Blu-ray and 4K Consumer Guide, "Laser Joe" Memorial Edition

Equipment: Sony UBp-X800 multi-region 4K play­er, Sony KD50X690E dis­play, Yamaha RXV-385 A/V receiver.

Alligator (Shout Factory 4K Ultra)

Back in the early 2000s, my col­leagues at Première thought it would be a good idea to entrust a fea­ture on the Ten Greatest Sex Scenes in Cinema to me and me alone, and since at the time I was still addicted to my own clev­erness, such as it was, I put the David Hemmings/Veruschka photo shoot scene from Blow-Up, in which no actu­al sex, sim­u­lated or not sim­u­lated, occurs, at the top spot. The magazine’s media book­er put me on whatever show Anderson Cooper was host­ing on CNN at the time to bang the drum for the piece and the magazine in gen­er­al. I didn’t want to go on. I was feel­ing fat, and I couldn’t put togeth­er an out­fit that would accom­mod­ate a tie, and I just didn’t want to go. On the plus side, the stu­dio was just a short walk from the office. I got there, got made up, and went to the green room with a com­pli­ment­ary can of Diet Coke. Anderson’s guest before me was this big beefy dude who was talk­ing about how con­ver­sion ther­apy changed his life. I stood there in the green room lounge watch­ing the seg­ment with a skep­tic­ally cocked eye­brow. On the couch sat a young woman with a blonde bouffant hairdo wear­ing some­thing not unlike a prom dress. The guy on the screen was detail­ing the depred­a­tions of the homo­sexu­al life­style. “I was a homosexual…a viol­ent homosexual…I had sex with strangers in pub­lic restrooms…I did drugs…” Impressed, I said to the screen, “Dude…” And the woman on the couch snapped, “That’s my hus­band.”

“How’s that work­ing out for you?” I asked. Kind of rude, but it was the first thing that came into my head, and such was my mood any­way. A little later, when the Formerly Violent Homosexual was through, they cor­ralled me upstairs. As the seg­ment star­ted, Cooper, in his ami­able way, laid into me. “A lot of old movies on this list,” he said, cit­ing Blow-Up as the main offend­er. While not a math whiz, I made some men­tal cal­cu­la­tions and poin­ted out that Anderson and the Antonioni film were pre­cisely the same age (OK, Blow-Up was maybe a year older). Ever since then I’ve pondered the ques­tion of how old a movie has to get before it can legit­im­ately be con­sidered old.

So: Alligator, dir­ec­ted by Lewis Teague, star­ring Robert Forster, writ­ten by John Sayles, released 1980. Here in a 4K Ultra form scanned from the ori­gin­al neg­at­ive, which is how experts such as Robert A. Harris like it.  An under-the-wire entry in the 1984 Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (as too, one infers, was 1981’s Dead And Buried.) My old friend Joseph F. (also known as “Laser Joe” by the cli­en­tele at Tower Video in Paramus) and I were not, as a rule, big fans of revi­sion­ism in genres. So we ten­ded to mis­trust comed­ic hor­ror pic­tures. Unless they had a con­nec­tion — by lin­eage or oth­er­wise — with the Corman hor­ror com­ed­ies of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s such as Little Shop of Horrors and A Bucket of Blood. While Alligator was not dir­ectly affil­i­ated, both script writer John Sayles and dir­ect­or Lewis Teague were more or less straight out of the Corman dugout. And as Jaws rip-offs went it had a spiffy concept (adap­ted from the urb­an myth about toilet-flushed baby water beasts grow­ing to giant pro­por­tions and roam­ing city sew­ers), and, as we would dis­cov­er, a tidy, blood-soaked exe­cu­tion. And look at that cast! Robert Forster! Jack Carter! Michael Gazzo! Henry Silva!

The 4K Ultra disc looks great — flaw­less col­or and detail. The fla­vor of a well-crafted low-budget pic­ture is entirely there. Cinematic innov­a­tions include a toilet’s eye view of a baby alligator (named Ramon!) being flushed. Indirectly the whole thing turns out to be the fault of the herpetologist/love interest played by Robin Riker. Forster is reli­ably him­self while Silva is very funny as an effete Quint vari­ant. This movie’s only 42, but it actu­ally feels old to me in a way that Blow-Up, say, does not. But pleas­antly so in any event, like a long­time pal. — A+

The Brain Eaters (Shout Factory)

Psychotronic cat­nip from the title down. This barely-a-feature from 1958 starts off ultra-strong with gor­geous gray scale semi-abstract paint­ings back­ing the open­ing cred­its. (The cred­its were by Paul Julian, a fact I gleaned from the invalu­able Tim Lucas’ great review of this disc, of which you ought to avail your­self.) The trans­fer shows a lot of grain but I reck­on accur­ately so. If authen­t­ic sad­ist­ic cinema, per Benayoun, steeps the view­er in an atmo­sphere of per­di­tion, this strain of genre pic­ture steeps one in an atmo­sphere of nar­cot­ized wooz­i­ness and clammy unease. Like the out-of-step-by-a-beat walk­ing bass line of the Pere Ubu song “Chiller!” (fea­tur­ing audio of a no-doubt-TV-derived soundtrack of a movie that could be, but is not, this one), The Brain Eaters stumbles about when not hit­ting on bizarre moments of slap-you-awake shock. As when the pro­nounce­ment “The mayor’s back!” motiv­ates a quick cut to the may­or hav­ing a hand-shaking men­tal break­down and try­ing to put a gun to his head. Essential. — A+

Escape From L.A. (Paramount 4K Ultra)

On its announce­ment — as a the­at­ric­al release, back in 1997, we did not under­stand the point of this movie’s exist­ence. I mean, 1981’s Escape From New York was a pretty poin­ted and entirely self-contained piss-take. The Big Apple was still in its ostens­ibly scary and blighted graffiti-splattered iter­a­tion. Making it into a lit­er­al sci-fi dysto­pia was an amus­ing con­ceit even if you lived there for real at the time. (Which I didn’t, yet. But five days a week Joseph took the bus from Dumont to the Port Authority, and then the 6 train down to 23^rd Street to attend SVA classes. That coun­ted for some­thing.) To come back 16 years later and say “Okay, Los Angeles sucks too” felt like a weak move, a dilu­tion of the ori­gin­al “vis­ion.” And it’s not as if any of the film­makers were split­ting from Hollywood, either.

Maybe I was/am overthink­ing this. John Carpenter’s 1996 pic­ture, co-written with Debra Hill and star Kurt Russell, who I sus­pect was lean­ing ever so slightly left in his liber­tari­an­ism at the time, is a bouncy and largely comed­ic near-sendup of the dysto­pia genre, with a fair amount of reward­ing action/exploitation goods. An earth­quake and author­it­ari­an polit­ics = L.A. as a pris­on island and Hollywood self-parody. (Plastic sur­gery dis­asters, free-throw com­pet­i­tions; they’re in here. One won­ders how Russell’s Snake Plisken sinks his shots with no depth per­cep­tion. Because the eye­patch. You know.) There’s also, to an even great­er extent than Alligator, a truly (and delight­fully) random-ass sup­port­ing cast: Peter Fonda! Valeria Golino! Steve Buscemi! Bruce Campbell! Cliff Robertson! Peter Jason! Leland Orser! Amusingly enough the movie’s “now” is 2013.  It all boils down to being a com­ic book movie of the good sort. (Marvel indeed did a Snake com­ic book in 1997.) The pro­duc­tion design is droll but cheap, as the detail on this hand­some but hardly extras-laden 4K disc under­scores. Not essen­tial but fun. Inspirational dia­logue: “What are you here for?” “I was a Muslim in South Dakota.”  Also: “We’re going to Anaheim!” — A

 Expresso Bongo (Cohen)

The movie that taught at least two gen­er­a­tions how to mis­pro­nounce “espresso.” Also the ori­gin of the band name Tom Tom Club (here an actu­al nightclub). Laser Joe was a long­time lowkey fan of dir­ect­or Val Guest, par­tic­u­larly the getting-scarier-every-day 1961 The Day the Earth Caught Fire. This 1959 Guest pic­ture, pos­sibly a British-inflected riff on Sweet Smell of Success, is deft and pacey and more eccent­ric than it ini­tially looks. Right from the sharp open­ing cred­its, which print the tal­ent names all over the attrac­tions of an arcade, end­ing with one of the film’s co-writers, Wolf Mankowitz, dis­play­ing Guest’s cred­it on a sand­wich board. Laurence Harvey, play­ing a non­chal­antly sleazy wan­nabe tal­ent agent, really com­mits to his louche look — that skinny bow tie and so on. While not big on the verisimil­it­ude that was catch­ing on cour­tesy of the French New Wave, the movie’s con­trived milieu does give a coher­ent pic­ture of the strivers of Soho in this era. As Harvey’s dis­cov­ery, whom the agent names “Bongo,” Cliff Richard, oft dis­paraged by us Yanks, really does have some cha­risma. And Shadows fans (I’m one) will be grat­i­fied to recog­nize Hank Marvin as a mem­ber of Bongo’s back­ing band.  It IS a little dis­con­cert­ing when the movie turns into an actu­al music­al; one rarely expects to see Laurence Harvey break­ing out into song. But he does, as does Sylvia Sims and oth­ers. So yes, this is also an obvi­ous pre­curs­or to Absolute Beginners.  A faboo time cap­sule served up with a spot­less 2K scan. Inspirational dia­logue: “Look, def­in­itely no jazz.”  — A

The Godfather Trilogy (Paramount 4K Ultra)

This — mean­ing, to begin with, 1972’s The Godfather — was the movie that changed everything for us, really. As much if not more so than Mean Streets, because it was first. There is SO MUCH in it. The char­ac­ter dynam­ics — which we recog­nized in at least small part from our own Italian-American upbring­ings — are so intense and lively. The “don’t talk busi­ness at the table” bit hap­pens in less than two minutes and it’s amaz­ingly reveal­ing and fright­en­ing. Fredo going in to look at his ail­ing dad and hold­ing his knees togeth­er like that… It’s just immacu­late film­mak­ing and by film­mak­ing I mean all of it, act­ing sta­ging shoot­ing dir­ec­tion, dia­logue, it just kills. “Look how they mas­sacred my boy.” Jesus. Watching it fifty years later I’m staggered that this movie was made in my life­time. No won­der it haunts Coppola. Whose intro­duc­tion is lovely, by the way; gen­er­ous and soul­ful and truth­ful and he com­mem­or­ates his daugh­ter Sofia’s birth­day as much as he com­mem­or­ates the anniversary of the movie and you can see he’s so proud of her. Made me tear up a little.  Yes, Part II is a remark­able film but the first is the mir­acle, the precedent-setter. As to Part II: Pretty crafty, on learn­ing that Richard Castellano was out, to not just put Michael Gazzo in the cast but to remake the char­ac­ter; he’s not a proxy Clemenza and he’s also, at first, some­thing of an annoy­ing jack­ass. Also: Al Pacino look­ing at Troy Donahue in con­tempt is cinema semi­ot­ics gold. In the final ana­lys­is, yes, it really is very nearly as good as the first. The emo­tions are even more wrench­ing; what goes on between Pacino and Cazale is palp­able. And Strasberg is great. Have you seen, here and there, people who’ve decided they don’t like Strasberg as an act­ing teach­er, who go after him in this film, cit­ing it as evid­ence that he couldn’t “actu­ally” act? Christ. Are they watch­ing a dif­fer­ent movie? Why am I bitch­ing at you about this?  Maybe it’s just because I no longer have the friend I want to talk about these movies with, not to get maudlin. As for III, or Coda: Andy Garcia is often a great act­or but his per­form­ance here is ini­tially pitched between Joey Tribbiani and Cage at his most man­ic. (Inspirational line read­ing: “I say we hit back and take ZAZA OUT !!!”) He does settle in, but he was the first sore thumb I noticed in this pic­ture, which is a lot more lumpy than the first two but hardly a dis­aster.  It def­in­itely has its moments, many of them not dir­ectly con­nec­ted to the dieges­is so to speak: the cur­tains of a castle bed­room mov­ing in the wind as an Elvis Costello song blasts from the open win­dow, for instance. And some that cer­tainly are, like Michael’s con­fes­sion. And how about that Raf Vallone, huh?  I gotta give Puzo (and I pre­sume it’s Puzo all the way down the line) cred­it: he comes up with the best gang­ster names ever: Luca Brassi, Al Neri, Johnny Ola, Joey Zaza. I think all the pic­tures in this set look remark­able. The review­er at DoBlu.com poin­ted out a couple of instances of “frozen grain,” one being Diane Keaton’s face in the first pic­ture, start­ing at around the 13 minute mark, when Kay is remark­ing on Luca Brassi. Honestly I think those are actu­ally Keaton’s freckles. Which I’d nev­er noticed before. If I’m incor­rect I shall be very embar­rassed. — A+

The Halfway House (Severin)

One of those things Joseph and I might have giv­en a very skep­tic­al look at while DVD-trawling at a Chiller Expo. The kind of movie in which a woman brings in a pic­ture of her miss­ing rel­at­ive to a couple of detect­ives and one of them looks at the snap­shot and says “Nice tits,” and this is sup­posed to be a laugh line. Later, anoth­er cop intro­duces him­self as “Sergeant Sheen. Dick Sheen.” Soon fol­lows a sex scene in which the woman with the miss­ing rel­at­ive dis­plays her own nice, um, sec­ond­ary sexu­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics, and the thing that’s sup­posed to be funny is that she and Sergeant Sheen are deliv­er­ing expos­i­tion all through their exer­tions.  While this hor­ror com­edy has a 2004 release date, it is clearly hap­pily situ­ated in the mid-80s world of Dave De Coteau. Not sur­pris­ing, as dir­ect­or Kenneth J. Hall is a friend and past col­lab­or­at­or with the man. Anyway. This was shot on high-def video and it looks it; not bad for 2004, but there are instances when the images seem to be strug­gling to hit 1280. Mary Woronov plays a crazed nun. Of course. IMDb user review from 2006, head­lined “Campy Schlock Crap From The Writer Of ‘PUPPET MASTER:” “OH LORD this one sucks. Pseudo-Lovecraftian garbage with very little gore, a few tits (but NO full-frontal), hor­rible act­ing – oh Christ, I give up – the list of neg­at­ives about this film is just way too long and encom­passes just about every aspect of this piece of trash.” The kids have really got­ten very demand­ing in this cen­tury. On the plus side, the movie fea­tures a pre-Benedetta use of a reli­gious sculp­ture as dildo. Extras are min­im­al (the not rep­lic­ated director’s com­ment­ary from a pri­or edi­tion not­with­stand­ing, what is there really to say about the movie as such?) rel­at­ive to say, Night of the Demon (see below) which has a whole sep­ar­ate disc of them. But they’re not THAT min­im­al — the Hall and cast and crew inter­view is over 30 minutes. There’s also a trib­ute to Hall’s depar­ted broth­er Cleve, a close col­lab­or­at­or of the dir­ect­or. I sound pretty bitchy about this so I should add that I am not wholly unmoved by the schlock love that clearly motiv­ated this pro­duc­tion. — B

Labyrinth (Sony 4K Ultra)

Really pretty stag­ger­ing in the looks depart­ment. A genu­inely eccent­ric film too. Kid’s film trap­pings with YA lit­er­at­ure themes mak­ing for an inter­est­ing bal­an­cing act for the cre­at­ors. For folks like myself, the pup­pet mon­sters and Bowie are the draws. The pic­ture detail shows the seams in the ambi­tious spe­cial effects, which just makes you admire the ambi­tion all the more. From the mag­got pit of Phenomena (1985, see below) to this movie’s Bog of Eternal Stench (1986), lead act­ress Jennifer Connelly (okay, okay, she too is one of the draws for folks like myself) could not catch a break. In the aggreg­ate, there are more fart noises in this movie than in Blazing Saddles, I think. Most of the rel­at­ively gen­er­ous extras in this pack­age are on the second BR disc. The  Arif Mardin pro­duced Bowie songs are pretty much what you’d expect of such a col­lab­or­a­tion. — A+

Last Night In Soho (Universal 4K Ultra)

I’ve praised this movie else­where, and I remem­ber telling Joseph that I’d be inter­ested in hear­ing what he thought of it — he could go either way with con­tem­por­ary genre pic­tures, to be sure — but that won’t hap­pen now. Phooey. The 4K present­a­tion is just as one would both hope and expect with a new pro­duc­tion, that is, spec­tac­u­larly close to the the­at­ric­al ver­sion. Extras include two com­ment­ar­ies, one with Wright and edit­or Paul Machliss and com­poser Steven Price, anoth­er with Wright and Cairns. They are prop­erly ener­get­ic and wonky. The oth­er supps are EPK Goes To Film School, so to speak, show­ing off Wright’s aston­ish­ing tech­nic­al com­mand and resource­ful­ness. Deleted scenes are a little over 9 minutes total and not without interest. — A+

Mister Majestyk (Kino)

Nothing says gritty like an open­ing shot of the title char­ac­ter leav­ing a gas sta­tion rest room. It’s actu­ally a plot point, set­ting up M. Majestyk as anti-racist, and good for him. A lovely young woman whom Charles Bronson’s title char­ac­ter assists in get­ting access to the sink (Linda Cristal) intro­duces her­self as Nancy Chavez, “Not related to the oth­er Chavez.” So Bronson’s got 160 acres of water­mel­on ready to be cut, and Bobby Kopas, evil labor exploiter, wants to tell him who he can or can’t hire. But this isn’t the main thrust of the plot, as it hap­pens. (And if you think film crit­ics today are snobs, back when this first came out nearly every review I read made snarky sport of the watermelon-farming angle, for real.) That hap­pens when Majestyk goes to the pokey and gets thrown in with a highly volat­ile gang­ster played by Al Lettieri.  The pretty spec­tac­u­lar shoot out about 20 minutes in is the con­vin­cer that this Dick Fleischer pic­ture isn’t inter­ested in wast­ing any time. This story is from an Elmore Leonard script that the author later nov­el­ized, and rather inter­est­ingly, here Leonard the screen­writer doesn’t invest in ultra-vivid-hood dia­logue the way Leonard the nov­el­ist did. And it doesn’t really mat­ter. I didn’t get Charles Bronson as a teen — I was about to turn fif­teen when this came out, and almost as snobby as your aver­age watermelon-farming-disparaging crit­ic — but Joseph always waved the flag for the guy’s per­sona, which was so tacit­urn as to make Clint Eastwood look like William F. Buckley. Eventually I got it. And I dig this pic­ture, and the new trans­fer, which really pops out those highly sat­ur­ated 70s col­ors. (In an onscreen extra, cine­ma­to­graph­er Richard Kline is still excited to dis­cuss his work on the pic­ture.) Bronson bio­graph­er Paul Talbot con­trib­utes an enthu­si­ast­ic com­ment­ary too. “Bronson had pier­cing green eyes — that was part of his per­sona.” Well, Paul, that was actu­ally part of his phys­ic­al makeup. He also dis­cusses the “no mus­tache, no Bronson” rule. And tells a filthy story about Lettieri, say­ing “He had two young hook­ers with him he had brought to ser­vice the crew.” (No won­der he died of a heart attack at age 47.) Lee Purcell, on the oth­er hand, in an on-camera inter­view, remem­bers Lettieri as a devoted hus­band look­ing for­ward to the birth of his child. Oh well. He was a man, take him for all and all, we shall not look upon his like again, etc. Good Blu-ray. —A

Monster From Green Hell (Film Detective)

Whoa, those giant anim­ated stop motion fly­ing insects men­acing rear-projected stock foot­age in this perky 1957 mon­ster cheapie are some­thing else. Also fea­tured: colo­ni­al­ist racism, which is cour­tesy of stock foot­age as well, and also of King and Brower’s 1939 Stanley and Livingstone.  Some of it — and by “it” I mean the non-effects mater­i­al — looks really great in terms of detail and con­trast. The bet­ter to enjoy some of the weird­est pro­duc­tion design ever (the lab with the sloped win­dows look­ing out on the desert moun­tain, with a brand new car parked just out­side). The mon­ster comes in a stop motion mini­ature mod­el and, like Kong in his debut film, a full size head. Also, here, full size pin­cers. Kong did not have pin­cers. The Kenneth Hall film saves the “best” effects work for over 50 minutes in. The whole thing ends with a fab­ulously ridicu­lous tin­ted sequence. Maven Steven Bissette’s com­ment­ary is enga­ging and pretty thor­ough. As home-grown res­tor­a­tion out­fits go, Film Detective is an exem­plary enter­prise that has a pleas­ingly ran­dom cata­log (their pri­or release was 1947’s The Fabulous Dorseys). Their digit­al cleanups aren’t likely to blow you away, but if you have any feel for the film col­lect­or aes­thet­ic as it is expressed herein, they’ll make you happy. Inspirational dia­logue: “Nature has a way of cor­rect­ing its own mis­takes.” — A-

Night of the Demon (Severin)

Another piece of rare schlock you’d find in a poor quasi-boot at a Chiller Expo, or so I like to ima­gine. (Much of its notori­ety derives from its hav­ing been clas­si­fied as a “video nasty” in Great Britain.) Hence, the fant­ast­ic image qual­ity here comes off as more of a shock than is some­times cus­tom­ary. I was nev­er one for Bigfoot movies and this 1980 item did not con­vert me, but it cer­tainly kept me engaged in a mor­bid curi­os­ity kind of way. The spe­cial effects are really gross.  The approach, it seemed, was for an act­or to hold a pack­age of offal to the “stump” of whatever limb the big­foot had torn off, and let it droop and drip. Yuck. The score by Dennis McCarthy is very Manos to start — flute driv­en and such — but then the synths come in. (In end cred­its, one Stuart Hardy is cred­ited with the score. I’m so con­fused.) Director James C. Wasson makes some genu­inely odd shot choices, cut­ting to the ceil­ing of a van after Bigfoot snatches the dude hav­ing sex therein, and the van’s bloody wind­shield after.  It’s also got a weird struc­ture, jug­gling flash­backs and oppor­tun­ist­ic dream sequences among a wide range of pecu­li­ar char­ac­ters. The penis–tearing-off scene is very John Waters. And through­out, the blood looks like a kind of hot sauce. The pic­ture often feels like a weird high/low point of region­al film­mak­ing at a par­tic­u­lar point in time. Except it was made in L.A. by a dir­ect­or who’d later get into gay porn. (“How do you know about that?” he asks the inter­view­er in a pretty enter­tain­ing sup­ple­ment.) Inspirational dia­logue: “Officials found this cam­era with the film in it. But no trace of the people.” — A

No Way To Treat A Lady (Shout Factory)

Like Wait Until Dark, this movie scared the beje­sus out of my moth­er when I was a kid. 1967/68 was a good time for scar­ing the beje­sus out of my moth­er I guess. I was suf­fi­ciently impressed that I still haven’t seen Dark and I only just watched this for the first time on the spiffy Shout Factory Bluray, which prop­erly puts across how pro­duc­tion design and cine­ma­to­graphy in urban-set con­tem­por­ary pic­tures was then start­ing to hew to a slightly drab real­ism. Anyway, sorry mom, but it did not scare the beje­sus out of me. The con­cep­tion of the killer hasn’t aged well — stran­gler as walk­ing audi­tion reel, but Rod Steiger makes a meal of it, includ­ing Ye Olde Homophobic Hairdresser Caricature. That’s anoth­er reas­on I didn’t see this movie at first — when I was a kid I really couldn’t stand Rod Steiger. I some­how got it into my head that he was a slob in real life, and I was very con­fused as to how he could be mar­ried to that nice, refined Claire Bloom. Boy did I have a lot to learn. Maybe if I’d seen this earli­er my mis­con­cep­tions would have been a little straightened out, as he really does act it up here. “You should hear my W.C. Fields some time, it’s abso­lutely uncanny,” he taunts cop George Segal. Prophetic words, as Steiger would play the man — Fields, not Segal — in 1976. As to the killer’s actu­al iden­tity, wow, did William Goldman (on whose nov­el this is based) have a bad exper­i­ence with a Broadway theat­er man­ager? And what about his rela­tion­ship with his moth­er? Poor Eileen Heckart has to enact a Jewish moth­er that even Philip Roth might con­sider a bit much. The pic­ture picks up as it becomes more pro­ced­ur­al, the double female imper­son­at­or scene with Kim August (at Joe Allen’s) is a real eye-opener. As are scenes of the super­fresh Lee Remick con­duct­ing tours around a still-under con­struc­tion Lincoln Center. In the sole extra, dap­per film crit­ic Kim Newman provides a cogent and inform­at­ive appre­ci­ation of the movie, point­ing out a Theater of Blood ana­logy; my two cents are that Vincent Price’s gay hairdress­er bit wasn’t nearly as poin­tedly nasty as what Steiger does here. — A-

Phenomena (Synapse 4K Ultra)

This has a 1.66 aspect ratio, so I guess it’s Dario Argento’s most art-film hor­ror. It begins with a killing, of course, the lush greens of the ostens­ibly Swiss hills giv­ing way to a grimy window’s view of a water­fall and a pur­pose­fully grainy grue­some slow motion shot. That delib­er­ate effect aside, the 4K present­a­tion here is spot­less and beau­ti­ful. In Argento’s cut there’s a moody slow­ness that lets the more out­ré points of the storyline settle in. The movie fre­quently riffs on De Palma’s Carrie but unlike Brian, Dario here really believes in inno­cence, and makes Jennifer Connelly’s char­ac­ter a ver­it­able angel. To these old eyes the FX shot of insects swarm­ing around the girl’s school looks faboo. I haven’t explored this multi-disc set in its entirety yet but what I’ve already seen war­rants the grade I’m giv­ing it. I remem­ber try­ing to see the U.S. release of this (mutil­ated from 106 minutes to 83 by New Line, who also retitled it Creepers) in Wayne with Joseph in the late sum­mer of 1985, only to be turned away from the box office because we were the only tick­et buy­ers and the theat­er man­ager didn’t think it was worth his while to run the pro­ject­or for just two pat­rons. That’s bush league theat­er man­age­ment for you. — A+

Repeat Performance (Flicker Alley)

“Is Repeat Performance really a film noir?” Eddie Mueller asks in a good intro to this restored 1947 rar­ity. A few months back (or a few years back, who can keep track in this eco­nomy) I got pedant­ic on Twitter and, using Out of the Past as my tem­plate, held forth on how a true noir needs implac­able fate and a femme fatale, and that I was get­ting kind of fed up with every polici­er being called a noir these days. Anyway, Performance sure is not a polici­er, it’s a quasi-supernatural tale of “if I could do it all again” that has to pull the trick of mak­ing sure that likable Joan Leslie doesn’t have to go to jail like the Production Code would say she would oth­er­wise. Directed by the workmanlike-and-often-better-than-that Alfred Werker, it’s pretty absorb­ing stuff. Albeit not a 100-percent noir, let’s say. The fatal­ist angle is damn strong, the redol­ence of noir is def­in­itely there. The depic­tion of a theatrical-milieu quasi bohemia is kinda like The Seventh Victim with money, etc. all very com­mend­able. And the res­tor­a­tion looks fab­ulous. Leslie’s char­ac­ter at one point encour­aging Louis Hayward’s char­ac­ter to have a drink is a real good grief moment. Also fun: “It’s William Williams, the poet,” said of Richard Basehart by Natalie Schafer. (Interestingly — and I swear I’m not mak­ing this up — I was hav­ing lunch at the counter at Hiram’s in Fort Lee last Friday, after vis­it­ing my mother’s grave, and one of the oth­er guys at the counter was wax­ing rhaps­od­ic over Schafer. “A lot of guys go for Ginger or Mary Ann, but give me ‘Lovey’ any time,” he pro­nounced. He then averred that Schafer was a multi-millionaire at the mid-point of her career, due to real-estate invest­ments, and didn’t need to act when she took the Gilligan’s Island gig. And that she donated a lot to the Lillian Booth Actor’s Home [this is con­firmed by Wikipedia]. And that John Lennon wrote “Lovey Do” as a trib­ute to her [this is not con­firmed by Wikipedia]. Again, I’m not mak­ing this up.) My friend Farran Smith Nehme, look­ing good and talk­ing sense, con­trib­utes an appre­ci­ation of Leslie, and the com­ment­ary by Nora Fiore (aka The Nitrate Diva) is crisply delivered, offer­ing astute ana­lys­is, inter­est­ing anec­dotes, and wise­cracks. Inspirational dia­logue: ”I feel won­der­ful except for my legs!” — A+

Stage Fright (Warner Archive)

One of the most pecu­li­ar pas­sages in Hitchcock/Truffaut is when Truffaut whales on Alastair Sim apro­pos this 1950 pic­ture. “I objec­ted to the act­or as well as to the char­ac­ter,” Truffaut says, and Hitchcock just rolls over: “Here again is the trouble with shoot­ing a film in England. They all tell you, “He’s one of our best act­ors; you’ve got to have him in your pic­ture.’ It’s that old loc­al and nation­al feel­ing, that insu­lar men­tal­ity again.” The dude was still alive (he died in 1976, about ten years after the book’s first edi­tion). Of course the thing that’s most objec­ted to in the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is the movie’s false flash­back. Which is itself a pretty snappy fif­teen minute mini-movie of death, pur­suit, and escape. And, among oth­er things, sees our maes­tro try­ing to get a diop­ter effect through rear-projection. Truffaut said to Hitchcock that this movie did noth­ing to add to the director’s “prestige” and he’s not wrong if you want to be that way about it, but if we learn any­thing in Today’s Hitchcock Studies it’s that not one of his films does not con­tain essen­tial points of interest. This has some stand­ard Hitchcock fea­tures in vari­ous stages of devel­op­ment, includ­ing an incho­ate change-of-identity theme. In the absence of stand­ard sus­pense we get a series of mor­al cork­screws, and chal­lenges to affin­ity. For instance, although the ever-grand Marlene Dietrich is (spoil­er alert) the mur­der­er, the way Sim hounds her with the blood­ied doll in the fair scene is genu­inely abom­in­able. As for wheth­er the false flash­back works, or is even per­miss­ible at all, Chabrol and Rohmer as usu­al were right the first time around: “The rev­el­a­tion of the lie is at the heart of the story. Far from being an arti­fice, the lying account is the very basis of the film. In this light the arabesques them­selves lose their appar­ent gra­tu­it­ous­ness, since they are vari­ations on the theme of inno­cence.” The only extra on this Warner Archive present­a­tion — the trans­fer is nev­er less than fab — is a Laurent Bouzerau 2004 pro­duced doc with Robert Osborne, Peter Bogdanovich, super­fan Richard Franklin, cranky Richard Schickel try­ing to look agree­able, and more, and in which the clips from the movie look like abso­lute crap,  which under­scores how good the actu­al present­a­tion here looks.  Alternate title: How I Found A Better Boyfriend. Inspirational dia­logue: “Double gin and lem­on. Not too much lem­on.” — A

A Star Is Born (Warner Archive)

The 1937 ori­gin­al, and this Warner Archive present­a­tion will con­vince you that it’s still the greatest. Staggering. I’d for­got­ten it opens with a wolf howl­ing. I quite dug the Hollywoodized Willa Cather stuff with grandma: “We burned in sum­mer and we froze in winter!” This recre­ation of Technicolor is just mag­ni­fi­cent. It is an amaz­ing edi­tion but it’s JUST TOO SAD TO WATCH! Definitely, to my mind, the sad­dest of the four (but Cukor’s is of course a very close second). Director William Wellman serves up Hollywood self-hatred at its most poin­ted, but still deliv­ers an earn­est no biz like show biz end­ing. Are this and Rebecca Selznick’s best movies? Discuss. Alternate title: More About Alcoholism. — A+

 The Three Musketeers (Warner Archive)

Joseph and I and so many of our con­sort from the 1980s on were real fiends for Technicolor, which only star­ted look­ing good on home video when laser­discs came along. For some time the con­sensus was that a Japanese laser disc of Vincent Sherman’s 1948 The Adventures of Don Juan, star­ring Errol Flynn and Vivica Lindfors, was the best present­a­tion of the format, so we all paid through the nose for that, and enjoyed the sump­tu­ous­ness, while also wish­ing the thing had been dir­ec­ted by Michael Curtiz.  Nowadays the Warner Archive and Criterion people do an abso­lute bang-up job with Technicolor, quite a bit more often than not. It’s a ver­it­able golden age. With this disc, of a George Sidney pic­ture also from 1948, you get the dose right away, and you also notice that in the open­ing cred­its those arms hold­ing up swords for two minutes have poor actu­al humans attached to them. This looks incred­ible through­out. It’s a slightly goofy movie over­all, some­times more prat­fall than action ori­ented. But in a pleas­ant enough way. Gene Kelly doesn’t so much play D’Artagnan as play Gene Kelly play­ing D’Artagnan. After a bit one may start chuck­ling at all those sword­fights facing the Pacific Ocean.  Kelly going all SuperWolf over June Allyson is about as MGM as any MGM film gets. George Sidney dir­ects. June is a bit more hotsy totsy than is cus­tom­ary. She, Marie Windsor (in a single close-up), Patricia “Funky Cold” Medina, Angela Lansbury and Lana Turner make this a real (elab­or­ately cos­tumed) babefest. The storytelling is a mod­el of Hollywood nar­rat­ive dis­patch. Good Tex Avery car­toon too. Inspirational dia­logue: “It takes a good man to pre­vent a cata­strophe, my lady. And a great man to make use of one.”— A+

The Vampire Lovers (Scream Factory) 

Not much to say here, except to thank Shout!/Scream Factory for the con­scien­tious update of a canon­ic­al release that is also the abso­lute quint­essence of Ingrid Pitt. How awe­struck were we by her back in 1970, and so we remain. The trans­fer here really pops, in all the ways it ought to. — A +

Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Touchstone 4K Ultra)

This is anoth­er movie that seemed like a mir­acle upon its 1988 release. It’s still plenty enga­ging, and invent­ive, and it def­in­itely trucks in myth­o­logy rather than IP grabbing…but seen from this vant­age point, it cer­tainly seems to con­tain the seeds of some­thing that became per­ni­cious. Also, the alleg­or­ic­al race angle the scen­ario trucks in feels weird and ali­en­at­ing, or maybe I should say more weird and ali­en­at­ing; I can’t hon­estly recall exactly what I thought about it back then, but I was uncom­fort­able. And I think that Bob Hoskins, who could gen­er­ally do no wrong, was dir­ec­ted into a corner by Robert Zemeckis. So…I did not enjoy revis­it­ing this as much as I’d anti­cip­ated, as it turns out. It’s still a land­mark, and still very enjoy­able in parts, and rel­at­ively tidy as super­pro­duc­tions go — not even 105 minutes. And of course it is a superb source of Richard Williams. Not to men­tion Mel Blanc and June Foray. And this disc looks beau­ti­ful.  Inspirational Wikipedia sen­tence: “Michael Eisner, then-CEO, and Roy E. Disney, vice-chairman of The Walt Disney Company, felt the film was too risqué with sexu­al ref­er­ences.”  — A

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (Warner Archive)

Boy, can you ima­gine try­ing to get away with a two-hour-and-20-minute CHILDREN’S MOVIE nowadays? I mean, I guess if you con­sider MCU pic­tures to be children’s movies, it hap­pens all the time, but I mean this sort of thing — a full on fairy-story antho­logy cum pas­teur­ized biop­ic. Come on. And it was a hit back in 1962. Maybe it was the Cinerama? Laurence Harvey as plays one bro, Karl Boehm is the oth­er. Man, Boehm was lucky to get this part after Peeping Tom, huh? The biop­ic part depicts the bro gram­mari­ans being upbraided for their dry out­put and soon dis­cov­er­ing the joys of enter­tain­ment for kids which is also folk­lore. This is a great present­a­tion of the kind of movie they really do not make any more AT ALL. The col­or! The light­ing! The stead­fast avoid­ance of close-ups of even stand­ard medi­um shots because of the Cinerama dimen­sions! It’s a really unusu­al mix of the cine­mat­ic and the­at­ric­al. One that reveals its co-director George Pal as one of the truest inher­it­ors of Melies. This is a two-disc set, one present­ing the Cinerama image in “Smilebox” format, and if you haven’t looked at such a thing in a while, it takes a little get­ting used to. And even the stand­ard widescreen ver­sion presents the implic­a­tion of a Cinerama curve, of course. Among its diverse com­pon­ents, the movie offers Terry Thomas AND Buddy Hackett in the same sequence. And they’re both excel­lent. And the dragon they battle is a cool dragon bro. A pic­ture of con­sid­er­able charm when you come down to it. And damn, those cobbler’s elves pup­pets. — A+