This is a great month for home media- from vintage Orson Welles, rare Jean Cocteau, Robert Aldrich, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Lucio Fulci, not to mention Dennis Hopper’s controversial (never-before-on-home-video) The Last Movie and a tribute to peroxide screen vixen Mamie Van Doren.
Mamie Van Doren Film Noir Collection (Kino Lorber). Van Doren was the 50’s blonde bombshell that livened up many a film with her hour-glass figure and brassy, take-no-prisoners attitude. Included here are three film noir examples, like Vice Raid, where Mamie plays a prostitute sent by the mob to entrap a cop. Or Guns, Girls And Gangsters, set in Las Vegas where a gang plans the heist of an armored car carrying casino money. But my fave is The Girl In Black Stockings, about the brutal murder of a playgirl at a Utah resort, which co-stars Lex Barker and Anne Bancroft. Mamie doesn’t have many lines but is wildly memorable. Some guy remarks as she walks by, “You ought to keep stuff like that under lock and key!” My favorite line is spoken to Marie Windsor: “I’d like to get so drunk I’d look in a mirror and spit in my own face!”
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (Olive Signature) A true paranoid sci-fi classic about spores from space that take root in Santa Mira, California growing pod-like vegetation that takes over the body of its host. It gets you when you’re asleep. Soon the town is teaming with secretive, emotionless aliens, all acting under one control. Director Don Siegel’s great 1956 film heavily reflects the insidious McCarthy-era time in which the film was made. Kevin McCarthy is terrific as the caffeinated doctor trying to flee town with his girlfriend (Dana Wynter) and warn the world of the imminent invasion. This looks phenomenal on Blu-ray and comes with almost too many extras. I’m still luxuriating in them.
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Arrow) One of cinema’s true masterpieces. Director Terence Davies’ 1988 film charts a working-class family in London during, and after, World War II. Memories haunt this house. We see glimpses of their life through funerals, weddings, and other celebrations. The ghosts of brutal fathers (Pete Postlethwaite), and saintly, long-suffering mothers (Freda Dowie) haunt the hallways. But comfort is found in song, when people band together in unison to sing popular tunes. A lyrical, heart-rending film that aches with autobiographical poignancy.
The Last Movie (Arbelos) Dennis Hopper was fresh from his huge success with Easy Rider, and was given carte blanche by Universal Studios to shoot a movie. He shot his film-within-a-film in Peru, with an eclectic cast including Dean Stockwell, Peter Fonda, Sylvia Miles, Julie Adams, Kris Kristofferson, with Hopper in the lead as a stuntman, working on a Western film. Heavily influenced by Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo) (who showed up on the set), it’s an arty, mad, drug-fueled jumble, and also wildly ambitious and fascinating. It won an award at the Venice Film Festival but Universal buried it, and for years many of us have only seen it on duped bootleg tapes. This is digitally restored from the negative and comes with incredible extras.
Bloodlust (Mondo Macabro) Genuinely weird 19677 German film by Marijan Vajda about a creepy deaf-mute (Werner Pochath), who rides around town on a motor scooter. He’s ridiculed at his office by co-workers and at home by his neighbors, where he lives in a flat filled with dolls. Brutalized by his father when he was a child, he has a mania for spilled ketchup and ink, but it escalates until he craves real blood. He reads the obituary notices and breaks into funeral homes defiling the corpses- cutting out the eyes, stabbing or decapitating the bodies or just drinking blood through a glass straw. Then he leaves his tag “Mosquito” on the wall. The newspapers refer to the crimes as committed by a vampire. There is very little dialogue, and a discordant organ score- like Philip Glass if someone was sitting on his hands. Supposedly this is based on a true crime, but who cares? It’s so morbid and poetically perverse it’s utterly fascinating. A brand new 2K transfer from the negative, with interesting interviews with the director’s son and actress Brigit Zamulo.
Les Parents Terribles (Cohen Film Collection) A rarity from director Jean Cocteau (Beauty & The Beast)- based on a successful staged play starring Jean Marais and Josette Day as young lovers who are purposefully torn apart by their selfish families. True, it doesn’t have the surreal flourishes of Orpheus but it’s wonderfully acted and beautifully restored on Blu-ray.
The Killing Of Sister George (Kino Lorber) Controversial (at the time), this 1968 Robert Aldrich film star Beryl Reid at a popular TV star, playing a cheerful nurse on a BBC show, who is always getting reprimanded by the station for her real-life drunken exploits around town. Her character is about to get bumped off, and her preternaturally childish girlfriend (Susannah York) is about to be wooed away by another woman (Coral Browne). Based on a play by Frank Marcus, this movie has unfairly taken heat through the years from gay critics, but needs to be re-examined. Especially for Reid, York and Browne’s inspired performances.
Eight Hours Don’t Make A Day (Criterion) The great director Rainer Werner Fassbinder made this for German TV during 1972-1973. It was a sprawling look at a postwar middle-class family, with his usual cast of amazing actors like Hanna Schygulla, Irm Hermann, Kurt Raab and Gottfried John (with his unforgettable face). He had planned to make eight full episodes (each the length of a feature film) but the government pulled the plug after five, unhappy with Fassbinder’s subversive and revolutionary take. Lovingly restored by the Fassbinder Foundation and with many excellent extras on Criterion, this is a remarkable experience, and a missing chapter from the director’s prolific, astounding career.
Perversion Story (Mondo Macabro) This is the film that changed Italian director Lucio Fulci’s direction (from comedies and westerns) which resulted in such masterworks as A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin, The Beyond and House By The Cemetery. This twisty mystery, also known as One On Top Of The Other is set in San Francisco where Jean Sorel plays a philandering doctor whose asthmatic wife dies under mysterious circumstances. He goes to a nightclub with his girlfriend (Elsa Martinelli) and meets a stripper (the gorgeous Marissa Mell), who strangely resembles his late wife. This Blu-ray is the most complete, and is sourced from the negative. The extras include new interviews with Jean Sorel and Elsa Martinelli and another fascinating examination of where this movie fits in Fulci’s career by author Stephen Thrower.
Killing Eve (BBC) Fabulous British TV series with a revelatory Sandra Oh as an MI5 Securities investigator whose investigation into a series of mysterious murders puts her on a collision course with a wily female hit woman (Jodie Comer). The two women are extraordinary in this sinfully enjoyable series and adds new meaning to “cat-and-mouse.”
Dracula A.D. 1972 (Warner Archive) A bunch of long-haired, kick-seeking, young people hold a black mass at midnight at church ready for demolition and raise Count Dracula (Christopher Lee). Peter Cushing plays a relative of Van Helsing. With Stephanie Beacham and Caroline Munro as a sacrifice to the Count. This latter Hammer film looks just terrific on Blu-ray.
The Grissom Gang (Kino Lorber) Director Robert Aldrich’s perverse take on No Orchids For Miss Blandish, starring Kim Darby as a 1931 heiress kidnapped and held ransom by a gang. She reluctantly becomes lover with a half-wit member of the gang (Scott Wilson), in a desperate attempt to stay alive. A sweaty, lurid, wonderfully nasty film.
Creepshow (Scream Factory) Enjoyable marriage between Stephen King and George Romero framed around a 50’s kiddie horror comic book, each story brought enjoyably to life. I loved the one with Fritz Weaver who discovers a crate from an ancient arctic expedition which houses a toothy monster, and the creepy final episode about a ruthless businessman (E. G. Marshall), with a fear of cockroaches, who creates a hermetically-sealed modernized apartment which unfortunately does not keep him bug-free.
Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers (Shout! Factory) A film based on a Stephen King short story about a mother (Alice Krige) and son (Brian Krause) who transform into monstrous cat-like creatures, moving from town-to-town, forever seeking victims. But the son’s growing relationship with a pretty schoolmate (Madchen Amick) threatens their existence. I rather like this for some oddball reason, and it’s great to have it looking beautiful on Blu-ray. This has a new commentary with director Mick Garris and actors Krause and Amick (still looking great) who share funny recollections about making the film.
The Blue Dahlia (Shout! Factory) Alan Ladd plays Johnny, an ex-bomber pilot who returns from war to find his wife has been playing around with shady men. When she is found murdered, Johnny becomes number-one suspect and races around trying to clear his name. The gorgeous Veronica Lake (with her peek-a-boo hairdo) accompanies Ladd in his pursuit of the killer. William Bendix is memorable as a soldier-friend of Johnny’s with a plate in his head who easily flies off the handle. One of those perfect film noirs. The great chemistry between Ladd and Lake is sublime, even though the studio only paired them because of height.
Candyman (Shout! Factory) Virginia Madsen plays a student doing a thesis on urban myths who tries to get at the bottom of a murderous hook-handed demon (Tony Todd– chilling) who appears to those unlucky enough to say his name multiple times in a mirror. Much of this takes place at a fearsome tenement building in Chicago. Expertly directed by Bernard Rose and based on a creepy Clive Barker short-story, this is one genuinely scary film.
The Last Seduction (Kino Lorber) “You are my designated fuck,” says sultry Linda Fiorentino to the poor schnook (Peter Berg) she picks up in a bar, who becomes a pawn in her elaborate scheme to keep the money she has stolen from her criminal spouse (Bill Pullman). Director John Dahl (Red Rock West) has a way of turning the film noir genre on its ear. Fiorentino, with her husky, sexy voice and long limbs, is a petulant, ruthless, amoral spider from the get-go.
The Outer Limits: Season 2 (Kino Lorber) This was another tragic example of a TV network who took a wildly successful show, changed its time slot and placed it opposite a hit show. They lost the show’s creator Joseph Stefano, and put in a producer who had no affinity for the sci-fi material. Despite this being a truncated last gasp for the series there were some terrific episodes like Demon With A Glass Hand starring Robert Culp pursued by mysterious assassins, who is aided by his talking glass hand (yes, you heard right). Or The Inheritors, a two-part show about men taken-over by alien intelligence (because they were shot with fragments from a meteorite).
The Magnificent Ambersons (Criterion) Orson Welles follow-up to Citizen Kane was this mesmerizing take on a Booth Tarkington’s novel about a spoiled son (Tim Holt– never better) who comes between his widowed mother (Dolores Costello) and the man she loves (Joseph Cotton), with tragic results. Agnes Moorehead’s performance, as the high-strung Aunt Fanny, is one for the ages. This was sadly taken away from Welles and tragically re-cut by the studio. Many have fantasized at what this could have been, but no matter, what’s here is so stunning and cinematically daring it takes your breath away.
Almost Human (Code Red) Umberto Lenzi’s (Cannibal Ferox) 1974 hardboiled cop drama about a weary, hardened police chief (Henry Silva) tracking down a sadistic psychopath (Tomas Milian) who has kidnapped a rich man’s daughter. One of Lenzi’s best “Poliziotteschi” crime film- it oozes sleaze and violence. Milian is astonishingly loathsome here- it’s a wildly impressive performance. He’s truly terrifying.