Parker is at the end of his rope, he’s broke, his marriage is failing, and he has lost his child. In desperation, he takes a job spying on a woman, about whom he has been given no information, from an abandoned apartment across the street. When he observes an altercation with a man in her apartment, Parker begins to watch her more intensely and even dives into her identity and past when he suspects that she may be in trouble. Meanwhile, his very existence in the abandoned apartment becomes plagued with strange, grotesque events and paranoia.
Observance starts you off in one direction, presenting a straightforward mystery and a straightforward mystery woman. Then, almost without warning, we abandon that and dive into the personal hell of her observer. Parker’s descent into madness or genuine haunting is well done, but I couldn’t help but wish the mystery had been more thoroughly played through. On the whole, Observance is a cerebral exercise and a very slow burn. For extras, the disc includes a three minute ‘Preface’ video and numerous trailers.
A bunch of guys (including David Caruso) get hired to clean asbestos out of the real life Danvers Mental Hospital (Since mostly demolished for apartments). As they get to work, the men find all kinds of documents and treasures from the former patients of the asylum. It’s only a matter of time before the madness of the place begins to take hold and one by one the men go missing.
Session 9 had the distinction of being one of the first major motion pictures shot on 24P HD video. The flipside of that honor is that the image is not great, with ghosting and bad range of color abounding. Its release on Blu-ray makes it look as good as it can but also draws attention to the limitations of that early video. The disc extras include ‘making of’ featurettes, audio commentary, deleted scenes, theatrical trailer, and a new Horror’s Hallowed Grounds.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension
Brain Surgeon Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) has developed a method to safely travel to the 8th dimension. His breakthrough attracts the attention of the institutionalized Dr. Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) who’s really an alien named Lord John Whorfin in disguise. Whorfin is a Red Lectroid who waged war on the Black Lectroids and was exiled to the 8th dimension but escaped and now wants Banzai’s machine to free his followers. Only Buckaroo himself and his Hong Kong Cavaliers can defeat them. Whew, that premise is exhausting but the movie is a lot of fun and boasts an insane supporting cast including: Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, Christopher Lloyd, and Yakov Smirnoff.
Shout Factory, who puts out all our favorite horror films under their Scream Factory label, is launching a brand new label called Shout Select and Buckaroo is the inaugural release. They’re going to start highlighting incredible titles under this banner and honor them with Collector’s Editions.
Buckaroo Banzai is one of those films that were a box office failure in its initial release (a sequel, mentioned in the film itself never materialized). Unlike so many others, it simply wouldn’t stay dead and found an incredible second life in video release. The transfer here is superb and in addition to a multi part documentary and audio commentaries; there is an entire second disc of extras including Alternate opening, deleted scenes, featurette and trailer (second disc is DVD not Blu, not sure what’s up with that).
Adam Ruhl is a writer and life long Cinephile. He is the Executive
Cinema Editor of Pop Culture Beast’s Austin branch; covering festivals,
conventions, and new releases. When not filing reports, Adam can be
found stalking Alamo Drafthouse Programmers for leads on upcoming
DrafthouseFilms titles. Adam once blocked Harry Knowles entrance to a
theater until he was given extra tickets to a Roman Polanski movie.