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Harry here with July… This month is a crazy one… TONS of great titles, mostly vintage though… Not much modern day stuff that I would recommend getting on DVD, but if you love film noir and old mysteries… And Crazy Cult titles… then get ready, here’s a July to remember…

July 6th, 2004

BATMAN Animated Series, Vol 1

Has it really been 12 years since BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES debuted on my television set? I remember before that debut, meeting Paul Dini, Kevin Altieri and Bruce Timm at the San Diego Comic Con… I was just a dealer at the time, had each of them do sketches in my convention sketch book and talked with Dini for what seemed like hours about Fleischer and the dream of intelligent American Adventure Animation. At the time, I had no idea just how great that team would succeed where so many teams had failed. Here on this set are the beginnings of greatness. These early episodes, their commentary… extras… For us geeks that hold these animated episodes high above any of the superhero work done at Warners… This is about the greatest thing we could get. This is the first of many volumes we’ll be buying. Great set!

THE BIG CLOCK

This is the first of many brilliant film noirs being released this month. Like many Noirs, a film that kinda wallows in obscurity waiting for a set of open eyes and ears to take in its shadows and mysteries. THE BIG CLOCK is great… great because of Ray Milland and Charles Laughton and Elsa “Bride of Frankenstein” Lancaster. The tale, one of booze and half-remembered nights… of dead pretty ladies and hard-nosed investigations. It was remade into an ounce of greatness called NO WAY OUT with Kevin Costner, but that didn’t come close to this. If you love cinema, I recommend getting every film noir I’m writing about this month. You’re in for such delights!

BLACK ANGEL

If you’re like most, you’ve never heard the name Constance Dowling… but once you see this movie, she’ll show up in your dreams whispering in your ear, teasing you and leading you straight to hell. She’s the bad seed all grown up and seething in delicious slinking evil. Fantastic. Dan Duryea is trapped in the midst of it all, usually he played guys that wound up collecting lead and crumpling along gutters breathing out some tough guy line, but here… here he’s something entirely different. Also, the man lizard, Peter Lorre is classic as always. Another little known gem dished up for your tastes!

THE CHARLIE CHAN CHANTHOLOGY ( The Secret Service / The Chinese Cat / The Jade Mask / Meeting at Midnight / The Scarlet Clue / The Shanghai Cobra )

You love mysteries? For me, there were 4 great mystery series in the classic era. You had Charlie Chan (by Warner Oland & Sidney Toler), Sherlock Holmes (by Basil Rathbone), Thin Man series (with William Powell) and of course, Mr Moto (by Peter Lorre). Late night on broadcast television as a child, they always showed one of those four character’s movies throughout my youth. I loved the Sidney Toler Charlie Chan films though…. A great deal! Sure, this series didn’t have Keye Luke, but his brother Edwin Luke. Also they had Mantan Moreland’s great chauffeur Birmingham Brown. These are formula films… but damn if I don’t love the formula. Death or Mystery begins, Chan is called to investigate, more suspicious activity occurs, Chan is on it… Characters in peril, Chan saves all… witticisms abound with pseudo Eastern fortune cookie dialogue and bliss follows. This set rules. If nothing else, taking away dialogue like, “My boy, if silence is golden, you are bankrupt.” “You talk like rooster, who thinks sun come up just to hear him crow!” No doubt, the Warner Oland Charlie Chans were superior in every way, but still… I’ve got such a fond spot for these, and the set is just very very nicely put together.

CRISS CROSS

Ok – this is inky black dark as midnight Film Noir. Lancaster is a god here, Dan Duryea is the scummy version of himself I mentioned in BLACK ANGEL… And Yvonne DeCarlo is yummy as hell. In addition you have Miklos Rozsa’s score to just make it all roast and steam… and Robert Siodmak is adding pressure and style and wit to it all throughout, just as he had in directing THE KILLERS. One of the great great great film noirs… This is an armored truck robbery with so much more going on. Classic!

THE NAME OF THE ROSE

I love this movie, and oddly enough… it is a film noir too. Sure it has to do with a hellalong time ago, and there isn’t a fedora in sight, but it feels noir. This was the film for me that signaled the return of Sean Connery. It felt like he’d disappeared off the face of the planet, then this thing came along and said… Knock Knock… Connery’s home! Haven’t seen it in forever, can’t wait to pick it up!

NEVER A DULL MOMENT

Tarantino introduced me to this film a few years back, and this is a Film Noir for kids! Dick Van Dyke plays a tough guy actor on TV, who gets mistook for a wise guy gangster and taken for a ride, to help steal a painting for Edward G Robinson. With a supporting cast of Slim Pickens, Jack Elam, Dorothy Provine and fucking Henry Silva… this thing rocks! It’s funny and genuinely great to look at. The box art is ass, and COMPLETELY WRONG for the movie, so pay it no mind. If you want to raise your kids with an eye to genre fun, this is a great starter film to then take them to the Charlie Chans and Sherlock Holmes flicks. LOTS OF FUN!

SHADOWS, LIES & PRIVATE EYES – THE FILM NOIR COLLETION, VOL. 1 ( The Asphalt Jungle / Gun Crazy / Murder, My Sweet / Out of the Past / The Set-Up )

Ok… Box sets rarely get this good. These are essential Film Noirs… Absolute classics each and every one. It includes my favorite of the genre (MURDER, MY SWEET) and Moriarty’s Fave (OUT OF THE PAST). And the other three ain’t whistling Dixie.

Let’s start with THE SET-UP… This is Robert Wise’s tale about a down on his luck has-been boxer on his final days as a punching bag. Everyone counts him out… so much so, that his own manager takes ‘throw’ money for his boxer to lay down in the third round, but never bothers to tell his lug, figuring, that’s about how long he’d last anyways. Of course it all goes real bad. Robert Ryan is GREAT as the boxer, and Wise’s direction is wonderful. This disc has commentary between Robert Wise and Martin Scorsese… MUST SEE!

Next let’s do GUN CRAZY… this was a low budge unhinged effort. They shot the bank robbery scenes on normal streets and didn’t tell the public. As a result… there’s a style and a sense of crazed realism that you’re just not really ready for. A great film.

Then there’s THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, which is most famous for the brief time that young Marilyn Monroe puts in, but Huston’s classic Noir is notable for everything else too. Great noir title.

OUT OF THE PAST… It’s kinda hard to write about. Generally considered by most to be one of the top 3 Noirs with DOUBLE INDEMNITY and the original THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, and who am I to argue with that? It’s great… it’s classic… the stars are bright and the writing, acting and moments are all perfect. But for me… I like my Noir slightly broken… to me, it needs to be unappreciated, lesser known… Kicked and dressed down. Noir is best with mistreated stars that were never given their dues…

And that’s why my favorite film noir is MURDER, MY SWEET. Dick Powell had come from the dancing juvenile goof of the Busby Berkeley musicals, and wanted to be taken seriously. Kinda like Mark Hamill when he did THE BIG RED ONE… Well Dick Powell is not that goof anymore in my eyes, he’s Phillip Marlowe and will forever be my Marlowe. His handling of Chandler’s tough guy is classic… and his dialogue…

“Okay Marlowe, I said to myself. ‘You’re a tough guy. You’ve been sapped twice, choked, beaten silly with a gun, shot in the arm until you’re crazy as a couple of waltzing mice. Now let’s see you do something really tough – like putting your pants on.’”

“My fingers looked like a bunch of bananas”

“She was a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud. I gave her a drink. She was a gal who’d take a drink, if she had to knock you down to get the bottle.”

Sigh… And then there is the god… MIKE MAZURKI… I’m a member of the Mike Mazurki fan club, and his Moose Malloy is filmic bliss. His face looked like a sculptor’s rough out of clay. The way he manhandles Dick is classic. This set will bring you a life time of joy. GET IT!

GIRL IN TROUBLE / A GOOD TIME WITH A BAD GIRL / BAD GIRLS DO CRY

Sleaze cinema… gotta love it! This is broken noir done cheap, bad and a whole helluvalot of fun. These films have evil lesbians with vibrators, women forced to work in whorehouses, bra-washing, death, mayhem and of course SLEAZE! These are films to watch with your fellow purveyors of filth. Scuzzy films on the cheap. Can’t wait!

The Herschell Gordon Lewis Collection (The Gore Gore Girls / A Taste of Blood / She-Devils On Wheels / The Gruesome Twosome / The Wizard of Gore )

Alright… time to complete my Herschell Gordon Lewis collection! There’s something intangibly correct about Herschell’s films… whether it be the quality of the babes, the redness of the blood, the realistically wrongness of the animal organs used… or the funky costumes of the era, the make-up and the hair-dos… It just makes me a happy camper. They are never as great as the higher grade genre efforts, but somehow it works for me. There’s just something here that makes me happy.

THIS GUN FOR HIRE

God, this month is gonna break me. THIS GUN FOR HIRE – another essential Noir. Why they just didn’t go with the original Poster art… and why they didn’t put out THE GLASS KEY too, I’ll never know… But when you have a cat-loving killer for hire named Raven played by Alan Ladd… and a nightclub magician named Ellen played by the lady that invented slinky.. Veronica Lake… well, I’m happy as can be. Now, if we could just turn color off in the world and take out that sun for the month, it’d all be perfect!

THE SHAME OF PATTY SMITH / YOU’VE RUINED ME EDDIE

THE SHAME OF PATTY SMITH is one of those sleazy films where a girl gets violently raped, pregnant and tries desperately to get an abortion, not wanting a child born out of violence, only to have to hit the back alleys of pre-Roe v. Wade United States and it’s fucked up! Classic teensploitation! And then you get YOU’VE RUINED ME EDDIE which I won’t even tell ya about. Hee hee hee…

JULY 13th , 2004

THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS (Les Invasions Barbares)

Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, though personally I would have chosen THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI, it is nevertheless a wonderful film well worth collecting and watching. A comedy about the things we tend not to laugh about, and that is why the film is great… we find ourselves laughing at the things that so often tear us apart. Denys Arcand has done it again!

THE BOURNE IDENTITY Extended Edition

I love THE BOURNE IDENTITY. Can’t wait to see the sequel. This edition comes with tons and tons of extras including looks at the CIA, AMNESIA and Fight Breakdowns. There’s a look at the author and interviews with Matt Damon about the series…. Oh… and Deleted Scenes. This is one I’m very much looking forward to.

THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR

Based on a true story from World War II of a man coerced into becoming a spy on a false charge of being a Nazi collaborator and forced into the war effort against his will. William Holden is outstanding in this film… Outstanding! This is one of those films that I have never met anyone who has ever brought it up to me, but damn if it isn’t a great flick. Discovering this film on DVD will be a revelation for most of ya, enjoy!

THE DREAMERS (NC-17 Edition)

Bertolucci’s THE DREAMERS is a triumph… A film about Cine-Lovers at perhaps the greatest time and place of film love in history. The movie is bristling with sensuality. It’s hot, sexy and about film geeks. People that see echoes of film in everyday movement and shadows. I love this film, so much so, that when I kicked off my little film series I’m doing at PEDAZO CHUNK, I surprised people with this as being my first choice to screen. Wonderful film! And remember, a lighter holds the secrets to the universe.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (Special Edition)

One of the best films ever made. Disc comes with Commentary by Frankenheimer, Interviews with Sinatra, Axelrod and Frankenheimer, Featurettes with Billy Friedkin and Angela Lansbury… and more! Coming out due to that remake (WHY???) that Demme has coming out this month, but my recommendation is buy this instead. This film cooks on an open flame and sizzles throughout! Angela is the bitch of bitches in this, Sinatra is the lost puppy with a mouthful of teeth and a spirit to never stop trying to figure it all out!

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD

A real Spy movie… forget Bond, Austin Powers and Flint… those gadget craving cowards pale next to the gritty reality of a film like this! Closer to the style of those Harry Palmer (Caine) flicks, but this even out does that. This is threadbare spy reality smack dab in the inky confusion of the Cold War. About time this hit DVD! God, what a great month! Burton is fantastic, Werner rules!

TRAIL OF ROBIN HOOD

Directed by the God of B-Westerns and Serials… William Witney, TRAIL OF ROBIN HOOD is the “DESTROY ALL MONSTERS” of the B-Cowboy Genre! This is the film that connects and joins the separate film universes of B-Cowboys and puts a ton of them between the same sprocket holes! Not only do you have Roy Rogers, but Jack Holt, Rocky Lane, Trigger, Monte Hale, Tom Tyler, Ray Corrigan, William Farnum, Kermit Maynard, Tom Keene and The Riders of the Purple Sage! Till you see this film, you exist in a shallow world of limiting possibilities… after watching it… you’ll know Tru-Color, Christmas and how important Christmas Trees are! The action kicks ass and “Ev’ry Day Is Christmas Day in the West” is a helluva song! WONDERFUL FILM! Can’t recommend highly enough!

JULY 20th, 2004

AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE Vol 2

I hear this is really funny stuff. I’m told I should check it out. So I am, I guess so should you. Laughing is good.

DEAD PIGEON ON BEETHOVENSTRASSE

Ok, I need to see this. As a Sam Fuller nutcase, finding a new thing to check out that he did… well, it’s just delicious. The write-up on IMDB has me drooling. There’s no art for this disc or details, but the film sounds great and Fuller rarely ever let me down. A curiosity that I’m indulging in, you may want to as well.

EARLY SUMMER – Criterion Collection

Ahhhh, Criterion gives us another of Ozu’s classics! This film is just lovely. Ozu paints a film about Arranged Marriage as it is used in Japanese Culture to affect the general happiness of others as much as yourself. Complicated, difficult and never just goes through the motions. Setsuko Hara’s Noriko is a modern woman who does not wish to go along with the arrangement and is so charming, so magical that you’ll want to go up on screen and take her away… or join her in her own ideal of happiness. LOVELY movie!

SEALAB 2021 – Season 1

Something that takes you to a happy place. I’ve heard I’ve appeared on this show, I do not know if this is true, but if it is, then no price is too high to pay for my animated gloriousness! This is the one that’s underwater… right?

JULY 27th, 2004

ENTRAILS OF THE VIRGIN (aka SHOGO NO HARAWATA)

Holy Shit did this movie kick unholy ass! From 1986 Japan, this is what Miike was watching, before he got behind a camera. ENTRAILS OF A VIRGIN is amazing. It’s the sexiest version of the FRIDAY THE 13TH series… Heavily influenced from that realm of slasher horror… This is the story of a photo shoot gone wrong. 3 men, 3 beautiful women… All Japanese get lost in the fog on the way back from a shoot and pull off at an abandoned house under construction. Something in the woods wakes up… I’ll call him the Mud Monster. All the people in the biz are sleazy sexaholics save for this one virgin being seduced into the nightmare they offer her in trade for sex. Gorgeous photography, gore, nudity and wonderful to watch. This is pure sex and violence, but it feels very tasteful, even though it does have one of my all time favorite gore moments in cinema history. MUST BE SEEN!

ENTRAILS OF THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN (aka BIJO NO HARAWATA)

The sequel to ENTRAILS OF THE VIRGIN – though not really… Personally I’d love to have seen an actual sequel… as the ending of the original was delicious. However, ENTRAILS OF A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN is a story of a female doctor that gets gang raped and drugged (with something called ANGEL RAIN) by a Yakuza gang only to come back… the penis headed toothed vagina creature is kinda must see for gore lovers, but frankly, I greatly preferred the first film.

HELLBOY (Two Disc Special Edition)

This DVD is loaded with extras… Commentary with Del Toro and Mignola… another with Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Rupert Evans and Jeffrey Tambor. There’s special DVD comics, 27 Documentaries, Set Visit behind the scenes, Hellboy’s Cartoon Recommendations, feature length storyboard track, 4 CG animated scene breakdowns, deleted scenes and more. Plus a really kickass comic book movie. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the nudity of the above two Japanese films, but… ya can’t have everything. Sniffle.

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN

Sigh… At last – I can lose days to watching PENNIES FROM HEAVEN and that blissful tap-dancing Christopher Walken scene! I love this film. Love it because Bernadette Peters is a vision of joy. Because Steve Martin hadn’t become Disney and Warners’ Family Film Bitch yet. Because it screams style and wonder and class. Because it sparkles just so. Because it was years ahead of itself and because most of all… I loves it!

SHOWGIRLS (VIP Limited Edition)

Heh. This dvd has a nude poster of Nomi with sparkle titties… and comes with pasties and a blindfold for your very own Paste the Pasties contest and drinking came… it comes with shot glasses and game cards! If the movie wasn’t trashy bliss enough, then these throw ins devolve it to sheer cheese! Fans of the film will be very pleased with themselves!

V – THE COMPLETE SERIES

I must own this, just so I can relish in how cheesy I think it was. Haven’t seen the series since I was a kid, but I still have my toys! Can’t wait to watch the original 19 episodes and just worship the man-god that was Marc Singer!

THE WICKSBORO INCIDENT

Of all the BLAIR WITCH wannabes, this was the one I liked most. Shot very much like BLAIR WITCH, but regarding Aliens instead of the supernatural. If you love the X-FILES as much as I do, then you’ll love this! I watched it at the dead of night… all by myself… and it kinda freaked my shit out. I mean think about it… some coot comes out of the woodwork telling you of missing towns and conspiracies… claims to have a device that can determine the difference between aliens and humans just by pointing it at them. I dig the hell out of this movie… though, it seems nobody else has ever seen it.

ZOMBI 2 (25th Anniversary Special Edition 2-Disc Set)

This is a uncut version of the film, claimed to never have been released before! Also, there’s tons of extras… all part of the new Fulci sets that are hitting the marketplace at last! This will make every gorehound around a happy brain lover! Still waiting on my check discs which should arrive any day now, I’ll update this spot with more details as soon as I have them!

Alright, that's it for JULY from me... Feel free to recommend titles of your own below, those are the ones that caught me. Also, be on the look out for the Double Feature DVDs from Hammer this month... if you don't already have them all individually, they're a nice way to pick em up... unfortunately I already have them all! Happy shopping and watching!