Anchor Bay/Starz Blu-Ray titles

Starz Home Entertainment/Anchor Bay Entertainment will release the first season of Masters Of Horror on Blu-Ray Disc in September. The release will consist of four BD-50 discs containing all the 15 season 1 episodes in 1080p high definition video. Currently plans are to provide uncompressed PCM 5.1 audio tracks with the release but that may change, depending on the storage availability on the final discs. The set will also contain some – though not all – of the bonus materials found on the individual DVD releases of the episodes.

In addition to “Masters Of Horror” there will be other Blu-Ray titles from Anchor Bay scheduled for Halloween: John Carpenter’s Halloween, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II and George A. Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead and Day Of The Dead, to be released on Blu-Ray some time in September or early October.

Anchor Bay Entertainment has not yet announced full details and specs on these releases but from what we've been hearing, expect DVD extras to carry over as well as uncompressed audio tracks on these movies. Since anchor Bay is well known for giving fans a treat, I think it is a safe best that these Blu-Ray Discs won't disappoint either. Stay tuned for more details.

Severin Films announced the worldwide DVD premiere of the fully restored and still-controversial 1977 adult hit VANESSA.

“Where EMMANUELLE ended,” the original ads whispered, “VANESSA begins!” Celebrity nudity website Mr. Skin.com today hails the movie as “A Four-Star Skin Classic!”

Tantalizing European actress Olivia Pascal stars as the titular teen who journeys from curious convent virgin to prisoner of a lavish Hong Kong bordello. Along the way, she experiences the most sensual and shocking extremes of pleasure, pain and even black magic perversion. ‘70s EuroSex favorites Eva Garden (VIRGIN REPORT), Astrid Boner (SCHOOLGIRL REPORT) and famed German character actor Anton Diffring (WHERE EAGLES DARE) co-star in this eye-popping flesh fest which features some of the most talked about scenes in European softcore history.

The disc’s exclusive bonus features include new interviews with director Hubert Frank and cinematographer Franz X. Lederle, as well as home movies filmed on set by Lederle.

More info at www.severin-films.com

Bill Tuttle has died.

William J. Tuttle, who as head of the makeup department at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios enhanced the looks of some of Hollywood's most beautiful people and helped design the creepy, human-devouring Morlocks in "The Time Machine," died July 27 at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif. He was 95. No cause of death was reported.

Mr. Tuttle's career encompassed more than 300 films, as well as the transition from black and white to Technicolor, a development he called murder, because the intense light needed for the process could melt layers of makeup. As a young man, he worked on the early Technicolor classic "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) with Judy Garland.

He was MGM's makeup chief from 1950 to 1970. For his work on "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" (1964), starring Tony Randall as a cunning Chinese medicine show impresario with many identities, he was the first in his profession to win an Academy Award. An Oscar category recognizing makeup skill did not begin on a regular basis until 1981. After leaving MGM, he became a freelance makeup artist, working on such features as Mel Brooks's "Young Frankenstein" (1974).

Mr. Tuttle spent 15 years as assistant to the head of MGM's makeup department during the heyday of the studio system. Plucking, dabbing, swabbing, he fiddled with the faces of MGM's biggest stars, including Katharine Hepburn, Greer Garson, Jeanette MacDonald, June Allyson, and Donna Reed, to whom he was briefly married in the early 1940s. Reed said at the time: "The first day I went to the studio, they sent me to the makeup department, and a makeup man named Bill Tuttle looked me over. He shook his head, mumbled something about what will they dig up next, and then went to work on me. He changed my eyebrows, shaded my chin, and made my mouth bigger. He made me very mad. Then he looked at me again and said: 'Now you'll do. Except you should change something else.' When I asked him what, he said, 'Your name. It should be Mrs. William Tuttle.' "