CineSavant Column
Hello!
The good news this week is all about disc announcements, some for October and November…
Leading off the hot news is word that Kino Lorber has a 4K Ultra HD disc coming for Sidney Hayers’ Circus of Horrors, a horror film with a good reputation that happens to be a CineSavant favorite. It’s due on October 29, so if it ships early it might arrive in time for Halloween fun.
They don’t have box art yet, so we’ll be curious to see if they find an alternative to the garish original poster graphic.
The giddy, oversexed big-top plastic surgery epic is also one of the screen’s better circus thrillers, and the Grand Guignol sadism is pitched perfectly for CineSavant sensibilities — you don’t take it seriously, but it’s excellent high-tension play acting. The cast is great too — Anton Diffring, Donald Pleasance, Yvonne Monlaur, Erika Remberg, Yvonne Romain, Jane Hylton and Kenneth Griffith. It certainly has spirit — plus exploitation, sadism and galloping misogyny. Just be kind to dancing bears and be wary of monster apes, and you’ll be fine.
Also high on our list of desired titles: the disc boutique Fun City Editions has already released excellent Blu-ray discs of Jeff Bridges’ Rancho Deluxe and Cutter’s Way.
We just learned that the oft-requested Robert Benton western Bad Company will be out right away, on August 20. It’s up up for preorder. I had forgotten the film’s cast — starring with Bridges are David Huddleston, Barry Brown, Jim Davis, John Savage, Geoffrey Lewis and Ed Lauter. It’s a story of draft evaders during the Civil War.
Available October 22 from Film Masters is an unofficial ‘Euro Kinski Double Bill’ Blu-ray disc. The leading title is a German Edgar Wallace ‘Krimi’ thriller, Creature with the Blue Hand. Klaus Kinski plays an asylum inmate. The press notice doesn’t mention a European version or German language, so this might be the U.S. release version only. We’ll have to see.
On the same disc is Web of the Spider, Antonio Margheriti’s Nella morsa della ragna, the 1971 remake of Margheriti’s own Danza Macabra starring Anthony Franciosa and Michèle Mercier. Klaus Kinski plays Edgar Allan Poe in this remake. For this one they say it’s the U.S. release version, surely in English language only.
Hitting us all at once is surprising news with The Criterion Collection’s announcement for November. In any given month we hope for a vintage Hollywood picture, some nice genre title or a remaster of a classic from an artist like Akira Kurosawa. Criterion is already celebrating the company’s 40th anniversary with a giant CC40 Collector’s set, but their other releases for November are a collectors’ dream wish list, all with something in common …
In alphabetical order:
• William Wyler’s Funny Girl arrives in 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray, with a stack of extras including a new audio interview with Barbra Streisand.
• Also in 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray is a new disc of Ishiro Honda’s orginal ’54 Godzilla. It has the same extras as the older Criterion release, including an encoding of the American re-cut Godzilla King of the Monsters.
We’re hoping that the ‘new 4K digital restoration’ is as good as the bit of a Japanese disc I was able to see several years ago … it looked better than anything we’ve gotten over here, so much so that we grumbled that Toho was withholding ‘the good stuff’ for export.
Heck, we still wish Criterion could market the Bill Sienkiewicz cover art for this disc, first seen twelve years ago.
• Next up, we’re more than ready for a 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon, the one where he channels the look and tone of a Depression-era John Ford / Will Rogers comedy. O’Neals Tatum and Ryan are truly charming, and Madeline Kahn hilarious. The extras list a lot of input from favorite Polly Platt.
• Fourth up is Howard Hawks’ hands-down absolute classic, the original 1932 preCode Scarface with Paul Muni. We’d go for this just to see Criterion’s extras, but it also is listed in 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray.
We definitely want to see this new digital restoration, as the accepted wisdom on this old Howard Hughes production is that its sound & picture film elements are ‘very limited.’ The best Blu-ray transfer hits a limit of contrast and sharpness. How much better than the Blu-ray can the movie look? We’ll hope for the best.
• Next comes a 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray upgrade on Akira Kurosawa’s original Seven Samurai, which always scores high on the list of best movies ever made. No arguments here … it’s from the same year as Godzilla and we’re hoping that a remaster can make it look even better.
Seven Samurai was Criterion’s 2nd ever DVD, spine number 2. I’ve never reviewed it, just because it’s so intimidating and I didn’t want to just rehash things I’d read elsewhere. I’ll try to give it a shot this time.
• And finally, the lineup finishes with a new 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray edition of Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water, a rare picture that was my favorite film for a year, and also took home the Best Picture Oscar.
The transfer may be the same as the existing Fox disc, but of course there are those Criterion extras to contend with. Mr. Del Toro can be very candid when evaluating his work, so I’ll be interested in hearing what he has to say.
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson