Blu-ray Release: Mamba

Blu-ray Release Date: Available now
Price: Blu-ray $17.97
Studio: Kino Lorber

An exotic adventure set among ivory traders and military officers in Colonial East Africa, 1930’s Mamba stars Jean Hersholt as a corrupt land-owner who battles a German officer (Ralph Forbes) over the honor of a young woman (Eleanor Boardman). But the romantic triangle is shattered when the indigenous population mounts an epic assault upon its oppressors.

Billed as the first feature-length, all-talking Technicolor drama, Mamba (directed by Albert Rogell) was an bold attempt by the low-budget Tiffany Productions to compete with the major studios. For decades it was considered a lost film, until an original print was discovered in Australia. Photochemically preserved and digitally restored, this edition reveals that Mamba is much more than a curiosity item–it is a film of remarkable artistic ambition, with such diverse influences as Erich von Stroheim’s sexually frank melodramas and the “unchained camera” of the German silent cinema.

Blu-ray extras include the following:

-Audio commentary by filmmaker Brian Trenchard Smith
-Interview with Paul Brennan on the rediscovery and restoration of Mamba, excerpted from the documentary Splice Here: A Projected Odyssey, by Rob Murphy
-Theatre of Dreams, a documentary short on Murray and Pat Matthews, the Australian film collectors who discovered the sole surviving print of Mamba