One of the most magical things that can happen to a film lover is buying a Blu-ray or seeing a random movie and watching it based on the cover alone. Something that’s equally as magical, is finding out that one of your favorite movies has a sequel, with the original cast mostly intact. Finally, there’s the case of a cult-classic movie that you watch on YouTube with horrific quality, but it still ends up kicking ass because the movie is that good. These are all cases when it comes to the movies on our list today for Fright-A-Thon. Today, we have five horror movies that desperately need either their first Blu-ray/4K release or an upgrade from a previously horrific studio release.

So if you’re listening Scream Factory, Synapse Films, Vinegar Syndrome, Arrow Video, Blue Underground, Criterion Collection, Imprint FIlms, or any other boutique Blu-ray label, we need these movies out with the best possible quality.

5. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II

The first Prom Night is a classic of the slasher genre, it gave us another “Scream Queen” performance from Jamie Lee Curtis and set her off in her post-Halloween career. So we get Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (gotta love a title that rhymes) in 1987 and while it’s not as culturally impactful as the first film, this is some later ’80s slasher goodness. It’s got possession, kills, thrills, and in classic horror fashion, it wasn’t originally made as a sequel to Prom Night. All mentions of the first film were added in reshoots after it was purchased by the Samuel-Goldwyn Company.

This one has a DVD release, but no Blu-ray release. The kick in the junk is that the DVD release is also extraordinarily expensive. You can watch it on streaming, so this one isn’t lost forever, but even a barebones Blu-ray release would be better than what we have. Give us the sequels to Prom Night as well! If there’s a market for direct-to-video Amityville Horror sequels, there’s a market for this.

4. Trick Or Treat

Heavy metal and Halloween/Horror go together perfectly. What happens when you combine the two for a kickass ’80s movie? You get Trick Or Treat. Originally this was supposed to star an actual heavy metal star as Sammi Curr, but Tony Fields is utterly fantastic in the role. It tells the story of a re-animated metal singer who tries to take over a town with the power of Satan and heavy metal. The soundtrack for this one was done by Fastway, and that soundtrack is more easily available than the movie is. The DVD for this one is ridiculously expensive for what it is, and there’s no Region A Blu-ray release in sight. This is just asking for someone to give us a collector’s edition.

3. Near Dark

So it’s a vampire-themed western horror movie, what more could you want?

How Criterion Collection or someone similar hasn’t done Near Dark on Blu-ray with a new transfer and restoration is beyond me. We got teased that Studio Canal would do a 4K restoration last year, but that never materialized. We did get an absolutely horrific cover art for the Region A release that came out in the midst of Twilight-fever, but since then, nothing. That release is prohibitively expensive for what it is, a barebones studio release. It’s out of print, and whoever decided that the cover art was okay, should likely not be working in that field anymore.

That cover art is offensive. Please, someone, give this movie the release that it deserves. You can watch it on Shudder right now, it’s bounced around to various streaming services, but a home video release with plenty of extras would do the trick.

2. The Keep

Michael Mann reportedly hates this movie, which is why we’ve never gotten a Blu-ray release for it. It has a stacked cast featuring Ian McKellen, Scott Glenn, Jurgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne, and Robert Prosky. A mysterious force in an old Romanian fortress is released and starts killing people. It’s kind of astounding how Michael Mann would do a straight-up horror movie like this (Manhunter doesn’t count, but is still horror), but here we are. You can watch this one on PlutoTV or grab the DVD, which is relatively inexpensive. But Michael Mann’s films need to be watched in the best quality possible, so we really could use this one on Blu-ray or even 4K.

There are some bootleg Blu-ray releases out there, but I don’t like supporting bootlegs.

1. Fright Night Part 2

This one is tangled up in some of the worst rights issues I’ve ever seen. Friday the 13th has NOTHING on Fright Night Part 2. Guess who the producers were for this film? It was Live Entertainment, whose chairman was Jose Menendez. Sadly, Menendez and his wife were murdered by their sons before this movie was released. The controversy surrounding their murder was felt by Fright Night Part 2, it lost countrywide distribution and led to poor box office results.

I wrote about this movie in the first-ever Fright-A-Thon article back in 2020. The first time I watched it was a surprisingly good HD version on YouTube, and there is a bootleg Blu-ray out there, and a DVD, but we really need an official release. With the surrounding issues with this one, that bootleg might be the best way to get this one on a physical disc.

It’s a shame because while the sequel doesn’t equal the first Fright Night, Fright Night Part 2 is excellent.

That’ll do it for the Top 5 Movies That Need A Blu-Ray/4K Release for Fright-A-Thon, did your choices make the list?

For more on Horror, make sure to check out the Fright-A-Thon Index for 2022 to see all the 61-Day Horror Marathon content!

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