Savant’s new reviews today are:

Hello!

A response from correspondent John Hall about the S.O.S. Tidal Wave review — it seems that that Republic re-used that Deluge disaster footage more times than I thought — !

      “I read your review on S.O.S. Tidal Wave and really enjoyed your take on it. I just wanted to let you know of another non-serial use of the Deluge footage.

     It’s used in the 1944 Ruth Terry vehicle, Jamboree about a country-western group moving to a farm to learn more about how the country folk live. About fifty minutes into the movie, a storm breaks out and Rufe Davis has a dream/nightmare of inventing a weather machine. He’s showing the machine (in a sequence with no dialog) to a group of investors when it explodes and starts the tidal wave. There’s a well-done montage of the Deluge footage with Davis running on a treadmill in front of the rear screen projection. He wakes up, panics and jumps out the window into a rain barrel … and that’s it. It’s not followed up at all and just seemed to be randomly inserted into the film. Like somebody in the front office said, Remember that flood footage? We haven’t used it since Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc.. Stick that in the movie. Weird!

     A year or so, this was one of the Republic films that was available on the Paramount Vault YouTube channel when full-length Paramount and Republic films were briefly available. It was a gorgeous looking print. Just thought you’d be interested in this.    John Hall” (October 31, 2017)

Here’s a positive plug for the Noir City E-Mag, which just brought out its issue #22 . . . I just read an excellent educational feature by Alan K. Rode about noir scribe Frank Fenton. The magazine is a good deal, and all the proceeds go to the restoration efforts of the Film Noir Foundation. Thanks to Daryl Sparks, Foundation’s promotional director.

Some good disc news — Powerhouse Indicator has more Harryhausen coming up soon, and they’ve just announced that they have some Universal titles coming for January: Mike Nichols’ The Fortune and Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar look to be all region, but the desirable The Border (Tony Richardson) and Don Siegel’s excellent Charley Varrick are indicated as Region B locked.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Halloween!

Savant’s new reviews today are:

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We start out this Halloween coverage with seven minutes of genuine historical horror. Joe Dante asks, is this the scariest movie of 1939? Check out the link: the answer is yes, because we’re living in the far-too-similar year of 2017!

Meanwhile, Dick Dinman’s latest web podcast show has arrived, Dick Dinman and George Feltenstein Salute the Restored and Uncut The Sea Wolf.” Warner Home Video executive Feltenstein regales producer/host Dick Dinman with the arduous challenges inherent in bringing the Michael Curtiz classic The Sea Wolf to its full uncut glory for the first time in more than sixty years. Also covered are the Warner Archive Collection’s new discs of the lyrically romantic Gene Kelly/Cyd Charisse/Vincente Minnelli classic Brigadoon as well as the Robert Taylor / Richard Widmark western The Law and Jake Wade, and Hell on Frisco Bay with Alan Ladd and Edward G. Robinson. They also take time out to talk about Criterion’s new disc of The Philadelphia Story.

I was about to review a foreign, Region B Blu-ray of Joseph Sargent’s Colossus: The Forbin Project, but Gary Teetzel tipped me off that Shout! Factory has announced a Region A release for February. The news also includes a Blu-ray for William Castle’s The Night Walker and Curtis Harrington’s Games — two more desired titles.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Savant’s creepy and spooky, mysterious and ooky features today are:

Hello! — and Happy Halloween. Welcome to the CineSavant Cauldron of Horror!

It’s a bit busy around here. I’ll be avoiding the Larchmont Halloween fair on Sunday, which is a mob scene just a block away. Today I may be doing some driving and hauling to help set up an altar at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery’s Day of the Dead celebration. That’s going to snarl up traffic both days — !

Yesterday I was more or less captive in my house for several hours while NCIS: L.A. filmed a car-motorcycle chase and gun shootout a couple of doors down the street, and racing up and down the block — you know, some neighbors get hefty fees for the rental of their front yards, and I just get told to stay off the street and out of sight. The people on the motorcycle wore furry animal masks, and the production company put Christmas decorations on various lawns, so I’m guessing that if I tune in this December I’ll have a good chance of seeing my house buzz by — for probably a half-second. Hollywood, it’s so glamorous. A cheerful A.D. let me stand in my own driveway to grab this blurry shot. The camera tricycle is on the left, filming backwards at the presumed stunt folk on the bike. They did this about thirty times, each time with a volley of five gunshots. Later in the day came a car crash, a little bit down the block.

Joe Dante has circulated a neat link to a The Public Domain Review, the newest (Volume 7, #20) issue of which has a nifty Halloween Special Section with ten neat articles about the holiday, highly recommended. One P.D. Review link is to an original color Georges Méliès movie, The Infernal Cauldron (1903)

Let me call out a new installment of The Friends of Marty Melville, a resuscitated Trailers from Hell feature that inspired today’s Halloween Horror Triple Bill features. We love those vintage newspaper movie pages, that promised all manner of strange fare, especially at drive-in theaters. The four-movie bill for the ‘Bel Air’ seen on the right was a typical item. This one may have been a package offered by United Artists, or perhaps a local distributor grouped them, or maybe the owner of the Bel-Air himself picked the titles out of a budget line-up. Diary of a Madman, the only show in color, is fairly new for 1963, but the other three are a couple of years old — ‘The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus’ is of course the dubbed and slightly cut Eyes Without a Face. The only title of the four not yet on Blu-ray is ‘The Vampire and the Ballerina,’ which is a dubbed cut of Renato Polselli’s L’amante del vampiro from three years before. I think MGM has elements for the original Italian item too, which is a real oddity. If some disc boutique snaps this one up, I hope they give us both versions.

And finally, correspondent Edward Sullivan directs us to the Film Board of Canada, which has a special selection of NFB Halloween Spook Shows all ready to go. They look good.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Savant’s new reviews today are: