Speaking of May flowers, there’s a delicious bouquet of Blu-rays this month, from a sinfully sardonic thriller starring Alain Delon, to three films from the criminally underused Anna May Wong, to one of my favorite Greta Garbo films, to a surprisingly enjoyable slasher film from the late 90s, to a crackling film noir starring Barbara Stanwyck and a young Marilyn Monroe, to a moving new movie by Francois Ozon, a glorious Russian fantasy film, not to mention a memorable sci-fi film where someone marries a monster from outer space. Talk about an aromatic bunch.
Joy House (Kino Lorber) Why do film lovers not know this wickedly entertaining 1964 thriller starring Alain Delon, the underrated Lola Albright, and a young, sexy Jane Fonda? It’s directed by Rene Clement (Purple Noon) which Delon also starred in. And it has a great beginning where a wealthy, powerful man is confronting his wife in the hotel where she slept with Alain Delon’s character Marc. He gives orders to his goons. “I want you to go to Europe and get him…and bring me back his head…I want to give it to my wife,” he sneers as she screams in horror. Marc narrowly escapes from the hoods in France and hides out in a homeless shelter. Two mysterious women come weekly to bring food to the less fortunate. Barbara (Lola Albright), a wealthy widow, and her attractive cousin Melinda (Jane Fonda). They hire Marc to be their chauffeur and bring him back to their neo-Gothic mansion and both attempt to seduce him. But what is their real agenda? An elegant, sardonic mousetrap of a film. Delon, Albright and Fonda are at their most beautiful and it’s fascinating to watch them all deviously scheming behind each other’s back.
Queen Christina (Warner Archive) I remember seeing Greta Garbo films at repertory theaters in my youth and that beautiful face on the big screen had an almost supernatural power. Queen Christina is director Rouben Mamoulian’s 1933 fanciful historical drama of the life of Queen Christina of Sweden (Greta Garbo), who became a monarch at age 6. Weary of her duties she enjoys running off, dressing like a man and riding horseback through the country. She is forced to share the bed of a Spanish envoy (John Gilbert) at an inn one night, who assumes she is a he. When Christina reveals herself to be a woman they have a romantic snowbound tryst. (He still is in the dark as to who she actually is). The scene where she walks around “memorizing the room” of the inn is unforgettable. Eventually Christina is forced to abdicate the throne for him and the last scene with her staring out at the bow of the ship is where director Mamoulian directed her to leave her mind a blank- that the audience would read everything into her face. It still astonishes. There are also nice, “coded’ touches like when she sees the Countess Ebba Sparre (Elizabeth Young) and they fall into each other’s arms and kiss. The Queen then tenderly caresses her face and promises that they will soon go off to the country together, “for two whole days.” Keep them coming Warner Archive!
Anna May Wong Collection (Kino Lorber) The luminous, Chinese-American star, Anna May Wong, was able to navigate the racist times in Hollywood and carve out a successful career for herself. But watch her in Shanghai Express (1932) where she is equal to Marlene Dietich in beauty, mystery and formidability. It makes you sad that she was so often asked to play “Dragon Ladies” and was never given the kind of roles she deserved. When she was passed over for the lead in The Good Earth by Luise Rainer in yellowface (who won an Oscar), it just makes your blood boil. Here are three she did for Paramount Studios and it’s a joy to see them restored and finally available. Island of Lost Men (1934) is a reworking of White Woman (1932) starring Carole Lombard and Charles Laughton. Anna May Wong stars as a cabaret singer in Singapore named China Lily who is invited to travel up the river by the feared Gregory Prin (J. Carrol Naish) who hires men fleeing from the law to rule the natives in his jungle empire. Lily is really the daughter of a Chinese general who she believes is being held captive by Prin. Anthony Quinn plays a secret service agent working undercover. Eric Blore plays a manservant to Prin with a pet pickpocket monkey. The native uprising revenge finale is a bit more satisfying here than in White Woman. Dangerous to Know (1938) was a film version of the hit play by Edgar Wallace– On the Spot. Anna May Wong reprised the role she played on Broadway as Madame Lan Ying, the mistress (or “hostess”) for classical-music-loving gangster Stephan Recka (Akim Tamiroff) who rules the political machinery in the city. Stephan, who yearns to mix with the swells, falls for a socialite (Gail Patrick) who crashes his birthday party. Meanwhile, a wily police Inspector (Lloyd Nolan) is determined to nail him- he even gifts Recka some chocolate handcuffs. Anna May Wong really gets to shine in the explosive, ironic finale. In King of Chinatown (1938), Anna plays a surgeon who saves the life of a crime kingpin (Akim Tamiroff) when he is shot, fearing her father (future Charlie Chan- Sidney Tolar) pulled the trigger. Meanwhile his crooked bookkeeper (J. Carrol Naish) and another hood (Anthony Quinn) take over while he is recuperating and begin strong-arming Chinese businessmen when they don’t agree to pay for protection.
Little Miss Marker (Kino Lorber) Oft-filmed Damon Runyon tale of a little girl (Shirley Temple) who is left as a marker for a bet to a bookie named Sorrowful Jones (Adolphe Menjou). When her dad doesn’t return Sorrowful takes her in and she names all the “guys and dolls” around him after King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. This was the movie that really turned around Shirley Temple’s career and she is pretty irresistible. When Jones finds out the little girl’s father has offed himself he ends up putting a racehorse in her name to get around authorities. This pre-Code film, directed by Alexander Hall, is pretty terrific, and the supporting cast is perfection.
Maigret; Season 4 (Kino Lorber) The fourth, and, sadly, the last season of the great BBC series based on the mysteries of Georges Simenon, who considered actor Rupert Davies the perfect representation of his pipe-smoking French Chief Inspector Maigret. With wonderful Ewen Solon as Sgt. Lucas, and the lovely Helen Shingler as Maigret’s wife. The fourth season is extraordinary. Every episode a winner. Such as the touching Poor Cecil, about a woman who haunts the station telling the Inspector about all sorts of strange noises going at night where she lives with her miserly aunt. Maigret ignores her one morning resulting in a double murder. A woman’s lifeless body is dumped out of a car in The Lost Life and Maigret is determined to give the victim justice and dignity in death. In A Man Condemned, Maigret is convinced a man on death row is innocent and cleverly attempts to right a judicial wrong. The treat is a 92 minute BBC Play of the Month: Maigret at Bay, with the Chief unhappily contemplating his eventual retirement and then getting set up by a duplicitous young woman in a complex sting to destroy his reputation.
Lovers Lane (Arrow Video) A 1999 slasher film which introduced actress Anna Faris. This was shot on 35mm but went straight to Blockbuster Video, and it’s a pleasant surprise. It starts as a familiar “urban legend” premise about a hook-handed killer who escapes from an asylum on Valentine’s Day to pick up where he left off- only this time killing the children of the victims he killed 13 years ago. The cast is quite appealing and the twists in the plot are clever. Anna Faris really shines as one of the gang out celebrating Valentine’s Day. One great touch in the film is when she realizes the killer might be in the farmhouse she is holed up in she arms herself with three knives instead of one. This is a 2K restoration from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative and looks wonderful. The disc includes the widescreen version and full-frame version. And a featurette about the making of the film “Screaming Teens: The Legacy of Lovers Lane.” Despite the grammatically challenged title I had a blast watching it.
Five Women for the Killer (Vinegar Syndrome) Francis Matthews (The Revenge of Frankenstein) plays Georgio, a reporter and novelist who returns from an overseas assignment to find his wife died in childbirth, and his baby might not be his. Suddenly there begins a series of grisly killings of newly pregnant women across the city and the suspects (and victims) circle around the hospital where Georgio’s premature baby is being cared for. I admit, I love Italian “Giallos” and this one has a nice nasty bite to it. This disc is restored in 4K from rare archival film elements. On the extras, there is an interview with actor Renato Rossini, who plays the police inspector in the film, discussing his work in films- from bodybuilder to starring in “sword & sandal” epics. Another extra is with Luc Merende, who had one of the most unique faces in Italian genre films, who is candid and funny discussing his career, admitting he always disliked “giallo” movies because of their convoluted plots. “Life is complicated enough.” The son of director Stelvio Massi spiritedly discusses his father, who went from talented DOP (Director of Photography) to filmmaker.
A Blade in the Dark (Vinegar Syndrome) Bruno, (handsome Andrea Occhipinti) is a musician who rents an isolated house for a month to compose the film score for a horror film. Michele Soavi (the director of Cemetery Man) is his real estate agent. Unfortunately, the former tenant “Linda” had a deadly secret that still haunts the house. A lunatic secretly spies on Bruno, sabotages the score and offs strangers with a handy X-Acto knife. Mercifully this gorgeous, remastered disc includes the Italian soundtrack which is wildly preferable to the atrocious English dubbing. Director Lamberto Bava, the son of the great Mario Bava, helmed other oddball thrillers like the bizarre Delirium and the fabulously twisted Body Puzzle. Not to mention the incredibly successful Demons and Demons 2.
The Tale of Tsar Saltan (Deaf Crocodile Films) Another glorious restoration from the boutique Blu-ray company who brought you other Russian fantasy films like Sampo and Ilya Muromets. This 1967 film was by Russian director, screenwriter, animator, painter and sculptor Aleksandr Ptushko (Sadko/The Stone Flower) and it’s based on a fairy tale (in verse) by Aleksandr Pushkin. A Tsar leaves his castle for war (against hairy, bug-eyed, troll-like creatures) while his bride is about to give birth to the heir to the throne. Her two wicked sisters and corpulent mother conspire with others against her and send word to the Tsar on the battlefield that she gave birth to a monster. The Queen’s son grows at a wildly rapid rate and he and his mother are put in a barrel and thrown into the sea. They survive and the young prince saves a magical swan, who is really a beautiful bewitched Princess, and he rules over a merry land with talking squirrels who crack open golden acorns to reveal precious gems. Visually sumptuous, dreamy and otherworldly, while also being satirical and witty. The director declared the film was intended for adults and children alike.
End of the Line (Terror Vision) Genuinely unnerving 2007 Canadian horror film by Maurice Devereaux about a bunch of late night subway riders who suddenly come under attack by a crazed cult of violent religious zealots. The cult members are responding to a beeper signal by their leader ordering them to kill with their cross-like knives because the apocalypse is approaching and they are doing “God’s will” to save souls. The claustrophobia of the long dark subway tunnels as the surviving passengers band together in a race to safety adds to the terror. An example of a low budget horror movie that scrappily succeeds by being really imaginative and different. The Blu-ray comes with an interview with the director, a “making-of” feature and audio commentary. Hopefully more people will discover this little horror gem.
Clash by Night (Warner Archive) A terrific 1953 film noir directed by Fritz Lang and based on a 1941 play by Clifford Odets set in a Monterey, California fishing village. It stars Barbara Stanwyck as Mae, who returns to town after a ten-year affair with a married man. Her brother Joe (Keith Andes) is not pleased to see her. She falls for and marries a decent fisherman (Paul Douglas) but takes an instant dislike to her husband’s good friend Earl (Robert Ryan), the bitter town movie projectionist. In one snappy exchange Mae accuses Earl of hating women and he replies, “Take any six of ‘em- my wife included. Throw ‘em up in the air. The one who sticks to the ceiling, I like.” In typical film noir fashion, she unwisely ends up having an affair with him. A young, luminous Marilyn Monroe plays a pretty girl that works in the sardine factory engaged to Mae’s brother. Not well-reviewed at the time of its release, this has aged well and crackles with sardonic dialogue and stellar performances by Stanwyck, Ryan and Douglas.
Max Fleischer’s Superman (Warner Archive) Max Fleischer was a brilliant animator, director and producer who went from “Out of the Inkwell,” “Betty Boop” and “Popeye the Sailor” cartoon shorts to great full-length features like Gulliver’s Travels. Fleischer developed the Superman cartoons (after acquiring the license from Republic) and this mix of sci-fi, action and fantasy was really unique in the early 1940s. The beautiful, meticulous restoration of these 17 Superman shorts really help you appreciate the dazzling animation and gorgeous color. Included are “The Mechanical Monsters,” “The Arctic Giant,” “Terror on the Midway,” and others. They are all just great.
Everything Went Fine (Cohen Releasing) Loving French director Francois Ozon as I do, I shouldn’t have been surprised that he could transform a seemingly depressing premise about an elderly stroke victim who demands his daughters find a way for him to end his life into something so exhilarating and affecting. And affords the supremely talented actress Sophie Marceau a chance to dazzle on the screen with a ferocious, poignant, heart-felt performance. Based on the achingly autobiographical novel by Emmanuelle Bernheim (who wrote the screenplay for Ozon’s masterful Swimming Pool), the film begins with 85-year-old Andre (played by great French character actor Andre Dussollier) raced to an emergency room after suffering a massive stroke. His daughters rush to his side- Emmanuelle (Sophie Marceau), a successful novelist and her married sister and mother Pascal (Geraldine Paihas). Dussollier’s performance is astonishing. Not only the physicality of playing a stroke victim, but, as he gets better, revealing a truly eccentric, offbeat character. Not to say that the film is not without some pretty devastating and heartbreaking moments, but there is such humor and intelligence coursing through it. The miracle is that this beautifully observed film never resorts to mawkish sentimentality or unearned pathos. There’s something life-affirming about that.
Alien from the Abyss (Severin) The first authorized release in the U.S. of a 1989 film by director Antonio Margheriti (Castle of Blood) about two Greenpeace activists who sail through restricted waters to an active volcanic island. There they encounter natives doing ceremonies to appease the fire God, while nearby is a secretive scientific plant which is dumping radioactive waste into the volcano and “creating a bomb of enormous power,” one scientist warns. Charles Napier (from Russ Meyer films) plays the stubborn and foolhardy head of operations. The Greenpeace twosome sneak into the plant to videotape and expose to the world what they are up to. The female activist avoids capture and is aided by an armed “snake hunter” she meets in the jungle. She confesses “I teach physics. I’m single, Catholic, Anglo-Saxon, and I don’t trust men who milk snakes.” An unidentified flaming object crashes into the water nearby and up from the deep comes a weird alien claw which spits out green liquid that melts off faces. The rest of the monster tunnels underground and pops up to mutate and infect and kill. (The full standing creature is the damndest looking thing). Plenty of cheesy dialogue, explosions and gore. There’s an interview with Edoardo Marghareti (who was shooting his own movie Black Cobra while his father was shooting this in the Philippines) and said his dad was disappointed with the special effects in the film but enjoyed making it. There is also an hour-long retrospective of the career of Antonio Marghareti, who his son Edoardo proudly describes as an “outsider in Italian cinema.”
King Solomon’s Mines (Warner Archive) This is the 1950 Technicolor version based on the popular H. Rider Haggard novel. (It was also filmed in 1938 and 1985). Deborah Kerr stars as a woman who hires a British safari guide- Allan Quatermain (Stewart Granger) to help find her husband- lost in the wilds of uncharted Africa territory while searching for a legendary diamond-filled mine. Along the way, they get embroiled in an attempt to dethrone a native king and have some hair-raising adventures. This glossy MGM adventure film was filmed on location in Uganda, the Belgian Congo, Tanganyika and Kenya. Robert L. Surtes won an Academy Award for cinematography. Typically, a superior Warner Archive restoration.
Conquest of Space/I Married a Monster from Outer Space (Shout! Factory). Now who hasn’t woken up and decided their partner wasn’t from this planet? That’s the premise of this 1958 sci-fi chiller I Married a Monster from Outer Space starring the wonderful Gloria Talbott as a new bride whose handsome husband’s (Tom Tryon) body has been taken over by an alien entity. In fact, many aliens have been transported to Earth because their planet no longer has any females to populate the race. Flashes of lightening reveal their ghastly real appearance. This was an early film for actor Tom Tryon, who went on to star in The Cardinal for Otto Preminger before becoming a successful writer (The Other & Crowned Heads). The co-feature on this Blu-ray is Conquest of Space, a Technicolor 1955 sci-fi film produced by George Pal and directed by Byron Haskins (The War of the Worlds) about 5 intrepid astronauts who encounter dangers on their interplanetary flight to the planet Mars. It stars future TV stars Eric Fleming (Rawhide), William Hopper (Perry Mason), Phil Foster (Laverne & Shirley), and Ross Martin (The Wild, Wild, West).
