Hello!

Yep, good old Dennis Price has arrived, with two friends in hazmat suits. Luckily, I’m not alone here at CineSavant headquarters, and won’t be going batty like Dennis. But plenty of people are soon going to feel very isolated. In a few days we’re going to be really grateful for our web connection to our friends and family.

I don’t have a virus filter for my Modem (that was in the health guidelines, wasn’t it?)  In the interest of Public Safety I considered taking CineSavant offline … but I figure that the public needs to be informed about the searing controversies that surface in these pages: Aspect ratios! Transfer speeds! Original versions! Just doing my bit.

Contributor/advisor/conscience Gary Teetzel knows how to use humor to defuse tension. After an exchange about COVID 19, he sent a picture from The Andromeda Strain of the scientist having a tiny layer of skin burned off as a sterilization ploy. Gary plans to do that before he goes out. Just to be extra safe, he says he’s going to do what the old man in the movie did to stay safe — start drinking Sterno!

The photo above is from a Universal horror-western (?) movie called Curse of the Undead, which Kino Lorber has announced for Blu-ray. I haven’t seen it, but I told Gary it must be a classic because Michael Pate is in it, and Michael Pate plays the marauding Apache Sierra Charriba in my personal obsession Major Dundee. Gary’s answer is typical:

“Yes Glenn, Sierra Charriba is a vampire in Curse of the Undead. Charlton Heston plays Major Van Helsing, who obsessively pursues him across the Old West.”

Sounds okay to me.

After I linked last time to an online encoding of The Beatles’ docu feature Let it Be, correspondent Mike Hasch told me that Peter Jackson has made a documentary about the final year of the group before their breakup. He sent along links to two announcement articles online: in Rolling Stone and in Variety.

Wait, don’t go away yet. Correspondent ‘Chuck’ has contributed a link to a Japanese-for-American-Viewers video piece about Japan’s top Inventions. The ‘invention’ in this particular episode is our old friend Godzilla, the monster with the radioactive personality. Gotta include a Godzilla link, it’s the law.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson