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Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAggro Dr1ft.NYFF have announced a few new lineups, including their adventurous-looking Spotlight section, with new work by Harmony Korine, Hayao Miyazaki, Nathan Fielder & Benny Safdie, and more. They've also shared the experimental program for Currents, which opens with Eduardo Williams’s The Human Surge 3 and features James Benning, Deborah Stratman, and Pham Thien An. And finally, their Revivals section includes restorations of Jean Renoir’s “almost ghostly last film in Hollywood,” The Woman on the Beach (1947); Niki de Saint Phalle's first solo feature Un rêve plus long que la nuit (1976); and a 4K restoration of Horace Ové’s Pressure (1976), world-premiering in conjunction with the London Film Festival. Following news last week that Leila’s Brothers (2022) filmmakers Saeed Roustayi and Javad Noruzbegi have been sentenced to six months in prison, suspended over five years,...

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By John M. Whalen

Kino Lorber, in its relentless effort to make forgotten, hard-to-find films available in superior, like-new condition, has released a Blu-Ray edition of the 1959 Weird Western, “Curse of the Undead,” the first movie ever to mix cowboys and vampires. The Weird Western, in case you’re not aware, is a sub-genre that combines the traditional western with elements of the supernatural, horror, or science fiction. They’ve been around for about 90 years, first appearing in print in the 1930s when Robert E. Howard, a pulp fiction writer from Texas, best known as the creator of Conan the Barbarian, wrote several short stories for Weird Tales and Argosy magazine that combined the traditional western with supernatural horror. Today a number of authors including Joe Lansdale, Heath Lowrance, Jonathan Mayberry, David West and even yours truly, have turned out Weird Western novels and short stories,...

Inner Sanctum Mysteries—Franchise Collection

Blu ray

Mill Creek Entertainment

1943, 1944, 1945 / 63, 64, 61, 62, 66 Min. / 1.33:1

Starring Lon Chaney Jr., J. Carroll Naish, Evelyn Ankers

Cinematography by Virgil Miller, Paul Ivano, Maury Gertsman

Directed by Reginald LeBorg, Harold Young, John Hoffman, Wallace Fox

For the first eight years of his career, Lon Chaney Jr. was just a face in the crowd—that all changed with 1939’s Of Mice and Men. The role of Lennie Small, a man-child who didn’t know his own strength, elevated the 33 year old actor to stardom but also typecast him as the perennial victim of circumstances—a B movie Hamlet. Offscreen, Chaney behaved more like Falstaff—his favorite pastimes were drinking, brawling, and more drinking. If Hollywood began to view him as a loose cannon, the actor sealed his own fate when he signed on as Larry Talbot, a discontented aristocrat who was more at home baying at the moon.

Now that October is officially underway, we have a brand new batch of Blu-rays and DVDs coming out tomorrow that would be perfect to add to your Halloween season viewing plans in the coming weeks. Rlje Films is keeping busy this Tuesday with The Pale Door and Yummy, and Arrow Video is showing some love to The Deeper You Dig this week as well. Tales from the Hood 3 is also headed to both Blu and DVD tomorrow, and for those of you who missed the fancier version this summer, there’s a new 4K release of Jaws coming our way, too.

Other home media releases for October 6th include Curse of the Undead, They Live Inside Us, The Face at the Window, The World is Full of Secrets, and Snow White: A Tale of Terror.

Curse of the Undead

Vampiric gunfighter Drake Robey goes West and terrorizes a small town.

Why do we like horror and monster movies that routinely get labeled as ‘bad?’ Because many of them have great story ideas and look at the world from odd, warped viewpoints. Back when ‘warped’ wasn’t a prerequisite for All filmed entertainment (my exaggeration) this murderous rejuvenation tale could be appreciated as something unusual, even quirky. Jeez, the characters are even nastier than the people I know! Lovely Coleen Gray takes a chance on a downmarket Universal programmer and proves how well she can carry a movie, even through several dubious horror make-ups.

The Leech Woman

Blu-ray

Scream Factory

1960 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 77 min. / Street Date August 27, 2019 / Available from Scream Factory

Starring: Coleen Gray, Grant Williams, Phillip Terry, Gloria Talbott, John Van Dreelen, Estelle Hemsley, Kim Hamilton, Arthur Batanides, Murray Alper, Paul Thompson.

Cinematography: Ellis W. Carter

Film Editor: Milton Carruth

Original Music: Irving Gertz

Written by David Duncan, story by Ben Pivar,...

Coleen Gray in 'The Sleeping City' with Richard Conte. Coleen Gray after Fox: B Westerns and films noirs (See previous post: “Coleen Gray Actress: From Red River to Film Noir 'Good Girls'.”) Regarding the demise of her Fox career (the year after her divorce from Rod Amateau), Coleen Gray would recall for Confessions of a Scream Queen author Matt Beckoff: I thought that was the end of the world and that I was a total failure. I was a mass of insecurity and depended on agents. … Whether it was an 'A' picture or a 'B' picture didn't bother me. It could be a Western movie, a sci-fi film. A job was a job. You did the best with the script that you had. Fox had dropped Gray at a time of dramatic upheavals in the American film industry: fast-dwindling box office receipts as a result of competition from television,...

Westerns. Horror films. Two great genres that go great together? You would think so. Westerns and horror films are, more than any American film genres I can think of, viscerally grounded in mortality, the vulnerability of human flesh and the primal drive of survival instinct. Whether facing wild animals or bloodthirsty monsters, cold-blooded gunfighters or psychotic madmen, roving bands of raiders or packs of zombies, the heroes of these films fight to live. "It feels like a natural connection. They're two of the most cinematic experiences that you have watching a movie," notes director J.T. Petty. He should know -- his film "The Burrowers," which was released on DVD yesterday, is the most recent and one of the most creative approaches to the horror western hybrid, a unsettling monster movie by way of "The Searchers."

Despite seeming ripe territory, there are relatively few horror westerns to speak of, but a...