Walk On The Wild Side In Arrow Video’s September Slate

Even when the fun in sun finally kicks off this Summer Arrow Video‘s work continues. Making sure every month is genre fest and September‘s slate will be a bit on the wild side. The month will include box set of films from a French master, the Blu-ray debuts of a star-studded Hollywood classic, a 1980s slasher gem, and a Japanese oddity, a collection of monster movies as you’ve never seen them before, and a trilogy of terror sprouted from the mind of one of the all-time horror greats.

First in September, we’ll get the box set of The Films of Olivier Assayas. Four films by the director now recognised as one of French cinema’s finest talents, including Disorder, Winter’s Child, Irma Vep, and Demonlover. A one time a critic and screenwriter before making his debut feature as director in 1986. Witty, heartfelt, and daring, Assayas remains one of the most interesting international filmmakers working today. No two films are quite alike.

This month also sees the release of Walk on the Wild Side with Jane Fonda, Laurence Harvey, Barbara Stanwyck and Capucine giving exceptional performances in his lurid drama of love and lust set in Depression era New Orleans. Based on the novel by Nelson Algren, featuring a stunning title sequence by Saul and Elaine Bass. Presented for the first time on Blu-ray, in a brand 4K new Special Edition restoration.

The month gets even more packed, Death Screams, a bodycount-heavy, long overlooked slice of Southern fried hack-and-slash from 1982. Released on US VHS as House of Death (and on UK DVD with the reels in the wrong order!), an ’80s regional slasher charm from its every pore, boasting an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink final reel featuring slashed throats, bisected bodies and exploding heads. At long last arriving on Blu-ray and lovingly restored from the only-known existing 35mm print, a little-seen slasher gem.

Zombies, werewolves, atomic mutations and intergalactic avians unleashed! With a quartet of classic terrors take you back to the golden age of B-Movie Monsters in Cold War Creatures: Four Films from Sam Katzman – four fantastic feature presentations – Creature with the Atom Brain, The Werewolf, Zombies of Mora Tau and The Giant Claw – from prolific producer Sam Katzman with a bounty of brand new extras and a raft of new writing by a range of respected raconteurs.

The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch, making its worldwide Blu-ray debut and its home video premiere outside Japan, with Noriaki Yuasa, director of Daiei Studios’ much-beloved Gamera series, making a monochrome film adaptation of the works of horror manga pioneer Kazuo Umezu (The Drifting Classroom). The result is a fantastically phantasmagorical slice of twisted tokusatsu terror ostensibly made for children that will irreparably traumatise any child that sees it! This rarely-screened, nightmarishly disorienting creepshow not only displays a seldom-seen side of kaiju auteur Yuasa, but its skilful blending of Umezu’s comics (published in English-language markets as Reptilia) arguably anticipates many of the trends seen in J-horror decades later.

Finally it’s time to reap the harvest, as the Children of the Corn Trilogy is released as a lavish Limited Edition box set. Best-selling author Stephen King sowed the seeds for a bumper crop of horror films with his classic collection Night Shift. Featuring the original film in Ultra High Definition and alternate cuts of both its follow-ups for the first time on Blu-ray, plus a wealth of new and archival extras.

The Films of Olivier Assayas 6th September

Disorder tells the tale of a post-punk band whose friendships are tested when a music store robbery turns fatal. It marked Assayas as a talent to be reckoned with. The intimate story of Winter’s Child built on that reputation and showed his remarkable gifts with actors, while in Irma Vep Assayas turned his attention to the French film industry to provide a mid-90s amalgam of François Truffaut’s Day for Night and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore, delighting audiences around the world and featuring a stand-out turn by Maggie Cheung playing a version of herself. Meanwhile, the startlingly prescient neo-noir/cyberhorror masterpiece Demonlover, takes a darker turn to present a chilling exploration of the nexus between sex and violence available at the click of a button, riffing on Cronenberg’s Videodrome and with an iconic score by art-rock pioneers, Sonic Youth.

Walk on the Wild Side 6th September

Down-to-earth, good-natured Dove Linkhorn (Laurence Harvey) train hops from Texas to Louisiana with Kitty Twist (Jane Fonda) in search of his lost love Hallie (Capucine), a soft-spoken, sophisticated artist. Once in New Orleans, Dove is devastated to discover that she has been reduced to working in the “Doll House”, a high society bordello run by ruthless madam Jo Courtney (Barbara Stanwyck). But when Dove tries to take Hallie away he finds himself fighting for his life against bordello thugs and the jealous Jo who wants Hallie for herself.

Death Screams Limited Edition Blu-ray 13th September

Late one night, a young couple are brutally murdered at a make-out spot by an unseen assailant, their bodies tossed into the nearby river. As the lifeless lovers drift slowly downstream, the residents of the town excitedly prepare themselves for their annual carnival, unaware that a machete-wielding maniac with a twisted grudge is lurking in their midst. When a group of teen revellers plan a late-night after party down in the local cemetery, they unwittingly set the stage for a bloodbath.

Death Screams Arrow Store Exclusive O-Card Limited Edition Blu-ray 13th September

Cold War Creatures: Four Films from Sam Katzman 13th September

A mob boss hires an ex-Nazi scientist to reanimate his dead thugs in Creature with the Atom Brain. An auto-accident survivor is used as an experimental subject to create a vaccine for nuclear fall-out with hair-raising side-effects in The Werewolf. Treasure hunters get more than they bargained for in the search for a cargo of diamonds that went down with a sunken ship when they discover the zombified crew are guarding the loot in Zombies of Mora Tau. Meanwhile, an enormous bird from outer-space descends to chow down on the people of planet Earth in The Giant Claw!

The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch 20th September

A young girl named Sayuri is reunited with her estranged family after years in an orphanage – but trouble lurks within the walls of the large family home. Her mother is an amnesiac after a car accident six months earlier, her sullen sister is confined to the attic and a young housemaid dies inexplicably of a heart attack just before Sayuri arrives… is it all connected to her father’s work studying venomous snakes? And is the fanged, serpentine figure that haunts Sayuri’s dreams the same one spying on her through holes in the wall?

Children of the Corn Trilogy 27th September

In the cult classic original a young couple (Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton) find themselves stranded in the small town of Gatlin, Nebraska where they meet a religious cult of children led by the mysterious Isaac and the unhinged Malachi and learn the blood-curdling secrets of He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Meanwhile in Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice, the well meaning locals of nearby Hemingford adopt the children who survived the original terror, but all is not as it seems. A new harvest is about to begin. Finally, Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest brings terror to the big city, as two orphaned boys from Gatlin are taken into foster care in Chicago, where He Who Walks Behind the Rows begins to walk again!