FILM FRENZY

Darby Jones in I Walked With a Zombie (Photo: Criterion Collection)

By Matt Brunson

(For Halloween Prime Cuts 2024, go here.)

(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.)

ALISON’S BIRTHDAY (1979). By virtue of its era and its genre, Alison’s Birthday is often described as an example of Ozploitation, an Aussie-centered niche not unlike blaxploitation and nunsploitation. Technically, that’s true, but it should be noted that it’s also one of the least sensationalistic Ozploitation films ever made. Bereft of gore and nudity, it’s more in the tradition of Rosemary’s Baby and the Tom Tryon novel (and its filmic adaptation) Harvest Home: Terror and danger are always just below the surface or hovering around the edges rather than front and center, and the likelihood of one or two upstanding individuals overpowering an entire network of evil feels like a losing battle from the start. At an impromptu séance, 16-year-old orphan Alison (Joanne Samuel, Mad Max’s wife in the 1979 original) is warned by the spirit of her deceased dad to stay put for her 19th birthday and not return home to visit the aunt (Bunney Brooke) and uncle (John Bluthal) who had raised her. But return she does, accompanied by her devoted boyfriend Peter (Lou Brown). Alison immediately feels uncomfortable due to various circumstances, including the appearance of a 104-year-old grandmother (Marion Johns) she never knew she had as well as the discovery of some Stonehenge-like rocks on the property, the sort that would be perfect for, say, demonic rituals. Those expecting cheap jump scares and slice-and-dice gruesomeness will be disappointed, but those seeking a slow-burn chiller that maintains its aura of unease should approve.

Blu-ray extras consist of film scholar audio commentary; extended interviews from the excellent 2009 documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! with Samuel, supporting player Belinda Giblin, and producer David Hannay; and a video essay on Satanic panic in Australia.

Movie: ★★★

BURN, WITCH, BURN (1962). This eerie British entry is the second of three screen adaptations of Fritz Leiber’s 1943 novel Conjure Wife, preceded 18 years earlier by 1944’s Weird Woman (reteaming The Wolf Man stars Lon Chaney Jr. and Evelyn Ankers) and followed 18 years later by the 1980 comedy Witches’ Brew (with Richard Benjamin, Teri Garr, and Lana Turner in her final film appearance). Also known as Night of the Eagle (its original UK title), this centers on Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde), a college professor enjoying great success, and his wife Tansy (Janet Blair), who believes it’s her interest in the occult — and the spells she casts — that fuels his good fortune. When the skeptical Norman discovers that his spouse has been dabbling in witchcraft, he forces her to stop, at which point his life begins to spiral horribly out of control. The majority of Sidney Hayers’ career would be spent as a journeyman director for American television — his countless credits include Galactica 1980, Knight Rider, and Acapulco H.E.A.T. — but he provides the right measure of sustained menace for this impressive feature, with the writing chores falling to the dynamic duo of Richard Matheson (The Twilight Zone, select Corman-Price-Poe pictures) and Charles Beaumont (ditto).

This Blu-ray edition offers both the US and UK versions of the film. Extras consist of audio commentary by Matheson; audio commentary by film critic Tim Lucas; an interview with Wyngarde (who ludicrously claims that Cary Grant, Peter O’Toole, and Alec Guinness all wanted — and were turned down for — his supporting role in The Innocents); the American theatrical trailer for Burn, Witch, Burn; the British theatrical trailer for Night of the Eagle; and trailers for other films on the Kino label.

Movie: ★★★

THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920). Arguably one of the most influential of all film movements, German Expressionism began in the 1910s, flourished in the 1920s, and petered out in the 1930s … but not before bleeding into other genres like horror (i.e. the Universal classics), helping establish the ground rules of film noir, and inspiring Hitchcock, Welles, and oh so many others to view the possibilities of cinema in yet another way. Along with 1920’s The Golem, 1922’s Nosferatu, and 1927’s Metropolis, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the most famous of the Expressionist efforts emanating from Germany, a waking nightmare that appropriately enough includes a somnambulist as one of its primary characters. That would be Cesare (Conrad Veidt, later the nasty Nazi Major Strasser in Casablanca), a carny sleepwalker who’s ordered to commit a series of murders by the mysterious Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss). Written by a pair of pacifists and released between the world wars, the film warns about the dangers of following an obviously crazed, petty tyrant (a lesson also applicable to 2024 America), although that’s only one of the themes to be gleamed from its sociopolitical and psychoanalytical musings. Yet it’s the visual look of the film that has always been its most impressive quality, with all manner of weird angles in the props and décor, skewed perspectives to trigger claustrophobia, and light and shadows painted directly onto the sets themselves.

The 4K + Blu-ray edition of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari offers the option of three different scores to accompany this silent film: an orchestral score, a score by composer Jeff Beal, and a score by Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky). Extras consist of audio commentary by Beal; the hour-long feature Caligari: How Horror Came to the Cinema; and a restoration demonstration.

Movie: ★★★½

CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND (1967) / WEB OF THE SPIDER (1971). We’re used to seeing plenty of movies showcasing “kinky Kinski” or “kooky Kinski,” but this double feature Blu-ray finds Klaus Kinski offering what for him might be considered relatively understated performances. Of course, understated for Kinski is still bonkers for anyone else, so expect a decent amount of eye-rolling and scenery-chewing.

While Italian cinema had the giallo, West German cinema had the Krimi, which basically meant “criminal films” that as a subgenre peaked in the 1960s. Dozens of Krimi flicks were based on the works of British novelist Edgar Wallace, including Creature With the Blue Hand. Kinski, who appeared in a number of Krimis, tackles two roles in this one: Richard Emerson, a respected aristocrat, and his brother David, who’s locked away in an insane asylum after committing murder. David has always maintained his innocence, and after he manages to escape from the asylum, he heads home — there, a mysterious figure wielding a glove adorned with knives (no, not Freddy Krueger) embarks on a killing spree. Is the murderer David, Richard, or someone else? Measured pacing and logical storytelling be damned: Like many Krimi, Creature With the Blue Hand barrels ahead with its excessive plotting and cornucopia of characters. It’s messy but entertaining.

Web of the Spider, meanwhile, finds director Antonio Marghereti electing to remake his own 1964 horror yarn Castle of Blood (recently released on Blu-ray and reviewed here), only this time in color. The plot remains the same: Journalist Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa) bets Lord Blackwood (Enrico Osterman) and Edgar Allan Poe (Kinski) that he can survive a night in Lord Blackhood’s haunted castle. Web of the Spider is competently made but not at all exciting, and while it offers Kinski in the small role of Poe, it misses two ingredients integral to the success of Castle of Blood: ample atmosphere and cult actress Barbara Steele.

As a bonus flick, this Blu-ray also offers 1987’s The Bloody Dead, which is a pointless exercise in adding some scenes shot 20 years later (by other hands and with other actors) and inserting them into Creature With the Blue Hand (a similar perversion was done to Night of the Living Dead a couple of decades ago). Extras include film historian audio commentaries on both Creature With the Blue Hand and Web of the Spider; audio commentary on The Bloody Dead by that film’s producer-director Sam M. Sherman; a featurette on Kinski; a piece on Wallace; and trailers for Creature With the Blue Hand, Web of the Spider, and Castle of Blood. A booklet is also included.

Creature With the Blue Hand: ★★½

Web of the Spider: ★★

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943) / THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943). Mindful of the millions that Universal Studios had made from its classic monster movies — and reeling from its own set of financial setbacks — RKO Pictures commissioned producer Val Lewton in the early 1940s to churn out a series of sensationalist horror flicks on minuscule budgets. But the highly educated Lewton had his own ideas: Rather than slapping together silly creature features with shoddy effects, he created a series of psychological thrillers showcasing literate scripts, taut direction, and a reliance on shadows, lighting, and sound effects to establish mood and atmosphere. Much to the delight of the studio, the films — a run that began with 1942’s 4-star masterpiece Cat People and included 1945’s Boris Karloff gem The Body Snatcher — proved to be largely popular with both critics and audiences. Criterion has now paired two of the Lewtons together in one 4K + Blu-ray combo edition.

I Walked with a Zombie has the distinction of being one of the best movies ever saddled with one of the worst titles. As it had done with Cat People, RKO chose a moniker around which Lewton had to build a movie. But the producer wasn’t about to let the silly name hamper his commitment to excellence: Teaming again with Cat People director Jacques Tourneur and bringing Curt Siodmak (The Wolf Man) and Ardel Wray aboard as scripters, the gang meshed together an article by Inez Wallace with no less than Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre to create a truly unique and spellbinding movie. Frances Dee plays the nurse who journeys to Haiti to look after the ailing wife (Christine Gordon) of a brooding plantation owner (Tom Conway). But as she becomes familiar with the locals and their customs, she begins to wonder if there’s any merit to their belief that the wife is one of the undead. The nighttime march through the sugar cane fields is incredibly atmospheric, the high point in a film that’s as poetic and dreamlike as it is suspenseful. This was also one of the few mainstream movies from the period to treat all of its black characters with reverence.

In director Mark Robson’s absorbing chiller The Seventh Victim, future A Streetcar Named Desire Oscar winner Kim Hunter (in her film debut) plays a young student who heads out to New York to search for her missing sister (Jean Brooks). A trio of sympathetic men — a poet (Erford Gage), a psychiatrist (Tom Conway), and the missing woman’s husband (Hugh Beaumont, years before playing Ward Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver) — helps her uncover the truth, which is that her sister has become mixed up with a cabal of devil worshippers. The allure of suicide, the suggestiveness of lesbian desire (mainly in a shower scene that brings to mind Psycho), and the banality of evil all get a workout in a dense, fascinating piece whose greatest crime is that it might be too ambitious. Those with a familiarity of Dante’s Inferno will especially have fun trying to piece it all together.

Extras include film historian audio commentary on both pictures; 2005’s excellent, hour-long documentary Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy, featuring interviews with Guillermo del Toro, William Friedkin, George Romero, and more; audio essays on both movies; and excerpts from an episode of the 2018 PBS series Monstrum titled “The Origins of the Zombie, From Haiti to the U.S.”

I Walked With a Zombie: ★★★½

The Seventh Victim: ★★★½

LAND OF THE DEAD (2005). George Romero had always been as much a social commentator as a horror filmmaker, which is why his zombie flicks have always remained as popular with critics as with cultists. Two decades after his last foray into the genre with 1985’s Day of the Dead (itself a follow-up to two stone-cold classics, 1968’s Night of the Living Dead and 1978’s Dawn of the Dead), Romero revived his undead series with this fourth chapter; it’s good, gory fun, even if its satiric jabs at societal mores are more heavy-handed than in the past. This entry follows a conscientious mercenary (Simon Baker) who has to contend with a ruthless CEO (Dennis Hopper) who caters to the wealthy (you don’t say!) while ignoring the unwashed masses — also involved is a hired gun (John Leguizamo) with his own agenda, as well as hordes of zombies who are starting to take baby steps up the evolutionary ladder. Romero’s wit remains intact: One scene lends new meaning to the term “finger food” while another features a headless zombie who still has some bite left in him. But the film’s nods to topicality — in this 21st century America, Hopper’s raging capitalist even barks, “We do not negotiate with terrorists!” — seem more obvious this time around. This was followed by Diary of the Dead in 2007 and Survival of the Dead in 2009.

The 4K + Blu-ray edition contains both the 93-minute theatrical version and the 97-minute unrated cut. Extras include audio commentary by Romero, producer Peter Grunwald, and editor Michael Doherty; audio commentary by four of the zombie performers; a making-of featurette; interviews with Leguizamo and supporting player Robert Joy; deleted scenes; and CGI tests.

Movie: ★★★

PARAMOUNT SCARES VOLUME 2 (1981-2022). At this time last year, Paramount released Paramount Scares Volume 1, a hefty box set that offered five of the studio’s terror tales (including Rosemary’s Baby and Sweeney Todd: The Barber of Fleet Street) in 4K, on DVD, and via Digital Code. The collection also contained a handful of physical extras such as a sticker sheet and a logo pin (that collection is reviewed here). The outfit now returns with Volume 2, this time serving up four films designed to provide more chills and thrills. What’s interesting (odd?) is that two of the four films are sequels (or rather a sequel and a prequel), but the first movies in these two series were not included in Volume 1.

At any rate, the best movie in the collection is not the sequel or the prequel; it’s also not really a horror film, registering instead as a thriller. In the turbo-charged Breakdown (1997), Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan are Jeff and Amy Taylor, whose car breaks down on a remote stretch of highway surrounded by desert. A friendly truck driver (J.T. Walsh) offers them a lift to a nearby roadside diner; Amy accepts the ride in order to phone for help while Jeff remains with their vehicle. Once Jeff gets his car moving again, he heads to the eatery, only to discover that no one there has seen Amy. Increasingly disturbed by the fact that his wife has seemingly disappeared into thin air, he seeks help from the local authorities before crossing paths again with the trucker, who now denies ever meeting the couple. As far as movies involving missing lovers and long stretches of highway go, this may not be as potent as the remarkable 1988 Dutch treat The Vanishing, but it’s vastly superior to that film’s utterly daft 1993 Hollywood remake starring Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, and a rising Sandra Bullock. Where Breakdown goes wrong is in playing its hand too soon; the film is at its strongest before everything is explained, and writer-director Jonathan Mostow (who co-scripted with Sam Montgomery) could have milked the mystery for at least a couple more sweaty scenes. Where the picture primarily succeeds is in tapping into the chilling fear of a close friend or family member suddenly disappearing without a trace, with Russell embodying that fright through an anxious and intense performance. Walsh is particularly noteworthy as the story’s principal villain — a fine character actor, he passed away the following year at the age of 54, the victim of a heart attack.

Because this century has given birth to a startling number of grade-A zombie flicks, it was only natural to wonder if such familiarity would reduce World War Z (2013) to the level of a World War Zzzzz. That wasn’t the case, thanks largely to a committed performance by Brad Pitt and a handful of exciting sequences nicely staged by director Marc Forster. Based on the novel by Max Brooks, WWZ is set in a near-future in which a virus has been turning people into zombies — worse, those people are turning other people into zombies, via the standard bite on the body. Gerry Lane (Pitt), a former United Nations hotshot known for his ability to deal with tough situations, is brought back into the loop to find some way to handle the crisis. His brainstorm: If he can locate the source of the first outbreak, he might be able to discover its cause and prepare an antidote. And so he’s off to see the world, although, at every stop, he has to search for clues while evading zombies who seem fit enough for the 100-mile dash. Imagine Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion recast with zombies instead of Gwyneth Paltrow, and that’s largely what you get with World War Z. Gerry’s mystery tour isn’t particularly compelling, the characters of his wife (Mireille Enos) and daughters could have been jettisoned (I say that only because after establishing them early on, the filmmakers have no idea what to do with them), and the CGI-saturated segments in which hordes of zombies run down the streets or climb over walls are too impersonal to stir much emotion. But the up-close-and-personal sequences — particularly one set aboard an airplane and another inside a World Health Organization facility — are expertly presented, and they prove that there’s still some life left in this genre … if just barely. For those wondering, this set contains both the theatrical version and the unrated cut.

As for the sequel, Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) is basically a lazy retread of the 1980 original, with the notable difference being that Jason takes over from his mom as the franchise’s killing machine. He sports a burlap sack to hide his ghastly features, a dull visual that would be rectified in the next entry. And as for the prequel, Orphan: First Kill (2022) checks in on the little monster from 2009’s Orphan, following Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) while she’s still living in Estonia under her real name of Leena Klammer. Posing as an American girl who’s been missing for a few years, she fools the family and is brought to the U.S., where she soon learns that she’s not the only devious character in the household. This is more even-keeled than its predecessor, with very few highs but thankfully also fewer lows. Like the first flick, it manages to be both classy and trashy in about equal measure.

Included with the movies are a specially created issue of Fangoria with articles on the films, iron-on patches, a logo pin, a sticker, and a poster. Extras accompanying the films include a look at the various actors who played Jason in the Friday the 13th franchise; audio commentary on Breakdown by Mostow and Russell; and a making-of featurette on World War Z.

Friday the 13th Part 2: ★½

Breakdown: ★★★

World War Z: ★★½

Orphan: First Kill: ★★½

SHORT AND SWEET

ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES (1993). Addams Family Values is the rare sequel that improves upon its predecessor. In this follow-up to 1991’s The Addams Family, Morticia (Anjelica Huston) and Gomez (Raul Julia) welcome baby Pubert to the family, Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd) becomes involved with a murderous gold digger (Joan Cusack), and Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) are shipped off to a summer camp full of pampered kids and run by two perpetually perky counselors (Peter MacNichol and Christine Baranski). The camp vignettes are the film’s best, thanks primarily to Ricci’s deadpan performance. Just as The Addams Family earned a single Oscar nomination for its costume design, this one snagged a solitary nod for its art direction.

Extras in the 4K + Digital Code edition consist of audio commentary by director Barry Sonnenfeld and writer Paul Rudnik, and a making-of featurette.

Movie: ★★★

THE MUMMY AND THE CURSE OF THE JACKALS (1969). A scientist (Anthony Eisley) turns into a werewolf — excuse me, “jackal man” — at the same time that a mummy (Saul Goldsmith) begins to stalk the Las Vegas strip. The connective tissue between the monsters is a resuscitated Egyptian princess (Marliza Pons) whose first order of business is figuring out how to wear a bra. This perfectly dreadful picture is a must-see for bad-movie mavens — all others should steer clear by at least a continent or two.

Blu-ray extras include film historian audio commentary and a discussion of the outfit behind the movie, Vega International Pictures. This also contains a bonus film likewise made by Vega International: the 1974 adult flick Angelica, the Young Vixen. Tagline: “The Old Judge Brought Home A Young, Itinerant, Nympho, Berry-Picking Vixen For His Bride … And Watched A Fire Explode He Couldn’t Put Out!”

Movie: ★

TRICK ‘R TREAT (2007). This horror anthology was scheduled for theatrical release in 2007 but, save for a few festival appearances, didn’t surface until it was released straight to DVD in 2009. Despite its poor treatment by Warner Bros., the film has become an audience favorite, and deservedly so. All the stories in this cleverly constructed work are set in the same fictional town (Warren Valley, Ohio) on the same Halloween night, thus allowing the characters to cross-pollinate each other’s tales. In terms of its denouement, the most startling yarn is the one involving Anna Paquin, “Little Red Riding Hood,” and a masked vampire; in terms of its execution, the most memorable is the one in which a cranky old man (Brian Cox) squares off against a malevolent tyke dressed like a pumpkin.

4K extras include audio commentary by writer-director Michael Dougherty; deleted scenes; and Season’s Greetings, Dougherty’s 1996 animated short that inspired Trick ‘r Treat.

Movie: ★★★