SCENES ON SCREEN
The latest releases coming to cinemas and home media
Scenes on the big screen
The Forbidden Worlds Film Festival has announced the lineup for its horror-centric Big Scream weekend, which takes place at the former Bristol IMAX on the 13th and 14th of September.
Proceedings on the 13th start with Fred Dekker’s 1986 tribute to The Monster Squad, Night of the Creeps. This is followed by the director’s cut of Guillermo del Toro’s Hollywood debut, Mimic. The final film on the 13th is William Friedkin’s The Guardian.
On the 14th, Frank Marshall’s 1990 family-friendly chiller Arachnophobia kicks things off, followed by John Carpenter’s adaption of Stephen King’s killer-car thriller Christine. Rounding out the festival is The Hidden, a VHS classic directed by Jack Shoulder, brought to the big screen.
Weekend and day passes are now available, as well as tickets to individual screenings.
Frederico Zampaglione’s latest film, The Well, will receive its world premiere at the Sitges Film Festival, as part of the Midnight X-treme strand.
It stars Lauren LaVera as a budding art restorer who travels to an Italian village to restore a medieval painting but finds herself up against an evil curse and a brutal monster.
Co-starring are Claudia Gerini, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Taylor Zaudtke, Linda Zampaglione, Jonathan Dylan King, Lorenzo Renzi, Gianluigi Calvani, Yassine Fadel, Melanie Gaydos, Stefano Martinelli and newcomer Courage Oviawe, and the film is produced by Iperuranio Film.
Scenes on the small screen
Sparky Pictures will digitally release a new director’s cut of Daniel Simpson’s western Dry River, featuring a score from The Cure’s Jason Cooper, on the 25th of September.
Starring Michael Moriarty and Charlie Creed-Miles, the film is set in a Mexican border town ravaged by drought, with the only water source controlled by a family of renegades. When a Mexican stranger arrives, a violent confrontation starts brewing.
On the 2nd of October, Sparky Pictures will also digitally re-release Gerard Johnstone’s horror Housebound. Johnstone, who directed the recent horror-comedy hit M3GAN, directs Morgana O'Reilly and Rima Te Waita, following a troubled thief who is put into the custody of her estranged mother and stepfather.
Initially dismissive of her mother’s superstitions, our protagonist starts to hear whispers and bumps in the night and begins to believe that the house might be possessed by a hostile spirit.
Following its world premiere at FrightFest last month, the zombie thriller Herd will get a digital and DVD release on the 23rd of October, courtesy of High Fliers.
It follows a couple on a make-or-break canoe trip to a remote Missouri town, but after an accident leaves one of them with a broken leg, things start going from bad to worse as they discover the town has been overrun by a virus.
Directed by Steven Pierce, Herd stars Ellen Adair, Jeremy Holm, Timothy V. Murphy, Corbin Bernsen and Mitzi Akaha.
On the 23rd of October, Second Run will release a 4K edition of Pearls of the Deep, a Czechoslovak New Wave anthology based on the stories of Bohumil Hrabal. The five films collected here are directed by Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, Evald Schorm, Věra Chytilová and Jaromil Jireš.
Two additional films, Ivan Passer's A Boring Afternoon (Fádníodpoledne) and Juraj Herz's The Junk Shop (Sběrné surovosti), are also included, as well as Rudolf Růžička’s 1967 short film about the author, About Cats, Beatniks and All Sorts of Other Things (O kočkách, beatnicích a všeličems jiném).
It marks the world Blu-ray debut for the collection, which is packaged with an essay by Peter Hames.
On the 30th of October, Treasured Films will put out its third release, a special edition of the former Video Nasty, Mausoleum, available uncut on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.
Directed by Michael Dugan and starring Bobbie Bresee, Marjoe Gortner, Norman Burton and Maurice Sherbanee, it follows a young girl who is possessed by a demon. Dormant for many years, the demon reawakens when she reaches womanhood to unleash a gory nightmare.
The film has been scanned into 4K from the original 35mm camera negative and comes with a new audio commentary from Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw, as well as a 2008 commentary with Bresee and Lee Christian. A new interview with Bresee, a video essay on Gortner and various interviews and featurettes.
Ordering direct from Treasured Films, the first 500 customers will also receive a reversible poster and Bitey Boob Demon magnet.