D.A. Pennebaker & Chris Hegedus’ Town Bloody Hall (1979):
Criterion Blu-ray review

Feminism and masculinity go toe-toe-toe in Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker's Town Bloody Hall (1979)

In D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ Town Bloody Hall (1979), the raggedness of the film – shot on the fly in 16mm – perfectly captures the chaos of the event it documents, a fractious panel held in New York on April 30, 1971, in which four feminists were pitted against Normal Mailer, who had just published The Prisoner of Sex, his problematic response to the feminist movement. Criterion gives the scrappy film a 4K restoration and loads the disk with fascinating contextual supplements.

Who are we to laugh at the past?

Peter Falk in his first starring role as Nico in Julian Roffman's The Bloody Brood (1959)

We tend to feel superior to the styles, attitudes and behaviour of earlier generations, forgetting that we’ll probably look ridiculous to those who come after us. Two Kino Lorber Blu-rays, Julian Roffman’s The Bloody Brood (1959) and Robert Thom’s Cult of the Damned (1969), offer interesting time capsules.

Sex-Death-Exploitation-Art

Jörg Buttgereit’s transgressive films are notorious for their gore and disturbing subject matter – murder, suicide, necrophilia – yet for all their graphic exploitation imagery, they display genuine artistry and a serious perspective on life, death and the emotional and psychological ties which bind being and non-being.

Indicator’s Hammer Vol. 4: Faces of Fear

... at the perfect body (Michael Gwynn) the Baron (Peter Cushing) has fashioned for him in Terence Fisher's The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)

With Hammer Vol. 4: Faces of Fear, Indicator continue to prove themselves one of the finest companies producing exceptional Blu-ray editions of a wide variety of genres. This new set includes three of the studio’s finest features, each very different from the others, plus an interesting misfire. As always, there’s an almost overwhelming quantity of supplementary material to provide background and critical assessments for each film.

Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957): Criterion Blu-ray review

Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes (Andy Griffith performs in a smalltown Arkansas jail in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957)

The Criterion Collection presents a new 4K restoration of Elia Kazan’s best film, A Face in the Crowd (1957). The excellent image showcases two of the finest performances of the 1950s: Andy Griffith in his screen debut as the countryboy-turned-demagogue Lonesome Rhodes and Patricia Neal as the smalltown radio reporter who discovers him and facilitates his rise to national stardom.

British black-and-white fantasies

Members of a British Army bomb disposal squad inspect the interior of the alien craft in Nigel Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit (1959)

Two excellent recent Blu-ray releases illuminate different strains of British fantasy. They Came to a City (1944), written by J.B. Priestley and directed by Basil Dearden is a Utopian political fable proposing a new Socialist society for post-war Britain, while Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass and the Pit (1959) spins an epic tale of human evolution and our innate propensity for violence through the story of an ancient spaceship discovered buried beneath London.

Adapting Clive Barker

Tony Todd's killer ghost schemes to destroy Helen (Virginia Madsen)'s complacent life so she'll have to join him in Bernard Rose's Clive Barker adaptation Candyman (1992)

Clive Barker’s distinctive prose style, while it creates vivid and highly visual stories, is difficult to transform into movies because the themes and meanings of the stories are strangely abstract. While Barker himself has been his own most successful adapter, there have been many attempts to capture his vision on film – some better than others. George Pavlou’s Rawhead Rex (1986) misses the mark, but Bernard Rose’s Candyman almost succeeds but is diverted by moving the story from Liverpool to Chicago.

Blasts from the past

Michael Curtiz’s The Breaking Point (1950):
Criterion Blu-ray review

The Fabulous World of Karel Zeman

The Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing (1990):
Criterion Blu-ray review

Seeing the world in black-and-white … again

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