Shout! Factory and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Inc. Announce Content Deal

SHOUT! FACTORY LANDS HOME ENTERTAINMENT RIGHTS TO POPULAR TELEVISION PROPERTIES MAX HEADROOM AND THE NORM SHOW

Los Angeles, CA - Shout! Factory and Warner Home Video, a division of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Inc., announced a multi-property alliance to bring the highly anticipated Warner Bros. television series Max Headroom and The Norm Show to the home entertainment marketplace. Under its multi-year agreement with Warner Home Video, Shout! Factory will be the exclusive media company to distribute Max Headroom and The Norm Show DVDs for home entertainment releases in the United States and Canada. The announcement was made today by Shout! Factory founding
partners Richard Foos, Bob Emmer and Garson Foos; and Jeff Brown, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Non-theatrical Franchise Marketing.

Production has begun to develop a wide range of bonus content for Max Headroom: The Complete Series DVD box set, as well as re-transferring the episodes from the original elements to provide the highest picture quality.

“Max Headroom is a uniquely sought-after television property, boasting a large fan following and consumer interests. We have been pursing this property with Warner Bros. for years, and we’re thrilled that it’s finally coming to fruition,” state Shout! Factory founding partners. “We’re pop culture fanatics at Shout!, and both of these shows are loved by fans of TV and are highly requested.  We’ll do them justice with great extras and packaging.”

“It’s a privilege to partner with Shout! Factory and we look forward to combining our efforts to bring these two highly-regarded television programs to the home entertainment audience,” said Brown.  He added, “We look forward with anticipation to the opportunity of creating a series of releases that will be innovative, original and stand out in the home
entertainment market place.”

Starring Matt Frewer, W. Morgan Sheppard, Jeffrey Tambor and Amanda Pays, the U.S. television series Max Headroom, inspired by a British made-for-television movie 20 Minutes into the Future, aired on ABC from 1987-1988.  Hailed by critics and fans as one of the most innovative science fiction series ever produced for American television, Max Headroom is considered to be the first cyberpunk television series, bolstered by its innovative premise, brilliant writing and fast-paced visual style.  Unafraid to explore any subject, no matter how controversial, the series cynically tackles topical issues from the general television industry such as the exploitation of the TV ratings games, political advertising, tele-evangelism, news coverage and commercials.  The world of Max Headroom is a satirically funny look at television of the not-too-distant future. There are 4,000 TV channels, cameras are everywhere, television sets can’t be shut off, ratings have been perfected to the point where programming decisions are made minute by minute, and Network 23, the ratings leader, is headed by a man who would literally kill for ratings.  Enter investigative reporter Edison Carter and his alter ego, the first computer-simulated multi-media star, Max Headroom, played by Matt Frewer. Max Headroom is a production of
Chrysalis/Lakeside in association with Lorimar Telepictures.

The Norm Show, starring Saturday Night Live veteran Norm Macdonald, chronicles the misadventures of former NHL hockey player turned dysfunctional social worker whose life has been thrown for a loop due to gambling and tax evasion. Brimming with edgy humor and smart repartee, The Norm Show was one of the top rated sitcoms in 1999 and ran on ABC
for three seasons. The second season also brought about the shortening of the show’s title to simply Norm.  The series also boasts a pedigreed ensemble cast including Laurie Metcalf, Ian Gomez, Artie Lange, Bruce Jarchow, Max Wright and Faith Ford.  Norm is executive produced by Bruce Helford, Bruce Rasmussen, Rob Ulin and Deborah Oppenheimer, produced by
Macdonald and created by Helford and Macdonald. Norm is a production of Mohawk Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television.

The Art Of The Nasty

Nigel Wingrove and Marc Morris

FAB Press

2^nd Edition, 11/15/2009

$39.95

Fab Press’ 2^nd edition of Marc Morris and Nigel Wingrove’s The Art Of The Nasty is a video collector’s dream come true. This lavish, full color 166 page hardcover book compiles hundreds of pieces of cover art from long out of print British issue VHS tapes, many of which came under scrutiny during the ‘Video Nasty Era’ – almost 450 images, to be exact (which is over a hundred more than the 1^st edition of the book contained).

While the book may be of more interest to British cult film fans simply because of the history behind the controversial titles covered, anyone even remotely interested in how films were marketed in the eighties through their often times shocking covers would do well to pick this up. Part coffee table book, part history lesson, this weighty tome starts off with thirteen pages of introductory text that explains what’s happened in regards to censorship issues in the British film industry since the first edition of the book was published ten years ago before giving us a solid overview of the era in which the video nasty was a cause for concern among moral crusaders and their ilk. The mood is set politically, socially and commercially and once we’re all up to speed on how and why this all came to be, we move on to the covers themselves.

The first chapter covers the ‘Official Nasties’ which were written up on  a list comprised of thirty-nine feature films deemed obscene by The Director Of Public Prosecutions.  Seriously disturbing titles such as Cannibal Holocaust, Faces Of Death and I Spit On Your Grave are featured here alongside more questionable selections such as Don’t Go In The Woods… Alone and The Werewolf And The Yeti. The Book doesn’t stop with just the official thirty-nine film, however, as the second chapter, Nasties On Parole, gives us a look at the often times very sensationalist cover art used on the video releases for the thirty-three films that were tried but not convicted. Stand outs here include Cannibal Terror (it’s hard to believe that anyone ever took this picture seriously enough to deem it a social threat!), Death Trap (better known elsewhere as Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive), The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue, Prisoner Of The Cannibal God (or, if you prefer, Mountain Of The Cannibal God), and Jess Franco’s Women Behind Bars among others.

The third chapter, ‘Nasties – The Ones That Got Away,’ covers films that somehow managed to evade prosecution attempts despite dubious cover art and questionable morality. Look for sleeves exhibiting the merits of pictures like Schoolgirls In Chains, City Of The Living Dead, Brutes And Savages, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Ilsa – Harem Keeper Of The Oil Sheiks (which was released with Arabic subtitles presumably to throw off officials looking to prosecute British companies by making the tape look like an import) to artsier fare such as In The Realm Of Senses and Waters’ Pink Flamingos to more action oriented films like Shogun Assassin, Death Wish, and Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs.

Chapter four, simply titled Nice And Sleazy Does It, is an interesting collection of artwork from the pre-cert days. Those with an interest in early adult video releases should relish cover art from interesting releases like De Renzy’s Babyface and Pretty Peaches, and Bethel Buckalew’s The Dirty Mind Of Young Sally alongside more expected offerings such as some of D’Amato’s Black Emmanuelle films, Fanny Hill, Double Agent 73, Electric Blue and some oddball British sex films such as Girls Come First and Keep It Up, Jack. There’s no shortage of horror movie material in this chapter either, so be on the lookout for plenty of great titles like The House Of Whipcord, Killer’s Moon, Scream Bloody Murder, and Torso as well as plenty of Nazisploitation pictures like SS Girls.

The fifth and final chapter, The Good, The Bad And The Vomit Inducing, is simply a selection of other titles of interest. There’s a lot of really odd cover art in here as well as some fairly strong images promoting titles like Astro Zombies, The Amazing Mr. No Legs (when is this going to get a DVD release?), The Black Gestapo, Bava’s Black Sunday, a garish piece from The Corpse Grinders and a surprisingly gory sleeves from Drive-in Massacre and The Executioner (better known as Massacre Mafia Style) to sexier stuff like Devils In The Convent, Primitive London, Queens Of Evil and Truck Stop Women. While there’s a nice mix in here made up of sex films, kung fu movies and general exploitation the focus is certainly on horror films, which make up roughly eighty percent of the images shown. An appendix listing the video companies and their catalogues closes the book out nicely.

Morris and Wingrove should be commended for the massive collection of images they’ve compiled for this book while FAB Press definitely deserves credit for making it available in such an attractive edition. The paper stock used is thick and it reproduces all of the tacky, garish and crazy covers quite well, while the hardcover binding ensures that you don’t have to worry about the pages ever falling out of the book. It’s a really well put together package in pretty much every regard and it’s hard to imagine any regular reader of this website not finding a whole lot to love here. VHS may be gone as a popular format but its fan base lives on (don’t believe me? Click here!)  and books like this ensure that the often times unique and exclusive artwork used for these releases is preserved. Here’s hoping someday we’ll see similar volumes in the future.

For more information on The Art Of The Nasty, check out the FAB Press homepage by clicking here!

As reported here, it’s with great sadness that we have learned that Jamie Gillis has passed away at the age of 66 after a battle with cancer.

Rest in peace, Jamie. You will be missed and you will never be replaced.

Los Angeles, CA) – First Look Studios proudly announces the DVD and Blu-ray release of NINJA, a non-stop martial arts action adventure.  NINJA is available on DVD and Blu-ray on March 2, 2010 at an SRP of $19.98 and $24.98, respectively.

It remains as true today as it did in the days of the ancient Samurai: the weapons of the Ninja hold legendary powers for both good men and evil. The deadly weapons of the last Koga Ninja have now been entrusted to an American Ninjutsu student (Scott Adkins, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Expendables, Undisputed) studying in Japan. Commanded by his Sensei to return to New York and protect the weapons at all cost, he must defeat the skilled Yakuza assassins hunting him and prevent the power of the weapons from falling into evil hands. The film also stars Todd Jensen and Kathryn Le.

NINJA  – Specifications

Format – DVD and Blu-ray

Running Time – 92 minutes

Rated – R

Pre-Book Date – January 26, 2010

Street Date – March 2, 2010

Sound: 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround

SRP: $19.98 (DVD) and $24.98 (Blu-ray)

Aspect ratio: 16 X 9 2.35 Anamorphic Widescreen

Special Features: Previews and Subtitles (English and Spanish)