A Salvage Edition of a Quarantine Blu-Ray Consumer Guide

I star­ted this in late March 2020. And then I stopped work on it because I real­ized it (“it” mean­ing stay­ing inside) WOULD NEVER END, maybe. Some time in sum­mer I spruced up the notes. But not a whole lot. From March on, too, I had book stuff to do, I was teach­ing, and to be hon­est I was suf­fi­ciently dis­pir­ited in a par­tic­u­lar way that I also did not feel much like doing any work that I did not have to do.  So this is kind of…dated? What IS dated nowadays? Who can really say?  I cleaned it up and am pub­lish­ing it now because, well, I put in the ini­tial work and also because some­time between now and next March I’ll get a god­damn Playstation 5 and will try and knock out a 4K Ultra Disc Consumer Guide for vari­ety and perversity’s sake. As Your Favorite President used to like to tweet, Enjoy!

EQUIPMENT: PlayStation 4 play­er, OPPO BDP 83 play­er, Sony KD50X690E dis­play, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.

Action of the Tiger (Warner Archive)

Here’s a nov­elty: Van Johnson try­ing to do Humphrey Bogart. I like Van Johnson, but as shifters of per­sonae go, he’s no Dick Powell. When in Greece, his free and easy “I own a boat” char­ac­ter drops mots like “Sorry boys it’s all Greek to me,” ar ar ar. The col­or pic­ture is grainy but…colorful. Some interi­ors look like smoke filled rooms. Maybe they ARE smoke filled rooms. An early sup­port­ing role for Sean Connery as Johnson’s soused, rape obsessed mate. ”He gives me the creeps even when he’s sober” one char­ac­ter notes, except he’s nev­er sober.  How did top­less Martine Carol hap­pen in a 1957 movie? Who knows, but you don’t have to be a leer­er to appre­ci­ate it; the nov­elty is an attrac­tion in and of itself. Although Carol looks swell. The chief creep of the scen­ario is played by Herbert Lom, and is even rapi­er than Connery’s char­ac­ter. Eventually you are asked to cry for him, and you do not, because he sucks. This mostly-shot-in-Spain thingama­jig is very scen­ic and reminded me a bit of Hemingway’s descrip­tions of the country’s land­scapes in Death in the Afternoon; look­ing them up might be a bet­ter use of your time. Unless if you’re really into Van Johnson. Or Martine Carol. Or Sean Connery. —B

Angel (Kino Lorber)

Oooh la la, a new 4K scan, and it looks lovely. The Ernst Lubitsch pic­ture treats a scen­ario of Marlene Dietrich as a neg­lected wife who assumes anoth­er iden­tity in a whack at adul­tery. It has the poten­tial to go full com­edy or full melo­drama and instead falls between two stools. While it doesn’t quite flop around there, the 1937 movie doesn’t have the buoy­ancy of the best Lubitsch. But it does have some of his most quint­es­sen­tial sequences, and Joe McBride’s typ­ic­ally expert com­ment­ary walks you through them with aplomb. —A

Beau Geste/The General Died At Dawn/Lives of A Bengal Lancer (Kino Lorber)

Kino put out these three almost sim­ul­tan­eously and heav­en knows they were use­ful in filling out my con­tem­por­ary Gary Cooper know­ledge, as it’s been lit­er­ally dec­ades since I saw these on loc­al tele­vi­sion in the ‘60s-‘70s. I was glad to catch up but none of them hit me with the force of rev­el­a­tion.. 1936’s General has a lot of speeches but also a lot of note­worthy indi­vidu­al shots. The faux-Hemingway scen­ario doesn’t draw on any anti-fascist spir­it but man­ages to play super portent­ous non­ethe­less. Cooper is fine but Akim Tamiroff does a lot of good as the title vil­lain. Director Lewis Milestone’s style here sug­gests a bridge between pure German Expressionism and noir. 1935’s Lives of A Bengal Lancer struck me as a little dull, antic Franchot Tone not­with­stand­ing. Of the three it’s the least out­stand­ing in appear­ance but is bet­ter than watch­able.  1939’s Beau Geste has a good com­ment­ary from Frank Thompson and William Wellman, Jr., excel­lent image qual­ity, crisp dir­ec­tion from William Wellman Jr.’s dad,  then-whelp Donald O’ Connor, a ridicu­lous story, and a super fresh Susan Hayward. Kind of walks all over Lancer, in my estim­a­tion. If you can only buy one of the three, this is it.  —A-/ B+/A

Blood on the Moon (Warner Archive)

Nicolas “Nick” Musuraca’s sharp and shad­owy cine­ma­to­graphy looks really good here. A super sol­id film, with a little some­thing extra because of  dir­ect­or Robert Wise’s ultra-competence and the cast. (Barbara Bel Geddes is par­tic­u­larly fine. ) It doesn’t get to Mann (Anthony) level but if you dial down your expect­a­tion appro­pri­ately, you’ll love it.  There are fre­quent ref­er­ences to drift­ing in the spoken exchanges, just like the Situationists. Which is cool.  Inspirational dia­logue, delivered impec­cably by Walter Brennan; “I always wanted to shoot one a’ ya. And he was the han­di­est.” —A-

The Bolshevik Trilogy (Flicker Alley)

We — and when I say “we” I should be clear, as so many oth­ers refuse to be, that I mean me and some oth­er people liv­ing in my head — don’t talk about Pudovkin much any­more, but back in the ‘60s and ‘70s he was a staple of Parker Tyler pic­ture books and col­lege film appre­ci­ation classes. Unlike Eisenstein this archi­tect of film lan­guage didn’t mind toe­ing the Soviet line and his films show­case some unusu­ally strik­ing con­tent as a res­ult.  The iter­a­tions of his works on this set unfor­tu­nately point up the lim­it­a­tions of film res­tor­a­tion when the optim­um mater­i­als don’t exist. 1926s Mother, about a mom who makes the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice — for the Revolution, of course — is pretty raggedy but watch­able. The com­ment­ary by Peter Bagrov is very eru­dite and sharp, a little aca­dem­ic. The End of St. Petersburg, his com­mem­or­a­tion of October 1917 on its 10^th anniversary, looks crisper and sharp­er, with some stun­ning frames. Storm Over Asia looks mostly sol­id. It’s the most action packed and, in part because it’s not set in Russia, the most gonzo of the fea­tures, with often start­ling imagery. Its anti-Buddhism is vicious — so over the top as to be mord­antly funny. The scene of the Western gen­er­als’ meet­ing with the Dalai Lama is a real treat, you could say. Jan-Christopher Horak con­trib­utes a sol­id com­ment­ary with a slightly stiff deliv­ery. Often start­ling imagery. Voluminous extras includ­ing the immor­tal short Chess Fever, which has no polit­ics as such and should be watched in con­junc­tion with read­ing Nabokov’s The Defense. (I guess Queen’s Gambit people might also enjoy.) —A-

Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter (Scream Factory)

A rather ter­rif­ic 1974 Hammer one-off, which is too bad — I could have gone for a series fea­tur­ing this char­ac­ter and I do not say that too often. Tongue in cheek, but hardly osten­ta­tiously or egre­giously so, which appar­ently Hammer major­do­mo Michael Carreras took excep­tion to. Schmuck. There’s a remark­able sequence fea­tur­ing an unk­il­lable vam­pire — dig­ging the new breed thing, so to speak — that’s as good as any­thing in any giv­en “ser­i­ous” Hammer hor­ror you could name. Good com­ment­ary by Bruce G. Hallenbeck — a little stiff but sol­id, inform­at­ive, and low-fat. Carreras’ dis­like of the film is treated in detail. There’s a second, older com­ment­ary with writer/director Brian Clemens and female lead Caroline Munro. Good image qual­ity; whole pack­age really hits the spot. —A

The Far Country (Arrow Region B import)

“A dif­fer­ent part of the land­scape and a dif­fer­ent set of fic­tions” is one par­tic­u­larly evoc­at­ive phrase in Adrian Martin’s com­ment­ary for this actu­al Anthony Mann Western, from 1954,  which was shot around the loc­a­tions where its story is set, one of them being Dawson City — yes, the same place memori­al­ized in the great recent Bill Morrison doc­u­ment­ary. One of the cru­cial Stewart/Mann pic­tures, it high­lights what Manny Farber called Mann’s “sharp geo­graph­ic sense” while unfold­ing a story that enables what Farber called “crawl­ing, mech­an­ized ten­sion.” The mater­i­al from which the 4K mas­ter was made is not  pristine. You def­in­itely can see it in the dis­solves, for instance. The image over­all is still pretty hand­some. Arrow presents the movie in two aspect ratios, 2.0 and 1.85, and that’s great. I can’t say I have a pref­er­ence for one over the oth­er but I’m delighted to have a choice.  —A+

The Fate of Lee Khan (Eureka!/Masters of Cinema)

A spec­tac­u­lar res­tor­a­tion of King Hu’s 1973 film. Since 1967’s Dragon Inn he’d been pro­du­cing his own films; the col­or in this one though is rather redol­ent of Shaw Brothers stuff. I reviewed this ver­sion when it had a the­at­ric­al release in New York so you can read my plot pré­cis and such here. As for this excel­lent disc, there’s one author­ing choice I con­sidered strange; Tony Rayns has a “Selected Scene Commentary” and when you select that on the menu it plays only those scenes. 1 hour and 13 minutes of a 1 hour 43 minute movie. I could roll with the half hour of silence. Anyway, Rayns’ com­ment­ary is as usu­al inform­at­ive, astute, sober and reward­ing. The English dub has cute idio­mat­ic touches: “Where’s the rest room?” This is a mostly chip­per film, only pretty much every­body dies at the end. As a demon­stra­tion of Hu’s mas­tery of cine­mat­ic space, it’s peer­less. Most of it takes place in the con­fines of an inn but the movie feels as expans­ive as one shot in Monument Valley. The video essay con­tri­bu­tions from Anne Billson and David Cairns are excel­lent. —A+

Flame of New Orleans (Kino Lorber)

“Rudy Maté,” is how com­ment­at­or Lee Gambin refers to this movie’s cine­ma­to­graph­er. But that’s about as loose as he gets. He lays out fun­da­ment­als known to a lot of afi­cion­ados already. But his cohort, the act­or Rutanya Alda, is unin­hib­itedly dishy. “I’m sure she went to bed with every­one,” she notes of star Marlene Dietrich, before assert­ing that on Destry Rides Again  James Stewart got her preg­nant, and Dietrich got an abor­tion. What the fuck is going on here, any­way? As for the movie:  As a scen­ar­ist Norman Krasna was fine but he wasn’t quite Brackett/Wilder, and this saucy yarn tends to peri­od screw­ball, but nev­er quite gets the right boisterousness/buoyancy. It picks up when Mischa Auer shows, as most things do. Shemp Howard shows as well, and Andy Devine plays a char­ac­ter whose interest in rape might have raised an eye­brow with the future pro­du­cers of Andy’s Gang. Or maybe not. While the movie’s racial por­tray­als are hardly hugely enlightened — it’s a 1941 Hollywood movie after all — it’s worth not­ing that a romance between African American char­ac­ters here (they’re played by Clarence Muse and Theresa Harris) is treated with almost no real con­des­cen­sion. One is temp­ted to put it down to dir­ect­or Rene Clair, but one nev­er can tell. In any event, “Rudy”’s imagery looks very nice here. Overall the pack­age is for Clair or Dietrich com­plet­ists only, but why are you not either or both in the first place? Inspirational dia­logue: “What a boaw­ing town.” Also: “Excuse me, my mon­key jumped in the win­dow.” —B

Force Ten From Navarone (Kino Lorber)

I did not watch this with a stop­watch so I couldn’t tell you exactly when one of the Anglos in this storyline make a “Zulu” joke to Carl Weathers, but it sure does hap­pen. A stone-faced Harrison Ford joins Weathers, Edward Fox and Robert Shaw in this rather remark­able boon­doggle. Guy Hamilton’s unin­spired “action” dir­ect­ing had me pre­oc­cu­pied with ques­tions like “Why does Shaw look like that? Did he get plastic sur­gery or just dry out?” Also star­ring Angus MacInnes, the beloved Gordie of Strange Brew, and Richard Kiel. The WW II mach­in­a­tions here head to the east­ern regions of Europe, but Come and See this is not. When the mot­ley band get to the bridge — guess what they’re sup­posed to do with it — one of them observes, “There’s no bridge in the world that can’t be blown. That’s what Force Ten is here prove.” And to think Ford com­plained about George Lucas’ dia­logue. Only Franco Nero gets through this thing with his dig­nity intact. The 2K res­tor­a­tion really lets you appre­ci­ate how overlit the interi­ors are. Imagine being chained to a stone wall in a cave-like pris­on illu­min­ated by klieg lights. The blow­ing the dam effects are not as good as any­thing in When Worlds Collide or, for that, mat­ter Deluge. From the audio com­ment­ary by Steve Mitchell and Steven Jay Rubin: “These are sup­posedly Chechnyans [sic]  because…” “Chetniks!” “Excuse me, Chetniks. But I think they’re related to Chechnyans [sic], I would think, per­haps…” “Yeah, it’s all in the same neigh­bor­hood.” —B-

The Golem (Kino Lorber)

Did this 1920 Paul Wegener film, based on Jewish fable,  inspire Schuster and Siegel to cre­ate  Superman? Tim Lucas is not unper­suas­ive on this point in his com­ment­ary. The new Murnau House 4K res­tor­a­tion is incred­ibly beau­ti­ful; it’s like see­ing the movie for the first time. A really magic­al and haunt­ing movie; this ver­sion ought to  move it up in the estim­a­tion of any skep­tics.  My only com­plaint is that the pro­du­cers did not include my friend Gary Lucas’ inspired, rauc­ous altern­ate score, which he’s per­formed live to enthu­si­ast­ic audi­ences for dec­ades, as a soundtrack option. —A+

King Creole (Paramount)/Wild In The Country (Twilight Time)

Two of the King’s more cred­ible stabs at Real Acting in Real Movies. 1958’s Creole, with Elvis play­ing a par­tic­u­larly hungry boy, bene­fits from Michael Curtiz’s ener­get­ic dir­ec­tion, a juicy melo­dra­mat­ic storyline, and a bevy of A‑plus 1950s char­ac­ter play­ers in the ensemble:  Walter Matthau! Dean Jagger! Paul Stewart! Carolyn Jones! Vic Morrow! Pretty good pic­ture, as nor­mal movie­go­ers used to say, and the new present­a­tion is pleas­ing indeed. 1961’s Wild in the Country is mostly a straight-down-the-middle piece of craft from the Twilight Time favor­ite Phillip Dunne, with Elvis as a would-be writer as earn­est as Dunne him­self. A poten­tial  Youngblood Hawke who doesn’t make it to New York. He gets plenty of action in the tit­u­lar coun­try, cour­tesy of Hope Lange, Tuesday Weld, Millie Perkins. It’s all a bit…peculiar. Also, he plays a guy named Glenn, which was per­son­ally weird. The songs are a bit more of an awk­ward fit than they are in King, because (duh!) he doesn’t play a sing­er. A curi­os­ity, to be sure, but a well-meant one. — A-/B+

Khrustalyov, My Car! (Arrow)

I love this movie while only hav­ing the most rudi­ment­ary under­stand­ing of what’s going on with it. Not because the film­mak­ing is obscure or indir­ect —every frame teems with action, life, dread, hil­ar­ity, what have you — but because the intim­acy with which it depicts a his­tory that I have only book know­ledge of is by defin­i­tion too INSIDE for me, or maybe any oth­er U.S. res­id­ent, to fully get. I don’t think dir­ect­or Alexei German wanted to be her­met­ic, but he also had no interest in “uni­ver­sal­iz­ing” this story of Stalin and nation­al and per­son­al trauma (all of which register with crush­ing strength in any event). So the superb com­ment­ary by Donald Bird, lay­ing out all of Russian in-jokes and German in-jokes, is cru­cial, giv­ing you a skel­et­on key. He also details German’s painstak­ing (to say the least) meth­od — he changed light­ing cam­era­man four times in the mak­ing of this 1998 mas­ter­piece. He’s a sharp eru­dite crit­ic too: “Dostoevsky is hys­ter­ic­al, is baroque, and these qual­it­ies have more to do with German’s cinema than with Bresson’s.” Arrow’s amaz­ing pack­age presents the movie beau­ti­fully. It includes an excel­lent visu­al essay; an inter­view with German, about 50 minutes, with his  wife and col­lab­or­at­or Svetlana Karmalita con­stantly at his side; Jonathan Brent holds forth on the actu­al his­tory of the “Doctor’s Plot,” the movie’s anim­at­ing atro­city, for over 40 minutes. And there’s more still. This is the  best over­all Blu-ray pack­age I’ve seen in some time. —A+

Rachel and the Stranger (Warner Archive)

Robert Mitchum sings! Well of course he does, you’ve heard his calypso album, haven’t you? And he does it in Night of the Hunter too. This might be his first time singing in a movie. Said movie being a 1948 sort-of Western with less emphas­is on action than on char­ac­ter and the depic­tion of rough fron­ti­er liv­ing. Mitchum is the pest in this story of Very Good William Holden tak­ing over the con­tract of an inden­tured ser­vant played by Loretta Young. “Buy a human being out of ser­vitude,” he observes to his cranky kid Gary Gray; “it’s the right Christian thing to do.” Later anoth­er char­ac­ter observes, “I’ve seen love take seed on rock­i­er ground than this.” Eww. Mitchum and his gui­tar put some moves on Young, and things get slightly squir­rely. Pretty aus­tere, in part because there’s almost no cast per se. The anim­ated birds are odd. Director Norman Foster keeps things brisk, there’s an awe­some “aw shucks” end­ing, and the whole thing — an RKO pro­duc­tion rushed into release to cap­it­al­ize on Mitchum’s new­found notori­ety upon being bus­ted for reefer (again, it’s 1948; what a pion­eer) — is very Dore Schary, I guess. The Blu-ray looks good but as a lib­rary item this is mainly of interest to intense devotees of one or more of its stars. Inspirational dia­logue: “Sure got a mess o’ hair.” —B+

Raining on the Mountain (Eureka!/Master of Cinema Region B Import)

Another super beau­ti­ful res­tor­a­tion of a fant­ast­ic King Hu movie — and my offi­cial review is here — and anoth­er faboo Tony Rayns com­ment­ary (although it’s funny to hear Rayns, usu­ally pretty gen­teel, refer to its prin­cip­al faux-monk char­ac­ters as “mer­cen­ary scum­bags.”) Rayns also drops some sur­pris­ing Jeff Bridges trivia. David Cairns’ excel­lent video essay takes a bio­graph­ic­al tack, dis­cuss­ing Hu’s “crav­ing for China” (he shot this in South Korea) and dis­cuss­ing how the female sword­fight­er had been pop­u­lar in Chinese silent cinema. Like Lee Khan in its ingeni­ous spa­tial rela­tions but dif­fer­ent, more abstract. —A+

Reflections in a Golden Eye (Warner Archive)

Warner Archive do movie cult­ists a sol­id by releas­ing this John Huston adapt­a­tion of  a Carson McCullers nov­el in two ver­sions: Huston’s Experiment in Color “Golden hue edi­tion” is pretty…interesting look­ing. Fucking spot­less too. And then there’s the normie col­or ver­sion the stu­dio put out when Huston’s exper­i­ment proved a bit of an ali­en­a­tion effect for audi­ences. Featuring Marlon Brando tor­tur­ing him­self as he starts to put on the pounds, and Elizabeth Taylor tor­tur­ing him and her­self, in a “I Dreamed I Was In A Nightmare Marriage In My Maidenform Bra” mode, Eye is a melo­drama so pecu­li­arly over­heated that why people give Boom! a hard time when this exists is bey­ond me. So, pretty great! —A

Romance on the High Seas (Warner Archive)

Now THIS is Technicolor. And Sir Lancelot is in it! (The calypso guy, not the knight. Come on.) An utterly trivi­al yet utterly per­fect 1948 construction/confection, gor­geously staged and shot. Made when dir­ect­or Michael Curtiz fan­cied him­self a tal­ent scout, and made Doris Day a star. She looks lus­cious and plays feisty, nev­er real­iz­ing that she’s got a date with des­tiny in the sexu­ally mag­net­ic per­son of Jack Carson. For whom she spurns Oscar Levant. The late ‘40s were odd. The sup­port­ing cast fea­tures Grady Sutton, Eric Blore, Franklin Pangborn, and S.Z. Sakall doing their delight­ful stuff at their career twi­lights, more or less. —A

 Woman Times Seven (Kino Lorber)

It’s weird to hear Bosley Crowther evoked with the impli­cit accus­a­tion of being too woke. But Kat Ellinger, fram­ing her com­ment­ary as a “defense of Italian com­edy,” dis­dains olé Boz here for bemoan­ing the way dir­ect­or Vittorio De Sica kicks around Shirley MacLaine in this 1967 sort-of antho­logy movie. Well,  just because it’s Italian com­edy doesn’t mean it gets off the hook for miso­gyny, and Crowther had a point. Whether MacLaine is por­tray­ing a wid­ow, a would-be adul­teress who learns the ropes from some pros­ti­tutes, or a fash­ion diva, she’s mainly asked to toggle between willed mouse­bur­ger or bitch. Lex Barker is in it. So is Alan Arkin. And Michael Caine. Shot in Paris, so that must have been nice. There’s wacky nud­ity, wigs, wigs, and wigs upon wigs. Very col­or­ful and very ‘60s, albeit very pre-May-’68 ‘60s for sure. Best watched in seg­ments, because as a movie in toto it’s pretty insuf­fer­able. —B-

Zu Warriors From The Magic Mountain (Eureka Region B import)

Tsui Hark’s amaz­ing 1983 pic­ture was a dir­ect influ­ence on John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. And as buoy­ant as Carpenter’s movie is, it’s still mild com­pared to this wacky account of vam­pires and dev­ils assault­ing the tit­u­lar moun­tain and meet­ing their match against magic swords and celes­ti­al powers. Or some­thing.  There’s a new weird lo-fi effect every 13 seconds or so. And the action is always furi­ous. As much fun as Hercules in the Haunted World. I may watch it again right now. —A+