The Paul Naschy Collection II [Blu-Ray]

This follow up to the acclaimed Paul Naschy Collection from earlier in the year, comes with a five Blu-Ray collection, and a twenty four page booklet with an essay on each film included. Folks seeking to further explore Paul Naschy will find a great delight in this follow up box set, as it has almost everything you’d want to continue your education in the Spanish horror star.

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The Paul Naschy Collection [Blu-Ray]

Paul Naschy has always been something of a large figure among horror fans and cult cinema enthusiasts everywhere, and Shout Factory is up to the task in reward their devotion with a collection that will peak interests. Still making an argument for why it’s one of the best horror movie distributors out there, Scream Factory unleashes a five disc collection that compiles some of Naschy’s most notable films, complete and uncut. There’s even an optional English dub for the films, or their truer Spanish language tracks with the subtitles.

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1922 (2017)

2017’s been the year of Stephen King, and it’s been a great bit of fortune that fans have been given mostly great cinematic adaptations of his work. “1922” is a deliberately paced and ingeniously calculated drama that hearkens back to the classic Victorian era murder thrillers. King invokes the style of Edgar Allan Poe for “1922,” a Southern Gothic drama that’s heavily steeped in horror. While it’s been lumped in to the Stephen King horror category, “1922” is more an examination on the concept of greed, and how it can rot us from inside out. It’s more tragedy with a tinge of horror more than horror, despite how menacing director Zak Hilditch paints the twisted albeit beautiful aesthetic.

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Cute Little Buggers (2017)

There’s a reason why sometimes a one off joke is used just once. It’s because stretching it out destroys the momentum of the joke. Someone behind “Cute Little Buggers” loved the scene in “The Holy Grail” involving the man eating cute rabbit and decided to turn it in to a horrendous horror comedy. Not that I have anything against movies that take inspiration from Monty Python, but when they have a rhyme or reason, and an actual good idea, I’m all for it. But “Cute Little Buggers” seems centered on the premise of one joke that one joke that gets boring after being used repeatedly mainly since the joke just isn’t that funny in the beginning, anyway.

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Daguerrotype (Le secret de la chamber noire) (2017)

In a French mansion, a photographer is obsessed with reproducing long lost photos taken with the daguerreotype technique of yore.  When he hires a young assistant for his project, things get complicated.

Written by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Catherine Paille, and Eléonore Mahmoudian and directed by Kurosawa, Daguerrotype is a very slow burn of a film that feels more like a drama than anything else.  This being said, there are a few elements that will be surprising if the viewer goes into it completely blind and thus will not be spoiled here.  Having the genre pre-established as anything other than drama will lead into guessing a few of these.  Given the director and his resume, this aspect can be easily guessed.  Here he works in a manner where the characters are given plenty of time to develop themselves and their arcs while the story builds around them.  The writing and directing of the film feel like a proper mix of French and Japanese cinema in a way that is hard to explain but works wonderfully well here.

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