Music from TV

Composer Bear McCreary keeps surprising me with his refreshing stylistic fusions and instrumental combinations in film and TV, and La-La Land’s new album features all sorts of giddy cues from the Sci Fi Channel’s Eureka series. This is a long and very fun CD, peppered with plenty of retro eighties sounds reminiscent of vintage synth gear.

Also reviewed is the second Bionic Woman [BW] album from Five Jays Music (limited to 1500 copies), featuring the entire score (plus bonus cuts) from Joe Harnell’s The Return of Bigfoot Part 2. Detractors will likely brand the music as cheesy, but they’re dead wrong about the music by the composer best remembered as the brains who wrote ‘The Lonely Man’ theme from The Incredible Hulk.

Harnell was a very underrated composer who wrote a huge amount of music for TV – and this is one of his best.

There’s a broad generation of ex-kids who watched the Bigfoot episodes (one that aired in 1975 on the Six Million Dollar Man [SMDM], and a 1976 follow-up crossover episode split between SMDM and spinoff series BW) and were totally engrossed in the gripping comic book tale of the famous bionic lovers re-teaming again to A) prove Bigfoot (Ted Cassidy) exists, and B) stop a volcano from exploding and ruining the world.

There’s aliens (Stephanie Powers sporting the biggest hairdo of her career), a magical serum, Lee Majors muttering “Sass…qvatch” while dying, a glowing psychedelic revolving tunnel in a mountain, and a TV remote that saves the world.

How can anyone resist?

Until Universal and the Weinsteins come to terms with the rights of both series, BW and SMDM will still remain unavailable to North American audiences (crappy 2007 BW remake excepted) on DVD.

That leaves us the albums (the first CD being Kill Oscar Parts 1 and 3), and not only is Harnell’s music still immensely evocative of the series, it’s a great fusion of funky orchestral urban jazz. Every theme every fan remembers from BW is here, and the score’s richness certainly leaves one hungry for a third CD (and if they all help convince the lazy parties to coordinate DVD releases of both TV series, even better).



- MRH

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British Chills

Just uploaded is another pair of British thrillers from the Paramount library via Legend Films in anamorphic transfers:

- The Man Who Could Cheat Death, Terence Fisher’s somewhat visually stale film for Hammer Films that’s nevertheless transcended by a great story that has eeeeevil Anton Diffring doing his damndest to stay young, and pretty Hazel Court as the love interest with serious self-esteem issues. (Note: like Phase IV, The Sender, and The Deadly Bees, Man/Death is currently a Best Buy exclusive, but is also available via Legend’s online site.)

- The Skull, Freddie Francis’ 1965 film version of Robert Bloch’s wacko story that has the flying skull of the Marquis De Sade threatening poor Peter Cushing. (The Skull, incidentally, was written and co-produced by Milton Subotsky, who also wrote Richard Lester’s feature film debut, It’s Trad Dad - a long unavailable title in Region 1 land that I really, really hope will see the light, given Skull and Trad both involved Amicus.)

Legend’s wave of Paramount titles, particularly the rare British ones, is a good sign that some of the UK films financed by major U.S. studios during the mid-sixties to early seventies are finally making their way to DVD (and about bloody time).

To further the issue, the release of Peter Watkins’ Privilege (via Project X/New Yorker Video in the U.S., and Morningstar in Canada) as well as Region 2 releases of Peter Yates’ Robbery and Peter Collinson’s Up the Junction mean some rarely seen films are slowly making their way to DVD (or the DVD labels at large have moved from directors named Paul to, uhm, Peter).

Eventually we’ll have a review of these gems, but their availability (albeit in Europe only) brings attention to director Collinson, whose best-known work is the original (and very zippy) Italian Job. And this nagging question: where is The Penthouse, his 1967 debut that apparently caused a stir during its original theatrical run?

We *will* have a review of the film, albeit from an ugly PAL VHS release, but the question begs as to why this risqué film, based on a play, has never received a (legit) DVD release.

Watch for a review of The Penthouse (plus another Collinson shocker) within two weeks, as well as an interview with Harkit Records’ Michael Fishberg, who discusses their release of the Penthouse soundtrack, as well as Christopher Komeda and the new Rosemary’s Baby CD.

Next: more soundtracks, reviews of Peter Watkins' Edvard Munch (Project X), and the refreshing documentary The Dali Dimension: Decoding the Mind of a Genius (MVD Visual).

And imminent: the last two Masters of Horror titles from Anchor Bay’s skull, plus the Canadian crime series Durham Country (also from Anchor Bay/Starz).



- MRH

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Asian Nightmares

Way back in 2004 I covered Uzumaki / Spiral (2000), the surreal adaptation of Junji Ito's manga by director Higuchinsky. Although the director has seemingly dropped off the filmmaking map after his feature film Tokyo 10+01 (2003), Bone House Asia and Facets Video have released Long Dream / Nagai yume (2000), his second hour-long film, with some supportive interview material.

Also based on a manga by Ito (creator of Tomie), Long Dream is a weird and creepy tale of a man who's been physically transformed by a mounting affliction which causes him to experience increasingly epic dreams, fantasies, ands nightmares over a short sleep. Every time he closes his eyes, things just get worse...

Also reviewed is Norio Tsuruta's feature-length edit of Dream Cruise, his Masters of Horror episode based on a story by Kôji Suzuki (Ringu, Dark Water / Honogurai mizu no soko kara). Housed in Anchor Bay's Season 2 skull, the episode contains more dialogue scenes than the 58 min. broadcast version, although the extra material doesn't smoothen the flaws in Tsuruta's meandering ghost tale.

The DVD's extras are first-rate, though, and provide a portal into filming in Japan through the eyes of the seres' American cast and crew (namely co-star Daniel Gillies, and executive producer/creator Mick Garris).

Next: more soundtracks, and another pair of horror classics from Legend Films - The Skull, and The Man Who Could Cheat Death.

And imminent: reviews of Peter Watkins' Edvard Much (Project X), and the refreshing documentary The Dali Dimension: Decoding the Mind of a Genius (MVD Visual).



- MRH

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Soundtracks

Just uploaded are reviews for a pair of moving albums:

- Lakeshore Records releases Rachel Portman's lovely scoe for The Duchess (2008) as a downloadable MP3 album.

- MovieScore Media has both limited CD and downloadable MP3 albums for Matt Dunkley's 4 Musketeers, The / D'Artagnan et les trois mousquetaires (2005).

- Buysoundtrax.com gives fans of Mark Snow (X-Files: I Want to Believe) a real treat in this limited CD release of Private Fears in Public Places (aka Coeurs), Snow's dramatic music for Alain Renais' recent film.

We'll have a film review of Coeurs shortly, plus an examination of Cult Epics' new 2-disc special edition of Slogan, featuring a second disc filled with publcity ephemera featuring stars Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, and rare ads by director Pierre Grimblat

Next: DVD reviews of Higuchinsky's Long Dream/Nagai yume (2000) from Bone House Asia/Facets, and Norio Tsuruta's featue-length cut of Dream Cruise, original made for Anchor Bay's Masters of Horror.

- MRH

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Supernatural Terrors

Nearing the end of Anchor Bay's Masters of Horror Skull, we have reviews of Ernest R. Dickerson's The V Word (V = vampires), and Rob Schmidt's Right to Die, both successful in different ways as horror tales.

The V Word, written by series creator Mick Garris, loses a bit of steam neat the end, whereas Right to Die features a tight revenge story, and yet another moment of indulgent, gooey skin peeling (which seems to be the theme of the year, due to the nasty final reel of the extreme French thriller Martyrs).

Also reviewed is Roger Christian's The Sender (1982), part of the Paramount package released on DVD by Legend Films (and current part of the company's Best Buy exclusive agreement). Perhaps the most intriguing thespian among the solid cast is Zeljko Ivanek (with hair!), currently known for his role (and recent Emmy Award) in TV's Damages.

Next: soundtrack reviews.

And imminent: Dream Cruise, Norio Tsuruta's feature-length Masters of Horror episode, and Nagai yume / Long Dream, by Higuchinsky (Uzumaki).

- MRH

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When Nature Kills

Sometimes humans make excellent chum for Nature, and where else to see the results in two new releases:

- The Deadly Bees (1967), the Amicus thriller directed by Freddie Francis, co-written by Robert Bloch, and co-starring Frank Finlay as a dirty old poop jealously guarding his rare bees. Legend’s DVD, like Phase IV, is currently a Best Buy exclusive, but we’ve got a review (soon to be followed by Legend’s other genre releases: The Skull, The Man Who Could Cheat Death, The Sender, and Zero Population Growth).

- Rogue (2007), Greg Mclean’s excellent giant croc flick that beautifully mixes CGI with rubber puppetry and real stuntmen flung about like rag dolls. Dimension Extreme’s DVD is loaded with oodles of goodies, including a long piece on Francois Tetaz’ punchy score (which screams for a CD release).

Next: CD reviews for Rachel Portman’s The Duchess (2008) from Lakeshore, Matt Dunkley’s D'Artagnan et les trois mousquetaires (2005) from MovieScore Media, goodies from DigitMovies, and more!

And soon: reviews of Intrada’s new expanded, true stereo CD of Hugo Friedhofer’s Boy on a Dolphin score (plus a film review, too), FSM’s beautiful mother-bleeping Shaft Anthology, and their monstrous 11-disc MGM Soundtrack Treasury, which we’ll breakdown in sets of 2 discs at a time. These sets broke the site’s soundtrack budget for two months, but they’re worth it!



- MRH

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Music for Clasics and Shockers

Just uploaded are a set of soundtrack reviews:

- Tadlow Music’s new limited 3-CD re-recording of Miklos Rozsa’s complete score for El Cid, featuring every note written for the film (rejected and edited in the final film mix) plus outtakes, alternates, and a suite from Rozsa’s Double Indemnity. Tadlow’s set also includes a fat booklet, and Flash videos from the recording sessions in Prague. Seen the film? Great. Now read about this gorgeous recording!

- AHI’s new 20th Anniversary CD of They Live (1988). The second of AHI/Buysoundtrax.com’s remastered and expanded John Carpenter-Alan Howarth CDs (after Halloween III), with way more music than the original Enigma CD. Oddles of fun.

- Rounder Records’ new anthology of selections from Seasons 2-4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with many great cues by Christophe Beck.

Next: DVD reviews of The Deadly Bees (Legend) and Rogue (Dimension Extreme).



- MRH

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Wider is Better

Although Warner Bros.' DVD and Blu-Ray releases of How the West Was Won [HTWWW] will get the bulk of attention this week, David Strohmaier's stellar documentary on the pivotal wide film format will probably be reduced to a mere footnote, which is unfortunate, because Cinerama Adventure (2002) is far more compelling and dramatically satisfying than HTWWW; fans may differ (and bicker) about that, but MGM's epic western is a ponderous, grandly mounted celebration of antiquated genre cliches.

That's still the impression that lingers from my first exposure, although we'll see if that's changed after having watched WB's new DVD (reserved for a later review) of the 3-panel wide film format.

We figured we could use Strohmaier's doc to give readers some perspective of Cinerama's impact on present-day formats like IMAX and OMNIMAX, its ongoing importance to film history, and the need to preserve these super-productions studios bankrolled to rekindle memoris of grand film showmanship muted by TV's fast and ever-potent impact on audiences.

Hopefully this DVD release will mark the first eforts to:

A) strike new prints to ensue anyone can experience this vintage format in one of the handful of places dedicated to Cinerama exhibition (namely Bradford, England's National Media Museum, Seattle's Cinerama, and Hollywood's Cinerama Dome, the latter profiled by DVD Savant's Glenn Erickson in an essay at Film.com)

B) lead to the distribution on DVD, as well as CD releases of their exotic film scores in complete fom. The late composer David Raksin (Laura) appears in Strohmaier's doc, and praises many colleagues who, like himself, scored Cinerama films, including Dimitri Tiomkin, Max Steiner, Alex North, Roy Webb, and Morton Gould (whom he cites as the most adept at scoring the wide film format).

C) spawn further interest in less flamboyant, independently produced widescren films (65mm and 70mm) shot in Europe whose fates may well lie on single surviving prints of their oiginal roadshow versions.

The latter is certainly the case of films like the German version of Onkel Tom's Hutte / Uncle Tom's Cabin (1965), filmed in the 65mm MCS Superpanorama, but then there's the sad situation of Scent of Mystery (1960), originally released in 70mm and, perhaps to its detriment, in Smell-O-Vision.

Poduced by the late Mike Todd Jr., it was an attempt at grand showmanship by sticking to the true elements of Cinerama - wide film fomat, colour, exotica, stereophonic sound - and adding, uhm, 30 smells that were piped under the seats of excited audiences. When the film died and was sold to Cinerama, it was reportedly chopped up into three panels and re-released as Holiday in Spain, wih new narration and major edits.

The irony? Todd's father, Mike Todd Sr., was one of the original partners in Cinerama, directed matrial in the format's debut film, This is Cinerama (1952), and later moved on found his own rival large film format, Todd-AO.

Scent was scored by Mario Nascimbene, a fine Italian composer who maintained an active and international career during the late fifties and early sixties. Quite prolific, Nascimbene had no problem bouncing between genres and extreme musical styles, and his score for Scent has just been released by Kritzerland (Evening Primrose) in a lush CD (limited to 1000 copies). Featuring original campaign art and numerous stills, the album (reviewed HERE) replicates the contents of the original Ramrod (love that name) LP in very clean stereo, including the two loopy songs crooned by Eddie Fisher.

I would love to say I've a review of the film as well, but lo and behold, it's not on any video format (although I swear it once ran on TV, maybe 15-20 years ago as some ugly, beat up print, and NOT the MTV airing in the 198os). Kritzerland's CD will certainly please fans of this top collectible LP, but hopefully it'll bring some attention to the film, and maybe an ardent fan with influence and bull-headedness will find a way to restore the film for a DVD release. It's probably a soapy, fluffy travelogue at best, but it's part of cinema history (as well as pop culture kitsch), and deserves to be rescued from oblivion.

Next: a handful of new soundtrack reviews, plus The Deadly Bees (Legend), Rogue (Dimension).



- MRH

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Real and Surreal Horrors

A bit short in time to babble right now, so we’ll just cut to the chase and cite the latest quartet of uploaded DVD reviews.

First is a pair of docs dealing with unforgettable tragedies:

- Diana: Witnesses in the Tunnel (Anchor Bay/Starz) is a straightforward, British-made investigative report, and not the usual crash-in production, and covers the paparazzi who were snapped up by French police when they learned the shutterbugs were taking pictures of the wreck while Diana was dying inside. The 47 min. doc may not imbue one with sympathy for the photographers, but it offers a different focus on Diana's death, and contrary to suspicions, the filmmakers do not feature any pictures of the princess inside the car.

- Diameter of the Bomb (Westlake Entertainment) is a play-by-play account of a suicide bomber who killed 20 people and injured 50 more riding on a Jerusalem bus in 2002. The filmmakers’ angle is on the victims rather than politics, and it’s a gripping yet mournful portrait of ordinary people mangled by a horrible act.

Secondly, the next Masters of Horror couplet from Anchor Bay’s pop-open cranium set for Season 2:

- John Carpenter’s Pro Life, wherein the veteran director (still smoking, still devolving into a KNB effects figure, as evidenced in the DVD's making-of featurette) tackles a siege-monster movie hybrid set in the happy environs of an abortion clinic.

- Dario Argento’s drippy Pelts, based on F. Paul Wilson’s deranged short story about cursed/haunted raccoon pelts that cause greedy trappers and fur handlers to traumatize themselves using handy home implements, or a bit of exotic machinery. Gory, disgusting, and very wet, and Meatloaf's performance is totally excellent.




- MRH

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The Olde and the New Guard

One of the good things the Masters of Horror [MOH] series provides is an opportunity for an older or younger filmmaker to take a crack at the anthology format. It certainly worked in the sixties when The Twilight Zone ran, and even Night Gallery gave John Badham time to learn his craft before embarking on feature films, and hitting career paydirt with films like Saturday Night Fever, Blue Thunder, and Stakeout.

MOH's younger filmmakers already have some feature works under their belts, so it's not quite the same, but it is interesting to see what short story a director will choose, and how the tale is realized within a 58 min. running time.

The latest couplet we've uploaded is Sounds Like, from Brad Anderson (Session 9, The Machinist), and The Washingtonians, from Peter Medak (The Changeling, The Ruling Class), and while one can understand the reasons each filmmaker picked their story, it's frankly jarring to see Anderson craft one of the best character-driven tales, and Medak make repeated wrong turns at every angle.

Anchor Bay's DVDs all come with commentary tracks, so it's helpful to hear the directors (when they participate) explain what they tried to achieve wih their episode. In Medak's case, it's not so much a train wreck as a one of those productions where everyone had fun, loved the extreme nature of the project (makeup, gore, audacious story elements) but the final results are repeated missteps.

Check out the reviews for further praise/excoriation, and we'll have another MOH couplet shortly.

- MRH

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British Bleakism

British Bleakism is, according to me (ahem), a discrete if not unofficial movement or style within film and TV that is unique to British filmmakers who have a knack for crafting stories that are unrelentingly bleak, dire, doom-laden, and make you feel humanity is doomed, or the human species as a whole is a vile aberration that should’ve been corrected by Nature at some point

A film steeped in this viewpoint in immutable; no editing can change its tone, no music can reduce its potent message of we-all-suck, and no sequel could bring closure because the images and sounds in said Bleak film are far too impressionable. Once you see the lowest moments of the low, it just won’t leave the mind.

A pioneer in this unofficial movement, at least in fiction, was Michael Reeves, whose Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm) is an angry, depressing drama of the sadistic urges that can’t be expunged from human DNA. It begins with a scream, and ends with a scream, and life sucks. End of directorial statement.

(One could argue the same goes for torture porn and sado-porn genres, but in rare cases, those genres work with banal archetypes tailored to the young male market, and any drama is manifested by an obsessive detail by the filmmakers on prolonged physical torment that’s heavily sexualized, if not fetishized.)

In the documentary form, British Bleakism probably reached a major artistic high point when a spate of anti-nuclear films emerged during the 1980s, or more specifically after 1982, when Dr. Helen Caldicott told us how we would die slowly from nuclear radiation after a bomb blast in the Oscar-winning short documentary, If You Love This Planet.

This stark NFB film would’ve made the perfect companion piece to our review of Threads (1984), the BBC’s answer to the American’s anti-nuclear TV drama, The Day After (1983), but it’s unfortunately unavailable on DVD (a HIGHLY common problem with most NFB works, if not Canadian films), and my copy, taped from TV when it aired in the eighties, is on VHS tape No. 35, which is currently in deep storage among 2000 other tapes that can only be accessed with a mighty pick ax and flashlight.

That doesn’t upset the context of our review, though, because Threads is very much a companion piece to Peter Watkins' brilliant 1965 docu-drama, The War Game, which won an Oscar for Best Short Documentary in spite of being banned by the BBC.

I actually made a point to avoid Threads (24 years, ahem) because it was reported to be utterly, utterly depressing (it is), and although I did tape it when it had a rare airing in Canada in the eighties, after peeking at the final scene and all that bloody matter, I taped over it.

Folly? Indeed, because while Threads did get a VHS release in North America, it’s only available on DVD in the U.K. It’s as though no one here wants to touch it because it’s still a hot potato of bleakism.

So we’ve reviewed the Region 2 DVD of Threads, as well as Peter Watkins’ The War Game, which comes paired with his superb 1963 anti-war docu-drama, Culloden, from Project X/New Yorker Video. The anti-nuclear films are uniquely British in the way the filmmakers perforate governmental myths, myopia, and absurdities, although their messages are still very much relevant.

Eventually we’ll also cover further British nuclear-themed documentaries and dramas, but for the time being, I think I need a small break from the subject, because British Bleakism is arguably more depressing than a five-film Ingmar Bergman marathon.

Go ahead, you try it.



- MRH

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