When the sausage DOESN'T get made: Notes from an unfinished BR/4K Consumer Guide

So. Here I present some­thing of an Experiment in Blogging. (And it looks like blog­ging is going to make a comeback, thanks to, um, Elon Musk sorta? Or maybe not?) Back in late March of this year I star­ted work on anoth­er one of my SCR high-def disc Consumer Guides, because I heard the call, or some­thing. And I took notes on the discs I wanted to include and then…other things star­ted hap­pen­ing. The head­er of the doc went through from changes until it was ulti­mately this: “Late Spring/Early Summer/Ok, Midsummer 2022 BR/4K Consumer Guide Notes.” And now it’s November. And the doc is still sit­ting on my desktop, wag­ging its fin­ger at me, and I’ve got all sorts of oth­er work to do and not enough time to whip the notes into a prop­er Consumer Guide AND there’s also the issue that we’re now deal­ing with far few­er spanking-new titles than I gen­er­ally like to have in such pieces. So I thought: Why not just run the notes. So any of you who are actu­ally inter­ested might get a peek into my pro­cess and also  to flog the actu­al titles that are actu­ally great at least some­what? So here goes.  What’s blog­ging without a little risk-taking?

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

Adventures of Don Juan (Warner Archive)

Technicolor/amazing/ —A

 

Alfred Hitchcock Collection 4K Volume 2 (Universal)

A+

 

Born to Win (Fun City)

Very clean also gritty

Actually LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING, which it did not on stream­ing when I watched it for the De Niro book

De Niro is very good as plain­clothes cop

Beach scenes are really beautiful

The score is really excellent

—A+

 

Caligula & Messalina/Caligula: The Untold Story (Severin)

Ugh the horse­fuck­ing in the inter­na­tion­al cut of C&M

Untold: Virginity is a flower that must not be wasted

Hoo boy this is indul­gently rank

Kills a counsel’s son/This is a bad move

Grotty but a bit pro forma in spots. But it’s just warm­ing up

Old ladies did­dling young concubines/orgiasts eat­ing fried chick­en and such/D’Amato’s pat­en­ted anti-erotic touches

Some enchanted orgy: Spotting Laura Gemser

OH GOOD, Horse Masturbation “We must not avert our eyes” actu­ally no, that’s a good idea. AVOID 1:00 to 1:07

Limpdick fel­la­tio, always a cine­mat­ic treat/the dude finally man­ages, good for him

This is one long ass orgy scene

Torture “I want them to suf­fer more.”

Untold Story is so utterly depraved on every level that it makes makes Caligula and Messalina look like Quo Vadis. Okay not quite but

Supplements: “Girls like Laura Gemser who of course nev­er did porn, but showed off their beau­ti­ful bod­ies,” great observation

 Couldn’t keep his per diem because of casi­nos: Mark Shannon

“He’d do any­thing for a good fuck” — screen­writer Luigi Montefiore “I know there’s a shot of a woman pleas­ur­ing a horse, and I have to say it was not in my script.”

How on earth should I grade this?

Captains of the Clouds (Warner Archive)

Canadians! Alan Hale! Technicolor! The goofi­est miso­gyn­ist plot point!

Curtiz’s OTHER “it’s good to be in World War II” movie of 1942

Some awk­ward optic­al effects in fly­ing scenes but also some dynam­ic (second unit?) stuff   —A-

Death Wish II (Vinegar Syndrome)

Paul Talbott: “I’m obsessed with the Death Wish movies,” yikes

Thomas Del Ruth quit after the rape scene/This is just remark­ably trashy

The appalling rape scene. Oh that Michael Winner

Oy vey or just…wow?

This must have been a real comedown for Laurence Fishburne after Apocalypse Now

Inspirational dia­logue: “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing is wrong?”

59 was Bronson’s age at the time of the mak­ing of the movie

At about the hour mark you start think­ing, you know, there hasn’t been a rape or an attemp­ted rape in some time, so where is this movie GOING?

The three rap­ists dan­cing with each oth­er: at least they aren’t uptight about that sort of thing.

Oh, okay, then the bad guys chase a nurse and pull up her skirt, I was wor­ried for a minute/Gardenia’s opera glasses “Target practice”

Ah it’s Tony Franciosa, always welcome/ As police commish/“My wife goes to a mace class.”

So wait is THIS why they did Escape from LA after Escape from New York?

Hilarious ending/the aes­thet­ic prin­ciples of James Page Esquire

 — Ungradeable

De Sade (Scorpion)

 Action packed! Fleeing on horse­back! AN AIP pic­ture! Dope (and goo­fily las­ci­vi­ous) anim­ated titles! Anna Massey/Not super great image/some stutter/A poten­tially inter­est­ing frame device that in the hands of a more engaged dir­ect­or yada yada yada/

On the oth­er hand, why insult Anna Massey? A mar­riage anti-comedy

Dullea mak­ing goofy faces while being drenched in wine shot through red gel

Tim Lucas com­ment­ary is the best thing about it “most ambi­tious production” 

6 mil­lion holy moley!

Salvador Dali was sup­posed to do the titles

Lots of “what might have been” stuff/Comparisons with…Somewhere in Time, whoa.

Hardy Kruger’s daughter/Lucas calls his com­ment­ary a “defense” but he doesn’t come off as pas­sion­ate about its quality

— B+

The Devil’s Trap (Second Run) 

Striking, of course. Director  Frantisek Vlacil achieves the ideal of Scorsese’s fly­ing cam­era, rather like that of Andrei Rublev

The bee sounds in the under-soundtrack/

imper­fect mater­i­als but looks great for the most part

Striking juxtapositions/the miller’s son and a romantic rival fight­ing inter­cut with the priest calmly sit­ting at a sort of pic­nic table

Not as overtly “far out” as the oth­er pic­tures in the tri­logy but a trip nev­er­the­less. This is what a “vis­ion­ary” dir­ect­or does, kids

— A+

Double Indemnity (Criterion 4K Ultra)

4K ank­let boost: check

4K angora sweat­er boost: check

This really is a hella dark movie — A+

 

Edgar G. Ulmer Sci-FI Collection (Kino Lorber)

Planet X: Dark and fake back­drops, black “Let us con­cen­trate on this remark­able object.”

Time Barrier: The light to X’s dark/the graph­ic beacons

Transparent Man: Holocaust scientist

Each pic­ture becomes a little cham­ber melo­drama to some extent

Essential cinema — A+

Farewell, Friend (Kino Lorber) 

1.66/Bronson dubs in his own voice/Put this in know­ing noth­ing about it, didn’t even read the box copy/Admires Delon’s gun

DP Darbes, com­pet­ent enough/post Algiers Marseilles/Whoever’s dub­bing Delon is atrocious/dumb coin in glass trick

Put bear­er bonds BACK in a safe? It can’t be. The ostens­ible scheme is to put bear­er bonds BACK in this com­pany safe. I don’t care if you ARE Olga Georges-Picot, that’s not a scheme I’d tumble for.

Worst Xmas break ever.

Bronson shorts out the AC so they have to take off their shirts only it’s CHRISTMAS BREAK AND THEY’RE IN A BASEMENT

Figures in a Landscape, but indoors. And not as good —B-

Femme Fatale (Shout Factory) —A+

Flight of the Phoenix (Criterion)

 Good pic­ture, fun paper air­plane kit, great Gina T. essay

Weird how Aldrich gives his kid star billing pretty much right before killing his char­ac­ter — A

Grand Slam (Kino Lorber)

Shoddy, miso­gyn­ist, image all over the place, nice Rio loc­a­tions. Who said this was good? Klaus Kinski plays a creep, who’d have guessed?  There’s no sus­pense if the guys pulling off the heist are assholes who you’d actu­ally LIKE to see get caught…but there’s a twist! — B-

 Heavy Metal 4K (Sony)

The new audio is amaz­ing, the image is pretty…well, as ster­ling as it could get — A

Lancelot du Lac (Gaumont)

2018 res­tor­a­tion

Fast open­ing

Like Pickpocket

“mer­veil­leux” aventures

Weird viol­ence

“The Grail eludes us. There was only blood and death.”

Shutting down the round table. All is lost from the start.

“Give us a pur­pose” Pile of knights: a junkyard

Unsubtitled sup­ple­ment: Hervé Gauville/I almost under­stand much of what he is say­ing— A+

 

Legend of the Lost (Kino Lorber)

Let me do the Hathaway math: only a few years after Niagara and Garden of Evil /Cardiff’s chapter in Magic Time/Ben Hecht script

The Kurt Kaszner stuff is Hecht tak­ing up unused notes for To Have and Have Not

Cardiff: “I can’t ima­gine any­one less like an Arab pros­ti­tute than Sophia Loren”

looks good, not great, (dis­solves are a little dupey) no extras

The Roman city dis­cov­ery scene is rather striking

Brazzi is super horny (rapey in fact) “I made you…virtuous”

The drama is mostly Brazzi or Loren los­ing their shit and Wayne yelling at them. This wears thin in a 1 hr 50 minute movie — B

 Paris When It Sizzles (Paramount)

1964 Quine Holden Hepburn Axelrod

Bossa Nova score, it’s the hip thing.

Noël Coward imper­son­at­ing a heterosexual/Alcoholism of screen­writer played by Holden

“for all prac­tic­al pur­poses he’s on the wagon”

Clean image

Dissolves are good

Largely French sup­port cast and crew

Astaire sings an ori­gin­al song

Axelrod takes the piss out of Bunuel E Angel

Rather delight­ful and some­times dreary

Fun cameos

“little per­son”

Look at this and Casino Royale and you get why some people were com­pletely shocked by Holden’s appear­ance in The Wild Bunch in 1969

 “That Face” both awk­ward and brilliant

The deus ex mach­ina of sleep­ing it off.

Inspirational dia­logue “Depravity can be ter­ribly bor­ing if you don’t smoke or drink” — A-

RoboCop  (Arrow 4K Ultra)

 THREE AUDIO COMMENTARIES/The fan three­some is light and fun and a little obsessive

How Ultimate Do You Like Your Ultimate Editions

Appropriately grainy

Gory as hell, and still rather upset­ting in that respect

In sev­er­al aspects it is pro­foundly depress­ing about the loss of self.

The “paste,” “Knock your­self out”

Really the only movie that got the 1980s in America on every level

Boy poor Leeza Gibbons just did not get it did she?

  — A+

Schizoid/X‑Ray (Vinegar Syndrome 4K)

Christopher Lloyd, Craig Wasson, Blonde Kinski drool­ing over his teen daugh­ter, guess he didn’t need to go full meth­od for that

Racism in the elevator/underfed stripper

 “ludicrous” —Psychotronic

Wasson at one point wears a white jump­suit like that of Townshend on “Who Came First” “Relax…I’m a main­ten­ance man.”

What do women want? To sleep with their ther­ap­ist after wit­ness­ing him make a bizarro quasi-incestuous scene at din­ner with his daugh­ter, apparently

Herrmann ripoff score

An excel­lent 4K ren­der­ing of an often dingy-looking film

“the concept came because I walked into a Mel’s Diner and I ran into Menachem Golan’s wife”  offer in January, “Shooting by March”

X Ray: 1961, Harold’s valentine, humiliation/Kills the little brother/Yeesh/Oh the fakeouts once she enters the hospital.

Is HAROLD the obsess­ive jan­it­or? How come he grew up to be ten years older than Susan? Oh anoth­er fakeout

“Didn’t I see your name on a checkup res­ult?” You can tell the screen­writer really did his homework

Weirdest x‑ray ever

The cam­era dolly that whis­pers, “yes, you will see Barbi Benton top­less, you will, just wait”

Cannon fol­lies

Ungradeable

Singin’ In The Rain (Warner 4K)

Whenever I men­tion my favor­ite movies I’m always quick to bring up Psycho, Repulsion, Stalker, that kinda thing and I think this reflex gives people a skewed impres­sion of me that I don’t really worry about too much these days — I’m 62, how many more CRUCIAL IMPRESSIONS am I gonna make on people? — but still. So let me state unequi­voc­ally and unam­bigu­ously that this too is one of my all-time favor­ite pic­tures and I have enjoyed it with nearly all of the people I’ve been close with in my life from my mom to my school friends to my room­mates to my sib­lings to my wife. And my cats too. So this edi­tion which is so utterly beau­ti­ful means and awful lot to me.

Green: “I was work­ing with the best people in the world”

A sorta round robin commentary

Behlmer: Oscar Levant was sup­posed to get the Donald O’Connor part —A+

Stone (Severin Bluray) 

That She-Devils on Wheels wire decap­it­a­tion trick nev­er gets old, does it.

Ye Olde Biker Funeral

This wastes no time with things blow­ing up and going off cliffs and such.

Lots of RIDING

Real sat­ur­ated col­ors here. Dr. Death gives the benediction

Undercover scheme

One of the bikers is named Bad Max

The invest­ig­a­tion in which ordin­ary work­ing people com­plain about the bikers is priceless.

Ocean sun­rise scene is incredible/A really unusu­al pic­ture, not neces­sar­ily what you expect. A bit gross when it gets excess­ive but worth a view. — A

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony)

This is the fea­ture length ver­sion of Peter Sellers hit­ting his arm in Dr. Strangelove

Is this the shortest MCU film ever? Is it even an MCU film? How do I find this out? Do I care? 

Wait I saw the first Venom and have no idea what is going on here.

De-aged Woody Harrelson looks like he did in…1996?

“I heard the writ­ten word hasn’t been work­ing out so well…”

San Francisco loc­a­tion = motor­cycle lev­it­at­ing over a hill

“We are wast­ing our talent!”

Woody Harrelson’s eccent­ric pro­nun­ci­ation of “ori­gin”

I hon­estly don’t believe pris­on inmates would applaud this guy

I didn’t like any of this Natural Born Killers type stuff the first time around so, you know

Really a waste of Naomie Harris

More CLIMBING

Rather incon­sequen­tial, pos­sible because of its need to dove­tail into some Spider Man shit…

Blooper reel does not live up to whatever you ima­gined its poten­tial to be — B