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May 29, 2007
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Dark Sky I've been alerted to a couple of studio's Hallowe'en disc plans, as posted on the very well informed Classic Horror Film Board, repeated from Creepy Classics: "Two new horror box sets are coming to DVD this fall, from Columbia and Fox. The Columbia set will include The Werewolf (1956 with Steven Rich), Creature with the Atom Brain (1955 with Richard Denning), Zombies of Mora Tau (1957), The Giant Claw (1957). An unannounced additional title turns out to be a single chapter of the 1951 serial Mysterious Island and a couple of short subjects, according to Sony exec Mike Schlesinger. The suggested retail price will be around 24.95. They will not be released separately. The Fox set will include Chandu the Magician (1932 with Bela Lugosi as Roxor), The Undying Monster (1942), The Lodger (1944 with Laird Cregar), Hangover Square (1945, also with Cregar) and Man Hunt (1941 with Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders, John Carradine and Roddy McDowell)." The Fox collection veers away from pure Hallowe'en content ... I mean, Man Hunt is a Fritz Lang film noir. But Savant is not complaining, as most of the titles are very desirable. I was told earlier that Sony was going to put out Peter Lorre's wonderful The Face Behind the Mask this year, so I'm curious what's going on about that ... Also, new specs on the three new Leone special editions (Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Duck You Sucker) due June 5 indicate mono tracks as well as new stereo remixes, a good call that should please fans wanting to hear as well as see prime Leone. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly will be the same exact release as before, however.
May 24, 2007
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Fox Vengeance is Mine Criterion and The Living Coffin Casanegra
Hello again. I've reviewed the Sam Fuller guilty pleasure Hell and High Water, just in time for Criterion to announce that its Eclipse line will present a box called The First Films of Samuel Fuller on August 14: I Shot Jesse James, The Baron of Arizona, and The Steel Helmet. Sony has dozens of desired genre titles, fantastic and not, that they aren't in any hurry to release. They're instead reissuing Ray Harryhausen's 20 Million Miles to Earth ... colorized. Even being generous, that seems a mistake -- the Venusian Ymir now looks a bit like a green plastic toy. Harryhausen has supervised the colorization personally, as he did with She, and is sidestepping anti-revisionist arguments (colorization has been something of a bad joke for quite a while, even when it's done carefully) with the statement that he always wanted the movie to be in color. To quote The Long Goodbye, that's okay by me. See you afer The Long Weekend, Glenn Erickson
May 20, 2007
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Masters of Horror Anchor Bay / Starz The Third Man Reissue Criterion The Tyrone Power Swashbuckler Box Set Blood and Sand, Son of Fury - the Story of Benjamin Blake; Captain from Castile, Prince of Foxes, The Black Rose Fox and Violette (Nozière) Koch Lorber Savant has to apologize for hia delay in the review for The Tyrone Power Box Set, but the screeners arrived after street date and both a contractual obligation and an editing job slowed me up. I haven't got a dog so I can't claim he ate the review, either. The big shock of the week was watching Anchor Bay's new DVD of the Masters of Horror episode of The Screwfly Solution, which those of you with Showtime Cable may have seen last December. We're in a major trend of miserable torture-based theatrical horror films right now, and it's refreshing to find a horror outing with something behind its scares besides vicarious sadism. In this case, the 'something' is a potent concept that may make the show an instant classic. Packed with dangerous & edgy ideas and highly recommended. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson.
May 18, 2007
Savant's new reviews today are Touchstone I Pass for Human Arcanum Black Test Car Fantoma and Jane Eyre Fox Hello! Gary Teetzel has been pointing me to some impressive My Space postings by William Stromberg. They're orchestra rehearsals for Stromberg's new recordings of Bernard Herrmann scores, to hopefully be offered soon on CD. He has two entertaining excerpts up so far, for Mysterious Island and Fahrenheit 451. See you on Tuesday, Glenn Erickson
May 13, 2007
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Columbia / Sony That Thing You Do! Tom Hanks' Extended Cut Fox and Maya Deren Experimental Films Mystic Fire / Microcinema 
June is looming on the horizon with more writing deadlines, and perhaps more editorial work as well. Naturally, the studios have chosen this time to release a bounty of desirable hot-ticket library titles, Savant's catnip. Here's the avalanche of titles we're expecting in the next five weeks or so that grabs my attention: Vengeance is Mine, Sansho the Bailiff, If ... , The Third Man, WR Mysteries of the Organism, Sweet Movie, La Jetee & Sans Soleil (Criterion); Prince of the City, Straight Time, Steelyard Blues, Air Force, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, Command Decision, Hell to Eternity, 36 Hours, The Hill, the CULT/CAMP even dozen of Attack of the 50 ft. Woman, The Giant Behemoth, Queen of Outer Space, The Big Cube, Caged, Trog, Hot Rods to Hell, Skyjacked, Zero Hour, Colossus of Rhodes, The Prodigal, Land of the Pharaohs (Warner); Hell and High Water, Broken Arrow, The Sand Pebbles, Twelve O'Clock High, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea Global Warming Edition, Fantastic Voyage, The Hustler, The Verdict (Fox); No Man of Her Own, Scarface '32, So Proudly We Hail, Unconquered, Thunder Bay, The Glenn Miller Story (Uni); Duck You Sucker, Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, 52 Pickup (MGM); Frankenstein Conquers the World (Media Blasters); Apocalypto (BVHV); Black Test Car (Fantoma). Hopefully a lot of these will be coming Savant's way. See you later in the week! Glenn Erickson
May 12, 2007
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are New Yorker The Goddess of 1967 Home Vision / Image and The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg New Yorker Hello again ... the fire seems to be mostly finished but there's still clouds of ash over parts of Los Angeles. Thanks for the emails about the picture ... I only watched for a few minutes but it was quite a show. Three worthy independent pictures up today. On Tuesday I'll have the new double-disc release of The Guns of Navarone, an old favorite that I wish had been preserved better by Columbia in the 1960s. I edited the new extras on the disc, and it was especially fun to work with the exciting Dimitri Tiomkin score. What with The High and the Mighty from a couple of summers ago, interesting new titles like The Well and Angel Face we've been enjoying some great Tiomkin music. Warners has Tiomkin's Land of the Pharaohs on the way on June 26, which has one of my favorite all-time scores .... I remember re-playing a VHS of an old TBS airing over and over again, just to enjoy the music. Now if great work like 55 Days At Peking and The Fall of the Roman Empire would just come out ... I've lost track of who exactly to expect those Bronston pictures from, although I'm reliably informed that The Weinstein Company owns them. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson
May 06, 2007
Hello! Savant's new reviews today are Becket MPI Pulp MGM/Fox and Thieves Like Us MGM/Fox 
Hello --- an unusually packed week ... it's three reviews and off to the races for Savant. See you next Saturday, when hopefully I'll have my brain back in my head where it belongs! Urgent update ... I missed the fire last month, but here are two pictures taken at about 9:45 PM, May 8 from my upstairs window on Gower street, looking toward the Griffith Observatory as fire rages behind it. The streaks in the picture are aircraft in time exposure. 
I hope we don't lose the Observatory, the Greek Theatre or the zoo ... not to mention any of Los Feliz, which includes some of the most beautiful homes in the city ... such as the houses used in House on Haunted Hill and Double Indemnity. Glenn Erickson
May 03, 2007
Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are Image The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky: La Cravatte, Fando y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain Abkco / Anchor Bay and Johan Van De Keuken: The Complete Collection Volume 2 Facets Video It's a pleasure to point silent movie fans to exceptionally good film writing: Gordon A. Thomas' analysis of Pandora's Box, "Of Sexual Hate and Lonely Death" is up at the Bright Lights website. Otherwise it's a rushed week here ... various kinds of excitement ... which is a nice break from the write, sleep 'n' eat regime that's been the norm for a month or so. I'd like to thank reader Joel Stein for some help, as well as "Chuck", who sent me more screen grabs that back up Benoît A. Racine's recent analysis of color manipulation in Peter Pan. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson
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I had to review Hell and High Water from a borrowed disc because this week's library titles from Sony, Fox, MGM, Universal and even Warners haven't yet materialized. So the next week or so may be rather lean for reviews, and that's no fun. I hope that this isn't a trend, or DVD Savant will be a very unhappy website.
