Hello!

Trying to find some information about the best way for Canadians to order U.S. discs, I got a number of helpful suggestions from north-of-the-parallel correspondents. The problem one reader had was mainly with the Warner Archive Collection — Amazon.ca simply doesn’t list all of them, or are understocked. He encountered downside issues ordering from Amazon.com U.S., with an unfavorable exchange rate, etc..

Several responses came back right away — unfortunately I didn’t mention Warner Archive discs very prominently, so I only got limited help on that one. The helpful readers that wrote in are Joel McCaull, Verel McElravy, Bryan Barrow, John Prins and Nigel Jahrles. Actually, some of what they said contradicted the experience of my concerned reader:

“Unobstructed View became Criterion’s Canadian distributor a few years ago and now we can get our own version of the Barnes & Noble sales. They also distribute Kino, Arrow and many more. I highly recommend them.”

“I’ve ordered 20+ times in 2021 from Amazon.com U.S. and have found the exchange rate to be fair & the delivery service very fine, if sometimes slow; Amazon’s tracking feature often even works for Canada which is a plus. Another possibility is ordering directly from Kino Lorber which I do quite a bit; they’ve got a lot of good movies at fair prices & right now they’re having a sale.”

“The source I use is Unobstructed View out of Toronto. Their prices are better than Amazon.ca, and they are official distributors for Criterion, Kino Lorber, Arrow, and many others. They have frequent sales, including sales that mirror the official Criterion sales. They even have free shipping for larger orders. Titles I can’t find at Unobstructed View, usually Warner Archive titles, I usually order from the TCM site.”

“My number one tip: open up the sidebar in amazon.ca marked ‘new from,’ and if importcds shows as a third-party vendor, use them. No more than 2 wks. delivery time, and only a $3.49 CAD shipping charge.”

“Unobstructed View are the official Canadian distributor for most of the boutique labels. They also run sales to match the ones happening elsewhere for Criterion & Arrow, which means you can expect at least 4 sales events for each label per year.”

I’m assuming that these are all legit responses, and not from ringers . . . although I’d never know the difference. I guess this ends up looking like an ad for Unobstructed View and “importcds” . . . which I looked at and definitely saw Warner Archive discs for sale. That said, I’ve never personally checked out these sites and cannot personally vouch for them. So chalk this up as more iffy journalistic ‘recommendations’ from CineSavant . . . I hope my reader solves his problem.

Now to catch up on some quality, undemanding reading: correspondent Lino Benvenuto passed on a link to The Chiseler, a site with a selection of good articles about older movies. The Chiseler prides itself for writing about, quote: Forgotten Authors, Neglected Stars, and Lost Languages Rediscovered.

The present page has articles I ought to read to broaden my mind. I gravitated toward some brief, thoughtful pieces on Spanish filmmaker Segundo de Chomón by David Cairns, silent movie actress Florence Turner by Imogen Sara Smith and some Depression-era William Wellman movies, by Daniel Riccuito.

I knew it would be fixed, somewhere: 11 years ago at ‘DVD Savant’ we reviewed the Warner Archive Collection DVD of Operation Daybreak, and were fairly certain that an entire subtitle track had been left off the disc. Operation Daybreak is an excellent account of the assassination of ‘The Hangman’ Reinhard Heydrich, the Reichsprotektor of Prague and the architect of the Holocaust’s Final Solution. It stars Timothy Bottoms, and as Heydrich, the dependably villainous Anton Diffring.

In the movie, the Czech dialogue is spoken in English, and the German dialogue in subtitled German … but the subtitles were left off the WAC’s 2010 DVD. A couple days back Turner Classic Movies cablecast Operation Daybreak, with subs intact. I now know what’s being spoken in scores of important scenes.

One plus for the Made-On-Demand production plan is that there is no huge standing inventory of product for every title made. I’ve seen the WAC quietly correct understandable ‘mistakes,’ even going so far as to restore a censored shot to the horror film The Cyclops.

So only one question remains: was this flaw ever corrected in the Warner Archive DVD?  I never followed up. Has any CineSavant reader purchased a newer WAC copy of Operation Daybreak?  Does it carry restored English subtitles for the German dialogue?

As a postscript, TCM also showed a restored, wonderfully pristine print of Francis Coppola’s You’re a Big Boy Now last Saturday Night … a real treat. Catch it if you can next time it’s up.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

It looks like the dependable UK disc folk at Powerhouse Indicator will be filling a huge gap in horror film history next March, with Blu-ray discs of two legendary Mexican horror films: Ramón Peon’s La Llorona and Fernando de Fuentes’ El fantasma del convento, both 1933. They’re said to be highly atmospheric — with the Catholic culture weighing heavily on them — and only slightly influenced by American horror. Can’t wait to see PI’s extras.

You’d think that the tale of ‘La Llorona’ would be better known, as it’s also the ghost-story used in a murder plot in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. These two will be very welcome; a couple of years ago Criterion gave us a restored Dos monjes, a spooky love-murder-romance tale that also involves a monastery.

Also from PI for March is Budd Boetticher’s final western A Time for Dying, an oater without big stars. Victor Jory and Audie Murphy each have small roles, as Judge Roy Bean and Jesse James. It’s a tiny production and may be just for completists . . . but we know western fans that have been waiting forever to see it properly restored.

This next item is in answer to a request from a Canadian reader who often finds it difficult to order Blu-rays and DVDs — he reports that Amazon.ca is almost always understocked, and that Amazon.us gives him an unfavorable exchange rate and iffy shipping. If any CineSavant readers to the North care to send in links to reasonable alternative online sources or workarounds, we’d like to know so I can pass them on and mention them here.

Years ago I read the wailings of Australian disc collectors, whose problems obtaining product sounded pretty terrible. Perhaps they found a solution or two over time?  The fact is that we here in the U.S. are pretty spoiled — when I’ve ordered from the U.K., France, Italy and Germany I’ve always gotten good prices and delivery in less than a month.

And a mini- Book Review:   Correspondent Ted Haycraft asked me to take a look at author DeWayne Todd’s
The Buckaroo Banzai Collectors’ Compendium and I’m happy to give it a plug/mini review here. The softbound book carries the sub-title “A Marketing and Promotional Odyssey,” and that’s exactly what it is, sort of a giant scrapbook, collector’s corner and arcane trivia depository for one of the more tenacious cult features of the 1980s. Buckaroo Banzai is a convoluted filmic adventure about the heroic Buckaroo and his Hong Kong Cavaliers, a tight-knit group of dandified specialists and men-of-action that travel the world righting wrongs, in the old Republic Serial sense. My Blu-ray review is here.

Todd’s text wanders afield explaining the appeal of various characters and the one-film franchise as a whole, as expressed through marketing material and ephemera. Collector-level detail is the book’s main draw: it documents just about every iteration of ads, premiere heralds, distributor’s pressbooks and posters for territories both domestic and foreign. Author Todd includes rare items, such as prototype toys that were never (I think) mass produced, etc.

And we’re also taken on a full trip through the film’s home video history, beginning with VHS tapes and CED video discs. The writing style is friendly; it’s the kind of book that one reads the opening chapters to understand the format, and then drops in whenever something grabs one’s attention, which is like every third page. A couple of comic book adaptations are present. There’s even full coverage of fanzines based on the Banzai cult, lobbying for the launch of a sequel, or a reboot.

The book is 152 pages including a bibliography; quite a few pages are in color. The cover illustration is by Mark Maddox.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

No, your favorite terrifying virus is not being made into a new motion picture — this show came out almost sixty years ago. The Italian social satire Omicron (1963, Ugo Gregoretti) is about a space alien that possesses an Italian factory worker (Renato Salvatori). If you’ve heard the movie mentioned at all, it’s possibly because it was one of several titles up for awards at the ’63 Trieste Sci-Fi film festival, where X-The Man With the X-Ray Eyes, Ikarie XB 1 and the Russian Amphibian Man were in competition. It’s on YouTube, but not with subtitles.

I thought of the old movie not just to drop a stack of movie titles, but because it reminded me of something. Our worldwide Pandemic, about to go into its third devastating year, continues for several dismal reasons.

When I heard the name ‘Omicron’ I thought, at least that name sounds like something potentially sinister, something to be afraid of.  It’s just a Greek letter, but in movie terms it reminds me of a name that a ’60s spy movie might give to an Evil Computer that wants to take over the world.   Who is disturbed by the name ‘Delta Virus?’  If the military can give mobilizations and missions politically-spun names like ‘Operation Freedom,’ why can’t we apply some better PR to this Pandemic?

Remember this name, for a nasty monster that eats little girls back in 1981’s Dragonslayer?:

“Vermithrax Pejorative.”

The stack of syllables in ‘Vermithrax Pejorative’ sounds utterly loathsome in itself, even when we have no idea what it means. That’s what’s needed, something to make one’s skin crawl. Anybody have any good ideas for a shiver-inducing name for the next killer mutation?  The Satan Bug and The Andromeda Strain had their day, but we need something that will have every citizen rushing to get ‘the jab.’  C’mon, step up and play good propagandists for world health and stability.

This second link is easy, it’s simply the Milestone Newsletter for December. Those people work up this page every month, and it always has interesting links, not just plugs for their product. Charlie Largent is working on a review for the Milestone/Kino disc of The Mystery of Picasso that I can’t wait to read — the 1955 non-fiction film is by director H.G. Clouzot, who simply records the artist painting in impressively creative ways. For part of the time he paints on glass, and we watch the act of creation from a vantage point where we see everything. And part way through the film, Clouzot’s films changes aspect ratios, to CinemaScope. I hope that this new remaster finds the right way to translate that to Blu-ray.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Whoa!

This grabs my attention: the hot item in my radar at this particular instant. Lovers of great screen horror will want to know about Arrow’s special edition of Giorgio Ferroni’s Mill of the Stone Women, which is my idea of a highly desirable possession.

I’ll be reviewing it right away but wanted to get this notice out today, just in case shipments from afar will take longer than usual this December. Scilla Gabel leads a great cast in a show that looks a genuine classic in this pristine, uncut presentation, in superb color, in several languages. Even the artwork is gorgeous — Nuff said!

For seventeen years I did a complicated ‘best of’ yearly article that more or less proved nothing … my top ten rounded off to a top twenty – plus. It was a week’s work, and it probably irked the vendors when my favorite for the year was some obscure item. So for the past few seasons I’ve been doing this instead.

Here’s my roundup of the top titles that stirred CineSavant’s inner juices this year, more or less in order of review. It’s just a hindsight shakedown of the discs I’d grab first if CineSavant headquarters were to be overrun by a zombie horde, or unwanted holiday visitors. Each ought to be a functioning link to the original review-essay.

Thanks for reading!