Now then… the big news today is that our friends at the new Warner Clockwork label have finally begun teasing the home video (Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD) announcement for their restored Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971). Watch for the announcement to be made on 11/10 (next Tuesday). We think that the BFI will have their own disc SKUs in the UK early next year, and that Warner Clockwork will release the US SKUs under their own branding. But we’ll have to wait until next week to confirm that.
Also, the good people at Second Sight Films in the UK have begun teasing their own new 4K restoration of George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead (1985) for release on Blu-ray and 4K UHD next year. We have it on good authority that this release will correct many of the issues with Shout! Factory’s own recent 4K release (which Stephen reviewed here on The Bits back in June).
Vinegar Syndrome has announced that they’re releasing Michael Mann’s Manhunter: The Original 1986 Theatrical Version in 4K Ultra HD. You can pre-order it on their website now here. This will also include the Legacy Director’s Cut of the film. Unfortunately, it will not include Mann’s new The Final Cut version, which is exclusive to StudioCanal in the UK (and there’s currently no sign that this is being made available to a US distributor at the moment). So if you’re a fan of this film, you have to buy both SKUs.
I should add that there have been online rumors that The Devils and Manhunter: The Final Cut could both eventually get a US 4K release from Criterion next year. To be 100% clear, that’s not impossible, but nothing I’ve heard at the moment suggests this to actually be the case. So make your plans accordingly.
Also, Radiance Films has just announced their February slate, which includes Valerio Zurlini’s The Desert of the Tartars (1976) on Blu-ray, Jacques Rivette’s Le Pont du Nord (1981) on 4K UHD + Blu-ray, John D. Hancock’s Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) on 4K UHD + Blu-ray, and Shinobi: Volume 3 (including Mist Saizo Strikes Back, The Three Enemies, and Mission: Iron Castle) on Blu-ray. Click here for more details. The street date for all is 2/22/27.
And Imprint Films has revealed a couple of new 4K Ultra HD catalog editions as well, including The Keep: Limited Edition (1983) and the Swamp Thing Collection: Limited Edition (1982-1990) on 1/20/27, and a New York, New York: Limited Edition (1977) on 11/25/26.
Okay, if you’re a Digital Bits Patreon subscriber, I’ll have a new My Two Cents: A Video Blog post up over there very soon. You can subscribe for as little as $6 a month, and it goes to help support our work here at The Bits (it’s really the only way we can afford to keep this website going), so if you’ve been a reader here for any length of time and find what we do valuable, please consider joining us there (click here)!
Stay tuned, friends…
- Bill Hunt
(You can follow Bill on social media on Twitter/X, BlueSky, and Facebook, and also here on Patreon)