Blu-ray Consumer Guide, February 2019

To Peter Nellhaus, and to the memory of Nick Redman.

Equipment: Playstation 3,  Sony KD50X690E dis­play, Pioneer Élite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver. (As it hap­pens even the U.K. imports I looked at this time around were all-region, so the OPPO was not brought into play.)

 Age of Consent (Indicator)

There’s a super-cheap U.S.-issued Sony Blu-ray double-featuring this 1969 Michael Powell pic­ture with Cactus Flower (some May-December romance theme unit­ing them I guess) and while it looks decent if you are any kind of Powell per­son this is the ver­sion to seek put and pay more money for. It’s dated in the way so many ‘60s films that took advant­age of the “new freedoms” tends to look today, but once it shifts to the island where James Mason’s quasi-Prospero makes his home there’s so much beauty in it you can’t help but be seduced, and this disc sops up and rede­liv­ers all of it like a thirsty sponge. My friend Kent Jones’ com­ment­ary is ter­rif­ic, detailed, intim­ate, entirely in con­son­ance with Powell’s sens­ib­il­ity. “Powell comes from the era of film­mak­ing as explor­a­tion,” he reminds us, per­tin­ently. On-screen con­tri­bu­tions from Helen Mirren (this was her first film) and Martin Scorsese are also great, and the disc also con­tains Powell and Pressburger’s final col­lab­or­a­tion, a 1972 mini-feature for chil­dren, The Boy Who Turned Yellow, which aside from being a delight in itself also fea­tures young Lem Dobbs (under the name Lem Kitaj) in a small but cent­ral role. What a world. —A+

 All The Colors of The Dark/All the Colors of Giallo (Severin)

I reviewed a Blu-ray of this essen­tial and essen­tially odd giallo (the film that intro­duced this lad to the allure of Edwidge Fenech, via a converted-to-NTSC German ver­sion I bought from Luminous Video at a Chiller Theatre Expo in the late 1980s, for what it’s worth to you) that Shameless put out in 2017 and was some­what resigned to that ver­sion being the best we’d get. But, as Mike Ness might say, “I WAS WRONG,” because this Severin disc, mastered from the ori­gin­al neg­at­ive, sup­posedly (where’d they FIND it?), blows the Shameless away while also reveal­ing that as ima­gin­at­ive and grot­esque and tit­il­lat­ing as the movie is, it’s also often out­stand­ing in what Frank Zappa would call its cheep­nis. But no mat­ter. Some might argue that the best Psychotronic cinema inter­twines all the above attrib­utes. I sprung for the Severin lim­ited edi­tion bundle, which also includes the All The Colors of Giallo pack­age, which is an insane com­pil­a­tion of giallo trail­ers, a doc­u­ment­ary, a CD full of giallo tunes (the Dark pack­age also includes the film soundtrack on CD) and more. No, I haven’t watched every last minute of all this but I think you can trust me: if this sort of thing is your thing, it’s a lot of your thing and it’s delight­ful. Critic and above-and-beyond-the-call-of duty enthu­si­ast Kat Ellinger has shed her col­lab­or­at­or from the com­ment­ary she did for the Shameless edi­tion, and done a whole new com­ment­ary on her own, and there’s not a whole hell of a lot of over­lap between the two, which is impress­ive. (She does lean heav­ily on a defens­ive “film his­tor­i­ans UNFAIR to Sergio Martino” tack.) In a feat of endur­ance exceeded, as far as I know, only by Richard Suchinski’s’s full-length com­ment­ary on the Cohen Blu-ray of La Belle Noiseuse, Ellinger provides run­ning com­ment­ary for the full four hours of trail­ers too, and con­cocts a drink­ing game, that you should by no means play if you want to avoid alco­hol pois­on­ing. The movie itself remains quite the wild ride, and Ellinger’s not wrong in her esteem for Martino. The picture’s ris­ible is-she-or-isn’t‑she-hallucinating premise gains cred­ib­il­ity (sort of) from Martino’s con­fid­ent shot-by-shot construction—and, of course, the icon­ic pres­ence of Fenech. Inspirational trail­er com­ment­ary line: “Despite the sen­sa­tion­al­ism in that [title] — Naked You Die — there’s not very much nud­ity actu­ally in this. It’s slightly mis­lead­ing.”—A+

Born of Fire (Indicator)

I’d not even heard of this unusu­al 1987 film pri­or to its release on this impec­cable U.K. label. Directed by Jamil Dehlavi from a scen­ario he con­cocted, it con­cerns a British musi­cian named Bergson (nice; he’s played by Peter Firth) who’s haunted by time-tripping vis­ions; Suzanne Crowley has mul­tiple roles as “The Woman” but mostly she plays an astro­nomer who helps Firth’s char­ac­ter fig­ure out that a so-called “Master Musician” is about to call the apo­ca­lypse with his flute, and all this is tied in with Bergson’s dad’s mar­riage. Described in some quar­ters as “the first Muslim hor­ror movie,” it’s not quite that; point of fact, it takes some time fig­ur­ing out whatever it is it wants to be. Once Bergson travels to Turkey and some rough, volcano-inclusive ter­rain there (oth­er attrac­tions include mag­gots, skulls, an evil [maybe] woman), the movie takes off. The beau­ti­ful trans­fer high­lights cease­less strik­ing imagery. If Dehlavi is not quite as inspired as Tarkovsky or Herzog in shoot­ing his land­scapes, he’s good enough to approx­im­ate a mys­tic atmo­sphere, and the sup­port­ing cast, includ­ing Nabil Shaheen — whose con­di­tion of brittle bone dis­ease neces­sit­ates that he move around in a way that’s fas­cin­at­ing to watch — add to the min­im­al­ist sense of The Significant/Cosmic Other. Supplemental inter­views with Firth, Dehlavi, Shaheen  and com­poser Colin Towns add a lot of anec­dot­al intrigue but my fave extra is Dehlavi’s short doc­u­ment­ary of a vol­can­ic erup­tion accom­pan­ied by Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream jams. ‘Delic for sure. I do love when you gamble on a disc and get this kind of reward. Inspirational film dia­logue: “The sun’s power is so strong it’s dam­aging the sur­face of the earth. That vol­cano is the begin­ning.” Inspirational sup­ple­ment sound­bite: “The shoot wasn’t phys­ic­ally demand­ing, but mor­ally demand­ing.” The flute soloist on the soundtrack is, whoa, James Galway! —A

Crimson Peak (Arrow)

Guillermo del Toro’s vivid Gothic romance, a 2015 pic­ture, has been in print on Blu-ray since…February of 2016? So why invest in this Arrow lim­ited edi­tion issue? I’m not always sold on beau­ti­ful pack­aging myself, although the pack­age and accom­pa­ny­ing book­let are indeed lovely. Moving on to the disc, one imme­di­ate advant­age is that you don’t have to slog through the Universal BD Live pre­views (I already saw The First Purge, thanks) to get to the main menu. And then there are the 12 or so dis­crete addi­tion­al extras that are not on the Uni disc (the delight­ful, pas­sion­ate, nicely organ­ized but also quirkily digress­ive com­ment­ary from del Toro was on that puppy). And while there’s no note on the disc indic­at­ing this is a dif­fer­ent trans­fer from the Universal one, I noticed slight dif­fer­ences. To my eyes, the Universal present­a­tion is a little bright­er than the Arrow one, and the downtick in bright­ness in the new edi­tion brings out more detail; check out Sofia Young’s cheekbones in the open­ing scene. The integ­rity of the movie’s VERY COMPLEX col­or scheme is main­tained through­out. The chapter breaks are placed dif­fer­ently too, and make more sense. I’m not try­ing to twist your arm but if you cher­ish this  misunderstood-by-too-many pic­ture, and you have the cash you should abso­lutely go for it.— A+

Daisies (Second Run)

Criterion made this still-stunning 1966 (!!!) film avail­able in a rel­at­ively raw (but com­pletely, pleas­ur­ably watch­able) form in its Eclipse “Gems From The Czech New Wave” col­lec­tion. But this region-free stand-alone upgrade is spec­tac­u­lar. The movie is a remark­able phant­asmagor­ic­al delight that bene­fits from the clean­est present­a­tion pos­sible. The phant­asmagor­ia itself is offered in the ser­vice of what the film­maker called a “philo­soph­ic­al essay in the form of a farce.” Its young heroines wander through their world mak­ing droll com­ment­ary and enact­ing rebel­li­ous ges­tures, with mixed res­ults. Director Vera Chytilova has said it is not a fem­in­ist film, and of course it is, but I under­stand why she’d think it’s not, because the movie’s con­cern for FREEDOM is ultimately/arguably gender-neutral. The movie has two com­ment­ary tracks, one from his­tor­i­ans Peter Hames and Donald Bird (who mis­takenly say the movie was made “before fem­in­ism almost. Before U.S. style fem­in­ism,” but wait, The Feminine Mystique was pub­lished in 1962, my dudes) and anoth­er from Kat “I Live To Do Audio Commentaries” Ellinger  + her Daughters of Darkness part­ner Samm Deighan (whom I was wor­ried about after she failed to show for the new All The Colors of the Dark com­ment­ary).  Both tracks are on the staid and sober side; it takes 20 minutes for one of the males con­trib­ut­ing to allow of the film, “it’s fun!” That said, they’re worth­while, and my only com­plaint about the disc is author­ing related—it doesn’t allow you to toggle between the com­ment­ar­ies while they’re run­ning, you have to listen to one or the oth­er via the main menu, from the begin­ning. Rounding out the extras is an eye-opening short doc on Chytilova.  If you’re a fan of Broad City who’s look­ing to, um, broaden their hori­zons, this is a potent gate­way drug to I’m not sure what.  –A+

The Giant Behemoth (Warner Archive)

One hes­it­ates to use the word “dregs” or the phrase “bot­tom of the bar­rel” when refer­ring to a giant mon­ster movie with stop-motion effects work, but…well let me put it this way, if you were a Ray Harryhausen/Willis O’Brien nut and you were told you were going to be exiled to a desert island and the only giant mon­ster movie you were going to be allowed to take with you was gonna be 1959’s The Giant Behemoth, you just might say “You know, skip it.” No one blames Willis H. O’Brien for the débâcle. He was work­ing with prac­tic­ally noth­ing, and his Behemoth has occa­sion­al moments of integ­rity in spite of look­ing like it is coated in chick­en skin. Thank God his last film was not this but rather, um, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The disc looks great though, and if you’re in enough of a bit­ter mood the movie has mord­ant appeal; Gene Evans’ “what the hell am I doing here?” per­form­ance makes him an ideal audi­ence sur­rog­ate. On the com­ment­ary, recor­ded for the 2007 DVD of the film, effects mavens Dennis Muren and Phil Tippett simply can’t get excited enough: “So, this movie…was released in…what do you think, ’57?” Inspirational dia­logue: “All these beaches are clogged up with dead fish, and nobody can tell why these fish are dead. However, it has its more amus­ing side to it.”—B-

 The Gingerbread Man (Kino Lorber)

I missed this one on its the­at­ric­al release and am just get­ting to it now. The John Grisham–derived storyline is not quite a world-beater, and des­pite the great cast this doesn’t get with­in swinging dis­tance of The Long Goodbye, which is the pri­or Altman it most resembles gen­er­ic­ally. As late Altman goes, though, I found it pretty agree­able. (if you want to cal­ib­rate this against my baro­met­er, I hated Short Cuts and Gosford Park, admired Kansas City and Cookie’s Fortune, and loved A Prairie Home Companion.) And there are a couple of moments that abso­lutely qual­i­fy as Vintage Altman, like the intro­duc­tion of Robert Duvall’s char­ac­ter. The Blu-ray offers a clean albeit what you’d call unex­traordin­ary image; the source isn’t  trum­peted on the pack­aging. The only extra is the some­times lac­on­ic but mostly ami­able and inform­at­ive com­ment­ary Altman recor­ded for the DVD edi­tion in 1998. —B+

The Grissom Gang (Kino Lorber)

Just as much of later Dario Argento work has admirers of his early pic­tures won­der­ing “Did he FORGET how to dir­ect a movie?” so too does the out­put of Robert Aldrich in the brief time he ran his own stu­dio (fin­anced with the profits from The Dirty Dozen) cause sim­il­ar head-scratching. While I find 1968’s The Legend of Lylah Clare a hoot, more emo­tion­ally stable film lov­ers than I hold that its tossed-off con­tempt lands it on the far side of incom­pet­ence. I enter­tained sim­il­ar thoughts while watch­ing this, a 1971 rethink of James Hadley Chase’s scan­dal­ous nov­el No Orchids For Miss Blandish, already made into a really weird movie in Britain in 1948, released on Blu-ray, also by Kino, a little while back. Aldrich was clearly aim­ing at a Bonnie and Clyde style suc­cess here but he can’t touch the way that Penn, Beatty and com­pany man­aged to make their peri­od mater­i­al both period-credible and abso­lutely con­tem­por­ary. The first half hour or so is almost, by my light, unwatch­able. The trans­fer is 4K from cam­era neg­at­ive and it’s super vivid, but the main thing I kept noti­cing was how not one of the act­ors even vaguely matches the oth­er in skin tone (check out beet-red Don Keefer, and, not entirely on-topic but also not unre­lated, the disappearing/reappearing mus­tache on poor Irene Dailey). And while the movie is relent­lessly viol­ent, man, is the fake blood hella fake look­ing. The movie mater­i­ally improves as it goes on though, with Scott Wilson, look­ing rather early–Edward–Norton­–ish, com­pletely com­mit­ted to his role as love­sick idi­ot rap­ist “Slim” Grissom. The com­ment­ary is from Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson, the same crew that got so agit­ated by Susan Kiger on the com­ment­ary track to Andy Sidaris’ Seven, not that I entirely blame them. Here they recount how cer­tain of them were trau­mat­ized by the pic­ture when they were six or sev­en years old and sun­dry pro­duc­tion tid­bits. They are an ener­get­ic crew; with­in mere minutes they man­age to slag Vincent Canby (he “nev­er met a for­eign film he didn’t like” — this is an empir­ic­ally false claim), over­sell the ori­gin­al Blandish (it’s not a good movie guys), bring up Schindler’s List, and talk about how Robert Lansing is under­rated (agreed, but not a whole lot we can do about it now). Entertaining! But still for Aldrich com­plet­ists only. —B

 Home From The Hill (Warner Archive)

This 1960 Vincente Minnelli-directed melo­drama has so outré-seeming ele­ments, like the stiff­ness of Robert Mitchum’s per­form­ance, which clicks once it’s clear that it’s cent­ral to the char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion; Mitchum’s not phoning it in. I’ve always found the pic­ture beau­ti­ful and com­pel­ling. Strangely it feels even more so now that its het­ero­norm­at­ive gender polit­ics and oth­er ideo­lo­gic­ally whack fea­tures are even more ana­chron­ist­ic than they may have been back in the day. The cam­era pos­i­tion­ing shot to shot is nev­er less than striv­ing for max­im­um emo­tion­al deliv­ery (I’ve used the cli­mactic truce scene between Mitchum and Eleanor Parker — chapter 33 if you are inter­ested — in my film class to explore the poten­tial of vari­ation with­in a shot/reverse shot pat­tern, and in CinemaScope yet). The trans­fer looks beau­ti­ful and fea­tures smooth dis­solves, noth­ing glitchy. No extras.  Inspirational dia­logue: “Libby, I’m dying to kiss you.” “Don’t die.” So now where’s a Blu-ray of The Cobweb, Warner Archive? —A

Invention for Destruction (Second Run)

A while back I pur­chased, dir­ectly from The Zeman Museum in Prague, a Blu-ray with three Karel Zeman  pic­tures includ­ing this 1958 beauty, released in the U.S. with a quaint Hugh Downs intro­duc­tion as The Fabulous World Of Jules Verne (and later a very spe­cial child­hood treat for me when it would turn up in the 1960s on WOR 9). Zeman’s mix of live action and anim­a­tion always enchanted me; these strangely baroque flat drawn/etched back­grounds tra­versed by live act­ors, on their way to action scenes where they’d face car­toon artil­lery shells and such. The ver­sion of Vynález zkázy on that disc is ver­sion is hand­some, and has been made from clean mater­i­als. Due in part (I reck­on) to lim­it­a­tions in tele­cine tech of only just a few years ago, the image has a notice­able flick­er to it. This new Second Run present­a­tion is incred­ible. It’s like look­ing through a just-cleaned wind­shield. The English-dubbed ver­sion is the exact same trans­fer with that match­less Hugh Downs intro tacked on, or so it seems. Three Zeman shorts nev­er before avail­able in this format,  and some extras impor­ted from the Zeman Museum discs, are also here. British anim­at­or John Stevenson’s on–camera appre­ci­ation is more per­son­al than gen­er­ally inform­at­ive, detail­ing his exper­i­ence of Zeman and the maestro’s influ­ence. I’m still glad to own the Zeman Museum disc (like this Second Run release, it is all–region com­pat­ible FYI) but this is what I’m gonna put on when I want to see Invention. —A+

 The Killing Kind (Vinegar Syndrome)

I’m not the world’s greatest Curtis Harrington stan but I know a key com­pon­ent of a dis­tinct­ive director’s filmo­graphy when I see one, and this is that. This unfussy 1973 por­trait of a seri­al killer played by John Savage in an early role is a sharp, nasty pic­ture. It doesn’t ask you to root for the mur­der­ous Terry but it does allow you access to his upset­ting point of view, which cre­ates a nag­ging effect. It is replete with sup­port­ing play­ers of interest, includ­ing Ruth Roman, Luana Anders, and Cindy Williams; Ann Sothern is dis­quiet­ingly superb as Suffocating Mom. Cinematographer Mario Tosi likes his dif­fuse light (see The Stunt Man, cer­tain scenes in Carrie, The Betsy) and Harrington allowed him to go full bore with it, which makes the action that much more dis­turb­ing. The care­ful trans­fer cour­tesy of the ace schlock reviv­al­ists at Vinegar Syndrome gets the job done nicely. Cat lov­ers will want to take a pass on the movie, as there’s a scene in which Terry pulls peep­ing tom duty while hold­ing a cat and gets a little too dis­trac­ted. Essential Psychotronic Cinema  (“A seldom–seen sick­ie” says the PEF itself) and an exem­plary double fea­ture with The Honeymoon Killers. Extras include a vin­tage 30-minute inter­view with Harrington (he also goes into some detail in his mem­oir “Nice Guys Don’t Work In Hollywood,” about his fond­ness for the film and why it nev­er received prop­er dis­tri­bu­tion) and a dishy, affec­tion­ate com­ment­ary from mondo film his­tor­i­an David Del Valle and mondo film maker David DeCoteau. Inspirational dia­logue: “That’s not a mouse, it’s a rat!”—A

My Name Is Julia Ross (Arrow)

So Dark The Night (Arrow)

I know it’s not crick­et to review a Blu-ray on which you did the audio com­ment­ary but indulge me. When I was pre­par­ing for the audio track for So Dark The Night, no disc of the new trans­fer was yet avail­able, so I worked from a boot­legged ver­sion up on YouTube. Circumstances were such that my com­ment­ary part­ner Farran Smith Nehme (she con­trib­utes the good parts) had to watch the same while record­ing the com­ment­ary. The film is strong enough that we were able to psych­ic­ally infer how good a decent print/transfer would look (and we’d seen the film before under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, so we had our memor­ies to fall back on too). But noth­ing could have pre­pared me for the gor­geous­ness of what Arrow has put on this disc, and the disc of Julia Ross is equally breath­tak­ing. (The two new ver­sions are 2K res­tor­a­tion sup­plied by Sony, and while he isn’t cred­ited, I reck­on Grover Crisp had some­thing to do with them.) Both these thrillers were dir­ec­ted by Joseph H. Lewis and are best watched togeth­er. I think they’re among the greatest wak­ing night­mares American cinema has yiel­ded us. Ross is the more famil­i­ar of the two, a story of gas­light­ing that goes up to 11. So Dark the Night…well…as Robert Ridgely says in Blazing Saddles, this one is a doozy. There’s simply noth­ing like it. Each disc has an equal con­sort of extras, one com­ment­ary, one essay and one video dis­cus­sion. For Ross, the com­ment­ary goes to the great Alan K. Rode, recent author of a ter­rif­ic Michael Curtiz bio­graphy. Rode is more Team Nina Foch (the film’s lead) that Team Lewis. (He takes Lewis to task for his ego­centric tall-tale-telling more than once.) The chal­len­ging essay is by Adrian Martin.  A video inter­view with The Nitrate Diva, Nora Fiore, fills out that disc. As I’ve men­tioned, the com­ment­ary on Night is Farran and me, and I am very much Team Lewis (I believe every word that ever came out of his mouth). Farran does very well as always. The video inter­view is with Imogen Sara Smith, and she’s inform­at­ive as always, and very poised. (So is Fiore, while I’m dotting my Is.) David Cairns is his usu­al superb self for the book­let essay.  Tonci Zonjic’s new cov­er art for Night is par­tic­u­larly clev­er. Forgive me for flog­ging these (I don’t get resid­uals, in case you were sus­pi­cious) but they’re both won­der­ful. —A+ 

The Naked and the Dead (Warner Archive)

This 1958 movie gets a bad rep for being an unfaith­ful adapt­a­tion of Norman Mailer’s nov­el, but any pic­ture that begins with L.Q. Jones rhaps­od­iz­ing over Lily St. Cyr (as “Lily”) can’t be all bad. Can’t be all good, either, it turns out. You could cut this togeth­er with the three-years-earlier Battle Cry, also dir­ec­ted by the gen­er­ally unim­peach­able Raoul Walsh, and have a mini-series, espe­cially giv­en that Aldo Ray plays pretty much the same char­ac­ter in each. The movie, a few hairs over two hours, tries to hew to Mailer’s flashback-laden struc­ture but it’s more than weird that it moves to estab­lish­ing Cliff Robertson’s dis­con­ten­ted officer that main guy, and then, when the flash­backs start, they’re… ALDO RAY’S flash­backs! And it turns out he used to be with L.Q. Jones’ girl­friend Lily! (At least that’s what I think is going on.) “Sam! Don’t hit him! He’s from the fin­ance com­pany!” she protests at one point. Scene plays like  The Dark Side of L’il Abner or some such thing. (Hmm.)  Other stray good­ies here include the apo­theosis of char­ac­ter play­er Max Showalter, Phantom Echoes of Citizen Kane in Bernard Herrmann’s score (the Xanadu theme most prom­in­ent), and very nice pic­ture qual­ity. For some reas­on this plays like the least WWII movie of all the WWII movies I’ve seen; the con­flict at hand seems entirely gen­er­ic. And the way it upends the novel’s actu­al nar­rat­ive is both appalling/hilarious while mak­ing for a not-unsatisfying movie-movie con­clu­sion. Inspirational dia­logue: “Under that mask of human­ism, you’re a reac­tion­ary, just like I am.” That might even be from the book, come to think of it. For Raoul Walsh and/or L.Q. Jones com­plet­ists only. —B-

 The Night of the Demon (Indicator)

This death­less clas­sic finally gets the exhaust­ive treat­ment and beau­ti­ful pic­ture qual­ity it deserves from Indicator, which really went to town. For instance: the lim­ited edi­tion two-disc set fea­tures two dis­crete high-def trans­fers of the 96-minute pre-release ver­sion, pre­sumed as the closest to a director’s cut we have. (Notwithstanding the appear­ance of the actu­al demon, which poor Jacques Tourneur was divested of his say on.) (It’s funny though, as much as we com­plain about said demon and how it detracts from the movie’s nuance, it’s still a suf­fi­ciently icon­ic image that it adorns the front of this set’s box. And it is a good look­ing demon, all things con­sidered. ) AND a high-def of the UK release ver­sion, an 82-minute cut. I haven’t even made a dent in the extras yet, but I’m grad­ing this any­way just based on how it presents the movie, and also because of one par­tic­u­lar extra, an object as hil­ari­ous as it is dis­turb­ing: a repro­duc­tion of the call­ing card of Julian Karswell, which I barely noticed when it fell out of the box; I put it away some­place I did not remem­ber, and was stunned to find in the pock­et of a coat I was wear­ing sev­er­al days after watch­ing the disc. After which it took a while for me to calm down and remem­ber that it is the parch­ment con­tain­ing the runic inscrip­tion, rather than Karswell’s card, that was the film’s bring­er of death. Whew. Essential. —A+

Obsession (Scream Factory)

If you’re look­ing to pro­gram a double fea­ture of Cliff Robertson/Bernard Herrmann pic­tures, you can’t do bet­ter than this and the above-reviewed The Naked and The Dead. Literally. Because that’s it — those are the only two. What are the odds they’re both end up reviewed here? This 1976 Brian De Palma pic­ture, hatched with writer Paul Schrader after the then-friends saw Vertigo togeth­er (their warm rela­tions waned a bit, appar­ently, at the com­ple­tion of the pro­ject, which jet­tisoned a third of Schrader’s ori­gin­al script), is reg­u­larly dis­paraged from all corners prac­tic­ally.. Rumor had it that Hitchcock him­self wasn’t thrilled with it. In the recent De Palma doc­u­ment­ary by Baumbach and Paltrow, the dir­ect­or laments his fussy, inex­press­ive lead­ing man. (In the extras here there’s a recol­lec­tion that Robertson was insist­ent about hav­ing only what he con­sidered his “good side” facing the cam­era, a pos­i­tion that causes major head­aches for dir­ect­ors, cam­era people, edit­ors, people who are sick of see­ing Cliff Robertson’s “good side,” etc.) Still, with what appears to be a spruced up trans­fer rel­at­ive to the Region B locked Arrow release of some time back (which had the delight­ful and now out-of-print extra of a book­let with Schrader’s com­plete screen­play attached), and the bene­fit of hind­sight and/or nos­tal­gia, the film slightly less mis­guided than it did on first view­ing. In its mar­gins, par­tic­u­larly as they relate to John Lithgow and Florence, the movie achieve its own integ­rity. The com­ment­ary by Douglas Keesey (a pro­fess­or and the author of De Palma: Split Screen) is well-researched and inform­at­ive but Keesey sounds so stiff that it can be an awk­ward listen. While I got some­what turned around on this film by the present­a­tion, I did con­clude that Palma movies need sex and/or viol­ence to really fly and the implic­a­tions of its premise not­with­stand­ing this doesn’t have a lot of either. Other new extras include on cam­era inter­views with pro­du­cer George Litto (he once wrote a song that was recor­ded by Louis Armstrong, who knew?) and edit­or Paul Hirsch, which have only slight over­lap with the EPK type stuff, shot years ago, also included here. Hirsch’s tales of Bernard Herrmann’s explos­ive tem­per are hair-raising for sure.—A

The Other Side of Midnight (Twilight Time)

I think my mom had read the Sidney Sheldon nov­el in the early ‘70s when it came out, and around then, and when the movie fol­lowed in 1977, I heard a lot about how LURID it was, but I was too punk rock to care, or some­thing. The recent emer­gence of a Twilight Time Blu-ray piqued my curi­os­ity. Combined with an old, old memory of a screen­ing of Robbe-Grillet’s Trans Europe Express at MOMA on Senior Citizen Thursday, or whichever it was. Lotsa shots of Marie-France Pisier chained to a met­al bed frame in that one, and on the way out a couple of bid­dies were say­ing, “Marie France-Pisier, she’s such a nice girl, why did she let them do that to her?” I pre­sumed they got that “nice girl” idea from this, her first Hollywood pic­ture. Thing is, for the first half hour or so this thing is more comatose than lur­id. Sure, “nice girl” MFP is besmirched by the future Boss Hogg, but it’s all por­trayed very taste­fully as, an ocean away, Susan Sarandon is pres­aging Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hudsucker Proxy in her por­tray­al of a peri­od girl with MOXIE, which qual­ity greatly impresses Clu Gulager as Beau Bridges’ uncle or whatever the hell he’s play­ing. So the movie is mov­ing along in this respect and I’m think­ing, God, what is it with the LIGHTING—flat and bright and unin­spired on this very hand­some disc. I didn’t think I was gonna make it, and then  about 50 minutes in, MFP gets into a warm bath and unravels a wire coat hanger. Not to make light of her character’s pre­dic­a­ment, but after that the movie really is off to the races. In seek­ing her revenge against jilter John Beck, who goes on to marry Sarandon’s char­ac­ter, she climbs the lad­der of pas­sion, or whatever it is. When she’s oil­ing her­self up before strad­dling poor Christian Marquand, who by this time had seen bet­ter days, I’m writ­ing in my notes “IS SHE TRYING TO KILL HIM.” He does not die, but notes, drolly, “You make love like a star. Perhaps you’ll be a star.” Um, you betcha. So it does get lur­id. I don’t know where those old ladies got that “nice girl” stuff about MFP because it sure is not here. Inspirational dia­logue: “In spite of all the smart talk, I guess I’m just Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I’m mor­al, I’m silly, and I’m sad.” The multi-player com­ment­ary, recor­ded by Laurent Bouzereau for a DVD a long time ago, fea­tures pro­du­cer Frank Yablans’ tips for film­makers, such as, “There’s a place for cam­era move­ment” Once the movie settles in at the estate of Greek Tycoon Raf Vallone, the look of the whole thing gets a big boost. It’s nev­er a mod­el of mise-en-scène and is nev­er­the­less the second Charles Jarrot-directed pic­ture from Twilight Time in a span of months. (The oth­er was Anne of a Thousand Days, which I haven’t been able to check out yet but know is not lur­id.) But one thing that makes Twilight Time a great label is its com­mit­ment to put­ting out what floats its boat for reas­ons overt, obscure or occult. Its cofounder Nick Redman, to whom this column is co-dedicated, died late last year and he is already much missed. This disc’s grade, and the one for Satan Never Sleeps, is for him.  —A+

Panique  (Criterion Collection)

This film is best appre­ci­ated if you just for­get the nov­el on which it’s based, Georges Simenon’s land­mark 1933 Mr. Hire’s Engagement. (Among oth­er things, with its painstak­ing atten­tion to phys­ic­al details oth­er authors would deem insig­ni­fic­ant, it’s a pre­curs­or to the nou­velle roman.) Yes, the 1946 film dir­ec­ted by Julien Duvivier adheres to many of that book’s plot points, but in its emphases and char­ac­ter­iz­a­tions it’s a wholly dif­fer­ent anim­al.  Duvivier’s 1933 adapt­a­tion of a Maigret nov­el, La tête d’un homme, demon­strated that the film­maker “got” Simenon. Now, back from Hollywood after the war and appar­ently eager to alleg­or­ize an occu­pa­tion undreamed of when Mr. Hire was pub­lished (although the novel’s incid­ents were drawn from Simenon’s exper­i­ences dur­ing the German occu­pa­tion of Belgium in World War I), Duvivier opted to make the book a vehicle for his own state­ment. The tipoff to the dif­fer­ences that will envel­op the pic­ture comes early on: Michel Simon’s Mr. Hire speaks more dia­logue in the first ten minutes than he does in the first 80 pages of the nov­el. Not just a voyeur, the character’s a sort of extor­tion­ist too. Now, Simon is always worth watch­ing but I have to admit it: all through the pic­ture I just kept think­ing how great it would have been to have the act­or work on a con­cep­tion of the char­ac­ter closer to Simenon’s. The present­a­tion of the film is start­ling, vivid. Supplements include Rialto Pictures’ Bruce Goldstein on sub­titling (wonky, fas­cin­at­ing); one of Georges’ sons,  Pierre Simenon, dis­cours­ing on how Duvivier’s vari­ations are more than okay ( in order to suc­cess­fully adapt Simenon, his the­ory goes, you “have to betray him” at least a little bit) and French crit­ics Guilemette Odicino and Eric Libiot gush­ing over the movie. Vaguely tut-tutting that Hitchcock raided this pic­ture for ele­ments later seen in over­rat­ing the film. Strangers on a Train, Vertigo, and Rear Window, they don’t men­tion how the bumper-car scene might have influ­enced Mouchette. —A

Satan Never Sleeps (Twilight Time)

“A film not without its McCarey moments,” Gary Giddins wrote of this 1962 pic­ture when Fox put out a standard-def DVD of this in 2005. He of course has to men­tion its moments, too,  that are bad McCarey, includ­ing the weird theme song (“Satan nev­er sleeps/he walks behind you”) sung, as he accur­ately (he IS Gary Giddins) notes, in Nancy Wilson style by Timo Yuri. The Pearl–Buck–conceived story of Communist Chinese doing some revolu­tion­ary Catholic bash­ing (as seen from the bashed side) offers almost a full hour of lower grade Going My Way stuff (with a butched–up Clifton Webb as the Fitzgerald sur­rog­ate dis­ap­prov­ing of fresh recruit William Holden the Crosby sur­rog­ate) before explod­ing into some weird wild anti-Communism plot points and will­ful mis­un­der­stand­ings of rape. It’s in the more ser­i­ous values-querying scenes that the most McCarey moments appear, oddly. (I think Giddins took interest in the 2005 disc because he was study­ing up on the dir­ect­or; there’s prac­tic­ally a mini-biography of McCarey in the recently pub­lished second volume of Giddins’ Bing Cosby bio­graphy, a honey of a book in every respect.)  Martin Benson as the Russian appar­at­chik pinch­ing his pince-nez and hold­ing his cig between thumb and fore­finger is a clas­sic por­tray­al of HUAC–nightmare Red Villainy. The pic­ture and sound qual­ity are aces, while the movie’s end­ing is both insane and obscene. A mad­den­ing piece of work…and McCarey’s final fea­ture, and Twilight Time remains the best for releas­ing it. Inspirational Holden dia­logue: “Now they’ll be spread­ing DISEASE along with their pro­pa­ganda.”—A+

A Story from Chikamatsu (Criterion Collection)

This 1954 Kenji Mizoguchi pic­ture has been more com­monly known in the West as The Crucified Lovers, which is both more sen­sa­tion­al­ist­ic and not entirely inac­cur­ate but the truly sali­ent fea­ture of this tale is that it indeed derives from an 18^th cen­tury pup­pet play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Do not be con­fused: this is not a pup­pet movie, it is beau­ti­fully acted by an ensemble of humans includ­ing Kyoko Kugawa, who con­trib­utes a quiet, reveal­ing inter­view to the sup­ple­ments. And yes, you read right, this is a 1954 movie, same year Mizoguchi made the immor­tal Sansho the Bailiff (and Uwasa no ona, aka The Crucified Woman). Kyoko Kugawa recalls being at the première of Sansho at the Venice Film Festival in September and fly­ing back to Japan to start this, which  was released in Japan in…November. Jesus. This film’s story is not as imme­di­ately emo­tion­ally dev­ast­at­ing as Sansho but it’s still pretty tough. And it gives the view­er the same  sense of a mas­ter­fully dis­tilled cine­mat­ic style as that mas­ter­piece. The nar­rat­ive, more dry and nuanced, exam­ines the tangled webs of deceit as prac­ticed by both the power­ful (who lie so they can profit, sexu­ally or mon­et­ar­ily) and the oppressed (who lie for survival’s sake). The fab­ulous res­tor­a­tion yields a sump­tu­ous black-and-white image. The sup­ple­ments are sol­id, and fea­ture illu­min­at­ing obser­va­tions, in an audio essay, from Dudley Andrews about Bunraku (pup­pet theat­er, that is) and Mizoguchi’s enthu­si­asm for the stage. —A+