FILM FRENZY

John Wayne in Rio Bravo (Photo: Warner)

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.)

THE BROADWAY MELODY (1929) / CIMARRON (1931). Two of the earliest — and weakest — Best Picture Academy Award winners are now available on Blu-ray through the Warner Archive Collection (each sold separately).

The second movie to win the Best Picture Oscar and the first sound film to do so (the first-year winner was the silent World War I drama Wings), The Broadway Melody is a creaky pre-Code feature that nevertheless set the template for many of the musicals that followed over the course of the next couple of decades. Vaudeville players Queenie and Hank Mahoney (Anita Page and Bessie Love) take their sister act to Broadway, where Hank’s fiancé, singer Eddie Kearns (Charles King), manages to get them parts in a major production. But matters become complicated when Eddie decides he prefers the beautiful Queenie to her plain-Jane sister, and they grow even more knotty once Queenie starts dating a wealthy lout (Kenneth Thomson). Although a middling watch today, this was an enormous hit (the year’s biggest) and marked innovations in the fields of music, sound, and choreography. Nominated for three Oscars, including Best Actress for Love and Best Director for Harry Beaumont, its sole victory was for Best Picture.

Arguably the worst Best Picture winner in the Academy’s 95-year history, Cimarron is based on Edna Ferber’s novel about one family’s struggles during the settling of the West at the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th. As a motion picture, this is fairly worthless, crippled by static direction, overblown performances (particularly by lead Richard Dix), and dull conflicts. But that opening staging of the 1899 Oklahoma Land Rush still impresses, and, as a study of the American mindset at the time of both the story’s setting and the film’s production, it offers a distinctive look back, with its casual cruelty and condescension toward Native Americans, Jews, blacks (“Lots of watermelon there, Isaiah!” bellows Dix to his young servant, to which the lad replies, “Yes sir, I sure glad I came to Oklihomy!”), and the handicapped. Nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Actor for Dix and Best Actress for Irene Dunne, it won three: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (Howard Estabrook), and Best Art Direction.

As usual, WAC should be commended for its restoration efforts on Blu-ray, as both movies look and sound great for their age. Extras on The Broadway Melody consist of the 1930 live-action shorts The Dogway Melody (a spoof of The Broadway Melody using dogs) and Van & Schenk as well as five musical shorts from the era, while extras on Cimarron consist of the 1930 live-action short The Devil’s Cabaret and the 1931 cartoons Lady, Play Your Mandolin and Red-Headed Baby.

The Broadway Melody: ★★½

Cimarron: ★★

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (1971). What hath Carmilla wrought? Author Sheridan Le Fanu’s lesbian vampire seemingly served as a figurehead for a rash of like-minded cinematic bloodsuckers in the early to mid-1970s, in such pictures as The Vampire Lovers, The Shiver of the Vampires, The Velvet Vampire, Lust for a Vampire, The Blood Splattered Bride, the X-rated Vampyres, and, of course, Vampyros Lesbos. Daughters of Darkness is one of the best of the bunch, and, like yet another film from this period, the same year’s Hammer offering Countess Dracula, it incorporates into its story the real-life historical figure of Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a late-16th-century Hungarian serial killer who supposedly bathed in the blood of her young female victims to keep herself young. An English-language, Belgian-French-West German co-production, this stars Last Year at Marienbad’s Delphine Seyrig as the same-named descendant of the original countess, turning up in a secluded Belgian hotel alongside her young assistant Ilona (Andrea Rau) and immediately insinuating herself into the lives of newlywed couple Stefan (John Karlen) and Valerie (Danielle Ouimet). Arty and audacious, this movie doesn’t always go where expected — for starters, Stefan is far from the usual vanilla hero seen in these types of films — and even a few missteps in plot and dialogue can’t obscure the interesting changes to the traditional vampire legend.

Extras in the 4K UHD edition from Blue Underground include audio commentary by director and co-scripter Harry Kümel; audio commentary by Karlen; audio commentary by author Kat Ellinger (Devil’s Advocates: Daughters of Darkness); interviews with Kümel, Ouimet, Rau, and co-writer Pierre Drouot; and alternate U.S. titles.

Movie: ★★★

EAST OF EDEN (1955). James Dean’s first starring performance was guided by the capable hands of director Elia Kazan, who had been looking for the right actor to play the role of Cal Trask in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. After testing various performers (including a newcomer named Paul Newman), Kazan went with the unknown Dean, a move that immediately yielded dividends. After floundering around Hollywood and New York for several years, the 24-year-old suddenly emerged as a full-fledged movie star in a film that proved to be a major box office hit. Basically a 20th century update of the Cain and Abel saga, this finds Dean cast as the troubled kid who, despite his best efforts, never gains the approval of a father (Raymond Massey) who lavishes all of his attention on his more respectable son (Richard Davalos). Top-billed Julie Harris provides much of the dramatic tension as the woman who finds her affections divided between the two boys. Dean, Kazan, and Paul Osborn (who wrote the adaptation) earned Oscar nominations, while Jo Van Fleet nabbed the Best Supporting Actress award for her work as Cal’s hard-boiled mother, who years earlier had abandoned her family and ended up operating a whorehouse in the adjacent town. Seven months after this film debuted, Dean was killed in that fateful automobile accident; his two subsequent films, 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause and 1956’s Giant, were released posthumously.

The only extra on the 4K UHD edition from Warner Bros. is audio commentary by film critic Richard Schickel. None of the many extras from the Blu-ray editions have been carried over (ditto the same label’s Rio Bravo, reviewed below).

Movie: ★★★½

HUGO (2011). Martin Scorsese has always been a student of film as much as a teacher and practitioner, and with Hugo, he manages to incorporate all his interests. Even more so than The Aviator, this adaptation of Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a product steeped in cinema lore, drunk on the fumes of a bygone era yet canny enough to channel its nostalgia through modern innovations. Set in a Parisian train station in the 1930s, the story concerns itself with young Hugo (Asa Butterfield), a parentless child who tends to the building’s giant clock while constantly avoiding the grasp of an inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) hell-bent on sending him off to an orphanage. Connected to his late father (Jude Law in a small role) by an automaton that needs repairing, Hugo steals the parts needed from an elderly man named Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley), who runs a toy store in the station. Eventually caught by the ill-tempered gent, Hugo becomes drawn into Méliès’ life, befriending his ward Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), learning about his former life as a film pioneer, and discovering the key — literally — that binds past and present together. Despite registering as a glorious celebration of Méliès, Scorsese hasn’t merely made an ode to cineasts; rather, his film is a moving exploration of the manner in which individuals seek out love and companionship in an effort to form their own version of a nuclear family (every character, even Cohen’s bumbling inspector, wages a war against loneliness). Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, it won five in various technical categories.

Extras on the 4K UHD + 3-D edition include a making-of featurette; a piece on Méliès; an interview with Selznick; and visual essays.

Movie: ★★★½

NEEDFUL THINGS (1993). This adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling novel (which itself seemed to owe at least a curtsy in the direction of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes) stars Max von Sydow as the gaunt Leland Gaunt, a stranger who opens the quaint antique shop Needful Things in the small Maine town of Castle Rock. He miraculously seems able to offer each citizen exactly what they desire, be it a baseball card, a porcelain figurine, or an erotic painting — in return, this devilish dude wants their souls, shrouding his desire in the guise of the destructive pranks he asks them to play on each other, mean-spirited monkeyshines that often end in murder. Only Alan Pangborn (Ed Harris), the watchful sheriff, seems to grasp what’s happening to his beloved burg. Needful Things starts out well, with an interesting premise given solid support by von Sydow, Harris, and Bonnie Bedelia as a local waitress — unfortunately, the venture eventually turns into a sloppy romp that borders on camp, dragged down by lame witticisms (von Sydow’s Gaunt suddenly turns into a Freddy Krueger wanna-be, with such lines as “We’re having fun now!” and “You wussy!”), increasingly ripe performances by the supporting players (it doesn’t help that the cast includes three actors known to go overboard, Amanda Plummer, J.T. Walsh, and Ray McKinnon), and a feeble climax that goes kaboom.

Kino’s Blu-ray edition contains both the 120-minute theatrical version and the 191-minute expanded television cut. Extras consist of audio commentary by director Fraser C. Heston (Charlton’s son); an interview with screenwriter W.D. Richter; the theatrical trailer; and trailers for two other King adaptations, Cujo and Misery.

Movie: ★★

NIGHTBREED (1990). Notorious for all the wrong reasons, writer-director Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, based on his own novel Cabal, was viewed by its auteur as a different kind of horror film, an ambitious undertaking that would lead to further movies and a deepening of the story’s mythology. Instead, the picture baffled the suits at distributor 20th Century Fox, who proceeded to butcher it in the editing room and subsequently promote it as a standard slasher flick. The released work proved to be a box office dud, and no one lived happily ever after … until the inaugural Mad Monster Party in Charlotte in 2012, when a premiere screening of the extended Cabal Cut ultimately led to a Director’s Cut. This edit, which contains (in Barker’s own words) “over 40 minutes of new and altered footage,” is vastly superior to the theatrical version, expanding on the secretive realm of Midian and the monsters who reside in this underground lair. It’s here where the troubled Boone (Craig Sheffer) ends up after he’s falsely accused of a string of murders committed by his psychiatrist, Dr. Decker (a rare — and shaky — acting turn by director David Cronenberg). Midian’s creatures of the night are an imposing lot, but they ultimately prove to be no more terrifying than the humans determined to wipe out these misfits. While the story is fitfully interesting, it’s the spectacular art direction and tremendous makeup designs that truly punch this across.

The new Shout! Factory release offers the theatrical cut on both 4K UHD and Blu-ray and the Director’s Cut on Blu-ray. Extras include audio commentary by Barker; a making-of documentary; deleted scenes; a piece on the special makeup effects; and still galleries.

Movie: ★★★

RIO BRAVO (1959). My all-time favorite Western? Unless one counts John Huston’s 1948 masterpiece The Treasure of the Sierra Madre — and many don’t, given its lack of traditional cowboys and its 1925 setting — that would be this marvelous motion picture directed by Howard Hawks (His Girl Friday) and adapted from a short story by scripters Jules Furthman (the original Nightmare Alley) and Leigh Brackett (The Empire Strikes Back). John Wayne is in peak form as Sheriff John T. Chance, who’s forced to take on a gang of seasoned gunmen with only scant support. “A bum-legged old man and a drunk. That’s all you got?” asks a fellow lawman (Ward Bond). “That’s what I got,” replies Chance in one of the movie’s many memorable exchanges. Joining Chance, the old man (Walter Brennan), and the drunk (Dean Martin) are a young hotshot (Ricky Nelson) and a typically (for a Hawks heroine) brassy woman (Angie Dickinson) who catches Chance’s eye. Hawks and Wayne expressly made Rio Bravo to show their disapproval of 1952’s High Noon — they didn’t like the way Gary Cooper’s sheriff went around begging all the townspeople for help — and count me among those who prefer it to that Oscar-winning hit by a wide margin (even though I agree more with High Noon’s anti-McCarthyism politics). The action sequences are just fine, but it’s the gift of gab that truly elevates this picture — it’s easy to see why the film is also a favorite of Quentin Tarantino’s, who has characters similarly speak at length in movies like Pulp Fiction.

The only extra on the new 4K UHD edition is audio commentary by director John Carpenter (whose 1976 Assault On Precinct 13 was inspired by Rio Bravo) and film critic Richard Schickel.

Movie: ★★★★

Short and Sweet:

DEAD HEAT ON A MERRY-GO-ROUND (1966). The continued claim to fame of this caper yarn is that it marked the film debut of 24-year-old Harrison Ford, uncredited for his tiny role as a bellhop. Beyond that, it’s an OK piece of entertainment with James Coburn as an amiable ex-con planning a major heist. Coburn is likable even if his character isn’t — he basically gets to play Fletch before there was a Fletch, donning various disguises throughout — and there are solid supporting turns by Camilla Sparv and Nina Wayne as two of the women he beds and then abandons. There’s also a nice gotcha ending.

Blu-ray extras consist of the theatrical trailer and trailers for 10 other films available on the Kino label.

Movie: ★★½

DU BARRY WAS A LADY (1943). The frisky and risqué Broadway musical gets toned down for this mildly amusing comedy in which nightclub hat check employee Louis Blore (Red Skelton), in love with singer May Daly (Lucille Ball), accidentally downs a tainted drink and dreams that he’s King Louis XV, she’s Madame Du Barry, and hoofer and romantic rival Alec Howe (Gene Kelly) is the dashing Black Arrow. It’s a full hour of this 100-minute movie before Louis finally gulps the drugged drink, making the whole raison d’etre of the stage show feel almost like an afterthought. Still, the cast is spirited, and there are a few effective gags spread throughout.

Blu-ray extras consist of the 1943 cartoon Bah, Wilderness and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★½

THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS (1954). The F. Scott Fitzgerald short story “Babylon Revisited” is the basis for this fairly effective soaper set after the end of World War II. Sisters Helen and Marion Ellswirth (Elizabeth Taylor and Donna Reed) both fall for writer Charles Wills (Van Johnson); he ends up going for Helen, but their strained marriage finds him cavorting with a man-hungry socialite (Eva Gabor) and her with a suave tennis player (Roger Moore in one of his first significant roles). Interest is initially maintained in trying to decide which spouse will be revealed as a rotter, but once that’s established, the film struggles with its bathetic components.

Blu-ray extras consist of the Oscar-nominated 1954 Tom & Jerry cartoon Touché, Pussy Cat! and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

OUT OF AFRICA (1985). There are many who would consider Out of Africa to be as weak a Best Picture Oscar winner as The Broadway Melody and Cimarron (both reviewed above), but I vehemently disagree … and not even because I lived in its Kenya setting for my junior and senior high school years. Meryl Streep won her third Academy Award for a performance that wouldn’t even rank in her Top 20, so rather than The Iron Lady, the Academy should have awarded her that elusive third Oscar long ago — specifically, for her splendid performance in director Sydney Pollack’s lush and romantic epic. Screenwriter Kurt Luedtke gracefully weaves together material from various novels by and about Karen Blixen (who wrote under the name Isac Dinesen), detailing how the young Karen Dinesen moves from Denmark to Kenya in 1913 to marry fellow Dane Bror Blixen (an excellent Klaus Maria Brandauer) and live on a coffee plantation. But his incessant womanizing, coupled with the minimal time he spends at home, leaves her lonely and frustrated. She eventually forms great friendships with the Kenyan locals as well as various foreigners, and she ultimately enters into a passionate love affair with British hunter Denys Finch Hatton. All-American Robert Redford plays Hatton, and while he doesn’t even try to feign an English accent, his star persona nevertheless makes him suitable for this larger-than-life role. Still, he’s almost a footnote when singing this film’s praises: Streep’s exquisite turn, Pollack’s measured direction, David Watkin’s picturesque cinematography, and John Barry’s gorgeous score. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards (including a Best Actress nod for Streep and a Best Supporting Actor bid for Brandauer), this earned seven, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Movie: ★★★½