Mid-August Arrivals (Now with More Troma!)

Steve Carell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Some fun new titles were made available for streaming on Amazon Prime in the past week, including Judd Apatow's unrated cut of the very funny The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Clair Denis' extreme 2001 vampire flick, Trouble Every Day, Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart (a fictionalized account of director John Huston big-game hunting while making The African Queen), and the 1946 Barbara Stanwyck-Kirk Douglas film noir, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Those titles alone show a nice range of the old and the new(ish) that seem to be hitting Prime with increasing regularity.

Among even newer releases are Kevin Pollak's documentary, Misery Loves Comedy (2015), exploring the psyche of comedians; A Most Violent Year, a 2014 thriller starring Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac, from the director of All Is Lost; the drama If I Stay (2014), starring Chloë Grace Moretz; and a pickup from Netflix, the Japanese music documentary, We Don't Care About Music Anyway (2013).

Television arrivals include The Forsyte Saga (which expired from Netflix mere days ago), the return of 2012's Masterpiece Mystery: Endeavour, which was among June's PBS casualties, and the (long-awaited?) debut of Toxic Crusaders, the 1991 animated series featuring a kid-friendly version of Troma's very own Toxie, a.k.a., The Toxic Avenger.

The latter continues the expansion of Amazon's Troma catalog, which took off in June and now includes one of the all-time gruesome classics, Bloodsucking Freaks, which I don't recommend watching right after a meal (or even a snack). Also on hand is 1970's Seduction of a Nerd, featuring Julie Newmar(!), and the poetically titled Star Worms 2: Attack of the Pleasure Pods, from 1985. There are a bunch of other Troma terrors on the list below. Are any of these movies any good? Probably almost definitely not. But they do promise to be enjoyably bad, something so much of today's oh-so-earnest low-budget filmmaking lacks—Sharknado and Zombeavers aside.

Anyway, here are the most notable of the mid-month arrivals. Except where noted, all are PRIME ONLY.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Unrated (2005)
The Brownian Movement (2010)
Trouble Every Day (French - 2001)
White Hunter, Black Heart (1990)

New Releases

If I Stay (2014) ALSO ON NETFLIX
Misery Loves Comedy (2015)
A Most Violent Year (2014)
We Don't Care About Music Anyway (Japanese - 2013)

Classics

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
Flatbed Annie & Sweetie Pie: Lady Truckers (1979) ALSO ON NETFLIX
The Harder They Come (1972)
Les Miserables (French, dubbed - 1982)

TV

The Forsyte Saga: Seasons 1-2 (2002-2003)
Masterpiece Mystery: Endeavour (2012) - Returned
Toxic Crusaders: The Complete Series (1991)

From Troma

Bazaar Bizarre (2004)
Blades (1990)
Blood Hook (1987)
Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)
Blondes Have More Guns (1996)
Dance or Die (1987)
Dangerous Obsession (1989)
Dog Years (1997)
Electra Love 2000 (1991)
Ellie (1984)
Fraternity Demon (1992)
Frostbiter: Wrath of the Wendigo (1995)
Rajin Cajun (1991)
Screamplay (1985)
Seduction of a Nerd (1970)
Shakespeare In and Out (1999)
Slaughter Party (2005)
Star Worms 2: Attack of the Pleasure Pods (1985)