DELICATESSEN: Grimly Hilarious Post-Apocalypse Comes to Severin Films

Streaming might be the future, but physical media is still the present -- for movie lovers, anyway. It's also awesome, depending on the title, the label, and the release, so join us as we take a look at the new 4K UHDs, Blu-rays, and DVDs heading your way. Now keep reading as we explore... new releases from Severin Films!

Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is probably best-known for his pop-colored masterpiece, Amelie or his stab at franchise fun with Alien: Resurrection, but both of those are predated by some truly weird cinematic endeavors.

Delicatessen was Jeunet's feature debut (alongside co-director Marc Caro), and it's... a lot. A post-apocalyptic adventure? A love story with cannibals? A quirky French comedy of epic proportions? It's all of that and more despite a relatively modest budget, and it's now available on 4K UHD, thanks to the good folks at Severin.

Jobs are almost as scarce as meat in the future, so one young man considers himself lucky when he lands a job at a butcher shop. Things are looking even more rosy when he falls in love with the butcher's daughter, but it's not long before the truth rears its tasty head -- the butcher hires assistants solely for the purpose of feeding them to his customers. Soon, the young couple are joining forces with a vegetarian resistance living underground, but they may have bitten off more than they can chew with this fight.

My Jeunet allegiance sits mostly with the two films mentioned at the top, but I'm still a sucker for the way his films present the world. Delicatessen, like all of his films, is a sensory experience where every frame captures memorable visuals and emotions tweaked through music, soundscape, and emotion. It's a funny film, more blackly comic than laugh out loud, and it's easy to get caught up in an oddball love story playing out in something of a Gilliam-esque atmosphere.

Severin's new 4K release uses the recent transfer from StudioCanal, and it's a different look from the old Blu-ray release. It's darker and feels like new color timing, something explained onscreen before the feature, but combined with the new HDR presentation, the result is a strong, satisfying image. The special features include a commentary with Jeunet, a making of featurette, and three new interviews -- one with Jeunet and Caro, one with just Caro, and one with Terry Gilliam discussing his own work and similar sensibilities.

Severin has also given the 4K treatment to the feature debut from Brandon Cronenberg. Antiviral explores the world of celebrity and our insatiable fascination with it, but it does so with that Cronenbergian touch -- i.e. body horrors, glacial pacing, and people chasing their worst instincts.

Syd collects celebrity illnesses to sell to rabid fans, and it's a lucrative gig. Turns out people want to share in the same sicknesses that have troubled their favorite stars, and as the technology advances, they also devour the opportunity to buy pieces of "meat" cloned and grown from those same celebs. What they do with that flesh is their own business...

Antiviral feels every bit like something out of the Cronenberg canon, but its pacing doesn't pair well with its content. While the elder Cronenberg delivered slow burns that chill and thrill (think Shivers and The Dead Zone), junior's debut only nails that pace.

His sci-fi celebrity concoction has its interesting elements and ideas, but they don't quite come together as more than just those elements and ideas. It's worth noting that his follow-up, Possessor, sees him firing on all cylinders and maintaining that controlled slow burn.

Your thoughts may vary, though, and if you're a fan, you're in very good hands with Severin's new release. The 4K presentation captures well the film's antiseptic details and brightly lit scenes of satirical social commentary, but it's the extras that truly shine. Cronenberg delivers a commentary track alongside his cinematographer, and the included Blu-ray comes loaded with a short film (something of a previous incarnation), deleted scenes, interviews, and featurettes.

Another famous son of horror royalty landed on disc from Severin recently as Lamberto Bava's The Mask of Satan finally comes home on Blu-ray. The film offers up a fresh take on the story of Viy -- previously adapted by Mario Bava as Black Sabbath -- and while it lacks his dad's masterful grip on atmosphere, the film still finds some fun.

A group of skiers fall into an ice crevasse where they discover a frozen corpse. They get handsy with it, of course, and soon find themselves trapped in an underground village with a dark secret. Devilish antics follow as the young fools fall under the spell of arrogance, idiocy, and Satan.

Marketed at times as Demons 5: The Devil's Veil, it's worth noting right at the start that Bava's film lacks the violent energy and bonkers creativity of his two proper Demons films. Originally made for television, the limited budget is stretched to build atmosphere with its underground village, and there are some minor macabre touches throughout, but there's also noticeable drag and elements feel stretched beyond reason. It's far from a bad film, but consider it more for big fans of Bava in particular or Italian horror in general.

Severin's new 2K scan makes the best of those aforementioned TV limitations, and you just know that Bava utilizes lighting and color nearly as well as his papa. It won't look as good as his film features, but it looks better than previous home video incarnations have allowed. The disc includes three new interviews with Lamberto Bava and two of the actors, Mary Sellers and Debora Caprioglio.