Category Archives: 70’s-groove!

With Fame Comes Absurd EVIL Exploitation. “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” reviewed! (Radiance Films / Limited-Edition Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Limited Edition Blu-ray of “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” Now Available!

To compete against a rival fashion magazine who found profound success after hiring a famous gymnast as their spokesmodel, an ambitious fashion company sees potential in amateur golfer Reiko Sakuraba with her beauty, grace, and a decent enough golf game.  The only problem is Reiko has not won a championship.  The fashion company representative and Reiko’s sport’s columnist writer/manager/boyfriend Miyake strike a deal to get intensely train and mentally exhaust Reiko to be the best by the next tournament.  When Reiko outperforms the tournament’s veteran players, she instantly becomes a fashion icon and celebrity that leads to her own show for the magazine, photoshoots, and a large house in the middle of the suburbs.  Miyake’s aloof behavior continues even after Reiko’s success and while he drives her back home, he hits-and-runs a woman form the neighborhood who blackmails and guilts Reiko into letting her into the rich and famous lifestyle.  Reiko’s mental health slowly declines as pressures mounts.

“A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” is a tale of how the sudden rise of fame and fortune can quickly lead to world of hurt through inexperience, obsession, misguided love, abuse, and the day-to-day tasks that can even burden even the most common person.  The story also represents a dichotomy between fame and the mundane.  The 1977 Japanese surreal drama is helmed by Seijun Suzuki, a filmmaker once blacklisted by the head of Nikkatsu Studios after his film for the company, “Branded to Kill,” was deemed terrible by Nikkatsu execs, and rode the filmic bench for nearly a decade until his theatrical release of the Shochiku Ltd. Released production that allowed him the freedom for artistic expression.  Also concisely known as “A Tale of Sorrow,” the Suzuki picture is written by Atsushi Yamatoya based off manga by Ikki Kajiware and produced by Yoshiki Nomura, Kenzo Asada, and Tokuya Shimada.  

Yoko Shiraki steps into the tragic golf-cleated shoes of golfer-turned-spokesmodel Reiko Sakuraba who finds herself unknowingly being exploited as object of marketable objectification.  What’s interesting about Sakuraba is she’s totally alone amongst other adults in a real cutthroat and cruel way through her trajectory of success.  In the fashion world, the magazine representative behind the concept (Masumi Okada, “The Living Skeleton”) only wants her for her beauty and success, her boyfriend Miyake (Yoshio Harada, “Lady Snowblood 2:  Love Song of Vengeance”), and even an once starstruck housewife, Kayo Senba (Kyôko Enami, “Killer Whale”) who was struck by Miyake’s car and resents Reiko’s, blackmailing her way into the superstar golfer’s life by forcing her hand to relinquish all from her worldly possessions to her mind, body, and soul.  Shiraki gifts Sakuraba the fault of inability to say no with her innocence and naivety ravaged and exploited beyond the point of no return and beyond repair but Sakuraba clings to dear life, perhaps even sanity, because of tone person that too only reacts negatively around her but since their blood reaction is thicker in the watery connections manipulating her, Sakuraba’s hand is forced to do much all of the golfing and modeling hell for her adolescent younger brother Jun (Tetsu Mizuno), a smart yet reclusive boy with off screen aggression getting into fights with school bullies stemmed likely by his sister’s constant absence.  Sakuraba’s not only a slave to external obsessions of success, image, and greed but also a slave to internal obsessions with Mikyake who deprives her of the most basic primal needs for financial gain and for manipulative control.  Kôji Wada, Shûji Sano, Noboru Nakaya, sao Tamagawa, Tokie Hidari, and Jô Shishido co-star.

“A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” is Seijun Suzuki’s tour de force return to feature films.  A linear narrative speckled with surrealistic doses creates an unsettling and bizarre atmosphere of strongarm manipulation on the unassertive character of Reiko Sakuraba.  Her raw talent is mined and minced without much consent and pushed past mental exhaustion and collapse in what is an all too true theme surrounding the early television era of celebrity branding with esteemed figures being puppets for large scale companies in order to sell their promoted products.  Money, image, and success steer the helm without any due remorse to the elegant centerpiece of the room, driving Suzuki’s social commentary to extreme levels of misappropriation of a human person with feelings and ambitions of their own.  Instead, Reiko’s meekness is measured by Suzuki’s fabricated milieu of mistreatment represented partly in a behavioralism of semi-surrealism – Miyake’s stoic aloofness, Senba’s brazen hijack of Reiko’s fame and wealth, and even Jun’s withdraw and reclusion are all good archetype of strange conducts illegitimizing Reiko as person.  She’s dehumanized so much so she stops whatever little rationality she had to begin with and becomes a vessel of command that allowed those around to walk all over her.  Suzuki’s suburban reach toward fame theme is satirical for “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness’s” thin blanketing of dark comedy and the filmmaker often accentuates the moments with elongated sequences, randomized bits of eccentricity, and highly stylized contrasts of sex and violence as well as commercially sensationalized imagery versus Stepford wives’ expectations.

A bleak absurdist dream, “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” becomes rightly a part of the Radiance obscure, high level lineup with a new, limited-edition high-definition transfer Blu-ray release.  The AVC encoded, 1080p, BD50 receives the high definition transfer from the Shochiku Corporation, who currently distributes a fair amount of Anime and since “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” is adapted from a Ikki Kajiware’s Manga, the film fits right in, and is presented in by Radiance in the original aspect ratio of a widescreen 2.35:1.  Radiance’s image quality surpasses expectations as visually bold in a wide variety of contrasting colors, especially in primaries of yellow and reds juxtaposed against achromatic shades of brilliant whites and deep blacks.  The original print is beyond pristine with virtually no dust, dirt, scratches, or any kind of visual impediments in what appears to be a well-preserved 35mm reel.  Skin tones appear naturally organic and textures pop in their specific fabrics inside an overlay of natural stock grain for that bare-faced aesthetic of clear based film strip.  The Japanese uncompressed mono PCM audio, again, surpasses expectations with a diverse mix through a single output that creates excellent note individualism rather than an indistinct amalgam.  The omitted compression codec provides the original audio framework comfortably upholding against the test of time without a flurry of issues in the single layer.  Hissing, popping, crackling and other types of interference are kept either suppressed or to a bare minimal in another pristinely kept transfer.  ADR dialogue clearly affixes to the images with synchronous efforts being no worse compared to other films of the era out of Japan.  The newly improved English subtitles render without error, are compositionally more-or-less within syntax range of translation, and pace nicely throughout.  Special features include a new audio commentary by film historian and author Samm Deighan, a new interview with assistant editor Kunihiko Ukai, and the film’s trailer.  The clear Amaray case contains Sam Smith commissioned artwork on an obi-strip included reversible sleeve – primary cover composition is of a live still of exhausted Reiko Sakuraba lying next to a bunker with a spirally title font and the reverse cover is more NSFW with a partially nude Reiko with boyfriend Miyake portrayed in soft, dreamy glow.  The white and red disc is pressed with eye-pleasing contrast and the inserted 31-page color booklet provides cast and crew credits, essay “Sorrow, Sadness, and the Sweet Smell of Excess” by Radiance regular contributor Jasper Sharp, an archive essay “The Realisation of a Seijun Sizuki Film” by Atsushi Yamatoya, and the Blu-ray acknowledgements. “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” Radiance Blu-ray has a runtime of 93 minutes, is unrated, and since Radiance is a UK boutique label, collectors and film aficionados will get the best of both worlds with a region A and B playback.

Last Rites: Seijun Suzuki’s return to theatrical feature films with “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” is a remarkable comeback for the ages and the decade interruption didn’t even cause a missed step for his artistic expression of exploitation and consumerism control ruining young, raw talent which is a clear-cut archetype of sorrow and sadness.

Limited Edition Blu-ray of “A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness” Now Available!

EVIL Nazis, Mad Lumberjacks, and Insatiable Nymphomaniacs! “Up!” reviewed! (Severin Films / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

It Won’t Be Hard to Get it “Up!” on Blu-ray!

Perverted Nazi, Adolf Schwartz, is murdered in his castle’s hot tub after a masochistic romp with his paid sadists, including male Dom named Paul.  Paul helps run a small restaurant-bar owned by his wife, Alice, and the two have a good thing going about town in working together and making love day-in, day-out.  When busty new neighbor Margo Winchester moves to their quiet, quaint town, she’s immediately raped by the locate hoodlum and kills him defending herself.  Officer Homer Johnson witnesses the entire ordeal and amends his report to reflect the hoodlum was not killed by Margo but rather fell off a cliff in order for him and Margo be constant bedfellows, but when Margo begins to work for Paul and Alice, a quadruple love-triangle ensues and there’s still the matter of who killed Adolf Schwartz in a small wooded community filled up to the brim with massive sexual appetites and ulterior hijinks. 

“Up!” is Russ Meyer’s 1976 released, oversexed gambol bringing with it an explicit nature a polyamorous, sex-for-all, character cast of players riding overtop a threadbare plot of that resembles something along the lines of murder mystery.  Is this Russ Meyer’s attempt the Italian giallo?  Offscreen killer, gloved hands, multiple suspects, most certainly a very vivid fleshy aesthetic, and a big brass jazz orchestra to back it up musically, “Up!” carries most, if not all, of the trademark building blocks that makeup popular thrilling subgenre but tailored in only a pageantry of perversion only Russ Meyer’s knows how to do it from his own imagination and story collaborated with Anthony-James Ryan (“Vixen!”) and the late, esteemed critic Robert Ebert.  Once under the working title of “Over, Under and Up!.” Meyer’s produces his production under his company RM Films International with associate producing credits attributed to long term collaborators Fred Owens and Uschi Digard.

Like most of Meyer’s auteur films, “Up!” is a quirky plotted story with quirky plowing characters converging into idiosyncratic copulating chaos surrounding a singular problem.  The cast of charactes are just as eccentric and eccentrically written as the inside of Meyer’s rapid storytelling and no-nonsense nudist eye.  Multiple principal leads create a confounding multi-string focus with an esemble character contingent that receive their own backstories, their own emphasized subplot tangents, and they crisscross paths with each other through an array of coitus montages that’s it would be no surprise if this small woodland community all had raging case of singularized strain of syphilis.  “Up!” opens with the masochist perversions of a Hitler variant in Adolf Schwartz (Edward Schaaf, “The Flesh Merchant”) in the throes of being self-purposefully exploited by bosomy gimp The Headperson (“Candy Samples, “Beneath the Valley of Ultra-Vixens”), the ball-bustin’ Ethopian Chef (Elaine Collins, “Fantasm Comes Again”), the Asian persuasion Limehouse (Su Ling, “Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks”), and whip-master and male dom Paul (Robert McClaine, “A Very Natural Thing”).  Paul’s the only character to continue through the story narrated nakedly through our breaking the third wall maestro, The Greek Chorus, played lively and in a state of fully and forever buff by former Russ Meyer wife and adult film star Kitten Navidad in her first principal acting role.  Paul along with Alice (Janet Wood, “Fangs!”) have a more stable presence in the story and same goes for who would likely be “Up’s!” lead character Margo Winchester (Raven de la Croix, “The Lost Empire”) and one of more prominent male lead characters, officer Homer Johnson (Monty Bane, “Sleepwalkers”) in a fervorous fit of philandering and fuc…I mean sexing…between the four while running the town full of loggers and locals on Alice’s grand opening of her second restaurant jamboree.  There are other side characters too that come and go, have more stage presence than others, but are always circled back to in flashback and in the Greek Chorus’s audience-directed commentating of suspicion and events, such the lesbian truck driver Gwendolyn (“Linda Sue Ragsdale), rapist Leonard Box (Larry Dean), the smoking peace pipe that is the stark naked Pocahontas (Foxy Lae), and Bob Schott (“Gymkata”) as the large grunting logger Rafe.

If what’s been described hasn’t been clear, perhaps to my horrendous descriptive writing no doubt, “Up!” has a political correctness that goes right into the garbage in scene one with a thrust-hard jab right at Adolf Hitler’s sexuality in the most hardcore and kinky perversity and, from there, plenty of other sexual objectifications against men and women, Native Indian American stereotyping, teetering racial commentary, and an overall nonchalant air quality on intimate encounters in Meyer’s inclination for spoof, satire, and sex.  Meyer shows no shame, remorse, or even letting his lead foot off the break toward the highly energetic debauchery between character carnality and his rapid-fire editing style that, as like throughout his career, has been seamlessly well put together to keep continuity integrity and make sense of the whole damn bedlam of frenzied bedding, violence, and fornicating flashbacks, but it must be noted that Meyer’s giallo with gusto storyline is severely stretched thin.  Unlike the “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens” that was released a couple of years later, the same harnessed liveliness charged through both films is not as focused in “Up’s!” common core narrative primarily because of the continuously dwelled upon flashbacks of reintroducing characters repeatedly to build suspicion upon those possibly “Clue”-like designed list of suspects.  Campy and a jovial orgy, peppered with some tension and bloodshed excellent junctures, “Up!” is above and beyond a good time sexploitation drivellers will treasure. 

The latest release from Severin’s Russ Meyer’s Bosomania collection is “Up!” now on a 1080p high-definition, AVC encoded, BD50 Blu-ray presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Scanned and restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative, “Up!” visually tickles the right spots with a vibrant and naturally granulated presentation, balanced in its color diffusion, and accurately represented and reproduced skin and texture tones to enhance the period’s cinematic appearance.  As far as pristine prints, the 35mm stock has held the test of time in its preservation without any major damage or plight hiccups aside from the more protuberant dust, dirt, and smaller scratches.  Contrast levels are a minor sore point in rendered night scenes that reduce delineation for more the nighttime effect but doesn’t hurt the overall value and restoration efforts.  The English LPCM mono track lacks the vitality as any fidelity true reproduction through a surround mix may offer as “Up!” is a fast-paced, ripping-and-roaring, chorus of sights and sounds meticulously constructed by the auteur himself but the mono honestly enthusiastic and we’re still able to distinct each note and ruckus through Meyer’s rapid-fire A/V design compositions, captured precising and without interference or intrusion through post Foley and dubbing work.  Same goes with ADR that’s always seemingly 2 or 3 layers above the rest of the soundtrack as Meyer’s script is flamboyantly dialogue heavy with Kitten Navidad’s narration of events and plenty of vocal deluge for flirtatious affairs by way of innuendo and blunt channels.  English closed captioning is available on this release.  The special features are not as plenty on “Up!” as they are on other Bosomania releases with an audio commentary by film historian Elizabeth Purchell, who was also on the previous Russ Meyer collection titles, an archived interview No Fair Tale….This! from The Russ Meyer Trust with star Raven De La Croix, and a radio spot for the feature.  Displayed like the rest with a primary red and black board surrounding white padding, “Up!” is down with the deep cleavage of Raven De La Croix on its one-sided cover art.  Inside the black Blu-ray Amaray, the disc is pressed with the same image but with greater resolution detail of Margo Winchester’s best assets in an open cut dress.  The region free release has a runtime of 80 minutes and is unrated.

Last Rites: A romp tour-de-force, “Up!” and the rest of the Russ Meyer’s Bosomania collection is Severin Films’ most bust-filled merry-go-rounds that’s one-part Benny Hill, one-part Fanny Hill, and all parts an sexploitation extravaganza.

It Won’t Be Hard to Get it “Up!” on Blu-ray!

Experimental, Recreational Drug Use in College has Killer, EVIL Effects! “Blue Suneshine” reviewed! (Synapse Films / 3-Disc 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and CD Limited Edition Set)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Trip Out on Synapse’s Limited Edition “Blue Sunshine”

A party between friends turns deadly when one of them goes into a violent frenzy after being reveled his loss of all his hair.  Blamed for the murders, floating through life Jerry Zipkin is evading police investigators while also trying to connect the pieces on why a good friend of his would suddenly turn into a madman with no body hair and with five times the strength of any ordinary man.  His own investigation leads him to Blue Sunshine, an LSD variant connected to every transgressive event similar to the party, and at the center of it all is congressional frontrunner Edward Flemming who peddled Blue Sunshine 10 years ago at Stanford.  The latent consequence is now slowly surfacing to a head and more people are starting to experience the aggressive, alopecia effects, all Zipkin has to do to prove his innocent and a major ticking timebomb is to take a sample from a living specimen to show aberrant chromosome damage caused by the designer drug. 

Before becoming outed and investigated that the U.S. government experimented LSD on human subjects and it’s unknown but possible dormant side effects of years later, writer-director Jeff Lieberman put theory into sensationalized practicality with his post-psychedelic horror “Blue Sunshine” that turned ordinary, friendly people into headache-induced phonophobia sufferers and hairless, homicidal maniacs with super strength.  Lieberman’s 1977 released film snugs in between his killer Earthworm creature feature “Squirm” and one of the better backwoods slashers titled “Just Before Dawn,” tackling with themes of adverse effects from manmade drugs, political corruption, and to never judge a book by its cover.  The film is produced by “Squirm’s” George Manasse with “He Knows Your Alone” and “The Clairvoyant” producers Edgar Lansbury and Joseph Beruh serving as executive producers on the Ellanby Films production.

While the plot point that pushes Jerry Zipkin in the direction of investigation of the sudden fury and death surrounding his friend treads a threadbare rope with little background to suggest Zipkin is characteristically dedicated, loyal, curious, or all of the above to find out what happened, Zalman King’s overall performance as the path unaffixed Zipkin overshadows those missing background pieces and motivations.  In more key precise terms, Lieberman’s misdirection toward King’s erratic and strange behavior puts a lot of the focus on Zipkin rather than obvious derangement of the latent LSD maniacs with corrupted chromosomes in what was meant to puzzle the audiences in believing Zipkin himself might be the loose cannon cause behind the murders or, even perhaps, another ignorant victim of blue sunshine, which the latter would have been more intriguing and powerfully motivating for the Zipkin character as what drives him to solve the mystery and save himself.  None of the relationship resolve any type of secure or genuine interactions, specifically with Alicia Sweeney (Deborah Winters, “Tarantulas:  The Deadly Cargo”) with an unrealistic strong undying love for Zipkin despite only knowing him for a couple of months and the entire Stanford contingent from a decade earlier who Zipkin was able to easily link together within a matter of seconds of either examining a bloody crime scene or meeting a pair of the blue sunshine fiends.  One of the better, solid bonds is between the will-do-what-it-takes congress candidate Ed Flemming (Mark Goddard, Lost in Space) and his towering former college football buddy Wayne Mulligan (Ray Young, “Blood of Dracula’s Castle”) who becomes Flemming’s 6’6” advisor and bodyguard.  While might not seem like a well-rounded bond, Flemming and Mulligan have something tangible one can grab and understand when compared to other dynamic relationships that float in arbitrary.   Robert Walden (“Rage”), Charles Siebert (“Tarantulas:  The Deadly Cargo”), Ann Cooper, and Stefan Gierasch (“Carrie”) costar. 

“Blue Sunshine’s” premise has long stood the test of time because its more relatable now than ever as scientists and medical experts are in a fluid state of studying the effects of drugs digested, snorted, injected, or smoked weeks, months, years, and decades ago.  This premise also translates over to contaminants that cause sicknesses, such as the link between asbestos and cancer were tumors form years after exposure.  Lieberman catches wind early of the dangerous latent effects and manipulates it for the basis his film that is more fact than fiction.  Lieberman’s ability to minimize assurances on who is transfiguring into a killer is all in his characterizing nuances, shading in gray areas with excellently crafted character profile vignettes in between the opening credits that instill suspicion, fear, and some unknown stemmed danger ahead.  The unique setup is the filmmaker’s only real unconventional course in the narrative that plays out mostly a routine hand in a natural style albeit the surrealism of extreme closeups and angles on bald headed balefulness when the rage takes over or the slow, insidious madness that seeps into Zipkin’s mind causing hallucinations to exact an audience experiencing disturbance in the envisaged air.  Engaging and self-security eviscerating, “Blue Sunshine” is carbonated madness in a bottle, shook up and ready to pop. 

Synapse continues to upgrade their catalogue with Blue Sunshine next on the augmentation block with a new and mighty 3-disc Blu-ray and 4K UHD restoration release.  Presented in Dolby Vision HDR10, the restoration of the original 35mm camera negative sees it’s 4K transfer compressed with a HEVC codec that produces 2160p and is stored onto a BD100 while the Blu-ray is a compressed AVC, 1080p resolution, on a BD50.  The restoration will blow you away with diffused color palette and organic details that by far are the best they’ve ever looked with a balanced, natural grain level that keeps the speckling down in darker portions of the film to retain inkiness while securing the authenticity of the film stock without any smoothing over and artificial enhancements.  Vivid coloring, immersive details, and natural skin tones, when not softly grayed by the drug’s effects, throughout are appreciatively stable with no qualitative loss between cuts, creating a pleasurable and seamless visual experience on both formats.  Each format comes with two English audio options, a lossless DTS-HD master audio 5.1 surround sound, supervised and approved by director Jeff Lieberman, and a lossless DTS-HD master audio original theatrical mono 2.0.  While the amplification of the same sound output through the dual channels is inviting for purist, I highly recommend the immersive 5.1 surround sound that retains the genuine article of audio fidelity.   Charlie Gross’s orchestral strings instruments, percussive gongs, and synthesizing score fully engrosses the characters and audiences alike into a fold of unnerving, lingering tingles that evoke the monstrous maniac effect possibilities beyond the Jerry Zipkin tale.  Dialogue renders over with fine precision that hangs on every word and sentence with no hissing and crackling to obstruct it’s sweeping clarity.  A bountiful amount of Mind-Altering special features that fill this limited to 4000 copies set that include a new feature prologue introduction with director Jeff Lieberman.  There are two audio commentaries, an archived 2003 interview with Lieberman, a Channel Z Fantasy Film Festival ”Lieberman on Lieberman” interview with the director hosted by “Sleepwalkers” Mick Garris, a Q&A video from the Fantasia Film Festival 4K premiere moderated by Michael Gingold and Lieberman, an anti-drug scare-film “LSD-25” from 1967 and “LSD:  Insight or Insanity?” From 1968 from the American Genre Film Archive, Jeff Leiberman’s first film “The Ringer” with two cuts of the film, the original uncut version from the projection print source and the final release from the remastered Synapse Films 4K transfer with audio commentary included on the uncut version by Jeff Leiberman and moderator Howard S. Berger, still gallery and theatrical trailers. Synapse’s limited-edition boxset is nothing you’ve ever seen before from the company with not only a rigid slipbox case but there’s also a cardboard O-slipcover, both housing the clear, inch-thick Blu-ray Amaray case and both showcasing new illustrative, compositional, air brushed artwork of some of the key character scenes and expressions by Wes Benscoter, which is a real thing of beauty. The Amaray cover art is the regular 70’s grade cover art seen on previous releases from DVD to Blu-ray with a reverse side an image of the tripped-out Ed Flemming icon photo of his drug peddling days at Stanford. Overlapping 4K and Blu-ray discs display graphic presses in story moment compositions, though I don’t recall a half-naked woman in the film yet is on the cover. Not quite yet done with the bonus material, the 3rd disc is a 13-track Soundtrack CD of the score and laid overtop is the 11-page liner note booklet from Jeff Lieberman’s 2020 memoir “Day of the Living Me: Adventures of a Subversive Cult Filmmaker From the Golden Age,” plus the CD track listing, production credits, and special thanks on the backside. A reproduction of the original one sheet poster is stored in the insert as a mini-folded poster along with Synapse’s 2024 catalogue for your perusing pleasure. The rated-R film has a runtime of 95 minutes, and the limited edition doesn’t limit itself to a confined playback with region free decoding.

Last Rites: In order to snag a copy of this stellar Synapse set, muscles are required as this heavy boxset feels like 5lbs of software and hardware special features regarding Jeff Leiberman’s drugs-are-bad thriller “Blue Sunshine” with chrome dome, blank-stare killers doing the dormant bidding of 10-years-old recessed LSD.

Trip Out on Synapse’s Limited Edition “Blue Sunshine”

Trapped Inside His Own Body While EVIL Buries Him Alive! “Short Night of Glass Dolls” reviewed! (Celluloid Dreams / 4-Disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Collector’s Run to Grab Celluloid Dreams’ “Short Night of Glass Dolls” on 4K UHD and Blu-ray!

Gregory Moore’s body is found motionless and wide-eyed in a Prague Plaza and is confirmed deceased by local doctors, but Moore is actually alive, paralyzed and trapped inside with only his inner voice able to cry for help.  As his mind races about how to communicate with those around him, Moore must recall the previous days events to see how he ended up this way.  Days before, the American journalist, currently stationed in Prague and soon to be relocated in another European country once his assignment comes to term, is visited by his beautiful girlfriend Mira and they attend an affluent party hosted by socialite Valinski.  Soon after, Mira disappears from his apartment late a night, leaving all her belongings behind in his apartment and as the police begin to suspect Moore as primary suspect, the journalist uses his trade to discover a powerfully mysterious and sexually depraved organization, known as Klub99, may be behind her disappearance.

Aldo Lado’s written-and-directed murder mystery goes by many Italian and English names:  “Short Night of Glass Dolls,” “La Corta Notte Delle Bambole di Vetro,” “Malastrana,” “La Corta notte delle Farfalle,” “The Short Night of the Butterflies,” and, finally, “Paralyzed.”  Doesn’t matter what you call it, “Short Night of Glass Dolls” needs very little title nomenclature as Lado, a dark sided and rich yarn spinner of Italian cult cinema with credits like “Who Saw Her Die?” and “Last Stop on the Night Train,” debuts his 1971 tale of mystery with precision and style that speaks global themes of affluent power for the sake of retaining that power as well as their youth.  The Italian production is a cross-country affair being filmed in not only Italy but also in Croatia, Slovenia, and Prague and is a production of Doria Cinematografica, Jadran Films, and Dieter Geissler Filmproduktion with Enzo Doria (“Beyond the Door,” “Tentacles”) and Dieter Geissler (“Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!,” “The NeverEnding Story”) as producers.

“Short Night of Glass Dolls’” American protagonist was actually not played by an American but by French actor Jean Sorel with a handsome stached face, bronze swagger, and whose taste of giallo carried into the Lado film after acting in “The Sweet Body of Deborah” and Lucio Fulci’s “A Lizard in Woman’s Skin.”  It’s not surprising or even uncommon for a 1970s through the 1980s Italian production to cast non-native Italians to star and perform as Italy sought foreign talent to be highly marketable abroad and “Short Night of Glass Dolls” is bursting with international talent from America, Yugoslavia, and Sweden to perform alongside Italians.  The only American in the film is the petite and lovely Barbara Bach whose career was mostly a decade and half of Italian films, including “The Great Alligator,” “The Humanoid,” and “Black Belly of the Tarantula.”  Bach’s short stint as Moore’s girlfriend, Mira, is the epitome of innocence and cherished love, an quality lost by Moore because of his work blindness and his philandering with colleague Jessica, “Salon Kitty’s” Ingrid Thulin entrenched into Jessica’s passion for Moore but also keeping a stark low-profile on her looks against Mira with Thulin’s naturally blond hair contained in a colorful headwrap for most of the film.  The love triangle is downplayed from the early revealing signs that Moore may be playing both sides but from the moment Mira vanishes, Moore and Jessica, along with fellow journalist Jacque (Mario Adorf,  “What Have You Done To Your Daughters?”) become a single unit of vocation to find Mira and they bitterness drains from Jessica to just despair by the shocking finale when all the cards laid upon the table.  Lado neatly keeps a tight lid on Klub99’s patrons with only the assures of Valinski as the organization’s ringleader of undisclosed purpose.  José Quaglio (“The Eroticist”) dons well as the oligarchal head keeping a low profile that emerges out like sordid serpentine of perversion and wickedness.  Daniele Dublino, Fabijan Sovagovic, Relja Basic, Piero Vida, and Semka Sokolovic-Bertok are the Croatian and Italian support actors that fill out the cast. 

Aldo Lado’s debut film pins him as a productional prodigy with a naturally gifted cinematic eye and a phenomenal storyteller.  “Short Night of Glass Dolls” sallies forth in an untraditional, nonlinear narrative through the perceptive procession of a paralyzed man’s thoughts and recollections.  That man being journalist Gregory Moore who audiences are first introduced lying motionless in the bushes of the plaza morning and, from the start, Moore is at the mercy of bystanders, medical professionals, and friends who mostly believe he’s dead but, on the inside, is in his thought’s echo chamber screaming for help.  Every frame captures the act and emotion, amplified even more so when Jean Sorel is absolutely still, eyes open, and withstanding forces upon, such as chest compressions, to which he doesn’t even flinch.  Lado finds beauty in the macabre imagery when dead women are laid out nude, splayed with an arrangement of flowers or juxtaposed wet against a dry paved ground.   Lado also doesn’t cater to a fixed position and, instead, tracks the characters with smooth movements, coalescing at times a back-and-forth or side-to-side to get lengthier, more dialogue and dynamically enriched, scenes with director of photography, Giuseppe Russolini (“Firestarter”), achieving a naturally dissemination of lighting and color.  “Short Night of Glass Dolls” is not a film without flaws as Moore’s investigation takes the easy pickings route as if briefly glancing over the reported missing, naked women list is an automatic ladder to the winner’s circle for unearthing mostly everything of an deprave inner circle of the powerful rich and so Aldo cheats a little to give his story’s theme of flightless butterflies some much needed wings.

Following up on their definitive, carefully curated, stunning release of Giuliano Carnimeo’s 1972 giallo “The Case of the Bloody Iris,” Celluloid Dreams doesn’t pump the breaks delivering their latest “Short Night of Glass Dolls” with an all-encompassing, 4-disc collector’s edition set that includes 4K UHD and Blu-ray. Scanned and restored in 4K from the original camera negative, the UHD is an HVEC encoded BD100 with 2160-pixel resolution and the Blu-ray is AVC encoded BD50 with 1080-pixel resolution. It goes without saying that both transfers are impeccable in their damage and blight free form for those who might have owned or once owned the cropped, VHS-sourced release under one of its many titles, “Paralyzed.” The grading blends a natural, dynamic pop with peppered psychedelic trips down the dark rabbit hole with Klubb99 is open for business and the color is diffused with balanced, natural saturation, adapting to lighting of all varieties. UHD offers a richer depth of focus with the increased pixel Dolby Vision seizing better delimitation around objects, but that doesn’t mean the Blu-ray doesn’t do the same, the UHD just enhances it by a quarter approximate percentage, while still keeping healthy, transpicuous grain. Two fidelity-true 1.0 DTS-HD offers mostly a dialogue entrenched mix that, audibly, has an imbalance against a rather omitted ambience and that’s not the release’s doing but rather a lack of Foley work amongst an ADR English or Italian track. Ambience hits where it counts but there are times when establishing shots or slow pans of Prague go nearly into a coma state, letting the dialogue and the renowned Ennio Morricone’s piano, triangle, and melodic vocal score take flight through the course of the mystery. English subtitles are available for the Italian language track. Disc one and two not only contain the feature but also contain identical extras with writer-director Aldo Lado & and Freak-O-Rama’s Frederico Caddeo feature-running commentary, a second parallel commentary track with Celluloid Dream’s founder Guido Henkel, an assortment of trailers labeled as grindhouse, Italian, English, and the Catalepsis, with an isolated score that pedestals Ennio Morricone’s score. Disc three delves into the Italian-language, English-subtitled feature documentaries and featurettes with a 2015 archived interview The Nights of Malastrana, clocking in over 100 minutes, that have isolated discussions with Aldo Lado and actor Jean Sorel, All About Aldo is another archived interview with the director circa 2018, The Quest for Money is an interview with producer Enzo Doria, To Italy and Back touches base with producer Dieter Geissler’s perspective and historical context, The Most Beautiful Voice in the World interviews Italian singer Edda Dell’Orso’s haunting vocalizations on Morricone’s score, Cuts Like a Knife speaks to editor Mario Morra, the Flying Maciste Brothers’ video essay The Man on the Bridge: Philosophy, Perception and Imprisonment in Aldo Lado’s ‘Short Night of Glass Dolls,’ the alternate title Malastrana’s German export credits, and an image gallery. Finally, disc four brings the encoded special features home with not one, but two alternate cuts of the film, a 35mm Grindhouse version and the cropped Paralyzed VHS version. If you thought the encoded special features weren’t hefty enough, Celluloid Dream’s physical presence is certainly imposing with a rigid slip box with newly designed cover compositional cover art on back and front, a massive 64-page color picture and poster booklet features a retrospective essay from Andy Marshall-Roberts as well as reprinted column and magazine reviews from the film’s initial release, and, of course, the thick Amaray case, which is surprising in the traditional Blu-ray blue rather than the 4K UHD black. The cover art is an original rendition that brings all theme elements of giallo into the illustrated fold in circling chaos of catalepsy with the reverse side displaying the same image but titled in Italian. Inside, an advert for “The Case of the Blood Iris” and their upcoming third title “La Tarantola dal Ventre Nero” is inserted. The 4K is region free while the Blu-ray is hard coded region A. The unrated main feature has a runtime of 97 minutes.

Last Rites: Celluloid Dreams pursues excellence and strikes twice achieving it with a heart-and-soul poured release that by far has blown all other limited-edition copies, collector sets, definitive releases out of the water and “Short Night of Glass Dolls” deserves every bit of the attention.

Collector’s Run to Grab Celluloid Dreams’ “Short Night of Glass Dolls” on 4K UHD and Blu-ray!

Rage EVIL Leads to A Legion of Drone Dwarfs! “The Brood” reviewed! (Second Sight / 4K UHD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Brood” Available Now from Second Sight!

After a series of mentally abusive behavior, Frank Carveth’s wife Nola resides under the unorthodox psychology of Dr. Hal Raglan whose controversial impersonation techniques to break down his patients’ dissociative psychological hangups and destructive blocks.  After months of therapy and witnessing Dr. Raglan’s methods in action, Frank is ready to pull the plug on the doctor’s sideshow sessions he deems are doing more harm than good when his daughter shows signs of physical abuse after a visit with her mother.  The prolonged verbal bout to get his wife out of Raglan’s care leads to Frank confiding in Nola’s mother who is found brutally murdered soon after.  When Nola’s estranged father comes into town to oversee the burial arrangements, he’s also brutally murdered.  Frank begins to connect pieces, theorizing that Dr. Raglan’s procedures and the murders may be linked and as he investigates further, the truth is more terrifying than he could ever imagine. 

Surging with emotional turmoil through a bitter divorce with ex-wife Margaret Hindson, Canadian body-horror director David Cronenberg pulled the rancorous inspiration from that turbulent time to write the originial screenplay for “The Brood,” a 1979 released thriller between an estranged couple, the effect of their ascending troubles upon their only child during the separation, and the sort of radical and systematic behaviors and practices used to reform a relationship bond that actually divides the emotional expanse even further.  Sprinkle a little of the unknown and grotesque abilities of unnatural corporeal world in there and you have yourself one hell of a dysfunctional and undomesticated horror only the unconventional David Cronenberg could conjure.  “The Brood” is produced by Claude Héroux, who would go on to produce Cronenberg’s next series of films, “Scanners” and “Videodrome,” and the Ontario filmed production is a studio venture from the CFDC (Canadian Film Development Corporation), Elgin International Films, and Mutual Productions.

Art Hindle is in the role of Frank Carveth, a father initially skeptical and frustrated with his wife’s supervised treatment and care.  The “Black Christmas” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” actor Hindle plays the role of a hinged investigative husband-parent involved into something far more unbelievable than initially imagined.  Next to his on screen dazed and mentally tarnished wife by Samantha Eggar, of “The Exterminator” and “Demonoid,” Hindle enacts normal responses that carry over into extreme situations when those around him – his mother-in-law (Nuala Fitzgerald, “Obsession”), his father-in-law (Henry Beckman, “Side Roads”), and his daughter’s teacher (Susan Hogan, “Phobia”) who might have had a little something-something with while on the rocks with the misses – dies a violent death at the hands of kid-sized mutants that resemble, partially, his own daughter Candace (Cindy Hinds, “The Dead Zone”).  As Nola Carveth, Eggars is only present in a few scenes alongside Dr. Raglan, played by the formidable British actor Oliver Reed (“Paranoiac,” “Gladiator”), as a staring into space, emotionally compromised woman struggling to cope with her past that makes her angry and upset and, in turn, makes her inexplicably conjure do-bidders in the birthing means of advanced evolution or in a parallelism to eusocial insects, like bees or ants.  Reed is the monkey in the middle of all of this between fending off Frank Carveth who challenges the results of his unorthodox psychological methods while also using those methods to unearth the root cause of Nola Carveth’s strange and unusual behavior and, eventual, psychic abilities.  Reeds delivers his typical stoic indifference which makes him ideal for a confident character of the scientific community eager for results rather than feeding his motivations with emotional fodder by empathizing with Carveth’s concerns.  Gary McKeehan (“Rabid”) and Robert A. Silverman (“Naked Lunch”) costar.

In his 50-year plus career, David Cronenberg has evolved in style, substance, and story that dip into more of alternate universes and deliver new ways to blend the future into an organic composite with commercial and social sub context.  While technology and personal and professional growth have developed the director into what he has accomplished and known for today, especially on the verge of his latest release with the living and dead connection theme in “The Shrouds,”  the core of what David Cronenberg does best and still does today has an etiology leading back to his earlier work and “The Brood” is definitely an archetype of his niche.  Cronenberg works the narrative up to his reveal of body horror, and “The Brood” is dangerously on the edge of being atypical, subjecting audiences to more of a buildup in the story and the delimitation of character  disclosure without a steady course of the maladjusted, mutated or modified human body as the villain or the escape, only for that theme to be quasi hinted and then unveiled at the end in a shocking reveal.  “The Brood” plays more of the slasher tones, using the children, dwarfs, or however you want to describe the little, mutant minions to be unknown villain tropes, even when one is laid up on a morgue slab for examination of its biology, or lack thereof.  Cronenberg’s directed ambiguity tees up one of the best endings of his career and, perhaps, even horror cinema as “The Brood” is queen sized stomach-churner, literally.

David Cronenberg’s “The Brood” arrives in 4K on a Ultra HD Blu-ray from UK boutique label Second Sight Films.  The BD100 is HEVC encoded with a 4K resolution or a pixel count of 2160 with Dolby Vision HDR10 and presented in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  On the back cover, the 4K restoration is approved by David Cronenberg.  There’s definitively a more positive treatment of the restored transfer that brightens with a slightly tweaked color grading compared to other DVD or Blu-ray releases, improving delineation as well as rectifying intended details to burst through what’s been long frustrating by a darkened wall of low-resolution definition.  Retaining and sustaining cinema coarse grain, the picture looks and feels incredibly natural without the presence of compromising touchups and smoothing overs that do more harm than good in the plastic-like approach to restoration.  The UHD reinforces the coloring with vibrant richness and range, boosting the once little Canadian film that could into an expensive-appearing optical overhaul that puts to shame previously shelved videos.  Audio fidelity is too retained with a LPCM 1.0 mono that although funnels through a single output is more than an adequate mix all in thanks to the competent sound engineering of Peter Burgess and team to amalgamate recorded sound and post-production ADR into a brawny singular unit that meshes nicely.  Dialogue foots the bill as a clean and clear presentation, the ambient sound design renders distinctly over without ambiguity, and longtime David Cronenberg collaborator and friend Howard Shore conducts an orchestra score that breaks through and keeps the course with an unforgettable amount of tension build.  English subtitles are available.  Special features are aplenty with a new audio commentary by film critics and historians Martyn Conterio and Kat Ellinger, a second commentary with film academic William Beard, interviews with actors Art Hindle and Cindy Hinds moderated by Fangoria’s editor Chris Alexander Meet the Carveths, an interview with executive producer Pierre David Producing the Brood, interview with cinematographer Mark Irwin The Look of Rage, interview with composer Howard Shore Scoring the Brood, an interview with actor Robert A Silverman Character for Cronenberg, a new video essay by film journalist Leigh Singer Anger Management: Cronenberg’s Brood and Shapes of Cinematic Rage, and an archived David Cronenberg interview The Early Years.  The standard Second Sight release comes in the traditional 4K UHD black Amaray case with new unnamed, unsigned illustrated cover art.  The UK certified 18 film is presented region free in this release and has a runtime of 92 minutes. 

Last Rites:  Cronenberg’s play on the word Brood is next level genius with litter rage as a result of mental health and a broken home.  The director’s filmic roots have proved time-and-time again his mastery of moviemaking as his body horror and thought-inducing stories, intermixed with social commentary, are complex visual and narrative devices braised an organic edge. 

“The Brood” Available Now from Second Sight!