Arrow Video - The House By The Cemetery

[Almar@Cult Labs]

Now we've changed the forums into Cult Labs we can start to share some more of the DVD projects we're working on with you guys for your expert feedback.

A lot of us on here seem to get a kick out of old school video labels and Shameless has drawn a lot of inspiration from many classic releases of the past. Many of you in the UK will be familiar with Arrow Films - they've recently brought us Caligula fully uncut on an amazing four disc edition, King of New York on a two disc edition and much more.

Arrow have a history of bringing some cool horror to DVD - The Funhouse being an old favourite of mine. Coming up from them 29th June are three classic giallos - Lamberto Bava's Macabre, Dario Argento's Sleepless and Lucio Fulci's The House by the Cemetery which will come to us in the UK uncut for the first time ever.

These three giants in the world of giallo film-making have inspired a series of DVD releases entitled 'Masters of Giallo' and an opportunity to create 'Arrow Video' where we're going to to revisit some of the cool stuff video labels used to do to promote their releases. Something that used to be popular with horror releases of the VHS/Betamax/V2000 era but never done these days was to create artwork by commissioning an artist to paint a wild flight of imagination based upon or sometimes just very loosely inspired by the film! Now due to the cost of doing such a thing and retail preferring the uniformity of a Photoshop-created 'let's pretend it's a new film' range of sleeves this art of exploitation selling has died off.

We're delighted to announce that Arrow Video is bringing back the skill, the artistry and imagination of the painted sleeve by commissioning all-new paintings for these releases. Hardcore purists need not worry - there will be original artwork on the flip side of the sleeve but wild horror movies deserve wild artwork and this is part of a commitment by Arrow for the Arrow Video label to create DVDs that are a touch more inspiring than other efforts out there. Part of that is to join Cult Labs and get your feedback.

Let's kick off with the first Arrow Video sleeve. Ladies and Germs we present... Lucio Fulci's The House By The Cemetery!