CineSavant

Blu-ray The Spiral Staircase There's a storm outside, the cook has drunk herself to sleep, the other servants are gone, the old lady is an invalid -- and the helpless mute maid is trapped indoors with a murderous maniac. No, it's not a Reality Show about the White House, but Robert Siodmak's superior 'old house whodunnit' that is equal...

Blu-ray 12 Monkeys Terry Gilliam's second big-star 'retrench' movie benefits from his fertile imagination, and his handling of an overly complicated sci-fi script. Did happy audiences respond to the film's second-hand time travel complexities, or did they just like seeing Brad Pitt in a new mode, playing a weird motormouthed eccentric?

Blu-ray Night of the Demon A top horror title gets the Powerhouse Indicator treatment just in time for Halloween -- it's not a domestic release but it plays in our Region A players. You can shuffle the alternate versions like a deck of cards: one basic movie, but six separate encodings: by length, title sequence and aspect ratio. Plus fascinating...

Blu-ray Dracula A.D. 1972 Dracula and Van Helsing seem more than a little confused, fighting the good fight of virtue against evil in a modern setting dominated by painful Mod fashions and flaky pop rock 'n' roll. Hammer's desperation bid to make itself 'relevant' at least gives us Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, who keep the show on the...

The Night Stalker/The Night Strangler In January of 1972 ABC broadcast the story of a middle-aged newsman hot on the trail of a vampire seemingly escaped from a 50’s horror comic. The man and the monster had one thing in common – by the 70’s they were both anachronisms, adrift in an era of hot pants and roller disco. Carl...

Blu-ray Shampoo Beverly Hills 1968 -- Sunset Blvd., The Strip, The Bistro, the haze in the Hollywood Hills -- where a lowly hairdresser-stud is locked in a crazy lifestyle free-fall while having the time of his life with four beautiful women. Warren Beatty puts a facet of his public personality on display as a world-class ladies' man...

Blu-ray Les Parents Terribles Jean Cocteau's film work wasn't limited to fairy tales and art-house fantasies; this adaptation of his hit play shows us fine theater at its best. A family is a tangle of not-quite-normal relationships that reach an impasse when the emotionally spoiled son seeks to marry -- a woman his father already knows.

Blu-ray Invasion of the Body Snatchers A super-classic receives a super 'Olive Signature' Blu-ray release. CineSavant clears up some online rumors complaining that the disc producers didn't do a full restoration. The original release Superscope version of Don Siegel's soul-shaking chiller has been handsomely remastered -- and with the extras we've awaited for 12 years.

Blu-ray The Swarm It's time to celebrate the Irwin Allen disaster epics for what they are -- huge, indigestible spectacles that first seem funny and then congeal into a cinematic badness that words cannot describe. This sprawling ordeal tortures good actors and shatters every limit of audience patience.  I alone have survived to tell thee. Is a fair review...

Blu-ray The Official Story Political terror hits home, as a Buenos Aires teacher and housewife discovers that her family life is not only a lie, it's a lie grounded in government treachery and murder. Forget conspiracy foolishness, for Luis Puenzo's Oscar-winning tale is based on solid, documented truth, with an American connection. This is one of the first of...

Blu-ray Trilogy of Terror The 70s brought forth some well-remembered TV horror movies, that shocked impressionable kids back in the days of Watergate and Sonny & Cher. Karen Black top lines Dan Curtis's trio of malevolent tales, all from original stories by Richard Matheson.

Blu-ray The Last Hurrah In the last decade of his career, John Ford produced and directed this ode to crony politics, with Spencer Tracy as an old-fashioned mayor who uses underhanded ploys to do right by his constituents. Tracy is backed by a veritable army of supporting actors, neatly orchestrated in Frank Nugent's screenplay. We're talking scores of John...

Horrors of Malformed Men The Toei Company made their mark in the 50s with a series of atmospheric horror films like Kinnosuke Fukada‘s Ghost Cat of Karakuri Tenjo and Tai Katô‘s The Ghost Story of Oiwa’s Spirit – esoteric shockers rooted in folklore and Kabuki theater that were rarely seen beyond Japanese cinemas. American audiences wouldn’t become familiar with...

Blu-ray Scenes from a Marriage The marital discord in this show is a different animal than those Italian romps with Loren and Mastroianni -- Ingmar Bergman's miniseries examination of a breakup between two upstanding, thoughtful parents is a demanding, grueling exercise in self-evaluation. Try as one might, we can't help but compare the fireworks between Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson...

Blu-ray Joseph W. Sarno Retrospect Series 4 Let the debate about the incompatibility of film art and screen eroticism commence: Joe Sarno is back!  His 1964 Sin in the Suburbs is still a slice of genuine Americana, considered total smut when first released but barely notable now except for the sordid believability of its subject matter. Is Sarno the Cassavetes of his...

Blu-ray The Naked Prey An excellent example of a thriller that improves with age, Cornel Wilde's survival tale is a lean 'n' mean exercise in first-person terror. Sent barefoot and naked on a hopeless 'run of the arrow,' our hero earns our admiration from his first desperate steps. Actor Wilde may never have directed anything else quite as good,...

Blu-ray The Bravados Gregory Peck slips into vengeance mode full-tilt, riding down a quartet of blackhearted knaves: rapist Stephen Boyd, ambusher Albert Salmi, sneaky Lee Van Cleef and inscrutable Henry Silva. The action direction and scenery in this late 'fifties Big Sky western are excellent; Joan Collins and Kathleen Gallant put in good performances as well.

Blu-ray Exorcist II: The Heretic One of the most jeered-at, overcooked sequels of all time thoroughly deserves its reputation as a train wreck of a movie. In hindsight we see a heap of resources and cinematic fireworks thrown at a project with little chance of survival. 'There must be a sequel' spake Warner Bros., and lo Sir John of Boorman...

The Collector German-born William Wyler was a storyteller who asked the audience not to understand him too quickly. A notorious perfectionist (Bette Davis credited him with making her a “far, far better actress”), he was a masterful old-school director of enduring entertainments distinguished by thoughtfulness and, a rare trait for the times, ambiguity. At their best, Wyler’s...

Blu-ray A Raisin in the Sun Lorraine Hansberry's play has been given a masterful film adaptation, with the emotional truth of her words left intact. We're told of some superficial compromises, but they do not diminish the play's powerful clash between old and new ideas in a Southside Chicago family struggling to escape poverty. This may be Sidney Poitier's best screen...

Blu-ray Looker It's always fun to peruse the impressive career of writer-director Michael Crichton, whose brilliant, commercially savvy ideas so often hit the mark. He even invented a plausibly credible dinosaur movie. This 1981 thriller may be his least coherent show, with too many screwy ideas and a supporting cast that needed better direction. Yet it has...

Blu-ray The Cyclops He's back -- looking meaner and uglier than ever!  Bert I. Gordon's early sci-fi effort shapes up as a surprisingly entertaining monster thriller with an elemental appeal. And lots of groaning and howling, too. An all-name cast led by Lon Chaney Jr. keeps things lively. The pop-eyed monster is the ultimate bogeyman for the kiddies....

Blu-ray The Mind of Mr. Soames Amicus tries for class-act science fiction: lifelong coma sleeper Terence Stamp is revived as an 'adult baby' and must be educated in a medical psychology lab. But hey, Doctors Nigel Davenport and Robert Vaughn differ on how to raise children! The bouncing baby Cockney is soon an infantile Clockwork Orange, defying his minders and running...

Region B Blu-ray The Dragon Missile (Region B) Guest reviewer Lee Broughton offers an assessment of one of the Shaw Brothers' quirkier and more idiosyncratic historical martial arts efforts: an action-packed Meng Hua Ho wuxia flick from 1976 that concerns an irredeemable killer sent on a mission to save the life of a despicable and hated tyrant. Outstanding fight choreography, unusual weaponry and...

The Changeling The success of 70’s shockers like The Devils, The Exorcist and Alien – grindhouse films in big budget drag – opened the door to increasingly explicit studio fare – moviemakers were happy to accommodate and upped the ante in the bargain. 1980 alone saw the release of Sean Cunningham’s seminal slasher Friday the 13th, Ken Russell’s evolutionary freak out Altered...

Blu-ray The Trip to Bountiful Horton Foote strikes again, with a warm and thoughtful tale of life as it was lived in East Texas in 1950. Geraldine Page won an Oscar for her unguarded portrait of Carrie Watts, a woman who has outlived her peers and been uprooted from an ideal hometown of her youth. Her trip to recover her...