Hello!

David J. Schow sent along this link to a CBS Sunday Morning interview with  Werner Herzog — an uncut extended conversation with TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz. Herzog’s not in fun-curmudgeon mode this time. He loves America, and even Los Angeles!

Herzog starts out explaining that he’s never owned a cell phone. The talk segues to the subject of AI and takes off from there. It’s apparently part of an effort to promote a book named after a familiar Herzog tagline, Every Man for Himself and God Against All.

The 90-minute talk is not all gold, but there’s a gem of a thought every couple of minutes. We get to hear the story of how Werner stole expropriated his first movie camera. About half an hour in he discusses the legacy of Naziism in Germany… not soon afterward he talks about meeting Klaus Kinski!

We still haven’t seen all the films in the giant Blu-ray box  Herzog: The Collection.

 

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Ah yes — upcoming CineSavant reviews. The choice is daunting. I’ve put together a quick list of what’s in the review hopper, as they show up on my chronological chart. In hand are tempting discs of . . .

 

 Tattooed Life (Radiance, September 9),

 The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell (Kino, November 5),

 The Visitors (Kino, November 19),

 Mountains of the Moon (Kino, November 26 Curious about this one),

 Paris Texas (Criterion, December 3),

 Blood and Lace (Kino Cult, December 10),

 Hatari 4K (Kino, December 10),

 Mr. Lucky (Warner Archive, December 17),

 The Killer Is Loose (Kino, December 17),

 The Spanish Main (Warner Archive, December 31),

 Yojimbo + Sanjuro 4K (Criterion, January 7),

 The Grifters 4K (Criterion, January 21),

 Underworld Beauty (Radiance, January 25),

 Winchester ’73 4K (Criterion, January 28).

 

I’m thinking of buying-to-review the much-praised  Godzilla Minus One, but I’m not at all sure that I have anything interesting to say about it. Expected in the review hopper soon but not yet here are discs of . . .

 

 Monk’s Last Case (Kino),

 The Lion in Winter (Lionsgate Vintage Classic),

 Miracle Mile (Kino),

 Invasion of the Bee Girls (Kino Cult),

 The Wages of Fear (Criterion),

 Godzilla vs. Biollante 4K (Criterion),

 Night Moves 4K (Criterion),

 Shattered Glass ([Imprint]),

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

🎶  Just Ask Alice Pandora. 🎶   2025 is going to be like a certain mythical box.

 

Hello!

Here we are trying to begin the New Year on a positive note, and the favored discs in the review hopper are about war, crime, and tragedy. Well, at least Russ Meyer gets to express his idea of bliss in a new release. Nirvana is where you find it.

Hey,  CineSavant correspondent Edward Parker Bolman has sent along a really interesting link item. Way back in our Famous Monsters days, Forry Ackerman’s articles about the original  The Lost World highlighted the film’s ape man, played by actor Bull Montana. For sixty years we’ve been seeing references to a Bull Montana performance in another silent film, First National’s Go and Get It (1920) …. and been told that the movie was lost.

Fear not, for an Italian copy turned up intact in the Italian Cineteca archives, and is now on Youtube. It’s a full 90 minutes long. The Italian title is “Le avventure di un reporter.” It was restored in 2022 at the Cineteca Milano MicLab.

We’re shocked at how good the show looks … like, pristine. I even like the text style of the handwritten Italian intertitles.

A mad scientist (Noah Beery) transplants the brain of a vicious criminal (Hal Roach regular Walter Long) into the head of a gorilla (Bull Montana). This can’t be the movies’ first ape-man brain transplant, later a goofy horror sub-genre … pop culture liked nothing better than to associate Darwinian ideas with medical atrocities.

Mr. Bolman explains:

“The director is Marshall Neilan. The gorilla’s murders are entirely off screen; perhaps the Italian distributor censored some more horrific scenes?”

“The hero jumps onto and off of boats, biplanes, and moving trains in a notable action sequence.”

“Writers Ring Lardner and Irvin S. Cobb are said to be in there somewhere, as actors.”

“Dinty the newsboy is played by Wesley Barry, a child actor who 42 years later produced and directed … wait for it …  The Creation of the Humanoids.

The ninety-minute feature looks great!

 

Go and Get It 

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We’re boosters of everything to do with The Film Noir Foundation. Their newsletter for January has promotions for everything from the booming Noir City screening programs, their ongoing film restoration program, and various publications.

The new Noir City Magazine is out — read about it (and get involved) at the bottom of the Foundation’s main web page:

 

The Film Noir Foundation 

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And we’re always grateful to David J. Schow for sending us such interesting links, and jumped at the opportunity to help promote his latest film book. I was a reader of David’s original long- OOP Outer Limits Reader; unfortunately, my copy disintegrated many moons ago. Did I loan it out too often?

David is the authority on all things Leslie Stevens, The Outer Limits, etc.. My Mac calendar informs me that it was November 23, 2010 that I had David over to view a rare copy of a TV show nobody had seen in 40 years, that had become little more than a rumor. It was the only Outer Limits- related show David had never seen.

But mostly the good favors have come in the other direction, my way. This week’s blurb is that the publishers Cimarron Street Books new release

 

Incubus
Inside Leslie Stevens’ Lost Horror Classic 

has been obtainable since January 1. The website just above has a full description and some sample pages.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

 

Hello!

No link and no faux-clever teaser line accompany today’s CineSavant ‘top photo’… we just admire the man and the President. If statesmen of his conscience and moral fiber come back, we hope that somebody will vote for them.

And that’s about all the non- Blu-ray sentiment I’m entitled to. We all have soapboxes to stand on, its just that some people do it better than we do. A good 2025 would be really welcome, I’m sure we all agree.

…. I compensate with an exclusive view of the CineSavant Sci-fi shelf … late 1954 through early 1957. Wow! What could be less relevant?  But I like poking through other people’s disc shelves …

– – – About this time  we once used to do a full rundown of favorite films, singling out about 15 ‘best of’ choices. Several years ago we just opted to make a pick of discs from the year that we’d not hesitate to see again, no hesitation.

So here’s a tall stack of disc covers from the year, each containing a review link. Charlie Largent, Lee Broughton and I keep pretty busy and we still can’t review everything we should. To tell the truth, I just like the long stack of badge-like disc covers …

I’m really happy with the response to the CineSavant review for  The Searchers — film-school opinionizing from the past still has some appeal. We’ve gotten some nice notes and read some kind words – “Kind words, Ethan” — on Facebook. If I had a rocking chair I’d take a picture of myself by the fire.

More odd links and quotes next time maybe … still have a stack of desirable discs to write up. Here are the really good movies and impressive restorations that grabbed our full attention in 2024:

 

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

One of Cannon Films’ best: it earned Barbara Hershey a top award at Cannes, but it received almost no release.

 

Hello!

Here’s some nostalgic New Year’s fun: Michael McQuarrie sends along a great feature documentary that we reviewed when it was packaged with the feature  Alfie … with terrific film clips and even better music, it lets Michael Caine explain the Brit Revolution of the ’60s, swinging London, the entire scene.

Helping Caine are Roger Daltrey, David Hockney, Jean Shrimpton, Donovan, Paul McCartney, Marianne Faithful, Mary Quant and even Twiggy, plus other models, fashion photographers, fashion designers, etc.

It’s all there with excellent color and sound on tubi.tv:

 

My Generation 

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Here’s something I wish I could have looked through with my father: a full Pilot Training Manual from the Army Air Corps in World War II, for the B-25 Mitchell Bomber.

It’s 171 pages that can get YOU ready to join Doolittle on his big raid!  Or something to that effect.

It reads like a New Car manual crossed with a Boy Scout manual … with a technical explanations for everything, and operative instructions for imagined missions. It’s pretty exacting.

 

Pilot Training Manual 

How strange, my dad had to fight that war for a little less than four years … but I’ve been imagining his experience for 60 years. The questions I wish I could ask him …

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

“Dad, you’re ruining Christmas!”

 

Hello!

All things fantastic film expert and generous blogger David J. Schow really hit something nice for the holiday week.

This video posted by Nigel Dreiner was taken at the 50th Anniversary Grauman’s Chinese Hollywood re-Premiere of the original, incomparable 1933  King Kong.

We don’t know how the event was arranged, but I long ago learned that a group of fans of Kong created a major attraction for the event. Some of them were well-known effects and stop-motion animation craftsmen, the disciples of Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen that we wrote about in  a popular old DVD Savant post. Their work became a big display in the famed Chinese forecourt, where all the cement signatures and handprints are.

They constructed a duplicate of the giant Kong ‘bust’ like the one used for close-ups in the original movie. It looks great — the eyes, jaw and eyebrows move, just like the original prop.

The 24-minute video shows the expected drive-up of notables. A young Leonard Maltin hosts the event for ET. Just scanning through we see several faces we ought to be able to name, and note RKO optical guru Linwood Dunn, Darlene O’Brien, Robert Clampett, Sally Struthers. A big arrival is Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen, who thanks to Maltin’s prompt, offers a great audio bite about King Kong’s influence on his life and career. The IMDB offers a full list of celeb attendees at  this page.

Also Gary Owens, Leonard Nimoy, Brian Dennehy, and Jerry Mathers. Could that be Ken Osmond with Mathers?  Is that even possible?  Looks like him to me.

Fay Wray shows up at about 12 minutes as the guest of honor. She’s a charmer, a beautiful, classy, and very well-spoken lady. Ms. Wray also looks great posing ‘in the grip’ of the giant ape mockup … once a picture model, always a picture model.

At about 18 minutes comes some on-air E.T. coverage, showing the Kong bust under construction.

 

Full premiere coverage KING KONG 50th Anniversary. 

Also from April of 1983, here’s a New York Times article about an abortive, ‘deflating’ attempt to commemorate the Kong’s Golden Anniversary  at the Empire State Building.

 

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We wanted some Holiday themed items … all we can offer is a link to our  White Christmas review from a few weeks back. Meanwhile …

 

 

There’s nothing like a little lustmord for the Holidays … correspondent Gordon Thomas, responding to Criterion’s recent restored Blu-ray of G.W. Pabst’s  Pandora’s Box, has updated his Bright Lights Film Journal essay.

It’s a rewarding read that discusses the Franz Wedekind source plays, the changing attitudes about sexuality during the Wiemar Republic, and other pre-Pabst silent film adaptations (there were a handful), two of which starred Asta Nielsen.

With the benefit of Thomas’s research, we get an understandable explanation why Pandora’s Box received a tepid reception in Berlin of 1929 — German audiences had a fixed idea of who Lulu should be, and American Louise Books was not her.

 

Of Sexual Hate and Lonely Death 

I translate the caption above (with my amazing German 1 skillset) as:

“You are under the Mistletoe. Now you must let yourself be kissed.”That’s as close as we can get to an appropriate Yuletime Motto. A safe and happy holiday to us all.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hey, it’s a family film: hopeful people making the Holidays as Happy as they can be. Works for me.