You voted the Best of 2013!

Happy New Year to all our fans! 2013 was a great year for us, being named Label of the Year by multiple publications and sites, garnering a record 4 awards from Home Cinema Choice magazine and scoring multiple entries in various Top 10 of the year lists. But our most important feedback was from you, our fans – so with a juicy prize on offer we asked you to name your favourite Arrow release of the year, new cover artwork, reversible sleeve (original artwork), SteelBook design, extra, booklet and restoration. We were pleased to see a whopping number of entries as well as a wide variety of votes (more than 75% of our releases were voted for in all categories), showing everyone has very individual tastes. Here’s what came out on top for each category.

The Top 10 John Carpenter Films

by John Kenneth Muir

It’s always a difficult task to weigh a director’s career output in terms of a mere top ten list, but much more so in the case of John Carpenter.  The auteur and maverick has directed so many great films --- and in so many genres -- that often times it feels like comparing apples and oranges.  For example, how does one choose between two legitimate masterpieces like The Thing (1982) and Halloween (1978)?

Terry Gilliam fronting a Kickstarter to restore Walerian Borowczyk's 1968 film 'Goto, Island of Love'

Filmmaker Terry Gilliam is fronting a Kickstarter campaign to restore Walerian Borowczyk's classic 1968 film Goto, l'île d'amour (Goto, Island of Love).

Speaking about the Polish artist and filmmaker’s work Gilliam says: “They activate a part of my brain that very few other things do…I haven't seen any of these films in probably thirty or forty years, but they all have stuck with me. He needs to be restored and the world needs to be reminded.”

What's the transfer like? What print did they use? Talking about the technicalities of discs

We are often asked technical questions about what a film will look like on a forthcoming release. Questions that frequently arise are " Will Arrow use the same transfer as label X", or "Is it a new restoration/new print” etc. To prevent information from being misconstrued we tend to reply using standard industry terminology. However as this may not always make things clear, we thought a good way to remedy this would be to walk you through the process of how a disc is made at Arrow. 

Here’s Arrow’s technical supervisor James White on dealing with masters and restorations:

Ninjas, Space Vampires and Chainsaws.. Oh My! The Top 10 Cannon Films

Some time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

There was a production company by the name of Cannon Films. Ok, so they might not have come from an alternate galaxy, but a lot of their movies did take us to worlds beyond our own.

We love Cannon Films here at Arrow Video, and with our brand-spanking new release of Lifeforce just days away, we decided to celebrate with a rundown of the best Cannon Films output – as voted by you! So buckle up and prepare yourself for a whistle-stop tour through some of the zaniest movies in the galaxy…

Horror in the Heartland - The 'Deranged' Legacy of Ed Gein

With our Blu-ray of 1974 classic Deranged unleashed this week, we thought we'd take a closer look at the shadowy real-life figure which inspired the film - "Plainfield Ghoul" Ed Gein. 

For those not in the know, Deranged is a loose retelling of the Ed Gein story, which also served as the inspiration behind the horror classics Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Our friends over at Rue Morgue magazine (who've graciously contributed an article to booklet accompanying our release of Deranged) here present a whistle-stop tour through the legacy of Gein: murderer, grave robber, pop icon. 

How to make an Arrow Video: Acquisition

One of the aims of this blog is to provide an insight into each and every Arrow Video release, whether that be discussion around film genres, images from the films, packaging photos but also how a release is actually made…

We thought the best way to look at how an Arrow Video release is made would be to look at each stage of the processes and procedures of how a release is created from acquisition to finished product. The release we will be looking at is our 2014 release of Michael Armstrong’s 1970 film Mark of the Devil.