Hitler's Hollywood

Stephanie Prange

June 6, 2018

Kino Lorber’s July slate of disc releases features everything from crime series to documentaries, cult classics, horror and foreign films.

Due July 3 on Blu-ray Disc ($29.95) and DVD ($19.95) with numerous special features is the drama Personal Problems (1980), an ensemble piece directed by Bill Gunn that explores black working-class lives.

It appears for the first time in a full-length, two-part version restored from the original camera tapes.

Also coming July 3 on Blu-ray ($29.95) is the Code Red release Monster Shark aka Devilfish (1984), a cult classic monster favorite from Italy in which a marine biologist, a dolphin trainer, a research scientist and a local sheriff try to hunt down a large sea monster, a shark/octopus hybrid that’s devouring swimmers and fishermen off a south Florida coast.

Special features include audio commentary with star Michael Sopkiw and reversible Blu-ray art.

Coming July 10 is the documentary Hitler’s Hollywood on DVD ($29.95). The film asks what the Nazi cinema of the Third Reich reveals about its period and its people. About 1,000 feature films were made in Germany between 1933 and 1945: musicals, melodramas, romances, costume dramas and war films. Only a few were overtly Nazi propaganda films. The documentary explains how stereotypes of the “enemy” and values of love and hate managed to be planted into viewers’ heads through the screen.

Due July  17 is The Emma & Lachy Show on DVD ($14.99), a kids show in the style of “The Wiggles.” Kids can try an Irish Jig with Lachy as he meets Phil the Fluter and attends a traditional Irish dancing ball and dance ballet with Emma and the fairies as they learn some new moves to teach to their dollies.

Also coming July 17 is Modus Season 1 on Blu-ray ($34.95) and DVD ($29.95), a Swedish detective series following a psychologist and ex-FBI profiler as she finds herself and her autistic daughter drawn into an investigation of a series of disturbing and brutal deaths in Stockholm. The series is based on the best-selling novels of Anne Holt.

Due July 24 on Blu-ray ($29.95) is the exploitation horror film Love Me Deadly, from Code Red.  Lindsay has an unusual fascination with the dead. She often finds herself at funerals for people she doesn’t even know. Once the mourners have cleared out, she’s drawn to the corpse by an unspeakable sexual curiosity. It appears that this obsession with the recently deceased has been brewing within Lindsay for quite some time and might have been something to do with her late father. She makes an attempt at a normal relationship (Lyle Waggoner), but is also lured into a corpse-loving cult by a creepy undertaker. Christopher Stone, Timothy Scott and H.B. Halicki co-star in this 1972 cult classic.

Special features include a new 2K Scan of the original camera negative of the uncut version, audio commentary with producer Buck Edwards, the film in “Maria’s B Movie Mayhem Mode,” the original theatrical trailer, and reversible art.

Also coming July 24 is Indivisible on DVD ($29.95) and Blu-ray ($34.95), an Italian drama about the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood. Dasy and Viola are conjoined twin sisters living in the suburbs of Naples. They are blessed with beautiful voices and, thanks to their performances at local weddings, communions and baptisms, have become the breadwinners for their entire family. Kept isolated from the world by their exploitative father, their lives are turned upside down when one of them falls in love for the first time, and they discover that it is possible for them to be separated. Special features include behind-the-scenes footage and a trailer.