Hello!

Correspondent Dan Mottola gives us a link to a video I enjoyed about a UK miniature maker, who gives a nice talk about the history of model-making. He’s a professional now taking it easy as a hobbyist.

Lots of commercial plastic models figure into The Miniature World of Mat Irvine, who starts with a kit of the moon space ship from Lang’s Frau im Mond. He goes a bit into the history of each model.

For a time Mat is only talking about movies. He goes off topic to explain stop motion animation (?) but then digs into some lesser-known English filmmakers as well. Then he shows some of the work he did for movies — he has years of effects credits. The most fun is seeing his shop stacked with vintage model kits, and to watch him tinker about.

We identify with Mat … like a garden-variety fan, he pulls out a box with his prized collection of James Bond cars.

. . . Note, 01 09 24, from correspondent Martin Hennessee:

“Mat Irvine is a hallowed name in the annals of Doctor Who fandom. He created some excellent models and effects for the original show, from 1972 until it ended in 1989, and wrote a great book on techniques of the era. He came back to help create the new Daleks for the 2005 revival, and his sturdy new build has served the series well ever since. He has also supervised some excellent practical effects for the new series. Truly an unsung hero of FX!”

— Good to know, Martin, thanks!

This is the first disc revelation of the year — I don’t want to scoop my upcoming review, but Severin Films’ new boxed set Danza Macabra Volume Two: The Italian Gothic Collection contains a fantastic 4K Ultra HD disc of Antonio Margheriti’s Castle of Blood — a film we’ve previously seen in at least 3 indifferent or so-so disc releases.

The new disc is everything a collector of classic Eurohorror would want, and more . . . I’ll be reviewing it right away. I previously thought the show a little overrated, but not now — it’s up there with the very best of Barbara Steele.

If I avoid being hung on an iron gate, a review will be up on Saturday. A full review of Severin’s boxed set will follow.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

I couldn’t believe it — with rain and high winds both before and after, the Pasadena Rose Bowl Parade still had its picture-perfect weather for the morning of the first. I have yet to see that parade rained out or blown away. Is that some kind of secret, perverted wish in my subconscious?  No, it’s right up front.

On to new business:  Here’s something altogether strange and very special, from a link just circulated by Joe Dante. Fast Film is a cinema-intense short subject art film that’s difficult to describe. A team of talented animators had an unlimited supply of photocopies of frame grabs, paper, and scissors — the work we see is a Super-Collage in motion, a bizarre 3-D Origami free-for-all.

The plastic play with film scenes and stars has been likened to a ‘History of Film,’ but it’s more like a tour through our movie unconsciousness. Since when have we seen Cary Grant, exiting a train compartment, being observed by aliens from a Japanese Godzilla movie?

The filmmaker is Virgil Widrich — he made this back in 2003. You’ll be riveted for the full 14 minutes. Almost as astonishing is the follow-up ‘how did they do it?’ short The Making of Virgil Widrich’s ‘Fast Film’

How do we choose what to review next?  Let’s try an upcoming disc round-up for this very chilly start-up for ’24. Some of the discs ‘in hand’ have been around a couple of weeks — I can sometimes be persuaded to review something on request.

The Warner Archive — just arrived are Madame Bovary (Minnelli), Anna Christie (Garbo), The Great Ziegfeld and Tarzan The Ape Man; we’re expecting Gentleman Jim (Errol Flynn) in the door soon.

KL Studio Classics keeps tempting us with a wide swath of product. In hand are Odds Against Tomorrow, The Ballad of Little Jo, Hardcore, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot 4K and , The Man Who Wasn’t There 3D.

ClassicFlix sent a pair of new discs — the domestic noir Cause for Alarm (Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan) and The Abbott and Costello Show, Season 2.

We’re curious about The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians, Deaf Crocodile’s latest excusion into vintage Czech fantasy-comedy.

There’s also the 4-tile Savage Guns Four Classic Westerns set from Arrow Video.

Powerhouse Indicator just tapped us with screeners of The Man Who Had Power Over Women (Rod Taylor, Carol White), Impossible Object (Alan Bates, Dominique Sanda) and Jinnah (Christopher Lee).

High in the queue are Film Masters’ The Devil’s Partner / Creature from the Haunted Sea combo.

An outfit called Mawu Films sent a fancy disc of the Brazilian Black Gold, White Devil, a Cinema Novo classic that we ought to look into.

For the Future, we just learned of KL Studio Classics February lineup:

New Blu-rays of Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder),  The Big Country (William Wyler),  The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison),  Burnt Offerings (Dan Curtis),  Blood on the Sun (James Cagney),  Man-Eater of Kumaon (Sabu),  Let’s Dance (Fred Astaire),  Alaska Seas (Robert Ryan),  Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema XVII with Vice Squad, Black Tuesday and  Nightmare, and  Monk The Complete Fourth Season.

and special Ultra HD discs of  Leviathan 4K,  The Last Castle 4K,  Gunfight at the OK Corral 4K (John Sturges), and  Fear and Desire 4K (Stanley Kubrick).

And, as we were reminded last week, some of the following were promised for January, and the dates of others have not yet been pinned down:

Severin’s Danza Macabra Volume 2 with Castle of Blood in 4K

Vinegar Syndrome’s promised The Horrible Dr. Hichcock 4K release

We will also be on a keen lookout for The Milestone Cinematheque’s forthcoming Household Saints, a special delight we’ve been wanting to catch up with for almost 30 years. Lili Taylor !

Criterion’s The Roaring Twenties and All That Money Can Buy plus McCabe and Mrs. Miller 4K and Lone Star 4K.

Bluebeard and a Region A of The Whip and the Body (Kino Lorber), a Region B of Devil Girl from Mars (UK Cult Classics), Red Planet Mars (MGM),

Not to mention a possible Alphaville disc, if a release is derived from the new remaster.

And of course, we’re going to welcome Godzilla Minus One the moment it is announced . . .

. . . which makes us ask, where is a disc of The Primevals, the decades-in-the-making stop-motion thriller premiered last year at various festivals?

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!  January slams in with new announcements for devotees of the fantastic:

KL Studio Classics has announced a horror rarity — Charles Marquis Warren’s 1957 possession tale Back from the Dead.

There’s at yet no exact release date. Back from the Dead has been very difficult to see, especially in ‘Regalscope,’ really CinemaScope rebranded; its companion Regalscope production The Unknown Terror came out from Viavision [Imprint] in 2021.

I believe the movie was filmed in or near the art enclave of Laguna Beach; the notable cast includes Peggie Castle, Arthur Franz, Marsha Hunt ( ! ), Don Haggerty, James Bell and Ned Glass.

The renewed interest in the title makes one hope that the rights for the Regalscope film Kronos might now be clear, putting that much-desired Sci-fi classic back in play. It would really benefit from a full restoration & remaster.

Vinegar Syndrome has posted a Promo Trailer for their upcoming 4K disc of The Horrible Dr. Hichcock.

They’ve also released more details for this release, that should please American collectors unable to play the Radiance Region B disc from back in October. The upcoming release is a combo 4K + Blu-ray item. It appears to be from the same remaster, with 3 separate cuts and some of the same extras.

Commentaries: instead of Radiance’s choice of Kat Ellinger or Tim Lucas, Vinegar Syndrome gives us Eugenio Ercolani, Troy Howarth & Nathaniel Thompson, or a select track with Barbara Steele speaking with Russ Lanier.

We’ll see if we get a chance to review the disc. Hichcock was for so long ‘not there,’ or impossible to see in a quality presentation — and now we suddenly have competing releases.

Having committed to this particular show long ago, I don’t mind the personal double-dip. We’re told not to look for this on Amazon — it’s said to be a Vinegar Syndrome exclusive, through their website only.

Wait, there’s more from Vinegar Syndrome, as reported by Gary Teetzel:

“Vinegar Syndrome posted online yesterday that they’ll be releasing Saul Bass’s Sci-fi thriller Phase IV on 4K Ultra-HD later this year — with multiple cuts!  So we’ll finally get to see it with the original trippy montage at the end.”

The movie’s home video release became an issue eight years ago, when a legendary original ending was screened once at a now-defunct L.A. venue called Cinefamily. We wrote that up in our 2015 review of Olive Films’ Phase IV Blu-ray.

Didn’t I just title drop The Unknown Terror up above?  Advisor Gary again amends the CineSavant release outlook: KL Studio Classics has announced a triple-bill Blu on the way entitled Sci-Fi Chillers Collection.

The disc set’s contents feature the Regalscope / Fox The Unknown Terror previously viewable on the Australian collection, and the Paramount / Eugene Lourie rampaging-cyborg fave The Colossus of New York. They’re both vintage favorites, and Unknown is still relatively hard-to see here.

The third picture I’ve never quite made it through, Francis D. Lyon’s Destination Inner Space. It certainly can boast a name cast: Scott Brady, Sheree North, Gary Merrill, John Howard, Biff Elliot, Roy Barcroft. It’s in color, but am I remembering correctly … was this the picture originally released in the U.S. in B&W?

Anyway, we never discourage even marginal Sci-fi . . . with the right encouragement, maybe Kino Lorber or Vinegar Syndrome is properly positioned to properly release pictures held by collectors, like the hotly-desired Kronos! touted above, or more titles held by collectors, like the ’63 The Day of the Triffids.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Yes, it’s a full-on Viavision [Imprint] review day today — the disc rotation just came out that way. We’ll be turning almost immediately to titles from Radiance, Severin, Criterion, Fun City, Universal, and the Warner Archive Collection, to start the new year.

We’re still waiting on the WAC December titles, which include the ripe-for-rediscovery Tarzan, the Ape Man.

Kino Lorber’s pkg also just arrived, with a new edition of Odds Against Tomorrow, the Brigitte Bardot comedy Please, Not Now!, Douglas Sirk’s Has Anybody Seen My Gal?, and the Brit war pix double bill The Sea Shall Not Have Them + Albert R.N..

Film Masters strikes again with a third ‘Filmgroup’ double bill; this time the duo are The Devil’s Partner and Roger Corman’s Creature from the Haunted Sea.

Powerhouse Indicator’s new UK releases include extras-adorned editions of the ’30s classics Love Me Tonight, Desire and the original An American Tragedy.

Deaf Crocodile brings us a bizzare Czech comedy-fantasy, The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians.

Radiance offers fancy editions of the unusual Japanese thriller Elegant Beast and Pietro Germi’s mysterious The Facts of Murder.

… and we just saw the new 4k of Oppenheimer, and want to add our two cents of opinionizing, 8 months after the fact …

The amazing friend and advisor “B” doesn’t know it, but he gave me an appropriate New Year’s idea for CineSavant. People choose special Holiday Films for occasions like New Year’s, and I realize that we do (or did) as well. Since it’s now available this year in a quality release, a likely new candidate is the Thornton Wilder, Wood/Menzies Our Town. It’s a bit on the chilling side — philosophically it’s not a happy story — but there’s something of an eternal feel behind it. Just as affecting on DVD is the 2003 TV production starring Paul Newman.

What’s your idea of a good movie to ring in The New Year?  Are there any modern-era films that qualify?  I’m mostly aware of some old standbys. Sci-fi fans vote for the George Pal The Time Machine, which revolves around the turn of the century 123 years ago, and it certainly has a ‘think about changing times’ attitude.

Back when I was a kid, with no home video, we were stuck with whatever the 5 or 6 TV stations decided to play around the holidays. It was usually another Christmas film or something heavily sentimental, like Lassie Come Home. In High School, it seemed, we were bombarded by sentimental ‘weepies,’ movies semingly designed to make one feel miserable-happy. My high school sweetheart, who I almost married two years later, came over two years in a row to watch pictures with my family. I remember one year was the first time I saw the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Not exactly holiday fare, but it was an enormous revelation, even with ten commercial breaks.

The big New Year’s memory with that girlfriend was the MGM tearjerker On Borrowed Time, with Lionel Barrymore et. al..  “Lachrymose” would have been a better title. The playright’s idea of a ‘touching’ film blanc is a grim tale about Death claiming 90% of the cast list, including a kid, just to keep a character from interfering with the mechanism of soul-taking. People are constantly crying. When Death came to collect sweet old grandma Beulah Bondi, the movie struck a raw nerve with the girlfriend.

My then- girlfriend would never have been described as a ninny. But the film found her vulnerable on the subject of mortality, the big ‘everybody you know and love is going to leave you’ question, and she broke down into tears that I never saw anybody cry before. I have a strong memory of that even though it’s literally ancient history, as if it happened in a past life. So yeah, On Borrowed Time is my idea of a creepy New Years’ movie, and I tend to be a little suspicious of militant tearjerkers.

Families now probably opt for favorite comedies, or maybe a repeat of winner like Die Hard. Only a couple of movies became repeat New Years’ choices for us. The Wells / Menzies Things to Come was a big title for a few years, when I had access to a 16mm print that didn’t look too terrible. Wells’ faulty prophecy of the future has the right ‘what if?’ speculative attitude. In three years we’ll reach the Centennial of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, which projected its Sci-fi fantasy exactly 100 years in the future. I wonder if there will be any general observation of that anniversary. Things to Come’s date of 2036 will certainly feel like a milestone for me, should I be fortunate enough to still be around twelve years from now.

The other New Year’s ‘repeater’ is probably shared by a lot of people my age and older. A very early date movie for us was Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, which of course has the ultimate New Year’s Eve finale. Wilder’s tainted fairy tale always came first in lists of ‘movies that make us feel good about people,’ especially because it insists on sweetness even when corruption reigns. Like all ‘special’ movies we’ve had to give it break — you don’t want to watch a favorite that often, for fear of breaking its spell.

I found out that a friend plans to make a big New Years’ event this year out of Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World , which sounds great too. It has the same timeless quality, even though its future 0f 1999, concocted in 1991, was obsolete by 1995. That’s not the point — the sentiment is the point. When all is said and done, Wenders’ sci-fi thriller generates Good Feelings About People as well.

Seeing how this year is winding up, perhaps a beloved comedy is what’s needed . . . OR, as we more often do now, we’ll observe New Year’s Eve by taking a break from movie entertainment, period.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

We’ll be getting back to serious disc reviewing right away — we’ve got hot prospects from most every label — but a holiday ought to be a holiday, sez I … and Gorgo concurs. It’s a time of reflection and a chance to think of how incredibly lucky we are — simple security in this world is nothing we take for granted.

So rather than waste your time — shouldn’t you be snooping for something you can eat only because it’s a holiday? — we’re just saying Hi until Saturday and wishing you the best. I’ve done a round-up of disc covers with review links, of movies that were released last year that I’m ready to pick up and see again, without hesitation.

A special thanks to — CineSavant’s contributors. The feedback and advice and suggestions are a big boost . . . along with the ‘saves’ when I get some obvious fact so incredibly wrong. Thanks very much to:

Charlie Largent, Lee Broughton, Don Adams, Malcolm Alcala, Stefan Andersson, Michael Arick, Jeremy Arnold, Matt Barry, Aitam Bar-Sagi, Dennis Bartok, Ake Bergvall, Guido Bibra, Michael Bjortvedt, Robert Blair, James Pat Block, Francesco Borseti, Thomas Betts, Rutcherd Bong, Ulrich Bruckner, Giancarlo Cairella, David Carnegie, Brendan G. Carroll, Paul Cashman, Brad Caslor, John Charles, Arrianné Ulmer Cipes, Marshall Crawford, John Crummett, Jim Danforth, Joe Dante, Chris Dejardins, Alan Dezzani, Dick Dinman, Dennis Doros, Clark Dugger, Chris Endicott, Daniel Erickson, George Feltenstein, Christa Fuller, Bob Furmanek, John G., Rob Gaczol, Stuart Galbraith IV, Jonathan Gluckman, George Godwin, Vicki Greenleaf, David Gregory, Laura Grieve, Darren Gross, Phil Hall, Ted Haycraft, Jon Paul Henry, Avie Hern, Jonathan Hertzberg, Marc Edward Heuck, Josh Hibberd, Bruce Holecheck, Chris Howard, Mike Hyatt, Owen James, ‘Jameson,’ Josh Johnson, Lee Kaplan, David Kawas, Kyu Hyun Kim, Bruce Kimmel, John Kirk, Alex Kirschenbaum, Andreas Kortmann, Nicholas Krisfalusy, Justin LaLiberty, Lynn Lascaro, Arnold Leibovit, Christopher Lemaire, JT Lindroos, Marek ___, Marjan Manafi, Mel Martin, Mike Mayo, Joseph McBride, John McElwee, Michael McQuarrie, Alan Meier, John Miller, Kris Millsap, Eddie Muller, Constantine Nasr, Gregory Nicoll, Gary Palmucci, Kit Parker, Allan Peach, Chris Poggiali, Alan K. Rode, Christopher Rywalt, David J. Schow, Bill Shepard, Richard A. Smith, Ralph Coviello, Louis Helman, Scott MacQueen, Andy Powell, Annelise Purdie, Allan Peach, Chris Poggialli, Craig Reardon, Marie Remilius, Toby Roan, Jeffrey Rosen, Matt Rovner, Michael Ryan, Gene Schiller, Michael Schlesinger, Wayne Schmidt, Bill Shaffer, Steve Sharon, Chuck Shillingford, Mike Siegel, Francesco Simeoni, Greg Skora, Richard Harland Smith, Todd Stribich, David Strohmaier, Derek Stubinski, Ed Sullivan, Gary Teetzel, Jack Theakston, Gordon A. Thomas, Mark Throop, Kayla Torres, Hernan Esteban Guerrero Troncoso, Jim Tushinski, Morris Warren, Nick Wayman, Tom Weaver, Ian Whittle, Caryl Woods, Peter A. Yacavone, Richard Yuricich, Blair Zykan . . . and of course, ‘B’.

Each disc below links to a CineSavant review. This time I’ve put the disc covers in alphabetical order, to avoid the impression of playing favorites. Of course, there are favorites . . .

Okay, I’ll get back to the people here at home, in need of my annoying presence!

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson