Pretty Packaging: Imprint's SPECIES And SPECIES II Boxset Is One Of A Kind

I always love it when a distributor goes crazy when releasing a film, and few go quite as crazy as Australian distributor Via Vision with their Imprint label. Note that their more normal editions are nothing to sneeze at either, but if you want proof of how gloriously insane Imprint can get, just look at their release of Michael Mann's flawed-and-butchered eighties fantasy thriller The Keep, which shipped with a slipcase containing a 600 grams messing replica of a cross, blocking a window with a 3D-lenticular view.

Other Imprint specials: David Lynch's Dune, with a slipcase containing a sand runner that partly obscures the cover image. Or Wolfgang Petersen's The Neverending Story, housed in a replica of the book, in a size so large that the extras included reprints of the lobby cards at actual size. And look what they did with Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce!

Imprint's obsession with giving nice-yet-flawed films the most humongous releases yet continues with their 4K-UHD/Blu-ray boxset of Species and Species II, which comes in a whopper of a package weighing in at over 3200 grams (that's 7 lbs for you lot West of the Atlantic...).

Not surprisingly it's quite the looker, so here is a gallery of shots. Click on the edge of the pictures to scroll through them, or at the center of each to see a bigger version.

Sveta Shubina

And here it is, Imprint's "Mutation" boxset. It's a large box, large enough to put shoes in.

Artist Sveta Shubina created the front and back covers, and her artwork shows the alien-human hybrid Sil in all her glory.

Opening the box by way of a large side drawer.

The contents taken out, and there are a LOT of them. You get the films in a 3D-lenticular slipcase, replicas of the press maps from 1995 and 1998, two folded posters, the script, a hardcover picture book, replicas of the lobby cards, and prints of Shubina's cover art.

The contents spread out. I had to move furniture for this, and I still had to be conservative in how I showed the many, many photos and prints. But especially the two huge posters catch the eye here.

The films come on three Blu-ray discs and two 4K-UHD discs. You might think that for the 3D-lenticular slipcase they would use the famous 3D-lenticular Species II poster, which was one of the best lenticulars ever made. But no: they designed a new one, just for themselves.

The hardcover photo book is just that: it has tons of stills from the films.

The script and the press maps are replicas of the real ones, and yes, thirty years ago we got these things with stencils and staples.

The photographs in the press maps and the Lobby cards are almost too much. You can wallpaper a room with the contents of this set.

The (back)end. What a fantastic release.
Apparently the next film to get this treatment will be Reservoir Dogs. Tempting...

Pretty Packaging: Imprint's SPECIES And SPECIES II Boxset Is One Of A Kind

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