Posts Tagged ‘Action’


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.


Ninja Warriors

December 31st, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,

dir. John Lloyd
1985 / Silver Star Film Company / ~90′
written by Ron Marchini, Romano Kristoff and Paul Vance
music by Pat Wales, director of photography Bob Aaron
starring Ron Marchini, Romano Kristoff, Paul Vance,
Ken Watanabe, Mike Cohen and Mike Monty
Ninja Warriors is available on VHS via Amazon.com, or in your nightmares

The holidays are winding down here in Wtf-Film-land, the jollity of days past reduced to little more than a slowly deteriorating refrigerated turkey and a few uncollected scraps of wrapping paper scattered about the floor. But much as I (and my waistline) would like to look forward to the year ahead there’s just one more bit of holiday business to attend to: the first annual M.O.S.S. Secret Santa assignment, my contribution to which has already been covered by the wonderful Fist of B-List. Thanks are due to Keith, of Teleport-City fame, for sending along this fetid slice of cinematic merriment, a US-Filipino martial arts fiasco from the bygone heyday of the under-produced action in-epic. It seems that, like myself, Keith had bad-white-actors-pretending-to-be-ninjas on the brain this holiday season, and the biggest surprise of his offering is that neither Joseph Lai, Thomas Tang, or even the inimitable Godfrey Ho are to be found in its credits. Don’t let that fool you, though, as 1985′s Ninja Warriors is at least as dreadful as anything that jolly band of schlock-shop entrepreneurs ever cobbled together.

Even though Ho and co. aren’t involved you’d never guess from the story line, which reads like those for any number of their efforts. Ninja Warriors concerns an evil band of ninja baddies (and one outrageously bearded goon) who are working feverishly to acquire a top secret and ambiguously described formula with which they hope to take over the world. Somehow. The police become involved after a bit of ninja espionage leaves a mountain of dead security guards in its wake. The bumbling lieutenant in charge of the case wastes no time in contacting his ninjutsu-expert pal Steve, who fights against the ninjas’ scheming with his two greatest weapons – bland, quizzical facial expressions and sweat pants.

Continue Reading »


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.

Heroic Trio

October 21st, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Year: 1993  Runtime: 84′  Director: Johnnie To
Writer: Sandy Shaw Lai-King   Cinematography: Tom Lau Moon-Tong, Poon Hang-Sang
Music: William Hu Wei-Li   Cast: Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung, Damian Lau, Anthony Wong

An invisible villain is stealing babies from their cribs and out of hospitals! The evildoer even mocks the police by announcing jis or her victims beforehand. Not even the son of Hong Kong’s chief of police is safe, as hard as the policeman responsible for the case, Inspector Lau (Damian Lau), is trying. Eventually, the local superheroine (Anita Mui) – depending on the version of your subtitles either called the copyright-endangered “The Wonder Woman” or the incredibly boring “Super Heroine” – takes an interest in the case, which might or might not have something to do with her being Lau’s wife Tung when she’s not fighting evil while wearing a mask. But alone, not even she is able to catch the invisible fiend.

Said fiend is a woman named Ching (Michelle Yeoh), using an experimental invisibility that is still in development created by a scientist she’s shacking up with. Ching is in the service of someone only known as Evil Master or Old Bastard (Yen Shi-Kwan). Evil Master is a person of dubious gender (so probably supposed to be a eunuch) with a most excellent plan: make one of the stolen babies – all of whom are astrologically destined to greatness – the emperor of China and turn the rest of them into his cannibal assassins. It’s quite obvious that Ching is conflicted about the whole baby stealing business, but years of brainwashing are difficult to get rid of.

Once the police chief’s baby has been stolen, another costumed heroine appears. Chat aka The Thief Catcher aka Seventh Chan is more of a bounty hunter than Wonder Woman is, preferably – though not exclusively – working for money. Chat is also an escapee of the Old Bastard’s assassin program, and an old friend of Ching’s, who once let her friend live when Evil Master told her to kill Chat.

As a heroine, Chat is of the rather reckless sort, prepared to pull stupid stunts like kidnapping a baby herself to provoke the invisible baby stealer into action. That’s the sort of plan that in a Hong Kong movie has a good chance to end with a dead baby, which it does. However, this does at least bring Chat into contact with Tung and lets the bounty hunter realize who is stealing all the babies and why. Eventually – but not before it is revealed that Tung and Ching have a common past too – the three women will throw their lots in with each other and give the Old Bastard what he’s got coming.

  
  
  

Before Johnnie To had his own production house, he was working as a director for hire like just about anyone else in Hong Kong’s industry. Most of his films of this period don’t show as much of the hand of their auteur as we are accustomed from him now, and are instead realized in the directorial style of the minute in Hong Kong, making them decidedly professional and strangely impersonal affairs.

Nonetheless, some of To’s movies of that time period are pretty great movies, or are even, as is the case with Heroic Trio, minor classics of their kind. Heroic Trio might be an impersonal effort by the standards of its director, but it is also action directed by the great Ching Siu-Tung, and perfectly adapts nearly everything that is great about early 90s wire fu movies to the superhero genre that wasn’t exactly filled with great movies at a point in time when Tim Burton’s Batman movies seemed to be as good as superheroes could get on film.

The wire fu film’s combination of the insane, the bizarrely violent, the poesy of bodies in motion, the slapstick-y and the melodramatic always had clear parallels to what’s great about the superhero genre (one could even argue that wuxia heroes are old-timey superheroes with swords), so making a wire fu superhero movie seems like an obvious direction to take the genre in.

Of course, obvious directions don’t always lead to watchable films. In Heroic Trio‘s case, though, they do. Even though you can criticize To’s direction as being strictly inside the parameters of early 90s wire fu, with all the Dutch angles, wobbly zooms and dramatic slow motion shots that implies, one would have to be a soulless monster not to enjoy this style of filmmaking, especially when the action sequences between the scenes of melodramatic slo-mo crying are choreographed by someone like Ching who knows how to let non-martial artists like Anita Mui and Maggie Cheung look more or less convincing in a fight, or at least as convincing as is necessary in this sort of film. Michelle Yeoh for her part doesn’t need anyone to let her look good in an action scene.

It’s also a true joy to watch a movie featuring three female superheroes where the heroines’ competence is never questioned by anyone. “But you’re a girl” is just not a sentence that belongs in a film coming from the wuxia tradition that is so rich in female heroes, so nobody ever utters it. On a slightly more superficial level, and one slightly less feminism-compatible one, seeing our competent heroines played by Mui, Yeoh and Cheung is the sort of experience that can distract a guy from a movie’s flaws quite well.

Truth be told, I’m not even sure I should even call Heroic Trio‘s problems flaws at all. Perhaps, interpreting them as simple markers of their place and time would be much fairer, especially given how much more enjoyable they make the movie at hand. How, after all, can I resist a script that turns a decidedly simple basic plot into a more or less labyrinthine construction of flashbacks, side plots and contrived connections between characters? And how could I not approve of a superhero movie actually willing to kill a baby, even if it’s only to give Mui the opportunity to cry some very decorative tears? And how could I not enjoy Heroic Trio‘s sudden, generous, bursts of ridiculous, awesome nonsense like Anthony Wong (playing the original cannibal assassin) munching on his own cut off finger, or the great moment in the film’s finale when the Big Bad has been reduced to a skeleton and decides to ride Yeoh’s body like a bony puppeteer? How not to love a film morally dubious enough to throw in a scene of one of its heroines mercy-killing a bunch of cannibal toddlers for no good reason at all?

If Heroic Trio is one thing, it truly is the embodiment of the whole of Hong Kong wire fu filmmaking 1993.

 

The Horror!? is a weekly cult cinema column by Denis Klotz, an aficionado of the obscure and operator of the film blog of the same name.

Miami Golem

October 14th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Year: 1985  Runtime: 85′  Director: Alberto De Martino
Writers: Gianfranco Clerici, Alberto De Martino, Vincenzo Mannino
Cinematography: Gianlorenzo Battaglia, Paolo D’Ottavi   Music: Detto Mariano
Cast: David Warbeck, Laura Trotter, John Ireland, Loris Loddi, Giorgio Favretto, Giorgio Bonora

War correspondent turned local TV reporter in Florida Craig Milford (David Warbeck) is sent to film the newest experiment of scientist Dr. Schweiker (Sergio Rossi), whom everyone calls – smiling as if it were the best of jokes – “that filthy Nazi”. Schweiker has cloned and somehow genetically manipulated cells that were found inside of a meteorite. Schweiker’s goal is to, um, you got me there.

A malfunction during Craig’s highly scientific looking attempt at filming the alien cells nearly ends the film early by killing the poor dears. Fortunately, the cells miraculously revive and Craig is distracted from that particular strangeness by vague looking projections swirling around the lab, talking to him in a language he doesn’t understand.

Our hero’s not too fazed by stuff like this, shrugs the David Warbeck shrug, and goes home. Shortly after he’s gone, Schweiker and his whole team are assassinated by the henchmen of evil rich guy Anderson (John Ireland), and the cells are stolen. Anderson has a fiendish and absolutely sensible plan: to grow the cells into a monstrous creature completely under his control he will then use to blackmail governments into doing whatever he wants them to do, like giving him contractual work. I think bribery would be an easier way to achieve that goal, but then I’m not an evil capitalist. For some reason, Anderson thinks Craig – and not sanity – is a threat to these plans and commands further henchmen to kill the reporter too.

But Craig, once he’s heard of the murders, gets himself a gun and demonstrates that shooting down helicopters with a revolver and being an all-around action hero are among the skills you learn as a war reporter.

When Craig’s not involved in chases and shoot-outs, he tries to find out what the strange swirling things were trying to tell him. Fortunately, he meets Joanna Fitzgerald (Laura Trotter), a very helpful woman who recognizes the message as being in the language of sunken Atlantis. Or aliens. Or both.

In fact, Joanna is secretly working for a group of benevolent aliens who give her fantastic psychic abilities (none of them protecting her from a gratuitous shower scene, alas). The aliens have decided that Craig is The Chosen One™, destined to destroy the cells which of course belong to the most horrible and destructive creature ever to live. It’s all in a day’s work for David Warbeck, I suppose.

  
  
  

Quite at the end of his career, Italian director Alberto De Martino had to work from confusing scripts bizarrely unfit for someone who was always at his best when directing straight action material. Miami Golem‘s confusing and generally random mix of Science Fiction, horror, action, and all kinds of 70s crackpottery (in the mid 80s to boot) isn’t as drugged up as that of De Martino’s Pumaman was – but what is? – yet it’s still pretty darn weird.

The film’s first fifty minutes or so consist of cheap and silly but also pleasantly tightly realized action scenes, which are regularly broken up by long sequences of characters talking reams of ridiculous poppycock at each other. There’s bad science, Atlantis, telepathy, telekinesis and people talking in that lovely Italian dub job manner that makes everyone sound as if they had learned cursing by watching Ed Wood movies. It’s enough to let anyone who has a heart and a brain cry tears of laughter and delight.

After those first fifty minutes are over, though, Miami Golem gets really weird. De Martino still shakes things up with decent action sequences, but most of the rest of the film is dedicated to melting its audience’s brains with as much dead-pan ridiculousness as it can possibly offer.

Among the film’s greatest moments belong a scene where an alien explains Craig’s role as The Chosen One™ by stopping time and drawing our hero into a mirror dimension (or something) where it can take on Craig’s appearance to talk to him, making the film’s main expository scene one of (an obviously pretty amused) David Warbeck discussing THE END OF ALL CREATION with himself. No no no, I’m sure he’s completely sane. Other high points of this phase of the film are many, many, many shots of actors and the embryo rubber doll in a jar that is the titular Miami Golem using mental powers at each other – leading to some lovely facial expressions and much VERY HARD STARING. And a blinking rubber embryo.

Even better are probably the scenes where the Golem/rubber embryo attacks Craig and Joanna with telekinesis, which is of course mostly demonstrated by the actors jumping around in the style of mildly excited St. Vitus’s dance sufferers and stunt doubles looking nothing like the actors catapulting themselves against walls. This, dear friends and readers, is exactly what movies were invented for.

Miami Golem‘s air of heart-warming wonder is further strengthened by an acting ensemble willing and able to say the most ridiculous things with the straightest of faces and what looks like real enthusiasm to me. His enthusiasm is of course what made David Warbeck such a likeable leading man in most films of the Italian phase of his career. He clearly realized that he was usually acting in ridiculous nonsense, but didn’t let that hinder him from putting as much energy into what he did on screen as possible, seemingly always having fun with his lot. If there’s an ability ideally suited to letting a grown man upstage a rubber embryo in a jar, as Warbeck does here so beautifully, it is the man’s gift of throwing himself into the job of having serious fun on screen.

The Horror!? is a weekly cult cinema column by Denis Klotz, an aficionado of the obscure and operator of the film blog of the same name.

Garo: Red Requiem

September 2nd, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , ,
Year: 2010   Runtime: 97′  Director: Keita Amemiya
Writers: Keita Amemiya, Itaru Era   Music: Shunji Inoue
Cast: Ryosei Konishi, Mary Matsuyama, Saori Hara, Yosuke Saito, Masahiro Kuranuki, Kanji Tsuda

Makai Knight Kouga (Ryosei Konishi) is still protecting his part of Japan from the incursions of extra-dimensional evil beings known as Horrors. This time around, our hero has left his home city for some other unnamed Japanese city to hunt the particularly loathsome “Lord” (who just happens to quite clearly be a Lady) Karma (Saori Hara voiced by Kouga’s TV show love interest Mika Hijii, for some reason). Karma resides inside of a mirror that can only be entered by others under very specific circumstances, and uses her victims’ hidden desires (and a couple of freakish henchpeople owning a goth club) to lure them in.

The city Kouga looks for Karma in has its own protectors already: the experienced Makai Priest Akaza (Yosuke Saito) and his assistant Shiguto (Masahiro Kuranuki). For once, both residents seem pretty okay with letting Kouga do his heroic loner thing. That’s not the reaction of another Makai Priest, Rekka (Mary Matsuyama), who arrives just when Kouga does, with a chip on her shoulder and obvious hatred towards Karma in her heart. Rekka wants to kill Karma herself, the fact that she isn’t bonded to a magical armour (it’s not allowed for girls, you know, I suspect because of girl cooties) notwithstanding, and really, given that we’ll later learn that Karma ate Rekka’s father, it’s a reasonable wish.

Obviously, Kouga and Rekka will come to blows, and it will take a series of cheesy speeches to convince the priestess that it’s the job of all female characters in tokusatsu to cast spells (or – as in this case – play magic flute) at the main baddie from the side-lines while a rude, arrogant man with a very large sword does the main fighting, even when she has been shown to be quite good – though not so good as to embarrass the main character – at kicking peoples’ asses.

Anyway, Karma is powerful enough for Kouga to actually need the magical help, so it is a good thing that he’s upgraded his interpersonal skills from “insufferable” to “just not a people person”.

  
  

Despite my problems with its use of its female lead character, the (3D, but who cares?) theatrical feature following the “mature” (and pretty damn great) tokusatsu show Garo is an at times very entertaining piece of work, at least if you’re willing to go with it.

Now, when you hear “theatrical feature”, don’t imagine the film’s budget to be visibly higher than that of the TV show. The rather humble number of locations, the shooting style and the quality of the special effects should make the low budget nature of the endeavour quite obvious.

Fortunately, Red Requiem is still as much Keita Amemiya’s baby as the original show was, and Amemiya is a director and creature designer with a great talent for milking low budgets for all the spectacle they are worth. After all, he’s the guy who once used re-jigged cuckoo clocks as gigantic war machines in a movie, and it kinda-sorta worked.

Whether you think the quality of the CG effects helps or hinders Amemiya in his creative efforts will depend on your tolerance for extremely cheap looking CG.

I have made my peace with unnatural looking CG effects by now, as long as I like the concepts and ideas that are being put on screen with their help. Given my predilections, it would be pretty difficult for me to dislike the aesthetic the digital tech is trying to bring to life in Red Requiem‘s case. It’s a strange, sometimes silly, sometimes cheesy, always very Japanese visual world, where classically Japanese style meets Western kitsch, mock-Gothic trappings, hack and slash videogame choreography and the free-form bizarre, until it becomes pretty difficult to decide on the appropriate reaction to it all. One could of course be an art snob and snort derisively, but it’s just as fair a reaction to be charmed by the combination of the childlike naive, the exploitative and the imaginative on display. (And yeah, there are some of Amemiya’s trademark mime-alike monsters and someone with white wings, too).

  
  

Most of the not-so-digital action and the wire fu is quite good too. Konishi and Matsuyama are convincing at striking the appropriate poses, and Amemiya is still a friend of staging action sequences so that the audience is actually able to see what’s going on. There are two or three moments of too obvious stuntman substitution, but I take a scene that’s so clearly staged I can identify someone as a stuntman over one where I don’t see what’s supposed to go on at all any time.

The acting’s about how you would expect from a project like this. Konishi still doesn’t move a facial muscle to do anything but scowl, but he ispretty fantastic at scowling, and everybody else plays his or her role a bit broader than contemporary Western tastes in acting styles would suggest. However, the characters the actors are playing are pretty broad archetypes too, so I can’t help but find these performances fitting. Certain characters are not meant to be portrayed naturalistically.

On the writing side, Red Requiem is clearly a step back from the comparative thematic richness of the show that spawned it, back into the safer territories of overlong speeches about heroics that take turns with emotional cheese. Still, I can’t say I found myself getting to annoyed by it all, because there’s nothing cynical about this aspect of the film, never a feeling that the film is going through the motions when it sprouts its not very clever philosophy. It’s all honest heart-on-its-sleeve goodliness that takes itself terribly seriously, and while it seems proper to giggle about that, I won’t blame it for being good-natured, silly and a bit dumb. See also, “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding”.

So, while I would have loved to watch a Garo movie that kept closer to the clever (or the exceedingly strange) parts of the show it came from, I had my fun with what Red Requiem has to offer, especially in its final third, when Amemiya seems to pull out all the stops and begins to bring anything on screen he could imagine and somehow squeeze in.

The Horror!? is a weekly cult cinema column by Denis Klotz, an aficionado of the obscure and operator of the film blog of the same name.

Asesinos De Otros Mundos

August 5th, 2011 | article by | 2 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Year: 1971    Runtime: 87′  Director: Rubén Galindo
Writers: Rubén Galindo, Ramón Obón  Cinematography: Raúl Martínez Solares   Music: Chucho Zarzosa
Cast: El Santo, Juan Gallardo, Sasha Montenegro, Carlos Agosti, Marco Antonio Campos, Carlos Suárez

A horrible monstrosity that looks a lot like a bunch of people crawling around under a tarp kills important leaders of Mexico’s industry. It’s so very very sad. The tarpster serves a certain Malkosh (Carlos Agosti) who uses his awesome ability to appear on a television in police chief O’Connor’s (Marco Antonio Campos) meeting room to try and blackmail Mexico into paying him a lot of money, or else, more “important” people will die.

Fortunately, the police has a not-so-secret weapon: El Santo (El Santo!), the idol of the masses, greatest man on Earth, Blue Demon’s secret nemesis (etc.) is on the case before you can even cry out in excitement. One might doubt the great man’s technique – getting himself overrun by Malkosh’s car after he has already gotten rid of the bad guy’s henchmen, and then caught – but his results are great.

Continue Reading »


Detective Dee And The Mystery Of The Phantom Flame

June 30th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
a.k.a. Di Renjie
Year: 2010    Runtime: 124′  Director: Tsui Hark
Writers: Chen Kuo-Fu, Chang Chia-Lu  Cinematography: Parkie Chan Chor-Keung, Chan Chi-Ying
Music: Peter Kam Pau-Tat   Cast: Andy Lau Tak-Wah, Li Bing-Bing, Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Deng Chao,
Carina Lau Ka-Ling, Richard Ng Yiu-Hon, Teddy Robin Kwan

China in the 7th Century, during the Tang Dynasty. To commemorate her crowning as the first (and, unfortunately, last) Empress of China, Wu Zetian (Carina Lau) has commissioned the building of an unpleasantly gigantic statue of the Buddha pretty much next to her palace grounds. Her rather dictatorial policies have left the Empress with a lot of enemies, so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise when trouble hits her construction project.

Two of the people responsible for the building of the Godzilla-large statue are killed. More surprising than the fact of their death is the way the men die – spontaneous combustion. The deaths may very well have been caused by the victims’ moving of some magical pieces of script hanging inside of the statue, but the Empress is only prone to superstition when it suits her, and stays sceptical. After her chief chaplain (as the not exactly trustworthy subtitles call him) visits her in form of a talking deer and mutters an imprecise prophecy, the Empress decides that the stars ask her to put the mystery into the hands of Judge Dee (Andy Lau).

Continue Reading »


The Omega Man

June 6th, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Year: 1971   Company: Warner Brothers   Runtime: 98′
Director: Boris Sagal   Writers: John William Corringtom, Joyce Hooper Corringtom
Cinematography: Russell Metty   Music: Ron Grainer   Cast: Charlton Heston, Anthony Zerbe, Rosalind Cash,
Paul Koslo, Eeric Laneuville, Lincoln Kilpatrick, Jill Giraldi, Brian Tochi, DeVeren Bookwalter, John Dierkes
Disc company: Warner Brothers   Video: 1080p 2.39:1    Audio: Dolby Digital 1.0 English, Dolby Digital 1.0 French, Dolby Digital 1.0 Spanish, Dolby Digital 1.0 German, Dolby Digital 1.0 Italian, Dolby Digital 1.0 Castellano
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, German, German SDH, Italian, Italian SDH, Castellano, Dutch, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Norsk, Swedish   Disc: BD25 (All Region)
Release Date: 12/18/2007   Available for order this disc now through Amazon.com

There have been no small number of film adaptations, legitimate and otherwise, of Richard Matheson’s 1954 science fiction horror novel I Am Legend, from the stark Italian-American co-production The Last Man on Earth in 1964 to the dreadful Will Smith vehicle of a few years past, but this Walter Seltzer (Soylent Green) production from 1971 may be my favorite even as it takes considerable liberties with the source.  Charlton Heston is as big as ever as the requisite last man, the survivor of a modern plague that has decimated the world’s population and left civilization in ruin, but as the tagline is quick to point out, “The last man alive… is not alone!”

Set in the (then) near future of the late ’70s, The Omega Man follows doctor and colonel Robert Neville as he fights for survival in Los Angeles after biological warfare between the Soviet Union and China brings a swift conclusion to most human life.  Immune to the lethal biological agent thanks to the chance success of an experimental vaccine, Neville spends his evenings fending off the nightly sieges of the Family – a cult of plague survivors led by former news anchor Matthias (Anthony Zerbe, Papillon) who were forced into a life of darkness after their disease rendered them hypersensitive to light. Neville dedicates himself to exterminating The Family until he happens upon fellow survivor Lisa (Rosalind Cash, Cornbread, Earl and Me), and with her a hope for saving humankind…

Continue Reading »


Born to Fight

May 13th, 2011 | article by | 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
a.k.a. Nato per combattere
Year: 1989    Runtime: 94′   Director: Bruno Mattei
Writers: Claudio Fragasso  Cinematography: Riccardo Grassetti   Music: Al Festa
Cast: Brent Huff, Mary Stavin, Werner Pochath, John Van Dreelen, Romano Puppo

TV reporter Maryline Kane (Mary Stavin) walks into a bar in Vietnam to hire war hero Sam Wood (Brent Huff) to relive his escape from a Vietnamese prison camp for the camera. At first, Brent isn’t too happy with the idea, but once Maryline has offered him enough money, he decides to take her up on her offer. After a nice little boat trip, Maryline, her two-men camera crew and Sam just happen to witness the execution of an American prisoner escaping from a camp full of prisoners of war. Turns out Maryline knows all about the war prisoner problem in the area, and actually wants Sam’s help in rescuing her father, General Weber (John Van Dreelen), from the prison camp, but thought that whole interview business and going to the place unarmed would make Sam more willing to help. Or dead. Or something.

Anyway, given Sam’s unarmed and unwilling status, the couple (and you know they’ll be one in this sort of movie, because they never agree about anything and hate each other’s guts) has to flee first. There’s also some stuff about Romano Puppo playing another guy who is supposed to buy the general’s way to freedom, but would prefer Kurt (Werner Pochath), the boss of the prison camp who will also turn out to be Sam’s arch enemy, to kill the guy so they can share the money. Which makes as much sense as Maryline hiring Sam to free her father without telling Sam about it, I guess. Plus, further complications because Sam doesn’t like Weber. Let’s just say that shooting and exploding huts – many of the latter without a good reason to explode – will result.

Continue Reading »


Ron Howard Action Pack (Eat My Dust / Grand Theft Auto)

May 11th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Eat My Dust – Year: 1976   Company: New World Pictures   Runtime: 88′
Director: Charles B. Griffith   Writer: Charles B. Griffith   Music: David Grisman   Cinematography: Eric Saarinen  Cast: Ron Howard, Christopher Norris, Warren J. Kemmerling, Dave Madden, Brad David, Kathy O’Dare, Clint Howard, Peter Isacksen, Jessica Potter, Charles Howerton, Kedric Wolfe, Rance Howard
Grand Theft Auto – Year: 1977   Company: New World Pictures   Runtime: 84′
Director: Ron Howard   Writers: Ron Howard, Rance Howard   Music: Peter Ivers   Cinematography: Gary Graver   Cast: Ron Howard, Nancy Morgan, Elizabeth Rogers, Barry Cahill, Rance Howard, Paul Linke, Marion Ross, Don Steele, Peter Isacksen, Clint Howard, James Ritz, Hoke Howell, Lew Brown, Ken Lemer
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 480p (1.78:1)   Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 English   Subtitles: None
Disc: 2 x DVD 9   Release Date: 05/24/2011   Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC.  Available for pre-order through Amazon.com

It’s finally warming up here in Minneapolis, and Shout! Factory is gearing up for another busy Summer of cult cinema releases.  Leading the charge is The Ron Howard Action Pack – a one-two punch of youthful car chase mayhem due out on the 24th that represents actor, writer and director Ron Howard’s brief but formative career under independent producer extraordinaire Roger Corman.  Shout!’s package is sound, from the new anamorphic film transfers (each occupying its own dual layer DVD) to an extensive collection of supplements, both new and appropriated from earlier editions, but before we get into the details let’s discuss the films themselves.

Made on the heals of more adult car-chase classics like Vanishing Point and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, 1976′s Eat My Dust is a decidedly juvenile affair, and as concerned with broad and goofy humor as it is high-speed action.  The young trouble-making son (Ron Howard) of a small-town sheriff (Warren J. Kemmerling) bites off more than he can chew when, in a desperate bid to woo local hottie Darlene (Christopher Norris), he steals a championship-winning stock car and takes it for a ride.  Darlene and an ever-increasing bundle of friends and passers by join in on the illegal shenanigans, while dear old dad sends out a fleet of incompetent patrolmen to round up his law-defying son.

Continue Reading »


A Fistful of Dollars

April 26th, 2011 | article by | 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
a.k.a.: Per un pugna di dolllari
Year: 1964   Company: Constantin Film Produktion, Jolly Film, Ocean Films   Runtime: 99′
Director: Sergio Leone   Writers: A. Bonzzoni, Victor Andres Catena, Sergio Leone, Jamie Comas Gil
Cinematography: Massimo Dallamano   Music: Ennio Morricone   Cast: Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch,
Gian Maria Volonte, Wolfgang Lukschy, Sieghardt Rupp, Joseph Egger, Antonio Prieto, Margarita Lozano
Disc company: MGM / 20th Century Fox   Video: 1080p 2.35:1    Audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1 English,
Dolby Digital 1.0 English, Dolby Digital 2.0 Spanish, DTS 5.1 French   Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French (Quebec), Portuguese (Brazil), French, Greek, Chinese (traditional), Polish, Portuguese, Chinese (Simplified)
Disc: BD50 (All Region)   Release Date: 03/22/2011   Available as a standalone Target store exclusive, or as part of The Man With No Name Trilogy (with For A Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) released in 2010. For what it’s worth, the Target exclusive edition was demanding a whopping $10 when I picked it up earlier this week – substantially less than the per-film price of the boxed set.

It’s a gray and rainy day here in Wtf-Film land, the sort of dismal conditions that keep slackers like me in bed an extra hour and leave us with want for motivation.  It’s a perfect day for a film – a perfect day for an escape – provided you don’t have to leave home for it.  And what better way is there to escape the drab, dreary confines of a downtown apartment than to take a trip to the bright and sunny American southwest circa the late 1800′s?  None, I say, particularly if that trip is to the American southwest by way of Spain.

A brief history of the Spaghetti Western shows that it was a fledgling wing of the productive Italian film industry leading into 1964, when director Sergio Leone (then known as an assistant director, with 1961′s The Colossus of Rhodes his only directorial credit) and a man named Clint Eastwood (looking to escape the bonds of bit parts and television) burst the genre wide open.  Produced for around $200,000 by a trio of Italian, Spanish, and German companies, A Fistful of Dollars would reap untold profits when initially released in Europe, and make a bona fide star of Eastwood when it reached American shores courtesy of United Artists in 1967.  The film’s influence can be counted in credits alone – the IMDB cites just two 1963 productions as Spaghetti Westerns, while listing no fewer than forty for the year of 1967 alone.

Continue Reading »


357 Magnum

April 22nd, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , ,
Year: 1979    Runtime: 88′   Director: Rubén Galindo
Writers: Rubén Galindo, Carlos Valdemar  Cinematography: Miguel Araña
Music: Manuel Esperón, Pedro Galindo   Cast: Mario Almada, Fernando Almada,
Ursula Prats, Roger Cudney, Carlos León, Jeanette Mass

(Don’t be like an IMDB reviewer and confuse this with any of the other movies of this or a slightly different name!)

The members of the improbably named “Brigade 357 Magnum” of the police are disturbing the work of a syndicate of weapons and drugs dealers only known as The Organization with a half successful raid on an arms deal with a Communist revolutionary group from a Central American country (whose boss, as we’ll later see, goes for classic Castro chic). The Organization is not pleased at all, so the whole gang – boss, favourite moll and all – stuff themselves into two cars and shoot Tony Murillo, the leading cop of the operation, his wife and his little daughter.

Continue Reading »


Super

April 18th, 2011 | article by | No Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Year: 2011   Company: IFC Midnight   Runtime: 96′
Director: James Gunn   Writer: James Gunn   Cinematography: Steve Gainer
Music: Tyler Bates   Cast: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tylaer, Kevin Bacon, Nathan Fillion,  Michael Rooker,
Andre Royo, Sean Gunn, Stephen Blackehart, Don Mac, Linda Cardellini, Rob Zombie, Lloyd Kaufman
Currently available ‘On Demand’ and out in limited theatrical release through IFC Films – see it at Minneapolis’ own Lagoon Cinema.

It’s difficult to know where to begin in speaking of James Gunn’s Super, the tale of a humble man who turns crime-fighting vigilante after his wife falls for a local drug kingpin.  The simplicity of the story belies the extravagant absurdity of the thing, which may just be the strangest film in American cinemas today.  Super is gruesomely violent, raucously funny, frequently tasteless and unexpectedly touching fare, and an all-out assault on audience expectations.

Though advertised as an action comedy, Super could perhaps best be described as the portrait of an unstable mind.  Frank D’Arbo (Rainn Wilson, exceptional in his most substantial film role to date) is the would-be hero of the story, a short-order cook in a grimy diner whose marriage to a recovering substance abuser (Liv Tyler) is on the rocks.  When his wife falls for the drug-fueled lifestyle of crime lord Jacques (Kevin Bacon) it’s just another in a lifetime of disappointments for Frank.  The police prove to be of no assistance and Frank’s own efforts to curtail his wife’s downward spiral fail, leaving him at a total loss for what to do…

Continue Reading »


Action Packed Double Feature (Dirty Mary Crazy Larry / Race With the Devil)

April 5th, 2011 | article by | 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Dirty Mary Crazy Larry – Year: 1974   Company: 20th Century Fox   Runtime: 93′
Director: John Hough   Writers: Leigh Chapman, Antonio Santean, James H. Nicholson, Richard Unekis
Cast: Peter Fonda, Susan George, Adam Roarke, Vic Morror, Kenneth Tobey, Roddy McDowall, Eugene Daniels
Race With the Devil – Year: 1975   Company: 20th Century Fox   Runtime: 88′
Director: Jack Starrett   Writers: Lee Frost, Wes Bishop   Music: Leonard Rosenman
Cast: Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit, Lara Parker, R.G. Armstrong, Clay Tanner, Carol Blodgett
Disc company: Shout! Factory   Video: 480p (1.85:1)   Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 English (DMCL only),
Dolby Digital 2.0 English (DMCL and RWTD)   Subtitles: None   Disc: 2 x DVD 9   Release Date: 04/12/2011
Product link: Amazon.com Reviewed from a screener provided by Shout! Factory LLC.

Loosely adapted from the novel The Chase (also published under the titles Pursuit and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry) by Richard Unekis, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry follows the exploits of aspiring NASCAR driver Larry and mechanic Deke who, tired of killing time in the amateur racing circuit, decide to take an illegal shortcut to fame and fortune.  The plan is simple: hit a rural grocery store on the morning of their cash delivery and escape into a maze of road and exits to the south.  The robbery goes off with nary a hitch, with threats against the store manager’s family ensuring that the would-be racers have ample time to escape.

Deke and Larry think of everything – everything, that is, except Mary, Larry’s headstrong one night stand from the evening before the robbery.  Looking for a bit of excitement in her dull life, Mary insinuates herself into the duo’s escape, proving to be as much a challenge to the success of the operation as grizzled cop Vic Morrow and his army of highway patrolmen.

Continue Reading »


« Older Entries