Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF August 12th, 2019

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Matcaci! Another stacked week of Blu-ray reviews in this newsletter by Criterion, Masters of Cinema, Warner Archive, BFI, Kino, Millcreek, Synapse Films, Shout! Factory, Twilight Time, Cult Films, Film Movement... of films by Alfred Hitchcock, Carol Reed, Fred Zinnemann, George Cukor, King Vidor, André De Toth, Phil Karlson, Fred Schepisi, Sergio Garrone, Hugo Haas, Nathan Juran, Fred Sears etc. .Our Calendar has new updates of films-to-Blu-ray by directors Samuel Fuller, Martin Scorsese, Joseph Losey, Costa-Gavras, Claude Sautet, Milos Forman, Leo McCarey, Richard Attenborough, John Landis, Abel Ferrara, Paul Verhoeven, John Huston, George A. Romero, Basil Dearden, Alan Parker, Jacques Demy, Alfred Hitchcock, and more. We also have our Feature Blu-ray and 4K UHD posted for AUGUST Enjoy!!

LISTING PAGES:

Cinema of Japan, Discs of the Year for 2018, The TOP 100 DISCS, Ingmar Bergman's Cinema, HAGSPloitation, BLAXPloitation, OZPloitation, 'WOMEN IN PRISON' CINEMA, CREATURE-FEATURES (on Blu-ray!), PRE-CODE FILMs (on Blu-ray!), SILENT ERA FILMs (on Blu-ray!), HAMMER Studios (on Blu-ray!) The 100 BEST Neo-Noirs (on Blu-ray!), The GREATEST 100 Westerns (on Blu-ray!), Giallo on Blu-ray!, ESSENTIAL NOIR on Blu-ray!, Shopping Guide for Blu-rays at Amazon.FR (France), Shopping Guide for Blu-rays at Amazon.DE (Germany) and our LATEST ARTICLES: Movies From... the End of the World,  The Beauties of Star Trek (TOS)

Feature Blu-ray and 4K UHD chosen for the Month of AUGUST!

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ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): There are 18 reviews this week, so I'll try to be brief with recommendation. I loved George Cukor's Gaslight on Warner Archive Blu-ray. It's a brilliant Victorian psychological thriller with a bit of the distressed damsel - Bergman glows and Cotten heroic. Both early Alfred Hitchcock films deserve top mentions on Kino Blu-rays. The Blackmail package offers three versions - with debate on the aspect ratios - plus a Tim Lucas commentary, while Murder! includes two version and also has a commentary. Must own for cinema fans everywhere. Highly effective western, André De Toth's Day of the Outlaw gets a Kino Blu-ray release with a new commentary. Exceptional. Fred Schepisi's overwhelming The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith gets a Masters of Cinema Blu-ray treatment with both Aussie and International versions. A devastating film experience. I am still working through the Millcreek's Noir Archive Volume 2: 1954-1956 9-film Blu-ray collection but loving everything I've seen so far; Phil Karlson's 5 Against the House, hostage-thriller The Night Holds Terror, the decent bio-drama with the obvious prison milieu and robbery-crime heist angles Cell 2455 Death Row, double-crossing plotted The Crooked Web with sexy Mari Blanchard and conflict, gold and a beautiful blonde leading a man down the road to ruin in Hugo Haas' Bait. Carol Reed's A Kid For Two Farthings has a bit of everything from childhood innocence and fantasy to survivors seeking slice-of-life dreams in a tight-knit community. There is quite a varied cast from Celia Johnson to Diana Dors, from Primo Carnera to Sidney James. Wonderful on new BFI Blu-ray. The commentary gives another solid reason why fans of the spaghetti western genre would want to indulge in Django the Bastard on Synapse Blu-ray. King Vidor's Man Without a Star is a top-shelf western with Kirk Douglas and the new Kino Blu-ray offers a commentary by Toby Roan. Not to be missed. The Reptile doesn't represent the best from Hammer Studios, but it still has the irresistible charm of those Brit horrors. One Deadly Summer has the obvious appeal of a scantily clad and seductive Isabelle Adjani but the film exposes a complex mystery. It is well-wroth a viewing on Blu-ray from Cult Films. Fred Zinnemann's Behold a Pale Horse is a strong war-drama starring Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharif on bare-bones Blu-ray from Twilight Time. The Inland Sea is an impacting documentary - the best you may see this year - from film scholar Donald Richie - a profound meditation on what it means to be a foreigner - on Blu-ray from Criterion. The visually stunning The Reflecting Skin is a memorable horror and Film Movement have brought it to Region 'A' Blu-ray. “The quickest way to correct the other fellow's attitude is to correct your own.” ― King Vidor

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The Reflecting Skin BD - As mysterious deaths plague a small American prairie town, eight year-old Seth (Jeremy Cooper) comes to believe that the pale, reclusive widow living next door (Lindsay Duncan) is a vampire. Seth’s worst nightmare comes true when his older brother Cameron (Viggo Mortensen) returns home from abroad and falls in love with the widow – will he be next? The truth is much more shocking than Seth could imagine. Film Movement Blu-ray Release Date: August 6th, 2019

The Inland Sea BD - In 1971, author and film scholar Donald Richie published a poetic travelogue about his explorations of the islands of Japan’s Inland Sea, recording his search for traces of a traditional way of life as well as his own journey of self-discovery. Twenty years later, filmmaker Lucille Carra undertook a parallel trip inspired by Richie’s by-then-classic book, capturing images of hushed beauty and meeting people who still carried on the fading customs that Richie had observed. Interspersed with surprising detours—visits to a Frank Sinatra–loving monk, a leper colony, an ersatz temple of plywood and plaster—and woven together by Richie’s narration as well as a score by celebrated composer Toru Takemitsu, The Inland Sea is an eye-opening voyage and a profound meditation on what it means to be a foreigner. Blu-ray Release Date: August 13th, 2019

Man Without a Star BD - In this deceptively titled and paced Western, Kirk Douglas shines in the hyper-macho role of Dempsey Rae, a good-natured drifter with a mysterious past up from Texas, a top hand with a gun, a horse, or a herd, who can even play the banjo and sing. He rides into a Wyoming town in a freight car, in the company of much younger drifter Jeff Jimson (William Campbell), who knows even less about the West than he does about life. Dempsey gets Jeff out of a few scrapes with the law, and both get hired by the foreman (Jay C. Flippen) of the Triangle Ranch. With 8,000 head, the Triangle is already the largest spread in the territory, but the new owner from back east, Miss Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain), arrives with plans to move in another 22,000 head onto the open range, threatening to squeeze out the smaller ranches completely. Kino Blu-ray Release Date: August 27th, 2019

One Deadly Summer BD - Eliane (Isabelle Adjani), a beautiful young woman, settles into a small town in the south of France with her introverted mother and physically handicapped father. Traumatized by her knowledge that her mother was raped by three men before she was born, Eliane thinks she's on a trail of vengeance when she's courted by a young garage mechanic (Alain Souchon), whose father has the only clue to the identity of her mother's aggressors. But as the story unfolds in Rashomon-like flashbacks and narrations, the tale becomes increasingly complex and leads inexorably to a stunning conclusion. Cult Films Blu-ray Release Date: July 22nd, 2019

A Kid For Two Farthings BD - Carol Reed's last film for the legendary Alexander Korda and his first in colour is the whimsical tale of a young boy, Joe, who buys a small goat in the belief it's a magical unicorn that will grant him and his friends wishes. Counter-balancing this is the equally childlike romance of Sonia (Diana Dors) and her body-building boyfriend Sam (Joe Robinson), and the latter's misguided involvement with crooked wrestling promoter Blackie Isaacs (Lou Jacobi.) Blu-ray Release Date: August 19th, 2019

Day of the Outlaw BD - Robert Ryan plays the ruthless cattleman Blaise Starrett who rides into the small, snowbound town of Bitters to settle a feud with homesteader Hal Crane (Alan Marshal) over access to land, with one eye on rekindling a past love affair with Crane's wife Helen (Tina Stuart). But once a band of brutal outlaws, led by the notorious Captain Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives), enters and takes the townspeople hostage, the situation becomes a powder keg ready to blow. Kino Blu-ray Release date: August 27th, 2019

Murder! BD - Alfred Hitchcock's second all-talkie thriller, Murder! (1930) stars Herbert Marshall as pompous actor-manager Sir John Menier, a send-up of George DuMaurier. Summoned for jury duty, Sir John is one of 12 people who must decide the fate of Diana Baring (Norah Baring), a young actress on trial for murder. Though the girl is found guilty, Sir John believes that she's innocent and sets about to prove it on his own, exercising his actor's prerogative of adopting clever disguises in the course of his investigation. Along the way, he is obliged to entertain a pair of lower-class clods, Ted and Dulcie Markham (Edward Chapman and Phyllis Konstam), who help him stage an elaborate re-enactment of the crime. Based on Enter Sir John, a novel and play by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson, Murder was simultaneously filmed in a German version, with Alfred Abel replacing Herbert Marshall. Blu-ray Release Date: August 13th, 2019

Blackmail BD - Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film utilized the new sound technology in a rather creative way off-camera. Hitchcock's lead actress, Anny Ondra, had a strong Eastern European accent that was difficult for English audiences to understand, so Hitchcock's solution was to have British actress Joan Barry speak Ondra's lines of dialogue off-camera. The film concerns a woman who kills a man who tries to assault her. Ondra plays Alice White who, while having dinner in a fancy English nightspot with her husband-to-be Scotland Yard Detective Frank Webber (John Longden), begins to flirt with an artist (Cyril Richard) seated at the next table. The artist invites her up to see his studio, and she goes but balks when the artist asks her to pose in the nude. When the request becomes a demand, Alice stabs him to death. She rejoins her fiance and tries to forget the murder, but her conscience keeps bothering her. To make matters worse, sniveling rat Tracy (Donald Calthrop) materializes to blackmail Alice for the crime. Blu-ray Release Date: August 13th, 2019

The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith BD - Fred Schepisi's internationally acclaimed masterpiece based on the novel by Thomas Keneally is the shocking tale of an indigenous man driven to madness and revenge. Jimmie Blacksmith (Tommy Lewis) is a young Aboriginal half-caste raised in central NSW at the turn-of-the-century a boy initiated by his tribe but also educated by a stern Methodist minister (Jack Thompson). Looking to gain respectability in European society Jimmy finds a white bride while performing back-breaking work on local farms but cannot escape his skin colour, suffering ongoing racism and oppression. Discovering that he may not be the father of his wife's child, and fired without pay, Jimmy explodes in a fury of violent revenge and escapes into the bush with his brother Mort, cutting a bloody path of retribution upon the society that has forsaken him. Masters of Cinema Blu-ray Release Date: August 26th, 2019

5 Against the House BD - A quartet of Korean war vets—aided by a sizzling Kim Novak—plan a “perfect” crime - robbing a casino in Reno, Nevada. What starts out as a prank becomes deadly serious, especially for the one vet with psychopathic tendencies. Noir specialist Phil Karlson directs Novak, Guy Madison, Brian Keith, Kerwin Matthews, Alvy Moore and William Conrad. 5 Against the House has a running time of 84 minutes and is not rated. Noir Archive Volume 2 Blu-ray Release Date: July 16th, 2019

The Night Holds Terror BD - Though based on a true story, the principal inspiration for The Night Holds Terror was the success of Paramount's The Desperate Hours. Jack Kelly plays well-to-do businessman Gene Courtier, who makes the mistake of his life when he picks up hitchhiker Victor Gosset (Vincent Edwards). Soon afterward, Gosset and his criminal confederates (John Cassavetes, David Cross) are holding Courtier and his family hostage. Upon learning that Courtier has a lot of money in the bank, the trio kidnap the businessman and hold him for ransom. Working in concert with Courtier's wife Doris (Hildy Parks), the FBI manages to keep apace with the criminals via the telephone system. Only occasionally resorting to family-held-captive cliches, The Night Holds Terror is an effective suspenser. Leading lady Hildy Parks later became an influential TV and theatrical producer. Noir Archive Volume 2 Blu-ray Release Date: July 16th, 2019

Behold a Pale Horse BD - From producer/director Fred Zinnemann comes Behold a Pale Horse (1964), a somber yet harrowingly suspenseful thriller of personal conviction in the face of political repression, set against the backdrop of the dark decades following the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War. In charismatic and charged performances, Gregory Peck plays an exiled guerrilla fighter, Anthony Quinn is the dogged police chief who lays a trap to catch him, and Omar Sharif portrays a priest who intervenes to prevent the antagonists’ inevitable confrontation. Blu-ray Release Date: August, 2019

Cell 2455 Death Row BD - Based on the autobiographical book by Caryl Chessman, this fictionalized account of how a boy becomes a brutal criminal is both shocking and sensational. William Campbell plays Whit Whittier, who begins with petty crime, escalating to violence, and finally convicted on charges of robbery and rape, is sent to San Quentin's Death Row. While awaiting execution, Whittier studies law and manages to successfully represent himself in appeal after appeal. The real story of Chessman was controversial for the prosecutor's use of the Lindbergh kidnap law, in an unorthodox way, resulting in Chessman's death sentence for crimes that did not amount to murder. A gripping, shocking film, particularly for its time, which explores the problems of juvenile delinquency and the justice system without shying away from controversy. Noir Archive Volume 2 Blu-ray Release Date: July 16th, 2019

The Crooked Web BD - Frank Lovejoy] plays the owner of a curbside hamburger joint in The Crooked Web, and Mari Blanchard is the carhop he's engaged to. It's established early on that Stan (he's the man) is willing to take a gamble or two, so when Joanie's brother (Richard Denning) comes through town with a secret deal in the works, he (Stan) is more than willing to cut himself in. Noir Archive Volume 2 Blu-ray Release Date: July 16th, 2019

Bait BD - Cleo stars as a cashier in a little dump of a mom-and-pop store, despised because she is an apparently unwed mother. Nasty old gold prospector Hugo Haas looks on her as trash but his partner John Agar is clearly attracted to the luckless blonde. When the men actually discover gold, greedy Haas tries to think of a way to have it all for himself and decides to marry Cleo, certain that in their secluded corner of the world Agar won't be able to resist Cleo's sex appeal, thus allowing Haas to shoot and kill him and get away with it via "the unwritten law". Noir Archive Volume 2 Blu-ray Release Date: July 16th, 2019

The Reptile BD - This chilling monster film metaphorically examines the horrors brought home by British colonialism. Harry and Valerie (Ray Barrett, Jennifer Daniel) inherit the Cornwall home of Harry's brother, who died under mysterious circumstances. The local villagers are tight-lipped and afraid, and the couple's neighbor, the hostile Dr. Franklin (Noel Willman), hides in a large mansion with his frightened daughter Anna (Jacqueline Pearce) and a strange foreign man (Marne Maitland). The truth is that Franklin had been investigating a secret tribe of snake-people on his last trip to Borneo, and they had reacted to his intrusion by making Anna one of them. As a result, the girl turns into a hideous cobra-woman every winter, with bulging eyes, a scaly face, and large, venomous fangs. Shout! Factory Blu-ray Release Date: July 30th, 2019

Django the Bastard BD - Anthony Steffen stars as the mysterious stranger named Django, a ghost-like figure who walks into a dusty western town with vengeance on his mind. As he finds the men he’s looking for, he places a cross with the person's name and death date in the middle of the street before enacting violent revenge! Is Django truly an unstoppable human army-of-one, or an avenging immortal angel of death? Blu-ray Release Date: August 20th, 2019

Gaslight BD - Lights flicker and dim. Footsteps sound from a sealed-off attic. Mysterious events only vulnerable young Paula sees and hears make her fear she's losing her mind - exactly what treacherous spouse Gregory hopes. Directed by George Cukor, Gaslight shines as a superb exercise in suspense. Ingrid Bergman won her first Academy Award®* as Paula, doubting her sanity while clinging to it. Fellow Oscar® nominee Charles Boyer skillfully plays against type as smoothly evil Gregory. Joseph Cotten, Dame May Whitty and an 18-year-old Angela Lansbury in her movie debut (also capturing an Oscar nomination) help make the Victorian era vividly realized through production design that earned an Academy Award. Blu-ray Release Date: June 25th, 2019

Next 2 weeks on the Calendar