On the Shelf: ‘Hairspray (1988),’ ‘Desperate Living,’ Adam Sandler Double Feature and ‘Hang ‘Em High’ Highlight the 4K Physical Media Releases for the Week of 6/22/26
Comedies and a classic western are the centerpiece of this week’s physical media coverage. Starting with our friends over at the Criterion Collection, two new releases this week come from legendary provocateur John Waters, with the 4K releases of his classics Desperate Living and Hairspray. For Desperate Living, it was the outrageous follow up to Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, where Waters brought his notorious trash trilogy to a fittingly twisted close with this antifascist fairy tale. After hysterical housewife (Mink Stole) murders her husband with the help of her fed-up housekeeper (Jean Hill), the newfound “sisters in crime” escape to the bizarre shantytown of Mortville, a depraved penal colony presided over by a despotic queen (Edith Massey) whose tyranny pushes her subjects to shocking revolt. In making it the end of his “trash trilogy” to an end with unleashing everything he has in a relentlessly warped, oddly beautiful tale of queer rebellion. Then eleven years later, Waters jumped into the mainstream with one of the best musicals of all time with Hairspray. When Baltimore teen Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake) shoots to stardom on a local TV dance party, her radical self-confidence and support for racial integration launch a movement that takes the city by storm. Toe-tapping and funny as hell, Hairspray finds Waters’ at his most accessible and at his best, being subversive, sensitive, and nostalgic all at once.
Staying on the comedy train, no one in the early 2000s was king of the comedy more than Adam Sandler. Two of his big hits land on 4K this week with 50 First Dates, one of Sandman’s best films,and Click, which saw the decline in Sandler’s great run of comedy hits. With 50 First Dates, Sandler reteams with his Wedding Singer co-star Drew Barrymore to make a rom-com that shines because of the duo’s impeccable chemistry. The film follows a marine veterinarian who thinks he’s met the girl of his dreams. They hit it off, but the next day, he discovers she has short-term memory loss and doesn’t remember him. He spends the rest of the film trying to get her to remember him, and accept that his life is going to be making her remember that they are in love every day, and he realizing that he’s the man of her dreams. Funny but heartfelt, Sandler and Barrymore should always work together if they are going to make movies like this. For Click, Sandler creates his version of It’s a Wonderful Life with a magical remote control that he can use to go back and forth in time. Sandler plays Michael Newman, a workaholic architect finds a universal remote that allows him to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices. Co-starring Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Walken, Henry Winkler, and David Hasselhoff, Click has the last of the hilarious magic found within Sandler’s comedy formula that mostly works due to the actor’s ability to commit to the bit. It’s a shame he hasn’t been this funny in a movie since or that these comedies aren’t on the big screen anymore.
Last up this week is from Kino Lorber and it’s a piece of western history, as the first film Clint Eastwood starred within the genre arrives on 4K. In Hang ‘Em High, Eastwood indelibly carves his niche as the quintessential tough guy—cool-headed, iron-willed and unrelenting in his pursuit of revenge in an action-packed thrill ride set in Oklahoma, 1873. Jed Cooper (Eastwood), mistaken for a rustler and killer, is lynched on the spot by crooked lawman Captain Wilson (Ed Begley) and a rampaging band of vigilantes. But as Wilson and his gang flee the scene, there’s one very important detail they’ve overlooked: Cooper is still alive! Out for his brand of justice, Cooper takes on the job of deputy marshal and looks to lay down the law. Directed by Ted Post of Magnum Force, Hang Em’ High is one of the great American westerns that is a must own for any fan of the genre, and any collector of physical media.
Other Notable Releases for the Week of June 22, 2026 include:
Audition (1999, 4K Blu-ray, Arrow)
Magellan (2025, Blu-ray, Criterion Collection)
Eagles of the Republic (2025, Blu-ray, Cohen Media Group)
Major Payne (1995, Blu-ray, Kino Lorber)
Solo (1970, Blu-ray, Radiance Films)
What Dreams May Come (1998, 4K Blu-ray, Shout Factory)
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