The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter December 2022
B&W P.I. in 3D & 4K!
In the earliest days of filmmaking, a set would have a painted backdrop in which objects that were higher were made smaller to appear as if they were further away and that the set was larger than it actually was. In the 1953 United Artists 3D detective thriller, Mickey Spillane’s I, The Jury, Spillane’s private eye hero, Mike Hammer, walks down the dark, dank, dreary hallway of a whorehouse. The hallway is tight, and you expect that any moment he’s going to reach the actual painted back of the set and the shot is going to cut away to something else, but instead, he keeps walking and walking, his nose level with the vanishing point the entire time. The 3D effects in the black-and-white film are fantastic, some of the best we have ever seen outside of the black-and-white 3D classic, Creature from the Black Lagoon (May 15). Set in New York, but shot in L.A., the hero’s office is in the Bradbury Building, and its lattice grillwork lining the hallways above its atrium are the dream location for 3D embellishment. There are almost no instances of objects being thrust at the camera, unless you count the glass of beer that gets slid down the counter in a bar. Instead, the effects all come from the set designs and the utilization of 3D itself on the people inhabiting those sets. Most 3D movies make use of multiple planes in their designs, so that there will be a foreground, a background and then something going on between them—and often the background is as flat as those old backdrops. In I, The Jury, however, everything has depth and everything has weight. The whorehouse hallway is not the only one that is tight, as the filmmakers make use, again and again, of cramped spaces to convey a palpable sense of the positions of objects and their relationships to one another, in fine detail (our favorite moment—a bottle that jiggles as we see a shot from the back of a shoeshine stand as the hero’s shoes are being polished; in another shot, the string from a light keeps swinging after a character tugs on it to turn the light on). For someone who takes delight in the application of 3D effects in motion pictures, every shot in the 88-minute feature is a thrill and a joy.
StudioCanal and Classic Flix have released the film in a two-platter Blu-ray set (UPC#851968007835, $50), one platter containing both a standard 2D presentation of the film and the 3D presentation, and the second platter offering up the 2D presentation again, in 4K. Written and directed by Harry Essex, however, the film itself is terrible. The only direction the actors appear to have received is that they were cast. And worst of all is Biff Elliot, who plays the hero. The one possible explanation for his awful performance is that he is very young, so that he is playing Hammer as a young man, still trying work out how to project a tough guy image and indeed, still trying to learn how to be a tough guy. Preston Foster, Peggy Castle, Alan Reed, Elisha Cook Jr. and Margaret Sheridan co-star.
The film is actually a Christmas movie, with holiday-themed title cards introducing new locations (the yuletide set decorations also make for more 3D delights). In the opening scene, an army buddy is murdered after attending a party, and the plot has Elliot’s character, at the urging of the police, visiting the other party attendees to ferret out the killer. The killer is spotable, but there really isn’t much of a mystery, as each suspect, in turn, becomes another victim, and the hero gets beaten a couple of times (including one cringe-inducing scene where a villain continually kicks him in the shins as he is held down by other thugs) as he works his way through the conspiracy. The film has metaphor—as the hero breaks down a woman’s alibi, she is simultaneously doing a striptease—and John Alton’s expert cinematography serves the film in 2D as well as it serves it in 3D. There is even a terrific musical score be Franz Waxman. But the movie’s dramatic and emotional artifice fails its technical dexterity. Stodgy, confused and continually abrupt (we’re still not entirely sure if the crime inspiring the murders involved jewelry theft, drugs, prostitution, or all three), it comes across as rather dopey, like Elliot trying to be something that he’s not, and it gives the many movies that have used the tools of the film noir and detective genres to achieve great and memorable motion picture legacies a bum rap.
The full screen image transfer is spotless, and in 4K, thanks also to Alton, the presentation is almost as engaging as it is in 3D. The production is cheap and spare, but the images are always precise and are often intriguing. Compared to the 2D presentation on the other platter, the cinematography and even the narrative are more arresting. The monophonic is sound is crisp and clear, and there are optional English subtitles.
Three half-hour Fifties TV episodes showcase three of the film’s stars. One episode of The O. Henry Playhouse (an anthology series from 1957, Thomas Mitchell portrays Henry in the bookending segments, ‘telling’ the story to an acquaintance, as if it were a true tale) running 27 minutes, Between Rounds, stars Foster as a street sweeper who tells a neighbor boy in his apartment building about his time in the cavalry out West, until the boy’s stepfather challenges the veracity of the tales. It is a nice turn from Foster, sporting an Irish accent. Kathleen Freeman co-stars. In another episode from the O. Henry series, After Twenty Years, Jim Davis is a fortune seeker who travels to the Old West to earn money through a mix of legal and illegal ventures, and Castle plays the dance hall girl who eventually becomes his wife. Running 26 minutes, the episode is more invigorating than the Foster episode and is a satisfying mix of drama and action. Elliot has a secondary role as a cop who coaches young boxers in the 1954 episode from Public Defender, a social drama series starring Reed Hadley, who actually helps the younger brother of a cop killer turn on his brother in the witness stand, even though his client is the killer. Elliot is much better cast in the part than he is in the feature, and comports himself effectively. Bobby Ellis, Phillip Pine and Ruth Lee co-star in the piece, which is reasonably entertaining if you don’t hold it too closely to reality.
Disc producer Max Allan Collins introduces a 29-minute pilot episode for a 1954 Mike Hammer TV series, created by Blake Edwards and starring Brian Keith (Virginia Lee costars in the episode). Although the series never aired (CBS bigwigs got nervous associating with Spillane), the pilot is terrific and was included previously in the DVD box set, Max Allan Collins Black Box Shades of Neo-Noir, that we reviewed in Feb 06.
Also featured is an excellent 11-minute explanation of why the 3D effects in the film are so good (Alton had a lot to do with it), a nice 5-minute interview with the elderly Elliot reminiscing about how he chose to approach the role, and a riveting 4-minute a clip from another O. Henry episode, a western starring Ernest Borgnine.
Finally, there are two other audio tracks on the film, which appear on both the 4K platter and the 3D/2D platter. In the first, Elliot is interviewed as the film unfolds and shares innumerable details about the shoot, the nature of his performance and the people he worked with. He runs out of steam a little bit in the final act, but for the most part his reminiscences are very rewarding.
In the second talk, Collins goes over the history of the film and shares what he learned from working with Spillane on several projects at the end of Spillane’s career (he accurately describes Spillane as the Stephen King of his day). He defends Elliot’s performance, explains some of the ambiguities in the plot, talks about Spillane’s dissatisfaction with producer Victor Saville, and points out how much the story was shafted by the Production Code. “[The Production Code] turned the plot into kind of gibberish. So we have to enjoy this movie by reading between the lines, forgiving it for the moments that the Production Code interferes, and just have a good time with the incredible cinematography that John Alton comes up with.”
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The polarization 3D method that requires a special BD player and a special TV screen delivers the absolute best 3D effects, to be sure, but for a black-and-white film, the old fashioned red/blue shift method, while not quite as smooth or as crisp, delivers perfectly decent 3D effects without the compromises that would be present in a color film. Thus, we were very excited to see 3-D Film Archive, MGM and Kino Lorber Incorporated release the 1954 black-and-white United Artists British crime film, The Diamond Wizard as a KL Studio Classics Blu-ray (UPC#738329261023, $30) incorporating both options. Three versions of the film are actually available on the disc, although because of the confusing menu, the 2D version must be accessed by first selecting the ‘Polarized’ option and not the red/blue option. Kino has also included a single pair of red/blue glasses with the disc.
The film is a procedural, with a slight touch of sci-fi to create its spectacular finale. The story is about an American agent teaming up with a British police detective in London to track down a group of diamond counterfeiters (they are using a huge, fire breathing machine to create their diamonds, which is the 3D-friendly sci-fi element that goes out with a bang at the end). As was often the manner in Fifties crime films, the heroes employ the latest methods and technologies to interpret their clues and track down their suspects. The daughter of a missing professor provides some romantic rivalry between the two heroes, although there is also a sharp-witted and ultra-efficient Scotland Yard female assistant who would be a better catch for whichever guy doesn’t get the professor’s daughter. Despite these spare elements of emotional content, however, the 83-minute film is first and foremost a narrative of process, and despite its appealing attention to detail, it would make for a rather dry entertainment were it not for the 3D effects. Instead, there is plenty of narrative to carry the viewer from one delightful effect to the next. Next to nothing lunges at the camera. Instead, there are terrific 3D views of London locations, bizarre police equipment, objects continually placed in the foreground to create delightful perspectives, and an always invigorating sense of depth that adds to the joy of every shot.
Director Dennis O’Keefe stars in the film, with Philip Friend and Margaret Sheridan. Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1, the polarized version is crisp and smooth throughout, as is the 2D version. The red/blue version is a little softer, but still looks great. The monophonic sound is solid and clear, and there are optional English subtitles, a trailer, a 3-minute demonstration of the cleanup the film had to undergo, a 2-minute alternate opening title sequence (the film presented on the disc is entitled The Diamond, because it never had a theatrical 3D release and its title card wasn’t finalized), and a good 12-minute history of 3D production in Britain (misguidingly listed as a ‘commentary’ on the menu) that looks at the unique camera setup developed to shoot the movie and why some of its 3D effects are so impressive.
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