June 28, 2016

As someone that lives, breathes and writes about horror, I’d like to think I have my thumb on the pulse of which companies and distributors are doing what. But every once in a while, one will slip through the cracks!

I mean, back at the height of the DVD boom in the early 2000’s, Anchor Bay Entertainment was a horror force to be reckoned with, fully restoring and putting out the works of Italian maestros Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci & Lamberto Bava (though, eventually Bill Lustig took those titles with him to populate his library at the mighty Blue Underground). This was also the period in which Anchor Bay was acquiring exciting new genre films worthy of playing alongside the rest of their discography of classics. THE LOST, BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON, HATCHET, MALEVOLENCE, all of the MASTERS OF HORROR episodes; so on and so forth. After the buyout by Starz, I trusted their latest acquisitions less and less.

Nowadays, I trust Scream Factory, at least with treating the classics with the utmost respect that they deserve. And now with their joint deal with Chiller Films and IFC Midnight, I look to them for the latest horrors, whether it be THE BABADOOK, THE HALLOW, SpectreVision’s THE BOY or the HUMAN CENTIPEDE movies. Retro titles are hard to keep track of. If it’s not Scream Factory, there’s Arrow, Olive Films, Code Red, Twilight Time, Kino Lorber. Does anyone else put out the new stuff?

Earlier today, I posted my thoughts on Bernard Rose’s 2015 adaptation of FRANKENSTEIN. I really, really liked the film and when I checked the back of the Blu-Ray, I noticed it was put out by a distribution company called Alchemy. When we popped in the disc for our Friday night movie viewing, the first trailer to come up was this one for a movie called HOWL.

What the hell was that?! Seriously… it’s hard for trailers these days to maintain my attention and excitement for their 2 minute running time, especially for low-budget horror movies I’ve never heard of, but this looks awesome! By the time it was over, there was that Alchemy logo again and both myself and my buddy Josh both had our phones out in a quest to immediately find the movie. Next trailer up was for CHARLIE’S FARM.

What the hell again? That looks pretty cool! Again, Alchemy! And then we watched FRANKENSTEIN and I thought it was a really solid genre contribution. And so I went on the quest to figure out who Alchemy was and if I could find any more of their titles. It took some digging!

Alchemy is a pretty common word. So multiple searched for things like Alchemy Productions, Alchemy Video, Alchemy Blu-Ray netted no results. No website, no Facebook, nothing. Considering how much I love and keep up with horror, this seemed unfathomable! But finally, after finishing up my FRANKENSTEIN piece, I accidentally stumbled upon OurAlchemy.com. Both Facebook and Twitter monikers also sport the “our” before the name “Alchemy.”

I’ve already ordered Blu-Ray copies of HOWL (which really does look awesome) and the DVD of CHARLIE’S FARM, and will continue to dip into their genre catalog in the hopes that the quality of these recent genre films are on par with the golden age of Anchor Bay. Check out the FRANKENSTEIN trailer below and have a look at their horror library!