By Gary Dretzka Dretzka@moviecitynews.com

The DVD Wrapup: Son of Saul, Phoenix, Losing Ground, Jane Got a Gun, Driftless Area, Packed in a Trunk, Dillinger, Sexploitation, What?, Krampus and more

Son of Saul: Blu-ray

Phoenix: Criterion Collection: Blu-ray

As much as we’d like to put World War II in our rearview mirror and move on to less nightmarish film fodder, the sad truth is that we need constant reminders of what happened then and what could happen again, if hate is allowed to trump cries for peace and sanity. The sick legacy of Third Reich simply refuses to disappear into the fog of history, either in real life or in the movies. What’s amazing is that even 70 years after peace treaties were signed, ever more heart-wrenching stories continue to surface from the conflagration. How many more remain to be told is anyone’s guess. The concurrent release of Son of Saul and Phoenix on DVD/Blu-ray suggests that European historians, writers and filmmakers – the children and grandchildren of the silent generation — still have plenty to say on the subject. Hollywood studios didn’t waste any time lionizing the heroism of American troops in the service of the Allied cause. It wasn’t until Steven Spielberg put audiences directly in the line of fire, during the first half-hour of Saving Private Ryan, that American audiences were forced to come to grips with the fact that John Wayne had died and no longer could shield us from the ugliness of combat. Outside the Soviet Union, where the Red Army’s triumphs were duly celebrated and atrocities ignored, European filmmakers struggled with ways to confront the reality of rampant of anti-Semitism and early appeal of fascism that allowed Nazi forces to cakewalk across borders. For too long, a dark shroud of guilt and shame kept artists from directly addressing the root causes Holocaust and the intricate machinery of death that served Hitler’s madness. Released in 1964, Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker was the first American movie to deal with the Holocaust from the viewpoint of a camp survivor. Typically, though, enforcers of the Production Code, the MPAA and Legion of Decency fretted more over the exposed breasts of two key characters than the good that could come from endorsing the distribution of a necessarily dark drama. It wasn’t until the 1970s, though, that non-documentary films and mini-series found audiences in large enough numbers to support a subgenre of war pictures dedicated to the Holocaust. In 1990, Polish director and screenwriter Agnieszka Holland’s Europa, Europa opened the door for movies that dealt with complex issues pertaining to ethnic identity and survival. Today, finding new ways to interest viewers in Holocaust-themed stories – even those involving doomed dissidents, homosexuals, Gypsies, Slavs and intellectuals — seemingly would be a difficult task for any filmmaker, especially in the long wake of Schindler’s List, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Oscar-winning Life Is Beautiful. Judging simply from such multifaceted European movies as Holland’s In Darkness, Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s Sarah’s Key and Stefan Ruzowitzky’s The Counterfeiters there are many more stories – albeit subtitled — out there to tell.

 

In addition to winning major prizes in nearly every competition in which it was entered – if only in the stopgap categories limited to foreign-language pictures — László Nemes’ breathtaking Holocaust drama, Son of Saul, probably deserved to capture the Academy Award for Best Picture or, at least, be nominated for it. That’s strictly my opinion, but I offer it after finally seeing all of the finalists on the big screen or on Blu-ray. They’re all excellent, but none compares to the wallop delivered by Son of Saul, which also is remarkable for its technical achievements and acting. The setting is Auschwitz-Birkenau, in October of 1944, as the Red Army is advancing on Germany with guns blazing and revenge on its collective mind. Unwilling to admit imminent defeat, Adolph Hitler has ordered the Gestapo to pick up the speed in transporting Jews to concentration camps. So many are being systematically murdered that the crematoriums can’t keep up with the volume and bodies are being stacked up in the open. Saul (Géza Röhrig) is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners forced to assist the Nazis in the rounding up of new arrivals and directing them almost immediately to their deaths. While waiting for them to die, the prisoners were required to retrieve, sort and pile everything left behind by the doomed men, women and children. The Sonderkommandos weren’t exempt from death in the gas chamber, but the Nazis needed all the help they could get in expediting the process and pretending that hands other than Aryan were executing the dirtiest of deeds. Moreover, the cynical policy ensured that survivors would forever debate the morality of Jews serving the Nazis, even faced with death for disobedience, in such a hideous way. Despite the fact that many of the prisoners we meet here already consider themselves to be dead, the strongest among them conspire to sabotage the machinery and kill as many of the guards as they can before, if possible, rendezvousing with the advancing Soviets. Nemes based his story on testimony from camp survivors, repeated viewings of Shoah, and the “Scrolls of Auschwitz.” These were the diaries of members of the Sonderkommando, written and buried before they revolted.

 

Saul considers himself to be one of walking dead, going through the motions until it’s his turn to die. It isn’t until he discovers the body of a teenage boy, left barely breathing after everyone else in the chamber is dragged to the crematoriums, that something ignites a spark of reflection in his brain. Disturbed by what could be a glitch in the system, a German doctor orders Saul to transport the boy to an operating theater where he will be allowed to die in his own time – not long — and have an autopsy performed on him by another Jew forced to comply with the cruelest of commands. After learning that the boy is Hungarian, Saul decides that the boy is his illegitimate son and deserving of a religious burial. For this, he needs to find a rabbi among the multinational crush of prisoners and compel him to recite Kaddish over a single corpse, while ignoring so many others. His single-minded mission convinces Saul’s fellow prisoners that he’s completely mad, even in a place where all madness is relative. While they’re preoccupied with gathering the tools for their uprising and disguising them from the Nazis, as they continue to perform their tasks, Saul interrogates the newly arrived Jews to find a rabbi. Son of Saul, which takes place over the course of 36 hours, isn’t a story of survival or heroism. Instead, Nemes says that it’s about the reality of death and coming to terms with it. Even so, by tightly focusing on the faces, hands and whispered conversations of the living, rather than the dead and dying bodies in the slightly blurred background, the horrors of the gas chambers are almost blessedly muted. A student of Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr, a master of framing and long uninterrupted tracking shots, Nemes conspires with cinematographer Mátyás Erdély and sound designer Tamás Zányi to keep the viewer trapped in the immediacy of Saul’s world. The effect is mesmerizing. The drab color scheme argues, as well, that Auschwitz-Birkenau was a place the sun’s rays didn’t reach. Comprehensive, informative and sometimes philosophical commentary is contributed by Nemes, Röhrig, and Erdély. There’s also a deleted scene and a post-screening Q&A at the Museum of Tolerance, with the same participants. Admirers of Son of Saul should consider it to be required viewing.

 

German writer/director Christian Petzold takes a very different approach to his Holocaust-inspired, Phoenix, adopted from a novel by Hubert Monteilhet. Set in Berlin, in the early days of the Allied occupation, it measures the pain and guilt experienced by two women who never thought they’d survive, let alone return home. Before she was gathered up by the Gestapo, Nelly (Nina Hoss) was a nightclub singer in Berlin. Her souvenir from Auschwitz is a face disfigured by a bullet wound after its liberation. Travelling in the care of a protective friend, Lene (Nina Kunzendorf), Nelly has inherited enough money from a deported family member to pay for a plastic surgery operation that she knows will make her a stranger to herself. After Nelly is completely healed and they get their affairs in order, the women plan to buy an apartment in Haifa and quit Germany for good. Before that, however, Nelly wants to reunite with her former husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), who survived the war by ratting out her out, along with other Jewish friends. As the picture opens, however, she isn’t aware of the fact that it was his deceit that led the Gestapo to her. In a decidedly Hitchcock-inspired twist, Nelly’s reconstructed face allows her to sidle up to her onetime pianist, who’s employed as a janitor in the Phoenix cabaret, without recognizing her. Neither does Nelly reveal herself when Johnny enlists her in a plan to recover property confiscated from his wife after her arrest. This requires Johnny to teach his ex-wife how to act, walk and write as she did when they were together. The similarities give Johnny pause, but only momentarily. Such parasitic opportunists probably were as common in post-war Berlin as pigeons or rats. The more Nelly learns about Johnny’s backstabbing in her absence, the more we want to see her exact revenge on him. But, will she succumb to long-dormant romance … and, given the Hitchcockian plotting, how would she do it? Then, too, why aren’t Nelly and Lene already in Haifa? Even though, like Saul, they feel as if they’ve already died and are uncomfortable among the living, the payoff to these questions is very satisfying. Another thing that makes Phoenix special is re-creation of post-war Berlin, with special attention given to the nightclub, which now caters to GIs looking for a taste of the divine decadence forbidden by the Nazis. Personally, I was surprised not only that such places existed so soon after the war, but also that Nelly was confident that she’d recover wealth confiscated by the Nazis. In this, we probably know more about post-war Germany than a survivor possibly could. In addition to the Hitchcock touch, Petzold borrowed ideas from the Douglas Sirk playbook, Germany Year Zero and Out of the Past. Phoenix is the fifth out of his seven feature films to feature the wondrously talented Hoss and the second film in a row, after Barbara (2012), to star Hoss and Zehrfeld in the leading roles. Petzold won the FIPRESCI Prize at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and Hoss was voted top actress at several other events. The Criterion Collection package adds a conversation with Petzold and Hoss; an interview with cinematographer Hans Fromm; a making-of featurette; and an essay by critic Michael Koresky.

 

Losing Ground: Blu-ray

Founded in 1990, Dennis Doros and Amy Heller’s Milestone Films has received several prestigious awards for its restoration, preservation and release of such endangered and rarely seen movies as Alfred Hitchcock’s Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache, Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles, Lionel Rogosin’s On the Bowery, Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba, Marcel Ophuls’s The Sorrow and the Pity, the Mariposa Film Group’s Word is Out, Shirley Clarke’s The Connection and Ornette: Made in America. In December, 2012, Milestone became the first-ever two-time winner of the New York Film Critics Circle’s Special Award, this time for its work in restoring, preserving and distributing the films of iconoclast Clarke, whose Portrait of Jason also was greeted warmly by collectors and buffs. The company’s latest reclamation project, Losing Ground, is being acclaimed for re-introducing filmmaker Kathleen Collins to a new generation of viewers, many of whom have grown accustomed to not seeing minority actors and themes represented on screen. The low-budget 1982 drama was one of the first features directed by an African-American woman. If it didn’t find distribution in the United States, the fault probably can be laid at the feet of distributors whose pre-conceived notions of what black audiences would pay to see was tilted toward Blaxploitation flicks and comedies with such popular stars as Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. Losing Ground reflects a completely different aspect of the African-American experience, then and now. Closer thematically to films of the French New Wave and intimate dramas of Ingmar Bergman and John Cassavetes, it profiles the marriage of a black philosophy professor (Seret Scott) at a New York college and an uncompromising abstract painter (Bill Gunn), who’s just sold his first piece to a major gallery. Although Sara is working on a paper about the “ecstatic experience” in religious rites, she’s as shy, sober and strait-laced as they come. By contrast, Victor is the kind of guy who wears his emotions on his sleeve and isn’t reluctant to push Sara into uncomfortable positions to share his exuberance. That summer, he convinces her to take a break from the city by joining him in a slightly rundown estate in an artists’ colony along the Hudson River in upstate New York. The quaint little town appears to be a magnet for Puerto Rican women and their families, seemingly on a full-time basis. If there’s nothing abstract in the scenery and faces available to Victor here, he’s reinvigorated by nature and colors that don’t come in geometric forms in the city. For her part, Sara would feel more comfortable in a town able to accommodate her needs for a library suited to her academic pursuits. (The Internet was a distant dream, if even that.) Not surprisingly, perhaps, Victor latches onto a young Puerto Rican neighbor, Celia (Maritza Rivera), who seemingly is the polar opposite of his wife and agrees to model for him. While Sara is in the city doing some research, she’s approached by a student who’s making a film that requires some dancing and dramatic displays of emotion. At first reluctant, Sara’s further encouraged by a dashing black actor, Duke (Duane Jones, star of the original Night of the Living Dead), who seems determined to bring out the blackness in her. They’re paired in a retelling of the “Frankie and Johnny” tragedy, which demands she let her hair down. Meanwhile, Victor’s attempting to stoke some of the Latin fire in Celia, both on canvas and over wine in the late afternoon and evenings, surrounded by old-growth trees.

 

Without going into detail, let’s just say that the tables eventually get turned on the Sara and Victor, in ways consistent with their characters’ personal trajectories and some narrative judo on Collins’ part, which provides a surprisingly satisfying ending. If Victor acts pretty much like any temporarily unattached and sexually frustrated man would in similar circumstances – or in an Eric Rohmer film, for that matter — Sara clearly is a stand-in for Collins, who was educated in France and became involved with SNCC in the civil-rights campaigns. She admits as much in the fascinating interview attached to the Blu-ray bonus package. This would be an appropriate time to point out that the filmmaker would succumb to cancer, in 1988, at age 46. The consistently challenging process of financing, producing and finding a distributor for Losing Ground must have taken its toll on her, especially when compared to her work in the theater and teaching at the college level. The Milestone package also contains her first film, the 50-minute The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy, which she based on episodes from “Cruz Chronicles,” a “novel of adventure and close calls” by Henry Roth. In it, three mischievous Puerto Rican lads find a summer job fixing up the once grand riverside home of an elderly stage actress. It takes a while for them warm to each other’s presence, as they share almost nothing in common. While the boys are directed by the practical, if ethereal advice of their dead father, Miss Malloy frequently gets lost in memories of a glorious past. It’s a lovely story, practically unseen since being made in 1980. Collins’ creative partner, cinematographer Ronald K. Gray, is represented by the 7-minute 1976 short, “Transmagnifican Dambamuality.” Lengthy interviews with Gray, playwright/actor Seret Scott and daughter, Nina Lopez Collins, add to the experience, as does a vintage 1982 interview with Kathleen Collins at Indiana University, in which the emphasis is on teaching.

 

Jane Got a Gun: Blu-ray

In Gavin O’Connor’s revisionist Western, Jane Got a Gun, wee Natalie Portman plays a frontier woman and former sex slave who calls on a onetime lover to help her save her daughter, homestead and severely wounded husband (Noah Emmerich) from a gang of revenge-minded gunmen led by Ewan McGregor. The ex-boyfriend, Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton), isn’t anxious to risk his life in what amounts to a suicide mission, but, knowing Jane will go it alone if necessary, he accepts the challenge. Set in scenic badlands of northern New Mexico, which could pass for 1865 B.C. if it had to, Jane Got a Gun was heavily influenced by the 1971 Western, Hannie Caulder, starring the physically more formidable Raquel Welch. In it, Welch plays the aggrieved widow who enlists a bounty hunter (Robert Culp) to teach her how to be a gunfighter. In both movies, the male lead is required to pull a trick out of his sleeve to balance what appear to be 20-to-1 odds against the protagonists. If all anyone requires is action and atmosphere in their Westerns, Jane Got a Gun shouldn’t disappoint. Beyond that, however, there’s nothing revolutionary here. I’d be surprised if Portman returns to the genre anytime soon, if only because the payoff rarely equals the investment in time, energy and money, anymore. As far as I’m concerned, the 2011 Oscar-winner can do whatever she wants … especially since she’s one of 30 names listed as one variety of producer or another. By 1971, Welch had already established herself as a sex symbol who wasn’t relegated to generic parts that required nothing more than unbuttoning her blouse. She was the primary drawing card in 100 Rifles and Bandolero! It would take another 20 years before women would be given top billing, even in revisionist and indie Westerns. Since then, we’ve seen The Ballad of Little Jo, Bad Girls, The Quick and the Dead, Meek’s Cutoff, The Homesman, Dead Man’s Burden and The Missing. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s portrayal of the doomed Daisy Domergue in The Hateful Eight is anything but typical. The problem, of course, is convincing audiences, especially women, to support Westerns in which female protagonists can hold their own in the blood-letting department. Jane Got a Gun ran into some serious problems during production, so, probably in consideration of budget constraints, there are no bonus features. The production values speak for themselves.

 

The Driftless Area

Burning Bodhi

It’s been seven years since Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt stole the hearts of indie audiences in the quirky, non-linear romance (500) Days of Summer. At the time, it was the irresistible 30-year-old’s most complete performance to date and a picture that made a bunch of money for Fox Searchlight. Instead of catching another big wave, Deschanel decided to take a chance on the wonderfully quirky Fox-TV series, “The New Girl,” which became an immediate hit in the most desirable demographics and turned her into a multi-platform star. That she’s stuck with the series all these years, without churning out a prestige picture or two during the hiatus periods, struck many observers as unusual. Instead, Deschanel focused whatever energy she had left on She & Him, the duo she formed with singer-songwriter M. Ward before (500) Days took off. In July, 2014, she gave birth to a daughter, Elsie Otter. She would appear in a few feature films – Our Idiot Brother, Your Highness and Rock the Casbah – but nothing to make anyone forget her earlier, more promising work. Along comes The Driftless Area, a very compelling neo-noir, which, for some reason, Sony has decided to launch on DVD and VOD. This, despite an ensemble cast that also includes Anton Yelchin, Aubrey Plaza, John Hawkes, Frank Langella, Alia Shawkat and Ciarán Hinds. Shot in B.C. and Wisconsin on what must have been a shoestring budget, co-writer/director Zachary Sluser adapted the story from Tom Drury’s 2006 novel. In it, a restless young man, Pierre (Yelchin) falls in love with a mysterious woman, Stella (Zooey Deschanel), who rescues him from a well, into which he fell while strolling through the countryside. Pierre had already been introduced to us in an ugly encounter he has with a local hoodlum (Hawkes) while hitchhiking home. A brief struggle leads to a potentially catastrophic event that drives the action for the next 90 minutes and adds a distinct air of magical realism to the proceedings. As his relationship with Stella deepens, Pierre is driven to engage in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the driver who assaulted him and, in a freak accident, was left for dead on the side of the highway. We’ll soon learn how the lives of all three of these characters intertwine in the most unusual of ways. I think The Driftless Area might have found a loyal audience in theaters if given the opportunity to create buzz and garner positive reviews. The DVD arrives with a decent making-of featurette.

 

Kaley Cuoco has been working in Hollywood, mostly on television, for 20 of her 30 years on the planet. Unlike Deschanel, the Camarillo native didn’t enjoy the luxury of garnering big-screen credentials before climbing on board “8 Simple Rules,” “Charmed” and the sitcom juggernaut that became “The Big Bang Theory.” Her character, Penny, represents a slight variation of the archetypal TV blond, whose lineage can be traced at least as far back as Elizabeth Montgomery on “Bewitched” and Barbara Eden on “I Dream of Jeannie.” Penny hasn’t been required to wear the dumb-blond yoke to play Penny, unless it was in the show’s early beauty-and-the-geeks period, as was the case for Goldie Hahn on “Laugh In,” Suzanne Somers in “Three’s Company” and Beth Behrs currently on “2 Broke Girls.” Nonetheless, when Cuoco was offered a non-comedic role in a contemporary ensemble piece, she didn’t have to think twice, even at small fraction of her $1 million/week salary on the “The Big Bang Theory.” In Matthew McDuffie’s indie drama, Burning Bodhi, Dylan (Landon Liboiron) finds out via Facebook that his best friend from high school, Bodhi, has died of an aneurysm. With no small degree of trepidation, he returns to Albuquerque to share in the grief generated by the deceased’s many friends. The former classmates struggle with the experience of confronting not only Bodhi’s sudden passing, but their own vulnerability to blind chance. Throughout their reunion, sticky feelings of love, longing and regret are stirred up in the characters – Cuoco, Sasha Pieterse, Cody Horn, Andy Buckley, Tatanka Means, Virginia Madsen, Meghann Fahy – whose lives he touched. As was the case in The Big Chill, they’ve all changed since going their separate ways after high school … or, not going anywhere at all, as the case may be. If Burning Bodhi couldn’t possibly make anyone forget Lawrence Kasdan’s Baby Boomer classic, it should please fans of the young actors, who, like Cuoco, are known far more for their work on television than on the big screen.

 

Packed in a Trunk

Anyone impressed by the 2013 American documentary Finding Vivian Maier, about the posthumous unlocking of a treasure trove of photographs taken by a previously unsung Chicago nanny and amateur street photographer, almost certainly will enjoy Packed in a Trunk. Although the circumstances are very different, both films describe an almost miraculous discovery of artistic gems created before the women responsible for them could benefit from their fame. In this, they shared certain qualities and demons with Vincent Van Gogh. In the case of Finding Vivian Maier, historian John Maloof purchased a box of photo negatives at a 2007 Chicago auction, then scanned the images and put them on the Internet site, Flickr. After news articles began to come out about Maier and another collector’s similar discovery of her work, a Kickstarter campaign for the documentary was launched. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 87th Academy Awards. The title, Packed in a Trunk, refers to the discovery of paintings by the obscure lesbian artist Edith Lake Wilkinson, who was part of the Provincetown art scene from 1914 to 1923. In 1924, at the recommendation of her crooked estate attorney, Wilkinson was committed to a decrepit, if expensive mental-health facility, in large part due to her “close and constant contact” with longtime companion. Once the artist was put away and abandoned, Edith’s work and all her worldly possessions were packed into trunks and shipped off to a relative in West Virginia, where they sat in an attic for the next 40 years. Edith’s great-niece, writer/director Jane Anderson (“Olive Kitteridge”), grew up surrounded by Edith’s vibrantly colorful Impressionistic paintings. On a whim, her mother had poked through the trunks and boxes in her dusty attic and rescued Edith’s work, if only for her own enjoyment. The film follows Anderson in her decades-long journey to find the answers to the mystery of Edith’s life and, then, return the work to Provincetown, where they could be recognized by the larger art world. As such, it also shines a light on the nation’s gay and lesbian community at a time when coming out of the closet often meant being locked up in jail or an asylum. She was joined in her quest by writer/director Michelle Boyaner (“A Finished Life: The Goodbye & No Regrets Tour”).

 

Dillinger: Special Edition: Blu-ray

Dolemite: Blu-ray

It wasn’t until Bonnie and Clyde was released in 1967 that anyone in Hollywood attempted to take a chance on showing the effects of lead on flesh and bone, in slow motion and excruciating detail. The Production Code may have been on its last legs, but no one could predict with any certainty how audiences would react not only to witnessing full-blown carnage in living color – ABC’s highly controversial “The Untouchables” was shown in black-and-white – but also to what some saw as the romanticizing of criminality. It worked. And how! It didn’t take long for Roger Corman and his team of recent film-school graduates to breathe new life into the gangster genre and develop a formula to make it profitable. Among the throwback titles the company released were Corman’s Bloody Mama, Martin Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha and John Milius’ Dillinger, which has just been accorded a first-class refurbishing by Arrow Video. Although there’s nothing particularly wrong with Michael Mann’s 2009 Public Enemies, the only justification for its retelling of John Dillinger’s story and $100-million production budget was the presence of Johnny Depp as titular bank robber. Milius, who had already joined the list of Hollywood’s screenwriting elite, agreed to participate in Dillinger if he could direct the picture, as well as write it. The $2.5 million AIP spent on it might not have covered the cost of renting vintage automobiles on Public Enemies, but it was money well spent. Both pictures took liberties with the facts, but nothing that would cause anyone to rewrite the time-honored legend. If J. Edgar Hoover was actually moved to complain about the portrayal of the G-men in Dillinger, he no longer carried the weight in Hollywood he once did. What was great then and is still the No. 1 reason to pick up a copy of the Blu-ray is a cast the included some of the greatest supporting actors in the industry: Warren Oates is a dead ringer for the boastful bank robber; Ben Johnson plays the cocky FBI bloodhound, Melvin Purvis; Harry Dean Stanton, Geoffrey Lewis, Steve Kanaly and star-to-be Richard Dreyfuss play ancillary gang members; Cloris Leachman, is a nice fit as the Lady in Red; and Mamas and Papas’ singer Michelle Phillips, in her first big movie role, doesn’t embarrass herself as the moll. As for action, Dillinger could still inspire wet dreams in card-carrying NRA members. Commentary is provided by Stephen Prince, author of “Classical Film Violence: Designing and Regulating Brutality in Hollywood Cinema”; new interviews with producer Lawrence Gordon, director of photography Jules Brenner and composer Barry De Vorzon; a stills gallery; reversible sleeve, featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sean Phillips; and a booklet containing new writing by Kim Newman on fictional portrayals of Dillinger, plus an on-set report containing interviews with writer-director John Milius and others, illustrated with original production stills.

 

Released in 1975, as the Blaxploitation subgenre was beginning to lose steam, Dolemite is an extreme example of the pimp as anti-superhero. Rudy Ray Moore, who resembles an over-the-hill heavyweight boxer, plays the title character, who’s just been released from prison and given carte blanche by a friendly FBI agent to take out his chief rival Willie Green (director D’Urville Martin). The well-connected thug had set up Dolemite on a phony drug charge and stole his club from under former partner-in-crime, Queen Bee (Lady Reed). In his corner, he’ll find a bevy of kung-fu-fightin’ prostitutes anxious for him to get back in the game. Supporting Green is the corrupt mayor, some crooked cops and a duplicitous preacher. Dolemite is an old-school pimp from the word, “go.” He’s also the headliner at his nightclub, the Total Experience, singing, dancing and signifyin’ with his hooker chorus line. Technically, Dolemite is a real mess and the acting isn’t much better. It may not hold a candle to The Mack … but, honestly, what does? The character and movie directly influenced Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, Eddie Murphy and Quentin Tarantino. The most essential thing about the newly scanned & restored in 2K version from Vinegar Syndrome is the background material on Moore, who enjoyed a thriving career as nightclub entertainer, freelance record distributor and producer, and X-rated comedian, before turning to the movies. In fact, Dolemite is an extension of a character he established in his act. The Blu-ray adds a delightful making-of documentary, “I, Dolemite,” and commentary track from Moore’s biographer, Mark Murray, featuring interviews with Moore as well as co-stars Jerry Jones, Lady Reed, John Kerry and cinematographer Nick von Sternberg; featurettes “Lady Reed Uncut” and “Locations: Then & Now”; the intended 1.85:1 widescreen frame and an alternate full-frame “boom mic” version; original trailers for Dolemite and The Human Tornado; and original cover artwork by Jay Shaw.

 

That’s Sexploitation!: Blu-ray

All Night at the Po-No: Storefront Theatre Collection: Volume #1

Trashy Lady: Blu-ray

I don’t know if the history of pornography can be traced beyond the Paleolithic cave paintings discovered in France’s Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Caveto, but who would be surprised to learn that some of our ancient ancestors, at least, were as fixated on sexuality as the lions, rhinos, deer and bears that adorned the walls of Chauvet Cave? In fact, some archeologists believe that representations of genitalia and sexual coupling can be traced back at least 11,000 years to the Creswell Crags in England, although it couldn’t be determined if they were intended to stimulate the caves’ residents or sex-ed classes for the young’uns. Clearly, though, the graffiti artists of Egypt, Greek, Rome and Peru had something on their minds beyond landscapes, portraits and still lifes. Pornography has existed throughout recorded history and has adapted to each new medium, from papyrus to the Internet. Eroticism on film goes back to the invention of motion pictures and many of the earliest shorts still are available for perusing on You Tube Red. The borders separating titillation, Victorian pornography, sexploitation and art blurred forever from there. In the exhaustively researched and often quite entertaining documentary, That’s Sexploitation!, writer/director Frank Henenlotter (Basket Case, Frankenhooker) and producer David F. Friedman (a.k.a., Mighty Monarch of Exploitation) pick up the subject in the 1920s, when the monetization and widespread delivery of porn products became nearly unstoppable. That isn’t to say that law-enforcement officials and religious leaders didn’t attempt to eliminate it, just that the purveyors of smut always found ways to get around their efforts, thanks, in large part, to the insatiable appetite of the American public. Depictions of explicit nudity, sexual intercourse and medical diagrams were famously inserted into films distributed as “hygiene” or “educational” and exhibited before audiences segregated by gender. In the post-war era, stag films, nudist camp shorts and nudie-cuties would give way to hard- and soft-core pornography openly shown in large cities where adherence to the First Amendment wasn’t considered voluntary. Even so, up until the latter half of the 1960s, much of the quasi-legal content was tamer than what could be found in the ruins of the brothels of Pompeii. This kind of explicit material isn’t for everyone, of course. Among its shortcomings is a reluctance to pay attention to the participation of organized crime in the industry or the mainstreaming of porn, in the Golden Age. In addition to the two-hour-plus documentary from Severin Films, That’s Sexploitation! offers three more hours of shorts from the Something Weird Archives and commentary with Henenlotter and Something Weird’s Lisa Petrucci.

 

As if anticipating the release of That’s Sexploitation!, Vinegar Syndrome has sent out the three-disc concept compilation, “All Night at the Po-No: Storefront Theatre Collection: Volume #1,” which is comprised of titles made immediately preceding the Deep Throat phenomenon and were exhibited in spaces that today might accommodate a Subway or Chinese take-out joint. Unlike larger houses, including those in the Pussycat chain, the films screened in these cozy spaces were low-budget 16mm efforts, affectionately known as one-day-wonders. Hundreds of these theaters dotted the landscape, attracting the anonymous work of aspiring independent and underground filmmakers. If there’s a common denominator here, it’s the presence of amateur actors who might have been recruited at hippie acid tests and whose acting chops make Harry Reems and Marilyn Chambers look like Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. The women, especially, are far from unattractive, but hardly classic movie goddesses. Their emotional range stretches from bored to giddy and none appear overly concerned about carrying a few extra pounds. Fetishists will welcome the absence of razors, implants and big hair. The male actors, with the exception of a very young John Holmes, are interchangeable. Most find it difficult to maintain an erection for more than a few minutes. Of the 12 films here, a few are no more than extended loops. Others tell stories that display a strong sense of humor, narrative and character development. The industry had not yet migrated from to L.A., from New York and San Francisco, so the action isn’t reserved exclusively to generic indoor sets. The titles include Huck Walker’s “All American Hustler,” Anthony Spinelli’s bizarre vampire comedy “Suckula,” Rik Taziner’s low-rent costume saga, “The Erotic Adventures of Hercules,” as well as such anonymously directed efforts as “Carnal-Go-Round,” “Sex Before Marriage,” “Homer the Late Comer” and the experimental subjective-camera feature, “Erotic Point of View.” Besides Holmes, only Rene Bond and Sandy Dempsey are remotely familiar. All have been scanned in 2k from rare original theatrical prints to re-create the experience of stumbling into the Po-No theater late one evening and not leaving until dawn the next day. Another thing that differentiates the films here from those to follow is a willingness to portray drug use and abuse honestly. Listen carefully and you might even catch a then-popular song by Paul Simon or Herb Alpert that’s been appropriated by the filmmakers, almost certainly without permission.

 

In a separate release, Vinegar Syndrome flashes ahead a mere 10 years to Trashy Lady, one of the most stylishly made and technically advanced hard-core films of the shot-on-35mm age. In the Roaring ’20s-period production, Harry Reems plays a slick gangster, Dutch, who has been ditched by his regular dame, Jessie (Cara Lott). Upon being introduced to the beautiful cigarette girl, Katherine (Ginger Lynn), who’s just begun to work at his classy speakeasy, Dutch is immediately smitten with her “good girl” looks and aura of innocence. Soon enough, though, he enlists the help of Rita (Amber Lynn) to teach her the tricks of the trade. It so happens that Rita served as main moll to Dutch’s incarcerated rival, Louie (Herschel Savage). Trashy Lady was nominated for six XRCO awards, including best director (Steve Scott), and featuring AFAA-award-winning cinematography by Tom Howard as well as an AVN-award-winning performance from Reems. In my opinion, though, Ginger steals the show with a performance that combines comedic chops with natural acting talent and natural girl-next-door beauty. The film arrives in Blu-ray for the first time, newly restored from its original 35mm negative, and Scott and Howard’s 1971 time-travel flick, “Coming West,” which very easily could have fit in the “Po-No” collection. The bonus package also includes commentary with Howard, moderated by filmmaker David McCabe, and a second commentary track with co-star Savage and XRCO co-founder, Bill Margold. Although Savage co-starred in Trashy Lady, he can barely recall the experience. What he and Margold can remember of the actors borders from offensive to hilarious.

 

What?: Blu-ray

After his wife, Sharon Tate, was so brutally murdered in an orgy of violence orchestrated by Charles Manson, it was easy to forgive any cinematic misstep taken in its immediate wake by Roman Polanski … until, of course, the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in Jack Nicholson’s Hollywood Hills home. Despite receiving several excellent reviews by mainstream critics, the public response to his adaptation of Macbeth, made for or Playboy Productions, was dampened by the X-rating attached to it by the MPAA’s concerns of extreme violence and a scene of Lady Macbeth ruminating in the nude. Then, Polanski produced a lifestyle documentary on the effort by Jackie Stewart to win the 1971 Monaco Grand Prix in Monte Carlo. After being shown at the 1972 Berlin International Film Festival, Weekend of a Champion was shelved for 40 years. Entertaining and occasionally exciting, it was re-edited and re-released briefly in 2013, before being sent out on DVD a year later. Blessedly forgotten after Polanski’s triumphant return to Hollywood with Chinatown was the over-the-top sex farce he made with Carlo Ponti’s money on the Amalfi Coast of Italy. What? (a.k.a., “Diary of Forbidden Dreams”) would be as reviled as Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown were universally admired. Written by Polanski and frequent collaborator Gérard Brach, What? chronicles the sexual indignities that befall a curly-haired American hippie while hitchhiking through Italy. As portrayed by Akron native Sydne Rome (Just a Gigolo), the only differences between her naïve and over-accommodating Nancy and Little Annie Fannie is a surprisingly scholarly and artistic background that manifests itself in unexpected ways during the film. After being attacked by three lecherous Italians while hitchhiking, she escapes down the steps and funicular leading to a villa overlooking the sea. It is owned by a wealthy art collector (Hugh Griffith) and inhabited by an international collection of wackos and what appear to be very expensive prostitutes, including the recently retired pimp, Alex (Marcello Mastroianni), and the proprietor’s sneaky son, Mosquito (Polanski). As near as I can figure, the rest of the movie is taken up by Nancy attempting to keep her clothes from being stolen by the villa’s rambunctious watchdog and humoring the sexual fetishes of the other residents. What? reflects the prevailing attitudes toward sex in Europe, which found some humor in forced intercourse in unlikely place and frequently exploited the liberating aspects of the sexual revolution. If the women characters tended to be almost freakishly glamorous and voluptuous, the male characters in comedies would be portrayed as sexually inept buffoons. Mastroianni was able to pull off being the debonair leading man in one film and a hopelessly deficient playboy in another. Here, his grabby character might have been inspired more by the chick-chasing Harpo Marx, than, say, Marcello Rubini in La Dolce Vita. As clueless and vulnerable as her character frequently is, Rome is the only actor who comes out of What? unscathed. The nicely restored Blu-ray adds new interviews with Rome, composer Claudio Gizzi and cinematographer Marcello Gatti.

 

Krampus: Blu-ray

The Zero Boys: Blu-ray

Sssssss: Blu-ray

Before seeing the delightfully twisted Scandinavian fantasy, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, I was completely in the dark about the European holiday tradition that involved the “half-goat, half-demon” anti-Santa, Krampus. Appearing on the eve of the Feast of St. Nicholas, Krampus would appear to children who didn’t live up to their holy obligation of being good little boys and girls in the preceding 300-some days leading up to Christmas. Where Saint Nicholas might award the lucky children rarely available fruit, nuts or trinkets, Krampus might bestow a lump of coal on the naughty ones, at best. Jalmari Helander’s inky black comedy, released here in December 2010, added several diabolically new wrinkles to the legend that also required reindeers and elves. I suspect that I wasn’t the only one unaware of Krampus, because, according to IMDB.com, it wasn’t until 2012 that the character appeared in an American entertainment, that being an episode of “Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated,” titled “Wrath of the Krampus.” Since then, he’s made more than a dozen appearances. The latest, Michael Dougherty’s Krampus, did well enough at the box office to think that it might be trotted out as every new holiday season approaches, not unlike National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. It succeeded even though its distributors decided not to show the picture to reviewers ahead their Friday deadlines – typically holiday-themed horror flicks haven’t fared well with mainstream critics – and most potential viewers hadn’t yet heard of Krampus. As is the case in the Griswald’s annual “Christmas Vacation” reunion, the spirit of the holiday is threatened by warring branches of the same dysfunctional family. The only one demonstrating anything close to a traditional Christmas mindset, if only in the form of believing in Santa Claus, is pre-teen Max. After being ridiculed by his obnoxious cousins, Max decides that putting too much credence in the holiday tradition no longer is worth the effort. This show of weakness emboldens the spirit of Krampus, who’s in the neighborhood this year. After killing the town’s electrical grid, the beast directs its wrath at Max’s family. Thanks to some effective special effects, the fury unleashed is pretty convincing, as are the monster’s makeup and costumes. If Universal lacked faith in its product in December, it’s made up for it with a bonus package that should please genre buffs. In addition to a digital copy of Krampus and UltraViolet access, it contains an alternate ending, deleted and extended scenes, a gag reel, galleries, commentary with Dougherty and co-writers Todd Casey and Zach Shields and featurettes, “Krampus Comes Alive!,” “Behind the Scenes at WETA Workshop” and “The Naughty Ones: Meet the Cast.”

 

I’m not at all sure what possessed Arrow Video to pull out the red carpet for The Zero Boys, a straight-to-video slasher flick from 1986 that also fit under the spam-in-a-cabin banner. In a nutshell, the story involves a group of “weekend warriors” – or, Rambo wannabes, take your pick – who, after a day spent shooting paintballs at pretend Nazis, ends up deep in a section of the woods north of Hollywood haunted by real killers. They’re accompanied by a small group of women, one of whom was the prize for winning that afternoon’s competition. It doesn’t take long for the couples to realize they’ve really stepped into some deep shit. In some ways, The Zero Boys appeared to be based on Charles Ng and Leonard Lake’s cabin of horrors in the Sierra Nevada foothills 150 miles east of San Francisco. Finally, though, the targets of the fiends’ sociopathy discover a way to turn their faux armaments into killing machines and a battle royal ensues. Blond scream queen Kelli Maroney (Night of the Comet) turns in a decent performance as the hard-boiled prize catch. More interesting stuff can be found in the bonus package, including a pretty entertaining piece in which Mastorakis interviews himself on the highlights of his long and varied career (The Greek Tycoon, Ninja Academy). He’s extremely proud of the contributions made by future Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer, cinematographer Steven Shaw (“Pandora’s Clock”), Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption) and other up-and-comers. Co-stars Kelli Maroney and Nicole Rio provide new interviews; Maroney and Mastorakis are on separate commentary tracks; a stills gallery; reversible sleeve, featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys; and a fully-illustrated collector’s booklet with new writing by critic James Oliver.

 

Released in 1973, SSSSSSS remains interesting mostly for the very real cobras and pythons imported specifically for the production from the jungles of Southeast Asia, as well as a typically manic performance by Strother Martin (Cool Hand Luke). He plays the head of research at a facility far enough from civilization to avoid the prying eyes of the medical-ethics police. Dr. Stoner’s madness manifests itself in his desire to develop a serum that can turn a man into a King Cobra. It takes a while for his daughter (Heather Menzies) to figure out that Stoner is using her boyfriend (Dirk Benedict) as a guinea pig. Considering its age, SSSSSSS looks pretty good for an early creature feature. The Blu-ray adds interviews with Benedict and Menzies, and a photo gallery.

 

Death Becomes Her: Collector’s Edition: Blu-ray

In this extremely broad and occasionally crude sendup of show-business narcissism, director Robert Zemeckis employs groundbreaking special effects in the service of what essentially is a 104-minute catfight between two of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Image-obsessed diva Madeline Ashton is played by Meryl Streep, who, in the early 1990s, had yet to convince critics that she could do as well in comic roles as she did in dramas. In the somewhat more sober role of Helen Sharp, the girlfriend of a miracle-working plastic surgeon, Goldie Hahn was uncharacteristically asked to play straight man to Streep. As Death Becomes Her opens, Helen introduces Madeline to her escort, Dr. Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis), in a backstage visit after a performance of a play based on Tennessee Williams’ “Sweet Bird of Youth.” Hearing the words “plastic surgeon” elicits the same Pavlovian response in the actress as being told she’d being nominated for an Oscar or Tony. David Koepp and Martin Donovan’s screenplay flashes us forward to a period when Madeline and Ernest are unblissfully married and Helen has devolved into an obese coach potato. Another flash-forward reverses the roles of the two women, this time with Helen a successful author of self-help books, Madeline a nearly over-the-hill star and the doctor doing makeup on corpses at a funeral home. Now completely desperate, Madeline hands her fate to the mysterious seductress Lisle Von Rhoman, who claims to be 71 but looks, well, exactly like Isabella Rossellini in her prime. Lisle offers Madeline the secret to eternal youth, courtesy of a glowing purple potion that immediately restores her earlier beauty and figure. Like any miracle drug or promise of eternal youth, however, there’s a catch. I won’t reveal it here, except to say that it required all of Zemeckis’ pre-CGI expertise and it’s hilarious. The Blu-ray adds “The Making of ‘Death Becomes Her,’” featuring interviews with Zemeckis, Koepp, director of photography Dean Cundey, production designer Rick Carter and special effects artists Lance Anderson and David Anderson; a vintage behind-the-scenes featurette; and photo gallery.

 

TV-to-DVD

PBS: Nature: Raising the Dinosaur Giant

PBS Kids: Caillou: Caillou’s Pet Parade

Just when paleontologists think they have the whole dinosaur thing figured out and can rest on their laurels for a generation, or two, a shepherd in Mongolia or Argentina will stumble upon on the fossilized remains of a previously unknown creature and force them to rewrite their textbooks. This is exactly what happened in 2014, in a remote corner of Patagonia where a portion of a thigh bone was discovered sticking out of a rock formation. Another 200 bones from the same species of titanosaur were discovered in the same vicinity. As yet unnamed, the gigantic herbivore is expected to weigh in at just over 77 tons and stand 121 feet from head to tail. In the “Nature” presentation, “Raising the Dinosaur Giant,” Sir David Attenborough guides us through the remarkable journey of “waking the giant” as it happens, connecting the dots, translating the paleo jargon and explaining the revelations using living examples, other dinosaur discoveries and CGI visuals.

 

The PBS Kids’ series “Caillou” is based on a series of books by Quebecoise writer and illustrator Hélène Desputeaux, which center on a 4-year-old boy who is fascinated by the world around him. In the DVD compilation, “Caillou’s Pet Parade,” he enjoys learning to care for different types of animals and pets belonging to his neighbors, parents and grandparents. The 13-episode collection times in at an hour.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon