Reviews
THRILLER
THE ULTIMATE FILM NOIR COLLECTION
(1 2) 909min (Pinnacle Vision DVD retail) ooooo
Although his fiction made a huge contribution to post-war American cinema via others’ screenplay adaptations, Raymond Chandler only wrote two films himself: The Blue Dahlia and (with Billy Wilder) Double Indemnity. Both feature in this excellent collection.
The Blue Dahlia is more notable for its murder mystery convolutions than the atmospherics of Siodmark’s 1946 The Killers. And while it doesn't embrace the fatalism of Tourneur’s Out of the Past, it boasts a pair of dazzling leads in Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, who also appear in This Gun for Hire and The Glass Key. Ladd and Lake were as fine a pairing as Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in Out of the Past (who also play cat and mouse in The Big Steal), or Mitchum and Gloria Graeme, here in Crossfire. The collection is completed with Murder, My Sweet, the first screen adaptation of the hardboiled Philip Marlowe stories penned by Chandler. Extras include The Best of Film Noir documentary. (Miles Fielder)
NEW WAVE
ERIC ROHMER: THE EARLY WORKS
(1 5) 1 74min
(Artificial Eye DVD Retail) O...
The French New Wave debuts of the late 503 that we all know about are Godard 's Breathless and Truffaut’s 400 Blows, but Eric Rohmer's too little seen
1959 debut feature. Le Signe Du Lion (Sign of the Lion) is easily their equal. Receiving a telegram telling him that his aunt has died, an idle American emigre in Paris celebrates, believing he’s come into a fortune. Instead it turns out he's been disinherited, and his cousin is the sole beneficiary of the will. As all his friends leave for the August holidays, he’s left to cope on his own and proves hopelessly inadequate to the task.
Utilising Paris locations, and filming in a simple style relying greatly on medium shots, Rohmer also gives us a music track that manages to capture the central character's feelings without reducing him to a cipher for ours. The shorts accompanying it are 1963 ’8 La Boulangere De Monceau and La Carriere De Suzanne from the same year — both are engaging sketches from a master filmmaker. Extras include further shorts and a filmography.
(Tony McKibbin)
HORROR
SEE NO EVIL (18) 84min (Lionsgate Home Entertainment DVD rental/retail) O.
This rank imitation of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th and the orgy of weaker variations made since, pulls few punches with its gore content but is as predictable as a film can be that's called
See No Evil and features a seven-foot psycho with a mommy complex and a fetish for removing his victims’ eyes.
Directed with as much class and sensitivity as you‘d expect from a man (Gregory Dark) with a background in hardcore porn and Britney promos, this is a symbol of the worst excesses in a genre that could be limping to an early grave. Lots of extras including making of documentary, cast and crew interviews and deleted scenes.
(Brian Donaldson)
ACTION FIGHTING ELEGY
(1 5) 86min
(Yume Pictures DVD retail) m
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Seijun Tokyo Drifter Suzuki has a deservedly cult reputation as a diverse genre filmmaker. Whether he is directing gangster films, youth movies, or erotica, he constantly works to counter any obviousness in the plotting with the pure bravura of his directing style. It’s clearly the case in this 1963 about unrequited, sexual frustration and street fighting in 19308 Japan. Protagonist Kirikou (Hideki Takahashi) fights his way through school, finds himself expelled and fights his way through another one just as nonchalantly. Suzuki films the whole thing with assertiveness, utilising wayward long shots on conversations when close-ups would be the norm, and shooting the initial stages of one spat from a high-angled rooftop shot while the protagonists are arguing on the ground. He even has a bit of fun with split screen when the students torment one of their teachers. Minimal extras.
(Tony McKibbin)
DVD ROUNDUP
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The Bigas Luna Boxset (Tartan oooo ) is a filthy, compelling collection of the great Spanish filmmaker’s best films, Golden Balls, Jamon Jamon, The lit And The Moon and The Ages of Lulu. One of cinema's great living erotic iconoclasts Luna was also responsible for bringing Penelope Cruz, Maria De Medieros (from Pulp Fiction) and Benicio Del Toro into public consciousness, so let’s hear it for the crazy old Catalan. The very curious Michael Caine
Collection (Prism Leisure ooo
) features just two of the great actor's
films, this is actually a rare opportunity to revisit a couple of Caine’s less well known films, namely Robert Aldrich's 1970 Pacific island set WWII epic Too Late the Hero and Joseph Losey’s commendable blocked writer drama (scripted by Tom Stoppard) The Romantic Eng/ishwoman from 1975. Both films are well transferred but there are no extras here at all. In terms of value for money, this certainly won’t blow your doors off.
And so to the long overdue DVD re-release of Leonard Kastle’s superb 1968 mass murdering lovers-on-the-run drama The Honeymoon Killers (Slam Dunk om ). If you thought stylish serial killer films that were purportedly based on fact began with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, then this is well worth a look. The tragically short-lived Michael Reeves' second and last film Witchfinder General (Prism Leisure 00.. ) gets a very welcome cheapo release but what we would really like to see is a complete Reeves collection illuminating this promising filmmaker’s earlier horror works.
Also Richard Jobson's bravely ambitious Edinburgh-set tale of love and
quantum physics A Woman in Winter (Tartan ooo
) premieres in disc
form this fortnight with enjoyable extras including a lucid director's commentary (boy can this man talk!) and a fascinating storyboard featurette. And finally Edgar Reitz’ seminal generational epic mini series Heimat ‘l 8. 2 (Tartan 0000.) gets another release for those who wish to stay indoors (that’s almost 2500 minutes of viewing). Next week we will be doing it for the ladies with female space warriors, campus lesbians, and bored housewives and much more besides. (Paul Dale)
HORROR SHORTS MASTERS OF HORROR SERIES 1: VOLUME 2
(1 8) 340min
(Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD rental/retail) ooo
After the reasonable standard of the first set of these made-for-TV horror shorts, this second batch comes as something of a disappointment,
particularly given some of the names involved. Perhaps the best of them, Larry Cohen’s Pick Me Up is grimly effective, if you can buy into its initial premise of two serial killers stalking the same stretch of isolated road. Michael Moriarty’s performance here as a psychotic trucker is pretty haunting. Dario Argento's contribution, Jenifer, the story of a disfigured witch—like teenage girl who creates sexual obsession in the men she meets is also good in places, but suffers from its truncated format.
The rest is strictly for the nerds. Tobe Hooper’s post- apocalyptic generation
gap film, Dance of the Dead takes a predictable road to nowhere, while William Malone's Fair Haired Child, a fairytale-like story of child abduction is simply dull. John McNaughton’s take on the Frankenstein narrative, Haeke/‘s Tale, is enlivened only by a bizarre gangbang among the living dead scene at its climax, while Takashi Miike's unspeakable Imprin, a sort of gothic Madame Butterfly, combines sex with appalling overacting to unpalatable ends. Some of these have yet to master horror. Each disc is however chock-a- block with extras. (Steve Cramer)
29 Mar—12 Apr 2007 THE LIST 39