A Christmas Gift To You From Some Came Running (That Is, A 2017 Blu-ray Consumer Guide)

Let’s get right to it. 

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

I can’t believe I actu­ally carved out the time to do this, although if you check out the release date of the very first disc reviewed (I’ll save you the trouble, it’s August of last year) you’ll see it’s been indeed over a year in the mak­ing. Whew!

3 Bad Men (Kino Lorber)

This 1926 Western, not to be con­fused with 1919’s Marked Men, which was Ford’s first stab at the story that would become Three Godfathers, is a fleet and excit­ing film with a sim­il­ar theme—the title fel­lows, en route to a gold stake, save the life of, and then look after, a fair waif. This disc presents a beau­ti­ful res­tor­a­tion ter­rific­ally aug­men­ted by a won­der­ful Joseph McBride audio com­ment­ary. Aside from its eru­di­tion (fun fact: this was Ford’s last Western for over a dec­ade; he would not revis­it the genre until, yup, 1939’s Stagecoach) it’s a mas­ter class in how to deal with, um, prob­lem­at­ics. One of the movie’s most thrill­ing moment sees a baby lif­ted from the ground in the middle of what’s effect­ively a stam­pede (an ante­cedent to sev­er­al stunts in Raising Arizona). The clear-eyed McBride, who loved Ford and Ford’s films, says “this is a fam­ous shot, unfor­tu­nately in my opin­ion it’s reprehensible…I think it’s uncon­scion­able to risk the life of a child for the sake of an effect.” And that’s that. —A

All the Colors of the Dark   (Shameless UK Region B)

You nev­er for­get your first Edwidge Fenech movie. I picked up a German DVD of this lur­id and non­sensic­al 1972 sort-of giallo in the mid’ 90s. It was a 4×3 image that was pic­ture­boxed to hon­or its widescreen fram­ing, and the image was suf­fi­ciently blah that you might have guessed the neg­at­ive had been pro­cessed in dirty bathwa­ter. And yet the power of La Fenech’s ultry-sultry screen pres­ence some­how shone through. This U.K. Blu looks…okay. It’s 16×9, always a plus of course. The open­ing minutes, fea­tur­ing the cred­its, are dingy enough to raise an eye­brow, but then you real­ize this was always a cheap film in every respect, not just con­tent. Once you make peace with. that it’s com­pletely watch­able and some­times a bit bet­ter. And the lead act­or looks great. The pack­age has sat­is­fy­ing extras, includ­ing cas­u­al but enthu­si­ast­ic and inform­at­ive com­ment­ary from Kat Ellinger (edit­or of Diabolique magazine) and Samm Deighan (con­trib­ut­or to that magazine; both do a pod­cast called Daughters of Darkness) and a 20-minute inter­view with dir­ect­or Sergio Martino. —A-

Battle Cry (Warner Archive)

Raoul Walsh con­ducts this nearly 150-minute adapt­a­tion of Herman Wouk’s nov­el at a spank­ing pace, which is salut­ary not just for the usu­al reas­ons but also because the story is maybe 80 per­cent soap opera and 20 per­cent war movie. No extras here, but the widescreen col­or image is very nice. The WA release of Hell on Frisco Bay, while vivid, suffered dur­ing dis­solve trans­itions in which col­or val­ues were lost, a lim­it­a­tion of the mater­i­al they had to work with. This is not the case here, for the most part, and in the rare occa­sions that it is, it’s so fleet­ing only the sharpest eye will catch it. Attractions include Tab Hunter try­ing to play drunk, Walsh using short fast pans as an accom­mod­a­tion to CinemaScope (see James Whitmore telling Perry Lopez to take off his fake medals, and Lopez then brag­ging about Guadalcanal to a group of strangers, all in the same shot). Aldo Ray play­ing a rapey char­ac­ter who is talked down from com­mit­ting actu­al assault is a very, um, vivid por­tray­al. —B+

The Birthday Party (Kino Lorber)

Don’t know why I haven’t seen more Friedkin-heads cel­eb­rat­ing the release of this 1968 pic­ture, his follow-up to, um, Good Times, that Sonny and Cher movie. This, on the oth­er hand, is an adapt­a­tion of the Haold Pinter play about a with­drawn board­ing house ten­ant who receives a vis­it from some exist­en­tial gang­sters on what may or may not be his birth­day. Their intro­duc­tion is really spe­cial: the cut from Robert Shaw’s Stanley sneak­ing out the kit­chen win­dow to Patrick Magee and Sidney Tafler stand­ing in the house’s sit­ting room is really one of the great edits in cinema. Friedkin shows remark­able sens­it­iv­ity to Pinter’s text, and if you only know Magee and Shaw from A Clockwork Orange and Jaws respect­ively, you’ll be sur­prised at how good they are at under­play­ing. (I know Shaw does SOME under­play­ing in Jaws, but here he even under­plays under­play­ing.) The image looks great rel­at­ive to what Eastman Color in the late ‘60s gen­er­ally yiel­ded. Although I wish the respons­ible parties had cleaned up the soundtrack a little more. Extras include a Friedkin inter­view in which he relates mater­i­al that read­ers of his Friedkin Connection book will remem­ber, includ­ing how the movie irrit­ated Joseph Losey. —A-

Casa De Lava (Grasshopper)

This 1994 pic­ture was Pedro Costa’s second fea­ture, and while it’s in some respects much more con­ven­tion­al than his stiffer future pic­tures, it’s still suf­fused, as they say, with a sin­gu­lar voice, achieved through form­al mas­tery. And con­fid­ence. The much-cited influ­ence of I Walked With A Zombie is evid­ent but it’s more sub­ter­ranean than many accounts would have you believe. The excel­lent Blu-ray image hon­ors the work of cine­ma­to­graph­er Emmanuel Machuel (who also shot, not insig­ni­fic­antly, Bresson’s L’Argent); aside from its char­ac­ters and story, the movie is also about a vol­can­ic island in the Cape Verde archipelago, and the movie’s col­or palette, its range of lights and darks, the often char­coal qual­ity of the land­scape, is well-represented. Machuel is inter­viewed in one of the discs’ sup­ple­ments. The oth­er not­able extra is a 24-minute paging through Costa’s scrap­book for the movie, which fea­tures lots of shots of Edith Scob (one of the picture’s stars) in Les Yeux sans Visage; the fam­ous pho­to­graph of Robert Johnson and gui­tar, which seems to inform the movie’s char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion of the role played by Isaac De Bankole; and pic­tures of Edgar Allan Poe and Edie Sedgwick. —A+

Chandu The Magician (Kino Lorber)

The dream team of William Cameron Menzies (dir­ec­tion) and James Wong Howe (cine­ma­to­graphy) hav­ing some fun with pulpy radio-play char­ac­ters, baroque vil­lainy, in-camera effects and so on. The mater­i­al used in the Blu-ray of this 1932 pic­ture shows some dam­age (speckles and such), espe­cially dur­ing trans­itions. Still great, some­times dazzling, fun, not least due to Bela Lugosi’s scenery-chewing as a bad­die named Roxor. (In future sequels he would play the hero Chandu, just to con­fuse people.) Commentator Greg Mank is super enthu­si­ast­ic albeit pos­sibly unavoid­ably stodgy in his praise of ana­log effects as opposed to these kids today with the CGI. Pretty much all the extras are taken from the 2008 Fox DVD, includ­ing a com­ment­ary by Richard Schickel that I’ve still not got­ten around to listen­ing to. —B+

Death Laid An Egg (Cult Epics)

What do you say about a 1968 giallo star­ring Jean-Louis Trintingant, Gina Lollobrigida, and Candy’s Ewa Aulin that cli­maxes with the intro­duc­tion of a head­less, all-breast-meat live chick­en? Quite a few things, and I said some of them about eight years ago in a piece for MUBI, in which I cat­egor­ized this pic­ture as being one of the “genre films that embed­ded a Marxist cri­tique of Western eco­nom­ic and/or social prac­tices into the thrills of their par­tic­u­lar sub­sets.” This trans­fer beats hell out of the Japanese stand­ard def DVD that was my ref­er­ence for the review, which like my first disc of All The Colors of the Dark, was let­ter­boxed in a 4×3 format. The image here is pretty bright; in sequences when there’s a lot of white light pour­ing through win­dows you get the impres­sion of tip­ping into over­ex­pos­ure. But everything holds nicely, mak­ing the view­ing exper­i­ence grat­i­fy­ing. I did not spring for the three-disc ver­sion that was part of the crowd fund­ing cam­paign for the disc, which included a CD of Bruno Maderna’s strik­ing mod­ern­ist score. —B+

The Earth Dies Screaming (Kino Lorber)

This 1964 British sci-fi cheapie is one of those pic­tures that, seen at an early enough age, will lodge in one’s uncon­scious and forever res­on­ate with the stiff, sniffy inverse-claustrophobia of its scenes depict­ing human sur­viv­ors of an ali­en onslaught snip­ing at each oth­er in empty pubs and hotel lob­bies. The sense of des­ol­ate isol­a­tion cre­ated by dir­ect­or Terence Fisher and his cast (espe­cially the ever-tetchy Dennis Price) is not upen­ded by the ridicu­lous dome-headed killer robots roam­ing the empty streets, but enhanced by them. After years away from the pic­ture, you’re not sure if it’s some­thing you saw as a movie, or just dreamed. But it is real, as this Blu-ray attests. This pecu­li­arly remark­able film is presen­ted in a good-looking, smooth, 1.66 pic­ture. The com­ment­ary from Richard Harland Smith is good and thor­ough (dig, for instance, how he iden­ti­fies foot­age repur­posed from Village of the Damned) and leavened by his dry sense of humor: “We begin…with stock foot­age.” —A-

Freebie and the Bean (Warner Archive)

Did Stanley Kubrick really call this the best movie of 1974? Because it’s not very good. This des­pite being shot by Laszlo Kovacs, hav­ing a theme song crooned by Bobby Hart , and fea­tur­ing a glimpse of City Lights books early on. Other things that had me on its side included a ter­ri­fy­ing scene on a build­ing crane, a vehicle fea­tur­ing the logo “Vertigo Trucking Company,” and, well, not much else. But as it hap­pens, James Caan and Alan Arkin yelling at each oth­er for almost two hours is not as enter­tain­ing as it sounds. (Yes, this is my first time see­ing it. I couldn’t make it to the movie when it first opened, des­pite its poster tease “…and look who’s play­ing Consuelo.” [It’s Valerie Harper].) The image is vivid enough that it’s no trouble at all to see that dur­ing one shot in the rough-housing-around-the-fountain scene, Caan is replaced by a very indif­fer­ently dis­guised stunt double. The end­ing, when put up against The Color of Night, sug­gests that Richard Rush, the dir­ect­or of both pic­tures, has some issues with trans people. I guess the thing has curio value. Inspirational dia­logue: “She’s on the pill.” —B-

Funeral Parade of Roses (Cinelicious Pics)

Speaking of Kubrick, it’s said that this 1969 quasi-underground pic­ture by Toshio Matsumoto was screened by Kubrick as research for A Clockwork Orange. Lest that give you the wrong impres­sion, this is hardly a pic­ture about wayward/criminal youth, regard­less of what Japan’s policy con­cern­ing trans people or cross-dressers. In any event, this is a remark­ably strik­ing pic­ture in every par­tic­u­lar, start­ing with lead per­former Pita (a.k.a. Peter), whose por­tray­al of the beau­ti­ful night life queen Eddie makes everything else about the film pos­sible. Pita’s own arti­fice of self-presentation con­sti­tutes an immut­able truth that makes the movie’s diverse post­mod­ern strategies not just unforced, but neces­sary. The movie’s black-and-white imme­di­acy is beau­ti­fully cap­tured in the trans­fer, and there’s a superb and inform­at­ive com­ment­ary by Chris Desjardins, a.k.a. Chris D. of Flesheaters and fan­zine fame (the pri­or DVD edi­tion of this, from Eureka!/Masters of Cinema, had liner notes from Jim O’Rourke—musicians looove this movie). The pack­age is roun­ded out by a sep­ar­ate disc of eight shorts by Matsumoto, ran­ging from the early ‘60s to 1975, many fea­tur­ing psy­che­del­ic music by Toshi Ichiyanagi, avant garde com­poser and ex-husband of Yoko Ono. —A+

Le Gai Savoir (Kino Lorber)

Released on Blu-ray in tan­dem with La Chinoise, this is argu­ably the more dif­fi­cult of the two films that Godard made in the run up to May ’68. These proph­et­ic pic­tures were of course irre­voc­ably affected by the events they more or less pre­dicted. Our world is still wracked by the con­cerns, philo­soph­ic­al and social, of the films; only the vocab­u­lary has changed. Savoir, ori­gin­ally con­ceived for tele­vi­sion, has no story as such; instead, it fea­tures Jean-Pierre Léaud and Juliette Berto, as char­ac­ters named Emile and Patrice (ref­er­en­cing Rousseau and Lumumba) but also as them­selves, inhab­it­ing the black expanse of a stu­dio and talk­ing edu­ca­tion, over­laid fre­quently by mont­ages that are, no sur­prise, quint­es­sen­tially Godardian. The movie gets more visu­ally “inter­est­ing” the more you watch it, actu­ally, and the disc includes an inform­at­ive and cogent com­ment­ary by Adrian Martin. Also, and this is not an insig­ni­fic­ant detail, Léaud and Berto have the richest, most lus­trous hair of any­one in motion pic­tures before and after this film. It’s not just the back­light­ing. It’s great hair. —A+

Gidget (Twilight Time)

The excep­tion­al label Twilight Time’s always idio­syn­crat­ic releases sug­gest an altern­ate his­tory of Hollywood. Not an anti-canon so much as an aes­thet­ic anim­ated by dis­crete pop cul­tur­al blips that were executed with not­able tech­nic­al pan­ache. This 1959 pic­ture, in CinemaScope and “Columbia Color” finds the stu­dio, bereft of Harry Cohn (he died in February 1958) grap­pling to deal with the Youth Culture. Adapting a nov­el by Fredrick Kohner (Susan Kohner’s uncle, since you ask) that he based on his own teen daughter’s adven­tures with surf­ing, it came up with this oddity. Sandra Dee plays the title char­ac­ter, a “girl mid­get” who’s roundly sas­sed when she tries to ingra­ti­ate her­self into a cadre of male surfers, includ­ing the snooty Moondog (James Darren) and the adult beach­comber “The Big Kahuna” (Cliff Robertson). Look for Tom Laughlin, Doug McClure, and Yvonne Craig in small roles. Cringe at dia­logue like “Hey Moondoggie! You’re not going for that jail­bait caper are you?” Thrill to the unex­pec­ted lyr­i­cism of Cliff Robertson look­ing out of the Kahuna’s shack at all the young­er surfers. Directed by Paul Wendkos with an effi­ciency he would be dis­in­clined to sup­ply in his later films (trust me, I watched The Mephisto Waltz a few months ago), this is an often glum and tetchy film that gets down­right weird when the moments of ten­sion are broken by char­ac­ters burst­ing into song, because while it may not be a full-fledged drama it sure ain’t a music­al either.   A fas­cin­at­ing arti­fact and of course it looks mighty good. Not much shak­ing in the extras depart­ment, save a typ­ic­ally astute Julie Kirgo essay. —B+

Innocent Blood (Warner Archive)

At the Venice Film Festival last fall, John Landis headed the jury, and so they showed a lot of his stuff, some newly restored. The video for “Thriller” isn’t that great, really. The making-of doc­u­ment­ary is slightly more inter­est­ing, and creepy in part. 1985’s Into the Night, which screened in a restored ver­sion, is a remark­ably indul­gent movie in soooo many ways. Many of which sound cool. You’d think a pic­ture in which David Bowie has a knife fight with Carl Perkins would be some kind of sure thing, but you’d be sur­prised. The whole thing is logy as hell, every scene a kind of non-sequitur. And the over­all sad­ism had a self-serving AND self-loathing qual­ity to in. It made me won­der: had Landis for­got­ten how to make a movie after that Twilight Zone busi­ness? Not that it wouldn’t have argu­ably served him right—but this isn’t the ven­ue for such dis­cus­sion. (Although, when you con­sider the entirety of the Landis Sage you may reas­on­ably con­clude that karma does­n’t exist, or if it does exist, it is a weirdo rather than a bitch.) Anyway, I men­tion all this because part of my interest in this high-def ver­sion of was my curi­os­ity as to wheth­er, five films after Night, he had remembered how to make a movie. The answer is, kind of. This super-grisly hor­ror com­edy from 1992 sort of ups the ante on American Werewolf In London’s total dis­reg­ard for human life. The hook here is a turned vam­pire vic­tim who likes it, and can derive some advant­age of if, that is, Pittsburgh mob mani­ac Sallie the Shark, played by Robert Loggia with chop-smacking fero­city. A kind of genre tem­plate for Loggia’s Mr. Eddie in Lost Highway. The Blu-ray gets the movie’s gar­ish col­or schemes—lots of neon-lit nightclubs and stuff—very well. I said it back then (in Entertainment Weekly I think), and I’ll say it now: any movie that puts Don Rickles and Dario Argento in the same frame has got some­thing going for it. —B

Kill Baby Kill (Kino Lorber)

These are the times that try men’s souls, to be sure. On the oth­er hand, think back to thirty years ago, when the only way we could watch movies such as All The Colors of the Dark, Death Laid an Egg, and this were via VHS tapes from Video Search of Miami or some­thing. And now we have them on Blu-ray, com­plete, often restored, some­times pristine. This 1966 Mario Bava pic­ture is a key work in many respects, amp­ing up the dream­like qual­it­ies that would spin into a fant­ast­ic deli­ri­um in his sub­sequent Lisa and the Devil. It also fea­tures the Demonic Little Girl fig­ure that would recur in Fellini’s greatest film, Toby Dammit. Which, Tim Lucas allows in his typ­ic­ally excel­lent com­ment­ary, could have its roots in Juliet of the Spirits. In any event, each dir­ect­or and each little girl is some­how dis­tinct­ive in spite of the affin­it­ies. In the case of the one in this pic­ture, Tim tells us, it’s in part because the child is a little boy in a wig, who was not happy to be in the role. —A

Letter From An Unknown Woman (Olive Signature)

This replaces the Olive Blu-ray from a few years back and it’s worth the double-dip I’m afraid. The 4K trans­fer appears to have been scanned from dif­fer­ent source; there’s a Universal logo before the Dozier/Rampart card…but that’s hardly the only dif­fer­ence. The point is that dif­fer­ences are clear from the open­ing cred­its on. It’s a pic­ture improve­ment of maybe 30 per­cent, pos­sibly more. So, for this exquis­ite bit of can­on you know what you have to do. The extras are almost all aston­ish­ing. Lutz Bocher’s com­ment­ary is unlike any I’ve heard before. His deliv­ery is kind of abrupt (sounds as if English is not his first lan­guage). But his detailed form­al ana­lys­is, and accounts of what the film could have included, how shots were con­struc­ted, and so on, all informed by pro­duc­tion doc­u­ment­a­tion and Ophuls’ own notes, con­sist­ently informs and fas­cin­ates. Tag Gallagher’s visu­al essay is a tour de force on the film’s very sub­ject­ive POV. There’s a brief, mov­ing inter­view with Marcel Ophuls, son of Max and a mas­ter of cinema his own self. Dana Polan on the ori­gins of the pro­duc­tion is very good. The only dud in the sup­ple­ments (and not one worth dock­ing a notch over) is cine­ma­to­graph­er Sean Price Williams’ tiredly snide inter­view, in which he reveals that the first time he laid eyes on Letter star Louis Jourdan, it was in Swamp Thing. Wow, man. —A+

The Lost World (Flicker Alley)

This is hardly a con­ven­tion­al upgrade from standard-def to high. It’s a whole new con­struc­tion of this 1925 grand­daddy of giant mon­ster movies, sup­ple­men­ted by a raft of schol­ar­ship and excit­ing related mater­i­al. The movie itself, with giant rep­tile spe­cial effects work by Willis O’Brien, is an import­ant pre­curs­or to King Kong but also a brisk and some­times eccent­ric, oth­er times repel­lent, adven­ture yarn, based on a nov­el by Arthur Conan Doyle. The movie looks remark­able for the most part, and the com­ment­ary by Nicolas Ciccone con­sist­ently iden­ti­fies the source mater­i­als for each part of the recon­struc­tion. It does a lot more, too. Conan Doyle’s yarn was inspired, you will learn, by the real-life explorers who were the sub­jects of this years The Lost City of Z. Ciccone also frankly addresses the movie’s repel­lent racist aspects, par­tic­u­larly with respect to the char­ac­ter Zambo, a betray­al, as it hap­pens of Conan Doyle’s more benign but still colo­ni­al­ist con­cep­tion. The more pleas­ant stuff includes two Willis O’Brien shorts, test foot­age from his abort­ive Creation, deleted scenes. Serge Bromberg con­trib­utes a “Secrets of the Restoration” essay in the book­let—A+

Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case (Kino Lorber)

Whose fault is it when crit­ic­al repu­ta­tions go down the tubes in a way that’s so igno­mini­ous that twenty years (or so) after the fact, a rep-series revi­sion, motiv­ated as much by sen­ti­ment­al regret as it is by crit­ic­al curi­os­ity, emerges to dole out praise and blame and woe? In oth­er words, does every reas­sess­ment of William Wyler have to drag Andrew Sarris for his “Strained Seriousness” cat­egor­iz­a­tion of the dir­ect­or in The American Cinema? Why not accom­pany a cel­eb­ra­tion of Wyler with André Bazin’s cel­eb­ra­tion of The Little Foxes instead? Also, Ben-Hur is not that good. Come on. Anyway. This is a round­about way of not­ing that this year saw the re-release of two 1950s polici­ers, based on pop­u­lar nov­els by Georges Simenon about his clas­sic detect­ive Maigret. These pic­tures were dir­ec­ted by Jean Delannoy, one of François Truffaut’s favor­ite punch­ing bags back when Truffaut was a crit­ic. Invariably, when such pic­tures are revived, they are accom­pan­ied by com­plaints about how mean Truffaut was. Delannoy is not someone whose films I know a lot about, and when 1958’s Maigret Sets A Trap was revived for the­at­ric­al release in the fall, I checked it out. It’s not at all bad—Jean Gabin, while not exactly Simenon’s own vis­ion of the detect­ive, takes over the char­ac­ter with brio, and the story is a good juicy one. But in what should have been the film’s cli­max, I began to get what Truffaut was on about—the goods Delannoy deliv­ers are talky, mono­chro­mat­ic, ped­es­tri­an, saved only by Gabin and the story itself. Not for noth­ing, but this 1959 follow-up, which did not play in any N.Y. theat­er in the fall, is rather a bet­ter pic­ture. It’s got a more inter­est­ing story, the milieu is more intriguing, or at least intriguingly por­trayed; the dir­ec­tion is bet­ter. And the 1.66 image on the disc is superb. Alas, that’s it for the Delannoy/Gabin Maigret films, so maybe I should be ticked at Truffaut—seems like Jean was hit­ting his stride with the mater­i­al just as Cahiers was ham­mer­ing him. —B+

Night School (Warner Archive)

I thought this 1981 pic­ture would be fun to check out, as it was one of the remain­ing few entries in the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film that I haven’t seen. About ten minutes into the movie I paused it to see what Michael Weldon said about it—he was a lot more dis­missive than I remembered. And yet here I was, watch­ing. Oops. No point in stop­ping now, though. The “Lorimar Presents” logo at the open­ing was a nice blast from the past…and the 1980s grain in the night­time image was not dis­pleas­ing. Nor was the news that the DP was Mark Irwin, who worked with David Cronenberg for many years. Sure, the dir­ect­or was also respons­ible for one-fifth of the second Casino Royale, as well as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Cromwell, and Sextette—not the cre­den­tials you are neces­sar­ily look­ing for in a Halloween deriv­at­ive. Ken Hughes’ sense of restraint only takes him so far, though; while this decapitating-serial-killer tale is not inor­din­ately gory, the vast array of red her­rings the plot offers up include a men­tally dis­abled bus­boy. Bad form. Also ana­chron­ist­ic is the half-milquetoast/half-smarm-king aca­dem­ic who, for all his thin-haired bland­ness, is cat­nip to the lady grad stu­dents. Drew Snyder, who por­trays the simp, puts on a hil­ari­ous look of resig­na­tion when his char­ac­ter over­hears the female dean telling a TA that she’s going to fire him. is going to fire him. So, yes, the main dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­ist­ic of this movie is that it fea­tures Rachel Ward tak­ing a shower. And she’s not killed therein. For very good reas­on. Anyway, the present­a­tion is, some would say, bet­ter than the movie deserves. But my argu­ment, as a gen­er­al rule, is that all pre­served films should be this well-preserved. Whatever. —B

The Old Dark House (Cohen Media)

As I wrote when I saw it in Venice in September: “This is the archetyp­al hor­ror com­edy, or would be, had it ever been equaled.” Or nearly equaled, even, I ought to have said. To con­tin­ue: “Ernest Thesiger is geni­us incarn­ate as the house’s very nervous mas­ter Horace Fenn, while British stage act­or Eva Moore is an exem­plary crone as his reli­gious fan­at­ic sis­ter. The movie brims with quot­able dia­logue, includ­ing the immor­tal line ‘Have a potato.’ The res­tor­a­tion, pro­duced by U.S. out­fit Cohen Media, looks dazzling.” Yes it sure does, and nev­er more so that when Moore takes Gloria Stuart’s silk night­ie between her fin­gers and says “That’s fine stuff—but it’ll rot.” You really get the fine­ness of the stuff. And the dis­tor­ted mir­ror busi­ness that fol­lows looks like it could have been shot yes­ter­day. Extras are from the pri­or Kino disc. And are fine. —A+

Red Line 7000 (Kino Lorber)

One of the hard­est Hawks films to see, gen­er­ally, which has been frus­trat­ing for not just cinephiles as a gen­er­al class but for Robin Wood devotees—his chapter on the 1965 pic­ture is one of the hinges that hold his 1968 book-length study of Hawks togeth­er. So this disc is cause for much cel­eb­ra­tion. It presents the film well, with a sol­id image and clear soundtrack. The racing foot­age has some raw­ness to it, but that’s kind of an asset—there’s a res­on­ance of peri­od authen­ti­city to it. At the start it feels like Only Angels Have Wings trans­posed to the world of stock car racing, but it mutates into a sort of All-American La Ronde, one in which the male characters—typical Americans!—suffer from sexu­al jeal­ousy of prac­tic­ally mani­ac­al pro­por­tions. Although the film, true to its era, looks at them as Normal Guys With A Few Problems. James Caan’s char­ac­ter is par­tic­u­larly truc­u­lent, and Caan por­trays him with utter con­vic­tion. The whole thing’s kind of unset­tling. On the oth­er hand, George Takei has a small role, and the nightclub music­al num­ber is almost com­pletely insane, and that’s fun, no? Nick Redman and Julie Kirgo, usu­ally the high­lights of the Twilight Time com­ment­ar­ies, are here, and Kirgo has a spe­cial insight—her dad wrote the screen­play. She is not as par­tial to the movie as the rela­tion might imply, which makes for an even more inter­est­ing com­ment­ary than she usu­ally deliv­ers. —A

Suspiria (Synapse)

I know that Synapse head Don May, Jr., has been work­ing on this labor of love for lit­er­ally years. David Mackenzie, who did the com­pres­sion and author­ing on the pro­ject, is a friend and someone I’ve worked with on a lot of Blu-ray projects—he is the record­ist on every  Blu-ray com­ment­ary I’ve done in the 21^st cen­tury. So I’m…partial? But I’m also a Suspiria nut, and a demand­ing one.  If this were to dis­ap­point, I might have just let it pass without com­ment. But hon­estly, I’d also be shocked, because I know the tech­nic­al acu­men and com­mit­ment to qual­ity of the people mak­ing the product. Well, here we are, and here is a review of it, so you can guess what I think of the new ver­sion. Indeed, it is won­der­ful. Indeed, I’ve nev­er seen it look bet­ter. Yes, all of the baroque light­ing effects are incred­ibly vivid and fresh but there’s more. The flesh tones are incred­ible. Jessica Harper’s “nat­ur­al” health­i­ness versus the overly made-up over­seers of the bal­let school, or the rud­di­ness of the pro­fess­or with whom she con­sults near the end—this  con­trast con­sti­tutes its own theme in the movie as presen­ted here. There is none of the over­sat­ur­a­tion that plagued the German ver­sion I wrote about in 2010. It’s beau­ti­ful. Perfect. Too per­fect? Since the res­tor­a­tion has the enthu­si­ast­ic approv­al of cine­ma­to­graph­er Luciano Tovoli, I’m com­fort­able say­ing “not likely.” And the audio. There’s an amaz­ing depth of detail that I’ve nev­er heard before in this very loud but intric­ately “com­posed” movie. I’ll be hon­est, I haven’t even delved into the sep­ar­ate disc of sup­ple­ments yet, and if I did things like declare “Blu-ray of the year” this would win in a walk, even if I nev­er got around to those extras. The extras I did sample were the two audio com­ment­ar­ies. Troy Howarth is very inform­at­ive with bios of the cast, stor­ies of the movie’s devel­op­ment, and wheth­er or not it’s a “giallo.” He says no and I agree. On the oth­er com­ment­ary, David Del Valle and pal Derek Botelho kick around crit­ic­al ideas, invoke Jung, and all that. They also spec­u­late on a the­or­et­ic­al Suspiria expan­ded uni­verse: “Are we to believe that some of these girls are part of the cov­en?” I got the col­lect­ible steel­book, which I pre-ordered for a mere $50; on Amazon it’s going for $90 as I write this. I pre-ordered not because I’m such a col­lect­ibles enthu­si­ast, but because I wanted to SEE THIS THING, and man am I glad I did. $90 is a lot of money, and I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but know­ing what I know now, I’d shell it out if I had to. If Synapse’s pat­tern runs true to what it was with the Phenomena Blu-ray of a few years back, a less fancy ver­sion of the same res­tor­a­tion will come down the pike some time. But none such item has been announced at press time as they say. Inspirational com­ment­ary line, from Mr. Del Valle: “You can nev­er use black magic to do any­thing good. Kenneth Anger told me that.”—A+

Witchhammer (Second Run)

To para­phrase John Belushi, I sug­gest you buy as many Eastern European peri­od films from the ’50s through the ’70s as you can. I’m not sure I’ve ever been let down by one yet. This night­mar­ish 1970 Czech pic­ture dir­ec­ted by Otakar Vávra—who began as an avant-garde film­maker (his first short, 1931’s The Light Penetrates The Dark, made when he was 20, is included here) and died in 2011 at the age of 100, with over 50 films to his credit—is a metic­u­lous sim­u­la­tion of an ignor­ant pro­ced­ur­al. Given the cir­cum­stances of its pro­duc­tion, it is of course spe­cific­ally alleg­or­ic­al. But it also speaks the uni­ver­sal truth that abuse of power should come as no sur­prise, and a few oth­er uni­ver­sal truths as well. Its widescreen black-and-white imagery is dazzlingly pre­cise, cre­at­ing an unusu­ally immers­ive atmo­sphere. Second Run, the British label respons­ible for this release, always does an amaz­ing job with its releases and I’m here with good news: its Blu-ray discs tend to be region-free. That goes for last year’s Horse Money and its new upgrade-from-standard-def disc of The Cremator, which I haven’t been able to watch yet. So if you’ve been curi­ous about this fare but lack­ing in what had been the neces­sary equip­ment, jump on all three of these.  —A+

Young Mr. Lincoln (Criterion)

Beyond the high-def image, which is breath­tak­ing, this Blu-ray reis­sue of a Criterion standard-def fea­tures a new, excel­lent sup­ple­ment. Yes, I’m bookend­ing Consumer Guide with Blu-rays of two John Ford films with audio com­ment­ar­ies by Joseph McBride. Here McBride con­sid­er­ately sep­ar­ates myth from fact and con­trib­utes deep-dish ana­lys­is of Henry Fonda’s per­form­ance. Frank as ever, he recalls some per­son­al anec­dotes about Fonda that reveal both com­mend­able and less-than-delectable aspects of the actor’s char­ac­ter, but his storytelling nev­er takes a pun­it­ive tone. He explains why Ford was usu­ally anti-moving cam­era (in the con­text of one of this film’s few track­ing shots, one which I reck­on was sug­ges­ted by a Murnau work) and takes apart the fam­ous Cahiers du Cinema decon­struc­tion of the movie. Geoffrey O’Brien’s book­let essay, fea­tur­ing the line, “We are invited to indulge a naïve lyr­i­cism that always proves decept­ive,” holds up, as of course it would. As for the movie, well, cinema doesn’t get more essen­tial than this. As Orson Welles said (and of course this is cited by McBride): “John Ford knows what the earth is made of.” —A+