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Powerhouse Indicator has announced its titles for August, a trio of Region B releases. Two of the titles haven’t yet been made available here in Region A: Joseph Losey’s much-discussed, seldom seen Eve ↑ , and the low-reputation high-interest Chris Lee / Peter Cushing picture I, Monster. The 1961 picture Eve has a sterling critical reputation, but I don’t know whether to expect a riveting masterpiece, or one of Losey’s tepid, artsy dramas.

The horror picture was filmed in a goofy kind of non- 3-D process that only worked on one axis, or was really only 2½-D or something. Gary has told us about it once or twice but the explanation didn’t stick. According to unreliable but entertaining sources on the web, the proposed 3-D process was more of an optical illusion, called The Pulfrich Effect. The description given sounds exactly how my eyes behave before I’m properly awake in the morning, when reality barely looks 1-D.

I knew it was happening: Scorpion Releasing’s Night Visitor disc is completed and its extras have been announced, although no formal release date has as of yet been announced. The 1989 horror feature with Allen Garfield, Elliott Gould, Richard Roundtree and Shannon Tweed was too good an experience for me to turn down talking about it, which I did last December … you know, before the world was semi-permanently placed on Pause.

We’ll have to see just how much my memories do or don’t clash with those of the screenwriter and director. I’m just the guy who assembled their work, on a long- extinct Convergence linear video editing machine — No, NOT steam-powered.  I love that when MGM/UA needed a publicity image, they had to re-rent that off-the-shelf devil mask — the film’s main advertising item is just a photo of the mask sitting there, as if for a prop shop catalog.

Once again Gary Teetzel has been scouring old Hollywood trade publications — this time he has corralled some old clippings illustrating the way Universal’s Dracula was marketed to exhibitors and ballyhooed on the local level back in 1931. The following articles can be made readable by opening them in a new window (that’s the right-click instruction on a Mac).

The first item on the left simply touts the film’s box office performance, and if you consider that admission to ‘nabe’ theaters in the Depression years might have only been a dime or a quarter, pulling in $20,000 in one week must have been good business. The other trade news items constitute a grassroots round-up of the creative ways that Universal’s horror shocker was promoted in individual theaters. There seems to have been a going trade in teens willing to dress up in silly costumes and put on little performances as a publicity gimmick, whether in front of the theater or on-stage. As you can see, local movie showmen took these charades pretty seriously, even if their pantomimes aren’t quite William Castle quality. Remember:

“His Kiss is like the Icy Breath of Death, yet no Woman can Resist — Dracula!”

Thanks Gary ! — Glenn Erickson

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←  We have A New Banner up. Is there a middle step between ‘Shelter In Place’ and ‘Second Wave’ that I’ve skipped over?  We also tried to show some discretion with the banner’s tagline. The text was for a while going to be ‘Waiting for the Second Wave,’ but I wanted to express wondering concern, not morbid anticipation. The first banner stayed up for two months — it would be nice if this one were to become old-news obsolete without delay.

The irreplaceable Gary Teetzel has rounded up some happy future Blu-ray horror news for us… Scream Factory has announced that their September lineup will include the delayed How to Make a Monster and War of the Colossal Beast ↑.

Plus, Scream is also going to reissue Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death separately and in a new pressing of their older Vincent Price Collection, Volume 1.

The first difference is that the Public Broadcasting Service introductions that previously accompanied the Price pictures will no longer be there (although new extras will be added). The second is that Masque will be presented in two cuts, the previous version but also the Academy of Arts and Sciences’ new restoration, which I am told looks fantastic and adds a few new moments of screen time. Gary writes:

“The big additions are the scene between Esmeralda and Hop-toad, and a longer version of the scene between Jane Asher and Price on the battlements, where Price releases the hawk. Censor cuts restored: the word ‘God’ from Asher’s exclamation in the opening scene in her village; a longer version of Asher being tossed into the tub; possibly one line of dialogue during the bal masque at the end. I think that’s it, but I’m not 100% certain.”

This will be a reward for patient horror fans that remember the old (mid- 1990s?) discussion of missing scene fragments and shots from Masque back in the old, indispensable Video Watchdog magazine.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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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

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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