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Arrow Video Enters Into 2022 with Mario Bava’s ‘SHOCK’, Masumura’s ‘RED ANGEL’, and the German Nightmare, ‘SLEEP’

Arrow Films, one of my favorite home video companies, is knocking down the door into 2022 with a desperately needed 2k restoration of Mario Bava’s final horror film, Shock. In addition to that title, genre home video enthusiasts get the global Blu-Ray debut of Yasuzo Masumura’s (Giants and Toys, Blind Beast) Red Angel and a newer film from Germany that has 94% on Rotten Tomatoes called Sleep. Read on for trailers to the films and how you can get your slimy hands on these releases! If you click on the image of the release, you will be taken to Amazon to order the disc.*

Available January 18, 2022

RED ANGEL

Directed by Yasuzo Masumura (Giants and Toys, Blind Beast), Red Angel takes an unflinching look at the horror and futility of war through the eyes of a dedicated and selfless young military nurse. When Sakura Nishi is dispatched in 1939 to a ramshackle field hospital in Tientsin, the frontline of Japan’s war of with China, she and her colleagues find themselves fighting a losing battle tending to the war-wounded and emotionally shellshocked soldiers while assisting head surgeon Dr Okabe conduct an unending series of amputations. As the Chinese troops close in, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Okabe who, impotent to stall the mounting piles of cadavers, has retreated into his own private hell of morphine addiction. Adapted from the novel by Yorichika Arima, Masumura’s harrowing portrait of women and war is considered the finest of his collaborations with Ayako Wakao (A Wife Confesses, Irezumi) and features startling monochrome scope cinematography by Setsuo Kobayashi (Fires on the Plain, An Actor’s Revenge).

Bonus Materials:

  • High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
  • Original uncompressed Japanese mono audio
  • Optional English subtitles
  • Brand new audio commentary by Japanese cinema scholar David Desser
  • Newly filmed introduction by Japanese cinema expert Tony Rayns
  • Not All Angels Have Wings, a new visual essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum
  • Original Trailer
  • Image Gallery
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
  • FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated booklet featuring new writing by Irene González-López

Available January 18, 2022

SHOCK

In a career spanning four decades and encompassing virtually every genre under the sun, Mario Bava inspired multiple generations of filmmakers, from Dario Argento to Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton. Best remembered for his gothic horror movies, for his final feature, Shock, he eschewed the grand guignol excesses of Black Sabbath or Blood and Black Lace for a more intimate portrait of mental breakdown in which true horror comes from within. Dora (Daria Nicolodi, Deep Red) moves back into her old family home with her husband, Bruno (John Steiner, Tenebrae), and Marco (David Colin Jr., Beyond the Door), her young son from her previous marriage. But domestic bliss proves elusive as numerous strange and disturbing occurrences transpire, while Dora is haunted by a series of nightmares and hallucinations, many of them involving her dead former husband. Is the house itself possessed? Or does Dora’s increasingly fragile grip on reality originate from somewhere far closer to home? Released in the United States as a sequel to Ovidio G. Assonitis’s Beyond the Door, Shock more than lives up to its name, proving that, even at this late stage in his career, Bava hadn’t lost his touch for terror. Now restored in high definition for the first time, the Maestro of the Macabre’s chilling swansong disturbs like never before in this feature-laden release from Arrow Video.

Bonus Materials:

  • High Definition Blu-ray™ (1080p) presentation
  • Brand new 2K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films
  • Original Italian and English front and end titles and insert shots
  • Restored original lossless mono Italian and English soundtracks
  • Newly translated English subtitles for the Italian soundtrack
  • Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtrack
  • New audio commentary by Tim Lucas, author of Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark
  • A Ghost in the House, a new video interview with co-director and co-writer Lamberto Bava
  • Via Dell’Orologio 33, a new video interview with co-writer Dardano Sacchetti
  • The Devil Pulls the Strings, a new video essay by author and critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
  • Shock! Horror! – The Stylistic Diversity of Mario Bava, a new video appreciation by author and critic Stephen Thrower
  • The Most Atrocious Tortur(e), a new interview with critic Alberto Farina
  • Italian theatrical trailer
  • 4 US “Beyond the Door II” TV spots
  • Image gallery
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Christopher Shy
  • FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Troy Howarth, author of The Haunted World of Mario Bava

Available January 25, 2022

SLEEP

Nightmare and trauma. Fear and repression. Guilt and atonement. Weaving together the emotional violence of horror with the cryptic motifs of German folk and fairy tales, Arrow Video is proud to present Sleep, the debut feature from a major new talent in world cinema. Tormented by recurring nightmares of a place she has never been, Marlene (Sandra Hüller, Requiem) cannot help but investigate when she discovers the place is real. Once there, she suffers a breakdown and is admitted to a psychiatric ward. Determined to discover what happened to her, Mona (Gro Swantje Kohlhof), her daughter, follows and finds herself in Stainbach, an idyllic village with a dark history. What is it that so tormented her mother, and the people of Stainbach? What is the source of the nightmares she suffers? And who is the mysterious Trude that lives in the forest? Richly conceived and confidently told, director Michael Venus draws influence from Mario Bava, David Lynch, Franz Kafka and the Brothers Grimm, but his voice is uniquely his own. As invested in substance and story as he is in style, Venus claws his way down to the roots of what haunts a people, a community, a nation and comes up screaming. “Will definitely keep you up at night” – Joey Keough, Wicked Horror

Bonus Materials:

  • High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
  • Original DTS-MA 5.1 audio
  • Optional English subtitles
  • Audio commentary by film critic and historian Kim Newman & author Sean Hogan
  • A Strange Dark Magic, a visual essay by film scholar Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
  • Sleepwalking through National Trauma, a visual essay by film critic Anton Bitel
  • Dream & Folktale in Sleep, an interview with anthropologist, dream researcher, and filmmaker Louise S. Milne
  • Talking in their Sleep, director Michael Venus and star Gro Swantje Kohlhof in conversation
  • A Dream We Dream Together, a compilation of film festival introductions created during lockdown by director Michael Venus and the cast of Sleep
  • Making Dreams Come True, a glimpse behind the scenes of Sleep
  • Deleted Scenes
  • Marlene’s Sketches, explore the many obsessive dream journal sketches that are only glimpsed in the film, created by artist Christoph Vieweg, presented here in full
  • Trailer
  • Image gallery
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Oink Creative
  • Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Alison Peirse, an interview with director Michael Venus, and Brothers Grimm fairy tale ‘Frau Trude’
  • Double-sided fold-out poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by Oink Creative
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Andy Triefenbach is the Editor-in-Chief and owner of DestroytheBrain.com. In addition to his role on the site, he also programs St. Louis' monthly horror & exploitation theatrical midnight program, Late Nite Grindhouse. Coming from a household of a sci-fi father and a horror/supernatural loving mother, Andy's path to loving genre film was clear. He misses VHS and his personal Saturday night 6 tape movie marathons from his youth.

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