New to Rent By Mail for May 2 2024

IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (1958) 

Summoned to the silver screen by sci-fi specialist Edward L. Cahn (Curse of the Faceless Man)—and too terrifying to even have a name!—“It” is a seemingly invincible monster that is hell-bent on killing everybody on a mission to Mars. This life-devouring alien brushes aside bullets and even nuclear blasts—making it one very cold-hearted Cold War-style invader. When his crew is brutally murdered on a Mars expedition, Commander Carruthers (Marshall Thompson, First Man into Space) becomes the prime suspect. Taken into custody and facing a court-martial back on Earth, he discovers that the real killer—a grotesque, slithering “It”—has stowed aboard the earthbound ship. But the indestructible creature has already begun a harrowing in-flight rampage, knocking off the members of the crew one by one. Now, as the spaceship heads home toward a panic-stricken Earth, the remaining crew must find some way to stop the unstoppable…“It." (BLU-RAY)

NO BEARS (2022) (Janus Contemporaries)

One of the world’s great cinema artists, Jafar Panahi has been carefully crafting self-reflexive works about artistic, personal, and political freedom for the past three decades, despite being banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government since 2010. In No Bears—completed shortly before his imprisonment in 2022—Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, a dissident filmmaker who relocates to a rural border town to direct a film remotely in nearby Turkey and finds himself embroiled in a local scandal. As he struggles to complete his feature, Panahi must confront the opposing pulls of tradition and progress, city and country, belief and evidence, as well as the universal desire to reject oppression. (BLU-RAY)

WEREWOLF OF WASHINGTON (1973)

Watergate-era governmental corruption inspired this cinematic howl of anger from boundary-breaking auteur Milton Moses Ginsberg (Coming Apart). The Werewolf of Washington is a biting satire that savagely attacks beltway politics while paying playful homage to the wolfman pictures of the past. Dean Stockwell (Blue Velvet) stars as a presidential aide whose rise to power is exacerbated by the bite of a wolf, transforming him into a bloodthirsty beast with the rising of every full moon. As history has shown, a monster in the White House is not strictly a 1970s phenomenon, and so, half a century later, The Werewolf of Washington is as eviscerating and relevant as ever. This edition includes a special director’s cut prepared by Ginsberg shortly before his death in 2021, as well as a 2K restoration of the 1973 theatrical release version. (BLU-RAY)

STAYING ALIVE (1983) 

Five years later and Tony Manero’s Saturday Night Fever is still burning. Now he’s strutting toward his biggest challenge yet—making it as a dancer on the Broadway stage. Screen legend John Travolta (Grease, Face/Off) is larger than life as he recreates his iconic character in this spectacularly visual musical that also sizzles with sensational performances by Cynthia Rhodes (Flashdance, Dirty Dancing) and Finola Hughes (Aspen Extreme) as the women in Tony’s life. Like its predecessor, Staying Alive pulsates with the groove-powered excitement of 5 new Bee Gees songs plus Frank Stallone’s high-intensity scoring which includes his hit, “Far from Over.” And watch closely to catch a Hitchcockian cameo appearance by producer-director-writer-superstar Sylvester Stallone (Rocky, Rambo)! (BLU-RAY + 4KULTRAHD)

THE OTHERS (2001) (Criterion Collection)

A remote manor; hushed, candlelit atmosphere; and shivery, supernatural menace. With his first English-language feature, Chilean Spanish writer-director-composer Alejandro Amenábar resurrected the classic gothic chiller to create a ghost story of uncommon emotional resonance. Nicole Kidman stars as a World War II–era mother whose imperiousness masks a terrifying pain, as she keeps her light-sensitive children enshrouded in darkness on her country estate. The arrival of three new servants punctures her insular world—and seems to disturb the balance between the living and the dead. With each stunning twist and turn, Amenábar immerses us more deeply in a realm haunted not only by spirits but also by guilt, trauma, and repression. (BLU-RAY + 4KULTRAHD)