Orson Welles directs a clutch of terrific actors in this rough-hewn Euro production … with 4 different release versions.

 

Hello!

Yes, we’re late but we’ve got good reviews. An updated graphics program slowed me down (and I’m still not working it right). We may have some Halloween fun after all, even with a couple of key releases being delayed. I even found a fantasy thriller set that Charlie Largent wants to review.

First up is a big surprise from the Criterion people, on my return from back East … I never dreamed they’d send along their lavish  The Complete Kubrick  box …. it is indeed mind-blowing.

It’s the man’s entire filmography in 4K (and Blu) in a massive red brick box. A finely crafted disc-holder album is stocked with interesting items. I’ll be giving it a full review shortly.

 

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And I was in a different place … and I brought home photo proof ….

In Washington D.C., my son took me to a site he figured was a must-see for old ‘DVD Savant’… and snuck it up on me. The funny thing was that I wouldn’t have recognized the location with out being tipped off, even though this one is a thousand times more famous than the Paris morgue seen in Eyes Without a Face.

Yep, I can now say that I’ve personally visited the locale for the Devil’s losing battle against Father Damien … those steps are pretty steep. I’ve mellowed a bit in my grudge against Friedkin’s movie, but I still like what I wrote about it way back in 2010, when advisor Gary Teetzel challenged me to stop griping and air my complaints. It was a good exercise — you know, reviewers are supposed to be able to defend their incoherent ravings considered opinions.

My takeaway — those steps are steep and hard, and on that morning, COLD. They might only ding the Devil up a bit, but I’d be a goner for sure.

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

It had everything the Production Code forbade — but squeaked through under cover of the Hemingway literary source.

Hello!

Here’s something nice that dropped into my in-box today, an interesting come-on for a German magazine, available in English, that digs into Euro-crime pictures in a very serious way, with full-on academic research.

American-International’s 1970 shocker  Scream and Scream Again was released with the title Die lebenden Leichen des Dr. Mabuse: ‘The Living Corpses of Dr. Mabuse.’

An article in a new issue claims that the Dr. Mabuse connection is actually appropriate — scriptwriter Laslo Fodor of the CCC Dr. Mabuse series penned an unproduced screenplay in 1966, intended for Robert Siodmak. Das Horrorkabinett des Dr. Mabuse is the missing link that explains everything.

The magazine is Krimi!  The Magazine for European Crime Cinema Culture, published by Boris Brosowski, who wrote to say,

“Based on that, we were able to establish the link between Bryan Edgar Wallace (who participated in the Dr. Mabuse series) and Stephen D. Frances, the author of the book The Disorientated Man. In short, putting the Dr. Mabuse title on Scream and Scream Again was no mere marketing stunt, but indeed a necessity, as the movie was, in fact, a Dr. Mabuse movie. Even more so, the main story was lined out by Fritz Lang himself, reaching back to the Replicants of Metropolis.”

That claim would certainly explain a lot. It’s sufficiently intriguing to offer a link to Mr. Brosowski’s sales page for his magazine:

 

Krimi!
The Magazine for European Crime Cinema Culture 

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The real-life Paris movie location that we billboarded on October 10 prompted some positive responses, so naturally we’re trying it again, this time with a movie that isn’t horror.

Readers that know the city better may not be impressed, but we were. Walking in the Marais after dinner, down an ordinary boulevard, suddenly on our left was a building that we knew very well. And there was no mystery about it … there and ready to open for business soon was the Cirque D’Hiver, a large round edifice with a distinctive look.

The building is grand in every respect … enlarging the photos reveals more beauty.

We know it from umpteen screenings of Trapeze, United Artists’ big-budget 1956 circus movie by Carol Reed, starring Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis & Gina Lolobrigida. It’s in CinemaScope and color and is quite good. I had no idea that it used an actual circus building. I supoose that after touring Europe, the circus returned to Paris and played the winter months in more comfort, at the home headquarters.

This is clearly no big news to the multitudes … but yes, I guess we’re easily impressed when things so familiar are suddenly, unexpectedly, right in front of our eyes.

 

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Is botany your thing?  Let Adela take you to lunch.

 

Hello!

We only infrequently get to review Warner Archive discs before street date, but their distributors Allied Vaughn are good at early announcements of upcoming product. Thus we are properly stoked for the upcoming titles  The Hill,  Phantom of the Rue Morgue in 3-D, and  Ryan’s Daughter,  The Man Who Would be King and  The Music Man all in 4K.

George Feltenstein wasn’t kidding when he said this year would have an impressive rollout of library classics.

So we’re not surprised to hear of two more desirable announcements: Doctor Zhivago in 4K, and a Blu-ray set called Tex Avery Screwball Classics Collection. The David Lean epic is a natural title. The Tex Avery box might confuse buyers that picked up the WAC’s previous Tex Avery releases, three Blu-rays of remastered cartoons starting with Volume 1 in 2018.

This first announcement doesn’t have details, but being that the upcoming Tex Avery Collection is listed as 4 discs, I’m thinking that it may have additional cartoons and other extras, making it a Blu-ray box equivalent of the old ‘The Compleat Tex Avery’ laserdisc set from the middle 1990s. I’ve proudly kept my copy for its glorious cover artwork, even though I no longer have a working laserdisc player. Thirty-plus years is enough time for the experts to locate and remaster even more rare items.

Let’s hope that the going-forward mega-studio ‘Skydance’ will keep The Warner Archive Collection active, along with hard media disc releases of great movies and TV shows.

 

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And here’s a more selfish item … I’m supposed to be reporting anything that may not be working in the CineSavant reviews hosted at the newly-refurbished Trailers From Hell page. I like the new look, and the website engineers have done a great job bringing my review details, even without being asked.

But I am asking for a little help, if readers see something questionable. I initially came across some old reviews that got mixed up a bit in the translation, but of course I didn’t write down their URLs.

I’m grateful for the page’s correspondents, many that have written in for years. It’s helpful when they point out my errors, especially when my brain fails and I write in the wrong name, or say that a movie was released in the year 2945. I have tried to prioritize proofreading lately, honest.

If you come across some old review that has a big reformatting problem, please let me know. Don’t bother to report reviews from the old DVD Savant Page — pre- September 2015. I’m discovering that Trailers from Hell’s website engineers can solve all kinds of formatting problems with generalized updates.

Thanks!

He searches for Antonioni, but all he hears is, “Morgan, come out!”

 

Hello!

Whoa, it appears that this year’s Halloween thrills have been put on hold … Hammer and the Warner Archive have delayed the street date of both releases of Terence Fisher’s Horror of Dracula by a full month, due to a flaw caught in the production line QC.

Our first thought is to roll our eyes at the weirdness of fandom — with all the horrible things going on in the world, is this something to suffer over?  We instead choose to suggest that Hammer’s tale of the bloodthirsty count might qualify as an ideal Thanksgiving movie.  All that’s needed is some kind of rational connection, which at the moment escapes me.

I’m frankly impressed that these complicated disc sets go out with so few errors. I’m halfway through watching 20 years of  Law and Order episodes, delivered in 20 keep cases with at least 5 discs each, and so far nothing is missing and everything plays. As for the Hammer Dracula discs, I wouldn’t want to think of the mess that would result if a major recall were to take place. So I’m glad they caught the flaw before discs shipped. I’ll just have to settle for Christopher Lee with Cranberry Sauce instead of Candy Corn.

 

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A Paris Discovery 

Hunting down a haunted film location.

If you’re lucky enough to go to Paris, what kind of movie-related special discovery would you want to make?  The city is so concentrated, anybody who likes movies can’t help but recognize places one has seen. This means a lot to some people and less to others. Here in Hollywood, my tour of film-related sights is a hit with some visitors. Besides, almost nothing here seems to last more than 30 years. I often complain that most every place I worked in my ‘career’ has been redeveloped into something less interesting.

Not so in Paris. Yes, they pulled down the Bastille, but a giant monument marks the spot. On an early morning apart from the organized tour, we set out walking to try and hit two movie-related locations. The first was easy to find: the Promenade Plantée of the Coulée verte René-Dumont. It is a long, elevated park created by converting an old elevated railway line. These Parisians, you see, they don’t rip a thing down before seeing what might be made of it as it is. The long park corridor was given extra popularity by its inclusion in Richard Linklater’s  Before Sunset. It’s nice, it’s romantic. It puts you above the noise of the traffic. We got to play Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for a few minutes.

We bopped off the Coule about halfway through and made a sharp right turn for the river Seine. The object was to see what remained of an iconic setting from a 68-year old horror movie, iconic to me anyway. The image above, the down angle of the car, has been lodged in my brain ever since seeing a midnight show (in crummy 16mm and English dub) of Georges Franju’s  Les yeux sans visage aka Eyes without a Face. That circular brickyard driveway was the focus of critic Raymond Durgnat’s statement that Franju’s B&W movie operated on contrasts of texture: clammy rough bricks, the skeletal black trees reflected in the shiny Citroën car, rough bandages, smooth skin. The driveway belongs to what in the film was a morgue.

 

 

Was it really ever a morgue?  We didn’t know. The building appeared to still exist. It was listed as ‘Institut Medico Legal,’ which we thought might be an archive for medical records.

When we got to the river we found what we were looking for squeezed into a tight space partly under an iron railway bridge over which trains pass every minute or two. The trestle for the bridge goes right over the building’s parking lot. The trains are only a few feet above us. There is only ten feet of clearance under the trestle, for vehicles to enter.

 

 

There was no barrier to access, but we stopped short when we saw a large coffin carried from the building. We then realized that the ‘Institut’ was indeed a morgue, and that it must have been one since long before 1959. Paris hearses aren’t stretch limos, just black vans. We hung around the perimeter trying to look invisible. When it looked like I wasn’t going to be disturbing either the bereaved or the chauffeurs waiting on the sides, I took my pictures. the only angle I couldn’t get was the down view of the car … I’d have to climb on top of the building to get that.

 

 

The building looks different only in that they added a partial overhang, presumably so people waiting in the rain wouldn’t be soaked. The movie scene was filmed in a foggy twilight but we were there on a bright September morning. The driveway yard has been somewhat reconfigured, with asphalt instead of bricks, but it’s still in a circular pattern. A downward driveway seen in the movie no longer exists. Did that at one time connect with a dock, to service funeral processions on the river?

 

 

My wider-angled lens makes the area look larger than it is. It was a little larger in 1959. A road has been widened, reducing the size of the lot.

 

 

 

The trains that rattle by every two minutes or so do lend the feeling that the morgue is some kind of departure point, to cross the Seine Styx and reach ‘that distant shore.’ The poetic effect works in broad daylight, in 2026.

 

 

 

A plaque on the wall today has the same message as the one in the movie: ‘Départ de Convois.’  Did Charon have the same sign next to his boat, written in Greek?

 

 

Some morgue interiors appear to be real. Through these windows we see a corridor where the bereaved might wait …

 

 

… and it matches the view from the other side.

 

 

Around the building from the ‘Départ de Convois’ hearse dock is a different parking lot, leading to this reception room for the next of kin.

 

 

Good old Dr. Gennessier wishes us to ‘Have a nice day.’  We spent part of our Paris time with a tour group. Had they known us better they might not have been so surprised by my enthusiasm to find the real-life morgue seen in the classic movie.

 

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Kidnapped, and a prisoner on a Nazi submarine headed for Argentina!