The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter January 2024
Tragedy and comedy
When Peter Bogdanovich made The Last Picture Show for Columbia Pictures in 1971, he was depicting a recent transition that many small towns, first in America and then all over the world, underwent as television brought a common culture and community everywhere, inadvertently stifling whatever individual cultural outlets those communities had. As the years have passed, however, and that transition has begun to look simply like one of many that occur from one generation to the next, what has endured in his remarkable film is the blunt honest truth that there is not only no privacy in a small town, there are not enough romantic choices for everyone, a problem that leads to almost everyone being unable to achieve an emotional equilibrium for their lives. The drinking doesn’t help, but it is the starkness of the limited choices in partners that will continue regardless of what century it is, or what new technology or industry passes through. That starkness was, famously, amplified by the Robert Surtees’ black-and-white cinematography, and now that cinematography is being delivered by Sony Entertainment and The Criterion Collection as a three-platter 4K Blu-ray (UPC#715515289313, $60).
Criterion released The Last Picture Show previously on Blu-ray as part of the America Lost and Found The BBS Story collection (Jan 11) and it was a welcome improvement over earlier releases of the film. Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, the BD, which is replicated on the second platter, looks terrific and amplified the film’s already compelling artistry. In addition to making things sharper, what the 4K presentation brings to the fore are the film’s people. We once had a conversation on an airplane with a gentleman who lamented the passing of black-and-white films, because he claimed that color movies looked ‘less natural.’ We pointed out the obvious contradiction in his statement and he laughed, because what he was really lamenting was the nostalgia for youth in a maturing artform. Black and white is less natural than color, but it focuses a viewer’s attention on how light reflects upon a human face. The greater detail in the 4K presentation brings more life to the performers and their characters. You lose yourself in their emotions, in their psychologies, in their guilts and in their exuberations. Based upon a novel by Larry McMurtry, who collaborated closely on the script with Bogdanovich, Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ellen Burstyn, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson star (the latter two won Supporting Oscars), playing the frustrated characters in a near-empty Texas town in the early Fifties (over the course of a year), who follow impulses and desires, relationship experimentations and the comforting or numbing repetitions of routine. On the standard Blu-ray, you are dazzled by the technological replication of the original filmmaking, but on the 4K presentation, you are completely absorbed by it. The characters become real, and you know the inner feelings and impulses of each one. The film is brought to life.
This is the ‘Director’s Cut’ version, running 126 minutes. The theatrical version, which was trimmed to accommodate theater screen availabilities, has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray. The crisp monophonic sound is terrific on both presentations, providing a showcase for the many wonderful country-western tunes (mostly Hank Williams, but not entirely) that fill the movie’s background as indelibly as the grey sky. There are optional English subtitles. Two commentary tracks, one featuring just Bogdanovich that he made for a DVD release and one with Bogdanovich and other members of the cast and crew that Criterion originally recorded for LD, have been carried over to both platters. The standard BD platter also has the special features that appeared in the BBS release, an excellent 42-minute retrospective documentary made by George Hickenlooper, another terrific 65-minute retrospective piece, a 13-minute interview with Bogdanovich, a 5-minute appreciation of the film by François Truffaut, 6 minutes of silent location footage, 2 minutes of silent screen tests accompanied by a Williams song, and a two trailers.
One of the impressions you get from the supplements on Last Picture Show is that Bogdanovich never did as much prep work and never tried as hard with any other film that he made as he did with that one. As his career advanced he developed a special flair for comedies, but became rather tone deaf in determining what could work as a film and what couldn’t. Last Picture Show has moments of rich humor (and Burstyn is particularly funny as all get out), but it is a true dramatic tragedy. It was Steve Allen, apparently, who coined the expression, ‘Tragedy plus time equals comedy.’ McMurtry followed that formula when he wrote a his comical sequel, exploring the lives of the surviving characters 30 years later, and Bogdanovich brought everyone (except McMurtry—this time Bogdanovich wrote the screenplay by himself) back together to make the 1990 sequel, Texasville, two versions of which are presented on the third platter, a standard Blu-ray.
The problem is that Last Picture Show isn’t just another drama. It is an exceptional and even profound work of cinematic art. The theatrical version of Texasville, with its overabundance of shades of blue and its untethered farcical narrative, seems almost sacrilegious in comparison. Running 126 minutes and set in the same but somewhat modernized locale in the early Eighties, the film is centered on Bridges’ character, by now a successful oilman whose business is tanking because oil prices are tanking and whose home is filled with a gaggle of sons, daughters, their spouses and their children, as well as his own wife, played by Annie Potts in the one major new role. Leachman’s character is now his secretary. Bottoms’ character is running a small store and is the town’s mayor, but he is starting to have cognitive difficulties and while it is never brought up directly, there is an implication that the problems stem from the fight his character had with Bridges’ character in the first film. Shepherd’s character is an actress who has returned from living in Rome after a personal tragedy, and essentially adopts the family of Bridges’ character (although told through the eyes of Bridges’ character, the film is actually about Shepherd’s character coming to terms with her heartache). Quaid is the president of the local bank, which is also in trouble because of the oil prices. Burstyn, sadly, did not return and, of course, Johnson isn’t there, either. Not only does the movie feel like a blatant attempt to cash in on a film general audiences would not remember in the first place, nothing significant really happens in it. Thanks to McMurtry’s sensibilities, the characters never act in an expected manner—Shepherd and Bridges’ characters, for example, do not rekindle their old romance—but, redeemed only by Bogdanovich’s touch for comedy (there is a shot of Bridges holding a pickle at the bottom of the screen that is hysterical), the film gives you nothing to hold onto yourself and it just seems like an aimless mess.
Ah, but this was not really the version Bogdanovich wanted to present, and so there is a second version on the platter, running 150 minutes and in black and white, a Director’s Cut. We reviewed Bogdanovich’s black-and-white rendition of another major flop, Nickelodeon, in May 09 and found it to be particularly disappointing, since the film’s lovely color cinematography was one of its strongest assets. Fortunately, that is not the case with Texasville. As calming as they are, getting rid of all those blues does the film a world of good. It is not a perfect transition, as faces, especially in the first half of the film, can look washed out or just strange because they haven’t really been lit for black and white, but the process tones down the distractions and lets you concentrate more on the characters. The added footage also lets the story breathe a little more, so you get to know the characters and their relationships better and can better savor the ups and downs they go through. It also allows Bogdanovich’s humor, which grows on you anyway as the film progresses, some more wiggle room (the pickle shot is even funnier in black and white, too). The film is not entirely successful since there is still a sense of a mood being destroyed by putting it on directly after Last Picture Show. Anchored to the laconic befuddlement with life that Bridges’ character is experiencing, however, it is another exploration of how lives in small towns are compromised by their limited choices, made in some ways better and some ways worse by the unbound amplification that information technology has brought to their world.
On both versions, the sound is centered and is reasonably strong, making it worthwhile to raise the volume and catch all of the songs that are playing on the radio in the background, one of the ways in which the movie does play off of Last Picture Show effectively. Produced by Nelson Entertainment and Columbia Pictures but now part of MGM’s library made available to Criterion, both presentations have optional English subtitles and both are letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. The black and white has occasional smearing, but the color tends to smear even more, although otherwise hues are fresh and fleshtones are accurate. There is a 4-minute introduction of sorts to the film and a trailer. Hickenlooper’s outstanding documentary about Last Picture Show was shot on location during the making of Texasville, and the program’s final 16 minutes, which were not included in the Last Picture Show segment, are about Texasville and is included on the Texasville platter. It is an amazing segment, too, delving into everything from the irritation the locals were feeling about Hollywood invading their space to Bogdanovich’s personal and career problems (and McMurtry proposing another sequel).
Two Conformists
Once in a while more than one version of a movie will be released on a DVD or Blu-ray. Sometimes it is a ‘Director’s Cut’ or alternate release version, sometimes it is a TV version with a different aspect ratio and sometimes it is a version in a different presentation format, such as a 3D version or the inclusion of both a DVD and a Blu-ray in one set. We have never before encountered a release, however, like Raro Video’s new two-platter Blu-ray presentation of The Conformist, identified as a New 4K Restoration (UPC#738329264635, $35). One platter contains the Blu-ray presentation of the Bernardo Bertolucci 1970 cinematic masterpiece that Raro already released and that we reviewed in Jan 15. It is the identical platter, with the same artwork and menu design, and the same transfer. Contrary to what one might misconstrue from the jacket identification, the other platter is not a 4K platter but another standard Blu-ray platter with an upgraded transfer. That said, the upgraded transfer is outstanding and a significant improvement in many ways over the previous release, but except for the excellent 57-minute retrospective documentary that is only available on the older version (along with the film’s original American trailer and a 2013 re-release trailer), what possible reason does Raro have for including the platter? Did they just have so many lying around that they decided to throw one in?
Well, no matter. The important thing is that the new image transfer is outstanding, making the older Blu-ray nearly unwatchable. The image is sharper and smoother, colors are better defined and more detail is present. In one iconic scene after another, where the older BD was bland or discomforting, the new BD delivers the dynamism that Bertolucci and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro intended in their designs. Set before World War II, Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a fresh Italian Fascist enrollee who travels to Paris ostensibly on his honeymoon to meet and assassinate an expatriate professor he knew from college. Stefania Sandrelli plays his new bride, Enzo Tarascio is the professor and Dominique Sanda is the professor’s wife, the four socializing on the night before the assassination. The 113-minute film, which like all releases in the past several decades includes a scene depicting blind people at a birthday party that was not in the original American theatrical release, is told with flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks (most viewers will require a couple of screenings to get a handle on what is happening, but the rewards for such an investment of time are endless). At one point, Trintignant and Tarascio’s characters discuss Plato’s cave parable, which was meant to describe man’s relation with God, but can also be interpreted within the film as speaking to political blindness, and can be interpreted outside of the film, as well, presenting an overpowering metaphor for film projection itself. On the older BD, shadows throughout the film are present but not particularly distinctive except in key moments. On the new BD, every shadow Storaro employs from the beginning to the end of the film is distinctive and readily enforces the ‘Plato’s Cave’ motif. We should also mention that the optional English subtitles, along with acquiring a new, easier-to-follow typeface, have also been upgraded, and for the first time, among other things, the antique song that plays over the film’s end credits and into what would technically be described as Exit Music is translated, “Tired shadow, you step away from me…”
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1. The differences in the monophonic sound between the older version and the new version are negligible. The older version might be a touch crisper, but the new presentation is fully acceptable. The film is in Italian and French. The alternate English dubbed track is also presented, but since you lose the nuances that occur in the incidental shifts between the other two languages, it is not worthwhile. Along with a new 2023 re-release trailer, there is a wonderful 28-minute talk by the head of the Bernardo Bertolucci Foundation, Valentina Ricciardelli, speaking a little bit about the restoration and what the Foundation wants to accomplish, but talking mostly about the great stylistic and artistic breakthroughs that Bertolucci accomplished with the film (and—if you don’t think the movie is also about undermining film conformities—she also reveals that Tarascio’s character in the film has the same Parisian address that Jean-Luc Godard had).
Film expert Bilge Ebiri supplies a commentary track for the movie, which he says is his favorite film. He doesn’t speak much about the cast and the crew, but does talk extensively about Bertolucci’s themes and approaches, and he breaks down the movie itself from that perspective as it proceeds, and even compares it to Citizen Kane. “Here’s another one of my favorite shots from the film. The way that she walks, in the light, catching the light, you know, the way that she turns to catch the light when she walks, she’s very aware of it, I mean she’s walking like a model. It’s totally unrealistic, but what makes it The Conformist so special is that it creates a world where these kinds of gestures can exist. This heightened style of Bertolucci’s is both melodramatic and dreamlike, and these are two things that cinema can do so well. And in many ways it is a summation of everything that has come until now, not just in the film, I mean in film history, really. The Conformist is almost a compendium of the cinematic styles and techniques that had come before it.”
Enduring fantasy
For the past couple of decades, special effects in fantasy films have become so good that the demarcations on screen between fantasy and reality have vanished. This has come at a price, however, which is being paid by older, beloved fantasy films. Spoiled viewers are more quick to dismiss a movie in which the special effects, however creative, are obvious, allowing such shortcomings to disrupt concentration on the story or the film’s intended magic. That need not be the case, though, since it is the very effort that the filmmakers are putting forth to embrace a viewer’s imagination that can be met, much like love, with an equal emotional embrace on the part of the viewer.
A case in point would be Tod Browning’s outstanding 1936 MGM fantasy thriller, The Devil Doll, which has been released on Blu-ray by Warner Bros. as a WB Warner Archive Collection title (UPC#810134945807, $22). Lionel Barrymore is an escaped convict who obtains the power to shrink people, and then to control their actions with his mind, a power he uses to extract revenge upon the men who framed him. First off, the film would be great fun even without the special effects, since in order to dodge the police, Barrymore’s character dresses as an elderly lady, and has no compunction, when nobody is around, of doing tasks half in his old woman makeup and half not. Rafaela Ottiano, as his demented servant, has black curly hair with a pronounced white streak, just like Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein, and since the plot involves miniature people (a brief but memorable subplot in Bride), the allusion is undoubtedly deliberate. From there, it is thank god for MGM, whose production department had the bucks to create enormous sets that not even Universal could match two decades later with The Incredible Shrinking Man. So sure, there are transitions in the black-and-white film where the composite shots cannot balance focus or contrast levels inside and outside of the matte, because the technology just wasn’t there at the time, but the film as a whole is so delightful and so thrilling that it would be foolish not to take such moments in stride and savor where they lead, since they enable fantasy scenes that are as astounding as they are exciting, and every moment is believable if you are not fretting over how the movie got there. Indeed, if it were made today, it would be less interesting, because no one would care about the work that went into staging the fantasy sequences, and as a corollary, no one would be gripped by the world the movie has created. Running 79 minutes, the film does have a following, but it is difficult to understand why Devil Doll is not as popular or famous as Bride and Shrinking Man, since it is otherwise every bit as satisfying and fantastic.
Maureen O’Sullivan has a sweet supporting part. The squared full screen picture is reasonably sharp and spotless, which adds greatly to the film’s vitality. The monophonic sound is relatively strong, and there is a wonderful musical score by Franz Waxman. Along with optional English subtitles, an original trailer and two strongly plotted 8-minute black-and-white Looney Tunes cartoons from 1936, Milk and Money (an early manifestation of Porky Pig has difficulties on his farm and trying to execute a milk delivery because a horsefly is biting his horse, until they wander onto a racetrack) and The Phantom Ship (a dog pilot with two puppy stowaways flies to the Arctic to examine a haunted frozen shipwreck).
Two Browning experts, Bruce Haberman and Constantine Nasr, provide an excellent commentary track for the feature, talking about the cast and the crew, the film’s ever rising popularity, and going into detail about the film’s production and the evolutions the script went through to get around the censors, as well as discussing Browning’s career, his unique artistic approach, and the challenges he faced along the way. “It’s unfair to compare Todd Browning of the 1920s, or even the early, pre-Code films. His style could not be replicated, it could not be tolerated. The Code is essentially saying, ‘We don’t want you to make movies.’ Here, he’s found a way to make really one of the peak films of his Thirties career, and I think, of his filmography.”
A marvelous movie and a terrific supplement
Gangsters, reporters and spoiled rich kids make an entertaining mix in the 1931 pre-Code MGM feature, Dance, Fools, Dance a Warner Bros. WB Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray (UPC#810134945791, $22). Joan Crawford and William Bakewell are the party-happy brother and sister whose wealthy father succumbs to a heart attack on the day of the stock market crash. Left on their own, Crawford’s character finds work at a newspaper and Bakewell’s character falls in with a bootlegging gangster played by Clark Gable in an early and rare—but very effective—appearance as a villain. Directed by Harry Beaumont, the film runs just 81 minutes and clearly had some transitional scenes removed during its initial editing, but whether it is the uninhibited flapper dancing, the quick-talking newsroom jabber or the muscular tough guy scheming, not to mention the meteoric trajectory that Crawford and Gable both clearly deserved as presences on the screen, the movie blends it all together in a way that is as exhilarating as it is irresistible, even if its ending does fly in the face of feminist sensibilities (all of the choices Crawford’s character faces at the supposedly ‘happy’ end are lamentable).
The full screen black-and-white picture is in very nice condition for the film’s age. Details are clearly defined, there is no significant wear and grain is minimal. The monophonic sound is somewhat aged and the dialog can be raspy, but there are always the optional English subtitles if you don’t want to push the volume up.
Along with two 1931 Warner Bros. Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising 7-minute black-and-white Merrie Melodies cartoons, One More Time (imaginatively spoofing the activities of gangsters and cops on city streets) and Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! (spoofing the imaginative antics of a trolley car operator and his passengers)—both of which veer perilously close to imitating Mickey Mouse—there is an outstanding 1972 telefilm documentary, Hollywood: The Dream Factory, that is clearly a warm up for 1974’s That’s Entertainment, conceived by Irwin Rosten. The documentary’s producer, Bud Friedgen, who also contributed to the editing, was then one of the two editors credited on That’s Entertainment, although other than having been produced by MGM, that is the sole shared credit between the two programs (oh, the song, That’s Entertainment, also plays at the end of both shows). Where the focus of That’s Entertainment was musicals, the focus of Dream Factory is on everything—there are clips in it from Dance, Fools, Dance, which one supposes is the justification for including it on the disc—bookended with the notion that the glory era of Hollywood has passed and that MGM’s soundstages and outdoor sets are being torn down and sold off. Narrated by Dick Cavett, it is the choice of clips that makes the show so riveting. Along with lots of behind-the-scenes footage (and the newsreels of the lengthy, star-jammed lunch tables at MGM’s anniversary celebrations), the actual film clips are often unexpected and delightful, including some great scenes from the original Ben-Hur A Tale of the Christ. Yes, there is Gene Kelly doing Singin’ in the Rain, but the Marx Bros. doctor’s office clip from A Day at the Races is rarely anthologized and captures the individual humor of the three men (and Margaret Dumont) with vivid exhilaration. There is a proto Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland ‘let’s put on a show’ montage that Friedgen would refine for That’s Entertainment, and there is a gloriously disturbing montage of Elizabeth Taylor growing up, from a little girl hugging Lassie to a woman in her underwear trying to hug a recalcitrant Paul Newman. Running just 50 minutes, the show genuinely communicates it’s theme—that a certain era and format in motion picture entertainment is passing before our eyes—lucidly and captivatingly. Thus, That’s Entertainment became its wake.
Corman classics done right
Languishing in the public domain and featuring, along with its headliner, an actor who would go on to become an even greater movie star, Roger Corman’s The Terror has seen a plethora of releases on home video, nearly all of them in pretty bad condition. We reviewed a couple of such DVDs in Feb 98 and Mar 98. Even Peter Bogdanovich took advantage of the movie’s ready availability to utilize it as the film within the film in his outstanding 1968 thriller, Targets (Jun 23). At long last, however, Film Masters has gone to the sources as best as can be done, and has issued a two-platter Special Edition Blu-ray (UPC#760137137566, $30), coupling the film with another Corman public domain classic, Little Shop of Horrors. Each film appears on a separate platter and comes with optional English subtitles, subtitles for a commentary and an upgraded trailer.
Jack Nicholson not only co-starred with Boris Karloff in the 1963 Terror, he also worked on the screenplay and directed a few scenes. Francis Coppola, Monte Hellman and Jack Hill were also involved in the film’s creation. Presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the color transfer looks terrific. The image deteriorates noticeably during dissolves, but that simply testifies to how cheaply the film was being put together. There is one truly fabulous set—the central room of a castle (which Corman had been using for another movie)—that takes on added power with the sharp color details and the wider image. Corman may have worked fast—he clearly didn’t care when shots didn’t match, so long as the general idea was being conveyed—but again and again, the film has beautifully rendered moments and appealing imagery. The picture can look soft at times, and will distort with color washes and rushed contrasts, but the basic freshness of the source material is clearly maintained, adding greatly to the appeal of the film’s environments, and when the lighting is controlled, hues are bright and fleshtones are gorgeous.
As Bogdanovich serendipitously presented, the film is probably best viewed in a drive-in movie environment, and even from the comfort of one’s home, one tends to savor the film by imagining the responses of viewers huddled in their cars as they watch the ghost story (perhaps intermittently) unfold. Set at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, the very young Nicholson is a French officer who has been separated from his command and is wandering along the beach, attempting to make his way back when he encounters a beautiful woman who may be shapeshifting into a raven, and a castle where Karloff’s character apparently pines for the same woman, claiming that she was killed a couple of decades earlier. Running 79 minutes, the film follows a mesmerizing dream logic as Nicholson’s character explores the mysteries of the castle, engages in edgy conversations with Karloff’s character, and chases after the girl, played by Sandra Knight, during the fleeting moments when she appears. Corman was a big fan of Sigmund Freud and the film is steeped in imagery that suggest phalluses, wombs, and all the other mysteries of life. If you’re the kid with the glasses in the front seat, analyzing every plot turn, then the movie doesn’t really make much sense, it if you’re in the back, only paying half attention and looking up during the scream moments, then the film is great entertainment and well worth returning to see again.
Like the cinematography, the sound recording is uneven, with the dialog being louder and softer from one scene to the next, but the BD’s audio is solid and can be set at a reasonable volume level that captures most of what needs to be heard. An excellent 44-minute analysis of the film by genre expert Howard S. Berger is included. While it teases at the beginning that it is going to delve into the film’s convoluted production history, it focuses primarily on a thematic analysis of the film and Corman’s career. That said, it is a highly rewarding endeavor, filled with great clips and stills, spelling out exactly what happens in the complicated plot, and sharing insights about the artistic resonances of every turn, such as when Berger raps poetically about one of his favorite topics, the ‘falling movie dummy’: “Now, with no voice or vision, Gustaf topples off the edge of a nearby cliff, but in a meta-cinematic moment of substitution, the actor portraying Gustaf is replaced with a prosthetic dummy replica that plummets onto the jagged rocks below. Like the witch’s rotating lantern, the dummy facsimile foregrounds another aspect inherent to the cinematic phenomenon, that movies present only an insubstantial, abstract illusion of life; that the characters that appear to spring to life on the screen are actually just inert, lifeless pieces of celluloid projecting colored ghosts in a darkened room. In this way, the actor and his prosthetic twin [are] an illustration of the dichotomy between the real actor and his celluloid double, the real world versus the abstract illusion that constitutes the celluloid one.”
Additionally, there is a very good commentary track by film experts Steve Haberman and C. Courtney Joyner. The two go into detail primarily about the actual shoot, including the contributions and reminiscences of each participating director and how Corman conceived in stitching everything together (secretly charging American International Pictures for the time and crew, and then releasing the movie independently).
We reviewed a cheap presentation of Little Shop of Horrors in Apr 98, a manipulated presentation in Dec 04 that took advantage of the movie’s tight sets (and a wonderful chase through a junkyard) to deliver it in an artificial 3D format, and a colorized version (included as an extra with Cry Baby Killer) in Apr 07. The version presented by Film Masters is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. The black-and-white image is sharp, but grainy. There was one sequence where a couple of vertical lines ran through the image for a moment, but otherwise, the presentation is clean and viable, with well-defined contrasts. The monophonic sound has some basic background noise but is reasonably strong, overall.
Corman says the 1960 film was made in a single workweek, but the witty script was clearly labored upon for a more extended length of time beforehand. About a schlemiel working in a flower store who grows a man-eating plant that brings financial success to his employer, Corman’s control and execution of the comedy, much of it ribbing Jewish stereotypes in the same burlesque manner that Jewish comedians had been doing for years, is beat perfect (especially with the nice Blu-ray transfer), thus accommodating the absurd and cheaply constructed horror elements in its stride. If The Terror is ideal for drive-ins, Little Shop of Horrors, while intended initially as theatrical filler, is ideal for television, where its simplicity, episodic humor and 72-minute running time were perfect for distorted black-and-white playback and commercials. Nicholson has last billing for a cameo part in a scene involving a dentist and proves that he can clown with the best of them. Jonathan Hayes (who also appears in Terror), Mel Welles and Jackie Joseph star, with Terror co-stars Dick Miller and Dorothy Neumann. With the ravenous, unrelenting the-more-you-feed-it-the-more-it-grows plant monster as its centerpiece, incidentally, the film can easily stand as a political metaphor depicting any sort of entity that continues to grasp for power unabated.
The monophonic sound is strong and clear, with limited extraneous noise. There is a jolly 17-minute overview of Corman’s budget-conscious early Sixties pictures and a 2023 trailer.
Film historian Justin Humphreys provides a nice commentary with the top-billed Haze. They talk about all aspects of the production and Humphreys pumps Haze with one question after another.
“Now what do you remember about the huge, the big plant? Was it, did it function properly when you were filming?”
“Yeah, I mean, it was very simple. It was not a very ‘special’ special effect. It was more just, ‘get somethin’ done.’”
“Yeah, was it just like paper mache, something like that?”
“Yeah, it was all kinds of paper mache and straw and other stuff.”
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