Blu-ray Consumer Guide, Spring 2020

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Equipment: PlayStation 4, OPPO Sony KD50X690E display, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.

And Hope To Die (Kino Lorber)

A remarkable curio. One of Rene Clement’s last pictures, it’s leagues removed from the focus and discipline of Purple Noon. The droll Leone pastiche in this 1972 picture’s opening railway station scene suggests something wholly other from what the movie becomes. Jean-Louis Trintignant, in Canada trying to escape from vengeful gypsies, stumbles upon what seems like a bungled caper run by, um, Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray. The dialogue soundtrack is all French, with Ray dubbing himself and Ryan, um, not. It kind of sticks out if you're accustomed to hearing Robert Ryan's voice coming out of his mouth. Ryan’s psycho leadership ethos and constant testing of Trintignant suggest James Hadley Chase, but the ostensible source material is David Goodis’ Black Friday. Between the dick-measuring character dynamics of the principal males and the psychodramas of molls Lea Massari and, um, Tisa Farrow, the thing mostly plays like some Claude Lelouch fever dream of existential romanticism. In the 140 minute playing time, about an hour fifty is pretty much nothing happening as the various permutations of the question of honor among thieves is considered. All of it culminating in one of the most logistically ridiculous capers I’ve ever seen in a movie, played out with a complete poker face and capped by the crane shot of Johnny LaRue’s dreams. Weirdly enough this is one of the better looking discs I’ve seen in some time, although DVD Beaver says it has a skimpy bitrate. What do I know. Stalwart Kino Lorber Kommentary Krew Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson are appreciative, discursive, and at times informative. Inspirational tidbit: “First black guy in the film I think.” —B+

Beau Brummel (Warner Archive)

“I wonder why Stewart Granger said that Scaramouche was the only movie he was proud of? This doesn’t look too bad,” thought I, as I pushed this disc into the old PS4. Well I found out. Not that this 1954 picture is bad — on a ground-floor craft level it’s a solid piece of studio period product. It’s two things: Granger is bad in it. He can’t find a useful balance between his 18^th-century egalitarian fop’s charisma and his arrogance, and so Peter Ustinov, as Brummel’s frenemy the future George IV, walks away with much of the film. Except when Robert Morley, as George IV’s better-known dad, shows up. And except when Elizabeth Taylor stuns in both white wig and natural raven tresses. (Granger too is always very well turned out — the much bruited russet dressing gown is a knockout.) And second, there’s the overall feeling that this is a real, albeit inadvertent, nothing-happens movie. Do I blame director Curtis Bernhard? Is it important at this point? Let the anonymous craftsman rest. Most of the time while watching this my mind reached back thirty or more years, when my boy Mel Neuhaus was running Laser Island and sold me a Japanese disc of Vincent Sherman’s 1948 Adventures of Don Juan with Errol Flynn and Viveca Lindfors. No great shakes as a movie per se, he said, but the best Technicolor on home video ever. And he was right. Why hasn’t Warner Archive put THAT on a Blu-ray? —B-

Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb (Scream Factory)

Seth Holt! Aubrey Morris! Oozing amputation wounds! And Valerie Leon, who’s both the titular mummy (why did I just write that) and her modern-day counterpart, a comely lass who’s the daughter of one of the tomb raiders who unearthed the ancient Egyptian witch in the first place. Which makes things easy on the filmmakers, location-wise. Anyway. As lurid early-‘70s Hammer pictures go, this is a few smidges better than Scars of Dracula, no disrespect to Roy Ward Baker intended. It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that a highly attractive female lead in the vicinity of depraved murderous supernatural goings-on equals horror picture success. As a member of this movie’s core demo, I grapple with ways to verbally convey Leon’s appeal without coming off like a drooling creep out of an early Jethro Tull tune. Suffice it to say that director Holt, as we’ll even see later in this column, has a knack for satisfying the male gaze. The extras are copious and the commentary from Steve Haberman is relaxed and informative, although he himself sometimes succumbs to the temptation to drool aloud. —A

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (Kino Lorber)

I guess I understand why this 1938 picture is considered “minor” Lubitsch, all right. For me the forced absurdism of the finale slops on a — well, there’s no other word for it — jejune quality that you almost never find in the maestro’s other pictures. (The writers were Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, and Wilder’s weakness for such stuff waned soon after, and started emerging again at the very end of his career.) But the opening sequence, from its very funny shop-window gag (which Wilder fully credits Lubitsch for) to the convolutions of the meet-cute of Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert, is worth the price of admission. And Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert continue to appear throughout the whole film! Joseph McBride says “its plods tiresomely through its grating plot mechanisms” and quotes Brackett calling it “a really embarrassing picture.” (In his swell book How Did Lubitsch Do It?) These days though, at 90 minutes, how plodding can it be? Also: Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert. The nice-looking disc also features a commentary by Kat Ellinger that you’ll forgive me for not listening to. —A-

El Bruto (VCI)

A “major 4K restoration,” says the cover, and the picture quality of this 1952 Mexican production is very good to excellent, but still a little soft in spots. “The law is for the rich,” one of the soon-to-be-evicted tenement dwellers notes after a crowd of them receives a visit from their all-but-gloating landlord informing them of their future homelessness. Director Luis Buñuel, in the interview book Objects of Desire: “I added the landlord’s father” — a doddering, mordantly comical figure — “and also a scene between Katy Jurado and a rooster that I improvised during the filming,” as one does. The real gist of the picture is the Katy Jurado as the servant of the landowner, a not at all obscure object of desire.  Pedro Armendáriz is the title character, a simple oaf the landlord hires to terrorize the poor community. Two super charismatic icons of Mexican cinema facing off is pretty hot stuff to begin with, but Buñuel makes it truly special. It should be noted here nobody before or since Jurado could make a drooping lower lip so lascivious. The movie’s pace is snappy but also deliberate — the Brute and Jurado’s Paloma don’t even meet until 30 minutes into this 80 minute picture. Good old Andrés Soler is properly tetchy as the landlord. The scenario enacts the old good girl/bad girl dynamic without making you sick, because Buñuel always brings a dynamic and skewed perspective to such tropes. This is part of a VCI series of restored Mexican pictures. While they are sold as being region-free, neither this nor a second title I bought played on my PS4 (and yes I did rebuild the machine’s database after getting the error message of “invalid disc”). Played fine on my OPPO which is set to Region B. Caveat emptor. Otherwise, like all Buñuel, essential in any format. —A

 Canyon Passage (Kino Lorber)

The presentation of this 1946 Jacques Tourneur western boasts an excellent image and a professional, well-organized commentary by Toby Roan. It’s a superb, unusual film. Largely a romantic drama around a kind of love quintangle, so to speak. Not a lot of action but a load of atmosphere — look at that mud in the middle of a non-boom town’s street, and the ineffectual planks leading into the bank and the hotel. Why does Dana Andrews even bother to buy new dress boots, one wonders.  Tourneur uses a steady, observant, patiently poetic style. “It’s a beautiful film,” Martin Scorsese told Richard Schickel. “There’s a wonderful moment where Brian Donlevy is in the back room — I think Hoagy Carmichael sees him — and he’s weighing some cold out of a pouch. It’s not his. He’s just measuring it and marking the weight down. Then he looks at it again. He takes some for himself. That’s where the problem begins. He’s a decent guy, but he’s got some business problems. This kind of dilemma fascinates me.” Contrast this with the scene in The Searchers, over a decade later, when Ward Bond watches Dorothy Evans caress Wayne’s coat. And speaking of Hoagy Carmichael, his presence and his songs are a bonus.—A+

 The Cranes Are Flying (Criterion)

Whoa, look at that image. The title of Chris Fujiwara’s booklet essay says it all: “A Free Camera.” Free and also beautifully focused and witnessing scenes still incredible over 60 years later. Like Tarkovsky and a few other Russians, Mikael Kalatozov’s movies can still elicit “how did they DO that?” gasps. But this love story of the Great Patriotic War (that’s World War II to us) is more than a technical tour de force, it’s an unrelentingly emotional movie. The character who dies imagining the wedding he will never have will break you. The great Ian Christie contributes a really solid video interview; there’s some material on the miracle-working cinematographer Sergei Urusevskiy; Claude Lelouch movingly recalls his discovery of the film, and bringing it to Cannes; and there’s a feature doc on Kalatozov which opens with a trumpet player in Havana playing “Nature Boy,” because I Am Cuba. — A+

The Criminal (Kino Lorber)

The entirety of director Joseph Losey’s filmography is fascinating, but each discrete period of it is fascinating for different reasons. This 1960 movie, also titled The Concrete Jungle (by some distributor who wasn’t quite so clever as he reckoned, I reckon) is arguably the last in that period, which saw him, from 1947’s The Boy With Green Hair and into self-imposed exile from the States, finding and losing and re-finding his voice as he struggled for consistent employment. (He details those struggles in Michel Ciment’s Conversations With Losey, a great film book.)  It’s a tight, urgent, beautifully observed study of rank and eventually impotent masculinity and the second film of Losey’s alliance with Stanley Baker. (The alliance with Dirk Bogarde began with The Sleeping Tiger six years prior. Baker and Bogarde would Losey-meet in 1967’s Accident, also a recent Kino Lorber release I did not review because it’s essentially the same as the BFI Blu-ray with fewer supplements.)  Losey’s depiction of prison, both visually and thematically, is striking. The cinematographer was Robert Krasker, and while his work here is not as consistently pin-sharp as in The Third Man (which I believe is at times deliberate), it’s very good. (The prison-door peephole effect is a little janky, but it’s 1960, come on.) The staging of the prison riots is something. Patrick Magee does some possibly unexpected underplaying as a prison guard. And Baker’s man outside for a new criminal endeavor is played by Sam Wanamaker, for all you wanting to do some further research into the universe of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. I’ve enjoyed Kat Ellinger’s commentaries on certain films but here her contribution did not send me. In a scene set in the prison chapel, she observes that here the men are “united by another oppressive force, by the church.” In any event, this is a helluva movie. Very influential, I think, in a kind of stealth way, on Scorsese’s crime pictures and on Fargo. Also the John Dankworth/Cleo Laine musical contributions are faboo. Did you know that my mom’s lawyer represented those two in the States? Now you do. —A+

Day of the Dolphin (Kino Lorber)

Looks spectacular. Is spectacular. This movie got a lot of smack when it was released in 1973, and it didn’t do well, but looking at it now, you can see director Mike Nichols doing a sketch blueprint for E.T. The long tracking shots, the mysterious montages building to a reveal, and more, are key components of a cinematic idiom designed to elicit Ye Olde “Sense Of Wonder.” But the dolphin voices just don’t do it the way Spielberg’s creature did, you may say. Well I LIKE the dolphin voices. (Which were provided by the late Buck Henry, also the movie’s screenwriter. I kind of regret not asking him to do one for me the single time I met the great man.) The Berger/Mitchell/Thompson commentary is typically enthusiastic and garrulous, albeit a little far-fetched; the fellows interpret this as a movie about a director being manipulated and thrown away by the studios, and compare to De Palma’s The Fury, positing that Andrew Stevens’ character in the latter film is a stand-in for De Palma and...well you get the idea. I think. I’m not exactly sure I do myself. —A-

 Dodsworth (Warner Archive)

“The best. The best.” I remember my old friend the film historian Ed Hulse characterizing this 1936 William Wyler picture thusly many moons ago, back when it was way harder to see. He’s right, and his opinion is not a minority one among his and our ilk. Which is kind of interesting to consider these days, because this adaptation of a Sinclair Lewis novel is a quiet, deliberate, nuanced character study that’s only a few steps on the other side of the Art Film border. This Warner Archive disc presents a 2019 Film Foundation restoration that is not merely a restoration but a revelation. Rudolph Maté’s cinematography is every bit as sensitive as Wyler’s direction and the three lead player, Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, and Mary Astor give career best performances that you can now view with startling clarity. The soundtrack is well cleaned up too. A master class in classical cinematic language, particularly with respect to framing (not to mention pacing).  he black telephone at Astor’s villa is a nifty precursor to the box in Wyler’s 1941 The Little Foxes Inspirational dialogue: “They say we’ll have to behave ourselves when we become a couple of old grandparents in December.”—A+

 ffolkes (Kino Lorber)

Roger Moore in 1980, growing a beard and breaking away from Bond…with Andrew V. McLagen. And bringing David Hedison along for the ride. (That makes it sound as if the participation of a Felix Leiter was deliberate, and I can’t REALLY say it was.) Here he’s a very unorthodox undersea rescue strategist called upon by a skeptical British government to prevent Anthony Perkins and Michael Parks and their pals from blowing up an oil rig. Moore’s character’s unorthodoxies include excessive cat coddling, a misogyny that truth to tell is expressed relatively mildly (he’s irritated at having been brought up with only sisters, or something), and swigging whisky straight from a bottle which winds up being the trait that registers most vividly. Action movie cultist comfort food to be sure.  Another good looking disc, especially color-wise. But not all that robustly cinematic. Can’t really complain though. —B

Hard Ticket To Hawaii (Mill Creek)

I have more than once related my conversation with director Andy Sidaris during a screening of this 1987 film, one in which he complained that the fellow sitting in the row ahead of me (whom I did not admit to actually knowing) were giggling too much. On the introduction to this disc, recycled from the Guns, Girls, and G-Strings DVD box set, statuesque scream queen Julie Strain, rest in peace, says to Sidaris of the picture, “It just cracks me up every time.” Why doesn’t Sidaris object when SHE says she finds it funny? I think we all know why. Anyway. This is a true classic of the let’s-discuss-this-case-nude-in-the-hot-tub subgenre of action thriller, the one featuring the giant uncontrollable poisonous snake. It is, as a production, WAY slicker than 1985’s Malibu Express. If you’re keeping score. Weirdly enough, given the purposefulness of most Sidaris fare, this meanders a bit. As if he wants to put off the ultimate snake reveal but he doesn’t have enough plot to manage. MST3K people take note:  Flying a small plane is to this movie what rock climbing was to 1951’s Lost Continent. While I miss Barbara Edwards and Susan Kiger from earlier films (blame it on my dad’s stash of Playboy mags), Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton bring what they bring with aplomb. And then there’s that classic Frisbee gag. Inspirational dialogue: “I’m supposed to be soft, I’m a woman.” Inimitable Sidaris comedy: “You tried to rape me last night!” “That was yesterday!” Inimitable Sidaris suspense: One of the girls takes a Polaroid and as she’s holding it up says, “Look, it’s developing!” The instantly memorable theme song is even “better” than I remembered: “It’s not paradise all the time,” verily. Image quality is fine, and the audio commentary features immortal banter between Andy and his wife and producer Arlene. Andy: ”Here comes a great joke,’ She’s so dumb she had to go home and study for her pap test.’” Arlene: “That was your joke Andy. I will never take credit for it. Ever.” They also wax amazed that they managed to credibly cut together footage shot in L.A. and Molokai, holy shit. Ultimate inspirational dialogue: “One man’s dream is another man’s lunch.” —A+

 House By The Cemetery (Blue Underground)

Troy Haworth’s commentary observes, early on, “Classing this as a zombie movie is a little bit problematic.” That’s not really what “problematic' means nowadays. A little later: “Fulci and women is one of those problematic topics,” okay, I guess that’s more like it. But the thing is, if I were worried about things being problematic, I wouldn’t watching a Lucio Fulci movie. I don’t want to drag Haworth too much, as I’ve got a Bluray with my own commentary on it coming soon. (Fortunately said disc’s commentary, on Ford’s The Long Gray Line, in a box from Indicator, also features Farran Smith Nehme and Diana Drumm, who are great, and make me look and sound better.) For the most part here he’s informal but informative, and occasionally understated, as when he observes “Amityville Horror 2 has some incestuous things in it.” SOME? This remastering has a very strong teal color correction. This practice is controversial, and I’m curious as to why this 1981 grindhouse item got this treatment. Its coolness complements the movie well, as it turns out, at least to my eye. As Fulci stuff goes, this is rather understated — nobody vomits up their own intestines or anything — and concentrates on creepy don’t-go-into-the-basement set pieces. The other extras are in the delightful Blue Underground  deep-dish tradition, and there’s a CD of the soundtrack for those delighted by mysterioso organ chords and such. —A

Leave Her To Heaven (Criterion)

This is from the Film Foundation restoration, and it is a smidge or two better than the Technicolor source that Twilight Time used for its 2013 Blu. It looks magnificent and until there’s a 4K disc this will stand as the ultimate home theater version of John Stahl’s magnificent broad-daylight noir with Gene Tierney magnificently playing against simpatico siren type to contrive and ice-cold selfish spider. This loses the 2005 commentary (recycled on the TT disc) that Richard Schickel did with supporting player Dwayne Hickman, which is a shame. But in a video interview Imogen Smith contributes a relatively thorough  examination of Stahl, well-organized and revealing. Citing Stahl’s restraint, she compares him with Naruse which is a sharp observation.—A

Masked and Anonymous (Shout Factory)

I saw this at Sundance in 2003 and roared much of the way through; emerging from the screening I pronounced it “the Plan 9 From Outer Space of Dylan movies.” (This was a thing for me back then; I called Toback’s 1999 Black and White the Plan 9 From Outer Space of race relations movies.) Anyway, I think I was being kind of a dick about it. Not to say that the strained allegory suddenly holds up…but its points seem rather more salient now for some reason. In any event, the star-studded procession certainly qualifies as A Unique Object. Digitally shot, it looks more so here than I recollect it looking back in the day. And the extras help in making sense of the whole thing: Co-writer and director Larry Charles (who got to know Dylan via factotum Eddie Gorodetsky, who Charles claims was boring Larry David so much on a plane trip that Charles jumped in to engage him to spare Gorodetsky potential humiliation) recalls the project’s conception as a “Bob Dylan slapstick comedy.” He also complains about the reviews. Sorry Larry! —A-

The Oscar (Kino Lorber)

It is a testament to the comic genius of the SCTV crew that they managed to successfully send up this, a piece of Hollywood bombast so mired in excess that it seemed well beyond parody. Co-screenwriter Harlan Ellison was so upset by the end result of this crazy crawl-your-way-to-the-top saga (although it is in fact replete with Ellisonean overstatement) that he used to mount a yearly Oscar Renunciation Tour, or something. Long elusive in terms of decent home versions, this is indeed a superb restoration. Jill St. John actually looks a little TOO peaches and cream, if such a thing is possible. Poor Tony Bennett. Anyway. The disc is equipped with two commentaries. The first features Patton Oswalt, Josh Olson (yup, the guy who said he won’t read your "fucking script" although maybe he’s got time now) and Eric Nelson (director of the Ellison documentary Dreams With Sharp Teeth). They enact an approximate MST3K riff session interspersed with gossip and much Ellison appreciation — they all knew the man. There are some good zingers. “Is he married to The Polyphonic Spree?” being one. Along the way the fellow reveal that they don’t know who Guy KIbbee was. No wonder movies suck nowadays. The other commentary features Berger, Mitchell and Thompson, who protest, re the movie’s alleged poor quality, “Audiences ENJOY this!” and at some point work in a comparison to The Best Years of Our Lives. One notes, “I watch this movie and I see one big similarity with one director and that’s Martin Scorsese.” These dudes are high as fuck. Eventually one of them descends sufficiently to make the more apt comparison, which is with Aldrich’s The Legend of Lylah Claire. Was the Jean Hale character truly based on Carroll Baker? We may never know. —A+

Penelope (Warner Archive)

Directed by the oft-dreaded Arthur Hiller, written by the producer of I Love Melvin, this 1966 piece of piffle of a is one of those things folks cite when complaining about How Hollywood Failed Natalie Wood. The movie is not quite the embarrassment that its poster, reproduced on the front of this Bluray, is, but that’s not saying much. Wood who is lovely and charming, plays a well-kept wife who’s not so well-kept that she won’t rob her husband’s bank to work out some neurotic kinks. Ostensible comedic highlights include attempted rape by Jonathan Winters and Dick Shawn as a shrink. The move maintains interest from a standpoint of sheer curiosity, although I cannot lie,  the lead performer running around in her underwear doesn’t hurt. She also sings. There’s a nifty 360 degree dolly shot (thank God for Harry Stradling Sr., the cinematographer later beloved by Barbra Streisand), nifty location scenes in MOMA’s sculpture garden, Peter Falk working out his Columbo mannerisms, Ian Bannen totally at sea, and a lot of hair and costume changes. Also a wacky twist ending. As Candice Bergen remarked to Paul Schrader re American Gigolo, “The colors are wonderful.” —B

Pray for the Wildcats (Kino Lorber)

The opening credits for this 1974 goodie tout “Special Guest Star” Robert Reed. It’s a made-for-TV movie, how can he be a “guest star?” This is one of the recent Kino releases that touts a “Brand New 2K Master” and makes you ask, “why this and not Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife?”  But wow, it really DOES look good. This is the third time I’ve seen this. The first was when it aired on ABC as a “special” (there’s that word again) “two hour event” or what they called it. It was pretty weird seeing nice Andy Griffith (I’d never seen A Face In The Crowd, whaddya want from me, I was 15) as a psycho exec inveigling some ad agency stooges to go dirt-biking with him, on a journey where he eventually kills a couple of hippies. Aiieeee. Griffith overplays when he’s taking off his motorcycle helmet, for Christ’s sake. Even more special than Reed is William Shatner, who throughout delivers the Most Shatner Line Readings Ever. The second time I saw it was in the late 90s with a bunch of drunk/high as fuck bar buddies during a marathon viewing that also included that Powers Boothe Jim Jones movie. And now, in sobriety, it remains almost if not quite as uproarious as ever, in part because the picture got its two-hour ABC time slot through padding. And the padding consists of, well, dirt biking, doled out in rock-climbing portions. Commentators Amanda Reyes and Bill Ackerman do not riff on the movie or find it in any way hilarious. Instead, they  take it quite seriously, which I suppose is to their credit. Apparently academia is beginning to catch up with TV movies, as they cite at least one study. Neat. They’re very informative — although it’s clear that Ackerman read the same Wikipedia entry on score composer Fred Myrow that I did. Said score is pretty creditable in fact. Did I mention Marjoe Gortner? This is his first post-Marjoe acting gig, and he’s not great. Supporting females Lorraine Gary, Janet Margolin and OF COURSE Angie Dickenson (who utters the immortal title) look very displeased to be here. —B+

 Quai des Orfevres (Kino Lorber)

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s third feature, made in 1947, doesn’t pack quite the wallop of his prior Le Corbeau (1943) in part because its scenario is a little more discursive, not as ruthlessly focused. In a sense this is a feature rather than a bug; Quai is a city tale located in differing milieus while Corbeau’s murderous provincials motored a story that was almost immediately tight as a noose. But this movie gets there. Bernard Blier is the sad sack married to luscious Suzy Delair (who only just died at the age of 102!) who might be looking for a sugar daddy in old Charles Dullin. Soon someone ends up dead and Louis Jouvet’s inspector shows up. Much devious character is revealed, Clouzot times kettles to boil over at thematically opportune times, and the whole thing builds to a brutal ending. Clouzot’s mastery (some would say facility) is more than fully formed here. My friend Nick Pinkerton flies solo for a long commentary and comes through with, well, flying colors. And the movie itself looks great. —A

A Quiet Place In The Country (Shout Factory)

The slight raggedness of the materials used to master this disc is a bit of a plus. Makes the movie look even more disreputable, so to speak. But what, you may ask, is Vanessa Redgrave doing in a disreputable movie? Neither giallo nor pure art picture, Quiet Place is a 1968 picture directed by Elio Petri (who cowrote the script with Tonino Guerra) and costarring Redgrave’s then-mate, Franco Nero. Nero plays a tortured artist tormented (or is that the word) by dreams of his lover/agent (Redgrave, natch) dominating him violently while dressed in S&M gear. They hit upon the title residence, she leaves him to his own devices, and he starts going even more insane. Good color values. A messy, weird movie that recalls a bunch of others from this time frame while not really resembling them. (I thought of The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh once and then said, “Nah.”) The color values of the presentation are solid and the Troy Haworth commentary is one of his better one, at least that I’ve heard. My friend Dan Callahan, in his biography of Redgrave, calls her role “essentially thankless,” which is fair enough. Unless Redgrave got a lot out of dressing in S&M gear. One hopes so. —B

Rasputin the Mad Monk (Scream Factory)

Don Sharp, of The Kiss of the Vampire fame, directed this 1966 Cinemascope picture. And whatever you think it’s gonna be based on that, it’s not. As commentators Steve Haberman, Constantine Nasr, and Ted Newsom point out, Sharp didn’t have enough dough for lavish scenes, the result of having 20,000 pounds cut from the budget. Hence, you don’t get a lot of the splendor of the Czar’s court. Really it’s mostly Christopher Lee’s Rasputin causing trouble in bars. You laugh (I hope) but I kid you not. (The commentary as a whole is mostly excellent but the fellow occasionally nod [one of them pronounces the great director’s name “VIncenty Minnelli”] or go out on weird limbs [“Rex Reed complained of Myra Breckinridge that his dance was not cut properly”]. They do display a lot of expertise on various refitted Hammer sets (one bar once was Dracula’s basement). There’s an original cast commentary too, featuring Lee, which of course is older. Once you become accustomed to the movie’s ontological reality, it’s kind of fun — there’s some super nasty acid-throwing stuff in the climax, if that’s your bag — and the image quality as a whole is splendid.—A-

Show Boat (Criterion)

Given the very particular standard set by MGM in the 1940s and beyond you may wonder, how good can a Universal-produced musical in black-and-white made in 1936 be. Holy moley, do you have a treat in store. Never doubt James Whale is all I can tell you. It looks superb and perhaps more crucially it sounds better than fine. The picture does have a side which many may consider stodgy, most of it residing in its hewing in some respects, to theatrical musical conventions of the time. But once you get accustomed to that it adds to the fascination. The performers are incredible. Helen Morgan! Paul Robeson! Irene Dunne in general but also her what-the-fuck-is-going-on dance during “Can’t Help Loving That Man.” Whale’s direction is  consistently excellent; there are moments of fascinating Whale Expressionism in “Old Man River” and the imagery during “I Have The Room Above Her” (a song composed especially for the film, one of three) is stunning. The extras are superb. They include excerpts from the 1929 Show Boat, originally silent, rewired for sound  and also featuring Helen Morgan, and a Paul Robeson doc from 1979, narrated by Sidney Poitier. (This is also a feature of Criterion’s Robeson box set.) There’s also a new video feature on the movie’s race issues, as navigated by scholar Shana L. Redmond. She asks viewers to interrogate what “makes us comfortable” about a number of its tropes and depictions. As much as I admire Show Boat, I’ve never been comfortable with it in that respect. Rather, I adore it largely because of the songs, their incredible melodies and quietly spectacular lyrics. People like to slag Oscar Hammerstein II but any guy who can come up with a couplet like “I’m tired of living/and scared of dying” has definitely got something on the ball. Many of you might not remember that this was, a long time ago, a Criterion laser disc (spine number 45) and the company has included my old Video Review colleague Miles Krueger’s professional, polished, informative commentary from that edition. An incredible package. —A+

Slaughterhouse Five (Arrow)

I saw this movie when it first came out in 1972, at the age of twelve. I had read the novel. As you can imagine I was an incredibly popular kid. Anyway, I convinced my mom’s younger brother to be my adult guardian; he was (and remains) twelve years my senior, and I do think he enjoyed the movie, largely due to Valerie Perrine. I would have my grandmother take me to see Frenzy later in the year and that did not go nearly as well, by which I mean it did not go well at all. I don’t know what my point is except to underscore that both the novel and the film are art objects I have long held dear. So I’m quite glad to see this on Bluray, in an excellent transfer. Kurt Vonnegut loved this adaptation and I can understand why — it gets within better than swinging distance of the novel’s tone despite (wisely, I think) jettisoning completely its mantra, “And so it goes.” I know it’s flawed and its portrayals of women are bad, although I’d argue that Vonnegut and the movie were pushing the stereotypes and cultural conventions that were part of the reality of American suburbia of the time, but we can argue about that later. The performances are all good to great, the structuring is masterful, the physical editing lives up to the concept behind the structuring (and almost never goes for cheap correspondences), and so on. With The World of Henry Orient, it’s director George Roy Hill’s greatest achievement. The editorial supplements, I’m sorry to say, abound with examples of Not Getting It. The commentary is by Troy Haworth, who kicks off by explaining he’s interested in this movie, since he’s usually more into “European stuff.” He then says that Glenn Gould “composed” the score. Glenn Gould was not a composer. The score was composed by Bach. It’s “European stuff.”  He’s very good on the cast, except when he says of Perrine, “we’re going to be seeing a lot more of her and I do mean a great deal more of her.” But man, he has a true millennial (at least I suppose it is that) appreciation of what World War II was all about, and almost constantly complains of how passive and uninteresting Billy is, without taking much note of his, um, name. More disappointing is the stalwart Kim Newman, who doesn’t seem to understand that the movie is about the dislocation of PTSD and instead wonders whether Vonnegut had seen Last Year At Marienbad. Maybe he had, but one doubts that had anything to do with anything. What Vonnegut did in his book was pinpoint the shattered reality of what Tom Brokaw would corrupt into “the greatest generation.” When Billy’s wife, wishing to know who gave Billy the jewel that he has put into a piece of jewelry for him, asks “What was his name Billy?” and we know his name was Edgar Derby and we know how he died and Billy won’t say but Billy keeps looping in and out of the event forever…I mean how dense do you have to be to get that this isn’t about Resnais? Or rather, that Resnais himself was often about the same thing? (You, he and I have all seen Muriel, no?) Newman also glibly dismisses “And so it goes” as words “of wry acceptance.” Seriously man. After a while I was almost shouting at the television: “IT’S ABOUT PTSD IT’S ABOUT PTSD IT’S ABOUT PTSD.” Anyway, the interview with Perry King is good. He’s superb in the movie, one of his best appearances. He at one point characterizes the film as perhaps “too gentle” and maybe that’s not a bad call.  It’s still great. —A

 Song of Songs (Kino Lorber)

Again — Force Ten From Navarone on Kino gets a 4K master but not this Rouben Mamoulian/Marlene Dietrich team-up. It’s a strange world. The image is mostly fine and hey, the movie is 90 years old. Soft at times. Lots of grain but it’s well-structured as they say. Sometimes a shimmer effect. All of it is superbly transferred. The movie presents a small but determined spider’s web of male perverts trapping the devout Dietrich. Sculptor Brian Aherne convinces her to pose nude for him, and perhaps he can provide the kind of love Dietrich dreams of, the kind spoken of in the title scripture. The resultant sculpture is pretty racy, because it was 1932. Instead of being a true amour, Aherne then pimps her to kinky military faux alpha Lionel Atwill. Mamoulian’s touch is not as clever as what he wielded in his prior City Streets (though the change of tone is appropriate to the ostensible tragedy of the melodrama) but his mastery is pretty impressive nonetheless. Because it’s Mamoulian the swoony stuff gets close to actual sensuality and the cheesy stuff has a consistently compelling quality. David Del Valle’s commentary is pertinent and informative but he is prone to overexcitement at times. “Look at those nipples!” he exclaims of the sculpture. Yup, there they are. Tom Milne, in his great monograph on Mamoulian, argues that the last third of the melodrama calls for a director with Stroheim’s sense of cruelty, and that “wielding the scalpel has never been Mamoulian’s forte.” Be that as it may, a few blows register. Highly worthwhile.  —A-

The Stalking Moon (Warner Archive)

I don’t believe in the academy of the overrated but I do believe in the academy of the underrated, and Robert Mulligan belongs there. This 1969 Western is a modest but incredibly solid construction, featuring  great, great cinematography by Charles Lang, spectacularly transferred here. Gregory Peck, who’d worked with Mulligan before in 1962’s To Kill A Mockingbird, iyou may have heard of it, is inspired while conspicuously narrowing his register. The underplaying of his tracker character makes him an enigmatic hero but not an anti-hero, as was often the fashion with American Westerns of the time. Eva Marie Saint, as the woman he protects, is a perfect mysterious foil for him. The direction of this suspenseful long-term chase drama is perfectly judged, superb, understated, but also brutal on occasion.  As a character study and a tense cat-and-mouse, it’s still pretty unbeatable.—A

Station Six Sahara (Netwerk UK Region B import)

I’ve often cited Robert Benayoun’s description of “authentic sadistic cinema,” “a cinema whose elective,  even ceremonious, climate remains, venomous and intoxicating, that of total perdition.” Genre movies provide the most hospitable grounds for such a climate, but it’s not a requirement. This 1963 number, often cited as a perverse favorite by Martin Scorsese (it was included in a double feature program he and Jay Cocks curated for Film Forum last summer, where I finally saw it for the first time) is a super-squinchy bit of business that begins as a mucky men at work melodrama. Specifically the men are post-war Germans and Brits (with Mario Adorf as a brute of not credibly specified ethnicity) pitted together and against each other at a Saharan oil-pumping station. So it’s already a little tense. These grimy fellows (among them Denholm Elliot at his least ingratiating and an insufferably loutish Ian Bannen, who we last spoke of in the Penelope capsule, and irritable as he is he makes a bigger impression here than there) get monthly visits from a van load of sex workers, but that hardly suffices to quell their passions. On to the scene crashes (literally) Carroll Baker, and it’s off to the races. Seth Holt, who we last spoke of in the Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb capsule, compels Baker (who we last spoke of in the The Oscar capsule) to tease the camera with everything she’s got, down to her little toe. The fellows, especially ultra-Teuton Peter Von Eyck (even slimier here than in The Snorkel, which we have not spoken of, and here he doesn’t even murder anyone), all start to lose it, and badly. Just when you think things couldn’t get more skeevy, they kind of do, and the jaw-dropping ending does adhere to a certain logic, one not just misogynist but committedly misanthropic. The image quality is sometimes a little soft and there are no extras but I’m just glad to finally have a copy with which to Amaze My Friends. And I just found out the thing is some kind of remake? I must look into that. —A-

Straight On Till Morning (Shout Factory)

A Hammer picture I hadn’t heard of before, directed by Peter Collinson, who made The Italian Job. This isn’t nearly as funsy. Dotty Rita Tushingham, too long sheltered by a cranky mom, strikes out on her own in not-quite-so-swinging-as-it-recently-had-been London (the picture was made in 1972). Where she soon runs afoul of Shane Briant’s Peter, whose look clearly inspired the Linus Roache character in Pan Cosmatos’ Mandy. (Or maybe not. I should never presume. But I’d bet money on it.) The movie is very “hip” in its cinematic language — a lot of ping-ponging flashbacks and flash forwards, interior monologues, dislocation stuff, not inappropriate for the psychotic character we eventually learn Peter to be. But the movie also uses it with some other random characters, which is kind of pointless and show-offy. It builds to a thoroughly icky conclusion after being vaguely distasteful throughout. The disc looks fine. The commentary with Tushingham and Jonathan Sothcott  (author of The Cult Films Of Christopher Lee) was recorded around 2002,  first heard on the Anchor Bay DVD of that year. For Hammer completists only, and might make you regret being a Hammer completist. —B

 The Tall Men (Twilight Time)

Seems like this is one of the final releases from a really remarkable label; I suppose that co-founder Nick Redman’s death last year put it to an end. This release is just one reason I’ll miss it. It’s a gorgeous, engaging 1955 Raoul Walsh Western, beautifully transferred with no extras save a typically astute essay by Julie Kirgo. Clark Gable and Cameron Mitchell are ex-Confederate cowboys drifting toward would-be cattle baron Robert Ryan. The three form an uneasy alliance for a big cattle drive, with Jane Russell complicating matters. The pace is relaxed, with tension rising and releasing; when payoff times come, they’re delivered with power. Mitchell’s character is particularly moving. Good script by two pros, Frank Nugent and Sydney Boehm. Really beautiful and sensitive use of widescreen and color, handled by Lee Tover, who also did The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Heiress. Durable score by Victor Young, which, as is standard practice on Twilight Time titles, featured on an Isolated track. The devotion of the Mexican vaqueros to Gable’s character is a nicely understated theme here.  And because Walsh is Walsh, the movie’s occasional corn isn’t just tolerable, it plays. Pretty great.  —A

Teorema (Criterion)

The BFI Blu-ray from 2013 has a teal-leaning color correction that was not complained about at the time; this transfer just pushes it harder. Again, as with Criterion’s Midnight Cowboy it looks better than fine in motion, and in still frames too. I suppose this is a matter of taste, but I do wonder about honoring directorial/cinematographic intent. I realize too that now might not be an opportune time to try to do any reporting on it. So I’ll just continue to say how pleasing I find this edition. The new master has real improvement in the overall picture with respect to detail, evident in the early sepia sequence. Also look at Laura Betti’s eyes when she first sees Stamp’s character. A deep pleasure to watch, I found. The BFI picture is harder edged, more contrast heavy, almost antiseptic. Bad Pasolini, crediting Mozart but not Ted Curzon, whose “Tears For Dolphy” plays under the opening titles. Shame!  The Robert Gordon commentary notes this, and good for him. I had not listened to this commentary on the BFI edition and I have to say it’s first-rate. Peter Cowie-level. Fun fact:  Lee Van Cleef and Orson Welles had been considered for the Stamp role, which would certainly have brought different discrete stresses to the allegory.  Essential cinema. —A+

Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 1 (Warner Archive)

I love Tex Avery and think he was a genius but let’s face it: the boisterousness of his humor walked hand in hand with something of a mean streak. You all know what I’m talking about: “Miss Repulsive 1898” in Swing Shift Cinderella (not included in this set but available on Blu-ray in a Looney Tunes Platinum collection), the repeated gag of a veil lifted from a shapely woman’s face to reveal pimples, buck teeth and so on, that sort of thing. In Big Heel Watha the title character is such a spectacularly offensive milquetoast grotesque aside from the ostensible racial stereotype that the racial stereotype kind of becomes a non-sequitur. Which doesn’t make it less objectionable. Just more…confusing. One senses that Avery was aware his own pigtail-pulling sadism, but not with any kind of regret. Indeed the entire idea behind the Screwball Squirrel character was to be purposefully almost intolerably obnoxious. This magnificent set includes the entirety of the Screwball Squirrel series and it’s also remarkably, manically inventive, every bit reminding you that the excess is the point (I especially like the multiple-doors chase in The Screwy Truant). In the less problematic areas (boy does that well-worn Warner disclaimer at the front of this program have its work cut out for it) there’s the magnificence of Red Hot Riding Hood. One gag therein practically invents the jump cut, while the sight of the wolf hitting himself on the head with a hammer while looking at Red makes one wonder if Avery also invented the “run me over with a truck” meme. Batty Baseball is extra radical,  Bad Luck Blackie incomparable, and so on. No extras, beautiful transfers, Volume 2 can’t come quick enough. —A+

Tiger of Eschnapur/The Indian Tomb (Film Movement)

I’ve written extensively on this movie before so I’m doing a brief capsule here just to say this version looks fantastic. The package retains the excellent David Kalat commentary from a prior standard def release. And adds Mark Rappaport’s excellent Debra Paget, For Example, which opens with the question “Why Debra Paget?”  To which the answer is “Why not,” but indeed, there’s more to it than that. —A+

Wheels on Meals (Eureka!, Region B import)

“Dad’s in with a nervous breakdown. He flipped! It’s really complicated.” The “Classic” English dub of this rollicking 1984 comedic martial arts picture really is, as the description in the jacket list of features says, “funkier” than the other audio options. Starring Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, and director Sammo Hung, and shot in Barcelona because by this time the three were so famous that shooting in Hong Kong became a logistical nightmare, this nonsensical tale is replete with lowbrow humor concerning mental institutions, mental health, the homeless, sex workers and more. It’s all so breezily tossed off, though, and the conditions as depicted have so little to do with real life that one just rolls one’s eyes and waits for the next bit of action. Which is all fabulous. The 2K master looks swell, the extras, mostly imported from a version of the movie released via the Hong Kong Legends label are enjoyable and informative and, suitably I’d say, hardly formidable.—A

Whisky Galore/The Maggie (Film Movement)

Film Movement has been doing stalwart work in the Bluray department recently. Their releases of the more obscure but reliable delightful old Ealing pictures such at The Titfield Thunderbolt are exemplary. Of course I was especially tickled to get this, a double feature generously put on a double-disc set. Whisky, also known as Tight Little Island, is of course the directorial debut of Alexander Mackendrick.  The story is of Scotch-starved Scots (WW II rationing, you see) who have the good fortune of having a ship carrying a large cargo of the stuff go down off their coast. It’s a very droll comedy with a bit of bite, something Mackendrick could always deliver. The disc is a good transfer from a good piece of material; I should say good rather than great. Every now and then, particularly in exterior shots, it looks a little dupey but it’s not too distracting. The commentary is by John Ellis also the producer of a good documentary on the film that’s included in the package. He knows his stuff, and he interacts with the actual soundtrack in a way that’s unusual for commentaries. There is a good deal of purposeful esoterica here: descriptions of the perspectives on religion in the Compton Mackenzie novel on which the film was based, and how the film kinda sorta upends them, and a funny but not entirely far-fetched theory that The Wicker Man is a stealth remake of the movie. The Maggie, from 1954, is something of a spiritual sequel to Whisky. Another shipping-and-cargo shaggy dog tale, its endearing charms include Paul Douglas, here at a peak of soulfulness, in the role of a mildly philistine American businessman whose heart is warmed by some conniving Scots (sounds a little like another, more recent Scottish picture we know). Mastered from a BFI restoration, it actually looks better than Whisky — beautiful contrast and sharp detail abound. Mackendrick’s filmography is small, but it’s been elusive on Bluray let alone any other format. This bountiful package is a meaningful correction. — A+

Comments

[Titch]

Magnificent, as ever, Glenn. In these pandemic times, home cinema watching is probably the only way we are going to get our cinema fix for a long time. Amazon.com has stopped shipping overseas, so sampling your cult recommendations are going to have to wait.

[Glenn Kenny]

It's been the case recently that Region B imports sold from domestic sources turn up on U.S. Amazon, but as of now this hasn't been the case with "Sahara" or "Meals," which I regret.

[Bill Ackerman]

Thank you for the kind words regarding our Pray For The Wildcats commentary, Glenn! I just ordered The Anderson Tapes, and I'm looking forward to hearing your track.

[Griff]

Some years back I attended a Film Forum screening of the shortened English-track American release print of AND HOPE TO DIE; it was playing with another North American-shot Trintignant picture, Deray's must-see THE OUTSIDE MAN. Even in a faded Deluxe color print, it was clear that this was perhaps equal parts sharp, ironic noir material and... well, a crazy meditation on the fraternal roots of gangsterism. [Some of both can be found in Goodis' BLACK FRIDAY, but not quite like it appears here.] The heist is indeed pretty loopy, as you note. Ryan was taking almost everything offered to him at this point -- he was already ill, and wanted to make as much dough as he could to leave to his family -- but his performance is all there, at least in the English-language version. [Its obdurate quality reminded me slightly of his mob boss in HOUSE OF BAMBOO.] It seemed a little better than Clément's disappointing DEADLY TRAP, but very weak in comparison to the near-great RIDER ON THE RAIN. I'd like to see this longer version, even if it lacks Ryan's voice. Thanks for discussing this -- KL has been bringing out so many discs, I had no idea this had been released!

You're right about BEAU BRUMMEL -- as a glossy studio product, it's on the money in every way except for Granger's weak performance. [SCARAMOUCHE is the outlier in Granger's career; it's so good, one tends to assume that the actor must have the right stuff... but, sadly, not anywhere else.]

Very nice call on SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, Glenn. Fine set of capsule reviews.

[GK]

Thanks so much!

[jwarthen]

What a treat, even when discovered six weeks later. I'll go look for THE TALL MEN right now.