One of the aspects that I love about working on the Cult Film Club is the research I assign myself before we tackle a new movie on the show. For one, I really love rewatching the flicks I’ve seen before, but for each episode I tend to watch the movie we’re covering at least two-three times, not to mention the time spent scouring the film for screenshots for our 30 Things lists and other article we write to support the monthly podcast. So I spent a lot of time with the movies and for the last three years I’ve used this as an excuse to upgrade some of my DVDs to Blu-Ray in order to watch the best quality versions of the films available. Of course not all the films we’ve covered have been available on Blu, I mean we are a cult film podcast and we like to pick flicks that are either a slightly more obscure or unloved than what typically gets released on HD dics. In fact there have been a handful of films that we’ve covered that we were really bummed didn’t have HD releases (or any release, I’m looking at you Rad!)
But every so often the licensing/distribution gods smile down on us movie lovers as is the case this coming August where we’ll be seeing not one, not two, but three new blu-ray releases of flicks we’ve covered (or about to cover) on the Cult Film Club! It’s like Christmas in August for the CFC!
Though we’re still hip-deep in the editing of the new CFC episode, the movie we’re covering for July is Wes Craven’s 1991 weird, trapped-in-the-house-from-hell horror flick The People Under the Stairs. The film stars Ving Rhames, Sean Whalen, Everett McGill, and Wendy Robie in a madcap exploitation fest that is one part kid adventure flick and one part twisted cannibal horror. Shout Factory has stepped up and is finally giving the film a true HD release that it deserves on August 11th. Take a gander at this awesome cover artwork!
Then, a week later on August 18th, Shout Factory is again filling in a gap in our CFC blu-tay collection when they release on of our all-time favorite films, Hackers! I mean, just go back and listen to how much we love this movie (and I believe we even spend some time bummed by the lack of a good blu-ray release of the film.) We can’t wait to pick this one up so that we can have our faces melted by the amazingly cheesy fractal hacking imagery and the ridiculous Gibson GUI experience. Bonus HD Matthew Lillard butt crack and topless Angelia Jolie shots to boot. HACK THE PLANET!
Finally, to make August 2015 truly an epic month for long-awaited blu-ray releases, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is finally putting out an HD release of Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon! Now we can finally witness the Glow in all of it’s backlit sweaty glory, check out DeBarge the way it was meant to be seen, and watch Julius Carry literally chew the scenery as the one, the only, the Master, Sho’Nuff! Kiss My Converse! Again, you can hear us gush about this flick on episode 14 of the CFC…
Now, if we can just get HD releases of The Wraith, Beastmaster, Zapped!, Karate Kid 3, Zero Effect, Streets of Fire, and Young Guns II! Or hell, just a plain DVD release of Rad and the Midnight Hour would be amazing as well…
