Savant's new reviews today are:

Agnès Varda in California
Eclipse Series 43
DVD
  Unique, lively, poetic and very much tuned into a special consciousness, Agnès Varda makes most free-range filmmakers look anemic. Here are three efforts from the '60s and two from the '80s -- Uncle Yanco, Black Panthers, Lions Love (...and Lies), Mur Murs and Documenteur. All are in color, and all but one is in 35mm. All are brilliantly restored. Since the subject of several films is Savant's hometown, it's a kick seeing the way it looked in 1968, and then in 1980 ... and I was shocked to find an artist friend of mine, now passed away, strongly featured in what has to be the definitive film record of Los Angeles' multi-cultured murals. With informative liner notes by Michael Koresky. In DVD from Eclipse.
8/01/15

Thunder Road
Shout! Factory / Timeless Media
Blu-ray + DVD
  This is the touchstone film for the hipster lone-wolf existential road film. Robert Mitchum is as close as the movies ever came to Jack Kerouac, and here he channels his laid-back energy into a tale of a moonshine runner battling both the Feds (straight arrow Gene Barry), and a gangster whose mob threatens the small-farm stills up in the hills. Plenty of road chases, explosions, the usual down-home fracas action; Mitchum's hero Lucas Doolin is coveted by both Shirley Knight and lounge singer Keeley Smith. Why the fools out there can't remake this I don't know ... oh, right, CGI has made ordinary realistic car action passé, I guess. Mitchum wrote the story, co-produced and even co-wrote the songs -- including the evergreen radio hit. A Dual-Format edition in Blu-ray and DVD from Shout! Factory / Timeless Media.
8/01/15

and

Black Sabbath
KL Studio Classics
Blu-ray
  After a false start or two, the American-International U.S. version of I tre volte della paura now arrives, with Boris Karloff's English-language voice, in synch! And with an additional extra to sweeten the pot, a new commentary from Tim Lucas that goes over the show in loving detail - examining every editorial change from rearranged scenes to deletions and additions. With Suzy Andersen, Mark Damon, Glauco Onorato, Rika Dialina, Massimo Righi, Michele Mercier, Lidia Alfonsi, Jacqueline Pierreux and Harriet White Medin. In Blu-ray from KL Studio Classics.
8/01/15

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Hello!

A couple of fun links here on the first of August, with Los Angeles -- and Portand, I'm hearing -- under scorching heat.

There must be more former insomniacs out there -- I've gotten several positive responses to my review for Philip Kaufman's mostly unloved turnip Fearless Frank. The review has been annotated with a couple of footnotes, by the way. No wonder that the film's narrator Ken Nordine sounds familiar - I likely listened to his voice every day for twenty years. Savant contributor and adviser Ed Sullivan gives us this link to a nice TV show about the inventor of 'Word Jazz', Stare with Your Ears.

Olive Films has announced its September Blu-ray slate, and among its offerings is The Invisible Monster, a Republic Serial in 12 chapters. I should think the fans would flip at the idea that Olive might bring out all the classic serials in HD. It would also be new territory for me -- I'm just old enough to have seen a real '50s Republic serial short subject in the theater, probably in 1957. In this one a mastermind wishes to conquer the world with an army of invisible soldiers. I understand he has difficulties making his formula work on just one guy. Richard Webb and Aline Towne star. Also on Olive's slate for September are BDs of Black Caesar, The Mighty Quinn, Hitler: The Last Ten Days, Fatal Instinct and Prick up Your Ears.

And Gary Teetzel guides us to a talk show excerpt, where the late, great lady of the stage Elaine Stritch reminisces about co-starring with Bela Lugosi in a late- 1940s production of Dracula: Dracula Meets Elaine Stritch.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Fearless Frank
MGM Limited Edition Collection
DVD-R
  More than a guilty pleasure, let's consider this unloved oddity a somewhat challenged minor work of art. Philip Kaufman's campy, comic book approach is so primitive that it's easily tagged as incompetent. But the show has an earnestness that elevates its Second City skit humor and clunky storytelling. In his first film, Jon Voight plays a hayseed who becomes a virtuous superhero, Frank -- but Voight also covers a dual role as the zombified automaton False Frank, built to serve an Al Capp-like gangster. With Severn Darden, Joan Darling, David Steinberg, Ben Carruthers, Anthony Holland and Nelson Algren. A former late-night crazoid item, and a true curiosity piece... with a heart! On DVD-R from MGM Limited Edition Collection.
7/28/15

Pit Stop
Arrow Video USA
Blu-ray + DVD
  Here we have Jack Hill's best movie in a perfect presentation. The story of a stock car figure-8 racer's violent career transcends its exploitation genre to make a bigger statement about the drive to win and the price of competition. Another great ensemble works well together -- Dick Davalos, Brian Donlevy, Ellen Burstyn, Beverly Washburn and Sid Haig. Great B&W cinematography, too. The extras are unusually satisfying, and include a candidly informative interview with Roger Corman, the silent financier behind this deserving obscurity. A Dual-Format edition on Blu-ray and DVD from Arrow Video USA.
7/28/15

and

Places in the Heart
Twilight Time
Blu-ray
  Writer-director Robert Benton tells a personal story from his Texas hometown, of Depression-era hard times. Sally Field loses her husband but is determined to keep her home intact and kids together. Lindsay Crouse, Amy Madigan, Danny Glover, John Malkovich & Ed Harris complete a nearly perfect cast. Field's housewife tries to raise a crop, with no experience, meeting resistance from both the bankers and the Klan. The picture won its share of Oscars, but needs to be better known just the same. The inspirational, powerful ending makes it one of the best of American pictures that express a religious theme. Cinematography by Néstor Almendros. On Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
7/28/15

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Hello!

I have to say I'm really enjoying reviewing this summer. The companies putting out library titles are hitting a lot of favorites, and I'm also getting a chance to review some foreign discs of pictures that I've akways wanted to cover, but just aren't being revisited here in HD. I've just seen a surprisingly good foreign disc of Sam Wood's For Whom the Bell Tolls; even though it wasn't obtained as a review screener, I want to review it. Earlier this year a Shout! Factory subsidiary called Timeless Media Group put out a disc of Robert Mitchum's Thunder Road, an old favorite. Shout! will send me good review material, but not everything; I seem to have missed the opportunity to watch my old friend Randall William Cook in I, Madman. But in general I have much more to review than I can ever get to. I don't call this a problem, but I urge readers to write if they should want to see a particular title covered, as I just did with Mississippi Mermaid.

Gary Teetzel comes through once again with an interesting link to a site called Lost Films, where you will find images from movies -- all of which seem to be 80 or 90 years old -- that have yet to be identified. I took a gander at them, used my hyper-acute Savant film detective skills, and came up with -- Bupkiss. The best I could do was to notice that each sample had a watermark reading 'Lost Films' at the bottom. Could they all have come from an old company called 'Lost Films?' No red carpet into the UCLA Film Archive for Savant! But take a peek, maybe you'll recognize your grandmother as a silent movie star.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
Arrow Films
Region B (UK) Blu-ray
 -Across the 8th Dimension. Freaky cult favorite or failed franchise bid? Earl Mac Rauch and W.D. Richter's full-blown pulp adventure epic posits a ultra-cool multi-talented genius hero and his band of loyal retainers, the 'Hong Kong Cavaliers;' the tale of Red and Black Lectroids trying to seize an invention called an Oscillation Overthruster brings on a battle between Banzai and a madman nemesis, Dr. Emilio Lizardo. He's actually possessed by Lord John Whorfin, but that's another story. The forced but funny proceedings employ an enormous cast: Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd, Rosalind Cash, Pepe Serna, Ronald Lacey, Matt Clark, Clancy Brown, Carl Lumbly, Vincent Schiavelli, Dan Hedaya. Is it cool? Is it hip? Well, it's definitely busy and loud. With a pile of new extras, too. On Region B (UK) Blu-ray from Arrow Films.
7/25/15

Night and the City
The Criterion Collection
Blu-ray
  This reissue of Jules Dassin's most extreme noir lays a riveting HD transfer on the hellish images of nighttime London, a collection of war ruins where the dishonest, undeserving Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) plays a get-rich-quick scheme that will make him the target of every informer and hit man in the underworld. Gerald Kersh's seamy novel becomes a critique of the business (under) world, where every deal is a swindle and everybody's looking to betray everyone else. This edition of Dassin's dog-eat-dog epic comes with an entire second encoding of a variant English version. It tries to make things a little 'nicer', to no avail. The disc carries the red-hot interview where Dassin nails down what he really thinks of Elia Kazan. With Gene Tierney, Hugh Marlowe, Googie Withers, Francis L. Sullivan and Herbert Lom. On Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
7/25/15

and

Mississippi Mermaid
Twilight Time
Blu-ray
  François Truffaut goes loser noir with this tale of a colonial tobacco planter taken in by a false mail order bride. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve play against type as a gullible husband who becomes obsessed with an icy adventuress -- who through his example may finally learn what love is, even if it's really amour fou. In Dyaliscope and color, the action moves from Reunion in the Indian Ocean to snowy mountains on the Swiss border. This time the Hitchcock parallels don't accompany an attempt to imitate Hitchcock's style -- Truffaut instead uses his own relaxed, spontaneous approach to drama. On Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
7/25/15

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Hello!

Well, I just realized that all three reviews today have at least some personal connection -- I hope that that's not off-putting. I'm not as heavily involved in disc extras these days and it's fun to see these older jobs bounce back.

A link: Gary Teetzel sends us a Daily Mail story about some Texas eccentrics that have way too much discretionary money. They decided to build a replica of the Munsters house. What's that, 1313 Mockingbird Lane ... or was that where the Addams Family lived? I shouldn't get too snooty about the decadence of all this, because a long time ago I daydreamed about buying a house next to a hill -- and then landscaping the hill to look like the weird set from Invaders from Mars. But it was only an idea!

And I'm glad to learn that colleague Shaun Chang will be conducting a film commentary with actress Cristina Raines for an upcoming Scream Factory Blu-ray of Michael Winner's The Sentinel. Shaun writes well about actresses and gets good interviews, so I'll be looking to see how this one comes out. I haven't seen The Sentinel; from what I remember Raines' character discovers that she's been nominated to serve as the 'Gatekeeper' for a portal to Hell, inconveniently located in her New York apartment (not rent controlled). I don't know whether or not Vinz Clortho, Keymaster of Gozer, makes an appearance.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Lost Soul:
The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau
Severin Films
Blu-ray + DVD
  David Gregory's in-depth docu about the insane production of a 1996 version of the H.G. Wells horror classic takes us deeper into out-of-control movie madness than ever before. The filming was a nightmare out of Lewis Carroll and Franz Kafka, involving crazy stars Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, warring studio heads, witchcraft, Barbara Steele, an unbelievably tiny 'miniature midget,' scores of severely gross Stan Winston monster creations, a location too remote for practicality, a demoralized film company in unending party mode, aboriginal curses, destructive floods, and a director in over his head and unsupported by most of his crew. Some of what happens is almost too strange to believe. Director Richard Stanley appears in many extras, and a special extra is a full-length 1921 German silent adaptation of H.G. Wells' influential book. A Dual-Format edition on Blu-ray and DVD (with a bonus Audio CD) from Severin Films.
7/21/15

The World of Henry Orient
Twilight Time
Blu-ray
  George Roy Hill came up a winner with Nora and Nunnally Johnson's great screenplay, enacted by a perfect cast -- Peter Sellers, Angela Lansbury, Paula Prentiss, Phyllis Thaxter and two remarkable teenagers that fully capture the adolescent mindset -- Merrie Spaeth and Tippy Walker. Two 'adventuring' girls roam Manhattan, and fixate on their heartthrob Henry Orient, a no-talent pianist more interested in his extra-marital affairs. Insightful to the nth degree, packed with comedy but also a deeply felt sentiment for families, especially families hit by divorce. With New York as a wonderful setting and fine music by Elmer Bernstein; the new transfer and audio are a big improvement over earlier discs. On Blu-ray from From Twilight Time.
7/21/15

and

The Clay Pigeon
The Warner Archive Collection
DVD-R
  Notable future talent -- screenwriter and producer Carl Foreman and director Richard Fleischer -- put together this postwar-themed noir, the first production released by new RKO owner Howard Hughes. Bill Williams is an amnesiac G.I. trying to find out why he's wanted for treason and murder in a Japanese prison camp, and Barbara Hale is the war widow whose husband he is supposed to have betrayed. A chase in Chinatown sees Williams evading the law, but also a group of criminals that seem to want him out of the way as well. An interesting if not dazzling effort, the show also stars future director Richard Quine and veteran Richard Loo. On DVD-R from The Warner Archive Collection.
7/21/15

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Hello!

I caught Mitch Cullin and Bill Condon's Mr. Holmes over the weekend, the new movie with Ian McKellen and Laura Linney. It's very good in every respect and I was quite moved by it. McKellen plays an older man at two ages, sixty and ninety, and as far as I can see plays them to perfection. The key 'case to be solved' is Vertigo in miniature, except that in place of acrophobia, Holmes' fatal flaw is also his most important attribute, his unwavering placement of rationality over the dictates of the heart. I also saw a second Hitchcock connection -- a reference to The Man Who Knew Too Much ('56) in the name of a Taxidermist's shop. I very highly recommend Mr. Holmes for people who'd like to a 'real' movie experience. The one unimpressed review I've read of it is all wrong.

Another buzz this week is a lengthy Garden and Gun article on the making of John Boorman's classic backwoods thriller, Delivering 'Deliverance' by John Meroney. Four different readers have recommended it to me so far.

And friend Guido Bibra wishes to warn buyers of the European StudioCanal PAL DVD of the new 4K restoration of The Third Man -- the copy he received has been encoded in the same manner as an Academy aspect ratio item for Blu-ray, with the flat image pillarboxed on a 16:9 screen... in other words, the actual encoded image of the film is squeezed, and therefore has less horizontal resolution. Oddly, I've always thought that the way to encode flat movies for widescreen would be to use the whole width of the frame, and then squeeze the image to obtain even more horizontal resolution. Can anybody else confirm this wonky format of the StudioCanal Region 2 DVD of The Third Man?

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

The Best of Everything
Twilight Time
Blu-ray
  Jerry Wald's 1959 soap opera has become more timely than ever -- not only was it a stylistic model for Mad Men, Don Draper is seen reading the original book in the series. It's a story of three girls young women who come to a Big Apple publishing house for careers, but mostly to find eligible marriage partners. Suzy Parker wants fame on Broadway, Diane Baker just wants a man and Hope Lange thinks she's toying with a business career while waiting for her steady to return from England. The work floor is a hive of rumors, gossip and intrigue, with Brian Aherne, Stephen Boyd and Joan Crawford as the editors -- lecherous, disillusioned and demonic, respectively. Sexism is the inescapable norm, what with rogues like Louis Jourdan and creeps like Robert Evans on the prowl. Title song by Johnny Mathis; great pre- Mad Men commentary by author Rona Jaffe. On Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
7/18/15

He Ran All the Way
KL Studio Classics
Blu-ray
 This is the bitter end of first-generation film noir, as romantic stylization gives way to socio-political despair. After his cohort Norman Lloyd kills a man, no-good thief John Garfield holes up with a lower middle class family (Shelley Winters, Wallace Ford, Selena Royle) and the desperation and paranoia sets in. Blacklistees Dalton Trumbo, Hugo Butler and director John Berry lay on the fatalistic determinism -- no matter how much Winters tries to convince him that her family will help with an escape, Garfield believes he'll be betrayed. Strange sympathy for a bad man, twisted into a criticism of the status quo, law & order-wise. Garfield's last film is a gripping drama, beautifully acted and directed. Handsomely remastered in HD. On Blu-ray from KL Studio Classics.
7/18/15

and
The Spider
(Edderkoppen)
Arrow Video (UK)
DVD
  This five-hour plus miniseries was a monster hit in Denmark, thanks to its lavish production values, period stylization and smart dramatics. Based loosely on true events, a reporter in the early postwar period (rationing, the black market) uncovers collusion between a corrupt government and a criminal empire borne straight from the German occupation. You likely never heard of the cast but they're great: green reporter Jakob Cedergren, established news veteran Bent Medjing, saxophone-playing prodigal brother Lars Mikkelsen and drop-dead gorgeous film star Stine Stengade, whose father is neck deep in the criminality. Quite demanding and rewarding, this has been favorably compared to the very different The Kingdom by daffy Dane Lars von Trier. On Region 2 DVD from Arrow Video (UK).
7/18/15

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Hello!

The picture at the top is brand new -- I just got back from visiting D.C., where I found that Greg Jein's original Mothership miniature from Close Encounters of the Third Kind is still on display at the Air and Space Museum a few miles outside of town, down Virginia way. The model seems a little out of place among the museum's incredible collection of real airplanes and spaceships, but it was certainly popular last Saturday. Let me see, the last time I saw this piece of plastic, metal, neon and Bondo was 38 years ago at Steven Spielberg's house. That's when we opened its top-secret crate to let a Revell Models engineer take a look at it for a potential hobby kit. As we were doing this, Amy Irving and Carrie Fisher exited the house on their way to play tennis, and paid us exactly zero attention. Not exactly a glorious Hollywood moment. Revell passed on taking out a license. I heard that by 1977 plastic model toys had been made too expensive by the oil shortage and most kits had to be safe for kids. With all those antennae, the Mothership had too much "It'll put your eye out" potential. I was on Greg's 'crew' for this, which means I scrounged up plastic model parts, sanded a few pieces and drilled umpteen zillion tiny holes in metal cigar tubes, for the M-Ship's miniature neon lighting to shine through. Greg got plenty of assistance from ace model maker Ken Swenson, and miniature lighting genius Larry Albright found ways of putting loops of neon inside those tiny tubes. ← (See illuminated tubes in half-completed ship, left. Photo © Copyright 1977 Glenn Erickson)

I think even Ken Swenson would say that it was Greg's creation from start to finish - the original concept he worked from was a small, un-detailed painting, and Greg's execution walked a fine line between a technological look and abstract fantasy. The ship was essentially an expensive mini-chandelier, with its lighting effects as important as its shape. Nothing on the ship was meant to have a specific function... it just looked cool. Cameraman Dennis Muren had just finished his Star Wars work at ILM and ambled over to Glencoe to do the major motion control filming of the Mothership. I got my UCLA pal Hoyt Yeatman the job of monitoring the shots in a smoke-filled room. They'd program shots all day, and then the takes ran through entire nights -- it was a camera babysitting job that required a highly competent special effects babysitter. Boy, were we happy when Spielberg decided to follow George Lucas's example, and give full credit to everyone who worked on the show's effects. It was unprecedented. As both Hoyt and I were non-Union, we were billed as 'project assistants.'

At least 50% of the magic of the Mothership was the incredible slit-scan animated light show seen on its underside when it hovers over the Base Camp at the foot of Devil's Tower. Ace animation supervisor Robert Swarthe engineered the amazing technical feat/optical illusion, with Harry Moreau and others (I remember meeting and liking Cy Didjurgis, Carol Bordman, Connie Morgan, Bill Millar and Eleanor Dahlen) that generated artwork for weeks and weeks. The synchronization of the animated patterns to the scene's music and sound effects had to be done by hand. I guess that all of the effects in CE3K could now be done in a single digital workstation, but I don't think they'd have the same quality. In 1977 they were amazing, with the best of them looking remarkably photo-real, projected in the Cinerama Dome in 70mm. So I have to say it's kind of neat, having something I was associated with on display in the Smithsonian. I think it puts my boss Greg Jein in a class by himself - he earned two Academy Award nominations on the two shows where I was his assistant.

Links and news ... hey, Criterion for October is bringing out two great horror Blu-rays. David Cronenberg's The Brood with Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar is one of his best. Masaki Kobayashi's epic horror classic Kwaidan has long been wanting for a fancy re-master. This means I'll no longer have to listen to Gary Teetzel complain every year at Halloween, "When are they going to do a proper improved Blu-ray of Kwaidan?" This version even has a chance of being completely uncut. The Yuki Onna episode is one of the creepiest things I've seen on a screen.

As reported to me by Savant correspondent Stefan Andersson, the Home Theater Forum broke some great news from Universal this week. No release dates were announced, but 4K restorations are finished and/or underway for a pile of great titles. They go like this: Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, the Marx Bros.' Animal Crackers, Cocoanuts, Duck Soup, Horse Feathers and Monkey Business; Gregory La Cava's My Man Godfrey and Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express; the Karloff, Lugosi and Chaney Jr. films Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, House of Dracula and House of Frankenstein; the early musical The King of Jazz; the silent features Last Warning, Oh Doctor and Outside the Law; Marlon Brando's impressive One Eyed Jacks. Not in 4K but set for remastering are Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady and Anthony Mann's Winchester '73. That's certainly a nice bunch of projects -- Universal recently announced the restoration of more silent films, fifteen in all, but did not give specific titles.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Around the World with Orson Welles
B2MP
Blu-ray + DVD
  Yet another wild Orson Welles adventure that showed great promise, and could have yielded the funding he needed for his ambitious personal projects. The six completed episodes of this travelogue-interview show, filmed in Spain, Germany, France and England present Welles' incomparable skills as an interviewer, raconteur and guerrilla filmmaker. He takes on a small Basque village, locations for The Third Man, Parisian intellectuals and a gaggle of old ladies in an English retirement home for widows. His technique is brilliant. The plan seems to have broken down on a seventh uncompleted episode about a murder in France. Included on this combo disc are a once-lost Viennese episode and a 2000 documentary on this unfinished episode, that analyzes Welles' progressive approach on the series as a whole. This should have been a big career success for him. On Blu-ray + DVD from from B2MP.
7/15/15

The Monster that Challenged the World
KL Studio Classics
Blu-ray
  A modest but solid late-'50s monster-on-the-loose picture that takes its story much more seriously than most, this one is about a sneaky herd of snail creatures from the bottom of California's Salton Sea, that interrupt Navy experiments and gobble up unlucky divers and smooching teenagers. Yet the generic story is given a fine polish, with Tim Holt, Audrey Dalton and our favorite Hans Conried all handed good characters to play. And the monster is halfway impressive -- a twelve-foot drooling sea slug called a Kraken, that smashes its way through doors to threaten the heroine. As a special treat, the disc has a bright, perfectly judged commentary by Tom Weaver, who seems to have interviewed literally everybody who came anywhere near this almost 60 year-old production. On Blu-ray from KL Studio Classics.
7/15/15

and

Come and Get It
The Warner Archives Collection
DVD-R
  A bona fide classic and a Savant favorite that will strike a chord with anybody harboring a romantic regret in their past -- Edna Ferber's dual-generational tale gives us Edward Arnold as a classic 'taker', a lumberman who profits from the rape of the North woods, and turns his back on his true love for the sake of riches and success. Twenty years later, he encounters her daughter, and through her tries to recover what he so callously threw away in his youth. Also starring Walter Brennan and Joel McCrea, this is THE movie to appreciate the legendary Frances Farmer, who in a dual role conveys the spirit of all good things lost, all loves betrayed. Co-directed by William Wyler, after Howard Hawks was fired; if Hawks is the one responsible for the 'alive' feeling of this show, it's one of his best jobs of direction. Farmer's singing of "Aura Lee" is an unheralded minor highlight of film history. On DVD-R from The Warner Archives Collection.
7/15/15

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Hello!

Savant links & connections provider Gary Teetzel is fighting the good fight down in San Diego at Comic-Con, trying to get into those crowded venues ... some people assume that I attend conventions, but that's a younger man's game. Gary has, however, found time to forward yet another good link, to a Leonard Maltin article about Vincent Price 'starring' in a new disc of 1950s industrial films: Vincent Price Goes Digging - in Technicolor. They're all corporate ads -- Price plays Colonel Drake, the engineer who figured out how to get oil out of the ground.

Let me see, here. Arrow Films is coming out with a BD disc of Buckaroo Banzai that repeats the extras I edited way back in 2002 or so. That was a messy project because he had to use a lot of material sourced from VHS tapes saved by the writer and director. Criterion is releasing Night and the City on Blu. It will retain my commentary, recorded in a freezing audio booth -- you can practically hear my teeth chattering.

What discs are people writing me about? They're pretty excited about the Warner Archives Collection's new disc of Sam Fuller's Run of the Arrow. I also noted The High Cost of Loving with José Ferrer and Gena Rowlands. It's a pretty creepy story of the insecurity of modern life -- work, home -- that now seems very prophetic.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Hiroshima mon amour
The Criterion Collection
Blu-ray
  An anti-nuke documentary, with the notable addition of Emmanuele Riva and Eiji Okada, becomes a romance of love blooming in the ashes, perhaps pointing the way to a sane response to the horror of war in the nuclear age. Riva and Okada achieve a moving intensity in their sensual, unsentimental affair. Making his feature debut, Alain Resnais turns Marguerite Duras' erotic novel into a rumination on memory and forgetfulness -- and the nature of shared human responsibility. Once considered opaque and intellectual, Resnais' film communicates better than ever. Mastered from a 2013 restoration, and graced with new extras -- and the revelation that Eiji Okada's fluent-sounding French was all spoken phonetically. On Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
7/11/15

Storm Fear
KL Studio Classics
Blu-ray
  Producer-actor-director Cornel Wilde cuts loose with a superior noir suspense drama about bandits snowbound in a high mountain cabin. The excellent screenplay is by Horton Foote. Wilde's co-stars in meaty parts are his partner and spouse Jean Wallace, defeated Dan Duryea, earnest Dennis Weaver, psycho Steven Hill (his first movie), good kid actor David Stollery and in a rare early film appearance, the luminous Lee Grant. Drama-wise this has everything. Cornel Wilde shows himself to be a more than capable director, with or without his shirt on. The high mountain location in the snow provides a convincing backdrop. Who will betray whom to escape? What destructive secret does Wilde's bank robber bring back to his family? On widescreen Blu-ray from KL Studio Classics.
7/11/15

and

Escape from East Berlin
The Warner Archives Collection
DVD-R
  Why did the East Berliner cross the wall? Back in Germany after a decade making great films noirs in Hollywood, ace director Robert Siodmak films the topical story of a major tunnel escape under the Berlin Wall -- only a couple of miles from where it happened, and just a few months after it happened. Don Murray is the young Berliner whose house is right next to the wall, and just a hop, skip and a week of tunneling away from freedom. Teenage fraülein-babe Christine Kaufmann has a yen to get to the other side as well. It's a suspenseful bit of history -- the East Berliners must move fast, before the wall is reinforced with barriers and listening devices that will make such efforts impossible. The supporting cast was lined up by actor Werner Klemperer, who reserves for himself a plum role. On DVD-R from The Warner Archives Collection.
7/11/15

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Hello!

We're in the middle of a drought, but we've got a cascade of library titles coming out now -- Kino, Olive and Twilight Time each release stacks of quality Blu-rays every month. Here's what I have in hand now -- let me know if you want a particular one covered in depth: Twilight Time: Mississippi Mermaid and State of Grace; coming up are The World of Henry Orient, The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Best of Everything, Places in the Heart, A Month in The Country.

Kino: Harry in Your Pocket, Deranged, Truck Turner, The Crimson Cult, Foreign Intrigue, He Ran All the Way, War Gods of the Deep, Black Sabbath, Still of the Night, The January Man. I have Kino's The Monster that Challenged the World ready to go; not quite here for August from Kino are Navajo Joe and Night of the Eagle (Burn, Witch, Burn).

From The Warner Archive Collection in DVD-R I have ready to write The Clay Pigeon, Quick! Before it Melts, Come and Get It, Robin Hood of El Dorado and Viva Villa! They've announced some attractive titles -- like Sam Fuller's Run of the Arrow -- but I'll need to finish these first.

Olive just dropped off some exciting Blu-rays: Hell's Five Hours, Ned Kelly, Criminal Law, Baby It's You, Street Smart, Wild Thing and The Eternal Sea.

And finally, some good news and bad news from The 20th Fox Cinema Archives. Their DVD-R of Michael Sarne's 1968 swinging London epic Joanna is from an ancient, pan-scanned transfer. The movie is an indulgent hoot but it sure looked great back in 1968. I was eager to see it again, just to enjoy Donald Sutherland's fruity performance and Rod McKuen's flashy music. Too bad. The good news, for weird movie freaks anyway, is that Philip Kaufman's sophomore effort, the cryptically primitive (or pop-sophisticated, take your pick) Fearless Frank, with Jon Voight, looks great on its 20th Fox Cinema Archives disc, in enhanced widescreen. That one I will definitely review, even though I'll be asking more questions about it than I'll be answering.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

It Follows
Anchor Bay/Radius
Blu-ray + Digital HD
 Another much-hyped horror effort, this shocker delivers the goods with no excuses. It's great, quality filmmaking as well: Alfred Hitchcock would probably not approve of the way modern kids live in this picture, but I bet he'd love the film's direction. Writer-director David Robert Mitchell comes up with a nightmarishly simple story notion involving an invisible phantom that never ceases its slow pursuit of its appointed victim, who can escape only by victimizing another innocent person. The way Mitchell chooses to tell his story makes all the difference: the people seem real, the threat is imminent and the show builds a relentless feeling of dread. This thing is superior filmmaking on all counts. On Blu-ray and Digital HD from Anchor Bay/Radius.
6/07/15

Miracle Mile
KL Studio Classics
Blu-ray
  Steve DeJarnatt slipped in just under the wire, historically speaking, as this nuke-threat classic came out just before the Berlin Wall fell. It's got a sure-fire, can't-lose Cold War jitters premise: if you were to somehow be given a 90-minute early warning for an impending nuclear attack, what would you do? At 4:a.m., Anthony Edwards gets no traction trying to roust his new girlfriend Mare Winningham and scram out of town -- as the news leaks out and the Miracle Mile section of Wilshire Blvd. erupts in chaos. The anxiety and the filming style mesh perfectly to produce the story of Armageddon, L.A., with the symbolic La Brea Tar Pits ready to preserve a few new specimens from the doomed year of 1989. You'll be surprised by the level of technical and logistical accomplishment in this modestly-budgeted End-of-the-World thriller, and the location work is so good that Los Angeles residents will feel like it's really happening. Don't panic! With John Agar (perfect!) and a great score by Tangerine Dream. On Blu-ray from KL Studio Classics.
6/07/15

and

The Young Lions
Twilight Time
Blu-ray
  It's an entertaining, fascinating big budget turkey -- three top stars in interesting roles can't overcome a trendy, faux-profound script and some of the worst direction in any big-studio attraction of the 1950s. You will believe that 20th Fox can spend millions on foreign locations and come up with a cheap-looking picture! Yet Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin, Hope Lange, May Britt, Maximillian Schell and Barbara Rush give the movie a gotta-watch quality. Brando as a dashing young Wehrmacht officer, complete with tricky accent gimmicks? Okay. Dean Martin as a draft-dodging showman? Much more believable. Comes with a Twilight Time audio commentary. Oh, and we all want to wrap up Hope Lange and Barbara Rush, and take them home. On Blu-ray from Twilight Tiime.
6/07/15

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Hello!

So whatta we got? We survived the 4th well enough, it seems.

Over at his Cageyfilms page, George Kenneth Godwin has an article called "Art Flms' and the Nature of Boredom. It's a cogent response to another article by a writer complaining about all those 'classics' we have to see that are boring or a drag. It's the "we have to see them" part that the writer gets wrong. One always has the right to discriminate. I barely survived a Bela Tarr film and it would take a concerted effort on someone's part to drag me back to one. But I wouldn't for a minute claim that his films are unworthy or invalid. Godwin very neatly sketches why some 'long art films where nothing happens' appeal to him and have value. More power to him.

If you've never read George's articles about his experience working on David Lynch's Dune, they're very much recommended. It was his great adventure at the periphery of big-time filmmaking, in his case, in Mexico City. They're at the Cageyfilms page as well.

And Joe Dante sent out this link to a what he joked is 'the stupidest review ever written, by somebody who hasn't seen the movie:' Joni Edelman's Pixar Fails At Body Positivity in 'Inside, Out.'

While Savant was knocked off the web airwaves, a disc I contributed to last year won an award. Kino circulated announcements that its Blu-ray of The Quatermass Xperiment is a 2015 Saturn Award Winner for Best DVD/BD Classic Film Release. Congratulations to author and authority Marcus Hearn, whose older Val Guest interview and audio commentary are really good. The award can't praise George Feltenstein, who, back in the 1990s at the old MGM Home Video, took the trouble of sourcing original elements for the English version. And there's also Deluxe Digital film manager Mary Grace Nicolas, who did such a good job re-mastering the movie in 2008.

The Saturn Awards are given out by The Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy and Horror Films. I remember the days when its eccentric founder Donald E. Reed, in his odd high-pitched voice, would introduce movies around Los Angeles. They are good memories - on my first Halloween in Los Angeles, on a stormy night in Westwood, Reed brought us a midnight show of the wondrous The Fearless Vampire Killers.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Kern & Hammerstein: Show Boat
EuroArts
Blu-ray
  From the San Francisco Opera comes this colorful presentation of one of Broadway's most famous musicals, with the accent on the music, the singing and the dancing. Patricia Racette is Julie La Verne, while Heidi Stober, Michael Todd Simpson, Bill Irwin and Morris Robinson carry the other biggest roles. Taped (apparently) during real shows, this feels live, which only makes the voices (non-amplified) seem stronger and the performances more energetic. Great color, and a lavish production. On Blu-ray from EuroArts.
6/30/15

Riffraff
The Warner Archive Collection
DVD-R
  Pat O'Brien and Anne Jeffreys are a sleuth and a femme fatale caught up in an oil scheme in Panama; the screenplay would seem tailored for Robert Mitchum, and the lively Jeffreys at times seems to be imitating Lauren Bacall. It's clever, witty, and is directed in great style by Ted Tetzlaff, who gives us an extended opening sequence on a fateful plane trip, completely without dialogue. Also with Walter Slezak, Percy Kilbride and Jerome Cowan. This who-ever-heard-of-it film noir is very entertaining. On DVD-R from The Warner Archive Collection.
6/30/15

and

The Killers '46
and
The Killers '64
The Criterion Collection
Blu-ray
  Returning to a dual-version DVD from fourteen years ago, Criterion gives them both excellent new transfers, and some new extras. Robert Siodmak's 1946 noir masterpiece enlarged Ernest Hemingway's short story, and made instant stars of Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. Don Siegel's 1964 remake updated things, and also changed the point of view -- the 'investigators' into the mystery are now the killers, played by Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager. Siegel's update sizzles with fine work from John Cassavetes and Angie Dickinson, plus the final performance of Ronald Reagan -- as a miserable, vicious gangster. He's great! On Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
6/30/15

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Hello!

It's good to be back up again -- but disappointing that it took so long. Not a subject for popular discussion... the DVDtalk people are great, though.

In the news, Gary Teetzel informs me that Warner Home Video, which distributes the Paramount library on home video, has announced a Blu-ray release of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance for October 13. Other Paramount titles coming the same day are Witness, Escape from Alcatraz, The Core, Along Came a Spider and Team America: World Police. So be happy -- we're waiting for the timeless Paramount sci-fi classics The War of the Worlds and When Worlds Collide to appear on Blu, but the sci-fi box-office dud The Core is coming right up. I remember an audience laughing at the trailer for that one.

Gary saw this old ad for Anak ng Bulkan, a Filipino movie about a giant monster bird, and wasn't sure it was even real. The title apparently translates to "Sons of the Volcano." Then he found a YouTube link to the whole movie. We don't have any subtitles, so can't say if anybody in the film describes the giant bird as being, 'As big as a battleship.' Chapters six and eight are recommended for miniatures and monsters-versus-the-military action. The plot blurb reads: "The story revolves around the friendship of a small boy with a gentle giant bird which is mistaken by people as an evil creature." The movie is ... lively.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson