"Cat People" (1982) (Scream Factory)
I remember that Universal had issued a HD DVD disc of this back when it had taken the losing format's side in the Blu-ray/HD DVD war of the early aughts; once Blu-ray won, Universal declined to issue a Blu-ray. So here's the redoubtable Scream Factory to pick up the slack, and the company has done a mighty fine job bringing this visually elaborate and tricky film to the currently dominant high-def format. It looks great, from stem to stern, and the visual highlights (the blood missing the white shoes! Annette O'Toole's topless swim interrupted! and many more) are particularly gratifying in high-def. The only extra feature: new interviews with the major cast members and director Paul Schrader. All the participants are frank and funny but tell a rather different tale of the film's making than the one in "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls." It's irritating, though, that each of the interviews, which range from six to ten minutes, is a discrete menu file, and there's no "play all" option for them. A quibble. —A-
"Death Wish" (Paramount)
"Frankenstein Created Woman" (Hammer)
"Successive Slidings of Pleasure" (Kino Lorber)
"Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" (Twilight Time)
Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here.