DVD and Blu-Ray Releases for April 23, 2011

Hey Fiends!  Happy Monday!  Let’s take a look at your DVD and Blu-Ray Releases for tomorrow – April 23, 2011.  We have some Hi-Def upgrades that you freaks will definitely want to pick up.  Check beyond the break to get the full list!

All Descriptions of the following titles are provided by Amazon.com unless otherwise noted. If you plan on buying a flick from this list, please click on the links provided or click on the cover as it helps us pay the bills around here. Also, unlike most sites, we provide the Netflix widget which we think is pretty convenient to add these films to your queue. If you don’t have Netflix, feel free to click on “Free Trial” and try it out!

 

Blow Out (The Criterion Collection)

Format: DVD | Blu-Ray
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In the enthralling Blow Out, brilliantly crafted by Brian De Palma (Sisters, Carrie, Scarface), John Travolta (Saturday Night Fever, Pulp Fiction) gives one of his greatest performances, as Jack, a movie sound-effects man who believes he has accidentally recorded a political assassination. He enlists the help of Sally (played by Carrie’s Nancy Allen), a possible eyewitness to the crime who may be in danger herself, to uncover the truth. With its jolting stylistic flourishes, intricate plot, profoundly felt characterizations, and gritty evocation of early-1980s Philadelphia, Blow Out is an American paranoia thriller unlike any other, as well as a devilish reflection on the act of moviemaking.

 

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Chawz

Format: DVD | Blu-Ray
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A young police officer is transferred from Seoul to a small village in the countryside for duty when he jokingly checked the box to be deployed “anywhere.” Arriving at the village, he encounters a bumbling police force who is working with a special detective to resolve some recent murders. As the bodies add up, it becomes clear that the gruesome deaths are attributed to a beast of an animal with a voracious appetite for human flesh. A famous hunter and his team are called in to track and destroy the man-eater. During their tracking expedition, they are confronted by a boar of massive size and strength, which they discover may be a result of experimentation during wartimes. Unprepared and unarmed for taking down the mutant creature, the group must disband as the hunters become the hunted.

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Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering

Format: DVD
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Nothing can prepare you for the onslaught of spine-tingling thrills unleashed in Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering, a chilling chapter in the wildly popular Children of the Corn series!

The horror returns when the children of a small Midwestern town are haunted by an unspeakable evil that lurks somewhere out behind the corn fields. A bright young medical student must solve the frightening mystery that plagues the children…before a sinister stranger can claim their souls for his own. It’s a pulse-pounding race against time and terror that will leave even the most die-hard suspense fans on the edge of their seats. Starring Naomi Watts (King Kong) and Mark Salling (TVs Glee).

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Dementia 13

Format: Blu-Ray/DVD Combo

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Future film-making legend Francis Ford Coppola makes his big-screen directorial debut with this cult horror classic, available for the first time in spectacular High-Definition Blu-Ray. Following the abrupt death of her husband from a heart attack, the scheming Louise Haloran (Luanda Anders) travels to her in-laws estate in Ireland, only to find herself trapped in a creepy, decrepit castle with her ex-husband s demented family. Upon arrival, she is introduced to a pair of maladjusted brothers (William Campbell, Bart Patton) and a distraught mother-in-law (Eithne Dunn), still grieving for the daughter she lost in a drowning accident many years earlier. When a mysterious axe-wielding psychopath enters the fray, leaving blood-spattered corpses in his wake, the family s doctor (Patrick Magee) takes it upon himself to try to get to the bottom of things–before it s too late! The making of Dementia 13, meanwhile, is a tale unto itself. An aspiring film-maker fresh out of UCLA, Coppola found work under the tutelage of B-movie legend Roger Corman, doing sound, editing and various other tasks. After finishing a film called The Young Racers under budget, Corman opted to use the leftover funds to finance a low-budget thriller to cash in on the success of Alfred Hitchcock s Psycho. Coppola quickly delivered a script to Corman s liking, promising plenty of nudity and gore. Corman gave him the green light. Despite the meager budget, Coppola made the most of his resources, re-purposing both sets and actors from The Young Racers, while employing the sort of creative lighting, camera angles, and storytelling that reveals an early glimpse at the great filmmaking that would follow with such titles as Apocalypse Now and The Godfather trilogy.

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Dinoshark

Format: DVD | Blu-Ray

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It was frozen in glacial ice over 150 million years ago. Global warming has just hatched it in the Arctic. And now, it has traveled to Puerto Vallarta for a massive Mexican buffet of sailors, swimmers, lifeguards, jet skiers, horny tourists, bikini babes and more. It thrives in warm water. Bullets will not pierce its prehistoric armor. And it can leap out of the ocean to devour helicopters and parasailers. Can a rogue fishing boat captain and a sexy science teacher stop this ravenous pliosaur before it takes a monster bite out of the local fiesta and all-girl water polo tournament? Eric Balfour (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 24) and Iva Hasperger star – along with award-winning B-movie producer Roger Corman himself – in the top-rated Syfy sensation about the blood-crazed primeval mutation called Dinoshark!

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The Dorm That Dripped Blood

Format: Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack

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On the eve of Christmas vacation, a college dormitory stands condemned… the dark halls now vacant and unsafe. Student Joanne Murray and her close friends volunteer to help close down the building, unaware a psychopathic lunatic is hiding in the shadows. As the students disappear one by one, Joanne discovers the horrifying reality that if she is to survive, she alone will have to find a way to slay the brutal murderer. If you think you ve seen this film totally uncut… think again! Synapse Films is proud to present THE DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD in a never-before-seen alternate version containing additional scenes, extended gore sequences, and a different sound mix. This transfer was created from the only existing 35mm answer print of the original Directors’ Cut entitled DEATH DORM, a version of the film thought to have been lost for over thirty years. Bonus Features include Audio Commentary Featuring Directors Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter; Interviews with Composer Christopher Young and Make-Up FX Creator Matthew Mungle; Original Theatrical Trailers.

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Wes Craven Presents: Dracula II: Ascension

Format: DVD
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This sequel to Wes Craven’s Dracula 2000 begins as a group of medical students discover the body of the infamous count. Soon, the students find themselves in the middle of a bizarre and dangerous conflict when a shadowy figure offers them $30 million for the body so that he may harvest his blood. At the same time, the kids find that they are being targeted by a Vatican-sanctioned vampire killer who will stop at nothing to see Dracula destroyed once and for all.

 

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Wes Craven Presents: Dracula III: Legacy

Format: DVD

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Wes Cravens modern Dracula series continuesand now, Dracula III: Legacy adds Rutger Hauer to a returning cast starring Jason Scott Lee, Jason London, and Roy Scheider.

The dreaded Dracula (Hauer) leads vampire hunters Father Uffizi (Lee) and Luke (London) back to Eastern Europe and a country plagued by civil war. There, powerful local warlords are assisting Dracula by capturing victims and delivering them to feed the vampires residing in Draculas castle. And to worsen matters, Father Uffizi must overcome the vampire virus hes infected with!

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El Topo

Format: Blu-Ray

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It was the landmark cult film that began the whole Midnight Movie phenomena of the counterculture crazy 1970s. El Topo was the most talked about, most controversial quasi-Western head trip ever made, transforming the way risk-taking audiences, seeking mainstream Hollywood alternatives, watched edgy underground films. Classic Americana and avant-garde European cinema sensibilities meet Zen Buddhism and the Bible as master gunfighter and cosmic mystic El Topo (played by writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky) must defeat his four sharp-shooting rivals on an ever-increasingly bizarre path to allegorical self-enlightenment and surreal resurrection.

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The Holy Mountain

Format: Blu-Ray

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The scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s flood of sacrilegious imagery and existential symbolism is a spiritual quest for enlightenment pitting illusion against truth. The Alchemist (Jodorowsky) assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. The occult adept’s intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their wordly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.

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Poor Pretty Eddie

Format: Blu-Ray/DVD Combo

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Brace yourself for one of the 1970s greatest, creepiest, cult classics now available for the first time ever on High Definition Blu-Ray. It s a surreal psycho-thriller that broke all the rules of political correctness and lowbrow film-making as it spun the sordid tale of a black singer from the big city, Liz Wetherly (Leslie Uggams), who finds herself stranded in a backwoods redneck nightmare that makes Deliverance look like a day at Disneyland in comparison. Poor Pretty Eddie spent years existing as one of those mythical, must-see… if you can find a copy films. As copies began to make the rounds, and as more movie buffs were able to view it, reports of the movie s content focused as much on the detailed, almost art-house, approach to many of the scenes as they did on the film s obvious seediness and dark storyline. Intriguing, when you consider its directors had demonstrated no aspirations previously (or, indeed, since) to produce anything beyond good ol fashioned exploitation fare aimed at the drive-in movie crowd. Not that this movie would have disappointed anyone looking for a down and dirty grindcore film, either. When her car breaks down, Whetherly ends up stuck in a remote southern town that s been left for dead ever since they put in the interstate. She is forced to stay in a dilapidated inn that serves as the bizzaro kingdom of faded, overweight burlesque star Bertha (Shelly Winters), her much younger boy-toy and aspiring Elvis wannabe, Eddie (Michael Christian), and a cast of suitably strange townsfolk including Sheriff Orville (Slim Pickens), Keno (Ted Cassidy aka Lurch from The Addams Family and one of the great character actors of our time) and Floyd (Dub Taylor, another notable character actor). Over the years, the film also appeared on the drive-in circuit under the titles Black Vengeance and Heartbreak Motel. But whatever you want to call it, it s not a movie you will soon forget!

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The Terror

Format: Blu-Ray/DVD Combo

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A cult classic from the master of the B-movie himself, director Roger Corman, available for the first time in thrilling High Definition Blu-Ray! In one of his first-ever roles, a young Jack Nicholson stars as Lt. Andre Duvalier, a soldier in Napoleon s army in 19th century France, separated from his regiment. He awakens on a beach to the sight of a strange woman who leads him to the gothic, towering castle that serves as home to eerie Baron Von Leppe (Boris Karloff). But, as Duvalier soon discovers, nothing is what it seems in this ghastly, haunted mansion of death! This underground favorite was made in classic Roger Corman fashion, making the most of his resources to bring yet another film to life on a minimal budget for his producers at American International Pictures. AIP was a small, independent studio that specialized in low-budget teensploitation films, and Corman was one of their main men. Here, he squeezed extra mileage out of not only previously-used sets, but also actors and crew from two of his other recently-completed films (The Raven, The Haunted Palace). Short on time himself (there were more movies to be made!), Corman left it to a few of the aspiring directors within his crew (among them, Jack Hill, a young Francis Coppola, and even Jack Nicholson taking a turn behind the camera for a few scenes) to help see the film to completion. The Terror would go on to become a drive-in favorite and late-night TV staple, also appearing under the titles The Terror, Lady Of The Shadows and The Castle of Terror. Meanwhile, Roger Corman would go on to inspire an entire generation of film-makers, including many like Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, James Cameron, Ron Howard, Martin Scorcese and John Sayles–who worked under him while honing their skills.