FILM FRENZY

James Garner in Grand Prix (Photo: Warner Bros.)

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 BLOOD OF FU MANCHU (1968) / THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU (1969). In 1965, producer Harry Alan Towers and actor Christopher Lee teamed up to make The Face of Fu Manchu, based on the series of novels by British author Sax Rohmer (real name Arthur Ward). The movie proved so popular that the pair would produce a Fu Manchu flick every year for the remainder of the decade: The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), and The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969). It’s the last two, both directed by the prolific Jess Franco, that have just been released in new 4K + Blu-ray editions by Blue Underground.

The Blood of Fu Manchu, which played the U.S. in theaters as Kiss and Kill, on television as Against All Odds, and on video as Kiss of Death, is the better of the pair, if only because it never slows down long enough for viewers to dwell on its general shoddiness. From his base of operations in a South American jungle, Fu Manchu, with the aid of his faithful daughter Lin Tang (Tsai Chin), hatches a plot in which 10 captive women will be carriers of a specific type of snake venom that can be transmitted with one kiss. These ladies will plant a smooch on various world leaders and nemeses of Fu Manchu, causing blindness and eventually death — the first recipient is the Chinese megalomaniac’s archenemy, Scotland Yard’s Nayland Smith (Richard Greene), who spends the rest of the picture seeking an antidote. Related plot threads involving Nayland’s top spy (Götz George) and a garrulous bandit (Ricardo Palacios) help keep the action percolating at all times.

Lee essays the role of the Asian villain for the fifth and final time in The Castle of Fu Manchu, the weakest entry in the series. Opening with footage lifted from the Titanic film A Night to Remember (see From Screen To Stream below), the movie finds Fu Manchu threatening to turn the world’s oceans into giant blocks of ice unless he’s deemed (not unlike James Cameron, speaking of Titanic) king of the world. Awkwardly paced sequences dominate (not unusual for a Jess Franco production), but the main problem with The Castle of Fu Manchu is that’s it’s deadly dull for long stretches.

The extras on these 4K + Blu-ray editions (sold separately) are largely identical, as each includes film historian audio commentary; interviews with Lee, Tsai, Franco, and Towers; a poster & still gallery; and the RiffTrax version of the film.

The Blood of Fu Manchu: ★★½

The Castle of Fu Manchu: ★½

THE CITADEL (1938). A.J. Cronin’s 1937 novel The Citadel is justifiably famous for helping inspire the creation of the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) in 1947, and it probably didn’t hurt the cause that this 1938 adaptation was a critical and commercial success. Robert Donat plays Andrew Manson, an idealistic doctor unappreciated by the miners he treats in a poor Welsh community. With his wife (Rosalind Russell) by his side, he moves to London, where an old chum (Rex Harrison) convinces him to abandon his principles and solely cater to wealthy hypochondriacs. It’s only when another colleague (Ralph Richardson) reenters his life that he’s forced to confront his conscience. This inspirational drama earned four Oscar nominations, for Best Picture, Actor (Donat), Director (King Vidor), and Screenplay.

Blu-ray extras include the 1938 live-action shorts The Ship That Died and Strange Glory, both directed by Cat People’s Jacques Tourneur, and the 1938 Daffy Duck & Porky Pig cartoon The Daffy Doc.

Movie: ★★★½

DANGER: DIABOLIK (1968). This colorful confection from director Mario Bava is not only known as the featured flick on the final episode of the original run of Mystery Science Theater 3000, it’s perhaps even more pointedly known as one of those decent movies that never should have ended up on the show in the first place. Largely dismissed upon its original release — its thunder stolen by another 1968 Euro-comic-based release from producer Dino De Laurentiis, Roger Vadim’s Barbarella — this cult fave stars John Philip Law as a master criminal perpetually thwarting the authorities while pulling off massive heists. Here’s a clear example of style over substance, with a wispy storyline significantly elevated by Bava’s usual attention to color schemes and surface sheen.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by Law; film historian audio commentary; a look at the character of Diabolik in comic and film form; and the music video for the Beastie Boys’ “Body Movin’” (which spoofs this film).

Movie: ★★½

FINAL DESTINATION BLOODLINES (2025). The sixth installment in the Final Destination franchise — and the first in 14 years — Bloodlines opens with a lengthy and rather remarkable set-piece which unfolds inside a sky-high restaurant tower roughly 50 years ago. From here, the picture moves to the present day, as college student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is plagued by a recurring nightmare, one which she’s finally made to understand is signaling the fact that everyone in her family is marked for death by Death himself. The Rube Goldberg of slasher series, Final Destination has always been about the clever and convoluted ways in which people get killed, but this entry has a strong emotional core that keeps viewers rooting for the characters to stay alive. It’s a shame, then, that the film falls apart in the home stretch, with some sloppy plotting and an unsatisfying denouement.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by directors Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky; a making-of featurette; and a discussion with the late Tony Todd about his recurring character William Bludworth.

Movie: ★★½

GRAND PRIX (1966). The predictable soap-opera elements might be strictly Formula One, but there’s innovation to spare when it comes to the mounting of the spectacular race scenes in this three-hour speedster from director John Frankenheimer and scripter Robert Alan Aurthur. Split-screen images, car-mounted cameras, and the ultra-widescreen Cinerama lensing help provide a you-are-there dynamic in this saga about the fortunes of several drivers as they tackle some of Europe’s toughest tracks over the course of one season. James Garner heads the cast as a maverick American driver, joined by Yves Montand as a philosophical French racer, Eva Marie Saint as an American magazine writer, and a dubbed Toshiro Mifune as a Japanese team owner. One of the top 10 grossers of 1966, Grand Prix went 3-for-3 at the Oscars, winning for Best Film Editing, Sound, and Sound Effects.

Blu-ray extras include a making-of featurette and a piece on the contributions of title designer and visual consultant Saul Bass.

Movie: ★★★

HIS KIND OF WOMAN (1951). This atypical film noir practically defies audiences not to consider it film noir, given that its hero doesn’t smoke or drink, the potential femme fatale is A-OK, and humor racks up as much screen time as menace. Robert Mitchum plays the marked patsy who gets mixed up with a ruthless crime boss (Raymond Burr), while Jane Russell costars as the beauty concerned for his welfare. The dialogue is superb, and Mitchum and Russell flaunt their combustible chemistry, yet the picture’s greatest component is Vincent Price, delivering one of his best performances as a vainglorious actor who relishes the opportunity to save the day. Never mind the fact that RKO head Howard Hughes’ meddling resulted in plenty of rewriting, recasting, and reshooting — despite production complications, this one’s an absolute treat.

Blu-ray extras consist of film historian audio commentary; the 1951 Bugs Bunny cartoon Bunny Hugged; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★½

MAN ON WIRE (2008). An Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature, this tells the amazing true story of Philippe Petit, a French high-wire walker who in the 1970s could always be found risking his life climbing and traversing high points of note (including Notre Dame and Sydney Bridge). When Petit learned of plans to construct the World Trade Center, he waited impatiently over the years for the Twin Towers to become a reality, at which point he and his supporters plotted to set up a line between the two buildings so that he could cross over with only a thin wire under his feet. Interviews and re-enactments provide the piece with its structure, but it’s the awe-inspiring archival footage that makes this a giddy watch. A sturdy fictionalized version, The Walk, was released in 2015 — starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit, it failed to find an audience.

The only Blu-ray extra is the 2005 animated short The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.

Movie: ★★★

STRANGERS WITH CANDY (2006). With The Late Show with Stephen Colbert being cancelled due to cowardice on the part of CBS/Paramount and in deference to the fascistic Trump regime, there might be renewed interest in the 1999-2000 Comedy Central series that Colbert created alongside Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello. Certainly, there wasn’t much interest when the program originally ran, but it later gathered its cult and even prompted a 2006 feature. Like the series, this prequel stars Sedaris as Jerri Blank, a 47-year-old ex-con and former “junkie whore” who decides to return to high school. Also like the show, the overriding decree is to add subversive humor to the standard storylines employed by most high school flicks and vintage after school specials — e.g. the outcast tries to join the cool kids before realizing there are things more important than popularity — but the movie only completes the assignment in fits and starts, with a large number of on-target zingers but also too many blanks fired.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Sedaris, Colbert, and Dinello; deleted scenes; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★½

THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL (2003). Here’s an ingratiating documentary that should hit the sweet spot for anyone with an appreciation for our fine feathered friends. In a certain San Francisco neighborhood, a gentle man named Mark Bittner spent years looking after a number of red-and-green parrots, many of them abandoned or lost pets. Director Judy Irving’s doc focuses on the man and his mission, detailing how he was a homeless musician who eventually ended up with a free place to stay and a flock of birds to parent. There’s also an introduction to some of the parrots, including Mingus, a temperamental bird who (unlike all the others) hated being outside, and poor lonely Connor, the only blue-crowned bird in the bunch but also the one seemingly least afraid of the menacing hawks frequently circling overhead. Here’s a nonfiction feature as laid-back as its (human) protagonist, and it’s a suitable fit.

Blu-ray extras include archival audio commentary by Bittner; updates; deleted scenes; and outtakes.

Movie: ★★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

BROKEN LANCE (1954). This sturdy Western is basically William Shakespeare by way of Joseph L. Mankiewicz, as the shadow of King Lear looms large over this loose remake of 1949’s Mankiewicz production House of Strangers. Philip Yordan had a hand in writing both pictures, setting the action for the first within the context of a modern crime story and reworking it into an oater for the second. Spencer Tracy is patriarch Matt Devereaux, who favors the one son (Robert Wagner) he sired with his current — and Native American — wife (Katy Jurado) over the three (Richard Widmark, Hugh O’Brian, and Earl Holliman) from his previous marriage. This naturally causes all manner of familial strife, as does Matt’s brusque, even cruel, treatment of most of those around him. Here’s another towering Tracy performance to add to the pile, as well as another opportunity for Widmark to ably play the sort of role — the intelligent yet underhanded heel — at which he excelled. And as is usually the case with Wagner, he’s perfectly acceptable if hardly inspiring, although he does enjoy some nice moments opposite Jean Peters as his independent-minded intended. Yordan earned an Oscar for Best Motion Picture Story, with Jurado nabbing a Best Supporting Actress nomination.

Movie: ★★★

LOCK UP (1989). The summer of 1989 was the summer of Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2, and several other sizable hits, so who in their right mind wanted to waste time and money on a generic Stallone prison flick? Very few people, which is why Lock Up emerged as a late-summer dud. Sly plays Frank Leone, a model prisoner with six months to go at a cushy minimum-security prison. (His crime? Defending an elderly friend against a bunch of street punks.) But in the dead of night, he’s whisked away to a hellhole run by the sadistic Warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland, atypically terrible), who’s determined to break Leone and possibly even kill him. The plotting is pure paint-by-numbers, and the characters are basically what you’d expect: Beyond the noble prisoner and the fiendish warden, there’s also the jittery snitch, the brash young upstart, the sympathetic black inmate, the brawny psychopath — everything except a meek guy who interacts with mice (but there is a meek guy who interacts with birds). The football game sequence is surpassed in idiocy only by the music video segment, although everything on tap is pretty doltish.

Movie: ★½

THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT (1956). Like The Best Years of Our Lives (reviewed here), The Man In the Gray Flannel Suit offers a study of what happens when WWII vets return from the war and attempt to assimilate back into American society. Unlike Best Years, which was universal enough in its approach that its post-war content remains as forceful as ever, Flannel Suit, based on Sloan Wilson’s bestseller, retains its topicality more in its exploration of a man who must choose between advancing his career or spending quality time with his family. Gregory Peck stars as Tom Rath, a Madison Avenue type with a needy and sympathetic wife (Jennifer Jones) and three small children. When he’s not distracted by memories of his wartime experiences in Europe — including a dalliance with an Italian beauty (Marisa Pavan) — he’s busy fretting over how to make ends meet. He accepts a higher-paying job at a company run by Ralph Hopkins (Fredric March), a fair-minded employer who, having long ago abandoned his wife and daughter for the sake of a career, finds himself envying Tom’s integrity and idealism. This was Peck’s second Top 20 box office hit in 1956, the other being John Huston’s version of Moby Dick.

Movie: ★★★

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1958). Before James Cameron’s Titanic sailed into view in 1997, the two most famous films about the doomed ship both appeared in the 1950s. The first was 1953’s Titanic, a slick Hollywood production which earned an Academy Award for its screenplay. The other was this expensive British effort, largely considered by film critics and scholars (although not by the Leo-loving masses) to be the best movie ever made about the disaster. With Walter Lord’s acclaimed book of the same name as its inspiration, it’s certainly the most factual, offering only brief vignettes concerning the passengers while spending most of its time with the officers as well as approaching the tragedy from a stance that almost qualifies as docudrama. Kenneth More essays the central role of Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller, and he’s the reassuring presence throughout a film that breaks down the incident in powerful fashion. Buffs will be interested in noting the appearances by future ’60s fixtures Honor Blackman (Goldfinger’s Pussy Galore and The Avengers’ Catherine Gale) as passenger Liz Lucas and David McCallum (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s Illya Kuryakin) as the assistant wireless operator.

Movie: ★★★½

SECONDS (1966). A colossal flop upon its original release, this absorbing oddity from Grand Prix director John Frankenheimer has deservedly picked up a cult following over the decades. A heady experience, this finds middle-aged bank executive Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) electing to chuck away his entire boring existence by accepting a mysterious organization’s offer to be “reborn” — that is, to allow his old “self” to be killed in an accident and to undergo plastic surgery so that he may be given a new face, a new identity, and a new life. Hamilton emerges from surgery as handsome Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson), but he quickly discovers that it’s not easy to mentally suppress 50 years of one’s life. Working from a script by Lewis John Carlino (adapting David Ely’s novel), Frankenheimer fashioned a trippy motion picture that was ahead of its time, even if just by a few years (the 1970s would be crammed with post-Watergate paranoia pictures). Hudson is excellent in what ranks as one of his finest performances, and it’s not a stretch to consider that playing the role of a man forced to keep his true identity a secret must have cut close to the bone. The experimental and frequently disorienting cinematography by James Wong Howe earned an Oscar nomination.

Movie: ★★★½