There’ve been a slew of “Quota Quickies” released on DVD in the past few years, a treasure trove of British ‘B’s, mostly labeled as ‘noirs’, mostly culled from the Hammer Library, and mostly released by VCI. There’s been no discernable theme exhibited in these collections, nor any directorial hand. Not so with this MPI collection which, from a different studio – Gainsborough – dredges up two early exercises from the directorial fist of Michael Powell, shortly thereafter to become, with partner Emeric Pressburger, one of the most beloved and respected filmmakers in the world, a position he still holds today.

I’ve heard and read varying things about his two films in this collection. Some say it’s Powell getting adjusted to the medium. Others think even less of them. Personally I was bowled over by THE PHANTOM LIGHT. I think it’s everything the director would stand for as the decades rolled by, and the criticism strikes me the same as the critics who dismiss Chaplin’s Mutual shorts as rudimentary works. They’re some of Chaplin’s best films, despite being only twenty minutes long and produced by a studio he didn’t own, and serve as trial runs for all his comic concepts, script structures, and directorial skills.

THE PHANTOM LIGHT, released in 1935, is redolent with Powell’s love of rural life forms – dissident personalities clashing from moment to moment, comprising the real substance supporting a superficial plot, and, as Hitchcock was given to drawing us into his thrillers with the droll patter of classic British character types, so Powell here indulges us similarly, only moreso. The humor is sharp, the rhythms are quirky, and it all holds up surprisingly well. Additionally, the casting is superb (with one exception perhaps), and the performances feel quite real and (intentionally) dramatically uncomfortable.

Quoting Powell from the first volume of his encyclopedic autobiography, concerning his lead actor: “Gordon Harker was one of those naturals that every country has – a face to remember: in France Fernandel, in Mexico Cantinflas, in Italy Alberto Sordi, in America Humphrey Bogart, in Ireland Victor McLaglen, in Germany Conrad Veidt, and in England Gordon Harker. He was one of Hitch’s favourite faces, and Hitch had helped to make him into a star. He had one of those flat, disillusioned Cockney faces, half-fish, half-Simian, with an eye like a dead mackerel. In one of Hitch’s first successes, THE RING, a boxing picture, Gordon Harker had played one of the hero’s seconds and nearly stole the picture. He was wonderful in silent films, but even better in talkies. He got his effects with all sorts of strange sounds, and to my delight he could hold a pause as long as any actor I had known. Close-ups were made for him, and we both took full advantage of it.”

All this is absolutely true. Harker’s rhythms are fabulous, and nine out of every ten deadpan jokes he cracks still work today. It’s worth watching the film just for his performance, but the rest of the cast is galloping along right behind him. Powell adds that, concerning the co-starring role of ‘Jim Pearce,’ “I had a major disappointment over casting. This was my first experience of being overridden by the front office and I didn’t like it…I got Ian Hunter, a contract artist… But I vowed to myself that one day I would make Roger [Livesey]‘s husky voice beloved all over the world. And I did.” Check out A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH to see just how well he honored his vow.

Despite my love of this little film, with its odd twists and bizarre characters, I fell asleep watching it and it took me two nights to straddle all 76 minutes. But I had a stomach ailment during those days, and I blame my illness, not the film. The quality of the print/transfer is good. The sound, so often a problem with British films of the period, is also good. There were some lines I couldn’t catch, so I watched it the second night with the subtitles on, and some of the dialogue became clearer for me, while other colloquial phrases remained a mystery even when spelled out.

Now, much as I liked THE PHANTOM LIGHT, you can see its ‘B’ limitations clearly when viewing another film in the collection, THE UPTURNED GLASS (a title, incidentally, whose significance eludes me). Though packaged with the two Powell ‘Quota Quickies’, GLASS is an ‘A’ film, one which was produced to rival Hollywood Production value, which is testified to by J. Arthur Rank’s name on a solo title credit. There is a general sense of gloss which the others lack, and wish they had. In addition to the gloss, which certainly doesn’t guarantee a film’s success, it has a good screenplay and a grim, effective central performance by James Mason, who also co-produced. I was taken by the film’s inventive structure, and shocked by its ending. It has been astutely pointed out by Doug Pratt in his ‘DVD LaserDisc Newsletter’ that GLASS is a precursor to Hitchcock’s VERTIGO in a number of ways. One of them, weirdly, is the score, which, in several passages, pre-quotes Bernard Herrmann, though more from NORTH BY NORTHWEST than VERTIGO.

Mason plays a brain surgeon who breaks the socially empty pattern of his life by falling for the mother of a young patient. I actually can’t go further than this without littering the review with ‘spoilers,’ but the narrative goes quite a bit further, way into noir territory. I had a few problems with the film, one being the casting of the mother/love interest (Rosamund John). Nothing intrinsically wrong with her as an actress, but being neither beautiful nor sexual nor unique, she disallowed me the willing suspension of disbelief to buy Mason’s obsessive attraction to her (even though his narration acknowledges that she was in no way special), nor did I detect the requisite chemistry between them – I was just told it was there, and shown that it should have been (there is, in all fairness, a voluptuous kiss that’s beautifully shot and performed, and really does sell their compatibility for a moment). And unfortunately a great deal hinges on that. And later on, in Act three, there were a few other problems, but again, I’d be spoiling the fun by discussing them. In balance, it’s a satisfying cinematic journey.

The print quality of THE UPTURNED GLASS is very good, with only a few areas in which there appears to be irreparable negative wear.

And as a convoluted aside, Pamela Kellino, who both co-authored the script and co-starred in the film, was the wife of cinematographer Roy Kellino, who shot Powell’s THE PHANTOM LIGHT. She met and had an affair with James Mason on the set of an earlier film, I MET A MURDERER, which was produced, directed and shot by her husband. She divorced Kellino in1940, and married Mason in 1941. Their marriage ended in divorce in1964. Her first husband died in1956, aged 44. Mason died in 1984, having been remarried in 1971 to Clarissa Kaye, with whom he appeared in Powell’s final feature, AGE OF CONSENT (1969 – released on a double bill DVD with A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH earlier this year by SONY) and SALEM’S LOT (1979), and to whom he remained married until his death. Pamela, whose film and TV appearances included JEW SUSS (1934), ‘The James Mason Show’ (1956), DOOR TO DOOR MANIAC (1961), and ‘The Pamela Mason Show’ (1965-66 – which she hosted), died in 1996, having never remarried.

Both of these films, and hence the collection, are 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.

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?

This has been a cruel year for many collectors. Scads of great DVDs have been released, but the economy’s faltering like mad, imposing limits on our buying power, and the money just might not be there for the mega Xmas gifts. So rather than just recommend box sets for your loved ones, I’ll also try to recommend simpler DVD gifts as well.

Starting with Paramount Home Video. From them you might pick the first three Deluxe editions of the original STAR TREK motion picture series. STAR TREK: THE MOVIE, was a misbegotten adventure helmed by Robert Wise who brought all his filmmaking prowess to bear, but was in synch with neither the humanity nor the spirit of the series.
It’s mainly terrific today because of Douglas Trumbull’s genius-level special effects. (I’m not sure there’s been anyone other than Trumbull of that creative gigantism at work in the technical end of cinema in the last forty years. He reminds me of a latter day Linwood Dunn.) The two-disc set claims to have over seven hours of extra material. Yipes…the film alone feels like it runs over seven hours. (That’s cruel; I actually like the film.) There’s a group commentary by director Wise, Trumbull, John Dykstra, and composer Jerry Goldsmith. There are five additional scenes that Wise had altered from the 1979 theatrical version for this director’s cut, and eleven deleted scenes which were in the 1983 tv version. There’a s storyboard archive, and much more.

The other two installments returned to popular Trekkie territory. Nicholas Meyer rescued the spirit of the series with THE WRATH OF KAHN, and Leonard Nimoy jockeyed himself into the director’s chair with THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK. I was particularly intrigued with the ending of the third installment. It reminded me of the ending of CITY LIGHTS, by no means an uncommon ending to crib (MANHATTAN did it, as did SCENT OF A WOMAN, and numerous others), rather like using Shakespeare for subtext, or the Bible. I wrote Nimoy, complimenting him on the film and inquiring if my intuition was correct. He was kind enough to write back, and his answer: “ I was particularly pleased by your thoughts regarding the ending of STAR TREK III as compared to CITY LIGHTS. I had never consciously thought about it, but now that you point it out there is a connection in the very touching scene of the blind girl recognizing Chaplin as her benefactor.”

THE WRATH OF KAHN sports over five hours of extra material. (Whew! That’s better than the first film’s seven hours.) And THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK makes no time boasts, which is least daunting of all. Still there’s plenty to linger over, such as linguist Marc Okrand’s detailed account of the creation of the Klingon and Vulcan languages.

But if your wallet is not filled to overflowing, hey, don’t sweat it: go for Paramount’s superb single DVD of Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD. This is a great film, a noir from the golden era of noirs, a cynical, glorious gob of sputum that engulfs the entire Hollywood system as Wilder knew it first hand. And it’s a wonderful DVD presentation. The youngest members of your family – adolescents who think motion pictures started with STAR WARS – will be affected by this, and surprised that they are. They’ll even succumb to the Black & White cinematography. And who knows, maybe they’ll be motivated to look further into the distant cinematic past.

SUNSET BOULEVARD comes with a commentary track by Ed Sikov, author of “ On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder”, as well as a retrospective
‘ making of’ documentary. A few Hollywood folk that were around for the filming share their memories with us, as well as other authority figures such as Andrew Sarris, who has nothing of depth to contribute but does do one thing that is weirdly compelling: each time he waves his hand to emphasize a point, the wide angle lens distorts the appendage so that it looks like he’s exposed his arm to the radioactive material in the box in KISS ME DEADLY. There’s also a delightful and constantly surprising mini-doc on Franz Waxman, who scored the film. The composer was actually named by Wilder, back in Germany. This is only one of many revelations about a filmusic luminary whose Hollywood scores date back to BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

A & E has given us the entire UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS for Xmas. One of the most beloved of tv series, it isn’t in the PRISONER or TWIN PEAKS category, series worshipped partially because of their defiance of traditional tv fodder. It is rather a literate, epic, mainstream treatment of the social class schism in England between the aristocracy and the servants, and the whole family can wade through the sixty-eight episodes for the better part of a year if doled out carefully. And when that’s over, there’s the 25th anniversary retrospective show, included to top off the adventure.

But if a boxed set of this dimension – 20 DVDs in total – is just a bite too large for your Xmas shopping budgets, here’s a suggestion that will maintain the spirit of the series. Why not spring for Robert Altman’s condensed look at the same subject in his recent GOSFORD PARK, a comeback film for the rebel director, and one of the best films of last year. The only caveat with that one, make sure you can access the subtitles for the hearing impaired – the dialogue’s hard to catch in many scenes. I had hoped it was a just a function of theater sound systems, but the DVD remains problematic.

If you want a smaller A&E title, try THE LATHE OF HEAVEN. Philip Haas and his co-screenwriter/editor wife Belinda have been diligently turning out more broadly entertaining takes on the Merchant/Ivory genre of filmmaking. Recall ANGELS AND INSECTS (FIR gave it the March/April cover in ’96), THE BLOOD ORANGES, and UP AT THE VILLA. Director Haas goes this one alone. It’s a remake of an ethereal scifi cult telefilm that gets one thinking about the nature of reality. James Caan is good in a creepy change of pace, and the other key actors – Lukas Haas and Lisa Bonet – move and emote as if locked in the slowmentation of a dream…which I think is the point.

I originally caught it on the tube, and my mouth dropped when the commercial break appeared. The film deals with a man who is afraid to sleep because his dreams not only depict a past different from the one he lives in, but when he awakens, his dream has morphed the real world to fit his nocturnal vision of it, often with dire consequences. And the commercial break…get this…was for Ambien, a new drug designed to ensure a good night’s sleep! I was so struck by this canny product placement that I had to track Haas down and ask him if it was his idea. He claimed it wasn’t. So I’m left to imagine that some shrewd ad manager has a gilded chair waiting for him in promotional heaven.

The A&E release of LATHE OF HEAVEN is a longer, European version, which makes it fun to watch even if you’ve already seen it on TV.

DVD released by Carlton Film Distributors.
English subtitles; in depth biographies; Scene access; Behind the scenes commentary; English: Dolby Digital (Mono: L, C, R).

‘This is a story of two worlds, the one we know and another which exists only in the mind of a young airman whose life and imagination have been violently shaped by war. Any resemblance to any other world, known or unknown, is purely coincidental’

Thus begins this whimsical tale of young Squadron Leader Peter Carter who, on a foggy night in 1945, with his ‘sparks’ Trubshaw dead and having ordered the survivors of his crew to bail out, finds himself in a stricken and ablaze Lancaster Bomber over the English Channel with no parachute. His desperate radio signals are picked up by June, a pretty young American sergeant in the WACS and, in sharing what they think are Peter’s last words on Earth, a special bond, perhaps even love, forms between them. Finally, saying his farewells to June, Peter bails out into what undoubtedly is oblivion.

Meanwhile, up in Heaven, Trubshaw patiently waits for his friend in the certain belief that he must have ‘bought it’. When Peter fails to make his appointment in the Great Beyond the alarm bells, literally, start to ring.

Back on Earth, Peter awakes washed up on a beach believing it to be Heaven, but as it turns out is in fact (and very conveniently as far as the story goes) near the aerodrome and village where June lives and works. They (almost immediately!) meet and are of course besotted with each other (a whirlwind romance or what?).

However there is consternation in the Firmament as Peter is now nearly 20 hours late. Conductor 71, a French aristocrat who lost his head in the Revolution (a wonderfully mischievous; appropriately flamboyant and masterful portrayal by Goring, who almost steals the film), who should have collected Peter at the appointed time but missed him in the fog (‘…because of your ridiculous English climate!’), is dispatched to retrieve him.

This Heavenly emissary first encounters Peter whilst he and June are enjoying an intimate interlude in a garden. Conveniently suspending time (though the plants still move) so that June is totally unaware of his presence (as will be the case whenever he appears on Earth), he puts forward the problem, but Peter counters that circumstances have now changed – the day before he was prepared and ready to die, but now he is in love. He sends the Conductor back with a flea in his ear and a request for an appeal, as the mistake was theirs and not his.
Back in the ‘real’ world Peter describes his experiences to June, who as a result introducers him to charismatic thrill-loving motorcyclist and people watcher Dr. Frank Reeves, who fortunately can dish out enough profound neuro-babble to convince us he knows exactly what’s going on. He discovers that Peter has been having headaches for some time, and with him also being the sensitive type (an aspiring poet and history scholar torn by war from his vocations), it has led to hallucinations, sensory manifestations and so on. Dr. Frank (obviously not the sensitive type) therefore decides that Peter must have a brain operation to cure these ills (a Cuckoo’s Nest fan perhaps?), whilst at the same time both he and June continue to indulge him in his fantasies of otherworldly goings on.

Peter once more meets with Conductor 71. He has won his right to appeal. His case will go to a Heavenly tribunal, but he now has the problem of deciding who should be his defending counsel. Prosecuting on behalf of the Celestial Records Dept. will be Abraham Farlan, the first Boston patriot killed in the War of Independence (Massey at his all time puritanical and scowling best), and who is, shall we say, a little biased against this happy-go-lucky, ner-do-well Englishman (to be honest any Englishman), especially where the honour of a Boston born girl (June) is involved.

And we’re still only half way through the film…

From here-on-in follow two parallel life and death struggles: One from Peter’s perspective of the Celestial trial, the other from June and the surgeons’ monitoring of his touch-and-go survival from the risky brain operation. Needless to say I won’t spoil the outcome for those who haven’t seen it.

The film opens in the usual monochrome of the day with the familiar J. Arthur Rank gong which segues into the ‘Archers’ logo, a black, white and grey RAF roundel that swiftly and magically changes to a vivid red, white and blue – a taste of things to come for the rest of the film. Then, with special effects that shame most of the SF films of the following ten or twenty years, begins a portentous narration: “This is the Universe…” followed by a twist that could have come straight out of ‘Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’: “Big isn’t it.” This immediately diffuses our solemnity and sets the tone for what is to follow. In a deliberate reversal of what the audience would expect, Earthly activities are in glorious Technicolor whilst Heaven is in monochrome. As Conductor 71 remarks on arriving on Earth among a deliberate blaze of red and pink rhododendrons, having just been introduced in a monochrome sequence, “One is starved for Technicolor up there”. Just as an aside, watch this scene carefully – Goring clearly mouths the word ‘colour’ but, in an early example of product placement, it was dubbed to ‘Technicolor’ in post-production. Cleverly they don’t give you too much of a good thing. Just as you’re getting used to it they keep taking the colour away and then reintroducing it as spectacularly as before, just to keep reminding you that this is something special. Now though, paradoxically, the black and white sequences seem twenty years older than the rest of the film.

Commissioned as a propaganda film to ease the then strained Anglo-American Alliance, it is no accident that the Heavenly debate over English Peter and American June’s future together becomes the bickering between two nations. Eventually Massey produces a radio and we are treated to a typically mundane and English cricket commentary presented as the ‘Voice of England’ that America will never understand. Our English Counsel counters with his own radio (eagerly provided by the French Conductor 71, who is now clearly on the side of Peter, Love, and, more likely, Anglo-French relations) and tunes into the Voice of America playing a boogie-woogie jazz number. In response the horrified and despairing Massey states “I don’t understand a word of it.”. “Neither do I” says the Englishman. Agreement at last. Times have changed and things will never be the same again. We just have to get used to it.

In the aftermath of six years of war, with families still hurting and grieving over the loss of so many loved ones, A Matter of Life and Death offered joy, hope and optimism, and a sense of this post-war time of change – ‘out with the old’ (black and white) and ‘in with the new’ (Technicolor). I can’t help but feel that the audiences of the time were echoing the one line of dialogue uttered in the film by a very young Richard Attenborough: “It’s Heaven isn’t it.”

This DVD presentation restores the vivid colour photography of the then yet to become legendary Jack Cardiff that must have stunned audiences in 1946. The Special Features are a little disappointing. I suppose there’s a limit to what you can do when most of the people associated with the film are no longer with us, but what they have done could be better. They include in depth text biographies of David Niven, Kim Hunter (22 years later unrecognisable, but equally compelling, as Zira in the original Planet of the Apes), Raymond Massey, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The thumbnail stills offered are also, at least on my copy, very blurred but the worst culprit is the ‘Behind the Scenes Commentary’ promised on the cover. This turns out to be simply a separate 10 minute interview with Cinematographer Jack Cardiff, which though interesting, informative and well crafted, is all too brief and certainly not what was implied.

The film itself though is a pure delight and in my mind the greatest film from the prolific and truly talented producing/directing team of Powell and Pressburger. It is, for it’s time, technically brilliant in every aspect; also brilliantly directed; wittily scripted, perfectly cast, beautifully designed and lavishly mounted, and was justly chosen as the first film to be shown at a Royal Command Performance.

Thoroughly recommended and a wonderful piece of not only cinema history but of history itself, to have in any collection. They sadly don’t, can’t and never will, make ‘em like this any more.

My only, and very, very slight nitpick is that the illustration on the DVD cover is the reverse of the image seen in the final minutes of the film, and I do get so annoyed with this kind of lack of attention to detail. But that’s just me. Enjoy.

An excellent website featuring stills, reviews, trivia and goofs from the film can be found at http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/index.html

Cast:
David Niven Sq. Leader Peter Carter
Kim Hunter June
Roger Livesey Doctor Frank Reeves
Marius Goring Conductor 71
Raymond Massey Abraham Farlan
Robert Coote Bob Trubshaw
Bonar Colleano American Pilot
Richard Attenborough English Pilot

Credits:
Production Design by Alfred Junge.
Cinamatography by Jack Cardiff.
Music by Allan Gray.
Edited by Reginald Mills.
Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
Released by Universal International Pictures.