New to Rent By Mail for July 10 2024

BARBARELLA (1968) 

Slip out of your spacesuit and into something more comfortable! It's time to join Barbarella on a series of cosmic adventures in this Dino De Laurentiis production directed by Roger Vadim (And God Created Woman) and starring Jane Fonda as the intergalactic glamour puss created by comic book artist Jean-Claude Forest.

It is the year 40,000ad. When evil scientist Durand Durand (Milo O'Shea) creates a deadly weapon with the potential to cause mass devastation, the President of Earth dispatches Barbarella (Fonda) to hunt him down. Crash-landing in an icy wilderness somewhere within the Tau Ceti planetary system, Barbarella is rescued by Mark Hand (Ugo Tognazzi, La Cage Aux Folles) and guided by the blind angel Pygar (John Phillip Law, Danger: Diabolik) to Durand's lair in Sogo, a city of corruption and debauchery, where an encounter with the Great Tyrant Black Queen (Anita Pallenberg, Performance) and her minions throws her mission into jeopardy. (4K ULTRA HD and BLU-RAY)

MARTIN (1977)

Young Martin (John Amplas) is entirely convinced that he is an 84-year-old blood-sucking vampire. Without fangs or mystical powers, Martin injects women with sedatives and drinks their blood through wounds inflicted with razor blades. After moving to Braddock, Penn., to live with his superstitious uncle (Lincoln Maazel), who also believes Martin is a vampire, Martin tries to prey exclusively on criminals and thugs but stumbles when he falls for a housewife (Sara Venable). (4K ULTRA HD)

THE CONFORMIST (1970)

In Mussolini's Italy, repressed Jean-Louis Trintignant, trying to purge memories of a youthful, homosexual episode – and murder – joins the Fascists in a desperate attempt to fit in. As the reluctant Judas motors to his personal Gethsemane (the assassination of his leftist mentor), he flashes back to a dance party for the blind; an insane asylum in a stadium; and wife Stefania Sandrelli and lover Dominique Sanda dancing the tango in a working class hall. But those are only a few of this political thriller's anthology pieces, others including Trintignant's honeymoon coupling with Sandrelli in a train compartment as the sun sets outside their window; a bimbo lolling on the desk of a fascist functionary, glimpsed in the recesses of his cavernous office; a murder victim's hands leaving bloody streaks on a limousine parked in a wintry forest. (BLU-RAY)

THE EXILES (1961)

The Exiles chronicles one night in the lives of young Native American men and women living in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles. Based entirely on interviews with the participants and their friends, the film follows a group of exiles — transplants from Southwest reservations — as they flirt, drink, party, fight, and dance. After graduating from USC in 1956, Kent Mackenzie began to hang around with a group of young Native Americans in downtown Los Angeles. He then asked them to collaborate on a film that would present a realistic portrayal of life in the community. In 1961, it was finished, but it was rarely seen for nearly fifty years. With UCLA Film & Television Archive’s magnificent restoration and Milestone’s release, The Exiles stunned the film world. It introduced a filmmaker of incredible talent and insight and revealed a subject that had not been seen before or since: the Diaspora of Native Americans who had left the reservations for the city. Gritty, realistic, beautifully photographed, and energized by the brilliant rock-and-roll score by Norman Knowles and The Revels, The Exiles is a cinematic miracle. (BLU-RAY)

FOUR ADVENTURES OF REINETTE AND MIRABELLE (1987)

Shot quickly in and around Paris during a production break on Rohmer’s The Green Ray (Le Rayon Vert), Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle is a breezy, witty film that traces the exploits of two young women—one an ethnology student from the city, the other an unsophisticated aspiring artist from the country. Reinette and Mirabelle (played by Joëlle Miquel and Jessica Forde) become instant friends upon meeting in the first of four vignettes that make up the film (“The Blue Hour”), and in their first two days together, they decide to become roommates in Paris. Throughout the three remaining stories, they encounter many of the inevitable characters of a modern city: the impossible waiter (“The Waiter”), the Metro-station hustler (“The Beggar, the Kleptomaniac and the Hustler”), and the snooty gallery owner (“Selling the Painting”). (BLU-RAY)