Fall never felt so refreshingly sweet, with these restored crackpot classics on Blu-ray this month. From the sleaze classic Nightmare, to Frank Henenlotter’s inspired and deranged Bad Biology; Nicolas Roeg’s creepy Don’t Look Now; a crackling paranoid thriller 3 Days of the Condor; Paul Schrader’s Hardcore; Oliver Stone’s controversial Natural Born Killers; Lucio Fulci’s occult shocker The City of the Living Dead; The Giant Gila Monster (restored!); and Elizabeth Taylor is the little-seen, bonkers The Driver’s Seat. It’s back-to-school alright. For Cinemaniacs.
Nightmare (Severin) One of the more notorious (unrated) slasher movies, this 1981 shocker directed by Romano Scavolini (A White Dress for Mariale) is given an amazing deluxe 4k UHD 3-disc restoration from Severin. The movie the Daily News called “The most repulsive, offensive, degrading, gory, depraved and horrifying movie ever made.” It’s about a schizophrenic mental patient named George Tatum (Baird Stafford) who suffers from horrible nightmares which wake him up screaming, related to a mysterious, traumatic incident from his past. He is given experimental new drug treatments, thought to be cured, let out and he heads right to 42nd Street to the peep shows that prevailed at that time. The audience I saw it with on Times Square cheered proudly when George was shown walking by the sex shops and the very theater showing the movie. George decides to hightail it to Florida, merrily killing women along the way. In Daytona Beach, a single mother with an incorrigible son (fond of playing gory pranks), is about to cross paths with homicidal George. Filled to the brim with outrageous gore sequences- especially at the end where George remembers hacking his dad to death with an axe. Tom Savini (who did special effects for Dawn of the Dead and Friday the 13th) was called in as consultant for one day and when he was plastered all over the ads he threatened to sue, so the producers had to tape over his name on all the posters. Known abroad under the better title Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, the film is just sleazy and great and I’ve never seen it look this good, ever. Even when it played in theaters, care of 21st Century Film Corporation, it looked like someone dragged the print through a sandpaper factory. This comes with a 4K UHD disc, a Blu-ray and a special features disc. There are many extras like audio commentary, deleted scenes and a making-of documentary. The third disc includes a documentary- Damaged: The Very British Obscenity of David Hamilton– about the English distributor who actually went to jail for 6 months for showing this film. To give such care and attention to such a disreputable movie floods my heart with great joy.
Bad Biology (Severin) A 4k UHD restoration of Frank (Basket Case) Henenlotter’s triumphant return to cult cinema with a wildly transgressive tale of two people with mutant genitalia who find love. Jennifer (Charlee Danielson) has orgasms that usually end in her partner’s death (and a mutant birth). Batz (Anthony Sneed) has a penis with a mind of its own. Can these two lost souls find love? With a wild, riotous script by Henenlotter and R. A “The Rugged Man” Thorburn, this gets pretty jaw-dropping and fabulous. And special effects wiz Gabe Bartalos really does some creatively sick work here. It fits right in with Henenlotter’s other off-the-wall body horror films like Frankenhooker and the deliriously deranged Brain Damage. It doesn’t get any more twisted or better than this. It comes with over 5 hours of special features including Spook House– interviews with cast and crew discussing the “haunted” Brooklyn house they filmed in, which once was the home of notorious spiritual leader Father Divine.
Identikit (Severin) Now released separately from their terrific House of Psychotic Women box set, this restored Blu-ray is of one of the most bizarre and confounding movies Elizabeth Taylor ever made. Released in the United States as The Driver’s Seat, the film begins with Lise (Elizabeth Taylor) picking up a dress she ordered for a vacation to Rome. She gushes about the “pure blend of natural colors,” but when the saleswoman tells her it’s also “stain resistant” she has a fit in the store and is only calmed down when they reassure her it is also available without that option. The film often flashes forward to a police investigation, interviewing many of the people who interacted with Lise in Italy. A woman being interviewed by the police describes the creepy energy coming from her. That it was, “a potential for catastrophe.” Based on a novel by Muriel Spark, Andy Warhol shows up in the airport as a Lord who approaches Lise because she dropped her paperback book. Elizabeth Taylor arrived on set the day after her divorce from Richard Burton and throws herself into the role with demented gusto. She fills the character with just the right kind of off-putting strangeness. The Severin Blu-ray restoration is a revelation- you can clearly hear the lovely, elegant piano score by Franco Mannino and see the gorgeous cinematography by the great Vittorio Storaro (the nighttime scenes in the park are otherworldly). It includes an excellent extra with literary historian Chandra Mayor about author Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brody), who considered The Driver’s Seat one of her favorites. This Italian-made film was directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi (‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore) and is truly fucked-up and fabulous.
Footprints (Severin) Another included in House of Psychotic Women box set, this 1975 strange “giallo” was directed Luigi Bazzoni (The Fifth Cord) and stars the always amazing Florinda Bolkan (A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin) as Alice, a foreign translator, living in Rome, who awakes one morning to find that she is missing three days of her life. The only clues are a ripped postcard of a hotel in Garma and a mysterious blood-stained yellow dress. Alice travels to the off-season, seaside town of Garma and meets all these strangers who seem to know her, even though she has no memory of ever being there. Included is a precocious little girl who knows more than she lets on (played by Nicoletta Elmi– a familiar staple in horror films at the time like Deep Red, Bay of Blood, Flesh for Frankenstein and others). Alice also suffers nightmares about a film she saw as a child about an astronaut left alone on the moon as a scientific experiment and his fear and sense of isolation is something she can relate to. (Klaus Kinski pops up in those sequences). This haunting mystery is also enhanced by the gorgeous cinematography of Vittorio Storaro (The Conformist, Apocalypse Now). Two versions of the film are included, along with a lengthy interview with Storaro and other goodies.
Don’t Look Now (Criterion) A 4k UHD release of Nicolas Roeg’s nightmarish 1973 thriller based on a story by Daphne du Maurier. The sublime Julie Christie and a superb Donald Sutherland play a married couple still reeling from the accidental death of their young daughter. They travel to Venice where Donald Sutherland is restoring a church and his wife (Christie) begins visiting two weird sisters (one a clairvoyant) to contact her dead daughter. Meanwhile a weird little killer in a red rain slicker scurries down the circuitous streets. Roeg’s telling of the story in a fractured, near hallucinatory style is spectacularly unnerving. Every scene vibrates with scary foreshadowing. The sex scene between Christie and Sutherland (intercut with them dressing) is refreshingly realistic and sensual. An unforgettable, scary film.
Black Circle (Synapse) Intriguing, slow-burn creepfest by director Adrian Garcia Bogliano (Here Comes the Devil) about two sisters who unwisely listen to an old self-help hypnosis record which conjures up an “Ethereal Double” doppelganger who stalks them, convinced that they are the original. The sisters seek the help of the woman who created the record Lena Carlsson (Christina Lindberg, star of cult favorite Thriller: A Cruel Picture) before this demonic double takes over. They hope to perform the reverse of an exorcism, coaxing the entity back into their body. This includes audio commentary with the director, a making-of featurette and a CD of the score by Rickard Gramfors.
3 Days of the Condor (Kino Lorber) Robert Redford plays a CIA book researcher for a secret government agency housed in the “American Literary Historical Society” in a Manhattan brownstone. When he comes back from lunch everyone in the building has been killed and he goes on the run, unable to trust his own organization. Director Sydney Pollack keeps the movie hurtling at breakneck pace as the noose tightens and Redford begins to realize there is no one he can trust. Faye Dunaway plays a stranger he meets (and abducts) along the way as he tries to figure out why people are gunning for him. Max von Sydow plays a shadowy assassin in this first-rate 1975 post-Watergate thriller. This includes a 4K UHD scan from the 35mm camera negative. It also comes with a Blu-ray disc and offers commentary by Sydney Pollack and a separate commentary track with film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson. Also, a featurette about the film and a 2004 documentary on Sydney Pollack.
Natural Born Killers (Collector’s Edition) (Shout! Factory) 4K UHD restoration of Oliver Stone’s electric Kool-Aid acid test. Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis are fabulous as the cold-blooded killer couple Mickey & Mallory, whose murderous exploits causes fan clubs and imitators. The whole cult-killer satire is way over the top, but it’s made with wild psychedelic editing, great music and even flashes of the giant rabbits from Night of the Lepus thrown in. Many critics groused about the graphic violence but the movie was a big box office hit. A real blast of kinetic energy which looks even better now in 4K.
Hardcore (Kino Lorber) Paul Schrader’s explosive 1979 film, with a towering performance by George C. Scott as a God-fearing Grand Rapids single father, whose young daughter Kristen goes on a Youth Calvinist Convention to California and disappears. He flies out with his brother-in-law (Dick Sergeant) and hires a private detective (Peter Boyle). Then he discovers to his horror his daughter is involved in hard core porn. He heads to Hollywood to hunt for her himself and finds himself out of his depths in the world of peepshows, prostitution, sleaze and depravity. He pretends to be financing an adult film in order to find more information and meets a porn actress Niki (played by the wonderful, underrated actress Season Hubley) and together they hunt for Kristen. Think of it as The Searchers but pornographers and perverts instead of Native Americans who captured his daughter. Nice cinematography by Michael Chapman with a memorably outrageous finale in San Francisco with Scott crashing through porn sets at a bondage house. With two separate audio commentaries, one by film historians and the other by director Paul Schrader.
The Giant Gila Monster (Film Masters) I can’t believe we are getting a new, 4K restored Blu-ray (from original 35mm film elements) of this inadvertently hilarious 1959 low-budget monster movie. Good-looking Don Sullivan plays a mechanic and hot-rodder who keeps finding wrecked cars, little knowing a giant Gila Monster is attacking other teens necking in their vehicles. (If you want a good drinking game take a shot of alcohol every time Don Sullivan raises his knee). But eventually the gargantuan lizard attacks a train and a rock & roll barn dance. There’s something wonderfully goofy about all of this. Directed by Ray Kellogg, this disc also includes his other great monster film The Killer Shrews (1959). I have the original poster framed in my living room for this film- a hairy animal tail and a bloodstained, high-heel shoe promising rodentacular horror. The film is actually about a bunch of people who get stranded on an island overrun by shrews from a mad doctor’s experiments gone wrong. The shrews have mutated into giants, although they are quite obviously packs of dogs with masks on, which actually makes it funnier. Included is Ray Kellogg: An Unsung Master, a documentary about the director and an archival audio interview with actor Don Sullivan.
City of the Living Dead (Cauldron) 4k UHD version of Lucio Fulci’s great 1980 horror film which begins with a priest hanging himself in a cemetery in Dunwich which opens the gates of hell. Exquisite Catriona MacColl plays a NY psychic who sees a vision of the demonic priest during a séance and has a seizure and dies. However, she is really in a cataleptic state and is rescued by an intrepid reporter (Christopher George) in her coffin (an amazing sequence) and then they travel to Dunwich to investigate the impending apocalypse. This was during Fulci’s ripest period, along with movies like Zombie, The Beyond and House by the Cemetery. With a great score by Fabio Frizzi and outrageous gore effects- particularly the scene with the couple in lover’s lane where the woman vomits out her innards; and the town halfwit’s (Giovani Lombardo Radice) fatal encounter with an electric drill. This film has been out many times before on DVD and Blu-ray but this new incarnation is pretty astounding. The flesh tones are realistic and the moody photography from cinematographer Sergio Salvati is detailed, beautiful and eerie. The extras differ from previous Blu-ray releases and are all terrific. Listen, there are certain films I love that I will forever upgrade and this is one of them.
