The good folks at Arrow are having yet another sale until Monday and I think they finally deserve their own thread, if only for releasing so many wonderfully obscure Japanese crime films from the 60ies - I just picked up the first Nikkatsu Diamond Guys set, Massacre Gun, Retaliation and the Outlaw: Gangster VIP collection. Can't imagine they're doing too well with all the sales and mostly ultra-obscure stuff they're putting out, so give them your money now before it's too late...
Damn fine idea, bunnyboy. The catalogue they have is just great, as you said, and since you brought it up here last time, I have been harbouring a quiet obsession over ordering some discs from them. So much money already committed mentally! Thanks for the heads up about the sale again, great outfits like theirs, especially in such a difficult to stay afloat industry, deserve our monies. Thankfully, I can say I think it is cinema aficionados and cult fans that I think sustain a large part of the physical media business, and for that we are rewarded by quality releases of great stuff.
This is some good stuff. Arrow releases generally speaking have been pretty awesome (some of their early releases had some major issues). Love the company and any support they can get is a-okay in my book. Shame I'm kinda done with physical media, though.
@ultrakaiju Take the plunge, you won't regret it. Interesting, I didn't follow their early days as closely because of the many re-releases of classic titles. The "death of physical media" is a consumerist hoax just like the "death of vinyl" afaic. Sure, I don't need to own Terminator 2, but I can't even begin to name all the little gems that came out on DVD, went OOP and can't be found either on Blu or online... Also, JAKE-GAI 4 LIFE!
Hey, thanks Jan. I'm a real fan of Arrow releases and this is an amazing opportunity to grab some gems. I really fancy hunting REAL DVD/BR stores in the UK for their horror releases, but this was too good to pass. Arrow's releases so much above all the rest. The remastering, the covers, the booklets... I started bying them with their BR era and never experienced a bad edition with them. I read an interview in a British magazine some time ago, and really, Arrow is a editor by fans for fans. With each release they take risks and are not really optimistic for the future. Those may be the last physical releases of this quality. I may be wrong. Who could have foreseen the return of vinyl anyway ? Though they are back for some wrong reasons unfortunately... Which Arrow releases with issues are you talking about Chris ?
They just released "Slugs" a little known gorefest from JP Simon (director of Pieces). Highly recommended if you love that 80s style of extreme gooey-slime-blood horror. Take the premise of "Worms" replace the worms with slugs and then up the gore factor 10000000% cant go wrong.
Plug for the DVD guys out there. I'm good friends with Diabolik DVD and work their table twice a year at conventions with them. They always carry a wide selection of Arrow stuff and have good relationships with most genre dvd companies out there. Check em out if you are so inclined! www.diabolikdvd.com Rockin' the blu ray booth hustle:
These two posts made me sad because they reminded me of slacking off on the Pieces blu-ray pre-order that came with the puzzle that now fetches stupid money on eBay. But yeah, @frakensteinsrobot, definitely need to check out Slugs if it is anything like Pieces. My wife and I saw a live re-scoring of Pieces at MondoCon last year by Umberto. Check out "Night has a Thousand Screams" if you haven't watched Pieces blu-ray extra of the re-scoring. It fits so well! And yeah, Diabolik DVD is awesome. I used to order imported PAL DVDs I could play on a region-hacked PAL-to-NTSC DVD player. Those were the days.
Diabolik is good folks indeed. Although one Arrow UK sale should save you enough money to get a region-free player... Their attention to detail is super-geeky in the best possible sense - the "Death Walks Twice" booklet actually dedicates the release to Ercoli's memory. Nice little touches like that warm my cold and bitter heart.
Did you get your items from the sale Jan ? It seems the sale was very popular and they got short on some items.... I wonder how that can happen in a world working around databases... Well... Mine got delayed and I don't know if I will get everything I ordered.
^^ That sucks. My goodies arrived quickly this time, last time took about two or three weeks due to most of the titles being "stock on order". Hope you get everything you wanted eventually!
^^ Don't be a tease, whaddya get? Regarding issues: Can't speak about the Blu, but the Black Sunday DVD has the same SDH sub track twice instead of one being the new translation. And while I appreciate Arrow's efforts to provide as much bonus stuff as possible for even the most obscure films, I have to say the quality sometimes leaves a bit to be desired. Out of the three bonus features on the Death Walks on High Heels disc, the only one I found enjoyable and somewhat interesting is the Cipriani interview. Ercoli, three years before his death, basically has a lot of trouble remembering ANYTHING while Nieves Navarro's most memorable contribution is praising Franco when being asked about making films in a fascist dictatorship: "He was like a father to the Spanish people!" Bleurgh. Then Gastaldi drones on bitterly for ten minutes about how Once Upon a Time in America got everything all wrong (apparently he wrote an early draft). Mercifully, the subtitles just stop about 17 minutes into his 32-minute rant. I would have actually enjoyed the release a lot more if they HADN'T included these, especially the Ercoli/Navarro interview...
Sorry, I meant to post this a few days ago, but I noticed when I was in town last, that HMV has a sale on their entire Arrow collection (along with a large proportion of the store's stock as well) - any 5 BDs for 30£. Not too shabby, considering the amazing library of cult flics I'd love to own. Sure, it's the whole 'multi-buy' thing, but when most of the titles are 10£ each or more, if there was something you were going to pick up anyways, provides a good chance to stock up on some extras. I don't know how many physical shops are still out there, but for anyone who can't access one locally, I just checked and it the special is available online as well: http://store.hmv.com/film-tv/blu-ray-5-for-30-or-3-for-20
Oh fudge. Sort of bittersweet news to share here, because I got the word too late on this. Arrow is releasing a special 4K restoration (let's hope this finally puts to bed all the need for those home corrected/muxed versions) of The Thing. I am really excited about this, The Thing is one of my favourite films (love the novella to, by the way) and is right up there with Alien in terms of amazing cinematic achievements, completely disregarding the sci-fi or horror aspects. One of those movies I would watch over and over, and thus definitely warrants purchasing a hardcopy - even if that makes me a fossil - in addition to wanting to support the preservation of great films like this. The special set is coming out in October, features a steelbook, bonus docs, the great commentary by Carpenter and Russell, and some nice bonus artwork which looks to be like the lobby cards of yesteryear. But a feature definitely worth mentioning in addition to these has to be that excellent new cover art, featuring McCready's hood outlining the Antarctic scene: However, unfortunately, as is the case often with these things, there was a "limited" number (OMG, only 4000*? ), and the hype and excitment around the news immediately caused a crash of the Arrow website. Now, of course it is back up, but they are all sold out. I don't doubt there will be a general release of course, without all the bonus bells and whistles, but really the feature is key to me anyhow More info via Dread Central. * a purely marketing ploy we see all too often these days which is particularly irksome to me, that has no effect other than to support a flipping re-sale aftermarket. Stuff like this really gets my goat, and has absolutely NO effect on the producer (i.e. Arrow's) bottom line, so I don't get it. Why wouldn't they want to sell as many units as they can? And at that point, they might as well make a "limited" number of 10k or something. It is all the same. But this way, hey, let's make it tough on the fans for no apparent endgame to us (it's not like it is a manufacturing limitation by any leaps of the imagination)... Argh, hobbies, eh?
Just a quick heads up to anyone interested that Zavvi is currently running a Buy One, Get One Free promotion on their Arrow offerings. A good chance to fill up any missing titles in the film library, plenty of excellent cult and horror pics (as one would expect from the Arrow catalogue) to choose from.
Sad that their Ringu edition is region locked. My favorite releases from them are Crimson Peak and Re-Animator.
I was just hepped to this via a price drop on some items at Zavvi (who had the 2-for-1 promotion going for ages). Arrow themselves are having an 'Easter sale' wherein most of the normal/past releases are marked down to £7,50 for the blu-rays. Plenty of amazing cult classics to sort through. I myself am looking at bundling some Teruo Ishii gems. I don't think it is free shipping, depends on the checkout, so that may make up the difference if you are really shopping around.