FILM FRENZY

Jean Wallace and Cornel Wilde in The Big Combo (Photo: Ignite Films)

By Matt Brunson

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray, 4K, and DVD. Ratings are on a four-star scale.)

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1951). Despite the existence of over two dozen film versions of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale, an alarmingly small number have been wholly satisfying. My vote for the best adaptation is Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer’s creepy 1988 stop-motion-animated Alice, with honorable mention going to 1985’s Alice offshoot Dreamchild (with Ian Holm marvelous as Carroll and Coral Browne as an elderly Alice). This animated Disney take on the story might be the most famous screen version (although I suppose many younger viewers might make that claim on behalf of Tim Burton’s live-action hit), but it’s hardly the most satisfying. Sandwiched between the releases of the lovely Cinderella and the similarly problematic Peter Pan, this proved to be a box office flop, though a couple of reissues in the 1970s and ’80s allowed it to eventually turn a profit. But the deliriousness of Carroll’s visions — to say nothing of his witty wordplay — don’t jibe with the inherent wholesomeness and comparative straightforwardness of the traditional Disney toon flick, and the mediocre songs and tame visuals are further hindrances. Despite the studio’s half-hearted attempt to be more hip and less traditional than usual, the result is a picture of limited charm. This earned an Oscar nomination for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture.

Extras in the 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray edition include a making-of featurette; behind-the-scenes footage; reference footage for the doorknob sequence; a 1959 TV introduction (in color) by Walt Disney; and a pencil test.

Movie: ★★

THE BIG COMBO (1955). John Alton may have won his Academy Award for the splashy musical An American in Paris, but among cineastes, he’s best known for his invaluable contributions to various film noir gems from the 1940s and ‘50s. His finest work in the genre can be found in The Big Combo, a quintessential noir directed by Joseph H. Lewis (who had previously helmed the noir classic Gun Crazy) and written by Philip Yordan. Packed with indelible imagery and unforgettable set-pieces, it centers on a grudge match between humorless police lieutenant Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde) and a vicious crime lord known only as Mr. Brown (Richard Conte), All manner of intriguing characters are lassoed into its psychological framework, including two potential femme fatales (Jean Wallace and Helene Stanton), Mr. Brown’s weak-kneed right-hand man (Brian Donlevy), a wild card in a woman named Alicia (Helen Walker), and the henchmen Mingo (Earl Holliman) and Fante (Lee  Van Cleef), who, although the Production Code wouldn’t allow it to be spelled out,  are as much a gay couple as Diamonds Are Forever’s Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd. Film noir offerings often come across as cool and collected, but not this one: The emotions are messy, the sexual tension heightened, and the death of a sympathetic character particularly unnerving. Alton’s camerawork and lighting somehow create more shadows than found in the common noir (which is really saying something), and the brutality is elevated in unexpected ways, including that found in two dissimilar scenes that both involve a hearing aid.

The superb 4K + Blu-ray Steelbook edition from Ignite Films also contains a second film, one also shot by Alton. The Crooked Way (1949) stars noir regular John Payne (Kansas City Confidential) as Eddie, a World War II hero who wakes up in a stateside hospital with a case of amnesia. He returns to his hometown of Los Angeles hoping to bump into friends who can identify him — that proves to be a bad idea once he learns that he was a gangster before the war and is now being watched by both the police and his former accomplices. The Crooked Way isn’t quite as brutal as The Big Combo, but it’s not exactly a softie, either: Watching Eddie get hurled down a fire escape is almost as startling (although not nearly as shocking) as watching Richard Widmark’s Tommy Udo bounce that wheelchair-bound old woman down a flight of stairs in 1947’s Kiss of Death. The Crooked Way is a solid noir, with an excellent villain in Sonny Tuft’s mob boss Vince Alexander and a memorable snitch in Percy Helton’s Petey (presumably, Elisha Cook Jr. wasn’t available).

Extras include film historian audio commentaries; a video essay on The Big Combo; and a piece on Lewis and his shooting style. The set also contains five lobby card reproductions and a booklet filled with essays.

The Big Combo: ★★★½

The Crooked Way: ★★★

CREEPY CREATURE DOUBLE FEATURE: THE SLIME PEOPLE (1963) / THE CRAWLING HAND (1963). We know what you’re thinking: Why should I plunk down dough for this turkey twofer when I can just watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 versions? That’s usually a fair question, but when it comes to The Slime People and The Crawling Hand, the obvious answer is that both pictures were tackled during the rough first season of the popular series, when the principals were still finding their footing as pertaining to both pacing and punchlines (plus, the season also featured J. Elvis Weinstein as Dr. Earhardt, who was about as funny as triple bypass surgery). We can guarantee that your own living-room riffs will be as funny as any that emanated from the Satellite of Love.

Of the pair, The Slime People is a tad more amateurish but also a tad more entertaining. Los Angeles has been taken over by a group of subterranean dwellers who use fog as their cover, and it’s up to a handful of survivors (most of whom sport squirrel-level IQs) to stop them. For such a low-budget endeavor, the monster costumes aren’t bad; unfortunately, they took up the vast majority of the budget, meaning many cast and crew members had to complete the flick sans pay. The rest of the budget seemingly went to a fog machine, producing mist so thick that an entire battalion probably could have hid in it.

Flashes of innovation are spotted in The Crawling Hand, which opens with a visually cool credits sequence and later includes a great fake out involving a crawling hand and a pillow. Otherwise, this is fairly dull stuff, with the severed appendage of an astronaut being manipulated by an otherworldly entity that also possesses a college kid (Rod Lauren) who looks like Weapons’ Alden Ehrenreich and emotes like a dime-store James Dean. Peter Breck (later of The Big Valley) is the square-jawed scientist on the case while, a year before getting stranded with Gilligan, Alan Hale Jr. plays a befuddled sheriff. The film also includes the use of The Rivingtons single “The Bird’s the Word,” later reconfigured by The Trashmen as the Top 10 hit “Surfin’ Bird.” Overall, this needed less teen angst and more hand jive.

Blu-ray extras include an interview with The Slime People star Susan Hart; film buff audio commentary on The Crawling Hand; and a sci-fi poster gallery.

The Slime People: ★½

The Crawling Hand: ★½

DEATH SHIP (1980). While I’ve always appreciated the thoroughness of IMDb, on occasion it admittedly leads to a double take or two. Case in point: On the main page for Death Ship, in the Top Cast section, there are photos of (among others) George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Kate Reid … and Adolph Hitler. Who knew he was still alive and now a SAG member? Actually, his presence is helpfully cleared up with the designation “(archive footage),” since one scene in this horror flick includes a vintage newsreel of Nazi propaganda. Perhaps best known for its awesome poster design, Death Ship is a grubby British-Canadian production in which a cruise ship gets rammed by the title vessel, killing all aboard save for nine survivors. This ennead, including the grouchy captain (Kennedy) set for retirement and his replacement (Crenna), boards the unmanned ship, which eventually is revealed to be a former Nazi freighter on which gruesome medical experiments were conducted. The behavior of the various characters is ridiculous even by the standards of this genre — for starters, what parents in their right mind would allow their small children to freely wander the corridors of a rusty, crusty ship? — but the setting is an inspired choice, and director Alvin Rakoff does a commendable job of making the ship a worthy substitute for the traditional haunted house. The aural assault, from Ivor Slaney’s hard-charging score to the ship’s grinding machinery to the voices of Nazi madmen past, aids the mood immeasurably.

The 4K UHD + Blu-ray edition contains both the theatrical version and an extended cut. Extras include audio commentary by Rakoff; film historian audio commentary; a retrospective making-of featurette; and an isolated track of Slaney’s score.

Movie: ★★½

MONEYBALL (2011). Adapted from a true story by the powerhouse team of Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List), Moneyball finds Brad Pitt as his most dynamic; he’s cast as Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, who in 2001-2002 is tired of losing both games and star players to better funded baseball teams like the Yankees and the Red Sox. Refusing to continue adhering to the old-school philosophies preached by his assemblage of geriatric scouts, he instead discovers a newer religion being espoused by Peter (Jonah Hill), an economics major from Yale who possesses a love for the game and a head for numbers-crunching. Employing a math-based system (sabermetrics, created by Bill James) that finds the value in underappreciated players deemed as too old/awkward/iffy by other organizations, Beane starts collecting these diamond castoffs as if they were baseball cards in the hopes that they’ll coalesce into a winning team. Whether or not one subscribes to the “moneyball” philosophy — it’s worked well for some teams, not so great for others — is irrelevant when it comes to enjoying a motion picture that takes a potentially arid subject and makes it sing on screen. Its success has less to do with director Bennett Miller, whose mise en scenes show little variance (a similar staidness also dogged his Capote), than with the scripters and the actors, all of whom exhibit a quicksilver strategy in keeping this thing popping. Put this one in the W column. Moneyball earned six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Actor (Pitt), Supporting Actor (Hill), and Adapted Screenplay.

Extras in the 4K edition include a making-of piece; deleted scenes; and a blooper.

Movie: ★★★

SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE (2003). The late Diane Keaton is magnificent in her Oscar-nominated turn in this romantic comedy from writer-director Nancy Meyers. Jack Nicholson is 63-year-old Harry Sanborn, a wealthy bachelor whose rule is to never date anybody over the age of 30. His current girlfriend Marin (Amanda Peet) certainly fits his guidelines, but his weekend of whoopee is doubly interrupted, first by the unexpected arrival of Marin’s mother Erica (Keaton) and then by a heart attack that lands him in the hospital. Harry’s boyish doctor (Keanu Reeves, never more charming) orders his patient to take it easy, thus leading to a set-up that finds Harry forced to recuperate while shacked up in Erica’s beachfront home. Initially antagonistic, they begin to warm up to each other, yet the road to an unlikely romance is strewn with obstacles, with Erica having to deal with the fact that Harry is a serial dater and Harry having to compete for Erica’s affections with his own doctor, who has instantly developed a crush on this older woman. For most of its length, Something’s Gotta Give is a delight, and Keaton is spectacular in a role that allows her intelligence, wit, and soulfulness to shine through. But after two hours of bliss, the movie tacks on a disastrous ending that’s a complete betrayal of what has preceded it. It’s unclear whether this finish was added because the Formula Filmmaking Doctrine decreed it or because Meyers herself believed that an older woman’s fantasy life can only be allowed to extend so far. It’s a toss-up as to which reason is more depressing to contemplate, although I lean toward the latter.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Meyers and Nicholson; audio commentary by Meyers, Keaton, and producer Bruce A. Block; and a deleted scene.

Movie: ★★★

SUBSPECIES (1991). The decision to shoot this vampire flick in Transylvania provides a significant boost to one of the most popular franchise starters from Full Moon Features. Notable as the first American movie to be filmed in Romania, Subspecies makes terrific use of existing castles and catacombs, thereby adding flavor to this yarn about the battle between a good vampire and an evil one. Radu (Anders Hove) is the monstrous bloodsucker, having just killed his father (Phantasm’s Angus Scrimm in what amounts to a cameo) while seeking a bauble known as the Bloodstone. Stefan is the saintly vampire, seeking not only to stop Radu from becoming all-powerful but also from turning three college students, two American (Laura Tate and Michelle McBride) and one Romanian (Irina Movila), into his concubines. As is par for the course for a Full Moon film, the acting is largely on the weak side, but the three actresses nevertheless make appealing protagonists and Hove transforms Radu into a truly repellant vampire in the grand tradition of Nosferatu. To date, there have been four sequels, all starring Hove — Bloodstone (1993), Bloodlust (1994), Bloodstorm (1998), and Blood Rise (2023) — and one spin-off, Vampire Journals (1997). Incidentally, the title refers to Radu’s pint-sized minions, even though they barely figure in the film!

As it had done with 1989’s Puppet Master this past fall, Full Moon has reissued Subspecies in a new VHS (you read that right) edition. And as with Puppet Master, it makes sense, as both were initially released straight to video, where they banked major bucks. There are no extras.

Movie: ★★½

FILM CLIPS

INTERNATIONAL HOUSE (1933). Peggy Hopkins Joyce, who became better known for her string of scandals, string of marriages, and string of lovers than for her acting, receives top billing over a cast of enduring stars in this amusing ensemble piece. The plot centers around various characters as they gather at a hotel in China to witness the demonstration of an early television set. The eclectic cast includes Bela Lugosi, Rudy Vallee, and the comedy team of George Burns and Gracie Allen, although the best moments belong to W.C. Fields and Cab Calloway. Both take advantage of the lax pre-Code ways, with Calloway pulling out all the stops while performing “Reefer Man” (“If he trades you dimes for nickels and calls watermelons pickles, Then you know you’re talkin’ to that reefer man”) and Fields including jokes involving gay panic, voyeurism, kinky sex, and “a pussy.”

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★★★

LOONEY TUNES COLLECTOR’S VAULT: VOLUME 2 (1935-1963). The latest set of Looney Tunes / Merry Melodies faves offers 51 more vintage cartoons, 26 of which have never been available on Blu-ray or DVD and another 25 which are new to Blu. That’s six full hours of mirth and mayhem showcasing such superstars as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig. The earliest toon in the set is 1935’s Country Boy, in which Peter Rabbit stirs up trouble on a farm; the latest is 1963’s To Beep or Not to Beep, featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Notable entries include 1948’s controversial Bugs Bunny cartoon A-Lad-In His Lamp, 1955’s Hyde and Hare, in which Bugs gets involved with a certain Dr. Jekyll, and the 1957 Daffy & Porky spy caper Boston Quackie (spoofing, of course, the character of Boston Blackie).

Blu-ray extras consist of audio commentaries by animation experts on five of the cartoons.

Collection: ★★★½

UFORIA (1985). Made in 1981 but shelved until 1985, UFOria brings to mind the title of MAD’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind spoof: Clod Encounters of the Absurd Kind. Written and directed by John Binder, this is an example of aw-shucks cinema, where the downhome yet kooky characters will leave audiences either wanting to give them a warm hug or send them packing. Laverne & Shirley’s Cindy Williams plays Arlene, a small-town supermarket cashier who has visions that friendly extra-terrestrials are about to pay a visit. Fred Ward co-stars as her disbelieving boyfriend while Harry Dean Stanton plays a phony evangelist who sees profit in Arlene’s conviction. Ward is good, but a little of the hayseed humor goes a long way. And given the setup, there’s only one possible way for this to end, and that it does, ever so predictably.

Extras in the 4K+ Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by Binder and associated producer Jeanne Field, and the trailer.

Movie: ★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF CANNON FILMS (2015). “That’s sort of the Cannon way,” states one of the talking heads seen in this vastly entertaining documentary. “It completely resembles something minus good taste.” Indeed, that’s one of the kinder things said about the maverick studio and its two guiding lights, cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Wildly successfully as filmmakers in their native Israel, they opted to go Hollywood, and their output came to define the 1980s as much as that of any other studio. Making movies on the cheap, snagging international financing based solely on poster art, throwing gratuitous T&A into whatever films would support them, making superstars out of such wooden lumps as Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme — it was all in a day’s work for Golan and Globus, and they made plenty of enemies (and some allies) along the way. This film allows everyone to have their say, from those who loved working for the pair (such as Franco Zeffirelli, who states that making 1986’s Otello under their banner was the best experience of his career) to those who hated toiling for them (basically everyone else). As he did with his previous documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (which made my 10 Best list for 2009), director Mark Hartley compiles ample film clips to help tell the saga, from such mega-bombs as 1980’s The Apple (an unspeakably awful musical) and 1987’s Over the Top (the arm-wrestling epic starring Sylvester Stallone) to such comparatively successful features like 1981’s Enter the Ninja (which led to the Ninjutsu craze during that decade) and 1985’s Runaway Train (which nabbed Oscar nominations for stars Jon Voight and Eric Roberts).

Movie: ★★★½

EXODUS (1960). As detailed in the best picture of 2015, the criminally underrated Trumbo (go here for a complete look at the Best & Worst Films of 2015), the heinous Hollywood blacklist was broken when two powerful filmmakers hired persona non grata Dalton Trumbo to write the scripts for their respective pictures using his own moniker rather than a pseudonym. One, of course, was actor-producer Kirk Douglas with 1960’s Spartacus; the other was director-producer Otto Preminger with the same year’s Exodus, the screen version of Leon Uris’ gargantuan bestseller about the founding of the State of Israel. Trumbo served up two hefty screenplays full of incident, emotion, and intellectual exchanges — of the pair, I much prefer Spartacus, although there’s something to be said for his streamlining of so much historical content (and, yes, fictional deviations) found in Uris’ bowling-ball-sized novel, as well as for Preminger’s mounting of some truly impressive set-pieces. Despite his deserved ranking as one of the Hollywood greats, Paul Newman is curiously ineffectual as Haganah leader Ari Ben Canaan, and his character’s romance with an American nurse (Eva Marie Saint) lacks palpable passion. The supporting players fare better, with David Opatoshu (as radical Irgun leader Akiva Ben Canaan) and Sal Mineo (as seething Irgun operative Dov Landau) emerging as the cast standouts. In the battle of the now-classic movie themes, Ernest Gold’s work on Exodus earned the Best Original Score Oscar over Elmer Bernstein’s achievement with The Magnificent Seven and Dimitri Tiomkin’s efforts on The Alamo (the best of the year’s bunch, Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho, wasn’t even nominated); the film’s other nominations went to Mineo for Best Supporting Actor and Sam Leavitt for Best Color Cinematography.

Movie: ★★★

WHAT? (1972). I’ve spent the entirety of my decades-long career steadfastly not reading other reviews of a movie until I’ve written my own, but after sitting through this stupid, clumsy, pretentious, and sexist drivel from Roman Polanski — easily the worst picture of his career — I was too depressed to actually write anything. Instead, I browsed the Internet in genuine curiosity to get a sense of what others got out of this film, which plays like a poor copy of the sort of picture Fellini could do in his sleep. I’m going to break another rule — quoting other scribes — since, in tackling this comedy of a bubble-headed American beauty (Sydne Rome) who finds herself constantly being sexually molested while in an Italian villa, others have already stated perfectly what I felt. Major critics at the time of the film’s release (it played under both What? and Diary of Forbidden Dreams) sensibly panned it — Roger Ebert awarded it a half-star and stated, “When it comes right down to it, there’s a nasty streak of misogyny in Polanski,” while The New York Times‘ Vincent Canby labeled it “a male chauvinist pig sort of comedy.” In modern times, it has its fans, but it still retains a number of detractors: Daily Verdict’s Clark Douglas, for instance, amusingly commented that “Seeing Polanski’s name attached to this rubbish feels a bit like seeing Picasso’s name at the bottom of a crude drawing on the wall of a public restroom.” The Onion A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin, however, best nailed it by writing, “Viewers begin to wonder if maybe, just maybe, this Polanski fellow has some issues when it comes to women … It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to see Polanski solely as an artist, and not as a man [briefly] in jail for having drugged and sodomized a 13-year-old.” There, I feel better, akin to having passed sizable kidney stones.

Movie: ★