Arrow Video In November Promises A Feast Of Eastern Action!

“ the Arrow Video in November!” Autumn is near and Arrow Video are already shaping your viewing pleasure with the  November line-up. A promise of Eastern action and horror!

This November, Arrow Video is set to release Tomie on Limited Edition Blu-ray. Based on the smash-hit series of the same name by cult manga artist Junji Itō (Uzumaki), the story of an evil high-school seductress identifiable by a beauty mark beneath her left eye, whose bewitching kiss drives men to madness. A creepy supernatural chiller directed by Ataru Oikawa (screenwriter of the pioneering Japanese horror Door) and featuring a chilling turn by the sensational Miho Kanno (Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness, Dolls), this key title from the J-Horror boom of the late 1990s, which spawned a string of sequels. Tomie is making its Blu-ray debut outside of Japan and expect the usual bundle goodies the only way Arrow Video knows!

Also coming in November, At Close Range on Limited Edition Blu-ray, James Foley’s intense, criminally underseen crime drama, inspired by real life events that occurred in 1970s Philadelphia. With riveting lead performances by Sean Penn (Mystic River) and Christopher Walken (True Romance), a stacked ing cast including Kiefer Sutherland (Flatliners), Crispin Glover (River’s Edge) and Mary Stuart Masterson (Daniel Isn’t Real), and a haunting soundtrack by frequent Madonna collaborator Patrick Leonard which includes the original song “Live to Tell” performed by Madonna, At Close Range is an atmospheric thriller ripe for rediscovery.

she’s back! Elvira (played by Cassandra Peterson), Horrorland’s hostess with the mostest, finally busts out on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray with this long-awaited, positively bursting-at-the-seams special edition of her big screen debut, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark! Campy, quirky and stuffed to the brim with more double entendres than your average Carry On movie, the 1988 film helped solidify the Elvira as a major pop culture icon, here owning every inch of the screen with her quick wit, sass, and of course, cleaving-enhancing gown!

In November, the edge-of-your-seat thriller The Invasion starring Nicole Kidman and Jeremy Northam makes its debut on 4K UHD. Ahead of the curve, with its eerily predictive shift toward a virus-like contagion more frighteningly resonant in a post-pandemic world, the film is based on Jack Finney’s classic 1955 sci-fi/horror novel The Body Snatchers. Produced by Joel Silver, and also starring Daniel Craig, Jeffrey Wright, and Veronica Cartwright.

Finally Shawscope Volume Three on Limited Edition Blu-ray will arrive in time for Christmas. Before Hong Kong’s mightiest film studio mastered the art of the kung fu film, Shaw Brothers hit box office gold with a very different kind of martial arts cinema, one that channelled the blood-soaked widescreen violence of Japanese samurai epics and Italian spaghetti westerns into a uniquely Chinese form: the wuxia pian. With their enthralling tales drawn from historical myth and legend of sword-wielding (and often gravity-defying) noble heroes, the wuxia films housed in this next instalment of Arrow Video’s best-selling Shawscope series demonstrate the sweeping stylistic evolution of the genre, from the righteous stoicism of the late-60s Mandarin period, right through to the wild-and-weird anarchism of the early-80s Cantonese explosion.

At Close Range Limited Edition Blu-ray 4th November

Brad Whitewood Jr. reconnects with his estranged father, Brad Sr., a notorious and charismatic criminal. Fascinated by his father’s lifestyle, Brad Jr. forms a gang with his brother Tommy and begins stealing tractors. Their criminal activities quickly draw them deeper into Brad Sr.’s world, but their illicit pursuits take a grim turn when the gang crosses the point of no return into murder. Now in too deep, Brad Jr. must now confront the chilling truth about his father’s nefarious actions.

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark Limited Edition 4K UHD 11th November

Having just quit her job as a Los Angeles TV horror hostess, Elvira receives the unexpected news that she’s set to inherit part of her great aunt Morgana’s estate. Arriving in the small town of Fallwell, Massachusetts to claim her inheritance, Elvira receives a less than enthusiastic reception from the conservative locals – amongst them, her sinister uncle Vincent, who, unbeknownst to Elvira, is in fact an evil warlock secretly scheming to steal the old family spellbook for his own nefarious ends…

The Invasion Limited Edition 4K UHD 11th November

A space shuttle crashes to Earth carrying an alien organism. Soon people are changing, becoming detached and emotionless. People like CDC director Tucker Kaufman (Jeremy Northam) who is investigating the crash. Meanwhile his ex-wife, psychiatrist Carol Bennell (Nicole Kidman), sees the same behaviour in a friend of their son, and a patient claims that her husband is no longer her husband. As people all across Washington D.C. become infected and the insidious epidemic spreads, Carol must fight to protect herself and her son, who might just hold the key to stopping the escalating invasion.

Also available on: Limited Edition Blu-ray

Tomie Limited Edition Blu-ray 18th November

Photography student Tsukiko (Mami Nakamura, Tokyo Trash Baby, Love Exposure) is plagued by violent dreams as she struggles to recall long-suppressed memories following a teenage trauma with the help of psychiatrist Dr. Hosono (Yoriko Douguchi, Cure, Charisma). Meanwhile, as Detective Harada (Tomorō Taguchi, Tetsuo: The Iron Man) leads an investigation into a missing high-school girl, he discovers a long line of similar cases that can be traced back decades, with all of the victims going by the name of Tomie Kawakami, and all slaughtered and decapitated by jealous lovers before they reach womanhood. Meanwhile, Tsukiko’s new neighbour seems to be harbouring something nasty in the downstairs apartment, something which rapidly begins to take on a dangerous form.

Shawscope Volume Three Limited Edition Blu-ray 25th November
The iconic One-Armed Swordsman trilogy, directed between 1967 and 1971 by wuxia cinema godfather Chang Cheh, made household names of stars Wang Yu and David Chiang and set the gory template for many of the films to come. Contrary to Chang’s tales of loyal brotherhood, many wuxia films focused on female protagonists, three very different examples of which we see next: Ho Meng-hua’s The Lady Hermit, with the great Cheng Pei-pei (Come Drink with Me) as a virtuous swordswoman called upon to stop a vicious warlord; Chor Yuen’s scandalous Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan in which the titular lady of the night masters every deadly skill she can to get revenge on those who enslaved her; and Cheng Kang’s all-star epic The 14 Amazons, in which Shaws’ finest starlets play the real-life women of the Yang dynasty, avenging their fallen menfolk in battle.

Next, Chor Yuen adapted several beloved novels by consummate wuxia storyteller Gu Long to the big screen, four of which are collected here: The Magic Blade, Clans of Intrigue, Jade Tiger and The Sentimental Swordsman, all starring the redoubtable Ti Lung. As kung fu overtook wuxia at the box office, the genre evolved into unexpected new directions, with its chivalrous knights-errant replaced by conflicted antiheroes, as seen in Sun Chung’s breathlessly exciting The Avenging Eagle and Boxer’s Omen goremeister Kuei Chih-hung’s fatalistic masterpiece Killer Constable. Finally, just when it seemed the wuxia film had nowhere left to turn, Eighties excess reigned supreme in the special-effects-soaked, fourth-wall-breaking fantastical delights of Taylor Wong’s Buddha’s Palm and Lu Chun-ku’s Bastard Swordsman.