The newest addition to the stable of horror and sci-fi on Ultra HD is Dario Argento’s debut feature, the game-changer that launched the full-blown giallo thriller. Argento takes a few twists from the Hitchcock playbook but otherwise shapes his whodunnit with a new, slick style of his own. Cinematography by Vittorio Storaro and design by…

It’s French!  It’s hot!  Jacques Deray’s most unusual film is an intimate, minimalist murder story that digs deep into the affairs of four very superficial people. Among the wealthy set are four pleasure seekers with a laissez faire take on relationships, that think they’re above basic drives — jealousy, possessiveness, resentment. The movie also makes…

Years in the making!  The glory of MGM on parade!  Enough studio resources to film twenty pictures were expended on this paean to showman Florenz Ziegfeld. It’s really Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s Technicolor valentine to itself, showing off the studio’s enormous stable of musical talent, along with various of its comic performers. Arthur Freed and Louis…

The Wade Williams Collection yields more ’50s sci-fi, Monogram Pictures’ ambitious space travel movie filmed in glorious green-challenged Cinecolor. Cameron Mitchell and Arthur Franz sign up for a semi-suicidal space expedition, but instead of murderous Bat-Rat-Spider-Crabs, waiting for them on Mars is the glamorous, mini-skirted Marguerite Chapman. It’s core sci-fi fun from early in the…

George Seaton’s literal feel-good comedy is the flipside of the pandemic film Contagion: a powerful virus ‘cures’ grumpiness and bad vibes, encouraging a kind of Urban Utopia. The picture has nothing more to say than ‘have a nice day,’ yet these days it’s difficult to argue with any positive sentiment. George Peppard and Mary Tyler Moore…

Gotta love that title!  Producer Walter Mirisch’s small-scale Monogram noir was once assumed lost, but now it’s making its home video debut on Blu-ray. A luckless young entertainer finds himself neck deep in murder trouble, when an unbreakable string of circumstantial evidence points directly at him. As the date of his execution nears, the only…

Hollywood acknowledges the existence of America’s proto- C.I.A. intelligence agency with this espionage tale of Yanks working with the resistance in occupied France. It’s basic cloak ‘n’ dagger action, with intrepid Alan Ladd and the daring Geraldine Fitzgerald risking life and limb to plant plastic explosive bombs. The details are fairly interesting: Ladd outwits the…

The EuroCrypt of Christopher Lee Blu ray – Region Free Severin Films 1962-72 Starring Christopher Lee, Thorley Walters, Karin Dor Cinematography by Ernst W. Kalinke, Angelo Baistrocchi Directed by Terence Fisher, Harald Reinl While Hammer Studios depended on bosoms and blood to rejuvenate a listless horror industry, their new contract player had some high octane…

Hollywood’s last big all-star war epic in Black & White?  Otto Preminger took a happy film company to Hawaii for this enormous saga about the Naval push in the Pacific Theater of WW2, with none other than John Wayne as the competent commander leading the charge. Soap-opera scenes aside, it’s a thrilling epic directed with…

High-quality chopsocky mayhem!  Guest reviewer Lee Broughton returns with an assessment of Jimmy Wang Yu’s action-packed martial arts flick. The combat comes thick and fast when a team of deadly mercenaries are employed to wipe out the honourable pupils of the Zhengde School. Writer-director Jimmy Wang Yu is placed front and centre in most of…

It’s smooth noir sailing with this polished noir from Universal-International and its choice cast of pros — Edmond O’Brien, Ella Raines and William Bendix, plus Vincent Price doing an excellent turn as a Machiavellian businessman, a ‘frame’ expert with a side specialty in double-dealing. Director Michael Gordon earns an early credit at Universal-International with a…

Sam Fuller turns from combat in Korea to cat ‘n mouse games in New York City, with America’s stand-up defenders being exactly one low-life pickpocket and one saucy woman of the sidewalks. Richard Widmark is a charming chiseler with a wicked grin, Jean Peters is the hot number who takes a knockdown as a love…

It’s a new deluxe Limited Edition of Sam Peckinpah’s mangled masterpiece, the third fancy boxed set in as many years. Arrow’s presentation certainly has the edge in graphic elegance. They’ve also strived to include as many earlier extras as possible, plus new analytical-critical takes on the picture, and an excellent (and wickedly funny) visual essay…

Viavision’s second deluxe Film Noir boxed finds real variety in the film style, with entries that range from low-budget efforts to a picture filmed on location in Mexico. Richard Conte solves a notorious movie studio murder in Hollywood Story, Gig Young is a cop who considers going crooked in City that Never Sleeps, Glenn Ford…

Masaki Kobayashi’s six-part adaptation of the book by Jumpei Gomikawa may be the most ambitious, most truthful film about the big-picture reality of war. Idealist Tatsuya Nakadai thinks he can avoid complicity in human evil by volunteering as a civilian to manage a work camp in occupied Manchuria, only to find that he’s expected to…

Favorite director Don Siegel is in fine form in this 1967 TV movie, a keeper with qualities not seen in Hollywood’s mega-westerns of the day. Henry Fonda’s ragged drifter is hunted by a gang of railroad deputies, and chief deputy Michael Parks doesn’t intercede because he can’t control his own men. A great screenplay, Siegel’s…

Alias Nick Beal Blu ray Kino Lorber 1949 / 1.33:1 / 93 Min. Starring Ray Milland, Audrey Totter Cinematography by Lionel Lindon Directed by John Farrow The most sinister light comedian in Hollywood, Ray Milland was never more charming than when he was fixing to cut your throat. In John Farrow’s Alias Nick Beal, the…

This unheralded story of the French retreat in 1954 Vietnam is one of the best films ever about guerilla combat. The professional French soldiers do what they can to avoid capture, but the new Lieutenant won’t abandon their wounded. The Alsatian top sergeant fought with the Germans ten years before, yet is the best and…

It’s a big international action epic, filmed in Mexico with a French director. Anthony Quinn is an 18th-century bandit who liberates a Mexican hamlet from marauding Yaqui Indians and a villainous Charles Bronson. Quinn is good, and all the necessary elements are present: fights, handsome scenery and a big battle… but it’s fairly tepid stuff,…

Move over, Angry Young Men: Alfie Elkins leverages class resentment and killer good looks to become a ladies’ man extraordinaire… in his own eyes. Michael Caine was born to play Bill Naughton’s smooth-talking, responsibility-dodging cad’s cad. Alfie mistreats a glorious lineup of actresses — Julia Foster, Jane Asher, Vivien Merchant — and Shelley Winters is…

The Little Rascals Volume 1 Blu ray – The ClassicFlix Restorations ClassicFlix 1929-30 / 1.37:1 / 3 Hr. 43 Min. Starring Allen Hoskins, Jackie Cooper, Mary Ann Jackson Cinematography by Art Lloyd, F. E. Hershey Directed by Robert F. McGowan, Anthony Mack, James W. Horne An epic celebration of the American melting pot, E. L….

Marriage, social pressure, professional disappointment — and if you want to be really unhappy, add alcohol to that mix. Fredric March and Sylvia Sidney are convincing sophisticates but also vulnerable people negotiating fragile lives. What can be done when one’s mate is dissolving in booze and drawn to the arms of another?  Dorothy Arzner’s best…

It happens every time: we want to cruelly betray somebody, but LOVE keeps getting in the way. When evil Dan Duryea sics con-man louse John Payne on the saintly war widow Joan Caulfield, three other women come tagging along as well, ’cause Payne is just too attractive. The swindle in George Sherman’s unsure noir gets…

Is this a horror classic?  I’d certainly say yes, just for the shrewd and sympathetic performance of Peter Lorre as an unlucky immigrant whose disfigurement in a fire turns him to life of crime and vengeance. An impossibly young Evelyn Keyes shines as the sweet love interest but the performances and Robert Florey’s good direction…

It’s still one of the most popular movies ever, and fans are proving that by shelling out for an umpteenth home video release, this time on the 4K Ultra HD format. Everybody knows exactly what to expect from Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach, but what about the transfer quality and encoding —…

Once an upstart and now a company to contend with, Britain’s Indicator continues their series of Hammer Studio releases with Hammer Volume Six: Night Shadows, a purely generic subtitle fit for any horror film, Hammer or otherwise. What isn’t generic is Indicator’s winning formula—top notch image quality and boatloads of extra materials including documentaries, commentaries,…