Last month’s re-release of The Conformist raised some vital questions about best practices in film restoration. And, like so many lines of thought, considering this topic ultimately brought me around to the frustrating, beautiful impossibility of objective truth. The movie a director sees in their head is different from the one the cinematographer sees through their lens, or the editor sees on their monitor. And all three are different from the film an audience member sees in a theater (or on Blu-ray, or on a fuzzy VHS dub ed to YouTube). So, to whom does the restorationist owe their loyalty? The filmmaker? The audience? The film stock? The software? Their own memory?

In navigating this terrain, I recently read an article in Filmmaker magazine by Bingham Bryant exploring similar ideas. Bryant is careful to remain agnostic, while confirming that, yes, laboratories like L’Immagine Ritrovata in Italy and Eclair in do have strong (and seldom-discussed) visual signatures that affect our collective memories of the movies they restore. Bryant posits that this is more of a structural phenomenon than rogue preservationists forcing cinema to conform to their personal preferences, noting that the fact that most viewers only notice color grading when it’s “wrong” inhibits our ability to develop the vocabulary for talking about it. So let’s keep talking about it as we continue our adventures in the world of Shelf Life.

White Zombie

On Blu-ray February 15th from Gold Ninja Video

Martin

On 4K Blu-ray February 27 from Second Sight Films

George Romero is known around the world as “the father of the zombie film”, to quote The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House. (Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new Netflix series has an unexpected, and delightful, running thread of praise for Romero and his movies.) But his most interesting films are the ones where he applies his satirical eye and gift for resonant metaphor to horror archetypes beyond the undead. Take Martin, a movie that’s never been easy to see, but whose influence over the grounded, character-driven dramatic vein of independent horror cinema cannot be overstated.

The opening scene tells us everything we need to know about Martin’s slippery relationship with the supernatural. A spindly young man ducks into the bathroom on a moving train, and looks around before pulling a kit with syringes and a vial of clear liquid out of his pocket. ‘Ah, so he’s an addict,’ we think. Then he fills the syringe, and breaks into a sleeping car occupied by a single woman who he attacks on her way out of the bathroom. ‘Oh, no, he’s a sexual predator,’ is our next thought. And Martin (John Amplas) is both of those things. But he’s also a Nosferatu, a member of the blood-sucking undead—at least, that’s what his cousin, Tada Cuda (Lincoln Maazel), believes.

The facts are these: Martin is 84 years old, although he looks and acts like a troubled teenager. He was born in the “old country”, and he arrives in the crumbling Rust Belt town of Braddock, Pennsylvania on the night train from Indianapolis. Martin suffers from a “family curse” that’s either a genetic disorder or an ancient evil, and Romero remains coy about which one it is until the film’s shocking finale. With shades of true crime and black comedy, it’s soaked in “moody Pittsburgh vampire Maniac grime”, as Ian West puts it in his Letterboxd review. It’s also “Romero’s saddest film… depressive in the way most of the best vampire stories are”, according to Willow Maclay. (Her Patreon is good, you should subscribe to it.)

I mentioned up top that Martin is not a particularly accessible film, on streaming or home video. Neither is Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, actually. Both of these are true for reasons that ultimately come down to producer Richard Rubenstein, who likes to keep his Romero-related copyrighted materials close. The UK’s Second Sight Films did manage to get Rubenstein’s permission to restore Martin in 4K in 2019; Dawn of the Dead was also part of that deal. But while the Dawn box set came and (quickly) went, Martin has been taking a little longer. Some fans hoped that meant that a recently recovered three-hour cut of the film would be included in the release, which was not to be. But we did get a 4K UHD out of it, along with a new feature-length doc and lots of other fun goodies.

It gets a little complicated here: The 4K is all-region (as all 4Ks are), while the standard Blu-ray is Region B only. (They also come paired in a limited-edition box set.) Second Sight does not ship internationally, so order it here if you’re in the UK and here everywhere else.

The Slumber Party Massacre / Slumber Party Massacre II

On 4K Blu-ray February 21 from Shout! Factory

If you don’t think a nude scene can be sarcastic, then you need to go watch the original The Slumber Party Massacre immediately. Famously the only slasher franchise to be written and directed entirely by women, the Slumber Party Massacre movies are sometimes mourned as a great idea—a satirical feminist take on body-count horror—that was diluted into a cheesy example of the exact thing it was trying to parody. But while it is true that Roger Corman insisted on adding gratuitous T&A to the film—and, indeed, that his habit of forcing directors to amp up the sexual content of their films, sometimes to their great displeasure, complicates his pseudo-feminist legacy as a producer who hired women when no one else did—the cheesiness is what makes The Slumber Party Massacre great.

Amy Holden Jones is a quiet quitting icon for doing what she was told in a way that she could live with, making the movie’s hornier elements as tongue-in-cheek as possible while playing the violence straight. Think of the younger sister reading Playgirl magazine, or the cats and hot dogs conspicuously placed in different shots throughout the movie. She also adds touches of winking homoeroticism, making the film a burlesque of sexuality whose absurdity contrasts with the relatively grounded and capable characters at its core. (There’s also the matter of that Freudian drill.) Writer, director and producer Deborah Brock takes this idea and runs with it in Slumber Party Massacre II, throwing a bucket of pastel paint and some Jim Steinman-style musical-theater rock ’n’ roll onto the concept.

Both films were misunderstood in their time, but have been reassessed as subversive cult favorites. They’ve also had conspicuous spotlights in recent years: Slumber Party Massacre II was the subject of a fan-favorite episode of The Last-Drive In with Joe Bob Briggs during the quarantine of 2020, and The Slumber Party Massacre is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel. (If you had suggested that pairing to me fifteen years ago, I would have laughed in your face.) Both films are also getting the 4K UHD treatment this February thanks to Shout! Factory, a more stalwart friend of slasher films than the relatively new-to-the-game Criterion. Slumber Party Massacre III, released in 1990, is still awaiting its turn on the revisionist merry-go-round.

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.

On Blu-ray February 14 from Paramount Presents

Harris’s writing of Chantel, as well as Johnson’s performance as the character, are extraordinary. Here’s a smart, capable, vulnerable young woman who bristles at the restrictions society places on her, who makes mistakes and avoids big decisions, and whose street-smart posturing hides a paralyzing fear of the future. She feels like a real, flawed, deeply lovable person, and her attitude and problems resonated with my memories of that time in my life despite our differences in race, age and geography. It’s my favorite new-to-me watch since Dressed in Blue, and I have thought about it every day since I watched it.

I agree with Patrick Brennan that “if there were any justice in this world, Leslie Harris would have made 25 more movies by now,” and with Michelle that “it’s refreshing to see a completely actualized dimensional young teen woman coming of age and trying her best but not always getting it right.” And without giving away too much, Andampers gets at something vital about Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. by writing, “that she’s just another girl doesn’t make us lose her face in the crowd so much as it suggests that with every face, there’s a story.” Don’t feel bad if, like me, you’re late to this particular film. But do pick up the Paramount Presents Blu-ray release, which includes brand-new commentary from Harris.

From Beyond

On 4K Blu-ray now from Vinegar Syndrome

From Beyond is also an ideal candidate for the 4K Ultra UHD treatment it’s receiving here, considering that the entire film is bathed in bright, beautiful shades of neon pink and blue. (Still less dangerous than a gender-reveal party.) I saw a pristine 35mm print of it a few years back and let me tell you, that screen practically glowed. Diligent restorations and thorough extras are also part of the VinSyn brand—sometimes I think they care more about some of these movies than the people who made them—so expect the packaging to be top-notch as well.