Posted Mon Jul 18, 2022 at 11:29 AM PDT by Tom Landy
The Criterion Collection has just announced their October home video releases that includes Lost Highway and Night of the Living Dead on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray.
Starting things off is George A. Romero's 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead which will be getting a 4K/Blu-ray combo treatment on October 4th.
Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, Night of the Living Dead, directed by horror master George A. Romero, is a great story of independent cinema: a midnight hit turned box-office smash that became one of the most influential films of all time. A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of recently dead, flesh-eating ghouls, Romero’s claustrophobic vision of a late-1960s America literally tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combining gruesome gore with acute social commentary and quietly breaking ground by casting a Black actor (Duane Jones) in its lead role.
NOTE: We just got confirmation from Criterion that this will be a 4K 2160p SDR release - no HDR grading.
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
1968 • 96 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.37:1 aspect ratio
On the 11th comes Frank Capra's 1944 horror-comedy Arsenic and Old Lace.
Frank Capra adapted a hit stage play for this marvelous screwball meeting of the madcap and the macabre. On Halloween, newly married drama critic Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant, cutting loose in a hilariously harried performance) returns home to Brooklyn, where his adorably dotty aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair, who both starred in the Broadway production) greet him with love, sweetness . . . and a grisly surprise: the corpses buried in their cellar. A bugle-playing brother (John Alexander) who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, a crazed criminal (Raymond Massey) who’s a dead ringer for Boris Karloff, and a seriously slippery plastic surgeon (Peter Lorre) are among the outré oddballs populating Arsenic and Old Lace, a diabolical delight that only gets funnier as the body count rises.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
1944 • 118 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.37:1 aspect ratio
On the same date, David Lynch's Lost Highway will be available on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray as well as Blu-ray.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” A mesmerizing meditation on the mysterious nature of identity, Lost Highway, David Lynch’s seventh feature film, is one of the filmmaker’s most potent cinematic dreamscapes. Starring Patricia Arquette and Bill Pullman, the film expands the horizons of the medium, taking its audience on a journey through the unknown and the unknowable. As this postmodern noir detours into the realm of science fiction, it becomes apparent that the only certainty is uncertainty.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
1997 • 134 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 2.39:1 aspect ratio
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure arrives on Blu-ray on the 18th.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s arresting international breakthrough established him as one of the leaders of an emerging new wave of Japanese horror while pushing the genre into uncharted realms of philosophical and existential exploration. A string of shocking, seemingly unmotivated murders—each committed by a different person yet all bearing the same grisly hallmarks—leads Detective Takabe (Koji Yakusho) into a labyrinthine investigation to discover what connects them, and into a disturbing game of cat and mouse with an enigmatic amnesiac (Masato Hagiwara) who may be evil incarnate. Awash in hushed, hypnotic dread, Cure is a tour de force of psychological tension and a hallucinatory journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
1997 • 111 minutes • Color • Stereo • In Japanese with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
Next comes Jayro Bustamante’s Cure also available on Blu-ray on the 18th.
A country’s bloody history stains the present in the Guatemalan auteur Jayro Bustamante’s transfixing fusion of folk horror and searing political commentary, inspired by the real-life indictment of the authoritarian Efraín Ríos Montt for crimes against humanity. A notorious, now aging former military dictator stands trial for atrocities committed against Guatemala’s Mayan communities. While battling legal repercussions and the people’s demands for justice, he and his family are plagued by a series of increasingly strange and disturbing occurrences, seemingly brought on by an enigmatic new housekeeper (María Mercedes Coroy). With a restraint that renders the film’s shocks all the more potent, Bustamante crafts a chilling vision of a nation reckoning with collective harms and the restless ghosts of a past that refuses to die.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
2019 • 96 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In Spanish, Ixil, and Kaqchikel with English subtitles • 2.39:1 aspect ratio
Finally on the 25th, Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou starring Jurnee Smollett, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Diahann Carroll, and Samuel L. Jackson will arrive on Blu-ray format.
“The summer I killed my father, I was ten years old . . .” So begins Kasi Lemmons’s spellbinding feature debut, an evocative journey into the maze of memory steeped in fragrant southern-gothic atmosphere. In 1960s Louisiana, a young girl (Jurnee Smollett) sees her well-to-do family unravel in the wake of the infidelities of her charming father (Samuel L. Jackson)—setting in motion a series of deceptions and betrayals that will upend her world and challenge her understanding of reality. Rooted in Creole history, folklore, and mysticism, Eve’s Bayou is a scintillating showcase for a powerhouse ensemble of Black actresses—including Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, and the legendary Diahann Carroll as a voodoo priestess—as well as a profoundly cathartic exploration of trauma, forgiveness, and the elusive nature of truth.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED TWO-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
1997 • 115 minutes • Black & White/Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
We will update the website as soon as the preorders for these titles become available!
Thanks again for all of your pre-orders. They really do go a long way towards keeping our little show up and running.
The latest news on all things 4K Ultra HD, blu-ray and Gear.