FILM FRENZY

Ewan Bremner, Kevin McKidd, Ewan McGregor, and Jonny Lee Miller in Trainspotting (Photo: Criterion)

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.)

BLOOD AND LACE (1971). Pity the accomplished actors and actresses from Hollywood’s glory years, those award-winning thespians who later found themselves winding down their illustrious careers by appearing in grade-Z horror yarns or Italian gangster cheapies. On that lengthy list that includes the likes of Joan Crawford, Ida Lupino, Joseph Cotten, Veronica Lake, and Arthur Kennedy, make room for Gloria Grahame. One of the best actresses to make her mark during the 1950s — she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful and also co-starred in In a Lonely Place, The Big Heat, and (as Ado Annie) Oklahoma! — Grahame here finds herself trapped in a lurid thriller far beneath her talents. She plays Mrs. Deere, who runs an orphanage for troubled teens and who harbors some strange ideas about life and death. Into her home comes Ellie Masters (Melody Patterson), who fears she might be the next victim of the hammer-wielding psycho who murdered her mother. The unusual setting helps, and the film ends on a string of plot twists, some less predictable than others. The supporting roster includes some familiar faces: Vic Tayback (Mel on TV’s Alice) as a lecherous detective, Len Lesser (Uncle Leo on TV’s Seinfeld) as a lecherous handyman, and Dennis Christopher (Breaking Away) as a teenager who is decidedly not lecherous but does raid the fridge a lot.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★

COMING HOME (1978). Given the unpopularity of the Vietnam War, it’s no surprise that few films on the subject were made while the conflict raged — there was John Wayne’s ridiculous pro-war embarrassment The Green Berets in 1968 and Michael Douglas’ dreary anti-war dud Summertree in 1971, and not much else. Even after the conflict ended, it took Hollywood a few years to address the issue — one of the first out the gate, Coming Home stars Jane Fonda as a military wife who undergoes a gradual awakening. Fonda’s Sally Hyde is married to Bob (Bruce Dern), a Marine Corps captain who’s excited to leave for Vietnam and hopes to return as a decorated war hero. While he’s gone, Sally volunteers at a VA hospital, where she meets the bitter paraplegic Luke Martin (Jon Voight). Luke is nasty to everyone except his fellow injured vets, but he eventually thaws under Sally’s care and the pair soon become lovers. Terrific performances (Voight has never been better) and mature, sensitive storytelling keep this emotionally charged throughout. Nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture (which it lost to fellow Vietnam War flick The Deer Hunter), Director (Hal Ashby), Supporting Actor (Dern), Supporting Actress (Penelope Milford as Sally’s friend), and Film Editing, this won three: Best Actress for Fonda, Best Actor for Voight, and Best Original Screenplay for Nancy Dowd, Waldo Salt, and Robert C. Jones.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Voight, Dern, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler, and a making-of piece.

Movie: ★★★½

CUTTING CLASS (1989). Brad Pitt has been in the biz longer than many folks might realize, first appearing in a couple of 1987 episodes of the soap opera Another World, running the gauntlet of guest spots on primetime series in the late 1980s (including Dallas and 21 Jump Street), and landing roles in a string of TV movies into the ‘90s. And like many other rising stars (including his ex, Jennifer Aniston, with Leprechaun), he also had to go through the initiation ritual of appearing in a slasher flick early in his career. In his case, it’s Cutting Class, a goofy terror tale that barely hit theaters before being shuffled off to video. Pitt plays Dwight, a quick-tempered jock who’s not thrilled that his girlfriend Paula (Jill Schoelen) has caught the eye of his former best friend Brian (Donovan Leitch), a twitchy type who spent a few years in a mental asylum after murdering his father. When students and teachers suddenly start disappearing or dying, all evidence points to Brian, but is it really Dwight who’s doing the slaughtering? Cutting Class is as bizarre as it is bad, which proves to be a slight saving grace. Yes, its staging is clumsy, its scripting sloppy, and its dialogue atrocious, but give it credit for its memorably deranged depiction of the school staff, including the pervy principal (Roddy McDowall!) who enjoys looking up Paula’s skirt and a janitor (Robert Glaudini) who’s like the psychotic version of The Breakfast Club’s friendly custodian.

The 4K + Blu-ray edition contains both unrated and R-rated editions. Extras include interviews with Leitch and Schoelen.

Movie: ★★

DEVIL’S PARTNER (1961) / CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA (1961). For the third time in the past few months, the Film Masters label has seen fit to release a double-feature Blu-ray showcasing low-budget pictures from the Roger Corman collection. All six movies released thus far were made under the banner of The Filmgroup, the company Roger and his brother Gene Corman created so they could produce and distribute their own flicks without studio or union interference. Approximately two dozen movies were Filmgroup titles; fingers crossed that Film Masters will be able to continue offering these tantalizing twofers.

Devil’s Partner (The Devil’s Partner in the ads but not on screen) was one of the few Filmgroup releases that wasn’t created under the Cormans but was instead a pickup. Until the unfortunately rushed and abrupt ending, it proves to be a nifty little chiller, predating such popular ‘60s devil-worship titles as The Witches (aka The Devil’s Own), The Devil Rides Out, and Rosemary’s Baby. The colorful poster showcases a centaur, but don’t be fooled: Since the budget-minded Roger Corman couldn’t spring for an actual centaur (they’re expensive, ya know!), he made do with a regular horse. The animal figures in a plotline that finds an elderly man (Ed Nelson in wrinkly makeup) in a small Southwestern town making a pact with Satan and returning as a smarmy younger man (Ed Nelson sans wrinkly makeup). The top-billed star is Edgar Buchanan, the veteran best known for “And that’s Uncle Joe, he’s a-movin’ kind of slow at the junction. Petticoat Junction!” — he plays Doc Lucas, the father of the woman (Jean Allison) pursued by the silver-tongued slickster.

Creature From the Haunted Sea was written by Charles B. Griffith, who was also responsible for the hilarious Corman quickie The Little Shop of Horrors. This film attempts the same mixture of monsters and mirth, although the results aren’t nearly as impressive. Still, this does offer its share of nyuks, as Renzo Capetto (Antony Carbone), a gangster in the Bogie mold, is introduced as someone who “in 1940 was involved in an unsuccessful attempt to nominate Benito Mussolini for the Republican ticket.” Capetto and his gang (including a lunkhead who can imitate any animal anywhere) team up with Cuban loyalists to steal some treasure and then must contend with one of the silliest-looking monsters ever placed on screen. Robert Towne adopts the pseudonym Edward Wain to star as undercover agent Sparks Moran (“My real name is Agent XK150”) — he’s terrible, but luckily he then had the good sense to focus instead on writing and would later win an Academy Award for that peerless Chinatown script.

Extras on Devil’s Partner include part three of a continuing piece on The Filmgroup (the first two parts can be found on Film Masters’ previous two Corman releases); an interview with Corman; and a recut trailer. Creature From the Haunted Sea is offered in its 60-minute theatrical version and a 75-minute extended cut with additional scenes filmed exclusively for its television airings (stick with the original version). Extras consist of audio commentary by Corman, film historian Tom Weaver, and others; before-and-after restoration footage; and the theatrical trailer.

Devil’s Partner: ★★½

Creature From the Haunted Sea: ★★

JENNIFER 8 (1992). Title notwithstanding, here’s a murder-mystery that avoids being completely by-the-numbers, even if it ultimately fails to fulfill its immense promise. An intense (occasionally too intense, methinks) Andy Garcia stars as John Berlin, who in movie parlance is a typical “cop on the edge.” Fleeing Los Angeles and a failed marriage, he relocates to a small California town where he’s reunited with his former partner and best friend Freddy Ross (Lance Henriksen, stealing the show). Berlin immediately gets wrapped up in a case in which the perpetrator might be a serial killer who murders blind women. His peers on the force believe he has an active imagination — they’re positive the murders aren’t related — but Berlin presses on, and his investigation leads him to a sightless woman (Uma Thurman) who may be the next victim. Writer-director Bruce Robinson sets up the scenario nicely and offers a satisfactory number of suspects, but the story gets out of hand with the convoluted backstory behind the killer’s crime spree, and John Malkovich hisses so much as an FBI agent who harasses Berlin that you would suspect he prepared for the role by studying both a snake and a punctured tire.

The Blu-ray contains the original cut as well as a version with a never-before-seen alternate ending. Extras consist of a retrospective piece featuring new interviews with Robinson, Garcia, and Henriksen, and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★½

KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977). Like those Biblical epics of yore, here’s a motion picture that can boast of literally presenting a cast of thousands. In this case, though, that number applies to the hordes of spiders seen crawling all over the place — 5,000 seems to be the accepted figure, although some have suggested as many as 10,000! At any rate, arachnophobes are advised to steer clear of any TV set showing this effective horror yarn, which managed to produce a handsome return on its half-million-dollar budget during a period when most moviegoers were busy rewatching Star Wars for the umpteenth time. William Shatner, still a couple of years away from the Star Trek movie franchise that would resurrect his career, plays “Rack” Hansen, a small-town veterinarian who teams up with a big-city entomologist (Tiffany Bolling) to figure out what’s killing animals in his Arizona community. It turns out that the area’s spiders, affected by the pesticides that have been destroying their natural food supplies, have set their sights on larger prey — before long, humans are finding themselves being attacked, bitten, and cocooned. This entertaining picture was clearly inspired by Jaws (right down to the blustery mayor worried that the intrusive presence of Mother Nature will ruin the town’s upcoming holiday weekend), but the chilling ending is all its own.

There are no DVD extras.

Movie: ★★★

RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP (1958) / THE DEVIL’S BRIGADE (1968). The Second World War is played out on different fronts — one by land against the Germans, one by sea against the Japanese — in two vintage films released individually through the Kino label.

One of the most famous of all submarine flicks, Run Silent, Run Deep stars Clark Gable as a sub commander who disobeys orders by seeking out the Japanese destroyer that sank his last submarine. He’s challenged every step of the way by his second-in-command (Burt Lancaster), who worries about the safety of the crew. Director Robert Wise makes good use of the story’s confined setting, and there are several tense cat-and-mouse games with various enemy ships. Nick Cravat, Lancaster’s lifelong friend, former circus-act partner, and frequent co-star/stuntman (oh, and the gremlin on the airplane wing in that classic Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner), appears as Russo the cook, while Don Rickles makes his film debut as the vessel’s quartermaster. Thirty-seven years later, a similar battle of wills would play out between Gene Hackman’s veteran sub captain and Denzel Washington’s conscientious second-in-command in Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide.

Out of the numerous WWII adventure yarns from the 1960s that featured all-star casts, The Devil’s Brigade turned out to be among the weaker offerings. Released within one month of the debut of The Dirty Dozen — thus suffering in comparison on every level, including commercially — this stars William Holden as the officer placed in charge of transforming a group of rascals, renegades, and reprobates into an elite fighting force. These American rebels are required to train alongside the members of a crack Canadian outfit, and while the two sides are initially resentful of each other, they manage to bond before being ordered to take on the Nazis. The sizable cast also includes Cliff Robertson as the head of the Canadian outfit, Vince Edwards as an American scrounger (basically James Garner’s role in The Great Escape), Hogan’s Heroes / Family Feud mainstay Richard Dawson as a nondescript Canadian soldier, and future Archie Bunker Carroll O’Connor as a blustery American general, but not a single performer manages to make any sort of impression whatsoever. The combat sequences aren’t that hot, either.

Extras on both Blu-rays are the same: audio commentary by film historian Steve Mitchell and author Steven Jay Rubin (Combat Films: American Realism), and the theatrical trailer.

Run Silent, Run Deep: ★★★

The Devil’s Brigade: ★★

STRANGE INVADERS (1983). This entertaining if only fitfully successful film is set around Centerville, an Illinois town that’s been inhabited by aliens for the past quarter-century. Diana Scarwid, perhaps second only to Ali MacGraw as the lamest actress to ever nab an Academy Award nomination — indeed, her work on Strange Invaders netted her a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Supporting Actress, two years after winning the Razzie for portraying Christina Crawford in Mommie Dearest — appears as Margaret, who informs her husband, New York college professor Charles Bigelow (Paul Le Mat, American Graffiti‘s hot-rodder John Milner), that she’s headed to Centerville for her mother’s funeral. When she never returns, Charles sets off in search of her, eventually assisted in his efforts by a gossip-rag reporter (Nancy Allen) and an asylum inmate (Michael Lerner) whose life was destroyed by the imposing extra-terrestrials. The zippy script by Michael Laughlin and future Oscar winner Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters) is better than Laughlin’s often lethargic direction, but the makeup designs and visual effects work remain eye-popping throughout. Laughlin and Condon had previously worked together on 1981’s Strange Behavior, but plans to make a Strange trilogy were abandoned after this one flopped at the box office.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★½

THINNER (1996). Based on one of those novels Stephen King wrote while passing himself off as Richard Bachman, Thinner centers on Billy Halleck (Robert John Burke), a 300-pound lawyer whose clients include the likes of Mafia boss Richie “The Hammer” Ginelli (Joe Mantegna). One night while returning home from a party, his wife Heidi (Lucinda Jenney) ignores the adage “Don’t drink and dive” and proceeds to go down on Halleck while he’s behind the wheel. The distraction causes him to hit and kill an elderly gypsy woman, leading that woman’s centenarian father (Michael Constantine) to place a curse on Halleck that will result in him ceaselessly losing weight. An unsuspecting Halleck initially appreciates the fact that he’s shedding dozens of pounds without having to lift a finger, but once he grasps the situation and realizes he will whittle away to nothing, he calls on Richie to help reverse the situation. The makeup design by four-time Oscar winner Greg Cannom (Mrs. Doubtfire, Vice) is sometimes effective and sometimes obvious, but the anemic screenplay offers little in the way of engaging scenarios and satisfactory payoffs.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director and co-writer Tom Holland and Mantegna; audio commentary by producer Mitchell Galin and Mantegna; new interviews with Holland and Jenney; and a vintage featurette on the makeup effects.

Movie: ★★

TRAINSPOTTING (1996). A pop culture sensation that drew notice to its own urgency and immediacy — it was a gargantuan hit in its U.K. homeland and a strong art-house performer stateside — this often riotous, often frightening adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel centers on a gang of slackers immersed in the Edinburgh drug scene. Foremost among the group is Renton (Ewan McGregor), a heroin addict who periodically tries to tear himself away from both his destructive lifestyle and the bad influence of his buddies: scheming Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), easygoing Spud (Ewan Bremner), and vicious Begbie (Robert Carlyle). Despite Renton’s boast that if you “take the best fucking orgasm you’ve ever had, multiply it by 1,000, and you’re still nowhere near [the highs of a heroin fix],” director Danny Boyle and scripter John Hodge (the latter earning a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination) can hardly be accused of taking a pro-drug stance — although, at the time, some clueless op-ed pieces on this side of the Atlantic amazingly made that charge, as did grasping presidential wannabe Bob Dole (it backfired, as the film’s success led Welsh to quip that Dole “basically was my PR in the U.S.”). If anything, the filmmakers merely tell it as they see it, complete with soiled bedsheets, hallucinatory odysseys, and a killer soundtrack. An excellent sequel, T2 Trainspotting, followed in 2017.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by Boyle, Hodge, McGregor, and producer Andrew MacDonald; a making-of piece; and deleted scenes.

Movie: ★★★½

Short And Sweet:

RED PLANET MARS (1952). “God is an American,” David Bowie once sang, and that sentiment can be viewed in a less ironic manner in this stodgy sci-fi flick that only comes to life during its final 15 minutes. Peter Graves and Andrea King star as husband-and-wife scientists who determine that the radio transmissions they’ve been receiving from Mars are being sent by God Himself. Such a revelation causes a global revolution that threatens Western democracy, but the White House stands tall in the face of Commie aggression and the machinations of a former Nazi scientist (Herbert Berghof). The late-inning twist is capped by an unexpected ending, but by then it’s too little too late for this dull and drowsy undertaking.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★

ROVER DANGERFIELD (1991). An animated dog who looks and talks just like Rodney Dangerfield, with the material provided by the hilarious comedian himself? It sounds like it can’t miss … and it might not have, had the studio carried out its original plan of an R-rated toon tale. But a funny thing happened on the way to the multiplex: It was decided that the movie should be G-rated, cuz, you know, the wee ones love Rodney! And so we get a neutered feature about a Las Vegas basset hound who ends up having to cope with farm life. Rodney’s personable delivery and a few good lines aren’t enough to overcome a bland storyline and a blasé presentation.

Blu-ray extras consist of the 1937 cartoon Dog Daze; the 1950 Porky Pig cartoon Dog Collared; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

POSSE (1975). One of the many sturdy Westerns that emerged from 1970s Hollywood sporting a chip on its shoulder, Posse, like other oaters of the past 50-odd years, offers lessons in genre revisionism that make it a distant cousin to the cynical likes of Little Big Man and Unforgiven. Whereas Sergio Leone’s seminal Once Upon a Time in the West viewed the intrusion of the railroad on virgin territory with a resigned yet hopeful eye, Posse views it as nothing less than the rape of the land, poisonous “progress” that allowed political corruption to make a clean sweep of the country from coast to coast. Kirk Douglas, also serving as producer and director, stars as a US Marshal who rests his political aspirations (he’s running for the Senate) on his ability to capture a notorious bank robber (an excellent Bruce Dern) who just might be his mental match. But the lawman’s self-serving ambitions, his muddy ties to the powerful railroad industry, and the ruthless behavior of the hotshots who comprise his posse end up making the outlaw’s old-fashioned villainy seem preferable by comparison.

Movie: ★★★