By Todd Garbarini

As a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film version of Stephen King’s 1977 novel The Shining, which I saw at the age of fifteen and was completely terrified by, it is a daunting task indeed to watch any other (excuse the pun) incarnation of this fantastic story as seen through the eyes of another filmmaker without being drawn back to Mr. Kubrick’s much-maligned interpretation that was initially criticized but subsequently revered by some as the greatest horror film ever made. The Shining is a film that has affected me profoundly in ways that only a handful of other films ever have. I felt a compelling obsession with it that was nearly impossible to verbalize. It was my second Jack Nicholson film, and it made me a lifelong fan of his; it introduced me to pre-existing music and its use in a contemporary film; and perhaps, most significantly, it was my introduction into the world of Mr. King’s writings. Having read the novel a mere two months after seeing the film for the first time, I was completely surprised to see how much Mr. Kubrick altered the source material. Much has been written about his decision to jettison nearly all but the bare bones plot of a former alcoholic schoolteacher-turned-writer taking on the position of the caretaker of a Colorado hotel during the winter months with his wife and young son. The film’s most vocal critic is perhaps the author himself who, while acknowledging Mr. Kubrick’s genius as a film director, has never held back his disdain for The Shining for which he wrote a screenplay that was subsequently rejected by the director in favor of his own collaboration with novelist Diane Johnson. Mr. King’s disappointment in the film made him vow to make his own version one day, and The Shining, as presented in a three-part mini-series on ABC in April and May of 1997 and directed by Mick Garris, is the result.

Jack Torrance (Stephen Webber) is a recovering alcoholic who has been fired for beating up a student following the latter cutting the former’s car tire after an argument. To say that Jack is skating on thin ice would be an understatement, even after many AA meetings. His marriage is on the rocks with his wife Wendy (Rebecca De Mornay) following him breaking their son Danny’s (Courtland Mead) arm after a drinking bout. All he really wants is quiet time to write his play. Taking care of the remotely located Overlook Hotel during the brutal winter months is his opportunity to do just that. Stuart Ullman (Elliott Gould), the stern and surly hotel manager, has been apprised of Jack’s past and is not too pleased to have to offer him the job as a favor. Dick Halloran (Melvin Van Peebles), the Overlook’s head chef, gives Wendy and Danny a tour of the kitchen, and discovers that he shares the gift of the Shining with Danny, a force described as a “psychic ability to see visions of the past, present, and future, as well as communicate telepathically with others who possess similar abilities.”

Once on their own following the hotel’s seasonal shutdown, the Torrances spend time acclimating themselves to the quiet solitude of the hotel and their quarters. It does not take long for them, however, to realize that strange things are going on in their midst. Unfortunately for Jack, there are evil forces at work that threaten to unravel the very fabric of his family unit as well as his sanity. Evidence of past horrors that occurred within the hotel begin to emerge in the form of an undead and decaying woman in room 217, an anthropomorphized topiary, a hornet’s nest of not-quite-dead wasps, and a scrapbook of news articles providing evidence of the hotel’s sordid history. Wendy’s attempts to seduce her husband into a night of lovemaking while dressed seductively are spurned multiple times by a distracted Jack who is thinking of incorporating elements of the Overlook into his play while also dealing with the demons of his alcoholism. In the midst of this is their seven-year-old son Danny who plays referee between them while trying to make sense of all that conspires to destroy his family. It isn’t long before the ghosts of the Overlook’s past begin to show up in their evening gowns and Jack loses his grip on reality, attempting to destroy his family while Danny telepathically summons Mr. Halloran who comes to their rescue.

At four-and-a-half hours, this version of The Shining is highly faithful to Mr. King’s story and, except for the genuinely frightening woman in Room 217, there is little in the way of tension and scares. Steven Webber does an admirable job of portraying a man modeled after Mr. King himself who is trying to go sober and keep his temper in check. Rebecca De Mornay, who was just twenty years-old when she was cast in late 1980 as an understudy in Francis Ford Coppola’s extravagant One from the Heart (1982) and found overnight fame as Lana in Paul Brickman’s highly successful Risky Business (1983) opposite Tom Cruise, plays Wendy much closer to Mr. King’s original vision in his novel. She is a strong-willed mother fiercely protective of her young charge against the adversity unfurling within the family unit. The film is ultimately undone by the not-ready-for-prime-time computer-generated imagery effects (CGI) that come off as silly and unfinished.

It is impossible to avoid comparisons between this and Mr. Kubrick’s film, the scariest film I have ever seen and which has only become more revered, iconoclastic, studied and analyzed in the years since its original release, so I will tread lightly. There are many areas that make Mr. Kubrick’s version, which was faked on backlots and massive sets at Elstree Studios in England, a standout. In his film, the Overlook, as represented by Oregon’s Timberline Lodge, became a character of its own. The Torrance’s, as played by Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duvall, and Danny Lloyd, felt as though they were really and truly snowbound and had absolutely no recourse from the outside world. The same cannot be said for the hotel in this version which, ironically, is the very hotel that inspired the story: the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.

The one area that neither film version touches upon that is a big fear of Danny’s in the novel of the notion his parents will divorce, which is further italicized to emphasize innate fear. The other words that do make their way into both films are, of course, REDRUM and MURDER.

The miniseries is now available on a double disc Blu-ray from Scream! Factory. Blu-ray Disc One contains Parts One and Two, and Blu-ray Disc Two contains Part Three and additional scenes that were cut from the film. The film begins with a disclaimer: “To provide the most complete version of the film, a few scenes have been upgraded from the best available, non-Interpositive source.” This verbiage will go over the heads of the uninitiated, and as such it merely states that the folks at Scream! Factory did their best to locate the best available film elements for this high-resolution transfer. I must admit that even to my trained eyes, I had difficulty differentiating between the best film elements and whatever less-than-stellar footage was used in the transfer, which is excellent. There is a highly enjoyable audio commentary by author Stephen King, director Mick Garris, actor Steven Weber, actress Cynthia Garris, visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis, makeup supervisor Bill Curso, and cinematographer Shelly Johnson that is worth the price of the movie alone. They give great insight into how the film came to be, especially author King who discusses staying at the Stanley Hotel in October 1974 with his wife. He explains that, had the concierge not asked the Kings if they could pay cash to stay overnight, the book would never have come to be. Talk about a fortuitous exchange. He also talks about his own experiences and struggles with alcoholism and his relation to Jack Torrance.

Director Garris discusses how his version is not intended as a remake of Stanley Kubrick’s film (which would have been a fool’s errand) but instead a filmed representation of author Mr. King’s novel, and discusses the challenges of making a film of a beloved book and working with a child actor, made easier thanks to Dawn Jeffory-Nelson, an acting teacher. She appears as an unwitting victim in David Schmoeller’s ultra-creepy Tourist Trap (1979), and worked extensively with young actor Mead. Steven Weber provides his insights into working with Ms. De Mornay and how the most difficult scene they did consisted of nine pages of dialog and had to be in the can in one day.

The film was originally released on DVD in 2003 and the commentary and additional eleven scenes that run a total of sixteen-minutes appear to have been ported over from that release. The image quality of this new double-disc Blu-ray, however, easily bests that DVD so if you are a fan of this film this is a worthy upgrade. 

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By Dean Brierly

Joe Jordan, the writer and film historian who applied his prodigious research and keen analysis to acclaimed books on the movies of Robert Wise and William Castle, has now focused his critical acumen on one of Hollywood’s most legendary directors in “Magic Time: The Films and Scripts of Billy Wilder.” (BearManor Media, 2023)

Born in 1906, Wilder worked as a journalist before turning to film. He initially made his mark writing film scripts in Germany before emigrating to America and pairing up with screenwriter Charles Brackett on such classic pictures as “Midnight” (1939), “Ninotchka” (1939) and “Ball of Fire” (1941). The two continued working together as Wilder graduated to the director’s chair on “Double Indemnity” (1944), “The Lost Weekend” (1945) and “Sunset Boulevard” (1950), before terminating their partnership upon completion of the latter. Wilder then teamed with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond on another run of classics, inclusive of “Ace in the Hole” (1951), “Some Like it Hot” (1959 and “The Apartment” (1960).

From the beginning to end of his directing career, Wilder was an authentic auteur, one whose films were easily identifiable by their visual elegance, sardonic wit and often-dark take on human nature. Few were his equal at blending cynicism and romanticism. Wilder maintained this distinctiveness over an extraordinary range of material—film noir, screwball comedy, wartime thriller, courtroom drama, Cold War satire.

“Magic Time” is another standout addition to the body of critical literature devoted to the great filmmaker. Following the recipe of his book “Robert Wise: The Motion Pictures” (2020), Jordan treats each film to its own chapter. Chapters 1 through 10 cover the films Wilder worked on as screenwriter only; chapters 11 through 35 on those he made as a director/writer. Jordan briefly describes the historical and social context at the start of each new production—including Wilder’s personal and professional circumstances, his state of mind, his thoughts about the actors and crew—before launching into a lengthy comprehensive synopsis, leaving out no detail or plot point. The effect is almost like watching the film unfold in one’s mind, so if it’s been awhile since you’ve seen, say, “A Foreign Affair” (1948), Jordan brings you up to speed as he touches on narrative, theme, tone, performance—the total fabric of the film, liberally interspersed with classic quotes courtesy of Wilder–Bracket or Wilder–Diamond.

Despite including an amazing amount of exposition, detail, observation and analysis about each film, the chapters are relatively brief, with Jordan’s insights and information delivered in clear, user-friendly language. Thanks to its structure, one can read the book straight through from start to finish, or simply open to a random chapter to get a fun, fresh slant on a favorite Wilder film.

Even if you’ve seen a particular film many times, Jordan can still surprise and enrich you with his critical acumen. I thought I was on familiar terms with every narrative aspect of “Sunset Boulevard,” which is in essence the story of three aspiring writers, but I never gave much thought as to the myriad ways in which those three narratives contrast and compete with one another, or the degree to which they inform and direct the film’s overall narrative.

There are many such examples embedded within this book. One cannot come away from reading it without having gained new insight and appreciation for the classic Wilder films that we almost know by heart. But if Jordan helps us see familiar favorites through new eyes, he also makes a strong case for getting to know lesser-regarded Wilder films such as “The Emperor Waltz” (1948) and “Fedora” (1978).

Jordan amusingly ends “Magic Time” with an extended addendum titled “101 Motifs, Catchphrases and More (From A to Z)” that rounds the book off in an offbeat manner, listing numerous recurring narrative, object and dialog tropes—including Bolsheviks, catchphrases, card games, cities in Ohio, close calls, monocles, sharing of cigarettes and more—that can only be termed Wilderian.

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“WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR FUTURES”

By Raymond Benson

A genius has to start somewhere.

A very young Stanley Kubrick made his first feature film, Fear and Desire (called The Shape of Fear during production and until it found a distributor), at the age of twenty-two. It was very much a DIY production. In many ways it is the epitome of early independent filmmaking, the kind in which a fellow with a camera goes out to make a movie and then worries about finding a studio to release it. The picture was financed by family and friends, written by a school pal (future Broadway playwright Howard Sackler), and cast with young, struggling New York actors who were willing to work for peanuts. Kubrick produced and directed the movie, but he also photographed and edited it himself, too. It took a year-and-a-half to finish, and then he went about marketing it himself.

The astonishing thing about all this is that Kubrick was operating on chutzpah. While he had already made two documentary shorts, he was simply “winging it” when it came to making a feature length fiction narrative film. What he had on his side was his cinematographic capabilities. He knew cameras, lighting, and composition like the back of his hand, for he had spent four years after high school working as the youngest staff photographer for Look magazine in New York creating narrative “photo essays,” almost the equivalent of storyboards. Editing a movie, directing actors, and telling a good story was another matter… and something he would eventually learn how to do. Unfortunately, while Fear and Desire looks gorgeous and is indeed a lesson in photographic composition and lighting, it fails on all the other aspects of movie making.

Kubrick himself disowned Fear and Desire not long after its release in 1953. In fact, he attempted to acquire all existing prints, including the negative, and burn them. Luckily for film historians and Kubrick aficionados, he was unsuccessful. The copyright in the movie was owned by Kubrick’s uncle, Martin Perveler, a fairly wealthy pharmacy owner in California who put up most of the money and received Associate Producer credit. The feature had disappeared for decades and was sometimes available on poor quality bootleg VHS tapes and DVDs. It was only since Kubrick’s death in 1999 that today’s copyright owners and the Library of Congress made the movie available. In the USA, Kino Lorber distributed excellent quality DVD and Blu-ray editions several years ago. Now, Kino has released new 4K UHD and Blu-ray versions of the film, including the original 70-minute premiere cut that hasn’t been seen since 1953. (After its premiere, Kubrick cut about nine minutes for the theatrical release, limited as that was. It was this 62-minute cut that has been the more familiar one to film buffs.)

Another remarkable aspect about Fear and Desire is how ambitious it was. Kubrick’s later, more mature works are often extremely existential in theme and tone—they are big budget art films that challenge audiences to actually think about what they’ve seen. Kubrick is big on ambiguity, symbolism, and metaphor in all of his later, more well-known features. Right out of the gate, Kubrick embarked to make an extremely non-commercial art film that deals with the meaning of existence and the futility of war. While he would later succeed with this kind of art house contemplative head scratcher, Fear and Desire unfortunately comes off amateurish, pretentious, and painfully like a student film.

That said, one who knows Kubrick’s work can see glimpses of the genius underneath this early effort. What he was attempting is quite “Kubrickian,” and there are moments and images that are indeed striking.

The story is thus… A four-man platoon are fighting an unnamed war in an unnamed country. They are lost in a forest behind enemy lines. The goal is to get back to their side. When enemy combatants are spotted in a structure, the men decide to strike one for the team and kill off the opposition. Weirdly, the enemy general and his sidekick look just like the platoon’s lieutenant and private (they’re played by the same actors). Whoa, profound! And, in typical Kubrickian fashion, one man, another private (played by young Paul Mazursky, who would go on to be a director of note himself) goes mad, nearly rapes a civilian (Virginia Leith), and runs off like a banshee from hell. Will the others make it back to “civilization?” Maybe. Maybe not. As the lieutenant says, “We have nothing to lose but our futures.”

The same could be applied to Stanley Kubrick’s first endeavor.

Besides Mazursky and Leith, the other actors are Frank Silvera as the sergeant (if anyone is the protagonist here, it’s him), Kenneth Harp as the lieutenant, and Steve Coit as the first private. Silvera would go on to play the villain in Kubrick’s next, also independently made, feature, Killer’s Kiss (1955). Kubrick’s first wife, Toba, has a cameo as a fisherwoman (she and Kubrick had been high school sweethearts). Toba also worked on the crew, but the stress of making a first film with Stanley Kubrick destroyed their already unstable marriage.

Kubrick had flown the cast and tiny crew from New York to California in the spring of 1951 and shot the film in the San Gabriel mountains. It then took him over a year to raise the money to do all the post-production (mostly post-sync sound). He submitted the 70-minute cut to the Venice Film Festival in August 1952, where an unofficial premiere took place (he wasn’t present). Only in late 1952 did Kubrick meet the international film distributor Joseph Burstyn, perhaps the important figure of art house cinema in America at that time. Burstyn agreed to release the movie, and it had its official premiere in March 1953. It received mostly negative reviews, which prompted the director to delete nine minutes to tighten the feature. There were, however, a handful of very positive notices from the likes of critics such as James Agee and Mark Van Doren, both of whom recognized that there was undeniable talent buried within this strange, unsettling movie.

Kino Lorber’s new 2-disk release of the 4K restoration comes with a UHD disk and a Blu-ray disk of both the 70-minute and 62-minute cuts. The longer cut is accompanied by an audio commentary by film historian Eddy Von Mueller. The shorter cut has an audio commentary by film historian/screenwriter Gary Gerani. Von Mueller’s commentary is quite informative about the tortured history of the film; however he makes several odd mistakes (he says the fisherwoman is Kubrick’s sister, not wife; he says the star of Barry Lyndon is “Patrick” O’Neal; and 2001: a Space Odyssey is from 1966, not 1968). Gerani’s commentary covers much of the same ground with a different perspective. Sadly, neither pinpoints the bits that were actually cut from the longer version of the film. It’s up to us to figure it out (this reviewer finds that some scenes in the first half of the movie were merely shortened… there are no full scenes missing in the theatrical cut).

The real treasure trove in this release is that for the first time, in the USA, that is, we get Kubrick’s early short documentaries in high definition. Day of the Fight (1951) and Flying Padre (1951) were only available as bootlegs in bad quality. Only The Seafarers (1953) had been released on home video prior. Now we have all of Kubrick’s early work on one gorgeous release.

Kino’s new Fear and Desire package is a must-have for Stanley Kubrick fans, because looking past the feature’s shortcomings will reveal what would come from the master filmmaker. It’s a fascinating step back into the auteur’s young mind.

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By Ernie Magnotta

I’ve always loved action cinema. It’s one of my all-time favorite genres. When I was a teenager in the mid-1980s, I saw a VHS copy of the action film Bucktown and I’ve been a huge fan of its star, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, ever since.

A former pro football defensive back for (amongst others) the Kansas City Chiefs (1965-1967), Williamson, who holds black belts in Taekwondo, Kenp? and Shotokan karate, later moved on to acting. Some of his first appearances was guest starring on TV shows such as Star Trek and Ironside. He quickly graduated to features, appearing in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H and Otto Preminger’s Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon.

In 1970, Williamson starred in the appropriately titled action movie Hammer (the nickname was given to him during his football days). The film was a success and it began his long and entertaining career as an action movie superstar. Standing at 6ft. 3 inches tall and rarely seen without a prop cigar in his hand, Williamson would go on to appear in a plethora of action classics (many of which were distributed by major Hollywood studios) such as Black Caesar, Take a Hard Ride, Black Eye, Three the Hard Way, Mean Johnny Barrows (which he also produced), and 1978’s Inglorious Bastards.

In 1976, the Hammer created his own company, Po’ Boy Productions, which would not only see him star in, but also direct, a ton of action films the likes of Death Journey, No Way Back, Mr. Mean, Foxtrap, and The Kill Reflex. Williamson is also a veteran of Italian exploitation cinema. He has appeared in the cult classics The New Barbarians, The New Gladiators, and Black Cobra 1-4. Just to name a few. In later years, he would act in films such as From Dusk till Dawn (for cinema titans Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino) and Original Gangstas (directed by the legendary Larry Cohen and co-produced by Williamson) and he shows no signs of slowing down.

Recently, the Hammer’s somewhat forgotten, 1973, action-packed, James Bond-like film That Man Bolt was released on Blu-ray.

Solidly directed by David Lowell Rich and Henry Levin from an entertaining screenplay by Ranald MacDougall and Charles Eric Johnson, That Man Bolt tells the tale of courier and martial arts expert Jefferson Bolt who is hired to transport a million dollars from Hong Kong to Mexico City. However, Bolt soon realizes that he’s been set up and now he’s dead set on paying back everyone who double-crossed him.

Produced by Universal Pictures and released in December of 1973, That Man Bolt, aka Operation Hong Kong, is an exciting adventure flick (sort of a 007/martial arts combo) which not only contains well-crafted action sequences, but also some memorable characters played wonderfully by its talented cast.

Leading the way, of course, is the always charismatic Fred Williamson who convincingly plays the intelligent and capable Jefferson Bolt. There are also appearances by familiar faces such as Byron Webster, Miko Mayama, Teresa Graves, John Orchard, Jack Ging and Paul Mantee; not to mention martial arts champions Mike Stone, Emil Farkas, David Chow and Kenji Kazama. Enter the Dragon fans will recognize Geoffrey Weeks who appears in a brief role, as well as the voice of the great Keye Luke (who not only dubbed Shih Kien in Enter, but also performs the same duty here).

The fun film which was shot in L.A., Las Vegas, Macau and Hong Kong, also features some terrific cinematography by Emmy Award winner Gerald Finnerman, and a cool, Lalo Schifrin/John Barry-like musical score by composer Charles Bernstein.

That Man Bolt has been released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. The region one disc presents the movie in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The 2K transfer looks gorgeous. The disc not only contains the original theatrical trailer, but also That Man Hammer, a short, but entertaining interview with Fred Williamson. Overall, this is a highly enjoyable, early 70s action-adventure that definitely deserves to be re-discovered. It’s also a very nice addition to your Fred Williamson collection. And if you’re just beginning to get into the Hammer’s filmography, That Man Bolt is a great place to start.

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