BY JOHN P. HARTY

Like his father director Ralph Thomas (Doctor in the House films) and his nephew Gerald Thomas (Carry on . . . film series), Jeremy Thomas always wanted to be a part of the British film industry. Unlike his relatives, twenty-year old Jeremy didn't want to make the typical British films. The young filmmaker saw himself as a "disruptor" and "sounding board" for new "unconventional ideas." His social connections in the early1970s with Philippe Mora, Mike Molloy and the artists' community of The Pheasantry at King's Road initiated his interest in Australian culture. In 1975, screenwriter Michael Austin contacted Thomas with a script proposal based on a short story entitled The Shout by Robert Graves. Thomas' interest in the story was aroused by Graves' ability to incorporate Australian aboriginal beliefs about the death-stone and the soul-stone into a psychological horror thriller set in a coastal English village. These native beliefs were rooted in the possibility of human souls awaiting reincarnation in the bough of a tree or the cleft of a stone.These story elements were unique in 1927 and became topical 50 years later as part of the Antipodean Fantasy Film genre then developing in Australia, spearheaded by director Peter Weir's films "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975) and "The Last Wave" (1977).

Graves' story concerned a psychiatric patient- Crossley- telling a story to a visitor. The story is told in flashback. In a little village a happily married couple Rachael and Anthony live in quiet harmony. Secretly, Anthony is having an affair with a local woman of the village. One day a stranger (the storyteller) appears at the couple's doorstep and announces that he had just returned from eighteen years in the Australian Outback where he lived among the Aborigines and studied their magic. The stranger tells the couple that he has learned the secret of "The Shout" (which has the power to kill) and possessed the power to steal the love of a woman by taking possession of some nondescript object belonging to her. The stranger moves in with the couple and makes the wife his sex slave- he steals her personhood using a soul-stone. The husband realized that he must find a way to combat the stranger seemingly implacable power- but how? This psychological jigsaw puzzle comes to a climax during a thunderstorm at a cricket match in which the truth of Crossley's possession of the power of the shout is revealed.

Thomas believed a foreigner with "new eyes" on the subject /location could bring something extraordinary to this unusual story. Thomas recognized in the vast array of hyper-active symbolic eccentricities in the film work of polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (Deep End) the ideal craftsman to fashion this highly unusual horror story. How the Polish director transformed Graves' short story into a classic thriller bares remarkable comparison to what Alfred Hitchcock did when he "reimagined" Daphne du Maurier's short story into the apocalyptic allegory film entitled The Birds. Both directors used creative techniques of sight and sound to fashion their unique visions of a world of impending danger and destruction. The special photography work of Ub Twerks, the matte pictorial designs of Albert Whitlock and the digital imagery of the craftsmen at Cinesite Studios bring to mind Hitchcock 's vision of the massive bird attacks. Skolimowski used jump-cuts, visual symbols, non-sequel editing and actual visual symbolism to introduce the Outback magic into the placid fabric of the English village. Both Hitchcock and Skolimowski had a deep preoccupation with the use of sound to enhance their stories. Guided by the musical mastermind Bernard Hermann, Hitchcock used the sounds created by the Mixtur-Trautonium of Oskar Sala with the assistance of composer Remi Gassmann. Skolimowski used the spooky chord of a section of the music piece known as "Undertow" written by Tony Banks, which was originally intended to be the introductory piece of the Genesis album "And Then There Were Three." Mike Rutherford and Banks used this music to heighten the pictorial images recorded by Molloy under Skolimowski's direction to create an atmosphere of existential dread relating to a haunted topography - an uncanny feeling caused by viewing something familiar (lovely English countryside) unnaturally distorted. Skolimowskli utilized the then relatively new Dolby Sound System to create the unique sound of the Shout. He explained it " had to be applied at just the right moment so that we would hear something special. The shock of the sound is not a question of loudness or richness - it is sudden and it is complex. . ." The brilliance of Skolimowski's method was highlighted by the way he choreographed how the stranger performed the Shout and the slow motion photography of the impact of the scream on Anthony.

Producer Thomas was very fortunate to have been able to assemble such a remarkable cast of actors to tell the story. If the three leads - Alan Bates as Crossley, Susannah York as Rachael and John Hurt as Anthony- had not been rightly cast, the story wouldn't have worked. The Shout won the Grand Prix de Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978. The whole idea of a person having the ability to control his destiny - life and death - is appealing especially in this age of pandemics and government mandates of behaviour. At a time when most human beings feel helpless to determine their own future, the idea of such a power or ability seems very attractive. If nothing else The Shout will make one question their own mode of existence. If you are looking for something rewarding, unusual and different to view, your search is over.

Click here to order Blu-ray from Amazon UK (PAL format)

(John P. Harty's latest book is "The Cinematic Challenge: Filming Colonial America, Vol. 3- The International Era, 1976-2020."

BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA

Ah, the early 1970s. If you were a monster movie fan, this was a fun time to be around. After all, creature features, which became popular with kids of the late 1950s and continued throughout the 60s, were still all the rage. Classic monster movies like Universal’s Son of Frankenstein (1939) starring horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, The Wolf Man (1941) starring the immortal Lon Chaney, Jr. and Hammer Films’ amazing and highly enjoyable Christopher Lee Dracula series were constantly playing on television. The late, great Forrest Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine was required reading for all 70s monster-kids, and Aurora plastics put out a wonderful line of glow-in-the-dark monster model kits which happily kept fans busy for hours. The local drive-ins and hard top theaters also rode the creature feature wave as, every week it seemed, movie houses were filled with outstanding, atmospheric delights starring horror kings Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Sir Lee. Monster enthusiasts couldn’t get enough.

Meanwhile, legendary film studio American International Pictures, who for almost two decades had specialized in producing fun, low-budget, youth-oriented films such as 1957’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf as well as the Beach Party, Edgar Allan Poe and Biker film cycles of the 1960s, decided to create a new creature feature. Most likely due to both the huge popularity of monster films and the Hammer vampire movies of the time, AIP created their own Dracula-like villain; a modern-day bloodsucker named Count Yorga. Benefitting from a solid script, above average direction and an amazing performance by star Robert Quarry (Dr. Phibes Rises Again) as Yorga, Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) did very well at the box office. It’s no surprise that AIP almost immediately started work on a sequel titled, appropriately enough, The Return of Count Yorga.

After crumbling to dust in Count Yorga, Vampire, the evil Count is resurrected when the world famous and supposedly supernatural Santa Ana Winds blow across an old cemetery. In no time, Yorga, his faithful servant, Brudah, and his horde of vampire brides put the bite on oblivious locals and cast a spell over little Billy, younger brother of the beautiful Cynthia who Yorga has developed deep feelings for. The undead fiend then kills Cynthia’s parents, turns her sister, Ellen, into a vampire bride and brings an unconscious Cynthia to his home where he plans to romance the lovely, young woman. Cynthia awakens and is told by Yorga that her parents were in an accident and that he will be caring for her until they are well. Meanwhile, Cynthia’s maid, Jennifer, who discovered the dead bodies, informs the police, but when they arrive, they find that the corpses have mysteriously disappeared. Cynthia’s fiancé, David, suspects that Yorga may be behind the grisly goings-on and, with the help of Lieutenant Madden, Sargent O’Connor and a frightened Reverend, he sneaks into Yorga’s lair in an attempt to rescue his beloved and stop the wicked Count for good.

Originally titled Yorga Returns, but changed to The Return of Count Yorga at the time of its release, the very entertaining sequel contains much of the fun, eerie atmosphere of the first movie and also uses most of the same cast and crew. The film was solidly directed by Bob Kelljan (Scream, Blacula, Scream) who helmed the original, and the engaging and creepy story was written by Kelljan and newcomer (to the Yorga series) Yvonne Wilder (Seems Like Old Times) who also shines in the role of mute maid, Jennifer. Kelljan keeps the film moving while, all along, building tension and dread; most notably in a terrific scene where Yorga sends his vampire brides to attack Cynthia’s family in their home one windy night. The talented director also keeps the film current (for 1971) by having the brides resemble zombies from the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead as well as giving their terrifying home invasion sequence a definite Charles Manson feel.

Michael Macready (Terror House), who produced and starred in Count Yorga, Vampire, once again takes on producing chores and makes a cameo appearance as well. His dad, actor George Macready (Gilda), who narrated the first film, also appears in a brief, but humorous scene. Talented composer Bill Marx (son of Harpo) returns and contributes another atmospheric and extremely eerie score while the likeable Roger Perry (Harrigan and Son), who played the heroic lead in the first Yorga film, returns in a similar role as Cynthia’s concerned fiancé, David. Edward Walsh (Another 48 Hrs.) is also back as Brudah and he’s just as intimidating as he was the first time around. Last, but certainly not least, the late, great Robert Quarry returns to the role for which he will be forever remembered: Count Yorga. Quarry once again plays the bloodthirsty Count as suave, sophisticated, cultured and magnetic. For the first time ever, the lonely Yorga falls in love and Quarry really makes you believe that he is completely taken with Cynthia. In other scenes, you can sense his pain at feeling this new and powerful emotion. Of course Yorga is also an evil, undead fiend and Quarry doesn’t disappoint in that department either as his vampire can be convincingly cold and extremely ruthless. Also, for a movie that’s over 40 years-old, you wouldn’t expect the scares to still work. However, the frightening image of a crazed, bloodthirsty Quarry/Yorga running out of the darkness in slow motion, fangs bared and arms outstretched while chasing a terrified victim, is still the stuff of nightmares.

We have plenty of newcomers to the series and they’re all wonderful. The lovely, talented and Emmy-winning Mariette Hartley (Marnie) is perfect as the goodhearted Cynthia. Both Rudy De Luca (High Anxiety) and, in an early appearance, Craig T. Nelson (Poltergeist) are believable, likeable and a bit humorous as the skeptical cops. Philip Frame (The Little Ark) is extremely creepy as young Tommy; Tom Toner (Splash) is a bit funny as the Reverend; Karen Houston/Ericson (Night of the Demons) does well as Ellen, Cynthia’s sister (especially in the scene where she vamps out), and David Lampson (Silence) is solid as Ellen’s faithful boyfriend, Jason. Helen Baron (Private Benjamin) and the highly recognizable Walter Brooke (The Graduate) are seen early on as Cynthia’s parents, Corrine Conley (Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer) skulks around as an old witch, and beloved character actor Michael Pataki (Grave of the Vampire) shows up briefly as a concerned boyfriend whose girl (Jesse Wells from Wizards) has been attacked by Yorga. B-movie aficionados of the 60s and 70s will be interested to know that the multi-talented Gary Kent, who appeared in many fun drive-in films such as Schoolgirls in Chains and Dracula vs. Frankenstein, was stunt coordinator on this film, and musician Marilynn Lovell, who provided music for Kelljan’s Scream, Blacula, Scream, Michael Macready’s Terror House and Quarry’s Deathmaster, sings the haunting tune “Think It Over.”

As already stated, the film is scary, atmospheric, well-directed and well-acted, but as much praise as it gets, I believe that it is still quite underrated. American International Pictures was all set to have Count Yorga rise from the grave once more, but, for whatever reason, a third film was, unfortunately, never made.

(Shout Factory’s Blu-ray special edition of the film is out of print but the movie is available for streaming rental or purchase on Amazon).

BY LEE PFEIFFER

At one point in the 1983 zany comedy "The Survivors", Robin Williams says to co-star Walter Matthau: "I was overreacting." It would have been more accurate if he had said "I was overacting" because Williams, who was certainly a comedic genius, also had the ability to go over-the-top in his quest to get a laugh or, conversely, to ring sentiment from playing dramatic scenes in a mawkish manner. To paraphrase Longfellow's famous poem, "When he was good, he was very, very good, but when he was bad, he was horrid." In "The Survivors", Williams doesn't quite reach the level of being horrid and there's plenty of blame to go around for this misfire, but he certainly contributes to its quick demise thanks to his failure to get a definable grip on his character. The premise of the film must have seemed promising when it was first developed as a vehicle to reunite Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, who had found great success co-starring in "The In-Laws". For whatever reason, the reunion never materialized and Joseph Bologna was signed to co-star with Williams under the direction of Michael Ritchie. Ritchie had an interesting background, having directed an eclectic assortment of films. They ranged from his acclaimed drama "Downhill Racer", the sports comedies "Semi-Tough" and "The Bad News Bears", the political satire "The Candidate", the social satire "Smile" and the bizarre but hypnotic crime thriller "Prime Cut"- all good movies, indeed. But shortly after production started, Bologna walked off the film, citing the oft-used excuse of "creative differences", presumably with Ritchie. Walter Matthau was called in to replace him, having worked successfully with Ritchie on "The Bad News Bears". The script was by Michael Leeson, who had written most of the scripts for the landmark sitcom "The Cosby Show". So far, so good. 

"The Survivors" opens in New York City during the grungy period of the early 1980s. Robin Williams plays Donald Quinelle, an affable but bumbling executive who thinks his career is set, only to report to work and experience being fired by his boss's talking parrot. He is put through the grueling process of applying for unemployment insurance, which is made to look like a old breadline from the Soviet era. Meanwhile, we're introduced to Walter Matthau as Sonny Paluso, a long-time franchisee of a gas station. He is equally unceremoniously dismissed when the oil company decides to revoke his franchise, leaving him high and dry and without unemployment insurance, due to a legal technicality. Prior to this, we had seen the wholesale destruction of his gas station when Donald,who was fueling up in a careless manner, accidentally ignites the place with a tossed cigarette. The two men later find themselves coincidentally dining at the same restaurant when it is held up by a masked man who demands that the captive patrons disrobe and hand over their money. Donald resists and bumbles his way into subduing the bandit, getting wounded in the process and becoming a fleeting hero in the media. The bandit is Jack Locke (Jerry Reed), a cool-as-a-cucumber one-time hit man who has been affected by the economic downturn, thus he's been reduced to being a small-time robber. He manages to get out of police custody and he has both men in his sites as revenge for turning him in. He breaks into Sonny's house, where the divorced dad lives with his precocious, porn-loving 16 year-old daughter Candice (Kristen Vigard) and prepares to kill Sonny. An unexpected drop-by visit by Donald results in a series of bizarre comedic set pieces. Cutting to the chase (literally), Donald inexplicably becomes an expert in self-defense and amasses an arsenal of assault weapons. He has fallen under the spell of a far right cult leader, Wes Huntley (James Wainwright), who runs a paramilitary camp in rural Vermont. Donald leaves his fiancee and heads for the hills to join the cult. Sonny learns that Jack Locke knows his whereabouts and he and Candice race to the camp to warn Donald.  The whole mad, mad, mad, mad fiasco disintegrates further when Reed shows up and attempts to murder Donald and Sonny, but ends up allying himself with them when they are marked for death by Wes. If you think all of this is convoluted to read, wait until you see it unwind on screen.

A major problem with the production is that Matthau is playing in a semi-realistic comedy whereas director Ritchie allows Williams to dabble in theatre of the absurd. One minute, he's in Robin Williams lovable loser mode, the next minute he's like a raving psychopath. Rarely have I seen him so consistently unfunny. Matthau steals the film by simply playing a typical Walter Matthau character: grumpy with his trademark hangdog facial expressions. Jerry Reed tries his best to invigorate the hit man character, but it's wildly inconsistent and unbelievable. Once the action shifts to Vermont, the pace is deadly and the jokes become weaker and more repetitive. It's as though Ritchie was just trying to run out the clock in order to meet the minimal running time. The film also suffers from some very sloppy aspects that are inexcusable. In the beginning of the film, a preoccupied Donald stops at Sonny's station to gas up- but he fails to insert the hose into the gas tank, thus allowing fuel to flow everywhere and later ignite when he tosses a cigarette nearby.  The scene is absurd, but for all the wrong reasons. Even if Donald doesn't see the ocean of fuel gathering on the ground around him, why would he not smell the pungent odor? Later, when Donald becomes suddenly obsessed with owning weapons, he drops by a local gun fair where enthusiasts are passing around military-grade hardware that is being sold openly and seemingly with no questions asked. However, at the time, New York City had (and continues to have) some of the strongest gun control laws in the United States. I have never heard of such events taking place there, though they are common in other parts of the country. It rings hollow and makes it seem like screenwriter Michael Leeson had never been in Gotham in his life. Additionally, when Donald decides to move to Vermont, he gets there via a taxi cab. The scenario calls out for a joke, but, alas, none comes. Let's set the record straight: in an unemployed person decided to travel to Vermont via a local taxi in 1983, they would still be paying off the fare today.

When "The Survivors" opened, it met with deadly reviews and was considered a boxoffice failure. New York Times critic Vincent Canby bemoaned the film thusly, "Most astonishing is that a director of Mr. Ritchie's taste and talent could have allowed a project of such utter foolishness to get to the point that it was actually filmed."  Indeed.

("The Survivors" is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Click here to order the DVD from Amazon)

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Love and Bullets is a 1979 Charles Bronson starrer that Roger Ebert appropriately described at the time as "an assemblyline potboiler". The film initially showed promise. Originally titled Love and Bullets, Charlie, the movie had John Huston as its director. However, Huston left after "creative differences" about the concept of the story and its execution on screen. The absurdity of losing a director as esteemed as Huston might have been understandable if the resulting flick wasn't such a mess. However, one suspects that, whatever the conceptual vision Huston had for the movie may have been, it must have been superior to what ultimately emerged. Stuart Rosenberg, the competent director of Cool Hand Luke took over but was unable to create anything more than a sub-par action movie. The plot finds Bronson as a Phoenix cop who is reluctantly sent to Switzerland on an undercover assignment. The local prosecutor has been doggedly trying to convict a local mob kingpin (Rod Steiger) for years. Now it appears that his moll girlfriend (Jill Ireland) might be a viable witness in terms of spilling the beans about his operations.  Thus, Steiger has stashed her abroad and is keeping her under constant watch. Bronson's job is to pretend he is also a mob guy and convince Ireland to return with him to Phoenix to testify against her lover. The movie seems to exist for one reason only: the main participants desired a paid working vacation in Switzerland. This concept is nothing new. The Rat Pack squeezed in filming Oceans Eleven almost as an afterthought while they were performing nightly in Las Vegas at the Sands casino. In the twilight of his years, John Ford famously got his stock company together for a jaunt to Hawaii and released the result as a big boxoffice hit called Donovan's Reef, which still must retain the status of being the most expensive home movie ever made. 

Love and Bullets is such a lazy effort you have to believe it must have taken a great deal of effort for the cast to meander to the set every day. The film also illustrates the danger of love-struck leading men force-feeding the lady in their lives into virtually every movie they make. Clint Eastwood shoe-horned Sondra Locke into a string of his films in the 1970s and 1980s and while some of them were artistic and commercial successes, I always greeted their next teamING with a sense of bored inevitability. (Locke was also a prime perpetrator in the creation of the worst movie of Eastwood's career, The Gauntlet.) In this case, Ireland had been Mrs. Bronson for over a decade following her divorce from David McCallum. She was always a competent enough actress but the couple obviously envisioned themselves as a new William Powell/Myrna Loy teaming. Not quite. Bronson is on full automatic pilot, registering almost no emotion. Ireland overplays the role of bubble-headed moll to an embarrassing level, as though she is a character in a sitcom sketch. She is saddled with intentionally laughable fright wigs but the real joke comes when she decides to discard them for her natural hair style, which proves to be even less flattering. Absurdity piles upon absurdity as the film becomes one long, extended chase sequence with Bronson and Ireland squabbling like Ralph and Alice Kramden, if you can imagine The Honeymooners being pursued by assassins. Steiger is in full scenery-chewing mode and an impressive array of supporting actors (Val Avery, Michael V. Gazzo, Henry Silva and Strother Martin) are pretty much wasted along the way. I'm generally undemanding when it comes to the pleasures of watching an unpretentious Charles Bronson action movie but Love and Bullets represents the latter period of his career where he rarely even tried to elevate his films beyond being vehicles for an easy pay check.

(The film is currently streaming on Shout! Factory TV and the app and subscription are also available through Amazon Prime Video.) 

BY HANK REINEKE

Following the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1960-61, there was – forgive me – a “mad” rush to cash in on that film’s coattails. On one side of the pond, U.S. based pastiches of Psycho would come courtesy of Shlock-horror maestro William Castle. The gimmicky producer would rush out the psychological-thriller Homicidal in 1961 and, a bit later - and more famously - with Joan Crawford in Straiht- Jacket (1964). In England, Hammer Film Productions, riding high due to their reimagining of the classic “Universal” monsters, would likewise bring to the screen four psych-thrillers of similar temperament: Paranoiac and Maniac in 1963, Hysteria and Nightmare in 1965.

One of the connecting threads of this quartet of Hammer efforts were that all scenarios had been dutifully scribed by their “house writer” of sorts, Jimmy Sangster. In his entertaining autobiography Do You Want it Good or Tuesday? From Hammer Films to Hollywood: A Life in the Movies (Midnight Marquee Press, 2009), Sangster doesn’t dwell too long on any reminiscences of Nightmare, but offers he found making the film “as being all fun.” Which, I suppose, is a fair self-assessment.

Sangster’s film (which he also produced) begins with a nightmare sequence, a young woman walking frightened and apprehensive through the empty corridors of an insane asylum. That woman, Janet (Jennie Linden) enters the cell of a deranged woman who cackles and taunts menacingly. The girl awakens from her dream with a tortured scream, scaring the living daylights out of her roommates at Hatcher’s School for Young Ladies. One of her teachers at the school, Miss Mary Lewis (Brenda Bruce) realizes this privileged girl is suffering from some sort of nervous condition. She accompanies her anxious student to Hightower, the tony mansion Janet is to inherit when she comes of age.

The staff at Hightower, particularly John (George A. Cooper) and Mrs. Gibbs (Irene Richmond), seem fond of Janet, sympathetic and protective. In contrast, her guardian and executor of the property Henry Baxter (David Knight) - as well as a new face at the mansion, Grace Maddox (Moira Redmond) appear outwardly friendly… but there’s something about the two that arouses one’s suspicions. We soon learn the disturbed mental patient Janet encounters in her nightmares is her very own mother. It’s revealed that on the day of her eleventh birthday, Janet witnessed the brutal stabbing death of her father by the hand of her mother.

Though mom would be subsequently sent to the local madhouse, the brutal memories of the event have left Janet teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The girl is haunted by the thought that her mother’s insanity might prove to be an inherited trait. It’s not helpful to Janet’s mental condition that each night at Hightower she’s visited by a ghostly figure with a scarred face and white dressing gown. The ghost-woman roams the hallways, her appearances always preceding an act of staged violence. It’s enough to drive a young girl crazy… which is exactly what happens in due course.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, the film’s narrative structure takes an unwelcome turn in its second half. Just as Janet Leigh’s embezzling character disappears – surprisingly - from Psycho a mere twenty-minutes into the film, so does Janet from Nightmare. Unfortunately, while Robert Bloch and Hitchcock’s shocking twist works perfectly in Psycho, Sangster’s cinematic mimic simply does not. Once Janet is out of the picture Nightmare is unable to sustain its tension or dramatic momentum.

With beleaguered Janet out of the film, the movie loses not only its principal character but its heart. The mystery of the ghostly figure and subsequent deterioration of Janet’s mental state – the film’s two most compelling elements – are simply abandoned midway through. There are really no surprises in what follows. The two characters we suspect from the beginning as being ne’er-do-wells are, of course, the two who actually are. The only mystery left is whether or not the pair will get away with their devious scheming. And that’s simply not all that exciting.

That’s not to say there’s no value to Nightmare. As one might expect, director Freddie Francis does a proper if workman-like job on the film. The movie offers many of the requisite elements expected of a thriller: twisting doorknobs, tentative walks through long, shadowy corridors, eerie bedside visitations from a mute, ghostly figure and frightened peeks from beneath the shield of a folded blanket.

In a 2013 memoir Francis recalled he was, for the most part, pleased with his work on Nightmare, believing he successfully managed “to sustain the drama and the shock elements.” He would write Sangster’s “excellent script […] was a genuinely scary mystery with of course a sting in the tail.” Author and Hammer historian Jonathan Rigby seems to agree in part, rightfully pointing out that many of Sangster’s psych-thrillers were thinly disguised “Gothic horror films in modern dress.”

Though Francis was well-schooled in the art of cinematic horror, he would admit he was not terribly enthused with the work of his detached cameraman Johnny Wilcox. But the director suggested the atmospherics of the film’s interior photography were buoyed by his keeping “the edges and corners dark thus giving the overall picture a claustrophobic and menacing feel.” Released in April of 1964 as the under-card of a double bill topped by Hammer’s The Evil of Frankenstein (also directed by Francis), Nightmare was met with mixed critical reviews – a considered view shared by many fans of Hammer thrillers ‘til this very day.

Scream Factory promotes their release of Nightmare as a “Collector’s Edition,” and one must say it certainly is that. There are a bevy of featurettes examining this 83 minute film from every conceivable angle. Kim Newman shares his thoughts during the near seventeen-minute study “Sleepless Nights – Reflecting on a Nightmare of a Movie.” Jonathan Rigby clocks a nearly twenty-five minute rumination during his episode “Slice and Fright. If that’s not enough, there’s also “Reliving the Nightmare: Interviews with Actress Julie Samuel and More,” “Nightmare in the Making,” “Jennie Linden Remembers,” and “Madhouse: Inside Hammer’s Nightmare.” If this bounty of extra-features still leaves you dissatisfied – and I can’t imagine why it ever would – there’s also an audio commentary supplied courtesy of film historian Bruce Hallenbeck. To round things off, we’re also gifted with the now expected theatrical trailer and a generous stills gallery.

In some respects, there’s perhaps too many featurettes complimenting a medium-range film that runs less than an hour-and-a-half. The general nuts and bolts background stories regarding the conception and making of Nightmare are shared with repetition by the usual gang of learned subjects – the trainspotting film scholars of British horror. The inclusion of commentaries by those who actually worked on the film partly offer a measure of balance, sharing time-worn memories and occasionally intriguing glimpses of behind-the-scenes moments. If the historians are somewhat guilty of bombarding us with factoids and ruminations of context, footnotes and filmographies, it’s all good, really. Let’s face it, this is the sort of minutiae we Hammer horror wonks live for and have now come to expect.

It’s fair to say that by the time you make it through all of this set’s special features you will know more about Nightmare than you ever thought possible. There are discussions on the influence that such films as Psycho and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) had on Sangster’s work. It’s also suggested that the writer’s inspiration in scripting films in the psyche-thriller genre went back even further than 1955, with nods to such predecessors as Gaslight (1944) and The Spiral Staircase (1946).

The commentaries aren’t necessarily dry and academic. Hearing a bit of gossip is always fun. It’s interesting to learn of Sangster’s anguished reaction when discovering his original script for Nightmare had been critically red penciled in its pre-production margins by Hammer producer James Carreras. Then again, Sangster’s screenplay for Nightmare might have seemed a tad familiar to Carreras. It was in many ways reminiscent of the writer’s own scenario for an earlier Hammer effort Scream of Fear (1961). In any event, Sangster’s work would prove to have long legs. The screenwriter would later sell the storyline – and yet another reworking of the script - to producer Aaron Spelling for the ABC-TV film A Taste of Evil (1971) featuring Barbara Stanwyck.

Anyway, if you’ve read this review this far in, you already know you want this. Aficionados of the horror, mystery, and thrillers of Hammer Films Productions will properly celebrate this U.S. Blu-ray release of Nightmare – and well they should. Scream Factory offers a brand new 2K Scan from an interpositive of the B&W film and the image is stunning, with only the slightest and most unobtrusive white emulsion scratches slipping by now and again. The film is offered here in 1080p High-Definition Widescreen (2.35:1) with English DTS-HD master Audio and removable English subtitles. This is an essential film purchase for collectors of Hammer’s legacy films as well as for fans of intelligently crafted psychological-thrillers in the Psycho and Les Diaboliques vein. But make no mistake about it, Nightmare is, at best, a middle-range Hammer film. It’s neither a classic, nor an embarrassment nor a cheap knock-off. It’s simply a passingly engaging thriller that sadly derails due to unsatisfying and curious scripting issues.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON

BY DARREN ALLISON

It’s certainly great to see Chris' Soundtrack Corner back on the pages of Cinema Retro. It’s been a little while, but rest assured, Christian Riedrich and his team have been hard at work and it’s always worth the wait.

CSC has released no less than three brand new soundtracks, all of which are essentially their world premiere debuts. Sure, if you deep long and hard enough you may discover an odd track or a popular main title that has previously surfaced here and there or perhaps on some obscure library compilation – but hey, good luck with that search, should you wish to undertake it.

Across these three releases you will certainly unearth a delightful range of styles and moods as well as sampling various flavours of the exotic Mediterranean.

Daniele Patucchi’s Il Sorriso Del Ragno (1971) (CSC 031) sets us on our way rather nicely.

This rarely seen 1971 Italian film (translated as, The Spider's Smile) was recognised more by its international title, Web of Deception. It was the only film directed by Massimo Castellani, a more established second unit director who had enjoyed greater success as a script supervisor. Based on a script written by Italo Gasperini and Armando Morandi, with dialogue by Fabio Piccioni, Il Sorriso Del Ragno, this is a crime thriller disguised as a roaming travelogue. With locales ranging from France to multiple regions of Greece, all of which was captured beautifully by cinematographer Giorgio Tonti,– it was pretty much guaranteed that both cast and crew would enjoy their opportunity in the sun- soaked regions.

The story involves private investigator Tony Driscoll; a ladies' man perhaps, but he also has a good reputation when it involves recovering stolen goods. So when thieves make off with $5 million in jewels from a French bank, Driscoll is hired to get them back. However, certain questions point fingers at Driscoll and the film’s plot makes the most of this twist up until its conclusion.

A self-taught musician, composer Daniele Patucchi was born in 1945 in Turin. By the time he began writing and performing music professionally, he was adept in a wide range of styles, from jazz and rock to classical and displayed a certain amount of flair when it came to digital synthesizers – all of which served him well over 35 movie soundtrack scores. His music for Il Sorriso Del Ragno is based around five central musical styles. Three of them- Main, Suspense and Action themes- occupy the majority of the score's structure and serve to enhance the adventure, tension, and intrigue as the story unfolds. Additional musical motifs signify more regional themes and local instrumentation. Acoustic guitar and Greek mandolin in particular feature prominently and work to wonderful effect throughout.

Il Sorriso Del Ragno is really enjoyable little score. There’s plenty of variation, but never too much. It never spills over into a heavy clash of styles, and retains a comforting, common thread. Christian Riedrich’s pin sharp production and remastering by Stefan Betke is what we have come to expect. Only three tracks have been previously released. Additionally, five tracks that were not used in the movie have been added as bonus tracks: alternate or varied versions composed for the movie or re-edited for inclusion on one of CAM's promotional library music albums. The CD includes a 12-page illustrated booklet by Aletta Heinsohn and features detailed, exclusive notes on the film and its score by film music journalist Randall D. Larson.

Chris' Soundtrack Corner’s second score release is another by Daniele Patucchi, Sans Sommation (1973) (CSC 032). This was a much harder hitting German-French-Italian co-production (released in the UK as Without Appeal and Internationally as Without Warning). Made by French director Bruno Gantillon, Sans Sommation was a tougher, straight-shooting thriller which again presented composer Daniele Patucchi the opportunity to demonstrate his diverse range of talents.

Maurice Ronet stars as Raoul Maury, a former Police inspector who made a seriously bad career move when he attempted to take down the son of a prominent politician on drug charges. As a result, Maury finds himself demoted to the role of archivist in the police records department. When it is discovered that Maury bears a striking resemblance to Lt. Kieffer, an associate of wanted mercenary Pierre Capra, he is reinstated in order to impersonate Kieffer in order to get close to Capra and assassinate him. However, conflicting acts of suspicion and trust will all head for collision and loyalties will become strained and tested to the full.

Patucchi's film compositions were plentiful throughout the 1970s and '80s. Sans Sommation is one of more than 35 European movie soundtracks he composed throughout the 1970s and '80s. His gift for tuneful melodies served him well in this score. Its opening theme in particular offers a dusty, smooth Jazz trumpet and for the first couple of tracks the ride seems distinctly mellow and easy-going. But don’t get fooled, by the time ‘Elikiller’ kicks in we are on much tougher, off road territory and the bold, brassy action cues are allowed to take full flight. There’s a good degree of suspenseful tracks, too, that really build nicely along with some very cool Hammond organ playing on display. The single central theme is a brisk, high-energy, driving motif that continuously helps the score race forward.

The album is produced again by Christian Riedrich and mastered this time by Manmade Mastering – all of which results in a big, fully rounded sound. The main score consists of 12 tracks with 3 bonus tracks included. The CD is accompanied by a 12-page illustrated booklet designed by Aletta Heinsohn and featuring detailed, exclusive notes on the film and its score by film music journalist Randall D. Larson, who deconstructs the score's elements in deeper detail.

Finally, Ingrid Sulla Strada (1973) (CSC 036 rounds up this excellent trilogy of scores and sees a welcome release from composer Carlo Savina. Ingrid Sulla Strada is an Italian psychological drama written and directed by Brunello Rondi. Rondi was arguably better known as a script-writer and script consultant, a reputation which had lead him to several collaborations with Federico Fellini. Rondi's directorial debut came more than a decade earlier in 1961 with the film Una vita violenta (aka Violent Life). Rondi went on to make a number of psychological/sexual dramas of which Ingrid Sulla Strada was one of the last.

Ingrid Sulla Strada is a drama in which young Ingrid (Swedish model and actress Janet Agren) leaves her home after being raped by her father. After her arrival in Rome, Ingrid, with little option, slips into prostitution. Life is not easy for Ingrid and soon her life begins to spiral out of control and eventually leads to her suicide. Ingrid Sulla Strada is not an easy film to find, and the limited amount of footage revealed within the trailer tends to suggest a rather bleak narrative and a Fellini- influenced style of filmmaking.

Ingrid Sulla Strada is without doubt an eclectic score. At its heart, Savina provides a light, delicate melody which is quite charming. And yet, the score’s overall soundscape doesn’t naturally provide a standardised form or perhaps an obvious sense of continuity. There’s certainly nothing wrong with Savina’s music, but the styles are so varied, one could almost be excused for thinking certain cues could had been taken from entirely different scores. As a collective it’s incredibly diverse and perhaps reflects the up-and-down nature and psychological aspect of the story. Regardless of its random style, it remains a fascinating listening experience.

Chris' Soundtrack Corner has completed an excellent challenge in making this obscure title available for the first time. Only the main theme and the pop organ track, ‘Walking through the falling leaves’, have been previously released. Christian Riedrich has beautifully produced the release, which certainly must have been a challenge. The result is the release of an entirely engaging score. Consisting of 15 tracks and 2 additional bonus tracks, the CD comes with a 12-page illustrated booklet designed by Tobias Kohlhaas and featuring detailed, exclusive notes by Randall D. Larson.

A fine collection of European scores for which everyone involved should be congratulated.

To order go to:

http://www.soundtrackcorner.de/

(Darren Allison is the Soundtracks Editor for Cinema Retro.)

BY LEE PFEIFFER

"Young Billy Young" is the kind of film of which it can be said, "They don't make 'em like that anymore". Not because the movie is so exceptional. In fact, it isn't exceptional on any level whatsoever. Rather, it's the sheer ordinariness of the entire production that makes one pine away for an era in which top talent could be attracted to enjoyable, if unremarkable, fare such as this. Such films, especially Westerns, were churned out with workmanlike professionalism to play to undemanding audiences that didn't require mega-budget blockbusters to feel they got their money's worth at the boxoffice. Sadly, such movies have largely gone the way of the dodo bird. In today's film industry, bigger must always be better and mid-range flicks such as are no longer made. However, through home video releases such as Kino Lorber's Blu-ray of "Young Billy Young" and streaming services such as Amazon Prime, it's possible to still enjoy the simple pleasures that such movies provide.  

The story opens with botched robbery in Mexico committed by Billy Young (Robert Walker) and some cohorts including Jesse (David Carradine). The plan to steal horses from the Mexican military goes awry and Billy is forced to split from his fellow robbers with the army in hot pursuit. Making his way back across the border to New Mexico, he is penniless and desperate. He has a chance encounter with Ben Kane (Robert Mitchum), a tough, sarcastic older man who he encounters again in a nearby town. Here, Billy is being cheated at cards by the local sheriff, who goads him into a gunfight. Billy ends up killing him but stands to be framed for the sheriff's death. He's saved by Ben, who rides along with him to another town where Ben has agreed to take on the job of lawman. Ostensibly he is there to keep order and collect back taxes from deadbeats but in reality, he is on a mission of revenge. Some years before, Ben's son had been gunned down by a criminal named Boone (John Anderson) and Kane has learned that Boone is a presence in the new town and that he is being protected by a local corrupt businessman, John Behan (Jack Kelly). Ben makes his presence known immediately by enforcing the law in a strict manner. He's confronted by Behan, who tries to intimidate him. This results in Behan being slapped around by Kane. Behan also grows to resent the new lawman because he is flirting with his mistress, saloon entertainer Lily Beloit (Angie Dickinson). When Behan abuses her as punishment, he gets another beating from Kane. Meanwhile, Billy runs into Jesse and accuses him of having deserted him in Mexico. The two men fight it out and Jesse is later involved with the accidental shooting of the town's beloved doctor while in the employ of Behan. Kane learns that Jesse is Boone's son and holds him in jail as bait for Boone to come out of hiding. The plan works all too well. Boone turns up with a small army and lays siege to the jailhouse where Kane and Billy are holed up.

"Young Billy Young" was compared to a TV show by New York Times critic Howard Thompson on the basis that it contains so many standard elements of westerns from this time period. There is the bad girl with the heart of gold, the evil business tycoon, the brash young gun and his wiser, older mentor, the heroes outnumbered by superior forces and a lovable old coot (played against type by Paul Fix in full Walter Brennan/Gabby Hayes mode.) Yet somehow it all works very well, thanks mostly to Robert Mitchum's stalwart presence. With his trademark ramrod stiff walk and cool persona, Mitchum tosses off bon mots like a frontier version of 007. Even the Times acknowledged that "Mitchum can do laconic wonders with a good wise-crack". He has considerable chemistry with Dickinson, though the action between the sheets is more implied than shown. Robert Walker Jr. acquits himself well in the title role and David Carradine makes an impression even with limited screen time. The film was directed by Burt Kennedy, an old hand at directing fine westerns in reliable, if not remarkable, style and it all culminates in a rip-snorting shoot-out that is genuinely exciting. The fine supporting cast includes Willis Bouchey, Parley Baer and Deanna Martin (Dino's daughter) in her acting debut.  One oddball element to the film: Mitchum croons the title song over the opening credits. If this sounds strange, keep in mind that Mitchum improbably once had a hit album of calypso music. 

The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Warner Archive has released a Blu-ray edition of the 1966 thriller Eye of the Devil. The MGM movie, directed by J. Lee Thompson, is one of the last major B&W studio releases. The film had a troubled production history. The female lead had been Kim Novak, but when she was injured during filming, Deborah Kerr took over and had to reshoot all of her scenes - a costly and troublesome process. However, this meant that Kerr was reunited with her Separate Tables co-star David Niven (the pair would be seen on screen again the following year in Casino Royale). Eye of the Devil is an atmospheric thriller with supernatural overtones. Niven plays the heir to a massive French vineyard, though he keeps his distance from the massive rural chateau, preferring to be with wife Kerr and their two young children in an urban setting. An emissary from the vineyard summons him back to the chateau, presumably because the harvest is failing, but Niven's emotional turmoil indicates that there are other factors dictating why he is reluctant to return. When Kerr and the children show up, things deteriorate quickly. Kerr finds the locals to be frightened and unfriendly. Inside the chateau, the staff and Niven appear to be collaborating on hiding information from her. Additionally, a strange brother and sister team (Sharon Tate in her first major role and David Hemmings) are an omnipresent and threatening presence. Kerr ultimate suspects that the presence of a local priest (Donald Pleasence) is inciting people to dabble in witchcraft and the black mass. All of this leads to the prequisite sequences in which a helpless woman is tempted to poke about dark castle corridors and crypts to find the facts.

The film is disturbing from minute one, largely because it is devoid of any humor whatsoever. Every minute exudes a sense of menace. The cinematography adds greatly to the tension and the cast is highly watchable, even if no one attempts to hide their full-throated British accents while playing French characters. (The exteriors were shot in France, the interiors were filmed at MGM's Borehamwood Studios). The movie is consistently engrossing, even if it never reaches the level one might expect, given the sterling cast. Tate makes a significant visual impression, but it should be noted that her immaculate British accent was dubbed.  The new region-free Blu-ray release does justice to the crisp B&W photography with a fine transfer. One quibble: Turner Classic Movies often shows an original production featurette from the film. One wishes it was included with this release, which features only the trailer as a supplement. However, spending any time with Niven and Kerr is time well-spent.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Few actors had the screen and stage presence of Yul Brynner. There never was an actor quite like him and there hasn't been since. Like most thespians, Brynner had his share of good movies as well as those that fell considerably short of their potential. Nevertheless, the man never gave a false performance. He came across as supremely self-confidant even when he must have suspected the material he was given proved to be far below his considerable talents. Much of his self-confidence seemed to stem from an inflated ego. Robert Vaughn once told me that when Brynner arrived on the set of "The Magnificent Seven" in Mexico, he was still firmly in the King of Siam mode that had seen him win an Oscar. Vaughn said he carried himself as though he were real life royalty at all times. You didn't chat with him casually. Rather, he would grant you an audience. As Brynner's stature as a top boxoffice attraction began to wane, he returned over and over again to his signature role in stage productions of "The King and I" and found his mojo and star power were still very much intact when it came to touring in front of live audiences. His exotic look and manner of speaking were invariably intoxicating. Given Brynner's enduring legacy as a Hollywood icon it's rather surprising to remember that he had very few major hits. "The King and I" in 1956 was his star-making vehicle and his role in "The Ten Commandments", released the same year,  helped build on his success. However, with the exception of the surprise success of "The Magnificent Seven" in 1960, Brynner proved to be more of a reliable on screen attraction than a powerhouse draw in the way that John Wayne, Cary Grant and Burt Lancaster were regarded. For most of Brynner's screen career, he top-lined in major studio releases that were relatively modest in terms of production budgets. Since this was during an era in which a decent profit for a film made it a success, Brynner remained popular for many years. By the 1970s, however, his clout had diminished considerably. He would have only one memorable big screen success during the decade- his brilliant appearance as the murderous robot in "Westworld" (1974). He would concentrate primarily on stage work until his death in 1985.

"Invitation to a Gunfighter" is the kind of mid-range vehicle that defined most of Brynner's career in Hollywood. Released in 1964 by Stanley Kramer's production company, the film is a perfect showcase for Brynner in that it lacked any rival star power and afforded him a smorgasbord of scene-stealing opportunities.  The story opens in the wake of the Confederate surrender that marked the end of the Civil War. Matt Weaver (George Segal), a veteran of the Confederate army, is making an arduous journey home to his Texas ranch on foot through the desert. When the exhausted man finally reaches the small town he calls home, he gets a rude welcome. His ranch is now occupied by another man who claims he bought the deed from the township. Matt soon learns that he is despised by the locals because he is the only man to have served in the Southern army. He is notified by the town's political kingpin, Sam Brewster (Pat Hingle), that a technicality has been used to seize ownership of his ranch. He also advises him to move on out of town because he is no longer welcome there. Matt, however, is not about to be cheated. He confronts the new owner of his house and is forced to shoot him dead in self-defense. Brewster manipulates the facts and accuses Matt of being a murderer. Matt takes possession of his ranch and uses firepower to hold off the townspeople. He is surreptitiously visited by his former lover Ruth (Janice Rule), who admits that she could no longer bear waiting for him to return from the war. She reluctantly married Crane Adams (Clifford David), a local Union war veteran who lost an arm in the conflict. Since then, Crane has become an alcoholic with a violent temper and his relationship to Ruth has devolved into a loveless marriage of convenience.

Unable to lure Matt from his besieged homestead, Brewster takes the step of announcing to the town council that he will hire a gunslinger to kill him. Coincidentally, a man with the exotic name of Jules Gaspard d'Estaing overhears the offer. He is just passing through on a stagecoach ride but is immediately intrigued. d'Estaing convinces Brewster that he is a master gunfighter and demonstrates his prowess with a pistol. Brewster hires him on the spot but d'Estaing is in no hurry to carry out the mission. Instead, he sees the townspeople for what they are: cowardly hypocrites and delights in humiliating Brewster in front of them.  d'Estaing is an intimidating presence to the townspeople. They can't pinpoint his ethnicity and know nothing of his background. He dresses immaculately, speaks fluent French, plays the harpsichord  and chain smokes Churchill cigars (though I wonder what they called them in this era before Churchill was born.) Ever provocative to his hosts, he stirs the pot even further by moving into the house of Crane and Ruth Adams. Predictably, it isn't long before Ruth is entranced by this larger-than-life man of mystery who dresses like a dandy and is highly cultured- the very opposite of her own husband and Matt. Tensions rise as Crane correctly suspects a romance may be brewing. d'Estaing insists he intends to carry out his mission to kill Matt, despite Ruth's protests, but he later makes it clear to her that he intends to manipulate the situation so that Matt is spared and Brewster is dragged down in disgrace.

The film, directed with admirable if unremarkable competence by Richard Wilson, is a slow-moving, talky affair that leads to some intelligent discussions about race relations and the horrors of bigotry. (This was, after all, a production financed by Stanley Kramer, who never heeded the old adage, "Leave the messages to Western Union!"). What saves the movie from devolving into a completely pedantic affair is the charisma of Yul Brynner. It also helps that he is playing an interesting character with a mysterious background and the revelations he makes to Ruth about his life only make him even more intriguing. This is a "thinking man's" western that touches on social issues as well as the desperate plight of women in the old West, when their survival often saw them entering dreadful marriages simply for financial security and protection. Brynner gets fine support from Janice Rule and rising star George Segal and Pat Hingle plays the town's pompous boss with appropriate, sneering superficial charm.

"Invitation to a Gunfighter" is by no means a classic but it does afford viewers to spend some time with Yul Brynner and that is always time well-spent.

The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Russian Roulette (originally titled Kill Kosygin!) starts out promisingly enough but ultimately ends up being unsatisfying and misguided. Produced by Elliott Kastner, who was an old hand at making good, populist entertainment, the production was shot entirely in Vancouver. George Segal plays a renegade cop (were there any other kind in the 1970s?) who has been suspended from the local police force for various infractions. Suddenly, he is recruited by Canadian secret intelligence to help thwart a reputed plot to assassinate Soviet Premier Kosygin, who is due to arrive in a matter of days for a high profile conference. Segal learns that he is being set up in an elaborate and confusing plot that involves traitorous KGB agents who want to kill their own premier in order to prevent him from initiating an era of detente with the West. Their plan involves kidnapping a local dissident (Val Avery), drugging him and using him as a human bomb who will be dropped on Kosygin's limousine from a helicopter! (I'm not making this up.) Along the way, Segal finds he's being set up as a dupe and is framed for murder. The entire tired affair ends in a race against time with Segal going mano-a-mano with a KGB killer on the roof of a landmark hotel  that Kosygin is en route to (the only sequence that affords the slightest hint of suspense). Absurdly, Kosygin's motorcade is permitted to continue racing to the hotel despite the fact that hundreds of people are watching a running gun battle taking place on the roof.

The film was directed by Lou  Lombardo, who made a name for himself as an editor of great talent after supervising the cutting of The Wild Bunch. As director, he keeps the action flowing but the plot absurdities soon distract from some otherwise interesting angles and performances. The fine supporting cast includes Gordon Jackson, Denholm Elliott, Nigel Stock and Louise Fletcher, but their characters are rather boring. The film also throws in Christina Raines for sex appeal but she comes across as the dullest leading lady in memory, barely registering much emotion even when finding a dead body in her bathroom. (Although most of us would find such a development a bit disturbing, Lombardo cuts to a scene of Segal and Raines enjoying a spot of breakfast tea- while the man's body remains on the bathroom floor.) Segal is always enjoyable to watch and his wiseguy persona is in full bloom here, but the production is amateurish on all levels considering the talent involved. Maybe everyone involved just wanted a paid getaway and had a desire to visit Vancouver. (It should be mentioned that director Lombardo was said to be battling drinking problems during production and that the finale of the film - the only truly effective scene- was directed by Anthony Squire, who did not receive screen credit.)

The film is currently streaming on Shout! Factory TV. The app and subscription for this service are also available through Amazon Prime video.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Kino Lorber continues its alliance with niche market video label Scorpion Releasing with a Blu-ray edition of the largely forgotten 1969 action/adventure flick "The Devil's 8". The film typifies the kind of movie that simply doesn't exist any more: a low-budget production designed for fast playoff and modest profits. Back in the day, studios depended on movies such as these to be important to their bottom line. It's in stark contrast to today's film industry where seemingly every release is intended to be a blockbuster with production costs so high that some flicks have to gross close to a billion dollars to be considered financially successful. "The Devil's 8" is pretty much what you might expect simply by examining the sleeve. Typical of these types of movies, it presents a cast of reputable character actors who get meatier roles than they usually did in more prestigious productions. The script is yet another in a seemingly endless number of action films that was shamelessly inspired by the success of "The Dirty Dozen". Christopher George is Faulkner, who we are introduced to as a criminal in a work group of convicts doing time in a prison in the deep South. Along with his fellow prisoners, he's performing backbreaking work under the guard of cruel, armed overseers. Faulkner initiates a riot and he and seven other convicts manage to escape. They are soon "rescued" by government officials and learn that Faulkner is actually an FBI agent and the entire scenario was pre-planned. Turns out that the men are being recruited to work under Faulkner as part of an elaborate plot to bring down a local crime king named Burl, who is running a major illegal moonshine operation in the area. The FBI knows that he is being protected by high government and police officials who are paid off with a share of the loot. Faulkner offers them a deal: if they agree to undergo extensive training and help him infiltrate Burl's operation, he'll recommend that they be pardoned and freed. Sound familiar? It's but one of the familiar scenarios blatantly copied from "The Dirty Dozen". The convicts all agree and end up being trained to drive specially-equipped cars that have been reinforced to withstand all sorts of calamities. They must also become proficient in the use of machine guns and demolition work. As you might imagine in a film with a 98-minute running time, this is accomplished fairly quickly. Adding to the "Dirty Dozen" similarities, the men initially fight among each other until Faulkner employs a successful strategy whereby they bond together in their common hatred of him.

The group then pretends to be rival moonshiners who move in on Burl's territory, knowing he'll try to take them out.When their resiliency wins out over Burl's men, Faulkner convinces Burl to allow them to become partners in his operation in the hope of being shown where his illegal stills are located. Burl agrees, but no one is naive to believe the alliance will last. Faulkner and his men know that ultimately, Burl will have them killed. As played by Ralph Meeker, Burl is a stereotypical, cigar-chomping Southern good ol' boy with plenty of charisma to cover up the fact that he routinely uses murder to protect his operation. By the time the double-crosses kick in, Faulkner and his gang are ready to engage Burl and his private army in an all-out battle to the death. Faulkner's group is the usual blend of eccentrics we see in prison films. Each has his own distinct personality from the lone Black convict (Robert DoQui in the Jim Brown "Dirty Dozen" role) to Joe Turkel (reunited with Meeker after having both appeared in Stanley Kubrick's classic "Paths of Glory") as an impulsive team member whose actions threaten to undo the mission (think John Cassavetes in "The Dirty Dozen"). Other members of the group are played by a familiar assortment of character actors including one-time teen idol Fabian, Tom Nardini of "Cat Ballou" and Larry Bishop, who specialized in portraying hippies. Christopher George dominates the film as the tough-as-nails Faulkner. It is puzzling why he never became a bigger star, given his rugged good looks and strong on-screen personality.  Despite starring in the modestly successful WWII TV series "The Rat Patrol", he rarely had a lead role in feature films. His biggest impressions were as the quirky villains in two John Wayne film, ""El Dorado" (1967) and "Chisum" (1970). Sadly, he passed away in 1983 at only 52 years-old. The rest of the cast performs well and each member provides some amusing moments. Leslie Parrish is inserted in the movie to provide some sex appeal as Burl's reluctant mistress. 

"The Devil's 8" was directed and produced by "B" movie king Burt Topper. Much of the action is rather clunky in its staging and the limited budget results in some of the worst and most laughable rear screen projection effects in the history of the medium. But Topper was unpretentious in his goals and execution of his films. He just wanted to make fun movies for undemanding audiences.  The score by Michael Lloyd and Jerry Styner, proteges of the wiz kid Mike Curb, provide a bouncy country score that is appropriate for the story but which rapidly grows weary due to its sheer monotony- and wait until you hear wacky theme song and lyrics by the Sidewalk Sounds that play over the end credits. "The Devil's 8" seems like one of those films that was specifically created to fill the bottom of a double-feature bill, but in fact, it was the main feature in most of its bookings, although in the UK, it was the second feature to "3 in the Attic". Interestingly, the movie proved to be a fertile training ground for screenwriters Willard Huyck and John Milius, who co-authored the script with James Gordon White. Within a few years, Huyck would pen the screenplay for George Lucas's masterwork "American Graffiti", while Milius would go on to write the screenplays for "Dirty Harry" and "Apocalypse Now" and find considerable success as a director. Thus, before we turn our noses up at lowbrow movies such as this, we should pause to remember how many considerable talents emerged from such productions.

The Blu-ray presents the film in the best state possible, given that there probably isn't an abundance of adequate master prints available. Although it's been produced from a new 2K master, the color is sometimes wishy-washy, but that just adds to the "B" movie appeal. Bonus features include a good recent interview with Larry Bishop, who discusses his friendship with Burt Topper and expresses respect for his talents. An original trailer and gallery of other Kino/Scorpion releases is also included. Kino and Scorpion have wisely retained the film's original poster artwork for the sleeve. It's a perfect example of how, in the Golden Age of movie marketing, the status of "B" movies could be considerably improved by employing dynamic graphics. Ironically, in today's industry, movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars are promoted with poster artwork that is bland, boring and unmemorable. Just another reason to miss those bygone days of low-budget crowd-pleasers. 

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BY FRED BLOSSER

“Binge-watching” is a relatively recent addition to our vocabulary, thanks to 24/7 streaming TV channels, but the concept itself isn’t new. On summer weekends in the 1970s, drive-in theatres offered the same opportunity for immersing yourself in cheap, all-night entertainment. There, you’d binge not on multiple episodes of “Peacemaker” or “Walking Dead” but instead on their Disco-era equivalent: triple or quadruple features of B-Westerns, soft-core sex comedies starring ex-Playboy Centerfolds, Kung-fu imports, and populist vigilante dramas.

Back then, one film on the bill in scratchy, tinny celluloid might have been “God’s Gun,” starring Lee Van Cleef. In the 1976 Western, now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, an outlaw gang led by Sam Clayton (Jack Palance) sweeps into town, demolishes the saloon owned by pretty Jenny (Sybil Danning), and kills a man at the poker table. Jenny is furious when the cowardly sheriff (Richard Boone) refuses to go after the outlaws as they ride out. The local Catholic priest, Father John (Van Cleef), follows instead, and brings back the murderer, Clayton’s nephew Jess, on his own. This provokes more mayhem as the outlaws return, break Jess out of jail, gun down Father John, and go on a further rampage of rape and murder. The sheriff still prefers to keep a low profile, so Jenny’s son Johnny (Leif Garrett) sets off for Mexico. There the boy intends to find Father John’s twin brother Lewis, a retired gunfighter, and bring him back to restore peace in Juno City. Those scenes give Leif Garrett nearly as much screen time as Lee Van Cleef. This was probably welcomed by the young actor’s rising fan base of thirteen-year-old girls in 1976. By Van Cleef’s leathery old fans, not so much.

“God’s Gun” was designed to look like a Spaghetti Western, still a viable if fading genre in the mid-'70s, even to the extent of reuniting Lee Van Cleef with director Gianfranco Parolini (alias “Frank Kramer”) from “Sabata” and “Return of Sabata.” Parolini employs many of the stock techniques from his earlier Westerns, including sudden close-ups when characters are shot, skewed camera angles from the victims’ perspective as they fall dead, and noisy saloon brawls. In reality, the movie was produced in Israel by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who would later head the Cannon Group in the 1980s. Golan and Globus followed a simple, commercially successful formula — take a popular genre, commission a marginally functional script with plenty of action, headline two or three well-known actors, hire an experienced B-list director, and keep the remaining overhead as low as possible. Many B-movies try to finesse their cheap budgets, but “God’s Gun” doesn’t bother. The Western costumes look like remainders from the Party Store, Van Cleef is burdened with a bad toupee and goatee, one exterior set doubles as two towns, and it’s painfully obvious that neither Van Cleef nor Boone dubbed themselves in post-production. The secondary casting is comparably haphazard. As Alex Cox notes in his audio commentary for the Blu-ray, Palance’s skinny, curly-haired bad guys look more like “a bunch of hippies” than bloodthirsty frontier desperadoes. Not that any of this would have mattered in your 2 o’clock stupor as you watched “God’s Gun” at the bottom of a drive-in triple-feature in 1976.

Kino Lorber presents “God’s Gun” in a remastered 2K edition at a 1.85:1 aspect. The picture looks a little soft, but it’s probably the best the studio could do with the materials at hand. Besides Alex Cox’s droll, savvy commentary, the Blu-ray includes reversible cover art from the original movie posters, as well as the vintage theatrical trailers for “God’s Gun” and other Lee Van Cleef Westerns on Kino Lorber’s backlist. If you’re in a nostalgic mood for a 1970s drive-in experience, you could do worse than select “God’s Gun” and two or three others from the KL catalog.  Augment with a couple of stale hot dogs and watery Cokes, fill your TV room with the heady scent of week-old popcorn, and then sit back and enjoy.

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Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)

BY LEE PFEIFFER

The 1970s was the Golden Age of American TV movies and mini-series. Fortunately, many of these long unseen titles have been surfacing again on home video and streaming services. I'll admit that memories of the very good ones had somewhat romanticized my recollection of the TV movie genre in general. Upon viewing some of the titles today, they don't hold up as well as I had hoped, but even the weakest remain quite entertaining. "One of My Wives is Missing" is definitely a lesser entry in the TV movie cycle. In fact, I had never heard of it until I came across the title on Amazon Prime and decided to give it a go. The film was telecast in 1976 and has a good deal of talent associated with the production. The show was produced by the powerhouse team of Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg. The screenplay was by Peter Stone, who used the nom-de-plume Pierre Marton, and the director was Glenn Jordan, an established TV veteran with a long line of credentials. The cast was also impressive: James Franciscus, Jack Klugman and Elizabeth Ashley. 

The film starts out with Franciscus as Daniel Corban, a rich New York City executive frantically calling police numerous times to find out about any progress made relating to his previous report of his new wife as a missing person. Corban and she were enjoying their honeymoon at a lake resort in upstate New York when he claims she went out in her car and never returned. Corban is increasingly frantic to find out where she is. Finally, the local police chief, Murray Levine (Jack Klugman) meets with him to get more facts. Corban is frustrated by Levine's unorthodox police methods and feels that the small department he oversees is not up to solving the mystery. Corban tells Levine that his wife is even wealthier than he is and that they are a devoted couple. When Levine leaves, things start to get weird. An attractive young woman arrives at the house and makes herself at home, claiming she is Corban's wife Elizabeth. As played by Elizabeth Ashley, she's attractive, intelligent and has a habit of sauntering around the rented house in an array of provocative outfits that are cut down-to-there. Corban is stunned and claims he has no idea who she is and why she is posing as his wife. Still, she goes about her business, saying that he must be delusional due to stress. Things get even weirder with the arrival of a local priest, Father Kelleher (Joel Fabiani), who backs up Elizabeth's story and verifies that Elizabeth is indeed the real Mrs. Corban.

The central premise of the plot is the movie's weakest point. It's patently absurd because anyone could have easily be able to prove or disprove the real identity of a spouse even back in 1976 in the pre-internet era. The fact that Chief Levine can't achieve this simple task is explained away by the fact that it's the Labor Day weekend holiday and everything is closed, as though New York City police resources would simply shut down as though they were a local coffee shop. As screenwriter, adapting the Robert Thomas stage play "Trap for a Single Man", Peter Stone allows most of the action to take place in a living room before opening things up a bit in the climax. As with all whodunnits of this type, the less plot revelations, the better. Suffice it to say that the script veers increasingly into the realm of the unbelievable before Stone redeems himself by providing some cracking good plot surprises in the last fifteen minutes. Stone's presence on the low-brow TV movie is a bit of surprise, given that he had written such esteemed feature films as "Charade", "Father Goose" and "The Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three". Perhaps that's why he used an assumed name. A near fatal error is director Jordan's handling of the pivotal role of the priest.  Joel Fabiani is miscast in the part and Jordan has him using a cliched Irish accent that makes him sound as though he's channeling the ghost of Barry Fitzgerald. Franciscus is good, if a bit hammy at times, as the bewildered and exasperated husband. Klugman, always a pleasure to watch, is in full Columbo mode, exhibiting plenty of disarming tactics to mask the fact he is more competent than he seems. Ashley oozes sensuality and is quite effective as the woman who holds the key to the mystery. In all, it adds up as satisfactory, if unexceptional, trip back in time to the era of the "ABC Movie of the Week" series. 

The Amazon Prime streamer is presented "as is" with from a source that has not been enhanced in any manner. The film had been released on VHS and as a low-rent public domain DVD. The latter probably served as the source for the streaming presentation.

Deadline reports that MGM and Eon Productions will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise with special IMAX screenings at theaters in the USA this Friday, January 21. Select theaters will also present a filmed Q&A session with Daniel Craig, producers Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson and director Cary Joji Fukanaga. The screening will also debut the new Bond 60th anniversary logo. Check your local IMAX theater listings to see if they will be showing the film. At this time, no information was given regarding how theaters showing the Q&A session can be identified.   Click here for more details.

THE WHISTLE AT EATON FALLS
 Flicker Fusion Blu-ray Disc Edition
SPECIAL PRE-ORDER SALE PRICE: $19.95 (M.S.R.P. $24.95)

The Whistle at Eaton Falls / 1951 / Directed by Robert Siodmak / 96 minutes
USA / UPC: 6-17311-60629-8

(Los Angeles, CA–January 14, 2022) -- Flicker Alley and LdR Films, in association with the Library of Congress, proudly present a new restoration of Robert Siodmak’s labor drama, The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951), in a replicated media publication as part of Flicker Alley’s new “Flicker Fusion” Blu-ray disc series.

Flicker Alley invites you to discover The Whistle at Eaton Falls, a rarely seen 1951 film by renowned filmmakers Robert Siodmak and Louis de Rochemont, featuring Lloyd Bridges, Ernest Borgnine, Murray Hamilton, and Dorothy Gish (in one of her rare later screen appearances). Making its home video debut, this superb quasi-documentary labor drama has been brilliantly restored, utilizing 2K scanned materials from the Library of Congress. Shot on location in New Hampshire and set during a post war economic crisis, The Whistle at Eaton Falls follows the newly appointed manager of Doubleday Plastics, Brad Adams (Lloyd Bridges), and the labor union that represents their factory workers. Brad, a former factory worker and union president, is tasked with the unfortunate responsibility of laying off employees and friends to ease the company’s financial struggles. Despite his relentless commitment to protect the workers, Brad must find a way to keep the company on its feet and thereby ensure the stability of the local economy. This brand new 2K restoration was undertaken by the Louis de Rochemont estate and spearheaded by Tom H. March and David Strohmaier, the same team behind the stunning Cinerama and Cinemiracle films also published by Flicker Alley. With negative scanning by FotoKem Industries through the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division facility in Culpeper, Virginia. Bonus Materials Include: Audio Commentary Track – by author and film historian Alan K. Rode “Louis de Rochemont Remembered” – a personal reminiscence from grandson Pierre de Rochemont Insights into the Restoration – a demonstration of the digital restoration and reconstruction process Isolated Soundtrack – the original 1951 orchestral score used for the film, sourced from rare archival recordings Carleton Carpenter Sings – archival audio recordings of "Ev'ry Other Day" and “It’s a Million to One You’re in Love” Image Gallery – slideshow presentation featuring the original script, budget details, and promotional materials from the Louis de Rochemont Special Collections at Keene State College Original Theatrical Trailer Booklet Essay – an excerpt from Richard Koszarski’s "Keep 'em in the East"  Kazan, Kubrick and the Post-War New York Film Renaissance, that covers Louis de Rochemont’s career during the time The Whistle At Eaton Falls was produced (Columbia University Press).

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About Flicker Fusion

This is the second title in Flicker Alley’s “Flicker Fusion” series, a publication line that brings new projects, lesser known rarities, and archival restorations to light. With a nod to the steady stream of images that motion pictures utilize in creating the magic of moving images, our “Flicker Fusion” series will be an ongoing way to offer high quality, pressed Blu-ray Disc publications at an affordable price. Look for more titles to be announced soon.

About Flicker Alley, LLC

Flicker Alley, LLC was founded in 2002 by Jeff Masino. Each Flicker Alley publication is the culmination of hundreds of hours of research, digital restoration, graphic design, music composition and scoring. Collectively, they reflect the creativity, expertise, and shared passion of many talented collaborators. The Flicker Alley brand has grown to enjoy national and international critical acclaim. The company is a four-time recipient of the National Society of Film Critics Film Heritage Award for publishing "rare early U.S. and foreign silent film."

BY DOUG OSWALD 

A concentration camp survivor returns home after the war only to find betrayal and deceit in “Phoenix,” a Blu-ray release from Criterion. Nina Hoss is Nelly Lenz, a German Jew returning to Berlin in 1945 both physically and psychologically damaged after years in concentration camps including the notorious Auschwitz death camp. A successful nightclub singer prior to the horrors of Nazi Germany, she returns home with a disfigured face hidden under bandages when we first meet her on screen. Nelly is aided by her friend Lene Winter (Nina Kunzendorf), a fellow German Jew who fled to England before the war. Nelly receives reconstructive surgery on her face which alters her looks, although we never see what she looked liked prior to her facial disfigurement. We first see her after the bandages are removed post surgery.

Nelly wants to be reunited with her husband, she married shortly before being taken by the authorities to a Jewish detention camp. She finds her husband, Johnny Lenz (Ronald Zehrfeld), who had not been arrested because he is not Jewish, working at a local restaurant. He doesn’t recognize her when they talk and it appears he is oblivious to who she is. Johnny returns to her the next day with a request. He asks if she will pretend to be his (presumably) dead wife so he can make a claim for her estate and then he’ll share some of the money with her. Nelly agrees to the ruse if only to be with her husband even though it is play acting on his part.

The psychological scars are deep for both Nelly and Lene, who has survivor’s guilt from avoiding internment. Those scars are deeper than the physical scars for Nelly which prevents her from revealing her true identity to her husband as she learns more about him. Nelly hopes her husband will somehow come to recognize her as the real Nelly, but plays things out maintaining the ruse in an attempt to learn how he survived throughout the war. The climax is chilling, as it is revealed how Nina was betrayed and by whom. These developments are played out in flashback.

Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld are excellent as Nelly and Johnny. as is Nina Kunzendorf as Lene. Directed by Christian Petzold with a screenplay co-written by Petzold and Harn Farocki,, the story is based on “motifs” from the novel “Le retour des cendres” by Hubert Monteilhet. I found it fascinating to watch as Johnny teaches Nelly how to act like Nelly, dress like Nelly and sign her name like Nelly in order to “fool” her own family and friends who survived the war. The movie has a definite “Vertigo” vibe going for it, almost as though we are experiencing a lucid daydream.

Nina Hoss may be familiar to fans of the television series “Homeland”, wherein she played Astrid in 13 episodes of the Showtime series from 2014 to 2017. She was also in the Showtime 2020 series “The Defeated.” Her co-star, Ronald Zehrfeld, is also terrific and convincing as the “widowed” husband who does not recognize his own wife, but knows this “other” woman looks close enough to hopefully fool everyone and claim Nelly’s estate. Zehfred appears in mostly German productions, but does appear in the 2020 Netflix series “Barbarans” as Berulf.

If the basic plot of “Phoenix” sounds familiar, as it did to me while I first viewed the Blu-ray, it’s because the same novel was adapted for the 1965 thriller, “Return from the Ashes,” which is also the English translation of the novel. That movie, directed by J. Lee Thompson and adapted by Julius Epstein, features Maximilian Schell, Samantha Eggar and Ingrid Thulin. I’ve never read the original novel, but a quick check on the web revealed “Return from the Ashes” is the more faithful while “Phoenix” focuses on “motifs” lifting the basic plot of the inheritance claim and changes the location from post- World War II France to Germany and adds the plastic surgery subplot.

“Phoenix” was released in September 2014 in Germany and found an audience as an American film festival and art house release throughout 2015. While not a blockbuster, the film did brisk business and deserves a fresh viewing. The movie is 98 minutes and filmed in German language. The Criterion Collection Blu-ray of “Phoenix” looks and sounds terrific in the original German with English subtitles. The disc also includes a making of documentary, interviews with the director, cinematographer, cast and also the trailer. There’s also an informative booklet with an essay about the film by Michael Koresky included with the disc packaging. The movie is highly recommended and makes a great double feature with “Return From the Ashes.”

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Charlton Heston fans will appreciate the fact that one of his most underrated films has finally made it to Blu-ray through a joint release by Kino Lorber and Scorpion Releasing. "Number One" (released in certain countries under the title "Pro") is an off-beat vehicle for the superstar, who was then at his peak of popularity. The fact that the movie under-performed at  the box-office and failed to score with critics didn't diminish Heston's status as a leading man. He would go on to star in such hits as "The Omega Man", "Skyjacked", "Soylent Green" "Earthquake", "Midway"and "Airport '75"- with cameos in the popular "The Three Musketeers" and "The Four Musketeers". The poor response to "Number One" doesn't diminish its many merits - and the fact that Heston was willing to play against type in a largely unsympathetic role. For the film, he reunited with director Tom Gries, with whom he made the acclaimed 1968 Western "Will Penny".  Curiously, both movies center on the same theme: a macho man who can't come to grips with the fact that he is aging and, therefore, his chosen way of life is threatened. In "Will Penny", Heston played the title character: a middle-aged cowboy who feels the inevitable aches and pains of trying to maintain a career that is clearly suited for younger men. Similarly, in "Number One" he plays "Cat" Catlan, a star quarterback for the New Orleans Saints football team. Catlan has seen plenty of fame and glory as the team's Golden Boy and the idol of the crowds. But now he is 40 years old and, although still in Herculean physical condition compared to most men his age, he's fallen victim to the constant brutalities he suffers on the field.

The film opens on a particularly disastrous game in which Catlan makes some serious misjudgments about plays and bungles some key passes. The result is an embarrassing loss for the team. The Saints' gruff coach Southerd (John Randolph) isn't ready to give up on Catlin but seemingly every other team member is. Catlan is subjected to some cruel jokes and he has to contend with the fact that a much younger player (Richard Elkins) is breathing down his neck, hoping to replace him as quarterback. Things aren't much better at home for Catlan. His long-suffering wife Julie (Jessica Walter) patiently endures his mysterious absences, unpredictable mood swings and volatile temper. She is a very successful fashion designer but Catlan is "old school" when it comes to the role of wives. He wants Julie to stay home and cater to his needs. In the midst of one of their frequent fights, he even stoops so low as to cruelly tease her about her inability to conceive a baby. Still, she sticks with him even when he confesses to having an affair with an attractive, self-made woman, Ann (Diana Muldaur). Faced with the fact that his career is winding down, Catlan reluctantly explores his options for his post-NFL life. They aren't very enticing. His best friend Richie (Bruce Dern), is an obnoxious former Saints player who brags about having gotten out of the game at age 34. He now runs a very successful car leasing business and lives a playboy lifestyle. He wants Catlan to work for him, a prospect that doesn't sit well with the aging quarterback. He also gets an offer from a computer company to work for them but the idea of dealing of being surrounded by machines in the confines of an office is repugnant to him. Ultimately, Catlan is inspired by his wife to go out on a high note. During one of their rare moments of domestic detente, she convinces him that he still has some good games in his future if he can shake off the funk and get his confidence back. The film's climactic game is the very definition of mixed emotions. Catlan performs well and has his mojo back but the movie's ambiguous final shot is anything but uplifting.

Tom Gries was a good director for Heston. He somehow managed to tamp down Heston's larger-than-life personality and afford him the opportunity to play everyday men. In "Number One", Heston is subject to the sorts of problems that plague most middle-aged men. He's nervous about his future. He often takes his frustrations out on the people closest to him. He tries to reassert his youth by exerting his sexual prowess through having an affair. Throughout it all, Heston admirably does not try to make Catlan into a hero. There is a level of sympathy accorded to him because of the emotional and physical stress he is under but his sheer disregard for others makes him more a villain than a hero. (He even refuses to give fans his autograph). Even worse is his sheer selfishness in how he deals with his wife's needs. He feels threatened by the success she is enjoying in her own career and therefore diminishes her achievements. Heston gives one of his finest performances, ironically, in what was one of his least-seen films.He gets able support from the woefully-underrated Jessica Walter, whose performance a couple of years later in "Play Misty For Me" should have assured her of major stardom (and an Oscar nomination). Director Gries also utilizes the talents of real-life football players, some of whom exhibit impressive acting skills. Diana Muldaur also excels as the siren who lures Catlan into her bed. There is an air of authenticity to the film, primarily because Gries shot much of it in front of packed stadiums. (Cinematographer Michael Hugo's work is especially impressive). Gries also captures the feel of New Orleans back in the day, capitalizing on the local scenery, jazz clubs and even getting the great Al Hirt to perform a number and do a bit of acting. About the only dated aspects of the film concern the off-the-field activities of the NFL players. Catlan complains that they are paid like peasants, which was probably true in 1969, but is a rather laughable notion today. Also, the NFL team is required to wear jackets and ties when traveling to or leaving the stadium, another rule that would be virtually unenforceable by contemporary standards. 

"Number One" never found its audience in 1969 but hopefully the impressive Blu-ray transfer will help retro movie lovers appreciate its merits, even if it lacks bonus extras except for a single trailer. The film did have at least one critic who appreciated the movie and Heston's performance. Writing in the New York Times, critic Howard Thompson wrote: "Charlton Heston, minus a beard, a loincloth, a toga or the Red Sea, tackles a starkly unadorned role in one of the most interesting and admirable performances of his career…If Heston could have been better, we don’t know how." Our sentiments exactly. 

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BY TODD GARBARINI

The inmates are running the asylum in Jack Sholder’s directorial debut Alone in the Dark (1982) which opened in New York on Friday, November 19, 1982 among a smorgasbord of horror outings that included midnight showings of George A. Romero’s then-notorious Dawn of the Dead, Trick or Treats (which, contrary to my original recollection, did play in my area, a fact that could have been easily confirmed with a quick consultation of an archival copy of my local newspaper – my bad!), the Canadian horror outing Funeral Home, the comic book pairing of George A. Romero and Stephen King in the fun-thrilled Creepshow, the mis-marketed Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and John Carpenter’s then-maligned but now rightly revered The Thing. While the marketing for Alone may hint at buckets of gore, it’s actually a fairly mild affair by today’s (arguably low) standards. It primarily focuses on the scenario at hand which features a group of then-unknowns pitted against an all-star cast in what can be described as a mixture of social commentary and a send-up of killer-on-the-loose movies. The lead characters play their roles straight despite having to utter some truly silly dialogue worthy of anything penned by Franco Ferrini and Dario Argento.

Dr. Dan Potter (Dwight Schultz) moves his family into a large new house after he goes to work for Dr. Leo Bain (Donald Pleasence) at the Haven Asylum, taking over the position from the previous Dr. Merton. Dr. Bain, whose last name cannot help but draw smirks from those who notice the absence of the letter “r” from his name, could easily be mistaken for one of the patients that Haven houses, as he seems more off-the-wall than they are. He smokes from a marijuana pipe and refers to the inmates as “voyagers”. One of the “voyagers” makes the comical statement that “There are no crazy people, doctor. We’re all just on vacation!” Yikes! It’s tough not to get a kick out of a film that boasts a nightclub scene featuring a band called the Sick F*cks who sing a song that has lyrics consisting solely of “Chop chop, chop up your mother!” recited over and over again. Dr. Potter hilariously remarks over the loud music, “I have enough insanity in my life. I don’t wanna pay for it!”

While a far cry from the “Do not touch the glass, do not approach the glass” severity of Hannibal Lecter, several of the inmates – sorry, voyagers – specifically Hawkes (Jack Palance), Preacher (Martin Landau), and Fatty (the late Erland van Lidth, unrecognizable from The Wanderers (1979) and from 1980’s Stir Crazy as the huge bald inmate), had been close to Dr. Merton and erroneously believe that his absence is a result of having been murdered by Dr. Potter. The poor doctor is now the target of termination by the triumvirate of terrors. They manage to have their day of reckoning when a power outage befalls the hospital and the loss of electricity causes their normally locked cells to now be conveniently opened, thus beginning their reign of terror. Fault tolerance was obviously not part of the institution’s budget. Oops!

Martin Landau is very amusing as Preacher. He looks like Fred Flintstone at the end of the “A Haunted House is Not a Home” 1964 episode when Fred flips his lid and sports a meat cleaver, laughing maniacally and chasing his relatives. I never would have expected Landau to deliver the impressive performance he gave Woody Allen in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) years later. When Potter realizes the reality of the situation, he holes up his family in his house to save their lives, but not before his precocious young daughter’s (Elizabeth Ward) sexy, Playboy-like babysitter Bunky (Carol Levy) is attacked after her boyfriend is killed. The scene of a huge knife menacing her on the bed is creepy and decidedly phallic. They all do their best to outwit the escapees.

The film’s ending is a bit bloody, however there is more to it than meets the eye, which is to say that it’s more than just a slasher film in that it posits questions about “who is crazy?” along the same lines as Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).

Originally released on DVD in 2005, the new Blu-ray from Scream Factory has a beautiful HD transfer and ports over the extras from that release, minus the liner notes by horror film authority Michael Gingold (a shame), while adding new ones. Up first is a feature-length audio commentary with the film’s director who discusses Ronald David Lang, who ran a famous psychiatric hospital and said that crazy people were saner than the “normal” people- they had just adjusted to it. This reminds me of Claire Bloom’s line to Julie Harris in Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963): “You really expect me to believe you’re sane and the rest of the world is mad?” He also talks in-depth about the choices made by some of the actors; the challenges he encountered working with Jack Palance; Lyn Shaye’s cameo at the film’s start; how New Line Cinema was originally a distribution company and moved into the production end of the business, and an interesting tidbit about Matthew Broderick auditioning and the director, who rejected him because he thought he was too good!

Out of the Dark – Interview with Jack Shoulder – A very interesting 40 minutes with the film’s director talking about his humble beginnings and the difficulties he ran into making films in his early days.

Mother Choppers – The Sick F*cks Remember Alone in the Dark – For over nine minutes, Snooky, Tish and Russell discuss their experience working on the film.

Sites in the Dark – The Locations of Alone in the Dark – Alone was filmed in sections of northern New Jersey in November 1981. As you can imagine, much of the locations have changed in 40 years. At just under 12 minutes, this is a brand-new, HD-lensed tour hosted by Michael Gingold, who did a great job with his tours of Alice, Sweet Alice (1977) and The Changeling (1980), to name a few. For the benefit of New Jersey readers, this time he takes us to the Skyland Manor, the Rockland Psychiatric Center, Route 46 and Bergan Turnpike, Hillsdale Plaza, Closter Plaza where the Bleeder wears a hockey mask before Jason Voorhees did in 1983’s Friday the 13^th Part 3 In 3-D, the Englewood Police Department, Oradell, NJ (specifically the intersection of Midland Road and Commander Black Drive where Preacher obtains his mailman’s hat), and the Potter Family house, which is a private residence that forbade them from filming on the property. I always love horror film locations and this is a great piece.

Bunky Lives! – Interview with Carol Levy – Now a successful real estate agent in New York, Carol did a lot of toothpaste commercials in her early career. She also talks about the few other films that she appeared in. I appreciated her taking the time to do this, which is something she clearly didn’t have to considering her current profession. This runs over 16 minutes.

Still F*cking Sick – Catching Up with the Sick F*cks – At 16 minutes, this is a piece that is ported over from that 2005 DVD. Great for fans of this group.

Rounding out the extras are a theatrical trailer, a TV Spot, two creepy radio spots (I miss those!) and an extensive stills gallery.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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BY FRED BLOSSER

In Andrew V. McLaglen’s “One More Train to Rob,” an obscure but modestly entertaining Western from 1971, train robber Harker Fleet (George Peppard) masterminds the armed theft of $40,000 from a Wells Fargo express. Thanks to his careful planning, he and his gang all have airtight alibis when the law comes calling. His partners Tim (John Vernon) and Katy (Diana Muldaur) posed as passengers on the train, and his other henchmen Slim, Red, and Jimmy were presumed asleep in their bunks at a nearby ranch. Checking on Fleet’s whereabouts during the holdup, the sheriff is assured by the town madam Louella that she and Harker were together in her bed all night. Louella is played by Marie Windsor, still plenty hot at fifty-two, if I may be excused a little ageism and sexism. The sheriff is ready to let Fleet off the hook, but the unexpected arrival of the hulking Jones brothers (Merlin Olsen and his real-life brother Eric) throws a wrench into the scheme. The brothers demand that Fleet marry their sister Cora Mae, whom he seduced and abandoned during an earlier layover, so to speak, while he and Tim scoped out the Wells Fargo heist. The prospect of a shotgun wedding doesn’t thrill Harker. “What if I confess to robbing the train and go to jail instead?” he asks the sheriff. No dice. Trying to get away, he slugs a deputy and winds up in prison for assaulting an officer.

Two years later, released early on good behavior, he finds that Tim has married Katy and combined Harker’s share of the loot with his own and Katy’s to start a ranch and a lumber business. Tim and Katy are unsettled by their former partner’s arrival for different reasons, Tim because Harker wants his cut of the money, Katy ostensibly because she enjoys her present lifestyle as a lady of means, but really because she still has a thing for Fleet. Tim’s position is especially shaky. He’s overextended on the ranch, the bank is poised to foreclose, and because of Harker’s accidental intervention, he’s been foiled in an attempt to shore up his credit with gold stolen from a neighboring mine owned by Chinese immigrants. As a hole card, he holds hostage the Chinese elder, Mr. Chang (Richard Loo), and tries to coerce him into turning over the gold. Aware of Tim’s plot, Harker sees a chance to recover his own losses and ruin his former partner in the process.

The tagline for the movie poster — reproduced as the cover art for a new Blu-ray edition of “One More Train to Rob” from Code Red — positions the film as a sweaty, violent story about betrayal and retribution: “He’d been cheated out of his gold . . . and his woman . . . now the only weapon he had left was revenge!” It’s a little misleading. “One More Train to Rob” offers plenty of action to satisfy genre fans, well-staged by McLaglen and stunt coordinator Hal Needham, but it takes a lighter approach to the vengeance theme than the poster implies. Harker’s payback relies more on intimidation and shrewdness than gunplay. The robber enjoys watching Tim and Katy squirm at his reappearance, wearing beat-up clothing and chewing tobacco in their lavish house, while they’re preparing to host a visit by the local minister and his wife — the humor is obvious but still pretty funny. In the meantime, he maneuvers to get on the good side of the Chinese immigrants to outfox Tim. Since Fleet is played by George Peppard, always at his best when cast in this type of role, neither the viewer nor the Chinese miners are quite sure whether he’s to be trusted. But Loo’s character is warily satisfied once he understands the robber’s ulterior motive: “I wondered why a man of your character would wish to befriend us, but now I see,” he concludes. Mr. Chang’s associates are played by France Nuyen and Soon-Tek Oh. It isn’t exactly “Crazy Rich Asians” or “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” in terms of casting Asian actors above the title in respectfully quirky roles, but at least the Chinese characters are depicted with shrewd dignity, and they give as good as they get with the racist white bad guys.

The Code Red Blu-ray presents McLaglen’s film in a sharp, rich transfer at its proper 1.85:1 aspect. Licensed from Universal, it includes the theatrical trailer and subtitles for those of us who didn’t need them in 1971 but welcome them now.

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Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)

BY TODD GARBARINI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

One of the positive elements of the Blaxploitation film genre that exploded in the 1970s was the emergence of many hitherto unknown talents. Among them was Bahamian-born actor Calvin Lockhart, who immigrated to New York and immersed himself in theater, studying with the legendary Uta Hagen. Lockhart didn't find immediate success but hop-scotched between the U.S. and Europe, where he found more opportunities on stage and in film. By the time he returned to America, the Blaxploitation rage was in its early stages and Lockhart nailed down a key, scene-stealing role in director Ossie Davis's film version of "Cotton Comes to Harlem" in 1970. He also earned the starring role the same year in "Halls of Anger", playing a besieged inner city teacher who is trying to keep the lid on inter-racial tensions. Lockhart also starred in the crime thriller "Melinda", which- perhaps because of its bland title- is not as well-remembered as lesser entries in the Blaxplotation genre. Thus, it's good news that the film has been released on DVD by the Warner Archive. "Melinda" is impressive on any number of levels. Unlike most Blaxploitation movies, which were actually produced, written and directed by white filmmakers, this one was brought to the screen entirely by African-American talent: director Hugh A. Robertson, producer Pervis Atkins, screenwriter Lonnie Elder III and composers Jerry Butler and Jerry Peters. The movie also has an intense, realistic tone that affords Lockhart to give what is arguably the performance of his career. 

Lockhart plays Frankie J. Parker, the morning drive DJ on a popular L.A. soul music radio station. Frankie is a showman supreme. His combination of unapologetic narcissism combined with his snarky, biting sense of humor sets him apart from the competition- and makes him a local legend among black listeners.  Frankie is living the life. He makes a lot of money, drives a fancy sports car and has a bachelor pad apartment where he entertains a stream of beautiful young women. He's so in love with himself that he has the place adorned with posters and photos of himself and looks in the mirror every morning verbally express how damned good looking he is. One fateful day, however, Frankie's charmed life goes into a tailspin when he meets Melinda Lewis (Vonetta McKee), a sexy new arrival from Chicago who is very much a woman of mystery. When she resists Frankie's standard pick-up lines and shows she is wise to his well-worn methods of seduction, she becomes a challenge for him. He wines and dines her and shows her off at a high profile party aboard a yacht owned by his old friend Tank (Rockne Tarkington), a black athlete who has made good. On board, he has an unexpected encounter with a former lover, Terry Davis (Rosalind Cash), who makes it clear she still carries a grudge against Frankie because of his philandering ways. Later that evening, Frankie and Melinda return to his apartment where they finally get down to business- but she makes it clear that she is in control of the situation. Unbeknownst to either of them, the heated sounds of their love-making are being enjoyed by a shady character who has been following Melinda since she arrived in L.A. and who is know pleasuring himself outside the apartment door! The next morning, Frankie realizes that this time he is genuinely in love- and Melinda seems to reciprocate.

Frankie learns that "Melinda Lewis" is an alias and that his new lover is the former mistress of a ruthless Chicago mob boss, Mitch (Paul Stevens) who is desperate to track her down because she has deposited a cassette tape in a bank safe deposit box that implicates him in a high profile murder. Before long, the mob links Frankie to Melinda and thinks he in cahoots with her. He is framed for a ghastly murder and pummeled and beaten by cops before he finally makes bail. Realizing he has limited time to get to the bottom of what is going on and clear his name, Frankie finds he has to enlist the aid of estranged lover Terry Davis, who becomes the only friend he can trust. The two become amateur detectives trying to get access to the bank vault and the evidence that would give them leverage over Mitch and his gang of murderous goons who are now in L.A. Things go awry, however, when Frankie is framed for yet another sordid murder and Terry is kidnapped by Mitch and held for ransom under threat of death unless Frankie delivers the incriminating evidence against him. Frankie knows that if he does, he and Terry are as good as dead so he enlists some unusual allies- the fellow students of his karate academy. It helps when the Grand Master is real-life martial arts expert and future "Enter the Dragon" star Jim Kelly. In the film's only truly over-the-top sequence, Frankie and the karate students ambush the gangsters, Before you can sing "Everybody Was Kung Fu fighting", everybody is  Kung Fu fighting. The film culminates with Frankie and his allies laying siege to Mitch's mansion, where they find Terry locked in a glass gazebo surrounded by rattle snakes and other dangerous critters. 

Until its rather fanciful finale, "Melinda" is a realistic urban crime movie packed with interesting characters and intriguing mysteries that are revealed slowly. Like a Hitchcock film, it centers on a completely innocent man who is swept up in fantastic and deadly events beyond his comprehension. Lockhart gives an outstanding and commanding performance, turning from a carefree, narcissistic playboy to a man who is willing to do anything necessary simply to survive another few hours. He gets able support from both female leads, gorgeous Vonetta McKee as the mystery woman who affords Frankie an evening of sexual bliss that turns his life into a nightmare and Rosalind Cash, in full tough girl mode as she was the previous year opposite Charlton Heston in "The Omega Man". On the other extreme,  Paul Stevens makes for a suitably slimy villain. The direction by Hugh A. Robertson is quite impressive and he overcomes the relatively modest budget by capitalizing on the street locations which he uses to maximum atmosphere and effect. "Melinda" is a superior entry in the Blaxploitation film genre. Highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD includes the original theatrical trailer.  

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“WONG FEI-HUNG AND THE CRITERION TREASURE”

By Raymond Benson

What character in cinematic history has appeared in the most films? Our friend the Internet says that Sherlock Holmes holds the record, followed by Dracula. However, most people outside of Asia might not realize that possibly third on the list is a Chinese martial arts practitioner and physician named Wong Fei-hung, who was a real person who lived mostly in the Canton area from 1847-1925. Wong became a cultural folk hero in his native country, spawning literature, comics, television series, and many, many films.

Wong Fei-hung (Wong is the surname, so in the West he would be Fei-hung Wong) has been known in fictional settings as Huang Fei-hong, Huang Fei Hong, Wong Fei Hong, and in this recent series as Wong Fei-hung. The actor most associated with the character in China is Tak-Hing Kwan, who made over 75 films between the 1940s and 1980s. Kwan is to Wong Fei-hung as Sean Connery is to James Bond. For many, Kwan is Wong. The titles to these movies invoke those of old serials, and they always begin with Huang Fei-hong… (e.g., Huang Fei-hong and the Courtesan’s Boat Argument or Huang Fei-hong’s Fight at Foshan).

However, other actors have portrayed the character in more recent years—Gordon Liu, Andy Lau, and Jackie Chan. Most recently, the actor Jet Li is associated with the role in director Tsui Hark’s extremely popular film and television series produced in Hong Kong in the 1990s.

Tsui (again, his surname) is one of the giants of the Hong Kong film industry. He began his career in the 1970s and worked on many films as director, writer, producer, and other capacities. He eventually started his own film company and became a major player in the region. In the early 90s Tsui decided to resurrect Wong Fei-hung in an updated, more politicized series of pictures that reflected a subtext of the anxiety felt by the Hong Kong people about the upcoming handover from Britain to China in 1997.

Thus, Once Upon a Time in China, as it was known in the West (in Cantonese the title is simply Wong Fei-hung), was unleashed in 1991 and proved to be a huge success. Jet Li, who was already a star on the Chinese film scene, moved to Hong Kong and solidified his standing along the likes of other martial arts superstars like Jackie Chan. The film’s triumph was such that the green light was given to make a sequel in 1992, Once Upon a Time in China II, followed by III in 1993. Jet Li dropped out of the series for the next two, IV (1993) and V (1994), and was replaced by Vincent Zhao (credited on screen as Zhao Wen Zhuo). Tsui Hark co-produced and co-wrote all five pictures, and he directed the first, second, third, and fifth. IV was directed by Yuen Bun. The five movies were then followed in Hong Kong by a five-episode television series called Wong Fei-hung, also starring Vincent Zhao as Wong. For a coda, a sixth film, Once Upon a Time in China and America was made in 1997, was directed by Sammo Hung, and Jet Li returned to the role of Wong one last time.

The overall theme in the series is one of nationalism. Unlike most high-action martial arts films produced in Hong Kong in the 90s, the Once Upon a Time series is overtly political, emphasizing how foreigners (i.e., Britain, the U.S., Europeans) invaded China and corrupted centuries-old cultures and traditions. Hence, in most cases, the villains in the films are the foreigners, although often the bad guys are also Chinese religious cults aiming to undermine not only foreigners but the current government.

The Criterion Collection has released a magnificent box set of the six feature films, plus a ton of supplements. Each movie takes place in the late 1800s (early 1900s in the last film) during the Qing Dynasty. Wong lives in a town called Foshan and runs a martial arts and Chinese medical clinic. He is surrounded by recurring characters who, while adept at martial arts and participate in the amazing action sequences, are there mainly for comic relief. A major recurring character is Leung Foon, played in the first picture by Yuen Biao, and from then on by Max Mok. Both Wong and Leung’s love interest is Yee Siu-kwan, more commonly addressed in the series as “13th Aunt” because of a complicated familial relationship to Wong. She is always played by Rosamund Kwan throughout the series. Wong himself is a serious guy who is honest, patriotic, and loyal. As played by Jet Li (and by Zhao as well), he is a dynamo at kung fu. For this reviewer’s money, he could take on Jackie Chan any day of the week and it would be troubling to decide upon whom to bet.

The films in the set:

Once Upon a Time in China (1991; Directed by Tsui Hark). A superb picture that won several of the Hong Kong Film Awards (their equivalent to the Oscars) of its year—Best Director (Hark), Editing (Marco Mak), Action Choreography (Yuen Cheung-yan, Yuen Shun-yee, Lau Kar-wing), and Original Score (James Wong). The main title theme song, based on a Ming Dynasty folk song, “A Man of Determination,” became the running theme for the entire film series and a popular hit tune. The song has long been associated with Wong Fei-hung, even before Tsui’s series. Here it is sung by George Lam (in the second feature it is sung by none other than Jackie Chan over the end titles). The film was nominated for Best Picture, Cinematography, Art Direction, and Supporting Actor (Jacky Cheung, as “Bucktooth”). The story involves Wong and his team battling a gang that operates like a mafia, terrorizing businesses in Foshan, as well as the corrupt American officials who plan to kidnap Chinese women and export them back to the U.S. as slaves (i.e., prostitutes). Although this first feature in the series is a little too long (134 minutes), it introduces all the ongoing characters, establishes the mix of action, comedy, and melodrama, and is full of visual spectacle.

Once Upon a Time in China II (1992; Directed by Tsui Hark). This reviewer ranks the second feature as the absolute favorite among the bunch. Replacing Yuen Biao with Max Monk as Leung Foon, who is Wong’s main sidekick, is an improvement. The story is tighter and not so all over the place as it was in the first picture. Wong and company travel to Canton to attend a medical conference, where they meet real-life political figure. Dr. Sun Yat-sen (Zhang Tielin). A dangerous religious cult, the White Lotus Sect, threatens not only the foreigners in the region, but also any Chinese who believe in progress or moving away from outdated traditions. Everything in the movie works, and the fight scenes are especially inventive and exciting. The historical perspectives involving Sun Yat-sen are also engaging. While there is no evidence that the real Wong Fei-hung ever met the real Sun Yat-sen, it’s entirely possible because their lives overlapped.

Once Upon a Time in China III (1993; Directed by Tsui Hark). This one provides a change of scenery as Wong and his team travel to Beijing to participate in a “lion dance” competition. Although made in Hong Kong, the film’s art direction convincingly creates landmark locations in Beijing, such as the Forbidden City. A Russian acquaintance of 13th Aunt, Tomanovsky (John Wakefield), supplies romantic conflict as well as antagonist duties. There are also rival gangs in the competition who aim to cheat to win, and Wong must dispel these challenges to his honor. It’s not as engaging as the first two—it feels as if we’ve seen much of it before. It’s also not surprising that Jet Li decided to leave the series after this production. Still, for fans of the films, it provides enough of the goods to entertain.

Once Upon a Time in China IV (1993; Directed by Yuen Bun). Vincent Zhao replaces Jet Li as Wong, but the rest of the cast remains the same. Rosamund Kwan and her character is absent, but she is replaced by her sister, “14th Aunt,” played by Jean Wang. In this one, Wong participates in an international lion dance competition, and there’s another fanatical religious cult, the Red Lantern Sect, this time made up entirely of women. In many ways, IV is a repeat of III, and the production values seem cheaper. Most interesting is the new dynamic of the romantic trio between Wong, Leung, and 14th Aunt.

Once Upon a Time in China V (1994; Directed by Tsui Hark). Hark must have decided to direct again due to the disappointing IV. Rosamund Kwan is also back as 13th Aunt, but Wang as 14th Aunt is still present, creating an even more romantic whirlwind conflict among the characters. A big improvement over IV, this picture features Wong and company moving to Hong Kong, where they join forces with the local government to battle pirates who are cutting off supply routes.

Once Upon a Time in China and America (1997; Directed by Sammo Hung). This one seems like an afterthought, although it is unique and entertaining in its way. Jet Li returns to the role of Wong Fei-hung, and this time the team travel to America and the Wild West in the early 1900s. Think Back to the Future Part III, as the Chinese characters are fish out of water, dealing with cowboys, outlaws, and Native Americans. The movie was made in the U.S., too, and there are scenes in Monument Valley and other locations identified with Hollywood westerns. It’s mindless hokum, but different enough from the others that it’s still enjoyable.

The first two films in the Criterion Collection set have 4K digital restorations, and new 2K digital restorations for the others, all presented in original Cantonese theatrical-release sound mixes in uncompressed monaural or stereo (the latter available as a choice for the first two films). Supplements abound on each of the six disks in the box. There are too many to list here; suffice it to say that there are new interviews with Tsui Hark, editor Marco Mak, and others, as well as vintage interviews with Jet Li and Tsui. A new interview with critic Tony Rayns is essential viewing for a background to the Wong character and the series. There is much more, including a master class given by martial arts choreographer Yuen Wo-ping, making of featurettes, behind-the-scenes footage, and deleted scenes. Essays by film critic Maggie Lee and novelist Grady Hendrix are included in the booklet.

The final word—Criterion’s Once Upon a Time in China—The Complete Films is a must-have package for fans of Hong Kong cinema, Jet Li, Tsui Hark, and martial arts extravaganzas.

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RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

REVIEW – Naked City: The Complete Series

RLJ Entertainment / 6,063 minutes

By Harvey F. Chartrand

Naked City was like no other TV series before or since – Michel Moriarty, star of Law and Order, once told this reviewer.

Inspired by Jules Dassin's 1948 film of the same name, Naked City centers on the detectives of the NYPD’s 65th Precinct, but the criminals and New York City itself often played as prominent a role in the dramas as the series regulars. Like the film it was based on, Naked City (1958- 1963) was shot almost entirely on location. The first season ran as a half-hour show under the title The Naked City, starring James Franciscus and John McIntire playing, respectively, Detective Jimmy Halloran and Lieutenant Dan Muldoon—the same roles essayed by Don Taylor and Barry Fitzgerald in the film.

The Naked City also starred Harry Bellaver as Det. Frank Arcaro. When the series was expanded to an hour, the producers brought in handsome Paul Burke as Det. Adam Flint and gruff Horace McMahon as Lt. Mike Parker to replace Franciscus and McIntyre (with jovial Bellaver remaining in the cast). That's when the classic episodes of Naked City were produced... with a host of famous guest stars, ranging from silent movie actors like Conrad Nagel to newcomers Martin Sheen, Peter Fonda and Christopher Walken.

Naked City is so good and so unlike any other American crime drama or police procedural it's hard to believe it was produced in the United States, because the series definitely has a European look and sensibility. It's sort of operatic neorealism – Vittorio De Sica let loose with a camera in NYC. Not unlike De Sica's Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D., Naked City reflects a very existentialist and humanistic philosophy that occasionally moves the viewer to tears. The series regulars often become supporting players in the weekly dramas. The writing by Stirling Silliphant and others makes the more celebrated Paddy Chayevsky sound like an overbearing pontificator. Silliphant really humanizes his characters.... whether cops, criminals or ordinary New Yorkers.

Sadly, the image quality of Naked City: The Complete Series varies considerably. Several of the earlier episodes are in bad shape – dark and speckled. Framed in 1.33:1, most of the transfers look pretty good. Generally, image and sound quality are more than acceptable, although dialogue isn't always clear.

But this box set is the only way to see the entire landmark television series – unfamiliar to contemporary audiences because the series rarely went into syndication after its ABC run.

Watching 138 episodes of Naked City on 29 DVDs is quite a time commitment, but well worth the effort. The show (filmed in glorious black and white) is interesting from a historical standpoint: We see the magnificent old Penn Station (tragically demolished in 1963) and the Singer Building (the 47-story office tower – built in 1908 and torn down in 1968). In the early sixties, the New York City skyline was never more beautiful and balanced, before the intrusion of such massive structures as One World Trade Center and the Bank of America Tower. The Columbus Circle of the late fifties is almost unrecognizable, with the monument at the centre the only constant. We also see pre-gentrified Manhattan neighborhoods that looked quite grungy back in the day, especially in the winter.

Naked City attracted top-flight guest stars, including Luther Adler, Eddie Albert, Edward Asner, Martin Balsam, Barbara Barrie, Richard Basehart, Diahann Carroll, Lee J. Cobb, James Coburn, Richard Conte, Hume Cronyn, Robert Culp, Sandy Dennis, Bruce Dern, Bradford Dillman, Keir Dullea, Dan Duryea, Robert Duvall, Peter Falk, Nina Foch, Anthony Franciosa, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Hopper, Kim Hunter, David Janssen, Jack Klugman, Shirley Knight, Diane Ladd, Piper Laurie, Joanne Linville, Robert Loggia, Jack Lord, Walter Matthau, Myron McCormick, Roddy McDowall, Burgess Meredith, Sylvia Miles, Vic Morrow, Robert Morse, Lois Nettleton, Leslie Nielsen, Carroll O'Connor, Susan Oliver, Nehemiah Persoff, Suzanne Pleshette, Claude Rains, Robert Redford, Ruth Roman, Mickey Rooney, Carol Rossen, Telly Savalas, George C. Scott, George Segal, William Shatner, Sylvia Sidney, Maureen Stapleton, Karen Steele, Akim Tamiroff, Rip Torn, Jon Voight, Eli Wallach, David Wayne, Tuesday Weld, Keenan Wynn and Dick York. George Maharis guest stars in a first-season episode that served as a pilot for Route 66. (Naked City and Route 66 were created and produced by Stirling Silliphant and Herbert B. Leonard.)

The only extra features are 12 minutes of commercials from 50+ years ago, including one in which Peter Lorre promotes a flexible watchband.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

In Cinema Retro's never-ending quest to analyze relatively inconsequential movies, the trail takes us to Dirty Dingus Magee, one of Frank Sinatra's last starring feature films. The movie shocked critics when it opened in 1970 due to the trivial of the production. Time has done nothing to enhance its reputation and one can only wonder what possessed Sinatra to star in this tepid Western comedy. In reality, Sinatra's passion for movie-making was also tepid. He always preferred to concentrate on his singing career and regarded acting as a time-consuming sideline. His penchant for rarely approving a second take became legendary. Nevertheless, he was undeniably one of the cinema's great icons. Prior to Dirty Dingus Magee, Sinatra had shown good judgment with the majority of the films he made during the mid-to-late Sixties. There were some misguided efforts but Von Ryan's Express, Tony Rome, Lady in Cement and The Detective were all quality productions in which he acquitted himself very well. All the more puzzling as to what attracted him to the MGM Western that seemed cursed from the start. 

Seldom has so much talent been squandered on one modestly-budgeted movie. The film was directed by Burt Kennedy, an old hand at bringing highly entertaining Westerns to the silver screen. (i.e The War Wagon, Support Your Local Sheriff, The Train Robbers, Hannie Caulder.) The screenplay was co-written by Catch-22 author Joseph Heller and the talented cast includes George Kennedy, Michele Carey, Anne Jackson, Jack Elam, Lois Nettleton and Harry Carey Jr. Yet it all adds up to a lively but inconsequential trifle that would have been designed for the bottom of double feature bills at drive-ins had it not been for Sinatra's name above the title. He plays the titular character, a low-rent outlaw who engages in an endless cat-and-mouse game with newly-appointed sheriff Hoke Birdsill (Kennedy). The two men relentlessly track each other down and alternately deceive and rob the other. The razor-thin plot has something to do with local madam Anne Jackson trying to start an Indian uprising to prevent the local U.S. Cavalry unit from relocating, thus ensuring the demise of her bordello.

It's unconscionable that as late as 1970 Native Americans could be portrayed in such a racist fashion on screen. The dialogue afforded them is of the "Me-Tarzan, You-Jane" variety and the tribe is presented as a bunch of childish imbeciles. Michele Carey is cast as Dingus's Indian maiden love interest but she is relegated to prancing around in a short buckskin outfit and enduring endless interrupted attempts to get it on with Dingus. The "palefaces" don't fare much better. Anne Jackson is channeling Shelly Winters as the obnoxious madam who spends more time screamin' than screwin'. Even old stalwart Jack Elam is completely wasted, as are a number of other generally reliable old coots who populated Westerns during this era. Sinatra seems uncomfortable throughout. Adorned by a distracting Beatle-type wig, he is constantly upstaged by George Kennedy, who provides whatever modest pleasures the film affords. Kennedy has a knack for playing broad, slapstick comedy that Sinatra never acquired.The movie's cheap production values extend to some of the worst rear screen projection I've ever seen in a major movie, and that includes Marnie.

At this point in his career Sinatra said he had grown bored with show business. He even went into self-imposed retirement for a couple of years before re-emerging and admitting that doing nothing was even more boring. He enjoyed remarkable success in the ensuing years and won a new generation of fans. Sadly, his work in films all but evaporated. After the poor reception accorded Dirty Dingus Magee, he only had one other starring role- ten years later in the underrated thriller The First Deadly Sin. His fine performance in that film stands as a stark reminder of what he could have accomplished in films in the latter part of his career had he concentrated on challenging projects. Dirty Dingus Magee is worth acquiring on DVD- but only to witness one of the most misguided ventures of Old Blue Eyes' career.

Them region-free DVD contains the original trailer.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Promoted for its psychedelic aspects (as seemingly all youth-driven films of the late 1960s were), the crime thriller "Cop-Out" also bears a completely meaningless title that was designed to bring the mod crowd into theaters. (Please do not confuse this "Cop-Out" with director Kevin Smith horrendous 2010 sleaze fest "Cop Out".) Yet, despite the emphasis on exploitation, the film is actually a tightly-scripted, highly intelligent drama that boasts an especially impressive performance by the generally impressive James Mason. He plays John Sawyer, a once-esteemed lawyer who has fallen on hard times. His vivacious wife has left him because of his sexual inattention to her, as well as his love affair with booze. With her departure, Sawyer putters around a decaying mansion that, like himself, was once quite impressive. Sawyer's house is also a home to his daughter Angela (Geraldine Chaplin), but the two are barely on speaking terms. She resents his disinterest in her well-being and he resents what he believes is her misspent youth. Angela hangs out with a group of upper crust, spoiled rotten modders who spend their time drinking, smoking and screwing with shameless abandon. The odd man out in the group is Jo (Paul Bertoya), a struggling Greek immigrant who is tolerated in the group of snobs primarily because Angela is his girlfriend. The restless modders end up surreptitiously boarding a docked freighter and wreaking havoc before they are caught out by a crew member, Barney Teale (Bobby Darrin), a fast-talking American hipster who befriends the group and sets about manipulating them. He moves into their motley secret hideaway in an abandoned local theater and begins to make use of the premises to indulge in doing drugs and entertaining strippers and prostitutes. He's got a Jekyll and Hyde-like personality: one minute he's charming and funny, the next he's cruel and violent. When Barney suffers injuries due to an accident, Angela allows him to recuperate in her room, safe in the assumption that her disengaged father would never find out about his presence. However, during the night, a gunshot rings out and Barney turns up dead in Angela's bed. The prime suspect is Jo, who is accused of being jealous of Angela's proximity to the sex-crazed Barney. However, Angela insists he's being framed. The question is: by who? She imposes upon her father to return to his profession and take up Jo's defense. He agrees to do so but his appearance before the court is a disaster, leading to Angela to believe that Jo will inevitably be convicted. However, her father rallies, lays off the bottle and begins to play detective. In Agatha Christie fashion, he confronts the man he suspects of being the real murderer at a posh dinner party where the suspect is being honored on his birthday. 

"Cop-Out" is rather striking for its blunt depiction of the open sexuality that was inherent in the youth revolution of the Sixties. There are few noble characters among the sleazebags but Sawyer's rise from the ash heap of humanity serves as a precursor for Paul Newman's character in "The Verdict" in that both men regain meaning in the lives by combating what they feel is a social injustice. The film was directed by Pierre Rouve, and it marks his only turn helming a film. (He major credits were as producer, including Antonioni's "Blow-Up".) Rouve is quite impressive, too, and doesn't allow the sexual and violent aspects of the film to overshadow the intelligent screenplay, which is based on the novel "Strangers in the House" by Georges Simenon. There's a very able supporting cast, with young Ian Ogilvy in what turns out to be a key role. The script deftly makes some biting observations about British class structure and delves into other areas such as sexual harassment, impotence and homosexuality (which was still an imprisonable offence at the time in England!).  Chaplin performs well, as does the supporting cast, with Bobby Darin somewhat mesmerizing in an off-the-wall performance. The main recommendation for seeing the movie, however, is Mason's outstanding performance as the world-weary, worn-out shadow of a man who still has the ability to slay his social adversaries with his rapier wit. There's also some good location scenery (it was filmed in Southampton) and retro movie lovers will enjoy Mason glimpsing at some skin magazines including one promoting Molly Peters in "Thunderball". As an added treat, there are occasional vocals by Eric Burden and the Animals. 

Kino Lorber has rescued yet another obscure gem of a film and given it a fine presentation on Blu-ray. The original trailer is included as are trailers from other KL releases including "Coming Home", "The Crucible" and others.  

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN

We all know Roy Rogers, King of the Cowboys, as famous for his colorful fringed shirts and hand-tooled boots as he was for his ability with his fists, guitar and shooting iron. He was the epitome of Hollywood’s concept of a fantasy hero in a west that never was, as far from reality as director William Witney and writers like Sloan Nibley and Gerald Geraghty could make him. He made over 80 feature films basically playing himself, and became an icon that will live on beyond the memory of any of us. He stopped making feature films in 1952, but spent five more years turning out over 100 episodes of the Roy Rogers TV Show. He sort of retired after that, making occasional appearances on TV and at rodeo shows, but in 1975, at age 64, in what may have been an attempt at a comeback, he returned to movie making and turned out a film far removed from any of those he’d done before.

He said he wanted to make a movie in a modern setting with a more realistic character but one who lived by the same values he’d always upheld. The movie was called “Mackintosh and T.J,” and was a bold departure for Roy. No fancy shirts, no Trigger, the smartest horse in the movies, no more songs around the campfire with the Sons of the Pioneers. The title character, Mackintosh, is a 64-year-old former rodeo cowboy, a drifter, traveling the country in a broken down pickup truck, a loner looking for work of any kind wherever he can find it. He’s like Sam Peckinpah’s Junior Bonner (Steve McQueen), only older and with fewer options. He’s no longer able to work the rodeo circuit, but he’s not angry about it and doesn’t feel sorry for himself. He takes life as it comes and deals with it best he can, without bitterness or regret.

The action of the story begins when Mackintosh stops in the town of Dickens, Texas, pop. 300, to put water in his truck’s leaky radiator. He spots a 14-year-old boy being run out of town by a local cop. He later runs into him down the road in a market where a grocer is about to catch him trying to steal some apples. On an impulse he steps in, telling the grocer they’re together and pays for his groceries as well as the apples. Screenwriter Paul Savage doesn’t provide much background information at this point about Mackintosh to explain why he decides to protect the boy, but it’s apparent he sees something of himself in the lad. T.J. (Clay Obrien) tells him that he is on his own on his way to “see the Pacific Ocean.” Mackintosh offers to take him at least part of the way, if he wants a ride.

As they travel, we learn that T.J. has been pretty much on his own for most of his young life. He’s got a cocky attitude, and tells Macintosh he always pays his own way. He seems to have a pretty cynical view of life for a kid. Mackintosh tells him, “What you see depends on how you look at it.” When a truck honks at them while passing, T.J. tells Mackintosh he doesn’t like being passed by anybody. He wants to be number one. But Mackintosh tells him those who get there first usually spend a lot of time just waiting for the rest of us to catch up. “That’s what time does to you. Waters down the vinegar in your bite.”

They split up temporarily when Mackintosh’s truck has a breakdown in the middle of nowhere and T. J. accepts a ride from a passing stranger. They meet up a few days later in a bar, where Mackintosh stops for a steak, and is surprised to see T. J. working as a bus boy. “Making fifteen dollars washing a stack of dishes higher than your hat,” the boy tells him. There’s trouble when a tough, drunken cowboy named Cal (Luke Askew) accuses T.J. of stealing money he’d left on his table. When Cal tries to rough him up, and make him pull out his pockets to prove he didn’t take the money, Mackintosh steps in between them. He tells Cal to back off and asks T.J. if he didn’t take the money why doesn’t he prove it by doing what he asks.

“I don’t have to,” the boy says. “I told him I didn’t and that ought to be enough.” Cal grabs the boy but Mackintosh knocks him to the floor. The drunk pulls a switchblade, and the next thing you know Mack has a ketchup bottle in his hand and smashes it against the cowboy’s head!

Hold on a minute! Roy Rogers just got into a bar fight and smashed a drunk in the head with a ketchup bottle!!? What?? I told you this wasn’t your usual Roy Rogers movie. There are several other themes that are dealt with in “Mackintosh and T. J.” that must have raised the eyebrows of more than a few Roy Rogers fans back in 1975. The story also deals with Maggie (Joan Hackett) a battered wife. Mack’s concern for her turns her husband Luke (Billy Green Bush) into a jealous maniac, which becomes a plot element further on. Also in the mix is Coley (Andrew Robinson) one of the ranch hands where Mack and TJ find jobs. He’s a pervert, a Peeping Tom who gets his kicks climbing up the side of Maggie’s house at night and watching her undress. Robinson has played his share of weirdos in his career and is best known as the killer Scorpio in “Dirty Harry”. You take a jealous husband and a peeping Tom and throw Roy Rogers into the middle of it and you’ve got a set up for some real trouble.

Perhaps it’s the mix of these unusual story elements and casting choices that resulted in “Mackintosh and T.J.” never really being given decent distribution. It only played in a few theaters south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I doubt if many people reading this review have ever heard of this movie much less seen it. And actually it’s too bad. Because it’s a very good movie—one that should have been given a chance to find an audience. Rogers’ performance as Mackintosh is low key and solid, and you never doubt for a minute that he’s real. Clay O’Brien, who was only 14, grew up to be a ProRodeo Hall of Famer and had already starred in two John Wayne westerns, “The Cowboys,” (1972), and “Cahill: U.S. Marshall,” (1973). Askew and Green are the quintessential “gold ol’ boys” you’d find in any good western, and James Hampton (The Longest Yard) as Cotton is decidedly nasty as a ranch hand with a gossip’s tongue who spins the various plots elements together into a vicious web with Mackintosh caught in the middle. Perhaps the biggest surprise in the film is the appearance of Joan Hackett in the cast. Her part is not quite developed enough for her to do much with, but she adds a quiet dignity to the film.

Director Marvin Chomsky, best known for his work in television, particularly “Brotherhood of the Rose,” (1989) and “Holocaust,” (1978), made some excellent choices in the way he and director of photography Terry K. Meade shot “Mackintosh and T.J.” Filmed entirely on location around Guthrie, Texas and on the famous 6666 ranch, the camera really captured the wide expanse of the ranch and the surrounding country, while at the same time focusing in close on the characters and the drama that unfolds. Another plus is the soundtrack, written and played by Waylon Jennings with an assist on one tune by Willie Nelson.

MVD Entertainment Producer Steve Latshaw deserves credit for rescuing “Mackintosh and T.J.” from obscurity. The film is presented in a beautiful 4K restoration that does justice to the images as they were captured on film. The color is rich and textured. It’s a pleasure to watch.

“Mackintosh and T.J.” is a film worth seeing, and the Blu-ray disc, which is loaded with extras, including interviews with some of the cast members by C. Courtney Joiner, is a keeper. Too bad Roy never got to do another “realistic” western after this one. But at least it’s good that this one time we get to see the King of the Cowboys as he was in his later years. The same as he ever was. Highly recommended.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

The old adage "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" is especially true in Hollywood, but it can be said it could be amended to "Imitation is the sincerest form of economic opportunism". Almost since the beginning of cinema, films that proved to be especially successful have immediately spawned a flood of imitators from rock 'n roll musicals to beach party comedies to secret agent films and "Star Wars"inspired sci-fi flicks. It's fair to say that studios are notoriously shameless about exploiting the success of competitor's products. In 1974, director Michael Winner released the screen version of author Brian Garfield's novel "Death Wish", which traced the path to vigilantism by a New Yorker whose wife and daughter have been ravaged by gang members. It was an especially dark period in terms of soaring crime rates and Americans looked to popular culture to mirror their frustrations with "the system", which was deemed to be too lenient on the bad guys. Director William Friedkin once told this writer that upon seeing "Death Wish" in a local movie theater, he found the audience's response to the vigilante's trail of vengeance to have elicited the most visceral reaction he had ever witnessed in regard to a motion picture. To be sure, "Death Wish" was far from a favorite with critics, but it was shrewdly made in terms of appealing to the emotions of everyday people who could not envision in 1974 that America would one day enjoy a sustained period of lower crime rates (the Covid pandemic period aside.) Sociologists found the advocacy of taking the law into one's hands to be a very dangerous message and even author Brian Garfield publicly distanced himself from the movie, stating it didn't resemble his novel in many key areas. Police officials were glad to have the public speak out about laws that were soft on criminals but feared a spike in real life vigilantism if everyday people tried to emulate star Charles Bronson's take-downs of celluloid bad guys.

The success of "Death Wish" immediately led to a flood of vengeance-themed dramas both as feature films and TV productions. The theme generally adhered closely to Winner's film: an everyday guy suffers a terrible fate at the hands of brutal criminals. The police are sympathetic but explain that they are understaffed and that the law often provides for a revolving door in terms of letting arrested suspects back into society. With no other options available, our protagonist takes matters into his own hands and initiates his own brand of brutal justice. One of the "Death Wish"-inspired crime thrillers was "Trackdown", a little-remembered 1976 production directed by Richard T. Heffron and starring Jim Mitchum in a rare leading role. Mitchum plays Montana rancher Jim Calhoun, whose 17 year-old sister Betsy (Karen Lamm) grows bored and desires to see the big city. While Jim is roping horses, she makes a getaway to Los Angeles, where the pretty blonde teenager immediately draws the attention of a local gang that spies her walking around Hollywood Boulevard. The gang enlists one of their members, Chucho (Erik Estrada) to help set her up for a robbery. The gang members escape with all her money and I.D. while guilt-plagued Chucho tries to help the desperate young girl in any way he can. She ends up moving into his small apartment where to no one's surprise she chooses to get it on with Chucho, probably because he looks like Erik Estrada. The two genuinely fall for each but tragedy is in the offing when the gang breaks in and brutally gang rapes Betsy. They then kidnap her and sell her into prostitution to a Jeffrey Epstein-like rich guy, Johnny Dee (Vince Cannon), who wants to add her to his stable of young hookers. He  assigns his mistress, Barbara (Anne Archer) to persuade Betsy to cooperate by showing her all the swag and posh surroundings she will get if she sleeps with some of Dee's clients. Betsy, who seems to have the ability to recuperate from the gang rape in record time, consents- although she soon learns the dark side of her new profession.

A parallel story forms in which Jim Calhoun arrives in L.A. desperate to find his sister. Jim, complete with cowboy hat, get the expected treatment Clint Eastwood received in New York in "Coogan's Bluff": he's treated like a naive hick by the cops, who explain the city is so awash with teen runaways that there is little hope of finding Betsy. Jim enlists the hope of local social activist Lynn Strong (Cathy Lee Crosby), who assists him in tracking down Chucho, who agrees to help them find Betsy, even though he will be endangering his own life by betraying his fellow gang members. Jim goes through the requisite attempts to save his sister through legal means before taking the traditional vigilante route and launching a violent campaign of revenge against Betsy's kidnappers. 

"Trackdown" benefits from being shot on location and eschewing studio scenes. Consequently, there's an abundance of footage of old Seventies L.A. that adds a degree of realism to the goings-on. While much of Jim Calhoun's crusade plays out in predictable fashion, there are some unexpected plot twists involving the cliched characters. Director Heffron does execute and excellent and suspenseful sequence in which Jim and Chucho battle the villains inside an elevator shaft. It's neatly staged and adds an element of originality to an otherwise well-worn scenario. Jim Mitchum gives a fine performance as the rancher whose seemingly inexhaustible patience is put to the test. His understated manner contrasts with his ability to carry off the action scenes. The rest of the cast is also rather good and you can see the future star power and charisma in Erik Estrada's performance. Vince Cannon makes an appropriately smarmy villain and Anne Archer is quite winning as his live-in glamor girl.  Cathy Lee Crosby seems inserted into the film simply to provide Jim with some opportunities to engage in some mild flirting. The film comes to a climax that is over-the-top but highly stylized.The movie also includes original songs sung by country music icons Del Reeves and Kenny Rogers.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray is yet another welcome collaboration with Scorpion, which holds a catalog of worthy "B" titles. The film has a fine transfer and offers a gallery of trailers for other titles that are available. There are also some radio spot ads for the film and reversible sleeve artwork. "Trackdown"'s virtues shouldn't be overstated, but it is one of the better "Death Wish" imitators.

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"LIFE'S A BEACH"

BY LEE PFEIFFER

When it comes to defining cinematic guilty pleasures, one need not look any further than the lame-brained beach movies that were marketed to teenagers in the mid-1960s. The formula started in 1963 with "Beach Party", teaming Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon for the first time as loved-starved teens who are addicted to fun and sun in the surf. The film was such a hit that it spawned numerous sequels, delighting producers Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson and American International, which was mining gold by making big profits from low-budget productions. The beach series didn't vary much in terms of content and many of the most popular actors were utilized in each successive film. There were also simlarly-themed films starring Avalon in different geographical settings ("Pajama Party", "Ski Party"). But if the beach series burned brightly, its flame was short-lived. By 1965, the young audiences that initially craved this fare were moving on to more sophisticated movies. The  Beatles had made two movies by then and they defined what was hip. Suddenly, the perpetual horndog males and the virginal girls they were perpetually trying to seduce seemed about as cutting edge as an episode of "Leave It to Beaver". By the time the final entry in the series, "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" limped into theaters in 1965, the bloom was off the rose. This time around, even fans of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello were disappointed. The script has them in different parts of the globe and they are only seen together briefly at the conclusion. Making matters worse, their appearances in the film are abbreviated with most of the screen time going to supporting players. As was the norm in these films, well known mature character actors are cast in humorous roles apparently to ensure that any parents in the audience stay awake. In this case, we have the legendary Buster Keaton and Mickey Rooney along with the rather bizarre casting of Brian Donlevy. Go figure.

This time around Frankie (who is cleverly cast as a character named "Frankie") is in the U.S. Navy and assigned to Tahiti, where is he basking in the affections of the local beauties including lovely Irene Tsu. The implication is that the Tahitian girls are far more liberal in terms of sexual activities than their American counterparts and its hinted that monogamy isn't a high priority for them. Frankie is understandably intoxicated by having his own harem until he begins to fret that his fiancee, Dee Dee (Annette Funicello) might also be tempted to stray during his long absence. He seeks the advice of the local medicine man (Keaton), who comes up with a strategy: he will concoct a beautiful girl, Casandra, to suddenly appear in the midst of Frankie's beach crowd and prove to be so desirable that every guy in the group will spend their time trying to seduce her instead of pursuing Dee Dee. (This is somewhat of an insult to Dee Dee, implying she would no longer turn heads in the presence of the mystery woman, who is played by Beverly Adams.) The ploy doesn't work because there is indeed a potential suitor for Dee Dee- local playboy Ricky (Dwayne Hickman). Dee Dee plays along, nursing anger and broken heart when she learns that Frankie is not remaining chaste. There is a crazy subplot involving Rooney as a manic marketing executive working for greedy tycoon Donlevy. They scheme to woo Casandra to make her the national model for their brand of motorcycles. In the midst of all this are zany fights, humor that is juvenile enough to alienate the average 10 year-old and climactic (and seemingly) endless cycle race that is filmed in the Keystone Cops mode. One can only suspect that Avalon saw the script and demanded a reduced role. Funicello, who was pregnant at the time, is often relegated to sitting alone on the beach attired in beach wear that skillfully hides this fact. If all of this sounds awful, it plays out on the screen even worse. The only saving grace is some genuinely amusing bits from Keaton and a brief "Bewitched"-inspired cameo by Elizabeth Montgomery, whose presence here is attributed to the fact that she was married to the director/screenwriter William Asher. Even the rock group the Kingsmen aren't used strategically. Instead of playing their smash hit "Louie Louie",  they are relegated to performing an instantly forgettable tune. There is some estimable talent behind the scenes including the esteemed cinematographer Floyd Crosby and composer Lex Baxter, both slumming in search of a quick pay check. Watching the film from the standpoint of a more enlightened era, its astonishing how crass the treatment of the young actresses is. In some shots, they are filmed minus such unnecessary appendages as their heads, as the camera lingers on only the parts that jiggle.

One hates to be a curmudgeon about such simple fare and it is necessary to view it in the context of the era in which it was made. But there lies the rub: "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" was considered awful even back in 1965 and time has not been kind to it. The Olive Blu-ray has a very nice transfer, though. An original trailer is the only bonus feature.

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BY TODD GARBARINI

Having been a film fanatic my entire life I was thrilled when, in June 1982, a new magazine burst onto the scene and quickly caught my attention. Devoted exclusively to new and upcoming motion picture releases, Coming Attractions cost $2.50 per issue and was published on a bi-monthly basis. It didn’t last long, unfortunately, but I recall that a bit of an uproar occurred over the cover of the March/April 1983 issue which featured a half-naked Valerie Kaprisky in a promo for the Breathless remake. Seriously, back in the day who complained about a beautiful naked woman on a magazine cover??

In one of the earlier issues, there was an article published about an upcoming horror film entitled Trick or Treats starring David Carradine. I don’t recall the film ever opening in my area and wondered whatever happened to it until I saw it on the shelf as a VHS rental a few years later in a local video store. Trick or Treats is not to be confused with the 1986 Dino De Laurentiis film Trick or Treat, directed by Charles Martin Smith, or the 2007 Michael Dougherty-directed vignette film Trick r Treat. It’s a strange concoction that cannot seem to make up its mind as to what it wants to be. My guess is that it’s attempting to be serious but fails miserably at it. It’s a mixture of horror and absurdist elements that almost play like a Saturday Night Live sketch.

Filmed mostly in Neil Young’s house that his then-girlfriend, actress Carrie Snodgress, lived in at the time on South Irving Boulevard in Los Angeles, CA, the film opens in 1978 and Malcolm O'Keefe (Peter Jason) just wants to read the morning paper, but his wife Joan (Carrie Snodgress) has other plans. Out of nowhere, she has two burly men fight to get Malcolm into a strait jacket while affording no explanation. Their antics are humorous and silly, and we have no idea why it’s even happening. Apparently, he’s being carted off to a mental institution where he stays until 1982 and plans his escape. None of this is even remotely believable as it raises too many questions – is he really insane? How did his wife arrange this? Why would anyone go along with it? Do the doctors know? As he’s planning his escape, Joan is now with Richard (David Carradine, the star of the film, who has less than ten minutes of screen time) and has an eight-year-old son, Christopher (is he Malcolm’s son or Richard’s son from a previous marriage? None of this is explained). Christopher (Christopher O’Keefe) is a practical jokester, an aspiring magician and aficionado of Harry Houdini. Joan and Richard decide to head to Vegas for a Halloween party and call their babysitter, Linda (Jacqueline Giroux), requesting her services to watch him and dole out candy to trick or treaters. Linda is an actress and is torn between seeing her boyfriend Bret (Steve Railsback) in his acting debut in Othello (I swear, I’m not making this up) or making the extra money. She chooses the latter despite Bret’s insistence on her presence at the play. The boyfriend doth protest too much. Richard tries to put the moves on Linda but is stopped by Joan. Despite this, they leave for the Playground of the World, and this gives Christopher all the time he needs to torture Linda by playing jokes on her that she continually falls for: sticking his head into a fake guillotine (remember this for the ending!), using a buzzer while shaking hands, pretending to cut off his finger and even feigning drowning in the family swimming pool. After so many instances of this, one must wonder how dim-witted Linda really is.

Things get really ridiculous when Malcolm escapes by donning a nurse’s outfit – and everyone he meets treats him as though he’s female. He’s a guy with a guy’s face and a guy’s voice! He makes his way back to the house and hides in the attic. Another subplot featuring two additional young women working on a film that Linda appears in comes out of nowhere. One of the women, Andrea (the late Jillian Kesner), goes to the house and spends a lot of time looking around very slowly just to pad out the running time until the final showdown with Malcolm…

If you’re looking for a serious horror film, this one’s going to be a disappointment. The credits even list Orson Welles as a “magical consultant”. I can definitely see the influence of Citizen Kane (1941) and Touch of Evil (1958) on this flick. Yikes! Mr. Welles put his “magical consulting” to better use two years later in the pilot episode of NBC-TV’s short-lived Scene of the Crime series which aired on Sunday, September 30, 1984. In the second story of the pilot, called “The Babysitter” and penned by Jeffrey Boam, the title character is left in charge of a prepubescent girl whom she antagonizes while the girl’s parents go out for the night. The girl gets her revenge in a very cool ending by making a wish to a magician topper that appeared on her birthday cake. That episode was better than this film. Mr. Welles should have put his full “magical” powers to work and made Trick or Treats disappear. The film would have worked better as an episode of Tales from the Darkside, which ran from September 1984 to July 1988 in syndication, and without the camp. Christopher constantly annoying Linda gets tiresome, though I give the film props for the scene wherein Christopher sorts through his LP record collection which consist of the soundtracks to Maniac (1980), The Howling (1981), and the BBC Sound Effects No. 13 - Death & Horror album from 1977 that my friend and I used to play in the early 1980s.

Trick or Treats debuted on DVD in November 2013 and has now been released in high definition on Blu-ray by Code Red (probably the same transfer, though this time it’s more colorful and clearer due to the high definition afforded in the Blu-ray format) with the same audio commentary which runs the entire length of the film and contains five people: Jackie Giroux, Peter Jason, Chris Graver and Cameraman R. Michael Stringer, moderated by Sean Graver. The big problem with the commentary is the audio quality – it’s poorly miked and begins with no introductions at all. It’s also too low. I loved listening to it, but at times I didn’t even know who was speaking. Commentaries as an extra are something that I love on any disc, but if it sounds as though the people who are speaking are on the other side of the room…hey, great title for an Orson Welles movie!

There is an audio interview with actor Steve Railsback that adds little value to the package.

There is something called “Katarina’s Bucketlist” mode wherein the hostess talks about the cast and does an Elvira, Mistress of the Dark-inspired schtick.

There are no trailers, interestingly.

The bottom line: I love a campy horror film, but if you’re going to be silly, make sure that you market it that way. Don’t sell it as something in the same vein (no pun intended, naturally) as John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). Otherwise, you might feel like Charlie Brown did on Halloween…you go out for candy, but all you end up with is a rock.

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BY HANK REINEKE

In the early spring of 1961, shortly following the completion of his work on A.I.P.’s Master of the World - and following a series of lectures regarding “The Enjoyment of Great Art” – Renaissance man Vincent Price was to jet off mid-April for two acting assignments in Rome, Italy. The two productions he had signed onto for producer-writer Ottavio Poggi were Gordon, il Pirata Nero (Gordon, the Black Pirate) and Nefertiti, Regina Del Nile (Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile). The former film – arguably the better of the two - was belatedly released in the U.S. in June 1963 under the title Rage of the Buccaneers. The film was distributed regionally in the U.S. with neither fanfare nor critical attention.

Rage of the Buccaneers would first appear on the drive-in circuit as the odd undercard to such films as Broccoli and Saltzman’s Bob Hope/Anita Ekberg comedy Call Me Bwana. Rage was later paired, a bit more sensibly, with The Playgirls and the Vampire, an Italian-horror production mostly recalled by old-school monster movie fans and admirers of voluptuous continental on-screen beauties. The weak-tea newspaper campaign in the U.S. for Rage of the Buccaneers could have hardly been helpful in exciting foot traffic into neighborhood cinemas. Though the posters for the U.S. release promised Furious Action! Passionate Love!, the accompanying newspaper adverts offered the far less sensational promise of Excitement plus… Emotional Turbulence. Emotional Turbulence? Meh.

In truth, Rage of the Buccaneers would be dimly recalled, if at all, by U.S. movie fans due to it popping up on television as 1964 drew to a close. In early November of 1964 it was announced - with some degree of ballyhoo - that the NBC network had acquired no fewer than eight post-1960 “first-run” films for television distribution. But even the network’s big newspaper announcement was late out of the starting block. Rage of the Buccaneers had already been televised by several NBC affiliates as early as September 1964.

Several essays and film books would note that Price’s latter ill-fated Italian film, Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile would not actually see a theatrical release in the U.S. market. This is actually untrue. The film had the briefest of runs – as a second feature in support of the Buddy Ebsen comedy Mail Order Bride - at a drive-in theater outside of Phoenix, AZ in March 1964. The film then seemingly disappeared from movie screens - both big and small - until it was picked up as a late-night television programmer in 1966. Shortly thereafter, Nefertiti too fell pretty much off the face of the planet, at least as far as U.S. audiences were concerned.

Then, in 1985, with the home video boom in the ascendant, Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile was briefly resurrected as a “big box” VHS cassette release in the U.S. on the Force Video label. In the UK, there were at least two video cassette releases of Gordon, il Pirata Nero, first as The Black Pirate (Apex Video) and later as Gordon, The Black Pirate (Midas Video). As far as I’m aware, these are the only three editions of these two obscure Vincent Price films to be officially released on the English-speaking home video market, though there are bootlegs circulating of both films. I only dredge up this old history in the, perhaps, overly optimistic hope that Kino Lorber might make note of these glaring deficiencies in their own burgeoning catalog of Vincent Price home video offerings.

In any case, Price’s second professional visit to Italy would prove to be more successful. In January of 1963, Hollywood scene gossip columnists reported that Price would celebrate the New Year by preparing a return to Italy for a “Halloween release of his next horror movie, The Last Man on Earth.” The film was to be based on the novel I am Legend by Richard Matheson. Matheson’s novel, the author’s first, was published in August of 1954 by Fawcett Gold Medal books. It was a slim paperback of one-hundred and sixty pages, but Matheson was no amateur writer, having previously published a score of science-fiction-based short stories in magazines and anthologies.

Matheson’s novel was optioned by Britain’s Hammer Films in 1957, that studio even commissioning the author to write a screenplay for a proposed production. The problem was that the British censor board found Matheson’s screenplay unrelentingly grim and violent, warning should any production be mounted, there was little chance that the film would pass code. So a wary Anthony Hinds at Hammer chose to sell the rights of Matheson’s screenplay to American producer and cinema theater chain owner Robert L. Lippert (Curse of the Fly). Lippert subsequently engaged Price to star in the project, traveling to Rome in late summer of 1962 to arrange crew and casting of the film’s Italian supporting players.

Matheson’s I am Legend recounts the final years of Robert Neville, one of the few survivors of a pandemic turned plague that killed off most of the earth’s population. The rub is that while those afflicted remained technically dead, they retained mobility. Neville goes to great lengths to investigate why the “undead” have transformed into bacillus vampires of a sort: they drink blood and avoid the rays of the sun much as did the Gothic and folkloric vampires of yore did. But otherwise they remained mostly human in appearance save for a decided graveyard pallor.

Neville (renamed Robert Morgan in the film) is a reluctant, modern day, post-apocalyptic Van Helsing. He has chosen to actively seek out and confront the vampire hordes. He really has no other choice as, much to his disdain, he’s under near-constant assault by them. Matheson’s book is an undeniably grim one with an equally fatalistic ending, but his slim volume would go on to influence countless filmmakers and aspiring science-fiction writers in years following publication. In manner of tone and presentation, it’s reasonable to say that George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was highly and undeniably influenced by The Last Man on Earth.

Price wasn’t terribly excited to travel to Italy in the grim winter season of 1963, but the offer to visit Rome would give the actor the opportunity to canvas galleries and antique stores in search of artworks. In June of 1962 it was announced that Price had entered into his semi-famous partnership with the Sears, Roebuck & Co. to search out art that could be consigned and sold as lithographs through the department store chain. This interest in art was a lifelong passion of the actor’s and he had already been collecting artworks for Sears a month prior to the official press release of their collaboration. The actor told columnist Bob Thomas that his searching out the Vincent Price Collection for Sears had already resulted in a “whirl” of activity, and that he’d already “bought 1,700 paintings and etchings: I’ve got to have 2,500 before the sale starts.”

By Mid-January of 1963 Price was already in Europe, first visiting Paris before traveling on to Rome to begin filming. In the space of three days and visits to the galleries and artist studios of the City of Lights, Price offered that he had already purchased one hundred and fifty paintings that he thought Sears could sell for $300 or less back in the U.S. Columnist Doris Sanders noted that Price had already admitted dropping four thousand U.S. dollars on the very first day of his Parisian shopping spree. It was also noted that the artists Price approached were appreciably happy as the actor – funded by his corporate sponsor - always chose to pay cash up-front.

RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES

BY LEE PFEIFFER

One of the few remaining Steve McQueen films not available on home video finally comes to DVD with Warner Archive's release of the 1961 military comedy The Honeymoon Machine. Sadly, the film can only be recommended to McQueen fans who feel obliged to buy the DVD in order to keep their collections complete. The movie is an embarrassing fiasco that might have been excusable had it been produced by a low-rent film studio. However, MGM backed this turkey and it must have seemed pretty stale even during its release back in the JFK administration. It's worth contemplating that America's obsession at the time with showing respect for any aspect of the military extended to many films that was neutered for fear of offending Pentagon brass. Sure, screenwriters could denote some highschool-like upstarts in the Army or Navy, and the top brass might be seen as  humorless stiffs, but studios rarely wanted to tweak the  powers-that-be, lest they not get cooperation from the military for their war movies. In fact, it wasn't until The Americanization of Emily in 1964 that the glass ceiling was truly broken and the U.S. military could be the object of outright satire and cynicism. From there, the floodgate opened and by the late 1960s and early 1970s, films like Kelly's Heroes and M*A*S*H went to the opposite extreme and portrayed the American military as primarily comprised of dolts.

The Honeymoon Machine was made during the era when servicemen were portrayed as overgrown  kids whose most dangerous exploits were acting like the kind of towel-snapping wiseguys you encounter in locker rooms. In this ill-advised opus, McQueen- in one of his first starring roles- is a Navy lieutenant who teams with civilian scientist Jim Hutton to come up with a scientific method of predicting how roulette wheels can be manipulated. When the fleet pulls into Venice, the theory is tested at the local casino, where McQueen and Hutton break the bank. Unfortunately, through a convoluted sub-plot, their shenanighans are mistaken for espionage activities and a Cold War crisis ensues.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Universal has released the 1967 Don Knotts comedy "The Reluctant Astronaut" as a Blu-ray release. The film was Knotts's second feature film for the studio following the surprise success of "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken". This time Universal raised the production budget, thus allowing director Edward Montagne to shoot on location at both the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers. Knotts again recreates what is essentially his Emmy-winning portrayal of Deputy Barney Fife from "The Andy Griffith Show", complete with that character's requisite "salt-and-pepper" suit. When we first see his character, Roy Fleming, he's a 35 year-old nervous type whose "career" is playing an astronaut on a rocket ship ride in a children's amusement park. He still lives at home with his doting mother (Jeanette Nolan) and his overbearing father, Buck (Arthur O'Connell), who keeps bragging about his heroics in WWI and instills military discipline in the household. ("Well, he was a corporal, and you know how bossy they could be!" explains Roy's mom.) Buck wants his son to live up to his own self-proclaimed achievements in the Great War and without Roy's knowledge, sends in an application to NASA under his son's name. The goal is to get Roy into the astronaut training program. When an acceptance letter to report to NASA arrives in the mail, Roy goes into panic mode at the prospect of being an astronaut. He's suffered from a fear of heights since childhood and he reminds his mother that he can't even bring himself to get on the step stool to reach the marmalade jar. Attempts to share his fears with his father fall on deaf ears as Buck is a big-mouthed blowhard who immediately starts bragging to the entire town about his son's achievement. Soon, Roy is the reluctant guest at a party in which he is already cited as a local hero. Not wanting to humiliate himself or his father- not to mention local girl Ellie (Joan Freeman), who is trying to impress- Roy leaves for the NASA training center. (An amusing, on-going gag finds Roy pretending to board planes but secretly slipping away so he can take a safer mode of transportation: a Greyhound bus.)

Once he reports to NASA, Roy is both relieved and bemused by the fact that he has not been accepted for astronaut training but, in fact, is a janitor-in-training. When his father and his friends make a surprise visit to the facility, Roy tries to cover up his shame by dressing as an astronaut and demonstrating a new rocket sled with predictably disastrous results. Upon being fired and unmasked as a fraud, he returns to his hometown in shame, leaving his father heartbroken. However, this familiar dilemma in all of Knotts's feature films is resolved in predictable fashion by fate allowing him a chance to redeem himself. NASA learns that the Soviets are about to demonstrate the effectiveness of their new automated space capsule by launching a dentist who has no experience with astronaut training. NASA is eager to beat them to the punch and decides to ask Roy to volunteer. The scenes of the panic-stricken nerd trying to cope with space travel are among the funniest bits in the film. Naturally, a disaster occurs and Roy saves the day by summoning hidden courage that even he didn't know he possessed. 

"The Reluctant Astronaut"  doesn't have the cult following that "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" has built but it's equally good and at times laugh-out-loud funny thanks to Knotts' comedic genius and an inspired supporting cast that includes Leslie Nielsen (still trapped in pre- "Airplane" mode when studios didn't realize his comic potential), Arthur O'Connell, Jesse White, Jeanette Nolan, Frank McGrath and Paul Hartman. There are other familiar elements of the Knotts feature films: a good script by Everett Greenbaum and Jim Fritzell (head writers of "The Andy Griffith Show") and fine direction by Knotts's frequent collaborator, Edward Montagne. Naturally, there's also a zippy and amusing score by Vic Mizzy.

Universal has once again provided a terrific Blu-ray transfer with eye-popping colors. Not to sound like an ingrate, but I feel compelled to repeat my only criticism of these Knotts releases, which is their complete lack of bonus materials, especially since the DVD editions contained the original trailers which are easily available for the Blu-ray releases. However, even if you have the DVD editions in your library, the quality of the Blu-rays releases merits upgrading if you're a true Knotts fan.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

I have a passion for Westerns of the 1960s, especially those mid-range productions that weren't designed to win awards but, rather, produce a decent profit on a modest budget. A typical example is director Burt Kennedy's 1969 film "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys" starring Robert Mitchum and recent Oscar winner George Kennedy.  Burt Kennedy had no pretensions of being placed on the same pedestal as John Ford and Howard Hawks, but when it came to making fun, whimsical Westerns, he was among the top talents in the industry. Kennedy was coming off the recent success of "The War Wagon" and "Support Your Local Sheriff!", two fun-packed Westerns that proved to resonate very well indeed with the intended audiences. "Good Guys" doesn't work as well due to a weaker script that sees it play out like a TV Western. Still, it has the central ingredients to make for an enjoyable romp: the presence of two popular leading actors, a supporting cast peppered with marvelous players, plenty of scenery of the great outdoors and even an intentionally hokey ballad sung by Glenn Yarbrough that is played throughout the film to serve as a narrative device. (Shades of "Cat Ballou"!). The film was originally developed by Kirk Douglas and director Martin Ritt but they could never bring it to fruition in a manner that was mutually satisfactory.

The story opens in the booming town of Progress, New Mexico. The local, long-serving marshall is Jim Flagg (Robert Mitchum), who is all-too aware of the fact that he's nearing the end of his career. Yet, he still remains devoted to serving the citizenry with honesty and dedication. He learns that his old nemesis, Big John McKay (George Kennedy) has been seen in the area with his gang and they are planning to rob a train that's due to arrive in a few days that is carrying $100,000 in  bank funds. Flagg notifies the town mayor, Wilker (Martin Balsam), who dismisses the concerns by saying train robberies are a relic of the distant past. Wilker is consumed with running for re-election and is bribing the population with free drinks and closing down the bordello, which delights the local women. (However, he privately assures the men that it will reopen right after the election.) He's also devoting his time to seducing a local, married beauty (Tina Louise). The unscrupulous mayor lures Flagg to a podium at one of his campaign rallies and shocks him by announcing Flagg will be retiring.  The mayor summarily appoints his right hand "yes man" to take over as marshal. He gives Flagg a gold watch and a pension then sends him off to a round of applause. Ever-dedicated to his profession, however, Flagg tracks down McKay and is shocked to find that the once-notorious outlaw is now being bullied by the cutthroats in his gang. Flagg manages to put handcuffs on McKay and bring him to town with the intention of delivering him to a federal marshal in a different territory, given Mayor Wilker's indifference to the train robbery plot. You can predict where this is all going. Flagg and McKay wax nostalgic about the good old days when there was some honor and respect between lawmen and thieves. Flagg enlists his aid to help him prevent the train robbery which leads to a chaotic conclusion with the new partners boarding the train and being mistaken for gang members, the townspeople forming a massive posse in pursuit of the out-of-control train and everyone fighting each other in comic shoot-outs.

There's a lot of violence in "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys" but none of it is gory. In fact, there's only one dramatic shootout in which a sympathetic character is murdered. There are plenty of women of loose morals but they all have the requisite heart of gold. The byplay between Mitchum and Kennedy is fun but it's Martin Balsam who steals the film in a rare comedic role. Among the familiar faces who contribute to the yucks: young David Carradine and his father John (though they don't share a scene together), Marie Windsor, Kathleen Freeman, Douglas V. Fowley and Lois Nettleton as a widow with a young son who is in a flirtatious relationship with Mitchum. Harry Stradling,Jr.'s cinematography is a quite impressive, capturing the grandeur of the New Mexico and Colorado mountain locations and the miniature work seen in the spectacular train crash is also very good. Critics were anemic at best when it came to reviewing the film. The New York Times dismissed it as "a dinky prairie oyster" while a few other outlets at least acknowledged it was fun family entertainment. Mitchum would later say he regretted being in the film, stating ""How in hell did I get into this picture, anyway? I kept reading in the papers that I was going to do it, but when they sent me the script I just tossed it on the heap with the rest of them. But somehow, one Monday morning, here I was. How in hell do these things happen to a man?"

The Warner Archive region-free DVD features the original trailer (which gives away some spoilers) and a lengthy featurette which covers the making of the film in the small railroad town of Chama, New Mexico through the eyes of a local young boy who gets to meet the stars and director and appear as an extra in the film.

"The Good Guys and the Bad Guys"  didn't rank high on the list of career achievements for anyone involved in it but it provides enough fun moments to merit recommending.

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release: Elvira’s back and she’s fabulous! On October 5, 2021, Scream Factory proudly presents the camp classic Elvira’s Haunted Hills from the iconic horror host in a Collector’s Edition Blu-ray release. The Blu-ray features a brand-new 4K scan of the original camera negative and comes loaded with bonus features including a new introduction by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, all housed within limited-edition collectible slipcase packaging, while supplies last. Fans who order their copies from shoutfactory.com will also receive an exclusive poster featuring brand-new artwork, while supplies last.   With her voluptuous figure, voluminous black hair and hilarious one-liners, the essence of camp oozes from her pores. Elvira’s Haunted Hills culls its outrageousness from the classic Vincent Price/Edgar Allan Poe/Roger Corman films of the early 60s, along with a little Rocky Horror Picture Show and Fearless Vampire Killers. The tale begins in 1851, when Elvira and her maid Zou Zou are en route to perform in the Parisian Revue “Yes I Can Can,” but inadvertently end up at the sinister Lord Vladimere Hellsubus’ medieval castle. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to Vladimere’s long-dead wife, Elvira learns of the Hellsubus curse and finds her life in danger. Will she escape the family curse and the evil Vladimere? And can she keep her hands off of the stable hand long enough to save the day? Special Features: NEW Restoration from a 4K Scan of the Original Camera Negative NEW Introduction by Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark Audio Commentary with Actors Cassandra Peterson, Mary Scheer, Mary Jo Smith And Scott Atkinson, and Director Sam Irvin Making-Of Featurette “Transylvania Or Bust” Featurette Elvira in Romania Featurette Interview with Actor Richard O’Brien Outtakes Photo Gallery CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON

BY FRED BLOSSER

A Dino De Laurentiis production starring Charles Bronson, John Sturges’ “The Valdez Horses” opened in Italy in 1973 and kicked around markets in Europe and the Far East over the next two years under various alternative titles. In 1975, it finally limped onto a handful of U.S. screens as “Chino.” By then, Bronson was already a cultural sensation here in the wake of “Death Wish,” but “Chino” didn’t have much of a push from its American distributor, and it didn’t last long in the movie houses. The Bronson vehicle that made a splash in 1975 was Walter Hill’s “Hard Times,” featuring the star as a hardscrabble street fighter during the Great Depression. If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember “Chino,” if at all, as a VHS release from the Neon Video budget label in the 1980s, gathering dust at your local Blockbuster or Suncoast.

In the film, young Jamie (Vincent Van Patten), traveling alone across the wide open spaces, is stranded miles from the nearest town as night begins to fall. Is he a runaway or an orphan? That’s never clarified, an element that may bother those who tend to pick at loose ends, although it doesn’t greatly matter in terms of the story. Seeing a lonely ranch house in the distance, the boy meets Chino Valdez (Charles Bronson), a half-Indian stockman who tames horses and lives by himself. The taciturn Chino gives Jamie shelter for the night, in return for the kid pitching in with the chores. Next morning, in a scene nicely underplayed by Bronson and Van Patten, Chino offers the boy a job as his hired hand, and Jamie eagerly accepts. The work includes mentoring on how to tame and ride mustangs. When Jamie asks if taming means “busting” a wild horse, Chino emphatically says no: “ . . . that takes all the spunk out of a horse. It breaks him. And I'm not gonna bust a Valdez horse.” It’s the first of several scenes in which, not very subtly, Chino is likened to his wild stallions.

Chino’s neighbor is Maral (Marcel Bozzuffi), a wealthy rancher whose sister Catherine (Jill Ireland) comes from the East to visit. In case any sticklers in the audience wonder why Maral has a French accent and Catherine a British one, the real answer is simple. If you wanted Charles Bronson for a picture in those days, his wife Jill Ireland was part of the deal. In context of the story, it’s because the siblings had different mothers, as quickly noted in passing. Trouble develops when Chino and Catherine fall in love with each other and decide to marry with the help of a friendly padre. Learning of the plan, Maral confronts Catherine in the chapel as she waits in her wedding gown for Chino to arrive. If his sister marries the rough-hewn, penniless horseman, “I will kill him,” Maral tells her. It’s a complication straight out of the 1950s B-Westerns. Except there, the hero and the overbearing cattle baron would have settled their differences with a friendly fist fight, and wedding bells would ring. This being a 1970s Western, and a Charles Bronson vehicle to boot, it isn’t too much of a spoiler to suggest that things won’t go that smoothly for Chino.

Even Bronson fans are likely to concede that “The Valdez Horses” is a mess dramatically speaking, although an interesting mess for those of us who fondly remember how the international co-productions in the 1970s, like this one, were often patched together. Quiet, family-friendly scenes of Chino and Jamie bonding as surrogate father and son are punctuated by a saloon brawl in which Chino bashes a bully in the crotch with a whiskey bottle, a protracted showdown with a high body count, a whipping, and a scene in which the Spanish actress Diana Lorys, in brown makeup as a Cheyenne woman, bares her breasts. In audio commentary for a new Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber Studio Classics, film historian and Bronson specialist Paul Talbot notes that Sturges filmed on Spaghetti Western locations in Almeria, Spain, in 1972 with an Italian and Spanish crew and supporting cast. Although the Europeans’ relaxed approach jarred with his studio-honed sensibilities for running a tight set, Sturges gamely wrapped on schedule. But once they previewed the finished product, De Laurentiis‘ investors decided that the director’s low-key, 1960s-style Western would disappoint Bronson fans. So Italian filmmaker-for-hire Duilio Coletti was brought in to film additional scenes, accounting for the more exploitative content. Even so, “Chino” squeaked by in the U.S. with a PG rating, bare breasts and all. Some of us will be less embarrassed by Diana Lorys‘ nudity than by the inane romantic scenes between Bronson and Ireland. For what it’s worth, the script was credited to veteran novelist and screenwriter Clair Huffaker from a book by Lee Hoffman. Stephen Geller and Elmore Leonard also made unofficial contributions along the way, according to Paul Talbot’s research.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray includes two versions of the movie, a 1.85:1 print from the U.S. release and a windowboxed 1.37:1 version with French opening titles. In color and clarity, the 1.37:1 version is superior to the other, but the nostalgically minded may prefer the 1.85:1, blemishes and all, as the one they watched on VHS back in the day. In a new interview, Vincent Van Patten fondly remembers Bronson, Sturges, and the shoot in Almeria. Between scenes, the young actor asked the fifty-year-old Bronson how he maintained his “ripped” physique, on display twice in the movie. “Push ups,” Bronson answered. “Push ups?” Van Patten said. “Push ups,” Bronson repeated. Van Patten’s affectionate Bronson impression is spot-on. From Talbot’s minute reconstruction of the picture’s bumpy history and Van Patten’s affable memories, you’ll conclude that a docudrama about the making of “The Valdez Horses” would be more engaging than the movie itself.

Other extras on the Blu-ray include a silent 8-millimeter home movie shot by Van Patten and his brother Jimmy in Almeria, the American TV spot for “Chino,” alternate title openings, trailers for other Bronson movies on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, and a reversible cover sleeve with poster art for “The Valdez Horses” on one side and “Chino” on the other.

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Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)

BY TODD GARBARINI

My love of horror films dates back forty years. In the fall of 1986, I accidentally stumbled across an aficionado’s bonanza – a local video store had hundreds of video posters in the cabinets underneath the movies it was renting. One of the posters was for Mortuary (1983), a horror film from the Vestron Video label that I knew of from another video store but had not seen. I liked the poster art but knew nothing of the film. To my recollection, it never played at area theaters, not even the 2-screen indoor/drive-in three miles from me that showed just about anything that was low-budget and esoteric.

Mortuary opened on Friday, September 2, 1983 in Los Angeles and is not a great movie, but it is not terrible, either. It does, however, move at a snail’s pace, so be forewarned if you have not seen it. It is one of the longest 93-minute movies I have ever seen. Director Howard Avedis, who has also gone by the tongue-twisters Hikmat Labib, Hekmat Aghanikyan, and (whew!) Hikmet L. Avedis, also directed the 1976 Connie Stevens outing Scorchy; Texas Detour (1978); and They’re Playing with Fire (1984) with Sybil Danning. Here he enlists Mary Beth McDonough of The Waltons fame as Christie Parson (the name taken from the characters of Christie Burns and Brooke Parsons in 1983’s Curtains, or just a coincidence?), a young woman who lives with her parents in their beautiful and unhumble abode and shows up just in time to see her father floating in the family pool after getting walloped with a baseball bat on the balcony. But who would want him dead?!

Her boyfriend Greg (David Wallace) and a co-worker go to collect tires from a warehouse owned by a funeral home, and he stumbles upon what appears to be some sort of weird cult/devil worship shenanigans in another room with all the figures wearing black cloaks, headed up by mortician Hank Andrews (Christopher George who sadly passed away two months after the film’s release). Even 2019’s Black Christmas featured a bunch of crazies running around in cloaks some 35 years later! Greg’s friend is stabbed and killed with a huge pole used for embalming by one of the members. Christie gets involved and decides to play sleuth and attempts to get to the bottom of her father’s murder – she refuses to believe that he “drowned”. Her mother Eve Parson, played by Lynda Day George, wife of actor Christopher George, wants to play everything off as though nothing is happening. Meanwhile, Hank’s son Paul (Bill Paxton of all people) is infatuated with Christie and does his best to win her affections, even serving her flowers in a cemetery in front of her boyfriend – what a guy!

Mortuary is one of those funeral home-based films that proliferated in the early 1980s and out of all of them, my personal favorite has always been Tom McLoughlin’s One Dark Night (1983), the spooky PG-rated Meg Tilly outing as a high schooler who attempts to sleep overnight among crypts as part of an initiation. Michael Dugan’s Mausoleum (1983), which starred a fetching Bobbie Bresee as a possessed woman who had the misfortune of being married to Marjoe Gortner, is terrible but great fun. Who could forget William Fruet’s 1980 film Funeral Home with Lesleh Donaldson? That film has yet to be released on Blu-ray. Like most horror films made since John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), they all pretty much follow a cookie cutter pattern which starts with something terrible that happens as either a flashback or as an event that is flashed back to later on. Mortuary is one of a handful of horror films that were shot in one year and released in another, specifically between April and July of 1981, but released two years later more than likely due to budgetary constraints.

The granddaddy of funeral home films is surely Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm (1979), wildly imaginable and one of the scariest and most original horror films ever made, though it is made up of supernatural elements. Mortuary is more of a murder mystery, but anyone who is a die-hard horror film fan will see the ending coming from a mile away. It’s almost a mashup of Jacques Lacerte’s Love Me Deadly (1972), Tom DeSimone’s Hell Night (1981) and J. Lee Thompson’s Happy Birthday to Me (1981).

Mortuary uses location filming to great effect as well. If the sprawling Parson mansion looks familiar, it’s the former Gulls Way Estate at 26800 Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, CA which was used on many other films and television series episodes. The living room itself is opulent, and a humorous sex scene between Christie and Greg takes place here. The mansion was purchased in 2002 by Dick Clark and the beautiful pool that Christie’s father died in was filled in with dirt.

Mortuary has been released on Blu-ray from the MVD Rewind Collection, an imprint of MVD Visual, in an upgraded video transfer attributed to Scorpion Releasing. I like the concept of this release as it contains a slipcover featuring the old Mortuary artwork as though it was a beat-up VHS rental return. Unfortunately, if you are a big fan of this film, you will be disappointed with the overall release as it contains only a fifteen-minute onscreen interview with John Cacavas who provided the inspired musical score. The only other extra is a trailers section comprised of The House on Sorority Row (1982), Dahmer (2002), Mikey (1992), One Dark Night (1983), and Mortuary (2005). One of the strangest things about this film is the television trailer, and why it is missing is a mystery. It is comprised of a single scene featuring Michael Berryman(!) digging a grave and being pulled into it, but the scene is nowhere to be found in the movie! Nor is Michael Berryman in the film! I wish that I had seen this trailer as a teenager, but no such luck. Think of the original teaser trailer for Alien (1979) with the little egg and the piercing shriek on the soundtrack.

This Blu-ray falls very short of being considered a “special edition” despite the inclusion of a fold-out poster of the cover art. I would have loved an audio commentary and I wonder why this release is so sparse.

One thing is certain – you’ll never experience Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” the same way after seeing the ending of Mortuary.

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“BURLESQUE LIVES”

By Raymond Benson

Kino Lorber and Something Weird Video continue their collaboration to present “Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture” with Volume 12—the double bill of Peek-A-Boo and “B” Girl Rhapsody, two documentations of burlesque revues from the 1950s.

The delicious and suitably sleazy pictures in the “Forbidden Fruit” series were made cheaply and outside the Hollywood system. They were distributed independently in the manner of a circus sideshow, often by renting a movie theater for a few nights, advertising in the local papers, and promoting the scandalous title as “educational.” It’s certain, however, that in this case both features in Volume 12 were not educational in any way except to provide the experience of burlesque shows to audiences who were unable to view them in person.

This reviewer, who usually welcomes and enthusiastically supports all the volumes in the “Forbidden Fruit” series, found these two pictures sadly unwatchable, with the caveat that Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ audio commentary on one of the titles might well be worth the price of admission.

Burlesque has a long history in the United States, and the entertainment form goes way back nearly two hundred years. It was closely associated with vaudeville, but at the beginning of the 20th Century burlesque broke off and became its own thing—something a bit more ribald and forbidden. There were still musical numbers of song and dance, and sketches by comedians who told groaner jokes—but burlesque added the striptease act.

The phenomenon flourished in the early half of the century, and especially in the ten or so years after World War II it enjoyed popularity in the big cities. Burlesque probably peaked in the early fifties, when these two documentaries—for that’s really what they are—were filmed. Once we got into the 1960s, burlesque became even more sleazy and was relegated to the more questionable and red light areas of “downtown” until it faded away for good.

One of the unsung impresarios of burlesque in Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s was Lillian Hunt, who managed burlesque performers, produced and directed stage productions, and documented her work on film to be distributed independently. Hunt was a former burlesque artist in her younger years, and the fact that she directed ten feature films (albeit of this ilk) in a decade in which there were very few women behind the camera is something that can’t be brushed aside.

Both “B” Girl Rhapsody (1952) and Peek-A-Boo (1953) were staged in the old Burbank Theater in L.A., renamed the “New Follies Theater” for these burlesque productions. They were filmed mostly in long shot with a stationary camera in the front row of the theater so that the full proscenium stage is in the frame. It’s as if the viewer is in the audience watching the entire show. Sometimes the camera cuts to a medium shot, at best, but there are never close-ups. As a result, this does not make for very interesting viewing. The striptease acts aside, the musical numbers and comedian sketches are, well, pretty bad. As both audio commentators remark, the actor/comedians were so jaded from repeatedly doing the routines night after night that the deliveries became rather uninspired.

The stripteases? Sure, the lovely ladies of a variety of shapes and sizes range from being somewhat amateurish to quite accomplished dancers. Unfortunately, these two titles feature none of the big name stars of the era like Lili St. Cyr, Tempest Storm, or Blaze Starr. Note: there is never total nudity.

The two features on Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray disk are surprisingly well preserved and pristine. The audio commentary for Peek-A-Boo is by Eric Schaefer, author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Films, and curator of the “Forbidden Fruit” series. He is always knowledgeable about these subjects.

The audio commentary for “B” Girl Rhapsody is by the previously-mentioned and always entertaining Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, whose wit and insight into these titles and exploitation films in general will make you laugh and appreciate more fully what you are experiencing.

Theatrical trailers round out the package.

While Volume 12 of the “Forbidden Fruit” series is not quite up to par with the preceding entries, these films of Old Burlesque might find their way into the hearts of some viewers who are interested in the history of this unique American art form.

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BY TIM MCGLYNN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BY TODD GARBARINI

By all accounts, Jennie Logan (Lindsay Wagner) has it all – beauty, intelligence, a loving husband (Alan Feinstein) named Michael, and a good friend in whom she confides (Constance McCashin). While they do not have children, Jennie and Michael seem to be unperturbed by the lack of tiny bare feet on the hardwood floors – there is plenty of time for all of that. Or is there? Looks can be deceiving and it is not long before we discover that this seemingly “perfect couple” have their own demons to wrestle with.

Guided on a tour of the sprawling Victorian manse prior to their eventual purchase by a matter-of-fact realtor (Pat Corley) who off-handedly remarks that the unfinished attic is unworthy of even the most cursory glance, Jennie feels drawn to it, though she cannot fathom why. Following their purchase and move-in, Jennie ventures into the attic and encounters a dress that is nearly 100 years-old (shades of John Hancock’s 1971 film Let’s Scare Jessica to Death). Trying it on, it fits her perfectly, as though fashioned just for her.

All is not well in the household, however. Michael tries to get close to Jennie but she quickly withdraws, plagued by Michael’s betrayal and infidelity with one of his students. Jennie’s willingness but inability to get past it puts a crimp in their marriage. She feels that sex for Michael is like taking a shower or going out for a jog, but despite his protests to the contrary he practically ignores her while watching a sports game on television, despite her wearing the old dress that makes her appear more fetching. The dress is the catalyst, a trigger for Jennie to see and experience a complete and alternate reality that occurred 80 years prior that consists of an artist named David (Marc Singer) who grieves the loss of his love, Pamela. After mistaking Jennie for Pamela, David spends time getting to know Jennie while brushing off the affections of another woman, Elizabeth Warrington (a nearly unrecognizable Linda Gray). David’s affections turn towards Jennie, and she becomes fulfilled by him. The question then becomes does Jennie really see and participate in this reality or is it all just in her head, a projection for a life and a love that she once had, or thought she had with Michael and lost, but still longs for? Much of the film reminds me of the Harlequin romances my grandmother and aunt had stacked in their basements.

The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan is the title of this 1979 made-for-television movie that is based on the 1978 novel Second Chance by David L. Williams. I am probably in the minority here, but Jennie Logan is an above-average outing with an intriguing story about love, longing and the perpetual life question of the road not taken, though contemporary audiences will no doubt find it trite and saccharine. As someone who grew up in the 1970s, I enjoy even the most basic of television movies as they were a lot more innocent back then in a time before the 1000-plus cable stations offered us game shows, talk shows with despicable guests, crime dramas, politics, and the rest of it. The world was slower and not so crazy. Some of these television films worked (Steven Spielberg’s 1971 film Duel) and many of them did not (Corey Allen’s 1985 outing Beverly Hills Cowgirl Blues). The innocence of these films is one of the reasons why television movies were not regarded very highly when they were made, and certainly not today. For me, less was more and although most audiences and reviewers look upon the average television movie with disdain, I have always had an affection for them that holds forth now.

Lindsay Wagner and Alan Feinstein (who reminds me of Daniel Hugh Kelly as the cuckolded husband in Lewis Teague’s 1983 film Cujo) give decent television movie-of-the-week performances as the couple besieged by turmoil. Jennie visits a psychiatrist (Joan Darling) to get a handle on her issues, leading the doctor to believe that this is all mental, a diagnosis Michael concurs with, though Jennie believes otherwise. A trip to a local library and discussions with librarian Mrs. Bates (Irene Tedrow, who bears a resemblance to Fay Compton, the actress who played Mrs. Sannerson in Robert Wise’s 1963 thriller The Haunting) puts Jennie into contact with information that she hopes will alter the course of David’s life so that she can be with him. Her discussion with an elderly bedridden invalid is shocking in how frightening the woman’s face is – think of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (1963).

The late writer and director Frank De Felitta is no stranger to supernatural material. He directed The Stately Ghosts of England for NBC (1965) and the beloved Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981). He also wrote the novels and screenplays for Audrey Rose (1977) and The Entity (1982). Here, he adapts material from another author. While portions of the film take place in 1899, Marc Singer’s beefcake stature looks out-of-place as though he is anticipating the arrival of Fabio, but it should please women and fans of The Beastmaster (1982), the film he is best known for.

Composer Glenn Paxton provides a lush and romantic score to complement the onscreen action.

Jennie Logan premiered on the CBS network on Halloween night in 1979 and has been released on Blu-ray from Australia-based Via Vision Entertainment through their Imprint label, the fine company responsible for the recent Scarface (1932) and Breakdown (1997) Blu-rays. Here, they offer up a region-free, pristine transfer with a wonderfully entertaining commentary by critic Kevin Lyons who speaks eloquently and knowledgeably about the film. He gives us some interesting on-set anecdotes about the making of the film, such as modifications made to the set as Ms. Wagner was unable to reach the handle to the attic; a history of the house in which the film was shot; director De Felitta making The Stately Ghosts of England, only to discover that the reels were blank after being developed and having to plead with the ghosts in the location where they were filming not to mess with the production!

There is a nice twist at the end of the film, and if you have ever lost a love in the fashion that Michael loses Jennie, it will have an impact on you.

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“WELCOME TO THE CLUB”

By Raymond Benson

Kino Lorber and Something Weird Video continue their collaboration to present “Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture” with Volume 11—Girl Gang/Pin-Down Girl, a double bill of so-bad-they’re-funny early 1950s “crime” movies. They were marketed as such, but they were really what passed for softcore in those days. If the movie ratings had existed then, these two gems would likely have been rated “R.”

These delicious and suitably sleazy pictures in the “Forbidden Fruit” series were made cheaply and outside the Hollywood system. They were distributed independently in the manner of a circus sideshow, often by renting a movie theater for a few nights, advertising in the local papers, and promoting the scandalous title as “educational.” It’s certain, however, that in this case both Girl Gang and Pin-Down Girl are not educational in any way except to show you how to use illegal drugs (uh oh!), and to appeal to prurient interests.

Producer George Weiss specialized in fare that defiantly challenged the Production Code and therefore made cheap—very cheap—exploitation flicks with filmmakers and actors who were not, shall we say, A-list material. For example, Weiss produced Ed Wood’s notorious Glen or Glenda (1953), along with Test Tube Babies (1948, previously reviewed in Cinema Retro as part of the “Forbidden Fruit” series). Weiss is responsible for both titles in Volume 11.

Girl Gang (1954) is a hoot. Unintentionally hilarious, it’s one of the better titles in the series. Exploitation film regular Timothy Farrell is Joe, the sleazy leader of a “girl gang” of outlaws—all of them thieves, drug users and dealers, and con artists who use sex as bait. Joe gets help from alcoholic Doc Bradford (Harry Keatan), who regularly checks the young women for, presumably, pregnancy and venereal diseases. There are a handful of young men in the gang who act as muscle, but mostly the members are 1950s-era Bettie Page-types who, for example, might hitchhike to stop an unsuspecting male motorist. Once two of the girls are in the car with him, two more drive up. The four women beat up the man, rob him, and hijack his car. Back at headquarters, Joe gives them “weed to make them less anxious.” Some of them have already graduated to heroin. The alpha-gal is June (Joanne Arnold, a popular pin-up model and occasional actress of the day), and she sets out to make a big score by seducing and fleecing an insurance agency head who she gets a part time job working for. Yes, folks, you’ll hear some of that devil boogey-woogey rock ‘n’ roll and see pot-smoking, smack-shooting, gunplay and beatings, and scantily clad women, all in a head-spinning 63 minutes.

There are truly some laugh-out-loud moments, such as when one of the girls has been shot in the gut. She’s brought to the Doc, who is forced to operate on the filthy kitchen table. The tremendously bad acting, the clumsiness of the direction, and the wince-poor editing make it a scene worthy of the Three Stooges.

Pin-Down Girl is the second feature, made three years earlier by the same producer (Weiss) and director (Robert C. Dertano). The movie is also known as Racket Girls, and The Blonde Pick-Up, which is what is seen in the opening credits. This one stars real-life lady wrestler Peaches Page as “herself.” Peaches gets involved in a ladies’ wrestling “club” that is a front for a gang that practices racketeering, prostitution, and bookmaking. Timothy Farrell appears again as Scalli, the gangster who manages the club. One might say it’s more of a crime tale, although it is sprinkled throughout with sequences of the leotard-and-tights-wearing women wrestling in the gym for those in the audience who are into that stuff.

While Girl Gang is unintentionally bad and funny, Pin-Down Girl is just unintentionally bad. At 55-minutes, though, perhaps it’s worth it for anthropological study.

Kino Lorber continues its fabulous job in the presentation of the Forbidden Fruit series. Girl Gang looks pristine in its digital restoration. It comes with an audio commentary by the always-interesting film historian Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, plus the theatrical trailer.

Pin-Down Girl is a bit choppy in places (missing frames of splices) and shows more damage to the source material. It comes with an audio commentary by Eric Schaefer, author of the book Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films and one of the curators of the Forbidden Fruit series. The theatrical trailer is included.

For fans of midnight-movie sensationalism and nuttiness… Girl Gang/Pin-Down Girl is for you!

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REVIEW: "MALONE" (1987) STARRING BURT REYNOLDS; BLU-RAY RELEASE FROM KINO LORBER

REVIEW: "THE KENTUCKIAN" (1955) STARRING BURT LANCASTER; KINO LORBER BLU-RAY RELEASE

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OUT OF THE PAST: MOVIES PLAYING IN MAY 1964

BIG E'S BAD MOVIES THAT HURT SO GOOD! TONIGHT'S FEATURE: "EMPIRE OF THE ANTS" (1977) STARRING JOAN COLLINS

REVIEW: "EACH DAWN I DIE" (1939) STARRING JAMES CAGNEY AND GEORGE RAFT; WARNER ARCHIVE BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION

REVIEW: "SWEET LIBERTY" (1986) STARRING ALAN ALDA, MICHAEL CAINE AND MICHELLE PFEIFFER; KINO LORBER BLU-RAY RELEASE

DVD REVIEW: "POINT OF TERROR" (1971) STARRING PETER CARPENTER AND DYANNE THORNE

REVIEW: "THE NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY" (1969) STARRING MARLON BRANDO AND RICHARD BOONE; KINO LORBER BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION