Three great things that go great together! The Nikkatsu oddity, ZOOM IN: SEX APARTMENTS combines genres to bring you a one-of-a-kind film about a sadistic killer who literally lights up the loins of his victims! The elaborately-orchestrated rapes and murders committed by a faceless, leather-gloved psychotic (and set to a booming bass-heavy soundtrack) are an unmistakably deliberate homage to the giallo films of Italian master director, Dario Argento.

Nikkatsu turns the women-in-prison genre on its head yet again with TRUE STORY OF A WOMAN IN JAIL: CONTINUES. If you thought the first film was brutal, wait till you see what’s in store here! Bath house attacks, lesbian sex scenes, rapist prison guards, violent abortions and even a transgender inmate add to the exploitation fun!

Two beautiful orphaned identical twins, Maria and Frieda Gellhorn (Playboy centerfold models Mary and Madeleine Collinson), move to the village of Karnstein to live with their uncle Gustav Weil (played by Hammer horror favorite, Peter Cushing), a fanatical puritan and leader of the local witch-hunting “Brotherhood.” The village Count (Damien Thomas, Never Let Me Go), an evil man who secretly practices Satanism, uses black magic and transforms into a vampire. Unhappy with her new life, Frieda seeks escape and tragically falls under the spell of the Count. Now overcome with an insatiable hunger for human blood, Frieda has to hide her secret from her sister, and escape her uncle’s killing grasp!

The wait is over! This Hammer horror classic is now available from Synapse Films in an all-new 1080p high-definition transfer and loaded with exciting exclusive special features. Also stars Kathleen Byron (Black Narcissus), David Warbeck (Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond) and Dennis Price (Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos)!

ZOOM UP: THE BEAVER BOOK GIRL is a film spawned from the dark manga stories of Takashi Ishii, featuring women troubled by the psychological effects of sexual violence. Barely staying within the boundaries of Japanese censorship laws, this film will shock and surprise you.

Perhaps the biggest question is, how can something so wrong feel so good? EROS SCHOOL: FEELS SO GOOD goes further than most in trumping itself in outrageousness. By the film’s end, your jaw will be on the floor and your eyes will be popping out of your head at what you’ve just watched on your television screen. You’ll discover, at Eros High School, no one is safe from the obscenity… not even the pig.

This action-packed controversial cult classic is now available from Synapse Films in a brand-new 2K high-definition transfer of the uncensored version, containing footage never before seen in the U.S. Featuring amazing performances from Dolph Lundgren, M. Emmet Walsh (Blood Simple) and the late Brion James (Blade Runner), RED SCORPION contains bloody special effects from the legendary Tom Savini (Dawn of the Dead, Friday the 13th). Loaded with interviews and other amazing special features, this disc will blow you away!

REVERSIBLE COVER ARTWORK!

Synapse Films’ best-selling 42ND STREET FOREVER DVD series has been a favorite of grindhouse and exploitation fans around the world. Presented here for the first time on Blu-ray, this colossal “best of” collection combines a selection of vintage theatrical trailers from the first two DVD volumes of the series, and mixes them up with some all-new selections! Remastered in true 1080p high definition, this mind-numbing dose of classic original coming attractions will have your Blu-ray player exploding with more than three and a half hours of sex, exploitation, action, horror and science-fiction advertisements from around the world! Can your brain take all this sleaze in one sitting? A collection so huge, we can’t even list them all on the Blu-ray packaging!

ACT OF VENGEANCE
BLACK SAMSON
THE BULLET MACHINE
THE CENTERFOLD GIRLS
CHAINED HEAT
CHAPPAQUA
COLLEGE GIRLS
THE CURIOUS FEMALE
THE DARK
DARK STAR
DELINQUENT SCHOOLGIRLS
THE DEADLY SPAWN
DEATH DRIVE
THE DEPRAVED
THE DEVIL’S NIGHTMARE
DR. BUTCHER M.D.
DR. TARR’S TORTURE DUNGEON
THE EVICTORS
EYE OF THE CAT
FLESH GORDON
THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW
THE .44 SPECIALIST
GINGER
THE GRIM REAPER
THE GUY FROM HARLEM
HARD CANDY
HELGA
HELLS ANGELS ON WHEELS
HONKY
I, A WOMAN
I DISMEMBER MAMA/BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE
INVITATION TO RUIN
THE ITALIAN STALLION
MAID IN SWEDEN
MARK OF THE WITCH
MS. 45
PANORAMA BLUE
THE PINK ANGELS
THE POM POM GIRLS
THE RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS
SAVAGE!
SAVAGE SISTERS
SECRET AFRICA
SHOCKING ASIA
SHOGUN ASSASSIN
SPY IN YOUR EYE
STREET GIRLS
SUGAR HILL
SUPER FUZZ
SUPERMANCHU
TABOOS OF THE WORLD
THE TALE OF THE DEAN’S WIFE
THE TEACHER
THEY CALL HER ONE EYE
THEY CAME FROM BEYOND SPACE
THE 3 DIMENSIONS OF GRETA
THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS
WELCOME HOME, BROTHER CHARLES
WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS
WHEN WOMEN HAD TAILS
WICKED WICKED
… AND MANY MORE!

I really don’t have to tell our fans how much Synapse cares about the product we release.  We really go above and beyond to make sure our Blu-ray transfers are the best we can make them.  We spend additional money on clean up and restoration.  Many companies do this, sure, but at Synapse we don’t like to do Digital Noise Reduction (DNR), grain replacement/removal, or softening of the picture that removes film detail in favor of a “cleaner” picture.  Based on reviews of some of the titles I’ve seen that do this, many people still feel this is an acceptable practice. We don’t.

Like THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, THOU SHALT NOT KILL…EXCEPT is a low-budget film that was rather difficult to transfer. It had problems inherent in the original materials due to the age, budget, editing and film stock used in its creation. Nothing that Synapse couldn’t tackle, of course, with a little extra time and money and, because we love the film, we wanted to create the best possible product.

We were approached, in late 2011, by a company that is rather well-known in Hollywood for their excellent digital restoration services.  I will not reveal their name, because I really am not here to embarrass them with what I’m going to tell you.  I have seen many releases that feature their work and I have to say I was impressed.  When the opportunity came for Synapse to work with these folks, we jumped at the chance, and we decided to start a relationship with them by letting them restore THOU SHALT NOT KILL…EXCEPT.

Now, time to back up a little….

THOU had some previous manual clean up done by another person a while ago and, while the work was GREAT, there were some additional areas I felt needed extra attention after I saw our HD encode.  You see, when you transfer something in high-definition, and down-convert your master/files for DVD, a LOT of the smaller dirt and problems do tend to disappear simply because you are knocking down the resolution from 1920×1080 (BLU-RAY) to 720×480 (DVD).  Small dirt sometimes just vanishes.  I watched the DVD version of  THOU and was very happy but, when I got the Blu-ray encode, I was taken aback by the amount of microscopic dirt I was seeing on-screen.  Full disclosure… I have a 108″ screen with an Epson PowerLite Pro Cinema 6010 Projector… it reveals a LOT of flaws in DVD and Blu-ray mastering, especially on a screen that size.

Now, back to the present…

We had already started the menus and authoring on THOU, so I was in a panic to try and get this fixed ASAP.  Right before Christmas, the unnamed restoration house told me they’d love to do the work and they were fully aware of my time constraint.  They agreed to take in the master and assured me that the work would be done by the time I returned from holiday break on January 3rd. I sent off the master, went on holiday, and enjoyed the end of the year with family and friends, thinking my film master was in good hands. We agreed to just tackle the small to medium sized dirt and to not touch the grain structure at all (a big pet peeve of mine… I HATE when companies do this).  The grain would not be reduced/replaced/changed and only various areas of dirt would be cleaned. We aren’t a major studio. We cannot afford hundreds of thousands of dollars in cleanup on our product, so they agreed to to the best job they could for our budget.

Got back on January 3rd and gave them a few days to contact me.  I heard nothing, so on January 9th I called and emailed the company wondering what was up.  Time was ticking away and we needed our master back. No response.  Nothing at all.  Emailed again a few days later asking for an update. Nada. Zip. Zero.  I finally called one of the heads of the company.  She was not aware what was going on and promised she’d get to the bottom of the situation. The VERY next day, I get a surprising email from my contact, upset with me that I actually called his boss! Really?  What did he expect when I wasn’t getting any answers at all?  Back and forth, we communicated (barely) for over another week… until FINALLY they told me the files were ready for delivery.

Long story short… we didn’t even get our files back from the company until January 25th. TWENTY-TWO DAYS after our agreed upon delivery date.  Because of the trouble, the company WAS nice enough to pick up the tab on the shipping… little did I know….

My authoring company got the hard drive back and called me up rather horrified.  Not only was the picture quality horrendous, but the film was actually shorter because entire frames and short sequences were now missing from the files.  He had the original version saved for comparison.  Dropped frames, skipping, etc. Now, remember when I said we’d agreed to just tackle dirt and not to change the grain structure at all? Well, besides the fact that whole portions of the film were now missing, this is a comparison of what we got back from the company. You’ll have to click the image a few times to expand it to viewable size. It has been reduced in size for convenience (but the damage is certainly viewable):

Needless to say, I was totally disgusted. I searched my emails and found one where the folks behind this work actually told me “Overall the element looks much better… We’ve not touched the grain levels as discussed.”

Uhhhhh… yeah.

Obviously what we had told them NOT to do.  I didn’t want our release to look like that PATTON Blu-ray abomination, or the even more pathetic PREDATOR: ULTIMATE HUNTER EDITION Blu-ray, but that’s what we got.

I actually contacted Robert Harris about all this.  Robert has been a friend for almost 20 years and he is one of the top film restoration experts in the world, responsible for restoring some of the greatest films ever made, including the GODFATHER Trilogy, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, VERTIGO and the 1991 restoration on SPARTACUS (not the awful version released on Blu-ray now).  Anyway, I love Robert and enjoy talking with him and what he told me at least made me laugh about all this.  He said, “Wow! They took your 16mm movie and made it look like a big budget 65mm film shot entirely out of focus.”  He also said [insert rather famous and completely misinformed video reviewer name here] would LOVE it, though!” He then added, “At least they got rid of that little piece of dirt on the hand in the lower left corner.” He gave me a good laugh. Thanks, Robert.

Robert mentioned Lowry Digital (now known as Reliance Mediaworks).  I know of them because they work with Robert and do quite a bit of fantastic work on films like the STAR WARS trilogy, many Disney films, and are currently finishing up James Cameron’s new 4K restoration on the 3D version of TITANIC.  I gave them a call and, to my surprise, two people I knew back in my early days at Synapse were now working there (they were responsible for the authoring and compression on many early Synapse titles like LEMORA and BLUE SUNSHINE).  Because of our previous relationship (and the fact that they liked me and I liked them), Reliance Mediaworks agreed to tackle the title for us ONE MORE TIME!  I couldn’t be happier.

As of this writing, Lowry/Reliance have finished the work and the files/masters are on their way to the authoring facility.  While they were working on THOU, they sent me a sample clip to review.  Thankfully, their proprietary technology is able to tackle annoying dirt and certain anomalies without compromising the grain structure of the film. Here’s a comparison sample (again, you’ll need to click a few times to make it larger):

The frame you are seeing is a bit of stock footage in the film (so it’s bad looking to begin with), but you can see that a lot of dirt has been removed without compromising the film’s grain structure. Thank goodness the people don’t look like waxy Barbie dolls anymore.

Anyway, it’s time for me to wrap this up. Synapse just wants our release of THOU SHALT NOT KILL…EXCEPT to be the best we can make it. Because of the unfortunate circumstances surrounding our clean up, we’ve had to take more time than expected to get the film the way we want it to be. We are going to strive to make the original street date but, realistically, with the re-authoring and pressing facility still ahead, we are not so sure it’ll happen. The delay shouldn’t be for more than a couple extra weeks.

We just want to do it right for the fans, and do it right for director Josh Becker. We apologize for the delay, but we think you’ll be MUCH happier with the results and we appreciate your patience.

With all the news about the various upcoming international releases of RED SCORPION on Blu-ray (UK, France, Germany, etc.), I just wanted to take a few moments to let you know what's happening with our version, which should be announced soon.

We've been working on our release of RED SCORPION for almost a year now.  We want ours to be the best version available in any country, on any format, and we have been taking our time putting together the ultimate version of the film for our audience.  Not only in compiling some amazing supplements, but also working on a restoration of the original materials to make ours the best looking version released.

Here is a breakdown of some of the features of our RED SCORPION release:

- All-new 2K transfer of the uncensored edition, containing additional footage not found in the original U.S. theatrical release. The Blu-ray will be 1080p widescreen in the aspect ratio of 1.78:1

- The digital restoration of film materials supervised by Synapse Films and Reliance Mediaworks (formerly Lowry Digital), exclusive to Synapse Films

- All-new DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround Mix, made specifically for the Synapse Films release

- Digitally Remastered Original 2.0 Soundtrack

- Synapse Films exclusive audio commentary with director Joseph Zito, moderated by Mondo Digital's Nathaniel Thompson

- HATH NO FURY - DOLPH LUNDGREN AND THE ROAD TO RED SCORPION - Video Interview with Dolph Lundgren

- ASSIGNMENT: AFRICA - An All-New Video Interview with Producer Jack Abramoff

- SCORPION TALES - An All-New Video Interview with Special Make-Up Effects Creator Tom Savini

- Original On-Set Behind-the-Scenes Video Footage

- Animated Still Gallery

- Extensive Liner Notes on the Making of RED SCORPION by Jérémie Damoiseau

...and the list of extras is growing daily... we're still working on some other things to add!

And, yeah, you read that right up there... we DID get Jack Abramoff. I know a lot of people made some jokes about getting him to do something for us while he was in prison.  Well, we just waited for him to get OUT... and he agreed to give us an interview. It's a really cool thing and Jack was a great guy.

We worked closely with two companies to help us with extras for our release.  Both RED SHIRT PICTURES and BALLYHOO MOTION PICTURES have put together some GREAT stuff.  And a big congratulations goes to Tom Savini who not only gave us an interview, but raided his footage archive to give us some great behind-the-scenes "on the set" footage that no one has seen in 14 years.  And big thanks to Dolph Lundgren for allowing us into his home for a great retrospective/interview about his career.

RED SCORPION is also being digitally restored by the same folks who did the Indiana Jones films, Once Upon a Time in the West, the Godfather Trilogy, The Alien films and, most recently, the all-new 4K 3D restoration on TITANTIC. We are thrilled to be working with them on this, as well as many future releases for Synapse Films.

Our release is going to be superb, not to mention a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, so you get both formats in one package.  Also, our release will be encoded for ALL REGIONS for both the DVD and the Blu-ray.

We're going to announce it in the coming weeks.  Remember the old saying... "Good things come to those who wait!"