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 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)

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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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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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?

BY GIACOMO SELLONI

Crime Story is a film that tries to sell an improbable story. Though there are some good performances here, enjoyment of the film hinges on the viewer's ability to suspend disbelief.

We first meet our anti-hero, Ben Myers, via voiceover. Richard Dreyfuss's voice is easily recognizable,as is the scene. He's been shot and wounded and is being questioned by paramedics on the ride to the hospital. Briefly, we're treated to what must be his life, and mistakes, passing before his eyes. Claiming to be "based on actual events," we are now informed that we are going to a point in time "12 hours earlier."

Ben Myers is a 71 year-old man. We get this information from the paramedics in the first scene. When we first see Ben, we also see that he is obese. He and his second wife, Nan, live in a lovely home. Nan suffers from dementia and seems unable to communicate verbally. Ben Myers is a former mob boss and enforcer who was once the most powerful man in town. Ben has a daughter named Nickel Wallace (Mira Sorvino), who, as Ben puts it, became a cop to catch him. They have long been estranged, from when Nickel was four years old and he left her mom. Although technically a homicide detective, Nickel is now assigned as a liaison to Congressman Billings (D.W. Moffett) who, unbeknownst to her, happens to owe his political career to Ben.

Ben heads out, leaving Nan alone in the home, to meet his daughter at the bar he currently owns. When he returns home from the contentious confrontation, he finds his home has been ransacked and robbed. Nan is unhurt but everything of value has been stolen. An examination of a video taken by the hidden cam in the living room clock shows Ben the faces of the three men who robbed him.

Now here where it gets improbable. Within the space of a few hours, he tracks down the van that left was parked outside when he left his home, attacks and disables a man twice his size, gets the address of one of the thieves, and defeats him in a wrestling match for a gun and...

The concept of "suspension of belief" is necessary for fans of sci-fi, fantasy and comic books. For example, we believe a person can fly. We believe that super spies get whatever woman they want. "Suspension of disbelief," not so easy to lose. That being said the film does have a lot going for it.

Crime Story has almost as many twists as a Chubby Checker dance party. And when they're revealed they make sense. It also has a few poignant scenes that will tug at your heartstrings. Dreyfuss and Sorvino are terrific in their roles. Megan McFarland as the voiceless Nan works magic. Pruitt Taylor Vince also works his usual supporting role magic as Tommy, Ben's long time, and long-suffering assistant/henchman/bar manager.

In select theaters, on digital and on demand as of Aug. 13th, don't expect this to become a classic, go-to mobster film but Adam Lipsius' Crime Story is worth a viewing.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

New York, NY -- August 3, 2021 -- Kino Lorber proudly announces the Blu-ray and DVD release of the critically-acclaimed documentary APOCALYPSE '45, a stirring account of the final year of World War II. Directed by celebrated documentarian Erik Nelson (The Cold Blue), APOCALYPSE '45 includes stunning restorations of never-before-seen archival footage (culled from over 700 reels in the National Archives) in vivid color and surround sound, and the voices of 24 men who lived through these experiences, immersing viewers in the events of the Pacific Theater with an immediacy and presence that brings history to life and serves as a tribute to the last of the Greatest Generation.

Presented in the extended director's cut, APOCALYPSE '45 comes to Blu-ray and DVD on September 7, 2021, with a SRP of $29.95 for the Blu-ray, and $19.95 for the DVD. Bonus features include Ford at Pearl, a new featurette containing long-lost color footage directed by Oscar®-winning filmmaker John Ford at Pearl Harbor in 1942 (23 minutes), plus two fully restored Oscar®-nominated documentaries from 1945, To the Shores of Iwo Jima (Newly Restored 6.5K Color Film, 5.1/Stereo Audio Mix, 20 Minutes), and The Last Bomb (1945, Newly Restored 6.5K Color Film, 5.1 Stereo/Stereo Audio Mix, 36 Minutes). Also included are a restoration demonstration, and the trailer.

Erik Nelson pioneered the genre he describes as "Big Screen History" with his groundbreaking 2018 documentary The Cold Blue, which featured newly-restored footage shot by Oscar®-winner William Wyler during his time with the 8th Air Force in World War II. The Cold Blue became the first in this genre of documentary films that would soon be followed by Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old and Todd Miller's Apollo 11.

With unprecedented access to footage shot at the time of the events, restored with state-of-the-art technology, APOCALYPSE '45 brings audiences closer than ever before to this defining chapter of American history, as told (and seen) by the men who were there.

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release:

Eight Feature Films Plus Hours of Special Features Arrive August 10, 2021, in Time for this Year’s Only Friday the 13^th

Take a ride down memory lane with everyone’s favorite psychotic killer Jason Voorhees in the new FRIDAY THE 13^th 8-MOVIE COLLECTION on Blu-ray, arriving August 10, 2021 from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Get ready for the only Friday the 13^th of the year on August 13^th with this to-die-for collection, which includes newly remastered versions of the first four films in one of the most influential and successful horror franchises in cinematic history.   This must-have set for fans of heart-stopping horror is gushing over with hours of previously released special features including slashed scenes, making of featurettes, killer commentaries and much, much more.  The set also includes access to digital copies of all eight movies, including the “uncut” edition of the original Friday the 13^th.

Return to the terror of Camp Crystal Lake and re-experience all the screams, scares, and creative kills.  From the too-often ignored warnings of Camp Crustal Lake’s “death curse,” through an ever-increasing body-count that culminates on the streets of New York City, the hockey-masked mayhem is unleashed and unstoppable.

The eight films in the collection are: Friday The 13th, Friday The 13th Part 2, Friday The 13th Part 3, Friday The 13^th Part IV: The Final Chapter, Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning, Friday The 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood, and Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.

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BY TIM MCGLYNN

Zephina Media and Metropolis Post have released a Blu-ray edition of 1974’s Buster and Bille, a teenage romantic drama starring Jan-Michael Vincent, Joan Goodfellow, Pamela Sue Martin and, in his first film role, Robert Englund.

The story is set in Georgia during 1948, where Buster is the local school athletic hero who is known for pulling pranks such driving his truck in front of the school bus and temporarily blinding the driver in a cloud of dust. Cocky and handsome, Buster is the leader of a group of cool kids and misfits that includes an albino, Whitey (Robert Englund) who has the shocking habit of dying his hair black. He’s engaged to a pretty classmate named Margie (Pamela Sue Martin) who has decided they should not have sex until their wedding night. The rest of Buster’s pals make a nasty habit of coaxing Billie (Joan Goodfellow), a shy backwoods girl, into their truck for sex whenever they’re feeling hard up. Buster, frustrated with Margie, decides to ask Billie out, hoping for the same action his buddies brag about on Monday mornings.

After spending an evening with Billie, Buster begins to see there is more to this girl than just an easy date. Buster feels empathy at first, and then begins to fall in love with Billie as she starts to talk and express her feelings. Not sure about his relationship with Margie and their upcoming marriage, Buster calls it quits, which shocks his friends, parents and most of the population of their small town.

Buster takes Billie to a dance where all their classmates can see that these two are truly in love. This angers the group of boys who have been abusing Billie and they soon plot to get even. An ugly scene of rape and shocking violence follows after the boys force Billie into their truck on a dark, rainy afternoon. Afterwards they drive off leaving her by the side of the road. Buster becomes aware of what has happened and races into town to confront the boys at a local pool hall where he exacts a harsh revenge.

Jan-Michael Vincent is believable as the high school boy who learns there is more to a relationship than just sex. He sees the good in both Billie and Whitey. It is revealed early on that Whitey was the victim of cruel jokes concerning his medical condition, but once he became friends with Buster, the taunting suddenly stopped.

Much was made at the time of release of the full-frontal nudity Vincent displays in one scene. In reality, it occurs during a swimming scene with Billie where we do get a shot of Buster in the altogether. This all happens in a flash, no pun intended.

Joan Goodfellow is excellent as the withdrawn Billie, a victim of some unrevealed ugliness within her family. She shines once Buster begins to draw her out and gets her to communicate her feelings. Billie is clearly in love with Buster and begins to develop a sense of self-worth under his protection.

Horror fans will, of course, recognize Robert Englund as the future razor-wielding Freddy Kruger from A Nightmare on Elm Street. As Whitey, Englund is convincing as the naïve boy who doesn’t know how to act around girls. He participates in the attack upon Billie even though he knows it is wrong, and becomes tormented afterwards.

Director Daniel Petrie gives his characters a natural feel and they are believable as typical high school students. The bullies are not horrible kids, they just react inappropriately to situations that allow them to feel better about their own insecurities. They commit a terrible crime, however, when those feelings become mixed with alcohol and revenge.

The script by Rob Turbeville gives us characters from the South speaking with a dialect typical of the region. However, the students, parents, police and other residents are refreshingly not depicted as the hicks we see in so many movies set in this geographical region.

Buster and Billie is another of those “product of their time” movies in that many viewers may find it uncomfortable to watch. I myself found myself cringing during the rape scene due to its sheet brutality. While attacking Billie, one of the boys keeps telling her “I love you.” This poignanlty illustrates the disrespect and hatred towards women and minorities present in the 1940s, when the story was set and which sadly remains part of our society in some segments 80 years later.

Mario Tosi’s cinematography is gorgeous, taking advantage of the fact that much of this film takes place in the countryside and features the colors of fall. Al De Lory provides a light score that doesn’t sound too stereotypically Southern. No banjos or slide guitars take over the movie at any time. Hoyt Axton performs the title song and twice during the film we hear Arlo Guthrie singing Shackles and Chains on a radio in the background.

According to information provided by the distributor, Buster and Billie was only released once on VHS and has been unavailable for years. It was reported that Columbia Pictures had somehow lost the master print and the only available copies were the old consumer tapes that were sold by secondary retailers. In 2019 Sony Pictures finally did locate the master elements and a restoration was completed the next year.

Apparently Sony was not interested in releasing this new edition of Buster and Billie so it fell to an independent company, Zephina Media, to do the honors. The result is a beautiful transfer in the original 1.85 aspect ratio that is free from any pops, scratches or other imperfections. The mono sound is clear and the dialogue is very easy to hear.

This film appears to have a considerable fan base as this Blu-ray is the result of their many requests made to Sony. The disc does not contain any extras and, in fact, has no menu page. Some collectors may be upset by this omission, but my opinion has always been we should be happy someone finally released Buster and Billie in a high quality format.

For more information about this release or to order, visit www.busterandbillie.com.