Columbia Noir #6: The Whistler: Indicator Blu-ray review

Things go very wrong for trucker Steve Reynolds (Richard Dix) in William Clemens' The Thirteenth Hour (1947)

Indicator’s latest box set of noir B-movies is devoted to Columbia’s series adapted from a popular radio show in which the mysterious Whistler observes and comments on the fates of various characters whose lives go off the rails. In the first seven movies, character actor Richard Dix suffers a variety of situations, sometimes as victim, sometimes as the perpetrator of murder; after the actor’s death, the studio made one more film, replacing him with the bland Michael Duane, before retiring the Whistler for good.

Aussie horror and Mexican luchadores and luchadoras from Indicator

Masked women wrestlers combat a cult of shape-changing witches in Rene Cardona's The Panther Women (1967)

Indicator continue to raise Mexican genre movies from obscurity with three recent limited editions of films by the prolific Rene Cardona Sr.: The Panther Women (1967), The Bat Woman (1968) and Santo vs the Riders of Terror (1970). In addition, they give substantial upgrades to a pair of early Ozploitation features – Richard Franklin’s Patrick (1978) and Simon Wincer’s Snapshot (1979).

Resurrecting a disparaged monster: Reptilicus (1961) in 4K

The monster rampages through Copenhagen in Reptilicus (1961)

Frequently derided as the worst giant-monster-on-a-rampage movie ever made, Reptilicus (1961) gets a 4K restoration from Vinegar Syndrome in a three-disk, dual-format set which presents both the more familiar, shorter U.S. cut credited to Sidney W. Pink and the longer Danish-language version directed by Poul Bang. The effects are bargain-basement, but the movie has genuine charm and a few surprisingly impressive sequences.

Italian murders and Ninja intrigue from Radiance

Souvenir "art" becomes an instrument of murder in Luigi Comencini’s The Sunday Woman (1975)

Recent Radiance releases include a pair of Italian police procedurals – Pietro Germi’s neorealist noit The Facts of Murder (1959) and Luigi Comencini’s satire on bourgeois hypocrisy The Sunday Woman (1975) – and some traditional and new wave martial arts from Japan with Yasuharu Hasebe’s pop-art Black Tight Killers (1966) and a set of the first three movies in Daiei’s Shinobi series of bleak Ninja movies, Satsuo Yamamoto’s Band of Assassins (1962) and Revenge (1963) and Kazuo Mori’s Ressurection (1963). And speaking of Ninjas, Neon Eagle have released a deluxe two-disk set of Godfrey Ho’s patch-job Ninja Terminator (1964) and the original Korean movie cannibalized by Ho, Kim Si-hyun’s The Univited Guest of the Star Ferry.

Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (1964): Criterion Blu-ray review

Manoel (Geraldo Del Rey) joins the outlaw band of cangaceiro Corisco (Othon Bastos) in Glauber Rocha's Black God, White Devil (1964)

Criterion’s two-disk Blu-ray release of Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (1964) not only presents and impressive restoration of a key film in Brazilian cinema; it anchor’s an impressive survey of the Cinema Novo movement which transformed that cinema in the early 1960s, with two feature-length documentaries – on Rocha himself and the larger movement – a commentary by the film’s restoration supervisor, and a 1964 documentary about the cangaceiro outlaws who formed a crucial element in the background of Rocha’s feature.

Sam Peckinpah’s swansong: The Osterman Weekend (1983)

Ali Tanner (Meg Foster) fights for her child in Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend (1983)

Imprint’s two-disk limited edition of Sam Peckinpah’s final film, The Osterman Weekend (1983), presents both the theatrical cut and the version Peckinpah initially handed to the producers – while there are numerous differences in the editing, neither version can make the murky story coherent. Some well-staged scenes and an interesting cast fail to breathe life into the Cold War paranoia and the filmmaker’s career ends with an air of disinterest and exhaustion.

Organized crime, political corruption and bourgeois complicity: four Italian Mafia movies

Cesare Mori is sent to Sicily by Mussolini to break the power of the Mafia in Pasquale Squitieri's The Iron Prefect (1977)

Radiance maintains its high standard with a pair of releases devoted to Italian films which tackle the intricate interconnections between organized crime, politics and civil society. Cosa Nostra (1968-75) is a three-disk set of collaborations between director Damiano Damiani and star Franco Nero which approach the theme using different genre tropes, while Pasquale Squitieri’s The Iron Deputy (1977) presents historical context with the fact-based story of a crusading official who uses brutal methods to break the hold of the Mafia on Sicilian society in the 1920s.

Emilio Fernández’s Victimas del pecado (Victims of Sin, 1951): Criterion Blu-ray review

Emilio Fernández’s Victimas del pecado (Victims of Sin, 1951), newly restored in 4K from the original nitrate negative, is a Mexican musical melodrama loaded with tragedy punctuated with ecstatic dance numbers from star Ninón Sevilla, who plays a cabaret dancer whose life is upended when she takes responsibility for an abandoned baby. Taut direction by Fernández and stunning photography by the masterful Gabriel Figueroa provide a remarkable showcase for Sevilla’s considerable talent.

Spring 2024 viewing, part three

Violent J (Joseph Bruce) is perplexed that the government would designate him and his fans as a criminal gang in Tom Putnam & Brenna Sanchez’s The United States of Insanity (2021)

Yet more recent viewing, ranging from several documentaries about the intertwining of personal identity and the cultural products we attach ourselves to and consume to unsettling explorations of sex, violence and misogyny and an ambitious, though not entirely successful, work of folk horror from Switzerland.

Blasts from the past

Criterion Blu-ray review: Fellini Satyricon (1969)

Podcasting again …

Adapting Clive Barker

Nuclear Madness

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