Savant's new reviews today are

There's nothing like an infusion of product to get the keyboard tapping. The grandiose Warners Hitchcock box is on the way, along with the following: Alexander's Ragtime Band, King Kong Lives, Lassie Come Home, Uncovered - The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, Pillow Talk, Lovers and Other Strangers, La Balance, The World at War, Zachariah, Come Back Little Sheba, Desire Under the Elms, Black Orchid, White Dawn, Videodrome, Lemora A Child's Tale of the Supernatural, The Alligator People, The Boston Strangler, Murder on the Orient Express, The Trojan Women, I Married A Monster from Outer Space, Hardcore and Tess. That's quite a stack for the next month so I hope to do them all justice. Learning to be a more concise writer will eventually come, but Que Sera Sera.

I'll try to handle them mostly in release order! I didn't get Freaks but will review it from friend's copy if it's really desired; I'm curious to see if it's an improvement on the old laserdisc. Thanks, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Thanks for the corrections this week. I didn't need one rather rabid letter trying to bait me over my review of 7 Days in September, but you can't have everything. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

Hello ... these are some of the most rewarding editing days I can remember but they don't leave much time to do the reviews ... which is why I'll be down to six a week for maybe another week or so ... Thanks for reading, once again. Glenn

Savant's new reviews today are

Screenings this week ... lets' see ... THE VILLAGE was sort of a wash. It wasn't outright ludicrous like SIGNS, but its stinger ending was a weak idea more suited to a 30 minute Twilight Zone show, and even without being tipped off I could see it coming a mile away. In fact, one of my college scripts - and not one of the better ones - was a similar idea. That's a shame because some of the acting and even some of the direction was very nice.

COLLATERAL was another superior Michael Mann show, so nicely put together that I didn't mind Tom too much. It also had a pitifully predictable ending but the moment-by-moment flow of the movie was exciting enough to compensate.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE was a big disappointment. It's a revamp of the original without a lot of point to it. Although I'm in full accord with the picture's anti War on Terror theme, it doesn't jibe well with a conspiracy plot that has to be made 20 times more complicated than the original Frankenheimer show. The movie comes off as science fiction, with the How requiring so much work, there wasn't much room for any thrills or romance or tension. We just think about how things are shifted from the original and wonder why the ending doesn't mean anything to us. Loved the propaganda, but wasn't excited about the drama.

At the Cinematheque last week I got to see a long wished-for movie, the 1963 Czech IKARIE XB-1, which I saw and loved at age 11 as VOYAGE TO THE END OF THE UNIVERSE. MGM had only one unscreenable print and no negative for the AIP dubbed version so it is probably near to being a lost film now. Besides being in Czech and subtitled, the original movie is a couple reels longer and its story entirely changed around. In the U.S. rehash, the space travellers are revealed at the end to be aliens coming to Earth on a one-way pioneering trip, a ploy repeated in Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES and sort-of repeated in PLANET OF THE APES (well, a little). The derelict space ship they encounter is therefore an alien craft to them.

In the Czech original, the Ikarie is an Earth spaceship on a fifteen-year mission to explore a part of the galaxy, in particular a white planet that might have intelligent life. The derelict space ship is boarded and revealed to be a U.S. craft from 1987, full of dead card-playing capitalists and soldiers who have killed each other to conserve a dwindling oxygen supply. The gas guns used are painted like toys and called "Tigger Fun." There are a lot more dead bodies discovered.

The space travellers are much more individualized, with one leader saddened because his pregnant wife decided not to join him. Another astronaut's baby is on the way and its birth becomes a hopeful event in the finale. I believe the 'astronaut goes mad' and 'sleeping sickness' subplots are reversed in the chronology. A mysterious detail is cleared up; people exchange little sniffer-tubes with nostalgic scents (or something more complex?) from back home: "Ah, the first frost of winter in November..."

The ending is jubilant, spacey and has a sense of wonder that predates 2001: after being saved from the radiation of a black star by a force field projected from the white planet, the space travellers penetrate its atmosphere to be greeted by a city of lights, seen from high above. It was very moving, with more group shots of astronauts reacting. In the AIP recut, the image dissolved to a ratty stock shot of the Statue of Liberty.

The picture is in 'scope B&W. It has some great effects and some not-so-good ones but the human drama and the details of life on the ship are wonderful, as are the spaceship interior designs that remind of 2001 without being as polished. The movie is one of the best outerspace movies ever, and surely the most serious made before Kubrick's film. It appears to have been copied very poorly as SPACEFLIGHT 1C1 a couple of years later.

That's it from Savant this week ... thanks for reading!

Savant's new reviews today are

Thanks! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

A rushed night ... I'd like to talk about the Czech Sci Fi films I saw at the Cinematheque last night but it'll have to wait. Thanks for being patient, I gave these reviews a lot of thought! Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

This week Savant goes nuts reviewing Warners' new Village of the Damned & Children of the Damned double bill. It was a good opportunity to spout about another of the many classic genre thrillers I'm most fond of.

Just received an exciting flyer from Home Vision Entertainment. This October they'll be releasing the five-picture Yakuza bloodbath saga The Yakuza Papers, the series that begins with the special screening favorite Battles Without Honor And Humanity. They're from Kinji Fukasaku, and will be hotly awaited. There's a special boxed set that contains a disc with a load of extras as well.

Everyone knows about the Star Wars original trilogy finally coming out on DVD this fall. In keeping with George Lucas' innovative attitude toward classic films, Fox is bringing out the minor (ve-e-ry minor) thriller The Alligator People on September 7. A reliably mendacious non-studio source has confirmed that the B&W horror film will not only be in enhanced CinemaScope for the first time, it will also make extensive use of Computer Generated Graphic enhancement to fix a few problems that have dogged, or more accurately, reptiled the film since 1959.

Masters of CGI not yet born when the film was made have been working for months to create a vast army of 50,000 Alligator People. An unnamed and unquestionably dubious source was quoted as saying "The movie was always called The Alligator People, even though there was only one Alligator Person in it. By using modern technology, we are finally able to realize Roy Del Ruth's original vision."

The magic of CGI will also allow the inclusion of The Alligator Fighter Steve Irwin as an Our Town- like narrator and commentator on the spooky proceedings down in the swamp. And, yes, Lon Chaney's hook will now be able to morph into a variety of Ninja weapons, and he'll engage in a series of Matrix-like fights with the Alligator People. His famous line "I'LL KILL YOU, ALLIGATOR MAN, JUST LIKE ANY FOUR-LEGGED GATOR!" will once again be heard across the land.

DVD Savant accepts no responsibility for this reporting outrage. :) Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are

No big news - an official announcement for Criterion's EYES WITHOUT A FACE is welcome - will be back on Sunday with at least one more noir review ... Thanks, Glenn

Savant's new reviews today are

Happy Sunday ... it's a new month of summer and Savant's enjoying spinning film noir discs and filling the night air with Miklos Rosza music. August has some odd horror titles coming up, a few first from Warner and then later some weird stuff like Synapse's truly-weird Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural. Also, strange art films like Robert Rossen's Lilith are on the way.

Enjoy summer ... stop looking at this and see what it's like outdoors! Glenn Erickson