The quintessential and politically incorrect New York movie The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
(1974) is an adaptation of John Godey’s novel of the same name and is brilliantly
directed by Joseph Sargent with loads of smile-inducing and laugh-out-loud
humor. This is the not the reaction one would associate with a film that is
marketed as a taut exercise in suspense, but one needs to understand and
appreciate the era in which the film was made. New York City was in financial
distress fifty years ago, with crime, violence and drug use running rampant.
Subway cars were blanketed in graffiti, and it was a dangerous time to be
walking the streets.
Pelham is the first and best of three filmed versions of
the novel and concerns four heavily armed men, all sporting moustaches and
machine guns. They are named after colors to mask their identities (this idea
was lifted by Quentin Tarantino and used to great effect in his 1992 film Reservoir Dogs). They commandeer an Interborough
Rapid Transit (IRT) train from the subway system and hold eighteen passengers
hostage. They demand one million dollars in cash for their release within one
hour – a mere pittance in 2025’s dollars – and will shoot one passenger per
minute should the police fail to provide the money by the ascribed deadline. Robert
Shaw shines as the lead baddy and heads the superb cast which also features
Martin Balsam as a sneezing confederate; Walter Matthau is the Transit
Authority lieutenant who negotiates with Shaw and lives on his wits, making a
last-minute snap decision that buys them time; Hector Elizondo is virtually
unrecognizable as the monkey-in-the-wrench who causes problems for Shaw with his
own sense of bravado; and Kenneth MacMillian is the Borough Commander. Among
the film’s highlights are Matthau’s off-handed and embarrassing treatment of
the representatives of the Tokyo Metropolitan Subway System who are visiting; Tom
Pedi’s role as Caz Dalowicz whose no-B.S. approach to the hijackers results in
a shootout in the tunnel; Lieutenant Rico Patrone (Jerry Stiller) who reads the
newspaper and is annoyed that he is being “interrupted” by the Japanese reps touring
the facility; Lee Wallace’s turn as the Mayor (he is a near dead ringer for
Mayor Ed Koch who became the New York Mayor four years after the film’s
release) and his inefficacy in dealing with the situation at hand, including
his Deputy Mayor, played brilliantly by Tony Roberts; and Robert Weil as a transit
worker – he’s a character actor who appeared in dozens of great New York films.
It also has one of the best endings to any film of recent memory.
Pelham manages to juggle suspense and outright human hilarity
in a way that few films that I have seen are able to. Bob Clark’s Black
Christmas, released the same year, also walks a tightrope of laugh out-loud
jokes on the one hand and intense fright on the other. While the idea of a
group of men “hijacking” a subway car might seem farfetched and implausible,
how about the city’s departments co-operating collectively to achieve a
peaceful outcome to the scenario at hand? There’s one for the books!
The Taking of Pelham One Two
Three was released on Wednesday,
October 2, 1974 in New York City. What the film
captures perfectly is the sense that working people have about themselves and
their jobs, a “another day at the office” mentality as they go about their
routines. The sentiments of the film are timeless and ring true in a city where
corruption and racism run behind-the-scenes and are perfectly sized-up by Doris
Roberts’s turn as the mayor’s wife when she tells him what he will receive in
return for paying out the ransom: eighteen sure votes, exposing the
expendability of the passengers.
Pelham was also lensed in 1998 for television by Felix
Enriquez Alcala, starring Lorraine Bracco, Edward James-Olmos, and Louis Del
Grande. This version posits Vincent D’Onofrio taking the place of Robert Shaw
and updates the times with a $5 million dollar ransom. Despite the film’s star
power, the lack of profanity in the New York setting, the use of archaic train
cars betrayed by the presence of oversized ceiling fans, and a lack of tension
all combined to make the film unrealistic, filling the audience with a yen to
revisit the original.
Tony Scott made a version in 2009 with John Travolta and Denzel
Washington, this time stylizing the title with Pelham 123 as numerical
numbers and upping the ransom to $10 million dollars. Gotta love inflation. It
is a well-made version with less emphasis on humor and more on action and it is
a film that stands on its own, and one of the few times that Mr. Washington
portrays a modern day Everyman just trying to get along.
A movie-only edition of Pelham was issued on Blu-ray in 2011, and
that transfer appeared to be derived from the same master that was used on the
standard definition DVD released in 2000. A new 4K restoration was performed in
2022 by Kino Lorber and the film was released as a two-disc set on 4K UHD and standard
Blu-ray with a much-improved image. There were a host of extras added, which
can be found on this standard Blu-ray release now available following the 50th
anniversary of the film’s release:
First up is an audio commentary by film historians
Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson which runs the entire length of the film.
They are informative and highly engaging and are an example of what I love
about commentaries. They give a fair amount of information on the background of
the cast, discuss the film’s themes, and how the film’s overall look was
achieved, among many others. I am a sucker for these 1970’s gritty New York
films, and this one fits the bill.
There is a second audio commentary by actor and
filmmaker Pat Healy and film programmer/historian Jim Healy and is equally
informative and entertaining.
The Making of Pelham One Two Three is a cleverly-titled piece that runs 6:08 and
features the actual shooting of the film during November 1973 through April
1974. It is told from the perspective of a transit policeman, Carmine Foresta,
who was hired as a technical consultant on the film. He has a small role in the
film also while appearing briefly in Francis Coppola’s The Godfather Part II
(1974) and Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975). My only complaint is
the short running time. I would have loved to have seen more behind-the-scenes
(BTS) footage and hear input from cinematographer Owen Roizman, who shot The
French Connection three years earlier for William Friedkin and has managed
to capture New York City in a way that I have not seen from any other director
of photography.
12 Minutes with Mr. Grey features a 2016 interview with actor Hector
Elizondo who recalls getting the role and enjoying his time working with the
late director Joseph Sargent. He points out how the station that they shot in
was fairly clean as it was unused (there was no way to interrupt actual daily subway
traffic) and therefore free of graffiti.
Cutting on Action runs 9:09 and features a 2016 interview with film editor Gerald B.
Greenberg, who won an Oscar for cutting The French Connection. That film
is highly lauded for its memorable subway/car chase through Brooklyn, NY. In Pelham,
there is an action sequence featuring police cars racing to the subway station
to get the money to the henchmen. Mr. Greenberg gives insight into his work on
the film. Again, I would have loved a longer piece. He discusses the editing
process and being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of footage he had to work
with. He brought in another editor, Robert Q. Lovett, to help him cut the film
and help create tension and suspense.
The Sound of the City runs 9:07 and features input from composer David
Shire. He began composing music for television shows back in the 1960’s, such
as CBS Playhouse and The Sixth Sense before creating the amazing
score for Francis Coppola’s The Conversation (1974). His theme to Pelham
is no less brilliant. He recalls how the music originally sounded like a
“dissonant Lalo Schifrin.” He would later score Martin Ritt’s Norma Rae
(1979) and win an Oscar for his collaboration with Norman Gimbel for the song It
Goes Like It Goes.
Trailers from Hell with Josh Olson runs just over two minutes and he
comments on the film, rightly praising it for its accomplishments as a great
New York movie. Interestingly, the film did not make money at the box office. I
suppose that New York humor does not go over well in Montana…
There is an Image and Poster Gallery that
runs 2:20 which features artwork and black and white snapshots of scenes from
the film.
There are two radio spots, and this is something
that I truly miss from the past. I loved hearing these spots for movies on the
radio, especially the ones created for horror films. These spots are a fun
listen.
The TV spot for the film is included here.
There are also theatrical trailers for Pelham;
Don Siegel’s Charlie Varrick (1973) and Stuart Rosenberg’s The
Laughing Policeman, both from 1973 and both with Walter Matthau; Guy
Hamilton’s Force 10 From Navarone (1979); Joseph Sargent’s White
Lightning (1973) with Burt Reynolds; John Frankenheimer’s The Train
(1964) with Burt Lancaster; Tom Griers’s Breakheart Pass (1975) with
Charles Bronson; and Andrei Konchalosky’s Runaway Train (1985) with Jon
Voight and Eric Roberts.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is one of
the best films made during the American cinema's most riveting decade.
“A
question of honor becomes a mission of vengeance!” Martial arts champion
and action movie icon Sho Kosugi returns in the explosive ‘80s cult classic Rage of Honor; a Bond-like film which
has just been released to Blu-ray.
Written by Robert Short and Wallace C.
Bennett, and directed by Gordon Hessler (who had previously helmed Sho’s
delightful 1985 hit Pray for Death), Rage of Honor finds our hero—undercover
narcotics agent Shiro Tanaka (Kosugi)—on a vengeance-fueled mission after his
partner is sadistically murdered by ruthless drug runners. Shiro’s
single-minded quest eventually gets the love of his life kidnapped, so now he
must summon all of his skills in order to save her and put an end to the
cold-blooded criminals once and for all.
Filmed on location in Argentina and released
in February of 1987 by Trans World Entertainment, Rage of Honor is a very enjoyable piece of action cinema. Director
Hessler expertly handles the movie’s many top-notch and exciting action
sequences while once again leaving the martial arts choreography to the great
Sho Kosugi (who also designed the special weapons featured in the film). Kosugi
is amazing to watch and it’s no wonder why he became such a beloved 80s action
hero. Also starring Robin Evans and Chip Lucia with a memorable score by Stelvio
Cipriani.
Rage of Honor has been released on
a region one Blu-ray and is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The
movie looks and sounds fantastic and the special features include a wonderful
audio commentary by action film historian Mike Leeder and UK cult movie
director Ross Boyask; the informative featurettes: Sho and Tell Part 2 (interview with Show Kosugi), Honorable Mentions (interview with
composer Stelvio Cipriani), and American
Ninjas (video essay by Chris Poggiali on the rise of the ninja film in the
1980s)as well as the original theatrical
trailer. The Blu-ray also comes with an eye-catching slipcover. More than worth
a look.
The Australian video label ViaVision/Imprint has released a second boxed set of Blu-ray special editions devoted to Marlon Brando. The region-free set cover six films released between the years 1969-1989. The films are:
"The Night of the Following Day"
"Last Tango in Paris"
"The Nightcomers"
"The Missouri Breaks"
"A Dry White Season"
"Listen to Me Marlon" documentary
To order and for full details, click here. (Prices are in Australian dollars. Use a currency converter for your local pricing.)
I cannot imagine working and
living in a submarine. The confined spaces and claustrophobic nature of the
layout and the seemingly never-ending levels and twists and turns make for a nerve-wracking
experience. I have been a fan of underwater movies since my youth. The first
one I recall watching is David Greene’s Gray Lady Down (1978) when it
aired on NBC-TV in October 1979. Richard Fleischer’s 20,000 Leagues Under
the Sea (1954), Kevin O’Connor’s Goliath Awaits (1981), and Wolfgang
Petersen’s Das Boot (1982) followed in the years hence. James Cameron’s The
Abyss (1989) is by far the finest underwater tale I have seen, weaving a modern-day
morality tale and admonishment akin to Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood
Still (1951) to say nothing of the dissolution and eventual rebirth of the
love between a divorced couple. George P. Cosmatos’s Leviathan (1989)
and Sean S. Cunningham’s Deep Star Six (1989) are interesting though
nowhere-nearly-as-good companions. Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide (1995)
brought great actors into the depths with an edge-of-your-seat thriller.
David Twohy’s Below,
filmed in 2001 and released on October 18, 2002, came and went during a brief
theatrical run. An underwater thriller that takes place in 1943 aboard the fictitious
submarine USS Tiger Shark, Below is a story involving secrets, frayed
nerves and ghosts. Bruce Greenwood, who has been phenomenal in his work for Armenian
filmmaker Atom Egoyan, is Lieutenant Brice, the commanding officer of the sub
whose men pick up the survivors of the British hospital ship Fort James: Claire
(Olivia Williams, best known as Bruce Willis’s wife in M. Night Shyamalan’s The
Sixth Sense (1999), who plays the only woman in the film), and two men, one
of whom is a German whom Brice shoots and kills following an altercation. The
presence of a female on the sub historically infers bad luck, and this crew
begins to experience their own taste of it. Strange things begin to happen –
voices are heard in the halls, a record player loudly calls attention to itself
at the most unfortunate of times, and confusion mounts in the ranks. Depth
charges dropped by the Germans result in exterior damage that requires outside repair.
More deaths follow, and the crew begin to question the validity of how Brice inherited
the mantle from Lieutenant Commander Winters. After all, they are only getting
Brice’s account of it. The situation begins to spiral: the periscope and
control tower have sustained damage from the German destroyer looking to sink the
sub; oxygen is being depleted, and hydrogen is slowly replacing it; a ghost is
haunting the premises. Is this true, or can we chalk it up to hallucinations precipitated
by oxygen deprivation?
This all sounds great on
paper, but unfortunately there is very little in the way of actual suspense,
which is surprising considering the film’s most obvious character, the sub
itself, and its imposing atmosphere. It becomes obvious that Brice is hiding a
secret, and when it is revealed, there is little in the way of astonishment at
his actions. The performances are all quite good. You will find some
recognizable faces in this cast.
Below began life in the summer of 1998 in the form of an
historical sci-fi thriller but soon morphed into a ghost story following the
theatrical success of David Twohy’s Pitch Black (2000) with Vin Diesel. While
that film has enjoyed near cult status and has been followed up with several
sequels, Below simply did not have the interest from the audience that
it required to be successful.
Kino Lorber has released the
film on both 4K UHD Blu-ray and standard Blu-ray and the results are quite nice
indeed. The former has a very sharp transfer, and an audio commentary recorded
in 2002 for the DVD at the time. It features director David Twohy and actors Matt
Davis, Bruce Greenwood, Holt McCallany, Zach Galifianakis, and Nick Chinlund.
They talk about the challenges of making the film, and their conversation is
spirited and amusing to listen to as they rib one another. Missing is actress Olivia
Williams who was away shooting P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan (2003) and was unable
to join in on the fun. This is a shame as I would have liked to have gotten her
perspective on playing the film’s sole female character.
The standard Blu-ray also
boasts a nice transfer, although in addition to the running commentary it has
other extras that are exclusive to this disc:
The Process: Featurette runs 12:24 and is a piece that looks at the making
of the film. My only complaint about it is the short running time. I love behind-the-scenes
(BTS) pieces, and this one includes excerpts from the shooting script,
storyboards, previsualization of scenes, and uncompleted scenes. These
documentaries are important as all the people who work BTS deserve to be
recognized for their hard work.
Deleted Scenes (8:19) – this section gives you the option of playing
the scenes individually or all together with the Play All option. There is an Optional
Audio Commentary by the director, and he explains why the scenes were removed
and what the original ending consisted of. These scenes appear to have been ported
over from the DVD edition and are presented in standard definition. Perhaps
they were unable to find these scenes and rescan them in HD? These are the
titles of the three omitted scenes and their running times:
Creepy Comic (1:36)
Hot Fish (3:39)
Red Flare Ending (3:03)
The last features are trailers
for the following films:
Below from 2002
Sean S. Cunningham’s Deep
Star Six from 1989
William Friedkin’s Bug from
2006
E. Elias Merhige’s Suspect
Zero from 2004
Park Chan-wook’s Thirst
from 2009
Last of all is the cover art.
The original key art for the movie poster features the same imagery that
appears on this 4K and Blu-ray release, including the stylization of the film’s
title. The standard DVD release, by contrast, reversed the image of the sinking
sub and added Bruce Greenwood’s frightened face in the sub’s vapor trail, which
I found more effective (the film’s title, however, is stylized differently).
If you’re a fan of Below,
this upgrade is a nice step up from the standard DVD.
Here's one of those marvelous vintage "making of" production shorts that took viewers behind the scenes on a forthcoming film, in this case, the 1967 blockbuster "The Dirty Dozen". If you can tolerate the hokey narration, the featurette affords some great candid footage of the cast at work and play in London. The movie was shot at the now defunct MGM British Studios Borehamwood. Curiously, although the featurette depicts or at least mentions the major names in the cast, Donald Sutherland is not identified. He was not well known at the time but the film would help elevate his profile in international cinema and major stardom would follow.
UPDATE: THIS ISSUE IS EXPECTED TO SHIP IN THE U.K. IN LATE FEBRUARY. IT IS EXPECTED TO BE SHIPPED
TO ALL OTHER LOCATIONS FROM THE U.S. OFFICE IN LATE MARCH, DEPENDING ON IMPORT/EXPORT SCHEDULES.
By popular demand, Cinema Retro presents a special edition issue devoted to director John Sturges' 1960 Western classic, "The Magnificent Seven" starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, Horst Bucholz and Brad Dexter.
Adapted from Brian Hannan's book "The Making of the Magnificent" with an abundance of new material.
Packed with rare production photos and scene stills.
The comparisons between "The Magnificent Seven" and the film that inspired it, Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai".
Foreword by Sir Christopher Frayling
An abundance of rare international movie posters and marketing materials.
Coverage of the film's big screen sequels.
NOTE: IF YOU LIVE IN SOUTHERN IRELAND, PLEASE USE THE "REST OF THE WORLD" ORDER OPTION.
In honor of Valentine's Day, let's look back at one of film industry's greatest love stories: director David Lean's 1945 classics, "Brief Encounter" starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. It's a masterpiece of post-war British cinema and it's emotional impact has remained undiminished over the decades.
Click here to order Criterion Blu-ray special edition.
Cinema retro has received the following press release:
SYNOPSIS
Bill Murray plays an irresponsible goof-off who has just lost his job, his girl, his apartment and his car. As he ponders his fate, it occurs to him that enlisting in the Army seems to be a sensible career move. He persuades his friend (played by Harold Ramis) to join him and soon they find themselves in boot camp surrounded by misfits. Directed by Ivan Reitman. Written by Len Blum & Dan Goldberg and Harold Ramis.
DISC DETAILS & BONUS MATERIALS
4K ULTRA HD DISC
Both Theatrical & Extended versions presented in 4K resolution with Dolby Vision, restored from the original camera negative
English Dolby Atmos (for both versions) + English 5.1 (for both versions) + English Mono (Theatrical version only)
Special Features:
40 Years ofStripesWith Bill & Ivan– a two-part on-camera reunion between star Bill Murray and director Ivan Reitman, discussing their careers, memories from set, a tribute to the cast, as well as a special guest appearance from cinematographer Bill Butler
Theatrical Trailer
BLU-RAY DISC™
Both Theatrical & Extended versions presented in high definition, sourced from the 4K masters
English 5.1 (for both versions) + English Mono (Theatrical version only)
Special Features:
Commentary with Ivan Reitman and Dan Goldberg (Extended version only)
11 Additional Deleted & Extended Scenes
1983 TV Version of the film (in standard definition)
Deleted & Extended Scenes from the Extended version of the film
Stars andStripesDocumentary
CAST AND CREW
Directed By:Ivan Reitman Produced By:Ivan Reitman and Dan Goldberg Written By:Len Blum & Dan Goldberg and Harold Ramis Cast:Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, P.J. Soles, John Candy
SPECS Run Time:Theatrical Version Approx. 106 minutes / Extended Version Approx. 123 minutes Rating:Theatrical Version: R / Extended Version: R for sexuality/nudity, language and some drug use. 4K UHD Feature Picture:2160p Ultra High Definition, 1.85:1 4K UHD Feature Audio:English Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Compatible) | English 5.1 DTS-HD MA | English Mono DTS-HD MA (Theatrical version only)
FOR MORE INFORMATION Instagram: @SonyPicturesHomeEntertainment Facebook: facebook.com/sonypictureshomeentertainment YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/sonypictureshomeent Twitter: @SonyPicsHomeEnt
No disrespect to Mike Stone, Franco Nero, Lee
Van Cleef or Michael Dudikoff (I love ‘em all), but the true 1980s ninja is,
without a doubt, Sho Kosugi. After completing Cannon Films’ very popular and
now classic “Ninja Trilogy” (“Enter the
Ninja” (1981) “Revenge of the Ninja”
(1983) and “Ninja III: The Domination
(1984), martial arts legend Kosugi went right back to work, starring in the
thoroughly entertaining Pray for Death.
Luckily for us, the film has just been released on Blu-ray.
Written by the movie’s co-star James Booth and
directed by veteran British filmmaker Gordon Hessler (who also helmed Sho’s
next feature, 1987’s Rage of Honor), Pray for Death tells the tale of master
ninja Akira Saito (Kosugi) who moves to America with his family, but
inadvertently becomes involved with vicious mobsters who murder his wife and
threaten his children. With the local police powerless against the gangsters,
the peaceful (except when provoked) Akira becomes the ultimate vigilante and he
warns his enemies, “Stay away from the Saito family. If you don’t, I promise
you, you will pray for death.”
Released in August of 1985 by Trans World
Entertainment, Pray for Death is a
highly enjoyable 80s action film with an exciting, if somewhat familiar story
(similar to Sho’s Revenge of the Ninja),
and awe-inspiring martial arts sequences choreographed by All Japan Karate
Champion Kosugi. The kick-ass movie also features an excellent cast including
Norman Burton, Michael Constantine, Parley Baer, Robert Ito, and Sho’s
real-life sons Kane and Shane Kosugi; not to mention expert editing by Academy
Award nominee Bill Butler.
If you’re a fan of action movies from this
era then Pray for Death is definitely
for you. Although I enjoy all of Kosugi’s films, this one is my absolute
favorite. What we have here is 92 minutes of 80s fun culminating with Sho all
decked out in his bulletproof ninja garb (which includes a very cool helmet,
deadly sword, bow and arrows, ninja stars and other assorted weapons), doling
out ninjitsu justice to the scum of the earth! You gotta love it.
Pray for Death has been released on
a region one Blu-ray. It is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio and
the film looks and sounds terrific. The special features include an
entertaining and informative audio commentary by action film historian Mike
Leeder and UK cult movie director Ross Boyask as well as the first part of a
great two-part interview with Sho Kosugi, and the original theatrical trailer.
This release is a two-disc special edition which contains both the rated and
unrated versions of the film and it also comes with an attractive slipcover.
Check it out!
Between now and Valentine's Day, ViaVision/Imprint, the popular Australian video label, is having a 25% off sale. Click here to visit the site. (Most of their Blu-rays are region-free). Prices are in Australian dollars. Use a currency converter for your local pricing.
Finally,
after many years of the title being available only as a DVD, the Woody Allen
classic comedy that’s not a Woody Allen film, Play It Again, Sam, is on
Blu-ray, thanks to Kino Lorber.
What
did you say? you
ask. That’s right. Woody Allen did not direct Play It Again, Sam.
Herbert Ross, a renowned Broadway theatre dancer and choreographer who
graduated to stage directing before moving into film, helmed the movie. Ross
had previously directed the musical remake of Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)
and The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) prior to landing the job to direct Sam.
Ross went on to direct such notable pictures as The Sunshine Boys (1975),
The Turning Point (1977, an Oscar nominee), and The Goodbye Girl (1977,
also an Oscar nominee).
But
Woody Allen wrote it and stars in the film. It’s Allen’s sensibility all over
it. It’s co-produced by Allen’s Rollins-Jaffe managerial production company. It’s
a Woody Allen film in all but directorial credit. That’s not to say Ross didn’t
do an excellent job adapting Allen’s stage play into a successful, popular
film.
Yes,
first it was a hit Broadway play in 1969. Its stars—Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, and Jerry Lacy—all moved over to the film’s
cast. While much of the story’s action takes place in interiors (mostly
apartments), director Ross managed to “open up” the material to include outdoor
scenes and other locations such as bars and restaurants. Interestingly, the
story takes place in San Francisco, not Allen’s familiar New York City!
The
story focuses on Allan Felix (Allen), whose wife, Nancy (Susan Anspach),
abruptly decides to leave him. Grieving and insecure, Allan leans on his
friends Dick and Linda Christie (Roberts and Keaton) for emotional and social
support. They are happy to help him, especially Linda. They try to fix him up
with blind dates that don’t go too well (the one with Sharon (Jennifer Salt) is
a particularly funny and memorable example). All Allan really wants is to
“score” again to boost his fragile, shattered ego, and maybe—just maybe—fall in
love with perhaps some reciprocity. A huge film buff, Allan gets advice from
none other than a fantasy Humphrey Bogart (Lacy), who appears at various times
to nudge him along. Bogart is one of Allan’s heroes (the movie begins with
Allan rapturously viewing Casablanca in a cinema). As time goes on,
though, (see what I did there?), Dick and Linda’s own marriage begins to show
signs of fracturing due to Dick’s busy career and his tendency to put his job
before his wife. Ultimately, Allan and Linda are drawn to each other. When
they’re finally on the couch together in his apartment, Bogart insists that
Allan deliver a corny, mushy line to her. He resists at first but finally he does…
and she reacts favorably. “She bought it!” Allan deliriously exclaims to the
audience. You can guess what happens next.
Play
It Again, Sam was
the first screen collaboration between Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, and we can
already see that this is a match made in heaven. The real-life actors began
dating during the run of the Broadway play in 1969 and they were a couple in
the early ‘70s up to and including the making of this film. Afterwards, they
split up but remained the closest of friends for the rest of their careers. The
late Tony Roberts was also an integral part of this screen duo in these early
years, appearing in several of Allen’s other pictures. It is the chemistry
between these three actors that makes Play It Again, Sam such a
delightful—and funny—motion picture.
(Photo: Cinema Retro Archives.)
Allen
had directed two features prior to starring in this one, and he had already
created for himself a screen persona best described as a Jewish, nebbish
neurotic. His Allan Felix here solidifies that character, and one can argue
that the actor/director played this character for the remainder of his career.
While he delivers extremely witty and funny lines and displays priceless facial
expressions, it’s notable that Allen engages in a great deal of
slapstick—pratfalls and clumsy maneuvers that wreak havoc on his and others’
apartments. It’s easily one of Allen’s funnier performances.
Diane
Keaton, a fairly new face on the screen at the time (it was the same year she
appeared, virtually unknown, in The Godfather), is marvelous. She is so
endearing, honest, gorgeous, and luminous, that it is no wonder that she became
a star. Again, the rapport between Keaton and Allen is perfect. Of course, she
would go on to make seven more films with Allen under his direction including the
Oscar-winning 1977 classic Annie Hall.
Tony
Roberts is also hilarious, constantly having to phone the office to let them
know where he is at a given time. “This is Mr. Christie. I’m no longer at
752-0420. I’ll be at 731-0711 for the next half hour, and then I’ll be at…” One
might think this repetitive joke would get old, but it doesn’t. It becomes increasingly
funnier as the movie goes on.
Being
originally written as a play in 1969 and filmed in 1971 for release in 1972,
yes, there are lines that some will consider inappropriate or politically
incorrect today. But they are few and far between. For the most part, the
dialogue is rich, intelligent, and very laugh-out-loud amusing. This is Allen’s
writing at his best. And Ross’ direction isn’t bad at all.
Kino
Lorber Studio Classics presents a new HD master of a 4K scan of the 35mm
original camera negative—so the video quality is excellent. The only supplement
is an audio commentary from screenwriter/producer Alan Spencer and author/film
historian Justin Humphreys, adding context and history to the proceedings.
Theatrical trailers to this and other KL releases round out the package.
Play It Again, Sam is for fans of Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony
Roberts, and early 1970s pictures that redefined the rom-com. Recommended
Kino Lorber has released an acclaimed documentary about African-American director Oscar Micheaux. Here is the description of the DVD.
"Oscar Micheaux was the most
influential African American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century, a
self-taught artist who funded, produced, and released more than 40 films, all
while completely excluded from the Hollywood systems of production and
distribution. Francesco Zippel’s revealing documentary (which premiered at the
2021 Cannes Film Festival) charts Micheaux’s incredible artistic journey, as he
followed the urban migration to Chicago, abandoned city life to became a
homesteader in South Dakota, and eventually became a resolute storyteller,
writing six novels and producing dozens of feature films before his death in
1951. Regardless of the genre in which he was working, Micheaux’s provocative
films served as a powerful rebuke to the ubiquitous racism of the times. In
Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking, a chorus of experts and
fans—from Chuck D to Melvin van Peebles—weigh in on the incredible legacy of
the man whom cinema scholar Jacqueline Stewart describes as “the most important
Black filmmaker who ever lived. Period.”"
Product Extras
:
Theatrical trailer
Interview with screenwriter/director Kevin Wilmott
(BlacKkKlansman, C.S.A: The Confederate States of America)
Original trailers of four films by Oscar Micheaux:
Veiled Aristocrats (1932), Harlem After Midnight (1934), Temptation
(1936), and Birthright (1939)
(Roberts in Woody Allen's 1982 film "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy". Photo: Cinema Retro Archives.)
By Lee Pfeiffer
Actor Tony Roberts has passed away at age 85. The cause of death was lung cancer. He had a long career on stage and on screen and his face was familiar to even those who didn't know his name. Fittingly, his autobiography was titled "Do You Know Me?" Roberts was adept at playing dramatic roles and appeared in such esteemed dramatic films as "Serpico" and "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three". He is best known to movie fans for his roles in six Woody Allen films. The two old friends and native New Yorkers co-starred in five of them and Roberts appeared in "Radio Days" in which Allen directed did not appear on screen. Most memorably, he played Rob, the best friend of Allen's Alvy Singer in Allen's 1977 Best Picture Oscar winner "Annie Hall". In the movie, Rob plays a down-to-earth New Yorker who moves to Hollywood and finds great success, but becomes an insufferable snob in the process. The two first met when Roberts appeared in Allen's 1966 stage comedy "Don't Drink the Water" and later in Allen's 1969 stage production, "Play It Again, Sam" but it would be years before Allen was convinced that he had the ability to shine on the big screen. They're first cinematic collaboration was co-starring in the 1972 film "adaptation in which Roberts played a success-obsessed friend, who served as a foil for Allen's character who was obsessed with Humphrey Bogart.
Roberts' musical talents were rarely seen on screen but he found great success starring in productions of such hits as "Sugar", "Arsenic and Old Lace", "They're Playing Our Song", "Cabaret", "Promises, Promises", "Follies", "Some Like It Hot", "Victor/Victoria" and "How Now, Dow Jones". He was twice nominated for Tony awards.
On a personal note, I
met Tony Roberts at a party in New York City about ten years ago and had a very amusing chat.
Later, when we were leaving he said, “Let me give you my card”. I took
it and placed it in my wallet. Sometime later, I actually looked at it
and it read simply “My Card”. You had to admire anyone like that!
"RETRO-ACTIVE: ARTICLES FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVE"
By Lee Pfeiffer
Burt Lancaster fans can rejoice that his 1974 thriller "The Midnight
Man" finally gets a home video release in America with Kino Lorber's
Blu-ray release. Even better news is that this is a special edition with
an informative commentary track. Lancaster co-wrote and co-directed
(both with Roland Kibbee) the murder mystery that plays out like a TV
movie-of-the-week from the era. That isn't meant as a knock, given how
good so many of the TV crime productions were in the 1970s. The film is
based on David Anthony's novel "The Midnight Lady and the Mourning Man"
and, refreshingly, it has an offbeat quality about it due to its
location filming in and around Clemson University in South Carolina,
which was very much a sleepier locale than it is today. Lancaster is
cast as Jim Slade, a once respected Chicago police officer who flew off
the handle and shot his wife's lover (though it isn't clear if he killed
him.) He's spent a lot of time in stir and when we first see him, he is
arriving in a small southern town by bus to pick up the pieces of his
life. He's broke with few prospects except a job offered to him by his
old friend and police colleague Quartz (Cameron Mitchell), who is now
retired from the police force and heading a security company that looks
after the local university. Slade will be working in the seemingly
boring job of night watchman on the midnight shift at the school, where
crime isn't a major problem. However, his timing is right in terms of
alleviating boredom. No sooner does Slade start the job than a
psychiatric counselor for troubled students informs him that his office
had been broken into and the only thing missing were several audio tapes
in which students confessed the most troubling aspects of their lives.
The highly confidential tapes had not been listened to but it becomes
clear that one student in particular, Natalie (Catherine Bach) is
particularly troubled. Slade befriends her and discovers she's an
emotional wreck about the missing tape but she won't tell him what was
so sensitive about the recording. When Natalie ends up dead in her dorm
room, the local police captain, Casey (Harris Yulin) takes over the case
and immediately arrests a local Peeping Tom who had an interest in the
victim. Slade, however, voices his skepticism and starts his own ad-hoc
investigation. Along the way he ends up romancing his parole officer,
Linda Thorpe (Susan Clark), who has a big city mentality when it comes
to sexual permissiveness.
"The Midnight Man" is a complex thriller with plenty of requisite
false leads and red herrings. It's leisurely-paced and that's a good
thing in the current era of shoot 'em up crime movies and TV series.
There are some exciting action scenes in the film but it's primarily
about following clues, which Slade doggedly does despite being targeted
for murder and not being able to trust anyone, including Captain Casey,
with whom he is in constant conflict. Lancaster provides one of his most
low-key performances. Some critics said he was sleepwalking through the
part but this isn't so. He's an ex-con with a lot to lose so it's
appropriate that he would maintain a quiet, polite demeanor. Lancaster
never gave a bad performance in his career and he's particularly good
here. The film has a marvelous supporting cast and directors Lancaster
and Kibbee use them well. It's great to see Lancaster teamed again with
the ever-underrated Susan Clark after the two starred in "Valdez is
Coming" a few years before. Clark has an important role here and she's
excellent. So, too, is Cameron Mitchell as the only true friend Slade
seems to have in an increasingly hostile and dangerous town. It's also
good to see Robert Quarry in small, non-horror film (he's very good.)
Lancaster's son Bill also has a supporting role and acquits himself
well. The finale unloads an abundance of complex explanations in a
voice-over by Lancaster as the mystery is solved. Your mind might end up
reeling but if you stop and think about it all, the clues were provided
throughout the film.
The Kino Lorber release has a typically fine transfer and the audio
commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson is
highly engaging and their subdued manner fits with the mood of the film
itself. They genuinely like the movie and provide an abundance of
interesting facts and insights. There is a also a trailer gallery for
other Lancaster films available through Kino Lorber. Highly recommended.
Celebrate 30 years of gut-busting laughs with the 90s classicTOMMY BOY, arriving for the first time ever on 4K Ultra HD™ March 25, 2025 from Paramount Home Entertainment.
TOMMY BOYstars “Saturday Night Live” alumni Chris Farley and David Spade in one of cinema’s funniest on-screen pairings as two drastically different personalities on a hellish road trip to save a family business. Produced by Lorne Michaels and directed by Peter Segal (50 First Dates, Get Smart),TOMMY BOYscored with audiences when it debuted in 1995 and continues to attract new fans three decades later.
Newly remastered under the supervision of director Peter Segal,TOMMY BOYis presented for the first time on 4K Ultra HD in a 4K/Blu-ray™ Combo or in a Limited-Edition SteelBook®, both of which include hours of legacy bonus content and access to a Digital copy of the film.
Bonus content on Blu-ray is detailed below:
Commentary by director Peter Segal
Featurettes:
Tommy Boy: Behind the Laughter
Stories from the Side of the Road
Just the Two of Us
Growing Up Farley
Storyboard Comparisons
Deleted and Extended Scenes
Alternate Takes
Gag Reel
Photo Gallery
TV Spots
Theatrical Trailer
Synopsis
Celebrating 30 years of gut-busting laughs, Chris Farley and David Spade are two ne'er-do-well traveling salesmen who hit the road to save the Callahan family's auto parts business, resulting in one disastrously funny consequence after another. This larger-than-life comedy features Rob Lowe, Bo Derek, and Brian Dennehy.
TOMMY BOY is rated PG-13 for sex-related humor, some drug content and nudity.
In his Blu-ray review of "Smile 2", Cinema Retro's Todd Garbarini made a favorable reference to director Parker Finn's 10-minute horror film short "The Hidebehind" starring Robin Collins from 2018. We decided to check it out. Indeed, the low-budget project is unsettling and eventually unnerving. Don't take our word for it-watch it yourself. Sometimes good things do come in small packages! (There is a brief commercial early in this YouTube video but it doesn't ruin the atmosphere in terms of what follows.)
“Diane,
I’m holding in my hand a box of chocolate bunnies.”
If
you haven’t heard of Twin Peaks by now, well, you must have been trapped
in the Red Room for the last 35 years. In tribute to the recent passing of
filmmaker and artiste David Lynch, we are taking a look at the brand new
release of one of the cornerstones of Lynch’s legacy: Twin Peaks.
Twin
Peaks Z – A was
a limited edition Blu-ray box set originally released in 2019 that contained
everything available in the Twin Peaks franchise. It had 21 disks and an
elaborate cube-shaped packaging with little “goodies” enclosed. That edition is
now out of print, rare, and sells for big bucks in the second hand market.
Thankfully,
CBS/Paramount made the decision to re-release the box set, only without the
lavish packaging, which was cute and clever but ultimately a gimmick. What
really counts are the disks, and now there are 22 disks: a new one has been
added with 4K UHD presentations of the Pilot and Season Three’s Episode 8, the
latter being one of Lynch’s most extraordinary creations.
At an affordable price, now you can own
everything there is to Twin Peaks in one purchase.
Home
Video releases of Twin Peaks over the years have usually been
problematic. In the 1990s, the VHS releases were often flawed because the Pilot
episode was owned by a different company and couldn’t be included in the
packages with the regular Season One (and later Season Two) episodes. Instead,
available separately, was the “International Pilot,” which was the original
90-minute pilot (two hours when commercials were inserted) but with a tacked on
fifteen-minute non-canonical “ending” that included footage from what would be
Season One, Episode Three (or Episode Two, if you’re not counting the Pilot as
Episode One… and that’s another issue*). This International Pilot was released
in some cinemas overseas in 1989-1990 as a stand-alone movie prior to the
television broadcast of the series in the States.
(*
Officially, the Pilot is just “the Pilot” and the first hour-episode is Episode
1, but really in terms of television, the Pilot would be Episode 1, the next Episode
2, and so on. Confusing, just like some of Twin Peaks!)
When
DVDs came about, we finally got the real TV Pilot and the International Pilot
released in a box set (“Definitive Gold Edition”) in 2007 with all of Seasons
One and Two. It wasn’t until the Blu-ray release of 2014 (“The Complete
Mystery”) that we got all of that plus the 1992 feature film prequel, Twin
Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, plus the legendary The Missing Pieces,
which was 90-minutes of deleted footage from FWWM that Lynch himself
edited into a separate feature film!
After
the 2017 “Season Three” appeared on Showtime (also known as Twin Peaks: The
Return and Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series) and released in its
own Blu-ray box set… we got a box set with just the Pilot and Seasons One
through Three (without Fire Walk With Me). Then, in 2019 came Twin
Peaks Z – A, which had everything, as mentioned above. (And to muddy the
waters even more, The Criterion Collection issued a Blu-ray of Fire Walk
With Me and The Missing Pieces by themselves!)
Thus,
the new repackaging of this wonderful set includes: The Pilot, International
Pilot, Season One, Season Two, Fire Walk With Me, The Missing Pieces,
Season Three, and hours and hours of Supplements. Easily over 50 hours’ worth
of material.
Twin
Peaks,
created by Lynch and Mark Frost,began as a quirky murder mystery set in
a small northwestern town near Seattle and close to the Canadian border.
Popular high school cheerleader Laura Palmer’s body is found (“wrapped in
plastic”) on a riverbank. Because of the murder’s similarities to a previous
case, the FBI is called in. Enter Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan,
in the role he was born to play). Cooper, with the aid of Twin Peaks Sheriff
Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean), investigates the case and uncovers a world and
other-world of mysteries upon mysteries, eccentric characters, and Lynchian
surrealism that was startling content on American network television in 1990-1991.
After Laura’s murder is solved, the series continued to explore the
supernatural and alternate universes, establishing a Twin Peaks lore
that spawned fan sites, conventions, books, and podcasts.
Other
recurring roles were played by the likes of (in no particular order) Lara Flynn
Boyle, Dana Ashbrook, James Marshall, Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Grace Zabriskie,
Richard Beymer, Piper Laurie, Joan Chen, Jack Nance, Warren Frost, Madchen
Amick, Peggy Lipton, Everett McGill, Eric Da Re, Kimmy Robertson, Michael
Horse, Harry Goaz, Russ Tamblyn, Kenneth Welsh, David Patrick Kelly, Catherine
Coulson, Heather Graham, Ian Buchanan, Michael Parks, Michael Anderson, Al
Strobel, Carel Struycken, David Duchovny, Miguel Ferrer, David Lynch himself, and
many others.
Season
One was a huge hit and became a cultural phenomenon. Season Two began well but
the network (ABC) forced Lynch and Frost to solve Laura Palmer’s murder shortly
into the season (they had wanted to never solve it). After the
revelation of the killer, the audience dwindled. ABC moved the show to
Saturday, the one night young audiences wouldn’t watch it. The Gulf War
pre-empted many episodes, and it became a challenge to keep up with the season.
Lynch went off to do other projects and Season Two faltered in its subplots
(however, there was still quite a bit of excellent material, especially with
Cooper’s exploration of the Black Lodge/White Lodge puzzle). The season ended
with a cliffhanger of Cooper trapped in the other-dimension’s Red Room, while
his evil doppelganger escaped to roam free on earth. Then… boom. Canceled.
Lynch
then made a prequel feature film with several of the television cast focusing
on the week leading up to Laura’s murder; hence Laura (Sheryl Lee) is the
protagonist. New cast members included Chris Isaak, Kiefer Sutherland, Harry
Dean Stanton, and David Bowie (!). The studio, unfortunately, forced him to cut
at least 90-minutes from his lengthy picture and thus it lost many of the
television show’s quirky characters and humor. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,
at the time, was a box office disaster and critically slammed. One issue was
that the film never resolved the cliffhanger of Season Two. That was pretty
much the nail in the coffin for Twin Peaks.
However,
over the years, re-evaluation of Fire Walk With Me has occurred. It is
now considered one of Lynch’s more personal and important works. With the
release in 2014 of The Missing Pieces, which brought more context to the
movie, interest in Twin Peaks rekindled. Lynch and Frost decided to have
another go and do Season Three, which aired in 2017. New cast members to Season
Three include Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Robert Forster, Jim Belushi, Matthew
Lillard, Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and bunches more. The story takes
place 25 years after the end of Season Two, with Cooper attempting to get out
of the Red Room, and his doppelganger wreaking havoc and mayhem on Earth. Locations
expand beyond the town of Twin Peaks as far as New York City, Las Vegas, and South
Dakota. The story then becomes something of a retelling of the Orpheus myth
with Cooper finding a way to change the past—but with tragic results.
Did
it resolve all the mysteries? Did it end satisfactorily? Hell, no! It’s Lynch!
Season Three gave us even more mysteries to ponder and debate what it all means.
But that’s what makes Twin Peaks so compelling and fun.
The
video and audio quality of the Blu-ray disks are all beautiful. Superb. Twin
Peaks never looked and sounded so good.
Supplements
include everything that has been presented before in previous box sets, which
includes hours of behind the scenes material of Lynch working on Season Three;
a lengthy conversation between MacLachlan, Lee, and author/journalist Kristine
McKenna, who co-wrote with Lynch his autobiography, Room to Dream; a
conversation with Kimmy Robertson and Harry Goaz; and the especially welcome
stand-alone full-length Roadhouse performances of all the musical artists that
appeared in Season Three.
Twin
Peaks was
a mind-blowing, controversial, groundbreaking entertainment phenomenon that went
from television to cinema and back to television… and while many talented
artists, writers, producers, and directors all contributed to the television
series (and feature film)—especially Mark Frost—this franchise will always and
forever be associated with the late, great David Lynch. Cinema Retro can’t
recommend this box set highly enough.
(At the moment it appears as if Amazon is sold out and can be obtained only by third party dealers or Barnes and Noble. We expect Amazon to restock, as it is a brand new release.)
Click here to see buying options available on Amazon.
Parker
Finn is a director who made a short film called Laura Hasn’t Slept
(2020), starring Caitlin Stasey and Lew Temple as her somnologist. It is the
second short he made after his impressive and creepy The Hidebehind
(2018), a nearly ten-minute now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t bit of computer
trickery that will make you think twice about trekking solo in a forest. In Laura
Hasn’t Slept, which runs under twelve minutes, Laura tells her therapist
that she has a recurring nightmare wherein a frightening man is constantly
smiling at her. While I appreciated the effort of this film and experienced no
difficulty in determining the ending, the prospect of sitting through the
theatrical version entitled Smile (2022) simply did not sit well with
me. To my surprise, Smile is every bit as terrifying as its marketing
campaign has professed. Like The Blair Witch Project (1999), Smile
feels like the sort of film that would emotionally bifurcate the audience into
those who love it and those who hate it (I am zealously ensconced in the first
camp). In terms of genre tropes, the film’s most obvious cinematic antecedent
is David Robert Mitchell’s superb It Follows (2014), and a nod to Smile’s
title can be further traced back to the malevolent chauffeur, played with icy
stillness by the late Anthony James, in Dan Curtis’s Burnt Offerings
(1976). The basic premise of Smile concerns an evil entity that exists
in a human being, or “host,” and survives by transferring itself from one
victim to another, albeit invisibly, not unlike the monster in John Carpenter’s
The Thing (1982), by essentially “infecting” a new host through trauma,
specifically when someone witnesses the horrific death of a previously infected
person; this new witness then becomes the next target, perpetuating a cycle of
terror and suicide.
Smile’s box office success, both critically and
financially, virtually ensured a sequel. In many ways Smile 2, which
was released on Friday, October 18, 2024, and was also written and directed by Parker
Finn, reminds me of Jon Harris’s The Descent: Part 2 (2009), the
pedestrian follow-up to Neil Marshall’s The Descent (2005), which was
one of the most effective and most terrifying horror films of recent memory, in
that the original and sequel are worlds apart in terms of their effectiveness. I
wanted to love Smile 2 just as much as its superior original, however
following two viewings of the film I have decided that it simply is not meant
to be.
To
follow Smile 2, it is imperative that the audience view the first film. The
sequel begins six days after the ending of Smile. Joel (Kyle Gallner of
2022’s Scream remake), the ex-husband of Smile’s heroine, is now
infected with the Smile Entity, and is desperate to pass it on to another
person. In a bravura opening sequence that is nearly completed in one take, he
attempts to pass the Smile Entity on by stabbing one drug dealer in front of a
second dealer. Unfortunately, during the mayhem, Joel inadvertently kills the second
dealer, which thwarts his plan. Lewis Fregoli (Lukas Gage of HBO’s The White
Lotus), a drug addict, stumbles upon the action and “inherits” the Smile
Entity instead. When Joel attempts to run from more dealers who arrive
unexpectedly, he races from the house and is killed by a truck, his blood and
entrails made to form a smile on the asphalt.
Skye
Riley (Naomi Scott of Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin and Elizabeth Banks’s Charlie’s
Angels, both from 2019) is a pop singer coming off the heels of a personal
traumatic event. In an effort to stage a return to the spotlight following her
substance abuse issues and car accident which killed her boyfriend Paul (Ray
Nicholson of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza (2021)) as she embarks
on her comeback tour, she revisits high school friend Lewis in need of drugs to
calm her and unwittingly becomes the next victim of the Smile Entity as it is
transferred from him to her. Skye’s life becomes a downward spiral into
confusion, fright and madness as she begins to question the validity of
everything before her eyes. A reconnection with her old friend Gemma (Dylan
Gelula) has an unfortunate, if predictable, outcome. Her mother and personal
manager Elizabeth (Rosemarie DeWitt) suffers a horrible fate – but does she?
The lines between fantasy and reality become blurred and we are left with more
questions than answers – and an ending that left yours truly with an upside-down
smile, indubitably paving the way for Smile 3.
If
you have seen Smile, you have seen Smile 2. In the first film, I
was actually convinced that these characters were possessed by the Smile Entity,
which essentially sold the film. That conviction is somehow missing from the
sequel. Why? I am unsure. Perhaps because we know what to expect now?
Watching
Smile 2, I am reminded of Gene Siskel’s take on Richard Franklin’s 1983
film Psycho II (a film which I actually liked a lot at the time) which
he referred to as a film that “does nothing extra than the original film did.
What I like about sequels that are good…is that they take the characters into new
places. This is basically a retread with sort of a wink at the audience…I
don’t think it was anything special. We don’t need this movie.”
Smile 2 is now
available on 4K UHD Blu-ray limited edition steelbook (which this review pertains to) and standard Blu-ray and both formats come in the
same package from Paramount Home Video. I watched both discs on a 43” TLC
television and the visual image differences are indecipherable to me. The 4K
disc contains the director’s audio commentary wherein he describes the difficulties in mounting
the film’s opening shot and the enthusiasm he felt in following up his
successful original with even more crazy kills. The standard
Blu-ray contains this also in addition to the following extras:
Ear
to Ear runs 5:17 and is a brief look
at the making of the film.
The
Rise and Fall of Skye Riley runs 5:33 and
features input from actress/singer Naomi Scott, director Finn, costume designer
Alexis Forte, actress Rosemarie DeWitt and how they created a persona for the
artificial Skye Riley.
Behind
the Music runs 4:44 and interviews
songwriter Alexis Idarose Kesselman and choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall on how
they created the music, and dance moves that Skye sings and performs,
respectively. These songs are very well done and the “mega pop star” persona is
convincing.
A
New Smile runs 5:37 and introduces us
to production designer Lester Cohen and prosthetic makeup designer Jeremy
Selenfriend who school us on the practical effects used to represent the Smile
Entity.
Smiler:
A New Monster runs 5:44 and
provides comments from animatronics designer Zachary Teller Trevor Newlin,
creator of “The Monstrosity,” and costume designer Alexis Forte.
Turn
That Frown Upside Down runs 5:25 and
features actor Lukas Gage as Lewis and prosthetic makeup designer Jeremy
Selenfriend.
Show
Me Your Teeth runs 5:11. This
features Ray Nicholson (who is a spitting image of his father, Jack) as Paul
and Charlie Sarroff, the director of photography, and the ingenious method that
was devised to create the car crash sequence.
Deleted
and Extended Scenes – this consists of three scenes that wisely runs 6:54
The package also includes a digital code for an additional viewing option.
The story of the Battle of Bastogne is told on screen for
the first time in “Battleground,” available on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive
Collection. The film begins with the arrival of replacement soldiers in France
to join other members of the 101st Airborne Division’s glider infantry in
December 1944. We meet several members of “I” Company as they prepare to head
out for the town of Bastogne, Belgium, and anyone familiar with the Battle of
Bastogne knows what’s in store for them. The German Army soon surrounds the
American soldiers as one of the coldest winters on record sets in as they
endure the severe conditions in the Ardennes Forrest.
Those familiar with the HBO series “Band of Brothers” saw
another version of this story in several episodes of that show. Fans of the
1965 big screen Cinerama epic “Battle of the Bulge” will be familiar with
incidents in “Battleground” such as German soldiers pretending to be American
soldiers to misdirect the Americans, the constant German artillery bombardment,
the extreme cold temperatures experienced by the Americans ill-equipped for the
winter, battle fatigue and the response “Nuts!” by Brig. General Anthony
McAuliffe to German surrender demands.
“Battleground” stars Van Johnson as Private Holley, but
the film is a who’s who of recognizable and up and coming actors. James
Whitmore is Sergeant Kinnie who chews and spits tobacco literally and
figuratively in every scene he appears in. Ricardo Montalban is Roderigues,
Richard Jaeckel is Bettis, James Arness is Garby, John Hodiak is Jarvess,
Marshal Thompson is Jim Layton, Don Taylor is Standiferd, George Murphy is
“Pop” Stozak and too many others to list here. The only woman member of the
cast is Denise Darcel as Denise, the owner of a Bastogne residence who takes in
some of the soldiers for some respite away from the front lines.
Known as the Battered Bastards of Bastogne, the various
infantry units who defended and fought in the Battle of the Bulge take umbrage
when they hear they were rescued by General Patton. The supply air drop at the
end as the men of the 101st are resupplied with food and ammo is followed by
the finale with Sergeant Kinnie marching his platoon in close order drill with
a wink and a nod twist by Kinnie.
Directed by William A. Wellman, “Battleground” wasn’t his
first effort depicting the infantry soldier in WWII and it wouldn’t be his
last. Wellman, known as “Wild Bill” from his WWI days as a pilot serving in the
French Foreign Legion, directed the 1943 classic WWII film, “The Story of G.I.
Joe,” released in 1943 and based on the exploits of war reporter Ernie Pyle and
his coverage of the North Africa and Italian campaigns and the soldiers he
journeyed with.
Along with the 1946 release “A Walk in the Sun,”
“Battleground” shares the common soldier’s view of war also seen in “The Story
of G.I. Joe” and all three films give a very realistic depiction of the war.
“Battleground” was filmed on two large MGM sound stages and cinematographer
Paul Vogel won an Oscar for his realistic lighting of the sets which made them
look like they were exterior shots.
The screenplay was by Robert Pirosh who was also made
associate producer on the film. He wrote the screenplay for over a dozen films
including “A Day at the Races” with the Marx Brothers, “Up in Arms” with Danny
Kay and “I Married a Witch.” Later, he would go on to also direct five movies
including “Go for Broke” and “Valley of the Kings.” Master Sergeant Pirosh was
a veteran of the Battle of Bastogne where he served as a combat infantryman
with the 35th Infantry Division.
“Battleground” became Pirosh’s pet project which he first
brought to RKO with the help of Dore Schary who was head of production and
shared Pirosh’s enthusiasm for the project. After returning from a research
trip to Bastogne in 1947 (where he found his old foxhole), new RKO head Howard
Hughes cancelled the project under the belief that American’s were no longer
interested in military combat movies. Pirosh and Schary quit RKO and Schary was
hired as head of production at MGM where he purchased “Battleground” and hired
Pirosh as executive producer. It became the first major studio military combat
movie made after the end of WWII.
MGM head Louis B. Mayer also thought Americans were no
longer interested in war films and thought the film would fail, but boy was he
wrong. “Battleground” became a huge hit for MGM and was their largest grossing
film in five years, ushering in a renewed interest in military themed movies
for decades to come. The movie also won an Oscar for Pirosh’s screenplay. I’d
say Pirosh and Schary had the last laugh.
“Battleground” had its premiere on 9 November, 1949 in
Washington D.C. The film was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture,
Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Whitmore, Best Film Editing for John
D. Dunning and wins for Robert Pirosh for his screenplay and Paul Vogel for
black and white cinematography. The black and white image looks terrific on
this Warner Archive release and is presented in the pre-scope flat aspect
ratio. The film clocks in at 118 minutes and sounds great with a score by
Lennie Hayton who was the musical director for MGM from 1940-1953 and who was
married to singer Lena Horne.
Extras on the Warner Archives Blu-ray disc includes the
Tex Avery animated classic “Little Rural Riding Hood,” the Pete Smith short
film “Have You Ever Wondered No.2: Let’s Cogitate” and the “Battleground”
trailer. The release would have benefitted greatly from an audio commentary by
Steven Jay Rubin, the author of “Combat Films: American Realism, 1945-2010,”
McFarland & Company, 2011 (second edition). The book is an excellent
reference and the chapter on “Battleground” was helpful in both my enjoyment of
the movie and in writing this review. “Battleground” is highly recommended for
fans of military combat movies.
Joe Dante's Trailers from Hell site presents screenwriter/producer Larry Karaszewski's insightful appreciation of the little-seen and long-forgotten film "The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker" from 1971. Based on the novel by Charles Webb, who also wrote "The Graduate" (and who also directed this film), "Stockbroker" stars Richard Benjamin as a young man who is successful in business but no so successful in his personal life. He's got a beautiful wife (Joanna Shimkus) but he suffers from a psychological obsession with voyeurism. The film looks at his dilemma from a comedic standpoint but the underrated movie also provides plenty of insights into the human psyche and the way we deal with relationships. Benjamin is terrific as the every day guy whose obsession causes him quite a few problems. There are fine turns by Elizabeth Ashley and Adam West, whose amusing performance reminds us of how foolish Hollywood was to alienate him after "Batman". Sadly, the movie was only released on video in the early days of VHS and has not resurfaced since except for an occasional showing on Turner Classic Movies. Hopefully, this will be rectified and we'll get a Blu-ray release at some point.
Actress and singer Marianne Faithfull has passed away at age 78. Faithfull was discovered in 1964 and quickly became one of the so-called "It Girls" who helped define the emerging mod movement in London. Faithfull gained fame with her recording of "As Tears Go By", which was written by Mick Jagger and fellow Rolling Stone member Keith Richard. Although the song was envisioned to be sung by a much older person reflecting on their life, Faithfull was only 17 years-old at the time. Neither Faithfull or Jagger had much enthusiasm for the sober ballad but the song became a major hit and the Stones would record their own version of it the following year, which would also resonate with the public in a major way. Faithfull capitalized on her fame to become an actress, though her involvement with the film industry would be sporadic. Perhaps her most popular film was director Jack Cardiff's 1968 production of "The Girl on a Motorcycle" (also known as "Naked Under Leather".)
(Marianne Faithfull graced on the cover of Cinema Retro issue #14.)
Faithfull ultimately left her husband, with whom she had a son, and began a high profile love affair with Jagger. After they broke up in 1970, Faithfull's life and career began to deteriorate with her ultimately becoming addicted to drugs, sex and alcohol. She would attempt periodic comebacks as a singer with some success and married two more times but was still plagued by serious health problems including Hepatitis, breast cancer and COVID-19. Faithfull never blamed anyone but herself for her destructive excesses and in a 2021 interview admitted she had never expected to live a long life. Undeniably, it was a life of triumph and tragedy. For more, click here.
“The
Carpetbaggers,” directed by Edward Dmytryk from Harold Robbins’ 1961 novel,
opened on July 1, 1964, with a massive publicity campaign from its producer,
Joseph E. Levine.The film was savagely
attacked by old-fogey critics who were offended by Robbins’ salacious story and
characters, elements emphasised in Levine’s marketing and advertising as “adult
entertainment.”This backlash cancelled
the picture’s chances for any prestigious Academy Award nominations in a highly
competitive year of family-friendly entertainment, but I’m certain Levine and
Robbins cried all the way to the bank.The implied threat that anyone under 21 would be unceremoniously turned
away at the box office only enhanced the lure for audiences avid for material
spicier than the standard TV fare of the time like “Ozzie & Harriet” and
“The Andy Griffith Show.” “The Carpetbaggers” earned a hefty return on its
production investment of $3 million and placed fourth in box-office returns for
the year.In the law of diminishing
returns, it fuelled many imitations and spinoffs, including several more
pictures produced by Levine from other novels by Robbins, but none were as
successful or influential as “The Carpetbaggers.”Its most lasting impact may be the template
it offered for every glossy TV soap opera and “reality” show about greed, bad
behaviour, and tawdry backstabbing that followed, from 1980s’ “Dallas” and
“Dynasty” to today’s “Deal or No Deal Island.”
It’s
well-known by the dwindling generation of Robbins fans that the story’s
protagonist, Jonas Cord Jr., was modelled on the reclusive billionaire Howard
Hughes.Or at least, on the tabloid
version ofHoward Hughes that still
loomed then in the popular imagination, the Hughes of the 1930s and 1940s who
was routinely linked with Hollywood’s most beautiful starlets.As the movie opens, Jonas is still the
restless heir to his father’s small chemical company but already notorious as a
high-living playboy who now faces the threat of a costly breach-of-promise
lawsuit and nasty newspaper headlines.Summoned by his angry father for rebuke over the scandal, the meeting
turns into a shouting match in which both men vent their longstanding disdain
for each other.Jonas (George Peppard)
asserts that dad (veteran actor Leif Erickson in a brief but juicy role) is
jealous of Jonas’ sexual prowess because he’s an “impotent old man.”The clash drives the older man to a fatal
stroke, and before the coroner even has time to arrive and take away the body,
Jonas has summoned his father’s staff and taken control of the company.He uses his capital to diversify into
aviation and movie-making, building a vast fortune and creating plenty of
enemies along the way with his ruthless methods.Only a few associates, notably his corporate
attorney McAllister (Lew Ayres) and his longtime minder Nevada Smith (Alan
Ladd), remain loyal to him as he makes risky investments and runs roughshod
over Hollywood.Eventually, even their
patience for his hard-charging arrogance wears out.The picture’s sexual elements are tame by
today’s standards, displayed mostly in seductive outfits worn by Carroll Baker
and Martha Hyer as hyperbolic versions of Jean Harlow and Jane Russell.The two actresses look spectacular, even if
Baker’s filmy peignoir and Hyer’s peekaboo mink coat would barely qualify as
provocative now; you can see more nudity in a TV ad for body wash.In a denouement to help the film skirt
Hollywood’s restrictive Production Code, Jonas reforms after his personal
demons—the toxic childhood residue that shaped his cutthroat instincts—are
exorcised in a furniture-smashing fistfight with Nevada Smith.The tough-love cure of the showdown is similar
to the medical advice routinely dispensed in old movies, where amnesia caused
by a blow to the head could be reversed by another blow to the head.As usual in a story when an unrepentant louse
transforms into a softie, the kinder, gentler Jonas in the movie’s final
two-minute scene hardly registers; it’s the bad boy image that sticks, thanks
to Peppard’s career-defining ferocity on the 148 minutes up to then.
“The Carpetbaggers”
is available from Kino Lorber Studio Classics in aBlu-ray edition from a new 4K scan of the
original 35mm camera negative.If like
me, you first saw the movie in a terrible TV print, the hi-def transfer with
its sharp definition and color is doubly impressive.Special features include two informative
audio commentaries, one by Julie Kirgo that studies the movie’s cultural place
in the social ferment of 1964, and the other by David Del Valle and David
DeCouteau that delves into everything from the careers of the moviemakers to
the sociological implications of the garish red wallpaper in the Cord mansion,
glimpsed in a couple of scenes.
Lately, the on-line communities of movie lovers have seen plenty of concerns raised over the announcement by Sony that it is going to stop manufacturing Blu-rays. The term "fake news" has been used far too flippantly in recent years, especially since stories that are derided as fake news are often legitimate and vice-versa. In fact, these rumors are "real" fake news, if that makes sense. Sony has announced that it is going to stop manufacturing blank, recordable Blu-rays. The company has every intention to continue to release Blu-ray and 4K editions from its vast movie library. Watch YouTuber Jeff Rauseo's video to get the full story. (Lee Pfeiffer)
Largely forgotten by the general public, Hickey & Boggs, a 1972 crime thriller,is
currently streaming on Amazon Prime. The film's primary merit is that
it reunited I Spy co-stars Bill Cosby and Robert Culp (though by
this time, Cosby's fame had eclipsed Culp's, thus resulting in his
receiving top billing). In their classic TV show, Culp and Cosby played a
tennis pro and his trainer who were actually secret agents. The glitz
of the tennis world allowed them to live Bondian lifestyles while they
thwarted bad guys. Intriguingly, Hickey & Boggs goes in a very different direction. Resisting the temptation to revive their wise-cracking I Spy personalities,
Culp and Cos are seen as down-and-out private investigators in Los
Angeles. Both are divorced but pine away for their ex's; they can't pay
the office phone bill and they ride around in cars that look like they
barely survived a demolition derby. As the TV spots for the film said at
the time, "They have to reach up to touch bottom." On the brink of
financial disaster, the men finally get a case: they are hired by a
mysterious man to find an equally mysterious woman he wants to locate.
The money is good, but the seemingly mundane case soon turns deadly with
Hickey and Boggs dodging mob hit men, Black Power radicals and
unfriendly police brass.
Although the film boasts a screenplay by the noted Walter Hill, this is
the weakest aspect of the production. The story becomes completely
incomprehensible within minutes and, in terms of confusing aspects of
the plot, makes The Big Sleep play like a Pink Panther movie. So
many characters and relationships are introduced that the viewer is
never sure who is doing what to whom and why. What the film does have is
atmosphere, and Culp, who also directed, takes pains to distance the
two lead characters from their I Spy counterparts. They still
have terrific screen chemistry, however, even as they play against type
as two rusty private eyes who can't hit the broad side of a barn even
with their .357 Magnums blazing. The film features a number of exciting
action sequences and an excellent supporting cast including Rosalind
Cash, Vincent Gardenia, Ed Lauter, Bill Hickman (the legendary stunt
driver) and, in early career roles, James Woods and Michael Moriarty. It
would have helped immensely if the downbeat script was at least
decipherable, but as it stands there is still plenty to recommend about Hickey & Boggs.
The original title of Don Knott's cult favorite "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" was originally titled "Running Scared". Did you know that Andy Griffith wrote much of the script but refused to take a screen credit? Instead, he wanted all the credit to go to screenwriters Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, who were writers for his hit sitcom "The Andy Griffith Show".
The title of The Three Stooges last feature film was "The Outlaws IS Coming!" and was released in 1965. Did you know that it was originally filmed under the title "The Three Stooges Meet the Gunslingers"?
The western "Cattle Annie and Little Britches" wasn't released, it
escaped, as the old Hollywood joke goes. The film was unceremoniously
dumped at a smattering of theaters by Universal in 1981 and then largely
faded into obscurity. The general implication of such treatment is that
the movie was a dog. In fact, it's a charming, well-made (if
traditional) lighthearted adventure with much to recommend about it.
Universal's disdain for the title is rather inexplicable especially
since the movie represented Burt Lancaster's first starring role since
his triumphant, Oscar-nominated performance in Louis Malle's "Atlantic
City" (although he made the movie before shooting the Malle production).
Lancaster, in a marvelously wry peformance, stars as legendary outlaw
Bill Doolin in a tale that is loosely based on actual people and events.
Doolin ran the infamous Doolin-Dalton gang with his late partner Bill
Dalton but when we first see the notorious outlaw band, they are a mere
shadow of their former selves. Most of the gang has either been arrested
or killed (including Dalton himself) and the remnants are desperately
trying to survive by outwitting Sheriff Tilghman (Rod Steiger), the
lawman who relentlessly pursues them. The focus of the script, however,
is the journey of two plucky runaway teenage girls, Annie (Amanda
Plummer) and her younger friend Jenny (Diane Lane). The two free spirits
have been drawn to Oklahoma from the east, having been weened on
largely exaggerated tales by Ned Buntline about the exploits of famed
outlaws. The girls are determined to meet these legendary figures in the
flesh and join a gang. A chance meeting with Doolin and his dwindling
fellow misfits allows them to do just that. Doolin admires their
courage, especially when they help the gang escape a bloody ambush by
Tilghman. They earn the nicknames Cattle Annie and Little Britches. The
script follows their adventures as their ingratiate themselves into the
gang. Both girls are virgins but the feisty and fearless tomboy Annie is
determined to fix that and manages to do so when she catches the eye of
Bittercreek (John Savage), a hunky gang member who is part Indian and
whose indulgence in mysticism and love of nature appeals to her. (The
family-friendly nature of the movie ensures that all sex occurs off
screen.) Ultimately, the impressionable Jenny develops a crush on Bill
Doolin, but fortunately he recognizes she simply yearns for a father
figure and gently finds a way to rebuff her advances while leaving her
with her dignity intact.
The movie, ably directed by Lamont Johnson, is a leisurely-paced tale
with a fine script by David Eyre and Robert Ward, based on the latter's
novel. Apparently, the book was based on two real life young women who
did travel with the gang. The performances are uniformly marvelous, with
Lancaster giving a charming performance as the world-weary outlaw who
finds new inspiration from his young female admirers. Rod Steiger, who
was often guilty of chewing the scenery, gives an unusually understated
performance, and it's all for the better. I loved the byplay between
Lancaster and Steiger's characters. They are old warriors, determined to
take each other down but they've also grown to admire each other in the
process. Even when Tilghman finally captures his man and prepares him
for his execution, he seems genuinely depressed by the prospect of
losing an adversary who has become almost a friend. The most impressive
performance is by Amanda Plummer, who made her screen debut with this
film. She's pure dynamite as the fearless young female who refuses to be
intimidated by any man. Had the film been more widely seen, she might
have been a contender for an Oscar nomination. In a rave review for the
film, New York Times critic Vincent Canby called Plummer's performance
"smashing". Another hard-to-please critic, Pauline Kael of the New
Yorker, was also charmed by the movie and Plummer's performance. Plummer
may have emerged as the only winner from the film, though it has
developed an appreciation among retro movie lovers who will be delighted
by the fact that it is streaming on Amazon Prime. (The Kino Lorber Blu-ray of a few years ago is now out of print.)
"Cattle Annie and Little Britches" is a highly enjoyable western that
will hopefully find a wider audience through streaming.
One of the best features of George McCowan’s Frogs (1972) is the fantastic art created
for the film’s poster and advertising campaign: a giant-sized frog with a human
arm hanging limply from its mouth.The
grisly art sort of bears a resemblance to a harvest cornucopia, a disembodied
arm displacing the usual spillage of autumnal gourds and seasonal
vegetables.
The poster and ad mats for Frogs was certain to
attract interest with the horror-film freaks who simply couldn’t get enough of
this stuff, no matter how weird.Still,
one can’t help but wonder today if moviegoers of 1972 left the theater slightly disappointed.The poster seemingly promises expectations of
a giant human-eating frog, the sort of creature as seen in all of those
atomic-era Roger Corman or Bert I. Gordon films.
McCowan’s Frogs
doesn’t treat us to anything as cool and retro as that.Though there may be hundreds of frogs on
screen – ostensibly - on “cerebral” attack, they’re all disappointingly of
regular proportion.They’re not terribly
seen as threatening either, truth be told.Yes, I imagine opening a door to find an army of croaking frogs crawling
about would startle.It would certainly illicit
uncomfortable, cringing reactions… but not necessarily fatal ones.Let’s face it.If a potential victim manages to assess the
situation with measured, reasonable composure, a safe extrication would be simple.It wouldn’t take great bravery to clear a
straight walking path through the frog horde with a mere lateral sweep of one’s
work boots.
The only frog that I call recall as malicious in
disposition, was the derby-topped, cigar-smoking villain of the old Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse cartoon
series.Yes, I suppose if one subscribes
to aged folklore beliefs, the worst consequence of engaging with a frog is,
perhaps, having a wart developed on point-of-contact… or his becoming a Prince.The filmmakers of Frogs seemed to have recognized early on that such amphibians are
hardly fearsome, creatures lacking shiver-inducing adversarial characteristics.This would task the film’s screenwriters to somehow
make sure the titular frog(s) would be abetted in their vengeful attacks on
humankind.
Indeed, they did.The
frogs telepathically summon a multitude of swampland friends to assist in their
scorching revenge: their army includes snakes, spiders, scorpions, insects,
lizards, alligators, leeches, turtles, Spanish moss entanglements, tarantulas
and Gila monsters. (Let’s not quibble why such Southwestern desert dwellers as
tarantulas and Gila monsters have made U.S. Southeast swamp country their
habitat).Though the frogs get top
billing in the film and are featured on the nifty poster, they mainly serve throughout
as cheerleaders, beckoning their swampland mates to annihilate these
inconsiderate, pesky, eco-insensitive humans.
In early October of 1971, Variety announced that Frogs
would be AIP’s next horror film effort, a co-production with Peter Thomas
Productions.Thomas and George Edwards
would co-produce, with Norman T. Herman to serve as executive producer.The screenplay would be co-written by Robert
Hutchinson (from his own original story) and Robert Blees.Though location shooting in New Orleans was
suggested early on, the city would not ultimately play host in the film’s
production. By October’s end three of film’s primary cast were announced: Ray
Milland, Judy Pace and Lynn Borden.
Frogs
would mark Milland’s fourth appearance (of five total) in an AIP horror/sci-fi
flick.Like other aging film stars of
the 1940s (Basil Rathbone, Peter Lorre e.g.), the actor found autumnal employment
in a stream of macabre exploitation films for AIP and others.His previous films for AIP included roles in The Premature Burial (1962), Panic in Year Zero! (which he also directed)
and The Man with X-Ray Eyes (1963) –
all well-made and reasonably good films for the most part. Judy Pace had recently graduated from
television roles to big screen features in such films as Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and Brian’s Song (1971).Frogs would be Borden’s first credited
feature film role, though she too was already a familiar fresh-face seen on
television.
By mid-November, there was news that actor William Smith
(best known for such motorcycle pictures as Angels
Die Hard (1970), C.C. & Company
(1970), and Chrome and Hot Leather
(1971)) was reportedly cast as well but – for whatever reason – he ultimately would
not appear in the film.For the most
part the on-screen talent had been selected from a pool of actors whose primary
resumes had been compiled from television work.
In one of this set’s special features, ultra-slim actress
Joan Van Ark (Karen Crockett), recalls Frogs
as her first true feature film role.She
was especially excited to work with the great Ray Milland, a favorite actor of
her father’s generation.Twenty-seven
year-old actor, Sam Elliott, whose previous experience was also primarily tethered
to the medium of television, was cast as the film’s hero, Pickett Smith.This too was Elliott’s first “big” break into
feature films, though he was somewhat familiar to fans of the small screen
through a recent reoccurring role as “Doug Robert” on TV’s popular Mission Impossible series.Van Ark recalled Elliott, even back then, as
a complete “class act” and “gentleman” throughout.
Pre-production of Frogs
would kick off on the “warm, white sands of Panama City Beach” during the first
week of November 1971.The cast and crew
had arrived in the resort town of Florida’s Panama City only days earlier.Everyone gathered was enjoying the respite of
warm water and plentiful sunshine. Milland in particular would describe the beach
as resplendent as any in Hawaii. Milland was tired upon arriving in Panama City,
having only recently returned from South Africa for his aging scientist role in
Robert Day’s The Big Game (1973).He’d later concede the breakneck, four-week
production of Frogs was simply an opportunistic,
open timetable gig, a quick pre-holiday season paycheck.
On Monday, 1 November, AIP would host a “welcoming
dinner” at a nearby Holiday Inn so local press and city officials could meet
and hobnob with Hollywood glitterati. One crew member sheepishly allowed to a
reporter that the film was, partly, conceived to coast on the box-office
coattails of Daniel Mann’s Willard
(1971), Bruce Davison’s rat-loving psychopath.The shooting of Frogs was quick
and strenuous as filming often went late into the wee hours.On 8 December, barely a month since
production had commenced, Variety reported
that principal photography of Frogs
had wrapped.
Despite the hectic schedule, Van Ark recalled director
George McCowan as easygoing and completely “unflappable,” a helmsman who
encouraged a “family atmosphere.”This
was no small trick as the actress recalled that due to the tight shooting schedule,
there were many “stressful and tedious” long hours of work expected from cast
and crew.But since McCowan’s
directorial resume also bristled with television assignments, he was used to
work expediently under deadline pressures.
On the morning following the press dinner, the unit would
move to its primary location of “the old Eden estate,” forty miles north of
Panama City.Production manager Elliot
Schick told the press the area had been chosen due to its proximity to the Eden
State Park mansion and historical museum, a location one hundred miles east of
Pensacola.“We had looked at houses in
Louisiana and Georgia,” he informed, “but this one was best and it was
available.”He added, it was helpful
that production would take place entirely in Florida as the state offered a
more “pleasant climate” in which to shoot.Schick conceded that while AIP was choosing to invest in, as ever, another
“low budget” production, he cautioned, “you’ll notice I didn’t say
‘cheap.’”
The film’s scenario takes no time in establishing its
ecological premise.Opening credits are
imposed over some footage of freelance photographer Pickett Smith (Elliott)
canoeing through a dismal swamp.The
only sound we hear are rustling wildlife noises and Smith’s quiet snapping of
evidential photos.The images were to
document the trash and pollution threatening the habitat.Actor Elliott plays Smith as a reserved outdoorsy-type:
his personality rests somewhere between the strong-and-silent-type and brooding
loner.His canoe ride is soon upended by
a speedboat driven by a nervy Clint Crockett (Roarke) with his sister Karen in
tow (Van Ark). With apologies, the two
rescue Smith from the lake and take him to the island mansion home of their
grandfather, Jason Crockett (Milland).
Old man Crockett is a rather surly, curmudgeonly fellow.Wheelchair-bound for fifteen years, the
wealthy and privileged Jason is bitter man, controlling of both staff and
family.He’s gathered his family
together (children, grandchildren, nephews etc.) for a combo celebration of his
upcoming birthday and the 4th of July holiday.When introduced to the still-soaked Smith,
Jason suspiciously asks why the photographer has chosen to ignore his No
Trespassing signage.He learns that
Smith is on an assignment to create “a pollution layout for an ecology
magazine,” an explanation that doesn’t put the shutterbug in a positive light
with the old man.However, Jason asks
Smith (in Milland’s not entirely convincing Southern drawl) to stick around.He explains the peaceful idyll of his mansion
estate is being ruined by the sounds of armies of croaking frogs – creatures of
which he soon intends to put an end to.
Smith learns Crockett’s intended frog genocide is to be
done by dousing the surrounding swamp with poisons, pesticides and oil
slicks.Smith cautions such a plan would
not only be devastating to the frogs but to all area wildlife.But the crusty, cigar-smoking patriarch of
the Crockett family cares not one whit.He admonishes Smith, declaring “Man is master of the world.”Of course, this is completely the wrong
attitude to take.It isn’t long until
nearly all in the Crockett family circle are attacked and killed by an
assortment of slimy, slithering creatures.The frogs are (apparently) communicating to their swampland brethren to
carry out the brutal attacks since… well, they’re frogs and can’t do it themselves.With most of the family missing and/or dead, the
beleaguered Smith advises survivors, “We got to get off this damn island!”Which, all things considered, sounds an entirely
reasonable position to take.
Frogs
would
have its world premiere screening on Thursday, 23 March 1972 at Martin’s
Florida Theatre in Panama City.The
earliest newspaper adverts read, “Frogs
Lay Millions and Millions of Eggs Each Year.”It then asks ominously, “What if They ALL Hatched?”The ad tag was soon tweaked to the more concise and memorable, “Today – The Pond, Tomorrow – The World!”Sam Elliott, Adam Roarke and Lynn Borden
were all scheduled to attend the premiere.Conspicuously missing was Ray Milland.The actor could not attend as he was already at work on yet another
exploitation picture for AIP, The Thing
with Two Heads.AIP had pre-arranged
another “press junket” to help with the premiere’s exploitation, bringing in
Debbie Callaway, the “Miss Panama City” beauty pageant contestant, to attract salacious
attention to the event.
No one attending could have predicted the future box-office
success of Frogs, least of all the
actors.Adam Roarke had been looking
forward to expanding his roles beyond those in such hippie-biker films as Hell’s Angels on Wheels (1967) and The Savage Seven (1968).He had recently auditioned for the role of
Michael Corleone in Coppola’s runaway box-office smash The Godfather.He disappointedly
lost out, of course, the part going to Al Pacino.Still looking for his first big break, Roarke
conceded that Frogs was unlikely the
ticket.Though pleased with the film’s
“strong ecology message,” Roarke candidly admitted Frogs simply wasn’t Gone with
the Wind.
Milland too wasn’t terribly boastful of his involvement
in the film.As reported in the James Robert
Parish and Don E. Stanke book The
Debonairs (Arlington House, 1975), Milland sighed reflectively, “I just did
that film in a hurry, so I could get out of town for Thanksgiving.I thought it was so awful that it would never
be released – now it’s making a lot of dough.”Joan Van Ark, on the other hand, shared mostly good memories of the
film.She was not only “not embarrassed”
by her participation in Frogs, but
actually “grateful” to be cast.
Upon the film’s release, much was made in the press of
the film’s comparison to Willard and
other ecology-based, animal-attack horror flicks in current vogue.Some thought the recent spate of pro-environmentalism
films were outright vehicles of propaganda, movies with an agenda.One AIP rep summarily dismissed that charge,
telling the press unapologetically, “We don’t make pictures to deliver
messages.Western Union takes care of
that.”What was certain is that film critics were clearly divided in their opinions
of the film.Perhaps choosing to
highlight the film’s potential marketability over its artful staging, Variety thought the pic “slickly
produced.” In their opinion, the film was “a tale of mounting danger and
suspense,” one of “which has every element to keep audience on the edge of
their seats.”
A contrarian view was offered by critic Howell Raines of
the Atlanta Constitution.He thought the film, “a movie of stultifying
stupidity, distinguished only by the total lack of wit which it delivers the
message.”Terry Kay of the Atlanta Journal likewise thought the pic’s
scripting both implausible and “inane,” suggesting most of the film’s frogs
were, at present, “gracing the tables of Panama City’s finer restaurants.”The Detroit
Free Press - obviously not holding back in acid opinion - described Frogs as, “the absolute worst film ever
made.” The critic asked how an actor of Milland’s status could have involved
himself in this, “piece of ecological garbage.” The critic did concede the picture, no matter
how awful, would likely bring in “a couple million bucks.”
He was mostly right about that; horror movie fans were
seemingly enthralled with the film.The
pic would bring in a “lively” take of some seven and a half thousand dollars in
its first week in its Motor City run, twelve thousand dollars each on both of its
second and third week of play.In
Houston, Frogs brought in fifteen
thousand dollars in a four cinema opening, with Washington D.C. reporting a
healthy twenty-thousand in receipts.When
it was becoming clear that Frogs was
going to score big bucks with the right promotional push, AIP ramped up the
ballyhoo by mid-April.Prior to the
film’s opening in Lafayette, LA, AIP would furnish local television and radio
stations with plastic frog giveaways.The area’s cinema employees were outfitted with “frog patterned hot
pants and ties” in which to greet patrons.
Cinema Retro Editor-in-Chief Lee Pfeiffer was recently a guest on film
music historian Frank Wilson's podcast, "What's the Score". Here is the
official episode description:
Click here to access the web site page to listen to or download the episode.
There is no progress to report on plans for the next James Bond movie. Industry sources say there is some tension between Eon Productions and Amazon MGM Studios. (The two companies are rights owners to the franchise.) However, it seems that the two entities have agreed to launch a remake of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". The film was originally brought to the screen in 1968 as a big budget production from Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli in between making "You Only Live Twice" and "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". The classic children's story was the brainchild of Bond author Ian Fleming and it was the only children's novel he wrote. The film under-performed at the boxoffice when originally released but over the decades it has become beloved by a generation that first saw it on British T.V. broadcasts and on home video. Indeed, enthusiasm for the movie is far greater in Great Britain than anywhere else. In 2002, Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli premiered a high profile stage production on the West End. A Broadway engagement followed. Since then, the production has proven to be very profitable through tours. At this time, no specific details are available about the new screen version. Stay Tuned. For more, click here. (Lee Pfeiffer)
If you made a list
of movies about men returning home injured
from a war you most likely include “The Men” starring Marlon Brando in his
first screen role or “Coming Home” (1978)with Jon Voight or “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) with Dana
Andrews and Frederic March. They’re all very good. But another that should be
on the list but probably wouldn’t make it because there’s no big star topping
the cast is “Bright Victory” (1951) with Arthur Kennedy as a soldier from
Florida who was blinded in combat in North Africa. It’s a sensitive, realistic
film, with a screenplay by Robert Buckner based on a novel by Baynard Kendrick
and directed by Mark Robson (“Home of the Brave” (1947) (Peyton Place (1957)).
Kino Lorber has just released this under-appreciated gem on Blu-ray.
Larry Nevins (Arthur Kennedy) catches a bullet in the
head that permanently blinds him. He’s sent to an Army hospital in Valley
Forge, PA. for rehabilitation. Robson shot the movie on location, actually
using patients and soldiers as extras, giving the film a realism that couldn’t
be duplicated on a soundstage. Kennedy gives a solid, no frills performance as
the blinded veteran-- at first full of self-pity but then filled with a new
desire to live when he makes a discovery in one of his therapy sessions. In
what’s called an Obstacle Perception Test,
the doctors take him outside and tell him to walk until he senses something
blocking his way. He’s actually standing in the middle of an obstacle course
consisting of brick walls and wooden barricades. He’s doubtful of the outcome
but he follows the doctor’s orders and starts walking. Suddenly he stops—just
short of one of the barricades. “It’s like I can sense something is there!” he
says. The doctors tell him that all humans have this sense of the presence of
things immediately in front of them. “It’s a kind of radar,” the doctor
explains. People with eyesight don’t need it, he’s told, so they never develop
it the way certain blind people can. For the first time, Larry’s excited…excited
enough to phone his parents down in Florida, who at first he had even refused
to tell that he was blind.
While he’s in the hospital, Larry meets two people who
become part of his new life. First is Judy Greene (Peggy Dow) whom he meets in
a club where all the GI’s hang out. At first, still cynical and sorry for
himself, he brushes her off, thinking she’s a hooker. But the bartender tells
him he’s got her all wrong. When he meets her again later, he apologizes and
they strike up a friendship. Judy falls for him, but he tells her there’s a
girl back home in Florida waiting for him. She’s disappointed but remains his
friend.
The other significant person he encounters is Joe Morgan (James
Edwards). They accidentally bump into each other in one of the hospitals long
hallways, and both being from the South, strike up an immediate friendship. Things
go well between them for a while until one day in the bunk room with the other
guys Larry casually uses the N-word and the room is suddenly locked in frozen
silence.He’s stunned to learn that all
along his new friend was a Black man. Joe gets himself transferred to another
hospital.
Larry then goes home on a pass, where his family and the
girl he left behind are waiting. Chris (Julie Adams) is happy to see him at
first, but there’s a nervous strain between them. After talking to her father,
who very simply expresses his doubts Larry will ever be able to support his
daughter unless he gives him a job in his company, Larry tells Chris they need
to leave their hometown and find a life of their own. Chris can’t make the
change and they part.
There’s more to the story that involves Larry facing his
racism, reuniting with Judy, and finding a suitable career path. What makes
“Bright Victory” unusual is the way Larry’s racism is presented. I haven’t seen
many films where the protagonist is presented with a character flaw like that.
His racism is presented as a result of his upbringing in the South. The
“victory” that Larry achieves is seeing that his only chance at a full life is
to leave behind the past and its prejudices.
It’s a thoughtful film, partly due to Robson’s
involvement. He did another film with racism as it theme, “Home of the Brave”
in which James Edwards also had a part. But the characters and plot of “Bright
Victory” all come from the Baynard Kendricks novel, ”Lights Out,” according to
the audio commentary by screenwriter Gary Gerani. Gerani says that Kendricks
actually met the person who became the Larry Nevins character in his book.
Kendricks wrote a lot about blind people, including a
series of books featuring blind detective Duncan MacClain, who was played by
Edward Arnold in the film adaptation “Eyes in the Night” (1942). The MacClain
character lived on into the Seventies under another name, when Oscar-winning
screenwriter Stirling Silliphant gave full credit to Kendrick as the
inspiration for his blind insurance investigator played by James Franciscus in
the “Longstreet” television series on ABC television.
Kino Lorber transferred “Bright Victory” from a brand new
2K Master and it looks very good. The picture is crisp and clear and William H.
Daniels black and white cinematography presents this dramatic story in
realistic detail and reminds you that human drama has no need of digital
effects. Also included as extras are half a dozen trailers for other Universal
films including “Bend of the River,” “Fixed Bayonets,” and “Boomerang.”
John Wayne made three movies with Marlene Dietrich
between 1940 and 1942: “Seven Sinners” (1940), “The Spoilers” (1942) and “Pittsburgh”
(1942); the latter two also featured Randolph Scott. The years between 1940 and
the end of World War II were interesting for all three stars. The Duke and
Scott’s star status was rising, while Dietrich reached the peak of her star
power. Dietrich was already a superstar, having left Germany for Hollywood in
1930 and rising to become the highest paid actress in Hollywood. During this
period the Duke often received second or third billing after bigger names like
Dietrich and Scott which was the case in these three releases by Universal
Pictures available on Blu-ray via Kino Lorber.
First up is “Seven Sinners” from 1940 which is,
in my opinion, the best of the three films. It opens with the classic Universal
logo followed by a bar fight playing out behind the opening credits. Dietrich plays
Bijou, a sexy cabaret singer traveling from island to island in the south
Pacific on the eve of America’s involvement in WWII. She gets deported by the
ruling governor general for suspicion of prostitution and ends up on a ship
heading out to a new island. There she is joined by an assortment of riffraff,
grifters and con artists.
Bijou ends up on the fictional island of Boni
Komba and finds work at a bar named Seven Sinners. A U.S. Navy Lieutenant named
Dan, played by the Duke, catches her eye while she performs a spicey cabaret
number in which she’s wearing a tailored U.S. Navy style dress jacket, trousers
and hat while singing to a crowd of sailors. Samuel S. Hinds plays the American
island Governor who warns Dan of the dangers of romancing Bijou. She’s followed
around by Little Ned, played by Broderick Crawford, and con artist/magician
Tony, played by Billy Gilbert. Bijou also has a rival for her affection, Antro,
played by Oscar Homolka. “Seven Sinners” is clearly Dietrich’s film and she’s
terrific in it.
Marlene Dietrich had a very successful movie
career in both Germany and in the United States. Born on 27 December 1901 in
what is now Berlin, Germany, she got her start as a cabaret singer in the 1920s
which soon led to parts in silent movies. Her breakthrough was in Josef Von
Sternberg’s “The Blue Angel” where she played a seductive cabaret singer. Von Sternberg
brought her to Hollywood where she rose to become the biggest female star in
Hollywood. She co-starred with James Stewart in one of her greatest roles,
“Destry Rides Again” in 1939. She became a United States citizen and supported
the troops throughout WWII touring with the USO. Her entertainment career
peaked during the war and she made just a few movies in the 50s and 60s until
her death on 6 May 1992 in Paris.
While she remained married to Rudolf Sieber
until her death, it was a marriage in name only as she became notorious for her
very public affairs including speculation that The Duke became one of her romantic
partners. Known for playing cabaret singers and saloon girls, Dietrich’s film
highlights include “The Blue Angel” and “Morocco” (with Gary Cooper), both
directed by Von Sternberg, “No Highway in the Sky” again with Stewart, Billy
Wilder’s “A Foreign Affair” and “Witness for the Prosecution,” Alfred
Hitchcock’s “Stage Fright,” Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” with Charlton Heston,
and Stanley Kramer’s “Judgment at Nuremberg.” She also appeared in a cameo role
along with many Hollywood stars of the era in “Around the World in 80 Days.”
Her final two films were “Paris When it Sizzles” in 1964 and “Just a Gigolo” in
1978.
The film was directed by Tay Garnet, a World War
I aviator who started working in Hollywood in 1920 as a writer, directed many films
including “My Favorite Spy” with Bob Hope, “Bataan” with Robert Taylor, “The
Postman Always Rings Twice” with Lana Turner and John Garfield, “A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” with Bing Crosby and dozens of television
episodes throughout the 50s and 60s, returning to feature films in the early 70s.
He also appeared uncredited in several of his movies including this one.
The Universal release made its way to theaters
in October of 1940. The movie is a light comedy playing out over 87 breezy
minutes. The movie looks very nice indeed on this Blu-ray edition by Kino
Lorber on a disc which includes an informative and entertaining audio
commentary track by David Del Valle and C. Courtney Joyner. While there has
been much speculation over the years over whether Dietrich and the Duke had a
fling, Del Valle downplays this as speculation and doubts the rumors were true.
The disc also includes the trailer for “Seven Sinners” and seven other Kino Lorber
releases. Highly recommended.
Next up is “The Spoilers”, which finds Dietrich
and the Duke in Nome, Alaska during the gold rush of 1900. This time they’re
joined by Randolph Scott in a rare bad guy role in a tale where most everyone in
the movie is bad except for Duke, Harry Cary and Dietrich. Based on the bestselling
novel by Rex Beach, the Duke plays Roy Glennister, a gold mining prospector. He
and his partner, Dextry (Harry Carey), team up with saloon girl Cherry Malotte
(Marlene Dietrich). They’re forced to protect their claim against the crooked
commissioner Alexander McNamara, played by Randolph Scott.
“The Spoilers” is a pseudo western taking place
in the Klondike and it comes with all the trappings of a traditional western
such as saloon fights, gun fights, horses, saloon girls and cowboys. “The Spoilers”
has the distinction of being the only John Wayne movie where the Duke is dressed
in women’s clothes and also the only time he appears in black face. It also has
one of the longest fight scenes ever filmed at almost four minutes between the
Duke and Scott.
Familiar faces on hand include Samuel S. Hinds
as Judge Horace Stillman, Russell Simpson as Flapjack Sims and Margaret Lindsay
as Helen Chester. The movie was directed by Ray Enright, who started work in
Hollywood as a teenager in 1913, served in the Signal Corps during WWI, and
working his way up as an editor, writer and director making dozens of feature
films through the mid-1950s.
Randolph Scott was born on 23 January 1898 in
Orange County, Virginia, and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He served as
an aviator during WWI in France, later played college football and after
graduating, caught the acting bug and moved to California where he eventually
received a contract at Paramount in 1929. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Scott
appeared in everything from comedies to dramas and adventure movies. In the
late 1940s he cemented his status as one of the most popular stars of westerns,
a genre he worked in almost exclusively starting in the late 1940s. He
especially shined in the seven westerns directed by Budd Boetticher starting
with “7 Men from Now” in 1956. Becoming one of the biggest box office draws of
the 1950s and early 60s, Scott retired from acting after the 1962 release of
the classic, “Ride the High Country” directed by Sam Peckinpah. A
multimillionaire due to his skilled investments, he lived in retirement with
his second wife until his death in 1987.
Released in June of 1942, the Universal release has
an 87-minute running time. The film looks and sounds very nice on this Blu-ray
release. Extras include an image gallery, trailers for this movie and seven
other Kino Lorber releases as well as an informative audio commentary by Toby
Roan where he shares lots of information about the production, such as this
being the fourth movie version of the Beach novel with another made in 1955 all
titled, what else, “The Spoilers.” A popular story indeed. The movie is the
least of the three Wayne and Dietrich films, but it’s a good rainy afternoon flick.
For my money, a better movie with a similar setting and subject is “North to
Alaska” also featuring the Duke.
The third Wayne and Dietrich pairing is “Pittsburgh”
which is not only the nickname of the Duke, but also the location of this 1942
release which takes place in the years leading up to WWII. The contemporary
drama (at the time) tells the story of two friends and the woman who comes
between them. The film opens at the start of America’s entry into WWII with
coal and iron works tycoons rallying the civilian workforce as military fighter
aircraft fly overhead. The movie flashes back to the two leads pushing a coal
cart in a mine shaft. The story follows the rise, fall and rise again of
Pittsburgh and his friendship with Scott and Dietrich.
Marlene Dietrich is Josie Winters who is known
by her nickname Hunky because she was raised in the Pennsylvania coal mining
region where the movie takes place. She meets up with Cash Evens (Randolph
Scott) and Pittsburgh Markham (Duke) while out on the town. Cash and Pittsburgh
head into a theater advertising a $100 in gold prize (about $1800 in today’s
dollars) to anyone able to knock out “Killer Kane.” A fight breaks out in the
theater with Cash and Pittsburgh making a getaway. The movie takes a turn away
from the comedy of the first act to more serious drama as a coal mining cave in
results in Josie joining Cash and Pittsburgh in rescuing their friend, “Doc”
Powers (Frank Craven).
The Doc is a genius when it comes to finding
different uses for coal from plastics to life saving medical applications.
Teaming up with Doc Powers, Cash and Pittsburgh form a corporation and with
Josie they start their rise to the top. Their main investor is the wealthy steel
magnet Morgan Prentis (Samuel S. Hinds) who also happens to have a pretty daughter,
Shannon Prentiss (Louis Allbritton), who catches the eye of Pittsburgh. He
marries Shannon for upward mobility rather than love and forgets his friends
and the many promises he made along the way.
Pittsburgh’s rise, fall and rise again are the
core of the story as we follow him in his journey. Pittsburgh becomes a better
man as the film comes to its hopeful conclusion assisting with the war effort.
Walking arm in arm with Scott and Dietrich, Pittsburgh provides the final line,
“I love you Cash. So help me, I love you.”
The
Duke is the lead here and he acquits himself quite well in a role that moves
from comedy to drama. Marion Morrison was born on 26 May 1907 in Winterset
Iowa. Known as “Duke” Morrison, his family moved to Southern California where
Duke entered college on a football scholarship from 1925 to 1927. Tom Mix
helped get Duke a summer job as a prop man in Hollywood where he eventually met
John Ford. The Duke appeared in over 70 low budget movies in the 1930s, mostly
westerns billed as John Wayne, until his breakthrough role in the 1939 classic
“Stagecoach.” His star rose in the 1940s where he remained a top box office star
into the 1970s and he remains a legend to this day.
The film was directed by Lewis Seiler, who
helmed dozens of movies from the silent era until he retired in 1959. He is
best remembered for his gangster movies and one of the best war movies made
during the WWII, “Guadalcanal Diary” in 1943.
The Universal release comes in at 92-minutes and
was released in December 1942, a full year into America’s entry into WWII. The
movie contains the typical propaganda of the time, specifically in the American
steel and coal industries, and veers from straight drama to comedy. Shemp
Howard of The Three Stooges fame makes a cameo as a tailor in the first part of
the movie. The Kino Lorber release looks very good and the movie has an
impresive performance by The Duke. The disc includes an image gallery and the
trailers for this and seven other Kino Lorber releases.
All three Kino Lorber
releases are in black and white and offer The Duke in three films pairing him
with Marlene Dietrich. The Duke is second and third billed here, but is a
standout in all three. While not the classics like many John Wayne films that
followed, these three movies are enjoyable and recommended, with “Seven Sinners” being the
best of the three.
We return to the realm of movies that were announced with fenthusiasm but never materialized...at least not in the version originally envisioned. This movie trade magazine article from May, 1964 announces that Robert Mitchum would be among a cast of 31 major stars to appear in 20th Century-Fox's "The Day Custer Fell". Custer would play Major Frederick Benteen. You will note that this was intended to be the studio's most ambitious American film production. Alas, for some reason it fizzled and died despite the preliminary ballyhoo (a quaint industry term for "fanfare".) Ultimately, an expensive Custer movie made it to the big screen through Cinerama Releasing's ill-fated 1968 production of "Custer of the West" starring Robert Shaw. (Lee Pfeiffer)
THE WINNER OF 8 ACADEMY AWARDS WILL BE
AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 4K RESOLUTION WITH HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE (HDR)
THE REMASTERED THEATRICAL VERSION OF THE FILM
WILL BE AVAILABLE ON DIGITAL AND 4K UHD DISC ON FEBRUARY 25, 2025
The
1984 period biographical drama film stars Academy Award Winner F. Murray
Abraham and Academy Award Nominee Tom Hulce
Burbank,
Calif., January 8, 2025 – Celebrating the 40th anniversary of
the epic historical film’s 8 Academy Awards, Amadeus, from
acclaimed director Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), will
be available for the first time Digitally in 4K Ultra HD and on 4K UHD Blu-ray
Disc on February 25.
One of the most celebrated films in cinematic history, the
theatrical version of Amadeuswill
be available to purchase on Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc online and in-store at major
retailers and available Digitally from Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, Fandango at
Home and more.
Directed by two-time Academy Award winner Milos Forman (One
Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) from a screenplay by Academy Award winner
Peter Shaffer, the film is based on the play Amadeus by
Shaffer and Mozartand Salieri by Alexander
Pushkin. Amadeus stars Academy Award winner F. Murray
Abraham as Antonio Salieri, Academy Award nominee Tom Hulce as Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart, Elizabeth Berridge as Constanze Mozart, Simon Callow as Emanuel
Schikaneder, Roy Dotrice as Leopold Mozart, Christine Ebersole as Katerina Cavalieri,
Jeffrey Jones as Emperor Joseph II and Charles Kay as Count Orsini-Rosenberg.
Amadeus was produced by three-time Academy Award winner and Irving
G. Thalberg Memorial Award recipient Saul Zaentz.
Amadeus received eleven Academy Award nominations and won eight
Oscars - Best Picture, Best Directing Best Actor (F. Murray Abraham), Best
Screenplay based on Material from Another Medium, Best Art Direction, Best
Costume Design, Best Makeup, and Best Sound.
In 2019, the film was selected for preservation in the United
States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally,
historically, or aesthetically significant.”
The
restoration and mastering of the Amadeus original
theatrical cut was completed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
with the participation of Paul Zaentz.
About
the Film
Disciplined Italian composer becomes consumed by jealousy and
resentment towards the hedonistic and remarkably talented young Viennese
composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
AmadeusDigital
release and Ultra HD Blu-ray disc contain the following new and previously
released special features:
Thanks to the Internet Archive, here's your chance to listen to Lalo Schifrin's score for the 1968 crime thriller "Sol Madrid" (aka "The Heroin Gang"). The film was directed by Brian G. Hutton and featured an impressive cast: David McCallum, Stella Stevens, Telly Savalas, Rip Torn, Ricardo Montalban, Paul Lukas and Pat Hingle. The film and soundtrack album were released by MGM. Click on the Play button below, left. Use the forward arrow button to advance to the next track.
David Lynch, the internationally acclaimed director of such diverse films as "Eraserhead", "Blue Velvet", "The Elephant Man" , "Mulholland Drive" and the creative force behind the classic T.V. series "Twin Peaks", has passed away at age 78.
If you haven't had the opportunity to attend a screening of a classic movie accompanied by a live orchestra providing the original musical score, you don't know what you're missing. It's a truly thrilling experience, as this CBS News segment illustrates.
Laurel and Hardy
first teamed up in early 1927 and quickly became a sensation, finishing the
year at the height of their success. Their achievements in 1928 motivated the
staff at Hal Roach Studios, including acclaimed director Leo McCarey, to
enhance their efforts in support of the duo’s comedic brilliance. Whether
creating chaos as a two-man band, feuding as a millionaire and his butler, or
playing grave robbers for a mad scientist, Laurel and Hardy proved in their
second year that they could capture audiences in the twilight of the silent era
while building momentum for their seamless transition into “talkies” by 1929.
Although they are now
synonymous with comedy, much of Laurel and Hardy’s early silent work exists
only in fragments, with original negatives scattered worldwide and often in
less-than-ideal condition. The Blackhawk Films
restoration team devoted four years to assembling and meticulously comparing
every surviving film element, frame by frame, to produce the highest-quality
digital restorations possible. Today, these beloved shorts look as vibrant as
they did nearly a century ago.
This impressive collection
includes newly restored versions of their ten 1928 team films, along with
additional works from Hal Roach Studios that highlight their final solo
performances and the transition from silent films to synchronized sound and
music.
Special Materials:
· Audio Commentary Tracks – For each film by historians
and authors Randy Skretvedt & Richard W. Bann
· Exclusive, Rare Audio - Featuring Anita Garvin, Thomas
Benton Roberts, and Hal Roach
· Additional Musical Scores – including original 1928
Vitaphone tracks on Habeas Corpus & We Faw Down
· Laurel & Hardy On-Location in Year Two – Video
essay by John Bengtson on selected location exteriors
· Eve’s Love Letters (1927) – One of Stan Laurel’s final
solo films
· Galloping Ghosts (1928) – Two surviving fragments of a
rare solo Oliver Hardy comedy
· A Pair of Tights (1928) – A short starring Anita Garvin
and Marion Byron
· George Mann’s Home Movies – From behind the scenes of
Hal Roach Studios
Shorts on the Laurel & Hardy: Year
Two set include:
Leave 'em Laughing, The Finishing Touch, From
Soup to Nuts, You're Darn Tootin', Their Purple Moment, Should
Married Men Go Home?, Early to Bed, Two Tars, Habeas Corpus, and We
Faw Down
Each film
includes a newly recorded score by some of today’s leading silent film
composers, such as Andreas Benz, Neil Brand, Robert Israel, and Jean-François
Zygel. This release has been curated by renowned film historians and Laurel and
Hardy experts Randy Skretvedt, Richard W. Bann, Serge Bromberg, and Eric Lange.
As the
"Grand Sheik Emeritus" of the founding chapter (or “tent”) of The Sons of the Desert,
the International Laurel & Hardy Appreciation Society, I consider this
collection—and its predecessor from last year covering 1927—a true treasure.
These films have never looked as exceptional as they do in these Flicker Alley
releases.
What
fascinates me most is the transitional period in cinema history. The final two
films in this collection originally premiered with sound-on-disc music and
effects scores, designed for theaters equipped with the “Vitaphone” system.
Their restored scores bring these silent films to life and offer a perfect
bridge to 1929, which is expected to be next year’s release—marking the end of
the silent era and the dawn of sound.
A
young, impoverished scholar is saved from a gang of thugs by a beautiful, thoughtful
woman with fantastical powers who then takes him home and offers to help look
after him. Little does he know that she is in fact an immortal vixen who, along
with her two equally beautiful sisters (although given what the pair of them
get up to together when they think she’s not looking, I hope they’re not
actually sisters), is trying to attain human form after a thousand years of
spiritual meditation. Once her sisters find out about the scholar, they get extremely
jealous and before you can say “love square”, there’s a whole lot of sex going
on between all four of them, and this naive young man is going to struggle to
get any studying done for quite some time.
Taking
its inspiration from The Witches of Eastwick (1987) and the ‘Liaozhai,’
or ‘Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio,’ a large collection of supernatural
stories published in the 1700s, where ghosts and foxes regularly interfere with
the ordinary world, Erotic Ghost Story (1990) was one of the many
adult-oriented films made possible by the introduction of the Category III
rating in Hong Kong in 1988. Known as Cat III, this rating was the equivalent
of the NC-17 in the States or the 18 in the UK and created a lucrative market
for filmmakers who saw exploitation potential. Hong Kong audiences would
eagerly attend midnight screenings of Cat III films to see nudity, softcore sex
and graphic violence, often in the same film, usually held together with goofy
comedy. A prime example, Erotic Ghost Story is a film in three acts; it
begins with comedy, keeps audiences sitting up straight in their cinema seats
with lots of sex and gorgeous leading ladies, and ends with an Evil Dead 2-style
explosion of horror and supernatural madness.
Of
the three sisters, Amy Yip is probably the best known to audiences in the West.
Famed for her stunning looks, large chest (she was forever denying rumours that
anything had been implanted) and sense of humour, she was a very popular star,
appearing in just a few key Cat III classics like this film and then Sex and
Zen, Robotrix and Erotic Ghost Story 2 (all 1991) before
effectively retiring to become a business owner. There really was no other star
quite like her, and it’s great to see her breakthrough role here, where shines
above the rest of the cast, in part thanks to her contract clause that would
not allow full nudity. The lengths the camera goes to show the audience almost
everything without actually showing us anything is quite remarkable.
Erotic
Ghost Story is hugely entertaining, and its
popularity ensured two sequels in quick succession. They are thematic sequels
with no actual plot connection, drawing again on ancient Chinese tales as well
as eighties special effects horror cinema. In the first sequel Anthony Wong,
another Cat III star, plays a virgin sacrifice-demanding demon who looks like a
member of KISS, and features tons of dry ice, sexy women, bonkers horror
freakouts and underwater kung fu. The second sequel, from just a year later, is
about a man who enters a painting and finds himself in the afterlife where he must
contend with yet another demon whilst also having copious amounts of sex. It’s
a hard life for some.
This
new Erotic Ghost Story Trilogy boxset from Imprint, limited to just 1500
copies, is a must have for any serious fan of Hong Kong cinema, or of
unpredictable horror films, or of gorgeous naked women (or any combination of
the three). The restorations for each film look terrific, with fabulous colours
and pin-sharp imagery. It is pleasing to see that the negatives for these
films, now over thirty years old (good grief, do I feel old), have been well
taken care of. Each film comes with new commentaries from critics and
historians, alongside a collection of exclusive new interviews with crew
members and genre historians. Included on one disc is the 2018 documentary Category
III: The Untold Story of Hong Kong Exploitation Cinema, which is an
interesting introduction to this world of slightly unhinged Hong Kong film history.
Aside from a couple of actors and Hong Kong directors however, most of the
talking heads in the doc are middle-aged male white film critics and academics
(and I say this as a middle-aged male white academic myself), and it is a shame
that more people involved in making the films themselves, or at least more Hong
Kongers, could not have been included. Despite that caveat, it is still
recommended viewing if you want to put Erotic Ghost Story into context.
So,
if you are looking for a spooky, funny, sexy time from an era when studios made
films for grownups, you really should check out the Erotic Ghost Story
Trilogy. And, in the meantime, if a beautiful, otherworldly woman in revealing
attire floats towards you surrounded by dry ice, just be careful...
The
Erotic Ghost Story Trilogy Blu-ray Region B boxset is available from
Imprint. Click here to order.
Here's a rarity: original 1969 behind-the-scenes production featurette for "Paint Your Wagon". The quality is pretty lousy but it's still fun to watch and hear comments from the stars. Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg starred in the mega-budget musical that went down in flames at the boxoffice, but there's still plenty to like in the film including production designer John Truscott's amazing sets and Marvin's unexpectedly effective warbling of "Wanderin' Star".
In 1958, Esther Williams was struggling to save her
career. The era of the Technicolor “aquatic musical,” that had made her a big
star at Metro Goldwyn Mayer for so many years, was over. After MGM let her go, she
signed up with Universal-International to make more dramatic films sans water
ballet. Her first outing with UI was “The Unguarded Moment” (1955), co-starring
George Nader. It told the story of a high school teacher sexually assaulted by
a student. It had nary a swimming pool in sight, but flopped, for various other
reasons too numerous to mention here. (See my review of that film here on
Cinema Retro). For her next film she put a toe back in the water with “Raw Wind
in Eden” (1958), which was shot on location on an island off the Tuscan Coast.
It had a swimming scene (without musical choreography), but it was another box
office disaster. NY Times movie critic Bosley Crowther said it looked like “the
producers lost the script and went right on shooting without it, making it up
as they went along.” It was the end of her relationship with Universal.
“Raw Wind in Eden”’s script was written by the
husband/wife team of Richard and Elizabeth Wilson (“Invitation to a Gunfighter”
(1964)) and follows the misadventures of a fashion model named Laura. I have to
stop here and note that after a thorough screening of the film and an AI search
of the internet I can’t find any mention of Laura’s last name. Apparently, the
screenwriters didn’t bother to give her one. Anyway, what we do know about her
is that besides being a fashion model she’s also having an affair with some
rich married guy, who seems reluctant to ask his wife for a divorce. So, fed up
with him, she decides to fly off with one of her boyfriend’s playboy friends, a
guy named Wally Drucker (Carlos Thompson), who owns a plane. Their intention is
to fly to where there is a big party being held on a yacht owned by one of
Wally’s friends. Instead they crash into
an island in the Mediterranean where three people live by themselves: a
mysterious man named Michael Moore (Jeff Chandler), an older man named Urbano
Verno (Eduardo de Felippo), and his daughter, Costanza Verano (Rosanna
Podesto). Laura is unhurt in the crash, but Wally is injured. Moore, a former
World War II medic, patches him up.
Moore tells the new arrivals that it could take as long
as five weeks before any help arrives to take them off the island. Of course,
during that time various romantic relationships develop. Drucker gets
interested in Costanza, and Laura finds the reclusive Moore of interest. In a
strange development it turns out that there’s another guy on a nearby island,
Gavino (Nik Battaglia), who wants to marry Costanza. Every so often he rides
his power boat to the island and fires a few shots, then turns around when
Moore fires back at him. Believe me, it’s all pretty lame.
There is a mystery at the core of this goofiness. Who is
Michael Moore and why is he living in seclusion on a Mediterranean island? And
why did he scuttle the yacht that brought him here? The solution is provided at
the end, but you’ll be unlikely to care much by then.
This is not to say that there isn’t entertainment to be
found on Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray edition of “Raw Wind in Eden.” First, of course,
there is Esther wearing outfits suitable for the tropical climate and having a
last cinematic swim. She was still in great shape. But the real gems are to be
found in the audio commentary provided on a separate audio channel by film
historian David Del Valle and movie historian/filmmaker Daniel Kremer. Perhaps
the highlight of their conversation is their discussion of Esther Williams’
claim in her autobiography that her co-star Jeff Chandler was a cross-dresser.
She had an affair with him during the filming of “Raw Wind in Eden” and claimed
that he liked to wear her dresses. Del Valle and Kremer strongly doubted there
was any truth to that accusation. Del Valle says he thought it was very cruel of
her to put that in her book, even if it was true. He said that Jane Russell who
had costarred with Chandler in “Foxfire” (1955) said she had never heard
anything about that. But according to Del Valle, Williams’ autobiography
contains many such accusations against the men she worked with on and off the
screen— including Johnny Weissmuller, who played Tarzan of the Apes! What? Come
on, now! Cheetah never said anything about that.
There are a lot of other insights and stories about what
happened behind the scenes during filming that you’ll probably enjoy more than
the film itself—especially if your one of the many surviving Esther Williams
fans out there. Restored from a 2K Master, the movie looks good in vibrant
Technicolor and widescreen. Also included are over half a dozen previews for
other Williams and Chandler films. If you’re looking for a film with a good
plot and believable characters, this one is probably not for you. But if you
want to relax and enjoy the sheer nuttiness of it all, and at the same time
experience a period of time when one kind of moviemaking was fading and another
kind was moving in, you could do worse.
In 1955, Esther Williams, the star offilms like “Million Dollar Mermaid,” and “Dangerous
When Wet”, suddenly found herself out of work when MGM ended her contract. The
era of the “aquatic musical,” which she was famous for, was over. So, Esther went
to work at Universal-International and focused on more dramatic roles. It
wasn’t a successful move. She made only two films for them.The first, “The Unguarded Moment,”(1956), was
a noirish tale about a high school teacher sexually harassed by a student. “Raw
Wind in Eden (1958)” was about a fashion model who crash lands on a
Mediterranean island. I’ll be reviewing that one separately.
In “The Unguarded Moment”, Esther plays school teacher
Lois Conway, who starts working in Ogden High School, which is in a typical
1950s “Leave It to Beaver” neighborhood- with the slight caveat that there’s a serial killer in the vicinity. She starts
receiving mash notes from an anonymous student on the first day of school.
Lois, who frankly, seems not very bright in light of the dumb things she does
during the course of the story, first accuses a perfectly innocent boy of
writing the note, which results in embarrassment to both her and the student.
The notes continue until she receives one that asks her to meet the mystery
stalker in stadium locker room that night at nine. Of course, she never
considers calling the cops and decides to show up at the rendezvous in order to
confront him. Things get nutty in the dark of the gymnasium but she manages to
fight him off and her attacker runs out into the headlights of an oncoming car.
We see it is a student named Leonard Bennett (John Saxon in his first major
role)—the school’s most popular student and star athlete. Esther recognizes him
but still fails to identify him to the cops who find her coming out of the
stadium all disheveled and with a torn dress. She doesn’t want to turn Leonard
in. After all he’s just a kid, not a criminal. Maybe she can help him. Naturally,
they’re more suspicious of her than anyone else and she becomes topic number
one at the school.
Now the police are involved and the cop in charge of the
investigation is Mr. Bland of the 1950s himself, George Nader, playing
Lieutenant Harry Graham. He’s frankly annoyed by Lois’s seeming naiveté and
lack of cooperation in regards helping identify the suspect, especially since
there’s already been one murder. But he is also aware that she’s a pretty good-looking
babe, and that body! Also in the cast in a key pivotal role is an actor who
probably appeared in at least 10,000 TV shows and films back in the Fifties and
Sixties. Edward Andrews plays Leonard Bennet’s father, in one of the weirdest
portrayals of a father ever given--even by Universal-International standards.
In one creep-out scene, for instance, he enters his son’s bedroom and tells him
for the 500th time how his mother left them years ago and he has
made sure that every trace of her was scrubbed out of the house. He keeps
Leonard on a tight leash and forbids him to go out with girls. He reminds
Leonard they don’t need women in their lives, and tells him: “We’ve built
something really good here. If you do anything to hurt it I’ll break every bone
in your body.” Not exactly Father of the Year.
“The Unguarded Moment” was directed by Harry Essex (“Tammy
and the Doctor,” and a lot of TV work), and written by Herb Meadow (“Have Gun-Will Travel),” Lawrence B. Marcus (“The Stunt Man,” 1980), and Rosalind Russell
(“Auntie Mame”). Yes, Auntie Mame herself dreamed up this weird tale and got Marcus
and Meadow to write the script, which is surprising because Marcus had written
some dynamite scripts for the “Route 66” and “Naked City” TV series back in the
day. And Meadows’ “Have Gun-Will Travel” scripts were well-written as well.
Their involvement in “The Unguarded Moment” should have resulted in something
better.
Kino Lorber says the
transfer to Blu-ray was made from a brand new 2K Master. The Technicolor comes
through very effectively, but honestly, I thought the picture looked a little
worn and grainy. I shouldn’t complain, though. This is the first availability
of this feature on home video ever. It’s never even been on video cassette
before. So overall I’d have to say this is a Blu-ray that will not only speak
to the surviving fans of Esther Williams, but also those who appreciate being
able to see movies that have almost been lost forever.
Hammer Film’s first ever 4K
restoration, Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter,
is released at UK cinemas!
LONDON, UK (07/01/25): Happy New Fear! To celebrate its 50th
anniversary, a new 4K restoration of Hammer Film’s swashbuckling horror
classic, Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter, will be released at UK cinemas
nationwide for one night only.
From 18th January 2025, the cult film will be screened at selected cinemas in
major cities across the UK including Cambridge, Liverpool, Sheffield, Belfast,
Glasgow and Edinburgh (full list below).
Legendary creator Brian Clemens (TV’s The Avengers, TV’s The Professionals)
writes and directs this stylish, revisionist Hammer Horror pitting a
swashbuckling hero, his trusty assistant and a feisty young ingenue against a
cunning and malevolent vampire.
Starring Horst Janson (Shout At The Devil, To Catch A King), John Carson
(Doomsday, TV’s Poirot), Shane Briant (Hawk The Slayer, TV’s The
Naked Civil Servant), Caroline Munro (The Spy Who Loved Me, The Golden
Voyage Of Sinbad), John Cater (The Abominable Dr. Phibes), Lois Dane
(Cash On Demand), William Hobbs (Willow, The Avengers) with Ian
Hendry (TV’s The New Avengers, Get Carter) and Wanda Ventham (TV’s
Sherlock, TV’s UFO), Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter makes its worldwide
debut as a brand-new 4K restoration from the original negative film elements.
Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter shifted the paradigm on cinematic horror,
creating a film for which appreciation has only grown over the decades – its
post-modern script, stylish direction, memorable performances and folk horror
mise en scène make it both of and ahead of its time. Its influence is hard to
over-estimate. Fifty years after its initial theatrical exhibition, this new
restoration of Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter celebrates an absolute
classic of British horror whose time has very definitely come.
Synopsis
A rash of mysterious deaths due to accelerated ageing compels Dr Marcus to
summon his brother-in-arms, Captain Kronos – once a soldier but now a
professional vampire hunter. As the deaths continue, however, Kronos realises
that this is no ordinary vampire he’s hunting.
The Restoration
This brand-new 4K restoration was scanned from vaulted 35mm original negative
elements, the resultant scans painstakingly restored to remove dirt and
defects. Other issues like density or colour fluctuations were corrected and
the film was then graded for High Dynamic Range to show off the full range of
colour and the detail in the dark and light areas of the image. Original
three-track mono audio elements were used to create a new 5.1 sound mix for
theatrical presentation.
Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter has a running time of 91 minutes a 15
certificate.
Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter is released at UK
cinemas from 18th January 2025 for one night only!
Full list of screenings:
18th January:
• BELFAST Queens Film Theatre
20th January:
• DUNDEE DCA
22nd January:
• FINSBURY PARK Picturehouse
• CAMBRIDGE Picturehouse
• CAMBRIDGE The Light
• BIRMINGHAM Mockingbird Cinema
• WALSALL The Light
• BOLTON The Light
• SHEFFIELD The Light
• STOCKPORT The Light
• NEW BRIGHTON The Light
• LIVERPOOL Picturehouse
• NEWCASTLE Tyneside
• EDINBURGH Cameo
• GLASGOW Film Theatre
• NORTHAMPTON Film House
24th January:
• BRISTOL Cube
27th January:
• DUNDEE DCA
28th January:
• MANCHESTER Home
Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter Limited Collector’s Edition 4K Ultra
HD/Blu-ray will be released from 27th January 2025
Pre-order now from Hammer Films,
Amazon,
HMV
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Arrow Video
On February 25, Arrow Video takes a walk on the wild
side with the controversial and erotic thriller, Cruising, making
its world premiere on 4K UHD. Director William Friedkin (The Exorcist)
cast Al Pacino (The Godfather) in a riveting film that sparked
protests upon its initial release in 1980. The Limited Edition release features
a brand new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative in Dolby
Vision (HDR10 compatible), and hours of special features.
A serial killer is preying on the gay men that frequent
the underground leather and S&M bars in New York City’s meatpacking
district. Detective Steve Burns (Al Pacino, Serpico) is assigned to go
under deep cover because he resembles the victims who have been dismembered or
stabbed to death in cheap hotels around the Village. A shop owner (Powers
Boothe, Red Dawn) explains the handkerchief color code to Burns, who hopes
the colors in his back pockets will lure out the killer at the clubs or in the
park after midnight. His investigation leads him into shadowy spaces that make
him question everything from his pursuit of a murderer to his relationship with
his girlfriend (Nancy Allen, Raiders of the Lost Ark). Can he truly return
to his normal life when this intense investigation ends? Cruising also
features Paul Sorvino (Goodfellas), James Remar (The
Warriors), and Joe Spinell (Rocky).
The special features include two vintage audio
commentaries with William Friedkin; audio commentary with musicians from
the soundtrack; an alternate music score by Pentagram Home Video; deleted
scenes; alternative footage; censored material reels; video interviews with
actors Karen Allen, Randy Jurgensen, Mike Starr, Jay
Aconvone, Mark Zecca; an interview with the manager of the Mineshaft; a
visual essay on the hanky-codes with David McGillivray; a short film on
the protests; vintage features on the movie; William Friedkin at
BeyondFest 2022; an image gallery; the theatrical trailer; teasers; TV Spots;
and a 120-page perfect-bound collector’s book with essays, interviews and
vintage articles.
This title will ship on February 25. Click here to order from Amazon.
Thanks to Shout! Factory, you can enjoy this premiere episode of Gerry Anderson's sci-fi TV classic "Space:1999" starring Martin Landau, Barbara Bain and Barry Morse, which premiered in 1975.(To maximize screen size, click "Watch on YouTube".)
Warner Bros. has made this scene selection available from the 1985 Western, "Pale Rider" starring and directed by Clint Eastwood. It was rumored at the time that this would be Eastwood's last Western, but he was carefully guarding the script for "Unforgiven" until he felt the time was appropriate to make the film. When he released it in 1992, it won the Best Picture Oscar and an Oscar for Clint's direction. Sadly, there's not much of a market today for Westerns on the big screen, despite Kevin Costner's noble attempt to revive the genre with his ill-fated "Horizon".
Amazon Prime is currently streaming the acclaimed 1968 French crime thriller "Farewell, Friend" ("Adieu, L'Ami"). The movie was instrumental in elevating Charles Bronson from supporting roles to leading man status. Here is Cinema Retro columnist Brian Hannan's review of the film from his web site "The Magnificent 60s".
By Brian Hannan
This heist
picture made Charles Bronson a star, though, like Clint Eastwood a few years
previously, he had to go to Europe, in this case France, to find an audience
appreciable of his particular skill set. This was such a box office smash in
France that it was the reason that Once
upon a Time in the West (1968), a major flop virtually everywhere
else, turned into a huge hit in Paris. After a decade as a supporting actor,
albeit in some quality offerings like The
Magnificent Seven (1960), The
Great Escape (1963) and The
Dirty Dozen (1967), Bronson developed a big following, if only
initially in Europe.
Farewell,
Friend
could also lay fair claim to stealing the title of “first buddy movie”
from the following year’s Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) because, apart from the heist
that is central to the story, it is essentially about the forging of a
friendship. But it wasn’t released in the U.S. for another five years, in the
wake of Bronson’s Hollywood breakthrough in The
Valachi Papers (1972), and then under a different title, Honor Among Thieves.
And you can
see why it was such a star-making vehicle. Bronson goes toe-to-toe with
France’s number one male star Alain Delon (The
Sicilian Clan, 1969). He had the walk and the stance and the look
and he was given acres of screen time to allow audiences to fully appreciate
for the first time what he had to offer. Like Butch Cassidy, the duo share a lot of screen
time, and after initial dislike, they slowly turn, through circumstance and the
same code of honor, into friends.
Dino Barran
(Alain Delon) is the principled one, after a final stint as a doctor in the
French Foreign Legion originally turning down overtures from Franz Propp
(Charles Bronson) to become involved in a separate major robbery. Propp is an
unsavory customer, making his living as a small-time thief who uses a stripper
to dupe wealthy marks. Barran plans to rob a corporation’s safe during the
three-day Xmas holiday of two million dollars as a favor to the slinky widow
Isabelle (Olga Georges-Picot) of a former colleague, for whose death he retains
guilt. Propp more or less barges his way into the caper.
It’s a
clever heist. Isabelle gets Barran a job as a company doctor whose office is
next door to the giant vault. But there’s a twist. Surveillance reveals only
three of the seven numbers required to open the combination to the vault. But
Barran reckons three days is sufficient to try out the 10,000 possible
permurations.
Barran and
Propp despise each other and pass the time playing juvenile tricks, locking
each other into a room, stealing all the food from the one dispensing machine,
winding each other up, while they take turns trying different combinations. But
it opens after only 3,400 attempts and they face a shock. The vault is empty.
They have been set up to take the fall for a previous robbery that must have
been completed before the building closed for Xmas.
And there’s
no way out. They are in lockdown, deep in a basement. The elevators can only be
opened by a small squadron of guards upstairs. Food long gone, they are going
to run out of water. If they use a lighter to see in the dark, or build a fire
to get warm, the flames will eat up the oxygen they need to survive in the
enclosed space. So the heist turns into a battle for survival and brute force
attempts to escape before the building re-opens and they are discovered,
exhausted and clearly guilty.
But that’s
only the second act. There is a better one to follow, as their friendship is
defined in an unusual manner. And there are any number of twists to maintain
the suspense and tension. Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were close friends when that western
began. Here, we see the evolution of a friendship between two forceful
characters who express their feelings with their fists.
Delon was a
known quantity, but Bronson really comes to the fore, more than holding his own
against a top star who oozed charisma. This is Bronson in chrysalis, the
emergence of the tough guy leading man screen persona that would turn him into
one of the biggest stars in the world. Surprisingly, given his later penchant
for the monosyllabic, here he does a lot of talking, perhaps more actual acting
than he ever did later when his roles tended to fall into a stereotype.
He has the
two best scenes, both character-defining, but in different ways. He has a
little scam, getting people to gamble on how many coins it would take for an
already full-to-the-brim glass to overflow when a certain number of coins were
dropped in. While this is a cute trick, it’s that of a small-time con artist,
but watching it play out, as it does at critical moments, is surprisingly
suspenseful. The second is the strip scene which shows him, as a potential
leading man, in a very poor light, and although thievery is the ultimate aim,
it is not far short of pimping, with Bronson standing back while the woman
(Marianna Falk) is routinely humiliated. It’s the kind of scene that would be
given to a supporting actor, for whom later redemption was not on the cards. It
says something for Bronson’s command of the screen and the development of his
character that by the end of the picture the audience has long forgotten that
he could stoop so low.
It is a film
of such twists I would not want to say much more for fear of giving away too
much, suffice to say that Olga Georges-Picot (Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime, 1968) and her friend,
mousy nurse Dominique (Brigitte Fossey, in her grown-up debut), are also
stand-outs, and not just in the sense of their allure.
Director
Jean Herman, in his sophomore outing, takes the bold step of dispensing with
music virtually throughout, which means that during the critical heist sequence
the audience is deprived of the usual musical beats that might indicate threat
or suspense or change of mood, but which has the benefit of keeping the camera
squarely on the two leading characters without favoring either. Most pictures
focusing on character rely on slow-burn drama. In the bulk of heist pictures,
characters appear fully-formed. Here, unusually, and almost uniquely in the
movie canon, character development takes place during an action film.
Top French
thriller writer Sebastian Japrisot (The
Sleeping Car Murder, 1965) was responsible along with Herman for
the screenplay. Japrisot was a key figure in the French movie thriller scene,
churning out, either as original novels or original screenplays, A Trap for Cinderella
(1965), Rider on the Rain
(1970) and The Lady in the
Car with the Glasses and the Gun (1970).
Even without
Bronson, this would have been a terrific heist picture. With him, it takes on a
new dimension.
Click here to order Kino Lorber Blu-ray from Amazon
CELEBRATING THE 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ACCLAIMED AWARD-WINNING MODERN CLASSIC
RETURNS TO 4K ULTRA HD™ AS A LIMITED EDITION STEELBOOK FEBRUARY 18TH
SYNOPSIS
THE SOCIAL NETWORK, directed by David Fincher, is
the stunning tale of a new breed of cultural insurgent: a punk genius who
sparked a revolution and changed the face of human interaction for a
generation, and perhaps forever. Shot through with emotional brutality and
unexpected humor, this superbly crafted film chronicles the formation of
Facebook and the battles over ownership that followed upon the website’s
unfathomable success. With a complex, incisive screenplay by Aaron Sorkin and a
brilliant cast including Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin
Timberlake, THE SOCIAL NETWORK bears witness to the birth of an idea that
rewove the fabric of society even as it unraveled the friendship of its
creators. Nominated for 8 Academy Awards®, including Best Picture (2010).
DISC DETAILS
& BONUS MATERIALS
4K ULTRA HD DISC
Feature presented in 4K resolution with Dolby Vision
Unrated Dolby Atmos English audio
Unrated 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
Theatrical 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
Special Feature:
Theatrical Trailers
BLU-RAY DISC™
Feature presented in high definition
Theatrical 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
Special Features:
Audio Commentary with David Fincher
Audio Commentary with Aaron Sorkin & Cast
Special Feature Blu-ray Includes:
How Did They Ever Make a Movie of Facebook?
David Fincher and Jeff Cronenweth on the Visuals
Angus Wall, Kirk Baxter and Ren Klyce on Post
Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and David Fincher on the Score
Ruby Skye VIP Room: Multi-Angle Scene Breakdown
In the Hall of the Mountain King: Reznor’s First Draft
Swarmatron
CAST AND CREW
Directed By: David Fincher
Produced By: Ceán Chaffin, Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti,
Michael De Luca
Screenplay By: Aaron Sorkin
Based Upon the Book “The Accidental Billionaires” By: Ben
Mezrich
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake,
Armie Hammer, Max Minghella
SPECS
Run Time: Approx. 120 minutes
Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, drug and alcohol use
and language and Unrated.
4K UHD Feature Picture: 2160p Ultra High Definition, 2.40:1
4K UHD Feature Audio: English Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD
7.1 Compatible) | Unrated English 5.1 DTS-HD MA | Theatrical English 5.1 DTS-HD
MA | French (PAR) 5.1 DTS-HD MA
In this clip, legendary directors George Cukor and King Vidor announce Robert Redford as the winner of the Best Director Oscar for "Ordinary People" in 1981. Redford's acceptance speech is a model of grace and class.