To be honest, what I’m thankful for this month is that home media is not dead yet. That way I can savor some of the crackpot titles released this month, especially in digitally enhanced splendor. From one of Joan Crawford’s finest performances, to Howard Hawks’ influential pre-Code gangster movie, to new horror favorites, exploitation greats, strange French thrillers, a terrifying tale about a hitchhiker, Chuck Connors as a mad bomber and every single I Love Lucy season now glorious-looking on Blu-ray. Not to mention the first sci-fi film about an astronaut knocked-up by an alien. Pass the cranberry sauce.
Humoresque (Warner Archive) I always get so annoyed when someone says that Joan Crawford was just a movie star but not an actress. Well, just watch Humoresque, where Joan gives a heartbreaking, brilliant performance as the rich, unfulfilled, alcoholic pining for a talented musician. John Garfield plays Paul Boray, a young, incredibly gifted violist from a poor section of New York. At a party, he meets a wealthy, married, patroness of the arts Helen Wright (Joan Crawford) who sponsors him. They fall in love and embark on a turbulent, doomed love affair. Oscar Levant plays Sid Jeffers. Violinist Isaac Stern was used for the close-up hand scenes of John Garfield playing. Screenplay by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold, based on a Fannie Hurst short story. Directed by Jean Negulesco (Johnny Belinda), it’s Warner Brothers at their best- chronicling ethnic urban neighborhoods with compassion and ramping up the melodrama to a feverish pitch. The ending is unforgettable, and Crawford is just great.
Deadly Circuit (Kino Lorber). Bizarrely beguiling, darkly funny, 1983 French thriller, directed by Claude Miller starring Michel Serrault as a dogged detective nicknamed “The Eye.” He is following the mysterious girlfriend of the son of a wealthy family. He spies her disposing of the young man’s body in a lake, and becomes obsessed with the deadly “black widow” beauty (Isabelle Adjani). “She kills 2 men, eats pears, reads Shakespeare. Active, voracious, cultivated,” he muses as he follows her trail of murder from Montreal to Marrakesh. When she falls for a rich, blind Swiss architect (Sami Frey) he becomes slightly unhinged. He even fantasizes she is his long-lost daughter. A dowdy, unrecognizable Stephane Audran (with fake bad teeth) plays someone else tracking down the globe-trotting murderess. “You might be less hideous with bangs,” the detective advises. Remade (badly) as Eye of the Beholder in 1999 with Ashley Judd and Ewan McGregor. Excellent audio commentary by Daniel Kramer.
Scarface (Criterion) Howard Hawks’ brutal and brilliant 1932 gangster film starring Paul Muni as Tony Camonte, an Italian immigrant and ruthless hood who machineguns up the ladder of bootleggers in New York City. His unwholesome obsession with hellcat sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak) leads to his undoing. George Raft’s iconic flipping of the coin is from this film, and Boris Karloff plays a mob boss who gets his in a bowling alley. Hawks’ innovative use of sound, visuals and editing makes this movie a fast and furious shocker. When the censorious Hays Code was imposed on Hollywood, a completely different ending was slapped on the movie (added here as an extra) where Tony is convicted, sentenced by the court and executed. The film looks glorious here and the extras include actor Bill Hader and author Megan Abbott discussing the film; film scholar Lea Jacobs on director Howard Hawks and an essay by Sara Smith.
The Hitcher (Warner Brothers) Rutger Hauer is absolutely chilling as a psychopathic hitchhiker, who stalks a motorist (C. Thomas Howell) in this harrowing 1986 thriller directed by Robert Harmon with an excellent screenplay by Eric Red. When asked what the maniac wants, he fiendishly replies “I want you to stop me.” Beautifully directed by Robert Harmon, with terrific cinematography by John Seale and a great score by Mark Isham. There’s real alchemy in the performances of C. Thomas Howell and Rutger Hauer. The extras include a fascinating new interview with Robert Harmon about the making of the film.
Oddity (IFC Films/Shudder) A genuinely scary supernatural thriller. shot in Ireland, by Damian McCarthy, starring Carolyn Bracken as a blind psychic who runs a bizarre curio antique store filled with haunted items. After her twin sister is killed in a home invasion by a lunatic recently released from an asylum run by her sister’s widowed husband Ted (Gwilym Lee), she arrives at his house with a strange gift- a creepy, life-sized wooden mannequin. Beautifully constructed from beginning to end it just creates an atmosphere of unbearable suspense as it sardonically plays out. An impressive, frightening film.
The Mad Bomber (Severin) Chuck Connors (The Rifleman) is fabulously bonkers as a psychotic bomber in L.A., targeting schools, state hospitals, hotels (particularly the floor holding a women’s lib meeting). He’s also self-righteous about courtesy and good manners. He stops a man littering on the street and takes the car keys away from a man who honks at him in the crosswalk. “People like you are what’s wrong with the world today!” he admonishes. It’s up to an unhinged cop (Vince Edwards) and a rapist (Neville Brand) who accidentally saw the bomber while he was molesting a patient at the hospital- to stop him. Directed by Bert I. Gordon– the king of teenage drive-in monster movies like War of the Colossal Beast; The Spider, The Beginning of the End, Tormented and Food of the Gods. His daughter Patricia Gordon has a lovely extra recalling being on her father’s set and points out that one of the lookouts during “Watergate” was too busy watching Gordon’s Attack of the Puppet People on TV to alert Nixon’s henchman that they were about to get caught.
The Warrior (Mondo Macabro) This 1983 Indonesian mixture of martial arts and mysticism made handsome, muscular Eurasian Barry Prima a major star as nationalistic rebel hero Jaka Sembung. Set in the 19th-Century, Dutch colonists have turned peasants into slaves and Jaka becomes a voice for the oppressed. Captured and tortured (he is nailed to the prison cell, his eyes are stabbed out and, by magic, he is transformed into a pig). A jungle holy man returns Jaka to human form and his dead girlfriend’s eyes are given to him so he can see again. He, and other villagers lay siege to the colonist’s fort and fight another magical villain who, when you sever off an arm or a leg, they magically heal back. It’s lots of martial arts fighting, supernatural hokum and extreme violence which resulted in several more Jaka Sembung films. The transfer looks absolutely stellar.
Don’t Change Hands (Severin) French filmmaker Paul Vecchiali’s scandalous 1975 neo-noir tale of a female detective Melinda (Myriam Mezieres) (complete with trench coat and fedora) hired by an abitious politician who was sent a porn film starring her son (Jean-Christophe Bouvet) as blackmail. Melinda heads to an infamous cabaret club at the center of all things criminal and nefarious. This mix of action and hardcore was a post-1968 revolutionary provocation by the director and some critics said at the time, “that Myriam Mezieres and Jean-Christophe Bouvet were among the rare actors capable of reading Shakespeare with a dick in their mouth.” Fast-paced, loony and filled with jaw-dropping X-rated sequences (a wild orgy near the end is astonishing). Not to mention a body count higher than any slasher film. There is a fascinating appreciation of the film by director Yann Gonzalez (Knife + Heart) as an extra, and a hilarious one with actor Jean-Christophe Bouvet, who said in those days actors would say, “I’ll be in your movie, but I don’t want to get naked. I would say- I’d like to play in your movie as long as I’m naked.”
Maniac (Kino Lorber) Exploitation king Dwain Esper) and his wife Hidagarde) did it all. They made (or acquired) the “Adults Only” movies, took them on the road, even threaded the projector, packing their bags and moving to another town when the cops started sniffing around. Maniac (1934) is Esper’s deranged masterpiece. Loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat, of all things. Bill Woods stars as an assistant to a crazed German scientist who assumes his boss’s identity after murdering him. He steals corpses, hallucinates, locks women in the basement and injects a man with a serum that turns him into a human orangutan. He even plucks out the eye of a cat and swallows it in this outrageous, hilarious cult classic.
Swallowed (Yellow Veil Pictures) Director Carter Smith’s new film is a nightmarish, nerve-shredding, queer love story/body horror film. Two best friends are spending a final night on the town together in Maine. Long-haired, tattooed Dom (Jose Colon) is straight and his handsome buddy Benjamin (Cooper Koch) is gay and heading to L.A. to start a career in gay porn. The two men have a real unspoken love for each and Dom is heartbroken that Benjamin is leaving. After a few drinks at a bar Dom announces he has to make a quick, money-making, pit stop along the way. They drive to a remote gas station where they meet surly, foul-mouthed Alice (Jena Malone), who is there to convince Dom to participate in an across-the-Canadian-border drug mule scheme. But, when he balks at having to swallow several condom-filled baggies, she pulls out a gun on him and orders: “down the hatch,” and Dom reluctantly swallows most of them. Then they are driven across the border and to a desolate cabin deep in the woods where they can void these baggies. But it is not drugs they have swallowed, but live, squirming, hallucinogenic bugs. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge star Mark Patton shows up as a scary criminal, who oozes such sleaze and malevolence you think you’ve suddenly been transported into a David Lynch film. Swallowed is the disturbing, deeply transgressive film we knew Carter Smith could make. There’s a sexually-charged, skin-crawling, bad-dream logic to it. A sinister, deeply unsettling cinematic treat for the unhinged entomologist buried deep in all of us. Also included is Carter Smith’s chilling short film Bugcrush– which is pure nightmare fuel.
Bug (Kino Lorber) A 4K UHD of this great disturbing psychodrama. Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon are electrifying as two damaged souls in a seedy Oklahoma roach motel in William Friedkin’s nightmarishly brilliant film version of the acclaimed play by Tracy Letts. Ashley Judd plays the hard-drinking Agnes, haunted by her son’s disappearance years ago, and the repeated menacing phone calls (with no one on the line) that she assumes is her ex (Harry Connick Jr.), just released from jail and abusive as ever. Her girlfriend introduces her to Peter (Michael Shannon) a brooding drifter who Agnes invites to spend the night. But she is soon drawn into his paranoid fantasies- convinced that the government has infected his blood with mutant bugs. Soon the walls and ceiling are lined with tinfoil and fly strips and the couple’s descent into madness escalates into violence. Tracy Letts’ play is like Sam Shepard on Special K, and Friedkin definitely has a feel for the dark side of this material. Ashley Judd gives a raw, shattering, performance and Michael Shannon is just astonishing.
I Love Lucy: The Complete Series (CBS) Back in 2014 and 2016 they released two amazing Blu-ray collections of season 1 and season 2 of the hilarious I Love Lucy TV comedy show. The stunning visuals were thanks to the visionary Desi Arnaz, who had the show filmed in 35mm by master cinematographer Karl Freund. Many TV shows were lost forever because they were shot on kinescope and either taped over or destroyed, but because of 35mm, these I Love Lucy episodes have been able to be digitally enhanced for home video. But when they stopped putting out any more seasons, I never thought I’d live to see the entire series on Blu-ray. Well, hallelujah- here are all 9 seasons (including the later Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour episodes). Watching them so crisp and dazzling is to savor the comic genius of the four leads of the show- Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball, William Frawley and Vivian Vance– in new ways. And the extras are astounding- some audio commentaries, color home movies from the set (which made me insane) and “flubs” are revealed, and old intros to the shows and “flashback” sequences. There are even a few colorized episodes also. I am overjoyed by this collection and you will be too.
Bones and All (Shout! Factory) Surprisingly romantic young “cannibals in love” movie from Luca Guadagnini (Call Me by Your Name). Based on a novel by Camille DeAngelis, it stars the charismatic Taylor Russell as Maren, whose father has deserted her because of her “affliction” of cannibalism, which she had been able to keep under control until recently. She is heading along the highways by bus and during a stopover she meets a creepy, older man- Sully (Mark Rylance), who instructs her that people of “their” kind can smell each other out. She gets majorly weirded out by him and hops another bus out of town. (Rylance hilariously chews the scenery and when he utters “Nothing dully with Sully,” you just die). Down the road, she sniffs out another of her kind- Lee (Timothee Chalamet) and they tentatively bond and head down the road in a stolen truck together. Chalamet is perfect young wet dream material- scruffy, with hennaed hair and incredibly ripped jeans, he the kind of damaged soul that is irresistible and he accompanies Maren on her mission to reconnect with the mother she never knew. This kind of loony romanticism mixed with blood is usually found in vampire films like Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark or Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive. But there is real tenderness and crackpot poetry to these bloodthirsty lovers’ journey. Never has the phrase “eat me” seemed more like a kiss. This 2-disc set is a 4K UHD presentation from the original elements plus a Blu-ray disc and plenty of bonus features.
Night of the Blood Beast/Attack of the Giant Leeches (Film Masters). Night of the Blood Beast (1958) is from a 4K scan of a damaged 35mm release print- but it looks absolutely sensational. Better than the muddy, unwatchable prints out before on home video. It’s about an astronaut, thought to be dead when his spacecraft crash lands on earth. But he is very much alive and impregnated by aliens- he is carrying the deadly spawn in his belly. The actor in the lead (Michael Emmet) suffered a worse fate in Attack of the Giant Leeches as blood-food for swamp monsters. The big finale is shot in Bronson Canyon in L.A.’s Griffith Park. Audio commentary by Tom Weaver and Mystery Science Theater 3000’s funny riff on the film. Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) One of those well-loved, idiotic monster movies from the 1950s set in swamp country, where giant leeches drag down unsuspecting victims and periodically drain them of blood in caves. The always-enjoyable Yvette Vickers plays “Liz Baby,” the slutty wife of an overweight shop-owner (Bruno VeSota) who pays for her adultery when she is dragged into the swamp by one of the creatures. What I find so entertaining in the movie is not the monsters (constructed from garbage bags), it’s the actor who plays the game warden- Ken Clark. The blonde, handsome Clark is best known as the slightly-dumb, muscular himbo named Stew Pot in the movie South Pacific (1958). In this film, his pants reveal a startlingly detailed outline of an impressive penis. The extras include a nice tribute to director Bernard Kowalski; audio commentary by Tom Weaver; a slide show of Yvette Vickers; and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 take on “Giant Leeches.” In the book “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” author Stephen King put it best, “When I lay in bed at night (at 13), listening to the wind in the trees or the rats in the attic, it was not Debbie Reynolds as Tammy or Sandra Dee as Gidget that I dreamed of, but Yvette Vickers from Attack of the Giant Leeches.”
