Hello!

Well, today we have actual posts about actual Blu-ray issues. Charlie Largent will be reviewing Severin Films’ Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection, the unthinkable 14-disc collector’s set. I asked Charlie if he liked the movies, as I’d already drawn my personal line against them when I reviewed the David Gregory documentary Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life and Ghastly Death of Al Adamson. Charlie reminded me that they’re “just a part of the wacky history of movie production” and therefore will draw interest. So I’m looking forward to the review.

Correspondent Bob Furmanek is working furiously on his next restoration project, which isn’t in 3-D. It’s the Nassour Brothers’ Abbott and Costello feature, the first of their non-exclusive projects enabled by a new Universal contract. To promote the movie, it looks like they’ve taken a surviving trailer, replaced the wretched old visuals with their clean restored images, and re-composited the original animated text. They did the same thing in 3-D for Taza, Son of Cochise, to really good effect. The result is a non-original ‘original’ trailer for Africa Screams that ought to bring the 1949 movie back from Public Domain limbo in grand style.

And host Dick Dinman hosts William Wellman Jr., to talk about the recent Kino release of the William Wellman classic Beau Geste. It’s a good conversation, and I’m glad it doesn’t contradict anything in our Beau Geste CineSavant review.

I haven’t forwarded any hot Turner Classic Movies tips lately, but these two are hard to pass up if you’re connected to that cable service. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Eddie Muller’s show Noir Alley screens Cy Endfield’s The Underworld Story, a savage & subversive 1950 movie that takes on media tyranny, blacklisting and racial injustice: a black maid is set up as the patsy in a murder, and every institution in sight encourages it. The searing exposé, made just when Red Channels was first published, is strong stuff — the words ‘blacklist’ and ‘nigger’ are used openly. The film’s title is not particularly apt — something like “America = Hate” would be more accurate.

Then on Sunday night on TCM, a real treat: Georges Franju’s 1963 Judex, an affectionate and poetic retelling of the silent Feuillade serial about a (sometimes) masked avenger who battles an array of pre- WW1 villains, including the Irma Vep-like Diana Monti, a slinky catwoman prototype in a leotard with a dagger at her waist. The incredible music by Maurice Jarre abets the art-deco/surreal goings-on. Judex is followed by Franju’s other genre masterpiece, also with a superb Jarre music score: Eyes Without a Face.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!  CineSavant is back from the ashes.

This what my piece of Los Angeles felt like waking up on Tuesday morning, even though our part of town had no arson fires (I think). This movement was everywhere, not just big cities… there’s even been trouble in Reno, Nevada. Moving on — I do have some Home Video-type news to report a bit below. Frankly, I kept myself distracted from the police sirens by finessing my Dr. Mabuse review.

How about that fabulous SpaceX  space launch on Saturday… the one that was buried under other current events. We seem to be retracing our steps right back to 1950’s Destination Moon, which proposed the ‘crazy’ idea that an aerospace mogul with a private company would be the first to send a manned atomic rocket into space. In some way things haven’t changed. The old movie’s Howard Hughes-like visionary scares millionaires into backing his rocket with the territorial imperative to secure the ‘high ground of space’ against those pesky Russians. The Destination Moon executive has other Elon Musk qualities: when a court order comes down to prevent his launch due to the risk of poisoning the planet with nuclear material, he just goes rogue and launches anyway, regulations be damned.

This launch feels much different than the old NASA missions. The cockpit interior and the space suits are simplified and designed for style — they look like something from a medium-budget space film. The suits don’t appear to be pressurized. If that’s true, then their function must just be for impact protection (?).

So amusing to see the astronauts driven to the launch in a Tesla sedan. SpaceX has the good taste not to slap logos and ads all over everything, even if the ‘entrepreneurial spirit conquers all’ message in their institutional media is more than a little strained. Last Saturday’s mildly hawkish TV spokesman for the new ‘Space Force’ even used the term ‘the high ground.’ I am a bit dismayed by the video montage with President Trump promising that we’ll plant an American flag on Mars. That aggressive stance sounds too much like our old nemesis Marvin the Martian, who was forever claiming new planets for his militant alien race.

← Blu-ray versus Burn-ray:  On Facebook, correspondent Robert Cashill has pointed out what was to me a new wrinkle with Blu-ray discs: the new Paramount release of Funeral in Berlin does not carry the Blu-ray logo, but simply says ‘Blu-ray Disc’ on the spine. That signifies that it’s technically not a pressed disc but a burned BD-R. According to Robert, discs purchased from Amazon are burned BD-R’s, while some purchased from other vendors are pressed discs. Even if the result makes no difference in practice, that’s certainly an odd wrinkle.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Severin Films delayed the release of their Horrors of Spider Island disc for a few weeks, but we can get a glimpse of its awesome wonder wonderful awfulness in a great, tacky original trailer from YouTube. (↑) I have to admit that the look of the monster always creeped me out.

And here’s a big thanks to overseas correspondent Stefan Anderson… I had barely gotten in contact with Stefan again, than he shot back about fifty interesting links, including sites with entire films to watch.

Stefan points us to a screenshot comparison page for Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, showing that the new 2020 disc comes in a poor second when compared to the very good 2012 Blu-ray. (↑) The huzzarah over the new version has circulated for some time now. In my older review, the terrific transfer made an un-favorite Hitchcock movie fun to watch again.

Then Stefan directs our attention to the National Film Preservation page, which features dozens of great short subjects, and some features, viewable for free. I covered many of these on DVD years ago.

The entire William S. Hart feature Hell’s Hinges (1916) is there,
but I really recommend
the funny special effects comedy The Thieving Hand (1908),
the great WW2 film The Autobiography of a Jeep (1943),
a chilling early- 1960s docu piece about the Berlin Wall, The Wall (1962),
the experimental ‘OffOn’ (1968),
the avant-garde horror item The Fall of the House of Usher (1928),
the weird Rose Hobart (1936),
the very early 2-color Technicolor The Toll of the Sea (1922),
a documentary on The Zeppelin “Hindenberg” (1936), and finally,
The Land Beyond the Sunset, a must-see emotional knockdown with a chilling ending… from 1912. (↑)

The Preservation Page’s notes on each film are very good, too.

We are directed to a trailer for a new German restoration of Paul Leni’s silent Waxworks. This one I’ll have to see again. The virtual remnant they showed us in film school didn’t impress, and every book on German silents points holds it up as a great film experience.

Finally, thanks to Stefan I finally saw a rare Mexican horror film I’d only read about in the Hardy Encyclopedia. A page called Cine en línea has a full gallery of beautifully restored, intact and viewable Mexican classics. The horror film is 1934’s Dos Monjes (Two Monks), an artsy melodrama influenced by German expressionism. (↑)

The catch: No English subtitles. But I have to say, my faulty Spanish was good enough to follow the rather stilted, carefully spoken dialogue of the early sound picture. Two other recommended movies at the Cine en Línea directory are two I’ve reviewed before, from pretty mangy DVDs, Vamonos con Pancho Villa! and El Compadre Mendoza, both really good (and brutal) movies about the Mexican Revolution. There’s quite a variety of other features at the site too, including a documentary about the Revolution years using amazing original footage, La Historia en la Mirada (History in View). It’s fantastic even without understanding the words.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Well, it looks like Scorpion Releasing definitely has a Blu-ray coming for Night Visitor, which might include an added value extra I was involved with. I enjoyed the afternoon I spent talking about the making of the movie, that part of the filming I could know about from inside an editing room. Meeting the new-generation crew of extras-creators currently cooking up featurettes and interviews for labels like Severin and Scorpion was fun, too. Some of them are really crazy about anything to do with Cannon Films, either that or they figured it was the right attitude to take when interviewing someone who worked for the company for a while.

Back when commentaries were recorded at professional post houses, I once worked for a disc producer from the ritziest label out there (no names) who was insultingly patronizing. But he was the exception. This bunch for Scorpion Releasing didn’t even treat me like too much of an old man. Much appreciated.

I had no idea that 1989’s Night Visitor had fans of any kind. I saw it again to prep for the session, and was pleased that it had some good qualities… the name actors involved always impressed me. I still like the late Allen Garfield’s performance, a lot. I’ve seen too many actors that hired on for films they thought were beneath them, and then took out their frustration on anybody within earshot. All of the acting talent in this modest satanic thriller did their best. Allen Garfield was very friendly in person, and his scenes were really fun to edit: look, a real performance!

Night Visitor was originally called Never Cry Devil, as seen in this sales poster by the original production company. MGM/UA’s title change insured that the film would forever be confused with a much better known Max von Sydow / Liv Ullmann movie.

And I’ve been thinking about the Memorial Day holiday that has just past. To help you get ready for our next war, I found something we’ll need to get more familiar with — a genuine Ration Book!  Rationing is what happens when an entire nation’s production capacity is realigned toward the war effort. Because the military’s needs are so great, civilians are allowed to consume less of the country’s output of food, gas, auto tires, etc..

And who knows, in the glorious economic disaster that looms ahead (?) we may need rationing, with or without a war. For years after victory in England, rationing remained imposed. Both staples and luxuries were tightly controlled, to squeak out a positive balance of trade and prevent the entire country from going bankrupt.

I’m kidding, yet I’m also feeling nostalgic for a time when the U.S.A., imperfect as it was, could actually face up to a calamity in a responsible way. They put up with the frustrating rationing system because it was fair, and patriotic.

My parents left me a ration book from 1945. I regret that I never asked exactly how the stamp system worked. I know they weren’t like money, but served only as permission to purchase something. This page of stamps has little images of tanks, but others have a cannon and an aircraft carrier. I have no idea what these particular stamps were for. Any experts out there want to fill me in?

The stamps always remind me of something else long-gone that I do remember: the old ticket system from Disneyland. Each standard book of ride tickets included a few ‘E-Tickets’ for the desirable rides (‘Matterhorn Bobsleds’), various mid-range tickets, and finally ‘A-Tickets’ for the Main Street vehicles and minor walk-through exhibits. The sock drawers of many of us kids in Southern California filled up with unused A-Tickets because one could ride a Fire Engine or see ‘Sleeping Beauty’s Castle’ only so many times.

Did these WWII Ration Book ticket pages survive because they were of lesser value?  Maybe there was a number system… would two pages of tickets entitle one to buy the juicy steak that shows up in wartime Tex Avery cartoons? ←

(opening the images in a new window makes them much bigger.)

And there you go, yet another Column entry that actually has nothing to do with Blu-rays. But let nobody say that CineSavant is not patriotic.  Now get out there and collect scrap metal and rubber.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson