Batshit Blu-rays of the Month- 18 for February

            Talk about some bloody Blu-ray valentines- this month’s crackpot collection includes Tennessee Williams’ twisted, dark comedy Baby Doll; the heart-ripping Canadian slasher My Bloody Valentine; not to mention a terrific, paranoid thriller- The Parallax View; some guilty-pleasure color musicals from the 1950s; some rare film noirs; and some oddball cult films that make me drool with joy.

            Baby Doll (Warner Archive) This wildly controversial 1956 film directed by Elia Kazan, with an original screenplay by Tennessee Williams, is about Mississippi cotton gin owner- Archie Lee (Karl Malden), married to a 19-year-old thumb-sucking nymphet Baby Doll (Carroll Baker) who refuses to sleep with him until her 20^th birthday. So, a drunken Archie spies on her sleeping in her crib through a hole in the wall. Baker, from the Actor’s Studio, is absolutely sublime- she’s sexy and funny and her scenes flirting with Archie’s Sicilian competitor (Eli Wallach) are comic perfection. The whole movie is darkly funny and certainly not deserving of the backlash it received at the time- particularly when Cardinal Spellman denounced the film from the pulpit and threatened to excommunicate any Catholic who saw the film. Many were so outraged over the giant Christmas-time Times Square billboard with Baker sucking her thumb in a crib that their outcries caused Warner Brothers to yank the film. By all means, don’t miss the movie Time magazine called at the time the “dirtiest American-made motion picture that had ever been legally exhibited.” It’s a comic masterpiece.

            My Bloody Valentine (Shout! Factory). A 4K restoration Limited Edition Steelbook release of a 1981 slasher classic about a crazed miner running around cutting out hearts with his pickax on Valentine’s Day is given the deluxe treatment on this special edition. Directed by George Mihalka, and shot in Canada, this was heavily cut by the MPAA at the time, and now all the gore scenes have been put back and for the first time you can see what you missed (and scanned from the film’s negative). And trust me, there’s a lot that was snipped at the time. The notorious laundromat scene (with a body in the dryer) is particularly extended and fabulous. Included on the disc is many extras and interviews with the cast. I can’t tell you how much fun it was revisiting my slasher “roots.” (You can also order a “limited edition” action figure of the pickaxe-wielding killer).

            The Parallax View (Criterion) Warren Beatty plays a loose-cannon of a reporter investigating the “accidental” deaths of people who were witness to a politician’s assassination years earlier at a 4^th of July rally in Seattle’s Space Needle. He comes across a secret organization (“Parallax”) recruiting potential killers. Director Alan J. Pakula’s chilly, political thriller is aided by the moody cinematography by Gordon Willis and a whip-smart screenplay by David Giler and Lorenzo Semple Jr. Pakula was a master of paranoia on screen but this one plays out darker and bleaker, which probably didn’t help the film’s box office at the time. Critics misread the pessimistic mood of the film, complaining that it needed a Hitchcock to liven it up. But this was a film nurtured by more conspiracy-driven, cynical times.

            Showboat (Warner Archive) This is the 1951 MGM version of the famed Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern musical about the performing troupe on a showboat traveling along the Mississippi river. Kathryn Grayson plays sweet Julie, daughter of the riverboat owner, who tragically falls for a charismatic, handsome, compulsive gambler (Howard Keel). Ava Garner plays Julie, the popular leading lady who is unmasked for passing for white. “Old Man River,” is a show-stopping moment in this adaptation. It doesn’t hold a candle to James Whale’s 1936 version, but it’s still a delight in many ways. One wishes Ava Gardner had been let sing with her own voice however.

            On Moonlight Bay (Warner Archive) Tuneful Warner Brothers musical based on Booth Tarkington stories starring a luminous Doris Day as the tomboyish daughter of a banker and his family in 1910 Indiana. She falls for the handsome home-from-college neighbor (Gordon MacRae), who has unorthodox opinions against marriage. With Leon Ames and Rosemary DeCamp as the loving parents, the always wonderful Mary Wickes as the tart-tongued housekeeper, and some lovely tunes like “Cuddle Up A Little Closer,” “Till We Meet Again,” On Moonlight Bay,” and “Pack Up Your Troubles,” when World War I rears its head. Day and MacRae made two of these for the studio, and God forgive me, I really love them.

            The Underneath (Kino Lorber) A superior thriller by Steven Soderbergh based on the 1949 film noir classic Criss Cross. A bubbling tension simmers beneath each frame about Michael Chambers (Peter Gallagher), a man who returns home for his mother’s wedding and tries to reignite a relationship with Rachel (Alison Elliot), an old girlfriend who is presently dating Tommy Dundee (William Fichtner), the hood owner of a local bar, and ends up in an unholy alliance with him. The film is bathed in expressionistic blues and greens, but it never detracts from the complex interweaving of the plot. Gallagher is perfect as the greasy charmer willing to risk it all on what he considers “a sure thing.” Alison Elliot is a real find, too- beautiful, cool and difficult to read; and William Fichtner is just electrifying as the sleazy hood. There are scenes that are unbearably suspenseful, as well as twists you won’t see coming.

            The Kiss Before the Mirror (Kino Lorber) Fascinating 1933 pre-Code melodrama by the great James Whale (The Bride of Frankenstein) with stunning cinematography by Karl Freund. Set in Vienna, Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz) plays a lawyer defending a husband (Paul Lukas) who murdered his unfaithful wife (Gloria Stuart). The irony is that the lawyer’s wife (Nancy Carroll) is also having an affair, which is driving him to vigorously defend his client, all the while fantasizing killing his own spouse. Jean Dixon is a stand-out as the lawyer’s deadpan, rather mannish assistant. 

            The Suspect (Kino Lorber) This rueful tale of murder is by director Robert Siodmak (The Spiral Staircase, The Killers, Criss Cross) with a wonderfully understated Charles Laughton as a hen-pecked husband in 1902 London. When the lovely Mary (Ella Raines) comes looking for work at his office he befriends her, without telling her he is married to the shrewish Cora (Rosalind Ivan), who refuses to grant him a divorce. Laughton is a kindly man, eventually pushed into committing murder while a dogged detective from Scotland Yard relentlessly hounds him. With a terrific commentary track by Troy Howarth, this is a stunning 2K master of a very unusual film.

            So Evil, My Love (Kino Lorber) Murderously enjoyable, gaslight noir set in 1890s England, and starring a luminous Ann Todd as Olivia, a missionary widow returning from Jamaica to Liverpool. She tends to a malaria victim named Mark (Ray Milland) on board ship but weeks later he follows her to her bed and breakfast and they enter into a passionate love affair. Mark is an artist (and cad) and wanted by the police for art theft. When an art heist goes wrong he finds himself desperately in need of money, Mark convinces Olivia to reacquaint with a school friend Susan (Geraldine Fitzgerald), miserably married to a wealthy but brutal husband who has turned her into a secret alcoholic. What follows is a sordid scheme of blackmail and eventual murder. Sleekly directed by Lewis Allen (The Uninvited), this fascinating, 1948 thriller is from a brand new 2K master.

            Dark Intruder (Kino Lorber) This 1965 film was intended as a pilot for a TV series that was deemed too violent and ended up in theaters instead. Set in San Francisco in 1890, Leslie Nielsen stars as a wealthy playboy who is secretly an occult specialist who works with the police investigating a series of murders where a weird, creepy statue is left at the scene of the crime. A misshapen monster is psychically linked with Nielsen’s good friend (Peter Mark Richman) in this 59-minute wonder, now from a brand new 2K master.

            The Unseen (Scorpion) The exotically beautiful Barbara Bach plays Jennifer, a TV reporter covering a festival in Solvang, California with her sister and girlfriend. When they can’t find lodgings, a seemingly kind museum owner (bow-tie sporting, wildly eccentric Sydney Lassick) invites the girls to stay at his remote country farmhouse with his wife (weepy Lelia Goldoni). But why is the basement door locked? And what are those weird noises coming from the heating grates in the floor? You really won’t believe your eyes during the last half hour which is so ludicrously over-the-top it’s fabulous. With hunky Douglas Barr as Jennifer’s injured, ex-football player boyfriend, and Stephen Furst– dementedly memorable as the “unseen.”

            Devil Times Five (Code Red) A van overturns on the highway and the survivors are five psychotic children (one even dressed like a nun), escaped from a mental hospital, who trudge through the snow at Lake Arrowhead to a remote lodge and proceed to whittle down the inhabitants (in inventively gory ways). Future teen idol (and occasional train wreck) Leif Garrett is one of the killer kids who hacks Sorrell Booke with an axe. Veteran actor Gene Evans plays the gruff house owner- “Papa Doc,” in this oddball 1974 oddity, also known as People Toys and Horrible House on the Hill. The Blu-ray looks sensational.

            Plague Town (Severin) There’s definitely an H. P. Lovecraft feel to this terror tale of a family trying desperately to bond on a trip through Ireland who get stranded in a remote woodland and stumble upon a village of the damned- filled with deformed children, giggling and carrying scythes. And wanting to play- rough. The rest of the film is a nighttime race for survival, filled with dreadful bloody fun and games by the weird children. Director David Gregory does a great job with atmosphere and gory effects that will have you singing “when Irish eyes are bleeding….” by the end. This Blu-ray has great extras, chronicling the making of the film. I’ve always been a fan of the film but watching it again, looking terrific on Blu-ray, was a real treat. It’s even better than I remembered and genuinely creepy and disturbing.

            Sputnik (Shout! Factory) Frighteningly effective Russian sci-fi chiller set in 1983 where a mission in space leaves only one cosmonaut (Pyotr Fyodorov) alive, but he has come back with a slimy alien parasite inside him, which slips out of his body every night to feed. An unorthodox neuropsychologist Tatyana (Oksana Akinshina) is brought to the remote facility, where the cosmonaut is being analyzed, and she tries to find a way to separate the creature from its human host. I remember seeing Night of the Blood Beast when I was young- where a male astronaut returns from a space mission as a human incubator with baby aliens growing in his stomach. And then there are movies like The Hidden and Ridley Scott’s Alien which also showed extraterrestrial creatures hitching a ride inside human bodies. But this slow-burn chiller feels rather fresh in many ways, and director Egor Abramenko makes the leads very sympathetic without skimping on the shuddery scares.

            Good News (Warner Archive) This exuberant 1945 musical from the Arthur Freed unit at MGM, set in Tate University during the Roaring 20s. Starring Peter Lawford as the handsome football star, June Allyson as the sweet student librarian who helps him learn French, and the amazing Joan McCracken, whose dance number “Pass That Peace Pipe” will unhinge your jaws. Even critic Pauline Kael called this “the best of the lighthearted rah-rah collegiate musicals.” The extras include a number screenwriters Betty Comden & Adolph Green wrote the lyrics for that was excised- “An Easier Way.” Two musical numbers from the 1930s version of Good News are also included with the athletic, rubber-legged Dorothy McNulty (who later changed her name to Penny Singleton and made a name for herself as the star of the Blondie movies). This color transfer is just astounding.

            Wings of the Hawk (Kino Lorber) A fun 3D restoration of a 1953 western feature by director Budd Boetticher. Van Heflin plays Irish Gallager, mining for gold in Mexico when a corrupt Colonel (George Dolenz) shows up and seizes the mine for himself. Gallager goes on the run and falls in with a colorful gang of revolutionaries, led by the beautiful Julie Adams (Creature from the Black Lagoon). This all ends with an explosive showdown with the Colonel and his troops where in 3D a river of boiling oil comes right at your face, and an explosion sends rocks right into your living room. This also includes a whacky 3D Woody Woodpecker cartoon Hypnotic Hick, and audio commentary by film historian Jeremy Arnold.

            Castle of the Creeping Flesh (Severin) A rare opportunity to see the fully uncut version of director Adrian Hoven’s (Mark of the Devil) gothic shocker originally titled In the Castle of Bloody Lust. A group of swingers leave a party and ride by horseback to the cottage of their friend Baron Brack (Michael Lemoine), who arrived earlier to ravish one of his house guests- Elena. She flees on horseback and they all follow after, ending up at the creepy castle of the Count Saxon (filmed at the real Castle Kreuzenstein in Austria). The Count (played by Howard Vernon, a familiar of Jess Franco films) is mourning the death of his daughter and invites them all to don period costume and stay at the castle for the night, planning to use the blood of one of them to revive his daughter. There are a lot of breast shots and actual open heart surgery scenes mixed in for the added ick factor. Oh, and did I forget to mention that there is a bear? The extras include the director’s wife and son discussing his career (and other hilarious anecdotes), plus alternate title sequences. 

            The Attic Expeditions (Severin) A curious brain-twister about Trevor (appealing Andras Jones) who wakes in a psychiatric hospital run by the mysterious Dr. Ek (Re-Animator’s Jeffrey Combs). Trevor has been in a coma for 4 years after killing his girlfriend during a satanic ritual. Dr. Ek sends him to a psychiatric halfway house- the House of Love, run by Dr. Thalama (Wendy Robie), filled will all sorts of weirdos (including Seth Green, who gives the movie a welcome charge of testosterone). But there are all these strange noises in the attic at night, and Trevor’s hallucinations, mixed with a series of murders in the house, make him doubt his sanity and question whether things are really as they seem. A labor of love for fresh-out-of-college director Jeremy Kasten, with so many starts and stops it took four years to finish. Severin gives this film a loving Blu-ray with a great reunion (by way of Zoom) with the cast and crew who share hilarious stories of the film’s arduous journey into being. The history behind the making of the film might be more fascinating than the finished product, but the movie is so ambitious and bizarre at times you have to give it a lot of credit.