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Hello, dear readers! We’re back with a brand new assortment of horror and sci-fi home media releases this week, and as we creep closer and closer towards Halloween, there are definitely a handful of titles coming out on Tuesday that would be fun to check out as you get ready for the spooky season. Arrow Video is keeping busy with a handful of releases, including a 4K version of Dario Argento’s The Cat O’ Nine Tails and Blind Beast. And speaking of Argento, Blue Underground is showing Two Evil Eyes - his collaboration with George A. Romero - some love with their 4K presentation of the film. Larry Cohen’s A Return to Salem’s Lot is finally getting a Blu-ray, and if you missed the latest Conjuring film in theaters earlier this year, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is headed home on multiple formats this week as well.

“Would you like something to drink? I have some milk.”

Dario Argento’s The Cat O’ Nine Tails (1971) will be available on 4K Ultra HD from Arrow Video August 24th. It can be pre-ordered Here

Following the success of his debut feature, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, distributor Titanus tasked writer-director Dario Argento with delivering a follow-up in short order. The resulting film, granted a greatly enhanced budget and heralded in its US marketing campaign as nine times more suspenseful than its predecessor, was The Cat O Nine Tails

When a break\-in occurs at a secretive genetics institute, blind puzzle\-maker Franco Arnò, who overheard an attempt to blackmail one of the institutes scientists shortly before the robbery, teams up with intrepid reporter Carlo Giordani to crack the case. But before long the bodies begin to pile up and the two amateur sleuths find their own lives imperiled...

Dario Argento’s second murder whodunnit is less stylized but almost as enjoyable as his first, Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Reporter James Franciscus and blind ex-detective Karl Malden investigate killings at a fancy genetics institute, but everyone they interview turns up dead. Catherine Spaak is among the suspects in a crime spree with nine clues but no easy solution. Turin locations, a glossy widescreen image and Argento’s polished direction are the draw, along with some fine music cues by Ennio Morricone — who in 1971 scored 24 separate features!

The Cat O’ Nine Tails

Blu-ray

Arrow Video USA

1971 / Color / 1:78 anamorphic 16:9 (Techniscope)/ 112m. / Il Gatto a nove code / Street Date August 14, 2018 / Available from Arrow Video / 34.95

Starring: James Franciscus, Karl Malden, Catherine Spaak, Pier Paolo Capponi, Horst Frank, Rada Rassimov, Aldo Reggiani.

Cinematography: Erico Menczer

Film Editor: Franco Fraticelli

Production Designer: Carlo Leva

Original Music: Ennio Morricone

Written by Dario Argento,...

March’s home media releases kick off in grand style this week with an eclectic array of horror and sci-fi arrivals, both new and old. Scream Factory has put together a stellar Collector’s Edition Blu-ray of The Strangers and Arrow Video is resurrecting yet another Dario Argento classic in HD with their limited edition celebration of The Cat O’ Nine Tails. My Friend Dahmer also arrives on both formats this Tuesday, and The Dark Crystal is getting a 4K Anniversary Edition release that fans will undoubtedly want to pick up as well.

Other notable Blu-ray and DVD titles for March 6th include Thor: Ragnarok, Fangs of the Living Dead, The Crossbreed, Curse of the Mayans, Knights of the Damned, and the House on the Edge of the Park/Last House on Massacre Street (aka The Bride) double feature from Kino Lorber.

The Cat O’ Nine Tales: Limited Edition (Arrow Video,...

Review by Roger Carpenter

After the runaway international success of director Dario Argento’s freshman effort, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, he quickly followed that animal-themed film with The Cat O’ Nine Tails. The film is essentially a whodunit featuring a blind man with extra-sensitive hearing due to his blindness who uses his only family, a little girl, as his eyes. They overhear a mysterious snippet of conversation on the street and later meet a hard-bitten detective at the scene of a murder. Connecting the conversation with the murder, the trio become embroiled in a series of killings. But the closer they get to the killer’s identity the more danger they are in as the killer soon begins to target them as well.

Argento’s sophomore effort was also a success and, together with his third film, 4 Flies on Grey Velvet, are credited with not only creating the giallo film,...

Dario Argento’s The Cat O’ Nine Tails will be available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video January 30th. It can be pre-ordered Here

Following the success of his debut feature, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, distributor Titanus tasked writer/director Dario Argento with delivering a follow-up in short order. The resulting film, granted a greatly enhanced budget and heralded in its Us marketing campaign as ”nine times more suspenseful” than its predecessor, was The Cat O’ Nine Tails.

When a break-in occurs at a secretive genetics institute, blind puzzle-maker Franco Arno (Karl Malden, Patton, One-Eyed Jacks), who overheard an attempt to blackmail one of the institute’s scientists shortly before the robbery, teams up with intrepid reporter Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus, Beneath the Planet of the Apes) to crack the case. But before long the bodies begin to pile up and the two amateur sleuths find their own lives...

The holidays may be over by the time January rolls around, but Arrow Video will still have gifts in store for horror fans with Blu-ray releases that include Dario Argento's The Cat O' Nine Tails, Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator, and Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes.

We have release details and images of Arrow Video's January Blu-ray releases below. The Cat O' Nine Tails is a limited edition item, and while Re-Animator and The Hills Have Eyes were previously released as limited editions by Arrow Video, they will be hitting shelves as re-releases in January (with slightly less goodies, but still plenty of bonus features and eye-popping 4K restorations to enjoy).

From Arrow Video: "New UK/Us Title: The Cat o’ Nine Tails (Dual Format Blu-ray + DVD) Limited Edition

Pre-order The Cat O’ Nine Tails in the UK: http://bit.ly/2i9y0cp

Pre-order The Cat...

So, it's pretty obvious why this film suddenly has currency. It's a fascinatingly different take on the historical events dealt with in Christopher Nolan's current war epic (and also in Leslie Norman's more low-key 50s production). While it's possible to imagine people liking all three films, it seems likely everyone will greatly prefer one or other of them.Henri Verneuil enjoyed a long collaboration with Jean-Paul Belmondo, his star here, some of which exploited the star's fearless enthusiasm for daredevil stunts. Though the actor runs about among huge explosions here, so does everybody else, so that doesn't seem so special, though he does perform a spectacular crash down a flight of stairs. But on the whole, the film's talk seems to be to strip away Belmondo's superhero charisma and make him just one of the guys, hundreds of thousands of them, stranded on a beach and prey to bombs,...

Merle Oberon films: From empress to duchess in 'Hotel.' Merle Oberon films: From starring to supporting roles Turner Classic Movies' Merle Oberon month comes to an end tonight, March 25, '16, with six movies: Désirée, Hotel, Deep in My Heart, Affectionately Yours, Berlin Express, and Night Song. Oberon's presence alone would have sufficed to make them all worth a look, but they have other qualities to recommend them as well. 'Désirée': First supporting role in two decades Directed by Henry Koster, best remembered for his Deanna Durbin musicals and the 1947 fantasy comedy The Bishop's Wife, Désirée (1954) is a sumptuous production that, thanks to its big-name cast, became a major box office hit upon its release. Marlon Brando is laughably miscast as Napoleon Bonaparte, while Jean Simmons plays the title role, the Corsican Conqueror's one-time fiancée Désirée Clary (later Queen of Sweden and Norway). In a supporting role – her...

By Lee Pfeiffer

I hadn't seen Hotel since it opened in theaters in 1967 and I was a tender lad of 9 years-old. I thought it was talky and somewhat boring at the time, but upon viewing the DVD release from Warner Archives, I have to say that I relished every minute of it. This is do in no small part to the fact that the film is packed with great actors that audiences used to take for granted, but whose presence is now sorely missed. Hotel follows the pattern of those all-star dramas that were so popular in the 60s and 70s. It traces the relationships between a disparate group of glamorous types who intermingle over the course of a few days at the elegant St. Gregory Hotel in New Orleans. (Envision The V.I.P.S - with room service.) Melvyn Douglas (who must have excelled at playing doddering old...

Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine' 1938: Jean Renoir's film noir (photo: Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine') (See previous post: "'Cat People' 1942 Actress Simone Simon Remembered.") In the late 1930s, with her Hollywood career stalled while facing competition at 20th Century-Fox from another French import, Annabella (later Tyrone Power's wife), Simone Simon returned to France. Once there, she reestablished herself as an actress to be reckoned with in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine. An updated version of Émile Zola's 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine is enveloped in a dark, brooding atmosphere not uncommon in pre-World War II French films. Known for their "poetic realism," examples from that era include Renoir's own The Lower Depths (1936), Julien Duvivier's La Belle Équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937), and particularly Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).[11] This thematic and...

Marie Dubois, actress in French New Wave films, dead at 77 (image: Marie Dubois in the mammoth blockbuster 'La Grande Vadrouille') Actress Marie Dubois, a popular French New Wave personality of the '60s and the leading lady in one of France's biggest box-office hits in history, died Wednesday, October 15, 2014, at a nursing home in Lescar, a suburb of the southwestern French town of Pau, not far from the Spanish border. Dubois, who had been living in the Pau area since 2010, was 77. For decades she had been battling multiple sclerosis, which later in life had her confined to a wheelchair. Born Claudine Huzé (Claudine Lucie Pauline Huzé according to some online sources) on January 12, 1937, in Paris, the blue-eyed, blonde Marie Dubois began her show business career on stage, being featured in plays such as Molière's The Misanthrope and Arthur Miller's The Crucible. François Truffaut discovery: 'Shoot the...

We all from time to time enjoy a comfortable stay when vacationing anywhere in the world. So why should movie characters not appreciate a great place to stay as well? Interestingly, big screen hotels and motels almost play an important part as an extra movie character in addition to serving as a backdrop to the proceedings.

In Enjoy Your Stay: The Top 10 Movies About Hotels/Motels let’s look at some special selections where hotels and motels in film are featured and play a primary role in plot and theme. Cinematic room service has never been so accommodating.

The Enjoy Your Stay: The Top 10 Movies About Hotels/Motels selections are (in alphabetical order):

1.) The Best Exotic Manigold Hotel (2011)

Director John Madden’s The Best Exotic Manigold Hotel juggles various topical matters at hand: the aging process, deception in advertising, exotic travel and cultural clashing. Madden assembles a notable cast...

Veteran actress Catherine Spaak - star of Italian classics like Dino Risi's The Easy Life and Dario Argento's The Cat O' Nine Tails - will star in a new gore movie, The Thousand And One Deaths (Le Mille e Una Morte) directed by Elisabetta Marchetti. The story is about a  horror film-maker who decides to explore the world of snuff movies, with real torture and death. Spaak will play the mother of the protagonist while the legendary Sergio Stivaletti - who worked with all the major genre directors of Italy, from Lamberto Bava to Michele Soavi, Dario Argento and Sergio Martino - will take care of the bloody special effects....

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

★★☆☆☆ In only his second film as director after The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Dario Argento was determined to demonstrate new facets of his talent, enthusing that The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971) - starring James Franciscus, Karl Malden and Catherine Spaak - would be a different beast to its giallo siblings. Sadly, the only discernible difference between this film and his masterful debut seems to be that only one of them is any good. Events begin abruptly with the saintly Franco Arno (Malden) and his niece overhearing a delicate conversation between two shadowy men in a parked car.

Read more »...

Graphic murders meet 70s Italian chic, in a film that exemplifies the Giallo horror genre that become so popular under the helm of director Dario Argento, amongst others. The Cat O’Nine Tails is released on Monday for the first time on Blu-ray, read on for our review…

The Cat ‘O Nine Tails, Dario Argento’s second feature as director, stars James Franciscus (Beneath the Planet of the Apes; The Valley of Gwangi), Karl Malden (On the Waterfront; A Streetcar Named Desire) and French actress and singer Catherine Spaak (Hotel, La Ronde) in a classic Giallo tale that begins when a break in at a genetics lab leads to a spiralling vortex of bloody murder. Strange circumstances surrounding the crime pique the interest of a journalist (Franciscus) and a blind crossword compiler (Malden) whose sharp ears have overheard talks of blackmail. However, all those assisting the would-be investigators in their...

Chicago – Stylish, sexy, and smart, “Zen” is a treat for international mystery lovers, seen recently on PBS stateside and now available on DVD and a stunningly-transferred two-disc Blu-ray. Starring Rufus Sewell and Caterina Murino, the release includes three feature-length mysteries — “Vendetta,” “Cabal,” and “Ratking” — all based on Michael Dibdin novels. While the BBC canceled the show (despite strong ratings) due to a reported glut of male crimefighters in the country’s TV (if only more American producers felt that way), “Zen” stands out from the crowd.

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.0/5.0

Detective Aurelio Zen (Rufus Sewell of “Dark City”) is a smooth character, the kind of upstanding mystery man who gets the criminal, the girl, and a new suit all in a day’s work. To be fair, Sewell adds a nice layer of realism and anxiety to the character, not giving in to the beautiful people in a beautiful setting aesthetic that...

Hitting movie theaters this weekend:

X-Men: First Class – James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence

Movie of the Week

X-Men: First Class

The Stars: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence

The Plot: In 1963, Charles Xavier (McAvoy) starts up a school and later a team, for humans with superhuman abilities. Among them is Erik Lensherr (Fassbender), his best friend, and future archenemy.

The Buzz: The film’s preliminary reviews have been solid, with 41 favorable reviews to 1 unfavorable, as of today at Rottentomates. The cast is really strong too. However, I personally have zero interest in this film, as it looks to have zero style (other than the standard nerdy film-version X-Men vibe), but perhaps this will be the first good X-Men film? I loved the comic books, was a pretty big reader for awhile there, and I’ve always felt like, of all the Marvel films, the X-Men films have fallen the furthest from their book.

There are so many regional detectives cluttering up British television that executives have started to look abroad for inspiration. But why bother importing a foreign series and subtitling it (as BBC4 did with French crime drama Spiral) when you can simply film British actors overseas, pretending to be foreigners. First out of the gate was an English-language remake of Wallander, where Kenneth Branagh played a dour Swedish detective in a country suddenly populated by “Brits”, and now it’s the turn of late author Michael Dibden‘s Italian detective Aurelio Zen, played by the smouldering Rufus Sewell. The benefit is we get detective shows crammed with exotic scenery, with a cultural backdrop that’s unfamiliar and thus fascinating to explore. On the downside, it might take some people awhile to adjust to seeing Italians played by people who sound like they’re from the home counties, but I found myself...

ROME -- After a drawn out bout with illnesses over the past several years, Italian director Alberto Lattuada, famed for his satirical take on Italy's sexual norms, died on Saturday in Rome. He was 90. With a career that spanned the 1950's to the early 1980's -- considered the golden era of Italian cinema -- Lattuado was credited with writing some of the most cutting edge women's roles and for helping to discover a bevy of female talent including Catherine Spaak, Natassja Kinski, Clio Goldsmith and Barbara De Rossi. Lattuada's best known credits include the movie La Spiaggia (1954) and I Dolci Inganni (Sweet Deceits), which pushed the traditional envelope with its exploration of a 16-year-old girl's first sexual experiences.