FILM FRENZY

Pernell Roberts, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, and Lorne Greene in Bonanza (Photo: Paramount & CBS)

By Matt Brunson

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray, 4K and DVD. Ratings are on a four-star scale.)

BONANZA: THE OFFICIAL COMPLETE SERIES (1959-1973). The popularity of Bonanza cannot be overstated. On NBC for 14 seasons, it remains one of the longest running fictional series on prime-time television as well as the second-longest running Western (after Gunsmoke’s 20 seasons). It was in the Nielsen Top 20 for a whopping 12 of its 14 seasons (all but the first and last), in the Top 10 for 10 of those 12, in the Top 5 for 9 of those 10, and #1 for three consecutive seasons (1964-1967). It was one of the first series shown in color (or “In Living Color,” as the NBC intro promised), and its theme song was recorded by a number of artists (including Johnny Cash), with one version (Al Caiola’s) hitting #19 on the Billboard chart. Set on the Ponderosa Ranch in Virginia City, Nevada, around the time of the Civil War, it centers on the members of the Cartwright family: patriarch Ben (Lorne Greene) and his grown sons Adam (Pernell Roberts), Hoss (Dan Blocker), and Little Joe (Michael Landon). Less action-oriented and more thoughtful than many of the era’s Westerns, it frequently tackled social issues and attacked societal prejudices all in the context of a strong family drama (with ample amounts of humor coursing through some episodes). Greene and Landon were the only cast members to appear throughout all 14 seasons — oh, and Victor Sen Yung, who played the clan’s Chinese cook Hop Sing. Roberts left after the sixth season and Blocker passed away after the 13th season — the show could survive the departure of Roberts but it could not survive the death of Blocker, as Hoss was to many folks the enormous heart and gentle soul of the series.

The new DVD box set from CBS and Paramount is, in a word, spectacular. In addition to offering all 431 episodes uncut and remastered, it also features a sizable number of appreciated extras. These include a Bonanza blooper / gag reel; a 1976 salute to the series (with Orson Welles providing the narration); a 1962 interview with Landon; Roberts singing on a 1965 episode of The Ed Sullivan Show; a 1970 episode of Sesame Street in which the Cartwrights pay a visit; Greene on a 1972 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson; audio of Landon’s final interview in 1991 (he died that year of cancer, age 54); and even vintage P.S.A.s with Greene and Blocker.

Series: ★★★½

CAGED (1950). Long before the “women’s prison film” got overrun by sadistic wardens, leering male guards, and lesbian trysts among the inmates — thus becoming the exclusive property of drive-ins and grindhouses — Warner Bros. added it to its slate of socially conscious dramas with the 1950 release Caged (Caged! in advertisements). The result was a hard-hitting picture largely bereft of the sort of moralizing often found in other message movies of the period, with an ending that I frankly didn’t expect. Eleanor Parker is excellent as Marie Allen, a 19-year-old who’s carted off to prison after she unknowingly serves as an accomplice to her husband’s failed attempt at robbery (he’s killed committing the crime). A complete innocent, she nevertheless earns the acceptance of the tougher inmates but runs afoul of the sadistic and corrupt floor matron, Evelyn Harper (Hope Emerson, providing a menacing presence at 6’2”). The characters are written intelligently enough to avoid functioning as mere stereotypes, with particularly memorable turns by Olive Deering as a sensitive prisoner, Betty Garde as a hardened inmate, and Jan Sterling as a flighty jailbird nicknamed Smoochie. And while one might reasonably expect second-billed Agnes Moorehead to be cast as the nastiest of the prisoners, she actually essays the role of the reform-minded prison superintendent who’s sympathetic toward Marie’s plight. Caged earned three Academy Award nominations: Best Actress (Parker), Best Supporting Actress (Emerson), and Best Story and Screenplay (Bernard C. Schoenfeld and Virginia Kellogg, the latter having arranged to serve time in prison for research purposes!).

Blu-ray extras consist of a 1951 radio broadcast starring Parker; the 1950 cartoon Big House Bunny, wherein Bugs accidentally ends up in prison (Sing Song instead of Sing Sing); and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★½

DANGEROUS WHEN WET (1953). The 1945 musical Anchors Aweigh found Gene Kelly famously dancing alongside the animated mouse Jerry. Eight years later, Esther Williams expanded on the routine by dancing — better make that swimming — with both Tom and Jerry in Dangerous When Wet. It’s one of the more memorable sequences in this box office hit that’s only intermittently entertaining (I prefer the previous year’s Esther Williams hit, Million Dollar Mermaid). Williams plays Katie Higgins, the oldest of three daughters in an Arkansas farm family whose five members (William Demarest and Charlotte Greenwood play the sexagenarian parents, Donna Corcoran and Barbara Whiting the other sisters) are convinced by traveling salesman Windy Weebe (Jack Carson) that they should all take part in an international competition that would require them to swim across the English Channel. Katie tries to keep her mind on her training but is distracted by the attention of French suitor André Lanet (Fernando Lamas); Windy, meanwhile, is pursued by flirtatious swimmer Gigi Mignon (Denise Darcel). There’s some irony in the fact that this lightweight musical comedy is at its strongest during the home stretch, when it turns dramatic as Katie struggles to finish the race. Before that, it’s hit and miss: Lama is a suitable leading man and Carson offers some laughs, but the material involving the other Higgins family members is forgettable. At the time of production, Williams was on husband #2 (out of four) and Lamas was on wife #2 (ditto) — 16 years later, they would marry each other and remain together until his death in 1982.

Blu-ray extras include an unused musical outtake, “C’est La Guerre,” with Lamas and Darcel; audio-only demo recordings by lyricist Johnny Mercer; an audio-only interview with Williams; and the 1949 Tom & Jerry cartoon The Cat and the Mermouse.

Movie: ★★½

EVIL DEAD RISE (2023). The prologue is set in and around a cabin in the woods — Evil Dead represent! — but the main action then takes place in a grungy apartment complex. Though this makes the film initially feel more like a remake of Lamberto Bava’s Demons 2 or a [REC] rip-off (or, heck, even a nod to that terrible Critters sequel with li’l Leo DiCaprio in his film debut), the eventual appearance of the Necronomicon means we’re clearly in Lovecraft country by way of Sam Raimi and his Deadites. Guitar techie Beth (Lily Sullivan) heads to L.A. to visit her sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), a tattoo artist who lives in a rickety apartment building with her three kids: teenage activist Bridget (Gabrielle Echols), teenage deejay Danny (Morgan Davies), and cute moppet Kassie (Nell Fisher). It’s Danny who discovers this volume of the Book of the Dead in a buried bank vault. He plays the accompanying records and hears something unusual — no, not Ray Stevens’ “The Streak” but the intonations that bring forth bloodthirsty demons. Like the Die Hard series after the first two entries, writer-director Lee Cronin tries to do something different with the franchise — I suppose that’s a noble goal, but in addition to offering nothing particularly inventive with the new locale, the biggest problem with Evil Dead Rise is that it’s critically missing the sense of fun that powered the original trilogy (also a flaw with the 2013 reboot). There’s no joy on display here, either in the filmmaking or the results; consequently, all that remains is a gore flick with little personality or distinctiveness. Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and Rob Tapert are all listed as producers so they must be A-OK with the project (or at least appreciative of all those zeroes on the studio-cut checks), but this doesn’t feel like an Evil Dead movie as much as it merely feels like something that’s dead on arrival.

The 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital Code edition holds zero extras.

Movie: ★★

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 (2023). As of this writing, Lawrence of Arabia and John Wick: Chapter 4 coincidentally hold both the same critic score (94% Fresh) and the same audience score (93% Fresh) on Rotten Tomatoes. I bring this up not to point out the limitations of the rigid Tomatometer formula nor to make any correlation between the films’ extreme lengths (Lawrence runs just over three-and-a-half hours, Wick runs just shy of three hours) — I mention it because Wick franchise director Chad Stahelski must love the coincidence given that JW4 opens with a direct homage to (or steal from, take your pick) the David Lean masterpiece, the brilliant “match cut.” JW4 is no LoA, of course, but it is the best film in this particular Keanu Reeves action collection, a series that admittedly hasn’t always enthralled me as much as it has the other denizens of Planet Earth. In a nutshell: I like Keanu as a world-class assassin whose puppy love leads to a mission of revenge; dig the idea of the Continental and other neutral-ground hotels for criminals; admire the mano-a-mano martial arts mayhem; and am bored silly by the repetitive gunplay (to quote my JW3 review, “There’s a numbness in witnessing Wick repeatedly flip around an opponent, punch him down, shoot him in the stomach or groin, and then fire into the head two or three additional times — this occurs with even greater frequency than Gary Coleman quipping, ‘Whatchu talkin’ about, Willis?’ over the course of eight seasons of Diff’rent Strokes”). But aside from some overextended vehicular chases, JW4 is good stuff, with some deft plotting, continued strong turns by Ian McShane and Laurence Fishburne as Wick frenemies, and a satisfying denouement (and don’t miss the end-credits coda).

Extras in the 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital Code edition include a look at the collaboration between Reeves and Stahelski; a pair of scene breakdowns; and a number of making-of featurettes.

Movie: ★★★

LAWMAN (1971) / SCORPIO (1973). Burt Lancaster is the star of these two underrated films from the early 1970s.

Lawman is a fascinating Western written by Gerald Wilson and directed by Michael Winner, the duo behind several Charles Bronson hits (including Death Wish). Lancaster stars as Jared Maddox, a humorless, by-the-book marshal who journeys to the neighboring town of Sabbath to apprehend the cowboys who accidentally killed an old man during a night of drunken carousing. The accused, cattle baron Vincent Bronson (Lee J. Cobb) and the men in his charge (including one played by Robert Duvall), debate whether to go with Maddox peaceably or resist him with guns drawn; meanwhile, the townspeople, all appreciative of Bronson’s service to the community, weigh whether to form their own vigilante squad to chase off the determined marshal. All of the central characters are refreshingly complex — few can be strictly defined as “good” or “bad” — and none more so than Ryan Cotton (a sensational Robert Ryan), the over-the-hill Sabbath marshal who may be in Bronson’s pocket but who still can exhibit moments of integrity and courage.

The strains of cynicism and paranoia that marked the majority of ’70s political thrillers — superb pictures like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor — can be found in the effectively dour Scorpio, which often feels like a Yankee version of the sort of espionage tales being churned out by John le Carré over in England. Lancaster provides the proper measure of weary resignation to his turn as Cross, a longtime CIA agent who learns that his own agency has put out a hit on him — and that the person ordered to squeeze the trigger is his own protégée, a cool-as-ice Frenchman known as Scorpio (Alain Delon). The remainder is the usual mix of lengthy chases, clandestine meetings, and tantalizing double crosses, all smoothly pulled off by Winner and writers David W. Rintels and Gerald Wilson. Paul Scofield turns up in a key supporting role as Zharkov, a Soviet agent and the closest thing Cross has to a true friend.

There are no Blu-ray extras on either release.

Lawman: ★★★½

Scorpio: ★★★

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION (1983). There’s a tendency to slap the label “comedy classic” on any guffaw-filled flick that emerged from the 1980s — Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Rhinestone (well, OK, maybe not that Sylvester Stallone-Dolly Parton atrocity) — but the truth is that only a portion of that decade’s highly touted output deserves such a heady classification. Many will vehemently disagree, but National Lampoon’s Vacation doesn’t quite make the grade: It’s an extremely pleasant diversion with a few memorable bits and a likable cast, but true comic invention is hard to locate in the meandering screenplay by John Hughes. Chevy Chase is Clark Griswold, a clod who elects to take his brood — wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), son Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall), and daughter Audrey (Dana Barron) — from Chicago to Los Angeles to spend some time at the theme park Walley World. While everyone else wants to fly there, Clark insists on driving, a decision that leads to a series of disasters for the Griswold clan. Chase is in good form, and his man-to-man talks with Hall are especially amusing; also scoring is Randy Quaid as Clark’s redneck in-law Eddie, whose idea of a decent meal is Hamburger Helper without the hamburger. The original ending was deemed so rotten by preview audiences that a new one was hastily shot with John Candy (as a park employee) added to the mix; it’s not much better than the discarded one. This movie’s commercial success led to more National Lampoon adventures for the Griswolds: 1985’s European Vacation, 1989’s Christmas Vacation (the best of the series), and 1997’s Vegas Vacation.

The only extra on the 4K UHD + Digital Code edition is audio commentary by director Harold Ramis, Chase, Quaid, Hall, Barron, and producer Matty Simmons.

Movie: ★★½

ROMEO IS BLEEDING (1993). “You’re not too smart, are you?” purrs Kathleen Turner’s femme fatale to William Hurt’s hapless sap in 1981’s Body Heat. “I like that in a man.” Similarly, Lena Olin’s lethal lady must adore that quality in Gary Oldman’s dim-witted (and corrupt) cop in this neo-noir wanna-be that huffs and puffs but rarely measures up. Oldman’s Jack Grimaldi has a lovely wife (perpetually undervalued Annabella Sciorra), a loving mistress (Juliette Lewis), and a loathsome habit of slipping valuable intel to mob boss Don Falcone (a smooth Roy Scheider) in exchange for envelopes of $65,000. As if Jack’s life wasn’t already complicated enough, it gets taken to the next level once he starts dallying — both professionally and personally — with Mona Demarkov (Olin), a hit woman whose killer legs turn out to be nearly as scary as her killer instincts. The same two things that caught my attention when I first saw the film upon its original release are the same two things that barged to the forefront with this new viewing. The first is that Olin delivers a bravura performance that overwhelms everything else in the picture, much like a tsunami laying waste to a seaside shack. The second is that it’s still difficult to discern whether it’s the character of Jack or if it’s the picture’s screenwriter, Hilary Henkin, who suffers from poor math skills, as evidenced by Jack’s line, “We’ll look for each other every six months. May 1, December 1, May 1, December 1” (intervals of seven and five months, not six months). Clearly, somebody deserves an F in arithmetic, but the formidable Olin deserves an A all the way.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★

THE WHITE BUFFALO (1977). Director J. Lee Thompson and actor Charles Bronson made a total of nine films together — by the time they teamed up, both men’s careers were winding down, with mostly wheezy vehicles like Death Wish 4: The Crackdown to keep them busy. For all its flaws, The White Buffalo is one of their better joint efforts: Largely dismissed as one of Dino De Laurentiis’ Jaws rip-offs (along with the producer’s two other “oversized creature on the prowl” films, King Kong and Orca), it has a bit more on its mind than just matinee thrills. Bronson plays Wild Bill Hickok, whose dreams are haunted by visions of a rampaging buffalo. Normally not afraid of anything, he finds himself unnerved by these nightmares, to the point where he decides to see if such an animal exists and, if so, kill it. The Native American warrior Crazy Horse (Will Sampson) knows such a beast is out there, since it destroyed his village and killed his child. Wild Bill and Crazy Horse eventually cross paths, and they decide to pursue the buffalo together, with Wild Bill’s friend Charlie Zane (Jack Warden) along for the ride. By mostly filming the imposing creature in extreme close-up, Thompson is able to avoid the lackluster visuals that often marred De Laurentiis’ King Kong remake, although the script by Richard Sale (based on his own novel) seems as interested in examining the mindset of a troubled Hickok as in tracking the buffalo’s antics. The ending is a letdown, and the cameos (John Carradine, Kim Novak, Slim Pickins, and more) add little, but overall, this qualifies as an interesting misfire worth a glance when entertainment options are limited.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Paul Talbot (author of the Bronson’s Loose! books); the theatrical trailer; and TV spots.

Movie: ★★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN (2002). Yes, its central characters are two horny teenagers and a beautiful older woman who lights their fires, but to tag this Mexican import the art-house equivalent of a teen sex comedy would be misleading — Y Tu Mamá También (And Your Mother, Too) has more on its mind than the male orgasm. Ultimately, this splendid picture from writer-director Alfonso Cuarón (later a Best Director Oscar winner for Gravity and Roma) and his brother, co-scripter Carlos Cuarón, begs comparison with Thelma & Louise more than American Pie, exploring the liberation (sexual and otherwise) of its leading characters as well as the mythos and pathos of the landscape they cross while making their life-altering journey. Gael García Bernal (recently starring in Disney+’s Werewolf by Night) and Diego Luna (recently starring in Disney+’s Andor) portray two of the most realistic teenagers ever seen in cinema, raging bulls of hormonal overdrive who, during one fateful summer, decide to embark on a road trip to the beach. They take off with an “older” (late-20s) woman (Maribel Verdú) at their side, a dental assistant from Spain who’s trying to come to terms with her failed marriage and the dark secret that seems to inspire her increasingly bold actions. Sexually explicit in a manner rarely seen in American titles yet also mindful of its country’s sociopolitical breakdown, this is a mature drama that snares the viewer with seductive ease. This swiped the majority of the year’s Best Foreign Language Film prizes from the critics’ groups, but antiquated Academy rules meant it wasn’t even in the running for that organization’s award; it did, however, earn an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Movie: ★★★½

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Review links for movies referenced in this column (all links open in new window):
Army of Darkness
Beverly Hills Cop
Critters 3
Death Wish (1974)
Demons 2
Die Hard
The Ed Sullivan Show
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
John Wick: Chapter 2
John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum
King Kong (1976)
Lawrence of Arabia
Million Dollar Mermaid
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
The Parallax View
[REC]
Rhinestone
Roma
Thelma & Louise