FILM FRENZY

Jennifer Lopez in Kiss of the Spider Woman (Photo: Kino)

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.)

CHILDREN OF THE WICKER MAN (2024). Last August, the Severin label released the 2018 documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers, which detailed how the torturous shooting of Ghost in the Noonday Sun, a reportedly unwatchable disaster starring Sellers, so affected director Peter Medak that he spent decades trying to find some measure of closure. Children of the Wicker Man, also a Severin release, makes for a simpatico bookend piece, as it also illustrates the personal toll that the making of a movie can have on individuals. The film in question isn’t a dud like Noonday Sun but rather a beloved cult flick, and the haunted person(s) isn’t the movie’s director, Robin Hardy, but two of the eight children he sired with six different women. Half-brothers Justin and Dominic Hardy, the former an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and the latter an art historian, reflect on their deadbeat dad (who eventually abandoned the family) and try to come to terms with how his actions, particularly as they pertain to his involvement with The Wicker Man (reviewed in From Screen To Stream below), have damaged them (Justin has always been especially angry, even yelling out, “Fuck Robin Hardy!” at one point). Examining old correspondence, interviewing some of the remaining folks from the shoot, and even journeying to the original locations, the Hardy boys launch an investigation that proves to be emotional, edifying, and a stirring means to an end.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by co-directors Justin Hardy, Dominic Hardy, and Chris Nunn, moderated by director David Gregory (The Wicker Man Enigma); a making-of featurette; and a Q&A with the Hardys, Nunn, and producer Alison Palmer.

Movie: ★★★

CRIME 101 (2026). Writer-director Bart Layton turns up the heat with Crime 101, an oftimes riveting thriller blessed with a sharp screenplay and an exquisite cast. Reminiscent in several ways of Michael Mann’s 1995 Heat, this employs a clever double meaning in its title, with Crime 101 referring not only to an introduction to matters of a criminal nature but also because the robberies showcased in the film all take place along the California stretch of the West Coast-spanning Highway 101. Chris Hemsworth stars as Mike, an introverted jewel thief responsible for a string of heists that the police believe is being committed by various individuals. Only intrepid cop Lou Lubesnick (Hemworth’s fellow Avenger, Mark Ruffalo) figures out that it’s all the work of one man and investigates accordingly. Both Mike and Lou end up encountering Sharon Coombs (Halle Berry), an insurance broker who’s tired of being passed over for a major promotion at her firm. Sharon becomes an integral part of Mike’s next job, but potentially gumming up the works is Ormon (Barry Keoghan), an unprincipled hothead hired by Mike’s former fence (Nick Nolte) to take over Mike’s operations by any means necessary. Crime 101 is rich in both character and plotting, and Ruffalo stands out as the caring copper — it’s also nice to see Monica Barbaro, so wonderful in her Oscar-nominated turn as Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown, bring dimension to the role of Maya, Mike’s new girlfriend.

The 4K Ultra HD edition contains no extras.

Movie: ★★★½

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (2025). The 1985 adaptation of Argentinian author Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel was successful on the art-house circuit, earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, and landed William Hurt the award for Best Actor. In the early 1990s, the story was converted into a musical — this led to a Broadway hit that won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical. A film adaptation of that stage show was released last fall and promoted as a major awards contender — instead, it was a sizable bomb, grossing $2 million against a $30 million budget. It deserved a better fate — while not as memorable as the ’85 take, it’s nevertheless a confident and competent retelling, only faltering during (oh, the irony!) some of the musical numbers. Set in 1983, toward the end of Argentina’s Dirty War, it finds political prisoner Valentin Arregui (Diego Luna in Raul Julia’s old role) forced to share a cell with Luis Molina (Tonatiuh inheriting Hurt’s part), a gay window dresser. Despite having nothing in common, the two become friends, with Molina helping pass the time by describing to Arregui in detail the plot of his favorite film: Kiss of the Spider Woman, a big-budget musical starring celebrated actress Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez in Sonia Braga’s role). The chats between the two men are far more interesting than the musical numbers found in the film-within-the-film, which not only blur into each other but also tend to dilute the potency of the prison scenes.

Extras in the 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by director Bill Condon and a deleted scene.

Movie: ★★★

PORT OF SHADOWS (1938). Director Marcel Carné’s drama belongs to a style of French cinema that was known as “poetic realism” (once described as “revealing the invisible poetry in everyday life”), yet many of its elements would gain wider recognition via the film noir movement of the 1940s. As in those later staples of American cinema, Port of Shadows (Le quai des brumes) features an existential antihero, a slinky femme fatale, words as weapons (“Your voice is nasty. Sounds like walking in muck with old sandals.”), and an overriding sense that a happy ending is decidedly not in the cards. Here, the down-on-his-luck protagonist is an army deserter (Jean Gabin) who winds up in a port city where he hopes to gain passage out of the country. While he waits for his ship to come in (or pull out, as the case may be), he earns the affections of both a leggy gamine (Michèle Morgan) and a stray mutt, but his rare run of good fortune keeps getting interrupted by the power plays of some local thugs.

Blu-ray extras consist of film critic audio commentary; an introduction to the film by professor and author Ginette Vincendeau (The Companion to French Cinema); a making-of featurette; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW (1971). Gene Roddenberry may have created Star Trek and Roger Vadim may have directed Barbarella, but this joint collaboration manages in a sense to be even more out there than their respective space odysseys. Produced and written by Roddenberry (adapting Francis Pollini’s novel) and directed by Vadim, this loopy yarn is set at an American high school where beautiful, blossoming girls (all played by actresses ranging from 18 to 24 years old) are being murdered on a regular basis. This plot intersects with one involving Ponce de Leon Harper (John David Carson), a virginal student whose sexual frustrations reach epic proportions. “Tiger” McDrew (Rock Hudson), the womanizing football coach and guidance counselor, suggests that substitute teacher Betty Smith (Angie Dickinson) should help the young lad with his problem; meanwhile, tenacious detective Sam Surcher (Telly Savalas) continues to sniff around for clues that would identify the killer. Too juvenile to take seriously (I’ve seen episodes of The Benny Hill Show that were less leering) but too offbeat to completely dismiss, this screams its early-’70s time period at every turn, particularly in its references to the sexual revolution. It’s occasionally intriguing but also often unsatisfying, although Star Trek fans will be pleased to see that Roddenberry brought along James Doohan (Scotty) to appear in a supporting role as Surcher’s right-hand man.

The only Blu-ray extra is the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★½

ZOMBIE (1979). Legendary for oh-so-many reasons, director Lucio Fulci’s gore-galore zombie flick is the one that was famously called Zombi 2 in its Italian homeland because its makers positioned it as a sequel to Zombi, or, as we know it, Dawn of the Dead. Of course this has absolutely nothing to do with the George Romero classic, but it has managed to carve out its own notorious corner in the zombie field. Tisa Farrow (Mia’s sister) plays a young woman who, with a reporter (Ian McCulloch) by her side, sets out to a Caribbean island in search of her MIA father — there, they encounter Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson), who’s attempting (and failing) to come up with a cure for the local zombie infestation. One of the films categorized as a “video nasty” in England, Zombie features astounding makeup designs by Giannetto De Rossi and Maurizio Tramo, a memorable score by Fabio Frizzi, and two scenes that are brought up whenever anyone discusses the movie: the underwater zombie vs. shark fight and the splinter-in-the-eye sequence (which I have always vividly recalled since first seeing the film in Portugal at the age of 14).

Blue Underground has reissued Zombie with a new 4K restoration in a two-disc Blu-ray edition. The copious extras include audio commentary by McCulloch; audio commentary by author Troy Howarth (Splintered Visions: Lucio Fulci and His Films); interviews with various cast and crew members; an interview with author Stephen Thrower (Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci); a poster and still gallery; and a discussion with Guillermo del Toro, who counts the movie among his favorites.

Movie: ★★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

BLACKHAT (2015). I expect I’m not the first to note that Crime 101 owes much of its style and narrative beats to Michael Mann’s 1995 stunner Heat. Crime 101 star Chris Hemsworth actually toiled under Mann when they worked together on Blackhat, a technothriller that proved to be a massive commercial bomb. Mann, whose films often pop off the screen with urgency and vibrancy, opted for a grainy, muted, and measured approach here, a choice that doubtless led to the few theatrical audience members wishing their auditorium seat came equipped with a fast-forward button. Yet those who remain patient will be rewarded with a reasonably involving tale about Nick Hathaway (Hemsworth), a brilliant computer hacker who’s released from prison to help the American and Chinese governments discover who’s behind the cybercrimes that have left several people dead in their wake. Some of Mann’s technical flourishes are less impressive than usual — for starters, the peeks inside a computer look like outtakes from 1982’s old-school TRON — but he still knows how to stage an action scene, more so when the parties involved are going mano-a-mano. But at 135 minutes, Blackhat could stand to be trimmed, and Hemsworth isn’t required to emote as much as he’s asked to assume hunky poses worthy of a GQ photo spread.

Movie: ★★½

THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997). This gonzo sci-fi outing, set in 2259, proves to be a messy amalgam — a motion picture with the body of a mainstream blockbuster but the spirit of a trendy cult flick. And yet, for all its narrative incoherencies, visual excesses, and shifting moods (it whiplashes between drama and comedy with light-speed abandon), the movie works. The plot posits that only an alien known as Leeloo (Milla Jovovich in the film’s most affecting performance) has the power to save our world from being destroyed by an approaching fireball of pure evil. The insane Zorg (a weak Gary Oldman) opposes her at every turn, but she receives invaluable assistance from Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), a former government agent who now works as a New York cab driver. It’s not exactly a revelation to discover that then-37-year-old writer-director Luc Besson (La Femme Nikita, Leon: The Professional) came up with the idea for The Fifth Element when he was 16, as few creatures on this planet are as familiar with the dictates of the science fiction form as teenage boys with overactive imaginations. Besides, it helps us understand why, in the movie, the only being with the power to save the planet is a lithe model whose wardrobe chiefly consists of strategically placed strips of masking tape. There’s also the litmus test of Chris Tucker as the hyperactive Ruby Rhod — a viewer must decide whether to go with the flow and accept his over-the-top shenanigans or turn to alcohol to dull the senses.

Movie: ★★★

A MAN APART (2003). A Traffic for the action crowd, A Man Apart takes an unblinking view of drug cartels before eventually revealing its true colors as a generic shoot-’em-up yarn. Vin Diesel, whose magnetism really only blossoms when he’s playing flippant antiheroes (Pitch Black, The Fast and the Furious, XXX), is all chiseled nobility in this film, and the result is a dull performance that points out the actor’s limitations — when his character gets weepy during one sequence, it’s like watching a single raindrop making its way down a craggy mountainside. He’s cast as Sean Vetter, a DEA agent whose wife (Jacqueline Obradors) is killed by a drug lord known only as Diablo. Close to cracking up — or at least that’s what the script suggests; given Diesel’s monotonous performance, it’s hard to tell — Vetter is forced to turn to the drug kingpin (Geno Silva) he put behind bars to obtain information that will lead him to his quarry. Director F. Gary Gray had earlier in his career proven himself to be an effective director of action flicks (The Negotiator, Set It Off), but here his talents deserted him. This sat on a studio shelf for quite some time, and no wonder.

Movie: ★½

THE MUMMY (1959) / FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (1969) / TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (1970). On the heels of last week’s excellent box set Sangster Directs Hammer (reviewed here), here are three more efforts from England’s legendary monster factory.

Hammer stumbled upon its successful formula with 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein and immediately built upon it with 1958’s Horror of Dracula. Both movies made international stars out of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, so they were logically chosen to headline 1959’s The Mummy. As before, it’s Cushing who handles the lion’s share of the dialogue as the human protagonist while the more physically imposing Lee plays the part of the creature. In this case, he’s Kharis, the high priest who awakens centuries later and seeks revenge against those who defiled the tomb of the Egyptian princess he served. Cushing portrays one of the archaeologists from that ill-fated group in this literate and robust retelling.

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed might be the worst picture in Hammer’s entire Frankenstein cycle, losing sight of the character of the obsessed scientist in an effort to score some cheap thrills. In this one, Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) blackmails young couple Karl Holst (Simon Ward) and Anna Spengler (Veronica Carlson) into assisting him as he tries to transfer a brain from one body to another — the result is yet another shambling grotesquery (Freddie Jones). In the four previous films in the series, Cushing’s mad doctor was consumed by his work to the point that nothing else mattered, which is why it makes no sense when he suddenly rapes Carlson’s character. Of course, that scene wasn’t in the original script — producer James Carreras insisted it be added because he felt American audiences demanded sex in all their films (because of course “rape” and “sex” are the same thing) — but despite the protests of Cushing, Carlson, and director Terence Fisher, the sequence stayed. There are a few flashes of style here and there, but the treatment of Anna throughout the film leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

A more acceptable bad taste in the mouth can be found in Taste the Blood of Dracula, an unusual if not wholly successful outing in which three bored members of respectable society (Geoffrey Keen, John Carson, and Peter Sallis, the latter best known as the voice of Wallace in the Wallace & Gromit franchise) get involved with a Satanist (Ralph Bates, star of the Sangster Directs Hammer set) who, after drinking the blood of the vanquished Count (Christopher Lee) like so much Kool-Aid, manages to bring him back from his eternal slumber. As always, the debonair bloodsucker prefers his victims to be young and female, which spells trouble for the daughter (Linda Hayden) of one of the three businessmen. A strong cast and some interesting relationships make this a worthwhile entry, although the denouement is lamentably laughable.

The Mummy: ★★★

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed: ★★

Taste the Blood of Dracula: ★★½

THE WICKER MAN (1973). One of the most intriguing of all cult films to emerge from the 1970s, The Wicker Man employs allegory and atmosphere to amplify its thin veneer of the supernatural — it registers as both a fantasy flick and a horror movie in our minds more than it does on the screen. Edward Woodward (best known stateside as TV’s The Equalizer) stars as Neil Howie, a humorless and devout Christian who in his capacity as a police sergeant is called to the Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl. He’s shocked to learn that, under the auspices of Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee in what the actor considered his best film and his best role), the residents are all part of a pagan society, and their upcoming harvest celebration requires the sacrifice of a virgin. Offering what ultimately can be seen as an examination of competing faiths — and, tellingly, the bleeding of one into the other — director Robin Hardy and scripter Anthony Shaffer offer up a heady stew of ambiguity and interpretation, and the ending remains one of the most shocking in cinema. A remake followed in 2006; gaze downward for the scoop on that version.

Movie: ★★★½

THE WICKER MAN (2006). The 1973 version of The Wicker Man pitted Christianity against paganism, and as such had a field day offering up a slew of ambiguous interpretations that (depending on the viewer) either spoke out against rigid Christian doctrine, against reckless hedonism, or against any form of organized worship. Writer-director Neil LaBute’s remake is a disastrous miscalculation, shucking religion completely and instead fashioning the tale as a battle between upstanding male dominance and wicked feminist doctrine. LaBute has repeatedly faced charges of misogyny (In the Company of Men, Your Friends & Neighbors, etc.) but never before had he appeared quite this terrified of emasculation — it’s as if John Bobbitt had grabbed a movie camera and made a film in which all the female characters were based on his interpretation of Lorena Bobbitt. Nicolas Cage is the befuddled protagonist here, no longer a God-(and sex-)fearing cop but rather a generic Hollywoodized detective (no spiritual side, haunted by a past tragedy, forever popping pills, etc.). Hampered by its fondness for annoying dream sequences, the film mopes along drearily, the only jolts coming when we witness an unexpected rage in Cage as he punches and kicks several women (including teenage girls); then again, these scenes are perfectly in line with LaBute’s apparent worldview.

Movie: ★½