FILM FRENZY

Soledad Miranda (bottom) and Ewa Strömberg in Vampyros Lesbos (Photo: 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.)

A BRIDGE TOO FAR (1977). From the mid-1940s through the early 1970s, World War II films featuring all-star casts were extremely popular, often just for the simple facts that they were entertaining and they moved like lightning. Between Richard Attenborough’s stodgy direction, William Goldman’s scattershot interpretation of Cornelius Ryan’s book, and a three-hour running time that actually feels like three hours (not the case with other long WWII flicks like The Great Escape and The Guns of Navarone), this rarely moves and only sporadically entertains. In September 1944, after the success at Normandy, the Allies were certain they could end the war in record time with an ambitious campaign dubbed Operation Market Garden. But rather than successfully invading Germany, the plan failed miserably, with 80,000 troops suffering 17,000 casualties while hundreds of planes and tanks were destroyed. A Bridge Too Far relates all of this in a far too leisurely and low-key manner — the movie is impressively mounted but bungles its emotional impact. As for the actors, the British stars (Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins among them) are at least given notes of individuality, while the Americans (Robert Redford, James Caan, Elliott Gould) are largely relegated to playing gruff bad-asses. Others in the cast include Gene Hackman as a Polish officer who recognizes right from the start that Operation Market Garden is a terrible plan and Laurence Olivier as a doddering Dutch doctor.

Extras in the 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray edition consist of audio commentary by Goldman and select crew members; film historian audio commentary; the theatrical trailer; and trailers for better WWII flicks also offered by Kino (including Five Graves to Cairo and The Train).

Movie: ★★

THE GAY DIVORCEE (1934). The stars of the 1933 RKO musical Flying Down to Rio were Dolores Del Rio (dull), Raul Roulien (duller), and Gene Raymond (dullest), playing the three points of a hardly scintillating love triangle. Enter supporting players Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: The moment they began dancing “The Carioca” together, a legendary screen partnership was born. The suits at RKO immediately saw the writing on the wall — or, in this case, the dancing on the screen — and scrambled to find the duo their own vehicle. That turned out to be The Gay Divorcee, which continues to rank as one of the best of the 10 Astaire & Rogers offerings. Adapted from the Broadway hit Gay Divorce (also starring Astaire), this finds Guy Holden (Astaire), a celebrated American dancer traveling through Europe with his dithering lawyer (Edward Everett Horton), falling for Mimi Glossop (Rogers), a fellow Yankee who’s anxious to divorce her stuffy workaholic husband (William Austin). Alice Brady plays Mimi’s busybody aunt, Erik Rhodes is cast as an Italian co-respondent hired to speed along the proceedings by posing as Mimi’s lover, and Eric Blore is a chatty waiter. Fred sings Cole Porter’s timeless “Night and Day,” Fred and Ginger dance to “The Continental,” and Horton, Blore, and Rhodes are all so hilarious that they returned alongside the stars in the following year’s Top Hat. Nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, this earned the very first Oscar given for Best Original Song (“The Continental”).

Blu-ray extras include a 1944 radio adaptation starring Frank Sinatra, Gloria DeHaven, and Horton, and the 1934 live-action short Art Trouble, featuring Shemp Howard and James Stewart. (Purchase this title here.)

Movie: ★★★½

IT ALL CAME TRUE (1940). Humphrey Bogart plays a tough — but not too tough! — gangster and Ann Sheridan receives top billing — until she doesn’t! — in this amusing lark from the Warner Bros. factory. Bogie plays gangster Chips Maguire, who kills a snitch and then blackmails his nightclub’s piano player, the squeaky-clean Tommy Taylor (Jeffrey Lynn), into letting him hide out at the boarding house run by Tommy’s mother Nora (Jessie Busley) and her friend Maggie (Una O’Connor). Tommy convinces the old ladies that Chips is a good guy who just needs to lay low to deal with a nervous breakdown, but Sarah Jane (Sheridan), Maggie’s daughter, instantly recognizes him as she used to work at his club. While Sarah Jane tries to figure out how to deal with the situation, Chips gets irritated by the elderly women’s presence (“I hate mothers!”) — eventually, though, he finds his tough-guy demeanor thawing under their kindness and even comes up with a radical idea on how they can save their boarding house from being taken over by the bank. Sheridan, one of the best WB contract players largely forgotten over time, is appealing as the tough-talking Sarah Jane, while ZaSu Pitts is amusing as a boarder who believes she’s always being followed by men. Best of all, of course, is Bogart, who takes advantage of this early career opportunity to show off his comedic chops. Still on the ascendancy, he received third billing under the above-the-title Sheridan as well as love interest Lynn; when the picture was re-released after stardom struck, actual prints of the film had his name placed first.

Blu-ray extras consist of the 1940 Porky Pig cartoon The Sour Puss; the 1940 cartoon Circus Today; and the theatrical trailer. (Purchase this title here.)

Movie: ★★★

LURKER (2025). Had I caught Lurker earlier, during its actual year of release, it would have easily cracked my Top 20 for 2025. It would have joined Friendship on the Honorable Mentions list (i.e. the next 10 following the 10 Best), which is appropriate since both are best described as symphonies of unease. If Friendship is an example of cringe comedy, then Lurker is its cousin on the dramatic side — a cringe psychodrama, as it were. A squirmy study of the famous and their followers in this modern age of media overexposure, debuting writer-director Alex Russell’s film focuses on Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), a geeky guy who works at a trendy L.A. clothing store. Into the shop walks rising pop star Oliver (Archie Madekwe), and Matthew immediately ingratiates himself. Before long, he becomes part of Oliver’s entourage and invited to hang out at his home — that initially means doing the laundry and the dishes, but he’s eventually given greater and more fulfilling responsibilities. Matthew is also thrilled that his own social media presence has grown considerably, but he becomes increasingly jealous whenever Oliver focuses his attention on one of the other yes-men. Russell’s script is rich in character details — Matthew’s turn from sympathetic loser to sleazy sycophant is convincing, but not to be ignored is Oliver’s own ofttimes odious actions — and he does an exceptional job of thwarting our expectations at every turn, particularly with a denouement that’s both unexpected and unforgettable. While Lurker deservedly won Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay (beating Friendship for the latter), it’s a shame it never broke out, earning only $633,000 in theaters. It’s definitely one to check out at home.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★★½

REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS… (1985). The sequelitis that gripped many a film during the mid-1980s — even sorry efforts like Hardbodies (1984) and Angel (ditto) received follow-ups, for Pete’s sake — didn’t quite spread to every project released during this time frame. Witness this takeoff of The Destroyer book series, a missed-opportunity exercise that might as well have been called Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins… and Ends. The problem with the picture starts with the casting of the lead role: Fred Ward is a damn fine actor — check out his dramatic chops in The Right Stuff and his comedic ones in Big Business — but even with the studios’ desire to build a series around a working-class James Bond, he’s ill-suited for the task, coming across as that proverbial bull in a china shop. Remo is a cop who’s transformed into an elite operative for an American outfit that spies on all citizens for their own good (a pre-Patriot Act in all its implicit creepiness); this snooping leads the clandestine group to uncover corruption affecting the U.S. Army. The story is drab in the extreme, although there’s one nicely staged set-piece largely filmed on the Statue of Liberty (the rest of the scene was shot on a partial replica). Joel Grey co-stars as Chium, a martial arts master and Remo’s mentor, and Carl Fullerton earned a Best Makeup Oscar nomination for turning a 53-year-old Caucasian into an 80-year-old Korean.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by producer Larry Spiegel and co-producer Judy Goldstein; behind-the-scenes pieces on the source material, the music score, and the production design; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★

RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985). A rare quality credit for The Cannon Group, the ’80s outfit responsible for a sizable number of junky action films, Runaway Train is based on an unused screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, which right there gives it no small measure of class and import. Director Andrei Konchalovsky and a trio of scripters do right by Kurosawa, delivering an exciting yarn in which two cons, the philosophical Manny (Jon Voight) and the hotheaded Buck (Eric Roberts), break out of an Alaskan prison and hop aboard a train whose engineer has just fallen off the transport, dead from a heart attack. Barreling toward oblivion, the pair must figure out how to stop the out-of-control machine, with a menial train employee (Rebecca DeMornay) as the only other passenger. Roberts is overly mannered yet still effective, but it’s Voight who’s the powerhouse here, delivering one of his best performances as a hardened killer who’s equal parts man and beast. This earned a trio of Oscar nominations for Best Actor (Voight), Supporting Actor (Roberts), and Film Editing. Runaway Train also marked the film debut of reformed convict Danny Trejo, who was visiting the set as a drug addiction counsellor and ended up not only nabbing an uncredited bit but also being hired to serve as Roberts’ boxing coach. Since this humble beginning, the popular actor has amassed a whopping 465 screen credits.

Incidentally, here’s a photo of me posing with Trejo at the 2015 Mad Monster Party here in Charlotte. I love our contrasting doggie shirts. And while I’ve never been an autograph collector, I was tempted to have him sign a photo — since the Machete flicks (the first one reviewed in From Screen To Stream below) found him uttering “Machete don’t text” and “Machete don’t tweet,” I wanted him to sign, “Machete don’t twerk.”

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by Roberts (joined by film historians); a new interview with Roberts; archival interviews with Voight, Roberts, and Konchalovsky; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

UNCOMMON VALOR (1983). While Ted Kotcheff directed the first Rambo flick, 1982’s First Blood, he wasn’t behind its smash first sequel, 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Part II. If he had, though, it would have been a case of been-there-done-that, since the same story had already played out in Kotcheff’s Uncommon Valor. This modest box office hit likewise dealt with the belief that, years after the Vietnam War, there were still American soldiers being held in POW camps and, by God, someone needed to rescue them. In the Rambo flick, all it took was one musclebound super-soldier to save the day — Uncommon Valor at least is more believable with its it-takes-a-village approach. Gene Hackman stars as retired Marine Colonel Jason Rhodes, whose son Frank has been declared MIA for approximately a decade. Convinced that his boy is still alive and being held captive in Laos, Rhodes turns to Frank’s brothers-in-arms (Fred Ward, Reb Brown, and Randall “Tex” Cobb) to help him mount a rescue mission; they’re joined by a pair of helicopter pilots (Tim Thomerson and Harold Sylvester) and a young Marine instructor (Patrick Swayze) who has his own reason for wanting to take part in the operation. With its story credited to actor Wings Hauser (Vice Squad), Uncommon Valor plays out largely as expected (the stateside training sequences are particularly predictable), but there is some minor suspense in seeing which characters will make it out alive, and the father-son angle resolves itself in poignant fashion.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition consist of a pair of film historian audio commentaries; interviews with Brown and Sylvester; the theatrical trailer; and trailers for other Kino titles.

Movie: ★★½

VAMPYROS LESBOS (1971) / SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY (1971). After approximately one decade into his career as writer-director and with 30 credits already to his name, Spanish filmmaker Jess Franco found his muse in Soledad Miranda, a raven-haired beauty from Seville. They completed six films together, but their partnership was short-lived, as the actress was tragically killed in an automobile accident in 1970, at the young age of 27. A few weeks ago, the Severin label released 4K + Blu-ray editions of Miranda’s signature films with Franco.

Released in 1970, Franco’s Count Dracula was an attempt to faithfully film the Bram Stoker novel, with Christopher Lee as Dracula and Soledad as Lucy Westenra. The following year found Franco cheekily revamping the vampire classic with Vampyros Lesbos. Miranda stars as Countess Nadine Carody, a man-hating bloodsucker who centuries earlier had been gangraped until Dracula rescued her and turned her into a vampire. In this film’s modern-day setting, there are a couple of significant gender switches: Jonathan Harker is now the beautiful Linda Westinghouse (Ewa Strömberg) while Renfield is an asylum inmate named Agra (Heidrun Kussin). There’s still a Dr. Seward (Dennis Price of Kind Hearts and Coronets fame), albeit one who’s more twitchy than usual, and the closest to a Van Helsing would be Linda’s fuddy-duddy psychiatrist, Dr. Steiner (Paul Müller). Clearly, the sympathies of Franco (who cast himself as the looney-tunes hotel employee Memmet) rest with Nadine, who seems more alive than all the squares around her — that includes Linda’s boyfriend Omar (Viktor Feldmann), who’s such a dullard that even Dr. Steiner suggests Linda should have an affair in the name of sexual fulfillment! (The story’s reversal of rooting interests predates Guy Maddin’s 2002 Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, reviewed in From Screen To Stream below.) Franco directed approximately 200 films over the course of his career (that number includes the numerous hardcore porn flicks he oversaw in the 1970s and ‘80s), and there’s a reason Vampyros Lesbos remains among his best-known titles. It’s one of his most confidently mounted productions, smoothly mixing art-house and exploitation and able to subvert its male-gazing tendencies with its feminist slant. It’s also the perfect showcase for the mysterious and alluring Miranda, and she and Strömberg provide the sensuality the picture requires.

She Killed in Ecstasy isn’t as accomplished — or as original — as Vampyros Lesbos, but it’s fairly effective as a revenge yarn. In this one, Miranda plays the wife of Dr. Johnson (Fred Williams), who’s been conducting controversial experiments that earn him the ire of the medical community. Pooling their influence, three doctors (Müller, Strömberg, and Franco) and one professor (Howard Vernon) manage to get him barred — devastated, he slits his wrists, leading his distraught widow to seek vengeance against the quartet she holds responsible. She not only cuts the throat of her first victim but also repeatedly plunges a knife into his genitals — the others suffer similarly gruesome fates. If the pacing often feels off — the price of Franco not providing enough meaty story to fill out the running time — there are some truly extraordinary shots to compensate, from the death of the female doctor, killed with a transparent plastic pillow, to the placement of a glass of sherry, leaving a love scene awash in a sea of liquid excess. Miranda is more animated in this one, as befits the role change from neck-chomping seductress to avenging angel.

Extras on Vampyros Lesbos include a pair of film historian audio commentaries; an interview with Franco (who passed away in 2013); an appreciation of Franco by Oscar-winning filmmaker Sean Baker (Anora); an interview with author Stephen Thrower (Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema Of Jesús Franco); and an interview with Soledad Miranda historian Amy Brown. Extras on She Killed in Ecstasy include interviews with Franco, Mūller, Thrower, and Brown.

Vampyros Lesbos: ★★★

She Killed in Ecstasy: ★★½

FILM CLIPS

MERCY (2026). An early scene in Mercy shows that none of the film’s characters have apparently seen The Fugitive — the rest of the movie makes it clear that they haven’t seen Minority Report, either. Intermittently interesting but also incessantly derivative, this futuristic yarn casts Chris Pratt as Chris Raven an L.A. detective who wholly believes in the Mercy Capital Court, in which AI entities serve as judge, jury, and executioner. But oops!, Chris now finds himself on trial for murdering his wife, and he has 90 minutes to prove his innocence to the AI judge (Rebecca Ferguson) overseeing his case or he will be terminated. The opening half-hour is brisk enough to command attention, but once it becomes clear that the picture will remain on the surface, rarely challenging the thorny legal and moral issues that it raises, there’s nowhere to go but down — and that southbound journey is best represented by an increasingly frenzied and dopey third act.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★

THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1979). Of the six screen adaptations of Anthony Hope’s adventure novel, this is the version that’s supposed to be a comedy. Don’t you believe it. Instead, it’s a wheezy, grasping picture that finds Peter Sellers donning three roles — the two that dominate are Rudolf V, the imbecilic king of Ruritania, and Syd, a Cockney cabbie who’s chosen to impersonate Rudolf V once it appears there’s a murder plot against the ruler. The picture’s approach to its humor is by combining antiquated bedroom-farce material with strained slapstick sequences — none of it is remotely funny, and even Sellers isn’t especially amusing, due not only to a deficient screenplay but also to the 53-year-old’s own failing health (he died the following year) and his rapidly crumbling marriage to 24-year-old Lynne Frederick (who co-stars in the film).

Blu-ray extras consist of film historian audio commentary; the theatrical trailer; and trailers for other movies offered by Kino.

Movie: ★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

BEGIN AGAIN (2014). Writer-director John Carmey struck indie gold with 2006’s Once, a gentle whisper of a film that touched many a viewer with its tale of a pair of struggling musicians. Figuring that Once was not enough, he then made Begin Again, another tale centering around two people about to either sink or swim in the currents of the music biz. Mark Ruffalo plays Dan, an alcoholic record-label maven estranged from his wife (Catherine Keener) and his daughter (Hailee Steinfeld). Keira Knightley is Greta, a songwriter who helps her boyfriend Dave (Maroon 5’s Adam Levine) reach the big time, only to break it off once she learns he had an affair. Greta is ready to head back to England, but first she performs one of her songs at a local club. Dan is in the audience, and he likes what he hears … so much so that he immediately offers Greta the opportunity to make an album with him. She figures why not, and soon they’re hopping all over New York City recruiting friends and recording songs. With its cornball narrative and unlikely developments, Begin Again is about as grounded in reality as a Minions movie, yet the picture is so warmhearted and generous of spirit that it’s easy to overlook its contrivances. The porcelain Knightley and the shaggy Ruffalo work well off each other, and I especially liked the way that Carney constructs their relationship: It’s clear that they harbor some mutual attraction but just as obvious that they’re not really compatible-couple material. CeeLo Green turns up in an amusing bit as (what else?) a successful musician.

Movie: ★★★

DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY (2002). Not since Francis Coppola’s sharp take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula has there been a vampire flick as deliriously off the wall as Guy Maddin’s Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary. Produced for Canadian television and featuring the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, this film brings the dance form alive on screen, at once making it sexy, stylish, and relevant. Yet this isn’t merely a filmed stage performance — most of the time, the dancing is so minimal that you forget you’re even watching a ballet. Instead, Maddin has integrated a new reading of the text with an old-fashioned shooting style straight out of the silent era. Influenced by the 1922 classic Nosferatu, this version employs black-and-white film stock (with the occasional striking burst of color), simple title cards, and often overripe performances to convey the cinematic experience of over a century ago. Yet where Maddin (working from Mark Godden’s stage show Dracula) ventures out on his own is in his casting of Zhang Wei-Qiang as Dracula — conveying the fear the Western world often exhibits toward immigrants from the East — and in his portrayal of the so-called good guys as humorless puritans straight out of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The rigidity of Dr. Van Helsing (David Moroni) is far more disturbing than the sensuality of Dracula and his brides, and it’s no coincidence that the dancers are most alive after they’ve been involved in a little neck-nibbling.

Movie: ★★★½

THE FOG (1980). John Carpenter wouldn’t direct his horror masterpiece for another couple of years — sorry, fans of 1978’s Halloween, but 1982’s The Thing is the real career pinnacle — yet The Fog is right in line with the types of films he made before his professional fall from grace: It’s unpretentious genre fun, stylishly assembled and populated with interesting characters. Set in the coastal California town of Bodega Bay, it concerns a curse wherein a group of murderous ghosts have returned after a 100-year slumber seeking revenge for a grave injustice. The script by Carpenter and producer Debra Hill is unique in that it features two heroines who never meet: Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau, at the time Carpenter’s wife), a local DJ who’s able to keep track of the menacing fog from her radio-station perch atop the Bodega Bay lighthouse, and Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis), a traveler who hitches a ride from local Nick Castle (Tom Atkins) and foolishly decides to stick around. For a low-budget feature, the movie looks great, thanks to director of photography Dean Cundey’s widescreen lensing, Tommy Lee Wallace’s atmospheric production design, and the groovy visual effects. Film buffs will appreciate the sight of Curtis and her mother Janet Leigh sharing screen time together, as well as the number of in-jokes (The Abominable Dr. Phibes and The Birds are but two of the titles that receive subtle shout-outs).

Movie: ★★★

GOOD LUCK CHUCK (2004). Upchuck would have been a more accurate title for this nauseating effort — not only does its mere existence instantly elevate the already high standing of such accomplished “raunchy comedies” as The 40-Year-Old Virgin and There’s Something About Mary, it also makes them seem as refined as an Ernst Lubitsch farce from the 1930s by comparison. Dane Cook plays Chuck, who was long ago placed under a hex which states that whenever he sleeps with a woman, she will then marry the next man who woos her. This allows Chuck to have sex with all sorts of buxom babes (and, in a couple of cruel sequences straight out of Norbit, obese ones as well) without worrying about commitment issues. But he grows tired of such a shallow lifestyle, especially after meeting Cam (Jessica Alba), a klutzy penguin specialist he’s afraid he’ll eventually lose to the curse. The central premise is no more farfetched than those exhibited in such frothy comedies as 13 Going on 30 and Big, yet Good Luck Chuck forgoes quirky charm and endearing characters in order to focus on bottom-of-the-barrel gross-out gags involving sex with grapefruits, stuffed penguins, and a woman with three breasts. Cook and Alba generate about as much chemistry as a mongoose paired with a rattlesnake, while Dan Fogler, as Chuck’s foul-mouthed best friend, offers a textbook example of “beyond obnoxious.”

Movie: ★

MACHETE (2010). More fun than a barrel of Sylvester Stallone DVDs, Machete is gleeful trash that delivers on the promise it held when it was just a twinkle in creator Robert Rodriguez’s eye, as one of the mock trailers shown in 2007’s Grindhouse. Everything about Machete is so over the top that it’s impossible to feel as if one’s morals are being compromised: When a film quickly moves from a sequence in which the title bad-ass (played by Danny Trejo) decapitates several men with one swift 360-degree turn to a scene in which a naked woman retrieves a hidden cell phone from her vajayjay, it’s clear that nothing is to be taken seriously. That’s not to say the movie doesn’t have the ability to incense a significant amount of folks, particularly conservatives like the xenophobic ogre in the White House. As expected, the Mexicans are the heroes, demanding to be treated like people and eager to have a crack at the American Dream. On the other side are the rich Texas fat cats determined to keep them down, including a right-wing Senator (Robert De Niro) who guns down illegal border crossers when he’s not busy hitting the campaign trail. Machete is coerced into taking out this slimy politico, but he quickly realizes he’s been double-crossed, and he has to rely on two women (Michelle Rodriguez and Jessica Alba) to help him out. Whether it’s a beefy Steven Seagal or a topless Lindsay Lohan, viewers never quite know who or what Machete will throw at them next. A disappointing sequel, Machete Kills, followed in 2013.

Movie: ★★★