Schlock-Wire: Specs Announced for Shout! Factory’s Special Editions Of PIRANHA and HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP

Fans of aquatic ter­ror, take note — this year, Christmas will arrive in August.  This is because the good folks at Shout! Factory are unleash­ing remas­tered, extras-packed spe­cial edi­tions of the beloved New World Pictures clas­sics Piranha and Humanoids From The Deep dur­ing that month.  The for­mer is an inspired riff on Jaws with a clever John Sayles script and punchy direc­tion from Joe Dante, the lat­ter is a delight­fully sleazy sci-fi/horror/exploitation hybrid that answers the ques­tion “What exactly does the Creature From The Black Lagoon do with the hero­ine once he kid­naps her?”

A GRUESOME TWOSOME OF ROGER CORMAN CLASSIC UNDERWATER SHOCKERS FINALLY UNLEASH THIS SUMMER

SHOUT! FACTORY PRESENTS

PIRANHA

SPECIAL EDITION BLU-RAY™ and DVD

packed with all-new bonus con­tent, reversible cover and pre­sented in anamor­phic widescreen for the first time

&

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP

SPECIAL EDITION BLU-RAY™ and DVD

fea­tur­ing the com­plete uncut ver­sion of the cult classic

pre­sented in anamor­phic widescreen,  reveal­ing bonus con­tent and reversible cover

LEAP INTO STORES NATIONWIDE AUGUST 3, 2010

FROM SHOUT! FACTORY

Just when you thought it was safe to take a dip in the water again…they’re baaaack! This sum­mer, redis­cover two endur­ing Roger Corman under­wa­ter thrillers filled with unstop­pable action and edge-of-your-seat sus­pense as Joe Dante’s Piranha and Humanoids from the Deep, directed by Barbara Peters, debut August 3, 2010 for the first time on Special Edition Blu-ray and DVD from Shout! Factory, in asso­ci­a­tion with New Horizons Picture Corporation. These two defin­i­tive Special Edition home enter­tain­ment releases from Roger Corman’s Cult Classics are sure to cause a feed­ing frenzy among thrill seek­ers and loyal fans of Roger Corman and Joe Dante.  Piranha Special Edition offers 2 highly col­lectible cov­ers: the Blu-ray and DVD both fea­ture the iconic vin­tage cover art from the film’s orig­i­nal 1978 movie poster and the spec­tac­u­lar art from the orig­i­nal inter­na­tional poster for the reverse cover; and the Special Edition DVD is fur­ther sparkled with a visu­ally stun­ning 3-D lentic­u­lar exte­rior pack­ag­ing. Humanoids from the Deep Special Edition also boasts a reversible cover fea­tur­ing vin­tage art from the U.S. and inter­na­tional movie posters.

Both Special Edition Blu-ray and DVD releases of Piranha and Humanoids from the Deep fea­ture anamor­phic widescreen pre­sen­ta­tion of the movie and a spec­tac­u­lar array of spe­cial bonus con­tent, includ­ing all-new in-depth inter­views and com­men­taries with cast and crew, rare behind-the-scenes footage, reversible cover and more. Each Blu-ray and DVD is sold sep­a­rately. Blu-ray is priced to own at $26.97 and $19.93 for the DVD.  Dare you to take the plunge with the orig­i­nal Piranha and Humanoids at home before you put on those 3-D shades for the remake of Piranha in 3-D com­ing to the­aters nation­wide late August.  See where the phe­nom­e­non began!

Lost River Lake was a thriv­ing resort until they dis­cov­ered … Piranha!

In 1978, audi­ences dis­cov­ered Piranha, widely con­sid­ered one of the very best films “inspired” by the suc­cess of Jaws, and for more than 30 years Piranha has been one of the true cult gems in the Roger Corman canon.

For the first time in anamor­phic widescreen, Piranha is being seen the way it was meant to be seen: Bigger, bad­der, blood­ier and more BITING than ever! This sum­mer at Lost River Resort, the fish are most cer­tainly biting!

While search­ing for miss­ing teenagers, rookie skip-tracer Maggie McKeon (Heather Menzies) and booze-soaked river rat Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) stum­ble upon a top-secret mil­i­tary lab­o­ra­tory con­duc­tion genetic research on piranha fish for the pur­pose of devel­op­ing the most lethal form of bio­log­i­cal war­fare imaginable.

When the deadly eat­ing machines are acci­den­tally released from the com­pound, they’re soon headed down­stream, con­sum­ing every­thing — and any­one — in their path. With Paul and Maggie in hot pur­suit, the piranha’s next stop is the children’s sum­mer camp, where Paul’s young daugh­ter is vaca­tion­ing, and then the newly-opened, multi-million-dollar water resort. Time is run­ning out, and the piranha are hungry!

Piranha marked the solo direc­to­r­ial debut of Joe Dante (The Howling, Gremlins and Gremlins 2: The New Batch), after a long appren­tice­ship under Roger Corman’s tute­lage at New World Pictures, and also marked the first pro­duced screen­play of future indie-film icon and two-time Academy Award^® nom­i­nee John Sayles (Lone Star, Passion Fish, Eight Men Out). Sharp-eyed view­ers will also spot cameo appear­ances by both Dante and Sayles in this film!

The film also fea­tured one of the most star-studded casts ever assem­bled for a Corman pro­duc­tion: Daytime Emmy^® and Golden Globe^® win­ner Bradford Dillman (The Way We Were, Compulsion, Escape from the Planet of the Apes), Heather Menzies (TV’s Captain America and Logan’s Run), Academy Award^® nom­i­nee and Golden Globe^® win­ner Kevin McCarthy (Death of a Salesman, Invasion of the Body Snatchers) and Emmy^® nom­i­nee Keenan Wynn (Dr. Strangelove, Robert Altman’s Nashville), as well as Emmy^® win­ner Barbara Steele (The Pit and the Pendulum, Caged Heat, Mario Bava’s Black Sunday), Dick Miller (A Bucket of Blood, The Terminator, Martin Scorsese’s After Hours), Paul Bartel (Death Race 2000, The Usual Suspects), Belinda Balaski (The Howling, Small Soldiers, Explorers), Richard Deacon (TV’s The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mothers-in-Law) and, in his final screen appear­ance, Barry Brown (Bad Company, Daisy Miller, The Ultimate Thrill).

Not only was Piranha a box-office hit – becom­ing one of New World Pictures’ biggest world­wide hits – but it also earned rave reviews from crit­ics, who appre­ci­ated its fast pac­ing, ener­getic cast, clever con­spir­acy satire, inven­tive spe­cial effects and, of course, the scares. Many crit­ics con­sid­ered it second-best only to Jaws but far supe­rior to the “offi­cial” Jaws sequels — includ­ing Jaws 2, which opened the same year. Piranha won the Saturn Award for Best Editing (shared by Dante and Mark Goldblatt) and was nom­i­nated as Best Horror Film.

Like so many Roger Corman pro­duc­tions, Piranha served as a career spring­board for many of its par­tic­i­pants, includ­ing direc­tor Dante, screen­writer Sayles, and pro­ducer Jon Davison (Airplane!, Robocop and RoboCop 2). Future Academy Award^® win­ner Rob Bottin (Total Recall, The Thing, Se7en) pro­vided spe­cial makeup effects in what marked his first screen credit, and the visual effects team boasted not one, but two, future Oscar^® win­ners: Phil Tippett (Jurassic Park, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back) and Chris Walas (The Fly, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Gremlins).

Perhaps the great­est trib­ute to Piranha’s sus­tained pop­u­lar­ity is that this sum­mer will see the release of Piranha 3-D to the nation’s movie screens. While the big-budget remake will undoubt­edly put the bite on movie­go­ers, true fans know where it all began … with the orig­i­nal, clas­sic Piranha.

PIRANHA SPECIAL EDITION BLU-RAY AND DVD SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New anamor­phic widescreen pre­sen­ta­tion (1.78:1)
• Audio com­men­tary with direc­tor Joe Dante and pro­ducer Jon Davison
• Behind-the-scenes footage
• “The Making of Piranha” fea­turette with new inter­views from Roger Corman, Joe Dante, Dick Miller, Belinda Balaski and many More
• Bloopers and outtakes
• Piranha trailer with com­men­tary by pro­ducer Jon Davison – Courtesy of Trailers From Hell (www.trailersfromhell.com)
• Stills gallery with pho­tos and posters from around the world
• Behind-the-scenes stills gallery fea­tur­ing pho­tos from Phil Tippett’s per­sonal collection
• Additional scenes from the net­work tele­vi­sion version
• Radio and TV spots
• New World trailers

One good bite deserves another!

Two years after the suc­cess of Piranha, Corman and New World Pictures went back to the water and came up with a win­ner. Humanoids from the Deep was yet another box-office bonanza.

In the sleepy fish­ing vil­lage of Noyo , the fish aren’t bit­ing — and that’s the prob­lem. The town’s fal­ter­ing econ­omy, depen­dent entirely on the fish­ing indus­try, has exac­er­bated ongo­ing, racially-charged ten­sions between the local fish­er­men, who want a can­nery to be con­structed in the town, and the Native American pop­u­la­tion, who most def­i­nitely don’t.

But some­thing else is bit­ing — and worse. A genetic exper­i­ment on salmon has pro­duced a species of aquatic mon­strosi­ties that are half-man and half-fish … and con­stantly on the ram­page! The body count is ris­ing. Men are being mauled to death, but the female vic­tims suf­fer a far worse fate: The mon­sters are mat­ing with them, try­ing to prop­a­gate their hor­rific species.

Local fish­er­man Jim Drake (Doug McClure) and sci­en­tist Susan Drake (Ann Turkel) join forces to inves­ti­gate the cause of this insid­i­ous inva­sion, but time is run­ning out. Noyo’s annual Salmon Festival is about to take place on the town’s board­walk, and some unin­vited guests are plan­ning to crash the party in blood­thirsty fash­ion, cul­mi­nat­ing in a blood­bath that pits man against monster.

Amid the film’s non-stop action and car­nage, how­ever, are also sub­tle mes­sages about cor­po­rate cor­rup­tion, preser­va­tion of the under­wa­ter ecol­ogy (years before Greenpeace hit the head­lines!), and the impor­tance of com­mu­nity. If the res­i­dents of Noyo are to sur­vive, they will have to put aside their cul­tural and polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences and band together. If not, Noyo is doomed.

Humanoids from the Deep proved to be expect­edly com­mer­cial, but also proved unex­pect­edly con­tro­ver­sial. Credited direc­tor Barbara Peters (billed as Barbara Peeters) con­tended that many of the film’s gorier scenes had been added to the film after prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy. That may be true, but some of these scenes are the ones most fondly — and fear­fully — remem­bered by the film’s legion of fol­low­ers. Then the MPAA (Motion Picture of America) threat­ened to slap the film with an X rat­ing unless some of its more shock­ing moments were edited down or elim­i­nated alto­gether. Nevertheless, these con­tro­ver­sies didn’t count where it mat­tered the most — at the box-office, as Humanoids from the Deep became one of New World Pictures’ most pop­u­lar releases up to that point.

Even more sur­pris­ing is that the film received good reviews. Although he called it “fast, occa­sion­ally hilar­i­ous gut­ter trash,” esteemed film critic Leonard Maltin also awarded it three out of four stars!

This release of Humanoids from the Deep will truly be some­thing spec­tac­u­lar. This ver­sion has never been seen before in the United States , as it was taken from the inter-positive from the uncut inter­na­tional ver­sion in high definition.

The cast of Humanoids from the Deep is headed by genre favorite Doug McClure (Warlords of Atlantis, The Land That Time Forgot and The People That Time Forgot), Golden Globe^® nom­i­nee Ann Turkel (The Cassandra Crossing, 99 and 44/100% Dead) and Emmy Award^® nom­i­nee Vic Morrow (Blackboard Jungle, The Bad News Bears, 1990: The Bronx Warriors).

Future Oscar^® win­ner Rob Bottin again pro­vided the film’s spec­tac­u­lar — and spec­tac­u­larly gory — spe­cial effects, includ­ing a cli­mac­tic birth scene that rivals the one in the orig­i­nal Alien! The film’s men­ac­ing and fore­bod­ing score was com­posed by James Horner (Titanic, Aliens, A Beautiful Mind), him­self the future recip­i­ent of two Academy Awards^®. Production assis­tant Gale Anne Hurd would go on to become one of the most suc­cess­ful female pro­duc­ers in Hollywood his­tory, with such block­busters as The Terminator, Aliens, Armageddon and Terminator 2: Judgment Day to her credit.

HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP SPECIAL EDITION BLU-RAY AND DVD FEATURES INCLUDE:

• New high-definition trans­fer of the Uncut inter­na­tional ver­sion pre­sented in anamor­phic widescreen (1.78:1)
• Never-before-seen deleted scenes
• Trailer, TV and radio spots
• Leonard Maltin’s inter­views with Roger Corman on the mak­ing of the film
• “The Making of Humanoids From The Deep,” fea­tur­ing new inter­views with com­poser James Horner, sec­ond unit/assistant direc­tor James Sbardellati, edi­tor Mark Goldblatt and more!
• New World trailers

With the release of both Piranha and Humanoids from the Deep on Special Edition Blu-ray and DVD, this is sure to be a shock­ing sum­mer. But remem­ber: Stay out of the water!

To Learn More About Shout! Factory’s Roger Corman Cult Classics DVD Series, Visit Its Website: