the middle of the night, their father is missing and all of the windows and doors in their home have vanished. But it soon becomes clear that something else is watching over them.

The release includes an audio commentary with Ball, as well as director of photography Jamie McRae.

The horror streaming platform Shudder will welcome the new creature feature Unwelcome on the 23rd of June, with survival thriller Quicksand debuting on the 14th of July.

Unwelcome sees married couple Maya and Jamie escape their urban surroundings and move to rural Ireland, only to discover malevolent goblins lurking in the ancient wood at the bottom of their garden.

In Quicksand, a couple on the brink of divorce, travel to Columbia for a work conference but become trapped in a pit of quicksand during a hike. In order to escape, they must battle the elements of the jungle and a venomous snake.

On the 10th of July, Second Run will present a new 4K restoration of Aravindan Govindan’s The Circus Tent (Thamp̄), a film once thought lost, which made was included in the 2022 Cannes Film Festival Official Selection.

It explores the impact of a travelling circus which arrives in a remote Indian village, encapsulating the magic of art encountered for the first time. The release includes a newly filmed interview with photographer Ramu Aravindan, son of the director, an interview with Film Heritage Foundation founder Shivendra Singh Dungarpur and actor Jalaja, and a 24-page booklet with writing by Dungarpur.

StudioCanal will release Evil Dead Rise for digital download on the 14th of July, and on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD, including a limited edition steelbook, on the 17th of July.

Written and directed by Lee Cronin, the film moves the Evil Dead franchise out of the woods and into a claustrophobic tower block as the Deadites reek havoc on a single mother, her three children and her estranged sister.

The releases are presented with an audio commentary by Cronin, as well as his short film Ghost Train.

You can read a special bonus essay on the opening of Evil Dead Rise below.

The brutal 2007 debut from Xavier Gens (Hitman, Gangs of London) will get the limited edition treatment from Second Sight Films, releasing on the 24th of July. The boxset will feature new artwork from James Neal and a 70-page booklet with new writing on the film.

Escaping the police during political unrest in Paris, a group of young reprobates find themselves in a remote guesthouse where they come face to face with a clan of violent neo-Nazis.

Both the limited edition and standard editions include a host of extras, including an audio commentary with Zoë Rose Smith and Kelly Gredner, new interviews with members of the cast and crew, a making-of featurette, a short film and more.

A host of new releases will be made available from Eureka Entertainment this August. Kicking things off is The Skyhawk, with Kwan Tak-hing returning as Wong Fei-hung, backed by Sammo Hung and Carter Wong.

Directed by Jeong Chang-hwa, the film sees Master Wong take a new student under his wing, while also dealing with a local crime boss. The martial arts classic is making its UK home media debut, presented in a new 2K restoration with a limited print run including new artwork by Darren Wheeling, a host of special features and a collectors booklet.

Eureka’s August slate also includes Buster Keaton’s feature debut, Three Ages, which enters the Masters of Cinema Series on the film’s 100th anniversary. The first movie to be written, directed and starred in by Keaton, it spoofs D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, following multiple narratives across different historical ages.

It’s presented in a new restoration by the Cohen Film Collection, with extras including an audio commentary by film historian David Kalat, new video essays by David Cairns and Fiona Watson, D.W. Griffith’s 1912 short film Man’s Genesis and a collectors booklet with new writing by Philip Kemp and Imogen Sara Smith.

Mubi will exclusively stream Rotting in the Sun, the latest film from Sebastián Silva (The Maid, Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus, Nasty Baby) from the 15th of September.

Starring Jordan Firstman in his first leading role and Catalina Saavedra, the film is said to be a meta-comedy, where Silva stars as a depressed director, unwinding at a Mexican gay beach town when he meets influencer Firstman and reluctantly agrees to collaborate on an upcoming project.

The September lineup for Radiance Films includes the 1993 Spanish thriller, The Dead Mother, directed by Juanma Bajo Ulloa, which predated a genre explosion in the country and is presented here as a limited edition 4K Blu-ray package.

Special features include a booklet with new writing on the film, a documentary on the making of the film, audio commentary and Ulloa’s 1989 Goya Award-winning short Victor’s Kingdom.

The Dead Mother is released on the 18th of September.

Bringing together three of the biggest stars of the era, Scream and Scream Again is a 1970 Amicus Productions film starring Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, directed by genre specialist Gordon Hessler.

The release includes a high-definition digital transfer of both the American and British cuts of the film, new interviews with the cast and crew, a discussion with author Ramsey Campbell and a documentary on Hessler’s directorial work.

Scream and Scream Again is released on the 18th of September.

Finally, following the sell-out release of the limited edition version, Radiance will produce a standard edition print of The Sunday Woman, a 1975 Giallo inspired by the Commedia all’Italiana boom and directed by Luigi Comencini.

The standard edition will include the same 2K presentation of the film, as well as all the extras found on the limited edition disc. It is released on the 18th of September