FILM FRENZY

Mars Attacks! (Photo: Warner Bros.)

By Matt Brunson

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

(For a review of the new 4K UHD edition of A Bay of Blood, go here.)

DISCO ITALIANA (1978-1979). While disco had been in existence since the late 1960s and leapfrogged in popularity during the mid-70s, its peak years were 1977 through 1979, after which it suffered a major backlash and effectively petered out or was incorporated into other genres. (Interestingly, many music historians blame its demise on insecure white males who felt threatened by its sizable population of blacks, Latinos, and homosexuals, exactly what’s happening now with MAGA mobs, DEI demolition, and anti-immigrant animosity. But I digress.) The 1977 box office smash Saturday Night Fever (reviewed in From Screen To Stream below) was the largest catalyst for its stay at the top, and, like any blockbuster worth its salt, it led to a number of celluloid imitators all hoping to hop a ride on its white polyester coattails. Italy was particularly excited about the possibilities, creating the Discosploitation subgenre. This new Blu-ray box set from Severin collects three such efforts — while John Travolta and The Bee Gees never had anything to fear in terms of being usurped, these hyperactive features are nevertheless enjoyable and exude their own brand of ragged charm.

Starting with that on the nose title, American Fever (1978) proudly struts its connection to its Hollywood predecessor. It stars Mircha Carven as Tony — and for those who may have forgotten, Travolta’s SNF character is also named Tony — who labors all day and rules the disco dance floor all night. Backed in his bedroom by posters of Sylvester Stallone in Rocky, Al Pacino in Serpico, and, of course, Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, Tony hopes to become a major movie star, only to quickly realize that he doesn’t rule the real world as he does the discotheque. This is easily the most serious of the three films in this set, although some goofy humor is provided by Tony’s best friend (Vincenzo Crocitti), an underachiever who’s attempting to write the script that he’s certain will help turn his buddy into the next Hollywood A-lister.

American Fever’s leading man is the standard lock-jawed, smoldering hunk — not so Monty Ray Garrison, the star of Grease Rock (1979). Yes, Travolta’s other smash musical also gets its moment in the sun, with this picture combining elements from both flicks. Thus, like Tony Manero, Robbie (Garrison) spends most of his time disco dancing, lusts after a classy woman (Auretta Gay) while relegating a less refined but more suitable one (Cecilia Nuonocore) to the friend zone, and enters a dance competition. Yet like Grease’s Danny Zuko, he also has a penchant for gloppy hair grease and agrees to take part in an unsanctioned vehicular race (this one far more dangerous than Danny’s through the Los Angeles River basin). With his rubbery face and tendency to (over)act like an imbecile, Garrison’s Robbie doesn’t bring to mind Tony Manero or Danny Zuko as much as he recalls Zuko sidekick Sonny LaTierri, the goofiest of the T-Birds. Interestingly, Robbie’s bedroom showcases the exact same Rocky poster as the one spotted in American Fever, making one wonder whether the folks behind Grease Rock bought their own or snagged the other one when no one was looking.

Pound for pound — or, more accurately, disco beat for disco beat — John Travolto: The Face With 2 Left Feet (1979) is probably the best film in the set — and by best, I mean the one so loony that it will remain in the memory the longest. Known under a number of titles (including, perhaps inevitably, Saturday Night Dancer), this finds bumbling hotel chef Gianni (Giuseppe Spezia) lusting after the DJ (future politician and porn star Ilona Staller, aka Cicciolina) at the local disco that’s named — wait for it — John’s Fever. Gianni has no luck until his friends realize that without his mustache and glasses, he looks exactly like John Travolta. Therefore, he takes to impersonating Travolta all over town, leading to all manner of wacky shenanigans. John Travolto: The Face With 2 Left Feet offers some very funny interludes, many revolving around a hapless hotel clerk (Enzo Cannavale), but the slapstick shenanigans get to be a bit much during the lengthy closing act.

Extras on all three titles consist of film historian audio commentaries; interviews with author Alan Jones (Discomania: Fantastic Beats and Where to Find Them); and trailers. Also included is a soundtrack CD for John Travolto: The Face With 2 Left Feet.

Collection: ★★★

FLIGHT (2012). Flight opens with “Whip” Whitaker (Denzel Washington) snorting a line of coke and drinking booze as if it were Gatorade. Hey, to each his own … except that Whitaker is a commercial pilot, and on this particular morning he’s set to commandeer a plane from Orlando to Atlanta. But Whitaker is nothing if not functional while under the influence, and when disaster strikes, he’s able to save most (but not all) of the 100-plus people on board. Yet while the media initially pegs him as a hero, there’s the troubling behind-the-scenes matter of a revealing toxicology report. Written by John Gatins and directed by Robert Zemeckis, Flight depends almost entirely on Washington’s performance, since the movie emerges as less a drama about an airplane crash and more a character study about a man who won’t admit his problems to anyone, including himself. The subplot involving Whitaker’s relationship with a fellow substance abuser (Kelly Reilly) starts out well but never comes to a boil, and the scenes opposite his ex-wife (Garcelle Beauvais) and teenage son (Justin Martin) are too brief to make the necessary impact. But when Gatins stays focused on Whitaker’s legal quandary, the film remains compelling, John Goodman co-stars as Harling Mays, a boisterous sort who’s not only Whitaker’s best friend but also his provider and enabler. The moral ramifications of such a character is completely brushed aside in order to allow Goodman to provide the requisite comic relief (which he does). Still, while Gatins pulls a punch with this particular characterization, he comes out swinging the rest of the time. So does Washington, once again performing at a dizzying altitude. This earned a pair of Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include a making-of featurette and an interview with Zemeckis and Gatins.

Movie: ★★★

HOKUM (2026). Forget all those modern horror franchises that make big bucks but travel down predictable and preordained paths — OK but scare-free series like The Conjuring, Insidious, and Black Phone. In recent years, the genre has generated some truly unique and truly clever one-word one-offs, efforts like Sinners, Weapons, Companion, Barbarian, Together, and Obsession. Add Hokum to this impressive list, as it’s a terror tale blessed with rich characters, a twisty storyline, and some genuinely creepy moments. Adam Scott is Ohm Bauman, a cranky American writer who travels to Ireland to dispose of the ashes of his parents. He stays at a rustic and isolated hotel, and his rude and obnoxious behavior alienates the staffers — the exception is the friendly bartender Fiona (Florence Ordesh), and he also reacts positively to the wood-dwelling local Jerry (David Wilmot). From its intriguing opening to its forceful finale, Hokum is the sort of film that’s best tackled without knowing too much ahead of time — suffice it to say that Ohm ends up trapped in the hotel, and there be ghosts and perhaps even a witch populating the place alongside him. Writer-director Damian McCarthy convincingly makes Ohm’s prickly personality an integral part of the film, tied to his past but also able to bring everything full circle, and he also uses dark corridors, dark corners, and dark shadows to good effect.

Extras in the 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray edition consist of audio commentary by McCarthy; a making-of featurette; a piece centering on a minor but memorably unsettling character in the film, Jack the Donkey; a teaser trailer; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

THE ISLAND (1980). After the monstrous success of Jaws — both the mediocre 1974 novel and the superb 1975 film — author Peter Benchley followed up with two more oceanic endeavors: 1976’s The Deep and 1979’s The Island. Benchley co-wrote the scripts for both Jaws and the 1977 screen version of The Deep before taking on solo scripting duties for 1980’s adaptation of The Island. But while Jaws was a commercial and critical hit and The Deep was a commercial hit but critical dud, The Island proved to be a flop with everyone. Michael Caine is Blair Maynard, a reporter investigating the disappearance of numerous ships in uncharted Caribbean waters. He drags along his bratty son Justin (Jeffrey Frank), a bad decision once they get captured by the cause of all those missing vessels: a band of modern-day pirates who are inbred descendants of actual cutthroats from 300 years earlier. Led by John David Nau (David Warner), the sterile gang brainwashes Justin into becoming one of them while keeping Blair alive so he can mate with the only fertile female (Angela Punch McGregor) on the island and spark a new generation. Risible passages abound, including a sequence in which all action stops so Nau’s men can take on a Bruce Lee wannabe and a climactic howler in which Caine’s thinking-man conveniently turns into G.I. Joe. Yet perhaps the biggest flaw is that these murderous pirates aren’t particularly frightening or imposing, instead coming off as Peter Pan’s Lost Boys all grown up — to riff from The Kentucky Fried Movie, they aren’t tough and ruthless so much as they’re rough and toothless. The score by Ennio Morricone isn’t bad, just wildly out of place: As the pirates head toward a yacht to slaughter the college-age kids aboard, a cheerful, bouncy track isn’t really what the scene requires.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition consist of a pair of film historian audio commentaries and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★½

MARS ATTACKS! (1996). A major disappointment from director Tim Burton, the one-note, one-joke Mars Attacks! is based on, of all things, a trading card series from the 1960s. Like the 1996 summer blockbuster Independence Day, this 1996 year-end flop centers on the events that transpire when sinister extra-terrestrials descend on our planet with the intent of wiping out humankind. And like that hot-weather romp, it also follows pockets of people across the country as they valiantly attempt to ward off the intruders. Alas, the human characters in MA! are so threadbare, they make the protagonists in ID look as complex as those in A Streetcar Named Desire. Among the countless stars who are mercilessly wasted are Jack Nicholson as both the US President and a Vegas scumbag named Art Land, Glenn Close as the First Lady, Natalie Portman as the First Kid, Annette Bening as a New Age peacenik, Danny DeVito in a part so flimsy that he’s listed in the credits as merely “Rude Gambler,” and Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rod Steiger, and a young Jack Black as assorted obnoxious folks. Tom Jones plays himself, but don’t expect any meta cleverness as with John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich or Bill Murray in Zombieland — the Welsh singer is merely part of the underdeveloped pack. The only actor who seems to have understood the assignment — remaining somewhat faithful while poking fun at some of those oh-so-serious sci-fi flicks from the ‘50s — is Pierce Brosnan, cast as a pipe-smoking scientist who firmly believes that, despite their actions, the Martians simply must be benign because of their advanced ways. The Martians themselves are amusing, what with their oddball appearance as well as their dialogue seemingly patterned after Bloom County’s Bill the Cat (“Ack! Ack! Ack!”) — it’s a shame their intergalactic agents didn’t hold out for a better movie.

Extras in the 4K Ultra HD edition consist of a retrospective behind-the-scenes featurette and a piece on the visual effects.

Movie: ★★

THE MUSIC MACHINE (1979). In addition to the Disco Italiana box set (reviewed above), Severin has also individually released The Music Machine, which can best be described as Disco Britannica. Set in and around the titular Camden music venue (now called Koko), this finds a young lad named Gerry (Gerry Sundquist) entering a dance competition in which the winning couple would land leading roles in an upcoming film about disco. Gerry’s dance partner is the lovely Claire (Patti Boulaye), and both are given pointers by the club’s DJ, Laurie (Clarke Peters, The Wire regular making his film debut). But it might be an uphill battle for Gerry and Claire, as it appears that both the roughneck club manager (Michael Feast) and the film’s American producer (Richard LeParmentier) are arranging for the winning team to be the more glamorous duo of the Travolta-styled Howard (David Easter) and his girlfriend Candy (Mandy Perryment). Less hard-hitting than Saturday Night Fever, the film nevertheless projects a realistic working-class milieu (the location shooting helps immeasurably) and has a nice feel for Gerry’s relationships with his parents and friends. The first half is the more entertaining stretch, with the picture getting bogged down in the second half and ending far too abruptly — it also doesn’t help that Claire appears out of nowhere about halfway through the film, with no opportunity for viewers to really get to know or invest in her. Incidentally, Gerry’s mother is played by Brenda Fricker, who would win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar opposite Daniel Day-Lewis for 1989’s My Left Foot and who passed away just last month at the age of 81. And tragically, Sundquist would commit suicide by hurling himself under a train 14 years after making The Music Machine; he was 37.

Extras include interviews with Boulaye, Peters, and choreographer Anthony Van Laast, and a piece on the Camden shooting locations.

Movie: ★★½

PRESSURE (2026). Who knew that a movie in which two men spend most of the time discussing the weather could be so compelling? Pressure highlights a famous quote by General and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, when asked by incoming President John F. Kennedy in 1961 why the Normandy operation on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), had been such a success, replied, “Because we had better meteorologists than the Germans!” It might sound like a facile answer, but it actually illustrates that Ike remembered these unlikely heroes of World War II better than history itself seems to have done. Based on a play but feeling anything but stage bound, this film centers on Scottish meteorologist and RAF Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott) and his role in helping Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) decide if the invasion could proceed as planned on June 5. Eisenhower’s own trusted weatherman, Irving Krick (Chris Messina), predicts nothing but blue skies and sunshine and gives the date his thumbs up — Stagg, on the other hand, contradicts Krick’s findings and maintains that the 5th will offer nothing but stormy weather and that the operation would fail miserably if carried out on that day. Eisenhower is irritated by Stagg’s abrasive manner and angered by his prediction, leaving his private secretary Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon) to serve as the calming intermediary. Drawing from the double meaning of its title, Pressure effectively examines the strain placed upon people forced to make monumental decisions even as the winds of war threaten to lay waste to the best laid plans. Not unexpectedly, Fraser never disappears into the role of Ike, but Scott, who has an easier job playing an infinitely less recognizable person of historical note, is excellent as Stagg.

Blu-ray extras consist of two making-of featurettes.

Movie: ★★★

REPO MEN (2010). Not to be confused with 1984’s dissimilar Repo Man but perhaps able to be mixed up with 2008’s similarly plotted Repo! The Genetic Opera, Repo Men mostly plays like an uninspired rip-off of Logan’s Run plus Brazil plus Total Recall plus Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life plus … well, I could do this all day. A futuristic saga with more blood than brains, this centers on Remy (Jude Law), whose career as a repo man for a company called The Union means that whenever someone falls behind on their payments for the mechanical organs keeping them healthy, it’s his job to track the person down and forcibly remove the expensive piece of hardware by any means necessary (as expected, the client often doesn’t survive the procedure). Like any good citizen of this country, Remy only cares about things that directly affect him, so it’s only after he’s injured and subsequently outfitted with a new heart he can’t afford that he thinks that maybe what he’s been doing to people isn’t so nice. No kidding. Now equipped with a self-serving conscience, he finds himself on the run, chased by his partner and best friend (Forest Whitaker). Whitaker’s inventive performance is an asset, but Repo Men, based on Eric Garcia’s novel The Repossession Mambo, isn’t able to take its potentially provocative storyline past the alternately silly, lazy, and illogical scripting by Garrett Lerner and Garcia himself. To be sure, there are moments of inspiration (the child surgeon, for example), but for the most part, here’s another piece of clunky sci-fi hardware that could use an overhaul.

The 4K + Blu-ray edition offers both the theatrical version and an unrated cut. Extras include audio commentary by Garcia, Lerner, and director Miguel Sapochnik; deleted scenes; and a piece on the visual effects.

Movie: ★★

FILM CLIPS

POPEYE (1980). It’s easy to see why most critics viewed Popeye as a travesty upon its initial release; it’s also easy to understand why select reviewers then and now declare it a winner. Those who can get on its wavelength will appreciate its eccentricities; those who cannot will find its whimsy the equivalent of waterboarding. Those who detest it will insist that the choice of Robert Altman as director was a horrible one; those who love it will insist his hiring was a stroke of genius. The overacting by all involved might be suitable for the project, but it’s uncured ham nonetheless. Robin Williams (Popeye) mumbles, Shelley Duvall (Olive Oyl) frets, Paul L. Smith (Bluto) roars, and I have no idea what Ray Walston (Poopdeck Pappy) is doing. The suitably dilapidated sets are certainly more impressive than the disappointing tunes by Harry Nilsson.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include a retrospective piece with Altman and Williams, and photos from the 1980 premiere.

Movie: ★½

RELENTLESS (1989). William Lustig, who directed Maniac in 1980 and the unrelated Maniac Cop in 1988, here tackles what amounts to Maniac Brat Packer. Judd Nelson, who just a few years earlier had been hobnobbing with Ally Sheedy and Emilio Estevez in The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire, is surprisingly effective as Arthur Taylor, a serial killer whose m.o. is to murder Los Angelenos who share one or both of his names. Out to stop him is transplanted New York cop Sam Dietz (smarmy Leo Rossi), who’s partnered with a jaded detective (Robert Loggia) more interested in pricing the victims’ condos than in cracking the case. From the pop psychology offered to explain the killer’s mindset (hint: daddy issues) to the precinct captain who’s constantly barking at his underlings, here’s a particularly dreary thriller that’s only relentless in its desire to include every moldy police procedural trope.

There are no Blu-ray extras.

Movie: ★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

BIG EYES (2014). Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski are the gents who wrote the script for director Tim Burton’s excellent 1994 feature Ed Wood — as well as both The People vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon for Milos Forman — so they may not exactly be the good-to guys when it comes to stories that remain committed to historical accuracy. But what they lack in fidelity to the facts, they make up for in entertainment value, and they score again with Big Eyes, a picture that reteams them with Burton. This one does hew closer to reality, relating the bizarre and fascinating story of Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), a single mom who drew paintings of children with exceptionally large eyes, and her second husband Walter (Christophe Waltz), a smooth-talking con man who took credit for all her work and then parlayed it into an empire. The film primarily exists as a showcase for two fine performances — Adams’ honest emoting in one corner, Waltz’s bombastic showboating in the other — but it also touches upon the difficulties faced by women (particularly single ones) in the 1960s. More pointedly, it looks at how one woman’s decision to remain silent about a cruel deception (“Lady art doesn’t sell,” Walter tells her) enforces the notion that spousal abuse doesn’t always have to take the form of physical violence. Like Margaret Keane’s artwork, Big Eyes catches viewers with its surface quirks, but there’s also something taking place underneath the surface.

Movie: ★★★

THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1962). Of the eight Edgar Allan Poe adaptations produced and directed by Roger Corman throughout the sixties, The Premature Burial is the only one not to star Vincent Price. His contract reportedly prevented him from joining Corman on this feature, and his presence is sorely missed in a movie that could have used his considerable talents. In Price’s place is Ray Milland, whose character of Guy Carrell possesses a heightened and paralyzing fear of being buried alive. He takes precautions to ensure he never suffers such a fate — a coffin that falls apart when movement is detected from within, a mausoleum with various escape routes — and his obsessive behavior worries those around him, including his loving fiancée (Hazel Court), his stern sister (Heather Angel), and his attentive doctor (Richard Ney, later a renowned Wall Street critic and, along with Ralph Nader, one of only two people NBC would never allow to appear on Johnny Carson’s show). Milland is acceptable as Guy, although he lacks the touch of madness that Price would have brought to the part. The picture is hurt by this central casting as well as too much narrative recycling required for this to reach feature length, but a nice plot twist allows the movie to end in somewhat satisfactory style.

Movie: ★★½

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1977) / STAYING ALIVE (1983). Unfairly remembered in some quarters as a kitschy celebration of the disco era — no, that would be Thank God It’s Friday — Saturday Night Fever is actually a hard-hitting drama about a Brooklyn kid who (shades of The Graduate‘s Benjamin Braddock) has trouble planning for the future. For now, he’s content hanging around with his deadbeat friends, ignoring one woman (excellent Donna Pescow) for another (Karen Lynn Gorney), and, most importantly, dancing his heart out at the local disco. The impact of Saturday Night Fever — not only as a movie (it was the fourth highest grosser of the year, under Star Wars, Smokey and the Bandit, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) but as a cultural movement — cannot be overstated, influencing everything from music to cinema to fashion to lifestyles. As Tony Manero, John Travolta is superb in a career-making performance that earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination, while the record, mostly featuring songs by The Bee Gees, earned the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and became the all-time top-selling album (at least until Michael Jackson’s Thriller came along) as well as the all-time top-selling soundtrack (at least until Whitney Houston’s The Bodyguard came along). Oddly, none of the individual tunes — not even the four that hit #1 on the Billboard charts (“Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” “How Deep Is Your Love,” and “If I Can’t Have You”) — earned Oscar nominations; the winner that year was the treacly title track from You Light Up My Life.

Saturday Night Fever was followed six years later by Staying Alive, which, its sizable box office (#8 for ’83) notwithstanding, only offers entertainment value to masochists who prefer their kitsch hard-boiled. In other words, it’s as artificial and superficial as its predecessor was raw and realistic. It’s an ego trip for Travolta and an even greater vanity piece for director and co-writer Sylvester Stallone, who makes Tony Manero his Rocky stand-in by having the formerly lithe dancer now look like Gene Kelly on steroids. The buff Tony has left his Brooklyn disco for the bright lights of Broadway, believing he has what it takes to become a star. Even before he and his angelic girlfriend Jackie (Cynthia Rhodes) land chorus roles in the big-budget production Satan’s Alley, he’s pursuing the show’s leading lady, a frosty Brit named Laura (Finola Hughes). A major problem with the film is that Tony hasn’t matured one iota over the years — his immaturity in the first film made sense since he was a teenager, but here it just makes him come across as a repellent jerk. The songs are mostly lame — Frank Stallone’s Top 10 hit “Far From Over” is truly terrible — and the Satan’s Alley finale is ghastly in its garishness. Disco inferno, indeed.

Saturday Night Fever: ★★★½

Staying Alive: ★½

TOGETHER (TILLSAMMANS) (2000). Almost on a par with 1998’s Show Me Love, writer-director Lukas Moodysson’s small gem of a previous effort, this remarkably deft comedy-drama, set in a commune in 1975 Stockholm, initially looks as if it’s going to be a rampant attack on the perils of extreme politics. The lefties living in the crowded household are so PC that you want to throttle them, while the conservatives constantly sniffing at their door are so humorless, you want to give them a smack as well. Yet as the film progresses, hypocrisies are dealt with, conflicts are defused, and deeply committed relationships are forged — and as a result, the film soars on the strength of its own eagerness to display goodwill toward all its characters, including an abusive, alcoholic husband who discovers his inner mild, an open-minded chap who’s so absurdly accommodating that he gives all nice guys a bad name, and, most pointedly, the various children forced to put up with the adults’ nonsense. Both funny and poignant, this might be the only film ever made in which a boy is named Tet after the 1968 Offensive, or where two kids take turns playing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in a game of torture. Moodysson also gets extra points for using ABBA’s “S.O.S.” and Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” so cannily that, in the context of the film, they come off as the two most relevant pop songs ever written.

Movie: ★★★½

YOUR HIGHNESS (2011). As screen couplings go, the less charitable might gaze upon the union of Danny McBride and Natalie Portman and be reminded of Princess Leia forced to sit half-naked and chained next to Jabba the Hutt. But this unlikely match is the least of the problems plaguing Your Highness. God almighty, this is one awful movie, a real feat considering that even the most juvenile of comedies can score at least a couple of guffaws off a steady stream of pot and dick jokes. But this stinkbomb manages the unpardonable sin of being boring for long stretches of time as well as unfunny all the time. As a dim prince, McBride’s stoner act can’t touch that of either Cheech or Chong; as his heroic brother, James Franco seems as out of it as he was hosting that year’s Oscars; as a warrior woman, Portman somehow maintains her dignity while wasting her talents; and as a damsel in distress, Zooey Deschanel is unpardonably ill-utilized. Meanwhile, a minotaur tries to engage in butt-fucking before getting his appendage lopped off, McBride and Franco are forced to give a hand job to a lecherous Yoda rip-off, and a traitor (Toby Jones) turns out to be as junk-free as a Ken doll. For comparable entertainment value, you might as well watch a Renaissance Festival employee take a leak behind the costume and pottery booths.

Movie: ★