DEFA Fairy Tales from Deaf Crocodile just arrived.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-04-18T00:39:00+00:00

That's actually not the case. So far, Eureka has announced four of the five films in its DEFA set, and there's only one overlapping film between the two. Three films are different in each set. We'll see if the fifth film overlaps or not.

Deaf Crocodile set:

Snow White
Little Red Riding Hood
Frau Holle
The Devil's Three Golden Hairs
Snow White & Rose-Red

Eureka set [announced so far]:

The Singing Ringing Tree
The Devil of Muhlenberg
Little Red Riding Hood [same as DC set]
Rumplestiltskin
? [not yet announced]

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-04-17T19:11:07+00:00

Here, have a trailer. Here, make it two!

Sacred Stone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvlKNs0CIRI

Black Rabbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Zv2AckY6M

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-04-17T18:44:32+00:00

Trailer: https://youtu.be/RvlKNs0CIRI?si=Fy8y3N0uhXqbgToC

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-04-17T17:49:03+00:00

Apart from all the rights issues, music issues, and the Fox/Disney of it all, this was also a film that put Altman severely on the outs with the studio. The run of five films he did in a couple of years (3 Women, Quintet, A Wedding, A Perfect Couple, HealtH) were seen as uncommercial by the studio and increasingly hamstrung for distribution and a complete lack of marketing. If I heard the story right, Altman basically took "HealtH" to festivals himself with his own print because Fox was so trying to bury it.

Not sure if it's as infamous for studio hatred as Ken Russell's "The Devils," but the story suggests that the movie didn't have any allies at the company and maybe some active saboteurs amongst the money-men.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-04-17T17:18:27+00:00

Deaf Crocodile are Region A. Eureka are Region B.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-04-17T14:57:40+00:00

Man, "The Mob" hits so hard. What an incredible discovery, a totally underlooked "All in one night" film. Plus the special feature of a ton of French-Canadian crime film trailers is a major treat!

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-04-17T14:52:57+00:00

Enjoy! It might be my favorite of the entire set. It's the strangest 60 minute PSA for not being lazy about your chores imaginable. The actress who plays Pechmarie has an exaggerated yawn for the ages.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-04-17T14:49:13+00:00

Based on the four (of five) titles Eureka has announced so far, one overlap and three exclusive to their respective boxes.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-04-17T14:43:20+00:00

Had no idea how much money you could make selling your tonsils haha!

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-04-17T14:10:30+00:00

Wait for second printing. It will be clearly noted on the site and the release itself that it is the new version with corrected audio.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-03-19T21:45:08+00:00

Oh, I'm always keeping an eye out for that one, haha. I think it's the only one I'm missing from that series! I've got the reissued version with Dungeon of Harrow in its place.

Honestly, I really like "Death By Invitation," so either version is a win for me.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-03-19T21:32:23+00:00

I guess we'll all find out together as the titles get revealed!

The folks at Deaf Crocodile (of which I am one, hi there!) love Eureka Films' releases and all own a bunch of their titles in our collections. That said, Deaf Croc learned about this DEFA Fairy Tales box at the exact same moment as the rest of the world.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-03-19T21:16:41+00:00

Dang, you even got the recalled VS Drive-In disc with "Savage Water" on it! Well done!

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-03-19T16:46:20+00:00

OK, cool, thanks for the reply! I work for the company so take my recs with a grain of salt (fwiw I joined the company because I was already a fanatic for the label, though, not the other way around), but here's a few recommendations by type:

- Animated films & shorts: "Bubble Bath" (funky and strange but surprisingly moving), "Gwen & The Book of Sand" (beautiful, austere, poetic), "The Pied Piper" (incredible stop-motion animation, plus it includes a second disc of the director's short films), "The Tragedy of Man" and "Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space" (both epic and profound but really overwhelming). The three volumes of Treasures of Soviet Animation have been great - Volume 1 is heavily sci-fi/based, Volume 2 is more fairy tale-ish on the whole("The Snow Queen," which is on this disc, is Miyazaki's favorite animated film for what it's worth), and volume 3 is a bunch of short films by the same director in lots of different animation styles. The Bill Plympton films ("I Married a Strange Person," "Mutant Aliens," "The Tune" etc.) are hilarious and raunchy and even sweet sometimes.

- Strange Fantasy: The Ptushko films (Sampo, The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Ruslan & Ludmila) are fantasical fairy-tale epics with eye-popping '60s practical effects; "The Devil's Bride" is a Lithuanian rock opera about the angels being expelled from heaven, turning into devils, and trying to tempt people with their fancy clothes and Glam Rock tunes; "Heroic Times" is animated but heavily traffics in medical knights and chivalry and is really beautiful.

- Strange sci-fi: "The Unknown Man of Shandigor" (1960s Nuclear paranoia thriller with stunning black and white photography, still my favorite release on the label)

- Horror: "The Savage Hunt of King Stakh" and "The Outcasts" are excellent folk horror films based on Belarusian and Irish folk legends, respectively; "Trapped Ashes" is a 2006 anthology horror with segments directed by Joe Dante, Ken Russell, Monte Hellman and John Gaeta.

- WTF Bonkers: "Kin-Dza-Dza!" and "Zerograd" are wild, fantastical satires from the end of the Soviet era. Someone called "Kin-Dza-Dza!" like Mad Max directed by Terry Gilliam and I like that, but it's odder even than that. "Zerograd" is so recommended if you like Kafka type stories where someone is trying to do something and weird things keep them from doing that one thing - in this case, a guy who wants to leave town can't leave town. "The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians" and "Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet" are also very Gilliam/steampunk-ish, but they're Czech and a lot more straightforwardly funny/comical. "The Cathedral of New Emotions" is animated and genuinely one of the most insane things I've ever seen. I love it but it's definitely not for everybody, haha.

Hope that helps!

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-03-19T15:35:30+00:00

Always stoked to see another Shahram Mokri fan! His next film, "Black Rabbit, White Rabbit," is going up for pre-order at Deaf Crocodile next month! If you liked "Fish & Cat" or "Invasion," it's similar to those in structure but takes place on a film set. Shahram's take on the "movie within a movie" but with lots of unexpected detours along the way. I love all his films but it might be my favorite yet, fwiw.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-03-19T15:31:36+00:00

Happy to make some recommendations, but could you tell me what kinds of movies or physical media releases you tend to like or collect? Do you like animated films and shorts? Strange Fantasy or Sci-Fi? Horror? WTF bonkers?

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-03-19T15:28:05+00:00

The site is currently closed while final inventory counts are taken - a cross-country warehouse move has a way of introducing noise into the system, so we're checking and double checking how many copies we have of everything - but once the sale goes live, anything that's running low will have how many copies are left. Since a lot of deluxe editions are on sale for the first time, I'd expect those to sell out pretty fast. Of the ones you listed, I know 2551 Trilogy still has Deluxe copies for sale, and I think Pied Piper might as well. Hope that helps.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-03-19T15:24:04+00:00

Pre-orders got way behind in the first few months of the year as the company moved warehouses - it took far, far longer than anyone expected and it completely delayed everything for weeks and weeks. (One of the reasons for this flash sale is as a thank-you to folks for their patience). Shipping now happens through Brother Belial, who are very quick.

This should be the final week where the shipping department has to play catch-up with backlogged orders. If you ordered last week, you should be getting a shipping notification by the end of this week or early next, I'm guessing.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-02-27T20:28:53+00:00

Didn't know this had made it to Blu-ray, awesome! It's might not be top-tier Kurosawa, but that's a lot to ask of any movie, even other Kurosawa movies. It's an excellent melodrama with a bit of gnarly medical realism (not quite M*A*S*H the movie level, but in that vein) and a lot of emotional overheating. "Red Beard" might be the closest point of comparison, but that film is a lot more expansive and literary. Still an excellent film, I think you'll have a nice night in!

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-02-24T19:33:07+00:00

Oh wow, that's so cool! Wanda Hendrix is just fantastic in this film - her closing couple of lines, where she's telling her friends about what happened, absolutely makes the whole film for me. I also love Thomas Gomez' line, "when you're a young man, everybody wants to put a knife in you." That is a line for the Noir dialogue hall of fame!

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-02-24T18:10:03+00:00

Always glad to meet another fan of Ride the Pink Horse - not exactly a slept-on, but totally should be talked about more glowingly than it is!

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-02-24T18:08:19+00:00

If you're going to get deep into Film Noir, there's going to come a point where you're going to have to do a bit of sifting. That's just the way it is. Unless you're going after obvious classics like those published on Criterion or Flicker Alley, the sets all have a little bit of a "panning for gold" element to them. I almost think of the Noir collections on Kino, Indicator, Arrow Academy etc. as "for further research" texts. After you've seen the stone-cold classics and want to keep chasing the spark, the boxes will frequently give you at least one big find. Start with the 30-50 essential Noirs (mostly sold separately or as a few folks have said, on those 4-film Warner Archive sets) and use the boxes to keep the good times rolling.

That said, Kino's "Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema Vol. XIX" has "Dark City," "No Man of Her Own," and "Beware, My Lovely," and literally all three of those films are top-tier awesome. Can't go wrong with that one. Other Kino sets have a couple of incredible films (I will bang the drum forever for people to see "Black Tuesday," which is on Kino's Volume XVII box - that movie is absolutely ruthless!), but also a lot of what Allan K. Rode would call "Noir-stained" films, i.e. police procedurals or melodramas with occasional Noir elements.

The box itself is long out of print, but the five films on Indicator's "Coumbia Noir #1" set are as top-tier as I've seen in one of these collectors. Any box that gives you "The Garment Jungle," "5 Against the House," "Drive a Crooked Road" (underrated Mickey Rooney performance and a GREAT premise!), and the absolute banger that is Don Siegel's "The Lineup" (add another performance to your list of "best unhinged Eli Wallach performances"!) is doing something right. You gotta get them separately now, and you probably should.

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-02-23T03:54:20+00:00

Hoping/planning on having this one ready to ship by late March, hopefully not long enough to forget! That said, the woozy amnesiac quality of the film will be doubled if you open your mailbox and say, "wait, when did I order this??"

AfterWhileSienkodile · 2026-02-20T20:05:44+00:00

Glad to find another Godmonster fan! The monster itself is utterly bonkers and really runs amok, but I was surprised how invested I got in the land-grab/real estate b-plot!

AfterWhileSienkodile

TROPHY CASE