Thank You — The Support Has Kept Us Alive! I asked, and you answered. The DVDBeaver donation drive was a success, and I'm moving forward today with more gratitude than I know how to put into a paragraph. To everyone who contributed - whether it was a large sum or a few dollars scraped together - thank you. And to those who couldn't give but sent a note of encouragement anyway: those messages also touched me deeply. It's a rare thing to find out, in plain numbers, that the work matters to people. You've told me it does. What it means in practice is simple: DVDBeaver continues. There's a 'listing page' debuting today: The Re-Watchables. Be kind, I'm sure I'm opening myself up for some head-scratching judgement. Calendar Updates and new reviews forthcoming. With sincere thanks, Gary W. Tooze DVDBeaver.com dvdbeaver.com/subsite/rewatc…

OUT TOMORROW! The Complete Kubrick [4K UHD] - Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Jack Nicholson, Kirk Douglas, Peter Sellers, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Malcolm McDowell, Ryan O’Neal, Shelley Duvall @Criterion US: link.amazon/B06ryq1id CAN: link.amazon/B0cMELQ8O OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film3/… Killer’s Kiss (1955) / The Killing (1956) / Paths of Glory (1957) / Spartacus (1960) / Lolita (1962) / Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) / 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) / A Clockwork Orange (1971) / Barry Lyndon (1975) / The Shining (1980) / Full Metal Jacket (1987) / Eyes Wide Shut (1999) Criterion The Masters: All features are presented in Dolby Vision HDR on the 4K UHD discs and in SDR on the Blu-rays. Criterion’s “About the Masters” notes show that nearly every title was restored from its original camera negative, though the restorations come from a mix of sources. Some are Criterion’s own, some are carried over from studio restorations of recent years, and some were done by partner archives. The three independently produced early features had their 4K debuts on Kino Lorber UHDs, but here they are presented in masters made for Criterion by Duplitech. Killer’s Kiss (1.37:1) comes from the 35mm original camera negative, with a composite fine-grain used for some sections. The Killing and Paths of Glory (both 1.66:1) are also drawn from their camera negatives. The Paths of Glory mono was remastered at 24-bit from UCLA archivist Robert Gitt’s 35mm magnetic track. Fear and Desire (1.37:1) is the exception: it is Kino Lorber’s 4K restoration, made from the camera negative and a Library of Congress fine-grain. The three shorts are new Criterion 4K restorations from Library of Congress elements. These were 35mm prints and a duplicate negative for Day of the Fight and Flying Padre, and the 16mm original reversal for The Seafarers. The studio-era films largely use existing restorations. Spartacus (2.20:1) is Universal’s 4K restoration from a 6K scan of the original Technirama elements, with Robert A. Harris consulting, and its 7.1 track was remastered from the 70mm six-track printmaster. Dr. Strangelove (1.66:1) is Sony’s 4K restoration, supervised by Grover Crisp and assembled from a fine-grain master, a duplicate negative and a 35mm print. 2001: A Space Odyssey (2.20:1) is Warner’s 4K from an 8K scan of the 65mm camera negative, supervised by Ned Price and Leon Vitali with input from Christopher Nolan and Hoyte van Hoytema. Its original 70mm six-track 5.1 mix is joined by the 35mm general-release mono, which Kubrick mixed without the overture, intermission and exit music, so those passages are silent on that track. A Clockwork Orange (1.66:1), The Shining (1.85:1) and Full Metal Jacket (1.85:1) are Warner 4K restorations from their camera negatives, with Full Metal Jacket graded against both an answer print and Kubrick’s own personal 35mm reference print. Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut match Criterion’s own recent 4K editions. Barry Lyndon is framed at 1.66:1 per Kubrick’s December 8th, 1975 letter to projectionists, and was graded against Vitali’s 2000 HD transfer. Eyes Wide Shut (1.85:1) is presented in its international cut, supervised and approved by cinematographer Larry Smith. Its look stems from Kubrick’s deliberate decision to have the negative force-developed by two stops, which accounts for the film’s distinctive grain and glowing low-light palette. Two presentations are new to 4K UHD. Lolita (1.66:1) is a new 4K restoration from the 35mm original camera negative, using a Warner 35mm print as color reference, with its mono remastered from the original DME magnetic track. Kubrick’s international version of The Shining (119 minutes, against 144 for the U.S. theatrical) comes from the same Warner restoration of the camera negative, with its own mono track remastered from the original magnetic elements. Since most of these masters have been reviewed before on DVDBeaver, we have used our existing captures from those earlier 4K UHD releases where applicable. New captures will eventually be taken for Lolita and the international version of The Shining. Audio: Criterion’s audio approach across the set is admirably purist. Every film is offered with its original soundtrack, and for the mono-era titles that means uncompressed linear PCM mono remastered from the original magnetic elements. Paths of Glory’s was remastered at 24-bit from UCLA archivist Robert Gitt’s 35mm track. For Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, both versions of The Shining and Full Metal Jacket, Criterion also includes alternate 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio remixes, so purists and surround enthusiasts are both served. The early independent features and Lolita are presented in their original mono alone. This is a notable step up from earlier editions. Warner’s 4K UHD of The Shining offered only a 5.1 remix with no mono at all, its Full Metal Jacket UHD relegated the mono to a lossy track, and Sony’s Dr. Strangelove UHD carried only 16-bit lossless tracks. The three large-format productions get special treatment. Spartacus is presented in 7.1 DTS-HD MA remastered from its 70mm six-track printmaster, and it retains the overture, entr’acte and intermission music. 2001: A Space Odyssey is the most generous of all, with its original 70mm six-track theatrical mix in 5.1, an alternate 5.1 remix and the original 35mm general-release mono, which, true to Kubrick’s own 35mm prints, is silent during the overture, intermission and exit music. Eyes Wide Shut is presented in its original theatrical 5.1, remastered from the 35mm magnetic track. Optional English (SDH) subtitles are offered on every feature, and the set is region free. From the portions we have sampled so far, the tracks sound exceptional, clean and faithful to their sources, with the dynamic range of the scores and Kubrick’s carefully chosen music coming through with clarity and weight. About the Captures Because of the size of this set and its release date, none of the screen captures in this review are taken from The Complete Kubrick discs. Instead, we have included a single capture per film from our earlier reviews, taken from previous 4K UHD editions or, where none exist, Blu-ray. Several of those editions share their restoration with this set, while others come from different transfers. The captures should therefore be taken as representative of each film’s presentation, not as exact reproductions of the Criterion discs. Fear and Desire is represented by Kino’s 2024 4K UHD, which uses the same Kino Lorber restoration found in this set. Killer’s Kiss and The Killing come from Kino’s 2022 4K UHDs, and Paths of Glory from the 2024 Masters of Cinema (Eureka) 4K UHD. All three of those earlier discs were scanned from the original camera negatives, but Criterion presents new Duplitech masters here, so the grading and framing may differ. Spartacus is from Universal’s 2020 4K UHD, which uses the same 2015 restoration from the large-format Technirama elements. Dr. Strangelove is from Sony’s 2021 4K UHD, drawn from the same Sony restoration. 2001: A Space Odyssey comes from Warner’s 2018 4K UHD. The Shining and Full Metal Jacket come from Warner’s 2019 and 2020 4K UHDs respectively. Our Shining capture is from the U.S. theatrical version and serves for both cuts, which share the same restoration in this set. Note that both of those Warner discs were framed at 1.78:1, whereas Criterion presents both films at 1.85:1. Barry Lyndon is from Criterion’s own 2025 4K UHD, which matches the restoration in this set. For Eyes Wide Shut, our capture is from Criterion’s 2025 Blu-ray of the same Larry Smith–approved restoration, as we were unable to capture from that 4K UHD disc at the time. Lolita and A Clockwork Orange are represented by Warner’s 2011 Blu-rays (the latter its 40th Anniversary Edition). Lolita receives a new 4K restoration in this set, so that capture predates it entirely. OUR PAST REVIEWS: Fear and Desire, Killer's Kiss, The Killing, Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut Seen together, Stanley Kubrick's films reveal a remarkably consistent sensibility beneath their wildly varied surfaces. There is the dehumanizing machinery of war, from the trenches of Paths of Glory to the War Room farce of Dr. Strangelove and the Parris Island crucible of Full Metal Jacket. There is the individual crushed or remade by institutional authority in A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon, and there are the hidden currents of desire and power in Lolita and Eyes Wide Shut. Running through all of it is an ironic, coolly precise eye that turned every genre he touched, whether noir, epic, satire, science fiction, horror or costume drama, into something unmistakably his own. Watching the arc from the self-financed Fear and Desire and the gritty New York of Killer's Kiss through to the monumental achievements of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining is a privilege few box sets can offer. Criterion's The Complete Kubrick is a staggering undertaking. Its 30 discs (13 4K UHD and 17 Blu-ray) hold every finished film Kubrick directed, all restored in 4K and presented in Dolby Vision HDR, many from their original camera negatives. It includes Lolita's 4K debut, Kubrick's international cut of The Shining, both versions of Day of the Fight, original soundtracks alongside remixes, over twenty-five hours of supplements, and archive-inspired packaging filled with Kubrick's own notes, slates and correspondence. We are still working our way through the set, but everything we have sampled so far has looked and sounded exceptional. This is the definitive presentation of one of cinema's most exacting artists and an essential acquisition for any serious film collection. Set of the Year - our very highest recommendation!

Uli Edel's "Christiane F." 4K UHD - Natja Brunckhorst, Thomas Haustein, David Bowie @Criterion US: link.amazon/A0c2Qm7IW CAN: link.amazon/B00qdtU99 US Blu-ray: link.amazon/B0i6FJSxK CAN Blu-ray: link.amazon/B0h7CIEuv BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/dvdbeaver/posts/… OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film3/… Natja Brunckhorst plays Christiane. She was barely older than her character when they shot it. Christiane is a bored 13-year-old living in the anonymous high-rises of Gropiusstadt with a mother who is rarely home. The film works because Edel refuses both moralizing and glamour. It has no adult voice of reason and no tidy redemption arc. Mostly there are kids, many of them younger than Christiane, trying to talk each other into quitting while they share a spoon. The withdrawal sequence, where Christiane and Detlef try to go cold turkey together in her room, is one of the most punishing passages in any addiction film. Uli Edel's Christiane F. remains one of the most harrowing films ever made about addiction, and its power hasn't diminished in 45 years. Edel refuses to moralize or glamorize. He lets his non-professional young cast, led by an extraordinary Brunckhorst, carry the story from the giddy freedom of the Sound discotheque and the David Bowie concert to the platforms and public toilets of Bahnhof Zoo. The authentically grimy location shooting and Bowie's Berlin-era music give it an atmosphere that no later film about addiction has quite matched. Criterion's director-approved 4K restoration is a revelation in 4K UHD, with heavy, natural grain, deep blacks and true-to-period color, and the new DTS-HD Master 5.1 track brings the Bowie songs to life. The extras, including the new interviews with Edel and Sean Baker, the 2022 Brunckhorst interview and the screen tests, add welcome context. This is easily the best this cult classic has ever looked or sounded on home video, and it comes very strongly recommended!

Beneath The Trees : Folktales At DEFA 2 Blu-ray - Rolf Ludwig, Heinz Schubert, Doris Weikow, Marianne Christina Schilling, Julie Juristova, Katrin Martin, Jana Mattukat, Susanne Luning, Eva-Maria Hagen, Lore Frisch @Eurekavideo @mastersofcinema UK: amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI… BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/dvdbeaver/posts/… OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film3/… Eureka's second volume of DEFA Märchenfilme is every bit as fascinating as the first. Drawing on Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, these five films share a distinctly East German sensibility: vain rulers, greedy courtiers and a moral that always favors ordinary working people, from the soldier of The Tinderbox, left with nothing but the friendship of the poor, to the miners who get their mine back in Snow White and Rose Red. The stars include Barbara Mehlan, Doris Weikow, Marianne Christina Schilling (Signals: A Space Adventure,) Julie Jurištová (Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea,) Katrin Martin and Jana Mattukat, whose princess in the late-GDR The Frog King must earn her prince rather than simply receive him. The crown jewel is Konrad Petzold's The Robe with Eva-Maria Hagen and Lore Frisch, an Andersen satire about a tyrant in a walled town that was shelved in the year the Berlin Wall went up and only reconstructed and premiered in 1991. Its history alone makes the set essential for anyone interested in DEFA. The restorations from the DEFA Foundation are mostly excellent, grainy and film-like, with very high bitrates and original German 24-bit linear PCM tracks. The Robe shows the limits of its surviving elements, but that is part of its story. Add two strong commentaries, informative new featurettes, three charming DEFA stop-motion shorts and a substantial book, and this is another superb Masters of Cinema Blu-ray package. Highly recommended!

Coming in January: one of the most harrowing survival thrillers ever made; a tender, bittersweet ode to female friendship; a piercing examination of the psychology of colonialism; and four long-awaited restorations from around the globe. PLUS: a genre-scrambling, zeitgeist-defining sensation and an influential snapshot of late-1960s New York, now on 4K UHD.

Jerzy Skolimowski's "The Shout" Blu-ray - Alan Bates, Susannah York, John Hurt, Tim Curry @Criterion US: link.amazon/A00zgUvQK CAN: link.amazon/B07FFY035 UK: amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI… BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/dvdbeaver/posts/… OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film3/… Jerzy Skolimowski, a Polish émigré working in England, approaches English village life the way an anthropologist might. Crossley is a kind of cuckoo in the nest, a figure familiar from Teorema and similar tales of the stranger who disrupts a bourgeois home. Here, though, the threat is primal rather than spiritual. He represents something old and uncontrollable that the civilized couple can’t reason with and, in Rachel’s (Susannah York) case, can’t resist. The Shout is one of the most unsettling and original British films of the 1970s, a puzzle-box study of dread that never settles whether we are watching memory, invention, or madness. Skolimowski (Moonlighting, EO, Night Train, Essential Killing, Deep End) looks at the English village like an outsider, making the cottage, the church, and the cobbler's shop as strange as Crossley's tales of the outback. Alan Bates (The Running Man (1963), The Wicked Lady, The Go-Between, Tommy, Zorba the Greek, The Pumpkin Eater, The Rose, Secret Friends, Impossible Object, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, King of Hearts, An Unmarried Woman, Women in Love, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Caretaker, Georgy Girl, Gosford Park) is superb as Crossley, by turns charming, menacing, and pitiful, and he never reveals whether the man is a sorcerer or simply a very persuasive madman. John Hurt (Alien, Melancholia, Watership Down, I, Claudius, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 1984, The Limits of Control, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, 10 Rillington Place, Dead Man, Scandal, The Hit, A Man for All Seasons) is a fine match as the composer whose curiosity about sound becomes the very thing that endangers him. Susannah York (Visitors, Images, The Killing of Sister George, Gold, Sands of the Kalahari, Tom Jones, Tunes of Glory, A Man for All Seasons, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, X Y & Zee, The Silent Partner) conveys Rachel's trance-like surrender with very little dialogue, and Tim Curry (Clue, Alice, The Hunt for Red October) is a quietly wry presence as Robert Graves, keeping score at the asylum cricket match. Mike Molloy's (The Hit) cinematography makes the vast coastal dunes feel like the edge of the known world, while the sound design and the electronic score by Anthony Banks, Michael Rutherford, and Rupert Hine turn listening itself into a source of terror. The Criterion Blu-ray offers a superb, film-like 1080P transfer from a 2K restoration approved by both Skolimowski and Molloy, a lossless 24-bit 2.0 surround track that delivers the titular shout in all its unnerving power, new interviews with Skolimowski and producer Jeremy Thomas, almost an hour of Skolimowski at the 1997 Midnight Sun Festival, a 1977 on-set TV program, and an essay by Leo Goldsmith (Keywords in Subversive Film.) A curious and deceptively entertaining film experience. Absolutely recommended!

Nadine Trintignant's "Crime Thief" Blu-ray - Jean-Louis Trintignant, Robert Hossein, Florinda Bolkan, Serge Marquand, Giorgia Moll, Tanya Lopert, Bernadette Lafont @indicatorseries US: link.amazon/A0iqaYJD1 CAN: link.amazon/B027UdkyE UK: amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI… BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/dvdbeaver/posts/… OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film3/… Crime Thief is loosely based on the Lucien Léger affair. In 1964 a man claiming to be “L’Étrangleur” flooded the French press and police with letters about a child’s murder, and the case became a national media frenzy. Nadine Trintignant takes the idea of a man who craves the notoriety of a crime and pushes it somewhere stranger: Jean doesn’t commit the original act at all. He steals it. What attracts him is not violence but significance. Being someone the newspapers write about fills a void that marriage, fatherhood, and work never touched. Crime Thief is a fascinating rediscovery. It is a psychological crime film without a mystery, about a man who doesn't commit a murder but steals one, because being the man the newspapers write about fills a void that marriage, fatherhood, and work never touched. Jean-Louis Trintignant (A Man and a Woman, Amour, And God Created Woman, And Hope to Die, Confidentially Yours, Deadly Sweet, Death Laid an Egg, Is Paris Burning?, Le combat dans l'île (aka Fire and Ice), Love at the Top, My Night at Maud's, Spotlight On A Murderer, The Conformist, The Crook, The French Conspiracy, The Great Silence, The Man Who Lies, The Sunday Woman, Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, Three Colors: Red, Trans-Europ-Express, Z) plays Jean Girod with the blank, slightly smug detachment he had perfected by the late 60s, and his mildness makes the slide toward real criminality more unsettling than any outburst could. Florinda Bolkan (Candy, Love at the Top, Machine Gun McCain, The Perfume of the Lady in Black, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, Don't Torture a Duckling, The Damned, A Brief Vacation, Footprints, Crime of Passion, Ring of Death, Perversion Story) is magnetic in her billed screen debut. Robert Hossein (The Wicked Go to Hell, Nude in a White Car, The Taste of Violence, Rififi, Vice and Virtue, Cemetery Without Crosses, Le Professionnel, Angélique, Marquise des Anges, Angélique et le Roy, Indomptable Angélique, Angélique et le Sultan) is the gruff, worldly friend who doesn't see what's growing in his spare room. The supporting cast includes Serge Marquand (Cemetery Without Crosses, Angélique, Spirits of the Dead, Barbarella, Last Known Address, Police Python 357, The Big Red One), Bernadette Lafont (Le Beau Serge, Out 1: Spectre, The Mother and the Whore, Violette), Giorgia Moll (Contempt), and Tanya Lopert (Satyricon, Navajo Joe, What's New Pussycat, Something Wild, Summertime). Nadine Trintignant's direction absorbs the Nouvelle Vague's cool, elliptical style but turns it toward the mechanics of media and self-mythology, giving us a portrait of male alienation made by a woman who seems to have studied it at very close range. The Indicator Blu-ray offers a superb, film-like transfer from a 4K restoration of the negative, faithful uncompressed mono with the Electric Prunes' Mass in F Minor used to great effect, new subtitles, four substantial new featurettes, script galleries, and a 36-page booklet. Very highly recommended!

James Gray's "Little Odessa" 4K UHD - Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, Moira Kelly, Vanessa Redgrave, Paul Guilfoyle, Natalya Andreychenko, Maximilian Schell @Criterion US: link.amazon/A05cBfYPs CAN: link.amazon/B00ErcRvB UK: amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI… US Blu-ray: link.amazon/B0eQsnXKX CAN Blu-ray: link.amazon/B0cUNkmb0 BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/dvdbeaver/posts/… OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film3/… On the surface Little Odessa is a gangster picture, but James Gray is far less interested in the mechanics of the hit than in what is waiting for Joshua at home. The violence he practices for a living is presented as the inheritance of a household ruled by Arkady’s contempt. In that household the mother is fading and the youngest son is learning, by watching, how to become his brother. It is a Dostoevskian construct of guilt, exile and patrimony. Gray stages it with a classical restraint that was startling from a first-time director in the age of Tarantino imitators. Thirty years on, Little Odessa remains one of the most assured American debuts of the '90s and the clear template for everything Gray has made since. Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, The Hit, Meantime, Vincent & Theo, Youth Without Youth, Don't Come Knocking, Invincible, Chronic, Bergman Island) gives one of his most interior performances as the hooded, watchful Joshua, with Edward Furlong (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, American History X, Animal Factory) as the open nerve of the film and Moira Kelly (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me) as the girl he left behind. Brief Vanessa Redgrave (Blow-Up, Isadora, The Devils, A Man for All Seasons, Camelot, A Quiet Place in the Country, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Julia, Comrades, Howards End, Deep Impact, Atonement, The Day of the Triffids) and Maximilian Schell (Judgment at Nuremberg, The Young Lions, Return from the Ashes, The Deadly Affair, Krakatoa East of Java, The Odessa File, The Man in the Glass Booth, Cross of Iron, John Carpenter's Vampires), reunited from Julia, give the household its gravity: the dying mother and the self-pitying, tyrannical father whose contempt set everything in motion. DoP Tom Richmond (Palindromes, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Chopping Mall; camera operator on Repo Man and Monster) shoots the drained winter palette and swallowing shadows with real mastery, and the choral music of Arvo Pärt and Georgy Sviridov turns the story into a requiem. Criterion's director-approved 4K UHD, with Dolby Vision, is flawless, handling the film's very dark photography beautifully, and the included Blu-ray is excellent in its own right. Add Gray's commentary, the French making-of documentary, a new conversation with Sean Fennessey and Glenn Kenny's essay, and this is a superb package for a film that has long deserved one. This 4K UHD package get a strong recommendation.

Sergio Grieco's "The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine" 4K UHD - Françoise Prévost, Jenny Tamburi, Corrado Gaipa, Aldina Martano, Barbara Herrera, María Luisa Sala @indicatorseries US: link.amazon/B093w4Gob CAN: link.amazon/B09AbiS37 UK: amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI… US Blu-ray: link.amazon/B0imhmsq5 CAN Blu-ray: link.amazon/B00d1JdXq UK Blu-ray: amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI… BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/dvdbeaver/posts/… OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film3/… What separates The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine from the more lurid entries of the cycle is that Grieco plays much of it as straight gothic tragedy. The Romeo-and-Juliet framework gives the film a narrative spine that many of its nunsploitation contemporaries lack. Its real target is the Church as an institution of control. The convent is a place where daughters are disposed of for family convenience, where piety masks appetite, and where the Inquisition serves anyone with a grudge. The expected flagellation and nudity are present, but they are less gratuitous than in films like The Nun and the Devil, and they are more firmly tied to the abbess’s tyranny. Prévost is the film’s center of gravity. Her abbess is icy and composed in public and quietly desperate in private, and she gives the film a dignity it might otherwise lack. Tamburi, only in her early 20s, has the wide-eyed vulnerability the role demands, and her terrified close-ups in the convent’s cells are among the film’s most effective moments. Malco, a few years before his Fulci period, makes a handsome if somewhat passive hero. Gaipa’s leering inquisitor is pure villainy, a grinning embodiment of religious sadism. The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine rises above much of the nunsploitation cycle by playing its Inquisition-era tale as gothic tragedy. Its Romeo-and-Juliet framework gives the film a narrative backbone, and its scorn is aimed squarely at institutional hypocrisy. Françoise Prévost (Paris Belongs to Us, Spirits of the Dead,) brings real dignity to the tormented abbess. Jenny Tamburi (The Suspicious Death of a Minor, Smile Before Death,) is affecting as the doomed novice, Paolo Malco (The New York Ripper, The House by the Cemetery, Murder-Rock) is a handsome hero, and Corrado Gaipa (The Godfather, Lucky Luciano, Illustrious Corpses) makes a gleefully sadistic inquisitor. The Indicator 4K UHD is superb, with a pristine, film-like Dolby Vision image at a very high bitrate and a clean lossless 24-bit Italian mono track. The extras include a new commentary and an excellent subgenre documentary. Fans of Italian genre cinema should consider this a must-own, and it is strongly recommended!

OUT TODAY! Wrye Martin / Barry Poltermann's "Aswang" Blu-ray - Norman Moses, Tina Ona Paukstelis, John Kishline, Flora Coker, Victor Delorenzo, Mildred Nierras @MondoMacabroUSA US: link.amazon/B077NXonj CAN: link.amazon/B03hlfpPf BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/dvdbeaver/posts/… OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film3/… Aswang lets the audience know early that something is very wrong with the Nulls. The suspense comes less from mystery than from waiting for the inevitable. About half an hour in, the aswang’s proboscis makes its first visit. From there the film becomes a steadily escalating run of grotesque, darkly comic set-pieces, with chainsaws, severed limbs and a sticky climax in the woods. The tongue effect sits right on the line between repulsive and absurd, and that feels deliberate. Martin and Poltermann are clearly working in the tradition of The Evil Dead and Re-Animator. Gore is the attraction, and the filmmakers know it is funny as well as gross. The amateur rough edges are visible in some stiff line readings and broad music cues. Even so, the film creates a real feeling of claustrophobia in that big, cold house. Its core idea is a pregnant woman held captive by a family who see her as a vessel. That idea comes from genuine folklore and is still upsetting under the camp. Few American horror films of the period drew on Philippine mythology at all, and that alone makes Aswang stand out. The film is a true lost oddity of ’90s American independent horror. Wrye Martin and Barry Poltermann shot it on 16mm around Milwaukee for about $70,000, and it took a genuine Philippine folk legend about a vampire that feeds on the unborn to a Wisconsin country estate. Tina Ona Paukstelis (October Moon 2: November Son, 5 Dark Souls) plays the pregnant Katrina, who is drawn into the Null family’s sham marriage. Flora Coker (Small Town Wisconsin), John Kishline (Public Enemies) and Violent Femmes drummer Victor DeLorenzo fill out a memorably odd regional cast. The film announces early that something is wrong with the Nulls, then builds into a run of grotesque, with darkly comic gore set-pieces. Its amateur edges are part of the charm, and the central idea of a young woman held captive as a vessel is still upsetting beneath the camp. Mondo Macabro’s Blu-ray offers a superb new 4K restoration from the original negative with very high bitrate, beautifully resolved grain, lossless 5.1 and 2.0 audio, two commentaries, a making-of documentary and a fascinating look at the lost Philippine prologue. This is very easy to recommend to fans of offbeat cult horror. It is the definitive presentation of a film that had nearly disappeared, and it comes recommended!

Umberto Lenzi's "Kriminal" 4K UHD - Glenn Saxson, Helga Line, , Andrea Bosic, Ivano Staccioli, Esmeralda Ruspoli, Maria Luisa Rispoli, Mary Arden, Mirella Pamphili @CultEpics US: link.amazon/A04iGRyIg CAN: link.amazon/B02vOL3FM US Blu-ray: link.amazon/B0f1dpii5 CAN Blu-ray: link.amazon/B0gAmFRnD BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/dvdbeaver/posts/… OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film3/… Umberto Lenzi's Kriminal is a gleefully amoral slice of 1960s Italian pop, a fumetti adaptation that plays like a Eurospy caper turned inside out: the hero is a thief and killer in a skeleton suit, and the film adores him for it. Lenzi, before his giallo, poliziotteschi and cannibal years (Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, Spasmo, Almost Human, Eyeball, Nightmare City), directs with breezy energy, globe-hopping locations and comic-panel transitions that wink at the source material. Glenn Saxson, the Dutch-born Roel Bos who came to Italy in 1964 and worked in commercials and photo novels before taking his screen name (Django Shoots First), makes a smirking, handsome anti-hero, all sunglasses, trench coat and unapologetic charm. Spanish genre icon Helga Liné (Nightmare Castle, Horror Express, The Loreley's Grasp) adds glamour and danger, and Andrea Bosic is the dogged lawman always a step behind. The mood is captured by the moment Kriminal discovers his double-cross has yielded nothing: "So I robbed the real courier, but she didn't have any diamonds?" The swinging, jazzy score keeps the whole thing light on its feet. Cult Epics' 4K UHD, from the original negative with HDR10 and a bitrate over double the included Blu-ray's, is a revelation: tighter detail, finer grain and a richer pop-art palette, with uncompressed 24-bit Italian and English tracks. The extras are stacked: a commentary by Eugenio Ercolani (Darkening the Italian Screen: Interviews with Genre and Exploitation Directors Who Debuted in the 1950s and 1960s) and Troy Howarth (So Deadly, So Perverse Vol 2: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films,), the feature-length Lenzi documentary Armed to the Teeth, a warm interview with Saxson, a piece on the music and an isolated score. Crime has rarely looked this stylish, or paid this well. A terrific package for fans of Italian cult cinema. Great fun! Absolutely recommended.

Edward Dmytryk's "Bluebeard" 4K UHD - Richard Burton, Joey Heatherton, Raquel Welch, Virna Lisi, Nathalie Delon, Marilu Tolo, Karin Schubert, Sybil Danning @KinoLorber US: link.amazon/B02OItYVZ CAN: link.amazon/B0bwq8yGw UK 4K UHD: amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI… US Blu-ray: link.amazon/B0aRgTqId CAN Blu-ray: link.amazon/B0fcM5nRb BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/dvdbeaver/posts/… OUR COMPARISON: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film3/… Bluebeard is a genuine artifact of early-'70s European excess: Edward Dmytryk's (Murder, My Sweet, Crossfire, The Caine Mutiny, Warlock, Mirage) macabre black comedy updates Perrault's wife-killing nobleman to 1930s Austria and turns it into a parade of glamorous stars and inventive deaths. Richard Burton (Becket, The Night of the Iguana, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Where Eagles Dare, Candy, The Medusa Touch, The Wild Geese) plays Baron Kurt von Sepper, the decorated flying ace with the inky blue beard, with heavy-lidded weariness - impotence and a mother fixation curdling into murder - and there's an unexpected melancholy beneath the camp. Joey Heatherton (Where Love Has Gone) is the film's real surprise as Anne, the American showgirl who discovers his frozen former wives in a locked vault, bringing intelligence and nerve to a role that could have been merely decorative. The wives themselves are a who's who of the era: Raquel Welch (One Million Years B.C., Fantastic Voyage, Bedazzled, Hannie Caulder,) as a former nun who can't stop confessing, Virna Lisi (How to Murder Your Wife, Casanova 70,) who can't stop singing, Nathalie Delon (Le Samouraï, When Eight Bells Toll), Marilù Tolo (Marriage Italian Style), Karin Schubert (The Punishment, The Erotic Daughters of Emmanuelle, Three Musketeers of the West, Cold Eyes of Fear,) Agostina Belli (The Night of the Devils, Scream of the Demon Lover) and Sybil Danning (Women in Prison, Julie Darling, Reform School Girls, Eye in the Labyrinth, Crossed Swords, God's Gun, Nightkill, The Salamander, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times,) macabre black comedy updates Perrault's wife-killing nobleman to 1930s Austria and turns it into a parade of glamorous stars and inventive deaths. Kino's package, from StudioCanal's new 4K scan of the camera negative, offers a very pleasing Blu-ray - consistently a shade brighter than the 2024 Umbrella, with deeper crimsons and identical framing - but at 1080P the differences are subtle, and the 4K UHD is where the new scan shines. The 24-bit lossless mono serves Morricone well, and the new extras - a commentary by Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson, Anna Bogutskaya's appreciation and Jean Porter-Dmytryk's affectionate half-hour portrait of her husband - are all worthwhile, though Umbrella owners will want to keep that disc for its own, entirely different, supplements. Heatherton still deserves more credit - and Bluebeard now looks better than ever. Recommended!

Kunio Watanabe's "The Loyal 47 Ronin" (1958) Blu-ray - Kazuo Hasegawa, Shintaro Katsu, Koji Tsuruta, Raizo Ichikawa, Yataro Kurokawa, Machiko Kyo, Fujiko Yamamoto, Michiyo Kogure, Chikage Awashima, Ayako Wakao @imprint_films @viavisionent AU: viavision.com.au/products/ch… BONUS CAPTURES: patreon.com/dvdbeaver/posts/… OUR REVIEW: dvdbeaver.com/subsite/film3/… Chushingura: The Loyal 47 Ronin is the all-star epic version of Japan's most-told story. Kunio Watanabe's film gathers seemingly every Daiei star of the era for a reverent, handsomely mounted telling of the Akō vendetta. Kazuo Hasegawa (Gate of Hell, The Crucified Lovers, An Actor's Revenge) anchors it as Ōishi Kuranosuke, all controlled surfaces as he feigns dissipation in the pleasure quarters to throw off Kira's spies, while his own men begin to doubt him. Raizō Ichikawa (An Actor's Revenge, The Betrayal) is the proud, wounded Lord Asano, goaded beyond endurance by Osamu Takizawa's (Fires on the Plain) loathsome Kira. Shintaro Katsu (The Tale of Zatoichi, Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo, Hanzo the Razor) brings warmth to Akagaki Genzō's famous farewell, and Kōji Tsuruta (Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple, Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island, The Japanese Godfather) adds gravity as Okano. Takashi Shimura (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Godzilla) has a surprisingly comic turn as the father-in-law of one of the ronin. The women are just as starry. Machiko Kyō (Rashomon, Ugetsu, Gate of Hell, Floating Weeds), Ayako Wakao (A Geisha, Floating Weeds, Red Angel, Irezumi), Fujiko Yamamoto (Equinox Flower, An Actor's Revenge), Chikage Awashima (Early Summer, Early Spring) and Michiyo Kogure (Drunken Angel, A Geisha, Street of Shame) each give the sacrifices behind the vendetta a human face. Takashi Watanabe's scope photography fills the frame with palace splendor and lantern-lit streets, building to the snowy night assault on Kira's mansion. Ichirō Saitō's (The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, A Geisha) score lends it all a mournful dignity. It lacks the austere formal rigor of Mizoguchi's The 47 Ronin and the revisionist edge of Kon Ichikawa's 47 Ronin, but it delivers the story in its fullest. Imprint’s worldwide Blu-ray premiere has a few blemishes and some frame instability at transitions. Still, it offers rich period color, intact grain, a solid 24-bit mono track, and two strong new extras from Jonathan Wroot and Aaron Gerow. For fans of jidaigeki and Japanese cinema of the golden age, this is an essential and long-overdue release. This star-packed epic is absolutely recommended!