So. Here I present something of an Experiment in Blogging. (And it looks like blogging is going to make a comeback, thanks to, um, Elon Musk sorta? Or maybe not?) Back in late March of this year I started work on another one of my SCR high-def disc Consumer Guides, because I heard the call, or something. And I took notes on the discs I wanted to include and then...other things started happening. The header of the doc went through from changes until it was ultimately this: "Late Spring/Early Summer/Ok, Midsummer 2022 BR/4K Consumer Guide Notes." And now it's November. And the doc is still sitting on my desktop, wagging its finger at me, and I've got all sorts of other work to do and not enough time to whip the notes into a proper Consumer Guide AND there's also the issue that we're now dealing with far fewer spanking-new titles than I generally like to have in such pieces. So I thought: Why not just run the notes. So any of you who are actually interested might get a peek into my process and also to flog the actual titles that are actually great at least somewhat? So here goes. What's blogging without a little risk-taking?
Equipment: Sony UBp-X800 multi-region 4K player, Sony KD50X690E display, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.
Adventures of Don Juan (Warner Archive)
Technicolor/amazing/ —A
Alfred Hitchcock Collection 4K Volume 2 (Universal)
A+
Born to Win (Fun City)
Very clean also gritty
Actually LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING, which it did not on streaming when I watched it for the De Niro book
De Niro is very good as plainclothes cop
Beach scenes are really beautiful
The score is really excellent
—A+
Caligula & Messalina/Caligula: The Untold Story (Severin)
Ugh the horsefucking in the international cut of C&M
Untold: Virginity is a flower that must not be wasted
Hoo boy this is indulgently rank
Kills a counsel’s son/This is a bad move
Grotty but a bit pro forma in spots. But it’s just warming up
Old ladies diddling young concubines/orgiasts eating fried chicken and such/D’Amato’s patented anti-erotic touches
Some enchanted orgy: Spotting Laura Gemser
OH GOOD, Horse Masturbation “We must not avert our eyes” actually no, that’s a good idea. AVOID 1:00 to 1:07
Limpdick fellatio, always a cinematic treat/the dude finally manages, good for him
This is one long ass orgy scene
Torture “I want them to suffer more.”
Untold Story is so utterly depraved on every level that it makes makes Caligula and Messalina look like Quo Vadis. Okay not quite but
Supplements: “Girls like Laura Gemser who of course never did porn, but showed off their beautiful bodies,” great observation
Couldn’t keep his per diem because of casinos: Mark Shannon
“He’d do anything for a good fuck” — screenwriter Luigi Montefiore “I know there’s a shot of a woman pleasuring a horse, and I have to say it was not in my script.”
How on earth should I grade this?
Captains of the Clouds (Warner Archive)
Canadians! Alan Hale! Technicolor! The goofiest misogynist plot point!
Curtiz’s OTHER “it’s good to be in World War II” movie of 1942
Some awkward optical effects in flying scenes but also some dynamic (second unit?) stuff —A-
Death Wish II (Vinegar Syndrome)
Paul Talbott: “I’m obsessed with the Death Wish movies,” yikes
Thomas Del Ruth quit after the rape scene/This is just remarkably trashy
The appalling rape scene. Oh that Michael Winner
Oy vey or just…wow?
This must have been a real comedown for Laurence Fishburne after Apocalypse Now
Inspirational dialogue: “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing is wrong?”
59 was Bronson’s age at the time of the making of the movie
At about the hour mark you start thinking, you know, there hasn’t been a rape or an attempted rape in some time, so where is this movie GOING?
The three rapists dancing with each other: at least they aren’t uptight about that sort of thing.
Oh, okay, then the bad guys chase a nurse and pull up her skirt, I was worried for a minute/Gardenia’s opera glasses “Target practice”
Ah it’s Tony Franciosa, always welcome/ As police commish/“My wife goes to a mace class.”
So wait is THIS why they did Escape from LA after Escape from New York?
Hilarious ending/the aesthetic principles of James Page Esquire
— Ungradeable
De Sade (Scorpion)
Action packed! Fleeing on horseback! AN AIP picture! Dope (and goofily lascivious) animated titles! Anna Massey/Not super great image/some stutter/A potentially interesting frame device that in the hands of a more engaged director yada yada yada/
On the other hand, why insult Anna Massey? A marriage anti-comedy
Dullea making goofy faces while being drenched in wine shot through red gel
Tim Lucas commentary is the best thing about it “most ambitious production”
6 million holy moley!
Salvador Dali was supposed to do the titles
Lots of “what might have been” stuff/Comparisons with…Somewhere in Time, whoa.
Hardy Kruger’s daughter/Lucas calls his commentary a “defense” but he doesn’t come off as passionate about its quality
— B+
The Devil’s Trap (Second Run)
Striking, of course. Director Frantisek Vlacil achieves the ideal of Scorsese’s flying camera, rather like that of Andrei Rublev
The bee sounds in the under-soundtrack/
imperfect materials but looks great for the most part
Striking juxtapositions/the miller’s son and a romantic rival fighting intercut with the priest calmly sitting at a sort of picnic table
Not as overtly “far out” as the other pictures in the trilogy but a trip nevertheless. This is what a “visionary” director does, kids
— A+
Double Indemnity (Criterion 4K Ultra)
4K anklet boost: check
4K angora sweater boost: check
This really is a hella dark movie — A+
Edgar G. Ulmer Sci-FI Collection (Kino Lorber)
Planet X: Dark and fake backdrops, black “Let us concentrate on this remarkable object.”
Time Barrier: The light to X’s dark/the graphic beacons
Transparent Man: Holocaust scientist
Each picture becomes a little chamber melodrama to some extent
Essential cinema — A+
Farewell, Friend (Kino Lorber)
1.66/Bronson dubs in his own voice/Put this in knowing nothing about it, didn’t even read the box copy/Admires Delon’s gun
DP Darbes, competent enough/post Algiers Marseilles/Whoever’s dubbing Delon is atrocious/dumb coin in glass trick
Put bearer bonds BACK in a safe? It can’t be. The ostensible scheme is to put bearer bonds BACK in this company safe. I don’t care if you ARE Olga Georges-Picot, that’s not a scheme I’d tumble for.
Worst Xmas break ever.
Bronson shorts out the AC so they have to take off their shirts only it’s CHRISTMAS BREAK AND THEY’RE IN A BASEMENT
Figures in a Landscape, but indoors. And not as good —B-
Femme Fatale (Shout Factory) —A+
Flight of the Phoenix (Criterion)
Good picture, fun paper airplane kit, great Gina T. essay
Weird how Aldrich gives his kid star billing pretty much right before killing his character — A
Grand Slam (Kino Lorber)
Shoddy, misogynist, image all over the place, nice Rio locations. Who said this was good? Klaus Kinski plays a creep, who’d have guessed? There’s no suspense if the guys pulling off the heist are assholes who you’d actually LIKE to see get caught…but there’s a twist! — B-
Heavy Metal 4K (Sony)
The new audio is amazing, the image is pretty…well, as sterling as it could get — A
Lancelot du Lac (Gaumont)
2018 restoration
Fast opening
Like Pickpocket
“merveilleux” aventures
Weird violence
“The Grail eludes us. There was only blood and death.”
Shutting down the round table. All is lost from the start.
“Give us a purpose” Pile of knights: a junkyard
Unsubtitled supplement: Hervé Gauville/I almost understand much of what he is saying— A+
Legend of the Lost (Kino Lorber)
Let me do the Hathaway math: only a few years after Niagara and Garden of Evil /Cardiff’s chapter in Magic Time/Ben Hecht script
The Kurt Kaszner stuff is Hecht taking up unused notes for To Have and Have Not
Cardiff: “I can’t imagine anyone less like an Arab prostitute than Sophia Loren”
looks good, not great, (dissolves are a little dupey) no extras
The Roman city discovery scene is rather striking
Brazzi is super horny (rapey in fact) “I made you…virtuous”
The drama is mostly Brazzi or Loren losing their shit and Wayne yelling at them. This wears thin in a 1 hr 50 minute movie — B
Paris When It Sizzles (Paramount)
1964 Quine Holden Hepburn Axelrod
Bossa Nova score, it’s the hip thing.
Noel Coward impersonating a heterosexual/Alcoholism of screenwriter played by Holden
“for all practical purposes he’s on the wagon”
Clean image
Dissolves are good
Largely French support cast and crew
Astaire sings an original song
Axelrod takes the piss out of Bunuel E Angel
Rather delightful and sometimes dreary
Fun cameos
“little person”
Look at this and Casino Royale and you get why some people were completely shocked by Holden’s appearance in The Wild Bunch in 1969
“That Face” both awkward and brilliant
The deus ex machina of sleeping it off.
Inspirational dialogue “Depravity can be terribly boring if you don’t smoke or drink” — A-
RoboCop (Arrow 4K Ultra)
THREE AUDIO COMMENTARIES/The fan threesome is light and fun and a little obsessive
How Ultimate Do You Like Your Ultimate Editions
Appropriately grainy
Gory as hell, and still rather upsetting in that respect
In several aspects it is profoundly depressing about the loss of self.
The “paste,” “Knock yourself out”
Really the only movie that got the 1980s in America on every level
Boy poor Leeza Gibbons just did not get it did she?
— A+
Schizoid/X-Ray (Vinegar Syndrome 4K)
Christopher Lloyd, Craig Wasson, Blonde Kinski drooling over his teen daughter, guess he didn’t need to go full method for that
Racism in the elevator/underfed stripper
“ludicrous” —Psychotronic
Wasson at one point wears a white jumpsuit like that of Townshend on “Who Came First” “Relax…I’m a maintenance man.”
What do women want? To sleep with their therapist after witnessing him make a bizarro quasi-incestuous scene at dinner with his daughter, apparently
Herrmann ripoff score
An excellent 4K rendering of an often dingy-looking film
“the concept came because I walked into a Mel’s Diner and I ran into Menachem Golan’s wife” offer in January, “Shooting by March”
X Ray: 1961, Harold’s valentine, humiliation/Kills the little brother/Yeesh/Oh the fakeouts once she enters the hospital.
Is HAROLD the obsessive janitor? How come he grew up to be ten years older than Susan? Oh another fakeout
“Didn’t I see your name on a checkup result?” You can tell the screenwriter really did his homework
Weirdest x-ray ever
The camera dolly that whispers, “yes, you will see Barbi Benton topless, you will, just wait”
Cannon follies
Ungradeable
Singin’ In The Rain (Warner 4K)
Whenever I mention my favorite movies I’m always quick to bring up Psycho, Repulsion, Stalker, that kinda thing and I think this reflex gives people a skewed impression of me that I don’t really worry about too much these days — I’m 62, how many more CRUCIAL IMPRESSIONS am I gonna make on people? — but still. So let me state unequivocally and unambiguously that this too is one of my all-time favorite pictures and I have enjoyed it with nearly all of the people I’ve been close with in my life from my mom to my school friends to my roommates to my siblings to my wife. And my cats too. So this edition which is so utterly beautiful means and awful lot to me.
Green: "I was working with the best people in the world"
A sorta round robin commentary
Behlmer: Oscar Levant was supposed to get the Donald O’Connor part —A+
Stone (Severin Bluray)
That She-Devils on Wheels wire decapitation trick never gets old, does it.
Ye Olde Biker Funeral
This wastes no time with things blowing up and going off cliffs and such.
Lots of RIDING
Real saturated colors here. Dr. Death gives the benediction
Undercover scheme
One of the bikers is named Bad Max
The investigation in which ordinary working people complain about the bikers is priceless.
Ocean sunrise scene is incredible/A really unusual picture, not necessarily what you expect. A bit gross when it gets excessive but worth a view. — A
Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony)
This is the feature length version of Peter Sellers hitting his arm in Dr. Strangelove
Is this the shortest MCU film ever? Is it even an MCU film? How do I find this out? Do I care?
Wait I saw the first Venom and have no idea what is going on here.
De-aged Woody Harrelson looks like he did in…1996?
“I heard the written word hasn’t been working out so well…”
San Francisco location = motorcycle levitating over a hill
“We are wasting our talent!”
Woody Harrelson’s eccentric pronunciation of “origin”
I honestly don’t believe prison inmates would applaud this guy
I didn’t like any of this Natural Born Killers type stuff the first time around so, you know
Really a waste of Naomie Harris
More CLIMBING
Rather inconsequential, possible because of its need to dovetail into some Spider Man shit...
Blooper reel does not live up to whatever you imagined its potential to be — B
Thank you Glenn for the guide and the risk-taking.
LANCELOT DU LAC has always been my favorite Bresson (might have been the first one I saw). The creator deity is gone, and everything is human scaled. The handing over of Guinevere is heart-breaking and prophetic.
Posted by: Brian Dauth | November 08, 2022 at 10:37 AM
The only indespensable Consumer Guide out there. And always an honor when one of my favourite film writers chooses to include something I’ve worked on (ROBOCOP this time, TENEBRAE last - by way of the Synapse release, but hey ho) in his illustrious lineup. Thanks Glenn
Posted by: James W | November 08, 2022 at 02:38 PM
Ah - great we didn't have to wait for months for another of your superb guides, Glenn! It's really entertaining reading your unexpurgated thoughts. Please keep jotting down your reactions to your future home video sessions and post them in similar fashion! I'm sending another $20, so that you know I mean it.
Posted by: Titch | November 08, 2022 at 07:48 PM
Oh - and by the way, Glenn, I keep getting error messages when I send the (occasional) bucks to your tip jar. Looks like the mac.com email address you use is invalid. Are you actually receiving tips and notifications?
Posted by: Titch | November 08, 2022 at 07:56 PM
Thanks much Titch. And the error messages are in error — the bucks came through, many thanks.
Posted by: GK | November 08, 2022 at 10:31 PM
reminiscent of when NY Mag wags decided posting their Slack channel was worth a paywall. still. said with affection. and acknowledging that this lil blog is still gratis.
Posted by: noh | November 16, 2022 at 10:10 PM
Best and most accurate review of Caligula I've ever read.
Posted by: george | November 18, 2022 at 01:30 PM