Blu-ray/DVD/Streaming Reviews & News
Entries from July 2012
By Lee Pfeiffer
It may seem hard to believe in this day of comic-book inspired blockbusters, but a mere twenty years ago, there was so little interest in adapting comic heroes to the big screen that some of the most legendary pop culture characters were relegated to cheap movies funded by second rung studios. Such was the case with Captain America, shot in 1990 and plagued by problems since the first day of shooting. The film was a production of 21st Century Films, the company owned by legendary schlockmeister Menahem Golan. The movie, which was championed by Marvel's Stan Lee at the time as a wonderful achievement, was originally beset by financial problems. The money dried up, forcing director Albert Pyun to make compromises in terms of special effects and sets. The film was shelved and did not receive a theatrical release in America, although it was seen in the international market.
The movie opens in fascist Italy with a chilling sequence in which a boy genius is forcibly removed from his family, who are then slaughtered in front of his eyes. He is subjected to a cruel and brutal experiment that sees him emerge with extraordinary powers and intelligence, though he is horrendously disfigured. The plan is to produce a master army of such young men to fight for the Axis powers. The person who emerges from the experiment has a twisted mind and is so badly scarred that he is called The Red Skull (Scott Paulin). However, the scientist who designed the formula for the experiment disdains that her achievement will be used for evil purposes. She escapes to America where she offers her talents to the Allies. A polio-stricken young man, Steve Rogers (Matt Salinger) volunteers to be the subject of the first experiment to produce an American super soldier. (The process having been refined to eliminate the disfigurement of the patient.) The plan works and Rogers emerges, not only having been cured of polio, but possessing uncanny strength. However, a Nazi sympathizer kills his mentor, leaving him to be the only living example of the Allies' super soldier. He is given a virtually indestructible costume and a shield with boomerang capabilities. He's also named Captain America (the US never misses a beat when it comes to marketing.) On his one and only war time mission, Captain America succeeds in preventing a German rocket from hitting the White House, but he ends up crash landing in the Alaskan wilderness where he is frozen in ice for decades. A team of scientists accidentally discovers him in 1990 and he is immediately sought by the U.S. government to resume his battle with the Red Skull, whose physical appearance has now been altered to allow him to pass as an influential tycoon. The Red Skull has corrupt corporate bigwigs on his side, along with a high ranking American general.
Although this pre-blockbuster version of Captain America is routinely knocked by Marvel fans, there is much to recommend in this modestly-budgeted adventure film. For one, the casting of Matt Salinger as Steve Rogers is good choice. Salinger, who never gained major stardom, gives a fine performance as the titular hero, maintaining a sense of wonderment at his new powers. Some of the film's best scenes find him trying to adjust to life in 1990, having been under ice since the 1940s. He knows nothing about the great historic figures and events of those missing years and is understandably dazed and confused by modern life (and he doesn't even have to cope with such future inventions as PCs and cell phones). Unsure of who is friend or foe, he avoids everyone as he tries to make his way back to his long-lost finance. In a poignant sequence, he reunites with her, but the obvious age differences (and the fact she is happily married) dooms their chances of resuming their love affair. Fortunately, his ex has a hip, sexy daughter (Kim Gillingham, who plays both mother and daughter) who willingly joins him on his eventual quest to find and defeat the Red Skull, who is lodged in an ancient Italian castle surrounded by his own sexy (but murderous) daughter and an army of henchmen.
The film is uneven throughout and the finale is rather lamely staged, with Captain America joined by his new girlfriend and the President of the United States, who is being held captive in the castle. Most improbably, both of these new allies are almost equally adept at street fighting as the super hero himself. There are far too many blandly staged chase sequences and the villains, aside from a fine performance by Scott Paulin as the Red Skull, are just cardboard characters with no interesting personality traits. Still, director Albert Pyun does a lot with very little and the final sequences in Croatia lend a bit of much-needed exoticism to the proceedings. The film features real life old buddies and Deliverance co-stars Ronny Cox (very funny as the hip U.S. President) and Ned Beatty, but sadly no one thought to write a scene for them to appear in together.
The master print for this DVD is disappointing and is rumored to be the same transfer used ages ago for a laser disc release. MGM does state at the beginning of every DVD that the transfers are made from the best source materials available. Given the current craze for Marvel heroes, they should consider investing in a major overhaul of this title. Director Pyun has stated over the years that his original director's cut of the movie is far superior than the butchered version seen by the public. A Blu-ray, extended version is supposedly in the works.
Captain America is available through most major on-line DVD retailers.
By Lee Pfeiffer
Shout! Factory has released a 24th volume of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes as a 4 DVD set. In case you've been on another planet yourself since 1988 when the show premiered, the bizarre premise finds a man and his two robot friends/sidekicks who are trapped by a larger than life villain and forced to watch an endless array of bad movies. The episodes are bookended by silly comedy sequences involving these characters, among others. These original comedy bits don't appeal to me, but there is no doubt they appeal to the show's hardcore fans. For this viewer, the real treat in any MST3000 episode is to cut to the chase and watch the bad movies along with the hostages. The episodes are cleverly filmed in that the viewer has the vantage point of someone who is sitting behind the trio in a theater. You see their silhouettes in the row in front of you. From minute one, the three trade sarcastic wise cracks about various aspects of the feature film. It isn't enough for a movie to be bad to merit inclusion in an episode...it has to be spectacularly bad, and the producers do a great job of tracking down largely forgotten clunkers and giving them new life (though not as their makers would have intended.)
In this boxed set, the "highlights" include Fugitive Alien and Star Force: Fugitive Alien II (yes, it merited a sequel.) These are bottom of the basement Japanese sci fi productions that were dubbed into English and imported to the USA by producer Sandy Frank. The films are patently awful by any standard and this gives the trio of "critics" plenty of ammunition to provide very amusing commentaries. Also on the bill is Samson Vs. the Vampire Women, an unintentionally hilarious Mexican horror film that combines the titular hero, a real-life masked wrestling sensation known south 'o the border as Santo, with a plot line that involves a bevy of gorgeous bloodsucking femme fatales. The best of the lot, however, is The Sword and the Dragon, a Soviet era historical "epic" that Roger Corman turned into an English-dubbed sword and sandals action flick. In doing so, Corman must surely rate alongside Ronald Reagan as one of the key figures to have brought down the Soviet empire. Comedy is funny thing...People will laugh hysterically when watching a movie with a group, but you're lucky to get a slight giggle if someone watches the same film at home, alone. In the case of The Sword and the Dragon, which features the worst dubbing of any movie in history, I actually found myself laughing out loud despite the lack of fellow bad movie lovers around me.
The set contains many extras including an excellent interview with producer Sandy Frank, who once feuded with and sued the series for running his bad old movies. They must have come to terms because Frank is fully cooperative. Surprisingly, there was much more to his career than importing a few B movies from Japan. He was major influence in the Golden Age of TV and produced some of the top game shows of all time. He's not lacking in ego, but he comes across as the kind of guy you'd love to have a drink with just to hear these tales of a bygone era of show business. There is also a recent interview with show cast member Frank Conniff and an excellent documentary about the history of the Mexican wrestling craze and how it was transferred to the silver screen. All that plus some cool commemorative poster art pieces for each film,
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By Lee Pfeiffer
To tie in with the recent Titanic commemorations, the Criterion Collection has issued its special edition DVD of A Night to Remember on Blu-ray. As usual, it's a first-class presentation all the way around. The 1958 British film was a modestly budgeted production by Hollywood standards, but represented a major investment for the Rank Organization, which specialized in films that were less-than-epic in scope. The film was shot at Britain's legendary Pinewood Studios, where the famous water tank facility was put to extensive use. The movie's scope may pale besides James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster, but it has lost none of its emotional impact. It presents the disaster through the experiences of numerous passengers and crew members, each of whom is superbly portrayed by a cast of young actors that includes such stars-in-the-making as Honor Blackman and David McCallum. The star of the film is Kenneth More, the reliable British actor whose popularity in England was sadly never replicated in America. More gives an impressive performance as Charles Herbert Lightoller, the second-in-command on the doomed vessel. The script by Eric Ambler captures all the intrigue and excitement of the best-selling novel by Walter Lord upon which the film is based.
The Criterion special edition contains precious interviews with key participants who have since passed away including Walter Lord, producer William MacQuitty and Roy Ward Baker, who did yeoman work as director.The interviews are contained in a 1993 documentary titled The Making of A Night to Remember. Although crude by today's standards, such documentaries were quite rare at the time and this one has a quaint appeal in that the filmmakers don't go in for the kinds of rapid-fire editing and pretentious special effects that mar so many "making of" featurettes today. The documentary presents McQuitty's home movies of the film's production along with extensive behind the scenes production stills. It's a priceless look into the making of a classic movie. The Blu-ray also contains:
- Audio commentary by Titanic scholars and authors Don Lynch and Ken Marschall
- Original theatrical trailer
- An archival interview with Titanic survivor Eva Hart, who was a small girl at the time of the disaster who initially thought the entire event was a marvelous adventure.
- There is also a fine Swedish television documentary from 1962 that features interviews with other Titanic survivors including a mother and her two daughters.
- Rounding out the remarkable set is The Iceberg That Sank the Titanic, a stunningly filmed 2006 BBC nature documentary that explores how the deadly berg had been formed and how it ended up colliding with the ocean liner. It also features the one known photograph of the actual iceberg, taken the morning after the disaster.
Criterion has also included an excellent and informative collector's booklet with essays by writer Michael Sragow that is packed with vintage graphics pertaining to the film and the Titanic itself.
This is another Criterion release that should be classified as essential to any classic movie collection.
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Twentieth Century Fox has joined other major studios in mining gold from its film library by launching a burn-to-order line of DVDs. The first batch represents worthy, but largely forgotten, films from the studio archives-- which is exactly the strategy Cinema Retro endorses. Many of these flicks feature major stars and hold up well in terms of entertainment value. However, they would never see release through a traditional DVD distribution market. The web site Oldies.com has an impressive line-up of the Fox titles on sale. Click here to view
By Lee Pfeiffer
The pressure to fill American cable TV channels with product- any product- to cover a 24/7 time span has resulted in the creation of some bizarre concepts for series. As reality-based shows are far less expensive to produce than scripted TV series, the cable networks are awash with a mixed bag of product. Some are ludicrous while others make for surprisingly good entertainment. Falling firmly into the latter category is Storage Wars, which is based on the seemingly lame concept of a group of self-employed entrepreneurs competing to outbid each other to take possession of storage lockers that have been left in a default status due to their owner's inability or unwillingness to pay the rental fees. This apparently is big business and all storage facilities hold regular auction events that attract big crowds of speculators. There are the seasoned pros and the novices and weekend warriors. The two elements don't mix easily, as the pros accuse the newbies of stupidly driving up prices for everyone for lockers that may not be worth the final sale price. The rules of every auction don't vary: the auctioneer allows the bidders five minutes to gaze into each locker but no one can enter the unit or touch anything. The challenge is to make this "what you see is what you get" scenario turn a profit. In some cases, valuable items are clearly seen but in most instances, there is a bunch of cluttered boxes and household items. The bidder must speculate as to whether there are any treasures to be found. There is an art to this "science", and too many wrong choices can drive you out of business. Not only do you have to pay for the locker in cash right then and there, but you also are responsible for emptying the contents. Thus, most bidders have to employ helpers and use at least one truck to haul away the "goodies".
The series Storage Wars has follows the exploits of a diverse group of competing bidders as they try to outwit each other for possession of certain lockers. The show, which airs on A&E network, has become such a phenomenon that is has not only spawned many low-rent imitators but also a line of collectibles. The key players are:
- Darrell Sheets, a 32 year veteran of the auction business, who runs his own shop and sells collectibles and household items gleaned from his purchases at storage unit. Sheets is a gruff, but likable, blue collar guy with a beer belly and penchant for ball-busting insults, many of which are directed at his son Brandon, who is being groomed as the heir apparent. The byplay between the two provides some very amusing scenarios, with both father and son finding the other exasperating.
- Barry Weiss, the oldest of the players at 60 years of age, is also the wittiest and most sophisticated. Barry works alone, has no store and seems to be an independently wealthy man who is in the junk business simply for amusement. Barry's apparent wealth allows him to show up at auction sites in outlandish vehicles and he is often accompanied by amusing sidekicks who are there to bring him luck or help in some bizarre way. (In one episode, he hired a little person and had him walk on stilts to be able to see further back inside lockers!)
- Jarrod Schulz and Brandi Passanti are a thirty-something married couple who are new to the business. They own their own store and face constant financial difficulties. Thus, they are under constant pressure to secure enough goods to resell. However, Jarrod's weakness for overpaying often results in some conflicts with the more business-minded Brandi, who, by the way, is a real looker.
- Dave Hester- every show needs a villain and Hester is the guy everyone loves to hate on Storage Wars. The stocky, middle-aged man has made a lot of money in second hand goods and is constantly bragging obnoxiously about his triumphs. He runs a very large store and has a staff of full time employees. He arrives at auction sites in large trucks and pisses off the other cast members by over outbidding them just to be mean. Even if he doesn't want a locker, he runs up the price just to hurt the competition. Hester's trademark "Yuuup!" is shouted to indicate he wants to bid. It's become a somewhat minor sensation in contemporary culture so Hester has "Yuuup!" painted in bold letters on his trucks, t shirts and baseball caps.
- Dan and Laura Dotson are the married couple who act as auctioneers in every episode. All shows are confined to southern California where the Dotsons have established a well-regarded auction business. They remain unbiased in their performance, but enjoy trading quips with the regulars. Part of the fun of Storage Wars is listening to Dan and Laura shout out the status of bids in the traditional motormouth style of auctioneers.
All reality shows are contrived to some degree since no one can be expected not to play to the cameras. However, Storage Wars minimizes the contrivances. There aren't any phony fist fights and the insults the participants toss at each other are usual done with humor, though one senses there is some true bad blood between Dave Hester and Darrell Sheets. The one hokey aspect of the show (that is replicated in similarly-themed TV series) inevitably occurs when one of the gang goes to an expert to get a particular item evaluated. To heighten the suspense, there is always a pretentious long pause before the expert gives the final estimate of value. The show is a great deal of fun because the viewer, like the bidder, is curious to see what exactly is contained inside each of the lockers. Sometimes it turns out to be pure junk and other times there are historic treasures. The series makes voyeurs out of all of us because we are, in fact, looking into the personal lives of whoever once owned these lockers. I'm probably the least likely person to evaluate a contemporary TV series since I haven't been hooked on the medium since The Beverly Hillbillies was the hot new show. However, I do find this low-key series consistently enjoyable and also informative, as you actually learn about the historical origins of some of the finds unearthed by these modern treasure hunters.
Storage Wars: Season 3 has just been released as a 2-DVD collection and contains complete, un-edited episodes along with bonus behind the scenes footage. It's worth getting just to spare yourself having to sit through all those nauseating commercials. Give it a try- but don't blame me if you end up addicted. My verdict? "Yuuup!"
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Click here to visit official web site for the show
By Lee Pfeiffer
The Warner Archive has released the 1961 MGM production Bridge to the Sun as a burn-to-order DVD. The film is based on a bestselling memoir by Gwen Terasaki, a young American southern belle who fell in love and married Hidenari ("Terry") Terasaki, a diplomat assigned to the Japanese embassy in Washington D.C. in the mid-1930s. The film is an unusually mature and sensitive look at a young couple trying to find happiness in a marriage beset by prejudice and intolerance from both Americans and Japanese. Mixed marriages during this era were still largely taboo and film reflects how Americans during the era treated the Japanese as amusing, childlike people. When the couple moves to Tokyo due to Terry's transfer, the social situation isn't much better. Terry's family politely accepts his Western bride but it's clear she will never really adapt to the huge gap in cultural practices. Gwen dresses in traditional garb but bristles at the notion that she must follow Japanese custom and be a submissive, quiet wife. Her determination to break down social barriers earns her plenty of enemies and the anger of her husband, but the two remain steadfastly in love. Eventually Gwen gives birth to a little girl but their happiness is short-lived. Japan's new militaristic government invades China, sowing the seeds for WWII. With the attack on Pearl Harbor, the couple find themselves trapped between two worlds. Both view the Japanese government as wrong, but Terry can't bring himself to leave his job in the government, hoping in vain that he and other peace activists can bring about an end to the war. Gwen remains in Japan, but predictably suffers prejudice, as does Terry for keeping his "white" wife. When the tide of war turns against Japan, the couple suffer even more, with food shortages and constant bombings. Gwen resents the bombing of Japanese villages with the resulting deaths of innocent people, but can't bring herself to cheer when the attacking planes are shot down- after all, they are American.
Bridge to the Sun was fairly unique in its day because it shows a mixed marriage without any patronizing aspects or insulting stereotypes. Both Gwen and Terry have their flaws, but they are mature, intelligent and kind people. James Shigeta was one of the first Asian leading men to make it big in English-language cinema. He delivers an outstanding performance, as does Carroll Baker as Gwen. Both get to have plenty of big, emotional moments on screen, all of which ring true. The film builds in dramatic intensity under the excellent direction of Etienne Perier, who maximizes use of the exotic Japanese locations. The crisp B&W cinematography by an American/Japanese/French team adds immeasurably to the film's quality. The film was well-regarded in its time and was the American entry at the Venice Film Festival. Over the years, however, its status has seemed to fade. The release of the movie on DVD will give it a much-deserved return to the spotlight. It's an outstanding movie in every regard and is highly recommended.
The DVD features the original theatrical trailer.
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