DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter March 2024
Why did it take so long?
One of the great mysteries of the American home video market is why several films based upon books by Alistair MacLean have never shown up on disc, even though they are readily available overseas. Bear Island and The Way to Dusty Death are enjoyable thrillers and it would seem to be a slam dunk that they would appeal to action enthusiasts in the U.S., but so far—what is the term they use these days?—crickets… But at least one MacLean title that we have been wishing for Paramount to put out on disc for more than 40 years is now finally being issued on Blu-ray by Paramount and Arrow Video, Michael Tuchner’s 1972 Fear Is the Key (UPC#760137143079, $40).
Running 100 minutes, the film has a distinctive three-act structure, and it is the first act that grabs you by your popcorn container and doesn’t let go. Barry Newman (coming off of Vanishing Point) is the protagonist, who panics in a Louisiana courtroom, shoots a cop and takes a pretty blonde courtroom observer, played by Suzy Kendall, hostage. Outside of the courtroom, he finds muscle car with keys in it, and the next quarter hour is him and her in the car, being chased by the police like in a Hal Needham movie down the back roads of Louisiana. You could forgive folks for thinking they were sitting through a Vanishing Point sequel, but that is the movie’s initial thrill. It isn’t just a quick car chase. It keeps going and going and going, with crashes and spin outs (you can have fun with some shots, counting the number of tire marks in the road from earlier takes) and everything there is to love about car chases.
And it is only after that part of the film and its apparent but exhilarating mindlessness is done that it takes up the second part, set in the mansion of the father of Kendall’s character, where Newman’s character is being held because of the skill set he possesses. This was one of MacLean’s better books, and the story twists are divvied out with a wonderful patience, drawing the viewer into each new situation before upending each assumption. The last act is set in an oilrig and an experimental underwater submersible that Newman’s character knows how to operate.
John Vernon co-stars and a very young and almost unrecognizable Ben Kingsley has a significant part. The performances are workmanlike, once in a while Tuchner doesn’t use the right camera angle (although the car chase is impeccable, and don’t miss the way that Newman’s stomach is just slightly exposed above his pants in the first moments of the film—it is a witty, deliberate choice) and some viewers may find the climax to be a bit silly and illogical. So what. By the time you get to it, the story has worked up so much good will as entertainment, it hardly matters. The film is not a masterpiece, but it is darn good fun.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. The color transfer looks good. Fleshtones are accurate and hues are reasonably bright. Darker sequences have a noticeable grain, but the image is sharp and the sunny chase sequences look terrific. There is a super Roy Budd jazz score that is well supported by the solid monophonic audio track. There are optional English subtitles, a trailer, a very nice 40-minute collection of retrospective interviews with various members of the cast and crew recalling different, detailed aspects of the production (the British crewmembers were a bit bent out of shape by the availability of real guns in Louisiana), and an excellent 17-minute deconstruction of Budd’s music in the film, particularly how it supplements the squealing wheels and so on during the chase sequence, enhancing the excitement. There is also a 30-minute interview with associate producer Gavik Losey, who shares all sorts of terrific war stories about shooting the film, working with the local Louisiana unions (everything was fine so long as someone’s kid got hired by the production) and working with the local law enforcement to stage the car chases (he claims that one cop told him not to worry if any African-Americans accidentally got run over during the shoot, they would take care of it).
If you enjoyed the movie, then definitely settle back in an easy chair and put on the wonderful 24-minute featurette from Scout Tafoya that examines the film in the context of spy thrillers and MacLean movies from the Sixties and Seventies. There are oodles of terrific film clips, looking at everything from Dr. No to Ice Station Zebra, as well as a satisfying breakdown of MacLean’s primary themes and plot devices (and how, unfortunately, so many film adaptations of his novels end with talky, uncinematic final scenes).
Finally, cult film expert Howard S. Berger supplies an absolutely loving commentary track, filling in details on the careers of the cast and crew members, but always in the context of the film’s own strengths and what they bring to it. He also deftly deconstructs the narrative and suggests that it can be seen as a metaphor for filmmaking, with Newman’s character acting as a rogue ‘director’ who is upsetting the designs that Vernon’s character is attempting to execute.
ThankYOH
Something immensely relaxing occurs when you settle back with a comedy that you have seen many, many times before. You may not laugh all that often, but you are at peace with the clowns on the screen performing their humor and you probably do pick up an innuendo or a moment that you don’t have memorized and chuckle to yourself, if not aloud. It is also advantageous when the transfer of the movie you are watching is absolutely gorgeous.
Turner Entertainment Co. and Warner Bros. have released a fantastic WB Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of the 1937 MGM Marx Bros. feature, A Day at the Races (UPC#810134949072, $22). Directed by Sam Wood and running a longish 111 minutes, the film may have been infected by MGM bloat, but at its heart, it is still as freewheeling and riotously amusing as any of the Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx collaborations. This is the one taking place in a cash-strapped sanatorium run by Maureen O’Sullivan, who brings in a veterinarian played by Groucho because he has been romancing a wealthy patient, played by steadfast Groucho foil Margaret Dumont (trying her best not to crack a smile), who may be able to keep the place afloat. Harpo is a jockey at a nearby racetrack and Allan Jones owns a horse and is in love with O’Sullivan’s character. Hence, doctor jokes (“Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.”), racetrack jokes (“Not so loud. I don't want it to get around that I haven't got a breeder's guide.”) and jokes that become ingrained as part of your own annoying repartee (“Thank you.” “ThankYOH”). Familiarity also allows you to be more patient with the musical interludes, which are impressively staged if you also like that stuff. The action climaxes with a madcap horse race.
The squared full screen black-and-white picture is sharp and spotless from beginning to end, a substantial improvement over the DVD (Jul 05). Contrasts are finely detailed and the image is so clear that you can readily make out Esther Muir’s liberated cleavage at 1:09:04. The consistency of quality is so pleasurable that it leaves a smile on your face even before Chico shares the first gag (standing next to an empty courtesy bus—“Free bus to the sanitarium. Just got room for a few more.”), and from that point forward, it is nothing but smiles and happiness not just from the comedy, but from how wonderfully and definitively the comedy has been preserved.
The monophonic sound is solid and clear, and there are optional English subtitles. The special features have been carried over from the DVD, including a trailer; a sporadic but informative commentary from Marx Bros. expert Glenn Mitchell; the MGM black-and-white Robert Benchley short, A Night at the Movies, running 10 minutes, about the frustrations of trying to watch a movie in a crowded theater; two black-and-white 8-minute MGM Captain and the Kids cartoons, Old Smokey from 1938, about an aging fire horse, and Mama’s New Hat from 1934, about a horse trying to get his hat back after the kids steal it; the classic 7-minute 1940 MGM Hanna Barbera color cartoon, Gallopin’ Gals, about racehorses who allow their femininity to interfere with the race; a 28-minute retrospective documentary; a 3-minute audio-only deleted song with Jones (set to clips and photos from the film); a 13-minute Leo Is on the Air audio-only radio promotion for the film; and a fantastic 3-minute audio-only clip that wasn’t on the DVD of Groucho singing a song about his character, Dr. Hackenbush, that was a little too much like his introductory songs in other films (but is still a great gem, all things considered, “With the possible exception of your mother, a doctor is a man’s best friend…”).
Another Damiani masterpiece
The more we see of Damaino Damiani’s films, many of which have never found their way outside of Italy before now (or at least not across the Atlantic), the more astounded we are at how good they are, despite their variety, and particularly how each and every one has an incisive political message hiding beneath the sheath of its drama. His excellent 1978 geopolitical hostage thriller, Goodbye & Amen, has been released on Blu-ray by Radiance (UPC#760137142799, $40). Tony Musante is an American CIA chief stationed in Rome whose top secret operation is compromised when someone affiliated with the embassy shoots two people from the roof of a hotel and then takes another couple hostage in one of the upper rooms. Claudia Cardinale is one of the hostages, and John Forsythe is the American Ambassador. Wolfango Soldati, Renzo Palmer and John Steiner are also featured. Carefully laced with an intelligent humor, the narrative is very clever and the film is expertly directed, combining the inherent entertainment of a suspense thriller with an enhanced political drama involving power and corruption, woven almost offhandedly with touches of romance. Everything is a deception.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, and the color transfer is terrific, with bright, fresh hues and accurate fleshtones, readily abetting the enlivened glimpses of male and female nudity. The disc has two versions to choose from, and this involves a major decision on the part of the viewer. There is a 110-minute Italian version with optional English subtitles with audio that is clear and solidly presented, and there is a 102-minute English version, which comes with a warning about its audio quality being much noisier and slightly muffled. Nevertheless, the English track not only has Musante, Cardinale and, most especially, Forsythe doing their own dialog, but there is also an important story point involving regional American accents that is lost in the Italian dub. Hence, although it is sonically inferior and a little bit shorter, we would heartily recommend the English presentation.
Editor Antonio Siciliano talks for 39 minutes in a very nice interview about his career and working with Damiani (he points out that he had to flip one shot because Damiani wasn’t paying attention to the crossover, so Musante’s mole ends up on the wrong side of his face—but nobody notices), and Soldati talks for a pleasant 24 minutes about working on the film (he doesn’t think Damiani gave him enough direction) and about how he loves seeking out the special local dishes whenever he shoots away from the studio.
Finally, Seventies film experts Nathaniel Thompson and Howard S. Berger provide a highly rewarding commentary track, discussing the careers of the cast and the crew (not by citing IMDB titles, but by waxing lyrically about their talents and personas—on Forsythe: “He is another one of these guys who I think just has integrity. He’s not one of these people who was ever in a situation to just take something for purely, cynically ‘the money.’ There had to be some other reason for it. I think he does another great layer to the morality of this film, the ethics. He just does it so perfectly here, you’re questioning why he’s doing certain things.”; and don’t miss their sweet, nostalgic and very acidic reminiscences of Bachelor Father), taking note of how the hero’s plans match those of a movie director confronting his latest project (an analogy Berger also makes in his commentary on Fear Is the Key—see page 1), and analyzing the film’s many inspired artistic components, such as Damiani’s extensive use of mirrors when characters are being duplicitous. “This can’t be a movie that is uninteresting to its creators. You really get lost in it after a while. It is a movie that bears great benefit from multiple viewings.”
Criterion does a Texas two-step in 4K
A Texas quilt wrapped around a murder mystery, John Sayles’ 1996 Lone Star is an engrossing and satisfying motion picture with an apparently unending topicality, given the border town location where it is set. Chris Cooper stars as the town’s sheriff, piecing together stories from the past after a skeleton is found in the desert with a badge and a bullet. The film is built partially with flashbacks, when the father of Cooper’s character, played by Matthew McConaughey, was a deputy at the time of the killing and Kris Kristofferson was his boss. The film also looks at the town’s Hispanic community, its much smaller black presence and the personnel at the local Army base. Elizabeth Peña is a widowed schoolteacher who knew Cooper’s character as a teenager and is open to rekindling their friendship. The film weaves all of its components together in such a way that the crime is used to dissect the town’s past and present social dynamics. Almost everything that happens can also be looked upon as representing one or another aspect of Texas itself—its history and the perspectives of its people—brought to the contradiction represented by the film’s many-tiered title, that no one person’s actions are independent of others for very long. Shot at Eagle Pass in Texas, it is the one Sayles film that we wish could have a sequel, to see how the present day border ‘crisis’ is reflected in the characters and their children (indeed, while the film’s primary plot threads are sewn together beautifully, the secondary stories are left somewhat open).
Clifton James, Ron Canada, Joe Morton and Miriam Colón costar, all with vividly realized moments and personalities, and Frances McDormand has a single weakly written and overacted scene. The way in which the characters gradually cross paths in both the backstory and the present story makes you want to dive right back into the beginning of the 135-minute film after it is over. To that end, Castle Rock Entertainment and The Criterion Collection have released the ideal way to savor the film, a two-platter 4K UHD Blu-ray (UPC#715515291316, $50). Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1, the image transfer is impeccable and finely detailed. The two-channel DTS sound has a wonderful dimensionality, clear separation effects and smoothly delivered tones. There are optional English subtitles. It seems to happen sometimes, although not disastrously in this case, but Criterion’s standard Blu-ray presentation has slightly brighter hues than the 4K presentation. The 4K image is crisper and conveys a more solid presence, but the colors look a little nicer on the standard Blu-ray, and that appeal can seep into a viewer’s response to the story. The sound on the 4K presentation has a slightly more authoritative presence. The bottom line is that either version is fully acceptable and perhaps gives the viewer an added impetus to watch the film again. Both versions look better detailed than Warner DVD we reviewed in Apr 00 (when we enjoyed McDormand much more than we did this time out). The standard Blu-ray also comes with a trailer, a very good 18-minute interview with cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh talking about Sayles and the various choices they made (and how the more complicated shots were executed), and a marvelous 38-minute interview with Sayles discussing the film’s structure, the casting (McConaughey, who has very little dialog, was still relatively unknown when Sayles grabbed him), the dynamics of individual scenes, the border, race, independent film and America, then and now.
***
McDormand has a much better written and better performed role in Joel Coen’s Texas-based 1984 Blood Simple, which has also been released in a two-platter 4K UHD Blu-ray by Criterion (UPC#715515291217, $50). Dan Hedaya is a tavern owner who has an investigator played by M. Emmet Walsh trail his wife, played by McDormand, and a bartender, played by John Getz. What follows has no concern for politics or community, just people who want to kill one another caught in a tense comedy of misunderstandings and presumptions, wonderfully lathered with a Texas flavor. We reviewed Criterion’s standard Blu-ray in Oct 16 and that is the second platter (with different platter art) included on the 4K release along with the 4K platter. Again, the 4K presentation has more subdued hues, this time markedly so, and while the 4K version is still fully entertaining and engaging, the color transfer on the standard Blu-ray, which was the version overseen by cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, has greater color detail and is more appealing when one toggles between the two of them. Since the film’s narrative hinges on constricted viewpoints, the nature of each image is vital to the subliminal appeal of the entertainment and in this instance, the greater bandwidth provided by the 4K format does not improve that dynamic. There seems to be no distinct difference in the 5.1-channel DTS sound, which has a marvelous directional mix on both presentations. Both platters have optional English subtitles. The standard Blu-ray comes with three trailers (selling the film’s suspense thrills), a 70-minute interview with Sonnenfeld and Joel and producer Ethan Coen, another 35-minute talk with the Coens and author Dave Eggers, a 25-minute interview with McDormand, a wonderful 17-minute interview with Walsh, and a 25-minute interview with composer Carter Burwell and sound editor Skip Lievsay.
Sirk nostalgia
Not a musical by any definition, Douglas Sirk’s 1952 Universal production, Has Anybody Seen My Gal, released by Universal and Kino Lorber Incorporated as a KL Studio Classics Blu-ray (UPC#738329265281, $25), is a lovely, delightful, multi-layered romantic comedy. The film is intentionally nostalgic, set in the Twenties but also looking back with longing onto the previous century. Charles Coburn is a wealthy curmudgeon who has never married. He travels to the town where he was raised with the intention of scoping out a family he wants to leave his money to—the immediate descendants of a woman, now passed away, who chose the other guy, thus sending Coburn’s character off to earn his fortune. The woman’s daughter has teenaged children of her own, and one, played by Piper Laurie, is in love with an employee in her father’s drugstore, played by Rock Hudson, although her mother is trying to nudge her in the direction of a wealthier suitor. Coburn’s character weasels his way into the household as a boarder and takes everything in. There are songs that were hits in the Twenties popping up on the soundtrack and the characters even join in to sing along now and then, but only for a few moments. Although the slang and manners of the Twenties are emphasized, the film is not Good News. It is also incomplete, as there are fragments of the setup near the end to have the characters recognize the true identity of Coburn’s character, but instead, he walks off in anonymity after solving the crisis he caused by giving them a brief taste of upper class living, leaving the film with an 89-minute running time.
William Reynolds, Lynn Bari and Gigi Perreau co-star, and be prepared to slam on the Pause button and replay the moment several times—James Dean has couple of lines in a very brief close-up. But that just certifies how magical the film truly is. Sirk would return to capturing the mood of a small New England town (and exploring similar themes) with All That Heaven Allows, but the whiffs of it that he creates on Universal’s backlot with the lovely squared, full screen Technicolor cinematography make every scene-establishing shot a transcendent moment of nostalgic longing (culminating in the film’s last act, with Christmas season decorations). Regardless of how the disc jacket has buried his name, it is Coburn’s film, and under Sirk’s guiding hand, his character’s machinations are spellbinding daydreams, reinforced by the pre-Depression, pre-War setting and what are actually penetrating ruminations upon character and fate hidden beneath the ditties and distractions of the popularized past.
The picture quality is often pristine, and at the weakest, it is a little soft now and then, although not enough to spoil the overall sense that a gemstone is in hand. The monophonic sound is fine and there are optional English subtitles, a trailer and a wonderful 33-minute intercut retrospective interview with Laurie and with Perreau from 2008 that also works out to be a very nice appreciation of the film as a whole (although they have markedly different opinions about Sirk). Before she passed away, Laurie also sat with film historian Lee Gambin (or, at least, shared the mic) for a terrific commentary track, where she goes into more detail about her problems with Sirk, reaffirms what Perreau had said in the interview about Coburn’s roving hands, and otherwise talks all about her career, her co-stars and what she recalls of the film.
The many talents of Fred Astaire
Even when Fred Astaire plays an unappealing character, that lack of appeal does not extend to his dancing, which is always divine and mesmerizing perfection. Astaire stars with Betty Hutton in a 1950 Paramount color feature, Let’s Dance, released by Paramount and Kino Lorber Incorporated as a KL Studio Classics Blu-ray (UPC#738329265649, $25). Hutton is a war widow with a young son and Astaire is her former performance partner, who has always wanted to be with her but is too self-centered and distracted by hair-brained financial schemes to secure her affections. They meet in New York after the war and he gets her a job at the nightclub where he is working. She is desperate to maintain custody of her son, much to the chagrin of the boy’s wealthy grandmother. Directed by Norman McLeod, the film runs 112 minutes and has an enjoyable supporting cast, including Barton MacLane, Roland Young, Ruth Warwick, Lucile Watson and George Zucco. Astaire’s character is irritating and you have little sympathy for him, even though he often means well and he does wise up at the end. Whenever he and Hutton do one of their numbers, however, and when he stops to ‘daydream’ an imaginary dance, you put the irritation on hold. Every movement of every muscle in his body becomes an expression of the music it is pretending to follow. There are no showy or really innovative efforts as there are in his other films—especially in the Fifties when he had to keep topping himself or retire to television—although there are certainly moves and ideas he never used before or afterward. Nevertheless, both alone and with Hutton, he has more than enough numbers to justify the film, and it isn’t just his feet or the tilt of his body. There is precision in his hands, his arms, his head and the symmetry or counterpoint he elicits from his partners, and the preservation on cinema of Astaire’s dancing is quite simply the magnificence of the utilization of the human body as an artform, rescued from the ephemera.
The full screen picture looks gorgeous. There are a couple of brief lines and speckles, but they are fleeting. Fleshtones are rich, colors are bright and some the stage numbers that have chorus dancers have carefully balanced hues, as well. The monophonic sound is fine, and there are optional English subtitles.
Although he spends a chunk of time talking about the Astaire and Ginger Rogers partnership, film historian Lee Gambin supplies a very rewarding commentary track (well, even those insights are rewarding), going over the artistry of the cast (but very little about the crew), discussing the film’s production history and placing the film in the context of film musicals in general. “The Thirties were bombarded with those wonderful, wonderful backstage musicals, which were gritty and hard films, and dealt with the artistic integrity and disillusionment of the industry itself. By the time you get to Fifties musicals, they’re very thematic based and very much about showmanship and show business, and as far as spectacle goes, they were very showy and glossy and gorgeous, especially MGM product. But Paramount and Warners and other studios really sort of shoehorned in a lot of real hard and thematic stuff that was really much about character and character displacement and struggle, and this film’s a perfect example of it.” Gambin deconstructs Astaire’s talents not just as a dancer and a deceptively relaxed singer, but as a comedian. “When you watch Fred Astaire through a lot of the films—not all, but a lot—when he stops dancing, when he’s not dancing or singing, not doing his musical numbers, he sort of falls into being a natural comic. Comedy really comes easy for him, his stature, his body, his face, the way he looks, his demeanor. Also, the way he fits as a representative of culture in filmic lands, like he represents the huckster or the charlatan or the sort of upper class clown, or the sophisticate who can get his way, and you know, suave and maneuver his way, and get the women he wants, etc., but he’s very funny, and he has a real sense of charm, and urbane sophistication that oozes this kind of hilarity.” The commentary also gives you a chance to watch Astaire without the intrusion of the dialog and music, which accentuates the totality of his physical dexterity all the more.
The play’s the thing
Kenneth Branagh’s sweet 1995 comedy about a makeshift theatrical troupe preparing a production of Hamlet in an old church outside of London for the Christmas holiday, A Midwinter’s Tale, has been released by Warner Bros. as a WB Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray (UPC#81013494-7474, $22). Michael Maloney stars as an out-of-work actor who tries to drum up some cash and pull himself out of depression by staging the show. Julia Sawalha, Richard Briers and Nicholas Farrell co-star, with Joan Collins playing the agent of Maloney’s character and Sawalha’s long-time Absolutely Fabulous costar, Jennifer Saunders, showing up in the last act for an amusing turn as a Hollywood producer. Indeed, it is the last act that delivers what the rest of the film has only been promising, both laugh aloud humor and touching emotional interactions, but it is well worth the movie’s 99 minutes to reach that point since the preparations appear to include every backstage anecdote and apocryphal story ever shared among laboring thespians. Hence, the film is a loosely gathered collection of foibles and miscues that eventually coalesce into something much greater than their parts could ever promise, and Branagh appears to have gotten so juiced by his creation that the very next film he made was Hamlet for real (Oct 07).
The picture is in black and white, like a Woody Allen film, but the effect accentuates the humor by subduing the distractions, and it has been letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.78:1, not the 1.85:1 listed on the back of the jacket. The image quality is sharp and flawless, encouraging the viewer to take the film seriously. The DTS stereo sound is generally centered, but seems to have just enough dimensionality to give the movie’s atmosphere and score an ethereal presence. There are optional English subtitles, and a trailer.
***
It is a dark and stormy night in a decaying Venetian mansion where children once died a horrible death. Michelle Yeoh, in an immensely satisfying performance, plays a psychic who is invited to the mansion to speak to the spirit of another woman who plunged to her death from her room there, perhaps tormented by the spirits of the children. Branagh, in his third outing in the part, plays Agatha Christie’s detective, Hercule Poirot, who is invited by a Christie-like author, played with wonderful precision by Tina Fey, to prove the psychic is a fraud. All of the elements, therefore, are in place for what is potentially, set on that single stormy night in which the waves outside are too dangerous for the police to come, and the phones are out, anyway (the film is set just shortly after World War II), an atmospheric delight, particularly after one of the participants in the séance is murdered, in Branagh’s 2023 A Haunting in Venice, a 20th Century Studio release (UPC# 786936896527, $30). If only Branagh were not such a mediocre director, the film would be magical, and at times it does come close. Bland as many of his visual choices are, he is at least competent enough to guide the performances and intelligent enough to understand what elements of the script are worth emphasizing. Running 103 minutes, the film is still reasonably entertaining—Christie’s reliable plotting combined with the investment that went into the production designs are sufficient to see things through to the end—but sharp witted viewers will find something nagging at their little grey cells as they drift ethereally through the events on display. A tweak here, a tuck there and a cast more on par with Yeoh and Fey, and the movie could have been even more captivating and transporting than it is.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. Much of the film is set in semi-darkness, so there is some minor smearing from time to time, but for the most part, the image is detailed enough to soak up the lovely production designs. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound has a few effective directional flourishes and sustains the stormy environment in a satisfying manner. There is an audio track that describes the action (“Lightning flashes, illuminating a girl’s figure, floating behind Rowena.”), alternate French and Spanish audio tracks and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.
Happy Easter!
Kevin Reynolds’ far-flung 1994 adventure and ecological allegory, Rapa-Nui has been released on Blu-ray by Warner Bros. as a WB Warner Archive Collection title (UPC#810134945845, $22—the hyphen does not appear on the film’s title card, but it is everywhere on the disc jacket and menu). The movie may have been a predictable financial flop, but it is an amazing piece of filmmaking and well worth the money lost, particularly now that viewers can absorb its technical proficiencies at leisure. Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and accompanied by a 5.1-channel DTS audio track with a rich bass, an enveloping dimensionality and many nice directional effects, Reynolds rather amazingly shot the film on location on Easter Island, creating a plausible story for why the island lost all of its trees but gained a collection of enormous and enigmatic stone heads. Reynolds shows how the heads were sculpted and how the trees were destroyed, utilizing a narrative that has strong similarities to Michael Powell’s The Edge of the World (Dec 23), about two men in love with the same woman living on a island of diminishing resources, and participating in a race that involves scaling a perilously high cliff to determine who sill stay and who will go. (The race is also, as we pointed out in our far less kind LD review in Mar 05, ‘an honest-to-goodness Easter egg hunt.’) Jason Scott Lee and Esai Morales star, with Sandrine Holt. Running a sensible 107 minutes, the film is a fine mixture of scientific exposition, all sorts of action, National Geographic-worthy toplessness (and not a single one of the scores of extras has a tan line) and plain old Saturday afternoon escapism. The picture is sharp and the colors are accurate, with only a sequence involving an iceberg belying ever so slightly the inclusion of special effects. The film is a thrill not just for its story, but for the fact that Reynolds actually had the gumption to make it. There are optional English subtitles and a trailer.
Arnold’s final feature
Many international co-productions depicting tales of intrigue with all-star casts came out in the Seventies, and most of them were readily disappointing, with dialog that sounded like the script had undergone too many translations on its way to the camera. The direction was usually pedestrian and no matter how much one strained oneself to enjoy the features, which always looked fantastically promising in the marketing artwork, they usually turned out too flat and too pedestrian to be worthwhile. Thus, we were substantially surprised at how much we enjoyed watching the 1976 international co-production shot in Zurich, The Swiss Conspiracy, a Film Masters and MVD Visual Special Edition (UPC#760137142256, $25). Of course, it is a rather silly film, but it stays true to what it wants to accomplish, which is something many of these features were unable to achieve.
One advantage the 88-minute film has is that it was directed by Jack Arnold (it was his final feature), a highly competent craftsman who gets the most out of every inexpensive action sequence, shuts the actors down in a scene before they run out of steam, and manages to keep the locations fresh every moment of the way. David Janssen plays a private investigator hired by a Swiss bank to bust a blackmail scheme threatening to reveal the identities of several clients. Now even though Janssen sits in the office of the president of the bank with his shirt unbuttoned halfway down to show off his chest, he has a much livelier presence than he normally does in feature films (he was one of those actors whose screen persona was far more compelling, usually, in episodic television), so that with his bronze décolletage and his absolutely wild, double-curled salt-and-pepper sideburns, you can’t take your eyes off of him. And an actress who usually melts into the furniture on the screen, Senta Berger, is ideally cast as his romantic interest, one of the blackmail victims (both characters drive Ferraris, too). Dressed in soft, elegant clothing that smoothly underscores her complexion, Berger is given just enough attention on the screen to be appealing without becoming boring. And then everywhere you look in downtown Zurich, there’s another movie star, including Ray Milland, John Saxon, John Ireland, Elke Sommer and a couple of German character actors who will look very familiar as soon as you see them. The action scenes are simple—a few car chases, a couple of gun fights, etc.—but Arnold stages them efficiently and knows how to sustain the excitement. The story has an interesting twist to it, so that if you just sit back, follow Janssen along and trust the filmmakers, you’ll have a good time and will not be let down when it is time to wrap up the narrative.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. The color transfer looks beautiful, which helps immensely when it comes to Berger’s scenes. The monophonic sound is strong and smooth. While Klaus Doldinger’s musical score is somewhat bogged down in its era, it still has a few moments that transcend the trappings of time. There are optional English subtitles, two trailers and 43 minutes of terrific appraisals of Arnold’s career, including clips from a number of films and a look at a very promising adaptation of The Lost World that was ultimately cancelled due to ill health.
Film enthusiasts Daniel R. Budnick and Rob Kelly provide a limited but entertaining commentary track, going over the film’s reasonably complicated plot, providing thumbnail profiles of the cast and Arnold, and even sharing licentious passages from the film’s novelization. For all the times they appear to have seen the film, however, they fail to pick up on an important story point that is explained right near the beginning when they claim to not understand why hitmen are trying to assassinate Janssen’s character when Saxon’s character clearly tells Janssen’s character that the hitmen will be after him and why.
Inside: Coffin Joe, Film Noir XVI, George & Tammy, Pam & Tommy and much more!
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