Savant's new reviews today are:

In The Land of the Head Hunters
The Milestone Cinematheque
Blu-ray
  A thorough reconstruction brings back the first feature film starring an all-Native American cast... from 1914, a full hundred years ago. Even then, the filmmakers had to find older native craftsmen to produce the authentic props and costumes, as some tribal customs and ritual dances had already been banned by law for 30 years. The two-disc package contains two versions of the movie and a wealth of ethnographic and filmic extras. The story? An Indian hero seeks his bride promised in a vision quest, and starts a tribal war waged in impressive war canoes. In Blu-ray from The Milestone Cinematheque.
2/28/15

The Prowler
VCI
Blu-ray
  Joseph Losey and Dalton Trumbo's searing film noir is bitter social criticism with a sordid edge that was shocking in 1951. Scheming cop Van Heflin cheats, lies and murders his way toward a life where he can "make money while he sleeps" -- all he has to do is seduce an unhappy wife (Evelyn Keyes) and get her radio-personality husband out of the way. A key Los Angeles 'nightcrawler' tale, this concludes in existential territory, an arid desert ghost town. A phenomenal missing film brought back from noir limbo by the Film Noir Foundation and the UCLA Film and Television Archives. With excellent extras by Alan K. Rode and Eddie Muller. In Blu-ray from VCI.
2/28/15

The End of Violence
Olive Films
Blu-ray
 Angels weep and thriller fans scratch their heads: ace cult director Wim Wenders' social sci-fi thriller about class inequality, technological paranoia and escalating violence in Los Angeles is a frustrating, pretentious mess... and Savant likes many a pretentious sci-fi fantasy. Bill Pullman, Andie MacDowell and Gabriel Byrne head a cast of cult favorites, the visuals are gorgeous and Ry Cooder's melancholy music is diverting, but this turkey is a bad idea assembled from stale ideas, adorned with hipster dialogue and sub-Tarantino confrontations. It's all about a... well, even I had to use four paragraphs to just begin to describe what it's about. Track down the long Until the End of the World instead. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
2/28/15

and

The Sure Thing
Shout! Factory
Blu-ray
  Rob Reiner's first light comedy teams a young John Cusack and the charming Daphne Zuniga for a dumb but diverting college break/road trip. Not bad but awfully inconsistent -- the nice college girl flashes herself naked out a car window, to prove a point to a guy she wants to leave her alone? Cusack and Zuniga -- and Reiner's easygoing direction -- keep such inanities at bay. We like the actors so much that tolerating other character and storyline goofs is not a problem. The sex fantasy scenes show off the acting skills of Nicolette Sheridan's knit bikini - she's done much better since. With a Rob Reiner commentary. In Blu-ray from Shout! Factory.
2/28/15

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Hello!

Today's curious case of mailbox-watching: Savant anxiously awaits Warner Home Video's three Blu-ray musicals -- The Band Wagon, Calamity Jane and the new 3-D disc of Kiss Me Kate. I saw it projected at the Tiffany on Sunset in 1979, and thus experienced the glorious three-dimensional appeal of Ann "Hi Honey!" Miller. Am eager to repeat the pleasure. Great vintage 3-D disc releases don't happen every week.

And Bob Furmanek's new Kiss Me Kate 3-D Page has just gone up at the 3-D Film Archive.

Over at Trailers from Hell that great commentator Brian Trenchard-Smith hits on a movie I never heard of but now want to see, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. It's a 2008 release apparently made from an un-filmed 1930s screenplay, and stars "a bubble-brained singer (Amy Adams) and her prim and proper social secretary (Frances McDormand)." It sounds great to me. Thank you, TFH.

Lastly but not least-ly, audio specialist Mike Matessino and writer-director Bob Gale are whipping up a gala night for a big-screen Hollywood premiere of their uncut visual and audio reconstruction of Steven Spielberg's massive comedy epic 1941. The air raid begins on Sunday evening, March 22 more or less where the movie takes place, on Hollywood Blvd. at the Egyptian Theater!

Mike and Bob are presently rounding up the film's actors and technical personnel to take part in pre- and/or post- screening panels. It's a spectacular big-screen picture (bring earplugs) with many funny production stories to be told. Take it from the guy who wrote the book. Civil Defense Wardens do not get free admission.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Incident
The Warner Archive Collection
DVD-R
  Monogram's ten-cent noir has a good script and good ensemble acting, with known names Robert Osterloh and Anthony Caruso as villains and the fresh-faced Jane Frazee as a terrific leading lady. Ordinary guy Warren Douglas is mistaken for a mobster marked for death, but is Frazee's beauty helping him, or running interference for the underworld? The small-scale drama generates considerable interest thanks to the committed performances. It's also the odd exceptional noir that begins with a male protagonist, but the emphasis soon shifts to the street-smart, take-charge heroine. In DVD-R from The Warner Archive Collection.
2/24/15

To Sir, With Love
Twilight Time
Blu-ray
  A true-life source novel proves the ideal vehicle for idol Sidney Poitier, especially since his star power and the writing and direction of James Clavell smooth over the potential pitfalls in what is really a sentimental, idealized semi-fantasy. Poitier's teacher takes control of his students and improves their lives, by demanding respect and in return offering his good will, good advice and excellent example. Naturally, every female from age fourteen up falls for this gentleman teacher, a charismatic inspiration who heralded by his own #1 theme song - that implies a teacher-student romantic fantasy. The film introduced both Judy Geeson and singer Lulu to America, not to mention genre fave Suzy Kendall; filmed in a realistic-yet-idealized London background. With great extras. In Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
2/24/15

and

Caveman
Olive Films
Blu-ray
  The live-action laughs in this One Zillion BC comedy are stone-age familiar, but its film's stop-motion special effects are hilarious. Ringo Starr, Shelley Long & future Mrs. Starr Barbara Bach frolic in furs while outwitting prehistoric perils from all sides; Jack Gilford is an amusing old blind duffer. But Jim Danforth's goofy dinosaurs steal the show. A pop-eyed green frog-lizard loves to chow down on cavemen, while a chubby T-Rex is too stupid to walk straight -- and that's before he gobbles up a mouthful of narcotic berries. Beautiful animation provides prehistory's funniest jokes, with some of the most creative pre-CGI visual effects ever. You will believe Ringo can ride atop a dinosaur. A little. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
2/24/15

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Hello!

Savant associate Gary Teetzel steers me to a facebook post by Ted Newsom with a link to a Soundcloud page with an Audio Lecture by Vincent Price. Fave horror star Price is heard giving a talk around the time of the production of Cry of the Banshee. Lots of the usual stories, but some fresh ones as well, and Price is in good humor throughout.

Meanwhile, another accomplished Savant contact David J. Schow has an upcoming premiere for us. Several years ago I helped him research the "lost" Joe Stefano film The Haunted a bizarre supernatural spin-off of Outer Limits that didn't get very far. On Friday March 13th (!) David will be helping to present a Los Angeles re-premiere of Leslie Stevens' long-unavailable feature Private Property, restored by Scott MacQueen and the preservationists at the UCLA Film Archive. The legendary film stars Kate Manx, Corey Allen and Warren Oates. It was refused an MPAA code seal yet Stevens promoted a profitable release for it anyway -- and then it all but disappeared. It's at the Billy Wilder Theater on Wilshire, with details available here. Good luck, David --

And I've just received VCI's new Blu-ray of Joseph Losey's The Prowler, restored to HD by the UCLA Film Archive, the Stanford Theatre Foundation and the Film Noir Foundation (hey, Noir City is coming soon...) . Even VCI calls it subversive!

But first I need to give The Milestone Cinematheque's 2-disc set In the Land of the Head Hunters the review it deserves.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

A Day in the Country
The Criterion Collection
Blu-ray
  The French dearly love Jean Renoir's short feature, filmed but not finished in 1936 and completed by its producer a full ten years later. The subject is a holiday from work, where a country picnic along a placid waterway turns into a double seduction. Freed from a complex narrative Renoir concentrates on the atmospherics of a gala day so precious that unexpected things can happen -- and he doesn't flinch from their emotional consequences. The presentation includes an extra comparable only to Criterion's disc of Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter -- the French producer saved all of the daily negative outs, and we get to see 90 minutes' worth of footage showing exactly how Renoir directed his masterpiece. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
2/21/15

Stormy Weather
Twilight Time
Blu-ray
  The monumental black musical from the war years, this takes place in an all-Black show business fantasy world, and therefore is mostly free of the cultural stereotyping of Cabin in the Sky. The singing and dancing talent on view is phenomenal, as is the direction by Andrew L. Stone. Stars Bill Robinson and Lena Horne are supported by Cab Calloway, Katherine Dunham, Fats Waller, Ada Brown and Dooley Wilson. It's Horne's best screen appearance, while the socko conclusion lets Cab Calloway's hair-tossing showmanship lead into one of the most amazing dancing finales ever, courtesy of Harold and Fayard Nicholas and their impossible vaulting splits. In Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
2/21/15

The Night They Raided Minsky's
Olive Films
Blu-ray
  William Friedkin doesn't talk much about this rather good movie, that according to legend was given a full re-edit in post production. Jason Robards and Norman Wisdom are Burlesque comics out to bed Britt Eklund, a virginal Amish girl who dances stories from the Bible. Elliott Gould promotes Britt as the 'dancer who drove a thousand Frenchmen wild', while censor Denholm Elliott tries to close the theater for good. Plenty of rowdy, vulgar and authentic comedy from 1925. Also starring Forrest Tucker, Harry Andrews, Joseph Wiseman... and Bert Lahr in his final role as "Spats". The great music score and songs are by Charles Strouse. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
2/21/15

and

The Killing
Arrow Academy
UK Region B Blu-ray
  Stanley Kubrick scores big artistically, in this late-period noir classic that borrows a great narrative trick from authors Lionel White and Jim Thompson. Sterling Hayden, Elisha Cook Jr. and Marie Windsor are at the center of a robbery caper gone wrong. We see the entire robbery from one point of view -- and then Kubrick winds back the clock three hours to see another POV, and so forth. The crooks that don't end up mincemeat probably wish they did. The unhappy campers include Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen, Ted de Corsia, Joe Sawyer, James Edwards and everyone's favorite maniac, Timothy Carey. Cinematography by Lucien Ballard, music by Gerald Fried. Also included is the entire Kubrick short feature Killer's Kiss. In Region B Blu-ray from Arrow Academy (UK).
2/21/15

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Hello!

Three links tonight... first, over at Trailers from Hell, director Don Coscarelli comments on the trailer for the original 1956 Godzilla, King of the Monsters, you know, the version where the monster is not a dinosaur, but an atomic demon loosed by America. Coscarelli's fine, but make sure you listen to the original track. It's wall-to-wall hyperbolic taglines, the more alliterative the better. "Towering Titan of Terror!" Back in 1956, TV cereal ads had voiceovers like that.

Gary Teezel sends along this odd link to a YouTube demo of a thing called a Multi-Terrain Guard Bot, a robotic bowling ball with wall-eyed cameras that will surely soon be deployed for all kinds of nefarious purposes. Sort of terra-drone, it doesn't look like it can climb stairs, but it can go most places a lot more quickly than a robot with tank treads... including across water.

And several people have written me about Steven Morowitz and Joel Bender's Distribpix article touting a newly-discovered print of Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight. I saw the movie only once at the Fox Venice around 1973, either with UCLA friend Clark Dugger, or perhaps Randy Cook. At the time I thought it was the Orson Welles movie I liked the most. The print was beautiful but the soundtrack was an abomination... there has to be a way on improving it without undue revision. Should you go snooping around the Distribpix site, take caution as other pages are X-rated NSFW. How did Orson's film end up there?

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre
Twilight Time
Blu-ray
  Roger Corman's semi-doc approach to Al Capone's wipeout of the Bugs Moran outfit didn't win critical accolades in 1967, but the its elevated violence quotient was a good match for the competition coming from John Boorman and Arthur Penn. Jason Robards doesn't look like Scarface but works up a righteous fury when killing men with razors and baseball bats; Ralph Meeker's Bugs has little screen time. But George Segal and David Canary are fair hands with Tommy Guns, and the huge cast covers a big hunk of the Corman stock company plus every actor in Hollywood suitable for a vintage gangland epic. Corman never made another big studio picture, and very shortly quit directing to open his own distribution outfit. In Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
2/17/15

Syncopation
Cohen Film Collection
Blu-ray
  This musical history of jazz is racially integrated, but its good intentions go only so far -- the music is great and the sentiment honest, but it's still a movie about black music told mostly from the viewpoint of white leads Bonita Granville and Jackie Cooper. Dixieland tunes move North to Chicago, WW1 takes its toll and the twenties are well underway before the public accepts jazz as more than vulgar trash; the semi-fantastic conclusion sees a concert by an "all-American dance band" that includes Charlie Barnet, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Jack Jenney, Gene Krupa, Alvino Rey and Joe Venuti. Beautifully crafted by William Dieterle and edited by John Sturges; the extras consist of over 90 minutes of musical short subjects with Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Ivy Anderson, Fredi Washington and Hoagy Carmichael. In Blu-ray from the Cohen Film Collection.
2/17/15

How to Murder Your Wife
Olive Films
Blu-ray
  Richard Quine directs George Axelrod's broad farce in high style, presenting Jack Lemmon as a playboy cartoonist pampered by the perfect man's-man butler, Terry-Thomas. But the Hugh Hefner fantasy crumbles when Lemmon falls for Italian bombshell Virna Lisi, who emerges from a cake at a stag party and takes over his life. The devastatingly alluring Lisi is eventually targeted for death -- or, at least a death in Lemmon's comic strip. Claire Trevor and Eddie Mayehoff provide additional comedy while Neal Hefti's peerless lounge- bachelor pad music score is a great fit for one of the best bachelor pad pictures of the '60s. And don't forget the goop from the gloppita-gloppita machine. Perfect farce magic all around:"Buona sera." In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
2/17/15

and

Black Sunday
The U.S. Release Version
Kino Classics
Blu-ray
  After an aborted release attempt last October, Mario Bava's directorial debut and Barbara Steele's horror debut finally arrives in its American-International version, with its great replacement music score by Les Baxter. Savant quickly steers his 'review' into a personal diatribe essay about the 'old days' of cult film fanaticism before home video and the Internet, when Eurohorror was scarce and even horror authority James Ursini had to be resourceful to catch the work of greats like Mario Bava. In many cases we had to wait ten years and more to see the movies we read about in European articles and magazines -- and for some of them we're still waiting! It's great to see A.I.P.'s Black Sunday again! In Blu-ray from Kino Classics.
2/17/15

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Hello!

Life is great! Again I'm late, but I still have a couple of interesting links to share:

Correspondent "F" points us to a YouTube links of a presentation of Benjamin Christiansen's silent horror suspense movie Seven Footprints to Satan. I watched the first scene and it looks eminently watchable... they have replaced all the title cards, though.

A promo for Icarus Films' video The Way Things Go contains this video clip of an outrageous Rube Goldberg chain-reaction device by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, that's pretty entertaining. A lot of fire is involved.

And New Yorkers -- walk, don't run to MoMA's Wim Wenders Film Exhibition, March 2-17. According to the program, they're going to show his full-length three-film director's cut of Until the End of the World, the one Savant's been gaga about since 1996. It actually screens on Saturday March 7, and will be introduced by the director. Should you see it, please write me how the screening went, and what new things Wenders might say...

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Project Shirley:
The Connection
The Milestone Cinematheque
Blu-ray
  Banned and suppressed, I suppose because the authorities didn't want anybody to sympathize with drug addicts, or know anything about them -- Shirley Clarke's adaptation of a stage play about a group of heroin junkies awaiting their fix comes across beautifully on this UCLA Archive-restoration, right from the original negative. Clarke adds a filmic perspective by pretending that what we see is raw footage by a filmmaker seeking to reveal the lives of these desperate men. The combination of stage artifice and 'New American Cinema' freshness is compelling. With Warren Finnerty, Garry Goodrow, Carl Lee, Roscoe Lee Browne and William Redfield. The show comes with a selection of insightful extras. In Blu-ray from The Milestone Cinematheque.
2/14/15

Rabid
Arrow Films
Region B UK Blu-ray + PAL DVD
  David Cronenberg's sophomore horror thriller puts a new wrinkle on the old vampire tale; porn superstar Marilyn Chambers is a surgically-created bloodsucker who starts a plague of mindless killings by her rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth victims. It's exciting, well directed and as effective a genre picture as one would want. The extras include two commentaries and a fat list of featurettes and documentaries, on Cronenberg, producer Ivan Reitman and Cinépix, Canada's maker of "Maple Syrup Softcore" product. In Region B UK Blu-ray and PAL DVD from Arrow Films.
2/14/15

Lust for Life
Warner Home Video
Blu-ray
  Vincente Minnelli and John Houseman drench this tale of that old psycho-genius Vincent Van Gogh with terrific production values -- perfect period déor, European locations and careful images of original paintings borrowed from museums and collectors. Kirk Douglas provides the visually accurate, teeth-gnashing bigger than life performance that makes Vince into a tortured soul in search of an Oscar. It was won by Anthony Quinn's muted Paul Gaugin. With James Donald, Pamela Brown and Jill Bennett; photographed by Russell Harlan and Freddie Young. And the screenplay adaptation is by Norman Corwin. Looking appreciably better than the old DVD, in Blu-ray from Warner Home Video.
2/14/15

and

The Wild Angels
Olive Films
Blu-ray
  Roger Corman goes wild and takes risks with this fairly respectable tale of the outlaw Hell's Angels biker gang of Venice, California. Cool misanthrope Peter Fonda makes lousy, self-destructive decisions that send his biker pack onto roads to nowhere. Bruce Dern takes the prize as a bad-luck lieutenant appropriately named Loser; Nancy Sinatra, Diane Ladd, Joan Shawlee, Michael J. Pollard, Dick Miller and Barboura Morris make this a happy homecoming for Roger Corman fans. And Rog even shelled out for a hit pop tune -- the Arrows' Blues Theme. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
2/14/15

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Hello!

A quick greeting tonight, as I've got to proofread these four reviews one more time!

Gary Teetzel again comes through with a great link, a Documentary on Bernard Herrmann that focuses chiefly on Vertigo and Psycho, examining Herrmann's techniques in those scores.

And Joe Dante points us to a terrific, well-researched essay at And You Call Yourself a Scientist. It's on the crazy English political-espionage-Sci-fi extravaganza of 1929, High Treason. Well, it's at least more coherent than A.I.P.'s later Scream and Scream Again.

As of a couple of nights ago Savant finally became personally 3-D functional; no more bumming time on friend's equipment. I've been doubling back on 3-D releases from the last few year, trying to remember which ones I received. Am also looking forward to those new in-depth features promised this year: Kiss Me Kate, The Mask, Inferno and Bob Furmanek's promised 3-D Rarities disc.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Watership Down
The Criterion Collection
Blu-ray
 Richard Adams' acclaimed book became this unique animated classic, a film about animals in the countryside that isn't for young children. Several rabbits break free of their warren to establish a new home, but the odds are not with them -- everything is deadly to a rabbit on his own. The voiceover talent includes John Hurt, Richard Briers, Ralph Richardson, Roy Kinnear, Denholm Elliott, Zero Mostel and Harry Andrews; in Blu-ray, the animation artwork is stunning. "All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you." In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
2/10/15

Kiss Me, Stupid
Olive Films
Blu-ray
  Billy Wilder fell afoul of the Catholic Legion of Decency with this smutty fairy tale about a wife and a hooker trading places -- and discovering new truths about their narrow roles as women. Ray Walston, Kim Novak, Cliff Osmond and Felicia Farr tangle with Dean Martin's 'Dino', a rapacious rat-packer who must be delayed, waylaid and maybe just laid, so he can be sold one of their songs. It's the ultimate shaggy bedroom farce, but in the setting of a crummy Nevada town. Wilder and Co. take things to their logical ends, a couple of years before the censors lost their sting. With Doro Merande, plus music by Ira Gershwin. In Blu-ray from Olive Films.
2/10/15

and

The Day They Robbed the Bank of England
The Warner Archive Collection
DVD
  Yank break-in expert Aldo Ray is recruited by Irish patriots (and gorgeous Elizabeth Sellars) to help plan a political/criminal raid on England's bullion depository... in 1901. Newcomer Peter O'Toole is the King's Guard watching over the vault, while Ray enlists hothead Kieron Moore and waterfront "Tosher" Albert Sharpe to find the way in. An interesting cast in a suspenseful period caper film, directed by John Guillermin. In DVD-R from The Warner Archive Collection.
2/10/15

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Hello!

Well, I'll congratulate myself on getting the reviews out on time this week. Kiss Me, Stupid required checking a lot of facts, but I think it worked out well. Now that the winter semester break is finishing up, I may be able to ramp the review quotient back up to four at a time. There are certainly enough good discs to cover.

Hey, let's perpetuate some rumors! It's going around that on May 19 Warner Home Video will be releasing Blu-rays of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Ninotchka, both from 1939. I've got a lot to talk about on those, so I hope it's true. My next eyes-up date for WB will be March 3 for The Band Wagon, Calamity Jane and a 3-D release of Kiss Me Kate. That'll really be something.

Over at Stuart Galbraith IV's World Cinema Paradise, Steve Bingen has written up his own autobiographical 'growing up in the movies' story, The Micro Movie House: An Improbable History. The article could be subtitled, "How my higher education got derailed into the experience of working at a tiny movie theater built into an old church". Maybe it's time I wrote up my own experiences as an usher in Westwood, particularly when loaned out to Grauman's Chinese for FILMEX and other shows. They would probably be rated a hard-R.

And finally, it's more Warner Archive news --- on March 31 the WAC will release the obscure but respected drama Face of Fire, that I wrote about last June here at Savant: "It turned out to be an excellent, moody little item, and only tangentially a horror movie. The well-produced show was filmed in Sweden, reportedly with some of Ingmar Bergman's crewpeople. It takes place in the late 1800s in a prim and proper community where everyone dresses and acts something akin to the 'decent folk' in Arthur Penn's film of The Miracle Worker. Some scenes show the influence of Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter -- although it's not stylized the same way, we see the same kinds of cruel relationships, and a few similar camera setups."

I'll be curious to see the film's aspect ratio -- I forget what TCM's cablecast used. There are many exceptions to the widescreen that became the standard in the early 1950s... you know, like Two Men in Manhattan... possibly, but for certain Edgar Ulmer's The Naked Dawn and Allen Baron's Blast of Silence. I'm sure that they were often screened wide anyway, and cropped.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Nightcrawler
Universal
Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD
  Jake Gyllenhaal creeps, and leaps, and glides and slides across Los Angeles pursuing a ghoulish profession in Dan Gilroy's refreshingly original tale of dead-of-night doings in the name of better gore for local TV. Camcorder in hand, he crashes accidents and crime scenes to get hot video of destruction and suffering... there's no more 'news', just Reality TV. In addition to the guilty suspense and dark thrills, the picture has a LOT to say about the modern working world for entry-level applicants. Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed and Bill Paxton co-star, along with a red Challenger that's 2014's answer to The Green Hornet's Black Beauty and Batman's Batmobile. In Blu-ray and DVD + Digital HD from Universal Studios Home Entertainment.
2/07/15

The Purple Rose of Cairo
Twilight Time
Blu-ray
  Woody Allen's gentle ode to the dream world of Hollywood is one of his very best pictures, a fantasy-tragedy that remains funny and charming all the way through. Mia Farrow 's waitress and battered wife finds escape from misery at her local Bijou, where a miracle occurs -- a character in the RKO show The Purple Rose of Cairo breaks free of the silver screen and joins her in the audience. The inter-dimensional romance becomes even more impossible when the actor who played the character shows up, and falls in love with Mia as well. Farrow is heartbreaking but the movie never gets sappy; anybody who loves old movies understands immediately. With Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello, Edward Herrmann, John Wood, Van Johnson, Milo O'Shea and Dianne Wiest. In Blu-ray from Twilight Time.
2/07/15

and

A Hole in the Head
Olive Films
Blu-ray
  Frank Capra's penultimate feature is a happy box office hit filmed in partnership with Frank Sinatra, from a play about an ageing widower-playboy brought into line by adult responsibilities. Sinatra's Miami Beach hotelier is in debt and unable to do right by his girlfriend Carolyn Jones or his son, Eddie Hodges. His bossy brother Edward G. Robinson flies in to force him to settle down, and has even lined up a prospective wife -- Eleanor Parker. Capra captures a little of his old freshness here and there, and Sinatra puts across a memorable musical number, "High Hopes". But there's something depressing about the movie, which comes off not as "It's a Wonderful Life", but "You're a ring-a-ding fool, grow up and be a good square". With Thelma Ritter, Dub Taylor and Keenan Wynn; in Blu-ray from Olive Films.
2/07/15

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Hello!

Correspondent Marshall Crawford has sent in Matt Zoller Seitz and Scout Tafoya's belated but enthusiastic reappraisal of a Savant favorite, John Patrick Shanley's unfairly maligned Joe versus The Volcano. I remember happily spending years beating the drum for Joe, and not finding much agreement with my opinion until the Internet came along. My old Savant review is appended with enough enlightened reader correspondence to show that the film had an enthusiastic cult fan base almost from the start.

Gary Teetzel forwards Richard Verrier's Thursday L.A. Times article about archive work at a warehouse Deluxe keeps for unclaimed, 'orphaned' film: "A painstaking effort to reunite forgotten films with their owners". The good article makes it sound as if owners that can show title to old pictures can walk in and get them. One reason that labs accumulate film footage is that not all of it was properly paid for. 'Aha Mr. Erickson, first you have to make good on the invoices you dodged back in 1982, plus compounded interest, plus storage fees for... 33 years." That's why some films are abandoned. The marvelous thing is that conscientious personnel at labs and storage facilities have often preserved abandoned films, even when nobody was paying the bill.

Great news from The Milestone Cinematheque in New York; Savant has their new Blu-rays of Shirley Clarke's The Connection and In the Land of the Headhunters in the review queue, but they're also premiering their restoration of a forgotten gem, Kathleen Collins' Losing Ground. In this week's New Yorker Richard Brody profiles the movie in terms that make it seem a major discovery. Here's a second link, to Milestone's page on Kathleen Collins' Losing Ground. I hate to bring up genre connections, but Collins' lead actors include Bill Gunn (Ganja and Hess) and Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead and Ganja and Hess).

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson

Savant's new reviews today are:

Don't Look Now
The Criterion Collection
Blu-ray
  Voted one of the best English films ever made? Nicolas Roeg uses his signature splintered-time editorial patterns to enliven an intense suspense tale of ghosts and/or psychic synchronicity. But the real appeal is in the naturalistic, erotic marriage created between stars Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. Uncanny echoes of a tragedy disturb an English couple working in Venice, where a pair of elderly ladies insist they are in communication with a lost daughter. The film's sex scene was more controversial than any of the horror content; critics remarked that to depict the afternoon lovemaking of a married couple as an ordinary/extraordinary event, was something highly unusual. The 4K scan really perks up Roeg's moody, eccentric thriller; even the soundtrack has a lushly mysterious quality. In Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
2/03/15

Far From the Madding Crowd
The Warner Archive Collection
Blu-ray
  John Schlesinger may have missed the mark for character depth, but this Thomas Hardy epic looks and plays better now than ever before. Julie Christie (again) is Bathsheba Everdeen, a good woman in need of a dating service -- she experiences bad fortune with three very distinctive suitors, all of whom have good qualities. There's the steady, poor Gabriel Oak (Alan Bates), the older and impassioned gentleman farmer William Boldwood (Peter Finch) and the rakish cavalry Sgt. Frank Troy (Terence Stamp), who comes on as every young woman's dream. The sprawling rural tale has plenty of incident, beautiful scenery and integrity to spare; it's as if we've been transported to Sussex (Wessex? North by North Wessex?) in the 1860s. In Blu-ray from The Warner Archive Collection.
2/03/15

and

God Told Me To
Blue Underground
Blu-ray
  Larry Cohen transcends horror exploitation with this still-edgy anti-clerical shocker that has the courage of its convictions. Devout detective Tony LoBianco, engaged in his own personal spiritual conflict, begins to believe that something fantastic is behind a spate of ordinary people-turned serial killers, all of which greet arrest with the words, "God Told Me To". The idea veers off in some screwball directions but never loses sight of its non-PC mission to debunk belief systems. Cohen's screenplay most definitely attracted a quality cast: Sandy Dennis, Deborah Raffin, Sam Levene, Sylvia Sidney, Richard Lynch -- and in a great bit part as a cherub-faced lunatic cop, Andy Kaufman! An incredibly good-looking quality Blu-ray with plenty of extras, from Blue Underground.
2/03/15

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Hello!

An interesting informal leak about future Kino silents in line for release: if 'MisterLime' on the Home Theater Forum is talking straight, we should be expecting Blu-ray editions of Fritz Lang's Frau im mond (Woman in the Moon) and Spione (Spies) in the near future. The spy film I definitely need to see again, and for obvious reasons I love the science fiction picture, despite it's lumpy screenplay. Kino has greatly enlarged its Blu-ray footprint in the last year; I try to review every worthy picture they put out. I'm glad they're not turning away from fancy Blu-rays of European silent classics.

Milestone Films continues with its' series of avant-garde 'Project Shirley' pictures. I've just received Blus of Shirley Clarke's famous, once-banned The Connection ( ← ) and her not-so-well-known In the Land of the Head Hunters. The classic filmed play about drug addicts The Connection stars Warren Finnerty, Carl Lee and William Redfield, as well as the first feature perfomances by actors Garry Goodrow and Roscoe Lee Browne. I missed the screening with Ms. Clarke way back at UCLA so am looking forward to catching up with it now.

Correspondent Edward Sullivan forwards this odd, but pretty complicated video protest against The Ecological Scourge of the K-Cup. I didn't know it they were a problem, so I surely don't frequent the tony establishments that use them.

Several people have let me know that my review of a Region B English disc of 55 Days at Peking doesn't take into account the existence of a French disc that is apparently the same restored transfer and has more extras. Also (and this I can't personally confirm) is listed as Region B but is reported to actually be coded All-Region. Use your own judgment. Of course, every time I spring for a foreign disc, it arrives on the domestic market within the year. So I'm doing my bit to keep Blu-ray Flying.

And finally, when Kino withdrew a combo A.I.P. version Black Sunday-Black Sabbath Blu-ray last October, my review ended up frustrating a number of readers. They're bringing out a single of the A.I.P Black Sunday on February 24, which will be good news to younger Bava fans who have never heard the show with its (really good) Les Baxter music score. Rather than just repeat my review, I hope to write up something about discovering the picture in the early 1970s at UCLA, and how I became a Bava fan in the Euro-horror information vacuum of those times.

Thanks for reading! --- Glenn Erickson