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Steve James spent the 1980s playing muscle in other people’s movies, Cannon Films action pictures, The Delta Force, American Ninja, a scene-stealing supporting role as Kung Fu Joe in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, streeting on disc again this very week. He died of cancer in 1993, forty years old, having never gotten the lead role his talent deserved. He got one. It just took thirty-six years for anyone to find it.
Read more: Friday Blu-Ray News: ‘Hokum,’ ‘Project Hail Mary,’ ‘The Descent Part II’ (PM Weekly #6)Riverbend Starring Steve James Hits Physical Media
Riverbend, a 1989 independent action-drama, cast James as an army officer leading a Black uprising against a corrupt sheriff in the Jim Crow South. It got a limited VHS release through Paramount’s Prism label and then all but vanished. Michael Dennis, a Philadelphia archivist, first saw the tape on a video store shelf in the ’90s and didn’t watch it. Decades later, a mentor asked him to digitize it for YouTube. He finally watched his own transfer and realized what he’d been sitting on.
What followed took three years: tracking down the original 35mm negative, a 6K restoration supervised by the film’s original director, a theatrical run at the Aero and BAMcinématèk, and finally a Blu-ray release on Juneteenth this year, the first release from Dennis’s new label, Reelblack Renaissance. Its entire mission is rescuing Black independent films that never got proper releases, the ones that end up bare-bones or don’t get released at all, no commentary, no restoration, no context, just a scan and a barcode. “There’s no Black-owned boutique label doing this work,” Dennis said. “So we’re filling that gap.”
Riverbend didn’t need a studio to decide it mattered. It needed one person who refused to let a VHS tape stay the only copy that existed.
Welcome to PM Weekly. Let’s get into the week.
THIS WEEK ON DISC
- Project Hail Mary (2026), Alliance Entertainment
- Troy (2004), 3-disc Limited Edition, Arrow Video
- Mars Attacks! (1996), 30th Anniversary SteelBook, Warner Bros.
- JFK (1991), Theatrical Cut, Shout! Factory
- Harlan County USA (1976), Criterion
- New York, New York (1977), MVD
- Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), Limited Edition, Arrow Video
- The Descent: Part II (2009), SteelBook, Lionsgate Limited
- Body Snatchers (1993), Vinegar Syndrome
- I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), Vinegar Syndrome
- Enemy at the Gates (2001), 25th Anniversary SteelBook, Paramount
- 54 (1998), Director’s Cut, Cinématographe
- Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story (2025), Shudder
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023), Lionsgate
- Circle of Iron (1978), exclusive SteelBook, Blue Underground
- Hokum (2026), Decal
- Spike of Bensonhurst (1988), Limited Edition, Fun City
- Abandon Ship (1957), Sony
- Buffet Froid (1979), Limited Edition of 4,000 copies, Indicator
MARKET SIGNAL
The Sopranos is getting its first-ever complete 4K box set on December 8th, all six seasons, eighty-six episodes, fully remastered, the release this show has deserved for years. It includes “Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos,” Alex Gibney’s acclaimed documentary on the show’s creator. One honest note: that documentary isn’t new, it aired on HBO back in 2024 and has been streaming on Max ever since. What is genuinely new is a single bonus featurette with David Chase, made specifically for this release and available nowhere else.
It’s worth sitting these two stories next to each other. A tiny Philadelphia label just spent three years and its own founder’s money reviving a film that had one VHS release and nothing since. A media conglomerate is bundling an existing streaming documentary into a box set and calling most of it new. Scale isn’t the same as care. Sometimes the smaller release is the one actually doing the work.
STORE OF THE WEEK
Beyond Video (Baltimore, MD)
A group of former customers and staff tried to save Video Americain, an actual John Waters filming location, the video store seen in Serial Mom, and couldn’t raise enough. Instead of giving up, they built an entirely new collection from scratch: donations from their own shelves, a public call for more, member support through Fractured Atlas in exchange for borrowing privileges. Opened in 2018 with under 9,000 titles, Beyond Video now holds more than 21,000. It’s not a survivor story. It’s a resurrection, built by the people who showed up after the original store couldn’t be saved.
(Next week: The Video Store MPLS, Minneapolis.)
THE STACK
What I pulled off the shelf this week.
The Ben Stiller Show: The Complete Series (2003 DVD, series originally aired 1992)
Format: DVD, 2 Discs
Bonus Features: Seven audio commentary tracks with Ben Stiller, the cast, and writers; “A Brief History of The Ben Stiller Show” featurette with an alternate pilot version; ten outtakes and five unaired sketches; an E! behind-the-scenes special; the “Melrose Heights” special commentary Easter egg.
Fox canceled this after twelve episodes, which is exactly the kind of decision that makes a case for physical media all by itself. The show won an Emmy for comedic writing, launched Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Bob Odenkirk, and Andy Dick into everything that came after it, and network television still didn’t want it. This DVD, released a full decade later once Stiller had actual box office pull, includes a thirteenth episode that never even aired. That’s the whole argument: a show good enough to eventually earn a proper release, sitting on a shelf as complete proof it existed, instead of scattered across whatever corner of a streaming library still bothers to license it.
SIGN-OFF
That’s this week. A one-person label spent three years chasing down a negative nobody else wanted, and a media conglomerate spent one afternoon repackaging a documentary that already existed. Nineteen new titles landed on shelves regardless of which kind of effort went into them. If you know one person who still alphabetizes their shelf, forward this to them. That is the whole engine we have, and it is a good one.
See you Friday.
PM Weekly – Sean Reid
Movie & TV Production
seanreid@worldonetv.com
