Spectacular Optical, the indie publishing imprint of Canadian genre veteran Kier-La Janisse, has expanded its remit to include theatrical, streaming and home video distribution of a selection of films curated by Janisse with a focus on landscape and design, music and counterculture, and experimental genre works. Janisse is the author of the influential horror memoir House of Psychotic Women, director of the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, and creator of The Haunted Season, an annual Shudder holiday horror anthology series. The new distribution label will launch this month with a diverse slate spanning new titles and exciting restorations.
“After decades of writing and film programming, there are certain films that never leave me,” says Janisse. “And though I’m known most for my explorations in genre, what inspires me is a broad cross-section of multidisciplinary work. And so this label is very personal to me, not so much a commercial enterprise as a dedicated compulsion to share films that have moved me – or even changed me – with a wider audience.”
The company’s first release will be BAFTA-winning documentarian Christopher Morris’ 2023 film A Year in a Field, which documents a year in the life of a 4000-year-old Cornish standing stone. The rollout will include a special Earth Day TVOD release on April 22, followed by a collectors’ edition Blu-ray. The film was shot between the Winter Solstices of 2020 and 2021, as the world had been quieted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For A Year in a Field to now find its way across North America is a wonder,” says director Christopher Morris. “I hope this small, quiet film about one field in England finds a true home within such a vast and complex continent.”
Spectacular Optical is especially excited to be partnering with Severin Films to co-release a new 4K restoration of Waris Hussein’s Melody (1971), scripted by Alan Parker (Bugsy Malone) and reuniting Oliver! stars Mark Lester and Jack Wild alongside then-newcomer Tracy Hyde in the puppy love story that inspired Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. Featuring songs by the Bee Gees, this restoration from the original camera negatives will mark the film’s first official release in North America in nearly 50 years.
“Melody has been my white whale for almost two decades,” says Janisse, “Truly the most adorable film ever made!”
The company has also begun restoration on Bert Deling’s 1975 Australian underground classic Pure Shit for its first-ever North American home video release. Depicting 24 hours in the life of Melbourne junkies in search of a fix, the film was initially banned following a raid on the theatre where it premiered. Featuring a driving soundtrack of local bands and a bevy of now-familiar faces from the first era of Australia’s independent film scene, including Gary Waddell and Phil Motherwell (Stir) and a small role by future Monkey Grip author Helen Garner, Pure Shit is being restored with elements held at Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive.
Andrew Horn’s 1984 independent melodrama Doomed Love starring avant garde staple Bill Rice (Decoder, Vortex) will see its first worldwide disc release with a new restoration from the original camera negatives housed at the Deutsche Kinemathek. “A true lost classic of the 1980s New York underground, and a marvel of visual ingenuity” (Le Cineclub), the film features incredible Expressionist-style two-dimensional sets by artists Amy Sillman and Pamela Wilson, a screenplay by experimental dramaturge Jim Neu and a score by the Lounge Lizards’ Evan Lurie.
Spectacular Optical has also acquired Paul Wright’s ethereal folk horror-adjacent archive film Arcadia (2017) — which the Guardian called “a fever dream of the British countryside” — and Don Levy’s experimental feature Herostratus (1967) — starring The Devils’ Michael Gothard and featuring an early role by Helen Mirren — from the British Film Institute.
All films will be available theatrically, on digital platforms and physical media. Wide distribution of Spectacular Optical’s home video releases will be handled in the US by Severin Films, where Janisse also serves as an acquisitions executive and was the blu ray producer behind such acclaimed box sets as All the Haunts be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror Vols. 1 & 2 and The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle.
Founded in 2014 and named after the sinister institution in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, Spectacular Optical is a small-press publisher of collectible film and pop culture books with an emphasis on supporting Canadian film writers and filmmakers. Through our film development and production arm, we support the creation of genre-related short, feature-length and episodic media. As of 2026, Spectacular Optical is expanding to include a curated line of film distribution for theatrical, streaming and home video.
Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, producer, publisher and acquisitions executive for Severin Films. She was a film programmer from 1999-2017, including a foundational role as Head Programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (2003-2007) and her books include House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012/2022) and Cockfight: A Fable of Failure (2024). She also has been an editor on numerous books including Truth & Soul: A Robert Downey Sr. Reader (2025), Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015).
Severin Films is the foremost independent studio dedicated to rescuing, restoring, and releasing the works of Oscar nominees and cult icons alike for Blu-ray, 4K UHD and digital platforms. Founded in 2006 by David Gregory, Carl Daft and John Cregan, the Los Angeles-based company features a library of 250+ films and television projects, as well as an international team of the industry’s most skilled and devoted genre experts. “World cinema speaks many languages,” says Severin co-founder David Gregory, “some whisper and others scream, but all deserve to be heard. From the obscure to the infamous, from the grindhouse to the arthouse, from the thought-lost to the proudly resurrected, Severin is committed to uplifting the most provocative voices in entertainment.”
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