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| Jas' Arrow Video Blind Buy Adventure
So I recently stumbled into the world of Arrow Video after picking up a copy of Big Trouble in Little China. I didn't really know much about the whole "boutique blu-ray" subculture thing, like I guess I knew they existed and I actually owned a few without knowing them as being that, but... yeah long story short Arrow had a massive october sale where a whole bunch of shit was like 5-9 pounds (10-20 bucks for me) and I... yeah I sorta lost my mind and just bought a bunch of shit. I was so in love with their catalogue of cult classic b-movie shit, the whole aesthetic of their products and catalogue obviously inspired by the now long gone video rental era that I kinda just went in and got a whole bunch of shit. I grabbed a couple of favs too that I wanted on 4k, or just didn't have yet (The Lighthouse, Hellraiser, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence) but I mostly bought blind here. And, boy has going through all those been a fucking experience. I'm honestly so fucking glad I did this, cause I feel like I've actually fallen in love with cinema for the first time. So, here's all the blind buys ranked. | | 14 |  | Yoko Ono
Feeling the Space
The Sacred Spirit (Espiritu Sagrado)
dir. Chema Garcia Ibarra (2021)
ahh, this was unfortunately one that just didn't work for me at all (13/14 really is not a bad return though!). This is a zero budget indie festival circuit number with a... yeah well it's definitely got a voice. It has a pretty distinct visual style, and while that means it has a pretty colour palette, it's also a bit of a dour affair as a film. The camera is pretty much always locked in place, with the shot framed dead centre (1:78:1, so proper fucking dull), and all of the actors are non-professional, so the director has opted to get them to go with that kind of Lanthimos deadpan delivery, and there just is not the legs for that in this movie. It's also a shockingly heavy subject matter that I just don't feel in my heart is handled with the most grace, and you never want to feel that way about this particular topic. I think this will work for some people, but it just did not move me.
4/10 | | 13 |  | The Stalin
STOP JAP
Burst City
Gakuryuu Ishii (1982)
I think there is a scenario where I would watch this again tbh, even though I didn't exactly enjoy it first time round. It's waaaaay too fucking long for what it's going for, and it is baffingly incoherent (though part of this might be because this movie is so poorly paced you spend half of it on your phone). This isn't a good blu ray transfer, but it would have been shot on pretty cheap equipment, so I can't really fault it (cause again, it's better than vhs quality). It's actually shot surprisingly nicely, it has a bunch of great set pieces and i love the use of lighting and camera speed. The music is unsurprisingly amazing, makes a good introductory playlist for J-punk, but like I said, it truly is a fucking slog to sit through (and it also absolutely is not a cyberpunk film lol, idk why it's marketed that way).
5/10 | | 12 |  | Hailu Mergia
Wede Harer Guzo
Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway
dir. Miguel Llanso (2019)
So this one is just some straight up crackhead shit. A very low budget indie release paying homage to old skool exploitation films. It has a dude wearing a paper Stalin Mask (and George H.W. too I guess?) Ethiopian batman with the logo blurred out, "the substance", virtual reality with 70s/80s tech, a burger truck, a couple of obnoxiously graphic sex scenes, and a scene where someone parachutes off a roof. It's like a collab between Spain and Ethiopia, and it's shot in Estonia? Idk like, I can't tell you this is a *good* movie, but I sure did fucking enjoy watching it (even though I couldn't follow it at all).
5/10 | | 11 |  | Haken
Fauna
Phenomena
dir. Dario Argento (1985)
I'm yet to see an Argento film I *love*, and Phenomena didn't quite find the right mix of ideas to get there. Starring fetus Jennifer Connelly, the homie Donald Pleasance, and a real chimpanzee for some reason, Phenomena felt like Argento was cooking for at least 3 separate films. The final quarter-ish of this movie is absolutely fucking buck wild, to the extent that you pretty much completely forget the entire set up. It's very much like Suspiria in that regard (actually, there are several ways in which Argento is retreading ideas from Suspiria), but it's just not especially coherent. It's a mostly banal movie with a fantastic ending. Also the version on Arrow's release is like a full original theatrical cut, which means there are deleted scenes added back in that were never dubbed in English, so it just randomly has scenes in Italian.
6/10 | | 10 |  | The Verlaines
Bird Dog
Vigil
dir. Vincent Ward (1984)
A kiwi film! While this actually could have made a super compelling folk horror story, considering the set up and the absolutely breathtaking Taranaki hills it's filmed in, the movie is unfortunately actually an offbeat coming of age drama. Which is fine, actually, the movie is fine. This is probably the most visually stunning movie of the lot, really rich blues and greens, very textured, serenely patient. It doesn't really have a plot, and there's a couple of kinda iffy moments, but it's not bad at all. Apparently it was the first kiwi film to screen at Cannes, which is odd cause I had never heard about this movie (or director) before, and I'm from here.
6/10 | | 9 |  | Krzysztof Penderecki
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima
Hiroshima
dir. Hideo Sekigawa (1953)
Emotionally affecting for the most part, but a little disjointed storywise, like it couldn't really find a through line and stick with it. The sole blind buy on the "Arrow Academy" line, this one is pretty clearly cut from a different cloth to these other films on this list. This particular restoration isn't *great*, it hasn't been cleaned up all the well, but it's certainly a massive improvement over seeing these older films on DVD or VHS. It's also a bit of an odd one cause I think the documentary that this is meant to come with isn't actually on the disc, it's a download? Also, so, for those who haven't encountered an Arrow release in the wild, they always come with reversible sleeves with the original release artwork on the other side. The tagline on the original says "it'll blast you out of your seat!" Like how unserious were you yanks about Hiroshima? gottdamn
7/10 | | 8 |  | Cannibal Corpse
The Bleeding
Society
dir. Brian Yuzna (1989)
This one I got because Bello mentioned it one time. This one falls in a weird liminal zone where it has the feel of an 80s teen movie a la John Hughes et al, but the entire premise is so fucking off the wall bizarre that it's kinda hard to place. It's not scary per se, and I don't think it's meant to be? But the body horror stuff is so hilariously extreme that it feels like probably that would have made more sense tonally to shoot it as a horror movie? It's cool though, it's a fun premise and it saves all of its practical effects and shit for the end in one big gross fuckfest. But it is an odd one.
7/10 | | 7 |  | The Rita
Lake Depths Lurker
Lake Michigan Monster
dir. Ryland Brickson Cole Tews (2018)
So this is exactly the kind of film that got me hooked on these Arrow releases in the first place. The idea that your local indie film festival circuit feature could get a boutique release on blu ray with a whole bunch of extras was just such a neat concept and it got me interested in seeing what else was in this catalogue that would never have come to my attention otherwise. This film looks like it had a negative budget; you could make this for youtube. But it knows exactly what it has to work with and how to do it. It's going for that old school mystery science theatre vibe and it's very tongue-in-cheek and absurdist. The bonus features had an "fx reel" and the reveal that basically the whole second half of the movie is shot on green screen in their living room and then composited with miniatures that look like paper mache is *chef's kiss*
7/10 | | 6 |  | Sade
Love Deluxe
Audition
dir. Takashi Miike (1999)
This is a brilliantly creative film. It's one of those that kinda has a reputation that precedes it, and so going in blind this absolutely wasn't what I expected this movie to be lol. While it's absolutely a horror film, the first like, 90% of it is more of a romantic drama, and so when it does finally flip on you in the third act it's really shocking. The whole thing is shot really well, clearly not made with a very large budget but it's very economical and clever. Really makes me want to take a time capsule walk through a Japanese video rental store.
7/10 | | 5 |  | The Cure
Songs of a Lost World
Empathy, Inc.
dir Yedidya Gorsetman (2018)
Woah holy shit this one was a surprise lmao. The final entry on this list that falls into the "zero budget indie film" category, this one has a few very significant legs up over the rest of them. For one, though definitely not perfect, this director actually seems to understand how to compose a shot, the writers and editors know how to make a story flow, and it actually has professional actors (some of these guys actually have pretty surprising portfolios considering what this movie is). It's wearing it's influences on it's sleeve, sure, and it was clearly shot on a budget of a wendy's voucher and a handjob, but it's such a compelling story, the black and white hides the lack of set dressing, and it makes the absolute most of its modesty. A really fucking solid indie sci-fi thriller.
8/10 | | 4 |  | Gorillaz
G-Sides
Zombie Flesh Eaters (Zombi 2)
dir. Lucio Fulci (1979)
I fucking love old school zombie films. They fill me with so much fucking joy and cum. So I grabbed this title because it was a name I recognised, as Jamie Hewlett used to use this name for his design team in the early Gorillaz era. This was marketed in Italy as a sequel to Dawn of the Dead (which it decidedly absolutely is not), but the funny thing is, I actually think this might be the closest I've seen a zombie film get to capturing that vibe? It's really a great time. It has some real silly shit, like the zombies just sitting up out of their graves, but it also has a particularly vile kill involving eyeballs, as well as a sexploitation scene where we get titties out and fight a real actual shark and an underwater zombie at the same time.
8/10 | | 3 |  | Talking Heads
True Stories
Matinee
dir. Joe Dante (1993)
Now *this* was a fucking pleasant little surprise. For whatever reason, this movie seems to have been completely forgotten about, lost to the time of blockbuster and video ezy, but it seriously deserves some kind of reappraisal. It's about a bunch of kids in a town in the Florida Keys who really like going to the movies to see whatever horror schlock is hot at the moment. John Goodman is an Ed Wood type film maker who is on tour putting on what's kind of an early 4D cinema experience for his new movie "Mant". The whole movie is a coming of age comedy/drama set the very present backdrop of the Cuban Missle Crisis and cold war paranoia and it's all these elements are just so perfect for one another. A fantastic find, give it a shot.
9/10 | | 2 |  | Buck-Tick
Yume Miru Uchuu
To Sleep so as to Dream (Yumemiru You ni Nemuritai)
dir. Kaizou Hayashi (1986)
This one truly was a beaut. As the name suggests, this is a very dreamy silent(!) film from the 80s. Quite clearly a love letter to the history of Japanese cinema, this movie is the visual equivalent of being sung a lullaby by a loved one. The sparse and deliberate use of sound effects really elevates this as well, and it has a very clever twist ending. Highly recommend even if being a modern silent film in black and white might make it a bit of an oddity.
9/10 | | 1 |  | Siouxsie and the Banshees
Tinderbox
Candyman
dir. Bernard Rose (1992)
and saving the best for last, Candyman is going to go on to be one of my all time favourite films I'm pretty sure. Tony Todd is really fucking scary in this (actually, so is Virginia Madsen tbqh), the Chicago projects feel haptic, eerie, and lived in (probably because they are) and are such an inspired choice of setting for this story. Adding the layer of race in the US to Barker's pre-existing commentary on class present in the original short story really elevates this conceptually. Some of the scariest shit in this movie isn't even the gore, the fucking bees and even just the women walking unarmed into that project tower had my asshole clenched tighter than most of the blood.
10/10 | |
Jasdevi087
11.23.24 | albums chosen for comic effect | mryrtmrnfoxxxy
11.23.24 | zombie kicks ass | Trebor.
11.23.24 | I started buying way too many Criterion blu rays | Jasdevi087
11.23.24 | yeah lucky for me criterions are prohibitively expensive out here, so i don't quite have that particular bug | mryrtmrnfoxxxy
11.24.24 | i bought a bunch of arrow 4ks the past few years. some of my favs have been Demons 1&2, Tremors, True Romance, the Hellraiser Quad, Django, Tenebrae, Cinema Paradiso, and Robocop. i had to stop buying them though, it got too dang expensive to live | unclereich
11.24.24 | im drowning in steelbooks and criterion i have a major hoarding issue |
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