FILM FRENZY

John Wayne in The Searchers (Photo: Warner Archive Collection)

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 LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (1975) / THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT (1977). Kino Lorber debuted the Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation The Land That Time Forgot on Blu-ray back in 2015, and now Sandpiper Pictures has released its own edition. Kino premiered Land’s sequel, The People That Time Forgot, in 2016; no word on whether Sandpiper will eventually be offering that one as well, but for convenience’s sake — and for those interested in belatedly grabbing the Kinos for a double feature — here are reviews of both titles.

Director Kevin Connor and actor Doug McClure teamed up for several fantasy flicks during the 1970s, among them At the Earth’s Core (another Burroughs adaptation) and Warlords of Atlantis. But the first of the bunch was The Land That Time Forgot, an often rousing adventure yarn in which a mixed group during World War I — British sailors from a torpedoed ship, a pair of passengers (McClure and Susan Penhaligan) from the ill-fated vessel, and the crew members from the German submarine that sank it — all find themselves stranded on Caprona, a hidden tropical island off the Antarctic coast. There, they encounter not only dinosaurs but also Neanderthals and the requisite active volcano. A higher budget and a longer running time would have made this even better, but even as it stands, it’s a satisfying film in the Saturday-matinee mold, with interesting developments and engaging (if not always convincing) special effects.

The film’s success led to a sequel two years later, although The People That Time Forgot isn’t quite as memorable as the picture which preceded it. Much like Beneath the Planet of the Apes found James Franciscus’ astronaut hunting for the original film’s missing hero Charlton Heston, this one finds the McClure character’s best friend (Patrick Wayne) arriving in Caprona to locate his MIA buddy. First, though, he and his companions encounter a pesky pterodactyl, a helpful cavewoman (Dana Gillespie), and a tribe of brutal warriors fond of human sacrifices. Wayne is a dull lead (he has none of the big-screen presence of his dad The Duke), and the effects are even less polished than those in the previous film — still, there’s enough of interest to make it an entertaining and undemanding time-filler. Gillespie, incidentally, is better known as a musician than an actress — she was a friend/disciple of David Bowie and also one of the first people to play Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar. Look also for a brief appearance by David Prowse as the executioner; that same year, he would play Darth Vader in Star Wars.

The only Blu-ray extra on the Sandpiper edition of The Land That Time Forgot is the theatrical trailer.

The Land That Time Forgot: ★★★

The People That Time Forgot: ★★½

SATURDAY NIGHT (2024). This endlessly entertaining comedy purports to tell the story of what happened during the hours before the live 1975 launch of NBC’s Saturday Night (later rebranded Saturday Night Live), but given Hollywood’s penchant for make-believe, it’s reasonable to expect that this is as fact-based as Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. Yet the latest from writer-director Jason Reitman (scripting with Gil Kenan) is more accurate than one might expect, and even if some of the incidents depicted didn’t happen on that fateful night, they did happen. Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) did get into a fight with a fellow SNLer, but it wasn’t John Belushi (Matt Wood) as shown here but rather Bill Murray three years later. And legendary old-school comic Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons) wasn’t around that night to whip out his notoriously enormous penis backstage, but he did expose himself from time to time, including years later on the SNL set. At any rate, what the film does well is capture the fears and frustrations of all involved as they prepare to launch what would become an American television institution. Show creator Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) is naturally the central character, frantically dashing around 30 Rock as he tries to corral series stars Belushi, Chase, Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), and Jane Curtin (Kim Matula), appease network suits like David Tebet (Willem Dafoe), and work in tandem with his writer wife Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), heralded by the film as the show’s unsung heroine.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Reitman; a making-of featurette; and on-set Super 8 footage.

Movie: ★★★

THE SEARCHERS (1956). Somewhere along the way, John Ford’s The Searchers has gone from being acknowledged as one of the best Westerns ever made to becoming widely cited as the greatest Western ever made (for a dissension, see From Screen To Stream below). Directed by Ford and written by Frank S. Nugent (adapting Alan Le May’s novel), it is indeed great although not perfect: The comic relief is occasionally clumsy, and the humiliating treatment of the Native American woman Look (Beulah Archuletta) always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Otherwise, this is American moviemaking par excellence, with John Wayne delivering one of his finest and fiercest performances as Ethan Edwards, a frontiersman on a double mission: to gain vengeance against the Comanches who slaughtered his family and to kill the one surviving family member, a niece (Natalie Wood) who’s been “tainted” now that she’s been raised for the past five years by the Comanches. Ford’s breathtaking visuals (the final shot is part of cinema lore), the story’s complicated politics, and Max Steiner’s haunting score are merely three of the myriad elements responsible for this picture’s lofty status, a movie so influential that its DNA can be found in such disparate pictures as Lawrence of Arabia, Taxi Driver, and Star Wars. It also famously led to Buddy Holly’s song “That’ll Be the Day,” influenced by Wayne’s drawl of that line during the picture.

Extras in the 4K UHD + Blu-ray edition — I believe the first 4K release via the Warner Archive Collection — include audio commentary by filmmaker and historian Peter Bogdanovich; a making-of retrospective; a discussion of the film with Martin Scorsese, Curtis Hanson, and John Milius; and outtakes.

Movie: ★★★★

SEVEN (1995). Director David Fincher’s film career is perhaps a bit more erratic than his devotees would like everyone to believe, but his second big-screen credit (following Alien³) remains one of his crowning achievements — from its stylish opening credits to its utterly shocking denouement, it’s a master class in nerve-fraying nihilism. Written by Andrew Kevin Walker, Seven (or Se7en, if you prefer) employs an unnamed and perpetually overcast metropolis as its setting for its unrelenting tale about the pervasive aura of evil that holds modern society hostage. William Somerset (Morgan Freeman in one of his best performances) is the jaded veteran detective, David Mills (Brad Pitt) is his idealistic new partner, and both men are in hot pursuit of a serial killer (Kevin Spacey) with a unique modus operandi: He bases each of his murders on one of the seven deadly sins, with the victims subjected to particularly gruesome deaths. Except for a couple of comparatively brighter interludes involving Mills’ wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), this never lets up either stylistically or emotionally, preferring instead to keep viewers perpetually tethered to its decaying heart of darkness. This unexpected box office hit nabbed a sole Academy Award nomination for Best Film Editing, while Spacey won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar that year for his work in another exceptional crime flick, The Usual Suspects (beating Pitt, who was up for 12 Monkeys).

Extras in the 4K + Digital Code edition include four audio commentaries, including one by Fincher, Freeman, and Pitt; deleted scenes; an alternate ending; and an exploration of that terrific opening title sequence.

Movie: ★★★½

THE WOLF MAN (1941). “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” The best werewolf movie ever made also gets my vote as the finest film in the entire Universal series (edging out 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein). Lon Chaney Jr. stars as Lawrence Talbot, who returns to the Welsh estate of his father (Claude Rains) after having spent the past 18 years in America. While wooing the local beauty (Evelyn Ankers) one evening, he gets bitten by a werewolf and eventually succumbs to the curse himself. Like most of the Universal crop, this intelligent and sophisticated picture unfortunately sports a brief running time (70 minutes), but the screenplay by Curt Siodmak nevertheless manages to pack the proceedings with all manner of intriguing developments, including discussions on the duality of man as well as the place of superstition in a God-fearing world. Jack Pierce’s werewolf design is superb, and, in addition to Chaney, Rains, and Ankers (all exceptionally well-cast), the strong roster includes Ralph Bellamy as the local constable, Bela Lugosi as a doomed fortune teller, and Maria Ouspenskaya as the gypsy woman who attempts to help our unfortunate hero.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray + Digital Steelbook edition include audio commentary by film historian Tom Weaver; a making-of retrospective; pieces on Chaney Jr. and Pierce; photo galleries; the theatrical trailer; and trailers for most of the vintage werewolf flicks from Universal, including 1935’s Werewolf of London (starring Henry Hull, it was the failed first attempt to establish this classic movie monster).

Movie: ★★★★

THE WOLFMAN (2010) This dismal remake of the ‘41 classic casts Benicio Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot, the British-born nobleman who returns to his family estate after spending years in the US. Estranged from his aloof father (Anthony Hopkins), Lawrence prefers the company of his late brother’s fiancée (Emily Blunt), but he fears for her safety after a wound from a ferocious creature periodically turns him into a monster. Although he’s physically right for the role, Del Toro’s line readings are unbearably stilted, and he brings none of the playfulness that Chaney contributed in his rendition. In short, he’s a brooding bore. Blunt is also alarmingly one-note, hampered by a sketchy part that allows her to do little more than pout and fret. As for Hopkins, he’s clearly indifferent to the whole project, and one suspects his eyes kept darting back and forth between the dopey script in one hand and the hefty paycheck in the other as he mulled over whether to accept the part. The makeup design by Rick Baker is excellent, although the transformation scenes aren’t nearly as thrilling as the pivotal one in 1981’s An American Werewolf in London — nevertheless, as he had for that earlier picture, Baker won another Oscar for this one. Yet what sinks the film on the technical side is the abundance of CGI effects; these come off as overkill, although viewers will probably be too busy tittering at the risible dialogue anyway to concentrate on much else. As for the epic battle pitting werewolf versus werewolf — let’s just say it couldn’t be any less frightening had the filmmakers elected to pit Pekingese against Poodle.

The 4K edition contains the theatrical cut and an unrated version. Extras include deleted scenes and a piece on the makeup.

Movie: ★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

CADDYSHACK (1980). Although far from the best Saturday Night Live-flavored comedy, Caddyshack offers enough in the way of laughs to earn it a respectable recommendation. Michael O’Keefe, Oscar-nominated for his dramatic performance as Robert Duvall’s sensitive son in the same year’s The Great Santini, here plays Danny Noonan, a caddy at a posh country club lorded over by the stuffy and corrupt Judge Smails (Ted Knight). Danny’s hoping to win the judge’s favor in order to secure a scholarship; for his part, Smails is distracted by the presence of the vulgar, nouveau-riche Al Czervik (Rodney Dangerfield). SNL vets Chevy Chase and Bill Murray are also on hand, the former as a laid-back golfer, the latter as the slovenly assistant groundskeeper at war with a pesky gopher. Murray’s fine when he’s ad-libbing monologues, less amusing when the script requires him to chase after the animatronic critter. Regardless, it’s Dangerfield who rules this show: His delivery of some truly hilarious lines is spot-on (“This is your wife?” he asks Smails. “A lovely lady. Hey, baby, you’re all right. You must have been something before electricity, huh?”), and his supporting turn served as the launching pad for his starring roles in 1983’s Easy Money and 1986’s peerless Back to School. Caddyshack was followed in 1988 by Caddyshack II, a limp sequel with Dan Aykroyd (in a role similar to Murray’s gopher hunter) and Chase (grabbing a “Special Appearance” credit).

Movie: ★★★

TARZAN THE APE MAN (1981) / GREYSTOKE: THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, LORD OF THE APES (1984). Edgar Rice Burroughs’ jungle swinger has been brought to film and television on nearly 100 occasions, including Elmo Lincoln’s big-screen christening of the role in the silent era, Johnny Weismuller’s popular portrayal in 12 movies during the 1930s and ’40s, Ron Ely’s run on the ’60s TV show, and that 2016 version starring one of those Skarsgårds. None of these adaptations have really bothered to adhere closely to Burroughs’ superb first novel in his literary series, but only Tarzan the Ape Man was so offensive in its atrociousness that a handful of lawsuits from the Burroughs estate would have been warranted. Leonard Maltin had the right idea in his annual Movie Guide when he stated that the film “nearly forced editors of this book to devise a rating lower than BOMB.” The man isn’t grandstanding, folks: This cinematic atrocity truly is one of the all-time worsts, a softcore snoozer devised as a means for director John Derek to show off the nude figure of wife Bo Derek (merely one of the worst actresses evah). This amateurish mess spends more time examining Jane’s strained relationship with her explorer dad (an unbelievably hammy Richard Harris) than in pairing her with Tarzan (dull Miles O’Keeffe), although there is that classic scene in which Jane discusses her virginal status with Tarzan while nibbling on a phallic banana.

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes is the version that has probably come the closest to faithfulness. Helming his first picture since his Chariots of Fire walked off with the Best Picture Oscar for 1981, director Hugh Hudson has fashioned a visually resplendent film that, while perhaps a bit too rigid to offer the proper degree of high adventure synonymous with the Tarzan trademark, contains no small measure of compelling sequences (particularly during the all-apes-all-the-time early portion) and strong performances. Christopher Lambert is highly expressive as John Clayton (aka Lord Greystoke, aka Tarzan), while Andie MacDowell (making her film debut, though her voice was dubbed by Glenn Close) is fine as Jane Porter. But it’s two British vets — Ian Holm as the Belgian explorer who discovers the ape man and Sir Ralph Richardson as Tarzan’s grandfather back in England — who provide the picture with its sizable heart. This earned three Oscar nominations: Best Supporting Actor for Richardson (who passed away before the film was released), Best Adapted Screenplay for Michael Austin and Chinatown scribe Robert Towne (billed as P.H. Vazak, his dog’s name!), and Best Makeup for Paul Engelen and the ubiquitous Rick Baker.

Tarzan the Ape Man: ★

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes: ★★★

THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948). My pick for the greatest Western of all time, even over John Ford’s The Searchers? That entirely depends on whether one places The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in the genre. Writer-director John Huston’s masterpiece, long considered one of the best movies ever made, centers on three prospectors (Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, and John’s pop Walter Huston) searching for gold in 1925 Mexico, a synopsis that some cineastes tag as representative of a Western (or at least a neo-Western) but leaves others emphatically saying no. (Removing this film from the equation, I would still place Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo, reviewed here, and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, reviewed here, over the Ford fave.) Here’s another question: What’s the all-time greatest performance not to be nominated for an Academy Award? Many might struggle with that ask, but for me, the answer has always been an easy one. As Fred C. Dobbs, a basically decent man destroyed by greed, Bogart’s turn is phenomenal. The actor’s snub remains one of the great mysteries in Academy history — in their invaluable book Inside Oscar, Mason Wiley and Damien Bona even wrote, “Nobody had an explanation.” While Bogart was shafted, this did earn four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won three, all for Huston père et frère: John for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay (based on B. Traven’s novel) and Walter for Best Supporting Actor (the movie itself lost the top prize to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet).

Movie: ★★★★