Back in form, at least for a few days or so - four reviews today:
MGM's Midnite Movies Double Feature of two Ingrid Pitt Hammer epics, Countess Dracula and The Vampire Lovers, come to DVD in pristine shape. The second of these sexy horror pictures has been extensively restored, fulfilling the promise of an article Savant wrote in 1998.
HVe's picture-perfect disc of Merchant/Ivory's The Europeans gives Henry James a heady mixture of fine performances (Lee Remick, Wesley Addey, Lisa Eichhorn) and a beautiful New England Autumn for a background.
John Steinbeck wrote the screenplay for his own The Red Pony, and it's an overlooked gem. Myrna Loy and Robert Mitchum turn in fine character performances, under strong direction by Lewis Milestone, and the famous score by Aaron Copland. From Artisan.
Columbia brings us one of Boris Karloff's least-seen, screwiest vehicles: The Devil Commands, which is a great title that has nothing to do with the movie. There is some body snatching going on to help poor Boris communicate with his dead wife, and good input from steely Anne Revere, but otherwise, this klunky spook show is pretty silly.
Savant saw the newest John Sayles movie in preview the other night. CASA DE LOS BABYS is more of Sayles' social commentary on an intimate dramatic level, with great performances from a clutch of Anglo women waiting in some Latin American country for babies to adopt: Daryl Hannah, Marcia Gay Harden, Mary Steenburgen, Lili Taylor, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Susan Lynch. Rita Moreno runs their hotel, and is part of the racket to soak the Americans as much as possible, but who's stealing from who? Less didactic and more deeply felt than Sayles' last effort, this one has a lot of emotion and some good observations about the intersection of the First and Third Worlds. - Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at August 24, 2003 10:37 AM