Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday 4K UHD (1993)

Director Adam Marcus' contribution to perhaps the daftest, most illogical and continuity-poor franchise in movie history is getting a deserved whistles and bells 4K UHD double disc release from Arrow.

Why deserved? Because while a number (but not all) of the sequels to Sean Cunningham's seminal FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) have adopted a rather ho-hum approach to the antics of Jason Voorhees, JASON GOES TO HELL grabs the crazy potential of its scenario and runs with it, hardly pausing for breath until the final audience-pleasing shot.

Crazy axe murderer Jason Voorhees is still up to no good at Crystal Lake despite having been dissolved in toxic waste at the end of the previous sequel, which Marcus was instructed to ignore when writing this (pretty much par for the franchise). He is lured into a trap by a sexy FBI agent (Julie Michaels) and gets blown to pieces. In the first few minutes.

But aha! His still-beating heart is eaten by the coroner assigned to report on all of Jason's bits and somehow he becomes possessed and we're off on another killing spree! But there's more - Jason needs to be properly reborn, plus the bodies he possesses have a habit of wearing out quickly so he has to swap often. He's also being pursued by professional Jason hunter Creighton Duke (a winning performance from X-Files star Stephen Williams) as well as leading man (and Friday the 13th the TV series star) John D LeMay. What's Jason to do? Apart from kill loads of people? 

The curious can have all their questions answered (within reason - this is a Friday the 13th film after all) in this double disc set that boasts the R-rated cut on disc one (running time just under 88 minutes) and the unrated cut on disc two (nearly 91 minutes). 

'Thanks for buying this film for the fourth time" says Adam Marcus in his brief introduction to both cuts, and Arrow's UHD set is certainly the fourth version to grace the film library here. However, you can now dispense with previous DVD and Blu-ray releases as Arrow's stunning 4K transfer (it really does look excellent) and the extras make this the ultimate version of the film. Disc one includes new interviews with SFX expert Robert Kurtzman (17 minutes), actress Julie Michaels (12 minutes) and good old Harry Manfredini (12 minutes). Extras from a 2020 release of the film include two interviews with director Marcus totalling 48 minutes in all and one with Kane Hodder (28 minutes). There's also 12 minutes of deleted footage with optional commentary, and a one minute tour of the Friday the 13th props museum.

Disc two has the commentary tracks and if you're unfamiliar with them you should start with the archival commentary from Marcus and co-writer Dean Lorey which is as entertaining as it is endearing and will leave you feeling extra love for the film. Then go to the 25th anniversary commentary with Marcus and Crystal Lake Memories author Peter Bracke before finally listening to the most recent track from Michael Felsher and Steve Barton. Finally, Arrow's set comes with a double sided poster, booklet, and a reversible sleeve.

In one of the interviews on here Adam Marcus said he wanted to make a film that was fun. He certainly achieved his aim and if you're a fan of JASON GOES TO HELL you'll also have a great time with all the extras that have been assembled here as well.

Adam Marcus' JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY is out in a dual disc 4K UHD set from Arrow Films on Monday 19th May 2025

It Feeds (2025)

 

"Slick Mixture of Things We've Seen Before"

Take James Wan's INSIDIOUS with a touch of Wes Craven's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, add a little bit of Tarsem Singh's THE CELL and you have IT FEEDS, which is getting a digital release from Signature Entertainment.

Cynthia (Ashley Greene) operates a home psychology practice where she treats her more special patients with the clairvoyant powers she possesses. When 14 year old Riley (Shayelin Martin) comes knocking on the door it turns out the girl is possessed by an entity that leaves terrible burn scars on her person. 

However Riley's father Randall (Shawn Ashmore) has other ideas about how to treat her condition that involves a cellar, regular victims, and a heavy lock on the cellar door. When Cynthia's daughter Jordan (Ellie O'Brien) tries to help, things go horribly wrong with Ellie now possessed by the thing and Randall determined to destroy it once and for all.

Writer-Director Chad Archibald will be know to UK festival goers for his THE DROWNSMAN (2014) and the very popular BITE (2015). Here, he does his very best to make a film that's more 'horror mainstream' and the result is something rather more generic than those other pictures, with nothing especially new or original to say. That said, if you liked any of the above listed movie influences you may well have a good time with this. Performances range from acceptable (Greene) to reliable (Ashmore from the X-MEN franchise, THE RUINS and Adam Green's FROZEN) to quirky (Julian Richings turns up for another of his frequent single scene-stealing turns). It's all professionally enough done and if you fancy your horror undemanding then IT FEEDS will tick your boxes. Here's the trailer:

IT FEEDS is out on digital from Signature Entertainment on Monday 12th May 2025

Birdeater (2025)

"Quite the Dread-Filled Trip"

The nightmarish (and occasionally Lynchian) feature debut of Australian writer-directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir is getting a cinema and digital release from Blue Finch.

Louis and Irene are planning on getting married. Louis organises a bucks' party with a crucial difference: Irene is invited and so is one of her female friends. They travel to a remote crumbling building in the country to spend one day and one night partying. Once there alcohol is consumed, drugs are taken, and the party games commence.

And it's when these games commence that things start to get weird, as it turns out Louis and Irene's relationship isn't as straightforward as their friends think, although we, the viewer, have been party to few strange goings-on earlier that are explained as the film progresses.

It's a bit difficult to say any more about BIRDEATER without spoiling it. At the beginning we glimpse an out of focus poster for Ted Kotcheff's 1971 WAKE IN FRIGHT, and, like that film, BIRDEATER is to an extent about toxic Australian masculinity. But there's a lot more complex stuff about interpersonal relationships in here as well, suffice to say that Clark and Weir's film is deserving of the accolades and prizes that have already been bestowed upon it. If you fancy a decent slice of Australian dread then BIRDEATER is just the ticket. Here's a trailer:

BIRDEATER is out from Blue Finch Releasing in cinemas on Friday 9th May 2025 and on digital on Monday 26th May 2025

I Will Never Leave You Alone (2023)

"Grim Japanese-Style Ghost Story"

American film-maker D W Medoff's low budget modern-day ghost story is getting a Blu-ray release from Arrow Films.

Richard Marwood (Kenneth Trujillo) is in prison on a sentence of involuntary manslaughter. He is offered a chance of parole on one condition: he has to stay in an abandoned house for a week and rid it of the ghosts that may or may not be haunting it. If he leaves the house he breaks his parole. 

So of course he agrees, and of course there is (at least one) ghost, but which is scarier: the restless spirit or the memories he has of the terrible thing that happened to the rest of his family, as a result of which he is now unable to speak?

It would spoil things to give too much more away, suffice to say that this setup could go any number of ways and Medoff elects for one of the grim ones, so be warned. Otherwise this is definitely what is known today as a slow burn of a movie, with its hints of a vengeful ghost suggesting influences by Japanese horrors such as THE GRUDGE. 

Admittedly there are a number of ideas here that are a bit difficult to swallow, one being that an American estate agent would actually specialise in 'house ghost clearing' which their Chinese clients are insisting on, and the other being that apparently a number of candidates have already tried and haven't been able to spend more than a couple of nights in the house. Would anyone in a position of authority really think of sending a traumatised prisoner into such an environment? And the final scene, while presumably intended to be the most disturbing of all, pushes everything in the direction of being ultimately a little bit silly.

Photography is crisp and, unfortunately, high definition enough to render effects and makeups rather less effective than they might otherwise have been. This is exactly the kind of film that needs to be in grainy 16mm with darker lighting to allow the viewer's imagination to fill in the gaps rather than what we get here. 

Extras include an interview with the writer-director (24 minutes) and commentary from him for a selected 23 minutes of footage (it's all together so you don't have to search through the film) and three D W Medoff shorts - AWOL, I'm Down Here and Yahrzeit. Each is about six minutes long and feel like mini anthology movie segments or comic book stories, each atmospheric and leading to a decent conclusion. 

D W Medoff's I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE is out on Blu-ray from Arrow on Monday 5th May 2025

Dirty Harry 4K UHD (1971)

Star Clint Eastwood and director Don Siegel's hugely influential crime thriller is one of three of Eastwood's movies getting a 4K release from Warner Bros. this week. 

The city of San Francisco is being terrorised by a sniper who calls himself Scorpio, picks victims at random, and says he will keep killing unless he is paid $100,000. City mayor John Vernon is willing to cough up but reckons without no-nonsense Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) who is frequently happy to ignore the rulebook to see justice is done. 

It's almost impossible to understate the effect of DIRTY HARRY on cinema, and especially crime cinema. Responsible not just for a string of sequels, and for inspiring the entire Italian poliziotteschi genre, The Sweeney in the UK, and 1980s action movies in the US, as one of the extras on here states, it brought the Western, and its figure of 'God's lonely man' (thanks John Milius) into the urban environment. It also helps that the film is superbly written, shot and scored, with excellent support performances, especially from,Andy Robinson as the killer. Most iconic of all, of course, is Eastwood himself as Harry, likely the only man who can dress like a geography teacher and still be the essence of cool as he eats a hotdog and blows hoodlums away on a busy city street.

Warners' 4K comes with a couple of new extras and a bunch of archival ones. Generations & DIRTY HARRY is 6 minutes of academics and film-makers of different ages (including millennials) offering their positive opinions of the character. Some balance would have been fun but this is a DIRTY HARRY disc after all. The Cinematography of DIRTY HARRY, like similar pieces on Warners' other 4Ks is eight minutes about DP Bruce Surtees.

Archival material includes a commentary track from Eastwood biographer Richard Schickel, the 87 minutes BBC Arena coproduction from 2000 'Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows', DIRTY HARRY's way: a seven minute piece about the making of the film from 1971, and DIRTY HARRY: The Original, a 30 minute 2001 documentary about the character. Also, and rather out of context, is an 'Interview Gallery' which includes tiny snippets of interview footage left out of that documentary. Consequently we get clips of Patricia Clarkson (2 minutes), editor Joel Cox (3 minutes), Evan Kim (2 minutes), Andy Robinson (2 minutes) and others talking about Eastwood and their involvement with him although you are often left on your own to work out which film they're talking about. Finally from 2021 there's Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy - Fighting for Justice which is more in the same vein as the 'Reinventing the Western' piece on Warners' other discs, with the same talking heads including Mel Gibson and John Milius as well as Gene Hackman and Shane Black.

Don Siegel's DIRTY HARRY is out on 4K UHD in both regular and posh steelbook editions from Warner Bros. now

Pale Rider 4K UHD (1985)

Clint Eastwood's 1985 western is one of three classic movies featuring the star that are being released by Warner Bros. on the 4K UHD format in both regular and steelbook editions. 

It's the Gold Rush and Michael Moriarty is part of a small prospecting community. Unfortunately Big Bad Boss Richard Dysart, who is busy plundering the surrounding hills with his industrial mining operation, wants their land as well, so he sets about driving them out with those old western standbys, intimidation and violence.

During a gang raid the dog of 14 year old Megan (Sydney Penny) is shot, and as she prays over its grave for someone to come to their rescue who should ride out of the wilderness but a nameless preacher (Eastwood) on a pale horse. The preacher soon establishes himself as part of the community and of course it's not long before he has to take on the bad guys, including sheriff for hire Stockburn (John Russell) and his gang of deputies. 

When it was released in 1985 contemporary reviews could not help but compare PALE RIDER with Eastwood's first western as director, 1973's HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, and that's not surprising. Both films begin and end very similarly, there's the suggestion that Eastwood's character is dead in both, but in PALE RIDER his character is perhaps more of a guardian angel than a vengeful spirit.

Considered by some to be inferior to the 1973 film, there's still much to appreciate here, not least the photography by Bruce Surtees of the impressive landscape. There's also a fine cast, many of whom (Moriarty, Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Richard Kiel) will be familiar to fans of fantasy cinema.

Extras new to Warners' 4K release include The Diary of Sydney Penny which is seven minutes of reminiscence from the actress. The Cinematography of PALE RIDER is an eight minute piece in which a number of academics discuss the contribution of Director of Photography Bruce Surtees to the picture. 

        Finally, there's Clint Eastwood: Reinventing the Western which includes interview footage with Mel Gibson, James Mangold, Kevin Costner, Frank Darabont, Morgan Freeman, Martin Scorsese and Sir Christopher Frayling in a compact 18 minute journey through Eastwood's contributions to the Western genre. It's the same extra that's also available on Warners' 4K of THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES. If you want a longer piece on Eastwood the film-maker, then Richard Schickel's 2010 feature length documentary The Eastwood Factor is also on here.

Clint Eastwood's PALE RIDER is out on 4K UHD from Warner Bros. on Monday 28th April in both regular and steelbook editions.

 

Motor Psycho (1965)

 

The film Russ Meyer made just before his classic FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (also 1965) gets the top class treatment of being released in 4K by Severin Films on UHD and Blu-ray, scanned and restored from the original 35 mm negative.

MOTOR PSYCHO is 74 black and white minutes of hoodlums and Meyer's trademark gravity-defying large breasted women. Three bikers (all suffering from war trauma, it turns out) descend on a desert town to rape and kill. When they attack Gail (Lane Carroll who would go on to appear in George Romero's THE CRAZIES) they figure without her husband, localveterinarian Cory (Alex Rocco) who sets off in pursuit, picking up the bountiful Ruby (Haji), whose husband (Coleman Francis, director of Tor Johnson starrer THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS) has been killed by the gang, along the way. The inevitable desert confrontation follows.

Working with a minimal budget, MOTOR PSYCHO is fast-paced and benefits from a snappy script with some great biting dialogue, especially between Haji and her soon to be late husband. The crisp black and white photography of the desert locations gives them a better sense of eeriness than colour, and the concept of a collection of women with similar physical attributes in a small desert town adds to the sense of slight otherworldliness. 

Severin's 4K transfer is, as with all their other 4K Meyer releases, out of this world. Who would ever have thought any of the films of Russ Meyer (and certainly a more obscure one like MOTOR PSYCHO) could be made to look this sparkling?

The disc comes with a new commentary track by academic Elizabeth Purcell and film-maker Zach Clark which discusses not just this film but other Meyer films in context with it. On the Blu-ray (which comes with the UHD if you get that) there are also archival interviews with Haji and Alex Rocco that last about 21 minutes.

Russ Meyer's MOTOR PSYCHO is out from Severin Films in a UHD / Blu-ray combo, or just the Blu-ray, on Monday 28th April 2025