The great thing about October is that Halloween encourages home video companies to release horror films, and this year many are 4K UHD new incarnations. But this month also includes rare pre-Code murder mysteries, a fictional film set in the Continental Baths (but without Bette Midler), a perverse Jeff Lieberman horror film, a paranoid new thriller, a 4K UHD Blu-ray of David Lynch’s dark masterpiece, a rare Montgomery Clift misfire, Faye Dunaway as a fashion photographer stalked by a killer, some offbeat Euro-sleaze, the “Coreys” (Feldman & Haim) in an 80s’ vampire film, a film noir with Maria Montez, and many rare Giallo films in a handsome box set. More “treats” than “tricks” this year.
Murder at the Vanities (Kino Lorber) You know it’s a pre-Code movie when there’s a musical number called “Sweet Marijuana.” This rollicking backstage murder mystery is set during the fraught opening night of the new Earl Carroll “Vanities” show. Someone is trying to drop sandbags on the leading lady Ann (the lovely Kitty Carlisle), and all sorts of backstage intrigue threaten to stop the show. But soon bodies start piling up, and manager (Jack Oakie) calls in a cop (Victor McLaglen) to solve the crime while the show rolls forward. Leading man Eric (Carl Brisson) sings a number on stage with lovely showgirls with feather fans as the waves on the ocean. Rotten Rita (Gertrude Michael) sings “Sweet Marijuana” in front of a giant cactus with topless girls covering their breasts. Later there is a number “Rape of the Rhapsody” that suddenly reveals Duke Ellington and his band. It just doesn’t get any wilder than this. I have been showing friends clips from this 1934 film for years but this 2K master is a revelation.
Poltergeist (Warner Brothers) 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray combo of Tobe Hooper’s superior 1982 haunted house story, set in a home situated over a cemetery amid the suburban milieu of a Steven Spielberg film (who wrote the screenplay and was a hands-on producer). “They’re here,” informs little Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) to her parents (JoBeth Williams & Craig T. Nelson) pointing at the TV, where strange unearthly voices emanate from. At first the supernatural events are surprising and non-threatening (chairs assemble mysteriously in the kitchen), but then things get darker and more twisted. The son’s fear of the creepy branches of a tree outside his window and a harlequin clown doll evolves into a frightening reality. A psychic (Zelda Rubenstein) is brought in to “clear” the house but things only get more horrifying. The movie holds up extremely well, and this new 4K UHD disc is staggering, capturing sharper facial tones and deeper blacks. There are a million extras including making-of documentaries and audio commentaries.
The Lost Boys (Warner Brothers) 4k Ultra HD Blu-ray combo of director Joel Schumacher’s incredibly entertaining 1987 vampire flick. The wonderful Dianne Wiest stars as a divorced mom moving with her two sons- Michael (Jason Patric) and younger brother and comic book fiend Sam (Corey Haim) to the California beach town to live with her eccentric taxidermist father (Barnard Hughes). They find the place a hotbed of vampires and Michael is lured to a gang of bikers led by Kiefer Sutherland who are really a pack of vampires and they try turning him into one of them. A riot of ludicrous 80s fashion and music, it also has a good sense of humor and a host of incredibly cute guys. Jason Patric is a ringer for Jim Morrison (a poster of Morrison even adorns the cave lair of the vampires and the movie opens with “People are Strange” on the soundtrack). This 4K restoration is stunning and the host of extras are exhausting- including audio commentary, deleted scenes and archival footage.
Mark of the Vampire (Warner Archive) 4K scan of the original negative of Todd Browning’s 1935 remake of London After Midnight about the suspicious death of a wealthy nobleman, which the superstitious villagers attribute to a vampire. When the dead man’s body disappears from its coffin and his daughter and her fiancé seem to be attacked by a weird caped figure that resides in the cobwebbed nearby castle (Bela Lugosi) and his ghastly partner (Carroll Borland with waist-length long hair and ghostly makeup- the prototype for Morticia Addams and Vampira), a vampire hunter is called in (Lionel Atwill). The gorgeous, atmospheric cinematography by James Wong Howe is sensational- and now looks superb on Blu-ray. Not as well known or loved as it should be.
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Warner Archive) 1931 4K scan of the best nitrate elements available for Rouben Mamoulian’s shocker based on a Robert Louis Stevenson story about a doctor who believes he can manifest the “evil” part of self through science. And when he uses himself as a guinea pig he lives to regret it. There have been fascinating early cinematic takes which get to show actors in full hambone heaven, getting to chew the drapes transforming into the malevolent Mr. Hyde. John Barrymore is amazing in his Jekyll-to-Hyde bit in the 1920 silent film version. It’s all done with twisted facial and body contortions and it’s incredibly effective. Fredric March changes while staring into a mirror after drinking the experimental elixir in the pre-Code 1932 version, and it is tricks of shadows and light while he grimaces and then the dissolve to reveal a toothy, ape-like creature. (March won an Oscar for Best Actor). Miriam Hopkins is heartbreaking as the cockney prostitute tormented by Hyde. For decades the filmmakers kept secret how it all was accomplished (it had to do with special make-up and colored filters). Difficult to find on home video (especially looking decent) this Blu-ray is just a revelation. It comes with two audio commentaries and a great Bugs Bunny cartoon Hyde and Hare.
Watcher (IFC Films) A tense, supremely gripping thriller directed by Chloe Okuno about an American couple who move to Bucharest. Julia (Maika Monroe) was a former actress and her husband Francis (Karl Glusman) has gotten a good job opportunity and speaks the language. Julia feels like a stranger in a strange land, attending dinner parties where she can’t fathom what anyone is saying and spending long days in their apartment waiting for her husband to come home. But then she begins to suspect a man across the way is staring at her from his window at night, and following her during the day (into a movie theater and a supermarket). Everyone, including the police, thinks she’s just being paranoid, but a killer is stalking the city, beheading his female victims. The director confirms she borrowed heavily from John Carpenter (you just have to check out his terrifically suspenseful TV movie Someone’s Watching Me!). A tight, satisfyingly suspenseful film.
Saturday Night at the Baths (Altered Innocence) This 1974 film (virtually unseen since its release), directed by David Buckley is set in the Continental Baths. The place was infamous at the time, not just for the decadence and sex but for their nightclub (Bette Midler and Barry Manilow got their starts there). The story is about a Montana musician Michael (Robert Aberdeen) who gets the gig playing piano at the baths. He is living with a girlfriend Tracy (Ellen Sheppard) in Soho (there are lots of great vintage shots of the West Village). The manager of the Baths- Scotti (Don Scotti) befriends the couple and slowly Michael begins to question his sexuality. The film is surprisingly touching and not as cringe-inducing as other gay-themed films at that time, and the cast is quite appealing. Talk about a time capsule of the city and the new sexual freedom at that time. Bonus features include an interview with the director, a video essay on the Baths by Lee Gambin, and a great interview with actor Don Scotti.
Lost Highway (Criterion) A thick cloud of menace hangs over David Lynch’s brilliant, nightmarish creep-fest. What begins as a story of a jazz musician (Bill Pullman) and his wife (Patricia Arquette) who receive mysterious videotapes showing static shots of the outside of their house suddenly escalates into violence, murder, and madness. Lost Highway has the crazed logic of a bad dream, though unlike any you’ve ever had: characters re-appear in different bodies; a man in a prison cell becomes someone else; a grinning, chalk-faced Robert Blake keeps popping up like a demented gnome. The Lynchian universe, with its muted walls, pale girls with black fingernails and extraordinary sound design, is unique and unnerving. Watching the film is like pressing a seashell to one ear while someone sticks a gun in the other. Just the simple act of Bill Pullman receding into the shadows of his bedroom can fill you with inexplicable dread. This 4K UHD Blu-ray is stunning looking, and comes with a feature-length documentary: Pretty as a Picture: The Art of DavidLynch and excerpts from the 2018 book Room to Dream by Kristine McKenna and David Lynch.
Satan’s Little Helper (Synapse) A darkly funny/scary mindfuck by director Jeff Lieberman (Blue Sunshine) about a young boy (Alexander Brickel) obsessed with a satanic video game who mistakes a serial killer dressed like the devil on Halloween, thinking it’s his video game hero answering his prayers. So, he follows the masked fiend around as he goes house to house trick or treating with a butcher knife. When I interviewed Jeff Lieberman for Paper he told me he got the idea from his 50th birthday, which was a costume party. A man in a gorilla suit came in the front door. “He just came in, he didn’t even ring the doorbell, and I was thinking, I don’t see my friend Eric, so I figured, ok it must be him. And he starts dancing with me and going crazy. And then I see Eric on the other side of the room. I’m like, fuck- this guy, he’s not invited. This guy could be a fucking head splitter, so I’m trying to signal my wife…and one half of my brain is trying to get my wife’s attention, and the other half said- there’s a movie idea in this.” The Blu-ray comes with audio commentary by the director, vintage behind-the-scenes featurette and a tour of the filming locations.
Going Places (Cohen Film Collection) This 1974 dark comedy from director Bertrand Blier is still pretty shocking and outrageous. It stars Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere as two morally-bankrupt drifters. They meet a pretty hairdresser (Miou-Miou) who they both fail to bring to orgasm. They wait outside a woman’s prison and pick up a newly released convict (Jeanne Moreau) and pamper, feed her, and have sex with her only to have it turn out drastically. They are scruffy, sexy, anti-heroes in this dangerously funny road-movie.
By Candlelight (Kino Lorber) Sparkling 1933 pre-Code comedy by the great James Whale (Bride of Frankenstein). It’s a joy to watch the opening scene with Paul Lukas as Josef, the elegant butler of a womanizing Prince (Nils Asther) as he readies the suite for a possible night of romance for his boss by setting out the champagne and putting another pillow on the Prince’s bed just in case. Based on a stage play, it’s a comedy of mistaken identities and romantic entanglements, where, on a train, Josef pretends to be the Prince to woo a beautiful girl (Elissa Landi). She is not all she seems either. Made with sly wit and great sophistication, this has an excellent audio commentary by author Troy Howarth.
Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema IX (Kino Lorber) 2K and 4K remasters of three offbeat black & white thrillers from Universal Studios in the 1940s. Lady on a Train (1945). I can’t believe I’m writing this, but: an enjoyable Deanna Durbin film. It’s a screwball comedy/mystery about a San Francisco debutante- Nikki Collins (Deanna Durbin), who witnesses a murder while looking out the window on a train pulling into Grand Central Station. No one believes her and she railroads her favorite mystery writer (David Bruce) into helping her solve the killing. With great character actors like Ralph Bellamy, Dan Duryea, Edward Everett Horton, Durbin also gets to sing “Give Me a Little Kiss,” “Night and Day” and “Silent Night.” Tangier (1946). Casablanca this ain’t. But it stars the glamorous Maria Montez (Cobra Woman herself) as a dancer at the “Ritz” club in Tangier. Robert Paige plays a war correspondent onto a good story about murder, ex-Nazis and stolen diamonds. Sabu costars as a local troubadour named Pepe who delights in singing American songs like “She’s Been Comin’ Round the Mountain.” It’s weird seeing Maria Montez and Sabu not in Technicolor and on some tropical island. Take One False Step (1949). After a witty opening credit sequence showing a literal interpretation of the title, we meet Andrew (William Powell) a noted, married educator visiting L.A. trying to raise money for a new college. He has the misfortune of running into Catherine (Shelley Winters) at the hotel bar, who he knew intimately during the war, and is now unhappily married to a shady gangster. Suddenly, the next day, he finds himself under suspicion for Catherine’s death, and her friend Martha (wonderful Masha Hunt) teams up with Andrew to find out who really killed her. A really offbeat treat, with a wonderfully blowsy Shelley Winters.
Eyes of Laura Mars (Kino Lorber) Gloriously trashy 1978 thriller with a gorgeous Faye Dunaway as Laura Mars, a controversial fashion photographer known for mixing sex and violence in her photos (like Helmut Newton). A killer is stalking acquaintances of Laura (stabbing out their eyes) and she suddenly has psychic visions of the killings. A ruggedly handsome Tommy Lee Jones is the detective assigned to the killings. Memorable photo shoots with women in lingerie and fur coats pulling their hair in front of burning, crashed cars at Columbus Circle add to the fun. John Carpenter is credited with writing the story, and there are wonderful co-stars like Raul Julia as Laura’s ex-husband, Brad Dourif as the creepy driver and Rene Auberjonois as Laura’s fashionable agent. It’s also wild to see Soho looking so seedy back then. Stylishly directed by Irvin Kershner.
Lonelyhearts (Kino Lorber) This film has been impossible to see for some time. It’s a 1958 version of Nathanael West’s novel (and the play by Howard Teichmann) directed by Vincent J. Donehue starring the phenomenal Montgomery Clift as Adam, a newspaper man who pens an “advice” column “Miss Lonelyhearts.” Robert Ryan is the hard-boiled editor of The Chronicle and Myrna Loy as his unhappy wife. West’s dark comedy was about a man who becomes so invested in the desperate letters he receives it destroys him. Despite the moody black & white cinematography by John Alton, this misses the whole point of the novel by shoe-horning it into a dreary drama which mixes in social issues. In the film, Adam’s downfall comes when he agrees to meet one of his letter-writers- Fay Doyle (scene-stealing Maureen Stapelton), who has a husband crippled and made impotent in the war. The cynical finale of the book is changed to a sappy romantic ending. But watching Clift is always thrilling and it is a fascinating mess.
The Horrible Sexy Vampire (Mondo Macabro) Rare 1971 Euro-sleaze set in German by Spanish director Jose Luis Madrid about a series of mysterious murders confounding the authorities. The killer is a vampire Baron who can become invisible at will and is tormented to return every seven years to kill. The bleached-blonde great grandson of the Baron arrives to stay at the ancient castle- under the will stipulation he can only live there alone or with his wife (or fiancé) but never step foot in the cellar where the Baron’s coffin lies. Many scenes of women in mini-skirts and thigh-high boots coming home from work and stripping off all their clothes before the invisible vampire strikes. Breasts, but very little blood in this oddball oddity.
Love Brides of the Blood Mummy (Mondo Macabro) Another obscure slice of Euro-sleaze, this 1973 French/Spanish production is about Lord Dartmoor, a practitioner of black arts, who brings back a rare sarcophagus from Egypt to his seaside castle. He opens it to find the perfectly preserved son of a high priest who was sentenced to die for the murder and mutilation of women. This mummy (who wears lots of eyeliner and has a Moe Howard hairdo) was put in a state of suspended animation, and is unwisely reanimated only to imprison the Lord and control his servant John, sending him out daily to bring back village women which he first tortures and rapes before drinking their blood. There’s a cool, stop-motion dismembered hand running around the castle at the end. This is the first time this weird film has ever been on home video anywhere in the world. It comes in two versions- the “horror” one and the “extended” one with much more extreme nudity. With audio commentary by David Flint.
The Other Side of the Mirror (Mondo Macabro) A very different kind of film for Jess Franco, whose prolific career has been wonderfully chronicled in two volumes by Stephen Thrower. Emma Cohen is extraordinarily soulful as Ana, whose controlling, obsessional father (Howard Vernon) hangs himself when his daughter plans to wed. Haunted by his suicide Ana flees and works as a pianist/singer at a jazz bar. But visions of her hanging father colors every relationship she has- with a jazz performer; a theater director who asks Ana to play Medea; later, a married free-wheeling tourist traveling with his wife. Ana also has disturbing dreams of murdering these men with a knife. It’s a movie suffused with melancholy, but in an incredibly interesting way. Stephen Thrower does a great, lengthy extra on the disc on how this film fits into Franco’s career; how long it took to get to the screen, and the different versions of it.
Forgotten Gialli: Volume 5 (Vinegar Syndrome) Three lesser known “giallo” thrillers from the 70s are offered in this mouth-watering set with an incredible spider-web and eyeball design on the handsome box. A White Dress for Mariale (1972) stars gorgeous Evelyn Stewart as Mariele, who, as a child, witnessed her father shoot her mother and her lover and then himself. She lives in a remote, gloomy castle with her unsmiling husband (Luigi Pistilli) and his menacing manservant, and they keep her heavily medicated and have locked up the phones to further isolate her from the outside world. She secretly gets a message out and invites six friends to the castle for a party and her husband begrudgingly lets them in through the intimidating front gate of the castle. What follows is a decadent masquerade party that gets drunkenly out-of-control. Then the guests start getting brutally murdered one after the other. Ivan Rassimov (All the Colors of the Dark) stars as a former lover of Marieale, and one of the unfortunate guests. Director Romano Scavolini (Nightmares in a Damaged Brain) has voiced his disdain for this film, but it’s actually quite fascinating and bizarre. There’s a wonderful extra with a lengthy interview with the delightful, still beautiful, Evelyn Stewart (aka Ida Galli) who discusses working with Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Mario Bava, Sergio Martino and Lucio Fulci, among others. Tropic of Cancer (1972) is set and shot in Haiti and the exotic setting mixed with sleaze and bursts of violence sets it apart from most “gialli.” Set at a luxury, decadent hotel where all these seedy characters are scrambling for a newly designed drug that’s part hallucinogen, part aphrodisiac. Dr. Williams (Anthony Steffen) who lives nearby in a house that “resembles the Addams Family” seems to hold the key. There is mystery with the newly arrived couple suffering severe marital disharmony- Grace (Anita Strindberg/Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) and Fred (Gabriele Tinti/Emanuelle in America). With interspersed moments of startling Mondo-like sleaze- like a voodoo ceremony where a bull gets sacrificed and when Anita Strindberg gets a tour of a slaughterhouse- which makes sense when you consider one of the directors- Giampaolo Lomi collaborated with Gualtiero Jacopetti on the jaw-dropping Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971). Nine Guests for a Crime (1977) is another take on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, set on a rocky island villa. The wealthy patriarch (Arthur Kennedy), his disturbed sister, his children and their husbands and wives sail a yacht to their vacation home. Suddenly the yacht disappears and one by one they all meet violent ends. John Richardson ((Black Sunday) is the cuckolded son, Massimo Foschi (Jungle Holocaust) is a son getting it on with his father’s wife, Loretta Persichetti plays the tarot cards-reading neurotic who sees doom and gloom everywhere- and is proven right. Quite frankly, the whole bunch of them are pretty despicable. Directed by Ferdinando Baldi and shot in gorgeous Sardinia, the beauty of the surroundings and the nasty deaths make this a great deal of fun. An interview with actor Massimo Foschi is included where he also tells funny stories of working with Reggero Deodato on Jungle Holocaust.
