William Gibson’s multi-character soap about a psychiatric clinic has a severe case of Caligari Syndrome: the doctors need more counseling than do the patients. Richard Widmark leads an impressive cast (Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer, Gloria Grahame, Lillian Gish, John Kerr, Susan Strasberg, Oscar Levant, Paul Stewart) as everybody goes crazy over various manias, staff rivalries,…
Cy Endfield’s intense African survival adventure purports to teach lessons about the Territorial Imperative and the easy slide to savagery when civilization is far away. Plane-wreck survivors in a remote African desert must fight the local baboon population for food and water. Stuart Whitman, Stanley Baker and Nigel Davenport are tempted by the female castaway,…
The early pre-Code era yields two star vehicles from the dawn of Sylvia Sidney’s long career. In Confessions of a Co-Ed her college girl falls for Phillips Holmes’ thoughtless student and gets herself ‘in a family way.’ In Ladies of the Big House she and her new husband Gene Raymond are framed by a gangster…
Another reissue disc that we wish were revived in an extras-laden 4K edition. Roman Polanski’s exceedingly rewarding thriller gives us Harrison Ford at his very best as an American doctor trying to recover his wife kidnapped at the outset of their Parisian getaway. Was the appeal more for middle-agers than kids? Not funny enough? Not…
Is it a Gothic fairy tale, a fantastic romance, or a backhanded comment about wounded war veterans? Mutilated flier Robert Young and the ‘unacceptably plain’ (?) Dorothy McGuire find each other in a seaside love nest out of a Harlequin Novel, overcome their self-loathing, and experience a miracle. Why not? The only witnesses are a…
Otto Preminger’s take on the Françoise Sagan’s novel finds the right tone despite the drawback of censorship limitations and Englanders and Americans playing French characters. CinemaScope and Technicolor on Saint-Tropez locations help, but the big plus is the radiant presence of Preminger’s discovery Jean Seberg as Sagan’s amoral heroine Cécile. David Niven is the father…
One of the best-ever documentaries about the making of a movie returns in a fresh 4K restoration, with its feature film clips rendered in full widescreen resolution. New interviews and featurettes are provided by Francis Coppola, and the late Eleanor Coppola is represented with a new documentary piece and encodings of several of her short…
No, it’s not a new disc. This is also not exactly a disc review, but Warner’s reissue allows us to write about Sam Peckinpah’s film for the first time in years. We’re happy to recount the film’s twisted release history, and its path on home video. The point of course, is to encourage Warner Bros….
MGM’s in-house Blu-ray label is back with another worthy remaster: a Mirisch- supervised West German production that leads with a Gene Pitney smash hit single and gives Kirk Douglas another tough-guy attorney to play. A brutal gang rape in Germany puts four U.S. soldiers on trial; to save their lives, Kirk must demolish victim Christine…
Once restored, old movies with ‘creaky’ reputations can yield surprising qualities, especially when the filmmaker is as earnest and creative as the great King Vidor. This English production sees the director engaged by the controversy of medical ethics. The approach may be emotional, but the film makes its points well. Robert Donat, Rosalind Russell and…
Italian maestro Luchino Visconti set the ’50s high mark for epic period reconstruction and historical authenticity. Alida Valli and Farley Granger’s doomed affair plays against a backdrop of civil war in the 1865 il Risorgimento. This new restoration brings out the feel of original Technicolor prints. It includes the English-language version, with dialogue written by…
Italy’s anarchic master thief gets a Covid-era trilogy of films that hew fairly closely to stories from the original Giussani comic books: Diabolik, Diabolik: Ginko Attacks!, Diabolik: Who Am I? It’s all very serious, literal and evenly paced, but can boast terrific art direction and a couple of intriguing characterizations. We’re impressed by the faithful…
A Warners reissue puts the cream of American gangster epics within easy reach, and at a better price. Robinson, Cagney and Bogart each found stardom in crime, just before the Production Code banned the genre outright. The four-disc set tells the rags-to-riches-to-gutter tales of Cesare Rico Bandello, Tom Powers, Duke Mantee and Cody Jarrett. That…
The second Quatermass adventure sees Brian Donlevy’s pushy Professor singlehandedly quash a totalitarian takeover of England in just 36 hours — an incredible interplanetary conspiracy! The most exciting chapter of the classic series is given a massive boxed set by the ‘new’ Hammer Films, a full five discs plus the entire original BBC serial and…
We’re always interested in movies about ships, and Lewis Gilbert’s accomplished Napoleonic battle epic is back in a Region B disc with some new extras. Alec Guinness’s captain is up against mutinous sailors and Dirk Bogarde’s troublemaking executive officer, a sadist who takes his anger out on the captain’s young son. With excellent visual effects…
Modest Z-picture Sci-fi groaners are an American staple, but this English effort is just as desperate. Landing on a moon of Jupiter, Astronauts find a verdant valley just like England, and encounter an Atlantean society with nymphs that dance to Borodin. We watched it 20 times as kids, and it never made much sense; perhaps…
William Inge’s intense drama of teenage angst comes to HD with rich Technicolor hues. Elia Kazan’s film has only improved, with performances that couldn’t be bettered. For Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty’s Deanie and Bud, sexual suppression leads to emotional hysteria, all against a 1929 backdrop of prohibition and a stock market boom. Pat Hingle,…
Is he a feisty French everyman or a selfish jerk?  :Are we talking about the fictional character Antoine Doinel, or the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud? François Truffaut hit on a genuine New Wave breakthrough, combining drama with ‘interview’ material, but soon proceeded to thrillers and dramas in a standard no-nouvelle vague format. Criterion assembled DVDs of…
Resuming his career after WW2, George Stevens assumed the mantle of Hollywood’s most serious producer-director. His ‘super-western’ is a beautiful piece of filmmaking with an optimistic view of American virtues in conflict. It’s a visual delight, and a genre throwback to unrealistic fights and a hero who may as well be the god of Pioneer…
Howard Hughes’ meddling fingerprints are all over this resort-set noir thriller. Even with RKO’s dynamite stars Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell above the title, the mogul’s endless rewrites and re-shoots guaranteed that it couldn’t earn a profit. Vincent Price, Tim Holt, Charles McGraw and Raymond Burr toil in a show split between light comedy and…
When the big boss croaks, veepees maneuver to take the top slot in a furniture company. Ernest Lehman’s first big screenplay was brought to the screen by Robert Wise and a cast of All Stars: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon, Shelley Winters, Paul Douglas, Louis Calhern, Dean Jagger and Nina…
Crime fighting gets personal in Fritz Lang’s progressive police vengeance saga. It’s Glenn Ford as an ex-cop against the mob, and his only assists come from a doomed bargirl, a handicapped woman, and the moll of mobster Lee Marvin. Every scene has tension or implied violence, much of it directed toward women. It was a…
Mario Bava’s big-scale fumetti adaptation hits 4K, an event of major interest in the fantasy fan-scape. John Phillip Law, Marisa Mell and Terry-Thomas are as brilliant as ever, and Ultra HD makes the picture even brighter and sharper. Ennio Morricone’s music is still a delight — the movie doubles as a psychedelic concert. Paramount or…
Let’s clear up a common misconception. Unlike The Blob, ‘The Stuff’ doesn’t eat you. You Eat It … and then it eats you! Larry Cohen takes a page from Professor Quatermass for this satirical slap at blind consumerism and unregulated commerce, in a thriller packed with ooky glob-monsters and people hollowed out like Halloween pumpkins….
And now for something completely different — an art-film creation that’s a surreal delight. Jean-François Laguionie’s allegorical animated fable extends what conventional, ‘organic’ animation could do in 1985. The still images alone fire the imagination. It’s an art-house short subject writ large, that we’re grateful to have seen, especially so handsomely remastered in 4K Ultra…
Reissued for the delight of ’80s horror fans is Tibor Takács’ and Randall William Cook’s ode to bibliophile terror, subcategory facial mutilation. David Chakin’s screenplay allows a demented anti-hero from a scary book to invade our reality: Malcolm Brand gives himself a surgical mix-match appearance by straight-razoring features from the faces of his victims. The…