Hello!

It’s a brief notice today … I pride myself for going over my review of  The Silent Star and removing whole paragraphs that read too much like showing off, or that push opinions I can’t back up with real facts … not that the review isn’t still a bit overloaded. When discs are released that CineSavant really really really wants to see, this is what happens.

The only column item today is a winner picked out by our Michael McQuarrie: an archive audio recording from 1966 that’s a recital of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart.

The gimmick in this case is the voice talent reader of the short story, none other than cinema horrormeister William Castle, he of the showmanship gimmicks, and personal appearances with his everpresent cigar. Castle’s reading is …. enthusiastic?   emphatic?   Just too much?  He’s giving it all, so no complaints here. You know what they always never say about old Bill Castle: “Gee, if he had directed Rosemary’s Baby himself, it might have been much better!

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Thanks to a little help from friends, shall we say, CineSavant will soon have some fun review writing to do. A disc of the UK Region B  Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA arrived, and will clearly grab our attention for several hours; the Eureka! disc is loaded with extras.

I’ll be concentrating on the set’s main attraction, Kurt Maetzig’s 1959 interplanetary epic  Der schweigende Stern, aka  The Silent Star, aka  Milcząca gwiazda, aka  Raumschiff Venus antwortet nicht, and finally dubbed and chopped up as  First Spaceship on Venus, which is how I saw it on a 1962 double bill, with an equally mutilated Japanese Kaiju, Varan the Indigestible.

And thanks to contributor Gary Teetzel we have a review loaner for an import from the other side of the world, the [Imprint] box  Tales of Adventure Collection 5, which happens to be a Sci-fi compendium with three (or four?) productions making their Blu-ray debut in Region A.

The biggest title is actually from Universal-International, and has already been released here in a near-definitve Blu, Joseph M. Newman’s  This Island Earth. It’s accompanied by three Columbia efforts,  The 27th Day,  The Gamma People and  The Night the World Exploded, plus an oddball English show with a noted Camp reputation,  Devil Girl from Mars.

It’ll be a concentration of ’50s Sci-fi damsels in distress — Faith Domergue, Eva Bartok, Kathryn Grant, Valerie French and the immortal Patricia Laffan:

Second up, the reliable Michael McQuarrie has found a winner at the seemingly inexhaustible archive.org, an entire fantasy film magazine from 26 years ago.

It’s Cult Movies issue 28 from 1999, published by Michael Copner. I was pleasantly surprised by the contents of this decently-assembled item. It has the usual film reviews and announcements, and some just-okay articles, but also a lot of worthy items written by people I came to know much later, like Cenk Kiral, who helped out a bit on our long-ago Sergio Leone DVD extras.

The full lineup has Mr. Kiral’s excellent interview with Mickey Knox, plus Tom Weaver interviewing Booth Colman, and David Del Valle’s interview piece with Joyce Jameson. Forrest J. Ackerman contributes a rambling column, while more genuine research-oriented pieces are offered by Scott MacGillivray & Ted Okada (Realart Pictures), and Frank J. Dello Stritto & Gary Don Rhodes (Bela Lugosi).

There’s even an interview piece between the publisher and Jan Alan Henderson, a Superman and Lugosi expert I met long ago through a mutual friend, editor Steve Nielson. I remember Jan dropping by once in the middle of the night in 1978, to either buy or sell an extra 16mm reel of Val Lewton trailers…

All in all, I was impressed … I’ve seen a lot of magazines of this kind, and this one had pieces I really wanted to read.

Finally, we’re pleasantly surprised at a recent announcement from Kino Lorber. It’s definitely welcome news: Mario Bava’s incomparable comic book masterpiece  Danger: Diabolik will arrive on July 22 in 4K Ultra HD.

Several years back, beautiful Blu-rays came out from both [Imprint] and Shout! Factory that solved the film’s many odd audio issues. This is said to be a brand new master from a 4K scan, so we hope they replicate the previous good work — older discs had used revisionist re-dub voice tracks, and buried Ennio Morricone’s wonderful music at too low a level.

And an equally interesting announcement is that Kino will concurrently release a triple-bill Blu-ray of the Manetti Brothers’ recent Diabolik remakes, now called  The Diabolik Trilogy.   the three features are  Diabolik (2020),  Diabolik: Ginko Attacks! (2022) and  Diabolik: Who Are You? (2023). Initial reviews were mixed; we’ll finally get to see for ourselves how they shape up. I’m assuming they’ll fare better than the 1960s trilogy of  Fantomas movies, that turned out to be a big disappointment.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

It’s a wish list of Upcoming Discs …

… that begins with a few titles already in hand that we’d like to cover: Kino is in with  Diary of a Chambermaid with Jeanne Moreau, the body-snatcher opus  Burke and Hare, Paul Robeson in  Borderline, and a 4K of John Frankenheimer’s notorious  Prophecy, aka  ‘Cocaine Bear’ without the laughs.

With Criterion, we’ve got a 4K of Billy Wilder’s  Some Like it Hot that’s desirable just for the new extras, Jacques Demy’s  The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in 4K, plus a 4K of Charles Burnett’s fine show  Killer of Sheep.

In hand also from Deaf Crocodile is a challenging box called  Treasures of Soviet Animation Volume 1, with The Mystery of the Third Planet and The Pass.

I’ve taken a peek at the new Radiance disc of Pietro Germi’s  The Railroad Man, which looks extremely good for video. I’m also liking it much more than I did the first time through, 20 years ago.

And also on the review launching pad are The Warner Archive’s Blu-rays of the MGM musical  Lili with Leslie Caron and the earworm theme song, the entire Clint Walker TV series  Cheyenne, and the Anthony Mann New York noir  Side Street, with Farley Granger as a postman.

Now, some things we’re waiting for …

Diabolic DVD says that they’ve just shipped the Eureka UK disc of  Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA, the Region B collection that contains a new remaster of The Silent Star aka ‘First Spaceship on Venus.’

June for KL Studio Classics has some very promising titles:

Billy Wilder’s  Sabrina will be out in 4K. We’re also very curious to see Edward L. Cahn’s much-praised 1932 Western  Law and Order with Walter Huston, written by John Huston. And Randall William Cook under monster makeup will be back in a remastered  I, Madman.

And [Imprint] for July has some Blu-ray rarities, we aren’t usually able to review:

Paul Newman in  Hud, With Patricia Neal and Yvette Vickers, and Robert Mitchum in William Wellman’s weirdly designed  Track of the Cat.  Is this movie held by Batjac now?  If so, I hope that more Batjac movies find their way to upgraded disc.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

I won’t name-drop, but some live-wire genre creatives love to trade links to odd bits of fantastic film found online; we happily disseminate them further, with comments, and gratitude.

The 1920s and ’30 were great years for expressionistic short subjects based on horror stories. We learned, for instance, that several  Mexican horror pioneers were rich kids that had studied in Europe, and came back with big ideas about film art.

It happens all the time — in high school, I must have seen three student films where some guy posed his girlfriend on a sea cliff wearing a fancy dress. Add one audio recital of a poem about ‘the lost Lenore,’ and voila — an instant 8mm student masterpiece.

These Italian silent short subjects based on Edgar Allan Poe stories are a little more accomplished. One is frequently cited by gorehound horror fans, as being way ahead of its time.

The links are to Magnaghi Hoepli’s 1936 ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,’ aka

and Mario Monicelli’s 1934 ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ aka

Mario Monicelli became a famed film writer and director ( The Organizer,  Big Deal on Madonna Street).

But who needs Italian art, when Perversion awaits?

Last week Michael McQuarrie sent us a good link about the oddball pop seer The Amazing Criswell … who we winked at as essentially harmless.

This 1965 public service film is hosted by the popular Los Angeles newsman George Putnam, who harangues the audience with a similar style of stentorian address. Screaming about moral decay and Communist conspiracy, Putnam condemns smut publications catering to the raincoat crowd, that go against our decent Judeo-Christian values!

The film is Perversion for Profit, produced by  ‘Citizens for Decent Literature Inc.,’ which would eventually ‘expand its obscenity focus to include rock music and devil worship.’

The disturbing / hilarious upshot is that Perversion for Profit achieves the opposite of its aim — it promotes the sleaze. The visuals are an encyclopedic advertisement for adult magazines that Putnam claims will turn us all into homosexuals, lesbians and sex killers. I saw this at age 13, and was instantly super-curious to know more about the ‘perversions’ named by Putnam … time to consult a dictionary!

It takes five minutes for Putnam to state his case. He repeats it, practically frothing at the mouth, for half an hour. I wonder — did ‘Citizens for Decent Literature Inc.’ ever collect money when they screened Perversion for Profit?.

Wikipedia says that the picture was financed by Charles Humphrey Keating, a banker, financier and conservative activist. He was the man behind the legal campaign to suppress Russ Meyer’s  Vixen!  Keating dropped out of the anti-smut crusade in the late 1980s, when he became a convicted felon in a savings and loan scandal.

I watched Putnam for years at KTLA, until he was replaced by Hal Fishman. We just thought he was self-importantly loud and funny. Putnam is said to have been a model for Ted Knight’s ‘Ted Baxter’ newsman character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Perversion awaits at this Archive.org link:

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

First up is the business of a Book Review.

Last week I noted that a couple of hot books had arrived to review; we wasted no time before crawling through Tom Weaver’s  From Page to Silver Scream, from Bear Manor Media.

For several years Tom has been editing a series of ‘Script from the Crypt’ books; I’ve reviewed some of them here. This new item is his work alone, and he’s hoping it will catch on and yield future volumes. The prospect of that seems entirely possible.

The format focuses on books that became noted fantastic movies, mostly horror pictures. The majority are fan favorites — but in all but a few cases the source books are not commonly read today. In his autobiographical confession up front Tom admits that he wasn’t always a reader, but that catching up with some of this arcane literature was a rewarding step that he’d like to encourage in other fans.

His choice of films is eclectic — horror milestones like  The Old Dark House as well as the minor Sci-fi item  The Navy vs. The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, which is of worth because its source author is the noted Murray Leinster.

After reading Tom’s introductory chapter I did what anyone would — I zeroed in on his coverage devoted to a favorite,  The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. His 25 pages on that book and movie start with a breakdown of every book chapter. Then we get a comparison / contrast with the finished film, some notes about the production and other observations. Each chapter reproduces a paperback cover or two (my crumbling 1964 copy is represented), and adds an unusual still or two, in this case, some BTS shots of the Triffid creatures. The extra kick in the Triffids chapter are two drafts of what read like early treatments for the movie, each of which presents ideas left undeveloped in the finished film.

The well-read Gary Teetzel may know all of the books that Weaver covers, but most are new to me. I forgot that  The Maze was sourced from a book; Tom includes Salvador Dali illustrations from an early print edition. A piece on  Donovan’s Brain has production back stories, establishing that actor Lew Ayres tried his best to slink out of the movie, just before the cameras rolled.

Tom goes in for some ‘quality’ titles, diving into Anya Seton’s  Dragonwyck. He uses his book breakdown to make a case for the movie as Vincent Price’s first go at the kind of characterization he perfected for Roger Corman’s later Poe series.

There’s a lot to learn here, even, as I said, with books I’ve already read. The authors covered include Richard Matheson, Sax Rohmer, Arthur Conan Doyle, Curt Siodmak, Edgar Wallace, J.B. Priestley, Fritz Leiber, Marie Belloc Lowndes and Raymond F. Jones. With Tom’s extra goodies, it’s an entertaining read that allows one to pop about from one interesting title to the next. I never liked the movie  The 27th Day but the coverage of it here allows me to learn more about John Mantley’s source book, at arms’s length.

The book makes an impressive quiz for know-it-all genre fans: what Boris Karloff mad doctor movie is based on a book called The Edge of Running Water?  That eliminates this Savant from the know-it-all bench.

Today we take a break from Matt Rovner’s ongoing CineSavant articles on the radio and film writer-director Arch Oboler, to see some reportage on Matt’s continuing research on the man.

The link is to Matt’s Library of Congress blog article on some of the things he has been uncovering from the LoC’s massive holdings on Oboler. Among the items Matt has examined are Oboler’s home movies, and a wealth of film footage he shot in Africa. Also described are film elements from This Precious Freedom, a film he shot for General Motors in 1940, that was never released. In it Claude Rains returns from a vacation to find that America has been taken over by a Fascist conspiracy. The show was eventually adapted into the very odd 1945 feature Strange Holiday.

The article also covers a TV pilot that wasn’t picked up, and home movies of the house that Frank Lloyd Wright built for Oboler in Malibu, the one featured in Oboler’s Science fiction feature  Five.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson