Brief thoughts on some genre movies released on Blu-ray by Arrow Video, plus a couple of interesting books about the making of Cy Endfield’s Zulu and Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.
Twilight Time offer a thriller maligned on its initial release, a harsh western directed by an Englishman in Spain, and a sprawling Hollywood epic which was one of the last of the big ’60s roadshow productions.
Recent viewing ranges from classic noir to mediocre ’80s thriller, from low budget horror to a documentary about one of the great craftsmen of fantasy film.
Nazis and vampires have been popular subjects for exploitation for decades in a range of genres from the Gothic to epic SF and paranoid b-movie thriller.
Another eclectic selection from my recent viewing, from an old fondly remembered BBC sci-fi series to an unsettling French psychological thriller, from a nasty John Frankenheimer thriller to a pair of atypical Rossellini features striving to break out of the confines of neorealism.
Criterion releases Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950) in a superb Blu-ray edition with plentiful special features to illuminate this bleak masterpiece about masculine insecurity and the roots of violence.
Three fascinating rediscovered movies suggest once again that the demise of DVD and Blu-ray isn’t happening anytime soon, even if the major distributors are shying away from the format; passionate smaller boutique companies are keeping it alive for those of us who who still care.
Britain’s Network are releasing a lot of previously hard to find movies on disk. Two new Blu-rays, Peter Yates’ Robbery and Val Guest’s 80,000 Suspects, resurrect a couple of interesting titles from the ’60s.
Twilight Time revive Gordon Douglas’ The Detective starring Frank Sinatra and Michael Winner’s Scorpio starring Burt Lancaster, a couple of largely forgotten movies from the late ’60s and early ’70s in editions which highlight their interest as time capsules of attitudes and filmmaking styles which have since all but disappeared; and revisit Mysterious Island, one of Ray Harryhausen’s better movies, with a new edition featuring some interesting supplements.