By Todd Garbarini
Paramount Home Video has released a set of five horror films in 4K UHD format. Here is a breakdown of the films included in the set.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
I
was in the minority of those left unimpressed by Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s
Baby (1968), based upon the 1967 novel of the same name by Ira Levin. I
never saw what the fuss was about and could not find it even remotely scary
when I originally saw it in the 1980s on VHS. I rewatched the film when the
Criterion Collection released it on the now-out-of-print Blu-ray in October
2012 (if you have that version, hold on to it) and I realized that I had an
incorrect reading of it. I believe that the terror that oozes from the screen is
directly attributed to Rosemary Woodhouse’s (Mia Farrow) new life in the
enormous Dakota Apartments (made famous by Mark David Chapman following his
murder of John Lennon in December 1980) which is surrounded by people who
initially make her feel safe and welcomed, but slowly begin to reveal their
true natures which are malevolent and evil. Her husband Guy (maverick
independent film director and actor John Cassavetes) is a struggling actor who understudies
for a Broadway play and is suddenly fast-tracked to the lead role by the
inexplicable blindness that befalls the play’s lead actor (portrayed by an
off-screen Tony Curtis over the phone) following a discussion with two nosy
neighbors (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon as Roman and Minnie Castavet,
respectively) who ingratiate themselves into their lives. Coincidence? Guy is often
short-tempered with his wife, but midway through the film he suddenly has a
burst of fatherhood when he suggests to her that they have a baby.
Overwhelmingly happy, Rosemary soon becomes suspicious of the people around her
during her pregnancy. They are revealed to be a coven of witches, and Rosemary
is carrying Satan’s child during a disturbing sequence of supernatural
impregnation that she believes was just a dream.
Rosemary’s
Baby is the ultimate gaslighting movie. It
is also a movie that, I would imagine, would work to great effect on the psyche
of female audience members for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is
due to knowing what the outcome of Rosemary’s pregnancy is, and knowing that no
one, not even the doctor (Charles Grodin) she has foolishly and naïvely
confiding in regarding her suspicions regarding the coven, can or is even willing
to help her. The film is set against a backdrop of complete normalcy, and when
that normalcy is slowly eroded by the Devil’s minions in sheep’s clothing, it’s
too much for us and Rosemary to bear. It’s also a film about betrayal, and it’s
shocking to see how Guy willingly confesses to her that he had no problem
selling her out to this life inorder to make an easy life for themselves,
something he sees as a bonus. Her reaction to him and to the (offscreen) face
of her baby is complete disbelief, and Ms. Farrow is more than capable of
carrying the film. Rosemary’s horrifically contorted face when she sees her
baby for the first time, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (sorry, Walt…), is
all that the audience needs to know that the evil has come full circle.
Rosemary’s
Baby turns 55 this year. Filmed in the
final four months of 1967 and released on Wednesday, June 12, 1968, it takes
place in 1965 and 1966. Ruth Gordon won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her
performance. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest horror films of
all time, and it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by
the Library of Congress in 2014. The film spawned a TV-movie follow-up in 1976
with Patty Duke.
The
new package contains the film in 4K UHD on one disc, and the film on a standard
Blu-ray, the latter boasting the following extras:
Rosemary's
Baby – A Retrospective
– this piece, originally shot in 2000 for the DVD, runs just under 17 minutes
and includes comments from the late film producer Robert Evans, the late
production designer Richard Sylbert, and Roman Polanski.
Mia
and Roman – this piece runs
roughly 23 minutes and contains a lot of nice behind-the-scenes shots taken
during filming on location in New York City, with input from actress Mia Farrow
and director Roman Polanski.
Theatrical
Trailer
50th
Anniversary "Redband" Trailer
This
is a nice upgrade to 4K that will make you feel as though you’re watching it in
a cinema again, though the lack of a feature-length commentary by film
historians is disappointing given the film’s stature in the genre, making one
wonder if the director is just against this sort of thing. Steven Spielberg and
David Lynch do not offer commentaries on their works, sadly.
NOTE:
It has come to Paramount’s attention that there is an error on this pressing,
and they are going to correct it with a disc replacement program. Apparently
there is a line of dialog missing from the film! When you purchase this box
set, click on this link to request the replacement discs which
should become available in the next several months.
Pet Sematary (1989)
Stephen
King published two frightening and best-selling novels in 1983: Christine
and Pet Sematary. Attempting to sandwich these massive tales into films
that ran less than two hours is a near impossible task and neither film, the
former directed by John Carpenter and the latter by Mary Lambert, is completely
successful in this regard. Lensed between August and November 1988 and released
on Friday, April 21, 1989, Pet Sematary begins with a familiar nod to
Dan Curtis’s creepy Burnt Offerings (1976) as Dr. Louis Creed and his
wife Rachel (Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby) leave the Windy City and arrive at
their new Ludlow, Main home with their young daughter Ellie (Blasé Berdahl) and
even younger son Gage (Miko Hughes). The house is located right in front of a
major road that trucks whiz by at a high rate of speed, setting up the roadway
as the imminent threat. Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne), the family neighbor, takes
them to the Pet Sematary and explains how children bury their pets there. This
proves convenient when the family, sans Louis, visit Rachel’s parents
for Thanksgiving, and Ellie’s cat Winston Churchill (“Church” for short) is
killed by a truck. Jud takes Louis to a location beyond the Pet Sematary called
the Micmac Burying Ground dating back to ancient Native American days. Buried
pets have come back to life, though their personalities are different, and this
is no exception with Church. The idea is to save Ellie the grief of losing him.
Following
Ellie’s displeasure of the now-reanimated Church’s smell, Gage finds himself in
the path of a truck and, following his death, Louis digs up his corpse
and heads for the Micmac Burying Ground despite verbal warnings from Jud. Unfortunately,
Gage comes back as a meanie, killing those around him until a final showdown
with his father.
Despite
being written by author King, the screenplay never really manages to get above
the level of a gross-out horror film. The subject of grief is best left to
serious dramas (think Ingmar Bergman) as director Mary Lambert can only give us
what’s on the written page as a truncation of an oversized novel, is fairly
schematic at best. Whereas the novel is more of a deep-rooted mediation on the
nature of the overwhelming emotion of grief over the death of a child, the film
focuses more on the horrific aspects of the deaths at hand. It does seem to be
enough, however, to satisfy genre fans.
Bonus
Content (on both 4K UHD Blu-ray and Standard Blu-ray Disc):
Feature-length
commentary by director Mary Lambert
Pet
Sematary: Fear and Remembrance –
this piece is in high definition and runs about 7 minutes. Select members of
the film’s cast and crew look back on the film and its reception.
Pet
Sematary: Revisitation –
this piece is in high definition and runs about 10 minutes. The director discusses
the film’s production, how she came to direct the movie, and restoring the
film.
Still
Galleries – this is in high
definition and consists of a large selection of photos separated into four
sections.
Storyboards
Introduction by Mary Lambert
– this intro runs 1 minute in length. She explains how they derived the new
transfer from the original camera negative and how the storyboards came to be.
Storyboards – this feature is extensive and
recalls the image galleries of the laserdisc days. By using the left and right
buttons on the remote control, you can navigate what is essentially a visual
representation of the film. Very cool!
Behind
the Scenes – this is a
stills gallery that, like the storyboards, can be navigated in a similar
fashion, showing images on the set of shooting during the summer of 1988.
Marketing – nice section of stills containing
the marketing of the film for both theatrical and home video exhibition.
The
following extras are only on the standard Blu-ray, though I will never
understand why they do not replicate all extras on both discs as there is more
than enough room to do so:
Stephen
King Territory – this
is a nice piece from 2006 that is shot in standard definition for the then-DVD
release and runs about 13 minutes. It discusses the autobiographical genesis
for the story, which really happened to Mr. King’s family and daughter.
The
Characters – also from 2006
and shot in standard definition, this runs 13 minutes and looks at the
motivations behind the characters and the cats used on the set. They had an
ingenious method of making the cat’s eyes glow maniacally with an attachment to
the Panavision cameras.
Filming the Horror – running 10 minutes, Mary Lambert
discusses how the script came to her and while she read Stephen King’s novels, she
did not consider herself to be a horror film director. Miko Hughes, who was
two-and-a-half-years old when he played Gage, appears to have had a fun time on
the set!
Smile (2022)
David
Sandberg’s 2013 short film Lights Out is a brilliantly frightening,
just-under-three-minute film about a woman seeing a strange creature in her
kitchen and bedroom. It is widely available on Youtube and is one of the
scariest movies I have seen in my 42 years of watching horror films and
thrillers. It provided the basis for an unnecessary, feature-length film of the
same name three years later, also directed by the same person, who has gone on
to direct Annabelle: Creation (2017), as well as other projects. Likewise,
Parker Finn is a director who made a short film called Laura Hasn’t Slept
(2020), starring Caitlin Stasey and Lew Temple as her somnologist. It’s the
second short he made after his impressive and creepy The Hidebehind
(2018), a nearly ten-minute now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t bit of computer
trickery that will make you think twice about trekking solo in a forest. In Laura
Hasn’t Slept, which is just under twelve minutes, Laura tells her therapist
that she has a recurring nightmare wherein a frightening man is constantly
smiling at her. While I appreciated the effort of this film and experienced no difficulty
in determining the ending, the prospect of sitting through the theatrical
version entitled Smile simply did not sit well with me. My disappointment
with Lights Out nearly made me pass on Smile, and I am glad that
I reconsidered.
Unlike
most of the horror films marketed today, Smile is every bit as
terrifying as its marketing campaign has professed. Like The Blair Witch
Project (1999), Smile feels like the sort of film that would
emotionally bifurcate the audience into those who love it and those who hate
it. In terms of genre tropes, the film’s most obvious cinematic antecedent is
David Robert Mitchell’s superb It Follows (2014), and a nod to the
film’s title can be further traced back to the malevolent chauffeur, played
with icy stillness by the late Anthony James in Dan Curtis’s Burnt Offerings
(1976). While it is true that familiarity can often breed contempt, this does
not make Smile any less frightening. There is credence to the notion
that although the film might offer up a less-than-compassionate view of mental
illness and handle the subject flippantly, the movie should ultimately be
judged for what it sets out to do: scare you. It may not be completely
original, but it is no less frightening.
Sosie
Bacon, the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, gives a bravura
performance as recently engaged Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist who meets a new
patient, Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey, the actress from the short film), who fails
to convince Rose that she is being chased by a demon that possesses people by
smiling at them. Rose’s training misinterprets this as an episode of some sort
of psychosis until Laura screams and reacts violently to something in the
examination room invisible to Rose. Laura’s terror suddenly turns inexplicably serene
wherein she effortlessly cuts her own throat with a broken plant’s pot while
smiling maniacally at Rose, who reacts with complete terror. Unbeknownst to
Rose, a terrible curse that plagued Laura has now been transferred to her. It
takes Rose a while to make this realization. In the interim, she blames what
she experiences on overworking, reluctantly taking a week off at the urging of
her manager. Her fiancée (Jesse T. Usher) wants to help her but feels
powerless. Rose begins to have hallucinations, and as the audience we see what
she sees. Her mother’s painful death becomes a force that she needs to reckon with
and is a major reason why she works as hard as she does. The hallucinations
become more and more unnerving. With the aid of her ex-boyfriend cop Joel (Kyle
Gallner), she begins looking into murder cases wherein people having died by
suicide that they committed in front of another person, and they themselves
have also witnessed a suicide. A turning point occurs when Robert Talley (Rob
Morgan of Netflix’s Stranger Things, in a small but powerful role), a
murderer currently in prison, managed to escape the clutches of the entity.
With Joel’s help, Rose goes to the prison to see him. He tells Rose that the
entity feeds on other people’s trauma. Apparently, the only way to relieve
oneself of this curse is to murder someone else in front of a witness to thereby
transfer the trauma on to them (again, similarly like in It Follows). Rose
attempts to do this, yet it turns out to be another hallucination. By the end
of the film, Rose confronts her childhood trauma at her now-abandoned childhood
home in an unsatisfactory ending that paves the way for a sequel.
Thematically
similar to Rosemary’s Baby in that the protagonist knows the truth and
cannot seem to convince anyone around them that they are not crazy, Smile,
while certainly not original, manages to take a familiar horror genre trope and
seriously make it its own, packing a powerful emotional punch with several
genuine jump scares nearly on a par with Gary Sherman’s Death Line
(1972) and William Peter Blatty’s Exorcist III: Legion (1990). In order
for a film like this to work, the performances need to be believable and they
are all spot-on.
Bonus
Content (on 4K Ultra HD Disc):
Audio
Commentary by director Parker Finn
– this is a feature-length discussion by the film’s director who speaks about
the movie scene by scene regarding what he wanted in the scenes and what he
got. I normally shy away from such commentaries as I am not interested in a
blow-by-blow description of the film, but the director speaks so intelligently
about it that he is a constant pleasure to listen to.
Something's
Wrong with Rose: Making Smile
(HD) – at just under 30 minutes, this is a behind-the-scenes look at what it
took to make the film in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Flies
on the Wall: Inside the Score
(HD) – Smile has one of the creepiest scores that I have ever heard, and
it was composed by Cristobal Tapia de Veer. In under nine minutes, we are
treated to his vast studio and his methods of creating ungodly sounds for the
film.
Deleted
Scenes with Optional Commentary by director Parker Finn – there are two scenes provided here
with an optional commentary and add depth to Rose’s character. These run just
under 12 minutes. I would have loved to have had these scenes added as an
optional cut of the film viewable through seamless branching.
Laura
Hasn't Slept – Original Short with Introduction by director Parker Finn – this is the short film that
Paramount scouts saw at South By Southwest in Austin, TX that paved the way for
Smile. It runs about 11 minutes.
Crawl
(2019)
Crawl, produced by veteran horror film
director Sam Raimi and directed by Alexandre Aja of High Tension (2003) and
The Hills Have Eyes (2006) remake fame, Crawl posits Haley Keller
(Kaya Scodelario) in Florida attempting to make it back to her father (Barry
Pepper, who played the sniper in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan
in 1998) in the middle of a Category 5 hurricane, which is getting worse by the
second. The film establishes her as a swimmer under the eye of her coach/father
David Keller who cheers her on during practice and competition during her
childhood. This sequence sets up Haley as a force to be reckoned with, and her
memories will provide her with the mental and physical fortitude necessary to
save her father…provided she can locate him.
Now
an adult, she is estranged from him following his divorce from her mother and
races to his condo, though he is not there. She then correctly assumes that he
is at the family home which is closer to the water but is warned by her
sister’s ex-boyfriend cop to turn around and seek shelter. Ignoring his
commands, she makes her way to the home and locates the family dog, Sugar. Her
father is unconscious in the crawlspace which also happens to be under the
watchful eye of several alligators who manage to rip apart several rescuers and
police officers while duelling with Haley and David.
This
was quite a feat to have made this film, which opened on Friday, July 12, 2019,
and obviously the alligators are all generated by computers. It’s not a film to
be taken seriously either, but it is a fun watch.
Bonus
Content (on 4K Ultra HD Disc):
Intro
to Alternate Opening (HD)
– the director, Alexandre Aja, introduces the alternative opening to the film
which is done in comic book form.
Alternate
Opening (HD) – the
alternate opening is featured as a comic book introduction to the live action
film. While nicely done, it was right to be excised in favor of the actual
opening. This runs just under five minutes.
Beneath
Crawl (HD) – the is a
behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film and the challenges that the
cast and crew experienced. It runs about 28 minutes.
Category
5 Gators: The VFX of Crawl
(HD) – a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the alligators in Computer
Graphic Imaging (CGI) which is really the only way that it could be done. It
runs just under 12 minutes.
Alligator
Attacks (HD) – 92 seconds
of alligator attacks from the film.
Deleted
Scenes (HD) – running
just under six minutes are several scenes that must have ended up being eaten
by the alligators.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Tim
Burton has built a career on making films about dark subject matter and he has
one of the most interesting imaginations in modern day cinema. Sweeney Todd:
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, filmed in 2007 and released on December
3, 2007 in New York City, is no exception. Johnny Depp plays a barber, Benjamin
Barker, who in 1846 arrives in London. He is accompanied by a young sailor named
Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower of Stranger Things fame). We come to learn
that he is arriving not for a visit but to commit revenge against corrupt Judge
Turpin (Alan Rickman) who lusted after his wife Lucy. Turpin and falsely
convicted Benjamin on trumped up charges to exile in Australia, so that he
could claim Lucy as his own. Benjamin calls himself “Sweeney Todd” and reopens
his barber business which is just above a meat pie shop run by Nellie Lovett
(Helena Bonham Carter). Sweeney comes to learn that the judge raped his wife
Lucy, an act that resulted in Lucy’s suicide. Seething with anger, Sweeney
plots his revenge, and the film takes a dark turn as he kills the majority of
his customers with straight razors just prior to sending them backwards down a
chute down to the first floor where the pies are made. You get the picture.
This
is one Tim Burton film that I found difficult to sit through, as nearly the
entire film is sung. I had difficulty understanding the words to the songs, so
the availability of sub-titles is a welcome asset on these discs.
Burton+Depp+Carter=Sweeney
Todd – this is a nearly 30-minute long
behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film, with the director and lead
performers weighing in while the film was shot in the Spring of 2007.
Sweeney
Todd Press Conference, November 2007
– this piece is almost 20- minutes in length and has some funny moments with
the cast and crew talking about the film.
Sweeney
Todd Is Alive: The Real History of the Demon Barber – this is a very interesting look at
whether or not there was a real Sweeney Todd upon which the stories and
eventual play are based. It runs 20-minutes and various authors weigh in.
Musical
Mayhem: Sondheim's Sweeney Todd
– this runs about 12 minutes and Stephen Sondheim reveals seeing the play in
1973 and writing his own version of it as a musical based upon its publication
in the serialized penny dreadfuls.
Sweeney's
London – at 16 minutes,
this piece looks at the gentry, the merchants, and the working class. The
underclass was below all of those, and it was within this class of social
undesirables that disease and contagion flourished as well as snake oil
salesmen and charlatans. A very interesting piece.
The
Making of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street – this is a nearly 24-minute long
behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film, with the director and lead
performers discussing their characters.
Grand
Guignol: A Theatrical Tradition
– at 19 minutes, this discusses the Grand Guignol and reminds me of the fine
book I read 30 years ago, Preposterous Violence: Fables of Aggression in
Modern Culture (1989) by James B. Twitchell.
Designs
for a Demon Barber – at
nine minutes, this looks at the amazing costume and production design on the
film.
A
Bloody Business – at 9
minutes, this is a look at the special effects, in particular how Sweeney
Todd’s victims die.
Moviefone
Unscripted with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp – at 11 minutes, this is a humorous talk between Johnny and
Tim, taking questions on a call-in show. I cannot help but wonder if Depp
deliberately wore a hat and shirt that mimics Fred Krueger!
The
Razor's Refrain – at
just under 9 minutes, this is a look at the film’s music.
Photo
Gallery – As with Pet
Sematary, you can look at the photo gallery by using the left and right
buttons to see the images.
Theatrical
Trailer – a green band
trailer for the film that runs about two-and-a-half minutes.
Along
with the five films, the set contains a very nice report on all of the movies
in the form of an issue of Fangoria Magazine; a sticker sheet, and a
collectible “Paramount Scares” logo pin.
Altogether,
a great package for horror fans. It makes me wonder what they have up their
sleeve for Volume 2!
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