My plunge into streaming has been more rewarding than not, catching up with a slew of recent action movies as well as a variety of older movies I missed decades ago, or remember from television screenings back in the ’70s.
Indicator’s new Columbia Horror box set collects six B-movies from the ’30s and ’40s, only half of which can honestly be called horror – the other three are adventure/crime movies. But all of them provide breezy, atmospheric entertainment, with strong casts (including Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Edward Van Sloan, Ralph Bellamy, Rose Hobart, Nina Foch and Fay Wray) and noirish cinematography.
My Fall viewing has been the usual varied mix, with a number of new and classic Japanese movies, John Boorman’s fantasy sequel to The Exorcist, Alex Garland’s uncomfortably prescient depiction of America tearing itself apart, a slice of anti-drug exploitation from the late-’60s, and a surprising discovery from none other than Bert I. Gordon.
Grindhouse Releasing have done a stellar job of resurrecting a little-known low-budget exploitation movie from the early ’70s. Set on the fringes of the film business in Los Angeles, Hollywood 90028 (1973) was the only feature directed by Christina Hornisher who approached the story of a homicidal film cameraman with the cool detachment of a European director and an emphasis on the experience of women being exploited by the industry.
Two new box sets from 88 Films provide an opportunity to re-visit the work of Pete Walker, arguably the best exploitation filmmaker working in England from the late-’60s to the end of the ’70s. The Flesh and Blood Show collects the seven horror movies which are his best-known work, while the Pete Walker Sexploitation Collection includes his first playful features which grew out of years of making sex loops as well as his final film of the ’70s in which the sex takes on a much darker tone.
I don’t get out to a theatre very often these days, so my choices of what to see are more judicious than they used to be, generally the work of directors I’m particularly interested in. The one dud is the latest superfluous entry in a franchise I’ve quite liked – Wes Ball’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – but the rest have been satisfying to some degree: George Miller’s latest apocalyptic action epic, Furiosa; M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, which as usual I liked in contrast to the predictable critical derision: MaXXXine, the conclusion of Ti West’s trilogy starring Mia Goth: and the small Canadian drama The Burning Season by sometime Winnipegger Sean Garrity.
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.
Yet more wide-ranging genre viewing – from classic and modern samurai to spaghetti western and ’40s supernatural noir and ’70s hard-boiled romance, ’50s exploitation horror to Hitler, Bigfoot and haunted 12″ vinyl.
More recent viewing, with excellent restorations of classic fantasies by Arrow – Roger Vadim’s Barbarella (1968) and John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian (1982); a pair of impressive German film school projects – Tilman Singer’s Luz (2018) and Lukas Feigelfeld’s Hagazussa (2017); a couple of entertaining Australian features which mix fiction and documentary in interesting ways – Brian Trenchard-Smith’s Stunt Rock (1978) and Aaron McCann and Dominic Pearce’s Top Knot Detective (2017): and Shredder Orpheus (1990), a low-budget indie version of the Orpheus myth made by Seattle musicians and skateboarders.
Recent Vinegar Syndrome releases offer a range of genres and styles and widely varying degrees of satisfaction – there’s Hong Kong action, Indonesian horror, experimental indie sci-fi, neo-noir and feminist vigilante violence, giant rats, Biblical horror and quite a bit of sex and violence.