In 1998 Grindhouse and Rolling Thunder released Lucio Fulci's uncut "The Beyond" to theaters as a midnight movie. It was pretty glorious. Here are some flyers for it from my local theaters.

Japanese 6-disc"Grindhouse"(2007) DVD boxset.

This film wasn't anyone's shining hour, except maybe Rob Zombie's. Won't bore you with my love(the concept)/hate(the faux nostalgia genre it started) relationship with the film. 

 In the USA "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof" were released as a single film entitled "Grindhouse" with fake vintage trailers sprinkled between the films. Most countries got the films released separately, which is some typical Weinstein bullshit. In an even bigger bullshit move, the film was split in two, with each title being released separately and re-cut for DVD and Blu-ray releases in the States without the phony trailers. The Japanese set has 6 discs. The longer, stand alone cuts of each film get a disc and their own "making of" discs. The American theatrical experience of "Grindhouse" is presented intact with trailers and the original, shorter cuts of the features. Not sure what's on the Grindhouse SIDE B JAPAN SPECIAL DISC...anyway here's the beautiful Japanese Region 2 set.  My crappy pics don't do it justice. 

 

12 inches of "Pulp Fiction"

Pulp Fiction was released on Oct 12th, 1994 and went on to gross a boatload of cash for Miramax. Back then it was the norm for a film to take 6-9 months, or even a year, to reach home video. Laserdisc owners sometimes had to wait even longer.  Pulp Fiction was still playing in first run theaters in the early months of 1995. I was working at a laserdisc shop at the time and the Japanese laserdisc of Pulp Fiction had been released. We had the biggest movie going at the time available for rental while it was still in theaters. It's nothing nowadays, but at the time it was a major score. This is the only LD I still own. Please note the last picture as it shows the difference between the original art and the re-touched version that replaced it and is now commonplace.

"A Better Tomorrow II" original VHS covers

Was going through some old paperwork today and discovered these. As much as I hate dealing with people, I kinda miss searching out stores that catered to Chinese viewers. Nothing like laying your eyes on a goldmine of video covers for the first time and then heading to the restaurant next door for dim sum with your VHS score afterwards. But them days are over, now it's click, click, and order in. 

 

Original lobby card for Yasuharu Hasebe's "Black Tight Killers". Big thanks to Stephen for this one!

Tokyo Theater Memories

Just found out a few very cool Tokyo movie theaters have closed. Two were in Asakusa, on a block that house 4 or 5 theaters in a row. One of the closed theaters showed newish foreign action movies. It's defunct sister theater showed Japanese films from the '60s to the mid '80s. Lots of samurai and yakuza fare. If the translation was correct these theaters have been around since the mid-1940s. Sadly, I always seemed to miss a Female Prisoner Scorpion or Lone Wolf and Cub movie by a few days on my travels to Tokyo.  

Theater-N in Shibuya also closed it's doors recently. I saw The Descent 2 there a few years back. It was a nice, decent sized theater with programing that seemed to cater to the arthouse and "cult" movie crowd. 

Here are some pics of the theater displays in Asakusa.