Macabre fantasy! Diving into these 100 year-old silent films is like being back in film school again, excited by ‘new’ film ideas. Henrik Galeen was a prime exponent of German Expressionism, and these Uber-classics show the style at its refined best. The Student of Prague is one of the top films ever about selling one’s…
Beware of hidden panels above your bed! The best of the silent ‘old dark house’ thrillers comes to 4K in a new remaster with a beautiful new music score. Laura La Plante is inheriting a vast fortune, but a pop-eyed monster with a clawed hand is eliminating the other relatives come to hear a reading…
Gaumont’s restoration brings back a trio of French-language thrillers by the under-appreciated actor-director Robert Hossein. Two are Euro-noir takes on steamy pulp fiction crime stories costarring the dreamy Marina Vlady; the third is a fatalistic political western made years before the Italians got into the act. Each has a hard edge and at least one…
This remake of a gangster classic barely 15 years old adds CinemaScope, Warnercolor and a selection of method-y actors — and it copies some scenes shot-for-shot. Jack Palance is mostly scary as the ‘new’ Roy Earle, and Shelley Winters less vulnerable as his new love. Also good crime-time fun are Lon Chaney Jr., Earl Holliman,…
Nominated for 9 Academy Awards, Paramount’s blockbuster adaptation of the ‘hot’ Ernest Hemingway novel was given a grand Road Show release, then cut by over half an hour for general audiences. Poor studio curatorship left the biggest picture of its day in a restoration limbo. This new disc works with the existing UCLA Archive restoration. A…
Science fiction goes psychedelic, with an audiovisual light show that far outstrips 1960s efforts with oil smears and surreal imagery. Maverick director Ken Russell was the man for the job, interpreting a powerhouse script by Paddy Chayefsky through a well-chosen young cast: William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban, Charles Haid. We think it works like…
Is this the most violent crime film of the pre-Code era? It takes an extreme Law ‘n’ Order position, one that downplays the need for Civil Rights while glamorizing brute vigilantism. Police chief Walter Huston takes the law into his own hands, while his detective brother Wallace Ford screws things up by getting all warm…
Whoa — this Halloween, horror fans are up to their severed necks in fancy restorations of Hammer’s first Gothic horror film, the world wide smash that singlehandedly revived the genre and made stars of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. This Baron Frankenstein lies, kills and profanes the dead in his quest for god-like power; he’s…
Hammer special editions are the craze in 2025, and another fine disc label gets in on the action with a vintage title directed by Terence Fisher, with the sumptuous Hammer Technicolor look provided by cameraman Jack Asher. Anton Diffring murders to maintain an indefinite, if shaky, state of immortality; Hazel Court is the beauty who…
Peter Hyams both wrote and directed this lavish ‘space hardware’ movie, set in an off-world mining colony of the future. The show looks good, but what saves it is the committed performance of star Sean Connery, who remains a class act all the way. Peter Boyle and James Sikking flesh out underwritten characters, in a…
In a strange house, strange people await a new spiritual life … or will it be a new imprisonment? Orson Welles’ Cassavius may be dying, but his will holds the secret lair called Malpertuis under a strange spell. A young man is offered the job of ‘new keeper’ for what might be a strange menagerie…
A philosophical animated film about animals in peril? This thoughtfully conceived, beautifully-crafted winner for Best Animated Film gives us something new in a genre dominated by safe family fare with jokes and songs: a rumination on the life struggle in an unstable world. Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis builds a fascinating fantasy environment, in which a…
It’s part film noir, part haunted house movie and a 100% atmospheric triumph for director Bernard Vorhaus and cameraman John Alton. Eagle-Lion’s spooky tale of a spiritualist conning a widow and her daring younger sister works up a nice charge of suspense. Turhan Bey stars as the smooth soothsayer, and Lynn Bari and Cathy O’Donnell…
It was the impossible, intolerable taboo horror of its day … does it still shock as it once did, or are audiences now too jaded to appreciate its brilliance? George Franju & Eugen Schüfftan ride the divide between clinical brutality and dreamy surrealism. Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli and Edith Scob brought horror up to date…
An ‘almost’ icon and a vivid memory from the New York cinema front of the early ’80s, Zoë Tamerlis graced exploitation screens in Abel Ferrara’s minimalist ode to sisterly vigilantism. The victim of two brutal rapes in one night, a meek mute seamstress is transformed into an avenging angel — ambushing the men that would…
The independent-minded Hedy Lamarr put this ‘Americana noir’ into motion with director Edgar G. Ulmer and excellent talent on both sides of the camera; the result is a superior, fairly uncompromised tale of beauty and ambition, spun into the realm of the ‘Evil Woman’ genre. It has a telling resemblance to a similar film from…
Underdog Warners actress Ida Lupino could hold her head high, turning out pictures like this — a Bette Davis reject that proved a winner. It’s an overachieving backstage musical soaper using some of the studio’s ‘A-minus’ talent. Lupino moves heaven and earth to carve out a starring showbiz career for her younger sister Joan Leslie,…
This New Zealand pirate adventure had bad luck theatrically, but we welcomed its old-fashioned thrills when it appeared on cable TV. It now looks super on widescreen Blu-ray. A young Tommy Lee Jones is Bully Hayes, a South Seas adventurer competing with Michael O’Keefe for the hand of Jenny (sigh) Seagrove. His piratical crew fights…
This impressive import collection of ‘Archers’ pictures is just one classic after another, including three of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Technicolor masterpieces. The boxed set also carries good extras, new input from experts plus a selection of the best existing documentaries on P&P. Plus, a couple of the transfers are big improvements on older…
Wonder of wonders — Hammer’s massive boxed sets seem unreasonable until one sees the depth and breadth of the extras. Nigel Kneale’s original ‘organic invasion’ scare show hasn’t lost its power, thanks to Richard Wordsworth’s compelling performance and the dogged intensity of Brian Donlevy. The 4K encoding is superb; they’ve added the U.S. version plus…
Akira Kurosawa’s modern crime masterpiece takes the leap to 4K. It’s a kidnapping tale in a context of social friction — the perpetrator is maddened by the gap between haves and have nots. A superb detective story balances that irony with the commitment of an ethical businessman and a police force we wish we had…
Here we take a ‘Missing on Blu’ Review break thanks to the Public Domain availability of a show we aren’t convinced was ever given a legit disc release, legit as in ‘authorized.’ England’s 1956 Michael Anderson version of George Orwell’s legendary book dropped (mostly) out of sight long ago, and this was the first time…
It’s a chronicle of defeat and doom, hopelessness and horror … yet director Kon Ichikawa turns it into an engrossing experience. Foot soldier Tamura is one of thousands of Japanese troops left behind after military defeats; surrender risks execution by partisan Philippinos, and the alternative is slow starvation in the hills. Desperation and madness take…
Crime movies have grown a lot more vicious since 1971, but few pack the hard crime impact of Mike Hodges’ gangster revenge tale. Michael Caine’s Jack Carter is a London hit man who returns to his roots in Newcastle, to sort out the sudden death of his brother. It leads to the expected trail of…
The blizzard looks real and the big stars are flashy, but Ross Hunter’s 70mm ode to supermarket best sellers still plays like a TV movie. Both airport manager Burt Lancaster and pilot Dean Martin are straying from their marriages, with Jean Seberg (sigh!) and Jacqueline Bisset (wow!). But the direction dotes on cute geriatric stowaway…
Is this the best teleplay ever written by Rod Serling? It’s almost too good, even for him. Van Heflin, Everett Sloane and Ed Begley square off at the center of a business power squeeze, in a business world adopting ruthless new ground rules. Is it all about staying competitive, or is it corporate criminality? It’s…