Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

James Lavelle thrust himself into the musical spotlight in the early ‘90s with his game-changing style that brought together a whole slew of musical genres and tropes. Aged just eighteen, Lavelle founded the Mo’Wax record label that provided a ridiculous amount of must-listen-to content, not to mention he’d found UNKLE with DJ Shadow. As ever, though, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Lavelle, UNKLE, or Mo’Wax, and this is what Matthew Jones’ The Man from Mo’Wax looks to document: the good times and the bad times of Lavelle’s roller coaster ride to date.

Many have often compared James Lavelle to artist Damien Hirst – a young game-changer who had a sense of cool, a sense of cocksureness, and who had so many others clamouring to work with them – and Lavelle’s story is one that hits many beats of your usual music industry tale. There’s huge success, there’s crushing lows, there’s big bucks, there’s penny-pinching, and there’s drugs and egos running wild.

The Man from Mo’Wax actually began life as some self-documented videos by Lavelle and his then-wife, only in more recent years being put together as a proper project by Jones. As a watch, it’s compelling stuff as you see Lavelle and his supporting players go through the gamut of emotions. This was a man who had the world at his fingertips but nearly pissed it all away thanks to some questionable decisions and fractured relationships. For Lavelle though, redemption was around the corner when he was asked to curate 2014’s Meltdown exhibition.

But while this makes for a satisfying story in a movie sense, the editing of The Man from Mo’Wax does at times feel like it’s on a very definitive path to serve as a three-act feature film. While the second act positions Lavelle as down and out, that’s not particularly the whole story; the documentary citing low physical sales of Lavelle’s albums at that point, despite the fact that the purchase of physical music had nosedived in general by then. But that’s the story that Matthew Jones has chosen to tell, and it does dovetail nicely towards the aforementioned Meltdown exhibit in which Lavelle vanquishes demons both personally and professionally.

The Man from Mo’Wax is certainly a fascinating watch and never anything but engaging – all accompanied by some stunning musical beats – but you’re left feeling that this is far from the full story of James Lavelle, and instead it’s maybe more put together to tell a cinematic narrative rather than be truly all-encompassing. Let’s face it, though, that’s not always a bad thing, and The Man from Mo’Wax is utterly compelling for the most part.

If the film itself is a brilliant viewing experience, the overall package of this limited-to-3000 box set – featuring Blu-ray and DVD versions of the documentary, a bonus disc of extra content, and all housed in a stunning book-cum-box – is a marvel to behold. Just from look and feel alone, this is a very special release and one that is a thing of beauty.

Special Features: Two audio commentaries / Four featurettes / Trailers / Collector’s booklet

THE MAN FROM MO’WAX / DIRECTOR: MATTHEW JONES / CERT: 15 / STARRING: JAMES LAVELLE, DJ SHADOW, JOSH HOMME, IAN BROWN, GRANDMASTER FLASH, THOM YORKE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

From the great classic pantheon of 1950s American monster movies which ran the gamut from various Blobs, Things, Creatures and giant-sized creepy crawlies such as the mutated ants in Them! or THE colossal crustaceans in Attack of the Crab Monsters, there are few which still have the capacity to terrify its audience more than 1955’s Tarantula, directed by Jack Arnold. Everyone – that’s everyone – hates spiders, of course, and here we have one of the eight-legged freaks grown to house-sized proportions rampaging across the monochrome Arizona desert laying waste to anything and everyone in its path. Eek, get it off me etc. Oh, and Clint Eastwood appears in an uncredited role as a fighter pilot in the film’s fiery climax.

Tarantula is no-nonsense, no-frills stuff. We open on a hideously-deformed man stumbling through the desert and collapsing. The deceased is scientist Eric Jacobs, an old friend of Dr Matt Hastings (Agar) who diagnoses acromegaly, a real-life disfiguring condition which takes years to develop but which Jacobs seemed to have contracted in days. Out in the desert, Jacobs’ colleague Dr Deemer (Carroll) is experimenting on a new growth drug which has unfortunate side effects. His lab is damaged in a fire and one of his test specimens – an already abnormally-large tarantula – escapes into the desert. Inevitably it starts to grow bigger and bigger and appears to resist all efforts to destroy it or halt its destructive, murderous rampage across the desert.

Tarantula is still a powerful and skin-crawling experience even now, over sixty years after it was made, mainly because unlike genre bedfellows such as Them!, the film doesn’t resort to unwieldy, unconvincing props, and uses a real spider and overlays it onto location footage. Scenes of the spider scuttling over desert highways and looming over hills and dunes are hugely effective – much of the film is set at night and the silhouette of the spider moving against the darkened horizon is still an eerie image – and the film even pays homage to King Kong as the tarantula crawls all over Deemer’s house and gazes through the window at Deemer’s unsuspecting assistant Stephanie “Steve” Clayton (Corday).

The film is punchy and to the point, and whilst it’s possible to read a Black Mirror-type “science is dangerous” subtext into the narrative it’s certainly not as heavy-handed and hectoring as the “beware radiation!” themes of many of its cinematic contemporaries. The film’s climax is a little throwaway though, with the tarantula nixed by napalm dropped by overflying fighter jets before fading to credits, but then again most of these 1950s creature features had the sense to get in and get the job done and then get out again.

A classic of its kind, Tarantula is pretty much guaranteed to get you looking behind the curtains and under the bed before you turn out the lights. They’re out there somewhere, millions of ‘em…

REVIEW: TARANTULA / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: JACK ARNOLD / SCREENPLAY: ROBERT M FRESCO, MARTIN BERKELEY / STARRING: LEO G. CARROLL, JOHN AGAR, MARA CORDAY / OUT NOW

American Horror Story is one of the most successful branches of television horror to have ever been broadcast. Branching across seven self-contained series, they take the familiar conventions of horror and twist them into new gratuitous territory.

Cult begins with the 2016 US Presidential election, which sees the rise of Trump and the fallout that it has on Ally (Sarah Paulson), a woman whose life with her wife, Ivy (Alison Pill) and son takes a turn for the worst with the re-emergence of her previous phobias, particularly that of clowns, holes and blood. Meanwhile, Kai Anderson (Evan Peters), a lone outsider, has been emboldened by the Trump victory and begins to ‘reclaim his rights’, both in society and out on the streets. However, when a series of murders begin to happen, instigated by a group dressed as clowns, and Ally’s phobia further impacting on her family’s life, the real consequences of that election are only just starting.

American Horror Story has always blended the traditional elements of horror: ghosts, vampires, witches, etc. with a commentary on the true American horror stories such as prejudice, paranoia and the madness of the world that we live in. Cult is the first series that deals primarily with the real demons that lurk in society and, when coupled with the paranoia that is created by social media and terrorism, terrifies people into the cult-like behaviours that can follow. This atmosphere of paranoia and terror is brilliantly brought to life by AHS regulars Paulson and Peters. This is coupled with strong supporting performances from Cheyenne Jackson, Billy Eichner and Colton Haynes, as well as appearances by Chaz Bono and John Carroll Lynch as Twisty the Clown from previous AHS outing Freak Show. However Cult, like previous AHS series, does have to overstretch certain plot points to fill the eleven episodes of the series. Nevertheless, Cult is a stand out addition to the AHS series, mostly due to its portrayal of real horrors.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: CULT /CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: SARAH PAULSON, EVAN PETERS, BILLIE LOURD, ALISON PILL, CHEYENNE JACKSON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It’s forty-two years since Alan Parker made his motion picture debut with this Prohibition-era musical response to Blue Remembered Hills – with kids playing adults, rather than vice versa – so the time is obviously right for a bangs-and-whistles edition, with a raft of new extra features and 4K restoration, updating the 2008 Blu-ray release. Well, this reissue comes in a beautiful Art Deco-styled steelbook, but otherwise the disc remains the same.

You’ll have seen the film already, but this is a timely reminder of just how accomplished a production it is; once Parker had made the decision to cast only children in all the roles – a decision apparently inspired by his eldest son – everything else fell perfectly into place. It’s a story about a turf war in 1920s Chicago, shot on the sound stages of Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire with a line-up of imported American child actors augmenting the multiple British ones involved in smaller roles (Dexter Fletcher makes an attention-grabbing debut as Baby Face, and ‘Bonita’ Langford’s in there too), and the plot, dialogue and photography are all a note-perfect homage to the films that inspired it. Some of the characters’ exchanges simply sing with love and respect for the early days of Hollywood, and the performances – while necessarily an occasionally mixed bag – are generally more than capable of pulling it all off. A fifteen-year-old pre-Happy Days Scott Baio – also in his screen debut – anchors the film with charismatic ease.

Paul Williams’ words and music are just as memorable and as consummately period reminiscent as Parker’s script, all honky-tonk pianos and jazz-tinged melodies, and round out the iconicism of the movie in catchy, unforgettable style. It’s a shame they didn’t get the kids singing the songs they had to mime along to, but time was short and the effect works well enough.

If it’s tempting to feel a touch of disquiet, especially in these sensitive times, about school-aged children dressed as dancing girls or spouting gangster spiel, then the conclusion to the picture rather settles the mind; the custard pie fight which resolves the story reveals the whole endeavour as essentially a supremely well-produced school play, with the criminal allusions being somewhat of a prelude to a good-natured sing-and-dance-along finale.

Parker’s film does look and sound lovely, with good contrast and rich colours despite the muted palette of the evocative production design, the only issue a hint of grain in the softer-focussed interior sequences. So it’s a 9/10 for the feature. But really, this release – including only the extra material already available elsewhere, mainly the director’s commentary – is all about whether you want to splurge out again just for the tin it comes in. It’s a really nice tin.

Extras: director’s commentary, trailers, promo reel, galleries, From Sketch to Screen

BUGSY MALONE / CERT: 12 (FEATURE: U) / DIRECTOR: ALAN PARKER / SCREENPLAY: ALAN PARKER / STARRING: SCOTT BAIO, JODIE FOSTER, FLORRIE DUGGER, JOHN CASSISI, MARTIN LEV / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Opening with the distinctive early Euro-disco strains of Amanda Lear (strained might be a better word), Flavio Mogherini’s 1977 giallo La Ragazza dal Pigiama Giallo is inspired by a true story, although it’s less interested in piecing together the facts than in using them as a launching pad for its own flights of fancy.

It begins with the discovery of a dead girl on a beach in Sydney, dressed in yellow pyjamas and with her face battered in. Oddly, we don’t get to see the yellow pyjamas, and perhaps forgivably the filmmakers have moved events into the present day (as well as 350 miles from where the incident actually occurred). Found next to the body is a sack containing a handful of grains of rice, which retired D.I. Thompson (Milland, looking old and tired but still exuding charisma) takes as a significant clue to the body’s identity and the perpetrator of the crime. The detectives getting paid to pursue the case are stumped, and end up displaying the cadaver naked in a shopping centre to see if anyone can come forwards and identify it.

Meanwhile a young immigrant called Linda (Di Lazzaro) is juggling affairs with a rich doctor (Ferrer), a younger German (Ross) and an even younger Italian (Placido), eventually marrying the latter but unable to give up the other two. Linda is irresistible but unfulfilled, and evidently heading for tragedy of one kind or another.

It’s an ambitious structure for a cheap, knock-off detective movie to develop, elevating it above (and possibly out of) the rest of its genre. But while The Pyjama Girl Case follows the usual giallo patterns – loving close-ups on the girl’s misshapen face, the promise of a group sex scene which we know will be delivered once we see how the narrative is working – Mogherini’s dialogue and character development leave a lot to be desired, and his direction favours interesting compositions over cohesive storytelling. Much as this focusses on the detectives, Thompson in particular, we’re rarely given any insight into the work they’re doing, and even the attempts to have us empathise with the victims – there are several, to varying degrees – end up feeling silly. One especially poignant death scene becomes a moment of unintentional hilarity thanks to an itinerant left shoe.

If your heart is in spaghetti gumshoe, then you’ll enjoy the sense of place and occasional grotesquery. But if you’re interested in the yellow pyjama case, you’re better off taking your curiosity elsewhere. Ultimately, this feels like an extended ‘See You Next Wednesday’ sketch from An American Werewolf in London, all cross-purpose foreplay and very little gratification. And to cap it all off, the transfer is just as muddy as the film.

Extras: trailer, audio commentary, interviews with critic Michael Mackenzie, actor Howard Ross, editor Alberto Tagliavia and composer Riz Ortolani

 

THE PYJAMA GIRL CASE (1977) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: FLAVIO MOGHERINI / SCREENPLAY: FLAVIO MOGHERINI, RAFAEL SÁNCHEZ CAMPOY / STARRING: RAY MILLAND, DALILA DI LAZZARO, MICHELE PLACIDO, MEL FERRER, HOWARD ROSS / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 17TH

 

If you’ve ever seen Audition, or Onibaba, or any other Japanese horror movie, you’ll know there’s a discord between the importance of the visuals and the need to make thoroughgoing sense; generally these stories will maintain a comprehensible narrative thrust while not worrying quite so rigidly about the smaller details. Teruo Issii’s film of Edogawa Rampo’s 1926 novel Panorama Island Otan (incorporating elements of the author’s other works) gives every indication that it’s not going to bother even trying to make sense – and then, albeit fairly clumsily, manages to pull pretty much everything together in its final act.

It begins with Hirosuke Hitomi (Yoshida) surrounded and attacked by a dozen or more semi-naked women (it actually begins with a close-up on one of those women’s breasts; director Ishii isn’t afraid of fetishising something he’s clearly fond of), after which it becomes clear that Hitomi has been incarcerated against his will in an insane asylum, and has lost his memory of who he is and where he’s from. Escaping from the institution, Hitomi meets a girl who works in a circus, and when the pair share memories of the same song, she suggests the investigation into his past take him to the coast – at which point, the girl is mysteriously killed and Hitomi goes on the run. Arriving at his destination, he discovers he’s the spitting image of the recently deceased Genzaburo Komoda, whose identity he assumes. Hitomi is then caught in something of a sex triangle between Genzaburo’s wife and one of the servant girls, while his interest is piqued by the story of Genzaburo’s father, who has apparently gone mad and withdrawn to a mysterious island off the coast, which he is seemingly rebuilding in the image of his own dreams.

Or nightmares, as it turns out. Freud would have had a field day with the first half of Horrors of Malformed Men, which takes elements familiar from the likes of Vertigo and replays them as a kind of surreal investigation into the self – and more so the sexually driven self – but once Hitomi reaches the island things get even more bizarre and dreamlike. Here we finally meet Genzaburo’s father, Jogoro Komoda (Hijikata, previously better known as the choreographer who created the performance art Butoh, as is obvious from his theatrical “acting”), and after some particularly freakish business involving human experiments – it’s all very Island Of Doctor Moreau – Jogoro volunteers some explanations and there’s around twenty minutes of spoken exposition, with occasional flashbacks.

It’s a shame that ending is quite so pragmatically presented, as prior to that Ishii’s film – beautifully restored and with a plethora of extras from Arrow – is rather poetic, if both difficult and deliberately shocking.

Extras: trailer, two Japanese cinema experts commentaries, co-screenwriter interview, Malformed Memories featurette, Far East Film Festival featurette

HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN / DIRECTOR: TERUO ISHII / SCREENPLAY: TERUO ISHII, MASAHIRO KAKEFUDA / STARRING: TERUO YOSHIDA, YUKIE KAGAWA, TERUKO YUMI, TATSUMI HIJIKATA / CERT: 18 / RELEASE DATE: 17TH SEPTEMBER 2018

Director Tomu Uchida worked the pre-war years of his career at the Nikkatsu studio on largely socialist films with a comedic or genre leaning. Spending the next decade imprisoned in Manchurian China, he joined the Toei studio and returned in 1955 with the luridly titled Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji – a picture that’s actually rather more thoughtful and considerably less violent than its title suggests.

It’s the story of a number of characters – principally a disgraced samurai and his two servants – on the road to Edo (which became Tokyo in 1868), in the shadow of the eponymous mountain, and the relationships that form and interactions that pass between them. Kojūrō, while a much kinder master than many of his kind, is a violent drunk and his bag-carrier Genta has been tasked with bringing him to Edo sober. Meanwhile, Kojūrō’s spear-carrier Genpachi befriends a small orphaned boy, Jirō, who has ambitions of becoming a samurai himself.

Elsewhere in the party – thrown together by a river-crossing and later torrential storms – we meet a widowed singer and her young daughter, a father taking his adult daughter to be sold into slavery for thirty gold coins, and Tōzaburō, a man who was forced to sell his own child years earlier and has spent the time since saving up the money to buy her back. At every stop the travellers make, they hear stories of a thief in disguise, robbing people on the road in tandem with their progress.

If the first half of the film is almost tortuously slow – or beautifully languid – and seemingly inconsequential, that’s as much of a deception as the robber’s inevitable disguise. Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji is Tomu (an assumed name meaning ‘to spit out dreams’) Uchida picking up where he left off and using the motion picture form to pick apart hierarchical structures and promote a left-wing agenda. The unmasking and arrest of the thief, and subsequent consequences thereof, are the first of a chain of events leading to Uchida’s ultimate goal, an overtly theatrically-handled massacre (on a small scale) that uses its own sense of incompetence to highlight the ridiculousness of social pecking orders. But there’s no happy ending here; for every triumph Uchida presents, there’s a tragedy to offset it. This isn’t grand filmmaking on a big scale, and its age betrays its occasional daftness, but it’s also consummately intelligent and rewarding in surprising ways.

There are a handful of retrospective extras on Arrow Academy’s new Blu-ray, and if there are a couple of picture drop-outs and the very occasional tramline alongside a rather crackly soundtrack, the picture itself is generally sharp and nicely contrasted, and with no sign of grain in the darker areas.

BLOODY SPEAR AT MOUNT FUJI (1955) / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: TOMU UCHIDA / SCREENPLAY: SHINTARO MIMURA, FUJI YAHIRO / STARRING: CHIEZO KATAOKA, DAISUKE KATO, RYUNOSUKE TSUKIGATA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

When New York nightclub hostess Norah Dain starts receiving obscene phone calls from an unknown “admirer”, police detective Dave Madden gets involved and makes it personal as he investigates who is responsible, warning Norah it never usually stops at just dirty dialling. Norah meanwhile comes to suspect every man in her world, including body beautiful busboy Larry (Sal Mineo), deaf and apparently mute nightclub bouncer Carlo (a pre-Hill Street Blues Daniel J. Travanti) and ultimately the possibly not-so-good detective himself. Everyone in Who Killed Teddy Bear, including Norah’s boss Marian (Elaine Stritch), seems to be only a step away from their “seedy” secret. The mystery caller isn’t really the hook of this release however, as the culprit is pretty obvious from the start. No, it’s a film that is interesting and remarkable stuff for other reasons.

Made at a point in the mid-60s where the youth movie (dance scenes, real wild kids, but nothing too dangerous) was starting to take on influences from darker genre fare, Who Killed Teddy Bear is a fascinating film of two approaches. The first is a fairly traditional crime thriller that could just as easily have been made for television at the time. The second is notably sleazier, curling American neo-noir with the psycho-sexual influences the next decade’s thrillers would make their own and skirting seriously dark themes of misogyny and incest. It’s not entirely successful at either, but considering how rare a mix of the two is, it’s a never less than fascinating film. When it does work, it’s remarkable. The final scenes are powerful and challenging and still have a punch to them. Add in some scenes shot in a Times Square and 42nd Street that is now forever lost, and there’s plenty to recommend.

This new Blu-ray from Network debuts the film in its proper aspect ratio, uncut and restored to probably as good a condition as it will ever be possible, considering what they had to work with. Print damage is visible in a number of scenes, but nothing distracts too much. A lot of Joseph Cates’ direction is pretty basic, but when he finds inspiration and when the print is clear, it showcases Joseph Brun’s beautiful cinematography. We should be grateful to get this in the shape it’s in. For extras, there’s an episode of the television series Court Martial that featured the tragic Mineo, and a stills gallery. More exciting than either is a scratchy copy of a short film narrated by Mineo called LSD: Insight or Insanity?

Recommended for anyone who, just as with the characters here, likes a little walk on the wild side.

WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR / DIRECTOR: JOSEPH CATES / SCREENPLAY: ARNOLD DRAKE, LEON TOKATYAN / STARRING: SAL MINEO, ELAINE STRITCH, JAN MURRAY, JULIET PROWSE / CERT: 15 / RELEASE DATE: 17TH SEPTEMBER 2018

Back in 1980, when Tom Baker was embarking on what was supposed to be his victory lap as Doctor Who, millions turned their backs on his alarmingly shagged-out Time Lord and watched Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century instead. Yes, genre fans, we felt we’d crossed a picket line, but all that stone-faced pontificating about ‘Block Transfer Computation’ and ‘Charged Vacuum Embodiments’ were the last thing we needed on a Saturday afternoon. How about a campy SF concoction featuring scantily clad space-ladies in lycra, cute robots and cool spaceships? No contest, frankly.

Co-created by Larsen with The Outer Limits originator Leslie Stevens and (very) loosely based on the 1939 film serial starring Buster Crabbe (who cameos in the pilot film), Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century tells the very tall tale of a 20^th Century playboy astronaut (Gill Gerard) who gets lost in space and ends up frozen in time. Rescued by Earth forces 500 years later, he’s soon put to work in a weekly battle against big-haired space fox Princess Ardala (Pamela Hensley) while teamed with no-nonsense fighter pilot Colonel Wilma Deering (Erin Gray). Cute tech support came from helmet-headed robot assistant Twiki (Felix Silla in a very sweaty suit and the voice of Mel Blanc) and super-intelligent computer brain Dr Theopolis, who Twiki wears like a giant Flava Flav-style neck medallion. It was a fun concept, and before you could say “STARBURST cover features” (we had it on twice) and “Look-In picture strip”, Buck Rogers’ feel-good adventures were blowing a great big ITV raspberry over the fence at Doctor Who, who sat there furiously playing with his BBC Micro and pretended it was all a bad dream.

Seen today, the series retains the campy charm that bedazzled us at the time. Gil Gerard’s smooth-talking performance was never going to win him any Emmys, but he’s an assuring hero in that late 70s, James Brolin/Lee Majors sort of way. He’s out-gunned in the acting stakes, however, by Erin Gray who many teenage boys held a candle for (as it were) and most episodes are sprinkled with an eclectic roster of guest stars including Vera Miles, Jack Palance, tragic Galaxina star Dorothy Stratten and a memorable turn from Jamie Lee Curtis in an orange jump suit.

Despite being produced straight after Battlestar Galactica, Larsen’s 1978 single-season response to Star Wars, Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century playfully jumps back to a pre-Lucas Logan’s Run-style of 70s futurism where everyone looks ready for a night out at Studio 54 and a modernist shopping arcade doubles nicely (and cheaply) for the interior of Earth Control. That said, the effects are excellent for TV of the time, with some very nice motion-controlled space battles featuring those Corgi die-cast favourite Starfighters, the sight of which may have you clicking on eBay.

Fans will tell you the first season is vastly superior to the truncated 11-episode second, and it’s hard to argue with that. The addition of Wilfred Hyde Whyte as resident boffin and the character of birdman Hawk (Thom Christopher) work OK, but the budget-driven decision to set the whole thing on a spaceship undermines the original concept. Gerard’s performance is less gung-ho, the scripts are less frivolous, and Wilma’s kick-ass wings are clipped. It was fun while it lasted.

This set includes all 33 episodes of the show, the original TV movie released in UK cinemas ahead of the TV series, and two other alternate-version stories, all looking rather splendid.

BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY – THE COMPLETE COLLECTION / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: GIL GERARD, ERIN GRAY, TIM O’CONNOR, MEL BLANC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW