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We’ve really got no Column today — assembling today’s big reviews gobbled up the available hours. But rather than completely beg off, this gives me an opportunity to thank correspondent Nicholas Krisfalusy, who sent me a disc last month that I wasn’t expecting.

It’s a Universal Essentials Collection disc from a year ago last October, the 1953 Sci-Fi item  It Came from Outer Space, remastered in 4K Ultra HD. I passed up the disc last year, for purchase or review, because for me the way to see that movie is in 3-D, and I’d already reviewed Universal’s handsome 3-D disc, from eight years ago.

The bad news is that only 3-D capable collectors are able to see good Polaroid-passive Blu-ray 3-D at home, and the industry stopped selling the good monitors for that years ago.

I should have looked at the disc package more carefully. It includes the fine-quality 4K encoding, a Blu-ray disc and a digital access code, and a lot of printed special edition extras. What I didn’t bother to notice is that the Blu-ray disc includes a 3-D option as well. Universal didn’t promote the feature in its text publicity. In other words, it’s still a 3-D friendly package, and recommended.

So thanks again Mr. Krisfalusy.  My question about 3-D to Cinesavant readers is this: do many of you maintain the ability to see Blu-ray 3-D?  Do you have a passive Polaroid setup, or the active setup with the battery-powered glasses?   Do you have other means of seeing Blu-ray 3-D?   I treasure my ability to screen good 3-D, but don’t know how long that will last. My home setup is now eight years old … when it gives out, It might be the end of good 3-D at Casa CineSavant!

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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Correspondent and advisor Gary Teetzel has found something good. Posting on YouTube just a few days ago, ‘Soundtrack Fred’ gives us about fifteen minutes of original cues from an RKO recording session for  All That Money Can Buy  aka  The Devil and Daniel Webster. It sounds like the original source is a transcription disc.

The bonus content is a few seconds of composer Bernard Herrman giving instructions to the orchestra, at the beginning and the end of the recording. His voice always surprises — he doesn’t sound like a stereotyped refined musical genius. He apparently hears extranous noise in his headphones:

“Don’t touch anything, don’t rattle any half-dollars, anything else …”

It’s a good listen for Herrmann’s Oscar-winning music, one of his very best film scores.

And here’s another call-out for fans of Euro-westerns. Genuine expert Tom Betts started decades ago with a printed newsletter, and for quite a while now he’s been running a website blog dedicated to his area of expertise.

The blog may not be for casual Italo and European western fans, but it can’t be beat for enthusiasts that want to know every last detail about the films, particularly the hundreds of actors that played in them.

Tom Betts’  Westerns… All’Italiana page is the place to go for genre loyalists. In addition to Tom’s writing are some essential links … including his & Jay Jennings’ YouTube  Spaghetti Westerns Podcast.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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More podcast news today, this time paralleling today’s new CineSavant review. Dick Dinman once again has coaxed Warner Archive overseer George Feltenstein into talking about a new release.

Since it’s a major digital reupholstering job on a classic MGM musical, we can guess that George was a big part of the restoration effort. (Yegads … I just realized that I worked for Mr. Feltenstein 33 years ago…)

A few days ago Joe Dante circulated this article by Jake Rossen, from the Mental Floss website. It’s short and to the point, but I’ve never heard the subject explained so clearly.

The notion of Howard Hughes ensconsced on the top floors of a Las Vegas hotel, ordering his favorite shows to be played over and over again on his own TV station, should be etched in the annals of eccentric Americana. It gives us mental images of Hughes screening  Ice Station Zebra over and over again. The James Bond movie Diamonds are Forever lampooned Hughes’ enforced isolation with a character called Willard Whyte — what a place to go mad … ?

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We of course follow all the doings at the 3-D Film Archive, keeping a running tally of projects in the works, like last year’s  Robot Monster 3-D, one of those weird Z-pictures that hasn’t lost its appeal — it must still be seen to be believed.

The Archive is rounding out its coverage of the 3-D legacy of the eccentric filmmaker Arch Oboler, who of course made a mint when he ignited the ’50s 3-D craze with his daring independent feature  Bwana Devil. Oboler’s semi-travelogue Domo Arigato may be shipping in a couple of months, and the next item up is a return to Oboler’s Sci-fi effort “The Bubble”, from around 1967. A truncated 3-D Blu-ray was released back in 2014; the Archive is now promoting a Kickstarter page to remaster the original full-length premiere cut of the movie starring Deborah Walley and Michael Cole.

Their kickstarter page features an original trailer for “The Bubble”. It interested me because it has no scenes from the movie, and instead gets its message across with polished radio writing with perfect timing — Oboler’s forte.

Friendly correspondent and  Major Dundee news bloodhound Chris Howard sent along this article from life.com commemorating a vintage photo spread, from when photographer Bill Ray was dispatched to Mexico to glamorize Austrian star Senta Berger.

The photo-heavy piece actually had to be taken in 1964, at least the on-location material with Charlton Heston and Sam Peckinpah. The cheesecake photos may have been in ’65, nearer the run-up to the film’s release. Did Ms. Berger’s agent work overtime to nab this exposure in a big magazine?  I honestly forget whether LIFE in ’65 would print all the pictures we see.

Between Chris Howard and myself, we figure that Senta Berger is among the last surviving participants in Major Dundee still with us, along with Michael Anderson Jr., Mario Adorf, and Aurora Clavell. Senta appears to be still working, at 83 years!

For my fellow Californians this is going to be no big deal. Friends living closer to the hills or especially out in the San Fernando Valley or West to Agoura, etc. see all manner of wildlife in or about their homes, rummaging through their garbage bins, who knows what else?  But for us here just South of Hollywood and only about 6 miles from downtown Los Angeles, the average animal sighting is maybe an opossum or a raccoon, and usually in the dead of night.

So it was a surprise to be out getting my paper at 7am this morning, and to run into this hungry fellow, chewing on something in a front yard. I’ll have to tell the neighbors to stay careful with their pets. Unless he/she has a den in some park nearby, he/she had to drift down from the hills, 1.5 miles to the north. Are these cousins of Wile E. here all the time, and I’m just too unobservant to notice?  Is that why our feral cat population has gone down a little bit?

Yes, it’s about as far from Blu-ray news as CineSavant can get, but I was too proud of snagging these pics, venturing out in my pajamas. We foolish city dwellers get our kicks where we can.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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I wouldn’t necessarily call this a public service … we expend too much effort around here arguing that movies and entertainent used to be better, so here’s something that proves the opposite. By 1974 I was in college and far away from Television, so I missed this pilot for a follow-up comedy series to follow George Schlatter’s Laugh-In.

It’s called Lampoon, and instead of doing something new, it copies the incredibly lame humor formula from the first show. The ‘zoom-in-and-out on a go-go dancer bit’ wore thin in the first year of Laugh-In but Schlatter doesn’t seem to have anything new in his bag of tricks — the not-well-cast Desi Arnaz Jr. and Brenda Vaccaro, a corps of Broadway hopefuls tasked with making something out of nothing, and slightly fancier pre-disco lighting effects. In the worst bit, about 15.5 minutes in, the new cast mimics the distinctive talent from the first show. It’s just not working.

Vietnam jokes!  Oil embargo jokes!  Are you laughing yet?  It kills me to see the obviously talented cast members giving their all for this. True, almost every variety show from the time looks pretty lame, seen as little as ten years later; I’m kind of glad I wasn’t watching much. A lot of The Smothers Brothers held up, but it was taken off the air in 1969…

Thanks to Michael McQuarrie for sending in both of today’s links.

Correspondent Michael also sent along this photo, reminding me that it is indeed true that, over on the Mediterranean island-nation of Malta, the old ‘Sweethaven’ set for the Robert Altman / Robin Williams / Shelley Duvall musical comedy Popeye (1980), has been turned into a tourist destination. The set was an entire little town on a cove, built for Altman’s scores of actors to improvise in.

It has its own tourism website as Popeye Village. The big attractions are a restaurant, a winery and The Beach Bar.

A former boss/business partner retired to Malta. The scenery and historical sites, and the port of Valetta look wonderful, but I don’t really know if I need to see this movie place. Another friend (local) reacts to the mere mention of the movie Popeye as if it’s Kryptonite, the worst thing ever made. We like parts of it, especially its spot-on Popeye-Olive Oyl combo. I once had a theory that every scene takes 3 minutes to get going, and goes on 3 minutes too long. I wanted to edit a trimmed-down version severely pruning the ‘local color’ inanities … material that some fans is the best thing in the movie.

Anyway, can you see yourself having lunch at Popeye’s Sweethaven?

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson