Columnists
Entries from January 2024
By Todd Garbarini
After the dramatic, Ingmar Bergman-esque directorial turn he took
with Interiors (1978) which came unexpectedly on the heels of
his masterfully hilarious Oscar-winning film Annie Hall (1977),
Woody Allen turned back to contemporary New York for a daring film that was
shot in black-and-white and scored with the music of George
Gershwin. Proclaimed as the only truly great American film of the 1970s by
film critic Andrew Sarris, Manhattan is a joy to behold from
start to finish and is quite simply one of the most romantic-looking films of
all-time (though its subject matter in the era of the MeToo movement will
indubitably raise more than a few eyebrows with the allegations of sexual
molestation launched against Mr. Allen). Gordon Willis’s beautiful
photography married with the sumptuous Gershwin music makes me wish that
filmmakers would make black-and-white films today. There are some who do, admittedly,
but they appear to only do it within avant-garde and independent circles.
Manhattan, released on Wednesday, April 25, 1979, stars Mr.
Allen as Isaac Davis, a television writer who is unfulfilled with his life as a
comedy writer. His second ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep) has left him for
another woman and is writing a book about their marriage. Isaac is 42 and
is dating Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) who is 25 years younger than he is and is
still in high school. He feels very guilty about this, but genuinely cares
for her (this plot point was reportedly inspired by Mr. Allen’s affair with
actress Stacy Nelkin on the set of Annie Hall which was
shooting in 1976, though her part was eventually cut from that film). His
friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is writing a book about Eugene O’Neill and is
married to Emily (Anne Byrne) but has started an affair with high-strung and
neurotic Mary Wilkie (Diane Keaton) whom Isaac initially cannot tolerate but
increasingly grows fond of. Throughout the film we are confronted by these
characters who cannot seem to put their finger on what they want and stick with
it. They are not inherently bad people. They just keep making questionable
decisions. By the end of the film, the only person who seems to have their
head on straight is Tracy and the film ends, like Mr. Allen’s Hannah
and Her Sisters (1986), on a very positive and upbeat note.
The real star of the film is Manhattan itself, with its pulsating
and bustling people and automobiles. Rarely has the city looked so
luminous and beautiful onscreen (if ever). Gordon Willis, the revered
cinematographer of The Godfather films and a good number of Mr.
Allen’s early works, captures Gotham in all its beauty even during an era
when the city was beset by social decay. For the first time in his career,
Mr. Allen forgoes the relative constraints of the 1.85:1 flat ratio to the far
more accommodating 2.35:1 anamorphic Panavision vista and the results makes one
ache for further use of this format.
Manhattan was penned by Mr. Allen and Marshall
Brickman, who also co-wrote Annie Hall. The dialogue in Mr.
Allen’s films has always been a strong point, but here it really shines. His
use of long, uninterrupted takes that first surfaced in Annie Hall
shine here Rarely have onscreen walks and chats been so fascinating.
Manhattan was also one of the first movies to appear
on home video in the widescreen format, which retained much (but not all) of
the film’s original image. I have owned Manhattan on
letterboxed VHS, letterboxed laserdisc with a gatefold, letterboxed DVD, and I
must say that this Region B anamorphically-enhanced Blu-ray courtesy of Fabulous Films is beautiful.
It would be wonderful if Mr. Allen would be open to providing
commentary tracks on his older films, specifically this one which,
unbelievably, he reportedly was so displeased with that he imposed on United
Artists to shelve it and offered to do another movie for free.
Thankfully, they did not take him up on it.
Click here to purchase this from Amazon’s UK site.
By
Todd Garbarini
Would
you go see a horror film billed as “Makes Night of the Living Dead Look
Like a Kids’ (sic) Pajama Party! Scream so they can find you!!!” Somebody did.
Released in New York City on Wednesday, March 7,1973 as the second feature on a
double bill with Mario Bava’s R-rated 1971 film Twitch of the Death Nerve
(the U.S. title of A Bay of Blood), Amando de Ossorio’s The Blind
Dead actually was given a theatrical release in a watered down, PG-rated
version minus blood, gore and nudity. It is also a tighter cut of the original
(known as Tombs of the Blind Dead) as it also dispenses with some
prolonged meandering that gets old real fast. Does the truncated Stateside
version triumph over the longer original Spanish cut of the film? That depends
on the viewer. As a purist who prefers a director’s original vision, I applaud
the efforts of the uncut version.
Lensed
in 1971 in Spain and Portugal at some truly creeping locales, Tombs of the
Blind Dead, clearly influenced by George A. Romero’s aforementioned highly
successful Night of the Living Dead (1968), is one of the better Spanish
horror films to come out of the 1970s, so much so that it spawned no less than
three follow-ups all written and directed by the original’s writer/director: Return
of the Blind Dead (1973), The Ghost Galleon (1974), and Night of
the Seagulls (1975). The madness begins when Virginia White (María Elena
Arpón) encounters her old college lover Betty Turner (Lone Fleming) at a public
pool. Their congenial attitude quickly becomes strained when Virginia’s friend
Roger Whelan (César Burner) shows up and immediately takes a more-than-platonic
liking to Virginia, inviting her on a train ride that he is taking with Betty.
Female resentment ensues and Virginia takes it upon herself to jump off the
train midway, baggage in hand, and goes off into the ruins of a town named
Berzano that the train deliberately bypasses due to an unsavory past. Making
creepy and effective use of the Monasterio de Santa Maria la Real de
Valdeiglesias, Pelayos de la Presa, Madrid, Spain, the director follows
Virginia through the decrepit structures and, unbelievably, camps out solo
overnight! Her presence awakens the buried corpses of the Knights Templar from
their crypts who attack and kill her, her body found by the train conductor the
next morning when on the return trip. Betty and Roger look for Virginia in
Berzano, and out of nowhere, two police detectives emerge to question them about
their relationship to Virginia. It’s a peculiar entrance into the scene, as
though they were standing “stage left” and issued in front of the camera by the
offscreen director. Betty and Roger make their way to the requisite
know-it-all, The One who comes in at the eleventh hour to explain the goings-on
to them, in this case Professor Candal (José Thelman), who explains to them
(and the audience) who manipulates them into finding his son, and the this
leads to a showdown with the Knights and sets up the film for a continuation. Spanish horror films of this era were on a par with their Italian giallo
counterparts as both genres flourished with exemplary outings from both
countries. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s La Residencia (1969), aka The
Finishing School and The House That Screamed, while not a zombie
film, is beautifully lensed and ends with a creepy and original denouement. Francisco
Lara Polop’s La Mansión de La Niebla (1972), known here as Murder
Mansion, boasts beautiful artwork that belies an otherwise pedestrian
thriller. Jorge Grau’s The Living
Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974), known also as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
and here in the States as Don’t Open the Window, is, on the other hand,
a key zombie film from this era and is generally regarded quite correctly as
one of the best, and has received stunning Blu-ray treatment from Synapse
Continue reading "REVIEW: "TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD" (1973); SYNAPSE FILMS BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION"
“A CAPER IN WHITE… AND BLACK”
By Raymond Benson
The
film noir movement/trend in Hollywood was fading away by the end of the
1950s decade. Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958) is often cited by film
historians and film noir aficionados as the “last true film noir.”
However, one picture released in 1959 could very well take that honor,
for it indeed exhibits many of the traits of pure film noir (black and
white photography, gritty realism, cynical and edgy characters, a heist,
and an ending that is, well, not a happy one).
Odds
Against Tomorrow was set up by actor and musician Harry Belafonte and
was made by his production company. Is it the first film noir with a
Black protagonist? This reviewer can’t think of another that preceded
it. Basing it on a novel by William P. McGivern, Belafonte hired
blacklisted Abraham Polonsky to write the screenplay. Polonsky (who had
written the great Body and Soul, 1947) had been caught up in the HUAC
investigations in Hollywood, refused to testify in the hearings, and was
subsequently blacklisted along with many other writers, producers,
directors, and actors. Polonsky, working with co-writer Nelson Gidding,
wrote the script under a front-pseudonym, John O. Killens, a living
Black novelist. It wasn’t until 1996 that the Writers Guild restored
Polonsky’s real name to the credits.
Belafonte
apparently had wanted to make a movie that was not only a gripping heist
drama but also a statement about prejudice. Of the trio of robbers who
attempt a bank robbery in the film, one is Black (Belafonte), the other
two are White, and one of the latter is terribly racist… a factor that
plays into how the caper ultimately plays out.
New York
City. Dave Burke (Ed Begley) is a disgraced former cop who needs money.
Earl Slater (Robert Ryan) is an embittered, racist war veteran and
ex-con who needs money. Johnny Ingram (Belafonte) is a musician in debt
to a gangster because of a gambling addiction, so he needs money, too.
Slater lives with needy Lorry (Shelley Winters, in one of her whiny
roles) but he has the hots for apartment building neighbor Helen (Gloria
Grahame). Johnny is separated from his wife, Ruth (Kim Hamilton) and
daughter Edie, but he desperately wants to make good and reunite the
family. When Dave learns about an upstate smalltown bank with a
vulnerability, he enlists Earl and Johnny in a scheme to steal $150,000,
split three ways. Johnny doesn’t want to do it, but the pressure from
the mobster and threats to his family force him into it. Earl is not
happy that a Black man is part of the plan, and this tension is a major
conflict in the heist proceedings. To reveal more would spoil the
excitement.
Robert Wise, a filmmaker who seemed to be
able to make a great film out of any genre, is at the helm, and he does a
terrific job. He had worked with Ryan before in the film noir, The
Set-Up (1949). Wise, of course, won Oscars for directing The Sound of
Music (1965) and co-directing West Side Story (1961), but also made such
diverse classics as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Haunting
(1963), and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)!
This
is an intense, engaging picture that generates suspense and has
something to say. The script is top-notch, and the performances are
heightened just enough to fit firmly into the film noir style. The
music, composed by John Lewis and performed by the Modern Jazz Quartet,
is phenomenally good, adding another level to the tone and feel of the
movie.
Kino Lorber Studio Classics’ new Blu-ray
presentation is sharp and clean in glorious black and white. There is an
accompanying audio commentary by author/film historian Alan K. Rode.
Supplements include Post Screening Q&A interviews with Harry
Belafonte (in 2009) and Kim Hamilton (in 2007), plus the theatrical
trailer for this and other Kino Lorber film noir titles.
Odds
Against Tomorrow is for fans of film noir, heist movies, Robert Wise,
Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, and other members of the sparkling cast.
Highly recommended.
Click here to order from Amazon
“A
SCHOOL FOR TELEVISION REPAIRMEN”
By
Raymond Benson
The
seventh and last entry in the Road to… motion picture series is often
cited as the weakest of the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope musical romps, but it’s
actually perhaps somewhere more in the middle. This reviewer found many of the
comic bits and one-liners to be quite funny, and despite their aging personas
(especially Crosby), the duo are in good form.
The
series began in 1940 with Road to Singapore and continued through the
forties. They were huge successes for Paramount Pictures. The single title made
in the fifties (and the only one shot in color), Road to Bali (1952),
seemed to be the swan song. It wasn’t until the early sixties that Crosby and
Hope decided to do another, this time for United Artists and shot in the UK.
Interestingly, fans of the James Bond film series will spot familiar faces and
names either on camera or in the credits behind the scenes (Walter Gotell, Syd
Cain, Bob Simmons, Maurice Binder, Wally Veevers).
More
significant is that The Road to Hong Kong, directed by Norman Panama, features a spy adventure plot that is not unlike the early 007 pictures,
and its release preceded the premiere of Dr. No by a little less than
seven months! There is a SPECTRE-like villainous organization (the “Third
Echelon”) and a caper involving nuclear weapons and space travel (shades of Dr.
No and You Only Live Twice). The villains even operate from an
underwater laboratory and control room that resembles that of Dr. No's. (When
Bob Hope’s character sees all the men and women in lab coats sitting at
terminals and monitors, he quips, “Oh, look, a school for television
repairmen!”)
As
usual, Crosby and Hope are conmen, Harry Turner and Chester Babcock, who
unwittingly become involved in a MacGuffin plot to steal plans for Russian
rocket fuel so that the Third Echelon and their leader (Robert Morley) can
launch nuclear missiles at earth from the moon. Echelon agent Diane (Joan
Collins) at first works with the villains, but of course the wacky pair of
Harry and Chester win her over to their side.
Oddly,
longtime costar Dorothy Lamour is relegated to helping the boys in a small
sequence and musical number near the end of the film. It’s a shocking example
of how Hollywood viewed aging female stars. A much younger Collins was cast as
the lead this time, with Lamour pushed into what amounts to a glorified cameo.
Never mind that both Crosby and Hope are much older than Collins and are
Lamour’s contemporaries!
It's
almost impossible in this day and age not to view the film through the lens of
cultural misappropriation. Despite the movie mostly taking place in British
Hong Kong, there are very few Asian actors to be seen (and they are mostly
extras). Too many white men and women are costumed and made up to be “Asian”
(and even Harry participates thusly as part of a disguise). This kind of thing
occurred in every Road to… picture, from Singapore to Morocco to Bali.
But, as classic film aficionados know, one must approach older films within the
context of when they were made and released. In 1962, this sort of thing was
commonplace.
An
old-school audience will certainly enjoy The Road to Hong Kong. The
singing and dancing, the slapstick hijinks, the snappy and silly dialogue, and
the references to the previous Roads are enough to delight. Another fun
aspect are the many cameos from the likes of Peter Sellers, David Niven, Frank
Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Colonna, and others.
Kino
Lorber Studio Classics presents a sharp-looking Blu-ray restoration in glorious
black and white (this one surely would have benefited from color). An
insightful audio commentary by film historian/filmmaker Michael Schlesinger and
archivist/historian Stan Taffel accompanies the feature. Rounding out the disk
are theatrical trailers from this movie, other Road titles, and other
Kino releases.
The
Road to Hong Kong is
for fans of the series, of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, and for vintage Hollywood
and British films of the early 1960s. Fun stuff.
Click here to order from Amazon
By Adrian Smith
Franco Nero was too young to take the lead role as the titular Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966), a grizzled Civil War veteran dragging a coffin across the mud flats of the southern US-Mexican border, but some clever makeup and several days of stubble added at least ten years to the then 25-year-old and a star was born. His piercing blue eyes dazzled audiences, and he hasn’t stopped stealing the screen from his co-stars ever since. Whenever he appears on screen he leaves an impression, whether he’s mowing down an entire western town with a machine gun in Django or playing the Pope to Russell Crowe’s exorcist in, er, The Pope’s Exorcist (2023).
UK label CultFilms have restored and released Nero’s career-making Italian western Django, available for the first time in the UK on Blu-ray, alongside two other hugely entertaining westerns, Keoma (Enzo G. Castellari, 1976), also starring Nero, and A Bullet for the General (Damiano Damiani, 1967), which sadly doesn’t star Nero, meaning this collection doesn’t quite add up to a Franco Nero boxset. However, A Bullet for the General does star a magnificent Gian Maria Volonté alongside Klaus Kinski and Martine Beswicke, and could arguably be the best film of the three. Rounding out this fantastic set is the documentary Django & Django (2021) which, perhaps inevitably, focuses on Quentin Tarantino’s relationship with the original Django and Spaghetti Westerns in general, and it is a great deep dive into why these films continue to resonate with audiences in the 21st Century.
Each of the films in this set is accompanied by a terrific set of bonus features too: there are new and archival interviews with many of key players, including Franco Nero himself, but this reviewer’s favourite addition is the introductions to each film by Alex Cox; writer, director and former presenter of Moviedrome, the influential late-night cult film slot back in the mid-1990s. He knows a thing or two about Italian cinema, and having seen Cox appear on other discs introducing and discussing films as well, I would like to argue for his inclusion on all film releases from now on. He is authoritative and has an encyclopaedic knowledge, and he is also witty and likeable. Watching him on these discs really makes me miss Moviedrome. Each of his three introductions here are worth their weight in stolen Mexican gold.
The boxset comes in a card case with three poster reproductions and is an essential addition to any western aficionado's library. CultFilms have also released Django as a standalone 4K UHD set which comes complete with a 64-page bound book written by Kevin Grant, who has written some excellent books on European westerns, published by FAB Press. Truly we live in a golden age. (The discs are region-free).
By Adrian Smith
In 1965 a huge brightly-painted sculpture of a reclining woman, called ‘Hon – en katedral’ (She – a cathedral), was displayed in a gallery in Stockholm. Visitors would enter the sculpture by walking through an open vagina, and inside they found two floors of amusements including a slide, a vending machine, silent film screenings, a public telephone and a ‘lovers' bench’ whose romantic conversations were secretly transmitted via microphone to a bar. This massive artwork was created by an art collective lead by French artist Niki de Saint Phalle and was a perfect melding of pop art and second wave feminism.
‘Hon - en katedral’ was clearly an inspiration to Italian television director Piero Schivazappa, who having had success on a number of different dramas (including the epic adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey in 1968, which also featured episodes directed by Mario Bava), drew on this sculpture and what it represented for his first feature film Femina Ridens. A life-size recreation of the sculpture features throughout the film, with the addition of sharp, jagged vaginal teeth that snap sideways as men queue to enter its dark interior. The film’s title, which translates from the Latin as ‘The Laughing Woman,’ suggests that this new power that women have found has come at the expense of men, who have become the butt of a great joke (the alternate title ‘The Frightened Woman’ makes for a more marketable thriller but is very misleading).
This is a film where it is best not to know too much going in, but the setup is essentially: “What if Christian Grey was also an incel who was afraid that feminism would result in a society entirely consisting of women reproducing through parthenogenesis?” Starring French actor Philippe Leroy and German actress Dagmar Lassander, both speaking English on an Italian production, Femina Ridens is essentially a two-hander about the powerplay between a man who seeks to dominate women and his chosen victim, who may be more than she first appears. With its fantastic pop-modernist design, the dreamlike imagery of men being eaten by Niki de Saint Phalle’s vagina dentata, and the two sexy leads, Femina Ridens is the perfect evocation of late sixties Italian cinema and popular culture and is well worth seeking out.
Thanks to Shameless Entertainment, we now have a new 4K restoration of the preferred director’s cut available in the UK on Blu-ray. It features a fascinating new interview with Dagmar Lassander, who admits that it’s often true that German’s have no sense of humour (her character is involved in a hilarious visual gag that she needed explaining to her afterwards), and also an archival interview with Piero Schivazappa. He discusses his career at length, his inspirations for the film and the production itself, and both of these interviews alongside the restored film (available to watch in English or Italian) make this disc a must-have for all fans of cult Italian cinema.(This release is region-free.)
Click here to order.
By Todd Garbarini
William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971) swept the 1972 Academy Awards ceremony and went on to become a smash hit with both critics and audiences alike. During promotion of the film months earlier, Mr. Friedkin received a copy of The Exorcist from William Peter Blatty, a writer whom he had met five years earlier and whose script of a project he was offered he brushed off. Fascinated by this new novel, The Exorcist, Mr. Friedkin agreed to direct the film.
Revered the world over as the scariest movie ever made, The Exorcist is staunchly referred by both its writer and director as a detective story about the nature and mystery of faith. Neither gentleman was interested in making a horror film, but given the film’s marketing campaign in 1973, few could have believed that it was anything but a horror film. My late grandmother had recalled more times than I care to admit that when she was seventeen, she was terrified to go and see James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) because the film’s poster provided this warning as such: “If you have a weak heart and cannot stand intense excitement or even shock...We advise you NOT see the production...If, on the contrary, you like an unusual thrill, you will find it in "Frankenstein". A bit of reverse psychology never hurt anyone…certainly not the box office anyway! The new documentary, The Exorcist Untold, which does not appear to be licensed by Warner Brothers, is directed by Robin Bextor, runs 70-minutes and provides us with a glimpse of the hysteria that gripped the world as unsuspecting audiences stood for hours in less-than-comfortable weather to see the film adaptation of the best-selling novel. The book initially went unknown upon its 1971 publication as there was little publicity surrounding it. There is a case to be made that actor Robert Shaw’s drunkenness prior to his scheduled 1971 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show resulted in him being cancelled and replaced with author Blatty. This interview made such an impression on Mr. Cavett’s audience that The Exorcist became the number one best-selling novel the following week.
The documentary, which features anecdotes and comments from experts in diversified backgrounds, makes one thing plain: no one today who did not see The Exorcist during its initial December 1973 release can come close to comprehending what it was like to see it theatrically at that time. In the absence of social media and the constant interconnected nature of contemporary life, major newspapers of that era reported on audiences vomiting or passing out in the theatres. The film was a major shock to their systems and gave rise to debates, both publicly and privately, on God and the Devil. Experts weigh in and generally agree on the film’s power while collectively repudiating the much-maligned and fast-tracked John Boorman sequel four years hence. However Exorcist III: Legion (1990) receives praise from Mr. Blatty’s family. There is also a discussion about how Mr. Friedkin discovered Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, the first album release on Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Records label and used the opening of the album as a counterpoint to the action on the screen. Instantly recognizable now and referred to as “The Exorcist Theme,” this led to millions of copies of the album selling on the basis of its use in the film.
Mr. Friedkin’s biographer, the always eloquent and erudite Nat Segaloff, speaks at length about Mr. Friendkin and the film. He is the author of The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear and is an excellent authority on the subject. He discusses Mr. Friedkin’s unorthodox methods of getting a natural reaction from an actor, which would probably not go over well today! Here’s hoping that an expanded version of his excellent Hurricane Billy: The Stormy Life and Films of William Friedkin (1990) gets an update and reissue.
One portion of the documentary that I found delightful and was news to me is a section discussing the iconic stair steps in the film. As a film fanatic, I enjoy seeking out the locations to favorite films of mine and seeing how they have changed in the years since. The French Connection, being my favorite film, was the first film’s locations that I sought out in July 1990. Many of these locales are now gone, but I was lucky enough to visit them back then. I have made my way to The Exorcist steps twice since 2008, and in October 2015 a ceremonial plaque was dedicated and unveiled at the base of the steps to commemorate the film’s location. Both the writer and director were on-hand at the unveiling. This event is included in the documentary.
There is also a good deal of behind-the-scenes footage, discussions of what was left on the cutting room floor, mentioning the Manson killings coming on the heels of the end of the “Flower Children” era and the on-going Vietnam War, and a lot of footage of first-time audience reactions and their impressions.
The film refers to The Exorcist as “a compelling supernatural murder mystery with a moral theme.”
A must-see for fans of the film.
(Note: this review is derived from a screener link.)
Click HERE to view online or purchase the DVD of The Exorcist Untold on Amazon.com. Click here to order from Amazon UK.
Click here to purchase The Exorcist 50th Anniversary Edition - Theatrical & Extended Director's Cut (4K Ultra HD + Digital) [4K UHD].
Click here to view or purchase William Friedkin’s The Devil and Father Amorth (2017) DVD.
Click here to view or purchase Friedkin Uncut (2019).
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