This one almost killed me so the next will likely be an, um, Fall/Winter guide. Also it's getting well-nigh impossible to get usable jacket art off the web (either that or Typepad can't work with what you've got) so there's not a lot of that here either. Thanks as always for reading.
Equipment: Sony UBP-X800 multi-region 4K player, Sony KD50X690E display, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.
Alphaville (Kino 4K Ultra)
The primary film texts of my childhood were this and Hitchcock’s Psycho, and I was able to see them more or less regularly on television in the 1960s. Psycho, oddly enough for a film that would come to carry an R rating, ran on WWOR Channel 9 in prime time. Alphaville was tougher — it ran about once a year on WABC 7 at two in the morning, in a highly truncated version to fit in a 90 minute time slot. My folks had a 13-inch Sony Black and White portable set I brought up to my room on those occasions and I could watch contentedly if I kept the sound low enough not to disturb my younger brother, with whom I shared a bedroom and was a sound and contented sleeper. How did I even know about the movie? My parents used to get the Sunday times and as a small child I’d pore over the movie ads and early on I had a particular eye for the once-yearly full page ad announcing the selections for the New York Film Festival. So maybe through there. Anyway, the point is that I’m really used to seeing this movie in less-than-optimum presentations. Can a film be shot in a style that’s high-end and lo-fi simultaneously? This film is proof that, hell yes. And this new transfer nails that gray scale whether Coutard’s shooting hard or soft. Inspirational dialogue: “Should I go through the North or South zone?” “What’s the difference?” There’s snow in the North. And sun in the South.” “I’m on a journey to the end of the night, so I really don’t care.” “Reflector Westinghouse 50 Watt” on the villain’s “face” is now very easy to read. — A+
Bad Company (Fun City Editions Blu-ray)
Robert Benton’s directorial debut is really bleak and violent — Benton did co-write Bonnie and Clyde let us not forget. But those who associate him mostly with Kramer Vs. Kramer might be a bit surprised. On his solid, engaged audio commentary Walter Chaw calls this an “acid Western,” a subcategory I have little sympathy with, and one I think Benton himself would raise an eyebrow at, but Walter didn’t just make it up. Which makes me a sad panda. It’s “revisionist,” to be sure, but hardly psychedelic. It’s whatever the opposite of psychedelic is. Maybe Hobbesian even. It looks great and moves like a (bad) dream. Underrated and underseen essential American cinema. — A +
The Bat Whispers (VCI Blu-ray)
This stagy and some might consider goofy thriller is a cinematic novelty on account of being shot in a wide-gauge film format — aspect ratio 2.0 to one, decades later to become the quizzical favorite of Vittorio Storaro if I’m not mistaken — called MAGNIFILM. 65 mm to be precise, later to make a more commercially successful comeback as VistaVision, sort of. The format was pioneered by this film’s own director, Roland West, bless him. This sweet VCI package includes that version — which couldn’t be shown everywhere — and the Academy ratio version, which could be shown everywhere. (This package actually includes three versions, as the U.S. and British Academy ratio versions were different.) It wasn’t shown everywhere, and while it was something of a sensation it wasn’t the kind of hit that confers conventional historical film immortality. What can you say about a cast whose best-remembered members are Gustave von Seyffertitz and Una Merkel? (Pace Boston Blackie fans re ostensible male lead Chester Morris) Also Grayce Hampton giving Margaret Dumont. The ambitious Hitchcockian opening shot, shows a bell tower; the camera suddenly “drops” down to ground level and a fire house garage door. It’s all model work, of which the picture has a good deal of. Trick shots such as this ameliorate the overall stagy feel a bit. It is stagy because it’s an adaptation of a play of course, and as to how stagy it ultimately is, well there’s even a closing curtain at the end. But of course those were in movie theaters back in the day too…What am I yammering on about, fer chrissakes. This is a beautiful package with a clean image and a must for your Novelty Hit library. Inspirational dialogue: “There’s enough shrubbery around to hide a dozen assassins” — A+
Chinatown (Paramount 4K Ultra disc)
Actual WOW. The sweat on Burt Young’s brow in the opening scene; you can count the beads. Paramount’s track record has not been great but this is a definite upgrade from the Blu-ray. Really beautiful. I will quote the expert, Robert A. Harris, and seen on Home Theater Forum: “Paramount’s new 4k is a beautiful affair, rendering the film as it was originally seen in the first run of dye transfer prints, only struck for the original release, and just before the Technicolor lab went off the dye transfer standard, which occurred in December of 1974. From my memory, all additional prints struck were Eastman Color.” The difference from prior home video version is indeed immediate. I can’t speak too specifically for my 14-year-old self, who actually did see the original release, but I do know that in subsequent viewings it never looked better than the first time. Now it does. —A+
The Dreamers (Icon 4K Ultra disc)
Well before the story of Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando’s thoroughly unethical and exploitative behavior with respect to Maria Schneider on the set of Last Tango In Paris resurfaced and was iterated in various states of rage in “the media” (with Jessica Chastain going so far as to say that if you watch Tango you are witnessing an actual sexual assault), people were mad at Bertolucci. They were mad at him over the cricket at the end of The Last Emperor (“They can’t take poetic license?” the one-time poet protested to me in a phone interview a couple of days before he won an Oscar or two, which had to have taken the sting out of this issue). They were mad at him over Stealing Beauty for shooting Tuscany, a part of his home country, like a giddy tourist. Which he did. And they were mad at him for his “dirty old man gaze” in his penultimate film, made in 2003 when he was a little over 60. They were mad, too, that he, one of the ’68 generation, was seeming to celebrate a lack of political commitment framed against that backdrop. The guy couldn’t/can’t win! Yet he remains, among other things, the maker of The Conformist, a single movie that had almost as galvanic an impact on film form as had the entire French New Wave. This movie can’t touch that one, but it is still very visually energetic and kind of moving as an old man’s affectionate look at a tumultuous past. Based on Gilbert Adair’s puckish cinephile novel, the movie’s an enchanting lark with heavy TCM content. In his commentary here, Adair insists that BB’s approach is the opposite of voyeurism and I think he’s correct. Additionally his understanding of collaboration equaling transformation is spot on. Smart guy. The Jean-Pierre Leaud cameo, with bonus Kalfon content. A very good movie but of course it’s a movie and not one worth getting mad at. But some might still deplore BB’s ultimate commentary declaration: “The revolution didn’t happen, thank God” — A
Fear City (Shout Factory Blu-ray)
Bad Lieutenant (Kino 4K Ultra disc)
Dangerous Game (Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray)
Remember when Abel Ferrara was ALMOST a commercial filmmaker? No? You’re probably too young. By commercial I mean Grindhouse commercial, and he was, almost and Fear City is his most mainstream in that respect. A cop-and-serial-killer thriller set in the bad old days of Times Square peep shows and strip joints (they weren’t that bad; they could be kind of fun actually) it has the least subtext of any Ferrara movie, and seem the least personal, but it certainly shows off his facility, economy, and underground art film sensibility. Sweet cast, too: Berenger, Billy Dee Williams, Maria Conchita Alonso, Ola Ray (remember the “Thriller” video?) and of course Melanie Griffith. Sweet dialogue from screenwriter Nicholas St. John includes zingers like “It’s a thin line these greaseballs tread.” But also, no real New Yorker says, “St. Vincent’s Hospital,” they just say, “St. Vincent’s,” that must have been a note from a suit. Great location shots, I said “YES” when I spied a Brew and Burger. The climax is a hoot, with Berenger summoning THE KILLER BLOW. Inspirational credit: “And Rosanno Brazzi.”
Bad Lieutenant and Dangerous Game are different animals, tortured-soul chronicles starring Harvey Keitel. Lieutenant still suffers a little on account of Jimmy Page forbidding the use of its most powerful musical leitmotif, a Spoonie G rap that sampled “Kashmir” without clearing it. It’s still Bad Lieutenant, and hoo boy. The VS Cinematographe presentation of inside-filmmaking kitchen sink exploration Dangerous Game, featuring Madonna’s best film performance is definitive. And that package presents an Incredible, emotional Ferrara interview, shot two days after his cinematographer Ken Kelsch died in December of 2023. Suddenly Ferrara’s’ Blu-ray/4K presence has gone from sparse to substantial. Buy all three with confidence. Inspirational commentary line: “I tell you it’s the hardest part of directing. Doing this stuff,” says Ferrara on the Lieutenant commentary. All discs: A+
Invasion USA/Navy Seals (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra discs)
Back in the day I was a snob who only saw Cannon Films that were directed by Godard. Okay not that bad, but almost. And the charms of Chuck Norris absolutely eluded me. In the late ‘90s I dated a young woman whose Italian grandmother, speaking not a lick of English, never missed Walker: Texas Ranger because of her Norris enthusiasm. It didn’t really help me get the guy. Nor does 1985’s Invasion U.S.A. make me a convert, but the movie is a hoot. Joseph Zito’s vision of the titular event, instigated of course by the Soviets, is relatively small scale. It’s essentially Norris vs. Richard Lynch. The baddies blow up houses at Christmas — in Florida, so they don’t have to depict winter actually. Despite having no monsters the movie seems to teem with what Frank Zappa called “cheepnis,” his fave quality in B picture. The superb Vin Syn edition looks good, has proper grain, and. Norris keeps asking “Where’s Rostov” and sometimes it sounds like “where’s Roscoe” which is funny. Inspirational dialogue: “Didn’t you bastards ever hear about the First Amendment?” “They don’t even understand the nature of their own freedom” Lewis Teague’s 1990 Navy Seals is of a somewhat higher grade. The soundtrack opens with a
Bon Jovi cover of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town” and that’s a perfect summation of the film’s ersatz gestalt. Joanna Whalley Kilmer’s defense of Islam is diverting; the movie could additionally be retitled S. Epatha Merkerson: The Early Years. While a 1990 picture it still has that bright ‘80s look. Lovely presentation again. The animated underwater bullets in one action scene are very Fantasia. Both disc: A+
The Man I Love (Warner Archive Blu-ray)
This 1947 picture represents the apex of Raoul Walsh’s brand of masculinized melodrama. Ida Lupino is a nightclub singer torn between a heel and a conflicted good guy. Peg La Centra dubbed Ida’s voice here. Contrast with Negulesco’s “Road House,” in which Lupino did her own singing and made Nico sound like Maria Callas. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. The new Archive edition has a lovely image which complements the steady reliable feel of Walsh not missing because Walsh hardly ever missed. The family drama, featuring the ineffable Martha Vickers, is almost as foregrounded as the romantic one. It’s grand (and unusual) how everything works out without anybody firing a shot. The supps include some fantastic Looney Tunes (“Rabbit Transit,” a latter Cecil Turtle bit, and the purposefully incredibly annoying Henery Hawk short “Crowing Pains”). Inspirational dialogue: “I think it’s a pretty good idea to do ‘Why Was I Born,’ do the boys know it?” “They know everything.” — A
Man’s Castle (Sony Blu-ray)
The Shining Hour (Warner Archive Blu-ray)
If you ever had a hankering to see Loretta Young and Spencer Tracy go skinny-dipping, Borzage’s incredible 1933 picture (co-scenarist: Ogden Nash!) affords you the opportunity. It’s not explicit, of course, but the footage was excised for many years, and the salient feature of this incredibly bare-bones Sony issue — there’s not even a menu! — is a complete version of a romantic radical vision. The Shining Hour, made in 1938, is rather more down to earth. If one believes Renoir’s assertion that Leo McCarey was the Hollywood director who best understood people, one might wonder if Renoir was giving Borzage short shrift or if he just hadn’t seen enough of his picture. I shuddered when I saw Hattie McDaniel in the credits for Hour, hoping she’d be treated right, and she is, relatively, and relatively is the operative word. Her character gives the lead played by Joan Crawford some advice, and not in that cliched “wiser than us all manner;” she’s very human. (Her participation in the movie’s punchline is a bit much but it’s also genuinely funny and warm.) Once Faye Bainter turns up the hostility here the Borzage expertise in melodrama finds its wings. Extras include good cartoons (all 1938, two colors and one b&w) and radio shows. Castle: A+ for content at least; Shining Hour: A+ all around
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Warner Archive Blu-ray)
This comedy tends to get shrugged off in Hitchcock Studies, and this lovely rendering from Warner Archive is a great opportunity to reassess as une vraie Hitchcock, rather than an anomaly he did to give himself the opportunity to work with his friend Carole Lombard. Accounts differ as to how enthusiastically Hitchcock pursued the project…and one should take his proclamations of indifference to Truffaut with a grain of salt. Only Chabrol and Rohmer, writing well before their friend François sat down with the Master of Suspense (and comedy!) bothered to give it a (brief) formal assessment within the context of his other work. But the very first shots, comprising the credit sequence, are quintessentially Hitchcockian (see Rope and Psycho and so on) in that they gradually approach the residence of the protagonists. For the remainder, things get a little harder to ID as Hitch; of course the cutting patterns are typically astute and seamless. There’s moving camera but nothing terribly elaborate. But late in the picture our title couple gets stuck in mid-air on an amusement park ride, and the suspense is, well, familiar and effective. Also effective: The Smiths’ standoff with the homeless kids at “their” transformed Italian restaurant is a crushing semi-throwaway. Chabrol and Rohmer’s account of a restaurant scene where Montgomery is stuck at a table with two “Incredible floozies” is astute but neglects the full dimension of the scene, with Montgomery faking a chat with the good looking woman at the other table. This was Hitchcock’s second-shortest U.S. film by one minute. Rope is shortest at 80, this is 94-ish, I Confess is 95. Extras include a Bogdanovich/Robert Osborne interview in old TCM supplement; Cinderella’s Fella a 20 minute narrative that’s one of those weird live-action shorts that, if you were not an expert on vintage studio output you would not believe it actually existed, had it not been included here. Inspirational dialogue: “That cat knows something.” — A
Never Open That Door (Flicker Alley Blu-ray)
Oooh, an Argentine ANTHOLOGY film based on two Cornell Woolrich stories. Fun. Schrader has spoken of its extremes in noir effects, and there’s a startling lighting effect in opening nightclub scene which lets you know you’re in for a good time. The restored image, as George C. Scott says about Julie Christie’s hair in Petulia, GLEAMS. /Raul’s no good blonde sister the degenerate gambler Luisa is a treat. The movie has unbelievable levels of smoking. I woulda switched the order of the stories myself, the second one isn’t as strong as the first in this array. But whatever. A real treat. —A
The Nude Vampire
Demoniacs (Powerhouse 4K Ultra discs)
Jean Rollin’s 1970 second feature, La Vampire Nue, absolutely delivers on its title. The tale of a man who follows an intriguing woman and comes to regret his choices looks terrific throughout but it’s absolutely sublime in its blowout final five minutes. There’s a very enthusiastic commentary from British mavens Kevin Lions and Jonathan Rigby, who kick off by noting “It’s a cliché to say Rollin’s films are bizarre, but they are.” At one point one of the duo invokes “the dread phrase ‘folk horror’” which made me think “ooh snap” and also made curious about internecine battles withing British genre circles, since, you know, the dread phrase “folk horror” is widely used in reputable corners these days. 1974’s Demoniacs eschews the supernatural for a, um, pirate tale, sort of. But it’s just as brutal and beautiful as anything in the Rollin canon, in part because female lead Joelle Couer is almost as potent an erotic presence as Rollin stalwart Brigitte Lahaie. Speaking of stalwart, Tim Lucas does the excellent commentary here. He sounds like he has a head cold, however. Get some rest, buddy! — A+
Off Balance (Cauldron Bly-ray)
I never much rated Ruggiero Deodato; while I am at least a semi-connoisseur of the crass, cannibal movies and stuff with actual animal cruelty falls on the wrong side of the line for me. Sure. Call me a wimp, I don’t care. But this picture from the auteur of Cannibal Holocaust, in which it appeared that Michael York went mad with some weird aging disease, looked intriguing enough, and Cauldron is definitely an up-and-comer in the good-presentation-of-anarchic-sticky-floor-cinema game. Also Edwidge Fenech is in it. That was the closer. So there we were. Ooh…he plays a concert pianist and the music is by Pino Donaggio. Better and better. Not the most ravishingly shot picture but the transfer is good and true and pure. There’s a gaping neck wound in the first anonymous murder that made me say “yikes!” People watch a live piano recital, and then watch it again as the recording is played back on a wall of video monitors. York’s character is the concert pianist (he plays a Bechstein, nice) who starts getting inexplicably old and not loving it. Crass about his romantic life, he ends a sexual encounter by sneering “We both got what we wanted, didn’t we?” He soon panics and goes to spend two months in Venice with his mom and one does.
A very sleepy Donald Pleasance’s face wanders out of frame and then there’s a cut and it wanders into frame in profile. The climactic reveal is rather fascinating in an inept way.
Once York’s character starts aging visibly it gets pretty gonzo; the makeup is moderately hilarious. The character adopts a dog. Discusses mortality with it. Oy. By the end he looks like Brundlefly. Michael York himself apparently developed a condition not unlike that suffered by his character here, a grisly irony noted by commentators. It’s Fenech’s own voice on the soundtrack, they also tell us, not a common thing. Solid package best appreciated by, well connoisseurs of the crass. — B+
Possession (Umbrella 4K Ultra disc)
I’ve not much to add to Zulawski discourse. Guy was a genius, that’s all. This is a fabulous package with actually very useful and attractive supplements, including Alexandra Heller-Nichols’ solid and new video essay on “The Failure of Language.” Also a 51 minute making of. Daniel Bird observes “the so-called science-fiction form was a mask.” The incoherent U.S. cut is also included, as is a standalone earlier Zulawski interview, producer Christian Ferry chiming it. All you could ask for is a contemporary Adjani interview and no. The superb 4K image highlights the cold-as-ice image consistently and gorgeously contrived by cinematographer Bruno Nuytten could be quite sumptuous (he also shot those Claude Berri Pagnol adaptations, all sunny wheatfields and stuff) but here his light is cold as ice almost throughout, which is appropriate to the proceedings — A+
The Story of GI Joe (Ignite Blu-ray)
The 2000 Image standard-def DVD of this essential item has served me in good stead for, wow, almost a quarter-century. Wow. Well, this Blu-ray comes from a Film Foundation restoration. I worried that the cleanup work on it would make the rear-projection skies in the opening transport scenes look more phony. And no, that’s not really the case. What it does it clean up a lot of speckling and enhance detail. Still looks like a movie, and an old movie at that — and, as Robert A. Harris has pointed out, an old movie made in a kind of piecemeal way. It looks like what it is, but more like what the filmmakers wanted you to see when you saw it in its theatrical release. So: well done, Imprint. Director William Wellman’s lyricism of the masculine has never resonated more beautifully than in this picture. An excellent (former) critic of my acquaintance simply called it “a special film” when it came up one day long ago — maybe around the time of the DVD issue. It is. Alan Rode does his customary professional and informative job on the commentary. — A+
Ah - so many cult movies, so little time. A lot of love for trashy, culty Chuck Norris films, seen with a perspective that no one else on other review sites has. And trashy Jean Rollins. May I send $20 to the tip jar, as you made my morning?
Posted by: Titch | September 09, 2024 at 03:48 AM
Yes and thank you!
Posted by: GK | September 09, 2024 at 06:36 AM
Always a delight when a new Consumer Guide pops up in my RSS reader. Thank you!
Posted by: JREinATL | September 09, 2024 at 11:54 AM
Body Snatchers, a Warner Bros release, was probably as a close as Abel Ferrara got to being a mainstream director.
That was a lot more mainstream than his first movie, the porn flick Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy.
As for Invasion USA, the huge NISSAN sticker on the windshield of Chuck Norris' truck may be the most blatant product placement I've ever seen.
Posted by: George | September 10, 2024 at 11:24 PM
Bad Company - another thing unmentioned… its funny! Yes, in the most bleak way possible as well as deeply ironic as was typical of the 70s revisionist Westerns. Great film
Posted by: Joel | November 26, 2024 at 10:26 AM