News

Nearly two years have gone by since Scream Factory brought the “nature run amok” cult classic Alligator and its sequel Alligator II: The Mutation to Blu-ray in North America. Now 101 Films’ Black Label are set to Alligator a 4K release in the UK – and since 4K Uhd discs are region free, fans outside the UK will be able to enjoy this release as well! The release date is January 29th, and copies are available for pre-order through the 101 Films website. The Alligator 4K is accompanied by a fresh Blu-ray release of Alligator II: The Mutation, but if you’re outside the UK you might need a region free player to watch that one.

Here’s the information on the release:

101 Films presents cult classic creature feature Alligator (1980) on 4K Uhd, along with the TV cut and 1991 sequel Alligator II: The Mutation (1991) on Blu-ray, title 033 on the 101 Films Black Label.

Hey everyone! We have one last batch of horror and sci-fi home media releases headed our way before the end of the month, and this week’s offerings are massive, with well over 20 titles coming out on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD this Tuesday alone.

One of my favorite creature features ever is getting some love in HD finally, with Scream Factory’s 4K release of Lewis Teague’s Alligator (and its sequel is headed to Blu-ray this week as well), and the horror comedy Dead Heat is also getting a 4K upgrade. For all you giallo fans out there, Forgotten Gialli: Volume 3 is being released tomorrow and features three more Italian classics genre fans are going to want to own, and Severin Films is keeping busy with a ton of titles this week too: Bloody Pit of Horror, Black Candles, Night of the Demon, and The Halfway House.

Other titles...

Something you should know about me for this month’s installment of Catalog From the Beyond is that as a kid, I was a huge fan of The Two Coreys. I could not get enough from Coreys Feldman or Haim, and of course much of this love springs from The Lost Boys, a pivotal movie in many of our collective horror educations. But I loved anything the Coreys put out, either together or on their own. And while everyone knows about Feldman’s hot streak of ’80s staples, I don’t think Haim gets nearly enough credit for his own contributions. He brought an earnest charm in early work like Silver Bullet and Lucas that later gave way to a mischievous streak in movies such as License to Drive and Dream a Little Dream. We get a dash of both personas in this month’s featured flick, the 1988 monster movie Watchers.

Writer Lee Gambin calls them Natural Horror films, other writers call them Revenge of Nature or Nature Run Amok films and writer Charles Derry considers them a type of Apocalyptic Cinema.

Of course we’re speaking of one of the great horror subgenres for which we’ll employ writer Kim Newman’s tag: The Revolt of Nature.

Since the end of the 1990s, lovers of animal attack films have been subjected to copious amounts of uninspired Nu Image, Syfy Channel and Syfy Channel-like dreck like Silent Predators (1999), Maneater (2007) Croc (2007), Grizzly Rage (2007) and a stunning amount of terrible shark attack films to name a few that barely scratch the surface of a massive list.

These movies fail miserably to capture the intensity of the unforgettable films they are imitating and the recent wave seems to carry with it the intent of giving the Revolt of Nature horror film a bad name.

Monday, October 5

I begin my first full week at the Sitges film festival (see last entry here) with a leisurely stroll into town. Several vendors hawking horror T-shirts and posters have set up shop outside the fest’s Brigadoon theater (where non-competition and video screenings are free for the locals), serving as a sort of mini-convention.

Two movies are on the agenda today. First up at the plush Auditori Melia is the Belgian/Canadian/French/German co-production Mr. Nobody, an excellent fantasy/quasi-sci-fi film that pretty much defies easy classification and synopsis. Urban Legend’s Jared Leto (never better) stars as a 117-year-old man (in totally convincing old age makeup), who, we are told, is the last mortal man alive on the Earth of 2092, where people now live forever. Gradually, the complexities of his back story are revealed as we experience multiple storylines of at least three different histories the character may have lived.