FILM FRENZY

Franco Andrei and Ivan Rassimov in Planet of the Vampires (Photo: Radiance & MGM)

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 Ultra HD edition of Gone With the Wind, as well as a look at the true Top 25 Moneymaking Films of All Time, go here.)

BOYS TOWN (1938). A sizable hit — it was the second biggest grosser of 1938, under only Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — Boys Town casts Spencer Tracy as the real-life figure of Father Edward J. Flanagan, a priest who believes that “there’s no such thing as a bad boy.” With that quote serving as his de facto mission statement, he sets about establishing a home for orphaned lads, a sanctuary where they will be fed, educated, and treated with respect. Into this tidy establishment strolls Whitey Marsh (Mickey Rooney), a tough-talking street kid who’s heading toward a life of crime unless Father Flanagan can turn him around. Mawkish to the extreme, Boys Town is at its most interesting when it examines the inner workings of what’s basically a mini-city unto itself and at its most amusing whenever Whitey has to suffer the slings and arrows of the other kids who are fed up with his nonsense. Tracy and Rooney reprised their roles in the 1941 sequel Men of Boys Town, which also proved to be a hit (#8 for its year). Nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director (Norman Taurog), and Screenplay (John Meehan and Dore Schary), Boys Town won two: Best Actor for Tracy (his second consecutive Oscar, having won the previous year for Captains Courageous) and Best Original Story (Schary and Eleanore Griffin). Rooney also won a Juvenile Oscar for his work in eight pictures released that year.

Blu-ray extras consist of 1938’s City of Little Men, a film tie-in about the actual Boys Town; an excerpt from the radio show MGM Good News featuring the real Father Flanagan; the featurette Boys and Girls Town; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

THE FIRST FILMS OF SAMUEL FULLER (1949-1951). “Maverick” is a word often applied to directors who march to their own beat, but was that word ever employed as often for any other filmmaker as it was for Samuel Fuller? His experiences as a reporter in his teens and as a heavily decorated soldier during World War II informed the hard-hitting style he adopted for his pictures, and his major-studio films often felt as daring and subversive as his independent features. He tackled all manner of genres — film noir (Pickup on South Street), war (Merrill’s Marauders), Westerns (Forty Guns), even lurid melodramas (The Naked Kiss) — and he courted controversy with such titles as China Gate and White Dog (the latter reviewed in From Screen To Stream below). He made his first three films as writer-director for independent producer Robert Lippert, the first a minor hit, the second a modest flop, and the third a major hit that proved to be his breakthrough.

Fifty-eight years before the 160-minute masterwork The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, I Shot Jesse James (1949) tackled the same true-life tale in exactly half the length. John Ireland, fresh off Howard Hawks’ 1948 classic Red River (in which he played Cherry Valance), is Bob Ford, who enjoys a close friendship with fellow outlaw and gang leader Jesse James (Reed Hadley). Hopelessly in love with actress Cynthy Waters (Barbara Britton playing a fictional character), Ford decides he needs money if he wants to settle down with her — aware that there’s a sizable bounty on Jesse’s head, he ends up fatally shooting him in the back, only to have his decision affect every minute of his life thereafter. Top-billed Preston Foster co-stars as John Kelley, a gentleman whose interest in Cynthy means that he and Ford will inevitably be facing off against each other. As much a character study as a traditional Western, I Shot Jesse James does an exemplary job of tracking Bob Ford’s increasingly frenetic mental state, as guilt, jealousy, and paranoia come to define his doomed existence.

With The Baron of Arizona (1950), Fuller had the fortune of working with a major talent still on the ascendancy. Vincent Price had spent over a decade appearing in supporting roles in such classy productions as Laura and The Keys of the Kingdom, but unless one counts 1940’s The Invisible Man Returns (in which, as the title character, he’s more heard than seen), The Baron of Arizona marked his first leading role, one which he always cited as being among his favorites. He stars as the real-life figure of James Reavis, a swindler who in the late 1800s launched an extraordinarily detailed scam that, if successful, would have given him exclusive land rights over the entire territory of Arizona. His scheme involved passing off a peasant girl (Ellen Drew) as a baroness and traveling to Spain to alter historical documents (kept in a monastery) pertaining to the land in question. This one’s more muted and less moody than most of Fuller’s output, but Price is engaging and the more fanciful aspects of the story (i.e. the ones made up for the film) maintain viewer interest.

The Steel Helmet (1951) was a movie of two firsts. It was the first film to focus on the Korean War (it was released just six months after the start of the conflict), and it was the first film to make any sort of mention of the Japanese-American internment camps in World War II. Gene Evans, like Fuller a WWII veteran, is suitably gruff and growling as Sergeant Zack, a role so rich that a major studio tried to obtain the project from Lippert and Fuller so John Wayne could be cast in the part (Fuller said hell no). The sole survivor of a massacre of American soldiers by North Korean troops, Zack ends up with a traveling companion in the form of a little South Korean boy (William Chun) he nicknames Short Round (and, yes, this was the inspiration for Steven Spielberg’s Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). Zack encounters several other Americans, including a black medic (James Edwards) and a Japanese-American sergeant (Richard Loo), and the group picks a Buddhist temple to serve as their fortress as they await rescue. The Steel Helmet was so honest in its depiction of the horrors of war, and so unsentimental in its approach to Americans in combat (racist streaks can be found in many of the characters), that the FBI, at that point already involved in Red Scare shenanigans, wondered about Fuller’s allegiances (thankfully, nothing came of it).

There are no Blu-ray extras.

I Shot Jesse James: ★★★

The Baron of Arizona: ★★½

The Steel Helmet: ★★★½

FOUR ROOMS (1995). The problem with anthology films is that they’re often only as good as their weakest entry. Unfortunately for this picture that was cobbled together by four indie writer-directors, the weakest entries are absolutely dreadful. All four segments in Four Rooms are set in a Los Angeles hotel on New Year’s Eve, with a hapless bellboy named Ted (an over-the-top turn by Tim Roth) serving as the connecting thread. The first vignette is the worst: Allison Anders’ “The Missing Ingredient,” in which a coven of witches (including ones played — badly — by Madonna and Valeria Golino) seek sperm in order to bring a stripper back from the dead. Almost as rancid is Alexandre Rockwell’s “The Wrong Man,” which finds a pistol-wielding husband (David Proval) keeping watch over his bound-and-gagged wife (Jennifer Beals). Quentin Tarantino’s “The Man from Hollywood,” about a wacky wager, rips off a great episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, with Tarantino and Bruce Willis instead of Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre (hardly a fair swap). It’s up to Robert Rodriguez, bless his soul, to contribute the only halfway decent vignette. “The Misbehaviors,” in which two rambunctious kids wreak havoc on a hotel room, isn’t great, but it does benefit from Antonio Banderas’ amusing performance as their dad and an uproarious finale.

Extras in the 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray edition include film historian audio commentary; new interviews with Rodriguez, Anders, Rockwell, Roth, Beals, and Tamlyn Tomita (who plays Banderas’ wife in the Rodriguez chapter); an archival making-of featurette; and the American and German theatrical trailers.

Movie: ★

THE LAST AIRBENDER (2010). This live-action spectacle was based on the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008), and were writer-director M. Night Shyamalan really as brilliant as his admirers insist, he would have demanded that the studio retain the word Avatar in the title — that act alone could have added an extra $10 million to the coffers from ill-informed folks thinking they were going to witness a James Cameron joint. Left to its own devices, the picture’s good-but-not-great gross wasn’t enough to warrant a planned sequel and perhaps wasn’t even enough to allow Shyamalan to Super-Size his next fast-food order. Unlike many family-friendly films, this has absolutely nothing to offer adults — it’s strictly kid stuff all the way. That may not be the case with the source material, but there’s little here — beyond some of the special effects — that could capture the imagination of anyone over 12. Those effects are occasionally fine (and just as occasionally not), and they’re the only things that provide any pulse to an otherwise poorly executed story of how one young boy, Aang (Noah Ringer), proves to be the only person in his world with the ability to control all four elements of air, water, fire, and earth. This is a clunky, soporific undertaking punctuated by some truly cringe-worthy dialogue. The film has just been reissued in a 4K + Blu-ray + Digital Code edition, and, in related news, Paramount has simultaneously released a Blu-ray + Digital Code edition of the far more favorably received Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, a 2026 animated feature that serves as a continuation of the original toon series.

Extras on The Last Airbender include a nine-part making-of documentary; a look at the original animated series; deleted scenes; and a gag reel.

Movie: ★½

MARKED WOMAN (1937). In 1936, gangster Lucky Luciano was prosecuted by future New York District Attorney Thomas Dewey and found guilty of running a prostitution ring after a few of the women testified against him. In Marked Woman, the names have been changed, so we have Eduardo Ciannelli as mobster Johnny Vanning (now guilty of running a gambling operation), Humphrey Bogart as New York District Attorney David Graham, and Bette Davis as Mary Dwight, the nightclub hostess (prostitutes apparently didn’t exist, according to Hays Code enforcers) who takes the lead in taking down organized crime. Mary’s the marked woman of the title, facially sliced by Vanning’s goons as a warning to the other hostesses — it’s just the usual testament to Davis’ commitment to her craft (and disinterest in movie-star glamour) that she wanted to look as bad as possible as her character lay recuperating in a hospital bed. Here’s another typically hard-hitting drama from the Warner lot, with the focus on female solidarity adding another element of interest. Trivial Pursuit Department: One of Mary’s fellow hostesses is played by Mayo Methot; she and Bogart met on this picture and were married the following year (it was the third marriage for both). Theirs was a turbulent union, marked by their mutual alcoholism and violent natures. They divorced in 1945, after he had already entered into a relationship with Lauren Bacall (whom he married 11 days after the divorce). Suffering from schizophrenia and depression, Methot died of alcoholism in 1951, at the age of 47.

Blu-ray extras consist of a retrospective making-of featurette; the 1937 Porky Pig cartoon Porky’s Hero Agency; the 1937 cartoon She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter (featuring a spoof of the Bette ‘n’ Bogie flick The Petrified Forest); and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN (1981) / THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE (1983). Two musical adaptations from the early 1980s attempted to try something different — neither exactly worked, and both proved to be box office bombs.

Dennis Potter’s 1978 BBC success Pennies From Heaven was brought to Hollywood by the wordsmith himself, with The Turning Point’s Herbert Ross handling directing duties and The Jerk co-stars Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters essaying the lead roles. It’s a Depression-era drama centering around Arthur Parker (Martin), a sheet-music salesman who’s miserable at his lot in life, including his marriage to a frigid wife (Jessica Harper). His only source of happiness arrives when he embarks on an affair with meek schoolteacher Eileen Everson (Peters) — the rest of the time, he breaks from reality by imagining himself starring in lavish musical numbers. The picture is strikingly designed, and the cast members (including Christopher Walken, popping up as a pimp) throw themselves into their duty of lip-synching vintage songs. But this is a particularly sour viewing experience, with the oppressive storytelling (even the most likable character ends up getting raped and murdered) smothering every aspect of the production. There’s nothing wrong with feel-bad flicks, of course, but this one flatlines even the supposedly cheerful moments. This earned a trio of Oscar nominations for Potter’s script, the costumes, and sound.

Like Potter, producer Joseph Papp and director Wilford Leach elected to transport their own acclaimed musical to cinemas. In this case, it was their Broadway smash The Pirates of Penzance that received the big-screen treatment … sort of. Rather than create a motion picture from scratch, the pair merely offered a filmization of the stage template, retaining the B’way cast but replacing Estelle Parsons with Angela Lansbury. It’s fun as far as it goes, but unlike, say, Hamilton, which was restricted enough to successfully take this route, this extravagant show really cries out for a proper transferal. Still, the Gilbert & Sullivan opera is sturdy enough to weather such decision-making whims, and the high points remain intact: Kevin Kline channeling Errol Flynn as the Pirate King, ably supported by pop stars Linda Ronstadt and (to a lesser degree) Rex Smith; the almost surreal movements of the loose-limbed dynamo Tony Azito as the Police Sergeant; and George Rose and his splendid performance of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” (horrifyingly, Rose was tortured and murdered just five years later in his home in the Dominican Republic; one of his killers, a local teenager he had adopted, served little jail time).

Blu-ray extras on Pennies From Heaven consist of scene-specific audio commentary by film critic Peter Rainer; a 20th anniversary cast and crew reunion; and the theatrical trailer. Extras on the 4K + Blu-ray edition of The Pirates of Penzance consist of audio commentary by film historian Julie Kargo and filmmaker Peter Hankoff; an interview with Smith; and the theatrical trailer.

Pennies From Heaven: ★★

The Pirates of Penzance: ★★½

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (1965). Originally titled Terror in Space in its Italian homeland and later dubbed The Demon Planet for U.S. television, Planet of the Vampires may not seem like a typical effort from writer-director Mario Bava, who’s most famous for such gialli and horror flicks as Black Sunday, Kill, Baby … Kill! and A Bay of Blood. But as he had with 1961’s Hercules in the Haunted World, he injected a startling amount of moody atmosphere and arresting visuals into his low-budget feature, thus elevating it far beyond its modest means. Cited as a major inspiration for Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien, it finds a pair of spaceships receiving a distress call from a distant planet — upon arrival to investigate, the crew members find themselves attacked by unknown alien lifeforms. Planet of the Vampires was a true international production, with Italian, American, and Spanish financing and a cast headed by American Barry Sullivan and including actors from Italy, Brazil, Spain, and Greece. Its endlessly inventive script (adapted from Renato Pestriniero’s short story “One Night of 21 Hours”) was written by Bava and four cohorts for its Italian release and modified for its stateside run by sci-fi stalwart Ib Melchior (Robinson Crusoe on Mars, The Time Travelers). It’s a brainy horror-fantasy hybrid, and that twist ending is killer.

Radiance (in collaboration with MGM) has released a superb 4K + Blu-ray edition (limited to 5,000 copies) that offers both the Italian and English versions and also houses an 80-page essay book, a 20-page booklet featuring Pestriniero’s short story, and six postcards. Extras include audio commentary by author Tim Lucas (Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark); a featurette on Bava and the movie; the Trailers From Hell segments with director Joe Dante (The Howling) and scripter Josh Olson (A History of Violence); and the 17-minute Super 8 version of the film.

Movie: ★★★

SCOOBY-DOO! MYSTERY INCORPORATED: THE COMPLETE SERIES (2010-2013). To date, there have been 16 animated series centering about the cowardly dog and those meddling kids … to say nothing of the various live-action efforts, the handful of TV specials, and the 45 straight-to-video features sporting such titles as Scooby-Doo! in Where’s My Mummy?, Chill Out, Scooby-Doo!, and Scooby-Doo! Frankencreepy and including crossovers with Batman, Krypto, and KISS. One of the more recent of the programs is Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, and what sets it apart from the other Scoob shows is that episodes aren’t self-contained but are instead parts of continuing narratives, with everything wrapped up by the end of the second and final season. Set in Crystal Cove (not to be confused with Cabot Cove, where Jessica Fletcher is out solving her own mysteries), this finds Scooby (voiced by Frank Welker), Shaggy (Matthew Lillard), Fred (Welker), Daphne (Grey DeLisle), and Velma (Mindy Cohn) cracking cases in their own backyard, all while working through romantic entanglements, combatting foes such as Crybaby Clown (Mark Hamill), and discovering there was a Mystery Incorporated team that existed before them. The supporting characters are a vivid and varied bunch — I especially like Professor H.P. Hatecraft, voiced by Re-Animator star Jeffrey Combs — and the pop culture references offer plenty of deep dives. Sure, it’s not exactly unexpected to see homages to Twin Peaks, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Star Trek, but did anyone have Tobe Hooper’s 1976 Eaten Alive, the hit TV series Hart to Hart, or MTV VJ Martha Quinn on their bingo card?

The Blu-ray edition contains all 52 episodes. Extras consist of audio commentaries on select episodes by Eddsworld producers Matt Hargreaves and Andy Clift (but why?), and Season 1 & 2 trailers.

Series: ★★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

GHOST RIDER (2007). Is it possible that before making the big-screen version of Ghost Rider, writer-director Mark Steven Johnson had never even held a Ghost Rider comic book in his hands, let alone read one? Yes, I know as well as anyone that faithfulness to the source material is a low priority when it comes to Hollywood, whether adapting Stan Lee or Lee Child. But Johnson, whose version of Daredevil wasn’t quite as bad as the press made out, here botches what would have seemed to be a fairly manageable assignment. The comics’ original Johnny Blaze wasn’t a joke-a-second character like Peter Parker or The Fantastic Four’s Ben Grimm. He was more somber and serious, as one would expect from a biker who sold his soul to the devil (to save the life of a loved one) and then found himself living under a curse that transformed him into a flaming-skull creature whenever in the presence of evil. Of course, when you hire Nicolas Cage to star in your movie, it’s safe to assume that camp was what was intended all along. And sure enough, Cage immediately falls back on the eye-popping, head-rolling overacting that has turned him into this century’s Rod Steiger. Amazingly, though, he doesn’t deliver the movie’s worst performance; instead, he lands in the show position, right under Eva Mendes as the somnambular love interest and the mesmerizingly awful Wes Bentley as one of the least convincing — and therefore least threatening — villains imaginable. On the plus side, the special effects are pretty cool, and it was inspired to cast Peter Fonda as Mephistopheles (Easy Rider, meet Ghost Rider). Otherwise, this is yet another comic book adaptation that goes up in flames before our very eyes. A sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, followed in 2011.

Movie: ★½

IF IT’S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE BELGIUM (1969). An unwieldy moniker (inspired by a magazine cartoon) masks what’s actually a pretty funny movie fronted by an engaging ensemble and featuring a string of rather pointless cameos. Ian McShane plays Charlie Cartwright, a British tour guide whose job entails whisking American tourists through nine countries over the course of 18 days. Among the assemblage are Samantha Perkins (Suzanne Pleshette), a beauty relentlessly wooed by Charlie; Harve Blakely (Norman Fell), whose wife Irma (Reva Rose) gets separated from the group during the whirlwind tour and keeps ending up in the wrong countries; Fred Ferguson (Murray Hamilton), who doesn’t meet a culture he can’t criticize; and Harry Dix (Aubrey Morris), who fills his empty suitcase with items stolen throughout the trip (including a telephone and a lifebuoy!). The cluelessness of Americans abroad and the inconvenience of roadrunner-paced vacations are both satirized in a gentle manner by director Mel Stuart (an award-winning documentarian nevertheless best known as the helmer of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and scripter David Shaw. Roughly a dozen actors make cameo appearances, but most (like Joan Collins and John Cassavetes) are on and off the screen so rapidly that it scarcely matters. Charlotte residents will be amused by the exchange in which a college kid (Luke Halpin) states, “I guess virginity is still a big hang-up in the smaller towns,” to which his teenage girlfriend (Hilarie Thompson), who hails from the Queen City, indignantly replies, “Charlotte, North Carolina, is not one of the smaller towns.” This was followed years later by the 1987 TV movie If It’s Tuesday, It Still Must Be Belgium, made by different hands and starring Courteney Cox, Peter Graves, and Claude Akins.

Movie: ★★★

TOPSY-TURVY (1999). Writer-director Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy is a delightful period piece that beautifully conveys the art (and sweat) that often goes into putting on a show. Leigh has applied his considerable talents to telling the story of librettist William Schwenck Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan, the 19th century musical team responsible for comic operas like H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance (reviewed above). But this is no conventional biopic that takes us smoothly from cradle to grave with a few pit stops for career highlights and social low points along the way. Instead, it hones in on a specific period in their musical collaboration — namely, the point at which the gruff Gilbert (marvelously played by Jim Broadbent) and the more affable Sullivan (Allan Corduner) seem to have reached a critical impasse before bursting through with The Mikado. Structured like a two-act play — you can even picture the curtain coming down for intermission when the idea for the Japanese musical springs into Gilbert’s head — this Oscar winner for Best Costume Design and Best Makeup (with additional nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Art Direction) devotes the first hour of its 160-minute run time to delineating the circumstances leading up to the creation of The Mikado, while the second part (which really cooks) deals with the preparation for the show’s grand premiere. The movie is packed with enchanting scenes showing the creative process at work, yet for all the merrymaking, there’s also an unexpected sadness that sneaks up on you, due largely to the personal problems of several principal characters. Topsy-Turvy is a joyous celebration of the theater, yet it’s also honest enough to expose the harsh realities that remain crouched beneath the make-believe.

Movie: ★★★★

WHITE DOG (1982). Political correctness has rarely seemed as misguided as when it ran headfirst into this drama by maverick writer-director Samuel Fuller. Loosely working from a story by Romain Gary, Fuller and co-scripter Curtis Hanson (who would later win an Oscar for bringing L.A. Confidential to the screen) crafted a social polemic in which a young actress named Julie Sawyer (Kristy McNichol) decides to keep the German shepherd she accidentally struck with her car. Soon, however, Julie comes to the chilling realization that her new companion has been trained to attack and kill black people. Although an animal trainer (Burl Ives) insists that the dog is a lost cause, a fellow trainer, the black Keys (Paul Winfield), makes it his mission to deprogram the canine’s color-coordinated instincts. Does the movie endorse the idea that a dog should be trained to kill minorities? Of course not, which made the charges of racism utterly moronic. Yet faced with ample protests, Paramount Pictures shelved White Dog, never giving it a proper stateside theatrical release (it briefly aired on HBO, which is where I first caught it back in the day) and leading to Fuller — particularly hurt since he had spent his career casting whoever was best for a role, race be damned — throwing up his hands and bolting to Europe to make films. Clearly, this isn’t a racist movie; it’s a movie about racism, and how it can bubble up from the most unlikely sources. The performances from the bit players are amateurish, as is some of the dialogue, but Fuller has nevertheless managed to make a fascinating yarn that actually has something to say about the state of the nation then and, sadly, now.

Movie: ★★★