BY LEE PFEIFFER

Twilight Time has released the 1959 Fox Western "Warlock" on Blu-ray as in a limited edition of 3,000 units. To call the film a superior Western might be a bit misleading, given the fact that so many great films of this genre were released in 1950s. "Warlock" isn't a classic but it tries hard to be (perhaps a bit too hard.) What can be said is that it is a consistently interesting film with a complex script detailing the dilemmas of some very complex characters.  The movie opens in the titular town, a speck on the map in the desert landscape that the official marshal for the area only rarely makes an appearance, thus forcing the townspeople to hire their own lawmen despite the fact that they lack legal status. When the movie opens, we find the town being routinely terrorized by a group of sadistic and wild cowboys led by Abe McQuown (Tom Drake). To show they are impervious to the law, they run the new marshal out of town in a particularly cruel and humiliating manner. (As with many films of this type, the townsmen are cowardly milquetoasts and even the deputy refuses to aid the marshal.) The town council decides to pay ten times the previous marshal's salary to hire Clay Blaisedell (Henry Fonda), a notorious and fearless gunman who has a reputation for restoring law and order to troubled towns. Blaisedell arrives with his constant companion, fellow gunman Tom Morgan (Anthony Quinn) and lays down the terms of his employment. In addition to his salary, Blaisedell demands complete autonomy over his methods for ridding Warlock of McQuown and his band of thugs. Additionally, he gets permission to open a gambling and prostitution sideline in the local saloon that he and Morgan will control. Out of desperation, the town council agrees.

The story focuses on a third major character in this scenario: Johnny Gannon (Richard Widmark), a disillusioned member of McQuown's gang who is becoming incensed at the senseless cruelty they practice. He stays with the gang only to keep an eye on his 19 year-old brother, Billy (Frank Gorshin), who is prone acting foolishly and impulsively. As Blaisedell and Morgan take draconian steps to confront McQuown and his men, the results become immediately apparent. However, the townspeople become leery of Blaisedell's dictatorial powers and hire Johnny Gannon to be the new marshal. Gannon has left McQuown's gang and is courageously promising to confront his former friends and ensure they leave the territory. This sets in motion competition with Blaisedell, who Gannon informs can no longer act as an unofficial arm of the law. Adding to this tension are a number of other factors that make "Warlock" play out at times like a soap opera. Blaisedell becomes engaged to local good girl Jessie Marlowe (Dolores Michaels), who is insistent that he reform his ways and adopt a respectful profession. This angers Morgan, who resents her interference. Meanwhile, Morgan is haunted the arrival in town of his ex-flame, the appropriately named prostitute Lily Dollar (Dorothy Malone), who is carrying a long-time grudge and threatens to undermine Morgan's reputation by revealing some devastating secrets about him.

There's a lot going on in "Warlock", both the town and the film, and at times the intelligent screenplay by Robert Alan Aurthur (based on the novel by Oakley Hall) seems over-stuffed with dramatic relationships and situations. At its heart, the film is about divided loyalties. Blaisedell wants to honor his promise to marry Jessie but he resents hurting Morgan in the process. Johnny Gannon is part of a gang he hesitates to leave because he feels loyal to his brother Billy and wants to act as his protector. The townspeople are grateful to Blaisedell for helping to restore peace to Warlock but they feel obliged to hire Gannon as the new lawman. I don't usually analyze films from a Freudian viewpoint because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar but one would have to willfully blind to ignore the homoerotic elements in the relationship between Blaisedell and Morgan. They are more like a married couple than old buddies. Indeed, when Blaisedell announces his engagement to Jessie, Morgan reacts like a spurned lover and has a breakdown of sorts that leads to a dramatic incident of violence. As for Blaisdell, he seems rather passive about the coming wedding, acting very much like a man who feels marriage is a mandatory part of a straight man's life, so he'd better get hitched in order to reassure himself of his masculinity. It's also worth noting that both Blaisdell and Morgan pay a lot of attention to their wardrobes and dress like dandies, which would be in line with Hollywood's perception of homosexual men in the era in which the film was made. In any event, this not-so-subtle element of the plot adds a fascinating angle to the production. The performances are uniformly excellent under the direction of Edward Dmytryk, the former blacklisted filmmaker who revived his career by naming names- which might add yet another level of Freudian analysis to a plot that centers on guilt-ridden, emotionally conflicted protagonists.

The Twilight Time region-free Blu-ray does justice to the fine cinematography of Joseph MacDonald, which makes the most of the vistas that were meant for CinemaScope. Bonus extras are limited to the original trailer, isolated score track and brief newsreel bit featuring Fonda at a charity event. There are also the usual insightful liner notes by Julie Kirgo. "Warlock" gets a bit bogged down in its own excesses (the 121 minute running time begins to make the film sag toward the end), but it is intelligent, compelling and engaging throughout. Recommended.

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BY FRED BLOSSER

In Michael Cimino’s “Year of the Dragon” (1985), now available in a handsome Blu-ray edition from the Warner Archive Collection, gang war threatens to erupt in New York’s Chinatown when the city’s elderly Triad kingpin is spectacularly murdered by a young Chinese thug. Police Captain Stanley White (Mickey Rourke) is brought in to crack down before more blood is spilled, as long as he doesn’t crack down too hard. As far as the NYPD and the neighborhood elders are concerned, things are fine the way they are in Chinatown under the Triad. All that’s needed is to bring the suddenly upstart youth gangs under control. But Stanley knows that the only way to really clean up Chinatown is to wipe out the underlying corruption of the Triad itself. To that end, he plunges into his assignment with a zeal that even Dirty Harry Callahan might find excessive. Stanley figures out that that the kingpin’s murder wasn’t a spontaneous act by a hopped-up teenager, but the opening move in a long game by Joey Tai (John Lone), the dead man’s urbane son-in-law, to seize control of the Triad’s billion-dollar drug trafficking business. Stanley harasses Joey, wiretaps his headquarters using a Catholic convent down the street as home base, inserts a rookie Chinese-American police officer undercover into the kitchen staff of Joey’s trendy restaurant, and pushes back when the department tries to move him off the case. Recognizing the power of the media while sneering at journalists as “vampires,” he cynically enlists an ambitious young female TV reporter to further his strategy. Stanley gives Tracy (Ariane) a scoop every time he digs up more evidence on Joey, she gives him the lead on the six o’clock news hour. When their business relationship becomes sexual as well, the situation strains Stanley’s already fragile marriage with his neglected wife Connie (Caroline Kava).

Michael Cimino’s moviemaking career had more ups and downs than this year’s Dow Jones, plummeting from the high of “The Deer Hunter” in 1978 to the critical and commercial fiasco of “Heaven’s Gate” in 1980. While “Year of the Dragon” didn’t represent a total rebound from the latter debacle, it put Cimino behind the camera again in the first of three respectably budgeted movies for the Dino De Laurentiis company. The partnership continued with “The Sicilian” (1987) and “The Desperate Hours” (1990), even though “Year of the Dragon,” based on a novel by Robert Daley, underperformed at the U.S. box office. It made only $18 million in ticket sales against its $24 million cost, and received a nomination for a Golden Raspberry Award as Worst Movie of the Year. Strictly speaking on the picture’s dramatic merit, this less than respectful reception is understandable. The script by Cimino and Oliver Stone overlooks or blithely dismisses some key points of basic logic. The racist, sexist, and insubordinate White is known to hate Asians, and he’s already rubbed the brass the wrong way in his career. “Nobody likes you, Stanley,” his colleague Lou Bukowski (Ray Barry) tells him, as if the NYPD assesses job performance by the criteria of a high school popularity contest. So why is this loose cannon unleashed on a politically and racially sensitive murder case? Some of the confusion suggests that Cimino may have written or filmed expository scenes that never made it into the final product, as when suddenly, late in the film, we learn that Lou isn’t just another of Stanley’s NYPD colleagues. He, Stanley, and Connie grew up together as friends in the same Polish-American neighborhood. He doesn’t resent Stanley just because he’s a by-the-book bureaucrat and Stanley is a rebellious maverick. He resents that Stanley turned his back on the old crowd when he changed his Polish name to “White,” and that he makes Connie miserable.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The Warner Archive has released "Go Naked in the World", a 1961 screen adaptation of a novel by Tom T. Chamales that apparently caused a bit of a sensation back in day with its forthright and adult look a highly-charged sexual relationship. The film, directed by Ranald MacDougall, opens with Nick Stratton (Anthony Franciosa) returning home on leave from the U.S. Army. We know things are somewhat tense with his family because he doesn't immediately tell them he is back, preferring to do some partying first. When his father Pete (Ernest Borgnine) discovers this, the tension builds immediately. Pete is a well-known construction magnate whose projects dot the city. Nick is in rebellion against his overbearing father, who feels that his son must follow him into the construction business. Pete loves his family, which consists of his long-suffering wife Mary (Nancy R. Pollack) and their two children, Nick and his teenage sister Yvonne (Luana Patten) but he alienates them with his heavy-handed demands that everyone march to his tune. He relegates Mary and Yvonne to the roles of helpless females and obnoxiously dictates his daughter's dating habits to the point of humiliating her. Mary, his wife of 30 years, has no say in any important matters. However, Nick is more rebellious and constantly stands up to his father, leading to explosive confrontations.  Things only worsen when Nick falls head over heels for the vivacious Guilletta (Gina Lollobrigida), an independent party girl with a knock-out figure who can only be described in the vernacular of the era as a "bombshell". Nick has no trouble luring Guilletta into bed but he can't understand why she wants to leave it as a one-night stand. Nick is more than smitten- he's in love but Guilletta continues to inexplicably try to keep him at arm's length even though it's clear she loves him. Turns out that Nick is rather naive in his understanding of her lifestyle. He soon learns that she is a notorious hooker. Worse, his own womanizing father is among her clients! Nick still can't leave her- but his relationship brings the feud with his father to an even more alarming level. Caught in the middle is Guillette, a woman who is ashamed of her lifestyle but not sufficiently ashamed enough to quit it. She acts as an unwitting catalyst for the destruction of Nick's family's relationships that extends to Mary and Yvonne finally confronting Pete about his dictatorial ways. Wracked by guilt, Guillietta attempts to leave Nick again and again, as she suspects their love affair can only end tragically. Still, she is drawn to him with the same passion he has for her and their relationship continues even as it leads them to mutual disaster.

"Go Naked in the World" is extremely steamy in its treatment of sex when one considers it was released in an era in which such activities could only be hinted at. Nick and Guillette clearly love sex and the film doesn't paint them judgmentally as "bad people" for engaging in this behavior, which was fairly progressive for the time.  The film is essentially a soap opera but a very engrossing one. Franciosa gives a powerful performance as a young man torn between his love for his father and the fact that he resents his attempts to dominate his life. Lollobrigida is terrific. She was often written off as another Italian sex symbol but I have never seen a film in which she didn't give a highly impressive performance. Her abilities range from light comedy to tragic dramas such as this. Borgnine, another great reliable force in old Hollywood, dominates every scene he is in and convincingly plays Franciosa's father even though he was only ten years old than him. The script has some melodramatic aspects but remains consistently interesting thanks to an intelligent, believable screenplay and fine direction.  The impressive supporting cast includes Will Kuluva and Philip Ober. High recommended.

The DVD contains the original theatrical trailer and is region free.

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BY DOUG OSWALD

Gregory Peck is an Army intelligence officer stationed in West Berlin during the Cold War in “Night People,” available on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. Lt. Colonel Steve Van Dyke (Peck) is investigating the kidnapping of an American soldier stationed in West Berlin and taken by Soviet agents to East Germany. It’s unknown at first why the soldier was taken, but his wealthy industrialist father soon arrives in an attempt to get his son back with money if necessary. His philosophy is everyone has a price, but Van Dyke knows better and has no time for outside interference. Broderick Crawford plays the father, Charles Leatherby, who uses his connections in Washington to meet with the American government bureaucrats in West Berlin. Van Dyke dresses down the father in short order, but builds a relationship with Leatherby in order to keep him on a short leash and use him in the correct way.

Van Dyke is also finalizing a plan for a Russian to defect to the West with his family and thinks the kidnapping may be connected, but it turns out to be far more complex. Van Dyke has a German informant, “Hoffy” Hoffmeier (Anita Bjork), with an addiction to absinthe and their relationship may be more than professional. Van Dyke is assisted by his military aid, Sergeant Eddie McColloch (Buddy Ebsen), and his German secretary, Kathy Gerhardt (Marianne Koch), always suspicious and jealous of Hoffy. The Cold War was a complex puzzle, especially in Berlin, a divided city in a divided country, often with divided and complex allegiances. It turns out the kidnappers want an elderly married couple who helped the allies during WWII. They’re wanted by East Germans seeking revenge against the couple for their betrayal of Nazi Germany.

Written and directed by Nunnally Johnson, the complex plot requires close attention. The story unfolds mostly at night and has a neo noir feel to it. Its spy vs. spy with double agents and triple agents and repeat viewing is rewarded with greater clarity. There are nuances I missed the first time around and if there is a flaw in this movie, it’s that the plot is almost too complex. After a follow-up viewing, things made more sense and that’s one of the many joys of home video – rewind and repeat. I’m not sure how audiences reacted to this movie when released in theaters and I wonder how often it was broadcast on television. I’d never seen the movie until this Blu-ray was released and I enjoyed the complex nature of the plot. It requires the viewer to think through the plot as if building a puzzle, anticipating the patterns as each minute is pieced together. This isn’t a thriller dependent on action, fights and car chases. It requires the viewer to think.

The cast features familiar character actors like Max Showalter as a local American bureaucrat, Walter Abel as an Army surgeon always begging a smoke, Peter van Eyck as a local West German bureaucrat and John Horsley as a British Army liaison. Buddy Ebsen is terrific as Sergeant McColloch and steals nearly every scene. The kidnapped soldier is played by Ted Avery and his role is almost a footnote as the main thrust of the story is the spy game as it unfolds over several nights. Much of the movie takes place in a few key locations including Van Dyke’s office, a local nightclub and an Army hospital. Much of the plot unfolds over telephone calls with a vital story twist made after an interrogation and an innocent conversation between Van Dyke and the British liaison. I’m not going to reveal it here, but it unfolds quickly as all the pieces are fitted together.

The Blu-ray looks and sounds terrific with a neo-noir feel to the color production. Filmed in CinemaScope and released in 1954, the film clocks in at 93 minutes. An unobtrusive score by Cyril J. Mockridge works well to help set the mood throughout the film. Extras on the disc include trailers for this and several other Peck titles released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. There’s also a nine -minute interview with Peck’s children discussing their father and this movie. I highly recommend “Night People” for fans of Peck and those who enjoy a complex Cold War thriller driven by great characters and a complex plot.

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN

Two men drive across the blazing Nevada desert and stop at the bridge leading to the town of Chuckawalla. Eddie Bendix (John Hodiak) remarks to his companion Johnny Ryan (Wendell Corey) that the bridge hasn’t been repaired since they were last here. We learn that there was some kind of accident that took place a while ago and Eddie was involved. Driving up behind them, honking the horn on her Chrysler wood-trimmed Town and Country convertible, comes 19-year-old Paula Haller (24-year-old Lizabeth Scott), freshly kicked out of yet another school, on her way to stay with her mother, Fritzi (Mary Astor). The chance meeting sets off sparks between the two, much to the dismay of Eddie’s friend Johnny. Uh-oh, what’s up with that?

Paula drives into town and stops at the Purple Sage Saloon, which her mother owns, along with the police chief, the mayor, and most of the town. On the way Paula runs into Deputy Sheriff Tom Hanson (Burt Lancaster), who has been carrying a torch for her since she left for school. While they’re talking out in the street in front of the saloon, Eddie and Johnny roll into town, and we see the start of a romantic triangle between Paula, Tom, and Eddie, or is it a rectangle, since Johnny seems pretty angry with Eddie over the attention he’s paying Paula.

Turns out Fritzi is not in the Purple Sage, so Paula drives out to her rather large home out on the desert, where we discover her relationship with mom is a bit strange as well. At first Fritzi seems like a 1940s version of a helicopter mom, but as the story goes on there’s something obsessive about the way she wants to run Paula’s life. In one scene a thunderstorm awakens Paula, and Fritzi pops in and offers to sleep with her like she did when she was little. Paula says thanks but no thanks. Uh-oh, what’s up with that?

As the story progresses, we learn that Eddie is a gambler and has come to stay at a ranch near town before setting up a gambling operation in Las Vegas. We learn his wife was killed in the accident at the bridge when her car plunged into the river. Johnny takes care of Eddie but is a little over-protective, which is starting to get on Eddie’s nerves, especially since Paula’s arrival on the scene. At one point Johnny threatens to kill Paula if she doesn’t leave Eddie alone. So we have two characters, Eddie, and Paula, both in the clutches of people who want to control them. Even Tom, the deputy, is guilty of wanting to control Paula, when he warns her to stay away from Eddie. He knows he’s no good. He tells Paula that she’d better be careful, because she looks a lot like Eddie’s late wife. Paula runs from both her mother and Tom and just naturally has to fall in love with the bad guy.

“Desert Fury” is based on a novel by Ramona Stewart, and was adapted for the screen by Robert Rossen and an uncredited A.I. Bezzerides. The screenplay shows a lot of Bezzerides touches. The screenwriter of “They Drive by Night”, “Thieves Highway,” and “Kiss Me Deadly” specialized in stories about flawed characters who cannot overcome their defects and are driven to their fate by them. In this case both Paula and Eddie seem to be weak characters who both need and, at the same time, are repelled by those who want to dominate them. When they try to escape this web of entanglement it merely sets off a disaster.

This is the kind of movie that should be listed in the dictionary as the definition of “potboiler.” It’s got more pots boiling than a kitchen in a Chinese restaurant. There are even more sordid twists, as we learn more about Fritzi’s background, and her relationship years ago with Eddie, as well as the truth about what happened to Eddie’s wife.

“Desert Fury” has been called the “gayest film noir ever made.” Stewart’s source novel reportedly is much more open about Johnny and Eddie’s relationship, which is strongly implied in the movie, but never explicitly stated. Audiences were not ready to see gay relationships on the screen in 1947.

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DIRECTOR JOHN STEVENSON (""KUNG FU PANDA", "SHERLOCK GNOMES") PAYS TRIBUTE TO A SPECIAL EFFECTS GENIUS

Stop motion animation is still the most magical of special effects techniques to me, because instinctively you know that real light is falling on a real object that is seemingly moving of its own volition. Computer Generated Imagery may be able to create more complex and fluid motion, but we instinctively know that what we are looking at does not exist in our world. There is still an arcane power in watching something you know you can touch move on its own. So films featuring stop motion animation were my great passion as a child.

Stop motion animation was the Rolls Royce of special effects techniques in the 1960s and early 1970s. If you were a young fantasy addict a new Ray Harryhausen film at the local ABC cinema was the equivalent of a new MCU film dropping today. Because Ray Harryhausen lived in London he sometimes appeared on British television with his models ( programmes such as “Screen Test” with Michael Rodd in 1970) where he would explain the principals of stop motion animation, which gave me a basic understanding of the technique at a young age. Stop motion animation could also be found in children’s television shows like “The Pogles” and “The Magic Roundabout”, commercials and even on “The Old Grey Whistle Test” where clips from Ladislas Starevitch’s films would sometimes accompany music tracks (courtesy of Phillip Jenkinson). It was a golden age if you were a fan of the technique, and Ray Harryhausen became my idol, representing everything that was magical about the movies for me. But I had yet to discover Karel Zeman.

I first encountered Karel Zeman’s work on a British children’s T.V show about movie special effects that showed extracts from a 15-minute Czech film called “The Magic World Of Karel Zeman” made in 1962. At the time I had no idea what I was looking at. The only part I remember clearly was a scene that showed some children climbing on the back of a dead Stegosaurus, then the camera tracked around to reveal that the Stegosaurus was a painting on a sheet of board close to the camera while the children stood on a wooden frame a long way in the distance. This was supposedly how they shot the scene from “Journey To The Beginning Of Time” (Many years later when I finally got to see the film I was amazed to discover that the film employed a life size prop, not a painting. I wondered if Karel Zeman was playing a joke by deliberately misleading the audience?) As a child I was fascinated by this short clip of film and wanted to know more about the movie and the person who made it, but Karel Zeman was elusive and it was difficult to find any information on him in the pre-internet 1960’s. It would be another thirty years before I was able to see his film.

Karel Zeman was Czech and began his film career in advertising and first worked in animation making an advertisement for soap. In 1943 he accepted a job offer at Zlin animation studio and in 1945 became director of the stop motion animation production group and made his first short film “A Christmas Dream” (“Vanocni Sen”) which combined animated puppets and live action. Zeman then created a series of puppet shorts featuring a character called Mr. Prokouk, which were very popular. In 1948 he made the beautiful short film “Inspiration”(“Inspirace”) using animated glass figures, and two years later directed the half hour film “King Lavra” (“Kra Lavra”) which went on to win a National Award. Karel Zeman’s first feature film “The Treasure Of Bird Island” (“Poklad Ptaciho Ostrova”) was completed in 1952 and used innovative techniques to evoke Persian art. Then in 1955 he made the first of his six feature films to use his unique combination of live action and animation techniques that would secure his place in movie history, the remarkable “Cesta Do Praveku”, or “Journey To the Beginning Of Time”.

JTTBOT tells the story of four children who venture back in time to discover the origins of life on Earth. On the way they encounter creatures from the Quaternary, the Tertiary, the Mezazoic, and Paleozoic eras. Uniquely and charmingly, no time is spent on a logical explanation for their trip. There are no fantastical devices here-no time machines, no boring into the center of the Earth, no discovery of lost plateaus or uncharted, mist shrouded islands. The boys want to go, so they go. They take a small boat and enter a mysterious cave tunnel and emerge in prehistory travelling further back in time as they follow the river to its source.

Apart from Karel Zeman’s most obvious accomplishments in creating myriad special effects sequences, his skill as a director is evident in his handling of the child actors, most of whom were not professionals. He elicits natural, unforced performances from his cast with none of the sentimentality or grating archness found in many American and British films featuring child actors from the same period. Zeman’s use of the camera is also very effective with many tracking shots taken on location or on studio sets closely following the children before an encounter with a prehistoric creature. These shots with the camera following just behind the children’s shoulders or tracking back in front of their faces puts the audience directly inside their experience and makes the build up to the reveal of the various creatures much more powerful. Compare these pre-effects sequences with similar scenes in American dinosaur films from the same period such as “Unknown Island” (1948) or “The Lost Continent” (1951) to see that Zeman’s direction is much more effective. Perhaps his least appreciated talent is as a writer. Apart from a few places where the film becomes too studiedly educational, most of the dialogue between the children flows naturally and believably. His abilities as a scriptwriter would become more apparent in his later works.

But the main reason anybody sees a film like this is to see the recreation of prehistoric life and it is here that Karel Zeman differentiates himself from Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen. These movie giants concentrated on one technique, stop motion animation combined with live action via miniature rear projection or travelling mattes, to create their illusions. They occasionally used giant props (King Kong’s hand or the Pteranodon’s feet from “1,000,000 Years B.C.”) to interact with the human actors, but all the creatures were primarily brought to life by stop motion animation (sometimes augmented by a mechanical head for close up’s like the King Kong bust, or the Ceratosaurs from “The Animal World”).

Karel Zeman is different from every other movie magician by fearlessly utilizing every FX and animation technique available to him at the time and often switching technique multiple times within a single scene. Examples are the mammoth, which is sometimes a stop motion creation and sometimes a mechanical puppet shot in camera on location with the children. The Phorusrhacos is a stop motion puppet, a hand puppet for close ups, and a paper cut-out for the running shots. The Brontosaurus is a combination of a mechanical head atop a painted flat body for the shots on land, and a hand puppet for the shots in water. The Uintatherium is combination of stop motion and close up’s using a mechanical head. Zeman is also fearless about using completely different techniques not commonly used in visual effects films, such as creating a herd of bounding antelope, giraffes and a Smilodon purely through paper cut out animation. An Edmontosaurus (called a Trachodon in the film) and an amphibian (possibly an Eryops) are brought to life as hand puppets. This willingness to use any technique to create the creatures means that the menagerie in “Journey To The Beginning Of Time” is much larger than in Willis O’Brien’s “King Kong” (9 stop motion creatures, King Kong, Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, two legged lizard, Tyrannosaurus (probably), Elasmosaurus, Pteranodon, prehistoric vulture (possibly Merriam’s Teratorn), various birds) or Ray Harryhausen’s “1,000,000 Years B.C. (13 creatures including a photographically enlarged iguana, tarantula, and grasshopper, Allosaurus, Archelon, Brontosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Pteranodon and its two chicks, Rhamphorhynchus, Triceratops, and a live warthog). In “Journey To The Beginning Of Time” we see 30 creatures (Mammuthus primigenius, Coelodonta, Deinotherium, Honanotherium, Smilodon, Moropus, Uintatherium, Phorusrhacos, Helladotherium, Pteranodons, Styracosaurus, Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Meganeura, Eryops, Trilobite, plus a giant boa constrictor, a swimming amphibian, a sea snake, flamingoes, antelopes, giraffes, crocodiles, a leopard, vultures, turtles, various animated birds and a large, real carp). Zeman also outdoes Harryhausen and O’Brien by having multiples of the same animal in shot instead of the one representative of each species that show up for their one sequence in “King Kong”, “Son Of Kong”, “I,000,000 Years B.C.” or “The Valley Of Gwangi”, usually to menace the heroes or get into a fight. JTTBOT has a flock of flamingoes, a flock of Pteranodons, herds of antelope, gazelle and giraffe, a congregation of crocodiles, two grazing Helladotherium and two battling Coelodonta. These brief scenes of herds of wildlife eating or galloping add immeasurably to the believability of Zeman’s prehistoric world and make it seem like life continues once the camera has moved on, rather than the line of solitary creatures waiting for their turn to be menacing in the O’Brien or Harryhausen films.

By Hank Reineke

There’s a long-standing Hollywood tradition of blending filmdom’s most bankable but seemingly disparate genres – horror and comedy – but a successful marriage of the two is a tricky business at best. The gold standard films of these hybrid would be, generationally, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Young Frankenstein (1974) or, I suppose, Ghostbusters (1984) should one choose to go “modern-contemporary.” Parodies of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde would serve as a virtual cottage industry of horror-comedy fusion, these pastiches encompassing the silent era, animated shorts, features, and even pornographic films. Having already challenged the Frankenstein monster, Abbott and Costello would eventually take on other classic movie monsters, including Boris Karloff’s Mr. Hyde in an entertaining 1953 Universal Studios production. I like that one a lot.

Charles B. Griffith’s Dr. Heckyl & Mr. Hype (Cannon Group, 1980) is one of the odder entries. It’s difficult to exactly pinpoint this production’s various misfires, but Dr. Heckyl & Mr. Hype ultimately displays more madness than madcap charm. This brand new release on Blu-ray by Scorpion Releasing promotes the film as nothing less than a “Long Sought after Cult Classic,” and I guess it might be… but only if screened before an audience of undemanding and sleepy stoners attending a midnight movie. It’s a shame really as there’s a cadre of proven talent both behind and in front of the cameras. Director Charles B. Griffith cut his teeth in the movie business contributing playfully winking screenplays to low budget exploitation films for industry maverick Roger Corman. Some of the quickly tossed-off monochrome films he helped construct – most notably Bucket of Blood (1959) and Little Shoppe of Horrors (1960) – would go on to achieve acclaim as true pop culture classics.

It’s of interest that simultaneous to the 1960 release of Corman and Griffith’s Little Shoppe of Horrors to the U.S. drive-in circuit, a little know twenty-two year old British actor named Oliver Reed would appear, un-credited, in the Hammer Studios horror film The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (Terence Fisher, 1960). That Griffith and Reed work together some twenty-years on Dr. Heckyl & Mr. Hype would suggest – on some cosmic level, I suppose - a neat closing of the circle. But it’s sadly more akin to the tightening of a noose.

Griffith gets sole credit for the film’s screenplay – although a sub-title acknowledges his “Apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson,” the author of the classic 1886 novella “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.” Griffith’s script, for all its faults, does offer an interesting twist on the classic tale… even if that twist is only a variation of Jerry Lewis’s The Nutty Professor (1963). Oliver Reed’s Dr. Henry Heckyl is, unlike the prosperous physician of Stevenson’s creation, an eccentric podiatrist, one of three doctors (“Heckyl, Hinkle and Hoo”) operating out of San Texaco’s quirky Robert A. Coogan Memorial Clinic.

What’s different here is Dr. Heckyl, as he himself admits forthrightly, possesses a “Face that Spoils a Sunny Day.” Though nattily dressed, he is dreadful in appearance. His skin is of a green-gray pallor and spotted with skin lesions, festering sores and ulcerations. His nose is bulbous and serrated. His teeth are brown, razor-sharp and crooked, and a bird’s nest of a fright wig sits upon his hideous noggin. One of his eyes is completely red, the other completely green. He walks stoop-shouldered and slumbering through his sunny suburban neighborhood, frightening – or, at the very least - making everyone around him uncomfortable in his approach. Some look away from him in sympathy, some in obvious distaste.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

By the time Burt Reynolds finally starred in the 1972 classic "Deliverance", he had been paying his dues in Hollywood for many years with varying degrees of success on television. His feature films, however, were strictly "B" grade. Saul David, who produced a 1970 film starring Reynolds titled "Skullduggery", bemoaned at the time that he should have been a major movie star but bad luck seemed to always interfere. Reynolds wisely cultivated an image as a hip, towel-snapping wiseguy through appearing on seemingly every American game and chat show. His appearances on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" merited "must-see TV" status. Ironically, "Deliverance" entirely abandoned this popular image of Reynolds and afforded him a dramatic role that he fulfilled with excellent results. But the success of the film made Reynolds anxious to prove he could sustain his boxoffice clout without the help of a strong co-star, in the case of of "Deliverance", Jon Voight. Reynolds chose wisely for his follow-up feature. "White Lightning" was developed under the working title "McClusky". The role of a hunky, charismatic southern good ol' boy fit Reynolds like a glove because it allowed him to incorporate his penchant for performing stunts with his flippant, wise-cracking TV persona.

Filmed in Arkansas, the movie finds Reynolds as "Gator" McClusky, a man doing prison time for running illegal moonshine. Gator still has another year to spend on the prison farm when he gets word that his younger brother has been murdered. (We see the scene play out over the opening credits in which two young men are brutally drowned in a swamp by the local sheriff, J.C. Connors (Ned Beatty) and his deputy.) Enraged and spoiling for revenge, Gator accepts a deal to work undercover for federal agents to expose Connors as the local Huey Long-type power broker in Bogan County. Indeed, the seemingly affable, understated Connors runs the entire county like a personal fiefdom, using extortion, shakedowns and outright murder to ensure his stature. He also gets a piece of the action from the very moonshiners he's supposed to prosecute. Gator feels uncomfortable working as a snitch but it's the only way to find out why his brother was killed and to bring Connors to justice. Using his considerable charm and his background as a guy from a small rural community, he finds himself quickly working for a moonshine ring headed by Big Bear (R.G. Armstrong), who is brutal in retribution against anyone who crosses him. Gator is assigned to deliver moonshine with a partner, Roy Boone (Bo Hopkins). They spend a lot of time together and become fast friends, even though Roy's hot-to-trot girlfriend Lou (Jennifer Billingsley) succeeds in seducing Gator, thus endangering his mission when Roy gets wind of the deception. When Gator learns the reason why his brother and his friend were murdered, he becomes even more vengeful, leading to a spectacular car chase involving Connors and his corrupt deputies. 

"White Lightning" was directed by Joseph Sargent, who was primarily known for his work in television. He fulfills the requirements of the film quite well, though the spectacular car chases and jaw-dropping action scenes were largely the work of legendary stutman/coordinator Hal Needham, who would go on to work on many films with Reynolds. The film is consistently lively but it also has moments of poignancy and drama. The supporting cast is terrific with Ned Beatty of "Deliverance" reuniting with Reynolds with good results. Beatty underplays the sense of menace attributable to his character. He also plays up his status as a pillar of the community, tossing off barbs about how hippies and big city liberals threaten "our values" and-worst of all- encourage "our coloreds to vote!". Meanwhile, he is heading up a vast criminal enterprise. Jennifer Billingsley is wonderful as the lovable air-headed seductress who will jump into bed with a man if there's a prospect of getting a new dress out of the bargain. There are also fine turns by Bo Hopkins, R.G. Armstrong and Diane Ladd (whose name in the opening and closing credits is misspelled as "Lad". Ouch!) The movie turned out to be a big hit for United Artists, aided in part by striking ad campaigns with the same weapon-as-phallic symbol design employed for Richard Roundtree's "Shaft's Big Score" the previous year coupled with another poster showing Reynolds behind the wheel of a speeding car. Sex and speed became hallmarks for promoting a Reynolds action movie.

Kino Lorber has reissued their 2019 Blu-ray edition, which is first-rate in all aspects, with a fine transfer and a 2014 interview with Burt Reynolds, who looks back fondly on the importance the movie had on proving he could be top-billed in a hit movie. The film initiated his association with rural-based comedies and action films and three years later, a successful sequel ("Gator") would be released. Reynolds also drops the interesting fact that this was to be Steven Spielberg's first feature film. However, Reynolds says the young TV director got cold feet about his ability to film on so many difficult locations, given that his background was largely working in studios. Reynolds praises his co-star Ned Beatty and reminds everyone that "White Lightning" was only his second film, having made his screen debut in "Deliverance".  He is also very complimentary towards Jennifer Billingsley and regrets that she never became a big star. Reynolds also discusses Hal Needham's zealousness for performing dangerous stunts and relates how one key scene in which a car shoots out over water to land on a moving barge almost went disastrously wrong. He says the film has a realistic atmosphere because of the screenplay by William W. Norton, who adapted many aspects of his own hard scrabble life. The only negative note Reynolds sounds is about Diane Ladd, who he cryptically says he did not like working with, although he doesn't go into detail as to why.The set includes a new feature not available on the previous Blu-ray release: a commentary track by film historian collaborators Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson. As far as commentary tracks are concerned, the duo are always terrific and this outing is no exception. Their easy-going, laid-back and humorous style is appropriate for the tone of the film. They go into great detail about aspects of the and cast. I hadn't realized until listening to the track how on-the-mark they are in assessing Ned Beatty as an actor whose physical appearance varied dramatically depending upon the type of story he was cast in. Indeed, they are correct. The evil good ol' boy corrupt sheriff of "White Lightning" is light years away from the fish-out-water rape victim of "Deliverance" or the demagogic TV executive of "Network". The track is good enough to merit upgrading to this version of the Blu-ray even if you have the previous release.

The Blu-ray also includes the original trailer, which was very effective in playing up Reynolds' emerging star power. Highly recommended.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

The 1960s spawned a number of thrillers that were blatantly intended to emulate the style and content of Alfred Hitchcock's films. The best of the lot was Stanley Donen's "Charade" (1963) which can be described as the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock didn't direct. There were others of varying degrees of quality, all of which boasted one-word titles in the manner of many Hitchcock classics. Among them: "Arabaesque", "Masquerade" and "Mirage". Most, but not all, were breezy, lighthearted adventures that pitted a glamorous couple against exotic bad guys in equally exotic locations. Fitting snugly into this sub-genre was "Blindfold", a 1966 romp that paired Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale. The movie begins in Manhattan and focuses on Hudson as Dr. Bartholomew Snow, a revered psychiatrist to the rich who is also one of the city's most eligible bachelors, probably because he looks a lot like Rock Hudson. Snow has a comfortable life running a successful practice. His sole employee is his devoted secretary Smitty (an amusing Anne Seymour), an older woman who speaks to him more like a son than an employer. Smitty keeps a file on Snow's failed romantic relationships and constantly needles him about being a serial proposer. However, he always gets cold feet before he walks down the aisle and early in the film, we see him call off yet another engagement with a frustrated (but unseen) lover. One afternoon while enjoying a horseback ride in Central Park, Snow is approached by one General Prat (Jack Warden), who is affiliated with a top secret U.S. intelligence agency. He explains to Snow that one of his former patients, an esteemed government scientist named Arthur Vincenti (Alejandro Rey) has become the target of a crime syndicate that is looking to kidnap him and deliver him to a foreign power (presumably the Soviets) so that he can be forced to divulge important information. Pratt explains that Vincenti is under guard at a secret location that can't be divulged. He also tells Snow that Vincenti is in an emotionally fragile state and is babbling incoherently. He hopes that by seeing Snow once again, he will allow the doctor to treat him. Snow reluctantly agrees to help only to find that he can't be told where Vicenti is being held. To get there, he is taken on a plane to a remote area, then blindfolded and driven to the hideaway. Snow makes the trip on numerous occasions but finds that Vincenti is not responsive to his treatments.

Back in Manhattan, Snow is accosted by a beautiful, irate young woman, Vicky (Cardinale), who is Vicenti's sister. She believes that her brother has been kidnapped and that Snow is partly to blame. You can pretty much take it from there, as these types of films go. The two squabble and yell at each other and then become romantically involved. Before long, they learn that both Arthur and the General have been kidnapped. In order to save them, Snow must use his memory and sense perception to try to recreate the journey to the lost hideaway he had visited many times. This is only one of the more far-fetched elements of the script and it isn't very convincingly brought off. However, "Blindfold" is a lot of fun thanks to the charisma of Hudson and Cardinale, who have real chemistry together. Director Philip Dunne keeps the pace brisk but goes off course with a fight set inside a Central Park boat house that is played with enough slapstick to mirror an episode of "Batman". Still, the film gets better as it proceeds and the finale, which finds Hudson and Cardinale trying to penetrate a dangerous swamp to thwart the villains, is very well done. Dunne, who co-wrote the screenplay with W.H. Menger based on Lucille Fletcher's novel, blends action and comedy rather successfully and the film is aided by a fine turn by Guy Stockwell as a villain with a stutter. There are also funny supporting turns by Brad Dexter and Vito Scotti. Jack Warden, as usual, is in top form as the cigar-chomping general.

"Blindfold" doesn't approach "Charade" in terms of style or wit but it's never dull and one can do worse than to spend 102 minutes in the company of Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale.  The film has been released by Kino Lorber on Blu-ray. The transfer looks terrific but the only extras are the original trailer and trailers for other thrillers available from the company.

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BY HANK REINEKE

As best as I can determine, Curse III: Blood Sacrifice was never screened theatrically, at least not in the U.S. or England. It seems to have been unceremoniously trafficked directly to home video in 1990. The owners of the film chose to best capitalize on their investment by gamely resorting to placing full page advertisements in home-video industry trade publications, an attempt to get VHS retailers and rental stores to add the movie to their inventories. They boldly claimed in their promotional that the film was a genuine “Horror/Thriller in the tradition of The Serpent and the Rainbow,” a reference to Wes Craven’s and Universal Studio’s more celebrated voodoo film of 1988. And while Curse III bore no thematic – or even tangential - relationship to the earlier “Curse” films (The Curse (1987) and Curse II: The Bite (1989), the ad boasted to retailers they had sold over “60,000” copies of this semi-franchise’s first two films… so why not give this newest film – one featuring the great Christopher Lee (described in their broadside as the “Master of Suspense and Horror”) - a fair shot?

Scorpion Releasing’s new Blu Ray of Curse III: Blood Sacrifice is, technically, not the film’s first digital release. The film first appeared on laser disc in 1990, courtesy of RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, and this was soon followed by a more consumer-friendly VHS release originally retailing for $59.95. It disappeared from shelves soon thereafter, though it was infrequently broadcast in the US under the film’s original title Panga and released in the Beta format in the UK under the amended title of Witchcraft. The film would thereafter languish in semi-obscurity until 2015 when MGM re-issued the film on a blandly packaged DVD as part of the studio’s Limited Edition Series.

In truth, I wouldn’t have been happy paying $59.50 for the video cassette of this title back in 1991. Having said that it’s not a terrible film by any means, but neither is it a lost classic. Curse III: Blood Sacrifice was first and only film to be directed by the British film editor Sean Barton. By the time his voodoo opus arrived on the shelves of Blockbuster and other home video rental chains, Barton had already enjoyed a decade-long career in the film industry. He was, perhaps, best remembered among fans of fantastic films as one of three co-editors that helped bring Star Wars: Revenge of the Jedi to the big screen in 1983, but his résumé included work on an impressive number of theatrical features before that.

Curse III would not only serve as the vehicle marking Barton’s directorial debut, but also his first as co-screenwriter (having worked alongside South African scenarist John Hunt). Their screenplay was based on a story supplied by the Johannesburg-based actor and occasional writer Richard Haddon Haines. If the script’s storyline and characterizations are a bit thin, the film still manages to move along at a pace brisk enough to satisfy the more forgiving horror film devotees.