Given the title of Killer Cop (Raro / Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD) a 1975 poliziotteschi from Italy, you might expect a rogue cop thriller, and ambitious young Commissario Matteo Rolandi (Claudio Cassinelli), a rising officer on a major drug case, certainly has good reason to go rogue. His case gets caught up in a major terrorist bombing and his best friend (Franco Fabrizi), a workaday veteran with a fidgety nature and a streak of bad luck, is murdered for stumbling across the prime suspect. He’s frustrated that he’s been bounced from the case by the Prosecutor General, a serious, stone-faced legend of dogged duty who has the unlikely nickname “Minty” (because he keeps popping breath mints while working a case) and is played by American star Arthur Kennedy (dubbed in Italian of course), so when his drug investigation winds back into the bombing he conducts his own investigation. It turns out the Prosecutor has his reasons for keeping the case close to the vest: the police force, the justice department, the entire political system in Milan is riddled with corruption and he doesn’t know who he can trust.
The northern capital of Milan, the symbol of modernity and progress in the Italian cinema of the 50s and 60s, is the epitome of official corruption and the urban mob in the crime cinema of the 70s. The violence here, however, is no mob war or message from the criminal underworld. It’s not even a terrorist attack, at least not as defined by the traditional “war on terror” yardstick. It’s… well, I’m not really sure, but as the masterminds explain it, “It was only supposed to be a demonstration.” The best I can figure is that it’s a conspiracy rooted in a cabal of industrialists, government officials, and mobsters and it is designed to stir things up. Which pretty much vindicates the fears of both Rolandi and Minty, who keep tripping over each other with a frequency that makes them both suspicious.
Raro has been championing the poliziotteschi—brutal crime thriller and mob dramas from Italy in the 1970s—since its revelatory release of Fernando di Leo’s filmography. Killer Cop is a minor but interesting addition to the library, a low-key film that (unusual for the genre) focuses on honest cops trying to do their job in a culture of corruption and political intimidation. Italian audiences of the day would have recognized the event as a reference to a real-life bombing at Piazza Fontana, which was unsolved, and director Luciano Ercoli suggests a conspiracy that could have come out of the American cinema of the day, like The Parallax View. It’s short on exposition, which is as interesting as it is frustrating—the whole conspiracy remains shadowy and the complicity of the police and justice officials is unclear—but also gives the film an atmosphere of distrust of all official representatives. The bomber himself (Bruno Zanin) is a kind of sad-sack patsy, not even a true believer but a foot soldier getting his orders from phone calls and abandoned by his bosses when the case spins out of their control.
As far as I know, this is Ercoli’s only poliziotteschi but he brings an interesting attitude to the genre.
Blu-ray and DVD, with both Italian and English dub soundtracks (the Italian is preferable, as the English dubbing is sloppy and lazily performed) and optional English subtitles, plus a 20-minute interview with production manager Alessandro Calosci.
The Happiness of the Katakuris (Arrow / MVD, Blu-ray+DVD), Takashi Miike’s deliriously bizarre 2001 musical remake of the South Korean dark comedy The Quiet Family, is a bright, energetic, gonzo comedy about a dysfunctional family who run a secluded inn where guests check in but they don’t check out. Think The Sound of Music at the Bates Motel. There are no psycho-killers here, just bad juju, but they don’t seem to notice that the magnificent landscape of their mountaintop retreat is surrounded by garbage pits, poisoned ponds, and a majestic mountain peak that belches ominous clouds of black smoke. Did I mention the family tends to break into song and soar through the sky in stylized dance numbers (at one point joined by shuffling zombies)? Miike has a well-earned reputation for extreme violence and brutality but this is actually strangely sweet. For all the wicked black humor of this absurd, over-the-top fantasy, there’s a delightful innocence as this family pulls together when the corpses pile up.
The film was released on DVD more than a decade ago by Chimera (now out of print). Arrow’s new edition, a combo pack that features the film’s Blu-ray debut, is mastered from a new high definition film transfer and it features a new line-up of supplements. There’s a new commentary track from Japanese genre film expert Tom Mes (of “Midnight Eye”), who also contributes a 23-minute visual essay “Dogs, Pimps and Agitators,” the original half-hour featurette “The Making of the Katakuris,” the five-minute featurette “Animating the Katakuris” (on the animated sequences), bonus interviews with Miike and the cast, and a booklet with new essays by Johnny Mains, Stuart Galbraith IV, and Grady Hendrix and a reprinted interview with Miike from 2002 (full disclosure: I conducted that interview and provided it to Arrow).
Carried over from the earlier DVD release is commentary by director Takashi Miike with film critic Tokitoshi Shiota, in Japanese with optional English subtitles and an alternate English audio translation track by unnamed American actors.
The Last Unicorn: The Enchanted Edition (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray, DVD), the 1982 animated fantasy based on the novel by Hugo-Award winning author Peter S. Beagle, gets a new edition. This is from another era of feature animation when filmmakers could get away with limited imagery and character designs, and while it shows its age, it is carried along by a particularly strong story, a kind of anti-Little Mermaid fable, and a voice cast that includes Mia Farrow as the unicorn, a magical being in a world losing its magic, Alan Arkin, Tammy Grimes, Christopher Lee and Jeff Bridges (whose singing voice is weaker than one might expect given his recent musical excursions). Produced and directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. (who populate the world with cousins to the creatures from their made-for-TV Return of the King), it features songs written by Jimmy Webb and performed by America, which aren’t bad but are not at all memorable. Kids raised on the high quality of animated Disney films may find it quaint, but it’s an intelligently made film that takes an interesting path through the world of animated fantasy.
It was previously released on Blu-ray and DVD by Lionsgate in a special edition a few years ago. This edition (on both Blu-ray and DVD) features a new transfer (it’s brighter) and new supplements: a new commentary track featuring author Peter S. Beagle with associate producer Michael Chase Walker, publisher Connor Cochran, and Conlan Press team members Terri Kempton and Travis Ashmore, the new featurettes “True Magic: The Story of The Last Unicorn” (43 minutes) and “Highlights from The Last Unicorn Worldwide Screening Tour with Peter S. Beagle” (about 11 minutes), and animated storyboards. None of the supplements from the earlier Lionsgate edition have been ported over, so passionate fans may want to have both. The Blu-ray features bonus DVD and digital copies of the film.
Harlock: Space Pirate (Ketchup, DVD, Digital HD, VOD), based on Leiji Matsumoto’s manga series and the subsequent anime series of the 1970s, revisits the original space swashbuckler as an old-fashioned space opera in the style of dark, dystopian science fiction drama with big budget CGI animation. Harlock, the notorious interstellar buccaneer with a loyal crew of freebooters, is an outlaw in a universe ruled by a repressive council and slowly dying off as mankind is prevented from returning home to Earth. Their newest recruit, Ezra, looks like he could be Harlock’s little brother but is in fact a spy sent by the council to infiltrate the ship and report back to his brother, an angry, vindictive officer in the government. In fact, Harlock and Ezra are more alike than not: both are haunted by past actions that had destructive consequences and determined to set things right, which ultimately puts them on the same side as underdog heroes fighting the power and turning to a mystical legend to save both Earth and humanity.
It’s a complicated story filled with a series of action set pieces and the spectacle of ships battling in space. Director Shinji Aramaki, the designer and director of the popular anime Appleseed, goes for photo-realism, delivering vivid worlds with incredible texture—the elaborate weapons and ships and the gearhead attention to fine details is impressive—but oddly stiff human characters whose mannequin-like faces fall in the cracks of the uncanny valley.
DVD, with English dub version and original Japanese soundtrack with subtitles. No Blu-ray edition, but you can buy a Digital HD version or rent it via VOD stream.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (Arrow / MVD, Blu-ray+DVD) – Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk has spent his career mixing eroticism with fantasy and horror, presenting sex as a primal instinct that can unleash buried desires. This adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel takes place in the course of a single night, as Dr. Henry Jekyll (Udo Kier) hosts a dinner party to announce his engagement to Miss Fanny Osbourne (Marina Pierro), and he unleashes Mr. Hyde (Gérard Zalcberg) to prey upon the guests and servants.
That’s not his only change to the original story: he brings out Mr. Hyde by pouring a powder in a tub and bathing in the mix, like an unholy baptism bringing out the devil inside. This Hyde is a sex maniac who rapes and murders women on the streets and then in his own home and Jekyll’s fiancée becomes a fascinated witness who unleashes her own suppressed desires and violent instincts. The mix of art, horror, and erotic content is not in any way faithful to Stevenson’s themes but it is an interesting take on the classic novel with talk of “transcendental” states and an element of lust and sexual violence central to the Hyde incarnation.
Features both French and English language soundtracks, with commentary by Daniel Bird interspersed with interview clips of Borowczyk and others, the 1979 Borowczyk short Happy Toy, interviews with actors Udo Keir and Marina Pierro, filmmaker Alessio Pierro, and historian Sarah Mallinson, a video essay by Adrian Martin and Cristina Álvarez López, and additional featurettes and short films.
Also new and notable: 
The two films paired up in Tentacles / Reptilicus – Double Feature (Scream Factory, Blu-ray) are sort-of related. Reptilicus (1961) is Sidney Pink’s filmed-in-Denmark cult creature feature about Danish mining engineers who dig up the frozen tail of a huge prehistoric monster. When it thaws, it grows into a giant rampaging lizard with a Godzilla complex. This is from a new HD master. Tentacles (1977), a Jaws knock-off with an angry mutant octopus attacking California beachgoers, is an American / Italian coproduction with slumming Hollywood stars (John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins, and Henry Fonda) and a Greek-born filmmaker famed for his cheap copycat films (Ovidio G. Assonitis). Features trailers.
A pair of Troma sequels debuted on Blu-ray a couple of months back: The Toxic Avenger Part II (Troma, Blu-ray+DVD Combo), which sends the first superhuman superhero from New Jersey to Japan, and Class of Nuke Em High 2: Subhumanoid Meltdown (Troma, Blu-ray+DVD Combo). Both feature commentary, introductions by Lloyd Kaufman, bonus interviews, and other Tromatic supplements.
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD