This month’s announcements have revealed another two
exclusive Arrow Video restorations for the US and UK markets – The Mutilator and Requiescant – making this an
excellent opportunity to talk a little about our ongoing work in this area.
Since our expansion into North America, we’ve
announced a number of exclusive Arrow Video restorations and we are currently
at work on plenty more. At the time of writing, the number of unannounced
restorations is well into double figures, while those that have already been
released or will be on shelves very soon include the Spaghetti Westerns Day of Anger and Cemetery Without Crosses, horror titles Blood and Black Lace, Contamination,
Eaten Alive and Island of Death, and Euro cult faves La Grande bouffe and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne.
As we have explained previously on this blog, the
main challenge in restoring films is simply one of budgets. In a physical media
market that is shrinking, the decision to restore films at great expense is not
to be taken lightly. Since our very first end-to-end restoration – carried out
for our 2012 release of Zombie Flesh Eaters – the question we have had to ask ourselves is: How can we
restore the films we want to release in order to get the best possible
presentation and stay in business?
The answer, of course, was the risky move towards
expansion into North America. This allowed us to release our restorations into
two territories, and so began the hunt to find new titles, helped along by your
ever-welcome stream of suggestions and our own wishlist. But finding films, and
– crucially – suitable materials, can be a very long and difficult process. Our
Walerian Borowczyk boxed-set, for example, had been a dream of its producers
for more than a decade, while discussions with Buddy Cooper, the producer and
director of The Mutilator, have spanned
almost two years. Fortunately, we’ve been planning ahead so have plenty of
titles that we’re currently working on…
The Arrow Video label was founded on horror,
encompassing classic US titles, gialli and other Euro gems, and quickly
developed into a wider array of cult movies encompassing everything from Chuck
Norris to Blaxploitation, from teen comedies to J-horror, from yakuza flicks to
the indefinable and all-out weird. However, the quality of existing masters
plays its part here: sometimes they simply do not exist and other times they
don’t meet up to our standards thanks to overzealous digital tinkering or other
issues.
It’s great to be able to focus once more on gore
and gialli and slasher movies thanks to our in-house restorations (fans of
Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and Blood Feast 2 will all have good reasons to get
excited – hint hint!) while continuing to release a wide variety of cult films
thanks to the relationships we’ve established with producers and studios that
can provide high quality HD masters. That combination provides the greatest
possible evolution for our label and its ever-expanding schedule. (Arrow
Video’s first year, in 2009, saw just four releases; 2014 delivered an amazing
52 new-to-the-label titles in the space of 52 weeks!)
During Arrow Video’s six years of existence we’ve
maintained an ongoing dialogue with fans thanks to our various social media
platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, plus the
dedicated email address: suggestions@arrowfilms.co.uk – we do read every single
one, even if we’re unable to reply to each to one individually. Communication
has never been higher, so please do ‘Like’, ‘Follow’ and ‘Subscribe’ were
necessary and continue to tell us how you’re enjoying the selection of titles
and, just as importantly, what you’d like to see us restore.
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