Some Came Running

Summer 2023 Blu-ray/4K Ultra Consumer Guide

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

Angel Face (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

Of all the amour fou film noirs out there, this one is absolutely the fou-est. Only Alain Corneau’s Serie Noire comes close, and that needed almost thirty years and being actually French to top this 1952 Otto Preminger lulu. If you’ve seen it you know what I’m talking about. If you ain’t seen it, grab this disc pronto. Very clean black and white image. The bags under poor beleaguered Herbert Marshall’s eyes have never spoken more eloquently. He plays the (spoiler alert) doomed dad of (not too much of a spoiler alert) psycho heiress Jean Simmons. Robert Mitchum, of course, is the ambulance-attendant sap who falls hard for her upon seeing her tickle the ivories and immediately throws over his Nice American Girlfriend for her after she, um, stalks him to his favorite diner. The cad. But anyway — TOGETHER THEY GO TO HELL. Preminger tells this hot tale with exemplary cool, the better to blow your mind at the finale. Beyond essential. As with Land of the Pharaohs (see below) the commentary from the standard def edition is included in…a standard def edition, as for some reason it couldn’t be imported on to the new transfer. It’s by Eddie Muller and it’s good. — A +

The Circus Tent (Second Run Blu-ray)

Second Run is almost unique among labels in that every single title it puts out is worth your time. Not just a cinephile’s time, not just a collector’s time; but your time as in you, a human being presumably invested in life on this earth. Taste doesn’t come into it. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but I think a rhetorically useful one, as a challenge. Someone name me a title in the label’s catalog that doesn’t meet my exaggerated claim. Whether you’ve heard of the picture before or not, you’re going to get something good out of watching it. This 1978 Indian film, for instance, presented in the restored form in which it went to Cannes last year. It was not dreamt of in my philosophy prior to my acquiring a copy. And here it is, a singular and great film. And by singular I do mean a film unlike any other. It is a fiction composed of documentary components, or something like documentary components — there are professional actors in the mix. The premise is simple: director Aravindan Govindan hires an actual circus and brings that circus to a riverbank village that has never seen such a thing. First there’s mystery, wonderment. Then there’s hardship, dissatisfaction, boredom. Some people change their lives. Others bemoan that they’re incapable of changing theirs. The black and white imagery is poesy in a rich but narrow register. Startling. The extras stress the restoration work for the most part and are illuminating. — A+

Creepshow (Scream! Factory 4K Ultra)

This was, in a sense, George A. Romero’s first unimportant picture. That’s not a dismissal. But consider that the likes of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, The Crazies and Martin were not just incredibly effective genre films but also significant statements, both aesthetic and social. As also was, I’ll insist, Season of the Witch. And Knightriders. Okay, maybe not There’s Always Vanilla. But don’t ruin my thesis. Let’s just iterate that this 1982 movie is focused on serving up not too much more than a nasty good time, and it does, propelled of course by Stephen King’s script. Critics who complained about the predictability of the scenarios in this EC--inspired omnibus kind of missed the point. A certain amount of predictability is built-in by convention. As it happens, I was a little surprised to be reminded that the opening scene, establishing the frame story, is pretty genuinely dark for an ostensibly “fun” movie, but then again, have you read an EC comic lately? Romero was a fan of Tales of Hoffmann and this film is the closest he got to making a picture akin to that Powell/Pressburger eye-popper. Not just the multiple stories, but the garish colors! And animation! And frames composed to look like comic book panels! Diopter shots! The shimmering water in the bathtub in the segment in which Stephen King acts in fact looks like a direct homage to Tales. This is a damn good looking 4K Ultra disc kitted out with customary Shout! Factory abbondanza. THREE soundtrack audio tracks (7.1, 5.1, 2-channel) Three commentaries (Horror people cannot get enough details) And more. — A+

DuBarry Was A Lady (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

People used to say, “Wait, was Red Skelton ever a thing” and now I guess they say, “What’s Red Skelton?” So, that’s either progress, or not. I say not, at the risk of sounding like a “square.” The silly stylings of the benevolent “little guy” comedian have certainly dated, we cannot deny. Nor can we do much of anything about it even were we inclined to. In any event, this curio from 1943 showcases Skelton at the relative height of his thingness, but wait, it also represents one of the biggest cinema vehicles for, um, Lucille Ball, who’s still a thing. So maybe I’m missing the lede here. In any event, this irrepressibly fluffy MGM musical is about ordinary Yankee doofus nightclub types who dream themselves into the reign of Louis XV. Singing Lucy is dubbed (mostly) by Marsha Mears. Relatively svelte but irrepressibly brash Zero Mostel doing a wacky Charles Boyer impersonation sets the overall comedic tone right out of the gate. Oh, it’s a Cole Porter musical too, or rather it’s based on one, and as it happens one of its standout numbers is “Salome,” which is an Edens and Harburg song and performed by Virginia O’Brien, who’s a pip. Keep your eyes peeled for an unusually pleasant-looking Buddy Rich, who’s the drummer in Tommy Dorsey’s band. Consider that an outfit called The Oxford Boys was once at least a minor thing. Jo Stafford sings “Katie Went To Haiti” as part of the Pied Pipers. I like the preceding sentence here, because anyone born after 1980 might think it’s in Esperanto. This Warner Archive disc boasts spectacular Technicolor; Karl Freund, later hired by Ball to pioneer sitcom filming for I Love Lucy, was the cinematographer. You’ll note that the focus puller is frequently challenged during the “I Love An Esquire Girl” number, which has a wonderful cameo punchline.  Delightful in all its particulars, a movie actually so insubstantial as to be kind of monumental — A+

East of Eden (Warner 4K Ultra)

For its 100^th Anniversary, the entity still known at least partially as Warner is putting out substantial upgrades of a good number of its classic titles. Their manifestations as physical consumer products are, we ought to remember, a side benefit to the fact that these digital versions are what’s going to be distributed to rep theaters from hereon in, replacing physical prints, which in a sense is a shame, but as the man said, you can’t stop what’s coming. This edition of Elia Kazan’s 1955 picture, James Dean’s debut in a lead role, is a real revision of the Blu-ray in the prior Dean box set, right down to the opening. The typeface designating the overture, for instance, here matches the type on the original opening credits, whereas on the box set disc it was just rendered in blocky orange letters.  And that rendition of the film kicks off with imagery that’s really brown and sunbaked. Yes, a title card speaks of the Santa Lucia mountains as being “dark and brooding” but… The new version gets some accurate green into the imagery. Not just in the opening shots, but check out eleven minutes in, when Dean jumps a train and walks across a green field; it’s properly lush. In that same shot there’s a dissolve to future Smiths cover star Richard Davalos walking with Julie Harris, and that transition is smoother than on the Blu-ray. The whole thing looks properly fantastic. Sound is also excellent. Boy oh boy is it a shame that Timothy Carey’s voice was dubbed by costar Albert Dekker, because Kazan didn’t like Carey’s own cadences, which the stubborn actor insisted represented “the way pimps talk” and Kazan decided no it wasn’t. The sole extra is Richard Schickel’s old commentary. — A

 

From Hollywood To Heaven (Powerhouse/Indicator Blu-ray)

I haven’t made it all the way through this eight-disc, thirteen film collection yet and who knows when I will. And I cannot tell a lie to sensitive souls out there: one of the films in it, 1968’s The Exotic Ones, features footage of rockabilly singer Sleepy LaBeef appearing to actually bite the head off of a chicken. So maybe don’t watch that one, although the movie is quite the thing otherwise so maybe you can just skip the scenes when you get close to it. Or not. Its whole gestalt kind of relies on that scene. So I don’t know what to tell you. Anyway. This set represents a substantial, one might say representative percentage of the film output of Ron, June, and later son Tim Ormond. Ron got off the ground at Monogram, formed an alliance with Western B star Lash Larue, branched out into making Southern-fried exploitation pictures showcasing, in some cases, a truckload of country music stars. And after a plane crash in 1966 experienced a Road To Damascus religious conversion and started making whacked out evangelical tracts on film. If you know that Negativeland album Escape From Noise, you’ve heard preacher Estus Pirkle intone “Christianity is stupid! Communism is good;” the source of this sample, the eye-opening satanic Cold War apocalypse now item If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1971) is here. Many of the transfers here are upgraded standard def (a flood in Tim Ormond’s home messed up a great deal of original material) and they’re done well. ANYWAY. The main reason I’m listing this here is the set contains the 1959 sex-trauma-and-hypnotism picture Please Don’t Touch Me, which is just one of the most startling films I’ve ever seen and one that I’ll include in my Ten Greatest List if I’m invited to participate in the next Sight and Sound poll. To say it’s as if Straub and Huillet attempted a grindhouse picture doesn’t quite cover it. But it does make so many self-conscious attempts at surreality look limp as hell. It’s worth the price of the whole box. And the rest of the box is pretty extraordinary anyway.   — A+

Hugo (Arrow 4K Ultra)

Two things: Blu-ray and 4K discs have their shortcomings — which almost always stem from the quality of the restoration or transfer, rather than the formats themselves — and you may notice that the ones I’m reviewing are all getting high grades and it’s because they’re really good. Luck of the chosen draw — nothing I’ve been looking at in this batch has, to my eye, bad blacks or blown out whites. There is perhaps no better time to be a physical media person than right now. And another thing, I should admit that a lot of the labels I’m reviewing here are ones for which I’ve done supplemental work. Or that my friends have. As it happens my good friend Farran Smith Nehme wrote an essay for this new, 2D-only edition of this, one of the greatest in Martin Scorsese’s endless series of gangster films. (Ar ar ar.) So I’m ethically compromised. Which is why this feature goes on my blog and not on a paying website. (Actually I could PROBABLY get away with putting it, conflicts and all, on a paying website, but since no paying website wants it, that’s kind of putting the cart before the nonexistent horse.) Christopher Lee’s in it. Funny how the things you want to see in cinema work as time passes. At the time of this movie’s release I was so stoked for Christopher Lee that he got to work with Scorsese, and now that Christopher Lee is gone I’m still stoked that Scorsese got to work with Christopher Lee. The disc is gorgeous, beautiful pastel colors throughout. I’m still exploring the COPIOUS extras. I listened to and liked Méliès biographer Jon Spira’s commentary, which concentrates on what’s on screen, and not the hilarious process of the movie’s making, which cost producer Graham King so much money that he took some revenge for the overages when Scorsese was trying to make Silence. You can read about that in my book about Goodfellas. I know, it sounds confusing, but it isn’t. Also. People who complain that there’s not enough CGI in Scorsese movies really need to check this out. There’s plenty, and it’s really well done. — A+

 Invaders From Mars 4K (Ignite 4K Ultra)

So many components made this 1953 independent production such special nightmare fuel for children of all ages. The unique color, courtesy of a two-strip, standard camera process called SuperCinecolor. It’s obviously less rich in saturation than three-strip Technicolor was, and the ever-so-slight sense of muting contributes mightily to the movie’s eerie feeling. As does director William Cameron Menzie’s sense of cinematic space, derived of course from his unique, idiosyncratic set design aesthetic. The plot anticipates Invasion of the Body Snatchers but the hook is here applied to a kid, eager little Jimmy Hunt, who’s convinced that aliens have replaced his loving parents with mean sorta-zombies, because, well, that’s what’s happened. Leif Erickson in particular really digs deep for his Evil Dad side — he’s lowkey terrifying.  Extras include an interview with Menzies biographer James Curtis; it’s dry but informative. Child lead Jimmy Hunt, now an adorable old man, is delightful. The alternate scenes are weird: Euro distributors requested a different ending and more, and they were shot and edited most perfunctorily, and they appear here prefaced by a long text explaining how they’re so bad and why. And the standard stuff on restoration, which is a little more unusual than usual because of the materials themselves. Anyway, a must-own.  — A+

Joy House (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

One rarely hears the words “I need to bone up on my Rene Clement” in this household, although as of this writing I do rather look forward to Kino’s upcoming Blu-ray of Is Paris Burning? This title just happened fit the bill one random movie night, and one thing that Claire K. and I enjoy on a random movie night is getting kicked in the head by an unexpected whack job of a 1960s movie. Which this is. “This is kind of Losey-esque, isn’t it,” Claire observed midway through this sometimes goofily moody thriller in which an on-the-run Alain Delon finds himself cooped up in a French mansion with Lola Albright (!!!) and Jane Fonda and a cranky dude in a hidden room (André Oumansky). And a cat. Anyway, the image quality is solid — the 2K Gaumont restoration yields a nice, sharply detailed widescreen black-and-white frame —the soundtrack options slightly challenging (seems as if its native language is, indeed, International Coproduction English, with the actual voices of at least Fonda and Albright; and the lip movements sync up in the case of both lead actresses; it’s hard to tell who’s dubbing Fonda in French, but it often doesn’t really sound like her, despite the fact that she could have done a French dub rather credibly; overall I recommend the English version frankly), and the commentary from Howard Berger and Nathaniel Thompson a little more focused than these often discursive (but always engaging) gentlemen sometimes manage. Look for future Boss Hogg and Commandant Lassard (that’s Sorrell Booke and George Gaynes to noninitiates of The Dukes of Hazzard and Police Academy) as a couple of the tough guys pursuing Delon. — B+

Land of The Pharaohs (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

Helen Of Troy (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

Ah, the mid-1950s, when widescreen color epics set in the ancient world were in Tribble-like profusion. John Ford didn’t succumb to the fad, but Howard Hawks did, and so produced what pretty much everyone acknowledges as a failure, Land of the Pharaohs. And when citing that failure, pretty much everyone repeats something that Hawks told Joseph McBride about starting the script with William Faulkner: “I don’t know how a Pharaoh talks,” Faulkner said to the director. But they don’t repeat the rest of the story, in which Faulkner asks, “Is it all right if I write him like a Kentucky colonel?” After which co-screenwriter Harry Kurnitz protest that he doesn’t know from Kentucky colonels, he wants to do it King Lear style, and Hawks tells them to go their own ways, he’ll rewrite what they come up with, and then Hawks admits that in so doing, “I messed it up.” And the final truth of the matter is that you can almost never win with this kind of period stuff, at least not with some people. Witness the ridicule Scorsese got in some quarters for making the Apostles talk and walk something like contemporary urban, um, mooks in The Last Temptation of Christ. Still. Watching the Hawks film, the first thing you might think is BOY DID THEY EVER NOT KNOW how a Pharaoh talks. But the problem isn’t so much the dialogue as it is it delivery, and the acting in general — it’s too stiff, too stately. Only a few times does Jack Hawkins show the spark of a, say, Jack Hawkins. As it happens the movie has a lot to recommend it.  A truly adventurous Dimitri TIomkin score. Spectacularly sensible compositions that don’t resemble the tableaus of De Mille. And unlike a lot of other films of this ilk, it really does move right along, and is pretty thoughtful on a few interesting topics: ritual and ceremony, slave labor. That kind of thing. The disc looks great too. Inspirational dialogue from Joan Collins: “Perhaps my Lord would PREFER it if I were OLD?” Her performance is a bit much but then again Dewey Martin’s no Montgomery Clift, let alone a Ricky Nelson. The only actor who appears comfortable is James Robertson Justice. None of the actors in 1956’s Helen of Troy, not even the at this time usually insouciant Brigitte Bardot, look particularly comfortable. (She does not play the title role, by the way; rather, she is servant to Helen, played by Continental Beauty [as they used to call such figures] Rossana Podestá.) Robert Wise’s picture opens with an overture, Max Steiner borrowing heavily from Ludwig van, and then dips into some narration delivered by a Paul Frees wannabe, intoning non-Homeric phrases like “Today known as the Dardenelles.” These components are generally never good signs. The movie winds up being a lot more watchable than you’d think, though, provided you’ve a high tolerance for Cinecitta-itis. Those who know, know. The battle scenes are better than competently directed, although they do succumb to cliché, as in a cutaway to a single wounded soldier staggering about with a fatal sword wound. The psychedelic-lighted orgy and of course the Trojan horse bits are other highlights.

Land — A-

Helen — B+

 

The Nutty Professor 4K (Paramount 4K Ultra)

Consider J. Hoberman on Robert Bresson: “Bluntly put, to not get Bresson is to not get the idea of motion pictures—it’s to have missed that train the Lumiére brothers filmed arriving at Lyon station 110 years ago.” Now consider Gilbert Adair on a particular image derived from Jerry Lewis’ astonishing 1963 picture: “For if it’s possible, even easy, to dislike Jerry Lewis, possible to dislike The Nutty Professor, possible, even, to judge the image opposite as kitschy, downright ugly, I would nevertheless submit that, if you cannot understand how such an image might ever be judged beautiful, even as it rejects, or insults, every virtue in the canon of high-art pictorialism, if you cannot understand how its garish color tonality, so very vulgar on the printed page, may be transfigured within the context of the medium to which it owes allegiance, then you do not understand the cinema.” Anyway so there. The transfer on this new edition is very…accurate. Which some might take for subdued, but as you get further into the film its candy-colored clowning becomes more vibrant. The gray-pink pastels of the gym walls…well they’re something else. The whole thing is really beautiful.  Frankly, all of Lewis’ films, at least all of those from his Paramount run, warrant this treatment. Fat chance. Extras include the commentary Lewis recorded around 2003 with his good buddy Steve Lawrence and is exactly what you’d hope/expect it to be. Lawrence singing “Stella By Starlight” over the instrumental version in the opening credits. “Victor Young!” Yes it was. “Unbelievable. This is before Eddie Murphy was born!” “Shelly Manne on drums!” Praise of Kathleen Freeman, good for those guys. And so on. A brand new extra is a 48 minute phone call between Lewis and Frank Tashlin in which Lewis hashes out the script and its gags with his mentor. Tashlin opens his remarks by saying ”I’m reading this like an idiot producer does.” Classic.  A masterpiece with a message: “You might as well like yourself. Just think about all the time you’re gonna have to spend with you.”— A+

One False Move (Criterion 4K Ultra)

Man, Carl Franklin shoulda made more movies. He’s still around, so maybe he will, but he really ought to have racked up a bigger filmography by now. He’s got the goods — sensitivity with actors, great attunement to mood via mise-en-scene and more, the whole package. If you’re looking for specific proof, check out the way this movie introduces Bill Paxton’s ingenuous lawman, a guy who’s about to get into a situation that’ll sink him way over his head. It’s an all-time great thematic/narrative dovetail that’s palpable in its power.  This is an unsparingly tense crime thriller, sociologically pertinent and emotionally wrenching, and yeah, I guess it IS something like a noir (I tend to be practically parochial in what I’ll term a noir or not), although Billy Bob Thornton emphasizes in a conversation with Franklin that’s a primo extra in this package, he and co-writer Tom Epperson that they never thought in terms of genre while concocting this.. The image quality is pretty much sublime. Inspirational dialogue: “Good to meet you, Chief Dixon.”  Poor schmuck. — A+

Rio Bravo 4K (Warner 4K Ultra)

As with East of Eden, this Howard Hawks Actual Classic (he made it right after the above Land of the Pharaohs! Robin Wood famously stated, “If I were asked to choose a film that would justify the existence of Hollywood, I think it would be Rio Bravo!’ [Is “famously” still right? - who knows?]) was a pretty brown Blu-ray, and again, in this 4K rendering, the green of the fauna in its landscapes is more prominent right from the start. And again, one feels that the studio restoration people expended extra care on this upgrade because for better or worse THIS IS GOING TO BE THE MOVIE from now on. There’s more detail, individual colors are more properly differentiated. The brightness of the day when Ward Bond rides into town is very bright but doesn’t wash out; the impression you get is of, well, heat. The whole thing is as much of a pleasure to watch as it’s always been, and for many it will be more so. The Richard Schickel commentary is enhanced by the presence of John Carpenter. They don’t interact; it appears they were recorded separately, which must have been nice for Carpenter. Ar ar ar. In fairness to Schickel, with whom I had an unpleasant personal interaction once upon a time (and many share my experience), he doesn’t lay on the pomposity here, coming off as a relaxed and smooth pro, and is very informative. Essential. — A+

Rules of The Game (Criterion 4K Ultra)

How do we see this film now, in the historical continuum that has led us to this precise and rather awful moment? Taking place between two 20^th century disasters, what does it give us in the here and now which can be considered a farcical/horrific coda to that century. I’ll be damned if I know. Except I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or just be grateful when the title card reading “Restoration of this film was sponsored by CHANEL” came up. I’ve been following the home video releases since the laser disc, which I wrote up in Video Review in the late 1980s. Spine number 50 in that format. Spine number 216 in this. Anyway, I keep saying the same thing: it never looked better. And so it is with this 4K edition. The thing that always gets me about the movie and has been getting me well before spine number 50, is not just its profundity, whatever that may amount to nowadays (and I believe it amounts to a lot, but others, not so much, poor benighted souls as they might be) but its fluidity, its utter watchability. The staging and the camera movement always just perfect and the acting beyond perfect. It’s funny, it’s tragic, it’s hard to watch (the scene of the hunt, gawd), truly an Everything Movie. — A+

Showgirls (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra)

Is this a “Murican  Rules?  No, seriously. Just as Rules presciently closed the door on and rang a death knell for a certain idea of Europe, Showgirls can be perceived perhaps as a final and possibly defining-by-damnation gob of sputum from the coughed up by the expiring American Century. As Jerry Lee Lewis would say, “think about it.” This irradiated variant of All About Eve takes that film’s professional rivalry into a feral neon realm that’s much more “Made In U.S.A.” than the refined milieu of 1950s Broadway. The motif here is along the lines of what Iggy sang in our national anthem, “Death Trip” (see Raw Power): “I’ll rip you/you’ll rip me/baby we’re goin’ down in history.” Is the dialogue “awful?” Kinda. Did non-native-English speaker director Paul Verhoeven know it was awful? Hard to say. But it is also wrong to say that the movie is poorly acted, especially by its lead. If we can praise Crispin Glover’s baroque performance in River’s Edge, we can work up some admiration for Elizabeth Berkley’s stylized hyper-expressiveness here, as it’s entirely thematically apt. And on the level of, you know, mise-en-scene and that kinda thing, this is incredibly well -made. Great lighting, great shots, great cuts, incredible staging of everything. (By the way, looking over the contemporary reviews of the movie, I see that my own perspective lines up with that of, well, Stanley Kaufmann’s.) And it looks incredible in 4K Ultra. The backstage stuff with the strippers clearly inspired the much more well-liked (mistakenly, for sure) Hustlers, certainly, but the staging and shooting of the club material reveals Hustlers as the dead-ass piece of filmmaking it really is. Newly produced extras include an interview with bad dialogue scribe Joe Eszterhas, he’s hella old now, and mildly conciliatory relative to his prior complaints about the movie. Good interviews, too, with the cinematographer and one of the lighting guys, the editors, and Penny portrayer Rena Riffel. The ostensibly comedic commentary from David Schmader includes his belching up some Diet Coke. And then dripping sporadic and uninspired disdain for the picture. Judging from the ten minutes I listened to, the feature as a whole is pathetic and arrogantly stupid and unfunny, all in a particularly obnoxious Seattle-based-“liberal” way. The package’s grade is docked two whole notches for its inclusion. — A-

Something in the Dirt (XYZ Blu-ray)

Brothers-from-other-mothers filmmaking team Justin Benson and Aaron Morehead should be as celebrated and awarded as “Daniels,” and in fact a lot more so, but life is unfair. This 2022 grabber is not their best movie (for me that’s still the mind-blowing The Endless), but among other things it’s an inspiring demonstration of pandemic production resourcefulness — most of the film is just the two of them, freaking out their convoluted conspiracy plot in a safely restricted location. How do they make it sing cinematically? They’re very eloquent with insert shots, like our friend Martin Scorsese, for one thing.  The filmmakers take the lead acting chores (which they have done before) and make the most of constricted space — a house shared by the two that starts behaving oddly. It’s essentially the story of the world’s greatest self-cleaning ashtray.  It’s also a very funny quasi-allegory of ambition and the lure of “success;” as the characters chronicle the seemingly supernatural phenomenon, one of them asks, “How much do you think, um, Netflix pays for these kinda documentaries?” For all that, the outstanding tidbit of Inspirational Dialogue is “Stop being paranoid, it’s weird.” The extras include two commentaries and a “watch party” (which I guess means commentary-only-goofy) with social media something-or-other Henry Zebrowski. I don’t like “watch parties,” I just learned.  — A

There’s No Tomorrow (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

Critic Adrian Martin, on his comprehensive commentary, recounts a late career interview with Ophuls conducted by Jacques Rivette and François Truffaut, in which the maestro, when asked about this movie, pronounced it “Not bad.” Martin’s point being that for the painstaking Ophuls to be so kind to one of his own pictures meant it was something special. And this — a first time viewing for me — really is. This 1939 melodrama has story elements you’ll recognize from Blonde Venus and Stella Dallas and even Lady For A Day. And since it’s French, it’s a lot less coy than even Sternberg had to be about its milieus — the cabaret in which lead actress Edwidge Feuillère works is an actual topless joint, just like in Showgirls. Feuillère plays Evelyn, a down-at-heels single mom who, upon meeting a love from the past, concocts what is, to be honest, a truly hare-brained scheme to retrieve happiness. The cinematography by longtime Ophuls collaborator Eugen Schüfftan (he did Metropolis, too. And The Hustler!) is quite purposefully dark, and the Gaumont restoration looks good; there’s not too much visible in the way of digital cleanup artifact but the image is very clean overall. Ophuls’ style here is mature but not wholly advanced — that is, the moving camera is present but not dominant. He does make it count, as when dollying back from the paradisical auberge the lovers shared.. Or dollying in and out at the train station near the end. Immaculate overall, and the ending is remarkable. Inspirational dialogue: “I’d like to drift into the fog” — A+

To Live And Die In L.A. (Kino Lorber 4K Ultra)

It was quite critically drubbed upon it 1985 release (future screenwriter Paul Attanasio called is “overheated and recklessly violent” what a bunch whiny moralistic twaddle) but this late Friedkin is not only great but it really is an ideal companion piece to the early Friedkin masterpiece The French Connection. The filthy cold boredom of being a cop in NY versus the filthy hot squalor of being a cop in L.A. When the guys in this movie are doing undercover staking out, they’re hosted and fed by Jesuit friars, or something. That’s as close to normal like as they really see. The intensity of Friedkin’s direction, and of William Peterson’s A-1 performance as Secret Service loon Chance, really helps you forget how hackneyed the whole opening gambit of “my partner got killed three days before retirement and now I must avenge him” is. Other points of interest, aside from the almost relentless action, the overall atmosphere of sleaze and corruption — perdition, even — include great supporting bits from Robert Downey, Sr. AND Valentin Vargas (whom you may remember as “Pancho” in Touch of Evil) and the fact that Willem Dafoe’s definitely evil counterfeiter character is nevertheless on higher moral ground than the cops. This 4K Ultra presentation is without a doubt superior to the prior Blu-ray (which wasn’t bad) — definitely an upgrade in terms of sickly orange sunset moodiness, sharpness and detail, skin tones, all that. Just a compulsively watchable package. The extras are old and include Friedkin saying “I’m gonna do this commentary for the film without referencing the film itself.” Oh, the experimental commentary days. — A+

Trouble Every Day (The Film Desk Blu-ray)

“They are jealous,” Catherine Breillat said to me in February of 2002, when I brought up to her the negative reaction that had greeted this Claire Denis movie in Toronto the prior fall. “The film is too beautiful, they know they can never fathom a film so beautiful.” Okay, the last part I’m paraphrasing a bit, I presume, as my memory may not be entirely accurate. But you get the idea, and right on. And so this beautiful film’s long overdue beautiful Blu-ray presentation is finally here. Which is all you need know. The supplements are not copious but they’re intelligent and coherent. Commentary by Alexandra Heller Nicholas; she starts right off on the opening credit’s use of Comic Sans. She recalls that the boos began not in Toronto but in Cannes.

Melissa Anderson’s booklet essay is cogent and sharp. The video essay from director Zack Clark tells us “the pace is languid,” which you know upon actually watching the movie, but the visual cross references to Franco and Herzog and Kenton and Browning and all those guys are solid. But the movie’s the thing, and it’s essential. Inspirational commentary observation: “What level of absolutely insane pearl-clutching bullshit is that?” — A+

Undefeatable (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra)

This Godfrey-Ho-directed Hong Kong film (made in English with almost entirely Occidental performers) is a weird unselfconscious hybrid. The Cynthia Rothrock vehicle is a little disinterested in its martial arts elements — the most impressive stuff in this respect is Rothrock doing solo sword exercises — and favors serving up queasy latter-day grindhouse luridness, what with its rapist serial killer villain who gouges the eyeballs out of his victims for his coup de grace. It’s only eight years after Rothrock’s big-splash debut with Yes Madam! and she seems kind of tired here to be honest I don’t know, maybe the real problem is that everyone’s very caky face makeup is prominently visible in this 4K transfer. (You can also see the knee pads under Rothrock’s jeans in the first fight sequence, but that’s not a 4K artifact, it’s just…you know.)  So much of this really doesn’t work, and yet I had something like fun. The eyeball gouging effects are rather amusingly sub-Fulci. Because I was amused in this way, I may need help. Anyway. The final fight scene is apparently on a lot of social media martial arts “worst” lists and on the commentary Rothrock is good-humored in response to the japes, and even throws some shade at director Ho’s idea “let’s have you do a cartwheel with your hand in a sling.” Also noteworthy is the really ludicrous mullet on bad guy Don Niam.  Inspirational dialogue: “You know the rules: no knives, guns, bricks…or anything else” For addicts, mostly.  I may be one. — A

When the sausage DOESN'T get made: Notes from an unfinished BR/4K Consumer Guide

So. Here I present something of an Experiment in Blogging. (And it looks like blogging is going to make a comeback, thanks to, um, Elon Musk sorta? Or maybe not?) Back in late March of this year I started work on another one of my SCR high-def disc Consumer Guides, because I heard the call, or something. And I took notes on the discs I wanted to include and then...other things started happening. The header of the doc went through from changes until it was ultimately this: "Late Spring/Early Summer/Ok, Midsummer 2022 BR/4K Consumer Guide Notes." And now it's November. And the doc is still sitting on my desktop, wagging its finger at me, and I've got all sorts of other work to do and not enough time to whip the notes into a proper Consumer Guide AND there's also the issue that we're now dealing with far fewer spanking-new titles than I generally like to have in such pieces. So I thought: Why not just run the notes. So any of you who are actually interested might get a peek into my process and also  to flog the actual titles that are actually great at least somewhat? So here goes.  What's blogging without a little risk-taking?

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

Adventures of Don Juan (Warner Archive)

Technicolor/amazing/ —A

 

Alfred Hitchcock Collection 4K Volume 2 (Universal)

A+

 

Born to Win (Fun City)

Very clean also gritty

Actually LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING, which it did not on streaming when I watched it for the De Niro book

De Niro is very good as plainclothes cop

Beach scenes are really beautiful

The score is really excellent

—A+

 

Caligula & Messalina/Caligula: The Untold Story (Severin)

Ugh the horsefucking in the international cut of C&M

Untold: Virginity is a flower that must not be wasted

Hoo boy this is indulgently rank

Kills a counsel’s son/This is a bad move

Grotty but a bit pro forma in spots. But it’s just warming up

Old ladies diddling young concubines/orgiasts eating fried chicken and such/D’Amato’s patented anti-erotic touches

Some enchanted orgy: Spotting Laura Gemser

OH GOOD, Horse Masturbation “We must not avert our eyes” actually no, that’s a good idea. AVOID 1:00 to 1:07

Limpdick fellatio, always a cinematic treat/the dude finally manages, good for him

This is one long ass orgy scene

Torture “I want them to suffer more.”

Untold Story is so utterly depraved on every level that it makes makes Caligula and Messalina look like Quo Vadis. Okay not quite but

Supplements: “Girls like Laura Gemser who of course never did porn, but showed off their beautiful bodies,” great observation

 Couldn’t keep his per diem because of casinos: Mark Shannon

“He’d do anything for a good fuck” — screenwriter Luigi Montefiore “I know there’s a shot of a woman pleasuring a horse, and I have to say it was not in my script.”

How on earth should I grade this?

Captains of the Clouds (Warner Archive)

Canadians! Alan Hale! Technicolor! The goofiest misogynist plot point!

Curtiz’s OTHER “it’s good to be in World War II” movie of 1942

Some awkward optical effects in flying scenes but also some dynamic (second unit?) stuff   —A-

Death Wish II (Vinegar Syndrome)

Paul Talbott: “I’m obsessed with the Death Wish movies,” yikes

Thomas Del Ruth quit after the rape scene/This is just remarkably trashy

The appalling rape scene. Oh that Michael Winner

Oy vey or just…wow?

This must have been a real comedown for Laurence Fishburne after Apocalypse Now

Inspirational dialogue: “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing is wrong?”

59 was Bronson’s age at the time of the making of the movie

At about the hour mark you start thinking, you know, there hasn’t been a rape or an attempted rape in some time, so where is this movie GOING?

The three rapists dancing with each other: at least they aren’t uptight about that sort of thing.

Oh, okay, then the bad guys chase a nurse and pull up her skirt, I was worried for a minute/Gardenia’s opera glasses “Target practice”

Ah it’s Tony Franciosa, always welcome/ As police commish/“My wife goes to a mace class.”

So wait is THIS why they did Escape from LA after Escape from New York?

Hilarious ending/the aesthetic principles of James Page Esquire

 — Ungradeable

De Sade (Scorpion)

 Action packed! Fleeing on horseback! AN AIP picture! Dope (and goofily lascivious) animated titles! Anna Massey/Not super great image/some stutter/A potentially interesting frame device that in the hands of a more engaged director yada yada yada/

On the other hand, why insult Anna Massey? A marriage anti-comedy

Dullea making goofy faces while being drenched in wine shot through red gel

Tim Lucas commentary is the best thing about it “most ambitious production”  

6 million holy moley!

Salvador Dali was supposed to do the titles

Lots of “what might have been” stuff/Comparisons with…Somewhere in Time, whoa.

Hardy Kruger’s daughter/Lucas calls his commentary a “defense” but he doesn’t come off as passionate about its quality

— B+

The Devil’s Trap (Second Run)

Striking, of course. Director  Frantisek Vlacil achieves the ideal of Scorsese’s flying camera, rather like that of Andrei Rublev

The bee sounds in the under-soundtrack/

imperfect materials but looks great for the most part

Striking juxtapositions/the miller’s son and a romantic rival fighting intercut with the priest calmly sitting at a sort of picnic table

Not as overtly “far out” as the other pictures in the trilogy but a trip nevertheless. This is what a “visionary” director does, kids

— A+

Double Indemnity (Criterion 4K Ultra)

4K anklet boost: check

4K angora sweater boost: check

This really is a hella dark movie — A+

 

Edgar G. Ulmer Sci-FI Collection (Kino Lorber)

Planet X: Dark and fake backdrops, black “Let us concentrate on this remarkable object.”

Time Barrier: The light to X’s dark/the graphic beacons

Transparent Man: Holocaust scientist

Each picture becomes a little chamber melodrama to some extent

Essential cinema — A+

Farewell, Friend (Kino Lorber)

1.66/Bronson dubs in his own voice/Put this in knowing nothing about it, didn’t even read the box copy/Admires Delon’s gun

DP Darbes, competent enough/post Algiers Marseilles/Whoever’s dubbing Delon is atrocious/dumb coin in glass trick

Put bearer bonds BACK in a safe? It can’t be. The ostensible scheme is to put bearer bonds BACK in this company safe. I don’t care if you ARE Olga Georges-Picot, that’s not a scheme I’d tumble for.

Worst Xmas break ever.

Bronson shorts out the AC so they have to take off their shirts only it’s CHRISTMAS BREAK AND THEY’RE IN A BASEMENT

Figures in a Landscape, but indoors. And not as good —B-

Femme Fatale (Shout Factory) —A+

Flight of the Phoenix (Criterion)

 Good picture, fun paper airplane kit, great Gina T. essay

Weird how Aldrich gives his kid star billing pretty much right before killing his character — A

Grand Slam (Kino Lorber)

Shoddy, misogynist, image all over the place, nice Rio locations. Who said this was good? Klaus Kinski plays a creep, who’d have guessed?  There’s no suspense if the guys pulling off the heist are assholes who you’d actually LIKE to see get caught…but there’s a twist! — B-

 Heavy Metal 4K (Sony)

The new audio is amazing, the image is pretty…well, as sterling as it could get — A

Lancelot du Lac (Gaumont)

2018 restoration

Fast opening

Like Pickpocket

“merveilleux” aventures

Weird violence

“The Grail eludes us. There was only blood and death.”

Shutting down the round table. All is lost from the start.

“Give us a purpose” Pile of knights: a junkyard

Unsubtitled supplement: Hervé Gauville/I almost understand much of what he is saying— A+

 

Legend of the Lost (Kino Lorber)

Let me do the Hathaway math: only a few years after Niagara and Garden of Evil /Cardiff’s chapter in Magic Time/Ben Hecht script

The Kurt Kaszner stuff is Hecht taking up unused notes for To Have and Have Not

Cardiff: “I can’t imagine anyone less like an Arab prostitute than Sophia Loren”

looks good, not great, (dissolves are a little dupey) no extras

The Roman city discovery scene is rather striking

Brazzi is super horny (rapey in fact) “I made you…virtuous”

The drama is mostly Brazzi or Loren losing their shit and Wayne yelling at them. This wears thin in a 1 hr 50 minute movie — B

 Paris When It Sizzles (Paramount)

1964 Quine Holden Hepburn Axelrod

Bossa Nova score, it’s the hip thing.

Noel Coward impersonating a heterosexual/Alcoholism of screenwriter played by Holden

“for all practical purposes he’s on the wagon”

Clean image

Dissolves are good

Largely French support cast and crew

Astaire sings an original song

Axelrod takes the piss out of Bunuel E Angel

Rather delightful and sometimes dreary

Fun cameos

“little person”

Look at this and Casino Royale and you get why some people were completely shocked by Holden’s appearance in The Wild Bunch in 1969

 “That Face” both awkward and brilliant

The deus ex machina of sleeping it off.

Inspirational dialogue “Depravity can be terribly boring if you don’t smoke or drink” — A-

RoboCop  (Arrow 4K Ultra)

 THREE AUDIO COMMENTARIES/The fan threesome is light and fun and a little obsessive

How Ultimate Do You Like Your Ultimate Editions

Appropriately grainy

Gory as hell, and still rather upsetting in that respect

In several aspects it is profoundly depressing about the loss of self.

The “paste,” “Knock yourself out”

Really the only movie that got the 1980s in America on every level

Boy poor Leeza Gibbons just did not get it did she?

  — A+

Schizoid/X-Ray (Vinegar Syndrome 4K)

Christopher Lloyd, Craig Wasson, Blonde Kinski drooling over his teen daughter, guess he didn’t need to go full method for that

Racism in the elevator/underfed stripper

 “ludicrous” —Psychotronic

Wasson at one point wears a white jumpsuit like that of Townshend on “Who Came First” “Relax…I’m a maintenance man.”

What do women want? To sleep with their therapist after witnessing him make a bizarro quasi-incestuous scene at dinner with his daughter, apparently

Herrmann ripoff score

An excellent 4K rendering of an often dingy-looking film

“the concept came because I walked into a Mel’s Diner and I ran into Menachem Golan’s wife”  offer in January, “Shooting by March”

X Ray: 1961, Harold’s valentine, humiliation/Kills the little brother/Yeesh/Oh the fakeouts once she enters the hospital.

Is HAROLD the obsessive janitor? How come he grew up to be ten years older than Susan? Oh another fakeout

“Didn’t I see your name on a checkup result?” You can tell the screenwriter really did his homework

Weirdest x-ray ever

The camera dolly that whispers, “yes, you will see Barbi Benton topless, you will, just wait”

Cannon follies

Ungradeable

Singin’ In The Rain (Warner 4K)

Whenever I mention my favorite movies I’m always quick to bring up Psycho, Repulsion, Stalker, that kinda thing and I think this reflex gives people a skewed impression of me that I don’t really worry about too much these days — I’m 62, how many more CRUCIAL IMPRESSIONS am I gonna make on people? — but still. So let me state unequivocally and unambiguously that this too is one of my all-time favorite pictures and I have enjoyed it with nearly all of the people I’ve been close with in my life from my mom to my school friends to my roommates to my siblings to my wife. And my cats too. So this edition which is so utterly beautiful means and awful lot to me.

Green: "I was working with the best people in the world"

A sorta round robin commentary

Behlmer: Oscar Levant was supposed to get the Donald O’Connor part —A+

Stone (Severin Bluray)

That She-Devils on Wheels wire decapitation trick never gets old, does it.

Ye Olde Biker Funeral

This wastes no time with things blowing up and going off cliffs and such.

Lots of RIDING

Real saturated colors here. Dr. Death gives the benediction

Undercover scheme

One of the bikers is named Bad Max

The investigation in which ordinary working people complain about the bikers is priceless.

Ocean sunrise scene is incredible/A really unusual picture, not necessarily what you expect. A bit gross when it gets excessive but worth a view. — A

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony)

This is the feature length version of Peter Sellers hitting his arm in Dr. Strangelove

Is this the shortest MCU film ever? Is it even an MCU film? How do I find this out? Do I care?  

Wait I saw the first Venom and have no idea what is going on here.

De-aged Woody Harrelson looks like he did in…1996?

“I heard the written word hasn’t been working out so well…”

San Francisco location = motorcycle levitating over a hill

“We are wasting our talent!”

Woody Harrelson’s eccentric pronunciation of “origin”

I honestly don’t believe prison inmates would applaud this guy

I didn’t like any of this Natural Born Killers type stuff the first time around so, you know

Really a waste of Naomie Harris

More CLIMBING

Rather inconsequential, possible because of its need to dovetail into some Spider Man shit...

Blooper reel does not live up to whatever you imagined its potential to be — B

Blu-ray and 4K Consumer Guide, "Laser Joe" Memorial Edition

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

Alligator (Shout Factory 4K Ultra)

Back in the early 2000s, my colleagues at Premiere thought it would be a good idea to entrust a feature on the Ten Greatest Sex Scenes in Cinema to me and me alone, and since at the time I was still addicted to my own cleverness, such as it was, I put the David Hemmings/Veruschka photo shoot scene from Blow-Up, in which no actual sex, simulated or not simulated, occurs, at the top spot. The magazine’s media booker put me on whatever show Anderson Cooper was hosting on CNN at the time to bang the drum for the piece and the magazine in general. I didn’t want to go on. I was feeling fat, and I couldn’t put together an outfit that would accommodate a tie, and I just didn’t want to go. On the plus side, the studio was just a short walk from the office. I got there, got made up, and went to the green room with a complimentary can of Diet Coke. Anderson’s guest before me was this big beefy dude who was talking about how conversion therapy changed his life. I stood there in the green room lounge watching the segment with a skeptically cocked eyebrow. On the couch sat a young woman with a blonde bouffant hairdo wearing something not unlike a prom dress. The guy on the screen was detailing the depredations of the homosexual lifestyle. “I was a homosexual…a violent homosexual…I had sex with strangers in public restrooms…I did drugs…” Impressed, I said to the screen, “Dude…” And the woman on the couch snapped, “That’s my husband.”

“How’s that working out for you?” I asked. Kind of rude, but it was the first thing that came into my head, and such was my mood anyway. A little later, when the Formerly Violent Homosexual was through, they corralled me upstairs. As the segment started, Cooper, in his amiable way, laid into me. “A lot of old movies on this list,” he said, citing Blow-Up as the main offender. While not a math whiz, I made some mental calculations and pointed out that Anderson and the Antonioni film were precisely the same age (OK, Blow-Up was maybe a year older). Ever since then I’ve pondered the question of how old a movie has to get before it can legitimately be considered old.

So: Alligator, directed by Lewis Teague, starring Robert Forster, written by John Sayles, released 1980. Here in a 4K Ultra form scanned from the original negative, which is how experts such as Robert A. Harris like it.  An under-the-wire entry in the 1984 Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (as too, one infers, was 1981’s Dead And Buried.) My old friend Joseph F. (also known as “Laser Joe” by the clientele at Tower Video in Paramus) and I were not, as a rule, big fans of revisionism in genres. So we tended to mistrust comedic horror pictures. Unless they had a connection — by lineage or otherwise — with the Corman horror comedies of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s such as Little Shop of Horrors and A Bucket of Blood. While Alligator was not directly affiliated, both script writer John Sayles and director Lewis Teague were more or less straight out of the Corman dugout. And as Jaws rip-offs went it had a spiffy concept (adapted from the urban myth about toilet-flushed baby water beasts growing to giant proportions and roaming city sewers), and, as we would discover, a tidy, blood-soaked execution. And look at that cast! Robert Forster! Jack Carter! Michael Gazzo! Henry Silva!

The 4K Ultra disc looks great — flawless color and detail. The flavor of a well-crafted low-budget picture is entirely there. Cinematic innovations include a toilet’s eye view of a baby alligator (named Ramon!) being flushed. Indirectly the whole thing turns out to be the fault of the herpetologist/love interest played by Robin Riker. Forster is reliably himself while Silva is very funny as an effete Quint variant. This movie’s only 42, but it actually feels old to me in a way that Blow-Up, say, does not. But pleasantly so in any event, like a longtime pal. — A+

The Brain Eaters (Shout Factory)

Psychotronic catnip from the title down. This barely-a-feature from 1958 starts off ultra-strong with gorgeous gray scale semi-abstract paintings backing the opening credits. (The credits were by Paul Julian, a fact I gleaned from the invaluable Tim Lucas’ great review of this disc, of which you ought to avail yourself.) The transfer shows a lot of grain but I reckon accurately so. If authentic sadistic cinema, per Benayoun, steeps the viewer in an atmosphere of perdition, this strain of genre picture steeps one in an atmosphere of narcotized wooziness and clammy unease. Like the out-of-step-by-a-beat walking bass line of the Pere Ubu song “Chiller!” (featuring audio of a no-doubt-TV-derived soundtrack of a movie that could be, but is not, this one), The Brain Eaters stumbles about when not hitting on bizarre moments of slap-you-awake shock. As when the pronouncement “The mayor’s back!” motivates a quick cut to the mayor having a hand-shaking mental breakdown and trying to put a gun to his head. Essential. — A+

Escape From L.A. (Paramount 4K Ultra)

On its announcement — as a theatrical release, back in 1997, we did not understand the point of this movie’s existence. I mean, 1981’s Escape From New York was a pretty pointed and entirely self-contained piss-take. The Big Apple was still in its ostensibly scary and blighted graffiti-splattered iteration. Making it into a literal sci-fi dystopia was an amusing conceit even if you lived there for real at the time. (Which I didn’t, yet. But five days a week Joseph took the bus from Dumont to the Port Authority, and then the 6 train down to 23^rd Street to attend SVA classes. That counted for something.) To come back 16 years later and say “Okay, Los Angeles sucks too” felt like a weak move, a dilution of the original “vision.” And it’s not as if any of the filmmakers were splitting from Hollywood, either.

Maybe I was/am overthinking this. John Carpenter’s 1996 picture, co-written with Debra Hill and star Kurt Russell, who I suspect was leaning ever so slightly left in his libertarianism at the time, is a bouncy and largely comedic near-sendup of the dystopia genre, with a fair amount of rewarding action/exploitation goods. An earthquake and authoritarian politics = L.A. as a prison island and Hollywood self-parody. (Plastic surgery disasters, free-throw competitions; they’re in here. One wonders how Russell’s Snake Plisken sinks his shots with no depth perception. Because the eyepatch. You know.) There’s also, to an even greater extent than Alligator, a truly (and delightfully) random-ass supporting cast: Peter Fonda! Valeria Golino! Steve Buscemi! Bruce Campbell! Cliff Robertson! Peter Jason! Leland Orser! Amusingly enough the movie’s “now” is 2013.  It all boils down to being a comic book movie of the good sort. (Marvel indeed did a Snake comic book in 1997.) The production design is droll but cheap, as the detail on this handsome but hardly extras-laden 4K disc underscores. Not essential but fun. Inspirational dialogue: “What are you here for?” “I was a Muslim in South Dakota.”  Also: “We’re going to Anaheim!” — A

 Expresso Bongo (Cohen)

The movie that taught at least two generations how to mispronounce “espresso.” Also the origin of the band name Tom Tom Club (here an actual nightclub). Laser Joe was a longtime lowkey fan of director Val Guest, particularly the getting-scarier-every-day 1961 The Day the Earth Caught Fire. This 1959 Guest picture, possibly a British-inflected riff on Sweet Smell of Success, is deft and pacey and more eccentric than it initially looks. Right from the sharp opening credits, which print the talent names all over the attractions of an arcade, ending with one of the film’s co-writers, Wolf Mankowitz, displaying Guest’s credit on a sandwich board. Laurence Harvey, playing a nonchalantly sleazy wannabe talent agent, really commits to his louche look — that skinny bow tie and so on. While not big on the verisimilitude that was catching on courtesy of the French New Wave, the movie’s contrived milieu does give a coherent picture of the strivers of Soho in this era. As Harvey’s discovery, whom the agent names “Bongo,” Cliff Richard, oft disparaged by us Yanks, really does have some charisma. And Shadows fans (I’m one) will be gratified to recognize Hank Marvin as a member of Bongo’s backing band.  It IS a little disconcerting when the movie turns into an actual musical; one rarely expects to see Laurence Harvey breaking out into song. But he does, as does Sylvia Sims and others. So yes, this is also an obvious precursor to Absolute Beginners.  A faboo time capsule served up with a spotless 2K scan. Inspirational dialogue: “Look, definitely no jazz.”  — A

The Godfather Trilogy (Paramount 4K Ultra)

This — meaning, to begin with, 1972’s The Godfather — was the movie that changed everything for us, really. As much if not more so than Mean Streets, because it was first. There is SO MUCH in it. The character dynamics — which we recognized in at least small part from our own Italian-American upbringings — are so intense and lively. The “don’t talk business at the table” bit happens in less than two minutes and it’s amazingly revealing and frightening. Fredo going in to look at his ailing dad and holding his knees together like that… It’s just immaculate filmmaking and by filmmaking I mean all of it, acting staging shooting direction, dialogue, it just kills. “Look how they massacred my boy.” Jesus. Watching it fifty years later I’m staggered that this movie was made in my lifetime. No wonder it haunts Coppola. Whose introduction is lovely, by the way; generous and soulful and truthful and he commemorates his daughter Sofia’s birthday as much as he commemorates the anniversary of the movie and you can see he’s so proud of her. Made me tear up a little.  Yes, Part II is a remarkable film but the first is the miracle, the precedent-setter. As to Part II: Pretty crafty, on learning that Richard Castellano was out, to not just put Michael Gazzo in the cast but to remake the character; he’s not a proxy Clemenza and he’s also, at first, something of an annoying jackass. Also: Al Pacino looking at Troy Donahue in contempt is cinema semiotics gold. In the final analysis, yes, it really is very nearly as good as the first. The emotions are even more wrenching; what goes on between Pacino and Cazale is palpable. And Strasberg is great. Have you seen, here and there, people who’ve decided they don’t like Strasberg as an acting teacher, who go after him in this film, citing it as evidence that he couldn’t “actually” act? Christ. Are they watching a different movie? Why am I bitching at you about this?  Maybe it’s just because I no longer have the friend I want to talk about these movies with, not to get maudlin. As for III, or Coda: Andy Garcia is often a great actor but his performance here is initially pitched between Joey Tribbiani and Cage at his most manic. (Inspirational line reading: “I say we hit back and take ZAZA OUT !!!”) He does settle in, but he was the first sore thumb I noticed in this picture, which is a lot more lumpy than the first two but hardly a disaster.  It definitely has its moments, many of them not directly connected to the diegesis so to speak: the curtains of a castle bedroom moving in the wind as an Elvis Costello song blasts from the open window, for instance. And some that certainly are, like Michael’s confession. And how about that Raf Vallone, huh?  I gotta give Puzo (and I presume it’s Puzo all the way down the line) credit: he comes up with the best gangster names ever: Luca Brassi, Al Neri, Johnny Ola, Joey Zaza. I think all the pictures in this set look remarkable. The reviewer at DoBlu.com pointed out a couple of instances of “frozen grain,” one being Diane Keaton’s face in the first picture, starting at around the 13 minute mark, when Kay is remarking on Luca Brassi. Honestly I think those are actually Keaton’s freckles. Which I’d never noticed before. If I’m incorrect I shall be very embarrassed. — A+

The Halfway House (Severin)

One of those things Joseph and I might have given a very skeptical look at while DVD-trawling at a Chiller Expo. The kind of movie in which a woman brings in a picture of her missing relative to a couple of detectives and one of them looks at the snapshot and says “Nice tits,” and this is supposed to be a laugh line. Later, another cop introduces himself as “Sergeant Sheen. Dick Sheen.” Soon follows a sex scene in which the woman with the missing relative displays her own nice, um, secondary sexual characteristics, and the thing that’s supposed to be funny is that she and Sergeant Sheen are delivering exposition all through their exertions.  While this horror comedy has a 2004 release date, it is clearly happily situated in the mid-80s world of Dave De Coteau. Not surprising, as director Kenneth J. Hall is a friend and past collaborator with the man. Anyway. This was shot on high-def video and it looks it; not bad for 2004, but there are instances when the images seem to be struggling to hit 1280. Mary Woronov plays a crazed nun. Of course. IMDb user review from 2006, headlined “Campy Schlock Crap From The Writer Of ‘PUPPET MASTER:” “OH LORD this one sucks. Pseudo-Lovecraftian garbage with very little gore, a few tits (but NO full-frontal), horrible acting - oh Christ, I give up - the list of negatives about this film is just way too long and encompasses just about every aspect of this piece of trash.” The kids have really gotten very demanding in this century. On the plus side, the movie features a pre-Benedetta use of a religious sculpture as dildo. Extras are minimal (the not replicated director’s commentary from a prior edition notwithstanding, what is there really to say about the movie as such?) relative to say, Night of the Demon (see below) which has a whole separate disc of them. But they’re not THAT minimal — the Hall and cast and crew interview is over 30 minutes. There’s also a tribute to Hall’s departed brother Cleve, a close collaborator of the director. I sound pretty bitchy about this so I should add that I am not wholly unmoved by the schlock love that clearly motivated this production. — B

Labyrinth (Sony 4K Ultra)

Really pretty staggering in the looks department. A genuinely eccentric film too. Kid’s film trappings with YA literature themes making for an interesting balancing act for the creators. For folks like myself, the puppet monsters and Bowie are the draws. The picture detail shows the seams in the ambitious special effects, which just makes you admire the ambition all the more. From the maggot pit of Phenomena (1985, see below) to this movie’s Bog of Eternal Stench (1986), lead actress Jennifer Connelly (okay, okay, she too is one of the draws for folks like myself) could not catch a break. In the aggregate, there are more fart noises in this movie than in Blazing Saddles, I think. Most of the relatively generous extras in this package are on the second BR disc. The  Arif Mardin produced Bowie songs are pretty much what you’d expect of such a collaboration. — A+

 

Last Night In Soho (Universal 4K Ultra)

I’ve praised this movie elsewhere, and I remember telling Joseph that I’d be interested in hearing what he thought of it — he could go either way with contemporary genre pictures, to be sure — but that won’t happen now. Phooey. The 4K presentation is just as one would both hope and expect with a new production, that is, spectacularly close to the theatrical version. Extras include two commentaries, one with Wright and editor Paul Machliss and composer Steven Price, another with Wright and Cairns. They are properly energetic and wonky. The other supps are EPK Goes To Film School, so to speak, showing off Wright’s astonishing technical command and resourcefulness. Deleted scenes are a little over 9 minutes total and not without interest. — A+

Mister Majestyk (Kino)

Nothing says gritty like an opening shot of the title character leaving a gas station rest room. It’s actually a plot point, setting up M. Majestyk as anti-racist, and good for him. A lovely young woman whom Charles Bronson’s title character assists in getting access to the sink (Linda Cristal) introduces herself as Nancy Chavez, “Not related to the other Chavez.” So Bronson’s got 160 acres of watermelon ready to be cut, and Bobby Kopas, evil labor exploiter, wants to tell him who he can or can’t hire. But this isn’t the main thrust of the plot, as it happens. (And if you think film critics today are snobs, back when this first came out nearly every review I read made snarky sport of the watermelon-farming angle, for real.) That happens when Majestyk goes to the pokey and gets thrown in with a highly volatile gangster played by Al Lettieri.  The pretty spectacular shoot out about 20 minutes in is the convincer that this Dick Fleischer picture isn’t interested in wasting any time. This story is from an Elmore Leonard script that the author later novelized, and rather interestingly, here Leonard the screenwriter doesn’t invest in ultra-vivid-hood dialogue the way Leonard the novelist did. And it doesn’t really matter. I didn’t get Charles Bronson as a teen — I was about to turn fifteen when this came out, and almost as snobby as your average watermelon-farming-disparaging critic — but Joseph always waved the flag for the guy’s persona, which was so taciturn as to make Clint Eastwood look like William F. Buckley. Eventually I got it. And I dig this picture, and the new transfer, which really pops out those highly saturated 70s colors. (In an onscreen extra, cinematographer Richard Kline is still excited to discuss his work on the picture.) Bronson biographer Paul Talbot contributes an enthusiastic commentary too. “Bronson had piercing green eyes — that was part of his persona.” Well, Paul, that was actually part of his physical makeup. He also discusses the “no mustache, no Bronson” rule. And tells a filthy story about Lettieri, saying “He had two young hookers with him he had brought to service the crew.” (No wonder he died of a heart attack at age 47.) Lee Purcell, on the other hand, in an on-camera interview, remembers Lettieri as a devoted husband looking forward to the birth of his child. Oh well. He was a man, take him for all and all, we shall not look upon his like again, etc. Good Blu-ray. —A

Monster From Green Hell (Film Detective)

Whoa, those giant animated stop motion flying insects menacing rear-projected stock footage in this perky 1957 monster cheapie are something else. Also featured: colonialist racism, which is courtesy of stock footage as well, and also of King and Brower’s 1939 Stanley and Livingstone.  Some of it — and by “it” I mean the non-effects material — looks really great in terms of detail and contrast. The better to enjoy some of the weirdest production design ever (the lab with the sloped windows looking out on the desert mountain, with a brand new car parked just outside). The monster comes in a stop motion miniature model and, like Kong in his debut film, a full size head. Also, here, full size pincers. Kong did not have pincers. The Kenneth Hall film saves the “best” effects work for over 50 minutes in. The whole thing ends with a fabulously ridiculous tinted sequence. Maven Steven Bissette’s commentary is engaging and pretty thorough. As home-grown restoration outfits go, Film Detective is an exemplary enterprise that has a pleasingly random catalog (their prior release was 1947’s The Fabulous Dorseys). Their digital cleanups aren’t likely to blow you away, but if you have any feel for the film collector aesthetic as it is expressed herein, they’ll make you happy. Inspirational dialogue: “Nature has a way of correcting its own mistakes.” — A-

Night of the Demon (Severin)

Another piece of rare schlock you’d find in a poor quasi-boot at a Chiller Expo, or so I like to imagine. (Much of its notoriety derives from its having been classified as a “video nasty” in Great Britain.) Hence, the fantastic image quality here comes off as more of a shock than is sometimes customary. I was never one for Bigfoot movies and this 1980 item did not convert me, but it certainly kept me engaged in a morbid curiosity kind of way. The special effects are really gross.  The approach, it seemed, was for an actor to hold a package of offal to the “stump” of whatever limb the bigfoot had torn off, and let it droop and drip. Yuck. The score by Dennis McCarthy is very Manos to start — flute driven and such — but then the synths come in. (In end credits, one Stuart Hardy is credited with the score. I’m so confused.) Director James C. Wasson makes some genuinely odd shot choices, cutting to the ceiling of a van after Bigfoot snatches the dude having sex therein, and the van’s bloody windshield after.  It’s also got a weird structure, juggling flashbacks and opportunistic dream sequences among a wide range of peculiar characters. The penis--tearing-off scene is very John Waters. And throughout, the blood looks like a kind of hot sauce. The picture often feels like a weird high/low point of regional filmmaking at a particular point in time. Except it was made in L.A. by a director who’d later get into gay porn. (“How do you know about that?” he asks the interviewer in a pretty entertaining supplement.) Inspirational dialogue: “Officials found this camera with the film in it. But no trace of the people.” — A

No Way To Treat A Lady (Shout Factory)

Like Wait Until Dark, this movie scared the bejesus out of my mother when I was a kid. 1967/68 was a good time for scaring the bejesus out of my mother I guess. I was sufficiently impressed that I still haven’t seen Dark and I only just watched this for the first time on the spiffy Shout Factory Bluray, which properly puts across how production design and cinematography in urban-set contemporary pictures was then starting to hew to a slightly drab realism. Anyway, sorry mom, but it did not scare the bejesus out of me. The conception of the killer hasn’t aged well — strangler as walking audition reel, but Rod Steiger makes a meal of it, including Ye Olde Homophobic Hairdresser Caricature. That’s another reason I didn’t see this movie at first — when I was a kid I really couldn’t stand Rod Steiger. I somehow got it into my head that he was a slob in real life, and I was very confused as to how he could be married to that nice, refined Claire Bloom. Boy did I have a lot to learn. Maybe if I’d seen this earlier my misconceptions would have been a little straightened out, as he really does act it up here. “You should hear my W.C. Fields some time, it’s absolutely uncanny,” he taunts cop George Segal. Prophetic words, as Steiger would play the man — Fields, not Segal — in 1976. As to the killer’s actual identity, wow, did William Goldman (on whose novel this is based) have a bad experience with a Broadway theater manager? And what about his relationship with his mother? Poor Eileen Heckart has to enact a Jewish mother that even Philip Roth might consider a bit much. The picture picks up as it becomes more procedural, the double female impersonator scene with Kim August (at Joe Allen’s) is a real eye-opener. As are scenes of the superfresh Lee Remick conducting tours around a still-under construction Lincoln Center. In the sole extra, dapper film critic Kim Newman provides a cogent and informative appreciation of the movie, pointing out a Theater of Blood analogy; my two cents are that Vincent Price’s gay hairdresser bit wasn’t nearly as pointedly nasty as what Steiger does here. — A-

Phenomena (Synapse 4K Ultra)

This has a 1.66 aspect ratio, so I guess it’s Dario Argento’s most art-film horror. It begins with a killing, of course, the lush greens of the ostensibly Swiss hills giving way to a grimy window’s view of a waterfall and a purposefully grainy gruesome slow motion shot. That deliberate effect aside, the 4K presentation here is spotless and beautiful. In Argento’s cut there’s a moody slowness that lets the more outré points of the storyline settle in. The movie frequently riffs on De Palma’s Carrie but unlike Brian, Dario here really believes in innocence, and makes Jennifer Connelly’s character a veritable angel. To these old eyes the FX shot of insects swarming around the girl’s school looks faboo. I haven’t explored this multi-disc set in its entirety yet but what I’ve already seen warrants the grade I’m giving it. I remember trying to see the U.S. release of this (mutilated from 106 minutes to 83 by New Line, who also retitled it Creepers) in Wayne with Joseph in the late summer of 1985, only to be turned away from the box office because we were the only ticket buyers and the theater manager didn’t think it was worth his while to run the projector for just two patrons. That’s bush league theater management for you. — A+

Repeat Performance (Flicker Alley)

“Is Repeat Performance really a film noir?” Eddie Mueller asks in a good intro to this restored 1947 rarity. A few months back (or a few years back, who can keep track in this economy) I got pedantic on Twitter and, using Out of the Past as my template, held forth on how a true noir needs implacable fate and a femme fatale, and that I was getting kind of fed up with every policier being called a noir these days. Anyway, Performance sure is not a policier, it’s a quasi-supernatural tale of “if I could do it all again” that has to pull the trick of making sure that likable Joan Leslie doesn’t have to go to jail like the Production Code would say she would otherwise. Directed by the workmanlike-and-often-better-than-that Alfred Werker, it’s pretty absorbing stuff. Albeit not a 100-percent noir, let’s say. The fatalist angle is damn strong, the redolence of noir is definitely there. The depiction of a theatrical-milieu quasi bohemia is kinda like The Seventh Victim with money, etc. all very commendable. And the restoration looks fabulous. Leslie’s character at one point encouraging Louis Hayward’s character to have a drink is a real good grief moment. Also fun: “It’s William Williams, the poet,” said of Richard Basehart by Natalie Schafer. (Interestingly — and I swear I’m not making this up — I was having lunch at the counter at Hiram’s in Fort Lee last Friday, after visiting my mother’s grave, and one of the other guys at the counter was waxing rhapsodic over Schafer. “A lot of guys go for Ginger or Mary Ann, but give me ‘Lovey’ any time,” he pronounced. He then averred that Schafer was a multi-millionaire at the mid-point of her career, due to real-estate investments, and didn’t need to act when she took the Gilligan’s Island gig. And that she donated a lot to the Lillian Booth Actor’s Home [this is confirmed by Wikipedia]. And that John Lennon wrote “Lovey Do” as a tribute to her [this is not confirmed by Wikipedia]. Again, I’m not making this up.) My friend Farran Smith Nehme, looking good and talking sense, contributes an appreciation of Leslie, and the commentary by Nora Fiore (aka The Nitrate Diva) is crisply delivered, offering astute analysis, interesting anecdotes, and wisecracks. Inspirational dialogue: ”I feel wonderful except for my legs!” — A+

Stage Fright (Warner Archive)

One of the most peculiar passages in Hitchcock/Truffaut is when Truffaut whales on Alastair Sim apropos this 1950 picture. “I objected to the actor as well as to the character,” Truffaut says, and Hitchcock just rolls over: “Here again is the trouble with shooting a film in England. They all tell you, “He’s one of our best actors; you’ve got to have him in your picture.’ It’s that old local and national feeling, that insular mentality again.” The dude was still alive (he died in 1976, about ten years after the book’s first edition). Of course the thing that’s most objected to in the conventional wisdom is the movie’s false flashback. Which is itself a pretty snappy fifteen minute mini-movie of death, pursuit, and escape. And, among other things, sees our maestro trying to get a diopter effect through rear-projection. Truffaut said to Hitchcock that this movie did nothing to add to the director’s “prestige” and he’s not wrong if you want to be that way about it, but if we learn anything in Today’s Hitchcock Studies it’s that not one of his films does not contain essential points of interest. This has some standard Hitchcock features in various stages of development, including an inchoate change-of-identity theme. In the absence of standard suspense we get a series of moral corkscrews, and challenges to affinity. For instance, although the ever-grand Marlene Dietrich is (spoiler alert) the murderer, the way Sim hounds her with the bloodied doll in the fair scene is genuinely abominable. As for whether the false flashback works, or is even permissible at all, Chabrol and Rohmer as usual were right the first time around: “The revelation of the lie is at the heart of the story. Far from being an artifice, the lying account is the very basis of the film. In this light the arabesques themselves lose their apparent gratuitousness, since they are variations on the theme of innocence.” The only extra on this Warner Archive presentation — the transfer is never less than fab — is a Laurent Bouzerau 2004 produced doc with Robert Osborne, Peter Bogdanovich, superfan Richard Franklin, cranky Richard Schickel trying to look agreeable, and more, and in which the clips from the movie look like absolute crap,  which underscores how good the actual presentation here looks.  Alternate title: How I Found A Better Boyfriend. Inspirational dialogue: “Double gin and lemon. Not too much lemon.” — A

A Star Is Born (Warner Archive)

The 1937 original, and this Warner Archive presentation will convince you that it’s still the greatest. Staggering. I’d forgotten it opens with a wolf howling. I quite dug the Hollywoodized Willa Cather stuff with grandma: “We burned in summer and we froze in winter!” This recreation of Technicolor is just magnificent. It is an amazing edition but it’s JUST TOO SAD TO WATCH! Definitely, to my mind, the saddest of the four (but Cukor’s is of course a very close second). Director William Wellman serves up Hollywood self-hatred at its most pointed, but still delivers an earnest no biz like show biz ending. Are this and Rebecca Selznick’s best movies? Discuss. Alternate title: More About Alcoholism. — A+

 The Three Musketeers (Warner Archive)

Joseph and I and so many of our consort from the 1980s on were real fiends for Technicolor, which only started looking good on home video when laserdiscs came along. For some time the consensus was that a Japanese laser disc of Vincent Sherman’s 1948 The Adventures of Don Juan, starring Errol Flynn and Vivica Lindfors, was the best presentation of the format, so we all paid through the nose for that, and enjoyed the sumptuousness, while also wishing the thing had been directed by Michael Curtiz.  Nowadays the Warner Archive and Criterion people do an absolute bang-up job with Technicolor, quite a bit more often than not. It’s a veritable golden age. With this disc, of a George Sidney picture also from 1948, you get the dose right away, and you also notice that in the opening credits those arms holding up swords for two minutes have poor actual humans attached to them. This looks incredible throughout. It’s a slightly goofy movie overall, sometimes more pratfall than action oriented. But in a pleasant enough way. Gene Kelly doesn’t so much play D’Artagnan as play Gene Kelly playing D’Artagnan. After a bit one may start chuckling at all those swordfights facing the Pacific Ocean.  Kelly going all SuperWolf over June Allyson is about as MGM as any MGM film gets. George Sidney directs. June is a bit more hotsy totsy than is customary. She, Marie Windsor (in a single close-up), Patricia “Funky Cold” Medina, Angela Lansbury and Lana Turner make this a real (elaborately costumed) babefest. The storytelling is a model of Hollywood narrative dispatch. Good Tex Avery cartoon too. Inspirational dialogue: “It takes a good man to prevent a catastrophe, my lady. And a great man to make use of one.”— A+

The Vampire Lovers (Scream Factory)

Not much to say here, except to thank Shout!/Scream Factory for the conscientious update of a canonical release that is also the absolute quintessence of Ingrid Pitt. How awestruck were we by her back in 1970, and so we remain. The transfer here really pops, in all the ways it ought to. — A +

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Touchstone 4K Ultra)

This is another movie that seemed like a miracle upon its 1988 release. It’s still plenty engaging, and inventive, and it definitely trucks in mythology rather than IP grabbing…but seen from this vantage point, it certainly seems to contain the seeds of something that became pernicious. Also, the allegorical race angle the scenario trucks in feels weird and alienating, or maybe I should say more weird and alienating; I can’t honestly recall exactly what I thought about it back then, but I was uncomfortable. And I think that Bob Hoskins, who could generally do no wrong, was directed into a corner by Robert Zemeckis. So…I did not enjoy revisiting this as much as I’d anticipated, as it turns out. It’s still a landmark, and still very enjoyable in parts, and relatively tidy as superproductions go — not even 105 minutes. And of course it is a superb source of Richard Williams. Not to mention Mel Blanc and June Foray. And this disc looks beautiful.  Inspirational Wikipedia sentence: “Michael Eisner, then-CEO, and Roy E. Disney, vice-chairman of The Walt Disney Company, felt the film was too risqué with sexual references.”  — A

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (Warner Archive)

Boy, can you imagine trying to get away with a two-hour-and-20-minute CHILDREN’S MOVIE nowadays? I mean, I guess if you consider MCU pictures to be children’s movies, it happens all the time, but I mean this sort of thing — a full on fairy-story anthology cum pasteurized biopic. Come on. And it was a hit back in 1962. Maybe it was the Cinerama? Laurence Harvey as plays one bro, Karl Boehm is the other. Man, Boehm was lucky to get this part after Peeping Tom, huh? The biopic part depicts the bro grammarians being upbraided for their dry output and soon discovering the joys of entertainment for kids which is also folklore. This is a great presentation of the kind of movie they really do not make any more AT ALL. The color! The lighting! The steadfast avoidance of close-ups of even standard medium shots because of the Cinerama dimensions! It’s a really unusual mix of the cinematic and theatrical. One that reveals its co-director George Pal as one of the truest inheritors of Melies. This is a two-disc set, one presenting the Cinerama image in “Smilebox” format, and if you haven’t looked at such a thing in a while, it takes a little getting used to. And even the standard widescreen version presents the implication of a Cinerama curve, of course. Among its diverse components, the movie offers Terry Thomas AND Buddy Hackett in the same sequence. And they’re both excellent. And the dragon they battle is a cool dragon bro. A picture of considerable charm when you come down to it. And damn, those cobbler’s elves puppets. — A+

Blu-ray and 4K Consumer Guide, WInter 2021

So I’m still maintaining this blog, but obviously haven’t posted on it too much. Like Dick Cheney vis a vis Vietnam, I have other priorities. There’s also the fact (not that I pay too much heed to it) that blogs really aren’t a thing anymore; they feel almost archaic. Yet here we are.

Some of the aforementioned priorities have diminished recently. I’m not going to get into detail but some of my readers at other publications may have noticed my contributions becoming lesser in number. This eventuality sees with it a diminishment in personal revenue, which led me to consider starting a newsletter, a subscription one even. So, I started gathering materials for such an undertaking, including notes for the Consumer Guide I’m publishing below. I made notes for other things, too, most hilariously an essay about a recent Van Der Graaf Generator box set, which would surely have rocketed my subscription base past Andrew Sullivan’s and Bari Weiss’s combined. All the while, a feeling gnawed at me. That feeling being: I don’t want to do this. Obviously conducting a newsletter hustle requires the hustler to go into it absolutely wholeheartedly and (in some respects, not necessarily the most obvious ones) cheerfully. Resentful hesitancy signals half-heartedness, and half-heartedness is no way to run a Substack or whatever it would have been.

And again, without going into detail, my anxieties concerning revenue are not what they were a few months ago. So there’s not going to be a Substack, not yet. And there’s probably not going to be an essay about the Van Der Graaf Generator box set either. (Sorry!) But there is, here, a Consumer Guide, now with some 4K UHD titles. And it is dedicated, for reasons he’ll understand, to the great Tim Lucas. Thanks for reading, as ever.

EQUIPMENT
My prediction in the last Guide, which was, “between now and next March I’ll get a goddamn PlayStation 5 and will try and knock out a 4K Ultra Disc Consumer Guide for variety and perversity’s sake,” proved highly laughable in the PS 5 department. Have you gotten yours yet? I just recently got a notice from B&H saying, “WE WILL NEVER HAVE THIS.” But anyway. At a certain point, specifically upon remembering that I hadn’t used my PS 4 for game playing in eleven years, I packed the thing up, sent it to a nephew who has four young boys, and got a Sony UBp-X800 multi-region 4K player and it’s pretty snazzy. Then there’s the Sony KD50X690E display and Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver. Which doesn’t have Dolby Atmos. For now, I’ll live.

The Damned (Criterion)

I recollect this picture being quite a scandal on its initial U.S. release — the distinguished maestro Luchino Visconti done gone and made an “X” rated movie. About Nazis! A couple of years later it would turn up at two in the morning on Channel 7 and I never bothered to stay up and watch because I figured it’d been cut to ribbons. When I finally got around to seeing it the first time what I was most struck by wasn’t the content but by how crazy Visconti decided to go with the zoom lens. Makes Jess Franco look like Carl Dreyer. Okay, not quite. But thank the creator that he curbed this tendency when he made Death In Venice soon after. Then again, the style here is suited to the movie’s almost hysterical account of Third Reich decadence/degradation/depravity and such. Maurice Jarre’s opening music inspires similar “what’s got into you?” thoughts. Bearing down hard on the anti-Communism of its Nazi characters in its first thirty minutes or so, it then sets in motion a relatively nuance-free account of fascist interpersonal dynamics. It’s kinda like Succession, but with actual Nazis! And with zero, or hardly any, likable characters. In many instances of laying it on with a trowel, it offers the sight of a naked Ingrid Thulin languishing in a bed rhapsodizing about power. The movie is possibly best considered as crazier cousin to Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero in its unrelenting depiction of not just Nazi, but German nihilism. In the end, Helmut Berger’s Martin wins out not because he’s wiliest in the batch, but because he’s the most depraved. The transfer of the sometimes handsome, sometimes Tinto-Brass-level-lurid imagery is terrific. — A

 

Dead and Buried (Blue Underground)

This 1981 oddity has a premise that would be acceptable in a fantastic black comedy, which apparently this was originally intended to be. But its New Direction, suggested in part by the excellent effects work by Stan Winston, casts it as a mostly intense, gritted-teeth grindhouse horror. In which the premise is pretty laughable. But never mind. The movie’s midsection is a series of compulsively watchable scare scenes set in the dark and fog and distinguished by go-for-broke sensational brutality. As it happened, Winston left the movie after the New Direction was determined, and wasn’t around for the shooting of one late-scenario death, and the crummy effects therein show. (You’ll definitely know it when you see it.) The 4K rendering has a subdued pallet, plenty of grain, and packs quite a punch, and Joe Renzetti’s score will give your subwoofer/woofers a bit of a workout. The voluminous extras feature four separate audio commentaries, to which I can only say “thanks, but come on.” Your mileage may vary of course.  —A-

Deep Blues (Film Movement)

Dave Stewart, or to be more precise, David A. Stewart, commissioned, co-produced, and appears in this 1991 documentary shot largely in North Mississippi, about blues music as a still-vital and everyday practice in those parts. And yes, it’s that Stewart, the Eurythmics fellow, who’s first seen in black t-shirt and wire-rimmed dark glasses looking at a couple of busking blues men in a Beale Street park on a hot sunny day. But don’t balk — further inspection reveals Stewart’s got both head and heart in the right place, and in the supplemental outtakes he jams pretty credibly with R.L. Burnside on “Big Boss Man.” On Beale, Stewart is soon joined by Robert Palmer — the music critic, not the “Addicted to Love” fellow — who acts as docent. Palmer was from the south and relocated there after doing time in New York City as, among other things, a music critic for the New York Times. He also made some pretty fantastic music, in part with the great boho band The Insect Trust. A little less than a decade older than Stewart, the friendly, scholarly Palmer here looks older than that still — he would die of liver disease in 1997. A bad loss in a lot of ways. The movie is simple: Palmer, sometimes with Stewart, sometimes without, travels to the homes of musicians whose roots go all the way back to Robert Johnson — among these figures Johnson is a lot less of a mystery than he is in the larger culture — and lets them talk. And play. And director Robert Mugge keeps his camera unobtrusive. Shot on 35 in a rough and ready style, the Blu-ray looks fantastic in its way, and the plain old stereo soundtrack is vivid and crisp. Along the way you’ll learn who or what “Johnny Cockaroo” is. You’ll also spend a lot of time with Big Jack Johnson, a helluva guitar player, whose nickname “The Oil Man” derives from the fact that he made his main living driving an oil delivery truck. An interesting oddity: the white rhythm section guys in these Black-led bands all look like George Costanza, or some variant thereof. Mugge’s commentary is a dry but informative production account, in which he relates, among other things, why the pre-cult-stardom Burnside is seen here playing a cherry Telecaster. Inspirational dialogue: “The musician, he’s usually down on his luck.” Inspirational commentary line: “One of the traditions when filming or recording rural blues artists is to bring along a fifth of whiskey as a show of respect, but in our experience many southern blues artists preferred Crown Royal.”  —A+

Deep Red 4K (Arrow)

The friend who introduced me to Argento way back in 1978 at a screening of Suspiria at the legendary Paterson Plaza Theater — where the projectionist omitted an entire reel of the picture, and it made no difference to the narrative coherence —long ago abjured the director’s work, repelled by its trucking in what he called “the pornography of violence.” Watching this 1975 landmark, wherein Argento shucked most of his Hitchcock influence in favor of something relatively new and entirely garish, I felt my pal’s point in a more pronounced way than I have in a long while. The bathtub-scalding murder, and the camera’s lingering on the victim’s awful burns, really squinched me out. The images seemed completely unnecessary, like that shot of the knife plunging into a beating organ in Suspiria. (On the commentary track from Troy Haworth and Nathaniel Thompson, one of them notes that in the aftermath of the breakup between Argento and Daria Nicolodi, the female lead here, Nicolodi actually accused Argento of being a notorious, at-large serial killer.)  By the same token, going too far is one of the perquisites of guignol, arguably. And while Argento’s image-making instincts take him, and you, places where no one ought to tread, it also inspires some truly fantastic, elegantly disturbing picture. The quick cut to Macha Meril’s mouth as she takes a drink of water and can’t keep it in is oddly beautiful, practically Magritte-worthy. This too is the sort of thing that wouldn’t occur to most filmmakers and shows why Argento was special in the first place. In any event: this magnificent 4K rendering doesn’t present anything like a subdued color pallet, nosirree Bob. The mono soundtrack acceptable, but man, the 5.1 is a kick in the head with the incredible Goblin score and such. Story still doesn’t make any damn sense though, and who cares. —A+

Dune 4K (Arrow)

Having sat through the Villeneuve Dune not once but twice (crazy, right? Second time was mainly a cousin date though, honest), and having long held a complicated admiration for this vexed Lynch effort, I approached a re-review of this movie in any format with some trepidation. What if it felt more cheesy than Lynchian? This splendid presentation assured me the unrealized vision here was more 60/40, or even 70/30 in favor of Lynch. A trifle overlit in the way of ‘80s Hollywood pictures at the time, it’s still packed with sinister weirdnesses (Robin Wood, a stalwart Lynch hater, came down hard on the homophobia of that Harkonnen scene, and I can’t say he didn’t have a point). The dialogue between Jose Ferrer and that “Navigator” is almost Eraserhead-worthy in its way, as is the sight of Alicia Witt with that dagger. As far as that pesky narrative is concerned, hell, this lays out the whole plot in the first ten minutes! Pas de problem! But as we get further in, the awkward condensation of scenes (dissolves and such, which are very Lynchian, but not entirely well-judged) becomes highly noticeable. The wonky Star Wars touches are a little blush worthy — “activate a fighter,” you betcha. In other news, Kyle MacLachlan’s Paul has an iPad, and in this version, they actually DO say “jihad.” So there. The disc is beautiful, and the only way you should ever watch this at home.  —A-

The Emperor Waltz (Kino Lorber)

Moderately fascinating Wilder. Released the same year (1948) as A Foreign Affair, this would have been a valentine to Old Europe, countering Affair’s poison-pen letter to post WW II Germany. The director envisioned a Lubitsch homage but felt he didn’t pull it off. Producer and co-writer Charles Brackett pronounced it “in no way outstanding” in his journal.  Still there’s Technicolor, which is reproduced handsomely here save for the odd out-of-register-looking shot. And there’s Bing Crosby. Where McCarey used Crosby’s insouciant, irreverent persona to buttress piety, here Wilder has him swing into Old Vienna like Stanwyck’s Sugarpuss O’Shea rocked the academic hermitage in Ball of Fire. Here Crosby’s character extols the virtues of the newly-invented phonograph and its accompanying devil music.  Joseph McBride’s exemplary commentary touches on Wilder’s affinity for jazz, first articulated back when Wilder was a German journalist. It also explores Wilder’s reasons for enlisting Der Bingle, and the conflicts between leading lady Joan Fontaine and her costar. — B+

The Guns of Navarone 4K (Paramount)

At its best, this UHD disc makes you feel like you’re looking at a miniaturized version of seeing Real CinemaScope, and for the first time. Those Greek columns and varied geologic formations have a genuine tactile quality. When Quinn’s sniping at the white-clad Germans from the mountaintop, I was like, “Wow! Look at that ROCK!”  Nevertheless Robert Harris, in his post at Home Theater Forum, is right (well of course he is) about the weaknesses sporadically inherent in the image overall. The sometimes dupey look is built into the original camera negative. These are most glaringly noticeable almost right away, with the optical effects of newsreel insets over the static shot of the title guns.  My ultimate takeaway was: when it’s great, it’s great and when it’s not it makes you appreciate the great parts. As for the movie’s content, I was slightly surprised all over again by some of it. You gotta hand it to screenwriter/producer Carl Foreman for keeping the narrative in the mire of it’s-a-helluva-thing-to-kill-a-man pessimism, countering the standard Hollywood heroics. Not that those aren’t there, of course, and “fan service” is certainly evident in the final death tally of the characters. For all that, when Peck says “You’re up to your neck,” it really does register. And the movie most credibly demonstrates a venerable World War II picture truism: When you’ve got a really tough job, leave it to the partisans. — A

 Halloween 4K (Shout Factory)

Inspirational commentary line: “John Carpenter was so committed to realism, we actually killed that dog.” — A+

The Incredible Shrinking Man (Criterion)

Once you’ve sat through this 1957 classic in its entirety, you’ll have one question, that being “So just where did Scott Carey record the narration?” Possibly the same place where Toby Dammit recorded his, I reckon. Anyway. A Universal picture, directed by Jack Arnold and produced by Albert Zugsmith, it of course features William Schallert in a key supporting role, that of a doctor. The one who has to ponder the statement: “People don’t get shorter…they just don’t get shorter.” And yet Scott Carey does, and at each stage of his shrinkage deals with it in different ways, like almost having an affair with a carnival employee. Eventually he gets into a doll house and there has his first face off with the cat. As housecats go, it’s pretty mangy looking. And a real biter too. Lead actor Grant Williams looks a tad like Aaron Sorkin, really. The transfer shows off the movie’s admirable effects ingenuity. But also underscores the optical effects that tend to look dupey. It’s kind of staggering this hasn’t been remade — not that I’m recommending it — given what effects supervisors could do with LCD backdrops and such. In any event, the overall presentation of this Existential Nightmare Redeemed (remember, as Scott notes in his recorded-God-knows-where narration, his reduction to near-atom size is in fact the Beginning Of A Great Adventure, maybe) is exemplary Criterion — respectful and thorough. In supplements, Richard Matheson’s son talks Eisenhower era anxiety; there’s a pleasing, coherent effects breakdown; and comedian Dana Gould and cinematic maestro Joe Dante discuss the movie in amiable, diverting, often amusing style. — A

 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 4K (Paramount)

Good news! My post-teen misogyny seems to have substantially waned, because I did not bristle with loathing over Kate Capshaw’s performance the way I did when I first saw the picture at the not-all-that tender age of 24. For whatever reason her characterization of a character who’s supposed to be mostly endearingly exasperating in a screwball comedy way made me just plain exasperated. Watching the movie now I was more inclined to notice that the Willie Scott role is actually anti-screwball in its conception: while the exasperating females in Bringing Up Baby and The Awful Truth and what have you are almost uniformly smarter and more resourceful than their male counterparts/foils, the nightclub singer along for the ride with Indy and Short Round is just an imposition and burden, albeit a physically attractive one. Now, as to Short Round…oh never mind. This is one of four films included in Paramount’s 4K UHD set of Jones movies, and it’s the only one I’ve watched so far and I was very taken by its look and sound. And I was largely taken by the movie itself, in spite of all its very manifest flaws and objectionable bits (not mutually exclusive, these) because the action set pieces are such a kick. I lay blame for the faults (all of them) on screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. Not to gang up on the team behind Howard the Duck — and hey, I think Messiah of Evil is a too-unheralded chef d’oeuvre of sorts — but the binding material they concoct is complete plaster compared to the story structure that held Raiders together. Of course it’s ultimately Spielberg’s mistake in accepting this flimsy contrivance but I surmise he was too excited about putting together the set pieces to really notice or care. Maybe. Anyway, the set pieces: great.— A

Invasion of the Body Snatchers 4K (Kino Lorber)

It’s kind of weird, and certainly against all odds, that (up until Ferrara's 1993 Body Snatchers, at least) this story has been made into a moving picture three times and all three of the moving pictures are in their way exceptional. (At the time I first posted this, I had forgotten that the 2007 The Invasion had broken the streak...and why wouldn't I forget that?) This one, directed by Phillip Kaufman in 1978 from a script by the too-undervalued W.D. Richter, is oft lauded for its satirical bent (the pods come to San Francisco, then the mecca of self-help and self-realization cult-like processes, get it?) and that factors into its effectiveness to be sure — Chicago-born Kaufman had been a Frisco resident since 1960, gets the environment with an offhanded mastery. But the movie is also steeped in an atmospheric unease that goes far beyond satire. It’s a film of genuinely eccentric, unnerving choices. From the opening in which the pods leave an alien planet and journey to earth with truly overbearing music (Denny Zeitlin) accompanying the action onward. Brooke Adams and Art Hindle are introduced by a voyeuristic camera, moving implacably down corridors to home in on the reflections of their characters rather than the characters themselves. The scenario makes an already unhappy marriage the fulcrum on which the discovery is first hinged. Cinematographer Michael Chapman, only a couple of pictures ahead of Taxi Driver, almost repeats the famed lateral dolly from the excruciating Bickle-on-the-pay-phone scene in a shot in which Adams and Donald Sutherland clinch by an elevator, about 24 minutes in. Dig, too, the distorted reflection of Jeff Goldblum in the bookstore mirror, and the fact that Sutherland never repairs the shattered windshield he suffers at the beginning of the movie. The 4K image on this edition is fabulous added value to the overall cinematic richness. —  A+

Jet Pilot (Kino Lorber)

Howard Hughes wanted a movie about aviation and hotness. Josef Von Sternberg wanted…work. The hijinks began in 1949, pairing a 22-year-old (but looking 18) Janet Leigh with a 42-year-old (but looking 55) John Wayne. The cast also features J.C. Flippen at his most suave. No really, he’s very polished here, as befits his ARMY BRASS role. The result, not unleashed on a drooling public until 1957) was one of the most exhilarating movies about nothing, or maybe about star charisma, ever made. Leigh, as a not-quite-defecting Soviet flyer (oh those egalitarian commies), doesn’t even try an accent, and I’d bet that Sternberg didn’t even ask her to. A typical Hughes touch is the obnoxious leering jet sound effects as Leigh removes each individual piece of her flight suit after landing. The Kino disc does not advertise as a new scan, but it looks plenty sharp and we’re offered a choice between 1.37 and 1.85 aspect ratios — given when its principal photography began, you know which one to watch. The movie’s depictions of American Plenty are properly vulgar, what with the half-foot-thick steaks, which actually trigger Leigh’s ultimate abandonment of the USSR. Where there are zero steaks and the barracks are in such a poor area they can’t even afford real scenery — the backdrops are remarkably obvious paintings. Its utter, blissful triviality is so scrupulously hewed to that it becomes transcendent, and hence Essential Cinema. There’s no commentary. Make up your own.  Andrew Sarris: “an ecstatic flight of speed, grace and color.” Jean-Luc Godard: “Chaplin said […] tragedy is life in close-up, and comedy, life in long shot. I said to myself, I’m going to make a comedy in close-up: the film will be tragi-comic. Sternberg’s Jet Pilot is also a close-up comedy. That’s why it didn’t go down well.” Inspirational dialogue, as Wayne shows Leigh some U.S.-made lingerie: “That’s one thing we have in common with the Soviets.” “What’s that?” “We both believe in uplifting the masses.” And from Leigh, solo: “The water is so hot.” — A

 John Carpenter’s The Thing 4K (Universal)

After watching this in 4K for the first time, I looked up the contemporary reviews of the movie and came to the conclusion that film critics, as a class, were then almost as dumb as film actors. Maybe dumber. And the situation is, revisionism on this particular movie notwithstanding, even worse today. I will not be taking any questions at this time. Anyhow. Image wise, I found this superb; what audiophiles call reference quality. The actual audio has elicited some dissatisfaction in certain corners but to my ears the lossless DTX soundtrack gets the job done. Carpenter’s mastery of film language is strongly present throughout, and it’s instructive to keep track of when he and cinematographer Dean Cundey keep their anamorphic frame in full focus and when and how they go shallow. In the latter instances they keep the backgrounds distinct but not too distinct. A nice kind of head-fake in the “don’t look behind you” suspense column. — A+

 The Misadventures of Biffle and Shooster (Kino)

So this is neither a Blu-ray or a 4K release — indeed, with 4K especially you might say super-high-resolution would, given the nature of the material, “defeat its own purpose” — and it’s not brand spanking new and the filmmaker is an old friend which is a crucial reason I’ve not covered this disc. The friend is Michael Schlesinger, a venerable and passionate film scholar and enthusiast who did a lot of hard time managing rep for a mega-corporation that often didn’t know its assets from its elbow. You’ve likely heard his commentaries on fare such as It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World and The Producers and other not-dissimilar titles, in which case you know the kind of madcap stuff he likes. The fictional comedy team of Biffle and Shooster is a concept that could only have sprung from his mind, and I do mean that as a compliment. The five picture collected here are made-in-the-21^st-century fake comedy shorts from the ‘30s, featuring the above-named and titular fictional comedy team. Played of course by real actors, Nick Santa Maria and Will Ryan, who shared Mike’s vision to the extent that they’re credited as co-creators of their characters.  Santa Maria’s Biffle is the goofy super-nervous one and Ryan is the dyspeptic and relatively straight-mannish Shooster. On this collection they Stooge and Niagara Falls their way through five “missions of mayhem” including a private-eye spoof guest-starring Robert Forster and an unapologetically Borscht-Belt Bride of Frankenstein send up. Much of the humor is as apt to elicit groans as laughs. I don’t think that’s accidental — the nudging is the point. I was sad to learn last month of the death of Will Ryan, half of the duo of amiable zanies. It reminded me that one thing about the Biffle and Shooster shorts that was wholly unmitigated was its absolute movie love. And that makes this object worth buying, and cherishing. —A

New York Ninja (Vinegar Syndrome)

Vinegar Syndrome’s devotion to the Grindhouse Dream in all its manifestations is 100 percent admirable even if not every title upon which it expends such exemplary care gives me the buzz I’m seeking. (Volume one of its Forgotten Giallo box had me muttering “there are reasons these were forgotten” more than once.)  I was at least mildly skeptical about this special project for the company, an unfinished 1984 picture with a self-explanatory title. Abandoned by director/star John Liu before any editing process began, with no dialogue or music nor any script to consult, it was assembled into a whole by Kurtis Spieler, who provides an informative commentary. A company of classic exploitation movie actors — Leon Isaac Kennedy, Linnea Quigley, Michael Berryman, Cynthia Rothrock, and Ginger Lynn Allen — dubbed in newly-written dialogue, some of it apparently extrapolated via lip-reading. I know what you might be thinking and I thought it too: “Uh-huh.” It was only after a recommendation from my buddy the writer and artist Bob Fingerman that I sought took the plunge, and I’m rather glad I did. Ninja really does approximate the True Grindhouse Experience in the Comfort Of Your Own Home (which is a big plus when you get to be my age). The likely wholly unlicensed NYC lensing is big on period interest (although a little on the narrow side — Liu never wastes a chance to get the Twin Towers in his lens), the plotline (initially concerned with a personal revenge story set in a milieu in which “drugged out scum” are roaming wild in the city doing horrible crimes) dips into some weird sci-fi shit about a half-hour in, the fake newspaper headlines are so bad they’re almost poignant (“Another Lady Vanishes Abductions Continue”) and so on. The music and dubbing are so apropos you’d swear this thing is a fully realized 1984 film. And the image quality is shockingly good, like straight-from-the-lab good. A unique entertainment. Inspirational dialogue: “Looks like we got ourselves a hero!” — A

 A Night at the Opera (Warner Archive)

As a Marxist sourpuss, I used to hew to the party line that Irving Thalberg ruined the brothers for film by imposing tighter structures and such on their anarchic antics. My memories of Allan Jones in this were particularly cringe. I don’t know if it’s age or Scott Walker who softened me up to the guy, but now I find him entirely tolerable and hell, if Zeppo wanted to retire why not. And I also very much enjoy the movie itself, and not just because Harpo doesn’t get to chase any gamines around. It’s a focused light comedy that goes down easy and has a lot of marvelous highlights. The musical interlude shipboard is awfully sweet too — Harpo and Chico Among The Children, acting like they should. Also: “Boogity boogity boogity.” The image here has a wonderful brisk clarity. Yes, the picture was/is at the top of a long downward slope for the fellas but nothing in the actual film necessarily indicates this. Give it a shot, you may be pleasantly surprised. — A

Operation Burma/Santa Fe Trail (Warner Archive)

I remember reading, way back in the day, in some Andrew Sarris volume or other, Sarris averring that the Raoul Walsh/Errol Flynn pictures were better than the Michael Curtiz/Errol Flynn pictures, so when these came from the Warner Archives at roughly the same time I figured it might be fun to use them to put the idea to the test. Burma is one of the made-during-World-War-II movies (first screened January 1945) in which the Japanese forces are referred to in the racist terms they were likely referred to as by actual Allied soldiers in that was and is additionally one of the “Give America all the credit” WW II movies. This is the Walsh movie, with a Franz Waxman score, and both craftpersons are pulling out all the stops here. This transfer is from original materials so there’s no “Sorry, Great Britain for snubbing you” disclaimer in the opening — this was put on prints after Great Britain raised holy hell about it. Way after Great Britain raised holy hell about it — 1952. Despite all the fictionalization this is a very wonky picture that’s consistently confident in putting across the illusion that it’s giving you the real story fair and square. That of “Merrill’s Marauders,” such as they are, slicing through a “Jap-infested jungle,” yeow. Looks clean as a whistle, with lots of what you could call “good” grain. Contains many lingering shots of reconnaissance plane equipment and such. Featuring Samuel Beckett lookalike Erville Alderson and the future Doberman.  Now. As for Santa Fe Trail. Curtiz in 1940, on a pretty good run as you may recall. You know you’re in for some “fun” when an explanatory opening text speaks of West Point’s “brilliant commandant” Robert E. Lee. But it gets worse. This phantasmagorical slop bucket of racist rationalization and Confederate-coddling is objectionable from start to finish but you almost have to hand it to the ideologically blinkered Curtiz — he would have made a great used car salesman. Curtiz’s fluid, impassioned camera never misses a trick, the staging is masterful, Sol Polito cinematography has that good Expressionist redolence. The movie also, one has to say, underscores Curtiz’s weaknesses as a director — his people are a lot shallower than those of Hawks and Ford. But the leads are great eye candy — Flynn grows and keeps a mustache, Olivia de Havilland is absolutely charming. Reagan is Reagan, and he’s playing George Custer, so you can happily imagine his ultimate fate. Raymond Massey’s John Brown is introduced about 25 minutes in. The actor displays utter conviction playing an utter nutjob but he refuses to project villainy, a salutary choice. Must have chapped Ward Bond’s ass to play an abolitionist, you think? Anti-inspirational dialogue, from Flynn’s J.E.B. Stuart: “It isn’t our job to decide who’s right and who’s wrong about slavery. Any more than it is John Brown’s.” Oh get stuffed. — A- to both.

The Outsiders: The Complete Novel 4K (Warner)

S.E. Hinton’s novel was foisted upon me when I was in my early teens as something I “ought to” read (as opposed to A Clockwork Orange or Funeral Rites, both of which I’d perhaps too-enthusiastically consumed by this time) and it did nothing for me. Not just because its terse, plain prose style didn’t appeal to me at all, but because as a Jersey suburbanite I couldn’t get with these relentlessly sentimental post-greaser mid-Western kids. And despite my devotion to Coppola, my 23-year-old self couldn’t relate to them onscreen, either. (Rumble Fish is a wholly other story, for reasons I explored here.) Watching this new rendition of the film it still speaks to me loudest as a curio of high visual interest, especially with respect to the stuff homaging Gone With The Wind. I also dig those GIANT closeups of Ponyboy as he goes into his reverie. Helluva cast, too: Tom Waits! William Smith! Melanie Meyrink! Coppola’s new, and rather moving, ten-minute intro to the film reminds you that he is the only director in recorded history who made a film at the request of middle school student petition.  — A+

The Servant 4K (Canal)

Some movies reveal themselves to you more and more on repeated viewings, and why wouldn’t they. The uncanny thing about The Servant is that it just gets more naggingly mysterious and disturbing. This spotless presentation conveys the film’s frostiness almost too well. You can choose between watching in 1.66 and 1.77 aspect ratios. Given that the compositions are such you’d swear that the movie emerged from Zeus’s (Losey’s, that is) brow in 1.66, I can’t imagine why you’d watch in 1.77. Because you can, I guess. — A+  

 Sex World 4K (Vinegar Syndrome)

Certainly some of you out there must be wondering: what does porn look like in 4K? Specifically, what does vintage porn, which for a brief span of time was actually shot on 35mm film, look like in 4K? Well. Let me tell you. The colors in this 1978 quasi-futuristic yarn of the troubled souls looking for satisfaction/catharsis at the title resort are often remarkable vivid. So, too, are the pimples and ingrown hairs on the intimate body parts of several performers. While directed by Anthony Spinelli, the movie suffers from Gerard Damiano Disease, that is, a compulsion to get almost sick-makingly self-serious about the dysfunctions its motley characters suffer from. Also it really skimps on the Annette Haven content. I absolutely credit Vinegar Syndrome for being format pioneers here, while wishing they’d have given the 4K treatment to something more funsy, like Mary Mary. I’m sure they have their reasons.. — B

 Some Came Running (Warner Archive)

What can I say? I named this damn blog after the movie, which I went into some detail on here.  And a few years later, for Decider, I wrote on it some more. So hell yes, I have been wishing and hoping that this would make it to Blu-ray for some time. Now it has, and It looks remarkably fine, crisp and clear with excellent color values. Director Vincente Minnelli’s mise-en-scene is as on point as ever and his camera ever so slightly more noticeably mobile than usual. The proscenium is less prominent than in such other landmark melodramas as 1955’s The Cobweb or 1960’s Home From The Hill. The final shot, a graceful funeral scene that closes with the very significant gesture of Dean Martin’s Alabama taking his hat off to a character he had previously rather grossly disparaged, is an all time. And watching it, I was hit with the nauseating realization that the Russo brothers were likely paying their own form of homage to it in the ghastly closing shot of Endgame. Anyway, this shot is way better than the one in Endgame. — A+

A Salvage Edition of a Quarantine Blu-Ray Consumer Guide

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

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

Action of the Tiger (Warner Archive)

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

Angel (Kino Lorber)

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

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

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

 

Blood on the Moon (Warner Archive)

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

The Bolshevik Trilogy (Flicker Alley)

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

 

Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter (Scream Factory)

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

 

The Far Country (Arrow Region B import)

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

 

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

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

 

Flame of New Orleans (Kino Lorber)

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

 

Force Ten From Navarone (Kino Lorber)

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

The Golem (Kino Lorber)

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

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

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

Khrustalyov, My Car! (Arrow)

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

Rachel and the Stranger (Warner Archive)

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

 

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

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

Reflections in a Golden Eye (Warner Archive)

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

Romance on the High Seas (Warner Archive)

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

 Woman Times Seven (Kino Lorber)

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

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

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

Blu-ray Consumer Guide, Spring 2020

Hello there. Customarily I point to my PayPal widget whenever I post one of these monoliths, but in this case I’ll instead ask you to consider donating to the Cinema Worker Solidarity Fund. Thanks.

Equipment: PlayStation 4, OPPO Sony KD50X690E display, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.

And Hope To Die (Kino Lorber)

A remarkable curio. One of Rene Clement’s last pictures, it’s leagues removed from the focus and discipline of Purple Noon. The droll Leone pastiche in this 1972 picture’s opening railway station scene suggests something wholly other from what the movie becomes. Jean-Louis Trintignant, in Canada trying to escape from vengeful gypsies, stumbles upon what seems like a bungled caper run by, um, Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray. The dialogue soundtrack is all French, with Ray dubbing himself and Ryan, um, not. It kind of sticks out if you're accustomed to hearing Robert Ryan's voice coming out of his mouth. Ryan’s psycho leadership ethos and constant testing of Trintignant suggest James Hadley Chase, but the ostensible source material is David Goodis’ Black Friday. Between the dick-measuring character dynamics of the principal males and the psychodramas of molls Lea Massari and, um, Tisa Farrow, the thing mostly plays like some Claude Lelouch fever dream of existential romanticism. In the 140 minute playing time, about an hour fifty is pretty much nothing happening as the various permutations of the question of honor among thieves is considered. All of it culminating in one of the most logistically ridiculous capers I’ve ever seen in a movie, played out with a complete poker face and capped by the crane shot of Johnny LaRue’s dreams. Weirdly enough this is one of the better looking discs I’ve seen in some time, although DVD Beaver says it has a skimpy bitrate. What do I know. Stalwart Kino Lorber Kommentary Krew Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson are appreciative, discursive, and at times informative. Inspirational tidbit: “First black guy in the film I think.” —B+

Beau Brummel (Warner Archive)

“I wonder why Stewart Granger said that Scaramouche was the only movie he was proud of? This doesn’t look too bad,” thought I, as I pushed this disc into the old PS4. Well I found out. Not that this 1954 picture is bad — on a ground-floor craft level it’s a solid piece of studio period product. It’s two things: Granger is bad in it. He can’t find a useful balance between his 18^th-century egalitarian fop’s charisma and his arrogance, and so Peter Ustinov, as Brummel’s frenemy the future George IV, walks away with much of the film. Except when Robert Morley, as George IV’s better-known dad, shows up. And except when Elizabeth Taylor stuns in both white wig and natural raven tresses. (Granger too is always very well turned out — the much bruited russet dressing gown is a knockout.) And second, there’s the overall feeling that this is a real, albeit inadvertent, nothing-happens movie. Do I blame director Curtis Bernhard? Is it important at this point? Let the anonymous craftsman rest. Most of the time while watching this my mind reached back thirty or more years, when my boy Mel Neuhaus was running Laser Island and sold me a Japanese disc of Vincent Sherman’s 1948 Adventures of Don Juan with Errol Flynn and Viveca Lindfors. No great shakes as a movie per se, he said, but the best Technicolor on home video ever. And he was right. Why hasn’t Warner Archive put THAT on a Blu-ray? —B-

Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb (Scream Factory)

Seth Holt! Aubrey Morris! Oozing amputation wounds! And Valerie Leon, who’s both the titular mummy (why did I just write that) and her modern-day counterpart, a comely lass who’s the daughter of one of the tomb raiders who unearthed the ancient Egyptian witch in the first place. Which makes things easy on the filmmakers, location-wise. Anyway. As lurid early-‘70s Hammer pictures go, this is a few smidges better than Scars of Dracula, no disrespect to Roy Ward Baker intended. It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that a highly attractive female lead in the vicinity of depraved murderous supernatural goings-on equals horror picture success. As a member of this movie’s core demo, I grapple with ways to verbally convey Leon’s appeal without coming off like a drooling creep out of an early Jethro Tull tune. Suffice it to say that director Holt, as we’ll even see later in this column, has a knack for satisfying the male gaze. The extras are copious and the commentary from Steve Haberman is relaxed and informative, although he himself sometimes succumbs to the temptation to drool aloud. —A

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (Kino Lorber)

I guess I understand why this 1938 picture is considered “minor” Lubitsch, all right. For me the forced absurdism of the finale slops on a — well, there’s no other word for it — jejune quality that you almost never find in the maestro’s other pictures. (The writers were Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, and Wilder’s weakness for such stuff waned soon after, and started emerging again at the very end of his career.) But the opening sequence, from its very funny shop-window gag (which Wilder fully credits Lubitsch for) to the convolutions of the meet-cute of Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert, is worth the price of admission. And Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert continue to appear throughout the whole film! Joseph McBride says “its plods tiresomely through its grating plot mechanisms” and quotes Brackett calling it “a really embarrassing picture.” (In his swell book How Did Lubitsch Do It?) These days though, at 90 minutes, how plodding can it be? Also: Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert. The nice-looking disc also features a commentary by Kat Ellinger that you’ll forgive me for not listening to. —A-

El Bruto (VCI)

A “major 4K restoration,” says the cover, and the picture quality of this 1952 Mexican production is very good to excellent, but still a little soft in spots. “The law is for the rich,” one of the soon-to-be-evicted tenement dwellers notes after a crowd of them receives a visit from their all-but-gloating landlord informing them of their future homelessness. Director Luis Buñuel, in the interview book Objects of Desire: “I added the landlord’s father” — a doddering, mordantly comical figure — “and also a scene between Katy Jurado and a rooster that I improvised during the filming,” as one does. The real gist of the picture is the Katy Jurado as the servant of the landowner, a not at all obscure object of desire.  Pedro Armendáriz is the title character, a simple oaf the landlord hires to terrorize the poor community. Two super charismatic icons of Mexican cinema facing off is pretty hot stuff to begin with, but Buñuel makes it truly special. It should be noted here nobody before or since Jurado could make a drooping lower lip so lascivious. The movie’s pace is snappy but also deliberate — the Brute and Jurado’s Paloma don’t even meet until 30 minutes into this 80 minute picture. Good old Andrés Soler is properly tetchy as the landlord. The scenario enacts the old good girl/bad girl dynamic without making you sick, because Buñuel always brings a dynamic and skewed perspective to such tropes. This is part of a VCI series of restored Mexican pictures. While they are sold as being region-free, neither this nor a second title I bought played on my PS4 (and yes I did rebuild the machine’s database after getting the error message of “invalid disc”). Played fine on my OPPO which is set to Region B. Caveat emptor. Otherwise, like all Buñuel, essential in any format. —A

 Canyon Passage (Kino Lorber)

The presentation of this 1946 Jacques Tourneur western boasts an excellent image and a professional, well-organized commentary by Toby Roan. It’s a superb, unusual film. Largely a romantic drama around a kind of love quintangle, so to speak. Not a lot of action but a load of atmosphere — look at that mud in the middle of a non-boom town’s street, and the ineffectual planks leading into the bank and the hotel. Why does Dana Andrews even bother to buy new dress boots, one wonders.  Tourneur uses a steady, observant, patiently poetic style. “It’s a beautiful film,” Martin Scorsese told Richard Schickel. “There’s a wonderful moment where Brian Donlevy is in the back room — I think Hoagy Carmichael sees him — and he’s weighing some cold out of a pouch. It’s not his. He’s just measuring it and marking the weight down. Then he looks at it again. He takes some for himself. That’s where the problem begins. He’s a decent guy, but he’s got some business problems. This kind of dilemma fascinates me.” Contrast this with the scene in The Searchers, over a decade later, when Ward Bond watches Dorothy Evans caress Wayne’s coat. And speaking of Hoagy Carmichael, his presence and his songs are a bonus.—A+

 The Cranes Are Flying (Criterion)

Whoa, look at that image. The title of Chris Fujiwara’s booklet essay says it all: “A Free Camera.” Free and also beautifully focused and witnessing scenes still incredible over 60 years later. Like Tarkovsky and a few other Russians, Mikael Kalatozov’s movies can still elicit “how did they DO that?” gasps. But this love story of the Great Patriotic War (that’s World War II to us) is more than a technical tour de force, it’s an unrelentingly emotional movie. The character who dies imagining the wedding he will never have will break you. The great Ian Christie contributes a really solid video interview; there’s some material on the miracle-working cinematographer Sergei Urusevskiy; Claude Lelouch movingly recalls his discovery of the film, and bringing it to Cannes; and there’s a feature doc on Kalatozov which opens with a trumpet player in Havana playing “Nature Boy,” because I Am Cuba. — A+

The Criminal (Kino Lorber)

The entirety of director Joseph Losey’s filmography is fascinating, but each discrete period of it is fascinating for different reasons. This 1960 movie, also titled The Concrete Jungle (by some distributor who wasn’t quite so clever as he reckoned, I reckon) is arguably the last in that period, which saw him, from 1947’s The Boy With Green Hair and into self-imposed exile from the States, finding and losing and re-finding his voice as he struggled for consistent employment. (He details those struggles in Michel Ciment’s Conversations With Losey, a great film book.)  It’s a tight, urgent, beautifully observed study of rank and eventually impotent masculinity and the second film of Losey’s alliance with Stanley Baker. (The alliance with Dirk Bogarde began with The Sleeping Tiger six years prior. Baker and Bogarde would Losey-meet in 1967’s Accident, also a recent Kino Lorber release I did not review because it’s essentially the same as the BFI Blu-ray with fewer supplements.)  Losey’s depiction of prison, both visually and thematically, is striking. The cinematographer was Robert Krasker, and while his work here is not as consistently pin-sharp as in The Third Man (which I believe is at times deliberate), it’s very good. (The prison-door peephole effect is a little janky, but it’s 1960, come on.) The staging of the prison riots is something. Patrick Magee does some possibly unexpected underplaying as a prison guard. And Baker’s man outside for a new criminal endeavor is played by Sam Wanamaker, for all you wanting to do some further research into the universe of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. I’ve enjoyed Kat Ellinger’s commentaries on certain films but here her contribution did not send me. In a scene set in the prison chapel, she observes that here the men are “united by another oppressive force, by the church.” In any event, this is a helluva movie. Very influential, I think, in a kind of stealth way, on Scorsese’s crime pictures and on Fargo. Also the John Dankworth/Cleo Laine musical contributions are faboo. Did you know that my mom’s lawyer represented those two in the States? Now you do. —A+

Day of the Dolphin (Kino Lorber)

Looks spectacular. Is spectacular. This movie got a lot of smack when it was released in 1973, and it didn’t do well, but looking at it now, you can see director Mike Nichols doing a sketch blueprint for E.T. The long tracking shots, the mysterious montages building to a reveal, and more, are key components of a cinematic idiom designed to elicit Ye Olde “Sense Of Wonder.” But the dolphin voices just don’t do it the way Spielberg’s creature did, you may say. Well I LIKE the dolphin voices. (Which were provided by the late Buck Henry, also the movie’s screenwriter. I kind of regret not asking him to do one for me the single time I met the great man.) The Berger/Mitchell/Thompson commentary is typically enthusiastic and garrulous, albeit a little far-fetched; the fellows interpret this as a movie about a director being manipulated and thrown away by the studios, and compare to De Palma’s The Fury, positing that Andrew Stevens’ character in the latter film is a stand-in for De Palma and...well you get the idea. I think. I’m not exactly sure I do myself. —A-

 Dodsworth (Warner Archive)

“The best. The best.” I remember my old friend the film historian Ed Hulse characterizing this 1936 William Wyler picture thusly many moons ago, back when it was way harder to see. He’s right, and his opinion is not a minority one among his and our ilk. Which is kind of interesting to consider these days, because this adaptation of a Sinclair Lewis novel is a quiet, deliberate, nuanced character study that’s only a few steps on the other side of the Art Film border. This Warner Archive disc presents a 2019 Film Foundation restoration that is not merely a restoration but a revelation. Rudolph Maté’s cinematography is every bit as sensitive as Wyler’s direction and the three lead player, Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, and Mary Astor give career best performances that you can now view with startling clarity. The soundtrack is well cleaned up too. A master class in classical cinematic language, particularly with respect to framing (not to mention pacing).  he black telephone at Astor’s villa is a nifty precursor to the box in Wyler’s 1941 The Little Foxes Inspirational dialogue: “They say we’ll have to behave ourselves when we become a couple of old grandparents in December.”—A+

 ffolkes (Kino Lorber)

Roger Moore in 1980, growing a beard and breaking away from Bond…with Andrew V. McLagen. And bringing David Hedison along for the ride. (That makes it sound as if the participation of a Felix Leiter was deliberate, and I can’t REALLY say it was.) Here he’s a very unorthodox undersea rescue strategist called upon by a skeptical British government to prevent Anthony Perkins and Michael Parks and their pals from blowing up an oil rig. Moore’s character’s unorthodoxies include excessive cat coddling, a misogyny that truth to tell is expressed relatively mildly (he’s irritated at having been brought up with only sisters, or something), and swigging whisky straight from a bottle which winds up being the trait that registers most vividly. Action movie cultist comfort food to be sure.  Another good looking disc, especially color-wise. But not all that robustly cinematic. Can’t really complain though. —B

Hard Ticket To Hawaii (Mill Creek)

I have more than once related my conversation with director Andy Sidaris during a screening of this 1987 film, one in which he complained that the fellow sitting in the row ahead of me (whom I did not admit to actually knowing) were giggling too much. On the introduction to this disc, recycled from the Guns, Girls, and G-Strings DVD box set, statuesque scream queen Julie Strain, rest in peace, says to Sidaris of the picture, “It just cracks me up every time.” Why doesn’t Sidaris object when SHE says she finds it funny? I think we all know why. Anyway. This is a true classic of the let’s-discuss-this-case-nude-in-the-hot-tub subgenre of action thriller, the one featuring the giant uncontrollable poisonous snake. It is, as a production, WAY slicker than 1985’s Malibu Express. If you’re keeping score. Weirdly enough, given the purposefulness of most Sidaris fare, this meanders a bit. As if he wants to put off the ultimate snake reveal but he doesn’t have enough plot to manage. MST3K people take note:  Flying a small plane is to this movie what rock climbing was to 1951’s Lost Continent. While I miss Barbara Edwards and Susan Kiger from earlier films (blame it on my dad’s stash of Playboy mags), Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton bring what they bring with aplomb. And then there’s that classic Frisbee gag. Inspirational dialogue: “I’m supposed to be soft, I’m a woman.” Inimitable Sidaris comedy: “You tried to rape me last night!” “That was yesterday!” Inimitable Sidaris suspense: One of the girls takes a Polaroid and as she’s holding it up says, “Look, it’s developing!” The instantly memorable theme song is even “better” than I remembered: “It’s not paradise all the time,” verily. Image quality is fine, and the audio commentary features immortal banter between Andy and his wife and producer Arlene. Andy: ”Here comes a great joke,’ She’s so dumb she had to go home and study for her pap test.’” Arlene: “That was your joke Andy. I will never take credit for it. Ever.” They also wax amazed that they managed to credibly cut together footage shot in L.A. and Molokai, holy shit. Ultimate inspirational dialogue: “One man’s dream is another man’s lunch.” —A+

 House By The Cemetery (Blue Underground)

Troy Haworth’s commentary observes, early on, “Classing this as a zombie movie is a little bit problematic.” That’s not really what “problematic' means nowadays. A little later: “Fulci and women is one of those problematic topics,” okay, I guess that’s more like it. But the thing is, if I were worried about things being problematic, I wouldn’t watching a Lucio Fulci movie. I don’t want to drag Haworth too much, as I’ve got a Bluray with my own commentary on it coming soon. (Fortunately said disc’s commentary, on Ford’s The Long Gray Line, in a box from Indicator, also features Farran Smith Nehme and Diana Drumm, who are great, and make me look and sound better.) For the most part here he’s informal but informative, and occasionally understated, as when he observes “Amityville Horror 2 has some incestuous things in it.” SOME? This remastering has a very strong teal color correction. This practice is controversial, and I’m curious as to why this 1981 grindhouse item got this treatment. Its coolness complements the movie well, as it turns out, at least to my eye. As Fulci stuff goes, this is rather understated — nobody vomits up their own intestines or anything — and concentrates on creepy don’t-go-into-the-basement set pieces. The other extras are in the delightful Blue Underground  deep-dish tradition, and there’s a CD of the soundtrack for those delighted by mysterioso organ chords and such. —A

Leave Her To Heaven (Criterion)

This is from the Film Foundation restoration, and it is a smidge or two better than the Technicolor source that Twilight Time used for its 2013 Blu. It looks magnificent and until there’s a 4K disc this will stand as the ultimate home theater version of John Stahl’s magnificent broad-daylight noir with Gene Tierney magnificently playing against simpatico siren type to contrive and ice-cold selfish spider. This loses the 2005 commentary (recycled on the TT disc) that Richard Schickel did with supporting player Dwayne Hickman, which is a shame. But in a video interview Imogen Smith contributes a relatively thorough  examination of Stahl, well-organized and revealing. Citing Stahl’s restraint, she compares him with Naruse which is a sharp observation.—A

Masked and Anonymous (Shout Factory)

I saw this at Sundance in 2003 and roared much of the way through; emerging from the screening I pronounced it “the Plan 9 From Outer Space of Dylan movies.” (This was a thing for me back then; I called Toback’s 1999 Black and White the Plan 9 From Outer Space of race relations movies.) Anyway, I think I was being kind of a dick about it. Not to say that the strained allegory suddenly holds up…but its points seem rather more salient now for some reason. In any event, the star-studded procession certainly qualifies as A Unique Object. Digitally shot, it looks more so here than I recollect it looking back in the day. And the extras help in making sense of the whole thing: Co-writer and director Larry Charles (who got to know Dylan via factotum Eddie Gorodetsky, who Charles claims was boring Larry David so much on a plane trip that Charles jumped in to engage him to spare Gorodetsky potential humiliation) recalls the project’s conception as a “Bob Dylan slapstick comedy.” He also complains about the reviews. Sorry Larry! —A-

The Oscar (Kino Lorber)

It is a testament to the comic genius of the SCTV crew that they managed to successfully send up this, a piece of Hollywood bombast so mired in excess that it seemed well beyond parody. Co-screenwriter Harlan Ellison was so upset by the end result of this crazy crawl-your-way-to-the-top saga (although it is in fact replete with Ellisonean overstatement) that he used to mount a yearly Oscar Renunciation Tour, or something. Long elusive in terms of decent home versions, this is indeed a superb restoration. Jill St. John actually looks a little TOO peaches and cream, if such a thing is possible. Poor Tony Bennett. Anyway. The disc is equipped with two commentaries. The first features Patton Oswalt, Josh Olson (yup, the guy who said he won’t read your "fucking script" although maybe he’s got time now) and Eric Nelson (director of the Ellison documentary Dreams With Sharp Teeth). They enact an approximate MST3K riff session interspersed with gossip and much Ellison appreciation — they all knew the man. There are some good zingers. “Is he married to The Polyphonic Spree?” being one. Along the way the fellow reveal that they don’t know who Guy KIbbee was. No wonder movies suck nowadays. The other commentary features Berger, Mitchell and Thompson, who protest, re the movie’s alleged poor quality, “Audiences ENJOY this!” and at some point work in a comparison to The Best Years of Our Lives. One notes, “I watch this movie and I see one big similarity with one director and that’s Martin Scorsese.” These dudes are high as fuck. Eventually one of them descends sufficiently to make the more apt comparison, which is with Aldrich’s The Legend of Lylah Claire. Was the Jean Hale character truly based on Carroll Baker? We may never know. —A+

Penelope (Warner Archive)

Directed by the oft-dreaded Arthur Hiller, written by the producer of I Love Melvin, this 1966 piece of piffle of a is one of those things folks cite when complaining about How Hollywood Failed Natalie Wood. The movie is not quite the embarrassment that its poster, reproduced on the front of this Bluray, is, but that’s not saying much. Wood who is lovely and charming, plays a well-kept wife who’s not so well-kept that she won’t rob her husband’s bank to work out some neurotic kinks. Ostensible comedic highlights include attempted rape by Jonathan Winters and Dick Shawn as a shrink. The move maintains interest from a standpoint of sheer curiosity, although I cannot lie,  the lead performer running around in her underwear doesn’t hurt. She also sings. There’s a nifty 360 degree dolly shot (thank God for Harry Stradling Sr., the cinematographer later beloved by Barbra Streisand), nifty location scenes in MOMA’s sculpture garden, Peter Falk working out his Columbo mannerisms, Ian Bannen totally at sea, and a lot of hair and costume changes. Also a wacky twist ending. As Candice Bergen remarked to Paul Schrader re American Gigolo, “The colors are wonderful.” —B

Pray for the Wildcats (Kino Lorber)

The opening credits for this 1974 goodie tout “Special Guest Star” Robert Reed. It’s a made-for-TV movie, how can he be a “guest star?” This is one of the recent Kino releases that touts a “Brand New 2K Master” and makes you ask, “why this and not Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife?”  But wow, it really DOES look good. This is the third time I’ve seen this. The first was when it aired on ABC as a “special” (there’s that word again) “two hour event” or what they called it. It was pretty weird seeing nice Andy Griffith (I’d never seen A Face In The Crowd, whaddya want from me, I was 15) as a psycho exec inveigling some ad agency stooges to go dirt-biking with him, on a journey where he eventually kills a couple of hippies. Aiieeee. Griffith overplays when he’s taking off his motorcycle helmet, for Christ’s sake. Even more special than Reed is William Shatner, who throughout delivers the Most Shatner Line Readings Ever. The second time I saw it was in the late 90s with a bunch of drunk/high as fuck bar buddies during a marathon viewing that also included that Powers Boothe Jim Jones movie. And now, in sobriety, it remains almost if not quite as uproarious as ever, in part because the picture got its two-hour ABC time slot through padding. And the padding consists of, well, dirt biking, doled out in rock-climbing portions. Commentators Amanda Reyes and Bill Ackerman do not riff on the movie or find it in any way hilarious. Instead, they  take it quite seriously, which I suppose is to their credit. Apparently academia is beginning to catch up with TV movies, as they cite at least one study. Neat. They’re very informative — although it’s clear that Ackerman read the same Wikipedia entry on score composer Fred Myrow that I did. Said score is pretty creditable in fact. Did I mention Marjoe Gortner? This is his first post-Marjoe acting gig, and he’s not great. Supporting females Lorraine Gary, Janet Margolin and OF COURSE Angie Dickenson (who utters the immortal title) look very displeased to be here. —B+

 Quai des Orfevres (Kino Lorber)

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s third feature, made in 1947, doesn’t pack quite the wallop of his prior Le Corbeau (1943) in part because its scenario is a little more discursive, not as ruthlessly focused. In a sense this is a feature rather than a bug; Quai is a city tale located in differing milieus while Corbeau’s murderous provincials motored a story that was almost immediately tight as a noose. But this movie gets there. Bernard Blier is the sad sack married to luscious Suzy Delair (who only just died at the age of 102!) who might be looking for a sugar daddy in old Charles Dullin. Soon someone ends up dead and Louis Jouvet’s inspector shows up. Much devious character is revealed, Clouzot times kettles to boil over at thematically opportune times, and the whole thing builds to a brutal ending. Clouzot’s mastery (some would say facility) is more than fully formed here. My friend Nick Pinkerton flies solo for a long commentary and comes through with, well, flying colors. And the movie itself looks great. —A

A Quiet Place In The Country (Shout Factory)

The slight raggedness of the materials used to master this disc is a bit of a plus. Makes the movie look even more disreputable, so to speak. But what, you may ask, is Vanessa Redgrave doing in a disreputable movie? Neither giallo nor pure art picture, Quiet Place is a 1968 picture directed by Elio Petri (who cowrote the script with Tonino Guerra) and costarring Redgrave’s then-mate, Franco Nero. Nero plays a tortured artist tormented (or is that the word) by dreams of his lover/agent (Redgrave, natch) dominating him violently while dressed in S&M gear. They hit upon the title residence, she leaves him to his own devices, and he starts going even more insane. Good color values. A messy, weird movie that recalls a bunch of others from this time frame while not really resembling them. (I thought of The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh once and then said, “Nah.”) The color values of the presentation are solid and the Troy Haworth commentary is one of his better one, at least that I’ve heard. My friend Dan Callahan, in his biography of Redgrave, calls her role “essentially thankless,” which is fair enough. Unless Redgrave got a lot out of dressing in S&M gear. One hopes so. —B

Rasputin the Mad Monk (Scream Factory)

Don Sharp, of The Kiss of the Vampire fame, directed this 1966 Cinemascope picture. And whatever you think it’s gonna be based on that, it’s not. As commentators Steve Haberman, Constantine Nasr, and Ted Newsom point out, Sharp didn’t have enough dough for lavish scenes, the result of having 20,000 pounds cut from the budget. Hence, you don’t get a lot of the splendor of the Czar’s court. Really it’s mostly Christopher Lee’s Rasputin causing trouble in bars. You laugh (I hope) but I kid you not. (The commentary as a whole is mostly excellent but the fellow occasionally nod [one of them pronounces the great director’s name “VIncenty Minnelli”] or go out on weird limbs [“Rex Reed complained of Myra Breckinridge that his dance was not cut properly”]. They do display a lot of expertise on various refitted Hammer sets (one bar once was Dracula’s basement). There’s an original cast commentary too, featuring Lee, which of course is older. Once you become accustomed to the movie’s ontological reality, it’s kind of fun — there’s some super nasty acid-throwing stuff in the climax, if that’s your bag — and the image quality as a whole is splendid.—A-

Show Boat (Criterion)

Given the very particular standard set by MGM in the 1940s and beyond you may wonder, how good can a Universal-produced musical in black-and-white made in 1936 be. Holy moley, do you have a treat in store. Never doubt James Whale is all I can tell you. It looks superb and perhaps more crucially it sounds better than fine. The picture does have a side which many may consider stodgy, most of it residing in its hewing in some respects, to theatrical musical conventions of the time. But once you get accustomed to that it adds to the fascination. The performers are incredible. Helen Morgan! Paul Robeson! Irene Dunne in general but also her what-the-fuck-is-going-on dance during “Can’t Help Loving That Man.” Whale’s direction is  consistently excellent; there are moments of fascinating Whale Expressionism in “Old Man River” and the imagery during “I Have The Room Above Her” (a song composed especially for the film, one of three) is stunning. The extras are superb. They include excerpts from the 1929 Show Boat, originally silent, rewired for sound  and also featuring Helen Morgan, and a Paul Robeson doc from 1979, narrated by Sidney Poitier. (This is also a feature of Criterion’s Robeson box set.) There’s also a new video feature on the movie’s race issues, as navigated by scholar Shana L. Redmond. She asks viewers to interrogate what “makes us comfortable” about a number of its tropes and depictions. As much as I admire Show Boat, I’ve never been comfortable with it in that respect. Rather, I adore it largely because of the songs, their incredible melodies and quietly spectacular lyrics. People like to slag Oscar Hammerstein II but any guy who can come up with a couplet like “I’m tired of living/and scared of dying” has definitely got something on the ball. Many of you might not remember that this was, a long time ago, a Criterion laser disc (spine number 45) and the company has included my old Video Review colleague Miles Krueger’s professional, polished, informative commentary from that edition. An incredible package. —A+

Slaughterhouse Five (Arrow)

I saw this movie when it first came out in 1972, at the age of twelve. I had read the novel. As you can imagine I was an incredibly popular kid. Anyway, I convinced my mom’s younger brother to be my adult guardian; he was (and remains) twelve years my senior, and I do think he enjoyed the movie, largely due to Valerie Perrine. I would have my grandmother take me to see Frenzy later in the year and that did not go nearly as well, by which I mean it did not go well at all. I don’t know what my point is except to underscore that both the novel and the film are art objects I have long held dear. So I’m quite glad to see this on Bluray, in an excellent transfer. Kurt Vonnegut loved this adaptation and I can understand why — it gets within better than swinging distance of the novel’s tone despite (wisely, I think) jettisoning completely its mantra, “And so it goes.” I know it’s flawed and its portrayals of women are bad, although I’d argue that Vonnegut and the movie were pushing the stereotypes and cultural conventions that were part of the reality of American suburbia of the time, but we can argue about that later. The performances are all good to great, the structuring is masterful, the physical editing lives up to the concept behind the structuring (and almost never goes for cheap correspondences), and so on. With The World of Henry Orient, it’s director George Roy Hill’s greatest achievement. The editorial supplements, I’m sorry to say, abound with examples of Not Getting It. The commentary is by Troy Haworth, who kicks off by explaining he’s interested in this movie, since he’s usually more into “European stuff.” He then says that Glenn Gould “composed” the score. Glenn Gould was not a composer. The score was composed by Bach. It’s “European stuff.”  He’s very good on the cast, except when he says of Perrine, “we’re going to be seeing a lot more of her and I do mean a great deal more of her.” But man, he has a true millennial (at least I suppose it is that) appreciation of what World War II was all about, and almost constantly complains of how passive and uninteresting Billy is, without taking much note of his, um, name. More disappointing is the stalwart Kim Newman, who doesn’t seem to understand that the movie is about the dislocation of PTSD and instead wonders whether Vonnegut had seen Last Year At Marienbad. Maybe he had, but one doubts that had anything to do with anything. What Vonnegut did in his book was pinpoint the shattered reality of what Tom Brokaw would corrupt into “the greatest generation.” When Billy’s wife, wishing to know who gave Billy the jewel that he has put into a piece of jewelry for him, asks “What was his name Billy?” and we know his name was Edgar Derby and we know how he died and Billy won’t say but Billy keeps looping in and out of the event forever…I mean how dense do you have to be to get that this isn’t about Resnais? Or rather, that Resnais himself was often about the same thing? (You, he and I have all seen Muriel, no?) Newman also glibly dismisses “And so it goes” as words “of wry acceptance.” Seriously man. After a while I was almost shouting at the television: “IT’S ABOUT PTSD IT’S ABOUT PTSD IT’S ABOUT PTSD.” Anyway, the interview with Perry King is good. He’s superb in the movie, one of his best appearances. He at one point characterizes the film as perhaps “too gentle” and maybe that’s not a bad call.  It’s still great. —A

 Song of Songs (Kino Lorber)

Again — Force Ten From Navarone on Kino gets a 4K master but not this Rouben Mamoulian/Marlene Dietrich team-up. It’s a strange world. The image is mostly fine and hey, the movie is 90 years old. Soft at times. Lots of grain but it’s well-structured as they say. Sometimes a shimmer effect. All of it is superbly transferred. The movie presents a small but determined spider’s web of male perverts trapping the devout Dietrich. Sculptor Brian Aherne convinces her to pose nude for him, and perhaps he can provide the kind of love Dietrich dreams of, the kind spoken of in the title scripture. The resultant sculpture is pretty racy, because it was 1932. Instead of being a true amour, Aherne then pimps her to kinky military faux alpha Lionel Atwill. Mamoulian’s touch is not as clever as what he wielded in his prior City Streets (though the change of tone is appropriate to the ostensible tragedy of the melodrama) but his mastery is pretty impressive nonetheless. Because it’s Mamoulian the swoony stuff gets close to actual sensuality and the cheesy stuff has a consistently compelling quality. David Del Valle’s commentary is pertinent and informative but he is prone to overexcitement at times. “Look at those nipples!” he exclaims of the sculpture. Yup, there they are. Tom Milne, in his great monograph on Mamoulian, argues that the last third of the melodrama calls for a director with Stroheim’s sense of cruelty, and that “wielding the scalpel has never been Mamoulian’s forte.” Be that as it may, a few blows register. Highly worthwhile.  —A-

The Stalking Moon (Warner Archive)

I don’t believe in the academy of the overrated but I do believe in the academy of the underrated, and Robert Mulligan belongs there. This 1969 Western is a modest but incredibly solid construction, featuring  great, great cinematography by Charles Lang, spectacularly transferred here. Gregory Peck, who’d worked with Mulligan before in 1962’s To Kill A Mockingbird, iyou may have heard of it, is inspired while conspicuously narrowing his register. The underplaying of his tracker character makes him an enigmatic hero but not an anti-hero, as was often the fashion with American Westerns of the time. Eva Marie Saint, as the woman he protects, is a perfect mysterious foil for him. The direction of this suspenseful long-term chase drama is perfectly judged, superb, understated, but also brutal on occasion.  As a character study and a tense cat-and-mouse, it’s still pretty unbeatable.—A

Station Six Sahara (Netwerk UK Region B import)

I’ve often cited Robert Benayoun’s description of “authentic sadistic cinema,” “a cinema whose elective,  even ceremonious, climate remains, venomous and intoxicating, that of total perdition.” Genre movies provide the most hospitable grounds for such a climate, but it’s not a requirement. This 1963 number, often cited as a perverse favorite by Martin Scorsese (it was included in a double feature program he and Jay Cocks curated for Film Forum last summer, where I finally saw it for the first time) is a super-squinchy bit of business that begins as a mucky men at work melodrama. Specifically the men are post-war Germans and Brits (with Mario Adorf as a brute of not credibly specified ethnicity) pitted together and against each other at a Saharan oil-pumping station. So it’s already a little tense. These grimy fellows (among them Denholm Elliot at his least ingratiating and an insufferably loutish Ian Bannen, who we last spoke of in the Penelope capsule, and irritable as he is he makes a bigger impression here than there) get monthly visits from a van load of sex workers, but that hardly suffices to quell their passions. On to the scene crashes (literally) Carroll Baker, and it’s off to the races. Seth Holt, who we last spoke of in the Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb capsule, compels Baker (who we last spoke of in the The Oscar capsule) to tease the camera with everything she’s got, down to her little toe. The fellows, especially ultra-Teuton Peter Von Eyck (even slimier here than in The Snorkel, which we have not spoken of, and here he doesn’t even murder anyone), all start to lose it, and badly. Just when you think things couldn’t get more skeevy, they kind of do, and the jaw-dropping ending does adhere to a certain logic, one not just misogynist but committedly misanthropic. The image quality is sometimes a little soft and there are no extras but I’m just glad to finally have a copy with which to Amaze My Friends. And I just found out the thing is some kind of remake? I must look into that. —A-

Straight On Till Morning (Shout Factory)

A Hammer picture I hadn’t heard of before, directed by Peter Collinson, who made The Italian Job. This isn’t nearly as funsy. Dotty Rita Tushingham, too long sheltered by a cranky mom, strikes out on her own in not-quite-so-swinging-as-it-recently-had-been London (the picture was made in 1972). Where she soon runs afoul of Shane Briant’s Peter, whose look clearly inspired the Linus Roache character in Pan Cosmatos’ Mandy. (Or maybe not. I should never presume. But I’d bet money on it.) The movie is very “hip” in its cinematic language — a lot of ping-ponging flashbacks and flash forwards, interior monologues, dislocation stuff, not inappropriate for the psychotic character we eventually learn Peter to be. But the movie also uses it with some other random characters, which is kind of pointless and show-offy. It builds to a thoroughly icky conclusion after being vaguely distasteful throughout. The disc looks fine. The commentary with Tushingham and Jonathan Sothcott  (author of The Cult Films Of Christopher Lee) was recorded around 2002,  first heard on the Anchor Bay DVD of that year. For Hammer completists only, and might make you regret being a Hammer completist. —B

 The Tall Men (Twilight Time)

Seems like this is one of the final releases from a really remarkable label; I suppose that co-founder Nick Redman’s death last year put it to an end. This release is just one reason I’ll miss it. It’s a gorgeous, engaging 1955 Raoul Walsh Western, beautifully transferred with no extras save a typically astute essay by Julie Kirgo. Clark Gable and Cameron Mitchell are ex-Confederate cowboys drifting toward would-be cattle baron Robert Ryan. The three form an uneasy alliance for a big cattle drive, with Jane Russell complicating matters. The pace is relaxed, with tension rising and releasing; when payoff times come, they’re delivered with power. Mitchell’s character is particularly moving. Good script by two pros, Frank Nugent and Sydney Boehm. Really beautiful and sensitive use of widescreen and color, handled by Lee Tover, who also did The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Heiress. Durable score by Victor Young, which, as is standard practice on Twilight Time titles, featured on an Isolated track. The devotion of the Mexican vaqueros to Gable’s character is a nicely understated theme here.  And because Walsh is Walsh, the movie’s occasional corn isn’t just tolerable, it plays. Pretty great.  —A

Teorema (Criterion)

The BFI Blu-ray from 2013 has a teal-leaning color correction that was not complained about at the time; this transfer just pushes it harder. Again, as with Criterion’s Midnight Cowboy it looks better than fine in motion, and in still frames too. I suppose this is a matter of taste, but I do wonder about honoring directorial/cinematographic intent. I realize too that now might not be an opportune time to try to do any reporting on it. So I’ll just continue to say how pleasing I find this edition. The new master has real improvement in the overall picture with respect to detail, evident in the early sepia sequence. Also look at Laura Betti’s eyes when she first sees Stamp’s character. A deep pleasure to watch, I found. The BFI picture is harder edged, more contrast heavy, almost antiseptic. Bad Pasolini, crediting Mozart but not Ted Curzon, whose “Tears For Dolphy” plays under the opening titles. Shame!  The Robert Gordon commentary notes this, and good for him. I had not listened to this commentary on the BFI edition and I have to say it’s first-rate. Peter Cowie-level. Fun fact:  Lee Van Cleef and Orson Welles had been considered for the Stamp role, which would certainly have brought different discrete stresses to the allegory.  Essential cinema. —A+

Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 1 (Warner Archive)

I love Tex Avery and think he was a genius but let’s face it: the boisterousness of his humor walked hand in hand with something of a mean streak. You all know what I’m talking about: “Miss Repulsive 1898” in Swing Shift Cinderella (not included in this set but available on Blu-ray in a Looney Tunes Platinum collection), the repeated gag of a veil lifted from a shapely woman’s face to reveal pimples, buck teeth and so on, that sort of thing. In Big Heel Watha the title character is such a spectacularly offensive milquetoast grotesque aside from the ostensible racial stereotype that the racial stereotype kind of becomes a non-sequitur. Which doesn’t make it less objectionable. Just more…confusing. One senses that Avery was aware his own pigtail-pulling sadism, but not with any kind of regret. Indeed the entire idea behind the Screwball Squirrel character was to be purposefully almost intolerably obnoxious. This magnificent set includes the entirety of the Screwball Squirrel series and it’s also remarkably, manically inventive, every bit reminding you that the excess is the point (I especially like the multiple-doors chase in The Screwy Truant). In the less problematic areas (boy does that well-worn Warner disclaimer at the front of this program have its work cut out for it) there’s the magnificence of Red Hot Riding Hood. One gag therein practically invents the jump cut, while the sight of the wolf hitting himself on the head with a hammer while looking at Red makes one wonder if Avery also invented the “run me over with a truck” meme. Batty Baseball is extra radical,  Bad Luck Blackie incomparable, and so on. No extras, beautiful transfers, Volume 2 can’t come quick enough. —A+

Tiger of Eschnapur/The Indian Tomb (Film Movement)

I’ve written extensively on this movie before so I’m doing a brief capsule here just to say this version looks fantastic. The package retains the excellent David Kalat commentary from a prior standard def release. And adds Mark Rappaport’s excellent Debra Paget, For Example, which opens with the question “Why Debra Paget?”  To which the answer is “Why not,” but indeed, there’s more to it than that. —A+

Wheels on Meals (Eureka!, Region B import)

“Dad’s in with a nervous breakdown. He flipped! It’s really complicated.” The “Classic” English dub of this rollicking 1984 comedic martial arts picture really is, as the description in the jacket list of features says, “funkier” than the other audio options. Starring Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, and director Sammo Hung, and shot in Barcelona because by this time the three were so famous that shooting in Hong Kong became a logistical nightmare, this nonsensical tale is replete with lowbrow humor concerning mental institutions, mental health, the homeless, sex workers and more. It’s all so breezily tossed off, though, and the conditions as depicted have so little to do with real life that one just rolls one’s eyes and waits for the next bit of action. Which is all fabulous. The 2K master looks swell, the extras, mostly imported from a version of the movie released via the Hong Kong Legends label are enjoyable and informative and, suitably I’d say, hardly formidable.—A

Whisky Galore/The Maggie (Film Movement)

Film Movement has been doing stalwart work in the Bluray department recently. Their releases of the more obscure but reliable delightful old Ealing pictures such at The Titfield Thunderbolt are exemplary. Of course I was especially tickled to get this, a double feature generously put on a double-disc set. Whisky, also known as Tight Little Island, is of course the directorial debut of Alexander Mackendrick.  The story is of Scotch-starved Scots (WW II rationing, you see) who have the good fortune of having a ship carrying a large cargo of the stuff go down off their coast. It’s a very droll comedy with a bit of bite, something Mackendrick could always deliver. The disc is a good transfer from a good piece of material; I should say good rather than great. Every now and then, particularly in exterior shots, it looks a little dupey but it’s not too distracting. The commentary is by John Ellis also the producer of a good documentary on the film that’s included in the package. He knows his stuff, and he interacts with the actual soundtrack in a way that’s unusual for commentaries. There is a good deal of purposeful esoterica here: descriptions of the perspectives on religion in the Compton Mackenzie novel on which the film was based, and how the film kinda sorta upends them, and a funny but not entirely far-fetched theory that The Wicker Man is a stealth remake of the movie. The Maggie, from 1954, is something of a spiritual sequel to Whisky. Another shipping-and-cargo shaggy dog tale, its endearing charms include Paul Douglas, here at a peak of soulfulness, in the role of a mildly philistine American businessman whose heart is warmed by some conniving Scots (sounds a little like another, more recent Scottish picture we know). Mastered from a BFI restoration, it actually looks better than Whisky — beautiful contrast and sharp detail abound. Mackendrick’s filmography is small, but it’s been elusive on Bluray let alone any other format. This bountiful package is a meaningful correction. — A+

Blu-ray Consumer Guide, February 2019

To Peter Nellhaus, and to the memory of Nick Redman.

Equipment: Playstation 3,  Sony KD50X690E display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver. (As it happens even the U.K. imports I looked at this time around were all-region, so the OPPO was not brought into play.)

 Age of Consent (Indicator)

There’s a super-cheap U.S.-issued Sony Blu-ray double-featuring this 1969 Michael Powell picture with Cactus Flower (some May-December romance theme uniting them I guess) and while it looks decent if you are any kind of Powell person this is the version to seek put and pay more money for. It’s dated in the way so many ‘60s films that took advantage of the “new freedoms” tends to look today, but once it shifts to the island where James Mason’s quasi-Prospero makes his home there’s so much beauty in it you can’t help but be seduced, and this disc sops up and redelivers all of it like a thirsty sponge. My friend Kent Jones’ commentary is terrific, detailed, intimate, entirely in consonance with Powell’s sensibility. “Powell comes from the era of filmmaking as exploration,” he reminds us, pertinently. On-screen contributions from Helen Mirren (this was her first film) and Martin Scorsese are also great, and the disc also contains Powell and Pressburger’s final collaboration, a 1972 mini-feature for children, The Boy Who Turned Yellow, which aside from being a delight in itself also features young Lem Dobbs (under the name Lem Kitaj) in a small but central role. What a world. —A+

 All The Colors of The Dark/All the Colors of Giallo (Severin)

I reviewed a Blu-ray of this essential and essentially odd giallo (the film that introduced this lad to the allure of Edwidge Fenech, via a converted-to-NTSC German version I bought from Luminous Video at a Chiller Theatre Expo in the late 1980s, for what it’s worth to you) that Shameless put out in 2017 and was somewhat resigned to that version being the best we’d get. But, as Mike Ness might say, “I WAS WRONG,” because this Severin disc, mastered from the original negative, supposedly (where’d they FIND it?), blows the Shameless away while also revealing that as imaginative and grotesque and titillating as the movie is, it’s also often outstanding in what Frank Zappa would call its cheepnis. But no matter. Some might argue that the best Psychotronic cinema intertwines all the above attributes. I sprung for the Severin limited edition bundle, which also includes the All The Colors of Giallo package, which is an insane compilation of giallo trailers, a documentary, a CD full of giallo tunes (the Dark package also includes the film soundtrack on CD) and more. No, I haven’t watched every last minute of all this but I think you can trust me: if this sort of thing is your thing, it’s a lot of your thing and it’s delightful. Critic and above-and-beyond-the-call-of duty enthusiast Kat Ellinger has shed her collaborator from the commentary she did for the Shameless edition, and done a whole new commentary on her own, and there’s not a whole hell of a lot of overlap between the two, which is impressive. (She does lean heavily on a defensive “film historians UNFAIR to Sergio Martino” tack.) In a feat of endurance exceeded, as far as I know, only by Richard Suchinski’s’s full-length commentary on the Cohen Blu-ray of La Belle Noiseuse, Ellinger provides running commentary for the full four hours of trailers too, and concocts a drinking game, that you should by no means play if you want to avoid alcohol poisoning. The movie itself remains quite the wild ride, and Ellinger’s not wrong in her esteem for Martino. The picture’s risible is-she-or-isn’t-she-hallucinating premise gains credibility (sort of) from Martino’s confident shot-by-shot construction—and, of course, the iconic presence of Fenech. Inspirational trailer commentary line: “Despite the sensationalism in that [title] — Naked You Die — there’s not very much nudity actually in this. It’s slightly misleading.”—A+

Born of Fire (Indicator)

I’d not even heard of this unusual 1987 film prior to its release on this impeccable U.K. label. Directed by Jamil Dehlavi from a scenario he concocted, it concerns a British musician named Bergson (nice; he’s played by Peter Firth) who’s haunted by time-tripping visions; Suzanne Crowley has multiple roles as “The Woman” but mostly she plays an astronomer who helps Firth’s character figure out that a so-called “Master Musician” is about to call the apocalypse with his flute, and all this is tied in with Bergson’s dad’s marriage. Described in some quarters as “the first Muslim horror movie,” it’s not quite that; point of fact, it takes some time figuring out whatever it is it wants to be. Once Bergson travels to Turkey and some rough, volcano-inclusive terrain there (other attractions include maggots, skulls, an evil [maybe] woman), the movie takes off. The beautiful transfer highlights ceaseless striking imagery. If Dehlavi is not quite as inspired as Tarkovsky or Herzog in shooting his landscapes, he’s good enough to approximate a mystic atmosphere, and the supporting cast, including Nabil Shaheen — whose condition of brittle bone disease necessitates that he move around in a way that’s fascinating to watch — add to the minimalist sense of The Significant/Cosmic Other. Supplemental interviews with Firth, Dehlavi, Shaheen  and composer Colin Towns add a lot of anecdotal intrigue but my fave extra is Dehlavi’s short documentary of a volcanic eruption accompanied by Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream jams. ‘Delic for sure. I do love when you gamble on a disc and get this kind of reward. Inspirational film dialogue: “The sun’s power is so strong it’s damaging the surface of the earth. That volcano is the beginning.” Inspirational supplement soundbite: “The shoot wasn’t physically demanding, but morally demanding.” The flute soloist on the soundtrack is, whoa, James Galway! —A

Crimson Peak (Arrow)

Guillermo del Toro’s vivid Gothic romance, a 2015 picture, has been in print on Blu-ray since…February of 2016? So why invest in this Arrow limited edition issue? I’m not always sold on beautiful packaging myself, although the package and accompanying booklet are indeed lovely. Moving on to the disc, one immediate advantage is that you don’t have to slog through the Universal BD Live previews (I already saw The First Purge, thanks) to get to the main menu. And then there are the 12 or so discrete additional extras that are not on the Uni disc (the delightful, passionate, nicely organized but also quirkily digressive commentary from del Toro was on that puppy). And while there’s no note on the disc indicating this is a different transfer from the Universal one, I noticed slight differences. To my eyes, the Universal presentation is a little brighter than the Arrow one, and the downtick in brightness in the new edition brings out more detail; check out Sofia Young’s cheekbones in the opening scene. The integrity of the movie’s VERY COMPLEX color scheme is maintained throughout. The chapter breaks are placed differently too, and make more sense. I’m not trying to twist your arm but if you cherish this  misunderstood-by-too-many picture, and you have the cash you should absolutely go for it.— A+

Daisies (Second Run)

Criterion made this still-stunning 1966 (!!!) film available in a relatively raw (but completely, pleasurably watchable) form in its Eclipse “Gems From The Czech New Wave” collection. But this region-free stand-alone upgrade is spectacular. The movie is a remarkable phantasmagorical delight that benefits from the cleanest presentation possible. The phantasmagoria itself is offered in the service of what the filmmaker called a “philosophical essay in the form of a farce.” Its young heroines wander through their world making droll commentary and enacting rebellious gestures, with mixed results. Director Vera Chytilova has said it is not a feminist film, and of course it is, but I understand why she’d think it’s not, because the movie’s concern for FREEDOM is ultimately/arguably gender-neutral. The movie has two commentary tracks, one from historians Peter Hames and Donald Bird (who mistakenly say the movie was made “before feminism almost. Before U.S. style feminism,” but wait, The Feminine Mystique was published in 1962, my dudes) and another from Kat “I Live To Do Audio Commentaries” Ellinger  + her Daughters of Darkness partner Samm Deighan (whom I was worried about after she failed to show for the new All The Colors of the Dark commentary).  Both tracks are on the staid and sober side; it takes 20 minutes for one of the males contributing to allow of the film, “it’s fun!” That said, they’re worthwhile, and my only complaint about the disc is authoring related—it doesn’t allow you to toggle between the commentaries while they’re running, you have to listen to one or the other via the main menu, from the beginning. Rounding out the extras is an eye-opening short doc on Chytilova.  If you’re a fan of Broad City who’s looking to, um, broaden their horizons, this is a potent gateway drug to I’m not sure what.  –A+

The Giant Behemoth (Warner Archive)

One hesitates to use the word “dregs” or the phrase “bottom of the barrel” when referring to a giant monster movie with stop-motion effects work, but…well let me put it this way, if you were a Ray Harryhausen/Willis O’Brien nut and you were told you were going to be exiled to a desert island and the only giant monster movie you were going to be allowed to take with you was gonna be 1959’s The Giant Behemoth, you just might say “You know, skip it.” No one blames Willis H. O’Brien for the debacle. He was working with practically nothing, and his Behemoth has occasional moments of integrity in spite of looking like it is coated in chicken skin. Thank God his last film was not this but rather, um, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The disc looks great though, and if you’re in enough of a bitter mood the movie has mordant appeal; Gene Evans’ “what the hell am I doing here?” performance makes him an ideal audience surrogate. On the commentary, recorded for the 2007 DVD of the film, effects mavens Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett simply can’t get excited enough: “So, this movie…was released in…what do you think, ’57?” Inspirational dialogue: “All these beaches are clogged up with dead fish, and nobody can tell why these fish are dead. However, it has its more amusing side to it.”—B-

 The Gingerbread Man (Kino Lorber)

I missed this one on its theatrical release and am just getting to it now. The John Grisham–derived storyline is not quite a world-beater, and despite the great cast this doesn’t get within swinging distance of The Long Goodbye, which is the prior Altman it most resembles generically. As late Altman goes, though, I found it pretty agreeable. (if you want to calibrate this against my barometer, I hated Short Cuts and Gosford Park, admired Kansas City and Cookie’s Fortune, and loved A Prairie Home Companion.) And there are a couple of moments that absolutely qualify as Vintage Altman, like the introduction of Robert Duvall’s character. The Blu-ray offers a clean albeit what you’d call unextraordinary image; the source isn’t  trumpeted on the packaging. The only extra is the sometimes laconic but mostly amiable and informative commentary Altman recorded for the DVD edition in 1998. —B+

The Grissom Gang (Kino Lorber)

Just as much of later Dario Argento work has admirers of his early pictures wondering “Did he FORGET how to direct a movie?” so too does the output of Robert Aldrich in the brief time he ran his own studio (financed with the profits from The Dirty Dozen) cause similar head-scratching. While I find 1968’s The Legend of Lylah Clare a hoot, more emotionally stable film lovers than I hold that its tossed-off contempt lands it on the far side of incompetence. I entertained similar thoughts while watching this, a 1971 rethink of James Hadley Chase’s scandalous novel No Orchids For Miss Blandish, already made into a really weird movie in Britain in 1948, released on Blu-ray, also by Kino, a little while back. Aldrich was clearly aiming at a Bonnie and Clyde style success here but he can’t touch the way that Penn, Beatty and company managed to make their period material both period-credible and absolutely contemporary. The first half hour or so is almost, by my light, unwatchable. The transfer is 4K from camera negative and it’s super vivid, but the main thing I kept noticing was how not one of the actors even vaguely matches the other in skin tone (check out beet-red Don Keefer, and, not entirely on-topic but also not unrelated, the disappearing/reappearing mustache on poor Irene Dailey). And while the movie is relentlessly violent, man, is the fake blood hella fake looking. The movie materially improves as it goes on though, with Scott Wilson, looking rather early–Edward–Norton­–ish, completely committed to his role as lovesick idiot rapist “Slim" Grissom. The commentary is from Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson, the same crew that got so agitated by Susan Kiger on the commentary track to Andy Sidaris’ Seven, not that I entirely blame them. Here they recount how certain of them were traumatized by the picture when they were six or seven years old and sundry production tidbits. They are an energetic crew; within mere minutes they manage to slag Vincent Canby (he “never met a foreign film he didn’t like” — this is an empirically false claim), oversell the original Blandish (it’s not a good movie guys), bring up Schindler’s List, and talk about how Robert Lansing is underrated (agreed, but not a whole lot we can do about it now). Entertaining! But still for Aldrich completists only. —B

 Home From The Hill (Warner Archive)

This 1960 Vincente Minnelli-directed melodrama has so outré-seeming elements, like the stiffness of Robert Mitchum’s performance, which clicks once it’s clear that it’s central to the characterization; Mitchum’s not phoning it in. I’ve always found the picture beautiful and compelling. Strangely it feels even more so now that its heteronormative gender politics and other ideologically whack features are even more anachronistic than they may have been back in the day. The camera positioning shot to shot is never less than striving for maximum emotional delivery (I’ve used the climactic truce scene between Mitchum and Eleanor Parker — chapter 33 if you are interested — in my film class to explore the potential of variation within a shot/reverse shot pattern, and in CinemaScope yet). The transfer looks beautiful and features smooth dissolves, nothing glitchy. No extras.  Inspirational dialogue: “Libby, I’m dying to kiss you.” “Don’t die.” So now where’s a Blu-ray of The Cobweb, Warner Archive? —A

Invention for Destruction (Second Run)

A while back I purchased, directly from The Zeman Museum in Prague, a Blu-ray with three Karel Zeman  pictures including this 1958 beauty, released in the U.S. with a quaint Hugh Downs introduction as The Fabulous World Of Jules Verne (and later a very special childhood treat for me when it would turn up in the 1960s on WOR 9). Zeman’s mix of live action and animation always enchanted me; these strangely baroque flat drawn/etched backgrounds traversed by live actors, on their way to action scenes where they’d face cartoon artillery shells and such. The version of Vynález zkázy on that disc is version is handsome, and has been made from clean materials. Due in part (I reckon) to limitations in telecine tech of only just a few years ago, the image has a noticeable flicker to it. This new Second Run presentation is incredible. It’s like looking through a just-cleaned windshield. The English-dubbed version is the exact same transfer with that matchless Hugh Downs intro tacked on, or so it seems. Three Zeman shorts never before available in this format,  and some extras imported from the Zeman Museum discs, are also here. British animator John Stevenson’s on–camera appreciation is more personal than generally informative, detailing his experience of Zeman and the maestro’s influence. I’m still glad to own the Zeman Museum disc (like this Second Run release, it is all–region compatible FYI) but this is what I’m gonna put on when I want to see Invention. —A+

 The Killing Kind (Vinegar Syndrome)

I’m not the world’s greatest Curtis Harrington stan but I know a key component of a distinctive director’s filmography when I see one, and this is that. This unfussy 1973 portrait of a serial killer played by John Savage in an early role is a sharp, nasty picture. It doesn’t ask you to root for the murderous Terry but it does allow you access to his upsetting point of view, which creates a nagging effect. It is replete with supporting players of interest, including Ruth Roman, Luana Anders, and Cindy Williams; Ann Sothern is disquietingly superb as Suffocating Mom. Cinematographer Mario Tosi likes his diffuse light (see The Stunt Man, certain scenes in Carrie, The Betsy) and Harrington allowed him to go full bore with it, which makes the action that much more disturbing. The careful transfer courtesy of the ace schlock revivalists at Vinegar Syndrome gets the job done nicely. Cat lovers will want to take a pass on the movie, as there’s a scene in which Terry pulls peeping tom duty while holding a cat and gets a little too distracted. Essential Psychotronic Cinema  (“A seldom–seen sickie” says the PEF itself) and an exemplary double feature with The Honeymoon Killers. Extras include a vintage 30-minute interview with Harrington (he also goes into some detail in his memoir “Nice Guys Don’t Work In Hollywood,” about his fondness for the film and why it never received proper distribution) and a dishy, affectionate commentary from mondo film historian David Del Valle and mondo film maker David DeCoteau. Inspirational dialogue: “That’s not a mouse, it’s a rat!”—A

My Name Is Julia Ross (Arrow)

So Dark The Night (Arrow)

I know it’s not cricket to review a Blu-ray on which you did the audio commentary but indulge me. When I was preparing for the audio track for So Dark The Night, no disc of the new transfer was yet available, so I worked from a bootlegged version up on YouTube. Circumstances were such that my commentary partner Farran Smith Nehme (she contributes the good parts) had to watch the same while recording the commentary. The film is strong enough that we were able to psychically infer how good a decent print/transfer would look (and we’d seen the film before under different circumstances, so we had our memories to fall back on too). But nothing could have prepared me for the gorgeousness of what Arrow has put on this disc, and the disc of Julia Ross is equally breathtaking. (The two new versions are 2K restoration supplied by Sony, and while he isn’t credited, I reckon Grover Crisp had something to do with them.) Both these thrillers were directed by Joseph H. Lewis and are best watched together. I think they’re among the greatest waking nightmares American cinema has yielded us. Ross is the more familiar of the two, a story of gaslighting that goes up to 11. So Dark the Night…well…as Robert Ridgely says in Blazing Saddles, this one is a doozy. There’s simply nothing like it. Each disc has an equal consort of extras, one commentary, one essay and one video discussion. For Ross, the commentary goes to the great Alan K. Rode, recent author of a terrific Michael Curtiz biography. Rode is more Team Nina Foch (the film’s lead) that Team Lewis. (He takes Lewis to task for his egocentric tall-tale-telling more than once.) The challenging essay is by Adrian Martin.  A video interview with The Nitrate Diva, Nora Fiore, fills out that disc. As I’ve mentioned, the commentary on Night is Farran and me, and I am very much Team Lewis (I believe every word that ever came out of his mouth). Farran does very well as always. The video interview is with Imogen Sara Smith, and she’s informative as always, and very poised. (So is Fiore, while I’m dotting my Is.) David Cairns is his usual superb self for the booklet essay.  Tonci Zonjic’s new cover art for Night is particularly clever. Forgive me for flogging these (I don’t get residuals, in case you were suspicious) but they’re both wonderful. —A+ 

The Naked and the Dead (Warner Archive)

This 1958 movie gets a bad rep for being an unfaithful adaptation of Norman Mailer’s novel, but any picture that begins with L.Q. Jones rhapsodizing over Lily St. Cyr (as “Lily”) can’t be all bad. Can’t be all good, either, it turns out. You could cut this together with the three-years-earlier Battle Cry, also directed by the generally unimpeachable Raoul Walsh, and have a mini-series, especially given that Aldo Ray plays pretty much the same character in each. The movie, a few hairs over two hours, tries to hew to Mailer’s flashback-laden structure but it’s more than weird that it moves to establishing Cliff Robertson’s discontented officer that main guy, and then, when the flashbacks start, they’re… ALDO RAY’S flashbacks! And it turns out he used to be with L.Q. Jones’ girlfriend Lily! (At least that’s what I think is going on.) “Sam! Don’t hit him! He’s from the finance company!” she protests at one point. Scene plays like  The Dark Side of L’il Abner or some such thing. (Hmm.)  Other stray goodies here include the apotheosis of character player Max Showalter, Phantom Echoes of Citizen Kane in Bernard Herrmann’s score (the Xanadu theme most prominent), and very nice picture quality. For some reason this plays like the least WWII movie of all the WWII movies I’ve seen; the conflict at hand seems entirely generic. And the way it upends the novel’s actual narrative is both appalling/hilarious while making for a not-unsatisfying movie-movie conclusion. Inspirational dialogue: “Under that mask of humanism, you’re a reactionary, just like I am.” That might even be from the book, come to think of it. For Raoul Walsh and/or L.Q. Jones completists only. —B-

 The Night of the Demon (Indicator)

This deathless classic finally gets the exhaustive treatment and beautiful picture quality it deserves from Indicator, which really went to town. For instance: the limited edition two-disc set features two discrete high-def transfers of the 96-minute pre-release version, presumed as the closest to a director’s cut we have. (Notwithstanding the appearance of the actual demon, which poor Jacques Tourneur was divested of his say on.) (It’s funny though, as much as we complain about said demon and how it detracts from the movie’s nuance, it’s still a sufficiently iconic image that it adorns the front of this set’s box. And it is a good looking demon, all things considered. ) AND a high-def of the UK release version, an 82-minute cut. I haven’t even made a dent in the extras yet, but I’m grading this anyway just based on how it presents the movie, and also because of one particular extra, an object as hilarious as it is disturbing: a reproduction of the calling card of Julian Karswell, which I barely noticed when it fell out of the box; I put it away someplace I did not remember, and was stunned to find in the pocket of a coat I was wearing several days after watching the disc. After which it took a while for me to calm down and remember that it is the parchment containing the runic inscription, rather than Karswell’s card, that was the film’s bringer of death. Whew. Essential. —A+

Obsession (Scream Factory)

If you’re looking to program a double feature of Cliff Robertson/Bernard Herrmann pictures, you can’t do better than this and the above-reviewed The Naked and The Dead. Literally. Because that’s it — those are the only two. What are the odds they’re both end up reviewed here? This 1976 Brian De Palma picture, hatched with writer Paul Schrader after the then-friends saw Vertigo together (their warm relations waned a bit, apparently, at the completion of the project, which jettisoned a third of Schrader’s original script), is regularly disparaged from all corners practically.. Rumor had it that Hitchcock himself wasn’t thrilled with it. In the recent De Palma documentary by Baumbach and Paltrow, the director laments his fussy, inexpressive leading man. (In the extras here there’s a recollection that Robertson was insistent about having only what he considered his “good side” facing the camera, a position that causes major headaches for directors, camera people, editors, people who are sick of seeing Cliff Robertson’s “good side,” etc.) Still, with what appears to be a spruced up transfer relative to the Region B locked Arrow release of some time back (which had the delightful and now out-of-print extra of a booklet with Schrader’s complete screenplay attached), and the benefit of hindsight and/or nostalgia, the film slightly less misguided than it did on first viewing. In its margins, particularly as they relate to John Lithgow and Florence, the movie achieve its own integrity. The commentary by Douglas Keesey (a professor and the author of De Palma: Split Screen) is well-researched and informative but Keesey sounds so stiff that it can be an awkward listen. While I got somewhat turned around on this film by the presentation, I did conclude that Palma movies need sex and/or violence to really fly and the implications of its premise notwithstanding this doesn’t have a lot of either. Other new extras include on camera interviews with producer George Litto (he once wrote a song that was recorded by Louis Armstrong, who knew?) and editor Paul Hirsch, which have only slight overlap with the EPK type stuff, shot years ago, also included here. Hirsch’s tales of Bernard Herrmann’s explosive temper are hair-raising for sure.—A

The Other Side of Midnight (Twilight Time)

I think my mom had read the Sidney Sheldon novel in the early ‘70s when it came out, and around then, and when the movie followed in 1977, I heard a lot about how LURID it was, but I was too punk rock to care, or something. The recent emergence of a Twilight Time Blu-ray piqued my curiosity. Combined with an old, old memory of a screening of Robbe-Grillet’s Trans Europe Express at MOMA on Senior Citizen Thursday, or whichever it was. Lotsa shots of Marie-France Pisier chained to a metal bed frame in that one, and on the way out a couple of biddies were saying, “Marie France-Pisier, she’s such a nice girl, why did she let them do that to her?” I presumed they got that “nice girl” idea from this, her first Hollywood picture. Thing is, for the first half hour or so this thing is more comatose than lurid. Sure, “nice girl” MFP is besmirched by the future Boss Hogg, but it’s all portrayed very tastefully as, an ocean away, Susan Sarandon is presaging Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy in her portrayal of a period girl with MOXIE, which quality greatly impresses Clu Gulager as Beau Bridges’ uncle or whatever the hell he’s playing. So the movie is moving along in this respect and I’m thinking, God, what is it with the LIGHTING—flat and bright and uninspired on this very handsome disc. I didn’t think I was gonna make it, and then  about 50 minutes in, MFP gets into a warm bath and unravels a wire coat hanger. Not to make light of her character’s predicament, but after that the movie really is off to the races. In seeking her revenge against jilter John Beck, who goes on to marry Sarandon’s character, she climbs the ladder of passion, or whatever it is. When she’s oiling herself up before straddling poor Christian Marquand, who by this time had seen better days, I’m writing in my notes “IS SHE TRYING TO KILL HIM.” He does not die, but notes, drolly, “You make love like a star. Perhaps you’ll be a star.” Um, you betcha. So it does get lurid. I don’t know where those old ladies got that “nice girl” stuff about MFP because it sure is not here. Inspirational dialogue: “In spite of all the smart talk, I guess I’m just Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I’m moral, I’m silly, and I’m sad.” The multi-player commentary, recorded by Laurent Bouzereau for a DVD a long time ago, features producer Frank Yablans’ tips for filmmakers, such as, “There’s a place for camera movement” Once the movie settles in at the estate of Greek Tycoon Raf Vallone, the look of the whole thing gets a big boost. It’s never a model of mise-en-scène and is nevertheless the second Charles Jarrot-directed picture from Twilight Time in a span of months. (The other was Anne of a Thousand Days, which I haven’t been able to check out yet but know is not lurid.) But one thing that makes Twilight Time a great label is its commitment to putting out what floats its boat for reasons overt, obscure or occult. Its cofounder Nick Redman, to whom this column is co-dedicated, died late last year and he is already much missed. This disc’s grade, and the one for Satan Never Sleeps, is for him.  —A+

Panique  (Criterion Collection)

This film is best appreciated if you just forget the novel on which it’s based, Georges Simenon’s landmark 1933 Mr. Hire’s Engagement. (Among other things, with its painstaking attention to physical details other authors would deem insignificant, it’s a precursor to the nouvelle roman.) Yes, the 1946 film directed by Julien Duvivier adheres to many of that book’s plot points, but in its emphases and characterizations it’s a wholly different animal.  Duvivier’s 1933 adaptation of a Maigret novel, La tête d’un homme, demonstrated that the filmmaker “got” Simenon. Now, back from Hollywood after the war and apparently eager to allegorize an occupation undreamed of when Mr. Hire was published (although the novel’s incidents were drawn from Simenon’s experiences during the German occupation of Belgium in World War I), Duvivier opted to make the book a vehicle for his own statement. The tipoff to the differences that will envelop the picture comes early on: Michel Simon’s Mr. Hire speaks more dialogue in the first ten minutes than he does in the first 80 pages of the novel. Not just a voyeur, the character’s a sort of extortionist too. Now, Simon is always worth watching but I have to admit it: all through the picture I just kept thinking how great it would have been to have the actor work on a conception of the character closer to Simenon’s. The presentation of the film is startling, vivid. Supplements include Rialto Pictures’ Bruce Goldstein on subtitling (wonky, fascinating); one of Georges’ sons,  Pierre Simenon, discoursing on how Duvivier’s variations are more than okay ( in order to successfully adapt Simenon, his theory goes, you “have to betray him” at least a little bit) and French critics Guilemette Odicino and Eric Libiot gushing over the movie. Vaguely tut-tutting that Hitchcock raided this picture for elements later seen in overrating the film. Strangers on a Train, Vertigo, and Rear Window, they don’t mention how the bumper-car scene might have influenced Mouchette. —A

Satan Never Sleeps (Twilight Time)

“A film not without its McCarey moments,” Gary Giddins wrote of this 1962 picture when Fox put out a standard-def DVD of this in 2005. He of course has to mention its moments, too,  that are bad McCarey, including the weird theme song (“Satan never sleeps/he walks behind you”) sung, as he accurately (he IS Gary Giddins) notes, in Nancy Wilson style by Timo Yuri. The Pearl–Buck–conceived story of Communist Chinese doing some revolutionary Catholic bashing (as seen from the bashed side) offers almost a full hour of lower grade Going My Way stuff (with a butched–up Clifton Webb as the Fitzgerald surrogate disapproving of fresh recruit William Holden the Crosby surrogate) before exploding into some weird wild anti-Communism plot points and willful misunderstandings of rape. It’s in the more serious values-querying scenes that the most McCarey moments appear, oddly. (I think Giddins took interest in the 2005 disc because he was studying up on the director; there’s practically a mini-biography of McCarey in the recently published second volume of Giddins’ Bing Cosby biography, a honey of a book in every respect.)  Martin Benson as the Russian apparatchik pinching his pince-nez and holding his cig between thumb and forefinger is a classic portrayal of HUAC–nightmare Red Villainy. The picture and sound quality are aces, while the movie’s ending is both insane and obscene. A maddening piece of work...and McCarey's final feature, and Twilight Time remains the best for releasing it. Inspirational Holden dialogue: “Now they’ll be spreading DISEASE along with their propaganda.”—A+

A Story from Chikamatsu (Criterion Collection)

This 1954 Kenji Mizoguchi picture has been more commonly known in the West as The Crucified Lovers, which is both more sensationalistic and not entirely inaccurate but the truly salient feature of this tale is that it indeed derives from an 18^th century puppet play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Do not be confused: this is not a puppet movie, it is beautifully acted by an ensemble of humans including Kyoko Kugawa, who contributes a quiet, revealing interview to the supplements. And yes, you read right, this is a 1954 movie, same year Mizoguchi made the immortal Sansho the Bailiff (and Uwasa no ona, aka The Crucified Woman). Kyoko Kugawa recalls being at the premiere of Sansho at the Venice Film Festival in September and flying back to Japan to start this, which  was released in Japan in…November. Jesus. This film’s story is not as immediately emotionally devastating as Sansho but it’s still pretty tough. And it gives the viewer the same  sense of a masterfully distilled cinematic style as that masterpiece. The narrative, more dry and nuanced, examines the tangled webs of deceit as practiced by both the powerful (who lie so they can profit, sexually or monetarily) and the oppressed (who lie for survival’s sake). The fabulous restoration yields a sumptuous black-and-white image. The supplements are solid, and feature illuminating observations, in an audio essay, from Dudley Andrews about Bunraku (puppet theater, that is) and Mizoguchi’s enthusiasm for the stage. —A+

Salvaged: August (or so) 2018 Blu-ray Consumer Guide

So at the end of every year I rearrange my computer desktop. Folders for freelance work, SCR work, and more go on to an external hard drive and are replaced on the desktop with folders for the current year. And one thing that had been on the desktop, outside of any folder, more than half a year was a document titled "AUGUST 2018 BLU RAY CONSUMER GUIDE." This is how it always works when I actually manage to finish a Blu-Ray Consumer Guide. Last one was in May, and I did it for the tenth anniversary of the blog, mainly because it represented the only type of writing that I couldn't find anyone to pay me for. (Not the ONLY kind, but you get my meaning.) Having pushed myself to get it done I thought, well that wasn't so bad, and immediately set about doing another, and of course I got too busy and never got it done. But I had still watched all the discs (in a period that extended well past August, mind you) and made notes, and there they sat, on my desktop. So I thought, January being a fairly fallow work time, maybe I can draft them up into something, so I did, although in many cases I am just presenting the notes themselves, as a glimpse into certain habits of mind that some of you might find amusing. The sole ringer here is the review for The Comfort of Strangers, a disc I only watched last week. 

Equipment: Playstation 3, OPPO Sony KD50X690E display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.

Au Hasard Balthazar (Criterion)

Notes: “Bresson deliberately refuses to chase beauty in his compositions but beauty finds its way into them anyway. The shot of PK [Pierre Klosowski, venerable author and brother of Balthus—ed.] getting a little water for the donkey. The blackness of the bottom of the well. The blackness of the container of water.” — A+

 Avanti! (Koch Lorber)

Back when it came out in 1972 it was in some quarters dismissed as old Billy Wilder trying to do one of his acid romances new-style, with cussing and nudity and all. Now, the movie is itself old. The pacing of it really stands out: It’s Billy Wilder’s Slow Cinema. There are unexpected moments of lyricism here, also sourer-than-usual bits of misogyny and projected transphobia with the mustachioed-maid joke. An anomaly and a curio. — A-

The Changeling (Severin)

Looks good and is a fabulous film, a well-paced and consistently scarifying haunted house mystery with a restrained and convincing George C. Scott lead performance. Lots of then late-model Fords getting involved in all manner of mishaps, quite a time warp to my suburban teens.  —A

Combat Shock (Severin)

One Viet vet’s worst day ever on Staten Island; a very working class New Yawk take on Eraserhead. Things I learned from the commentary: Director Buddy Giovinazzo studied with  seminal minimalist musician and multi-media pioneer Phill Niblock, who wrote him a “legit filmmaker” note. Inspirational commentary soundbite: “Eddie had a gall bladder operation” meaning cast member and future cult figure Eddie Pepitone. —A

 The Comfort of Strangers (BFI Region B import)

I’ve long thought this Schrader’s most accomplished directorial effort (although there are quite a few gaps in my viewing of his films) and with the exception of the anachronistic and trendy camera-click-sound-effect freeze frames in some early scenes, this holds up spectacularly and is naggingly creepy in the best way. The image quality is particularly good in a nuanced way; the gorgeous detail doesn’t pop but instead insinuates. Among the extras is a typically spectacular Schrader commentary. Topics include degrees of queer in Rupert Everett’s performance and the way he instructed Schrader to rein him in; uses of screen nudity back then (1990) versus today, and working with screenwriter Harold Pinter. One admirable thing about Schrader’s practice is that he has a confidence that doesn’t register as entirely egotistical, and when he talks about Pinter he’s very matter of fact, never fanboying it in. One of the niftiest features of the film is that its theme of the proximity of danger leading to hotter sex, while a valid one, is usually depicted in cinema in  the most dumb and ham-handed way, and this picture provides an excellent exception to that. There are two other audio tracks of Schrader here that I haven’t gotten to but the primary commentary is aces. While he’s not an overtly sentimental man, the way he almost always refers to Natasha Richardson as “Tasha” tips me off that he misses her…as do all film lovers, really.  —A+

Curse of the Cat People (Scream Factory)

The 2016 release of Cat People on Criterion made me hope that the entire Lewton run of RKO pictures would be on the label. Apparently that’s not to be. But Shout!/Scream Factory  are not trifling here. “Beauty” is the only note I had on this, so clearly I didn’t get to any of the extras. But I’d still call this essential. —A

Designing Woman (Warner Archive)

John Alton shooting in color Cinemascope is as much a recommendation for this Blu-ray as one would need I suppose. And this is a lovely disc; the materials from which it was transferred look to have been pretty pristine, as there’s not a lot of wobble or color degeneration in dissolves.  The movie, according to my notes, is “weird as fuck.” Probably more for its perspective on gender relations than its Husbands and Wives-prophesying device of framing it as a quasi-documentary retrospective on a romantic quandary. Bacall and Peck struck me as a very mismatched couple. But what a supporting cast: Mickey Shaughnessy, Chuck Connors, Ed Platt, Alvy Moore. And that climactic brawl. All that notwithstanding, I think (and it's possible I've made this observation before in the context of a different picture) this is the sort of output that compelled François Truffaut to call Vincente Minnelli “un esclave.”—A-

Female Trouble (Criterion)

Boy she’s really fixated on those cha-cha heels. This is one of those demonstrations that no amount of digital scrubbing can make a movie that purposely looks TERRIBLE look any less terrible, and that is how it should be. And yet by this point in his career (1974) John Waters (with Charles Ruggero) has sufficient editing chops to pull off the scene in which Divine plays two characters, one of whom rapes the other. And yes, the skid mark on the Fruit of the Loom is there in spectacular HD. My favorite bits in this are with Edith Massey telling her son to “go nelly” and describing the boredom and emptiness of the heterosexual lifestyle. The wide-ranging extras are entertaining, not least in that they feature both the refined debonair garrulous elder statesman Waters we know and love AND the  semi-surly, snotty, sunglassed, chainsmoking Waters on R. Couri Hay’s public access show from back in the day. —A

Frank and Eva (Cult Epics)

Hard to describe this 1973 Dutch counterculture relationship drama. Maybe to say it’s as if Crown International decided to do a homage to Bergman or something. A prodigiously drinking male constantly pranks his lovely female partner, including with fake suicide attempts, while relentlessly pursuing side interests including a pre-Emmanuelle Sylvia Kristal. Energetic if ultimately pointless, with lots of nudity on a not-at-all-bad-looking disc. —B-

Hilda Crane (Twilight Time)

Twilight Time’s devotion to Fox Cinemascope and films that fall outside the purview of conventional  auteur-driven cinephilia has been opening my eyes for years now. This 1956 Phillip Dunne melodrama (adapted from a Samson Raphaelson novel) can be commended as an exceptional anti-Sirk example of the genre in that there’s no subtext whatsoever. The only “there” in the movie is the “there” there. Jean Simmons plays the title role, a double divorcee crawling back from New York to small town Winona,  her British accent a victim of Midwestern small mindedness. Hilda’s mom Judith Evelyn disdains how New Yorkers laugh at the solid virtues. But this Harper Valley doesn’t quite teem with hypocrites, just old folks with ultra-hardened arteries who don’t want anyone to have a good time, exhibit A being  clinging mom Mrs. Burns, who doesn’t want Hilda anywhere near her good boy Guy Madison. “I live for nothin’ but that boy,” she proclaims in a REMARKABLE characterization from Evelyn Varden.

Jean Pierre Aumont phones in the great French lover bit, e.g., Hilda: “Get out and never come back.” Jacques: “Varay well. I wish you lots of unhappiness. But I’m sure you’ll get it anyway.”

From notes: “UNDER THE PORTRAIT OF MOTHER best shot in the movie.”— B+

Let’s Make Love (Twilight Time)

Notes: “ ‘A lively interest in balloons,’ are you fucking kidding me?

All the guitarists in the Elvis parody are out of tune.

Dennis Hopper was right. [When he said to Cukor “we’re gonna bury you man” at some dinner party recounted in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.-ed.]

The plot line is very pre-code.

JOE BESSER

Quine’s ‘among the beatniks’ or whoever they were treatment in Bell Book and Candle was better.

‘I’ve never been so humiliated in my life’  you said it.”  Not a bad-looking disc, though.—B

Lifeforce (Shout! Factory)

Generally I’m a little skeptical about re-remasterings, but this new version of the 1985 Tobe Hooper classic, the best Hammer movie Hammer never made while at the same time kind of wholly and irrefutably a Cannon film, is a worthwhile investment for the wise people who love it as I do. From notes: “ It DOES look a little better. There’s more definition on the FX Halley’s Comet looks better. Oh yeah it looks HELLA better.”— A+

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (ClassicFlix)

Notes: “Super nifty movie little movie, classical in direction and outlook. Claude Rains is fabulous, one of his greatest performances. Truculent and weaselly wimpy within a single breath. and it looks great. No extras.”  —A-

Midnight Cowboy (Criterion)

I’m only going to say this once about 1960s and 1970s and sometimes even 1980s films getting scanned/transferred/mastered for HD with what some would call a bias toward teal in the color correction: it’s always all about how the movies looks in motion. And in motion, this Blu-ray looks absolutely wonderful. The overall color values are superb—check out Joe Buck’s mom’s pink dress in the beauty salon flashback shot. Green  seems a dominant color in the film’s palette anyway. Also noteworthy, more and more each year, is the location shooting: look, it’s the last gasp of Hubert’s Museum. The 1991-recorded commentary from Schlesinger is  very good and made me miss Supreme Macaroni all over again. “Little too snazzily cut,” he says of one sequence, and yes, you could say that. Audio mix is fabulous.  From notes: “This is A LOT OF MOVIE MAKING (b&w, film within film, lighting, quick cutting)”—A+

My Sister Eileen (Twilight Time)

Notes: “Charming and bright. The dance between Fosse and what’s-his-nut is great. Sexism aside, the congenial sympathies of Quine and Edwards are practically palpable. Lovely transfer. It feels like a movie everyone had a good time on.”—A

Queen of Outer Space (Warner Archive)

Notes: “The most undemanding movie ever made, maybe. Fond and unexpectedly sweet commentary.”—A

The Revolt of Mamie Stover (Twilight Time)

This features Jane Russell as a barely-disguised prostitute thrown out of San Francisco for being a barely disguised prostitute and going to Hawaii and dying her hair red and becoming a barely disguised prostitute who get real estate investment tips from semi-Hemingwayesque author Richard Egan. It all goes pretty well until Pearl Harbor. Raoul Walsh directed. Agnes Morehead plays a barely disguised madam. CinemaScope, Deluxe Color, 1956.

Notes: “Vivid.” —A

Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (Warner Archive)

From notes:  “A triumph of MISE EN SCENE. Catchy tunes.  A lot to chew on for Jordan Peterson.”—A

Two Weeks in Another Town (Warner Archive)

Notes: “Timeless classic in a crisp transfer. These are mean mean people. ‘Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha’ ‘Toby Dammit’ “—A

Under Capricorn (Kino Lorber)

Kat Ellinger’s commentary is fact-filled and interesting, and her notes on Hitchcock’s treatment of class are engaging. But I gotta disagree with her when she says this relative obscurity from 1949 doesn’t LOOK like a Hitchcock film. This was Hitchcock’s second color film (the first was Rope) and his first period piece in some time (since Jamaica Inn ten years before), so maybe that’s where she’s coming from, but…the film language is very much Hitchcock’s. I also think she’s off base with her semi-constant disparagement of Hitchcock’s use of Bergman, that he “takes a great star and he kills her off” and then her note that Hitchcock’s insistence on long takes was “perhaps unnecessary.” Yeah, Hitch, why didn’t you try getting some COVERAGE, little indulgent there, ya think? But I’m not gonna kid myself. Ehringer is the future: with film critics a generation or two younger than myself, the thing with Hitchcock from now on is gonna be three parts slagging for every one part praise. And that’s if we are lucky. The disc looks GOOD, but given this is the only substantive collaboration between Hitchcock and Jack Cardiff it’s not quite what I had hoped for. —A-

Blu-ray Consumer Guide, May 2018 (SCR 10th Anniversary Edition)

This month marks the tenth anniversary of this stupid blog, and I was thinking of what I could do to commemorate this landmark, and the main thing that occurred to me was that I could just pull the plug on the whole thing. My work load really doesn’t allow me the time to contribute much to it, and my temperament has improved over the past few years to the extent that I don’t feel the need to vent as much as I used to, and when I do feel that need, I attempt to exercise some prudence, at least eight times out of ten if my track record of the last seven months is a reliable indicator. In any event, something—sentimentality, the need to maintain a safety valve or existential escape hatch, who can say—compelled me to pony up for another year with Typepad. And to carve out (and it wasn’t easy) the time to write the one thing that no professional outlet will pay me for.

Also, one of the providers of one of these discs asked about a review a little while back, and I got snippy with him about it, which I then felt guilty about, which then motivated me to write an entire thing to support the one capsule. I shall have to discuss this with my therapist. ("So I wrote 6000 words as an amends to a guy I had a mildly unpleasant DM exchange with.")  As our President likes to say, “Enjoy!”

Equipment: Playstation 3, Sony KD50X690E display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.

La Belle Noiseuse (Cohen)

Hopefully I need not extol the virtues of this 1991 film directed by Jacques RIvette, nor excessively clamor with respect to the necessity of a swell high-def edition, a necessity that this two-disc set so satisfactorily addresses. The image quality is consistently gorgeous. And what an amazing movie it is, an epic that’s tight and devastating and incorporates all the lessons of Rivette’s prior experimentations with improvisation in the service of a multi-dimensional dissertation on art and life and life as art and art as life. Here’s the matter I want to address though: Once this disc was delivered to my doorstep and I looked at the back cover I had one question, which was “What kind of freakazoid can conceive and deliver a full-length audio commentary to a nearly four-hour motion picture?” Not to say that Rivette’s work doesn’t lend itself to exhaustive analysis but, well, you know.  (Believe it or not, I get tired of hearing my own voice after about 40 minutes, which is why I prefer to do  Blu-ray audio commentaries with partners.) In any event, for this Blu-ay package that freakazoid is Richard Suchenski, a writer and academic associated with Bard College. Bard. Figures. The phrase “vertiginous interchange between different layers of intertextual reference” is uttered not even ten minutes in. I kid, I kid—while I consider this a borderline jargon incident, I also concede Rivette’s art calls for complex language in analysis. In any event, Suchenski’s work is outstanding. He takes an aesthetically holistic approach harking back to Rivette’s criticism. Weirdly enough there’s little in terms of nuts-and-bolts making-of info or on-set anecdotes. And yet the commentator fills the space. In the first half he’ll pause for 20 or 30 seconds at a time, but that’s nothing! The pauses do get longer in the second half, which reduced my potential resentment somewhat.  He’s very sharp on any number of topics, including the film’s approach to female nudity. (Even as you watch with commentary you recognize how amazing Emmanuelle Béart is in an IMPOSSIBLE role.) Suchenski deserves a medal in addition to his fee. Perhaps he’ll settle for my giving this package an… — A+

The Church (Scorpion)

Michele Soavi’s 1989 Not Demons 3, concerning an monoportal church whose only entrance/egress is sealed up via some satanic power, the better to condemn its inhabitants to  grotty death. holds up pretty well. It’s no Cemetery Man but what is; anyway it’s credible enough throughout not just to hold your attention but to make you feel bad that poor Soavi’s stuck directing Italian mini-series these days, or so it seems. (The near-suffocation-by-wedding-dress-bit is particularly inspired.) Featuring little Asia Argento, a bit tomboyish as the curious daughter of a church caretaker (she was over 20 here but looks 15), and Tomas Arana, who transforms from Wall Street-trading-floor-extra to Peter Murphy lookalike as he is compelled to serve the devil.  Scorpion’s presentation is better than solid—check out the good autumnal tones in its medieval prologue. Only the English-language soundtrack is offered, and that’s fine. There are video interviews with Soavi, who doesn’t dis the prior Demons movies here, as he’s been rumored to in the past, and with Argento, whose recollections are funny and affectionate.  Swell. —A

The Color of Pomegranates (Criterion)

The blow-the-top-of-your-head-off imagery of this cheaply made work of film poetry registers beautifully in this edition. Shots that then-music-video directors like Mark Romanek and Tarsem lifted wholesale from this 1969 Sergei Parajanov masterpiece look better in the original; once, you had to take this assertion on trust, now it’s as plain as the nose on your face.  The commentary from Tony Rayns, one which he confesses his personal trepidation about taking on in the beginning, splendidly illuminates the rich veins of history, tradition, art, and literature from which the motion picture derives. He is deft in sorting out what he calls its “fusions of trans-Caucasus identity” and still finds time to drop some choice anecdotes, including one in which Parajanov goes to the New York Film Festival and makes dirty talk with Allen Ginsberg.  —A+

Dead Man (Criterion)

This new transfer of one of Jim Jarmusch’s best films looks superb, so the 2011 issue regarding the first Blu-ray atrocity (see here) can be considered resolved. (And can also be considered as Harvey Weinstein’s last of many aggressive acts against the film.) The extras are multifarious and delightful. A making-of-focused commentary from  production designer Bob Ziembicki and sound mixer Drew Kunin is wonky in all the right ways. There’s a 45-minute supplement in which Jarmusch reads and answers questions submitted by fans of the film. Among the submitters are Bill Hader and Alan Arkush. The latter asks about Iggy Pop and Neil Young and their contributions.. But there’s not a drop of consideration for my friend and neighbor Gibby Haynes, who appears in an unusually memorable cameo. Well you can’t have everything.  —A+

Don’t Bother To Knock (Twilight Time)

Made in 1952, the same year in which Marilyn Monroe also did creditable work in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night, this fascinating, weirdly unfocused melodrama/thriller directed by Roy Ward Baker features a stellar performance, supple and gradient, from MM. She plays a mentally disturbed young woman on a babysitting gig at an NYC lodging, whose bearings are further shaken up when sullen Dick Widmark makes to pick her up after a spat with Anne Bancroft, who plays a singer in the ground floor nightclub. The confined environs of the action suggest the alternate title Glum Hotel. Bancroft lip-syncs “How About You” (the lyrics “and Tyrone Power’s looks/give me a thrill” tip you off to this Fox production in the event you’ve missed the opening logo). MM’s portrayals of longing and malingering listlessness are convincing and upsetting, especially the way she uses her breathy, sex-kitten voice to put over the character at her most dangerous. (It probably goes without saying, by the way, that the movie’s got a pretty unenlightened view of mental illness.)  The disc has no extras to speak of, the usual excellent Julie Kirgo booklet essay aside. But it does look good and crisp (Lucien Ballard shot it so we expect no less.).  All this and Elisha Cook, Jr. too—he plays an elevator operator and uncle to MM’s character (his insistence of recommending her as a sitter is what gets all the trouble started).  Not to mention Jim Backus. —B+

A Fistful of Dollars (Kino Lorber)

Good God I think this is the 700^th home video edition of this movie I’ve owned. Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH? I think I first saw it in the late ‘60s on a double feature with For A Few Dollars More. I was maybe ten years old and I was completely transfixed and nothing Pauline Kael said will ever make me change my mind and take your bromides about putting away childish things and stuff them because these movies feature Gian Maria Volonte and yours are about superheroes and everyone knows Gian Maria Volonte is cooler than any superhero. Excuse me. This Blu-ray is based on a recent 4K restoration and it looks fabulous. If you know this movie well (and if you don’t WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU) you will remember that it’s the sweatiest movie ever, and lemme tell you in this rendition you can practically count the beads. Extras include pretty much everything that’s been on the previous 700 versions, so that’s a lot. A new one is a commentary by Tim Lucas, delightful as always. There’s also this prologue for network television, shot by Monte Hellman and starring Harry Dean Stanton and some guy dressed in the Man With No Name (or “Joe,” if you believe Richard Schickel, whose old commentary is NOT included—Lucas has a good long riff on his track about how the Man With No Name in fact “has” several but goes by none personally). What’s very funny is how the actor doubling for Eastwood keeps trying to make sure his face isn’t in the frame, almost holding his hand up in front of it at one point—shades of Mrs. Prickley’s double. All things considered this is great and you should buy it. —A+

Gun Crazy (Warner Archive)

This year I showed my Language of Film students the fabled bank robbery long take and was newly impressed by so much, including Peggy Cummins’ driving skills. I am happy to know that next time I do the course I’ll be able to show it with the Blu-ray bump, which is pretty much all this new edition offers but that ain’t nothing. —A

Harper/The Drowning Pool (Warner Archive)

Well here I was hoping that I’d get some kind of eye-opening demonstration that would enable me to argue that the big studio genre films of the 1960s don’t get enough love. But I’m sorry to report that, Paul Newman notwithstanding, both these pictu res prove you can’t make The Big Sleep without Howard Hawks and Raymond Chandler, not to mention Leigh Brackett. These are adaptations of Ross MacDonald novels, with Lew Archer now named Lew Harper. Screenwriter William Goldman, on the not unexpectedly engaging commentary he recorded for the standard def DVD of Harper, reproduced here, tells us why this happened, but I didn’t put it in my notes, and what he said now escapes me, so I guess you can rest assured the rationale was real exciting. Anyway, the most interesting thing about 1966’s Harper is that I’m now convinced that Joel and Ethan Coen watched it (maybe preparing for Hudsucker Proxy) and lifted a few facets from it for The Big Lebowski. The movie seems to introduce the cliché of the ditzy poolside bikini babe, which reaches its nose-thumbing apotheosis in Lebowski (in this picture she is played by Pamela Tiffin). There’s also some kidnap-money-drop stuff that Lebowski goofs on. This movie’s tough-guy atmosphere is steeped in ugly sexism, as in the dialogue about a woman who “used to be a pretty hot young starlet, what happened to her?” followed by a cut to high-BMI Shelley Winters. Director Jack Smight handles this kind of stuff competently, but is a stiff with action and suspense sequences. In the time-capsule department, the look is mid-60s Panavision/Technicolor, and the soundtrack features an André and Dory Previn song, sung by Julie Harris in the role of an arty Lola Heatherton. No really. I admittedly eat up this kind of stuff, and this movie has plenty of it, which, combined with the superb image and sound quality of the disc,  wound up being its saving grace. Drowning Pool was made almost  10 years later, has the  action shifted to Louisiana (for no reason one can discern from the diegesis), and at first seems  overall like it might turn out to be a better picture than Harper. Young Melanie Griffith is memorable in a “problematic” role for sure. But while Harper is merely pedestrian, at least it’s got an Old-Hollywood-Tries-To-Stay-Spry spring in its step, while Pool devolves to  downright sluggishness (and the playing out of the whole title conceit is five kinds of dumb). The discs are beautiful so if this kind of fare is your idea of a great nostalgia trip, or if you’re a Newman completist. you’ll be in a lower circle of heaven. Both discs:— B+

The Holy Mountain (Kino Lorber)

Hey kids it’s Leni Riefenstahl’s 1925 screen acting debut, given a spectacular restoration by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation.  As a screen presence, I never got her, I must tell you. I’m skeptical about her as a filmmaker too but this is not the time for that. As its title suggests, this is, um, a “Mountain Film”—this was a big genre in German filmmaking starting in the beginning of the 20^th century, one which is pretty much what it sounds like. Germany, you know, is somewhere in the vicinity of the Alps, and Germanic Romanticism places a great emphasis on, you know, climbing, so, I don’t know how much more of this I need to spell out for you. The director of the movie was one Arnold Fanck, who liked to be known as “Dr.” Arnold Fanck, even though he only had a PhD, and again what does that tell you. I shouldn’t be ragging so hard given this movie is genuinely curious, and ravishing to look upon. One salient feature of the Mountain Film was that it was hard to shoot, and it’s clear that technical difficulty yielded high technical sophistication—the outdoor stuff here is still startling. “The sea is her love—wild, boundless…” an intertitle says of LR’s character early on, and her wacky Dance to the Sea is something to behold. According to the commentary by Tavis Crawford, Hitler loved it. The shot of LR’s love interest standing on a peak is fer-sure Caspar David Friedrich in orange-tinted monochrome. According to the commentator, the Mountain Film also helped popularize skiing; talk about being freighted with a lot to answer for. Another interesting feature is how often the movie messes around with aspect ratio, at one point settling in for a frame orientation that looks quite a bit like what we now call “vertical video.” This goes unnoted by Crawford. The disc itself is pretty great looking. I can’t emphasize enough the truly incredible imagery throughout,  but particularly in the final 20 minutes. —A

 Joe (Olive)

One of the verboten movies of my childhood, a Socially Significant tale of the late 1960s and one that inspired as many thinkpieces as a movie was capable of inspiring back then. . Beleaguered Square Businessman and Hard-Drinking Bigoted Construction Worker (I don’t think he really IS a construction worker, but might as well be) meet and team up to find and/or kill hippies. In some expects you kinda hadda be there back in 1970,  but the title character played by Peter Boyle still walks among us, and makes it to his polling place, alas. The film, directed by John G. Avildsen from a Norman Wexler script, is cheaper-than-the-norm cold-water-flat-kitchen-sink realism, not much to look at, but the Blu-ray features a solid transfer from clean materials, with particularly good color values, so watch with confidence. All the pre-echoes of MAGA aside, this has some not-displeasing anachronistic  1970 feels, beginning with Jerry Butler singing the opening theme. “Child, all you gotta do is grow up little girl,” the lyrics go, and what incredible irony if you already know the movie’s ending. Mr. Wexler’s writing of hippie/drug-addict dialogue lacks (“You promised maybe we could stay off the hard stuff for a while…”) but by the same token, I can’t tell you that a junkie skeezebucket of the era wouldn’t hassle Susan Sarandon over her not at all fat “fat ass.” Peter Boyle’s Joe doesn’t show up in the movie until a half hour in, and when he does it’s in an out-of-focus master shot. The movie meanders in its social commentary, sometimes veering into comedic territory (and here’s where Boyle shows the chops that were to serve him so well in Young Frankenstein and Everybody Loves Raymond)—hey look, the two squares have stumbled into a health food restaurant, and so on. The finale is still pretty harrowing. And interestingly enough, the scene where the working-class Currans have the upper-middle-class Comptons over for dinner could be dropped into Fassbinder’s Why Does Herr R. Run Amok (made the same year) and no one would raise an eyebrow. —B

Les Girls (Warner Archive)

This underrated 1957 Cukor musical is a visually sumptuous cross between Pal joey and Rashomon. Also one of the jewels of Kay Kendall’s too-short filmography. And a good source of early Patrick Macnee (he’s one of the barristers in the courtroom scenes). The Cole Porter songs are all good but I don’t hear a single. The disc itself is dazzling from stem to stern. It never ceases to amaze me that Cukor did so well with CinemaScope here, with cinematographer Robert Surtees, then screwed the widescreen pooch so badly on ‘64’s My Fair Lady with Harry Stradling, Jr. Sr., future beloved of Barbra Streisand and no slouch with 2.35 with Quine on How To Murder Your Wife. Just one of those things, I guess. Check out the solidity of the Paris dressing room scenes, with each of the mirror light bulbs’ filaments visible in a given shot—so gorgeous. I showed the scene, one where Taina Elg tries to escape the notice of her nobleman boyfriend,  to my students in tandem with a clip from Black Narcissus to exemplify a Golden Age of Hanging Lights. —A

 Manhandled/Stage Struck (Kino Lorber)

Two silent Gloria Swanson starrers directed by Allan Dwan;  I’d say these recommend themselves.. If your sole exposure to Swanson is by way of Sunset Boulevard or Stroheim or various and sundry of her works for DeMille, you will be knocked sideways by the super-likable comedienne you’ll meet here. 1924’s Manhandled is a rags to riches story whose generic plot was more or less recycled by the Clara Bow vehicle It a few years hence, while 1925’s Stage Struck depicts a daydream-prone waitress who finds unusual inspiration when a performing idol hits town. Both films are distinguished, and elevated, by the wit, humanity, and reliability of their star and director. The Manhandled commentary by Gaylyn Studlar gets started by referring to the “post-World War I fascination with young women’s deployment of their sexuality,” while the Stage Struck commentary, by Dwan biographer Frederic Lombardi, is a bit more nuts-and-bolts. Stage Struck also has an essay by Farran Smith Nehme,  and the movie itself features AMAZING two-strip Technicolor  sections, nicely restored, at the beginning and end of the picture. You should have both but if you have to choose, Stage Struck would be it. Both discs: —A

Model Shop (Twilight Time)

Back in the day, when the powers that be, or were, at home video concerns had little interest in releasing catalog titles, those beneath them who were invested with getting stuff out were compelled to come up with unusual marketing schemes. I have no first-hand knowledge in this matter, but I think that must have been what inspired the short-lived Sony-Columbia “Martini Movies” rubric for a group of otherwise completely unrelated titles. This was one such title. As was, I’m seeing now, The New Centurions (see below). As was, good grief, Anthony Newley’s draft-dodger drama Summertree. One of the nice things about boutique labels is they don’t have to justify putting out what they want. On balance I like Agnes Varda’s California movies better than Jacques Demy’s single one, made in 1969, which sees his Anouk Aimee character Lola inhabiting a pretty grim little California world. Gary Lockwood plays a disaffected, directionless would-be architect who’s gotta make up his mind about something or other before Uncle Sam plucks him up for Vietnam duty; instead, he meets Lola at the title establishment and pulls some Before Sunrise action on her. Prior to that he drops in on Spirit, the band, and gives Jay Ferguson the opportunity to do a little acting. A speech Lockwood gives in this scene encapsulates the film’s reason for being: “I was driving down Sunset and I turned down one of those roads that leads up into the hills. And I stopped at this place that overlooks the whole city, it was fantastic. And I suddenly felt exhilarated, you know. I was really moved by the geometry of the place, its conception, its baroque harmony. It’s a fabulous city. To think some people claim it’s an ugly city, when it’s really pure poetry. It just kills me. I wanted to build something right then, create something.” Model Shop is Demy’s own L.A. inspired creation, but as love letters go it’s kind of glum. Also, this is not the color-feast that you might expect in the wake of the one-two punch of Cherbourg and Rochefort. But it’s a key component of the Demy filmo nonetheless and this extras-free package is the finest extant presentation of it. —B+

Moses Und Aaron (Grasshopper)

Grasshopper does invaluable art-film service here not just by presenting a super-scrupulous rendering of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s 1975 non-spectacle cinema rendering of Schoenberg’s great opera, but by also including three other films by the duo, all crucial, including their 1965 debut feature Not Reconciled, their prior short Machorka-Muff (1963; practically Expressionist relative to their subsequent works), and Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene (1973). That’s a lot of Straub-Huillet, and because of the addition of Schoenberg, I’m not sure I’d call it an ideal beginner’s package but on the other hand, with all three of these artists you’re either all in or out, so might as well. I have to be in a very particular mood to be receptive to the filmmakers (I never don’t have time for Arnold), who withhold a lot in terms of conventional audience engagement and provide dense intellectual inquiries instead. Surely no filmmakers are more resolute, or distinguished, in their austerity: they are resolutely anti-chic even when depicting snazzy Euro cocktail lounges (see Not Reconciled). My only complaint about the package is that the Ted Fendt booklet essay is in something like 7.5 point type, which is too small for this old man to comfortably read. —A

The New Centurions (Twilight Time)

Twilight Time remains one of my favorite Blu-ray labels, and I think even they would agree that with their always good-looking releases, the extras situation is either feast or near-famine. “Near” because Julie Kirgo can always be counted on to deliver a great booklet essay every time out. For this 1972 Richard Fleischer adaptation of a Joseph Wambaugh novel, it’s close to feast because of the presence of two audio commentaries. The first is with Nick Redman and actor Scott Wilson, co-starring here with Stacy Keach, George C. Scott, Ed Lauter, Clifton James, and Erik Estrada. It’s a casual conversation with Nick taking the role of the well-informed fan. A lot of Wilson’s stories fall into the “How I Got Shafted Once George C. Scott Came On Board” category—Scott’s star power compelled a reshuffling of the ensemble in terms of numbers of scenes and so on. But he’s entertaining. The second commentary is by  film historians Lee Pfeiffer and Paul Scrabo, who are also informative, but allow me to vent a little here. They’re not even ten minutes into the movie before the “Dick Fleischer never got his due critically” complaints start. Now one of the great things that Twilight Time does is give love to underappreciated directors by putting their movies on Blu-ray, which isn’t nothing. But the Fleischer reassessment is not actually all that new, Sarris’ American Cinema rankings only have Papal Infallibility status if you want them to, and sometimes things can be taken too far. Lauding the ostensible eclecticism of a director who mainly went where the work was seems a bit special-pleading to me. Statements such as this: “They certainly never got the recognition or fame that they deserved. They were usually dismissed by critics as ‘workmanlike.’ Efficient directors who could turn out a good movie but really weren’t ‘artistes.’ And I think history has proven that to be wrong and Fleischer was a perfect example.” are really straw man arguments that don’t advance anyone’s appreciation, and when you follow such a pronouncement with “Doctor Doolittle, although a box office bomb, is actually a very good movie that’s better regarded today,” well, I don’t know what to tell you.  Messrs. Scrabo and Pfeiffer are otherwise amiable and knowledgeable. As for the movie itself, it's not The Choirboys but it’s not bad. And man is it dated! Plenty of casual sexism and racism and yeesh, the depiction of the Stacy Keach-Jane Alexander union, in the first domestic scene, when they’re discussing partner Scott:  “Is he married?” “Divorced.” “Then he’d probably appreciate a home-cooked meal!” The next time we see the couple they’re practically divorcing, though. The “gritty” film doesn’t have much of a plot, just a bunch of it’s-tough-to-be-a-cop anecdotes leading up, of course,  to a tragic death. The cinematography, by Ralph Woolsey, is pretty low key and the disc gets the Eastmancolor By Night vibe pretty nicely, which is kinda my favorite part of the package. —A

No Down Payment (Twilight Time)

Speaking of people who discontinued their blogs, I can’t find the entry from Like Anna Karina’s Sweater that hipped me to this “whoa!”-inducing 1957 problem picture, which could be alternately titled Varieties of U.S. Post War Suburban Rot. My buddy Filmbrain, going slightly against what was considered the proper auteurist grain, lavished love on this Martin “Marty” Ritt picture in which Jeffrey Hunter and Patricia Owens buy into a prefab community all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed but wind up defeated by All-American hypocrisy. The combination of soap opera and social commentary still whips up a heady froth today, thanks largely to a go-for-broke cast that includes Cameron Mitchell when he was still a thing, Joanne Woodward soaking up fryer oil as the ebullient one-time Southern belle and Tony Randall in a “don’t look at me like I’m an alcoholic” vodka sulk. Early on Pat Hingle, manning a barbecue most manfully, asks Mitchell “When you gonna start a family of your own?” and I’m all like HEY LAY OFF ME JORDAN PETERSON. There’s a lot more crisis-of-masculinity stuff in there too. Lovers of black-and-white widescreen will find a lot to like here even if they can’t engage the content (although I can’t imagine anyone being unable to engage the content); this extras-free presentation is a really nice transfer. —A-

No Orchids for Miss Blandish  (Kino Lorber)

What an oddity. This 1948 British production, shot at  Alliance Studios, Twickenham, is a New-York-set story that begins with a bogus depiction of the Manhattan skyline. Based on the James Hadley Chase novel that inspired a salty Raymond Queneau parody (We Always Treat Women Too Well), this is one of the messier tales of Stockholm Syndrome before it was so named. (I know that’s not Blue Book accurate, description wise, but bear with me.) The movie fascinates from the start for its off-base depiction of New York life among both the rich and gutter-bound. It’s like that bit in Carpenter’s The Thing when the alien tries to disguise itself as a husky and the other dogs are like, no, you’re not right. Director St. John Legh Clowes (no, really) throws in some fancy camerawork amidst the fake American accents. Linden Travers, as the titular Miss Blandish, sports some pretty elaborate boudoir wear early on, reminding the viewer that British productions were not subject to the overview of Joseph Breen. This circumstance of course extends to features of the plot as well, as witness  Bill O’Connor’s Johnny, the rotter fiancé who thinks bringing her to a dive roadhouse will melt Miss Blandish’s frigidity. About a half hour in the movie gets fixated on the sexual assault of the heroine; the squalor is neither bracing or unusually repellent, just odd. The movie was clearly made by people with no experience of firearms, as one of the gangsters involved in the abortive kidnapping of the title character calmly takes hold of a gun by its barrel right after it’s been fired. One may infer that a similar lack of real-world savvy informs every other part of the film. Once Miss Blandish falls in love with one of her captors, and he back (“You’re the only dame that’s ever got me. Got me inside and twisted my guts!”), Travers really starts to magnificently overdo her performance. Unfortunately this plot development also signals the point where the movie starts to truly and finally go off the rails. Pretty good image quality overall. A cinephile novelty. —B+

 The Outer Limits, Season One (Kino Lorber)

I may never finish watching this 1,632 minute set 32 episode monster. I haven’t even listened to any of the audio commentaries yet. But for random hours of pleasure to steal, this has proven both incredibly consistently great and revelatory. According to Tosches’ Dean Martin biography, when Martin passed Frank Sinatra said “He has been like the air I breathe.” I haven’t thought about it in a long time, especially as someone who grew up to be not much of a television person, but Outer Limits, even as glimpsed out of a corner of my boyhood eye, was a huge formative influence. The effects might be dated, but that’s fine, and the extremely high quality of the writing, acting, directing, cinematography is consistently awe-inspiring. I’m beside myself with admiration here. And very eager for a Season Two set. —A+

Raw Deal (Classic Flix)

Relative newbie label Classic Flix follows up its first-rate renditions of He Walked By Night and T-Men with another essential Anthony Mann/John Alton collaboration, a narratively astounding noir whose twists and turns are put across in a style that’s both moody and breakneck. The transfer was made from a fine grain element from the BFI, on which 400 hours of digital restoration were spent. The results are pretty remarkable to behold, with the fabled John Alton blacks looking plenty dark and the image stability rock solid overall. The detail is so fresh that I actually noted some surprisingly ragged technique during the beach house scene—a dropped gun that winds up on a section of floor not seen anywhere before, and lighting mismatches once Dennis O’Keefe is outside and moving down the shoreline. Jeremy Arnold’s generally cogent and informative commentary doesn’t address this, which I found frustrating. Overall it’s a spectacular package, with a  bounty of supplements. Essential home library material. —A+

The Sadist of Notre Dame (Severin)

Late ‘70s Jess Franco films almost always make you wanna take a long shower afterwards. Talk about a pervasive atmosphere of perdition—you’re soaking in it. This release along with its Severin companion Sinfonia Erotica are exemplary examples. (And both are more rewarding than the recent Severin release of Two Female Spies With Flowered Panties; not that that’s Severin’s fault; it’s just that the movie itself is a dose of cinematic Sominex laced with PCP.) This one is a mad pastiche, a Frankenstein/Franco monster stitched together from portions of 1975’s Exorcism, its hardcore variant Sexorcisme, and more; the extras provide all the gory details (and also contain snippets of Sexorcisme featuring our auteur performing unsimulated cunnilingus, which will allow you the privilege of saying “Now I’ve seen everything”). Turns out Franco maven Steven Thrasher Thrower and I agree that the best parts of the movie are the shots of trench-coated Jess skulking around Rue St. Denis and Ile de la Cité, giving a back street crawler context to the surrounding squalor. The supplements are varied but all high-spirited, including a mini-doc on a Paris grindhouse theater. I was most taken with the interview with Thrasher, though. The presentation looks quite good, especially considering the endless iterations the film material had to have gone through before landing in this mess. For normal people this disc is useless; for the rest of us, it’s an essential course in Franco Education.  Inspirational dialogue: “I inherited the house from my parents.” “I only inherited misery.” —A

 Seven (Kino Lorber)

This 1979 Andy Sidaris  babes-and-bullets (and bombs and stabbing implements and all manner of nonsense) actioner has more integrity in its nuttiness, I think, than Hard Ticket to Hawaii, but I realize such a distinction is possibly lost on those of you who are not “into” Andy Sidaris. As with Jess Franco, your loss. Then again, the three Andy Sidaris fans who contribute the commentary to this title might be a little too enthusiastic for their, or anybody’s, good, as when one of them evinces a desire to be incarnated as Susan Kiger’s shorts. Oh, boys. Shot mostly in Hawaii over what appear to be a series of cloudy days, each individual scene’s color palette seemingly determined by that of whatever car in the scene figures most prominently in the action, this is not the most visually distinguished of Sidaris’ pictures. The titlular seven refers to the number of agents in freelance mercenary William Smith’s team, and one of the film’s biggest formal laughs comes about 40 minutes in when Sidaris seems to realize that if he keeps spending as much time as he has on the individual character introductions, he’s going to have a three hour movie on his hands, and so ruthlessly picks up the pace. The movie seems to have had a high flash-paper budget, as it has more flash-paper tricks in it than I think I’ve seen in any movie ever. In addition to Ms. Kiger (who really is quite attractive) and Mr. Smith, who both seem engaged in some unspoken competition as to who can deliver the worse line reading (Kiger aces “Hat on the bed; that’s bad luck, Cowboy” but Smith trumps her near the end with “Hey I’m rentin’ your bike for a while, pal, thanks, huh?”), the film also features Lenny Montana and Reggie Nalder. And Art Metrano. While the bad guys are plenty bad, it still seems unsporting that Smith’s team pretty much murders them all in cold blood—Kiger and Guich Koock, as the aforementioned Cowboy, actually lock a couple of mooks in their Town Car, douse it in gasoline, and set it on fire. Yikes. An essential 20^th century entertainment. —B+

A Christmas Gift To You From Some Came Running (That Is, A 2017 Blu-ray Consumer Guide)

Let's get right to it. 

Equipment: Playstation 3 for domestic discs, OPPO BDP 83 for import discs, Panasonic Viera TCP50S30 plasma display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.

I can’t believe I actually carved out the time to do this, although if you check out the release date of the very first disc reviewed (I’ll save you the trouble, it’s August of last year) you’ll see it’s been indeed over a year in the making. Whew!

3 Bad Men (Kino Lorber)

This 1926 Western, not to be confused with 1919’s Marked Men, which was Ford’s first stab at the story that would become Three Godfathers, is a fleet and exciting film with a similar theme—the title fellows, en route to a gold stake, save the life of, and then look after, a fair waif. This disc presents a beautiful restoration terrifically augmented by a wonderful Joseph McBride audio commentary. Aside from its erudition (fun fact: this was Ford’s last Western for over a decade; he would not revisit the genre until, yup, 1939’s Stagecoach) it’s a master class in how to deal with, um, problematics. One of the movie’s most thrilling moment sees a baby lifted from the ground in the middle of what’s effectively a stampede (an antecedent to several stunts in Raising Arizona). The clear-eyed McBride, who loved Ford and Ford’s films, says “this is a famous shot, unfortunately in my opinion it’s reprehensible…I think it’s unconscionable to risk the life of a child for the sake of an effect.” And that’s that. —A

All the Colors of the Dark   (Shameless UK Region B)

You never forget your first Edwidge Fenech movie. I picked up a German DVD of this lurid and nonsensical 1972 sort-of giallo in the mid’ 90s. It was a 4x3 image that was pictureboxed to honor its widescreen framing, and the image was sufficiently blah that you might have guessed the negative had been processed in dirty bathwater. And yet the power of La Fenech’s ultry-sultry screen presence somehow shone through. This U.K. Blu looks…okay. It’s 16x9, always a plus of course. The opening minutes, featuring the credits, are dingy enough to raise an eyebrow, but then you realize this was always a cheap film in every respect, not just content. Once you make peace with. that it’s completely watchable and sometimes a bit better. And the lead actor looks great. The package has satisfying extras, including casual but enthusiastic and informative commentary from Kat Ellinger (editor of Diabolique magazine) and Samm Deighan (contributor to that magazine; both do a podcast called Daughters of Darkness) and a 20-minute interview with director Sergio Martino. —A-

Battle Cry (Warner Archive)

Raoul Walsh conducts this nearly 150-minute adaptation of Herman Wouk’s novel at a spanking pace, which is salutary not just for the usual reasons but also because the story is maybe 80 percent soap opera and 20 percent war movie. No extras here, but the widescreen color image is very nice. The WA release of Hell on Frisco Bay, while vivid, suffered during dissolve transitions in which color values were lost, a limitation of the material they had to work with. This is not the case here, for the most part, and in the rare occasions that it is, it’s so fleeting only the sharpest eye will catch it. Attractions include Tab Hunter trying to play drunk, Walsh using short fast pans as an accommodation to CinemaScope (see James Whitmore telling Perry Lopez to take off his fake medals, and Lopez then bragging about Guadalcanal to a group of strangers, all in the same shot). Aldo Ray playing a rapey character who is talked down from committing actual assault is a very, um, vivid portrayal. —B+

The Birthday Party (Kino Lorber)

Don’t know why I haven’t seen more Friedkin-heads celebrating the release of this 1968 picture, his follow-up to, um, Good Times, that Sonny and Cher movie. This, on the other hand, is an adaptation of the Haold Pinter play about a withdrawn boarding house tenant who receives a visit from some existential gangsters on what may or may not be his birthday. Their introduction is really special: the cut from Robert Shaw’s Stanley sneaking out the kitchen window to Patrick Magee and Sidney Tafler standing in the house’s sitting room is really one of the great edits in cinema. Friedkin shows remarkable sensitivity to Pinter’s text, and if you only know Magee and Shaw from A Clockwork Orange and Jaws respectively, you’ll be surprised at how good they are at underplaying. (I know Shaw does SOME underplaying in Jaws, but here he even underplays underplaying.) The image looks great relative to what Eastman Color in the late ‘60s generally yielded. Although I wish the responsible parties had cleaned up the soundtrack a little more. Extras include a Friedkin interview in which he relates material that readers of his Friedkin Connection book will remember, including how the movie irritated Joseph Losey. —A-

Casa De Lava (Grasshopper)

This 1994 picture was Pedro Costa’s second feature, and while it’s in some respects much more conventional than his stiffer future pictures, it’s still suffused, as they say, with a singular voice, achieved through formal mastery. And confidence. The much-cited influence of I Walked With A Zombie is evident but it’s more subterranean than many accounts would have you believe. The excellent Blu-ray image honors the work of cinematographer Emmanuel Machuel (who also shot, not insignificantly, Bresson’s L’Argent); aside from its characters and story, the movie is also about a volcanic island in the Cape Verde archipelago, and the movie’s color palette, its range of lights and darks, the often charcoal quality of the landscape, is well-represented. Machuel is interviewed in one of the discs’ supplements. The other notable extra is a 24-minute paging through Costa’s scrapbook for the movie, which features lots of shots of Edith Scob (one of the picture’s stars) in Les Yeux sans Visage; the famous photograph of Robert Johnson and guitar, which seems to inform the movie’s characterization of the role played by Isaac De Bankole; and pictures of Edgar Allan Poe and Edie Sedgwick. —A+

Chandu The Magician (Kino Lorber)

The dream team of William Cameron Menzies (direction) and James Wong Howe (cinematography) having some fun with pulpy radio-play characters, baroque villainy, in-camera effects and so on. The material used in the Blu-ray of this 1932 picture shows some damage (speckles and such), especially during transitions. Still great, sometimes dazzling, fun, not least due to Bela Lugosi’s scenery-chewing as a baddie named Roxor. (In future sequels he would play the hero Chandu, just to confuse people.) Commentator Greg Mank is super enthusiastic albeit possibly unavoidably stodgy in his praise of analog effects as opposed to these kids today with the CGI. Pretty much all the extras are taken from the 2008 Fox DVD, including a commentary by Richard Schickel that I’ve still not gotten around to listening to. —B+

Death Laid An Egg (Cult Epics)

What do you say about a 1968 giallo starring Jean-Louis Trintingant, Gina Lollobrigida, and Candy’s Ewa Aulin that climaxes with the introduction of a headless, all-breast-meat live chicken? Quite a few things, and I said some of them about eight years ago in a piece for MUBI, in which I categorized this picture as being one of the “genre films that embedded a Marxist critique of Western economic and/or social practices into the thrills of their particular subsets.” This transfer beats hell out of the Japanese standard def DVD that was my reference for the review, which like my first disc of All The Colors of the Dark, was letterboxed in a 4x3 format. The image here is pretty bright; in sequences when there’s a lot of white light pouring through windows you get the impression of tipping into overexposure. But everything holds nicely, making the viewing experience gratifying. I did not spring for the three-disc version that was part of the crowd funding campaign for the disc, which included a CD of Bruno Maderna’s striking modernist score. —B+

The Earth Dies Screaming (Kino Lorber)

This 1964 British sci-fi cheapie is one of those pictures that, seen at an early enough age, will lodge in one’s unconscious and forever resonate with the stiff, sniffy inverse-claustrophobia of its scenes depicting human survivors of an alien onslaught sniping at each other in empty pubs and hotel lobbies. The sense of desolate isolation created by director Terence Fisher and his cast (especially the ever-tetchy Dennis Price) is not upended by the ridiculous dome-headed killer robots roaming the empty streets, but enhanced by them. After years away from the picture, you’re not sure if it’s something you saw as a movie, or just dreamed. But it is real, as this Blu-ray attests. This peculiarly remarkable film is presented in a good-looking, smooth, 1.66 picture. The commentary from Richard Harland Smith is good and thorough (dig, for instance, how he identifies footage repurposed from Village of the Damned) and leavened by his dry sense of humor: “We begin…with stock footage.” —A-

Freebie and the Bean (Warner Archive)

Did Stanley Kubrick really call this the best movie of 1974? Because it’s not very good. This despite being shot by Laszlo Kovacs, having a theme song crooned by Bobby Hart , and featuring a glimpse of City Lights books early on. Other things that had me on its side included a terrifying scene on a building crane, a vehicle featuring the logo “Vertigo Trucking Company,” and, well, not much else. But as it happens, James Caan and Alan Arkin yelling at each other for almost two hours is not as entertaining as it sounds. (Yes, this is my first time seeing it. I couldn’t make it to the movie when it first opened, despite its poster tease "...and look who’s playing Consuelo.” [It’s Valerie Harper].) The image is vivid enough that it’s no trouble at all to see that during one shot in the rough-housing-around-the-fountain scene, Caan is replaced by a very indifferently disguised stunt double. The ending, when put up against The Color of Night, suggests that Richard Rush, the director of both pictures, has some issues with trans people. I guess the thing has curio value. Inspirational dialogue: “She’s on the pill.” —B-

Funeral Parade of Roses (Cinelicious Pics)

Speaking of Kubrick, it’s said that this 1969 quasi-underground picture by Toshio Matsumoto was screened by Kubrick as research for A Clockwork Orange. Lest that give you the wrong impression, this is hardly a picture about wayward/criminal youth, regardless of what Japan’s policy concerning trans people or cross-dressers. In any event, this is a remarkably striking picture in every particular, starting with lead performer Pita (a.k.a. Peter), whose portrayal of the beautiful night life queen Eddie makes everything else about the film possible. Pita’s own artifice of self-presentation constitutes an immutable truth that makes the movie’s diverse postmodern strategies not just unforced, but necessary. The movie’s black-and-white immediacy is beautifully captured in the transfer, and there’s a superb and informative commentary by Chris Desjardins, a.k.a. Chris D. of Flesheaters and fanzine fame (the prior DVD edition of this, from Eureka!/Masters of Cinema, had liner notes from Jim O’Rourke—musicians looove this movie). The package is rounded out by a separate disc of eight shorts by Matsumoto, ranging from the early ‘60s to 1975, many featuring psychedelic music by Toshi Ichiyanagi, avant garde composer and ex-husband of Yoko Ono. —A+

Le Gai Savoir (Kino Lorber)

Released on Blu-ray in tandem with La Chinoise, this is arguably the more difficult of the two films that Godard made in the run up to May ’68. These prophetic pictures were of course irrevocably affected by the events they more or less predicted. Our world is still wracked by the concerns, philosophical and social, of the films; only the vocabulary has changed. Savoir, originally conceived for television, has no story as such; instead, it features Jean-Pierre Léaud and Juliette Berto, as characters named Emile and Patrice (referencing Rousseau and Lumumba) but also as themselves, inhabiting the black expanse of a studio and talking education, overlaid frequently by montages that are, no surprise, quintessentially Godardian. The movie gets more visually “interesting” the more you watch it, actually, and the disc includes an informative and cogent commentary by Adrian Martin. Also, and this is not an insignificant detail, Léaud and Berto have the richest, most lustrous hair of anyone in motion pictures before and after this film. It’s not just the backlighting. It’s great hair. —A+

Gidget (Twilight Time)

The exceptional label Twilight Time’s always idiosyncratic releases suggest an alternate history of Hollywood. Not an anti-canon so much as an aesthetic animated by discrete pop cultural blips that were executed with notable technical panache. This 1959 picture, in CinemaScope and “Columbia Color” finds the studio, bereft of Harry Cohn (he died in February 1958) grappling to deal with the Youth Culture. Adapting a novel by Fredrick Kohner (Susan Kohner’s uncle, since you ask) that he based on his own teen daughter’s adventures with surfing, it came up with this oddity. Sandra Dee plays the title character, a “girl midget” who’s roundly sassed when she tries to ingratiate herself into a cadre of male surfers, including the snooty Moondog (James Darren) and the adult beachcomber “The Big Kahuna” (Cliff Robertson). Look for Tom Laughlin, Doug McClure, and Yvonne Craig in small roles. Cringe at dialogue like “Hey Moondoggie! You’re not going for that jailbait caper are you?” Thrill to the unexpected lyricism of Cliff Robertson looking out of the Kahuna’s shack at all the younger surfers. Directed by Paul Wendkos with an efficiency he would be disinclined to supply in his later films (trust me, I watched The Mephisto Waltz a few months ago), this is an often glum and tetchy film that gets downright weird when the moments of tension are broken by characters bursting into song, because while it may not be a full-fledged drama it sure ain’t a musical either.   A fascinating artifact and of course it looks mighty good. Not much shaking in the extras department, save a typically astute Julie Kirgo essay. —B+

Innocent Blood (Warner Archive)

At the Venice Film Festival last fall, John Landis headed the jury, and so they showed a lot of his stuff, some newly restored. The video for “Thriller” isn’t that great, really. The making-of documentary is slightly more interesting, and creepy in part. 1985’s Into the Night, which screened in a restored version, is a remarkably indulgent movie in soooo many ways. Many of which sound cool. You’d think a picture in which David Bowie has a knife fight with Carl Perkins would be some kind of sure thing, but you’d be surprised. The whole thing is logy as hell, every scene a kind of non-sequitur. And the overall sadism had a self-serving AND self-loathing quality to in. It made me wonder: had Landis forgotten how to make a movie after that Twilight Zone business? Not that it wouldn’t have arguably served him right—but this isn’t the venue for such discussion. (Although, when you consider the entirety of the Landis Sage you may reasonably conclude that karma doesn't exist, or if it does exist, it is a weirdo rather than a bitch.) Anyway, I mention all this because part of my interest in this high-def version of was my curiosity as to whether, five films after Night, he had remembered how to make a movie. The answer is, kind of. This super-grisly horror comedy from 1992 sort of ups the ante on American Werewolf In London’s total disregard for human life. The hook here is a turned vampire victim who likes it, and can derive some advantage of if, that is, Pittsburgh mob maniac Sallie the Shark, played by Robert Loggia with chop-smacking ferocity. A kind of genre template for Loggia’s Mr. Eddie in Lost Highway. The Blu-ray gets the movie’s garish color schemes—lots of neon-lit nightclubs and stuff—very well. I said it back then (in Entertainment Weekly I think), and I'll say it now: any movie that puts Don Rickles and Dario Argento in the same frame has got something going for it. —B

Kill Baby Kill (Kino Lorber)

These are the times that try men’s souls, to be sure. On the other hand, think back to thirty years ago, when the only way we could watch movies such as All The Colors of the Dark, Death Laid an Egg, and this were via VHS tapes from Video Search of Miami or something. And now we have them on Blu-ray, complete, often restored, sometimes pristine. This 1966 Mario Bava picture is a key work in many respects, amping up the dreamlike qualities that would spin into a fantastic delirium in his subsequent Lisa and the Devil. It also features the Demonic Little Girl figure that would recur in Fellini’s greatest film, Toby Dammit. Which, Tim Lucas allows in his typically excellent commentary, could have its roots in Juliet of the Spirits. In any event, each director and each little girl is somehow distinctive in spite of the affinities. In the case of the one in this picture, Tim tells us, it’s in part because the child is a little boy in a wig, who was not happy to be in the role. —A

Letter From An Unknown Woman (Olive Signature)

This replaces the Olive Blu-ray from a few years back and it’s worth the double-dip I’m afraid. The 4K transfer appears to have been scanned from different source; there’s a Universal logo before the Dozier/Rampart card…but that’s hardly the only difference. The point is that differences are clear from the opening credits on. It’s a picture improvement of maybe 30 percent, possibly more. So, for this exquisite bit of canon you know what you have to do. The extras are almost all astonishing. Lutz Bocher’s commentary is unlike any I’ve heard before. His delivery is kind of abrupt (sounds as if English is not his first language). But his detailed formal analysis, and accounts of what the film could have included, how shots were constructed, and so on, all informed by production documentation and Ophuls’ own notes, consistently informs and fascinates. Tag Gallagher’s visual essay is a tour de force on the film’s very subjective POV. There’s a brief, moving interview with Marcel Ophuls, son of Max and a master of cinema his own self. Dana Polan on the origins of the production is very good. The only dud in the supplements (and not one worth docking a notch over) is cinematographer Sean Price Williams’ tiredly snide interview, in which he reveals that the first time he laid eyes on Letter star Louis Jourdan, it was in Swamp Thing. Wow, man. —A+

The Lost World (Flicker Alley)

This is hardly a conventional upgrade from standard-def to high. It’s a whole new construction of this 1925 granddaddy of giant monster movies, supplemented by a raft of scholarship and exciting related material. The movie itself, with giant reptile special effects work by Willis O’Brien, is an important precursor to King Kong but also a brisk and sometimes eccentric, other times repellent, adventure yarn, based on a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle. The movie looks remarkable for the most part, and the commentary by Nicolas Ciccone consistently identifies the source materials for each part of the reconstruction. It does a lot more, too. Conan Doyle’s yarn was inspired, you will learn, by the real-life explorers who were the subjects of this years The Lost City of Z. Ciccone also frankly addresses the movie’s repellent racist aspects, particularly with respect to the character Zambo, a betrayal, as it happens of Conan Doyle’s more benign but still colonialist conception. The more pleasant stuff includes two Willis O’Brien shorts, test footage from his abortive Creation, deleted scenes. Serge Bromberg contributes a “Secrets of the Restoration” essay in the booklet—A+

Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case (Kino Lorber)

Whose fault is it when critical reputations go down the tubes in a way that’s so ignominious that twenty years (or so) after the fact, a rep-series revision, motivated as much by sentimental regret as it is by critical curiosity, emerges to dole out praise and blame and woe? In other words, does every reassessment of William Wyler have to drag Andrew Sarris for his “Strained Seriousness” categorization of the director in The American Cinema? Why not accompany a celebration of Wyler with André Bazin’s celebration of The Little Foxes instead? Also, Ben-Hur is not that good. Come on. Anyway. This is a roundabout way of noting that this year saw the re-release of two 1950s policiers, based on popular novels by Georges Simenon about his classic detective Maigret. These pictures were directed by Jean Delannoy, one of François Truffaut’s favorite punching bags back when Truffaut was a critic. Invariably, when such pictures are revived, they are accompanied by complaints about how mean Truffaut was. Delannoy is not someone whose films I know a lot about, and when 1958’s Maigret Sets A Trap was revived for theatrical release in the fall, I checked it out. It’s not at all bad—Jean Gabin, while not exactly Simenon’s own vision of the detective, takes over the character with brio, and the story is a good juicy one. But in what should have been the film’s climax, I began to get what Truffaut was on about—the goods Delannoy delivers are talky, monochromatic, pedestrian, saved only by Gabin and the story itself. Not for nothing, but this 1959 follow-up, which did not play in any N.Y. theater in the fall, is rather a better picture. It’s got a more interesting story, the milieu is more intriguing, or at least intriguingly portrayed; the direction is better. And the 1.66 image on the disc is superb. Alas, that’s it for the Delannoy/Gabin Maigret films, so maybe I should be ticked at Truffaut—seems like Jean was hitting his stride with the material just as Cahiers was hammering him. —B+

Night School (Warner Archive)

I thought this 1981 picture would be fun to check out, as it was one of the remaining few entries in the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film that I haven’t seen. About ten minutes into the movie I paused it to see what Michael Weldon said about it—he was a lot more dismissive than I remembered. And yet here I was, watching. Oops. No point in stopping now, though. The “Lorimar Presents” logo at the opening was a nice blast from the past…and the 1980s grain in the nighttime image was not displeasing. Nor was the news that the DP was Mark Irwin, who worked with David Cronenberg for many years. Sure, the director was also responsible for one-fifth of the second Casino Royale, as well as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Cromwell, and Sextette—not the credentials you are necessarily looking for in a Halloween derivative. Ken Hughes’ sense of restraint only takes him so far, though; while this decapitating-serial-killer tale is not inordinately gory, the vast array of red herrings the plot offers up include a mentally disabled busboy. Bad form. Also anachronistic is the half-milquetoast/half-smarm-king academic who, for all his thin-haired blandness, is catnip to the lady grad students. Drew Snyder, who portrays the simp, puts on a hilarious look of resignation when his character overhears the female dean telling a TA that she’s going to fire him. is going to fire him. So, yes, the main distinguishing characteristic of this movie is that it features Rachel Ward taking a shower. And she’s not killed therein. For very good reason. Anyway, the presentation is, some would say, better than the movie deserves. But my argument, as a general rule, is that all preserved films should be this well-preserved. Whatever. —B

The Old Dark House (Cohen Media)

As I wrote when I saw it in Venice in September: “This is the archetypal horror comedy, or would be, had it ever been equaled.” Or nearly equaled, even, I ought to have said. To continue: “Ernest Thesiger is genius incarnate as the house’s very nervous master Horace Fenn, while British stage actor Eva Moore is an exemplary crone as his religious fanatic sister. The movie brims with quotable dialogue, including the immortal line ‘Have a potato.’ The restoration, produced by U.S. outfit Cohen Media, looks dazzling.” Yes it sure does, and never more so that when Moore takes Gloria Stuart’s silk nightie between her fingers and says “That’s fine stuff—but it’ll rot.” You really get the fineness of the stuff. And the distorted mirror business that follows looks like it could have been shot yesterday. Extras are from the prior Kino disc. And are fine. —A+

Red Line 7000 (Kino Lorber)

One of the hardest Hawks films to see, generally, which has been frustrating for not just cinephiles as a general class but for Robin Wood devotees—his chapter on the 1965 picture is one of the hinges that hold his 1968 book-length study of Hawks together. So this disc is cause for much celebration. It presents the film well, with a solid image and clear soundtrack. The racing footage has some rawness to it, but that’s kind of an asset—there’s a resonance of period authenticity to it. At the start it feels like Only Angels Have Wings transposed to the world of stock car racing, but it mutates into a sort of All-American La Ronde, one in which the male characters—typical Americans!—suffer from sexual jealousy of practically maniacal proportions. Although the film, true to its era, looks at them as Normal Guys With A Few Problems. James Caan’s character is particularly truculent, and Caan portrays him with utter conviction. The whole thing’s kind of unsettling. On the other hand, George Takei has a small role, and the nightclub musical number is almost completely insane, and that’s fun, no? Nick Redman and Julie Kirgo, usually the highlights of the Twilight Time commentaries, are here, and Kirgo has a special insight—her dad wrote the screenplay. She is not as partial to the movie as the relation might imply, which makes for an even more interesting commentary than she usually delivers. —A

Suspiria (Synapse)

I know that Synapse head Don May, Jr., has been working on this labor of love for literally years. David Mackenzie, who did the compression and authoring on the project, is a friend and someone I’ve worked with on a lot of Blu-ray projects—he is the recordist on every  Blu-ray commentary I’ve done in the 21^st century. So I’m…partial? But I’m also a Suspiria nut, and a demanding one.  If this were to disappoint, I might have just let it pass without comment. But honestly, I’d also be shocked, because I know the technical acumen and commitment to quality of the people making the product. Well, here we are, and here is a review of it, so you can guess what I think of the new version. Indeed, it is wonderful. Indeed, I’ve never seen it look better. Yes, all of the baroque lighting effects are incredibly vivid and fresh but there's more. The flesh tones are incredible. Jessica Harper’s “natural” healthiness versus the overly made-up overseers of the ballet school, or the ruddiness of the professor with whom she consults near the end—this  contrast constitutes its own theme in the movie as presented here. There is none of the oversaturation that plagued the German version I wrote about in 2010. It’s beautiful. Perfect. Too perfect? Since the restoration has the enthusiastic approval of cinematographer Luciano Tovoli, I’m comfortable saying “not likely.” And the audio. There’s an amazing depth of detail that I’ve never heard before in this very loud but intricately “composed” movie. I’ll be honest, I haven’t even delved into the separate disc of supplements yet, and if I did things like declare “Blu-ray of the year” this would win in a walk, even if I never got around to those extras. The extras I did sample were the two audio commentaries. Troy Howarth is very informative with bios of the cast, stories of the movie’s development, and whether or not it’s a “giallo.” He says no and I agree. On the other commentary, David Del Valle and pal Derek Botelho kick around critical ideas, invoke Jung, and all that. They also speculate on a theoretical Suspiria expanded universe: “Are we to believe that some of these girls are part of the coven?” I got the collectible steelbook, which I pre-ordered for a mere $50; on Amazon it’s going for $90 as I write this. I pre-ordered not because I’m such a collectibles enthusiast, but because I wanted to SEE THIS THING, and man am I glad I did. $90 is a lot of money, and I'm not going to tell you how to live your life, but knowing what I know now, I'd shell it out if I had to. If Synapse's pattern runs true to what it was with the Phenomena Blu-ray of a few years back, a less fancy version of the same restoration will come down the pike some time. But none such item has been announced at press time as they say. Inspirational commentary line, from Mr. Del Valle: “You can never use black magic to do anything good. Kenneth Anger told me that.”—A+

Witchhammer (Second Run)

To paraphrase John Belushi, I suggest you buy as many Eastern European period films from the '50s through the '70s as you can. I'm not sure I've ever been let down by one yet. This nightmarish 1970 Czech picture directed by Otakar Vávra—who began as an avant-garde filmmaker (his first short, 1931's The Light Penetrates The Dark, made when he was 20, is included here) and died in 2011 at the age of 100, with over 50 films to his credit—is a meticulous simulation of an ignorant procedural. Given the circumstances of its production, it is of course specifically allegorical. But it also speaks the universal truth that abuse of power should come as no surprise, and a few other universal truths as well. Its widescreen black-and-white imagery is dazzlingly precise, creating an unusually immersive atmosphere. Second Run, the British label responsible for this release, always does an amazing job with its releases and I'm here with good news: its Blu-ray discs tend to be region-free. That goes for last year's Horse Money and its new upgrade-from-standard-def disc of The Cremator, which I haven't been able to watch yet. So if you've been curious about this fare but lacking in what had been the necessary equipment, jump on all three of these.  —A+

Young Mr. Lincoln (Criterion)

Beyond the high-def image, which is breathtaking, this Blu-ray reissue of a Criterion standard-def features a new, excellent supplement. Yes, I’m bookending Consumer Guide with Blu-rays of two John Ford films with audio commentaries by Joseph McBride. Here McBride considerately separates myth from fact and contributes deep-dish analysis of Henry Fonda’s performance. Frank as ever, he recalls some personal anecdotes about Fonda that reveal both commendable and less-than-delectable aspects of the actor’s character, but his storytelling never takes a punitive tone. He explains why Ford was usually anti-moving camera (in the context of one of this film’s few tracking shots, one which I reckon was suggested by a Murnau work) and takes apart the famous Cahiers du Cinema deconstruction of the movie. Geoffrey O’Brien’s booklet essay, featuring the line, “We are invited to indulge a naïve lyricism that always proves deceptive,” holds up, as of course it would. As for the movie, well, cinema doesn’t get more essential than this. As Orson Welles said (and of course this is cited by McBride): “John Ford knows what the earth is made of.” —A+