Hey folks, Harry here with yesterday’s DVD column a day late. Sorry about that – Got distracted with a host of extracurricular activities in the last 36 hours that made putting this together on time, difficult. Sorry about that. There’s some damn fine stuff on this one. As usual the pics and titles click over to AMAZON where you can learn more on the title in question – and possibly purchase the item, which would be down right swell by me. A small portion of the purchase price helps keep supporting the column going forward. Something I will continue to endeavor to do, no matter what else I’m doing. Here ya go, let’s start with some real sexy vampire action…
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
TRUE BLOOD: The Complete Second Season
My wife and I have an utterly sick obsessive compulsive disorder when it comes to this show. The whole thing is just sexy as hell. It really makes me want to try a couple drops of V. It is for me, what TWILIGHT is for the teenagers that are obsessive about that. We quote the show… A LOT. I have crushes on every girl on the show and Yoko’s the same with all the guys… It makes vamps sexy and cool and even adds to the mythology in a way that is truly hot. And soon… the third season begins to air. The BluRays are a must for us. This is a marital aide.
DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG (Blu Ray)
Amongst the greatest things ever! “Commentary: The Musical” Ahem. Amongst the greatest things ever!
THE ROAD
I regret not writing a review of this last year. It is a really tremendous film. I just don’t know if I want to watch it again. This is one of those rare great films that I just can’t fully enjoy. The world is just so bleak. Different subject matter, but I kinda associate this film a lot with HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, LONE STAR, GOODFELLAS as films that I have the highest of regard for – but just affect me aversely. The atmosphere of this film is just toxic. It’s so scary to immerse myself in those worlds – I just cease to find fun in it. But goddamn it is a great movie. Personally felt Robert Duvall’s makeup should’ve won an Oscar. Amazing. Seriously amazing. But inky inky black. I’ll own it, but it is for a very particular mood, when you want to wallow in despair and have no hope. It is a rare mood, but this is just the right movie for that.
SPARTACUS (50th Anniversary Edition) Blu Ray
Watched this last week. I love this film. I love everything about it. I love the full restored edit. I do prefer the longer cut – and watching this movie just showed a level of class that’s missing from today’s epics. I know this is most likely unrealistic and technically a flaw. But for some reason my critical brain instantly shifts to neutral and I am just in love with the movie. I’ve always considered this one of the least Kubrick, Kubrick films – but this fuller edit changed that. That one scene in particular with Larry & Tony. Changes giant gobs of this movie for me. I love it. This is a great BluRay!
STAGECOACH (Criterion Blu)
If JOHN WAYNE has an ACTION #1, it is STAGECOACH. Wayne was around prior to STAGECOACH, but he wasn’t really the JOHN WAYNE we love and know. Here, John Ford teaches film history how to introduce an antihero in an awesome way. Watch this, then George Miller’s ROAD WARRIOR and you’ll see what I mean. Ford just knocked this film out of the park. Now – why do we love CRITERION? Well – the transfer as expected is perfect. But then, here’s the extras they give us:
Audio commentary by noted western authority Jim Kitses
Bucking Broadway (1917), a fifty-four-minute silent western by John Ford
Extensive video interview with Ford from 1968
New video interview with Dan Ford
New video interview with filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
New video essay by writer Tag Gallagher
New video feature about Monument Valley
New video interview with stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong
Radio dramatization of Stagecoach from 1949
Theatrical trailer
A booklet featuring an essay by David Cairns
In particular – I love that Radio play! It’d be so much fun to produce radio plays of modern movies. I love the classics!
SEVEN SWORDS (Blu Ray)
For $15 – this is a total deal. I paid out the nose for my import ages ago – and this even has Commentary by Tsui Hark and additional scenes. I’m not a total freak forr this film… I’m afraid my love of the great Hark peaked with THE BLADE… But all nitpicking aside – Donnie Yen is the MAN in this film. (and technically just about everything he’s ever been in, dying for IP MAN 2) Nicely done.
CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (Blu Ray)
This and the next title. While perhaps not the highest critically acclaimed or historically relevant films being released on Blu Ray this week – but god damn it. 1080p Blu Ray technology was given to us specifically to show with absolute crystal clarity… what PUKING YOUR GUTS OUT would look like if… you know… you LITERALLY PUKED YOUR GUTS OUT. This shit is important because when you want to show off your home theater and you have some young horror lovers over… And they start talking about how gross the gore in something like SAW 5 is… You can whip out your Blu Fulci and just make their jaws hang in absolute wonder.
BTW – This happens to be Quint’s favorite Fulci… he’s of course retarded, because everybody knows Fulci’s best is THE BEYOND followed closely by THE PSYCHIC… but he’s a young impetuous boy… a few nights in the stocks will clear his head.
Lastly, if you really want to know what a Fulci horror film like CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD is like. There really is nothing modern that you can compare it to. I find it more frightening because it is horror without specific rules. The only character that knows what is going on, essentially sends these two absolute novices to essentially seal the gates of hell before midnight on All Hallow’s Eve in the town of DUNWICH. Yes, it is kinda Lovecraftian – but you won’t see tentacles - or fish people. Instead you get Fulci undead – and flat out, they’re gonna get ya. Then there’s a fucking hanging priest. I am terrified of the hanging priest. This Man of God hung himself for the express purpose of releasing HELL ON EARTH. He’s dead. It is like some corporal spirit – and the fucker can just blip in and out of existence and he doesn’t bite you, touch you, shoot anything at you. He just fucking LOOKS at you and the shit gets bad quick. Fulci horror is amongst my favorite flavor of horror. I love how he picks people with amazing eye color as his actors – like all the green eyes in this film – it just ain’t right. There’s always something OFF in every shot. Something that just doesn’t make sense. Like that framed art behind the Therapist’s desk. Nothing ever adds up and the turn was always something you missed. This is horror that doesn’t only attack the characters physically, but psychically. I genuinely afraid we won’t see this sort of thing again.
DJANGO (Blu Ray)
If Sergio Leone was the BEATLES of Spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Corbucci was our ROLLING STONES. Django – as played by Franco Nero – is amongst my favorite Western heroes ever. First off. This guy drags around a coffin. A big, unwieldy coffin. He’s psychotic about his fucking coffin. He doesn’t want anybody to touch it, look in it, mess with it. If you try, you’re dropping limp to the Earth in need of a coffin of your very own.
By the end of the film, you’ll have decided that a COFFIN was the best fucking thing in the world to drag around in the old west. He gets so much done with the coffin. It is like Felix’s magic black bag. A whole lot of awesome comes out of that coffin and you’d be an ass to spoil it.
The Blu Ray is fantastic. Just having a print this beautiful to watch at home – of this. Makes long for a Blu of THE GREAT SILENCE. Perhaps one day soon!
SAMURAI PRINCESS (Blu Ray)
This is by no means great or even good. What it is is silly, mildly titillating and a trifle boring. But ultimately it is fun. The crazy insane gore does give it a rather constant giggle factor, but I kinda want more. This isn’t nearly as bat nuts fun as TOKYO GORE POLICE or MACHINE GIRL. But hey. You see that cover. It is a lot of that. And that is worth the tedium.
CLASS OF NUKE ‘EM HIGH (Blu Ray)
Classic TROMA. There are people that will just never ever appreciate the finer bits of awesome that came from the fevered brain of Lloyd Kaufman. But for those of us that dig the aesthetic… OH GOD, this is fun. It is. The most absurd High School flick ever. As a result, this is just fun. That said – I’m not entirely sure if the productions were ever meant to be seen this clearly. There’s hilarity to be seen that I didn’t notice before.
JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE COMPLETE SERIES
15 DVDs – all 91 episodes of JUSTICE LEAGUE and JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED, a full extras DVD, lots of special features – basically if you don’t care about high def and you just want all the episodes – here ya go. Personally, for this price, I’d require that they be Blu Rays. But I’m a prig that way.
NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH
Now here’s a film I didn’t know. I wasn’t familiar with the title at all. I’d seen Jack LaRue in a few flicks, but nothing this great. This is a very adult film. Made in post WWII America – this is one of those inky dark crime films. Not so much a Noir – as it is just an unflinching crime story of a group of low rent thugs that royally fuck up a honeymoon with robbery, assault, murder, kidnapping and assorted unsavory acts. The folks that put this DVD out knew what they had, because they actually assembled some pretty sweet extras, including interviews and a commentary. Very nice film to discover!
ALL MY FRIENDS ARE FUNERAL SINGERS
This is an experience. If you like very indie films. The kind that involve ghost-speaking fortune tellers and one helluva bunch of wonderful music – and a strange strange film? Then ALL MY FRIENDS ARE FUNERAL SINGERS will be just what you got. As usual, Angela Bettis is amazing to watch. Give this a shot.
SUPERSONIC MAN / WAR OF THE ROBOTS
If you’re an aficionado of awful cinema, here’s two knotted fists to the stomach to take the air clean out of ya. Cheese of this quality comes wrapped in aluminum foil and is called Velveeta. Watch at your own peril!!!
SILVER LODE
FUCKING LOVE THIS MOVIE. You see John Payne’s face there. You can see despair beginning to wear him down. This is a Western – but it has almost nothing to do with the Old West. It is really about McCarthyism that was rampant at the time it was made. This RKO jewel with the lovely femme fatale Lizabeth Scott playing something a tad different. The sometime dancing warbler, Dan Duryea is also quite wonderful here. While not the best Western about this theme, that falls to THE OX-BOW INCIDENT – this is a film to play with that one. Seriously. It is that good. A real jewel. Amazon is already out of stock, but if you order as soon as they get more copies in they’ll go out. You definitely want to see this if you love message westerns.
TROMEO AND JULIET (Blu Ray)
Next to CITIZEN TOXIE, my favorite TROMA flick is TROMEO AND JULIET. Everything just seemed to be working. James Gunn’s script is the real fountain of fun from which this flick springs to life. I’m pretty sure this is exactly what the Bard always meant with his troublesome lovers. This needed the clarity of Blu Ray. And if you haven’t seen it. Fuckin’ Hell… get to it! You allergic to a great time?
SANDOK
Something entirely different from the great exploitation filmmaker, Umberto Lenzi. Starring Errol Flynn’s son Sean Flynn, this dreadful would be Jungle action film is just dead in the water. I wanted to like it. It just bored the hell out of me.
SUBMISSION OF A WOMAN
A pretty powerful Home Invasion flick from Italy of 1991. Long before the net started alerting us to pretty killer alternative foreign titles – SUBMISSION OF A WOMAN is a brutal film, that many of you will have trouble with. But if you thrive on the toughest of exploitation – this will serve you well. You might find it offensive.
Well, that’s it for May. Next week, we kick off June with Burton’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND, LIFE, the superior director’s cut of THE WOLFMAN, the 8th THREE STOOGE collection, Blu Ray double bill of KELLY’S HEROES / WHERE EAGLES DARE, Spielberg’s WAR OF THE WORLDS on Blu, BAD BOYS (Blu), THE MAN WITH NO NAME TRILOGY (Blu), Disney Parks: The Secrets, Stories and Magic Behind The Scenes, more PEANUTS, HEARTBREAK RIDGE (Blu), THE RED BARON, ABSOLUTE POWER (Blu), THE BARBARA STANWYCK SHOW Vol 2, THE ROOKIE (Blu), THE THREE MUSKETEERS / FOUR MUSKETEERS collection, PALE RIDER (Blu), CHANGE OF HABIT, GOTCHA!, CHARLEY VARRICK, GAUNTLET (Blu), UNDISPUTED III: REDEMPTION, GRAY LADY DOWN, THE SUN, HAVANA, EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE (Blu), THE BEGUILED, MADIGAN, TWO-MINUTE WARNING, TONY MANERO and more!
