Archive for the ‘Blu-ray’ Category


The Bed Sitting Room

February 7th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »

dir. Richard Lester
1969 / United Artists / 91′
written by John Antrobus and Charles Wood
from a play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus
director of photography David Watkin
music by Ken Thorne
starring Rita Tushingham, Sir Ralph Richardson, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan, Michael Hordern, Marty Feldman, Richard Warwick, Arthur Lowe, Mona Washbourne, Roy Kinnear, Dandy Nichols and Frank Thornton
The Bed Sitting Room is presently available both as an out of print standalone Blu-ray and a Blu-ray / DVD combo pack from the British Film Institute

One of the strangest productions ever to be made for the mainstream market, Richard Lester’s film version of The Bed Sitting Room (adapted from a popular play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus) is a cynical and nonsensical post-apocalyptic black comedy that refuses to be classified no matter how many adjectives one throws at it. Withheld from release for over a year by backers United Artists, the film was a tremendous flop when it ultimately reached cinemas in early 1970. Neither its contemporary critics nor audiences seemed able to reconcile its bleak subject matter and sardonic tone with its more farcical sensibilities, and it has lost none of its capacity to confound in the forty-plus years since.

Detailing the narrative would here be useless - The Bed Sitting Room is less a cogent story than an absurd documentary on life in London three years after a brief nuclear “misunderstanding” has leveled it to the ground. The Royal Army, the General Post Office (Spike Milligan), the electric company and even the Church have been reduced to single entities under the dictatorial auspices of the Inspector (Peter Cook), who patrols the skies by balloon-powered-car, at his side the combined remaining forces of Scotland Yard – a bowler-hatted sergeant (Dudley Moore) and a lone bobby. The BBC (Frank Thornton) roams the countryside in the remaining third of a tuxedo, presenting “the last news” from within the hollowed remnants of television sets, concluding broadcasts with the singing of “God Save Mrs. Ethel Shroake, of 393A High Street, Leytonstone” in honor of the Queen’s surviving charlady, the closest to royalty bombed-out England has to offer.

In the presence of intense radioactive contamination nighttime glows and atomic mutation has become the order of the day, with people finding themselves transformed into various animals and furniture. Lord Fortnum of Alamein (the great Sir Ralph Richardson, “Stop, in the name of the Lord!”) provides the eponymous accommodation, devolving into a bedsitter at 29 Cul-De-Sac Place, Paddington, and suddenly faced with the existential threat of renters (“Quick, put a card in the window! No coloureds, no children and definitely no coloured children!”). The Lord soon finds himself occupied and facing imminent demolition by the Inspector – “We don’t want to stop in one place long enough for the enemy to have another chance at us, do we sir?”

Things take a turn for Eraserhead by way of Monty Python’s Flying Circus when young Penelope (Rita Tushingham), her doting Mother and Father, and dense love interest Allan (Richard Warwick) emerge from the Underground in search of a nurse (Marty Feldman) – Penelope is pregnant with a monster, and nine months overdue. Along the way she finds herself forced into an arranged marriage to the impotent Bules Martin (Michael Hordern) while Father, slowly turning into a parrot, is measured (22 inches) for the Prime Ministership. Mother becomes an armoire. Penelope and Allan’s child, an unseen screeching thing in a bowling bag, is eventually delivered, and the radiation levels steadily rise…

The Bed Sitting Room is undeniably a comedy, and often a very funny one at that, complete with a pie-to-the-face, surreal sight gags (a man having a hair cut offered an image of another man’s head instead of a mirror by which to check progress) and that quintessential English wit (“It’s the latest early warning hat,” says Lord Fortnum, with a miniature radar dish spinning atop his head, “Gives you that extra four minutes in bed.” “I never wore a hat in bed,” responds the BBC. “I’ve been a Catholic person for a long time now.”), but the current running through it all is as bleak as its landscapes of rusted-out cars, sludge, and shattered pottery and glass. Three years after total nuclear holocaust the handful of survivors have settled back into a bizarre but usual state of affairs because they’re too stupid to do anything else, willfully ignoring the horror that surrounds them in favor of tuning into years-old BBC news on their empty television boxes. Stupidity, as history, seems doomed to repeat itself, and the proverbial light at the end of The Bed Sitting Room is the grimmest detail of all. Like Dr. Stranglove and its “mineshaft gap”, The Bed Sitting Room suggests an inevitable cycle of pointless conflict, concluding with the arrival of a bomb by post and the BBC’s triumphant announcement that England is, once again, a “first-class nuclear power.”

Beyond its proclivities for the cynical and the bizarre The Bed Sitting Room is also tremendously produced show, and highly recommendable on the virtues of its imagery alone. Filmed at unexpected scale in vast industrial locations, the picture’s landscapes are both beautiful and haunting, possessed of that indefinable stuff one expects to find only in dreams. The sum experience of it all is quite unique and unforgettable, and buoyed by the choice talent operating both before and behind the camera. The potential for cult appeal on that last count alone is staggering. What else can I say? There’s no other film quite like The Bed Sitting Room, making it all the easier a recommendation from me.

Blu-ray details:
released May 25, 2009 by the British Film Institute
disc: dual layer BD-50 | Region B (locked)
video: 1080p | AVC | 1.85:1
audio: 24-bit LPCM 2.0 monophonic English
subtitles: English SDH
supplements: archival interviews with Spike Milligan, Peter Cook and Richard Lester, original theatrical trailer, 25-page booklet of liner notes
note: The above details pertain to the original and now out of print stand-alone Blu-ray issued by BFI in May of 2009. The Bed Sitting Room was more recently reissued as a DVD/Blu-ray combo pack, the contents of which should be exactly the same.

A proper home video release of The Bed Sitting Room has been a long time coming, and if memory serves, this BFI edition from 2009 marks the first time ever that the film has been made officially available (its finally been made available here in the US as well, though only as part of MGM’s manufactured-on-demand DVD-R program).

Sourced from a high definition master prepared by MGM (who have broadcast the same on their MGMHD channel from time to time) with further work done by BFI to improve upon the image, The Bed Sitting Room looks about as good as one might expect in its Blu-ray debut. The image is presented in 1080p at the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with a healthy AVC encode that keeps any obtrusive digital deficiencies well at bay – the worst I noticed was some minor banding during one of the color-filtered scenes (sampled in the tenth screenshot below, and more obvious in motion). Detail is only moderate but feels wholly appropriate to the original photography, as does the often muted color (see the ninth shot below for a great exception), and contrast seems at source-accurate levels throughout. There is some minor damage to contend with, including minor dirt and speckling and some larger scratching, and a few instances (beyond the usual fades and opticals) where the overall quality takes a dive, but nothing really untoward. All in all I’d say that this is a very good presentation for the film in question, and those with proper expectations for this modestly-budgeted 40-year old production should be very pleased.

Screenshots were captured as full resolution .png in VLC and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 97% using the ImageMagick command line tool.

Audio is presented via a respectable uncompressed 24-bit LPCM 2.0 track (mono) in the original English. Nothing stands out as sounding especially astounding, though I suspect that’s just as it should be for this recording, and the dialogue, sound effects and occasional music are all well-rendered and legible. BFI have gone above and beyond on the subtitle front, providing optional English SDH subtitles not only for the feature, but for the supplements as well – including the 3 minute theatrical trailer. Good stuff!

Extras are limited with regards to film-specific content, but BFI have provided a trio of excellent archival interviews (all sourced from film in HD) conducted by Bernard Braden with some of the film’s key players discussing other subjects – Spike Milligan, actor and co-author of the source play (44 minutes), star Peter Cook (32 minutes), and director Richard Lester (20 minutes). BFI now owns the complete collection of the previously unreleased interview material produced by Braden and his wife Barbara Kelly between 1967-68, totaling some 330 interviews in all, and the chosen subjects make for a wonderful inclusion here. The original theatrical trailer (3 minutes, HD), which is honestly pretty awful, is also included. Perhaps the best of the supplements, particularly with regards to the The Bed Sitting Room itself, is the accompanying illustrated 25-page booklet, which is highlighted by a lovely essay on the film by BFI’s own Michael Brooke.

While the region-coding issue (this disc is Region B-locked all the way) will no doubt deter some, those fans with the appropriate capabilities owe it to themselves to pick this up. The Bed Sitting Room is still an inimitable one-of-a-kind experience, and BFI’s new dual-format package is even more cost effective ($23, shipping included, through Amazon.co.uk at present) than the original stand-alone Blu-ray. Recommended!


Godzilla

January 28th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , ,

dir. Ishiro Honda
1954 / Toho Co. ltd / 96′
written by Shigeru Kayama, Ishiro Honda and Takeo Murata
 director of photography Masao Tamai
music by Akira Ifukube
director of special effects Eiji Tsuburaya
starring Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura, Sachio Sakai, Katsumi Tezuka and Haruo Nakajima
Godzilla, along with Godzilla King of the Monsters!, is now available in a deluxe Blu-ray edition from the Criterion Collection

Unleashed upon an unsuspecting Japan to massive popular success in late fall of 1954, the original Godzilla was one of those rare perfect storms of cinema, a picture so tremendous in its impact that it ushered in not only a distinct new genre of Japanese film, but a bona fide pop culture revolution as well. It also touched a chord with a post-war Japan fresh from years of occupation, and finally allowed to openly discuss the full sum of its wartime experiences. Godzilla‘s considerable box office take all but ensured the long run of increasingly silly sequels that followed, and those familiar with those alone might be forgiven for expecting the same here, but the father of them all is an intelligent and at times downright cerebral affair, possessed of a raw power not seen in the genre since. Much more than just another monster movie, Godzilla is a spectacular public exorcism of the specters of World War II, and the tumultuous, emotional expression of a nation’s struggle to come to terms with its history as both a perpetrator and victim of incalculable wartime devastation.

The story, for those unfamiliar, begins with a series of dreadful shipping accidents off the coast of Japan, an investigation into which leads reporters and government officials to remote Odo Island, a sparsely populated speck of land near where the accidents occurred. There they find no answers beyond the superstitious ramblings of one of the island’s elders, who is convinced that the mythical Godzilla – a mysterious sea beast the Odo Islanders once sated with human sacrifice – is responsible for the maritime troubles. No one believes a word of it until something comes ashore one storm-torn evening, leveling several of the island’s residences and leaving a set of impossibly huge footprints in its wake.

A scientific expedition headed by noted zoologist Dr. Yamane (the great Takashi Shimura) is swiftly mounted to survey the destruction and investigate its cause. Once the scientists are on the island they make a series of surprising discoveries. The footprints left behind are intensely radioactive, and the area around them dangerously contaminated. What’s more, they’re littered with ancient sediments and the remnants of primitive life long thought extinct, leading Dr. Yamane and his team to the conclude that the impressions were made by something straight out of prehistory. It isn’t long before more conclusive evidence arrives in the form of a mountainous Jurassic-age monster, the Godzilla of legend, who has his sights set on Japan’s thriving metropolitan heart – Tokyo.

Co-written by director Ishiro Honda and Takeo Murata (Rodan) from an original story by Shigeru Kayama (which he also novelized), the basics of Godzilla‘s narrative development are pretty traditional, writ large, the origins for the monster having been freely adapted from elements of the classic King Kong (an island, a legend, talk of human sacrifice) and the contemporary The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (about a prehistoric monster roused from its icy slumbers by an atomic test in the Arctic). Indeed, the idea of a dinosaur wreaking havoc on modern civilization was nothing new in 1954, having been seen previously in the silent The Lost World, Max Fleischer’s Superman short The Arctic Giant, as well as in Godzilla‘s most direct inspiration, the aforementioned Beast. The difference, as ever, is in the details.

Under the creative auspices of Honda, Kayama, Murata, producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, effects director Eiji Tsuburaya and even composer Akira Ifukube1, Godzilla‘s eponymous monster becomes one of the most singularly loaded metaphors in cinema history. Through references, both overt and subliminal, to such events as the irradiation of the fishing vessel Daigo Fukuryu Maru by the Castle Bravo H-bomb test, the fall of radioactive rain resulting from Soviet atomic tests, the firebombing of Tokyo and the A-bombing of Nagasaki, Godzilla becomes a fearsome and direct manifestation both of the horrors of World War II and the new and frightening realities of the Atomic Age. The monster’s steady, methodical destruction of modern Tokyo is a sequence unlike anything before it. Godzilla advances with the unrelenting force of an atomic blast, sending whole blocks crumbling into smoldering rubble and engulfing the city’s skyline in a curtain of nuclear flame. Dialogue clarifies whatever doubts may be lingering as to the rampage’s symbolic significance - “Godzilla’s no different from the H-bomb still hanging over Japan’s head…“

In Godzilla’s wake millions lie dead or dying, both of physical injuries and radioactive contamination, while countless traumatized survivors wonder what terrors are yet to come. The imagery here – endless corridors filled with the wounded and an entire city reduced to wasteland – is potent, and evocative not only of the haunting aftermaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but of the wartime razing of Tokyo as well. Even Godzilla himself is granted a history of victimization, with Dr. Yamane insinuating that, much like Japan’s A-bomb survivors, the creature is traumatized by its recent brush with American nuclear might. “Don’t shine searchlights on Godzilla!” he gravely begs of a military officer, fearful that they might remind of the blinding flash that tore him from his deep sea niche and send the monster into a deeper rage. Of course Godzilla is not just a victim, but an aggressor as well, and the vision of a dragon rising from the Pacific alludes strongly to the ugly flip side of Japan’s wartime misfortune – the fact that through their own militant nationalism, and the brutal campaign of conquest that resulted from it, they had brought that misfortune upon themselves.

To that end the central dramatic conflict of the film might be viewed as an allusion to the position of the Allied forces during the war. Godzilla, awakened by the H-bomb and impervious to all modern munitions, seems unstoppable, but a brilliant young scientist – Dr. Serizawa (a convincing young Akihiko Hirata) – may have found an answer. The problem? His discovery has such immense destructive potential that any use of it, however good the cause, could prove catastrophic. It’s a narrative development that dramatically echoes the creation and eventual use of the Atom bomb in the final days of World War II, and that implies a certain understanding by Honda and his crew of the position of the Allied forces at the time. With a marauding force like the Imperial Japanese at large, do you set aside your most powerful weapon for fear of the horrific consequences of its use, or do you use it in spite of them? What the Allies decided is history, and their decision is paralleled by that of Dr. Serizawa – the result is that Godzilla is stopped, though at a tremendous cost. Another elemental force, as horrifying as the H-bomb, has been let loose in the world, and the film concludes with a grave Dr. Yamane wondering what other Godzillas might be unleashed as a result.

In terms of drama Godzilla has certainly aged in the decades since it was made, and a forgettable love triangle between Toho’s brightest young stars (top-billed Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi and Akihiko Hirata) will be of minimal interest to modern viewers, but the complex substance of the thing remains, its power undiminished over the near-60 years since it was fresh. Godzilla is perhaps the best of its kind ever made, the ultimate, indelible atomic monster experience and the birthplace of an unlikely pop-culture icon. It’s must-see material, folks, and that’s all there is too it.

1 Some of Ifukube’s cues for the film, both the elegiac pieces set to Godzilla’s aftermath and demise and the descending motif that accompanies the earlier ship disasters, are highly evocative (and in the latter case a direct adaptation) of his past work on Kaneto Shindo’s Children of Hiroshima (a somber, thoughtful film about the human toll of the Hiroshima bombing), an allusion that only further cements Godzilla‘s connection to World War II and the burgeoning Atomic Age.

disc details:
released January 24, 2012 by the Criterion Collection
disc: dual layer BD-50
video: 1080p | AVC | 1.37:1
audio: LPCM 1.0 Japanese
subtitles: English
supplements: commentary track with David Kalat, interviews (star Akira Takarada, suit actor Haruo Nakajima, effects men Yoshio Irie and Eizo Kaimai, composer Akira Ifukube, critic Tadao Sato), composite test footage, The Unluckiest Dragon illustrated audio essay, theatrical trailer and Godzilla King of the Monsters! (also featuring a David Kalat commentary and theatrical trailer)
retail price: $39.95
Available now from Amazon.com, and also available on 2-disc DVD

The Criterion Collection has certainly started the year off right, getting one of their most anticipated releases of 2012 onto store shelves right from the start. A few niggling video issues may keep their high definition presentation of Godzilla from being the end-all be-all of the format, but compared to what’s come before (an awful edition from Classic Media and a dull, over-processed alternative from Toho itself) it’s a revelation. Those simply wondering as to whether or not their Blu-ray is worth the price of admission need read no further – of course it is, so get out there and buy it you fools!

The thorn in Godzilla‘s side is just a case of Criterion cramming too much stuff (and there’s a lot!) onto one disc – this really should have been a 2-disc Blu-ray, a la the simultaneously released 2-disc Criterion dvd, and the video presentation suffers a bit for it in the form of artifacting. The AVC-encoded video for Godzilla, running a modest average bitrate of 23.5 Mbps, does well by the majority of the show, but moments of flatter contrast and more ambiguous detail (like the underwater finale) present with notable, if not exactly damning, grain artifacts.

Otherwise I’ve nothing to complain about with this 1080p presentation, which Criterion have sourced fresh from a fine-grain 35mm master positive (the original negative for Godzilla is long gone) with excellent results. Detail improves handily over past editions, finally appearing at a level in keeping with the show’s 35mm photography, and contrast is dead-on. The usual limitations associated with Godzilla are all here, including some flicker and an assortment of damage, but Criterion’s work to clean up the material will be obvious to anyone familiar with past iterations. There’s a lot of obtrusive, large-scale damage I’m used to seeing that just isn’t here, and Criterion have struck their usual attractive balance between cleanliness and source authenticity. It may not be pristine (given the state of surviving elements it was never going to be – the first three Godzilla films are all in rather dire condition, with King Kong vs. Godzilla evidently having no usable 35mm elements at all for some scenes), but for the first time ever the film looks as good as it rightly should. This gave me the most satisfying viewing of Godzilla I’ve had to date, enough so that my boundless devotion to the 2006 BFI dvd has finally been broken, and those with realistic expectations for the title should be thrilled.

Screenshots were taken as full 1920×1080 resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 95% using the ImageMagick command line tool. See our complementary review of Godzilla King of the Monsters! for screenshots from that version of the film.

Strong as the image can be, my minor quibbles aside, the audio is tremendous. Criterion present Godzilla in its original Japanese courtesy of a robust uncompressed 24-bit LPCM 1.0 track that restores the film’s sound mix to its original luster. I usually complement the score with regards to these uncompressed jobs, and Ifukube’s work sounds better than ever here, but it’s Godzilla’s roar that really hooked me on this track. There’s a visceral depth to it that I had never caught onto before, in my many viewings of the film, and at times it can be downright chilling. Complementing the audio is a wonderfully translated new set of subtitles that are more complete than those on the BFI edition.

Supplements are stacked, beginning with the full 80 minute American edition of the film, newly transferred in 1080p from a fine-grain 35mm master positive and a 16mm dupe negative, which comes with its own commentary track and trailer (see our review of Godzilla King of the Monsters! for more details). Otherwise there’s a fine commentary with critic David Kalat, as well as a solid slate of interviews, most newly-produced, and a substantial piece on the Daigo Fukuryu Maru. The standout for me is a retrospective interview with late composer Akira Ifukube, recorded in 2000, that runs a whopping 50 minutes. Everything here appears to be rendered in HD (though a couple of pieces are upscaled from SD), and the menu is conveniently accessible disc-wide. Bill Sienkiewicz’s packaging design is earning no end of fan ire, and I can confirm that which has so many in an uproar - that is, in fact, one of the Millennium-series Godzilla designs illustrated on the interior pop-up (itself a bit of an oddity, but kudos for thinking outside the box). Having finally seen it in person I can’t say that I mind – the art has terrific impact, particularly the front cover image, and those for whom the offending bits are an honest distraction will find them easily enough avoided in the Blu-ray edition (you have to fully unfold the two-fold digipak-style interior to see the pop-up, and the disc can be accessed without doing so). A booklet featuring a nice essay by J. Hoberman rounds out the package.

There’s some lost potential here with regards the encode (spreading the content over two discs instead of just one would have readily solved that problem, which is much more pronounced in Godzilla King of the Monsters than it is here), but overall the Criterion Collection’s Godzilla is as strong as fans might have hoped. The film has never looked, sounded, or read better than it does here, and that alone makes this Blu-ray more than worth the price of admission. Recommended!

Continue to Godzilla King of the Monsters!


Godzilla King of the Monsters!

January 28th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , ,

dir. Terry O. Morse
1956 / Jewell Enterprises / Trans World / 80′
written by Al C. Ward
 director of photography Guy Roe
edited by Terry Morse
starring Raymond Burr, Frank Iwanaga and Mikel Conrad
Godzilla King of the Monsters! is now available, along with Godzilla, in a deluxe Blu-ray edition from the Criterion Collection

“This is Tokyo, once a city of six million people. What has happened here was caused by a force which up until a few days ago was entirely beyond the scope of man’s imagination. Tokyo, a smoldering memorial to the unknown – an unknown which at this very moment still prevails and could, at any time, lash out with its terrible destruction anywhere else in the world. There were once many people here who could have told of what they saw. Now, there are only a few.”

Though a phenomenal success in its native Japan, garnering nearly 10 million admissions during release, Godzilla remained relatively unknown abroad – unknown, that is, until the international distribution rights were secured by Jewell Enterprises (otherwise best, and seemingly only, known for the Mara Corday crime picture Girls on the Loose and the shabby cavegirl adventure Untamed Women, one in a long line of shows that repurposed the creature effects from Hal Roach’s One Million B.C.). The firm would would go on to hire Terry O. Morse, an experienced film editor with limited directing experience, to oversee their American adaptation of Godzilla, and cast recognizable talent Raymond Burr, here just before his rise to fame on television’s Perry Mason, as their new star. The resulting film would eventually be seen world wide, even in Japan (where it was retrofitted for ‘Scope projection for a 1957 release), and bestow upon its eponymous attraction a title still familiar to this day – King of the Monsters.

Though drastically restructured for its Stateside adaptation, the meat of Godzilla King of the Monsters!’ narrative remains familiar. Ships are disappearing off the Japanese coast, their survivors recounting stories of boiling seas and brilliant light. Officials are at a loss for why until an expedition to an isolated island near to the disappearances reveals the terrifying truth: Godzilla, a monster right out of prehistory, has been torn from its undersea niche by Pacific H-bomb testing and is making a bee-line for the Japanese capital. Impervious to all known armaments, Godzilla seems unstoppable until a young inventor reveals his own horrifying discovery – a new elemental power with more deadly potential than the atom.

The difference lies in the framing, accomplished through new footage starring Raymond Burr as American press correspondent Steve Martin, who recounts the majority of Godzilla‘s events in flashback. On layover in Tokyo, Martin takes to investigating the shipping disappearances out of a natural journalistic instinct, but soon finds himself witness to the utter destruction of Tokyo.

Though filmed in a matter of days, the footage that serves as Godzilla King of the Monsters!’ backbone is remarkably ambitious for its type, with a good deal of effort made to match locations and even actors (with doubles only seen from behind) so that the new story line fits properly with the old. One can question just how Martin so insinuates himself into some of the film’s lesser drama, like an underlying romantic triangle, but writ large the material works quite well, and no future attempt at the same would ever be so successful. A lot of that success is undoubtedly linked to the casting of Burr, who could deliver a stereo manual with thrilling authority, but the script by seasoned television writer Al C. Ward is no slouch either. Martin’s narration remains sensible and intelligent throughout, even when he’s privy to unlikely plot details, and the few new dramatic scenes – largely between Burr and Frank Iwanaga, playing a Japanese official – are well drawn and plot-driven. It’s much more than could be said of the comparable Half Human, the American adaptation of Ishiro Honda’s second monster feature Ju Jin Yuki Otoko, which has John Carradine ponderously spilling the full details of its foreign action from the comfort of an office chair.

Despite being shorn of some of its original drama (including all overt references to World War II) and re-structured with a distinct focus on action, Morse’s Godzilla King of the Monsters manages to retain much of the feel of the original. Morse shows a notable respect for his material throughout, something lost on the purveyors of many of these fantasy and science fiction imports, remaining true to the Japanese source during the occasional dubbed scenes (much of the dialogue is retained in Japanese) and leaving Akira Ifukube’s phenomenal score untouched. He even gets away with some critical commentary on the H-bomb, courtesy of Dr. Yamane’s dubbed remarks, an intellectual thread dismissed by critics at the time. “We assure you that the quality of the picture and the childishness of the whole idea do not indicate such calculation,” notes a condescending Bosley Crowther, writing for the New York Times in May of 1956. “Godzilla was simply meant to scare people.”

Regardless of contemporary critical opinions Godzilla King of the Monsters! was immensely successful upon release, and helped to pave the way for the colorful kaiju boom of the 1960s, as well as for the original Godzilla‘s more recent rediscovery. Indeed, with memories of the unvarnished Godzilla so fresh in mind I was a little surprised to find that this still works as well as it does, fifty-six years after it first stomped onto domestic screens. That’s not to say that Godzilla King of the Monsters! is a perfect film, not by a long shot, but it’s better than it really should be and a bona fide piece of film history besides, and worthy of the care and attention it has finally received.

disc details:
released January 24, 2012 by the Criterion Collection
disc: dual layer BD-50
video: 1080p | AVC | 1.37:1
audio: 24-bit LPCM 1.0 English
subtitles: English 
supplements: commentary by David Kalat, theatrical trailer, plus the original Godzilla (featuring its own commentary, interviews, documentary subjects and more)
retail price: $39.95
Available now from Amazon.com, and also available on 2-disc DVD

When the Criterion Collection’s Godzilla arrived I actually watched Godzilla King of the Monsters! first, and with some reservations I was duly impressed. Those familiar with the history of the film know that Toho has no elements of their own for the title, and as such no new transfer from quality material has been minted for decades. The 2002 Classic Media DVD and their later 2-disc edition, as well as earlier VHS releases from Simitar, Paramount and others have all been sourced from the same transfer, but change (for the better) is finally afoot courtesy of Criterion, who tracked down privately owned 35mm and 16mm elements from which to mint their new HD transfer.

Sourced from a combination of fine-grain 35mm master positive and 16mm dupe negative at the original aspect ratio of 1.37:1, Criterion’s new 1080p transfer of Godzilla King of the Monsters! represents the best that can be expected of the title at this point in time. There is damage, of course, plenty of which was inherent in the materials from the start, but don’t let that dissuade you. Godzilla King of the Monsters!, like its Japanese counterpart, finally exports a level of detail consistent with its 35mm photography, with excellent contrast to match. Guy Roe’s photography shines in close-up, even if lighting is flat compared to the Japanese footage. It all looks quite good overall, though there are issues worth noting for those wishing to give the transfer a closer look. Godzilla King of the Monsters! suffers most from Criterion’s efforts to stuff everything onto a single BD-50, and its modest 17.6 Mbps AVC encode just isn’t healthy enough to support the finer points of the transfer. Grain artifacts are evident throughout and the image just doesn’t hold up consistently to really close scrutiny, but it’s important not to overstate the issue (this is nowhere close to being an encoding disaster on the order of Horror Express). In motion I must admit that this looks very good, and ultimately I’d rather have the film available, even in a slightly insufficient encode, than not have it at all.

Screenshots were taken as full 1920×1080 resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 95% using the ImageMagick command line tool. Comparison shots were taken from the 2002 Classic Media DVD of Godzilla King of the Monsters! in VLC in .png format, and compressed to .jpg using the same method as above. Frame matches in comparisons are exact. See our review of Godzilla for screenshots from the original version of the film.

More Blu-ray Screenshots:

Audio is again presented in uncompressed 24-bit LPCM, and the limitations of Godzilla King of the Monsters!‘ low budget mix are readily apparent. The track is clear enough (Criterion’s restoration has worked wonders on some of the crackle and damage) but sounds quite flat, and both the sound effects and score lack the dynamism evident in the original Japanese. That said, it also sounds perfectly accurate to the source, and I wouldn’t ask for more. Criterion have even provided optional English subtitles, leaving me no room to complain on that front. Supplements are limited for this cut of the film, unsurprising given that it’s a supplement itself, and include another commentary from critic David Kalat and the original theatrical trailer (featuring some of my favorite film ad phrasing – “A cyclonic cavalcade of electrifying horror!”).

Godzilla King of the Monsters! may not be enough to recommend this Criterion Blu-ray outright, but its inclusion certainly helps, improving upon an already strong release. Like plenty of others I know this is the Godzilla film I grew up with, watching it on TV or renting it from the video store at every opportunity before some enterprising adult finally decided I deserved a copy all my own. Seeing it looking as good as it does here was a real treat, and fans should be very pleased.


The Roots of Heaven

January 23rd, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , ,

dir. John Huston
1958 / 20th Century Fox / 126′
written by Romain Gary and Patrick Leigh-Fremor
from the novel “Les Racines du ciel” by Romain Gary
director of photography Oswald Morris
music by Malcolm Arnold
starring Trevor Howard, Juliette Greco, Errol Flynn, Friedrich Ledeber, Edric Conner, Herbert Lom and Orson Welles
The Roots of Heaven is reviewed here from a screener provided by Twilight Time, and is available on Blu-ray exclusively through ScreenArchives (and ScreenArchives by way of Amazon)

“My duty is to protect all the species, all the living roots that heaven planted into the earth. I’ve been fighting all my life for their preservation. [...] The oceans, forests, the races of animal, mankind are the roots of heaven. Poison heaven at its roots and the tree will wither and die, the stars will go out, and heaven will be destroyed…”

Playing as a sort of thematically-reversed companion piece to Huston’s earlier epic Moby Dick 1958′s The Roots of Heaven is a film perfectly in keeping with the director’s usual disposition towards eccentric characters and the obsessions that drive them. Based upon the bestselling Prix du Goncourt-winning novel by Romain Gary, Roots counters Melville’s Ahab with a man consumed by a passion not to destroy the great things of the Earth, but to save them. While the film’s focus on the issue of environmental conservation puts it in league with cinematic brethren more than a decade yet to come, films like Silent Running, the bizarre No Blade of Grass and so on, an A-list cast of players and a penchant for sprawling CinemaScope adventure elevate it to another class entirely. What’s that, Mr. Flynn – you say the elephants need saving? Where do I sign!?

Roots follows the Sisyphean efforts of expat Englishman Morel (a terrific Trevor Howard), whose imaginings of the free-roaming herds of Africa helped to see him through his stint in a Nazi POW camp, to abolish the wholesale slaughter of elephants by the ivory trade as well as their trapping by the callous providers of zoo specimens and circus attractions. When his early attempts at beating up freelance hunters and pushing petitions across all French Equatorial Africa fall on deaf ears Morel abruptly changes tact, becoming one of film’s first ever eco-terrorists (albeit of a strictly non-lethal variety – “You can never teach a man anything by killing him,” he quite logically notes).

When a bit of violent activism against a boisterous American television personality (Orson Welles) unexpectedly lands Morel the respect of the same his hopeless task is given wings, and oddball sorts looking to lend their support for their own ideological reasons join the fold. Most dangerous among them is wannabe revolutionary leader Waitari, who seeks to use Morel’s elephants as a rallying point for a popular uprising. Others, like a Dutch naturalist looking to save the “roots of heaven” and a learned Baron who refuses to speak until mankind has civilized its violent tendencies, are merely devoted, if a bit strange, while the cheerfully alcoholic Forsythe (Errol Flynn!), who turned informant after being captured during the war, is just looking to do a good deed to ease his conscience. Together they distribute printed materials and crash the party of an aristocratic huntress, achieving popular success among those reading of their exploits abroad while the French colonial government tries, in vain, to derail their operations.

Throughout The Roots of Heaven peripheral players attach various personal justifications to Morel’s impassioned quest for pachyderm rights, a trend that leads to some of the film’s most thought-provoking elements. Forsythe lends the narrative a Cold War timeliness, casting Morel as a man out to better his fellow man, rather than just trying to save elephants, at a time when the threat of “Sputniks” and atomic obliteration are dangling overhead. It’s a thought reverberated frequently in the screenplay (penned by Patrick Leigh-Fremor and later revised by Romain Gary1 himself) as well as in one particularly obvious visual flourish, a close-up of a magazine page declaring “Nuclear scientists predict ‘End of Mankind’ unless Atomic Race Halted”. Then there’s Waitari, who sees parallels between Morel’s quest to free elephants and his fellow Africans’ desire to free themselves from colonial rule.

For his part Morel’s motivations seem quite simple, but wonderfully personal. After the elephants helped him to maintain an internal freedom while imprisoned during the war he simply wishes to return the favor, though on a scale tremendously greater. He finds a kindred spirit in Minna (Juliette Greco), a bar hostess with a past – she found herself forced into prostitution by the Nazis only to later be “liberated” again and again by the Allied forces at war’s end. Minna seems to understand Morel’s humanity more so than his quest, and supports him all the more for that reason, trekking deep into no-man’s land (with Forsythe along for the ride) to deliver much-needed supplies and medicine to his rag-tag gang of activists. She also offers the most concise, and perhaps accurate, variation on his motivations. When berated by reporters as to just why Morel is doing what he’s doing, she glibly responds,  “Did it ever occur to you that he just might be fond of elephants?”

Shot largely on location in Chad (as well as at Studios de Boulogne in France), The Roots of Heaven was, by all accounts, a nightmare to film, with the production constantly hampered by debilitating heat and illness. In retrospect it may be a minor miracle that it was accomplished at all, and as such I find its occasional weaknesses easier to forgive than I might otherwise. Much maligned by critics at the time of release was the film’s chaotic third act, and not without justification. The final half hour or so sees Morel and his company astray in the African wilderness, battling a literal army of ivory hunters and playing the willing subjects to the neurotic advances of an American news photographer (a wonderfully absurd Eddie Albert, who literally crashes into the picture). A climactic elephant stampede featuring some legitimately impressive second unit footage of hundreds of the creatures in the wild provides some nice grounding action (and some of Trevor Howard’s finest moments), but is overshadowed by a couple of grim narrative developments that just feel nasty rather than necessary.

But The Roots of Heaven shuffles right along, to a conclusion that’s concerned more with inspiring hope than really resolving anything. Huston musters some classic Hollywood-style movie magic for the build-up to the emotionally charged finale, the defeated Morel gradually realizing that all’s not lost for mankind as a few, then tens and eventually hundreds of locals gather just to catch a glimpse of the man who’s become a folk legend. However artificial it can feel in context it’s a moment that works as pure cinema, bolstered by Malcolm Arnold’s triumphant themes and beautifully captured by Oswald Morris’ (The Guns of Navarone, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold) DeLuxe ‘Scope photography.

In a way it’s a moment evocative of the film as a whole. Despite its fair share (and more) of issues The Roots of Heaven still works, writ large, and has enough meat on its bones besides to inspire conversation about any number of issues still perfectly relevant today. It’s also a hell of a production, and may be worth seeking out for the cast alone, which is a still-impressive lot of name talent (even if many are relegated to minor roles). Where else might you find Herbert Lom stinking up a bar as a slimy aristocrat, Orson Welles livening up the airwaves, Errol Flynn talking to his pet jumping bean, and Friedrich Ledeber – Queequeg himself – waxing philosophical about creation, all in one film?

1 According to Hedda Hopper (writing Feb. 27, 1958 in the Los Angeles Times – Trevor Howard has Lead in ‘Roots’), Gary completed those revisions in just nine days. Huston would later lament that there hadn’t been more time to spend on the screenplay.

disc details:
released January 17, 2012 by Twilight Time
disc: dual layer BD-50
video: 1080p | 2.35:1
audio: DTS-HD MA 2.0 English
subtitles: none
supplements: isolated score track
retail price: $29.95
available exclusively through ScreenArchives.com (and ScreenArchives by way of Amazon)

If I’m not mistaken this Twilight Time Blu-ray edition marks the domestic home video debut (on any format) of The Roots of Heaven - a cause for minor celebration in and of itself. The latest restoration of the film provided by 20th Century Fox isn’t quite so pristine an affair as the simultaneously released Picnic, a product of Sony’s inimitable preservation department and one of the best classic film transfers I’ve ever seen, but I’m hard pressed to find anything demonstrably wrong with it. If there’s a quibble to be had it’s with the damage that crops up from time to time, mostly minor specs and blemishes but occasionally in the form of noticeable scratching and (very) infrequent negative damage. There’s nothing here that struck me as excessive for a film now fifty-four years old, and while Fox certainly could have put more time, money and effort into sprucing things up the results of their work are still pretty keen.

Twilight Time present The Roots of Heaven in an excellent 1080p transfer at the intended 2.35:1 CinemaScope ratio. Texture is again a key factor here, and a big part of the show’s appeal – this is another of those transfers that feels like film. The well-saturated DeLuxe color is dominated by the subdued hues of the scorching African shooting locations, with abundant shades of brown and tan, but can have some pop when given the chance (interiors, foliage, clothing and so on). Contrast and detail are at healthy, natural levels, and in motion the sum experience of it all is quite impressive. In terms of technical specifications this is nigh identical to Picnic - the two-hour feature is spread comfortably over a dual layer BD-50, with the video robustly encoded in AVC at an average bitrate of 33.2 Mbps. The grain in evidence throughout (heavier in some of the second unit photography and predictably coarser during the infrequent opticals – fades, credits, etc.) is deliciously rendered and free of artifacts, and the image is bereft of any undue digital manipulation.

The Roots of Heaven may not have quite the same wow factor as some of the other CinemaScope epics of its day, but it does have a rough-and-tumble grandeur all its own. Fox have captured the sense of it perfectly with their high definition transfer, and Twilight Time’s ace presentation supports it beautifully. Fans should be very pleased.

Screenshots were taken as full 1920×1080 resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 95% using the ImageMagick command line tool.

Complementing the fine video presentation is a DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo track in the original English. It’s worth noting that The Roots of Heaven was originally a 4-track stereo presentation, something that no doubt benefited the climactic elephant stampede, and while it’s a shame that original mix hasn’t been restored here this track certainly gets the job done. Malcolm Arnold’s tremendous score is perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the lossless encode, displaying some decent dynamic range and depth despite the lack of LFE oomph. Otherwise the vintage sound effects and dialogue come across perfectly clearly, and I’ve got no complaints. Less fortunate is the fact that Fox, again, seem to have snubbed viewers on the subtitle front, as no options have been made available in that regard.

Supplements are, again, light – the only on-disc extra is the isolated Malcolm Arnold score, presented in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. This is another fully functional Blu-ray disc complete with pop-up menu and non-generic chapter stops (sixteen of them). Twilight Time’s packaging is solid work once again, topped off by a booklet of liner notes from the ever-informative Julie Kirgo (here quoting quite a bit from Huston himself). I’ve found myself reaching for the booklets first with these Twilight Time releases as of late, rather than my usual knee-jerk habit of hurling discs towards players in a flurry of shredded cellophane. High praise, I assure you.

The Roots of Heaven is an undeniably peculiar film, an eccentric character drama by way of a sprawling conservation adventure, but it remains suprisingly timely. Indeed, that so many of the issues the film raises still plague us today, from endangered species to pollution to nuclear proliferation, makes it as relevant now as it ever was. Fans should be pleased that Twilight Time have served this Huston curio up right with their new Blu-ray edition, and it gets another easy recommendation from me.


Picnic

January 19th, 2012 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,

dir. Joshua Logan
1955 / Columbia Pictures / 115′
written by Daniel Taradash
from the play by William Inge
 cinematography by James Wong Howe
music by George Duning
starring William Holden, Kim Novak, Susan Strasberg, Betty Field, Cliff Robertson, Arthur O’Connell and Rosalind Russell
Picnic is reviewed here from a screener provided by Twilight Time, and is available on Blu-ray exclusively through ScreenArchives.com

A star-studded big-studio production with oodles of old-Hollywood appeal, Joshua Logan’s Picnic, from Columbia Pictures in 1955, is a terrific film that still holds up more than a half century on. Adapted with some alteration from the award-winning play of the same name, which Logan had also directed on Broadway, Picnic expands well beyond its theatrical origins, resisting any temptation to be just a play-on-screen and becoming an indelible cinematic experience in its own right. Superb Technicolor production design and ace CinemaScope photography from veteran James Wong Howe (Sweet Smell of Success) infuse William Inge’s (by way of screenwriter Daniel Taradash) small-town drama with an unexpectedly epic quality. Logan took his production on location in Kansas to secure the necessary middle-American atmosphere, and his effort pays off wonderfully – there’s a distinct believability to Picnic‘s fictional heartland community, despite all the big-name talent occupied there.

Taking place over the course of a single 24-hour period and dominated by the Labor Day event alluded to in the title, Picnic concerns itself with the passions and jealousies that boil up from under an anonymous small-town veneer when a rugged drifter arrives with the morning freight. Hal Carter (Holden) is that rugged drifter, a boisterous but good-natured bum who conceals a lifetime worth of insecurity beneath an extroverted All-American facade. With nothing to his name but the clothes on his back and a pair of his father’s oversize boots, Hal takes to doing odd-jobs for room and board and soon becomes acquainted with the Owens family, a single mother and daughters Millie (Strasberg) and Madge (Novak) – the latter of whom is attached to the son of the local grain tycoon and Hal’s former fraternity brother, Alan (Robertson).

Hal finds himself invited along for the holiday’s festivities as Millie’s date, and his hearty personality proves well-suited to a day of pie-eating contests, three-legged races and amateur talent shows. Alan, excited to see the return of an old friend, even offers Hal a job shoveling grain in one of his father’s plants. For a moment Hal clings to the hope of starting over, but as the sun sets passions rise and a night of dancing devolves into an explosive public exposé of frustrated desires, anger and jealousy…

Though originated by the underrated Ralph Meeker (Kiss Me Deadly, Paths of Glory) on Broadway, in retrospect it’s difficult to imagine that any actor other than Holden could have played the part of Hal Carter on the big screen. Years of heavy drinking had already taken a toll on Holden (Sunset Boulevard, The Wild Bunch) by the mid-50s, and by the time Picnic rolled around his golden boy image had given way to a more ragged, tortured handsomeness. His appearance alone speaks volumes for the character – an aging college football star steadily slipping past his prime – with his athletic build and potent sex appeal balanced by a human vulnerability that’s very much the actor’s own. It’s a mix that might have worked for the material even if Holden hadn’t had the acting chops to back it up, but it’s good fortune that he did. As his shirtless torso is ogled by Picnic‘s female players (a boundless mix of middle-aged spinster schoolteachers, divorcees, and younger women just entering their sexual prime) Hal’s unease is palpable – whatever his boisterous personality and compensatory bragging might imply he’s clearly not comfortable being the center of attention.

Neither, for that matter, is Madge, the pretty girl in town and Hal’s feminine equivalent. Taking over for the Broadway production’s Janice Rule is the ever capable Kim Novak (Vertigo, Strangers When We Meet), who slips effortlessly into the role of a woman who’s fed up with just being “the pretty one”, but distressed at not having the talent to be much else. Though she lords her physical superiority over her younger sister Millie, a brilliant young Susan Strasberg (Psych Out, Rollercoaster), Madge is actually deeply jealous of her intelligence – and the four year college scholarship that comes with it. It’s an opportunity that a beauty queen working the counter at the five-and-dime could never hope for. Meanwhile Millie is similarly resentful of being forever cast as “the smart one”, a designation that’s inspired a rebellious tomboy streak that’s only further removed her from the attentions of the men she, at age seventeen, has begun to take a keen physical interest in.

And thus we arrive at the crux of the picture. To quote from Julie Kirgo’s liner notes, “Sex [...] seems to be at the root of Picnic‘s every discontent,” and indeed, from the moment Hal’s kindly old landlady insists that he remove his shirt (so that she can wash it, of course!) right through to the end Picnic and its players have sex on the brain. Perhaps I’m just not watching the right big Hollywood movies, but the discussion on the topic heard here struck me as being remarkably frank for a major release in 1955, particularly when Madge’s mother suggests that she should grin and bear an unsatisfying sex life for the sake of achieving greater social status, stopping just short of demanding that her daughter give in to Alan’s desires at that night’s picnic. Other instances are far less disturbing, as when Millie calls her big sis’ a “slut” or tries to sneak a peak at Hal in the raw – “Hey, kid. You better get away from this wall or you’re liable to get educated!” It’s this up-front approach to the sexuality of its characters that, in part, helps keep Picnic from feeling so old-hat. Some things never change.

Given its proclivities I suppose it’s no surprise to that Picnic‘s most memorable moments are also it’s most sexually charged. Hal and Madge’s impromptu riverside courtship dance still sizzles, illuminated by the soft glow of Chinese lanterns and set to a sublime marriage of George Duning’s wistfully romantic theme and a sumptuous arrangement of the ’30s standby “Moonglow” – it’s one of cinema’s indelible romantic moments. What follows is less than enchanting but no less enthralling, as the passions of boozed-up middle-aged high school teacher Rosemary (Rosalind Russel, His Girl Friday) get the better of her and tensions erupt in an ugly public confrontation. Hal finds himself in the literal spotlight, every bit as vulnerable as when he first arrived, but his frenzied flight to somewhere, anywhere, instead lands him by the river with Madge at his side…

Picnic was a popular and critical success upon release, garnering six nominations and two wins (for best color art-and-set design and best film editing) at the 1956 Academy Awards, and it’s easy to see why. Loaded with rich performances (including one from the delightful Arthur O’Connell, of Anatomy of a Murder fame) and beautifully produced besides, this is powerful stuff that hooks you in a way that only classic Hollywood can. Highly recommended!

disc details:
released January 17, 2012 by Twilight Time
disc: dual layer BD-50
video: 1080p | 2.55:1
audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1 / 2.0 English
subtitles: English SDH
supplements: theatrical trailer, isolated score track
retail price: $34.95
available exclusively through ScreenArchives.com

I found myself unexpectedly wowed by Picnic as presented on Blu-ray from Twilight Time, here working once again from an ace restoration by Sony Pictures’ archive team. Indeed, wowed may actually be an understatement. I don’t bring up words like “perfect” or “reference quality” very often in my reviews, but here they certainly apply. Yes, Picnic‘s Blu-ray debut is that good.

Picnic has undergone extensive restoration over the past two decades and the end result is a film that looks practically new, as though it had aged not a day in the 57 years since it was made. Presented in all its vintage Technicolor glory at the intended extra-wide CinemaScope ratio of 2.55:1 and bolstered by a rock-solid encode spread comfortably over a dual layer BD-50, this easily ranks as one of the most satisfying Blu-ray experiences I’ve had to date. Detail (healthy as it is) doesn’t impress so much as the overall texture of the thing, and the image is lush, positively alive with that elusive filmic allure. A fine grain is evident throughout, and all the character of James Wong Howe’s color ‘Scope photography is deliciously preserved. The aesthetic at work here is so strong that you can practically feel it, and it’s easy to forget that you’re watching a film from disc at all.

In terms of drab, technical assessment Picnic is still a tremendous affair. The feature and accompanying audio occupy the better part of a dual layer BD-50, with the AVC video encode trucking along at a high average bitrate of 33.2 Mbps. Picnic is not just free of distracting digital artifacts, but of digital artifacts all together, and the image holds up under the closest of scrutiny. Physical defects have been seen to as well – Sony’s restoration team must have worked overtime picking out all those decades of grit. Even the infrequent opticals (fades, credits) appear virtually pristine, noticeable only by a shift in film density and the degraded source resolution and coarser grain that comes along with it. Projected in a theatrical setting I doubt there’d be anything to give this edition of Picnic away other than just how good it looks, and you can’t ask for much better than that.

Screenshots were taken as full 1920×1080 resolution .png in Totem Movie Player, then compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 95% using the ImageMagick command line tool.

Originally released in 4-track stereo, Picnic arrives on Blu-ray with a new DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround mix that’s as restrained as it is effective. Though punctuated with some louder effects – like the opening bellow of a train horn – this is a mostly sedate affair, and the new surround mix admirably supports the original intentions. As with Twilight Time’s earlier Mysterious Island it’s really the score, backed with some occasional LFE punch, that benefits the most here. Duning’s work sounds terrific throughout, and its more dynamic moments have real impact. Twilight Time have also included a robust DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo option, and the feature is complemented by a set of optional English SDH subtitles.

Supplements are limited, as expected, but Picnic is hardly a barren affair. Fans of the film’s tremendous score will find plenty to love by way of an isolated DTS-HD MA 2.0 music track that appears to encompass pretty much everything, including the various Labor Day picnic “Talent Show” vocals. Otherwise the disc offers only the original theatrical trailer, presented in lovely 1080p AVC with DTS-HD MA 1.0 audio. Those who have found Twilight Time’s previous Blu-rays lacking in functionality will be pleased to find that Picnic comes with both a pop-up menu and a set of 12 non-generic chapter stops (as opposed to the ten minute breaks seen in past efforts). The disc’s packaging even becomes a selling point courtesy of Julie Kirgo, the indispensable print-voice of Twilight Time, who contributes another fine set of liner notes on the production.

There’s very little else to say here. Picnic is a terrific film, one of the best I’ve seen in a while, and its Blu-ray edition from Twilight Time is, for all intents and purposes, flawless. Needless to say, we recommend.


Fright Night

December 13th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , ,
Year: 1985  Company: Columbia Pictures   Runtime: 106′
Director: Tom Holland   Writer: Tom Holland
Music: Brad Fieder   Cinematography: John Kiesser
Cast: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse, Roddy McDowall, Stephen Geoffreys, Jonathan Stark, Dorothy Fielding, Art Evans, Stewart Stern, Nick Savage, Ernie Holmes, Heidi Sorenson, Irina Irvine
Disc company: Twilight Time   Video: 1080p 2.41:1   Audio: DTS HD-MA 5.1 English
Subtitles: English SDH   Disc: BD25 (All Region)   Release Date: 12/13/2011
Fright Night is now officially SOLD OUT
Reviewed from a screener provided by Twilight TIme

“What would you do if you accidentally discovered the house next door was occupied by something not human… something horrifying… something unspeakably evil? No one believes you – not your mom, not your girlfriend, not even the police. It knows that you know. You’ll do anything to protect yourself, but it’ll do anything to protect it’s secret…”

It’s not often that one can rely on a theatrical trailer to give an honest description of the film it represents, but in the case of Tom Holland’s 1985 horror opus Fright Night the advertising makes such excellent work of it that I feel no remorse in letting it do that part of my job for me. With inspirations ranging from Hammer to Hitchcock, a smart script, and a superb cast of players, Fright Night ranks as one of the very best of the ’80s genre revivals and a damn fine film in its own right. In theme it recalls the distinct brand of sci-fi terrors Universal’s B-picture department specialized in some thirty years before (epitomized by 1955′s Tarantula!), in which all manner of fantastic horrors were visited upon small-town America, though in practice it’s a different beast all together. Standing in for the Cold War paranoia of then is a sexual anxiety fitting of Fright Night‘s teen leads, while the usual atom-born menace is lost in favor of one of the oldest fantasy threats of all – the vampire.

Taking place in an anonymous slice of Reagan-era suburbia, Fright Night follows the exploits of veritable every-teen Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale), a high school kid with a beer light in his room, porno mags shoved between his encyclopedias, a doting single mother, and a girlfriend named Amy (Amanda Bearse) who loves him to bits even if she’s horrified to go “all the way“. Charley idolizes his local horror icon Peter Vincent, washed-up host of the late-night schlock marathons from which the film takes its name, stumbles through his trigonometry homework, and oh yeah – he has a vampire living next door who knows Charley knows about him and wants to kill him for his troubles. With no one believing his story, not even Vincent, Charley rightfully fears for his life, but things get even more personal when the suave bloodsucker next door takes a shine to his virginal girlfriend…

It is with that last point that Fright Night, a terrific horror film on its surface merits alone, reveals what’s really on its mind – sex. Some (including Julie Kirgo, who contributes the excellent liner notes for this release) have read homosexual undertones into the vampire Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon as the ultimate in sensual and be-sweatered yuppie menace) and his relationships with troubled young outsider “Evil” Ed (Stephen Geoffreys, who made a career of gay porn in the ’90s) and his live-in familiar Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark), but the most overt of the film’s sexual substance is of the straight variety. Indeed, Holland pushes the subject from the very start, opening with a bit of intercourse that is not to be between Charley and his beloved. The vampire attack witnessed by Charley that starts all the trouble is an overtly sexualized affair and a later encounter between Dandridge and Amy (the spitting image of Jerry’s long-dead lover) is even more so, with Amy cooing in orgasmic bliss as blood trickles down her back. In this context the growing conflict between Charley and the dastardly Dandridge becomes less about survival than about who will collect the sexy spoils, and control the fate of Amy’s freshly-awakened sexuality.

Fright Night may have sex on the brain, but it’s still out for thrills and chills, first and foremost. Holland and company don’t disappoint. Though bolstered by terrific practical effects and creature design from Randall William Cook and Richard Edlund (Oscar-winning alumni of such productions as Ghostbusters and Raiders of the Lost Ark), Fright Night‘s most effective moments remain its simplest, like Charley investigating suspicious noises in the night, Dandridge suddenly appearing in the corner of a darkened bedroom, or “Evil” Ed running into the stalking menace in a misty alleyway. Holland shows a keen understanding for the genre throughout, both in his taught direction (this, his debut as director, remains his best work in that regard) and in the intelligence of his screenwriting, and never neglects the horror of the situation. Much more importantly, he never neglects the characters who make that horror tick.

To that end it’s impossible not to discuss Fright Night without also discussing its cast, perhaps the best in practice of any of the decade’s revival horrors. Roddy McDowall gives the performance of his later career (one he would reprise in Fright Night Part 2 three years later) as down on his luck horror icon Peter Vincent, whose career as cinema’s preeminent vampire killer has collapsed into a low-pay hosting gig on a late night television film show. Initially paid to help cure Charley of his vampire delusions, Vincent soon finds himself the unlikely ally of the child, and forced to summon the courage of a role he’d played so many times before to combat an evil all too real. McDowall balances Vincent’s tremendous charm and ego (his reaction to discovering Charley and his friends don’t want his autograph is priceless) with underlying insecurity and, ultimately, courage, and practically owns the picture in the process.

At the more malignant end of the spectrum lies Chris Sarandon as the devilish Jerry Dandridge, who, along with Kinski, Schreck, Lugosi, and Lee, exists as one of film’s most memorable vampires. Dandridge – who eschews the traditional cape for snazzy cable knit sweaters and has a taste for fresh fruit (fruit bat?) just as strong as his taste for the supple necks of prostitutes – is every bit a product of the decade in which the film was made, an upper crust yuppie bloodsucker with a penchant for remodeling homes and antiquing. He keeps up with the pop music scene, looks perfectly adept in the neon haze of a discotheque, and keeps a dark, wry sense of humor about himself that makes him seem all the more dangerous (“What’s the matter Charley? Afraid I’d never come over without being invited first?”). But Dandridge is more than just yuppie trappings and a handsome smirk, whistling “Strangers in the Night” as he stalks his prey. Sarandon’s ace performance lends the character an attractive outsider mystique and a feral magnetism that’s difficult to ignore. He’s a perfect villain, made all the more effective by just how tempting he makes the evil he represents appear.

Like Dandridge, Fright Night itself is very much a product of its time, though it’s no less successful a picture today for the polka dotted linoleum on its floors or the Ian Hunter on its soundtrack. It remains the best film of writer and director Tom Holland’s career (is that really The Langoliers I see in your filmography? Oy.), and easily makes my short list for most satisfying genre efforts of the ’80s. Among its often lamentable brethren Fright Night manages to be something different, something special, and for those keen on horror it’s an absolute must-see.

Fright Night proved a surprise success upon its release, becoming the second highest grossing horror film of 1985 (behind A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge), but times have clearly changed. Though still a popular cult item Fright Night has become just another among many victims of waning big-studio confidence in deeper library titles, however successful they may have been initially, and the lackluster returns of the recent remake (also to be released on Blu-ray today) have sealed its fate as far as owners Columbia / Sony are concerned. With no interest on the part of the owners to release the film to Blu-ray themselves, niche label Twilight Time have stepped in to take up their slack. While many may find the arrangement less than ideal, with Fright Night released as a limited edition of 3000 at a price point higher than might be expected of a wider issue, you’ll hear no complaints from me. If this is the future of library titles on Blu-ray then I’m in full support of it, and those wishing to see more marginal big-studio properties available on the format would do well to do the same.

But what of the disc, eh? Fright Night arrives on Blu-ray with an honest 1080p transfer in the original Panavision ratio that serves the intended aesthetics of its modest production quite dutifully. From the neon-drenched interiors of the discotheque and a beer-light illuminated teenage bedroom to the starker, more natural exteriors, the latest Sony-produced master of the title looks very good throughout. Damage is minimal, limited to some baked-in white marks and a bit of minor dust and debris, and while the level of detail can vary greatly from scene to scene the end results never appear unfaithful to the original photography. There’s a lovely layer of natural grain in evidence throughout, and though the modest encode (single layer AVC at an average video bitrate of 21.5 Mbps) results in some (very) minor artifacts there’s nothing here that’s so dramatic as to distract from viewing. This is another strong showing from Twilight Time, and fans of Fright Night should be very pleased.

Blu-ray screenshots were taken as uncompressed .png at full resolution in Totem Movie Player, and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 95% using the ImageMagick command line tool.

Originally a Dolby Stereo show, Fright Night‘s visuals are served well by a new lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix. Those expecting directional effects to be bouncing about like ping-pong balls will be out of luck – what you get is occasional LFE umph and some minor separation, but a track that remains faithful to the overall aesthetics of the original recording. The moody synth score, dialogue and effects all sounded excellent to these ears, and appropriately vintage for a film now in its 26th year. I dig it. The most robust addition to the contractually-limited supplemental package (which otherwise includes only a pair of theatrical trailers, both in HD with lossless audio) is the isolated Brad Fieder score in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo which, though lacking the notable pop songs included in the film (I assume they were omitted due to the lofty expense of licensing them), sounds quite robust. Twilight Time leave very little to complain about here, and even include a set of optional English SDH subtitles in the mix.

In the short period Twilight Time have been active in the Blu-ray market expectations have already grown quite high for them, and Fright Night does not disappoint. Another excellent set of liner notes (remember when these were included with practically everything?) from Julie Kirgo round out the package, and even include the URL for a pair of Fright Night ’pirate’ audio commentaries (available from Icons of Fright) featuring much of the cast and crew. Awesome stuff! Whatever your thoughts on these limited edition niche releases, the bottom line is that you won’t find Fright Night looking or sounding better than it does here, and isn’t that what really matters? Fans and genre junkies are heartily encouraged to indulge.

in conclusion
Film: Excellent  Video: Excellent –  Audio: Excellent
Supplements: Isolated Brad Fieder score track. two theatrical trailers in HD, liner notes by Julie Kirgo.
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case with booklet.
Fright Night is now officially SOLD OUT

Rapture

December 12th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Year: 1965  Company: 20th Century Fox / Panoramic Productions   Runtime: 104′
Director: John Guillermin   Writers: Ennio Flaiano, Stanley Mann, Phyllis Hastings
Music: Georges Delerue   Cinematography: Marcel Grignon
Cast: Patricia Gozzi, Dean Stockwell, Melvyn Douglas, Gunnel Lindblom
Disc company: Twilight Time   Video: 1080p 2.35:1   Audio: DTS HD-MA 1.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: BD25 (All Region)   Release Date: 12/13/2011
Rapture is available for purchase exclusively through ScreenArchives.com
Reviewed from a screener provided by Twilight TIme.

Young Agnes, an adolescent malcontent struggling to reconcile her childish nature with her budding desires, lives in isolation in her widowed father’s modest seaside estate. One day, after her father (himself obsessed with ruminations on “compassionate justice”) dashes her favorite doll on the coastal rocks in a fit of misplaced rage (“You’re not a child!” he screams), Agnes decides to construct a new companion for herself – a scarecrow made from one of her father’s old suits. A few days later Agnes, her father and their housekeeper witness the violent escape of a jailed man. When one stormy night that same man arrives in the family shed, having stolen the clothes from the scarecrow to hide himself from the authorities, Agnes becomes convinced that her manufactured companion has come to life.

The stranger-on-the-run is welcomed into the presumed safety of the home by the father, the housekeeper, and especially Agnes, though each for very different reasons. The promiscuous housekeeper takes him on as a lover, while the father uses him as a testing ground for his legal theories. Agnes, meanwhile, remains convinced that he is hers alone, and after throwing off his plans for escape (both from the police and the home) develops a more intimate relationship with him.

It’s rare anymore that I see a film so uniquely its own that it leaves me with no starting point from which to discuss it, but such a film is Rapture, director John Guillermin’s bleak yet sumptuous adaptation of Phyllis Hastings’ novel Rapture in my Rags. Transposed from the novel’s English countryside to the Brittany Coast to sate 20th Century Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck’s taste for young French talent Patricia Gozzi, who would soon disappear from the film business all together, and produced by a largely French crew with American actors Melvyn Douglas and Dean Stockwell and Swede Gunnel Lindblom filling out the leading roles, Rapture is a film of strange international pedigree. That it was directed by a man (fittingly an Englishman of French lineage) best known for his contributions to the super-productions of mega-producers Irwin Allen (The Towering Inferno) and Dino De Laurentiis (King Kong and the much maligned King Kong Lives) only makes it stranger still.

Of course it’s not just the cultural diversity of the production that makes this film so unique, as good an initial indicator of such as that might be, but its substance and artifice as well. Ostensibly a coming-of-age drama about a confused young woman and the father whose misplaced anger threatens to obliterate their tenuous family ties, but with darkly fantastic overtones, a penchant for forbidden romance and art-house panache to spare, Rapture never comes across as being the usual cinema fare. Indeed, from the opening shots of a giggling bride on the way to her wedding ceremony to the final closing fade, I’m still not at all sure what to make of it, though it’s certainly a film I’ll never forget.

Portrayed magnificently by Patricia Gozzi, who was just fifteen at the time, Rapture‘s Agnes is the very embodiment of bewildered adolescence, and struggles to find herself under the domineering auspices of a father who at once demands she behave as a woman while treating her as though she were a child. Having spent most of her life out of school and in social isolation, with the threat of a nearby loony-bin forever looming, Agnes is predictably unprepared for the outside world. Her brief encounters with modern France, both during an early wedding and a later elopement, are claustrophobic, nightmarish affairs, with the trappings of metropolitan life (buzzing neon, busy streets, and dense, impenetrable crowds) skewed into horrific sights and sounds by her maladjusted perspective. By contrast her life on the depopulated French coast is appropriately rapturous, dysfunctional family dynamics aside, and spent splashing in the waves and reaching out for the greater freedom of the gulls fluttering above. Still the specter of her father (a troubled turn by the veteran Melvyn Douglas) lurks, omnipresent, waiting to lash out at her for any petty grievance.

With a torrent of lightning and rain (and a bit of overt Christian symbolism) the escaped prisoner Joseph (an enigmatic Dean Stockwell, who plays his cards close) arrives, signalling change for the conflicted family whether it’s prepared for it or not. Though he compells the father to contemplate that which torments him, and the roots of his revulsion for his youngest daughter, it is with Agnes herself that the change becomes most obvious – and disquieting. Joseph’s tryst with the housekeeper (Gunnel Lindblom in a hefty supporting role) inspires a fit of jealous rage in the teenager, who takes to her presumed competition with a shovel in hand and a homicidal gleam in her eye. The housekeeper survives, but wastes no time in seeing herself out of her job, and it is with her exit that things take a turn for the uncomfortable.

Agnes becomes romantically entangled with Joseph, a man twice her age (literally in the case of Stockwell), and takes up the outward trappings of womanhood (curling her hair, and dressing up and so on). While the sexual aspect of the relationship, however tastefully restrained in its conveyance, is undeniably disturbing, I found Agnes’ sudden transformation into a homemaker to be even more so. Though clearly unprepared for such a development, Agnes runs away with Joseph to an oppressive one-room downtown hovel in which she dutifully takes up her domestic responsibilities. It’s a depressing development made none the less so by its transience, and as Joseph piles more and more relationship burdens on Agnes (like handling the couple’s finances) it becomes quite horrifying. Guillermin and director of photography Marcel Grignon capture the experience with uncomfortable, inorganic angles and aggressive montage that makes us long for the wide-open seclusion of the seaside every bit as much as Agnes, even though we know as well as her that, after all that’s transpired, things can never be the same as before.

Meticulously photographed in black and white CinemaScope and related in an intense, personal manner, Rapture is about as far removed from Guillermin’s big-money spectacles as I’d imagine possible. It also speaks more for the director’s not inconsiderable talents than any of his better known films. Rapture practically oozes art-house appeal, and with that in mind it’s difficult for me to believe that the film, largely ignored upon its initial release, hasn’t garnered more of a reputation in the 46 years since. Far be it from me to say whether it’s great film making or not – coming-of-age dramas, however strange, aren’t exactly my area of expertise, and I’m still scratching my head over this one – but it’s certainly something different, and a beautiful something at that. Given the present era of over-hyped mediocrity that’s more than enough for me.

The second of Twilight Time’s limited edition Blu-ray series to be culled from the archives of 20th Century Fox, Rapture has finally received the quality home video presentation that has so long eluded it. Before I get into the technical details it’s worth noting that Rapture, like the rest of the Twilight Time catalogue, has been released as a limited pressing of 3000 and is available for purchase exclusively through ScreenArchives.com.

Once again I’m left with very little room to complain. Rapture makes its high definition debut in a glorious 1080p transfer at the original CinemaScope aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and though only single layered I can’t say that things suffer much for it. Marcel Grignon’s ace photography is wonderfully replicated here, with all its lush 35mm texture blessedly intact. There’s a wide variety of imagery to take in, from the most expansive of landscapes to the closest of faces and everything in between, and all of it is delivered in that true-to-film fashion I crave. Yes, there is some damage, unobtrusive printed white marks and a bit of dirt here and there, and even a smattering of very minor encoding artifacts, there’s a lot of grain for an encoder to digest here and with some rare exception the AVC video encode at 24.5 Mbps average handles it quite well, but all things considered this disc looks very, very good. I’ll let the screenshots do the rest of the talking for this one. Bravo, Twilight Time!

Blu-ray screenshots were taken as uncompressed .png at full resolution in Totem Movie Player, and compressed to .jpg at a quality setting of 95% using the ImageMagick command line tool.

Audio for the Rapture is presented in English via a simple and effective DTS-HD MA 1.0 track that perfectly replicates the film’s original monophonic recording. The sound design for Rapture is as memorable as the imagery in my mind, with crescendos in sound effects – not music – building up to its most impacting moments. Georges Delerue’s rich, oddly romantic score sounds quite good throughout, given the limitations of the original mix, but the accompanying isolated DTS-HD MA 2.0 score track – the disc’s sole supplement – is a revelation. If there’s a complaint to be made then its with Rapture‘s lack of a subtitle track, SDH or otherwise. Both Mysterious Island and Fright Night (review coming soon, I promise!) have subtitles, and I can only assume that none were provided by 20th Century Fox for this release.

Rapture is the sort of release that really drives home the importance of independent labels like Twilight Time, which are finally allowing some of the real surprises of the big studio libraries to see the light of day on home video. This Blu-ray is another quality package from the company, with a fine transfer, a great isolated score, and a superb set of liner notes from Julie Kirgo (some perspective on Rapture is really a must, and Kirgo does an admirable job providing it), and another easy endorsement from me.

in conclusion
Film: One of a kind  Video: Very Good +  Audio: Excellent
Supplements: Isolated Georges Delerue score track
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case with booklet of liner notes.
Rapture is available for purchase exclusively through ScreenArchives.com

Mysterious Island

November 15th, 2011 | article by | 2 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Year: 1961  Company: Columbia Pictures   Runtime: 101′
Director: Cy Endfield   Writers: John Prebble, Daniel B. Ullman, Crane Wilbur
Music: Bernard Herrmann   Cinematography: Wilkie Cooper
Cast: Michael Craig, Joan Greenwood, Michael Callan, Gary Merrill,
Herbert Lom, Beth Rogan, Percy Herbert, Dan Jackson
Disc company: Twilight Time   Video: 1080p 1.66:1   Audio: DTS HD-MA 5.1 and 1.0 English
Subtitles: English SDH   Disc: BD50 (All Region)   Release Date: 11/08/2011
Mysterious Island is available for purchase exclusively through ScreenArchives.com
The Wtf-Film Guide to Essential Blu-ray is the record of one man’s eclectic journey to uncover the very best of the weird and wonderful that Blu-ray has to offer. The special effects of Ray Harryhausen had to make it onto our list sooner or later, and we’re pleased as punch that it’s the former.

1961′s Mysterious Island begins with one of the great scenes of fantasy-adventure cinema. Imprisoned by Confederate forces in the midst of the Siege of Richmond near the end of the Civil War, Union Captain Cyrus Harding and his underlings, freed slave Corporal Neb and the cowardly Herbert Brown, decide to make a daring escape by the unlikely means of an observation balloon. With Union war correspondent Gideon Spillet and Confederate operator Pencroft in tow the men escape their cell and commandeer the balloon, only to launch themselves into the midst of ‘the greatest storm in American history’. Aloft for days and trapped on a steady course Westward, the escapees are savaged by weather and circumstance until the balloon itself finally gives way, ripping under the pressure of gale-force winds and plunging its crew towards the tumultuous Pacific and a mysterious, uncharted speck of land.

Buoyed by the descending bass and percussive clash of one of Bernard Herrmann’s finest fantasy scores, I remember thinking that this sequence was the most suspenseful, thrilling thing I had ever seen when I first chanced upon the film as a young child. The idea of these men, casting themselves out into the elements toward some unknown, foreboding locale, was harrowing stuff, and as their epic adventure unfolded I was filled with dread excitement. As they dangled from the balloon’s rigging over a seething sea I wondered with fatal curiosity, how would they survive, and who among them? And what if they did make it to that strange island. What then?

Of course Captain Harding and his rag-tag band of castaways do make it to the island, and what follows is a potent mix of survival adventure, science fiction and fantasy that thrills me just as much today as it ever has. Mysterious Island may follow the Vernian adventure on which it is based with only a middling accuracy, condensing and consolidating its events in an economical fashion and taking some pretty judicious liberties with it along the way, but it’s tough to complain when such diversions include the lovely Beth Rogan and her abbreviated lace-up goatskin dress (the height of Victorian fashion, I’m told). Oddly enough it’s one of the film’s many deviations from source that has gone on to make the film so beloved as it is – a sci-fi plot thread that could almost be of Bert I. Gordon’s invention, but which is elevated to the level of pulp genius under the creative auspices of effects wizard Ray Harryhausen – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Though with some obvious variation, Mysterious Island actually follows the basic circumstances of Verne’s story quite faithfully. Captain Harding and his fellows find themselves castaways on an uninhabited volcanic island, and are forced to allay those philosophical differences that plagued them in the civilized world so that they might join forces to survive. Through human ingenuity the five manage to scrounge together a rather satisfying existence, feasting on the island’s often bizarre fauna and taking up permanent residence in a comfortable cliff-side cave they call ‘Granite House’. Along the way they are aided by unlikely coincidences, like the discovery of a trunk loaded with supplies – tools, weapons, and even a copy of The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. After a brief tangle with cutthroat pirates ends in the inexplicable destruction of the pirate vessel the source of the coincidences is revealed. The island is the home port of none other than Captain Nemo, who was thought lost in a maelstrom some years before. With his submarine Nautilus inoperable Nemo was forced to continue his mission for global peace from the confines of the island and its surrounding waters, stalling his terrorist action against the world’s military fleets in favor of eradicating of the root causes of human strife through scientific invention.

Though ostensibly escapist adventure, there are some underlying themes in Mysterious Island that, though largely ignored today, must have held broad appeal in a time of Cold War and civil rights unrest. Nary half a decade after Rosa Parks and Brown v. Board of Education Mysterious Island prominently features an African American (a freed slave fighting for the Union, no less) with the same rights and privileges as his white peers – a fixture of Verne’s novel granted a newfound timeliness in the film adaptation. Indeed, the screenplay by John Prebble, Daniel B. Ullman and Crane Wilbur also simplifies the politics of the Civil War, purposefully conflating its noble struggle to free men with the contemporary Civil Rights Movement. In the context of an ongoing Cold War, Mysterious Island offers the hope of reconciliation among political ideologies by virtue of the relationship between Captain Harding and Confederate soldier Pencroft, each of whom begin the film as a prisoner of the other side only to set aside their philosophical differences for a greater good. So, too, does the character of Nemo offer hope, in converting a destructive weapon (the submarine Nautilus) into a tool for peace – if contemporary science could create the atomic and hydrogen bombs that threatened the world, then perhaps it had the power to save the world from them as well.

All that said, Mysterious Island is still ostensibly an escapist adventure with overtones of fantasy and science fiction, and that which lends it thematic weight also serves as a catalyst for some of its most exciting moments. Captain Nemo’s efforts to eradicate human suffering through science have left his island teeming with an assortment of gigantic flora and fauna, from harmless overgrown plants and oysters to the giant crabs, honeybees and flightless birds that threaten the existence of Harding and his castaways. It’s a plot thread concocted purely to take advantage of the talents of effects artisan Harryhausen, who had pretty perfected his stop motion process (now touted as Dynamation) with the color spectacle The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. By 1961 Harryhausen was at the top of his game, precisely blending live-action back and foreground plates with his meticulously crafted stop motion armatures to create spectacular special effects scenes that even the more obscenely budgeted epics of the time couldn’t match.

In Mysterious Island his work feels like a response to the big bug pictures that had been so popular in the years just prior, with Harryhausen answering the poor travelling matte grasshoppers of Beginning of the End and the monolithic composited arachnid of Tarantula! with a few gigantic creepy crawlies of his own. In the film’s most famous sequence, stills of which populate no end of children’s monster books, Harding and his crew are forced to do battle with an enormous land crab – a scene which concludes with the castaways dining on the beast after it falls into a hot spring. Truer to the giant bug pedigree are a host of car-sized honeybees, which trap young heartthrob Michael Callan and hottie Beth Rogan in the mother of all honeycombs. Later on Harryhausen takes a moment to reference both Verne’s giant squid and his own past work, as a walk on the sea floor leads into a life-and-death struggle with a colossal chambered nautilus. More than just an homage to the sensational squid attack from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, itself entering film history in Disney’s spectacular adaptation, the creature design closely resembles that of one of Harryhausen’s own creations – the city-smashing cepholapod of 1955′s It Came From Beneath the Sea.

Aside from Harryhausen’s considerable talents, Mysterious Island also serves as a colorful showcase for all manner of practical visual effects techniques. Filmed partly on gorgeous coastal Spanish locations and partly on the sound stages of England’s Shepperton Studios, Mysterious Island bridges the considerable gaps between A and B and expands its fictional locale with exceptional matte paintings, composite and miniature work. Indeed, the epic balloon escape that so thrilled me as a child is accomplished through a succession of opticals and process shots, the transparency of which do nothing to impede the experience. With modern expectations in mind there is the temptation to label such vintage effects methods as crude or unrealistic, but as I grow older I become more acutely aware of just how overrated realism is in cinema – especially with regards to such overtly fictional stuff as this. While there’s a concerted effort by the technicians to ensure that the various mattes and miniatures match to the scale sets and locations the effects themselves are more suggestive than literal, the cinematic equivalent of the illustrated plates published in the stories and novels that came before. As such I’d suggest that those tempted to question the methods by which human conflicts with gigantic arthropods and impossible transcontinental balloon trips are related are perhaps missing the point of the experience, and would do well to occupy their time elsewhere.

For my money Mysterious Island is fantastic, beautiful stuff, and a pitch-perfect example of the lost art of fantasy filmmaking as it once was. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a full fifty years since it originally premiered, but the taught direction of Cy Endfield (Sands of the Kalahari, Zulu) and a screenplay that’s both wittier and more substantial than I remember have certainly helped it to age more gracefully than it might have otherwise. Much as the novel from which it was (freely) adapted has become a classic of literature, Mysterious Island deserves its place as classic of cinema escapism. For those keen on the rousing genre excursions of old it’s an absolute must-see.

Just in time to celebrate the film’s fiftieth anniversary, Mysterious Island makes its Blu-ray debut courtesy of independent collector’s label Twilight Time (in conjunction with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) in a limited run of only 3000. This arrangement won’t be to everyone’s taste, particularly in that it means a high retail price point, a contractually limited slate of extras, and venue exclusivity (it can only be officially had through Screen Archives Entertainment), but the plain fact of that matter is that licensor Sony, after the marginal enthusiasm their previous Harryhausen Blu-rays inspired, had no great interest in releasing this film to Blu-ray themselves. While I’m sure their agreement leaves Sony open to releasing the film in the future, if they should so desire, those wanting Mysterious Island on Blu-ray now (and I’m among them) will find this Twilight Time release to be their only option. Fortunately it’s a good one!

There are those who may worry that Twilight Time have been left to their own devices with regards to the transfers they’re working from, but that’s happily not the case. They’ve instead been granted access to the latest studio masters of the titles they’ve licensed. In the case of Mysterious Island that means a comprehensive 50th anniversary restoration courtesy of Sony’s second-to-none archive restoration team. There is always talk of restorations bringing films back to their original luster, but effort here really goes beyond the call of duty. I can state unequivocally that Mysterious Island has never looked so good as it does on this disc, ever, and that fans of these colorful Harryhausen effects vehicles are in for a downright exhilarating experience.

Past editions of Mysterious Island have all suffered from a variety of damage, from flicker and general aging of the elements to the specks, flecks, dust and scratches that were baked right into the film’s extensive optical printing effects from the start. I know my comparison below is not ideal – I’m forced to rely on a compressed archival copy of the 2002 DVD, having seemingly lost my original – but it does reveal the obsessive extent to which the restorers have gone to remedy the issue of print damage. The third comparison set shows one of the film’s many optical effects, one which, like the rest, was possessed of a good deal of blemishes and imperfections from the start. You’ll note that in the new restoration practically every hint of damage has been successfully removed. Such is the case even with the classic Dynamation stop motion sequences, as evidenced by the final comparison set. Specks and blemishes present in the original back projection and rephotographed during the Dynamation process have been carefully removed, leaving the footage looking even crisper and cleaner than it was when originally produced. That isn’t to say that there’s absolutely no damage to be found in this new restoration of Mysterious Island, which does present with some minor white speckling at times, but the improvements in this regard are striking.

More impressive still is the attention paid to the film’s rich and at times eccentric color design, from the white sands and pure blue skies of the coastal Spanish locations to the fantastical studio interiors, punctuated with unreal shades of yellow, red, blue and green. Whether the result of the telecine process or of fading of the elements themselves, the 2002 DVD edition had some color shifting that resulted in an overly yellow appearance. Comparison set two shows perhaps the most obvious and widest breadth of improvement. Everything from Spillet’s light white undershirt to background rock, foliage, and water has lost its yellow tinge, resulting in purer shades of white, grey, green, and so on, while flesh tones have shifted from the overly orange hues of the DVD into more natural territory. Contrast is similarly improved, with what had before been a comparatively flat image alive with rich, deep blacks and more pronounced highlights (see the third comparison set again). The sum experience of the color restoration here is utterly breathtaking, with ace cinematographer Wilkie Cooper’s dynamic photography more vividly represented than ever. Other aspects of the restoration improve in a manner more typical to these comparisons between standard and high definition. Detail takes a healthy bump upwards, bolstered by the healthier contrast and increased resolution, and the at times considerable grain inherent to the original production is blessedly retained.

Beyond the source restoration, Twilight Time’s Blu-ray is a robust technical specimen as well. The 1.66:1 1080p image is spread comfortably over a dual layer BD50, with the feature plus audio taking up more than 30 GB of space on disc. The image is AVC-encoded with a strong average bitrate of 33.2 Mbps, and the encode frequently lazes about in the upper 30s. You’ll have to look long and hard to find any technical deficiencies in the image, as Twilight Time have ensured that the film receives a very strong presentation. Thanks to its meticulous restoration and beefy technical specs Mysterious Island may well be the strongest a Harryhausen film has appeared yet on Blu-ray.

HD screenshots were captured as .png at full resolution in MPlayer and compressed to .jpg using the ImageMagick command line tool at a quality setting of 95%. The three DVD screenshots are sourced from my compressed archive copy of Columbia Tristar’s DVD from 2002 (my original disc is somehow missing in action – sorry!), and were captured in .png format in VLC, upconverted to 1920×1080 and saved as .png in GIMP, then compressed to .jpg using the same method as for the HD screenshots.
DVD | Blu-ray

More Blu-ray Screenshots:

While it may be the best looking, Mysterious Island is inarguably the best sounding of the Harryhausen films currently available on the format. The primary track for the feature is a new, restored 5.1 surround mix presented in lossless DTS-HD MA at an average bitrate of around 3 and half Mbps. I’m generally not much a fan of these 5.1 remixes, but this track is a stunner, with more breadth and depth of auditory potential than anything that’s come before – none of that even comes close! The foley work remains consistent with the original monophonic recording, never sounding out of place for a film of this vintage, and all of the dialogue and effects come across crisply and cleanly. The biggest beneficiary of the bump to 5.1 DTS-HD MA, however, is Bernard Herrmann’s tremendous score – for my money the best of the four he composed for Charles H. Schneer and Ray Harryhausen. The opening theme, repeated throughout with some variation, blew my mind when I first saw Mysterious Island as a child, and no other viewing of the film has touched that nostalgic experience until now. As Herrmann’s score clashed forth over the classic Columbia logo I felt a chill run down my spine – terrific stuff. With purists in mind Twilight Time have also preserved the originally monophonic recording courtesy a lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0 track. Though it obviously loses the LFE of its 5.1 counterpart, which is particularly notable in the music department, this restored track still sounds very good, and is well in advance of the 2002 DVD. Whether you’re fond of original recordings or surround remixes, Twilight Time has you covered. They’ve even included a set of optional English SDH subtitles, leaving me no room to complain.

As noted earlier, Twilight Time are contractually obligated with regards to the supplements they can provide, so Mysterious Island is predictably limited in that department. In terms of complementing video the disc presents both the original theatrical trailer and an imaginatively bizarre 1-minute television spot, each of which are presented in native 1080p AVC encodes (at 1.66:1 and pillarboxed 4:3 respectively) with lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0 audio. The only other extra is a big one, an isolated original score track (in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo!) that accompanies the feature. There’s an interesting mix here, with some cues accompanied by sound effects (a la the old Laserdisc edition) and others not. For its part the music here sounds terrific, and those who don’t already own the soundtrack will find much to love here. My one complaint is that the isolated score only appears to be accessible from the disc’s main menu (there is no pop-up that I could find), and plays as a separate timeline from which the audio for the film is likewise inaccessible. Small potatoes, but some may find it bothersome. The package is accompanied by a lovely booklet of film stills and liner notes (all too rare a thing these days) by Julie Kirgo, and my order arrived with a Mysterious Island refrigerator magnet (which replicates the attractive cover art for this release) as well.

There has been some grumbling about the rise of short run ’boutique’ labels like Twilight Time and Olive Films in the home video market, much of it arising from the perceived high price of their releases. In my mind that’s just the cost of doing this sort of business, and if Warner can charge $20 a pop for burned DVD-R of their own catalogue titles then $34.95 for an independently produced limited run Blu-ray of a big-studio title like Mysterious Island seems fair enough. I’ve put my money where my mouth is in this case, happily shelling out the nearly $40 it cost to put a copy on my shelf even though I knew I had a screener en route. It’s a matter of principle. I want to support those companies that release the movies I love, especially when they’re doing it well, and so long as Twilight Time continues to release them so proficiently as they have here I’ll have their back all the way. Now, if they can just find their way to The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and The First Men in the Moon…

in conclusion
Film: Excellent  Video: Excellent  Audio: Excellent
Supplements: Isolated Bernard Herrmann score track, Theatrical Trailer, Television Spot
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case with booklet of liner notes.
Mysterious Island is available for purchase exclusively through ScreenArchives.com

Horror Express

November 5th, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
a.k.a. Panico en el Transiberiano
Year: 1972  Company: Benmar Productions / Granada Films   Runtime: 87′
Director: Eugenio Martin   Writers: Arnaud d’Usseau, Julian Zimet   Music: John Cacavas
Cast: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Alberto de Mendoza, Silvia Tortosa, Julio Pena, Angel del Pozo, Telly Savalas, Helga Line, Alice Reinhart, Jose Jaspe, George Rigaud, Victor Israel, Faith Clift, Juan Olaguival
Disc company: Severin Films   Video: 1080p / 480p 1.66:1   Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 (English, Spanish)
Subtitles: None   Disc: BD25 / DVD9   Release Date: 11/29/2011
Reviewed from a screener provided by Severin Films (thanks Nicole!).
Available for purchase through Amazon.com

The last of a three picture deal between American producer Philip Yordan (Crack in the World, 55 Days in Peking) and Spanish director Eugenio Martin (The Ugly Ones), and conceived largely as a means of making use of the expensive passenger train sets devised for the epic Poncho Villa, 1972′s Horror Express is a compact and economical slice of Euro-cult mayhem that benefits from the recycled illusion of production value and a magnificent headline cast. The inimitable duo of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing join forces once more as a pair of catty, big-headed men of science who must contend with a supernatural sci-fi menace on the Trans-Siberian Express.

The story, penned by the men behind the devilish British actioner Psychomania, follows professor Sir Alexander Saxton’s (Lee) discovery of a 2 million year old ape-man frozen in the chilly north of Manchuria. Determined to provide the remains as proof-positive of the theory of evolution, Saxton loads the crated beast onto the next train towards Europe – a train populated not only with hundreds of disposable personalities, but Saxton’s professional rival Doctor Wells (Cushing) as well.  Soon after the train departs on its long snowbound journey the baggage man is found dead, his eyes a boiled to a ghastly white. Saxton’s empty crate provides ample evidence for the cause – his 2 million year old specimen was not so dead as had been presumed, and had awakened from its frosty slumbers and murdered the baggage man. With the creature at large a concerted, but quiet, effort to find and detain it is mounted, but it soon becomes obvious that there’s more to the monster than meets the eye.

Once the beast is tracked down and killed things take a turn for the decidedly silly. An impromptu dining room investigation of its eye fluid reveals a host of unlikely images suspended there – images of our planet’s biological past, including a brontosaurus and pterodactyl, and a mysterious view of Earth from space. Further autopsies on the creature’s victims, whose brains appear to have been scrubbed clean of all knowledge, leads to an astounding conclusion: The ape-man discovered by Saxton was not the monster, but merely a shell for some malignant alien force capable not only of absorbing the intelligence of others but of possessing their bodies as well.  With the truth of the matter revealed doctors Saxton and Wells are faced with a terrifying fact – not only is the extraterrestrial menace  quite comfortably alive, but it’s hiding in the guise of one of the Trans-Siberian’s passengers!


This film’s got stars, and dinosaurs, in its eyes…

Playing a bit like They Came From Beyond Space by way of Who Goes There by way of Murder on the Orient Express, Horror Express is an uneven genre pastiche that never really capitalizes on its own capacity for thrills, chills, mystery and paranoia. Rather than focus on the mechanics of the genre, writers d’Usseau and Zimet instead lead viewers on a string of oddball diversions that include a bit of international espionage and the ravings of a mad monk in the mold of Rasputin (coincidentally, a part played by star Christopher Lee in an earlier Hammer production). None of it ever amounts to much, but it does pass the time between the various monster attacks and ludicrous plot developments. To be fair, d’Usseau, Zimet, and indeed the whole cast and crew, seem perfectly aware of the absurd nature of the project, and an underlying sense of good humor on the part of all involved goes a long way towards keeping Horror Express from feeling so tired, pointless, and repetitive as it easily might have.

Indeed, stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing look to have had a wonderful time with the alternately strange and hilarious material, particularly when it offers them an opportunity to needle one another. The two also bring a wealth of genuine thespian ability to the production, largely occupied with overdubbed Spanish performers otherwise, and each is possessed of that unique talent for making even the dumbest of lines sound reasonable – a skill that’s indispensable to a film that so frequently asks its audience to believe the darnedest things. The supporting cast is largely disposable with the exception of Alberto de Mendoza, who all but steals the show as an insane monk who drops his godly ways and starts following the alien “devil” at the drop of a hat. Telly Savalas (TV’s Kojak) received high billing in the films advertising and is listed third on this video edition, but only appears briefly as the memorably crazy Cossack Captain Kazan. Savalas’ dialogue is perhaps the most ungainly of the whole script, and while none of it makes much sense on its own terms the actor’s unhinged delivery gives it plenty of oomph.

Horror Express will never be confused for great filmmaking, and is possessed of the same cold and languid quality that makes much of the Spanish exploitation of the time so unappealing to me, but its excellent casting and proclivity for the humorously bizarre make all the difference. As a film about an eye-boiling brain-stealing alien intelligence loosed upon long-distance rail travelers it remains the best, and only, of its kind, and genre aficionados should find it well worth checking out.


There’s something about that guy that just doesn’t look right to me…

Taking a cue from a good number of independent English video labels, Severin Films have chosen to present Horror Express as a combination Blu-ray and DVD package. While we’ll be covering the latter later in this section it is the former, with which the film makes its high definition debut, that rightfully commands the most attention. Severin present Horror Express on Blu-ray in full 1080p at its native theatrical aspect ratio of 1.66:1, sourced from a positive 35mm Spanish print of some dubious lineage (provided you believe the packaging, it was unearthed in a Mongolian film depot…). The print is in decent shape if far from pristine, though I don’t know that anyone was honestly expecting better.

In addition to some printed white damage and splice marks, the print also presents with a healthy assortment of darker debris, scratching, and even the odd tear here or there. This may distract some viewers, but I’d argue that it’s just part and parcel for this sort of low budget exploiter. The source also has its weaknesses with regards to color reproduction and contrast, the latter of which can vary quite a lot depending on the original photography. The image has obviously aged a good deal in the nearly 40 years since Horror Express was originally produced, with the color shifting, at times quite heavily, to the red. I’m not sure what the original photographic intentions were on the part of the director and cinematographer, but it’s impossible for me to believe the flat, over-warm appearance Horror Express currently exudes is accurate. An ounce of restorative attention – some color grading here, some tweaking of the contrast levels there - could well have helped to mitigate the issues with the color and contrast, but these film-based limitations are still far from fatal flaws.  Unfortunately that’s not the end of the story.

Limited though Horror Express‘ source materials may be Severin Films look to have managed a decent high definition transfer of them, particularly in terms of detail. It’s all the more a shame, then, that they’ve bungled things so badly with regards to its presentation on-disc. The numbers hint at the bad things to come – Horror Express limps onto Blu-ray at a total disc size of 21 GB, with a paltry 11.7 GB of that dedicated to the feature and its three accompanying audio tracks. The AVC encoded video averages out at a middling bitrate of just 17.2 Mbps, well less than half of the format’s potential, but even that low figure doesn’t  account for such dreadful results. This is one of the poorest high definition encodes I’ve seen in a while, and it presents with a laundry list of defects that distracted from my viewing at every turn. Most notable in motion are aliasing artifacts that are every bit as frequent as they are ugly. The hounds tooth patterning on Christopher Lee’s suit provides the most obvious examples, with the encoder failing time and again to properly resolve it.


A rough approximation of how this disc’s encode made me feel.

More frustrating on closer examination is the encode’s treatment of the transfer’s grain structure, and vicariously its fine detail. The long and short of it is that there just isn’t much grain or fine detail, as the majority of it has been obliterated by persistent blotchy digital artifacting. The final comparison set below demonstrates the problem most obviously, with the details of the wooden floor disappearing into blotchy artifacts and patches of digital noise, but it is evident to some degree in every shot in the film. There are even some chroma aberrations to be found, tucked away in the lines and patterning of people’s clothing. It’s a hell of a mess all told, and certainly not what I was expecting for a release so oft-delayed as this one – surely in all the months since Horror Express was officially announced someone could have been bothered to check the disc encode? It’s impossible not to feel as though Severin have dropped the ball here, and hard, leaving the video side of the Blu-ray’s feature presentation a very tough sell in spite of some modest improvements over the DVD.

The accompanying DVD is something of a technical improvement given the constraints of its format, but still far from ideal. The disc is sourced from the same hi-def transfer at the same aspect ratio (16:9 enhanced 1.66:1) and features the same inherent deficiencies with regards to color and contrast. Fortunately this disc is dual-layered, a step in the right direction, and while the image still looks substantially weaker than I’d have expected it to (things just aren’t as well resolved as they should be) at least it doesn’t show its artifacting to the same degree as the Blu-ray.  Unfortunately both editions showcase many of the same ugly digital pox marks, as evidenced by Christopher Lee’s suit in the first and next-to-last comparison sets. I’d say it’s a draw as to which is the better way to view the film – the better encoded but visually flat DVD, or the better-resolved but awfully encoded Blu-ray – with neither being particularly appealing in the long run. Amusingly (or distressingly, depending on your frame of mind) both the DVD and Blu-ray share the same menu designs to the point of failure – whoever authored the Blu-ray either forgot or purposefully neglected to include even the most rudimentary pop-up menu during feature playback. That alone is barely worth mentioning, but it is indicative of the breadth of shortcomings that hamper what had the promise of being a fine release.

Blu-ray screenshots were captured as .png at full resolution in MPlayer and compressed to .jpg using the ImageMagick command line tool.  DVD screenshots were captured as uncompressed .png in VLC media player, and are provided here in both their native resolution (compressed to .jpg using the ImageMagick command line tool) as well as upscaled 1920×1080 (scaled in GIMP, saved as .png, and converted per the rest to .jpg) to offer the best range of comparison.
DVD 480p | DVD 1080p | Blu-ray 1080p

While the Blu-ray video was impaired to the point of distraction, at least it got the bump to HD. No such luck is to be had with the audio. Horror Express is accompanied in each of its video iterations by lossy Dolby Digital tracks, either 2.0 monophonic English or 2.0 stereophonic Spanish, each at 192 kbps. John Cacavas’ interesting musical score is served best by the better-preserved 2.0 Spanish track, but both sound flat and unremarkable otherwise. I’m not sure that a lossless encoding could have improved much upon that in the Blu-ray edition, but as things stand now I’ll never know. Adding to the disappointment is Severin’s failure to include any subtitles whatsoever, making the secondary Spanish audio track more a vestigial feature than a legitimate viewing option for the majority of the release’s potential audience.

With the feature presentation a disappointment on practically every front, I’m very happy to report that the supplemental package is quite exceptional. Things begin with Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express, a 14 minute interview with director Eugenio Martin. Though Martin’s accent is thick and his handling of English at times lacking, the information he provides is all quite good. Next up is a wonderful half-hour archival interview with late screenwriter Bernard Gordon (The Day of the Triffids), who served as producer on Horror Express, in which he discusses the Hollywood blacklist, his involvement with producer Philip Yordan and his work on the Samual Bronston epics of the ’60s. There’s nothing whatever about Horror Express here, but I couldn’t be bothered by that – it’s a fantastic interview. Telly and Me grants composer John Cacavas a few minutes to talk about his friendship with actor and singer Telly Savalis and their work toghether on this film and elsewhere. The undisputed king of the supplements is an interview and question and answer session with the inimitable Peter Cushing, circa 1973, which runs for a whopping 80 minutes (!) and serves as a sort of commentary track for the feature presentation. I’ll not spoil any of the goods here, but Cushing fans will be over the moon – the disc may be worth picking up for this alone. An introduction to Horror Express by Fangoria editor Chris Alexander (6 minutes), a theatrical trailer, and three trailers for other Severin titles (Psychomania, The House That Dripped Blood and Nightmare Castle) round out the disc.

Horror Express is a fun little footnote in the annals of Euro-horror, and one that I remember seeing many, many times on discount video racks as a kid. I had exceedingly high hopes for this release from Severin Films, hopes that were effectively dashed as soon as the Blu-ray disc began to play.  The issues with the feature presentation are so distracting as to make a recommendation on its merits difficult, but the supplemental package certainly makes this release tempting.  Given the low asking price it currently commands (just $13.99) fans will likely want to indulge for that reason alone.

in conclusion
Film: Good silly fun  Video: Fair +  Audio: Fair   Supplements: Excellent
Harrumphs: You’d do better to ask what isn’t wrong here.  The wealth of supplements is the saving grace.
Packaging: Standard two-hub Blu-ray case.
Available for purchase through Amazon.com

Dead Alive

November 2nd, 2011 | article by | 2 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
a.k.a. Braindead   Year: 1992  Company: Wingnut Films   Runtime: 97′
Director: Peter Jackson   Writers: Stephen Sinclair, Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson
Music: Peter Dasent   Cast: Timothy Balme, Diana Penalver, Elizabeth Moody, Ian Watkin, Brenda Kendall, Stuart Devenie, Jed Brophy, Stephen Papps, Murray Keane, Glenis Levestam, Lewis Rowe
Disc company: Lionsgate   Video: 1080p 1.78:1   Audio: DTS HD-MA 2.0 English
Subtitles: English, English SDH, Spanish   Disc: BD25 (Region A)   Release Date: 10/04/2011
Available for purchase through Amazon.com

Before he found himself tooling around Middle Earth in the most expensive and protracted LARP session in history, writer and director Peter Jackson was cutting his cinematic teeth on genre-bending exploiters the likes of which the world had never seen.  It may be difficult for some to grasp that the man behind The Fellowship of the Ring was also responsible for the demented The Muppets take-off Meet the Feebles and the drive-through alien insanity of Bad Taste, but there are just as many of us who became Jackson fans strictly because of his unhinged past works.  After working with tiny budgets in the latter part of the previous decade Jackson’s company Wingnut Films finally came into some substantial financing in the early ’90s, and the immediate result was the director’s first film to receive any real worldwide exposure – the gloriously outrageous gross-out masterpiece Dead Alive (or Braindead to all of you lucky enough to have the film in its original title).

Written by Jackson, his wife Fran Walsh and their sometimes collaborator Stephen Sinclair, Dead Alive follows the budding relationship of reclusive mother’s boy Lionel and the lovely Pequita – a romance pre-ordained by a stack of tarot cards and Pequita’s creepy grandmother.  Standing in the way of any hope of happiness for the young lovers is Lionel’s mother, an insufferable nag who’s not quite herself these days.  After an unfortunate run-in with a vicious and purportedly cursed Sumatran Rat-Monkey at the city zoo, mum devolves into a putrescent sack of homicidal idiocy that Lionel deals with as best he can.  Veterinary tranquilizers do the job for a while, but unexpected encounters with punks, nurses and the local clergy soon find Lionel stuck with a basement-full of troublesome stiffs, and the arrival of estate-hungry uncle Les and his gaggle of hard partying cohorts only makes things worse.  As the situation spirals further and further out of control Lionel and Pequita are forced into drastic action to save both themselves and their fated romance…

If there’s one thing that leaps out at me every time I sit down to revisit Dead Alive, it’s how obvious it is that Jackson and his co-conspirators love film – Dead Alive is the sort of production that really wears its inspirations on its sleeve.  The film begins on King Kong‘s Skull Island, far west of Sumatra, with an asshole explorer running afoul of superstitious natives in his quest for a rare beast – the bothersome Sumtran Rat-Monkey – which is brought to life, naturally, through stop-motion animation.  Back in Wellington, Lionel hearkens to Anthony Perkin’s portrayal of immortal screen Psycho Norman Bates, albeit with a potential for heroism taking the place of homicidal mania, while Jackson and company hint at secrets in his past with flashes of Deliverance-style hand-out-of-the-water illusions.  Once Lionel’s mum is infected the film treats audiences to a veritable parade of zombie genre homage, referencing everything from the Dead works of Romero to Raimi’s more slapstick take on the material – Jackson and effects man Richard Taylor take particular relish in the “total bodily dismemberment” of the latter.  There are broader references as well, like the famed cemetery-bound kung fu battle between some zombie punks and the inimitable Father MacGruder (“I kick ass for the Lord!”), and one bit for the real nerds among us – a brief glimpse of a poster for Johnny Weismuller in Jungle Moon Men that foreshadows Lionel’s final act of macho heroism, swinging to safety by belt as he and his beloved share a kiss.

More than just paying lip service to their inspirations, Jackson and crew were also clearly enamored with the very act of making film.  Dead Alive often feels a though it were handled by a hyper-active grade-schooler who’d finally been given the opportunity to figure out his latest toy.  The camerawork, care of photographer Murray Milne (Meet the Feebles), is brimming with vitality, with the camera swishing or panning or craning in any number of directions and as often as was possible.  The compositions themselves are just as variably vivid, from the diffused soft-palette exteriors of fantasy Wellington circa 1957 to the eccentric neon-hued, comic-inspired interiors of the more horrific later segments.  Perhaps the greatest example of the enthusiasm of the men behind Dead Alive can be found in the breadth of technical effects exemplified throughout – more than just the eccentric splatter that comes to dominate the film, Jackson toys with conventional and large-scale puppetry, suit-mation, and even a bit of clever miniature work to expand his retro Universe.  Carefully photographed miniatures of a vintage Wellington no longer extant, complete with cable cars decorated in period-appropriate advertisements (and at least one building baring the Wingnut company name), merge perfectly with the modern location photography.  The temptation now seems to be to go overboard in creating a sense of location, with loads of CGI overproduction and perhaps a bit of gimmicky 3D immersion.  Dead Alive‘s old-hat techniques manage the feat without drawing too much attention to themselves, and are all the more satisfying for it.


The house where evil dwells…

All of that is good and well, but with a hyperbolic blurb like “The goriest fright film of all time” flaunted across the top of the box art it’s impossible to discuss Dead Alive without also discussing the excesses that have made it (in)famous.  While I might contest the “fright film” designation (this is comedy born of horror rather than any kind of horror outright) the rest of the statement is hard to argue with.  Dead Alive dishes out its visceral delights in such quantity that adjectives fail it – this may well be the bloodiest show on Earth.  While early gags are geared towards gross-out giggles – mention “pudding” in the context of this film and most anyone who’s seen it will give you a laughing, half-shuddering reaction – Dead Alive quickly transitions towards one-upping itself with its own over-the-topness.  This is, after all, a film famous for a scene in which a priest with a taste for the martial arts unceremoniously rips the limbs from his zombie opponent and beats him with them, and that’s just a start.

Those attempting to find logic or reason in Dead Alive‘s zombie hordes are out of luck as any sense there was to the thing quickly falls victim to the all-important gag.  It’s a welcome change in a subgenre that enjoys strangling itself in rules and regulations – “aim for the brain” doesn’t seem such a helpful piece of advice when the critter creeping your way has a lawn gnome for a head!  While some of the violence is undeniably rooted in genre conventions, as in the case of a neck-bite or two, the vast majority aims for hitherto unseen levels of absurdity.  Jackson’s creativity flourishes here in a ways that it just hasn’t in his more recent work, and its these demonstrations of his imagination unchecked that attracted so much of us to his filmmaking in the first place.  Faces and scalps are ripped whole from screaming skulls while men devoured up to their waists kick bloodied skeleton legs – one victim is so mangled that he comes back from the grave looking more than a little like a brachiosaurus.  In perhaps the classic attack of the film a young woman has her face ripped literally in two by a fiendish infant who then uses her corpse as a sort of full-body puppet!

If the zombie violence itself is extreme then that perpetrated against them is even more so, with heads and whole bodies exploding blood and nameless pulp about Lionel’s respectable Victorian abode.  One poor chap, having been cut in two, is reduced to using his legs for stilts while his whole set of internal organs, which have been granted their own bizarre life, are left to chase people about on their own!  Lionel eventually decides that he’s had enough of all that nonsense and takes matters into his own hands.  With most of the zombies gathered in the foyer, Lionel enters with a lawnmower draped over his neck and shoulders with a bit of rope.  ”Party’s over!” he announces, and so begins the single most epic scene of wanton bodily destruction in the history of film.  Here the effects are thrilling in their efficacy, with assorted limbs, faces, and torsos butchered by the rumbling blade of the mower and spewed out in a stream of vivid red glop.  Never missing an opportunity for another gag, the film allows Lionel to reach the other end of the room safe and satisfied, only to look back and realize that he’s only mowed down one row of zombies and that there’s a whole horde of them left behind.  Mowing down the dead is evidently every bit as tedious and time consuming as mowing the lawn, and as Lionel turns to finish the job Peter Dasent’s synthesizer accompaniment swells into something melodious and balletic.  This is grand guignol as it might have been directed by Vincent Minnelli, and in its own way it’s every bit as genius as any of those other revered moments in cinema.

On their own gore and gags do not a terrific film make, and Dead Alive earns audience sympathies by packaging its more eccentric material within an old fashioned love story that’s actually quite touching and sweet.  In this way Dead Alive plays as the sort of pitch-perfect escapism only film can provide, offering up a happy ending that never feels trite or condescending.  We want Lionel and Pequita to be together, not because some goofy cards told us it would happen but because our investment in the characters makes us think it should.  In the end Dead Alive may be the most hopeful horror picture ever made – if these two can fend off the forces of darkness amassing against them then surely there’s a little hope for us all.  Just be sure to keep your lawnmower handy, as you never know when you might need it.


Grrrrrrrrr…

Dead Alive creeps, leaps, and splats onto Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate who, to be perfectly fair, have dropped the ball on a couple of key points.  Firstly, the cut of the film included is the slightly abbreviated 97 minute version (allegedly preferred by Jackson, though I could find no primary source for this – help!) that premiered at the 1992 Toronto Film Festival.  I’m not especially bothered by this – it’s the version that I have become most familiar with over the years – but the opportunity to include both the longer 104 minute version and this unrated 97 minute cut, preferably as seamlessly branched viewing options, was sorely missed.  Secondly, Dead Alive‘s high definition home video debut is woefully lacking in supplemental heft.  All that is included is the original American trailer in upconverted HD, and an interminable slate of Lionsgate previews that starts the disc.  A special edition this isn’t, though at least the packaging (a slight update of that for the Trimark DVD from over a decade ago) is honest enough not to lead consumers into thinking otherwise.

With no uncut version  and effectively no supplemental content to distract from it, the presentation of the 97 minute feature is very much front and center, and while I wasn’t expecting much by virtue of the low pricetag I found myself reasonably impressed, if with some reservations.  My apologies in advance for the paltry DVD comparison in this review – I no longer own the Trimark DVD and was forced to scrounge around online for the grand total of two uncompressed .png captures sourced below.  I’ve included two captures from the horrifically encoded Laser Paradise ‘Blood Edition’ for posterity, so that a more precise comparison can be made with regards to the film’s proper framing.

Lionsgate present Dead Alive under its American export title by way of a gritty 1080p transfer at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 – slightly cropped from the intended 1.66:1.  Compared to the DVD editions this new transfer adds, substantially at times, to the left and right of the frame, as well as to the top and bottom in comparison to the 1.85:1-cropped Trimark DVD.  A marginal amount of headroom is lost compared to the 1.66:1 “Blood Edition”, but not to the extent that it proves catastrophic to the framing, and while I’d have preferred a more open presentation the Blu-ray does offer a reasonable middle ground compared to what has been available before.  While the 1080p transfer can appear quite weak at times, overly grainy and softly focused with a subtle color palette and plenty of pox marks, I don’t think there’s much here that can’t be explained away by the source materials themselves.  The soft and grainy qualities of the image appear for the most part to be a product of the original photography, which is often done with wide-angle lenses and heavy diffusion filtering – this is not something that’s ever going to export a terrific amount of clarity and detail.  There are exceptions to the the norm here, with some effects takes appearing quite clear, apparently having been shot through different lenses and possibly on entirely different stock.


Case in point – the grain in this effects close-up is still visible, but much less pronounced. The darker areas of the frame seem especially crisp and clear compared to other samples from the film.

Then there is the frequent damage, which offers viewers a persistent parade of minor speckles and larger blemishes that seem excessive for even this modestly budgeted production, which is less than 20 years old as of this writing.  While there are black bits of dirt and dust to contend with the majority of the damage appears printed right into the materials themselves, showing as white flecks of varying sizes, including the odd white printed hair.  It’s all frame-specific, but the quantity was a bit surprising, and those sensitive to such things should note that Lionsgate have obviously attempted no restoration.  Color and contrast will likely also fall below most’s expectations.  With the exception of the over-the-top conclusion, with its wealth of vibrant reds, colors can appear quite flat, and while I suspect that much of this is intentional on the part of the filmmakers (looking to create a sort of soft fantasy version of 1957 Wellington) the flatness has been compounded by the transfer’s low level of contrast.  Black levels are quite weak for the most part, with plenty of grain (and a bit of noise as well) lurking behind every shadow.  A bit of tweaking could easily have resolved this situation, resulting in an image that looked just that much more healthy and robust.

Technically the disc is only middling, occupying  around 17 Gb of a single layer BD-25 with the AVC-encoded feature sporting an average video bitrate of just 19.6 Mbps.  I was hard pressed to find any fatal encoding flaws, but the image still doesn’t hold up as well in close examination as I’d like.  All said, I’m not really that put off by any of the above – in motion I’d say Dead Alive looks pretty decent, particularly in the final twenty minutes or so.  While I believe Lionsgate could have improved a bit, either by sourcing from the original negative or by tweaking the transfer they had, I’m hard-pressed to think they could have improved upon it drastically. For the $13 it presently demands I’d say this looks good enough, and substantially more accurate to the source materials than some other recently lauded presentations (I’m looking at you Zombie and House By the Cemetery).

HD screenshots were captured as .png at full resolution in MPlayer and compressed to .jpg using the ImageMagick command line tool.  Screenshots from the German Laser Paradise “Blood Edition” DVD were captured in .png format in VLC, upconverted to 1920×1080 (black bars were added to the left and right to fill the frame, and the original 4:3 letterboxing removed – note that the original letterboxing is very imprecise, with warping along the top and bottom of the frame, and that thin amounts of black information were left in some areas to prevent the loss of image information in others) in GIMP and compressed to .jpg format at a quality setting of 95%.  The two Trimark DVD comparison shots were found online in their original uncompressed .png, then upconverted and compressed at the same settings as the “Blood Edition” DVD (excluding the de-letterboxing and addition of black bars).
Blood Edition 4:3 letterboxed PAL DVD | 16:9 1.85:1 Trimark NTSC DVD | Lionsgate Blu-ray

More Blu-ray Screenshots

Gore!

In the absence of any appreciable funding having been thrown at this disc’s production, at least I don’t have an underwhelming 5.1 bump to contend with in the audio department.  What the disc does offer is the film’s original stereo recording, soundly related in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0.  The icky sound effects, which are every bit as delightfully sickening as the visuals, shine, as does Peter Dasent’s (Meet the Feebles) alternately cheesy and inspired synthesizer score.  There’s a bit of depth and even some appreciable stereo separation to be had, and Lionsgate manage to one-up many of their competitors by complimenting the track with three sets of subtitles – English, English SDH, and Spanish.

So there you have it – Dead Alive in its slightly shorter American cut (at least it’s not the bastardized 85 minute R-rated version) on Blu-ray in a somewhat uninspired but relatively source accurate presentation with strong lossless audio and no supplements beyond the theatrical trailer.  Were the asking price more than that of a modest lunch out I might have been more compelled to complain, but as things are I find myself reasonably pleased.  Yeah it could have been better, but the DVDs can’t touch it and I know damned well it could have been much, much worse (Near Dark anyone?).  For fans this is tough not to recommend, weaknesses and all.

in conclusion
Film: Excellent  Video: Very Good –  Audio: Excellent   Supplements: Poor
Harrumphs: No supplemental weight whatever, and a transfer that likely could have been improved upon a bit in more capable, or loving, hands.
Packaging: Standard-size Blu-ray Eco case.

Heavy Metal

October 30th, 2011 | article by | 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Year: 1981  Company: Columbia Pictures   Runtime: 90′
Director: Gerald Potterton   Writers: Daniel Goldberg, Len Blum, Dan O’Bannon,
Richard Corben, Bernie Wrightson, Angus McKie, Jean Giraud
Music: Elmer Bernstein, Riggs, Blue Oyster Cult, Donald Fagen, Stevie Nicks, Journey,
Cheap Trick, Nazareth, Don Felder, Sammy Hagar, Trust, Black Sabbath, Devo
Cast: Rodger Bumpass, John Candy, Jackie Burroughs, Joe Flaherty, Don Francks, Martin Lavut,
Marilyn Lightstone, Eugene Levy, Alice Playten, Harold Ramis, Susan Roman, August Schellenberg,
Richard Romanus, John Vernon, Caroline Semple, Al Waxman, Harvey Atkin, Glenis Wootton Gross
Disc company: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment   Video: 1080p 1.85:1
Audio: DTS HD-MA 5.1 English, DTS HD-MA 5.1 French   Subtitles: English, English SDH, Spanish, French
Disc: BD50 (All Region)   Release Date: 06/14/2011   Available for purchase through Amazon.com

The Wtf-Film Guide to Essential Blu-ray is the record of one man’s eclectic journey to uncover the very best of the weird and wonderful that Blu-ray has to offer.  This edition is also our contribution to the Skeletons in the Closet roundtable, the inaugural group-think event of online pop culture consortium M.O.S.S.

A fleet of bombers slice through occupied airspace in the last Great War, ack-ack blooming about them and fighter fire riddling them, and their unfortunate crews, with holes.  The bomb bay doors open, the payload is dropped, and the bombers – crippled and leaden with the dead-weight of expended flesh – creep back towards the safety of Allied territory.  We focus in on one bomber in particular, in which all but the pilot and co-pilot have been killed.  As the co-pilot inspects the damage a strange, green-glowing sphere approaches and enters the plane, bathing the dead crewmen in its unnatural, unholy radiation.  We see one of the dead men’s hands in close-up – it boils and bursts, oozing fluids and dissolved flesh until only a menacing skeletal claw remains.  As the co-pilot makes his way back to the cockpit he realizes that the bodies of his comrades have vanished, leaving no trace of themselves behind.  Where could they possibly have gone, and how?

When he hears a rustling in the bomber’s central ball turret his curiosity gets the better of him.  He opens the hatch, expecting one of his fellow men to emerge.  Instead he is grappled by a pair of monstrous arms, and his body splattered lifeless about the turret’s walls.  The pilot, suspecting too late that something is wrong, opens the cockpit door to see what has become of his fellow soldiers – on the other side he is greeted by a gang of inhuman things, piles of bones and organs stuffed into bomber jackets and creeping with grim determination towards his position.  The pilot slams the door to isolate himself from the horror and fires his side arm into the approaching horde, but it’s no use.  The creatures pummel the door to pieces, and as it falls from its hinges a mass of zombified flesh-hungry ghouls spill into the cockpit.  The pilot survives only barely, escaping the doomed bomber by parachute in the nick of time.  As the plane plummets into the Pacific he lands safely on the shores of a tropical atoll – but the safety is only illusory.  Awaiting him is a graveyard of aircraft of all generations, as well as the damnable creatures their passengers have become.  The pilot screams, but it’s too late.  The beasts surround him, leaving no possibility for escape…

These images, etched indelibly into my brain during my impressionable youth, were my first encounter with the alternative animated 1981 vignette-epic Heavy Metal - as they filtered out of my family’s seemingly monolithic tube set (a 32″ Sharp in an oversized black plastic box – huge to me at the time, but soon replaced with a 54″ monstrosity) into my unsuspecting, unprepared mind, I was horrified.  I’d never seen anything like it before, and nor had I expected to, particularly not from a cartoon.  As the scene’s nihilistic conclusion loomed I slammed my prepubescent fist into the power button, thus saving myself from what promised to be more such terror.  Even at that young age I knew I had seen something strange and different, and something I knew darn well I shouldn’t have.  One thing I could hardly have fathomed was that, had I only left the television running, I’d have likely seen a few other things that would have blown my growing male mind1…

It is only with the above experience related that one should judge the unflappable adoration the present I holds for Ivan Reitman and Leonard Mogel’s alternately crude, juvenile, prurient, and fantastic production – itself modeled on Mogel’s magazine of the same name, the domestic answer to the French publication Metal Hurlant.  Reitman and Mogel’s Heavy Metal was hardly the first alternative animation to burst forth into the American social consciousness (I can only imagine what things might have replaced the writings on these pages had I chanced first upon Ralph Bakshi’s Felix the Cat or Coonskin instead) but it remains one of the most accessible and popular, likely a result of its sidestepping of the sharp satire  and cultural observations of Bakshi’s work in favor of knock-down drag-out pulp madness.  More than once have I earned perplexed glares from Disney fans after they discover that my favorite of the studio’s work is the grim live action fantasy DragonSlayer - how much more disgusted those reactions might have been had those same people only known that my favorite animated film was Heavy Metal!


So beautiful and so dangerous. Who could ever say no to a face like that?

Comprised of a series of stand-alone vignettes, some original and some adapted from stories which had appeared in the magazine, Heavy Metal flirts with a variety of styles and genres – science fiction, film noir, western, fantasy, horror – with little but an overriding sense of adolescent glee holding it all together.  The individual segments – each farmed out to its own team of talented independent animators – are never quite in harmony with one another, even though a framing device in which an evil green orb relates the film’s six stories certainly tries, but the incongruousness of it all quickly becomes part of the film’s charm.  Heavy Metal shifts willfully and wildly in tone and style from one segment to the next, from the eroticized Burroughs-ian universe of Den to the futuristic scum-metropolis of Harry Canyon to the vast, inhospitable fantasy wastes of Taarna, and yet it works, both as an oddball assortment of self-contained narratives and as a jubilant celebration of genre excesses.  The sum experience is the cinematic equivalent of thumbing through the magazine from which the film takes its name – no more and no less than what Reitman and Mogel had always intended – and, much like the ancient Loc-Nar, the magnitude of its appeal and influence should not be underestimated.

Nowhere is this more obvious than the future-noir Harry Canyon.  Set in the rundown sprawl of New York, New York circa 2031, the story follows a world-weary street-smart cabbie who runs afoul of the Venusian mob after saving a red-headed show stopper from a shootout on the front steps of the Museum of Natural History.  The mobsters want the ancient Loc-Nar, the red-head wants to sell it, and Canyon just wants her.  The story by Daniel Goldberg (Cannibal Girls) and Len Blum (Stripes) is a 10-15 minute reduction of the narrative sensibilities of Taxi Driver and the MacGuffin-fueled drama of The Maltese Falcon with plenty of fantastic violence, raunchy cartoon sex and contemporary rock tracks thrown in for good measure.  If the story – a cab driver and a red-head on the run from unseemly elements on the hunt for an ancient artifact in future New York – sounds familiar, it should.  Whether credited or not, Harry Canyon plays like a step-by-step blueprint for much of Luc Besson’s later pop sci-fi epic The Fifth Element - a film which also prominently features a talking orb that is the embodiment evil.  Recently Heavy Metal ‘s influence has been glimpsed in other high-profile projects, notably in the bleak and over-contrived SuckerPunch (whose writer and director, among others, has been mentioned in association with a new Heavy Metal feature) and, more directly, in the 12th season South Park parody Major Boobage.

To that latter end, Heavy Metal is often negatively criticized for its decidedly adolescent sensibilities, including its grade school attention span and subject matter that seems culled straight from the doodlings of a 14 year old boy.  While I can hardly argue with the point – this is, after all, an exceedingly adolescent film - I’m similarly hard pressed to see it as a burden to the production.  Heavy Metal is a film in which cars drive home from outer space, cheeky alien robots have sexual affairs with Earth secretaries, and a pair of intergalactic hippies take a stoned-out trip around the Universe in a giant flying smiley face.  It’s an out and out celebration of whooshing rockets, spurting blood, and bouncing bare breasts – the very staples of the young male imagination brought to life in vivid, living color.  I certainly can’t fault anyone for not liking it, but to hold Heavy Metal‘s juvenile proclivities against it, when they are the very thing it exists to serve, seems more than a little silly2.

Every bit as senseless as you could possibly imagine but more intelligently conceived than you likely thought, this one makes about as good an argument as can be made for smart people making dumb entertainment.  The fun factor here is through the roof even twenty years on, and I’m sure that producers Ivan Reitman and Leonard Mogel are plenty pleased with their crass animated legacy.  The late Dan O’Bannon’s short horror segment B-17 still appeals to me most here, if only for the childhood memories it recalls, but there are more than enough fantastic developments along the way to appeal to genre fanatics of all kinds.  One could go on interminably about how Heavy Metal isn’t for all tastes, but that’s really the point of it all.  I say give it a try – the worst you can do is hate it.

1 Live and learn, I suppose, but the thin static haze separating family fun from outright pornography in old-school satellite programming would expose me to that other forbidden world soon enough…
2 Yes, I know. I’m sure I’ve made similar arguments against other films.  Then again, I never said I wasn’t silly.

Boo!

Heavy Metal was actually the first DVD I ever purchased, and to be perfectly honest that 1999 Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment edition has held up pretty well over the years with its decent anamorphic image, healthy encode, and substantial slate of supplemental content.  While I’ll be keeping that disc on the shelf for nostalgia’s sake it’s safe to say that it’s not going to be getting much play in the future – this Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Blu-ray blows it right out of the water.  Originally released as a Best Buy exclusive, the disc is now out in wide release and well worth picking up.

Given the highly variable nature of its animation, all of which was produced outside of any major film animation outlets, I had very grounded expectations going into Heavy Metal‘s Blu-ray debut, but I needn’t have worried.  Presented in 1080p at its original theatrical 1.85:1 aspect ratio, this new HD transfer is a modern marvel as far as I’m concerned.  Perhaps the greatest beneficiary of the upgrade is the color reproduction, with both saturation and the depth of hues taking some huge steps forward – the 1999 DVD can look quite faded and yellow in comparison.  The colors here really have some pop (just look at the sky in the first comparison or Taarna’s lips in the final one below), and are backed by a richer, darker contrast and a substantial uptick in clarity and detail.  Each segment is a revelation, from the trash-noir Harry Canyon to the brilliantly bizarre Den to the all-too-brief B-17, and while the crudeness of some sequences is all the more obvious the more awesome moments shine all the brighter.

The overall quality of the film elements seems to have improved a bit as well, and while there is still some damage to contend with (mostly speckling and dust, much of it a product of the original animation and effects process, still more the result of age) the image here is considerably cleaner than on the DVD edition.  The delicious texture of the original photography is also maintained, much to my delight, with variable levels of legitimate film grain present throughout.  It’s refreshing to see that Sony haven’t skimped on the technical front, either.  The AVC-encoded image receives substantial bitrate support at an average of 34.2 Mbps, and the feature spreads comfortably into dual-layer territory.  I noted nothing in the way of artifacting or other encode troubles, and the image retains its lovely film-like aesthetic even under close examination.  The bottom line is that Heavy Metal looks better here than I’d have ever thought it could, and I doubt most theatrical screenings could touch it.

For the sake of full disclosure, HD screenshots were captured as .png at full resolution in MPlayer and compressed to .jpg using the ImageMagick command line tool.  After comparing to the original .png files the results appeared quite transparent to these eyes, even when zooming in 2-3x.  DVD screenshots were captured in .png format in VLC from the 1999 Columbia Tristar Home Video edition (I don’t own the Superbit edition to compare), upconverted to 1920×1080 in GIMP and compressed to .jpg format at a quality setting of 95%.  In the five comparisons below DVD screen shots appear first, followed by the Blu-ray.  The rest should be self-explanatory.

More Blu-ray screenshots:

The all-important audio receives a healthy bump to DTS HD-MA 5.1 in the original English (a second DTS HD-MA 5.1 track in dubbed French is also included), and I’ve never heard Heavy Metal sound better.  The crude sound effects have a wonderful vintage about them, and sound very much of their time, as does the voice recording.  The HD track offers considerably more breathing room than on past editions, sounding neither so muffled as the Dolby Surround 2.0 stereo track or as frail as the Dolby Digital 5.1 included on the 1999 DVD, and feels considerably more substantial for the trouble.  The vintage rock tracks have great punch, with Felder’s Heavy Metal (Takin’ a Ride) and Hagar’s Heavy Metal both sounding hilariously awesome in their lossless iterations.  Benefiting even more so from the bump is Elmer Bernstein’s tremendous score, which offers some of the best genre work of its kind in segments Den and Taarna.  Heavy Metal finally sounds as big as it should on home video, and while I’d have loved a lossless track in the original stereo for posterity’s sake I’m hard-pressed to complain.  The disc comes with a decent array of subtitling options – English, English SDH, French and Spanish – and, according to the back of the case, should be playable in all Blu-ray regions.

The only area in which the disc seems to be lacking is in the supplemental department, and those who already own the Collector’s Series edition from 1999 won’t find anything new here.  Included is the original feature-length rough cut of Heavy Metal, which runs 90 minutes in 480p and is available both with or without commentary from Carl Macek, a small selection of deleted scenes – the unfinished Neverwhere Land sequence (3 minutes, 480p) and the alternate carousel framing story (2:38, 480p, and with or without Carl Macek commentary) – and the excellent documentary featurette Imagining Heavy Metal (36 minutes, 480p).  While all this is retained, a large selection of material was also left behind.  Lost, but available on the 1999 DVD, are a host of image galleries, including portfolios of pencil art, cell animation, production photos, and a massive gallery of Heavy Metal magazine covers spanning from 1977 to 1999, as well as an audio recording of Carl Macek reading from his book The Art of Heavy Metal: Animation for the Eighties that originally accompanied the feature presentation.

While Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have clearly skimped on the supplements, which is a real shame with regards to the art galleries (these would have looked fantastic bumped to HD), they have spared no expense with regards to the feature presentation, and given the low price this release currently commands that’s more than enough for me.  If I had my way this disc would be sitting on a shelf in every home in America, but finding myself in the absence of godly powers of influence I’ve added it to our shortlist of Blu-ray essentials instead.  So there you have it.  Heavy Metal on Blu-ray is an essential.  That means you have to buy it, right?

in conclusion
Film: Awesome  Video: Excellent  Audio: Excellent   Supplements: Good +
Harrumphs: Limited supplemental weight.
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case.

Cannibal Girls

October 25th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Year: 1973  Company: Scary Pictures   Runtime: 83′
Director: Ivan Reitman   Writers: Ivan Reitman, Daniel Goldberg, Robert Sandler
Cinematography: Robert Saad   Music: Doug Riley   Cast: Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Ronald Ulrich,
Randall Carpenter, Bonnie Neilson, Mira Pawluk, Bob McHeady, Alan Gordon, Allan Price, Earl Pomerantz
Disc company: Filmswelike, Warner Music Canada   Video: 1080p 1.78:1
Audio: Dolby TrueHD 2.0 monophonic English   Subtitles: None   Disc: BD25 (Region A)
Release Date: 10/26/2010   Available for purchase through Amazon.ca and Amazon.com

“Gloria, do whatever makes you happy, and I’ll do whatever makes me happy.  And you know what’s going to make me really happy right now?  A big chocolate milkshake.”

Produced for a pittance in 1971 and released by exploitation megalith A.I.P. in 1973 with the classic tagline “These girls do exactly what you think they do!”, Ivan Reitman and Daniel Goldberg’s Cannibal Girls plays like Canada’s answer to the Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman gore fantasies of a decade past.  Featuring SCTV regulars Eugene Levy (Best in Show) and Andrea Martin (Black Christmas) and largely improvised from a 13-page treatment, the film blends overt comedy with exploitation staples and throws in a hefty dollop of the just plain weird for good measure.  The results won’t be to everyone’s taste, but those with a soft spot for genre oddballs are in for a real treat.

The story, such as it is, follows young couple Cliff and Gloria as they head off for a bit of rest and relaxation in small-town Canada.  After a bit of car trouble they settle in quaint little Framhamville, a place where people – especially woman – have a habit of disappearing.  While checking in at the local motel Cliff and Gloria here the legend of the cannibal girls, three devilish young ladies who lured men to their country home with the promise of sexual delights, only to feast on them instead.  As luck would have it their country estate has since become the town’s must-visit tourist destination – a bizarre bed and breakfast run by a demented reverend (Ronald Ulrich) that’s just dying to have Cliff and Gloria over for dinner.  Soon the cannibal legend is looking more like a lesson in recent history, and the entire town seems to be in on the man-eating conspiracy!

Though it reminds heavily of Friedman and Lewis’ Two Thousand Maniacs, in which a village of cannibal Confederates conspires against a carload of Yankee passers by, Cannibal Girls offers more than enough of its own brand of the schlocky and strange to stand apart.  Case in point is the good reverend Alex St. John, Farmhamville’s resident cannibal guru and hypnotist extraordinaire, and leader of the eponymous pack of man-eating nymphets.  As played by Ronald Ulrich the character is hilariously bizarre, a tuxedo-donning Shakespeare-reciting weirdo who leads his girls in hymns and is prone to mumbling about the “rich, red, warm blood of life”.  Ulrich takes to the role with a deadly earnest that makes it all the more hysterical, leaving it unclear as to whether he was actually in on the gag or just doing his best by the material.


Ouch.

More transparent in their roles are Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin as bickering young lovers whose relationship is imperiled by their stopover in Farmhamville.  Levy and Martin play mostly as two archetypes – the man who just wants to get laid, and the woman who takes things much more seriously – but become quite endearing as time wears on.  Levy, though more than adept at delivering both scripted lines and improvisation, is here best remembered for his numerous crimes against good fashion sense.  From his bulky furs to a knitted tie (these exist??) there’s little he wears that isn’t cringe-worthy, though it’s his hair that really takes the prize – the actor is all but unrecognizable beneath his sideburns, Bollywood-villain mustache, and monstrous bobbling mane.  Martin may be the only member of the cast whose performance speaks for genuine talent, and while she carries the lighter early drama well it’s her believable late-film paranoia that really makes an impression.  It also builds perfectly to the film’s ludicrous step-frame twist ending, a stupefying turn of events I’ll not spoil here.

Though its trappings are largely comedic Cannibal Girls still works as bread-and-butter exploitation, offering up plenty of exposed flesh and stage blood (and some combinations thereof as well) before its 83 minutes are up.  Reitman and Goldberg offer up a cannibal girl for every taste here – blonde, brunette and red-head – each of whom are given their own dim-witted beau to attend to.  The majority of the more salacious material is limited to a lengthy pseudo flashback early on in the film, in which the girls are given ample opportunity to do “exactly what you think they do”, though there are lovingly tasteless flourishes to be found throughout.  The uber-exploitative opening is a prime example, dishing out a helping of gratuitous nudity, blood, and hypnotic weirdness before the credits even roll.  There’s little in the way of overt gore to be had, separating Cannibal Girls still further from its inspirations, but the shocks are handled pretty well given the paucity of the production and the limited experience of its crew.  The appearance of a pair of bloodied scissors still gives me a jolt, particularly when a bit of well-conceived phallic imagery hints further at what they had been used for…

Cannibal Girls never quite decides whether it wants to be outright exploitation or a spoof of the same, but it works well enough on both levels to keep this reviewer happy.  Silly and sexy and just violent enough to pack a punch, Cannibal Girls grows on me a little more each time I see it – it’s quickly becoming a personal favorite!  The long list of familiar names attached to it will give Cannibal Girls plenty of niche appeal, but it’s really best appreciated on its own strange terms.  Schlock aficionados, trash connoisseurs, and fans of the generally bizarre owe it to themselves to give this oddball genre flunky a run – they just might like it.


If I can’t convince you to give this film a chance, perhaps Bonnie Neilson can…

Just how well you take to Filmswelike and Warner Music Canada’s Blu-ray edition of Cannibal Girls will largely depend on how well you take to the film itself – I happen to adore it, in no uncertain terms, which has put me in a more forgiving mood than the usual with regards to this review.  Released day and date with Shout! Factory’s domestic DVD edition, this hi-def sister package from north of the border is sourced from the same transfer and features much of the same supplemental content.  The difference, as ever, is in the details, and while this Blu-ray package is inarguably imperfect fans of the film and its famous progenitors should still find plenty to love therein.

Though listed as 1.85:1, Filmswelike and Warner Music Canada present Cannibal Girls at the marginally more open aspect ratio of 1.78:1 via a freshly minted 1080p transfer from the “newly restored original film elements”.  Restored or no, the film elements in question have clearly seen better days, though that’s far from unexpected given the nature of the film in question.  Cannibal Girls is an overflowing font of visual imperfections from start to finish, with a host of white flecks and blemishes, persistent scratches and baked-in black specks that will warm the hearts of those who, like myself, enjoy this sort of patina in their grindhouse entertainment.  Your mileage may vary.  There’s also a good deal of grain on display, though it’s honestly not so intense as I was anticipating.  This aspect of the image tightens up nicely compared to the DVD, and help it to export a more faithfully film-like aesthetic.

Otherwise Cannibal Girls improves only modestly, when at all, and I suspect which image is preferred will honestly be a matter of personal taste.  The Blu-ray presents with a broader range of black levels than the comparatively boosted DVD, and they can appear strong during some sequences and a bit milky in others – I’d say that the Blu-ray is just less forgiving of the source elements’ inconsistencies in this regard.  Colors vary only slightly, most notably in red shades, while detail can actually appear less pronounced, a product of the minor edge enhancement and contrast boosting applied to the DVD.  Be it because of Cannibal Girls‘ so-so original photography or weaknesses inherent in the sourced elements the differences in real-world detail are negligible for the most part, though the Blu-ray appears more accurate overall.

All of the above is honestly fine with this reviewer, who had minimal expectations for this presentation going in – Cannibal Girls was never going to be the kind of thing you throw in to show off your home theater anyway, and those expecting otherwise may well have lost all touch with reality.  More problematic are the technical limitations imposed on the product, which has been relegated to a single-layer BD25.  The feature takes up just 10.5 GB of space on-disc, with the AVC-encoded video suffering from a low average bitrate of 15.7 Mbps.  The deficiencies show up as blocking artifacts and inconsistent support of the film’s  natural grain structure, which can appear quite digital and noisy on close inspection.  In motion I didn’t find the issues to be too distracting, and the disc definitely has its stronger moments, but the specter of poor encoding is lurking all the while, and could well have been exorcised had this disc been bumped into dual layered territory.

For the sake of full disclosure, HD screenshots were captured as .png at full resolution in MPlayer and compressed to .jpg using the ImageMagick command-line tool.  After comparing to the original .png files the results appeared quite transparent to these eyes, even when zooming in 2-3x.  The sample DVD snapshots in comparison sets one through four were captured in .png format in VLC, upscaled to 1080 resolution from their native resolution and exported as .png in GIMP. These captures were then also compressed to .jpg using the ImageMagick command-line tool.
In the first four sets of captures the Shout! Factory DVD is represented first, followed by the Filmswelike / Warner Music Canada Blu-ray.

More Blu-ray Screenshots:

The audio, whether you choose to go with or without the “warning bell” gimmick, fares much better.  Both tracks receive Dolby TrueHD 2.0 monophonic encodes in the original English with results that are perfectly satisfactory.  Dialogue sounds as flat as it always has, as do many of the canned sound effects, but it’s all perfectly intelligible.  The original score by Doug Riley (alumnus of Reitman’s earlier Foxy Lady) offers a bit more opportunity for expansion, and presents with some modest depth.  Both tracks stay true to their bottom-dollar roots, and remain free of unnecessary modern remixing, which is all I really ask of them.  As is the case with the Shout! Factory DVD, there are no subtitles.

Supplements duplicate the Shout! Factory package for the most part, but all benefit from a bump to HD video (more so than the film itself!) and Dolby TrueHD audio.  Included are two substantial interview featurettes – Cannibal Guys (26′) with director Ivan Reitman and producer Daniel Goldberg, and Meat Eugene (19′) with star Eugene Levy – and the original theatrical trailer, which I’d say is sourced from better elements than the feature it advertises.  Lost from the Shout! Factory package are a 60 second television spot and two radio spots (30 and 60 seconds) and a nice reversible cover.  Gained, however, is the 22 minute Reitman and Goldberg short film Orientation, an amusing artifact from their days at McMaster University presented in 1080p in its original 4:3 aspect ratio.  Though most definitely not a horror film (beyond the horrors of starting college, I suppose) it does make for an excellent companion piece, and the score is pretty groovy too!  Cannibal Girls also exemplifies one of the unsung benefits of the Blu-ray format, in that all of the disc’s content is accessible at any point in playback, even during the supplements, via a simple pop-up menu.  While it may not be a big deal to some it makes my job that much easier, and I heartily approve.

Unless you’re the kind of person for whom the simple act of owning Cannibal Girls on Blu-ray is its own reward (guilty!), this really isn’t must-buy material.  The biggest benefit over the Shout! Factory DVD edition is in the high definition supplements and the addition of the short student film Orientation, but the feature presentation is pretty much a wash.  Both have their downsides, be it the DVD’s limited resolution and digital boosting or the Blu-ray’s paltry encoding, and with the difference in retail price so minor ($22.97 DVD, or CDN$24.99 Blu-ray) it’s impossible for me to recommend one over the other.  I’m perfectly happy to have both sitting on my shelf, but anything beyond that is down to personal preference.

in conclusion
Film: One of a kind  Video: Good  Audio: Excellent   Supplements: Excellent
Harrumphs: No subtitles, iffy video encode for the feature.
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case.

Things to Come

October 18th, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Year: 1936  Company: London Films   Runtime: 92′
Director: William Cameron Menzies   Writers: H. G. Wells   Cinematography: Georges Perinal
Music: Arthur Bliss   Cast: Raymond Massey, Edward Chapman, Sir Ralph Richardson, Margaretta Scott,
Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Maurice Braddell, Sophie Stewart, Derrick De Marney, Ann Todd, Pearl Argyle
Disc company: Legend Films   Video: 1080p 1.33:1   Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: BD50 (Region A)   Release Date: 09/27/2011   Released as part of the oddly titled Ray Harryhausen Double Feature Blu-ray collection, featuring Things to Come, SHE, and a bonus DVD of The Most Dangerous Game, and available for purchase through Amazon.com

Penned by H. G. Wells from his novel The Shape of Things to Come and directed by feature newcomer William Cameron Menzies, who had already garnered acclaim for his accomplished production design, the lavish 1936 Alexander Korda production of Things to Come never quite amounts to the sum of its parts.  A masterwork of design and ideas hamstrung by cold human drama and a penchant for speechifying, Things to Come is perhaps best described as an unforgettable failure – a sprawling epic of speculative fiction and philosophical propaganda that’s no less a classic for all of its faults.

Things to Come‘s ambitious narrative follows the 100 year history of the English metropolis of Everytown, from its destruction in war-time in Christmas of 1936 to it’s glittering future rebirth.  The yarn is constructed around two generations of the family Cabal (both played by Raymond Massey, Arsenic and Old Lace), who are rarely so much characters as they are mouthpieces for Wells’ selfsame political-scientific philosophy.  In 1936 John Cabal volunteers for the war effort, taking to the air as a fighter pilot.  As the global conflict drags on for decade after decade, reducing Everytown to a pre-industrial autocracy, Cabal secretly organizes a new society of scientific fascists – a technologically unchallenged and black-suited army for peace.  His Wings Over the World fills the skies of 1970, putting an end to all warmongers with the ‘gas of peace’, setting humanity on a track towards miraculous scientific progress and transforming Everytown into a glittering underground utopia.

In 2036 John Cabal’s great grandson Oswald Cabal, leader of the future governing council, must face a new threat to progress – an uprising among the citizens of Everytown who seek to halt mankind’s first trip around the moon.  As hordes of rioters surround the enormous Space Gun that is to launch the rocket, Cabal orders it fired, preserving man’s quest for knowledge and sending the protesters into oblivion.  The conclusion sees Cabal standing before an enormous telescopic lens, contemplating whether mankind is doomed to be Earthbound or fated to expand its conquest to the rest of the Universe.  ”Which shall it be?” he asks, words that are repeated again in the rapturous chorus that closes the film.

Propelled by the shear magnitude of its production alone, Things to Come is dramatically inert for the most part.  Sir Ralph Richardson (Dragonslayer, The Bed Sitting Room) takes a memorable turn as a mid-century despot of Everytown known only as the “Boss”, while Sir Cedric Hardwicke (George Pal’s War of the Worlds) does much the same as the doomed revolutionary Theotocopulos in the future Everytown of 2036.  Unfortunately the “Boss” and Theotocopulos are little more than straw men, existing solely to be put down by righteous Cabal (either of them) and lost to the unstoppable march of progress.  For his part Raymond Massey does well by a role that’s less forgiving than any of the rest, and effectively ties the multi-generational drama together even though he’s given little to do but strike a pose (often in one of two ridiculous costumes) and espouse interminable tracts of Wells’ philosophy.


Bombed-out Everytown, circa 1966

While Wells himself can be blamed for the deficiencies in Things to Come‘s drama, having penned the script himself (with updates by Korda associate Lajos Biro, The Thief of Bagdad), it was the power-struggle between producer Korda and Wells, who had been granted unprecedented access to and influence over the production, that would lead to the film’s steady decline.  Wells proved difficult and inflexible with regards to the production, while Korda often reacted to what he disliked about the picture (like Wells’ interminable exposition) by simply removing it.  By the time the film first reached American shores Korda and its distributors had already excised half an hour of its original 130 minutes, compromising its continuity and whatever narrative flow there had been in favor of the spectacle alone.  Further release variations would be even shorter, with some running barely more than an hour.

Director William Cameron Menzies, along with photographer Georges Perinal, designer Vincent Korda and effects director Ned Man, assured that Things to Come would at least have a cohesive visual style, from the opening moments in pre-war Everytown to the closing starscape, and no matter how cold and turgid its dramatics may be the technical achievements of the thing are difficult to overstate.  The futuristic rebuilding of Everytown, in which massive excavators hollow out a cavernous expanse that swiftly develops into a vast antiseptic city of porcelain and glass (complete with moving sidewalks and glass-tube elevators) with the booming themes of Arthur Bliss taking precedence over any sort of sound effects, is perhaps the mother of all science fiction montages.  Even the substantively embarrassing Space Gun, the film’s one absolute piece of scientific bunk (it even has a sight!), is of impressive construction and imposing scale.

But the spectacle is hardly limited to the future of 2036.  The air raid sequence that begins the picture is one of most successful undertakings of its kind, with swift and lyrical cross-cutting between a panicked population and defensive military operations culminating in a terrifying tour-de-force of urban destruction and human misfortune.  Mann’s complex miniature and composite effects are certainly more transparent a full seventy five years after the fact, but the brilliantly realized imagery (explosive anti-aircraft barrages, buildings reduced to rubble, survivors struggling among the wreckage, and the body of a child half-buried in debris) has lost none of its visceral potency.  The montages that follow, detailing a horrific futility of a decades-long war between nations through the power of image alone, are pure Menzies, a mix of the literal and the symbolic that drives the story more effectively than any of Wells’ truncated drama.  The plague-ravaged and despotic future of 1970, complete with a massive exterior set of bombed-out Everytown, invites one of science fictions great visuals – a fleet of improbably gigantic aircraft flown by the peace-dealing soldiers of Wings Over the World emerging from the clouds to put an end to the warmongers once and for all.  That’s the image that so captivated a much-younger me, viewing Things to Come on television for the first time in one of its many confounding broadcast versions, and though the ideas behind it don’t settle so easily with me anymore the scene has lost none of its grandeur.

While its difficult for me to believe that the potential with Things to Come was not greater than what eventually came to pass, the final product still ranks as the unparalleled science fiction achievement of its generation.  The ravages of time, battles with overzealous editors and a dubious public domain status may have conspired to eradicate much of this top-tier production’s original luster, but it’s still a hell of a thing, brimming with big ideas and some of the most classic of classic sci-fi conceptions.  Regardless of whatever problems it may have Things to Come is still must-see genre material, and gets an easy recommendation from me.


The Space Gun.

I wish I had better things to report for this Legend Films Blu-ray edition of Things to Come, which packages colorized and black and white versions of this film and the Merian C. Cooper epic She on a single dual-layer Blu-ray disc, but with a retail price under $17 I can’t say that I was expecting much either.  The case lists that the film has been “lavishly and painstakingly restored in high definition from the original 35mm elements” – an overstatement, to be sure.  While She was indeed restored a few years ago by Legend Films in association with Kino International, Things to Come looks a lot like it always has in its domestic variants – bad.

Though this disc certainly has its technical faults, which will be enumerated later, the majority of Things to Come‘s problems can be blamed squarely on the nature of the source materials utilized.  A concerted effort was made by Network and Granada several years ago to restore Things to Come to its original US release length of 96 minutes (all footage relating to longer release and pre-release versions is unfortunately lost), an effort that resulted in a lavish, if imperfect, 2-disc special edition DVD of the film in 2007.  Even with the added benefit of 1080p resolution this latest Legend Films edition can’t touch that region 2 PAL-format disc, having been sourced from positive elements of the more common 92 minute cut of the film that are just too far removed from the source to even benefit from the HD upgrade.

As the screenshots below will attest, Things to Come appears soft throughout and lacks anything in the way of fine detail in its hi-def debut.  Menzies and Perinal’s expressive, highly stylized close-ups are void of skin texture, clothing appears flat and uninteresting, and any sense of higher definition is effectively diffused in the gritty mush of an image duped a few times too often.  Contrast likewise suffers, with what were once balanced highlights and intense shadows now reduced to uninteresting shades of dull, milky grey.  Damage is abundant in varying degrees, with much of it undoubtedly baked right into the print itself.  Expect plenty of dust, dirt and speckles, as well as some persistent emulsion scratches and lines.  But perhaps the most egregious fault with the transfer can be lay squarely at the feet of Legend Films themselves, who have granted Things to Come an AVC encode at an intolerably low average video bitrate of just 9.57 Mbps (the colorized version improves by half, at 15.8 Mbps) – less than a quarter of what the format is capable of.  The considerable grain in the image is supported in lackluster fashion, with plenty of artifacting to be found on close inspection, though the inherent softness of the image does a good job of concealing any more fatally distracting digital nastiness.

In all fairness this is far from the worst Things to Come has looked on home video, and I have a perfectly unwatchable Madacy Home Video VHS edition to prove it.  Still, better sources for this film do exist, and their availability on the market renders this HD offering essentially useless however low the price may be.

For the sake of full disclosure, HD screenshots were captured as .png at full resolution in MPlayer and compressed to .jpg using the ImageMagick command-line tool.  After comparing to the original .png files the results appeared quite transparent to these eyes, even when zooming in 2-3x.  The sample DVD snapshots in comparison sets one and two were captured in .png format in VLC, upscaled to 1080 resolution from the native PAL resolution and composited into a 1920×1080 frame for ease of comparison in GiMP, then exported as .jpg at a quality setting of 95%.
In the first two sets of captures the upscaled Network DVD is represented first, followed by the Legend Films black and white and colorized versions respectively.  The rest should be self-explanatory.

More Blu-ray Screenshots:

Audio is additionally disappointing, with only a lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 monophonic track in the original English to be had.  Things to Come has never sounded good on home video, to the point that some editions are outright unintelligible, and while the dialogue in this case improves over that of many (I didn’t have trouble discerning any lines this go around) it’s difficult for me to believe that even this flat-sounding recording couldn’t have improved a bit with a lossless encode.  Funnily enough, the audio on this Legend Films edition actually bests that of the Network R2 DVD, whose zealously over-processed audio “restoration” resulted in shrill high end and some nasty phasing problems (much of the dialogue on that edition sounds as though it were recorded from within a soup can).  Still, this is no better than you’ll find on the Legend Films DVD.

Supplements are as lackluster as the rest, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, and pertain to Ray Harryhausen’s (who had no part in the production, being just 16 at the time of its release) memories of the film and, mostly, to his association with Legend Films and their dubious colorization process.  You get Interview with Ray Harryhausen (3 minutes) and Colorization Process with Ray Harryhausen (8 minutes), both in up-converted 1080i.  After all the fantastic things Harryhausen has done in his life this it’s a sad development that he’s become the chief talking head for this sort of thing.  (She also features a pair of Harryhausen interviews in 1080i HD, as well as an audio commentary with Harryhausen and Mark Vaz. A Harryhausen bio and filmography and a 9 minute collection of vintage toy commercials in 1080i rounds out the disc. A bonus DVD of The Most Dangerous Game is also included.)

Harryhausen’s name looms as large as that of Things to Come on Legend Film’s packaging for this release, a regrettable strategy given that the man had nothing directly to do with the films contained in it, and the ballyhoo about the colorization’s latest revival certainly left a bad taste in my mouth.  Regardless of what you make of any of that, the presentation of Things to Come leaves a hell of a lot to be desired, leaving this half of the Legend Films double feature woefully lacking anything in the least bit recommendable.  Skip it.

in conclusion
Film: Very Good +  Video: Fair  Audio: Fair   Supplements: Poor
Harrumphs: Everything.
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case.

Color Me Blood Red

October 14th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Year: 1964  Company: Jacqueline Kay / Friedman – Lewis Productions   Runtime: 87′
Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis   Writer: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Cinematography: Herschell Gordon Lewis   Cast: Gordon Oas-Heim (as Don Joseph), Candi Conder,
Elyn Warner, Pat Lee, Jerome Eden, Scott H. Hall, Jim Jaekel, Iris Marshall, William Harris, Cathy Collins
Disc company: Something Weird / Image Entertainment   Video: 1080p 1.78:1   Audio: LPCM 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: BD50 (Region A)   Release Date: 09/27/2011   Released as part of the Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Trilogy Blu-ray collection, and available for purchase through Amazon.com
This review is part three of three of our coverage of the Something Weird / Image Entertainment Blu-ray release of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Trilogy – reviews of Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs have already been published.

To paraphrase an old proverb, all good things must come to an end.  Not only did the luck of exploitation dynamos Herschell Gordon Lewis and David F. Friedman run out with Color Me Blood Red, a bland little shocker produced in 1964 but not released until late 1965, but their partnership did as well.  Lewis would go on to direct a few hillbilly adventures and a host of other gore classics (like The Gruesome Twosome, Wizard of Gore and The Gore Gore Girls) before embarking on a successful career in direct marketing, while Friedman would continue peddling his own peculiar brands of entertainment (Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS, Love Camp 7 and She-Freak).  Color Me Blood Red never turned much business for either party, and would likely have faded into obscurity all together had drive-in entrepreneurs not been so cunning as to re-release it, triple-billed with the infinitely more amusing Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs.

Clearly inspired by Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood, a fusion of comedy and horror in which Dick Miller turns a penchant for murder into a thriving sculpting career, Color Me Blood Red follows the dead-serious misadventures of struggling painter Adam Sorg (Minnesota’s own Gordan Oas-Heim, as Don Joseph), who finds a cure for his color woes in human blood.  As Sorg earns praise from a persnickety local critic the bodies start piling up, and its not long before the teen-aged daughter of Sorg’s biggest fan and her assortment of obnoxious friends find themselves in the artist’s murderous sights.

From the stock musical cues right on up, Color Me Blood Red is a dull and monotonous affair.  The screenplay by Lewis is below even his usual standards, and the concept inspires too little gruesome action and far, far too much forgettable filler.  The primary narrative of Sorg’s decline from struggling artist to homicidal maniac often plays second fiddle to a lot of paddle boating and general mucking about by Jerome Eden (a sort of poverty row Frankie Avalon who, thankfully, never sings) and his gaggle of beach-bound fans, mind-numbing in-action that never expands beyond Sorg’s beach front home and the beach itself.  The sum experience is not unlike being forced to sit through reels upon reels of your lamest friend’s vacation videos, and the minimal gore payoff hardly makes it worth the effort.  Some may find solace in the dialogue’s occasional lapses into absurdity (“Holy Bananas! It’s a girl’s leg!” is a perennial favorite), but I found the fast-forward button to be more appealing.

There is gore to be found here, and of the same brilliantly low-tech variety one should expect of vintage Lewis, but it’s also in much shorter supply than in companion pieces Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs.  The lone standout sequence has Sorg menacing a pair of unassuming young paddle-boaters with a fire poker, one of whom he later bleeds for artistic inspiration in the back room of his home.  Otherwise there’s a stabbing and a lot of painting with red corpuscles to look forward to, but not much else.  From a story filled to tipping point with ripe and disposable anonymous youth I was expecting a lot more.

Far more entertaining than the film itself is its advertising campaign, which prominently featured a devil standing before an easel and promised audiences “A Blood-Spattered Study in the Macabre… Drenched in Crimson Color!”.  The theatrical trailer offers even more to love, its narrator gravely intoning “You must keep reminding yourself: It’s just a movie… It’s just a movie… It’s just a movie…”  It’s more the pity, then, that Color Me Blood Red turned out to be so forgettable.  Skip it.


Adam Sorg, tortured artist and dresser.

Something Weird, through distributor Image Entertainment, presents Color Me Blood Red for the first time on Blu-ray by way of The Blood Trilogy collection (along with Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs, all housed on a single dual layer BD50).  Like Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs before it, Color Me Blood Read is transferred from a positive theatrical source, with results neither as surprising as the former or distressing as the latter.  Print quality here is strictly middle of the road, with frequent dirt, grit and speckling, reel change markers, and the odd splice and photochemical damage.  I was overall pleased with the quality of the source, which ranks as more than “good enough” for the film in question.

Presented in 1080p, Color Me Blood Red‘s matted aspect ratio of 1.78:1 makes for a decent viewing experience but is not without controversy.  Quick comparisons between an older SD variant and this new HD transfer show that the image typically loses information at the bottom of the frame, to the point that information is occasionally gained at the top.  Of course this isn’t consistent, and there are at least a few instances in which more is matted from the top than from the bottom.  There is very little to no head room in the original full frame photography, leaving me to wonder whether this was ever meant to be shown at a widescreen aspect ratio at all, and the new transfer’s selective matting amounts a new brand of pan-and-scanning, with the top and bottom falling victim as opposed to the sides.  Those touchy on the subject will want to hold onto their older DVDs, which retain a more open full frame aspect ratio.

Colors and contrast are again a sticking point.  The all-important reds again take a shift for the magenta, leading the artificial blood to look especially so and unnaturally purple / pink.  Here the trouble looks to be present across the board, meaning that a modicum of hue tweaking could have resolved it from the start.  Contrast is, as with the rest of the transfers on this disc, flat, and while not so bothersome as the color situation could just as easily have been remedied.  Color Me Blood Red lacks any appreciable sharpness due to the frequent focusing woes of the original photography (check out that final close-up), with few moments of exceptional detail.  Film texture is evident throughout, and the AVC encode at an average video bitrate of 19.6 Mbps does a reasonable if imperfect job of supporting it – I noted no flagrant encoding deficiencies.  The issues of the aspect ratio aside this transfer really doesn’t look that bad, and the improvement over SD iterations is obvious even if the color and contrast levels leave something to be desired.

For the sake of full disclosure, HD screenshots were captured as .png at full resolution in MPlayer and compressed to .jpg using the ImageMagick command-line tool.  After comparing to the original .png files the results appeared quite transparent to these eyes, even when zooming in 2-3x.

Audio is once again presented in uncompressed 16-bit Linear PCM monophonic English.  There’s no sign of restoration in sight but I can’t see too many complaining, as the library music, sound effects and dialogue all come through just fine.  There are no accompanying subtitles.

Supplements are sourced from past editions and mirror those of the other features in the collection, starting off with another excellent  commentary track with director Herschell Gordon Lewis, producer David F. Friedman, and Something Weird’s Michael Vraney.  Lewis and Friedman’s partnership dissolved during the production of Color Me Blood Red, and though the two’s friendship later recovered that subject is the focus of much of the discussion here.  Next up is a 10 minute collection of silent outtakes and alternate footage in SD, with a theatrical trailer in SD and a few images in the Lewis / Friedman art gallery rounding out the film-specific extras. (Each of the other films in the collection is also accompanied by a feature audio commentary, outtake footage, and an original trailer, with short subjects Carving Magic and Follow That Skirt and a trailer for the Something Weird documentary Godfather of Gore finishing off the disc)

Two Thousand Maniacs may be this disc’s low water mark with regards to its technical deficiencies, but Color Me Blood Red is easily its lowest in terms of entertainment value.  The bland A Bucket of Blood-inspired narrative is pumped so full of dull youth filler that its few high points are easily lost in the shuffle.  Something Weird’s high definition revisit is not without its problems, particularly when it comes to the questionable 1.78:1 framing, but for a snoozer like this I’m not one to complain too loudly.  For $4 per film it could certainly have been worse.

in conclusion
Film: Pretty Bland  Video: Good +  Audio: Very Good   Supplements: Very Good
Harrumphs: Limited video bitrate, with all three films plus extras cohabiting one dual layer BD50, compromised framing and no subtitles.
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case.

Two Thousand Maniacs

October 13th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Year: 1964  Company: Jacqueline Kay / Friedman – Lewis Productions   Runtime: 87′
Director: Herschell Gordon Lewis   Writer: Herschell Gordon Lewis
Cinematography: Herschell Gordon Lewis   Music: Larry Wellington, Herschell Gordon Lewis
Cast: William Kerwin, Connie Mason, Jeffrey Allen, Shelby Livingston, Ben Moore, Jerome Eden, Gary Bakeman
Disc company: Something Weird / Image Entertainment   Video: 1080p 1.78:1   Audio: LPCM 2.0 English
Subtitles: None   Disc: BD50 (Region A)   Release Date: 09/27/2011   Released as part of the Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Trilogy Blu-ray collection, and available for purchase through Amazon.com
This review is part two of three of our coverage of the Something Weird / Image Entertainment Blu-ray release of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Trilogy – a review of Blood Feast has already been published, and Color Me Blood Red will follow shortly.

With the 1963 release of their influential inaugural gore effort Blood Feast proving an epic success (a quarter million in film rentals - 10 times the film’s meager budget – were recorded in its Southeastern regional release alone), it was only natural that producer David F. Friedman and director Herschell Gordon Lewis should try to make their peculiar brand of crimson lightning strike twice.  Granted nearly three times the budget ($60,000 baby!) and filmed on location in St. Cloud, Florida, Blood Feast‘s more accomplished thematic progeny Two Thousand Maniacs would have its premiere just 8 months further on.  Though its success was limited compared to what had come before, more than enough proceeds rolled in to ensure that blood would flow forever after.

Largely inspired by MGM’s big-budget Cinemascope musical Brigadoon, in which a mystical village emerges from the mists of the Scottish countryside once every hundred years, Two Thousand Maniacs offers up Southern-style exploitation escapism by way of a small town that reappears on the centennial of its Civil War-era destruction so that its slaughtered residents might take revenge on their Yankee aggressors.  The details of the premise known, the story proves a simple no-nonsense affair.  The temporarily revivified citizenry of sleepy Pleasant Valley lure two carloads of Yankees (identified by license plate) to town as the “guests of honor” of their centennial celebration.  Teacher Tom and tag-along Terry (William Kerwin and Connie Mason in the starring roles) soon begin to think that there’s more to their hosts than meets the eye and set about investigating, while their anonymous compatriots find themselves the unwitting star attractions of the town’s gruesome retribution.

Say what you will for its entertainment value, but there’s little denying that Blood Feast isn’t a very good film by most qualifying standards.  With a town-worth of production value, a huge cast of local extras, and more general competence to be had in pretty much every department, Two Thousand Maniacs not only excels beyond its predecessor as film but also maintains the uneasy balance between the grisly and the goofy that helped make it so much fun.  There’s a carnival atmosphere that pervades throughout, with the residents of Pleasant Valley perpetually singing and dancing and waving their commemorative Confederate flags.  It’s all quite charming in a subversive sort of way, like a Gone With the Wind for exploitation devotees.  Hell, it’s hard not to want the South to rise again after a few repetitions of the catchy “Rebel Yell” (complete with an inspired vocal turn by director Herschell Gordon Lewis himself).

Adding to the insidiously cheerful atmosphere are the unhinged dramatics of Jeffrey Allen (Something Weird, This Stuff’ll Kill Ya!) as Pleasant Valley’s boisterous Mayor Buckman.  He’s a legitimately imposing figure, with his deep, booming voice and devilish ulterior motives, but is ultimately as lovable a murderous madman as ever has been.  Even after all the un-pleasantries he dishes out to his Yankee guests – and there are plenty – he’s just impossible to hate.  Less effectual is the performance of Gary Bakeman as town cut-up and events organizer Rufus, an over-the-top be-overalled caricature whose scenery chewing would have left the film coated in chaw and tooth marks had the saying any literal merit.  William Kerwin maintains his usual level of professionalism, and does far better by his role than most would ever credit him for, while Connie Mason’s physical presence again makes up for whatever she lacks in thespian charms.  The rest of the cast (including Jerome Eden, who would be prominently featured in the following year’s Color Me Blood Red) more or less fades into the background, which says more for their talents than any individual assessment could.

In direct comparison to its predecessor the all-important gore quotient for Two Thousand Maniacs seems more restrained, though thanks to more thoughtful direction on the part of Lewis that’s never really a problem.  Rather than just flinging audiences headlong into its ludicrous gore set pieces, a la Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs makes a concerted effort to build a sense of suspense and dread in advance of its shocks.  When at its best, as when a young Yankee woman has her thumb removed by a local beau, only to face greater dismemberment at the hands of those from whom she seeks help, the extra effort here really pays off.  The gore effects themselves are of the same stuff as before, and the Kaopectate-laced stage blood and appropriated bits of mannequin every bit as obvious, but they’re undeniably colorful (“Gruesomely stained in Blood Color!” proclaimed the ad campaign) and the added emphasis on build-up renders them more effective than they have any right to be.

As with its companion Blood Feast there’s not much to Two Thousand Maniacs that’s likely to shock audiences these days, but its quaintness in comparison to modern horrors is a large part of why I find it so endearing.  Director Herschell Gordon Lewis has been known to list this as his favorite of his films, and I can’t argue with that sentiment.  Of course I’m also a Southerner at heart (displaced though I may be in the far-flung north), so perhaps I’m biased to this particular myth of the South, however preposterous.  Bias or no, Two Thousand Maniacs‘ place as a classic of drive-in exploitation has long been secure, and unlike so many of its peers it retains a genuine capacity to entertain.  I’ll not ask for more.


Another trustworthy, stable personality from the H.G. Lewis stable.

Something Weird, through distributor Image Entertainment, present Two Thousand Maniacs for the first time on Blu-ray by way of The Blood Trilogy collection (along with Blood Feast and Color Me Blood Red, all housed on a single dual layer BD50).  Like Blood Feast before it, Two Thousand Maniacs is transferred from a positive theatrical source, though in this case the results are considerably less appealing.  The state of the source elements for Two Thousand Maniacs leave a lot to be desired from the outset, and while I’m not one to complain too much about the sad state of source prints (particularly in the case of a film for which better elements simply may not exist) the damage here is still quite striking.  Aside from the expected dirt, speckling and reel change markers, there are also persistent green emulsion scratches, printed-in black damage, and more than a few jump cuts.  This is likely a more ragged appearance than most will be expecting, even for a low budget film of this vintage, and I’ve done nothing to conceal the source defects in the images below.

Presented in 1080p at a matted widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1, Two Thousand Maniacs also provides a softer, less detailed presentation than its two co-features by virtue of its source limitations.  The framing here is more problematic than on Blood Feast, and seems to selectively matte from either the top or bottom (or both) of the frame depending on the situation.  Two prime examples can be found in the famed barrel roll scene, in which the 6th sample frame below is matted along the bottom, while the 7th sample frame is matted along the top.  This is a case where an open matte presentation would have been vastly preferred over the matted 1.78:1, as the framing for the original photography is all over the place, though the new transfer does add substantially to the left and right of the frame.  Perhaps the most egregious misstep with this film is that it is granted the least impressive of the disc’s encodes (AVC at an average video bitrate of only 15.7 Mbps), and it shows.  The variable grain structure of the print is simply not supported, and on close inspection reveals clumping artifacts and an unnaturally digital appearance.  It’s far from the worst encode I’ve seen, and it undoubtedly has its stronger moments, but with 8 unused GB of space on the dual layered disc there was quite literally room for improvement.

In other areas the transfer is similarly lackluster.  The quality of color reproduction varies on a scene-by-scene and sometimes shot-by-shot basis, and while some fluctuation is expected a modicum of color tweaking here or there could have safely laid this issue to rest.  That said, colors are for the most part healthy, if a little flat, but there are times when the blues and all-important reds take a shift for the magenta with unsavory results (see the 2nd and 6th samples below).  Black levels, as was the case with Blood Feast, also fall flat and, just like the color inconsistencies, could easily have been remedied through minor tweaking of the transfer.  Overall I’d say that Two Thousand Maniacs on Blu-ray offered me an okay but thoroughly unremarkable viewing experience, and while it undeniably excels in ways beyond the previous DVD edition its limitations are really too numerous, and at times too egregious, to ignore.

For the sake of full disclosure, HD screenshots were captured as .png at full resolution in MPlayer and compressed to .jpg using the ImageMagick command-line tool.  After comparing to the original .png files the results appeared quite transparent to these eyes, even when zooming in 2-3x.  I’ve made no effort to avoid the considerable damage and other weaknesses present in this transfer, as should be obvious.

Far less problematic than the video is the audio, presented in uncompressed 16-bit Linear PCM monophonic English.  All of the warts and imperfections of the original recording and subsequent aging of the source master are present and accounted for, which is just fine by me – I love this sort of lo-fi patina.  You can expect plenty of background crackle, as well as the nasty pops that accompany the frequent splices, with nary a hint of restorative work in sight.  As with Blood Feast the dialogue (including some hysterically boomy post dub work), sound effects and score (in this case a mix of memorable and appropriate folksy numbers) come across just fine, and I’ve no complaints with it.  There are no accompanying subtitles.

Supplements are sourced from past editions and mirror those of the other features in the collection, starting off with an exceptional commentary track with director Herschell Gordon Lewis, producer David F. Friedman, and Something Weird’s Michael Vraney.  For the collaborative team of Lewis and Friedman, which would end with the following year’s Color Me Blood Red, this seems to be their proudest achievement, and they have more than enough to say on the subject.  Next up is a modest 16 and a half minute collection of silent outtakes and alternate footage in SD, which have been sourced from an earlier tape transfer.  A theatrical trailer in SD and a few images in the Lewis / Friedman art gallery round out the film-specific extras. (Each of the other films in the collection is also accompanied by a feature audio commentary, outtake footage, and an original trailer, with short subjects Carving Magic and Follow That Skirt and a trailer for the Something Weird documentary Godfather of Gore rounding out the disc)

The framing of the transfer and an iffy encode keep this third of The Blood Trilogy Blu-ray from ever really getting off the ground, and I’d say that the old axiom “you get what you pay for” certainly applies here.  As with almost any inaugural product this disc mixes good with bad, and Two Thousand Maniacs is its lowest point (a real pity since I’d argue it’s the best film of the three), but with a going rate of a little over $4 per film at present it’s hard to argue too much against Something Weird’s efforts.  I just hope they learn from their freshman flubs, and that future Something Weird Blu-rays, if there are to be any, improve upon them.

in conclusion
Film: Excellent  Video: Good –  Audio: Very Good   Supplements: Very Good
Harrumphs: Limited video bitrate, with all three films plus extras cohabiting one dual layer BD50, compromised framing and encode, and no subtitles.
Packaging: Standard Blu-ray case.

« Older Entries