BY MARK MAWSTON

If you’re a fan of American Werewolf In London, Arrow’s latest Blu-ray release of the film will leave you salivating as much as the film’s titular beast. Crammed full of extras, it’s simply stunning and the key point here is that these are mainly new features and are as informative and essential as the best-ever “making of documentary, Beware The Moon by Paul Davis, that appears here, as it did on the film’s previous releases. This Arrow release is a full Rick Baker-style transformation from good to great as far as quality and content is concerned.

AWIL is easily one of Arrow’s most impressive releases and finally does justice to what is a fully fledged cult classic. Not only are the extras superb (including two feature length documentaries, the pick of which is the brand new documentary about Universal’s Wolfman mythos by Danial Griffith) but the transfer of the film itself is outstanding.

Earlier this week I asked Director John Landis what he thought of the transfer, to which he replied:

“I am delighted with the new Arrow release of An American Werewolf in London. Picture quality is excellent with strong blacks and you can choose between the original theatrical mono track or the surround stereo remix. They packed it with extras and a small poster of Graham Humphrey's excellent new art for the film”.

Not only is the content superb but the packaging is also up there and deserves to gain the recognition it deserves when it comes to the Rondo Awards next year. Along those lines I also took the opportunity to ask the man responsible for the superb new cover art, legendary poster artist Graham Humphreys (Evil Dead, Nightmare On Elm Street) about how he approached this commission, the execution of director Landis so admires:

“A fan of ‘An American Werewolf In London’ since going to the cinema during its first run, I recall leaving the London West End cinema and walking into the night, in the very same locations that I’d just witnessed on screen. It was thrilling! I was living it! This particular painting was a private commission from a fan of the film, one of a series I’ve been creating for their private poster gallery of 80s horror classics. A previous illustration of mine had already adorned the book ‘Beware The Moon’ by Paul Davis, but with a constricted brief. The new commission provided the opportunity to go ‘the full blood’ with imagery. Starting with my client’s requested elements list, my composition also included the decomposed Jack and the monstrous stormtroopers, though these additions proved not to their taste, thus resulting in a compromise and the addition of the transformation sequence (filling the otherwise vacant space). So although not satisfying my own preferred direction, the compromise has proven attractive enough to find its way beyond the private collection. It’s an honour that it has been recognized and appreciated by the director himself. At some point in the future I’ll ensure my own version makes it onto paper.”

By Hank Reineke

I must confess from the onset that I have always considered From Beyond the Grave, directed by Kevin Connor, to be the least of the Amicus horror anthologies. It’s not a terrible film by any means, but the E.C. Comics-inspired insanities and dark supernatural energies that powered the franchise for a decade or so seemed less potent this time around. This final curtain-closing portmanteau from the folks at Amicus would feature, as usual, a well-established and highly regarded cast of stars, Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, Margaret Leighton, Lesley-Anne Down and a trio of Ian’s (Bannen, Oglivy, and Carmichael) among them. The talent behind camera was of equal pro grade, but somehow the celluloid cocktail that resulted was far less kitschy and exhilarating than its forebears.

An anthology film is only as strong as its collected interior stories, of course, and the four tales that compromise From Beyond the Grave are, at best, weak tea. Naturally, the same can be said about any number of standalone episodes from such classic and revered television fare as, say, The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. These series all have their own episodic gem marks, the handful of entries that everyone recalls and can agree upon as favorites. Perhaps it was an atmospheric spine-tingler or perhaps a more thoughtful episode that ends with a novel twist. The other less-celebrated episodes that buttress these high-water marks are either – at best – only dimly recalled or simply less regarded.

Amicus was, far and away, the uncontested “studio” of honor in their presentations of these anthology horror films. The term “studio” is perhaps a bit of a misnomer as the company had no Bray House or formal studio lot as a permanent home. Taking a page from the 1945 British classic Dead of Night, transplanted American producer Milton Subotsky and his mostly stateside partner Max J. Rosenberg unleashed their first portmanteau horror Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors in 1965. That film’s success – and its dependable formula – would be tirelessly reworked a half-dozen times with such subsequent entries as Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1971), Asylum (1972), Tales from the Crypt (1972), and The Vault of Horror (1973).

In an interview with Gary Smith, the author of Uneasy Dreams: the Golden Age of British Horror 1956-1976, producer Rosenberg revealed that it was the studio brass at Warner Bros. who actually approached them one last time to make From Beyond the Grave. When the completed film was finally delivered to them, Rosenberg recalled “the executives at Warner Bros. hated it” with the studio declining to even release it. In a prudent business move to minimize the financial losses of both parties, the savvy Rosenberg arranged to retrieve for Amicus the sole rights to the film. It was then that Subotsky and Rosenberg were able to negotiate a mutually less-risky, cost-saving distribution deal with Warner Bros.

To be fair, I suppose one can sympathize with the reservations expressed by the Warner executives as From Beyond the Grave (1974) is a somewhat pedestrian entry. The bloom was already off the rose for this particular sort of production, and the already struggling British film industry was still in the midst of battling up from the mat. To make matters even more trying, by the mid-1970s, interest in the two-decade long reign of stylish, stiff-lipped and sometimes winking British horror films was clearly on the wane. The horror film zeitgeist had moved back to the U.S. with audiences now grappling with dark devil-worshipping blockbusters as Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. Not to mention the indie-film slashers who were waiting in the wings for their own bloody turn.

But there was no crystal ball to see the end was near in 1973, so the machine continued to grind. Amicus was not above pinching talent – especially more recognizable old-school on-screen talent as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee – from Hammer Films Inc. The folks at Hammer were Amicus’s most famous rival in the British horror industry, and non-trainspotting fans could – and often did - misidentify their films as genuine Hammer productions. While the formidable Christopher Lee was cast in such Amicus productions as Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, The House That Dripped Blood and the Jekyll and Hyde pastiche I, Monster, it was – unquestionably – his professional contemporary Peter Cushing who would provide the studio its principal marquee value.

Cushing would appear in no fewer than thirteen Amicus productions 1965-1976 and he, more than anyone, would become the most public face of the company’s acting troupe. Likewise, director Freddie Francis who had helmed such horror and psychological terror films as Paranoiac, Nightmare, The Evil of Frankenstein and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave for Hammer between 1963 and 1968, would bring to Amicus that studio’s recognizable flourish and attitude to his new assignments for Subotsky and Rosenberg.

The four short stories woven in the creation of From Beyond the Grave were collected from the ghost and horror tales spun by the British author R. Chetwynd-Hayes: “The Gate Crasher,” “An Act of Kindness,” “The Elemental” and “The Door.” I can’t comment on how faithful the film commits to Chetwynd-Hayes’ original stories as I have not yet had the pleasure of reading through his collected works. What I can say is that the four tales presented here aren’t particularly suspenseful or mysterious… though there is, I suppose, enough atmosphere sprinkled about to keep one interested throughout the film’s ninety plus minutes. Peter Cushing likely enjoyed only a day or two of work on the film, his contribution limited to a bit of sketchy shop-keeping – and episode bridging - at the alley storefront of his macabre antique parlour Temptations Ltd. The four tales woven are really minor morality plays that end with unforgiving Old Testament judgments. Nearly every duplicitous customer who scams the elderly Cushing gets… well, what they deserve.

The problem is that the stories chosen for the adapted screenplay courtesy of Robin Clarke and Raymond Christodoulou are not a particularly compelling or interesting. For the earlier Amicus anthologies, Milton Subotsky dutifully combed for ghoulish material through the grotesquely entertaining stories that appeared in the pages of the schlocky E.C. Comics. Though Subotsky was not, even by the account of co-producer Rosenberg, a particularly good writer, he still managed to successfully capture some of the demented E.C. Comics spirit in these earliest productions. Freddie Francis, who would go on to direct no fewer than nine films for Amicus, was impressed by Subotsky’s “passion and perseverance” for the movie business, but rued matter-of-factly in his own memoir that the producer, ultimately and alas, “wasn’t very good at making them.”

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Director Jan Zabeil's 2017 adventure drama "Three Peaks" won acclaim on the film festival circuit and it now comes to DVD in America via Kino Lorber. To say the film isn't for everyone is an understatement but patience is a virtue here as the glacially-paced story finally kicks into gear an hour into its 89 minute running-time.  Until then, the movie plays out so slowly that it makes Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock" resemble "The Fast and the Furious". The film follows the emotional ups and downs of Lea (Berenice Bejo), a young French mother who is divorced from her unseen American husband. She and her German boyfriend of two years, Aaron (Alexander Fehling) are raising her young son Tristan (Arian Montgomery) and there are concerns about the nature of Aaron's relationship with him. The movie opens with the three main characters arriving for a holiday stay at a small, remote cottage located at the base of the spectacular, snow-capped Dolomite mountains in Italy. Although Lea and Aaron are clearly in a loving relationship, they are haunted by how Tristan regards Aaron, who goes above-and-beyond to ingratiate himself to the boy. However, Lea worries that Aaron is assuming the role of father to Tristan at the expensive of his relationship with his real father. (Since we never see the father, we have to rely on Lea's assurance to Aaron that he is "a good man". ) Tristan himself sees confused. At times he calls Aaron "daddy" and at other times he seems to resent his presence, a feeling echoed when Aaron confesses to Lea that he sometimes feels the same way about Tristan. Director Zabeil is in no hurry to get to any aspect of the film that resonates with any particular sense of drama. Consequently, we observe some occasional bickering and lovemaking between the couple even as we try to empathize with their dilemma. The main problem with the script (written by Zabeil) is that the character of Tristan is inconsistent. At times, he idolizes Aaron as a father figure but inexplicably at other times, he pulls cruel minor pranks on him and demands that Aaron promise to "leave my mommy alone", which would imply he has witnessed some form of abuse when, in fact, he hasn't. The bottom line is that the kid isn't particularly likable and we end up sympathizing with Aaron, who still feels like "the other man", haunted by the spiritual presence of the boy's father.The confusing presentation of the relationships isn't helped by the fact that, for some reason, the main characters alternate speaking in German, French and English.

The movie transitions to the adventure genre when Aaron takes Tristan on a hike in the mountains. Tristan disobeys Aaron and wanders away, immediately getting lost. In his desperate search for the boy, Aaron becomes seriously injured and largely incapacitated. Director Zabeil is given the opportunity to ratchet up the suspense to a full boil but opts instead to keep things merely simmering. There are some unnerving scenes but Zabeil can't quite close the deal by making them dramatic enough to keep the viewer on edge. The film ends on an intriguing note that some might find a bit too ambiguous. The small cast is uniformly excellent (the only other characters are nameless members of a rescue team) and Axel Schneppat's cinematography is suitably stunning. The movie is never boring but it also doesn't pay off in ways we anticipate.

The Kino Lorber DVD presents an excellent transfer. Bonus features are the original trailer and trailers for other art house feature films available from the company.

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By Hank Reineke

Generally speaking, I happen to watch more bad movies than good ones… and I suppose that any film which includes the breathless line, “It’s too bad we didn’t bring the dune buggy!” suggests I’m likely in the midst of another. In truth, I sort of knew this going into Arch Hall Sr.’s cult classic EEGAH (1962), a bona fide drive-in circuit masterpiece. This film has long suffered ignobility partly due to the circulation of tattered prints relegated to the Public Domain. The film’s PD fate partly explains its inclusion in practically every budget-label 50 or 100 count horror and sci-fi multi-film DVD collection ever marketed. Happily – if somewhat curiously - Film Detective has bravely rescued the film – and its fans - from the gray-market, washed-out, faded and deteriorating prints of which we’ve been accustomed, sharing with us this brand new 4K transfer to Blu-ray from an original 35mm camera negative.

The real question I suppose is whether or not EEGAH deserves such white-glove attention? I will reason that it does, especially as I have no financial interest or skin in the game. It’s nothing if not a fun film; a completely nutty and perfect jewel of non-pretentious, time-capsule-exploitative-entertainment. It’s also of some train-spotting, fan-boy interest as the film features the decidedly fresh-faced, twenty-one year old, 7’ 2” actor Richard Kiel (“Jaws” of the James Bond films) as the titular EEGAH. EEGAH is, apparently, a brooding prehistoric cave dweller who has somehow managed to survive well into the early 1960s, unnoticed, unwashed and unloved, in the Coachella Valley of Southern Californian Mountains.

EEGAH’s curious, eon-spanning survival is never explained to scientific satisfaction in Bob Wehling’s dotty script adapted from Arch Hall Sr.’s original story. Sweet Roxy Miller’s adventure-writer father Mr. Miller (also played by Arch Hall Sr.) opines – not unreasonably – that the caveman is likely the last of his line. But he gives us no indication of how he’s intellectually arrived at his totally non-scientifically tested, off-the-cuff conclusion. By his best ballpark estimate the savage primitive has managed to survive perhaps “fifty to one hundred years” following the passing of even EEGAH’s most recent forebear. In some manner of speaking EEGAH still lives alongside his now all-but-extinct extended family in his lonely mountainside cave. Except they now reside there as little more than well cared for mummified remains.

EEGAH’s survival has seemingly gone on unnoticed until one dark night on a deserted road when sweet Roxy (Marilyn Manning) nearly plows into him with her banana yellow sport coupe. While EEGAH grimaces and growls and postures menacingly, it’s apparent that he’s somewhat smitten with his hit-and-run paramour. The girl manages to escape their impromptu meet-up and soon relates the details of her strange run in to her disbelieving boyfriend Tom (Arch Hall, Jr.) and her aforementioned father. Acknowledging the mystery would be best investigated by a responsible adult, Dad Miller is apparently unable to find one. He chooses to go off on his own, hiring a helicopter to take him into the deep ravines within Shadow Mountain. Dressed resplendently in white safari shirt, shorts, and pit helmet, Miller disembarks the copter for an ill-prepared solo expedition. He carries little more than a small tartan satchel and a Brownie camera to support him on his overnight camping trip.

When he fails to appear at the pre-arranged pick-up site the following day, heartthrob Tom and Roxy rush to the designated spot in the hot desert in Tom’s cool dune buggy (“The tires are filled with water,” he tells his girlfriend, the extra weight giving them better “traction in the sand”). As an aside, actor Hall Jr. recalled the dune buggy featured in the film was actually the most authentic and menacing monster of the production. Though it had once been a 1939 Plymouth Sedan it was now, in the actor’s own parlance “a deathtrap,” since it had been amateurishly converted into a buggy and welded back together poorly with no semblance of supportive structure. He recalled a few instances where he was literally pinned under a wreckage of metal, the crew scrambling to pull him free from the crushing weight.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The 1970s spawned a peculiar sub-genre of crime movies: the rape revenge sagas. Ostensibly, the films were designed to celebrate female empowerment and denounce sexual exploitation of women. In reality, that was just window dressing for the true purpose of the productions, namely, to exploit women. True, they did demonstrate scenes of violated young ladies exacting some just desserts on male stalkers and abusers, but there was an overall suspicion that the films' intended audience wasn't liberated females but men who enjoyed cinematic depictions of women being abused. A prime example is "Act of Vengeance", a 1974 American International cheapie that was also released under the cruder but more accurate title of "Rape Squad". The movie opens with Linda (Jo Ann Harris), a self-employed 20 year-old, having the misfortune of being stalked by a slimeball named Jack (Peter Brown), who wears a red jump suit and a hockey mask (thus inspiring later, more memorable screen villains.) He brutally rapes Linda while adding an additional humiliating element to the crime: he forces her to sing "Jingle Bells" during the assault. Linda survives the ordeal but finds the police are inefficient in tracking down the villain, understandably because he was masked. Turns out Jack is a serial rapist who has subjected numerous other young women to the same horrific fate. Linda meets and bonds with the other victims (played by Jennifer Lee, Lisa Moore, Connie Strickland and Patricia Estrin) and they decide to take matters into their own hands by personally tracking down their attacker and also attempting to come to the rescue of other women who are in danger of being sexually assaulted. To brush up on their self-defense skills, they are taught martial arts by a pro, Tiny (Lada Edmund, Jr.) and-presto!- the women are turned into female versions of Kato on the spot. The film then follows the women as they thwart the bad guys by subjecting them to humiliating beatings. But their primary mission is to track down their mutual rapist and dish out their own brand of justice.

Director Bob Kelljan was already an old hand at helming exploitation films including the Count Yorga horror flicks and "Scream Blacula Scream". If his desire was to depict the terror of sexual assault, he certainly succeeded. The rape scenes are hard to watch and chilling in their realism, made all the more disturbing by the perversions of Jack. (In addition to making his victims sing "Jingle Bells", he requires them to praise his sexual performance and speaks to them in a calm, friendly voice even as he subjects them to despicable acts.) However, the main attributes of the movies pertain to its goofy aspects. Every one of the victims is a knock-out and, despite knowing that Jack is still stalking them, they persist in parading around braless in the skimpiest outfits imaginable. If that isn't enough to keep male audience members awake, they find time to relax by sharing a hot tub (totally nude, of course!)The finale finds our heroines engaging in cliched behavior from other "women-in-jeopardy" films by being lured to meet Jack in the dead of night in a creepy, abandoned zoo. Now, what could possibly go wrong with that strategy? Naturally, they end up separating and- oh, yes, one of them suffers a broken heel that impairs her ability to run. The only predictable element missing is the presence of Vincent Price.

The performances by the female leads range from passable to laughable. All of the male cast members play characters who are killers, rapists or just plain jerks. (The esteemed comedic actor Stanley Adams inexplicably turns up in a brief, embarrassing turn as a pervert.) In the 1970s, the crime of rape was depicted in major films such as "Death Wish" and "A Clockwork Orange". Those scenes, too, are difficult to endure but at least the films were making a serious comment on the degradation of societal norms. "Act of Vengeance" is disguised as a message movie but exists only to titillate, although it does provide plenty of laughs as well (some of them actually intentional). 

Once again Scorpion has given a "B" movie a first-class presentation with an excellent transfer. Extras include a new on-camera interview with actress Jennifer Lee Pryor, who played a member of the Rape Squad. She's quite loquacious and discusses her memories of the film, providing some interesting anecdotes and claims, quite correctly, that the female heroines preceded Charlie's Angels, who were seen as ground-breaking female heroes. The original trailer is also included as well as a gallery of trailers for other Scorpion titles.

(At this time, the Blu-ray does not appear to be available on Amazon. It can be ordered here.)

Universal has released a highly impressive 4K/ Blu-ray/ Digital gift set for "Scarface" starring Al Pacino, packed with cool bonus extras including the Blu-ray debut of the original version starring Paul Muni. Here is the official press announcement:

Scarface “The World is Yours” Limited Edition Gift Set

The ultimate Scarface experience includes:

1983 version of Scarface on 4K UHD, remastered Blu-ray and Digital

1932 version of Scarface on Blu-ray for the first time ever (newly restored with 2 versions of the film – Original uncensored version and Alternate version with different ending)

Collectible “The World is Yours” statue replica

Available for a limited time only! Loaded with bonus features including new 35th Anniversary Reunion with Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Synopsis: In the spring of 1980, the port at Mariel Harbor was opened, and thousands set sail for the United States. They came in search of the American Dream. One of them found it on the sun-washed avenues of Miami… wealth, power and passion beyond his wildest dreams. He was Tony Montana. The world will remember him by another name… Scarface. Starring Al Pacino as Tony Montana along with Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Robert Loggia, Scarface has become a cultural phenomenon brilliantly directed by Brian De Palma and written by Oliver Stone.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON

BY HANK REINEKE

Novelist Jay Richard Kennedy was, in his pre-Hollywood youth, known to friends simply as Samuel Richard Solomonick. Idealistic and having come of age in the midst of the U.S. depression, this native of Bronx, New York, would be caught up in the radical politics of the 1930s. In the years prior to the entry of the U.S. in World War II, Kennedy’s personal politics were mostly aligned with those of domestic left-wing groups, including the U.S. Communist Party. This marriage of shared ideals was primarily due to the CP’s seemingly uncompromising anti-fascist beliefs.

But Kennedy’s allegiance to the CP and to their professed socialist ideals came to an abrupt end in 1939 when the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin shocked internationalists and fellow travelers by doing the unthinkable - co-signing a non-aggression pact with Hitler’s Germany. That agreement, of course, was not long-lasting, broken when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. But Stalin’s pact with the Devil had irreparably shaken the faith of many left-wing activists who had previously – and naively - looked to the Soviet Union for political guidance.

Though Kennedy would abandon many tenets of the far left, he remained an unapologetic political liberal. He was particularly active in the civil rights movements of the 1960s. He worked alongside members of C.O.R.E. (Congress of Racial Equality) and professed solidarity with the Black Panther Party. In truth, this activist wasn’t doing so badly working within the framework of the capitalist system. In April 1966, the recording industry trade magazine Billboard would describe the creative Kennedy as a true renaissance man. He was, they explained, been “at various times a writer for films, radio producer, novelist, talent manager, songwriter, and music publisher.”

At age 54, Kennedy’s youthful radicalism, while never abandoned, was likely tempered when he was tapped by Frank Sinatra to head the record and music publishing wing of Sinatra Enterprises. Kennedy’s 1965 novel, Favor the Runner, had mixed politics and seamy stories of entertainment industry practices. The novel was praised by Sinatra as “the most entertaining and beautifully written novel about show business to be published in this or any season… a swinging, shattering, glorious experience.”

Though the film credits of The Chairman do note that the film was based on a Kennedy’s original novel, it would appear as though the book was only first published two months following the movie’s release in June 1969. It was also published in an odd manner, the mass-market Signet paperback movie-tie-in of August 1969 preceding the later 1970 hardcover by the New American Library/World Publishing. The hardcover version of the book was simultaneously published in the UK under the more intriguing title “The Most Dangerous Man in the World.” (This title was retained for the UK release of the film.)

As Kennedy had a life-long interest in contemporary international-politics, it’s not surprising that the ideas behind The Chairman would germinate from his passion. In 1966 Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party of Party, would architect his infamous “Cultural Revolution,” fervently calling on students and workers to commit themselves to continual revolution. It was a disastrous experiment, an anti-intellectual call to arms. During a four year period, universities were shuttered and any semblance of a free press crushed, leaving only Mao’s cult-of-personality and famed “Little Red Book” to light the path to world revolutionary socialism. Professors, intellectuals, workers of mid-to-high station - even loyal Communist Party members - were publically criticized, chastised and jailed by Mao’s infamous Red Guard, derided by the faithful as “Capitalist Roaders.”

Interestingly, the term “Capitalist Roader” was invoked to disparage the new bourgeois class of post-revolutionary China, accusing former comrades of abuses of privilege and power. Such charges were – somewhat oddly - more anti-Soviet than anti-American in their hysteria. In the mid 1950s, Mao had soured on what he perceived as the U.S.S.R.’s softening anti-revolutionary rhetoric and other “anti-socialist” practices as détente. Mao deemed such peace offerings as misguided and “revisionist.” It was a moment in time when the Soviet Union and China were jockeying for position as the preeminent architects of the international socialist movement.

The opening credit sequence of J. Lee Thompson’s The Chairman perfectly captures the revolutionary zeal of Mao’s Red Guards. Playing beneath composer Jerry Goldsmith’s stirring score is a montage of folk art and propaganda poster images of China’s peasant class brandishing their “Little Red Books,” holding them triumphantly aloft in their left-hands or dutifully studying Mao’s enlightening text.

The film had been in the works for some time. In February 1967, the syndicated gossip columnist Earl Wilson teased: “Jay Richard Kennedy, Frank Sinatra’s story sleuth, is winding up the minutes of The Chairman, about Commie China, which Frank, Yul Brynner, and Spencer Tracy’ll have fun with in Hong Kong next fall.” None of this would actually happen, of course, though Frank Sinatra was strongly rumored to have been considered for the role of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist John Hathaway early on. The part eventually went to Gregory Peck. For his troubles, Peck would sign onto a contract that reportedly paid him $500,000 dollars and 10% of any profits. Peck had been working steadily, though his more recent films had not been overly successful at the box office. In 1969, the actor would appear in no fewer than four feature-length films of varying success. Though The Chairman, Peck’s first film with 20^th Century Fox in more than a decade, eventually brought in 2.5 million dollars, it was not a huge box-office success. The film would only rank as the forty-first highest-grossing film of 1969.

On July 17, 1968, Hollywood gossip columnist Joyce Haber reported that producer Arthur Jacobs was in London test-screening some of the “10,000 feet of film” the filmmaker had managed to photograph discreetly “behind the bamboo curtain for use in The Chairman.” Afterwards, the production crew was to move to Hong Kong for principal photography. Jacob’s first choice to helm the feature was the British director Peter Yates. Yates was a natural choice for this espionage film, having previously worked on such ITV television series as The Saint with Roger Moore and Danger Man with Patrick McGoohan. Yates had recently – and easily - made the transition to feature films, beginning with Robbery (1967) but scoring big-time with Bullitt (1968) featuring Steve McQueen.

Jacob’s talks with Yates eventually stalled, perhaps due to the success of the latter film which might have made the director too hot – or too expensive - a property to sign on to The Chairman. Jacobs then offered the directorial job to another Brit, the equally talented J. Lee Thompson. Thompson was a natural choice. He had already worked with Gregory Peck on The Guns of Navarone (1961, for which he would receive a “Best Director” nomination by the Academy), Cape Fear (1962), and the all-star cast assembled in search of Mackenna’s Gold (1969).

In The Chairman, Gregory Peck portrays John Hathaway, an American currently residing in England and lecturing at a London university. He is contacted by Shelby, an American military attaché, who along with a Russian diplomat, and a British RAF officer, press him into accepting an industrial espionage assignment, code name Minotaur. It seems the Red Chinese have developed a ground-breaking agricultural enzyme that allows for crops to grow in usually unfriendly environments. With such ground breaking technology, the allies are afraid the world’s power balance will accordingly tilt. They are afraid that the poorest nations of the third world would sidle to the side of their Peking benefactors.

The Chinese have already expressed interest in having Hathaway lend his scientific expertise to their breakthrough. Though they possess the secret formula, they have thus far been unable to produce this enzyme in sufficient quantities. As few Americans are welcomed to Peking, the calculating Shelby wants Hathaway to accept the invitation of the Reds. He’s not to help out as they wish, of course, but will only be sent east long enough to steal their secret. The scientist refuses until the U.S. President himself calls, urging Hathaway to accept as the mission has been deemed as being of “urgent and terrific importance.”

Hathaway relents and agrees to have a “Q-23 transmitter” surgically inserted as a mastoid sinus canal implant. While Hathaway is told the implant has a satellite monitored tracking radius of one hundred and ten miles and can even monitor changes in his physiology, he is not informed the device also houses a “coil of explosive wire” which the military can remotely detonate should the mission go wrong. Arriving in China in the midst of the Cultural Revolution - already warily surveilled by his cautious and suspicious Chinese hosts - things, quite understandably, go wrong rather quickly.

While a very entertaining and old fashioned Cold War thriller, The Chairman does suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. It’s first positioned as a serious film involving a chess game of competing ideologies and geo-political espionage. But it soon loses such sober prestige when it occasionally dresses as a pastiche of a more outlandish James Bond adventure. In many respects the film is less interesting as the controversies that would surround its production. Principal photography on The Chairman was scheduled from August 26^th through December 3^rd, 1968. Most of the film’s interior scenes were shot without incident on the soundstages of Pinewood Studios, with the windy and rugged cliff sides of Scotland doubling as those of western Mongolia.

The real troubles began when, following a series of location shoots in Taiwan, the cast and crew were due to arrive in Hong Kong on Saturday, November 30, 1968. The company’s Hong Kong schedule was unceremoniously scrapped when, on Wednesday the 27^th, the New York Times reported the “British colonial government, reacting to Communist protests, announced today that it had forbidden an American film unit to shoot several sequences here of the movie The Chairman.” The leftist Wen Wei Pao and other Communist newspapers were at the forefront of cancellation of the film unit’s business in Hong Kong. The newssheets all published editorials decrying the project as a “conspiracy of the British and American imperialists,” an “insult to Chairman Mao,” and a “serious provocation against the 700 million Chinese people.”

Interestingly, there was not a lot of support for the production team in Hong Kong’s non-Communist mainstream press either. Beginning In the spring of 1967, Hong Kong had been wracked with nearly eight months of serious violence – bombings, assassinations, and street riots – following a series of hit-and-run confrontations between police and Communist agitators in the wake of a labor dispute. The resulting chaos and property damage had wearied many of the 8.5 million people living in Hong Kong. They were less interested in engaging in a free-speech battle, opting instead for an uneasy peace. To complicate matters further, a British-based journalist for Reuters was concurrently being held under house arrest in Peking, the capitol of mainland China. The reporter’s detention was seen by most observers as Peking’s retaliatory tactic for what they accused was Hong Kong’s “unjustified persecution of Communist reporters.”

BY HANK REINEKE

The 1972 Giallo Who Saw Her Die? (Chi l'ha vista morire?) was Aldo Lado’s second film as director, his first being Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971). That film was a somewhat less-than-traditional Giallo, photographed inexpensively behind the Iron Curtain in the cities of Zagreb and Prague. Short Night of Glass Dolls was a complicated film that told its story in backward fashion, much in the style of the celebrated playwright Harold Pinter. It was also an unusual Giallo in the sense that its overtly exploitative sex scenes were unevenly mixed with the genre’s level of on-screen violence than European movie-thriller fans had come to expect. Lado had entered into the film business only some five years earlier, serving as the assistant director on a handful of Sergio Leone-inspired Spaghetti western knock-offs and a couple of action films, before getting the opportunity to work with the famed director Bernardo Bertolucci on the auteur’s Oscar-nominated production of The Conformist (1970).

In the featurette “I Saw Her Die,” Lado offers a compartmentalized history of popular Italian cinema. The eighty-four year old asserts that the first wave propagated three identifiable trends: first the Maciste era (or sword-and-sandal “Peplums” as they are referred Stateside). These films were followed by the era of the Spaghetti western, with the Giallo serving as this first wave’s bookend. Both Lado and principal screenwriter Francesco Barilli on Who Saw Her Die? were children of cinema’s first generation, having been exposed to the same diet of black and white motion pictures and having read many of the same novels. There was little differentiation between the classics and the pulp paperback. Lado was in love of mysteries but preferred the hard-edged novels of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer to the drawing room nicety whodunits of Agatha Christie. Barilli was a fan of the pulp mysteries and adventure tales by the likes of Edgar Wallace. Of their filmmaking contemporaries, both men expressed admiration for Roman Polanski’s stylized work and this is reflected on the film they would collaborate on.

In Who Saw Her Die? George Lazenby is cast as Franco Serpieri, an artist who keeps a small sculpting studio based in Venice. He has been experiencing a welcome measure of recognition due to a recent and critically acclaimed exhibition of his work in Beirut. His success is partly the result of the machinations of his agent, the powerful and commanding Serafin (Adolfo Celi, Largo of Thunderball fame). Serpieri’s young, red-headed and freckle-faced daughter Roberta (Nicolette Elmi) is visiting with her father from her home in London.

We learn the sculptor is apparently estranged from his daughter’s mother Elizabeth (the beautiful Swedish actress Anita Strindberg). In a decidedly grim scenario that bristles even today, the doomed child’s visit is short lived. The girl’s sudden disappearance and subsequent murder throws Serpieri into depression and a relentless desire to bring the guilty party to justice. Despite the film’s morbid subject matter, the storyline soon evolves into a conventional whodunit of sorts. There are any numbers of shady characters introduced within the film’s running time: several seemingly plausible suspects and red-herrings bring attention to themselves with expressionless eyes or incautious suspicious mannerisms. Most moments are initially perceived as innocent, but now appear unseemly in light of the tragedy.

Though not for every taste, this is a well-constructed film and it’s likely George Lazenby’s best film after On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969). Though an Italian production, the English-speaking Lazenby was brought on at the suggestion of producer Enzo Doria, primarily due to the actor’s recent attachment with the James Bond franchise. He was, in Lado’s unapologetic estimate, “A good name to attract easy money.” In an eleven-minute featurette featured on Anchor Bay’s DVD issue of Who Saw Her Die? (2002) (not ported over to this new Arrow edition), Lado would recall, “George Lazenby had already played the role of James Bond and acquired a certain international fame. This was useful for the producers… He had deep issues with (Cubby) Broccoli and the entire James Bond organization… In the end, he didn’t make a lira. He was going to the casinos, staying in big hotels, and nothing was free. At the end he was shown the bills and everything had been deducted from his pay… he had made nothing. His only dream was to return to his homeland of Australia, buy a boat and sail off alone. He was happy that [his work on Who Saw Her Die?] would earn him the money to buy the boat.”

Lado’s memory is partly in error here, as Lazenby, an admitted novice boatman, had already sailed with his wife Chrissie into Italy, via the island of Malta. The adventuresome couple eventually arrived, according to Lazenby’s recollection, in “Fiumicino, at the mouth of the Tiber outside Rome.” The pair had arrived on a catamaran purchased on the dwindling reserve of earnings from the Bond film. As late as October 1973, Lazenby told one journalist that the paycheck cashed from the “little art film” shot in Italy - along with the remnants of his Bond money - allowed him and his wife to survive on “five pounds a week.” He confessed he had no yet had the opportunity to see the final cut of Who Saw Her Die? but was nonetheless thankful for the gig as “it helped keep us for fifteen months on the catamaran, and that kind of life brings sanity.”

If the Bond producers had weathered the well-documented “deep issues” with the actor, Lado in contrast could only recall one uncomfortable exchange with Lazenby. Lado was proud of the fact he had never experienced problems dealing with any of the actors he had worked with previously… but admitted that dealing with Lazenby was somewhat of an initial challenge. “He was used to all that James Bond entourage, that luxury environment,” the director recalled, and this was a low-budget production that allowed for few indulgences. Lazenby may have been James Bond, but he was not yet an established international movie star of Sean Connery’s stature, and even Connery’s post-Bond films had not been box office smashes. Indeed, other than OHMSS, George Lazenby had only one other film on his résumé, and that was an unsuccessful one at that.

Lazenby’s first post-Bond film Universal Soldier (Cy Endfield, 1971) had been partly financed by Lazenby and then sold, for percentages, to Britain’s Hemdale Film Corporation. The entertainment company puzzled how to market this shot-on-a-shoe-string, mercenary-turned-hippie- pacifist production. Though Universal Soldier was eventually released to theatres in the UK in February 1971, it was a commercial failure. Hedging its bets, Hemdale chose to absorb their losses by releasing the film as an under-bill to a more commercial property, the political suspense-thriller Embassy, based on the best-selling novel by Stephen Coulter. Directed by the Gordon Hessler, Embassy would feature an all-star cast that would include Richard Roundtree, Max von Sydow, Ray Milland, Broderick Crawford, and Chuck Connors.

The film had some defenders. John Russell Taylor, the film critic of the London Times, wrote that while Universal Soldier was undeniably “muddled” and “not exactly a missed masterpiece,” the film was stronger than the more formulaic Embassy as it “tries to say something about war, arms sales, and the limits of cynicism.” Taylor’s view of the film was far more generous than David McGillivray of the UK’s Monthly Film Bulletin. That critic unkindly wrote off Universal Soldier as little more than a “shallow piece of social drama,” and mercilessly dissected the screenplay’s “apparently improvised dialogue.” Especially galling to the MFB critic was the plot device that allowed for Lazenby’s immoral, cynical mercenary soldier to undergo a “sudden and dramatic ideological conversion […] largely attributed to the influence of one insipid yoga fanatic and a couple of outbursts from Germaine Greer on the topic of arms to South Africa.”

It’s likely neither Lado nor Doria had even screened Universal Soldier, the film having disappeared from sight almost upon release. On the set of Who Saw Her Die?, the director had more a more logistical issue to contend with. Lado, a native Italian whose second language was French, spoke little English. So, to communicate with Lazenby, the filmmaker – who maintained that a director’s responsibility was to “stage” a film as one might a theatrical performance – would pantomime what he desired the former James Bond to convey as the cameras rolled. Following production, Lazenby bragged, “For the Italian film I had needed to learn the language,” but if this was the case the lessons didn’t go so well. The actor dialogue’s is dubbed throughout the film in both the Italian and English-language versions of the film.

The dubbing was becoming something as a trend. Though he had been famously dubbed as “Sir Hilary Bray” for parts of OHMSS, he was also - mostly - dubbed in the course of the three Kung Fu films he would appear in for Raymond Chow’s Golden Harvest Productions following his move to Hong Kong in 1973. In any event, Lazenby appears in Who Saw Her Die? much as he did as the mercenary Ryker in Universal Soldier, almost unrecognizable as the previously dapper James Bond. For starters, the actor’s hair is shoulder-length long, and he now sports a thick brown moustache. When Lazenby removes his shirt during one early scene he appears well beyond thin – he’s alarmingly lanky and skinny. This was likely the result of his and his wife Chrissie’s conversion to vegetarianism in 1971.

BY MARK MAWSTON

“Nightbreed” is a movie I’d wanted to see for many years. I’m not in a minority. I have the excuse that I missed its initial limited theatrical run and simply never got round to seeing it. Later, whenever I went to hire it from the video store on its VHS release , it was always rented out- no doubt due to its then blossoming cult status. However, those that did see it initially also desperately wanted to see it again. By that I mean that the print that was first shown in theatres and released for home entertainment wasn’t even close to the vision director and author Clive Barker had for the project. It was, as many classics have been, butchered as unsympathetically as the creatures the film celebrated by those “above” who simply didn’t understand or care. This is touched upon in Arrow’s new press release synopsis for the film- a cult gem which seems to have morphed as much as the creatures of it title:

Nightbreed, from the mind of legendary visionary of the macabre Clive Barker (Hellraiser, Candyman). A nightmare-induced fantasy set in a world like nothing you’ve ever experienced before… Nightbreed will leave you questioning who the real monsters are. The victim of studio interference and an unrepresentative marketing campaign, Nightbreed has since undergone a radical reappraisal. Arrow Video is proud to present two versions of this depraved cult classic and an insane selection of extras that will likely never be bettered, for the ultimate nightmarish viewing experience.

This release from Arrow is sumptuous and easily the best version of “Nightbreed” both fans and fascinated seekers such as myself have yet seen become officially available. The extras, as ever, are excellent and the transfer is probably (according to those who know) the best the film has had and may be even better than the prints seen on its initial release. As I’ve touched on, the film has a huge following and I recently caught up with two of its most high profile fans, poster artist Graham Humphreys and director John Stevenson. Although both agree that the infamous Cabal Cut is still the Holy Grail as far as the films various versions go, this director’s cut is a welcome treat for fans. I asked them why they thought the movie was still so important and why fans should seek out this latest Arrow release….

John Stevenson on Nightbreed

It wasn’t Clive Barker’s source novel “Cabal’ that got me obsessed with ‘Nightbreed”. It wasn’t even the film version, which I saw in the first days of its release in 1990 in San Francisco. It was the Titan book ‘Clive Barker’s The Nightbreed Chronicles’ released in 1990 to coincide with the theatrical release. The book contains beautiful portrait photography by Murray Close of over 30 of Midian’s denizens (created by Bob Keen, Geoff Portass and their team at Image Animation) and their wonderfully strange and imaginative back stories, courtesy of Clive Barker.

Looking at the book was a much more satisfying experience than watching the frustrating theatrical release which had cut most of Midian’s monsters, and reduced the screen time of the few that remained to fleeting seconds. The film also gave no sense of the fascinating monster society that ‘The Nightbreed Chronicles’ filled in, in Barker’s dark and witty personal histories of his creations.

By John M. Whalen

“Barquero”(1970) stars Lee Van Cleef as Travis, an ex-gunslinger living a quiet life as the owner/operator of a barge that is the only way to cross the river at a certain spot between Texas and Mexico. When we first see him he’s in bed with Nola (Marie Gomez), a hot looking Mexican chick who likes to suck on cigarillos. Everything’s fine until the creepy Fair (John Davis Chandler) shows up at his doorstep leering down at the naked Nola and says he and two men with him want to go across the water to Texas. Travis doesn’t like the way he’s looking at Nola and tells him “A ride across the river is all your money’s going to buy.” They get across and Fair pulls a gun on him and tells his amigos to tie him up.

Meanwhile, in a town a few miles to the north Remy (Warren Oates), leader of an outlaw gang, watches from the bedroom of a whorehouse as his gang robs the bank and shoots up the entire town. Once they’re done shooting everything full of holes they ride south, expecting the barge to be ready to take them to Mexico. Only trouble is Travis has a friend named Mountain Phil (Forrest Tucker in a show-stealing performance) who is handy with a knife. He kills the two of the desperadoes and neutralizes Fair with the help of some “tasty” fire ants. Once freed, Travis quickly rounds up a bunch of squatters, including Anna (Mariette Hartley) and Nola and takes them over to the Mexican side. Remy is pretty ticked when he gets to the river and sees there’s no barge ready to help them flee to Mexico. It’s pretty much a standoff for the next hour of the film as both sides try to get the upper hand.

Producer Aubrey Schenck intended to make “Barquero” a combination of the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone and the bloody westerns of Sam Peckinpah. He hired Van Cleef, who was a star of two Leone westerns Oates, a member of Peckinpah’s regular stock company, for the lead roles. He had a script by George Schenck and William Marks that had a fairly strong premise. The idea was to set up the clash between Van Cleef and Oates and let it explode.

It succeeds as far as it goes, but could have been much better. Schenck originally hired TV director Robert Sparr to helm “Barquero” but Sparr was killed in a helicopter crash scouting location in Colorado and the job went to veteran director Gordon Douglas (“Them!” “Rio Conchos”). You can see the Leone influence, especially when Remy starts cracking up and begins smoking some loco weed, reminiscent of Indio (Gian Marie Volante) in “For a Few Dollars More.” The bank robbery scene that opens the film is imitation Peckinpah, complete with an astronomical bullet count. But it’s obvious Douglas, capable though he was, lacked the crazed inspiration of either Peckinpah or Leone. You would really need an inspired mad man to make “Barquero” work and Douglas just wasn’t crazy enough. “Barquero” is something of a misfire rather than the cult classic it could have been. Nevertheless, it’s a treat to see two of the baddest badasses together for the one and only time in their careers, and if you take it for what it is, it’s a wild ride.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray presents “Barquero” in its 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio. The picture is crisp and clear, with good color. Some film elements are more worn that others, but overall it’s in good shape. The only extra is trailer. Kino Lorber deserves to be commended for the way it’s releasing these terrific looking-Blu-Ray transfers of hard-to-find-movies like “Barquero,” especially at a time when most of the market is heading away from actual physical discs to on-line streaming. I hope they keep them coming.

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN

“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” That’s the stock phrase you hear in most western films. But in William Wyler’s sprawling, richly produced western extravaganza, “The Big Country” (1958), Jim McKay (Gregory Peck) spends nearly three hours NOT doing what a man’s gotta do. And he reaps the scorn of just about everybody, including his fiancé Patricia Terrill (Caroll Baker), who lives on a gigantic Texas ranch with her father Major Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford). McKay is a retired ship’s captain from back east, and he’s come west to marry Pat and start a new life. But you know right off it’s not going to be easy when he steps off the stagecoach dressed like a dude and ranch foreman Steve Leech (Charlton Heston) advises him that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea for him to go around wearing that funny looking derby. Sure enough when he and Patricia ride their buckboard out to the Terrill ranch some rough cowboys, known as the Hannasseys, chase him down and pull that hat right off his noggin and give him a bit of a roughing up. When McKay doesn’t get all riled up about it, Patricia suspects her new fiancé might be a little bit chicken.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, when Leech sets McKay up to be humiliated by riding a killer bronc, and McKay declines the invitation, once again Patricia is disappointed. Everybody goes through that initiation, she tells him. McKay rides off and goes to visit Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons), who owns a valuable piece of land, and doesn’t come back until next day. Leech tells the major McKay was lost—“the lostest man I ever saw,” thus causing McKay to call him out as a liar. Now in these parts when a man calls you a liar you either go for your gun or start swinging a fist or two. But instead McKay tells him he doesn’t intend to let him draw him into a confrontation with horses, guns, or fists. Well, that tears it. Pat can’t have any respect for a man who won’t stand up for himself. McKay thinks it’s time to go back to town and rethink this marriage business.

All this takes place against the backdrop of a larger conflict between the major and his next door neighbor, Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives) and his three sons, including the wild and vicious Buck (Chuck Connors). They’ve been squabbling over the Big Muddy and water rights for years. Terrell has the upper hand. He’s got the larger spread, more men and money, while the Hannasseys live in relative squalor on an arid piece of dirt with little water. The major uses the Hannassey boys’ hazing of McKay as a pretext to ride out to their spread and teach them a lesson, which includes shooting holes in the Hannassey’s water tower and later driving Hannassey’s cattle away from the water of the Big Muddy.

“The Big Country” is based on a novel by pulp writer Donald Hamilton, best-known for the Matt Helm books that were turned into Dean Martin comedy/action flicks. (One of them, “The Wrecking Crew” with Sharon Tate is featured in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”)_ But Wyler hired Quaker author Jessamyn West (“Friendly Persuasion”) to write an adaptation that put pacifism front and center as the central theme of the film. In 1958 the Cold War was in progress and the threat of nuclear annihilation had everybody nervous. (It’s still a threat, but now we have Netflix and binge-watching to keep us from thinking about it.) With “The Big Country” Wyler tried to preach that there is a better way to solve disputes other than by giving in to violence which can only end by wiping out civilization. (“The Big Country” is the opposite of a Sam Peckinpah western, where violence and destruction are portrayed as inevitable and ultimately cathartic.) It’s an odd movie, in which most of the scenes are filled with tension and the threat of violence, but fail to have a satisfactorily pay off. For example, McKay walks away from the killer bronc, but later rides the horse when no one is around to witness it except Ramon (Alfonso Bedoya), one of the Mexican ranch hands. And when McKay decides to leave the ranch he wakes Leech up in the middle of the night and fights him when no one is awake to see it. He makes the point that he isn’t a coward, but doesn’t feel the need to prove it to anybody.

BY STEVE JANKOWIAK

The Image Book (Le Livre d'image) is the latest offering by octogenarian auteur Jean-Luc Godard. It is a cinematic essay likened by some reviewers to be a sequel of sorts to his encyclopedic Histoire(s) du cinema (1989-1998). However, the cinematic essay or cine-essay is the mode of discourse Godard began to employ half a century ago, at the end of his avant-garde period, starting with Le Gai savoir[1] (1969). His goal in doing so was to dispense with the classic bourgeois narrative and employ extra-diegetic devices such as film clips, intertitles, musical scores, photos, etc., even his own voice-over commentary to address the audience. When The Image Book premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018 it was awarded an honorary Palme d'Or by Jury President Cate Blanchett for Godard’s effort “to define and redefine what cinema can be”.

The image of the upward pointing right hand in Leonardo da Vinci's "Saint John the Baptist" is the organizing principle of Godard’s book of pictures. The five fingers of the hand represent five chapters: Remakes, St. Petersburg's Evenings, Flowers Between the Rails Travel Without Steam, Spirit of Laws and La Région Centrale. The first chapter contains a generous sampling of clips from Godard’s own films: Le Petit Soldat (1963), Les Carabiniers (1963), Allemagne année 90 neuf zero (1991) and Hélas pour moi (1993). Chapter Two, “St. Petersburg's Evenings”, juxtaposes the tsarist period typified by War and Peace (Bondarchuk, 1966) to the brave new world of Soviet collectivization represented by Earth (Dovzhenko, 1930). The third chapter is a meditation on trains as agents of industry, modernity and the Holocaust. Chapter Four, "Spirit of Laws", references Young Mr. Lincoln (Ford, 1939) as an example worthy of emulation. The focus of the fifth and final chapter is the Arab world and Godard's audio-visual assault on Orientalism. He appropriates multiple texts including Edward Said's critique and footage from an unfinished Dziga Vertov documentary of the 1970 Black September conflict that ultimately became the subject of inquiry in his cine-essay Ici et ailleurs (1976).

Kino Lorber has released the film on DVD and Blu-ray. Bonus features include interviews with researcher Nicole Brenez and producer Fabrice Aragno. The conversation with Brenez at the 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam is conducted in heavily accented English and quickly becomes tedious. The interview with Aragno in which he responds to clearly formulated questions in much less heavily accented English is much more fluid. The accompanying essay booklet features James Quandt's "Facing the Void: Jean-Luc Godard's Book of Images" which provides some useful context for interpreting the film but does presuppose some knowledge of Godard's recent output. And if one is uninitiated then The Image Book is a great introduction to the late work of one of the greatest and most seminal filmmakers alive today.