Inadvertently Black Friday Adjacent Blu-ray/4K Ultra Disc Consumer Guide, Autumn 2023

These things do take time. I star­ted col­lect­ing notes for this at the end of August and where are we now? Almost optim­ally placed for a pre-Black Friday Consumer Guide, although your shop­ping util­ity may vary. And in a couple of days the Severin Black Friday Sale stars, so for me, this pro­cess is, as Ruth Donnelly put it in Blessed Event, “like Tennyson’s brook — it nev­er ends.”

N.b.: I did not get through the latest and last volume of Universal’s 4K ren­der­ing of The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection in time for a coher­ent assess­ment but I’ve looked at both Rope and Torn Curtain and they are as spec­tac­u­lar as the oth­er reviews say. Very much look­ing for­ward to Topaz and Frenzy and of course the Vista Vision splendor of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Buy with confidence!

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

 American Pop (Sony)

The anim­at­or Ralph Bakshi is in many respects a hero­ic fig­ure, as an American artist who tried to drag anim­a­tion into some kind of Adult World even as the form, or at least the gate­keep­ers of the form, kicked and screamed res­ist­ance. While I hate to make this pro­nounce­ment while the man is still around to read it (not that I think he will, mind you), I have to say that in my dir­ect exper­i­ence of moviego­ing, par­tic­u­larly as a teen­ager, Bakshi as con­sist­ently the source of my greatest dis­ap­point­ments. He had the best, most for­ward ideas (includ­ing, yep, an anim­ated adapt­a­tion of Tolkien’s Ring series), and fol­lowed them up with exe­cu­tion that was either lackluster, crude, or spec­tac­u­larly wrong­headed. His fond­ness for roto­scop­ing fre­quently brought his work up short, I felt. But there was also some­thing in the qual­ity of his defi­ance to the aes­thet­ic forces that be, or were, as the case may be. American Pop, a scrappy fic­tion­al­ized his­tory of the evol­u­tion of pop­u­lar music as essen­tially a multi-generational crime story, exem­pli­fies the ulti­mately coarse nature of Bakshi’s vis­ion and reaches an apo­theosis of absurdity in its ulti­mate vis­ion of the rock star as street push­er. Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” isn’t quite the song that can sell this con­ceit, to say the least. The col­ors are vivid, some of the vul­gar­ity packs a genu­ine kick (par­tic­u­lar in the turn-of-the-19^th-cen­tury stuff [and isn’t it weird to have to spe­cify “19^th” when you bring up a cen­tury turn­ing nowadays?] with its over­stuffed women of the even­ing and man­ic pian­ists) but ulti­mately the movie, while con­stantly divert­ing in a way, is an encyc­lo­pe­dia of Ralph bring­ing you up short. —B+

Andrzej Zulawski: The Third Part of the Night/The Devil/On the Silver Globe (Eureka! Region B Blu-ray)

Watching the blood orgies and cru­ci­fix­ions at great heights that make up just some of the action of On The Silver Globe, a Zulawski novice might won­der wheth­er the per­son who com­mit­ted this imagery to cel­lu­loid isn’t con­fined in an insti­tu­tion of some sort. WE all like to talk a good “derange­ment of the senses” game but this stuff is…well, genu­inely dan­ger­ous. Anyway, not only was Andrzej Zulawski allowed to walk free (after a fash­ion) on this earth, but he also actu­ally nar­rates Silver Globe, provid­ing a meta-narrative about the film he could nev­er prop­erly com­plete. And at the very end he appears as a reflec­tion in a shop win­dow, look­ing com­posed enough. The dieges­is stuff — based on a sci-fi nov­el by Zulawski’s great uncle — was shot in the ‘70s, while Zulawski’s docent­ing accom­plished in the 80s; the final form was released in 1988. While the home-media debut of this monu­ment­al and con­tro­ver­sial It’s the main event of this spec­tac­u­lar box set, the oth­er two pic­tures included are no slouches either. His 1971 fea­ture debut, The Third Part of the Night, set in occu­pied Poland dur­ing the second World War, doesn’t have the story you might expect, and as such suc­ceeds in present­ing an unusu­ally dis­tinct­ive night­mare. 1972’s The Devil, set in the late 18^th cen­tury, pos­its, among oth­er things, that the evil we asso­ci­ate with the Dark One is already inside of us; the dev­il, as he’s called, just hands us the knife. Silver Globe gets the bounty of sup­ple­ments, includ­ing a doc­u­ment­ary on its mak­ing and a com­ment­ary by Daniel Bird that sets the stand­ard for such items as usu­al. Michael Brooke, in inter­views, provides fresh insights on the oth­er two films.  Spectacular restoration/presentation. Essential. — A+

Blood and Black Lace (Arrow 4K Ultra Disc)

GREAT GOD ALMIGHTY THIS LOOKS AMAZING. This is not super-big news, as the latest edi­tion presents the 4K res­tor­a­tion on a 4K Ultra disc. We’ve seen its earli­er iter­a­tion on Blu-ray, but now in nat­ive res­ol­u­tion it’s that much more more, and it’s mag­ni­fi­cent. This round with Mario Bava’s, ahem, sem­in­al but nev­er equaled giallo was my first time with the com­ment­ary, which was on the pri­or Blu-ray. Tim Lucas bring­ing it as usu­al, and it’s pleas­ing to note that over the years Tim’s deliv­ery of his splen­didly detailed and inform­at­ive scripts is get­ting less stiff. So in addi­tion to being fas­cin­at­ing, here he’s genu­inely a pleas­ure to listen to. And of course he wrote the book on the guy (Bava, that is), lit­er­ally. This pack­age seems like an unlikely source for inform­a­tion about the mar­it­al his­tory of Rosemary Clooney, but just you wait.  —A+

Christopher Strong (Warner Archive)

A plot right out of Evelyn Waugh, if Evelyn Waugh wrote romantic melo­dra­mas: unlikely lov­ers brought togeth­er by vile bodies/bright young things indul­ging in the height of frivolity, that is, an unusu­ally crass scav­enger hunt. (The actu­al source mater­i­al derives from the now-forgotten Gilbert Frankau.) Katharine Hepburn has nev­er been quite so damn Hepburny as in her third movie debut, dir­ec­ted with admir­able dis­patch and an even more, per­haps, admir­able straight face by Dorothy Arzner. Colin Clive is a little too Colin Clive to make an entirely cred­ible romantic lead, but his off-kilter qual­ity adds nice neur­ot­ic notes to the pro­ceed­ings. Which are both brisk and, shall we say, wrought almost to the point of over. All shot in a lumin­ous black and white that’s very hand­somely presen­ted here. One could say for Hepburn com­plet­ists only but really, why aren’t you a Hepburn com­plet­ist to begin with? — A

Contempt (Lionsgate 4K Ultra Disc)

A 4K Ultra disc of a recent and very fine res­tor­a­tion is a no-brainer. So give Lionsgate cred­it for trans­fer­ring Godard’s remark­able 1963 poison-pen missive to pro­du­cers, and valentine to Fritz Lang, on to slabs of plastic and met­al. As for the menus, the absence of extras, and so on, they are a monu­ment to “per­func­tory.” “Cineastes de notre temps? Never heard of it!”  — A+ for image, B- for everything else

The Devil Doll (Warner Archive)

Physical media has yiel­ded a bump­er crop of Tod Browning recently, between this and the Criterion triple fea­ture headed by Freaks, which nat­ur­ally gets the highest recom­mend­a­tion pos­sible. This 1936 oddity is his second-to-last pic­ture, and its driv­ing premise, believe it or not, was reit­er­ated in Alexander Payne’s 2017 Downsizing. Lionel Barrymore takes the people-shrinking tech­no­logy co-developed by his fel­low Devil’s Island escapee and uses it for evil ends, or at least venge­ful ends — the guys he’s tak­ing revenge on were stinkers. The movie’s defin­ing atmo­sphere is estab­lished with the daugh­ter of the escapee sci­ent­ist play­ing goth organ as her moth­er works in a lab full of vile foam­ing liquids. The mom’s got a Bride of Frankenstein white streak in her updo, natch. Erich Von Stroheim worked on the scen­ario, not that you’d guess. The image qual­ity is lovely sil­very stuff. The optical-printer effects show­ing mini­atur­ized anim­als and people is not dis­sim­il­ar to what we saw in Bride, now that we think of it. New sup­ple­ments are rar­it­ies on Warner Archive releases but this has a sol­id, inform­at­ive mint com­ment­ary by Dr. Steven Haberman and Constantine Nasr, who’ve pro­duced a bunch of doc­u­ment­ar­ies on genre cinema, includ­ing Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy. They know their stuff and have impec­cable taste and of course can’t help but notice the sim­il­ar­ity between Franz Waxman’s score here and what he did in the pri­or year’s, yup, Bride of Frankenstein. Bottom line, I guess: If you love Bride of Frankenstein (and if you don’t, why are you read­ing this?) you’ll need this.. — A+

The Exorcist (Warner 4K Ultra Disc)

As Robert Harris has poin­ted out on Home Theater Forum, there’s no “ref­er­ence” ver­sion of this on home video so mere con­sumers with no access to ori­gin­al mater­i­als have a lim­ited com­par­is­on per­spect­ive with respect to what many of us saw in theat­ers back in the 1970s.. What it boils down to for this high-high def edi­tion, then, is how it looks to you while watch­ing. I do not cot­ton to Friedkin’s director’s cut — while an undeni­ably great film­maker, the man was prone to some poor decisions, and this was one of them — so I’m going by my impres­sion of the the­at­ric­al ver­sion in this edi­tion. And my impres­sion is rather good. I like the sur­round mix. I like the col­ors in the Iraq sequence and espe­cially the detail. I like the way the bed­room lamp makes Chris McNeil’s script pages look a little pink. One of the first things I did at Première was an art­icle about the poten­tial and the short­com­ings of the then-new DVD format, which had its ori­gins in MP4 video com­pres­sion tech­no­logy, and I used the approach-of-the sub­way shot about 17 minutes in as an example of a cer­tain kind of pic­ture dis­tor­tion. Anyway, I like how that shot looks here too. I like the muted chil­li­ness and the pop­ping purples of the priest’s vest­ments in the exor­cism scene. What else? Max Von Sydow is a great act­or, Jason Miller is a great act­or, Ellen Burstyn is a great act­or, Linda Blair is a great act­or, Mercedes McCambridge is a great act­or, Jack MacGowran is a great act­or.  Lee J. Cobb is Lee J. Cobb. Pretty great movie, and this is great ver­sion.   — A+

Night of the Hunted/Rape of the Vampire/Fascination/Lips of Blood (Powerhouse 4K Ultra Discs) 

The Powerhouse 4K Rollin pro­ject con­tin­ues apace and the res­ults are rap­ture indu­cing. The thread­bare maestro’s fea­ture debut, 1968’s Rape of the Vampire, is in starkly beau­ti­ful black and white; Imagine a het­ero­sexu­al, more com­puls­ive Jean Cocteau work­ing with a crew accus­tomed to mak­ing cheap “rough­ies.” 1980’s Night of the Hunted is mod­er­ately Cronenbergian, as com­ment­at­or Tim Lucas notes. He also bemoans the film’s dis­join­ted­ness and lack of resource­ful use of film lan­guage, a byproduct of the rushed nature of the pro­duc­tion and Rollin’s dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the con­di­tions. All true, but star Brigitte Lahaie provides con­struct­ive dis­trac­tion from such ostens­ible defects. And Tim is unabashed in his ador­a­tion of the film’s end­ing, and why not? It’s fant­ast­ic. I per­son­ally don’t mind the dis­join­ted­ness, it gives the movie a pecu­li­ar col­lage feel. I also quite appre­ci­ated its kin­ship with The Crazies. Fascination fea­tures Lahaie with a scythe, life, and/or death, doesn’t get any bet­ter. Lips of Blood is bonkers and defin­it­ive. All are presen­ted in res­tor­a­tions that can’t help but engulf the recept­ive view­er. — A+

Father’s Little Dividend (Warner Archive)

A few years back I waxed rhaps­od­ic over 1950’s Father of the Bride, Minnelli and MGM’s cel­eb­ra­tion of the joys and sor­rows of American upper-middle-class val­ues. Against all class odds, it’s an inef­fable, prac­tic­ally tran­scend­ent vis­ion. Lightning did not strike twice for the 1951 sequel, in part because the imagery is not nearly as splen­did. Of course Elizabeth Taylor still looks great but in the first film she was con­ceived and shot as the apple of both a father’s and a poten­tial husband’s eye, and here she’s releg­ated to per­form­ing her wifely duty, for God and coun­try and so on. The Blu-ray is fab­ulous, as is cus­tom­ary. The comed­ic stuff of the film is how­ever a little less coher­ent than it might have been. The “los­ing the kid” epis­ode is dark­er than this movie wants, as Minnelli doesn’t apply much melo­dra­mat­ic brio to it, and melo­dra­mat­ic brio could at times of course be his middle name. It’s both sharp and tol­er­ant (it would of course have to be) in cri­tiquing men and their sex­ism. The cast is of course uni­formly lov­able and splen­did but Joan Bennett winds up as the MVP., and good for her. — A

The Giant Gila Monster/The Killer Shrews (Film Masters)

I fondly remem­ber con­sid­er­ing this 1959 mas­ter­piece of forced per­spect­ive a little goofy even when I was ten. In any event, this small-label res­tor­a­tion gets the much-desired job done: Giant Gila Monster has NEVER LOOKED BETTER. The Kuleshov Effect shots (are they inten­tion­ally so? We will nev­er know) of the Gila Monster doing the bit with its tongue while watch­ing the “teen” lead char­ac­ters make out are fant­ast­ic. Haven’t got­ten to Killer Shrews yet, because frankly it skinks me out, even when giv­en the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treat­ment. But this pack­age bears recom­mend­ing on Gila Monster alone.  — A

Heroic Times (Deaf Crocodile)

Lest you pre­sume that this 1983 Hungarian anim­ated fea­ture might be cat­nip for the likes of Viktor Orban, the title turns out to be iron­ic. This tale of medi­ev­al slaughter and con­com­it­ant per­son­al betray­al) and rage, rage, rage), dir­ec­ted by József Gémes, fea­tures really unusu­al mul­tiple graph­ic approaches includ­ing impres­sion­ist tableaux. Not life-changing fare but damn intriguing and illu­min­at­ing.  Alternate Title: My Brother Was In Jethro Tull. — A 

It Came From Outer Space (Universal 4K Ultra Disc)

Jack Arnold’s beau­ti­ful 1953 sci-fi pic­ture, was an anom­aly at the time because the “It” that came from out­er space wasn’t malevol­ent. Yes, it was men­acing, or at least highly dis­quiet­ing, in its clon­ing powers, but it meant no harm. Leave it to Ray Bradbury to come up with this par­tic­u­lar nar­rat­ive curve­ball. Richard Carlson plays the astro­nomer who has to con­vince his com­munity over and over again, Barbara Rush is his BEAUTIFUL wife whose pres­ence and cos­tum­ing provide the movie with what I’ve always seen as very Cocteau-esque touches. It was pro­duced by Thompson from Citizen Kane. A stone clas­sic presen­ted in very gor­geous 2D 4K Ultra — the image, although not without nat­ive grain, is argu­ably a little TOO pristine depend­ing on your taste. But I found it dreamy, almost lit­er­ally. — A+

The Last Horror Movie (Severin 4K Ultra Disc)

Taxi Driver showed Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle aim­lessly sit­ting in porno theat­ers. This grind­house oddity star­ring Joe Spinell (also in Taxi Driver, hey!) poin­tedly shows his char­ac­ter Vinny beat­ing off in a porno theat­er. The cam­era setup is more or less identic­al to Scorsese’s. That’s the thing about exploit­a­tion cinema: it goes where the main­stream will not dare. You really gotta hand it to Spinell, as an act­or he had exactly ZERO van­ity. Here he plays a slob who travels to Cannes to enlist Caroline Munro, Spinell’s cost­ar in the genu­inely aber­rant Maniac (and indeed this item was mar­keted as Maniac II in some provinces, and the slip­case art­work for this exem­plary pack­age is for that iter­a­tion) to star in his own inco­her­ent vis­ion. Along the way he cuts a mur­der­ous swath through the fest.  Confronting Stanley Kline, the fic­tion­al auteur of the fic­tion­al Caller In the Night, Vinny declaims,” It was dis­gust­ing, it made me sick it made every­body sick, you shouldn’t be ALLOWED to make films like this Stanley!” He then enacts act­iv­ist cri­ti­cism at its most extreme. The murder here are mostly of dudes, which is kind of refresh­ing. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d get with this but ended up enjoy­ing myself quite a bit. — A

The Life of Emile Zola (Warner Archive)

People talk about the “great man” biop­ics of the late 30s as being stodgy and right­eous but to be hon­est, I enjoyed this quite a bit more than Maestro even though it’s one of the most egre­gious copouts in U.S. stu­dio his­tory. In that — try to keep up — the whole reas­on that Dreyfus was per­se­cuted — anti­semit­ism in the French mil­it­ary, oh, and EVERYWHERE ELSE IN FRANCE — is not only not artic­u­lated in this movie but scarcely even implied, because the Warner broth­ers didn’t want to offend Germany, or some­thing. This was 1937, and even­tu­ally the Warners would get with the damn pro­gram but still. So what’s in the asset side of the ledger? Great image qual­ity, fevered Paul Muni per­form­ance, that great Warner biop­ic pacey-ness, over­seen by the reli­able William Dieterle. It’s stag­ger­ingly lit­er­al at times but maybe that’s the way to get your social justice mes­sage across after all —at least its approach has got clar­ity. With Grant Mitchell as Clemenceau. That guy had range. Also keep an eye out for out for l’il Dickie Moore as a Dreyfus kid. Funny, he doesn’t look… — A

Pandora’s Box (Eureka! Region B Bluray)

I have to con­fess that for reas­ons of mere per­son­al slov­en­li­ness I’ve nev­er paid G.W. Pabst much mind. I was under­whelmed on my first view­ings, back in the ‘80s, of both Diary of a Lost Girl and The Threepenny Opera, and so I held Pandora’s Box at arm’s length for years. I figured I’d get as much from vari­ous stills of Louise Brooks in the pic­ture as I might from actu­ally sit­ting through the thing itself. Always been a big fan of Berg’s opera, though. Enjoyed the hell out of that pro­duc­tion a couple of years ago at the Met. Yes, my explan­a­tion here is dif­fuse and inco­her­ent, but it’s pre­lude to telling all you people that I’ve SEEN THE LIGHT via this new Blu from Eureka, a 2K ren­der­ing of a res­tor­a­tion, and yes, this actu­ally is a Great Film. Ado Kyrou said, “Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the abil­ity to trans­fig­ure no mat­ter what film into a mas­ter­piece” and maybe he’s right (won­der if he ever saw her Three Mesquiteers pic­ture, 1938’s Overland Stage Raiders, as unusu­al a retire­ment movie as has ever been). But Box has a truck­load of legit goods bey­ond Brooks’ remark­able intu­it­ive per­form­ance. This looks beau­ti­ful for the most part, but there is a prob­lem and it’s not an insig­ni­fic­ant one. It was poin­ted out on the NitrateVille site and sub­sequently men­tioned by Ye Olde DVD Beaver. “The mis­take: When Lulu stuffs some money into the meter read­er­’s hand, he is so dis­trac­ted that he lets two coins drop onto the car­pet and does­n’t even real­ize it. The digit­al clean-up soft­ware registered those two fall­ing coins as defects and erased them. So we do not see any­thing fall out of his hand.” This is pretty early on: around 4:37 on the disc, 1:37 in the movie prop­er (there’s about three minutes of res­tor­a­tion explan­a­tion in the present­a­tion before the movie itself gets under­way). Once seen it’s impossible to unsee, because Brooks’ Lulu observes the coins fall­ing from his hand (he picks them up from the car­pet a little later) and you won­der why she’s observing lit­er­ally noth­ing. Obviously for this view­er the sub­sequent enjoy­ment was not killed. Whether this will be fixed is not yet known. —A-

The Psychic (Severin 4K Ultra Disc)

The early shots of face-mutilation-as-a-byproduct-of-jumping-off-a-cliff-and-one’s‑head-scraping-the-rock-face (which even­tu­al­ity strikes me as at least a trifle implaus­ible to be hon­est) not­with­stand­ing, this 1977 good­ie is one of Lucio Fulci’s more restrained efforts and this 4K edi­tion is intox­ic­at­ingly beau­ti­ful. The movie also fea­tures shots of Jennifer O’Neill in a car look­ing wor­ried, end­less shots of gloved hands turn­ing on and off record­ing devices, and an excel­lent cheesy/drippy score. Masterpiece, obvi­ously. The sup­ple­ment­al array is incred­ible and fea­tures the shot-in-’93 inter­view film Fulci Talks, a typ­ic­ally can­did ses­sion with the maes­tro —who, among oth­er things, knew the high­brow Italian arts scene well enough that he refers to William Weaver as “Bill” — shot three years pri­or to his 1996 passing. Inspirational Fulci quote: “There was always a dwarf recit­ing Walt Whitman poems from a chair. I later found out he was Truman Capote.”  Definitive Fulci quote: “I regard myself as kind of an accu­mu­la­tion of inco­her­ence.”—A+.

Queen Christina (Warner Archive)

Quite good look­in’, spec­tac­u­lar Mamoulian styl­iz­a­tion, superb Garbo per­form­ance, this title has it all. The role cap­it­al­izes on Garbo’s andro­gyn­ous appeal in a way that lets Mamoulian and the act­or flex some comed­ic muscle, as when the icon­o­clast­ic title char­ac­ter dis­guises her­self as a lad in order to be Among The People, and thus mas­quer­aded, winds up bunk­ing at an inn with Spanish envoy Antonio, Garbo’s fre­quent on-screen romantic part­ner John Gilbert, who’s quite good.  Haunted, romp­ing, funny, ulti­mately stir­ring — the final shot is one for the ages and even if you’re not a fan you’ve prob­ably seen it in a lot of Industry-Celebrating-Montages. Tom Milne’s Mamoulian book is required read­ing, and his chapter on this is breath­tak­ing.  On a sequence pri­or to the dis­guise adven­ture he is at his bedazzled best: “[A] long, linger­ing, mag­ni­fi­cent close-up as she stands at the win­dow star­ing out over the end­less, unchan­ging land­scape of white: ‘Snow,’ mourns the voice of the greatest blues sing­er of all, ‘is like a wild sea. One could go out and get lost in it and for­get the world.’” — A+

 The Sexual Story of O (Severin)

In a move that pays homage to the ori­gin­al mar­ket­ing of the movie, Severin put some ooh-la-la shots of late-period Franco con­sort and muse and star Lina Romay on the slip­cov­er — even though she is nowhere to be seen in this 1984 film. By this time Romay had dialed back on the frantic per­form­at­ive sexu­al­ity that remade her name (born in 1954, Franco rechristened Rosa Martinez with the handle of the Brooklyn-born [in 1919] Mexican-American big band sing­er who, among oth­er things, cameos in Tex Avery’s Señor Droopy) and in this pic­ture the erot­ic hijinks are enacted mostly by a trio of young­er per­formers who are appos­itely somn­am­bu­lant. This is one of Franco’s bet­ter “Camera look­ing in and out of hotel win­dows” movies. The shoot­ing style is cas­u­al while nev­er get­ting too lax, and while it takes its time get­ting ser­i­ously out­ré, when it gets there, get ready. —A

Spinout/Double Trouble (Warner Archive)

When con­sid­er­ing the unfor­tu­nate aspects of Elvis Presley’s film out­put, and there are many, the cookie-cutter qual­ity of his ‘60s music­als is often cited. How cookie-cutter were they? Check it out: 1966’s Spinout is 93 minutes long. And 1967’s (yes, 1967’s; it’s like Sgt. Pepper wasn’t hap­pen­ing, even though the movie is par­tially set in London) Double Trouble is 92 minutes long. Impressive! Trouble is, of course, now semi-legendary as hav­ing been ini­tially developed for, who else, Julie Christie. Irwin Winkler’s pro­du­cer cred­it here is a muta­tion of his then-status as, with Robert Chartoff, Christie’s U.S. man­ager. Both pic­tures are dir­ec­ted by then-nearly-blind Norman Taurog, Gore Vidal’s one-man refut­a­tion of the auteur the­ory. They are both ami­able, goofy and corny as Kansas. As for Spinout, it has an unusu­ally strong audio com­pon­ent. And looks great. Why, I asked myself, does the rear-projection driv­ing stuff here look bet­ter than it does in Hitchcock pic­tures of the same peri­od?. While there’s cer­tainly a legit­im­ate tech­nic­al explan­a­tion, I’m just going to go with “life is unfair.” Presley plays a singing race car driver, because of course he does, and “Stop, Look and Listen” is not a ter­rible song. “Adam and Evil,” on the oth­er hand, kind of is. Set design and cos­tumes are very POPPY. The pro­ceed­ings, involving Elvis dodging the affec­tions of three beau­ties, are rel­at­ively nar­cot­iz­ing. For luthiers and gear nuts there are glimpses of Elvis and a band­mate play­ing one of the most bizarre Gibson SG double necks ever. It is, my gui­tar expert sources tell me, a six string gui­tar and a six string bass, or bari­tone gui­tar, and one of only two known to be in exist­ence, spe­cial ordered for Elvis by the Colonel. One of the two is on exhib­it at Graceland. The oth­er is MIA. The fea­tures Donna Reed’s TV hus­band Carl Betz and Una Merkel of 42^nd Street, Destry Rides Again, and I Love Melvin fame. Double Trouble was writ­ten by Jo Heims, whose work here does noth­ing to hint that she’d later co-write the scen­ario for Dirty Harry and co-script Play Misty for Me. The Elvis/Julie Christie issue becomes easi­er to under­stand if you fig­ure, while watch­ing (and you might!) that the Christie part was not of the male lead but of this film’s female lead Annette Day, as a mod­er­ately ditzy heir­ess pur­sued by a vari­ety of crim­in­als. The vaudevil­lian Wiere Brothers provide ostens­ible screw­ball com­edy accents. One won­ders why, and then one detects, once again, The Colonel’s hand. One can see this, with Christie and a suit­able male lead — and EVEN ELVIS PRESLEY, prop­erly dir­ec­ted would have made a suit­able male lead — work­ing along sim­il­ar lines to Gambit, made the same year as this, with Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine. In any event, this isn’t Gambit.  Both discs: —A

Touch of Evil (Eureka 4K Ultra Disc)

Damn this looks great Particularly in the grimy clos­eups of Welles and Tamiroff. One dis­quiet­ing side effect of the excel­lent image qual­ity is that you really notice how Charlton Heston’s brown­face makeup, which is rel­at­ively “taste­fully” or dis­creetly applied (or maybe at times not quite applied at all) to Heston in the Welles-shot stuff, is slathered on to an embar­rass­ing and shame­ful degree in the reshoots Universal ordered for story clar­ity, such as it is, and which were over­seen by Harry Keller, whose own cred­ited dir­ect­ori­al career doesn’t even reach jour­ney­man level. The scene where it really popped for me, in a hotel lobby with Heston and Janet Leigh, is prop­erly excised in the recon­struc­ted ver­sion, one of three to choose from here. I got around to check­ing out the com­ment­ar­ies, one from the late and fast-talking F.X. Feeney (“small won­der there’s an explo­sion when these two kiss”) anoth­er from Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore, who also sound pretty caf­fein­ated, and two from res­tor­a­tion honcho Rick Schmidlin, one solo and one with Leigh and Heston, who lived to see the Welles memo car­ried out as best pos­sible. All are inform­at­ive and com­pan­ion­able, but of course the one with the stars is the most to be cher­ished. — A +