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Last week director Nicolas Winding Refn launched the free streaming service byNWR.com, a project he has been developing for the past two years. The site features rare, forgotten and in many cases never-really-known films from the fringes of film history. Throughout the year, he will release four volumes of content, each built around a specific theme that Refn and his team of archivists will piece together along with a guest editor.

For example, Vol. 1, “Exploitation Gems from the Southern USA,” is anchored by three 1960s low-budget independent genre films, like “The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds,” a gothic horror film shot in the Florida Everglades.

Refn’s passion for finding and restoring rare films is a little different than his cinephile-turned-auteur peers like a Del Toro, Tarantino or Scorsese. For starters, Refn often wasn’t familiar with the individual films or regional sub-genres when he started buying them. In...

Nicolas Winding Refn announced last October he was launching a free curated website of films and essays, and now it’s almost time for that website to launch. The Guardian reports byNWR.com is set to launch later this July, and Refn celebrated his upcoming website debut by telling the publication the first four films that will be made available to stream for free. Refn handpicked Curtis Harrington’s “Night Tide,” Bert Williams’ “The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds,” Ron Ormond’s “The Burning Hell,” and Dale Berry’s “Hot Thrills and Warm Chills.”

The Guardian asked Refn to write a bit about why he chose each title, which provides some very Refn insight into each cult movie. The filmmaker explained the reason for creating a website by saying, “Over recent years, I’ve bought and had restored scores of old movies as a hobby. I wondered what to do with them.

As he gears up byNWR.com, a new curated platform of films and more that’s billed as “An Unadulterated Expressway for the Arts,” Drive helmer Nicolas Winding Refn described the reasoning behind the site, telling me it’s “like a Rubik’s Cube in outer space, full of culture inspiring the world to be a better place.”

In a piece he earlier penned for The Guardian, timed to the July 4th holiday, Refn wrote, “This is a frightening time to be alive,” but “certainly, we have to embrace such an apocalyptic time, because the alternative is hand-wringing inertia and that’s perfect for those in power.” And what’s needed, “is art: good, challenging art, not good-taste art, which is the chief enemy of creativity.”

An expert on cinema of different genres and eras — he’s developing remakes of some classic horror pics — Refn has acquired and restored old movies as a hobby.

Mubi is exclusively premiering online the new restorations of Hot Thrills and Warm Chills (1967) and The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (1965) as part of the series ByNWR. I think it was Quentin Tarantino who said that the grindhouse enthusiast not only has to drink a lot of milk to get to the cream, they have to drink a lot of curdled milk. And I generally figured I would leave that to someone else because it didn't sound too appetizing. So I have to be grateful to Nicholas Winding Refn, a sturdier trashonaut than I, who has performed curatorial duties, rediscovering and restoring two prime examples of cultist cream, thick, clotted and soured and probably very bad for your figure. I shouldn't, I really shouldn't. But I'm going to.Hot Thrills and Warm Chills (1967) accompanies its nonsensical title with some really exciting Latin rhythms, credited to "Dario de Mexico" (who has...

Nicolas Winding Refn has announced he is launching a curated website of films, essays, photography, and more art in February 2018. The website, entitled “byNWR.com,” will be completely free for users, including the streaming films. Refn made the announcement during an appearance at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, France, where he described the project as “an unadulterated cultural expressway of the arts” that will “create a modern idea of what cinema will become.”

Read More:Nicolas Winding Refn Teases ‘Too Old To Die Young’ TV Series With Punk Track

The website’s mission statement reads: “byNWR shares Nicolas Winding Refn’s passion for the rare, the forgotten and the unknown, breathing new life into the culturally intriguing and influential. Quarterly volumes of content divide into three monthly chapters, each featuring a fully-restored film. These revived cinematic gems inspire a wealth of original content, curated by special Guest Editors.”

The...

Aside from the obvious appeal of this smörgásbord of dirty movie delights, cult director Frank Henenlotter hosts a good history of soft-core film smut, in all its forms. Includes excellent clips and input from one of the 'greats' in this field, David F. Friedman. Remember, it's for educational purposes only. That's Sexploitation! Blu-ray Severin Films 2013 / Color / 1:37 full frame / 136 min. / Street Date April 26, 2016 / 24.95 Starring Albert Cadabra, Gal Friday, David F. Friedman, Frank Henenlotter. Cinematography Daniel Griffith, Brent Kerr, Anthony Sneed Produced by Jimmy Maslon, Mike Vraney Written and Directed and Edited by Frank Henenlotter

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Remember the beginning of the Paddy Chayefsky-Sidney Lumet film The Bachelor Party, where a group of men in a darkened room are watching a film, and we don't know what it is? That's Sexploitation! is a comprehensive documentary about a sleazy, yet strangely innocent, slice of prurient Americana. From VHS through the DVD days,...

While his name may not jump out at you at first, I can promise you that Mike Vraney was an important part of just about every horror fan's life, and unfortunately he's been taken from us far too soon. Vraney, the founder of Something Weird Video, has passed on at the age of just 56.

From the Something Weird Video Facebook Page

In Memorium Mike Vraney Founder of Something Weird December 29, 1957 to January 2, 2014

We regret to tell you that Something Weird’s founder, Mike Vraney, passed away on January 2, 2014 after a long heroic battle with lung cancer. He was 56 years old, way too young to leave this planet. There was still so much Mike wanted to do in his life, so many films to be found, and adventures to be embarked upon.

This sad news may come as a shock to most of you. Mike was a very private person and didn’t want anyone,...