On those summer days when it’s just too hot to hit the beach, Arrow Video has you covered with two new June releases that will make staying in and keeping cool the best way to spend those long summer days.
The first summer delight comes courtesy of Arrow Video for the release of Vincent Ward’s directorial debut, “Vigil.” An 11-year-old girl attempting to get over the death of her father is determined to protect her family from a mysterious stranger that she believes to be the Devil. This New Zealand classic was the first from the country to screen in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and the film’s young star, Fiona Kay, was rewarded with a standing ovation.
And secondly, moving stateside we get an interesting entry from the vampire subgenre with cult favorite Abel Ferrara and his 1995 take on the bloodsuckers with “The Addiction.” Philosophy grad student Kathleen (Lili Taylor) is bitten by a vampire and must learn to come to terms with her new lifestyle which now features a frequent craving for human blood. Shot in stunning black and white and on the streets of New York, “The Addiction” is a raw and shocking vampire film that only Abel Ferrara could make.
VIGIL
Vincent Ward – once described as “the Antipodean Werner Herzog” – made his feature debut with “Vigil,” heralding his status as one of New Zealand’s most distinctive filmmaking talents and paving the way for such equally remarkable and unclassifiable efforts as “The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey” and “Map of the Human Heart.” A stranger appears in a remote New Zealand farmland at the exact time a farmer accidentally falls to his death. The mysterious outsider grows close to some of the dead man’s family, to the point where he and the widow become lovers. But her eleven-year-old daughter, Toss, struggling to come to terms with the death of her father as well as her impending womanhood, believes the intruder to be the devil and sets about protecting her family and their homestead. Propelled by Fiona Kay’s outstanding performance by as Toss, she would earn a standing ovation when “Vigil” screened at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival – the first time ever that a New Zealand feature played in the main competition.
Bonus Materials:
- High Definition (Blu-ray) presentation
- Original mono audio (uncompressed LPCM)
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
- Brand-new appreciation by film critic Nick Roddick, recorded exclusively for this release
- On-set report from the long-running New Zealand television programme Country Calendar
- Extract from a 1987 Kaleidoscope television documentary on New Zealand cinema, focusing on Vigil and Vincent Ward
Theatrical trailer - FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Carmen Gray
Available on a Special Edition Blu-ray June 26th
THE ADDICTION
The mid-nineties were a fertile period for the vampire movie. Big-name stars such as Tom Cruise and Eddie Murphy flocked to the genre, as did high-caliber filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, veterans Wes Craven and John Landis, independents Michael Almereyda and Jeffrey Arsenault, and up-and-comers Quentin Tarantino and Guillermo del Toro. Amid the fangs and crucifixes, Abel Ferrara reunited with his “King of New York” star Christopher Walken for “The Addiction,” a distinctly personal take on creatures of the night. Philosophy student Kathleen (Lili Taylor, “The Conjuring”) is dragged into an alleyway on her way home from class by Casanova (Annabella Sciorra, “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”) and bitten on the neck. She quickly falls ill but realizes this isn’t any ordinary disease when she develops an aversion to daylight and a thirst for human blood… Having made a big-budget foray into science fiction two years earlier with “Body Snatchers,” Ferrara’s approach to the vampire movie is in a lower key. Shot on the streets of New York, like so many of his major works – including “The Driller Killer,” “Ms. 45,” and “Bad Lieutenant,” and beautifully filmed in black and white, “The Addiction” sees the filmmaker on his own terms and at his very best: raw, shocking, intense, intelligent, masterful.
Bonus Materials:
- New restoration from a 4K scan of the original camera negative by Arrow Films, approved by director Abel Ferrara and director of photography Ken Kelsch
- High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
- Restored 5.1 audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Audio commentary by Abel Ferrara, moderated by critic and biographer Brad Stevens
- Talking with the Vampires (2018) A new documentary about the film made by Ferrara especially for this release, featuring actors Christopher Walken and Lili Taylor, composer Joe Delia, Ken Kelsch, and Ferrara himself
- New interview with Abel Ferrara
- New interview with Brad Stevens
- Abel Ferrara Edits The Addiction, an archival piece from the time of production
- Original trailer
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain
- FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet containing new writing on the film by critic Michael Ewins
Available on a Special Edition Blu-ray June 26th
