Val Lewton Double Feature THE GHOST SHIP and Boris Karloff in BEDLAM Now Available on Blu-ray From Warner Archive

“If you ask me, M’Lord, he’s a stench in the nostrils, a sewer of ugliness, and a gutter brimming with slop.”

The Val Lewton Double Feature THE GHOST SHIP (1943) and BEDLAM (1946) are now available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive

This double-feature disc brings together two of producer Val Lewton’s classic RKO horror films, newly restored and remastered. In 1943’s The Ghost Ship, Tom Merriam (Russell Wade), the young third mate on a freighter bound for Patagonia, witnesses the murder of a crewman by the ship’s captain, Will Stone (Richard Dix). Merriam realizes Stone is going insane, but the rest of the crew won’t believe him…or that he may be the mad captain’s next victim! 

Boris Karloff reunites with Lewton for a third and final time in 1946’s Bedlam, set in 1971 at a London asylum. Karloff gives an unforgettable performance as the doomed overseer who fawns on high-society benefactors while ruling his mentally disturbed inmates with an iron fist. Newly restored from their original nitrate negatives, both showcase Nicholas Musuraca’s cinematography under the inspired direction of Mark Robson. B&W. 16×9 1.37:1 WITH SIDE MATTES. 

SPECIAL FEATURES: Commentary on Bedlam by Tom Weaver • Theatrical Trailers 

Throwback Thursday: ‘The Body Snatcher’

the body snatcher

In 1942, at the age of 38, Val Lewton was named the head of RKO Studios’ horror unit.  As part of his job, he was to follow three rules.  His films had to cost the studio less than $150,000, his films had to run under 75 minutes in length, and his supervisor’s would be supplying the names of each film.  For the next four years, Lewton would write and produce nine horror films, each of them earning a status in history as black and white horror classics. Continue reading Throwback Thursday: ‘The Body Snatcher’

‘I Walked With a Zombie’ to Get Remake

Film Scorsese Documentary

ComingSoon.net/Shock Till You Drop recently spoke with Andy Fickman about the four films RKO will be remaking. Â  The producer revealed the first one up will be ‘I Walk With a Zombie’, based on the 1943 classic from director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton.

The film is about a young nurse who goes to the West Indies to care for  the wife of a plantation manager.   The wife seems to be  suffering from a kind of mental paralysis as a result of fever.   When the nurse falls for the plantation manager, she  determines to cure the wife even if she needs to use a voodoo ceremony, to give the husband what she thinks he wants.

“We’re just getting ready to start going out for casting on that, and we’ll film that in New Orleans in the spring,” Finkman said.

On a personal note, I really don’t want to see this. Â  I love everything Val Lewton produced, and I really hope his creations don’t get ruined by lame attempts at remakes. Â  If you haven’t seen any of his films, you are missing some of the best, classic horror films ever made.

Adam Marcus (‘Jason Goes to Hell’) is directing the remake with a tentative 2009 release date.

Source: Coming Soon