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Everything seems to be running okay here today, and I'm back in review harness. Upcoming Blu-ray notices will include Scream Factory / MGM's Lifeforce (pictured), Twilight Time / Fox's Leave Her to Heaven, Olive / Paramount / Republic's Miracle of the Bells, Champion and Hoodlum Empire and Anchor Bay's A Common Man. DVD selections include Fox Cinema Archives' Sons and Lovers and Icarus Films' docu Last Summer Won't Happen.

My latest Warner Archives to-do list is impressive in itself. I'm ready to write up their Forbidden Hollywood 6 collection, while the Cold War epics Never Let Me Go and I Was a Communist for the FBI wait in the wings. I'm also hoping for Mask of Dimitrios to walk in the door -- it has been one of the top request titles in reader mail here at Savant. George Feltenstein said that the Collection would be nailing some much-desired titles this year...

Link of the day: over at the recommended site Trailers from Hell, Joe Dante comments on a reissue trailer for Peter Bogdanovich's Boris Karloff horror pic Targets. Be sure to read the accompanying text -- and follow its link to a second, original Targets trailer. It plays like a gun control PSA from today!

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

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The fact that you can read this means that my DVDtalk uploading problem got resolved, thanks to some great help from Homer & Luis at the home hosting company. I've been writing furiously trying not to think about the uploading issue, and will have to go back through my reviews to see if they're loaded with nervous errors.

I've been seeing some terrific pictures, including some new Warner Archive Pre-Codes. They show how the Code censorship banned not only nudity and sex innuendo, but relevant subject matter and honest expressions of sexuality as experienced by real people. I've also seen a fun new film noir (see photo) that concludes on a Malibu beach, at the same lonely beach house seen in Kiss Me Deadly. That was quite a shock of recognition. As I'm writing this ahead of time, right now I need to go back and work on getting DVD Savant up and running again ... thanks for reading and for the corrections. I've also fixed about 50 typos and other mistakes in my Monster (El monstruo resucitado) review -- now if I could only upload them!

--- Glenn Erickson

Since you can't see them yet, take my word for it, the reviews are brilliant! They're Warners' Ultimate Gangsters Collection: Classics (Blu-ray) with Public Enemy, Little Caesar, The Petrified Forest and White Heat; Criterion's Japanese classic Gate of Hell (Blu-ray) and The Warner Archive Collection's Eddie Cantor musical Kid Millions. I hope I can get them launched tomorrow. Should anyone have any pressing questions about those or other new releases, please write (address above) ... if I've got the disc I'll answer as best I can.

I do have one link to offer, courtesy of correspondent Gary Teetzel: a Blastr article with scans of a 1968 Howard Johnson's Children's Menu, promoting 2001: A Space Odyssey. I'd have a sample image up here for you, but, ha, ha, I can't upload anything!  I love the way the kids finish by saying that they now understand the movie's mystery ending, and immediately declare gender-stereotyped career choices!

Thanks for reading, back tomorrow I hope -- Glenn Erickson

Saturday May 11, 2013

Savant's new reviews today are:

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Dick Dinman has uploaded a great 3-part radio show this week, using his interviews with the late, wonderful Jonathan Winters. In Part One of Dick Dinman Says Goodbye to Jonathan Winters the comedian talks about his childhood, his self-imposed stay in a mental institution and his rebirth and rediscovery in the all-star comedy classic It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Part Two continues with a discussion of The Loved One and Winters' thoughts on modern comedy and politics (with an Arnold Schwartzenegger impression).

In Part Three Winters talks about Stanley Kramer and his love of painting, among some other candid observations. I was able to be a fly on the wall when Jonathan Winters and George Kennedy were helping a student out on a film shoot, and listening to him just gab for three hours was the most entertaining evening of my life. Thanks for putting these shows together, Dick.

Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson

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Eddie Selover sends along a great career article he's written on Basil Rathbone over at Bright Lights Film Journal. He has information and insights on Rathbone that are ceratinly new to me.

An awful lot of WW2-themed pictures are showing up all of a sudden, so you'll have to bear with me while I review some very interesting, and in some cases all but forgotten thrillers. Coming up quick will be Olive Films' disc of Fritz Lang's Cloak and Dagger and the Fox MOD program's The Moon is Down, which was written by none other than John Steinbeck. But for folks that aren't interested, I'll break them up with a new batch of Warner Archive titles, including two sets of Forbidden Hollywood PreCode pictures, the scarce noirs Mask of Dimitrios and Loophole and the sublime Eddie Cantor musical Kid Millions. That's the one where all the Egyptians call him Eddie-Bay.

That Fox MOD roster contains a slew of Jane Withers comedies, and musicals featuring Mitzi Gaynor and June Haver. I haven't seen any of them but I'm tempted to check out The I Don't Care Girl after reading a rave for its musical numbers over at David Cairns' Shadowplay. The new Fox disc I'm going for right away is Jack Cardiff's Sons and Lovers (pictured), another picture that nobody seems to remember. I talked a couple of close friends into catching it at the Museum about ten years ago, and the best the studio could come up with was a beat-up print riddled with splices. I had to explain what happened in a couple of scenes. This ought to be a better experience.

Oh, and I guess I'm going to have to go back and take in Olive's new Blu-ray of John Ford's The Sun Shines Bright. I was underwhelmed by it back at UCLA in 1974, but I understand that Republic's release version was severely cut and that Olive has restored Ford's version (thank you, correspondent "B"). Take it from me, it's a Hollywood Law with self-nominated film experts (cough, cough) : we all prefer elusive "longer" versions, and take it as a badge of seriousness to suss out the differences.

Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson

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Some big-time critics squawked good and loud and submitted a petition, and Warner Home Video listened: The Good News result is that the upcoming Blu-ray of George Stevens' Shane will be in flat 1:37, not widescreen 1:66 as it was premiered in 1953 (it was filmed in 1951, see, and Stevens rightfully freaked when he found out that Paramount was showing it in a wide format, cropping his compositions. Kudos to Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere, who provided a pulpit for the controversy and for once is on the right side of an aspect ratio issue. The upshot of all this righteous re-formatting is that the disc will be delayed two months, to August 13. Go in Peace.

I've heard a rave from Nathaniel Thompson about the horror thriller The Name of the Game is Kill! and hope to be reviewing VCI's new DVD fairly soon.

And a bright new batch of Olive Films Blu-rays has arrived, featuring Fritz Lang's Cloak and Dagger, the Humphrey Pushcart gangster film The Enforcer (which I've never seen) and Fred Zinnemann's Marlon Brando picture The Men. And MGM-Fox has surprised me; I'd been turned down for a Blu screener of The Great Escape, but a copy apparently escaped in my direction anyway. A note of thanks will be in order.

And thanks for reading -- hopefully not too many typos in today's reviews! -- Glenn Erickson

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A fast go-round today, as there's not enough time to lay out a full column. I did find something interesting, however, one of several articles about a real super-weapon project begun in 1957 and abandoned in 1964, called SLAM. the Missile from Hell. It was, and I'm not kidding, an atomic powered rocket:

"SLAM was perhaps the most fearsome weapon ever conceived. The missile was designed to deliver as many as 26 nuclear bombs over the Soviet Union in a single mission. It would do this while flying at Mach 3 and less than 1,000 feet above ground level. SLAM's shock wave overpressure alone (162 dB) would devastate structures and people along its flight path. And, as if that were not enough, its nuclear-fueled ramjet would continuously spew radiation-contaminated exhaust all over the countryside."

It struck me immediately -- could Project Pluto's SLAM rocket have been the inspiration for the dreadful 1958 Sci-Fi thriller The Lost Missile, starring a young Robert Loggia? It's about an almost identical Supersonic Low-Altitude Missile that roasts a path across the earth as it flies. No explanation is given for the origin of the film's very terrestrial-looking rocket, although a half-baked narration implies that it may be from outer space. The movie is only an hour or so long and frankly looks as if half its scenes are missing. Is it possible that it ran into 'official difficulties' with the secret military project, and changes had to be made?

Doesn't it warm your heart to know that the Pentagon was looking out for us, with warm and fuzzy defense ideas like SLAM? And so practical, too. Forget drones, I think we need a SLAM ... if I were a schoolteacher, I'd have my students check out the brief article, and then make a mental list of all the ways this scheme was entirely insane. It reads like something designed to be deliberately leaked to the Russians, to scare them to death.

Hey, Thanks for reading! I'll be back on Saturday -- Glenn Erickson

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We've still got the 3-D Expo 3 coming up in town in early September. I've been writing to Bob Furmanek lately, and have found out that he's added another page to his 3-D Film Archive site. It's about the History of the Archive, and the unusual path Bob took to becoming one of the foremost 3D history experts in the country. It includes something I didn't know about, a job stint Bob had with Jerry Lewis.

And over at the Greenbriar Picture Shows page, John McElwee has announced an upcoming book .... soon? It's called Showmen, Sell it Hot!: Movies as Merchandise in Golden Era Hollywood. John's article is from Tuesday, April 23, so to get to it you'll need to scroll down past a couple of great articles about shows like the old Hammer Curse of the Werewolf. It's fun reading John's announcement, as he's almost as self-conscious about pushing his book as I was about mine. John's book promises to be quite a read, as anyone who has perused the Greenbriar page soon finds out ... I spent a week reading the whole backlog of articles when I came upon it years ago, and half the people I've sent to it have told me they've done the exact same thing. Anyway, I certainly wish John the best with his book and will be posting about it again when it becomes available.

Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

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Today's dose of Edgar G. Ulmer will be followed soon by one of the director's big-budget classics, 1948's Ruthless. I just realized that I also have two of Jean Renoir's American movies on the way, This Land is Mine and Diary of a Chambermaid. They're special films that perhaps only a fan checking off a list of "auteur" titles would be keeping an eye out for.

I know that I rattle off reports of Hollywood screenings at places like the American Cinematheque as if they were no big deal ... readers in Dubuque or Topeka probably think I'm spoiled rotten, film accessibility-wise. Well, it's true. Hollywood and the L.A. County Art Museum are less than a mile away; a younger version of myself could bicycle to either venue (cough, cough). So it's only fair that I wax jealous about a film program of Utopian Science Fiction Films screening soon at the Munich Stadtmuseum. Yes, that's Munich, Germany, a place where the shadow of Savant has never fallen, so to speak. On the docket are most of the big titles post- 2001: A Space Odyssey. Listed for Saturday, July 14 is Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World, the 4.5-hour trilogy version that I was so excited to write about ten years ago. I almost feel like buying a plane ticket...

Thanks for reading -- Glenn Erickson

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A lot of writing and re-writing this week, what with the complicated Django Unchained on the docket. As for the new Twilight Time Blu-ray of Major Dundee, I wasn't sure that the long essay I wrote was appropriate at all for the format of a review. Having reviewed the movie twice already, I really wanted to get deeper into what I've learned about it. I also confess that I wanted to express more personal opinions and theories on a movie that some of the published Sam Peckinpah studies dismiss as unworthy of serious consideration. So consider the review a chapter in a Peckinpah book that DVD Savant never wrote.

More importantly, the Blu-ray release presents an opportunity to web-publish friend and colleague Darren Gross's unique interview with Helen Samuels, a teen actress who played a key role in the legendary (really) deleted Massacre Prologue to Major Dundee. Like an investigative reporter, Darren located Ms. Samuels and obtained a great interview from her. The significance of what she has to say goes beyond curiosity because more than a few Peckinpah biographers and historians believe that the Massacre Prologue was never filmed. Helen's account indicates that at least some of it was.

More Olive Films, Criterion and Kino discs have arrived ... the reviews will keep coming! Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

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Some quick notes tonight! I ordered a couple of DVD-to-Blu-ray upgrades through Warner Home Video's Interesting Trade-in Program, and just ten days later am the happy recipient of Blu-rays of Deliverance and Woodstock -- I know, I know, I'm showing my age. But I'm proud of myself, as I followed the easy instructions and managed not to screw it up or lose my money. In other words, it's yet another good Warners promotion that a) works, and b) is not a gyp.

Fellow sci-fi freak Kevin Pyrtle has located (online, if you want to see it) a previously un-see-able Danish Science Fiction film from 1916, Verdens Undergang (The End of the World). Kevin's article The End of the World in Six Stirring Parts and the link to the show are here. Abel Gance's 1930 La fin du monde follows practically the exact same storyline blueprint, 16 years later. The experts keep confusing the number of Danish science fiction films, but so far I know three: this picture, 1917's Himmelskibbet (The Sky Ship) and half a century later, Reptilicus. One can't count Journey to the Seventh Planet because there was no Danish version -- good old Kip Doto proved that the Danish version of Reptilicus is a separately-directed item distinct from A.I.P.'s release. Aren't you glad I'm around to point these things out?

On the local front, Twilight Time is dropping hints that a Blu-ray of the 'Scope and color Violent Saturday may be on the way. If you recall, Fox only had a flat letterboxed version back in 2011 when TT's DVD came out. Gee, if they're doubling back on the trail, maybe they might consider a Blu-ray of The Kremlin Letter. It's a Savant favorite and not the most popular title in history, so I'm not holding my breath.

The week started out good -- Anchor Bay's Django Unchained should be written up by Saturday, and Star Vista/Time Life's DVD compilation Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War is ready to go. And there are a lot more Olive Films and Criterion discs that really need to be reviewed too, so I'll be a busy boy. Thanks for reading -- Glenn Erickson

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Well, I got to see, study and review the new UK Dracula (Horror of Dracula) Blu-ray, which I accomplished by borrowing a copy. It's so good, I'm going to order a copy unless I hear that a domestic Warner disc is on the way. Then again, the extras are so good maybe I'll just go for it. I need to first look up how much £17.00 is in good old shrinking Yankee dollars. My review was finished just as Tim Lucas reported on an unexpected discovery in the disc's transfer of the surviving reels of the Japanese version, and I've managed to work in a response.

A fun link: consultant Bob Furmanek has written a very informative article about Aspect Ratios and the changeover from Flat Academy 1:37 to widescreen 1:85, with various ratio stops in between. I wish these guidelines were law at the movie studios and disc companies, where disputes about ARs have become an excuse to make extra money by packing disc sets with unnecessary 'alternate' versions. The New Era in Screen Dimensions is now up at the 3D Film Archive.

And finally, a question that worries me, as it involves a memory that I'm not absolutely certain is real. In watching the new Dracula BD, I noticed once again an incident similar to one that occurs in, of all things, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Jonathan Harker is waiting alone in Dracula's hall when he knocks some dishes from the banquet table, and must pick them up off the floor. That's when the Vampire Bride appears, seemingly out of nowhere. The spaceman at the end of 2001 does the same thing with a glass of wine, on the floor of his fancy period room/alien prison. When he bends to pick up the mess, he looks up and beholds the next stage of his own evolution.

Here's where the memory question comes in. "I remember" reading somewhere that this particular scenario had an allusive (not 'elusive') connection with Friedrich Nietzsche and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. My usual exhaustive research (twenty keystrokes on the Internet) turned up nothing. Did I dream this? Is it typical Savant crazy talk, or is the answer already common knowledge among readers that paid better attention in their college classes?

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

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The Noir City Hollywood, 15th Annual Festival Of Film Noir opening night last Friday was great fun, with the audience pretty much spellbound by the gripping, grim Try and Get Me! and knocked out by the great cast and equally subversive theme of Hell Drivers. Just try and find another movie with a lineup of stars-to-be this interesting: Stanley Baker, Patrick McGoohan, Sean Connery, Herbert Lom, Gordon Jackson, Peggy Cummins, Jill Ireland, Sidney James and David McCallum! When McCallum came on, all the NCIS fans in the audience applauded -- he looked about twenty years old, and had crooked teeth! Hell Drivers is about crooked employers exploiting truck drivers, forcing them to break the law and risk their lives just to keep their jobs -- it's practically a protest pamphlet against corrupt capitalism! Cy Endfield had to partly disguise his name, but the politics that got him blacklisted weren't changed by the trip across the Atlantic.

And hey, the midnight trip back from Hollywood Blvd. was almost as exciting, with us having to make detours around police 'incidents' and mobs of stylish night-outers queueing up for all these clubs that sprang up on the side streets in the past ten years. Back in the '70s I'd just say, 'lotta freaks out tonight', but all these hipsters, gangsters and pretenders clearly have money to blow. Didn't have it then and don't have it now -- but the fun doesn't look as enticing as it once did.

Savant is overseeing a $$ pricey bit of work tomorrow -- they're replacing the forced heating and air in my house. With the high winds tonight, I'll be lucky if my twenty-year-old roof isn't leaking like a sieve in the next rain. It's lucky that DVD Savant is such a high paying gig hahahahahahahah (choke!). Actually, I'm posting this Tuesday column a bit early, in case my internet goes out in this windstorm.

The UK Blu-ray disc of Dracula/Horror of Dracula came in today, so I'll probably be reviewing it pretty quick. After mentioning my desire to do so I've gotten more letters asking where the review is, some of them rather impatient. Just remember that my reactions are going to be as subjective as usual -- I've seen it maybe six times theatrically in 35mm Technicolor, and I'll just tell it like I see it. And don't worry, I have no special commitment to the old Warner DVD, or the way it looks. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

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A respectful bow to the memory of Roger Ebert... whose courage and resilience will continue to be a source of admiration and inspiration.

Gary Teetzel forwards a link to a ten-minute collection of terrific behind-the-scenes clips from the making of Toho's first Ghidorah film. We get a good look at some amusing horseplay from the man in the Big G suit, miniature makers at work (looks familiar to me!) and impressive publicity appearances. Nobody step on his tail, now!

Credit where credit is due department: Writer Matthew Rovner tipped Savant off a couple of months ago to the WAC's release of Arch Oboler's Bewitched. Matthew has been studying the writer-director-producer Oboler for some time now, and has posted interesting articles on the radio veteran's film work. Arch Oboler's 'Bewitched' and its Alter Egos is Matthew's own review/study of the film. Night of the Auk is a critique of an Oboler TV show from 1960, a science fiction tale starring James MacArthur and William Shatner. When the moon mission astronaut Shatner claims Earth's satellite for the United States, he touches off a nuclear war! Online as well is Rovner's original 2009 study of Oboler's career: What Ever Happened to Arch Oboler?

Am working my way through a tall stack of desirable Warner Archive and Olive Films discs. Criterion just sent four of its latest, including Blu-rays of Repo Man and Gate of Hell. Thanks for reading! -- Glenn Erickson

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Savant gets to go out to the movies Friday night, and a special show it is -- this year's Noir City Hollywood, 15th Annual Festival Of Film Noir begins on Friday, April 5 at the Hollywood Egyptian Theater with a double bill of two hot titles by everyone's favorite blacklist target, Cy Endfield. He's the director or writer behind The Underworld Story, Zulu, Sands of the Kalahari and Zulu Dawn, and the Cinematheque is showing a double bill of his most interesting work not available on video. I've written about Try and Get Me! but have never seen it on a big screen or with an audience because prints simply didn't exist; the Film Noir Foundation has completed a film restoration. I haven't seen the second picture on the bill but have heard a great deal about it. Hell Drivers is said to be a tough-edged drama about truckers in a corrupt situation in England ... it sounds as if Endfield brought his grudge against the profit motive with him when he relocated to his new cinematic home. I believe Hell Drivers may be the picture that put Endfield and Stanley Baker together as a producing team. The full schedule for Noir City 15 is now viewable ... it looks like they're even including a 3-D double bill in the mix.

Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

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Honored associate and Savant advisor Dick Dinman has a full house of Fox-oriented radio shows this week, auditable through web links to his DVD Classics Corner on the Air site. Four new shows in all: Dick speaks with Cecilia Peck about Gentleman's Agreement; with Kathryn Crosby, Peter Graves, Geoffrey Horne and Kim Novak about Otto Preminger, the director of Laura; with favorite producer Stanley Rubin about Otto Preminger on River of No Return; and with Tyrone Power Jr. and Coleen Gray about the Twilight Time release of Pony Soldier.

Over at the always eye-opening Greenbriar Picture Shows, John McElwee gives us the full rundown on MGM's enthusiastic release campaign for (hard to let this subject go) Gorgo. You'll need to do some scrolling, or better yet, reading, down to March 23.

I'm happy to be putting out reviews at a faster pace than I have lately -- and have more notices coming for interesting pix by Luis Buñuel, Edgar G. Ulmer, Sam Wood, Sam Fuller, Jean Renoir, Charlie Chaplin and (thanks to DVDtalk) Roy Ward Baker. The photo immediately above is one of Baker's friendly actresses. Thanks for the notes and corrections! Glenn Erickson