Arrow Video has announced the American Horror Project, a new series of box-sets which sees a variety of rarely seen and long-forgotten cult horror films being restored and returned from obscurity and risk of being lost forever due to fragility of original film material. American Horror Project will ensure that these unique slices of the American Nightmare are brought back into the public consciousness and preserved for all to enjoy in brand new High Definition transfers from the best surviving elements.

American Horror Project is a story of the unsung heroes of American horror cinema – films from the USA’s golden age of terror which, for a multitude reasons, have either slipped through the cracks or never gained the recognition they so richly deserve. Films that aren’t mentioned by movie fans in the same hushed tones of reverence as The Exorcist or Halloween – but are every bit as bold, bloody and bizarre as their more famous counterparts.

Everyone knows the classic American horror titles: Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street, to name but a few. But we want to tell you a different story: a story of the unsung heroes of stars-and-stripes terror, films that have remained on the fringes of the genre either through lack of availability or else sheer obscurity. This is where American Horror Project comes in.

Volume One of this series presents three tales of violence and madness from the 1970s. Malatesta's Carnival of Blood (Christopher Speeth, 1973) sees a family arrive at a creepy, dilapidated fairground in search of their missing son, only to find themselves at the mercy of the cannibalistic ghouls lurking beneath the park. Meanwhile, The Witch Who Came from the Sea (Matt Cimber, 1976), stars Millie Perkins (The Diary of Anne Frank) as a young woman whose bizarre and violent fantasies start to bleed into reality – literally. Lastly, every parent's worst nightmare comes true in The Premonition (Robert Allen Schnitzer, 1976), a tale of psychic terror in which five-year-old Janie is snatched away by a strange woman claiming to be her long-lost mother.

The first volume of the The American Horror Project will be released 22nd February 2016 by Arrow Video at the RRP of £59.99. The set will be limited to a run of only 3000 copies.

Limited Edition contents:

• Brand new 2K restorations of the three features

• High definition Blu-ray (1080p) and standard DVD presentations

• Original mono 1.0 audio (Uncompressed PCM on the Blu-rays)

• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• Reversible sleeves for each film featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by the Twins of Evil

• American Horror Project Journal Volume One – Limited edition 60-page booklet featuring new articles on the films from writers Stephen Thrower (Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents), Kim Newman (Nightmare Movies), Kier-La Janisse (House of Psychotic Women) and Brian Albright (Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990: A State-by-State Guide with Interviews)

Special features:

Malatesta's Carnival of Blood

• Introduction to the film by Stephen Thrower

• Audio Commentary by film historian Richard Harland Smith

• The Secrets of Malatesta – an interview with director Christopher Speeth

• Crimson Speak – an interview with writer Werner Liepolt

• Malatesta's Underground – art directors Richard Stange and Alan Johnson discuss the weird, mysterious world of Malatesta's underground

• Outtakes

• Draft script (BD/DVD-ROM content)

• Stills gallery

The Witch Who Came from the Sea

• Introduction to the film by Stephen Thrower

• Audio commentary with director-producer Matt Cimber, actress Millie Perkins and director of photography Dean Cundey

• Tides and Nightmares – brand new making-of documentary featuring interviews with Cimber, Perkins, Cundey and actor John Goff

• A Maiden's Voyage – archive featurette comprising interviews with Cimber, Perkins and Cundey

• Lost at Sea – director Cimber reflects on his notorious cult classic

The Premonition

• Introduction to the film by Stephen Thrower

• Isolated score

• Audio commentary with director-producer Robert Allen Schnitzer

• Pictures from a Premonition – brand new making-of documentary featuring interviews with Schnitzer, composer Henry Mollicone and cinematographer Victor Milt

• Archive interviews with Robert Allen Schnitzer and star Richard Lynch

• Three Robert Allen Schnitzer short films: Vernal Equinox, Terminal Point and A Rumbling in the Land

• 4 Peace spots

• Trailers and TV spots