Here's a gem from an unusual Fox double feature: "Planet of the Apes" and "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines". The only less-compatible combo occurred when Paramount paired "The Odd Couple" with "Rosemary's Baby"!

(Thanks to reader Jim Kroeper for the submission.)

BY LEE PFEIFFER

"A Tattered Web" is yet another 1970s American made-for-TV movie that has found new life on Amazon Prime's streaming service. The 70s were a golden age of TV movies, then a relatively innovative concept. Popular actors and talented writers and directors would bring to the small screen countless productions, many of which have long been forgotten. However, that doesn't diminish their worth. "A Tattered Web" is an engrossing crime thriller that I either forgot existed or never knew it did. In any event, it's a compelling and unconventional crime flick. Lloyd Bridges plays Sgt. Ed Stagg, a 25 year veteran of the L.A. Police Department. Stagg has a reputation as a top-notch detective and he's by-the-book in every respect. At home, however, his life is a lot messier. Stagg's wife abandoned him and their young daughter Tina (Sallie Shockley) who he has raised to adulthood on his own. She's now married to Steve Butler (Frank Converse) a hunky blue collar worker in the oil industry. Trouble is they are living in Stagg's house and the situation is tense. Butler resents Stagg's authoritarian rules and things get worse when Stagg discovers that Steve has been having an affair with goodtime girl Louise Campbell (Anne Helm). Stagg has played the role of overprotective father to Tina since her mother left them. In doing so, he has also gone overboard, treating her as a child who can't cope with bad news or pressures. When Steve refuses to agree to Stagg's demands that he end the affair, Stagg takes it on himself to pay Louise a visit at her apartment.Things go badly. Louise isn't bothered by the fact she is endangering another woman's marriage and she seems quite content to continue to play the role of mistress to Steve. The argument becomes physical and Stagg pushes her, with Louise striking her head on a piece of furniture and dying from her wound. Stunned and frightened, Stagg does his best to remove any traces of his being in the apartment. 

The next day, the LAPD receives news that a cleaning woman has found Louise's body. Ironically, Stagg and his partner, Sgt. Joe Marcus (Murray Hamilton) are assigned to the case. Stagg does his best to appear unaware of the circumstances of Louise's death but neighbors report she had been seeing a man regularly in her apartment. An artist's sketch makes the front pages and Marcus is all-too-aware the sketch is identical to Steve. Adding to Stagg's worries is the realization that he neglected to dispose of a drinking glass at Louise's apartment that has his fingers prints on it. Stagg finds himself trying to put out quite a few fires, all the while keeping Tina in the dark about the events. With the police closing in on Steve as a suspect, Stagg finds the opportunity to get him off the hook. A local alcoholic hobo (Broderick Crawford) has already confessed to murdering someone and has been sentenced to the death penalty. Stagg begins trying to convince him to confess to Louise's murder, as well. Stagg justifies the deception by rationalizing that if the drunk is going to die for one murder, what difference does it make if he also admits to another homicide?

Lloyd Bridges is exceptionally good as the man trying to juggle many different levels of this crisis simultaneously. He's not a villain in the traditional sense, but he is covering up his own responsibility for manslaughter and trying to frame another man for the death. The supporting cast is first-rate, with Frank Converse a standout as the much-put-upon son-in-law who becomes the prime suspect in the murder. Murray Hamilton is also very good as Stagg's partner who becomes increasingly suspicious that Stagg is covering up a crime.  Broderick Crawford is truly impressive and he makes the most of his couple of brief scenes as the alcoholic whose memory is so bad that Stagg might convince him he committed a murder he is innocent of. As with most TV movies of the era, the tight 74-minute running time ensures the story moves quickly and there isn't any extraneous dialogue. "A Tattered Web" is an above average crime thriller. 

Photo: Richardson Adventure Farm -SWNS

One criticism that has never been used to describe the James Bond films is that they are corny. That may not be the case any longer. An Illinois farm owned by diehard 007 fans happens to be the site of the world's largest corn maze and this year, they've immortalized the Bond actors in the most unique way possible. However, there is a flaw that will be fatal for Bond fans: the maze does not show George Lazenby. Can't "the other fella" ever get a break? Maybe next year they can do a sequel featuring Barry Nelson and David Niven.  Click here for more.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Classic movie lovers have long been acquainted with the fact that some of the industry's finest performers of stage and screen perfected their unique styles of acting through their association with The Actors Studio, which has locations in New York and Los Angeles. The roster of alumni reads like a "Who's Who" of Hollywood legends. As the Actors Studio celebrates its 75th anniversary, we reached out to Beau Gravitte, Artistic Director of the New York Studio to get some insights into the Studio's history, mission and legacy.

Cinema Retro: How was the formation of the Actors Studio inspired by the legendary Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski?

Beau Gravitte: The roots of The Actors Studio go back to the Group Theatre (1931-1941) whose work was inspired by the discoveries of the great Russian actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski and his best student Eugene Vakhtangov as revealed in the legendary productions that the Moscow Art Theatre toured in America in 1923. Techniques based on a variety of methods were developed here by Lee Strasberg from the Stanislavsky System and reformations from the Vakhtangov acting processes. Within the Studio, actors are free to develop privately without the glare of commercial pressures.  Since its founding in New York City in 1947 by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, and Bobby Lewis, The Actors Studio has become renowned worldwide as ‘the home of method acting.’

CR: Kazan's name remains known to most classic movie lovers. Can you give us a bit of background on the co-founders Bobby Lewis and Cheryl Crawford?

BG: Bobby Lewis was an accomplished actor, director, teacher and author.   He was an original member of the famous Group Theatre, and then, in 1947, he became a co-founder of the Actors Studio, along with Elia Kazan and Cheryl Crawford. Bobby directed several plays, including, in 1947, the Broadway production of “Brigadoon.”  He later became the Chair of the Yale School of Drama, in the 1970’s, where he shaped the careers of many successful actors, including Meryl Streep.  

Cheryl Crawford was the only co-founder of both the Group Theatre and the Actors Studio. She was a very influential producer, involved in many iconic productions, including “Awake and Sing,” “Porgy and Bess,” “Brigadoon,” “The Rose Tattoo,” “Paint Your Wagon,” “Sweet Bird of Youth,” and many others.  

A bit of a cipher, her incisive mind, and her connection to the Broadway pipeline seems to have been integral to the Studio’s early successes.

Actors Studio legends Marlon Brando and director Elia Kazan on the set of the 1954 Oscar winner "On the Waterfront". (Photo: Columbia Pictures.)

CR: "The Method" was a new style of acting that tremendous influence on a new generation of actors, many of whom would go on to gain esteemed reputations. How would you describe the Method and in what ways did it differ from the traditional styles of acting?

BG: The “Method” is simply that - a method, a series of techniques to train the imagination to respond to imaginary circumstances. Before this, acting was much more formulaic, exterior, and largely unconnected to anything personal. This new method taught actors to use their own experiences, their memories, their subconscious in creating a character.   

CR: The Actors Studio was founded in 1947. Was it an immediate success or did its reputation build slowly?

BG: By the time the Actors Studio was created, in 1947, this new kind of work was already catching on. That same year, “A Streetcar Named Desire” opened on Broadway, and the film in 1951. Word was out - something new was happening in American acting.

CR: The Actors Studio is free of any membership charges. Has it always been free for those artists who are accepted?

BG: Membership at the Actors Studio is lifetime, and free. And always has been.  

CR: Those who studied at the Studio are said to be given a great deal of latitude in terms of developing their acting skills. How crucial is the ability to improvise relevant to a student's ultimate success?

BG: I’m not sure if “latitude” is the correct word. The Studio is like a gym, for actors. And like a gym, you have to create your own workout.  The actor shapes whatever exercise they feel they need, so I guess there is latitude in that. It is a very self-motivated place. And improvisation is simply another tool at an actor’s disposal.

CR: How and when did Lee Strasberg become affiliated with the Studio and how can you describe his influence?

BG: Lee Strasberg became Artistic Director of the Studio in 1951, at the request of Elia Kazan - a position he held until his death in 1981.  The list of actors that he trained is simply a “who’s who” of American film and theatre. He was, undoubtedly, the most influential teacher of acting in American history. And his legacy lives on in the Studio leadership, including presidents Ellen Burstyn and Al Pacino.  

Two more Actors Studio legends, Lee Strasberg and Al Pacino, co-starred in "The Godfather Part II" in 1974. Both actors received Oscar nominations for their performances. (Photo: Paramount Pictures.)

CR: The Studio remains relevant today for a new generation of actors who follow in the footsteps of legends. Can you name some of the more prominent artists who came to fame after attending the Studio?

BG: This year marks the 75th year of continuous operation for the Actors Studio.  Since that day in 1947, the members of the Studio have met, twice weekly, to deepen their understanding and mastery of the craft of acting. That’s pretty remarkable, for a non-commercial theatrical enterprise, located in the heart of what is probably the most commercial theatre district in the world. The Studio continues because of its very high standard of work, and because of the caliber of artists who make up its membership. Just to name a few:  Bradley Cooper, Melissa Leo, Stephen Lang, Nicholas Braun - all lifetime members of the Actors Studio.  

CR: How would you describe the continuing mission of the Actors Studio?

BG: The mission of the Actors Studio is to provide a private, safe place for its members to work, to stretch, to try things they would not normally be allowed to do - all in the service of deepening their understanding of the work. As the world changes, so does the artist, in response. And the Studio is a place where that focus can evolve - which keeps us relevant in these turbulent times. The Actors Studio is in session, twice a week, every week - hopefully for the next 75 years, and beyond.  

(Special thanks to Brett Oberman.)

(Al Pacino will be appearing at a benefit screening of "Dog Day Afternoon" for the Actors Studio in New York City on October 27. Click here for details.)

(Photo: Greg Williams/EON Productions.)

James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are seemingly everywhere lately, receiving honors and awards and having their hand prints immortalized outside of Grauman's Theatre. In this interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the two siblings reflect on the past, present and future of the James Bond franchise but make it clear they are in no hurry to get to the next film, which will involve finding a new actor to replace retired Daniel Craig. Patience is a virtue if you are a Bond fan. It sometimes takes years between entries in the series to make it to the big screen but the success of the last entry "No Time to Die", both critically and commercially, indicates that being slow and methodical can pay off in the long run. Click here to read.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Time Life:

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The first African-American to direct a major film for a majorHollywood studio was Gordon Parks, whose feature film debut "The Learning Tree" was released in 1969. Parks may have shattered the glass ceiling but there wasn't a tidal wave of opportunities that immediately opened for other minority filmmakers, in part because there were so few with any formal training in the art. One beneficiary of Parks' achievement was Ossie Davis, who was internationally respected as a well-rounded artist. He was a triple threat: actor, director and writer but his directing skills had been relegated to the stage. In 1970 Davis co-wrote the screenplay for and directed "Cotton Comes to Harlem", a major production for United Artists. The film was based on a novel by African-American writer Chester Himes and proved to be pivotal in ushering in what became known as the Blaxploitation genre. In reality, it's debatable whether "Cotton" really is a Blaxploitation film. While most of the major roles are played by black actors, the term "Blaxploitation" has largely come to symbolize the kinds of goofy, low-budget films that are fondly remembered as guilty pleasures. However, "Cotton"- like Gordon Parks's "Shaft" films that would follow-  boasts first class production values and top talent both in front of and behind the cameras. Regardless, the movie had sufficient impact at the boxoffice to inspire a seemingly endless barrage of Black-oriented American films that were all the rage from the early to mid-1970s. The Blaxploitation fever burned briefly but shone brightly and opened many doors for minority actors. 

The film was shot when New York City was in the midst of a precipitous decline in terms of quality of life. Crime was soaring, the infrastructure was aging and the city itself would be on the verge of bankruptcy a few years later. Harlem was among the hardest hit areas in terms of the economy. The once dazzling jewel of a neighborhood had boasted popular nightclubs, theaters and restaurants that attracted affluent white patrons. By the mid-to-late 1960s, however, that had changed radically. Street crimes, organized gangs and the drug culture spread rapidly, making Harlem a very dangerous place to be. It was foreboding enough if you were black but it was considered a "Forbidden Zone" for most white people, who spent their money elsewhere, thus exacerbating the decline of the neighborhoods. "Cotton Comes to Harlem" serves as an interesting time capsule of what life was like in the area, having been shot during this period of decline. Director Davis was considered royalty in Harlem. Despite his success in show business, he and his equally acclaimed wife, actress Ruby Dee, never "went Hollywood". They stayed in the community and worked hard to improve the environment. Thus, Davis was perfectly suited to capture the action on the streets in a manner that played authentically on screen. Similarly, he had a real feel for the local population. As with any major urban area, Harlem undoubtedly had its share of amusing eccentrics and Davis populates the movie with plenty of such characters. 

The film opens with a major rally held by Rev. Deke O'Malley (Calvin Lockhart), a local guy who made good and who is idolized by the population of Harlem. O'Malley is a smooth-talking, charismatic con man in the mode of the notorious Reverend Ike who uses religion as a facade to rip off gullible followers. This time, O'Malley has launched a "Back to Africa" campaign for which he is soliciting funds. It's based on the absurd premise that he will be able to finance disgruntled Harlem residents back to the land of their ancestry. The hard-working, semi-impoverished locals end up donating $87,000 in cash but the rally is interrupted by a daring daytime robbery. An armored car filled with masked men armed with heavy weaponry descend upon the goings-on, loot the cash box and take off. They are pursued by two street-wise local cops, "Grave Digger" Jones (Godfrey Cambridge)  and his partner "Coffin" Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques). Davis provides an exciting and colorful car chase through the streets of Harlem, as the cops fail to snag the robbers. They also discover that O'Malley has gone missing, leading them to believe that he orchestrated the heist himself so he could keep the proceeds raised at the rally. The plot becomes rather convoluted, as Jones and Johnson learn that a bale of cotton has arrived in Harlem and its somehow connected to the crime. They assume that the stolen money has been stashed in said cotton bale, which quickly changes hands among the most unsavory characters in the community. Getting in on the action is a white mob boss and his goons who are also trying to recover the cotton bale. The cotton itself is resented in Harlem because of its historical links to slavery and by the end of the film, the bale ends up in a stage show at the famed Apollo Theater where it is used as a prop in a bizarre production that involves historical observations about the black experience intermingled with a striptease act! Through it all, Jones and Johnson doggedly chase any number of people through the streets, engage in shoot-outs and car chases and come in and out of contact with Rev. O'Malley, who professes his innocence about being involved in the robbery. The Rev isn't so innocent when it comes to other unscrupulous activities such as chronically cheating on his long-suffering girlfriend Iris (Judy Pace) and manipulating other women in a variety of ways. 

The most delightful aspect of the film is the showcasing of some very diverse talents of the era. Godfrey Cambridge (who made it big as a stand-up comic) and Raymond St. Jacques enjoy considerable on-screen chemistry even if the script deprives them of the kind of witty dialogue that would have enhanced their scenes together. They make wisecracks all the time and harass some less-than-savory characters but the screenplay never truly capitalizes on Cambridge's comedic potential. The film's most impressive performance comes from Calvin Lockhart, who perfectly captures the traits of phony, larger-than-life "preachers". He's all flashy good looks, gaudy outfits and narcissistic behavior. Lockhart seems to be having a ball playing this character and the screen ignites every time he appears. There are some nice turns by other good character actors including pre-"Sanford and Son" Redd Foxx, who figures in the film's amusing "sting-in-the-tail" ending, John Anderson as the exasperated white captain of a Harlem police station that is constantly on the verge of being besieged by local activists, Lou Jacobi as a junk dealer, Cleavon Little as a local eccentric, J.D. Canon as a mob hit man and Dick Sabol as a goofy white cop who suffers humiliation from virtually everyone (which is sort of a payback for the decades in which black characters were routinely used as comic foils).  The film has a surprisingly contemporary feel about it, save for a few garish fashions from the 1970s. It's also rather nostalgic to hear genuine soul music peppered through the soundtrack in this pre-rap era. Happily, life has not imitated art in the years since the film was released. Harlem has been undergoing the kind of Renaissance that would have seemed unimaginable in 1970. The old glory has come back strong and the center of the neighorhood, 125th Street, is vibrant and thriving once again. These societal perspectives make watching "Cotton Comes to Harlem" enjoyable on an entirely different level than simply an amusing crime comedy.

(The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.)

BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA

Six-time, undefeated world karate champion Chuck Norris made his film debut in 1972’s Way of the Dragon; a marvelous movie in which Norris played a villainous character who battled the immortal Bruce Lee in a scene that is now considered to be one of the greatest cinematic fights of all time. In 1974, Norris did another villainous turn in the low-budget martial arts film Slaughter in San Francisco by portraying a powerful drug lord. He would then go on to headline 1977’s Breaker! Breaker! wherein he played the hero for the first time. When the higher budgeted and more ambitious Good Guys Wear Black was released the following year, it scored big and suddenly everyone took notice of this rising new talent.

Vietnam vet John T. Booker (Norris) is now a political science professor at UCLA who gets wind of the fact that someone very powerful is killing off the remaining members of his old Special Forces team, the Black Tigers. With the help of a young reporter named Margaret (Anne Archer), Booker attempts to find out who’s responsible for the slaughter while simultaneously trying to stay alive.

Very well-directed by Ted Post, Good Guys Wear Black was written by Bruce Cohn and Mark Medoff (from a story by Joseph Fraley),and released by American Cinema Releasing on June 2, 1978. The entertaining action film, which Norris considers his breakthrough movie, is a post-Watergate/ post-Vietnam story, but, in some spots, also feels very much like a James Bond film.

Much has been said about Norris’s performance in this film. Norris himself doesn’t love his acting in this one. After Good Guys was released, Steve McQueen, who was one of Norris’s karate students at the time, told the rising star that it would be better if, from now on, he let some of the character actors handle the heavy exposition while, much like Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson, Chuck only uttered the most important lines. Great advice, but still, I don’t think Norris’s performance in this film is nearly as bad as everyone has said and he has nothing to be ashamed of. If you watch his movies in order of release, you will see an actor who worked hard on his craft and improved with each film.

To help support Norris in this early film effort, the filmmakers cast Good Guys Wear Black with an amazing array of acting talent the likes of Anne Archer, James Franciscus, Lloyd Haynes, Dana Andrews, Jim Backus, Lawrence P. Casey and Soon-Tek Oh (who would later appear in two more Chuck Norris films). The film also features 9^th degree black belt Pat E. Johnson, the first screen appearance of Chuck’s brother (and fight choreographer) Aaron Norris, and a cool musical score by composer Craig Safan.

Good Guys Wear Black has been released on Blu-ray in anamorphic (1.85:1) widescreen from a brand new 2K transfer. The Region 1 disc also contains an interesting audio commentary by action film historians Mike Leeder and Arne Venema, the featurette “The Making of Good Guys Wear Black”, an interview with director Ted Post, the original theatrical trailer, reversible sleeve artwork, TV spot and several radio spots. There are also trailers for five other Chuck Norris films as well as the trailer for Narrow Margin which stars Anne Archer.

Click here to order from Amazon

Ernie Magnotta is the author of "Halloween: The Changing Shape of an Iconic Series". Click here to order from Amazon

“RAIN, A BIKE, WALK-UPS, AND THE DELIVERY GUY”

By Raymond Benson

The filmmaker Sean Baker, who most recently gave us (along with co-producer Shih-Ching Tsou) such striking independent features as The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021), began his career modestly with extremely low-budget indie pictures that take on a cinema verité style (a type of documentary-like filmmaking that is improvisational and attempts to capture “reality” in all of its harsh and spontaneous truths). Baker co-directed with Tsou his second feature film, released in 2004, Take Out, which is a slice of life tale that takes place within the twelve hours of a single day.

Ming Ding (Charles Jang) is an undocumented Chinese immigrant living in New York City’s Chinatown. He had come to America in search of a better way of life, leaving his wife and son in China until a later date when he could afford to bring them over legally. Unfortunately, he owes a great deal of money to an unscrupulous loan shark, whose muscle men show up at Ming’s apartment of squalor (where several immigrants also live) and demand that a payment of $800 be made by the end of the day or else Ming’s balance owed will be doubled. They strike Ming in the back with a hammer to emphasize their seriousness. Ming already has $500—his entire savings—so he must find $300 over the next several hours. Ming works as a delivery boy for a take out Chinese restaurant on the Upper West Side. One of his co-workers, Young (Jeng-Hua Yu), gives him $150. Thus begins a frantic, and tension-filled race against the clock for Ming to deliver enough orders to customers in an attempt to make $150 more in tips. Seeing that many customers barely tip anything at all, the task is definitely a challenge.

Compounding the situation is that Mother Nature has decided that this would be a day in which torrential rain must plummet New York all day long. So poor Ming must ride his bicycle in the downpour back and forth from the restaurant to customers’ residences. Sometimes the elevator in high-rise buildings is out of order. Many times he must trek up the stairs to walk-up apartments. Customers run the gamut—some are nice and friendly; more are cranky or racist or cheapskates or all of the above- and, this being New York City, Ming must also be wary of criminals who might target him for the money he’s carrying.

This is a riveting piece of cinema that is not only suspenseful but also quite revealing. Those of us who have ordered take out Chinese food in the big city perhaps do not appreciate what a difficult job it is for the delivery guy. It is hard, thankless work. We also get to see how a storefront Chinese take-out place (not a sit-down restaurant) works behind the scenes. The manager and counter person, Big Sister (Wang-Thye Lee), is the conduit between the kitchen and the public. She speaks English perhaps better than any of the other employees, but she’s not beyond throwing insults to or cursing out rude customers in Mandarin that the recipients don’t understand.

Shih-Ching Tsou, who has collaborated with Baker as a producer on his subsequent pictures, was instrumental in bringing Take Out to life. She not only co-produced the movie, but also co-wrote and co-directed it with Baker, who cannot speak Mandarin or Cantonese. The script was written in English, but Tsou translated it into Chinese for the actors, who were, for the most part, amateurs. Baker did all of the striking camerawork himself along with the editing. Take Out is truly a “homemade” production.

The acting is remarkably potent. Charles Jang as Ming doesn’t say much in the movie, but his inner turmoil and frustrations are clearly evident in his charismatic demeanor and stoic facial expressions. He rarely reveals his pain, but we know what he’s feeling. Of special note is Wang-Thye Lee as Big Sister, who is in many ways the beating heart of the film. She is a pleasure to watch in action.

The Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray release presents a new 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by Baker and Tsou. It has an uncompressed stereo soundtrack and comes with an audio commentary by Baker, Tsou, and Jang. There are new English subtitles, as well as English captioning for the hearing impaired. Supplements include a fascinating new documentary on the film featuring interviews with Baker, Tsou, Jang, Lee, and Yu; a vintage documentary on the making of the film; deleted scenes; Jang’s screen test; and the theatrical trailer. The booklet comes with an essay by filmmaker and author J. J. Murphy.

Take Out is for fans of Sean Baker’s work, New York City locales, and independent filmmaking with a bite. Highly recommended.

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Australia-based ViaVision's Imprint video line is taking pre-orders for a limited edition (1500) Blu-ray release of "The Avengers: The Emma Peel Collection".The set will be released on 30 November.

This set is Region-Free, which is good news for fans worldwide.

Here is the relevant information:

Number of Blu-ray Discs	16
Rating	PG
Release Date	30 November 2022
Runtime (in minutes)	2255
Product Code	IMP3065

Mrs. Peel… We’re needed!

Extraordinary crimes against the people and the state have to be avenged by agents extraordinary. Two such people are John Steed, top professional, and his partner, Emma Peel, talented amateur. Otherwise known as The Avengers. With lethal bowler hat and umbrella, killer fashion and kung fu, the secret agents investigate bizarre and colourful adventures with nonchalant efficiency, sophistication and charm.

Whilst every era of the long-running, enduringly popular and trend-setting British series has its own unique style, charm and wit, it is the Emma Peel years that have become the programme’s most iconic and recognisable, with Diana Rigg’s portrayal of Mrs. Emma Peel ushering in a new era of excitement, fashion and iconology, coupled with Patrick Macnee’s continuing depiction of the urbane and sublime John Steed.

Now, this 16-disc Blu Ray set brings together every episode from the Emma Peel era in stunning high-definition encompassing the complete Series 4 and 5, plus a copious collection of vintage and new Special Features celebrating this peak era of The Avengers.

Special Features and Technical Specs: 

• 1080p high-definition presentation from the original 35mm elements
• Collectable double-sided Hardbox packaging LIMITED to 1500 copies
• 120-page booklet featuring essay by Dick Fiddy of the British Film Institute and Story Information for every episode taken from the original studio files
• Original ‘as broadcast’ mono audio tracks (LPCM)
• Original ‘as broadcast’ “The Avengers in Color” opening slate on Series 5 episodes
• Audio Commentary on “The Town of No Return” by producer / writer Brian Clemens and director Roy Ward Baker
• Audio Commentary on “The Master Minds” by writer Robert Banks Stewart
• Audio Commentary on “Dial A Deadly Number” by writer Roger Marshall
• Audio Commentary on “The Hour That Never Was” by director Gerry O’Hara
• Audio Commentary on “The House That Jack Built” by director Don Leaver
• Audio Commentary on “The Winged Avenger” by writer Richard Harris
• Audio Commentary on “Epic” by guest actor Peter Wyngarde
• NEW Audio Commentary on “The Joker” by filmmakers Sam Clemens and George Clemens (sons of writer/producer Brian Clemens) (2022)
• Audio Commentary on “Return of The Cybernauts” by Diana Rigg’s stunt-double Cyd Child
• Audio Commentary on “Murdersville” by producer / writer Brian Clemens
• Filmed introductions to eight Series 5 episodes by producer / writer Brian Clemens
• Filmed introduction to “The ?50,000 Breakfast” by guest actress Anneke Wills
• Brief audio recollection from guest actor Francis Matthews on filming “The Thirteenth Hole”
• “THE AVENGERS AT 50” – Footage captured from the 50^th anniversary celebration of the series, held at Chichester University in 2011. Includes: video message from Patrick Macnee, interviews with producer / writer Brian Clemens, director Don Leaver (never before released), director Gerry O’Hara (never before released), stunt co-ordinator Raymond Austin, guest actress Carol Cleveland, guest actress Anneke Wills, writer Roger Marshall, and Patrick Macnee’s biographer Marie Cameron
• “Dame Diana Rigg at the BFI” – 2015 on-stage interview and Q&A held at the British Film Institute in London to celebrate 50 years of Emma Peel
• “The Series Of No Return” – audio interview with actress Elizabeth Shepherd, who was originally cast as Emma Peel
• Granada Plus Points featuring actor Patrick Macnee, composer Laurie Johnson, writer Roger Marshall and stunt-double Cyd Child
• Bonus Series 6 episode “The Forget-Me-Knot” – Emma Peel’s final story and the introduction of Tara King
• “K Is For Kill” – excerpt from The New Avengers episode featuring appearances by Emma Peel

ARCHIVAL MATERIAL

• Armchair Theatre episode “The Hothouse” starring Diana Rigg (the performance that led to Rigg’s casting as Emma Peel in The Avengers
• Chessboard Opening Title sequence used on US broadcasts for Series 4
• German and French title sequences
• Series 4 UK Commercial Break Bumper slates
• Alternative titles / credits / end tag of select Series 4 episodes
• Series 4 Commercial Break Bumpers
• Production trims from select Series 5 episodes
• “The Strange Case Of The Missing Corpse” – Series 5 teaser film
• German television interview with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg by Joachim Fuchsberger
• Colourisation test footage for “Death At Bargain Prices” and “A Touch Of Brimstone”
• Reconstructed John Stamp Series 4 trailer
• “They’re Back” Trailers, Series 5 Trailer and Series 5 German Cinema Trailer
• Extensive Photo Galleries from the studio archives
• 1973 Interview with Diana Rigg discussing her US sitcom Diana, and leaving The Avengers
• Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1, b&w / colour
• Audio English LPCM 2.0 Mono
• English subtitles for the Hard of Hearing (Series 4 & 5 episodes only)

BONUS DISC 1: ADDITIONAL SPECIAL FEATURES

• More interviews from “THE AVENGERS AT 50” including composer Laurie Johnson, writer and guest actor Jeremy Burnham, stunt-double Cyd Child, and a screenwriters’ panel discussion featuring Brian Clemens, Richard Harris, Richard Bates and Terrance Dicks
• “Brian Clemens In Conversation” – on-stage interview at the British Film Institute in London discussing his early writing career
• Diana Rigg German Super8 films: “Das Diadem”, “Minikillers”, “Der Goldene Schlüssell”
• Extensive Photo Gallery from The Avengers Fashion Show
• Diana Rigg Photo Gallery

BONUS DISC 2: THE ORIGINAL EPISODES FILE

• Featuring the 4 original episodes from the Cathy Gale era of the series which were remade in Series 5: “Death Of A Great Dane”, “Don’t Look Behind You”, “Dressed To Kill” and “The Charmers” (Standard Definition)
• Audio Commentary by writer Roger Marshall on “Death Of A Great Dane”
• Audio Commentary by actress Honor Blackman and UK presenter Paul O’Grady on “Don’t Look Behind You”
• Filmed introduction by Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman to “Don’t Look Behind You”
• “Tunnel Of Fear” – a full-length, previously lost episode from Series 1, recovered in 2016
• “THE AVENGERS AT 50” – interview with Honor Blackman by Paul O’Grady

BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA

After the release of 1982’s excellent action/drama First Blood which featured the debut appearance of Vietnam vet (and soon-to-be action movie icon) John Rambo (brilliantly played by Sylvester Stallone), a slew of action films featuring war veterans as their heroes soon flooded movies theaters of 1980s America. Along with many others, entertaining films like Missing in Action (1984), Commando and Stand Alone (both 1985)—which starred Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charles Durning, respectively, as war vets who faced almost insurmountable odds, yet still saved the day—satisfied action-starved audiences around the country. Throughout the decade, Norris returned with two Missing in Action sequels and so did Stallone with Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and Rambo III (1988). Although these films (with the exception of the underrated Stand Alone) are probably the most remembered of the 1980s war vet/action film genre, Steele Justice; a somewhat forgotten, but very enjoyable war vet/action movie, was released in 1987.

While living in California, Vietnam vet and former cop John Steele (Martin Kove, The Karate Kid 1, 2 & 3, Rambo: First Blood Part II), who hasn’t been able to hold down a job since the war ended, witnesses Lee (Robert Kim, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), his best friend and fellow vet turned cop, being gunned down by the Vietnamese mafia. Steele soon learns that this mafia is run by Bon Soong Kwan (Soon-Tek Oh, Missing in Action 2, Death Wish 4), a former Vietnam General who Steele and Lee tangled with during the war. Steele now wants nothing more than to bring Kwan to justice, but with resistance from Chief of Police Bennett (Ronny Cox, Deliverance, 1990’s Total Recall) and not one shred of proof, the evil Kwan is untouchable. To make matters worse, Kwan has put out a hit on Steele’s niece, Cami (Jan Gan Boyd, Assassination), and framed the dead Lee, making it look like he was a crooked cop. Feeling that the war has moved from Vietnam to the States, one-man-killing-machine John Steele loads up his deadly arsenal and, with the help of his ex-wife Tracy (Sela Ward, TV’s Sisters, 1993’s The Fugitive) and good cop Reese (Bernie Casey, Never Say Never Again, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka) sets out to take Kwan down.

Written and directed by Robert Boris, who wrote the script for Electra Glide in Blue, Steele Justice may not be in the same league as the films of Stallone, Norris and Schwarzenegger, but if you’re a fan of movies of that type (and 1980s action cinema in general), the somewhat predictable, but still mostly fun Steele Justice won’t disappoint. Boris’s direction is solid. He competently handles the action sequences and keeps the film moving at a fast enough pace. He also peppers his screenplay with likeable heroes and despicable villains. Although many of these characters as well as the situations they find themselves in, may seem somewhat clichéd, it’s exactly what fans of 80s action (like me) came to see; a larger-than-life, lone hero singlehandedly taking out a gang of evil bad guys with a smile on his face. Realistic? No. Entertaining? Yes. You pretty much know what you’re getting into just from hearing the film’s memorable tag line: “You don’t recruit John Steele, you unleash him.”

Over the years, I’ve heard harsh criticism of Martin Kove’s portrayal of John Steele, but I don’t find a problem with it. Kove is one of those actors who is always welcome in just about anything as far as I’m concerned. Whether he is playing hero or villain, he always comes through with his performance and makes a film that much better. He is especially good at playing henchman and bully-type villains as well as all-American heroes like John Steele. If I have a complaint, it’s that the usually charismatic and humorous Kove is toned down a bit here. It’s a minor complaint, but I would have liked to have seen a little more enjoyment in his portrayal. Besides benefitting from a strong lead like Kove, the movie also features a wonderfully villainous performance from the great Soon-Tek Oh, super-talented veterans Ronny Cox and Bernie Casey convincingly playing cops, and the lovely Sela Ward as Steele’s sometimes exasperated ex-wife.

The fun movie also features several highly recognizable faces such as Joseph Campanella (Defiance), Sarah Douglas (Superman II), Peter Kwong (Big Trouble in Little China), Al Leong (Lethal Weapon), Shannon Tweed (No Contest) and Irene Tsu (Three the Hard Way) who all add immensely to the film’s enjoyment.

Although the movie itself may be a bit derivative, it’s still a well-done and entertaining action film with a solid, extremely likeable cast. If you’re a fan of this genre, I recommend checking it out.

Steele Justice has been released on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and, as is usually the case with KL, the HD transfer is terrific. The disc also contains a very informative audio commentary by Martin Kove, Robert Boris and moderator Alex Van Dyne (Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee). It’s fun to listen to them reminisce about the film and Martin Kove talks about how he would play the role differently today. We’re also treated to the original theatrical trailer as well as trailers for five other exciting action films: Code of Silence; Taffin; Murphy’s Law; The Final Option and Hard Target.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

"Kill a Dragon", a 1967 action-adventure production from United Artists, is the perfect example of kind of film I've praised many times before. Namely, it's a low-budget flick designed for a fast playoff (perhaps as the second feature on double bills) and a modest profit. Often, as in this case, they were marketed with terrific movie posters that often promised more sex and violence than the films delivered. Studios thrived on such mid-range fare which inevitably employed actors in leading roles who would generally be playing supporting parts in more prestigious productions. They still enjoyed enough respect and name recognition to market the films successfully internationally. "Kill a Dragon" is based in an around Hong Kong and stars Jack Palance as Rick Masters (now there's a cinematic name for a hero), who is an American jack-of-all-trades who enjoys a laid-back lifestyle with his mistress, nightclub "hostess", Alizia Gur (who memorably squared off against Martine Beswick in the gypsy catfight in "From Russia with Love".) In the umpteenth Hollywood attempt to crib from the scripts of "Seven Samurai"/"The Magnificent Seven", Masters, who specializes in maritime salvage operations, is approached by peasants from an impoverished village. They inform him that recently a ship was grounded on their island and the crew deserted it because of its cargo: a gigantic load of highly volatile nitroglycerine. The peasants offer Masters a 50/50 split of the profits if he can smuggle the goods into Hong Kong and sell it on the black market. There is a catch, however. The nitro shipment is the property of Nico Patrai (Fernando Lamas), a local crime kingpin who warns the peasants to turn over the goods or have their village destroyed. Masters accepts the assignment and contacts his frequent collaborators: Vigo (Aldo Ray), who is now relegated to hosting bus excursions for tourists, Jimmy (Hans Lee), a local aspiring boxer and martial arts expert and his British manager, Ian (Don Knight). They are outnumbered and outgunned so they must use their instincts to outwit Patrai.

"Kill a Dragon" is the kind of goofy action flick that never takes itself very seriously. It opens with what is possibly the worst title song in the history of film and presents  Latin heartthrob Fernando Lamas as a Hong Kong crime lord without a word of explanation as to how he managed to arrange this. The film is laden with Bond-style quips and the fight scenes are pretty limp under the direction of Michael Moore. (Obviously, not that Michael Moore.) But there is a great deal of fun to be found in the film. The Hong Kong locations adds an exotic element and cinematographer Emmanuel L. Rojas makes the most of it, capturing the hustle and bustle of the city center and the serenity of the surrounding areas very effectively. Palance gives a low-key performance (for him, at least) and minimizes his tendencies to ham it up. Lamas is a villain in the Bondian style and its a pleasure to see him and Palance in the requisite scenes in which they banter with witticisms and civility even though they have marked each other for death. An unusual and pleasurable aspect of the movie is that all of the Asian characters are played by Asian actors, a rarity in 1967 and they are presented in a dignified manner.

I don't want to overstate the merits of "Kill a Dragon", as it's the epitome of a "B" movie and nothing more. However, if one approaches it with those expectations, you may well find it as enjoyable as I did.

Kino Lorber has released the film on Blu-ray, a significant upgrade to MGM's previous burn-to-order DVD. Quality is very good and the original trailer is included along with a gallery of other action films from KL.

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Klubb Super 8/ Eken Press

384 pages

Hardback

Published 2021

ISBN:? 978-9198677201

RRP: £25

BY ADRIAN SMITH

If cinema made us believe anything back in the mid-twentieth century, it was that those Europeans were getting far more sex than the rest of us. From Brigitte Bardot to Sophia Loren, from I – a Woman to I am Curious, films from Europe were somehow more adult, more daring and sexier. There was an “Ooh La La!” factor when it came to European cinema, and audiences did not always differentiate between a challenging black and white French New Wave film or a ‘commedia sexy all'italiana’. If it came from the continent there was an assumption that you would get to see far more than in British or Hollywood films. Post-war it was primarily French and Italian films that dominated this market, but gradually Sweden took the crown and Stockholm became the sexy film capital of Europe. Whereas the sophisticated French and Italian women all wore heavy makeup and expensive lingerie and looked glamorous and unattainable, Swedish girls seemed to be fresher, down-to-earth and more natural. There was something of the girl next door about them, perhaps becoming a more realistic prospect for the average man in the audience.

Although Rickard Gramfors is keen to point out in this excellent new collection of film posters that Swedish cinema was not all with angst and existential anxiety, Ingmar Bergman’s Summer With Monika in 1953 was one of the first to make the rest of the world aware of this sexy northern European nation. This is perhaps because it was distributed in America under the title Monika – the Story of a Bad Girl. Swedish films increased in popularity throughout the fifties and sixties, although it was a change in censorship law in 1971 that finally saw Sweden become one of Europe’s most prolific hardcore pornography production centres. The country became so synonymous with sex that the word ‘Sweden’ would often be inserted into film titles from other countries to spice them up, from Bob Hope’s I’ll Take Sweden to the Italian mondo documentary Sweden Heaven and Hell (now best remembered for the origin of the ‘Mah-na-Mah-na’ song later used in The Muppets). This book features many such examples.

Do You Believe in Swedish Sin? also demonstrates that it was not all just sex: Sweden’s growing film industry also produced action films, westerns (known as Lingonberry westerns!), horror, sword-and-sandal, comedies and even the occasional ninja epic.

As has been remarked upon before in Cinema Retro, the art of the film poster is not what it used to be, and this fabulous collection from the archives of Klubb Super 8, a Swedish vintage distribution company, shows us many great examples of just how good poster art was. As well as Swedish posters there are also examples from around the world, from fantastic hand-painted Italian locanda that manage to make everything look like a gothic masterpiece to eye-catching posters from the grindhouses of 42^nd Street. This is a book that will have you seeking out many of the fabulous-looking films covered. Fortunately for you, Klubb Super 8 have recently established a new streaming service called Cultpix, where indeed many of these films can now be viewed at the click of a mouse, from classics like Anita - Swedish Nymphet to sex education films such as The Language of Love. Cultpix also has cult films from all over the world in a range of genres, and it is growing all the time. It is a must-have subscription for anyone looking for something a bit different from the safer options on Netflix or Disney +.

With hundreds of posters and written commentary in English, Do You Believe in Swedish Sin? is an eclectic and engrossing poster collection for any serious movie buff. This glossy hardback book will add a touch of colour and Scandinavian glamour to any top shelf.

You can order a copy of Do You Believe in Swedish Sin? here: https://super8.merchants.se/en/article.php?art=181506235

BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA

Although Robert Clouse will always be remembered for directing the immortal Bruce Lee’s 1973 martial arts classic Enter the Dragon, the talented filmmaker has quite a few more interesting movies in his filmography. Just hearing about a small portion of the man’s work is enough to impress any film buff. For instance, in 1970, Clouse directed the very well-done detective mystery Darker than Amber. He also helmed the 1974 cult classic action flick Black Belt Jones (starring martial arts champion Jim Kelly). In 1978, Clouse completed Bruce Lee’s fifth and final film (which was never finished due to Lee’s unfortunate death) by writing and directing Game of Death. He then directed the great Jackie Chan in the enjoyable 1980 actioner The Big Brawl; a movie he also penned. While taking a break from action, Clouse took a few stabs at the horror genre by first directing the enjoyable 1977 movie The Pack (starring the great Joe Don Baker) as well as the fun, rats-on-the-loose feature Deadly Eyes (1982). He has also directed action film icons Cynthia Rothrock and Bolo Yeung, and wrote the films Something Evil and Happy Mother’s Day, Love George which went on to be directed by Steven Spielberg and Darren McGavin, respectively. If all this info has gotten you interested in Robert Clouse, then you’ll be happy to hear that Golden Needles, a film Clouse directed in 1974, was recently released on Blu-ray.

In Golden Needles, the race is on as seven people frantically search for a priceless Chinese statue which contains seven needles that are guaranteed to grant the owner perfect health and vitality.

Filmed on location in Hong Kong, Golden Needles was distributed by American International Pictures and released on July 17, 1974. Although the movie is filled with plenty of action and adventure, it’s a tad more lighthearted than, say, Enter the Dragon. This entertaining film benefits from an engaging story, Clouse’s solid direction, the Hong Kong locations, another funky ‘70s score from the legendary Lalo Schifrin, and fun performances from the very talented cast. Besides Joe Don Baker and Elizabeth Ashley, who are both very likeable and seem to have some nice onscreen chemistry, we are also treated to humorous turns from Ann Sothern and Burgess Meredith. Super cool Jim Kelly shows up and, as always, it’s a joy to watch him kick ass. Last, but not least, as a cold-hearted villain, Roy Chiao (best known as Lao Che from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) is appropriately intimidating. If you’re looking for a light, enjoyable adventure, this film really hits the spot.

Golden Needles has been released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber in a widescreen (2.35:1) transfer from a brand new 2K master, and the movie looks and sounds fantastic. The Region 1 disc also contains the original theatrical trailer, TV spot, radio spots, an image gallery, newly commissioned art by Vince Evans, reversible sleeve artwork and an informative audio commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger and Chris Poggiali. Rounding out the special features are seven terrific action movie trailers: Mr. Majestyk; Newman’s Law; Brannigan; Thunderbolt and Lightfoot; Truck Turner; The Laughing Policeman and Revenge of the Ninja.

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Godard with Belmondo and Seberg filming "Breathless".

By Joe Elliott

French director Jean-Luc Godard, who was a significant part of the 1960s French New Wave movement, died on Tuesday at age 91. Godard was among a handful of brilliant and innovative French filmmakers of the period that included Louis Malle, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Francois Truffaut. While these young turks of the cinema viewed their work as intellectually serious statements of their times, they did so with an air of stylish nonchalance, off-handed humor and striking visual flair. Heavily influenced by American movies, especially film noir of the 1940s, they, in turn, influenced the next generation of American movie makers, among them Arthur Penn, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino.

Godard’s “Breathless” ("À Bout de Souffle") is probably the film for which most of us remember him best. His first feature, it’s a witty, romantic cops and robbers picture starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and American-born Jean Seberg as his girlfriend.  “Breathless” is filled with many memorable grace notes and startling visual signifiers, not the least of which is the radiant young presence of Seberg herself. (Who can ever forget the "New York Herald Tribune" sweater she wore?) According to film critic Pauline Kael, whose early support of Godard helped create a market for his pictures in the States, the director “saw something in the cheap American gangster movies of his youth what French movies lacked; he poeticized it and made it so modern (via jump cutting) that he, in turn, became the key influence of American movies in the 60s.” In his later years, Goddard grew more embittered and combative in his attitude and was frequently critical of younger filmmakers. However, he never lost his childhood love of the cinema. In a 1989 “New York Times” interview he is quoted as saying, “I never thought I would do better than John Ford or Orson Welles, but I thought I could perhaps do what Godard was meant to do.”

For more on Godard's life and career, click here. 

By John M. Whalen

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD . . . (actually from the late 50s to the late 80s) there was a famous screenwriter who was something of a living legend. His name was Stirling Silliphant. He’s all but forgotten now but he was once one of Tinseltown’s most prolific, highest paid writers, having turned out 47 produced screenplays (including the Oscar winning “In the Heat of the Night” (1967), literally hundreds of hours of primetime TV episodes (including “Route 66” and “Naked City”), and several novels (“Steel Tiger”). He drove around L. A. in a Rolls Royce, sailed the world in a yacht, was friends with and a student of Bruce Lee, had an office on the Warners lot and was married four times—his last to Du Thi Thanh Nga, a Vietnamese actress better known as Tiana Alexandra, who was also a Bruce Lee student and 38 years Silliphant’s junior.

Silliphant took an active interest in advancing his wife’s acting career. Between 1974, when they were married, and 1987, he wrote parts for her in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Killer Elite” (1975), several TV dramas (“Pearl” (1978), “Fly Away Home” (1981),” and he created a starring role for her in “Catch the Heat” (1987), an action movie designed to show off her acting and martial arts skills. (The film has also been marketed as "Feel the Heat"). Silliphant produced the picture and action director Joel Silberg (“Breakin” (1984), and “Rappin” (1985), directed. Moshe Diamant’s Trans World Entertainment which had produced a host of action movies with stars like Sho Kishogi, and Jean Claude VanDamme, released the film.

“Catch the Heat” features Tiana as San Francisco cop Checkers Goldberg, who goes to Buenos Aires undercover, posing as Chinese singer/dancer named Cinderella Pu to investigate Jason Hannibal (Rod Steiger). He’s a talent agent who is actually a drug kingpin from Thailand who is somehow smuggling drugs into the U.S. Checkers’ partner, Detective Waldo Tarr (David Dukes) is already in Buenos Aires, ready to slap the cuffs on Hannibal as soon as Checkers can come up with some drug-smuggling evidence. Waldo also just happens to be in love with Checkers.

There is plenty of action in “Catch the Heat,” as Checkers kicks, punches, and thigh-crushes a host of 80s action movie villains including Professor Toru Tanaka (Subzero in “The Running Man” (1987), Brian Thompson (Night Slasher in “Cobra” (1986), John Hancock (“Dead Aim” (1987), and others. Tiana’s karate moves are authentic and she doesn’t stop moving throughout the entire film, even in scenes that don’t require any action, such as when she finds out Hannibal’s fiendish method for smuggling heroin into the U.S., she becomes so infuriated, she goes to Waldo’s hotel room and instead of knocking or turning the door knob, she kicks the door off the hinges, raging about what she’d like to do to him. “He’s not a talent agent,” she shouts. “He’s a monster.” Probably a line she may have uttered in real life more than once.

“Catch the Heat” may not be the greatest action movie to come out of the 80s, but it’s certainly not the worst either, and probably should be better known than it is, especially among martial arts movie fans. Silliphant’s script is more of a send-up of the genre, even to the point of having Checkers wear a “Suzie Wong” dress and wig and talk in a sing-song Chinese cutie accent when she’s on screen as Cinderella Pu. The satiric elements seemed to have been lost on Silberg, who probably saw the film as just another chop socky day at the office.

Unfortunately, it would be Tiana’s one and only starring role in a feature film. In Nat Segaloff’s biography, “Silliphant: The Fingers of God,” Tiana explains that despite Bruce Lee’s success, studios were still reluctant to cast Asians, especially females, in leading roles. Silliphant said it was racism that prompted one Warners executive to tell Lee, when he was being considered for the Kung Fu TV series, that Americans would be offended by having a Chinese man in the living rooms every week. Lee had to leave the country to find success. According to Tiana, she was an even tougher sell. Producers and studio executives disliked having the wife of a writer/producer pushed on them. When Silliphant proposed making Dirty Harry’s female partner in “The Enforcer” (1976) an Asian, Tiana said, “They were not amused.”

In 1988, a year after “Catch the Heat” flopped, Silliphant, at the age of 70, moved lock, stock and barrel out of the “eel pit” that he called Hollywood and expatriated to Thailand, where he said he felt he had lived in a previous life. He and Tiana remained married for 22 years, but the last several years of their relationship found them apart more than together. Silliphant was busily involved in the Bangkok film industry, and managed to pen at least one decent script, an adaptation of Truman Capote’s “The Grass Harp” – miles away from the likes of “The Swarm” or even “Catch the Heat.” He died of prostate cancer in 1996.

Tiana went back to her birthplace despite the U.S. Trade Embargo that was in place at that time to film “From Hollywood to Hanoi ”, a documentary, which won critical accolades, and was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. She has since partnered with writer Christopher Hampton on several significant projects including serving as associate producer for “A Dangerous Method (2011).”

Her mini-bio on the Internet Movie Database says that she is working on a documentary on General Vo Nguyen Giap, the Commander of the North Vietnamese Army during both the French and the American wars, called “The General and Me,” to be released in 2025. From late 2020 to 2021 she traveled the United States collecting stories and characters for a new series entitled “Detour 66.” The project follows in the tracks of her late husband’s TV series, “Route 66” (1960), and “chronicles the dramas and cultural zeitgeist unfolding across the Divided States of America.”

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray release, presented in collaboration with Scorpion, presents “Catch the Heat” in its 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio. The transfer to disc is a major league improvement over the previous MGM video of 2003, which was full-screen. The only extras are the theatrical trailer, the VHS Preview Trailer, and trailers for half a dozen other Kino Lorber action flicks from the 80s. It’s really too bad there wasn’t at least an audio commentary from a martial arts film authority included as a bonus feature to provide some background and context for “Catch the Heat.” Now that it’s out on Blu-ray, maybe it’ll finally get some recognition as an undiscovered ‘80s cult classic.

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John M. Whalen is the author of "Tragon and the Scorpion Woman...and Other Tales". Click  here to order from Amazon

By Dana Polan

There are two fleeting moments in Love Story, based on author Eric Siegel’s bestselling novel that became a publishing phenomenon, where the major social and political issue of the day – the war in Vietnam – intrudes into a film notorious for deflecting or displacing larger concerns of the day into seemingly private questions of love and family. Of course, it was a common assertion in the Sixties and Seventies that the “personal is the political,” and Love Story could well be said to be politically “relevant” (to use another catchphrase of the times) around questions of class and generation as they play out in two families. But it’s certainly the case that one would be hard-pressed in the many scenes set outdoors on college campuses (Harvard and Radcliffe) to see any signs of antiwar protest or leafletting or whatever: instead, outside provides a site for a couple to frolic in the snow or toss a football back and forth in an empty stadium that thereby becomes their own private playground.

All the more surprising, then, that the first allusion, to militarism, comes in a very privatized inner sanctum, a members’-only club where Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal) comes to spar verbally with his millionaire snob father (Ray Milland) over young Oliver’s desire to marry a girl from across the tracks, Jenny Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw). As they begin their conversation, Barrett Senior asks his son about what a classmate will be doing after graduation and learns the kid is joining Army Officer’s Training. Good, says the imperious father, to which his son replies “Bad.” One shouldn’t perhaps make too much of this but it is a moment that raises the question of the good or bad of fighting for one’s country, especially when it can be so deadly. Later, in another indoors scene, young Barrett, now a budding lawyer, tells a pal at their gym, that he's turned down a request by his law firm to go defend a journalist beaten up by cops “in Chicago” (he doesn’t tell his friend that he needs to stay home with Jenny, who’s got a fatal illness). Again, the moment passes quickly but it was likely impossible for most viewers in 1970 not to understand the reference as code for police brutality against protestors and their journalistic advocates.

The critics generally hated Love Story for what they imagined as its refusal to address the times. Fans loved it, often, for that very refusal: it allowed them to cry about something other than the real death and dying (both overseas and in the streets of the cities back home). But even though the American Film Institute lists it as number 9 amongst all romances, we should note that this film is ultimately, like what one could read in the papers or see in many other movies, about life abruptly cut short.. Maybe it’s not brutal death, à la other films of the moment like, say, The Wild Bunch or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but just as these films are saying something about the violence of the times even as they look to other times for their specific subject matter, Love Story is marked by a fatalism that actually could be saying something resonant about fragility of live in that historical moment. Love Story perhaps is due for critical reconsideration, and Paramount’s careful remastering of the film in striking Blu-ray might well help in that project.

The careful digitalization allows the viewer to focus on visual accomplishment as much as the saccharine story. For example, there are some impressive long-takes often with a complex choreography between character and camera. Most noteworthy is the Blu-ray’s careful capture of the color design for the film: a washed out look for scenes of Cambridge and New York in winter matched to oppressive dark but oh-so-masculine colors (browns and blacks) in the interior scenes of Oliver’s confrontations with his father, both leavened by touches of red, from a single lamp in the brown wood of Barrett Senior’s imperial home office to the scarlet dresses or miniskirts that Jenny sports and that bring vitality into a story of staid convention and oppressive rule-boundedness across class and generational lines.

The Blu-ray combines several new special features with ones that were available earlier in DVD editions. New are a short discussion of the film by critic Leonard Maltin and a very brief introduction by Ben Mankiewicz to an airing of the film on TCM. Both tend to repeat commonplaces about the film -- sometimes the same ones, such as that the film resonated with audiences who needed sweet emotion in a complicated historical moment – and both go over well-known production facts, such as that Ali MacGraw was in large part cast because she was Paramount boss Robert Evans’s girlfriend at the time.

Carried over from the DVD are a 14-minute documentary “Love Story: A Classic Remembered,” which goes over much of the same ground as Maltin and Mankiewicz, and a commentary track by director Arthur Hiller. Hiller’s narration is curious, caught between light anecdotes (for example, Ray Milland agreeing to not wear his beloved toupee for this film) and some sparse but useful technical discussion (for example, how some of those impressive meandering long takes were engineered) and, fairly unbearably, fatuous thematic commentary about how Hiller wants to make films that say something (in this case, something about the triumph of human spirit).

Nonetheless, whatever one thinks of it, Love Story at the very beginning of the 1970s is a key film in American cinema history, and it is so important to have this carefully crafted Blu-ray to commemorate it.

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(Dana Polan is the author of "Dreams of Flight: 'The Great Escape' in American Film and Culture". Click here to order from Amazon

BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA

In 1984, The Cannon Group released Missing in Action, a film that dealt with Colonel James Braddock (Chuck Norris)’s attempt to rescue prisoners of war from Vietnam. Directed by Joe Zito (The Prowler, Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter), the entertaining actioner, which was made for only $1.5 million, went on to gross almost $23 million. A sequel, which was actually a prequel and titled Missing in Action 2: The Beginning, was released the following year (These two movies were originally filmed back to back and were to hit theaters in reverse order, but because Zito’s film was the better of the two, it was released first). The film dealt with Colonel Braddock’s time as a POW in Vietnam and his subsequent escape. Although not nearly as successful as the first film, MIA2 was still well-done and entertaining enough for action movie icon Chuck Norris to return to the role of Colonel Braddock for the third and last time in 1988’s Braddock: Missing in Action III.

After not only discovering that his thought-to-be-dead wife, Lin (Miki Kim, Primary Target), is still alive, but also that he has a 12-year-old son named Van (Roland Harrah III, TV’s Airwolf) who are both prisoners in present day Vietnam, Colonel James Braddock (Norris) heads back to to his old war zone, against orders, in hopes of finding them. Once he does, the Braddock clan, along with a benevolent Reverend (Yehuda Efroni, The Delta Force) and several children from a nearby mission, are captured by General Quoc (Aki Aleong, TV’s Babylon 5) who kills Lin and makes prisoners of Braddock, Van, the Reverend and the children. Does Braddock have what it takes to overpower Quoc and his massive army in order to escape safely with his son, the Reverend and the rest of the innocent children?

Shot in the Philippines, directed by Chuck’s brother, Aaron Norris (Delta Force 2), and written by James Bruner (An Eye for an Eye) and Chuck Norris (as an outcry against the thousands of Asian-American children trapped in Vietnam), Braddock: Missing in Action III, which continued Chuck’s association with now legendary film studio The Cannon Group, is a very solid (final) sequel to the original film, making the Missing in Action trilogy a completely entertaining and worthwhile action series. It may not be as good as the original (most sequels aren’t), but it’s a very enjoyable actioner as well as a nice continuation of the James Braddock character. It also stays true to the series’ roots by having Braddock return to Vietnam to perform a dangerous one man rescue mission without it seeming like a lazy retread of the first film. Just as in any action film from this time period, there are a few over-the-top action sequences, but director Aaron Norris, who does a very nice job here, doesn’t go overboard with this and keeps things nicely balanced by making the situations (and characters) believable enough so that we can get completely caught up in the action and suspense.

It’s no big shock that action movie superstar Chuck Norris delivers exactly what we want to see from him. Although he’s his usual likeable, low-key and convincingly deadly self, his humorous quality is mostly absent here perhaps due to the character’s journey being a personal one (rescuing his wife he thought dead and his son he never knew he had). To go along with this somber attitude (as well as with keeping the story and characters a bit more balanced than in a usual 80s action extravaganza), Chuck is only given one over-the-top, action hero line. When ordered by his superior not to step on any toes, Chuck utters the immortal line: “I don’t step on toes; I step on necks.”

Although Chuck is the main reason we’re all watching this movie, he is ably supported by a very talented cast. To begin with, Aki Aleong is terrific as the evil and sadistic General Quoc. Roland Harrah III gives a very convincing performance as Chuck’s angry and confused son Van, and Miki Kim and Yehuda Efroni do well in their roles of Chuck’s ill-fated wife and the good-hearted Reverend, respectively. The film also features familiar faces such as Jack Rader (1988’s The Blob), Floyd Levine (The Hangover) and a brief appearance by the always welcome Keith David (1982’s The Thing, There’s Something About Mary).

Braddock: Missing in Action III is currently streaming free for Amazon Prime members.

BY FRED BLOSSER

John Sturges’ “Last Train from Gun Hill” was released in 1959 as one of several high-profile Westerns of its era, designed to lure audiences away from their television sets and back to their neighborhood movie theatres. Against TV’s advantage of free programming that you could enjoy from the leisure of your easy chair, films like “Last Train from Gun Hill,” “Warlock,” “The Horse Soldiers,” and “The Hanging Tree” countered with A-list stars, widescreen CinemaScope and VistaVision, Technicolor, and sweeping outdoor locations. The studios wagered, correctly, that viewers would welcome a change from the predictable characters, cheap backlot sets, and drab black-and-white photography of “Gunsmoke,” “Wagon Train,” and “Cheyenne.” The approach was successful, sporadically continuing through the next decade with expensive epics like “How the West Was Won” (1962), “Custer of the West” (1967), and “MacKenna’s Gold” (1968) before it collapsed from dwindling returns, scaled-back studio budgets, and changing popular tastes at the end of the 1960s.

As Sturges’ movie opens, two loutish cowboys chase down, rape, and murder a young Indian woman. Although the rape and murder occur offscreen, the lead-up is viscerally terrifying. In a bizarrely poor choice of words, Bosley Crowther’s review in the New York Times referred to the murderers as “scallywags.” At least in my lexicon, scallywags are mischievous kids who make prank phone calls, not perpetrators of a horrendous sexual assault. When the pair flee in panic after realizing what they’ve done, they inadvertently leave behind a horse and saddle. The murdered woman’s husband is Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas), the marshal of the nearby town of Pawley, who immediately identifies the letters “CB” branded on the saddle. They’re the initials of Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn), a powerful rancher who controls Gun Hill, a community further down the railroad line. One of the murderers was Belden’s hired hand Lee (played by Brian Hutton, later the director of “Where Eagles Dare” and “Kelly’s Heroes”), and the other was Belden’s son Rick (Earl Holliman). When Morgan arrives in Gun Hill with arrest warrants, Belden first tries to convince him to go easy by reminding him that he and Craig were once good friends. After that doesn’t work, he resorts to intimidation. The cowardly local marshal refuses to help Morgan, unashamedly admitting that he fears the boss man’s wrath more than he respects the rule of law. (I’ll leave it to you to decide if you see a similarity to recent political controversies.) The other townspeople are chilly if not hostile, and when Morgan finally subdues Rick and handcuffs him in a hotel room, waiting for the arrival of the train back to Pawley, Belden surrounds the building with his army of hired guns.

The only person sympathetic to Morgan is Belden’s battered girlfriend Linda (Carolyn Jones). Even she believes the determined marshal faces overwhelming odds:

“You remind me of Jimmy, a fella I used to know,” she remarks. “Stubborn as a mule.”

“Next time you see Jimmy, say hello,” Morgan answers dryly. “We seem to have a lot in common.”

“More than you know. He’s dead.”

“Last Train from Gun Hill” originated with a story treatment by writer Les Crutchfield, expanded by James W. Poe with an uncredited assist from Dalton Trumbo, whom Douglas brought in to sharpen the dialogue. The exchanges between the characters, like the one quoted above, crackle with Trumbo’s signature style. Crutchfield contributed scripts regularly to “Gunsmoke,” and “Last Train from Gun Hill” unfolds like a traditional episode of the long-running series, dressed up with a little more complexity, a rape-murder that would never have passed network censorship, and a striking climactic scene that also would have run afoul of the censors. Standing up, Morgan drives a wagon slowly down main street to meet the arriving train. Rick stands beside him, handcuffed, with the muzzle of Morgan’s borrowed shotgun pressed up under his chin to keep Belden and his gunmen at bay.  When Dell Comics adapted the movie as a comic book at the time of the film’s release, it chose that scene as the cover photograph. As far as I know, the graphic come-on of imminent shotgun mayhem didn’t raise the ire of parents, educators, child psychologists, or media pundits in that distant year of 1959. Back then, of course, pervasive gun violence wasn’t the social catastrophe that it is today. In 2022, the comic book would surely raise a firestorm of controversy on social media and cable news.

“Last Train from Gun Hill” falls just short of a true classic, since the plot mostly relies on ingredients that we’ve seen many times before in other Westerns—the incorruptible lawman, the overbearing cattle baron, his bullying but weak-willed son, the old friends now at cross-purposes, the unfriendly town, the tense wait for a train—but Douglas, Quinn, and supporting actors Carolyn Jones, Earl Holliman, Brian Hutton, and Brad Dexter are at the top of their form, and Sturges’ no-nonsense direction keeps the action moving at a tense pace. The Blu-ray edition of the film from Paramount Pictures’ specialty label, “Paramount Presents,” contains a sharp, remastered transfer, an appreciative video feature with Leonard Maltin, and theatrical trailers. Even though “Last Train from Gun Hill” ran frequently on local TV channels in the 1970s and ‘80s, its visual quality there was seriously compromised by the broadcast format. Worse, endless commercial breaks disrupted Sturges’ masterful mood of mounting tension. Revisiting the production in its original, intended form, we may better appreciate its merits as classic Hollywood professionalism at its finest. Highly recommended.

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(Above: Her Majesty attends the London opening of "West Side Story" in 1962. The title of the film is never mentioned because the Queen could not be seen as making a commercial endorsement.) 

By Lee Pfeiffer

Queen Elizabeth was known to be an avid movie fan who looked forward to attending royal premieres. These were generally held at the famed Odeon Theatre in Leicester Square, London. However, she also attended the premiere of the first motion picture to be shown at the Royal Albert Hall, "Die Another Day", which marked the 40th anniversary of the James Bond franchise in 2002. Her Majesty had seen every Bond film, but supposedly favored the earlier ones because they weren't "as loud" as the more recent entries. Indeed, she even participated in that surrealistic 007-themed sketch that was seen as the opener of the London Olympics, "co-starring" with Daniel Craig. On occasion, Her Majesty would also visit film sets, much to the delight of cast and crew.

The Queen's appeal was universal. I'm an American but I felt a connection to her, possibly more than most of my countrymen because I've spent so much time in England since the mid-1990s. In 2002, her attendance at the Royal Premiere for "Die Another Day" and later, "Casino Royale" in 2006, reminded me that no one does opulent and impressive events as well as the Brits. The premieres are always very special occasions with tuxedos and gowns mandatory as a dress code. But when Her Majesty was in attendance, it was all the more special. Audiences have to be seated a full hour before her arrival- no exceptions. When Her Majesty arrived, it was telecast on the big screen so that the audience could enjoy seeing her being introduced to the cast and crew by the producers. When she entered the auditorium, Royal trumpeters took to the stage in their traditional regalia to announce the Queen had entered the auditorium. It was always a moving and unforgettable moment. Her presence was enough to lure Lord Richard Attenborough to the stage before the premiere of "Casino Royale". Pure movie magic made all the more special by the Queen's attendance. 

Her Majesty greets actress Diane Cilento and husband Sean Connery at the 1967 premiere of "You Only Live Twice".

The Queen's taste for popular culture was well-known and wasn't restricted to upper-crust fare. In his autobiography, Dick Van Dyke recalls attending the premiere of "You Only Live Twice" and being introduced to her by producer Cubby Broccoli as she made her way down the line of dignitaries and engaged in a few seconds of small talk with each person. Van Dyke was shocked when she told him how much she and her family had always enjoyed watching his weekly TV sitcom. Thus, in the end, she was a woman of privilege and vast wealth- but she never lost her touch when it came to relating to people from all aspects of society. In that sense, she belonged to everyone and that is why everyone today is sincerely mourning her passing.

By Giacomo Selloni

“Hello, Bookstore” chronicles the heart-warming story of how the community of Lenox, Massachusetts rallied around their local bookshop to save it from bankruptcy during COVID-19. Viewers are treated to an amazing storyteller, Matthew Tannenbaum, owner of The Bookstore since 1976. It's not your typical documentary. There's no narrative here. It is not linear. What we are treated to is a raconteur of the first level musing about his life and raison d'être, The Bookstore on Housatonic Street. The film is best described as being stream of consciousness musings attached to a metronome of time.

Director A.B.Zax, the sole cameraman of the film, started filming in the fall of 2019. "It was an amazing journey, starting in fall 2019 and early winter, 2020. Then COVID hit, and I came back from L.A., where we were living at the time. I was upset at first, this isn’t The Bookstore I want to show, it wasn’t that magical world anymore. Once I accepted that this is the time we had to do this, what an interesting microcosm to explore, these shifts in our communities, this humble little bookstore. We stayed and bought a small house in West Stockbridge," Zax (who is married to a high school friend of Tannenbaum's daughter, Shawnee) said.

Tannenbaum has owned this shop since 1976. He's hosted many a book reading there and raised a glass with his customers at the in-store/next door wine bar Get Lit. 

Matt Tannenbaum behind his Get Lit wine bar.

(Photo: Heather Bellow.)

He's been in debt since he signed the papers and borrowed money to buy the store 46 years ago. But he's been doing what he loves ever since: “I’m just that guy who likes to do what I do, to sit upfront, do the work, and handle books. The film captures me doing that,” he said in a post-film interview.

In April of 2020, while the shop would not let browsers in, books were sold either curbside, asked for through the front door or via the internet. Customers would read off their credit card numbers and books from inside were placed on a stool right outside the front door.We meet many regular customers during the course of the film as well as his two daughters, the previously mentioned Shawnee and Sophie, who gave birth to a child during the filming. Matt has a great rapport with his customers and a never-ending font of stories. In his early days in Manhattan he worked at the famous Gotham Book Mart. He eventually wrote a short (36 page) memoir: My Years at The Gotham Book Mart with Frances Steloff, Proprietor. The idea for the documentary came to Zax when he asked Tannenbaum if he planned to write more stories and Tannenbaum said he didn't. Thus, it was decided to film the stories as they were related by him to the camera. And occasional customer.

In August of 2020 he was selling in one week less than what he would sell in a day. Bills mounted up. In desperation he started a Go-Fund me page hoping to raise $60,000 to save the store. He reached it in 23 hours. Eventually, it topped out at $120,000.The Bookstore, a fixture in Lenox for well over four decades, got its start in Stockbridge, “in the living room of a small rented house behind an alley that housed a then little-known café that later came to be known as Alice’s Restaurant.”

In a photograph taken in the mid-1990s, Matt Tannenbaum with Alice Brock of Alice’s Restaurant and Arlo Guthrie. Brock had just illustrated Arlo’s new book, Mooses Come Walking.

The move to Lenox took place sometime in the late 60s or early 70s. And the baton pass from the previous owner, David Silverstein, to Matt Tannenbaum took place on April Fool’s Day, 1976. Due to the community's generosity, The Bookstore still operates to this day. “Hello, Bookstore” is available on DVD from Kino Lorber/Greenwich Video (Click here to order from Amazon). It can also be rented for streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple. For those interested, the film's website has a video of Neil Gaiman's introduction to the movie that was shown while running at Manhattan's Film Forum. https://www.hello-bookstore.com/

For further reading you may be interested in reading these newspaper articles:

https://theberkshireedge.com/matt-tannenbaums-bookstore-lenox-40-years-serving-writers-readers/

https://theberkshireedge.com/business-monday-the-bookstore-in-lenox/

https://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/central_berkshires/matthew-tannenbaum-hello-bookstore-film-lenox/article_d4f29782-c4cf-11ec-9ebd-779f12000d16.html

The Power of the Social-Problem Programmer

By Dana Polan

Film historians like to connect Jack Arnold’s Man in the Shadow (1957) to Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil from the same year, produced both at Universal-International by Albert Zugsmith. Each revolves around a murder somewhere in the South or Southwest that ensues when a rich and prejudiced gringo capitalist tries to prevent a romance between his daughter and a Mexican man. Each involves an intrepid squared-jawed he-man law enforcement figure investigating that murder and fightin the obstructions of a racist megalomaniac played in both cases by Welles.

But the differences are instructive. For instance, in Touch of Evil, the Welles figure is, like the hero, a lawman, but in this case corrupt yet often getting the job done even as he bends the law to do so. In Man in the Shadow, in contrast, Welles’s character Renchler is an imperious cattleman (Virgil Renchler) whose ranch was the site of a killing he oversaw. He’s unremittingly corrupt from beginning to end. Touch of Evil then is about moral ambiguity – Welles’s Hank Quinlan is good cop and bad cop rolled up into one. Man in the Shadow is more certain of its morality: if, at the film’s beginning, Sherriff Ben Sadler (Jeff Chandler) has a somewhat jaded attitude to his job (he clearly couldn’t care a whit about the presumed killing of a Mexican bracero), he nonetheless pushes on in his inquiry and stands finally for ethical uprightness against the unambiguous immorality of Renchler. If Jeff Chandler once played Native Americans (Cochise in three films), thus crossing or confusing racial and ethnic lines, here he is the all-American, initially disdainful of the lowly Mexican workers but coming ultimately to defend their rights against fascistic Anglo over-reachers. Conversely, in Touch of Evil, the good cop, played by sculpted macho man Charlton Heston, is himself Mexican, a casting decision that has never made sense even as it adds to the weird fun of Welles’s film. And indeed Touch of Evil is weird in so many ways – curious acting, baroque editing, overwrought compositions, convoluted plot, and on and on.

Man in the Shadow in contrast is a straightforward 80 minute programmer shot in a generally sober style: after an initial act of excessive violence (the murder of the bracero in the shadows), the film settles down to offer a taut and tight morality tale played often in daylight (until a final battle that is dark in look but clear in moral stance) and in long takes that, instead of meandering like the ones in Touch of Evil often do, frequently remain implacably fixed on the action in order to take in the verbal sparring of Sadler and everyone who wants to prevent him from getting at the truth.

In this pared-down narrative of one intrepid man against the world, Man in the Shadow is in a lineage of other such films that came out the complex context of the 1950s. For instance, Sadler’s casting off of his badge when virtually no one in the town comes to his defense seems inspired by High Noon while the paranoid atmosphere of a modern Western town where deadly realities of racial violence are being hidden away by the villagers reminds one of John Sturges’s man-against-conspiratorial-community-nightmare, Bad Day at Black Rock. Yet, when an Italian barber announces his allegiance to Sherriff Sadler and explains that over in Italy, they tried to install a dictator in the 1920s and that’s why he prefers America, we can readily see that Man in the Shadow is going in a different direction than the paranoid narratives of the hunted hero alone against corrupt society. The barber is the first crack in the mindless devotion to fascistic conformity. Like, say, the Frank Sinatra Western Johnny Concho from the year before, Man in the Shadow ultimately shows itself devoted to the cause of liberalism as the townsfolk convert in their convictions and come to Sadler’s defense. This liberalism against a conspiratorial conformity takes on new relevance and resonance in today’s fraught political context as we see the townsfolk initially disdaining the Mexican workers as undocumented and othering them through xenophobic stereotypes while imagining whiteness as a fundamental decency. That the white commonfolk can evolve ideologically and overcome prejudice might well link the progressivism of Man in the Shadow to a key earlier film by director Jack Arnold, It Came from Outer Space, another liberal intervention into Cold War Culture that, similarly, is all about turning fear of the other into inter-cultural tolerance.

Filmed in CinemaScope black-and-white (like some other programmers just around this time), Man in the Shadow looks great on Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray edition. The only special features are the original trailer (which, interestingly, pinpoints Sherriff Sadler and not Orson Welles’s seemingly respectable but fundamentally corrupt capitalist as the “man in the shadow”) and a breathless commentary track from movie critic Troy Howarth. To my mind, Howarth is a bit too enamored of character actors’ filmographies, enumerating at length the career and date of death for virtually anyone from within the film’s secondary cast, but he does offer helpful insights about the film’s genre affiliations: for example, Horwath’s perception that violence around a seemingly alien otherness insinuating itself into arid small towns is common to a number of Jack Arnold films enables us to see the xenophobia at issue in both Arnold’s Westerns and science-fiction.

Long unavailable (or available only in pan-and-scan), Man in the Shadow in Kino Lorber’s fine Blu-Ray edition offers anew a strikingly suspenseful social-problem film that offers a trenchant glimpse of the politics of its time.

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(Dana Polan is the author of "Dreams of Flight: 'The Great Escape' in American Film and Culture". Click here to order from Amazon

Writer/Producer Mark Cerulli with the homicidal “Ruby Rose” (Matthew Lucero). (Photo copyright Mark Cerulli).

(Cinema Retro's Mark Cerulli provides an update on his initial report that took readers inside the making of an indie horror film.)

By Mark Cerulli

My first Cinema Retro report was just after we had wrapped our first shoot for Area 5150, a sci-fi/horror comedy I co-wrote with director Sean Haitz. It was 6  days filled with warmth, laughter and moments of terror in the high desert outside Palm Springs, California. But we got it done, movie in the can, premiere on the horizon, right?

Not so fast.

Haitz, an intense storyteller (who also fronts a rock band), wanted to do a “Cold Opening” to the film, launching the audience right into the action. He had a vision of a terrified young woman, babbling in a foreign language, running down a deserted highway, trying to get away from… something. Several weeks later, damn if Sean didn’t have Kati Rausch, a young Finnish actress, running down an empty highway in a bloody hospital gown at 7 AM on a Sunday. She gets recaptured – ‘natch - and then we meet our villain, Dr. Izar (an amazing character actor named Jed Rowen) in a prison cell that would have done Hannibal Lecter proud.

Director Sean Haitz lining up a shot in Morongo Valley, CA. (Photo copyright Sean Haitz.)

A few months later Sean landed Felissa Rose – the “it girl” of Sleepaway Camp, now a well-known genre star with over 100 credits including Victor Crowley, Terrifier 2 and the upcoming Dark Circles. We had her for only one day, so Sean and I pounded out some scenes where she played a crazy desert rat mom with two feral kids – local desert residents who brought a menagerie with them including a tarantula, snakes and scorpions! (In a very un-Bondian manner, this writer declined the opportunity to have the tarantula crawl up his arm.) Felissa went all out and delivered an outstanding performance, getting applause from the sleep-deprived crew.

“No thanks, kid.” writer/producer Mark Cerulli with a cast member and her pet Tarantula. (Photo copyright Mark Cerulli).

That’s a wrap, right? Well… we realized the film needed more. In came a brilliant young producer named Ryan James who had us write some character-building scenes and stayed on for the duration. The entire cast was brought back for a new shoot in March ’22. Like the previous year, we made use of every last minute of daylight, especially during the fabled “Golden Hour” which seemed to go by in minutes. Once again, we shot scenes in an abandoned crack house – now even MORE vandalized than on our previous shoot. Somehow, we managed to get our new scenes shot both in the desert and in a soundstage in LA that had very realistic standing sets which we used for the interiors of Area 51.

Jed Rowen on our “Interrogation Room” set with actress Kati Rausch. The haze is due to artificial smoke which looks great on camera! (Photo ©Mark Cerulli.)

There is still more to do – a few more scenes (possibly with an iconic genre actor) and Sean has an epic attack on Area 51 by our lead mutant, Ruby Rose in mind. There’s also hiring a skilled editor and funding the maze of post-production – mixing, scoring, color correcting, etc. But we’re getting there…

RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Criterion has released a dual format Blu-ray/DVD edition of director Michael Mann's 1981 crime thriller Thief starring James Caan. It's a highly impressive film on many levels, especially when one considers this was Mann's big screen feature debut. He had previously directed the acclaimed 1979 TV movie The Jericho Mile, which was set in Folsom Prison. Mann was inspired by his interaction with the world of convicts and wrote the screenplay for Thief, which is credited as being based on author Frank Hohimer's novel The Home Invaders, but he maintains virtually none of the source material ended up on screen. The story centers on Frank (James Caan), a bitter man with a troubled past. As a child he was raised in state-run homes before being sent to jail for a petty crime. Inside prison, he committed violent acts in order to defend himself but this only resulted in lengthier jail terms. By the time he has been released, he has spent half of his life behind bars.

While in jail, Frank befriended Okla (Willie Nelson), a older man and master thief who is doing a life sentence. He becomes Frank's mentor and father figure and teaches him the tools of the trade. When Frank is finally released, he becomes a master at his craft, which is pulling off seemingly impossible heists of cash and diamonds. Before long, he has become a legend in his field. As a cover, Frank runs a major used car dealership and a small bar. However, he realizes that his luck will certainly run out at some point and he is determined to retire after making a few more high end scores. He works with a small team consisting of two confederates (James Belushi, Willam LaValley) who are also pros in gaining access to seemingly impenetrable vaults. The headstrong Frank wants to also settle down and raise a family. He makes an awkward introduction to Jessie (Tuesday Weld), an equally head strong, down-on-her luck character who nevertheless becomes smitten by him and ends up marrying him. The couple face frustration, however, when their attempts to adopt a baby are thwarted by Frank's criminal record. Frank is ultimately approached by Leo (Robert Prosky), a local crime lord who entices him to stop working independently and pull off a high profile heist for a fortune in diamonds. Frank rejects the offer but eventually he relents, though he is reluctant to work with a new partner. Leo has managed to break through Frank's cynicism by showering him with praise the benefits of his influence, which include arranging for Frank  and Jessie to illegally adopt the baby they want so desperately. The lure of being able to retire after this one huge score leads Frank to go against his better judgment and he agrees to work for Leo on this one big job. The diamonds are located in a vault so secure that it would seem to be better suited for Fort Knox.  In order to break in, Frank and his team must use highly sophisticated drills and other equipment that would rival the top gear used by any branch of the military. On the verge of realizing his greatest score, however, things go terribly wrong on any number of levels. Frank, seeing his world crumble around him, goes on a violent rampage of destruction and self-destruction.

Thief is a highly stylized movie that moves at a rapid clip and features one of James Caan's strongest performances. The problem, however, is that the character of Frank is so obnoxious, he is difficult to relate to. Peckinpah, Scorsese and Coppola always had a knack for making disreputable characters seem appealing, but Frank is nasty, arrogant and self-centered. This is certainly realistic, given the bitter feelings he has toward society, but the viewer never warms to him in any meaningful way. He is only sympathetic because the people he deals with are so much worse. Nevertheless, Thief is a crackling good yarn that boasts some fine performances especially by Tuesday Weld and character actor Robert Prosky, who is brilliant in a scene-stealing role. Willie Nelson's screen time is very limited but he makes effective use of his two scenes. The film features superb cinematography by Donald E. Thorin, who made his debut here as Director of Cinematography. His night sequences on the rain-slicked streets of Chicago evoke visions of neon-lit nightmare. The film features an electronic score by Tangerine Dream, the band that provided the memorable music for Willliam Friedkin's Sorcerer. Strangely, their score for that films holds up well but their work in Thief comes across as a bit monotonous and dated. The film's ultra-violent conclusion is exciting but rather cliched with Frank turning into yet another pissed- off screen hero who decides to take down all of his enemies in an orgy of shootouts and destruction. (I know it sounds petty but I can never accept such sequences when they are set in urban neighborhoods in which no one ever seems to call the police even as houses explode and machine gun fire is sprayed all over the place.). The film excels, however, in the break-in sequences which are superbly directed and feature camerawork that make the crime scene look like an attraction from Disney World, with fireworks-like sparks filling the air. 

The Criterion Blu-ray transfer is superb on every level.  Extras, which are carried over to the DVD, include a commentary track by Michael Mann and James Caan that was recorded in 1995. There are also fresh video interviews with both men that are rather candid. (Caan, who has worked consistently through his career, modestly says "I was rather popular at one time" in reference to his work on the film. Mann says he is still debating in his mind whether he regrets using Tangerine Dream's score.) There is also an interview with Johannes Schmoelling of the band, who discusses working with Mann to create the score. An original trailer is included as is a nicely illustrated booklet with an informative essay by film critic Nick James. 

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Cinema of the 1970s is primarily remembered for being a bold era in which groundbreaking films were released and the emergence of titanic new talents both on screen and behind the camera. It was an era in which sex, crime and violence were often exploited to take advantage of the new freedoms in the industry. Yet, there still remained a market for family comedies. While Disney and other major studio family fare could still prove to be profitable, there was also a subculture of low-budget films of this genre that were made by independent production companies. Some of these films were never even released in big cities but they proved popular with rural audiences, thus there were an abundance of rural themes in many of them. A good example of this is the 1978 comedy "They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way" starring Tim Conway and Chuck McCann, working from a screenplay by Conway. I've always had sentiment towards both of these comedy stars, having grown up in the 1960s watching Conway on "McHale's Navy" and McCann hosting a kid's show. Conway was a major factor in driving the success of "McHale's Navy" and in the 1970s he would be an integral part of "The Carol Burnett Show"'s popularity. His skits with straight man Harvey Korman were often hilarious as Korman would gamely try (unsuccessfully) to prevent himself from cracking up at Conway's often improvised antics. In the 1970s, Conway also found success in Disney feature films, sometimes co-starring with another TV icon, Don Knotts.

In "That-A-Way", Conway and co-directors Stuart E. McGowan and Edward J. Montagne provide a prison comedy that introduces us to small town deputies Dewey (Conway) and Wallace (McCann). Do we have to inform you that they are totally inept? Every decision they make turns into a disaster, yet they are secretly appointed by the governor to pose as inmates at a prison camp in order to find out what happened to some stolen loot that one of the prisoners has stashed away. Their mission is to win his confidence and use the information to recover the money. The scenario is ripe for big laughs, but Conway and McCann so blatantly attempt to emulate their idols, Laurel and  Hardy, that it only serves to remind us that they were inimitable in their comedic brilliance. At one point, Conway resorts to dusting off his classic sketch as an inept dentist that ran on "The Carol Burnett Show". However, without a live audience and Harvey Korman as his hapless foil who can't stop laughing, the skit falls flat as a pancake. There are a few chuckles in the scenarios of the inept duo trying to cope with living among hardened criminals, among them Lenny Montana and Richard Kiel. In fact, it's quite funny to see Montana, who played the much-feared Luca Brasi in "The Godfather" as Kiel's intimidated "yes man". There are numerous other supporting players who are fun to watch: the always-marvelous Dub Taylor as the prison warden (named Warden Warden), Reni Santoni as the inept deputy who is carrying on with his sexpot wife and the ageless Hank Worden as the con with the stash of cash. Our inept heroes stumble upon the hidden loot but they soon learn that the governor has died without informing anyone he has assigned two lawmen to pose as inmates. Thus, they are facing years in prison. They decide to break out and head to the new governor's residence where he is hosting a swanky luncheon for the Japanese ambassador (!). This gives Conway the opportunity to pose as a  fellow Japanese  and McCann as a geisha in one of those painful comedy bits that is cringe-inducing by today's sensibilities. The film races to a finale that manages to be chaotic without being even slightly funny.

The fact that the film was credited to two directors indicates some kind of problem or tension on the set. My guess is that Edward Montagne's contributions were minimal and I put forward as evidence that he brought several Don Knotts feature films to the screen as producer and sometimes writer and director. They have all stood the test of time and remain very funny. In any event, Montagne would not direct another feature film and he passed away in 2003. I admire Tim Conway but I've found that his comedic persona has not always aged well. As a kid, I thought his bumbling Ensign Parker on "McHale's Navy" was hilarious. I still find the show amusing but it's now in spite of Conway, not because of him. Conway's character, much like the one he plays in "That-A-Way", is not just comically inept. Rather, he seems like a man-child, someone who suffers from a mental deficiency- a four year-old boy trapped in a man's body. I have the same opinion when I watch the characters played by Jerry Lewis in his early films with Dean Martin. There is nothing remotely believable about them and they seem more pathetic than funny.

It gives me no pleasure to knock an attempt to provide wholesome family entertainment such as this. Still, a comedy isn't worth much if it isn't funny, and "That-A-Way"'s few modest pleasures don't merit a recommendation. The Kino Lorber Blu-ray looks good and provides only some TV spots and a trailer as extras.

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PLEASE NOTE: WE CAN NO LONGER SUPPLY A COMPLETE RUN OF SEASON 19. 

By Giacomo Selloni

Have you ever seen a high school yearbook from the 1940s or 1950s? The graduates' photos make them appear to be in their mid-twenties. They look much older at 18 or 19 than we did in our photos. That was the first thing I noticed when I first saw director Mike Nichols' “Carnal Knowledge” in the 1970s and was reminded of again now, with the new 4K restoration now being shown at the Film Forum in New York City. The film traces the relationship between former college roommates through 25 years, from the late 40s to the early 70s. Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel, as roommates at Amherst College, look a little too old to be students there. But we're eventually lulled in to accepting them as such by the dichotomy of their personalities and their acting abilities.

The film opens in the dark. Literally. We hear the voices of the two roommates discussing women and sex in the dark of their dorm room. We never see their faces until the next scene; at a college mixer where we followed Susan (Candice Bergen) into the dance. Sandy (Art Garfunkel) is immediately attracted to her. Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) coaches the shy, sensitive Sandy in what to do to break the ice. Seeing this scene today made it impossible not to recall the villainous Joker grin on Nicholson's face we would come to know well. Which works very well for the character of Jonathan, the tough, aggressive misogynist who ends up cuckolding his best friend and roommate.

When the film opened back in 1971 America was going through societal changes. The Vietnam War was in full swing, and the youth of the country were protesting. They were also embracing the sexual freedom boom. In 1969 "I Am Curious (yellow)," a Swedish erotic drama that opened there in 1967,

made it to American shores. Nudity appeared on the Broadway stage with "Hair" in 1968 and "Oh! Calcutta!" in 1969. Societal mores were changing. The Sexual Revolution was in full attack mode with women wearing miniskirts, see through shirts and hot pants. Woodstock. Flower Power. Psychedelics. Hippies. "Foreign" films (read: obscenity to many) were being banned in a number of states. The Generation Gap was being covered in newspapers and news magazines. In the face of it all, never missing a beat, the entertainment industry began to embrace counter-culture in way they never had before. The cultural bandwagon that spawned the summer of love spread from Haight-Ashbury to Greenwich Village, possibly in VW vans trailing "aromatic" smoke clouds in their wake.

Jules Pfeiffer originally saw this as a play, but upon showing it to friend Mike Nichols, was convinced it would be better made as a film. And as a film it has grown better with age. Specifically, this reviewer's age. Dialogue that went over my head, or that I had found both puerile and stuffy, resonated clearer while they were dancing in my older brain. This film has a lot to say about life and the relationships we allow ourselves to suffer through.

Back to the film:

Sandy scores a date with Susan and the two shy virgins begin a relationship. All the stupid, testosterone- fueled braggadocio that rears its head in most adolescent (and collegiate) males arises like the mist that surrounds the roommates as they walk to their dorm while Jonathan pumps Sandy for information about his latest date with Susan. Even the shy Sandy comes out of his shell to brag about how he got beyond the kissing stage of his and Susan's relationship. This leads to Jonathan calling Susan and eventually the two of them begin to sneak around behind Sandy's back.

Advancing into Act II, sometime into the late 50s - early 60s, Sandy is married to Susan. He meets Jonathan at an ice rink where they watch a beautiful skater (Ann-Margaret, in an Oscar-nominated performance) from a distance and talk about, what else? Women. Jonathan's take: "You think a girl goes for you, and you find out she's after your money or your balls. Women today are better hung than the men." He continues to ramble, slightly to Sandy's disgust. "It's not as easy getting laid as it used to be," Jonathan complains, "I don't think I fuck more than a dozen new girls a year now."

We find Jonathan out with Bobbie, the gorgeous, redhead with the "tits" and "ass" Jonathan's looking for in a woman. They eventually shack up together, at Bobbie's suggestion and Jonathan convinces her to stop working. This causes the relationship to deteriorate as Bobbie doesn't know what to do with herself all day long alone in the apartment and Jonathan complains that the place is a pig sty. Sandy, meanwhile, complains to Jonathan about his life with Susan: "It's funny, Susan and I do all the right things. We undress in front of each other. We spend fifteen minutes on foreplay. We experiment, do it in different rooms, it's a seven-room house. We don't believe in making a ritual of it, we do it when we feel like it. We don't feel like we have to be passionate all the time. Sometimes it's even more fun necking," he goes on, finishes with: "Maybe it's just not meant to be enjoyable with women you love." Jonathan replies: "Sandy, do you want to get laid?"

No surprise here; Sandy and Susan divorce. Sandy begins seeing Cindy (Cynthia O'Neal), a modern, empowered, smart woman. The couples spend a lot of time together. Things are nearing the end for Bobbie and Jonathan; he doesn't want children and doesn't want to marry Bobbie. Before Cindy and Sandy arrive at their apartment Jonathan and Bobbie get into a heated argument that finds Bobbie not fully dressed in the bedroom. Things come to a head and a disturbing end when, while at Jonathan's apartment he suggests to Sandy that they swap women and Sandy goes along with it.

Advancing to Act III, late 60s - early 70s, middle-aged Jonathan presents a slide show "Ball-Busters on Parade," at his place showing the loves of his life to a hippyish, middle-aged Sandi and Jennifer (Carol Kane), his eighteen-year-old girlfriend. Jonathan mistakenly shows a slide of Susan, but Sandy notices. Jonathan, showing a slide of Bobbie, "The king of the ball-busters. She conned me into marrying her and now she's killing me with alimony." As he continues his narration, he becomes angrier, vulgar and misogynistic. Then he insults Jennifer and she and Sandy walk out without a word.

A nighttime walk with the two old "friends" is the last time we see them together. The conversation teeters between the then and now, the us and them. Jonathan makes fun of Sandy's relationship with Jennifer. "She knows worlds which I cannot begin to touch yet," Sandy tells him. "You give up bad vibrations." "Sandy I love you," Jonathan retorts, "but you're a schmuck." Sandy tells Jonathan he can find what he's found. The last words we hear between the "friends" are Jonathan's: "Don't make me insult you."

The film ends with, after a time passage, Jonathan going to Louise's (Rita Moreno) apartment. Louise is a prostitute for whom Jonathan is a regular customer. Louise performs a monologue/dialogue that also seems to be part of their usual routine. At one point she messes it up angering Jonathan. Obviously, it's Jonathan's creation, and the only thing that can get him erect is to hear her compliment his virility.

“Carnal Knowledge” was so controversial in 1971 that, after a conviction of a theater manager, Mr. Jenkins in Albany, Georgia for "distributing obscene material" was upheld by the Supreme Court of Georgia, the US Supreme court overturned the conviction: "Our own viewing of the film satisfies us that “Carnal Knowledge” could not be found … to depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way. Nothing in the movie falls within … material which may constitutionally be found … "patently offensive" … While the subject matter of the picture is, in a broader sense, sex, and there are scenes in which sexual conduct including "ultimate sexual acts" is to be understood to be taking place, the camera does not focus on the bodies of the actors at such times. There is no exhibition whatever of the actors' genitals, lewd or otherwise, during these scenes. There are occasional scenes of nudity, but nudity alone is not enough to make material legally obscene… Appellant's showing of the film “Carnal Knowledge” is simply not the "public portrayal of hardcore sexual conduct for its own sake, and for the ensuing commercial gain" which we said was punishable…"[1]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it "clearly Mike Nichols' best film." Others were not so kind but there were more positive reviews than negative. Vincent Canby: "a nearly ideal collaboration of directorial and writing talents" that was "not only very funny, but in a casual way—in the way of something observed in a half-light—more profound than much more ambitious films." Gavin Millar: "Though not the last word on the subject, it's still a telling and unhysterical assault on male chauvinism; and if that's fashionable, it's not unwelcome." "The iciest, most merciless and most repellent major (and seriously intended) motion picture in a very long time." - Charles Champlin. "Basically a one-note story ... The characters do not change or learn; they do not even repeat their mistakes in very interesting ways." - Gene Siskel. "This movie says not merely that there are some people like these, but that this is it—that is, that this movie, in its own satirical terms, presents a more accurate view of men and women than conventional movies do. That may be the case, but the movie isn't convincing." - Pauline Kael.

“Carnal Knowledge” is sometimes referred to as a "coming of age film." But do people actually come of age when they seem to be incapable of maturing? It's a film that can make one examine and question the relationships in their lives. How long does one put up with a toxic person? How bad is someone's insecurity that they need constant, positive, reinforcement in their lives? “Carnal Knowledge” is a great film but not necessarily a good story.

The new 4K restoration will be running at the Film Forum in Manhattan from Sept. 2 - Sept. 8. Details on the Film Forum's website:

https://filmforum.org/film/carnal-knowledge

(At the September 7 screening, Mike Nichols biographer Mark Harris will introduce the film.)

By Lee Pfeiffer 

The year 1979 was a good one for vampires, cinematically speaking. John Badham's version of "Dracula" premiered starring Frank Langella in the film version of his Broadway hit, George Hamilton had a surprise success with the spoof "Love At First Bite" and German director Werner Herzog unveiled his remake of the classic German silent horror movie "Nosferatu: The Vampyre". The original version by director F.W. Murnau is still regarded by many as the greatest horror movie ever made. Indeed, the mere sight of the film's star Max Schreck (who was as eerie in real life as he was on screen) is enough to give you nightmares. Herzog's version was not only the best of the vampire films released in 1979, it is a fitting homage to the Murnau classic. Working with a relatively extravagant budget, Herzog produced a film that is eerie and unsettling. He refrains from going for quick shocks, relying instead on the overall unnerving atmosphere that resonates throughout the production. Perhaps the most iconic aspect of the film is Klaus Kinski's remarkable resemblance to the character played in the original by Schreck, who embodied what is perhaps the most unnerving movie monster of all time.  Kinski's appearance mirrors that of Schreck but the actor brings his own persona to the role.

The film, based on Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, opens with Jonathan Harker  (Bruno Ganz) leading an idyllic life with his beautiful young wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani). His boss, Renfield (Roland Topor), induces him to make an arduous journey to Transylvania to visit the eccentric but rich Count Dracula, who has expressed interest in buying a house in Harker's town. Harker is enthused about the mission because of the financial rewards but Lucy has a premonition that the journey will have disastrous consequences. She pleads with him not to go but to no avail. Harker sets off over mountain roads that lead through deep forests. The nearer he gets to the Count's castle the more unnerved the local peasants are. They blatantly warn him to turn back, citing eerie disappearances and deaths associated with Dracula. Harker dismisses their concerns as the superstitions of unsophisticated people. However, upon arrival at Dracula's castle he immediately has second thoughts. The Count is a corpse-like, sinewy figure with almost impossibly long fingernails who talks in a whispery voice that is more menacing than comforting. In the cold dank castle, Dracula serves Harker a meal then becomes obsessed with sucking the blood from a small cut Harker has suffered from a kitchen knife. The Count assures him that's all just a homespun way of treating the wound. Harker, increasingly unnerved, realizes he has made a mistake in visiting the castle but it's too late to escape. Dracula notices a locket with Lucy's photograph in it and makes inquiries about her, much to Harker's distress. In the morning, Harker awakens to find he has been imprisoned in the castle- and worse, he has been the victim of a vampire. Having arranged the sale of the house to Dracula, he realizes he is in a race against time to return to his village before the Count arrives there. He is desperately ill, however, and fails in his quest. Meanwhile, Dracula has stowed away inside a coffin on board a cargo ship headed towards the town of his destination. Along the way, crew members begin to die mysteriously. By the time the vessel arrives in port, it is a ghost ship, devoid of any human life with only the captain's log hinting at the horror he has witnessed. Accompanying Dracula on board the ship were thousands of rats who now run amok in the town, spreading the plague. Harker is returned to Lucy by some kindly peasants, but he is very ill and in a zombie-like condition. Lucy is then threatened by the appearance of Dracula in her own bedroom and she realizes that the town is being victimized by a vampire, though no one believes her. As the plague takes its toll on the citizenry, the town falls into chaos- and Lucy becomes determined to kill Dracula even if she must do so by herself.

Herzog, who also wrote the screenplay, has fashioned a film that oozes menace to the extent that even before the appearance of Dracula, the movie has a sense of foreboding. It is a rather cold and emotionless film, more visually interesting than moving. Herzog seems to intentionally present his protagonists in a dispassionate manner. He provides cursory details of their lives but seems to be far more interested in making almost every frame a work of art. To a great degree he succeeded. There are images in Nosferatu that will haunt the viewer, but there's no getting around the fact that there isn't anyone the audience can truly relate to. Neither Harker or Lucy are ever seen as anything more than one dimensional characters. The silly eccentric Renfield is largely wasted in the latter part of the story. He does become a servant of Dracula but this plot device is disposed of rather quickly. Prof. Van Helsing (Walter Ladengast), who is generally presented as the hero in Dracula films, is shown here to be a half-senile old fool who realizes too late that a vampire may be running amok. Herzog provides plenty of memorable moments, among which are scenes of the town's rapid decay into death and disaster because of the plague.  As Lucy walks through the town square, she witnesses doomed people acting out their final fantasies, whether it is indulging in a last sumptuous feast, dancing wildly or illogically stealing furniture from vacant stores. Composer Popul Vuh provides an appropriately eerie score throughout.  

Herzog's Nosferatu is a poetic experience in many ways. It's leisurely pace and low-key tone make it one of the more unusual horror films you'll ever see. However, it can be deemed a success by virtue of the fact that he and Kinski brought relevancy to this remake of what many people believe is the greatest German film ever made.

The excellent Shout! Factory Blu-ray features both the German and English language versions of the film and  a commentary track by Herzog, whose soothing, rather monotonous tone becomes somewhat mesmerizing. He provides interesting insights into the making of the film and this is complimented by the inclusion of a vintage "making of" production short that shows fascinating footage of Herzog and Kinski during production, including Kinski's rather arduous daily makeup sessions. Also included is a photo gallery showing great behind the scenes shots of Herzog at work. There are also a selection of superbly designed original trailers that truly convey the menace of the titular character.

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