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I guess we’ll know soon enough how ‘things’ will go today … even if if takes a few days. I hope the outcome is easily decided, or a certain gentleman sitting on his stone chair on The Mall in Washington might just decide to go for a walk… maybe to look for a country that deserves him. I’m optimistic, and not doing anything rash. This unsolicited political aside was brought to you by one apprehensive citizen among millions, hoping for the best.

Anyway, fans of film horror might find something here to distract them from biting their nails. Halloween was four days ago, but CineSavant runs on Who-Has-Savings? Time… the two discs we’ve reviewed only arrived a couple of days ago.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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Why a photo of Val Lewton’s sublime The Seventh Victim up top?  Eddie Muller has scheduled the ultimate downer depressive horror flick for his TCM Noir Alley Halloween show, tonight. The film’s tone is so defeatist, its evil devil cult can’t even work up a competent human sacrifice. But that’s not the point — it may be the only show of its era to aesthetically encourage self-destructive impulses. I hope Eddie’s discussion stays out of the ‘Is it Noir?’ weeds. If we look at The Bishop’s Wife in the right way, it becomes film noir as well.

U.K. Correspondent Dave Carnegie sends along an interesting YouTube item, an eight-minute German color film from 1936: Berlin in the Year of the Olympic Games. The city scenes are a good reminder right now … a Fascist country can look as pretty as a picture. It’s really a demonstration of Agfacolor — a color system perhaps not as robust as Eastmancolor, but perfected almost twenty years before. The best restored Agfacolor is in the ‘Sissi’ Films of the 1950s. They are quite beautiful, if soft and muted compared to Hollywood’s Technicolor. Thanks Dave!

Important words for our time. Ashley Cullins’ Hollywood Reporter article about the drawbacks of ‘owning’ digital movies stored in the cloud is the kind of thing that’s ammunition for we hard media advocates: Amazon Argues Users Don’t Actually Own Purchased Prime Video Content. Remember, the original haberdashers and junk men that founded Hollywood invested in Nickelodeons because they realized people would pay just to see the product, and walk away empty handed. It’s intellectual property… all sales final. Media corporations are improving on the moguls’ dream of literally selling ‘nothing’: it’s the same now, except with ‘home theater’ the audience provides the auditorium, the projector, the screen and the chairs. (We have to provide the popcorn too, but at least we don’t overcharge ourselves.)

I have associates that don’t want to accumulate too many video discs (gee, how is that possible?) and tell me that with some digital purchases, when a better transfer surfaces, it automatically replaces what was there when he purchased. That sounds terrific to me… but I’ll stick to my cold frozen fingers speech about how the 2nd Amendment gives me the American birthright to own and open-carry DVDs and Blu-rays to my heart’s content, even in churches and government buildings. The small print on all of those ‘purchase contracts’ basically say that what’s being bought can disappear at any time.

And Dick Dinman outdid himself this month, with an incredible, amazing, pretty-important podcast of his DVD Classics Corner on the Air series. This time it’s A Heated Conversation about The Day the Earth Caught Fire. Dick’s impeccable taste in interviewees is in evidence as well — I help him discuss Val Guest’s super Apocalyptic ‘The-Weather-Goes-Haywire’ epic.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!  The non-Halloween Halloween is coming, so we need to be prepared!

Confirmed Foolish Monster Fan Guilty Pleasures Department: not a whole lot to discuss today (look Ma, no politics!) but have been thinking about an announced Sci-fi title and a very non-classic horror item that nevertheless sound like fun viewing. Kino and Scorpion have announced that they’ll be releasing on Blu-ray an oddball Sci-fi opus from the 1960s, Ib Melchoir’s colorful, goofy, threadbare The Time Travelers, the show that ends with the rather clever ‘time dilemma.’ We were extra-aware of this show in 1964 because the producers gave Forry Ackerman a part to play — a clever ploy to ensure coverage in Famous Monsters. Alas, most A.I.P. shockers played locally (San Bernardino) only at the drive in, so my personal Time Dilemma was limited to staring at the Reynold Brown poster in the B&W newspaper ad. Or was it a ‘Time Paradox?’ Or maybe a ‘Time Quandary?’

No date is yet set for the release. The Time Travelers is one of the few remaining sci-fi or horror oldies in the MGM library not released on Blu-ray disc. Most of the others are in B&W, but if you ask me, they’re no less marketable than some of the color offerings that have made it to disc, like Cyborg 2087. Is it perhaps time for a disc boutique to bring back a ‘Midnite Movies’ series of double bills?   MGM still has Pharaoh’s Curse, that mummy movie with a very non-standard mummy. The 100% Weird Red Planet Mars hasn’t been seen on video since VHS, and I’m not sure that there was a VHS, either.

I don’t see why a Kino or a Scream Factory isn’t going for Edgar Ulmer’s Beyond the Time Barrier. It appears to exist in more than one version, and it has a racy ‘continental cut’ that someone should try to recover. And I’m personally itching to re-see Levy-Gardner’s no-reputation Sci-fi jungle picture The Flame Barrier again, just to check out Pat Fielder’s screenplay and Dick Smith’s makeup. A.I.P.’s The Angry Red Planet improved quite a bit with the jump to Blu-ray … who knows but that one of these less-seen movies might emerge looking much better, like The Beast with a Million Eyes?

I can get away with all this wishful thinking because another ’50s title has been given a hard release date on Blu from The Film Detective. Giant From the Unknown is the filmed-at-Big Bear tale of an enormous Spanish Conquistador come back from the dead. I guess The Wall didn’t stop him, but he did manage to get himself buried for a few centuries. His name is Vargas… and he doesn’t paint pin-ups, gringo.

The release arrives as two separate products. We have to wait until January 19th for the basic Blu-ray restoration, but December 17th will see the release of a Collector’s ‘Giant Cult Film’ Boxed Set — you know, to fulfill all of your Killer Spaniard gift-giving needs. This promotional page has full details on the ‘Giant Cult Film’ package.

Brought to us by those fun-loving producers of She-Demons, Frankenstein’s Daughter and Missile to the Moon, Giant from the Unknown is actually considered the best feature of the foursome. This is credited to a spirited performance by the six-foot, seven-inch Buddy Baer, who snarls and grimaces from behind his 300 year-old Conquistador armor. His makeup is said to be by the legendary Jack Pierce.

If I recall from fuzzy TV screening eons ago, Vargas The Giant worked up some righteous ‘the monster’s gonna get ya’ tension. Unfortunately, it was strong enough for my older sister to change the channel before the finish. So I don’t known if Buddy’s hulking Spaniard falls into a pit, is hit by lightning or takes a streetcar back to Madrid.

I’m staying away from spoilers until the show arrives. Quoting Joe Dante from in his TFH Trailer Commentary, Vargas the Giant does indeed come from another world: “The vanished world of B&W double features that I for one really miss.”

And one more CineSavant Column item arrives just in time for the deadline. Correspondent Michael Cummins saw the CineSavant coverage of Joe Kidd last weekend and thought to send along a film clip of a similar ‘Old West’ locomotive that smashes through a building, in a film shot a number of years before the Clint Eastwood movie. It’s pretty impressive, coming near the end of a typically endless German trailer for the epic ‘Tyrol Oater’ Winnetou 1.Teil.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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Step right up — for movie fans with deep pockets there’s nothing better than seeing Hollywood history go on the auction block. Icons and Legends of Hollywood Auction has assembled quite a site, 304 illustrated pages of auction items displayed more attractively than in an old Spiegel’s department store catalog. The prime item is Ursula Andress’s white bikini bathing suit from Dr. No, but beyond the racks of famous costumes the pages feature special effects rigs, spaceship miniatures, ancient cameras, an Oscar staturette (aren’t there rules about those things?), and an enormous cache of movie posters. Many items may have originated with the MGM and Fox auctions, fifty years ago.

You can’t help but get hooked by some of what’s being sold — entire picture cars like The Green Hornet’s Black Beauty. Several pages offer early production scripts for King Kong. If that’s not enough, there’s the original miniature of the SS Venture as well…. and all kinds of production art and documentation associated with effects legend Willis O’Brien.

I could just keep naming interesting items… I stopped reading at about page 82, which displays costumes from Planet of the Apes. The James Bond and Star Trek sections go on for pages and pages. Like I say, it reads like a toy store ‘wish book’ from my childhood. Thanks for the link, Mr. Largent.

A timely reminder of something that has finally gone live — the Kickstarter campaign to restore the color Abbott & Costello musical Jack and the Beanstalk that I touted earlier this month, is now open and rolling.

And finally, just a few days ago (October 17 2020) Greenbriar Picture Shows devoted an entire article to a 1.5-second censor cut made to The Incredible Shrinking Man sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. When Robert Scott Carey kills a tarantula with a sewing pin, jamming and twisting the pin into its body, there is a Medium Close-Up of Carey gripping the pin, as a drop of arachno-blood oozed down the shaft and onto his hand, like a big glob of chocolate syrup. Before CGI this was an uncommonly graphic, super-icky moment, what with Carey surrounded by the eight hairy legs and in such close proximity to those scary fangs. On a big screen the scene screams Insect Fear loud and clear, arachnid or no.

I’ve been blinking and going ‘Huh?’ at the scene for years, as at some point Universal opted to drop a shot, creating a stutter where the splice occurred. I’m guessing that it was done because some influential TV client objected to the spidey gore. For DVD the full shot of the blood dripping down the pin returned, but minus 3 frames at the end. Greenbriar’s John McElwee shows us the missing three frames. Until about ten years ago the official version (even in 35mm at the Cinematheque) was pan-scanned flat, but starting with the DVD Shrinking was returned to its widescreen framing. It’s also being shown on TCM widescreen as well… but still with the odd 3-frames replaced by a freeze frame.

Greenbriar guru McElwee reminds us that the original gloopy cut persisted in Universal’s 8mm digest version from the early 1970s. The ‘twisting’ of the pin happens earlier, and the three frames don’t show anything dynamic occurring. They just add an odd freeze frame beat. I think it must be a video fix to make up for film damage — perhaps the splice tore during handling. That’s only a theory.

I don’t believe that The Incredible Shrinking Man has yet been given a Region A Blu-ray release. Correspondent John Black tells me that he read that the studio remastered the movie in just the last year. C’mon, Universal, do the right thing. We really appreciated the amended bits restored to Psycho, and the brassiere industry salutes you for that one as well. Smoothing out the full Shrinking Man spider attack would be a nice post-Covid gift for 2021 !

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

How’s this for a shocker?  Is this an example of that pernicious Kiddie Gore that poisoned the Youth of America?  Somebody call The Wretched Doctor Wertham!  But don’t fret readers, for Nancy and Sluggo weren’t really murdered. This strip was part of an ad for a comic book that’s … a long story. Those uncomfortably realistic corpses are just dummies posed by artist Ernie Bushmiller, you know, for fun.

Well, it felt like a good Halloween idea….

…..Every Halloween I receive requests for likely Halloween pix to order, but usually closer to the holiday, when there isn’t time to act on a good recommendation.  With 11 shipping days still to go, here’s a selection of likely horror thriller candidates that came through the CineSavant doors in the last year or so. The images are encoded as links — just some wallet-lightening suggestions offered as a humble public service. Let the reviews guide you, as they range from all-time classics to hilarious losers.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson