Hello!

Just a quick notice today, as we find ourselves in a state of max trepidation over next Tuesday’s election — we have to admit that we feel like Gert Fröbe, just above. Can sanity prevail?  We’re doing our best to be optimistic.

 

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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made a disturbing announcement — they’ve laid off a number of specialists in motion picture preservation and library archive work. Although it mostly happens behind the scenes, preserving films is supposed to be one of the Academy’s key functions. Here is the news, as reported at  Variety,  The L.A. Times and  Deadline.

I guess that’s might happen when you sink mega-millions into a museum. It’s the kind of corporate move one expects from a conglomerate-owned movie studio. The Academy’s preservation staff has reportedly been gutted of both its leadership and its most experienced specialists. Photochemical film experts with the knowledge and judgment to do the job right are not expendable. Word is already circulating, calling for an intervention by Scorsese, Spielberg, et. al..

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Have a Hooky Pooky Spooky Halloween!  (thanks Wayne Schmidt!)

 

Hello!

What — where are the monsters?  More Halloween-themed movies will arrive in November. Some simply haven’t gotten here yet and a couple that have — Film Masters’  Creature with the Blue Hand and Powerhouse Indicator’s  El Vampiro: Two Bloodsucking Tales from Mexico — got caught up in the review log jam.

I’m hearing from friends that are dead serious about having new fun titles to watch on and before Halloween. Some write me to talk about their changed reactions to old favorites, as when a rediscovered ’50s picture suddenly plays better for them. If you really get stuck for ideas, the CineSavant Review Index overflows with critical discerning shamelessly enthusiastic coverage of just about every worthy horror / Sci-fi / fantasy picture from years gone by. Co-reviewer Charlie Largent has contributed a ton of these, being a like-minded major booster of good horror. Not only that, Charlie properly proofreads his articles.

In the meantime, we direct readers back to earlier CineSavant articles about the joys we remember from spooky matinees — yes, mostly as kids. Our  Hypnotic Chill!  Monster Thrill!  piece takes in a triple bill of memories, as does  How Much Shock Can You Stand?, Charlie Largent’s personal take on his perfect horror triple bill.

Now maybe we’ve really lost track of what is and what isn’t an interesting link. If you really want to go spelunking in the lost past of CineSavant, you can have a look at what was current in past Octobers at this page…

I’ve indexed CineSavant and DVD Savant back to 2012, so here are some quick links to what we were covering as hot ‘new’ horror and fantasy pix:

2017,   2018,   2019,   2020,   2021,   2022,   2023

 

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And we’re grateful for John McElwee’s Greenbriar Picture Shows for posting something we couldn’t provide this week, a great link for disc collectors interested in 100-year-old silent horror pictures.

Just a few days ago, our Charlie Largent reviewed a new Blu-ray for the 1926 haunted house thriller  The Bat. John’s GB post talks about the ins and outs of that whole subgenre of part-horror part-comedies set in haunted houses, where the supernatural business usually boils down to some con game, money scam or inheritance ruse. The films were once just vague titles that collectors like McElwee thought they’d never see, but individual items (Seven Footprints to Satan, perhaps) keep showing up. You never know, the lost London After Midnight could suddenly pop up somewhere, too.

Anyway, if you’re into a good discussion of vintage horror from a collector’s viewpoint, we don’t have it but Greenbriar does:

Honey of a Horror for Halloween
Happy Halloween! — Glenn Erickson

If only Babs and Suzy had known: Chris just can’t abide Peanut Butter Cups.

 

Hello!

Halloween approaches … thanks to Wayne Schmidt, we actually have a nice holiday- themed top banner photo up today. Like several  CineSavant confrères,  Wayne really gets into Halloween fun, and we appreciate the assist.

Advisor & collaborator Gary Teetzel has stumbled across a nifty TV show starring Boris Karloff:

“Speaking of Boris: The 1950s were not a great time for Karloff in terms of movies. Feature roles during this period were few and far between, and the decade saw some of his weakest efforts:  Island Monster,  Voodoo Island,  Sabaka,  Frankenstein 1970. But Boris kept busy with stage and TV work. For my Halloween contribution, here he is as a not-so-mad scientist in a 1958 episode of ‘Studio One,’  The Shadow of a Genius.“

“Karloff plays a scientist on the brink of winning a major award who must cope with family difficulties and the shocking discovery that he may have accidentally stolen ideas from a deceased colleague’s work. It looks like Boris is in fine form. Of special interest: The episode was scored by that young, up-and-coming kid Jerry Goldsmith.”

The show co-stars Eva Le Gallienne, Patricia Barry and Skip Homeier, with Herbert Anderson and Morris Ankrum. It was directed by Ralph Nelson:

Studio One:  The Shadow of a Genius 

Coincidentally, Joe Dante just circulated this nice 2019 link to a ‘Flapper Press’ article by John C. Alsedek. It’s about Boris’s radio career, which started in horror but took an unexpected, very happy turn — You know, For Kids:

From Chills to Children: The Radio Career of Boris Karloff 

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Correspondent Jeff Allee sends along a YouTube posting that caught our attention. He says it is now common knowledge, but being that CineSavant monitors the Cutting Edge of everything important in the culture, we never heard of it until now.

Art echoes reality, in this case 66 years before the fact. It’s an episode of the Robert Culp western TV show Trackdown from May of 1958, about a predatory charlatan who defrauds an entire town. Dabbs Greer and Neyle Morrow co-star. The despicable charlatan is played by Lawrence Dobkin. Hey, the leading lady is Claudia Barrett, of  Robot Monster fame.

The weird connection is that the villain’s name is Trump. An unrepentant conman, Trump holds the town for ransom, promising a fake barrier against an outside threat he’s conjured up out of nothing. It’s … a little unnerving. The townspeople buy the scam 100%, and panic ensues. Trump inspires a local lawman to become a greedy opportunist as well.

 

Trackdown:  The End of the World 

At our house, we watch reruns of the long-running TV show Law and Order. We must have seen 5 episodes in which the Trump name surfaces, always when a detective wants to make a joke about the most dishonest, unprincipled businessman in New York City. Ain’t politics strange?  We’re truly living in Bizzaro World, or an episode from The Twilight Zone.

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

With every viewing, this Sci-fi gem convinces even more as classic-grade film art.

 

Hello!

We’ll be going back to look for typos in today’s reviews — this was quite a work crunch and I need to turn my brain off for a couple of hours.

The solution for the column arrived on Saturday afternoon, with a delivery of fancy Halloween horror offerings that we’ll probably still be reviewing halfway to Thanksgiving. Some are pre-order titles. They’re attractive and colorful, and each looks like it took thousands of hours of curatorship work to produce. Here’s a quick list with links to more product info:

Forgotten Gialli Volume Seven (Vinegar Syndrome) has the Italo rarities  Mystère,  Obsession: A Taste for Fear and  Sweets from a Stranger.

The Tenant 4K (Vinegar Syndrome) is a deluxe disc of the Roman Polanski suspense picture newly remastered — it comes in an elaborate box with bay windows that open.

Cruel Brittania: Three Killer Thrillers From The UK (Vinegar Syndrome) collects Ted Hooker’s  Crucible of Terror, Jack Cardiff’s  Penny Gold and Freddie Francis’s  Craze, produced by Herman Cohen.

Trick ‘R’ Treat 4K (Arrow) an omnibus presentation of four horror stories by Michael Dougherty. Note: I’m not finding American pages for some of these Arrow disc sets, but the review copies received are domestic discs. I’ve read online that they are/are going to be available here; some readers report ordering the identical U.K. versions.

Hellraiser: Quartet of Torment 4K (Arrow) is a full-on compendium of the Clive Barker series, starting with  Hellraiser and all three sequels,  Hellbound,  Hell on Earth and  Bloodline, plus a 200 page book, ‘Ages of Desire.’  We’re still waiting for ‘Hellraiser V: Sunday School Picnic.’

J-Horror Rising (Arrow) is a multiple-title set, with  Shikoku,  Isola: Multiple Personality Girl,  Inugami,  St. John’s Wort,  Carved, the Slit-Mouthed Woman,  Persona,  Noroi and  The Curse plus a thick booklet.

Delirium Photo of Gioia (Vinegar Syndrome) is a 1987 Lamberto Bava thriller with Daria Nicolodi.

Daiei Gothic – Japanese Ghost Stories (Radiance) has  The Ghost of Yotsuya,  The Bride from Hades and  The Snow Woman plus an 80-page book.

These are gift boxes, for sure — the long lists of extras, essays and other goodies is too much to take in. You’ll have to click about online to figure out where to buy these. Some come only direct from the company, and there should be news online about U.S. release dates for the ones for which we only found U.K. pages.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

It’s a documentary, not a horror movie … but it’s just as scary.

 

Hello!

We like to call out impressive lineups of new disc releases, and The Criterion Collection’s picks for January 2025 jumped out at us. We’re always waiting for classics or favorites; it’s okay when a particular month has nothing personally essential, for the next month will almost always feature something highly desirable.

All of the January titles are going to be available in 4K Ultra HD. The list includes the Richard Pryor comedy  Jo Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling and Jean Eustache’s  The Mother and the Whore, an intriguing title we look forward to learning more about.

The other three discs definitely got our attention. Is Criterion going to make a sweep through its Akira Kurosawa holdings, taking more of them to 4K?  Do they have a renewed relationship with Toho, indicated by their upcoming (November 5) 4K disc of  Godzilla, promised to be a remastered version not previously available here?  Criterion also has a 4K release of Kurosawa’s  Seven Samurai promised for November 12. Now we’ve been told that a 4K  Yojimbo – Sanjuro combo will be here on January 7. Frame grabs suggest that both titles are huge improvements over the older Blu-ray discs.

Good HD encodings of Stephen Frears’  The Grifters exist, but Criterion’s 4K (Jan. 21) promises excellent extras, including a new documentary on author Jim Thompson.

And finally there’s Anthony Mann’s conspicuously absent  Winchester ’73 (January 21). It is the first and perhaps best Mann-James Stewart collaboration and the only one not available on Blu-ray. It is also an almost perfect western, with a clever ‘La Ronde’ structure that replaces sex with a coveted rifle. The show has been rumored to be coming from Criterion for three years.

 

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Here’s a good idea. Since we don’t cover many current horror pictures here at CineSavant, let us direct attention to Terry Morgan’s chiller roundup, an article just posted at Trailers from Hell:

Lesser-Known Halloween Horror Film Suggestions
The title may seem appropriate for a government pamphlet, but Mr. Morgan’s picks sound suitably creepy — and non-junky. Pointing it out is just one of many important public service initiatives, here at CineSavant.

 

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There you go … the ballot is in. I’ve got my patriotic  I VOTED sticker, so hopefully all will be well. Let’s hear it for saving Democracy and the world in general.

In the immortal words of Richard A. Smith, “VOTE SOON !  VOTE OFTEN !  Tell ’em McGinty sent ya.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Why no love songs for Magaera?  Did sorority sisters Euryale, Stheno and Medusa ruin her reputation on Facebook?