What’s the quickest and most painless way to learn to write a screenplay?

No, it’s not the Robert McKee bonding weekend, which I have always thought must have been based on the brainwashing chapter in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE….

It’s not an “Insider” class on the Internet led by some dweeb in his pajamas exactly like you pretending to be a “major Hollywood agent.”

It’s not an MFA from a fancy film school where your graduation speech will be given by someone who used to be Michael Eisner…. (Neither fun nor painless.)

If you want to learn the bones of commercial screenwriting practically in your sleep, do it in your undershirt while eating Haagen Dazs and laughing your head off – and pay only $13.95–go to Amazon right now and order HITCHCOCKED, the new novel by Hal Spear and Rocco Simonelli.

Hal Spear is a comedian who has written for the likes of Jay Leno, Drew Carey and Howie Mandel. Rocco Simonelli is a screenwriter with a string of commercial successes (including co-creation of THE SUBSTITUTE – 1,2 and 3). He is also the author of a book about independent filmmaking (Shoot Me), and has taught screenwriting for a number of years. Together, they have produced a wisecracking thriller starring a film professor and the proverbial smart and gorgeous girl who’s-not-as-tough-as-she-seems. The professor – Marlowe, no less — is the person central casting would have sent if they suddenly woke up in 2010 and had to cast BRINGING UP BABY. And Cary Grant was dead and everyone else was from New Jersey. Denise Brigham is an amalgam of every heroine from Kate Hepburn to Jessica Beal – the fantasy girl every hero wants to end up with.

Being that Marlowe is, like Indiana Jones, commissioned from his post in a college, the nerdy professor of film sees everything in terms of movies. A lovely repartee develops between Denise and Marlowe, testing each other on their knowledge of movies and giving the reader clues to how the villains can be foiled. The villains — swarthy and villainous – lead the pair on a romantic romp through the history of Hollywood.

The pace is fast – perhaps too fast to allow for the organic growth of character. But that’s quibbling. HITCHCOCKED is the verbal equivalent of a box of Cracker Jacks – and the prize is that it is every bit as tightly constructed as a good movie. Figure out how the authors did it and all that stands between you and the next AVATAR is several hundred million dollars.

For the purpose of full disclosure (sounds like a movie starring Marlowe and Denise) Rocco Simonelli was the author’s colleague at the School of Visual Arts for 10 years. He is every bit as funny in person.

This is not just one of the ten best films of 1959. Nor is it just the best film of 1959. It is one of the best films ever made. Though I had a friend named Al Kilgore who disliked NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Felt the famous crop duster sequence, where Cary Grant hides out among the corn-stalks, with their surreal yellowish husks and obvious studio presence, suddenly turned the film into THE WIZARD OF OZ. But Al was an anglophile. He worshipped Hitchcock’s B & W British period and never could embrace any of the Technicolor work. Me, I’m thankful to this day that I got to see it at Radio City Music Hall, sitting in the company of several thousand other euphoric movie-goers, enthralled beyond description by the greatest romantic/comedy/thriller of all time.

For reasons utterly incomprehensible to me, Laser Disc and DVD never got it quite right. I had a Technicolor16mm print once, eons ago, which was on the money. But the proper color balance and sharpness continued to elude the film throughout its many home theater versions.

The BluRay is a 50th Anniversary edition, packaged like a little book, with a matte-textured cover portraying Grant, pursued by the plane, running toward us on a geometric designed surface. Behind this image, soft and indistinct at first, are the Mt. Rushmore heads. Inside there is a single disc, and an attached booklet with reasonably good information and several choice stills from the archives, but no information about chapters or supplementals.

Now for the comparisons with the recent Warner Bros DVD release, also featuring the crop duster shot on the cover, but less a design than a cropped photo.

NBNW was a sumptuous, stylish piece of art design. Grant’s silver-gray suit and tie were complimented by the silver in his hair, then given a little balance by his year-round tan. The next time I saw such stunning grays and silvers was in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, I presume intentionally, as homage. Anyway, the image feels right, if a bit studio over-lit, on the DVD. The BluRay is considerably more contrasty. Even the opening Green MGM lion is deeper and soggier, like paint, as opposed to the sharp, key lime green of the DVD.

Contrary to what one might expect, there is not more information on the BluRay, in fact at times there seems to be even less detail than on the DVD. The BluRay’s contrasty look feels almost as if the film were run through a B&W negative in addition to the standard matrices, as in John Huston’s MOBY DICK or David Fincher’s SE7EN. Scenes such as the Grand Central Station establishing shots, or Grant’s arrival by taxi at the Frank Lloyd Wright home occupied by James Mason and his Nazi cohorts in the third act, are too dark, obscuring important background details. (And Grant’s tan is darker throughout.)

Dialogue, too, is slightly muddy on the BluRay. But not the score. From the start, Bernard Hermann’s music feels like a different, more complex recording. There are nuances I hadn’t heard before, and they actually smooth out a few passages I’d always found to be foolish and off-putting. Both releases give you the option of isolating the score, by the way.

Looking at the classic Crop Duster sequence, I noticed that the sides of the frame were slightly ‘cropped’ on the BluRay. There’s an extra fence post clearly visible to Grant’s camera left on the DVD as he malingers at the side of the road, which is pushed all the way to the side of the frame on the BluRay (depending on the scanning of your monitor tube, you might not even see it). And when the plane is making its first curve and heading straight for him, it practically flies out of frame on the BluRay. Not so on the DVD. And that occurs on camera right, so the narrowed framing occurs on both sides. Also, since brown tones are favored, the WIZARD OF OZ curse is dramatically reduced here. Al would have been happy, though I realize now that I kinda liked the curse…

Interestingly, Eva Marie’s face shows less diffusion in the BluRay’s dining car scene. And attention is drawn to her hands when she puts them around Grant’s neck later in the sleeping car, distracting in that they have the appearance of an older woman’s fingers and skin. This may not only be because the BluRay is more contrasty, but because it also favors those brown tones more than the DVD does. On the DVD mastering, her hands look fine.

Supplement-wise, the BluRay has a few more goodies, in particular a nice bio piece on Grant, with interviews from a former wife, from historians Jeannine Bassinger and Peter Bogdanovich, as well as archival footage from the likes of George Cukor, not to mention George Stevens’ color home movies on the set of GUNGA DIN.

So…what does one do? Some scenes in the DVD are too light, some scenes in the BluRay are too dark. Both releases have things to recommend them, and things to dislike. Does one keep them both? Sure, you can do that. But you can’t double-bill them for guests, so eventually you’re going to have to choose one or the other based on…what?

Tricky situation.

On August 1, 1935 Alfred Hitchcock’s masterwork, THE 39 STEPS, hit the movie screens. An enormous international success, this fast-paced thriller with chases, murders, laughs, mysterious spies and romance placed Hitchcock as England’s top film director, and as the worldwide master of cinema suspense.

Most film thrillers up until THE 39 STEPS were stage-bound, usually set in only one or two rooms, and highly dependent on dialog. That’s because most of these films were based on stage plays. Hitchcock used the film medium and the soundtrack to full tilt here. THE 39 STEPS is rich in quick cutting, carefully crafted point of view shots, location photography and effects work that often make the film’s hero, Richard Hannay, played by the great Robert Donat, seem so real.

The plot, very quickly, finds Hannay, an ordinary traveler, falsely accused of murdering a stranger, a beautiful woman he invited to his London apartment. Before she died, she told Hannay she was a spy, pursuing foreign agents bent on endangering England. Now both the spies and the police are pursuing Hannay!

In future films like SABOTEUR and NORTH BY NORTHWEST, Hitchcock would return to this theme of the double chase, and set his ‘wrong man’ theme in elaborate places like The Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore. Twice, other directors remade this still popular film, first in 1959 with Kenneth More, and again in 1979 with Robert Powell. Screenwriter (CHINATOWN) Director (PERSONAL BEST) Robert Towne is set to direct a third remake, due out in 2011. So, how can this story of speed and action work as a stage play? Well, it works amazingly well, and it keeps audiences gasping and laughing non-stop.

The play is an almost word-for-word, chase-for-chase recreation of the 1935 film. You’ll love how four stage-bound actors pull off, with minimal props, a mad pursuit inside, and on top of a speeding train, or how Hannay, and his unwilling accomplice, Pamela, duck under a waterfall and cross a stream. Hitchcock always seasoned his films with eccentric supporting characters, harmless oddballs on the brink of total madness, such as the two cricket fanatics in THE LADY VANISHES, or the bird expert in THE BIRDS. In all of Hitchcock’s films, from his first suspense thriller, THE LODGER in 1926, to his last film, 1976′s FAMILY PLOT, supporting characters who are paired together usually move in exact unison. You see this with both detectives and bad guys. It’s part of Hitchcock’s design. The cast of THE 39 STEPS picked up on this and has a field day.

Sean Mahon does a great Richard Hanney, never trying to channel Robert Donat, but making it his own creation. Jill Paice is the three female leads, including the love interest Pamela, originally played by Madeleine Carroll, whom Paice resembles very closely. Arnie Burton and Jeffrey Kuhn take on every other role in the film, and all the eccentric qualities of these roles (such as Mr. Memory, or the nervous ticks of the crofter who helps and double crosses Hannay, and even the folksy Scottish couple who run the inn where Hannay hides.) Just watch the glorious field day they have. I wish I could have been in the room when these four talented people (with their gifted director, Maria Aitken) watched the film and picked up the quirks Hitchcock placed there 70 years ago.

The stage version of The 39 Steps first opened in England’s West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2005 and made its Broadway debut in January 2008. As of September 2009, this two-time Tony Award play is the only non-musical Broadway play enjoying an open-ended run.

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.

“You go through your ordinary little day, and you sleep your untroubled ordinary little sleep, filled with peaceful stupid dreams. And I brought you nightmares.” That’s a line from a classic Alfred Hitchcock film. It could be Hitchcock himself, talking to an eager, film-loving audience that for decades has stayed and grown with dozens of his outstanding films.

20th Century Fox’s “Alfred Hitchcock- The Premier Collection” is an amazing treat for the Hitchcock fan, and essential who 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 this lodger. The film ends with the first climatic Hitchcock chase. Before this box set, those wanting to see this 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!

The next two films in the set come from Hitchcock’s early British period, SABOTAGE (1936) and YOUNG AND INNOCENT (1937). Like THE LODGER, both films were normally available through public domain prints, robbing viewers of so much detail. They both look and sound great here, reminding us of the care Hitchcock put into his work. In SABOTAGE, Verloc, a timid terrorist (Oscar Homolka) is forced to set off a bomb in London’s Picadilly Circus. Even though a Scotland Yard detective (John Loder) is on Verloc’s trail, Hitchcock focuses on ordinary every-day citizens who are involuntarily thrown into this deadly, violent world. Verloc gives Stevie, his innocent teen-aged brother-in-law a “package” to deliver across town. The package, an ordinary film-can, is really the deadly explosive. Stevie is delayed in his cross-town trip. He boards a crowded bus, not knowing the bomb is scheduled to go off. It’s an unbearably suspenseful moment. We know we are in the hands of a master director in SABOTAGE. Hitchcock’s key visual elements here: signs of innocence – puppies, bird cages, a Disney cartoon, and warm meals – are given such a dark, chilling treatment that we never know where to turn or what happens next in this vastly under-rated classic.

His next film, YOUNG AND INNOCENT, is an entertaining light comedy-thriller, similar to NORTH BY NORTHWEST. A struggling writer (Derrick DeMarney) is wrongly accused of strangling a female movie star. Escaping from the police, he crosses paths with the headstrong Erica (Nova Pilbeam), the daughter of the local Constable (Percy Marmont). So much of this film is visually driven, keeping the audience on its toes all the time. YOUNG AND INNOCENT’s most celebrated moment is a beautiful tracking shot starting with a wide shot of a massive ballroom and closing in on the real killer’s twitching eyes.

The next four films in the set represent Hitchcock’s early work in Hollywood, where he was teamed with producer David O. Selznick, who always bought in the best of the best for his productions. These films, REBECCA, SPELLBOUND, NOTORIOUS and THE PARADINE CASE abound with amazing black and white cinematography, the best writing, and top drawer acting talent. REBECCA throws that old rule of films being wish fulfillment, dreamlike stories with happy endings, into a delicious whirlwind of Hitchcockian darkness. A drab young woman (Joan Fontaine) meets and falls in love with the mysterious, exotic Max DeWinter (Laurence Oliver). Manderley, his mansion, is a labyrinth of rotting, forbidding secrets. This is Hitchcock’s first American film, and his only film to win a Best Picture Oscar. It’s highlighted with a terrific supporting cast. George Sanders is the hissable bad guy, and Dame Judith Anderson makes film history here as a butchy maid nobody in their right mind would want in their house.

The next Hitchcock/Selznick teaming is 1945′s SPELLBOUND. Like REBECCA, SPELLBOUND exists in a gorgeous monochromatic world of darkness. SPELLBOUND takes a while to get started, but soon we are glued to this tale of a psychologist (Ingrid Bergman, being oh so professional and gorgeous here) helping a troubled fugitive (Gregory Peck, making us fear and root for him at the same time) escape police and break through amnesia in order to clear his name of murder. SPELLBOUND created a sub-genre of films that, in a very entertaining way, treated psychology as black magic, something that has instant results, like bug spray! Hitchcock returned to this world of pop-psychology in his masterful VERTIGO and the wonderfully eccentric MARNIE. Mel Brooks cribbed big time from SPELLBOUND for HIGH ANXIETY, his comedic spoof of Hitchcock. (Side note: Brooks feared that Hitchcock hated HIGH ANXIETY. But days after Hitchcock saw the film, he sent a congratulatory case of wine to Brooks, knowing Brooks was a wine connoisseur.) The SPELLBOUND disc comes with terrific extras, such as a documentary telling all the secrets one would wish to know about Salvador Dali’s contribution to the visual knock-out of a dream sequence that highlights the film.

Bergman goes from the strong, bookish doc in SPELLBOUND to the helpless and vulnerable Alicia in NOTORIOUS, one of filmdom’s darkest romantic corners. Alicia, a rebellious alcoholic, is pushed by Devlin, an FBI agent, to marry Alex, an escaped Nazi. Cary Grant, as Devlin, reworks the typical movie hero, forming a flawed, mega-deep knight in shining, dented armor, thus being more real. Like Verloc in SABOTAGE, Alex (a great performances by Claude Rains) is a weak, often frightened villain. Living in constant fear makes these villains more dangerous, more deadly. In NOTORIOUS, Grant’s Devlin, a hero who can’t handle his girlfriend having to marry a Nazi, is at first an immature, glamorous force, but by the end, he pulls himself together and dives to the rescue. NOTORIOUS’ ending, has more romantic force than a century of Valentines Days, while at the same time, gloats at the inescapable fate facing the morally empty Alex. And that final shot of the film, with Claude Rains, Wowza!

Gregory Peck returns to Hitchcock for the last Selznick/Hitchcock pairing, THE PARADINE CASE, in which he plays a lawyer falling for his client (Alida Valli). This dialogue-driven film doesn’t have the expected visual slam-bang Hitchcock moments (a Disney cartoon triggering Sylvia Sidney to kill in SABOTAGE, the camera tracking to Ingrid Bergman’s fingers grasping a key in NOTORIOUS). Still, it deserves better then its undeserved negative rep.

Also in this set is the only film Hitchcock made for 20th Century Fox – LIFEBOAT, noted for the technical experiment of confining the entire film to a single, small set – a lifeboat deep in enemy waters, battered by World War II. Claustrophobia is a key element in all of Hitchcock’s work (many of his close ups and dialogue scenes feel very cramped) It’s LIFEBOAT’s driving force. My favorite performance here is Willie the Nazi (Walter Slezak) He seems friendly, willing to help his American co-survivors make it through a storm, and an improv amputation, but has hideous dark secrets.

The Hitchcock box set in Glenn's DVD shelf

Of course, this Christmas, if you have a film buff on your gift-list, you’ll want it! This Hitchcock box set is filled with terrific extras, great commentary tracks, and of course, eight varied gems by the great Alfred Hitchcock. My only negative is the bulky shape of the box set. Bigger than most DVD sets, it physically sticks out of DVD shelves like an army tank in a parking space. But, if you have to have a box set stand out in your DVD shelf, let it be Hitchcock.