Blu-ray Consumer Guide, May 2018 (SCR 10th Anniversary Edition)

This month marks the tenth anniversary of this stu­pid blog, and I was think­ing of what I could do to com­mem­or­ate this land­mark, and the main thing that occurred to me was that I could just pull the plug on the whole thing. My work load really doesn’t allow me the time to con­trib­ute much to it, and my tem­pera­ment has improved over the past few years to the extent that I don’t feel the need to vent as much as I used to, and when I do feel that need, I attempt to exer­cise some prudence, at least eight times out of ten if my track record of the last sev­en months is a reli­able indic­at­or. In any event, something—sentimentality, the need to main­tain a safety valve or exist­en­tial escape hatch, who can say—compelled me to pony up for anoth­er year with Typepad. And to carve out (and it wasn’t easy) the time to write the one thing that no pro­fes­sion­al out­let will pay me for.

Also, one of the pro­viders of one of these discs asked about a review a little while back, and I got snippy with him about it, which I then felt guilty about, which then motiv­ated me to write an entire thing to sup­port the one cap­sule. I shall have to dis­cuss this with my ther­ap­ist. (“So I wrote 6000 words as an amends to a guy I had a mildly unpleas­ant DM exchange with.”)  As our President likes to say, “Enjoy!”

Equipment: Playstation 3, Sony KD50X690E dis­play, Pioneer Élite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.

La Belle Noiseuse (Cohen)

Hopefully I need not extol the vir­tues of this 1991 film dir­ec­ted by Jacques RIvette, nor excess­ively clam­or with respect to the neces­sity of a swell high-def edi­tion, a neces­sity that this two-disc set so sat­is­fact­or­ily addresses. The image qual­ity is con­sist­ently gor­geous. And what an amaz­ing movie it is, an epic that’s tight and dev­ast­at­ing and incor­por­ates all the les­sons of Rivette’s pri­or exper­i­ment­a­tions with impro­visa­tion in the ser­vice of a multi-dimensional dis­ser­ta­tion on art and life and life as art and art as life. Here’s the mat­ter I want to address though: Once this disc was delivered to my door­step and I looked at the back cov­er I had one ques­tion, which was “What kind of freakazoid can con­ceive and deliv­er a full-length audio com­ment­ary to a nearly four-hour motion pic­ture?” Not to say that Rivette’s work doesn’t lend itself to exhaust­ive ana­lys­is but, well, you know.  (Believe it or not, I get tired of hear­ing my own voice after about 40 minutes, which is why I prefer to do  Blu-ray audio com­ment­ar­ies with part­ners.) In any event, for this Blu-ay pack­age that freakazoid is Richard Suchenski, a writer and aca­dem­ic asso­ci­ated with Bard College. Bard. Figures. The phrase “ver­ti­gin­ous inter­change between dif­fer­ent lay­ers of inter­tex­tu­al ref­er­ence” is uttered not even ten minutes in. I kid, I kid—while I con­sider this a bor­der­line jar­gon incid­ent, I also con­cede Rivette’s art calls for com­plex lan­guage in ana­lys­is. In any event, Suchenski’s work is out­stand­ing. He takes an aes­thet­ic­ally hol­ist­ic approach hark­ing back to Rivette’s cri­ti­cism. Weirdly enough there’s little in terms of nuts-and-bolts making-of info or on-set anec­dotes. And yet the com­ment­at­or fills the space. In the first half he’ll pause for 20 or 30 seconds at a time, but that’s noth­ing! The pauses do get longer in the second half, which reduced my poten­tial resent­ment some­what.  He’s very sharp on any num­ber of top­ics, includ­ing the film’s approach to female nud­ity. (Even as you watch with com­ment­ary you recog­nize how amaz­ing Emmanuelle Béart is in an IMPOSSIBLE role.) Suchenski deserves a medal in addi­tion to his fee. Perhaps he’ll settle for my giv­ing this pack­age an… — A+

The Church (Scorpion)

Michele Soavi’s 1989 Not Demons 3, con­cern­ing an mono­portal church whose only entrance/egress is sealed up via some satan­ic power, the bet­ter to con­demn its inhab­it­ants to  grotty death. holds up pretty well. It’s no Cemetery Man but what is; any­way it’s cred­ible enough through­out not just to hold your atten­tion but to make you feel bad that poor Soavi’s stuck dir­ect­ing Italian mini-series these days, or so it seems. (The near-suffocation-by-wedding-dress-bit is par­tic­u­larly inspired.) Featuring little Asia Argento, a bit tom­boy­ish as the curi­ous daugh­ter of a church care­taker (she was over 20 here but looks 15), and Tomas Arana, who trans­forms from Wall Street-trading-floor-extra to Peter Murphy lookalike as he is com­pelled to serve the dev­il.  Scorpion’s present­a­tion is bet­ter than solid—check out the good autum­nal tones in its medi­ev­al pro­logue. Only the English-language soundtrack is offered, and that’s fine. There are video inter­views with Soavi, who doesn’t dis the pri­or Demons movies here, as he’s been rumored to in the past, and with Argento, whose recol­lec­tions are funny and affec­tion­ate.  Swell. —A

The Color of Pomegranates (Criterion)

The blow-the-top-of-your-head-off imagery of this cheaply made work of film poetry registers beau­ti­fully in this edi­tion. Shots that then-music-video dir­ect­ors like Mark Romanek and Tarsem lif­ted whole­sale from this 1969 Sergei Parajanov mas­ter­piece look bet­ter in the ori­gin­al; once, you had to take this asser­tion on trust, now it’s as plain as the nose on your face.  The com­ment­ary from Tony Rayns, one which he con­fesses his per­son­al trep­id­a­tion about tak­ing on in the begin­ning, splen­didly illu­min­ates the rich veins of his­tory, tra­di­tion, art, and lit­er­at­ure from which the motion pic­ture derives. He is deft in sort­ing out what he calls its “fusions of trans-Caucasus iden­tity” and still finds time to drop some choice anec­dotes, includ­ing one in which Parajanov goes to the New York Film Festival and makes dirty talk with Allen Ginsberg.  —A+

Dead Man (Criterion)

This new trans­fer of one of Jim Jarmusch’s best films looks superb, so the 2011 issue regard­ing the first Blu-ray atro­city (see here) can be con­sidered resolved. (And can also be con­sidered as Harvey Weinstein’s last of many aggress­ive acts against the film.) The extras are mul­ti­far­i­ous and delight­ful. A making-of-focused com­ment­ary from  pro­duc­tion design­er Bob Ziembicki and sound mix­er Drew Kunin is wonky in all the right ways. There’s a 45-minute sup­ple­ment in which Jarmusch reads and answers ques­tions sub­mit­ted by fans of the film. Among the sub­mit­ters are Bill Hader and Alan Arkush. The lat­ter asks about Iggy Pop and Neil Young and their con­tri­bu­tions.. But there’s not a drop of con­sid­er­a­tion for my friend and neigh­bor Gibby Haynes, who appears in an unusu­ally mem­or­able cameo. Well you can’t have everything.  —A+

Don’t Bother To Knock (Twilight Time)

Made in 1952, the same year in which Marilyn Monroe also did cred­it­able work in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night, this fas­cin­at­ing, weirdly unfocused melodrama/thriller dir­ec­ted by Roy Ward Baker fea­tures a stel­lar per­form­ance, supple and gradi­ent, from MM. She plays a men­tally dis­turbed young woman on a babysit­ting gig at an NYC lodging, whose bear­ings are fur­ther shaken up when sul­len Dick Widmark makes to pick her up after a spat with Anne Bancroft, who plays a sing­er in the ground floor nightclub. The con­fined environs of the action sug­gest the altern­ate title Glum Hotel. Bancroft lip-syncs “How About You” (the lyr­ics “and Tyrone Power’s looks/give me a thrill” tip you off to this Fox pro­duc­tion in the event you’ve missed the open­ing logo). MM’s por­tray­als of long­ing and malinger­ing list­less­ness are con­vin­cing and upset­ting, espe­cially the way she uses her breathy, sex-kitten voice to put over the char­ac­ter at her most dan­ger­ous. (It prob­ably goes without say­ing, by the way, that the movie’s got a pretty unen­lightened view of men­tal ill­ness.)  The disc has no extras to speak of, the usu­al excel­lent Julie Kirgo book­let essay aside. But it does look good and crisp (Lucien Ballard shot it so we expect no less.).  All this and Elisha Cook, Jr. too—he plays an elev­at­or oper­at­or and uncle to MM’s char­ac­ter (his insist­ence of recom­mend­ing her as a sit­ter is what gets all the trouble star­ted).  Not to men­tion Jim Backus. —B+

A Fistful of Dollars (Kino Lorber)

Good God I think this is the 700^th home video edi­tion of this movie I’ve owned. Have I ever men­tioned that I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH? I think I first saw it in the late ‘60s on a double fea­ture with For A Few Dollars More. I was maybe ten years old and I was com­pletely trans­fixed and noth­ing Pauline Kael said will ever make me change my mind and take your brom­ides about put­ting away child­ish things and stuff them because these movies fea­ture Gian Maria Volonte and yours are about super­her­oes and every­one knows Gian Maria Volonte is cool­er than any super­hero. Excuse me. This Blu-ray is based on a recent 4K res­tor­a­tion and it looks fab­ulous. If you know this movie well (and if you don’t WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU) you will remem­ber that it’s the sweat­i­est movie ever, and lemme tell you in this rendi­tion you can prac­tic­ally count the beads. Extras include pretty much everything that’s been on the pre­vi­ous 700 ver­sions, so that’s a lot. A new one is a com­ment­ary by Tim Lucas, delight­ful as always. There’s also this pro­logue for net­work tele­vi­sion, shot by Monte Hellman and star­ring Harry Dean Stanton and some guy dressed in the Man With No Name (or “Joe,” if you believe Richard Schickel, whose old com­ment­ary is NOT included—Lucas has a good long riff on his track about how the Man With No Name in fact “has” sev­er­al but goes by none per­son­ally). What’s very funny is how the act­or doub­ling for Eastwood keeps try­ing to make sure his face isn’t in the frame, almost hold­ing his hand up in front of it at one point—shades of Mrs. Prickley’s double. All things con­sidered this is great and you should buy it. —A+

Gun Crazy (Warner Archive)

This year I showed my Language of Film stu­dents the fabled bank rob­bery long take and was newly impressed by so much, includ­ing Peggy Cummins’ driv­ing skills. I am happy to know that next time I do the course I’ll be able to show it with the Blu-ray bump, which is pretty much all this new edi­tion offers but that ain’t noth­ing. —A

Harper/The Drowning Pool (Warner Archive)

Well here I was hop­ing that I’d get some kind of eye-opening demon­stra­tion that would enable me to argue that the big stu­dio genre films of the 1960s don’t get enough love. But I’m sorry to report that, Paul Newman not­with­stand­ing, both these pictu res prove you can’t make The Big Sleep without Howard Hawks and Raymond Chandler, not to men­tion Leigh Brackett. These are adapt­a­tions of Ross MacDonald nov­els, with Lew Archer now named Lew Harper. Screenwriter William Goldman, on the not unex­pec­tedly enga­ging com­ment­ary he recor­ded for the stand­ard def DVD of Harper, repro­duced here, tells us why this happened, but I didn’t put it in my notes, and what he said now escapes me, so I guess you can rest assured the rationale was real excit­ing. Anyway, the most inter­est­ing thing about 1966’s Harper is that I’m now con­vinced that Joel and Ethan Coen watched it (maybe pre­par­ing for Hudsucker Proxy) and lif­ted a few facets from it for The Big Lebowski. The movie seems to intro­duce the cliché of the ditzy poolside bikini babe, which reaches its nose-thumbing apo­theosis in Lebowski (in this pic­ture she is played by Pamela Tiffin). There’s also some kidnap-money-drop stuff that Lebowski goofs on. This movie’s tough-guy atmo­sphere is steeped in ugly sex­ism, as in the dia­logue about a woman who “used to be a pretty hot young star­let, what happened to her?” fol­lowed by a cut to high-BMI Shelley Winters. Director Jack Smight handles this kind of stuff com­pet­ently, but is a stiff with action and sus­pense sequences. In the time-capsule depart­ment, the look is mid-60s Panavision/Technicolor, and the soundtrack fea­tures an André and Dory Previn song, sung by Julie Harris in the role of an arty Lola Heatherton. No really. I admit­tedly eat up this kind of stuff, and this movie has plenty of it, which, com­bined with the superb image and sound qual­ity of the disc,  wound up being its sav­ing grace. Drowning Pool was made almost  10 years later, has the  action shif­ted to Louisiana (for no reas­on one can dis­cern from the dieges­is), and at first seems  over­all like it might turn out to be a bet­ter pic­ture than Harper. Young Melanie Griffith is mem­or­able in a “prob­lem­at­ic” role for sure. But while Harper is merely ped­es­tri­an, at least it’s got an Old-Hollywood-Tries-To-Stay-Spry spring in its step, while Pool devolves to  down­right slug­gish­ness (and the play­ing out of the whole title con­ceit is five kinds of dumb). The discs are beau­ti­ful so if this kind of fare is your idea of a great nos­tal­gia trip, or if you’re a Newman com­plet­ist. you’ll be in a lower circle of heav­en. Both discs:— B+

The Holy Mountain (Kino Lorber)

Hey kids it’s Leni Riefenstahl’s 1925 screen act­ing debut, giv­en a spec­tac­u­lar res­tor­a­tion by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation.  As a screen pres­ence, I nev­er got her, I must tell you. I’m skep­tic­al about her as a film­maker too but this is not the time for that. As its title sug­gests, this is, um, a “Mountain Film”—this was a big genre in German film­mak­ing start­ing in the begin­ning of the 20^th cen­tury, one which is pretty much what it sounds like. Germany, you know, is some­where in the vicin­ity of the Alps, and Germanic Romanticism places a great emphas­is on, you know, climb­ing, so, I don’t know how much more of this I need to spell out for you. The dir­ect­or of the movie was one Arnold Fanck, who liked to be known as “Dr.” Arnold Fanck, even though he only had a PhD, and again what does that tell you. I shouldn’t be rag­ging so hard giv­en this movie is genu­inely curi­ous, and rav­ish­ing to look upon. One sali­ent fea­ture of the Mountain Film was that it was hard to shoot, and it’s clear that tech­nic­al dif­fi­culty yiel­ded high tech­nic­al sophistication—the out­door stuff here is still start­ling. “The sea is her love—wild, bound­less…” an inter­title says of LR’s char­ac­ter early on, and her wacky Dance to the Sea is some­thing to behold. According to the com­ment­ary by Tavis Crawford, Hitler loved it. The shot of LR’s love interest stand­ing on a peak is fer-sure Caspar David Friedrich in orange-tinted mono­chrome. According to the com­ment­at­or, the Mountain Film also helped pop­ular­ize ski­ing; talk about being freighted with a lot to answer for. Another inter­est­ing fea­ture is how often the movie messes around with aspect ratio, at one point set­tling in for a frame ori­ent­a­tion that looks quite a bit like what we now call “ver­tic­al video.” This goes unnoted by Crawford. The disc itself is pretty great look­ing. I can’t emphas­ize enough the truly incred­ible imagery through­out,  but par­tic­u­larly in the final 20 minutes. —A

 Joe (Olive)

One of the ver­boten movies of my child­hood, a Socially Significant tale of the late 1960s and one that inspired as many think­pieces as a movie was cap­able of inspir­ing back then. . Beleaguered Square Businessman and Hard-Drinking Bigoted Construction Worker (I don’t think he really IS a con­struc­tion work­er, but might as well be) meet and team up to find and/or kill hip­pies. In some expects you kinda hadda be there back in 1970,  but the title char­ac­ter played by Peter Boyle still walks among us, and makes it to his polling place, alas. The film, dir­ec­ted by John G. Avildsen from a Norman Wexler script, is cheaper-than-the-norm cold-water-flat-kitchen-sink real­ism, not much to look at, but the Blu-ray fea­tures a sol­id trans­fer from clean mater­i­als, with par­tic­u­larly good col­or val­ues, so watch with con­fid­ence. All the pre-echoes of MAGA aside, this has some not-displeasing ana­chron­ist­ic  1970 feels, begin­ning with Jerry Butler singing the open­ing theme. “Child, all you gotta do is grow up little girl,” the lyr­ics go, and what incred­ible irony if you already know the movie’s end­ing. Mr. Wexler’s writ­ing of hippie/drug-addict dia­logue lacks (“You prom­ised maybe we could stay off the hard stuff for a while…”) but by the same token, I can’t tell you that a junkie skeezebuck­et of the era wouldn’t hassle Susan Sarandon over her not at all fat “fat ass.” Peter Boyle’s Joe doesn’t show up in the movie until a half hour in, and when he does it’s in an out-of-focus mas­ter shot. The movie meanders in its social com­ment­ary, some­times veer­ing into comed­ic ter­rit­ory (and here’s where Boyle shows the chops that were to serve him so well in Young Frankenstein and Everybody Loves Raymond)—hey look, the two squares have stumbled into a health food res­taur­ant, and so on. The finale is still pretty har­row­ing. And inter­est­ingly enough, the scene where the working-class Currans have the upper-middle-class Comptons over for din­ner could be dropped into Fassbinder’s Why Does Herr R. Run Amok (made the same year) and no one would raise an eye­brow. —B

Les Girls (Warner Archive)

This under­rated 1957 Cukor music­al is a visu­ally sump­tu­ous cross between Pal joey and Rashomon. Also one of the jew­els of Kay Kendall’s too-short filmo­graphy. And a good source of early Patrick Macnee (he’s one of the bar­ris­ters in the courtroom scenes). The Cole Porter songs are all good but I don’t hear a single. The disc itself is dazzling from stem to stern. It nev­er ceases to amaze me that Cukor did so well with CinemaScope here, with cine­ma­to­graph­er Robert Surtees, then screwed the widescreen pooch so badly on ‘64’s My Fair Lady with Harry Stradling, Jr. Sr., future beloved of Barbra Streisand and no slouch with 2.35 with Quine on How To Murder Your Wife. Just one of those things, I guess. Check out the solid­ity of the Paris dress­ing room scenes, with each of the mir­ror light bulbs’ fil­a­ments vis­ible in a giv­en shot—so gor­geous. I showed the scene, one where Taina Elg tries to escape the notice of her noble­man boy­friend,  to my stu­dents in tan­dem with a clip from Black Narcissus to exem­pli­fy a Golden Age of Hanging Lights. —A

 Manhandled/Stage Struck (Kino Lorber)

Two silent Gloria Swanson star­rers dir­ec­ted by Allan Dwan;  I’d say these recom­mend them­selves.. If your sole expos­ure to Swanson is by way of Sunset Boulevard or Stroheim or vari­ous and sun­dry of her works for DeMille, you will be knocked side­ways by the super-likable comedi­enne you’ll meet here. 1924’s Manhandled is a rags to riches story whose gen­er­ic plot was more or less recycled by the Clara Bow vehicle It a few years hence, while 1925’s Stage Struck depicts a daydream-prone wait­ress who finds unusu­al inspir­a­tion when a per­form­ing idol hits town. Both films are dis­tin­guished, and elev­ated, by the wit, human­ity, and reli­ab­il­ity of their star and dir­ect­or. The Manhandled com­ment­ary by Gaylyn Studlar gets star­ted by refer­ring to the “post-World War I fas­cin­a­tion with young women’s deploy­ment of their sexu­al­ity,” while the Stage Struck com­ment­ary, by Dwan bio­graph­er Frederic Lombardi, is a bit more nuts-and-bolts. Stage Struck also has an essay by Farran Smith Nehme,  and the movie itself fea­tures AMAZING two-strip Technicolor  sec­tions, nicely restored, at the begin­ning and end of the pic­ture. You should have both but if you have to choose, Stage Struck would be it. Both discs: —A

Model Shop (Twilight Time)

Back in the day, when the powers that be, or were, at home video con­cerns had little interest in releas­ing cata­log titles, those beneath them who were inves­ted with get­ting stuff out were com­pelled to come up with unusu­al mar­ket­ing schemes. I have no first-hand know­ledge in this mat­ter, but I think that must have been what inspired the short-lived Sony-Columbia “Martini Movies” rub­ric for a group of oth­er­wise com­pletely unre­lated titles. This was one such title. As was, I’m see­ing now, The New Centurions (see below). As was, good grief, Anthony Newley’s draft-dodger drama Summertree. One of the nice things about boutique labels is they don’t have to jus­ti­fy put­ting out what they want. On bal­ance I like Agnes Varda’s California movies bet­ter than Jacques Demy’s single one, made in 1969, which sees his Anouk Aimee char­ac­ter Lola inhab­it­ing a pretty grim little California world. Gary Lockwood plays a dis­af­fected, dir­ec­tion­less would-be archi­tect who’s gotta make up his mind about some­thing or oth­er before Uncle Sam plucks him up for Vietnam duty; instead, he meets Lola at the title estab­lish­ment and pulls some Before Sunrise action on her. Prior to that he drops in on Spirit, the band, and gives Jay Ferguson the oppor­tun­ity to do a little act­ing. A speech Lockwood gives in this scene encap­su­lates the film’s reas­on for being: “I was driv­ing down Sunset and I turned down one of those roads that leads up into the hills. And I stopped at this place that over­looks the whole city, it was fant­ast­ic. And I sud­denly felt exhil­ar­ated, you know. I was really moved by the geo­metry of the place, its con­cep­tion, its baroque har­mony. It’s a fab­ulous city. To think some people claim it’s an ugly city, when it’s really pure poetry. It just kills me. I wanted to build some­thing right then, cre­ate some­thing.” Model Shop is Demy’s own L.A. inspired cre­ation, but as love let­ters go it’s kind of glum. Also, this is not the color-feast that you might expect in the wake of the one-two punch of Cherbourg and Rochefort. But it’s a key com­pon­ent of the Demy filmo non­ethe­less and this extras-free pack­age is the finest extant present­a­tion of it. —B+

Moses Und Aaron (Grasshopper)

Grasshopper does invalu­able art-film ser­vice here not just by present­ing a super-scrupulous ren­der­ing of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s 1975 non-spectacle cinema ren­der­ing of Schoenberg’s great opera, but by also includ­ing three oth­er films by the duo, all cru­cial, includ­ing their 1965 debut fea­ture Not Reconciled, their pri­or short Machorka-Muff (1963; prac­tic­ally Expressionist rel­at­ive to their sub­sequent works), and Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene (1973). That’s a lot of Straub-Huillet, and because of the addi­tion of Schoenberg, I’m not sure I’d call it an ideal beginner’s pack­age but on the oth­er hand, with all three of these artists you’re either all in or out, so might as well. I have to be in a very par­tic­u­lar mood to be recept­ive to the film­makers (I nev­er don’t have time for Arnold), who with­hold a lot in terms of con­ven­tion­al audi­ence engage­ment and provide dense intel­lec­tu­al inquir­ies instead. Surely no film­makers are more res­ol­ute, or dis­tin­guished, in their aus­ter­ity: they are res­ol­utely anti-chic even when depict­ing snazzy Euro cock­tail lounges (see Not Reconciled). My only com­plaint about the pack­age is that the Ted Fendt book­let essay is in some­thing like 7.5 point type, which is too small for this old man to com­fort­ably read. —A

The New Centurions (Twilight Time)

Twilight Time remains one of my favor­ite Blu-ray labels, and I think even they would agree that with their always good-looking releases, the extras situ­ation is either feast or near-famine. “Near” because Julie Kirgo can always be coun­ted on to deliv­er a great book­let essay every time out. For this 1972 Richard Fleischer adapt­a­tion of a Joseph Wambaugh nov­el, it’s close to feast because of the pres­ence of two audio com­ment­ar­ies. The first is with Nick Redman and act­or Scott Wilson, co-starring here with Stacy Keach, George C. Scott, Ed Lauter, Clifton James, and Erik Estrada. It’s a cas­u­al con­ver­sa­tion with Nick tak­ing the role of the well-informed fan. A lot of Wilson’s stor­ies fall into the “How I Got Shafted Once George C. Scott Came On Board” category—Scott’s star power com­pelled a reshuff­ling of the ensemble in terms of num­bers of scenes and so on. But he’s enter­tain­ing. The second com­ment­ary is by  film his­tor­i­ans Lee Pfeiffer and Paul Scrabo, who are also inform­at­ive, but allow me to vent a little here. They’re not even ten minutes into the movie before the “Dick Fleischer nev­er got his due crit­ic­ally” com­plaints start. Now one of the great things that Twilight Time does is give love to under­ap­pre­ci­ated dir­ect­ors by put­ting their movies on Blu-ray, which isn’t noth­ing. But the Fleischer reas­sess­ment is not actu­ally all that new, Sarris’ American Cinema rank­ings only have Papal Infallibility status if you want them to, and some­times things can be taken too far. Lauding the ostens­ible eclecticism of a dir­ect­or who mainly went where the work was seems a bit special-pleading to me. Statements such as this: “They cer­tainly nev­er got the recog­ni­tion or fame that they deserved. They were usu­ally dis­missed by crit­ics as ‘work­man­like.’ Efficient dir­ect­ors who could turn out a good movie but really weren’t ‘artistes.’ And I think his­tory has proven that to be wrong and Fleischer was a per­fect example.” are really straw man argu­ments that don’t advance anyone’s appre­ci­ation, and when you fol­low such a pro­nounce­ment with “Doctor Doolittle, although a box office bomb, is actu­ally a very good movie that’s bet­ter regarded today,” well, I don’t know what to tell you.  Messrs. Scrabo and Pfeiffer are oth­er­wise ami­able and know­ledge­able. As for the movie itself, it’s not The Choirboys but it’s not bad. And man is it dated! Plenty of cas­u­al sex­ism and racism and yeesh, the depic­tion of the Stacy Keach-Jane Alexander uni­on, in the first domest­ic scene, when they’re dis­cuss­ing part­ner Scott:  “Is he mar­ried?” “Divorced.” “Then he’d prob­ably appre­ci­ate a home-cooked meal!” The next time we see the couple they’re prac­tic­ally divor­cing, though. The “gritty” film doesn’t have much of a plot, just a bunch of it’s‑tough-to-be-a-cop anec­dotes lead­ing up, of course,  to a tra­gic death. The cine­ma­to­graphy, by Ralph Woolsey, is pretty low key and the disc gets the Eastmancolor By Night vibe pretty nicely, which is kinda my favor­ite part of the pack­age. —A

No Down Payment (Twilight Time)

Speaking of people who dis­con­tin­ued their blogs, I can’t find the entry from Like Anna Karina’s Sweater that hipped me to this “whoa!”-inducing 1957 prob­lem pic­ture, which could be altern­ately titled Varieties of U.S. Post War Suburban Rot. My buddy Filmbrain, going slightly against what was con­sidered the prop­er auteur­ist grain, lav­ished love on this Martin “Marty” Ritt pic­ture in which Jeffrey Hunter and Patricia Owens buy into a pre­fab com­munity all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed but wind up defeated by All-American hypo­crisy. The com­bin­a­tion of soap opera and social com­ment­ary still whips up a heady froth today, thanks largely to a go-for-broke cast that includes Cameron Mitchell when he was still a thing, Joanne Woodward soak­ing up fry­er oil as the ebul­li­ent one-time Southern belle and Tony Randall in a “don’t look at me like I’m an alco­hol­ic” vodka sulk. Early on Pat Hingle, man­ning a bar­be­cue most man­fully, asks Mitchell “When you gonna start a fam­ily of your own?” and I’m all like HEY LAY OFF ME JORDAN PETERSON. There’s a lot more crisis-of-masculinity stuff in there too. Lovers of black-and-white widescreen will find a lot to like here even if they can’t engage the con­tent (although I can’t ima­gine any­one being unable to engage the con­tent); this extras-free present­a­tion is a really nice trans­fer. —A-

No Orchids for Miss Blandish  (Kino Lorber) 

What an oddity. This 1948 British pro­duc­tion, shot at  Alliance Studios, Twickenham, is a New-York-set story that begins with a bogus depic­tion of the Manhattan sky­line. Based on the James Hadley Chase nov­el that inspired a salty Raymond Queneau par­ody (We Always Treat Women Too Well), this is one of the messi­er tales of Stockholm Syndrome before it was so named. (I know that’s not Blue Book accur­ate, descrip­tion wise, but bear with me.) The movie fas­cin­ates from the start for its off-base depic­tion of New York life among both the rich and gutter-bound. It’s like that bit in Carpenter’s The Thing when the ali­en tries to dis­guise itself as a husky and the oth­er dogs are like, no, you’re not right. Director St. John Legh Clowes (no, really) throws in some fancy cam­er­a­work amidst the fake American accents. Linden Travers, as the tit­u­lar Miss Blandish, sports some pretty elab­or­ate bou­doir wear early on, remind­ing the view­er that British pro­duc­tions were not sub­ject to the over­view of Joseph Breen. This cir­cum­stance of course extends to fea­tures of the plot as well, as wit­ness  Bill O’Connor’s Johnny, the rot­ter fiancé who thinks bring­ing her to a dive road­house will melt Miss Blandish’s fri­gid­ity. About a half hour in the movie gets fix­ated on the sexu­al assault of the heroine; the squal­or is neither bra­cing or unusu­ally repel­lent, just odd. The movie was clearly made by people with no exper­i­ence of fire­arms, as one of the gang­sters involved in the abort­ive kid­nap­ping of the title char­ac­ter calmly takes hold of a gun by its bar­rel right after it’s been fired. One may infer that a sim­il­ar lack of real-world savvy informs every oth­er part of the film. Once Miss Blandish falls in love with one of her captors, and he back (“You’re the only dame that’s ever got me. Got me inside and twis­ted my guts!”), Travers really starts to mag­ni­fi­cently overdo her per­form­ance. Unfortunately this plot devel­op­ment also sig­nals the point where the movie starts to truly and finally go off the rails. Pretty good image qual­ity over­all. A cinephile nov­elty. —B+

 The Outer Limits, Season One (Kino Lorber)

I may nev­er fin­ish watch­ing this 1,632 minute set 32 epis­ode mon­ster. I haven’t even listened to any of the audio com­ment­ar­ies yet. But for ran­dom hours of pleas­ure to steal, this has proven both incred­ibly con­sist­ently great and rev­el­at­ory. According to Tosches’ Dean Martin bio­graphy, when Martin passed Frank Sinatra said “He has been like the air I breathe.” I haven’t thought about it in a long time, espe­cially as someone who grew up to be not much of a tele­vi­sion per­son, but Outer Limits, even as glimpsed out of a corner of my boy­hood eye, was a huge form­at­ive influ­ence. The effects might be dated, but that’s fine, and the extremely high qual­ity of the writ­ing, act­ing, dir­ect­ing, cine­ma­to­graphy is con­sist­ently awe-inspiring. I’m beside myself with admir­a­tion here. And very eager for a Season Two set. —A+

Raw Deal (Classic Flix) 

Relative new­bie label Classic Flix fol­lows up its first-rate rendi­tions of He Walked By Night and T‑Men with anoth­er essen­tial Anthony Mann/John Alton col­lab­or­a­tion, a nar­rat­ively astound­ing noir whose twists and turns are put across in a style that’s both moody and break­neck. The trans­fer was made from a fine grain ele­ment from the BFI, on which 400 hours of digit­al res­tor­a­tion were spent. The res­ults are pretty remark­able to behold, with the fabled John Alton blacks look­ing plenty dark and the image sta­bil­ity rock sol­id over­all. The detail is so fresh that I actu­ally noted some sur­pris­ingly ragged tech­nique dur­ing the beach house scene—a dropped gun that winds up on a sec­tion of floor not seen any­where before, and light­ing mis­matches once Dennis O’Keefe is out­side and mov­ing down the shoreline. Jeremy Arnold’s gen­er­ally cogent and inform­at­ive com­ment­ary doesn’t address this, which I found frus­trat­ing. Overall it’s a spec­tac­u­lar pack­age, with a  bounty of sup­ple­ments. Essential home lib­rary mater­i­al. —A+

The Sadist of Notre Dame (Severin)

Late ‘70s Jess Franco films almost always make you wanna take a long shower after­wards. Talk about a per­vas­ive atmo­sphere of perdition—you’re soak­ing in it. This release along with its Severin com­pan­ion Sinfonia Erotica are exem­plary examples. (And both are more reward­ing than the recent Severin release of Two Female Spies With Flowered Panties; not that that’s Severin’s fault; it’s just that the movie itself is a dose of cine­mat­ic Sominex laced with PCP.) This one is a mad pas­tiche, a Frankenstein/Franco mon­ster stitched togeth­er from por­tions of 1975’s Exorcism, its hard­core vari­ant Sexorcisme, and more; the extras provide all the gory details (and also con­tain snip­pets of Sexorcisme fea­tur­ing our auteur per­form­ing unsim­u­lated cun­ni­lin­gus, which will allow you the priv­ilege of say­ing “Now I’ve seen everything”). Turns out Franco maven Steven Thrasher Thrower and I agree that the best parts of the movie are the shots of trench-coated Jess skulk­ing around Rue St. Denis and Ile de la Cité, giv­ing a back street crawl­er con­text to the sur­round­ing squal­or. The sup­ple­ments are var­ied but all high-spirited, includ­ing a mini-doc on a Paris grind­house theat­er. I was most taken with the inter­view with Thrasher, though. The present­a­tion looks quite good, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the end­less iter­a­tions the film mater­i­al had to have gone through before land­ing in this mess. For nor­mal people this disc is use­less; for the rest of us, it’s an essen­tial course in Franco Education.  Inspirational dia­logue: “I inher­ited the house from my par­ents.” “I only inher­ited misery.” —A

 Seven (Kino Lorber)

This 1979 Andy Sidaris  babes-and-bullets (and bombs and stabbing imple­ments and all man­ner of non­sense) action­er has more integ­rity in its nut­ti­ness, I think, than Hard Ticket to Hawaii, but I real­ize such a dis­tinc­tion is pos­sibly lost on those of you who are not “into” Andy Sidaris. As with Jess Franco, your loss. Then again, the three Andy Sidaris fans who con­trib­ute the com­ment­ary to this title might be a little too enthu­si­ast­ic for their, or anybody’s, good, as when one of them evinces a desire to be incarn­ated as Susan Kiger’s shorts. Oh, boys. Shot mostly in Hawaii over what appear to be a series of cloudy days, each indi­vidu­al scene’s col­or palette seem­ingly determ­ined by that of whatever car in the scene fig­ures most prom­in­ently in the action, this is not the most visu­ally dis­tin­guished of Sidaris’ pic­tures. The titlu­lar sev­en refers to the num­ber of agents in freel­ance mer­cen­ary William Smith’s team, and one of the film’s biggest form­al laughs comes about 40 minutes in when Sidaris seems to real­ize that if he keeps spend­ing as much time as he has on the indi­vidu­al char­ac­ter intro­duc­tions, he’s going to have a three hour movie on his hands, and so ruth­lessly picks up the pace. The movie seems to have had a high flash-paper budget, as it has more flash-paper tricks in it than I think I’ve seen in any movie ever. In addi­tion to Ms. Kiger (who really is quite attract­ive) and Mr. Smith, who both seem engaged in some unspoken com­pet­i­tion as to who can deliv­er the worse line read­ing (Kiger aces “Hat on the bed; that’s bad luck, Cowboy” but Smith trumps her near the end with “Hey I’m rentin’ your bike for a while, pal, thanks, huh?”), the film also fea­tures Lenny Montana and Reggie Nalder. And Art Metrano. While the bad guys are plenty bad, it still seems unsport­ing that Smith’s team pretty much murders them all in cold blood—Kiger and Guich Koock, as the afore­men­tioned Cowboy, actu­ally lock a couple of mooks in their Town Car, douse it in gas­ol­ine, and set it on fire. Yikes. An essen­tial 20^th cen­tury enter­tain­ment. —B+