CineSavant

Blu-ray Man with the Gun Set loose from his home studio of RKO, the unpredictable Robert Mitchum became the bad boy of ’50s Hollywood. Among other cute tricks, he turned up at Cannes in racy photos with a topless starlet. To sample the naughtiness, just Google ‘Robert Mitchum Cannes topless images.’ But our favorite delinquent was also honing a terrific...

Blu-ray Turkey Shoot Who cannot appreciate a movie that carries the alternate title Blood Camp Thatcher? That alone made me want to see this 1,001st revisit of Richard Connell’s old “The Most Dangerous Game” story. That and the personality of Brian Trenchard-Smith, a maker of mostly action-exploitation movies who gives such erudite, compelling mini-lectures at Trailers from Hell....

Blu-ray Fat City This rewarding show is a fine opportunity to catch up on two great talents, John Huston and Stacy Keach. Many of Keach’s 1970s movies were box office no-shows, yet are highly recommended just the same. Three I’ve reviewed in good presentations are End of the Road, The Traveling Executioner and The Squeeze. Everyone’s seen director...

DVD (Season 1) Deutschland 83 This is something extraordinary, an exciting TV serial about the misadventures of an East German spy during a high point of the  Cold War, Ronald Reagan’s buildup of nuclear missiles in West Germany. The first German-language TV series to air on a U.S. network (The Sundance Channel), this UfA Fiction- produced stunner brings the era...

Blu-ray + DVD Eaten Alive Tobe Hooper is an odd duck among the horror directors that rose in the 1970s. First Wes Craven, then Hooper and then Carpenter made gruesome subject matter into box office bait too popular for the industry to ignore. Hooper’s 16mm regional film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre still holds up. It’s original, it’s scary and...

Blu-ray ‘Breaker’ Morant Bruce Beresford’s ‘Breaker’ Morant is one of the stronger entries in the late ’70s — early ’80s upsurge of quality movies from Australia and New Zealand. Two earlier DVD releases tried to do it justice, and Criterion finally comes through with a definitive disc presentation. In Apocalypse Now, Captain Willard muses about Vietnam: “Indicting men...

Blu-ray The Black Stallion Francis Coppola divided audiences with his war epic Apocalypse Now, but in the same year his name also adorned a show much more universally loved, Carroll Ballard’s The Black Stallion. Hollywood has been making movies about ‘special’ horses ever since film could spool through a camera. Every generation got its show about ‘a wild stallion...

Blu-ray The Reivers What? This movie was directed by that guy who smashed a bottle in that woman’s face in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye? A totally pleasant yet wholly unappreciated piece of down-home Americana, Mark Rydell’s The Reivers takes a racially accommodating look at testy subject matter and comes up with a winning combination. I don’t hear...

Blu-ray The Wonderful Country This gem is as individual a western as any made in the 1950s, and a favorite even of critics that didn’t know how to tell readers that something different was being offered. It was a major find for film students of the early 1970s. Like Anthony Mann’s Man of the West, it’s another adult western...

Blu-ray Kings of the Sun Who needs epics about Ancient Rome, Egypt, or Greek mythology when we have a thousand years of exotic Central and South American civilizations to exploit? Well, it's only been done a handful of times. This cinematic concatenation of nifty architecture, fruity multicolored headgear and athletic oiled warriors is, well, nifty, fruity and athletic!

Blu-ray The Bear Animal movies aren't just for kids anymore, but nobody made one better than this French production, which stars a pair of talented Ursine thespians doing their thing amid more beautiful mountain scenery than seems decent. It's guaranteed perfect 'watch something with the kid' material, and more than intelligent enough for consenting adult fans of the great...

Blu-ray The Little House (Chiisai ouchi) Forget English soap operas about upstairs and downstairs upheavals, Yoji Yamada's chronicle of a life in the little Tokyo house with the little red roof is an emotional grabber. It's the war years of patriotic acquiescence and home-front selfishness -- and a secret, forbidden romance.

Region 2 PAL (Germany) DVD Alraune (1952) Note — this German-manufactured disc has no English track or subtitles. Let’s go back to roughly 1911. German author Hanns Heinz Ewers was a genuine radical, a proto-national socialist. He was also adventurous. During WW1 he reportedly traveled to Mexico as a spy, to encourage Pancho Villa to attack the United States. Ewers’ horror writings...

DVD-R The Robin Hood of El Dorado Viewers expecting to see a lighthearted  'Cisco Kid' swashbuckler got a surprise with William Wellman's movie: it's a tragedy about a genuine historical California bandit who may have been an outlaw terrorist, avenging murderous discrimination against Mexican-Americans in the Gold Rush days. Hangings, rape and massacres -- not your average popcorn matinee fare for 1936.

Blu-ray Daniel How does one make a movie about a hot-button political topic that's divided the nation for sixty years?  And if the facts of the case aren't fully known, how can one be sure that some news revelation won't reach back and make your well-meaning  film play like a stack of lies? E. L. Doctorow and Sidney Lumet...

Blu-ray Murder, My Sweet Many films noir seem to come from the same stylistic universe, in terms of themes and visuals. But a few of the earliest classics set forth templates that evoke unmistakable images — the laconic detective, the sultry women in his path, the assortment of eccentrics and grotesques that lurk in a nighttime, urban setting. Edward...

Blu-ray I, Madman We've all wished we could change our appearance to attract some desired object of our affections. Demented Malcolm Brand takes the notion seriously. Since his face doesn't charm lovely Virginia, he'll make himself a new one -- stealing facial features from Virginia's favorite friends. With a straight razor.

Blu-ray Innerspace Warner Home Video shows some class with this Blu-ray revisit of a genuine 1980s audience-pleaser, the sci-fi comedy Innerspace. It’s one of the best achievements from the cinematic toy box of Joe Dante, the Roger Corman acolyte who graduated to direct some of the most entertaining fantasy pictures of the last thirty years. Savant’s been...

Blu-ray War-Gods of the Deep In the history of soggy underwater adventures, none have been been soggier than this A.I.P. Panavision curiosity from England. Four out of five insomniacs agree: it has the most awkwardly mis-matched cast of players in fantasy film history... starting with a chicken.

3-D Blu-ray, 2-D Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD Mad Max Fury Road We want to take a moment and welcome the DVD Savant himself, Glenn Erickson, to our guest blog. Glenn's critical and technical insights make him unique in the vast sea of movie reviewers and we couldn't be happier that he's sharing the wealth here at TFH. Enjoy!