THE RAYGUN NEWSLETTER RETURNS :: WEEK COMMENCING JANUARY 21 2024

PIRATE ORDERED TO PAY MASSIVE FINE, COSTS

PIRACY REPORTED BY NETWORK FINALLY PUNISHED…

…AS GLOBAL PIRACY ON THE RISE

EUREKA HEADS TO THE US AFTER INKING DEAL…

…MVD TO RELEASE PIONEER’S PRODUCT IN THE US

INDICATOR UNVEILS MARCH, APRIL TITLES

SCALA!!! RELEASE FINDS A WIDE AUDIENCE…

…AND CALIGULA RIDES AGAIN

WONKA DATES, DETAIL REVEALED

BAFTA NOMINATIONS GIVE OPPENHEIMER BOOST

TRAILERS OF THE WEEK

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It was a good week for… Eureka heading to the US…

It was a bad week for… A few glaring omissions in the BAFTA nominations…

We’ve been watching… Caligula (see below) and a whole bunch of physical media for our FIlm Stories reviews, taking in everything from Peeping Tom, to Femme, by way of Nightmares In A Damaged Brain and Typist Artist Pirate King (more on that next week)…

When pioneering company Network Releasing, which had done as much as any other UK supplier to bring obscure and near-forgotten gems to the UK market, notably on the British film and television front, it saw, according to a recent court case, more than 30 jobs being lost. Justice of some form was served as DVD pirate John Williams was ordered to pay a whopping £75,000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act after pleasing guilty to two offences "relating to the counterfeit cult and classic movies and TV series”. The 72-year-old pirate, of Great Cornard, Suffolk, was also fined £7,500 and given a 16-month suspended jail sentence, as well as being ordered to pay more than £42,000 in costs. His home had been raided after Network reported him for selling cult TV and film product online, and, the BBC noted: “In October 2021, more than 40,000 copied DVDs were seized from his home, along with computers, disc burners, a colour photocopier with printouts of DVD box paper insert sleeves, and address label stickers.” Suffolk Trading Standards was praised for its work in bringing Williams to court and the organisation mentioned the collapse of Network

Graham Crisp, head of Suffolk Trading Standards, said the original complainant was a UK company called Network Distributing Ltd, whose business involved buying copyright licensing rights and would then restore and remaster classic TV and films for DVD. However, the company ceased trading in June last year with the loss of nearly 30 jobs. Williams, and those that supply counterfeit discs, contributed to Network's demise and have now actually limited the amount of cult TV and film available to purchase because these titles now remain in the archives and may never become available to the public. We found correspondence from Williams where he said that trading standards were only concerned with large-scale counterfeiters connected to organised crime and did not have the resources or time to come after people like him. He was wrong. When we find evidence of criminal activity we will always act.”

At the other end of the scale, the kind of pirates that maybe do have links to organised crime and operate on a large scale were covered off by a report just published by MUSO looking at global online piracy. It suggested that visits to dodgy websites offering illegal downloads and streams had grown by 12 per cent in the last four years. Online piracy sites were visited a staggering 141 billion times in 2023, an average of 386 million every day. The increase is down to technology advances, the cost of living crisis and streaming fatigue and other similar issues, as well as availability. MUSO’s Andy Chatterley said: “In the past 10 years, and specifically in the past five years, we’ve just had a proliferation of these platforms. As a consequence, because they’re behind walled gardens, piracy has increased accordingly and shifted to different technologies. “You could probably make quite a nice direct correlation between streaming services and numbers of subscribers, and increases in piracy and the cost of living and people generally getting subscriptions. “The film or TV piracy issue is ultimately driven by demand for content. When accessing that content is maybe harder in certain territories, that must be driving it.” MUSO believes there are missed opportunities to make people pay for content. The report can be accessed here.

More interesting news from the boutique label sector and one of the pioneers of this sector, Eureka, has just announced that, like its contemporaries such as Arrow and Powerhouse and its Indicator series, has announced it is heading to the States. The indie imprint, founded by the industry legend, the late Ron Benson, has inked a distribution deal with US operator MVD Entertainment, which will look after the label in America. The deal was put together by Eureka’s head of content Kevin Lambert, who worked at the label for 14 years, before leaving to Jon Arrow as head of catalogue production and acquisitions, eventually returning to Eureka last year. The deal will kick off later this year and see US crime classic The Cat And The Canary as well as early Jet Li breakthrough martial arts film Black Mask arriving in the US as well as UK. The US titles will see Eureka continuing its vast and varied release strategy, which takes in everything from classic cinema from the silent era through to contemporary titles, and every genre, including martial arts, horror and plenty more.

Comment on the Eureka and MVD deal came from Kevin Lambert himself, who said: “It’s extremely exciting to be partnering with MVD for our North American physical and digital distribution. We can’t wait to get our first releases out to US retailers, and we look forward to bringing the best of auteur and classic cinema, including our celebrated Masters of Cinema series, to a wider audience. It is a big new step forward for the company, and I’m sure Blu-ray collectors will be thrilled to have another of the world’s best labels available in North America.” MVD Entertainment Group’s director of home video sales and acquisitions, Eric D. Wilkinson, commented: "MVD Entertainment Group is thrilled to be partnering with Eureka Entertainment and help bring this premium collector's label to North America. I very much look forward to working with the Eureka! team and am even more excited to be adding Eureka! titles to my personal collection!” Eureka Entertainment md Ruth Schofield added: “With Kevin’s return to the company it seemed like a logical move to capitalise on his knowledge of multi-territory distribution and finally fulfil the desires of our fans. We’re asked daily when we will be able to distribute in North America, and I’m very happy that the day has come to be able to make those fans’ wishes come true.”

Talking of boutique labels, another imprint, Powerhouse’s Indicator series, has made two months’ worth of announcements, revealing its titles for March and April. It includes the usual eclectic range you’d expect from the imprint, taking in both Mexican cult films and erotica from French legend Jean Rollin. Here’s the company’s Sam Dunn on its first announcements of the year. He said: “After an exciting year for Powerhouse – during which we published some of our most ambitious box sets (including collections of low-budget filmmaker Michael J Murphy and blood-and-thunder actor Tod Slaughter) and finally released our first UHD editions – our first new-release announcements of 2024 find us continuing to offer a rich and varied diet for intrepid film lovers. On 25 March, we have a trio of wild Mexican cult movies, all directed by genre-fan favourite René Cardona: 1967's The Panther Women, 1968's The Bat Woman, and 1970's Santo vs. the Riders of Terror. These action-packed examples of the popular 'lucha libre' genre feature female wrestlers, masked men, and evil villains who must be defeated at all costs. On 22 April, we will release the next two instalments in our ongoing series of French auteur Jean Rollin's surreal and erotic films: 1970's The Nude Vampire, and 1974's The Demoniacs. We announced all five of these deluxe editions this week, and the response across the fan forums, and on social media, has been extremely positive, and initial orders bode well."

Monday January 22 sees the release of the best documentary we’ve seen over the past 12 months (and bene talking about on here for a while), in the shape of Scala!!!, or to give it its full title, Scala!!! Or, the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits. Its release on Blu-ray by the BFI – it’s also on the BFI Player – comes in the midst of an excellent campaign including a UK tour that has seen its directors, former BFI home ent supremo Jane Giles and writer Ali Catterall, travelling the length and breadth of the country to talk about the film. The BFI’s Phil Roberts said: “Scala!!! has touched a nerve with the cinephile community and it has become a real talking point. As well as a deluge of social media coverage there's also been editorial across traditional, old-school media from The Daily Telegraph to The New Statesman to BBC London. The film has massively exceeded box office expectations, helped no doubt by the directors Jane Giles and Ali Catterall's tireless energy in attending Q&As around the country. After a short window Blu-ray and Digital audiences will get to see what all the fuss is about from Monday."

Talking of the Scala!!! film, the BFI on the Southbank has bene running a season celebrating the rep cinema and the films it showed there during its 15 year stint. It’s amazing how many of them are now home entertainment staples and available more widely – thanks, in no small part, to the status conferred on them by numerous screenings at leftfield cinemas such as the Scala. On Saturday night, in great Scala and BFI tradition, it hosted a surprise screening with no clues beforehand as to the film’s identity. And the film? It was the newly restored and re-edited Caligula, the controversial tale of the Roman emperor directed (or not) by Tinto Brass. Boasting an all-star cast, including Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren and such luminaries as John Gielgud and Peter O’Toole, the much trouble production saw its cast and crew in turmoil and, after Penthouse owner and the film’s backer Bob Guccione edited himself, inserting hardcore adult material into the film, many of them disassociating themselves from it. Now it has been given a new lease of life and returned closer to the original vision of the film, with a near-three hour running time. After premiering at Cannes last year, it is being released by Vertigo in the UK at cinemas, with a physical home entertainment release almost certainly on the cards. And, given the reaction on Saturday night at the BFI screening – from walkouts to cheers, from howls of laughter ate applause – it will go down a treat.

On the more mainstream front, meanwhile, Warner has announced plans for the home release of its current blockbuster Wonka. The film is now the 27th most successful of all time at the UK box office, where it was amassed more than £58 million, It is poised in the next few days to overtake Oppenheimer to become the second highest grossing film released in 2023, bested only by another Warner title, the juggernaut that is Barbie. The film, directed by homegrown master Paul King, is released on Monday January 22 on premium VOD, with the 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD versions landing on March 4 in the UK (three days prior to this in Ireland). The first two physical formats will include an extras-laden disc of Making Of featurettes and more, looking at the production and certain elements of the film.

Of course the last week has seen a raft of nominations and awards, with the BAFTA nominations leading the charge, as the big guns from 2023 line up to vie for the gongs at the forthcoming awards, unveiled next month at a glittering ceremony. Leading the way is Oppenheimer, with a raft of nominations that saw it easily beating its summer 2023 rival Barbie in terms of nods received ahead of the awards. It earned 13, taking in best film, director, adapted screenplay, leading actor for Cillian Murphy, supporting actress for Emily Blunt, supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr, cinematography, editing, costume design, makeup and hair, original score, production design, and sound. Given its current availability on home entertainment formats, the Christopher Nolan directed film should receive not only a further box office boost but also a fillip on physical and digital too. Poor Things, currently performing very well thank you at the box office, has 11 in all, with the full list of nominations over here.

TRAILERS OF THE WEEK