Dr. Rossiter will give you something to scream about! Sidney Hayers’ Big Top terror flick is luridly oversexed, excessively gruesome — and great fun. Mad plastic surgeon Anton Diffring creates his own harem of facially-restored women who also happen to be criminals. Circus acts provide the ‘accidents’ to remove any that become a liability. It’s…
Taken from a story by Patricia Highsmith, director Claude Autant-Lara’s murder thriller can boast an attractive cast: Maurice Ronet, Gert Fröbe, Robert Hossein, Marina Vlady and Yvonne Furneaux. The slick production, good music and committed performances can’t be faulted, but the point gets lost amid a lot of yelling. Just the same, Hossein and Fröbe…
David Hinton’s documentary celebration of the ‘Archers’ team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is a feature-length rumination filtered through Martin Scorsese’s narration, emphasizing his first awakening to the Power of Film. The collaboration was so rich and the films so impressive that it takes over two hours just for a cursory pass through the…
George Stevens’ back-from-the-war masterpiece honors family vaues and stability with the near-reverent story of a Norwegian immigrant family subsisting in San Francisco of 1910. The filmmaking is fastidious and the performances exemplary — Irene Dunne is the Hanson matriarch, young Barbara Bel Geddes the teenager who wants to write, and Oscar Homolka the overbearing Uncle…
Roman Polanski’s twisted ‘apartment horror’ creepshow melds supernatural and psychological possession — a meek clerk finds himself being possessed by the previous occupant of his apartment: a woman who committed suicide. It might be all in his mind, but the spook-show trimmings are compelling too: the new tenant plays his cross-dressing new role to the…
The Bat Blu-ray Undercrank Productions 1926 / 86 min Starring Emily Fitzroy, Jack Pickford, Louise Fazenda Written by Roland West Photographed by Arthur Edeson and Gregg Toland Directed by Roland West Films produced in the silent era were triumphs of artistic ingenuity—though they lacked even the rudimentary tools of contemporary filmmaking, no Steadicam or drone…
This collector’s box of Columbia odds ‘n’ ends has a couple of movies that are only marginal horror, but all have at least one or two horror elements. A gangster picture with Boris Karloff dips into mad doctor territory, and the mad scientist in an aviation thriller has cooked up an anti-aircraft death ray. Peter…
Director G.W. Pabst imported the notorious Hollywood showgirl Louise Brooks to Germany, to star in one of the greatest of Weimar-Era films. Brooks’ Lulu is the equivalent of catching lightning in a bottle, a revelatory performance in a play adaptation that upends Victorian conventions: female sexuality is for once not demonized for ‘loosing evils on…
Repo Man 4K ULTRA HD + Blu-ray Criterion 1984 / 91 min Starring Emilio Estevez, Harry Dean Stanton, Tracy Walter Written by Alex Cox Photographed by Robbie Muller Directed by Alex Cox Repo Man is the work of a bartender with a metaphysical bent, conjuring up strange brews and even stranger stories. Alex Cox is…
Keeping relations good with the U.S. and NATO may have doomed Helmut Käutner’s grim tale of trouble on an American air base in West Germany. The story is a sordid swirl of romantic, political and criminal complications — all of them down & dirty. A tiny burg that serves as a brothel for U.S. airmen…
It’s the WW2 spy thriller that everyone once assumed Orson Welles directed without credit. Director Norman Foster does good things with Eric Ambler’s tale of an American cornered by Nazi killers; Joseph Cotten co-wrote as well as starred and Dolores Del Río and Orson provide fine supporting performances. Welles’ problems at RKO surely contributed to…
How can a silent film seem such a modern conception? Kino reissues the 2014 restoration of Robert Weine’s horror landmark in 4K Ultra HD, with a choice of music soundtracks. The sleepwalking Cesare’s hypnotic abduction of Lil Dagover is still a grabber, and the nightmarish images don’t diminish in impact. It’s an incredible kickoff to…
Two of legendary Val Lewton’s greatest achievements make it to 4K Ultra HD. In Jacques Tourneur’s film the Gothic romance goes Voodoo on a West Indies plantation, with a side tragedy of slave misery. Scandal can’t hide, especially when the cheating wife falls into a catatonic ‘zombie’ state. It’s guilt, duty, and ‘shame and sorrow…
Halloween ’24 is looking good, as we chalk another genre landmark onto the list of excellent special edition discs. Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava’s thriller is the initial foray into Italo horror, a meeting of Gothic notions and modern medical chills. Gianna Maria Canale is the ravishing Duchess whose beauty is preserved through sordid science;…
It’s a dive into an intoxicating, anarchic slice of the 20th-century, the brief era that was Weimar Germany. The society still reels from crushing defeat and dark political forces are gearing up for a malign future. Berlin’s nightlife churns with experimental art, debauched revelry and untempered vice. Henk Handloegten, Tom Tykwer and Achim von Borries’…
Sure, it’s a TV landmark. To liberals it is a dream vision of how responsible government, run by practical idealists, ought to work. The show’s seven years of rational ups and downs were aired mostly during the Bush administration, and still managed to hold out hope for America. It’s a crowning achievement for creator Aaron…
The Ladykillers 4K ULTRA HD + Blu-ray Kino Lorber 1955 / 91 min / 1.37:1 & 1.66:1 Starring Alec Guinness, Katie Johnson, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers Written by Alexander Mackendrick, William Rose Photographed by Otto Heller Directed by Alexander Mackendrick British comedy has always depended on an understated quality, and nothing was as understated as…
The Warner Archive’s latest MGM Technicolor bon-bon is this strained musical bio — Mickey Rooney as Lorenz Hart? — that nevertheless can boast an impressive revue lineup of performances: Judy Garland, Betty Garrett, Lena Horne, Mickey Rooney, Mel Tormé et al. The showstopper is one of Gene Kelly’s earliest ‘music ballet’ extravaganzas — he dances…
Corporate culture had been around for years when the ‘Office Hell’ genre arrived, and this sleek fable from cubicle-land is both one of the best and one of the least seen. The much abused office temps Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow and Alanna Ubach don’t have the luxury of cubicles, or even desks of…
No sooner do we dig up an old review for this horror masterpiece, than StudioCanal remasters it with a 4K scan and Kino adds some quality extras — just in time to start off the CineSavant Halloween season. College professor Peter Wyngarde refuses to believe that his missus Janet Blair has secured his high academic…
Jackie Chan’s legendary ‘Project A’ pictures reach 4K in a boxed set as lavish as home video can get. Chan’s pals Sammo Hung and Biao Yuen, and the amazing Chan Stunt Team assemble two of the most frenetic, athletic & death-defying comic action thrillers ever; the first is a Marines-vs-pirates epic and the second a…
The Lost Picture Show Blu-ray Vinegar Syndrome 1966-1974 / 843 min / 1.37:1 & 1.85:1 Starring Robert Dix, Rene Bond, Ray Molina Written by Walter M. Berger, Oliver Drake Photographed by Bruce G. Sparks, Glen Tracy Directed by Walter Burns, Joe Sarno, Al Zugsmith A grungy mix of sex, violence, and mushroom clouds, Vinegar Syndrome‘s…
“Space Flight: A Fantastic Story.” As ’50s kids we assumed that Soviet claims of ‘firsts’ in space science were a pack of lies. But this once- incredibly obscure 1936 silent feature dramatizes the space travel theories of a visionary Russian scientist who first published in the 1880s. The year is 1946 when the space ship…
Patricio Guzmán’s 3-part ‘you are there’ documentary of the beleaguered presidency of Chile’s Salvador Allende goes into great detail to show how a democratically-elected government can be destroyed from within. Guzmán’s cameras witness terrible events leading to the military attack on the presidential palace on September 11, 1973. It’s an amazing achievement — the film…
It’s still the best gangster film of the post- Godfather era. Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren are a striking couple at the top of London’s crime scene; Hoskins’ Cockney fireball Harold Shand is about to transform his crooked lifestyle with Mafia money and a land development scheme. Becoming the Posh Prince of the City has…
Kino’s 21st noir series entry gives us two winners and a not-bad contender. Fritz Lang’s Cloak and Dagger with Gary Cooper and Lilli Palmer is a grim spy chase to keep atom secrets out of enemy hands; the weird Shack Out on 101 with Terry Moore, Lee Marvin and Frank Lovejoy sees a Malibu diner…