FILM FRENZY

The Master of Suspense flanked by Alfred Hitchcock Presents guest stars Vincent Price, Steve McQueen, and Charles Bronson (Photos: Universal)

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.)

ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: THE LEGACY COLLECTION (1955-1962). There’s a reason this box set is called The Legacy Collection and not The Complete Series, and that’s because it isn’t — complete, that is. Fans will want to know that five episodes are not included, all presumably due to rights issues (those five are listed below in the bonus features paragraph). I expect most of these fans will temper their disappointment at the five missing episodes by inhaling the 263 episodes that are included in this wondrous set. If the series isn’t as consistently brilliant as The Twilight Zone (although Hitchcock was as effective a host as Rod Serling), it nevertheless remains a high point of prime time television, recruiting both veterans (Bette Davis, Claude Rains, Vincent Price, Joseph Cotten, Thelma Ritter, Joan Fontaine) and newcomers (Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Roger Moore) alike to punch across various tales of the mysterious and the macabre. A sizable number of episodes offer pure pleasure, including two generally regarded (by polls and lists and such) as the best: “Lamb to the Slaughter” (scripted by Roald Dahl and one of the 17 episodes Hitchcock directed himself), in which a housewife (future Dallas star Barbara Bel Geddes) kills her husband and disposes of the murder weapon in a unique manner, and “Man From the South” (based on a Dahl short story), in which an unsavory fellow (Peter Lorre) bets a young man (McQueen) that if the latter can start his lighter 10 times in a row, he wins a car, and if he can’t, he loses a finger.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents hit the Nielsen Top 25 in four of its seven seasons (peak position: #6 for Season Two) and garnered 13 Emmy Award nominations, including two for Best Dramatic Series – Less Than One Hour, one for Best Dramatic Anthology Series, one for Best Action or Adventure Series(?), two for Hitchcock as Best Director (for the episodes “The Case of Mr. Pelham” and “Lamb to the Slaughter”), and one for Dahl for scripting “Lamb to the Slaughter”; its three victories were for Robert Stevens’ direction of “The Glass Eye,” James P. Cavanagh’s teleplay for “Fog Closing In,” and the editing on “Breakdown.” The 30-minute Alfred Hitchcock Presents transformed into the hour-long The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and ran for three more seasons (1962-1965); those shows are not included here and will presumably be given their own box set at some point.

Extras in this box set consist of a retrospective piece on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and a featurette in which Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, and others praise Hitchcock and his films. As for those missing episodes: “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat,” directed by Hitchcock and scripted by Dahl (Season Six); “Outlaw in Town” (Season Six); “The Landlady,” scripted by Dahl (Season Six); “Act of Faith” (Season Seven); “What Frightened You, Fred?” (Season Seven).

Series: ★★★★

ALTERED STATES (1980). Three-time Oscar-winning writer Paddy Chayefsky (Network) adapted Altered States from his own novel, but you wouldn’t know it from the screen credit, which states that someone named Sidney Aaron penned the script. That’s actually Chayefsky using his own birth names (first and middle) after he removed his more familiar handle, upset at (among other things) the manner in which the performers were tackling his dialogue. In the case of Charles Haid, Chayefsky has a point — as the easily excitable Mason Parrish, he’s terrible, shouting every line as if he were calling for help from the bottom of a deep well. But the rest of the film isn’t bad — at least for those who can handle the usual excesses of director Ken Russell. William Hurt, a leading man with this very first film role, stars as Eddie Jessup, a scientist who believes that sensory deprivation is the key to proving that humans can easily move between various levels of consciousness. This leads to a typically Russell-esque assault on the senses, as well as the sight of Eddie turning into some sort of missing link. The film’s too aggressively enjoyable to be completely dismissed, although the ending is risible — I preferred it when this finale was later reconfigured and reused in a-ha’s music video for “Take On Me.” This earned a pair of Oscar nominations for Best Original Score (John Corigliano) and Best Sound.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition consist of film historian audio commentary; archival interviews with Russell and Hurt; a new interview with special visual effects designer Bran Ferren; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★½

ASYLUM (1972). Beginning in the late 1950s and winding down in the mid-1970s, Hammer Films cornered the market on color-drenched horror flicks featuring blood, bosoms, and sturdy genre players like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Yet the outfit wasn’t the only one snagging a piece of the pie, as Amicus Films, a British company founded by American filmmakers Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg, gained some measure of success with its own terror tales. Amicus’ productions often lacked the atmosphere and production values that distinguished the Hammer line, but they were rarely less than entertaining, bolstered by impressive casts and ghoulish plotlines straight out of a vintage EC Comics title. Of the 24 horror/fantasy flicks the outfit released between its creation in 1962 and its closing in 1977, seven were anthology films — the first, 1965’s Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, is probably my favorite, but all are worth checking out, including Asylum (head to From Screen To Stream below for two more). Directed by genre vet Roy Ward Baker and scripted by Psycho author Robert Bloch (adapting his own short stories), this finds Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) arriving at an insane asylum in the hopes of landing a position. He learns that the head of the institute, Dr. Starr, has suffered a breakdown and has been locked away with the other loonies. If he can deduce which patient is really Dr. Starr, then the job is his. Cushing, Charlotte Rampling, Herbert Lom, and Britt Ekland are among the name actors appearing in the various vignettes, and the final twist is particularly satisfying. Bonus points for the best use of Mussorgsky’s “Night On Bald Mountain” this side of Fantasia and Saturday Night Fever.

Extras in the 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray edition include archival audio commentary by Baker and camera operator Neil Binney; an interview with Powell; and pieces on Bloch and Amicus.

Movie: ★★★

EDDINGTON (2025). The latest from writer-director Ari Aster (Hereditary) is basically a bingo card filled with catechismal buzz terms from the past decade: COVID, mask mandates, lockdowns, Social Justice Warriors, Black Lives Matter, the cult of personality, conspiracy theories, Antifa, media misinformation, Internet outrage, IT centers, government-sanctioned thugs, online influencers, Zoom meetings, pedophilia, sex trafficking, PTSD, proliferation of guns, intolerance of indigenous people, George Floyd, Marjorie Taylor Greene, doomscrolling — in fact, about the only things not mentioned are Donald Trump and MAGA, presumably because Aster and A24 didn’t want to deal with a flimsy presidential lawsuit that they would probably end up paying anyway. Eddington is a mess, the sort of satire that thinks it’s revealing some shocking new truths when its revelations are ultimately along the lines of being told that fish swim in the sea and the sky is blue. It’s set in early 2020 in Eddington, New Mexico, where right-wing redneck sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) is angry that he’s required to wear a mask because of the pandemic and opportunistic left-wing Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) is upset that not everyone is complying with the state law. Despite a home life that exhausts him — his wife (Emma Stone) is mentally unbalanced, his mother-in-law (Deirdre O’Connell) is a conspiracy theorist, and both swoon under the spell of a please-drink-the-Kool-Aid cult leader (Elvis himself, Austin Butler) — Cross decides to run for mayor, which only elevates their feud. Meanwhile, a homeless man (Clifton Collins Jr.) rants and raves about corruption, several young kids try to stage peaceful protests, and one of the city’s most prominent members is about to be assassinated. It’s ultimately all too much, which is exactly why it’s paradoxically all too little, with Aster engaging in some insulting “both sides now” behavior (and not the type Joni Mitchell meant) and leaning on dopey caricatures without bringing any insight or meaning into his increasingly scattershot ramblings.

The only Blu-ray extra is a making-of featurette.

Movie: ★½

EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960). Les yeux sans visage got no respect when it premiered stateside in 1962: Trimmed and dubbed into English, it was paired with the two-headed-creature cheapie The Manster and released under the title The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. The unedited French version finally opened on three U.S. art-house screens in 2003, and this of course is the cut that Criterion has seen fit to preserve. Working from an adaptation by the team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (known for the novels that morphed into Vertigo and Diabolique), director Georges Franju has fashioned a terror tale that’s as poetic as it is horrific, buoyed by the austere camerawork by Eugen Shufftan (a year before he took the Oscar for The Hustler) and an early score by Lawrence of Arabia composer Maurice Jarre. Pierre Brasseur plays the disturbed doctor (named Genessier, not Faustus), whose own negligence has left his daughter (Édith Scob) facially disfigured. Determined to restore her beauty, he sends his assistant (Alida Valli) out to lure young women back to his estate, where in gruesome fashion he removes their faces in a continued (and failed) attempt to transfer their looks to his own child. The film sports an eerie elegance not unlike that of Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, and if its grisly subject matter would seem to preclude it from narratively generating a comparable fairy tale ambience, the dreamlike imagery works overtime to indeed create such a mood.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include archival interviews with Franju and Scob; excerpts from Les grand-pères du crime, a 1985 documentary about Boileau and Narcejac; and Blood of the Beasts, Franju’s 1949 documentary about Parisian slaughterhouses.

Movie: ★★★

THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD (2014). If ever an actor was born to play Golden Age screen star Errol Flynn, it would be Kevin Kline. The only real question, I suppose, is why it had taken so long. The Last of Robin Hood focuses on the event that defined the final years (1958-1959) of Flynn’s life: his relationship with Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning), an aspiring actress handled by her opportunistic mother Florence (Susan Sarandon). Spotting Beverly across the studio lot, Flynn promises the virginal 18-year-old girl the moon and ends up seducing her late one night. But the seduction is really a rape — and statutory rape as well, since Beverly was actually 15 and able to pass herself off as 18 thanks to a fake ID provided by mommie dearest. Nevertheless, Errol and Beverly are soon inseparable, professing their love while trying to make movies together. Clearly, the subject matter makes for a sordid Hollywood tale that’s still relevant today — after all, tabloid journalism, guileful parents, and exploitation of the young have never gone, and will never go, out of fashion. Why, then, is this story related with all the lackadaisical tempo of a Mutual of Omaha TV commercial? In almost every regard, this is subpar television, with unconvincing period verisimilitude and a timid approach to prickly material. Fanning is badly miscast, although it’s not entirely her fault. Her wan presence certainly hurts, but so does the filmmakers’ insistence on making Beverly Aadland a cardboard character, a thin figure defined only by her age and beauty. “I like my whiskey old and my women young,” Flynn reportedly once stated, and this dud does nothing more than provide lip service to that declaration.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★½

MEATBALLS (1979). Following the massive success of 1978’s National Lampoon’s Animal House, multiplexes were flooded with all manner of films hoping to capitalize on audience cravings for slob comedies and T&A titles. Ivan Reitman, who produced Animal House, served as director on Meatballs, and what’s surprising about the picture is its lack of raunch. Instead, this PG effort boasts an unexpected sweetness as it follows the misadventures of the staff at Camp North Star. Tripper (Bill Murray in his feature starring debut) is the wild and crazy head counselor, tormenting his superior (Harvey Atkin), wooing a fellow staffer (Kate Lynch), and taking a lonely camper named Rudy (Chris Makepeace) under his wing. Except for the roly poly Fink (Keith Knight) and the aptly named Spaz (Jack Blum), none of the other counselors sport much in the way of personalities, but the scenes between Murray and Makepeace are nicely handled, and the lack of mean-spiritedness is refreshing. This was followed by three sequels made by other hands: 1984’s Meatballs Part II, featuring Paul “Pee-wee Herman” Reubens in a supporting role; 1986’s Meatballs III: Summer Job, in which a dead porn star (Sally Kellerman) tries to help Rudy (now played by Patrick Dempsey) score with a local hottie (Playboy model Shannon Tweed); and 1992’s Meatballs 4 (presumably because the makers thought “IV” would confuse audiences), starring a post-15-minutes-of-80s-fame Corey Feldman.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by Reitman and writer-producer Dan Goldberg; a making-of featurette; the original 1978 casting sessions for the film; and a piece on Reitman.

Movie: ★★½

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975). Ken Kesey’s novel was first brought to the attention of Michael Douglas by his father Kirk, who had appeared in a short-lived Broadway version back in the 1960s and had tried without luck to transfer it to the screen for years. Michael met with more success: Nabbing Saul Zaentz as co-producer, Milos Forman as director, and Jack Nicholson as star, he turned out an enduring American classic, as well as one of only three films to win all five major Academy Awards (It Happened One Night and The Silence of the Lambs are the others). Nicholson is sensational as Randle McMurphy, a live wire who fakes mental illness and ends up in an institution, where he matches wits against the dictatorial Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher, a limited actress landing the role of a lifetime). Equally superb as a comedy, a drama, and a social critique, the movie sports the added treat of boasting a wide variety of soon-to-be familiar faces in the supporting ranks, among them Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Brad Dourif (as stuttering Billy Bibbit), and Will Sampson (memorable as the hulking yet sensitive Chief Bromden). Nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor (Dourif), it won for Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Adapted Screenplay.

Extras on the 4K Ultra HD + Digital Code edition consist of a feature-length making-of documentary; a new conversation with Douglas, DeVito, Dourif, and Lloyd; and deleted scenes. One bonus oddly missing from previous Blu-ray sets is the audio commentary by Douglas, Zaentz, and Forman.

Movie: ★★★★

THE RED HOUSE (1947). This curio stars Edward G. Robinson as Pete Morgan, who lives on a modest farm with his sister Ellen (Judith Anderson) and his adopted daughter Meg (Allene Roberts). Pete has always warned Meg to stay away from the forest located on their property, particularly the red house that’s buried deep within it; she’s always obeyed until her classmate Nath (Lon McCallister) snags a job at the farm and decides he won’t rest until he uncovers the mystery behind Pete’s paranoia. This isn’t a film noir in the traditional sense, but it boasts enough ingredients to pass as one — these include the superb, shadow-saturated camerawork by Bert Glennon, a memorable score by three-time Academy Award winner Miklós Rózsa (Hitchcock’s Spellbound), and a femme fatale of sorts in Nath’s mischievous girlfriend Tibby (21-year-old Julie London, a quarter-century before she became a household name via her role as nurse Dixie McCall on TV’s Emergency!). This was an early credit for writer-director Delmer Davies, who would later become known for the box office hit A Summer Place as well as a series of acclaimed Westerns including Broken Arrow and 3:10 to Yuma.

The only Blu-ray extra is audio commentary by author Karen Burroughs Hannsberry (Femme Noir: Bad Girls of Film). A booklet is also included.

Movie: ★★★

SCHOOL IN THE CROSSHAIRS (1981) / SHAKESPEARE’S SHITSTORM (2020). Adventurous viewers seeking something off the beaten path might want to check out these two oddities, one hailing from Japan and the other hailing from Tromaville.

Considering all the school shootings that have tragically become the norm in this gun-fetishizing nation, one would understandably approach a movie named School in the Crosshairs with much trepidation. Fear not, as this moniker instead houses a bonkers sci-fi flick from the director of the 1977 cult fave Hausu (House). Based on Taku Mayumura’s 1973 novel Psychic School Wars, this finds a sweet-natured teenager (Hiroko Yakushimaru) discovering she has psychic abilities — a good thing, since fascistic aliens are attempting to take over her school. Those who’ve seen Hausu have a general sense of what to expect in terms of loopy plotting and trippy effects, although this one’s more muted in its outlandishness and therefore not as consistently entertaining.

Troma Entertainment, the studio that gave the world Tromeo and Juliet, returns to Bard country with Shakespeare’s Shitstorm. Writer-director (and Troma head) Lloyd Kaufman has taken The Tempest and reworked it so that Prospero (Kaufman) now lives in Tromaville, New Jersey, and the shipwreck survivors are there after being capsized by defecating whales. Also added to the mix are deformed lab experiments (such as a rooster with an enormous schlong that it uses to fatally skullf*ck a “woke” harridan), songs with titles like “I’m a Proud Crack Whore” and “Renaissance (In My Underpants),” and a cameo by Ron Jeremy. If this is your cup of poop, uh, tea, by all means knock yourself out. But while there are some chuckles to be had (I appreciated that a song rhymed “Miranda” with “veranda”), it’s relentlessly juvenile (as intended), even though the gross material isn’t nearly as wince-inducing as the septuagenarian Kaufman’s attempts to comment on the country’s current sociopolitical cesspool.

Blu-ray extras on School in the Crosshairs consist of film critic audio commentary; a visual essay; and a poster gallery and theatrical trailers for various films helmed by Obayashi. Extras (or, as the box copy reads, “Special FECALtures”) on the 4K + Blu-ray edition of Shakespeare’s Shitstorm include a couple of audio commentaries featuring Kaufman, producers, and cast members; an introduction by Kaufman; a feature-length making-of documentary that details the method behind the madness; and cast auditions.

School in the Crosshairs: ★★½

Shakespeare’s Shitstorm: ★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975). One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest beat a rather formidable slate of films for the Best Picture Oscar, as its competition consisted of Jaws, Nashville, Barry Lyndon, and Dog Day Afternoon. Based on a true story, the last-named is director Sidney Lumet’s corrosive comedy-drama detailing how a simple bank robbery explodes into a three-ring media circus. Sonny (Al Pacino) and Sal (John Cazale) are two low-level hoods whose attempt to rip off a bank backfires when the police quickly arrive on the scene and pin them down. Sensing that these two sad sacks won’t hurt them, the hostages bond with their captors; meanwhile, the cops, the FBI agents, and the TV reporters all jockey for the best position to follow the action inside the bank. Pacino delivers what might be his best performance (certainly top two or three), and there’s a fine role for Charles Durning as the streetside detective trying to stay on top of the situation. Frank Pierson earned a well-deserved Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay; the other nominations were for Best Picture, Actor (Pacino), Supporting Actor (Chris Sarandon), Director, and Film Editing. Sarandon is fine in a showy role as Sonny’s transsexual lover, but his nod clearly should have gone to Cazale, sensational as Sonny’s woe-is-me partner. (A trivial tidbit involving Cazale is that he only appeared in five movies before his death of cancer in 1978, age 42, but all five earned Best Picture Oscar nominations, the others being The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, and The Deer Hunter. His girlfriend at the time of his death was Meryl Streep, who lovingly took care of him throughout his illness.)

Movie: ★★★½

THE SPECTACULAR NOW (2013). There’s a spectacular performance hovering around the edges of The Spectacular Now, and it belongs to Shailene Woodley, who delivers a transcendent turn that feels so natural, so precise, so perfect in every detail. The central character is Sutter Keely (Miles Teller), the cool high school senior with the hot girlfriend (Brie Larson), a laid-back job (at a men’s clothing store), and an easygoing demeanor that allows him to talk to anyone anywhere. But Sutter also has problems: He has no desire to attend college, he unfairly blames his mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh) for his dad’s departure, and said girlfriend dumps him when it’s clear they have no future together. But that’s OK, as long as he has his trusty flask, his keg parties, and his booze-fortified sodas. It’s after one of his drunken all-night revelries that he meets and befriends Aimee Finecky (Woodley), who’s as shy and awkward as he is garrulous and outgoing. This adaptation of Tim Tharp’s novel nicely captures the ill-advised decisions frequently made by teenagers, and none of the kids or adults ever descend into caricature. But a late-inning incident — the movie’s only melodramatic misstep — leads to a curiously rushed final act, one which shortchanges the characters, skips key developments, and leaves an unsettling and unsatisfying feeling regarding what transpired. A key strength of the film is the subtle way it builds upon Sutter’s drinking, slowly revealing him not as a fun-loving kid but as a damaged individual just a few years away from becoming an alcoholic. It’s not the sort of narrative spin found in high school flicks — I approached The Spectacular Now expecting to see a movie like Sixteen Candles and was stunned when I got a prequel to Days of Wine and Roses instead.

Movie: ★★★

TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972) / VAULT OF HORROR (1973). Here are two more portmanteau pics from Amicus (see Asylum above), these based on the horror comics by William M. Gaines (of Mad magazine fame), Al Feldstein (ditto), and Johnny Craig.

Tales from the Crypt opens with five people who, after getting separated from their tour group deep inside some catacombs, find themselves listening to macabre stories spun by the self-named Crypt Keeper (Ralph Richardson). The top vignette finds Peter Cushing delivering one of the best performances of his long career, as a kindly trash collector who loves his late wife, his dogs, and the local children. But a blue-blood bully (Robin Phillips) feels superior to his lower-class neighbor, so he sets out to destroy the old man’s life. Cushing is heartbreaking as the gentle senior, but rest assured he gets his revenge in bloody fashion. The other stories star Joan Collins as a murderous wife who runs afoul of a serial killer dressed like Santa Claus; Ian Hendry as an adulterous husband involved in a bizarre car accident; Richard Greene as a ruthless businessman whose wife (Barbara Murray) asks three wishes of a mystical Chinese statue; and Nigel Patrick as the heartless overseer of a home for the blind.

Tales from the Crypt proved to be a box office hit, so it’s no surprise it was quickly followed by a similar picture. Vault of Horror didn’t fare nearly as well with moviegoers or critics, although its tales are of comparable quality. There’s no Crypt Keeper in this anthology, only five men who relate their odd dreams as they all remain trapped in an office basement. Daniel Massey portrays a murderer whose search for his sister (real-life sibling Anna Massey) leads him to a town which only comes alive at night; Terry-Thomas plays a fussbudget whose neatness wears down his wife (Glynis Johns); Curd Jurgens is a magician who will resort to any means necessary to locate a new trick for his act; Michael Craig is cast as a schemer with a clever plan to scam his insurance company; and Tom Baker (TV’s Doctor Who for seven years beginning in 1974) plays an artist who employs voodoo to help him exact revenge on those who cheated him.

Tales From the Crypt: ★★★

Vault of Horror: ★★★

ZOOTOPIA (2016). At its center of this critical and commercial smash — an Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature — is a marvelous character: Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin), a small-town rabbit who moves to the sprawling metropolis of Zootopia and becomes the first bunny to ever serve as a police officer. The police chief (Idris Elba) is unimpressed and relegates her to meter-maid duty, but rather than slapping tickets on cars, she’s more interested in tackling the mystery of why approximately a dozen citizens have vanished without a trace. A chance encounter with a con-artist fox named Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) provides the impetus she needs to pursue the case on her own, and, with the reluctant help of Nick, she uncovers a labyrinthine plot with fearful implications. It ain’t Chinatown, of course, but Zootopia crafts an unexpectedly complex mystery, one that also allows for an examination of cultural differences and the poisonous prejudices that result in being judged by the color — and, in this anthropomorphic world, the texture — of one’s skin. It’s particularly apropos given the current mood of fear and loathing in this country under a blatantly bigoted administration, but the beauty of the film is that one can be unaware of the subtext and still reap the benefits of an imaginatively designed endeavor packed with huge laughs. The sequence involving the sloths remains one of the comic highlights of modern cinema, and there’s a bit with wolves that’s also uproarious. If nothing else, Zootopia — and, hopefully, the upcoming Zootopia 2 — proves that laughter is still the best medicine, providing temporary soothing relief during these sick, unhealthy times.

Movie: ★★★½