Spring 2024 Blu-ray/4K Ultra disc Consumer Guide

Technically speak­ing, it IS still Spring. No?

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

Bloodmoon (Severin Blu-ray)

“What if we choose to appre­hend the slash­er film as a vir­us?” I thought while look­ing at this Australian 1990 item. Because des­pite being made in, well, 1990, it has most of the hall­marks of an American-made example of the genre from 1982 or so, when a thou­sand Friday the 13^th vari­ants bloomed. So it’s like the con­ta­gion took about eight years to make its way around the world. In any event Bloodmoon nev­er­the­less man­ages to impart to the tired tropes a guile­less and crass Down Under charm. It offers a bump­er crop of fresh female top­less­ness, usu­ally revealed right before someone (it’s gen­er­ally the top­less girl, but some­times a dude) gets strangled with a circle of barbed wire, thus firmly imprint­ing the sex-death con­nec­tion on the hap­less young view­er. The whole thing cer­tainly LOOKS sharp (dir­ect­or Alec Mills was a one­time cine­ma­to­graph­er of some dis­tinc­tion) (and he only just died in February, poor guy) and the scenario’s cheating-teacher bit is a stitch. The killer’s patho­logy is such that he gets really sloppy, and nobody notices, which is odd but leads to an unusu­ally sat­is­fy­ing end­ing involving an act­iv­ist nun, sort of. The “Frightbreak” at 1 hour and five minutes was pos­sibly RIPPED OFF BY GASPAR NOE for I Stand Alone nine years later. Check it out. The sup­ple­ments are enter­tain­ing but I was still left with ques­tions, such as, “Did the ter­rible band Vice, who start off sound­ing like Hootie and then morph into a form of Creed, have a codi­cil in their soundtrack that allowed their ter­rible music to be heard with min­im­al dia­logue inter­fer­ence for the first minutes of their appear­ance?” The rest of the score is by Brian May, and if you know your Australian film com­posers you know it’s not the Queen guy. Inspirational dia­logue: “You shouldn’t be out here with a boy. You should know bet­ter than that.” Inspirational inter­view quote, from female lead Christine Amor: “I thought it was appalling” — B+

Burial Ground (Severin 4K Ultra disc)

One of the sig­nal innov­a­tions of Lucio Fulci’s 1979 Zombi was to take the sickly-green appear­ance of the undead in Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead a step fur­ther and give the mon­sters skull-exposed heads with nests of worms squirm­ing in the eye sock­ets and all that kinda thing. Ick. Andrea Bianchi con­tin­ued the mode of rep­res­ent­a­tion in this 1981 gros­sout, which was in fact some­times shown as Zombi 3. (I don’t have the space or inclin­a­tion to explain where Zombi 2 fits into all this, but real heads know and all.) Here’s it’s not just worms but mag­gots that fester on the flesh-eaters, so do not have a TV din­ner whilst con­sum­ing this if indeed you choose to con­sume it. The poor crypt-exploring sci­ent­ists and friends who unleash the creatures have the usu­al hard time fig­ur­ing out how to kill them. Some dis­cov­er a green flam­mable mater­i­al. Does set­ting them on fire work? Yes it seems it kind of does. Later anoth­er char­ac­ter avers “They can only be killed by blow­ing their heads off.” Uh huh. Very con­fus­ing. Remember in the Fulci movie where one of the undead wrestled a shark? In this movie there’s a few undead with seem­ing Spider-Man powers meth­od­ic­ally mak­ing their way up a pil­lar. Cool, The Climbing Dead. The unex­pec­ted incest angle in the scen­ario is very unex­pec­ted. Michael, the “son” who’s really into get­ting back into nurs­ing at his mother’s breast is played by an adult mid­get. Gnarly. 85 sol­id minutes of “what the fuck?” — A

Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (Severin 4K Ultra disc)

Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film pretty much shrugs this movie off, but you should not. It’s bonkers. The sali­ent facts of dir­ect­or William Asher’s life and career — that is, he dir­ec­ted a bunch of AIP “Beach” movies and he was mar­ried from 1963 to 1973 to Elizabeth Montgomery — can­not pre­pare you for the fevered real­ity of this serial-murder-motivated-by-incestuous-desire tale. As Susan Tyrell plays the aunt with the inces­tu­ous desire, you can eas­ily infer a primary source of the mania — Tyrell, as is her wont embod­ies a des­per­ate grot­esque at a ragingly high volume without ever mak­ing her into a cari­ca­ture. But then there’s the rest, which is almost equally delight­fully con­found­ing — Bo Svenson’s tetchy, homo­phobic hom­icide detect­ive, Julia Duffy’s eye-openingly hot-to-trot teen girl­friend, Bill Paxton’s bully jock, and poor Jimmy McNichol look­ing very “what the hell have I got­ten myself into?” And lots of blood. That the dir­ec­tion is entirely staid and straight adds to the unwit­ting potency. Essential. And look­ing like it should. ‑‑A

Cabin in the Sky (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

Damn, look at that spot­less gray scale in the open­ing cred­it graph­ics. That may be clean­est you are likely to feel watch­ing this prob­lem­at­ic Vincente Minnelli fea­ture debut. The racial ste­reo­typ­ing applied through­out this all-Black music­al is of the ostens­ibly benign vari­ety, and good God, once the music­al num­bers get going that’s all for­got­ten and the spec­tacle of Black excel­lence is gor­geously envel­op­ing, but one nev­er quite escapes the “but still…” feel­ing about the whole thing. That said, Minnelli was about as enlightened as white stu­dio dir­ect­ors at MGM got in this era, and as dicey as the musical’s book may be (par­don the pun), the cam­era treat­ment of the per­formers is nev­er less than square and appre­ci­at­ive. This is a fancy way of say­ing Minnelli demon­strates a form of anti-racism by shoot­ing this cast as beau­ti­fully as any oth­er ensemble in his filmo­graphy (see for instance the beau­ti­ful crane from the dance floor to immacu­late Duke Ellington at the piano at in the nightclub scene in the last third). “Bogus but rather enter­tain­ing” James Baldwin said of this and Stormy Weather — they had, he stated, the advant­age over sim­il­arly pitched fare of allow­ing the Black view­er to “at least […] listen to the music.” Both Ethel Waters and Lena Horne are giv­en Marlene-Dietrich-worthy light­ing. And Waters just looks so infec­tiously happy through­out. That, appar­ently, is ACTING, because by most accounts Ethel could be rather mean and took many oppor­tun­it­ies to do so dur­ing the mak­ing of this pic­ture. Eddie Anderson’s really play­ing that gui­tar, you may notice. There aren’t too many VMs in need of upgrade left — I Dood It, Four Horsemen, Tea and Sympathy and ESPECIALLY The Cobweb are the ones I’m most eager to see — and prob­lem­at­ic as it is I’m delighted to have this one checked off.  — A

Conan the Barbarian (Arrow 4K Ultra disc)

This looks fant­ast­ic. Arrow’s giv­en us an immacu­late 4K ren­der­ing of a magnificent-looking movie. Duke Callaghan was lowkey a great cine­ma­to­graph­er (uncred­ited cam­era op on a lot of clas­sic, or just great-looking, stuff includ­ing The Carpetbaggers and Zabriskie Point), and he shot this when he was push­ing 70! The 2010 com­ment­ary by dir­ect­or John Milius and star Arnold Schwarzenegger has a nice share of “hoo boy” moments. The duo is pretty lac­on­ic, a couple of pally old pros sit­ting around talk­ing and say­ing things like: “It’s fit­ting that he should be the fath­er of Conan. William Smith.” They’re not wrong. Unlike everything else that passes for a com­ic book movie these days, this, in its own way this is as much a real com­ic book movie as Danger Diabolik and Modesty Blaise. The cru­ci­fix­ion scene in par­tic­u­lar could have come right out of Savage Sword, obvi­ously though it’s more Buscema than Barry Windsor Smith, of course, and do any of you have any idea of what I’m talk­ing about at this point. But as we’re on the sub­ject, cast­ing Schwarzenegger as Conan is in its way the biggest and best source-material-to-movie cor­res­pond­ence since John Huston cast Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade. Finally, mmm, that’s great animat­ron­ic snake — A+

A Day At The Races (Warner Archive)

The boys are start­ing to look tired here, espe­cially as you can see them so very clearly in this beau­ti­ful rendi­tion. While Night at the Opera did a rel­at­ively seam­less job of thread­ing the mad­cap Marx antics into an ostens­ibly sweet-natured romance nar­rat­ive, here you get the feel­ing that the story’s just being put on pause for the boys to recycle an old vaudeville routine or two. Hence, the ten­sion between the masks of the Marxes and the tropes of con­ven­tion­al com­edy is espe­cially pro­nounced here.  Also, cutesy­ing up Chico is not a great look. That said, the closer it gets to vaudeville show and fur­ther from a movie, the bet­ter it is. The “All God’s Chillun” num­ber is a real treat — until the boys them­selves put on black­face and then holy shit. Quite a nice array of sup­ple­ments here, too. — B+

Deathdream (Blue Underground 4K Ultra disc)

Real heads know this Bob Clark-Alan Ownsby vari­ant on “The Monkey’s Paw” is one of the lowkey hor­ror greats of the early ‘70s. The for­mula? Two Canadian film­makers decamp to Florida, cast the lead act­ors of Cassavetes’ Faces as anoth­er tetchy couple, here mourn­ing the death of their son in the war, and let rip when said son mater­i­al­izes at their door. With needs — most spe­cific­ally and troub­lingly a need for fresh blood. It looks how it looks, which is plain, argu­ably crude — Rex Reed’s fam­ous com­plaint about Willard hav­ing the appear­ance of hav­ing been shot through the bot­tom of a Coke bottle springs to mind — but it’s almost impossibly effect­ive because of that, not in spite of it. The 4K cap­tures that well. And the dir­ec­tion itself is nev­er slack. The incred­ibly abrupt cut to the nerdy-looking little kid after the undead Vietnam vet Andy deals with a very annoy­ing dog is a stitch. Ninety minutes of “I came back from the dead and all I got was this lousy sub­urb­an malaise.”­—A

The Devil’s Honey (Severin 4K Ultra disc)

What can you say about a movie whose first sev­en minutes, which I won’t describe, will make you lose whatever faith you may have left in human­ity? Obviously that it’s per­man­ent col­lec­tion item. It takes a while for the 4K advant­age of Severin’s reboot of its edi­tion of this late Lucio Fulci “erot­ic thrill­er” to make itself felt, as cine­ma­to­graph­er Alejandro Ulloa goes for a dif­fuse, vaguely soft-focus look much of the time. But the boost is there, and lib­rary items ought to be in the best edi­tions avail­able, so there you go. This was Brett Halsey’s inaug­ur­al fea­ture in a four-picture run of Fulci col­lab­or­a­tions, and here he gives the appear­ance of grit­ting his teeth for a long haul. Corinne Clery mostly wears a “what have I done to deserve this” pout, which fits her role as an unap­pre­ci­ated wife. ‑‑ A

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (Severin Blu-ray)

Lunatic stuff, with our best friend Jess Franco pay­ing “trib­ute” to his favor­ite movie mon­sters by toss­ing off a fea­ture shoot in what appears to be 72 hours. Animal lov­ers beware of the bit where they almost drown a bat in tomato juice. Fog fil­ters, poor expos­ures, — all sorts of attemp­ted effects com­bined with uncer­tain exe­cu­tion are what gives this curi­os­ity its spe­cial look. It’s very…distinct (although not at all slick, of course). Poor Dennis Price as Dr. Frankenstein seems — as so many oth­er dis­tin­guished act­ors late in their careers work­ing in exploit­a­tion cinema — to be dis­so­ci­at­ing. Not a good “intro to Franco” piece. But a true mon­ster mash, in which indeed “the guests included Wolfman.” Look for Jason Reitman’s mom Genevieve Robert as Amira, the Gypsy Woman. No really. — A

Faithless (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

Not an inor­din­ately dis­tin­guished pre-code MGM pic­ture, but cer­tainly note­worthy for provid­ing a lead role to Tallulah Bankhead (here on loan from Paramount, where her pic­tures hadn’t been click­ing com­mer­cially), who’s at her pert and insolent best as a poor little NYC rich girl who, while rid­ing high, makes pro­nounce­ments such as” I don’t believe in delin­quent girls. Silly weak­lings.” This will of course bite her in the ass once she’s wiped out. This is from 1932, early enough in the sound that Hugh Herbert is actu­ally able to cred­ibly por­tray the heavy. Mourdant Hall called it “lum­ber­ing,” which is indic­at­ive of the gen­er­al mien of the early talk­ie dra­mat­ic pic­ture — it’s not even eighty minutes long, how much can it “lum­ber?” Bankhead would not play anoth­er dra­mat­ic lead in film for a dozen years, return­ing to the screen in ’44 for Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. So she’s the clear attrac­tion here, and worth it. The extras come in the form of a few nifty nov­elty Vitaphone shorts. The image qual­ity of the fea­ture is rather stag­ger­ingly good — it’s almost one hun­dred years old, for God’s sake. Look at this as Metro vin ordin­aire (the extra-ordin­aire pres­ence of Bankhead not­with­stand­ing) in a superb bottle. Inspirational dia­logue, when Bankhead’s char­ac­ter learns someone is from Colorado: “Good heav­ens, what does one do there, take mud baths?”— A

Geronimo (Powerhouse)

Holy moley, it’s A WOKE WESTERN. A WOKE WESTERN star­ring a 12-year-old Matt Damon no less. Okay, he’s a little older than that in this crim­in­ally under­seen 1993 Walter Hill pic­ture. (He’s like, 22 or so.) Wes Studi plays the title war­ri­or with cus­tom­ary grav­itas. The action is coher­ent in the time-tested Hill way, and the movie itself is per­tin­ent, intel­li­gent, con­sist­ently enga­ging. The 2.35 frame is stun­ningly rendered through­out. A very nice array of extras, start­ing with a con­sist­ently inter­est­ing com­ment­ary from Western mavens C. Courtney Joyner and Henry Parke and good inter­views with Studi, com­poser Ry Cooder, Hill. There’s also an archiv­al doc in which Bertrand Tavernier demon­strates that, as always, he got it. Inspirational dia­logue: “That was a great shot!” “Not so great, I aimed for his head.” Or should it be: “Must be a Texan. Lowest form of white man there is,” uttered by Robert Duvall? A primo example of a rel­at­ively recent Western that’s as vital as almost any clas­sic from the genre’s golden age. —A+

The Golden Coach (Raro)

A quick note on a film — Renoir, you’ve heard of him, and Anna Magnani too — that needs to be in your lib­rary in whatever form avail­able. This form is quite good, hap­pily. The image here can be best described as refresh­ing, beau­ti­fully detailed, beau­ti­fully bal­anced in the col­or depart­ment. It’s a Canadian res­tor­a­tion and hence there is a Canadian com­ment­ary — my pal the crit­ic Adam Nayman is gen­i­al and inform­at­ive. — A

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (Criterion)

I am not com­pletely won over by the songs, nor by the con­spicu­ous pop psy­cho­logy in the writ­ing (“imper­fect fath­ers,” yeesh). But the graft­ing of the story into the inter­stice between two 20^th cen­tury cata­strophes works rather well, the suf­fer­ings of the Ewan McGregor-voiced crick­et make for good and mord­ant slap­stick, the imagery and sta­ging and action is gor­geous, and the heart is genu­ine. And the 4K Ultra present­a­tion here is spec­tac­u­lar. As dis­tinct­ive a vis­ion­ary as Del Toro is, it’s in a work such as this in which his mag­pie tend­en­cies most pro­duct­ively adhere, and so the stuff he lov­ingly adopts from the likes of Miyazaki and Harryhausen and Svankmayer and the Quays sings out with love. The making-of sup­ple­ments are inform­at­ive and exhaust­ive, as befits such a pro­ject. Spending time in Del Toro’s ima­gin­a­tion is always reward­ing, and it’s almost equally reward­ing to be immersed in the pro­cess as in the res­ult. Of course I am espe­cially par­tial to the 20-minute con­ver­sa­tion between Del Toro and Farran Smith Nehme, my friend and a ter­ribly astute-while-amiable inter­locutor. — A+

The Horrible Doctor Hichcock (Vinegar Syndrome 4K Ultra)

So how bad was he? Pretty bad! Vinegar Syndrome has put togeth­er a fault­less present­a­tion of this sem­in­al bit of psy­cho­tron­ic cinema from 1962, all about a phys­i­cian who can only func­tion as long as his part­ner lies per­fectly still. While Ricardo Freda nev­er had the mojo of Mario Bava, he wasn’t without juice — as in the match cut from title medico Hichcock and syr­inge in the sur­gery to Hichcock and syr­inge in mar­it­al bou­doir to anes­thet­ize wifey into a corpse-like state. The num­ber of can­de­lab­ras here reminds one of Scorsese’s remarks about Italian hor­ror movies being all about women car­ry­ing them down long cor­ridors. This movie doesn’t quite rep­res­ent the apo­theosis of Barbara Steele (it’s still Black Sunday, people), she here rather amus­ingly plays a woman who goes to bed with her lip­stick on. The extras are good; second AD Marcello Avallone recounts how he “learned to hang out on sets” and it is revealed that the cinephile gag of the title was not screen­writer Ernesto Gastaldi’s. Steele, in a com­ment­ary, calls Freda “the epi­tome of Italian emo­tion­al­ism.”  Incredible image qual­ity. All that’s miss­ing is Tim Lucas. —A+

King Kong (Universal 4K Ultra disc)

I remem­ber see­ing this when it first came out and think­ing it godaw­ful EXCEPT for Jessica Lange, who enchanted my 17-year-old self with great force. I don’t even think I cot­toned much to Jeff Bridges in it. I didn’t think he played an ecology-concerned hip­pie aca­dem­ic all too well. Of course I saw it while com­pletely in thrall to the Cooper-Schoedsack, as one should be, and my head’s still in that place. But now I can assess the pic­ture with a calmer head cap­able of sim­u­la­tions of objectiv­ity, so I can report that this is a pretty bouncy, ener­get­ic adven­ture film infused with a not-too-cheesy ‘70s irrev­er­ence, all the way up to the moment when the title char­ac­ter shows up. No mat­ter how many effects mas­ters worked on him (see the infam­ous final title card) he just looks goofy, is all. And the 4K Ultra rendi­tion makes that rather too clear. Inspirational dia­logue: “Who in the hell do you think went through there, a guy in an ape suit?” — A

The Mask of Fu Manchu (Warner Archive Blu-ray)

“A Chinaman beat me?” Never hap­pen. So says here one Jean Hersholt, the guy for whom a human­it­ari­an award is named. He sure played some unsa­vory char­ac­ters, though. Remember him in Greed? Anyway. This is what you have to call an ines­cap­ably racist bit of cine­mat­ic pulp but it is also replete with a lot of evoc­at­ive weird­ness not related to the more objec­tion­able com­pon­ents of its con­tent, like lead act­or Karloff’s vis­age dis­tor­ted in reflect­ive sur­faces while some­thing not unlike a Tesla coil crackles with illu­min­a­tion. Iconic. He also looks a little like late peri­od Lou Reed in such shots.  Karen Morley, who we have also enjoyed as Poppy in the Hawks Scarface (but my book, The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface, at your loc­al or via vari­ous online empori­ums!) is very whiny in a proto-Lisa Kudrow way. This disc boasts a beau­ti­ful trans­fer; nev­er have I been more enthralled by Karloff’s insane intro, which also fea­tures the Vile Foaming Liquids treas­ured by Frank Zappa. This thing has more trap doors and secret pas­sage­ways than any movie ever made, and good snake action too. It was with this film that I first star­ted con­fus­ing Lewis Stone with C. Aubrey Smith, des­pite the lack of resemb­lance between the two.. — A

Peeping Tom (Criterion 4K Ultra disc)

The defin­it­ive edi­tion of this queasy and com­puls­ively watch­able thrill­er high­light­ing, for my money, the most heart­break­ing serial-killer in his­tory, Karl Boehm’s Mark Lewis. This time around I latched on to scen­ar­ist Leo Marks’ and dir­ect­or Michael Powell’s sar­don­ic atti­tude toward por­no­graphy and its con­sumers, exem­pli­fied in a sense by the remark of one of the “spe­cial” news-agent item mod­els when Mark shows at the stu­dio: “Why look who’s here — Cecil Beaton!”  Another bit of dia­logue, “All this film­ing isn’t healthy,” sums up the theme. If the meta­phor seems extreme to you, well. I watched this res­tor­a­tion (on the European Studio Canal edi­tion, which shares some but not all of the extras on the Criterion) on the same day that I watched the Arrow Conan. On that film’s com­ment­ary, John Milius recalls Arnold Schwarzenegger’s treat­ment of the act­ress play­ing the slave girl dropped into Conan’s quar­ters, say­ing that it was great that Arnold did noth­ing to make her feel com­fort­able (she enters the scene top­less). “This woman was really scared when she was put in here and you were great because…you nev­er let her get relaxed. You nev­er said a thing the whole day to her.” (Her name was Andrea Guzon.)  — A+

The Raid Redemption (Sony 4K Ultra disc)

If I’m not mis­taken, this presents the action clas­sic in some­thing above its nat­ive defin­i­tion — the thing was shot with a Panasonic cam­era that got a 1080 image. SO what’s the point of a 4K upgrade? Revisionism, as dir­ect­or Gareth Evans wanted not to alter the movie’s con­tent but to tweak col­or cor­rec­tion and cor­rect visu­al “errors” he con­sidered a product of his own inex­per­i­ence back in 2011 when he made the movie. Acceptable! This version’s col­or scheme and muted look is fit­ting for the doc­u­drama style Evans was emu­lat­ing to a cer­tain extent. The standard-def BR in the pack­age is old. How old? The trail­ers are for Looper (2012), Starship Troopers Invasion (also 2012) and, um, Resident Evil Invasion (also 2012, how many of these trail­ers am I gonna look at), and The Words (okay, I’m glad I kept look­ing, to be reminded of a movie that really stank and was also made in 2012), and, oh, Safety Not Guaranteed (no com­ment I guess). The ren­der­ing of the movie itself herein is use­ful and mildly instruct­ive because it really does show­case how Evans went to town in retool­ing the look of the pic­ture for 4K. Most notice­able is that the blueish tinge, which on old low-def home cam­cord­ers indic­ated that one had shot with the WRONG WHITE BALANCE, is gone. — A

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

The cov­er and slip­case repro­duce (too small in both cases but what the hell) the immor­tal Jack Davis poster art, which con­veys the mad­cap aspect of this movie a little too vividly — the Norman Jewison com­edy is rel­at­ively lowkey through­out, although it builds up a prop­er head of ten­sion even­tu­ally. And ends up sur­pris­ingly sweet natured, espe­cially rel­at­ive to oth­er cine­mat­ic Cold War con­tem­pla­tions of the 1960s. My buddy Michael Schlesinger and his buddy Mark Evanier do the com­ment­ary, they are ami­able and inform­at­ive and they LOVE the Mirisch Corporation and Walter Mirisch of course. The image here is SUPER hand­some (the pic­ture was shot by the great Joseph Biroc) and our com­ment­at­ors high­light this by point­ing out that this is the first time on home video that the lav­ender tint in the switch­board operator’s hair (she’s played by Tessie O’Shea) is rendered cor­rectly. Inspirational com­ment­ary nug­get: “There are people who see this film and think it’s Gary Burghoff” (Evanier on Michael J. Pollard) — A

Scarlet Street (Kino Lorber 4K Ultra disc)

Jeepers, as Joan Bennett is fond of say­ing in this touch­stone pic­ture, this is gor­geous. It’s been a long jour­ney to 4K for Lang’s lur­id remake of Renoir’s La Chienne, and for lov­ers of the pic­ture (here I am going longish on it), it’s been worth it. My cor­di­al acquaint­ance Imogen Smith’s com­ment­ary is typ­ic­ally detailed and cogent but she def­in­itely dis­ap­proves of these char­ac­ters in ways that I just can’t. Because truly, they are all me. Except for the mur­der­ing part. With the new­found clar­ity of image we can bet­ter appre­ci­ate how Bennett over­does it in a very pro­duct­ive way — the faces she makes when Robinson embraces her and kisses her neck, her abso­lute repug­nance at him is tra­gic­ally vivid. Is there such a thing as too much detail? Well, Eddie G.’s tou­pee is more appar­ent than it has been, Otherwise, no notes. Inspirational dia­logue: “He’s too dumb to be a phony”—A+

The Warriors (Arrow 4K Ultra disc)

This pack­age arrived on a gloomy after­noon dur­ing which my out­look was espe­cially glum and I have to say, the movie made my god­damn day, as did the superb Arrow trans­fer of 9this is import­ant) the ori­gin­al the­at­ric­al ver­sion, with my town look­ing grimy as all get out. The scene with the prom kids still rips. The extras are great. Buy with con­fid­ence. — A+

Witness for the Prosecution (Kino Lorber Blu-ray)

As res­tor­a­tion maven Robert A. Harris has noted, Kino Lorber has been hid­ing its light under a bushel when reis­su­ing titles already in their cata­log. He wrote of this: “Yet anoth­er Kino ‘re-issue’ title that gives us an upgrade of 50%+ in data through­put, along with a requis­ite view­able dif­fer­ence in qual­ity at close quar­ters.” I con­cur. Another asset newly added is a typ­ic­ally stal­wart and astute Joseph McBride com­ment­ary in which he details dir­ect­or Billy Wilder’s demon­ic work eth­ic and dryly notes, “There’s always some­body com­plain­ing about some­thing” with respect to Marlene Dietrich’s on set carp­ing about Tyrone Power’s natty ward­robe.  — A

You’re a Big Boy Now/The Rain People (Warner Archive Blu-rays)

With our good friend Francis Ford Coppola back in the news, it’s an oppor­tune time to check out his early work. He’s dis­missive of 1966’s You’re A Big Boy Now but can­not and ought not deny 1969’s Rain People, which brought both James Caan and Robert Duvall, both of whom he’d work with more decis­ively in years fol­low­ing, into his fold. One can see why he might be a little sheep­ish about Big Boy, a coming-of-age com­edy made under the extreme influ­ence of Richard Lester. Although the New York loc­a­tion stuff feels more dir­ectly Godardian and of course it was Godard who was influ­en­cing Lester back in the day. And you can see how Coppola’s work here might have influ­enced De Palma for Greetings and Scorsese for Mean Streets. The film’s whimsy does show strain after a while (and some of it bor­ders on lowkey miso­gyny) and lead Peter Kastner is no Richard Dreyfuss (bet you’d nev­er hear any­one com­plain about some­body not being Richard Dreyfuss these days, huh?). But the dog, “Emily,” is great, as are the female leads Julie Harris, Karen Black and the tra­gic Elizabeth Hartman. The quasi-seduction scene scored to John Sebastian’s “Darling Be Home Soon” is bra­cingly ori­gin­al and intim­ate and comes closest to Coppola’s true voice. Rain People, on the oth­er hand, feels “Coppola-esque” from the open­ing shot, as do the fre­quent frames shot through win­dows. Look for Eleanor Coppola in a flash­back scene as Robert Duvall’s dying wife. A spec­tac­u­larly bleak and heart­break­ing movie — not a young man’s pic­ture at all. Coppola was about 30 when he shot it. Both discs are without extras but look won­der­ful. — Both pic­tures: A