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!

 

Hello!

The Cinesavant reviews at Trailers from Hell have an entire new look.

The new formatting of CineSavant reviews is proceeding nicely. We’ll see if the automatic formatting will fix most of the strange things happening to older reviews. I’m far too old to go in manually and fidget with 4,000 separate files. But Trailers From Hell’s website engineers have already accomplished their share of miracles, so we’ll wait and see.

The reviews now have a format choice that toggles from dark to light, via a command on the upper right of the screen. The black background looks great but mine will be the lighter choice. The darker format reminds me more of a blog, and I think of CineSavant as more of an ongoing source of articles, a full website. In the isolation of writing for the web, ya gotta double down on the delusions that feel the best.

I hope you can navigate okay … please write in with comments …

 

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So … upcoming discs!

We’re already getting antsy for some of the Halloween-themed discs promised this month, a thought that motivated this quick list of discs I call Mailbox Watchers. It’s neither comprehensive nor particularly well organized, just a stack of titles that come to mind when we ask, ‘what are we most waiting for here?’

We’re naturally most keen for the 2 Warner Archive Collection releases of Terence Fisher’s Horror of Dracula in 4K. In addition to the monster box, the WAC is offering  a more practical, more economical set. It’s a genuine event in the fan world of classic Hammer: every horror freak in the world wants to know exactly what is meant by ‘the original uncut pre-censorship’ version we’re supposedly getting in prime condition. We intend to review both sets, splitting that chore with Charlie Largent. Now all we need are discs to review, thankyouverymuch.

The stack that follows is more than a laundry list; I’ve skipped some high profile titles (a musical, etc.) that I can’t see myself watching again. Looking at the logs between here and late November, here’s what stuck out:

The Warner Archive Collection has some super surprises: David Lean’s  Ryan’s Daughter in 4K, hopefully remastered from 65mm. George Pal’s  Tom Thumb is a fantasy that I’ve somehow never managed to see straight through. Sidney Lumet’s all-star military prison picture  The Hill will hopefully have English subtitles, enabling me to undestand what’s going on when prisoners are screaming in various accents. We’re also happy with the WAC’s firm commitment to  Blu-ray 3-D, with both  Phantom of the Rue Morgue and  The Charge at Feather River.  Thanks, George!

We’re just now getting into Deaf Crocodile’s fine disc of Aleksandr Ptushko’s  Scarlet Sails, a Russian adventure movie said to be one of the director’s best.

While Radiance Films continues its flow of prime Japanese and European thrillers, we are primed for its immediate Halloween titles, Mario Bava’s  Planet of the Vampires 4K (perhaps a reissue), Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s chilling  Who Can Kill a Child 4K, and a much-anticipated horror box, enticingly titled  Fantastique: Dreams and Nightmares of French Cinema.

Criterion has our full attention with a deluxe 4K disc of Netflix’s presentation of Guillermo Del Toro’s  Frankenstein. The only other direct-horror
title we see is Sergei Parajanov’s weird Ukranian fable  Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors 4K. But we’re also primed to receive several other desirables. A new ‘Eclipse’ box offers Samuel Fuller’s early features for Lippert Films,  I Shot Jesse James, The Baron of Arizona, and The Steel Helmet. A bit later we get François Truffaut’s  Shoot the Piano Player 4K, and Philip Kaufman’s  The Right Stuff 4K. I will have to invite Todd S. over for that one.

KL Studio Classics has a potential deal-maker coming in November, a monster box of Four Sergio Leone Masterworks westerns, all in 4K:  A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, and as a surprise  Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s a guaranteed all-nighter.

And there’s one more title that popped up that feels fun to mention. Paramount is once again giving us Frank Capra’s Christmas picture  It’s a Wonderful Life in an 80th Anniversary deluxe 4K gift set. There must be a million more movie newbies out there needing an introduction to the tale of Harry Bailey. Not to get on the Xmas bandwagon too hastily, but I think it’s a good film to introduce kids to what we used to be proud of as core American values … you know, honesty, integrity, a sense of neighborly fair play.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

So why do I have the gut feeling that AI sees something like this as the final solution for the world’s ills?

 

Hello!

Good old CineSavant host Trailers from Hell, where our reviews reside, has launched an improved page, with a different look and (I am assured) a wealth of functional improvements. It is said to run more smoothly and suffer fewer glitches.

Today’s CineSavant reviews are the latest I’ve uploaded with a new publishing process … we’ll see if I’m successful. There are a few bugs which will likely be fixed or addressed in the next couple of days. I like the way the reviews display, but the font size undergoes a change after the first paragraph and I think it ought to be uniform. More importantly, the ‘top photo’ on each of my reviews is missing … and I’ll be looking to see that fixed. There are 4,000 of them so hopefully they’ll pop up automatically. Otherwise, the planning seems very smart and considerate … I think it will be smooth sailing very shortly.

That’s important because we have a LOT of reviews to write!

 

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And now for something different, a little think-piece contemplating Influences that are hard to pin down.

Years ago we were intrigued to learn that Jefferson Airplane’s old song  Crown of Creation had lyrics (and its title) lifted directly from  The Chrysalids, a 1955 novel by that grand old man of British Science Fiction, John Wyndham.

A few nights back we decided to re-read Wyndham’s popular novel  The Midwich Cuckoos, the imaginative, scary shocker that became  Village of the Damned, the classic Sci-fi thriller about the weird children with ‘the eyes that hypnotize.’ We last read the book around 1972 …

… and it read well, even if some aspects did seem a bit dated. But one paragraph jumped out at us. Other sources suspect that it provided inspiration for a later artist, in this case writer-director Terrence Malick. This time around it’s not quite a full quote. The paragraph is a statement about woman’s place in the cosmos … and may be a bit dated itself. It reads as follows:

‘Man’s arrogance is boastful,’ he observed, ‘woman’s is something in the fibre. We do occasionally contemplate the once lordly dinosaurs, and wonder when, and how, our little day will reach its end. But not she. Her eternity is an article of her faith. Great wars and disasters can ebb and flow, races rise and fall, empires wither with suffering and death, but these are superficialities: she, woman, is perpetual, essential; she will go on for ever. She doesn’t believe in the dinosaurs: she doesn’t really believe the world ever existed until she was upon it. Men may build and destroy and play with all their toys; they are uncomfortable nuisances, ephemeral conveniences, mere scamperers-about, while woman, in mystical umbilical connexion with the great tree of life itself, knows that she is indispensable. One wonders whether the female dinosaur in her day was blessed with the same comfortable certainty.’

Like we did, you might also make a connection with Malick’s monumental ethereal-cereal epic  The Tree of Life … its title also quotes a line from a John Wyndham book. The subject of the paragraph is women as the source of life, which is a major concern in Malick’s film. And then there’s the out-of-left-field concern with a dinosaur, which in Malick’s film becomes a bizarre sequence. Is Malick’s dinosaur supposed to be female?  The movie observes what might be a moment of very non-reptilian mercy … not Wyndham’s allusion to a dinosaur with motherly instincts.

You be the judge … it’s not exactly the most meaningful mystery to contemplate, but we’ll take what we can get.

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Back from a break … to find a new formatting upgrade at Trailers from Hell. See the CineSavant Column, just below.