I participated in the DVDBeaver Blu-ray and 4K UHD of the Year 2024 poll and a number of my comments are excerpted throughout the coverage; however, I have included here my picks and comments in full (Amazon links in the titles).
Top Blu-ray Releases of 2024:
- 1. The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez, 1999) Second Sight; Region B REVIEWED HERE!
- 2. Valley of the Bees (Frantisek Vlacil, 1968) Second Run; Region ALL REVIEWED HERE!
- 3. I vampiri (Riccardo Freda, 1957) Radiance Films; Region ALL REVIEWED HERE!
- 4. Viva la Muerte (Fernando Arrabal, 1971) Radiance Films; Region ALL REVIEWED HERE!
- 5. Strangers Kiss (Matthew Chapman, 1983) Fun City Editions; Region A REVIEWED HERE!
- 6. A Quiet Place in the Country (Elio Petri, 1968) Radiance Films; Region B REVIEWED HERE!
- 7. Elegant Beast (Yûzô Kawashima, 1962) Radiance Films; Region AB REVIEWED HERE!
- 8. Le combat dans l'île (Alain Cavalier, 1962) Radiance Films; Region ALL REVIEWED HERE!
- 9. Planet of the Vampires (Mario Bava, 1965) Radiance Films; Region ALL REVIEWED HERE!
- 10. Delusion (Alan Beattie, 1981) Vinegar Syndrome; Region A
Comments: Not only has Second Sight's The Blair Witch Project set gone back to the original 16mm and Hi8 materials to recreate the theatrical and festival cuts, the combination of the original cast and crew commentary and the new Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson track shed light on just how much the film was not a fluke and its continued cultural impact. Valley of the Bees was a long time coming after previous Blu-rays of Vlacil's other medieval pictures.
I vampiri was not only the real first Italian Gothic horror but also the film that put director Riccardo Freda and cinematographer/director Mario Bava on their subsequent career paths with, respectively, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (also now on 4K UHD) and Black Sunday. Radiance Films' Blu-ray not only gave us a Tim Lucas commentary to shed light on the rough edges of its construction but also its first exposure in English-speaking territories in compromised cuts.
Radiance Films' Blu-ray of Viva la Muerte was not the film's (or Arrabal's) first exposure in English-speaking countries, but it special features do a better job than before of distinguishing the director from being a mere colleague or Artaud and Jodorowsky with his own unique vision on family, politics, and religion.
Long consigned to the video shelves, Stranger's Kiss was not just a neo-noir speculative fiction on the making of Stanley Kubrick's Killer's Kiss but the special features reveal its more contemporary roots in the Dorothy Stratten tragedy, repositioning Peter Coyote's obsessed filmmaker somewhere between hyper-perfectionist Kubrick and Stratten's muse-struck director/lover (shedding light on his subsequent, proficient but sometimes detached output).
Radiance Films give Elio Petri's Vanessa Redgrave Franco Nero-vehicle A Quiet Place in the Country the same respectful treatment of their other Petri releases by allowing its special features contributors to delve beneath its psychedelic surface into its Gothic and giallo underbelly.
Who knew Radiance Films' Elegant Beast and its satiric treatment of the Japanese postwar Danchi apartment living situation would not only produce this comedic drama but also inform this reviewer's understanding of Nikkatsu's Apartment Wife: Affair in the Afternoon (released on Blu-ray later in 2024) and the danchizuma sociocultural phenomena.
Radiance Films' Blu-ray of Alain Cavalier's Le combat dans l'île not only provides an introduction to the director's filmography and a wonderful Romy Schnedier/Jean-Louis Trintignant vehicle but also provides insight into prominent subsequent titles in both actors' filmographies: That Most Important Thing: Love and The Conformist, respectively.
Germany might have given Italian Gothic horror and sci-fi fans a (region-locked) UHD of Planet of the Vampires, but Radiance Film's Blu-ray is the far more satisfying package supplement-wise whether you snap up the limited edition from earlier in the year or the more recent stripped down but not entirely "standard" special edition.
We did not have time to review Vinegar Syndrome's Blu-ray of Alan Beattie's eighties Gothic throwback Delusion, but a 4K restoration from the original 35mm negatives was more than we expected for this underrated video rental store dust-gatherer that some might have encountered as "The House Where Death Lives".
Top 4K UHD Releases of 2024:
- 1. Cheeky (Tinto Brass, 2000) Cult Epics REVIEWED HERE!
- 2. Night of the Blood Monster (Jess Franco, 1970) Blue Underground REVIEWED HERE!
- 3. The Case of the Bloody Iris (Guiliano Carnimeo, 1972) Celluloid Dreams REVIEWED HERE!
- 4. Anthropophagus (Joe D'Amato, 1980) 88 Films REVIEWED HERE!
- 5. Eyeball (Umberto Lenzi, 1975) 88 Films REVIEWED HERE!
- 6. Frivolous Lola (Tinto Brass, 1998) Cult Epics REVIEWED HERE!
- 7. Absurd (Joe D'Amato, 1981) 88 Films REVIEWED HERE!
- 8. All Ladies Do It (Tinto Brass, 1992) Cult Epics REVIEWED HERE!
- 9. Burial Ground (Andrea Bianchi, 1981) Severin Films REVIEWED HERE!
- 10. TIE - Count Dracula (Jess Franco, 1970) Severin Films (REVIEWED HERE!) and 88 Films (REVIEWED HERE!)
Comments: All three of Cult Epics' Tinto Brass 4K remasters are easily the best these stylish films have ever looked and sounded, and the special features go a long way towards contextualizing Brass as an Italian pop culture figure and household name.
Two long holdouts for Jess Franco HD remasters Night of the Blood Monster and Count Dracula finally hit 4K, the former from Blue Underground in a comprehensive edition that ported over two commentaries from the recent U.K. Blu-ray release along with their own new extras and the latter from Severin Films in a mammoth four-disc edition and 88 Films in a two-disc edition with two exclusive commentary tracks.
Celluloid Dreams made their debut with a definitive 4K/Blu-ray edition of The Case of the Bloody Iris, a minor giallo once consigned to box set exclusive on DVD now looking its best with extras that make a convincing case for it being a better work thank it once seemed, and they have more planned for 2025 including a four-disc edition of Short Night of Glass Dolls and The Black Belly of the Tarantula.
88 Films have also given us sterling 4K UHD remasters of the Joe D'Amato duo Anthropophagus and Absurd, the extras of which provide an Italian film industry context for what made films like this possible and even necessary for fiercely independent filmmakers like D'Amato, while Umberto Lenzi's Eyeball saturates the screen in all its bloodshot glory.
Severin Films' 4K edition of the Italian zombie classic Burial Ground is a very different viewing experience from all of the wildly different earlier transfers (and is really only lacking in comparison to the U.K. release in regard to that edition's Grindhouse 35mm extra transfer of the U.S. version).
Top Boxsets of 2024:
Comments: Jackie Chan's Project A films have had a rather convoluted history on video including cropped releases of the Miramax edits, upscaled SD masters, and 1080p Blu-rays that looked better but had fans just accepting a certain degree of roughness due to the breakneck pace of Hong Kong filmmaking (even though Chan's films had far more extensive schedules than some of his contemporaries), but 88 Films' 4K restorations far more effectively convey just how much bigger and grander these films were meant to be compared to his earlier Lo Wei productions.
Arrow's J-Horror Rising set of seven post-Ringu Japanese horror films offered the best-looking and sounding presentations of these films while also outfitted with extras that provided insight into both the "formula" of audience-pleasing J-horror films and the need to continually experiment along with the ambitions of some of the filmmakers, some of whom stayed with the genre and others who moved beyond. Fans of the set should check out Arrow's recent release of Tomie along with their earlier releases of the Ringu Collection (and Ringu 4K), One Missed Call, as well as the Ju-on set, while fans of those films should check out this set.
88 Films' Pete Walker set collected his horror filmography in a combination of new transfers and re-graded ones along with plenty of archival extras and new ones that may have you changing your opinions about some of the "lesser" films.
Altered Innocence's Ozon set rescued three of the director's less-mainstream, more daring works from the DVD oblivion of their original U.S. distributors.
Overshadowed by Severin's bookending mammoth Black Emanuelle box set and their second folk horror set – along with the Christmastime announcement of Russ Meyer's films finally getting remastered in any format after years as tape-sourced DVDs was Severin's second and third Danza Macabra volumes, the former giving us a 4K edition of Castle of Blood and a Blu-ray of the wonderfully experimental vampire film They've Changed Their Face while the latter gave us new transfers of Necrophagus – a film that once seemed fated to only exist on DVD in its U.S. version Graveyard of Horror – and three gorgeous HD transfers of Night of the Walking Dead, Cross of the Devil, and Cake of Blood which were heretofore only accessible on the gray market in dark, chalky TV recordings and VHS sources.
Shawscope Volume 3 brought us a 4K restoration of The One Armed Swordsman along with 2K restorations of Killer Constable and Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan and eleven other lesser-known Shaw Brothers films, encompassing Chang Cheh's films that got the new wave wuxia genre off the ground as well as some of the major works of the no-less-talented by lesser-known Chor Yuen and some other surprises.
Forgotten Gialli: Volume Seven is the more uneven of the two "Forgotten Gialli" sets issued this year by Vinegar Syndrome but it has gorgeous restoration of Obsession: A Taste for Fear, a futuristic giallo long available in cropped, fuzzy video transfers (the one letterboxed transfer just matted off the fullscreen crop even though the film was shot in anamorphic Panavision), and Sweets from a Stranger was a sleeper surprise.
Daiei Gothic's selection of ghost stories provided an overview of some of the major monster and ghost types of Japanese folklore, as proven by the fact that all three of the films have analogues in the anthology Kwaidan (notably the life-draining Snow Woman).
We did not have time to cover the Buñuel set due to the server issue backlog but the review is coming and this region free British set is the one to go for.
