Return Of The Son Of Blu-ray Consumer Guide: July Fourth Weekend 2016 Edition

This wasn’t sup­posed to hap­pen. I was sup­posed to be shut­ting down the blog maybe, not writ­ing for no money ever again def­in­itely, and all sorts of stuff like that. And yet. Here it is. Some things refuse to be killed, and/or die a nat­ur­al death.

Equipment: Playstation 3 for domest­ic discs, OPPO BDP 83 for import discs, Panasonic Viera TCP50S30 plasma dis­play, Pioneer Élite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.

Recommended without com­ment (because I got to them too late to really for­mu­late read­able cap­sules in time for my self-imposed dead­line here): Belladonna of Sadness (Cinelicious Pics), Everybody Wants Some!! (Paramount), Hawks and Sparrows/Pigsty (Region B U.K. import, Eureka!/Masters of Cinema), Horse Money (Region B U.K. import, Second Run), The Last Command (Region B U.K. import, Eureka!/Masters of Cinema).

Appassionata (Twilight Time)

Twilight Time’s eclecticism is genu­inely unpre­dict­able; just when you think you’ve got the label’s tastes pegged (it loves strong music scores, CinemaScope, über-competent stu­dio dir­ect­ors like Henry Levin and…Ralph Nelson? Yeah, Ralph Nelson) than they release some­thing wholly oth­er. In this case, a 1974 Italian domest­ic drama with 100-proof psycho­sexu­al con­tent, star­ring then-teen Ornella Muti and then-newly-turned-20 Eleonora Giorgi. Gabrielle Ferzetti, of L’Avventura jaded-stud fame, looks pretty tired of being a jaded stud, and is here Muti’s dad, a dent­ist whose wife is going bonkers and whose daughter’s best friend has the hots for him. The movie’s open­ing scene fea­tures young Ornella in school­girl white blouse and sweat­er, so you know the movie wants to make you feel dirty right off the bat. About 41 minutes in, do take note of the “what the hell is she doing with that dog scene.” Eventually all the sexu­al repression/expression—which really begins roil­ing once Ornella’s char­ac­ter starts inex­plic­ably sway­ing her butt at daddy—builds to a, um, cli­max of stag­ger­ing WTFness. Not since the “Knock it off, Vix” shower sequence in Russ Meyer’s Vixen has the male gaze had to con­tend with such ser­i­ously icky mixed feel­ings about being the male gaze. As for the disc, damn—the trans­fer has excel­lent col­or val­ues and the image qual­ity over­all is spec­tac­u­lar for a 40-plus year old film. Not big on extras, but a highly mem­or­able view­ing exper­i­ence. Inspirational dia­logue: “All big, hand­some cow­ards, all filthy pigs like you are.”

—­B

Bad Influence (Shout! Factory)

Early David Koepp, sure, why not. Early Curtis Hanson, ditto. Relatively early Robert Elswit—WTFIU?! This 1990 movie still looks and feels a little‘80s, and some of that look and feel is a mite cheesy—the white walls of James Spader’s apart­ment, the over­de­termined shad­ows of Venetian blind slats on Lowe’s face. On the oth­er hand, the late after­noon job pro­mo­tion scene with Spader and John DeLancie is pretty sweet and def­in­itely sug­gests visu­al express­ive­ness to come from the Elswit camp. As does the dis­cov­ery of the emptied-out apart­ment. And then there’s that great party scene where they’re pro­ject­ing Alphaville on the wall of a house. Ace soundtrack too—Les Negresses Vert, Don Cherry and Nana Vasconcellos, Gavin Friday… and the movie holds up, for the most part. The sole extra of note is a 30-minute inter­view with, Koepp, which has lots of sol­id stuff. —B+

Candy (Kino Lorber)

Not a bad look­ing disc, but pace pal-of-mine Kim Morgan, who con­trib­utes an elo­quent and impas­sioned defense on one of the discs extras, an almost unspeak­ably bad film. I think the only way a viable movie could have been made from Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg’s porn pas­tiche would have been to film it com­pletely straight =-faced, in the mode of either Douglas Sirk or Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker. Renata Adler was ter­ribly unkind to young Ewa Aulin in the former’s New York Times review of the movie but she also had a point—the poor young thing looks so puffy in the film’s open­ing scene that she’s almost unre­cog­niz­able in the fol­low­ing school­room scene. Which is where the film’s prob­lems prop­er begin, with John Astin’s intol­er­able non­stop mug­ging. A fas­cin­at­ing curio though, what with the cameos (Brando’s is less mor­ti­fy­ing than Burton’s) and the loc­a­tion stuff (is she actu­ally walk­ing over the Verrazano Bridge?) and so on. Good look­ing disc, too; the oth­er extra is screen­writer Buck Henry offer­ing a frank assess­ment of the film while unabashedly recall­ing what a great time he had with dir­ect­or Christian Marquand while mak­ing it. —B-

The Chase (Kino Lorber)

Of the 300 movies titled The Chase, this 1946 Arthur Ripley-directed num­ber, from a Cornell Woolrich tale, def­in­itely belongs in the top five at least. The thing about Woolrich, or one thing about Woolrich, is that like a lot of genre writers he was not aller­gic to using pretty hoary plot devices but was always smart enough to use them in com­pletely insanely inspired ways. As you will see if you’re watch­ing this very nicely restored and trans­ferred thrill­er for the first time, in which Robert Cummings, as a down on his luck nice guy who turns chauf­feur to bonkers gang­ster Steve Cochran and OF COURSE falls for his wife Michèle Morgan, is largely eclipsed by his co-stars, anoth­er one of whom is Peter Lorre. The per­vas­ive atmo­sphere of the pic­ture is such that it’s com­pletely fit­ting that Guy Maddin does the com­ment­ary. (“A little sprock­et wriggle…it’s still alive, in oth­er words,” he notes of the UCLA res­tor­a­tion.) Other extras include two-count-‘em-two radio adapt­a­tions of the Woolrich story. —B+

La Chienne (Criterion)

I’ve always been pretty nuts about Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street, which was based on this 1931 Jean Renoir pic­ture. A pic­ture, I admit, that I had nev­er seen until now. This is anoth­er reas­on Criterion is kind of the best. Street gets the kudos for bone-chilling sexu­al sad­ism and volup­tu­ous­ness, and near-nihilist end­ing hijinks, while Renoir’s film is a remark­ably flu­id slice of sleazy life that dis­plays a lot more sexu­al frank­ness and has a real­ism that’s as raw-nerve-provoking as Lang’s fevered styl­iz­a­tion. (Check out the amaz­ing hand-held cam­er­a­work in the arts-patron-courting scene here.) Hence, the films are as alike as Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir are alike, and as dif­fer­ent as Edward G. Robinson is dif­fer­ent from Michel Simon. The Criterion pack­age also con­tains Renoir’s first sound fea­ture, which looks as good as the main fea­ture, anoth­er 97 minutes from Jacques Rivette’s made-for-television study of/tribute to Renoir, and more. An essen­tial pur­chase. —A+

City Heat (Warner)

The pic­ture qual­ity on this is really something—more ‘80s cheese, this time ‘80s cheese doing peri­od, so lots of red neon and such. So the disc is a pleas­ure to look at, always. And for about three or four minutes you get the feel­ing that this might hold for the movie itself—it can’t be as bad as the crit­ics said it was, or as I remem­ber it, can it? Oh yes it can— this is just a really ter­rible movie that gets worse as it goes on. I can for­give Clint Eastwood a lot but clearly his inclin­a­tion to act upon his inab­il­ity to get along with Blake Edwards was a major fail­ing on his part. For Eastwood or Burt com­plet­ists only. I may be both those things, as I still have the Blu-ray of At Long Last Love (don’t even get me star­ted). —C+

Cuba (Kino Lorber)

In his book Getting Away With It, par­tially a series of inter­views with Richard Lester, Steven Soderbergh classes this pic­ture in the cat­egory of “fas­cin­at­ing films that get bet­ter with age.” Interestingly, when he made Che with Hispanic act­ors in Hispanic roles and shot the whole thing (almost) in Spanish, he added, with­in the cine­mat­ic can­on, to the aggreg­ate of movies that actu­ally make Cuba, with its cast­ing of the likes of Martin Balsam and Chris Sarandon in roles as Cuban nat­ives, seem that much more ana­chron­ist­ic. Nevertheless, this remains fas­cin­at­ing, par­tic­u­larly for Lester nuts (and why wouldn’t you be one) and those who enjoy watch­ing Sean Connery decon­struct his screen per­sona (which, as Lester revealed to Soderbergh, was some­thing that in this par­tic­u­lar case he was actu­ally rather reluct­ant to do). This disc provides a very hand­some ver­sion of the film, which, as it hap­pens, twists around the standard-issue Casablanca scen­ario in a way that Soderbergh would later attempt with The Good German, a movie that, it so hap­pens, I have found to have got­ten bet­ter with age. Circles with­in circles. But back to Cuba: Evocative and trenchant visu­als, low-key char­ac­ter­iz­a­tions, and the tragic-comedy of errors in the cli­mactic battle scene really sells the whole thing. The unstable dynam­ic between Connery and female lead Brooke Adams is fant­ast­ic and rare. The only extras are trail­ers, but that’s okay. —B+

Death By Hanging (Criterion)

Nagisa Oshima’s 1968 anti-death pen­alty movie is part absurd­ist theat­er, part par­able, pos­sibly not wholly artist­ic­ally suc­cess­ful in the way that, say Cruel Story Of Youth is, but most cer­tainly more that a curio. Its claus­tro­phobic set­ting, unshowy black and white cine­ma­to­graphy, and stand­ard 1.85 frame com­bine to yield, well, not one of Oshima’s most visu­ally dis­tinct­ive films. But the anim­at­ing impulse behind it gath­ers a power that increases the way decibels do, and yields a movie whose hatred of injustice is potent, vicious. —A

Dillinger (Arrow)

Watching this excel­lent release a while back, thoughts along the lines of “John Milius is so much bet­ter on paper than in real­ity” kept boun­cing through my head. But the movie’s snuck up on me since; little bits in which Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Harry Dean Stanton et. al. do all sorts of their char­ac­ter­ist­ic stuff, and the bru­tal­ity of the shootout scenes, and lots more, keep pop­ping up and res­on­at­ing. So, you know. A pic­ture that can dis­place the 1945 Lawrence Tierney Dillinger from my con­scious­ness is worth reck­on­ing with. Excellent trans­fer, fant­ast­ic­ally per­sist­ent use of “Red River Valley,” and the cus­tom­ary pas­sel of engaged extras. My favor­ite has pro­du­cer Lawrence Gordon wax­ing sort-of nos­tal­gic for his time in no-budget film­mak­ing and express­ing an affec­tion for and belief in Milius that you wish every pro­du­cer had for a good dir­ect­or. —A

Dr. Strangelove (Criterion)

Not much to say about this one. Lately I’ve been see­ing a few Feisty Young People weigh­ing in on how they “don’t like” this movie, and I don’t know what to tell them except “Bless you hearts” and/or “Good luck.” (I know the Self Styled Siren doesn’t con­sider it her cup of tea either, but she gets a dis­pens­a­tion because, well, Self-Styled Siren.) It’s a genu­inely canon­ic­al film and The Culture is stuck with it, although you’re of course under no oblig­a­tion, say, to buy this Blu-ray. But if you are a sens­ible per­son and you like this movie you def­in­itely should. On this new trans­fer derived from new a 4K scan—made from the same source as the pri­or excel­lent Sony BR—there’s an over­all barely detect­able uptick…but an uptick non­ethe­less. A good point of comparison—the low angle close-ups of Sterling Hayden and his cigar, where there’s def­in­itely more facial-crease detail, for instance. So until 4K discs, play­ers, and dis­plays are com­mon, this is the defin­it­ive home ver­sion for the movie alone. The extras man­age to say a few new­ish things about the movie, which you might not have thought pos­sible. —A+

Eureka (Twilight Time)

A very odd movie that’s been very dif­fi­cult to see decently in a prop­er state for some time, this is the object of near-simultaneous Blu-ray releases by Twilight Time in the U.S. and Eureka!/Masters of Cinema in the U.K. In the spir­it of inter­na­tion­al coöper­a­tion I hoped to foster in my New York Times piece about dif­fer­ing U.K. and U.S. Blu-rays of The Fury, the two releases share the on-disc extras, my favor­ite of which is the nearly hour-long chat with screen­writer Paul Mayersberg in which he lays out the movie’s com­plex sym­bology, and dis­cusses how it does and does not riff on Citizen Kane. The region-free TT disc gets an edge for its region-freeness, while the Eureka gets an edge for hav­ing more Nicolas Roeg stuff (includ­ing an excerpt from his forth­com­ing auto­bi­o­graphy) in the prin­ted extras. The movie looks stun­ning on both.—A+

Father Of The Bride (Warner Archive)

Wow. When Elizabeth Taylor comes bound­ing down the stairs to greet Spencer Tracy in her first scene, I almost cried. I won­der how this film will play for people who don’t have the same asso­ci­ations of Tracy and Taylor that I oth­ers of my and pri­or gen­er­a­tions do. But I insist they had some­thing numin­ous that tran­scends that, and that any­one who can watch the afore­men­tioned bit and not have their heart melt just a little might not be a movie per­son, or a per­son. Anyway. When Scorsese had Vicki spend­ing an after­noon at this movie in Raging Bull he knew where­of he spoke, that is, who MGM and Vincente Minnelli made this movie for. This 1950 delight presents a vis­ion of middle class America that must look now to be 500 times more of a fantasy than it might have then, but I know it was the America that my chil­dren of immig­rant grand­par­ents bought into (that is, desired) big time. The movie ver­sion was as seduct­ive as Lubitsch’s Paris, Hollywood. Minnelli’s metic­u­lous assured­ness is evid­ent in every shot of this movie. This, of course it one of his par­ables of nor­malcy, which through the ‘50s and into the ‘60s would kind of altern­ate with his par­ables of neur­os­is (The Cobweb, Two Weeks In Another Town). He was so abso­lutely at home with both. But also very know­ing about “nor­malcy:” note the woozy dis­solves after the Dunston pat­ri­arch breaks out the mar­tinis at the first in-laws sum­mit. The high angle shots from church ceil­ing of the wed­ding rehears­al and its attend­ant cho­reo­graphy are also spec­tac­u­lar. Every frame of this Archive Blu-ray is worship-worthy. Just per­fect. And you can also see why Truffaut kinda hated Minnelli—he’s so spec­tac­u­larly adept at reify­ing val­ues Truffaut prob­ably con­sidered utterly sham at the time. Very few extras, which would nor­mally deprive it of an A+ but I’m still giv­ing it an —A+

Garden of Evil (Twilight Time)

When the Fox DVD came out, I thought it was one of the most visu­ally beau­ti­ful discs I’d ever seen…this Blu-ray is almost maybe too gor­geous: those matte paint­ings in the first can­tina scene look an awful lot like, well, matte paint­ings. But you can still drown in the blues if you like. This bet­ter than decent 1954 double-cross Western is also sup­plied with, among oth­er spiffy supps, a com­ment­ary from TT honcho Nick Redman and three film music guys: Stephen C. Smith (a Bernard Herrmann bio­graph­er), John Morgan, William T. Stromberg. They talk about a lot more than the music though: oth­er top­ics include the stu­dio sys­tem, optic­al vs. mag­net­ic tracks, how and why they don’t make ‘em like these any­more, etc. A ter­rif­ic pack­age over­all. Which leads to my ques­tion for Twilight Time: How about Warlock, pretty please?—A

Gold (Kino Lorber)

“No more mis­chief with the high voltage!” one char­ac­ter says in this 1934 Ufa pro­duc­tion, presen­ted by Kino Lorber from a hand­some Murnau Foundation res­tor­a­tion. This sci-fi melo­drama about modern-day alchem­ists and the cor­por­ate scum who seek to steal their secrets could have used a little more mis­chief with the high voltage, frankly. The elec­tric­al arcs redol­ent of Metropolis are a little more fun than the over­heated mach­in­a­tions of the char­ac­ters. Although it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate this picture’s cir­cum­scribed world, in which an allur­ing vamp like Brigitte Helm could fall big time for a puffed up dude who looks like Charles Dance’s stuf­fi­er grand­fath­er. I’m glad this disc exists, but I still more-eagerly await a Blu-ray of one of those fucked up Alraune movies I read about in the Overlook sci-fi encyc­lo­pe­dia. —B+

Hound of the Baskervilles (Twilight Time)

Haven’t seen the U.K. ver­sion from Arrow, but this ver­sion of the 1959 Hammer pic­ture, with Peter Cushing as Holmes, Christopher Lee as Sir Henry, and André Morrell as the most com­pet­ent, least goofy Watson ever, is really beau­ti­ful. Scanned from spot­less mater­i­als, it seems, with great col­or. A really fun, effect­ive movie; Cushing’s Holmes is a thing of beauty to the extent I some­times con­sider it bet­ter than Rathbone’s. The wide-ranging extras here include two equally divert­ing com­ment­ar­ies. —A+

I Saw What You Did (Scream Factory)

William Castle’s 1965 hybrid of Psycho and The World Of Henry Orient cer­tainly does not lack for nov­elty value, premise-wise. Capitalizing on what it presents as the new fad with the kids, it shows a couple of charm­ing teens (and little sis too!) call­ing ran­dom folks and ask­ing stu­pid ques­tions. The mar­ried couple who get a call and react with grins that say “Prank calls are such good fun!” Unfortunately the girls call John Ireland and say “I know who you are and I saw what you did” right after he’s pulled his estranged wife into the shower with him to stab her to death. No really. And Ireland just gets tetch­i­er. He devel­ops the con­vic­tion that he can just solve all his prob­lems by killing every­one who irrit­ates him, not real­iz­ing this is in fact only likely to increase his troubles. Not a ration­al thinker. Joan Crawford, as Ireland’s inex­plic­able next-door neigh­bor AND girl­friend, is here in her second and final col­lab­or­a­tion with Castle, and she stomps through the pro­ceed­ings with real “who do I have to fuck to get off this pic­ture” zeal. The movie is pretty crisp look­ing in this as-usual con­scien­tious Shout/Scream present­a­tion. But it is one odd pic­ture: ton­ally all over the place, some­times con­sciously, some­times maybe not, and saddled with a music scores that’s part ‘60s sit­com and part…Big Valley? I’d say this could be prof­it­ably remade but con­tem­por­ary phone cul­ture doesn’t really sup­port the idea. (A trail­er in the scant sup­ple­ments actu­ally pos­its the phone book itself as some­thing to be ter­ri­fied of.) —B 

Journey To The Seventh Planet (Kino Lorber)

How can one not have affec­tion for this cheesy/earnest/ambitious 1962 pic­ture whose premise pres­aged Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris and by exten­sion the two movies made from that book? As Michael Weldon summarized/rhapsodized in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia Of Film: “Five astro­nauts on Uranus have their brains picked by a giant eye creature. Their fears, desires, and memor­ies appear as real­ist­ic hal­lu­cin­a­tions. One of the weird mon­sters is a Cyclops-dinosaur-rat anim­ated by Jim Danforth. One of the dream women found loun­ging in a bikini is Greta Thyssen, seen in many of the final Three Stooges shorts. One of the astro­nauts is John Agar! What a movie!” Indeed. This is plainly one of the rocks upon which the church of Psychotronic/fantastic cinema is built. Carrying the torch, Video Watchdog’s Tim Lucas provides an inform­at­ive and astute com­ment­ary, not­ing of the pic­ture that it’s “the last of the naïve films about space travel.” As for the movie itself, I’ve nev­er seen it look­ing so good. Healthy col­or, rich detail, clean pic­ture through­out. —A

The King and Four Queens (Olive)

The film mater­i­als used to make this high-def ver­sion, one can see from the open­ing craggy vis­tas, were ever so slightly on the pink side. But this is some­thing that will only be really notice­ably if you’re look­ing at it with a col­or corrector’s eye, not a movie-watchers. That aside, this is a hand­some look­ing present­a­tion of Raoul Walsh’s 1956 cham­ber Western, in which Clark Gable settles in at a ghost town to play foot­sie with the four daughters-in-law of an out­law mat­ri­arch. All the girls are wait­ing for their out­law fellas—them that’s sur­vived, if any—to come back to the ranch with a for­tune in gold. Pretty enter­tain­ing stuff. Poor Jo Van Fleet has to endure the indig­nity of play­ing mom-in-law to four act­resses who are only between thir­teen and sev­en years young­er than her, and Eleanor Parker is the wili­est of the beau­ties. As the movie’s story is a bit of a wait­ing game, nobody really goes any­where, which keeps its vis­tas lim­ited. Gable plays the melodeon and sings (badly) “In The Sweet Bye And Bye.” Composer Alex North plays with some Copeland voicings dur­ing a bizarre dance sequence. The movie’s laid-back vibe may account some­what for the film­makers get­ting the def­in­itely mor­ally unac­cept­able dénoue­ment past the Breen office. Not much in the extras depart­ment, but it’s Clark Gable and Raoul Walsh. Come on. —B+

Million Eyes of Sumuru/Girl From Rio (Blue Underground)

I always stop for a Harry Alan Towers double fea­ture. 1967’s Million Eyes, shot in expedi­ent Techniscope, looks mighty fine here, and the movie itself prom­ises at first to be a bikini clad feature-length cat­fight, which is great, but then Frankie Avalon shows up. (Uninspirational dia­logue from Avalon: “I won­der if this is where I’m sup­posed to sing.”) The movie non­ethe­less main­tains a cer­tain volup­tu­ous goofi­ness, thanks in part to Goldfinger girl Shirley Eaton, with­stand­ing sev­er­al not-great hair days in the title role. The movie also fea­tures George Nader reach­ing a kind of apo­theosis, and Klaus Kinski wear­ing makeup that vaguely recalls that of Daniel Gelin in The Man Who Knew Too Much. You’re sold, right? But wait, there’s more: the Jess Franco dir­ec­ted sequel Girl From Rio, boast­ing wacky Rio and Brasilia loc­a­tions. It’s a fun movie but a little repet­it­ive with the mild tor­ture scenes, which is a com­plaint I nev­er thought I’d make. A very Francoesque touch is the use of what looks like a dent­al X‑ray machine to rep­res­ent a deadly heat-ray gen­er­at­or. In the sup­ple­ments Ms. Eaton waxes slightly prig­gish about Mr. Franco, which made me sad, and I thought ever so slightly less of her as a res­ult.—A-

Panic In The Year Zero (Kino Lorber)

Ray Milland’s dir­ect­ori­al debut is a ter­rific­ally down­beat look at the dis­in­teg­ra­tion of an American fam­ily as it escapes what it believes to have been a nuke attack on Los Angeles. It should make great Election Night view­ing.  Milland cast him­self as the stol­id pat­ri­arch, a Good Liberal who has to make some Tough Choices, while Jean Hagen tamps down her comed­ic skills to play the world’s now most stressed-out 1950s white house­wife. Mary Mitchell is good as the daughter…and Frankie Avalon, as the son, evokes the death­less ques­tion “Where the hell is Ricky Nelson when you need him?” Hell, even David Nelson would do. This is nev­er­the­less a tough and tense pic­ture, and it looks super crisp here. Richard Harland Smith of Movie Morlocks gives one of the most inform­at­ive and well-organized audio com­ment­ar­ies I’ve ever heard. Discussing the movie’s loc­ales, he starts off talk­ing about the Republic Pictures back lot, men­tions a par­tic­u­lar house on its street set, and says “I’ll tell you about that in about 75 minutes,” and sure enough, 75 minutes later, he does. —A-

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (Olive)

A remark­ably solid-looking present­a­tion of an idi­ot­ic­ally under seen film. George Sanders is geni­us, in the title role of the Maupassant-derived cad. Angela Lansbury is great and gor­geous. The script is mag­ni­fi­cently highfalutin—the act­ors CLEARLY love the dia­logue. Darius Milhaud did the score, and the movie is also Warren William’s last stand. Pictures of determ­ined, even will­ful, refine­ment were dir­ect­or Albert Lewin’s stock-in-trade, and their aspir­a­tion­al qual­it­ies turned off crit­ics like Andrew Sarris. But there are sev­er­al scenes here that provide sol­id evid­ence that Lewin truly was a dir­ect­or of the first rank. Look at the sequence in which Sanders counts off twenty-five paces pri­or to a duel and tell me that’s not film­mak­ing. As for the refine­ment, maybe it seemed pre­ten­tious in 1947 but in 2016 it strikes me as rather ton­ic. A good and mem­or­able film.—A-

Rollercoaster (Shout! Factory)

This 1977 movie, the first really mem­or­able egg laid in the ‘70s dis­aster genre, looks really good here. Timothy Bottoms’ skin tones are a little red, but he IS play­ing the vil­lain, a psy­cho who’s plant­ing bombs on roller coast­ers at America’s amuse­ment parks. Like Dr. Evil, he wants “one mil­lion dol­lars.” There’s what I like to think of as a nice in-joke here when George Segal says to Richard Widmark “You remind me of the man I work for—I don’t like him either.” “He seemed nice enough to me,” Widmark responds. The man Segal’s char­ac­ter works for is played by Henry Fonda, so laugh it up, Madigan people. Phoning in his demands, Bottoms talks like Douglas Rains, and Segal keeps say­ing “Screw you” to him. And it’s like maybe 45 minutes straight of this sort of thing. So clearly, this movie’s troun­cing by the likes of Star Wars was not unearned. The Sensurround gim­mick, here rendered in a muta­tion of three-channel ste­reo, is not entirely com­pel­ling either. In the disc’s sole sub­stan­tial sup­ple­ment, one-time child act­or Tommy Cook, who came up with the story idea and the scen­ario, waxes so enthu­si­ast­ic about his dream pro­ject you feel kinda bad that it turned out so meh. Things only really heat up about an hour and 25 minutes in, when both Sparks and a wild-eyed long-haired Craig Wasson show up. —B-

She Wore A Yellow Ribbon

They Were Expendable (Warner Archive)

“Custer is dead,” now that is one heck of an open­ing line. It’s the open­ing line of the cav­alry movie, not the World War II movie, obvi­ously. Yellow Ribbon doesn’t imme­di­ately seem to pos­sess the grav­itas of Fort Apache or even Liberty Valance, but it’s enter­tain­ing as all getout and in terms of the heavy stuff it’s a grow­er. The key is Ford’s use of Technicolor, which is as determ­inedly anti-realistic as it is in any Powell-Pressburger. We get to prac­tic­ally expres­sion­ist levels, par­tic­u­larly in the scene where Wayne’s char­ac­ter is at his wife’s grave site—a beau­ti­ful echo of Young Mr. Lincoln but also much more. Expendable, along with The Best Years Of Our Lives one of the Hollywood pin­nacles of immediately-post WWII film­mak­ing, is in black and white, and visu­ally “plain­er” because it wants/needs to be. Both discs look pretty spec­tac­u­lar (yes, there are one or two “soft” shots in Ribbon, and here and there in Expendable the pro­cess shots are more process‑y than you might remem­ber them) and both films are lib­rary items. —A

Summer Lovers (Twilight Time)

Director Randall Kleiser con­trib­utes an inform­at­ive, thor­ough, albeit stiffly delivered com­ment­ary to this high-def ver­sion of his shot-in-the-Greek-islands 1982 youths-experiment-in-polyamory sex drama. The scenery is pretty and the people—a very buff Peter Gallagher, a very lithe Daryl Hannah, and a very con­tin­ent­al Valerie Quennessen—equally so. The look is sun-dappled, so it’s aged less drastic­ally than many oth­er 1980s pic­tures. Cinematographer Timothy Galfas was no Nestor Almendros, but he was no slouch either. While in sev­er­al respects the movie is fluff, on a base level it’s still a smarter and more enga­ging movie about being a young adult in the ‘80s than fuck­ing St. Elmo’s Fire was. And for what it’s worth, all the way down to extras cast­ing, Kleiser really knows how to appeal to the het­ero­sexu­al male gaze. —A-

Susan Slept Here (Warner Archive)

Yes, the whole setup of this not-quite-bedroom farce is poten­tially infuri­at­ing. (If you don’t know the setup, think of the Steve Coogan/Rob Brydon dueling-Michael-Caine bit in the first Trip movie.) But the movie’s energy and spec­tac­u­lar visu­als cre­ate a car­toon vul­gar­ity that tran­scends car­toon vul­gar­ity. Even the most rel­at­ively sed­ate frames of this early Frank Tashlin live action fea­ture are pop-art insane. He makes Ann Francis look like a real-life ver­sion of his col­league Tex Avery’s Swing Shift Cinderella or some such lust object. The Blu-ray gets every last bit of visu­al tin­sel, from the light glint­ing off the Christmas presents when Dick Powell steps off the elev­at­or to the sheen of a cop’s hat band. Spectacular, and a clear influ­ence on Godard’s Une femme est une femme if you want to get high­brow about it. —A

Suspicion (Warner Archive)

One of the most frus­trat­ing Hitchcock pic­tures, due to his inab­il­ity to get an actu­ally con­vin­cing end­ing past either the cen­sors or the stu­dio or who­ever ulti­mately put the kibosh on the letter-mailing twist that should have been the final shot. Nevertheless, like every Hitchcock pic­ture, it is of con­sid­er­able interest for stu­dents of film lan­guage and oth­er liv­ing things. The Blu-ray looks good and slick—check out Cary Grant’s pomaded coif in the “kissed in a car” scene, you can count each par­tic­u­lar hair. Other moments jump out: the movie’s open­ing in the dark, Grant “break­ing” the fourth wall when clown­ing in wretched antique chairs. The char­ac­ter played by Carol Curtis-Brown ought to be cat­nip for today’s cul­tur­al stud­ies under­grads. There’s a cer­tain deli­cious­ness in Grant’s char­ac­ter is so abysmal, but on rewatch­ing one gets an intense remind­er of how insuf­fer­able Nigel Bruce’s best friend is as well. It’s kind of excruciating—and Hitchcock’s sym­path­ies are with Joan Fontaine through­out: he por­trays the char­ac­ter not as a fool but a genu­inely lonely and vul­ner­able There’s an acute aware­ness of just how Grant’s char­ac­ter is text­book abus­ive, par­tic­u­larly in the depic­tion of the “give us a smile” tor­ture he inflicts. Finally, Hitchcock and Fontaine and Grant are so great they sell the stu­pid end­ing any­way. —A

Too Late For Tears

Woman On The Run (Flicker Alley)

Two “redis­covered” and restored noirs from the always-impeccable Flicker Alley, and they are both rev­el­at­ory and enjoy­able. Tears fea­tures Lisabeth Scott fall­ing in love with a suit­case full of money, and Arthur Kennedy and Dan Duryea pay­ing the cost of that love. Byron Haskin dir­ects with apt vin­eg­ar and move­ment. Woman stars poor Ann Sheridan, only 35 but aged by booze bloat, in the middle of a killer-wants-to-off-a-murder-witness plot that ends with night­mare imagery of the same hor­rible amuse­ment park mas­cot that fig­ures so prom­in­ently at the cli­max of Lew Landers’ Man In The Dark. Inspirational dia­logue from the lat­ter: “What are you wor­ried about mis­ter, he missed.” Both discs fea­ture lively engaged com­ment­ar­ies from Alan Rode and Eddie Muller respect­ively, and extens­ive video sup­ple­ments on the res­tor­a­tion. Noir nuts will be very sat­is­fied. —A

Under The Sun Of Satan (Cohen)

A two-BR set, part of the label’s Pialat col­lec­tion, and it’s a beau­ti­ful ren­der­ing of one of the Great Films of the 20^th cen­tury, so what do you want? The second disc of extras rep­lic­ates much of the Eureka/MOC stand­ard def set, includ­ing an inter­view with a very thought­ful Gerard Depardieu from 2003 in which he makes the immor­tal obser­va­tion “acteurs son des…des…des animaux mal­ade.” But the pack­age does NOT con­tain the two Pialat shorts from the early ‘50s, and so as much as I don’t seek title redund­ancy in my DVD lib­rary I’m hanging on to both. But when I want to watch Satan itself, this is the ver­sion I’m watch­ing. —A

The Vikings (Kino Lorber)

I under­stand that the cast­ing of this 1958 pic­ture (altern­ate title: Kirk Douglas Presents “My Life As A Blond”) imbues it with unin­ten­tion­al camp or kitsch value, but if you can get past that, this is a sur­pris­ingly cred­ible peri­od action pic­ture and yes, Ernest Borgnine actu­ally pulls of his role as a patriarch/warrior. This Blu-ray of the movie is very nice; the ren­der­ings of the exter­i­ors in day­light are par­tic­u­larly beau­ti­ful. Some of the con­tent is what some call “rapey” these days, with dia­logue exchanges like: “She said she’d kill herself…if I touched her.” “They all say that. What they really mean is that they’ll kill them­selves if you don’t!” But the story is reas­on­ably event­ful: by the end, poor Kirk has only one eye, and poor Tony Curtis only one arm: it’s hard out there for an early Common Era war­ri­or. A career high for dir­ect­or Richard Fleischer, and, in a sense, for cine­ma­to­graph­er Jack Cardiff.. —A-

Where’s Poppa? (Kino Lorber)

I have a con­fes­sion to make. While this 1970 movie looms large in my child­hood memory, largely due to its repu­ta­tion as an object so out­rageous as to be prac­tic­ally taboo—despite its being the product of Hollywood rather than of young John Waters—I’ve nev­er actu­ally seen it until a couple of weeks ago. When it first came out on DVD, I was run­ning the DVD reviews sec­tion at Première, and I assigned the disc—MGM/UA, if I recall correctly—to the woman who I would even­tu­ally marry. I don’t remem­ber why I did that. “Was it to pun­ish you?” I asked her the oth­er day. “I think it was more that I drew the short straw,” she said. Because now that I’ve seen the movie I’m a little mixed up about it. Despite the par­ti­cip­a­tion of very tal­en­ted people, from dir­ect­or Carl Reiner on down, the movie is creepily unpleas­ant in a way that goes bey­ond the stand­ard level of dis­com­fort aspired to by black com­ed­ies. It’s unre­mit­tingly ugly and racist, and not all that funny either. I had not been aware, not hav­ing seen it, that the whole thing, a miser­able scen­ario in which George Segal con­tends with a moth­er whose demen­tia has rendered her, well, demen­ted, takes place over a fraught maybe 30-hour peri­od. The movie’s exten­ded rape, um, joke, is curi­ous. In a sense it’s too ridiculous/idiotic to be taken in earn­est, but it still makes you want to take a long shower. The cli­mactic scene at a seni­or “home” run by Paul Sorvino is, on the oth­er hand, poin­tedly and pur­pose­fully horrific—one of the aspects of the movie that give it a “you won’t believe it unless you see it” repu­ta­tion. Which is not a recom­mend­a­tion. The trans­fer is good looking—ever dingy moldy tile of Segal’s shower looks dingy and moldy. —B-