Boutique home entertainment label Radiance Films are relative newcomers on the scene, but are certainly making their presence known. Since launching their first releases in January of this year, they have gone from strength-to-strength with some killer releases, and far more unmissable discs to come on their slate. But looking at two of their most recent – The Iron Prefect, and Red Sun – we see a real taste of their passion for the format. These two cult flicks are packed with incredible bonus features, booklets, reversible sleeves – everything a collector could ever want. The films (more info on them below) look and sound exquisite on the Blu-ray format, too.
We took a closer look at the packaging of these releases.
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THE IRON PREFECT
Based on the true story of the Iron Prefect, Cesare Mori, who was sent to Sicily for an Eliot Ness-in-The Untouchables style clean up of the mafia. Mori approaches organised crime on the island with uncompromising force even in the face of mass murders designed to scare him off. Pasquale Squitieri (The Climber) directs this stunning period piece which won the David di Donatello award for best film and features spaghetti western icon Giuliano Gemma brilliantly playing against type as the titular hero, winning him an award for his performance at the prestigious Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Alongside Gemma are the cream of international film from the period with co-stars Claudia Cardinale (The Day of the Owl) and Francisco Rabal (Sorcerer), the key surveyor of Italy’s civic cinema screenwriter Ugo Pirro (The Working Class Goes to Heaven) and legendary composer Ennio Morricone (Once Upon a Time in America).
LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES
- 2K restoration of the film from the original negative presented with Italian and English audio options
- Uncompressed mono PCM audio
- Archival interview with director Pasquale Squitieri and star Giuliano Gemma (2009)
- New interview with Squitieri biographer Domenico Monetti (2023)
- New appreciation of Giuliano Gemma and the film by filmmaker Alex Cox (2023)
- Original trailer
- New and improved English subtitles for Italian audio and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing for English audio
- Reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters
- Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Italian cinema expert Guido Bonsaver and an original article on the real-life Cesare Mori and his Mafia raid as depicted within the film
- Limited edition of 2000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings
Also available in USA/Canada from Radiance’s partners MVD, Diabolik, Rough Cut Canada
Year: 1977
Cert: TBC
Format: Blu-ray
Region: AB
RAD022BDLE
EAN: 5060974680429
Release date: 17/07/23
RED SUN
Thomas (Marquard Bohm, Kings of the Road) gets a ride to Munich where he finds his ex-girlfriend Peggy (counter culture activist and model Uschi Obermaier) who takes him in. In her flat he finds Peggy and her roommates have a commune-like lifestyle where they kill the men in their lives after five days, but will Thomas realise in time? A pop fantasy focused on the post-’68 and women’s liberation movements, Red Sun was compared to a comic strip by Wim Wenders and is a beautiful art-genre collision that is both brilliantly bizarre and provocative. Director Rudolf Thome was an emerging talent in the New German Cinema alongside Wenders, Fassbinder and Herzog, but received little international distribution and fell into obscurity despite a consistent career covering six decades. Radiance Films is proud to present Red Sun to English-speaking audiences for the first time in a restoration overseen by Thome.
LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES
- High-definition digital transfer overseen by director Rudolf Thome
- Select scene commentary with Thome and Rainer Langhans, Obermaier’s boyfriend and Kommune 1 member who served as inspiration for the film and was on set for the shoot
- Rote Sonne between Pop Sensibility and Social Critique – A newly produced visual essay by scholar Johannes von Moltke on Red Sun, which looks at the social and cultural influences on the film and provides context for the era in which it was made (2022, 21 mins)
- From Oberhausen to the Fall of the Wall: A visual essay by academic and programmer Margaret Deriaz tracing the development of the New German Cinema from the Oberhausen Manifesto to the fall of the Berlin wall (2023, 50 mins)
- Reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters
- Limited edition 52-page booklet featuring new writing on the film by Samm Deighan, newly translated archival letters by Wim Wenders, critic Enno Patalas and the German Film Evaluation Office on the film’s official submission, newly translated archival interview with Rudolf Thome and an overview reviews
- Limited edition of 2000 copies (each for the UK and US), presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings
Also available in USA/Canada from Radiance’s partners MVD, Diabolik, Grindhouse
Year: 1970
Cert: 12
Format: Blu-ray
Region: Free
RAD006BDLE
EAN: 5060974680108
Release date: 19/06/23