TENEBRE -- DVD review by porfle

 

 Originally posted on 5/8/08

 

I'm a Dario Argento fan but have yet to see all of his films. So it was a real treat to get the chance to watch TENEBRE (aka TENEBRAE), the Italian director's 1982 return to the giallo style after a detour into the supernatural (SUSPIRIA, his masterpiece, and its follow-up INFERNO). According to Wikipedia, "giallo" films are typically slasher-style whodunits characterized by "extended murder sequences featuring excessive bloodletting, stylish camerawork and unusual musical arrangements", which would make this a prime example of the genre.

Tony Franciosa plays Peter Neal, a murder mystery writer who's just arrived in Rome to promote his latest book, "Tenebrae", only to find that a serial-killing stalker is using his new novel as a template for ridding the world of sexual deviates and other undesirables. With the help of his secretary and budding love interest Anne (Argento collaborator and former spouse Daria Nicolodi) and eager young assistant Gianni (Christian Borromeo), Neal hopes to add a feather to his literary cap by solving the real-life murder mystery himself as bodies begin to pile up. The arrival in Rome of his spurned ex-lover Jane (Veronica Lario) and the presence of a television journalist named Berti (John Steiner) who appears to be a little too obsessed with Neal and his writings are just two of the many pieces in Argento's jumbled jigsaw puzzle.

One of the first things I noticed about TENEBRE is how bright it is. Much of it takes place in broad daylight, while the night scenes are often overly-lit. Argento has stated that he wanted the film to look hyper-realistic, with no shadows for either the victims or the killer to hide in. It's an interesting stylistic choice that Argento uses effectively. The often light-bleached visuals and pallid settings also allow him to emphasize certain elements such as a woman's fire-engine red pumps or the gouts of blood that liberally decorate several moments of terror.

Some of my favorite Argento touches are well-represented here, including: a haunting flashback, the details of which are only gradually revealed to us (not unlike Harmonica's recurring childhood memory in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, which Argento co-wrote); characters not picking up on an important visual or aural clue until it suddenly occurs to them after much reflection, as in the "three irises" scene from SUSPIRIA or the mysterious painting in DEEP RED; and several POV shots that disconcertingly put us in the killer's shoes as he (or she) is on the prowl.

As usual, Argento uses sound very effectively. In particular, he shares something in common with singer Nick Lowe--he loves the sound of breaking glass--so if you see a plate glass window in this movie, chances are it's going to shatter when you least expect it. Argento uses such devices to make his murder sequences even more nerve-wracking than they already are, usually after some very careful buildup and a few fake-outs to keep us off guard. And when the killer strikes, it's disturbingly violent. But unlike the standard slasher bore such as FRIDAY THE 13TH, Argento is more interested in the imaginative cinematic depiction of violence rather than simply racking up outlandish yet by-the-numbers body counts. When he does go for the gore, it shocks us, and it happens to characters that we care about and for reasons that keep the story moving.

Oh, and speaking of nerve-wracking, Argento managed to reunite three members of the disbanded rock group Goblin (Claudio Simonetti, Fabio Pignatelli, and Massimo Morante) to supply the original score. Unlike their music for SUSPIRIA, this has a synth-heavy, somewhat cheesy 80s sound that seems to be influenced at times by Giorgio Moroder's drum-machine disco rhythms. Other passages resemble their music for George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD. But it has that unmistakable Goblin sound, which somehow manages to compliment Argento's style even as it's turning your eardrums to mush.

Tony Franciosa is an old pro who did a lot of television while I was growing up, in addition to appearing in scores of fun films (a year after this, he got to do a steamy love scene with my favorite actress, Isabelle Mejias--the lucky dog--in the lively Canadian thriller JULIE DARLING). John Saxon, who plays Peter's literary agent, is, of course, always a welcome presence, and Veronica Lario is very effectively creepy as Jane. The rest of the cast is good, too--I especially liked Giuliano Gemma and Carola Stagnaro as a pair of homicide detectives--although in most cases the dubbing makes it hard to fully appreciate their performances. Daria Nicolodi does her usual fine job as well.

There are some really nice-looking women in lesser roles, adding considerably more sex appeal than you usually find in an Argento film. Ania Pieroni appears briefly as a lovely kleptomaniac who uses sex to beat a shoplifting rap but can't escape the fate awaiting her when she gets home. Lara Wendel plays a lesbian magazine writer whose promiscuous, half-naked housemate is the heart-stoppingly gorgeous Italian model Mirella Banti, in a sequence that allows Argento to indulge his stylistic impulses to their fullest.

Most interesting of all, perhaps, is the casting of Eva Robins as a woman who appears in several strange flashbacks to a traumatic event in the killer's youth. Born a male, Robins reportedly began to develop breasts and other female characteristics during puberty, to an extent that convinced her that nature intended her to live as a woman. At any rate, she's convincing enough as the "girl on the beach" in some of the film's strangest scenes.

The new DVD from Anchor Bay features an uncut, remastered widescreen (1:85:1) transfer enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Aside from the trailer and an Argento biography, there's a commentary track featuring the director along with composer Claudio Simonetti and journalist Loris Curci, which is as informative as you might expect although much time is spent waiting for Argento to figure out how to say everything in English--I kinda wished it could have been in Italian with English subtitles. "Voices of the Unsane" is a nifty 17-minute featurette with Argento, Nicolodi, Simonetti, and other principals discussing the making of the film. (UNSANE was the retitled, badly-edited version first shown in the US.) Other brief featurettes explore the creation of TENEBRE's sound effects and the filming of an intricate extended shot featured in one of the murder sequences. All in all, not a bad array of extras.

It's interesting to see Argento eschew the sumptuous, fairytale look of SUSPIRIA for a more stark and austere style here. Without the dark shadows and saturated colors, TENEBRE is like a blank canvas splattered with bright red, with a realism that's as brittle and sharp as all that broken glass. Only when the killer's identity is revealed at last in an axe and straight razor-slashed finale do we get a really dark, lightning-streaked scene, and it's horrifying enough to warrant the seemingly never-ending screams of the last person standing as TENEBRE fades out into its closing credits. And if you're a Dario Argento fan, you'll definitely want to be there when it happens.

THE BEST OF BOGART COLLECTION (The Maltese Falcon/ Casablanca/ The Treasure of the Sierra Madre/ The African Queen) -- Blu-ray review by porfle

 Originally posted on 3/28/14

 

When I made a list of my top 100 favorite actors a few years ago, the first three positions were pretty much a lock.  Number one, of course, was John Wayne.  Two--well, I'm a Bruce Willis fan from all the way back to "Moonlighting", and I even liked "Armageddon." 

But as for number three, there's only one actor who could knock either of them out of their slots at my slightest whim, and that's Bogart.  He invented cool, refined it, and perfected it to such a degree that nobody else could ever be quite that cool again. 

Now, Warner Home Video has brought four of Bogart's greatest and most varied performances together on Blu-ray with THE BEST OF BOGART COLLECTION, a four-disc set which contains "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), "Casablanca" (1942), "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948), and "The African Queen" (1951). 

Humphrey DeForest Bogart looked like he'd been around the block a few times and could take care of himself in a tough scrape, unlike a lot of the pretty-boy leading men who populated movie marquees then and now.  Which is ironic, since he started out as a male ingenue in film roles that were pure fluff. 

This prompted him to keep returning to his native New York and the stage, where he eventually landed the role of escaped killer Duke Mantee in the play "The Petrified Forest."  When this was slated to become a film, star Leslie Howard insisted that Bogart be cast as Mantee, and his chilling, tough-as-nails performance made him a movie star in the Warner Brothers gangster vein.

Bogart's screen persona wavered between no-nonsense good guy and fearsome bad guy, with sometimes a little of both.  If need be, he could also portray either a frightening psycho or a pathetic failure.  As an actor with a much broader range than one might first suspect, he could make any of these personas both convincing and compelling, with a nuance and intensity that few actors can ever achieve.  And there was something about that unforgettable face which seemed to express everything his character was thinking and feeling. 

One of the finest actors in the history of the medium, Humphrey Bogart's filmography contains several of the greatest movies ever made.  The best of these comprise quite a selection of Hollywood filmmaking at its peak as both an art form and a means of pure escapist entertainment.  


THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)

The first great "film noir" set the standard both storywise and in its impeccably exquisite visuals.  First-time director John Huston does a masterful job orchestrating his actors and crew to create a visual experience which is consistently involving and often dazzling. 

The film, shot mostly on interior sets, was brought in on budget and ahead of schedule despite Huston requesting an extra day of rehearsal for the film's climactic sequence, which takes place entirely within a single hotel room with almost all members of the main cast.  The complex character interactions and the way the tangled plot is meticulously resolved during this scene makes for some of the most breathlessly riveting cinema ever filmed.

Huston uses clever direction and camera movements to keep things from getting claustrophobic, and never once lets the pace drag.  His screenplay follows Dashiell Hammett's novel almost to the letter (the two earlier, inferior adaptations, 1931's "Dangerous Female" and the comedic "Satan Met a Lady" in 1936, didn't), and crackles with scintillating dialogue, intriguing plot twists, and relentlessly building suspense. 

Hammett's celebrated anti-hero Sam Spade is the perfect noir detective--brash, resourceful, self-assured, keenly intelligent, streetwise, tough but not infallible, and opportunistic.  He does have a moral code, one not easily compromised, and a motto that is rigidly enforced: "Never play the sap for anyone." 

The first person to try and use him is quintessential femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy (exquisitely  played by Mary Astor), who hires San Francisco private detective Spade and his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) to locate her missing sister along with a mystery man named Floyd Thursby.  When both Archer and Thursby turn up dead, it appears there's more to Brigid's story than she's letting on. 

Before long Spade discovers that she's after a priceless treasure known as the Maltese Falcon, for which she's in fierce competition against  "the Fat Man" Kaspar Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) and the wily, effeminate Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre).  Spade must spar with these conniving characters while fending off police detectives Dundy and Polhaus (Barton MacLane, Ward Bond), who suspect him in the murders although the more genial Polhaus tends to side with Sam.  All in all, these actors comprise one of the finest casts ever assembled for a film.  (Look for John Huston's father Walter in a quick cameo as a fatally wounded ship's captain.)

Huston delights in working with these masterful performers as any artist deftly employs his chosen medium.  The dialogue scenes between Bogart and Greenstreet are a verbal delight (Gutman constantly admits his glowing admiration for the crafty Spade), while the utter dishonesty underlying Spade's love affair with Brigid gives it an air of perversion. 

Lorre's Joel Cairo, both dangerously scheming and amusingly fussy, is always fun to watch.  I love the scene in which Spade disarms and manhandles Cairo, whose main concern is expressed with the heated accusation "Look what you did to my shirt!"

Even young character actor Elisha Cook, Jr. gets to shine in the plum role of Gutman's "gunsel" Wilmer Cook, a callow trench-coated hood hiding his cowardice behind guns and tough talk.  (Dwight Frye played the part in the 1931 version.)  The ever-sharper Spade delights in yanking Wilmer's chain, and in one incredible closeup we see fat, glistening tears suspended in each of the young killer's eyes as he's overcome with burning frustration and impotent rage (another bravura touch by Huston).

But it's Bogart's show, and his performance is a pure delight.  We know Spade's a stand-up guy, yet the moment his partner's murdered he has the signs around the office changed from "Spade and Archer" to "Samuel Spade."  He's even having an affair with Archer's wife, Iva (Gladys George), but loses interest once he meets Miss O'Shaughnessy.  Yet we know he's an okay guy as long as his faithful gal Friday, Effie (Lee Patrick), still secretly loves him. 

In one delightful moment, after storming out of a tense encounter with Gutman and Wilmer in the Fat Man's swanky hotel room, Spade smiles when he realizes that his hand is shaking and his palms sweating.  Spade may be brave, but he still gets scared, a fact which both amuses and excites him.

This vintage detective yarn sizzles with suspense and excitement for viewers who are able to plug themselves into its high-voltage current.  For me, it took several viewings before I finally began to appreciate just what a finely-rendered thing of beauty it truly is.  Others (as some IMDb comments would indicate) seem to take a strange kind of pride in remaining immune to its charms, believing that such classics are revered by many simply because they're "old." 

But if it doesn't hit you right away, just keep watching and remain open to it.  Sooner or later, hopefully, THE MALTESE FALCON will weave its magic spell over you.  Like the rare and unique artifact of the title, it's "the stuff dreams are made of.

1080p High Definition 1.33:1, DTS-HD Master Audio: English 1.0, Dolby Digital: Espanol 1.0
Subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.

Special Features:

·         Commentary by Bogart Biographer Eric Lax
·         Featurette The Maltese Falcon: One Magnificent Bird
·         Breakdowns of 1941: Studio Blooper Reel
·         Makeup Tests
·         Becoming Attractions: The Trailers of Humphrey Bogart
·         Warner Night at the Movies
·         1941 Short Subjects Gallery
·         Audio-Only Bonus: 3 Radio Show Adaptions
·         Vintage art card


CASABLANCA (1942)

This is one of those films which we can now look back on as an undisputed classic in which everything seems to come together perfectly.  At the time, however, it was regarded by the studio as just another production, whose script, based on the unproduced play "Everyone Comes to Rick's", was being written on the fly and didn't even have a proper ending worked out until shortly before it was shot.

The story takes place in 1942 in the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca, which overflows with refugees desperately struggling to gain passage to America and elsewhere in the free world to escape Nazi encroachment in Europe .  Exiled American (and ex-freedom fighter) Rick Blaine, played to perfection by Bogart , runs a nightclub called "Rick's Café Américain" in which many of these people meet to buy and sell the hope for freedom. 

Also on hand is Rick's friend, Captain Louis Renault (THE INVISIBLE MAN's Claude Rains in one of his best performances), the head of the local police and an opportunist of the first order whose greatest pleasure is accepting bribes both monetary and sexual.  Renault openly admires Rick's similarly self-serving qualities and even displays a platonic crush on him ("If I were a woman, and I were not around, I should be in love with Rick," he admits). 

We wonder how Renault would react if Rick started reverting back to his old, noble self, especially in the presence of the vile German officer Major Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt, THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI,  THE MAN WHO LAUGHS), newly-arrived and on the trail of famed Czech resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henried). 

While Rick starts out as an anti-hero, he gradually and without really meaning to becomes more heroic as the story progresses.  Early on, Peter Lorre's oily Ugarte--who recently killed some German soldiers to attain two letters of transit to sell in Casablanca--begs Rick for help before he's captured ("Hide me, Rick!  Hide me!").  Rick's terse response: "I stick my neck out for nobody." 

And indeed, Rick seems grudgingly content to sit out the current world war as manager of his bustling nightclub until one night, when an old flame named Ilsa (the utterly radiant Ingrid Bergman) comes through the front door with her husband, none other than Victor Laszlo.  Rick, once an idealistic crusader himself but now cynical and disillusioned, has never forgiven Ilsa for inexplicably running out on him during the fall of Paris, at the height of their love affair--not knowing that Laszlo, whom they both thought dead, had turned up alive.

When Rick obtains the two letters of transit from Ugarte, he has the means of whisking Ilsa back to America with him and resuming their love affair while leaving Laszlo behind to carry on alone and devastated.  But will he do something so selfish and immoral?  Or regain his soul and commit the supreme act of sacrifice for the sake not only of Ilsa and her husband but of the free world itself?

This is the dilemma which gives CASABLANCA much of its power to effect us emotionally while simmering with a growing suspense.  As a film, everything clicks-- Michael Curtiz' sharp direction, the gorgeous black-and-white photography, great performances by a stellar cast, a powerful musical score by Max Steiner, and a story that's always totally engaging. 

Action and romance are perfectly balanced and compliment each other, while comedic touches abound, especially from the delightfully corruptible Renault,  the antics of Rick's eccentric staff (including S.Z. Sakall), and a fez-topped Sydney Greenstreet (again) as a competing club owner who wants to acquire Rick's place along with his loyal piano-playing band leader Sam (Dooley Wilson, who croons the classic "As Time Goes By"). 

But when Laszlo exhorts Sam and his band to strike up a stirring rendition of "La Marseillaise" in response to Strasser and his fellow German officers belting out "Die Wacht am Rhein", the move (which Rick okays with a subtle nod of his head) not only stirs the patriotic fervor of everyone else in the club but may bring the viewer to tears as well.  (Steiner uses this same anthem as a fanfare for his own musical credit during the main titles.)

The climax of the film takes place at the airport, a focal point for dreams of freedom throughout the story.  Rick now literally holds the ticket to a new life with Ilsa, who will join him if he asks her to.  Yet his newly reawakened sense of duty to humanity now fights for precedence.  Meanwhile Renault, his own duty to Strasser  putting him at odds with his friend, awaits Rick's decision. 

When the plane fires up its engines, Steiner's music swells, and there comes a stunning, perfectly-edited series of  closeups of Bogart,  Bergman, and Henried which generate a dramatic tension few films could ever attain.  It's pure, undiluted Hollywood magic at its most sublime, and the resolution which follows couldn't be more perfect.  CASABLANCA is an intricate jigsaw puzzle of seemingly disparate pieces which fit together to form a beautiful picture.

1080p High Definition 1.33:1, Dolby Digital: English 1.0, Francais 1.0 & Espanol 1.0
Subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.

Special Features:

·         Commentary by Roger Ebert
·         Commentary by Historian Rudy Behlmer
·         Introduction by Lauren Bacall
·         Additional Scenes & Outtakes
·         Scoring Session Outtakes
·         Bacall on Bogart
·         You Must Remember This: A Tribute to Casablanca
·         Featurette As Time Goes By: The Children Remember
·         Production Research Gallery
·         Homage Cartoon Carrotblanca
·         Who Hold Tomorrow? : Premiere Episode From 1955 Warner Bros. Presents TV Series Adaptation of Casablanca
·         Audio-Only Bonus: Radio Production with the Movie’s 3 Key Stars
·         Theatrical Trailers
·         Vintage art card


THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)

With this epic outdoor action-drama, based on a novel by enigmatic writer B. Traven,  Bogart once again joined with director John Huston and his father Walter for a grueling tale of the devastating effects of greed on average men.  During the film's arduous shoot in the wilds of Mexico, any hint of Hollywood glamour would soon become a distant memory. 

As Fred C. Dobbs, Bogart loses himself in one of his grittiest and least sympathetic roles.  Dobbs is an American stuck in a small Mexican town with no job or money, wandering the streets and begging for pesos.  (The younger Huston has a funny cameo as a well-to-do man Dobbs keeps hitting up for change.)  Dobbs will fling water in the face of a small boy (Robert Blake) pestering him to buy a lottery ticket, yet we sense a modicum of decency somewhere beneath his gruff exterior. 

This early sequence of him trudging his way through life, getting bad haircuts, chasing after prostitutes, etc. lets us sit back and watch Bogart at work creating one of his finest characters.  Dobbs hooks up with a fellow American named Curtin (Tim Holt) for a job in which they're cheated out of their pay by a crooked foreman (Barton MacLane of THE MALTESE FALCON) whom they beat senseless after he attacks them in a bar.  (This well-choreographed fight scene is brutally effective.)  Then, after meeting grizzled old prospector Howard (Walter Huston) in a flophouse, they take his advice and set out to find gold in the mountains of the Mexican desert. 

Walter Huston enjoyed recounting the story of how he told his son John that if he ever became a filmmaker to "write me a good part."   The old gold-hunter Howard is that part, a role the elder Huston,  sans dentures, inhabits so fully that he almost manages to steal the picture right out from under Bogart.  (He would go on to win an Oscar for it.)  Howard is a goodnatured, level-headed old man, and we believe him when he warns of the evil effects gold can have on weak-willed men.  

Dobbs blusters against such talk, thinking himself above any negative influences.  Yet without missing a beat, he will fulfill each of Howard's admonitions one by one as the lure of gold transforms him into a paranoid,  resentful,  and ultimately dangerous man.  By the time he's gone over the deep end, he's a frightening character, convinced in his mindless desperation that everyone's out to get him and that he's justified in whatever heinous act he may commit to protect himself and his newfound fortune.

When Dobbs and Curtin finally find themselves locked in a life-or-death battle of wills in the middle of the desert, the film almost takes on the eerie inevitability of a horror movie.  The only thing that undercuts it, along with much of the rest of the film, is one of Max Steiner's worst musical themes--a loping, folksy motif that  I find jarringly out of place.

In addition to being a fascinating character study,  TREASURE is a terrific action-adventure.  Alfonso Bedoya is unforgettable as the ruthless Mexican bandit Gold Hat,  whose gang attacks our heroes' train during their trip into the mountains and then later stumbles upon their mining camp, leading to a blazing gunfight.  Gold Hat may be a monster, but Bedoya manages to make him funny, especially with his immortal response to Dobbs' question "If you're federales, where are your badges?"

"Badges? We ain’t got no badges...we don’t need no badges...I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!"

Tim Holt is solid in the less flashy role  of sturdy, dependable Curtin, who shares Howard's dismay at Dobbs' growing instability.  Walter Huston is a delight in a truly wonderful performance--he even gets to break the fourth wall and give us a sly look during one sequence in which he's being given the royal treatment by a tribe of Indians after doing them a good turn.  We don't even hold it against Howard when he votes along with the others to execute another man, Cody (Bruce Bennett), who tries to horn in on their find. 

But it's Bogart, as a man susceptible to bouts of pure, wild-eyed insanity, who makes the film as truly memorable as it is.  No matter how low he sinks and what horrible things he does, we always remember the relatively decent guy he was before gold changed him, and feel some remorse for what he's become.  And just like Dobbs, I'd like to think gold wouldn't make me act that way--but who knows?

1080p High Definition 1.33:1, DTS-HD Master Audio: English 1.0, Dolby Digital: Francais 1.0 & Espanol 1.0 (Both Castilian and Latin)
Subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.

Special Features:

·         Commentary by Bogart Biographer Eric Lax
·         Discovering Treasure: The Story of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
·         Documentary Profile John Huston
·         Warner Night at the Movies
·         1948 Short Subjects Gallery: Leonard Maltin Introduction, Newsreel, 2 Classic Cartoons, Comedy Short, Theatrical Trailers.
·         Audio-Only Bonus: Radio Show with the Movie’s Original Stars
·         Vintage art card


THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)

Here's the story of two people you'll want to get  to know very much--Humphrey Bogart as Charlie Allnut, a goodnaturedly uncouth little man who runs a tiny supply boat up and down the river in German East Africa in 1914,  and Katharine Hepburn as Miss Rose Sayer, a Christian missionary who, along with her brother Reverend Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley), brings God's word to the natives until German soldiers burn down the church and village, kill her brother,and leave her all alone in the jungle.

Director John Huston deftly blends comedy with tragedy in the opening scenes.  Shortly before their horrific encounter with the German military, the Sayers invite Charlie to tea during a supply stop.  He hasn't eaten in awhile, so his stomach starts making the most impolite growling noises to which Rose and her brother react with growing dismay until finally Charlie explains brightly, "Ain't a thing I can do about it!" 

Charlie returns later to bury the brother and take Rose away in his boat, the "African Queen".  But her first thought is to somehow aid in her country's war effort by whatever means available.  Hearing of a German gunboat, the "Louisa", which is terrorizing the countryside from a large lake somewhere downriver, she hatches a scheme in which Charlie will devise a couple of torpedos out of compressed gas bottles and they will then ram the Louisa with the torpedos sticking out of the African Queen's bow. 

Humoring her for the time being--and not realizing that he has begun something he won't be able to back out of--he later mocks Miss Sayer's request in a grumbling approximation of her prim accent: "Can you make a torpedo?  Then do so, Mr. Allnut." 

This belly-laugh moment, courtesy of Bogart's irresistibly natural, likable performance as the ragtag river rat, is just the beginning of what will be a rip-roaring adventure, a tender romance, and a gut-busting comedy.  The independent production, filmed mostly on location in Africa in lush Technicolor, is one of John Huston's warmest and most heartfelt films.  This is due in large part to the chemistry between the two stars and Huston's ability as a master director to showcase them at their best.

Miss Rose Sayer is naturally brave and resourceful, which helps make up for her naivete' and inexperience with life in general.  She adapts quickly and becomes instantly addicted to the thrill of adventure as a substitute for sexual intimacy (her first excursion down the rapids leaves her as though she'd just had her first sexual release).  Learning to handle Allnut's boat is symbolic of her growing familiarity with the man himself  while he, in turn, finds himself suddenly yearning to bring out the inner woman behind the straight-laced exterior. 

Allnut is one of Bogart's funniest and most uninhibited characters--his emotional honesty and expressiveness are at their peak here.  Often a single look on his face will convey more thought and emotion than many actors can manage with an entire speech.  Hepburn is ideally cast as the initially very proper, timid spinster who gradually lets her hair down (literally) and begins to appreciate the more sensual and even carnal aspects of life as her love for Charlie Allnut blossoms toward fruition.

Their journey down the river is a series of funny and romantic vignettes interspersed with moments of harrowing danger which are excitingly staged.  The rapids are a major obstacle, as are mosquitoes, leeches, and, in one suspenseful sequence, German bullets.  Through it all, Rose's indefatigable attitude brings out the best in Charlie, and together they give each other something to live for even when things are at their worst.

Huston's technical skills are dazzling throughout the film.  The location photography is not only stunning but often amazing as well, as when we see a number of large alligators diving off the bank into the water right after Bogart has moved out of the frame--all in a single shot.   The process shots are as well integrated into the action as possible for the time and, for me at least, proved little distraction.  Allan Gray's musical score is another of the film's many pleasures. 

The story reaches its triumphant conclusion aboard the German gunboat, where our unlikely hero and heroine reach the end of their journey in fine style.  Like SHANE, which is tied with KING KONG (1933) as my favorite movie of all time, there are scenes throughout THE AFRICAN QUEEN which bring me to the verge of tears.   Not because these scenes are particularly sad, or particularly happy, but simply because they're quite disarmingly beautiful. 

1080p High Definition, Dolby Digital: English 1.0, Francais 1.0 & Espanol 1.0.
Subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.

Special Features:

·         Embracing Chaos: Making The African Queen
·         Vintage art card


Own it on Blu-ray:

Official WB Shop Link
Official Facebook
Official You Tube Videos

Images shown are not stills from the actual Blu-ray discs
Street Date: March 25, 2014

LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) -- DVD Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 3/14/09

 

Up till now, I'd only seen Wes Craven's 1972 horror-movie debut LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT once, when I rented the VHS tape back in the 80s, and for the life of me I couldn't remember a damn thing about it. Which I found somewhat strange considering its reputation as a ghastly, hardcore horror ordeal that so many found hard to watch and even harder to forget. Now that I've seen it again, I can understand why I originally found it unmemorable, but I'm still at a loss to explain its profound effect on others. To me, it's just a fairly decent cheapo murder flick, despite whatever perceived historical significance it may have. Have I really become that desensitized, or what?

Sweet young Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel), who just turned 17, is on her way to a rock concert with her more worldly friend Phyllis (Lucy Grantham), when they're kidnapped by sadistic escaped convicts Krug (David Hess) and Weasel (Fred Lincoln), their wretched moll Sadie (Jeramie Rain), and Krug's junkie son Junior (Marc Sheffler), who'll do whatever his pop tells him to in order to get his next fix. The bad guys dump their captives into the trunk and head for the hills, but their car soon breaks down on a secluded road. They take Mari and Phyllis into the woods, where the girls are humiliated, raped, tortured, and murdered.

Posing as stranded travelers on a business trip, they're taken in by a friendly couple who offer them food and accomodations for the night. As it turns out, however, John (Richard Towers) and Estelle (Cynthia Carr) are Mari's parents, the Collingwoods. And when they discover that their houseguests have just murdered their daughter, the mild-mannered mom and dad find their own killer instincts fiercely kicking in. Naturally, more bloody violence and mayhem ensue.

Visually, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is pretty artless, bringing to mind the likes of BLOOD FEAST and early John Waters films such as PINK FLAMINGOS. Wes Craven attributes this to a deliberate attempt at a documentary, cinema-verite' style, and claims that this makes the film's events seem more realistic. Marc Sheffler's assessment, as stated in one of the DVD's bonus featurettes, is that "in its professional ignorance, its stylistic ignorance, it has created its own style." I think it's just crummy camerawork. Plus, it's hard to be fooled into thinking "Hey, this is real!" when the characters are so borderline farcical and the acting, for the most part, is on a porn-movie level. (The script, in fact, started as a sick hardcore porn project, which is how adult actor Fred Lincoln became involved, before most of those dubious elements were wisely jettisoned.)

Hess, who would later appear in Wes Craven's SWAMP THING, comes off fairly well in a brutish way, while Lincoln isn't very convincing as a psycho killer. Sheffler's "Junior" is more of a comic doofus than the pathetic heroin slave he's intended to be. Jeramie Rain (who later became Mrs. Richard Dreyfuss and is surprisingly beautiful in her recent interview footage) comes off pretty well as the feral Sadie. As Mari's parents, Richard Towers and Cynthia Carr are superficial at best, although Carr comes to life in the final scenes. I like the two girls, Sandra Cassel and Lucy Grantham, who are unpolished yet appealing and who manage to express genuine terror during key moments, although in Cassel's case there's more to this than acting skills (more on that later). Her sad death scene provides one of the film's genuinely affecting moments.

As far as the violence and gore are concerned, there's nothing more extreme than George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD from four years earlier, or even 1963's BLOOD FEAST. And I can never take these characters seriously enough for their acts to be truly shocking or difficult to endure. The only thing I find hard to watch--the rape scene--comes not from what's happening in the story but from what went on during the filming of it. As David Hess relates during the commentary, he had the already nervous Sandra Cassel so distraught and fearful of him that much of her humiliation and distress during the scene are real. Marc Sheffler also tells of actually grabbing her and threatening to push her over a precipice if she didn't stop fouling up take after take of their main scene together. For me, these two accounts are the creepiest thing about the movie.

Meanwhile, awkward attempts at comedy relief keep inexplicably popping up at the darndest times. These come mainly in the form of a fat, bumbling sheriff (Marshall Anker) and his moronic deputy (Martin Kove, the most recognizable actor in the film), who run out of gas on their way to the Collingwood home and try to hitch a ride on a chicken truck. In an early scene, the world-weary sheriff laments, "Sometimes I wish I was something else" and his deputy asks, "You mean, like a duck?"

This, we're told, was meant to counterpoint the (already humor-laced) serious scenes just as David Hess' irreverent soundtrack songs serve as a jarring contrast to onscreen events. But as Fred Lincoln, who still refers to the film as "a piece of sh**", states in the commentary, "to cut back to them was to cut back to a different movie." It's like switching channels between a slasher flick and "The Dukes of Hazzard." The cartoonish Ozzie and Harriet-ness of Mari's parents is similarly overstated in their early scenes.

The blood-splattered finale, which takes place in and around the titular house, has its moments but is pretty much a mess. Reacting to the death of their daughter not with crippling grief but with a strangely industrious fervor, Mrs. Collingwood becomes a deadly seductress while Mr. Collingwood turns into a vengeful cross between Tim Allen and MacGyver. I won't give away too much of what happens, but aside from a few cool images, it's not all that shocking or suspenseful. A curiously tame chainsaw showdown does result in the destruction of some nice furniture, though. And one character's swimming pool demise is quite satisfying.

 

Fans of the film will no doubt enjoy the yakky, argumentative, and funny commentary track featuring Hess, Lincoln, and Sheffler (but not Craven or Cunningham, who did a commentary for the 2002 DVD release), as well as the behind-the-scenes featurette "Still Standing: The Legacy of The Last House on the Left" and the 40-minute documentary "Celluloid Crime of the Century", both of which contain much interview material with Craven, producer Sean S. Cunningham, and members of the cast. Along with some interesting inside info, the personable Craven also dishes up a little after-the-fact hooey about the script (based on Ingmar Bergman's THE VIRGIN SPRING) that he banged out with no deep intentions besides making a simple horror flick, "but I think what was going on subconsciously was a pretty complex matrix of the fundamentalists being alive in America at that time, and...uh, the Viet Nam war..." He also opines that some scenes evoked a perverse sympathy for the villains which resulted in a "trememdous turmoil of emotions in the audiences that created a lot of anger." I guess you had to be there--at no time while watching the film do I feel any sympathy for them whatsoever.

In "Scoring Last House", David Hess tells of how he wrote the music for the film and performs snippets from some of the songs. "Tales That Will Tear Your Heart Out" is about eleven minutes of silent Wes Craven-directed footage from an unfinished 1976 film. There are also some silent never-before-seen LAST HOUSE outtakes, a minute of deleted dialogue from Mari's death scene, and some trailers for other films. This unrated "collector's edition" DVD, released on 2/24/09, is in 1.85:1 widescreen with Dolby Digital mono sound and subtitles in English, Spanish, and French. Picture and sound quality are about as good as can be expected considering the age and low budget of the film.

According to Roger Ebert, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT "never lets us out from under almost unbearable dramatic tension." I was really hoping it would have the same effect on me, and was genuinely surprised when it didn't even come close. For the most part, I found it lively and reasonably fun to watch, though much of the fun was of the "so bad it's good" variety with very little of it being just plain good. And it was nowhere near the grueling cinematic ordeal that I've come to expect over the years. I wonder if I've become desensitized, or if the film just isn't as sensitizing as it's cracked up to be.

SHINING SEX -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

  Originally posted on 6/24/20

 


I think it's fair to say that incredibly prolific cult filmmaker Jess Franco wrote and directed SHINING SEX (1977, Severin Films) as an excuse to closely examine the naked body of his lifelong love and artistic muse Lina Romay in what can only be described as loving detail.

Hence, the narrative consists of roughly 10% story and 90% naked Lina Romay, which is great if (a) you're really, really into Lina Romay, and (b) you enjoy just sitting back and watching compulsive film addict Franco getting his celluloid fix by thinking up different reasons to aim a camera at things.

Those things in this case would be parts of Lina Romay's body, which we get to know almost as intimately as her ob/gyn.  In fact, this film goes a long way toward making up for the fact that I never had sex education classes in school.  It's like an anatomical textbook in motion.

Of course, even Franco's simplest films usually have some kind of plot, and in this case it's the story of wildly popular nightclub dancer Cynthia (Romay), whose act consists of wearing next to nothing and rolling around on the floor in front of patrons like a kitty cat in heat, being taken to the luxurious home of an interested but strangely aloof couple.

Playfully seductive Cynthia strips off upon arrival and gets the woman, Alpha (Evelyne Scott), into bed for some girl-girl action while the man, Andros (Raymond Hardy) is supposedly off "putting the car away."

But whereas this is usually a prelude to naughty fun, we can see (even if Cynthia can't) that there's something very not right about Alpha's disaffected, almost robotic behavior.

Even her growing sexual arousal in response to Cynthia's efforts to engage her has an ominous feel to it, as the accompanying music itself sounds like something out of a Herk Harvey movie.

How much should I reveal about the rest of the plot? I like to watch movies like this without much foreknowledge, and in this case the mystery just made it that much more enjoyable. Suffice it to say that Franco takes a big left turn into sci-fi territory with elements of the mystical and the metaphysical.

All that, of course, is in service to the abundance of prolonged sex scenes, which get about as close to hardcore as I've seen in a Jess Franco movie. I'll even wager that this one would need extensive cuts to have been shown on Cinemax or the Playboy Channel back in the day.

Evelyne Scott (DEVIL'S KISS) is a commanding presence as Alpha. Monica Swinn (BARBED WIRE DOLLS) appears about halfway through as mystic Madame Pécame, who becomes involved in the paranormal goings-on along with Franco himself as Dr. Seward, head of a private psychiatric hospital. Also appearing are Olivier Mathot (THE SADIST OF NOTRE DAME) and Elmos Kallman.

The 2-disc Blu-ray from Severin contains a CD of music from this and other Franco films. The uncensored print has been scanned from the original negative. Soundtrack is English 2.0 mono with English subtitles. A slipcover features different artwork than the box itself.

Bonus features include "In the Land of Franco, Part 3" with Stephen Thrower, an interview with Thrower entitled "Shining Jess", "Never Met Franco" with filmmaker Gerald Kikoine, "Filmmaker Christopher Gans on France", Commentary with scholars Robert Monell and Rod Barnett, some very explicit outtakes, and a trailer.

While the sci-fi angle gets nuttier (and the sex kinkier) as it goes along, there's always the spectacle of Jess Franco's beloved Lina languishing in the nude and getting ravished by everyone in sight. If you're not a Francophile, this will probably mean very little to you. But for those to whom every aspect of the director's career evokes endless fascination, SHINING SEX will prove evocative indeed.


2-Disc Blu-ray Featuring Limited Edition Slipcover
Limited to 1500 copies

Slipcover art:

HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

  Originally posted on 6/12/20

 

Poor Gary--just when he achieves every man's fondest fantasy (well, many of us, anyway) of being the only guy stranded in a remote location with a bevy of beautiful babes, he gets bitten by a big, hairy mutant arachnid and becomes one of the HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND (Severin Films, 1960).

These days a film like this German trash classic is usually described as "cheesy", which, admittedly, is rather apt since it's cheap, it's goofy, and it has all the dramatic gravitas of a dime-store sex and horror pulp novel come to sordid life.

It's main qualities are either pros or cons, depending on your point of view. Bad movie fans will love the dumb dialogue and situations, florid performances, and overheated plot that has its over-emoting cast either engaged in steamy sex clinches or running from hairy, fanged monsters through the jungle.  

 
The plane crash scene is especially amusing as it consists of stock footage of a burning plane intercut with random closeups of women screaming comically in front of a black background.

But it also has some nice black-and-white photography which at times is actually quite good, as well as actual outdoor locations and some very attractive actresses portraying the stranded women whose plane went down on its way to a gig in Singapore under the supervision of manly showbiz producer Gary (Alexander D’Arcy, THE AWFUL TRUTH, BLOOD OF DRACULA'S CASTLE) and his partner and romantic interest, Georgia (Helga Franck), a stern woman who isn't above bitch-slapping the more unruly gals when they step out of line.

Chief among these is the lush, plush blonde mega-babe Babs (Barbara Valentine, BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ), upon whom many male viewers will remain focused for most of her screen time. Others include the more emotionally vulnerable Gladys, the exhibitionist Linda who strips at the drop of a hat (or anything else), and several other attractive aspiring actresses. 

 
Alpha-blonde Babs and a contentious beta-babe engage in the film's central catfight scene which, in the unedited version, features a guest appearance by Babs' boobs. 

While stranded on the island they stay in the cozy cabin of a scientist whose dead body they discovered hanging in a giant spider web in the livingroom, and whose experiments with uranium created the monster spider that will bite poor Gary and turn him into sort of a clawed were-spider with a face even his mother would run screaming from.

The unfortunate Gary disappears for much of the film when a couple of other studly guys enter the picture in their motorboat and find themselves surrounded by amorous females. 

 
One of them, Bob (Reiner Brandt), is a womanizing letch who acts like a kid in a candy store, while the older, more mature Joe (Temple Foster) finds love with one of the less brazen beauties (during a night of drunken revelry for the rest of the gang which, in the uncut version, is also semi-naked) until their jungle meet-cute is interrupted by the return of slavering party-crasher Gary.

This leads to a lively, fun finale with everyone running around the jungle in terror, alternately chasing after and hightailing it away from their resident human-spider-monster as the film draws to a satisfying close for those brave souls who've actually stayed with it all the way.

Severin Films' Blu-ray edition of the film, "scanned from the Düsseldorf dupe negative", looks great all things considered and is likely the best-looking version of the film currently extant. The disc also contains the alternate U.S. version which is dubbed in English and minus the nudity (released in 1963 as "It's Hot In Paradise" although I've only ever known it under its current title). 

 
Bonus features include the featurette "The History of Spider Island" with film historian Prof. Dr. Marcus Stiglegger, an audio interview with actor Alexander D’Arcy ("Gary") by horror historian David Del Valle, alternate "clothed" scenes from the U.S. version, a trailer, reversible box artwork, and a slipcover with yet more different artwork.

There are two kinds of people in the world--those who will find HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND to be unwatchable, unredeemable trash that they wouldn't touch with ten-foot eyeballs, and those who will savor every single minute of it. I'm a happy member of the second group, and if you are too, then I'll meet you on Spider Island!


Buy it from Severin Films

Special Features:

    Alternate US Release Version: IT’S HOT IN PARADISE
    The History of Spider Island With Prof. Dr. Marcus Stiglegger
    Audio Interview with Actor Alexander D’Arcy by Horror Historian David Del Valle
    Alternate Clothed Scenes
    Trailer
    Revisable Artwork
    Comic Book [WEBSTORE EXCLUSIVE]

 Box art:

Reversible box art:

THE GREEN MILE -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

 

 Originally posted on 5/8/16

 

 

Four years after 1994's THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, Frank Darabont once again tapped master storyteller Stephen King (in addition to his own screenwriting talents) for another prison tale, THE GREEN MILE.

I recall the novelty of reading King's tale when first published not as a lengthy single volume but as a series of small paperbacks released in serial form a la Charles Dickens. I was skeptical when I heard that this riveting but highly unusual tale would be turned into a movie, a skepticism that Darabont proceeded to dash into smithereens by creating what I consider to be his finest and most thoroughly accomplished work to date.

The story takes place on Death Row in a Southern prison circa 1935, where head guard Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) strives to treat the condemned men with a fair amount of dignity and compassion until their date with "Old Sparky." Brawny, reliable Brutus "Brutal" Howell (David Morse) is his right hand man, aided also by the other guards Harry Terwilliger (Darabont regular Jeffrey DeMunn) and young Dean Stanton (Barry Pepper, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN).

Paul's biggest headache, besides the occasional psycho prisoner such as fiend killer "Wild Bill" Wharton (Sam Rockwell, GALAXY QUEST, GENTLEMEN BRONCOS), is a cruel, cowardly weasel of a guard named Percy Wetmore, brilliantly played by one of my favorite actors, Doug Hutchison (MOOLA). As the spoiled nephew of the governor's wife, Percy threatens to tattle on Paul whenever he doesn't get his way or is caught abusing the prisoners. It's Hutchison's best role since that of inhuman super-creep Eugene Tooms on "The X-Files."

While his connections could secure any job he wishes, Percy remains on Death Row because he aspires to be lead guard during an execution. Anxious to be rid of him, Paul grants him this opportunity. But it turns disastrous when Percy deliberately botches the electrocution of a hated inmate, turning it into a horrifying, agonizing ordeal (which Darabont stages with exquisite aplomb) both for him and the mortified onlookers in the film's most grueling, deliciously Grand Guignol sequence. (The SPFX as the ill-fated inmate's smoking body jerks, spasms, bursts into flames, and finally roasts alive are gruesomely convincing.)

While all this horror is going on, the Green Mile--named for its faded green linoleum--receives its strangest guest yet, a monstrously huge but mild-mannered black man named John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), convicted of murdering two little girls but seemingly unable to hurt a fly. Duncan, whose only previous film credit was in ARMAGEDDON, sought the services of an acting coach for the role and this paid off handsomely when he delivered a bravura performance as the doomed behemoth with the mind and heart of a child.

The film plunges full-bore into the supernatural when it's discovered that Coffey has miraculous healing powers which he uses to bring life back to the pet mouse of fellow condemned man "Del" Delacroix, an eccentric Cajun (Michael Jeter), after Percy cruelly stomps on it. (The mouse, "Mr. Jingles", will be a crucial element of the story in unexpected ways.)

After Coffey heals his painful bladder infection as well, Paul suddenly gets a wild, farfetched idea upon which he's willing to stake not just his job but his very freedom--that perhaps, somehow, John Coffey might be able to heal the dying wife of his boss and friend, Warden Hal Moores (James Cromwell). But if Coffey is capable of doing this, how in the world can Paul preside over the man's execution? Especially now that he's convinced Coffey is actually innocent?

It's a dilemma to haunt the viewer for some time to come, as impeccably rendered by Darabont with the skills of a master screen craftsman. Here again he tells the story unhurriedly and in a formal, old-school fashion that evokes the satisfaction one feels delving into a fine novel. Beautifully designed sets and another ideal prison location, this one with a distinct Gothic atmosphere, combine with gorgeous cinematography to create a film whose period ambience is intoxicatingly effective.

Hanks is at his best here, as is Morse, both portraying the kind of good and stalwart men you'd want in such positions. (Ditto for actors DeMunn and Pepper as their fellow guards.) Duncan gives the performance of his career and earned the Oscar nomination he received for it. James Cromwell and Patricia Clarkson, as Warden and Mrs. Moores, help make their strange encounter with John Coffey unforgettable, while always likeable Bonnie Hunt provides endearing moral support and domestic romantic interest as Paul's wife, Jan.

Gary Sinise (FORREST GUMP), Eve Brent, and SHAWSHANK alum William Sadler appear briefly as well, and in the film's wraparound segments, an older Paul Edgecomb is portrayed by none other than the great character actor Dabbs Greer in one of his juiciest and most high-profile roles ever.

As in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, Darabont and King present prison inmates who are more like members of a social club than hardened criminals in order for us to more easily accept and identify with them. The first one to walk the Green Mile is Graham Greene's Arlen Bitterbuck, who gets one wonderfully poignant scene in which he wistfully recounts his happiest moment in life to Paul. 

 

 Michael Jeter is profoundly effective as Del in his scenes with Mr. Jingles the mouse, which never fail to have me blubbering like a baby even more than the film's powerful finale. As Wild Bill, Sam Rockwell is both repellent and perversely hilarious. Harry Dean Stanton is also funny in a smaller role as a prison trustee.

THE GREEN MILE ultimately becomes not only a highly absorbing tale of life on Death Row from both sides of the bars, but also a fascinating and moving morality tale that mines some of our deepest and most profound emotions. Darabont achieves a perfect balance here between the story's darker, uglier aspects, which manage to hold us in morbid fascination even at their most repellent, and the joyously uplifting passages that radiate with the compassion, empathy, and love which human beings sometimes display in the unlikeliest of circumstances.


Read our review of THE FRANK DARABONT COLLECTION

 

DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. (aka ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST) -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 7/17/16

 

I really scored this week, getting to see two notorious exploitation titles from the 80s that I hadn't seen before.  Well, not quite, since they're both pretty much the same movie. 

Thanks to Severin Films, both are now available in a 2-disc Blu-ray set under the title DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. (1980), which includes that noteworthy "video nasty" along with its predecessor, ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST. 

The initial film, an Italian gorefest directed by Marino Girolami (father of Enzo G. Castellari of "Inglorious Bastards" fame) and featuring both loinclothed zombies and ravenous cannibals on a tropical island, was then purchased by ballyhoo master Terry Levene and somewhat "Americanized" for the 42nd Street crowd. 

In addition to some general editing for time and a different score, the main changes consist of the new name (from "Zombie Holocaust" to "Dr. Butcher, M.D.") and an entirely new prologue and main titles sequence with footage taken from an unfinished anthology film called "Tales That Will Tear Your Heart Out" and starring its producer Roy Frumkes as a zombie whose presence is totally unrelated to the original storyline.

What the two versions have in common is the story of a New York hospital plagued by a rash of weird cadaver mutilations that stymie Dr. Peter Chandler (Ian McCulloch) and Lori Ridgeway, a hospital staff member who's also an anthropologist (Alexandra Delli Colli, renamed "Alexandra Cole" for the altered version). 

After catching the culprit actually eating the heart of one of the cadavers and then jumping to his death to avoid capture, Peter and Lori organize an expedition to the man's native island in the West Indies where it is said that primitive tribes still engage in cannibalism.

With Peter's assistant George (Peter O'Neal) and an annoying photo-journalist named Susan (Sherry Buchanan) in tow, they meet up with Dr. Obrero (Donald O'Brien) in his island research retreat and head out for the dreaded Kito Island.  Soon after arriving, their party is attacked by bloodthirsty cannibals who dismember and devour anyone they can lay their hands on. 

Thus, after a prolonged stretch of exposition and build-up, the stage is set for an almost non-stop parade of some of the most grisly and disgusting gore effects that a low budget and ample imagination can provide.  They range from obviously fake-looking to near Tom Savini-quality gore, and even the less convincing stuff displays a sort of giddy showmanship. 

(The main FX fail, in fact, is when a dummy thrown from the hospital roof loses an arm upon hitting the ground, whereupon in the next shot the victim's arm is intact.)

Entrails are strewn, eyeballs plucked out, scalps lifted--and that's before the zombies show up.  It turns out the living dead are the result of Dr. Butcher's mad experiments in his island laboratory, which he soon stocks with the survivors of the expedition in order to include them as additional unwilling subjects in what resembles an even more horrific variation of "The Island of Dr. Moreau."

This guy's a real sadistic bastard, which means that we're in for some more grotesque makeup FX which must've delighted gorehounds over the years while giving anti-"video nasties" crusader Mary Whitehouse and her ilk heart seizures.  The exposed brain effect with its pop-top skull foreshadows a very similar, and much more expensive, one in Ridley Scott's HANNIBAL.

Marino Girolami's direction is serviceable as are the modest production values--the film has the same basic look as other Italian cannibal and zombie pictures of the era by directors such as Lucio Fulci and Ruggero Deodato, as well as later ones by Bruno Mattei (ZOMBIES: THE BEGINNING, IN THE LAND OF THE CANNIBALS, MONDO CANNIBAL).  The dubbing is often amusingly bad, yielding (as expected) some lines of dialogue that are real corkers. 

The acting isn't always top-notch either, but the cast give it their all.  Alexandra Delli Colli shows off her nude body a few times to stunning effect, especially in her big human-sacrifice scene during the film's climax.

The 2-disc Blu-ray from Severin Films is a treasure trove of extras.  The keepcase itself features a reversible cover insert and a barf bag.

Disc one contains the feature film DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. plus the following extras:

"Butchery and Ballyhoo": an interview with Terry Levene
"Down on the Deuce": Roy Frumkes and Chris ("Temple of Schlock") Poggiali's nostalgia tour of 42nd Street's grindhouse theaters
Roy Frumkes' unfinished segment from "Tales That Will Tear Your Heart Out"
"The Butcher Mobile": an interview with "Gore Gazette" publisher Rick Sullivan
"Calling Dr. Butcher": an interview with editor Jim Markovic
"Experiments With a Male Caucasian Brain": an illustrated essay by Gary Hertz
Theatrical and Video trailers

Disc two contains the feature film ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST and these extras:

"Voodoo Man": an interview with star Ian McCulloch
"Blood of the Zombies": an interview with FX master Rosario Prestopino
"Neurosurgery Italian Style": an interview with FX artist Maurizio Trani
Filmmaker Enzo G. Castellari Remembers His Father/Director Marino Girolami
Interview with Actress Sherry Buchanan
"New York Locations Then vs. Now"
Ian McCulloch sings his hit "Down By the River"
Theatrical trailers

The films are anamorphic widescreen with English 2.0 sound.  No subtitles.  "Zombie Holocaust" can also be viewed with its original Italian soundtrack.  Picture quality is a bit rough at times due to the source material but the films probably look as good here as they're ever going to look.

All in all, DR. BUTCHER M.D. is a gorehound's delight, with its slower first half giving way to a veritable charnel house of hokey horror later on.  Which might truly horrify if it were meant to be taken at all seriously, instead of being such total dumb fun that your main reaction to its ample atrocities may be simply to laugh yourself sick.

Buy it at Amazon.com:
Blu-ray
DVD

Release date: July 26, 2016

I GOT THE FEELIN: JAMES BROWN IN THE 60s -- DVD review by porfle

Originally posted on 8/7/08

 

While I've always liked James Brown, I was never what you'd call a big fan. Now, after viewing Shout! Factory's 3-disc set I GOT THE FEELIN': JAMES BROWN IN THE '60s, I have a much deeper appreciation for both his talent as a musician and the important role he played in the civil rights movement. The biggest surprise for me, in fact, was the discovery of an incident in Boston following Martin Luther King's assassination, which makes this DVD set not only an irresistible record of Brown's musical prowess at the time but also the compelling account of a fascinating moment in American history.

I wanted to save the Boston stuff for later and indulge in some pure entertainment right away, so the first disc I watched was "James Brown Live at the Apollo '68." Originally broadcast as a television special entitled "James Brown: Man to Man", the image and sound quality are pretty rough at times--the early color video is especially bad at first, although it improves as it goes along. It helps to think of this as a priceless recording that we're lucky to have, warts and all, rather than dwelling on its imperfections. For me, they were soon forgotten as I became engrossed in James Brown's electrifying performance before a fiercely appreciative audience in the legendary Harlem theater.

Sweat pouring from his face, Brown earns his nickname as "the hardest working man in show business" as he gives his all during each number, belting out one classic after another with his heart and soul. The songs include "I Got the Feelin'", "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World", "I Feel Good", "Please, Please, Please" and twelve more, usually with one segueing right into the next. The backup band is hot, and with each song Brown gets into a groove and works it for all it's worth with his customary showmanship, including those patented dance steps, mike stand acrobatics, and that delightfully dramatic robe routine as a finale. The direction is really terrible during the show and the psychedelic '60s camera effects are a major distraction, but that's the way stuff like this was usually televised back then and the whole thing serves as a time capsule of its era.

A brief documentary portion shows Brown walking the streets of Watts and Harlem, commenting on what should be done to improve conditions in such communities ("My fight now is for the Black America to become American.") With a running time of almost fifty minutes, the Apollo show is augmented by James Brown's 1964 performance of "Out of Sight" on THE T.A.M.I. SHOW, plus two more songs from a 1967 show at L'Olympia in Paris.

The next disc I watched was "James Brown Live at the Boston Garden", taped during his historic April 5, 1968 show only 24 hours after Martin Luther King's assassination. With cities burning across America and angry riots raging in the streets, Brown's scheduled appearance there was turned into a televised memorial concert and an opportunity to relieve tensions in a peaceful way. The mood is initially tense as Boston's sole black councilman Thomas Atkins and the city's mayor Kevin White introduce Brown while urging everyone to honor Dr. King's legacy of non-violence. Then James Brown takes the stage and performs full-throttle for over an hour.

The public television station WGBH in Boston was unaccustomed to covering such a concert, especially at such short notice, but they do a magnificent job here. The direction and camerawork are outstanding, with uncommonly rich black-and-white videography that looks almost cinematic at times, and dramatic lighting which is particularly effective in the backlit shots from behind the stage. A few awkward moments occur, and at one point the video is missing for a minute or so, but these are negligible in light of how well this impromptu telecast turned out. On the whole, this is an amazing document of what is perhaps the most important performance of James Brown's career.

What almost turned it into a disaster comes in the latter minutes of the concert. With people crowding forward and starting to climb onstage, Brown's security men brusquely shove them back one by one and are soon joined by Boston police in flinging people off the stage. Brown calls a halt to this with the assurance that he can handle his people, but in no time is surrounded by a swarm of rowdy fans who refuse to back off. Brown strongly expresses disappointment and exhorts them to show him some respect ("We're Black--don't make us all look bad!") and let him finish the show, which he is finally allowed to do. Everything ends well, although for a few moments there it's a tense situation that could've gone bad in a heartbeat. All in all, pretty fascinating stuff. As an extra, the audio of Brown's eight-minute speech to the crowd before the show is played against an old-fashioned Indian chief test pattern.

Having watched the concert itself, I was really ready for the third disc, director David Leaf's excellent 2008 documentary THE NIGHT JAMES BROWN SAVED BOSTON. The backstory of King's murder, the resulting nationwide chaos that came after it, and the tension-filled situation in Boston are presented in well-chosen archival footage along with narration by Dennis Haysbert ("24", THE COLOR OF FREEDOM) and interviews with Mayor White and Councilman Atkins, Brown's manager Charles Bobbit, Boston deejay James Byrd, Rev. Al Sharpton, Dr. Cornel West, various bandmembers and concert attendees, and several others. (Bonus footage of these interviews is included on the disc along with a panel discussion which followed the film's premiere.)

Atkins' idea of using the James Brown concert to quell impending violence had to be sold to a dubious mayor, but an even more dubious Brown, it turns out, was fit to be tied when he discovered that his concert was to be televised for free--several times, in fact--and people were already cashing in their tickets. The drama that occurred during the closing segment of the concert is recounted by witnesses including David Gates of Newsweek, who was there that night and attests to the air of anxiety that hung over the situation ("It could've gone up like a torch," he recalls.) But perhaps the most compelling part of this documentary is James Brown's subsequent role as one of the most influential leaders of the civil rights movement, a racial ambassador helping to bring people together, and a crucial proponent of Black pride in America.

The three discs are boxed in slimline cases with achingly cool retro design and a 23-page booklet by Rickey Vincent, with an introduction by David Leaf. As a whole, I GOT THE FEELIN': JAMES BROWN IN THE '60s is a treasure trove of invaluable concert footage and real-life historical drama that's ultimately both enlightening and inspiring. If you're a James Brown fan already, this is a must-see. If not, watch it and you just might get the feelin'.