Finally, The Warlock Films from Vestron

Yes, I have been waiting for this one for a very long time!  Warlock is a pretty major horror film.  Maybe not quite on the level of Dracula or The Exorcist; but certainly one of the best known, highly regarded, successful horror flicks that's still never had a special edition.   In fact, in the US. all we've had is a hideous, fullscreen, barebones DVD (more on that below) from Trimark.  But finally, thanks to Lions Gate Vestron line continuing to do justice to their long-neglected catalog titles, it's a packed, special edition blu-ray.  And it's packed with the sequels, too!

Update 7/12/18: Just to be more thorough, I've added the Warlock 3 DVD to the comparisons.  Seeing it really makes you appreciate Vestron's blu!

1989's Warlock is as much a fantasy adventure as it is a horror film.  You really feel the production values as two 17th century nemeses chase each other into modern times in this thoroughly eccentric battle of good and evil.  The star power is evenly split between Julian Sands (Boxing Helena, A Room With a View) as Satan's cunning servant, and Richard E. Grant (Withnail & I, Twelfth Night) as his sort of Van Helsing expert witch hunter.  Caught between them is Footloose's Lori Singer as a cheerful valley girl who's forced to pursue the warlock across the country after he curses her with an aging spell.  Besides, if they don't stop him, he's going to end the world.

Sands is super cool as one of horror's great villains, and there's so much fun to be had from a smart script that plays with a wide variety of witchcraft law, from hex signs to nailing footprints.  It stays a little darker and more serious than director Steve Miner's previous horror masterwork, House, but there's more than your usual dollop of humor in both the characters and the situations.  But thankfully everyone's smart enough to play it with a straight face, particularly Grant, who brings enough talent to keep a character grounded that would veer much too far off into the silly in another actor's hands.  And speaking of great actors, we've also got Mary Woronov (Eating Raoul, Scenes From the Class Struggle In Beverly Hills) in a great cameo as a psychic who Sands pays a visit on to get acclimated in the modern world.  There's just too much to enjoy in this film; you don't want it to end.

a glimpse of the deleted scene from the trailer

Now, speaking of Woronov's character, we fans have to ask with every Warlock release if this will restore her lost death scene.  There's only ever been one cut of the film released, theatrically or on home video, but it's well known that Miner shot a wild, effects-heavy death for Woronov that had to be cut out for their R rating.  Pictures were posted in Fangoria, heck, there's a snippet of it in the film's theatrical trailer.  Well, before this set's release, I reached out to Michael Felsher, head of Red Shirt Pictures, about this scene and he responded, "[w]e looked extensively for this scene but could not find it, but the Bluray does contains several photos and behind-the-scenes FX video that show images from that sequence.  Wish we could have found the whole thing."  So no, sad to say that scene's not here; but at least we now know that footage is truly lost, and it's not just a case of Trimark being too disinterested to reinstate it.  ...And we get a pretty good look at it now in the special features.

So, like I said, here in the US we've been suffering with Trimark's 2000 fullscreen, barebones DVD as our sole release of Warlock.  I mean, just look at it down there below.  At least, overseas, there were some equally barebones but restored widescreen editions.  In fact, I've got Second Sight's UK DVD from 2011, so we can add that to the comparison.  There have been barebones blu-rays, too, in places like Australia and Germany.  But those have been rendered fairly obsolete now, thanks to Vestron's fancy, 2017 2-disc 3-film Collector's Series blu-ray set that's just being released this week.

2000 US Trimark DVD top; 2011 UK Second Sight DVD mid; 2017 Vestron blu bottom.

So wow, yeah.  For anybody who can't or won't import, this couldn't be any more essential of an upgrade.  Look at that ugly, dark, 1.30:1 Trimark disc.  It looks like it's ripped from a fuzzy laserdisc that was itself pulled off a tape.  The only positive thing to say about it is that, because it's fullscreen, the vertical mattes are lifted and we get more picture information on the top and bottom.  But it's all excessive, with crazy headroom, boxy framing, and all at the cost of lost information chopped off the sides.  This new Vestron blu, though, is clearly not sourced from a new master.   It's a respectable HD picture, but not on the same level as the fancy 4k masters we've been getting recently like with Arrow's Phenomena and Studio Canal's Mulholland Drive.  Comparing it to the Second Sight DVD, it seems to be the same 1.85:1 master that all the modern discs have been sourced from.  Of course, Second Sight's release being a DVD means Vestron's is superior by virtue of being a cleaner, stronger image.  The only other difference seems to be that Vestron's looks to be a bit better color corrected, which is nice.  But yeah, Vestron seems to have a strong "if it ain't broke" policy to their transfers, so this is perfectly fine but short of impressive.  Unless you're comparing it to the Trimark DVD, of course, in which case it's a friggin' revelation.

Audio-wise, both DVDs have fairly basic Dolby stereo tracks.  Trimark at least gave us optional English and Spanish subtitles, which Second Sight neglected.  Vestron bumps that stereo mix up to lossless DTS-HD and, as always, provides optional English and Spanish subtitles.  I think the Spanish subs are new for Vestron?

Extras is where Vestron is really playing to win.  Trimark's DVD was barebones with nothing but the trailer and a pair of bonus trailers, and Second Sight didn't even have that, managing to take that extra step backwards.  But Lions Gate has again brought in the excellent Red Shirt Pictures to create something really great.  We get a terrific audio commentary by director Steve Miner, moderated by Nathaniel Thompson, and another one of their patented score tracks, which plays the film's soundtrack for the first half and interviews the composer.  Though in this case, the interview is with author Jeff Bond, who writes books about film scores - an understandable substitution, since Warlock has a score by none other than Jerry Goldsmith.  Then Steve Miner gives us an additional on-camera interview, as does star Julian Sands (who totally spoils Warlock 2, so watch that first!), as well as make-up effects artists Carl Fullerton and Neal Martz.

Then there's the aforementioned "behind-the-scenes FX" stuff Mr. Felsher mentioned.  In fact, there's a wealth of vintage material here: vintage effects featurette, vintage making of featurette, vintage on-set interviews, behind-the-scenes footage...  And you might think, okay, little throw-away promo featurettes, big whoop; but one of these runs as long as 41 minutes(!), so they cover a lot of ground.  There are also two different trailers, a couple TV spots, and a photo gallery.  The only frustrating thing about all this archival material is if the studio already had all this, why wasn't any of it on the DVD?  FFS, Trimark.  Oh well, the past is past, and now we've got all this great old and new Warlock content.

Our favorite male witch returns in 1993's sequel Warlock: Armageddon, directed by Anthony Hickox.  Hickox seems to take a lot of flack from horror fans, but his films are always a lot of fun without shying away from the dark side, so I'm a fan.  And he does a great job with the warlock character.  Unfortunately, Richard E. Grant wasn't interested in sticking around for sequels, but Sands is more than able to shoulder the extra weight and carry even more of the film himself.  This time around, he has to collect some magical gems to resurrect Satan, and Hickox manages to make each trip feel like a distinct little film: the high-end fashion world, the crazy circus world.  It's almost like an anthology film all tied together by a through-put narrative of Sands' quest and our heroes training to stop him.

That does bring us to Armageddon's weakest spot.  The elders who reunite once they hear of the warlock's return are fun, feeling a lot like Patrick Macnee's gang in the Waxwork films.  But their young charges, including Hellraiser 3's Paula Marshall, are on some awful milquetoast teeny bopper Dawson's Creek vibe.  You just want them to die horribly, but you know they won't.  So this film isn't as consistent as the original Warlock, but the original film's tone meshes perfectly with Hickox's sensibilities, and the high points really are great.  I mean, Sands' introduction in this film may owe a small debt to Xtro, but it's fantastic, even outshining anything seen in the first film.  And it's topped off with a great cameo by Zach Galligan.  Warlock: Armageddon is like the dictionary definition of "worthy sequel."

Like the first Warlock, Trimark released part two as a barebones DVD 2000, though at least it was widescreen this time.  And again, that was all we ever got in America.  Germany did put out a barebones blu-ray in 2015, but by the time that started making its way stateside, I think most of us were holding out for this Vestron set.

Trimark 2000 US DVD on top; Vestron 2017 US blu-ray below.

So Trimark did better with this film, giving us an anamorphic widescreen transfer.  But looking at it recently, it's pretty murky.  It was slightly windowboxed to a ratio of 1.82:1, losing a bit on all four sides compared to Vestron's 1.78:1 blu.  Again, it's a little soft and looks like an older master with a slightly dull palette.  I haven't seen it, but I assume the German blu is from the same source, which Lions Gate probably made even years earlier than that.  But again, hey, compared to the DVD we'd been stuck with, it's a huge leap forward in terms of clarity and color.  The Trimark disc looks like you're viewing the Vestron disc through wax paper.

Trimark again gave us a good Dolby 2.0 stereo mix with optional subtitles (including English, Spanish and French).  And Vestron again bumps that stereo track up to DTS-HD and gives us optional English and Spanish subtitles.  A lot of labels skimp on the subtitles, so I'm happy to see Vestron being so consistent on that front.

Red Shirt really poured all their love into the first Warlock, but not so much the sequels.  But since they already recorded commentaries with Hickox for the Waxwork films, I just knew they couldn't leave us hanging here.  And thankfully they didn't.  It's another fun (and in this case funny) audio commentary from Hickox, who's surprisingly forthcoming about what he feels doesn't work in this film, which is a lot ...and in the case of some of those prehistoric CGI shots and dippy teen "Jedi" scenes, it's hard to disagree.  But that commentary's all the new content we get.

However, we do get more vintage material.  The old DVD featured nothing but the trailer, and that's been ported over here.  But we also get a vintage 'making of' featurette, on-set interviews, behind the scenes footage, TV spots and a stills gallery.  Again, I can't help but wonder why we never got this stuff on the DVD.  Heck, I probably would've coughed it up to import the German blu if they'd slapped it on there.  But oh well, we've got it all now, and that's all that matters.

Now, I was tempted to refer to these films as the Warlock trilogy in this post title, but I couldn't bring myself to do it because of this film.  1999's Warlock III: The End of Innocence's most overt crime is carrying on without Julian Sands.  That would be like making a Freddy Krueger film without Robert Englund or a Pinhead without Doug Bradley.  Yeah, I know they actually did both of those things, but looked how they turned out.

But actually, Sands' replacement Bruce Payne is the best thing about this film.  He's not quite as good as Julian, but he comes reasonably close enough, or at least as good as they could've hoped to manage.  No, what's so off-putting about this film is just about everything else.  It's a lame story that feels as much like a Skinemax softcore flick as a tale of witchcraft.  It's got the worst bunch of wannabe MTV rejects for character fodder, and it's all set in one lame, haunted house set to try to deal with its budgetary problems.  This was shot in a foreign country trying to pass for America, and it certainly shows.

In fact, it was shot in Ireland, and I think they should've owned that.  Run around, shoot all the interesting and old world-y locations they could.  That would've at least given this film some production values and unique character.  All they used was a tiny bit of woods, which frankly, I could match just by shooting next to the railroad tracks in my hometown.  This movie has no direct connection to the previous Warlock films anyway (another failing), so why not make it an Irish warlock with some unique lore to spice things up a bit?  Instead they're tucked away in an obvious set trying to look as generic as possible, so Blockbuster Video patrons in America don't get a whiff of it being foreign.  Seriously, Ashley Lawrence walked away from the Hellraiser films to make this?  And Mikey?

Honestly, though, until seeing the blu-ray, I'd only ever seen this film on VHS.  And rediscovering it now in its proper aspect ratio and decent picture quality, actually helps it some.  The film actually has a decent, if modest, look to it that was lost on the fullscreen video, and even the special effects look better than I remember them.  They're not amazing, but like that fire effect and all?  Not so shabby.  It's not a good movie, but it's not as offensively bad as I remember.  It's more just mediocre, but kind of nice to have in this set if you think of it as more of an extra itself rather than a whole third movie.  You know, watch it as a curiosity piece for Warlock fans and round out the collection.

No comparisons here, because I never copped Warlock 3 on DVD because it's Warlock 3.  The comparison's here now!  Trimark put it out in 2000 (in fact, they issued all three Warlock films on the same day: September 12th).  And there are no HD imports for this one.  Vestron's set is The End of Innocence's blu-ray debut.

Trimark's 2000 US DVD top; Vestron's 2017 US blu bottom.

Like Armageddon, The End of Innocence is open matte at 1.78:1 instead of 1.85:1.  It looks like a slightly older master, too, like the other films (and most Vestron titles), but maybe a little nicer... possibly just because it's a slightly more modern film.  Grain resolution still isn't what one would hope, but it's a bit better than Armageddon.  You'll certainly be singing its praises if you've been living with the DVD, though.  Matted to 1.82:1, the DVD actually has less information around all four sides.  But the real story is the soft, blocky lack of detail compared to the blu.  It's non-anamorphic, too, which really doesn't help, and the color palette is much more compressed.  Seeing the blu-ray after years of that is like lifting a thick veil.

Ever consistent, Vestron again gives us the Dolby Stereo track in DTS-HD with optional English and Spanish subtitles. The same stereo track is on the DVD, but not in DTS of course, and it also has optional English and Spanish subs, as well as French.

Warlock 3 has no new Red Shirt features, which is understandable but disappointing.  A commentary or a few interviews where the a couple of the cast or crew gave an honest retrospective about this film might've been more interesting than the movie itself.  But we do get another nice collection of vintage EPK stuff again, at least.  This time, their on-set interviews run almost 45 minutes long!  Yeah, it's a lot of fluff, softball promotional Q&A, but at least they cover some extra ground, and some interesting moments pop up here and there.  There's also a brief but interesting bit of behind-the-scenes footage, plus a trailer, a promo video, and a stills gallery.  Oh, and like all Vestron releases, this set comes in a spiffy slipcover.

The DVD had nothing but the trailer and a couple bonus trailers if you clicked the Trimark logo.

So at the end of the day, I'm grinning to be holding this set.  I've been waiting decades for a special edition of the Warlock films, and it's finally here.  And while the HD presentations warranted a little nitpicking, they're far from cutting edge, but they're still respectable blus.  Like if I was in the business of giving letter grades, these would be in the B-range, not in danger of failing ...unlike those dirty Trimark DVDs.  Thank goodness we're replacing them.  I hope this Vestron line never ends, because there's so many more titles Lions Gate is sitting on, including a couple I've written about already, like Nightwish and Eyes of Fire.  But today I'm just happy the Warlock films have finally come home.

Sean S. Cunnignham's House 1-4 Party from Arrow (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

Produced by Friday the 13th creator Sean S. Cunningham, House is one of the all-time great horror movies of the 80s; and it's been a surprisingly long time getting it to blu-ray.  But here it is, and in a beautiful boxed set with its three sequels, too.  Or, just one of its sequels if you bought the US version.  Yes, due to a little rights snafu, Arrow was able to release House 1-4 in the UK, but only parts 1 & 2 in the US.  Thankfully, in the internet age, importing is a snap, especially with the whole set being region free. So let's see how they all look, and we can compare them to the classic 2001 Anchor Bay limited edition DVD set, which included House 2 as an uncredited bonus disc.

The Great American Hero William Katt stars as a struggling author coming to grips with trauma from the Vietnam war and the loss of his young son.  Did I mention this is a comedy?  Well, it's a horror comedy that, thanks to a tight script by Fred (Night Of the Creeps) Dekker, expertly walks the line between a serious story with pathos and some great laughs.  A perfect supporting cast, including George Wendt, Richard Moll, Kay Lenz, Susan French and Bond girl Mary Stavin, some great effects and a robust soundtrack by Harry Manfredini really help to seal the deal.

Katt moves back into his haunted, childhood home when he comes to believe the answers to all his issues may be hidden within, and winds up in a taught one on one conflict with the psychological and supernatural forces alive in the house.  It's fun to see a character taking a proactive stance in a haunted house.  Where most protagonists in these films are desperately trying to escape, or inexplicably continuing to endure living there as they're inflicted with one horror after another, Katt has reason to explore and press further every time he encounters something other worldly.  The story is ambitious and imaginative, with one sequence after another tackling something new and wild. from subtle and unsettling touches to big, crazy creatures.

2001 Anchor Bay DVD on top; 2017 Arrow DVD mid; 2017 Arrow blu bottom.

So, where to begin.  Well, first I should quickly point out that the Arrow set is a combo pack, so each film has a DVD and blu-ray version included.  The Anchor Bay DVD is pretty old, but holds up fairly well, being non-interlaced, anamorphic and a generally good transfer.  But Arrow's new 2k scan of the interpositive is a lot crisper.  And whole both editions are slightly letterboxed to 1.85:1, we can see that Arrow's scan has pulled out to include significantly more information around the sides... which the second set of shots there shows (hi, boom operator!) probably isn't entirely correct.  Hellraiser 3, Creepshow 2 and this are all new scans for Arrow releases with the same issue, and they all originate from Lakeshore Entertainment, so it doesn't feel like a coincidence.  It makes you question some of their previous releases, like The Stuff, that also reframed the image with extra information, particularly on the left-hand side.  But, while there are other shots where the framing does look like it might be a bit off, the shot above is the only clear case of something included in frame that obviously shouldn't be there, and which the previous releases had cropped out.

2001 Anchor Bay DVD on top; 2017 Arrow blu bottom.

Some people online are also citing the above shot, with what looks almost certainly to be he edge of a set that wasn't meant to be seen in the upper left.  But as you can see, it's also visible in the old Anchor Bay DVD; so it might just be a gaff in the original film.  Anyway, in the dark and on a layered rooftop, it doesn't really stand out as something wrong unless you stop and look at it in a screenshot like this.  Only that boom guy's arm is a real problem; it's very noticeable and distracting, but it's just one quick, 2-second shot.  And framing aside, Arrow's beautiful new HD transfer is a pretty perfect presentation with natural grain and attractive colors.  Maybe slightly on the bright-side, but it could probably pull a clean 5-star rating if not for that one, awkward flaw.

Arrow really creams Anchor Bay in the audio department.  AB just had the mono track in 2.0, but Arrow has both the mono and a stereo mix in LPCM 2.0, plus a DTS-HD 5.1 mix.  Both Arrow and Anchor Bay included optional English subtitles/ closed captions.

Now, Anchor Bay's DVD had some pretty nice features.  First of all, it had a terrific audio commentary by Sean S. Cunningham, director Steve Miner, William Katt and co-writer Ethan Wiley.  It also had a vintage promotional featurette, 2 trailers and a stills gallery.  Happily, Arrow has ported all of that over.  In fact, their version of the promotional featurette is twice as long, making it a nearly half-hour 'making of' that gives a really good look behind the scenes.  But Arrow has also created an all-new documentary, which runs over an hour long and really tells the whole story in a fun, slick way, bringing back everybody from George Wendt to Kane Hodder.  Arrow's also added a couple more trailers and TV spots to the mix - one of which is quite interesting because it mixes in footage from Friday the 13th - plus the screenplay and Dekker's original short story as DVD-Rom bonuses.

Where House expertly walked the line between dramatic horror and comedy, House 2: The Second Story stumbles and pratfalls.  Compared to the first film, House 2 is a disappointment.  You know, people always point out how House 3, released as Horror Show in the US, is completely unconnected to the first one and not really a legitimate sequel; but that's true of this one, too.  It's all different characters coming to a totally different house which is haunted by different style ghosts (they're Western and time-traveling themed this time) for totally unrelated reasons.  It's written and directed by Ethan Wiley, who co-wrote the original; but it just doesn't have the weight of Dekker's original material.  I don't know who thought House should be mashed up with an 80s frat comedy, but here we are.

Still, taken on its own, it's an amusing horror comedy with a lot of cool effects and some entertaining sequences.  Serial 80s teen Arye Gross (remember him?) and Jonathan Stark (Fright Night's Renfield character) are two buddies who inherit an old haunted mansion.  They resurrect Arye's grandfather, an old timey Western prospector, who takes a break from enjoying modern technology to warn them that they have to guard his crystal skull from evil forces who will use it to take over the world or something.  I believe this is the first and still the only haunted house movie with dinosaurs in it!  They continue the tradition of having a co-starring role played by a cast member of Cheers with John Ratzenberger, who steals every scene he's in.  And Bill Maher also turns up to basically play himself.

2001 Anchor Bay DVD on top; 2017 Arrow DVD mid; 2017 Arrow blu bottom.

Arrow brings another fresh 2k scan from an interpositive, which really draws out the detail compared to Anchor Bay's strong but slightly drab standard def transfer.  Again, though both versions are 1.85:1, Arrow's disc finds more information around the sides, but this time it's not so extreme on the left, and I didn't spot any camera equipment or crew.  I'd say the framing's completely in the clear on this one.  The colors are a bit different (is the shirt of that dancer in the bottom right corner red or pinkish purple?), but I can't say I really prefer one disc's over the other this time around; they're just different.  Nothing controversial; just a good ol' HD upgrade.

Arrow gives us the original mono in uncompressed LPCM and another 5.1 mix in DTS-HD, where Anchor Bay again just had the mono track.  Both discs again have English subtitles/ captions as well.

Anchor Bay's House 2 also had a commentary, with Cunningham and Wiley, which was a little drier than House 1's, but very informative.  But apart from the trailer, that was it.  Well, Arrow again ported those extras over, but have also made another, brand new, hour long retrospective documentary, with all the lead actors (though, disappointingly, no Ratzenberg, and of course no Maher) and crew.  If you're a fan, man, these docs are great.  Plus, they've included another vintage featurette, a stills gallery and a TV spot.

So now we come to The Horror Show, the somewhat unofficial entry.  Yeah, there's no direct connection to the previous two films, but it's another Sean Cunningham produced, Manfredini scored story about a man against a haunted house.  This one definitely takes a darker tone, though, feeling much more like a New Line franchise horror flick, about a nasty serial killer who comes back with supernatural powers.  This time we've got Lance Henrickson as a tough cop (I mean, it's Henrickson, what other kind of cop could he play), who captures Brion James, who's quickly executed.  But he comes back to find Henrickson's house and terrorize his family.  This one's essentially a straight horror, as opposed to a horror comedy, except it's a victim of the Freddy one-liner influence, plus a couple of the surreal fantasy-horror sequences are hard to take seriously (in the film's most famous scene, his face grows out of the Thanksgiving turkey on the family's dinner table).  I liked this a lot more as a kid than I do now, and the fact that the script is credited to Alan Smithee should tell you all you need to know.  But it still has some cool effects and gross-out moments that make it still worth a casual viewing with tampered expectations.  If you're a horror fan who just wants to see another horror film, you'll be satisfied.

R-rated cut on top; unrated version below.

Now, with this film, we also have to talk about cuts.  Like many 90s horror flicks, there was a theatrical R-rated cut and an uncensored unrated version.  Scream Factory put The Horror Show out on blu in 2013 (the first release it had gotten in the USA since VHS), but unfortunately theirs was the R-rated version.  Movie-censorship.com has the full-break down of all the differences here, but in brief, it's a bunch of little cuts that don't even add up to two minutes, but definitely remove a lot of the limited fun this film has to offer; so seeing this unrated is crucial.  And yes, Arrow has given us the unrated version.  And they threw in the R-rated cut, too, which I respect.  But it has exactly one shot that's unique to that version (above), so really it's for completists only; just watch the unrated cut.

Top to bottom: R-rated DVD, unrated DVD, R-rated blu, unrated blu.

So the R- and un-rated transfers both use the same master, but I've included comparison shots of both versions, because I can be a completist, too.  😉  In this case, Arrow used the same 2k scan of the interpositive as supplied by MGM that Scream used, but then used another MGM 2k scan of a different interpositive for the unrated footage, which they then cut back into the first one, and color corrected to match them.  Again, letterboxed to 1.85:1, it's pretty seamless and maybe a little soft (degrained a bit?), but generally looks great.

Now, I don't have the Scream disc, hence no comparison, but I do know it had a nice DTS-HD track of the stereo mix, but disappointingly, no subtitle options.  Arrow gives us the stereo mix in LPCM and a DTS-HD 5.1 mix, and does include English subtitles.

Scream Factory created a nice little set of extras for this film: a good audio commentary with Cunningham and some fun on-camera interviews with Kane Hodder and actress Rita Taggart (she played the mom), plus the trailer.  How do I know they were good if I don't have the SF disc?  Because Arrow ported them all over.  Plus, they've added a new featurette interviewing the three KNB guys about their effects work in this film, over 20-minutes of behind-the-scenes footage, workprint trimmings (essentially two takes of a deleted scene, and a bonus glimpse of one of the film's coolest gore effects) and a stills gallery.  Plus, there's a cool easter egg, where they interview actor Terry Alexander.  Terry sounds really fond of his experiences with this film, but it's super short, which I assume is the only reason they hid it away.  So this is easily the definitive release of this film: the complete, uncut version, more audio/ subtitle options, and more special features.  If you're a fan of this film, you need this set.

Finally, we come to House 4, the only true sequel to the original, with William Katt returning as Roger Cobb.  But that's almost the only thing this film has going for it.  It's back to being a horror comedy, but swings even further into the goofy comedy side than House 2; and it's really, really cheesy.  Cobb refuses to sell his family home because of some oath his grandfather swore, so he and his new family move in, and of course it's still haunted and up to no good shenanigans.  This time there's also some goofy real-estate mafia guys on their case, trying to force them to sell; and it feels like a children's film half the time.  But then a woman still gets covered in blood in her shower, so I don't really know who this film is for.  Anyway, there's also an old Indian wise man who just so happens to be a friend of the family, and a subplot about dumping toxic waste.  Jim Wynorski was one of the credited writers.  Honestly, I think most people just remember this film for the talking pizza scene.

2017 Arrow DVD on top; 2017 Arrow blu-ray below.

This film was made for the direct-to-video VHS market, and a few shots make me wonder if this was composed for fullscreen.  But it's been released in 1.85:1 before, and most of it looks right.  This film definitely has the weakest picture quality, with the blu barely distinguishable form the DVD for large sections, but I'm sure that's down to the original film, not anything wrong that Arrow's doing.  It's another fresh 2k scan, this time of an internegative (actually, that's probably the root of the difference).  Daylight scenes look better than the dark ones, which can get pretty splotchy and light on detail.  I'm sure this film has never looked better, though, and probably never will.

Again, we get both LPCM 2.0 stereo and DTS-HD 5.1 tracks, plus optional English subtitles.

I was more interested in getting Arrow's new documentary about House 4 than the film itself, so it's disappointing that this one's only half an hour.  But it's still quite good, talking to all the stars, Cunningham, and yes, Hodder again.  And we also get another audio commentary, which interestingly, was recorded by Blue Underground, and this time is by director Lewis Abernathy.  He's quite a character, so he makes for an amusing commentary, especially with some good prodding from the moderator.  There's even a cameo by (no foolin') James Cameron; so definitely don't skip this commentary.  Finally, there's the trailer and a slideshow.  So yeah, it gets a little shorter thrift, but it's still a nice bunch of extras, surely way more than it would ever have gotten in any other context, and probably more involving than the film itself.

Now let's talk about the box, because it's terrific.  Anchor Bay's old DVD had liner notes hidden on the inside of the cover art (what a weird, brief practice that was), plus two nice, cardstock inserts.  But Arrow nukes that.  The box is nice and solid, and each blu case includes reversible cover art.  There's an insert with notes on the transfers.  It all looks great.  But Holy Camolie™, look at that book!  It's 148 full color pages, hardcover(!), written by Simon Barber.  Besides his writing, it contains all the press kit materials from the four films and tons of artwork, including close-ups of the crazy paintings depicted in the first film, foreign cover art, and pretty much everything really.  It's beyond extensive.  This is one attractive set.

So do I recommend Arrow's set?  Oh gosh, yes!  Even despite me not being a huge fan of some of these films, the top notch presentation and the special features linking everything together makes this a must-have.  I wish Arrow would offer a replacement program for their framing issues; but I certainly wouldn't let it put me off this awesome set.  The original House is a truly great horror film, and the rest are at least a fascinating extension of its legacy; and digging into all the extras has been a blast.