There is a staggering array of films out on Blu-ray and 4K this month- from classics like The Night of the Hunter and The Servant, to cult favorites like Paul Bartel’s kinky, fabulous Private Parts, to Victor Buono as an oversized psychotic killer in The Strangler. There’s also new movies like Keanu Reeves in the jaw-dropping 4th installment of John Wick. Also, new restorations of Peter Greenaway films; the quintessential women’s prison movie- Caged, plus a 3-D sexploitation women’s prison movie. Last, but not least, Joan Crawford as a mink-draped mobster’s moll in one of her best- The Damned Don’t Cry. All these makes me want to cry too. For joy.
The Servant (Criterion) This diabolical 1963 film about the shifting dynamics between a wealthy, decadent Londoner (James Fox) and his scheming servant (Dirk Bogarde) was the beginning of a successful partnership between director Joseph Losey and acclaimed playwright Harold Pinter. This is based on a novel by Robin Maugham but Pinter’s icy, sardonic script and Losey’s elegant filmmaking elevates this into one of the most perverse, brilliant movies of the 1960s. Dirk Bogarde is peerless as the duplicitous manservant and the homoerotic tension in the film adds another level of discomfort. This is a 4k restoration and comes with rare archival interviews with Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter, not to mention actors James Fox, Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles and Wendy Craig. Fiendishly fun. Be sure to watch the wonderful extra on the “Actors” to hear Dirk Bogarde on meeting Losey and Sarah Miles hilariously recounting her parents coming over to her home after they saw a screening of The Servant and having a fit over her being in such a repugnant film. And then how they had to eat crow when the rave reviews came out.
Private Parts (Shout! Factory) My favorite film of director Paul Bartel (Eating Raoul), this 1972 twisted dark comedy/horror film deserves to be better known. I showed a print of it for friends when I managed a movie theater in Provincetown and everyone just flipped out. Ayn Ruymen plays Cheryl, who has a fight with her roommate and heads to stay with her Aunt Martha (Lucille Benson), who runs the seedy King Edward hotel, only to find it chuck full of perverts, voyeurs and a possible killer. Lucille Benson has such a commanding, unsettling and bizarre quality you want to squeal with delight every time she appears on screen. And there are a million great weird touches- like a tenant who has a clear, life-size inflatable doll filled with water with Chery’s face taped to it, which he injects with a syringe filled with blood. And way before the Martin Scorsese film, Cheryl calls back to an elderly tenant, “Alice doesn’t live here anymore!”
The Strangler (Shout! Factory) Wonderful character actor Victor Buono plays a psychopathic momma’s boy who strangles women in this 1964 sleaze wonder. Buono plays a lab technician who visits his hospital-bound shrew of a mother (Ellen Corby), then heads to the arcade and wins dolls by a ring-toss. He strips the dolls and throws them in a desk drawer after each home invasion killing. This was made to cash in on the Boston Strangler murders at the time, and according to excellent audio commentary on the disc by David Del Valle and David Decoteau, Buono was not a happy camper on the set and objected to any overtly sexual elements included in the murder scenes. But it was one of his few leading roles after his success in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and the money was good. This is a 2K scan from the Interpositive and looks amazing. And Buono brings a dark wit to his performance.
The Draughtsman’s Contract (Kino Lorber) Director Peter Greenaway’s dazzling baroque mystery set in the 17th-century England. A dashing draughtsman (Anthony Higgins) is assigned to do 12 drawings of a country estate, and in each one he leaves enigmatic clues of a more sinister nature. It’s also a murder mystery, of sorts. One of my favorite moments comes when the lady of the house calls her servant into her room and says, “Fetch me nothing.” Dripping with wit and irony, it also features exaggerated costumes and a glorious Michael Nyman score.
A Zed & Two Noughts and The Falls (Kino Lorber) God knows director Peter Greenaway is an acquired taste, but for those who love his films (and you can count me in) they are endlessly fascinating, perversely bizarre and like nothing else. Two women are driving outside of a zoo when their vehicle crashes into a pregnant swan. Afterwards, their twin zoologist husbands become obsessed with decay and begin to chronicle the decomposition of dead animals. Yes folks, that’s the plot of one of Greenaway’s weirdest experiments. But like all his films, it’s loaded with baroque detail (thanks to the stunning cinematography of Sacha Vierny) and has a haunting score by Michael Nyman. The Falls is a mock-documentary of 92 casualties of V.U.E. (Violent Unknown Event), their surnames beginning with the letters F A L L.
Mr. Wong Collection (Kino Lorber) Monogram Studios hired the great Boris Karloff to play Asian detective (and scientist) James Lee Wong in five on-the-cheap films based on a series by Hugh Wiley for Collier’s magazine. Mr. Wong Detective is set in San Francisco where the detective investigates the mysteries of several men who are killed in locked rooms with poisoned gas. Mystery of Mr. Wong is about a collector of antiquities who has acquired the “eye of the daughter of the moon” jewel, which, naturally, comes with a deadly curse. Mr. Wong in Chinatown begins with a frightened Chinese Princess coming to Mr. Wong for help. She is killed with a poisoned dart but is able to scrawl “Captain J” on a piece of paper. With Marjorie Reynolds as a pushy newspaper reporter and Angelo Rossito (Freaks) as a mysterious mute. The Fatal Hour is about the Captain’s good buddy (and fellow officer) Dan Grady found murdered after going undercover to unmask the men responsible for smuggling in rare jade. Everything seems to lead to a shady gambling joint called the Club Neptune. Doomed to Die is about the mysterious shooting of a shipping magnate. (Keye Luke played the detective in the last of the series Phantom of Chinatown).
Prison Girls 3D (Kino Lorber) A loony 1972 3-D sexploitation film about six women serving time in prison who are given a two-day furlough to help them acclimate to real life when they are finally released. And what do they do? Have lots of sex. One girl goes back to her pimp who beats her up and then has sex with her. One girl tries to get over her frigidity with her husband in a hippie love pad leant by the warden. One, who murdered her husband, visits his brother and they come under attack from a biker gang who force them to have sex. One, along with her prison girlfriend, visit a wealthy painter and they all have sex. Finally, one visits her bank robber boyfriend hiding out from the law. She is played by exploitation royalty- Uschi Digard, the big-busted Swedish star who appeared in several Russ Meyers films including Super Vixens, not to mention appearing in Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS and Truck Stop Women. Directed by Tom DeSimone (Hell Night) this Blu-ray comes in both Polarized 3-D and Anaglyphic (Red/Cyan) 3-D (glasses provided).
John Wick: Chapter 4 (Lionsgate) An epic, non-stop action orgy, part spaghetti western, part cartoonish Asian action film, director Chad Stahelski goes for broke as John Wick’s violent actions (against an Elder) has caused him to ex-communicated by the High Table. And anyone who enables him becomes a target too. An evil, wealthy, impeccably-dressed Marquis (Bill Skarsgard) has put a world-wide bounty on his head and villains from all over are after him. A blind assassin (astounding Donnie Yen) and a mysterious combatant named Nobody (Shamier Anderson) traveling with a trained dog are included in this mix. Like Clint Eastwood’s character in the Sergio Leone Italian westerns, Keanu Reeves’ character is a man of few, deeply guttural words. But as he attempts to overturn his fate Wick travels the globe, from a wild fight in Osaka, to another at a water-drenched, Berlin disco where dancers are wildly gyrating all the while Wick battles a hulking giant with gold teeth wearing a purple suit. There’s a mind-boggling sequence where Wick dodges cars and killers at the Arc de Triomphe. And a lengthy staircase sequence leading up to the Sacre-Coeur Bascilica that certainly rivals the “Odessa Steps” sequence of Battleship Potemkin or Laurel & Hardy in The Music Box. “The bloodshed in Osaka was not necessary,” complains someone to the Marquis who straightforwardly responds, “The bloodshed was the point.” That is basically the core of this gloriously bonkers blood and bullet ballet.
The Witches Mountain (Mondo Macabro) There is plenty of Wicca-weirdness to go around in this ultra-rare 1972 Spanish supernatural film. It was directed by Raul Artigot, who only directed 3 films and was mostly known as a cinematographer. It stars John Gaffari as Mario, a photojournalist who has an assignment to shoot in the Pyrenees Mountains in Northern Spain. He meets a pretty writer on a beach- Delia (Patty Shepard) who decides to tag along with him and the further they go, the weirder things get. They come upon an abandoned stone-house village in the mountains and eventually come to realize it is an enclave of very active witches. John Gaffari (his real first name is Cihangir) grew a big bushy mustache for the role, and Patty Shepard was an American studying in Spain who ended up modeling and acting in movies and really became a cult film favorite. This movie was called “cursed” by people who worked on it because it never opened in Spain (the subject matter didn’t fly in the Franco era), so this has been nearly impossible to see. With plenty of extras including with actor John Gaffari, who still looks terrific. A moody, atmospheric, especially strange film.
Angel Face (Warner Archive) A terrific 1953 film noir expertly directed by Otto Preminger starring Robert Mitchum as an ambulance driver who meets and falls for a scheming heiress (Jean Simmons). It all ends in murder and disaster. Jean Simmons was always a gifted actress that, fortunately, got some great roles which showed off her staggering talent (Elmer Gantry, Home Before Dark, The Happy Ending) but it’s fun to watch her here as the scheming, fiendish, femme fatale.
Caged (Warner Archive) The quintessential women’s prison movie. Directed by John Cromwell, this gritty 1950 film stars Eleanor Parker as the doe-eyed, petrified and pregnant “new fish” at the prison, convicted after a botched robbery where her husband is killed. There is the kindly warden (Agnes Moorehead) and a colorful array of female convicts, but the sadistic matron (a staggering Hope Emerson) rules the wards with an iron fist. A fabulous supporting cast- Jan Sterling, Lee Patrick, Ellen Corby, Jane Darwell, we watch as this innocent newcomer evolves into a hardened dame, who, after she is paroled, the weary warden says “Keep her file active. She’ll be back.”
The Damned Don’t Cry (Warner Archive) Just what I love- Joan Crawford suffering in a mink coat. We flashback to Ethel Whitehead’s poor, hardscrabble early years, married to a hard-working dud, played by Richard Egan. But after her son tragically dies she packs her bags and heads out the door. “I want something more than what I’ve had out of life. And I’m gonna get it.” She rises from rags to riches, first romancing a nice guy accountant Martin (Kent Smith) who she convinces to work for a ruthless mobster- George Castleman (David Brian). Then she makes a play for the married Castleman. She quickly swans her way into Café Society, transforming herself into “Lorna Hansen Forbes” and mixing with the swells. But when one of their hoods- Nick Prenta (a dynamic Steve Cochran) gets out of line they send Lorna to the West Coast to “ingratiate” herself into his life. Then things turn pretty deadly. Vaguely based on mobster Bugsy Siegel and girlfriend Virginia Hill, this crackles with hard-boiled dialogue. A great vehicle for Joan– she digs into this role with ferocious gusto.
The Night of the Hunter 4K (Kino Lorber) It seems unfathomable now that this unforgettable film adaptation of a Davis Grubb novel about an evil preacher (Robert Mitchum) with good tattooed on one hand and evil on the other was a box office flop. He woos and kills widows for their cash and moves on down the road on horseback singing “Bringing in the Sheaves.” Shelley Winters is sensational as the pitiful new victim and her two small children escape down the river fleeing from the murderous minister. He is after hidden cash in the girl’s doll. The scenes going down the river are some of the most evocative, lyrical moments on film you will ever see. Lillian Gish is the beatific, gun-toting woman who takes in stray children. This was the only film directed by actor Charles Laughton and its failure at the box office stopped him from making another film, which is pretty heartbreaking. This is a 4k UHD Blu-ray and only enhances the extraordinary cinematography by Stanley Cortez. The extras include audio commentary by film historian Tim Lucas, a feature with director Ernest Dickerson discussing the film, and Kathy Garver, who played a child in the movie discusses her memories of being on that set. I am forever haunted at the image of Shelley Winters underwater in a submerged car, her hair snaking upwards.
Wow….what an incredible collection of movies to watch.
Haven’t seen Caged in forever, just reading the words ‘new fish,’ brings back memories!
Can’t wait to see it again, I think … yikes.