Some Came Running

4K Mini Consumer Guide, Special Halloween Edition

Equipment: Sony UBp-X800 multi-region 4K player, Sony KD50X690E display, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.

 Army of Darkness (Shout Factory 4K Ultra)

One has to give Sam Raimi credit: after the editorial mangling and critical drubbing he endured with Crimewave, in 1992 he invested the commercial credibility he’d regained with 1990’s Darkman into making another live-action cartoon, placing it in the context of his popular not-quite franchise (at the time) as a form of insurance. Army of Darkness can get pretty grisly but, thanks to the absurdism of the effects and the slapstick energy of lead actor Bruce Campbell, it’s ultimately much more a comedy than a horror movie. Not so much Monty Python and the Holy Grail as A Connecticut Yankee Misses King Arthur’s Court By Several Crucial Decades and Endures Magical Curses That Might as Well Have Been Conceived by Tex Avery. Which is a roundabout way of saying that while the movie remains startling in parts it is much much much more a comedy than a horror movie. That it, it’s not scary. It is pretty groovy though. The 4K rendering, from the original negative, foregrounds that Good Celluloid Grain…and also lays bare the ways many of the process shots are process shots, which some viewers may find distracting.  We will encounter this issue again at the end of this column. —A-

Cat People (Shout Factory 4K Ultra)

Once you’ve accepted that this 1982 movie is — not to be commonplace about it — what it is, it looks better — more stubborn, more perverse, more relatively uncompromised — with every viewing.  I like the original camera negative scan particularly for its rendering of the diverse Weird And Fancy Colors, from the oranges of the ancient (or dream) cat world to the red of the blood that splashes on Nastassja Kinski’s shoes in a particularly “aiiieee” sequence. I’d never listened to the commentary Paul Schrader recorded for the movie in 2002 or so until I got this editions. Apparently part of the reason he made it was because Universal was remaking old RKO sci-fi/horror pictures for some reason — Schrader links this up with Carpenter’s The Thing, released the same year. Holy cow, an early iteration of the DARK UNIVERSE? Anyway. Schrader’s not specific about how he evolved Alan Ormsby’s original script, but I bet the Beatrice theme was Schrader’s: the idea of a zookeeper who’s heavy into Dante’s “La Vita Nuova” isn’t entirely improbable, but it’s definitely a conceit. But of all the performers, John Heard, as said zookeeper, seems the most hemmed in somehow, while Malcolm McDowell executes his Catman moves with clear relish. Reflecting on the movie’s themes in the commentary, Schrader reflects that as he speaks, people are more shocked and upset by them than they were in the early ‘80s; and he predicts that the pendulum would soon swing back from prudery he saw around him at that time. BOY WAS HE EVER WRONG. And his new film, Master Gardener, is partially his screw-you response to that. Might make a good double feature with this almost-classic. And one thing about this picture, you definitely cannot say that the sex scenes don’t move the plot ahead. —A

 The Fog (Shout Factory 4K Ultra)

Maybe I’m just a sucker for John Carpenter’s neo-classical stagings and compositions and camera movements, but where the critics of the day found the horror stylings here to be conventional and stale, I walked out of my first viewing of this 1980 vengeful-ghost story saying, “These satisfactions are permanent.” And I say that again every time I rescreen the movie. This version (touted as a “4K restoration by Studio Canal” as opposed to an OCN scan) is pretty dark, make sure your ambient lighting is low to nonexistent for best results. —A-

The Funhouse (Shout Factory)

First rate picture. This 1981 Tobe Hooper item concludes his casual trilogy of Extremely Disturbed Dads (of a sort) begun with Texas Chainsaw in 1974 and continued with 1976’s Eaten Alive. It can also be be enjoyed as a higher budget, more “professional” but not necessarily less sleazy rethink of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed Up Zombies!!?. Seasoned and nationally renowned professional actor Kevin Conway, playing a demented carny barker with multiple identities, is almost as effectively creepy as regional luminary Jim Siedow was in Massacre. And poor Elizabeth Berridge suffers almost as much as Marilyn Burns, beginning with a shower attack from creepy little brother Joey, who not only shouldn’t be playing with rubber knives but shouldn’t be looking for ways to see his sister naked, either. What year was this movie made? Oh, right, 1981, when nobody “called” you “out” for this sort of thing. Anyway, in a more ruthless mood Hooper would deliver to Joey the comeuppance he had so richly earned. But this “dark ride” excursion is not lacking in gnarliness for all that, and with The Fog is probably the most outright genuinely scary movie in this batch. The accompanying Blu-ray disc contains a cornucopia of extras (and this is true of all the other Scream Factory discs treated here) and the 4K Ultra disc, again from the OCN, looks just right. — A+

The Lost Boys (Warner 4K Ultra)

I declined to see this when it first came out. It had something to do with coming down from an acid trip on a summer morning in 1987, and seeing Corey Haim and Corey Feldman on Good Morning America, wearing these head scarves that made them look like Jim Henson’s Duran Duran Babies. Kind of freaked me out. So the new 4K was a first time for me. Hey, I’d forgotten that Alex Winter was in this! This made me more kindly inclined toward the picture, but unfortunately the picture itself kept intruding on my kindly inclinations. There’s that first absolutely not frightening vampire attack, for instance. There’s that terrible Echo and the Bunnymen cover of “People are Strange.” And I like Echo and the Bunnymen, too. Then there are the little asides that I’ve come to think of as “Jeffrey Boam touches” (and indeed, Boam was one of the screenwriters), such as “You know what it means when there’s no TV? No MTV.” Oof. The suspension of disbelief director Joel Schumacher tries to extract from the audience with respect to the idea that the bodybuilder sax player they snapped up from 1985’s Beyond Thunderdome (Tim Cappelo is his name) can actually sing is more of a stretch than any of the supernatural stuff. I think the overall problem with the picture, not to put too fine a point on it, is that no one involved in its writing and staging seemed to have any idea what a horror movie was, let alone how to make one. On the positive side, the 4K disc looks quite spectacular. And the 98 minute film is pretty pacey, even as it threatens to turn into The Goonies by its last third. And the cast is appealing. I didn’t “get” Jamie Gertz back in 1987, but I can see it now, not that you’re interested. Kick my grade up two notches if you’re an unrepentant ‘80s nostalgist. —B+

Night of the Living Dead (The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra)

Still the greatest. This is a 4K rendition of the fantastic 2016 restoration that I wrote about here. As Robert A. Harris has pointed out, this upgrade might, to aficionados, feel like a redundancy: “There is simply no 4k imagery here to reproduce.” And he still rates it as Highly Recommended, because the restoration itself is that good and the movie is that good. The clarity of the image really underscores the commitment and inspiration of the filmmaking. We now can fully understand that the movie is not “crudely powerful,” as some felt obliged to put it at various points in its critical history. It’s just POWERFUL. —A+

Poltergeist (Warner 4K Ultra) 

I rather enjoyed this when I saw it in a theater in 1982 but sat out the whole “who really directed it?” business, in part because I never watched it again after that, for whatever reason. Looking at it now, I’m hardly surprised at how Spielbergian it is — after all, Spielberg did not just produce, but he co-wrote both the story and the screenplay. And so the story and the screenplay continue the preoccupation with suburbia that marked Close Encounters and E.T. The theme is Spielbergian (traumatized/transformed family) the resolution is Spielbergian (everybody lives — at least in the movie itself; two of the younger cast members suffered tragic deaths in subsequent years), and the direction is…not unlike that of Tobe Hooper, the director of record. (A television set in this movie, before it goes kerblooey, also reflects Spielberg’s preoccupation with A Guy Named Joe, which he will remake as Always in a few years.)  When you get to the meat of it, dated special effects notwithstanding (and in 4K, they can’t help but look more dated) the movie gets a reasonably grisly and galvanizing job done. (I also noticed that the catcalling pool installer — who’s catcalling a high school girl for heaven’s sake [what year was this made? Oh, 1982] is played by Sonny Landham, who also played the ingratiating Billy Bear in Walter Hill’s 48 Hrs. the same year.) —A-

Tenebrae (Synapse 4K Ultra)

Two Evils Eyes (Blue Underground 4K Ultra)

The 4K Adventures in Argento continue to pay off. Rewatching the titles from his best run of films — those between and including 1975’s Deep Red and Two Evil Eyes, the 1990 double header, with one hour of Argento and another of Romero — I’m struck over and over by just how downright nasty Dario’s pictures are. The excess is the point, as I’ve mused before, but there’s a dimension of the sadism that’s just so unadorned that the movies disturb in ways that few other films can manage. And maybe that’s a good thing? (That few other films can manage, I mean.) The bloody murders in Tenebrae have significantly startling imagery one could defend on the grounds of surrealism — but they’re also resolutely anti-social. One supposes it takes something akin to conviction to be so “et voila” in the presentation of this kind of material. It’s complicated! And I suppose what draws people (including myself) to such things is also complicated — it can’t just be genre loyalty, can it? And yet of course like so many of my generation of horror hounds I can’t stand the Saw films at all and despise the likes of Clown. Any way. Of these two releases, both are less than carefree Halloween entertainments: the relentless misogyny depicted in Tenebrae and the simulated cat torture in Argento’s Harvey-Keitel-fueled revision of Poe’s “The Black Cat” in Evil Eyes leave definitively queasy aftertastes. Both are spectacular-looking renderings, however. Pick your poison, as they say. — A+

Universal Classic Monsters: Icons of Horror Collection Volume 2 (Universal 4K Ultra)

Speaking of being a horror hound, Universal Home Video knows a mark when it sees one. Once more they (okay, we) are asked to reinvest in long-owned material for a potentially utopian upgrade. Am I NOT going to own Bride of Frankenstein in 4K? No, I am not. Have I ever not been in near-narcotic thrall to Freund’s The Mummy? No, I have not. Both these titles look divine herein — and I don’t think any future format is going to wring more detail out of them than what we get here. So I’m DONE, Universal, you hear me? DONE. Don’t try to 8K me on this stuff whenever there’s 8K. Just don’t. The two weak links in this 4-film set are the 1943 Phantom of the Opera and 1954’s The Creature From the Black Lagoon (which is offered in 3D only on the Blu-ray of the set, which contains both 4K Ultra and BR discs). This was the first time I even watched this Phantom — my horror sensei Carlos Clarens, in his great An Illustrated History of Horror and Sci-Fi Films, discouraged me as a kid by complaining, first, that here “the excellent Technicolor photography served to support the spectacular, rather than the horrific aspects of the story,” and later that the movie “divested the Leroux story of all fantasy and mystery, turning the redoubtable Phantom into a fatherly musician with an acid-scarred face.” To which I will add, after this viewing, too much opera, not enough Phantom. Despite Claude Rains giving it the old college try. The Technicolor does look good in 4K, however. As for Creature, it’s a movie that contains many resolution-compromising process shots, and the 4K version underscores this to a sometimes uncomfortable degree. By this time in the studio’s history, horror stories just didn’t have the same kind of care lavished on them as in the 1930s. Still, the great Ricou Browning’s performance as the Creature is a masterpiece of super-powered pissed-offedness. Who knows what this guy wants, right? Is there even a point to his kidnapping Julie Adams? I don’t think there is.  In any event, the greatness of the first two titles pretty much compensates for whatever quibbles one might have about the other two. —A-

Buñuel's least favorite Buñuel: "La fievre monte a El Pao"

Gérard Philipe and  Maria Félix in Fievre.

Myself and others have not infrequently had the occasion to quote Luis Buñuel’s reflection on his career as a filmmaker, to the effect that, while he’d often been obliged to work with scanty budgets and subjects that he didn’t find aesthetically congenial, he’d never put on film something that contradicted his morality. For instance, in my New York Times’ review of Ingmar Bergman’s rarely seen This Can’t Happen Here — a 1950 anti-Communist propaganda narrative that Bergman very soon came to see as a bad move — I kicked off with what I thought was the Buñuel quote: “I never made a single scene that contradicted my convictions or my morality.”

Trying to track down the quote recently, what I found was a slightly different pronouncement. Which is from a 1964 interview with Wilfried Berghahn, for the German film magazine Filmkritik, and it goes like this: “It is quite true that in the beginning, caught up by necessity, I was forced to make cheap films. But I never made a film which went against my conscience or convictions.” In the excerpt from the quote as cited on the site cranes are flying, Buñuel continues: “I have never made a superficial, uninteresting film.”

But in his conversations with the Mexican film critics José de la Colina and Tomás Pérez Turrent in 1974 through 1975, collected in the invaluable book Objects of Desire: Conversations With Luis Buñuel, he reveals some considerable misgivings about 1959’s La fievre monte a El Pao. Turrent says, “It doesn’t seem like you have very good memories of La fievre monte a El Pao.” Buñuel responds: “No, and neither did Gérard Philipe. It’s the last film he acted in. One day during filming we dropped our masks. ‘Why did you agree to make this film?’ I asked him. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘And you?’ ‘I don’t know either,’ I told him.”

I’m not familiar with the situation in today’s France, but here in the States, French film star Gerard Philipe is barely remembered, in part because his career did not even span two decades. He died in 1960, at age 37, not too long after completing Fievre. But prior to that the delicately handsome actor was something of a matinee idol in his country.  His greatest cinephile hits include Ophuls’ 1950 La Ronde and Vadim’s 1959 Les Liaisons Dangereuses; he also made pictures with Allegret, Becker, Clair, Guitry, and Autant-Lara, the latter if I recall correctly something of a bete noir for the anti-Cinema du Papa agitators of Cahiers du Cinema. (Godard called Autant-Lara’s 1947 Devil in the Flesh, starring Philipe, “miserable,” so there’s that.)

Buñuel explains why he agreed to make the film with customary bluntness: “My agent proposed it from Paris. A certain producer wanted to make a film with me and came to see me in Mexico. The truth is that it didn’t interest me much, and I accepted it only because at the time I took everything offered to me, as long as it wasn’t humiliating, because I didn’t have any money and lived day to day. I think my lack of interest is apparent. It turned out to be a very routine film, made to get out of my financial predicament.”

While one can’t quite call Fievre a buried Buñuel, it’s not one that’s frequently revived, so I never saw it until this month, courtesy of a solid all-region French Blu-ray (with English subtitles yet) from Pathé, complete with a “restored by” box on the front cover. You may recall Pathé was widely criticized for its digital scrubbing of Carné’s Les enfants du paradis back in 2012, and it may have learned something from that episode. I didn’t consider the image here bothersome in the slightest but some might still find its rendering of Gabriel Figueroa’s cinematography a little more Mr. Clean that it ought to be. I’m thinking of Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary’s remarks about contemporary video transfers in my friend Farran Smith Nehme’s interview with the idiosyncratic duo in the September 2022 issue of Sight and Sound, with Tarantino rhapsodizing over the days when  “Ninety-nine per cent of every video transfer was done from a direct print of a movie. They had a 35mm or a 16mm, usually a 35. They had the best print they could get, but it was a print,” and Avary chiming in that sometimes an original negative scan is “sometimes worse” than one from an interpositive. Such sources, Tarantino points out, “Never saw a lab…never played in a theatre, never entertained and audience…that print has no life.”

Does it seem like I’m waltzing around articulating my direct experience of the movie? Well I probably am, in part because Buñuel’s own implicit assessment of the work is so spot on. “Despite everything, I tried to make a professional, well-made film, and even to put in interesting details.” And guess what? He did. The movie is set on a fictional Caribbean island where its tyrant Vargas is assassinated. The aftermath relates a triangle of intrigue between Vazquez, the martinet’s mild-mannered and idealistic secretary (Philipe), Gual, the underhanded and corrupt military leader making an out-and-out power grab (Jean Servais, best-known for his portrayal of a hangdog heist man in Rififi), and Inés (Maria Félix), Vargas’ widow, who had been conducting an affair with an officer before her husband was killed and who now flits between the sincere attentions of Vazquez and the perverse desires of Gual.

Overt politics never interested Buñuel, but sexual politics certainly did, and it’s interesting that he didn’t opt to emphasize them more in this scenario. Certainly, once he got the assignment, he took it seriously; in a December 1958 letter to his Paris-based agent, Paulette Dorise (reproduced in the volume Luis Buñuel: A Life In Letters), he wrote of his work on the screenplay, which was based on a novel by Henri Castillou: “Luckily filming is still three and a half months away, which will give me time to introduce new improvements, as well as the changes that are likely to emerge from your notes. I am happy with the work in general. Despite what you may think, the adaptation was very, very difficult.” For all its difficulty, Buñuel must have felt obliged to stick closely with the overtly political aspects of the story. Because watching the movie, it’s entirely self-evident that Vazquez is a much less compelling character than Gual. It’s not that Buñuel couldn’t make idealistic characters interesting; I mean, look at Nazarin. The problem here is that Vazquez’s idealism doesn’t propel him into the absurd that way that Nazarin’s does. And there’s also Philipe’s delicacy. Some observers of the movie have said he looks physically ill here; he doesn’t, really; he was never an intimidating presence (his portrayal of the ultimately hapless and feeble Count in Ophuls’ La Ronde almost a decade earlier uses his corporeal wispiness to great effect), and again, Buñuel is right on when recalling this movie 15 years after its making: “The role didn’t go very well for Gérard; he wasn’t the man for that character, that was obvious even in the way he wore his pistol hanging loosely on his belt.”

On the other hand, Servais’ Gual is really something, particularly as he toys sexually with Maria Felix’s uninhibited Inés, giving her precise instructions on how to undress for him and then dismissing her with an abruptness that suggests self-disgust but could be something rather more peculiar. Servais’ hooded eyes and dispirited jowls put across a paranoid mood that’s practically Nixonian.

The scenes between Servais and Felix, one of which Buñuel claimed to have adapted from Tosca, are the liveliest in the movie. Another sequence, in which two former henchmen divide the worldly goods of a master who’s just been put to death, has a droll Buñuelian mordancy. So too, does Vazquez’s declaration of love for Inés, which he makes from a subservient position, while cleaning up broken glass in what was once Vargas’ office. But there’s no surrealism, either lower-case “s” or upper. And there’s not much fever, and there’s practically no mounting. So while it’s a Buñuel picture as per the credits, one is left with the conviction that it’s something less than un vrai Buñuel picture.

In a February 1960 letter to Buñuel, his friend the film critic Georges Sadoul wrote from Paris:

“Anne Philipe” — Gerard’s widow — “came to dinner last week, the first time we’d seen her since the death of poor Gérard, we had so much to talk about we didn’t have a chance to ask her about you, we were also afraid of stirring up sad, recent memories. We were genuinely relieved to discover that Gérard’s death was not related to any kind of amoebic infection. The doctors were mistake, thinking there was an amoebic connection, when it was in fact cancer; so, no one can now claim he died prematurely because he went to make a film in Mexico, where he was supposed to have contracted a terrible illness.”