Blu-ray & DVD: The Digital Dread Report for June 2nd!

Bloody Harlan; evil scarecrows; inter-species romance; the best TV show ever made; and werewolves in New York... this is The Digital Dread Report for June 2nd!

Many of this week's best releases have little to do with Horror, but good is good, and we can't not discuss shows like The Wire and Justified hitting Blu-ray, at least briefly. Man can not live by Horror alone! Scarecrows and Spring are about as Horror as it gets though, so it all balances out in the end.

*Read on, and be sure to click the pics to order whatever strikes your fancy.

"From creator Graham Yost, each episode of the edge-of-your seat final season propels U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and criminal mastermind Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) ever closer to their ultimate confrontation. While Raylan is torn by just how far he will go to bring Boyd down – including using Boyd's fiancée Ava (Joelle Carter) as his secret informant – both Raylan and Boyd must now contend with the new incendiary force in town (Sam Elliott), a drug lord intent on building his own pot empire in Harlan. Based on the crime novels of Elmore Leonard, the Peabody Award-winning drama now takes its place in the pantheon of acclaimed drama series."

Justified was an excellent show, and we're still sad that it ended its 6 season run only a few short months ago. We are glad that it ended on a strong note though, giving us an excellent final season, and just about the perfect resolution to the whole Raylan vs. Boyd storyline. The Series Finale was one of the best that we've ever seen, and final line of the show was perfect in every way.

If you've never seen Justified, then you're missing out; anti-heroes just don't get any better than Raylan Givens. If you have seen it, then you know that this Final Season is a must own in every way. 

• Hollywood to Harlan Featurette – Join the writers of Justified in Kentucky as they conduct research before sitting down to write the final season of the show. From a visit to the Lexington marshal's office to the coal mines of Harlan, the writers had an opportunity to experience Kentucky in a whole new way.
• Directing the Show: Adam Arkin – Go behind the scenes with Director Adam Arkin as he directs the episode "Trust." (BD Exclusive)
• Dutch Speaks – A vintage interview with Writer Elmore Leonard about his thoughts on Justified. (BD Exclusive)
• Deleted Scenes (BD Exclusive)

"After a band of ex-military criminals pulls off a multi-million dollar heist, they hop aboard a plane headed for Mexico. But when one of their own betrays them, they suddenly find themselves on the ground and on the run through a field of scarecrows near an abandoned farmhouse. And as night sets in, the real nightmare begins. The men discover that there's a reason the farmhouse is empty... and now those who thought they were the hunters are being hunted by an unimaginable and malevolent force!"

Back when were kids, you couldn't just stream whatever you wanted to watch, whenever you wanted to watch it, so you either rented a movie from the video store, or you'd take a blank tape and record whatever was on cable at the time, and then watch it over and over again until the tape wore out.

Scarecrows is an obscure little flick that we had recorded on a VHS tape, and yes, we watched it over and over again. Thanks to Scream Factory, the folks that constantly bring us the beloved Horror gems from our childhood in Blu-ray quality, we can now watch it over and over all over again... although now the picture and audio won't be 80's bad, and we won't have to adjust our tracking every two minutes to try and make it look better.

This is an awesome release.

• New Audio Commentary With Co-screenwriter Richard Jefferies, Director Of Photography Peter Deming And Composer Terry Plumeri.
• Audio Commentary With Director William Wesley And Producer Cami Winikoff.
• The Last Straw – An Interview With Special Make-Up Effects Creator Norman Cabrera.
• Cornfield Commando – An Interview With Actor Ted Vernon.
• Original Storyboards.
• Still Gallery.
• Theatrical Trailer.

"After the death of his mother and a bar fight that could lead to jail time, sous-chef Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci, Evil Dead, Thumbsucker) flees California for Italy. While backpacking along the spectacular cliffs of the Adriatic coast, he stops in an idyllic village, where he meets and instantly connects with the enchanting and mysterious Louise (European TV star Nadia Hilker in a breakout role). A flirtatious romance begins to bloom between the two - however, Evan soon realizes that the voracious Louise harbors a monstrous, primordial secret that could put both their relationship and their lives in jeopardy."

*This Blu-ray is a Best Buy Exlusive until August.

We really enjoyed Spring (read our review HERE), and we may just have to make a trip to Best Buy this week to grab ourselves a copy. I'm not sure if this is a movie that we'd watch repeatedly, or if it's one that we'll pull out once in a while to relive it's odd, romantic creepiness, but either way, it's worthy of a spot in our collection.

If you haven't seen Spring, it's absolutely worth the $9.99 to experience it in Blu-ray quality.

• Audio commentary with writer-producer-editor-director Justin Benson and producer-editor-cinematographer-director Aaron Moorhead.
• Feature-length "The Making of Spring."
• Deleted scenes.
• SFX case studies.
• Proof of Concept short.
• Alternate ending.
• The Talented Mr. Evan.
• Angelo: The Worst Farmer.
• Wankster Girlfriend Monologue.
• Evan Ti Odio.
• Promo videos.

"In the six years that have passed since the conclusion of the HBO series The Wire, the critically acclaimed drama has turned into a worldwide phenomenon that has been hailed as "the best show in the history of television" by MSNBC. This summer, the series will make its highly anticipated debut on Blu-ray disc for the very first time."

The Wire is the best TV show ever made. Period.

The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, LOST, Deadwood, The Shield, the first four seasons of The West Wing, Hannibal, Band of Brothers, and Mad Men are the shows that we consider to be the best televised dramas of all-time. Everybody has their favorites, and everyone has their own idea about what makes something "The Best," but these are as good as it gets for us. And yes, The Wire trumps them all.

When we heard that HBO was remastering the show from its old 4:3 aspect ratio to a new, 16x9 1080p format, we were ecstatic. Purists can argue all they want to about how the show was meant to be seen in its original format, but the fact is that no one has square TVs anymore, and watching a show this great appear as a square in the middle of our windscreens, sucked.

Now, we get to see this masterful crime saga in the best possible quality, and since this is a show that we re-watch at least once per year, that's a beautiful thing.

If you've never seen The Wire, now is the perfect time to right that wrong. This is one Blu-ray set that gots to get got. Indeed.

• The 20-disc box set featuring all 60 episodes of the hit series in a stunningly re-mastered 16x9 full-screen HD format is showcased with newly redesigned box art.  
• Four behind-the-scenes documentaries.
• Three prequels that explore life before The Wire.
• An all-new cast and crew Q&A from the Paley Center for Media's The Wire reunion event.

"A real-estate tycoon, his coke-bringing wife and a slum wino have something grisly in common: they're the latest victims in a series of random murders. A veteran NYPD detective soon suspects the killings may be supernatural and deliberate: ages-old beings of cunning intelligence and incredible power, defending their turf from the encroachments of humankind."

Warner Bros. is opening up their back catalog quite a bit lately, and their latest gift to Horror fans is one of the better werewolf films of the 80's. This is a bare-bones offering (the only Special Feature is the movie's trailer), but it's great that werewolf lovers finally get to own this semi-classic on Blu-ray. Sometimes, it's just about the movie, you know?

It's another deep week for releases, and here are the best of the rest of them.

• Apollo 13 is a great movie, and one that we'd gladly add to our Blu-ray Collection.
• Falling Skies isn't really our cup of tea, but it's a pretty popular show, so fans will probably be thrilled to grab its latest season. 
• Will Smith's movies usually tend to leave us underwhelmed, so we'll probably wait until Focus hits Netflix. Did it even come out in theaters? 
• The Wachowski's haven't really done anything great since The Matrix, but Jupiter Ascending was a major flop, and maybe their worst movie yet. Channing Tatum? In space? No thank you. 
• Asmodexia (read our review HERE) was a solid little supernatural flick that we really enjoyed. $20 seems a little high for a DVD, but when the price drops by about half, it's definitely worth grabbing. 
• Michael Keaton as a bad guy? We might just have to give Blindsided a look.
• Everything else this week, as always, is a crap-shoot.