A Salvage Edition of a Quarantine Blu-Ray Consumer Guide

I started this in late March 2020. And then I stopped work on it because I realized it (“it” meaning staying inside) WOULD NEVER END, maybe. Some time in summer I spruced up the notes. But not a whole lot. From March on, too, I had book stuff to do, I was teaching, and to be honest I was sufficiently dispirited in a particular way that I also did not feel much like doing any work that I did not have to do.  So this is kind of…dated? What IS dated nowadays? Who can really say?  I cleaned it up and am publishing it now because, well, I put in the initial work and also because sometime between now and next March I’ll get a goddamn Playstation 5 and will try and knock out a 4K Ultra Disc Consumer Guide for variety and perversity’s sake. As Your Favorite President used to like to tweet, Enjoy!

EQUIPMENT: PlayStation 4 player, OPPO BDP 83 player, Sony KD50X690E display, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.

Action of the Tiger (Warner Archive)

Here’s a novelty: Van Johnson trying to do Humphrey Bogart. I like Van Johnson, but as shifters of personae go, he’s no Dick Powell. When in Greece, his free and easy “I own a boat” character drops mots like “Sorry boys it’s all Greek to me,” ar ar ar. The color picture is grainy but…colorful. Some interiors look like smoke filled rooms. Maybe they ARE smoke filled rooms. An early supporting role for Sean Connery as Johnson’s soused, rape obsessed mate. ”He gives me the creeps even when he’s sober” one character notes, except he’s never sober.  How did topless Martine Carol happen in a 1957 movie? Who knows, but you don’t have to be a leerer to appreciate it; the novelty is an attraction in and of itself. Although Carol looks swell. The chief creep of the scenario is played by Herbert Lom, and is even rapier than Connery’s character. Eventually you are asked to cry for him, and you do not, because he sucks. This mostly-shot-in-Spain thingamajig is very scenic and reminded me a bit of Hemingway’s descriptions of the country’s landscapes in Death in the Afternoon; looking them up might be a better use of your time. Unless if you’re really into Van Johnson. Or Martine Carol. Or Sean Connery. —B

Angel (Kino Lorber)

Oooh la la, a new 4K scan, and it looks lovely. The Ernst Lubitsch picture treats a scenario of Marlene Dietrich as a neglected wife who assumes another identity in a whack at adultery. It has the potential to go full comedy or full melodrama and instead falls between two stools. While it doesn’t quite flop around there, the 1937 movie doesn’t have the buoyancy of the best Lubitsch. But it does have some of his most quintessential sequences, and Joe McBride’s typically expert commentary walks you through them with aplomb. —A

Beau Geste/The General Died At Dawn/Lives of A Bengal Lancer (Kino Lorber)

Kino put out these three almost simultaneously and heaven knows they were useful in filling out my contemporary Gary Cooper knowledge, as it’s been literally decades since I saw these on local television in the ‘60s-‘70s. I was glad to catch up but none of them hit me with the force of revelation.. 1936’s General has a lot of speeches but also a lot of noteworthy individual shots. The faux-Hemingway scenario doesn’t draw on any anti-fascist spirit but manages to play super portentous nonetheless. Cooper is fine but Akim Tamiroff does a lot of good as the title villain. Director Lewis Milestone’s style here suggests a bridge between pure German Expressionism and noir. 1935’s Lives of A Bengal Lancer struck me as a little dull, antic Franchot Tone notwithstanding. Of the three it’s the least outstanding in appearance but is better than watchable.  1939’s Beau Geste has a good commentary from Frank Thompson and William Wellman, Jr., excellent image quality, crisp direction from William Wellman Jr.’s dad,  then-whelp Donald O’ Connor, a ridiculous story, and a super fresh Susan Hayward. Kind of walks all over Lancer, in my estimation. If you can only buy one of the three, this is it.  —A-/ B+/A

 

Blood on the Moon (Warner Archive)

Nicolas “Nick” Musuraca’s sharp and shadowy cinematography looks really good here. A super solid film, with a little something extra because of  director Robert Wise’s ultra-competence and the cast. (Barbara Bel Geddes is particularly fine. ) It doesn’t get to Mann (Anthony) level but if you dial down your expectation appropriately, you’ll love it.  There are frequent references to drifting in the spoken exchanges, just like the Situationists. Which is cool.  Inspirational dialogue, delivered impeccably by Walter Brennan; “I always wanted to shoot one a’ ya. And he was the handiest.” —A-

The Bolshevik Trilogy (Flicker Alley)

We — and when I say “we” I should be clear, as so many others refuse to be, that I mean me and some other people living in my head — don’t talk about Pudovkin much anymore, but back in the ‘60s and ‘70s he was a staple of Parker Tyler picture books and college film appreciation classes. Unlike Eisenstein this architect of film language didn’t mind toeing the Soviet line and his films showcase some unusually striking content as a result.  The iterations of his works on this set unfortunately point up the limitations of film restoration when the optimum materials don’t exist. 1926s Mother, about a mom who makes the ultimate sacrifice — for the Revolution, of course — is pretty raggedy but watchable. The commentary by Peter Bagrov is very erudite and sharp, a little academic. The End of St. Petersburg, his commemoration of October 1917 on its 10^th anniversary, looks crisper and sharper, with some stunning frames. Storm Over Asia looks mostly solid. It’s the most action packed and, in part because it’s not set in Russia, the most gonzo of the features, with often startling imagery. Its anti-Buddhism is vicious — so over the top as to be mordantly funny. The scene of the Western generals’ meeting with the Dalai Lama is a real treat, you could say. Jan-Christopher Horak contributes a solid commentary with a slightly stiff delivery. Often startling imagery. Voluminous extras including the immortal short Chess Fever, which has no politics as such and should be watched in conjunction with reading Nabokov’s The Defense. (I guess Queen’s Gambit people might also enjoy.) —A-

 

Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter (Scream Factory)

A rather terrific 1974 Hammer one-off, which is too bad — I could have gone for a series featuring this character and I do not say that too often. Tongue in cheek, but hardly ostentatiously or egregiously so, which apparently Hammer majordomo Michael Carreras took exception to. Schmuck. There’s a remarkable sequence featuring an unkillable vampire — digging the new breed thing, so to speak — that’s as good as anything in any given “serious” Hammer horror you could name. Good commentary by Bruce G. Hallenbeck — a little stiff but solid, informative, and low-fat. Carreras’ dislike of the film is treated in detail. There’s a second, older commentary with writer/director Brian Clemens and female lead Caroline Munro. Good image quality; whole package really hits the spot. —A

 

The Far Country (Arrow Region B import)

“A different part of the landscape and a different set of fictions” is one particularly evocative phrase in Adrian Martin’s commentary for this actual Anthony Mann Western, from 1954,  which was shot around the locations where its story is set, one of them being Dawson City — yes, the same place memorialized in the great recent Bill Morrison documentary. One of the crucial Stewart/Mann pictures, it highlights what Manny Farber called Mann’s “sharp geographic sense” while unfolding a story that enables what Farber called “crawling, mechanized tension.” The material from which the 4K master was made is not  pristine. You definitely can see it in the dissolves, for instance. The image overall is still pretty handsome. Arrow presents the movie in two aspect ratios, 2.0 and 1.85, and that’s great. I can’t say I have a preference for one over the other but I’m delighted to have a choice.  —A+

 

The Fate of Lee Khan (Eureka!/Masters of Cinema)

A spectacular restoration of King Hu’s 1973 film. Since 1967’s Dragon Inn he’d been producing his own films; the color in this one though is rather redolent of Shaw Brothers stuff. I reviewed this version when it had a theatrical release in New York so you can read my plot précis and such here. As for this excellent disc, there’s one authoring choice I considered strange; Tony Rayns has a “Selected Scene Commentary” and when you select that on the menu it plays only those scenes. 1 hour and 13 minutes of a 1 hour 43 minute movie. I could roll with the half hour of silence. Anyway, Rayns' commentary is as usual informative, astute, sober and rewarding. The English dub has cute idiomatic touches: “Where’s the rest room?” This is a mostly chipper film, only pretty much everybody dies at the end. As a demonstration of Hu’s mastery of cinematic space, it’s peerless. Most of it takes place in the confines of an inn but the movie feels as expansive as one shot in Monument Valley. The video essay contributions from Anne Billson and David Cairns are excellent. —A+

 

Flame of New Orleans (Kino Lorber)

“Rudy Maté,” is how commentator Lee Gambin refers to this movie’s cinematographer. But that’s about as loose as he gets. He lays out fundamentals known to a lot of aficionados already. But his cohort, the actor Rutanya Alda, is uninhibitedly dishy. “I’m sure she went to bed with everyone,” she notes of star Marlene Dietrich, before asserting that on Destry Rides Again  James Stewart got her pregnant, and Dietrich got an abortion. What the fuck is going on here, anyway? As for the movie:  As a scenarist Norman Krasna was fine but he wasn’t quite Brackett/Wilder, and this saucy yarn tends to period screwball, but never quite gets the right boisterousness/buoyancy. It picks up when Mischa Auer shows, as most things do. Shemp Howard shows as well, and Andy Devine plays a character whose interest in rape might have raised an eyebrow with the future producers of Andy’s Gang. Or maybe not. While the movie’s racial portrayals are hardly hugely enlightened — it’s a 1941 Hollywood movie after all — it’s worth noting that a romance between African American characters here (they’re played by Clarence Muse and Theresa Harris) is treated with almost no real condescension. One is tempted to put it down to director Rene Clair, but one never can tell. In any event, “Rudy”’s imagery looks very nice here. Overall the package is for Clair or Dietrich completists only, but why are you not either or both in the first place? Inspirational dialogue: “What a boawing town.” Also: “Excuse me, my monkey jumped in the window.” —B

 

Force Ten From Navarone (Kino Lorber)

I did not watch this with a stopwatch so I couldn’t tell you exactly when one of the Anglos in this storyline make a “Zulu” joke to Carl Weathers, but it sure does happen. A stone-faced Harrison Ford joins Weathers, Edward Fox and Robert Shaw in this rather remarkable boondoggle. Guy Hamilton’s uninspired “action” directing had me preoccupied with questions like “Why does Shaw look like that? Did he get plastic surgery or just dry out?” Also starring Angus MacInnes, the beloved Gordie of Strange Brew, and Richard Kiel. The WW II machinations here head to the eastern regions of Europe, but Come and See this is not. When the motley band get to the bridge — guess what they’re supposed to do with it — one of them observes, “There’s no bridge in the world that can’t be blown. That’s what Force Ten is here prove.” And to think Ford complained about George Lucas’ dialogue. Only Franco Nero gets through this thing with his dignity intact. The 2K restoration really lets you appreciate how overlit the interiors are. Imagine being chained to a stone wall in a cave-like prison illuminated by klieg lights. The blowing the dam effects are not as good as anything in When Worlds Collide or, for that, matter Deluge. From the audio commentary by Steve Mitchell and Steven Jay Rubin: “These are supposedly Chechnyans [sic]  because…” “Chetniks!” “Excuse me, Chetniks. But I think they’re related to Chechnyans [sic], I would think, perhaps…” “Yeah, it’s all in the same neighborhood.” —B-

The Golem (Kino Lorber)

Did this 1920 Paul Wegener film, based on Jewish fable,  inspire Schuster and Siegel to create  Superman? Tim Lucas is not unpersuasive on this point in his commentary. The new Murnau House 4K restoration is incredibly beautiful; it’s like seeing the movie for the first time. A really magical and haunting movie; this version ought to  move it up in the estimation of any skeptics.  My only complaint is that the producers did not include my friend Gary Lucas’ inspired, raucous alternate score, which he’s performed live to enthusiastic audiences for decades, as a soundtrack option. —A+

King Creole (Paramount)/Wild In The Country (Twilight Time)

Two of the King’s more credible stabs at Real Acting in Real Movies. 1958’s Creole, with Elvis playing a particularly hungry boy, benefits from Michael Curtiz’s energetic direction, a juicy melodramatic storyline, and a bevy of A-plus 1950s character players in the ensemble:  Walter Matthau! Dean Jagger! Paul Stewart! Carolyn Jones! Vic Morrow! Pretty good picture, as normal moviegoers used to say, and the new presentation is pleasing indeed. 1961’s Wild in the Country is mostly a straight-down-the-middle piece of craft from the Twilight Time favorite Phillip Dunne, with Elvis as a would-be writer as earnest as Dunne himself. A potential  Youngblood Hawke who doesn’t make it to New York. He gets plenty of action in the titular country, courtesy of Hope Lange, Tuesday Weld, Millie Perkins. It’s all a bit…peculiar. Also, he plays a guy named Glenn, which was personally weird. The songs are a bit more of an awkward fit than they are in King, because (duh!) he doesn’t play a singer. A curiosity, to be sure, but a well-meant one. — A-/B+

Khrustalyov, My Car! (Arrow)

I love this movie while only having the most rudimentary understanding of what’s going on with it. Not because the filmmaking is obscure or indirect —every frame teems with action, life, dread, hilarity, what have you — but because the intimacy with which it depicts a history that I have only book knowledge of is by definition too INSIDE for me, or maybe any other U.S. resident, to fully get. I don’t think director Alexei German wanted to be hermetic, but he also had no interest in “universalizing” this story of Stalin and national and personal trauma (all of which register with crushing strength in any event). So the superb commentary by Donald Bird, laying out all of Russian in-jokes and German in-jokes, is crucial, giving you a skeleton key. He also details German’s painstaking (to say the least) method — he changed lighting cameraman four times in the making of this 1998 masterpiece. He’s a sharp erudite critic too: “Dostoevsky is hysterical, is baroque, and these qualities have more to do with German’s cinema than with Bresson’s.” Arrow’s amazing package presents the movie beautifully. It includes an excellent visual essay; an interview with German, about 50 minutes, with his  wife and collaborator Svetlana Karmalita constantly at his side; Jonathan Brent holds forth on the actual history of the “Doctor’s Plot,” the movie’s animating atrocity, for over 40 minutes. And there’s more still. This is the  best overall Blu-ray package I’ve seen in some time. —A+

Rachel and the Stranger (Warner Archive)

Robert Mitchum sings! Well of course he does, you’ve heard his calypso album, haven’t you? And he does it in Night of the Hunter too. This might be his first time singing in a movie. Said movie being a 1948 sort-of Western with less emphasis on action than on character and the depiction of rough frontier living. Mitchum is the pest in this story of Very Good William Holden taking over the contract of an indentured servant played by Loretta Young. “Buy a human being out of servitude,” he observes to his cranky kid Gary Gray; “it’s the right Christian thing to do.” Later another character observes, “I’ve seen love take seed on rockier ground than this.” Eww. Mitchum and his guitar put some moves on Young, and things get slightly squirrely. Pretty austere, in part because there’s almost no cast per se. The animated birds are odd. Director Norman Foster keeps things brisk, there’s an awesome “aw shucks” ending, and the whole thing — an RKO production rushed into release to capitalize on Mitchum’s newfound notoriety upon being busted for reefer (again, it’s 1948; what a pioneer) — is very Dore Schary, I guess. The Blu-ray looks good but as a library item this is mainly of interest to intense devotees of one or more of its stars. Inspirational dialogue: “Sure got a mess o’ hair.” —B+

 

Raining on the Mountain (Eureka!/Master of Cinema Region B Import)

Another super beautiful restoration of a fantastic King Hu movie — and my official review is here — and another faboo Tony Rayns commentary (although it’s funny to hear Rayns, usually pretty genteel, refer to its principal faux-monk characters as “mercenary scumbags.”) Rayns also drops some surprising Jeff Bridges trivia. David Cairns’ excellent video essay takes a biographical tack, discussing Hu’s “craving for China” (he shot this in South Korea) and discussing how the female swordfighter had been popular in Chinese silent cinema. Like Lee Khan in its ingenious spatial relations but different, more abstract. —A+

Reflections in a Golden Eye (Warner Archive)

Warner Archive do movie cultists a solid by releasing this John Huston adaptation of  a Carson McCullers novel in two versions: Huston’s Experiment in Color “Golden hue edition” is pretty…interesting looking. Fucking spotless too. And then there’s the normie color version the studio put out when Huston’s experiment proved a bit of an alienation effect for audiences. Featuring Marlon Brando torturing himself as he starts to put on the pounds, and Elizabeth Taylor torturing him and herself, in a “I Dreamed I Was In A Nightmare Marriage In My Maidenform Bra” mode, Eye is a melodrama so peculiarly overheated that why people give Boom! a hard time when this exists is beyond me. So, pretty great! —A

Romance on the High Seas (Warner Archive)

Now THIS is Technicolor. And Sir Lancelot is in it! (The calypso guy, not the knight. Come on.) An utterly trivial yet utterly perfect 1948 construction/confection, gorgeously staged and shot. Made when director Michael Curtiz fancied himself a talent scout, and made Doris Day a star. She looks luscious and plays feisty, never realizing that she’s got a date with destiny in the sexually magnetic person of Jack Carson. For whom she spurns Oscar Levant. The late ‘40s were odd. The supporting cast features Grady Sutton, Eric Blore, Franklin Pangborn, and S.Z. Sakall doing their delightful stuff at their career twilights, more or less. —A

 Woman Times Seven (Kino Lorber)

It’s weird to hear Bosley Crowther evoked with the implicit accusation of being too woke. But Kat Ellinger, framing her commentary as a “defense of Italian comedy,” disdains ole Boz here for bemoaning the way director Vittorio De Sica kicks around Shirley MacLaine in this 1967 sort-of anthology movie. Well,  just because it’s Italian comedy doesn’t mean it gets off the hook for misogyny, and Crowther had a point. Whether MacLaine is portraying a widow, a would-be adulteress who learns the ropes from some prostitutes, or a fashion diva, she’s mainly asked to toggle between willed mouseburger or bitch. Lex Barker is in it. So is Alan Arkin. And Michael Caine. Shot in Paris, so that must have been nice. There’s wacky nudity, wigs, wigs, and wigs upon wigs. Very colorful and very ‘60s, albeit very pre-May-’68 ‘60s for sure. Best watched in segments, because as a movie in toto it’s pretty insufferable. —B-

Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain (Eureka Region B import)

Tsui Hark’s amazing 1983 picture was a direct influence on John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. And as buoyant as Carpenter’s movie is, it’s still mild compared to this wacky account of vampires and devils assaulting the titular mountain and meeting their match against magic swords and celestial powers. Or something.  There’s a new weird lo-fi effect every 13 seconds or so. And the action is always furious. As much fun as Hercules in the Haunted World. I may watch it again right now. —A+

Comments

[George]

I've long wondered if THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN inspired Caniff's "Terry and the Pirates" (or vice versa) in subject matter and visual style.

[Kevin Oppegaard]

Outstanding, Glenn! And I bought your excellent Goodfellas book too. Going off on a bit of a tangent here, but your book is one of the few that I've read this year: we had an evening a month ago, where we watched Italianamerican on the Criterion Scorsese Shorts (there's one that should have been in your guide), made the meatballs that were served in both that and Goodfellas, and then we watched Goodfellas again.

You featured some cooking (gravy, as I recall) on your blog some years ago. Try the meatballs recipe.

https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a19548519/godfellas-movie-pasta-sauce/

[Peter Nellhaus]

We're in agreement about "Captain Kronos". I didn't know that Michael Carreras hated that film. This is the same guy who second guessed Monte Hellman and Seth Holt, two directors who've also served as editors, claiming their films "didn't cut together".

[lazarus]

Last year when I was in Paris (seems like a lifetime ago) I caught both Winchester '73 and The Far Country on the big screen, and while I already knew the qualities of the former, the latter really blew me away. Not as manic or intense of a Stewart performance, but perhaps a more complex and layered one. But the location work really goes a long way. And the sheer attrition over the course of the film is pretty brutal, not pulling any punches at the difficulty of frontier life, particularly in that region.

Maybe I'm grasping at straws here because it just popped into my head, but I feel like this would make a great double-feature with River of No Return. Am I crazy?

Anyway, Happy Holidays to you and yours Glenn, and to all the people still frequenting this spot.

[Glenn Kenny]

We just watched "River of No Return" the other night. Indeed, it features many approximate rhymes to Mann's '50s Westerns.

[That Fuzzy Bastard]

Pudovkin really is unjustly neglected. Earth is an all-timer, and End of St Petersburg has some great moments. Last time I was in Russia I managed to get some of his 50s color dramas, which are not great but... kinda interesting

[Chris Labarthe]

Sous les pavés, le sang sur la lune!