Sunday, January 8, 2017

Low Radar EGGSHELLS Release on Stateside Blu-Ray!

Small academic publishers UT Press (University of Texas Press) is behind this quiet release, of what is by all means an all-new, specially-packaged Eggshells Blu-Ray/DVD "combo pack with booklet," made available only a few days ago.  Link to the product page is here (already bought my copy; buy yours too!).  Here's their full description:
Before The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper made this psychedelic comedy set in the heady days of anti–Vietnam War protest. In its own weird way, Eggshells is a documentary of that moment in Austin when hippies and rednecks merged into one through music and other “recreational activities.” But it is also infused with Hooper’s love of Hammer horror and the phantasmagorical.
Louis Black and Mark Rance restored Eggshells, Hooper’s first film, from the only known 35 mm print. The box set also includes commentary by Hooper and Black, two of Hooper’s early short films, and a booklet that contains an illustrated biography of Hooper’s childhood and an essay by Black.
Eggshells is a true 1968 film, psychedelic and political. . . . The film celebrates alternative lifestyles and politics and people and an odd, kinky semi-mysticism that is grounded more in humor than the supernatural,” David Hudson wrote on the website Notebook.
Which also means we may be getting a new Hooper work to ponder soon.  I imagine the two "early short films" mentioned are The Heisters and a 1966 documentary short film he made, Down Friday Street, about the demolition of an Austin home and which there was rumblings about having been restored.  Huzzah!  Reaction to that coming up in a bit, I can only imagine.