FILM FRENZY

Shari Eubanks in Supervixens (Photo: Severin & RM Films)

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.)

CONCLAVE (2024). In modern times, there have been other actors who have delivered as many consistently excellent performances as Ralph Fiennes — Willem Dafoe and Julianne Moore spring to mind — but I daresay none have been as perpetually underrated. It’s ridiculous that, over the course of 30 years, Fiennes had acquired only two Oscar nominations (1993’s Schindler’s List and 1997’s The English Patient) when he’s delivered award-caliber turns in Quiz Show, The Constant Gardener, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and many more. He finally nabbed a third nomination for Conclave, one of the best films of 2024. In this riveting papal thriller directed by Edward Berger and written by Peter Straughan (adapting Robert Harris’ novel), the Pope has died, and it has fallen to Cardinal Lawrence (Fiennes) to arrange the conclave in which all the cardinals will choose the next Pope. The frontrunners appear to be one liberal (Stanley Tucci), one moderate (John Lithgow), and two conservatives (Sergio Castellitto and Lucian Msamati), but as the balloting gets underway, Cardinal Lawrence gains knowledge of various secrets involving some of the candidates. Conclave is fashioned like a murder-mystery, with plenty of mystery but the murder replaced by a string of character assassinations. It’s heady, harrowing stuff, pumped with intriguing back-and-forths between the players and charged by an excellent score from Volker Bertelmann. This earned eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actress (Isabella Rossellini), Adapted Screenplay, and Original Score (no nod for Berger, oddly).

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition consist of audio commentary by Berger and a behind-the-scenes featurette.

Movie: ★★★½

THE CONVERSATION (1974). A pet project for writer-director-producer Francis Ford Coppola — both he and star Gene Hackman would later cite this as a personal favorite — The Conversation had the good fortune of being released shortly after the Watergate break-in made the subject of wiretapping all the rage. It provides a nice stepping stone between Antonioni’s Blow-Up and De Palma’s Blow Out, with Hackman as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert hired by a prominent businessman known only as “the director” (an unbilled Robert Duvall) to tape a clandestine meeting between two young lovers (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest). Harry carries out the assignment with the aid of his annoying assistant (John Cazale), but as he analyzes the recordings, he fails to follow his own advice of not getting personally involved and begins to worry that something awful is being planned for the lovebirds. Hackman is terrific as an alienated man unable to establish any meaningful connections in either his personal or professional life, while Harrison Ford has a key supporting role as the director’s sleazy assistant. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, this also earned three Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and, naturally, Best Sound (Walter Murch). The film was shut out, but Coppola didn’t exactly go home from the ceremony empty-handed: He personally nabbed three Oscars for his other 1974 release, The Godfather: Part II.

4K extras include audio commentary by Coppola; audio commentary by Murch; an archival interview with Hackman; a Q&A with Murch; and the screen tests of Ford and Williams.

Movie: ★★★★

THE HAPPY ENDING (1969). Richard Brooks made his directorial debut in 1950 with the OK Cary Grant drama Crisis and wrapped up in 1985 with the disastrous Ryan O’Neal gambling flick Fever Pitch. These bookends might not suggest a robust career in between, but that’s exactly what Brooks carved out for himself, thanks to such excellent efforts as Blackboard Jungle, Elmer Gantry, and In Cold Blood. The Happy Ending has receded into the background, but it warrants another look. The story deals with a marriage buckling under the pressures of work, alcohol, and infidelity, as Mary Wilson (Jean Simmons, Brooks’ then-wife), who’s hitting the bottle hard, is restless in her role as housewife and aware that her husband (John Forsythe) has cheated on her. Her housekeeper and confidante (Nanette Fabray) supports her, her mother (the great Teresa Wright, who at 51 was clearly not old enough to be playing the 40-year-old Simmons’ mom) lectures her, and her neighbor (Tina Louise, shortly after her Ginger got off Gilligan’s island) gossips about her. Fed up, Mary takes off, hooking up with a former friend (Shirley Jones) and reflecting on her life. Simmons is excellent — she earned an Academy Award nomination, as did the song “What Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life?” — while Bobby Darin amuses as an Italian slickster, seemingly basing his performance on Erik Rhodes’ work in the Astaire-Rogers classics Top Hat and The Gay Divorcee.

The only Blu-ray extra is the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS (1973). The popular Nicholas Meyer (see The Seven-Per-Cent Solution below in From Screen To Stream) earned his first big-screen credit for scripting this inventive sci-fi yarn. In a small California town, a biologist drops dead from sexual exhaustion. Government agent Neil Agar (prolific character actor William Smith, forever known in my mind as the villainous Falconetti in the landmark TV miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man) arrives to investigate, teaming up with the scientist’s lab assistant (Victoria Vetri) to solve the mystery. Soon, there are spent male corpses all over town, leading Agar to believe that the answer rests both with the frosty Dr. Susan Harris (Anitra Ford) and with the insect world. Meyer was reportedly upset with the many changes made to his script and considered having his name removed from the picture — given his subsequent track record, his version probably was superior, but what’s on view is nevertheless entertaining, if a tad undercooked. Traces of humor are found throughout (a scientist reflects on a colleague’s death by stating that he “was coming and going at the same time”) and for a low-budget effort, the visual effects are pretty good. This was reissued years later with the terrible and terribly misleading title Graveyard Tramps.

Blu-ray extras consist of film historian audio commentary; theatrical trailers; radio spots; and trailers for other films on the Kino label.

Movie: ★★½

JACKIE BROWN (1997). Pulp Fiction, arguably the most influential film of its day, would be a tough act to follow, so that probably explains why Quentin Tarantino spent a few years putzing around (TV show appearances with friends, contributing to schlock projects like Four Rooms and From Dusk Till Dawn) before finally unveiling his feature-film follow-up. Even arriving three years after Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown couldn’t quite step out of the shadow of that gangbusters effort, but now it can be seen as a solid effort that reinforced Tarantino’s standing as one of the most exciting cinematic discoveries of the 1990s. This adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch stars two 70s survivors, blaxploitation star Pam Grier and Robert Forster (who, beyond his film work, I fondly recall from the short-lived cop series Banyon), as a stewardess who tries to bilk a murderous gunrunner (Samuel L. Jackson) out of a half-million dollars and the smitten bail bondsman who agrees to help her. The cast also includes Robert De Niro as a scuzzy bank robber, Michael Keaton as an ATF agent, and Bridget Fonda as a perpetually stoned surfer girl, but neither their performances nor their roles are as interesting as those of the three stars. Grier and Jackson are excellent, while Forster steals the entire picture with his understated turn — he earned the film’s sole Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor.

4K extras include a trivia track; an interview with Tarantino; deleted scenes; and the Siskel & Ebert review of the film.

Movie: ★★★

LAST EMBRACE (1979). An early credit for The Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme — it followed three cheapies for Roger Corman, an episode of TV’s Columbo, and a film about the then-faddish CB radio craze (1977’s Handle With Care) — this thriller has long been described in countless quarters as being in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock. Sure, if we’re talking about mediocre Hitchcock efforts like Topaz and I Confess. Roy Scheider is fine as Harry Hannan, a government agent still reeling from the senseless death of his wife (killed by his side while he was on assignment) but hoping to distract himself by getting back into the game. His oily superior (Christopher Walken, seen far too briefly) believes he isn’t ready, but Harry nevertheless finds himself caught up in intrigue when he notices that he’s not only being followed but has also started to receive cryptic messages that might be death threats. With the help — or is that hindrance? — of a Princeton student (Janet Margolin), an anthropology professor (John Glover), and a private eye (Sam Levene), Harry follows a string of clues that eventually leads him to Niagara Falls. The set-up is suavely handled, but the film ultimately unravels as thoroughly as the villain’s plans, with some far-fetched developments and a distasteful whiff of misogyny tainting the proceedings. Look for brief (very brief) appearances by notorious character actor Joe Spinell (Rocky, Maniac) and a young, bushy-haired Mandy Patinkin.

Blu-ray extras include film historian audio commentary; an archival interview with producer Michael Taylor; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★

RIDDICK (2013). A step up from the 2004 slumber party The Chronicles of Riddick but still a few rungs down the ladder from 2000’s pitch-perfect Pitch Black, this third endeavor foregoes the ill-advised epic scope of that middle movie and attempts to return to the more fleet-footed thrills of the original. Vin Diesel reprises his role as Riddick, once again stranded on a desolate planet teeming with hostile creatures. He manages to domesticate a canine-like critter — it appears that, even in space, a dog is man’s best friend — but otherwise has his hands full warding off monstrous eel-scorpion thingies. In order to get off this rock, he activates a beacon so that mercenaries may come and find him, at which point he plans to steal one of their ships and vacate the premises. Two vessels do arrive, one commandeered by the vicious Santana (Jordi Mollà), the other captained by Boss Johns (Matt Nable), the father of Cole Hauser’s cowardly (and deceased) merc from Pitch Black. With the arrival of these characters, the film turns into a slog, with Riddick playing feeble cat-and-mouse games with the hopelessly outmatched mercenaries. Katee Sackhoff has a sizable supporting role as Johns’ second-in-command, a hardcore lesbian who warms up to Riddick after he suggests she allow him to go “balls deep” in her, while Spanish star Mollà (Bad Boys II, Elizabeth: The Golden Age) delivers another awful performance in an English-language film. The final half-hour is basically a reprise of Pitch Black, only lacking in characters we care about (Radha Mitchell and Keith David are sorely missed here) as well as deficient in any real suspense.

The 4K edition offers the theatrical and director’s cuts. Extras include a making-of featurette and a piece on the main character.

Movie: ★★

SHOUT AT THE DEVIL (1976). Shout at the Devil sounds like the sort of film that can’t miss, a rousing action yarn that pits Lee Marvin and Roger Moore against some nasty Germans just as World War I prepares to unfold. Marvin is Flynn O’Flynn, a boisterous, hard-drinking man who tricks dapper English gent Sebastian Oldsmith (Moore) into helping him illegally poach on the East African coastland controlled by the Germans. Relentlessly pursued by the sadistic Herman Fleischer (Reinhard Kolldehoff), they’re eventually forced to hide out on the plantation estate of Flynn’s daughter Rosa (Barbara Parkins), who holds her drunken dad in contempt but ends up falling for Sebastian. It’s fun to watch Moore play someone far more bumbling than James Bond, and it’s always a treat when Ian Holm turns up in a movie — even here, where he has no dialogue as Flynn’s mute assistant, Mohammed. But Marvin’s broad turn is just an embarrassing knockoff of his Oscar-winning performance in Cat Ballou, and despite its interesting premise (loosely based on a true story), the movie — a graceless and lurching mix of brutal drama (dead babies!), lowbrow humor (Marvin drunk again!), and general daftness (Moore in blackface!) — runs out of steam long before its bruising 150 minutes are up.

Blu-ray extras consist of audio commentary by Lee Marvin biographer Dwayne Epstein and film historian Steve Mitchell; the theatrical trailer; and trailers for other films on the Kino label.

Movie: ★★

VIXEN (1968) / SUPERVIXENS (1975) / BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRAVIXENS (1979). As film critic Roger Ebert stated in an interview, you could watch five seconds of any Russ Meyer movie and immediately peg it as one of his pictures. If those five seconds include a woman with gargantuan breasts, that makes the task even easier. Initially called “King of the Nudies” and later tagged “The Fellini of Sex,” Meyer spent the majority of his career writing, directing, producing, shooting, and editing pictures that featured busty women. He was a study in contradictions, with some labelling him a misogynist because of his focus on the physical female form and others branding him a feminist because the women in his pictures were almost invariably always smarter, stronger, and more confident than the weak-willed males around them. Meyer never had any interest in making hardcore porn flicks — his bread and butter was always softcore romps endowed (heh heh) with sharp sociopolitical satire — but his pictures nevertheless found him occasionally tangling with hypocritical and self-appointed moral watchdogs. (A leading example was Charles Keating, a conservative anti-porn crusader who turned out to be a crook and served jailtime for his part in the saving and loans scandal in the early 1990s.)

Severin Films, having struck a deal with The Russ Meyer Charitable Trust, will be releasing many of Meyer’s movies on Blu-ray in restored editions. First up are his three “Vixen” titles, of which Vixen is my favorite. Erica Gavin is all unbridled heat as the title character, a Canadian nymph who loves her square husband, a bush pilot named Tom (Garth Pillsbury), but can’t keep her hands off all the men (and one woman) who turn up in her neck of the woods. She states that she will screw anyone except “spades and cripples” — indeed, her racism is her ugliest feature, yet this opens up an ever-expanding subplot involving the troubles of a black American draft dodger named Niles (Harrison Page, still around and enjoying a sustained career on television). One of the very first films to score an X rating, Vixen was reportedly a tremendous hit with both sexes, yet even an anti-Communism storyline late in the tale couldn’t prevent the picture from being banned in Keating’s backyard of Cincinnati.

Out of this trio, Supervixens is the one that most exposes the dichotomy of views surrounding Meyer’s output: Women rule, but they suffer some nasty tortures along the way. It has the most plot of the bunch (“plot” being a relative term), as handsome Clint Ramsey (Charles Pitts), on the run for a murder he did not commit, is the hapless victim of every woman who meets and wants to bed him. This is hayseed humor done well, and the film is entertaining as long as it remains in this gear. But the uglier interludes intrude on the merriment. Shari Eubanks plays two roles — the shrieking harridan SuperAngel and the sweet SuperVixen — while Charles Napier, later a noted character actor (the filleted guard in The Silence of the Lambs, the voice of Duke Phillips on TV’s The Critic), is cast as Harry Sledge, a psychotic police officer who murders SuperAngel in a brutal sequence that even Meyer later admitted went too far (the scene was frequently trimmed for subsequent runs). Like Vixen, Supervixens was a sizable success at the box office.

Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, co-written by Ebert under the nom de plume R. Hyde, finds Meyer back on steadier ground, with the sex accentuated and the violence minimized. Yet the film turns out to be a bust (heh heh), with the T&A likely to produce ample ZZZs. Set in Small Town, U.S.A., it focuses on a wide variety of eccentric yet not very interesting characters, chief among them the insatiable Lavonia (Kitten Natividad) and her doofus husband Lamar (Ken Kerr). There’s little time for wit because Meyer can’t keep his eye or camera off Natividad (his real-life girlfriend at the time) — consequently, many moments feature nothing but the former striptease dancer swaying in full-frontal splendor. Clearly, the times they were a-changin’: Breast implants were becoming more common (until Natividad, all of Meyer’s stars were naturally voluminous), hardcore porn was really taking off, and Meyer’s brand of jokey titillation was all but extinct. Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, therefore, ended up being his final theatrical feature.

All three Blu-rays (sold separately) are tagged on the covers with the label “Russ Meyer’s Bosomania,” marking them as a continuing series (next up from Severin: 1965’s Motorpsycho! and 1976’s Up!). All three offer archival audio commentary by Meyer (who passed away in 2004, age 82). Other extras on Vixen include audio commentary by Gavin; interviews with Gavin and Page; and an interesting piece on that Cincinnati censorship battle with Keating. Extras on Supervixens include a discussion with Meyer about the censorship wars; an interview with Napier; and a 1988 episode of The Incredibly Strange Film Show featuring Meyer. Extras on Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens include an interview with Natividad and a 1979 talk show appearance by Meyer.

Vixen: ★★★

Supervixens: ★★½

Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens: ★★

YOJIMBO (1961) / SANJURO (1962). Reflect upon the great director-actor tandems in film history, and the same teams always come up. John Ford-John Wayne. Ingmar Bergman-Max von Sydow. Martin Scorsese-Robert De Niro. Dennis Dugan-Adam Sandler (OK, maybe not). And then there’s Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, who collaborated on no less than 16 pictures, many of them acknowledged classics.

The wildly entertaining Yojimbo isn’t generally ranked on the same plateau as the team’s Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, and Throne of Blood, but it’s still considered a staple of any serious cinephile’s education, as well as a worthy entry point for foreign-film novices wanting to get their feet wet before plunging into the deeper waters of Bergman or Fellini. In short, it’s so accessible that it’s no wonder it was eventually remade by Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood as the classic “spaghetti Western” A Fistful of Dollars (and far less successfully by Walter Hill and Bruce Willis as Last Man Standing). Mifune, apparently having the time of his life, is the strutting epitome of cool as the Yojimbo (“bodyguard”) who offers his services to a pair of warring clans and then manipulates the situation so that the two corrupt factions basically wipe each other out. A colossal box office hit, Yojimbo was immediately followed by Sanjuro, in which Mifune’s wandering swordsman attempts to settle a local skirmish with the help (hindrance?) of nine inexperienced samurai.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray two-film edition consist of audio commentaries for both films by Kurosawa scholar and author Stephen Prince (The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa); making-of pieces; theatrical trailers; and photo galleries.

Yojimbo: ★★★★

Sanjuro: ★★★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

COP LAND (1997). Here’s an early credit for writer-director James Mangold, presently nominated in both capacities for the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. Sylvester Stallone stars as Freddy Heflin, the sheriff of a small New Jersey town largely populated by New York City cops and their families. Freddy has always wanted to be a member of the NYPD, but the loss of hearing in one ear has always prevented this from becoming a reality. When an internal affairs investigator (Robert De Niro) informs Freddy that his town is teeming with police corruption, he’s forced to decide whether to metaphorically turn that deaf ear or help take down men he has long admired. Cop Land isn’t so much a police drama as a Western with a modern-day spin — it owes thanks to, among others, High Noon, Rio Bravo, and 3:10 to Yuma — and Mangold only loses control of his material during the disappointingly rote climax. The large cast includes Harvey Keitel, Michael Rapaport, Annabella Sciorra, and Janeane Garofalo — and look for Edie Falco, Method Man, and Blondie’s Deborah Harry in tiny roles. Top acting honors, however, go to an intense Ray Liotta as Gary Figgis, a cokehead cop who just might be Freddy’s only friend.

Movie: ★★★

THE PROPOSITION (2005). A cold, hard film chiefly populated by cold, hard men, The Proposition finds director John Hillcoat and scripter Nick Cave (yes, the musician) transplanting what is generally perceived as a quintessential American genre — the Western — to the equally sparse Australian terrain. It’s an easy and, in retrospect, obvious fit, given that country’s own history of settling uncharted territory while simultaneously squashing the dark-skinned natives who inhabit it. In a standout performance, Ray Winstone plays Captain Stanley, the lawman who manages to capture Charlie (Guy Pearce, a current Oscar nominee for The Brutalist) and Mikey (Richard Wilson), two-thirds of the murderous Burns clan. But Stanley is really after oldest sibling Arthur (Danny Huston), the pack’s leader, and so he tells Charlie that if he can find and kill Arthur, he’ll spare the life of the dim-witted Mikey. The Proposition brings to mind Australia’s Outback flicks from the 1970s, mood pieces in which philosophical renegades seek to come to terms with their own restless souls while navigating merciless and uncompromising territories that only serve to enhance their feelings of desperation and disconnectedness. The Proposition is unremittingly violent, yet it’s also the sort of movie where ruthless men are as apt to spout poetry or discuss Darwinism as they are to rape women and slaughter Aborigines. Hillcoat and Cave suggest that while a harsh environment can negatively influence a person’s actions, grace can still be found within — provided that person knows where to look, and cares to make the effort.

Movie: ★★★½

THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION (1976). Before writing and/or directing three popular Star Trek movies (II, IV, and VI, for those keeping score), Nicholas Meyer nabbed an Academy Award nomination for adapting his own novel that could be readily summed up with one line: Sherlock Holmes meets Sigmund Freud. Not the unflappable detective portrayed by Basil Rathbone or Peter Cushing, this Sherlock (Nicol Williamson) is introduced in the throes of his cocaine addiction, ignoring the advice of Dr. Watson (an imaginatively cast Robert Duvall) to receive treatment. Instead, he stalks a seemingly innocent professor named Moriarty (Laurence Olivier), a man he’s convinced is a devious criminal mastermind. Watson and Sherlock’s brother Mycroft (Charles Gray) finally manage to trick Sherlock into traveling to Vienna to subject himself to the care of Dr. Freud (Alan Arkin), who seeks not only to cure the great detective but also discover the secret buried in his past. First, though, Holmes and Drs. Watson and Freud must solve a kidnapping that involves glamorous actress Lola Deveraux (Vanessa Redgrave). The focus on Holmes’ drug habit dominates the first hour, with the mystery only coming into play during the second half — the latter portion is certainly livelier, capped by an exciting skirmish on top of a moving train. John Addison contributes a fine score, while costume designer Alan Barrett was Oscar-nominated for his period attire. Three years later, Meyer wrote and directed Time After Time, which, like The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, offers a tidy summation: H.G. Wells meets Jack the Ripper.

Movie: ★★★

ST. ELMO’S FIRE (1985). Maybe it’s because I was in college when St. Elmo’s Fire was originally released, or maybe it’s because my comparable age at the time prevented me from taking a condescending stance toward the so-called “Brat Pack,” as most older critics did. Whatever the reason, I found a lot to like (and still do) in this look at life A.C. (After College). Many reviewers at the time slammed the movie for being fussy, unfocused, and self-important, completely missing the point that these are the very same qualities often attributed to college-age kids who form a facade of cocky confidence in an effort to mask their foibles and insecurities as they prepare to venture out into the real world. Andrew McCarthy may have gone absolutely nowhere over the long haul, but here he’s pretty great as a cynical writer unlucky in love, and he’s ably supported by most of his co-stars: current Oscar nominee Demi Moore (The Substance), Emilio Estevez (quite amusing as he pines for an early-in-her-career Andie MacDowell), Ally Sheedy (appealing as always), Mare Winningham, even Rob Lowe (only Judd Nelson is miscast). This produced two hit singles in John Parr’s “Man In Motion (St. Elmo’s Fire),” which made it to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and David Foster’s instrumental “Love Theme From St. Elmo’s Fire,” which peaked at 15; the music also earned a Grammy nomination for Best Album of Original Score (Motion Picture) and a pair of nods for Foster’s love theme.

Movie: ★★★