Orca - The Killer Whale (1977)

 

Studio Canal are releasing a gorgeous 4K restoration of Michael Anderson's ORCA on all disc formats, with the UHD getting the steelbook treatment as follows:

Newfoundland fisherman Nolan (Richard Harris) dreams of paying off his mortgage with the money he hopes to make capturing marine creatures which he can then sell to aquarium attractions. However, when he attempts to trap an orca things go horribly wrong. The whale is a pregnant female that spontaneously aborts and then dies, all of it witnessed by her life partner. 

It takes both the science of cetologist Rachel (Charlotte Rampling) and the superstitions of both native American Umilak (Will Sampson) and the local fishing community for Nolan to understand the whale has sworn vengeance on him and his crew and will stop at nothing until they are all dead. The only thing Nolan can do is chase the whale out into iceberg-filled waters for a final showdown.

Produced (by Dino De Laurentiis) in the wake of JAWS  with the intention being very much to capitalise on that film's success, it's perhaps unsurprising that the popular press of the day dismissed the film as a ripoff of the Spielberg film. However, while Jaws is a superlative example of a monster movie, Michael Anderson's Orca is a different beast altogether, and perhaps has more in common with Michael Winner's Death Wish (another film where a man goes after the people how destroyed his family) than a shark movie. 

It's far more of a downbeat affair as well. There's nothing of the camaraderie we see in JAWS. Instead Nolan is a man who knows he is journeying to his inevitable death, and as the film goes on it becomes progressively sadder and more doom-laden.

Studio Canal's 4K restoration is a thing of beauty, allowing DP Ted Moore's beautiful compositions of sea and land, and the shots of the orcas, to look their very best. Get the UHD disc if you can. Extras are limited to a 30 minute discussion of the film by French film journalist and director Phillipe Guedj, who offers background to the movie as well as his own interpretation of it. The disc also comes with four art cards. 

Michael Anderson's ORCA - KILLER WHALE is out from Studio Canal on DVD, Blu-ray and 4KUHD on Monday 2nd September 2024

Saint Clare (2024)

Director Mitzi Peirone's latest gets its UK premiere at Frightfest prior to a digital release by 101 Films later in the year.

Clare (Bella Thorne) lives in a small town in the US with her grandparents. When she was young she fought and killed a large bearded man who threatened her camping trip. Now she possesses an ability that allows her to identify other men with the same intentions and kill them. She's aided by the ghost of a mailman (Frank Whaley) who died in front of her in the woods.

She attends a party where there's a police raid, and finds herself in the bedroom of the boy who invited her where she discovers a set of compromising photographs, including one of a girl who has recently disappeared. It turns out that she is only the latest of a staggering 53 young women to have vanished in the same town over a period of years. 

SAINT CLARE is the second feature from Mitzi Peirone who's first film, BRAID, also received its UK premiere at Frightfest. At the time I suggested that film probably needed a bit more thinking through so as not to come across solely as a load of pretentious old bollocks. With SAINT CLARE there's more of a plot, the art direction and location work is gorgeous, and the acting's not bad, including turns from Rebecca De Mornay and Ryan Phillippe.

Sadly, however, the direction is ghastly, with the result the film reeks of 'immature sixth form film student project' in its overwhelming and frequently nauseating Dutch camera angles and wobbly hand held shots, none of which help the film and many of which actually hinder it. It's a slight step up from BRAID but at this rate it's going to be a while before Peirone comes up with something watchable. 

SAINT CLARE will be getting a Digital release from 101 Films

Schlitter: Evil in the Woods (2024)

"Like a SAW film if John Kramer was a French Lumberjack"

Pierre Mouchet's highly entertaining, gory, revenge-driven horror thriller gets a deserved UK release on Digital from Signature Entertainment.

When he was a boy, Lucas was witness to his brutal lumberjack father accidentally running over Lucas' best friend Matthieu. Years later he is summoned back to the family home after a fire has destroyed it and two charred corpses were found within. Matthieu's father never found out how the boy died and he seems overly willing to help Lucas and his friends. Is he as friendly as he seems? Is he actually wheelchair-bound? And doesn't he seem to have an unnatural penchant for designing complex animal traps?

The title smacks of comedy but schlitting apparently refers to the lumberjack practice of shifting logs using a sledge. That said, while SCHLITTER is played dead serious, if you're the kind of person who can chuckle at the cheekily outrageous excesses of a SAW film this is going to be right up your alley. In fact while SAW has Jigsaw, Schlitter's villain could perhaps be nicknamed Bandsaw.

If there's one quibble to be had it's that the ending is a little abrupt and could have done with a bit more wit and a little less grimness, but seeing as this is modern French horror we're talking about here, this is still the lightest and most entertaining genre piece to come out of the country for many years. A real treat. Let's have a trailer:

SCHLITTER: EVIL IN THE WOODS is out on Digital from Signature Entertainment on Monday 26th August 2024

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Jonathan Demme's classic film version of the second Thomas Harris novel to feature his charismatic psychopathic psychiatrist Hannibal Lector gets a limited edition 4KUHD and Blu-ray release from Arrow Films.

You know the plot, don't you? If not then you have a real treat in store and certainly not one I'm going to spoil, suffice to say that THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is the police procedural thriller that launched a thousand imitators, most of them on television and episodes of some of which are still continuing to be made to this day. As well as shows like Crime Scene Investigation it's also easy to see how it inspired more fantasy-related programmes like Chris Carter's the X Files.

Of course, what sets the film apart from 'just' being 'FBI trainee cracks a case' is the masterstroke that is Hannibal Lecter and the icy, magnetic performance of Anthony Hopkins who plays him. It's been stated so many times how little screen time he actually has but so memorable is he that even when Lecter isn't around he's still playing on the mind.

It's a mark of just how iconic a film has become when it's possible to point out scene after scene that has been used in comedy sketches or just plain imitated in films made subsequently. However, it's a testament to the skill of all involved that, 33 years after it was made, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS doesn't feel especially dated and still retains much of its ability to not just shock an audience but keep it in suspense.

Arrow's disc is packed with extras, including two commentary tracks. If you want the facts then go for the archival Tim Lucas one, however, of you fancy a fascinating discussion between trans film academics then you want the new one by Elizabeth Purchell and Caden Mark Gardner.

Other new material includes two new visual essays. Through Her Eyes (8 minutes) discusses Jodie Foster's character of Clarice Starling, while Healing Humanity (16 minutes) looks at how the film tells its story via the different characters' POV. 

Breaking the Silence is an archival 'on-screen interview and trivia track' that plays throughout the film, all available as a separate extra. Page to Screen is a 41 minute 2002 Bravo TV episode about the film, while other archival pieces include a 2004 interview with Howard Shore (16 minutes), a 1991 making of (8 minutes), and a 51 minute documentary on the collaboration of Jonathan Demme and Jodie Foster on the film.

You get 20 minutes of deleted scenes and an addition seven minutes of deleted scenes from VHS sources, plus two minutes of outtakes, trailer, TV spots and image gallery. Oh, and Anthony Hopkins' telephone answering machine message. 

Finally, Arrow's limited edition set contains a booklet with new writing on the film, a double-sided poster and six double sided reproduction lobby cards. 

Jonathan Demme's THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is out on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from Arrow Films on Monday 26th August 2024

The Beast Within (2024)

"Attempt at 'Elevated Horror' Falls Flat"

From that you should be able to deduce that Alexander Farrell's THE BEAST WITHIN, starring Kit Harrington, is not a remake of Philippe Mora's entertaining Lovecraftian giant were-cicada film of 1982. Which is a bit of a shame, actually.

So what's it actually about? Ten year old Willow (Caolinn Springall) lives in a remote country farmhouse with mother Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings) and infrequently-seen father Noah (Kit Harington) who has a habit of disappearing altogether around the full moon. When she eventually follows her parents on one such occasion she finds Noah being chained up in the ruins of a building in the forest, and learns that Noah's 'affliction' may run in the family.

Far less a horror film and more a domestic drama, THE BEAST WITHIN suffers from being terribly slow, with little in the way of plot or even character development for at least the first hour of its 97 minute run time. The exploitation elements - a pretty good werewolf and Kit Harrington's bottom - are present but we don't get to see any werewolf action until the final act, and even then not much of it. One suspects director Farrell had aspirations to make something 'more' than just a horror film but in doing has ended making a film that can comfortably be watched on double speed and you won't miss anything. Here's the trailer:

THE BEAST WITHIN is out on Digital from Signature Entertainment on Monday 19th August 2024

Boy Kills World (2024)

"Highly Enjoyable SF Action Piece"

Moritz Mohr's extremely entertaining satirical science fiction action picture gets a welcome disc release from Signature Entertainment.

Bill Skarsgard is the 'Boy' of the title. As the film opens we see that his parents were killed in front of him when he was a child. Unable to either hear or speak, he adopted for his internal monologue (which we are party to) the voice of his favourite video game and headed off into the jungle to be trained in martial arts by a shaman (Yahan Ruhian).

All of this means that by the second act we have Bill Skarsgard as an instrument of death with the voice of H Jon Benjamin, out to get revenge on Famke Janssen's evil family who now rule what is left of the world.

"Do you know how hard it is to get a cereal company to sponsor mass murder?" There are parts of BOY KILLS WORLD that reach near-ROBOCOP levels of satirical violent SF perfection, and it's hard to think of another film that's as enjoyable in the same way as the Verhoeven classic. The script is witty, the camerawork is kinetic while never resorting to shakicam confusion, and the choreography of some of the fight scenes is something else, with the highpoint being a set piece of utter carnage at a television studio. 

Extras on Signature's 4K UHD disc include a 17 minute making of, plus a bunch of very short pieces that range from 34 seconds to just under a minute and a half and include Martial Arts Training, Winter Wonderland, F*cked Up Fairytale, Bill and Yayan, and a couple of trailers.

Action-packed, gory, satirical, and well-cast, BOY KILLS WORLD is the kind of thing pulp entertainment cinema needs a lot more of. Its cinema release was limited and if you missed it Signature's disc comes highly recommended. If you saw it you'll be picking this up anyway. Let's have a trailer:

BOY KILLS WORLD is out on all disc formats (DVD, Blu-ray, 4KUHD) on Monday 5th August 2024