Jose Larraz's SYMPTOMS Limited Edition Blu-ray Is Up For Pre-Order Now

J Hurtado, Editor, U.S. ; Dallas, Texas (@HatefulJosh)

April 1 2016, 3:00 PM

Cult film specialists, Mondo Macabro, have opened up pre-orders for their upcoming release of Jose Ramon Larraz's Symptoms. The film is a rare project from Larraz that has been unseen for decades, and Mondo Macabro has teamed up with the British Film Institute (BFI) to restore the film and brings it back into the public consciousness. The resulting standard home video releases from Mondo Macabro and BFI are too be mostly identical, apart from packaging and an additional DVD copy from BFI.

However, as has become a welcome habit from Mondo Macabro, there will be an exclusive red box edition in the US packed with extra materials. Check out the specs below, with the exclusive limited edition content bolded for emphasis

RED BOX LIMITED EDITION! 1000 numbered copies! 1 copy per customer!

Please note this is a PRE-ORDER! This exclusive set is due out May 10, 2016. We hope to get them a little early, but we can't make any promises.

A dark and haunting study in psychological horror, SYMPTOMS takes us deep into the twisted mind of a damaged girl.

Helen, who lives alone, invites her new friend Anne to stay with her in a lonely house, lost in the English countryside. The house, the woods that surround it and the figures fleetingly glimpsed through its windows, all seem imbued with a deep sense of mystery. Helen appears to be hiding a secret and the more Anne tries to uncover it, the deeper she is pulled into its dark heart.

SYMPTOMS was the official UK entry to the Cannes film festival in 1974 and was highly praised at the time. Subsequently the film sank into obscurity and was recently listed as one of the UK’s top 75 “lost films”. This release, taken from the original negative and fully restored, brings this quiet masterpiece back into view, where it can now be appreciated as one of the most under rated films of the 1970s.

Extras:

The 2011 documentary on Jose Larraz, ON VAMPYRES AND OTHER SYMPTOMS, a film by Celia Novis
FROM BARCELONA TO TUNBRIDGE WELLS, a 1999 TV documentary on Larraz, part of the EUROTIKA! series
New interviews with stars Angela Pleasence and Lorna Heilbron and editor Brian Smedley-Aston
Newly commissioned cover art by Gilles Vranckx

Red Box Limited Edition Exclusive Extras:

Larraz on Larraz! Bonus DVD featuring a two-hour long archival interview with Jose Ramon Larraz! - Conducted in the late 90s and used as the basis for the Larraz episode of UK TV show Eurotika! (included as an extra on the main disc), the majority of this career-spanning interview has never been seen before.
Exclusive booklet featuring a brand new essay from Writer/Critic Samm Deighan! – Samm is the editor of the Satanic Pandemonium blog, co-host of the Daughters of Darkness podcast, and the assistant web editor for excellent horror magazine Diabolique. She has contributed to Fangoria, Paracinema, and the book Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s, and is currently writing a book about WWII and cult cinema.

The bonus DVD containing the two-hour interview with Larraz is quite a perk, but I'm also a sucker for booklets (if you've read my reviews in the past, you would have noticed this). The red case is neat and matches my other Mondo Macabro DVDs, but content is king, and this set adds a ton of content to analready impressive package.

I'm a frequent and satisfied customer of Mondo Macabro's online store, and we should all buy directly as often as possible, it's the best way to ensure that our money keeps these companies alive and kicking. Symptoms is on sale now at the Mondo Macabro store, click the link below to get your order in before it's too late!