It appears the studio Archives are doing the heavy lifting this year. Some exquisite delights and rare turkeys have crept out of the vaults by the way of internet orders. These titles include THE BLACK SLEEP (wonderful), CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN (really bad), BURN, WITCH, BURN (good), THE BABY (good), THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK (good), THE SANDS OF THE KALAHARI (terrific), THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (remarkable), PLANET OF BLOOD (very good), THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN (dreadful), and SUGAR HILL (bad, yet fun).

Doled out the old, traditional way, as well as an archive item or two, are the following titles, which are causes for rejoicing and/or cautious consideration:

THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (Criterion) DVD & BluRay. 1932. 70 mins.

This is the last treasure of Horror’s Golden Age to hit the stores. It’s full of mutations playing at being human, the brainchildren of vivisectionist Dr. Moreau, interpreted with sadistic and gay-tinged gusto by Charles Laughton. His delicious performance is the centerpiece of a truly eerie excursion into H.G. Wells’ perverse tale, framed by heavily shrouded cinematography that makes for intentionally hard-to-see the images, rendering them all the more creepy. A reviewer at the time called the atmosphere suffocating, and Richard Stanley, the original director of the 1996 remake, in his supplementary interview, refers to it as an atmosphere of oppression and pain.

Richard Arlen is picked up at sea, the lone survivor of a shipwreck. He’s dehydrated and practically delirious, but his misadventures are just beginning. Deposited against his will on an uncharted island, he becomes part of the grand scheme of exiled bio-experimentalist Moreau, and we cringe every time he upbraids the loose-cannon scientist, as we know more than he does about the perils of existing on the savage island.

A rogue’s gallery of half-human creature make-up designs, from what must have been a small army of application artists under the leadership of Wally Westmore, adorn Moreau’s experimental surgery rejects, who lurk in the jungle, just a hair away from reverting to their primitive states. Moreau’s laws have been laid down to keep them thinking they should act like people, and the ‘sayer of the law’ is an unrecognizable Bela Lugosi, looking as if he’s wearing Jack Pearce’s wolfman facial application upside down with every hair sticking straight out as if he’d jammed his finger into an electric socket. It was another dubious career choice for Lugosi within a year of his ground-breaking turn as DRACULA. He had nixed the role of Frankenstein’s monster because it offered him no opportunities to flex his Hungarian vocal chords, and he certainly summons all the majestic notes he can in this role, but that distracting eruption of facial hair makes one wonder just what animal he’s devolved from – a giant Polynesian hedgehog perhaps?

The visual quality of this title has always looked degraded – lots of gauze over the lens in addition to whatever else the years have done to the vault materials; I remember it looking thus from screenings and TV broadcasts fifty or so years ago. I think that, given the Criterion make-over, this is as good as we’re ever going to see it. There’s a band of negative wear on the left center of frame, which is visible in some scenes, but usually slides under our conscious notice. The sound is decent, though one no longer senses why audience members vomited upon hearing it eighty years ago.

Arlen looks like my former LA manager, Randy Warner, who is now a practicing therapist in Hollywood. Arlen is intense and forceful. You believe him when he agrees, out of an acknowledgment that he is an unwanted guest, not to talk about what he sees, nor violate the area he is consigned to within Moreau’s compound, and you believe his moral indignation upon learning the extent of the doctor’s procedures causing him to say drastically unwise things which could place him in danger at any moment. A feeling of dread hangs over the entire running time, and that’s a neat achievement. One can still feel it today.

Special kudos to first time actor Kathleen Burke, plucked (possibly) from a job in a dentist’s office to play the sexual, sympathetic panther-woman, Lota. A nation-wide search was whittled down to four women, who came to Hollywood for the final judging at the hands of directors like Cecil B. De Mille, and Ms. Burke walked away with the coveted role. She’s particularly well directed by Erle C. Kenton, who did a few other equally fast-moving, juicy horror items – GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN and HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN among them. He’d been around since the early silent days, and would hang around long enough to make the transition into TV, dying in 1980 at age 83.

Supplementals, a la the Criterion treatment, are lavish. Greg Mank provides the commentary track, overflowing with fun into, but trying a bit too hard to connect the dots. John Landis sits and discusses the film with make-up great Rick Baker and horror historian Bob Burns. David Skal weighs in. And as mentioned above, they’ve even interviewed Richard Stanley, who was unseated by John Frankenheimer on the most recent version of MOREAU, which starred Marlon Brando in a wacky performance as the titular doctor and Fairuza Balk as the panther woman/Cheyenne Brando character. In between there were a few other versions – one with Burt Lancaster and Michael York which was terminally sedate, and another from the Phillipines (TERROR IS A MAN) with Francis (RETURN OF DRACULA) Lederer and Greta Thyssen, a good ‘B’ effort. Harder to find is the adult film version, THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR PORNEAU.

According to Mank, H.G. Wells hated the film. He was overly critical.

THE HOWLING: REBORN (ANCHOR BAY)

I was very happy and pleasantly surprised with this franchise reboot. Victoria Alexander, our first string film critic, is always moaning that directors and cinematographers no longer know how to light their leading ladies beautifully. Well, here’s the exception to that recent rule. Leading lady Lindsey Shaw looks lovely all the time – it’s near impossible to take your eyes off her. The director, who must have been enraptured by her, even gives her one long close-up reaction shot where she’s crying, snot is pooling in her left nostril, and he’s literally daring me – “C’mon, Roy! Do you still think she’s beautiful?!” Well, yes, I still do; I just don’t think that particular shot belonged there. But a director, especially one who wrote such a clever script and kept the narrative moving at such a brisk pace despite what appears to be a dangerously low budget, deserves an indulgence or two at the expense of a little dramatic momentum.*

Now there’s nothing unique about the plot. High school nerd, high school fox, high school jocks/bullies, high school monster of some sort. We’ve all been there…so many times. But Hollywood lives by playing it safe, so then it becomes a matter of what do you do with the clichés to freshen them up a bit? And that’s where this film also shines.

By the way, protagonist Landon Liboiron is also shot attractively, and Ivana Milicevic, as a key figure whose identity I shouldn’t reveal, also looks just great all the time. Ms. Milicevic is a sensational actress whose ability to completely change her emotional state at the drop of a film frame is given dozens of opportunities to flaunt this gift.

On the commentary track (which happily features Ms. Shaw who, I failed to mention two paragraphs ago, is an intuitive and engaging actress), director Niziki sounds a little as if he’s been inhaling helium. I’m bewildered that he hasn’t done another feature film (according to IMDB) since1989. I really can’t figure it, as he displays such a confident and successful directorial hand. He hasn’t been idle, but his recent work has been mainly short form.

Also worthy of praise are DP Benoit Beaulieu who makes the director’s vision come palpably true, and Editor James Coblentz who takes us for quite a spin, leaping the 180% line repeatedly to great effect, and getting us in on the action for long, poetic stretches of time.

I’m not sure the effects work was everything the crew had hoped for. There’s a lot of dodging around the werewolves rather than showing them off (we see less of them then we saw of the creature in ALIEN), and fortunately they’re less central to the film than the romance is. Also, there’s a sermonizing voice-over from the protagonist at the end which clobbers the pacing, but the earlier voice-over moments are good, and there’s a whole lot of good spoken dialogue, so even though third act missteps are harder to forgive, this is in balance a very effective screenplay.

* I checked out an earlier film featuring Ms. Shaw – DEVOLVED (2010) – a variation of LORD OF THE FLIES with High School nerds and jocks stranded on an island. She is not photographed nearly as well, a testimony to Beaulieu’s work, but she does show all the intuitive physical gifts that really shine in THE HOWLING: REBORN.

THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (MGM Archives) 1956. B&W.

The release of this ‘B’ budget level classic is a cause for rejoicing. The first of several theatrical adaptations of Nigel Kneale’s brilliant meditations on science/scifi/horror/and the supernatural, all blended into captivating narrative fiction, this was originally a BBC miniseries, much of which, sadly, has either deteriorated or disappeared. But Val Guest’s condensation of the script, and his documentary-flavored direction, have created a timeless adventure into the unknown (in fact, in its US release, it was called THE CREEPING UNKNOWN). I have been showing the PAL disc in my History of Horror class for years with unanimously positive reactions from the students

An accident has befallen three astronauts in space. Only one returns, and he is not who (or what) he was when he left. Professor Quatermass, who pioneered the rocket program, tries to put the pieces of the solar mystery together as the death toll mounts and life on earth is threatened with disaster, as it usually is in the Quatermass films. ‘Ticking Clock’ syndrome drives the third act.

Subtexturally the narrative is an examination of the British population’s distrust of science after the bombardment of World War II, and of departmental hostilities within the government. It stars American actor Brian Donlevy (a popular practice with ‘Quoto Quickies’ and larger budgeted films in the UK after the war was to secure a second tier, affordable American actor for the cast, to help with foreign and US sales) as the cantankerous, egomaniacal ‘old man’ of rocketry, Bernard Quatermass. He tolerates no fools, and for him, everyone other than himself is a fool. Kneale despised Donlevy’s interpretation of his creation and never missed an opportunity to rail on the guy when doing commentary tracks or interviews. But I disagree. I find Donlevy’s rude characterization fun, exhilarating, even amusing, as it pumps the narrative relentlessly forward. Hammer Films produced this little gem. My advice to you would be to go buy it. Even people not into the horror genre find it compelling. (But if you have the PAL version, don’t dump it just because you’re getting this one – the European disc has good supplementals, such a commentary track from director Val Guest).

A SERBIAN FILM (Invincible Pictures) 2011. Unrated (even with a few seconds edited out to avoid legal problems [and with good reason]).

Boy, this calls for careful handling, possibly with asbestos-lined gloves. If you were looking for the sub-genre in which to place it, ‘Torture-Porn’ would do the trick. Except that unlike, say, HOSTEL, which is a key title in that sub-genre, where the appellation ‘porn’ is meant to stress how brutal the narrative is, A SERBIAN FILM really is about torture and really contains pornography. So please, while it is totally defensible technically and aesthetically – beautifully made, extremely effective, and about something beyond just the exploitative thrills – please be careful about who sees this one with you. What can I compare it to? Pasolini’s SALO? Buddy G’s SLICE OF LIFE? Wes Craven’s original THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT in its day? Respectable films created by respectable directors, but aimed at viewers with extremely specialized, tolerant tastes.

An ex-porn actor is lured back into the biz by an offer of mucho cash, which he desperately needs to support his lovely family – a tall, beautiful, loving wife, and a sweet young son (who he talks to guardedly about masturbation). You know this is going to go bad, you just don’t know how bad.

While there are clear instances of directorial restraint, nothing is finally left to our imagination. Gory violence, graphic nudity, hard-core scenes (even if the guy’s penis is bogus, a la BOOGIE NIGHTS, it appears real in a few shots). What makes it painful to watch, apart from the obvious qualities listed above, are it’s unsympathetic characters. Our main guy maintains one disenchanted expression almost throughout, which can also be read as the cluelessness that seals his fate. His cop brother lusts for the protagonist’s wife to the extent that, while visiting their home, he has to excuse himself to jerk off in the bathroom.

The filmmaking is slick (it would almost have to be to support this narrative for audience consumption), with pleasing lighting, often harsh color design, experimental editing and imaginative art direction, most of it in line with the hard-edged tone of the film. Referring back to HOSTEL, while I like that film very much, it cops out on the nudity level: when the young tourist protagonist is tied in the chair, about to be eviscerated, the ‘client’ leaves the kid’s underpants on. I just didn’t buy it, but this was, after all, a film out of Hollywood, and some concessions had to be made. No such concessions are made here.

I had a few reservations. The lead villain is distractingly over the top (that’s a directorial choice which called for a less flamboyant approach), and there seemed to be illogical elements in the narrative. It’s not bereft of inner logic like, say, a Dario Argento film. I has inner logic; it just doesn’t let us in on it, which is a different kind of problem.

I couldn’t help thinking, during the film (as the film was no doubt prompting me to), about the entire story being a painfully bleak metaphor for what Serbia is actually going through in these desperate economic times. I hear there are other, similar-themed films in the Serbian pipeline waiting to be picked up and released here. Things are bad in the U S of A, but probably considerably worse in some Eastern European countries. And all this depravity, the film says between the frames, is what a country in precipitous decline leads to. Metaphorically, I hope.

An Excellent Halloween Book:

THE HORROR HITS OF RICHARD GORDON – A Book-length interview by Tom Weaver. BearMountain Media. $24.95

I’ve always referred to him as the British Roger Corman, and yet I’ve always felt that it was a troublesome analogy, not because Richard Gordon produced far fewer films than Corman, nor because he didn’t ‘discover’ talent such as Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Francis Ford Coppola, Jon Davison and scores of others as Corman did. I felt uneasy about the comparison because Gordon’s ratio of admirable films to misfires in the 1950s was actually far better than Corman’s. He was a true film lover from early childhood on, and though he, like Corman, produced his projects cheaply, he always maintained a dedicated eye toward quality and class.

Most of Gordon’s horror flicks are out on DVD, most gratifyingly the five that Criterion has released. It’s wonderful to see FIEND WITHOUT A FACE sitting on the Criterion-reserved shelves in stores along with the films of Bergman, Fellini, and Dreyer. They have also released four films from Richard’s and his brother Alex’s canon as a collection. And with Universal joining the ‘Archive’ distribution model, could THE PROJECTED MAN be far behind?

Tom Weaver’s book-length interview goes in depth into not only the making of each film, with plentiful anecdotes supplied, but also into the state of the film industry here and in the UK during the 50s and 60s, since Gordon had offices in both countries. Gordon’s memory is razor sharp and this is not only a fun read but a valuable text about the film biz in the decades covered.

Gordon is the last man standing who worked with Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. His recollections about the two stars of Universal’s Golden Age are priceless. He is a staunch defender of Lugosi’s image and character (which he maintains were diametrically opposed to the Martin Landau portrayal in Tim Burton’s ED WOOD), and he paints a warm, genteel portrait of Karloff. THE HAUNTED STRANGLER and CORRIDORS OF BLOOD are two of Karloff’s finest late-career performances.

The soft-cover coffee-table book is amply illustrated, and while I don’t care for the quality of BearMountain’s replication of stills, they are nonetheless wonderful shots, meticulously selected to give the interview ample visual support.

When it comes to the horror genre, Weaver is the planet’s foremost archeologist. I’m thrilled to see that this entertaining, edifying biographical journey was a stand-alone volume, and not part of a collection of interviews as is more often his wont. You should buy this book; you’ll get lots of revisitation use out of it.

Even at this late date, with so many titles having appeared on DVD, there are still some that are yet to see the light of a home theater monitor. Among these are:

THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS

C’mon guys! Dig ‘em out and hand ‘em over!

It’s time to lay out some dough for those you love – including, of course, yourself – and invest in some mega-releases: BluRay remasterings, boxed sets, even a lush coffee table book or two. Here are some stand-out items in those categories, all of them worthy of your consideration this holiday season.

FANTASIA + FANTASIA 2000
(Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment)
BluRay, + 2 Docs – WALT & EL GRUPO and WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY

FANTASIA and FANTASIA 2000 come in a single container as a four disc special edition. Disc 3 is FANTASIA on DVD, and Disc 4 is FANTASIA 2000 on DVD. Plus there are numerous supplementals, including the legendary short DESTINO, and the feature doc DALI & DISNEY: A DATE WITH DESTINO.

WALT & EL GROUPO (2008), directed by Theodore Thomas, son of legendary animator Frank Thomas, is a pleasant compilation of footage not used in SALUDOS AMIGOS (you can see more of it in the actual animated/live action film, which is included on the disc), the partial result of Disney’s government sponsored three month trip to ‘ABC’ (Argentina, Brazil and Chile) in 1941 to foment good will in South America at a time when the Nazis were making inroads into that continent. Much of the footage is shown while the children or the widows of the original Disney voyagers read from letters sent to them at the time.

By being even-handed (some residents still alive today loved the resulting animated mini-features, some didn’t, and most of them think Disney was frozen), director Thomas certainly gives us an unbiased insight into that interesting adventure. The sense remains that there is much more to investigate if one were motivated to do so, but it’s a reasonable and earnestly-crafted introduction to the subject.

Disney was embroiled in a Union-threatened strike against his studio at the time this opportunity came his way, so the whole trip was also a convenient escape for him, getting him out of the line of fire while his lawyers attempted to resolve the conflict (which they did, but not to Disney’s satisfaction – he describes it here as the worst time of his professional career). He took 18 people with him, including one animator, other studio artists, etc., to sketch what they saw, and come up with storylines and gags.

The old Kodachrome color look is nostalgic, and the archival footage, particularly of Disney himself, is really wonderful. We even get to see him doing (possibly) the Samba, and he acquits himself admirably.

Of the rest of his team, one artist brought along his wife, Mary Blair, and she’s quite a looker, very sexy and modern in appearance. Disney liked her work, and she turned out to be one of the studio’s most valuable in-house artists. She had a great career as a result of her work on the trip, and was involved on such wonderful projects as THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD, PETER PAN, and SONG OF THE SOUTH. She died in 1978, aged 66, and was honored as a Disney Legend in 1991.

While it’s well known that fleeing Nazis found a haven in South American countries after the war, so there must have still been some tolerance to the party by those in government, there’s no doubt that Disney’s good-will tour was effective. Newspapers from the times have both Nazi info and Disney info on their front pages. The Disney columns take precedence, both in size and placement. And Brazil ended up being the only South American country to send soldiers to fight in Europe, alongside the Americans.

WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY covers the pivotal years of 1984-1994, when the studio experienced an unprecedented renaissance of its animation department. And although we are not privy – probably a very good thing – to the egos and tirades of Mssr’s Eisner and Katzenberg, we are presented with what feels like an honest ‘PG’ account of those driven, tumultuous, wildly successful years. With THE FOX AND THE HOUND and THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE already in the chute, the studio revamped with a string of mega-hits, each one topping the last: THE LITTLE MERMAID, WHO KILLED ROGER RABBIT?, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, ALADDIN, and THE LION KING. Carpel tunnel syndrome was rampant among the animation staff, family life suffered, still they were passionately committed to their winning streak, the first since Walt’s untimely death in 1966 The last animated feature he worked on was THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967), one of the best films of that year, and one of the company’s most delightful features, with a new emphasis on character animation matching the personalities of the actors hired to voice them. I still think of Shir Kahn, the Tiger, looking and of course sounding just like George Sanders. Not to mention Louis Prima’s King Louie the swingin’ orangutan. Great score, fast-paced, emotionally satisfying. After that…a long, fallow period.

It’s fun getting a glimpse of a young Tim Burton, slack-jawed, sitting at his desk before splitting from the company. And John Lassiter, before he started up what is perceived by Disney during this turnaround as a troubled little company called Pixar. As the documentary ends, TOY STORY is gearing up. More fabulous years and films lay ahead, but this was the mythic adventure that kicked a waning, legendary studio back into first gear.

As to the BluRay re-issue of FANTASIA, I didn’t think it was possible to get the grain as stable as they’ve managed to here. It’s something of a miracle. And there’s more definition in dark scenes (Mickey’s entrance in THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, for eg). On the downside, the heightened musical track separations are jarring. There’s an aggressive sharpness that appears to come from working on them in the hopes of producing more clarity. They remain better on the DVD, which is included in the collection. As for FANTASIA 2000, that one never had a chance to accrue technical problems due to age, so it is what it was, only slightly moreso because of BluRay’s image replication capacity.

And then there’s DESTINO, the completed animated short conceived by Disney and Salvador Dali, but horded away in the Disney ‘morgue’ for decades like the lost ark. It’s very good, if a bit too modern in its lines and edges, and even its speed. I wish they’d made it feel a bit more 1945. But it’s a deluge of Dali-esque patented imagery, and fun to race through. More exciting is the 1-hour-22-minute documentary accompanying it (on the FANTASIA 2000 BluRay) called DALI & DISNEY: A DATE WITH DESTINO. This is the showpiece of the several docs in this review. Alternating between Disney’s and Dali’s lives, from birth on, it makes the collaboration more destined than one might have imagined. Their love of art and film, their being the leading forces in their art forms. (Dali, of course, had dabbled, historically, in film, with UN CHIEN ANDALOU.) They were both supreme marketers of their images and their art. In the Fall of ’36 their work was both exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art. And they actually had similar visual goals in their work. (double images, etc.). The doc makes the case extremely well; I was dubious going in, but I came out convinced.

Among the treats to be found in the doc are footage of Marlene Dietrich and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. at the premiere of SNOW WHITE. When Fairbanks later married, his wife, jealous of Dietrich, had all photos hunted down and destroyed (according to Douglas), but here’s evidence, courtesy of the Disney newsreel cameras. And the stills of Dali and Harpo Marx, who he felt was cinema’s great American surrealist, are a delight.

ELIA KAZAN COLLECTION
(Fox Home Entertainment)
15 films by the director, and a documentary by Martin Scorsese. Booklet included. Copious supplementals, many carried over from some of the DVDs’ original releases as stand-alone films. Several titles never released on DVD before.

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN (1945), BOOMERANG (1947), GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (1947), PINKY (1949), PANIC IN THE STREETS (1959), A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE(1951), VIVA ZAPATA! (1952), MAN ON A TIGHTROPE (1953), ON THE WATERFRONT (1954), EASST OF EDEN (1955), BABY DOLL (1956), A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957), WILD RIVER (1960), SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS(1961), AMERICA AMERICA (1963), A LETTER TO ELIA (documentary by Martin Scorsese – 2010).

Most of us remember the 1999 Academy Award telecast where Marty Scorsese escorted a frail 90-year-old Elia Kazan out on stage to receive his honorary award to large applause, while the camera revealed a front row occupied by glaring luminaries such as Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins who sat, arms crossed, in silent protest against the recognition of a Blacklist capitulant on grounds of his artistic body of work alone. I imagine there were similar divided feelings when the Telluride Film Festival paid tribute to Leni Riefenstahl back in 1974.

It was a thought-provoking act of moderation, and I’ve revisited it many times in my mind in the years since, as I teach courses in Film History at The School of Visual Arts, and when I cover the Blacklist, I focus in on Kazan’s rationalization of an informant in ON THE WATERFRONT (1954), and then I show RIFIFI (1954), which was, perhaps by chance, Jules Dassin’s timely rebuttal/reply to the Kazan film, which shows Dassin himself, in a peculiarly masochistic sequence, as a criminal cadre informant who pays for his betrayal not with a fulfilling career as Kazan did, but with death, and his acceptance that he deserves no less.

A LETTER TO ELIA contains another kind of justification. To all those in the audience who remained unmoved by Kazan’s appearance that night, Scorsese explains, quite emotionally, how much the director meant to him – to his childhood, to his love of film, to his own career. And this time, the justification works.

There are of course clips, some (ON THE WATERFRONT, for eg) teeming with grain. And there are stills, and good interview footage of Kazan discussing his career. The doc is an hour long, and 19 minutes in, pretty much on schedule, Act 2′s crisis begins…in the form of the Blacklist. Nothing was the same for Kazan after April,1952, but from Scorsese’s perspective, his films got better. There was nothing in between them and his personal vision any more – not Hollywood, not the many combative forces that stand toe-to-toe with the filmmaker, pushing for compromise. It all fell into place after the HUAC testimony.

Arnaud D’Usseau, a black-listed writer, was a good friend of mine. He had to leave the country to survive financially, and although he had a reasonably successful career abroad (writing Ava Gardner’s dialogue for 55 DAYS AT PEKING, uncredited, and penning exploiters such as the entertaining HORROR EXPRESS [soon to be released by Severin on DVD]), and although he married a French woman and had a loving family life that he wouldn’t have had if he’d stayed in the US, still in the conversations we had about those tumultuous years, he never forgave Kazan for what he’d done.

Now we have a Scorsese-spearheaded, dark and elegant box release of a near-definitive collection of Kazan’s film work (four are not represented, including Kazan’s last film – THE LAST TYCOON – which, interestingly, stars Robert De Niro). It’s an utterly handsome package, one which opens in the same manner as the ALIEN collection, as a thick-paged book, only larger, with DVDs inserted in pockets on each double-page, and a description on the facing page about the film presented next to it. Many of them have been released previously, by three different companies, and all of those contain their original supplementals, and their quality remains the same (SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS’s Technicolor look may be a tad different, but equally good), which creates no problems in relation to getting rid of your separate DVDs, though I wish they’d found better material on PINKY, which suffers both in its sound reproduction and in its pictorial contrast ratio – but that was the same on the earlier release and this is no worse for the time elapsed between their appearances.

Kazan was always alert to conflict and crisis, and his films are powerful emotional experiences, but he was also an intellectual, and the films clearly were, for him, contemplations of ideas, much in the way George Romero’s zombie films are very much about subtextural ideas. In Kazan’s films the ideas were less subtextural and more on the surface. In few of their films are the intellectual ideas clubbing you over the head, as they are in, say, Stanley Kramer’s work, which is not to denigrate Kramer’s work so much as to evoke a comparison.

Presented in this collection for the first time is A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN (1945), an extraordinarily rich, sharp, detailed print, in which the cinematography strives unsuccessfully to offset, or balance, the staginess of the script and the blocking of the actors. Very nice to see what his films were like at the beginning, the better to measure their development over the course of his career. John Dunn and Peggy Ann Garner won Academy Awards for this one, but personally I couldn’t take my eyes off Dorothy McGuire. She’s an exquisite-looking jewel up there on the screen. The camera absolutely loves her…

…as it loves Lee Remick in WILD RIVER. Her eyes are what color? Turquoise? I couldn’t take my eyes off them. A somber story about the Tennessee Valley Authority trying to prevent natural catastrophes by building dams along the river, and one elderly woman’s refusal to leave her island, is compellingly told, often in the form of a dialectic, with the government’s position represented by a vulnerable Montgomery Clift, and the farmers’ position taken by JoVan Fleet, a powerful force who won an Academy Award five years earlier for EAST OF EDEN, another Kazan film from this collection. Scorsese spends an inordinate amount of time on this film in the doc, and it helps adjust one’s critical eye when viewing it, though Clift seems ill-matched with Lee Remick, or perhaps for anyone. He arrives in the beginning all set to get Van Fleet off her property, brimming with confidence, or at least that’s what the script says. But watching his wavering physical condition on the CinemaScope screen, it’s hard to believe.

BOOMERANG (1947) is a Docu-Noir, based on a real murder trial, with Stamford Connecticut substituting for Bridgeport, Conn., shot entirely on location, and using townspeople for the minor and extra roles. Kazan’s stage actors are present. It’s wild to see Karl Malden and Lee J.Cobb talking in one scene together, knowing that they’d be on opposite sides of the law seven years later in ON THE WATERFRONT. Noir commentary faves Alain Silver and James Ursini fill in a lot more detail on what led Kazan to the fateful testimony in ’52, and point out – at 26:30 – a quick appearance in a line-up by Arthur Miller, who was working with Kazan at the time on the Broadway production of ALL MY SONS. The ending has an ironic twist involving one of the suspects which was used again, too closely to be co-incidence, but separated by enough years to be unintentional, in Sean Penn’s 2001 drama THE PLEDGE.

Kazan worked three times with Marlon Brando, who was to him what De Niro was to Scorsese. Both of them became guaranteed box-office icons after the director/actor relationships had already begun.

THE JEAN-JACQUES BEINEIX COLLECTION

DIVA (1981), BETTY BLUE (1986), ROSELYNE AND THE LIONS(1989), THE MOON IN THE GUTTER (1983), IP5 (1992), MORTAL TRANSFER (2001), and two documentaries and a short – LOCKED-IN SYNDROME (1997), MR. MICHEL’S DOG (1977), and OTAKU (1994).

Supplementals: Beineix interviews on each disc. THE GRAND CIRCUS – a feature-length documentary on the making of ROSELYNE AND THE LIONS. Audio commentaries with Beineix on DIVA and BETTY BLUE, various interviews with key crew.

Jean-Jacques Beineix was the second assistant director on Jerry Lewis’ THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED in 1972. That he had the fortitude to move on with his career says a great deal about the man. That he has created such a diverse body of work is equally impressive. And that he eventually made his own circus film – ROSELYNE AND THE LIONS, is something to ponder…

This collection of his work is coming at you from Cinema Libre Studio, and can be purchased either at their website (cinemalibrestudio.com) or on Amazon. They are an all-purpose studio, which does post-production work, the occasional production, and distributes DVDs. Recent releases are Oliver Stone’s SOUTH OF THE BORDER, and THE PRICE OF PLEASURE.

Beineix’s DIVA was actually received poorly in his native France, but Festivals around the world praised it, and critics and the public welcomed it as a watermark stylistic advance in cinema storytelling. I remember seeing it when it came out, and I knew I was privy to something brand new in visual thinking. It was a true adventure, taking the ride with the director on his debut feature.

MOON IN THE GUTTER, his follow-up feature, was another story entirely. A noirish adaptation of a David Goodis novel, it came out as something closer in spirit to Coppola’s ONE FROM THE HEART, using the extreme artifice of the studio as a form of heightened reality. The film starts as if it’s going to be a new CITIZEN KANE, but slowly loses steam as its conflicts become muddled and elongated, and the third act fails to deliver, transforming it into an elusive dream world drama in which everything moves much too slowly. It is a monumental example of stylization vs. pretention. And the winner in this instance is: pretention.

I heard (but cannot confirm) that when star Gerard Depardieu saw the film for the first time at a festival screening, he went up on stage and started punching Beineix for ruining it. What I can confirm, since Beineix states it in an interview on the DVD, is that Gaumant made him cut it to 2 hrs. 15 mins, and that his greatest disappointment is that he cannot restore the film to it’s better self – as he has done here with BETTY BLUE and ROSELYNE AND THE LIONS, because the distributor, soured on the experience, junked the trimmed scenes and the negative. That is sad to hear indeed, because while it could never have been rendered unpretentious, I can imagine that the terrible and illogical ending might have been redeemed.

Still, if you purchase the entire collection, you’ve got to see it to believe it, and you may return to the first act many times, it is so stunningly beautiful on its own.

ROSELYNE AND THE LIONS is a complete reversal of the ultra-slick styles Beiniex utilized in DIVA and MOON IN THE GUTTER. Realistic, almost documentary-like, it charts the path of two young people who fall in together while studying to be lion tamers with a small circus. The subject is so fascinating, and the anticipation of the lion scenes so compelling, that one stays glued to the ambling narrative for it’s three hour restored length. And then, oddly, despite the running time, the finale comes out of nowhere. God bless him for putting Roselyn in that skimpy suit, but the 3-hr running time still somehow didn’t give Beineix the opportunity to make us believe that these two characters would hatch the show-stopper they do. Nor, on a character level, does it resolve the tensions that have been built up between them.

The French coined the term ‘Film Noir’, yet there’s no mention in the supplemental interview with Beineix on MORTAL TRANSFER that this indeed is one. However it is. Distinguished by good acting, a fun story – the kind that American audiences like – stylish direction, gorgeous cinematography and art direction, sex and nudity…given all that, why, I wonder, wasn’t it released here theatrically? That’s as big a mystery as the narrative. Perhaps because it has a title that wasn’t engaging? Was that the best moniker Beineix could come up with?

I applaud the extensive window-boxing on the MORTAL TRANSFER transfer. My 16X9 screen, with the subtitles falling into the black area below, never allows them to impinge on the exquisite images. Considering how big home theater screens are nowadays, a decision like this should be made much more often.

SINATRA & FRIENDS ON BLURAY, DVD, AND IN PRINT

OCEAN’S ELEVEN
(WARNER BROS HOME VIDEO)
1960. 127 mins. AR 2.35:1. Supplementals: Commentary track by Frank Sinatra Jr. and Angie Dickenson.

Directed by Lewis Milestone. Screenplay by Harry Brown, Charles Lederer, and a smidgeon by Billy Wilder. Music by Nelson Riddle. Cinematography by William Daniels. Title Design by Saul Bass.

With: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson, Richard Conte, Cesar Romero, Patrice Wymore, Joey Bishop, Akim Tamiroff, Henry Silva, Red Skeleton, George Raft.

SINATRA: HOLLYWOOD HIS WAY.
(Running Press) by Timothy Knight. Hardcover $35.00.

With Martin Scorsese set to direct SINATRA very soon, this is a wonderful time to reacquaint oneself with the accomplishments of the legendary singer, actor, political activist, hedonist and…well, legend.

Even Saul Bass’ title design can’t alter the tone set by the film’s score, which ushers us into OCEAN’S ELEVEN: silly. If it’s what Nelson Riddle was going after, perhaps that’s what the rest of them were going after as well. The caper flick was just a lark for the Rat Pack.

Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, Angie Dickinson, Shirley MacLaine, and others I’m probably forgetting, picked up where Bogart’s Rat Pack left off. Several of them were actually performing in Vegas when this was shot, so they’d get off stage at 1:00 a.m., arrive at the set and start shooting at 2:00, finishing up by morning. Most of the interiors, even those posing as daytime, were shot in the middle of the night. This goes a long ways toward explaining why Sinatra would leave after one take.

Frank Sinatra Jr. provides most of the commentary track, and he only talks now and then, but it’s not a gyp; even if he’s reading from a prepared text, which is what it sounds like, he is ultimately well-informed. The facts and details he supplies are key to enjoying this film long after its ‘cool’ charms have worn off.

He calls his father “Sinatra.”

While some of the apartment scenes were shot on sets, he informs us that the casino scenes were all filmed on location, in the real casinos, built to lure men to Vegas, now torn down and a part of history, replaced by family friendly hotel/casinos. In this way, carefully articulated by Jr., OCEAN’S ELEVEN is a fascinating and nostalgic time capsule (much as THE PROJECTIONIST is today – showing Times Square and 42nd Street as it was back in the late 60s, before the Disney hordes invaded), and its enduring importance lies in this fact. I’m watching it much differently now than I did 50 years ago when it first came out, or in the interim, when I no longer found the boys’ shenanigans as endearing.

Jr. explains that Sinatra and his crew were improvising whenever they wanted. Which helps explain why Act 2 – the crisis, begins 53 minutes in (about 25 minutes late by Hollywood standards), when the plan to rob the Vegas casinos on New Year’s Eve is finally revealed. The film easily could have been pared to two hours if the cast had stuck to the script, but that wasn’t the game plan, and while much of the dialogue is dated now and lacks almost any punch or wit, it, like the Vegas environment is a valuable historical document of a macho ethic that literally called the shots in America for a while in terms of what was cool.

As each of the eleven former war buddies is introduced, forming the bulk of a long, laconic act one, out of nowhere Sammy Davis Jr. is introduced with a musical number – song plus dance – in a vast garage. Martin, likewise, warbles a few bars at the piano a short time later. Sinatra resists the temptation, although in one scene the background music is from his THE TENDER TRAP.

Angie Dickinson, who is on camera for a short time, is utterly charming in her commentary – a class act. At one point she mis-remembers something, and casually laughs it off, after all it was five decades ago. A wonderful personality. One thing she raves about (and the commentaries were done several years ago for the DVD release) is the picture quality of the film, which has looked shabby over the years on VHS, etc., and never looked phenomenal even on film. She should see the BluRay!. If you hit the chapter button and find the barber shop scene with Joey Bishop and Akim Tamiroff, it seems to have been shot through a fog filter when seen on the DVD. The BluRay disperses the fog completely.

Speaking of Tamiroff, a mere two years after TOUCH OF EVIL he looks quite a bit older. I remember being moved by Richard Conte’s performance fifty years ago, and I still find him moving. The camera loves him. And Henry Silva, a close friend of Sinatra’s, looking robust and sounding like Harry Belafonte, is another one of the eleven. Two years later, in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, he’d be kicking the shit out of his buddy in one of cinema’s better fight scenes. Silva is still alive, and I’m sorry they didn’t lure him onto the commentary track back in ’02 – there was certainly plenty of dead air for him to fill.

Lewis Milestone (ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT; 1962′s MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY) directs as if he were helming an over-the-top comedy. Fortunately the laid-back Rat Pack rarely fall into the trap, but some of the other performers do.

At 41:30, there’s an ad-lib where an angry girlfriend pitches a candy bowl at Sinatra. According to Jr., his father didn’t know it was going to happen. That being so, Sinatra Sr. could duck every bit as nimbly as George Bush.

A perfect Holiday combo gift would be the OCEANS ELEVEN BluRay and the lovely coffee-table book, SINATRA: HOLLYWOOD HIS WAY. Timothy Knight is an engaging writer. His prose rolls easily off the page. The chapter on OCEANS ELEVEN enhances what you’ve read above, driving home the film’s real commercial success – audiences getting a glimpse, only one celluloid layer beneath the surface, of what the Rat Pack was actually like off-camera. On page 211, a frame blowup shows the pack strolling along the Vegas strip. When the camera slowly panned up during the film, you could see their names on a marquee, since they were currently appearing at the Sands Casino.

Much as I like the writing in the book, I like the pictures equally. Most of them have a slightly brownish cast, and yet they look color accurate, and blowing them up doesn’t diminish their sharpness. I’ll never forget the coffee-table book, many years ago, about the Technicolor process, in which none of the pictures were produced with color fidelity! These are. It’s a pleasure turning the pages and seeing what frames have been chosen.

The book is divided into sections: “Frankie’s Rise and Fall, 1941-1952″, “The Crooner Comes Back, 1953-1959″, “The Rat Pack Years, 1960-1964″, and “Sinatra’s Hollywood Twilight, 1965-1991.” In each section several films are given a number of pages and pictures, and then there are ‘other’ films, which are given short shrift. In the Rat Pack section, all four of those films are given full coverage, and a few of them were godawful. Also, in the ‘twilight’ section, though I fully understand why it’s called that – the author makes his case well – the light-noir detective films Sinatra made during this period (LADY IN CEMENT, TONY ROME and THE DETECTIVE) are among my very favorites of his, and Gordon (KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE, THEM, IN LIKE FLINT) Douglas is one of the best directors he worked with. Far too often he picked directors he could push around, and when he made a mistake with that MO (eg. Robert Aldrich/FOUR FOR TEXAS) then the working relationship frayed to nothing, and Sinatra would make himself extra scarce.

RAT PACKAGE

If you want to make the gift even nicer, see if you can get a hold of (probably on Ebay or Amazon) THE RAT PACK (HBO Home Video, 1998, 120 mins). A lovely bio-pic, the way HBO knew how to make them back then, it gives you the other side of the group’s activities while they were making OCEANS 11, as well as before and after.

Wanna up the ante yet again: there’s A&E’s THE RAT PACK, subtitled “The True Stories of the Original Kings of Cool,” narrated by Danny Aiello. 2 discs, 200 mins., including footage of them at the Sands Casino in 1960 – possibly while they were filming OCEANS ELEVEN. Again, it probably is no longer in stores – the internet is the place to go searching.

BOOKS:

STEVE MCQUEEN: A Tribute to the King of Cool
(Dalton Watson Fine books)
Marshall Terrill, with Foreword by Barbara McQueen. Hardcover.
CD included containing a lecture given by McQueen at Loyola Marymount University in 1978.

A six-lb. coffee-table weight, so watch out when you heft it up to thumb through. Make sure you tighten your stomach muscles before lifting! If you do it right, you will have a terrific time following the varied career – not just film career – of Steve McQueen, as related by over 200 of his friends and acquaintances, biker buddies and film co-stars over a fifty year period.

The interviews/contributions are categorized by decade, starting in the 1930s, and concluding with the 1980s. I’m thrilled to have been included, based on a fortuitous incident in the 1960s, while I was a student at Tulane University in New Orleans. McQueen was in town with fellow thesps Karl Malden, Edward G. Robinson and Ann-Margaret, as well as director Norman Jewison and screenwriter Terry Southern, doing location filming on THE CINCINATTI KID. I was invited onto the location, and talked with everyone, including, eventually, the elusive Terry Southern, who was out visiting graveyards while the shoot was going on.

They were all larger than life, but McQueen was a little moreso. Thin and focused, he was standing by himself in an open area when the MGM publicist brought me over to meet him. We shook hands, and he was cordial if not exactly friendly, but then why should he have been, obviously engrossed in his role and having a 22-year-old college kid thrust upon him. But he was cordial, and agreed to meet at another time to talk in detail. I came away with an interesting perception: although he was physically slight in appearance, there was an electric vibe in the air around him. It felt as if his aura was displacing the molecular structure of the environment. I’ve seen/felt it once or twice before. One could call it star power; but there should be a scientific experiment done to determine exactly what the phenomenon really is.

Anyway, enough of my little adventure. Others included in the handsome book include director Jewison, James (THE GREAT ESCAPE) Coburn, Andrew Sarris, Jack (THE BLOB) Harris, Robert (THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN) Vaughn, Faye (THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR) Dunaway, Neile Adams McQueen, Peter (BULLITT) Yates, Alec Baldwin, Ben Affleck… I’m not going to go on for 200 names, but clearly it’s a great roster.

There are pictures galore, as well as his birth certificate, a McQueen family tree, movie contact sheets, and his death certificate from Mexico, where he’d been fighting cancer in a private clinic.

The book was supervised by his widow, Barbara. I’m a big McQueen fan. His jump over the barbed wire in THE GREAT ESCAPE (they have a reminiscence by the stunt man who actually performed the jump – I hate to face the truth about that, it’s too ingrained in my memory that McQueen made the jump himself) is an iconic image from my film-going youth. I also loved his rendition of the song BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL in the film of the same title, although to my knowledge only a cover version was released on record.

I’m glad to have this book to pull off the shelf to show friends whenever I screen one of his films on DVD or BluRay.

STARSTRUCK: Vintage Movie Posters From Classic Hollywood
(Abbeville Press Publishers)
Ira M. Resnick. Foreword by Martin Scorsese.

The author tries valiantly to categorize his collection into clear chapters, but really what we’re finally poring over is the end result of his taste. That being said, he’s got great taste, it’s a wonderful collection, and infinitely worth spending time with. As with paintings in other over-sized coffee-table books, periodically on one page the full poster will be displayed, and on the adjacent page, a close-up of a portion of the poster, focusing one’s attention on the brush-strokes, the use of color, the tone, etc. That’s a nice idea, giving the artistry its due. Other layout choices – in which the posters are aesthetically cropped, are less pleasing. And one choice in particular that vexed me was the Russian poster for Buster Keaton’s THE GENERAL. I have this poster reproduced in a book of Russian posters, and it looks better here. But the author (I presume) made the annoying decision to overlap it onto two pages, so that the poster is split down the middle. Fortunately that isn’t a constant layout device.

Martin Scorsese provides the foreword. He deconstructs the poster for the noir classic GILDA (at first confusing, because the poster sits on the page opposite his description, and it doesn’t jive…until we realize that this reproduction is clipped, and the entire poster is reproduced elsewhere in the book), and manages to encapsulate everything magical and mythic about what posters were able to accomplish for the fascinated filmgoer back in the day. It’s a great intro to the book, and should be quoted in any lecture on film poster art. (Worth mentioning: Available for Christmas from Sony Home Entertainment, in the Rita Hayworth Collection, is GILDA, which Scorsese introduces [along with Baz Luhrman], and again the poster is shown.)

Author Resnick, who founded the Motion Pictures Art Gallery, takes us on quite a tour. Best for last, he discusses posters he has gathered not because he’d seen the films, but because of their remarkable design. One in particular, for a ‘B’ film called THE SIN OF NORA MORAN, really is everything he says it is, and apparently it goes for very big bucks today, despite the fact that the film is seldom seen and apparently unworthy of the poster. It starred Zita Johann, the exquisitely exotic star of Universal’s 1932 THE MUMMY, an intelligent woman who didn’t like being bullied by director Karl Freund, nor the way Hollyood-ites thought they were entitled to behave, and she promptly dropped out of the biz. A great loss, and sadly, even the NORA MORAN poster art fails to give back an ounce of what we lost when she departed, since the pin-up depicted, inexplicably, is a blonde, and Ms. Johann was a brunette.

EDITH HEAD: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood’s Greatest Costume Designer
(Running Press Book Publishers)
Jay Jorgenson. Hardcover, $75.00. Foreword by Sandy Powell, Academy Award-winning costume designer of 38 films including GANGS OF NEW YORK and FAR FROM HEAVEN.

Another six-pounder, this tome has Ms. Head prominently posed in B&W on the front cover, and she’s an imposing, thought-provoking figure. Unabashedly masculine and hard-edged in aura, she is leaning back slightly against an array of paint brushes spread out like a floral arrangement, her black pageboy coiffure and owl-disc dark glasses iconically highlighting her foreboding, no-nonsense countenance. She’s riveting – a true star – despite the fact that she never appeared in front of the camera.

The book is a treat. A spectacular repository of on-set pictures of Ms. Head at work, plus her costume designs, and even a recipe for Chicken and Potatoes Casa Ladera (her home in the 50s), we get a full-bodied picture of her career. Over 1100 films, 35 Academy Award nominations and eight wins, many of the prominent films she worked on are detailed not only in terms of her contribution, but as regards the tempests erupting on the set concerning directors and stars. Much is lifted and reshaped from her autobiography, THE DRESS DOCTOR. And the author has interviewed a number of celebrities still living who Head worked with.

The Edith Head we consistently see is a composite of fears and fandom. Peer abuse about her prominent teeth when she was young made her stop smiling. Her hair was bobbed in the manner of silent film star Colleen Moore. She was taught the tricks of the trade, Hollywood’s “pagan spirit of over-emphasis’, by top costume designers then in sway, and she proved invaluable to the wardrobe departments she first apprenticed for because she spoke Spansih and could liason with the creators of the foreign versions of the studio’s films. Her breakthrough friendships with Clara Bow and Mae West (for whom she came through on SHE DONE HIM WRONG – 1933 – earning her first full screen credit, and again [Yipes!] on MYRA BRECKINRIDGE), on through other classics and biggies such as SAMSON AND DELILAH and VERTIGO.

There are occasional copy problems – missing words and such – but it never really distracts. The book is too much fun, and too beautiful, to let a copy editor’s flub get in the way.

FEDERICO FELLINI – THE FILMS
(Rizzoli New York) 320 pages. $75.

Written by Tullio Kezich. Edited by Vittorio Boanni

A prodigious work of visual research, set comfortably in concise, often subjective text, this infinitely browsable Rizzoli coffee-tabler charts the long, gratifying career of Federico Fellini (who worked with Angelo Rizzoli as a producing partner).

The filmmaker’s body of work is laid out in visually florid and dazzling chapters, rampant with stills, movie posters from different countries, hand-colored lobby cards, documents, and Fellini’s drawings. Each chapter is careful to include at least one photo of the maestro at work on the set. These set shots often shed light, in their non-verbal way, on the voyage of the director through the years as his style changed, his confidence changed, his goals changed.

There has also been a conscious effort to include pictures of the key people Fellini worked with over the years – amongst many others are Danilo Danati, Alberto Moravia, the sublime composer Nina Rota, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Arturo Zavattini, Tullio Pinelli (who died last year, aged 100), Dino De Laurentiis, Alberto Lattuada, Angelo Rizzoli (with him at the Academy Awards gala, two of which the film [8 1/2] won). And of course, numerous pix of all the actors he directed, in particular Giulietta Masina (his wife for fifty years, and heir to Chaplin’s tramp), Marcello Mastroianni, and Anita Ekberg. The shots of Ms. Ekberg, dressed in white, rehearsing for her emersion in the fountain in LA DOLCE VITA, are particularly stunning.

This is not a banner year for Halloween releases on DVD or BluRay. The studios have not reached deep into their vaults for exciting tricks and treats. It makes me worry that some classics may never surface. Hopefully I’m just being overly anxious in that regard.

THE EXORCIST
(Warner Bros Home Entertainment)

Both versions are available on the new BluRay release, which is important because, exciting as the extended version is, many people prefer the original theatrical release. The discs also contain a slew of pre-existing supplementals, and one important new one. It’s a very special film, and represented a shocking step forward in the genre when it was released in 1973. For more on this release, I refer you to my latest editorial.

TROLL 2
(MGM Home Entertainment)

Taking a page from the SLIME CITY book, elements of Greg Lamberson’s culty ’80s goo fest are reprised in PG-13 clothing, but the result is hardly child-friendly – a tale of vegetarian Goblins (nary a Troll in sight – one of the juicy little adsurdities the deriders of this little flick hold up to ridicule) out to convert meat-eaters to green mush, and then devour them. The BluRay box wrapping contains a sticker which proudly indicates that a documentary – BEST WORST MOVIE (2009) – was made about this release, directed by the actor (Michael Stephenson) who played Joshua, the child protagonist.

I settled down to watch it, anticipating a rival for the title of Worst Film Ever Made – and on BluRay yet! But such did not prove to be the case. The screenplay, for instance, is often clever. It opens with a child (Stephenson) being regaled by his grandfather (Robert Ormsby) about the evil goblins – in a direct and intentional replication of the opening of THE PRINCESS BRIDE…except that we soon learn that the grandfather has been dead for several months and the kid is imagining the whole thing, a wonderful twist on the former film’s framing device. And there’s plenty more of this kind of imaginative thinking. Much of the film’s cinematography is good as well. [Must make mention: the blonde girl - a goblin in disguise - who seduces the young man in the story the grandfather tells in the first act, is about the purest and loveliest looking creature I've laid eyes on since Angela Lansbury graced the frames of THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY. And that's even with a bunch of foolish freckles painted on her face. Who she is, and where she is now, I have no idea. Maybe I'll learn this when I catch up with BEST WORST MOVIE, since Stephenson makes a brief appearance in the scene with her.]

Where it all falls apart, however, and falls hard, is in the direction of the actors. Most of them speak their lines as if they’re reading off a teleprompter while on Xanax. It’s as if Werner Herzog had loaned them the hypnotist who got all the actors zoned out for HEART OF GLASS. Apparently director Claudio Fragasso spoke no English, and rigidly insisted the lines be read exactly as written, over the cast’s adamant protestations. Any kidding aimed at their delivery is well-deserved – it’s really awful. In addition, there are lines that are ripe fodder for howls of unintended laughter (and maybe a few that were intended – by the actors if not by the director). One such line, “They’re eating her…and then they’re going to eat me!” has apparently become one of the biggest viral videos of all time. And the Goblin masks are generally the stuff of Halloween costume stores – rubber face-pieces with sightless glass eyes.

Generally the older actors acquit themselves decently. There’s a local sheriff (Gary Carlson) who has a nice bit, and Ormsby is often effective. Oddly enough, however, it’s Stephenson, the child protagonist, who delivers the best performance of the bunch.

RED, WHITE AND BLUE
(IFC Films)

I’m mentioning this for Halloween, but I’m not sure when it’s coming out on DVD. It’s already been VODed, so you can catch up with it one way or another. Director Simon Rumley is a serious filmmaker – though his films are not an easy fit for the horror genre. But just to make things easy, lets say they infringe on the genre.

This one is more accessible than his last admirable job – THE LIVING AND THE DEAD, and its narrative surprises make it difficult to discuss without fear of giving too much away. Amanda Fuller (who starred in a short called DEATH, CAN I BUY YOU A DRINK?), and also appeared in many TV series) plays a jaded young woman who only likes one-night stands. Where does this lead…? Into pretty dark territory. Trust me.

The film was shot in the vicinity of the remarkable Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas, and produced in part by Drafthouse people such as Tim League. It’s well cast, well written and acted. The editing rhythms are lovely, as is its use of space. Perhaps a character motivation or two had me unconvinced, but overall it’s one of the better films of the year…of any genre.

HOUSE
(Criterion Collection)

For coverage of this uncategorizable oddball classic, I refer you to Ben Peeples’ review elsewhere in this current FIR Halloween updating. I’d heard of it for years, but fortunately waited for Criterion’s BluRay release to finally see it, and, like everyone else (none excepted) I was nonplussed at what I was watching. Criterion’s worthy supplementals make it more digestible. Incidentally, I watched it a second time with my son, who hadn’t seen it, and it got better. I’m told this is one of those films that, due to how much sensory overload it packs into its 88 minutes, tends to behave that way on subsequent viewings.

FROZEN
(Anchor Bay)

This seemed, from its ads, and from word of mouth, like a followup to the simplistic but intriguing one location/few actors-therefore-low-budget concept of OPEN WATER, where scuba divers are left behind and have to tread water for a day until one of them dies and the other swims away. Except that this time the hapless victims are stranded on a ski-lift, abandoned to the elements, 50-ft up in the air. Actually it sounded less original than the water scenario.

Except that this one is wonderfully shot, with such abundant coverage that one never feels marooned like the protagonists. And the acting by the three leads – Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers & Emma Bell – guided carefully by director Adam Green, is really first rate. Added to that are some narrative surprises that are ultra-harrowing, plus good make-up and sound design, and you’ve got a superior horror thriller, possibly the best of the year.

ALIEN ANTHOLOGY
BluRay (Fox Home Entertainment)

When this collection originally came out on DVD, as ALIEN QUADRILOGY, it was the best release of the year. Nothing else came close. The ALIEN series is perhaps the finest film compendium in history. All the directors are so gifted. Each installment is so markedly different from the others, yet terribly creative and satisfying (even # 3, ladies and gentlemen, even # 3, in its dour, morbid way). When I heard this was coming, I couldn’t wait, as I’m sure all the rest of the ALIEN-loving hordes couldn’t wait. It’s debuting in stores this week, and since I only just received my review copy, please don’t expect me to have watched all 50 hours of primary and supplemental material for this Halloween Column review.

Let’s start with the packaging. The DVD packaging…my god, it unraveled across my living room, into the hallway, and ended up in the street outside my brownstone. This thing had more flaps than an accordion. It was very impressive, but more than a bit unwieldy.

The BluRay collection is in book form, brilliantly designed with thick, hard pages, every other one containing a disc that slips out of flat envelope. It’s literally half the size of the DVD box. This is good. Good for wear and tear, and good for your shelves.

The disc I chose to compare with the DVD release was ALIEN 3. That was a dark mother, with lots of sound design and score. Right off the bat, the Fox logo (whose final notes, as you recall were tampered with, morphing into something less triumphant and more ominous then the proud Fox fanfare). On the DVD, it’s a bit subdued. On the BluRay, holy shit, it cracks like a whip inside your ear drums. And on it goes from there. More volume, more substance, more definition of instrumentation, and more dramatic in its mix.

The image – less clearly improved, is certainly as good as the DVD release. I’d have to do a lot more watching to say something definitive about the various versions and the overall visual quality, but the audio jumped out at me. It’s markedly better on the BluRays.

COLIN
(Walking Shadows)

Someone gets an Executive Producer credit at the end. What did he do, put up the seventy-five bucks?

No one warned me how somber this film was. It’s not a fun watch, but it’s a well observed slice of life…rather, death. I’d heard it was from the POV of a guy who gets bitten and turns into a zombie, and that is indeed what it’s about, and it’s a clever idea. But it’s the melancholy and the sense of loss that’s pervasive here. Being a zombie is a no-win affair; Romero’s films, and SHAUN OF THE DEAD, distance us from that grim fact by using comic relief and living protagonists. Also, it very much reminds me, at its best, of the work of Peter Watkins (THE WAR GAME, PUNISHMENT PARK, BATTLE OF COLLODON). I wonder if Watkins has seen it? Director Marc Price certainly seems to have studied Watkins’ work. The ‘you are there’ hand held camera realism that Watkins pioneered is present in several nicely staged scenes. It’s not the hand held, say, of BLAIR WITCH; it’s not trying to be shaky for effect so much as trying to stay steady against overwhelming emotional odds and failing.

It’s quite an accomplishment if it were done for as little as the press releases claim. But it’s an accomplishment no matter what the micro-budget was. The mise-en-scene is well attended to. At times the silences, the wrinkling skin representative of zombification (which could also represent old age if this film were all one big metaphor for where we’re heading), the use of space and shadow, and the barriers of life we just can’t control, creep through the horror story and become what COLIN is really about.

Don’t know how often I’d watch this film, but it’s certainly impressive. I have a Noir shelf, an Epic shelf, a Western Shelf, a Silent Film shelf, etc., etc. As you can imagine, I could easily have an entire Zombie shelf, given the vast amount of films made on the subject over the past twenty years. But this one goes up on the Fake-Documentary shelf next to Watkins’ work.

BOOKS:

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
Written by Joe Kane
(Citadel Press)

Joe was the infamous “Phantom Critic” for the Daily News, and later (and still) the editor of one of the best genre-review rags – “The Phantom of the Movies’ VIDEOSCOPE.” Here he presents us with a comprehensive soft cover book on the phenomenon that was, and is, and will continue to be, one of the most influential films on the planet, even if you don’t like the horror genre – George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The cover copy makes the author’s intent very clear: “behind the scenes of the most terrifying zombie movie ever,” and “includes the original legendary screenplay by John Russo.” Making it a perfect Halloween gift for the zombie lover in your life.

It goes well beyond the original breakthrough zombie flick that changed the direction of the genre. Sequels, inspirations, remakes, all are discussed, and there are lists of films to read about – zombie comedies for example, so that the genre gets a good and thorough going over before the book is closed. Interviews with many of the film’s participants or other horror filmmakers are included, even one with yours truly, who Joe maintains made the first documentary about the making of a horror film – DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD. I was honored to be included in this omnibus accounting, and greatly enjoyed, as I always do, Joe’s unique, clever, and droll use of prose.

MUSHROOM CLOUDS AND MUSHROOM MEN: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda
Written by Peter H. Brothers
(Authorhouse)

Here’s another lovely voyage through a director’s career, including reasonably in depth analysis of the films in the vast series he created. Ishiro Honda was the director of GODZILLA. For a number of years I’ve been teaching History of Horror classes at the School of Visual Arts, and I’ve long since ceased to be surprised at how many college students truly adore the Godzilla films. Therefore I think this book is a safe bet as a Halloween gift for your favorite horror aficionado.

After acquainting us with the quartet of filmmakers who form the creative core of the Toho monster films – Director Honda, Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, Japan’s Father of Special Effects Eiji Tsuburaya, and composer Akira Ifukube – author Brothers guides us carefully and at length through Honda’s life and directorial style. He is meticulous even in documenting opposing views about the filmmaker – for example at one point explaining that Honda focused more on the technical aspects of production and left the actors to do for themselves, then later quoting an actress who claims that he was an actor’s director. Also Honda’s wishes to have done more varied and better-budgeted films makes itself clear over the course of the book, though he was a mild-mannered man, ultimately happy to be working as steadily within the studio system as he did.

Honda worked a lot before he got to GODZILLA, but once he directs his most famous film, it and each subsequent fantasy/sci-fi/or/horror project is given a separate chapter. I was chagrined to learn that one can’t get a good print of THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN on DVD. I’ve always loved Yeti legends, and thoroughly enjoyed the film made from Nigel Kneale’s screenplay by Hammer Studios. But Brothers claims that Honda’s take on the subject is the best that’s been done, and that it has been suppressed by Toho, perhaps due to its negative depiction of indigenous peoples.

Also, I’m a fan of the noirish THE H-MAN (1958), but a similar film by Honda, THE HUMAN VAPOR, according to Brothers, is the better of the two, and I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing that one, so after Halloween I’m going to go hunting.

Brothers calls 1963 the last year of Honda’s really good work. But in the years and films that follow, he finds stand-alone elements that still soar – be it the cinematography, the music, the effects, or the appearance of American actor Nick Adams, who did two films for Honda and might have done more had he not ended his life shortly after these roles. I remember being in the Forum of the Twelve Caesars restaurant in NYC in the early 60s and spotting Adams at a table nearby. Soon everyone knew he was there, because he had a telephone brought to his table and called someone, announcing in a loud voice “Hi. This is Nick Adams.” The rest of the call escapes me, but it was just the intro that he wanted all of us to hear.

I don’t know what’s become of copy editors nowadays. You will come across a goodly amount of errors in the book, but fortunately they don’t spoil the fun.

THE PERFECT HORROR FILMS NOT PLAYING AT THIS YEAR’S HALLOWEEN PARTY
By Glenn Andreiev

Yes, 2010 has been a weak year for horror, mostly “tribute” horror films produced by Eli Roth, like THE LAST EXORCISM and PIRANHA 3D. They make you want to break out the DVD’s of the classic films they were “saluting”. What about the classic films that for some crazy reason never saw a DVD release?

Top of the “should-be-on-DVD” list is Paramount’s 1933 THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS. H.G Wells felt this film was an overly perverse take on his novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, which told of an exiled surgeon who sped up the evolutionary process in animals, having them become half-men. In this rare film, Moreau, as played with psychotic relish by Charles Laughton, performs live dissections on his manimals and tries to get hero Richard Arlen to bed with a half-panther half-hottie who runs around in a bikini. Cinematographer Karl Struss (BEN-HUR, SUNRISE, LIMELIGHT) lensed most of the film through gauze to create a washed out dream-like look. After 68 minutes of cutting live manimals open, hints of bestiality, and after 80 years still a truly scary ending, the tail credits appear with happy music best suited for that studio’s Lubitsch or Marx Brother comedy. It could be the most unfitting tail credit music of all time. The reason for this is that ISLAND OF LOST SOULS was released at the height of the depression. Even after serving a depression era audience (and all audiences afterwards) a buffet of welcome creepy hysteria, Paramount wanted their audiences leaving the theatre happy.

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1938) is a somber, fast paced British horror suspense masterwork not to be confused with a same-titled Warner Brothers truck-driving drama starring Humphrey Bogart and George Raft released in America two years later. This Brit DRIVE BY NIGHT is directed by Arthur Woods, Britain’s intended replacement for a certain master of suspense who went to Hollywood. This film is very Hitchcock in nature. A recently released ex-con, Shorty (Emlyn Williams) yearns for a fresh start, an honest living and his ex-girlfriend. However, he finds his ex freshly strangled in her apartment. Feeling the finger of blame will point to him, Shorty heads off to find the real killer, who turns out to be a meek, gentle soul – Mr. Hoover (played with prissy excellence by Ernest Thesiger). Hitchcock touches abound here. A guilt-ridden Shorty ducks out into a movie theatre which is playing a short heralding how Scotland Yard can find anybody, and the villainous Hoover relaxes by reading a large book titled Sex In Prison. In a touch of early cinematic technical brilliance, ala Hitchcock, we have a wide shot of Hoover’s spooky old house. The camera quickly cranes forward to a close up of Hoover peering through a second story window. Because of the Bogart-Raft film of the same title, this THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT was never released in America. Sadly, director Arthur Woods, showing immense promise here, died during World War II while serving as a fighter pilot.

Back in America, RKO’s B-Movie unit put out STRANGER ON THIRD FLOOR. In this 1940 shocker, Mike (John McGuire), a struggling reporter, is letting poverty and bitterness rot his soul. His neighbor, Meng, is a nosy pest One evening, Meng is found murdered in his apartment – his throat cut. Meng is the latest victim of a local serial killer. The highlight of the film is Mike’s nightmare of being wrongly accused, tried and convicted. The nightmare sequence rivals CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI for the wildest set design ever. For example, people stand at warped street-corners reading newspapers bigger than they are. Peter Lorre is perfect as the homeless stranger who is really the killer. Just his delivery of such dialog as (delivered to a deli clerk) “Hello. I would like some meat…. raw please.” will make you want to grab a DVD of this film, but sadly, nobody has put this film on DVD. Mike’s girlfriend is played by Margaret Tallichet, aka Mrs. William Wyler. This is a very early film noir – catch it.

DARK SHADOWS was the compelling gothic horror soap opera that ran in afternoons on ABC from 1966 to 1970. It was hampered by minimal sets, contrasty black and white TV cameras, and technical hiccups galore, but its performances, atmosphere, and overload of macabre thrills earned it international fans. In 1970, its director, Dan Curtis, released a theatrical movie version of the series, HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS. Here Dan and stars Jonathan Frid and Joan Bennett are given serious coin by MGM, and they give us a vampire thriller that bursts with terrific location shooting, mounting suspense and a nightmarish ending where everybody in the cast becomes a crazed vampire.

Our list ends with a cinematic salute to uncontrolled lunacy – 1983′s NIGHT WARNING. The great Susan Tyrrell is Aunt Cheryl, an unhinged, homicidal middle aged woman who really, really likes her nephew (Jimmy McNichol) She will do anything to get close to him. The film is blood-drenched, melodramatic as all get out, and should be on DVD. I could also add to this should-be-on DVD list – Michael Curtiz’s THE MAD GENIUS (1931) with John Barrymore and Boris Karloff, overlooked vintage Universal studio classics like SECRETS OF THE BLUE ROOM with Lionel Atwill, and THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD with Claude Rains. These would be the films I would play at my Halloween bash, and I’d run Disney’s SKELETON DANCE from 1929 between each film.

Hello out there, Trick or Treaters, all trussed up in your Thing With Two Heads (Obama and Limbaugh) outfits and ready to go. The delectable offerings below will probably not be dropped in your gift bags with trepidation by wary home-owners, but they’re worth checking out.

WILLIAM CASTLE FILM COLLECTION
(Columbia Pictures)

All except for the documentary were directed by William Castle.

THE TINGLER (1959)
82 mins. B&W. AR: 1.85:1.
Screenplay by Robb White. With Vincent Price, Darryl Hickman.

13 GHOSTS (1960)
85/82 mins. B&W/Color. AR 1.85:1.
Screenplay by Robb White. Cinematography by Joseph Biroc. With Charles Herbert, Jo Morrow, Martin Milner, Margaret Hamilton.

HOMICIDAL (1961)
87 mins. B&W. Full Screen.
Screenplay by Robb White. With Glenn Corbett, Patricia Breslin. Music by Hugo Friedhofer. Cinematography by Burnett Guffey.

MR. SARDONICUS (1961)
89 mins. B7W. AR 1.85:1.
Screenplay by Ray Russell. Cinematography by Burnett Guffey. With Oskar Homolka, Audrey Dalton, Guy Rolfe.

ZOTZ! (1962)
87 mins. B&W. AR 1.85:1.
With Tom Poston, Julia Meade, Jim Backus, Fred Clark, Cecil Kellaway, Mike Mazurki, Margaret Dumont.

13 FRIGHTENED GIRLS
(1963) 89 mins. Color.
Screenplay by Robert Dillon. With Kathy Dunn, Murray Hamilton, Joyce Taylor, Hugh Marlowe, Lynne Sue Moon.

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1963)
86 mins. B&W/Color.
Screenplay by Robert Dillon, from the novel “Benighted” by J.B. Priestley. Title sequence backgrounds by Charles Addams. Produced by Anthony Hinds. Shot at Bray Studios in a co-production with Hammer Films. With Tom Poston, Robert Morley, Janette Scott, Mervyn Johns, Peter Bull.

STRAIGHT-JACKET (1964) 93 mins. B&W. AR 1.85:1.
Screenplay by Robert Bloch. Production Design by Boris Leven. With Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Leif Erickson, George Kennedy.

SPINE-TINGLER: THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY (2009) 82 mins. Color/B&W.
Directed by Jeffrey Schwarz. With Forrest J. Ackerman, John Badham, Diane Baker, Robert Bloch, Budd Boetticher, Bub Burns, Terry Castle, Roger Corman, Joe Dante, FIR’s David Del Valle, Stuart Gordon, John Landis, John Waters, and, in archival footage, Joan Crawford, William Castle, Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, Adolf Hitler, Jacqueline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Mia Farrow, Harry Cohn.

2 Episodes of the TV series GHOST STORY, William Castle featurettes, promotions and trailers.

I took Linda Elin, who I had a hopeless crush on, to see THE TINGLER in 1959. I was fourteen; she was a year younger. I was into horror films big time by then, and I knew that one row of theater seats would be wired to deliver a mild electric shock during the scene where the ‘Tingler’ escapes into the audience. When we arrived at the theater, I went up to the elderly ticket taker and asked, “Where are the ‘tingle-seats’?” He was confused. I repeated it: “Where are the ‘tingle-seats’?” Finally it seemed to dawned on him, and he led us to…the bathrooms!

I never did get to first base with Linda Elin.

If you had any hopes that the four titles in this collection new to DVD were going to make the collection collectible, I’m here to pretty much dash your hopes. One of the features, while not stellar, is worth checking out; the other two…were poorly paced and probably dated when they were released. However, the documentary is quite good, and the other five features are good examples of the Castle cannon, and there are good supplementals as well.

THE OLD DARK HOUSE was released in the US theatrically in B&W, indicating what the studio’s expectations must have been like. On TV the color was restored. And here, in a very clean print, the color is also on display, but it is not the creamy Technicolor we associate with Hammer Films, nor does the cinematography aid either the scare elements or the comedy of the piece. The prime offender, however, is the score. Since they recruited Hammer’s trusty Bernard Robinson for Production Design, they should have also dragged in James Bernard for the music. Anything would have been better than the mickey-mousing fiasco they ended up with.

James Whale would roll over in his swimming pool at the desecration of his work displayed in this remake. As a comedy it’s occasionally mildly amusing at best. As horror…well, there isn’t any of that to be found. For all his droll appearances in his horror flicks, Castle did not have a light touch for the comedy genre. Tom Poston, while dignified and doing his utmost, doesn’t carry the film very far at all, and some genuinely top-rank Brit talents are right beside him operating below par. Mervyn Johns, alumni of the watermark British horror anthology DEAD OF NIGHT, adds pedigree but no panache to the proceedings. Peter Bull, the Russian Ambassador in DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, is interesting to look at in Color. Robert Morley, who fares better in THEATER OF BLOOD, mugs his way through this one to little effect.

ZOTZ! finds Poston again teamed with Castle, doing his best to avoid over-acting, but his naturalism can’t sustain the loose editing, nor the underwhelming narrative concept of a magic coin endowing its owner with the powers to a) point his finger at someone and give them a stomach-ache, b) utter the coin’s name and make the victim move in slow motion, c) point and utter simultaneously and destroy whomever the coin’s owner focuses on. It’s such a silly notion, it never stood a chance of being memorable. THE ABSENTMINDED PROFESSOR had come out the previous year, and I suspect Castle and Columbia wanted a similar romp from this trifle (just as the director glommed on to PSYCHO for his HOMICIDAL), but Castle, alas, is no Robert Stevenson, and the fun is sparse. There are some pleasant ideas, and effective individual shots…nice effects here and there. There’s a bizarre scene where likeable actress Julia Meade appears outside Poston’s house nude, claiming she was struck by lightning and her clothes were blown off. And there’s a long scene of Jim Backus making a toast in slow motion that goes on long enough to be truly silly. But for each of these pleasant occurrences, there are many more that founder.

The film begins with Castle chatting up the Columbia insignia lady, who towers above him. A cute launch-pin. But it’s also the high-point of the film.

The final new-to-DVD theatrical feature presentation, 13 FRIGHTENED GIRLS, is worth a look. At its best it sporadically works up a Hitchcockian sense of tension as a 16-year-old Ambassador’s daughter with a crush on an embassy agent begins gathering secret information to save him from getting sacked. Her flirtation with the agent is pretty racy even though he never Polanski’s her, and seeing her subsequently cause deaths and witness other violent demises is a bit strong for a perky teenage protagonist in what wavers back and forth between being a cute little caper flick and something more sinister. Castle, I presume, was on the fence, trying not to scare off audiences and critics, but every now and then some perverse element in his brain ignited, and this odd movie catches fire. Only to be doused a few minutes later by those god-awful music cues we’ve heard in his other semi-comedy newcomers-to-DVD, etc. The performances range from stiff to pleasant. There’s a long split-screen multiple-character telephone call that is very PILLOW TALK (made four years earlier). The print quality is excellent. And the oddest thing about the film is that the only time the eponymous13 girls get frightened is in the pre-title sequence when, as presented via the supplementals menu, numerous variations of the sequence are shown, each featuring a girl from a different country in the driver’s seat of a bus, with her voice-over (in her native tongue) propelling the initial narrative. It was a device to stir up interest abroad, and I don’t recall ever seeing anything like it before. Another Castle marketing gimmick, I presume.

And then there’s SPINE TINGLER: THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY, an 82 minute (my favorite running time) documentary on the ‘B’ genre showman, a comprehensive film tinged with melancholy for an industry showman who both reveled in, and was trapped by, his gimmicks’ success. The film is nicely researched, and populated with a meteor shower of film personality interview bites. There is a warm, MATINEE-like feeling for the era and, fittingly, Joe Dante is one of the film’s talking heads. The filmmakers posit the case for a rivalry between Castle and Hitchcock in which it is Hitch who borrows Castle’s promotional strategies for PSYCHO, rather than the other way around as one might suspect. Joan Crawford’s demands on STRAIGHT-JACKET, and Castle’s capitulation to her, is sobering. And the morphing of ROSEMARY’S BABY from Castle’s directorial piece de resistance to a Roman Polanski over-budget, over-schedule box office hit proves both a heady success and a tragic missed opportunity for Castle. Rather telling is the omission of any mention of the three features new to DVD in this boxed set.

In addition to the impressive documentary, you get several successful, repeatable films from the gimmick-meister’s repertoire – MR. SARDONICUS (wonderful), STRAIGHT JACKET (Joan Crawford), HOMICIDAL (in the still-wet footprints of Hitchcock), 13 GHOSTS (however without the special glasses allowing you to see or not to see the threatening spirits), and THE TINGLER (Castle and Vincent Price).

The five discs fit into a relatively thin box-sleeve. It’s a lot of fun footage to have handy on your DVD shelf.

RECOMMENDED

For an economy that is supposedly affecting DVD sales, you wouldn’t know it to see the mega-disc-collections appearing in stores currently. As if the Fox Hitchcock Collection wasn’t enough to clog a DVD collector’s shelf, the new Fox Entertainment Murnau/Borzage/Fox box requires the construction of a new shelf entirely. I haven’t seen the inside of that box yet, and perhaps there’s a way, once opened, to deconstruct it so that it fits a normal shelf – but short of that, this $200.+ release may require some architectural rethinking. To honor Fox’s chutzpah, and at the request of foreign film societies, we’ve resurrected from FIR’s archives a 1974 article by William K. Everson which deals with Fox’s preservation efforts, including the work of Murnau and Borzage.

If, by chance, your friends’/spouses’ apartments aren’t quite large enough to encompass that volume, and yet we know that Xmas calls for a more substantial gift than a single platter, below are a few good choices for your consideration…

From SONY Pictures Home Entertainment comes a title we thought might never make an appearance, and it has arrived inside a most elegantly designed box cover – the Powell & Pressburger fantasy masterpiece A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (aka STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN). This was cinematographer Jack Cardiff’s first feature and, great as his body of work is, he never surpassed it. And that includes the likes of BLACK NARCISSUS, THE RED SHOES, PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (recently restored and hopefully soon to come to DVD in its sparkling new incarnation) and RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART 2. The British Technicolor is admirably recreated here. Subdued hues are infiltrated with myriad strokes and shades of luminous red. It’s a constant and delerious feast for the eyes. And the story’s not bad either. Powell (friend and) aficionado Marty Scorsese gives an American historical perspective in which he and his pals – amongst them Coppola and Spielberg – all loved the Archers’ films, but knew nothing about the filmmakers. David Lean, Carol Reed,Alfred Hitchcock — these they knew, but not Powell & Pressburger. In the decades since, Scorsese has done his best to remedy that situation for all of us. His editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, eventually married Powell. Also on the disc – a commentary track by historian Ian Christie, his delivery decidedly low key alongside the passion of the Scorsese, but it’s worth a listen for its many factual insights.

Also included on this double-disc edition is Powell’s last feature film, AGE OF CONSENT, made after his partnership with Pressburger had ended, released in 1969, truncated in the US, but seen here in its 103 minute form, and in a worthy transfer. Made outside the European studio system within which he’d functioned for decades, the film has an independent sensibility – including less glamorous lighting and more disrupting room tones, some of both of which Powell uses to his advantage. It also features a 24-year-old Helen Mirren (last year’s Best Actress AA winner for THE QUEEN) in her first performance as the island-bound Cora, much of it gloriously in the nude. Not since TARZAN AND HIS MATE, or THE MERMAIDS OF TIBURON (available on DVD from VCI Entertainment) has there been such a nude underwater swimming scene. Ms. Mirren, in a recently filmed interview, remembers the film the way one would a first lover. Also present is Scorsese, again making sharp insights in his brief intro/extro, and historian Kent Jones on the commentary track…

The earlier scenes are wooden and artificial, with oddly paced editing, leavened only by the presence of quirky Australian actor Frank Thring (THE VIKINGS, BEN-HUR, KING OF KINGS, EL CID, MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME). After disgruntled artist Bradley Morahan (James Mason) retreats to the Great Barrier Reef, the tone finds itself and stays put. It’s a delightfully rambling treatise on an artist’s obsessive personality – and in that way a statement by the director no less personal than the one that got him in trouble with PEEPING TOM. Mason co-produced with Powell, and I sense that it was personal for the actor as well – his THE HORSE’S MOUTH. Mason was sixty at the time, and his relationship with the supposedly-barely-legal Cora was pushing the envelope as much as the nudity. (Makes one wonder where Clint Eastwood’s BREEZY has been hiding). Powell and Mason yearned to work together again on a version of THE TEMPEST, some aspects of which are evident in this endeavor.

An aside: you know how sometimes there’s an information sheet adhered to the back of a DVD box by a dab of rubbery glop, which you slowly remove once you’ve unpacked the box? Well on this sheet there’s a photo of Helen Mirren in which she looks more stunning than she does in the actual film. So don’t be so quick to pull it off and trash it.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK – THE PREMIERE COLLECTION
Recommendation by Glenn Andreiev

20th Century Fox’s ALFRED HITCHCOCK – THE PREMIERE COLLECTION is an amazing treat for the Hitchcock fan, and essential for all of us who love great movies! The first of the eight films in the set is the silent 1926 THE LODGER, Hitchcock’s debut exercise in suspense cinema. This tale of a mysterious, cloaked tenant who may be a depraved sexual serial killer is an opportunity to see Hitchcock begin using his beloved cinematic trademarks. This lodger turns out to be a victim of mistaken identity; the police tracking him are fearful, and there’s a young women who places herself in horrid danger to save him. The film ends with the first climatic Hitchcock chase. Before this box set, those wanting to see the film, directed by the then 27-year old Hitchcock, had to settle for contrasty public domain dupes, usually made off of already-battered 16mm prints. One would think Hitchcock filmed THE LODGER with an elevator security camera! Here we get a beautifully restored LODGER, bursting in clarity, with gorgeous blue and red tinting, and that welcome chilling sense of dread that Hitchcock would build on in later years. The LODGER disc comes with great extras, one of which is “Hitchcock 101”, a short wherein Hitchcock’s grand-daughter tells of taking a college course on her grand-dad’s films – and she never told her professor who her famous grandpa was!

Others on this pristine collection are: SABOTAGE, YOUNG AND INNOCENT, REBECCA, LIFEBOAT, SPELLBOUND, NOTORIOUS, and THE PARADINE CASE.

To read the rest of Glenn’s in coverage…

This new addition to the excellent Walt Disney Treasures series collects the full 20-episode ANNETTE serial as it aired in the 1957-1958 season of The Mickey Mouse Club. After a slow start, ANNETTE soon drags you into a world of nostalgia, wishing you could get a shake at a malt shop, or take a hayride on the way to a BBQ, singing Disney’s greatest hits. ANNETTE’s vision of wholesomeness seems as if it may have been nostalgic even for those who watched it when it originally aired, as it obviously reflects the Disney 1950s vision of America, more then the country’s social realities.

ANNETTE stars Walt Disney’s favorite, and only, hand-picked member of the Mickey Mouse Club, Annette Funicello, as a dark-skinned farm girl who moves in with her aunt and uncle in an all-white, middle-class American suburb. She soon finds a friend in the class hunk, Steve, and a nemesis in his rich, snotty girlfriend, Laura. Other characters include Jet, a farm girl who is not a member on the cool-crowd, and Steady Ware, an always-hungry, dancing-pro, loud-mouthed youngster who hangs out with the older teenagers. Steady, holding up a giant, raw steak and telling the girl obsessed with him to beat off, is a sight to be seen. This lightweight soap is the closest live action could get to an Archie comic book (certainly more then ARCHIE: TO RIVERDALE AND BACK AGAIN, 1990).

If a person can authentically and realistically posses the Disney magic, it is Annette Funicello. There isn’t a shred of negativity throughout her career, and always with the most sincere intentions. From the Mickey Mouse Club through her roles in Disney movies and the American International Pictures BEACH PARTY series, she encompasses the idea of the ‘American Sweetheart’ more then any other. Her charm is still irresistible in her last feature film role as Annette in BACK TO THE BEACH (1987), but how could you ever resist the girl who inspired Paul Anka’s ‘Puppy Love’?

The DVD features 2 full episodes of The Mickey Mouse Club (the debut and concluding episodes of her serial) and 2 featurettes: Produced in 1993, “Musically Yours, Annette” looks at Annette’s musical career and the creation of her unique sound. “To Annette, With Love” is a loving tribute featuring some of Annette’s friends and her husband. The set truly does right by Annette, and is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

DR. SYN: THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH, sits waiting in another Disney tin, on two discs, one containing the three-part TV presentation, the other, the tightened, theatrical feature. As Disney maven Leonard Maltin rightly explains, some degree of nuance is lost in condensing the series to a little over an hour and a half, though he praises the editing in the shorter version. You’ll find yourself in a conundrum when you watch them: the shorter piece is compressed, sometimes to its detriment, but it moves quickly, whereas the three-part version moves slowly enough, at times, to lose narrative focus. I’m for the alacrity of the condensed version.

Maltin also acknowledges Hammer Films’ take on the same historical story – 1962’s DR. CLEGG, starring Peter Cushing. What he doesn’t mention is how Hammer-esque the 1963 DR. SYN is, even replicating some Hammer musical ideas in the score. Of course Disney had more money to lavish on its productions than Hammer ever dreamed of spending, and so this is a particularly stunning movie, with dazzling day-for-night sequences, a terrific, theme-song driven title montage, and a fine cast, featuring Patrick McGoohan, who had a clipped way of delivering dialogue, as he does here, but as his alter-ego, The Scarecrow, he ramps it up a few notches, barking out his ultra-clipped dialogue like a burp-gun. Others who excel in the cast are Michael Hordern and Geoffrey Keen. James Neilson, very much a TV director, and at that very much a Disney in-house director, does an adequate job with atmosphere. The editing in the feature version does the rest.

2009 will see FIR’s tardy entrée into the esoteric world of BLURAY, but that doesn’t keep us from mentioning the medium a month early: Disney’s BluRay release of all three PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN films is a really neat Stocking Stuffer. Though the surprise success of the series was due, without doubt, to Johnny Depp’s fey interpretation of the lead character, he was supported with the most amazing make-up and CGI effects, both of which beg for the heightened detail of BluRay to strut their stuff, in particular the maelstrom sequence which, for me, was the best use of Special Effects in its year, and must be seen in that format to be believed.

From BBC Video comes a three-disc collection: KEN RUSSELL AT THE BBC. On the cover, Russell strikes a pensive pose, no doubt contemplating further sensational imagery he can perpetrate on an unsuspecting public. These six films, representative of his BBC work, are in some quarters considered for Russell what the Mutual shorts were to Chaplin. They show the artist finding himself, and at the same time creating his best work…or much of it.

Certainly SONG OF SUMMER (1968) fits that description. It is a somber B&W meditation on obsession, selfless devotion, artistic inspiration, and destructive egotism. Russell regular Max Adrian plays Frederick Delius, crippled and in need of a slave, who appears in the form of cinema pianist Eric Fenby (the film is based on his autobiography). It is a painful, claustrophobically controlled feature. The only Russell theatrical feature that comes near it in tone is SAVAGE MESSIAH (1972, currently unavailable on DVD). And it is a unique work of art, even among the many films about composers directed by Russell himself.

Oddly, this version, and one presented on a single disc several years ago by The British Film Institute, are different cuts, and neither of them are the cut originally aired, and which still exists on 16mm rental prints (a market that sees less and less commercial viability nowadays). I’m assuming the rights to footage from Laurel and Hardy’s WAY OUT WEST was not originally licensed for home video, and so had to be deleted. But the two releases also start with different shots? And to further complicate the issue, the BFI DVD release is smooth and creamy in its look, while the new BBC release is contrasty and harsh – aggressively different visual presentations, and I couldn’t tell you which was Russell’s intent. They both work, but accentuate different emotional attitudes in the narrative. I had to keep both.

ELGAR (1962) is 54 minutes long, a good documentary which was apparently more radical in its day (the box cover claims he was the first filmmaker to use re-enactments, and in his interview on disc one, he affirms this), tracing the life of the composer, who was recognized very late in his desperate career, always teetering on the verge of poverty. There’s good archival footage and still photos, all set to his music. And long, sensuous B&W tracking shots of his time in the country as a boy, which would carry him through his life, past great depressions and professional set-backs.

Others in the collection are THE DEBUSSY FILM (1965 – with Oliver Reed and Vladek Sheybal), ALWAYS ON SUNDAY (1965), ISADORA: THE BIGSEST DANCER IN WORLD (1966) – a rambunctious reverie on Isadora Duncan which far out-passions Karel Reiz’s elegant but sterile version, made the same year, with Vanessa Redgrave in the title role. DANTE’S INFERNO (1967), with Oliver Reed (another Russell regular) as poet/painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. And there are special features, such as an 81-year-old Russell sitting outdoors on a park bench, commenting animatedly about his early work, while we are treated to fabulous footage of him at work in his BBC days, the footage looking as if he were in one of his own films. There is much Russell yet to make its way to DVD, but this is a wonderful, rewatchable dose of his output, and it should be owned.

On October 25th, we lost writer/director Gerard Damiano, aged 80. A major footnote in film history, he was the director of the first porno films to go mainstream in the early 70s. DEEP THROAT (1972) was distinguished by some smart editing, and THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES (1973) was a hard-core version of “No Exit”. Both films therefore had marketable pretentions of class, allowing the public to cross the X-barrier and see them without recrimination. DEEP THROAT made an estimated $600 million dollars.

A year after these milestones, I was working for Great Scott, a PR agency, and was put in charge of running the only (to my knowledge) Academy Award campaign for a porno film – Gerard Damiano’s MEMORIES WITHIN MISS AGGIE (1974). It was a miserable little piece of celluloid, but with touches of Ingmar Bergman in the characters’ behavior, and in the cinematography, thus, once again, giving the director’s work a veneer of respectability (on IMDB it notes that the film opened on July 8th in Sweden). What it really delivered, however, was an appalling vision of sex, and of the human body. I begged Boris Kaufman, the man who shot ON THE WATERFRONT, then in his 80s, not to come to the screening I’d set for Guild members. I didn’t offer quite the same advice to Tony Randall, who showed up with his coat pulled over his head.

One of the few articulate advocates of sexuality in the arts was Al Goldstein. (He and my brother Lewis had been the two outspoken members of an advanced philosophy class at NYU.) Goldstein found his calling, creating the publication Screw Magazine, which incurred its share of obscenity lawsuits, each of which Goldstein battled in the courts, and in the pages of his paper, winning some landmark cases, and hemorrhaging money in the process. Decades later, when Goldstein was penniless and his professional belongings were about to be either sold off or destroyed, Bill Lustig (owner of Blue Underground, a cherished DVD label) bumped into the former editor, who ended up working at the 2nd Avenue Deli in lower Manhattan, and learned that the entire collection of tapes of Goldstein’s cable show ‘Midnight Blue’ – representing the years 1975-2002 – were among the articles in a warehouse about to be destroyed. Bill struck a licensing deal with Goldstein for the tapes, which saved the show for posterity, and out of these countless hours, he has pieced together four feature-length DVDs (each running two hours), compilations of ‘Midnight Blue’ highlights, which are packaged in one collection for your viewing pleasure.

The fifth DVD in the boxed set is a feature doc – PORN KING – which displays the arc of Goldstein’s career, brought down in the end by his own self-destructive nature. This collection is not only valuable for historical purposes, but for its many pleasures. Guests such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, O.J. Simpson, Russ Meyer and Deborah Harry make appearances, and the work of porn pioneers such as Harry Reems, Georgina Spelvin, Marilyn Chambers, and Annie Sprinkle (who increased her professional options by taking classes at The School of Visual Arts) are on display. And throughout it all, Goldstein’s irreverent personality sets the tone. The titles of the compilations discs are: ‘The Deep Throat Special Edition’, ‘Porn Stars of the 70’s’, ‘Celebrities Edition’, and ‘Freaks & Geeks.’ Also included in the box is a sweet little booklet featuring a history of Screw Magazine along with reproductions of several of its covers, including the one done by R. Crumb, who also appears in the ‘Celebrities Edition’ DVD.

From Kino comes THE GRIFFITH MASTERWORKS COLLECTION, VOLUME 2

This includes several of Griffith’s features we’ve been really pining for, such as WAY DOWN EAST (1920), which, like his epics of the period, ran a staggering 149 minutes. Each of these features include many supplements, in this case a score by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, notes on Lottie Blair Parker’s original play, photos of William Brady’s 1903 stage version, and a clip of the ice flow sequence from the Edison Studio’s UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.

The other features and shorts on this five-disc boxed set are: SALLY OF THE SAWDUST (1925 – D.W.Griffith & W.C. Fields? And with an intro by Orson Welles), THE AVENGING CONSCIENCE (1914 – 84 mins), EDGAR ALLEN POE (1909, 7 mins), ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1930, 90 mins, ‘talking’), and THE STRUGGLE (1931, 87 mins, also ‘talking’). The difference between ABRAHAM LINCOLN and THE STRUGGLE is major, and it seems clear that if he’d had another few shots at it, he might have finally adapted to the ‘talkies’, but it didn’t happen. Uneven, to be sure, THE STRUGGLE has some powerful scenes, and it features one of the very few performances by the extremely exotic Zita Johann.

After a bad experience with Karl Freund on THE MUMMY (1932) she ditched Hollywood, a loss for the film capital, and for us. She doesn’t have the big emotional role here, sadly, but she’s still mesmerizing to look at.

And the plum in the pudding is a near three-hour documentary on the life and career of the director: D.W. GRIFFITH: FATHER OF FILM by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. Brownlow, for the one or two of you who don’t know, is the world’s leading film historian, in part because of his remarkable archeological digs into the remnants of motion picture history, and equally for his filmmaking and literary skills. His docs are passionate, cinematic, and bring the shadows of the silent era to life for us. As do his books. ‘The Parades Gone By’ is still one of the ten greatest tomes on cinema history.

BOOKS:

UNFILTERED: THE COMPLETE RALPH BAKSHI.

This coffee table book from Universe, a division of Rizzoli International Publications, is a work of art depicting the work of a major artist in the field of animation. Bakshi, a gifted, difficult artist, has had a rewarding career and often a ground-breaking one. Best remembered for FRITZ THE CAT, a sweet translation of the R. Crumb comics, his work spans many genres within the animation field. More often autobiographical (or at least ferociously personal) than not, his best may be AMERICAN POP, but if so, it is followed closely by HEAVY TRAFFIC, COONSKIN, WIZARDS, and HEY GOOD LOOKIN’ (yet to find its way to DVD!!)

The book is a masterpiece of design, copiously illustrated with full color reproductions of not only film frames, but sketches, doodles, storyboards, etc. It’s informative, outrageous, and sexy. The Herculean task of assembling this book goes to Jon M. Gibson & Chris McDonnell. Quentin Tarentino does a Foreword, but Bakshi gets the last word.

CHEAP SCARES! LOW BUDGET HORROR FIMMAKERS SHARE THEIR SECRETS, by Greg Lamberson. From McFarland.

Greg Lamberson is nothing if not renaissance prolific. He’s a novelist (JOHNNY GRUESOME), a screenwriter (SLIME CITY), a film director (NAKED FEAR, UNDYING LOVE) and producer, a promoter, a horror website publisher/editor (FearZone.com), a columnist. He’s everywhere in this country at once, hawking his work and churning out new books or articles during breaks from his horror convention table signings. Did I hear he was going toe-to-toe with Caroline Kennedy for the Senate seat? Maybe not, but why would I not be surprised. And he helps raise a lovely little daughter simultaneously with all this.

‘Cheap Scares!’ is a terrific overview of the many and terrible obstacles awaiting the neophyte filmmaker on his journey through the process. It’s organized and written by Greg, and by interviews he’s conducted with key figures in the low-budget end of the genre, including Larry Fessenden, Scooter McRae, Brett Piper, James Lorinz, Paige Davis, Stephen Biro, and…alright, so I’m included, so what? I should have probably relegated this review to someone else at FIR, right? But hey, it’s Christmas, it’s my gift to all of you. Check it out.

An odd Halloween, this year. Few biggies, but a number of little goodies. Enough to fill the treat bag of any horror lover. Below are a few of these recent releases.

FOX HORROR CLASSICS
Two horror rarities, and one almost-horror flick, from the vaults.

CHANDU THE MAGICIAN – 1932. 71 mins.
Directed by William Cameron Menzies and Marcel Varnel. From the radio serial by Harry A. Earnshaw, R.R. Morgan and Vera M. Oldham. Screenplay by Barry Conners and Philip Klein. Cinematography by James Wong Howe. Art Direction by Max Parker. Props by Kenneth Strickfadden.
With: Edmund Lowe, Irene Ware, Bela Lugosi, Henry B. Walthall.

DRAGONWYCK – 1946. 103 mins.
Written & Directed by Joseph Mankiewicz. Produced by Ernest Lubitsch, Darryl Zanuck. Cinematography by Arthur Miller. Original Music by Alfred Newman. Art direction by J. Russell Spencer, Lyle Wheeler. Edited by Dorothy Spencer.
With: Gene Tierney, Wvincent Price, Walter Huston, Glann Langan, Anne Revere, Spring Byington.

DR. RENAULT’S SECRET – 1942. 58 mins.
Directed by Harry Lachman. Screenplay by William Bruckner, Robert F. Metzler, from the novel ‘Balaoo’ by Gaston Leroux. Cinematography by Virgil Miller. Music by David Raksin.
With: J. Carrol Naish, Shepperd Strudwick, Lynn Roberts, George Zucco.

A nice collection, each of them in gorgeous condition, which accents the fine detail of DRAGONWYCK, and shows off Howe’s and Menzies work in CHANDU.

Of the three, CHANDU is the most impressive, suffering from a case of dueling departments. Edmund Lowe and Irene Ware are awful, flattening out our willing suspension of disbelief, as does the terrible script. Pumping the film back up are Menzies sets, Howe’s cinematography, Strickfaden’s props, and ‘s special effects. All these great talents are unable to put Chandu back together again, but as a consolation prize, we get Lugosi in prime shape, and he has some wonderful scenes (for #2500!). Fox puts a disclaimer up front about the film’s quality, but outside of an errant spice, and some minor lines, it looks gorgeous. What were they concerned about?

CHANDU, spun off of a super-successful radio show, is an early attempt at a compressed serial, a la RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, intended (as I learned from Greg Mank’s commentary) for children, with the forlorn hope that maybe adults would enjoy it as something akin to camp. There are cute animal cameos – camels, bovines, tiny frogs, etc. And there’s Ernest Munden, a dreadful comic relief character, but he’s given excellent special effects support.

Man’s colorful commentary places facts at stragegic places. He also thinks Tom Weaver for filling in some of the gaps.

Lugosi’s final ‘God’ speech really sounds like Hitler in TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, replete with gutteral voice, vocal rhythms, etc. Could the Fuhrer have seen the film and imcorporated Lugosi into his shtick? 1932 is about right. He stole Chaplin’s moustache; why not Lugosi’s ham?

DR. RENAULT’S SECRET is a poor man’s ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, with only one lost soul on display. But in its framing and veneer it looks like a Universal programmer from the 40s, which is high praise. J. Carrol Naish, as the morose ‘secret’ of the title, acquits himself well, gathering pathos, much as he did in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. It’s a minor piece, and left to its own devices, it wouldn’t be worth having, but in the company of the other two, it is a lot of fun.

DRAGONWYCK was Mankiewicz’s first directorial foray, and while it has elements of horror in it, one could not honestly call it a horror film. Nonetheless it features genre stalwart Vincent Price…before he was adopted by the genre, and dark moody sets oozing horror ambience. Mankiewicz was to use Ms. Tierney to better effect in THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR a few years later. For a full review, check out the FIR article by David Del Valle.

PIECES (1982) aka One Thousand Cries Has the Night 
Directed by Juan Piquer Simon. Screenplay by Dick Randall and Joe D’Amato
Starring Christopher George, Lynda Day George, Frank Brand, Edmund Purdom, Ian Sera, Paul L. Smith, Isabelle Luque.

I love October! It is the only month where I feel like everybody shares my obsession with horror movies. Blockbuster’s scary movie section is all checked out, and people pack into theaters to watch midnight showings of their favorite fright flicks from the past. If only it would stay like this all year round…

Sometimes I’m in the mood for a film that can get under my skin, and make me think long after the credits have rolled…that film is THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Other times I want to see a topless woman running through a locker room screaming her head off, while a mysterious figure chases her with a buzzing chainsaw, only to cut her up into small pieces, confiscating parts he needs for his human jigsaw puzzle…this film is PIECES.

PIECES is, as its tagline proudly advertises, “Exactly what you think it is”. The film opens in 1942, where a young boy is putting together a puzzle of a naked woman. He is caught by his mother and she goes crazy, throwing things around the house and attempting to burn all his belongings. Sound a little over-the-top? The child deals with this the only way he sees fit…he cuts her into pieces with an ax. CUT TO: 40 years later. A serial killer stalks women in a Boston college campus, severing their bodies and stealing limbs. I know the plot doesn’t sound very impressive, and that’s because it ain’t, but I guarantee nobody likes this movie for the ingenious plot.

To read the rest of Guglielmo Anthony’s review.

THE SKULL
DVD review by Richard A. Ekstedt
 

Legend Films. Amicus Films, released by Paramount Pictures in 1965. Technicolour/Techniscope. 83 minutes.Widescreen 2:35.1 (16×9). Original Trailer (1:85). No subtitle option but close-captioned.

Producer…Milton Subotsky & Max J. Rosenberg. Director…Freddie Francis. Music…Elisabeth Lutyens. Cinematography…John Wilcox
Film Editing…Oswald Hafenrichte. Art Direction…Bil Constable
With: Dr. Christopher Maitland…Peter Cushing. Anthony Marco…Patrick Wymark
Jane Maitland…Jill Bennet. Inspector Wilson…Richard Green. Police Surgeon…Patrick Magee. Auctioneer…Michael Gough. Dr. Londe…George Colouris. And, as
Sir Matthew Philips…Christopher Lee.
 
This is a title many lovers of the fantastique have been waiting for: a beautiful 2:35.1 WIDESCREEN (that’s right folks!) release of the Amicus Film THE SKULL!  Throw those ep p/s vhs copies away and finally see the film as it was meant to be seen.

Legend Films, a leading company in digital restoration (and the colorization of older PD titles), has obtained the rights to several Paramount Pictures titles, and has begun issuing them as authorized DVD releases that are a joy to behold. THE SKULL is just an example of their emphasis on quality.

This film, based upon the classic short story “The Skull Of The Marquis de Sade” by Robert Bloch, is a tale of obsession — the mania to collect and own something at all costs, manifested by the film’s main characters, and the horrifying outcome of one such quest.

Peter Cushing (who I had the chance to meet and talk to in the 1970′s – a very warm and gentle man) plays Christopher Maitland, a writer and collector of the occult, who is offered the skull of the legendary Count Donatien Alphonse Francois – The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), by a shady dealer named Marco (played with great relish by Patrick Wymark, best known to some viewers as ‘The Judge’ in the exceptional THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW). Intrigued by the possibility, Maitland turns to his long time friend Sir Mathew Phillips, a fellow collector who turns out to be the skull’s former owner. Warned by his friend that the skull is infested by the forces of evil and better left alone, Maitland,  now obsessed by the graveyard relic, decides to ignore his friend’s advice and seeks out the nefarious Marco. When he arrives at dealer’s flat he finds him dead – his throat ripped out. Ignoring the premonitions of his wife, Maitland, now having the skull in his study, is engulfed into a whirlwind of black horror from which there is no escape.

THE SKULL is a cinematic ballet of sorts for cinematographer/director Freddie Francis, who won Academy Awards for the films SONS AND LOVERS and GLORY, as well as his work in such genre films as DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (uncredited direction), THE INNOCENTS, EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN, DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE – to name a few. With his camera compositions in Cushing’s study as the lens lingers over the curios. to the most important shots, missing from the cropped p/s tapes but now restored in widescreen on this disc, are the POV shots that take the viewer INSIDE the skull and has us looking out from both eye sockets at the actors – done by having a large mockup of the skull positioned over the camera. The final part, done almost as a silent movie, is a visual feast as we watch Peter Cushing spiral downward in panic, set to the sparse, nervous score of Elisabeth Lutyens (who also scored DOCTOR TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS). Christopher Lee’s role very sincere performance is really an extended cameo (he is billed S ‘Guest Star’) as are Patrick Wymark, Jill Bennet (as Mrs. Maitland), Nigel Green, Michael Gough, Peter Woodthorpe (best remembered as Professor Zoltan in EVIL OF FRANKENSTEI) and George Coulouris. But the star here is Peter Cushing, who carries the movie on his shoulders in such a way that it never downgrades the talents of the other performers.

As reported to me, the original materials given by Paramount were in very good shape, with just a little bit of grain/scratches showing up on the visuals. The color is strong and the audio is equally good, with little distortion when played LOUD. Also included is the original theatrical trailer, framed at 1:85. There is no subtitle option but the filim is closed captioned. THE SKULL may be obtained from Legend Films (www.legendfilms.net) or various retail outlets like Best Buy.  Seek out this film and pay the price!!

With contributions from Glen Andreiev, Mark Gross and David Del Valle

I’m told everyone is waiting for the last minute to scramble for Xmas gifts. Well consider these handsome DVD releases: either collections or special editions, with lovely packaging, good supplements, and shelf-worthy subject matter. The reviews are supplied by your editor and some of his gallant writers.

WARNER DIRECTOR SERIES: STANLEY KUBRICK

I once knew a therapist, my ex-wife’s therapist, to be specific, who said he went to high school with Stanley Kubrick. “It was in the Bathgate section of the Bronx.,” he said. “Stanley was always playing hooky and going to the movies. I used to tell him if he kept going to the movies he’d never amount to anything.” Then my ex-wife’s therapist sighed. “I guess Stanley had the right idea after all.”
As for me, I find myself in a somewhat paradoxical position recommending this set as a Xmas gift. To be honest, I don’t necessarily like most of Stanley Kubrick’s films. It’s possible I may be kvetching a little, for I must confess I love this new Kubrick set, both for the glorious transfers and terrific new extras. This includes three documentaries of extraordinary depth and subtle artistry (on 2001, CLOCKWORK ORANGE and EYES WIDE SHUT, respectively) commissioned by the BBC, not to mention some great commentary tracks, which makes seeing these films again fairly revelatory.
This set contains the original widescreen theatrical presentations of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, THE SHINING, FULL METAL JACKET and EYES WIDE SHUT (in its unrated version) for the first time on home video. Although Kubrick apparently insisted on 1:33 as the preferred aspect ratio of these films except 2001 (which was shot in 70mm Super Panavision), the previous standard releases had way too much floor and ceiling so, for instance, in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Alex and his droogs seem to be floating in this amniotic fluid of hazy reddish grain. The hellish color is because the source material appears to be taken from badly faded television prints.
All this has now been corrected. The widescreen compositions are much sharper and also more involving without that empty space around the actors. (According to Garrett Brown, Kubrick’s operator, he always shot in 1:66, which means slightly cutting off the frame if one goes to 1:85, although these new transfers look perfectly centered to me).Warners’ immaculate transfers, combined with Kubrick’s impeccable technique and quest for perfection, have combined to create images that are hypnotic in their ability to dazzle the eye, with nary a trace of edge enhancement or any defects whatsoever.
I’ve been looking at Kubrick’s films all my adult life, feeling simultaneously frustrated and elated. Unlike many of the directors I admire, such as Sam Fuller or Jean-Marie Straub, Kubrick did not toil in obscurity. He worked in many genres, from horror to the historical epic, yet continually made the same film – a supremely elegant, ironic meditation on power and individual meaning, with a gliding camera simultaneously detached yet drawing us into the depths of the unknown, transforming space with a sardonic yet terrifying beauty, the tone poised somewhere between Kierkegaard and Mad Magazine.
In many of these films, the camera isn’t telling a story so much as creating a series of almost abstract images that runs parallel to the narrative. This method works best in 2001, but in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and THE SHINING, which deal with a character in crisis, it’s more problematic. There’s an aspect of Kubrick’s style that’s overly fastidious, not to mention self-consciously cartoonish, especially the way he takes complex literary works and pares the characters down to stereotypes, with broad acting and almost banana-peel like humor. Kubrick’s tendency to use symmetrical narratives of opposing yet complementary scenes reinforces for me this feeling of two-dimensionality, as the characters seem trapped in a circle from which they cannot escape, a trap not of their own devising but rather due to the director’s imperious vision. (In CLOCKWORK, for instance, the circular structure implies that Alex’s spontaneous violence is just as machine-like as the totalitarian state that oppresses him, which is the exact opposite meaning of Burgess’ novel.) Another problem is Kubrick’s sense of time. It may be sublime (as in the extended takes of 2001) but it’s also inherently static, similar to someone looking at a painting. (Compare the long takes in Welles’ MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, for instance, where you can almost hear the performers hearts beat, to those in THE SHINING, where the camera seems to be moving through a terrain that is inaccessible to us, unchanged and inviolate.)
The first Kubrick film I saw was 2001, on opening day at the Capitol Theatre in New York City. I can’t remember if I, like Stanley before me, was playing hooky from high school or if it was the beginning of summer vacation. I do recall wearing shirt-sleeves. On the way to the theatre, I noticed the new Truffaut book of Hitchcock interviews in the window of Doubleday on Fifth Avenue and bought it. During intermission, I read the book with the word “Hitchcock” emblazoned in blue across the front and got a number of approving nods from a group of serious young men who were sitting in the front row. Hardly anyone else was there.
I love 2001, possibly because I saw it at such an impressionable age. But for me, the film still holds up, and even more, has new revelations in store every time I plop the disc in. Yes, the picture has plenty of flaws, although I wouldn’t use it to prove, as Andrew Sarris has tried to do, that Kubrick is unable to tell a story, for I think 2001 is one of Kubrick’s best achievements in storytelling.
At the beginning of time, ape-men discover a monolith and by touching it are able to learn how to develop skills to survive. A few millions years later, explorers on the moon dig up the same monolith which emits a radio signal in the direction of Jupiter. A spaceship manned by astronauts Bowman and Poole (Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood) as well as a neurotic, overconfident computer named HAL (Douglas Rain) are sent to investigate.
This new transfer goes a long way towards recreating the experience of seeing 2001 in a theatre. What’s particularly important is the color, which has a density and detail that almost seems three-dimensional. In the Dawn of Man and Spaceship Discovery sequences, for instance, there’s all these shades of red–fuschia, magenta, and hot pink–that bring to mind the fauve canvases of Maurice de Vlaminck, and also evokes the sense of nostalgia for things that have not yet come to pass, which is an important part of screenplay author Arthur C. Clarke’s sensibility.
I remember the Dawn of Man sequence as being deeply emotional and densely entertaining, with lots of interactions between the ape-men. Now it seems very spare. Listening to the commentary by Gary Lockwood and Keir Dullea on the first disc, I discovered this wasn’t a hallucination on my part, as Kubrick cut more than ten minutes out of the sequence after the premiere. I particularly remember a scene where Moonwatcher, the head man-ape (played by Daniel Richter) teaches a child how to eat raw meat, as well as a sequence of ape men pushing each other in play that turns to violence. I would love to see that footage again, but apparently it no longer exists.
I also saw A CLOCKWORK ORANGE on opening day, at the Cinema I, to be specific, directly across from Bloomingdale’s where I was working at the time. Although it’s beautifully made, not to mention a classic example on how to adapt an “unfilmable” novel to the screen (the original was written first person in an invented language called “nadsat”, a mixture of Russian and cockney rhyming slang), I’m afraid I can muster little enthusiasm for the film, even while I find its technical mastery awe-inspiring.
In the near future, Alex and his droogs, Georgie, Pete and Dim (Malcolm Mc Dowell, James Marcus, Michael Tarn and Warren Clarke) “go in for a bit of the old ultraviolence” by breaking into people’s homes. One such foray ends in murder, and Alex is set up by his mates and turned over to the police. In prison, Alex is introduced to the tender ministrations of the Ludovico method, which will apparently turn him into a model citizen.
This transfer, in my opinion, is the most dazzling of the entire set, and goes a long way to correcting the poor impression left by the abysmal versions that have been available previously. The imagery is almost crystalline, sharp yet spare, the colors minimal yet suddenly confronted by blazing red, like Andrienne Corri’s frock in the “Singin’ in the Rain” scene. It’s impossible not to watch the darn thing, even while one is completely repelled by the actions on screen. Clearly, that was Kubrick’s intention, and on some level, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, with its vistas of gang violence in the near future, haphazardly vicious yet ironically beautiful, is a masterpiece. But it’s such a cold, calculated construction of a film, with outright borrowings from other contemporary movies, it’s difficult for me to have much affection for the thing. (This is not entirely a criticism, as the cinematic polyglot of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, referencing everything from Bunuel to Minnelli, creates a multiplicity of voices and viewpoints that is similar to reading the Burgess novel.)
Unlike Nick Redman, though (whose commentary with Malcolm McDowell is consistently fascinating), I do not find the film’s violence “pre-feminist.” Through the use of tracking shots and various forms of performance stylization, Kubrick is able to place an audience simultaneously inside Alex’s head, while remaining objective about the reprehensible meaning of his actions. It’s an amazing performance, evocative of the late prose style of Henry James, somehow transferred to the cinema. Unfortunately, because Alex never changes, the process that both he and the audience goes through– Kubrick uses an editing technique of identification and repulsion that is similar to Hitchcock’s PSYCHO–ultimately seems, to me, anyway, a waste of time. Although I can’t help watching the opening shot set at the Korova milkbar, with McDowell wearing one false eyelash and a derby, the camera slowly tracking backward until his supine figure and that of his mates becomes suffused with light.
What I find most interesting about A CLOCKWORK ORANGE is how Burgess’ novel, which was based on a real event (the author’s wife was raped by hooligans) after being made into a film caused the possibility of that violation to be revitalized (the Kubricks were inundated by threatening letters after the film was released). In a weird case of art imitating life and then looping back again, Kubrick withdrew the film from circulation in the UK due to those threats and it was unseen there for 25 years.(This is covered, in fascinating detail, in the BBC documentary.)

From Glenn Andreiev:
WAR OF THE WORLDS
(Dreamworks/Paramount)

In one scene from WAR OF THE WORLDS, my favorite 2005 release, a frazzled military man shouts: “Our weapons have no effect on them! Just help the citizens escape!” That’s the tone of Steven Spielberg’s often disturbing and scary take on H.G Wells’ story about a massive worldwide alien invasion. Like Wells’ story, our emotions almost never focus on scientists and military men. The center of attention here is an ordinary family man (Tom Cruise) protecting his children from unbeatable, hate-filled aliens. We see very little of us fighting back. Spielberg aims his camera at helpless, very often doomed people trying to escape and shield their loved ones.

2005 saw the release of two excellent fantasy remakes, this one, and Peter Jackson’s KING KONG. Spielberg and Jackson obviously both love the original versions of their big budgeted and effect-filled remakes. They never took the sneering tone of “Well, we have better special effects than what they had way back then, so nyah-nyah!”

WAR OF THE WORLDS never takes the ultra-cool, spoofy tone of alien invasion films like INDEPENDENCE DAY. This time it’s very cold and dark! You truly get the idea that these are final days for the human race. If you’re one of those who didn’t like Spielberg’s “tacked on” ending here, think of it as Tom Cruise meeting his family in heaven.

I’m still a big fan of George Pal’s 1953 original film, which is an exciting, suspenseful treat, drenched in rich Technicolor. I remember, as a pre-teenager, reading that it was going to be on TV one afternoon. At that point I hadn’t seen the movie, I only knew about it from incredible photographs in monster magazines. I tuned in a little late, missing the opening credits. The TV station, at the last minute, replaced the film with a western musical. Here I am, ten years old, watching some cowboy get into a bar fight and I’m thinking “Okay, where are those flying saucers?” The cowboy then rescues a stray cat and it along on his travels. It’s now almost twenty minutes into the film. The cowboy is canoeing down river with the cat, and he’s singing about the countryside. I’m confused, thinking: “Wow, this is the most bulloxed up sci-fi movie of all time. Maybe the Martians are behind that mountain?”

Twenty years from now, the same thing will happen to some confused young film fanatic when the TV station replaces WAR OF THE WORLDS with BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN.

From your Editor:
UNKNOWN CHAPLIN
(A&E/Thames) 1983. 163 mins. Supplements: The Story behind UNKNOWN CHAPLIN; The Making of THE COUNT; Chaplin Meets Harry Lauder.
Written and Produced by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. Music composed by Carl Davis. Film Editor Tevor Waite. Introduced by Geraldine Chaplin. Narrated by James Mason.

This was one of the ten best films of the 80s. Divided into three parts, it used footage from the Chaplin Archives, as well as outtakes horded by collectors like Raymond Rohauer over the decades, some going back as far as 1916, painstakingly collected and then cobbled together to form a striking demonstration of the great artist’s thought processes, his directorial style, his obsessions, his ability to sacrifice great sequences if he thought they weighed down the whole.

Brownlow and Gill were the passionate silent film historians of the planet Earth. Brownlow’s book ‘The Parades Gone By’ is still the best evocation of the creative joy surrounding the birth of cinema. In this film, eloquently narrated by James Mason and scored with love by Carl Davis, we watch endless takes (compressed for our tolerance level) within which Chaplin experimented with germs of comic ideas, working them over and over, adding nuance, elongating the takes, until they became the works of genius which would be all we ever saw.

The CITY LIGHTS section (episode 2) is the most astonishing. He worked on the opening – where the tramp meets the blind girl and she believes him to be a millionaire – for over a year. Contemporaries contribute anecdotes and analysis under Brownlow’s expert coaxing. A breakthrough when it came out in ’83; it’s essential viewing/owning today.

The transfer is excellent, and there are supplements which were not on the laserdisc release. In one, Kevin Brownlow, the remaining member of the Brownlow/Gill team, relates the story of the arduous creation of the documentary. He also shares his feelings about Chaplin’s working methods, which he felt were in some ways disturbingly undisciplined. It’s an interesting take on an artist who had enough money and power to do it his way, and however odd his chosen route may have been, the ends certainly justified the means.

From Max Pemberton
THE FILMUSIC SELECTION

One has to review filmusic from several standpoints – Mainly: Does it stand up on its own as a piece of composition? Does it benefit the movie? Does it detract from the movie? Does it do any of the above? The best scores become an integral part of the movie itself and inseparable from its characters and visuals, i.e., you can’t imagine the movie without it, and neither can you listen to it without visualising the relevant parts of the movie (think JAWS).

So, asked to come up with my favourite score for a DVD release from last year it would have to be… (cue FX of envelope being torn open) … THE WIZARD OF OZ. from Warner Home Video.

Why? Well, it certainly fulfils all the requirements for a ‘best score’ as described above, but one of the beauties of this new three disc box set is the facility to watch the movie with just the music and sound effects in glorious digitally re-mastered stereo. All dialogue, except in the songs, is removed. Birds sing, the wind howls, the witch cackles and the tin man creaks – but nobody speaks. In this version, the only character with a voice (whilst not singing) is Toto, so you can listen to every music cue without interruption and accompanied by the appropriate visuals. Magic! Dorothy being whisked away by the tornado is a particular delight. The film is alternatively presented in its original mono for the inevitable purists.

I can’t think of another release where so much reverence has been shown in the restoration and presentation of a film’s soundtrack. Senior Vice President Theatrical Catalog Marketing for Warner Home Video, George Feltenstein, who was responsible for this release, and many others in 2005, deservedly received the William K. Everson Award for History of Film at the recent National Board of Review Awards in NYC.’

AND APPROPOS OF OZ…
We dip into FIR’s Archives, to bring you an excerpt from an article written for us in 1956:

There are two DVD packages this season that are absolutely indispensable. You should fine someone to give them to as a gift immediately. Better yet – give them to yourself. We’re all allowed a certain number of self-gifts for Christmas. These are essential home video collections. And the rest aren’t bad either…

A WILLIS O’BRIEN COLLECTION (Warner Bros Home Entertainment) – KING KONG DELUXE SET

He was a King and a God in the world he knew, but now he comes to DVD! The KING KONG Collector’s Edition is easily the DVD event of 2005. Warner Brothers went all out giving lovers of this 1933 screen classic something to salivate over. Film fanatics in general will have a blast piling through the extras on this must-own disc.

The DVD releases (there are three separate packagings) include a) the uncut 1933 version of KING KONG, with a slew of extras, b) a more elaborate ‘tin’ including a reproduction of the Program Guide you would have received had you attended the film’s March 1933 premiere, and c) a less ritzy boxed release in which you also get KONG’s sequel, SON OF KONG (1933) and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG (1949), both of them sweet, loving kin of Kong.

KING KONG
Executive Producer- David O. Selznick
Screenplay by James Creelman and Ruth Rose
From a story by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper
Chief Technician – Willis O’ Brien
Music Score – Max Steiner
Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack
Cast: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher, Nobel Johnson
1933 100 minutes RKO – DVD release by Warner Bros Home Entertainment

I’m one of those who has seen KING KONG literally dozens of times: in theaters, on VHS, laserdisc, and of course, the late-late show. It never looked as crisp as it does on this DVD. Taken off a pristine British 35mm print, there is hardly a scratch, or an audio pop. The jungle sequences now have incredible visual detail. The New York sequences jump out in sharp blacks and grays.

If you don’t know KING KONG’s basic plot-line, than where have you been? Over-enthusiastic film-maker Carl Denham takes his camera crew and his new leading lady, Ann Darrow, to Skull Island, where the natives kidnap Ann and offer her to their God, a gigantic gorilla they call Kong. After numerous perils with dinosaurs and Kong, Denham captures the beast and brings him to New York for paying audiences to gawk at. The chains holding Kong don’t hold, and, well, you know…

Not only is KING KONG a marvel of primitive special effects, it’s movie-making at its most energetic and experimental. It’s an amazingly well-edited and swiftly-paced film. I always loved how many key scenes in KING KONG either begin or end with people scattering for their lives. Scenes that would have just been boring filler are bypassed. This is true in the scene on Skull Island Beach where Denham knocks Kong out with gas bombs, and shouts out how Kong will be the biggest thing on Broadway. We jump-cut to Kong’s opening night. A lesser film-maker would have had at least ten yawn-inducing minutes of Kong being transported to New York, the New York Department of Health throwing a hissy-fit, and Kong being custom-fitted for chains.

The KING KONG extras begin with I’M KING KONG!, a one-hour documentary on the film’s producer/director, Merian C. Cooper, co-produced by Kevin Brownlow, the extraordinary film historian whose documentaries are labors of love as well as works of art. “Coop”, as friends called him, was an amazing renaissance man. Along with Kong’s co-director Ernest B. Schoedsack, “Coop” made GRASS (1925) and CHANG (1927), two silent documentaries about the wilds of Africa and Siam.

“I made my first two films without ever visiting Hollywood.” Cooper commented in a vintage recording that can be found on the commentary track. “I was an entirely self-taught filmmaker!” Cooper became head of production at RKO studios, where he championed the early use of the Technicolor process. He later helped to develop Cinerama, an early widescreen process that revolutionized the formats in which films were shot.

Now we come to RKO PRODUCTION 601: THE MAKING OF KONG, EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD, a two hour documentary about the birth of Kong. In 1931, pioneering stop-motion animator Willis O’Brien filmed a test reel to prompt RKO executives to green-light CREATION, a story about shipwreck survivors encountering dinosaurs. Cooper hated O’Brien’s plot outline (CREATION’s story is recreated in this documentary, compellingly narrated by redolent toned film preservationist Scott McQueen, but even so, you’ll see why Cooper didn’t respond to it!) However, Cooper was captivated by O’Brien’s stop motion work, which showed dinosaurs attacking hunters. Cooper had been developing KONG, and enlisted O’Brien to bring his story about a gigantic ape to life.

We go into the casting of KONG. 1932 was a busy time for the lovely Fay Wray. She was making 12 films that year. It’s interesting that KING KONG did not help the careers of its talented cast. Robert Armstrong, who played Denham with brilliant gusto, would only do supporting roles afterwards (He is very funny as a sarcastic FBI man opposite James Cagney in 1935′s G-MEN). Bruce Cabot, who plays Jack, Ann’s human love interest, would appear here and there, mostly as a bad guy. KING KONG was Fay Wray’s last starring role.

One of the great cinematic Holy Grails (a celebrated scene that was cut from the film, and then lost) is the scene where Kong has shaken sailors off a log into a chasm, where giant spiders, crabs, and squids attack and devour the helpless men. The scene was shot, but cut from the film before it’s general release, and it hasn’t been seen since. All that exists of this gruesome segment is Cooper and O’Brien’s shot list, and a few stills.

This is where Peter Jackson, the maker of KING KONG 2005 comes in. His visual effects team at Wingnut Productions recreated the spider pit sequence using 1932 technology (stop motion, a 35mm movie camera from the period, glass mattes, pose-able figurines, and no computers) They used the shot list and stills as a guide. They also re-created missing jungle scenes involving a Styracasaurus. (FIR’s editor commented that the Styracasaurus animation resembles Willis O’Brien’s work, while the spider pit creatures behaved as if Ray Harryhausen was guiding them.) I showed the spider pit sequence to two friends who seen almost everything filmed, and like me, their jaws dropped! Ray Harryhausen, whose legendary stop motion career started when he first saw KING KONG during it’s 1933 first run, heads a wonderfully enjoyable commentary track.

SON OF KONG
Produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack.
Screenplay by Ruth Rose
Chief Technician – Willis O’Brien
Music Score – Max Steiner
Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack
Cast: Robert Armstrong, Helen Mack, John Marston, Frank Reicher
1933. 71 minutes – RKO – DVD release by Warner Bros Home Entertainment

“Oh, heavens!” they must have said at RKO, “A sequel to our biggest hit – KING KONG! How on earth are we going to top the original?!” Merian C. Cooper wisely decided not to top KONG, but to parody it! What makes SON OF KONG such an enjoyable film is that it’s a study in let-down! Every time something is built-up in the film, it’s smashed down. The film’s opening shot shows a poster advertising King Kong’s Broadway debut. The camera pans down to show the poster is tacked to flop-house wall. Carl Denham, Kong’s captor, is sneaking out to avoid the process servers and lawsuits. On a South Seas island, Denham sees an ad for an exotic local singer – La Belle Helene (a very cute Helen Mack). Her stage act is a confusing, off sync, untrained monkey act. When Denham, Helen and company return to Skull Island they find smaller dinosaurs and a relatively diminutive albino Kong. You have to laugh with Robert Armstrong’s Denham as he apologizes to Kong Jr. for “knocking off your ol’ man,” or, in one scene, chastising the big baby gorilla for playing with a loaded rifle: “You big rummy!” At 71 minutes, SON OF KONG is a fun little flick, with a genuinely touching ending.

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG
Produced by John Ford and Merian C. Cooper
Screenplay by Ruth Rose
From an original idea by Merian C. Cooper
Special Visual Effects – Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen.
Commentary track with Harryhausen and Moore.
Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack
Cast: Terry Moore, Ben Johnson, Robert Armstrong, Frank McHugh
94 minutes. 1949 – RKO – DVD release by Warner Bros Home Entertainment

Once again, Merian C. Cooper wanted to make a giant gorilla picture, and as he did with SON OF KONG, the showman wisely chose not to top his 1933 classic (although the stop motion destruction scenes are unparalleled), but to have fun with it. MIGHTY JOE YOUNG is a fast paced fantasy-comedy-thriller about a gentle simian giant raised on an African plantation by a young girl (Terry Moore). A Carl Denham-clone stage producer named Max (the always energetic Robert Armstrong, this time sporting an awful toupee) coaxes Jill to bring Joe to Los Angeles where he features the giant ape in a night club routine. The crazy skits Max dreams up for Jill and Mighty Joe resemble Barnum and Bailey on crack! (The tug of war between Joe and a line up of beefy muscle men is 100% entertainment overdrive!) Joe finally goes berserk, and tears the club apart. There’s a court order to have him killed, but Max and Jill brainstorm an escape, and the mad chase is on.

John Ford is credited as a second unit director. (I’d love to know what scenes!) There are amusing cameo appearances by Hollywood supporting actors like Charles Lane, Edward Gargan, and Jack Pennick. MIGHTY JOE YOUNG’s highlight is the stop motion work, most of it by young Ray Harryhausen. His work here is some of the best animation you’ll ever see. The fist-fight between Joe and former heavyweight champion Primo Carnera, Joe’s rampage through the club (complete with animated lions, drunks, and debris), and the climactic fire sequence, help make MIGHTY JOE YOUNG a high-caffeine treat.

I have to mention how “film-logic” fuels MIGHTY JOE YOUNG’s third act. Joe is in a stolen van, being chased by angry policemen who are gaining on him. Suddenly they come across a burning orphanage, and Joe redeems himself by rescuing the trapped kids. (With my luck, if I was helping Joe escape, I’d come upon a burning maximum security prison with death row inmates waiting for a rescue!) While Joe lies there injured, after having rescued the last screaming tot, Jill is assured by her boyfriend (warmly played by Ben Johnson) that “Nobody’s gonna shoot Joe now!” Uh, excuse me, Benny, there’s a court order to shoot Joe! Are you a lawyer?!

Merian C. Cooper never worried about logic and goofball details. He was just interested in entertaining an audience, which he has done superbly for the last 70 plus years.

A commentary track is provided by Ray Harryhausen, whose memory about things 55 years ago is quite sharp, and Terry Moore, who Primo Carnera used to call “Teeny Weenie” on the set. At times the conversation flags, but mostly it’s a warm remembrance flavored with factual flourishes. One of the most important bits of info is supplied by Harryhausen: the tinting of the fire sequence was originally two-color – yellow and rich red, not the somewhat washed out orange we have here. Couldn’t someone have called him first?

For tax purposes I had to keep count: In 2004 I saw 225 movies. This number does not include DVD rentals or indicate the number of movies I saw twice. While I could easily condemn more than 10 as the worst films I have seen in 2004, here is my brief rundown of the top films of the year. But first, didn’t you cringe at THE CINDERELLA MAN trailer? What crass sentimentality dumped on us to stimulate patriotism for punching somebody senseless in a boxing ring. However, I really liked the SIN CITY and ELEKTRA trailers. And that BATMAN RETURNS poster? I get the message: Batman is kinky, virile, and brooding.

1. THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST: I read the book. I’ve done extensive research on crucifixion. Gibson did a faithful rendering of a widespread practice that was horrifically violent. Crucifixion was an immensely effective form of cruelty for a thousand years. I do not want a sanitized version of what happened to Jesus. The Catholic Church has been setting aside its founder in favor of His mother. Single-handedly, Gibson put Christ back in Christianity. THE PASSION was beautifully executed and a stunning recreation of the Biblical era. More significantly, it was emotionally riveting. To ignore THE PASSION is to snub all the people Gibson brought into theaters – for the first time in years.

2. LEMONY SNICKET’S SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS: Genius! Everything I want from a children’s fairy tale. The essential elements are all here: dread, evil, hardship, fear of adults, and a sublime villain. It is gorgeous to look at and drenched with extravagant characters, a dark mood, and an eerie menace. I think Jim Carrey hits his stride and creates a unique iconic villain. I saw it twice in one week.

3. THE MACHINIST: This year’s MEMENTO. Christian Bale is electrifying as a tortured man unable to sleep. It is not the weight loss that merits this one of the best performances of the year, it is that Bale committed himself to expressing the character’s deteriorating sate of mind so effectively. He never compromised. With so many movie stars giving up acting, Bale dives in the deep end of the artistic pool.

4. KILL BILL VOL. 2: Seen twice. We were wondering if Quentin Tarantino had left filmmaking; the KILL BILL movies put us all back in our seats. Tarantino has the unique ability to write fascinating characters so memorable that he has once again given other filmmakers something to sack and pillage. Tarantino makes The Bride an iconic figure and resurrects the careers of Daryl Hannah and David Carradine. If only Tarantino would admit he was joking when he said he would consider using Madonna in a film – if the role suited her. Quentin, no role suits Madonna.

5. THE AVIATOR: They left out Hughes’s well known homosexuality but kept in the sexless romanticism. Regardless of the politically correct considerations that have to sanitize “heroes” to insure a blockbuster (too many great homosexual men have been whitewashed by Hollywood in biopics. Why hasn’t the gay community complained?), Leonardo DiCaprio was able to suggest the selfish, nasty man buried beneath the enigma. It is a beautifully crafted movie though without Scorsese’s brutal mischief. Because of DiCaprio’s terrific performance and Scorsese’s extravagant filmmaking, I saw it twice in one week.

6. SAW: Nasty, cruel and cheaply done. Cleverness-over-money ruled the production and it shows. Isn’t this exactly what we want from a horror thriller? It has a very tight story and answers my question: Where are the original stories told with style and a definite point of view? There will be a SAW2 but lets hope they don’t add special effects and animation or a little kid with big eyes.

7. TOUCHING THE VOID: Still thinking about it makes me cringe. Would you cut the rope? And if you fell into a pit-less abyss, would you ever have the courage to claw your way out and then crawl around in the snow for days? This true story made me shiver. Regardless of the sincerity of the actual men involved, you, like I did, will come to your own conclusion.

8. OPEN WATER: Ha! Thank God, I don’t know how to swim! This based-on-a- true-story film is so tough and, since there was only one possible outcome, it is chilling and effective. Anyone can make an OCEAN’S TWELVE, but as Steven Soderbergh found out (FULL FRONTAL) not everyone can make a low, low budget movie (even with your mega-star friends as co-conspirators) and make it work. OPEN WATER, with two cast members, triumphed with creativity over budget.

9. THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON: I saw all the big budgeted films and I’m not naming any of them (except THE AVIATOR) on this list because most of them were awful, not because I am an elitist and need to praise small, obviously destined to be little-seen films. I hate those lists naming some Iranian film about a peasant who raises a chicken that absolutely no one sees. However, ASSASSINATION is on my list because Sean Penn gives a fascinating performance. How in the world does a famous movie star give a performance about a guy who is a lonely loser trapped as an office furniture salesman and make us believe him?

10. HERO: Because I couldn’t name BATTLE ROYALE which I only saw this year. BATTLE ROYALE is the only blockbuster Hollywood will never remake and if they ever do, we will all be emailing from Hell. HERO is gorgeous to look at and should inform Hollywood that we appreciate hypnotic visuals and a stylish storyline we have to pay attention to. We will be seeing for years to come how Hollywood translates the beauty of HERO into their action movies. I saw HERO twice.