Recent big-screen viewing

Young Alena (Natalie Jane) and Benny (Christian Meer) share a terrible secret in Sean Garrity's The Burning Season (2023)

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.

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.

Winter 2024 viewing, part three: Other labels

You don't have to be crazy to do this job, but it helps: Grant Page in Brian Trenchard-Smith's Stunt Rock (1978)

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.

Lost films and alternative histories

A cultured ape (Zain Rahnat) teaches life lessons in Donn Greer's The Rare Blue Apes of Cannibal Isle (1975)

Film restoration is usually seen as an effort to preserve the canon, but there are vast areas of film history which may be less reputable, but still represent significant aspects of the past century’s most popular art form. In their recent six-disk, ten-movie set Lost Picture Show, Vinegar Syndrome highlight their own efforts to unearth and give new life to cheap, obscure, frequently disreputable examples of movies made far from the mainstream – sex. violence, politics and an occasional talking animal are on display in this ragged, sometimes enlightening, sometimes frustrating collection.

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

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

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.

Blasts from the past

Nigel Kneale & British genre television

Vinegar Syndrome Partners

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s La vérité (1960):
Criterion Blu-ray review

Smart Sci-Fi

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