Hello!

Are you a fan of John Parker’s 1953 avant-garde horror pic Dementia? A singer-songwriter by the name of K. Edward Smith has put together a new score for the show, and is offering it online with the movie or as a separate soundtrack recording.

We’ve only heard a few sample cues from the new music tracks. The info on Smith and his re-scoring of the classic movie is at this Right Brain link; I’ve also been given a link to a page for the score sans video: Dementia: The Complete Film Score.

Interesting ambition, that. I’d say that the original George Antheil score isn’t begging for replacement, but an experiment is an experiment. You know, like Philip Glass and his buzz-hum music score revision for the original Dracula.

The ever-observant Joe Dante has been circulating this YouTube link, a curious bit of cultural appropriation entitled The Exquisite Gucci Campaign. The budget for this must have been astronomical, the imagination required not quite as impressive.

Yes, this was no ordinary fashion video shoot. The underlying message seems to be ‘we’re Gucci trendsetters and you’re not; we can do any frivolous thing our hearts desire and call it culturally significant.”  That negative evaluation is probably uncalled for. The images are indeed arresting.

Ever had the thought of recreating an environment from a movie?  There was a marvelous effects man by the name Tom Scherman, who with his brother completely transformed his apartment so that it evoked the iron + rivets interior of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus from the Disney film. On a less extreme level, my son recently told me about a friend who decorated his basement rec room to resemble the David Lynch Doom Room in ‘The Lodge,’ complete with scarlet drapes, zigzag carpeting and an odd statue or two. More power to the guy.

Is the detailed recreation of movie memories going to be a ‘thing’ as the movies themselves fade into some passé netherworld?  I confess to having similar daydreams — were I a Sultan with unlimited discretionary fun money, I’d eagerly commission a landscaped property where the backyard view would be a full-scale recreation of The Sand Pit Hill from Invaders from Mars. It would face the rising sun, of course, with trees painted black and grass painted yellow. You know, just to unnerve houseguests.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Here are the facts for what’s shaping up as a major 3-D November, with two major 3-D Blu-ray releases in just two weeks’ time.

First up, on November 8 comes the hard-to-see 1953 I, The Jury, the first Mike Hammer thriller. It stars Biff Elliot and Peggie Castle and was photographed in original organic 3-D by the legendary John Alton.

ClassicFlix is the diskery of note for the release; it’s a 4K Ultra HD / Polarized 3-D Blu-ray / flat 2-D Blu-ray combo, the first I’ve run into. The restoration was performed by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

As reported by ClassicFlix, the extras include a commentary by Mike Hammer continuation author Max Allan Collins, a second commentary and video interview by star Biff Elliot, a making-of featurette and several vintage TV shows.

Then, one week later on November 15 comes the 1954 English film The Diamond Wizard, a ‘T-Men’-like international heist yarn starring Dennis O’Keefe and Margaret Sheridan.

The company behind this release is KL Studio Classics; it will be viewable in Polarized 3-D Blu-ray / flat 2-D Blu-ray / and in Anaglyphic 3-D. A a pair of red/cyan 3-D glasses come in the disc case.

Restored for 3-D by the 3-D Film Archive, The Diamond Wizard is the Archive’s third ‘3-D Premiere’ — as with Dragonfly Squadron and Jivaro, this English show was produced in 3-D but only released in flat 2-D.

Mike Ballew will provide an audio commentary and a 3-D slideshow.

I’ve often seen The Diamond Wizard listed as a Science Fiction film, but have been told that its only fantastic element is the notion of artificial diamonds. We haven’t seen either feature, unlike associate Gary Teetzel, who knows them well. We’re eager to see what the noir ace cameraman John Alton does with the 3-D depth-space.

A few weeks back we reviewed Severin Films’ Blu-ray collection The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler, actually covering only one disc in the set. At that time weren’t aware that deliveries of the boxed set weren’t yet happening. Yesterday Severin reported that the boxes have, quote, “finally arrived in finished form. We will now begin shipping them out and expect the process to take a couple weeks.”

Curious?  It is possible to get a good preview of the lineup of Steckler magic, in this Severin Ray Dennis Steckler Collection trailer.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

It’s the Battle of the 4K Martians!

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We at CineSavant love strange coincidences, alignments, cosmic serendipities … but only when they fit our preconceived notions, of course.

Way back in 1953 two competing movies about invasions from outer space were released, Paramount’s relatively lavish The War of the Worlds in Technicolor, and an exotic independent released through 20th Fox, Invaders from Mars, with original prints struck in the strange SuperCineColor process.

The most exciting Sci-Fi news of Fall 2022 is that 4K Ultra HD discs of both of these very different imagination spectaculars are going to be released on the very same day, September 27. That’s — gulp — two weeks from today. If this paragraph is weak on syntax, maybe it’s because I’m running down to the mailbox every twenty minutes to, you know, just check. No, I’m not doing that, but the 9-year old inside me is beginning to think that way.

The films really don’t compete with each other. Both were unique efforts in the first wave of the ’50s Sci-fi boom. George Pal’s big-scale interplanetary onslaught featured special effects that weren’t bettered for twenty years, and alien designs that still amaze, even if my young daughter kidded me about the ‘desk lamp’ Martian fighting machines. William Cameron Menzies’ visual wonderment was the focus of a million weird dreams for kids just a couple of years older than myself. The bizarre visual imagination on view burrows deep into the adult psyche as well.

We’re looking forward to both disc releases and formulating a strategy to review them with amazing new insights never read before good and fair coverage with a fresh angle or two. War of the Worlds 4K is being packaged with George Pal’s 1951 When Worlds Collide, in its first U.S. Blu-ray release. I’ll need to close my windows in consideration of the neighbors — Martian invasions work best when played LOUD.

I’ve been corrected: Invaders from Mars 4K, Blu-ray and DVD hits on September 26, not 27. So technically speaking, it will beat The War of the Worlds by one day. I believe it hit theaters first as well, back in 1953.

And here’s an unknown quantity that I’ll be checking out very soon: U.K.’s Powerhouse Indicator sent along their September 20 release
Orders to Kill. The 1958 thriller is directed by Anthony Asquith and stars Eddie Albert, Paul Massie and Lillian Gish. The credits list the notable Paul Dehn, the writer strongly associated with Seven Days to Noon and Goldfinger.

It’s described as a wartime espionage story, which is a Dehn specialty. Let’s hope it’s something special. I haven’t seen it but I did put the disc in a domestic player — and it’s Region-Free.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

The weather is keeping us guessing here in Los Angeles: today’s overcast heat and humidity are more like tropical South America than sunny, desert-adjacent Southern California. That’s part of our excuse for an abbreviated column today — the Sidney Falco item hopper is almost empty, and we haven’t the energy to even fake anything.

A few weeks back, helpful Malcolm Ayala came through with some odd behind-the-scenes shots from a certain Japanese science fiction film. I wasn’t sure how to use them.

The critter on view is a Mysterian robot, whose name keeps getting re-spelled in English. I knew him as Moguera. He’s a fanciful robotic Godzilla — Toho’s series producer knew that every fantasy needed at least one ‘monster.’ Although the shots showing him digging were cut from American prints, we found out later that Moguera robots did the Mysterians’ tunnelling work. His design makes little practical sense, but a kid might associate his torso with tractor treads, his nose as a drill, and his back as a buzzsaw. We just thought he looked like a metallic samurai.

Where were the tie-in Moguera toys, Toho?  At age 7, this guy was actually scary on a big screen.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

I was pleased to see that Fun City Editions is bringing out its own special edition of Jonathan Demme’s Married to the Mob — it’s a favorite show and I’ve never had the opportunity to review it.

The new Blu-ray restoration is Region A, and the extras will include interviews with Matthew Modine and Mercedes Ruehl, plus the writers, along with other features.

Things are quiet in Los Angeles, after the hottest weekend in years, after many months of drought. The top temp here reached 105 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, and it was likely 10 degrees higher out in the San Fernando Valley, where the thermometer is often a match for what’s happening in the Mojave Desert.

Without having a relevant disc-related news bite, we retreat to movies that remind us of our weather. Weather systems have become so scrambled across the globe that we wonder if the tilt of the Earth has shifted — should I be buying balmy beach property in Alaska?

We asked the enticing-perspiring Janet Munro for her movie preferences this weekend, and all she said is she wants out of The Day the Earth Caught Fire.

But we have a rule at CineSavant Central — when concerned about COVID, we watch Contagion. When it’s hot, we go for movies where the sky is on fire. It’s kind of a reverse-denial psychology: worrying about something fantastic numbs the brain’s reality receptors.

See you next Saturday! — Glenn Erickson