Re: Deaf Crocodile
Posted: Sat May 16, 2026 7:04 am
A triple-win!
Any chance these may be retrospectively added to new "limited slipcover" releases of the films that had the current Deluxe/Standard edition model? I'm sad I have a couple of standard releases, not because they are not Deluxe in a hardbox, but because they don't have the booklets like the older keepcase Deaf Croc releases.TechnicolorAcid wrote: Sat May 16, 2026 3:52 amwhile booklets are set to become 48 pages but will now be included inside both limited and standard releases.
*JULY - DECEMBER 2026 SUBSCRIPTION TITLE REVEAL #1*
JAN S. KOLÁR CZECH SILENTS: One of the great pioneers of the early Czech film industry, director and writer Jan S. Kolár (1896-1973) worked in a number of genres: supernatural fantasy, medieval epics, romantic melodrama, sci-fi and more. Deaf Crocodile is thrilled to collaborate with the Národní filmový archív, Prague and Comeback Company on this first-ever Blu-ray release of two of Kolár’s finest features.
THE ARRIVAL FROM THE DARKNESS (PŘÍCHOZÍ Z TEMNOT) – 1921, NFA, 62 min. Much wilder-than-you-think-it-will-be occult story about a book collector (Theodor Pištěk) who uses an ancient manuscript to revive his long-dormant 16th century ancestor (Karel Lamač) – who then tries to steal the collector’s wife (Anny Ondra), thinking she’s his long-lost love Alena. Mad esoteric shenanigans involving ruined castles, alchemists, time travel, the Elixir of Life, the Black Plague and Black Magic rituals make this one of the most surprising genre treats of the Silent era. With an experimental musical score by the Silent film trio Neuvěřitelno.
ST. WENCESLAS (SVATÝ VÁCLAV) – 1929, NFA, 103 min., Kolár’s sweeping medieval epic set in 10th century Bohemia about the struggle between paganism and Christianity, centered around the prince (and later saint) Wenceslas (Zdeněk Štěpánek). With a new score for this release by Silent film composer Ben Model.
All films feature Czech intertitles with English subtitles. Bonus features to be announced later.
#deafcrocodile #silentfilm #czechfilm #blackandwhitefilm #bluray #stwenceslas #blackandwhitehorror
***JULY - DECEMBER 2026 SUBSCRIPTION TITLE REVEAL #2***
Treasures of Soviet Animation, Vol. 4: Roman Davydov’s THE ADVENTURES OF MOWGLI (MAUGLI) - 1967-1971, Soyuzmultfilm, 90 min.
The 4th installment in our ongoing series of newly restored Soviet animated gems from Soyuzmultfilm features one of the most visually stunning animated films ever made in Russia (or anywhere). Director Roman Davydov’s utterly glorious adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s 'The Jungle Book' was originally released as 5 separate short films between 1967 – 1971 and then combined into a single feature -- and frankly puts the better-known Disney version to shame with its phenomenal colors and highly stylized design.
Featuring in-house restoration work by Deaf Crocodile!
NOTE: Stills are unrestored and not indicative of the final released version. Also, the order of title announcements does not correspond to the months of release! Full month-by-month release details will come on Friday, along with the final subscription price.
#deafcrocodile #bluray #blurayanimation #2danimation #sovietanimation #thejunglebook #theadventuresofmowgli #treasuresofsovietanimation #preorder #culmovies
Alright, here's announcement #4 - another box set!
MURDERERS AMONG US: DEFA ANTI-FASCIST FILMS [5-FILM BOX SET]
“*The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there*,” wrote English novelist L.P. Hartley in 1953. And yet, perhaps not so differently. Fascism and right-wing ideologies are on the rise worldwide these days, including here in America. It’s a good time to take a look at a remarkable group of films made by East Germany’s DEFA Studios in the post-WWII period which addressed the rise and rot of fascism in Germany since 1933 – even more remarkable given that they were made under strict Soviet and GDR control. All of the filmmakers and actors had been directly or indirectly impacted by the war: director Falk Harnack had fought with the White Rose resistance group and lost his brother to the Nazis, while author Bruno Apitz and actor Erwin Geschonneck had survived the Nazi concentration camps. Other film artists had worked at the UFA studio under Nazi authorities, even producing anti-Semitic propaganda films. Fascism and WWII had marked all of them. To quote (East) German film historian Christianne Mückenberger, “Here were films made by directors of their own free will. Nobody needed to commission them. These were ‘confessional films’...”
Shot primarily in stark black-and-white, these films – a selection of many anti-fascist films made by the DEFA Studios from 1946 to 1992 -- are pathologically obsessed with guilt, fear, and retribution, haunted by the terrors of the recent past and relentlessly asking, “How could this happen to us, to everyday people?”
Our enormous thanks to the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for collaborating with us on this release.
**Note:** As we approach the release date for the box set, we will announce the other four titles in the set. Though the box title should be a big clue to one of the five films!
Great news if true, but when the rumour first popped up a couple of years ago they were swift to deny it, saying that the US rights weren't available.TechnicolorAcid wrote: Tue May 19, 2026 10:24 pm Oh I forgot but apparently they’re doing a release of Lemonade Joe, which is easily the title I’m most excited for if it is coming this cycle because it’s basically like if the team of Adela Has Not Supper Yet transposed the energy of that film into a proto-Blazing Saddles Western comedy that moves at a gag a second speed, if anyone loves Adela (as I’m sure many do) than Lemonade Joe is a perfect companion to it.
Title 8:SCARLET SAILS (ALYE PARUSA), 1961, Mosfilm, 88 min. An often-overlooked gem from Soviet fantasy master Aleksandr Ptushko (ILYA MUROMETS, RUSLAN & LUDMILA), SCARLET SAILS is a lovely paean to dreamers and the world of dreams, to outsiders and outcasts, rebels and sailors and storytellers – to those who live differently than the rest of us, no matter who tries to stop them.
The film follows two parallel stories: the first about Assol, daughter of an impoverished sailor (Ivan Pereverzev from SADKO and NEBO ZOVYOT). As a young girl, an old storyteller predicts her destiny: "One day the sun will shine upon a white ship with scarlet sails. The white ship will slice through the waves and move right towards you." This shimmering dream sustains her into adulthood when she’s played by the luminous Anastasiya Vertinskaya (WAR & PEACE, AMPHIBIAN MAN, HAMLET). The second story revolves around Arthur, the rebellious son of an aristocrat, who only dreams of shipwrecks, pirates and going off to sea – as an adult he’s played by popular Soviet actor Vasiliy Lanovoy (WAR & PEACE, ANNA KARENINA).
Ptushko’s films are filled with images of the sea and voyages, in SADKO, SAMPO and THE TALE OF TSAR SALTAN, and this is his most lyrical homage to the lore and lure of the ocean: windmills framed in the darkening sky, bonfires flickering on cliffs, storm-tossed waves crashing to shore, faces bathed in red firelight like a Caravaggio painting. SCARLET SAILS was Ptushko’s follow-up to SAMPO, and the two films are companion pieces in many ways, both brilliantly shot by the cinematography team of Gennadi Tsekavyj and Viktor Yakushev. And we defy you not to weep at the film’s stunning climax, arguably the most purely emotional sequence in all of Ptushko’s filmography. Beautifully restored by Mosfilm in 4K for its first-ever U.S. Blu-ray release by Deaf Crocodile, in association with Seagull Films.
In Russian with English subtitles.
Title 9:Second one is no surprise to anyone, everywhere. You know him. You love him! He comes from Earth. But his name is...
ROY! FROM!! SPACE!!!
[universe explodes with applause]
ROY FROM SPACE (ROY DEL ESPACIO) – 1983, Andrea Pérez Mata, 64 min. Completely lost for over 40 years and only the 3rd animated feature ever produced in Mexico, ROY FROM SPACE has finally returned, newly scanned from the original 35mm negative and lovingly restored by Deaf Crocodile! The only feature made by noted titles and commercials animator Héctor López Carmona, ROY is a wildly entertaining work of Outsider / Sci-Fi Animation, loosely inspired (ahem) by the classic 1930s Flash Gordon serials.
"I'm Roy from Space. I come from Earth,” our helmet-wearing hero announces with a straight face (note: he never takes off his helmet, indoors or outdoors), and we follow as he fights a nonstop stream of synthesizer-voiced robots and flying saucers in the service of wicked Ming-the-Merciless clone “King Alom” while fending off the king’s hot-blooded daughter. Produced over the course of 3 years, often with the help of non-professional animators, ROY features an incredibly strange and disorienting Outsider Animation style, ala DELTA SPACE MISSION: faces and body parts constantly shift, expanding and contracting without warning; bodies and feet don't seem connected to floors or walls; characters tumble through space like a Merce Cunningham modern dance piece. In other words, it’s a mind-altering blast.
Working with the daughter of original producer Ulises Pérez Aguirre, Deaf Crocodile was able to locate the 35mm film elements at the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico, but were shocked to discover 4-1/2 minutes of live-action footage had been slugged into the film from a Japanese sci-fi movie without permission. Independent animators Isabelle Aspin and Brian Smee were brought in to replace this bootleg footage, creating new animation using the cel-painted techniques and style of the original. Featuring a groove-a-delic synth-laden score by Ernesto Cortazar and the voices of Salvador Nájar, Patricia Martínez and Rubén Moya.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
THE MAN WHO THOUGHT LIFE (MANDEN DER TÆNKTE TING) – 1969, Danish Film Inst., 97 min.
A rare, overlooked gem of late 1960s Sci-Fi, Danish director Jens Ravn’s eerie, hypnotic thriller opens on a respected doctor, Max Holst (Preben Neergaard) who is brought in to examine an enigmatic, arrogant man, Steinmetz (John Price). Steinmetz can miraculously make objects materialize by focusing his mind (including an expensive cigar, in the film’s recurring leitmotif). When he attempts to blackmail Dr. Holst into performing surgery to expand this sinister brainpower, Holst refuses – and Steinmetz calls to “life” a mirror image that sets out to destroy the doctor’s willpower.
Brilliantly shot in B&W Scope by cinematographer Witold Leszczyński, with a disturbing minimalist score by Per Nørgaard (BABETTE’S FEAST), the film has the angular 60s Mod / Sci-Fi vibe of films like THE UNKNOWN MAN OF SHANDIGOR and TIME OF ROSES (both Deaf Crocodile releases) and British TV shows like “The Prisoner” and “The Avengers,” with labyrinthine corridors, banks of geometric lights and nurses whizzing past on electric scooters. (Deaf Croc fans will also notice doppelganger similarities to Henrik Galeen’s silent horror THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE.)
“I will open the depths of existence to you, and will make all your ideas collapse violently," Steinmetz both promises and threatens Holst – and as we descend down the rabbit-hole of Ravn’s gripping, Stanley Kubrick-meets-Kiyoshi Kurosawa cerebral horror, we too begin to lose our grip on reality, until it may be too late. Deaf Crocodile is thrilled to present this first-ever U.S. Blu-ray release of the film, in collaboration with the Danish Film Institute.
In Danish with English subtitles.