Fall 2024 viewing round-up, part three

Henry Creedlow (Jason Flemyng) loses his sense of identity in George A. Romero's Bruiser (2000)

Recent viewing includes a mix of horror, sci-fi and social commentary, from George A. Romero’s Bruiser (2000), about an office drone whose social invisibility enables him to exact revenge on his abusers, to a pair of Mexican Gothic fantasies about a vampire count; from an Aussie Indiana Jones rip-off to late effects artist David Allen’s passion project The Primevals, left unfinished at his death in 1999 but now completed by his friends.

Roberto Gavaldón’s Untouched (Sombra Verde, 1954) on Blu-ray from Indicator

Yáscara (Ariadne Welter), raised far from society, expresses an unconstrained eroticism in Roberto Gavaldón's Untouched (1954)

Indicator have taken a break from their recent spate of Mexican genre movies by dipping a little deeper into the Calderón family archives. Untouched (Sombra Verde, 1954) is a torrid romantic melodrama with allegorical notes which trades in the urban noir of a movie like Emilio Fernández’s Victims of Sin (1950) for the primal jungle of Veracruz. Both were produced by Guillermo Calderón and show him pushing against the boundaries of censorship and testing how far cinema could push a frank depiction of sexuality in a society still very much under the sway of the Catholic Church.

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).

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.

DVD diary: September – part two

Dark Of The Sun (Jack Cardiff, 1968) The great cinematographer Jack Cardiff, responsible for the dazzling imagery of Michael Powell’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948), and Albert Lewin’s Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), among many others, was also a director. One of my earliest […]

Blasts from the past

Reading Movie History

Blu-rays from Kino Lorber

Cheap sci-fi and hardboiled noir in 3D

Criterion Blu-ray review: Orson Welles’ The Immortal Story (1968)

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