BY TODD GARBARINI

One of my all-time favorite horror films is Richard Ciupka’s 1983 outing Curtains. Following nearly three consecutive decades of relative obscurity after a VHS release even among die-hard horror genre fans, Curtains finally made its DVD and Blu-ray debut in 2014, restored to its original grandeur. The film starred Samantha Eggar who I knew from William Wyler’s The Collector (1965) and David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979). At the time that I first viewed the film in the summer of 1986, however, I was unfamiliar with much of the supporting female cast members. One of them was an actress named Anne Ditchburn, and it came to my attention that she had primarily been hired for the film due to her talent in ballet, which she performs in the film.

An earlier title that she co-starred in is the little seen but interesting Slow Dancing in the Big City (1978), a leisurely romantic drama starring Paul Sorvino. The film was directed by the late John Avildsen and was his follow-up to his 1976 surprise smash hit Rocky which starred Sylvester Stallone and won the 1977 Oscar for Best Picture. Slow Dancing was shot from September to November in 1977 and follows the exploits of two characters from completely disparate backgrounds. Lou Friedlander (Paul Sorvino) is a New York Daily News columnist who ingratiates himself into any and every situation that he can possibly write about because his paycheck depends upon it. Whether he is chatting up young children on the playground (an action that would get you jailed today), or meeting with creepy undesirables in a bar, Mr. Sorvino portrays Lou with an unusually spirited and enthusiastic air. Nothing bothers him: insults roll off his back and he perpetually smiles against even the most vituperative of threats. He genuinely cares about the people he writes about, including an elderly apartment dweller (Michael Gorrin from 1974’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) displaced following a fire, reminding him that he is a human being. He is well-known, and those who recognize his name are only too happy to tell him that they love his work. (The character of Lou was all-too-obviously based on legendary New York reporter Jimmy Breslin, a fact that many critics pointed out, much to Breslin’s disdain.)

It is not long before he crosses paths with Sarah Gantz (Anne Ditchburn), a stunningly beautiful and lithe ballet dancer ten years his junior who leaves the safety of her impatient boyfriend David’s (Nicolas Coster) opulent home for a tiny New York City walk-up apartment right next door to him. She is a workaholic and dances as much as she can, almost putting The Red Shoes’s (1948) Victoria Page to shame. For Sarah, dancing is all she knows, or even seems to care about. Specifically, she is training for a show that is due to open at Lincoln Center and becomes the target of the show’s director’s frustration as she makes considerable missteps in her beats and timing and begins to flail here and there. When pressed as to why she is fumbling, she brushes it off as being tired and unfocused. The truth comes out eventually when, at a fellow dancer’s urging, a visit to a doctor reveals that she suffers from fibro myositis, a muscle disorder that will not only require an operation but will also derail her plans for dancing in the future. The news is devastating, though she chooses to press on, thumbing her nose in the face of adversity.

Meanwhile, Lou is trying to get a young Spanish drummer out of poverty and into the big time by trying to convince him that his natural gift is something that he should pursue. This is a subplot that I feel could have been jettisoned and does not work as well as it should, though the director probably felt that it was necessary to make the ending more emotional. The focus should be more on Lou and Sarah’s budding romance similar to the teen drama Jeremy (1973), and the film could have easily lost about 20 minutes to make it tighter. There is an argument to be made that the movie is Rocky simply supplanted to the world of choreography and dancing. However, Mr. Sorvino is always charming when constantly looking at the bright side of things and attempting to raise Sarah’s spirits.

Kino Lorber has restored and released the film on Blu-ray. It begins with the era’s United Artists/Transamerica logo and the film is shot in a way that visually downplays the seediness that plagued New York City in the 1970s. (Owen Roizman made New York look far more sinister in William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971). The trademark landmarks of Lincoln Center and Broadway are recognizable to even out-of-towners. The film’s running time is 110 minutes, although the artwork states 84 minutes. This discrepancy could be based upon the fact that some sequences were reportedly added or extended following the film’s lukewarm reception upon its release on Friday, November 8, 1978 in an effort to flesh out the characters more and draw in the audience.

The extras are a bare minimum this time around, with on-camera interviews with actor Nicolas Coster at just under eight minutes and composer Bill Conti at around seven minutes. I would have loved a commentary with Paul Sorvino, and am not sure if an attempt was made to include his participation.There is also reversible sleeve artwork. 

The trailer is included, and it is a bit of a curiosity as it makes no mention of Mr. Avildsen’s success with Rocky.

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“JUNGLE JEOPARDY”

By Raymond Benson

The 1964 action-adventure picture, The 7th Dawn, is a solid piece of work that features an exotic location (it was filmed in Malaysia), a couple of big stars (William Holden, Capucine), a fairly “new” one (Susannah York), and, for the year it was released and its budget limitations, moderately spectacular action sequences.

However, today, the movie might be memorable because of its links to James Bond films. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert (who helmed You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker), it co-stars Tetsurō Tamba (“Tiger Tanaka” in You Only Live Twice), is photographed by Freddie Young (credited here are Frederick Young, DP of You Only Live Twice), the main titles are by Maurice Binder (veteran of the 007 films for three decades), it was released by United Artists, and the movie is produced by Charles K. Feldman (responsible for the non-EON 1967 Casino Royale)!

The 7th Dawn is based on the 1960 novel, The Durian Tree by Michael Keon, and was adapted to film by Karl Tunberg. It’s the story of the path to Malayan independence from British rule after World War II, especially during the chaotic and violent years of the early 1950s.

Three close friends—American Ferris (William Holden), Malayan/French Dhana (French actress Capucine), and Malayan Ng (Japanese actor Tetsurō Tamba) fight with the Malayan army against the Japanese during World War II. Both men are sweet on Dhana, but at the end of the war, Ng graciously retreats and allows Ferris and Dhana to live together while he goes off to Russia to further his education. Cut to 1953, when Malayan guerrillas—led by Ng—are attacking both the British forces and Malayans in terrorist acts to force the British to leave. Ferris, who simply wants to live in peace on his rubber plantation, is persuaded by the British leader, Trumpey (Michael Goodliffe), to find Ng and convince the man that the British eventually do want to grant the Malayans independence. Dhana leaves Ferris to join Ng’s guerrillas, making room for Trumpey’s daughter, Candace (Susannah York), to set sights on the American. When Dhana is arrested, tried for terrorist acts, and sentenced to death, Candace is kidnapped by Ng’s forces. Ferris then has seven days to find Ng and Candace in the back country before Dhana is hanged.

It’s all fairly exciting stuff, and it’s a colorful display of mid-1960s Hollywood production values depicting warfare in a jungle setting. Holden is fine as the stalwart and stubborn former mercenary turned businessman. Capucine, although lacking Asian heritage, is convincing enough as being half Malayan (her skin color appears to have been artificially darkened), and Tamba exhibits why director Gilbert likely chose him to play Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice. York is also a screen presence who, being the only blonde in sight, attracts audience attention. She had just come off her appearance in the award-winning Tom Jones, so her star was quickly rising.

The musical score by Riz Ortolani is of note with lush melodies and sweeping strings. The theme song, sung by The Lettermen, became a hit standard in the decade.

Kino Lorber’s high def transfer is acceptable; it certainly shows off that distinctive look of 1960s film stock, and Freddie Jones’ cinematography captures panoramic vistas of Malaysia and its jungles. There are no other supplements other than a theatrical trailer and optional English subtitles for the hearing impaired.

The 7th Dawn is fine fare for fans of any of the cast members, action-adventure in exotic landscapes, and 1960s Hollywood sensibility in widescreen Technicolor.

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“ARTHUR MILLER ANGST”

By Raymond Benson

The Academy Awards certainly overlooked this well made and superbly acted drama when it was released in 1948. All My Sons is tightly-adapted from the 1947 stage play by Arthur Miller, and it deserved some recognition, especially for some of the actors and perhaps the screenplay by Chester Erskine, who also produced the movie. It was directed by Irving Reis, who had earlier in the decade come into his own in Hollywood with the first few “Falcon” detective pictures starring George Sanders.

All My Sons was Arthur Miller’s first significant hit play, his second produced on Broadway (the first one flopped), and it won the playwright a Tony award. Erskine and Universal Pictures quickly secured the rights and got the movie into production, streamlining the three-act play into a roughly 90-minute movie. It works extremely well.

Joe Keller (Edward G. Robinson) runs a steel manufacturing business in a small town in the Midwest. His son, Chris (Burt Lancaster), is his right-hand man. Joe’s wife, Kate (Mady Christians), suffers from depression—she holds on to the hope that her other son, Larry, who disappeared three years earlier during World War II, is still alive. Kate also does not approve of Chris’s intention to marry Ann (Louisa Horton), who was originally Larry’s fiancée. Both Joe and Chris believe Larry to be dead. Ann, too, has moved on and has redirected her affections to Chris. The bigger elephant in the room, though, is that Keller and his company came under criminal scrutiny when some airplane fuselages they built proved to be faulty, causing the deaths of many soldiers overseas during the war. Keller’s business partner, Herb (Frank Conroy), took the fall and went to prison. Herb happens to be Ann’s father! Ann, Chris, Joe, and Kate have accepted the sad truth that Herb was responsible for the disaster, but Ann’s brother, George (Howard Duff), has not, and he wants to blow the lid off some well-kept secrets. Has Joe been lying all this time about his role in the manufacturing mishap? Is he not the father that Chris has placed on a pedestal for his entire life?

It’s very typical Arthur Miller angst, the kind of family drama that the playwright would explore often. And here, in All My Sons, the Miller angst is faithfully represented.

Edward G. Robinson delivers a powerful performance as Joe Keller. It is Oscar worthy, and the sad thing is that Robinson was never nominated for an Academy Award throughout his long career. He did receive an honorary Oscar in 1973, but he died two months before it was presented. This is one of those “shame on you” footnotes in the history of the Oscars, for Robinson always approached his roles with professionalism and skill. His Joe Keller in All My Sons is a pivotal piece of the film’s success.

Burt Lancaster, still fairly new to the industry, is also quite effective as the Good Son who is ready to leave his career at the factory for the girl he loves if his parents don’t accept the union. Louisa Horton is also very good, and All My Sons is her debut film performance. Horton didn’t make many movies, but she did a lot of television and was then married to filmmaker George Roy Hill for a couple of decades. Mady Christians, a longtime veteran of films since the silent days, holds her own, too. Unfortunately, Christians became a victim of HUAC—the House Un-American Activities Committee—shortly after the release of the movie and her career ended after four decades. HUAC certainly had its tentacles on several elements of the movie. Robinson had some unpleasant dealings with them, Elia Kazan (original director of the Broadway play and co-producer of the film) was a major figure in the investigations into “Communist infiltration” of Hollywood, and, most of all, Arthur Miller himself was an outspoken adversary of the committee.

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release presents a high definition transfer that shows off Russell Metty’s black and white cinematography quite well. It comes with an informative audio commentary by film historian Kat Ellinger and author/film historian Lee Gambin. The only supplements are the theatrical trailer and other Kino Lorber trailers.

All My Sons is highly recommended for fans of Arthur Miller, Edward G. Robinson, Burt Lancaster, and for late 1940s Hollywood fare. Just be ready for the angst.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

My introduction into the world of the late horror film director Wes Craven’s films came in October 1977 when I began seeing ads in my local newspaper for his film The Hills Have Eyes. The image of actor Michael Berryman as Jupiter, with his bald head and serious grin, I will not lie, freaked me out. Twenty-one years later I would meet him at a horror film convention, and he could not have been nicer – but that is beside the point! I did not know what the movie was about, but it sported an R-rating, and it did not look like anything that I could ever sit through at the age of nine. I would later learn that I was correct. I finally caught up with Hills in the summer of 1984 on a television broadcast, three years into my newfound love of horror films. I found it to be fairly terrifying, even during an afternoon viewing. Around the same time, I obtained Mr. Craven’s lesser-known film, Deadly Blessing (1981), which also featured Mr. Berryman, on CED, which takes place in the Amish Country. It is more of a supernatural film, but I enjoyed it just the same.

Everything changed when, in early November 1984, I saw the television trailer for Mr. Craven’s new film, A Nightmare on Elm Street, which introduced audiences to the world of Fred Krueger. I was curious and enthralled, and my mind began working on how I could get my parents to agree to allow me to see it. A local theater was showing it with the PG-rated A Soldier’s Story on the other screen. I lied and said that I needed to review A Soldier’s Story for my English class as we were reading the stage play upon which it was based. My friend and I saw Elm Street on my sixteenth birthday. When we left the theater after the film was done, I was over the moon. The original Elm Street was and still is the best horror film I have ever seen in a theater, though I was clueless that it would begin a franchise that I would grow to like less and less as time went on. When my parents asked me what A Soldier’s Story was about, all I could muster what that it was a story about a soldier. I think they had their suspicions…

When I saw Mr. Craven’s latest film at the time, Scream (originally titled Scary Movie), on opening night on Friday, December 20, 1996, it did not feel like anything that he had directed before. The terror and brutality that permeates much of Hills and even portions of Elm Street are absent. There is graphic gore in Scream, but the whole affair looks closer to an episode of The O.C. than a horror film as the California high school setting looks a little too clean and shiny. Drew Barrymore plays Casey, a babysitter, at the film’s start in a similar way that opens Fred Walton’s 1979 thriller When a Stranger Calls. She fields calls from a psycho who taunts her, asking her what her favorite scary movie is, etc. The calls become more verbal and horrible. Casey is killed after the first thirteen minutes in a clear nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, although Janet Leigh’s scream time (sorry) in that film was much longer.

The real protagonist of Scream is Sidney (Neve Campbell), the virginal high school girl whose boyfriend Billy (Skeet Ulrich) is predictably pressuring her for sex. We discover that her mother was killed a year ago and her father travels for business. Sidney is pretty much left to fend for herself. As though her problems were not bad enough, she is now subjected to the same calls that plagued Casey. A cloaked figure wearing a contorted ghost mask makes his way into her home and a fight ensues, with her boyfriend Billy coming to the rescue. His timing arouses suspicion in both the audience and Sidney, and his possessing a cell phone at a time when they were not everywhere as they are today is even more cause for alarm. The police bring him in for questioning but they have no tangible proof of any guilt. While all of this is going on, a television newscaster (Courtney Cox) is anxious to get the story of her career and stops at nothing to glean information from Sidney or even seduce the local goofball cop (David Arquette) who is never taken seriously. She uses her charms to infiltrate a party comprised of teenagers who are all suspect; she places a hidden camera to record their gathering. The camera is nondescript, and it made me wonder what 1996 technology would be small enough to go unnoticed. How does it even work? How is it powered? From the looks of it, it is wireless, though this raises more questions than it answers. Probably best to not make too much of it in a film that clearly does not take itself seriously.

One of the issues that I have with the film is its failure to make up its mind as to what kind of a film it is intended to be: a parody or an actual slasher film? It never really succeeds at either, because it is not funny enough to be a parody, nor is it even scary enough to be considered a true slasher film. Henry Winkler plays the high school principal. He is summarily displaced as a request from producer Bob Shaye, who wanted an additional kill in the story, but not before encountering a janitor named Fred in a green and black sweater, played by Mr. Craven, in an eye-rolling cameo, clearly saluting the “hero” of his better film.

The screenplay also gets into a little too much social commentary wherein the high schoolers talk about how movies do not make killers, etc. By the time the true killer’s identity is revealed, I was honestly glad that the film was over, as I found it more irritating than anything else.

Scream was written by Kevin Williamson who is best known for the teen drama Dawson's Creek, and it shows – the film has a polished look that, I feel, works to its detriment – Hills (shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm) and Elm Street (shot on 35mm) both have their own signature visual styles that work very well. He also penned a short-lived and (unfairly) panned television series in 2007 called Hidden Palms, which featured a twenty-year-old Amber Heard as Gretchen, a troubled teen whose boyfriend reportedly committed suicide, with rumors about aspects of his death arising afterward. That show only lasted two months, but an air of mystery permeated each episode. Mr. Williamson has employed sexual promiscuity in much of his work and the results never seem to be worth the trouble that the characters endure.

I take no pleasure in saying anything negative about Scream, as I possess a genuine affinity for Mr. Craven’s work. Scream feels like a Hollywood mainscream film (I know, sorry!), however the another issue that I have with it probably is not even an issue at all. It is just a pet peeve of mine: when it comes to slasher films, beginning with Halloween (the 1978 John Carpenter film and Mr. Williamson’s favorite movie, one that figures prominently in Scream), there has been sort of a misunderstanding, in my humble opinion, among hardcore fans regarding the notion of the reputed â€œLast Girl” being a virgin and therefore making it through to the end while the promiscuous “Bad Girls” are killed. The unspoken notion is that being a virgin is what manages to keep these surviving girls safe from being killed. In Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis's character, Laurie, makes it not because she is a virgin, but because she actually pays attention to what is going on around her. Her friends Linda and Annie are so busy being distracted by their boyfriends and their sexual shenanigans that they have no idea what is really going on and are oblivious to the presence of the killer, Michael Myers. The way that this motif is displayed historically from everything following Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13^th (1980) up to Scream is quizzical, and I often wonder if we are meant to identify with the teenage characters because we are seeing it through their eyes. They seem to be interpreting the “Final Girl” as making it simply because she is a virgin.

Mr. Craven has made plenty of other films throughout his career that have nothing to do with Elm Street’s Fred Krueger, among them his debut film The Last House on the Left (1972) of which I am not a fan; the Linda Blair TV-movie Stranger in Our House/Summer of Fear (his first 35mm film); Swamp Thing (1981); the oddball Kristy Swanson vehicle Deadly Friend (1986); The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988); Shocker (1989); and the bizarre The People Under the Stairs (1991), all horror films that deal with different subjects. Despite what most people may feel about Scream, it was a highly successful and well-received film that also paved the way for not only sequels, but also a remake scheduled for release in early 2022. Scream also revived the slasher film, a genre that for years languished in the mediocre made-for-video sections of video stores all across the country. For that, I am grateful, as some true classics of the genre have been made in the years since.

Scream is now available on a Paramount 4K Ultra High-Definition Blu-ray and the results are spectacular. The disc has some interesting extras, which consist of:

A feature-length audio commentary with Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson that was more than likely recorded for the original DVD release. It is a fun listen, though most of it entails them commenting on the onscream action (damn, sorry again! These puns write themselves!) than delving into the behind-the-scenes facts to any great extent.

A Bloody Legacy: SCREAM 25 Years Later – This is just over seven minutes and is more of a promotional piece for the 2022 release of the new Scream film directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett

Production Featurette – This runs just over six minutes and is exactly what it sounds like.

Behind the Scenes has two small parts: a three-and-a-half-minute piece of BTS footage, while another runs just under three minutes and focuses on Drew Barrymore’s work on the film.

Q & A with Cast and Crew – Two short parts, the first being What’s Your Favorite Scary Movie?, which most people interviewed do not reveal, they sort of just list movies that scared them. I was grateful that one woman mentioned Burnt Offerings, which is the first thriller that I saw and made me become interested in horror films. This part runs just under three minutes. The second portion, Why Are People So Fascinated by Horror Films?, runs about two-and-a-half-minutes, and they all echo similar notions about living through fear vicariously. Neve Campbell reveals the dark side in all of us and letting it out in a movie. Look fast for Linda Blair early on as a television reporter.

The release also includes a digital code for streaming the film. 

Scream is, of course, not to be confused with the film of the same name from 1981, written and directed by Byron Quisenberry, which was widely panned by pretty much everyone who saw it.

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“A MARITAL MISADVENTURE”

By Raymond Benson

Most film historians agree that the great Alfred Hitchcock became the Master of Suspense with his British production, The Man Who Knew Too Much. But Hitchcock had been directing movies since 1925—nine silent titles and seven sound features preceded that 1934 landmark. While a couple of these earlier titles are quite good, such as The Lodger (1927) and Blackmail (1929), the rest are mostly oddballs that don’t reflect the types of films for which Hitchcock would be known.

Rich and Strange, released in Britain at the end of 1931 and in America (retitled East of Shanghai) in early 1932, is one of these oddities. That is not to say it’s an unworthy entry in Hitchcock’s filmography. While it will never be considered one of his numerous masterworks, Rich and Strange is such a curiosity that it’s interesting and entertaining enough for the discerning Hitchcock fan or vintage film buff. Everyone else, though, will assuredly stop watching after thirty minutes.

Based on a 1930 novel by Dale Collins, the screenplay was written by Alma Reville (Mrs. Hitchcock) and Val Valentine. Hitchcock also worked on the script uncredited. Allegedly it is somewhat inspired by a round-the-world cruise the Hitchcocks had taken. Is it autobiographical? Some historians claim that some elements might be, but it’s more likely that Rich and Strange is the couple’s shared fantasy of a marital misadventure.

Billed and marketed as a comedy, the movie does contain humorous moments in the vein of Hitchcock’s sardonic wit and sometimes rather prurient sensibility. The first third is certainly more comic than the rest, the middle becomes tragically serious, and the final act is action-adventure on the high seas. Yes, it’s an oddball movie.

Fred and Emily Hill are a middle-class married couple who are happily married, and yet they don’t realize they’re happy. Fred (Henry Kendall) is bored with his job in London and dissatisfied with their living conditions. Em (Joan Barry) is a bit shrewish but only because of Fred’s malaise. Then, out of the blue, Fred receives a large early inheritance from an uncle. The couple ditches it all and goes on a round-the-world cruise. From the get-go, Fred discovers that he easily succumbs to seasickness aboard the ship, which puts a damper on the festivities. In Paris, they are shocked by the Folies Bergère. By the time they get to the Mediterranean, Em has become infatuated with handsome Commander Gordon (Percy Marmont). Fred, too, begins an affair with a sexy German “Princess” (Betty Amann). Thus, the Hills’ marriage is threatened by their attractions to other partners. It takes the sinking of a tramp steamer, where they end up after losing all their money, and being captured by Chinese pirates, to save it.

Rich and Strange could be called a warm-up to Hitchcock’s 1941 Hollywood comedy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which also revolved around a bickering couple played by Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery. While even that picture is not held in high regard in Hitchcock’s filmography, it’s much better than Rich and Strange. True, there is a ten year difference in technical advancements and in Hitchcock’s development as a director. In fact, Rich and Strange seems to still have one foot in the silent era. Quite a bit of the movie has no dialogue and there is an abundance of unnecessary title cards. Obviously, when Hitchcock made Rich and Strange, he was still learning—and experimenting with—how to make sound pictures.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray is the 4K restoration recently done by the BFI and it looks the best this reviewer has ever seen it. In the USA, the title has mostly appeared on knock-off bootleg compilations on VHS and then DVD in poor quality. The movie comes with optional English subtitles, and an audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth. The only supplements are an introduction (in French with subtitles) by Noël Simsolo, and an audio excerpt about the film from the famed Hitchcock/Truffaut interviews. The theatrical trailer and more Kino Hitchcock trailers complete the package.

Rich and Strange is for Alfred Hitchcock completists and fans of early British cinema.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

I owe a lot to my late grandmother on my mother’s side. She introduced the arts to me at a very early age. As far back as I can remember, her household was always a place filled with music and laughter as the sounds of Broadway show tunes, singer Allen Sherman and George Burns and Gracie Allen filtered through her basement. In the summer of 1978, she told me about a new film that had just come out which was a remake of an earlier black and white comedy that she had enjoyed. I had heard the term “remake” the previous year when my father took me to see King Kong as directed by John Guillermin starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange. This time, the “remake” in question was Heaven Can Wait which had been based upon Alexander Hall’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941). I knew nothing of either film, but it was a day to go to the movies with my grandmother, so I jumped at the chance.

Heaven Can Wait opened on Wednesday, June 28, 1978 as another starring vehicle for Warren Beatty, an actor who was new to me. Coming on the heels of McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Parallax View (1974) and Shampoo (1975), Mr. Beatty was riding high and struck box office gold with this colorful and charming update of an athlete who finds himself in a predicament for the ages. I immediately liked his interpretation of Joe Pendelton, a quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams (not a prize fighter as in the original which, itself, was based on a stage play) training for the Super Bowl who has a near-fatal bicycle accident which results in his appearing at a heavenly “way station” with others who have just become deceased. His escort (Buck Henry) introduces him to Mr. Jordan (James Mason) when he fails to convince Joe about his worldly death and ultimate fate. Through their discussions, it becomes clear that The Escort, for lack of a better term, jumped the gun and removed Joe from the accident just before it happened – a big “no-no” and a clear rule-breaker as far as the gentlemanly Mr. Jordan is concerned. To fix this, The Escort must find a suitable body back on Earth to put Joe back into, as his own body has already been cremated.

Leo Farnsworth is a millionaire who is involved with many industrial and political affairs and is about to be murdered by his wife Julia (Dyan Cannon) and her lover Tony Abbott (Charles Grodin) who works for him. Joe steps into his shoes and perplexes the staff at his (Farnsworth’s) character traits and sudden love of football, while also shocking Julia and Tony following the “murder”. Joe/Leo finds himself in the midst of a meeting with Betty Logan (Julie Christie) who is determined to stop the reach of Farnsworth’s company’s negative effects on the environment. Deep down, however, Joe’s/Leo’s only desire is to play football and get back to playing with the Rams.

Mr. Beatty co-wrote the script with Elaine May and co-directed the film with Buck Henry. The supporting cast in this film are all excellent and charming, especially Ms. Cannon and Mr. Grodin, both of whom I would go on to enjoy immensely in Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) and Midnight Run (1988), respectively. Jack Warden is also terrific as Max Corkle, Joe’s trainer who is summoned to the Farnsworth estate and is astonished when he is made aware of Joe’s transformation into Leo. I could not help but feel overjoyed for Max as I knew that he missed his friend terribly. James Mason is also wonderful with his dry expressions and comments.

Heaven made a huge impact on my life that year. For Halloween 1978, I came very dangerously close to dressing in Joe’s trademark sneakers, sweatpants and zippered sweatshirt, though I doubt that any of my fellow classmates, who themselves were donning their best impressions of ghosts, vampires, characters from Happy Days, Star Wars and Grease, would have had the slightest idea of who I was trying to impersonate. Coincidentally, Here Comes Mr. Jordan was airing on the 1:00 Movie on Channel 9 in New York on Halloween. My mother’s uncle was the sole owner of a then-$1200.00 top-loading Magnavox VCR which he used to record the movie for me to view on a later date. I liked it just as much as the remake.

Heaven was nominated for nine Academy Awards in the Spring of 1979 and I wanted very badly to view the ceremonies. A start time of ten o’clock in the evening for the broadcast on a school night ensured no such luck. I had to make do with the movie tie-in novelization of the film as well as the Fotonovel, an ingenious paperback reproduction of the entire film in color photos with all the dialogue. I enjoyed Dave Grusin’s lovely musical score, though if anyone had told me that I would have to wait until 2017 to purchase it on a device known as a “compact disc” I would have been thoroughly confused and crestfallen to say the least. Heaven ultimately won its sole Oscar for Best Production Design, indubitably due in no small part to Northern California’s beautiful Filoli Mansion that doubles as the Farnsworth estate. The Best Picture accolades went to Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter.

Birney Lettick provided the marketing campaign with the film’s sole key art for the promotion of the film, an enormous tapestry of which was unfurled on the side of (Grauman’s?) movie theater in Los Angeles which can be seen briefly in the 1978 John Travolta film Moment by Moment.

Although released in July 1999 on DVD, that pressing has been out-of-print for many years. Fortunately, “Paramount Presents” has now reissued the film in a lovely transfer on Blu-ray. Inexplicably, there are no extras, not even a trailer (although it does contain a code to access a digital version), but that should not stop you from purchasing one of the most delightful romantic comedies from the 1970’s. A true classic.

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“AGE IS JUST A NUMBER”

By Raymond Benson

Harold and Maude, which was directed by Hal Ashby (his second feature film) and released in 1971, is one of those initially critically stomped box-office bombs… and yet years later became a cult hit in revival houses, on television broadcasts, and home video releases. It’s one of many examples that illustrate how critics don’t always know everything and how some motion pictures are ahead of their time. Harold and Maude now resides in the top 50 of the AFI’s list of 100 greatest comedy films.

Written by Colin Higgins, who simultaneously turned his original screenplay into a novel (also published in 1971), the movie was unquestionably a counter-culture, rebellious black comedy that from the get-go had the potential to offend some folks. The main character’s fake suicide pranks aside, the theme of a May-December romance—this time with the woman being the older one in the relationship—was sure to be off-putting to the moral majority. One often hears the justification for couples in which one person is much older than the other is that “age is just a number.” In the case of Harold and Maude, Maude’s number is 79, while Harold’s is 19. That’s a sixty year difference. Okay, then!

Most everyone by now knows the story. Harold (Bud Cort) is a cynical young man who lives with his wealthy, snobbish mother (Vivian Pickles). He is a misfit who is obsessed with death. He constantly stages gory suicides for shock effect, which of course upsets his mother as well as any blind dates that she sets up for her son. Harold also attends funerals for people he doesn’t know, and that’s where he meets Maude (Ruth Gordon). It turns out that Maude, a concentration camp survivor, also likes to go to strangers’ funerals, but her outlook on life is much different than Harold’s. She is wild, happy-go-lucky, and full of life. She’ll commit misdemeanors like stealing cars for the fun of it. The two develop a fast friendship, and together they have some misadventures, all set to the lively music of Cat Stevens. Romance blooms between the two, and Harold ultimately announces that he will marry Maude. The movie takes a poignant left turn at this point, and to say more would spoil it for those who have never seen the picture.

Director Ashby has always been something of an iconoclast in Hollywood. He started out as a successful editor who transitioned to directing. He found a niche in the swinging early 1970s as a helmsman of fringe anti-establishment titles like The Last Detail (1973) or Shampoo (1975). The failure—and then cult reputation—of Harold and Maude solidified Ashby’s place as a quirky, but talented, director. His work here is obviously eccentric, inventive, and perfect for the material.

Bud Cort is winning in his role as Harold, but it is of course Ruth Gordon who is the heart of the movie. Without her screen presence, charisma, and enthusiasm in the role of Maude, the film would not have worked.

Another element that elevates the film is the soundtrack full of songs by Cat Stevens. Most of the tunes were taken from previously-released albums, but two numbers were composed and recorded specifically for the movie.

Harold and Maude has appeared several times in home media, including a now out of print Criterion Collection edition. A more affordable new release from Paramount Presents is the item on display here, and the remaster from film transfer looks quite good. It comes with an entertaining audio commentary by Larry Karaszewski and Cameron Crowe. The only supplements, though, is a short interview with Yusuf/Cat Stevens and a couple of theatrical trailers.

For fans of Hal Ashby, Ruth Gordon, Cat Stevens, and those free-wheeling early cult films of 1970s Hollywood, Harold and Maude is for you.

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RIP VAN MARLOWE

By Raymond Benson

(Note: Portions of this review appeared on Cinema Retro in 2014 for an earlier Kino Lorber edition.)

Robert Altman was a very quirky director, sometimes missing the mark, but oftentimes brilliant. His 1973 take on Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel The Long Goodbye is a case in point. It might take a second viewing to appreciate what’s really going on in the film. Updating what is essentially a 1940s film noir character to the swinging 70s was a risky and challenging prospect—and Altman and his star, Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe (!), pull it off.

It’s one of those pictures that critics hated when it was first released; and yet, by the end of the year, it was being named on several Top Ten lists. I admit that when I first saw it in 1973, I didn’t much care for it. I still wasn’t totally in tune with the kinds of movies Altman made—even after M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud (an underrated gem), and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. But I saw it again a few years later on a college campus and totally dug it. Altman made oddball films, and either you went with the flow or you would be put off by the improvisational, sometimes sloppy mise-en-scène that the director used. And the sound—well, Altman is infamous for his overlapping dialogue (one critic called it “Altman Soup”). If you didn’t “get” what the director was doing with sound, then you would certainly have a hard time with his pictures.

Yes, Elliott Gould plays Philip Marlowe. A very different interpretation than Humphrey Bogart or Dick Powell, obviously. And yet, it works. Gould displays the right amount of bemused cynicism, as if he had been asleep for twenty years and suddenly woken up in the 1970s. And that’s exactly how Altman, screenwriter Leigh Brackett (who co-wrote the 1946 The Big Sleep), and Gould approached the material. Altman, in a documentary extra on the making of the film, called the character “Rip Van Marlowe.” He is an anachronism in a different time. For example, Marlowe can’t help but be bewildered by the quartet of exhibitionist hippie lesbians that live in his apartment complex. And he still drives a car from his original era. And therein lies the point of the picture—this is a comment on the 70s, not the 40s or 50s.

The plot concerns the possible murder of the wife of Marlowe’s good friend, Terry (played by baseball pro Jim Boutin), who is indeed a suspect, as well as a suitcase of missing money belonging to a vicious gangster (extrovertly portrayed by film director Mark Rydell), an Ernest Hemingway-like writer who has gone missing (eccentrically performed by Sterling Hayden), and the author’s hot blonde wife who may know more than she’s telling (honestly played by newcomer Nina van Pallandt). The story twists, turns, hits some bumps in the road, and finally circles back to the initial beginning mystery.

It may not be one of Altman’s best films, but it’s one of the better ones. It’s certainly one of the more interesting experiments he tried in his most prolific period of the 70s.

Kino Lorber already put out a Blu-ray release several years ago, but it didn’t really improve much on the original DVD release prior to that. The company has now re-issued the film in a brand new 4K master that is a vast step-up from the previous release. It looks great. The soft focus cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond is no longer a hazy gaze but is instead a crystal transfer of that distinctive 1970s film stock imagery. The movie now comes with an informative audio commentary by film historian Tim Lucas.

Some of the extras are ported over from the previous Kino Lorber release, such as the aforementioned “making of” documentary, a short piece on Zsigmond, an animated reproduction of a vintage American Cinematographer article, the trailer, and a few radio spots. New to this edition are featurettes with film historian/critic David Thompson on Altman and the film, author Tom Williams on Raymond Chandler, and author/historian Maxim Jakubowski on hard-boiled fiction in general. There is also a “Trailers from Hell” segment with Josh Olson.

If you’re an Altman fan and don’t already own the out of print DVD or previous Blu-ray, you may want to pick up the new, improved The Long Goodbye. It probably won’t be long before this, too, like Philip Marlowe himself, is a rare collector’s item.

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(Note: It has just been announced that "The Long Goodbye" has been named to America's National Film Registry of classic motion pictures.)

BY TODD GARBARINI

We all know the old saying that hindsight is 20/20. When it comes to slasher films from the 1980s, movies that were released during that time were very often dismissed by critics – and rightfully so. Audiences, on the other hand, had a great time experiencing arguably the cinematic equivalent of riding a roller coaster. Following the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978 and its most closely related “holiday” second cousin, Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th in 1980, movie studios were falling over themselves to come up with the next big horror hit in much the same way that the spate of killer fish and outer space movies followed the success of Jaws in 1975 and Star Wars in 1977, respectively. Unfortunately, for us, often this resulted in some terribly silly and cookie cutter films that were nothing more than derivations of superior slasher films from years past.

The House on Sorority Row (1982) is a film that didn’t exactly set the box-office on fire during its initial release. To be fair, it didn’t receive a huge theatrical distribution deal. It was shot on a small budget, starring a cast of relative unknowns at the time. In keeping in slasher film tradition, the film begins, as so many other films of the day do, with the typical opening sequence that takes many years prior to the film’s start wherein something quite awful happens before bringing the viewers to present day. In this case, House begins with a soft filter which is generally used to imply a flashback. The trick is remembering this prologue as it will answer the question as to what is happening for the rest of the film. This is a familiar trope that can be seen in everything from Paul Lynch’s Prom Night (1980) to his own Humongous (1982).

Written and directed by Mark Rosen in the summer of 1980 and released in New York in February 1983, House concerns seven sisters of a sorority – Katey (Kathryn McNeil), Vicki (Eileen Davidson), Liz (Janis Zido), Jeanie (Robin Meloy), Diane (Harley Jane Kozak), Morgan (Jodi Draigie), and Stevie (Ellen Dorsher) – whose graduation celebration is interrupted by their house mother, Mrs. Slater (Lois Kelso Hunt), who throws cold water on their plans for a party. In retaliation, the leader of the pack, Vicki, devises a prank to play on Mrs. Slater which involves submerging her cane in the outdoor pool (which is full of muck) and forcing her to retrieve it at gunpoint! The gun is supposed to be loaded with blanks but accidentally fires and hits Mrs. Slater, who collapses. Shocked, there is a mad dash by the sisters to hide her body in the pool and go through with the party and pretend as though everything is status quo.

The bulk of the film revolves around the party and the sisters trying to keep up a good-natured charade, though some of them have more difficulty than the others. None of these characters are especially interesting and the actresses portraying them do their best to remain interesting enough to parlay their actions into suspense, however in the hands of another director, the film could just as easily resemble a comedy, something along the lines of Weekend at Bernie’s (1989). The ending may have been a bit of a shocker at the time, however nearly forty years hence it’s old hat and has been echoed in many better slashers, in particular Michele Soavi’s 1987 directorial debut film Deliria (StageFright).

House made its home video debut on VHS, Betamax, CED and laserdisc in 1983 (wow – did I really just type that??) and then surfaced on DVD in 2000, 2004, 2010 and 2012(!) in varying special editions. Scorpion Releasing brought the film to Blu-ray in 2014 and 2018. Now, MVD has reissued the film on Blu-ray as part of its MVD Rewind Collection in a slipcase edition wherein the cardboard cover is made to resemble a worn VHS rental that needs to be returned to a video store. If you don’t own the 2018 Scorpion Releasing version, this new MVD release contains all the extras from that Blu-ray and is the most comprehensive release to date.

The first interview is with actress Harley Jane Kozak (Diane) who went to New York University and was waiting tables while trying out for the role of Diane. She says that the cast saw the film at the only theater in New York City that was showing it. She also recalls how Eileen Davidson (Vicki) wore her gym shorts in the film. Strangely, the house mother was dubbed! Harley also describes the party scene as “slogging through cement” as they had to dance with no music playing while speaking their lines. This interview lasts a whopping 42 minutes.

The second interview is called “Kats Eyes” with Eileen Davidson, who went on to a successful career in soap operas, and runs just over seven minutes. The third interview is with Kathryn McNeil (Katey) and runs about 14 minutes. She discusses how she got the audition through Backstage magazine (the old-fashioned way!). She had no agent; the cast helped the crew set up the scenes; she was paid $50.00 per day; she was scared by The Wizard of Oz when she was a child and is amazed how young kids now tend to see the more violent films (I was always freaked out by the boat ride sequence in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory!).

The fourth interview is with writer and director Mark Rosman, running about 21 minutes. He had the great opportunity to work on Home Movies by Brian De Palma as a first assistant director on the campus of Sarah Lawrence!

The fifth interview is with composer Richard Band and is the most in-depth, running 45 minutes. The score was recorded in London; he grew up in Rome, which I never would have assumed; he talks about many other aspects of his career and his website.

The sixth interview is with composer Igo Kantor and runs 10 minutes.

The additional extras consist of:

Original pre-credit sequence – this runs just over two minutes and is bathed in a blue hue.

Alternate ending storyboards and runs just over seven minutes.

Alternate monoaural audio version with re-timed pre-credit sequence

There is a feature-length audio commentary with the director, and a secondary feature-length audio commentary with the director and Eileen Davidson and Kathryn McNeil.

There are trailers for this film, Mortuary, Dahmer, Mikey and Mind Games.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

Dustin Hoffman has played a tremendous variety of roles throughout his 50-plus year career: an underconfident graduate in love with his fiancé’s mother; a terminally ill hustler; a mathematician forced to defend his home; real-lifers Lenny Bruce and Carl Bernstein; a marathon runner out to avenge his father’s and brother’s deaths; and most notably as a divorced father and a mentally challenged genius (for which he scored two Academy Awards for Best Actor), among many other memorable performances. However, there is one film that he made during all his great work in the 1970s that, despite receiving a sizeable theatrical release and decent reviews, is virtually unknown to anyone outside of his most ardent admirers. His young fans today who know him primarily from the “Fockers” films are probably oblivious to his interpretation of ex-convict Max Dembo in Ulu Grosbard’s streetwise Straight Time, which was shot in the Spring of 1977 in Los Angeles and opened nationwide on Friday, March 17, 1978. This is one of his best outings (my personal favorite film of his) and proof that Mr. Hoffman is one of cinema’s greatest actors. It’s a strong, quiet yet often brutal and measured performance, one that should have earned him an Oscar nomination as he portrays a convict trying desperately to fit into society. The film possesses a bleak outlook on life, and the unsavory and nearly irredeemable and generally unlikeable characters who populate the film’s landscape are brilliantly realized by all involved.

Max is released from Folsom Prison after completing a six-year incarceration for burglary. Despite being mild-mannered, we sense that there is something brooding beneath the surface just waiting to erupt out of control. (Actor Jason Isaacs portrayed Irish mobster Michael Caffee in the Showtime series Brotherhood from 2006 to 2008 who returns home following a jail stint with a similar disposition.) Max makes the six-plus-hour bus ride down to Los Angeles and he gets his first taste of life outside of prison when he calls and leaves his parole officer Earl Frank (M. Emmet Walsh) a message that Earl says he didn’t get when Max meets him the following day. They get off on the wrong foot when he makes the mistake of not going to a halfway house, rubbing Earl the wrong way. The conditions of his parole are that he is to discuss all his intentions with Earl first. After getting a room at the Garland Hotel for the week, he tries out for a typing job at the Wilshire Agency. Under the eye of Jenny Mercer (Theresa Russell), we see that Max has a problem with rules as he continues typing long after Jenny calls “time” on the test. Despite this and his revelation of his past, she agrees to date him. Max looks up a former convict, Willy Darin (Garey Busey just before his breakout role in the Oscar-winning The Buddy Holly Story), at Willy’s house in the Echo Park suburb of Los Angeles. Willy’s wife Selma (an unrecognizable Kathy Bates) is less-than pleased at their reunion and confides her trepidation to Max who, although visibly hurt, leaves the house. The look he gives her on his way out is one of a wronged man who doesn’t forget. Yes, that’s Gary Busey’s real-life son, then-credited as Jacob, playing his onscreen son Henry. Again, Max abides by his own rules, and it costs him when Willy shoots up heroin in his room and leaves behind evidence that Earl discovers when he visits Max unannounced, costing him time back in L.A. County jail for a week. When Earl springs Max, he asks him the identity of the person who shot up in his room. Max flips out and steals Earl’s car, leaving him hanging half naked against a freeway divider fence. Max is now back to his old ways, pulling petty hold-ups to make ends meet while looking for shotguns and semi-automatic pistols.

Straight Time began life as No Beast So Fierce, an intriguingly titled 1973 novel written by the late paroled and convicted felon Edward Heward Bunker, who would go on to achieve a modicum of success in Hollywood by appearing in Steve DeJarnett’s Miracle Mile (1988) and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992) among other films. Reportedly, Mr. Hoffman began directing the film himself before handing over the reins to veteran director Ulu Grosbard whom he worked with previously on Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? in 1971 so that he could focus on playing Max. Mr. Bunker appears briefly in the film, and the plot is bolstered by the always excellent Harry Dean Stanton as Jerry, an ex-con who, like Willy, is also bored by his legit profession and wants to get back into the game and do jobs with Max. The trouble with Max is, he’s reckless and takes unnecessary risks, allowing his temper to get the better of him. He wants the bigger scores and when he and Jerry rob a prominent bank in broad daylight, he goes way beyond the time at which he should leave, narrowly escaping. Things go awry when his hunger for more money gets them into big trouble following a jewelry store that he scoped out earlier with an unassuming Jenny who thinks he is buying her an expensive watch.

Straight Time raises a lot of questions: Why does Jenny, an attractive woman, get involved with Max? Why do Max and Jerry take scores with no masks on? Is The System really trying to help ex-convicts assimilate back into a free society, or is it simply there to give the impression of attempting to handle ex-convicts as they try to get back on their feet? Do we sympathize with Max for a life of crime? Is a life of crime better than working for The Man? Who is responsible for the recidivism rate among paroled convicts? If the film seems familiar in how it handles the issue of thievery, it might not come as a surprise that writer and director Michael Mann did some uncredited work on the screenplay. His films Thief (1981), L.A. Takedown (1989) and Heat (1995) are all examinations on thieves and the way they live their lives, especially how the rush of stealing is what they find exciting. Tom Sizemore said it best in Heat: “For me, the action is the juice.”

My introduction to Straight Time came in the form of the film’s trailer that was shown prior to a screening of (I kid you not) Walt Disney’s Pete’s Dragon that my family took my younger sister and I to see at a local neighborhood movie theater when I was nine in early 1978. It was not the sort of fare I would have expected to see advertised in front of a children’s film, though I distinctly recall seeing Mr. Hoffman pull down M. Emmett Walsh’s pants, baring his bottom. The trailer on the Blu-ray is intact with this sequence, however the pulling down of the pants is only hinted at and not outright or explicitly shown. Whether this is the way the original trailer played theatrically or not 43 years ago, the answer is buried deep in my hippocampus and neocortex, and I’m tending to believe that if Mr. Walsh’s derriere had been shown, my mother would have protested, as anything even remotely sexual to my sister’s and my own eyes was anathema to her. (This was evinced by her reaction to Lesley Ann-Down’s risqué outfit in the trailer to The Great Train Robbery shown before my virgin screening of Superman: The Movie in December 1978 would attest to.) Given the evidence, my gut feeling is that I imagined it.

It would be another six years before premium cable viewers would have an opportunity to see the film; four years after that my visit to the new Blockbuster Video in an adjacent town made me giddy with delight as the aisles were filled with VHS copies of movies that I knew of yet never saw before. Max Dembo beckoned me from the cover of the oversized Warner Home Video clamshell box for Straight Time, his large sad eyes asking me to rent it and give it a chance, which I did and did not regret in the slightest.

Straight Time was released on DVD by Warner Home Video in May 2007 with a much-needed upgrade from the old VHS transfer. It’s now available on Blu-ray through their Warner Archive line and it looks even better. I appreciate Warner Archive retaining the original black and red “A Warner Communications Company” logo from the period. This edition carries over the audio commentary track featuring director Grosbard and star Hoffman who both give wonderful anecdotes about the making and history of the film. The aforementioned trailer is also included. It’s marvelous hearing Mr. Hoffman talk about this film, as it reminds me of the excellent commentary that Jack Nicholson provided to Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975), arguably the actor’s greatest film.

Cinematographer Owen Roizman, already a veteran of some great New York-lensed films such as William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971), Joseph Sargent’s The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974), Sidney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor (1975) and Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976), brings his characteristic visual genius to the Hollywood and Wilshire Boulevard streets of Los Angeles and makes the city another character, with close-ups of Montgomery Ward and Woolworths, their signage stylized in long-gone and forgotten fonts.

Composer David Shire provides a wonderfully catchy minimalist score that I would love to see released on compact disc (remember those?).

Ironically, Dustin Hoffman and his roommate, Gene Hackman, were both were voted least likely to succeed in their Pasadena Playhouse classes when they first started out. Hilarious.

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BY RAYMOND BENSON

One of the great Alfred Hitchcock’s normally derided pictures from his early British period that the Master of Suspense made prior to gaining that moniker is the 1932 comic thriller, Number Seventeen. It is a short work, running only 63 minutes, and its brevity is one of its few strengths.

For some reason, Hitchcock’s British films, made between 1925 and 1939, have all turned up on various home video labels in the USA over the years, mostly of dubious quality ranging from bad to terrible. They often show up on bootleg “bargain collections” and such. This is despite the fact that none of these movies are in the public domain, as is commonly thought. Thankfully, certain boutique DVD/Blu-ray producers have taken the reins to correct this horrid practice. StudioCanal or the BFI have restored most of the titles and they are slowly making appearances in America (the UK is way ahead in this regard).

Kino Lorber has recently released a few of these works, usually port-overs from the StudioCanal restorations. The new Blu-ray edition of Number Seventeen is a 4K restoration by the BFI. In this reviewer’s experience, viewing this title in the past has been an unpleasant endeavor because of poor video and sound quality on those previously-cited wretched home video releases. Not anymore. The Kino Lorber edition of Number Seventeen looks and sounds as if the film is almost brand new.

Alas, it ranks near the bottom of Hitchcock’s output. The problem—and Hitchcock himself admits it in an audio interview with François Truffaut—is that he wanted to make a comedy, or a parody, of a thriller. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work as a comedy or a thriller. The story is mind-bogglingly confusing, and in the end it’s much ado about nothing. Of particular interest to Hitchcock aficionados and film buffs, though, is the final twenty minutes, in which there is indeed an exciting chase involving a train and a bus. This sequence utilizes miniatures rather than real vehicles, the latter assuredly unaffordable to the studio and production team. To today’s audience’s eyes, there is no question that we’re watching many miniatures; it’s as if we’re eye level with a model train set. In 1932, however, this may very well have been a dazzling piece of cinematography and visual effects.

The story? Hmm. The “number seventeen” refers to a house that’s a creepy old place that appears haunted. A detective, who at first calls himself “Forsythe” (John Stuart) enters the house and discovers a squatter named Ben (Leon M. Lion). There is also a dead body, or at least they think it’s a corpse. It turns out, he’s the very much alive father of Rose Ackroyd (Ann Casson), who is somehow involved with thieves who are after a diamond necklace. These people arrive, and one of them is Nora (Anne Grey), supposedly a deaf mute. After much mistaken identity shenanigans, gun-pulling on each other, and other head-scratching (for the audience) action, the thieves get away to catch the train to Germany. The detective, who eventually reveals that he’s really the “Barton” whom everyone has spoken about throughout the movie, pursues with the aid of Ben, who is suddenly and surprisingly adept at derring-do.

Since the whole thing takes up just an hour of one’s time, Number Seventeen is worth a look to see early studio playfulness by Hitchcock. However, the acting is nothing to note—Leon M. Lion, especially, chews the scenery with an outrageous Cockney accent and mugging.

That said, the Kino Lorber 4K restoration does looks marvelous and is a revelation to anyone who has seen only inferior quality versions of the movie. The feature comes with an audio commentary by film historian and critic Peter Tonguette.

Supplements include an introduction—in French with subtitles—by Noël Simsolo, which isn’t very enlightening. Of more interest is the nearly-hour-long documentary—again in French with subtitles (it was made by StudioCanal in France)—about Hitchcock’s early years. There is also a short excerpt from the Hitchcock/Truffaut audio interview regarding Number Seventeen. The theatrical trailer, along with other Kino trailers, complete the package.

Number Seventeen is for fans of Alfred Hitchcock, early British cinema, and for anyone who has always wondered what the movie was really supposed to look and sound like after seeing it horribly bootlegged.

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