Restored Films | Cagey Films

Resurrecting a pre-tax shelter classic: The Rainbow Boys (1973)

Posted on December 24, 2022December 24, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Donald Pleasence, Don Calfa and Kate Reid hit the road in search of gold in Gerald Potterton's The Rainbow Boys (1973)

A relatively new label, Canadian International Pictures, has resurrected Gerald Potterton’s light and charming character-based comedy The Rainbow Boys (1973) in a fine Blu-ray edition with substantial extras. Another CIP release showcases Potterton’s National Film Board short The Railrodder (1965), a travelogue starring Buster Keaton towards the end of his life, along with John Spotton’s documentary about the making of the short, Buster Keaton Rides Again (1965), and another NFB travelogue, Eugene Boyko’s Helicopter Canada (1966), made to mark the country’s centennial.

Revisiting two more old favourites

Posted on November 23, 2022November 19, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) stands wrapped in a towel at the top of the stairs in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944)

Excellent Blu-ray editions from Criterion and the BFI respectively do full justice to Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953), two very dark examinations of the post-war crisis of masculinity.

James Whale’s Show Boat (1936): music and race in Golden Age Hollywood

Posted on November 2, 2022November 1, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Black labour with echoes of slavery in James Whale's Show Boat (1936)

Although now he’s best-known for his four witty Gothic horror movies – Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein – Show Boat (1936) is arguably James Whale’s crowning achievement as a filmmaker. One of the decade’s great musicals, it is also one of the most complex and nuanced treatments of race and its impact on American culture produced at the height of Hollywood’s studio era. Criterion’s Blu-ray does full justice to the film’s intrinsic qualities and historical importance.

George A. Romero’s The Amusement Park (1975)

Posted on October 19, 2022October 15, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

The rediscovery of a film commissioned by Lutheran Services from Pittsburgh’s The Latent Image company in 1975 shines a light on a transitional stage of George A. Romero’s career. The Amusement Park transforms a PSA about neglect of the elderly into a bleak nightmare of abuse and paranoia as Lincoln Maazel (Tata Cuda in Martin [1976]) is subjected to disdain, neglect and outright violence at a rundown amusement park.

David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on October 12, 2022October 12, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Mystery Man (Robert Blake) undermines Fred (Bill Pullman)'s sense of reality in David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997)

Criterion’s new 4K restoration of David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1996) captures all the film’s dark and unsettling mysteries with an impressive image and ominous soundscape.

The Pemini Organisation on Blu-ray from Indicator

Posted on October 5, 2022October 4, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

John Drummond (Edward Woodward) expresses his grief through violence in Peter Crane's Hunted (1972)

Indicator unearth an obscure corner of ’70s British cinema with a box set of the three movies made by recent filmschool graduates who formed a production company called The Pemini Organisation. Despite extremely low budgets, director Peter Crane and writer Michael Sloan benefited from skilled technicians and high-profile casts who give the films professional polish; but the vagaries of commercial distribution made them disappear until this revival on disk fifty years later.

World Cinema Project 4: Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on September 28, 2022September 27, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Servant Kanizak (Shohreh Aghdashlou) schemes for power in Mohammad Reza Aslani’s Chess of the Wind (1979)

With their fourth set of World Cinema Project restorations, Criterion again present a fascinating collection of films from different periods and different cultures: two features from post-colonial Africa which illuminate the complex effects of tradition distorted by colonial influences; a South American movie which also deals with colonialism and the exploitation of labour; a pre-war Hungarian feature about two women struggling to survive in a city towards the end of the Depression; an Indian film exploring myth and the politics of Independence and partition through music and dance; and a pre-revolutionary film from Iran which uses melodrama as a metaphor for the nation’s transition from feudalism to modernity.

Digital resurrection

Posted on August 17, 2022August 15, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

The blood-drinking witch (Henriette Gerard) peers into hero Allan Gray (Nicholas de Gunzburg)'s coffin in Carl Th. Dreyer's Vampyr (1932)

Digital tools put in service of restoring films from a century ago produce spectacular results with Blu-rays of Carl Th. Dreyer’s uncanny Vampyr (1932) and Louis Feuillade’s serial Tih-Minh (1919).

Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein (1976): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on May 25, 2022May 23, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Robert Klein (Alain Delon) takes the place of the other Klein on the transport to Auschwitz in Joseph Losey's Mr. Klein (1976)

Criterion’s new Blu-ray release of Joseph Losey’s chilling allegory of identity disintegrating under the pressure of anti-Semitism in Occupied France features a new 4K transfer from the original negative and includes three-and-a-half hours of supplements about the production and the real history in which the story is grounded.

Early Mexican horror from Indicator

Posted on April 27, 2022April 27, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Cristina (Marta Roel) tries to overcome Alfonso (Enrique del Campo)'s reticence about betraying Eduardo (Carlos Villatoro) in Fernando de Fuentes’ The Phantom of the Monastery (1934)

Two new releases from Indicator illuminate the origins of Mexican horror (best known from the work of filmmakers like Chano Urueta, Fernando Mendez and Rafael Baladon in the 1950s and ’60s) in the early days of sound in the 1930s when filmmakers first strove to create an indigenous industry rooted in Mexican history and culture. Ramon Peon’s La llorona (1933), rooted in a local folk legend, was the country’s first sound horror movie, while Fernando de Fuentes’ The Phantom of the Monastery (1934) uses a Twilight Zone-like narrative to teach three characters a moral lesson. Both films have been impressively restored on disks which include a commentary and informative featurettes which illuminate their position and influenbce in Mexican cinema.

Tag: Restored Films