Review | Cagey Films

The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter on Blu-ray from Indicator

Posted on January 10, 2024January 7, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

James Dalton, the Tiger (Tod Slaughter) becomes desperate at the end of George King's The Ticket of Leave Man (1937)

Indicator closed 2023 with one of their finest offerings yet – a four-disk, eight film box set of blood-and-thunder melodramas produced, and mostly directed, by George King and starring the inimitable Tod Slaughter as a roster of heinous villains portrayed with gleeful enthusiasm by an actor who devoted his long career to preserving an art form incubated on Victorian stages and largely fallen out of favour by the time these films preserved it with such relish. With striking restorations, mostly from original nitrate negatives, supplemented with commentaries, interviews and Slaughter-related ephemera, this is definitely the highlight of the past year.

Monsters, killers and existential dread on Blu-ray

Posted on December 27, 2023December 26, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Fatma (Fatma Oussaifi) herself is drawn towards the flames in Youssef Chebbi’s Ashkal: The Tunisian Investigation (2022)

Recent releases cover a range of horrors, from a 4K restoration of the classic Canadian working class slasher My Bloody Valentine (1981) to a 4K restoration of Stephen King’s mad dog tale Cujo (1983) to a pair of low-budget ’70s monsters – Creature From Black Lake (1976) and Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973) to Ashkal (2022), a haunting Tunisian police procedural with supernatural overtones, and World of Giants (1959), an obscure, short-lived TV series about a six-inch tall secret agent.

Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence (1961): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on December 20, 2023December 19, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Documentary background detail in Allen Baron's Blast of Silence (1961)

Shot on a small budget, first-time writer-director-actor Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence (1961) is a taut film noir about an out-of-town hit man beginning to question his career as he closes in on his target in New York a few days before Christmas. Striking documentary images of the city, presented on Criterion’s Blu-ray from a new 4K scan, serve as background for the killer’s existential doubts.

Crime and Horror from Radiance

Posted on December 13, 2023December 12, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Cynthia (Barbara Steele) descends into the cellars in search of answers in Riccardo Freda's The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962)

A sampling of releases from new U.K. label Radiance covers a range of favourite genres from the 1960s and ’70s – from classic Japanese yakuza film Big Time Gambling Boss (Kôsaku Yamashita, 1968), to the American indie horror Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1973); from the Swedish police procedural Man on the Roof (Bo Widerberg, 1976) to a pair of Italian Gothic horrors separated by a decade, the perverse The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (Riccardo Freda, 1962) and The Night of the Devils (Giorgio Ferroni, 1972), a contemporary retelling of the final story from Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (1963); topped off with a revisit to Gordon Hessler’s Scream and Scream Again (1970), which seems to get better every time I see it. All of them come with excellent presentations and a wealth of extras, including commentaries, documentaries, interviews and visual essays.

Recent Noir releases from Indicator and Arrow

Posted on December 6, 2023December 5, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Filmmaker William Wyler was known for his complex compositions in depth in The Desperate Hours (1955)

Indicator’s Universal Noir #2 box set gathers six minor movies from the late 1940s, most of which can only qualify as noir if the definition is severely stretched, while William Wyler’s consummate craft lifts B-movie tropes to the level of art in The Desperate Hours (1955), beautifully restored on Arrow’s new Blu-ray edition.

Don Shebib’s Canadian working class poetry: Goin’ Down the Road (1970) and its sequel

Posted on November 29, 2023November 26, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Friends Joey (Paul Bradley) and Pete (Doug McGrath) search restlessly for a better life in Don Shebib's Goin' Down the Road (1970)

Don Shebib, who died on November 5 at the age of 85, left an indelible mark on Canadian cinema with his first feature, Goin’ Down the Road (1970), a raw, realist depiction of the country’s economic inequalities and the failed dreams of a pair of working class friends who leave impoverished Nova Scotia for the promised land of Toronto.

Claude Chabrol’s La cérémonie (1995): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on November 22, 2023November 20, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire) and Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert) become allies against the bourgeois Lalievres family in Claude Chabrol’s La cérémonie (1995)

Four decades into a career which began with the New Wave, Claude Chabrol delivered a masterpiece with La cérémonie (1995), a psychological mystery adapted from a Ruth Rendell novel. Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert play a pair of working class women whose bitterness and resentment drive them on a collision course with the bourgeois Lelievre family. Criterion’s new Blu-ray edition provides some illuminating supplements on the director and his two stars.

Fall 2023 viewing: Arrow Video

Posted on November 15, 2023March 2, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Cloistermouth (Nicholas Hoye) panics when he realizes his privileged position is threatened in John Mackenzie's Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1971)

A selection of new and slightly older Arrow releases range from ’70s Japanese gangster movies by Kinji Fukasaku to David Cronenberg’s icy adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s Crash (1996), from an early feature by John Mackenzie combining a satire of class with psychological suspense to a sampler of sci-fi and horror movies produced in the ’80s by Charles Band’s Empire International Pictures.

Two Godzilla novellas by Shigeru Kayama

Posted on November 8, 2023November 7, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

A star is born: Big G, woken by an A-bomb test, is very angry in Ishiro Honda's Gojira (1954)

The publication of a pair of novellas aimed at young adults, first published in 1955 and now translated for the first time into English, adds an interesting footnote to the history of Godzilla and restores writer Shigeru Kayama to his key place as the creator of the original story which was adapted by Ishiro Honda and Takeo Murata into the classic Gojira (1954).

Fall 2023 viewing, part four

Posted on November 1, 2023October 31, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Frequently betrayed by those who hire him, Shouhei Narumi (Yusaku Matsuda) stays focused on the job in Toru Murakawa's The Game Trilogy (1978-79)

Crime, violence, sports, noir, international intrigue and political allegory from Kino Lorber and Arrow Video.

Category: Review