Cruising (1980)

     The original theatrical cut of William Friedkin's controversial giallo-style thriller set in the New York gay leather bar underground scene is getting a two disc 4K release from Arrow films with a bunch of new and archival extras.

A serial killer is preying on members of New York's gay underground scene, stabbing them to death in a particular way. Meanwhile body parts are being found in the river and are thought to be linked to the murder spree.

Because of his physical likeness to the killer's preferred type of victim, rookie cop Steve Burns (Al Pacino) is asked to go undercover by his boss (Paul Sorvino). He accepts the job with enthusiasm but as his immersion in his role becomes ever deeper he runs the risk of losing his own identity, much like A SCANNER DARKLY's Bob Arctor or SHOCK CORRIDOR's Johnny Barrett.

A cold, dark, grim thriller that pulls no punches in its unflinching portrayal of the scene Pacino's cop has to infiltrate (or rather Friedkin's own personal creation of it), Arrow's uncut 102 minute print will have you wondering how the director got away with so much back in 1980 (he had to cut a lot, too, which is discussed in the commentary tracks and other extras). It's not exactly a gruelling watch but to anyone not familiar with that particular scene it's certainly an eye-opening and educational one, and the educational element also extends to some of the extras as well.

Arrow's CRUISING set consists of two discs. Disc one is a 2160p UHD with a brand new 4K restoration of the film from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films. To accompany this are three sound options (mono, 2.0 stereo and 5.1) and a further four audio tracks including two archival commentaries by Friedkin, one from 2007 and the other from 2019 moderated by Mark Kermode. There's also a track in which various individuals are interviewed about the film's eclectic soundtrack and finally and new music track, the 'Heavy Leather' alternate score by Pentagram Home Video which is synth heavy and a good listen if you like electronica but this option doesn't allow for the film's dialogue.

Disc two is a Blu-ray with a battery of interviews and other bits and pieces. These include a new interview with star Karen Allen (38 minutes), and actor and police advisor Randy Jurgensen who over a whopping 71 minutes talks about not just his involvement with the film but his own experiences as a cop going underground in the New York gay underground scene. 

Archival material is mainly a bunch of interviews from 2017 including editor Bud Smith (55 minutes), and actors Jay Acovone (14 minutes), Mike Starr (47 minutes), and Mark Zecca (37 minutes) with a piece from 1990 in which Wally, Wallace,  the manager of the Mineshaft club, is interviewed (33 minutes).

The BeyondFest Q&A from 2022 is actually a good place to start these extras as it's a 41 minute on stage interview with Friedkin who is a little frail here but in good spirits and exhibits a good sense of humour. Stop the Movie is a short silent film about the protests to CRUISING's release. Finally, and one of the best extras here, is David McGillivray's piece on gay 'coding', going at greater length (ooer) to explain the handkerchief code than the film does, as well as talking about the history of queer coding. Who would have thought the classified ads of Films and Filming were once such a hotbed of such things?

Finally, the set comes with a 120 page perfect bound book featuring archival articles , essays, interviews and an introduction from William Friedkin. You also get a reversible sleeve. It's a fantastic set for a unique, eye-opening and unsettling film.

William Friedkin's CRUISING is out as a 4K restoration in a two disc set from Arrow on Monday 24th February 2025

Sirk in Germany (1934 - 1935)

Eureka Entertainment are bringing out a double disc set of German director Douglas Sirk's early works that includes three feature films and some short pieces, all in new restorations from the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation. Sirk is best known for a series of vividly colourful melodramas he made in Hollywood in the 1950s. While in this set Sirk is very much at the beginning of his career, all three films are eminently watchable (and are actually immensely entertaining). They also require no prior familiarity with the director's work in order to appreciate them. 

Disc One

April, April! (1935)

That's the German for 'April Fool!' by the way. Sirk's directorial feature debut is an 82 minute comedy of mistaken identities. The owner of a pasta company receives a message that a prince is interested in his product. It's April Fool's Day and two of the pasta owner's friends decide to play a trick and convince him and his stuck up family that the prince is coming to visit the factory. Things start to get out of hand when the story is leaked to the papers, necessitating someone to actually play the prince. Then the real prince reads the news story and turns up to the factory as well. Much hilarity ensues in this pacy, good-natured, thoroughly entertaining piece of classic comedy that breezes along in the presence of likeable characters acted well.

The film comes with a commentary track by Sirk expert David Melville Grove who provides an erudite and extremely listenable commentary track that frequently goes into detail about what's happening on screen.

The disc also include three short comedy pieces: TWO GREYHOUNDS (30 minutes) in which applicants for an accountant's job end up in a case of mistaken identity; THREE TIMES BEFORE (19 minutes silent with intertitles, 16 minutes silent but with subtitles) is a story of marital disharmony that results in intervention by a third party; and THE IMAGINARY INVALID (38 minutes), an adaptation of a play by Moliere.

Disc Two

The Girl From Marsh Croft (1935)

The girl in question is Helga, a maid who has had a child by her previous employer and now cannot find work in the small rural German town on which the film is set. Kind-hearted Karsten takes pity on her and offers her a job on his farm, much to the consternation of his fiancé Gertrud, who demands Helga be dismissed from his service. 

A romantic melodrama, THE GIRL FROM MARSH CROFT also provides a fascinating historical insight into the farming activities of the rural folk of Germany in the 1930s. There's also a bit of magic realism in there if you want it. Eureka's presentation is aided immensely by a very helpful commentary track by David Melville Grove who frequently analyses scenes with particular attention to why director Sirk has chosen particular camera angles and movements. He points out the (to this viewer) almost godlike character of Jens the boatman, instead likening him to a Greek chorus, whic is also an apt description. Like APRIL! APRIL! the film holds up surprisingly well and, like that film, tells its tale in a brisk 81 minutes. 

Pillars of Society (1935)

A Henrik Ibsen play is the basis for this tale of a wealthy shipbuilder whose empire turns out to have been based on lies and deceit. In fact so cynical is this film in places it's rather depressing to say that it doesn't feel that dated. Albrecht Schoenhals, who played the prince in APRIL! APRIL! returns here as the Norwegian brother-in-law done wrong by Heinrich George's corpulent man of business who also has a secret love child. The climax is set during a well-executed (for 1935) storm at sea and the entire enterprise demonstrates Sirk's developing feel for both melodrama and character development. 

Disc two also has a 20 minute piece from Sheldon Hall who offers a useful potted history of Sirk's life and career, explaining how over the years the director's work has come to be more appreciated through film texts and retrospectives, as well as paying special attention to the three films included in this set. 

Finally, the set comes with a limited edition 'O' card and a collector's booklet featuring new writing on the films. 

Sirk in Germany is out from Eureka Entertainment in a limited edition (of 2000) double disc Blu-ray set on 

Monday 24th February 2025

Doctor Vampire (1990)

"If the CARRY ON team ever made a vampire picture..."

That sounds crazy, doesn't it? But it doesn't take too much of a stretch of the imagination to see how those two 'genres' collide in Jamie Luk's raving mad, extremely silly vampire sex comedy that's getting a UK Blu-ray release courtesy of Eureka.

Dr Chiang Ta-Tsung (Bowie Lam from John Woo's HARD BOILED) is on holiday in the UK when his Volkswagen Polo breaks down in the middle of nowhere. He comes across a castle, and when he goes in it appears to be a fully functioning British pub complete with fruit machines. There also happen to be gorgeous girls busy draining men of blood. Our hero doesn't spot this, though, until he's seduced by a lady vampire who bites him on the penis.

Back in Hong Kong amidst the hilarity of being a doctor in a sex comedy hospital, Chiang's girlfriend spots bitemark-style spots of blood on his underpants and Chiang himself develops a need for dark glasses. The head of the vampires (Peter Kjaer) decides to come to Hong Kong because apparently the doctor's blood is the best he has ever tasted. Meanwhile the foundations of a new hospital block are about to be purged of any possible ghosts by a Buddhist ceremony. Could all of this collide in a supremely wacky climax?

Imagine Jim Dale as the hero, Charles Hawtrey as the vampire count, and Kenneth Williams as the head of the hospital and you'll quickly see how this could be a Carry On film. For slightly younger viewers, the word 'Troma' will likely pop into your head during the final act where the doctor and his friends get transformed into...well, I'm still not sure. What I am sure of is that DOCTOR VAMPIRE is exceptionally silly, but if gags like a hospital patient turned into a hopping vampire with a permanent erection make you chuckle (and I'll admit it did raise a smile here) then you may well have a good time with this.

Extras include two commentary tracks, both of which are new. One has East Asian film experts Frank Djeng and John Charles while the other has Hong Kong cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema. Stacey Abbott (author of Celluloid Vampires) gives us a 20 minute piece contextualising the film in terms of other vampire nmovies around at the time, while Mary Going provides a 22 minute essay on all the ways a vampire has been slain throughout cinema history. Finally, you get a collector's booklet with new writing on Hong Kong vampire films from MR VAMPIRE to DOCTOR VAMPIRE by Katarzyna Ancuta.

DOCTOR VAMPIRE is out on Blu-ray from Eureka Entertainment on Monday 24th February 2025

Project Silence (2025)

The TRAIN TO BUSAN of Animal Attack Movies?

Well it's perhaps not quite that, but PROJECT SILENCE, which is getting a DVD, Blu-ray and (for those who like things sparkling and shiny) a 4K UHD release that looks excellent, is a rip-roaring Korean killer dogs on the loose picture that also handles the human element well. 

There's a huge pile-up on a suspension bridge during terrible fog and pretty soon the lanes both ways are closed. The main problem, however, is the subjects of Project Silence, a military research project gone wrong that has involved training big black bully breed dogs to attack assigned targets, those targets having been programmed into them via the chips inserted into their brains.

The lorry carrying them is in the crash. The dogs escape. Everything would still be okay but after the animals have been herded back into their container the helicopter crew sent in to lift it out (in terrible weather) find that one of the dogs has lost her chip and she attacks them. The cage is dropped back onto the road, the helicopter crashes, and the all the dogs end up viewing everyone on the bridge as targets. Oh, and the bridge is collapsing and at one end there's a tanker of poison gas that's leaking.

PROJECT SILENCE moves at a clip (it's only 95 minutes long) and handles its scenes of action, suspense, and catastrophic disaster well. Characters are well drawn and interact believably. Finally there are the dogs. Some reviews have complained that they look too CGI, but actually if you're a dog lover the effects sufficiently divorce you from thinking of them as real dogs that you can enjoy it too.

Altitude's disc release contains no extras, but you do get the option of either a Korean or English language track, with subtitles if you need them. 

PROJECT SILENCE is out on DVD, Blu-ray, 4K UHD, and 4K UHD steelbook now

Red Dawn (1984)

Altitude Films have just released director John Milius' RED DAWN on 4K UHD and Blu-ray in both regular and steelbook editions.

"I'd be happy to go on directing Conan films until the day I die," said John Milius on the set of 1982's CONAN THE BARBARIAN, after which he never made another one. Instead, his next project was RED DAWN, based on a script called TEN SOLDIERS by future Kevin Costner associate Kevin Reynolds which was brought to the director because the producers felt he was the only man to depict a Russian invasion of America.

Which is what RED DAWN is all about. One bright morning Russian soldiers parachute into a small American town and start blazing away, rounding people up and sending all those who don't want to comply with the new communist regime to special camps. A group of teenagers (played by Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C Thomas Howell, Jennifer Grey and Lea Thompson among others) escape and form a resistance faction called the Wolverines. Aided by a downed airforce pilot (Powers Boothe) they start to strike back at their oppressors.

Easily construed as jingoistic tub-thumping nonsense, the real main problem with RED DAWN is its lack of focus. We never get to learn much about any of the characters and there's never a viewpoint to focus on. It's also never adequately explained why Russian forces would hit a small town first (or even that particular small town) nor why they would feel the need to have regular tank displays and marches through the middle of it. Are we expected to believe they would do this everywhere?

We are also rarely party to the rebellion's plans with the result that the second and third acts of the film become a rather meandering series of attacks on the Russians before the film staggers to its end. A year later, George P Cosmatos would make the jingoism more palatable (or slightly more ignorable) in his well-executed comic book action opus RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II but here John Milius' desire to make a movie with a message rather comes undone with its own obsession to repeatedly show conflict to the point where it threatens to lose the attention. Perhaps that was part of the point.

"Forget politics, let's shoot some Russians" says Charlie Sheen, pretty much echoing what might be the philosophy of the film, in the archival 23 minute making of from 2007 that can be found on Altitude's second disc. The featurette also includes interview with Milius, Thompson, Swayze and Howell, all of whom turn up to varying degrees in the other extras which include 10 minutes on how they were trained to use the weapons, 10 minutes on the construction of the army (and where they got the tanks from) and 14 minutes on the locations (mainly Las Vegas New Mexico). There are no new extras.

John Milius' RED DAWN is out now from Altitude Films in double disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray sets (extras on the Blu-ray) and in a 4KUHD and Blu-ray steelbook

Dr Sander's Sleep Cure (2025)

"Quirky and Creative Anthology Movie That's Set a New Guinness World Record"

Here's something a bit different from Estonia. DR SANDER'S SLEEP CURE has just been released on digital in the United States, with a UK release date currently awaited, and it has indeed broken a Guinness world record, about which more in a bit.

The brainchild of writer-director and star Mart Sander, the film uses the anthology format, telling eight weird stories and using the framework of a man (Sander in one of many roles) who suffers from insomnia trying to get to sleep with the aid of a cassette tape that is the 'cure' of the title.

The stories themselves range from excellent (the first) to slight, with one story, the fourth, being a ghost tale told entirely in German with no subtitles. However, apart from the acting being a little flat and a couple of the stories not quite hitting the mark this is actually quite the achievement for a low budget independent film. Sets and costumes are excellent (there's a fair bit of green screen as well) and Sander knows how to set up and move the camera well to tell his tales.

As for the tales themselves, they all tale place in the realm of the fantastical. Some tend more towards horror, at least one is comedy (and so is the framework), and there's even some very peculiar science fiction in there as well. Despite the film being quite a ragbag of ideas Sander's style pulls everything together nicely and the entire endeavour both looks gorgeous and is graced with a well chosen soundtrack of library music. 

As for the Guinness World Record that the film has already achieved? That's actually addressed by the film itself at the end and is for the most roles played by a single actor in a film. The previous record was 45. Sander manages a few more than that in a film that's well worth checking out if you fancy something a little bit different. Here's the trailer:

Mart Sander's DR SANDER'S SLEEP CURE is distributed by Octane Multimedia and is streaming from all major VOD retailers in the US right now, with UK dates to be announced later.