I’m thankful for a lot of things this month. That I get to spend Thanksgiving with people I love. And I get to gorge myself on a meal of tasty Blu-rays this month that include new classics like Peter von Kant; two rare 3d film noirs; Esther Williams on dry land; a dazzling Neil Jordon film now given a 4K restoration, a whacked-out Gaspar Noe film; a twisted mother/son film; the final season of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery and more. Pass the gravy, indeed.
The Unguarded Moment (Kino Lorber) Supposedly Fanny Brice wisecracked about MGM’s aquatic star Esther Williams, “Wet, she’s a star. Dry, she ain’t.” I’ve always liked Williams– her MGM swimming films occasionally reach surreal heights (thanks to crackpot Busby Berkeley choreography). But there was a real likability to her. And her wild, surprisingly revealing, autobiography made her MGM’s loose cannon. Here, she transitions at Universal studios to dramatic roles, playing Miss Lois Conway, a high school music teacher who starts receiving creepy, smutty mash notes from a mystery student. She’s even assaulted by the creep in the locker room and he even breaks into her apartment. The teacher discovers her attacker is the young, dreamboat, popular football star (John Saxon) who lives alone with his sleazy, controlling father (scene-stealing Edward Andrews), who fills his son’s head with misogynist hatred of women. The teacher is not believed by anyone and her reputation takes a beating. George Nader plays a detective investigating a series of murderous attacks on women who actually believes her. This is a great, perverse little gem of a film and it came from a story by Rosalind Russell, of all people. Great informative and hilarious audio commentary by film historian David Del Valle and director David DeCoteau.
The Company of Wolves 4K (Shout! Factory) Director Neil Jordan’s (The Crying Game) masterful 1984 interweaving of Angela Carter’s gothic fairy tales. Angela Lansbury is sublime as an elderly woman in the late 18thcentury knitting a red shawl for her granddaughter and warning her of the dangers of wolves and men who change into them. Sexually coming-of-age undercurrents flow through the film. Visually the film is spectacular, with fairy tale imagery and disturbing, nightmarish twists and turns as the tales interweave in a young girl’s dreamscape. I remember loving and seeing this film multiple times when it opened. To see this film back to its visual splendor is a thrill.
Peter von Kant (Strand) Francois Ozon’s daring new film is “freely adapted” from Fassbinder’s 1972 The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and it’s a brilliant, sardonic, audacious triumph. And a wonderful love letter to Fassbinder. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, claustrophobically set in a stylish apartment and concerning the complicated S & M relationship between a tyrannical fashion designer (Margit Carstensen) and her silent, abused assistant (Irm Hermann). In Peter von Kant, Ozon gender-switches. The lead is now a successful director (played with ferocious intensity by Denis Menochet) and most of the film transpires in his apartment where he hurls orders at his masochistic, mute assistant Karl (beautifully played by Stefan Crepon). An actress he made famous on screen- Sidone (sensationally played by Isabelle Adjani) dramatically arrives, resplendent in a white mink coat with a handsome young man named Amir (Khalil Ben Gharbia), and Peter takes one look at the tousle-haired, pouty-lipped beauty and is immediately smitten. Karl may not ever speak but one can read volumes in his expressive eyes as he silently surveys (from afar) as the relationship between Peter and Amir implodes. Unfortunately, the devastating effects of the broken love affair results in Peter cruelly lashing out at his daughter Gabrielle (Aminthe Audiard) and elderly mother (played by long-time Fassbinder collaborator, glorious Hanna Schygulla). What Ozon achieves here is different from Fassbinder’s cool, austere approach to the material. There is an ironic lightness but also real tenderness in Peter von Kant.
Lux Aeterna (Yellow Veil Pictures) Trippy 51 minute Gaspar Noe film starring Beatrice Dalle as a harried director making a film about witches starring Charlotte Gainsbourg. The beginning has the two women joking about horrible past film experiences, then the movie (like Noe’s Climax) spins wildly out of control. Everything that can go wrong does, and with a hysterical pitch- the lighting becomes non-stop strobing, a nearly 3-D effect on the viewer. It’s a funny, bizarre and fabulously disturbing experience. Actor Karl Glusman hilariously shows up, playing an annoying, would-be director, pestering Charlotte Gainsbourg to be in his new film. It’s truly a mind-altering blast.
The Bat (Film Detective) This 1959 mystery starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead is the 4th movie version of the Mary Roberts Rinehart stage favorite. Moorehead plays a famous mystery author renting out a gloomy mansion called the Oaks, along with her skittish female companion (Lenita Lane, wife of director Crane Wilbur). A series of murderous attacks in town by a masked figure with a razor-sharp glove nicknamed the “Bat” seems to target the mansion. Vincent Price plays a suspicious doctor, and Little Rascal’s Darla Hood plays a hapless victim of the dastardly fiend. To say this is a lot of fun is an understatement. Always available on video and DVD because of its “Public Domain” status, this was given a Blu-ray release before by Film Detective but this newly restored one has hardly any speckles or imperfections and offers real depth and clarity.
I, the Jury 3-D (ClassicFlix) Kudos to UCLA Film & Television for their incredible restoration of this 1953 film noir based on the Mickey Spillane pulp novel. Biff Elliot plays tough guy detective Mike Hammer, out to avenge the shooting death of his one-armed army buddy Jack (Robert Swagner). A police chief (Robert Preston) gives him a list of all the people that were at a party with Jack before his death and like a bull in a china shop Hammer goes to interrogate them, usually coming in the door and immediately beating the shit out of them to get answers. The women on the list either lustfully go after him, or, in the case of a sexy psychiatrist (Peggie Castle), help him in his investigation. This 3-D movie was shot by the great cinematographer John Alton (The Big Combo) so the nighttime universe of dangerous hoods and devious dames has a scary depth and menacing atmosphere. Directed by the screenwriter of Creature from the Black Lagoon– Harry Evans, this is a movie I’ve always wanted to see and it’s thrilling to experience this restoration in 4K UHD and 3-D. The jury is out on Biff Elliot in the lead but his thuggish acting style worked for me, and the wonderful Margaret Sheridan (The Thing) plays Hammer’s faithful secretary Velma. Peggie Castle (The Beginning of the End) has never been better in this film noir rarity.
The Diamond Wizard 3-D (Kino Lorber) Dennis O’Keefe directed and stars in this film about the smuggling of synthetic diamonds in London. O’Keefe plays a treasury agent who hooks up with Scotland Yard to track down who is making these flawless (yet synthetic) gems. His old girlfriend, played by Margaret Sheridan (The Thing), might be the clue- her atomic scientist father has disappeared and might be being used by crooks to manufacture the diamonds. This fast-paced thriller has great 3-D special effects including a lamp thrown at your head, a gun aiming right at you and a flaming dish in a restaurant that makes you feel you are singing your eyebrows. The Blu-ray includes the Polarized 3-D and also the Anaglyphic (Red/Cyan) version (glasses are provided). Released near the end of the 1950s 3-D wave, this never actually had a public 3-D release during its theatrical run. Great fun, a wild explosive ending and always a pleasure to see Margaret Sheridan in anything.
The Blood Beast Terror (Kino Lorber) I have a soft-spot for this 1968 Hammer-rip-off starring Peter Cushing as a 19thCentury London detective investigating a series of mysterious killings. Robert Flemyng (The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock) plays a scientist/entomologist (Basil Rathbone was to play the part but unfortunately died). The murders are being committed by a giant, flying, blood-drinking, death’s head moth. (You heard me right). Peter Cushing always called this his worse film but it’s not, really. And he is so much fun to watch doing his little business with props- there is a moment where he disentangles himself from some cobwebs that is sublime. This was previously out on Blu-ray but this 2K restoration is truly sensational.
Night Gallery: Season 3 (Kino Lorber) Anyone watching the openings to Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities can see the homage to Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. This is the third and final season for Serling’s omnibus horror TV series, and the episodes have shrunk to a half hour, but still filled with wonderful casts and offbeat stories. In Return of the Sorcerer, Bill Bixby stars as an Arabic translator who gets a job deciphering an evil, ancient occult book for sorcerer Vincent Price. In The Girl With the Hungry Eyes, Joanna Pettit plays a bewitching model who lures men to their death. Spectre in Tap-Shoes stars Sandra Dee as a traumatized woman haunted by the tap-dancing ghost of her dead sister. The Trunk features Stuart Whitman as a writer who inherits his occultist cousin Zachariah’s furnished farmhouse, but is warned to never go near the trunk up in the attic. Every time he tries disposing of the trunk it keeps reappearing. Something in the Woodwork stars the luminous Geraldine Page as a martini-swilling woman with an angry spirit locked up in an attic room she plans to use to get revenge on her ex-husband (Leif Erickson). The Doll of Death is set in the West Indies where Susan Strasberg plays a woman who jilts her rich fiancé at the alter and runs off with her lover (Alejandro Rey). Her angry betrothed uses voodoo to destroy the pair. The Blu-ray includes many audio commentaries and a featurette on the troubled life of the series when NBC revamped the successful show for a third season and doomed it, infuriating Serling.
Grand Jete (Altered Innocence) And I thought Ma Mere was fucked up. But this 2022 German film about the incestuous relationship between a mother and son takes the cake. Nadja (Sarah Nevada Grether) is a ballet teacher and former renowned dancer, whose body is now in bad shape which causes her to take strong pain medication. She also reunites with her estranged teenage son Mario (Emil von Schonfels), who competes in contests which entail severe ball torture. She quickly seduces her son, even asking during sex “Have things changed there?” referring to her vagina. “You’re a little cat,” she says to him in bed, “and I’m your queen of mice.” She even jerks him off while he recites homework poetry. This disturbing tale of obsession, directed by Isabelle Stever, is artfully told (almost to a fault) but it still is pretty outrageous.