The Christmas holidays are usually a slow one for home video releases but this December includes some really exceptional new 4k scanned collector’s editions. From greats like The Night of the Iguana, Carrie, Black Christmas, 4 Flies on Grey Velvet, Freeway to the camp masterpiece Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman. And a special round of applause to Criterion for Three Films by Mai Zetterling. If these don’t constitute “stocking stuffers,” what the hell does?
The Night of the Iguana (Warner Archive) Not only is the 1964 John Huston-directed adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play one of the best Williams adaptations it’s also an unforgettable black & white masterpiece. Richard Burton plays defrocked minister Rev. Shannon, a boozy mess leading church tour groups in Mexico. But a seductive little vixen (Sue Lyon) threatens his job and he hijacks the bus to the Puerto Vallarta resort of his friend Maxine Faulk (Ava Gardner) to figure out how to save his job and kick his demons. Deborah Kerr is radiant as another arrival at the hotel, a spinster traveling with her ancient grandfather writing his epic poem. Ava Gardner gives the performance of her career as the blowsy, sexy Maxine, always going to the beach for moonlight swims with her hot, maraca-shaking beach boys. Because of all the star power (and the fact that Burton was bringing Elizabeth Taylor for the shoot) Huston gave the cast little Derringer guns with bullets adorned with the other actor’s names, which broke the ice and everyone got along famously.
Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (Warner Archive) When you shout, “Stella!” you immediately conjure up A Streetcar Named Desire. But “Harry!” belongs to this 1958 camp classic. The wonderful Allison Hayes plays wealthy, unhappy wife Nancy Archer, whose philandering husband Harry (William Hudson) is always busy at the local bar with sexy spitfire Honey (Yvette Vickers– perfection). While out driving, Nancy encounters an alien space orb in the middle of the road and a giant emerges more interested in the “Star of India” diamond around her neck. But the radiation from the creature causes her to grow enormously and she heads into town looking for “Harry” leaving a trail of destruction. The poor special effects (especially the giant hand) only make you love this movie more. This Warner Archive Blu-ray is spectacular looking.
Picpus & Cecile is Dead (Kino Lorber) Two 1940s mysteries based on the works of Georges Simenon starring Albert Prejean (The Threepenny Opera) as the famed Detective Inspector Maigret, with trademark hat, trench coat and lit pipe, who goes by hunches which usually turn out to be right. Picpus (1943) is about a woman moving to a new apartment in Paris. During the move the dead body of a strange woman shows up in her wardrobe. Maigret is on vacation and is dragged back to solve this crime as the bodies pile up. Cecile is Dead (1944) is about a forlorn spinster Cecile (Santa Relli), who lives with her invalid skinflint aunt. She keeps returning to the station to talk to Maigret about strange noises during the night at her house but he doesn’t take her seriously. He is busy investigating a headless woman found in a hotel. But then Cecile is found murdered and the plot thickens. Beautifully restored, there is great wit and humor and mystery in these delicious rarities.
Three Films by Mai Zetterling (Criterion) Long overdue tribute to actress, novelist, film director Mai Zetterling with three of her controversial films. Zetterling was a revered stage and screen actress in Sweden (her role in Ingmar Bergman’s Torment a high point). She came to London and joined the Royal Dramatic Theater, but then threw herself into learning how to direct. She filmed several well-respected documentaries for the BBC before branching out to narrative films. Loving Couples (1964) was based on a novel by author Agnes von Krusenstjerna that Zetterling desperately wanted to adapt but she didn’t have any money to get back to Sweden. Thankfully a Lux Soap commercial she was asked to be in paid her way and she got the financing for the film which was luminously shot by Sven Nykvist. It’s about three women in a maternity ward of a cold, prison-like hospital. The women are from different social standings and they reflect on key moments from their lives. Blonde Angela (Gio Petre) was an orphaned girl raised by a loving aunt who had an affair with a married man. Adele (Gunnel Lindblom) is an unhappily married woman whose family began as aristocrats but death and disaster moved them down the ladder. Agda (Harriet Andersson) is the sexually free-wheeling maid who skips around the hospital singing and eating taffy, unconcerned about the child’s birth. It’s a radical, great film. During a 1984 interview included on this disc, Mai Zetterling said, ”Okay, I’m a woman filmmaker. But I don’t make women’s films. I make personal films, and I happen to be a woman.” The Girls (1968) is a playfully experimental film about three actresses rehearsing for a tour of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. The thespians are played by Bibi Andersson, Harriet Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom, and the film mixes in their home and love lives with the rehearsals and the difficulties of being taken seriously as artists and women. Night Games (1966) for me is her transgressive masterwork. A wealthy young man- Jan (Keve Hjelm) brings his fiancé (Lena Brundin) to his family castle and is forced to deal with his sordid memories as a boy. He lived with a destructive, decadent mother (Ingrid Thulin), who either showered him with unhealthy affection or left him for months to be cared for by an elderly aunt. She would throw outrageous, orgy-like parties when she returned, and in one notorious scene she gives birth to a stillborn baby in front of musicians, drunk partygoers and her crying son. The young version of Jan is played by Jorgen Lindstrom (memorable in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona and The Silence). The movie caused a scandal at the Venice Film Festival, and Shirley Temple Black resigned from the San Francisco Festival board in protest of the film’s inclusion, accusing the movie as being “pornography for profit.” That alone should make you want to see it.
Black Christmas (4K UHD) (Shout! Factory) Gorgeous 4K UHD Blu-ray of a true horror classic. This 1975 Canadian shocker by Bob Clark (Porky’s, A Christmas Story) about a deranged killer who sneaks into the attic of a sorority house during the Christmas holidays. Olivia Hussey plays one of the students receiving disturbing, obscene phone calls. Margot Kidder is a real stand-out as the drink-swilling, tart-tongued sorority sister. Even a young Andrea Martin is one of the girls. John Saxon plays a cop in this genuinely unsettling and surprisingly effective chiller that really holds up. The ads proclaimed, “If this movie doesn’t make your skin crawl…it’s on too tight!” Special features include audio commentary with late director Bob Clark; audio commentary with actors Keir Dullea and John Saxon.” Remembering Black Christmas,” with actor Art Hindle. “12 Days of Black Christmas,” a documentary and archival interviews with Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder and others.
Carrie (4k UHD) (Shout! Factory) Brian De Palma’s great 1976 adaptation of a Stephen King book with a luminous Sissy Spacek as Carrie White, a shy student tormented by her classmates and living with a religious fanatic mother (scary Piper Laurie). But Carrie has these telekinetic powers she cannot control which all come out during an ill-fated prom. A great cast- Amy Irving, William Katt, Betty Buckley, Nancy Allen (deliciously malevolent) and John Travolta (terrific). But it’s De Palma’s mastery as a filmmaker that makes this so endless enjoyable. It just gets better with every viewing, although it does have one of the best jump scares in movie history. This 4k UHD Blu-ray set includes a new digital scan from the film negative and includes many memorable features and interviews with cast and crew and rare behind-the-scene photos of the movie shoot. Perfection.
Girl on a Motorcycle (Kino Lorber) Marianne Faithfull looks gorgeous, decked out in a skin-tight leather jumpsuit as Rebecca, a woman who leaves her newly married schoolteacher husband, jumps on a chopper and heads down the highway to her lover (Alain Delon). Along the way there are lots of erotic reverie and psychedelic imagery in this arty, weirdly memorable, 1968 movie directed by Jack Cardiff based on a novel by Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues. “Rebellion is the only thing that keeps you alive,” she muses while on the road. This was rated X at the time and has a bummer of an ending. This is a new 4K restoration and comes with audio commentary by the director.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Kino Lorber) Brand new 4K scan from the negative of a quintessential 1974 New York thriller about several armed men who kidnap a subway train and threaten to kill the passengers one at a time unless they get a million dollars in one hour. Robert Shaw is the scary leader of the hijackers, along with a nose-blowing Martin Balsam and a chilling Hector Elizondo as a trigger-happy psycho. Walter Matthew is the frantic transit chief trying to navigate this nightmare. Directed by Joseph Sargent, gritty 1970s New York City is evocatively captured and the cast is just fantastic, right down to smaller roles played to perfection by greats like Jerry Stiller as a police Lieutenant and Doris Roberts as the tart-tongued mayor’s wife. Incredibly suspenseful, with crackling dark humor, it just works on every level. The Blu-ray includes two audio commentaries, a vintage featurette, and interview with Hector Elizodo and an interview with composer David Shire.
Maigret: Season 1 (Kino Lorber) There have been many adaptations of author Georges Simenon’s mysteries (see above), but this BBC television adaptation from the early 1960s starring Rupert Davies as the French detective was the only one in which Simenon himself exclaimed, “At last, I have found the perfect Maigret.” With his trademark hat and pipe, Maigret attempts to get to the bottom of 13 mysteries from the first season (now remastered in high definition). Some of the inscrutable cases include a Montmarte stripper who goes to the police to report a future murder only to be strangled later in her flat. An electric train aficionado who is convinced his wife is trying to poison him. A burglar’s wife (Andree Melly– memorable in Brides of Dracula) tells Maigret that her husband was breaking into a dentist’s home and found a dead woman wrapped in a carpet. Davies is just excellent- he has just the right authority, and the dialogue crackles with hardboiled intensity. “You’ve lost your first love. You’ve killed your first man. There’ll be others,” Maigret says to comfort a fellow officer.
Creature from Black Lake (Synapse) Fun 1976 drive-in bigfoot film, filmed in Louisiana, with great character actors like Jack Elam and Dub Taylor. Two Chicago kids in a white van head to the swamps to find evidence of Sasquatch and live to regret it. Dennis Fimple plays one of the hamburger-craving college kids named Pahoo and his buddy is Rives (cute John David Carson/Pretty Maids All in a Row). The treat in this 4K restoration (from the original camera negative) is the gorgeous cinematography by the great Dean Cundey, who later would make his mark working with John Carpenter on Halloween, The Fog, The Thing and other great cult films and blockbusters. There’s a fascinating featurette where Cundey discusses working on this movie plus audio commentary by Michael Gingold and Chris Poggiali.
4 Flies on Grey Velvet (4k UHD) (Severin) This 4-disc box set makes me insane. The film is an early, great 1971 Dario Argento thriller with handsome Michael Brandon as a rock musician who fears he has accidentally killed a crazed stalker and then is blackmailed by an even more fiendish maniac. With sexy, wonderful Mimsy Farmer as his wife and a wild premise (about capturing the last photographic image on the eyeballs of a corpse). Argento’s brilliant camerawork here reinforces his love for director Michelangelo Antonioni and the script his worship of author Cornell Woolrich. He attempts something more bizarre and daring than in his first two films. It totally anticipates the stylistic leaps he took with his next project Deep Red. In a fascinating extra Lord of the Flies, Argento admits in hindsight how personal the film was about the end of his marriage. Out before in a dubiously-licensed version, this Severin box set includes a 4k UHD restoration from the camera negative. We now can see the director’s cut and the English language theatrical cut (all in 4K). This set includes a host of extras, audio commentaries and interviews and even the CD of the original score by Ennio Morricone on a separate disc. The minute I heard of this release I wanted to hit myself unconscious with a hammer until it arrived in my mailbox.
Freeway (4k UHD) (Vinegar Syndrome) This 1996 sardonic take of the Little Red Riding Hood story stars an electrifying, young, Reese Witherspoon as Vanessa Lutz, hitchhiking to grandma’s house only to be picked up by seemingly harmless Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland– brilliant), who is secretly the “I-5 killer.” But messing with Vanessa proves disastrous for the big bad Wolverton. I hesitate to say more to ruin the fun of this hilarious, darkly comic thriller. Criminally not as known as it should be, I remember seeing Freeway multiple times in theaters when it opened, dragging friends who were also blown away by the mad genius of the film and Reese’s wild child performance. Matthew Bright, the director, is another criminally underappreciated talent, and many of his films unhinge your jaw like this one. Finally, this is given the 4K UHD Blu-ray restoration it so richly deserves. This is uncut and restored with several minutes of violence and dialogue censored before the theatrical run.