Since I’m not yet getting rid of this blog I might as well use it. If you’ve been on Substack for a while, I can see why you’d stick with it, but it would feel weird for a non-Substack person such as myself to actually JOIN it now. Anyway. Happy New Year.
Equipment: Sony UBP-X800 multi-region 4K player, Sony KD50X690E display, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.
Anna Christie (Warner Archive Blu-ray)
While I’ve seen a few O’Neill plays on stage and of course several more-or-less distinguished film adaptations of his work I’m far from an expert on the work and hence have no real authority with respect to this piece in any edition. The life of the sea, the life of the drunk, the life of the fallen woman, here the ineffable Garbo is playing one and she’s quite good, putting her height to excellent use in making her title character gangly and awkward. The image quality of the main feature is superb given the circumstances. The package’s most crucial extra is the German-language version made by MGM, with Garbo playing against a different cast on the same sets. It’s directed by Jacques Feyder, and the conventional wisdom is that it’s more fluid than the English-language version directed by Clarence Brown but the difference between the two in terms pf both aesthetic and emotional impact is negligible. And unless you’re a Garbo devotee, to be honest, most of the movie’s salutary qualities might be obscure. I find it congenial but it’s also no Queen Christina. The presentation of Feyder’s version looks like a solid scan of a good looking print, but it doesn’t have a patch on the good (not startling, but solid, and yielding some of what you’ll at least take for nitrate gleam) image quality of the English language version. This was Garbo’s first sound film; it also represents the single solitary moment in Charles Bickford’s career in which he could credibly play anything even vaguely resembling a romantic lead. Inspirational dialogue: ”Lutherans, is it? Oh, then I’m damned entirely.” — A
Barbarella (Arrow 4K Ultra)
I have no business — less than no business — reviewing and assigning a grade to a package in which I am featured in a supplement. And yet. This is such an exquisite rendering that I need to bang the drum for it. I’ve never seen this peculiar film look as good as it does here, and the way it looks good is very filmic — like a MOVIE. You know, the way you and I like it. It’s a wonderful thing to behold after years of seeing it not look all that much better than the TV promo spot included here. Is it a revelation? Yes! But does it improve the movie itself? A bit, yeah. Tim Lucas’ commentary is reliably spectacular, I’m a little embarrassed that there’s a bit of overlap between it and my own video “appreciation” of the movie (part of the supplements disc, separate from the 4K Ultra disc). Overall though it’s given me only a mild case of imposter syndrome. The Lucas/Bissette Zoom discussion is very macro, there’s about a good twenty minutes about bandes desinee, a lot of fun reminiscing about the Evergreen Review, etc. There’s also Elizabeth Castaldo Lunden on the costumes, camera op Roberto Girometti on working with Vadim and Claude Renoir, amusing son Ricky Tognazzi on dad Ugo, Fabio Testi on being John Philip Law’s body double, a good video essay on Dino di Laurentiis. All one could ask for is a new interview with Jane Fonda and I don’t think that was ever going to be in the cards, the fact that she attended Vadim’s funeral notwithstanding. — A+
The Carpetbaggers (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)
The image here is awful pretty — really sumptuous in its color and clarity and super clean. And the 1964 movie itself is legendary in being pretty awful. It’s interesting to look at this in tandem with Minnelli’s Home From the Hill, which has story and characters that are very nearly as pulpy as this, but which Minnelli invests with some hard-fought gravity and dignity. And makes the most of the mise-en-scene furnished by Preston Amre. Edward Dmytryk, the director here, was generally competent and often better than competent, but couldn’t really be bothered here to invest in the material, and it shows. Hence, the fantastic production design of Hal Pereira notwithstanding, Dmytryk can’t make any of it signify beyond the lurid surfaces. There’s not really such a thing as “it’s so bad it’s good” but there is also the truth as articulated by Vladimir Nabokov that nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity, so you may split the difference between those two realities and come up grinning with this item. In terms of entertainment value, it helps that leads George Peppard and Carroll Baker both seem to be on angel dust, and that Baker is costumed throughout as if the movie has the alternate title Chick in Her Underwear. Incidentally, this was the second movie I watched in a single day in which the commentator used the phrase “roman a clef.” I don’t want to rat anyone out but I’ll say that Julie Kirgo here is the one who pronounces the phrase correctly. Her work is relatively discursive but two hours thirty is a lot to have to fill up. I have not yet listened to the David Del Valle/Dave DeCoteau commentary but those fellows are always entertaining. Inspirational dialogue: “How do you like my widow’s weeds?” Spoken by Baker, in her underwear, or something like underwear at least.. — A
Cemetery Man (Severin 4K Ultra)
This exquisitely executed compendium of morbidities really hit my sweet spot when I saw it for the first time in its 1994 U.S. theatrical release. The Golden Age of Argento was definitely on the wane — 1993’s Trauma had its kicks, including location shooting in Newark, New Jersey, but was not 100 proof — and Lamberto Bava’s output at this point was spotty, and not well-distributed in the U.S. Fulci had reached a kind of apotheosis in 1990 with Cat in the Brain, but to be honest at that point in my life I was too much of a snob to have embraced Fulci anyway. So Michele Soavi was the guy, and this meta-movie just plain stomped. This turned out to be the end of an era rather than the beginning of a new one, alas. Essentially the story of a man who keeps misplacing his gun, this resourceful low-budget wonder contains credible visual allusions that range from Magritte to Hitchcock to the Richard Corben cover of Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell. Anyway, after its theatrical run it never had an even decent physical media release until now and the Severin edition is spectacular. No notes. In extras, it’s gratifying that star Rupert Everett holds the movie in such high esteem and fascinating to learn that the “Dylan Dog” comic book character was actually based on him (and that this movie, contrary to popular U.S. belief, isn’t really based on Dylan Dog but a different graphic novel by the same author). Overstated yet strangely enigmatic love interest Anna Falchi (there was a rumor when the pic first came out that she was a trans woman; she is not) still looks great and is quite interesting and frank in her self-assessment: “I have a very comic-book style physicality, truth be told.” Inspirational dialogue: “You’ve got a real nice ossuary!”— A+
Clue (Shout Factory 4K Ultra)
Hey, kids, it’s an Intellectual Property movie! Had director Jonathan Lynn gotten an Oscar nomination for his screenplay (not likely but bear with me), would it be for Adapted or Original? Should we ask Judd Apatow? Moving on, it’s interesting that this moderately misbegotten cinematic board game adaptation has acquired a cult sufficient to warrant a 4K edition, but that’s the sort of thing that the release calendar of Shout Factory teaches us on the regular. (The corporate entity known as Sony Pictures Itself has issued a 30th Anniversary 4K Ultra disc of 1993’s So I Married an Axe Murderer, which my wife and I watched and enjoyed the other night, while at the same time mildly bemused that a film so inconsequential should be so marketed. I think the answer is reasonably obvious; the big studios are digitizing EVERYTHING in their libraries [see below’s Imprint title] and there are licensors eager for product on the one hand and, in what’s probably the case with Axe Murderer itself, in-house enthusiasts who’ll pitch hard for a physical release of a fave.) Anyway — the reason for the cult, I think, has less to do with the IP and a lot to do with Madeline Kahn and the rest of the expertly amusing cast. The divine Madeline and Lesley Ann Warren are the most consistently funny of the ensemble, but Mull, McKean, Curry and the rest (as the first version of the Gilligan’s Island theme song would put it) all do their level best within a very constrained and labored story frame. How the question of whether Colonel Mustard got sapped in the library with a length of pipe, or wherever and whatever and by whom, was for cinematic purposes yoked to a story premise focused on the 1950s Army McCarthy hearings comes down to Lynn. We learn in a supplement that he was approached, in a state not unlike desperation, by producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters to come up with something/anything in the script department, and drew on his acquaintance in Great Britain with the blacklisted screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart for his idea. Who, indeed, woulda thunk it. The other extra here is ten smart minutes on score composer and Mel Brooks stalwart John Morris. The camera’s leering plunges down faux-French-maid Colleen Camp’s cleavage is no doubt a Guber/Peters touch. — A
Count Dracula (Severin 4K Ultra)
Watching this, I worked up a theory, which was that this is Jess Franco’s most conventionally competent film and hence his least interesting film. Or, as Tim Lucas, who’s got way more mileage than myself with respect to Franco, put it in a lengthy and as far as I can glean un-linkable Facebook post, “one senses it was not to [Franco’s] taste to film a classic story in a classical sense.” (Tim then puts the movie’s weaknesses down to cinematographer Manuel Merino.) Nevertheless, there are bits when Franco’s inspiration rises to the largely staid surface here. Soledad Miranda sleepwalking is good. As are the shots of her in Dracula’s embrace, followed by a shot of a bat shadow, and Miranda with her head thrown back in ecstasy and her shoulders slouching, like she’s suspended by invisible wires. That sort of thing is very startling and effective. The symphony of stuffed animals is rather good too. Christopher Lee seems into it; indeed, this 1970 production is the picture that inspired Lee to confide to me, in an unfortunately lost 1993 interview, that Franco was “a not untalented man, by the way.” Severin has also issued a Blu-ray of the spectacular Surrealist sort-of documentary Cuaducu (Vampir) which I already have in a good Second Run edition but which I recommend in any form you prefer. As for this package, it’s another spectacular Severin effort. I don’t know how they do it. —A+
Danza Macabra 2 (Severin 4K Ultra & Blu-ray)
These are indeed the days of miracle and wonder. When I was a kid, I was completely freaked out by an early ‘60s black-and-white Italian horror called Castle of Blood when it screened on WOR 9’s weekly “Chiller” movie program. This was/is the Antonio Margheriti-directed picture on which a fictional Edgar Allan Poe and a rich creep pal of his bet a journalist that he can’t spend the night in this haunted castle without going nuts and/or dying. Barbara Steele plays one of the haunting elements. I can’t begin to imagine how washed out it looked on the 12-inch Sony portable TV I probably watched it on. And yet it dazzled young weird me. In no small part this had something to do with the ineffable Barbara Steele in a crucial role. In subsequent years I learned other folks had similar epiphanies. The title became an answer to one of the “Ask Glenn” questions that came my way at Premiere, just in time for the DVD release of the picture by the ever-great Don May at Synapse. And Don’s version looked…better than it had in the beat-up print indifferently telecined and then broadcast by WOR into my home back then. But now. Now. Castle is the centerpiece of a box set continuing Severin’s loving care of Italian horror masterpieces and oddities. This picture gets the 4K Ultra treatment, while the three remainders are Blu-rays. All good. Two versions are here, the Italian-language Danza Macabra and English-dubbed Castle, which I watched first, because nostalgia, right?. The opening credits of Castle are beat up but the feature itself is the restored version and it looks pretty incredible. It’s a testament to the film’s power that it came through in compromised presentations, but having an edition of this caliber is mind-blowing. The Italian Danza is about six minutes longer and has the nudity we’ve been missing, which doesn’t improve the movie as such — those anti-sex-scene prudes are RIGHT! (Actually it’s pretty righteous.) And yes, the package has other pictures (although I presume down the road Severin will break this up into individual titles for sale.) 1971’s They Changed Their Face is… a very subtle critique of capitalism in which Adolfo Celi plays an Italian car magnate named Nosferatu. Yes, you read correctly. He announces himself a pioneer in “gastronomic socialism” as he feeds his latest prey a TV dinner that looks even less appetizing than what Heywood Floyd slurped down on his way to the moon in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie is pretty drab visually, although the radical-cinema-pastiche fake TV ads proffered by a propagandist character are mildly amusing. The film will definitely ring chimes with anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the schizoid political currents of Italy in the late 60s/early 70s. 1972’s The Devil’s Lover is more overtly lurid, not that Faces isn’t lurid — a movie that more or less opens with a female hitchhiker topless under her fur-lined winter jacket can’t be called not lurid. But Lover features actress Rosalba Neri, who practically defines lurid, although the supplement called “The Feminism of Rosalba Neri” argues that her lurid qualities were for a righteous cause, and why not. I confess I haven’t given more than a cursory look at the mini-series Jekyll, a postmodern variant on Stevenson’s tale. But I can still confidently assign the whole box my highest grade. —A+
eXistenZ (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra)
Underappreciated at the time of its release, subsequently subjected to one measly and thoroughly indifferent home video release, this 4K edition was a “Secret Title” from Vin Syn and a really welcome surprise. Viewed today, it really synchs up nicely with the maestro’s 2022 Crimes of the Future. This brutally meta-textual work is both about and not about gaming, or maybe we can say it’s about gaming as life. It has affinities to both Borges and Nabokov — affinities that both authors might find the film itself to viscous to deign to recognize. (They’re also not alive, either, which would be a further impediment to their potential appreciation.) It is also maybe the closest thing to an out-and-out comedy that Cronenberg has ever made. (All the performers get it, but Willem Dafoe and Ian Holm have the most fun with it.) The vast array of supplements includes a commentary by Jennifer Moorman; at one point she pronounces “And this is where the film starts to get…rapey. We might say.” We might, as physical violations of all kinds are the movie’s bread and butter, but I don’t know — Moorman’s analysis, use of colloquialisms notwithstanding, often struck me as labored and humorless in a typically academic way, although it does offer insights worth turning over. In the department of my own critical shortcomings, or whatever you want to call them: Is it weird that I think Jennifer Jason Leigh is the hottest she’s ever been in this movie? First rate image throughout. A real gift. Inspirational dialogue: “Death to realism!” — A+
French Revelations (Flicker Alley)
I wish that more labels had ideas like the one that led to this disc. This is a sort-of thematically-paired double feature of French-language films. There’s 1934’s Mauvaise Graine, co-written and co-directed by Billy Wilder, then freshly emigrated from Germany to France and soon to head to the States. It’s a very mordant and cynical crime comedy that looks ahead to The Fortune Cookie, except it’s a lot more vicious. It’s fascinating in a more-than-historical way. (It incidentally features a black character who’s not depicted with absolutely horrific racism, which is kind of a novelty for its time.) Commentator Jan-Christopher Horak notes throughout that Wilder didn’t like directing. Which sort of kept being true (he only started doing it in Hollywood to protect his scripts). The print here opens with the kind of degeneration you get so excited about in Bill Morrison movies. But the image straightens out quickly enough. The second feature is 1935’s Fanfare D’Amour, which Wilder had nothing to do with…. except that the spine of its plot fed the 1951 German picture Fanfaren der Liebe, which in turn led to Wilder’s own Some Like It Hot. And this film does feature a jaw-dropping racialist gag in which the two protagonists, in a montage depicting their various guises before joining an all-girl band, don blackface to infiltrate a Black jazz combo. This is a mercifully short sequence in an otherwise amiable film co-starring Julian Carette, who went on to play the poacher who blithely cuckolds Gaston Modot in Renoir’s Rules of the Game. Fanfare functions without the mob element or the frantic “I’m a girl I’m a girl I’m a girl” gender panic that gives Hot its incredible dimension. The very Deco art direction here make the amusing but in most other respects ordinary picture an almost Lubitschean pleasure to behold. Inspirational dialogue: “Are you sure you’re a man?” “I don’t know…” — A
The Fugitive (Warner 4K Ultra)
The 4K Ultra disc offers a handsome image to be sure. I do recollect that this was something to see in the summer of 1993 while we were all waiting for Jurassic Park…and I also recollect that In The Line of Fire was something better to see. Neither picture, for me, has aged into anything like a classic, but while Fire still has the edge, Fugitive is a sturdy action/thriller construction — and an IP movie, let us not forget! — with, as it happens, no real point of view about anything. That is, it’s kind of impersonal. In a way not dissimilar to what Tommy Lee Jones’ U.S. Marshall character conveys here. It’s also a little predictable. “As soon as you see Joroen Krabbé’s name in the opening credits, you know who the bad guy is,” my pal Joseph Failla complained at the time. Speaking of the opening credits, boy are they cheesy: “Harrison […wait for it] Ford” “Tommy […wait for it] Lee…Jones” Except Jones himself, in the much-maligned commentary track, doesn’t think so, saying to journeyman director Andrew Davis over the phone, “These are really cool titles Andy.” A lot of the movie still holds up better than well, though, so reservations notwithstanding, this is the Davis that I’m keeping in my library. — B+
Gentleman Jim (Warner Archive Blu-ray)
It’s Raoul Walsh, it’s Errol Flynn, it’s Warner Archive, how much selling do you need here? Also featuring an adorable Alexis Smith and Jack Carson manifesting as the Frank McHugh of Ralph Bellamys. Dramatically fine image quality. The boxing sequences are tight despite containing plenty of 180 “rule” violations. Don’t wait, buy today. — A
Horrors of the Black Museum (VCI Blu-ray)
The restoration here is courtesy of Canal +, and it’s sufficiently vivid to really deliver the lurid goods of this glibly sicko 1959 tale of a dude who’s really into devices of torture and how to use them. The American distributor tacked on the ridiculous “Hypnovision” hook, via a short prologue that Canal + has NOT restored but is included here courtesy of the magpies at VCI. It is a nice thing, as the Red Riding Hood in the Bugs Bunny short would put it, “TO HAVE!” Via the short, you yourself, the viewer that is, are supposed to get hypnotized. Didn’t work on me. The picture doesn’t have a patch on the Ormonds’ Please Don’t Touch Me, which treats a similar theme. But back to Black Museum. Oh my. Kind of the apotheosis of Michael Gough in creepazoid mode; he really tears into his role as a true crime writer and murderer. It’s thin line, the movie implies. The movie looks as clear as a bell and the electrocution of the shrink is nothing short of amazing. Two commentaries, the one from co-writer and co-producer Herman Cohen archival, the one from Robert Kelly new. Essential Psychotronic cinema. — A
JFK (Shout Factor 4K Ultra Disc)
About ten minutes into this, when Jack Lemmon and Ed Asner are sitting at a bar, and Asner’s character is waxing racist/reactionary and Lemmon is doing a “for God’s sake you’re talking about the President” bit, you may have an inkling that you’re watching The Greatest Story Ever Told of conspiracy theory movies. Well, you know, I LIKE The Greatest Story Ever Told. And since Oliver Stone was really gracious and generous with me for my upcoming book, if you think I’m going to use this non-officially-remunerated exercise in order to dis one of his films, you are sorely mistaken. And I mean, let’s face it, like it or not it’s a fascinating artifact and it moves along like a panther in whatever cut you’re watching. Gary Oldman as Oswald does inspire poignant thoughts of “Boy wouldn’t he have been great in a film of Libra?” The 4K disc looks fantastic; by all means do luxuriate in the burnished bronze and brown tones of Jim Garrison’s office. (Another incidental pleasure here is witnessing Michael Rooker’s almost palpable relief at playing a normal dude in these settings.) As for the Stone commentary, which like the other extras dates back to Shout’s 2019 JFK Revisited The Complete Collection, if you think making the movie exhausted everything he has to say on this topic — and actually, why would anyone actually think such a thing — you are sorely mistaken. — A+
The Last Tycoon (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)
This adaptation of unfinished Fitzgerald is a better and more interesting (the two descriptors aren’t always mutually exclusive) film than its tepid reputation suggests, featuring a truly fascinating Robert De Niro performance. As Irving Thalberg stand-in Monroe Stahr, De Niro is not playing a complete weirdo, but a kinda-sorta weirdo, that is, a film person. Lovely character bits abound, from Ray Milland, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson and others. Teresa Russell is the ideal Celia Brady, and Ingrid Boulting is alas the weak link in the performance chain. Gorgeous new transfer and a continuously sharp commentary from Joseph McBride, who pulls together a lot of tendrils especially relative to director Elia Kazan’s relationship to the studio heads portrayed in disguise here, HUAC stuff, and more. The tales of producer Sam Spiegel, a rather old-school piglet chasing both Teresa Russell and Ingrid Boulting, are distasteful. McBride also notes the clash in sensibilities between Kazan and screenwriter Harold Pinter. Inspirational commentary quote: “Kazan’s work got better after he informed.”— A
Madame Bovary (Warner Archive)
The book in question is condemned as “a disgrace to France and an insult to womanhood” in the opening of this 1948 Vincente-Minnelli-directed adaptation of Flaubert, which uses the book’s prosecution for obscenity as a framing device. (James Mason as the embattled author, narrating his heroine’s story, is heavenly albeit slightly ridiculous.) The structure is odd and has a hard time getting on its feet. Jennifer Jones is very wobbly as the teen Emma but there’s no way she wouldn’t be; as it happens, her performance gains strength as she resolves to rebel. Maybe she just thought of all the men in her life before each take. Van Heflin as Dr. B. is miscast — not so much in terms of type, but his performance is way too American — but his work has some small power. The blurb on the back cover of this beautiful Warner Archive edition is absolutely correct: the ballroom scene, nine minutes total, beginning about 24 minutes in (Chapter 10) is one of the best things ever, in Minnelli or in American cinema in general. Robert H. Planck is the cinematographer here. Gene Lockhart as Homais gets a big laugh telegraphing the actual punchline of the book: “perhaps…the Legion of Honor!” The soundtrack itself is pretty clever, with a background cry of “we demand manure” as Louis Jourdan is laying it on to Emma. The question of whether even Renoir or Chabrol, let alone Minnelli, could really capture the spirit of Flaubert on celluloid is not one I’m prepared to cogently address at this time but I will insist that this Item is two thirds (at least) a potentially great and often very good Hollywood melodrama. Depressing inspirational dialogue: “I hurt Charles. I hurt inside.” — A
The Man In Half-Moon Street (Imprint Blu-ray)
A Paramount attempt to outdo Universal in the Gothic horror genre, this is a little more understated than what the House of Laemmle was putting out but pretty keen. The story of a guy who’s copped an elixir of immortality, but of course At What Cost, it’s all foggy streets and Helen Walker in skintight variations of Edwardian couture (it’s sufficiently atmospheric that until you see the occasional automobile you’re inclined to think the 1945 film is set in some indistinct turn-of-the-century period). Pretty pacey, too.. A cool kind of out-of-nowhere release that makes Australia’s Imprint a label worth keeping an eye on at all times. The extra is a typically thorough and informative Tim Lucas commentary with much kvelling over Miklos Rozsa’s lavish score, which Rozsa absolutely did not phone in despite the material almost giving him an excuse to. (Tim does make a forgivable error during the proceedings, confusing an actor who wasn’t in Vertigo with one who was.) — A
School Daze (Allied Vaughn) 4K Ultra)
This 35th anniversary upgrade’s 4K boost gets it pleasingly close to theatrical quality. Spike Lee’s third picture and second feature (depends on whether you categorize the barbershop one as a feature) saw him putting Columbia’s (modest — $6 million) money into a relatively elaborate musical-comedy that was the first of his pictures to get critics agitated over his ostensible disinclination to apply a consistent tone to his work. We have since come to understand that it is this trait, if you want to call it that, which makes Lee Lee, and which makes Lee great. As for this movie, what’s inconsistent, and again, only if you want to call it that, isn’t tone but stylization; the dramatic scenes are relatively plain and straightforward, and then the mise-en-scene goes low-budget Earth Girls Are Easy for the musical numbers. But, follow along with me here, is this even a problem really? Have you seen Window Shopping/Golden Eighties? No, it’s not a problem. It’s freedom. So roll with it people. This is intriguing, troubling, engaging, and it’s a kick to watch the young cast. The extras are imported from 2018, including Spike’s sporadic commentary. “I went to school with a lot of motherfuckers like that too. Just ignorant.” The music video for “Da Butt” is NOT in 4K, alas — A
Spider Labyrinth (Severin 4K Ultra)
I decided to check this out on the word of the great genre enthusiast and Edwidge Fenech maven Sarah Jane, whose taste for the lurid is utterly unsurpassed. My trust in her is such that once the package arrived, I wasn’t at all put off by the fact that the first twenty minutes or so of this 1988 Gianfranco Giagni picture was over lit hot-air exposition absorbed and acted upon by one of the most mannequinesque male acting leads I’ve ever seen, Roland Wybenga, whose career did not get up to much after this. And sure enough, once it got into gear — with a pursuit and murder in a green-lit room turned into a maze via hanging bedsheets, the first and absolutely mildest of its set pieces — I knew I was in for some goods. Or rather, I did not know, because the thing just piled one bizarre, nonsensical, grotesque surprise on top of another until it established itself in a very high position in my pantheon of what-the-fuck horrors. I cannot recommend this sufficiently highly. Inspirational commentary tidbit: “We’re gonna talk about that hairstyle.” —A+
Tarzan the Ape Man (Warner Archive Blu-ray)
First things first, Warner now has a new “this stuff is racist” disclaimer, it’s a little tighter than the old one, a little less guilt-ridden, and it calls the issuing company “Warner Bros./Discovery.” So Mr. Zaslav has been dotting his Is and crossing his Ts. For what it’s worth. And if any movie needs a “this stuff is racist” disclaimer, Woody Van Dyke’s enthusiastic but nonchalant lensing of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ gonzo tale does. I mean, it’s HELLA RACIST, as they might say in Quincey, but probably wouldn’t. I was startled a lot of the time. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it — and in fact I’m not sure if I ever have watched it in its entirety to be honest. My own enthusiasm for jungle tales on film (or anywhere else, really, unless they’re war movies) opens and shuts with Cooper and Schoedsack and this ain’t Cooper and Schoedsack. No, for me the main attraction of the franchise has always been the promise of Maureen O’Sullivan in deshabille, which is to be honest not an attraction that beckons to me all that frequently. It’s funny about some old-school actresses though. Looking at O’Sullivan in this, you’d never guess she’d end her career working for Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola. Whereas looking at Gloria Stuart in The Old Dark House you have no problem imagining her throwing down for James Cameron. Interesting. Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yes, have you SEEN this movie lately? It’s insane. It’s mostly told from the perspective of Jane, Tarzan is only first heard 24 minutes in and only first seen 32 minutes in. And when C. Aubrey Smith’s character gets a look at him, he enthuses, “He’s white, too!” Jesus. Neil Hamilton (we know, we know, the future Commissioner Gordon on the original Batman TV series, we know) as Jane’s suitor, gets whinily jealous of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan before even setting his orbs on the ape-man’s loinclothed glory. He’s not wrong but still, what a feeb. As Robert A. Harris has observed, both this film’s and Anna Christie’s original materials went up in smoke in the great Warner’s fire — not the one in 2023, but the one in 1934. And in terms of good dupes to work from, this picture came out in not so great shape, but that’s in part due to the nature of the movie itself, a huge cut-and-paste job in some respects. There’s lots of janky documentary wildlife-footage editing; who knows where the original camera negatives of that material were? The image quality is sometimes rough and ready but pretty impressive all things considered. Van Dyke does like to keep things moving along and doesn’t care about matters going completely bonkers; the Scott of the Antarctic-redolent man-and-beast wrestling is especially goofy. And honestly John Waters could have come up with some of this material. The climax, in which, among other things a crowd of African pygmies (I think they’re pygmies) cheer on a guy in an ape suit who’s going to violate Jane, is highly objectionable on grounds moral, aesthetic, racial, and spiritual. Essential American semiotics studies, to be sure. —A
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Kino Lorber 4K Ultra)
Michael Cimino’s directorial debut is maybe his second-best film (first is Heaven’s Gate, natch) and this 4K rendering displays gorgeous imagery and tells a galvanizing story in which you’ve never hated George Kennedy more. Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges give career high performances here. A spectacular commentary from my friend Nick Pinkerton commentary spotlights the pre-Mel-Gibson masochism of Eastwood in the shoulder-repair business early on, and quotes from both Richard Schickel and Peter Biskind from points in their careers when they both really knew what they were on about. Nick is a fantastic researcher. — A+
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