Newsletter - FOR THE WEEK

OF March 5th, 2018

Rojbash! Another excellent week with Blu-ray reviews of packages by Arrow, Indicator, 88 Films, Kino, Code Red, Olive, ClassicFlix, Snappy Video and others of films directed by Robert Altman, Ermanno Olmi, John Frankenheimer, Val Guest, Lucio Fulci, John Sturges, John Grissmer, Sam Wood, Guy Green, Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast, Ruggero Deodato, Stuart Heisler!. Our Calendar has updates of films-to-Blu-ray, including works by John Ford, Jules Dassin, André De Toth, Norman Jewison, Brian De Palma, Eli Roth, Mario Bava, Roger Donaldson, Steve De Jarnatt, Tobe Hooper, Michael Crichton, Michael Anderson, Joe Wright, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Guillermo del Toro, Michio Yamamoto, Jesús Franco, Friz Freleng, Joe D'Amato, Wes Craven, James Foley and we have our Feature Blu-ray is posted for MARCH plus a new CONTEST with a BRAND NEW INDICATOR Blu-ray prize. Enjoy!!

LISTING PAGES:

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)

DVDBeaver has their own store at Movie Zyng - check it out! Many have $1 shipping - even overseas!

Feature Blu-ray chosen for the Month of MARCH!

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(Week of) March 5th, CONTEST  identify the film HERE to win a prize of a BRAND NEW INDICATOR Blu-ray of Stanley Kramer's Ship of Fools Best of luck!

If there are DVD or Blu-ray titles you'd like us to cover - please feel free to recommend!

Gary at 2ze dot com

ONE VOICE (not Ellsworth Monkton Toohey): I quite enjoyed two Arrow, Region FREE, Blu-rays this week, Robert Altman's genre-bending Images with Susannah York - a kind of psychological, horror, thriller and the Blu-ray offers a commentary, interviews and more. I was also attracted to John Grissmer's Scalpel from 1977 with themes of incest, obsession, identity plus the Blu-ray offers presentations in two different visual grades as well as an excellent commentary and more. Don't miss either! We completed the final three reviews of Indicator's 4 Blu-ray set Hammer Volume Two: Criminal Intent with the inventive The Snorkel, the probing The Full Treatment and a deceptively strong bank heist drama in Cash on Demand. This is another must-own Region FREE set from Indicator. I was fascinated by the incredible differences in Arrow's Blu-ray of Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs - it's great to have this option. John Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz with Burt Lancaster on Olive Blu-ray has one of my favorite commentaries of the year and a solid dual-layered transfer of the biographical film. Topaze is a pre-code cracker comedy with John Barrymore and Myrna Loy - Kino's Blu-ray offers another brilliant commentary from Kat Ellinger and a rich, desirable film. Regarding The Phantom Planet Blu-ray - fans of the 50s-60s, more innocent, campy-nostalgic, science-fiction memorables - this kinda amounts to a 'must-own' - even as a BD-R. Code Red offer a unique Drive-In-esque Blu-ray experience with the double-feature House on the Edge of the Park and Last House on Massacre Street (aka The Bride) which begs the question - who would buy a house on 'Massacre St.'? I warmed a shade more to 1976's Dogs - a weak but unnecessarily serious creature-feature on Blu-ray from 88 Films. Vintage era film fans appreciate ClassicFlix's lighter Gary Cooper fare with Along Came Jones and Casanova Brown making the jump to Blu-ray. The Enchanting Ghost isn't particularly remarkable - another in the string of Hong Kong 70's horrors from Shaw Brothers that makes it to Blu-ray thank to 88 Films. Lucio Fulci's A Cat in the Brain doesn't improve the film with a superior transfer on Blu-ray and Olive's The Hallelujah Trail, an epic western with Lee Remick, Burt Lancaster and many others, looks atrocious on Blu-ray - something went wrong there. DVDs to come next week!

'In my opinion, all men are islands. And what’s more, now’s the time to be one. This is an island age...' - About a Boy

Have a passive and understanding week!

Casanova Brown BD - In this slight comedy with a charming cast, Cooper plays the title character, an unassuming young man who is about to marry Madge Ferris (Anita Louise). On the day of his wedding rehearsal, he receives a letter from a maternity hospital in Chicago informing him that he is the father of a baby daughter. Months earlier, Casanova (called Cass) had enjoyed a whirlwind romance with Isabel Drury (Teresa Wright), and the young couple married in haste. But, the Drurys turned out to be an eccentric family, and Cass didn't fit in. The relationship between Cass and his in-laws deteriorated further when he accidentally burned down the Drury mansion, resulting in the annulment of his marriage. But, given the birth of a daughter, there was much more to the marriage than a piece of paper. Blu-ray Release Date: February 6th, 2018

The Phantom Planet BD - Captain Frank Chapman (Dean Fredericks) is sent on a mission to discover a series of recent lost ships in space, and finds himself shrunk to six inches and on the asteroid planet of Rheton, put on trial by its tiny inhabitants! Will Frank Chapman ever be able to leave the planet? Will be fall for the beautiful Liara (Coleen Gray) or the more plain but also beautiful mute Zetha (Dolores Faith)? Will jealous Rheton inhabitant Herron (Anthony Dexter) beat him in the Duel? Will he help Sesom (Francis X. Bushman), the leader, battle the Solarite invasion? Blu-ray Release Date: July 6th, 2017

Along Came Jones BD - Gary Cooper added "producer" alongside "star" on his resume with this light-hearted Western about a mild-mannered cowboy (Cooper) who drifts into a small town with his sidekick (William Demarest). Naturally, he's mistaken for a notorious highway robber (Dan Duryea), although he can barely handle a gun. His impersonation of the menacing gunman falls apart when his skills are put to the test, and he faces certain doom when challenged by the returning gunman himself. In the end, however, our hero defeats the villain and even ends up with his girl (Loretta Young). A send-up of both Western clichés and Cooper's own heroic persona, Along Came Jones is brisk, amusing entertainment. Blu-ray Release Date: February 6th, 2018

Scalpel BD - In Scalpel, Lansing plays Dr. Phillip Reynolds, a man whose daughter Heather (Judith Chapman) has run away from home a year prior following the suspicious death of her boyfriend. When he happens across a young woman one night, her face beaten beyond recognition, the unhinged Reynolds sees his an opportunity to put his trusty scalpel to use - hatching a plan to ''reconstruct'' her face in the image of his missing daughter, and so claim her sizeable inheritance. Blu-ray Release Date: February 19th (UK) - 27th (US), 2018

The Enchanting Ghost BD - An early example of Hong Kong horror, The Enchanting Ghost was released in 1970 to critical acclaim and established a future trend for the city's supernatural-themed Oriental fright flicks. Baked in the trademark Shaw Brothers atmospherics, this story of a young scholar who becomes resident in a haunted house, whilst also struggling to instigate a new romance, features some spooky set pieces, a potent aura of lovelorn macabre and a growing sense of ghoulish whimsy. Predating the classic Japanese creeper HOUSE (1977), but featuring some thematic similarities, this ghostly terror tale is a vital addition to any collection of classic Asian cinema. Blu-ray Release Date: February 26th, 2018

The Hallelujah Trail BD - Under the watchful eye of its owner Frank Wallingham, the Wallingham Freighting Company is bound for Denver with forty wagons of whiskey to quench the town’s thirst. But there are others who have plans of their own for the load of libations including temperance leader Cora Templeton Massingale (Remick), who wants it destroyed, the Sioux Indians who want it for themselves, ditto the Denver citizens militia, as well as the Irish teamsters hired as wagon drivers. Fearing that the shipment may not reach its destination, Colonel Thaddeus Gearhart (Lancaster) assigns Captain Paul Slater to safeguard the cargo, unaware that Slater’s fiancée, Louise – who also happens to be the Colonel’s daughter – has fallen under the powerful spell of Cora’s temperance message. Blu-ray Release Date: February 27th, 2018

A Cat in the Brain BD - In this Italian splatter film, director Lucio Fulci plays a horror filmmaker who goes to a psychiatrist because the types of films he makes are starting to disturb him, he suspects that his German producers are Nazis, and he believes he may be a killer himself. Much of the movie consists of clips from Fulci's previous films. 88 Films Blu-ray Release Date: January 8th, 2018

Images BD - A woman walks a razor's edge between reality and madness in this impressionistic drama written and directed by Robert Altman. Cathryn (Susannah York) is a woman who begins to suspect that her marriage to Hugh (René Auberjonois) is falling apart after receiving a mysterious phone call from a friend who tells her Hugh has been having an affair. Cathryn herself has not been happy with Hugh, and years before she took a lover, Rene (Marcel Bozzuffi), though he died some time ago in a plane crash. Thinking they both need to get away, Hugh takes Cathryn to their house in the country, where Hugh indulges in his hobbies, hunting and photography, and Cathryn works on a book of fantasy tales for children. Before long, Cathryn begins to see apparitions of the late Rene around the house, much to her consternation; while confronting her feelings about the late Rene and the wandering Hugh, Marcel (Hugh Millais), a friend of the couple who makes little secret of his attraction to Cathryn, arrives for a visit, with his daughter Susannah (Cathryn Harrison) in tow. Blu-ray Release Date: March 19th-20th, 2018

Birdman of Alcatraz BD - Birdman of Alcatraz, director John Frankenheimer’s biographical drama, stars Burt Lancaster as Robert Stroud, the “birdman” of the title, who, as the film begins, is incarcerated at Leavenworth Prison for murder, a sentence that will eventually lead him to Alcatraz. Seeing his days stretch out to life without parole for the murder of a prison guard, Stroud will pass his days in solitary confinement caring for a baby sparrow, an act which eventually blossoms into caring for an array of birds sent as gifts to fellow inmates. Blu-ray Release Date: February 27th, 2018

House on the Edge of the Park BD - Two low-life punks invite themselves to a party at a posh villa and after being taunted by their snobbish hosts, hold everyone hostage and subject them to various forms of torture and mayhem. Blu-ray Release Date: March 6th, 2018

Topaze BD - An adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's satire about an honest yet naive science teacher who loses his job because he won't pass an undeserving student who is the son of a wealthy man. After inventing a formula for a questionable health tonic called "Sparkling Topaze," however, the teacher risks losing his integrity by marketing the product with an unscrupulous businessman (George Mason). Loy is cast as the businessman's mistress, who falls for the teacher and eventually joins him on the road to redemption. Blu-ray Release Date: March 6th, 2018

The Snorkel BD - Van Eyck tries his hand at committing the perfect crime in this ingenious murder mystery. In order for his wife's murder to appear a suicide, he gives her a dose of tranquilizers, locks the doors and windows from the inside, turns on all the gas, and hides in a cubbyhole underneath the floor. From there he breathes through a snorkel tube and waits until the police arrive, remove the body, and declare it a suicide before he comes out. His plan is foiled when the dead woman's daughter from a previous marriage catches on to Van Eyck's scheme. A clever film that works. Blu-ray Release date: February 19th, 2018

Dogs BD - Another entry in the vast nature-amok horror subgenre of the late '70s, this murky low-budget woofer stars David McCallum as a pontificating college prof who begins to suspect something is amiss when the canine populace of a small college burg begin leaping at their owners' throats with wild abandon. 88 Films Blu-ray Release Date: January 8th, 2018

The Tree of Wooden Clogs BD - A painterly and sensual immersion in late nineteenth-century Italian farm life, Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs lovingly focuses on four families working for one landowner on an isolated estate in the province of Bergamo. Filming on an abandoned farm for four months, Olmi adapted neorealist techniques to tell his story, enlisting local people to live as their own ancestors had, speaking in their native dialect on locations with which they were intimately familiar. Through the cycle of seasons, of backbreaking labor, love and marriage, birth and death, faith and superstition, Olmi naturalistically evokes an existence very close to nature, celebrating its beauty, humor, and simplicity but also acknowledging the feudal cruelty that governs it. Arrow Blu-ray Release Date: August 28th, 2017

The Full Treatment BD - The Full Treatment is the story of a famous English race car driver named Alan Colby (Ronald Lewis) and his wife Denise (Diane Cilento), who on their wedding day are involved in an accident. Nearly a year later, the couple are reattempting their honeymoon in Cannes, but Colby is afraid that sexual desires seem to be manifesting in a desire to kill his wife. Blu-ray Release date: February 19th, 2018

Cash on Demand BD - Cash on Demand was selected by the film historians Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane as one of the 15 most meritorious British B films made between World War II and 1970. They note that it also received enthusiastic reviews at the time of its release from The Monthly Film Bulletin and Kinematograph Weekly. They particularly praise Peter Cushing: "Above all, it is Peter Cushing's performance of the austere man, to whom efficiency matters most (though the film is subtle enough to allow him a certain integrity as well), and who will be frightened into a warmer sense of humanity, that lifts the film well above the perfunctory levels of much 'B' film-making. Blu-ray Release date: February 19th, 2018

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