Give Your Valentine the Gift of Curated Horror with ARROW’s streaming platform — a treasure trove of classic and cutting-edge cult cinema.
The Indie Release Radar usually focuses on the latest and greatest Blu-ray releases from our favorite indie distributors. But this month, we want to highlight the stellar video-on-demand service from our friends at Arrow Video. The widely respected distributor known for their stunning, feature-rich Blu-ray releases also offers one of the best streaming platforms around at arrow-player.com.
FEBRUARY SPOTLIGHT RELEASE
The platform’s impressive February lineup includes the hotly anticipated premiere of Ochestra of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin, available exclusively on ARROW starting Valentine’s Day, February 14th in the US, Canada, UK, and Ireland.
The acclaimed documentary from Dima Ballin and Kat Ellinger tells the story of one of Eurocult cinema’s most singular voices.
Deeply misunderstood and widely misrepresented during his decades-long career as a film director (1958-2009), Rollin’s work received absolutely no recognition in his native country of France and was completely unknown anywhere else. In the nineties, because of home video, Rollin attained a marginal cult status in niche English-speaking genre circles. Otherwise, he has remained completely obscure.
Despite his lack of well-deserved recognition, Jean Rollin remains one of genre cinema’s most singular poets — a theatrical fantasist, interpreter of dreams, and orchestrator of storms.
Rollin’s recurring use of twin or paired protagonists and surrealistic interpretations of vampirism, with tones that were often in the midnight space between gothic literature and fairy tale, his sense of humor and intellectual musings, his sumptuous visual ideas, came together to make inspired works of genre art that ran against nearly all traditions of the times they were made in.
Rollin was raised within the bosom of some of France’s most influential and intellectual elites, thanks to his mother Denise’s friendship with figures such as Maurice Blanchot, George Bataille, Jean Cocteau, as well as Jacques and Pierre Prévert.
Similarly, his father was a director in avant-garde theatre, exposing Jean to some of France’s most exciting aspects of culture.
It is perhaps not surprising that his films were unlike anything else on the scene.
Once you dig into the director’s life and passions, what emerges is a strong connection to the French surrealists, symbolist art, the poetry of TristanCorbière, the French anarchist scene in the sixties, and counterculture.
Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin sets out to tell this story in an attempt to elevate the director’s work by exploring it in depth.
Major influences are explored alongside key themes such as the tradition of the French Fantastique.
The film also looks at his frustrations, the way in which he had to constantly grapple and scramble for funding as one of the only filmmakers predominantly working within the horror genre through the sixties and seventies. Most importantly, it examines his singular vision, which ran completely counter to other western traditions in genre film.
Fiction Machine hails Orchestrator of Storms as “a valuable reflection on an iconic, one-of-a-kind filmmaker.” And POV Magazine calls it “an effective celebration of an auteur who was ahead of his time.” You don’t want to miss this one.
MORE GREAT FEBRUARY RELEASES: CURATED COLLECTIONS
ARROW starts the month of love on February 3 with a pair of Paul Joyce documentaries about the American indie film scene: Robert Altman: Giggle and Give In and Made in the USA (both available in US/UK/CA/IRE).
Joyce’s documentary profile of Altman, initially produced in 1996, includes contributions from Altman, Elliott Gould, Shelley Duvall, assistant director Alan Rudolph and screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury.
Also set to release on February 3 is a collection of films celebrating the work of triple-threat writer-producer-director Charles Band. Band has been pulling the strings making horror, sci-fi, and fantasy features since the 70s, and his films were a massive part of making the 1980s home video boom, well, boom.
The ARROW tribute, Charles Band: The Puppetmaster, brings together many of his wildest and most fun work —from murderous pint-sized puppets to re-animated horrors, from time-traveling Trancers to a terrifying Tourist Trap, and even the re-tooled Doctor Strange movie starring Jeffrey Combs as a slightly different sorcerer supreme.
Titles include Puppet Master, Doctor Mordrid, and Trancers.
On February 6, while shopping for a gadget for your sweetheart, ARROW uploads Killer Tech to the service.
We all want the latest gadgets, but in Killer Tech, screen time means scream time.
From cursed videotapes and phone calls to the dangers of the dark web and vicious virtual reality, ARROW’s newest, smallest, lightest, fastest, most expensive curated collection doesn’t just have the best screen, the largest amount of storage and the coolest camera. It also comes with a guarantee that the newest tech equals instant death.
Titles Include: .com For Murder, Laguna Ave, Edge of the Axe.
On February 10, ARROW hands the keys to the kingdom to Cinematic Void, a Los Angeles-based cult film screening series. Focusing on all oddball gems of all genres, the Void unleashes an onslaught of horror, Eurotrash, exploitation, and gonzo action on the silver screen at the American Cinematheque. CV film programmer Jim Branscome has selected a few of his favorite genre films for your viewing pleasure in Cinematic Void Selects.
Titles include Deadly Games and Deep Red.
A KILLER VALENTINE’S DAY CELEBRATION
Celebrate Valentine’s Day with the perfect pairing: the undead and the living dead.
Two Orphan Vampires: A pair of teenage girls are blind by day, but when the sun goes down, they roam the streets to quench their thirst for blood.
Zombie Lake: In a small village in France, German soldiers, killed and thrown into the lake by the Resistance during WWII, come back.
Additionally, to celebrate the release of Orchestrator of Storms, ARROW proudly announces the February 14th debut of Jean Rollin: The Fantastique Collection Part IV. This is ARROW’s final volume of horrifying dream-like sauce from the master of conjuring up erotic nightmare fuel, Jean Rollin.
Titles include: The Living Dead Girl, Lost in New York, and Dracula’s Fiancee.
MUCH MORE TO LOVE: FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHTS
This month’s filmmaker spotlight series continues on February 17th with The French Hitchcock: Claude Chabrol.
For five decades, Claude Chabrol navigated the unpredictable waters of cinema, leaving in his wake more than fifty feature films that remain among the most quietly devastating genre movies ever made. Sardonic, provocative, and unsettling, Chabrol’s films cut to the quick with clarity and honesty honed to razor sharpness.
Though influenced by Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, and Jean Renoir, Chabrol’s voice was entirely and assuredly his own, influencing, in turn, filmmakers like Bong Joon-ho, James Gray, and Dominik Moll. His amused, unblinkered view of life and refusal to judge his characters makes his films timelessly relevant and accessible to all.
Dark, witty, ruthless, mischievous: if you’ve never seen Chabrol before, you’re in for a treat.
Titles include Cop au vin, Madame Bovary (1991), and The Swindle.
Then, on February 24th, tune in for King of Karate: The Sonny Chiba Collection.
Put up your dukes and prepare yourselves for brutal and lightning-fast martial arts action starring the King of Karate, Sonny Chiba.
Whether you’ve only heard of Sonny through Clarence and Alabama’s True Romance triple-bill, have seen him sword-making for The Bride in Kill Bill, or know Shinichi Chiba from way back in the 70s martial arts boom where his lethal mastery of karate, judo, and Kenpo made him an in-demand anti-hero to legions of fans, there’s plenty of bruising bad-assery to be had in King of Karate: The Sonny Chiba Collection.
Titles include The Street Fighter, Wolf Guy, and Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Hiroshima Death Match.
CLOSE OUT THE MONTH ON AN EPIC HIGH NOTE
Finally, February 28 closes out the shortest month of the year with Millionaires’ Express (US/CA).
All aboard for the action-packed all-star adventure of a lifetime as martial arts maestro Sammo Hung (Heart of Dragon) brings East and West crashing spectacularly together in Millionaires’ Express!
Sammo himself plays Ching Fong-tin, a former outlaw with a wild scheme to make amends with the citizens of his struggling hometown of Hon Sui: explosively derail a brand new luxury express train en route from Shanghai so that its super-rich passengers will have no choice but to spend money in the town.
He’s not the only one with eyes on the passengers’ deep pockets, however; a gang of ruthless bank-robbing bandits is on the way, looking for a priceless map being guarded by a trio of Japanese samurai.
Bullets and fists will fill the air equally, but will Hon Sui Town be left standing?
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