FILM FRENZY

Promotional artwork for The Blackening (Photo: Lionsgate)

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 BLACKENING (2023). The Blackening offers a clever hook that stood the chance of being funny only in suggestion rather than execution. As the ads ask, “If the entire cast of a horror movie is Black, who dies first?” Teaming with director Tim Story (Barbershop) and co-scripter Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip), writer-actor Dewayne Perkins stretched his 2018 Comedy Central skit into a feature-length flick that consistently upends horror tropes. Several friends who rent a cabin in the woods for a Juneteenth celebration discover on the premises an offensive board game called The Blackening (“Jim Crow Monopoly,” as one character tags it). Soon, they’re all forced to play the game, which requires them to correctly answer questions about black culture … or else. What makes the movie work so well isn’t the horror (minimal) or even the humor (maximal) but rather the characterizations — going against the grain of most slasher flicks and their interchangeable victims, Perkins (who plays the gay BFF) and Oliver have created a number of unique individuals, all vividly brought to life by a smartly chosen cast. The jokes are often sly and subversive (the Friends bit is a riot), and the picture furthermore plays fair by offering clues throughout as to the identity of the killer (the initialed envelope sealed it for me, pun not intended). Watch this back to back with last year’s Bodies Bodies Bodies for a durable double feature.

Extras in the 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital edition include audio commentary by Story, Oliver, and Perkins; a Q&A session with Story and the cast; a highly amusing featurette titled Who’s the Blackest? Game Show; a deleted scene; and outtakes.

Movie: ★★★

DORIS DAY AND ROCK HUDSON ROMANTIC COMEDY COLLECTION (1959-1964). Doris Day and Rock Hudson made three movies together, and their triple play can be found in this set that’s been newly reissued on Blu-ray.

The 1950s produced no small amount of frothy romantic comedies centering around the lives (and lifestyles) of wealthy, winsome people, and Pillow Talk (1959) proved to be one of the biggest commercial hits in this field. In the first of their three screen pairings, Day and Hudson strike sparks as two New Yorkers forced to share a party phone line. Brad Allen (Hudson) is a womanizing songwriter who ties up the telephone with endless chats with a bevy of lovestruck females, much to the frustration of interior decorator Jan Morrow (Day), who needs the phone for business calls. Their war of words over the wire escalates until Brad spots Jan in a nightclub; impressed by her beauty, he sets about wooing her under false pretenses by pretending to be a hayseed from Texas. She responds favorably to his hick routine, leading to a romance that pleases her perpetually hung-over maid (Thelma Ritter) but angers her persistent suitor (Tony Randall). It’s impossible to imagine this movie not being presented in CinemaScope, as the widescreen format is integral in supporting the imaginative use of split-screen techniques. Nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Day and Best Supporting Actress for Ritter, this won for Best Original Story and Screenplay. While it qualifies as sparkling entertainment and deserved to beat fellow nominee Operation Petticoat (like Pillow Talk, co-written by Stanley Shapiro and Maurice Richlin), few cineastes would agree with it besting the other contenders (are you ready?): Ernest Lehman’s Hitchcock collaboration North By Northwest, François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, and Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries!

This collection could easily have been called the Doris Day-Rock Hudson-Tony Randall Romantic Comedy Collection, since the popular performer appears in support in all three pictures. In Lover Come Back (1961), Randall is Pete Ramsey, the nitwit owner of the advertising agency at which hotshot executive Jerry Webster (Hudson) works. Carol Templeton (Day), a new hire at a competing agency, immediately takes a dislike to Jerry’s shady methods of snagging new clients; a case of mistaken identity results in Carol wining and dining Jerry, erroneously believing him to be a Nobel Prize-winning chemist. The laughs are not only plentiful but also clever, with the bit in the aquarium particularly sharp. Like Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back was one of its year’s top 10 moneymakers, and Shapiro and Paul Henning earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Story and Screenplay.

The trio’s third and final collaboration, Send Me No Flowers (1964), pales in comparison to its predecessors but still offers a few memorable scenes as well as another of Rock’s rock-solid comedic turns. In this one, he and Day play characters who are already married: He’s George Kimball, a hypochondriac who wrongly believes he’s dying, while she’s Judy, his faithful if exasperated wife. With the help of his pal (Randall), George decides to find Judy a new husband for after he passes, but she mistakes his intentions and believes he’s covering up an affair. The story is weak, but scattered laughs do appear, particularly whenever Paul Lynde (as a cheerful funeral home director) is on the screen.

Blu-ray extras consist of film historian audio commentary on Pillow Talk; a retrospective piece on Pillow Talk; a look at the Doris-Rock teaming; and trailers for all three films.

Pillow Talk: ★★★½

Lover Come Back: ★★★

Send Me No Flowers: ★★½

GO TELL THE SPARTANS (1978). While films about the Vietnam War had been trickling out of Hollywood since the mid-1960s, it was 1978 that proved to be both a watershed year and a turning point for sobering cinema centered on the conflict. The Big Two were The Deer Hunter and Coming Home, which between them won eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture for The Deer Hunter) — less ballyhooed yet also deserving of attention were The Boys in Company C and Go Tell the Spartans. Both were ensemble pieces and both co-starred rising actor Craig Wasson (later of De Palma’s Body Double), although Go Tell the Spartans did have an above-the-title superstar in Burt Lancaster. He offers the right mix of humanism and gruffness as Major Asa Barker, a military adviser who’s ordered to send a mix of American soldiers and South Vietnamese civilian fighters to a deserted outpost that eventually gets overrun by Viet Cong troops. Wasson plays the most idealistic member of the group, Jonathan Goldsmith (best known for those Dos Equis commercials and memes) is the weary veteran, and Evan Kim (the Bruce Lee character in The Kentucky Fried Movie) appears as the outfit’s interpreter and interrogator. Adapted by Wendell Mayes from Daniel Ford’s novel Incident at Muc Wa and directed with journeyman competency by the prolific Ted Post, Go Tell the Spartans employs a more muted strain of M*A*S*H black humor to point out the ironies, inconsistencies, and idiocies of war without ever sacrificing the overriding dramatic tension.

There are no extras on the Blu-ray.

Movie: ★★★

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 (2023). The third GotG film is a step down from its predecessors, although there’s still enough of merit to satisfy the MCU faithful. Although it juggles many subplots, the main storyline finds Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and friends forced to combat the sadistic High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) as they attempt to save the life of Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper). Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 suffers from too much bloat, the smart-alecky humor is much more forced than usual — Dave Bautista’s Drax, once a lovable highlight, has particularly grown tiresome with his sophomoric quips — and post-Avengers: Infinity War developments have rendered Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) a dramatically flailing character. But the strongest material is perhaps the most unexpected: the backstory of Rocket Raccoon, which is involving and even touching in ways that the rest of the picture is not. Pom Klementief is allowed to shine in this entry as the empathetic Mantis, Karen Gillan continues to be an MVP as the grouchy Nebula, and Will Poulter joins the cast as Adam Warlock (although the character, meant to be childlike, comes across instead as imbecilic). Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is ultimately a mixed bag, with patience required to arrive at the scattered best moments in this 150-minute sprawl.

DVD extras consist of audio commentary by director James Gunn; a making-of featurette; a piece on Rocket Raccoon; deleted scenes; and a gag reel.

Movie: ★★½

HACKERS (1995). In a manner similar to that of 1982’s Tron predating the obsession for Computer-generated Imagery (CGI) in entertainment, so did 1995’s Hackers offer an early peek at the online world shortly before the global explosion of the Internet. But the comparison doesn’t end there, as both films find that even their cutting-edge ideas can’t quite compensate for their banal storylines. Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie landed their first significant screen roles in Hackers, respectively playing Dade (aka Zero Cool, aka Crash Override) and Kate (aka Acid Burn). They’re high school students who, along with their hacker buddies Cereal Killer (Matthew Lillard, in the first of his countless roles as an insufferable sidekick), Lord Nikon (Laurence Mason), The Phantom Phreak (Renoly Santiago), and the handle-less Joey (Jesse Bradford), are framed for a cybercrime by The Plague (Fisher Stevens), a computer security expert attempting to create a distraction from his own embezzling scheme. A flop upon its initial release, the film has achieved ever-so-slight cult status thanks to its working knowledge of computer technology (several real-life hackers served as consultants), its engaging effects (most created without CGI), and a pulsating soundtrack. But the heroes remain hopelessly bland, while Stevens’ master villain exudes about as much menace as a pampered poodle.

Blu-ray extras consist of a retrospective featurette and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★½

LAUREL AND HARDY: YEAR ONE (1921-1928). Silent cinema continues to be grossly underrepresented on Blu-ray (where is The Wind? The Crowd? Or the hilarious Show People?), so it’s nice to have outfits like Flicker Alley doing its part to keep early film history vibrant, relevant, and up to date. To that end, the company is offering a boon to comedy lovers, serving up a 2-disc edition of newly restored shorts starring the immortal team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. What’s unique about this collection is that it focuses on the partnership in its first year of existence, adding as a bonus the two films they made before they were officially a team (1921’s Lucky Dog and 1926’s 45 Minutes From Hollywood). As for the rest, it’s 13 of the 15 films they made in 1927 (Flying Elephants has a 1928 release date but was actually shot in 1927). Regarding the two no-shows, Now I’ll Tell One is considered partially lost (only half of the footage remains) and the boys don’t share any scenes anyway, while Hats Off! is completely lost (however, see the extra features for a special treat). Not all of the shorts included here are among the dynamic duo’s best — many of their classics were still ahead of them — but all are entertaining, and a few qualify as undisputed gems. The Battle of the Century is probably the most famous, with its raucous scene involving the throwing of a record 3,000 pies. Do Detectives Think? (aka The Bodyguard) was worthy of being a feature instead of a short, with the lads as incompetent gumshoes assigned to protect a judge from an escaped killer. And Sailors, Beware! is a delight, with Stan as a cab driver and Oliver as a ship’s purser who both tangle with a pair of thieves.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentaries by author Randy Skretvedt (Laurel & Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies); a look at the restoration; and a slide show presentation of Hats Off!

Collection: ★★★½

THE LEGEND OF ZORRO (2005). It was seven years before Columbia Pictures got around to releasing a sequel to 1998’s delightful swashbuckling adventure The Mask of Zorro, and the lengthy interim suggests this follow-up was perhaps an afterthought. Maybe so, but at least nobody can accuse it of being hastily put together to cash in on the success of the first film. Set approximately nine years after the conclusion of the previous picture, this finds Don Alejandro de la Vega (Antonio Banderas) having trouble shedding his day job as Zorro in order to spend more time with his lovely wife Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and rambunctious young son Joaquin (Adrian Alonso). External pressures force the couple to split, with Alejandro drowning himself in booze and Elena taking up with a Frenchman (Rufus Sewell) who’s clearly up to no good. But once Alejandro learns of a criminal plot that threatens not only California but the rest of the nation as well, he steps back into his role as the other Man In Black, receiving some unexpected help along the way from his own kid. The presence of Anthony Hopkins (who played the original, aging Zorro in the first film) is sorely missed, but Banderas and Zeta-Jones remain a sexy and spirited screen couple. Their fiery passion, combined with some solid action scenes, results in an undemanding good time.

Extras in the 4K Ultra HD + Digital edition include audio commentary by director Martin Campbell (who also helmed the first flick) and cinematographer Phil Meheux (who also shot the first flick); a quartet of behind-the-scenes featurettes; and deleted scenes.

Movie: ★★★

THE RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE (1968) / THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTED (1980). Following its release of two Jean Rollin films this past May, 1971’s The Shiver of the Vampires and 1997’s Two Orphan Vampires, the Powerhouse / Indicator label is now offering two more titles from the perpetually kinky monster-movie maker.

Rollin made his feature-film debut as both writer and director with The Rape of the Vampire (Le viol du vampire), which if nothing else introduced several of the themes and some of the imagery that would dominate his pictures over the decades. Originally envisioned as a short, this was expanded into a two-part movie in order to be released theatrically. The first half (“The Rape of the Vampire”) finds a trio of scientists arriving at a remote estate to convince four sisters that they are not vampires as they believe. The second part (“Queen of the Vampires”) centers on, well, a vampire queen. Many have attacked the movie for being incomprehensible, but its greater sin is that it’s uninteresting. Rollin’s films would become known for their dreamlike ambience, but this picture is merely sleepy.

The Night of the Hunted (La nuit des traquées) was made during a period when Rollin had stepped away from lesbian vampires, and it’s certainly the better of the pair. It seems inspired by early Cronenberg and foreshadows the odd medical milieu of Lars von Trier’s miniseries The Kingdom, as a clinic harbors a number of patients/prisoners all suffering from memory loss. Since atmosphere matters more to Rollin than narrative, the interesting storyline never reaches its full potential, but that ending manages to be both disturbing and touching in equal measure.

Blu-ray extras on The Rape of the Vampire include audio commentary (from 2007) by Rollin; an introduction by Rollin; a retrospective making-of piece; the abbreviated Super 8 version of the movie; and Rollin’s 1965 short film The Far Countries. Blu-ray extras on The Night of the Hunted include select-scene audio commentary (from 2006) by Rollin; an introduction by Rollin; a retrospective making-of piece; and alternative sex scenes.

The Rape of the Vampire: ★★

The Night of the Hunted: ★★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

ED WOOD (1994). Tim Burton’s best movie also remains one of his biggest box office flops, more proof (as if we needed any) that quality and commerce rarely go hand-in-hand. A spirited Johnny Depp stars as Edward D. Wood, Jr., the hopelessly untalented, cross-dressing moviemaker whose eternally optimistic outlook serves him well as he goes to any lengths to get his pictures made. Boasting that he and Orson Welles are the only two people in Hollywood to write, direct, produce, and occasionally star in their own movies, he relies on minuscule budgets and his offbeat friends to help him get such enduring turkeys as Plan 9 From Outer Space, Bride of the Monster, and Glen or Glenda into the can. It’s my bet that any other filmmaker would have made a dark, depressing movie out of this material — a downer about a sexually confused hack who surrounded himself with a gallery of freaks and rotted away in the bowels of Hollywood. But under Burton’s sympathetic eye, this unique gem is actually a gentle valentine that celebrates the creative spirit, no matter how misguided that particular spirit happens to be. Yet for all its merriment, the movie’s primary juice comes from the friendship between Wood and Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau), the once-prominent horror star downsized to a frail morphine addict by the time Wood met him. Their scenes are handled tenderly, and Landau delivers an astonishing performance that embodies irony, humor, and pathos. Several critics’ groups rightly cited Stefan Czapsky’s crisp black-and-white cinematography and Howard Shore’s ebullient music score in their year-end accolades, but the Academy’s charity only extended toward Oscar wins for Landau as Best Supporting Actor and Rick Baker and team for Best Makeup.

Movie: ★★★★