FILM FRENZY

Jean-Claude Dreyfus in Delicatessen (Photos: Severin)

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.)

BANDITS (2001). This criminally overlong misfire from director Barry Levinson tries hard to be a quirky comedy — God, does it try — but the funniest moment turns out to be a purely unintentional one. Kate Wheeler (Cate Blanchett), a bored housewife who has hooked up with a pair of bank robbers known as “The Sleepover Bandits,” is stunned when she hears one of the crooks (Bruce Willis) mouth the words of the chorus from Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” “You know that song!” she bleats, as if that omniscient smash single was some obscure Gregorian chant and they were the only two people in the world familiar with it. Grab your chuckles where you can, because Bandits is such a complete mess that even the prospect of seeing Willis and Billy Bob Thornton mix it up fails to stir anything besides contempt. Like a squeaky axle that won’t quiet down over the course of a 300-mile road trip, this grates on the nerves almost from the start, when we realize that Thornton’s hypochondriac character is going to spend the entire 125-minute running time whining about his various ailments. Blanchett doesn’t fare much better as the bargain basement screwball heroine in love with both men, and, for that matter, neither does Jane Fonda’s son Troy Garity as the gang’s thick-witted driver. Even though he’s cast opposite Thornton, Blanchett, and a Fonda heir, it’s Willis who comes out on top: Playing it closer to the vest, he at least provides a respite from all the mannered acting smothering the rest of the picture.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★½

BODY OF LIES (2008) / EDGE OF DARKNESS (2010) / PRIDE AND GLORY (2008). Five above-the-title stars. Three edgy thrillers. But only one out-and-out recommendation on this Triple Feature Blu-ray release.

Despite Russell Crowe’s shared marquee billing, Body of Lies is really Leonardo DiCaprio’s film, as the young thespian handles the part of Roger Ferris, a compassionate CIA point man working in the Middle East under the jaded eye of his ruthless superior Ed Hoffman (Crowe) back in the U.S. Hoping to track down a bin Laden-like terrorist (a menacing Alon Aboutboul) responsible for a series of attacks on America and its allies, Ferris ends up traveling to Jordan and entering into a terse relationship with Hani Salaam (Mark Strong, great here), the head of Jordanian intelligence. The film’s best scenes are between DiCaprio and Strong, as their characters alternate between working together and keeping each other at arm’s length. Better than the vast majority of the post-9/11 terrorist yarns, Body of Lies is both more ambiguous and ambitious than such heavy-handed duds as Rendition and Redacted. Director Ridley Scott and The Departed’s Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monaghan (working from David Ignatius’ novel) refrain from merely putting Ferris and Hoffman through the good-cop-bad-cop routine: Ferris’ idealism isn’t always beneficial, and while Hoffman might be a prick, he occasionally exhibits more clarity than might be expected. And even a superfluous romance between Ferris and a Muslim nurse (Golshifteh Farahani) allows for some insight into societal disapproval for such a coupling, as the pair can’t even shake hands in public. It’s the extra attention to smaller details that gives this Body its necessary heft.

It had been eight years since Mel Gibson had handled a leading role on the big screen, and he spent the time between 2002’s Signs and Edge of Darkness directing the biggest moneymaking snuff film of all time, getting in trouble with the bottle, with the law, and with the wife, and being parodied in a memorable episode of South Park. While his off-screen antics noticeably aged him, he hadn’t lost a step when it came to exuding that undeniable movie-star magnetism. Gibson plays Thomas Craven, a widowed Boston cop whose grown daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is murdered right before his eyes. The devastated dad starts snooping around and finds that all signs point toward Emma’s former place of employment: Northmoor, a shady corporation with all sorts of underhanded ties to the government. Although based on a 1985 British TV miniseries, Edge of Darkness mostly feels like 2005’s The Constant Gardener shorn of all emotional complexity and weighty plotting — it’s effective as a cathartic revenge yarn, at least until the absurdities begin to pile up during the final half-hour. As for Gibson, he’s just fine in the sort of role that was his bread-and-butter for the majority of his long gone A-list career: the maverick out to right a massive wrong by any gory means necessary.

Pride and Glory boasts such a generic and instantly forgettable title that, even hours after watching it, viewers might be remembering the film as Honor and Justice or Law and Order or Cops and Crooks or, with apologies to Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. Then again, this dull moniker reflects the picture bearing it, since this is nothing but one more look at police corruption, a subgenre that had become especially threadbare during the course of a decade that also served up Narc, Dark Blue, and We Own the Night. Edward Norton, far superior to the material surrounding him, plays Ray Tierney, part of a clan of cops: His father (Jon Voight), his brother Francis (Noah Emmerich), and his brother-in-law Jimmy (Colin Farrell) also have NYPD blood coursing through their veins. Troubled by a past tragedy and therefore satisfied to be working a quiet desk job, Ray is reluctantly pulled back onto the streets after four police officers are fatally gunned down in the line of duty. As Ray works his connections in the back alleys and juggles a handful of clues, he makes the startling discovery that the murders are connected to dealings within his own family. For the first hour, Pride and Glory wears its formulaic trappings fairly well, but a movie that refuses to offer anything fresh — watching Farrell get hyper yet again certainly doesn’t qualify — has no reason to clock in at a strenuous 125 minutes.

Various extras include making-of featurettes and deleted scenes.

Body of Lies: ★★★

Edge of Darkness: ★★½

Pride and Glory: ★★

DELICATESSEN (1991). Before he made international waves with 2001’s Amélie, Jean-Pierre Jeunet teamed with Marc Caro to co-direct a pair of wonderfully inventive oddities. The latter of the two was 1995’s The City of Lost Children, with Ron Perlman as a circus strongman who attempts to rescue his little brother from the clutches of a scientist who steals children’s dreams. It’s best described as a hybrid of Terry Gilliam and the Coens, with dashes of Jules Verne, Charles Dickens, and Rube Goldberg added to the mix — a designation that largely works for this earlier feature as well. Wonderfully unpredictable and bursting with all manner of visual innovations, this is set in a post-apocalyptic France — specifically, an apartment building with a butcher shop on the bottom floor. The store is run by the edifice’s landlord Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), who hires laborers and then chops them up and feeds them to his apartment dwellers. The latest arrival is unassuming Louison (Dominique Pinon), a former circus performer who soon shares a mutual attraction with Clapet’s sweet daughter Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac). Once Julie decides to save Louison, a group of vegetarian underground dwellers also gets involved in the proceedings. While black comedies are often known for their cynicism, this one maintains an unorthodox esprit de corp mainly through its employment of the underground Troglodistes and via Louison and Julie as two people who retain a core of decency in a hellish dystopian landscape.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by Jeunet; a making-of featurette; and an interview with Gilliam, who presented the film for its U.S. release.

Movie: ★★★½

EVILENKO (2015). Between 1976 and 1990, Andrei Chikatilo was Russia’s most notorious serial killer, sexually assaulting, mutilating, and murdering at least 52 women and children (boys and girls), the vast majority between the ages of 7 and 19. Evilenko is writer-director David Grieco’s fictionalized slant on the story — working from his own novel The Communist Who Ate Children, his picture follows the Chikatilo stand-in, Andrei Evilenko (Malcolm McDowell), as he embarks on his reign of terror. Initially a teacher who’s fired when he tries to rape one of his students, a little girl he repeatedly calls “Whore,” he then hangs around railway stations and the like, always keeping his eyes open for potential victims. Evilenko begins strongly (if queasily), but it flattens out as it progresses, spending too much time on other characters (particularly a dedicated detective played by Marton Csokas and a homosexual psychiatrist portrayed by Ronald Pickup) and getting weighed down by a bizarre decision to endow the madman with a seemingly psychic ability to lure his victims through hypnosis. For a far superior take on Chikatilo, check out the excellent 1995 HBO film Citizen X, starring Stephen Rea and an Emmy-winning Donald Sutherland as law officers in relentless pursuit of the psychopath.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by McDowell and Grieco; interviews with McDowell, Grieco, and composer Angelo Badalamenti (still best known for Twin Peaks); a 2021 interview with McDowell and Grieco; a piece on the real-life Chikatilo; and a photo gallery.

Movie: ★★

THE GLASS WEB (1953). After the rousing success of its first 3-D feature, 1953’s It Came From Outer Space, Universal immediately threw its director, Jack Arnold, behind the camera for another spectacles-enhanced offering. The plot of The Glass Web doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a 3-D treatment, but at least 2-D viewers will know why they’re being soaked with water and having rocks dropped on their noggins. More a straightforward murder-mystery than an atmospheric film noir, this focuses on two staffers who work for the true-life TV series Crime of the Week: Don Newell (John Forsythe), who writes the scripts, and Henry Hayes (Edward G. Robinson), who gathers all the factual material from each crime scene to put in the show and gets irritated whenever his work is ignored (like the killer on the show wearing a different kind of tie than the one the actual killer wore). Paula Ranier (Kathleen Hughes) is the woman in both their lives — as heartless as any femme fatale, she ends up murdered, which leads Henry to propose using this fresh incident on the show. The unusual backdrop of a television series studio adds further interest to a slickly made and well-acted crime yarn, even if the filmmakers barely bother to hide the identity of the killer. One grammar police gripe: In an age when it seems as if over half the country’s population doesn’t know when to use “its” and when to use “it’s,” it’s irksome to see the word “its” used properly in the movie’s original 1953 trailer (“Suspense That Will Rock And Shock You With Its Impact”) but then changed and employed incorrectly on the disc’s main menu:

The Glass Web is offered in 2-D, Blu-ray 3-D, and anaglyphic 3-D versions (a pair of 3-D glasses is included). Extras include film scholar and 3-D expert audio commentary and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

THE MASK OF SATAN (1989). Mario Bava’s 1960 chiller Black Sunday is one of the finest of all Italian horror yarns, and his filmmaker son Lamberto Bava decided to pay it tribute in his own way. As one of the episodes of his short-lived anthology series Sabbath, the junior Bava shot The Mask of Satan, which takes the basic groundwork for his dad’s classic and spins it in a different direction. In this one, the 19th century setting has been changed to modern times, as six friends on a skiing trip discover a cavern that houses a masked corpse. Upon removing the mask, they unleash the demonic spirit of a witch (Eva Grimaldi) burned centuries earlier at the stake. They also stumble across a hidden village whose only resident is a fearful blind priest (Stanko Molnar), and it’s in this locale where matters get pretty crazy. Italian television was decidedly different from American television in 1989 — clearly, no one was going to mistake this blood-soaked offering with Highway to Heaven or Doogie Howser, M.D. — but groovy effects can only go so far in, uh, masking the convoluted storyline and annoying characters. The busty leading lady is Debora Caprioglio, who worked during this period under the name Debora Kinski as she was the companion of Klaus Kinski and, as she helpfully explains in the interview included in this release, she figured using his more familiar name couldn’t hurt her in landing roles. Because Lamberto Bava was responsible for the popular Demons and Demons 2, this was released on video in some territories (including the U.S.) as Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil.

Blu-ray extras consist of separate interviews with Bava, Caprioglio, and co-star Mary Sellers.

Movie: ★★

THE 10TH VICTIM (1965). A few bodies are added to Robert Sheckley’s short story “Seventh Victim” to come up with The 10th Victim, a sci-fi saga set in the 21st century. In an effort to curb wars, the government has created The Big Hunt, a televised event wherein participants alternate between hunter and hunted as they try to stay alive — whoever survives all 10 games will become fabulously wealthy. Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress) is on her 10th and final round — designated the hunter, she’s matched with Marcello Polletti (Marcello Mastroinanni), who’s fared pretty well himself. Since the hunted doesn’t know the identity of the pursuer, Marcello plays it cool around Caroline, who’s passing herself off as an American journalist interested in interviewing him for a piece on the sexual mores of Italian men. As they circle and flirt, they begin to fall for each other, which naturally complicates matters. Director and co-scripter Elio Petri adds plenty of cheeky humor and pointed criticisms of capitalism in a playful film that would make for an intriguing double bill with Jean-Luc Godard’s same-year futuristic offering Alphaville (reviewed here). It’s interesting to note how much of the material in this picture influenced or at least predated similar scenarios in later hits. The bullet-spraying bra in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was lifted from this film; the idea of a government-sanctioned sporting event replacing random acts of violence drove Rollerball and Death Race 2000; the idea of a government-sanctioned sporting event set outdoors and demanding many casualties powered The Running Man, Battle Royale, and The Hunger Games; and the Hunt Club, a neutral site where players can’t kill each other, is just like the Continental in the John Wick flicks.

The Blu-ray edition offers both Italian and English audio. Extras include a piece on Petri and the Italian and American trailers.

Movie: ★★★

TOMMY BOY (1995) / BLACK SHEEP (1996). Some Saturday Night Live veterans appear to be universally loved (Bill Murray, John Belushi, Tina Fey, Gilda Radner) while others are more a matter of personal taste (Adam Sandler, Jimmy Fallon, Jon Lovitz, and the spectacularly unfunny Rob Schneider). Chris Farley (who died in 1997 of a drug overdose) would certainly fall into the second category, as would David Spade. Fans of their joint starring vehicles will be pumped to know that both films have been released in 4K.

Tommy Boy stars Farley as the title character, an imbecilic underachiever who’s initially delighted when he learns that his dad’s (Brian Dennehy) impending marriage will provide him with a new mom (Bo Derek) and a new brother (Rob Lowe). But after Pop dies on his wedding day, Tommy eventually discovers that his new relations plan to sell the family business. Determined to save the company, he enlists the aid of his late father’s sniveling yes man (Spade), and they hit the road as traveling salesmen. There are a few scattered laughs tossed throughout — the sequence involving The Carpenters’ “Superstar” is not only hilarious but relatable to pretty much everyone — but they can’t really stem the tide of idiotic gags involving Tommy screaming, getting hurt, and/or falling down.

One would probably have more luck finding a valuable doubloon on the beach with a metal detector than unearthing an acceptable number of laughs in Black Sheep, one sorry excuse for a comedy. Farley this time plays Mike Donnelly, who loves his brother Al (Tim Matheson) and volunteers to help him get elected as the next governor of Washington. But Mike is a perpetual screw-up who makes every situation worse, so it’s decided that campaign aide Steve Dodds (Spade) will babysit him in an isolated location until the election is over. Gary Busey appears in another of his patented loony roles, this time as a militia man who helps out the boys. There are a couple of worthy verbal cracks, but most of the dialogue is on the order of this exchange: (Mike after getting clobbered by a moving fridge) “I got a bowl of chocolate pudding in my underpants!” (Steve) “We didn’t have any pudding in there, buddy.” Black Sheep gained some notoriety for being one of only three pictures that forced film critic Gene Siskel to leave the theater before it was over (the others were 1971’s live-action Disney kiddie flick $1,000,000 Duck and the controversial 1980 slasher flick Maniac; talk about diversity!).

Extras on the 4K + Blu-ray + Digital Code edition of Tommy Boy include audio commentary by director Peter Segal; deleted and extended scenes; alternate takes; storyboard comparisons; and a gag reel. Extras on the 4K + Blu-ray edition of Black Sheep includes audio commentary by director Penelope Spheeris and the theatrical trailer.

Tommy Boy: ★★

Black Sheep: ★½

VENOM (1982). Here’s a movie that’s almost as entertaining as it is ridiculous. It was a troubled production, with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper quitting after a few weeks, temperamental actors Klaus Kinski and Oliver Reed not hiding their hatred of each other, and Kinski occasionally walking off the set in a rage. The plot seems like the type someone wrote on a napkin after downing one too many, but it was actually based on a novel. In a London townhouse, former big-game hunter Howard Anderson (Sterling Hayden) assists his grandson Philip (Lance Holcomb) in obtaining a harmless African snake. Except — gasp! — the store owner’s ditsy wife hands the lad a box containing a black mamba, which, as the movie reminds us now and then, is the deadliest snake in the world. The boy returns home and is taken hostage by the family chauffeur (Reed), the family maid (Susan George), and the family terrorist — scratch that, just a run-of-the-mill terrorist (Kinski). The snake gets loose, everyone is on edge, and a police inspector (Nicol Williamson) and a toxicologist (Sarah Miles) hang around outside sipping tea (OK, not the whole time, but I vaguely recall them sharing a cuppa). Hooper probably would have manufactured more suspense than replacement Piers Haggard can muster, but it’s fun watching all these skilled thespians playing this material straight (Reed is especially enjoyable in his typically sweaty, sour way), and I like how the mamba targets the villains as pinpoint-specifically as The Terminator targeted Sarah Connor. Trivia tidbit that made my day: Kinski turned down Raiders of the Lost Ark (the role of Toht) to make this, stating that the script was “moronically shitty.”

Extras on the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by Haggard; film historian audio commentary; an interview with editor/second unit director Michael Bradsell; and a poster gallery.

Movie: ★★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

FUZZ (1972) / THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN (1973). “This movie is so real it makes every other movie in this town look like a movie,” promises one of the taglines that was used to publicize The Laughing Policeman upon its initial release. That blurb could also be applied to Fuzz, as both were ’70s efforts that sought to add a realistic veneer to the traditional cop flick.

Fuzz attempts to do so through humor, but the disappointing film turns out to be no laughing matter. Adapted by Evan Hunter from the novel by Ed McBain — which, surprise!, was Hunter’s nom de plume — the picture attempts to duplicate the satiric spin of such early-’70s efforts as M*A*S*H and The Hospital, but a heavy-handed approach as well as a scarcity of genuine wit renders it ineffectual as comedy or drama. Burt Reynolds, Tom Skerritt, and Jack Weston play the irreverent cops on the force, Raquel Welch is awkwardly shoehorned into the proceedings as a policewoman attempting to nail a serial rapist, and Yul Brynner is badly miscast as a deaf man who’s quite adept at extortion.

The Laughing Policeman sounds like it’s a comedy, but it’s actually a humorless affair — it’s also the better bet among these two films. Based on one of the books in the popular Martin Beck series by Swedish authors Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (with the action shifted from Stockholm to San Francisco), this casts Walter Matthau as Jake Martin, a surly detective whose partner is killed in a massacre in which an unknown assailant opens fire on a busload of passengers. Alongside his new partner (Bruce Dern), a younger cop who frequently whiplashes between being sympathetic and being short-fused, Martin sets out investigating the histories of all the victims in an effort to locate clues that will help him solve the crime. Select scenes pop with an air of authenticity — especially ones featuring Louis Gossett Jr. as a fellow detective — and the gravity of the plot helps temper those moments when some of the actors — including Dern in some scenes and, as the police chief, Anthony Zerbe in all scenes — threaten to go overboard with their emoting.

Fuzz: ★★

The Laughing Policeman: ★★★

HUSH…HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964). Thanks to the success of 1962’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (reviewed last week here), which found real-life nemeses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford sparring under the gleeful direction of Robert Aldrich, the rest of the decade and into the early ’70s yielded several more films in which aging actresses took center stage in low-budget thrillers. Strait-Jacket, What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? and Die! Die! My Darling were among the offerings, but the best of these knock-offs was arguably Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte, an atmospheric creepshow that reunited Aldrich and Davis … but not Crawford, who was cast but bolted after a few days. Davis essays the role of Charlotte Hollis, who’s spent the last few decades holed up in her Louisiana mansion, going crazy over the possibility that she may have been the one to chop up her lover (Bruce Dern in one of his earliest roles) with a meat cleaver. But could the actual killer have been her housekeeper (Agnes Moorehead)? Her father (Baby Jane scene-stealer Victor Buono, seen here in the flashback sequences)? Her soft-spoken cousin (Olivia de Havilland, Crawford’s replacement)? The family doctor (Joseph Cotten)? Or someone else entirely? Davis and Moorehead are both at their unhinged best here, leaving others to provide the more discreet villainy. This earned a generous seven Academy Award nominations, including a Best Supporting Actress bid for Moorehead.

Movie: ★★★

THE TRIP (1967). There’s a reason Roger Corman’s autobiography was titled How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. Known for stretching a dollar — hell, a nickel — beyond the breaking point, Corman made films fast ‘n’ cheap and sat back as the decent box office receipts were counted. One case in point is The Trip, one of those flicks which found “B” filmmaker Corman tapping into the youth market when most of the major studios couldn’t be bothered (their disregard changed, of course, with the 1969 release of Easy Rider). Budgeted at several hundred thousand dollars, the picture snagged an impressive $10 million following its successful run over the remainder of the decade. The simple script, written by Corman discovery Jack Nicholson, centers on angst-ridden director Paul Groves (Peter Fonda) and how he’s struggling with his marriage (Susan Strasberg plays his alienated wife), his job, and his own identity crisis. His friend John (Bruce Dern in his third consecutive review on this page; congrats!) urges him to try LSD, and so he does, embarking on an odyssey that includes hooded figures on horseback, a torture chamber run by a druggie (Dennis Hopper), and lots of groovy swirling colors. Corman (serving as director, one of his last such credits before exclusively concentrating on producing) took LSD himself to prepare for the film and reported that he had a pleasant experience — that stance apparently influenced this picture, which finds Paul contending with so few lows (and lots of lovemaking highs) that the British censorship board banned the film for 35 years since its members felt it was a pro-drug picture. Thematically, the film is as shallow as a puddle, but visually, it’s a stimulating experience, thanks to the rapid-fire editing by Ronald Sinclair during the psychedelic scenes as well as the contributions of the special effects team.

Movie: ★★½