Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Being James Bond, from Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), will be exclusively available to stream on the Apple TV app as a free rental ahead of the theatrical release of the upcoming 25^th film in the James Bond franchise, No Time To Die.* In this special 45-minute retrospective, Daniel Craig candidly reflects on his 15-year adventure as James Bond. Customers in over 30 countries and regions around the globe can rent the film for free and stream it exclusively on the Apple TV app from September 7 to October 7.

Including never-before-seen archival footage from Casino Royale to the upcoming 25th film No Time To Die, Craig shares his personal memories in conversation with 007 producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, in the lead up to his final performance as James Bond.

“A lot of people here have worked on five pictures with me,” Craig noted during the conversation with the films’ producers in Being James Bond. â€œI've loved every single second of these movies, and especially this one because I've got up every morning and I've had the chance to work with you guys, and that has been one of the greatest honours of my life.”

Said Broccoli in the film: “Daniel has just taken this, the character, the series, the whole thing, to a place that is so…extraordinary. And so emotionally satisfying.”

“It's also emotionally tough being Daniel's last one. It's tough on Barbara, it's tough on me,” added Wilson. 

The Apple TV app brings together all the ways to watch shows and movies into one app and is available on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iPod touch, Mac, popular smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, VIZIO, TCL, and others, Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, Chromecast with Google TV, and PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Customers can visit https://apple.co/-beingjamesbond on iPhone, iPad, and Mac now to add Being James Bond to Up Next on the Apple TV app and be alerted when the film is available to watch. 

The Apple TV app also features Apple TV+, Apple’s video subscription service offering original shows, movies, and documentaries from the world’s most creative storytellers, as well as Apple TV channels, personalized and curated recommendations, and movies and TV shows to buy or rent.

Being James Bond was directed by Baillie Walsh (Flashbacks of a Fool) and produced by Charlie Thomas, Carla Poole and Special Treats Productions. Colin Burrows served as executive producer. 

The 25^th film in the James Bond franchise, No Time To Die, will be released in theaters beginning September 30 in the UK through Universal Pictures International and in the US on October 8 through MGM via their United Artists Releasing banner.

To learn about all the ways to access the Apple TV app, view the complete list of supported devices.

*Renting movies on the Apple TV app requires an Apple ID.

BY HANK REINEKE

I turned age three one month prior to the January 1965 U.S. release of Roger Corman’s The Tomb of Ligeia (American-International, 1964). The film had been first released in England in November 1964 - which was only fair - since both The Tomb of Ligeia and its predecessor The Masque of the Red Death (also 1964) had been shot at Shepperton Studios and in the neighboring English countryside. I’m guessing that I only became acquainted with Corman’s octet of Poe adaptations when the films were televised on New York City’s 4:30 Movie in the mid-1970s.

I didn’t know quite what to make of the AIP Poe films at first. These were horror films without monsters and, at age fifteen, I had no particular interest in - or understanding of - “psychological horror” pictures… I wanted rubber-suit monsters sporting grotesque make-up appliances and causing small-town mayhem. I wasn’t yet old enough to understand the paralyzing torment and terrors suffered by those with tortured souls. That is until I reached my mid-20s and discovered, unhappily, I myself was afflicted with one.

The Tomb of Ligeia was the eighth and last film that would comprise Corman’s famed “Poe cycle,” a series (of sorts) that launched with the moody House of Usher (1960). In his entertaining memoir, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime (Random House, 1990), the filmmaker shared with candor that while he was pleased he had made “several very good-looking, psychologically effective horror pictures” from 1960 through 1964, he admitted that by cycle’s end, “I was repeating myself, taking ideas, images, themes, and techniques from my earlier work.”

I would say in defense there was no discernible slippage of quality present in The Tomb of Ligeia. Both Robert Townes literate screenplay and Corman’s direction are well crafted. In fact, I’ve long considered Corman’s House of Usher, The Premature Burial, The Masque of the Red Death and The Tomb of Ligeia as art-house horror films of a sort. The gold standard.

Or, perhaps, The Gold Bug standard, if one is to remain true to the Poe terminologies. According to reports of January of 1964, Poe’s The Gold Bug was actually scheduled as A.I.P.’s immediate follow-up to The Masque of the Red Death. In his biography of Peter Lorre, author Stephen D. Youngkin suggests that previous Corman scribe Charles B. Griffith (Bucket of Blood, Little Shop of Horrors) had worked on script for The Gold Bug, a romp that was to re-team Price, Basil Rathbone and Lorre, recent stars of AIP’s The Comedy of Terrors (1963). Griffith’s version of The Gold Bug was reportedly sketched as a horror-comedy in the vein of that earlier film. His script was - presumably - scrubbed when Lorre passed away in March of 1964.

In any event, I now consider several films in the Poe cycle among my favorite horror efforts. Thanks to 35mm revival screenings in the 1980s at New York City’s repertory theaters and at retro all-night drive-in monster movie weekends, I’ve been able to enjoy these classics in genuine Colorscope as originally designed. I’ve also had the wonderful opportunity to enjoy a pair of relatively recent screenings of The Tomb of Ligeia in the company of two of the film’s high-profile participants. In August of 2015 Roger Corman and actress Elizabeth Shepherd (Lady Rowena Trevanion) participated in a screening and Q & A at the Anthology Film Archives on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. In 2019 I caught still another 35mm screening, this time with Elizabeth Shepherd attending alone and sharing more expansive memories of working with both Corman and her notable co-star and boogeyman Vincent Price. So it’s impossible for me to separate my admiration for The Tomb of Ligeia from such personal memories.

One of the nicest aspects of this Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray edition of The Tomb of Ligeia is that if you weren’t geographically fortunate enough to attend any of these retrospective 35mm screening events, you now have the opportunity to listen to Corman and Shepherd share their on-the-set memories on two of this package’s generous trio of audio commentaries. The third commentary is provided by film historian Tim Lucas who provides all the nuts and bolts factoids we cinema history train spotters require. With three distinct voices sharing the commentary tracks, there’s a lot of material and viewpoints and memories to wade through.

As was so often the case, Corman’s cinematic adaptations of Poe were not terribly faithful to the original source materials. Instead we are treated to more visual reimagining’s of the gloomy author’s classic short stories. Corman and a team of screenwriters (including Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, both of Twilight Zone fame) had constructed new tales only partly drawn from Poe’s characters and grotesque plot lines.

As Poe’s horrors were psychologically driven and introspective in presentation, it was necessary for Corman and his team to inject more cinematic visual tropes. This was accomplished by introducing completely new scenarios and mixing in original and intriguing subplots. In Corman’s “serious” offerings of the Poe cycle, the birthing author’s gloomy atmospheres, the dreary broodings on mortality, the wearisome toll of mental anguish (and subsequent psychic breakdowns) all remain faithful in tone to the spirit of his visions.

The screenplay of The Tomb of Ligeia was scribed by the actor-writer Robert Towne. Towne already boasted a screenwriting credit on The Last Man on Earth (1960) as well as playing multiple on-screen roles in Corman’s Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961). Towne, who would go on to be feted with no fewer than four Oscar nominations for his writing (most notably for Chinatwon), serves up a literate screenplay that comes complete with the moody, erudite - and occasionally archaic dialogue - that one comes to expect from this series. His work on the script stands alongside the best Poe adaptations of Matheson and Beaumont.

The film version of The Tomb of Ligeia concerns the curious and eccentric manner of which Vernon Fell ((Vincent Price) conducts himself following the passing of his wife Ligeia. Fell is obsessed, nay terrorized, by the notion that his late wife is not quite dead in the usual sense of the word. He’s convinced that his wife’s disturbed spirit – she was, after all, an unrepentant atheist who dabbled in spiritualism – is now reincarnated in the form of a menacing black cat that prowls along the premises of the dilapidated ruins of an abbey he calls home. The somber and haunted Fell finds new romance with Lady Rowena (Shepherd), an already betrothed woman who happens upon his property when she’s thrown from her horse during a spirited fox hunt. Rowena eventually marries Fell only to find herself guarding against her new husband’s odd behaviors - and a malevolent black cat who appears to willfully cause her torment.

Towne’s story takes many liberties with Poe’s original short story, simply titled Ligeia, and first published in Baltimore’s American Museum periodical in September 1838. The most significant of these changes is that there’s no black cat present in Poe’s version - and Rowena dies nine pages into the twelve-page tale. But since Poe tends to tell his tales as either a detached narrator or in a “first person” internal dialogue of madness, Corman’s cinematic vehicle needed a flesh and blood protagonist – even if the one chosen for the film is adorned only in a coat of black fur – to make any menace visually tangible. There’s a not too subtle revelation of necrophilia and a more overt sequence of mesmerism sprinkled in as well. It was obvious that Towne, much like his predecessors, were mining a wide swath of Poe’s oeuvre in a desire to enliven and expand the author’s short story for a film of feature-length running time.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Ed Asner, the seven-time Emmy winner who specialized in playing gruff-but-likable characters, has died at age 91. Asner, a Missouri native, served in the military in the 1950s before pursuing acting as a career. He broke into the profession in the late 1950s and appeared in scores of major television programs, generally cast in dramatic roles. He made his big screen debut in an uncredited role in the 1962 Elvis Presley movie "Kid Galahad" starring Elvis Presley. He went on to play a detective in "The Slender Thread" (1966), a nemesis of John Wayne in Howard Hawks' "El Dorado" (1966) and Robert Vaughn's shady C.I.A. boss in "The Venetian Affair" (1966). Asner's distinctive style led him to work almost non-stop between the feature film and television mediums. In 1970, his career skyrocketed when he was cast as Lou Grant, the grumpy boss of Mary Tyler Moore in her iconic TV sitcom. The show proved that Asner was as adept at playing comedy as he was drama. He won multiple Emmy awards for playing Grant and when the series eventually ended, he would win Emmys for playing the same character in the dramatic off-shoot program "Lou Grant". He also won Emmys for two highly-rated 1970s TV minis-series, "Rich Man, Poor Man" and "Roots". Asner's career continued to thrive with a younger generation, as he acted in and provided voice-over performances in major hit films such as "Elf" and "Up". In his personal life, he served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and was a political activist for progressive causes.

For more about his life and career, click here.

“A BEAUTIFUL MESS”

By Raymond Benson

Filmmaker Stanley Donen had substantial success with his comedy-thriller, Charade (1963), which starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. It was hyped and critiqued as “Hitchcockian” in tone and style, especially the light-hearted and glitzy To Catch a Thief (1955). (There are many who mistakenly believe that Charade is a Hitchcock film.)

The studio then wanted to repeat that success with a similar picture, Arabesque, also with Cary Grant in the lead role with Donen directing again. However, Grant felt that the script was “terrible” and passed. Donen allegedly wasn’t too thrilled with the script, either, and he wasn’t too keen on making the picture without Grant.

Then Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren expressed interest in the movie, so Donen acquiesced. Sounds like a fairy tale scenario for the greenlighting of a Hollywood movie, right? The two Oscar-winning stars were cast, and the script was rewritten… and rewritten… (it is credited to Julian Mitchell, Stanley Price, and Pierre Marton; however, Marton is a pseudonym for Peter Stone, who had written Charade!).

Released in 1966, Arabesque has all the hallmarks of a hit movie. It is beautifully photographed by Christopher Challis, with colorful usage of mirrors and prisms and glass throughout the picture. These visuals provide the film with its spectacular glossy eye candy. Ms. Loren’s costumes (by Christian Dior) are psychedelic/exotic/1960s fabulous. Henry Mancini’s musical score is fun and lively—except for the examples cited below. Maurice Binder’s main titles design hints at something leaning toward a James Bond or Derek Flint film.

These are the only admirable aspects of the picture.

Both Charade and Arabesque, when one examines them closely, are really screwball comedies set in a spy/thriller milieu. The success of a screwball comedy depends on the comic timing and charisma of the two “mismatched” leads—this is the core ingredient of the sub-genre. Cary Grant can do these kinds of roles in his sleep. And this is where the problem lies.

Gregory Peck is a wonderful actor, but unfortunately here he is terribly miscast. It’s obvious that he’s trying to “do” Cary Grant (without the accent), and it simply does not work. The dialogue—meant to be witty banter in the Cary Grant mold—does not flow elegantly from Peck. Sophia Loren, while looking gorgeous and mysterious throughout the story, fares little better with what the poor script has her do.

And the script? It makes no sense. Peck is David Pollock, an American professor at Oxford who knows something about Hieroglyphics. He’s “hired” by sleazy Arabic shipping magnate Beshraavi (Alan Badel) to decipher a code in Hieroglyphics that he has stolen from a murdered spy. The prime minister of an unnamed Middle Eastern country, Jena (Carl Duering), also wants the code deciphered, because “there will be no peace in the world without it.” What? It’s unclear what conflict we’re talking about or what the situation really is. Pollock meets Beshraavi’s mistress, Yasmin Azir (Loren), who is working for another group of spies—maybe—or maybe she’s working for Jena—it’s not really clear—in fact, we don’t know what Yasmin’s motivation is for any of her actions in the film. Suddenly, Pollock is on the run as several factions of Arabs and others are out to kill him. Sometimes Yasmin helps him, sometimes she doesn’t. But, of course, they fall in love, and they prevent a political assassination in the meantime.

Okay, it’s a beautiful mess, but it’s still a mess. Even the misplaced slapstick sequences are dumb—and Mancini’s comic music that underscores some of these scenes is cringe-worthy (one example—when a drugged Pollock is standing in the road of a crowded freeway and playing “matador” to oncoming vehicles).

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release looks quite gorgeous, showing off the colorful glitz that is the primary asset of Arabesque. It comes with an audio commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson, who all seem to enjoy the picture more than this reviewer did and yet point out all the same faults. A lovely half-hour featurette on Mancini is a welcome supplement. There is also a poster gallery (note the cover/poster art by the great Robert McGinnis), TV spots, the theatrical trailer and teaser, and trailers for other Kino Lorber releases.

Arabesque is a product of its mid-1960s origin, for sure, as it wants to be both Charade and a James Bond film. It is neither, but it might be a curiosity for fans of 1960s Hollywood spy movies and pristine cinematography.

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BY FRED BLOSSER

A Dino De Laurentiis production starring Charles Bronson, John Sturges’ “The Valdez Horses” opened in Italy in 1973 and kicked around markets in Europe and the Far East over the next two years under various alternative titles. In 1975, it finally limped onto a handful of U.S. screens as “Chino.” By then, Bronson was already a cultural sensation here in the wake of “Death Wish,” but “Chino” didn’t have much of a push from its American distributor, and it didn’t last long in the movie houses. The Bronson vehicle that made a splash in 1975 was Walter Hill’s “Hard Times,” featuring the star as a hardscrabble street fighter during the Great Depression. If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember “Chino,” if at all, as a VHS release from the Neon Video budget label in the 1980s, gathering dust at your local Blockbuster or Suncoast.

In the film, young Jamie (Vincent Van Patten), traveling alone across the wide open spaces, is stranded miles from the nearest town as night begins to fall. Is he a runaway or an orphan? That’s never clarified, an element that may bother those who tend to pick at loose ends, although it doesn’t greatly matter in terms of the story. Seeing a lonely ranch house in the distance, the boy meets Chino Valdez (Charles Bronson), a half-Indian stockman who tames horses and lives by himself. The taciturn Chino gives Jamie shelter for the night, in return for the kid pitching in with the chores. Next morning, in a scene nicely underplayed by Bronson and Van Patten, Chino offers the boy a job as his hired hand, and Jamie eagerly accepts. The work includes mentoring on how to tame and ride mustangs. When Jamie asks if taming means “busting” a wild horse, Chino emphatically says no: “ . . . that takes all the spunk out of a horse. It breaks him. And I'm not gonna bust a Valdez horse.” It’s the first of several scenes in which, not very subtly, Chino is likened to his wild stallions.

Chino’s neighbor is Maral (Marcel Bozzuffi), a wealthy rancher whose sister Catherine (Jill Ireland) comes from the East to visit. In case any sticklers in the audience wonder why Maral has a French accent and Catherine a British one, the real answer is simple. If you wanted Charles Bronson for a picture in those days, his wife Jill Ireland was part of the deal. In context of the story, it’s because the siblings had different mothers, as quickly noted in passing. Trouble develops when Chino and Catherine fall in love with each other and decide to marry with the help of a friendly padre. Learning of the plan, Maral confronts Catherine in the chapel as she waits in her wedding gown for Chino to arrive. If his sister marries the rough-hewn, penniless horseman, “I will kill him,” Maral tells her. It’s a complication straight out of the 1950s B-Westerns. Except there, the hero and the overbearing cattle baron would have settled their differences with a friendly fist fight, and wedding bells would ring. This being a 1970s Western, and a Charles Bronson vehicle to boot, it isn’t too much of a spoiler to suggest that things won’t go that smoothly for Chino.

Even Bronson fans are likely to concede that “The Valdez Horses” is a mess dramatically speaking, although an interesting mess for those of us who fondly remember how the international co-productions in the 1970s, like this one, were often patched together. Quiet, family-friendly scenes of Chino and Jamie bonding as surrogate father and son are punctuated by a saloon brawl in which Chino bashes a bully in the crotch with a whiskey bottle, a protracted showdown with a high body count, a whipping, and a scene in which the Spanish actress Diana Lorys, in brown makeup as a Cheyenne woman, bares her breasts. In audio commentary for a new Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber Studio Classics, film historian and Bronson specialist Paul Talbot notes that Sturges filmed on Spaghetti Western locations in Almeria, Spain, in 1972 with an Italian and Spanish crew and supporting cast. Although the Europeans’ relaxed approach jarred with his studio-honed sensibilities for running a tight set, Sturges gamely wrapped on schedule. But once they previewed the finished product, De Laurentiis‘ investors decided that the director’s low-key, 1960s-style Western would disappoint Bronson fans. So Italian filmmaker-for-hire Duilio Coletti was brought in to film additional scenes, accounting for the more exploitative content. Even so, “Chino” squeaked by in the U.S. with a PG rating, bare breasts and all. Some of us will be less embarrassed by Diana Lorys‘ nudity than by the inane romantic scenes between Bronson and Ireland. For what it’s worth, the script was credited to veteran novelist and screenwriter Clair Huffaker from a book by Lee Hoffman. Stephen Geller and Elmore Leonard also made unofficial contributions along the way, according to Paul Talbot’s research.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray includes two versions of the movie, a 1.85:1 print from the U.S. release and a windowboxed 1.37:1 version with French opening titles. In color and clarity, the 1.37:1 version is superior to the other, but the nostalgically minded may prefer the 1.85:1, blemishes and all, as the one they watched on VHS back in the day. In a new interview, Vincent Van Patten fondly remembers Bronson, Sturges, and the shoot in Almeria. Between scenes, the young actor asked the fifty-year-old Bronson how he maintained his “ripped” physique, on display twice in the movie. “Push ups,” Bronson answered. “Push ups?” Van Patten said. “Push ups,” Bronson repeated. Van Patten’s affectionate Bronson impression is spot-on. From Talbot’s minute reconstruction of the picture’s bumpy history and Van Patten’s affable memories, you’ll conclude that a docudrama about the making of “The Valdez Horses” would be more engaging than the movie itself.

Other extras on the Blu-ray include a silent 8-millimeter home movie shot by Van Patten and his brother Jimmy in Almeria, the American TV spot for “Chino,” alternate title openings, trailers for other Bronson movies on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, and a reversible cover sleeve with poster art for “The Valdez Horses” on one side and “Chino” on the other.

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Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)

BY ADRIAN SMITH

When film fans hear the name of Italian director Lucio Fulci, it almost inevitably brings to mind his oft-quoted moniker as the “Godfather of Gore,” thanks to the films made towards the end of his career that caused so much trouble with the British film censors; Zombie Flesh Eaters (1980), The Beyond (1981) New York Ripper (1983) being some of the most notorious. To view him as such however is to miss out on what was an extraordinarily prolific career which also included musicals, comedies, westerns, historical dramas, fantasy films, science fiction and thrillers. This new Blu-ray and digital release of The Psychic, out now in a 2K restoration from Shameless Films, is an opportunity to reassess one of his less well known films, which is only now being released in the UK for the first time.

The Psychic tells the tale of a woman who has visions of murder and death. These visions cause her to break through a wall in her rich new husband’s old farmhouse, where she discovers the skeleton of a woman murdered four years earlier. Naturally her husband is under suspicion, and with the help of a doctor friend with an interest in parapsychology she tries to replay the memories of these visons in her head over and over again, looking for clues that might prove her husband’s innocence. As pieces of the puzzle fail to add up however, she begins to realise that some of what she has seen may in fact be a premonition of murders yet to come, possibly her own.

The original Italian title was Sette note in nero, or “Seven Black Notes.” The seven notes in question refer to the tune that is played each hour on a watch worn by our heroine, gifted to her by the husband’s sister. This sister has dozens of lovers who give her gifts, and the watch apparently came from someone in the Vatican. This is just a sly hint towards illicit goings on in the Catholic Church. In some of Fulci’s other films, such as Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972), the criticism would be far more overt.

With its amateur detective attempting to solve a crime by constantly revisiting distorted memories, The Psychic sits squarely within the tradition of the giallo, the sub-genre of Italian thrillers that often featured bizarre murders, unreliable witnesses, amateur detectives and red herrings galore. Described as an “elegantly constructed murder mystery” by historian Stephen Thrower (who wrote the definitive book on Fulci’s career), this is an entertaining thriller that leads the audience down dark paths and blind alleys before finally delivering an exhilarating ending straight out of Edgar Allan Poe.

This new Shameless Blu-ray edition includes both the original Italian and English dubs, and a wealth of new interviews. Sadly, Fulci himself is no longer with us, but his daughter Antonella Fulci appears in two separate interviews, one focused on the film and the other on her father. Put together, she speaks in these interviews for almost an hour, and it is fascinating to get insight into both her personal relationship with her father as well as her own analysis of his career. Also appearing on the disc is the writer Dardano Sacchetti, who also speaks for around an hour, and with almost a hundred different credits, he has had a rich and diverse career and is full of great stories. The final interview is with the film’s composer Fabio Frizzi, who discusses how he got started in composing for film as well as his relationship with Lucio Fulci. Frizzi was a frequent collaborator with Lucio Fulci, and several years ago went on tour performing music from these films around the world (something this writer was lucky enough to see one Halloween). And if you are wondering why The Psychic score sounds familiar, that’s because it is yet another Italian score pinched by Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill!

The Shameless Films Blu-ray, in a distinctive yellow case, comes with a collectible O-ring featuring the iconic American poster art, and also includes a reversible sleeve which uses the original Italian artwork which made the Edgar Allan Poe connection even more explicit.

The Psychic deserves to become better known as a fine example of the 1970s European thriller, and this new restoration is the perfect way to see it.

(Note: this release is currently available in Region 2 UK format only.)

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Eddy Murphy may or may not succeed in reviving his "Beverly Hills Cop" franchise, as he's long wanted to do. His recent comeback  and surge in popularity might make his dream come true. In the meantime, the folks at the website www.digitalhollywood247.com look back on the three "Cop" feature films that have been released to date and evaluates their individual merits (or lack thereof). Click here to read.

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Universal presents this free streamer of director Anthony Harvey's delightful and zany 1971 comedy "They Might Be Giants" with George C. Scott as a delusional man who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes and Joanne Woodward as his psychiatrist, who is appropriately named Watson. 

BY LEE PFEIFFER

I'm all for ambiguity in feature films and television series. The resistance to tie every plot point up in a neat little bow is an admirable trait among filmmakers and sometimes the tactic results in some tantalizing end products. Prime examples: Patrick McGoohan's classic 1960s TV series "The Prisoner", the meaning of which is still be debated by fans of the show, and director Michelangelo Antonioni's controversial 1966 thriller "Blow-Up" which might require numerous viewings before you figure out the point of the film's final scene. What I have little tolerance for is ambiguity as a cover for sheer pretentiousness. Cult director Abel Ferrara's little-seen 2019 feature film "Siberia" oozes sheer pretentiousness. It's so bizarre that Ferrara had so raise the production budget on Kickstarter through contributions from his enthusiastic fan base. Although the movie was shown at various film festivals, IMDB reports that it's international gross to date is $23,626. You read that right, folks...there isn't a zero missing. Ferrara teamed with his frequent collaborator Willem Dafoe to bring "Siberia" to the screen, which only indicates that Dafoe is a truly loyal friend or a blatant masochist.

Dafoe plays Clint, the owner (or caretaker) of a remote outpost on the frozen tundra. Although the location is never specified, perhaps it is Siberia, hence the title. It also isn't clear what the purpose of the outpost is or what Clint's duties are aside from serving drinks at the building's makeshift bar. One night, an elderly woman and a much younger woman come in to swig down some shots at the bar. They are speaking a strange language that may or may not be Inuit. In any event, Clint appears to be unable to communicate with them verbally. Suddenly, the younger woman rises up, unwraps her fur parka and reveals she is not only totally naked but about eight or nine months pregnant. Clint is aroused and begins to explore her body while the older woman looks on, bemused. The scene then switches to the couple in bed making love. This plot thread is soon dropped and- to cut to the chase- Clint finds himself on a bizarre psychological journey that sees him entering an underground lair filled with bizarre and ominous people including a naked female dwarf in a wheelchair, an apparition of his beloved father with whom he communicates, and some ghastly visions as well. Are these dreams or is Clint actually experiencing a supernatural occurrence? We then find him being transported by dog sled across the tundra before he suddenly appears in the African desert among tribesmen, for no apparent reason. The strange journey also has ominous overtones as he passes the remains of what appears to have been a concentration camp. It stirs horrific memories of authoritarian figures indulging in mass executions of naked men and a young boy who manages to escape the carnage. Was this something Clint had experienced and is it a personal recollection? Who knows...The action then shifts to a bucolic setting in the countryside in another unspecified location where Clint asks a practitioner of the black arts to teach him its secrets. The man declines. We then see another scenario emerge in which Clint meets his mother, who seems to have some sexual desire for him. Things are rounded off by him encountering his ex-wife and her child (is it also his child?) Waiting for answers to clarify these mysteries is a bit like waiting for Godot in that they never arrive. Dafoe gives a daring, intense performance, but to what end? The ambiguity here seems to be provided simply to convince viewers that Ferrara had some deep meaning to the goings-on. However, I'm reminded of an old cartoon in which some pseudo-intellectuals are analyzing the precise meaning of a modern art painting. When they leave, the curator discovers it has been hanging upside down and adjusts it accordingly, thus rendering the viewers' conclusions meaningless. The same can be said about "Siberia". I doubt that even Ferrara knows what it all means. He probably just tossed it out there in the hope his fans would think he was presenting something profound.

The Lionsgate Blu-ray (with digital copy) looks very good indeed and does justice to Stefano Falivene's impressive cinematography, one of the few admirable aspects of the production. The only bonus extra is a trailer. It's a pity Ferrara didn't provide a commentary track. We might have been able to discover what inspired him to bring this  this pretentious and preposterous mess to the screen.

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BY  HANK REINEKE

Lesley Selander’s Flight to Mars (1951) was one of the earliest offerings of cinematic science-fiction’s Silver Age. The film is not one of the best of that era’s productions, and not even the best of 1951 – that honor would arguably go to Rudolph Maté’s When World’s Collide due to that film’s ground-breaking animation of George Pal. But the stage was already set for science-fiction to replace door-creaking Gothic horror as more dependable, bankable product. Moviegoers of 1945 through 1950 had already been primed for space-travel and alien-enemy films through such entertaining Republic serials as The Purple Monster Strikes, King of the Rocket Men and Flying Disc Man from Mars. The 1947 crash near Roswell, New Mexico, also made a lot of folk’s look up to the skies to ponder – and fear – what might be floating above them in the cosmos. So the time was right.

There were several delays in the start of the production of Flight to Mars. In mid-January of 1951, the Hollywood trades reported that Monogram production was scheduled to commence on 12 February. When that date passed without cameras rolling, the production start date was pushed forward, amended to 23 March. When March passed by, a third date was announced (5 April), only to be pushed forward again to 30 April. When these dates passed by as well reports came in that production of Flight to Mars was to officially commence on 12 May, 1951 with Walter Mirisch producing.

There was no announcement as of 5 May of who might be helming Monogram Picture’s very ambitious project. But, at long last, on 19 May 1951, the film was put on Hollywood’s current in-production schedule with the notice that Lesley Selander had signed on to direct with Harry Neumann serving as Director of Photography. Selander was an odd choice to direct. He was a well-regarded and dependable figure at Monogram, but his stock-in-trade was knocking out scores of inexpensive westerns with breakneck rapidity.

The Monogram Pictures Corporation was now under the umbrella of Allied Artists. The President of Allied, Steve Broidy, had been promising as early as October of 1951 that both studios would lens no fewer than forty-five feature films in 1951-52, a half-dozen of those efforts being “high budget” films produced under the Allied banner. Monogram, as was its reputation, would knock off its usual run of low-budget westerns, detective films, Bowery Boys comedies and “fantasy” films – the latter being a generous euphemism for their string of bargain basement horrors with a dash of science-fiction.

In truth, even Monogram’s threadbare production values were on the rise, Broidy promising that several of the studio’s planned features would be shot in Cinecolor, a two-color film process that brought out a striking and vibrant – if occasionally unnatural in appearance - pallet of saturated hues. If nothing else, Flight to Mars would appear a relatively bright and lavish production by Monogram standards. The film’s production’s designs were actually pretty well-done all things considered. The space-traveling animation, mattes and Mars “location” shooting effects (California and Nevada’s Death Valley was used as backdrop of the dying planet) were, at best, disappointing as little would be splashed on-screen in any memorable fashion. On the other hand, there was no shortage of skimpily-dressed women milling about.

One gossip North Hollywood gossip columnist teased that Mirisch and Selander – abetted by the film’s wardrobe department - seemed to have come to agreement on the “astounding fact that women on Mars do not wear skirts.” It is true that all of the women featured on screen were not-so-immodestly dressed. Such space-age fashion, the columnist determined, might prove testing to the “squinting eyes” and morality standards set forth by the industry’s Johnson Office. Another news sheet from this same period described the costuming of the film’s female players as “nothing but hip-length tunics and the scantiest of scanties.” Piling on, still another news item described the female Martian outfits as rating “hotter than even an H-bomb, making Bikini-wearers looking over-dressed!”

Such prurient ballyhoo, of course, would understandably arouse – in a matter of speaking – interest to male filmgoers of Saturday matinees. Upon the film’s release, even the critic of the Los Angeles Times conceded should reality mirror the Martian “femme beauty” as seen on-screen in the course of Flight to Mars, “there’s going to be an awful scramble even among scientists to find a way to the distant planet.”

The publicity machine went to work in earnest in July of 1951, noting that while production on Flight to Mars had recently wrapped (shooting lasted only four to six weeks, depending on the report), actress Marguerite Chapman had become so intrigued by art director David Milton’s stage dressing, she commissioned him to re-do her Beverly Hills apartment in a “Martian manner.” Though Chapman would receive top billing, she was merely part of a genuine ensemble cast that would include Cameron Mitchell, Arthur Franz, Virginia Huston and John Litel. Since none of the above players were box-office names of any particular renown, there wasn’t a terrible amount of fanfare accompanying the film’s release in November of 1951. The cast was described a non-distinguished manner in the press as “a rather unknown but able cast of Thespians.”

The scenario of the film itself (“The Most Fantastic Expedition Ever Conceived by Man!”) was not terribly original. A meteor shower diverts a group of space-travelers from their mission and forces them to crash land on Mars. There they meet a group of white, Anglo-Saxon looking, English-speaking Martians who currently survive underground thanks to a mineral called Corium. They seem friendly enough at first, even offering to help the Earthlings rebuild their space craft for a trip home. What they’re not letting on is that their supply of life-supplying Corium is fast dwindling and thus threatening their existence. So they plan on hijacking the repaired space craft to launch an invasion of Earth.

The scenario is actually less exciting as it might sound. The premise is OK, but this is a studio-soundstage bound production with lots of people talking about things and not enough of action or on-screen intrigue or cool space-matte paintings to balance such loquaciousness. Still, there was some enthusiasm amongst studio accountants in 1951 that Flight to Mars might fare pretty well at the box office. So much so that on the very week of the film’s release, producer Mirisch announced he had once again engaged Flight to Mars screenwriter “Arthur Straus” [sic] to adapt an original story conjured up by Kenneth Charles.

It’s unclear - but certainly possible - that screenwriter Arthur Strawn was not so much misidentified in the news item as he was purposely misidentified. Strawn, the child of emigres from Romania, had been blacklisted by the right-wing Red Channels publication in 1950, suspected of Communist sympathies. His writing of the screenplay and his association with the film Hiawatha had postponed that particular film of getting into production. Monogram president Broidy thought it best to shelve the Hiawatha project due to the screenplay’s alleged Moscow-aligned pacifist taint.

Strawn’s political affiliations shouldn’t have mattered, of course. But sci-fi cinema historians have long debated if the creative genesis of Flight to Mars was, at least in part, a thematic mimic of Yakov Protazanov’s 1924 space-traveling silent-era Soviet flicker Aelita (aka Queen of Mars), a film based on Alexei Tolstoy’s 1923 novel Aelita: the Decline of Mars). Flight to Mars seems to share a few tenuous ties to this early Soviet film. The most damning and oft invoked of these is the purloining of the name “Aelita” for Marguerite Chapman’s female lead character. Sci-fi film fans who wish to decide for themselves how many ideas were lifted, can view the original Soviet film on any of a number of DVD or DVD-R issues… or simply visit youtube for a peek if only passingly curious.

In any case, Mirisch’s proposed follow-up to Flight to Mars, Voyage to Venus, was to bring a crew of space-travelers to the planet second from the sun. That this second film was never put into production is a shame and a great loss: if for no other reason that moving the cast to a planet even closer to the sun’s heat would have likely caused the Venusian women to wear even less clothing…

This Blu-ray of Film Detective’s Flight to Mars, licensed from Wade Williams, has been sourced from original 35mm elements of the Cinecolor separation negatives and restored with assistance of the Paramount Pictures archives. The Blu-ray features several bonus supplements. These include two “exclusive” documentaries, both directed by Daniel Griffith: the first is Walter Mirisch: from Bomba to Body Snatchers, a thirteen-minute feature where film historian C. Courtney Joyner examines the stewardship of Mirisch and Broidy as transformative to the rise of Monogram and Allied as an industry player. The second is Interstellar Travelogues: Cinema’s First Space Race where famed space-art illustrator Vincent Di Fate narrates a ten-minute feature on the earliest bits of cinematic interest in space travel from the influences of early German rocketry to the novels of Robert Heinlein.

The set also rounds out nicely with a commentary track by Justin Humphreys, the film historian and author of the recently published The Dr. Phibes Companion: The Morbidly Romantic History of the Classic Vincent Price Horror Film Series. There’s also a twelve-page booklet that features the essay Mars at the Movies, written by journalist/author Don Stradley. While Stradley briefly touches on some aspects of the production of Flight to Mars, the essay mostly offers a brief history of the role the red planet has figured into film history. In all, a very impressive release that will delight fans of the genre.

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Decca Records will release Hans Zimmer's soundtrack for the new James Bond film "No Time to Die" as a special 2-LP vinyl soundtrack. Here is the official description:

The Hans Zimmer produced soundtrack for the 25th installment in the James Bond film franchise, No Time To Die. The soundtrack will include Billie Eilish's electrifying title track No Time To Die, co-written (with brother Finneas O'Connell) and performed by Eilish. Joining Zimmer on scoring the soundtrack is Johnny Marr, who is also the featured guitarist on the album, with additional music by composer and score producer Steve Mazzaro.

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"WHEN SHERMAN MET FRANKENSTEIN" 

BY MARK CERULLI

To celebrate the release of producer Sam Sherman’s memoir, When Dracula Met Frankenstein (Murania Press) Cinema Retro presents this exclusive interview with the man himself. In our two-hour conversation, the filmmaker demonstrated a virtual photographic memory when discussing his remarkable 60 plus year career. Our interview was a time capsule of the drive-in era where creative marketing, distribution and production exemplified the true spirit of independent filmmaking.

Sam Sherman grew up a horror and western film fan. The first horror film Sam ever saw was Universal’s classic monster comedy, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) which captivated his imagination at a very young age. Following his dream, he attended City College of New York to study filmmaking. Like most CR readers, he was also an avid collector – in his case, horror stills, which one imagines were almost given away in the 1950s. Those black and white photos, picked up in the small memorabilia stores that used to dot Manhattan, led to a career – “In 1958, I wrote to Famous Monsters and to my surprise, got a call back from Jim Warren and asked if they’d be interested in renting my stills,” Sherman recalled.

“I produced ads for Captain Company (FM’s merchandising division) and I also acquired product for them.” (As one who spent a lot of hard-earned teenage cash on Captain Co products - including a Dr. No movie poster for all of $4.99 - that was a part of Sam’s long career I could instantly relate to.)

While ghostwriting articles for FM and working on other Warren publications like Spacemen, Screen Thrills Illustrated and Wildest Westerns, Sherman frequently found his enthusiasm for horror looked down upon by Help! magazine art director, Terry Gilliam. Years later, Gilliam took an obvious jab (and inspiration) from Sherman’s climactic battle of the monsters in Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971) with his own comedic dismemberment scene in Monty Python & The Holy Grail (1975). “I made it a point never to see anything he’s done,” Sam adds.

In the 1950s and 60s, New York was the center of the film universe and Sherman found himself making the rounds of small distributors trying to find films to license for his own fledgling company, Signature Films. Sam later got in with an independent film company called Hemisphere Pictures which specialized in movies shot in the Philippines, including the Blood Island horror cult classics directed by Eddie Romero. Sherman honed his exploitation skills by creating the theatrical, television, radio and print ad campaigns which established Hemisphere as The House of Horror with unforgettable gimmicks and marketing promotions like “The Oath of Green Blood” for the first audience participation film, The Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969).

Sam’s book is full of photos from that era – from snapshots of early visits to LA, to on-set stills and “ballyhoo” photos of theater displays, lurid posters and marquees. One image that jumps out is of a young Sam standing behind the iconic Boris Karloff on A.I.P.’s The Raven set. “Forry Ackerman (Famous Monsters’ longtime editor) took me to the last day of shooting and we spent the whole day with Peter Lorre and Vincent Price, which was wonderful. I had a nice chat with Karloff. He finished up for the day and (director) Roger Corman took him away to do The Terror, which was non-union, somewhere else.” Talk about maximizing your star!

In 1968, Sherman and several partners – including longtime friend, filmmaker Al Adamson, formed Independent-International Pictures Corp. (a riff off the very successful American International Pictures). “Al just wanted to make movies, he left it to me to figure out how to market them and make money,” Sam recalls.

Their first production for the new company was a raw biker film, Satan’s Sadists starring Russ Tamblyn of West Side Story fame and directed by Adamson. The film tapped into the national shockwaves reverberating from biker gang violence as well as LA’s horrific Manson murders. The female lead was a statuesque California blonde, Regina Carrol, who became Adamson’s girlfriend, later his wife and star of his films. Wanting to give her a little extra exposure, Sherman labeled her “The Freak-Out Girl”. As the film contained nudity, the then-new movie ratings board wanted to slap an X on Satan’s Sadists. Sam went to the mat to contest it, even advising the theatre circuits to rate the film themselves based on regional tastes vs the Motion Picture Board’s inconsistent classifications for independent films.

Sam’s book is full of similar throw out the rulebook tales – like licensing an odd Filipino caveman film named Tagani which was shot in black & white. To modernize it, Adamson shot some new scenes with veteran horror star John Carradine but the film still didn’t look right, so Sam suggested using various tints (“Like they did in silent movies”). He wrote MORE new scenes (including computer sex!), added an eye-catching title - Horror of the Blood Monsters and they now had a releasable film!

At Independent-International, Sam and Al shrugged off the industry’s notoriously unforgiving deadlines: “We released an imported German picture called Women for Sale which had been a big hit and I said ‘We can’t find anything like it to follow up with, so let’s make a picture like this’, it’ll be called Girls for Rent…” Sam hired an industry friend to write it, months went by without a script. “We’re getting closer to the key summer playdates, and we were really in a jam” Sam recalled. “I got another writer and we knocked the picture out fast, doing the campaign fast, ordered prints and got it into release by the end of the summer. Sixty days, I couldn’t believe we could do it but we did and it was a pretty good film!”

Of course, there’s a chapter on Independent-International’s biggest picture – Dracula vs Frankenstein, which actually started out as Blood Freaks (aka Blood Seekers). “The script was not much of anything but I was working on it… we wanted a name actor so Al went to agent Jerry Rosen who said ‘You can have Lon Chaney, Jr. and J. Carrol Naish for a week for $6K.’” They booked them sight unseen – and when they reported for work, both were in ill health. “Naish had a bad eye and Chaney had throat cancer. (Dracula vs Frankenstein would be his final horror film.) “Ya gotta meet the people,” Sam adds knowingly. Diminutive Angelo Rossitto rounded out the cast as the carnival barker Grazbo. The resulting film was so bad, backers recommended it just be shelved. Sam lives by the motto “Waste not, want not” and since he was an editor himself, he went to work watching the film repeatedly until he found a line of dialogue he could use to expand the storyline to include the last surviving Frankenstein… and the monster. “And once I thought that I said, ‘Let’s bring in Dracula for good measure.’” Scraping together $50K for reshoots they hired a tall, dark-haired record store employee, Rafael Engel (named “Zandor Vorkov” by Forry) to play the Count and 7’4” accountant, John Bloom, to play the monster. “I left it to Al to make the picture, but as the president of Independent International, I made the final decisions,” Sam adds. Sam also tapped Famous Monsters’ Forry Ackerman who not only acted in the film, but also secured the electrical equipment and props of special effects wizard Kenneth Strickfaden for the production. Strickfaden’s crackling electrical contraptions were originally used in Universal’s Frankenstein film 40 years earlier. Against the odds, Dracula vs Frankenstein was a monster hit! Ahead of his time, Sam even released the film on TV AND in theaters/drive-ins “day-and-date” at the same time. “Nobody cared”, Sam says, chuckling, “I did what I wanted to do.”

Naturally, Sam devotes a chapter to his creative partner and “the brother I never had”, Al Adamson, who was tragically murdered by a contractor renovating his desert house in 1995. Incredibly Sam still had a connection with him because one night after Al had been declared “missing”, Sam silently asked his friend to give him a sign of where he was… the word “Cement” popped into his mind. He communicated that to police and sure enough, when they investigated, Al’s body was discovered underneath a cement floor. The contractor was apprehended in Florida and is now serving decades in prison but the pain of Sam’s loss is palpable. He still keeps Adamson’s name alive with drive-in screenings and special DVD and Blu-ray releases of their work.

Now 81, Sam feels the time is ripe for his story to be told. His oversize book is full of industry lore and life lessons. “I hope readers get that if they want to be in the picture business, they can… and people who aren’t filmmakers but want to know the history of Al and myself, the whole story is there – how we did it, why we did it and what really happened.” Summing up, Sam says, “We did what we had to do.”

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BY TIM MCGLYNN

Mill Creek Entertainment has released a Blu-ray edition of Universal Pictures’ Safe House from 2012. This spy thriller features a first-rate cast including Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Ruben Blades and Sam Shepard.

Directed by Sweden’s Daniel Espinoza, the story concerns the capture and escape of a former CIA operative who possesses damning evidence that his superiors are spilling secrets to anyone with a large bank account. The script is by David Guggenheim and may remind viewers of Matt Damon’s Bourne films.

Ryan Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a young CIA agent stuck on housekeeping duty at an empty safe house in Capetown, South Africa. He's restless and eager for a more important post in a less isolated location. The house doesn't see much action, nor does Weston apart from conjugal visits from his gorgeous girlfriend played by Nora Arnezeder. That is, until the CIA brings in Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), a rogue agent wanted for selling state secrets to the highest bidder.

Right off the bat we learn that Frost is highly skilled at manipulating those around him as his captors are intimidated by his history with the agency. He is calm and recognizes that the agents escorting him to the safe house are following all the standard procedures. In one tense scene Frost is tortured by waterboarding as the agents need to know what information he has shared with the enemy.

It soon becomes apparent that Frost’s contacts on the other side are not too happy with him either as a squad of assassins arrives at the supposedly secure location. Weston and Frost manage to escape before the gunmen swarm the building. It's now Weston's responsibility to bring his charge back to the American embassy in one piece. Not an easy task for a rookie, considering Frost's attempts to ditch his captor and their pursuers' attempts to kill them before they reach safety.

The remainder of the film is one gigantic chase throughout Capetown as it revealed there is a mole within the agency feeding details to the other side. Car chases, gun battles and hand-to-hand fights abound as Weston begins to doubt Frost’s guilt. At one point, Frost tries to confuse his captor by saying “They’re going to put their arm around you and tell you things like ‘You did a decent job, son. We’ll take it from here.’ That’s when you know you’re screwed.” After hearing that line you know one of the bosses will actually say it.

The double agent within the CIA is soon revealed and a smashing fight scene along with a couple of surprising plot twists bring the story to a satisfying conclusion.

Denzel Washington demonstrates why he is a two-time Academy Award winner with his performance in this film. He’s cagey and understated in his portrayal of Frost and viewers are never quite sure if he’s a traitor or not. With this role and his appearances in the two Equalizer movies, Washington is fast becoming another action star in the manner of Keanu Reeves’ assassin in the John Wick adventures.

Ryan Reynolds takes a straight-laced approach as Weston, the bored safe house monitor suddenly thrust into the center of an international espionage incident. He relies on his training and instructions from his handler played by Brendan Gleeson. Weston begins to question his superiors as Frost gets inside his head sowing doubts.

Sam Shepard and Vera Farmiga are serviceable as CIA leaders back at Quantico Headquarters although there is not enough development to make them truly interesting characters. Ruben Blades has a small, but memorable role as a document forger that Frost contacts in an attempt to leave South Africa. Nora Arnezeder is criminally underutilized as Weston’s physician girlfriend. Her role requires her to be annoyed most of the time.

The thugs chasing Tobin are stereotypical Middle Eastern villains who are highly skilled at killing several hapless CIA agents. The script focuses on Frost and Weston and their mano y mano encounters as both adversaries and allies. This is the crux of the story and director Espinoza keeps it moving at a breakneck pace. The violence is bone crushing, but not overly bloody.

Editor Richard Pearson deserves much credit for keeping the action at a warp speed level throughout the entire film. Most of the time I find these quick cut thrillers annoying and hard to watch. Michael Bay’s frenetic movies come to mind when everything looks a trailer for a second rate action flick. Pearce keeps the pace without giving viewers a migraine, and he is helped by cinematographer Oliver Wood who doesn’t allow the individual cuts to go all shaky cam on us. Wood also uses tight framing to provide a feeling of desolation in many of the location shots even though the story is mostly set in a major city.

Composer Ramin Djawadi provides a wonderful score for the film that utilizes styles and instrumentation reflecting the film’s setting in South Africa. Music is sometimes not noticed in action and chase scenes until those brief moments when there are no sound effects from the cars and guns. There would be awkward breaks without the music to fill in the blanks.

Safe House is a terrific film for the stunts and shootout sequences which more than compensate for the lack of character development. You may not always know what is going on, but your interest is definitely captured by the cat and mouse game between the two main characters. The bigger the screen and the louder the sound, the more you will enjoy this movie.

The Blu-ray disc issued by Mill Creek Entertainment deserves kudos for the presentation of the film. The video quality is terrific with just enough of a gritty quality to put an edge on all scenes. The 5.1 sound mix is loud and heavy on the bass. Explosions will jump out at those viewers using higher end surround systems. Fans of Blu-ray extras will be disappointed, however, as there are none with the exception of optional English subtitles. However, the film itself looks fantastic and, as drive-in critic Joe Bob Briggs might say, things blow up real good.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

High school friends Enid Coleslaw (Thora Birch) and Rebecca Doppelmeyer (Scarlett Johansson) absolutely cannot wait to be free of the prison of school, defiantly flipping the bird and squashing their mortarboards following their graduation. Enid isn’t off the hook just yet: her “diploma” is instead a note informing her that she must “take some stupid art class” (her words) if she hopes to graduate. Their fellow classmates are caricatures of everyone we all knew during our adolescence. Melora (Debra Azar) is inhumanly happy all the time and oblivious to Enid and Rebecca’s sense of ennui and contempt. Todd (T.J. Thyne) is ultra-nervous to talk with the insouciant Rebecca at the punchbowl. Another bespectacled student sits off by himself. Enid and Rebecca are at both an intellectual and emotional crossroads. They want to share an apartment; however, they seem unaware of the amount of money they will have to come up with for such a venture. Instead of finding jobs, their post-graduation afternoons are spent meandering through life while frowning upon society, following strange people home, bothering their mutual friend Josh (Brad Renfro) and admiring the Weird Al wannabe waiter at the new 50’s-themed diner which plays contemporary music. Seemingly without a care in the world, the women have no plans to attend college, preferring instead to prank an unsuspecting nebbish named Seymour (Steve Buscemi) who has placed a personal ad in an attempt to communicate with a striking blonde he noticed, with Enid feigning said blonde on Seymour’s answering machine. Rebecca is a dour and solemn counterpoint to Enid’s aloof yet occasionally jovial demeanor. If Holden Caulfield had a girlfriend, she might be someone just like Enid, sneering at the losers and phonies in her midst. Searching out Seymour, they approach him and his roommate at a garage sale where he is unloading old records for next to nothing. His affection for collecting 78 rpms begins to endear him to Enid, who confides in Rebecca that she likes him despite their 25-year age difference. They have some truly funny moments together such as attending a “party” for guys who talk techno mumbo-jumbo, riding in the car together as Seymour screams at people walking through an intersection, and a humorous romp through an adult video and novelty store.

Rebecca grows tired of hearing about Seymour, and presses Enid to get a job but she only succeeds in getting fired repeatedly, even from her position at the concession stand at a Pacific Theatre cinema when she ribs the customers over their choice of movie and their willingness to eat popcorn with “chemical sludge” poured on it. The tone of the film shifts from one of comedic commentary on the world to one of disillusionment as Enid begins to feel her world slowly begin to crumble around her. Her friendship with Rebecca, an anchor in her life for years, is ending and like so many of us at that age, she has no idea where her life is going or what she needs to be doing when she isn’t changing her hair color or her now-famous blue Raptor t-shirt or donning punk rock garb as a sartorial statement. Her summer art teacher (Illeana Douglas) shows her students her personal thesis film Mirror, Father, Mirror which itself is a parody of the pretentious student films submitted to professors. She pushes Enid to create interesting and powerful art when Enid is only interested in drawing the people she knows and Don Knotts. In short, nothing seems to be going well for her. The only person she can rely on is Norman, the well-dressed man who sits on a bench at a bus stop that stopped service a long time ago and holds the key to the film’s long-debated denouement. Enid is almost like an older version of Jane Burnham, the character portrayed by Ms. Birch in American Beauty (1999). In that film, she barely reacted to her father (Kevin Spacey) and here her contempt for her father (Bob Balaban) and his girlfriend Maxine (Teri Garr) is even more perceptible.

Director Terry Zwigoff takes the source material created by artist and writer Daniel Clowes and fashions one of the most brilliantly entertaining and poignant ruminations on adolescence the silver screen has ever seen. Ghost World also boasts excellent use of music, much of it pre-existing, although the main theme by David Kitay is an elegiac piano theme that recalls David Shire’s theme to The Conversation (1974). The film starts with a bang to the seemingly non-diegetic tune of the Mohammed Rafi hit “Jaan Pehechaan Ho” from the 1965 Hindi film Gumnaam, the scenes of which are intercut with images of the apartment complex’s inhabitants. As the camera tracks from the exterior windows of these grotesqueries, it settles upon Enid’s bedroom where the night before graduation she dances to the aforementioned tune which we now see is being played back on a bootleg VHS tape. The beat is frenetic and infectious. Enid, for the first of only a handful of times in the entire film, appears to be in a state of joy as she mimics the moves of the dancers. If only she could always feel this way! With this singular sequence, Mr. Zwigoff achieves something reserved for only the greatest and rarest of filmmakers – re-identifying a popular musical piece with his movie. I can’t hear “The Blue Danube” without thinking of spaceships spinning throughout the galaxy.

Ghost World opened on Friday, July 20, 2001 in limited release in New York and Los Angeles and garnered immediate critical acclaim. Filmed in 2000, the film is a product of a simpler and more innocent time. Before the brutal wake-up call of the September 11th attacks, there is a complete lack of cell phone usage in the film. It makes a great companion to 2001’s other minor masterpiece of adolescent angst, the cult favorite Donnie Darko.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Originally released in 1921 at the height of the nation’s appetite for motion pictures, the epic romantic drama THE SHEIK became a massive sensation, breaking box office records and earning over $1 million during its first year of release.  100 years later, Paramount Pictures celebrates this towering classic of the silent film era with a brand-new Blu-ray release, arriving as part of the Paramount Presents line on October 19, 2021.

Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, THE SHEIK was directed by George Melford and stars the legendary Rudolph Valentino as the title character.  The role helped propel Valentino into stardom and sealed his status as a Hollywood heartthrob—and the original “Latin Lover”—at the age of 26.

THE SHEIK restoration employed modern technology so viewers can experience the original beauty of this monumental silent film.  Since original negatives for silent films rarely exist, Paramount searched the world for the best elements and used a print and an intermediate element called a fine grain.  One source of the film yielded better results for image quality, another for intertitles.  One of the elements was “stretch-printed” and had to be adjusted digitally during the restoration process.  In the silent era there was no standard frame rate, so stretch printing was done to show silent films at 24 frames per second.  In addition, tints and tones were digitally applied, guided by an original continuity script from the Paramount archive.  The result is the best picture quality THE SHEIK has had since it was originally shown in theaters 100 years ago.

While THE SHEIK was wildly successful, it did provoke controversy, much as the source material had upon its original publication in 1919.  Many of the themes and controversial elements of the film are still being grappled with today, a subject that is explored in a new featurette on the Blu-ray with film historian and professor Leslie Midkiff DeBauche entitled “Desert Heat: 100 Years with The Sheik.”  The disc also includes a music score by Roger Bellon and access to a Digital copy of the film.

As with all films released in the Paramount Presents line, THE SHEIK is presented with collectible packaging featuring a foldout image of the film’s theatrical poster and an interior spread with key movie moments. 

Synopsis

Rudolph Valentino is Ahmed Ben Hassan, a charming Arabian sheik who becomes infatuated with the adventurous, modern-thinking Englishwoman Lady Diana Mayo, played by Agnes Ayres.  When the sheik abducts Lady Diana, the two clash, but ultimately profess their love for one another in this quintessential “desert romance” that effectively capitalized on the popularity of the genre.

About Paramount Presents

This collectible line spans celebrated classics to film-lover favorites, each from the studio’s renowned library.  Every Paramount Presents release features never-before-seen bonus content and exclusive collectible packaging.  Additional titles available in the Paramount Presents collection on Blu-ray include: Fatal Attraction, King Creole, To Catch a Thief, Flashdance, Days of Thunder, Pretty In Pink, Airplane!, Ghost, Roman Holiday, The Haunting, The Golden Child, Trading Places, The Court Jester, Love Story, Elizabethtown, The Greatest Show on Earth, Mommie Dearest, Last Train From Gun Hill, 48 HRS., Another 48 HRS., Almost Famous, A Place in the Sun, Nashville, Bugsy Malone, and Breakdown.

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BY FRED BLOSSER

Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “There Was a Crooked Man . . .” debuted in theaters on Christmas Day 1970, a disruptive year for Hollywood as the moviegoing audience continued to fracture along the Vietnam War divide. Studios were desperate to retain their core demographic of older, conservative viewers while courting younger, affluent ticket-buyers who wanted stronger fare. “There Was a Crooked Man . . .” tried to offer a little something for everybody. For the older guys at the VFW Hall, it was a Western starring Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas, supported largely by a cast of other well-established, middle-aged actors. For the “Easy Rider” crowd, there was plenty of nudity, cussing, and innuendo about weed that you’d never encounter on “Gunsmoke” or “Bonanza.” In Mankiewicz’s cynical, R-rated Western, now available from the Warner Archive Collection, outlaw Paris Pitman Jr. (Kirk Douglas) and his partners rob a wealthy banker, Wayne Lomax, of $500,000 at gunpoint in an 1880s version of a home invasion. Lomax is played by Arthur O’Connell, the first of several actors cast against type in the script by David Newman and Robert Benton (their follow-up to “Bonnie & Clyde”). Instead of meeting misfortune with the folksy resignation we expect from an Arthur O’Connell character, Wayne Lomax reacts with a racist, profane tirade in front of his wife, his young son and daughter, and his African-American cook and butler: “A man works like a [insert the “n”-invective] all of his life to get ahead, and some bastard takes it from him.”

Fleeing with the loot, Pitman and his gang exchange shots with Lomax and his family. Even the kids join in from the porch with their rifles. Pitman’s partners are killed, including one whom he himself shoots in the back. The last thief standing, he hides the loot in a rattlesnake den, and celebrates at a brothel. Lomax coincidentally visits the same establishment for some cheer after being cleaned out. In Mankiewicz’s second “What the --!” scene for O’Connell, the sympathetic madam offers Lomax a free look through a peephole into an adjoining room to watch another customer have sex with two women. Eagerly agreeing, Lomax is startled to recognize the other customer as Pitman, and the outlaw is arrested and sentenced to the penitentiary, a remote fortress surrounded by miles of desert. There, the warden (Martin Gabel) lives in comfort while his charges are crammed into filthy cells. He first tries intimidation, then bribery, to learn where Pitman has hidden the stolen money. Neither gambit works. After he’s killed in a riot, his idealistic replacement, Woodward Lopeman (Henry Fonda), arrives.

Lopeman sets about to clean up the prison literally and figuratively. He abolishes corruption among the guards, eliminates cruel punishment on the rock pile, institutes regular bathing, hires a prison doctor, and begins to construct a dining hall where the convicts will be fed decent food instead of swill. Unimpressed with the newcomer’s progressivism and confident that no man is above temptation, Pitman offers Lopeman a cut of his stolen money if he’ll let him escape. The warden refuses, just as the loquacious robber refuses when Lopeman asks him to give a speech praising the reforms when political leaders visit for the dedication of the dining hall. Pitman has emerged as the leader of his motley collective of inmates, much like Ken Kesey’s Randall P. McMurphy, whom Douglas portrayed on Broadway in 1963 in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Douglas had tried for years to interest Hollywood in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” before handing the rights over to his son Michael in 1970 once he decided he was too old to reprise the part. In a sense, the role of Paris Pitman Jr. was the big-screen version of Kesey’s character (Jack Nicholson, in the 1975 picture eventually produced by Michael Douglas) that Kirk Douglas never got to play.

Determined to break out of the prison, Pitman devises an elaborate escape plan and enlists his cellmates to help. One of them is easily convinced, a young man sentenced to hang for murder (Michael Blodgett, whose other movie in 1970 was “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”). The others are reluctant, having less to lose by serving out their time. “There ain’t no way out,” claims the elderly Missouri Kid (Burgess Meredith), who endures confinement by smoking the cannabis that he grows in his corner of the cell. But Pitman wins him and the others over with a deal they can’t resist: if they assist, he’ll share his stolen money with them after they’re all free. Or will he?

In this clip from the 1964 classic "Goldfinger", Desmond Llewelyn as "Q" introduces Sean Connery's James Bond to the soon-to-be-iconic Aston Martin DB5. The vehicle would become a star in its own right and continues to appear in contemporary Bond films. Cinema Retro co-publisher Dave Worrall wrote the history of the vehicle in his book "The Most Famous Car in the World", a designation that still remains valid today.

Turn back time and sit in on candid conversations between the legendary Lucille Ball and the biggest Hollywood stars of the era with Let's Talk To Lucy — the long-lost radio show that's back as a pop-up channel on ch. 104 and the SXM App. Tune in to hear Lucy chat with Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Carol Burnett, Dean Martin, and many more, for a fascinating time capsule of both a classic era and her own classic wit.

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