Blu Ray Wish Lists

[william newell]

[lhb412]

^ It's the Hammer one.

Huh, a poster on blu-ray.com says Media Blasters will release Gappa on Blu next month. We all know how reliable that company is, so on the off-chance this is actually released it's probably a good idea to pick it up when it comes out because it'll probably go out of print in like three days.

[Heiseigodzilla425]

[Gwangi]

[lhb412]

Tex Avery Blu-ray coming soon from the Warner Archive!

[william newell]

YES!!!!!!!

[Jinzo Ningen]

[lhb412]

Dear sweet merciful heavens...

[tbeasley]

^ Came here to post that, and the feeling is mutual! One of those releases that knocks others off the list to take top priority.

[lhb412]

^ Just recently I was thinking how cool it would be if someone licensed Tetsuo for home video release here, and then Arrow comes in and exceeds all expectations I had in my wildest dreams!

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

Good news for 4K fans Jaws is scheduled for a 4K release in June.

Also the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films are all getting 4K treatment but we don't have an exact time yet. The YouTuber who posted a video seems to think it'll be either the end of this year or next year closer to the Amazon series to help promote that.

[tbeasley]

[lhb412]

[lhb412]

I just realized that, even though I've been buying releases since almost the beginning of the DVD era when I was like 12 years old or something like that, even with that long commitment towards buying official North American releases of this tokusatsu stuff my personal collection of tokusatsu Blu-rays and DVDs will have doubled in size in just a few years because of the number of releases were seeing right now. That's incredible.

[Gwangi]

[Jinzo Ningen]

Ooooooh! The Paul Waggoner version????

[Gwangi]

[Dai]

OMG!

One of the best martial arts fantasies of all time is getting a UK blu-ray.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Zu-Warri ... ay/227844/

Also, Kwaidan is finally getting a UK blu-ray.

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Kwaidan-Blu-ray/262562/

[lhb412]

^ I hope HK fantasy, action, and martial arts flicks become the new go-to thing for the boutique home video distributors to license.

Of course, it seems like just now they've come around to doing that with tokusatsu, and for that I'm very grateful. It feels like those same distributors will never run out of cheap, obscure old horror films that the gorehounds just lap up. There must be a million of those movies!

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

Shout Factory announced Orca the Killer Whale for a June 30th release date. No word on special features yet but still an excellent announcement non the less. I wonder if they're doing this to match the Jaws 4K release which is due out this summer? I know Orca was made because Jaws was successful.

I did suggest they look into Alligator today on their FB page. Henry isn't the only one that'd like to get that movie on BD, hell they could do an Alligator/Alligator 2: The Mutation double pack and I'd buy that.

EDIT: Well I found out from someone on my FB comment that Shout said they'd love to do Alligator but can't. Not sure why but that sucks. Hopefully whomever can do Alligator does a BD release this year.

[lhb412]

[quote="lhb412"]^ I hope HK fantasy, action, and martial arts flicks become the new go-to thing for the boutique home video distributors to license.

Of course, it seems like just now they've come around to doing that with tokusatsu, and for that I'm very grateful. It feels like those same distributors will never run out of cheap, obscure old horror films that the gorehounds just lap up. There must be a million of those movies![/quote]

Man, I was projecting into the future here! I've spent the last year really getting into Hong Kong martial arts movies via the plethora of release as we've gotten from Arrow Video, Criterion, 88 Films (like Arrow, a UK distributor now putting out stuff in the US), Warner Archive put out some Jackie Chan and supposedly will be dipping more into their Golden Harvest catalog), and I just ordered the first of what will supposedly be more of HK titles from Vinegar Syndrome.

Between this and various tokusatsu releases, there is simply too much to buy.

Oh, and rumor has it that Shout has acquired King Kong Lives (and maybe Kong '76 4K coming?)

[lhb412]

Wow! Shout's new releases haven't wowed me in the last year or so because it's mostly just UHD upgrades, but November titles have leaked and we're finally getting The Company of Wolves and a big boxed set of Sonny Chiba action movies! Other companies have recently specialized in Asian genre films, so I was kinda gobsmacked to see this major announcement.

I think they might be Toei films? Would make sense, as they're working with them for Sentai and Rider.

[lhb412]

Well, the biggest movie catalog licensing news in ages just broke, and hallelujah!

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/john-woo-chow-yun-fat-golden-princess-shout-studios-1236272850/

Golden Princess was a studio that produced some of the most iconic Hong Kong films of the '80s and '90s, but unfortunately this library of films ended up in the hands of a real estate company uninterested in licensing them out, so all these iconic films have been harder to see (and practically impossible to see in good quality) in recent years. Now, Shout Studios has acquired worldwide rights (aside from some Asian territories) to this library of films.

That means tons of well-known films, like City on Fire or the Chinese Ghost Story trilogy, but the crown jewels are those classic John Woo directed, Chow Yun Fat starring action movies - The Killer! Hard Boiled! Better Tomorrow trilogy!

[lhb412]

A French label is putting out a blu-ray set of the Showa Kamen Rider movies. I hope this bodes well for a US release, I mean, the idea that these movies are all packaged together as a single licensing bundle, you know?

[lhb412]

Man, the boutique home video space is really turning out a lot of stuff that's specifically my jam. I'm gonna group a few and list them more to get my own head around them more than anything else...

- Arrow just teased the original TMNT films, presumably 4K. Hopefully they'll be for both the US and UK!

- Mill Creek and Discotek continue to release tokusatsu at a steady pace. With the success of Mediablasters' Rider releases we'll likely see more toku from them. Shout's still a big question mark in this regard. Presumably, we'll be getting 4K Godzilla movies at a decent pace, but the big question mark is the non-Godzilla Honda/Tsuburaya films in their stable. I hope Arrow upgrades some of their Daiei films in 4K as well.

- Shout starts their "Hong Kong Classics Collection" sublabel next month with a 4K collection of Jet Li films, then after that will begin doling out new releases of the much-in-demand Golden Princess catalog films that they rescued from licensing hell. They're already hyping up their restoration of Hard Boiled. Tons more Hong Kong martial arts and action continues to be released as the prolific Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest catalogs continue to be plundered by several boutique labels, with lots of stuff still unreleased even after several years of Arrow/Shout/Vinegar Syndrome/88 Films/Eureka putting out so many sets and single releases of their films.

- Radiance Films, a great newer label dedicated mostly to Japanese and European genre films, has been delivering exactly the Japanese ghost story and swordfighting films I crave. They just announced another set of the classic Shinobi no Mono ninja films (constituting of entries 4, 5, and 6, which are a mini-arc to themselves).

- Deaf Crocodile, a label devoted to European fantasy and animation, is starting a series called "Treasures of Soviet Animation" that has me very excited. I've always known Russian animation has been held in high regard (the movie that inspired Hayao Miyazaki to become an animator will be included in this series) ... but I've never actually seen any of it, so this is both availability and curation, which is exactly what I need!

- Warner Archive is killing it with their animation releases. They're restarting their Looney Tunes releases in a new format; the Looney Tunes Collector's Vault. Each volume will be one disc of shorts that haven't been released since the VHS/laserdisc era (if at all) while the second disc will be blu-ray upgrades of shorts previously released on DVD. That should give a nice balance of the obscure and more well-known shorts and characters. In addition, the Warner Archive is starting the hard work of restoring The Bugs Bunny Show, the early '60s prime time series that combined preexisting shorts and new material. It was edited into oblivion during decades of Saturday morning reruns, so they're having to piece it back together from the individual bits of animation.

- When Criterion put out Nobuhiko Obayashi's House a decade and a half ago it became a retroactive cult classic for the English speaking world, so it's downright bizarre no other Obayashi films have been scooped up until now! Label Cult Epics has acquired 4 of his best known films and we'll start seeing those soon. Better late than never!