Cinefantastique Online

This week’s interesting DVD and Bluray releases are few and far between. A slew of generic DTV titles are hitting shelves, but we separate the wheat from the chaff for discriminating fans of cinefantastique.

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Dead & Buried (Blue Underground Bluray)
Director Gary Sherman’s debut feature, Raw Meat (known under his preferred title, Deathline) was an absolutely chilling film about a tribe of cannibals living in the London Underground after a cave-in trapped dozens of workers over a century ago. Featuring brilliant performances from Donald Pleasence (in full impish elf mode and pulling 10 pounds of quirk out of 5 pound bags, as a beleaguered Scotland Yard inspector) and Hugh Armstrong as ‘Man’ (an all too believable byproduct of what would greet you after 100 years of disease and inbreeding in near total darkness). In fact, wringing both fear and pathos from the grisly material in equal measure, his performance can be comfortably placed beside the best of Lon Chaney as one of the great “monster” performances of all time. Unfortunately, the low budget picture drifted into relative obscurity until it finally resurfaced on Showtime, and finally on DVD several years ago.

Amazingly, it would be nearly a full decade before Sherman’s next feature, an atmospheric shocker that found notoriety in the UK as part of the BBFC’s infamous “Video Nasties” list. Set in the fictional New England town of Potters Bluff (imagine the Maine equivalent of The Fog’s Antonio Bay), the story (by Ronald Shusett and Dan O’Bannon, of ALIEN fame) follows Sheriff Gillis (James Farentino) as he investigates a series of grisly killings that seem decidedly out of place in the idyllic surroundings. The case takes a decidedly unusual turn when the murder victims begin reappearing in the town, walking and talking and being very much a normal member of the community. To reveal anymore could potentially ruin a satisfying Twilight Zone-like twist at the show’s conclusion, even though most experienced genre aficionadas will see it coming like a slow-moving train. The show has solid performances from a good cast that included Farentino (a dependable actor seen the previous year in another quality Blue Underground Bluray release, The Final Countdown); Jack Albertson – in his last feature role – as local undertaker, Dobbs; the gorgeous Melody Anderson, fresh from setting young geeks hearts aflutter in the previous year’s Flash Gordon; in addition to supporting turns from Barry Corbin, Lisa Blount, and a young Robert Englund.

What still seems out of place, however, are the gory on-screen murders, which were actually the result of reshoots forced on the production by investors who obviously wanted more of a horror show than Sherman had in mind. In fact, many of the problems that Sherman had with D&B were also faced by John Carpenter on The Fog two years earlier. Both attempted a more genteel approach to the material, only to be faced with the reality that the horror industry was now driven by the body count. Dead & Buried didn’t get a particularly luxurious run in theaters, and until Blue Underground finally released the title on DVD a few years back, it existed in the US only as a long out of print VHS tape and inferior imports. Their two-disc set, which featured 3 commentary tracks (one with director Sherman, a second with co-star Linda Turley and producer Ronald Shusett, and the third with DP Steve Poster) and 3 featurettes on FX creator Stan Winston, then-unknown supporting player Robert Englund, and screenwriter Dan O’Bannon. With all the video supplements on the second disc, there was plenty of room for a high bit-rate on the feature, resulting in the best transfer the film has ever had (but does reflect some of the low-budget conditions under which the film was shot) along with several elaborate audio options. Blue Underground’s Bluray release appears to be from the same HD master as the SD DVD, and ports over all the original extras. Highly recommended.

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Zodiac: Director’s Cut (Paramount Bluray)
The best film of 2007 and the best disc release of 2008 (the HD-DVD release if you’re curious) finally makes it to Bluray in an attempt to continue the streak in 2009. Zodiac heralded the return of the much missed ‘police procedural’ genre – in stark contrast to the forensics procedurals that we’ve been flush with since the ’90s. Refreshingly free of CSI double speak about bullet trajectories, body gasses, and splatter patterns, Zodiac instead concentrates on the nuts and bolts of investigative work – immersing the viewer in decades worth of interviews and testimony of witnesses, victims, and even suspects.

The ‘Zodiac’ terrified the Bay Area of Northern California with a series of shootings in the late ’60s and early ’70s, but like Jack the Ripper, only found true infamy after sending a series of letters and coded ciphers to major San Francisco newspapers, creating a climate of fear and paranoia similar to NYC’s own Son of Sam case. The letters promised more victims (including school buses), taunted the police for not finding him, and even claimed credit for random crimes that he had nothing to do with. Nobody was ever officially charged with the murders, and with the exception of the police assigned to the case and the journalists who wrote about it, the Zodiac nearly faded from public memory by the end of the 1970s. It was the publication of Robert Graysmith’s book “Zodiac” in 1986 that helped to re-ignite interest in the case; in the book, Graysmith accuses Arthur Leigh Allen on the basis of an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence gathered by the former cartoonist during his years at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Fincher’s film concentrates on the toll that years of chasing down dead end leads took on the men closest to the case – SFPD Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), columnist Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr), and cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and deftly juggles each character in what must have been a logistical nightmare to structure at the screenplay level. The film covers more than a decade and throws enough names, dates, and alibis to make even the most attentive audience feel woozy, yet any patience exhibited is rewarded. Visually, the film has an amazingly exhilarating style yet never drifts too far from the docudrama approach that grounds the film in reality. When Fincher does dip into his bag of digital trickery to lock onto a yellow cab from above and follow it through the streets of downtown San Francisco, or show the passage of a year with a time-lapse recreation of the construction of the landmark Transamerica building set to Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues, it always flows naturally from the narrative and never feels like the “showing off because we could” camera shots in Fincher’s previous Panic Room.

Paramount’s new Bluray appears identical to their previous HD-DVD release – and that’s a very good thing. We thought that release worthy of disc of the year status on our Best of ’08 list, and their new Bluray carries over both the image quality and extras of the HD-DVD. Our highest recommendation.

Re-written from an earlier review.

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42nd Street Forever Vol. 4 (Synapse DVD)
Synapse Films has always been one of the premier independent DVD labels, producing superb editions of genre classics like Thriller, Lemora, and Blue Sunshine with a yeoman’s attention paid to image quality and supplements. As the once bountiful well of unlicensed cult titles dwindles, forcing once formidable companies like Blue Underground and No Shame into stasis, Synapse soldiers on, currently specializing in wonderfully obscure Asian titles like Rug Cop and Executive Koala and the ever burgeoning 42nd Street Forever compilation line. The previous volumes each feature 2 hours of fabulous exploitation trailers, running the gamut from Euro-sleaze, to Hollywood slashers, to Italian cop thrillers, to Hong Kong martial arts epics and back again. All trailers are mastered in high definition, and look still wet from the lab. Among volume 4’s rogues gallery are the impossible-to-see Canadian Deliverance knockoff Rituals, a pair of Charles B Pierce classics The Legend of Boggy Creek and the superb The Town that Dreaded Sundown, the grisly Tender Flesh, better known as Welcome to Arrow Beach (the final film of Lawrence Harvey, who finished editing the film from his deathbed), the Rudy Ray Moore-Yaphet Kotto blaxploitation team-up Monkey Hustle, and the one we most look forward to, the race-hate drama The Klansman starring Lee Marvin, Richard Burton and OJ Simpson!.

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Door Into Darkness (Mya Communications DVD)
A limited-run series created by Dario Argento for Italian television in 1974, Door Into Darkness finally gets a stateside release this week, courtesy of Mya Communications. The series consists of four 1-hour episodes: “The Tram”, about a woman killed on a crowded train (directed by Argento under a pseudonym); “The Neighbor”, about a couple with a young child and a suspicious upstairs neighbor (the directorial debut of Luigi Cozzi, whose 1980 Contamination would be a prime inspiration for Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror); “Eyewitness”, about a woman who witnesses a shooting but can’t convince the police once the body disappears (credited to one Roberto Pariante, though apparently featuring numerous Argento reshoots); and “The Doll”, featuring one escaped lunatic and lots of stalking (directed by Mario Foglietti, with an assist from Cozzi). This was previously available as a now out-of-print German import DVD, and we look forward to seeing what Mya Communications can do with the title

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Dead of Night (MPI DVD)
Another made-for-TV film gets its debut on DVD, this time from producer-director Dan Curtis, writer Richard Matheson, and composer Robert Cobert – a creative team whose genre output in the ’70s includes Dracula, The Night Stalker, The Night Strangler, and Trilogy of Terror – to name just a few. Dead of Night came in 1977, just as the golden era of the telefilm was ending, and even if this 3-story omnibus doesn’t represent the best work of anyone involved, it’s still a reminder of the class that men like Curtis brought to genre pieces on the small screen. The first story (featuring Ed Begley, Jr and a time traveling car) and the second (a vampire tale with eyes bigger than its budget) aren’t all that special, but the third, with Joan Hackett as a mother grieving the recent death of her son who gets decidedly more than she wished for once her son arrives shivering at her front door, is a minor masterpiece of suspense, owing much to “The Monkey’s Paw.” MPI’s disc features a very welcome isolated audio track of Cobert’s fabulous, jazzy score, deleted scenes from the second segment, and a real treasure – the 1969 “A Darkness at Blaisedon”, an hour long, shot-on-video pilot that was actually a go at a weekly Dead of Night series that wasn’t picked up by the network.

Other releases this week include:

• a 45th Anniversary Edition of the Disney classic MARY POPPINS.
• The second and final season of the classic TV show THE INVADERS, along with a box set including both seasons.
• SHARKS IN VENICE (from First Look Home Entertainment DVD). A previous Sci-Fi Chanel Original Movie, and tangible proof that Stephen Baldwin’s love for God isn’t reciprocated.
• An “Exploitation Cinema” double bill of NIGHTMARE IN WAX and THE BLOOD OF DRACULA’S CASTLE, which gives you a chance to see Cameron Mitchell and John Carradine, respectively, slumming.
• CLASSIC SCI-FI TV – 150 Episodes

All of these discs are available below, or check the CFQ Online Store for more.