CineSavant

Blu-ray Cease Fire! — 3-D Here's an Army booster production that got way out of hand: it's a semi-docu using real soldiers, and filmed in Korea near the real combat zones – and filmed in full-scale 3-D. The soldiers, the equipment, everything is real -- even the ammunition used is live, not blanks.

Blu-ray Le Samouraï Jean-Pierre Melville's tale of an emotionless killer is distilled to a narrative minimum. Alain Delon stars as Jef Costello, an imperturbable, ultra- slick hit man who follows a strict personal code. When a contract goes bad, he's caught between irreconcilable compulsions. Following this Zen-like assassin through the mean streets of Paris never seems to get...

Region B Blu-ray Willard and Ben — Region B Guest Reviewer Lee Broughton is back, with a rodent roundup of horror, or more accurately, psychological suspense interrupted by a few salacious slayings. What would Mickey say? The brief synopses of Daniel Mann's Willard and Phil Karlson's Ben that appeared in the horror movie books and magazines that kids in the UK loved to pore...

Blu-ray Desert Hearts By 1985 Hollywood had still only dabbled in movies about the 'shame that cannot speak its name,' and in every case the verdict for the transgressors was regret and misery, if not death. Donna Deitch's brilliant drama achieves exactly what she wanted, to do make a movie about a lesbian relationship that doesn't end in...

Blu-ray He Walked by Night Do you think older crime thrillers weren't violent enough? This shocker from 1948 shook up America with its true story of a vicious killer who has a murderous solution to every problem, and uses special talents to evade police detection. Richard Basehart made his acting breakthrough as Roy Martin, a barely disguised version of the...

Blu-ray Battle Cry Move over James Jones -- Leon Uris clobbers the big screen with a sprawling adaptation of his WW2 combat novel, loaded down with roles for promising young actors. This is the one where twice as much time is spent on love affairs than fighting. War may be hell, but if Mona Freeman, Nancy Olson, Dorothy...

Blu-ray Cannon for Cordoba A middling entry in the genre of blow-it-up big action spectacles, Paul Wendkos' Spain-filmed western gives us all the excitement promised by the poster, but with some cardboard characters and lumpy storytelling. George Peppard is on the job, however, and once again proves he can carry a big picture, flaws and all.

Blu-ray The Pirates of Blood River Can a pirate be a substitute monster? Hammer Films gives yet another genre a spin with this box-office winner that launched a sideline in costume adventures. The Hammer crew makes it work: Christopher Lee, Marla Landi, Marie Devereaux, Michael Ripper, Oliver Reed and Andrew Keir, plus yank assistance from Kerwin Mathews and Glenn Corbett.

Blu-ray I’ll Be Seeing You This unusually sensitive, overlooked WW2 romance skips the morale-boosting baloney of the day. Two people meet on a train, each with a personal shame they dare not speak of. Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten are excellent under William Dieterle's direction, and Shirley Temple doesn't do half the damage you'd think she might.

Blu-ray The Green Slime Look out! Gamma Gamma Hey! It's the attack of screaming, arm-waving green goober monsters from a rogue planetoid, here to bring joy to the hearts of bad-movie fans everywhere. Just make sure your partner is agreeably inclined before you make it a date movie -- this show has ended many a good relationship, even before...

Blu-ray Hammer Vol. 1 – Fear Warning! Starting out in 1939 as the little studio that could, Hammer would finally make their reputation in the late fifties reimagining Universal’s black and white horrors as eye-popping Technicolor gothics - their pictorial beauty, thanks to cameramen like Jack Asher and Arthur Ibbetson, was fundamental to the studio’s legacy. So it’s been more than a...

Blu-ray The Vampire’s Ghost Is it a classic? Well, not exactly, but it's also not a typical disappointing '40s Z-picture. Screenwriter Leigh Brackett pens a nice twist on the Dracula motif, and actor John Abbott is genuinely impressive as what is surely the most low-key vampire on the books. Plus a sexy dance from Adele Mara!

Blu-ray S.O.S. Tidal Wave Republic raids an early RKO talkie for a fantastic special effects sequence, and you won't believe how it's repurposed -- in a story about a TV personality (in 1939!) taking on a corrupt political mob. New York crumbles and is then washed away -- sort of. It's yet another resurfacing of a title that not...

How Much Shock Can You Stand? Ghosts are famous for their flexibility, spiraling through keyholes and up from the floorboards in search of their next mark. But movies about ghosts can be flexible too. Three classics of the genre, The Uninvited, House on Haunted Hill and The Innocents, demonstrate that there’s more than one way haunt a house. These films never...

Hypnotic Chill! Monster Thrill! This short article is in the spirit of the crowded ad-mat advertising blurbs that, once upon a time, would show up in the newspaper for horror- related features. The particular composite just below is a fantasy, but since all films back then were for General Audiences, a stack like it is entirely credible. Here, it’s...

Blu-ray Dawson City: Frozen Time This Blu is a fascinating hybrid of experimental film and historical documentary by Bill Morrison of Decasia fame. Lost film history and the vanished era of the Dawson Gold Rush blend into one story -- all touched off by the discovery of tons of rare silent film, buried in the cold ground of the Canadian...

Blu-ray Captain from Castile One of the best Hollywood historical epics takes Technicolor to Mexico for a Production Code version of La conquista: the Inquisition is still bad, but the Church is exonerated. Likewise with the invasion -- Cesar Romero embodies a marvelous Hernán Cortés, substantially less murderous than the one we now know from accurate history books. Tyrone...

Blu-ray + DVD In this Corner of the World Away from Hollywood's stifling commercial limits, Fumiyo Kouno's manga about a young bride in wartime Japan has no illusions regarding the human price of war. Young Suzu takes in a new family, endures the hardships of a militarized country and wartime privations, but nobody is ready for what's coming. Sunao Katabuchi's historical drama makes stunning...

Blu-ray Blood Feast 1963’s Blood Feast, the infamous gorefest from director Herschell Gordon Lewis, is a pox on our culture; grossly stupid, comically inept and depressingly nihilistic. A perfect film for 2017. Lewis’s movie was released the same year that Patsy Cline and John Kennedy died, George Wallace turned away black students from an Alabama college and Martin...

Blu-ray The Killer is Loose Psycho killers long ago lost their novelty, but in 1956 Budd Boetticher and Wendell Corey gave us Leon 'Foggy' Poole, a screen original with limitless appeal. Imagine a time when 'normalcy' was so taken for granted that any weird behavior was enough to give us the chills? Foggy carries this crime potboiler with a refreshing...

Blu-ray Play Dirty In a war film, what's the difference between nasty exploitation and just plain honest reportage? André De Toth made tough-minded action films with the best of them, and this nail-biting commando mission with Michael Caine and Nigel Davenport is simply superb, one of those great action pictures that's not widely screened. It's not 'feel good'...

Blu-ray City of Industry Harvey Keitel takes center stage as a double-crossed crook goes for blood after a major jewel heist turns sour -- and bloody. Timothy Hutton and Stephen Dorff are in on the split for one late- '90s crime caper that's not a stylistic hijack of Quentin Tarantino. Directed by John Irvin.

DVD Nest of Vipers & Tails, You Lose… Guest Reviewer Lee Broughton is back, with another Italo Western double bill DVD review. Wild East’s ongoing Spaghetti Western Collection continues to grow and this double bill release is particularly welcome since it features two obscure and wholly idiosyncratic genre entries from 1969. Italian Western directors had found it relatively easy to appropriate key plot...

Blu-ray Hell on Frisco Bay I tell you it's rough out there on Frisco Bay, especially when you say the word 'Frisco' within earshot of a proud San Francisco native. This Alan Ladd racketeering tale could have been written twenty years earlier, but it has Warner Color and the early, extra-wide iteration of the new movie attraction CinemaScope.

Blu-ray Othello Shakespeare didn’t invent Orson Welles but he did define him; it can be said that if any one director took arms against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it was the man behind Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight. The 1952 production of Othello is exhibit A. Filmed over a turbulent three year...

DVD-R Porky Pig 101 A welcome to new CineSavant guest reviewer "B", whose encyclopedic knowledge has been a boon to the page since it began. This comprehensive, chronological collection of the ninety-nine black-and-white shorts featuring Warner Bros.' first big cartoon star is a rich, diverse, fascinating look at the evolution and growth of a great animation studio. Some of...