Some Came Running

Spring 2024 Blu-ray/4K Ultra disc Consumer Guide

Technically speaking, it IS still Spring. No?

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

Bloodmoon (Severin Blu-ray)

“What if we choose to apprehend the slasher film as a virus?” I thought while looking at this Australian 1990 item. Because despite being made in, well, 1990, it has most of the hallmarks of an American-made example of the genre from 1982 or so, when a thousand Friday the 13^th variants bloomed. So it’s like the contagion took about eight years to make its way around the world. In any event Bloodmoon nevertheless manages to impart to the tired tropes a guileless and crass Down Under charm. It offers a bumper crop of fresh female toplessness, usually revealed right before someone (it’s generally the topless girl, but sometimes a dude) gets strangled with a circle of barbed wire, thus firmly imprinting the sex-death connection on the hapless young viewer. The whole thing certainly LOOKS sharp (director Alec Mills was a onetime cinematographer of some distinction) (and he only just died in February, poor guy) and the scenario’s cheating-teacher bit is a stitch. The killer’s pathology is such that he gets really sloppy, and nobody notices, which is odd but leads to an unusually satisfying ending involving an activist nun, sort of. The “Frightbreak” at 1 hour and five minutes was possibly RIPPED OFF BY GASPAR NOE for I Stand Alone nine years later. Check it out. The supplements are entertaining but I was still left with questions, such as, “Did the terrible band Vice, who start off sounding like Hootie and then morph into a form of Creed, have a codicil in their soundtrack that allowed their terrible music to be heard with minimal dialogue interference for the first minutes of their appearance?” The rest of the score is by Brian May, and if you know your Australian film composers you know it’s not the Queen guy. Inspirational dialogue: “You shouldn’t be out here with a boy. You should know better than that.” Inspirational interview quote, from female lead Christine Amor: “I thought it was appalling” — B+

Burial Ground (Severin 4K Ultra disc)

One of the signal innovations of Lucio Fulci’s 1979 Zombi was to take the sickly-green appearance of the undead in Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead a step further and give the monsters skull-exposed heads with nests of worms squirming in the eye sockets and all that kinda thing. Ick. Andrea Bianchi continued the mode of representation in this 1981 grossout, which was in fact sometimes shown as Zombi 3. (I don’t have the space or inclination to explain where Zombi 2 fits into all this, but real heads know and all.) Here’s it’s not just worms but maggots that fester on the flesh-eaters, so do not have a TV dinner whilst consuming this if indeed you choose to consume it. The poor crypt-exploring scientists and friends who unleash the creatures have the usual hard time figuring out how to kill them. Some discover a green flammable material. Does setting them on fire work? Yes it seems it kind of does. Later another character avers “They can only be killed by blowing their heads off.” Uh huh. Very confusing. Remember in the Fulci movie where one of the undead wrestled a shark? In this movie there’s a few undead with seeming Spider-Man powers methodically making their way up a pillar. Cool, The Climbing Dead. The unexpected incest angle in the scenario is very unexpected. Michael, the “son” who’s really into getting back into nursing at his mother’s breast is played by an adult midget. Gnarly. 85 solid minutes of “what the fuck?” — A

Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (Severin 4K Ultra disc)

Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film pretty much shrugs this movie off, but you should not. It’s bonkers. The salient facts of director William Asher’s life and career — that is, he directed a bunch of AIP “Beach” movies and he was married from 1963 to 1973 to Elizabeth Montgomery — cannot prepare you for the fevered reality of this serial-murder-motivated-by-incestuous-desire tale. As Susan Tyrell plays the aunt with the incestuous desire, you can easily infer a primary source of the mania — Tyrell, as is her wont embodies a desperate grotesque at a ragingly high volume without ever making her into a caricature. But then there’s the rest, which is almost equally delightfully confounding — Bo Svenson’s tetchy, homophobic homicide detective, Julia Duffy’s eye-openingly hot-to-trot teen girlfriend, Bill Paxton’s bully jock, and poor Jimmy McNichol looking very “what the hell have I gotten myself into?” And lots of blood. That the direction is entirely staid and straight adds to the unwitting potency. Essential. And looking like it should. ‑‑A

Cabin in the Sky (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

Damn, look at that spotless gray scale in the opening credit graphics. That may be cleanest you are likely to feel watching this problematic Vincente Minnelli feature debut. The racial stereotyping applied throughout this all-Black musical is of the ostensibly benign variety, and good God, once the musical numbers get going that’s all forgotten and the spectacle of Black excellence is gorgeously enveloping, but one never quite escapes the “but still…” feeling about the whole thing. That said, Minnelli was about as enlightened as white studio directors at MGM got in this era, and as dicey as the musical’s book may be (pardon the pun), the camera treatment of the performers is never less than square and appreciative. This is a fancy way of saying Minnelli demonstrates a form of anti-racism by shooting this cast as beautifully as any other ensemble in his filmography (see for instance the beautiful crane from the dance floor to immaculate Duke Ellington at the piano at in the nightclub scene in the last third). “Bogus but rather entertaining” James Baldwin said of this and Stormy Weather — they had, he stated, the advantage over similarly pitched fare of allowing the Black viewer to “at least […] listen to the music.” Both Ethel Waters and Lena Horne are given Marlene-Dietrich-worthy lighting. And Waters just looks so infectiously happy throughout. That, apparently, is ACTING, because by most accounts Ethel could be rather mean and took many opportunities to do so during the making of this picture. Eddie Anderson’s really playing that guitar, you may notice. There aren’t too many VMs in need of upgrade left — I Dood It, Four Horsemen, Tea and Sympathy and ESPECIALLY The Cobweb are the ones I’m most eager to see — and problematic as it is I’m delighted to have this one checked off.  — A

Conan the Barbarian (Arrow 4K Ultra disc)

This looks fantastic. Arrow’s given us an immaculate 4K rendering of a magnificent-looking movie. Duke Callaghan was lowkey a great cinematographer (uncredited camera op on a lot of classic, or just great-looking, stuff including The Carpetbaggers and Zabriskie Point), and he shot this when he was pushing 70! The 2010 commentary by director John Milius and star Arnold Schwarzenegger has a nice share of “hoo boy” moments. The duo is pretty laconic, a couple of pally old pros sitting around talking and saying things like: “It’s fitting that he should be the father of Conan. William Smith.” They’re not wrong. Unlike everything else that passes for a comic book movie these days, this, in its own way this is as much a real comic book movie as Danger Diabolik and Modesty Blaise. The crucifixion scene in particular could have come right out of Savage Sword, obviously though it’s more Buscema than Barry Windsor Smith, of course, and do any of you have any idea of what I’m talking about at this point. But as we’re on the subject, casting Schwarzenegger as Conan is in its way the biggest and best source-material-to-movie correspondence since John Huston cast Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade. Finally, mmm, that’s great animatronic snake — A+

A Day At The Races (Warner Archive)

The boys are starting to look tired here, especially as you can see them so very clearly in this beautiful rendition. While Night at the Opera did a relatively seamless job of threading the madcap Marx antics into an ostensibly sweet-natured romance narrative, here you get the feeling that the story’s just being put on pause for the boys to recycle an old vaudeville routine or two. Hence, the tension between the masks of the Marxes and the tropes of conventional comedy is especially pronounced here.  Also, cutesying up Chico is not a great look. That said, the closer it gets to vaudeville show and further from a movie, the better it is. The “All God’s Chillun” number is a real treat — until the boys themselves put on blackface and then holy shit. Quite a nice array of supplements here, too. — B+

Deathdream (Blue Underground 4K Ultra disc)

Real heads know this Bob Clark-Alan Ownsby variant on “The Monkey’s Paw” is one of the lowkey horror greats of the early ‘70s. The formula? Two Canadian filmmakers decamp to Florida, cast the lead actors of Cassavetes’ Faces as another tetchy couple, here mourning the death of their son in the war, and let rip when said son materializes at their door. With needs — most specifically and troublingly a need for fresh blood. It looks how it looks, which is plain, arguably crude — Rex Reed’s famous complaint about Willard having the appearance of having been shot through the bottom of a Coke bottle springs to mind — but it’s almost impossibly effective because of that, not in spite of it. The 4K captures that well. And the direction itself is never slack. The incredibly abrupt cut to the nerdy-looking little kid after the undead Vietnam vet Andy deals with a very annoying dog is a stitch. Ninety minutes of “I came back from the dead and all I got was this lousy suburban malaise.”­—A

The Devil’s Honey (Severin 4K Ultra disc)

What can you say about a movie whose first seven minutes, which I won’t describe, will make you lose whatever faith you may have left in humanity? Obviously that it’s permanent collection item. It takes a while for the 4K advantage of Severin’s reboot of its edition of this late Lucio Fulci “erotic thriller” to make itself felt, as cinematographer Alejandro Ulloa goes for a diffuse, vaguely soft-focus look much of the time. But the boost is there, and library items ought to be in the best editions available, so there you go. This was Brett Halsey’s inaugural feature in a four-picture run of Fulci collaborations, and here he gives the appearance of gritting his teeth for a long haul. Corinne Clery mostly wears a “what have I done to deserve this” pout, which fits her role as an unappreciated wife. ‑‑ A

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (Severin Blu-ray)

Lunatic stuff, with our best friend Jess Franco paying “tribute” to his favorite movie monsters by tossing off a feature shoot in what appears to be 72 hours. Animal lovers beware of the bit where they almost drown a bat in tomato juice. Fog filters, poor exposures, — all sorts of attempted effects combined with uncertain execution are what gives this curiosity its special look. It’s very…distinct (although not at all slick, of course). Poor Dennis Price as Dr. Frankenstein seems — as so many other distinguished actors late in their careers working in exploitation cinema — to be dissociating. Not a good “intro to Franco” piece. But a true monster mash, in which indeed “the guests included Wolfman.” Look for Jason Reitman’s mom Genevieve Robert as Amira, the Gypsy Woman. No really. — A

Faithless (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

Not an inordinately distinguished pre-code MGM picture, but certainly noteworthy for providing a lead role to Tallulah Bankhead (here on loan from Paramount, where her pictures hadn’t been clicking commercially), who’s at her pert and insolent best as a poor little NYC rich girl who, while riding high, makes pronouncements such as” I don’t believe in delinquent girls. Silly weaklings.” This will of course bite her in the ass once she’s wiped out. This is from 1932, early enough in the sound that Hugh Herbert is actually able to credibly portray the heavy. Mourdant Hall called it “lumbering,” which is indicative of the general mien of the early talkie dramatic picture — it’s not even eighty minutes long, how much can it “lumber?” Bankhead would not play another dramatic lead in film for a dozen years, returning to the screen in ’44 for Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. So she’s the clear attraction here, and worth it. The extras come in the form of a few nifty novelty Vitaphone shorts. The image quality of the feature is rather staggeringly good — it’s almost one hundred years old, for God’s sake. Look at this as Metro vin ordinaire (the extra-ordinaire presence of Bankhead notwithstanding) in a superb bottle. Inspirational dialogue, when Bankhead’s character learns someone is from Colorado: “Good heavens, what does one do there, take mud baths?”— A

Geronimo (Powerhouse)

Holy moley, it’s A WOKE WESTERN. A WOKE WESTERN starring a 12-year-old Matt Damon no less. Okay, he’s a little older than that in this criminally underseen 1993 Walter Hill picture. (He’s like, 22 or so.) Wes Studi plays the title warrior with customary gravitas. The action is coherent in the time-tested Hill way, and the movie itself is pertinent, intelligent, consistently engaging. The 2.35 frame is stunningly rendered throughout. A very nice array of extras, starting with a consistently interesting commentary from Western mavens C. Courtney Joyner and Henry Parke and good interviews with Studi, composer Ry Cooder, Hill. There’s also an archival doc in which Bertrand Tavernier demonstrates that, as always, he got it. Inspirational dialogue: “That was a great shot!” “Not so great, I aimed for his head.” Or should it be: “Must be a Texan. Lowest form of white man there is,” uttered by Robert Duvall? A primo example of a relatively recent Western that’s as vital as almost any classic from the genre’s golden age. —A+

The Golden Coach (Raro)

A quick note on a film — Renoir, you’ve heard of him, and Anna Magnani too — that needs to be in your library in whatever form available. This form is quite good, happily. The image here can be best described as refreshing, beautifully detailed, beautifully balanced in the color department. It’s a Canadian restoration and hence there is a Canadian commentary — my pal the critic Adam Nayman is genial and informative. — A

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (Criterion)

I am not completely won over by the songs, nor by the conspicuous pop psychology in the writing (“imperfect fathers,” yeesh). But the grafting of the story into the interstice between two 20^th century catastrophes works rather well, the sufferings of the Ewan McGregor-voiced cricket make for good and mordant slapstick, the imagery and staging and action is gorgeous, and the heart is genuine. And the 4K Ultra presentation here is spectacular. As distinctive a visionary as Del Toro is, it’s in a work such as this in which his magpie tendencies most productively adhere, and so the stuff he lovingly adopts from the likes of Miyazaki and Harryhausen and Svankmayer and the Quays sings out with love. The making-of supplements are informative and exhaustive, as befits such a project. Spending time in Del Toro’s imagination is always rewarding, and it’s almost equally rewarding to be immersed in the process as in the result. Of course I am especially partial to the 20-minute conversation between Del Toro and Farran Smith Nehme, my friend and a terribly astute-while-amiable interlocutor. — A+

The Horrible Doctor Hichcock (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra)

So how bad was he? Pretty bad! Vinegar Syndrome has put together a faultless presentation of this seminal bit of psychotronic cinema from 1962, all about a physician who can only function as long as his partner lies perfectly still. While Ricardo Freda never had the mojo of Mario Bava, he wasn’t without juice — as in the match cut from title medico Hichcock and syringe in the surgery to Hichcock and syringe in marital boudoir to anesthetize wifey into a corpse-like state. The number of candelabras here reminds one of Scorsese’s remarks about Italian horror movies being all about women carrying them down long corridors. This movie doesn’t quite represent the apotheosis of Barbara Steele (it’s still Black Sunday, people), she here rather amusingly plays a woman who goes to bed with her lipstick on. The extras are good; second AD Marcello Avallone recounts how he “learned to hang out on sets” and it is revealed that the cinephile gag of the title was not screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi’s. Steele, in a commentary, calls Freda “the epitome of Italian emotionalism.”  Incredible image quality. All that’s missing is Tim Lucas. —A+

King Kong (Universal 4K Ultra disc)

I remember seeing this when it first came out and thinking it godawful EXCEPT for Jessica Lange, who enchanted my 17-year-old self with great force. I don’t even think I cottoned much to Jeff Bridges in it. I didn’t think he played an ecology-concerned hippie academic all too well. Of course I saw it while completely in thrall to the Cooper-Schoedsack, as one should be, and my head’s still in that place. But now I can assess the picture with a calmer head capable of simulations of objectivity, so I can report that this is a pretty bouncy, energetic adventure film infused with a not-too-cheesy ‘70s irreverence, all the way up to the moment when the title character shows up. No matter how many effects masters worked on him (see the infamous final title card) he just looks goofy, is all. And the 4K Ultra rendition makes that rather too clear. Inspirational dialogue: “Who in the hell do you think went through there, a guy in an ape suit?” — A

The Mask of Fu Manchu (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

“A Chinaman beat me?” Never happen. So says here one Jean Hersholt, the guy for whom a humanitarian award is named. He sure played some unsavory characters, though. Remember him in Greed? Anyway. This is what you have to call an inescapably racist bit of cinematic pulp but it is also replete with a lot of evocative weirdness not related to the more objectionable components of its content, like lead actor Karloff’s visage distorted in reflective surfaces while something not unlike a Tesla coil crackles with illumination. Iconic. He also looks a little like late period Lou Reed in such shots.  Karen Morley, who we have also enjoyed as Poppy in the Hawks Scarface (but my book, The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface, at your local or via various online emporiums!) is very whiny in a proto-Lisa Kudrow way. This disc boasts a beautiful transfer; never have I been more enthralled by Karloff’s insane intro, which also features the Vile Foaming Liquids treasured by Frank Zappa. This thing has more trap doors and secret passageways than any movie ever made, and good snake action too. It was with this film that I first started confusing Lewis Stone with C. Aubrey Smith, despite the lack of resemblance between the two.. — A

Peeping Tom (Criterion 4K Ultra disc)

The definitive edition of this queasy and compulsively watchable thriller highlighting, for my money, the most heartbreaking serial-killer in history, Karl Boehm’s Mark Lewis. This time around I latched on to scenarist Leo Marks’ and director Michael Powell’s sardonic attitude toward pornography and its consumers, exemplified in a sense by the remark of one of the “special” news-agent item models when Mark shows at the studio: “Why look who’s here — Cecil Beaton!”  Another bit of dialogue, “All this filming isn’t healthy,” sums up the theme. If the metaphor seems extreme to you, well. I watched this restoration (on the European Studio Canal edition, which shares some but not all of the extras on the Criterion) on the same day that I watched the Arrow Conan. On that film’s commentary, John Milius recalls Arnold Schwarzenegger’s treatment of the actress playing the slave girl dropped into Conan’s quarters, saying that it was great that Arnold did nothing to make her feel comfortable (she enters the scene topless). “This woman was really scared when she was put in here and you were great because…you never let her get relaxed. You never said a thing the whole day to her.” (Her name was Andrea Guzon.)  — A+

The Raid Redemption (Sony 4K Ultra disc)

If I’m not mistaken, this presents the action classic in something above its native definition — the thing was shot with a Panasonic camera that got a 1080 image. SO what’s the point of a 4K upgrade? Revisionism, as director Gareth Evans wanted not to alter the movie’s content but to tweak color correction and correct visual “errors” he considered a product of his own inexperience back in 2011 when he made the movie. Acceptable! This version’s color scheme and muted look is fitting for the docudrama style Evans was emulating to a certain extent. The standard-def BR in the package is old. How old? The trailers are for Looper (2012), Starship Troopers Invasion (also 2012) and, um, Resident Evil Invasion (also 2012, how many of these trailers am I gonna look at), and The Words (okay, I’m glad I kept looking, to be reminded of a movie that really stank and was also made in 2012), and, oh, Safety Not Guaranteed (no comment I guess). The rendering of the movie itself herein is useful and mildly instructive because it really does showcase how Evans went to town in retooling the look of the picture for 4K. Most noticeable is that the blueish tinge, which on old low-def home camcorders indicated that one had shot with the WRONG WHITE BALANCE, is gone. — A

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

The cover and slipcase reproduce (too small in both cases but what the hell) the immortal Jack Davis poster art, which conveys the madcap aspect of this movie a little too vividly — the Norman Jewison comedy is relatively lowkey throughout, although it builds up a proper head of tension eventually. And ends up surprisingly sweet natured, especially relative to other cinematic Cold War contemplations of the 1960s. My buddy Michael Schlesinger and his buddy Mark Evanier do the commentary, they are amiable and informative and they LOVE the Mirisch Corporation and Walter Mirisch of course. The image here is SUPER handsome (the picture was shot by the great Joseph Biroc) and our commentators highlight this by pointing out that this is the first time on home video that the lavender tint in the switchboard operator’s hair (she’s played by Tessie O’Shea) is rendered correctly. Inspirational commentary nugget: “There are people who see this film and think it’s Gary Burghoff” (Evanier on Michael J. Pollard) — A

Scarlet Street (Kino Lorber 4K Ultra disc)

Jeepers, as Joan Bennett is fond of saying in this touchstone picture, this is gorgeous. It’s been a long journey to 4K for Lang’s lurid remake of Renoir’s La Chienne, and for lovers of the picture (here I am going longish on it), it’s been worth it. My cordial acquaintance Imogen Smith’s commentary is typically detailed and cogent but she definitely disapproves of these characters in ways that I just can’t. Because truly, they are all me. Except for the murdering part. With the newfound clarity of image we can better appreciate how Bennett overdoes it in a very productive way — the faces she makes when Robinson embraces her and kisses her neck, her absolute repugnance at him is tragically vivid. Is there such a thing as too much detail? Well, Eddie G.’s toupee is more apparent than it has been, Otherwise, no notes. Inspirational dialogue: “He’s too dumb to be a phony”—A+

The Warriors (Arrow 4K Ultra disc)

This package arrived on a gloomy afternoon during which my outlook was especially glum and I have to say, the movie made my goddamn day, as did the superb Arrow transfer of 9this is important) the original theatrical version, with my town looking grimy as all get out. The scene with the prom kids still rips. The extras are great. Buy with confidence. —  A+

Witness for the Prosecution (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

As restoration maven Robert A. Harris has noted, Kino Lorber has been hiding its light under a bushel when reissuing titles already in their catalog. He wrote of this: “Yet another Kino ‘re-issue’ title that gives us an upgrade of 50%+ in data throughput, along with a requisite viewable difference in quality at close quarters.” I concur. Another asset newly added is a typically stalwart and astute Joseph McBride commentary in which he details director Billy Wilder’s demonic work ethic and dryly notes, “There’s always somebody complaining about something” with respect to Marlene Dietrich’s on set carping about Tyrone Power’s natty wardrobe.  — A

You’re a Big Boy Now/The Rain People (Warner Archive Blu-rays)

With our good friend Francis Ford Coppola back in the news, it’s an opportune time to check out his early work. He’s dismissive of 1966’s You’re A Big Boy Now but cannot and ought not deny 1969’s Rain People, which brought both James Caan and Robert Duvall, both of whom he’d work with more decisively in years following, into his fold. One can see why he might be a little sheepish about Big Boy, a coming-of-age comedy made under the extreme influence of Richard Lester. Although the New York location stuff feels more directly Godardian and of course it was Godard who was influencing Lester back in the day. And you can see how Coppola’s work here might have influenced De Palma for Greetings and Scorsese for Mean Streets. The film’s whimsy does show strain after a while (and some of it borders on lowkey misogyny) and lead Peter Kastner is no Richard Dreyfuss (bet you’d never hear anyone complain about somebody not being Richard Dreyfuss these days, huh?). But the dog, “Emily,” is great, as are the female leads Julie Harris, Karen Black and the tragic Elizabeth Hartman. The quasi-seduction scene scored to John Sebastian’s “Darling Be Home Soon” is bracingly original and intimate and comes closest to Coppola’s true voice. Rain People, on the other hand, feels “Coppola-esque” from the opening shot, as do the frequent frames shot through windows. Look for Eleanor Coppola in a flashback scene as Robert Duvall’s dying wife. A spectacularly bleak and heartbreaking movie — not a young man’s picture at all. Coppola was about 30 when he shot it. Both discs are without extras but look wonderful. — Both pictures: A

Winter 2024 Blu-ray/4K Ultra Disc Consumer Guide

Since I’m not yet getting rid of this blog I might as well use it. If you’ve been on Substack for a while, I can see why you’d stick with it, but it would feel weird for a non-Substack person such as myself to actually JOIN it now. Anyway. Happy New Year.

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

Anna Christie (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

While I’ve seen a few O’Neill plays on stage and of course several more-or-less distinguished film adaptations of his work I’m far from an expert on the work and hence have no real authority with respect to this piece in any edition. The life of the sea, the life of the drunk, the life of the fallen woman, here the ineffable Garbo is playing one and she’s quite good, putting her height to excellent use in making her title character gangly and awkward. The image quality of the main feature is superb given the circumstances. The package’s most crucial extra is the German-language version made by MGM, with Garbo playing against a different cast on the same sets. It’s directed by Jacques Feyder, and the conventional wisdom is that it’s more fluid than the English-language version directed by Clarence Brown but the difference between the two in terms pf both aesthetic and emotional impact is negligible. And unless you’re a Garbo devotee, to be honest, most of the movie’s salutary qualities might be obscure. I find it congenial but it’s also no Queen Christina. The presentation of Feyder’s version looks like a solid scan of a good looking print, but it doesn’t have a patch on the good (not startling, but solid, and yielding some of what you’ll at least take for nitrate gleam) image quality of the English language version. This was Garbo’s first sound film; it also represents the single solitary moment in Charles Bickford’s career in which he could credibly play anything even vaguely resembling a romantic lead. Inspirational dialogue: ”Lutherans, is it? Oh, then I’m damned entirely.”  — A

Barbarella (Arrow 4K Ultra)

I have no business — less than no business — reviewing and assigning a grade to a package in which I am featured in a supplement. And yet. This is such an exquisite rendering that I need to bang the drum for it. I’ve never seen this peculiar film look as good as it does here, and the way it looks good is very filmic — like a MOVIE. You know, the way you and I like it. It’s a wonderful thing to behold after years of seeing it not look all that much better than the TV promo spot included here. Is it a revelation? Yes! But does it improve the movie itself? A bit, yeah. Tim Lucas’ commentary is reliably spectacular, I’m a little embarrassed that there’s a bit of overlap between it and my own video “appreciation” of the movie (part of the supplements disc, separate from the 4K Ultra disc).  Overall though it’s given me only a mild case of imposter syndrome. The Lucas/Bissette Zoom discussion is very macro, there’s about a good twenty minutes about bandes desinee, a lot of fun reminiscing about the Evergreen Review, etc. There’s also Elizabeth Castaldo Lunden on the costumes, camera op Roberto Girometti on working with Vadim and Claude Renoir, amusing son Ricky Tognazzi on dad Ugo, Fabio Testi on being John Philip Law’s body double, a good video essay on Dino di Laurentiis. All one could ask for is a new interview with Jane Fonda and I don’t think that was ever going to be in the cards, the fact that she attended Vadim’s funeral notwithstanding.  — A+

The Carpetbaggers (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

The image here is awful pretty — really sumptuous in its color and clarity and super clean. And the 1964 movie itself is legendary in being pretty awful. It’s interesting to look at this in tandem with Minnelli’s Home From the Hill, which has story and characters that are very nearly as pulpy as this, but which Minnelli invests with some hard-fought gravity and dignity. And makes the most of the mise-en-scene furnished by Preston Amre. Edward Dmytryk, the director here, was generally competent and often better than competent, but couldn’t really be bothered here to invest in the material, and it shows. Hence, the fantastic production design of Hal Pereira notwithstanding, Dmytryk can’t make any of it signify beyond the lurid surfaces. There’s not really such a thing as “it’s so bad it’s good” but there is also the truth as articulated by Vladimir Nabokov that nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity, so you may split the difference between those two realities and come up grinning with this item. In terms of entertainment value, it helps that leads George Peppard and Carroll Baker both seem to be on angel dust, and that Baker is costumed throughout as if the movie has the alternate title Chick in Her Underwear. Incidentally, this was the second movie I watched in a single day in which the commentator used the phrase “roman a clef.” I don’t want to rat anyone out but I’ll say that Julie Kirgo here is the one who pronounces the phrase correctly. Her work is relatively discursive but two hours thirty is a lot to have to fill up. I have not yet listened to the David Del Valle/Dave DeCoteau commentary but those fellows are always entertaining. Inspirational dialogue: “How do you like my widow’s weeds?”  Spoken by Baker, in her underwear, or something like underwear at least.. — A

Cemetery Man (Severin 4K Ultra)

This exquisitely executed compendium of morbidities really hit my sweet spot when I saw it for the first time in its 1994 U.S. theatrical release. The Golden Age of Argento was definitely on the wane — 1993’s Trauma had its kicks, including location shooting in Newark, New Jersey, but was not 100 proof — and Lamberto Bava’s output at this point was spotty, and not well-distributed in the U.S. Fulci had reached a kind of apotheosis in 1990 with Cat in the Brain, but to be honest at that point in my life I was too much of a snob to have embraced Fulci anyway. So Michele Soavi was the guy, and this meta-movie just plain stomped. This turned out to be the end of an era rather than the beginning of a new one, alas.  Essentially the story of a man who keeps misplacing his gun, this resourceful low-budget wonder contains credible visual allusions that range from Magritte to Hitchcock to the Richard Corben cover of Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell. Anyway, after its theatrical run it never had an even decent physical media release until now and the Severin edition is spectacular. No notes. In extras, it’s gratifying that star Rupert Everett holds the movie in such high esteem and fascinating to learn that the “Dylan Dog” comic book character was actually based on him (and that this movie, contrary to popular U.S. belief, isn’t really based on Dylan Dog but a different graphic novel by the same author). Overstated yet strangely enigmatic love interest Anna Falchi (there was a rumor when the pic first came out that she was a trans woman; she is not) still looks great and is quite interesting and frank in her self-assessment: “I have a very comic-book style physicality, truth be told.”  Inspirational dialogue: “You’ve got a real nice ossuary!”— A+

Clue (Shout Factory 4K Ultra)

Hey, kids, it’s an Intellectual Property movie! Had director Jonathan Lynn gotten an Oscar nomination for his screenplay (not likely but bear with me), would it be for Adapted or Original? Should we ask Judd Apatow? Moving on, it’s interesting that this moderately misbegotten cinematic board game adaptation has acquired a cult sufficient to warrant a 4K edition, but that’s the sort of thing that the release calendar of Shout Factory teaches us on the regular. (The corporate entity known as Sony Pictures Itself has issued a 30^th Anniversary 4K Ultra disc of 1993’s So I Married an Axe Murderer, which my wife and I watched and enjoyed the other night, while at the same time mildly bemused that a film so inconsequential should be so marketed. I think the answer is reasonably obvious; the big studios are digitizing EVERYTHING in their libraries [see below’s Imprint title] and there are licensors eager for product on the one hand and, in what’s probably the case with Axe Murderer itself, in-house enthusiasts who’ll pitch hard for a physical release of a fave.) Anyway — the reason for the cult, I think, has less to do with the IP and a lot to do with Madeline Kahn and the rest of the expertly amusing cast. The divine Madeline and Lesley Ann Warren are the most consistently funny of the ensemble, but Mull, McKean, Curry and the rest (as the first version of the Gilligan’s Island theme song would put it) all do their level best within a very constrained and labored story frame.  How the question of whether Colonel Mustard got sapped in the library with a length of pipe, or wherever and whatever and by whom, was for cinematic purposes yoked to a story premise focused on the 1950s Army McCarthy hearings comes down to Lynn. We learn in a supplement that he was approached, in a state not unlike desperation, by producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters to come up with something/anything in the script department, and drew on his acquaintance in Great Britain with the blacklisted screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart for his idea. Who, indeed, woulda thunk it. The other extra here is ten smart minutes on score composer and Mel Brooks stalwart John Morris. The camera’s leering plunges down faux-French-maid Colleen Camp’s cleavage is no doubt a Guber/Peters touch. — A

Count Dracula (Severin 4K Ultra)

Watching this, I worked up a theory, which was that this is Jess Franco’s most conventionally competent film and hence his least interesting film. Or, as Tim Lucas, who’s got way more mileage than myself with respect to Franco, put it in a lengthy and as far as I can glean un-linkable Facebook post, “one senses it was not to [Franco’s] taste to film a classic story in a classical sense.” (Tim then puts the movie’s weaknesses down to cinematographer Manuel Merino.)  Nevertheless, there are bits when Franco’s inspiration rises to the largely staid surface here. Soledad Miranda sleepwalking is good. As are the shots of her in Dracula’s embrace, followed by a shot of a bat shadow, and Miranda with her head thrown back in ecstasy and her shoulders slouching, like she’s suspended by invisible wires. That sort of thing is very startling and effective. The symphony of stuffed animals is rather good too. Christopher Lee seems into it; indeed, this 1970 production is the picture that inspired Lee to confide to me, in an unfortunately lost 1993 interview, that Franco was “a not untalented man, by the way.” Severin has also issued a Blu-ray of the spectacular Surrealist sort-of documentary Cuaducu (Vampir) which I already have in a good Second Run edition but which I recommend in any form you prefer. As for this package, it’s another spectacular Severin effort. I don’t know how they do it.  —A+

Danza Macabra 2 (Severin 4K Ultra & Blu-ray)

These are indeed the days of miracle and wonder. When I was a kid, I was completely freaked out by an early ‘60s black-and-white Italian horror called Castle of Blood when it screened on WOR 9’s weekly “Chiller” movie program. This was/is the Antonio Margheriti-directed picture on which a fictional Edgar Allan Poe and a rich creep pal of his bet a journalist that he can’t spend the night in this haunted castle without going nuts and/or dying. Barbara Steele plays one of the haunting elements. I can’t begin to imagine how washed out it looked on the 12-inch Sony portable TV I probably watched it on. And yet it dazzled young weird me. In no small part this had something to do with the ineffable Barbara Steele in a crucial role. In subsequent years I learned other folks had similar epiphanies. The title became an answer to one of the “Ask Glenn” questions that came my way at Premiere, just in time for the DVD release of the picture by the ever-great Don May at Synapse. And Don’s version looked…better than it had in the beat-up print indifferently telecined and then broadcast by WOR into my home back then. But now. Now. Castle is the centerpiece of a box set continuing Severin’s loving care of Italian horror masterpieces and oddities. This picture gets the 4K Ultra treatment, while the three remainders are Blu-rays. All good. Two versions are here, the Italian-language Danza Macabra and English-dubbed Castle, which I watched first, because nostalgia, right?. The opening credits of Castle are beat up but the feature itself is the restored version and it looks pretty incredible. It’s a testament to the film’s power that it came through in compromised presentations, but having an edition of this caliber is mind-blowing. The Italian Danza is about six minutes longer and has the nudity we’ve been missing, which doesn’t improve the movie as such — those anti-sex-scene prudes are RIGHT! (Actually it’s pretty righteous.)  And yes, the package has other pictures (although I presume down the road Severin will break this up into individual titles for sale.) 1971’s They Changed Their Face is… a very subtle critique of capitalism in which Adolfo Celi plays an Italian car magnate named Nosferatu. Yes, you read correctly. He announces himself a pioneer in “gastronomic socialism” as he feeds his latest prey a TV dinner that looks even less appetizing than what Heywood Floyd slurped down on his way to the moon in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The movie is pretty drab visually, although the radical-cinema-pastiche fake TV ads proffered by a propagandist character are mildly amusing. The film will definitely ring chimes with anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the schizoid political currents of Italy in the late 60s/early 70s. 1972’s The Devil’s Lover is more overtly lurid, not that Faces isn’t lurid — a movie that more or less opens with a female hitchhiker topless under her fur-lined winter jacket can’t be called not lurid. But Lover features actress Rosalba Neri, who practically defines lurid, although the supplement called “The Feminism of Rosalba Neri” argues that her lurid qualities were for a righteous cause, and why not. I confess I haven’t given more than a cursory look at the mini-series Jekyll, a postmodern variant on Stevenson’s tale. But I can still confidently assign the whole box my highest grade. —A+

eXistenZ (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra)

Underappreciated at the time of its release, subsequently subjected to one measly and thoroughly indifferent home video release, this 4K edition was a “Secret Title” from Vin Syn and a really welcome surprise. Viewed today, it really synchs up nicely with the maestro’s 2022 Crimes of the Future. This brutally meta-textual work is both about and not about gaming, or maybe we can say it’s about gaming as life. It has affinities to both Borges and Nabokov — affinities that both authors might find the film itself to viscous to deign to recognize. (They’re also not alive, either, which would be a further impediment to their potential appreciation.)  It is also maybe the closest thing to an out-and-out comedy that Cronenberg has ever made. (All the performers get it, but Willem Dafoe and Ian Holm have the most fun with it.) The vast array of supplements includes a commentary by Jennifer Moorman; at one point she pronounces “And this is where the film starts to get…rapey. We might say.” We might, as physical violations of all kinds are the movie’s bread and butter, but I don’t know — Moorman’s analysis, use of colloquialisms notwithstanding, often struck me as labored and humorless in a typically academic way, although it does offer insights worth turning over. In the department of my own critical shortcomings, or whatever you want to call them: Is it weird that I think Jennifer Jason Leigh is the hottest she’s ever been in this movie? First rate image throughout. A real gift. Inspirational dialogue: “Death to realism!” — A+

French Revelations (Flicker Alley)

I wish that more labels had ideas like the one that led to this disc. This is a sort-of thematically-paired double feature of French-language films. There’s 1934’s Mauvaise Graine, co-written and co-directed by Billy Wilder, then freshly emigrated from Germany to France and soon to head to the States.  It’s a very mordant and cynical crime comedy that looks ahead to The Fortune Cookie, except it’s a lot more vicious. It’s fascinating in a more-than-historical way. (It incidentally features a black character who’s not depicted with absolutely horrific racism, which is kind of a novelty for its time.) Commentator Jan-Christopher Horak notes throughout that Wilder didn’t like directing. Which sort of kept being true (he only started doing it in Hollywood to protect his scripts).  The print here opens with the kind of degeneration you get so excited about in Bill Morrison movies. But the image straightens out quickly enough. The second feature is 1935’s Fanfare D’Amour, which Wilder had nothing to do with…. except that the spine of its plot fed the 1951 German picture Fanfaren der Liebe, which in turn led to Wilder’s own Some Like It Hot. And this film does feature a jaw-dropping racialist gag in which the two protagonists, in a montage depicting their various guises before joining an all-girl band, don blackface to infiltrate a Black jazz combo. This is a mercifully short sequence in an otherwise amiable film co-starring Julian Carette, who went on to play the poacher who blithely cuckolds Gaston Modot in Renoir’s Rules of the Game. Fanfare functions without the mob element or the frantic “I’m a girl I’m a girl I’m a girl” gender panic that gives Hot its incredible dimension. The very Deco art direction here make the amusing but in most other respects ordinary picture an almost Lubitschean pleasure to behold. Inspirational dialogue: “Are you sure you’re a man?” “I don’t know…” — A

The Fugitive (Warner 4K Ultra)

The 4K Ultra disc offers a handsome image to be sure. I do recollect that this was something to see in the summer of 1993 while we were all waiting for Jurassic Park…and I also recollect that In The Line of Fire was something better to see. Neither picture, for me, has aged into anything like a classic, but while Fire still has the edge, Fugitive is a sturdy action/thriller construction — and an IP movie, let us not forget! — with, as it happens, no real point of view about anything. That is, it’s kind of impersonal.  In a way not dissimilar to what Tommy Lee Jones’ U.S. Marshall character conveys here. It’s also a little predictable. “As soon as you see Joroen Krabbé’s name in the opening credits, you know who the bad guy is,” my pal Joseph Failla complained at the time. Speaking of the opening credits, boy are they cheesy: “Harrison […wait for it] Ford” “Tommy […wait for it] Lee…Jones” Except Jones himself, in the much-maligned commentary track, doesn’t think so, saying to journeyman director Andrew Davis over the phone, “These are really cool titles Andy.” A lot of the movie still holds up better than well, though, so reservations notwithstanding, this is the Davis that I’m keeping in my library. — B+

Gentleman Jim (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

It’s Raoul Walsh, it’s Errol Flynn, it’s Warner Archive, how much selling do you need here? Also featuring an adorable Alexis Smith and Jack Carson manifesting as the Frank McHugh of Ralph Bellamys. Dramatically fine image quality. The boxing sequences are tight despite containing plenty of 180 “rule” violations. Don’t wait, buy today. — A

Horrors of the Black Museum (VCI Blu-ray)

The restoration here is courtesy of Canal +, and it’s sufficiently vivid to really deliver the lurid goods of this glibly sicko 1959 tale of a dude who’s really into devices of torture and how to use them. The American distributor tacked on the ridiculous “Hypnovision” hook, via a short prologue that Canal + has NOT restored but is included here courtesy of the magpies at VCI. It is a nice thing, as the Red Riding Hood in the Bugs Bunny short would put it, “TO HAVE!” Via the short, you yourself, the viewer that is, are supposed to get hypnotized. Didn’t work on me. The picture doesn’t have a patch on the Ormonds’ Please Don’t Touch Me, which treats a similar theme. But back to Black Museum. Oh my. Kind of the apotheosis of Michael Gough in creepazoid mode; he really tears into his role as a true crime writer and murderer. It’s thin line, the movie implies. The movie looks as clear as a bell and the electrocution of the shrink is nothing short of amazing. Two commentaries, the one from co-writer and co-producer Herman Cohen archival, the one from Robert Kelly new. Essential Psychotronic cinema. — A

JFK (Shout Factor 4K Ultra Disc)

About ten minutes into this, when Jack Lemmon and Ed Asner are sitting at a bar, and Asner’s character is waxing racist/reactionary and Lemmon is doing a “for God’s sake you’re talking about the President” bit, you may have an inkling that you’re watching The Greatest Story Ever Told of conspiracy theory movies. Well, you know, I LIKE The Greatest Story Ever Told. And since Oliver Stone was really gracious and generous with me for my upcoming book, if you think I’m going to use this non-officially-remunerated exercise in order to dis one of his films, you are sorely mistaken. And I mean, let’s face it, like it or not it’s a fascinating artifact and it moves along like a panther in whatever cut you’re watching. Gary Oldman as Oswald does inspire poignant thoughts of “Boy wouldn’t he have been great in a film of Libra?” The 4K disc looks fantastic; by all means do luxuriate in the burnished bronze and brown tones of Jim Garrison’s office. (Another incidental pleasure here is witnessing Michael Rooker’s almost palpable relief at playing a normal dude in these settings.) As for the Stone commentary, which like the other extras dates back to Shout’s 2019 JFK Revisited The Complete Collection, if you think making the movie exhausted everything he has to say on this topic — and actually, why would anyone actually think such a thing — you are sorely mistaken. — A+

The Last Tycoon (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

This adaptation of unfinished Fitzgerald is a better and more interesting (the two descriptors aren’t always mutually exclusive) film than its tepid reputation suggests, featuring a truly fascinating Robert De Niro performance. As Irving Thalberg stand-in Monroe Stahr, De Niro is not playing a complete weirdo, but a kinda-sorta weirdo, that is, a film person. Lovely character bits abound, from Ray Milland, Robert Mitchum, Jack Nicholson and others. Teresa Russell is the ideal Celia Brady, and Ingrid Boulting is alas the weak link in the performance chain. Gorgeous new transfer and a continuously sharp commentary from Joseph McBride, who pulls together a lot of tendrils especially relative to director Elia Kazan’s relationship to the studio heads portrayed in disguise here, HUAC stuff, and more. The tales of producer Sam Spiegel, a rather old-school piglet chasing both Teresa Russell and Ingrid Boulting, are distasteful. McBride also notes the clash in sensibilities between Kazan and screenwriter Harold Pinter. Inspirational commentary quote: “Kazan’s work got better after he informed.”— A

Madame Bovary (Warner Archive)

The book in question is condemned as “a disgrace to France and an insult to womanhood” in the opening of this 1948 Vincente-Minnelli-directed adaptation of Flaubert, which uses the book’s prosecution for obscenity as a framing device. (James Mason as the embattled author, narrating his heroine’s story, is heavenly albeit slightly ridiculous.) The structure is odd and has a hard time getting on its feet. Jennifer Jones is very wobbly as the teen Emma but there’s no way she wouldn’t be; as it happens, her performance gains strength as she resolves to rebel. Maybe she just thought of all the men in her life before each take. Van Heflin as Dr. B. is miscast — not so much in terms of type, but his performance is way too American — but his work has some small power. The blurb on the back cover of this beautiful Warner Archive edition is absolutely correct: the ballroom scene, nine minutes total, beginning about 24 minutes in (Chapter 10) is one of the best things ever, in Minnelli or in American cinema in general. Robert H. Planck is the cinematographer here. Gene Lockhart as Homais gets a big laugh telegraphing the actual punchline of the book: “perhaps…the Legion of Honor!” The soundtrack itself is pretty clever, with a background cry of “we demand manure” as Louis Jourdan is laying it on to Emma. The question of whether even Renoir or Chabrol, let alone Minnelli, could really capture the spirit of Flaubert on celluloid is not one I’m prepared to cogently address at this time but I will insist that this Item is two thirds (at least) a potentially great and often very good Hollywood melodrama. Depressing inspirational dialogue: “I hurt Charles. I hurt inside.”  — A

The Man In Half-Moon Street (Imprint Blu-ray)

A Paramount attempt to outdo Universal in the Gothic horror genre, this is a little more understated than what the House of Laemmle was putting out but pretty keen. The story of a guy who’s copped an elixir of immortality, but of course At What Cost, it’s all foggy streets and Helen Walker in skintight variations of Edwardian couture (it’s sufficiently atmospheric that until you see the occasional automobile you’re inclined to think the 1945 film is set in some indistinct turn-of-the-century period). Pretty pacey, too.. A cool kind of out-of-nowhere release that makes Australia’s Imprint a label worth keeping an eye on at all times. The extra is a typically thorough and informative Tim Lucas commentary with much kvelling over Miklos Rozsa’s lavish score, which Rozsa absolutely did not phone in despite the material almost giving him an excuse to. (Tim does make a forgivable error during the proceedings, confusing an actor who wasn’t in Vertigo with one who was.) — A

School Daze (Allied Vaughn) 4K Ultra)

This 35^th anniversary upgrade’s 4K boost gets it pleasingly close to theatrical quality. Spike Lee’s third picture and second feature (depends on whether you categorize the barbershop one as a feature) saw him putting Columbia’s (modest — $6 million) money into a relatively elaborate musical-comedy that was the first of his pictures to get critics agitated over his ostensible disinclination to apply a consistent tone to his work. We have since come to understand that it is this trait, if you want to call it that, which makes Lee Lee, and which makes Lee great. As for this movie, what’s inconsistent, and again, only if you want to call it that, isn’t tone but stylization; the dramatic scenes are relatively plain and straightforward, and then the mise-en-scene goes low-budget Earth Girls Are Easy for the musical numbers. But, follow along with me here, is this even a problem really? Have you seen Window Shopping/Golden Eighties? No, it’s not a problem. It’s freedom. So roll with it people. This is intriguing, troubling, engaging, and it’s a kick to watch the young cast. The extras are imported from 2018, including Spike’s sporadic commentary. “I went to school with a lot of motherfuckers like that too. Just ignorant.” The music video for “Da Butt” is NOT in 4K, alas — A

Spider Labyrinth (Severin 4K Ultra)

I decided to check this out on the word of the great genre enthusiast and Edwidge Fenech maven Sarah Jane, whose taste for the lurid is utterly unsurpassed. My trust in her is such that once the package arrived, I wasn’t at all put off by the fact that the first twenty minutes or so of this 1988 Gianfranco Giagni picture was over lit hot-air exposition absorbed and acted upon by one of the most mannequinesque male acting leads I’ve ever seen, Roland Wybenga, whose career did not get up to much after this. And sure enough, once it got into gear — with a pursuit and murder in a green-lit room turned into a maze via hanging bedsheets, the first and absolutely mildest of its set pieces — I knew I was in for some goods. Or rather, I did not know, because the thing just piled one bizarre, nonsensical, grotesque surprise on top of another until it established itself in a very high position in my pantheon of what-the-fuck horrors. I cannot recommend this sufficiently highly. Inspirational commentary tidbit: “We’re gonna talk about that hairstyle.” —A+

Tarzan the Ape Man (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

First things first, Warner now has a new “this stuff is racist” disclaimer, it’s a little tighter than the old one, a little less guilt-ridden, and it calls the issuing company “Warner Bros./Discovery.” So Mr. Zaslav has been dotting his Is and crossing his Ts. For what it’s worth. And if any movie needs a “this stuff is racist” disclaimer, Woody Van Dyke’s enthusiastic but nonchalant lensing of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ gonzo tale does. I mean, it’s HELLA RACIST, as they might say in Quincey, but probably wouldn’t. I was startled a lot of the time. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it — and in fact I’m not sure if I ever have watched it in its entirety to be honest. My own enthusiasm for jungle tales on film (or anywhere else, really, unless they’re war movies) opens and shuts with Cooper and Schoedsack and this ain’t Cooper and Schoedsack. No, for me the main attraction of the franchise has always been the promise of Maureen O’Sullivan in deshabille, which is to be honest not an attraction that beckons to me all that frequently. It’s funny about some old-school actresses though. Looking at O’Sullivan in this, you’d never guess she’d end her career working for Woody Allen and Francis Ford Coppola. Whereas looking at Gloria Stuart in The Old Dark House you have no problem imagining her throwing down for James Cameron. Interesting. Anyway. Where was I? Oh, yes, have you SEEN this movie lately? It’s insane. It’s mostly told from the perspective of Jane, Tarzan is only first heard 24 minutes in and only first seen 32 minutes in. And when C. Aubrey Smith’s character gets a look at him, he enthuses, “He’s white, too!” Jesus. Neil Hamilton (we know, we know, the future Commissioner Gordon on the original Batman TV series, we know) as Jane’s suitor, gets whinily jealous of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan before even setting his orbs on the ape-man’s loinclothed glory. He’s not wrong but still, what a feeb.  As Robert A. Harris has observed, both this film’s and Anna Christie’s original materials went up in smoke in the great Warner’s fire — not the one in 2023, but the one in 1934. And in terms of good dupes to work from, this picture came out in not so great shape, but that’s in part due to the nature of the movie itself, a huge cut-and-paste job in some respects. There’s lots of janky documentary wildlife-footage editing; who knows where the original camera negatives of that material were? The image quality is sometimes rough and ready but pretty impressive all things considered. Van Dyke does like to keep things moving along and doesn’t care about matters going completely bonkers; the Scott of the Antarctic-redolent man-and-beast wrestling is especially goofy. And honestly John Waters could have come up with some of this material. The climax, in which, among other things a crowd of African pygmies (I think they’re pygmies) cheer on a guy in an ape suit who’s going to violate Jane, is highly objectionable on grounds moral, aesthetic, racial, and spiritual.  Essential American semiotics studies, to be sure. —A

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Kino Lorber 4K Ultra)

Michael Cimino’s directorial debut is maybe his second-best film (first is Heaven’s Gate, natch) and this 4K rendering displays gorgeous imagery and tells a galvanizing story in which you’ve never hated George Kennedy more. Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges give career high performances here.  A spectacular commentary from my friend Nick Pinkerton commentary spotlights the pre-Mel-Gibson masochism of Eastwood in the shoulder-repair business early on, and quotes from both Richard Schickel and Peter Biskind from points in their careers when they both really knew what they were on about. Nick is a fantastic researcher.  — A+

Inadvertently Black Friday Adjacent Blu-ray/4K Ultra Disc Consumer Guide, Autumn 2023

These things do take time. I started collecting notes for this at the end of August and where are we now? Almost optimally placed for a pre-Black Friday Consumer Guide, although your shopping utility may vary. And in a couple of days the Severin Black Friday Sale stars, so for me, this process is, as Ruth Donnelly put it in Blessed Event, “like Tennyson’s brook — it never ends.”

N.b.: I did not get through the latest and last volume of Universal’s 4K rendering of The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection in time for a coherent assessment but I’ve looked at both Rope and Torn Curtain and they are as spectacular as the other reviews say. Very much looking forward to Topaz and Frenzy and of course the Vista Vision splendor of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Buy with confidence!

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

 American Pop (Sony)

The animator Ralph Bakshi is in many respects a heroic figure, as an American artist who tried to drag animation into some kind of Adult World even as the form, or at least the gatekeepers of the form, kicked and screamed resistance. While I hate to make this pronouncement while the man is still around to read it (not that I think he will, mind you), I have to say that in my direct experience of moviegoing, particularly as a teenager, Bakshi as consistently the source of my greatest disappointments. He had the best, most forward ideas (including, yep, an animated adaptation of Tolkien’s Ring series), and followed them up with execution that was either lackluster, crude, or spectacularly wrongheaded. His fondness for rotoscoping frequently brought his work up short, I felt. But there was also something in the quality of his defiance to the aesthetic forces that be, or were, as the case may be. American Pop, a scrappy fictionalized history of the evolution of popular music as essentially a multi-generational crime story, exemplifies the ultimately coarse nature of Bakshi’s vision and reaches an apotheosis of absurdity in its ultimate vision of the rock star as street pusher. Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” isn’t quite the song that can sell this conceit, to say the least. The colors are vivid, some of the vulgarity packs a genuine kick (particular in the turn-of-the-19^th-century stuff [and isn’t it weird to have to specify “19^th” when you bring up a century turning nowadays?] with its overstuffed women of the evening and manic pianists) but ultimately the movie, while constantly diverting in a way, is an encyclopedia of Ralph bringing you up short. —B+

Andrzej Zulawski: The Third Part of the Night/The Devil/On the Silver Globe (Eureka! Region B Blu-ray)

Watching the blood orgies and crucifixions at great heights that make up just some of the action of On The Silver Globe, a Zulawski novice might wonder whether the person who committed this imagery to celluloid isn’t confined in an institution of some sort. WE all like to talk a good “derangement of the senses” game but this stuff is…well, genuinely dangerous. Anyway, not only was Andrzej Zulawski allowed to walk free (after a fashion) on this earth, but he also actually narrates Silver Globe, providing a meta-narrative about the film he could never properly complete. And at the very end he appears as a reflection in a shop window, looking composed enough. The diegesis stuff — based on a sci-fi novel by Zulawski’s great uncle — was shot in the ‘70s, while Zulawski’s docenting accomplished in the 80s; the final form was released in 1988. While the home-media debut of this monumental and controversial It’s the main event of this spectacular box set, the other two pictures included are no slouches either. His 1971 feature debut, The Third Part of the Night, set in occupied Poland during the second World War, doesn’t have the story you might expect, and as such succeeds in presenting an unusually distinctive nightmare. 1972’s The Devil, set in the late 18^th century, posits, among other things, that the evil we associate with the Dark One is already inside of us; the devil, as he’s called, just hands us the knife. Silver Globe gets the bounty of supplements, including a documentary on its making and a commentary by Daniel Bird that sets the standard for such items as usual. Michael Brooke, in interviews, provides fresh insights on the other two films.  Spectacular restoration/presentation. Essential. — A+

Blood and Black Lace (Arrow 4K Ultra Disc)

GREAT GOD ALMIGHTY THIS LOOKS AMAZING. This is not super-big news, as the latest edition presents the 4K restoration on a 4K Ultra disc. We’ve seen its earlier iteration on Blu-ray, but now in native resolution it’s that much more more, and it’s magnificent. This round with Mario Bava’s, ahem, seminal but never equaled giallo was my first time with the commentary, which was on the prior Blu-ray. Tim Lucas bringing it as usual, and it’s pleasing to note that over the years Tim’s delivery of his splendidly detailed and informative scripts is getting less stiff. So in addition to being fascinating, here he’s genuinely a pleasure to listen to. And of course he wrote the book on the guy (Bava, that is), literally. This package seems like an unlikely source for information about the marital history of Rosemary Clooney, but just you wait.  —A+

Christopher Strong (Warner Archive)

A plot right out of Evelyn Waugh, if Evelyn Waugh wrote romantic melodramas: unlikely lovers brought together by vile bodies/bright young things indulging in the height of frivolity, that is, an unusually crass scavenger hunt. (The actual source material derives from the now-forgotten Gilbert Frankau.) Katharine Hepburn has never been quite so damn Hepburny as in her third movie debut, directed with admirable dispatch and an even more, perhaps, admirable straight face by Dorothy Arzner. Colin Clive is a little too Colin Clive to make an entirely credible romantic lead, but his off-kilter quality adds nice neurotic notes to the proceedings. Which are both brisk and, shall we say, wrought almost to the point of over. All shot in a luminous black and white that’s very handsomely presented here. One could say for Hepburn completists only but really, why aren’t you a Hepburn completist to begin with? — A

Contempt (Lionsgate 4K Ultra Disc)

A 4K Ultra disc of a recent and very fine restoration is a no-brainer. So give Lionsgate credit for transferring Godard’s remarkable 1963 poison-pen missive to producers, and valentine to Fritz Lang, on to slabs of plastic and metal. As for the menus, the absence of extras, and so on, they are a monument to “perfunctory.” “Cineastes de notre temps? Never heard of it!”  — A+ for image, B- for everything else

The Devil Doll (Warner Archive)

Physical media has yielded a bumper crop of Tod Browning recently, between this and the Criterion triple feature headed by Freaks, which naturally gets the highest recommendation possible. This 1936 oddity is his second-to-last picture, and its driving premise, believe it or not, was reiterated in Alexander Payne’s 2017 Downsizing. Lionel Barrymore takes the people-shrinking technology co-developed by his fellow Devil’s Island escapee and uses it for evil ends, or at least vengeful ends — the guys he’s taking revenge on were stinkers. The movie’s defining atmosphere is established with the daughter of the escapee scientist playing goth organ as her mother works in a lab full of vile foaming liquids. The mom’s got a Bride of Frankenstein white streak in her updo, natch. Erich Von Stroheim worked on the scenario, not that you’d guess. The image quality is lovely silvery stuff. The optical-printer effects showing miniaturized animals and people is not dissimilar to what we saw in Bride, now that we think of it. New supplements are rarities on Warner Archive releases but this has a solid, informative mint commentary by Dr. Steven Haberman and Constantine Nasr, who’ve produced a bunch of documentaries on genre cinema, including Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy. They know their stuff and have impeccable taste and of course can’t help but notice the similarity between Franz Waxman’s score here and what he did in the prior year’s, yup, Bride of Frankenstein. Bottom line, I guess: If you love Bride of Frankenstein (and if you don’t, why are you reading this?) you’ll need this.. — A+

The Exorcist (Warner 4K Ultra Disc)

As Robert Harris has pointed out on Home Theater Forum, there’s no “reference” version of this on home video so mere consumers with no access to original materials have a limited comparison perspective with respect to what many of us saw in theaters back in the 1970s.. What it boils down to for this high-high def edition, then, is how it looks to you while watching. I do not cotton to Friedkin’s director’s cut — while an undeniably great filmmaker, the man was prone to some poor decisions, and this was one of them — so I’m going by my impression of the theatrical version in this edition. And my impression is rather good. I like the surround mix. I like the colors in the Iraq sequence and especially the detail. I like the way the bedroom lamp makes Chris McNeil’s script pages look a little pink. One of the first things I did at Premiere was an article about the potential and the shortcomings of the then-new DVD format, which had its origins in MP4 video compression technology, and I used the approach-of-the subway shot about 17 minutes in as an example of a certain kind of picture distortion. Anyway, I like how that shot looks here too. I like the muted chilliness and the popping purples of the priest’s vestments in the exorcism scene. What else? Max Von Sydow is a great actor, Jason Miller is a great actor, Ellen Burstyn is a great actor, Linda Blair is a great actor, Mercedes McCambridge is a great actor, Jack MacGowran is a great actor.  Lee J. Cobb is Lee J. Cobb. Pretty great movie, and this is great version.   — A+

Night of the Hunted/Rape of the Vampire/Fascination/Lips of Blood (Powerhouse 4K Ultra Discs)

The Powerhouse 4K Rollin project continues apace and the results are rapture inducing. The threadbare maestro’s feature debut, 1968’s Rape of the Vampire, is in starkly beautiful black and white; Imagine a heterosexual, more compulsive Jean Cocteau working with a crew accustomed to making cheap “roughies.” 1980’s Night of the Hunted is moderately Cronenbergian, as commentator Tim Lucas notes. He also bemoans the film’s disjointedness and lack of resourceful use of film language, a byproduct of the rushed nature of the production and Rollin’s dissatisfaction with the conditions. All true, but star Brigitte Lahaie provides constructive distraction from such ostensible defects. And Tim is unabashed in his adoration of the film’s ending, and why not? It’s fantastic. I personally don’t mind the disjointedness, it gives the movie a peculiar collage feel. I also quite appreciated its kinship with The Crazies. Fascination features Lahaie with a scythe, life, and/or death, doesn’t get any better. Lips of Blood is bonkers and definitive. All are presented in restorations that can’t help but engulf the receptive viewer. — A+

Father’s Little Dividend (Warner Archive)

A few years back I waxed rhapsodic over 1950’s Father of the Bride, Minnelli and MGM’s celebration of the joys and sorrows of American upper-middle-class values. Against all class odds, it’s an ineffable, practically transcendent vision. Lightning did not strike twice for the 1951 sequel, in part because the imagery is not nearly as splendid. Of course Elizabeth Taylor still looks great but in the first film she was conceived and shot as the apple of both a father’s and a potential husband’s eye, and here she’s relegated to performing her wifely duty, for God and country and so on. The Blu-ray is fabulous, as is customary. The comedic stuff of the film is however a little less coherent than it might have been. The “losing the kid” episode is darker than this movie wants, as Minnelli doesn’t apply much melodramatic brio to it, and melodramatic brio could at times of course be his middle name. It’s both sharp and tolerant (it would of course have to be) in critiquing men and their sexism. The cast is of course uniformly lovable and splendid but Joan Bennett winds up as the MVP., and good for her. — A

The Giant Gila Monster/The Killer Shrews (Film Masters)

I fondly remember considering this 1959 masterpiece of forced perspective a little goofy even when I was ten. In any event, this small-label restoration gets the much-desired job done: Giant Gila Monster has NEVER LOOKED BETTER. The Kuleshov Effect shots (are they intentionally so? We will never know) of the Gila Monster doing the bit with its tongue while watching the “teen” lead characters make out are fantastic. Haven’t gotten to Killer Shrews yet, because frankly it skinks me out, even when given the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. But this package bears recommending on Gila Monster alone.  — A

Heroic Times (Deaf Crocodile)

Lest you presume that this 1983 Hungarian animated feature might be catnip for the likes of Viktor Orban, the title turns out to be ironic. This tale of medieval slaughter and concomitant personal betrayal) and rage, rage, rage), directed by József Gémes, features really unusual multiple graphic approaches including impressionist tableaux. Not life-changing fare but damn intriguing and illuminating.  Alternate Title: My Brother Was In Jethro Tull. — A 

It Came From Outer Space (Universal 4K Ultra Disc)

Jack Arnold’s beautiful 1953 sci-fi picture, was an anomaly at the time because the “It” that came from outer space wasn’t malevolent. Yes, it was menacing, or at least highly disquieting, in its cloning powers, but it meant no harm. Leave it to Ray Bradbury to come up with this particular narrative curveball. Richard Carlson plays the astronomer who has to convince his community over and over again, Barbara Rush is his BEAUTIFUL wife whose presence and costuming provide the movie with what I’ve always seen as very Cocteau-esque touches. It was produced by Thompson from Citizen Kane. A stone classic presented in very gorgeous 2D 4K Ultra — the image, although not without native grain, is arguably a little TOO pristine depending on your taste. But I found it dreamy, almost literally. — A+

The Last Horror Movie (Severin 4K Ultra Disc)

Taxi Driver showed Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle aimlessly sitting in porno theaters. This grindhouse oddity starring Joe Spinell (also in Taxi Driver, hey!) pointedly shows his character Vinny beating off in a porno theater. The camera setup is more or less identical to Scorsese’s. That’s the thing about exploitation cinema: it goes where the mainstream will not dare. You really gotta hand it to Spinell, as an actor he had exactly ZERO vanity. Here he plays a slob who travels to Cannes to enlist Caroline Munro, Spinell’s costar in the genuinely aberrant Maniac (and indeed this item was marketed as Maniac II in some provinces, and the slipcase artwork for this exemplary package is for that iteration) to star in his own incoherent vision. Along the way he cuts a murderous swath through the fest.  Confronting Stanley Kline, the fictional auteur of the fictional Caller In the Night, Vinny declaims,” It was disgusting, it made me sick it made everybody sick, you shouldn’t be ALLOWED to make films like this Stanley!” He then enacts activist criticism at its most extreme. The murder here are mostly of dudes, which is kind of refreshing. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d get with this but ended up enjoying myself quite a bit. — A

The Life of Emile Zola (Warner Archive)

People talk about the “great man” biopics of the late 30s as being stodgy and righteous but to be honest, I enjoyed this quite a bit more than Maestro even though it’s one of the most egregious copouts in U.S. studio history. In that — try to keep up — the whole reason that Dreyfus was persecuted — antisemitism in the French military, oh, and EVERYWHERE ELSE IN FRANCE — is not only not articulated in this movie but scarcely even implied, because the Warner brothers didn’t want to offend Germany, or something. This was 1937, and eventually the Warners would get with the damn program but still. So what’s in the asset side of the ledger? Great image quality, fevered Paul Muni performance, that great Warner biopic pacey-ness, overseen by the reliable William Dieterle. It’s staggeringly literal at times but maybe that’s the way to get your social justice message across after all —at least its approach has got clarity. With Grant Mitchell as Clemenceau. That guy had range. Also keep an eye out for out for l’il Dickie Moore as a Dreyfus kid. Funny, he doesn’t look… — A

Pandora’s Box (Eureka! Region B Bluray)

I have to confess that for reasons of mere personal slovenliness I’ve never paid G.W. Pabst much mind. I was underwhelmed on my first viewings, back in the ‘80s, of both Diary of a Lost Girl and The Threepenny Opera, and so I held Pandora’s Box at arm’s length for years. I figured I’d get as much from various stills of Louise Brooks in the picture as I might from actually sitting through the thing itself. Always been a big fan of Berg’s opera, though. Enjoyed the hell out of that production a couple of years ago at the Met. Yes, my explanation here is diffuse and incoherent, but it's prelude to telling all you people that I’ve SEEN THE LIGHT via this new Blu from Eureka, a 2K rendering of a restoration, and yes, this actually is a Great Film. Ado Kyrou said, “Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece” and maybe he’s right (wonder if he ever saw her Three Mesquiteers picture, 1938’s Overland Stage Raiders, as unusual a retirement movie as has ever been). But Box has a truckload of legit goods beyond Brooks’ remarkable intuitive performance. This looks beautiful for the most part, but there is a problem and it’s not an insignificant one. It was pointed out on the NitrateVille site and subsequently mentioned by Ye Olde DVD Beaver. "The mistake: When Lulu stuffs some money into the meter reader's hand, he is so distracted that he lets two coins drop onto the carpet and doesn't even realize it. The digital clean-up software registered those two falling coins as defects and erased them. So we do not see anything fall out of his hand.” This is pretty early on: around 4:37 on the disc, 1:37 in the movie proper (there’s about three minutes of restoration explanation in the presentation before the movie itself gets underway). Once seen it’s impossible to unsee, because Brooks’ Lulu observes the coins falling from his hand (he picks them up from the carpet a little later) and you wonder why she’s observing literally nothing. Obviously for this viewer the subsequent enjoyment was not killed. Whether this will be fixed is not yet known. —A-

The Psychic (Severin 4K Ultra Disc)

The early shots of face-mutilation-as-a-byproduct-of-jumping-off-a-cliff-and-one’s-head-scraping-the-rock-face (which eventuality strikes me as at least a trifle implausible to be honest) notwithstanding, this 1977 goodie is one of Lucio Fulci’s more restrained efforts and this 4K edition is intoxicatingly beautiful. The movie also features shots of Jennifer O’Neill in a car looking worried, endless shots of gloved hands turning on and off recording devices, and an excellent cheesy/drippy score. Masterpiece, obviously. The supplemental array is incredible and features the shot-in-’93 interview film Fulci Talks, a typically candid session with the maestro —who, among other things, knew the highbrow Italian arts scene well enough that he refers to William Weaver as “Bill” — shot three years prior to his 1996 passing. Inspirational Fulci quote: “There was always a dwarf reciting Walt Whitman poems from a chair. I later found out he was Truman Capote.”  Definitive Fulci quote: “I regard myself as kind of an accumulation of incoherence.”—A+.

Queen Christina (Warner Archive)

Quite good lookin’, spectacular Mamoulian stylization, superb Garbo performance, this title has it all. The role capitalizes on Garbo’s androgynous appeal in a way that lets Mamoulian and the actor flex some comedic muscle, as when the iconoclastic title character disguises herself as a lad in order to be Among The People, and thus masqueraded, winds up bunking at an inn with Spanish envoy Antonio, Garbo’s frequent on-screen romantic partner John Gilbert, who’s quite good.  Haunted, romping, funny, ultimately stirring — the final shot is one for the ages and even if you’re not a fan you’ve probably seen it in a lot of Industry-Celebrating-Montages. Tom Milne’s Mamoulian book is required reading, and his chapter on this is breathtaking.  On a sequence prior to the disguise adventure he is at his bedazzled best: “[A] long, lingering, magnificent close-up as she stands at the window staring out over the endless, unchanging landscape of white: ‘Snow,’ mourns the voice of the greatest blues singer of all, ‘is like a wild sea. One could go out and get lost in it and forget the world.’” — A+

 The Sexual Story of O (Severin)

In a move that pays homage to the original marketing of the movie, Severin put some ooh-la-la shots of late-period Franco consort and muse and star Lina Romay on the slipcover — even though she is nowhere to be seen in this 1984 film. By this time Romay had dialed back on the frantic performative sexuality that remade her name (born in 1954, Franco rechristened Rosa Martinez with the handle of the Brooklyn-born [in 1919] Mexican-American big band singer who, among other things, cameos in Tex Avery’s Señor Droopy) and in this picture the erotic hijinks are enacted mostly by a trio of younger performers who are appositely somnambulant. This is one of Franco’s better “Camera looking in and out of hotel windows” movies. The shooting style is casual while never getting too lax, and while it takes its time getting seriously outré, when it gets there, get ready. —A

Spinout/Double Trouble (Warner Archive)

When considering the unfortunate aspects of Elvis Presley’s film output, and there are many, the cookie-cutter quality of his ‘60s musicals is often cited. How cookie-cutter were they? Check it out: 1966’s Spinout is 93 minutes long. And 1967’s (yes, 1967’s; it’s like Sgt. Pepper wasn’t happening, even though the movie is partially set in London) Double Trouble is 92 minutes long. Impressive! Trouble is, of course, now semi-legendary as having been initially developed for, who else, Julie Christie. Irwin Winkler’s producer credit here is a mutation of his then-status as, with Robert Chartoff, Christie’s U.S. manager. Both pictures are directed by then-nearly-blind Norman Taurog, Gore Vidal’s one-man refutation of the auteur theory. They are both amiable, goofy and corny as Kansas. As for Spinout, it has an unusually strong audio component. And looks great. Why, I asked myself, does the rear-projection driving stuff here look better than it does in Hitchcock pictures of the same period?. While there’s certainly a legitimate technical explanation, I’m just going to go with “life is unfair.” Presley plays a singing race car driver, because of course he does, and “Stop, Look and Listen” is not a terrible song. “Adam and Evil,” on the other hand, kind of is. Set design and costumes are very POPPY. The proceedings, involving Elvis dodging the affections of three beauties, are relatively narcotizing. For luthiers and gear nuts there are glimpses of Elvis and a bandmate playing one of the most bizarre Gibson SG double necks ever. It is, my guitar expert sources tell me, a six string guitar and a six string bass, or baritone guitar, and one of only two known to be in existence, special ordered for Elvis by the Colonel. One of the two is on exhibit at Graceland. The other is MIA. The features Donna Reed’s TV husband Carl Betz and Una Merkel of 42^nd Street, Destry Rides Again, and I Love Melvin fame. Double Trouble was written by Jo Heims, whose work here does nothing to hint that she’d later co-write the scenario for Dirty Harry and co-script Play Misty for Me. The Elvis/Julie Christie issue becomes easier to understand if you figure, while watching (and you might!) that the Christie part was not of the male lead but of this film’s female lead Annette Day, as a moderately ditzy heiress pursued by a variety of criminals. The vaudevillian Wiere Brothers provide ostensible screwball comedy accents. One wonders why, and then one detects, once again, The Colonel’s hand. One can see this, with Christie and a suitable male lead — and EVEN ELVIS PRESLEY, properly directed would have made a suitable male lead — working along similar lines to Gambit, made the same year as this, with Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine. In any event, this isn’t Gambit.  Both discs: —A

Touch of Evil (Eureka 4K Ultra Disc)

Damn this looks great Particularly in the grimy closeups of Welles and Tamiroff. One disquieting side effect of the excellent image quality is that you really notice how Charlton Heston’s brownface makeup, which is relatively “tastefully” or discreetly applied (or maybe at times not quite applied at all) to Heston in the Welles-shot stuff, is slathered on to an embarrassing and shameful degree in the reshoots Universal ordered for story clarity, such as it is, and which were overseen by Harry Keller, whose own credited directorial career doesn’t even reach journeyman level. The scene where it really popped for me, in a hotel lobby with Heston and Janet Leigh, is properly excised in the reconstructed version, one of three to choose from here. I got around to checking out the commentaries, one from the late and fast-talking F.X. Feeney (“small wonder there’s an explosion when these two kiss”) another from Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore, who also sound pretty caffeinated, and two from restoration honcho Rick Schmidlin, one solo and one with Leigh and Heston, who lived to see the Welles memo carried out as best possible. All are informative and companionable, but of course the one with the stars is the most to be cherished. — A +

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-