The new year is coming up and Arrow Video is welcoming 2022 with a trio of releases that will send shivers up your spines like a January wind gust. Red Angel is director Yasuzo Masumura’s film about war. But instead of taking us into the battles, the movie follows a young nurse (Ayako Wakao) assigned to serve near the front lines in China. Her time in the field is disturbing as everyone around her might be the enemy. This is not for the squeamish as the doctors can do little beside amputate. Arrow Video has been making a case over the last year that Yasuzo Masumura was one of the best directors working in Japan during the 20th Century. Red Angel shows he was among the elite.

Mario Bava was among the top horror directors in Italy with classics such as Bay of Blood and Planet of the Vampires. Shock would be his final directorial effort. The movie has Daria Nicolodi move back into her old house with her son and new husband. But she’s haunted by the memories of her dead first husband. The memories turn out the be a bit more as the supernatural comes into play. The movie was originally released as Beyond the Door II since it featured the same child actor. Sleep is a rather new film from Germany about nightmares and dark family secrets.

Here’s the press release from Arrow Video with all the bonus features:

New from Arrow Video US
RED ANGEL[Blu-ray] (1/18)
SHOCK[Blu-ray] (1/18)
SLEEP[Limited Edition Blu-ray] (1/25)
via MVD Entertainment Group
Arrow Welcomes Film Fans into 2022 with Genre Releases from Italy, Japan, and Germany!
Kick off the new year with Arrow’s latest round of releases beginning on January 18 with Mario Bava‘s Shock. The legendary Daria Nicolodi stars as Dora, a woman that goes through extensive electroshock treatment and then moves into her old home with her young son and her new husband. While in the home, she’s tormented by the memories of her dead first husband. Is she experiencing supernatural events associated with a haunted house or has she merely lost her grip on reality? Released in the United States as Beyond the Door IIShock was the last theatrical film Bava would release before his untimely passing in 1980. The Terror Trap praised Shock for containing “all the stylish sequences” Bava is known for and “a handful of disturbingly graphic sequences.” Arrow presents Shock with a brand-new 2K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative. This new restoration features Italian and English soundtracks and newly translated English subtitles. Special features include new audio commentary, new interviews with co-writers Lamberto Bava and Dardano Sacchetti, a video essay, and much more!

Also releasing on January 18 is Red Angel from director Yasuzo MasumuraRed Angel takes a look at the horrors of war through the eyes of Sakura Nishi (Ayako Wakao), a young field nurse on the front lines in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. While tending the wounds of soldiers injured in battle, Nishi must also be strong enough to deal with their unstable mental state and unwanted sexual advances. Jeffrey M. Anderson of Combustible Celluloid praised Red Angel as “one of the most brutal portraits of war ever filmed,” while Don Willmott of Filmcritic.com called it “one of the most powerful anti-war films you’ll ever see.” Arrow’s Blu-ray release of Red Angel contains a high-definition film presentation with the original uncompressed Japanese audio. Special features include a brand-new audio commentary with Japanese cinema scholar David Desser, a new film introduction by Tony Rayns and a new visual essay from Jonathan Rosenbaum.First pressings will also include an illustrated booklet with new writing from Irene Gonzalez-Lopez.

Arrow’s final release of the month comes on January 25 in the form of Sleep. After being plagued by horrific nightmares of a place she has never been, Marlene (Sandra Hüller) suffers a mental breakdown in a remote village and is placed in a psychiatric ward. Marlene’s daughter Mona (Gro Swantje Kohlhof) follows after her, uncovers dark family secrets, and reveals a curse that threatens her life. This debut film from director Michael Venus earned German Film Critics Association Award nominations for Best Screenplay, Best Feature Film Debut, and Best Editing. Currently, Sleep holds a 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Lindsay Traves of CGMagazine awarded Sleep 8 out of 10, writing that the film is “a stunning tale of inherited trauma manifesting as nightmares and the work one has to do to conquer what cannot be physically escaped.” Arrow presents Sleep on Limited Edition Blu-ray for the first time with special features that include an audio commentary track with authors Kim Newman and Sean Hogan, a visual essay from film scholar Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, a conversation between director Venus and star Kohlhof, and a whole lot more!

Red Angel
Masumura’s anti-war masterpiece on Blu-ray for the very first time!
Red Angel
List Price: $39.95

Directed by Yasuzo Masumura (Giants and Toys, Blind Beast), Red Angel takes an unflinching look at the horror and futility of war through the eyes of a dedicated and selfless young military nurse. When Sakura Nishi is dispatched in 1939 to a ramshackle field hospital in Tientsin, the frontline of Japan’s war of with China, she and her colleagues find themselves fighting a losing battle tending to the war-wounded and emotionally shellshocked soldiers while assisting head surgeon Dr Okabe conduct an unending series of amputations. As the Chinese troops close in, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Okabe who, impotent to stall the mounting piles of cadavers, has retreated into his own private hell of morphine addiction. Adapted from the novel by Yorichika Arima, Masumura’s harrowing portrait of women and war is considered the finest of his collaborations with Ayako Wakao (A Wife Confesses, Irezumi) and features startling monochrome scope cinematography by Setsuo Kobayashi (Fires on the Plain, An Actor’s Revenge).

Bonus Materials
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
Original uncompressed Japanese mono audio
Optional English subtitles
Brand new audio commentary by Japanese cinema scholar David Desser
Newly filmed introduction by Japanese cinema expert Tony Rayns
Not All Angels Have Wings, a new visual essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Original Trailer
Image Gallery
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated booklet featuring new writing by Irene González-López

Shock
A new look at the face of evil
Shock
List Price: $39.95

In a career spanning four decades and encompassing virtually every genre under the sun, Mario Bava inspired multiple generations of filmmakers, from Dario Argento to Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton. Best remembered for his gothic horror movies, for his final feature, Shock, he eschewed the grand guignol excesses of Black Sabbath or Blood and Black Lace for a more intimate portrait of mental breakdown in which true horror comes from within. Dora (Daria Nicolodi, Deep Red) moves back into her old family home with her husband, Bruno (John Steiner, Tenebrae), and Marco (David Colin Jr., Beyond the Door), her young son from her previous marriage. But domestic bliss proves elusive as numerous strange and disturbing occurrences transpire, while Dora is haunted by a series of nightmares and hallucinations, many of them involving her dead former husband. Is the house itself possessed? Or does Dora’s increasingly fragile grip on reality originate from somewhere far closer to home? Released in the United States as a sequel to Ovidio G. Assonitis’s Beyond the Door, Shock more than lives up to its name, proving that, even at this late stage in his career, Bava hadn’t lost his touch for terror. Now restored in high definition for the first time, the Maestro of the Macabre’s chilling swansong disturbs like never before in this feature-laden release from Arrow Video.

High Definition Blu-ray™ (1080p) presentation
Brand new 2K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative by Arrow Films
Original Italian and English front and end titles and insert shots
Restored original lossless mono Italian and English soundtracks
Newly translated English subtitles for the Italian soundtrack
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for the English soundtrack
New audio commentary by Tim Lucas, author of Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark
A Ghost in the House, a new video interview with co-director and co-writer Lamberto Bava
Via Dell’Orologio 33, a new video interview with co-writer Dardano Sacchetti
The Devil Pulls the Strings, a new video essay by author and critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Shock! Horror! – The Stylistic Diversity of Mario Bava, a new video appreciation by author and critic Stephen Thrower
The Most Atrocious Tortur(e), a new interview with critic Alberto Farina
Italian theatrical trailer
4 US “Beyond the Door II” TV spots
Image gallery
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Christopher Shy
FIRST PRESSING ONLY: Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Troy Howarth, author of The Haunted World of Mario Bava

Sleep [Limited Edition]

Who protects you when you dream?

Sleep [Limited Edition]

List Price: $39.95

Nightmare and trauma. Fear and repression. Guilt and atonement. Weaving together the emotional violence of horror with the cryptic motifs of German folk and fairy tales, Arrow Video is proud to present Sleep, the debut feature from a major new talent in world cinema. Tormented by recurring nightmares of a place she has never been, Marlene (Sandra Hüller, Requiem) cannot help but investigate when she discovers the place is real. Once there, she suffers a breakdown and is admitted to a psychiatric ward. Determined to discover what happened to her, Mona (Gro Swantje Kohlhof), her daughter, follows and finds herself in Stainbach, an idyllic village with a dark history. What is it that so tormented her mother, and the people of Stainbach? What is the source of the nightmares she suffers? And who is the mysterious Trude that lives in the forest? Richly conceived and confidently told, director Michael Venus draws influence from Mario Bava, David Lynch, Franz Kafka and the Brothers Grimm, but his voice is uniquely his own. As invested in substance and story as he is in style, Venus claws his way down to the roots of what haunts a people, a community, a nation and comes up screaming. “Will definitely keep you up at night” – Joey Keough, Wicked Horror

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