Hello!

You didn’t derive enough nightmares from  August 10th’s  CineSavant Column dose of AI horror?  Never despair:

The Vape is back with more dreadful visions, this time leaning toward enormous, Kaiju-like rude beasts slouching toward Bethlehem. Giant ill-defined silverfish-things floating in the sky, anybody?  It’s as if the hinges busted on Julian Karswell’s portal to Hell, setting free Satan’s entire demonic menagerie.

Quick, gather up little children that you want to see scarred forever — why should the illusion of a benign universe be quashed only for adults?

‘Village Live’ epizode 99530 zoology special. 

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And we confess to having purloined a link circulated by Joe Dante, a quite satisfying video lecture by matttt about a legend of comic books.

The Hunt for the Anonymous Cartoonist who Transformed Pop Culture.
Many of us already know about this great talent, but the real issue here is his suppression by a publishing company with illusions to maintain — and a desire to pay peanuts for the genius of ‘hired help’ that brought in millions in profits. This particular story has a happy ending … the bona fide great artist wasn’t acknowledged until he was retired and no longer working, but he could have remained unknown, thinking that his life’s work wasn’t significant or appreciated.

The video is really sentimental and inspirational, and the art shown is wonderful.

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

It’s like I’m 8 years old again, and everything on TV is wonderful…

 

Hello!

Friend Dick Dinman has a new podcast up for Kino’s 3-D Blu-ray of Arch Oboler’s Bwana Devil, the first movie of the 1950s 3-D craze.

His guests are two of the experts from the 3-D Film Archive, Robert Furmanek and Mike Ballew, talking about the restoration job in three dimensions. Get down in the technical weeds with a full discussion of Ansco color and trying to match up the color. CineSavant’s coverage of the disc release is  here.

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

A basic survival story gets me every time.

 
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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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

Life is a Carousel … poor Liliom didn’t foresee the celestial petting police.

 

Hello!

I tell ya, its great to have good friends. Photographer, electronics engineer and amateur 3-D printer jockey Allan Peach likes the CineSavant logo, and a while back made me a 3-D sign, which I showed off in these pages.

A couple of weeks back he did it again, only fancier … he may be on his third 3-D printer by now. You can see the impressive result for yourself. It lives behind my work desk and it even keeps good time … after years of digital readouts, I’m going to be reading an old fashioned dial clock again.

 

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Here’s something new from the elusive Correspondent ‘B.’ — America’s National Parks have a fun semi-morbid toy on sale, and it looks like a bargain. It’s the perfect snuggly plush toy for people 70 years and older, who remember atom drills in grade school.

It’s Bert from the famous Duck and Cover cartoon immortalized in  The Atomic Cafe. He’s pretty cute, but we can’t tell how big he is.

He’s up for sale — what a patriotic toy!  Tell ’em CineSavant sent you.

Bert the Turtle Plush 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Some clever story gimmicks deserve applause of their own.

 

Hello!

Yet another foreign Sci-fi disc has us curious … the watchful Gary Teetzel forwards some links relating to an obscure but fantastic Sci-fi movie that we’ve only seen on compromised DVD releases.

Almost 20 years ago, we were knocked over when Robert Skotak introduced us to  Kosmitcheskiy reys: Fantasticheskaya novella, a Russian movie from 1936 depicting a sophisticated voyage to the moon. It’s a terrific movie, packed with gigantic miniature work and employing lots of sophisticated stop-motion animation. It’s a missing link in realistic Sci-fi space movies, between Fritz Lang’s  Woman in the Moon and George Pal’s  Destination Moon.
Germany’s Der Ostfilm is offering a Blu-ray of the movie with the German title Kosmische Reise. We’re going to keep our eyes peeled to find out if the quality is good. Although made in 1936 ‘Cosmic Journey’ was a silent film, and existing prints add a soundtrack that cuts off the left of the frame and puts composiitons out of whack. We can’t expect that issue to be solved, but we’d want some kind of quality improvement.

The text says that the show is Region A compatible and has English subtitles, something Gary confirmed at an English sales site called  Wicked Visions.

→  Included on the Blu-ray is the 1935 Russian Sci-fi item  Gibel Sensatsii (Loss of Feeling), the wild tale of capitalist Jim Ripl, whose aim is to replace all workers with robots. In the film still (it enlarges) Ripl is playing his saxophone while the assembled robots dance. Der Ostfilm offers several other Eastern-block Sci-fi pictures in DVD and Blu.

 

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In the ‘say it ain’t so’ category of news, correspondent Ted D showed us over the weekend that something we thought we knew about 4K discs, just isn’t true. 4K discs can have Region coding. Ted purchased a German Plaion 4K of Planet of the Vampires and was surprised that it wouldn’t play on his domestic player.

The  Diabolik sales page confirms this. This presents a problem for reviewing — I have an all-region 4K player, and thus might not notice a Region-blocked disc … so many Blu-ray ads say they’re Region coded, but are not. So I hope we haven’t steered readers toward pricey discs that they can’t play. It’s a lot of responsibility, and the most we can do is offer a flaky disclaimer. First warning — if you’re not All-Region equipped, be wary of imported 4K discs from Munich-based Plaion Pictures.

 

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For the last couple of months, various people have been circulating a disturbing ‘AI Nighmare’ video from  the VAPE called Vilage Live. It’s a horror video sampler, a selection of vignettes conjuring horrific tableaux. It’s demented, for sure. Part of the uneasiness with the images comes in trying to reconcile the realistic elements with the weirdness of AI image manipulation, with its ‘animation’ that’s at least 50% a morphing effect. So watch if you dare … it’s technically Safe For Work, but no apologies for psychic damage.

I once got the same jolt from a creepy old pocketbook my friend Douglas Haise showed me, Charles Addams’  Dear Dead Days: A Family Album. It’s a weird ‘concept book,’ as if Addams’ fictional ‘Addams Family’ characters had kept a Seriously Morbid Scrapbook. Amazon reviews describe it as ‘an answer to the ‘good old days’ nostalgia craze of the early 1960s,’ ‘loaded with photos and period art of coffins, cadavers, funeral carriages, freaks of nature, and more.’  If I recall, the sub-par photo quality in the pocketbook made it all seem even creepier — identifying the subject of some photos was difficult.

→  The warped visuals also remind us of my copy of Charles G. Finney’s The Circus of Dr. Lao … at least one edition was illustrated with weird art by  Boris Artzybasheff, some of which used similar physical contortions and distortions…

Hope that wasn’t too rough … Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Was this the first gore-horror Sci-fi kiddie matinee?  Anything earlier come to mind?