Arrow Video and Arrow Academy have announced four new titles to join their collection on Blu-Ray this month: America As Seen By A Frenchman (1960), The Mad Fox (1962), Dream Demon (1988) and Django (1966), available as a limited edition Blu-ray as well as a Steelbook. These represent a charming documentary, an underseen classic, a long-lost VHS-era gem, and the definitive Spaghetti Western. Details on these films can be found below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Ge2hmSTbo]
America As Seen By A Frenchman
Street Date: June 2, 2020
Synopsis: At the end of the 1950s, celebrated French documentarian François Reichenbach (F for Fake, Portrait: Orson Welles), whose lens captured the likes of Brigitte Bardot and Johnny Hallyday, spent eighteen months traveling the United States, documenting its diverse regions, their inhabitants and their pastimes. The result, America is Seen by a Frenchman, is a wide-eyed – perhaps even naïve – journey through a multitude of different Americas, filtered through a French sensibility and serving as a fascinating exploration of a culture that is both immediately familiar and thoroughly alien. Prison rodeos; Miss America pageants; visits to Disneyland and a school for striptease; a town inhabited solely by twins; rows of newborns in incubators, like products on an assembly line – all these weird and wondrous sights, and more, are captured, sans jugement, by Reichenbach’s camera, aided by whimsical narration (provided by, among others, Jean Cocteau) and a jaunty musical score by the late, great Michel Legrand (Une femme est une femme). Titled L’Amérique insolite – literally “unusual America” – in its native tongue, America as Seen by a Frenchman lovingly renders the various eccentricities of Americana circa the mid-twentieth century, and proves the old adage that reality really is stranger than fiction.
- High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray™ presentation
- Original uncompressed mono audio
- Newly translated English subtitles
- New video appreciation of the film by author and critic Philip Kemp
- Image gallery
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Ignatius Fitzpatrick
- FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Caspar Salmon
The Mad Fox
Street Date: June 23, 2020
Synopsis: In stark contrast to the monochrome naturalism of his earlier masterwork Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji, visionary master director Tomu Uchida took inspiration from Bunraku and kabuki theater for arguably his strangest and most lavishly cinematic film, The Mad Fox. Amidst a mythically-depicted medieval Japan, a court astrologer foretells a great disturbance that threatens to split the realm in two. His bitter and treacherous wife conspires to have the astrologer killed, as well as their adopted daughter, Sakaki. The astrologer’s master apprentice, Yasuna, who was in love with Sakaki, is driven mad with grief and escapes to the countryside. There, he encounters Sakaki’s long-lost twin, Kuzunoha, and the pair meet a pack of ancient fox spirits in the woods, whose presence may be the key to restoring Yasuna’s sanity, and in turn bringing peace to the fracturing nation. Finally available outside Japan for the first time, Uchida’s stunning, wildly stylized widescreen tableaux – using expressionist sets and color schemes – are highlighted in a world premiere Blu-ray™ release.
- Brand new restoration by Toei
- High Definition Blu-ray™ (1080p) presentation
- Original uncompressed mono Japanese audio
- Optional newly translated English subtitles
- Brand new audio commentary by Japanese cinema expert Jasper Sharp, recorded exclusively for this release
- Original theatrical trailer
- Image gallery
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin
- FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Ronald Cavaye and Hayley Scanlon
Street Date: June 23, 2020
Synopsis: A young bride-to-be’s anxieties over her upcoming wedding take on a horrifying, demonic form in this underseen 1988 “rubber reality” shocker from director/co-writer Harley Cokeliss (Black Moon Rising), starring Timothy Spall and Jemma Redgrave. As her marriage to decorated war hero Oliver draws near, well-heeled Diana moves into her sprawling new London home where she starts to experience strange and terrifying nightmares. But are these blood-curdling night terrors merely the symptom of an unsettled mind, or the sign of something far sinister at work? Hounded by a pair of sleazy journalists (Timothy Spall and Jimmy Nail), Diana soon crosses paths with American tourist Jenny, who appears to have a strange connection to the foreboding house and its sinister past. Long dormant on home media since its original VHS release, Dream Demon – a terrific blend of psychological horror and late 80s practical gore effects – has at long-last been stirred from its analogue slumber and arrives on Blu-ray, newly-restored from the original camera negative and in a brand new Director’s Cut!
- Brand new 2K restoration from the original camera negative, supervised and approved by director Harley Cokeliss
- Director’s Cut and Original Theatrical Version
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
- Original uncompressed stereo audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Brand new scene-select audio commentary with director Harley Cokeliss and producer Paul Webster
- Newly-filmed interview with director Harley Cokeliss
- Newly-filmed interview with producer Paul Webster
- Newly-filmed interview with actress Jemma Redgrave
- Newly-filmed interview with actor Mark Greenstreet
- Newly-filmed interview with actor Nickolas Grace
- Newly-filmed interview with actress Annabelle Lanyon
- Newly-filmed interview with composer Bill Nelson
- Foundations of Nightmare: The Making of Dream Demon – behind the scenes documentary on the production featuring interviews with director Harley Cokeliss, producer Paul Webster, actors Timothy Spall, Jemma Redgrave, composer Bill Nelson and more
- Image Galleries
- Original Theatrical Trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Christopher Shy
- FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Anne Bilson, author of the Dream Demon novelisation, and director Harley Cokeliss
- FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Reversible poster featuring exclusive newly-commissioned artwork by Christopher Shy
Django
Street Date: June 30, 2020
Synopsis: In this definitive Spaghetti Western, Franco Nero (Keoma, The Fifth Cord) gives a career-defining performance as Django, a mysterious loner who arrives at a mud-drenched ghost town on the Mexico-US border, ominously dragging a coffin behind him. After saving imperilled prostitute Maria (Loredana Nusciak), Django becomes embroiled in a brutal feud between a racist gang and a band of Mexican revolutionaries… With Django, director Sergio Corbucci (The Great Silence) upped the ante for sadism and sensationalism in Westerns, depicting machine gun massacres, mud-fighting prostitutes and savage mutilations. A huge hit with international audiences, Django’s brand of bleak nihilism would be repeatedly emulated in a raft of unofficial sequels. The film is presented here in an exclusive new restoration with a wealth of extras including the newly restored bonus feature Texas Adios, which also stars Franco Nero, and was released as Django 2 in several territories.
- New restoration from a 4K scan of Django from the original camera negative by Arrow Films
- New restoration from a 2K scan of Texas Adios from the original camera negative by Arrow Films
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentations
- Uncompressed Mono 1.0 PCM audio
- Newly translated English subtitles for the Italian soundtrack
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtrack
- Six double-sided collector’s postcards
- Double-sided fold-out poster
- Limited edition 60-page perfect-bound book featuring new writing on the film by Howard Hughes and Roberto Curti, and original reviews
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sean Phillips
- Audio commentary by film critic, historian and theorist Stephen Prince
- Newly filmed interview with star Franco Nero
- Newly filmed interview with assistant director Ruggero Deodato
- Newly filmed interview with co-writer Franco Rossetti
- Newly filmed interview with Sergio Corbucci’s wife Nora Corbucci
- Archival interview with co-writer Piero Vivarelli
- Archival interview with stuntman and actor Gilberto Galimberti
- Discovering Django, newly filmed appreciation by Spaghetti Westerns scholar Austin Fisher
- An Introduction to Django by Alex Cox, an archival featurette with the acclaimed director
- Gallery of original promotional images from the Mike Siegel Archive
- Original trailers
- Audio commentary for by spaghetti western experts C. Courtney Joyner and Henry C. Parke
- Newly filmed interview with star Franco Nero
- Newly filmed interview with co-star Alberto Dell’Acqua
- Newly filmed interview with co-writer Franco Rossetti
- Hello Texas!, newly filmed appreciation by Spaghetti Westerns scholar Austin Fisher
- Gallery of original promotional images from the Mike Siegel Archive
- Original trailer
Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.
