Be forewarned: You have never seen anything like SCARLET WARNING 666, the long-lost, made-in-Dallas masterpiece of outsider cinema written, produced, directed by, and starring weird music legend
PALMER ROCKEY!
Never released on home video and not seen in 40 years, SCARLET WARNING 666 is coming to Blu-ray in a limited collector’s edition, newly restored from the original 35mm negative and available for preorder at GrindhouseReleasing.com.
The deluxe 3-disc (2 Blu-rays + CD) release includes Palmer Rockey’s SCARLET LOVE ‘Movie Album’ in a new CD remaster with bonus tracks from the original 1980 ROCKEY’S STYLE pressing of the rare cult classic LP.
Palmer Rockey boasted of playing 7 different roles on screen and 47 different roles behind the scenes in what is reputed to be the worst movie ever made. He expected Academy Award recognition for his efforts.
SCARLET WARNING 666 stars Rockey as twin brothers in a story of Satanic skullduggery, bizarre occult rituals and “demonic assassination” on a country estate. The execution of this premise was so bewildering, insane, and incompetent that the film was laughed off the screen at its Dallas premiere in 1974.
After audiences mocked his naive ineptitude, Rockey said, “You know what I think the meaning of this whole thing – the movie – is? Don’t give anybody the right to make you unhappy, because, man, they will. People can laugh at what I do, but they can’t laugh at me. I mean, man, I’m satisfied. I’m smiling inside.”
Rockey spent decades obsessively laboring over his magnum opus, shooting new scenes and piling layer upon layer of cringe in a doomed effort to explain the incomprehensible plot. He distributed the movie himself, four-walling theaters to show his epic in various incarnations as IT HAPPENED ON SUNDAY, SCARLET LOVE, ROCKEY’S STYLE, LOVE IS DEEP INSIDE, and SCARLET WARNING 666.
In 1980 he released the film as SCARLET LOVE, with an original soundtrack album featuring his own vocal stylings. When this too met with audience mockery, Rockey attempted to frame the unintended laughs as “keen satire.” Rockey was still restitching his Frankenstein’s monster of a movie with new material at the time of his death in 1996.
“It seems to me that the real story is in the mental and to some extent moral decline of Palmer Rockey which is exhibited in the final version of the film,” said Dr. Ron DiSalvo, who played opposite Rockey in scenes filmed decades apart.
The Rockey legend grew when Rev. Ivan Stang (The Church of the SubGenius) evangelized about the film in THE BOOK OF THE SUBGENIUS and Jello Biafra wrote about the SCARLET LOVE “Movie Album” in the popular RE/Search book series INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC.
The ultra-rare LP became an obsession for record collectors, leading to a sold-out 2013 reissue in the UK. Carl Broemel (My Morning Jacket) covered one of Rockey’s songs and Broadway World called the soundtrack “a rare cult classic of oddball music.” Yet the movie remained missing for more than 40 years. Until now!
Although he never nabbed his Oscar, Rockey ended up Oscar-adjacent: his final cut of SCARLET WARNING 666 was found in the Academy vault and restored by Academy Award-winning film editor Bob Murawski, whose credits include THE HURT LOCKER, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, and Sam Raimi’s SEND HELP.
Grindhouse Releasing has painstakingly restored SCARLET WARNING 666 from the original camera negative, going beyond the limits of sanity to preserve every agonizing frame of Rockey’s cinematic tribulation and to document the bizarre story behind it.
SPECIAL FEATURES
– Beautiful new master, lovingly restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative
– Provocative, in-depth interviews with producer Cookie Rockey,
and co-star Dr. Ron DiSalvo
– Additional interviews with punk rock icon Jello Biafra and legendary rare record connoisseurs Paul Major and Jonny Trunk
– Audio commentary by Reverend Ivan Stang (Church of the SubGenius)
– Original theatrical trailer and extensive still galleries
– Glossy illustrated booklet with liner notes by exploitation historian Chris Poggiali
– Beautiful embossed slipcover with new art by esteemed painter Jerry Martinez
– Blu-ray cover painting by cult artist Dave Lebow
– BONUS CD – SCARLET LOVE MOVIE ALBUM by Palmer Rockey
newly remastered in stunning 24-bit/192Khz sound
-AND OTHER SURPRISES!
