The CRITERION DVD and Blu-ray Thread

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

. . .merely a page on the US site which forwards you to Amazon. . .

It used to link to zoom.co.uk until they went out of business, so they switched to Amazon. It's not conveniently signposted on the site either. You have to manually search 'UK' on the Criterion site to locate that page.

[nicholasrope]

Pandora's Box is with Eureka in the UK

[Justin101]

I really like Gummo.

[Rob4]

I Walked with a Zombie is my favourite Lewton. I may not be able to wait for a UK release...

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Rob4

I Walked with a Zombie is my favourite Lewton. I may not be able to wait for a UK release...

I'd imagine it'd be part of the Warner Archive Collection over here as with Isle of the Dead, Ghost Ship and Bedlam.

Probably the same extras as the Criterion though as most of those are ported over from the Lewton dvd box set.

[Dave Boy]

Excellent news!

[Susan Foreman]

Rumour has it... Criterion are going to be releasing the 1990 Tom Savini version of 'Night Of The Living Dead'

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Susan Foreman

Rumour has it... Criterion are going to be releasing the 1990 Tom Savini version of 'Night Of The Living Dead'

Patricia Tallman and her constant hysterical shrieking ruins that film for me. I can't stand it.

[Stephen@Cult Labs]

I actually prefer Night of the Living Dead '90 to the original, even though the ending of the original is superior.

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Susan Foreman

'Produced by Val Lewton: I Walked with a Zombie / The Seventh Victim' (1943 / 1943)

Release date: October 8

"Terror lives in the shadows in a pair of mesmerizingly moody horror milestones conjured from the imagination of Val Lewton, the visionary producer-auteur who turned our fears of the unseen and the unknown into haunting excursions into existential dread.

As head of RKO's B-horror-movie unit during the 1940s, Lewton, working with directors such as Jacques Tourneur and Mark Robson, brought a new sophistication to the genre by wringing chills not from conventional movie monsters but from brooding atmosphere, suggestion, and psychosexual unease.

Suffused with ritual, mysticism, and the occult, the poetically hypnotic I Walked with a Zombie and the shockingly subversive The Seventh Victim are still-tantalizing dreams of death that dare to embrace the darkness.

I Walked with a Zombie - 1943

Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur elevated the horror film to new heights of poetic abstraction with this entrancing journey into the realm between life and death. When she takes a job caring for a comatose woman on a Caribbean island, a young nurse (Frances Dee) finds herself plunged into a mysterious world where the ghosts of slavery haunt the present and witch doctors have the power to summon the living dead. Sugarcane swaying in a moonlit field, the hypnotic beat of voodoo drums, the relentless pull toward death - the otherworldly atmosphere of this bold reimagining of Jane Eyre is as close as studio-era Hollywood ever came to pure dream-state surrealism.

The Seventh Victim - 1943

"Death is good" is how producer Val Lewton summarized the message of his films, a credo that received its most explicit expression in this strikingly nihilistic shocker, the first film directed by regular Lewton editor Mark Robson. Kim Hunter makes her film debut as a young boarding-school student who, in search of her missing sister (proto-goth icon Jean Brooks), travels to New York's bohemian Greenwich Village, where she uncovers a sinister shadow world of devil worshippers and murder. And what about that mysterious room furnished with nothing but a chair and a hangman?s noose? With its daring treatment of depression and queerness, The Seventh Victim has haunted the margins of cinema for decades, its radical bleakness undiminished by time"

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restorations of both films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the 4K UHD and Blu-ray editions
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the films and one Blu-ray with the films and special features
• Audio commentary on I Walked with a Zombie featuring authors Kim Newman and Stephen Jones
• Audio commentary on The Seventh Victim featuring film historian Steve Haberman
• Interview with film critic and historian Imogen Sara Smith
• Audio essays from Adam Roche?s podcast The Secret History of Hollywood
• Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy (2005), a documentary featuring Newman; Val E. Lewton, son of producer Val Lewton; filmmakers William Friedkin, Guillermo del Toro, George A. Romero, John Landis, and Robert Wise; author Neil Gaiman; actor Sara Karloff; and others
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: Essays by critics Chris Fujiwara and Lucy Sante

UK pre-orders available from Zavvi for 4K UHD / Blu-Ray combo - UK$36:99 and Blu-Ray - UK$22:99

Release date: October 14