BY LEE PFEIFFER

The Warner Archive has showcased another "B" movie and rescued it from relative obscurity with the release of "Lady Scarface". The 1941 movie is an RKO "Poverty Row" production with a low budget (i.e. there are almost no exterior shots) and abbreviated running time of only 66 minutes. The titular character is never referred to as such in the film. She's simply called Slade and she's a mysterious Chicago gangster who the police have been searching for under the assumption their prey is a man. Slade does bear a scar on her cheek but it would appear this was added simply to enable the producers to capitalize on the "Scarface" moniker in order to tie the film in with Paul Muni's classic gangster flick. Slade appears in the opening scene in which she and her gang rob a businessman and loot his safe. She ends up shooting him in cold blood. As played by Judith Anderson, Slade has the potential to be a fascinating character-- a female mob boss in the early 1940s. At one point she dresses in a foreboding black hat that makes her resemble Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch of the West. However, the screenplay only uses her to bookend the film's opening and climax and she rarely appears on screen in the interim. It's a pity because Judith Anderson's ruthless interpretation of the role is quite interesting and in this viewer's mind seemed to foreshadow Lotte Lenya's Rosa Klebb in "From Russia with Love" in that she's as brutal as any of her male counterparts, humorless and devoid of humanity on any level. Most of the story is devoted to a perky couple who are tracking down Slade, still under the impression they are searching for a man. Lt. Bill Mason (O'Keefe) is a Chicago detective who is sent to a New York hotel where they set a trap for Slade to appear. Accompanying him is Ann Rogers (Frances Neal), an intrepid reporter in the Lois Lane mode. They banter and bicker but we all know they will fall in love by the end of the film. When they get to New York the plan goes awry when an innocent honeymooning couple (Mildred Boles, Eric Blore)  inadvertently gets caught up in the plot and are mistaken for Slade's accomplices.

"Lady Scarface" was probably produced to be the lower half of a double bill. However, it isn't without its merits. Director Frank Woodruff keeps the pace brisk and the story, although occasionally confusing, holds the viewer's interest. O'Keefe and Neal make a good team in the "Thin Man" mode but it's Anderson who steals her scenes despite her abbreviated appearances in the film. She was already an acclaimed star on Broadway and recently gave a brilliant and acclaimed performance in Hitchcock's "Rebecca". One can only ponder why she was attracted to this low rent production that is distinguished primarily by the fact that women are given the most interesting roles. Slade keeps her male gang members in line through sheer acts of terror and Ann Rogers is ahead of the police in cracking the case. In all, a competently made and fun crime thriller.  The Warner Archive print looks perfectly satisfactory. There are no extras but the disc is region-free.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Mill Creek Entertainment has released the 1981 comedy "Neighbors" on Blu-ray. The film boasted an impressive line-up of talent both before and behind the cameras. Stars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd were both riding high on the previous year's success of "The Blues Brothers". Director John G. Avildsen had won the Oscar a few years before for "Rocky". The producers were Richard Zanuck and David Brown, the team behind the blockbusters "The Sting" and "Jaws" and the screenplay was written by the esteemed Larry Gelbart, based on Thomas Berger's recently published novel. The story finds Belushi as Earl Keese, a bored executive living a hum-drum life with his equally bored wife Enid (Kathryn Walker). The Keeses reside on a seemingly isolated suburban street (the film was shot in Staten Island) and the bland surroundings reflect the bland state of their marriage. Then one night Earl notices that a couple is moving into the vacant house next door. They are Vic (Dan Aykroyd) and Ramona (Cathy Moriarty) and the fact that they are choosing to move in during the night is only the first sign of their bizarre lifestyle and behavior. When Earl makes they acquaintance, he is immediately unnerved. Vic is the polar opposite of Earl's button-down, conservative manner and Ramona is a sex-obsessed beauty who has no qualms about trying to seduce Earl, going so far as to sneak under his bed sheets while Edna is preparing dinner for the group. Vic is perpetually upbeat and smiling, though he and Ramona engage in a series of cruel pranks and jokes with Earl as their target. Edna is immediately smitten with the new couple, however, and finds their over-the-top behavior and bad habits to be an anecdote to her dull life with Earl. As the plot progresses, Earl and Vic alternate between being friendly and adversarial, each competing to one-up each other through elaborate pranks most of which find Earl on the losing end. When Earl and Enid's wayward daughter Elaine (Lauren Marie-Taylor) arrives home from college, cheerfully explaining that she has been expelled, she, too, is intoxicated by Vic and Ramona's exotic and unpredictable, sexually-driven behavior.

Bizarrely, "Neighbors" seems to have been inspired in part by Edward Albee's masterpiece "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" In that classic, a young, bored couple are induced to visit another couple, George and Martha, who they have just met. As the seemingly endless evening unwinds, they witness their new friends engage in outrageous and often vulgar behavior and language. They find themselves alternately repulsed and excited by George and Martha's outrageous antics right up until everyone ends up suffering brutal psychological assaults on their relationships and psyches. "Neighbors" takes a similar premise and adds slapstick humor. Belushi and Aykroyd were to have played opposite roles but Belushi wanted to prove he could play the straight man in a comedy. Both acquit themselves well, as do Moriarty and Walker- but the film itself is an unsatisfying mess. Behind the scenes, Belushi, who was trying valiantly to conquer his drug addiction, fell back into bad habits. He squabbled with Larry Gelbert over the script and hated working with director Avildsen. At one point, Belushi tried to get John Landis to take over direction of the film. No one could even agree on the musical score and Avildsen dismissed the original composer, Tom Scott, in favor of his frequent collaborator, Bill Conti, who provides a score that is supremely annoying and distracting. After test screenings showed audiences were confused and unsatisfied with the film, reshoots took place to try to salvage it. "Neighbors" was heavily marketed and ended up making money, though falling short of expectations due to bad word-of-mouth. (It was released directly to video in the UK.) There are some occasionally amusing moments but the disjointed script never quite gels and the characters are more irritating than funny.

The Mill Creek Blu-ray has a very fine transfer and is creatively packaged to replicate the movie's original VHS release. Unfortunately, the perks stop there as there are no other bonus features. This is a pity since film historians would have a field day recounting the dramatic developments in the making of the movie, which proved to be John Belushi's final feature film. He would die of a drug overdose four months after its release. He was said to loathe the final cut, making the tragic circumstances associated with "Neighbors" even more profound.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

The Cohen Collection has released the obscure but worthy 1977 ensemble comedy "Between the Lines" as a special edition Blu-ray. Back in the day, the film won acclaim at film festivals but was barely seen by the public. The movie was the brainchild of aspiring screenwriter Fred Barron, who approached director Joan Micklin Silver, who had won praise for her feature film "Hester Street", released in 1975, which chronicled the experience of Russian Jews who emigrated to America in the late 19th century. "Between the Lines" was sandwiched between "Hester Street" and her 1988 film "Crossing Delancy", which also won a good deal of praise. The film was shot entirely in Boston and takes place at the cramped offices of an alternative weekly newspaper. The progressive staff is comprised of young people who caught the tail end of the protest movements of the mid-to-late 1960s. By the time 1977 rolled around, that movement- having accomplished much- was diminishing by the day. The staffers doggedly pursue muckraker journalism while coping with measly salaries that see them perpetually scrounging in order to let off some steam at the local bars. Having served on a campus newspaper during this period, I can attest that director Micklin Silver perfectly captures the mood of such a setting. In the pre-internet era, campus papers and alternative weeklies were widely read by young people and carried a good deal of influence. (My own contributions were somewhat less impressive: I was the film critic, an enviable position because I got to see major films in advance without having to delve into my barren wallet.)

The staffers portrayed are a diverse lot ranging from those dedicated to the highest standards of journalism and others who simply hang around, having lost the spark that once inspired them. The offices are cluttered and messy and even the one modern perk- the coffee machine- constantly malfunctions. The screenplay is meandering as it covers the personal relationships between this diverse group of young writers and editors. They are also fearful of rumors that the paper will soon be sold to a rich man (Lane Smith in full Nixonian mode) they suspect will put profits above integrity. The staffers are an incestuous lot in the sense that, despite the fractured inter-office romances and friendships, they can't quit each other. There is romantic sex, spontaneous sex and revenge sex. Since the film was directed by a woman, it's not surprising that it plays out in a sympathetic manner to the female characters who are generally presented as honest and intelligent while even the most likable male characters are impulsive and self-centered. Given the scarcity of women filmmakers during this period, it's hard to gripe about the men not getting a fair shake, given the fact that so many movies of the era presented female characters in equally simplistic terms.

"Between the Lines" features an engaging cast of up-and-comers who would find varying degrees of stardom over the next few years. Lindsay Crouse, Jill Eikenberry and Gwen Welles are the female leads and acquit themselves very well indeed. The male cast contains some very good performances as well with Jeff Goldblum funny as a slacker on the newspaper staff whose desire to change the world has degenerated into trying to justify his meager $75 pay check; John Heard as a once-estimable writer who has also fallen on hard times and Stephen Collins, especially good as an aspiring author who becomes an elitist snob when he finally gets a book contract. (Given the sharp edges Collins provides to the character, it is especially disappointing that henceforth he would mostly be cast in bland roles as romantic leads.) Bruno Kirby, having distinguished himself as young Clemenza in "The Godfather Part II" shines as the office nerd and Marilu Henner gives a fine performance as a stripper with a heart of gold. Michael J. Pollard is woefully underutilized but Lane Smith shines as the newspaper's new owner.  I even unexpectedly spotted a personal friend, New York publicist Gary Springer in an early acting role. We're also treated to a 1977 concert by Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, who are still a popular attraction in New Jersey. Kenneth Van Sickle provides some impressive cinematography and Michael Kamen adds some original musical scoring. It all moves along briskly under Micklin Silver's assured direction and makes for a generally compelling and interesting film.

The Cohen Collection provides an excellent Blu-ray transfer along with an original 1977 TV spot and a trailer for the remastered reissue of the film. There is also an engaging recent on-camera interview with Joan Micklin Silver in which she discusses the challenges of being a female film director then and now. In all, an impressive release. Recommended.

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By Lee Pfeiffer

Referring to the 1955 film "Man With the Gun" as a routine Western might not sound like an enthusiastic recommendation. However, because the 1950s was such a fertile time for fine movies representing this genre, "routine" can be taken as praise. The film follows many of the standard story elements that were popular in horse operas of this era: a stalwart, mysterious loner with a shady past who takes on the forces of evil; a good-hearted "bad girl"; a larger-than-life villain and a town with a population of timid, helpless men who must rely on the stranger to save them from being exploited and cheated. Robert Mitchum, then an up-and-coming star, plays Clint Tollinger, a drifter with a reputation for taming wild towns. The town he rides into has a trouble with a capital "T". Seems one Dade Holman (Joe Barry) is the standard villain in a Western piece: he's been flexing his considerable financial resources by buying up all the surrounding land and using paid gun hands to terrorize or kill anyone who won't cede their property rights to him. Tollinger drifts into town to find that his reputation precedes him. He is hired by the local council to thwart Holman's thugs, who have also been disrupting the peace. Tollinger agrees as long as he has complete control over the methods he employs and that he is temporarily deputized, as well. He finds the local sheriff to be an aged, fragile man Lee Simms (Henry Hull), who is more of a figurehead than a respected lawman. Tollinger quickly reverses roles and becomes the central law officer in town, with Simms taking on the role of his deputy. It doesn't take long for Holman's gunmen to test his mettle. Tollinger proves to be adept at protecting himself, consisting outdrawing his adversaries and killing them even when they outnumber him. He also enforces a "no guns in town" rule and a curfew as well. Before long, the businessmen are complaining that now things are too peaceful and their businesses are suffering. Tollinger also interacts with a young couple who are engaged to marry: lovely Stella Atkins (Karen Sharpe) and her headstrong fiancee Jeff Castle (John Lupton) who continues to defy Holman's men and who has been seriously wounded for his refusal to cede a parcel of land Holman wants. Tollinger takes a liking to the couple, though rumors begin to swirl that Stella is more in love with him than she is with Jeff. Tollinger also encounters his estranged wife Nelly (Jan Sterling), who is running the local bordello/dance hall. The two are not happy to see each other and when Nelly reveals a shocking secret about their daughter, the enraged Tollinger goes on a rampage that terrorizes the town.

"Man With the Gun" suffers from a bland, uninspired title but the film itself is quite engaging. Mitchum looks terrific in the part, strutting about town ramrod straight and looking handsome even when embroiled in shoot-outs. Even this early in his career there was evidence of a superstar in the making. The supporting cast is also very good, especially some wonderful character actors such as Henry Hull, Emile Meyer, James Westerfield and other familiar faces of the era (including a young Claude Akins). The film, ably directed by Richard Wilson, is certainly no classic but on the other hand, it is consistently engrossing and highly entertaining. Despite the considerable talent involved, it's Mitchum's show throughout- and he delivers the goods.

The Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber does justice to the crisp B&W cinematography. The edition features the original trailer and bonus trailers for other Mitchum Westerns from the company, The Wonderful Country and Young Billy Young. 

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BY DOUG OSWALD

The folks at Mill Creek Entertainment have released the 10-part documentary “WWI: The War to End All Wars” on DVD. The documentary is a detailed analysis of what was known as The Great War until the outbreak of World War II. Each episode covers a different aspect of the war, in mostly chronological order, from its origins leading to the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on 28 June 1914 to the armistice signed on 11 November 1918.

In four years and four months, over 70 million men were mobilized on all sides and in the end an estimated nine million died along with seven million civilians. Disease and genocides resulted in an estimated additional 50 to 100 million deaths making World War I one of the deadliest wars in history. Early research was done during and after the war with men ravaged by what is known today as post- traumatic stress or PTS (many veterans prefer excluding “disorder”). Back then it was called “shell shock” and in World War II, “battle fatigue.” An entire generation of men never returned from the war. Many others who did survive suffered from a largely undiagnosed and rarely treated illness.

The documentary was produced by Creation Films in 2008. Each episode runs between 40-47 minutes with title cards and five acts per episodes for a total running time of just over 7 hours. It was produced, co-written and directed by Edward Feuerherd and is narrated by Fred North. The research is detailed, informative and interesting. Single episodes are devoted to topics such as aviation, the war at sea and chemical warfare.

The series ends rather abruptly with the signing of November 11th Armistice. An episode on the aftermath of World War I and its impact would have added more value to the series. While the well-researched information provided in the narration is excellent, the major flaw is the poor quality of the 100 year-old film. I doubt anything was done to restore the film for the series when it was produced in 2008 or for this 2018 DVD release.

Interestingly, the title of the documentary at the start of each episode is, “The War to End War 1914-1918.” I’m not sure why the DVD title is different. Perhaps it was changed in a subsequent television broadcast. According to IMDB, the documentary was released on the Heroes Channel in the U.S. in September 2014, presumably to tie in with the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. IMDB lists the documentary as a co-production by Looksfilm and Les Films d’ici Paris.

In addition to the well-researched narration and film shot during the dawn of movie making on the front lines of the conflict, there is the music both contemporary of the era and original scoring included to add dramatic effect. Highlights include “Shine on Harvest Moon” by Jack Norworth and Nora Bayer, “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber and “Adagio in G Minor” by Tomaso Albinoni. There are scenes that are reused numerous times and the music becomes repetitious, but both get the job done.

The 10-parts of the documentary are divided between two disks with five parts on each disc. The movie looks adequate and is watchable, but the lack of a restoration is a major liability. The DVD release includes a digital version of the documentary, but there are no extras. Recommended for history buffs, especially since it’s value-priced.

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BY TIM GREAVES

It’s been three years since ‘American Horror Project’ was unleashed. Comprising an eclectic gathering of indie curios from the 1970s, the fact it was announced as Volume 1 led to much anticipation as to what future collections might serve up.

Well, Arrow Video has finally issued Volume 2. It’s been a long wait. Was it worth it? For those whose passions run to the sort of weird, otherworldly slices of 70s small-town America represented by the first, the answer would be a resounding yes. But, as before, for a more general audience it’s unlikely to harbour much appeal. Regardless, whether you think they’re deserving of Blu-ray resurrection or not, all power to Arrow – and ringmaster of this circus of the bizarre, film historian Stephen Thrower – for rescuing these micro-budget productions from the bowels of obscurity, giving them a wash and brush up and setting them free back into a world that for better or worse had long forgotten them. Someone somewhere is sure going to love them.

All three titles in the set are brand new 2k restorations from the original film elements, and some infrequent patches of heavy grain notwithstanding – really only distracting in darker sequences – they look absolutely fantastic.

So what exactly do we get this time? Opening with 1970s Dream No Evil, we move on to 1976’s Dark August and conclude with 1977’s The Child. All three films are thematically linked, however tenuously, in that in each it is a child who’s the catalyst for the terrors that ensue. In the first they’re born of a little girl’s desperately unhappy childhood, in the second the product of an accidental death, and in the third it’s vengeful death wrought upon those around her by a precocious teenager.

Dream No Evil

A former orphan, Grace (Brooke Mills), now assistant to a charlatan travelling fire and brimstone preacher, Rev Bundy (wild-eyed Michael Pataki), is fixated on locating her real father. Not only is Grace convinced she’ll find him but that when she does he’ll welcome her back into his life with open arms. Her inadvisable quest leads her down a path of self-destruction and she descends into madness.

Though everything is subjective, writer-director John Hayes’ film isn’t so much horror as it is bleak drama… exceedingly bleak. If the forlorn pre-titles sequence doesn’t alert you to that, then Jaime Mendoza-Nava’s gently melancholic credits music reinforces the notion. A couple of slasher movie tropes aside – and even they are rendered mundane in their bloodlessness – the real draw here is former Oscar-winner (for The Barefoot Contessa) Edmond O’Brien, overweight and overacting on the fag end of a prodigious career; it’s a car crash performance from which it’s impossible to avert your eyes. Still, it’s nice to see Marc “I didn’t know there was a pool, down there” Lawrence, dressed almost exactly as he appears in his two Bond roles (Diamonds Are Forever and The Man with the Golden Gun), as a seedy mortician rather than a hoodlum.

With some dispassionate narration thrown in, presumably to keep you up to speed if you’ve zoned out during its leisurely pace, Dream No Evil’s key conceit has been worked countless times; if you keep in mind that what you’re seeing is what Grace is seeing, not necessarily what’s real, then there won’t be too many surprises ahead.

Bonus features on the disc are an appreciation and a look at the director’s prior career by Thrower, an audio commentary from writers Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan, and a segment devoted to dear old O’Brien.

Dark August

In a small backwoods town a little girl is accidentally killed when she runs into the road without looking, following which the driver of the vehicle (J J Barry) has a death curse sworn upon him by the child’s grandfather.

Although Planet of the Apes star Kim Hunter as a psychic medium is probably the main draw here, what makes it worth sticking around for is J J Barry. A slow burn drama helmed by former director of commercials Martin Goldman, Barry’s sincere, committed performance lends the supernatural shrouding a bit of gravitas. The irksome score at the outset (courtesy William S Fischer) does its darnedest to dissuade the intolerant, but it’s worth hanging in there; it may be the least interesting constituent of the set, but it does evolve into something rather compelling.

Goldman not only directed, but also co-wrote and co-produced, and much like bedmate Dream No Evil it isn’t really a horror film. I’d label it chiller-lite with a couple of wince-inducing moments tossed in, the most effective being when a character slips and carves up his leg with a handsaw (even though the subsequent blood spill is of the day-glo paint variety).

Shot in Vermont, Richard E Brooks’ beautiful cinematography balances out the overall oppressive mien, and if the finale is a tad anticlimactic it isn’t excessively injurious.

Bonus features are a couple of appreciation pieces (one by Thrower, the other from writer and artist Stephen R Bissette), interviews with Goldman and his co-producer Marianne Kanter, and a commentary from Goldman.

The Child

Embittered over the death of her mother, a teenage girl, Rosalie (Rosalie Cole), uses her psychic powers to reanimate a battalion of corpses from a graveyard, willing them to carry out her twisted campaign of vengeance upon those she deems responsible.

In terms of exploitation terrors this tasty number from director Robert Voskanian is where we hit pay dirt, it’s the diamond in the rough. Yes, the dialogue – evidently post-dubbed, and badly at that – is stilted and the acting in general is wooden enough to drill holes in, but it’s the only title in the collection that engenders any real suspense and it boasts a supremely grungy vibe.

Taking a little while to gain momentum, once it does it delivers the goods with several suitably impressive set pieces and a bunch of effectively creepy zombies. Gory when it needs to be – albeit all pretty unrealistic looking by today’s standards – it builds up a decent head of steam for a climax in which the survivors take refuge in an old barn, barricading themselves in to fend off a full-on assault by the undead.

Also known as Zombie Child and (this writer’s favourite) Kill and Go Hide, skewed camera angles and a disorienting score – one moment melodic piano recital material, the next a series of peculiar electronic bleeps and bloops – all add to the sense that Voskanian was a fledgling talent with so much more to offer, making it a crying shame to note that (for reasons outlined in the supplements on the disc) this was to be his sole feature.

Said supplements consist of an appreciation from Thrower, an interview with (and commentary from) Voskanian and producer Robert Dadashian, plus an original theatrical trailer. There are two viewing options on the feature itself, a 1.33:1 presentation and a 1.78:1; though not the most aesthetically pleasing choice, the former opens up the frame significantly to reveal more picture both top and bottom.

‘American Horror Project’ Volume 2 comes with a limited edition 60-page collectors’ booklet, and each individually cased film has a reversible sleeve bearing original and newly commissioned artwork.

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BY TIM GREAVES

One of the most surprising things about director Roger Christian’s 1982 chiller The Sender, which screams America from almost every fibre, is that it’s British made. With a cast and crew of varied nationality and narratively set in America – location work took place in Georgia – all the studio work for the Paramount Pictures production was actually shot on stages at Shepperton in the UK. 

British born Christian himself was a former Academy Award winning art director on the first Star Wars (and a nominee in the same category for Alien). On the other end of the ‘accomplishments to be proud of’ scale, however, he’s the man responsible for the woeful Battlefield Earth, so it’s fair to say his cinematic career was mixed. The Sender, his debut in the director’s chair, resides on the upper end of that scale.

Following a failed attempt at suicide on a public beach, a nameless young man suffering from amnesia (Zeljko Ivanek) is committed to a sanatorium for psychiatric assessment by Dr Gail Farmer (Kathryn Harrold). Before long she begins experiencing phantasmagorias, at first confounding, then progressively disturbing. It transpires her patient, who’s tagged John Doe #83, is a telepath, but to a level beyond his control, cursed with unconsciously transferring the conjurings of his dreams and fears into the minds of others, skewing their sense of reality. After she’s visited by Doe’s subtly manipulative mother (Shirley Knight), Farmer believes she's starting to get to grips with the lad, but she hasn’t accounted for how deeply he’s penetrated her psyche and how great an influence he has on her ability to distinguish between the physical and the hallucinatory.

The Sender’s ability to toy with an audience’s perception of what is and what isn’t real gifts it with the tropes of one of the better entries in the series spawned by Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street – minus its infamous child molesting maniac, of course. The waking dream sequences are expertly realised, several of them genuinely chilling, and writer Thomas Baum taps into a number of base human fears with his gleefully dark and disturbing script. For example, there’s a full blooded yikes moment in which it goes unnoticed by surgical staff that the patient on the table has woken during an invasive procedure. If that doesn’t touch a nerve, little will, although murophobics should definitely approach with caution! The film’s highlight hallucinatory sequence is served up in a marvellously staged setpiece during an attempt to administer shock therapy treatment to Doe, wherein all manner of telekinetic hell breaks loose.

Yet for all the horrors The Sender has stashed in its pocket, there’s a curious undercurrent of melancholia coursing through its veins. It’s a facet that enables the viewer to empathise with Doe, who, much like Carrie White before him, hasn’t chosen to walk a destructive telepathic path, but rather has been pushed that way by circumstance rooted in a toxic maternal relationship.

Of the cast there are several standouts. American Kathryn Harrold, who over the period of just a few years scooped starring roles opposite the likes of Steve McQueen (The Hunter, 1980) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Raw Deal, 1986), is excellent and – let’s not skirt it, seriously gorgeous – as the beleaguered psychiatrist. Christian couldn’t have chosen a better leading lady, her authoritative confidence masking an endearing fragility. Perhaps the most recognisable among the cast’s British contingent is Paul Freeman, who brings class to everything in which he appears and pleasingly gets plenty to do here. As the head doctor at the sanatorium, the impotent voice of reason amidst the less and less easy to explain away dramatics, he commands the screen whenever he’s on. Shirley Knight meanwhile delivers an elegantly eerie performance as Doe’s mother, arriving to impart an earnest warning about her son, then departing with ethereal serenity. And then there’s Slovenian actor Zeljko Ivanek in the first of what thus far tallies in excess of a hundred film and television roles, large and small; he most recently cropped up in 2017’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. His John Doe is at once scary and sympathetic, and on the strength of his stellar performance it’s easy to see why he continued in the profession with such success.

With moody cinematography from debuting DoP Roger Pratt (Brazil, Batman) and a score by Trevor Jones (The Dark Crystal, Angel Heart) that spans the thrill-infused to the breezily melodic, The Sender is arguably Roger Christian’s most enjoyable film and well worth spending time with. 

Arrow Video have done a splendid job with their restoration, which looks absolutely luscious on their new Blu-ray release. The supplements comprise an audio commentary from Roger Christian, interviews with Thomas Baum and Paul Freeman, an overview of psychic horror in the cinema from genre guru Kim Newman, a decent sized step-through stills gallery, a trawl through all the extended, alternate and deleted material in Baum’s shooting script, and a trailer. And what would any Arrow release be without reversible sleeve art and an attractive limited edition collectors’ booklet?

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