Strip-Tease DVD's in at last!

here's the proof!



pre-order now from Diabolik DVD

New Release - STRIPTEASE - starring Nico! Music by Serge Gainsbourg

Streetdate end May 11 - packed full of extras - and a brand new master - the world DVD premiere of Nico's first ever starring film role.

Kill List!

Kill List had its world premiere at SXSW last Saturday - here's our favorite piece so far....


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SXSW 2011: 'Kill List' mixes the mundane and the unthinkable [Update]
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March 14, 2011 | 6:34 pm



Playing as part of the SXFantastic sidebar at this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, “Kill List” marks the return to Austin for British filmmaker Ben Wheatley. He was previously in town for the 2009 edition of the genre-centric Fantastic Fest with his first film, “Down Terrace,” which began as a look at small-town gangsters where the stakes were so small as to seem comical and built up to something terrifying and stunning. With “Kill List,” Wheatley again steadily escalates from the banal to the bruising.

After a screening Sunday night, the audience was so seemingly disoriented and stunned, as if it had been collectively struck by a head-butt, that it took a few moments for anyone to think of a question to ask during the Q&A.

[For the record: An earlier version of this post stated that Ben Wheatley's "Down Terrace" played as part of the 2010 South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas. The film actually premiered in Austin at the fall 2009 edition of the Fantastic Fest film festival. Wheatley's new film, "Kill List," is playing at the 2011 edition of SXSW as part of SXFantastic, a sidebar programmed by Fantastic Fest.]

"Kill List," which premiered Saturday at midnight and screened again Sunday night, is deceptive, tricky and creates something of a phantasm of anxieties large and small.

"It's based around my dreams and nightmares," Wheatley said while introducing the film Sunday, "which includes being chased, being trapped in small places and, indeed, long and difficult dinner parties — all types of horror."

The film opens with a dinner party between two couples who don't seem to particularly enjoy each other's company. The men (Neil Maskell and Michael Smiley) are former army buddies who now sometimes work together. Business has been off lately — apparently even hit men can be affected by an economic downturn — so when a job comes along that seems too good to be true, they have no option but to take it.

Escalating from uncomfortable domestic drama to gritty action to cult-horror freakout, likely few other films reference both Mike Leigh and "The Wicker Man."

"It's definitely a film of acts," Wheatley said after the Sunday screening. "The move forward was going from a domestic drama and it mutates — I don't know why I'm explaining it, you've just watched it."

Asked if some the film's cult religious imagery was taken from anything specific, Wheatley said he just made it all up.

"It's actually stuff I'm afraid of in my own mind, and I know it's been made up in my head, in dreams and like that, so I was trying to find that primal, scared point. I guess what you see is just a fear of other people, organized groups of people. It doesn't really matter what their belief system is or how they jam it all together, you don't need to know that. You just need to know their goal is something cohesive and they don't like you."



— Mark Olsen in Austin, Texas

twitter.com/indiefocus

Kill List - World Premiere announced

We're very very pleased to announce that Kill List - Ben Wheatley's new original feature we co-produced - will have its world premiere at this years SXSW festival this March. The film will play in the SXFantastic midnights - hosted by Tim League from fantastic Fest and the Alamo Drafthouse.

The film concerns two ex army contract killers who's first job in eight months goes very very wrong! It's very dark and very disturbing horror movie... you're gonna love it!

Get the screening lowdown here.

Tim Lucas on Lorna

Tim has written an entry at his Video Watchdog blog about our release of Lorna the Exorcist - we couldn't have put it better ourselves so have taken the liberty of reprinting it. Follow Tims blog here - and get hold of Video Watchdog here.

Some Words on Lorna... the exorcist

Having just watched Mondo Macabro's new, long-awaited release of Jess Franco's LORNA... THE EXORCIST (1974), I find myself surprised, shaken and stunned. Before my review appears in VW 162, I want to use this blog to spread the word about this release because it warrants your support, if you're brave enough to go where it will take you.

I've seen this film several times in its French version via various ragged, incomplete bootlegs, but now, having seen the film uncut for the first time and as good as it's ever going to look -- given the loss of the original negative and MM's painstaking three-print reconstruction -- I find it a very different and revelatory experience. I must caution my readers that this film contains a good deal of full frontal nudity and lesbian coupling and feels pornographic though it literally is not; it is also not traditionally "well-made" and is quite toxic in its intent. Owing to these qualities, it's not a film I could recommend to casual horror fans.

That said, LORNA is unique in Franco's sprawling filmography because here he summons, from the most shambolic ingredients (including, to be fair, some shots of immense beauty), something I find quite rare within the horror genre: a truly terrifying film.

It's a story, a Faustian fairy tale really, about male weakness and female empowerment. The film builds to a final revelation of Lina Romay's character in which she gives what is certainly her finest work onscreen -- a concise portrait of demonic possession achieved entirely through performance and without special effects. When the scene faded out, I wanted to stand and applaud right there in my living room. It is the hope that I will see at least one more horror film of this uncanny power that keeps me going.

This is powerful, taboo-shattering, primal filmmaking. But what is most compelling about LORNA is how it demonstrates that great actors, elegant cinematography, a consistent sense of style, traditionally good direction and even a completed script can be absolutely irrelevant to producing a film that can reach into the deepest emotions of a viewer and give them a good twist.

Yes, you could point to many things that seem "wrong" about the movie: it's a short story padded to feature length, the character makeup is overdone, the lenses clash from one shot to the next, the camera crosses the line, inserted cutaways disrupt the precious suspense of the main scene unfolding simultaneously, the casino flashback goes on far too long and fails to ratchet up any tension, the camera lingers on some shots long after they have made their point... all of this is hard to dispute. But, when all is said and done, what I once called "the sex scream of Jess Franco" has never been more piercing than it is here.

© Tim Lucas 2011 Original Blog Post

MMArchives: Tina Aumont - Ten Years In Another Town

Many years ago we released a few DVD's in the UK - one of our favourites was Cesar Canevari's The Nude Princess.



A real euroddity starring Ajita Wilson and Tina Aumont. We were lucky enough to get one of the last interviews with Tina before she sadly passed away in 2006. The disc is long since discontinued but we thought we'd share the interview with you again here. Even this late in her life Tina still possesses an incredible aura - it's impossible to drag yourself away from those eyes!



As well as roles in such eurocult classics as Howl, Salon Kitty and Torso, Tina also appeared in the superb Mondo Macabro release Lifespan - starring the late great Klaus Kinski. Here's a taster...





There's loads of great stuff on Tina Aumont all over the interweb but click here for a very nice blogpost including loads of photos.


*** By the way - we've made the Tina interview YouTube friendly by the addition of some not very subtle black blocks - if you want the unexpurgated version we suggest a trawl around Ebay ***

At last - Lorna is here!

It's been a long long wait - and we want to thank you for sticking by us on this one - but - it'll be well worth it! Jess Franco's transgressive masterpiece Lorna the Exorcist is here - in a never before seen 100 minute version. Here's a little taster:



Streetdate is February 2nd - and the disc is available to pre-order now from all the usual places. We recommend our friends at Diabolik DVD - get the disc here