Hello!

Advisor-correspondent Gary Teetzel found just a couple of days ago that  Wellesnet writer Ray Kelly is reporting that a new effort is underway to restore/complete Orson Welles’ most prominent unfinished feature film, Don Quixote. Begun in the 1950s, it was the director’s main personal project when he was filming  Touch of Evil for Universal in 1957.

The setbacks suffered by the ill-fated Don Quijote project are legendary. Welles’ stars were Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza and Francisco Reiguera as Quizote. Reiguera had roles in 4 Luis Buñuel pictures, and showed up in Louis Malle’s  Viva Maria! and Sam Peckinpah’s  Major Dundee. It was perfect casting until Welles wanted Reiguera to fly to Spain to continue filming, and learned that the old actor was an expatriate who couldn’t go back without being arrested by Franco’s fascists. Oops.

We once reviewed a 1992  ‘restoration’ by Jesús Franco that turned out to be an abomination. Not only was it haphazardly thrown together, it had no access to 65,000 feet of Welles’ footage that were held in Italy. That bounty of unseen film was reportedly returned to Oja Kodar, who controls the rights to the project, in 2017.

It’s a hopeful article. Ray Kelly reports that the progress so far is that all the film holdings are being catalogued, “in anticipation of a scholar-supported assembly and restoration.”

And the round-up of appealing future titles is pretty good this holiday — here are twelve desirable items coming between now and March of 2025. The graphic above enlarges.

Kino Lorber has some favorites on tap … on January 21 will arrive Denis Sanders’  Invasion of the Bee Girls, a Sci-fi conspiracy that walks a tightrope between genre thrills and sexy satire. One of Doris Day’s nicest features is the 1958  Teacher’s Pet. She’s paired romantically with Clark Gable, while teaching a night class in journalism. And Kino has a Blu scheduled way out on February 25, for John Wayne’s most unusual action epic  The Conqueror. The radioactive saga of Genghis Khan co-stars Susan Hayward and Pedro Armendariz, plus the nice red sand of a nuclear testing site.

The titles announced for The Criterion Collection in March couldn’t be more eclectic. A 4K release is on tap for H.G. Clouzot’s subversive suspense masterpiece  The Wages of Fear (March 4), starring Yves Montand. Also in 4K are Michael Mann’s modernistic crimer  Thief (March 11) with James Caan. Ditto 4K for Arthur Penn’s neonoir classic  Night Moves (March 25), starring Gene Hackman and Melanie Griffith. Scheduled for March 18 is a remastered Charlie Chaplin silent drama,  A Woman of Paris starring Edna Purviance. Criterion then reaches into the Kaiju grab bag for the most artistic of Toho’s giant monster knock-down-drag’em-outs,  Godzilla vs. Biollante (March 18).

The Warner Archive Collection has some excellent vintage items coming out right now. We’re eager to see a good-looking copy of  Nora Prentiss, a near-macabre noir star vehicle for Ann Sheridan. It features interesting cinematography by James Wong Howe.  The Tall Target is an excellent ‘costume noir’ with Dick Powell as a cop trying to prevent the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on a train to Washington. It was in bad need of a restoration-remaster as well. Both of those titles arrive today. Not due until January 28, just missing the inauguration, is one of the weirdest political thrillers ever made, the pro-dictatorship tale  Gabriel Over the White House. It’s about a President who almost loses his life, but is then inspired by a religious vision. He busts America out of hard times by assuming authoritarian powers, executing criminals in Star Chamber trials, and threatening the Nations of Europe.

And we got confirmation last week that, although no release date has yet been set, the disc boutique Film Masters will be issuing a special edition Blu-ray of Roger Corman’s first Sci-fi production, the humble but solid  Monster from the Ocean Floor with Anne Kimbell. It is said to be a 4K scan from the original negative.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson