FILM FRENZY

Ed Harris in Pollock (Photo: Sony Pictures Classics)

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 BIG KNIFE (1955). A Clifford Odets theatrical piece morphs into a Hollywood-insider movie, and while the staginess remains, it actually suits this claustrophobic story about a self-proclaimed artist suffocating from all the concessions he’s had to make along the way. Jack Palance (in a role played by the great, soon-to-be-late John Garfield in the Broadway incarnation) is Charles Castle, a movie star who’s disgusted that he’s trapped in subpar productions by vulgar studio boss Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger). Castle is separated from his upstanding wife (Ida Lupino), who hints that she might return if he refuses to sign a seven-year contract with Hoff — Charles agrees with her in principle, but he’s bound to Hoff by a dirty secret that if exposed would destroy his career. Aside from a precious few characters like Lupino’s sympathetic spouse and Everett Sloane’s compassionate agent, Odets and director Robert Aldrich are only interested in showcasing Tinseltown’s most horrible citizenry, from the soulless studio flunky (Wendell Corey) to the loathsome gossip columnist (Ilka Chase) to the immoral and opportunistic floozies (Jean Hagen, Shelley Winters). Palance is excellent; Steiger starts off strong by underplaying before eventually hamming it up in prime Steiger fashion.

There are no extras on the Blu-ray.

Movie: ★★★

CLUE (1985). The butler did it — provided all the laughs, that is. Tim Curry’s high-flying turn as the able manservant Wadsworth is one of the few bright spots in this dim adaptation of the popular board game. Working from the game’s characters and playing pieces, this finds six strangers — Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan), Mrs. White (Madeline Kahn), Professor Plum (Christopher Lloyd), Mr. Green (Michael McKean), Colonel Mustard (Martin Mull), and Miss Scarlet (Lesley Ann Warren) — invited to an isolated mansion at the request of Mr. Boddy (Lee Ving). A dead Boddy appears, and everyone is a suspect. The quality of the humor is rapidly established not even so much by the opening gag involving dog doo but by the fact that this gag is repeated over and over and over again. The rest of the movie follows suit, with a big-name cast doing its best to enliven the malodorous proceedings. When this was released in 1985, it was with the gimmick of three different endings, each randomly sent to various theaters. It wasn’t grasping as much as pointless, making it difficult to invest in a story with no real conclusion. Home-entertainment editions (including this one) have included all three endings running successively, making the movie seem even more moot than ever.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include an interview with writer-director Jonathan Lynn and a discussion of John Morris’ score.

Movie: ★★

HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959). This terror tale centers around the real museum where Scotland Yard keeps items previously employed in murders and other nefarious activities. Michael Gough plays a journalist who writes about the latest killings affecting London. He’s one of the few outsiders granted access to the Museum; what the law doesn’t know is that he manages his own “black museum” at home, and he’s the one behind the slayings. This is a bit grislier than expected, with an unforgettable murder opening the movie and the dire fate of a likable character closing it — this hard edge allows the picture to occasionally overcome its pedestrian plot points. This was distributed in the U.S. by American International Pictures — no doubt noticing the earlier triumph of 3-D as well as William Castle’s success with promotional gimmicks for movies like House on Haunted Hill (“Filmed in Emergo!”), AIP MVP James H. Nicholson opted to add something extra to this film: “HypnoVista — It Actually Puts YOU In The Picture.” Alas, Nicholson’s idea was merely to insert a prologue in which a hypnotist discusses his craft. It’s not uninteresting, but I imagine it didn’t jolt audiences quite like a seat rigged with a buzzer (The Tingler, “Filmed in Percepto!”).

Blu-ray extras include archival audio commentary by writer-producer Herman Cohen; archival phone interviews with Cohen and Gough; and a piece on Cohen’s career.

Movie: ★★½

THE MONSTER SQUAD (1987). As someone whose favorite genre isn’t necessarily horror but whose favorite specific subgenre is the Universal Classic Monsters crop from the 1930s and ‘40s, this would seem to have been my cup of tea. Yet catching it back in ‘87 (I had to be quick since it was a box office bomb), when I was 21 and still kept my Famous Monsters of Filmland mags perpetually pressed to my bosom, I immensely disliked it — revisiting it now, I’ve apparently mellowed yet still can’t give it anything more than a shoulder shrug. Co-written (with Shane Black) and directed by Fred Dekker (whose 1986 Night of the Creeps I quite enjoy), it follows the plug ‘n’ play template of many ‘80s flicks featuring goony kid explorers embarking on the adventure of a lifetime. In this one, several monster-movie devotees are startled when Dracula (Duncan Rehger), the Frankenstein monster (Tom Noonan), the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and the Gill-man all appear in their small town. It turns out there’s a mystical amulet and Dracula needs it to take over the world but the kids need it so they can keep the forces of Good and Evil balanced and furthermore they can create a wormhole to suck all the critters to another dimension and, and, Van Helsing makes an appearance and, and, Spielbergian divorcing parents, and, and, and — you know, the usual stuff. This is silly rather than funny, cloddish rather than clever, and only an underused Noonan makes any sort of impression.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include two audio commentaries by Dekker and team; a lengthy documentary; and deleted scenes.

Movie: ★★

POLLOCK (2000). Depicting the creative process of an artist at work is one of the hardest challenges consistently beating down filmmakers, so let’s give Pollock its due: More than almost any other similar picture, this look at Jackson Pollock convinces us that we’re experiencing the artistic genesis firsthand, never shying away from giving us scene after scene in which its tortured protagonist tackles those daunting blank canvases. Ed Harris (also serving as director and co-producer) does his own painting — no discreet cutaways here — and the best sequences are those that show the preparation, execution, and aftermath whenever Pollock gets cracking. These moments salvage what’s otherwise another by-the-numbers biopic about an unhappy creative type who can control neither his personal demons nor his boorishness — like too many other like-minded films, it assumes that a historical figure’s insufferable behavior automatically makes him or her a fascinating movie character. There’s no faulting the performances: Harris earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his intense emoting, while Marcia Gay Harden won the Best Supporting Actress statue as Lee Krasner, Pollock’s fellow artist, then girlfriend, and then wife.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Harris; a making-of featurette; and deleted scenes.

Movie: ★★½

SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE COMPLETE SERIES (2007-2020). Over the decades, England’s Aardman Animations has consistently produced movies, series, and shorts that highlight the glories of stop-motion animation. For my money, the outfit’s greatest achievement remains the original trio of Wallace & Gromit shorts: 1989’s A Grand Day Out, 1993’s The Wrong Trousers (a flat-out masterpiece), and 1995’s A Close Shave. It was A Close Shave where viewers were first introduced to Shaun, and this character was so popular that he became the star of his own television series. In collaboration with Shout! Studios, Aardman has packaged all six seasons of the series in a cracking box set that not only houses all 170 seven-minute episodes but also two specials and other assorted shorts. (The theatrical releases Shaun the Sheep Movie and A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon are MIA, but they’re already available in stand-alone editions.) Set on Mossy Bottom Farm, where Shaun and his flock live with the hardworking mutt Bitzer and the clueless Farmer, the series is as much a celebration of silent comedy as of animation, and its innovativeness makes it as likely to be enjoyed by adults as by the wee ones.

Blu-ray extras consist of the 2015 special Shaun the Sheep: The Farmer’s Llamas; the 2021 special Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas; and Mossy Bottom and Championsheeps shorts.

Series: ★★★½

THE TERROR (1963) / THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960). For those less into ho-ho-ho and more into ho-ho-horror comes not only VCI’s Horrors of the Black Museum and Kino’s The Monster Squad (both reviewed above) but also this double feature from the Film Masters label, a gift of two flicks from that cheerful deliverer of thrifty thrills, Roger Corman.

The production of The Terror certainly didn’t lack for talent, but then again, that was often the case when Corman was involved. Although he’s listed as the sole director, he only orchestrated a few scenes, with the remainder split up among four young bucks: Francis Ford Coppola (nine years before The Godfather), Monte Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop), Jack Hill (Spider Baby), and Jack Nicholson. Nicholson also serves as co-star here — he plays Andre Duvalier, a Napoleonic officer whose infatuation with an enigmatic woman named Helene (Sandra Knight, then Nicholson’s wife) eventually leads him to the castle of the brooding Baron Von Leppe (Boris Karloff). Also figuring into the proceedings are a local witch (Dorothy Neumann) and the Baron’s manservant Stefan (Corman regular Dick Miller), the latter perhaps the only one who understands the whole truth of the mystery at hand. Ever the cost-conscious filmmaker who was able to spend a penny where others would spend a dollar, Corman employed Karloff for three days of shooting (the length left on the actor’s contract) and reused the sets still fresh from the previous Corman-Karloff-Nicholson collaboration, The Raven. The script for The Terror is erratic and the pacing often poor, but it’s a treat to watch the great Karloff and a baby-faced Nicholson square off, and the story packs a couple of nice surprises toward the end — including that curtain-closing jolt.

It’s interesting that The Little Shop of Horrors is designated the second attraction in this set — its title appears small on the cover and isn’t even on the case spine — since it’s actually one of the best films ever made by Corman. This was rumored to have been shot in a mere two days, but whether it took two days or two years, the end result is worth whatever time was put into it. Jonathan Haze plays the nebbishy Seymour Krelborn, an incompetent dork who works alongside the sweet Audrey (Jackie Joseph) in a failing Skid Row flower shop owned by the fussbudgety Gravis Mushnick (Mel Welles). After Seymour creates an exotic new plant and displays it at the store, customer attendance (as well as attendant sales) skyrockets, but matters become thorny once Seymour realizes the only way to keep his plant alive is by feeding it human blood. The 1986 film version (adapted from the off-Broadway musical that was itself based on this movie) may have all those lovely songs on its soundtrack, but this version has far more laughs, with scripter Charles B. Griffith locating off-kilter (and even macabre) humor at every turn. Dick Miller is amusing as a guy who enjoys munching on flowers, and a 23-year-old Jack Nicholson is delightfully deranged as Wilbur Force, a masochist whose stint in a dentist’s chair finds him begging for more and more pain.

Blu-ray extras include film historian audio commentary on both titles (including the participation of Haze on The Little Shop of Horrors); a look at Corman’s production and distribution company, The Filmgroup; and newly recut trailers for both movies.

The Terror: ★★½

The Little Shop of Horrors: ★★★½

THE WARRIORS (1979). Director Walter Hill has long been known for directing unpretentious, red-meat fare, and The Warriors is a fine representation of his output. Delegates from various New York City street gangs gather in The Bronx to listen to a speech delivered by the magnetic leader of the most powerful outfit, but all hell breaks loose after he’s fatally shot and the members of the Warriors are falsely fingered for the murder. Determined to make it back to their Coney Island turf, they cautiously tread their way through an urban jungle in which every other gang, including the creepy, bat-wielding Baseball Furies, is out for their blood. Highly controversial in its day — the poster stated that gang members “outnumber the cops five to one. They could run New York City,” and a few gang-related deaths occurred at screenings — this remains a rousing piece of pulp entertainment, and its continued popularity can be seen by the homage paid to it in the recent John Wick: Chapter Four. James Remar is particularly good as the quick-tempered Warrior Ajax, while David Patrick Kelly as Luther, the psychotic leader of the Rogues, is the one who gets to (repeatedly) utter the classic line, “Warriors … Come out to play-ee-ayyy!”

Extras in the 4K edition include audio commentary by film critic Walter Chaw; a new interview with Hill; and a making-of featurette.

Movie: ★★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

Turkey Pick: AVALANCHE EXPRESS (1979). Fourteen-year-old boys are game for pretty much any action film, and 14-year-old film buffs are game for pretty much any action film featuring an all-star cast. Yet even at that age, when I caught Avalanche Express during its initial theatrical run, I knew that this movie stank on ice. Watching it lo these many years later, it still proves to be a miserable experience. An adaptation of Colin Forbes’ popular novel, this finds Lee Marvin as an American agent who, with his team in tow, attempts to help a Russian bigwig (Robert Shaw) defect by escorting him on a perilous journey aboard a transcontinental train. Critic Leonard Maltin hilariously noted that the “cast has enough stiffs in it to resemble audition time at the Hollywood Wax Museum,” and he isn’t kidding: Marvin and Maximilian Schell are uncharacteristically awful, while Horst Buchholz, Mike Connors, Linda Evans, and especially gridiron great Joe Namath (or, as he’s billed, “and Joe Namath as Leroy”), are all comatose. Shaw at least had an excuse: He died of a heart attack during production, resulting in practically all of his dialogue being dubbed by others. Two months prior, the fine director Mark Robson (Von Ryan’s Express, Peyton Place) had also died of a heart attack, thereby marking this as a doomed production almost from the start. The only achievement of note is the visual effects work in the avalanche sequence, supervised by John Dykstra (Star Wars).

Movie: ★