Imprint has released the Region-Free boxed Blu-ray set "Tales of the Wild West Collection One" consisting of:
Nevada Smith
The Professionals
Nevada Smith
Three Violent People
Waterhole #3
Cinema Retro's own Editor-in-Chief Lee Pfeiffer and contributors Paul Scrabo and Tony Latino provide the audio commentary tracks for "Nevada Smith" and "Waterhole #3".
Back around the late 1980s/early 1990s, Joan Collins was making a
personal appearance signing books in London, when a fan presented her with a
VHS sleeve for director Bert I. Gordon’s film Empire of the Ants, in
which she had starred in 1977. She not only refused to sign the sleeve, but
declined to answer any questions about the film. It’s a shame, because despite
any perceived flaws, the film is a solidly entertaining “nature bites back”
thriller, and whatever Collins’ feelings might have been about it, given some
of the daft things required of her, she was a real trooper and treated it just
as seriously and with the consummate professionalism that she did any role. So
said, one can perhaps also understand why she was dismissive of the film. By
1977 her career had tapered off and in order to keep working she was obliged to
take jobs that not so many years earlier she would have had the luxury of
turning down. Around the same time she had also been set to star in the UK’s
answer to Jaws, Cliff Twemlow’s The Pike, but for better or worse
that never went into production. Empire of the Ants - or to give it it’s
full on screen title, H.G. Wells’ Empire of the Ants - actually marked
one of the last films that she made before her career took a sudden upturn when
she stripped off at the age of 45 for The Stud (1978). There followed
its sequel, The Bitch (1979), and then global recognition anew arrived
with a starring role in hit American soap Dynasty.
But enough about Collins. Whether the threat was people, animals
or insects, director/co-producer/co-writer/visual effects creator Bert I.
Gordon - known affectionately as Mr. B.I.G. - was no stranger to “giant”
movies, with such titles as The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), The
Spider (1958), Village of the Giants (1965) and Food of the Gods
(1976) in his back pocket. Empire of the Ants takes its cues from
enormous formicidae classic Them! (1954), improving considerably on its
effects work and gleefully upping the gore quotient.
It opens with a short introduction in which it is explained that
ants excrete a pheromone that genders compliance. That established, we first
meet Collins, who plays a hard-nosed real estate agent, welcoming a bunch of
affluent clients aboard a motor launch. They subsequently head out to an island
where she hopes to make good money selling off swampland that she intends to
pass off as a little bit of paradise. However, a recent dumping of radioactive
waste in the ocean just off the island’s coast has resulted in its ant populous
growing in both size and ferocity.
The supporting cast, lining up as prospective dishes on an all you
can eat buffet for ants, includes Robert Lansing, Brook Palance (daughter of
Jack), Pamela Shoop, Robert Pine, Jacqueline Scott, John David Carson, Harry
Holcombe and Irene Tedrow. The film itself exudes an of-its-time charm that’s
hard to resist, and the effects work - which employed real ants filmed on
miniature sets, integrated with the actors via rear projection, matte and
split-screen processes - is mostly impressively efficient. Less convincing
perhaps are the outsize heads and antennae created for practical effects work
when close-ups of hapless victims being mauled were required, but any shortfalls
actually only add to the sense of fun. The story is at its most propulsive
during the first half, with the island visitors trying to survive out in the wild.
When the action shifts to a small town where (spoiler!) it is revealed that
islanders willingly line up to submit themselves to the huge queen ant’s
controlling pheromone, it becomes a tad less interesting. Make no mistake
though: Empire of the Ants is a rollicking good time.
The film makes its UK Blu-Ray debut on the Eureka label this
summer. The quality of the 1080p HD presentation is exceptional (even if the
clarity occasionally highlights deficiencies in the effects work), with clean
original English mono audio. Supplements comprise an introduction by Chris
Cooke (co-director of Mayhem Film Festival) who discusses his love of the film
and presents a whistlestop overview of Joan Collins’ career in the early 1970s
(7:00), “The B.I.G Picture” in which the indefatigably effusive Kim Newman
discusses Bert I. Gordon’s career (18:14), an original theatrical trailer
(2:19) and a radio spot (1:03). There are two audio commentaries accompanying
the film, one from Gordon himself, the other from film historians David Del
Valle and Michael Varrati. Not included with our review copy, the release
promises to include a limited edition booklet with writing by Liam
Hathaway.
The single disc Region B Blu-ray will be released on the 22nd June
and is available to pre-order now.
When some people think of 1980s horror
cinema, all they seem to remember are slasher films. Although the slasher
sub-genre did dominate most of the decade, there were plenty of other types of
horror movies that were produced during that time period. For instance, we had
amazing werewolf films like The Howling
and An American Werewolf in London; fun
and kick-ass vampire flicks such as
Fright Night and Near Dark, and
revolutionary zombie extravaganzas like
Day of the Dead and Return of the
Living Dead, just to name a very few. Another type of horror that graced
the decade was ghost/haunted house movies. Terrifying films like The Shining, Ghost Story, and The Changeling immediately come to mind;
not to mention the enjoyable and entertaining Poltergeist. Death Ship,
a slightly lesser known ghost tale which was released in 1980, has just found
its way to 4K Blu-ray.
“What
in the living hell is onboard!”
Directed by Alvin Rakoff and written by John
Robins (from a story by Jack Hill and David P. Lewis), Death Ship deals with an old freighter that collides with and
pretty much destroys a cruise ship. The surviving passengers, including Captain
Ashland (George Kennedy), have no choice but to board the freighter only to
find that it is completely deserted. Soon, the captain is possessed by the
ship’s evil and he begins silently stalking the claustrophobic corridors while
attempting to hunt down and kill everyone on board. Can the remaining
passengers elude the crazed captain, discover the haunted vessel’s secrets and
escape the death ship before it’s too late?
It may not be the greatest ghost movie of the
80s, but Death Ship is a decently
made and fairly engaging horror film. The movie conjures up some terrific
atmosphere and also benefits from excellent production design (in the form of
the old, dilapidated ship), wonderful stunt work, and a great, nutty
performance by George Kennedy. However, it suffers a bit from things like
noticeable stock footage and the use of a few overly familiar horror film
tropes. It also could have used another shocking sequence or two. Still, it’s
enjoyable enough and although it slightly drags in spots, director Rakoff does
a decent job keeping the plot moving.
Death Ship is also greatly
helped along by its incredible assortment of talented actors who really make
you believe in the horrors they are facing. Besides the always reliable George
Kennedy, we have a gifted cast consisting of Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso,
Sally Ann Howes, Kate Reid and Saul Rubinek.
Clocking in at 91-minutes and released in
March of 1980, Death Ship, which was
filmed in Alabama, the Gulf of Mexico and Quebec City, Canada, may not be in
the same league as the previously mentioned ghost films from the 1980s, but
it’s still a good time. If you enjoy 80s horror like I do then it’s definitely
worth a look.
Death Ship has been released as
a 4K/ Blu-ray edition. It is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and the
beautiful HDR 10 master—from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera
negative—boasts sharp images and terrific sound. The discs are also loaded with
special features. On the 4K disc, we have the theatrical cut of the film as
well as two audio commentaries; one with Paul Corupe of Canuxploitation.com and
film historian Jason Pichonsky; and another by film historians Alexandra
Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson.
The Blu-ray disc contains both the theatrical
cut and the extended cut of the film (which runs 93 minutes) and features the
same two audio commentaries as the 4K disc (the Alexandra Heller-Nicholas/Josh
Nelson commentary appears on both cuts of the film) as well as a third one with
director Alvin Rakoff, moderated by Jonathan Rigby (extended cut only). We are
also treated to a documentary with George Kennedy, Nick Mancuso, director Alvin
Rakoff, and writer Jack Hill (who was set to helm Death Ship, but was replaced because the production required a
Canadian director); the featurette What
the Ship is Saying with Katarina Severen of Katarina’s Nightmare Theater; the isolated score for the extended
cut by composer Ivor Slaney; Jack Hill’s original script (titled Bloodstar which was later rewritten and
retitled), and two theatrical trailers.
Adapted by Yuki Tanada from
Moyoco Anno’s manga series, Sakuran is the startlingly original
directorial debut of Japanese photographer/visual artist Mika Ninagawa. Set in
the ancient Edo period, Sakuran is filmed in a striking, psychedelic
color scheme that mirrors Ninagawa’s photographic work, and uses anachronistic
modern punk rock and jazz music from J-pop icon Shiina Ringo. The result is a
wonderfully eccentric and quirky film that both pays homage to and deconstructs
Japanese pink films (pinku eiga) like Hideo Gosha’s Tokyo Bordello and
Noboru Tanaka’s A Woman Called Sada Abe.
Anchored by a powerful lead performance by Anna Tsuchiya, Sakuran tells
the story of the strong-willed Kiyoha, who is sold by her mother to a brothel
at a young age and trained to become a courtesan. As she grows up to become a
beautiful, rebellious young woman, Kiyoha quickly rises in the ranks of the
brothel, but also encounters obstacles in the form of a forbidden love affair
with her client Sojiro (Hiroki Narimiya), and also the possibility of escape
with Seiji (Masanobu Ando), a young man who was raised in the brothel as the
son of a courtesan. The visual design for Sakuran features Ninagawa’s
distinctive eye-popping, sometimes hallucinatory color tone, mirroring her
photographic work. Like her contemporary Takashi Murakami (who also ventured
into film with Jellyfish Eyes), Ninagawa brings her psychedelic visual
arts background into Sakuran.
While many traditional pinku eiga films from
male filmmakers approach the subject matter of bordellos from a mostly erotic,
titillating perspective, Ninigawa focuses more on the psychological and
dramatic aspects of the story. Ninigawa takes her time to explore the power
dynamics of the female characters and also helps us understand what drives
Kiyoha. Most importantly, Ninigawa focuses on how Kiyoha feels about the
various men who are her customers and presents her as an active rather than
passive character who is free to approve or reject which men she works with,
rather than showing the pleasure her male clients receive. This approach
results in viewers becoming more invested in Kiyoha’s journey of personal
growth, as she rises to a high-ranking courtesan. Ninigawa wants us to
understand the inner struggles and dreams of Kiyoha, rather than using her as
purely a sex object to satisfy male customers and viewers.
Released on Blu-ray by 88 Films, Sakuran is
presented in high-definition 1080p in its original 1:85:1 aspect ratio, with
original Japanese 5.1 and stereo audio (with some English language music) and
new English subtitles. The 1080p presentation perfectly captures the bright,
vivid red and orange-tinged color scheme and design of cinematographer Takuro
Ishizaka, who worked closely with Ninigawa to capture her unique vision as a
visual artist. The 5.1 DTS-HD Master surround track clearly presents Shiina Ringo’s punk and jazz inspired soundtrack and also
does an excellent job of immersing the viewers in the bustling street and
brothel crowd noises of Yoshiwara’s red light district.
The supplemental features for Sakuran
are exemplary and provide helpful context for Ninigawa’s film. The features
begin with an informative 23-minute-long introduction by film scholar Amber T,
in which she provides insights into how Ninigawa’s career in photography and
fashion informs Sakuran, details how the original manga developed into
the film adaptation, and discusses how Sakuran fits into the wider
feminist movement in Japanese art and culture. The audio commentary by film
scholar Josh Slate-Williams provides a detailed scene-by-scene analysis of Sakuran,
which is best viewed after watching the film to help gain better insight into
Ninigawa’s artistic process. There is also a thoroughly researched booklet
essay by film scholar Jasper Sharp, which discusses the historical context for Sakuran
and how the film relates to the aesthetic of Japonisme. Overall, all three
contributors provide a master class into Ninigawa’s career and her making of Sakuran.
If you’re a fan of Japanese pinku eiga films
but also want to see the genre presented in a completely new and uniquely
feminist perspective by the bold visual artist Ninigawa, Sakuran comes
with the highest recommendation. It really is a breath of fresh air in the
modern cinematic landscape, and Ninigawa is an exciting filmmaker to watch for.
The overwhelming success of Jaws (1975) didn’t just launch
the career of Steven Spielberg, change the way the cinema industry operated and
invent the modern blockbuster, it also inspired producers around the world to
make films about animals running wild. Some of those films were not very good,
it’s fair to say, but some, like Alligator (Lewis Teague, 1980), were great;
so good you might forget about Jaws altogether. Alligator begins with the urban legend of
a pet baby alligator being flushed down the toilet to live in the sewers.
Normally such a creature would not do so well, but fortunately for this one it
is being fed on a diet of dead dogs, the victims of a local unscrupulous
laboratory testing growth hormone products. After a decade in those tunnels,
this alligator is bigger than a pickup truck and begins to chow down on any
humans who stray too close to its lair. When body parts start turning up in the
water treatment plant, it’s up to Detective Madison (Robert Forster) and
beautiful (and, crucially, single) herpetologist Marissa (Robin Riker) to stop
it.
Alligator has a witty script by John
Sayles, excellent performances, including support from Henry Silva, Dean Jagger
and Michael V. Gazzo (who surely had the longest eyebrows in Hollywood),
dynamic directing and a willingness to push the limits of good taste (the
walking the plank scene must have given nightmares to anyone with a backyard
pool).
The distribution history of Alligator is interesting: it was
shot for theatrical release but then, without any warning, producer Brandon
Chase sold the rights to television and an edited version of the film was
prepared, removing the gorier deaths, dubbing the worst of the bad language
(although, amusingly for any British viewers, “son of a bitch” is switched for
“this map is all bollocks!”) and adding back some additional shots of the hero
walking through the sewers. Having made all his money back plus a healthy
profit, Chase was not interested in spending any money on theatrical promotion
or distribution. Director Lewis Teague (a Roger Corman alumnus) took it upon
himself to fly to New York with a print of the film for a press screening, to
which only one journalist turned up. Thankfully this was Vincent Canby of The
New York Times and he loved it, stating that “the film's suspense is
frequently as genuine as its wit and its fond awareness of the cliches it's
using.” Word spread and Alligator became a hit, and was also very
successful on home video, which eventually led to Brandon Chase deciding to
make a sequel. Alligator II: The Mutation (Jon Hess, 1991) was conceived
as a TV movie right from the start, and you can tell by the casting, the
slightly flat shooting style and the almost complete lack of suspense and gory
deaths. When people are eaten, they are mainly eaten just off camera. It is
effectively a remake of the first film, with unidentified chemicals being
illegally dumped into the sewer system instead of growth hormones. The cop on
the case is Detective Hodges (played by miscast comedian Joseph Bologna), who
is conveniently married to scientist and alligator expert Chris (horror legend
Dee Wallace). The big bad here is an evil yuppie property developer and
chemical company boss, played in moustache-twirling style by Steve Railsback (who
arguably should have played the lead). He is making profits by poisoning the
waterways and buying up all the homes around Echo Park Lake in LA, upsetting
the Latino locals. Things build towards a carnival he is throwing to impress
investors, and you can probably guess which uninvited guest comes to dinner.
It's 36 feet long and it weighs 2,000 pounds... Given the size of
some special edition boxsets recently (notably Imprint’s release of The
Neverending Story) one could be forgiven for assuming that these are the
particulars of this new release, but no, they haven’t packaged both films into
an oversized replica alligator with realistic gator skin finish. At least, not
yet. That is actually a description of the alligator from the first film, which
was stalking the sewers of Chicago (although shot in LA). What we do get here
is a shiny hardbox which contains the 4K UHD, which of course looks and sounds
fantastic, together with a Blu-ray of the film and the bonus content plus an
additional Blu-ray featuring the TV cut, together in one plastic case. Alligator
2: The Mutation is on Blu-ray in its own case, like an unwanted stepchild
being kept away from the Alligator family. Sadly, there is no
accompanying book, which this reviewer is always a fan of, but there is enough
bonus content across both films (seemingly all ported over from the 2022 Shout!
Factory release of the films) to keep one busy for hours.
Within the hallowed halls of female revenge films, from
the 1970s Foxy Brown films to Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill!
Kill! (1965) and Supervixens (1975), the Hong Kong “Girls with Guns”
films from the 1980s and 1990s contained some of the finest examples of the genre.
One of the best “Girls with Guns” films was the legendary Cory Yuen’s She
Shoots Straight (1990), an exhilaratingly kinetic and dramatic powerhouse
of a film.
Yuen was a legend of Hong Kong cinema, and began his
career as one of the Seven Little Fortunes, a performance troupe made of up
China Drama Academy’s most promising young students. Among the other members of
this troupe were the legendary stars Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. In addition to
his prolific directing career, Yuen was also a popular actor appearing in
several high-profile films along with Chan and Hung, including Tsui Hark’s Zu
Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) and Sammo Hung’s Heart of Dragon
(1985). Yuen also worked with other Hong Kong and international luminaries,
including Bruce Lee, Michellle Yeoh, Stephen Chow, Jet Li, and Jean-Claude Van
Damme. Later in his career, Yuen worked in Hollywood as an action
choreographer, working on such popular films as Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), X-Men
(2000), and The Expendables (2010). Yuen made She Shoots Straight
during the mid-point of his career, when he was still working primarily in Hong
Kong.
The heart and soul of She Shoots Straight are the
fierce lead performances of Joyce Godenzi and Carina Lau, who play the
policewomen Mina Kao and Chia Ling, respectively. As She Shoots Straight begins,
Mina marries into Chia’s family with Chia’s brother Huang Tsung-Pao (Tony Leung
Ka-fai). All three are members of the same police force, further complicating
their relationship as there is career rivalry between Mina and Chia. When Mina
gets promoted, the bitterness between her and Chia escalates, as Chia tries to
pit her brother Huang (who is also Mina’s husband) against Mina. When a vicious
Vietnamese gang led by Yuan Hua (Yuen Wah) attacks Mina and Chia during an
armed robbery, resulting in a series of conflicts that lead to a tragic event,
the two rival policewomen must put their differences aside to fight against
their newfound enemy, along with the help of their commander Officer Hung
(Sammo Hung) and Chia’s defiant matriarch (Tang Pik-Wan).
Like other Hong Kong films from the 1980s and 1990s, She
Shoots Straight does veer into melodrama at times, but this is just part of
what makes Hong Kong action films appealing; they have kinetic action set
pieces but also lure the viewer in with emotionally engaging storylines.
Although the plot summary may sound lurid and soap-operish, it is this very
over-the-top nature of She Shoots Straight that makes the film such a
visceral experience. Yuen and other master Hong Kong filmmakers like John Woo
and Tsui Hark know how to tap into primal human emotions like revenge, the bond
of family, and camaraderie to create action films that not only entertain with
elaborately staged, breath-taking action set pieces but also connect with the
viewer emotionally.
Which brings us back to the central performances of
Gondenzi and Lau, who are the leaders of a band of five policewomen that no one
wants to mess with. Not only do Gondenzi and Lau know how to shoot a gun with
precision and unparalleled skill (as the film’s title She Shoots Straight
clearly alludes to), but they are both powerful martial arts fighters who are
able to take down machete and mallet wielding thugs. There are five main,
brilliantly choreographed action set pieces in She Shoots Straight, but
the climax involving Gondenzi and Lau taking on a horde of vicious gangsters on
a boat and through a heart-stopping motorcycle chase truly ranks among one of the
best action set pieces in Hong Kong cinema history. It’s too bad that there
weren’t additional films featuring Gondenzi and Lau’s policewoman band beating
up more gangsters, but at least we have She Shoots Straight to enjoy.
88 Films’ Blu-ray of She Shoots Straight contains
a brand new 2K restoration from the original 35mm negative, which was shot
using spherical lenses, and it preserves the original 1:85:1 aspect ratio. The
visual presentation is crystal clear for an early 1990s film, and there are no
specks of dust of hair strands to distract from the image. The sometimes muted
looking colors are typical for a 1990s Hong Kong action film, and it’s good
that nothing was done to digitally alter the original look and feel of She
Shoots Straight. The 5.1 DTS-HD audio track is clean and nicely highlights
the pulsating early 1990s style Hong Kong action film music score by Lowell Lo,
and we hear every gunshot and bone-breaking fight impact clearly.
There is a fun and enthusiastic audio commentary track
from Asian film scholar Frank Djeng, in which he provides a wealth of
information about the production of She Shoots Straight, along with
great context on the Chinese historical and cultural aspects of the film. In
addition to the commentary track, there’s also an informative interview with She
Shoots Straight’s screenplay writer Yuen Kai-Chi, in which he details his
working relationship with Sammo Hung and Gondenzi, along with background
context on the field of scriptwriting in 1980s and 1990s Hong Kong. The last
supplements are a touching and entertaining image gallery slideshow of
production stills and the original theatrical trailer.
She Shoots Straight is
an at-times over-the-top extravaganza of an action film, but it is this
boisterous nature of the film that makes it such an entertaining viewing
experience. For fans of female revenge films featuring strong women
protagonists and lovers of Hong Kong cinema, 88 Films’ Blu-ray release of She
Shoots Straight is a must-own.
The Warner Archive has released a number of films made by Ivan Tors' production company during the 1960s. Tors specialized in underwater and animal-themed adventure movies and TV series and he had a number of major successes including Sea Hunt, Flipper and Gentle Ben. Tors also had a knack for turning feature films into TV series. Flipper began as a theatrical release and morphed into a TV show. Gentle Ben began as a TV show and later inspired the feature film Gentle Giant. The Warner Archive has released another of these cross-over productions, Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion which would serve as the feature length pilot for the TV series Daktari. Marshall Thompson stars as Dr. Marsh Tracy, a veterinarian who works in the jungles of Africa to help injured animals and help thwart poachers with the aid of local government authorities. The film's subject matter has something in common with John Huston's 1958 film The Roots of Heaven (click here for review) in that both were extolling the merits of conservation in an era before environmental protection had become mainstream. All other similarities between the films end there, which should be obvious from the title of the Tors movie. The plot finds Dr. Tracy as a widower trying to raise a teenage daughter, Paula (Cheryl Miller, who would reprise her role in Daktari), in a dangerous environment while also training her as his assistant. There is some flirtation with a local widow, Julie Harper (Betsy Drake), who undertakes dangerous solo missions into the jungle a la Jane Goodall to observe and photograph gorillas. The titular beast, Clarence, is indeed an amusing oddity, as no camera tricks have to be employed to obtain the effect of his being cross-eyed. However, the furry protagonist is sort of the Col. Kurtz of the animal kingdom- making only fleeting appearances in the Heart of Darkness until the end of the movie. The script is so squeaky clean it makes The Brady Bunch look like a Bergman movie and the only real danger comes near the end when a virtual army of ruthless poachers are thwarted by Dr. Tracy and his allies, including local police authorities, a chimpanzee and Clarence himself, who somehow commandeers a jeep for a wild ride through enemy forces. (You have to see it to believe it.) There are also fleeting appearances by noted character actor Richard Haydyn, mercilessly going over-the-top as a dapper British tutor who fears the local environment and Clarence. Predictably, the two are constantly encountering each other in rather silly comical sequences. (It's never explained why a man who fears the jungle and animals would decide to reside in the wilds of Africa.)
The film was designed strictly for the younger crowd. Thompson makes for a sufficiently stalwart hero, Drake (in her last film role before retiring) provides the chaste love interest and the overly-perky Miller does get to toss in a bit of sex appeal by slinking into a party dress in a scene designed to keep awake older brothers who had to bring younger siblings to the film. The best performance comes from Alan Caillou as the charismatic leader of the poachers. The film is directed by Andrew Marton, who was primarily known for presiding over major action sequences in films such as Ben-Hur and The Longest Day. He would go on to produce and direct the far superior Around the World Under the Sea for Ivan Tors. Clarence has a rather chintzy feel to it, owing to the fact that the film was all-too-obviously shot in an American game preserve (in Florida). Second unit footage from Africa is rather unconvincingly blended in to give the movie an exotic appeal. Nevertheless, the movie is likable enough and will probably be most appreciated by Daktari fans who can now enjoy the series' origins as a feature film. An original theatrical trailer is included.
Click hereto order from the Cinema Retro Movie Store.
To my knowledge, Kino’s Blu ray of Hobart Henley’s Night World (Universal, 1932) is this
film’s long belated official debut in any home video format.The film, which runs a mere 58 minutes in
length, mostly disappeared from movie screens following its original roll-out
in spring of 1932.Likewise, Night World rarely, if ever, played on broadcast
late-night television.The film’s very first
TV airing (as far as I can tell) would happen fifty-six years following its
theatrical release.In August of 1988 –
and in subsequent market broadcasts through 1989 – Night World was screened by the cable-only AMC network. Following
those few telecasts the film, once again, seemingly disappeared back into the
ether.
Post-1988, the most obsessive fans of Boris Karloff - or curious
collectors of early ‘30s gangster flicks - could source copies of the film from
gray-market videos.It’s fair to assume
most of those bootlegs were duped from the film’s few AMC airings, although I
guess more inner-circle enthusiasts might have had access to a print via a 16mm
television dupe.In any regard, and though
it’s taken some ninety-four years to happen, thanks to Kino Lorber anyone
interested in this rare film now has access.No more dupey bootlegs: the film looks magnificent as it offers “a 2K
Scan of the Original Fine-Grain” elements.
Night
World was the first film in which Karloff would appear
following the “monstrous” box-office success of James Whale’s Frankenstein, released December
1931.The entirety of Night World (originally announced under
the title of Night Club in January
1932) was shot in March of 1932 - a mere three months following the premiere of
Frankenstein.Looking to quickly piggyback on Karloff’s
star-making turn as the monster, Universal fast-tracked the release of Night World.The film would make its theatrical debut on 5 May 1932.Though the revamped title of Night World seemingly suggests a film
offering macabre atmosphere, it’s not.It’s merely one of the many exploitative gangster pics lensed in the
wake of Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar and
William Wellman’s The Public Enemy (both
Warner Bros., 1931).
That said, Night
World is certainly a very different sort of gangster film.Its scripting template is clearly designed as
a knock-off of Edmund Goulding’s Grand
Hotel (MGM, 1932).Berlin’s Grand Hotel was used by that film’s
scenarists as a device to unravel several disparate character stories in a
singular setting.Night World does much the same, replacing the gilded German hotel
with racketeer Happy MacDonald’s (Karloff) swanky Manhattan nightclub.The storyline of Night World is credited to P.J. Wolfson and Allen Rivkin, but the screenplay
itself was written by Richard Schayer, the “scenario editor” on Frankenstein.The result is a fast-moving and decidedly
busy programmer: part-gangster film, part-mawkish soap opera, and part musical.
This is the sort of Pre-Code film that really pushed the
boundaries of acceptable on-screen adult themes.The film was produced in the midst of the worldwide
Depression and of U.S. prohibition.For
cinemagoers, the swanky, high-life, good-timey, black tails and gowns,
cocktails and dancing girls of MacDonald’s served as reminders of better times
in the past.
In the audio commentary of Tim Lucas and “Monster Kid
Hall-of-Famer” Joe Busam, the latter acknowledges Night World offers no shortage of “draw-dropping Pre-Code
material.”This view is seconded by
Jeremy Arnold in this set’s second audio commentary.Arnold suggests the film’s opening montage was
purposefully designed to tweak the noses of moralists by offering fleeting images
of all the things they were against.This is certainly true.The film’s
opening montage juxtaposes fleeting images of gang shootings, street
prostitution and well-heeled and debauched partygoers at play under the bright
lights of Times Square, against more pious captures of somber Salvation Army
workers drumming for donations and a small child kneeling in prayer.
If one accepts this code-tweaking premise as purposeful, Henley
is certainly complicit.He allows the often
gliding mobile camera of cinematographer Merritt B. Gerstad – a frequent
photographic collaborator of director Tod Browning - to salaciously languish
over the bare legs (and other bits of amorous anatomy) of the nightclub’s female
dance troupe.Outside of this film’s marketable
gangster angle, there’s also passing references to alcoholism, depression, marital
infidelities, and spousal murder.
Busby Berkeley offers his own touch, choreographing a
pair of geometric dance and musical numbers.The first of these (“Who's Your Little Who-Zis?”) is allotted extended
screen time, the second number merely seen only fleetingly.Lucas suggests the film was originally set to
run for some seventy-minutes.If that’s
the case, it is likely Berkeley’s second dance sequence fell victim to the
scissors of film editor Ted Kent.Busam
opines Berkeley approached Universal’s offer to contribute to Night World as “a minor assignment” paycheck.
In a second view, commentator Arnold
suggests by 1932 movie musicals had already “oversaturated the market.” Movie audiences
were now wishing to thrill to something more rough and rowdy on screen.
For a film of such brief duration, there’s a lot of
characters breezing in and out.Though a
“mysterious” image of Karloff takes center-stage on the film’s marketing materials,
he’s actually (and rightfully) third-billed behind Lew Ayres and Mae
Clarke.Ayres plays Michael Rand, a
troubled young man tortured by the knowledge his father was murdered by his own
mother (future legendary gossip columnist Hedda Hopper).Mae Clarke, who earlier played the wife of
Colin Clive’s Dr. Henry Frankenstein, is cast as the lovely, good-hearted chorus
girl Ruth Taylor.Though of lascivious
interest to menacing tough-guy gambler Ed Powell (George Raft), Taylor retreats
from his advances, having fallen hard for the handsome if melancholic (and
alcoholic) Rand.
Clarke’s role in Night
World is certainly one of more emotional nuance and consequence than that
in Frankenstein, Karloff’s less
so.Though Lucas and Busam feel the
actor’s casting as nightclub owner MacDonald seems “hilariously unlikely,” the
not-yet-typecast “horror film” icon nonetheless turns in a solid performance.If Frankenstein
hadn’t scored so handsomely for Universal, Karloff’s primary film credits would
likely have trapped the actor in menacing if equally slight gangster and heavy
roles. Prior to the lensing of Night
World, Karloff was often seen circa 1931-1932 as a brutal gang member or
mobster in such flicks as The Criminal
Code, The Guilty Generation, Graft, Behind the Mask and Howard Hawk’s notorious Scarface.
Scarface was
a relatively easy film to find back in the early days of home video.But it wasn’t until 2013 when the team at
TCM’s Vault Collection released The
Criminal Code, The Guilty Generation and
Behind the Mask in their DVD package Karloff: Criminal Kind, that many of us got
a glimpse of the actor’s early sound work.As far as I can tell, Graft (which
also features actress Dorothy Revier, Karloff’s unfaithful wife in Night World) is still only available on
gray market video.(There’s a
decent-looking – if likely not properly licensed - copy of Graft available on view at YouTube for the curious).
Yes, in Night World
Karloff remains a gangster-in-association but at least he’s sort of a good guy.He’s not seen here in his usual stone-cold
killer persona but rather as a sympathetic figure, one carrying the weight of
personal and business issues.Not only
is MacDonald being strong-armed by a mobster to carry their own bootleg liquor
in his establishment, but his wandering-eye wife Jill is having an affair with
the nightclub’s dance director (Russell Hopton). (To be fair, there’s an
earlier allusion that Happy too has been an unfaithful in his vows).
There are other small bits of Peyton Place-style drama threaded about, as well as a bit of comic
relief afforded by the musings of nightclub drunk Tommy (Bert Roach).Henley keeps the film’s pace moving quickly with
only Berkeley’s musical interludes slowing the film’s drama.Perhaps the most surprising role is allotted
to African-American actor Clarence Muse as Tim Washington, the convivial and
philosophical doorman of MacDonald’s speakeasy.Lucas asserts correctly that Muse delivers a wonderful “fully-rounded
performance” and, unusual for the time, well-scripted.Billed in the film’s opening credits only as
“The Doorman,’ Muse’s fully drawn character is integral to the film’s plotting
and denouement.
Harry Carey returns to the Ozark Mountains in “The
Shepherd of the Hills” available on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. Daniel Howitt (Carey)
arrives a stranger to everyone in his home town after being away for decades
for reasons not revealed until the end. The local people- farmers, ranchers and
moonshiners- are suspicious of all strangers and they are superstitious, too. Daniel
meets and befriends Sammy Lane (Betty Field) who skips, hops, walks backwards
and chants magic spells as she makes her way through the forest while entering
an abandoned cabin to keep evil spirits away.
Daniel saves the life of a local who was shot by federal
agents looking for bootleggers and saves a young girl with a high fever, which
endears him to Sammy and others in the community. Daniel astonishes the local
owner of the general store by asking to cash a check for cash. Too proud to
admit he does not have the cash on hand, the owner takes the check and gives
Daniel all the cash in the store, finding some of the money hidden in jars.
Daniel later meets with Aunt Mollie Matthews (Beulah Bondi) and makes an offer
to buy a piece of land and she reluctantly agrees. It also turns out an abandoned
cabin Sammy brought him to sits on that land and holds a special connection for
Daniel. Young Matt Matthews (John Wayne) finds out about the land
sale and makes it clear about his displeasure. Matt and Sammy are an item and
she calms him with her common sense approach to problem-solving. When we first meet them together outside
the store, young Matt is in a brawl with his friend Wash Gibbs (real life John Wayne pal Ward Bond) and
Sammy breaks it up. The movie is not a traditional John Wayne film, as the
Duke is more of a supporting player. It’s primarily the story of a man’s returning
home to confront his past. Young Matt has vowed to kill his father if he ever
returns, because he believes his father had abandoned his mother. Matt's vow is encouraged by Aunt Mollie and tempered by Sammy. In another plot development, Daniel sends Granny Becky (Marjorie Main), who has been
blind all her life, to a hospital to have surgery to restore her vision. When
she returns to have her bandages removed, much is revealed as we discover
Daniel’s true identity and his relationship to the town and its inhabitants. The ending is a bit predictable but satisfying.
Directed by Henry Hathaway and photographed in
Technicolor by cinematographer Charles Lang Jr and W. Howard Green, the movie
was filmed on location in Branson, Missouri and Big Bear, California which
stands in for the Ozarks. Based on the book by Harold Bell Wright, the screenplay
is by Grover Jones and Stuart Anthony. In addition to the members of the cast already discussed,
the film features James Barton as Old Matt Matthews, Samuel S. Hinds as Andy
Beeler, Marc Lawrence as Pete Matthews, John Qualen as Coot Royal, Fuzzy Knight
as Mr. Palestrom, Tom Fadden as Jim Lane and many other great character actors
of the era. Released 18 July 1941 by Paramount, the Technicolor movie
clocks in at 98-minutes and offers up an interesting plot that makes for a
perfect rainy afternoon movie for those wishing to catch up on an often
overlooked and underrated John Wayne film.
Bonus features on the Kino Lorber release include an
audio commentary by Simon Abrams, who calls this a transitional film for John
Wayne and I agree. Not only is the film the first color movie for the Duke, but
it takes him away from his usual western roles. Hathaway would direct Wayne in numerous films, including two of his best, “The
Sons of Katie Elder” and “True Grit”, for which the Duke won his Oscar as the
eye patch-wearing marshal Rooster Cogburn. This movie is also the first of
several films in which The Duke co-starred with Harry Carey, whom he idolized. They
would later co-star in Howard Hawks' classic western “Red River.” The Duke
would pay tribute to Carey in the final scene of “The Searchers” by crossing his arms in a manner associated with Carey. Harry Carey, Jr. would also have a role in that film and several others with Wayne.
In addition to the interesting commentary, the disc has
the trailer for this and six other John Wayne Kino Lorber Blu-ray releases. The
movie looks and sounds terrific and is well worth your time. Recommended for
fans of The Duke, Harry Carey, Henry Hathaway and the great cast of character
actors.
Click here to order from Kino Lorber (This title is currently sold out on Amazon)
In
Japanese-occupied Shanghai an idealistic group of students, whose bond formed
through amateur dramatics, hatch a plan to assassinate a high-ranking Chinese
police official, Mr Yee (Tony Leung) who they deem a collaborator. They decide
to infiltrate the higher echelons of society in which he exists by having Wang
Jia Zhi (Tang Wei) pose as the bored wife of a wealthy exporter. She becomes
part of Yee’s wife’s inner circle and they while away their days playing
mahjong and shopping. Gradually he begins to let his guard down and the two
begin a passionate, sometimes violent affair. By leaking information back to
the Resistance, they prepare to gun him down as a warning to others, but the
closer she gets to him, the more blurred the lines become.
Lust,
Caution was Ang Lee’s follow-up to Brokeback
Mountain (2005), a film which broke new ground in terms of onscreen
intimacy between men in an American film. Shot in Hong Kong and Malaysia, Lust,
Caution would use sex as a crucial depiction of the shifting power
relationships between Mr Yee and Wang Jia Zhi. It was considered to be as
explicit as a mainstream film could be, creating censorship issues around the
world and causing Tang Wei to be banned from making more films in China. Since
then, other filmmakers have gone far further and the questions about Lust,
Caution’s explicitness seem somewhat quaint now in 2026, nineteen years
later.
If
one wanted to be flippant, Lust, Caution could be summarised as being a
film about the potential danger of signing up to amateur student theatre. Actually,
it is a bleak, moving drama. The performances are incredible across the board,
particularly when one considers that this was Tang Wei’s first film, and her
supporting actor Leehom Wang was a major pop star in Asia and not a film actor.
And of course, being an Ang Lee film, it looks incredible. The costumes, the
settings and the cinematography combine to make this a sumptuous film to look
at, especially in this Blu-ray release (although it is a pity that a 4K has not
also been produced).
One
disappointment here is that there is not more bonus content, as this is an
incredible film which depicts a fascinating time in China’s history, as they
approached the end of their Century of Humiliation. There is a new insightful
discussion with Jon von Kowallis, an Australian professor and expert in Chinese
literature and cinema who puts the film into historical context and discusses
the similarities and differences to Eileen Chang’s 1979 novella, plus he has
met Ang Lee, which is cool. This is a helpful piece, particularly for those who
may be unfamiliar with what was going on in China, especially Shanghai, at the
time. Unfortunately, the only other bonus content is an old making-of
documentary ported over from the original DVD release and some B-roll footage,
most of which can be seen in that making-of doc. Given the film’s importance,
the calibre of its director, and the controversy surrounding its release
(censored around the world and released as two different versions in the States
– NC-17 and R), there is plenty more to say. Even a commentary track by some
experts would help to unpack some of this.
However,
if this is a film which you have never seen before, or perhaps not since 2007,
this release of Lust, Caution is a must-have for any serious collector
of world cinema.
Click here to order the region-free Blu Ray of Lust, Caution direct from Imprint.
(Prices are in Australian dollars. Use a currency converter for your local currency.)
What an amazing career acclaimed
actor/director/writer/producer Sir Kenneth Branagh has had so far. This
incredible talent has directed over twenty features; acted on stage, screen and
television; earned 2 Academy Awards, and was nominated for sixteen. Not to mention
taking home two BAFTAs as well as a Golden Globe and an Olivier Award.
Some of Branagh’s best and most well-known
directorial efforts are Henry V
(1989), Peter’s Friends (1992), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), As You Like
It (2006), Thor (2011), Cinderella (2015), Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Belfast (2021), Death on the
Nile (2022) and A Haunting in Venice
(2023).
Recently, Branagh’s sophomore directorial
feature, Dead Again, was released on
4K/Blu-ray.
Dead Again revolves around Mike
Church (Branagh), a private detective who is hired to help an amnesiac (Emma
Thompson) suffering from terrifying nightmares. After agreeing to let hypnotist
Franklyn Madson (Derek Jacobi) put the woman under hypnosis, Church discovers
that she may somehow be connected to Margaret Strauss (Thompson again), a
famous pianist who was horribly murdered in the late 1940s.
Dead Again is a wonderfully entertaining,
neo-noir romantic thriller and it’s no surprise that Branagh’s direction is
top-notch. The talented filmmaker has said that with this film, he was inspired
by the work of Alfred Hitchcock (I was reminded of Vertigo, Rebecca and
Spellbound), Orson Welles (especially
Citizen Kane) and Edgar Allan Poe, and it certainly shows.
Solidly written by Scott Frank, Dead Again expertly balances mystery,
melodrama and humor, and with the help of a gifted crew (gorgeous cinematography
by Matthew F. Leonetti; a lush, gothic musical score by composer Patrick Doyle,
etc.) and cast, the film is a joy to behold.
Speaking of the cast, we not only have
excellent performances by Branagh and Thompson (who both play dual roles), but
also magnificent turns from Derek Jacobi as the quirky hypnotist, Andy Garcia
as a reporter (played both young and old), Wayne Knight as a comic relief
sidekick, and Robin Williams who is darkly humorous as a disgraced doctor. There
are also terrific appearances by Campbell Scott, Christine Ebersole, Raymond
Cruz, Miriam Margolyes, and lovely German actress Hanna Schygulla.
Released by Paramount Pictures in August of
1991 and clocking in at 108 minutes, Dead
Again moves along at a fast enough pace and never becomes tiresome. Highly
enjoyable and visually stunning (for instance, the modern day scenes are filmed
in lovely, vivid color while the flashback sequences are photographed beautifully
in black and white), Dead Again is a
triumph for Branagh as well as for his accomplished cast and crew.
Dead Again has been released in
a brand new HDR/Dolby Vision master-from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera
negative (approved by Kenneth Branagh). The 4K disc is region free while the
Blu-ray is region A only. The film, which is presented in its original 1.85:1
aspect ratio, looks gorgeous. The audio is also superb making this transfer far
superior to all other versions. The discs’ special features (which are ported
over from previous releases) consist of two excellent audio commentaries: one
by Kenneth Branagh and the other by producer Lindsay Doran and screenwriter
Scott Frank as well as the original theatrical trailer (Blu-ray only). Highly
recommended.
Blu-ray Collection Just Released by Kino Lorber. Highly Recommended!
James Bond fans take note! This new Kino Lorber release of British crime movie gems features Sean Connery in his last leading role prior to appearing as Agent 007, Guy Hamilton's debut as director and a film with Bernard Lee. Here is the official description:
"Dive into the dark side of postwar
British cinema with three gems of film noir, each featuring the great Herbert
Lom (Inspector Dreyfuss of Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther films). Cage
of Gold (1950) – A Young bride (Jean Simmons) believes her husband
(David Farrar) has been killed, only to find the “dead” man come back with
devious intentions. A glittering thriller directed by Basil Dearden (The
Blue Lamp) and co-starring Lom, James Donald and Bernard Lee. The
Ringer (1952) – Lom takes the lead as a crooked lawyer who is hounded
by vengeance seeking master of disguise. Future 007 veteran Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger)
make his directorial debut with this taut Edgar Wallace (Chamber of Horrors)
adaptation. The Frightened City (1961) – Lom is a London
accountant who, with the help of an ex-thief (a pre-Bond Sean Connery), plans
to merge six criminal gangs into a single syndicate. It’s extortion,
racketeering and murder—the English way—in this action-thriller directed by
John Lemont (The Shakedown).
Product Extras
:
Three 4K Restorations by StudioCanal
NEW Audio Commentary for Cage of Gold by
Entertainment Journalists/Authors Bryan Reesman and Max Evry
NEW Audio Commentary for The Ringer by Film
Historian/Writer Julie Kirgo and Writer/Filmmaker Peter Hankoff
NEW Audio Commentary for The Frightened City by
Author/Screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner and Film Historian Bruce Scivally
With announcements of new 4K and Blu-ray releases almost every
other week, Hammer’s extensive back catalogue has been enjoying something of a
renaissance of late. A landslide of expensive all-whistles-and-bells box sets
are appearing at premium prices, so many in fact that it has reached the point
where all but the most affluent are being forced into choosiness over which
titles they open their wallets for.
1974’s Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell received a
special edition release from Second Sight back in 2022, comprising a beautiful
transfer of the film, a nice array of supplemental features and bonus goodies
such as art cards and a booklet. For those who couldn’t, or maybe chose not to
stretch to that, four years on Second Sight’s standard edition (disc only) is
finally here.
This was the seventh and final entry in Hammer’s run of
Frankenstein features and it’s not unreasonable to suggest the formula had
become tired. The story this time concerns a young Doctor, Simon Helder (Shane
Briant), who has been busily studying the anatomies of stolen corpses. Arrested
and tried for sorcery, he’s sent to an asylum overseen by the cruel and sleazy
Adolf Klauss (John Stratton). There, Helder encounters Dr Carl Victor (Peter
Cushing), who appears to hold sway over Klauss and, with the rudimentary
assistance of a mute girl, Sarah (Madeleine Smith), is using the premises for
his own experiments in rebuilding the dead. Before long, Helder gets Dr Victor
to confess that he is in fact Baron Frankenstein. With his hands horribly
scarred, Frankenstein is unable to carry out the delicate surgery required for
his work, so he seconds Helder to help, revealing a bestial “work in progress”
that he keeps caged in his laboratory (Dave Prowse). All that’s needed are some
new appendages and a brain transplant and Frankenstein will be able to claim himself
a “creator of man”. What could possibly go wrong?
With director Terence Fisher at the helm, working from a script by
Anthony Hinds (under his John Elder pseudonym), more than any Hammer before it,
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell peddles the uber-grotesque. The
whole film is shot through with a streak of cruelty, especially in the scenes
between the bullying asylum orderlies and the inmates, and if it isn’t busily
promoting discomfort on that level, it’s eagerly ratcheting up the gross-out
factor; witness the moment when Frankenstein impatiently kicks a discarded
brain across the floor. Ommetaphobics should approach with caution too:
detached eyeballs trailing ligaments are myriad, and if they’re not being
inspected in quease-inducing close-up, jarfuls of them are getting spilled on
the cobblestones.
Notably, the grotesquerie reaches its apex with the “creature”
itself - a formidable, disfigured, shambling hulk, which without doubt
represents Frankenstein’s most deviant creation yet. He proceeds to gift it
with the brain of a professor and the hands of a sculptor, but to what end when
it otherwise resembles… well, a monster from hell? The finale in which the
frenzied inmates tear it apart is particularly unpleasant.
On the more aesthetically pleasing side, Scott McGregor‘s asylum
sets are outstanding and, of course, we get another beautiful laboratory with
pulsing lights and lots of spinny-whirry things that don’t appear to do very
much, but really look the business.
The big plus, of course, is the return of Peter Cushing after his
absence from 1970’s divisive, blackly comic Horror of Frankenstein (for
which Ralph Bates stepped in). Although having him wear a curly wig was a
curious decision, he brings gravitas to the frankly bonkers story. Through
scene after scene, being back in the company of the same driven, ruthless man
we first encountered 17 years earlier in The Curse of Frankenstein is
infinitely rewarding, perhaps no more so than the moment when he casually remarks
that his creation needs to procreate with Sarah; despite it being an outrageous
suggestion, the dispassionate, matter of fact expression on his face is Peter Cushing
gold. Arguably, without him the film would be wholly dispensable.
Surrounding Cushing are a number of faces from previous Hammer
horrors, among them Shane Briant (Straight On Till Morning, Demons of the
Mind), Madeline Smith (Taste the Blood of Dracula, Vampire Lovers),
Patrick Troughton (The Gorgon, Scars of Dracula), Chris Cunningham (Dracula
Has Risen From the Grave, Lust For a Vampire), Dave Prowse (Vampire
Circus, Horror of Frankenstein), Charles Lloyd Pack (Dracula, The
Reptile) and Andria Lawrence (Countess Dracula). Also on hand -
cheap pun intended (you’ll have to see the film!) - is Bernard Lee, between
jobs as James Bond’s boss, M. James Bernard delivers a functional score, albeit not the most
memorable constituent among his host of greats.
Second Sight’s Region B coded Blu-ray presents the film with two
viewing options: its UK theatrical aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and full frame
1.37:1, the latter opening up the image head and foot noticeably. The picture
quality is absolutely pristine, the only downside of that being that it
occasionally highlights some of the film’s budgetary constraints. For example,
the overhead exterior shots of the asylum buildings now clearly show them for
what they were: scale models. But there’s no mileage in nitpicks when the film
looks as splendid as it does. There are two audio commentaries on offer: a
new one from enthusiast Kat Ellinger and the other - rather more engaging due
to their first-hand involvement in the film itself - from Shane Briant and
Madeline Smith, along with Hammer scholar Marcus Hearn.Supplements comprise “An Appreciation of Frankenstein and
the Monster from Hell” in which film historian David Huckvale speaks enthusiastically about
the film (8:37), “The Music of Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell”, which
also features Huckvale, this time tickling the ivories as he discusses James
Bernard’s score (11:49), a making-of piece entitled “Taking Over the Asylum”
comprising archival interviews (25:55), “Charming Evil: Terence Fisher
at Hammer”, which includes various talking heads, among them Micky Harding (née
Fisher) who shares memories of her father (13:29) and an extensive gallery of
stills and artwork.
Due for release on May 25th, Frankenstein and the Monster from
Hell is available to pre-order now.
Arthur Lubin’s Hold
that Ghost (1941) was the first of two “ghost” films Abbott and Costello
would star in for Universal, the second being Charles Barton’s The Time of Their Lives (1946).These two ghost-themed films do not have all
that much in common, being completely different in scenario and tone.Perhaps the biggest difference is that Abbott
and Costello did not work as the usual team in The Time of Their Lives.Despite
this, and in my humble opinion, these two “spirited” pics remain among the
pair’s best.Though Time offers a more imaginative story, Ghost serves as the better exemplar of A&C’s more traditional comedies.
The scenario: two bumbling, struggling but dreamy gas
station attendants, Chuck Murray (Abbott) and “Ferdy” Jones (Costello) find
themselves accidentally in the car of notorious gangster Moose Matson (William
B. Davidson).Unfortunately for the
pair, Matson is presently trying to escape from the gun-fire of chasing police.Matson is killed in course of that chase
which – very improbably – makes strangers Chuck and Ferdy inheritors of his
estate.That estate is a roadhouse
tavern in the countryside which once served as Matson’s speakeasy and
casino.A stormy night strands the boys
– alongside secreted Matson gang member Charlie Smith (Marc Lawrence) and
several other stranded passengers – at the tavern.
Smith, posing as an associate of Matson’s scheming attorney,
is there to locate where his departed boss stashed the gang’s ill-gotten accumulated
loot.But there’s all sort of mysterious
goings-on in the spooky tavern: people disappearing in dark cellars, corpse’s
intermittently reappearing, screams in the night and various ghost
sightings.There’s little doubt Moose
Matson’s cryptically clued secreted stash of cash will eventually be found… the
question now is by whom?The gangsters?
Or the group of stranded misfits whom the gang has tried to scare out of the
roadhouse… and wits?
This new Kino Lorber Studio Classics 4K set includes two
separate audio commentaries (by film historian/author Alan K. Rode and Diabolique associated editor Samm
Deighan), both well-researched and informative.Rode certainly pulls no punches nor sugarcoats Lou Costello’s reputation
as a “perpetually insecure,” often irascible screen diva. Within a two year span of 1941 and 1942,
Abbott and Costello would readily unseat actress Deanna Durbin as Universal
Studio’s top cash cow, rocketing to stardom in a pair of morale-boosting WWII
comedy and music vehicles, Buck Privates
and In the Navy.
The pair’s earliest films circa WWII offer the best of
their work – and this certainly includes Hold
that Ghost.There’s no denying that
as citizens Abbott and Costello were incredibly generous of their time and
talents in support of the morale-boosting efforts of the U.S. War Office.Whether performing for weary soldiers or
helping to sell war bonds, the pair were seemingly everywhere doing their part
in the fight.They were unflinching in
their support of the U.S. and her wartime allies as well of President Franklin
D. Roosevelt.
The duo’s sudden meteoric rise from the burlesque stage
to radio fame to big screen success would swell Costello’s head.The comedian was increasingly viewed by
fellow players and on-set techs as something of a prima donna.Though the roly-poly actor was rightfully acknowledged
as a comic natural – he was, in all fairness, a gifted physical comedian - Costello
became increasingly self-involved, leery of any fellow cast member celebrated
as center of attention.
In the course of a 1983 interview with Paul Buhle and
Dave Wagner, Hold that Ghost co-screenwriter
Robert Lees offered Costello as “a fat little egotist.He couldn’t stand the attention being drawn
away from him, even if [someone else’s contribution] made the movie funnier and
better.”Lees thought this personality shortcoming
was painfully apparent in Costello’s uproariously funny and masterfully
choreographed dance sequence with actress Joan Davis.Davis was a tried-and-true master physical
comedienne herself, every bit Costello’s equal.
Davis, like Costello, could also expertly deliver a glib
line of snappy dialogue as well as take a well-timed pratfall.This was a problem for Costello for in Hold that Ghost he was challenged to
play opposite an old-pro.Davis was, at
the very least, as every bit as funny as Costello: perhaps more so, and he knew
it.Lees was of the opinion that
Costello purposefully tried to mute Davis’ contributions, lest he be
upstaged.Lees believed the
self-preserving actor selfishly “screwed up some scenes, or tried to screw them
up, by objecting to [Davis’] action and her lines.”
Though Lees conceded Hold
that Ghost ultimately proved “a good film,” he admitted that he and co-writer
Frederic Rinaldo’s primary involvement with the picture was mostly finished
following their submission of the screenplay.Lees did complain that both he and Rinaldo were annoyed with the subsequent
script tampering of the film’s third credited writer, John Grant.Grant, who had been writing bits and gags for
Abbott & Costello since the pair’s vaudeville days, was reportedly omnipresent
on set, often replacing Lees and Rinaldo’s “good dialogue” with tried-and-true
stage and radio bits.
Abbott and Costello’s dependence on routines that had worked
for them in the past was partly understandable.Lees thought early on in their film careers, A&C weren’t at ease
working before cameras on a Hollywood sound stage.The team, he opined, were “verbal” comedians
who had always gauged the effectiveness of their material and performances “in
the moment.”They only trusted their comic
repartee by laughter received on stage or before a seated radio audience.Lees thought the two were “uncomfortable” with
the natural behind-the-camera silences of a working film crew.Despite his personal criticisms, Lees
acknowledged Costello was “a superb physical comedian,” well-equipped in this
regard to “do pratfalls and double-takes with the best of them.”He also allowed that Costello’s sense of comic
timing did often elevate the occasionally subpar material given him.
This set’s commentaries trace the beginnings and
backgrounds of A&C’s partnership: from the waning days of burlesque through
their galloping success in vaudeville, on radio and finally on the team’s
beloved films for Universal. It’s also noted that many of the pair’s most
famous gags and bits – earlier having been honed to perfection on stage – were
later incorporated (some repetitively) throughout their tenure at
Universal.The team’s mysterious and
sputtering “moving candle” bit famously makes its first appearance here in Hold that Ghost.
Much of the pair’s success was no doubt due to working
under the able mentorship of director Arthur Lubin.Five of the duo’s first six films – and
indeed many of their most successful pictures – were made with Lubin at the
helm 1941-1942.Much to his credit,
Lubin delivers the spooky old house mystery trappings of Hold that Ghost with great effect.Following Hold that Ghost,
Lubin’s only two other principal horror-associated pics for Universal were The Phantom of the Opera (1943)and The
Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946). Lubin was very much a stylish and
reliable craftsman as director, always delivering a good film - regardless of
genre - on budget and on schedule.
Rodes cites Ron Palumbo’s Universal Film Script Series
book on Hold that Ghost (Bear Manor
Media, 2018) as a primary resource for his own commentary.In doing so, he repeats an anecdote that can
be traced to Chris Costello’s own book on her father’s career, Lou’s On First (St. Martin’s Press,
1981).Daughter Chris offers the canard
that her father dismissed the team’s long-serving gag writer, John Grant, due
to his refusal to sign on to a House of Un-American Committee-era “loyalty”
pledge.This would explain Grant’s name
being absent from scripting credits of the pair’s Jack and the Beanstalk and Lost
in Alaska, both 1952.If true, Grant
would not spend much time in exile.Costello would soon bring Grant back into the fold for Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd
(1953) and subsequent films.
In
tandem with 1974’s Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Second Sight
is issuing a standalone Region B Blu-ray disc of 1959 Hammer classic The
Mummy, which follows on the tail of the now out of print 2022 special
edition box set release.
1895
Egypt: Fronted by the courageous John Banning (Peter Cushing), his father
Stephen (Felix Aylmer) and the more cautious Joseph Wemple (Raymond Huntley),
an archaeological dig is underway to locate the lost tomb of Princess Ananka.
Upon finding and entering the tomb, Stephen makes the mistake of reading aloud
from the Scroll of Life, disturbing… something! Three years later, the
tomb’s protector Mehemet Bay (George Pastell) arrives in England with the
mummified Kharis (Christopher Lee), an ancient high priest who secretly loved
Ananka and, upon her death, attempted to resurrect; he paid dearly for his crime,
having his tongue cut out before being sealed alive in an annexe within
Ananka’s tomb. It transpires that Stephen’s incautious recital of the Scroll of
Life three years earlier brought life to Kharis, and now Mehemet is overseeing
a trail of vengeance upon those who desecrated Ananka’s resting place. However,
when it turns out that Banning’s wife, Isobel (Yvonne Furneaux), bears an
uncanny resemblance to Ananka, Kharis defies Mehemet’s orders and sets out to
claim her for his own.
In
the space of three years, Christopher Lee had played three iconic screen
monsters: Frankenstein’s ungodly creation (1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein),
Count Dracula (1958’s Dracula aka Horror of Dracula) and here,
the Mummy. Was there ever a better screen incarnation of the iconic,
bandage-swathed figure than Lee? One look at him emerging from the quagmire
into which his casket has accidentally been deposited presents a solid case for
saying not.
Of
course, these same three films also headline Peter Cushing, and once again he’s
impeccable. It’s one heck of a plot device to have Banning’s wife be a dead
ringer for an Egyptian princess. Yet when he casually remarks to her, “It’s
extraordinary, I never noticed before, but with your hair like that you’re the
image of Ananka”, though it’s a distinctly ridiculous turn of events, with
those words coming from the mouth of the consummate Cushing, one accepts the
contrivance without further question.
In
the hands of director Terence Fisher (working from a Jimmy Sangster script,
loosely based on a couple of the 1940s Universal Mummy classics),
Hammer’s The Mummy is a slow-burner that shares little of the propulsive
energy of the director’s Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula.
Nevertheless, it builds steadily to a terrific climax in which Kharis seizes
Isobel and carries her off into the swamps, with John in heated pursuit.
Bernard
Robinson’s sets are of course beautiful, particularly the interior of Ananka’s
tomb, bathed in an eerie green light. Meanwhile, the ceremonial entombment of
the Princess, which plays out in a protracted middle act, is exquisitely
staged.Franz Reizenstein’s score eloquently accompanies the visuals, conveying
the awe-inspiring majesty of ancient Egypt and its pharaohs.
It
goes without saying that the presentation of The Mummy on Second Sight’s
Blu-ray is unparalleled by any previous release. The film itself is presented
in a choice of screen ratios, 1.66:1 or 1.37:1, the latter giving the picture
more breathing space top and bottom. Supplements are naturally generous.There are
two commentaries, one from enthusiast Kelly Robinson, the other from Hammer
experts Marcus Hearn and Jonathan Rigby. “An Appreciation of The Mummy” finds
film historian David Huckvale discussing the movie (10:10,) and he also hosts
“The Music of The Mummy” (9:40), in which he looks at Franz Reizenstein’s
background and, using his pianist’s skills, breaks down the score. “Unwrapping
The Mummy” is a making-of comprising archive footage and interviews (29:53).
“The House of Horror: Memories of Bray” also utilises extensive archival
material to examine the history of the famous studio at which so many of the
Hammer greats were shot. In “The Hammer Rep Company” Jonathan Rigby discusses
some of their wonderful stock players (14:59). An original promotional reel essentially
presents the opening of the film without sound (5.55). And finally, there is
the requisite extensive stills and art gallery.
Due
for release on May 25th, The Mummy available to pre-order now.
Note:
The Criterion Collection has released a two-disc edition with one 4K UHD disc
of the film in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray disc, and a single disc edition
with just the Blu-ray. This review is of the latter edition.
Lawrence
Kasdan burst onto the Hollywood scene in 1980 when his name appeared as one of
the co-writers of The Empire Strikes Back, a little sequel to another
little movie we all know well. It was, uhm, a big hit. He’d already sold the
screenplays he’d written for films called The Bodyguard and Continental
Divide, both of which would be made later by others (in 1992 and 1981,
respectively). Then came another little movie that made a bit of a splash, a
ditty called Raiders of the Lost Ark. Kasdan wrote that screenplay from
the story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. Kasdan was thus poised to take
the big dive and begin directing his own scripts and, given the clout he had
achieved with those two blockbusters, the writer/director was given the green
light to unleash his debut feature… an erotic neo-noir thriller called Body
Heat, released in 1981.
What
exactly is “neo-noir?” Film noir, of course, is the French term that
describes the body of Hollywood crime picture output that appeared between,
roughly, 1941 to 1958, although the exact duration of the movement is
debatable. It’s not a genre, but rather a style. Most noir scholars
define the material as having specific traits such as a cynical outlook,
hard-boiled characters, black and white cinematography with high contrasts of
light and dark, voiceover narration, a femme fatale character, betrayals
and double-crosses, (usually) no happy ending, and much more. Neo-noir is
anything that came after that period that attempted to mimic the style and tone
of film noir with an updating to contemporary sensibilities (such as shooting
in color rather than black and white).
Body
Heat is
a picture that had several firsts besides Kasdan’s directing credit. It was
Kathleen Turner’s debut in a strikingly powerful and sexy performance that made
her a star overnight. It also solidified the leading man cache
of William Hurt, who had exploded into our collective consciousness with Altered
States the year prior and had appeared in Eyewitness (1981, with
Sigourney Weaver). With Body Heat, Hurt was assured of his place as a
cinematic hunk who could act circles around other such types of leading
males. And while we had seen other neo-noir motion pictures (Chinatown comes
to mind), we hadn’t before experienced such a hot, sizzling display of
two beautiful actors in all their glory of naked skin glistening with sweat in
a mainstream Hollywood release (and apparently there was more explicit footage
that was deleted in the final editing stages).
It’s
a painfully hot summer in South Florida, and Ned Racine (Hurt) is a B-level
attorney and known womanizer with little scruples and a restless, unsatisfied
soul. Then he meets Maddy Walker (Turner), a drop-dead gorgeous and
husky-voiced woman married to the older and very wealthy Edmund Walker (Richard
Crenna), a “financier” who makes his money in mysterious ways and is often out
of town. Ned and Maddy begin a steamy affair and eventually she reveals her
unhappiness in the marriage and that there’s a pesky prenuptial agreement—so
divorce would leave her without much of her husband’s fortune. Of course, what
does the couple plan next? Murder Edmund, then Maddy splits the money with
Edmund’s sister as dictated in his will, and Ned and Maddy run away together. Ned,
the hapless schmuck who is always the type of male character in these kinds of
stories, is in over his head with a woman like Maddy… and tragic results ensue.
Kasdan,
in a candid and fascinating new interview that is a supplement on the new
Criterion Collection release of the film, admits that he was inspired by the film
noir pictures like Double Indemnity (1944) and other works. That
movie was based on the novel by James M. Cain, who also wrote The Postman
Always Rings Twice, another tale of a married woman enlisting a lover to
off her husband. Body Heat is a modern updating of James M. Cain’s
world, so much so that many critics and audiences think of the picture as a
“remake” of Double Indemnity (it’s not). Interestingly, a sexier remake
of the 1946 film, The Postman Always Rings Twice, also came out in 1981,
starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange—and it had none of the staying power
or artistry displayed in Body Heat.
(Photo: Criterion)
For
a directorial debut, Body Heat is darned good, and Kasdan’s stock in the
industry rose exponentially with its success (he next went on to make The
Big Chill, released in 1983). The performances—and visual eye candy—of both
William Hurt and Kathleen Turner are indeed the movie’s biggest assets, despite
the predictable Cain-like storyline, even with its clever and often surprising twists.
(That said, a head-scratching final twist at the end involving a boat house
door is never really explained. But does it matter?)
The
Criterion Collection’s new director-approved 4K restoration, supervised by
editor Carol Littleton (who worked with Kasdan on a number of occasions) looks
marvelous. It has an uncompressed stereo soundtrack and an alternate 5.1
surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. Supplements include the aforementioned
interview with Kasdan; a new interview with Littleton in discussion with film
historian Bobbie O’Steen; a bevy of archival features that include behind-the
scenes making of the picture and interviews with Hurt, Turner, co-star Ted
Danson, Kasdan, Littleton, cinematographer Richard H. Kline, and composer John
Barry (whose lush and smoky score is superb). There are also nearly ten minutes
of deleted scenes, the theatrical trailer, and English subtitles for the deaf
and hard of hearing. Last but not least is a learned and insightful essay in
the enclosed booklet by crime writer and noir expert, Megan Abbott.
Body
Heat is
for fans of neo-noir crime tales, erotic thrillers, William Hurt, Kathleen
Turner, and Lawrence Kasdan. Highly recommended.
Cinema Retro regular contributor Brian Hannan has
launched a Movie Poster Exhibition at the bookshop Abbey Books he runs in
Paisley, Scotland. “It occurred to me the walls of the shop were looking a bit
bare above the bookshelves,” said Hannan, “I had about six feet of blank space
to play with, so I thought I’d solve the problem by digging into movie
memorabilia I’ve got stored in boxes at home.” There are over 200 items on show
including quad posters (both vertical and horizontal), half-sheets, insert
posters, heralds, window cards, stills, and pressbooks. Trade magazines were
also a great source of very rare material – ads that never saw the light of day
in consumer magazines or newspapers – and were printed as pop-up, gatefold or
fold-outs. In that regard there’s a four-page colour pull-out for Where Eagles Dare (1968) and a pop-up
fold-out for Tamahine (1963), among
others.“My all-time favorite in that department is the four-page glossy
pull-out teaser ad that ran in Box Office
magazine in April 1977 that announced Close
Encounters of the Third Kind would appear at Christmas 1977, unaware that
by that point Star Wars would have
rewritten the genre.” However, that may well be out-gunned in terms of fan
appreciation by Hannan’s collection of 20 original stills from The Empire Strikes Back, many of which
were never released. Hannan was possibly the first journalist to write about
the film when he visited the set during production. “That was in the days
before public relations people ruled the roost and stuck embargoes on
reporting. I worked for a small trade newspaper called The Drawing Paper and managed to garner a set visit. My article was
published long before the film was released.”
The exhibition covers the walls of the three rooms of the
bookshop, so that’s around 12 walls of movie memorabilia. The oldest is Edward
G. Robinson gangster picture Thunder in
the City from 1937.There’s a window
card of John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich in Seven
Sinners (1940), an insert poster for Dark
Command starring John Wayne and Claire Trevor (1940), the pressbook for Love Happy (1949) – Marilyn Monroe Meets The Marx Bros – a
half-sheet for The Rains of Ranchipur
(1955) starring Lana Turner, and a quad for The
Prisoner (1955) starring Alec Guinness. There are also posters for She (1965), War and Peace (1956), Bigger
Than Life (1956) Cat Ballou (19650,
That Darn Cat! (1966),The
Scalphunters (1968), Marooned (1968),
Mackenna’s Gold (1962), Lawrence ofArabia (1962), Macao (1952),
Giant (1956), Blindfold (1966), Chinatown
(1974), Play Dirty (1968), The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), The Las Vegas Story (1952), The Collector (1965) and Zulu Dawn (1979).
Among the selection of movie souvenir programs are: The Guns of Navarone (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Isadora (1968), Paint Your Wagon (1969), El
Cid (1961), The Agony and the Ecstasy
(1965), Cleopatra (1963), Hawaii (1966), Cromwell (1970), Camelot
(1967), Lord Jim (1965) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1967). “I
had imagined that souvenir posters disappeared at the end of the roadshow era
but actually I have ones for The Horsemen
(1971) and The Valachi Papers (1972)”,
said Hannan.
Magazines available include Box Office, Motion Picture
Herald, Kine Weekly, ABC Film Review, Films & Filming, Focus on
Film, Cinema Retro, Star Wars magazines and books, Lord of the Rings magazines and various
MCU and DC comics and graphic novels. Add to that 200 books about the movies.
“As far as I can see there are precious few movie
memorabilia shops left anywhere in the world,” said Hannan.” Most items are now
sold online or at auction. So there’s no chance just to see these old posters
and memorabilia relating to favored movies or triggering a memory. Pop in and
see the exhibition. Everything is for sale.”
(Brian Hannan is the author of over a dozen books on the
movies, the latest being King of the
Action Thriller, Films from the Mind of Alistair MacLean published by
McFarland.
The exhibition is open during shop hours – 10.15am-5.15pm
Tue-Sat.
A
Better Tomorrow is a tale of brotherhood: Mark (Chow
Yun Fat) and Ho (Ti Lung) are best friends raised on the streets of Hong Kong
who now work in organised crime making counterfeit US dollars. Ho also has a
brother, Kit (Leslie Cheung), who works in Hong Kong’s police force and is
dedicated to bringing down organised crime, unaware of his brother’s
connections until things start to go very wrong and Ho is betrayed and his
father murdered. Mark swears to get vengeance for Ho but receives life-changing
injuries in the process, and by the time Ho is let out of prison and returns to
Hong Kong determined to lead an honest life, he discovers Mark is living in
destitute conditions and his brother never wants to see him again. He
reconnects with Mark and together they begin to work out just who
double-crossed them and what they can do to get payback, and how this might
also be able to help Kit finally receive his promotion and become an officer.
This
sounds very melodramatic, and it is, with the love and respect these men have
for each other never far beneath the surface, but what this plot summary fails
to communicate is a) how damn cool everyone is, and b) that this film rewrote
the rules of action cinema, invented a new genre (“Heroic Bloodshed”), made
Chow Yun Fat one of the most iconic actors of his generation, and launched the
stellar action career of director John Woo. This would eventually take him to
Hollywood where he would give us, amongst others, Face/ Off (1997) and Mission
Impossible2 (2000, and not as bad as everyone says it is). The “Heroic
Bloodshed” films that flooded out of Hong Kong were a huge influence on
Hollywood, most notably on the early career of Quentin Tarantino: without A
Better Tomorrow there would have been no City on Fire (Ringo
Lam, 1987), the film that inspired Reservoir Dogs (1992).
The
instant box office success of A Better Tomorrow, at first in Hong Kong
and Taiwan, and then around the world,took everyone by surprise. As
explained in some of the excellent bonus features in this set, this was
effectively John Woo’s last chance as a director. He had been forced to direct
comedies for years, none of which were exactly lighting up the box office.
Producer Tsui Hark (who has a cameo in the film, as does its director) gave
John Woo this final opportunity, but had himself been experiencing box office
trouble recently. The two stars seemed unlikely too; Chow Yun Fat was a
television actor who had been trying, and failing, to break through into cinema
for years, and Ti Lung, a former Shaw Brothers kung fu star who fought
alongside David Chiang in several brotherhood-focused films in the 1970s, was
considered old news with zero audience appeal. So when the film was a hit and
other Hong Kong filmmakers began making “Heroic Bloodshed” films of their own,
the producers naturally demanded a sequel which needed to focus on the post
popular character, Mark. However, given the way things ended for that
character, this was going to require some creativity. John Woo’s first idea was
to make a prequel, but Tsui Hark preferred to make a direct sequel which
magically introduced Mark’s previously unmentioned twin brother Ken, who runs a
Chinese restaurant in New York. This deepened further the brotherhood angle,
with Ken reminiscing about his brother and even donning the iconic Armani
trenchcoat (the budget for Armani coats in A Better Tomorrow was so high
they had to cut some planned action set pieces) and his aviator Ray Ban shades.
Ho is now working as an informant for the police in return for an early prison
release, so that he can get information for his brother who now has a wife and
a baby on the way. Naturally things get complicated, and spectacularly violent.
John
Woo wrote an incredibly complex script telling the stories of its many
characters across two continents, but when his final cut was almost three hours
long producer Tsui Hark had to intervene and the film was trimmed
significantly. Looking at it now, there’s arguably still a lot of character
moments that could have been snipped, particularly a lot of gross close-ups of
people with food all over their faces (at least in my opinion), but the action
scenes, when they come, are sensational. The final confrontation in the villa
of the evil boss is incredible, and there is a seemingly unending supply of
besuited henchmen to mow down, blow up or slice open. One favourite moment
comes when Chow Yun Fat’s Ken throws a grenade through an open door and then
turns his back, facing the camera. The whole wide shot is in slow motion and
when the explosion comes it clearly takes Fat by surprise as he first tries to
remain cool but is eventually knocked over by the blast wave. Apparently, this
burnt some of the hair off the back of his head, and would not be the last time
that John Woo seemed to want to blow him to bits in one of his films (the
finale of Hard Boiled (1992) is on another level).
It
was disagreements over how to produce another follow-up after the success of A
Better Tomorrow II that led to Tsui Hark and John Woo, a brotherhood in
themselves (as analysed in some of the bonus features), splitting and making
separate films. John Woo’s idea for the second film had been to set it in
Vietnam ten years earlier, and this developed into his script for Bullet in
the Head (1990), which he directed a couple of years later. Hark, who was
born in Vietnam but left with his family for Hong Kong because of the war, took
over as director and adapted that original idea into what became A Better
Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon (1989). This is effectively the
origin story of Mark, who travels to Saigon to first help his cousin Chi Mun
(Tony Ka Fei Leung) get out of jail, and then bring him and Mun’s father, his
uncle (played by legendary Hong Kong actor Shih Kien, instantly recognisable
for his role as the villain in Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973),
back home before things get too dangerous in Vietnam. Whilst there they become
embroiled in local organised crime and Mark meets, and falls in love with the
beautiful and dangerous Kit (Anita Mui). She is a complete badass and wears a
trenchcoat and sunglasses whilst mowing down her enemy with submachine guns.
Here we learn how Mark became the Mark we know and love from A Better
Tomorrow, by effectively emulating her. It’s an exciting film with plenty
of action, as we would expect, but it also has a lot to say about what went on
in Vietnam in the 1970s, and invites the viewer to make parallels with what was
currently going on in China (the massacre at Tian’amen Square occurred during
pre-production) and the nervousness in Hong Kong about the impending British handover
of power.
After
decades of being legally unavailable for distribution, last year the lawyers at
Shout Studio managed to achieve what many believed was impossible and secured
the rights to restore over 150 films from the Golden Princess back catalogue,
which included many classic John Woo films such as this trilogy and The
Killer (1989), A Bullet in the Head (1990) and Hard Boiled
(1992). These are the films which cemented Woo’s status as the leading director
of action in East Asia and were all hugely influential on Hollywood in the
1990s (and continue to be today). This deal has allowed other labels to pick up
the titles too, which is how we get this fabulous, stacked hardbox from
Imprint.
Amazon Prime is currently streaming Harry in Your Pocket, a
largely unheralded 1973 comedy/drama that finds James Coburn well-cast
as a debonair "King of the Pickpockets". Along with his partner, the
elderly but equally charismatic Casey (Walter Pidgeon), Harry is intent
on recruiting a couple of newcomers to train as part of an ambitious
pickpocket team. He settles on Ray (Michael Sarrazin) and his new
girlfriend Sandy (comely Trish Van Devere), a destitute couple that is
eager to learn from the master. After some rough edges in the
"training", Ray and Sandy earn their keep by helping Harry set up the
sting operations. Casey decides who will be the victim, Sandy distracts
that person while Harry robs his wallet, then quickly passes it off to
Ray. Harry's golden rule is "Harry doesn't hold", meaning he is never in
possession of the incriminating loot for more than the few seconds it
takes to pass it off to his accomplice.Life with Harry is good. The team
travels extensively and everything is first class. However, it isn't
long before Ray suspects that his real value to the team is the fact
that he is accompanied by Sandy, who Harry clearly has eyes for. Soon,
sexual tension threatens to disrupt the profitable partnership.
It may seem that a film about pick-pocketing might be a complete
yawn. Indeed, there isn't much that happens in terms of plot and the
movie relies almost entirely on the chemistry between cast members.
Fortunately, everyone is at the top of their game. Coburn is charismatic
and charming, but has a hard, threatening edge that makes it clear
Harry is man who is used to getting things his way. It's top flight
Coburn, in terms of performance and he's well-matched by Sarrazin and
Van Devere, who gets to wear some eye-popping mini-skirts to distract
the potential victims. The most kudos, however, go to Pidgeon in a
wonderful late career performance. As the erudite, dapper and
coke-sniffing thief, he dominates every sequence- especially when he
opines about the lack of a code of honor that used to be prevalent among
people of his peculiar trade.
This is the only feature film ever directed by Bruce Geller, best known as the creator and chief writer for the Mission: Impossible TV
series. He handles the action well and capitalizes on lush location
shooting in Seattle, Victoria, BC and Salt Lake City, all set to a funky
Lalo Schifrin score. If there is one dismaying aspect to the movie,
it's the fact that, unlike most films and TV series about charismatic
con-men from The Sting to Hustle, the victims here are not
corrupt executives and politicians, but everyday working people. It's
hard to cheer on the protagonists when they are depriving the guy next
door of his week's wages. Nevertheless, Harry in Your Pocket is a forgotten gem of film and well worth catching up with.
3-DVD NOIR COLLECTOR'S SET- AVAILABLE MAY 26, 2026
INCLUDES 12 FILM EPISODE SYNOPSES
“I didn’t want to kill him… but I wanted him dead.”—
Myra Leeds (Angela Lansbury) Please Murder
Me!
NEW YORK CITY — May
2026 — For Immediate Release: Film Chest Media Group, the classic film company,
will release Dark Film Mysteries IV in a 3 DVD Film Noir Collector’s Set, available
May 26, 2026
Dark Film Mysteries IV continues this
successful noir-based series with an additional 12 films and a robust 17 hours of
stories that include many of the most memorable actors of the genre including
Lizabeth Scott, Raymond Burr, Lee J. Cobb, Hedy Lamarr, Peter Lorre and Fred
MacMurray, along with notables Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen.
The stories featured here reach back to the
year of 1933 with The Kennel Murder Case, (a successful example of an early
talkie), through the 1955 feature, The Man with the Golden Arm starring Frank
Sinatra.
Amongst these films you will find those that
broke new ground with daring content (The Naked Kiss) or were developed in
documentary style (The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery) or used a dream sequence.
The trademark black-and-white cinematography, (used here brilliantly on The Big
Combo), pushes the classic noir tensions and emotional instabilities, fostering
a sense of dread.
Across all these movies, Dark Film Mysteries
IV offers the full throttle of psychological traps, dim lit locations,
twist-turns, femme fatales, deception and murder to set the course for your
dark film viewing pleasure. This carefully reviewed and perceptively assembled
selection of historic “dark crime” master’s will undoubtedly be another
outstanding addition to this popular series.
Dark Film
Mysteries, a continuing noir-based series with 12 films and a robust 17 hours
of Dark Film classics is
presented with an aspect ratio of 4x3 and is available on
DVD ($19.98)
BONUS FEATURES: Episode
Synopsis
About Film Chest:
Founded in 2001, Film Chest offers
high-quality content for a wide variety of production and distribution needs,
boasting one of the world’s largest libraries (10,000+ hours) of classic
feature films, television, foreign imports, documentaries, special interest and
audio—much of it restored and digitized in HD. Headquartered in Meriden, Conn.,
with offices in New York City, the company also produces and distributes
collector’s DVD sets for its American Pop Classics, CULTRA and HD Cinema
Classics labels. Visit us online: www.filmchestmediagroup.com
In this 2015 interview, Robert Redford recalls how he first met and worked with Paul Newman and the friendship that developed between them. He also recounts a very funny, elaborate practical joke that they once played on each other.
Here is a complete ITN News broadcast from 24 June, 1981. If you advance to approximately the 7:45 mark, you'll see coverage of the royal premiere of the James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only" with Prince Charles and Lady Diana attending. The clips show them being greeted by producer Cubby Broccoli and chatting with star Roger Moored, who presents the future king with an official Seiko 007 wristwatch.
In this 1984 interview from the British T.V. show "Sunday Sunday", Herbert Lom provides a rare on-camera interview to promote "Trail of the Pink Panther", the controversial film that director Blake Edwards called a tribute to the deceased Peter Sellers. However, some critics thought the film, which consisted of blending deleted scenes from the series with new footage featuring Sellers' co-stars, was exploitive of the acting icon. Nevertheless, host Gloria Hunniford asks Lom intelligent questions about the Panther series as well as biographical information concerning his career, including starring in the West End production of "The King and I".
The year 1983 was still representative of the glory days for the Oscar ceremonies. In this clip, the camera pans the audience and we see the superstars of the day in sttendance. Today, not so much. This evening was highlighted by a long-overdue honorary Oscar for a true screen legend: Mickey Rooney. It is presented to him by another legend, Bob Hope and Rooney accepts the honor in a graceful and moving speech. The presentation of honorary Oscars used to be a highlight of the broadcast but in recent years, the Academy has given the awards at a private ceremony, of which only a few brief glimpses are shown on the telecast. Thus, moments like Rooney's speech would go all but unseen by millions of viewers, even as the ceremonies allot time for extended comedy skits. (Lee Pfeiffer)
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Arrow Video:
On May 26, the
blockbuster medieval adventure Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves arrives
on 4K UHD. The legend of the English nobleman forced into outlaw life shines
under the direction of Kevin Reynolds (Waterworld). The
limited edition release features brand new 4K restorations of both the
theatrical and extended cuts from the original negative by Arrow Films, hours
of special features, and newly commissioned extras.
Robin of Locksley (Kevin
Costner, The Untouchables) follows King Richard the Lionheart (Sean
Connery, Goldfinger) on a crusade to the Holy Land, only to end
up imprisoned in Jerusalem. After years behind bars, Robin escapes with the
help of Azeem Edin Bashir Al Bakir (Morgan Freeman, The
Shawshank Redemption) and returns to England. Things have gone bad in
Robin’s absence. The evil Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman, Die
Hard) rules as a tyrant, dreaming of wearing the crown. Alongside his
vicious cousin Guy of Gisborne (Michael Wincott, The Crow),
he steals from the poor and the defiant rich alike, including Robin’s father (Brian
Blessed, Flash Gordon). The Sheriff also sets his sights on
marrying Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Scarface).
Special features include
4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation of both cuts in Dolby Vision (HDR10
compatible); original uncompressed stereo and DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio;
optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing; an audio
commentary with director Kevin Reynolds and actor Kevin
Costner; an audio commentary with actors Morgan Freeman, Christian
Slater, and others; a multi-part documentary featuring interviews with
director of photography Douglas Milsome, editor Peter Boyle,
and members of the creative team; an archival documentary hosted by Pierce
Brosnan; archival 1991 interviews with Kevin Costner, Morgan
Freeman, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Christian Slater,
and Alan Rickman; Bryan Adams’ “(Everything I Do) I Do
It for You” performance at Slane Castle, Ireland; music soundtrack cues; the
theatrical trailer; TV spots, an image gallery; a collectors’ perfect-bound
booklet; two double-sided fold-out posters; and six postcard-sized artcards.
A Turner Classic Movies clip from Roger Corman's 1964 production of "Masque of the Red Death", one of the best of his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. The film had a more opulent look than the other adaptations he and Vincent Price collaborated on. That's because when Corman arrived at the studio in England, the sets from the prestigious big-budget film "Becket" were still standing, thus allowing him to use some of them for his movie.
"In Roger Corman’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, the Red Death plague sweeps the countryside, and the devil-worshipping Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) believes his loyalty to Satan will keep him safe. But when Francesca (Jane Asher) begs for the lives of her lover, Gino (David Weston), and her father, Prospero sees an opportunity, and no one inside his castle walls is ready for what the Red Death has in store."
On May 19, Paramount will release a boxed DVD set of every episode of "I Love Lucy" to commemorate the series' 75th Anniversary. Here are the details:
194 OF YOUR FAVORITE GRAPE-STOMPIN’, VITAMEATAVEGAMIN SPOONIN’, SHOW-STEALIN’ EPISODES! PLUS SPECIAL FEATURES ON 33 DISCS!
This
special 75th Anniversary edition of I Love Lucy: The Complete Season
celebrates the legendary comedy that changed television forever,
starring the incomparable Lucille Ball. This complete collection
includes every episode from the classic series that defined sitcom humor
for generations. Packed with iconic moments and timeless laughs, it’s
an essential addition for fans and classic TV collectors.
In
October 1951, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz debuted the first episode of
what was to become one of the best-loved and most watched TV shows of
all time. Zany redhead Lucy and her Cuban bandleader husband Ricky
Ricardo, along with their neighbors and comic foils Ethel and Fred Mertz
(Vivian Vance and William Frawley), got into the most hilarious
predicaments ever imaginable. This must-own collection contains all the
classic episodes from the six seasons of I Love Lucy (1951-1957) plus
three iconic seasons of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957-1960).
Overflowing with notable guest stars and escapades that never lose their
entertainment value, it’s no wonder everyone still loves Lucy.
FEATURES:
Special 75th Anniversary Edition with collectable embossed and gold foil o-sleeve.
One of the most enduring television series of all time!
The show won 5 Emmy Awards and is consistently cited as one of the most
influential television series, maintaining multi- generation appeal.
It is difficult to believe
that it has been thirty-two years since I saw Jim Carrey in Chuck Russell’s
film The Mask, released on Friday, July 29, 1994, multiple times with
multiple people. I recall thinking that Chuck Russell? The man who
directed A Nightmare on Elm Street Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) and The
Blob (1988)?Learning later that the
film’s genesis was originally in the form of a horror film, it makes sense. The
notion of spinning it into a comedy to showcase Mr. Carrey’s considerable talents
was a stroke of genius. It is impressive, and perhaps unprecedented, to see Mr.
Carrey starring in three of his most successful, laugh out loud hilarious, and best-known,
films in the same calendar year.
Following a successful stint
on the television show In Living Color, Mr. Carrey appeared as Ace
Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, and finally Dumb and Dumber,
all of which were box office hits. The Mask is easily my favorite as it
depicts a lot of character. Mr. Carrey’s portrayal of Stanley Ipkiss, a timid
and hopeless romantic (the dreaded “nice guy”) working an unsatisfying job
under the watchful eye of a nepotistic bank manager, is one for the books. Charming
in a non-obsequious way, he is just trying to get by like all of us, and is
master to an adorable Jack Russell Terrier named Milo. His life changes when he
finds a discarded mask – which is possessed by the Norse god Loki who
specialized in pranks – in the nearby river of Edge City. When he wears it at
night, he turns him into a berserk Don Juan imbued with trickery and cartoonish
behavior attempting to woo Tina Carmichael (Cameron Diaz in a splendid big
screen debut) who recently opens an account at his bank. Unfortunately for Mr.
Ipkiss, Edge City is also home to an organized crime territory struggle between
Niko (Orestes Matacena) and Dorian Tyrell (the late actor Peter Greene from
Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction), the latter who also happens to be
Tina’s boyfriend. Along for the ride are the late Richard Jeni as Stanley’s
co-worker, Amy Yasbeck as news reporter Peggy Brandt who uses Stanley for a
story, and Peter Riegert as a police lieutenant doing anything he can to arrest
Stanley. And of course, there is Milo, who comes to the rescue as bails Stanley
out of jail. Among the cartoon insanity are several musical numbers that come
out of nowhere and would feel perfunctory in another setting. They work
splendidly here because they contain the same level of manic silliness that makes
the film so much fun.
The Mask
takes the awkwardness of male machismo and the desire to impress women to a
hilarious extreme. Stanley is Every Guy wanting to appeal to women and have
fun, but cannot seem to do so in his current Every Man state. By the end of the
film, Stanley gets The Girl, and all he had to do was be himself.
Jim Carrey was a virtual
unknown at the time having had a recurring role on In Living Color and The
Duck Factory. He made a brilliant transition to films and really shines
here. So does The Mask in its latest home video incarnation on 4K Ultra
High Definition Blu-ray from Arrow Films. We get a 4K restoration of the film
from the original camera negative approved by director Chuck Russell.
The original audio
commentary with Chuck Russell from the DVD has been ported over.
A second audio commentary
with Chuck Russell, New Line co-chairman Bob Shaye, screenwriter Mike Werb,
executive producer Mike Richardson, producer Bob Engelman, ILM VFX supervisor
Scott Squires, animation supervisor Tom Bertino and cinematographer John R.
Leonetti has also been ported over.
TheMan
Behind the Mask is a newly filmed interview with director Chuck Russell,
shot in 2025. It runs 20:27. Mr. Russell comes from a comedic background and
worked on Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield in 1986. The original
comic of The Mask possessed (no pun intended) a dark sense of humor and
was more horrific in nature and tone. He was motivated by Jerry Lewis in The
Nutty Professor (1963). He acknowledges seeing Peter Green in Clean,
Shaven and needed him for the villain. Given that Jim Carrey was sick
during the Cuban Pete sequence, it is remarkable that he was able to
perform it.
From Strip to Screen –
Adapting the Comic into a Blockbuster is a newly filmed interview
with creator and executive producer Mike Richardson and screenwriters Mark
Verheiden and Mike Werb, shot in 2025, and running 18:33. They primarily
discuss the differences between the original comic book and the finished film,
especially the addition of Milo, the Jack Russell Terrier and Cameron Diaz as
Mr. Carrey’s love interest. She is brilliant in her film debut.
Green Faces Blue Screens –
The Visual Effects of The Mask is also a newly filmed
interview shot in 2025. It runs 14:16 and showcases visual effects supervisor
Scott Squires whose background as a high school newspaper photographer and a theater
projectionist allowed him to come up with ideas for films. His first
professional gig was working with Douglas Trumbull in 1976 on Steven
Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and later on with Robert
Wise on Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). John Badham’s Blue
Thunder (1983) and W.D. Richter’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
Across the 8th Dimension (1984) followed.
Sssssssplicin'! Editing The
Mask
is also a newly filmed interview with editor Arthur Coburn, running 6:51 and
shot in 2025. He started in the 1970s assisting film editors like Walter Murch
and worked his way up to editor. He speaks rather quickly and I would have
liked to hear about the other people he worked with over the years.
Ask Peggy – Amy Yasbeck
Tells All! is a newly filmed interview with actress Amy Yasbeck who
played Peggy. She looks almost the same as she did in the movie from 32 years
ago! Heartbreakingly, she was married to the late actor John Ritter, who would
run through the script with her (this is something I would love to see).
Toeing the Conga Line –
Making The Mask Move is a newly shot interview with choreographer
Jerry Evans in 2025. This piece runs 10:09 and includes on-set footage from
when the film was shot between August and October in 1993 featuring
never-before-seen rehearsal footage.
Terriermania: The Mask and
America’s Obsession with the Jack Russell Terrier runs
10:18 and is a new video essay by critic Elizabeth Purchell on Milo and the
introduction of the Jack Russell into popular culture in the form of television
series and movies, to appeal to animal lovers.
The Archival section
features the following standard definition featurettes that appeared on the
original special edition DVD release of the film:
Return to Edge City
runs 27:18 and covers much of the same ground that is in the newly shot
material and interviews, especially regarding Milo the Terrier and the
Industrial Light and Magic visual effects.
The Making of The Mask
runs 3:11 and is more of a promotional piece.
Interview Bites
runs 4:38 and includes comments from the set during shooting from Cameron Diaz,
Peter Green, Richard Jeni, Jim Carrey, Peter Riegert, director Chuck Russell, and
even little Milo weighs in.
Introducing Cameron Diaz
runs 13:19 and covers at length the difficulty the production team experienced
trying to cast the character of Tina Carlyle.
Cartoon Logic runs
13:44 and covers the Tex Avery cartoons that inspired The Mask.
Animation historian John Canemaker, who animated the “angry old goat” on Sesame
Street and worked on Richard Williams’s Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical
Adventure (1977), chimes in about how Mr. Avery created characters that
went through a series of hilarious and violent maneuvers, with characters
exaggerated to an insane degree.
What Makes Fido Run
runs 10:52 and examines the challenges that animal trainers find themselves in
when training dogs for film productions.
There are two deleted scenes:
Viking scene, with optional commentary by director Russell, running 1:50;
The Death of Peggy, with optional commentary by director Russell, running
2:05.
There is some B-roll that
runs 5:24.
The requisite theatrical
trailer runs 1:59.
There are two image galleries:
the first is an on-set production photo gallery that runs 6:51 and features 411
photos. The second is a stills gallery featuring 16 publicity images of
Stanley, Milo, and Tina.
There is a reversible sleeve
featuring two original artwork options.
Arrow has included a beautifully
illustrated collector's booklet running 38 pages lavishly illustrated with 66
color photos. It features new writing on the film by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
and original production notes. The essay is called Masks of Dreams, Masks of
Nightmares. She is the author of the 2019 book Masks in Horror Cinema:
Eyes Without Faces and here discusses how The Mask was originally
positioned as a horror film. The oldest known mask is 9,000 years old. The mask
fanaticism that plagued the COVID-19 plague is also referenced.
There is a double-sided
fold-out poster featuring two original artwork options.
Also included are six
postcard-sized reproduction art cards.
If you’re a fan of The Mask, this set is a
ssssssssssssmokin’ must!
Brandeis
University professor of American studies, Thomas Doherty, has published several
books on Hollywood and film history, especially as they pertain to geo-political
topics. For example, his 2018 work on the Hollywood Blacklist (Show Trial:
Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist) is an excellent resource
for anyone researching that sordid time in our history.
Now
comes How Film Became History, which examines the birth of what is
called the “archival documentary.” Exactly what is that? The “documentary” as a
film genre existed since the birth of the medium. The very first films by the
Lumiere Brothers and Thomas Edison are indeed documentaries because they were
depictions of real life at the time (trains coming into a station from the
former, or a cock fight from the latter). As cinema entered the 20th Century
and progressed into what we call the “Silent Era,” all kinds of footage was
shot around the world. Kings and queens, presidents, and monarchs were captured
on celluloid in official and unofficial settings. There was footage from the
First World War. The birth of aviation and all those spectacular crashes caught
on film.
By
the 1930s, there was a backlog of nearly four decades of documentary footage of
all kinds. So, when sound came into the process, what does one do with all this
silent documentary footage? You make an anthology of the footage and add
a voice narrator, and voila—the “archival documentary” is the result.
And we are all familiar with them. All those newsreels that became part of the
cinema-going experience in the 30s, 40s, and 50s (they began to die out in the
60s) are archival documentaries. The filmmaker would select and assemble
footage from, say, the Tsar of Russia and his family prior to the Russian
Revolution and present a brand new documentary about the Tsar of Russia, all
narrated by an actor (or academician) with a commanding voice. Today, just
about every collage of a newsworthy event is an archival documentary if it
utilizes already existing film.
Doherty
takes us on a journey through some of the earliest (and rarest) examples of
this unique subgenre that really became probably the main form of documentary
cinema in the century. The First World War, written and directed by
Laurence Stallings, was released in 1934. The author claims this was the first
archival documentary from a major Hollywood studio (Fox). It contains
incredible footage from that conflict, stitched together to form a narrative.
Some of that footage was apparently too gruesome to show originally and was
thus censored by the military, instead painting a rosier picture of the war to
the public. The First World War changed that by including the uncensored
footage. By the way—you can see The First World War only by streaming it
from the Imperial War Museum’s website.
Other
chapters in Doherty’s book discuss Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.’s Hitler’s Reign
of Terror from 1934, Max Eastman and Herman Axelbank’s Tsar to Lenin from
1937, and more.
Then
there is The March of Time, the ever-popular newsreel series that
cinemagoers enjoyed prior to the feature film. Sponsored by Time, Inc., these
shorts that spanned from 1935 to 1951 were some of the best sources of news
that the average citizen could get. All archival documentaries.
While
Doherty takes an academic approach to the subject matter, anyone interested in
documentary filmmaking, cinema history, and the politics of propaganda should
enjoy How Film Became History.
Depending on the regional market – in this case
Charlotte, North Carolina - Paul Harrison’s chiller The House of Seven Corpses would premiere as early as mid-December 1973.
Doubling as co-writer and producer on the pic, Harrison’s directorial work was
mostly consigned to television.The
scenario of Seven Corpses was
co-written by Harrison with Thomas J. Kelly… of whom I can find only one
additional writing credit.For an
obvious low-budget feature, the featured cast is a surprisingly impressive one.The pic’s players includes the familiar faces
of a trio of veteran film and television stars: John Ireland, Faith Domergue
and John Carradine.
The scenario: a film crew chooses the spooky old “Beal
Estate,” a brooding mansion (with adjoining graveyard), to shoot a low-budget
satanic horror film.The film’s star
Gayle Dorian (Faith Domergue) sighs the mansion is “not exactly the Beverly
Hilton is it?” True ‘dat. The gloomy
locale was partly selected due to its real-life ghastly past.Seven members of the Beal family met untimely
and violent ends within the mansion’s walls: an unexplainable fall, a drowning,
a shooting, a hanging, a stabbing and even a bludgeoning by candlestick.The bodies of seven of these unfortunates are
accounted for by their gravestones.But a
mysterious eighth grave remains unmarked… and no one is quite sure why.They’ll find out soon enough.
The film’s production becomes, ahem, troubled when cast
member Anne (Carole Wells) and film tech David (Jerry Strickler) discover the
Beal mansion library holds a stash of books concerning black magic and the
occult.Though Anne wishes otherwise,
David becomes increasingly enchanted – one might say obsessed - by one musty
volume, The Tibetan Book of the Dead.David suggests to director Eric Hartman
(Ireland) that passages from the book should be incorporated into their own film
to provide a measure of authenticity.
Hartman agrees.He
notes while the hoodoo found in the book “maybe garbage” it’s still “better
garbage than what the writer gave us.”This ultimately proves to be a terrible decision – as everyone discovers
when David chooses to read the book’s demonic incantations aloud.If that’s not enough to disturb the grim atmosphere,
there’s also a creepy, aged caretaker (Carradine) lurking about, unsettling
everyone with his doomy warnings.
Hey, this is not the worse set-up for a horror film.Unfortunately, while something is always happening on screen there’s little
in the way of pay-off: a bit of mystery, perhaps, but few atmospheric chills.This theatrical film arrived courtesy of the
Television Corporation of America and… well, it mostly presents as a typical run-of-mill
made-for-television programmer. Director of Photography Don Jones does what he
can.The film looks very “nineteen-seventies”
in its grit and grain. The film’s many interiors tend to be on the dark side…
which is fair, as the house supposedly has no electricity and brightened at
night only by candles.It’s also fair to
say the pic’s graveyard scenes manage to convey a genuine atmospheric eeriness.
The film ultimately falters due to the too-slow burn of
its fuse.One could forgive the long
stretches of sidecar storytelling if the film had ignited spectacularly at its
denouement.But the last reel is only
marginally more chilling than anything offered earlier.It doesn’t help that the characters (well,
let’s call them “victims-in-waiting”) aren’t well developed - or even made likable
– in scripting.As unpleasant director
Hartman, John Ireland comes off as petulant, demanding, impatient and
insulting.He’s particularly hard on the
film’s star Gayle Dorian.Yes, she’s a
bit diva-ish on and off set, sometimes annoying and certainly high-strung.But her rattled emotional state is partly
understandable as she suffers no shortage of verbal abuse by Hartman.Oddly, the script never attempts to completely
explain this pair’s combative yet seemingly co-dependent professional and
personal relationship.
Actress Domergue does her best with the material given, reciting
windy passages of satanic gibberish or tending to her beloved cat, Cleon.Though Domergue appeared in only a handful of
sci-fi films (all released in 1955), a number of them were classics: Cult of the Cobra, This Island Earth, It Came
from Beneath the Sea and The Atomic
Man.For those holding fond memories
of Domergue’s performances in those films, it was certainly nostalgic to see
her terrorized on the big-screen again.Conversely,
one wishes she was threatened in a better vehicle than this.Though Seven
Corpses was not the sort of pic to enjoy studious notices in the press, a
few reviews did trickle in.The Los Angeles Times allowed while Seven Corpses might be a “sour apple,”
actress Domergue “manages to act impressively in the film within the film.”
For better or worse (and, alas, the actor’s late-stage
filmography was often for the worse), I still remain an unabashed fan of John
Carradine.When Seven Corpses went before the cameras in Salt Lake City in September
and October of 1972, the legendary actor was still of the sprite age of
sixty-six.Depending on how you look at
it, Carradine was either fittingly or generously third-billed in this film’s
credits.I would suggest it was the
former, as his role as the creaky and mysterious caretaker Edgar Vincent is
fairly substantive.By the 1980s, too many
of Carradine’s appearances in (mostly) low, low
budget horrors were found in blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em small roles or cameos.The actor’s presence in Seven Corpses – abetted by his famous low-growl perfect diction and
eye-rolling madness - brings gravitas to an otherwise unremarkable film.
Ported over from the Severin release of 2013, is a
remarkable twenty-eight minute, on-screen interview with Carradine. (This feature
is included only on the Blu-ray disc of Kino Cult’s Seven Corpses 4K/Blu twin as is the film’s scratchy trailer).Film historians with more formidable
pedigrees than myself have noted that one shouldn’t always believe everything
Carradine shares in reminiscence.It’s charged
no matter how lucid his stories and memories may sound, the actor wasn’t above
embellishing otherwise small vignettes into tall tales.At one point in the interview Carradine
mentions having once gone to Vienna to play either Dracula or a similar vampire
alongside German actor Curd Jürgens.This tidbit of info certainly made curious film wonks scramble for
confirmation.To my knowledge, no film
nor stage play of this exists.
In the interview (originally recorded in February 1983),
Carradine is continually pressed to discuss his career in horror films.The classically-trained actor is pretty
dismissive of his work in the genre, offering he made only about “twenty-five”
such films in his career.Well, should one
choose to include among his “horror” filmography overlapping sci-fi and mystery
films, I reckon Carradine made somewhere in the vicinity of double that number
by 1983… with a lot more ghoulish-shlock to come.Though Carradine (b. 1906) shares gracious
memories of working with such greats as Karloff and Lugosi, the actor laments
his horror film appearances as “the least of my work.” He notes his favorite horror film was Paul
Wegener’s silent film classic The Golem
of 1920.
Carradine also unapologetically denigrates the work of the
youthful modern actors with whom he presently intermingles as “not very good.”He namechecks some of the great actors in the
past: Lionel Atwill, Elsa Lanchester, Lionel Barrymore and Tyrone Power etc.: the
sort of actors who learned their craft on the proper professional stage.Carradine’s opinion in this regard is not
surprising. The actor’s long film career ran parallel with and concurrent to
his stage work.Carradine generously allows
his favorite films in which he appeared did not necessarily feature him in leading
roles, but simply as one member of a great ensemble: Victor Fleming’s Captain Courageous (1937), John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and Rouben
Mamoulian’s Blood and Sand (1941).His opined his favorite role was that of Sir
Thomas More in a stage production of playwright Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons. If Carradine overplayed many of his “horror”
film characters with a measure of tongue-in-cheek over-the-top bemusement – as
is often charged - it’s likely that he found the material ridiculous and
beneath his station.
That was
my answer every time I was asked, "When are we going to see your
book?" I had only been in the business 40 years and thought that memoirs
came at the end of a career. I had worked on Star Wars and Bond films, gaining
some fans, and had been a signing guest at film and TV conventions all over the
world. Also, I had been giving talks about my life and stunts for some time,
and occasionally a two-hour 'An Evening with Paul Weston', relating my life as
a fashion model and stuntman. As always, the dreaded question would be asked,
"Have you written your book yet?"
Writing
was a problem for me, growing up in north London during the Second World War,
dodging bombs, and running down to air raid shelters. My education was poor in
a system that didn't seem to care and did nothing to help my dyslexia. So, at
15 years-old I was shoved out into the working world with no certificates of
any kind, not even an 11-plus. Oh, I did have a gold star for boxing, which
helped in my future career — that's the boxing, not the star!
I had to
admit that my life had been somewhat unusual, from my early days in fashion, to
extra work on film, to my 'Claims to Fame' as I call them: dancing with Charlie
Chaplin in The Countess from Hong Kong, singing with the Beatles on Help!,
standing up actress Lauren Bacall, being considered to play James Bond, and not
complaining when the future King of England hit me over the head with a bottle.
About
four years ago my family, friends, and fans finally convinced me I should start
to put something down on paper. I was starting to mature a little and didn't
know when I may shuffle off this mortal —! But where do I start?
I didn't
want it to be a book of my stunts — "There I stood, 60 feet up, on fire
and —" I also didn't want a ghost writer. I wanted it to be a true story
about my life in my words, warts and all.
(Photo courtesy of Paul Weston.)
I feel
privileged to have been stunt double for Superman and James Bond, and to have
worked with some of the most famous directors, actors, and actresses in the
film and TV industry.
It had
been 60 years since I first walked through the gates of Pinewood Studios and
into a life that a scruffy little kid from the war-torn streets of London could
never have conceived. A career that took me from Pinewood to Hollywood, and
into the music world, becoming friends with Sammy Davis Jr., Dionne Warwick,
and joining Hugh Hefner for Sunday lunch at the Playboy Mansion.
My wife
Dolly and I had been married 60 years when I started writing, and tapping out
those intervening years made me realise the many months I had been away on
locations, away from her and my two daughters. The film industry is a hard
taskmaster, and our families suffer for our art, so I wanted to include them as
they are woven throughout my long career — ‘long’ being the operative word.
I
thought I'd start with a little action. It seemed the right way to go, and so I
began with the epic A Bridge Too Far —
"There I was, 100 feet up, hanging on a malfunctioning parachute —" I
know! Anyway, the chute was malfunctioning, and I thought I was about to die.
They say that in that situation your life flashes before you. I survived and
decided to write the book as though my life was flashing before me.
I began
writing and couldn't stop! Covering 1940 up to the swinging 60’s and on to late
1996, the page count was over 500 — too many for one book — and I had more
stories too, both in front of and behind the camera, plus I was still working
in 2025.
What
could I cut out that wasn't part of my life? The early wartime stories I had
written for my grandchildren, to help them understand what it meant to be in a
war and to know poverty. I thought perhaps those could go, but the friends who
read it said to keep them in, as it is not just my story — it's history.
Although
I was warned against putting my life into two books - being told it would never
work, it looks like it may actually be three! Book 1, Falling
Into Film: A Stuntman's Early Adventures, is
published. Book 2, From Pinewood to Hollywood
(working title) covering through to 1996, is written and I'm editing it. And
Book 3..?
I now
know how to start a book; the trick is knowing when to stop.
Disc reviewers have an obligation to listen carefully to
audio commentaries.But as a growing
number of 4K and Blu-ray releases now offer as many as three (sometimes more)
separate commentary tracks, it’s becoming a challenge to give them all a proper
listening.Having sat through a couple
of hundred of such multiple audio commentaries, you learn there’s a lot of repetitive,
mind-numbing information to wade through.Having said that, I’ve also discovered even the most well-read of film
enthusiasts can glean something new or interesting.
I certainly learned something new from Rob Kelly’s
commentary of Herbert L. Strock’s The
Crawling Hand (1963).Almost as an
aside, Kelly casually informs that those who attending a 1963 screening of The Crawling Hand and The Slime People at Rutherford, New
Jersey’s Route 3 Drive-in in were treated to a third exciting “extra attraction.”
This nugget of information was not only new to me, but even personal.The Route 3 Drive-in was my drive-in theater in the late 1960s and 1970s, a venue associated
with precious familial memories.
Apparently, just as the showing of The Crawling Hand was getting underway, a fire broke out in the
kitchen of the drive-in’s cement block concession stand.Though the concessionaires did their best to
put out the flames via fire extinguisher, it was of little benefit.Ultimately it took the efforts of five local
fire companies to extinguish the inferno.According to a report I found in the Passaic
Herald News, the entire “interior of the four-lane, cafeteria style
refreshment stand was gutted,” damage estimated at some $25,000.
Luckily the theater’s projection booth – seven-five feet
away - was not damaged.The General
Manager of the drive-in chose to keep rolling The Crawling Hand despite the curious crowd’s attention having understandably
shifted from the screen in front to the inferno blazing behind.“The show must go on,’ the GM told reporters,
defending his decision to keep the projectors rolling throughout the torching.
‘We haven’t missed a showing in 17 years.”I imagine those who waited to purchase their popcorn, candy and soda
until intermission were now second-guessing that decision.
Reading through news accounts of the event, I was
surprised to learn The Crawling Hand
began rolling as early as 6:30 PM.That
starting time made no sense.It was only
then that I discovered the fire broke out on Sunday night, December 22,
1963.December… in New Jersey?So of course it was dark at 6:30 PM.The drive-in was apparently still showing
films during a wintry Christmas week.I decided
to check out the newspaper’s weather forecast that night: high temps in the low
20s with a chance of snow after midnight.No wonder everyone was crowding around the concession stand fire.They were trying to keep warm.
Which brings us, at long last, to VCI’s new Blu-ray mirroring
(sans fire) that double-feature of The
Crawling Hand and The Slime People,
released a mere sixty-three years following the Route 3 drive-in screening.VCI had previously issued these two pics as a
single DVD release in 2013, nicely upgraded here.Some of the bonus features included on the DVD
set are included here (minus the film’s original trailers).Most notable is Tom Weaver’s audio interview
with actress Susan Hart (“Lisa Galbraith” in The Slime People).
However, we’re going to start with The Crawling Hand.Director Herbert
L. Strock was obviously interested in movies offering macabre fare, often pics
with sci-fi shadings. Though he primarily
worked in television, Strock had also directed a number of big screen flicks.Some of these are warmly remembered fondly by
horror-film aficionados: Gog (1954), I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957), Blood of Dracula (1957) and How to Make a Monster (1958).While disembodied crawling hand films weren’t
entirely new – Robert Florey’s mystery The
Beast with Five Fingers (1946, with Peter Lorre) is perhaps the best
recalled – Strock gives that old premise a new sci-fi twist. The cast of The Crawling Hand is comprised of a lot
of television talent (Alan Hale Jr., Peter Breck and Kent Taylor), but also
features two big-screen figures: one old (Richard Arlen of the 1927 silent
classic Wings), one new (Allison (Attack of the 50-Foot Woman) Hayes). Despite
its measly budget, The Crawling Hand delivers
adequate chills and offers a passably engaging story.
The folks at the Route 3 Drive-in who chose to forgo The Crawling Hand to watch the
concession stand burn down that December night missed the better of the two films.
The space center has briefly lost contact with the solo astronaut piloting
their X-20 lunar spaceship on its return to Earth. The control center team of
Steve Curan (Peter Breck) and Dr. Max Weitzberg (Kent Taylor) are troubled by
this interruption of contact as they’ve tragically already lost an astronaut –under
similar circumstances - on a previous lunar mission descent.
They do finally make contact with X-20, but the aggrieved
voice of the spaceman – who claims to have been without oxygen for some
twenty-minutes - implores the techs to push the “red button” and destroy the plummeting
craft.When asked why he’s chosen not to
simply push the destruct button available inside the craft itself, the
desperate astronaut mysteriously answers, “It won’t let me.”It’s a pretty cracking beginning.
The action then shifts to earth where medical college
student Paul Lawrence (Rod Lauren) is busily wooing Swedish foreign exchange
student Marta Farnstrom (Sirry Steffen).Their fun afternoon on the beach is spoiled however when the pair
discover a severed arm on the sand.Paul
later collects the arm and brings the appendage home with him, hiding it behind
some chemical beakers on his shelf.This
turns out to be a not particularly good idea.
The radiation-burned hand is somehow imbued by an alien energy
that takes control of human hosts and commands them to strangle fellow
earthlings.This rampage begins with the
strangulation of poor old Mrs. Hotchkiss (Arline Judge) with whom student Paul
boards.A coroner’s report identifies
the fingerprints that strangled Hotchkiss as that of astronaut Mel
Lockhart.But how can that be?Lockhart, the pilot of X-20 is, of course,
dead.One need not worry as perplexed scientists
Curan and Weitzberg along with non-believer Sheriff Townsend (Hale Jr.) – the
latter of whom suspects Paul is Hotchkiss’ murderer – are on the case.
On his commentary of The
Crawling Hand, Rob Kelly (“artist, reviewer, podcaster and film buff
extraordinaire!” as per the sleeve notes) offers a light, fun and informative accounting
of this opus.He blessedly keeps the IMDB
filmography listing credits of cast and crew members brief.He also (as so many commentators
understandably do) references stories culled from the pages of Tom Weaver’s indispensable
catalog of first-person interviews with the people connected to the production
of these films.Kelly, of course, also
provides and mixes in his own unique insights and research findings as
well.One such moment occurs when he recounts
the amusing controversy surrounding the design of the film’s original one-sheet
poster.
The original “blue” poster featured a photo frame of half-nude
actress Steffen posing lasciviously, her prominent, half-draped backside on
display with the blurb, “She revealed her
body but not the secret!”Due to the
protests of the ever-present morality police, a second “green” one-sheet was
commissioned to replace the “nudie” photo with one of fright-faced astronaut “Mel
Lockhart.”Interestingly, the moralists
didn’t take issue with the block image of actress Arline Judge being strangled
“in a violent manner.”Which just goes
to show what images, circa 1963, our forgiving-of-violence society deemed acceptable.
Criterion has released a new 4K special edition of director John Boorman's 1967 crime classic "Point Blank", a film that was pivotal in breaking ground in terms of presenting on-screen violence in a realistic fashion. Here, an admirer of the film, director Jim Jarmusch, describes the aspects of the movie that led him to name this his favorite crime movie.
From Criterion:
"Presented here is an excerpt from a new interview with Jarmusch that is available in full on Criterion’s new 4K-restoration edition of POINT BLANK, alongside a full-length commentary featuring Boorman and Steven Soderbergh; a documentary on Alcatraz and the making of the film; a new program on the Los Angeles architecture in the film; interviews with John Boorman, Lee Marvin, and critic Mark Harris; and more."
In addition to being an Oscar winning actor, Ray Milland’s
impressive credentials included his work as director. Commencing in the mid-1950s, Milland helmed
several low-budget films, casting himself in the starring roles.Most were undistinguished pot-boilers, but Panic in the Year Zero! is an anomaly.
The film presents the era of Cold War paranoia in a vivid and disturbing manner
that overshadows the movie’s meager production values and Milland’s often
clunky direction. He stars as Harry Baldwin, a typical middle-class,
middle-aged American who seeks nothing more than to load up his caravan/trailer
and take his family on a pleasant camping excursion in a remote mountain area
of California. He’s joined by his wife Ann (Jean Hagan) and his teenaged kids
Rick (Frankie Avalon) and Karen (Mary Mitchel).No sooner do they get on the outskirts of Los Angeles when they witness
an enormous mushroom cloud. News comes through the radio that the U.S. and an
unnamed enemy nation are engaged in nuclear strikes against each other. Harry
decides he has to move quickly to safeguard his family – at any cost.
It’s at this point in the story that the tale becomes
distinctive from the general pacifist nature of nuclear Armageddon films that
were produced during the Cold War. If Stanley’s Kramer’s On the Beach was a cautionary tale seen through the prism of a
liberal, Panic in the Year Zero! appears
to have been written by the executive board of the National Rifle Association.
The character of Harry Baldwin may emerge as the voice of sanity and
decisiveness, but only from the standpoint of being willing to do whatever it
takes to survive – and damn to hell anyone who gets in his way. This aspect of
the film is what separates it from most of the ‘kumbaya’-themed pacifist
messages exuded by other movies of the era.
Harry’s first move
is to exploit people in remote towns who have not heard the devastating news
about the destruction of Los Angeles. The concept of a population segment being
ignorant of the destruction of a major city may seem absurd in the age of
instant communication, but it was a conceivable concept in 1962. He immediately
buys up all of the supplies, guns and ammunition he can before the townspeople
realize their very survival will depend on access to these items in the days to
come. When his money runs out, he blatantly terrorizes and robs an innocent
shop keeper to get his stash of guns and ammo. This hardly makes for the
actions of the typical American screen hero of the era, but that’s precisely
what makes the film bristle with tension. At another point, Harry and his
family attempt to get their car and trailer across a motorway upon which
thousands of other cars are speeding away from the L.A. area. He devises a
unique solution to the problem by pouring gasoline on the roadway and igniting
it. In the resulting chaos, he’s able to cross the road, but innocent drivers
are endangered and their cars burst into flames as the result of his actions. Harry’s
actions horrify his wife but he justifies his behavior by citing the necessity
for practicing a Darwin-like philosophy that only the fit will survive the
brave new world that the nuclear holocaust has initiated.
Ultimately, Harry leads his family to a remote cave in
the midst of a forest where the family used to vacation. Here, his survivalist
instincts are brought to the fore as he prepares his loved ones for a
threadbare existence. Armed to the teeth, he jealously guards the meager domain
they have established. Harry’s paranoia proves to be justified when his
daughter is brutally raped by a roving band of teen-aged thugs. He tracks them
to a house where he rescues Marilyn (Joan Freeman), a teen-aged girl who is being
kept as a sex slave by the thugs, who have murdered her parents. This leads to dramatic
developments that we won’t divulge here, ‘lest we provide spoilers.
What sets Panic in
the Year Zero! apart from other doomsday thrillers of the period is the
willingness to show the central protagonist engaging in behavior that was
completely against the grain for American screen heroes of the era. Milland
also doesn’t shy away from other distasteful aspects of the character’s plight.
While other directors might have compromised on the sequence of Harry’s
daughter being sexually threatened, the script makes it quite clear that the
girl has indeed been actually raped, leaving her parents to grapple with the
inevitable psychological burden she will carry henceforth. The filmrather perversely benefited from real life
events, as it was released only months before the Cuban Missile Crisis which
brought the world to the brink of nuclear war and made widespread the same
paranoid instincts Milland’s Harry displays in the story. (In America, people
coped with scenarios such as whether to allow their neighbors into their
well-stocked backyard fall-out shelters if nuclear war were to break out, a
plot device used by Rod Serling in a classic episode of The Twilight Zone.)
Without the benefit of a sizeable budget, Milland the director sometimes makes
awkward concessions to the technical aspects of the production, which are
indeed shoddy. Still, he displays a bold instinct as a filmmaker that makes one
wonder what caliber of films he could have been capable of creating if he had
been given adequate resources. As it stands, Panic in the Year Zero! is a flawed, but compelling film that
boldly explores territory that many more mainstream productions would have
shied away from. The movie is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.(The film is currently out of print on physical media in the U.S.)
Carpenter. Romero. Craven. Hooper.
Cronenberg. These legendary directors are immediately recognizable to fans of
horror cinema; especially fans of late 20th century horror cinema.
However, there are some filmmakers who, although their filmographies aren’t as
extensive, have made some classic and sometimes original horror movies, but
never got the recognition they truly deserved. Brooklyn born Jeff Lieberman is
definitely one of those filmmakers. With only five genre flicks to his name (so
far), the talented Lieberman has directed some completely solid and seriously
underrated works.
His entertaining filmography began with
1976’s Squirm, a nature-strikes-back
movie in which a horde of carnivorous worms attack a small Georgia town. In
1981, Lieberman contributed to the super popular slasher genre with Just Before Dawn, a great flick which
sees a group of vacationers terrorized by homicidal twins in the Oregon Mountains.
Although the movie seems to be inspired by Tobe Hooper’s 1974 masterwork The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Lieberman
had never seen the film (at that time) and has stated that he was instead
influenced by John Boorman’s Deliverance
(1972). Next up is 1988’s fun Remote
Control, a sci-fi/horror picture where an alien-made VHS tape turns viewers
into crazed killers. It would be almost two decades before Lieberman would
direct again, but, in 2004, he didn’t disappoint with Satan’s Little Helper, a black comedy which takes place on
Halloween and follows a young boy who unwittingly accompanies a masked killer
on a murder spree.
Lieberman’s films are not only extremely
enjoyable, but they are clearly the product of an artist with a definite point
of view and all of his movies are now considered cult classics. Recently, Blue Sunshine, which, in my opinion, is
the writer/director’s greatest work, has been released on 4K Blu-ray.
Blue Sunshine deals with Jerry
Zipkin (Zalman King), an innocent man wrongly accused of murdering several
people at a party. While on the run and trying to clear his name, Jerry
discovers that the real killer’s homicidal psychosis stems from a drug he took
in the 1960s called Blue Sunshine. The delayed side effects of this
hallucinogen are hair loss, splitting headaches, sensitivity to loud noises,
total insanity and an extreme urge to kill. What’s worse, Jerry comes to the
horrifying realization that Blue Sunshine had been taken by many people in the 60s
and all of them are now walking time bombs.
In a list of little known, underrated horror
films, Blue Sunshine would be close
to the top. It’s an extremely engaging and original horror/suspense film
(Lieberman came up with the idea after his brother, who is a doctor, told him
about patients freaking out years after dropping acid) with a simple, but very
effective premise. Lieberman keeps the mesmerizing story moving and deftly creates
many moments of dread as well as perfectly timed bits of humor.
Distributed by Cinema Shares International in
late 1977, Blue Sunshine is greatly
helped along by its incredible assortment of talented actors. Zalman King
rightly gives a bizarre, over-the-top and eccentric performance as the
panic-stricken, erratic and desperate hero Jerry Zipkin. Supporting King, we have
marvelous turns from Deborah Winters, Mark Goddard, Robert Walden, Charles
Siebert, Alice Ghostley, Stefan Gierasch, Billy Crystal’s look-alike brother
Richard, and the late, great Brion James, just to name a few.
This criminally overlooked, frightening and
sometimes humorous film should have put Lieberman on the map. Why it didn’t, I
have no idea except that maybe it was just too quirky for the “normals”. For
example, there’s a wonderfully surreal puppet show featuring Frank Sinatra and
Barbara Streisand hand puppets, a parrot that keeps saying “Blue Sunshine”, and
Brion James imitating Rodan from a Godzilla movie. This is an imaginative,
individualistic and amazing movie from an extremely gifted filmmaker and I highly
recommend checking it out.
Blue Sunshine has been released on
a region A, B, and C 4K disc by Synapse. It is presented in its original 1.85:1
aspect ratio and the beautiful 4K restoration of the original 35mm camera
negative mastered in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible) boasts sharp images and
terrific sound, making it superior to all previous releases. The disc is also
loaded with special features. We are treated to two audio commentaries by Jeff
Lieberman; a new introduction by Lieberman; an archival Jeff Lieberman
interview from 2003; Lieberman on Lieberman video interview; Channel Z Fantasy
Film Festival interview with Mick Garris and Jeff Lieberman; Fantasia Film
Festival 4K premiere Q&A with moderator Michael Gingold and Jeff Lieberman;
two anti-drug “scare films” from the late 1960s; Lieberman’s first film The Ringer presented in both the
original uncut version (from a projection print source) and the final release
version (remastered in 4K from the original camera negative). The uncut version
features optional audio commentary by Lieberman and moderator Howard S. Berger.
Last, but not least, we have a still gallery as well as the original theatrical
trailer. A must have. (Blue Sunshine
is also available in a 3-disc limited edition which features the 4K disc, a
Blu-ray and a CD soundtrack.)
Iconic actress, singer, and
dancer joins screening of "Bye Bye Birdie" at Omaha Community
Playhouse in benefit for Douglas County Historical Society
OMAHA,
Neb., April 2026 -- Ann-Margret, the two-time Academy Award-nominated actress
and five-time Golden Globe winner whose career has spanned more than seven
decades, will make a rare personal appearance in Omaha on Friday, May 15, as
the featured guest of Omaha Classic Film Event.
The
evening will center on a special screening of "Bye Bye Birdie," the
1963 musical comedy that helped launch Ann-Margret to national stardom. She
will appear live onstage, with film historian and the event's producer Bruce
Crawford and take part in a discussion of the film and her career this will be
Crawford's 54th event in Omaha since 1992.
·Doors open at 6 p.m. at the Omaha Community Playhouse, 6915 Cass
Street. The program begins at 7 p.m.
·Proceeds from the event will benefit the Douglas County Historical
Society.
·Tickets go on sale April 22nd, are $40 each, and are available in
limited quantity at douglascohistory.org or by calling 402-455-9990.
Ann-Margret's
career includes acclaimed roles in "Carnal Knowledge,"
"Tommy," and "Grumpy Old Men," among dozens of others. Her
work has earned her five Golden Globe Awards, an Emmy Award, and nominations
for two Academy Awards and two Grammy Awards.
Omaha
Classic Film Event was founded by film historian, documentary producer, and
lecturer Bruce Crawford in 1992. The series has hosted a long roster of
Hollywood figures over more than three decades, including Janet Leigh, Debbie
Reynolds, Tippi Hedren, and many others. Past events have been held at Omaha
landmarks including the Joslyn Art Museum and the Orpheum Theater.
"These
events are dedicated to honoring the greatest films and filmmakers in
Hollywood's history," Crawford said, "and to giving audiences an
experience they simply cannot find anywhere else."
The
series has earned recognition from Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz,
film critic Leonard Maltin, and Jean Picker Firstenberg of the American Film
Institute.
Omaha
Classic Film Event is Bruce Crawford's long-running classic film tribute
series, producing special screenings with celebrity guests, live presentations,
commemorative artwork, and community-benefit programming since 1992. For more
information, visit the official event archive online.
About
Douglas County Historical Society The Douglas
County Historical Society works to preserve and share the history of Douglas
County, Nebraska. The organization operates the Crook House Museum, open to the
public seven days a week, with self-guided tours available; no
reservations are required. For more information, visit douglascohistory.org.
Hot
off the grill, er, press, is this unique and whimsical cookbook “inspired by
the films of Wes Anderson.” Note that director/writer Anderson is not credited
anywhere in the book and, in fact, there is an “Unofficial & Unauthorized”
disclaimer on the front… and yet anyone familiar with Anderson’s movies will no
doubt feel his presence here. Well, maybe his tastes. In food, that is.
Chris
Peterson has written witty prose that captures much of the quirkiness of those celluloid
delicacies such as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic
Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle
of Dogs, The French Dispatch, and all of Anderson’s other titles you
may or may not have seen. Illustrations by Heidi Peel capture Anderson’s visual
sensibilities in eccentric pastels and fanciful nods to places and maybe characters
in the movies. But it is the imagination of Michelle Anderson (no relation),
who created the recipes in the book, and her work shines here.
Peterson
has done several works on home improvement, cooking, and general reference
categories. Michelle Anderson was a chef for twenty years before becoming a
food writer and author of several cookbooks.
Divided
into six “Acts,” we start with Rise & Shine Breakfasts. My wife,
Randi Frank, tried out the deceptively simple Omelette Á La Policier,
described as “uniquely French as the Eiffel Tower” and “particularly embraced
in Ennui-sur-Blasé (the town in The French Dispatch). The recipe is
inspired by the Omelette Mere Poulard, which is a cross between an omelette and
a soufflé. It is extremely light and delectable. The ingredients are 1/4 cup of
lardons (bacon pieces), two large eggs, and 1-1/2 tablespoons of unsalted
butter. The lardons are sautéed until crispy. The eggs are beaten at high speed
with an electric mixer until they are foamy (maybe two minutes). The butter is
swirled in a large skillet (preferably copper) over high heat. The eggs are
added and cooked for a minute. Sprinkle on the lardons, let the omelette stand
for thirty seconds, then fold it over after sliding it onto a plate. Wow.
Act Two consists of Fantastic
Appetizers & Snacks; Act Three: Spectacular Sides & Salads;
Four: Tipples & Quaffs, a collection of mighty fine-sounding
beverages; Five: The Grand Main Course; and finally, Six: The Sweet
Life (desserts, of course).
We tried as a main course Suzy’s
Lake Trout Almondine (inspired by Moonrise Kingdom). This was especially
to die for. You need boneless trout fillets, sea salt, ground black pepper,
cornstarch, unsalted butter, raw sliced almonds, lemon zest, fresh lemon juice,
and fresh chopped parsley. You’ll have to get the book to see the preparation
instructions. It’s not difficult if you’re somewhat experienced in the kitchen.
This course was supported by Rosemary’s Carrots (inspired by Rushmore),
which consists of baby (young) carrots, extra virgin olive oil, chopped fresh
rosemary, minced garlic, lemon pepper seasoning, sea salt, and rosemary sprigs
for garnish. Oh my. Tender and delicious.
These are just three of the fifty-nine
recipes included in the book. Mind you, the recipes range from easy/moderate to
difficult/involved. But if you know your way around a kitchen and can obtain
all the necessary stuff to make things like Blueberry-Filled Donuts, Minced
Lamb Bonbons in Pastry Purses, Roasted Duck with Olives, or New
Penzance Sandie Truffles, all washed down with, say, a Bottle Rocket
with a Splash… you’re in for some mouth-watering delights.
The Wes Anderson Cookbook is for cooking enthusiasts, and for fans of the films of Wes
Anderson.
In
the 1960s, the legendary French actor Jean Gabin was already a veteran actor
near the end of his career. After working with renowned filmmakers like Jean
Grémillon, Jean Renoir, and Jacques Tourneur,
Gabin teamed up with the prolific Gilles Grainger to make the neo-noir “Maigret
Sees Red” (1963). This would be Gabin’s third and final appearance as the
detective Jules Maigret, and like the previous two films, it was a boxoffice
hit in its native France, although it was not as well received by critics as
the previous Maigret films.
Based
on the Belgian writer Georges Simeon’s novel “Maigret, Lognon and the
Gangsters” (1951), “Maigret Sees Red” is very much influenced by American noir
films, with its neon-lit city streets and hard-nosed, Sam Spade-like
protagonist. After three men cruising through Paris shoot a bystander and the
body turns up missing, Gabin’s detective Maigret gets involved in a gang war
between dangerous American mobsters and the FBI. As he investigates further,
Maigret finds himself in a race against time to stop the gangsters from killing
a key witness to the shooting.
What
made the Maigret films so popular was Gabin’s tough, yet charming and
sardonically humorous portrayal of Maigret. With Gabin as the detective, one
always got the sense that no matter how dangerous or seemingly unsolvable the
case may seem, Maigret would always find a solution due to his punctilious and
authoritative personality. Gabin brings a certain gravitas to the role of
Maigret, and one always senses that his very presence in a room will bend the
will of even the most cunning criminal. Grainger cleverly emphasizes this
robust aura of Gabin in “Maigret Sees Red” by contrasting his character with
the weaker, less decisive detective of Longnon (Guy Decomble). Indeed, much of
the enjoyment of “Maigret Sees Red” is seeing how Maigret and Longnon approach
the investigation, and their at times humorous interactions with each other.
“Maigret
Sees Red” is a slow-burn noir that contains some surprisingly violent scenes
that burst out of the film like rapid fire gunshots, including a vicious attack
by the gangster Cicero (Michel Constantin) when he is cornered by cops.
Although it takes a bit for the film to build momentum after the first act,
Grainger does a good job of steadily raising the stakes throughout the film,
culminating in a thrilling last act as Gabin confronts the various villains
head on.
Released
on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, “Maigret Sees Red” contains a new 4K restoration
from Studio Canal, with a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (24-bit). The 1080p
transfer is crisp and clean, and nicely highlights the cinematography by Louis
Page, with its dark noir-tinged shadows and neon-lit Parisian streets. Much of
the film is set during nighttime and in dark rooms, giving it a foreboding
atmosphere that Kino’s transfer nicely displays. The audio mix is clear and
does justice to Francis Lemarque’s jazz-themed score. The extra features
include an informative audio commentary with film critic and writer Simon
Abrams, in which he goes into detail about the differences between Simeon’s
novel and Grainger’s adaptation, and also provides interesting context and
background about the filming decisions and actors. Also included are the
theatrical trailer, and optional English subtitles.
If
you’re a fan of French crime films and Gabin, Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray edition of “Maigret
Sees Red” is highly recommended, and it does a great job of highlighting a
neo-noir film that deserves more recognition.
Here's the original trailer for the 1975 Alistair MacLean western/mystery "Breakheart Pass", directed by Tom Gries and featuring a sterling cast: Charles Bronson, Ben Johnson, Jill Ireland, Richard Crenna, Charles Durning, Ed Lauter, David Huddleston and Bill McKinney among other familiar faces. If the trailer whets your appetite, then you might want to read our latest issue, #64, with the film as our cover story. Click here to subscribe for the current season and get all three issues throughout 2026.
"The Hawaiians" was regarded as a cinematic misfire, was released in England under the title Master of the Islands. The
1970 big budget movie was a critical and commercial failure in its day,
but evaluating it after all these years leads the viewer to accentuate
its many positive elements. The story is actually an official
continuation of James Michener's Hawaii, which was made into a
major film in 1966 that curiously also underwhelmed critics and public.
This sequel doesn't have the epic proportions of its predecessor, but it
does boast some impressively lush production values and a typically
enticing score by Henry Mancini. For this film, Heston reunited with
director Tom Gries, with whom he made the vastly under-appreciated 1968
Western "Will Penny"which
Heston regarded as one of his most satisfying artistic accomplishments.
He is cast against type here in a somewhat unsympathetic role during a
period of his career in which he was typically cast as a stalwart heroic
figure. Heston plays Whip Hoxworth, a hard-nosed sea captain who
transports luckless Chinese immigrants to Hawaii where they become
cheated, abused and enter into what amounts to indentured servitude. The
opening sequence finds the Chinese crammed into the sweltering hold of
the ship and falling victim to illness and malnutrition. Hoxworth only
adds to their misery by applying beatings and coldly calculating his
human cargo in terms of acceptable deaths, 'lest his ultimate profits
fall short of expectations. Hoxworth is the black sheep of a wealthy
family. He is cut out of his father's will and has a contentious
relationship with his siblings, who have little use for him. Barred from
further sea duties, he is relegated to a failing plantation which he is
determined to turn into a success, if only to spite his relatives.
Geraldine Chaplin is his half-Hawaiian wife, whom he adores but who, for
reasons never satisfactorily explained in the script, turns frigid
after their son is born.
The film tells a parallel story about
the plight of two immigrants who work on his plantation: Nyuk Tsin (Tina
Chen) and Mun Ki (Mako), two people who, through necessity, live as man
and wife even though Mun Ki tells Nyuk Tsin that the children she has
borne him will not be considered hers. Instead, Chinese tradition
dictates that they will ultimately return to China where his wife will
assume the mantle of mother and Nyuk Tsin will be relegated to the
status of an aunt. The couple's hard work appeals to Hoxworth's
generally dormant sympathies and he allows them to prosper financially,
especially when they successfully grow the first pineapples on Hawaii - a
development that makes Hoxworth rich. However, the film piles crisis
upon crisis on each of the major characters, including political
intrigue, armed revolution and, in particularly affecting sequences,
outbreaks of leprosy and plague. John Phillip Law appears late in the
134-minute film as Heston's grown son, whose humanitarianism brings him
into direct conflict with his father's Machevellian ways.
The Hawiians is big-budget soap
opera at every level, but it's a consistently engrossing one. Heston
excels playing part that takes him into new territory as an actor. The
supporting cast is equally good, with both Mako and Tina Chen giving
outstanding performances. It can't be said that the film is an
unqualified success, but it's never boring and it probably seems more
impressive today than it did at the time of its initial release. It
should be mentioned that the movie has a fine score by Henry Mancini.
There are worse fates than spending a couple of hours with Heston under
any circumstance.
("The Hawiians" is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.)
Cindy Williams was one of the funniest actresses imagineable,
best known for her immortal pairing up with future filmmaker Penny Marshall (no
comedy slouch either by any means) in their megahit TV situation comedy Laverne
& Shirley. Yet Williams could also easily do drama and proved it in two
all-time classics: Francis Coppola's thriller The Conversation and
George Lucas's coming-of-age gem American Graffiti.She goes for comedy played straight in John
Binder's UFOria (1981, released 1984 by Universal) with interesting
results.
Willians plays Arlene, a Born Again Christian who
works as a cashier at a smalltown grocery store. She believes Jesus is
connected to all the frequent flying saucer sightings that are happening in the
community.A con artist who likens
himself to looking like a young Waylon Jennings (Fred Ward, The Right Stuff,
Remo Williams, Big Business) robs and cons his way through life.
We meet him when he attempts to shoplift in the store Arlene works in. They
eventually get involved. However, a phony, money-grubbing preacher (the ever
scene-stealing Harry Dean Stanton), turns out to be her new friend's old friend
and things will slowly get wilder as he keeps conning people amidst a rash of
UFO sightings. The townspeople who claim to have seen the aircraft start to
meet up and compare experiences with comedic results.
Fox originally had the film, then dropped it, as
no one knew how to sell it and its low-budget made the few visual effects too
dated in the Lucas/Spielberg Era. It was critics like Roger Ebert who thought
it was a buried treasure and it slowly started to find some kind of
following.Not quite a cult item, it is
laid back and leisurely in its approach and in a way movies seem not to know
how to be these days. To be sure, this is not an underrated classic . Yet, there
is still a much larger potential audience for the film and with the three leads
sadly no longer with us, it deserves to get the solid release set Kino Lorber
has given it. A time capsule in some ways and timeless in certain aspects,
UFOria is worth a look. Cindy Williams in particular reminds us of her considerable
talents and she is joined by an extraordinary cast: Harry Carey Jr., Hank
Worden, Joe Unger, Darrell Larson, James Lemp and Peggy McCay also star.
This new Kino 4K Ultra High Definition disc of
the film is pretty good, if not always great due to the older visual effects
and low budget, grain included. However, the grain is more of an issue on the
regular Blu-rays (both framed at 1.85 X 1). Both discs have the latest DTS
sound (lossless MA) in 2-track mono.This is as good as this film will ever sound, though I wish the stereo
songs were in stereo, but alas, they are not.The 4K disc has superior color and is a more impressive as a result.
Extras include a feature length audio commentary
by director Binder, associate producer Jeanne Field and moderator Daniel
Kremer, plus you also get ten original theatrical trailers for other Kino
comedy releases.
Let me say, from the start, I’m a big fan of the work Film
Masters (formerly Film Detective) undertake.They are, as they self-proclaim, “Archivists” and “Stewards” and
“Historians” of low-budget films.These
are the pictures too long neglected or deemed unworthy of serious restorative consideration.They are also aware many of the films to
which they’ve applied their white glove are not necessarily of Citizen Kane caliber.
This is made apparent in the deferential rear sleeve notes
of their new Monster Mayhem Collection:
a two-disc Blu-ray featuring four bottom-of-the-barrel 1950’s sci-fi hokum
pics.The four include Kenneth G.
Crane’s Monster from Green Hell
(1957), Nathan Juran’s The Brain from
Planet Arous (1957), and Richard E. Cunha’s Frankenstein’s Daughter (1958) and Giant from the Unknown (1958).On one commentary, author Tom Weaver suggests 1957-1958 as either the
greatest or most shallow years of silver-age cinematic sci-fi: though the genre
was exploding, piggybacking low-budget Indies were flooding the market with
dubious product.
It’s true that not every pinched-budget picture reaching
for the stars was gold - nor even gold-plated.Film Master admits, in a refreshing, non-hyperbolic manner:
“Logic
dictates that these shoe-stringers would be the least admired of the monster
movie world but, in many cases, bargain basement titles like these are just so
much fun.This collection celebrates
four all-expenses-spared science fiction sagas and the clever shortcuts taken
by their cash-strapped creators.”
“Amen” to that.I’ve no doubt that young horror and sci-fi fans scratch their heads over
boomer interest in such films.Along
with being painfully short of budget, it can be argued the four films collected
here are also hindered by workman-like scripting and lack of genuine scares.But what they might lack in “art” they most
certainly do not lack in heart.
For those of us lucky (?) to have caught one of these
double bills in the 1950s or (more likely) were introduced to them via the “free”
late-night telecasts in the 1960’s or ‘70s - these pics are a nostalgia trip
and strangely comforting.I’m pretty certainly
I was first introduced to all four of these films on Manhattan’s WPIX-TV’s
Saturday night series Chiller.Now, thanks to home video, we can watch
them any night of the week, should we choose to.And, yes, we should.
For collectors of the Film Master catalog, it should be
noted there’s – technically – nothing new here.The company previously issued all four films as individual Blu-ray releases
in 2021 and 2022.All were sourced from
4K scans of 35mm archival prints and in DTS-HD/Dolby AC3s audio.In short, they all look and play great. All are
offered in a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1.All play region-free and include English SDH subtitles and chapter stops.That said, if you do already have the
original individual releases, you might want to think twice before selling off those
older discs.
There were materials on these earlier single disc
releases not ported over to this new collection.Among these: Film Master’s predecessor Film
Detective’s 2021 issue of Giant from the
Unknown had included a “collector’s booklet” of stills and notes by Tom
Weaver, as well as a theatrical trailer; Film Detective’s 2022 issue of The Brain from Planet Arous included a
special introduction by actress Joyce Meadows, a Weaver booklet and an
alternate full frame 1.33:1 version; the 2020 edition of The Monster Green Hell offered Don Stradley’s booklet “The Men Behind
the Monsters” as well as an alternate 1.33:1 version; Film Detective’s 2021
Blu-ray of Frankenstein’s Daughter
featured the doc John Ashley: Man from
the B’s, a C. Courtney Joyner booklet and a second audio commentary by
Larry Blamire.. These earlier special features are all absent from this new set.
The single particular-to-this-release is a new, more
encompassing eighteen-page booklet by Tom Weaver.Otherwise, everything on this set has been
ported over from the earlier releases: the featurettes Richard
E. Cunha: Filmmaker of the Unknown and Missouri Born: Films of Jim Davis, the audio
commentaries of Tom Weaver - singularly (more or less) on Daughter and Giant, on
Arous with the addition of the Weaver “Players.” Gary Crutcher provides a full
commentary on Giant as well, with film historian Stephen R. Bissette sharing his
thoughts on Monster from Green
Hell. We’re also again treated to a pair of worthwhile docs
courtesy of Ballyhoo Motion Pictures Productions, The Man
Before the Brain: Director Nathan Juran and The Man Behind the Brain: The World
of Nathan Juran.
Let’s begin looking at the
two films of Richard E. Cunha.As I previously
reviewed Film Detective’s single Blu of Frankenstein’s Daughter for Cinema
Retro, I’m going to limit my discussion of that film here.Basically, the oft-ridiculed Frankenstein’s
Daughter centers around the experimentations of Dr. Oliver Frank (Donald
Murphy) whom, we learn, is the grandson of the original Dr. Frankenstein
himself. Frank, in all truth, is a pretty awful guy: cynical, intense,
lecherous and high-strung. He works alongside two assistants, the
doddering Carter Morton (Felix Locher) and Elsu (Wolfe Barzell), the latter an
aged creepy colleague of his grandfather’s.
Unfortunately for such a crack team, Dr. Frank’s
experiments have all been disappointing failures. The mad doctor decides
these misfires are the result of his decisions to create only strong-willed male monsters. He’s chosen to re-imagine
his experiments by turning a female into a full-fledged monster.This, he reasons, will be enough to correct his
past mistakes as a woman’s brain is simply more “responsive to command.”To this end he’s already turned Morton’s
lovely niece Trudy (Sandra Knight) into a drug-addled half-monster.
Dr. Frank’s sexist recalibration goes awry, needless to
say.Director Cunha offered to Weaver
that Frankenstein’s Daughter was his
“biggest disappointment” for any number of reasons.The now transformed “Trudy” is so obviously a
bulky male sporting not terribly convincing horrific make-up that it’s
laughable.This is certainly one monster
film that could have been brightened by Universal Studios make-up genius Jack
Pierce creating a more feminine-styled creature.
Interestingly, Pierce did the muddied make-up of actor
Buddy Baer’s long-dead - but recently revived - Spanish conquistador in Cunha’s
Giant from the Unknown.Despite its “ultra-low budget” of $54,000, Cunha’s
first foray into feature film production is a pretty nifty production.Cunha and producer Arthur Jacobs tell Weaver
their film – shot in an around the woods and the bucolic lakes of California’s
Big Bear Valley – was, following a month of planning, shot in a total of six
ten-hour days, more or less.They were
only able to do this by working under the radar of Hollywood unions and praying
the weather held out.Jacobs admits the
film, made speculatively under the provisional titles Diablo Giant and The Giant
from Diablo Pass, ultimately took “longer to sell” than to actually produce.
I tend to enjoy Tom Weaver’s audio commentaries as much
as I do his interview books.Though this
set’s packaging only mentions Weaver as commentator for Giant, the author splices in lengthy segments of his original taped
interviews with Cunha and Jacobs from the early 1980s. Also included are
insights by such friends as Larry Blamire and Steven Kronenberg. Weaver also
shares interesting memories of getting his start as a professional writer
through a providential letter-writing friendship with Cunha.The occasionally sardonic Weaver acknowledges
that too often his fevered horror-film scholarship sometimes goes too far.We not only learn that Giant actor Morris Ankrum was suffering angry hemorrhoids
throughout production, we’re also told of an unpleasant creepy legal accusation
made against actor Baer (a charge later dismissed) in the year preceding this particular
film’s production.
Moving to disc two: in
spring of 1957 London’s Daily Film Renter described Kenneth Crane’s Monster
from Green Hell as a “reliable booking,” noting the low-budgeter made
“effective use of documentary material and ‘cuts,” plus some good model and
trick work.” But, ultimately, it was dismissed as a “booking for the less
sophisticated.”Which, I guess, is
fair.That particular notice is certainly
more gracious than the one offered in Tom Weaver’s booklet:“Not everything about the movie is bad,’
Weaver writes, ‘just… almost everything.” Green Hell was one of the many
low-budget “mutant insect” knock-offs riding the coattails of Gordon Douglas’ THEM!
(1954). The difference?Green Hell
offers African jungle giant wasps in place of U.S. desert-producing giant ants,
both mothered (of course) by unfortunate large doses of atomic radiation.
It’s obvious in his
commentary that film historian/writer/stop-motion fan/DC comic scribe Stephen Bissette
is more of a fan of the film than Weaver.His nostalgia for the pic provides a balance to Weaver’s less
enthusiastic assessment.Bissette is at
his best when sharing personal recollections of catching the film on television
or when offering well-researched background information. That’s a tough job as Green Hell runs a scant
seventy-minutes and there’s not a terribly large pool of info available on its production.To get around this dearth of info, Bissette
fills a lot of the allotted time doing deep dives into the IMDB filmographies
of cast and crew.Frankly, he’s more engaged
when relating comments gleaned from cast and crew interviews or the mining of such
seminal sci-fi film texts as Bill Warren’s Keep Watching the Skies!:
American science fiction movies of the fifties.
Bissette allows producer Al
Zimbalist too often pilloried the stock footage archives of MGM and 20th
Century Fox to creatively pad out his cheapie-features.It’s true a good deal of the time we’re not
watching footage shot by first-time director Crane, but of aged, non-matching safari
footage seen earlier in such films as in Fox’s Stanley and Livingstone (1939)
and MGM’s Trader Horn (1931). We’re also informed that Zimbalist had perhaps hit
creative rock bottom upon purchasing the rights to the 1955 Japanese Yeti film Jû jin
yuki otoko.The producer chose to discard a better part
of that film, inserting inane narration featuring John Carradine.(Those U.S. version inserts, incidentally,
were also directed by Crane at Zimbalist’s request).When Monster from Green Hell was released in
May of 1957 – not in 1958 as Bissette suggests – it was as the top-bill to Half
Human, Zimbalist’s rejiggered title of Ishir?
Honda’s Jû jin yuki otoko.
I’ve also previously
discussed The Brain from Planet Arous back in November 2025 when it was included
as part of the Corinth DVD Drive-In Retro Classics.I ended that particular review noting Arous
was “reportedly being readied for Blu-ray release by another
home video company, one known for bring loving attention to neglected films.” That
comment, of course, referenced Film Detective’s then up-coming 2022 Blu-ray issue
of the pic.
Walter Matthau was still a box office name when
Howard Zieff's House Calls (1978) was released to some success.The film finds Matthau as a surgeon and recent widow who is at
least getting quite a bit of sympathy and attention from women of all ages at the hospital he practices at. He unexpectedly finds himself getting involved with an
injured patient (Glenda Jackson, who would later reunite with Matthau for Hopscotch
in 1980) who has had bad head and jaw injurys. At
first, it is one of a few concurrent introductions going along with the other
medical characters but eventually moves towards developments between Matthau
and Jackson.Too bad the writing is very
mixed, with the decent Alan Mandel and Max Schulman, legendary Julius J. Epstein and highly overrated Charles Shyer
credited on a script that may have involved even more uncredited writers.It’s a case of too much and not enough and I’ve
personally been annoyed by the inept manner in which Art Carney as a forgetful
elderly surgeon is utilized. This trait might have been funny if used sparingly but here it is repeated numerous times.
Decades later, we know the character's affliction as Alzheimers and dementia, so brace yourself
for that part of it when (re-)screening the film.
Richard Benjamin, Candice Azzara, Thayer David,
Reva Rose, Dick O'Neill, Brad Dexter, Lloyd Gough, Jane Connell and Gordon Jump
are all a plus here, reminding us of all the great actors and character actors
Hollywood used to have an abundance of. However, I was never a big fan of the movie, despite
its impressive cast. At least the film is now available in its original form
for the first time in decades on home video. Director Zieff
was on a roll, making six interesting comedies in a row (Slither (1973,)
Hearts of the West (1975,) this film, The Main Event (1979,) Private
Benjamin (1980) and an ill-fated remake of Unfaithfully Yours
(1984,) which made for an impressive achievement.
This new Kino Lorber Blu-ray (1.85 X 1) has a
nice, solid transfer with good color and definition, adding the latest DTS
sound (lossless MA) in 2-track mono to replicate the original theatrical
monophonic sound and sadly, so are the hit records heard in the movie.Not all
films had switched to even regular Dolby Stereo yet, so monophonic releases
were still very common for a few more years.Otherwise, playback performance is just fine and, after being omitted
from the 12-inch LaserDisc and DVD versions of the film, Something by
The Beatles has been (finally!!!) restored to the film's soundtrack.Henry Mancini did the overall score for the
movie. Extras include a feature length audio commentary
by Bryan Reesman and Max Ervy, plus you also get eight original theatrical trailers for other Kino comedy releases. Of course, it inspired a TV series version, but
we'll wait for that to hit Blu-ray down the line.
Back in the 1960s United Artists distributed or launched
series that enjoyed commercial (and sometimes critical) success including James
Bond, Sergio Leone's Man with No Name trilogy and the the Pink Panther franchise.
The concept of movie series with larger budgets was a new idea.Ultimately, the esteemed United Artists gang that
was led by Arthur Krim and the Picker family left the studio and by the 1980s some
of them were running their co-founded Orion Pictures company.They purchased the rights to the well-known
Destroyer novels, from which they hoped to launch a new film franchise. The
result was the singular film Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985)
with the likable Fred Ward as the title character, an allegedly dead cop back
to fight another day.
With some touches of Bond here and there, the
makers got three-time 007 director Guy Hamilton to helm the project and
two-time Bond writer Christopher Wood to co-write the screenplay, yet the
makers also wanted to have a slight retro-adventure feel (think Indiana Jones,
et al) and had all kinds of fighting and set pieces. (Unfortunately, the fight
scenes are not that impressive.) Williams investigates some strange goings-on
that eventually leads him to the U.S. Army, but it turns out to be more
sinister than expected, though not enough to make this film interesting.
Offering more misses than hits, it even has a
theme song for Remo by the underrated ex-Styx member Tommy Shaw (called ''What
If'') and a mixed supporting cast including Joel Grey as an Asian (!!!) self-defense
expert in the worst retro way, Wilford Brimley, Kate Mulgrew, Michael Pataki,
Charles Cioffi and George Coe.Dick
Clark Productions was also involved, so that is why the film ultimately played
it too safe and silly. A bomb in its time, not helping Orion who were
now free of Warner distribution, the film has gained a cult following of sorts,
but maybe not on the level of the much better Buckaroo Banzai.Either way, Ward is not bad here and his
career did not suffer too much, save hurting his lead status commercially.
Orion did promote it well at the time, but to little avail. Once viewer and
critic reactions arrived, it was finished it was deemed a boxoffice failure.
This new Kino Blu-ray is from the new 4K scan of
the film (also issued in the 4K Ultra High Definition format) and though you
can see grain and some softness in this regular HD format transfer, I can see
color improvements from the older and softer HD master used for years on
various Blu-rays.That one was a little
too dark, not doing justice to the camerawork by the great Alan Hume (B.S.C.,
in 1.85 X 1) and the result is comparatively more watchable and makes me
curious enough to want to see it in pure 4K at some point. The sound on the
older version was analog Dolby, upgraded here in simple stereo and a home
theater 5.1 mix (both in the newest DTS sound) that brings out some good things
in the soundtrack, but also its weaknesses.This is more obvious sonically than when I last watched it.
Most extras from previous editions are here, but
we get a NEW Feature Length Audio Commentary by film journalist Brandon
Streussnig.
Older extras include:
·Audio Commentary by Producer Larry Spiegel and Co-Producer Judy
Goldstein
·Lessons in Popcorn Villainy: Interview with Actor Patrick Kilpatrick
·Created, the Destroyer - Writing Remo Williams: Featurette
·Unarmed and Dangerous - Producing Remo Williams: Featurette
·Secrets of Sinanju - Training Remo Williams: Featurette
·Balance of Power - Designing Remo Williams: Featurette
Sadly, but understandably, the impressive
booklets from the Arrow U.K. and out of print Twilight Time U.S. Blu-rays are
not there, but especially annoying is the absence of the fine audio commentary
by Cinema Retro co-founder Lee Pfeiffer, Eddy Friedfeld and Paul Scrabo.It was thorough, honest, informative and
detailed, yet apparently too controversial for diehard fans of the movie.Outside of the film's many problems, this is
a glaring omission from this upgrade.Otherwise, this is worth a look for fans of the film.
Throughout his
career, Wong Kar-wai has explored the theme of unrequited love and longing in
intimate and gorgeously lensed films like “Happy Together” and “In the Mood for
Love.” Wong Kar-wai expands upon these films on a truly epic level with his
television series “Blossoms Shanghai,” based on Jin Yucheng’s novel “Blossoms.”
Now streaming on The Criterion Channel, this 30-episode series is ravishingly
romantic and set over a decade across Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. It traces
the rising and falling fortunes of a group of characters in Shanghai during the
1990s, and the whole series is a vast Dickensian portrait of a city and its
people.
“Blossoms Shanghai” is Wong Kar-wai’s love
letter and tribute to his birth city of Shanghai, focusing on the financial
boom of the 1990s when China opened up the country’s economy, resulting in the
creation of the Shanghai Stock Market. This economic boom revitalized the
country and led to the modernization of China as the powerhouse of commerce
that it is today.
“Blossoms Shanghai”’s protagonist Mr.
Bao (Hu Ge) capitalizes on the economic boom and becomes a sort of Great Gatsby
of Shanghai, while being mentored by the wise businessman Uncle Ye (You
Benchang). Mr. Bao has amorous relations with three ambitious women (Ma Yili as
Ling Zi, Tiffany Tang as Miss Wang, and Xin Zhilei as Li Li), and faces a
fierce rival when he encounters the shark-like businessman Mr. Qiang (Huang
Jue). All these characters face off with each other to seek fame and fortune in
Shanghai’s Huanghe Road district. Like Wong Kar-wai’s previous films “Chungking
Express” and “2046,” “Blossoms Shanghai” presents its story in a beguiling
fractured narrative, deftly juggling multiple narrative strands while seamlessly
weaving backwards and forwards in time.
Wong Kar-wai and his creative team
recreated the gleaming, bustling Huanghe Road district from scratch, a sort of
Shanghainese Las Vegas strip with neon-lit restaurants and hostess bars. Both
the exteriors and interiors of Huanghe Road are intricately designed with an
old-world charm that makes 1990s Shanghai resemble the roaring 1920s of New
York. The incredibly lush and
beautiful cinematography is by the legendary Peter Pau, who also shot the
classic films “The Killer,” “The Bride with White Hair,” “Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon,” “Naked Killer,” and “The Swordsman.”
Just like Jacques Tati recreated Paris
in “Playtime” and Stanley Kubrick recreated New York City in “Eyes Wide Shut,”
Wong Kar-wai recreated 1990s Shanghai’s Huanghe Road district from the ground
up, placing his characters in a vast story filled with femme fatales, scheming
dreamers, and enigmatic tycoons. This gorgeous reproduction of Shanghai during the 1990s truly immerses us in
the time period.
“Blossoms Shanghai”
culminates with some of the most emotionally powerful moments of Wong Kar-wai’s
filmmaking career, and the epic runtime gives him the time to truly explore all
facets of his various characters’ complex lives. In many ways, “Blossoms Shanghai” is like a Chinese version of “Mad
Men” with its portrait of the cutthroat nature of business, and the various
vultures and personalities attracted to the pursuit of wealth and commerce.
Wong Kar-wai has stated that “Blossoms Shanghai” is the project he has been
working towards his entire career. Indeed, with its fragmented narrative, tragically
yearning lovers, and ruminations on the fleeting nature of love and time, “Blossoms
Shanghai” is perhaps the purest distillation of what makes Wong Kar-wai such a
powerful artist. If Cahiers du
Cinema can declare the television series “Twin Peaks: The Return” by David
Lynch to be the greatest film of the 2010s, then “Blossoms Shanghai” is one of
the best films of this decade so far.
Although it’s only available for
streaming now on The Criterion Channel, there is still hope for a massive
physical media boxset of “Blossoms Shanghai” from Criterion, as Criterion has
released most of Wong Kar-wai’s previous films on Blu-ray. In the meantime, if
you’re a fan of Asian cinema and the work of Wong Kar-wai, “Blossoms Shanghai”
is highly recommended.
Cinema Retro covered this 1965 film in our war movies special edition. If you can ignore the Hollywood hokum inserted to provide a sexual element to the movie, it covers the incredible mission undertaken by Norwegian Underground fighters and every day citizens to prevent Hitler from developing an atomic bomb. Ably directed by the esteemed Anthony Mann with input from veterans of the real campaign, the film is exciting and almost too impossible to believe...but it really happened! The movie's main flaw was excluding a tragic aftermath to the successful mission. The movie succeeds as a rousing WWII thriller despite the fact that stars Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris came to loathe each other. (Lee Pfeiffer)
For more about the film and its historical aspect, click here.
