Eureka! Entertainment has announced its September line-in, which consists of four crime epics that have had an immeasurable impact on popular culture around the globe; a couple of crazy kung-fu extravaganzas from the first family of Hong Kong martial arts; a kung-fu soccer comedy starring Yuen Biao; plus re-issues of G. W. Pabst's sordid melodrama Pandora's Box, and Orson Welles' film noir masterpiece, Touch of Evil.

LOUIS FEUILLADE : THE COMPLETE CRIME SERIALS (1913-1918)

Limited Edition 10-disc Blu-ray | 30 September 2024 | £78.99

An early cinematic pioneer with an undeniably pervasive influence, Louis Feuillade made hundreds of films in a short career spanning only a few decades. Today, he is best remembered for his landmark serials Fantômas, Les Vampires, Judex and Tih Minh, four crime epics that have had an immeasurable impact on popular culture around the globe. The Masters of Cinema series is presenting these silent masterworks on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK from astonishing 4K restorations.

Adapted from a series of popular novels by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, Fantômas stars René Navarre as the eponymous criminal mastermind. Across the serial's five episodes, Fantômas is pursued by Inspector Juve (Edmund Breon) and newspaper reporter Jérôme Fandor (Georges Melchior) as he carries out his nefarious schemes. In Les Vampires, journalist Philippe Guérande (Édouard Mathé) attempts to investigate an enigmatic criminal gang operating in the Parisian underworld – a group known only as the Vampires. In Judex, a mysterious vigilante (René Cresté) sets out to bring down a corrupt banker named Favraux (Louis Leubas). Finally, in Tih Minh, a young man (Cresté) returning from an expedition in Indochina becomes embroiled in a game of espionage and thievery with a gang of mysterious jewel thieves.

Feuillade's crime serials had an enormous impact on some of the greatest filmmakers of the twentieth century, chiefly Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock. They also played an important role in the development of the criminal mastermind and masked vigilante characters that would proliferate in pulp magazines, film, television, radio and comic books over the next few decades, including Dr Mabuse, The Shadow and Diabolik. Feuillade's celebrated serials are collected here in their entirety alongside a wealth of special features.

LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY BOX SET FEATURES:

• Limited Edition Hardcase Box Set [2000 copies]
• Set includes all four serials across 10 Blu-ray Discs, all presented in 1080p HD from stunning 4K restorations courtesy of Gaumont Film Company
• Uncompressed LPCM 2.0 audio on all serials, including scores by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra and Patrick Laviosa
• Brand new audio commentaries on select serial chapters
• Brand new interviews with film critics and historians
• A collector's booklet featuring new and archival writing on Louis Feuillade and the serials included in this set
• ** More TBC, extras subject to change

TWO TAOIST TALES (Hong Kong 1984 / 1986)

Blu-ray | 23 September 2024 | 27 September 2024

In the wake of Encounter of the Spooky Kind, the Hong Kong film industry launched headlong into a prolific genre cycle that drew upon Taoist folklore. Popular throughout the 1980s and into the next decade, these films combined elements of horror, fantasy, comedy and martial arts as they pit their protagonists against hopping vampires, vengeful ghosts and evil sorcerers. Here, Eureka Classics presents two of the most mind-bending tales of Taoist magic ever committed to film: Taoism Drunkard [Gui ma tian shi] and Young Taoism Fighter [Yin yang qi bin].

Directed by and starring Yuen Cheung-yan (The Miracle Fighters), Taoism Drunkard follows a man with a love for wine who accidentally damages a sacred statue. To atone for this blunder, he is asked by an enraged Taoist priest (Hsiao Hou-tao) to find a virginal boy (Yuen Yat-chor) to aid in defending his temple from a demonic sorcerer (Yuen Shun-yi). Then, in Young Taoism Fighter(directed by Police Story's Chen Chi-hwa), a practitioner of Taoist kung fu (Yuen Yat-chor) manages to separate his soul from his body before teaming up with a vengeful young woman (Hilda Liu Hao-yi) to take on a sinister sorcerer (Kwan Chung) and the evil leader of a rival kung fu school (Yen Shi-kwan).

Filled with imagery both fantastical and thrilling – not least Taoism Drunkard's banana monster – and featuring some of the most jaw-droppingly inventive fight sequences in the history of martial arts cinema, Taoism Drunkard and The Young Taoism Fighter are cult classics from the celebrated Yuen Clan that need to be seen to be believed. Both films are presented on Blu-ray for the first time ever from brand new 2K restorations.

BLU-RAY FEATURES:

• Limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Darren Wheeling [2000 copies]
• Both films presented in 1080p HD from brand new 2K restorations
• Original Cantonese audio and optional English dub tracks (original mono presentations)
• Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release
• Brand new audio commentaries on both films by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival)
• Brand new audio commentaries on both films by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
• Brand new interview with director and actor Yuen Cheung-yan
• Brand new interview with critic Andrew Heskins (easternKicks)
• Trailers
• A limited edition collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Southeast Asian horror expert Dr. Katarzyna Ancuta, and Daniel O'Brien, author of Spooky Encounters [2000 copies]

* All extras subject to change

THE CHAMPIONS [BOH NGAU] (Hong Kong 1983)

Sports, action and comedy collide in Golden Harvest's The Champions, the precursor to Shaolin Soccer from the first family of Hong Kong martial arts cinema: the inimitable Yuen Clan.

Lee Tong (Yuen Biao, Dreadnaught) is a young farmer who has grown up in an isolated rural community. When an indiscretion lands him in hot water, he leaves his home in the countryside and heads for the big city – where he meets Suen (Cheung Kwok-keung, Eastern Condors), a street footballer who recognises Tong's talent for the beautiful game and encourages him to try out for a pro team. But Tong's first chance at footballing glory is scuppered by a rivalry with the narcissistic King (Dick Wei, Project A), who relegates the newcomer to cleaning up after his teammates. But having discovered a love for football, Tong soon accepts an offer to join a rival team – and the stage is set for a final confrontation with King on the pitch.

Written and directed by Brandy Yuen (In the Line of Duty III) and featuring action choreography by Yuen Shun-yi (The Miracle Fighters) and Yuen Chun Yeung (Armour of God), The Champions is a sporting underdog story filtered through some of the greatest minds in the history of Hong Kong action cinema. Eureka Classics presents the film on Blu-ray for the first time ever from a brand new 2K restoration.

BLU-RAY FEATURES:

• Limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Darren Wheeling [2000 copies]
• 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a brand new 2K restoration
• Original Cantonese audio and optional English dub tracks (original mono presentations)
• Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release
• Brand new audio commentary by East Asian film expert Frank Djeng (NY Asian Film Festival)
• Brand new audio commentary by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
• Andrew Heskins on The Champions – brand new interview with film critic Andrew Heskins (eastern Kicks)
• Brand new featurette by CFK looking at the 1987 Hong Kong celebrity football / soccer team that featured a number of Hong Kong legends including Jackie Chan and Andy Lau
• Reversible sleeve featuring original poster artwork
• Trailer
• A limited edition collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by James Oliver [2000 copies]

UK SEPTEMBER RE-ISSUES:

PANDORA'S BOX [DIE BÜCHSE DER PANDORA] (Germany 1929)

Blu-ray | 16 September 2024 | £16.99

In a role intended at one point for Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel), 22 year-old Louise Brooks (Diary of a Lost Girl), with her fragile beauty and iconic dark bob hairstyle, gives a performance decades ahead of its time that immortalised her as an icon. Largely condemned and censored upon its initial release for its daring treatment of sexuality and female desire, Brooks' understated yet erotically charged performance endures as among the most modern of the silent era.

Adapted from a pair of plays by Frank Wedekind, Pandora's Box tells the story of prostitute Lulu, a free spirit whose open sexuality breeds chaos in its wake. When Lulu's latest lover, the newspaper editor Dr Ludwig Schon (Fritz Kortner, The Hands of Orlac), announces plans to leave her to marry a more respectable woman, Lulu is devastated. Cast in a musical revue written by Schon's son, Alwa (Francis Lederer, The Return of Dracula), Lulu seduces Schon once more – only to have their tryst exposed, and Schon's plans for a more socially acceptable marriage shattered. Left with no choice but to marry Lulu, Schon meets with tragedy on their wedding night. Lulu stands trial for the incident, facing years of imprisonment. With the aid of her former pimp (Carl Goetz, Tom Sawyer), an infatuated lesbian countess (Alice Roberts, The Merry Widower) and Alwa, she flees toward a fate of increasing squalor and peril, finally crossing paths one Christmas Eve with Jack the Ripper.

Reviled and bowdlerised at its debut, Pandora's Box has since been recognised as one of the masterpieces of early German cinema. A sordid melodrama made with great style, it affirms G. W. Pabst as a daring and important director and Louise Brooks as one of cinema's most exquisite and distinctive performers. The Masters of Cinema series presents Pabst's masterpiece in a new restoration on Blu-ray.

BLU-RAY FEATURES:

• 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a definitive 2K digital restoration
• Optional English subtitles
• Orchestral Score by Peer Raben
• Audio commentary by critic Pamela Hutchinson
• The New Woman & The Jazz Age: The Dangerous Feminine in Pandora's Box – Visual appreciation by author and critic Kat Ellinger 
• Godless Beasts – Video essay by David Cairns
• Lulu in Wonderland – Video essay by Fiona Watson
• Restoring Pandora's Box – Interview with Martin Koerber
• A collector's booklet featuring an essay by film critic and historian Imogen Sara Smith, author of Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City

TOUCH OF EVIL (USA 1958)

Touch of Evil begins with one of the most brilliant sequences in the history of cinema; and ends with one of the most brilliant final scenes ever committed to celluloid. In between unfurls a picture whose moral, sexual, racial, and aesthetic attitudes remain so radical as to cross borders established not only in 1958, but in the present age also.

Charlton Heston portrays Mike Vargas, the Mexican chief of narcotics who sets out to uncover the facts surrounding a car bomb that has killed a wealthy American businessman on the US side of the border. As Vargas investigates, his newly-wed wife Susie (Janet Leigh, two years before Hitchcock's Psycho) is kidnapped by a gang out to exact vengeance for the prosecution of the brother of their leader (Akim Tamiroff). Meanwhile, Vargas' enquiries become progressively more obfuscated by the American cop Hank Quinlan (played by Welles himself, in one of the most imposing and unforgettable screen performances of his career), a besotted incarnation of corruption who alternately conspires with Susie's captors and seeks solace in the brothel of the Gypsy madame (Marlene Dietrich) who comforted him in bygone times.

Welles' final studio-system picture has at last become secure in its status as one of the greatest films ever made. It remains a testament to the genius of Welles – a film of Shakespearean richness, inexhaustible. The Masters of Cinema Series presents Touch of Evil in a welcome re-issue of its UK debut on Ultra HD Blu-ray.

4K UHD FEATURES:

• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentations of all three versions, presented in Dolby Vision HDR: the Theatrical version (95 mins), the Preview version (109 mins), and the 1998 Reconstruction (110 mins), across 2 UHD Discs.
• Four audio commentaries, featuring: restoration producer Rick Schmidlin (reconstructed version); actors Charlton Heston & Janet Leigh, with Schmidlin (reconstructed version); critic F. X. Feeney (theatrical version); and Welles scholars James Naremore & Jonathan Rosenbaum (preview version)
• Video interview with critic, broadcaster and cultural historian Matthew Sweet
• Video interview with critic Tim Robey
• Video interview with author and critic Kim Newman
• Bringing Evil to Life + Evil Lost and Found – two video pieces, featuring interviews with cast and crew, as well as critics and admirers
• Original theatrical trailer
• Optional English SDH subtitles
• A collector's booklet featuring writings by Orson Welles, François Truffaut, André Bazin, and Terry Comito