Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE (1983) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: LAMONT JOHNSON / SCREENPLAY: DAVID PRESTON, EDITH REY, DANIEL GOLDBERG, LEN BLUM / STARRING: PETER STRAUSS, MOLLY RINGWALD, ERNIE HUDSON, MICHAEL IRONSIDE, ANDREA MARCOVICCI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It’s hard to know who Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone is aimed at. At first glance, it’s an adventure yarn, maybe for kids, but its 15 rating – as much for a general feeling of unpleasantness as for the usual partial nudity and sexual dialogue that rating parlays – lifts into a different sphere altogether, one which its lack of nudity and sexual dialogue will surely lead to disappointment. Originally released in May 1983, Spacehunter was part of a revival for 3D films, up there with Jaws 3D and the third instalments of the Friday 13th and Amityville series, and was at that point the most expensive 3D movie ever made, but this Blu-ray release sadly omits the third dimension, leaving the film to stand on the first two alone.

Peter Strauss is Wolff, a space garbage man on the run from debtors, who receives a mayday call to rescue three Earth women stranded on a quarantined planet. His only companion is Chalmers (Marcovicci), his mechanic-cum-lover, who is later revealed to be an artificial being. The quarantined planet, Terra XI, was struck by a deadly plague, and one of the doctors sent to deal with the outbreak went native and took over the planet, renaming himself Overdog. What is supposed to be a simple retrieval becomes complicated when Overdog’s men capture the women, and Chalmers is killed; Wolff resolves to complete his mission – the three thousand mega-credits (no exchange rate is given but it’s assumed to be a lot) at the heart of his motivations – and hooks up with a native Terran to guide him to Overdog’s lair, the Zone.

Strauss is incredibly charismatic, the action movie lead the 1980s lost (to insipid miniseries like Kane and Abel), and his partnership with Molly Ringwald’s Niki is wonderful in its awkwardness. Ringwald, at just fifteen and in only her second film, sparkles with the charm that would make her a Brat Pack star in the years following Spacehunter, and there is also a small part for Ernie Hudson, who would team up with executive producer Ivan Reitman on Ghostbusters a year later.

The Blu-ray is light on extras, with just a commentary track from film historians Allan Bryce and Richard Holliss, regulars on 101 Films re-releases of cult ‘80s films, and this is a missed opportunity, because the movie looked like it was a lot of fun to make; interviews with Strauss, Ringwald, and Michael Ironside – who hams it up as Overdog – would have been very interesting, even at thirty-seven years’ distance.

Spacehunter is fun but by no means a classic. There’s a healthy nostalgia for the films we rented from the video store in the early- to mid-1980s, and Spacehunter will appeal to fans of recent re-releases Class of 1984 and Howard the Duck. Whether it stands by itself as a movie outside that bubble, however, will depend entirely on whether hackneyed dialogue (although Niki’s Terran slang is cute), inconsistent acting outside the principals, and dirt cheap effects (one can only wonder where that budget went) take away more than the charisma of Strauss and Ringwald bring to the table.

THE POINT (ULTIMATE EDITION) (1971) / CERT:  U / DIRECTOR: FRED WOLF / SCREENPLAY: NORM LENZER / STARRING: RINGO STARR, PAUL FREES, LENNIE WEINRIB / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (US ONLY)

In the Land of the Point, everything is pointed: the houses, the cars, the trees, and the people. Everything that is, except for Oblio, a little boy who has to wear a pointed hat to disguise the fact he was born with a suspiciously round head. But, when he defeats the evil count’s son in an innocent game of triangle toss, Oblio and his pointy dog Arrow are banished from the Land of Point and exiled to the uncharted realms of the Pointless Forest. Except that everything in the Pointless Forest still has a point, including the freakishly pointed man, the giant bees, the fat dancing sisters, and the walking tree, all of whom directly or unwittingly help Oblio and Arrow find the point to their journey. Because, if Oblio can ever find his way back to the Land of Point, he’ll be returning with a knowledge that will change the kingdom forever: everyone has a point, even if, sometimes, you’ve got to look harder to find it.

The Point is based on a story and songs written by Harry Nilsson, probably best known to modern audiences for droning “I can’t live, if living is without you” on the Bridget Jones soundtrack while Renee Zellwegger pounds the air drums (even though that was one of his biggest hits, he didn’t write it). But, if that’s all people know about Nilsson, it’s kind of sad. He was a prolific musician who worked with (and wrote for) some of the biggest musical stars of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and even starred in a pretty appalling little movie called Son of Dracula alongside Ringo Starr. The Point is lifted almost directly from Nilsson’s 1970 album The Point! and both album and movie are pretty freaking groovy.

Not surprisingly for a film that was produced as the hippie era of peace and love was beginning to wane, The Point is also endearingly trippy. It’s nowhere near as anarchic and vibrantly in-your-face as The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (which is undoubtedly The Point’s closest comparison), probably because it was designed for the non-confrontational family-friendliness of prime time US TV. But you can still easily see where Nilsson’s inspiration for The Point came from, when an acid trip made him look at the world in a very different way. It’s surreal, good-hearted, and – despite a little flagging somewhere near the middle – still makes for thoughtful, toe-tapping animated entertainment. Ringo Starr, as the narrator, is surprisingly good, although it would have been nice to hear the original televised narration that was provided by Nilsson’s good friend, Dustin Hoffman. Unfortunately, Hoffman’s contract meant that his narration could only be used one time only, and Starr was only one of three more narrators whose vocals were enlisted for subsequent transmissions. For a disc that’s packed with a lot of fabulous extras, it’s a shame that none of the alternative narrations could be included. Still, The Point is a little-known animated classic that will hopefully become much more popular thanks to this stonkingly enjoyable Region 1 release. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a UK-friendly version, if you’ve got a multi-region player and a hankering for some great tunes and a cool little cartoon story with a great message at its core, put The Point on your shopping list today.

RUNAWAY (1984) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: MICHAEL CRICHTON / STARRING: TOM SELLECK, CYNTHIA RHODES, GENE SIMMONS, KIRSTIE ALLEY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It’s the near future and robots are everywhere, working in offices, cooking our meals and minding our children, and even building skyscrapers. But, just like anything manmade, robots are liable to malfunction and, when they do, very bad things can happen. That’s why there’s a police division known as the ‘runaway’ squad, whose sole purpose is to track down and turn off the robots who have gone nutso. And Sergeant Jack Ramsay (Selleck) is their star player.

Today, Ramsay has far more than glitchy robots to worry about. Just as he’s teaching his perky new partner (Rhodes) the job, a robot goes full-on psycho and murders an entire family. Pretty soon, the body count’s rising and it looks like the psychopathic genius Dr Charles Luther (KISS star Simmons) is at the centre of it. And Luther isn’t just hacking robots with dodgy microchips, he’s also invented a smart microbullet that locks onto its target’s body heat, meaning that however fast the victim runs, and wherever they run to, the bullet will always find them. But best of all are Luther’s robot spiders that can climb any surface and inject their target with a lethal dose of acid before exploding.

Ramsay’s got Luther’s microchip templates, and Luther wants them back. Even if that means kidnapping Ramsay’s son, trapping the cop at the top of an under-construction skyscraper, and sending his spider assassins off to finish the job. Between terrifying tech and a debilitating case of vertigo, Sgt Jack Ramsay’s about to have a very bad day.

It’s fair to say that Michael Crichton’s career as a screenwriter/director never came close to eclipsing his work as a bestselling author. Westworld was a great high-concept idea that hadn’t aged well until the TV series, and only 1978’s marvellously fun The First Great Train Robbery still holds up to repeated viewings. However, it’s good to see Runaway finally getting some UK Blu-ray love because, even though it’s a sub-sub-Blade Runner rip-off served with a massive pile of cheese with extra cheese on the side, it’s still a terrific piece of low-budget, switch-your-brain-off, comfort-watching hokum. And who doesn’t want to live in a world where robots that look like photocopiers run amok with handguns, microbullets are confusingly four times the size of ordinary bullets, and hero cops try valiantly to perform emergency ER on a mangled robot maid haemorrhaging hydraulic fluid? It’s batty, it’s brilliant, Kirstie Alley smoulders as a wannabe femme fatale, and why the heck Cynthia Rhodes wasn’t a bigger ‘80s film star is one of life’s great unanswerable questions.

ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY COLLECTION / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 30TH

Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of the few truly unique figures in moviemaking. His early work such as Fando y Lis and El Topo caused a massive stir when they came out back in the ‘70s and continue to influence filmmakers to this day. This collection brings together his most important works, accompanied with appropriate commentary and documentaries.

El Topo is the most famous work mostly because of its surreal and striking imagery. This is, after all, a movie where a man duels a naked cowboy. In theory, it’s the tale of a gunfighter who is on a search for spiritual and sexual self-discovery. He wanders the desert challenging masters of the art of gun-fighting until the inevitable consequences of his actions catch up with him. On the way, Jodorowsky’s striking cinematography and surreal direction carry the story forward. Like all of these works, it’s in Spanish, but there’s so little dialogue that it doesn’t matter (and the subtitles are superb).

The Holy Mountain takes things up a notch with surreal tale of spiritual enlightenment, delusion, and fraud. Starring Horacio Salinas as a thief, a fool, and a Christ-like figure, and the director as an alchemist and wise-man, it is a triumph of visual design and shock over coherent storytelling. Crammed with alchemical symbolism, nudity, and surreal violence, it feels like both a criticisms of man’s attempt to understand his soul and also an enormous prank played on western meta-culture.

Finally, we get to Fando y Lis, the director’s earliest work. It’s a messy blueprint for what was to come, and is hard to understand fully because it’s so short and feels unsteady and unsure. More than the others, this is a delight for students of film and a nightmare for the casual viewer.

Each movie has been fully restored and it all looks crisp, which is good because we are here for the visual experience, not the plot. Extras include various critics, academics and the movie’s creators themselves going on about how important these movies are. They’re both interesting and entertaining in equal measure.

The collection includes Jodorowsky’s new film Psychomagic, which is basically the director talking about his two favourite topics. Namely himself and his spiritual believes. It’s a jumble of avant-garde performance art, surreal moments, odd juxtapositions, and utterly pointless excess. Some will find it uplifting and eye-opening. Others will find it to be new-age dross. This sort of art is entirely subjective, so leave your expectations at the door.

As a collection of Jodorowsky’s work, this is a comprehensive collection of his early work with informative commentary. Like anything connected to the man, it’s a matter of personal taste, but if you like this sort of thing then this is a pretty much perfect collection.

MAGIC (1978) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH / SCREENPLAY: WILLIAM GOLDMAN / STARRING: ANTHONY HOPKINS, ANN-MARGRET, BURGESS MEREDITH / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 23RD

Despite being a film that was written by William Goldman, directed by Richard Attenborough, has as its star Anthony Hopkins along with support from Ann-Margret and Burgess Meredith amongst others, and comes from one of 20th century cinema’s most celebrated decades, Magic doesn’t seem much discussed when talk turns to psychological horrors or classic films of the seventies.

It’s a dour tale that’s unrelentingly bleak, a purposefully washed out palette not bringing much brightness to proceedings. Hopkins plays Corky, a magician who spectacularly blows his first attempt at being a professional performer. Taking a year out, Corky comes back with a new act of the same magic but this time supported by the banter and bad language of his ventriloquist’s dummy Fats. Picked up by agent Ben Greene (Meredith), Corky is seemingly destined for success, but when the opportunity for stardom comes, he instead panics and heads home to the Catskills, frightened the world might discover that his ‘relationship’ with Fats isn’t entirely sane. When there, he reconnects with a childhood crush going through marriage problems and the stage is set for tragedy.

Whether you’ll enjoy any of this depends on how much you dig clammy, oppressive tales in which every character seemingly makes the worst possible decision they could, every time. That’s a challenging vibe but one that Magic largely carries off. This is not a film that seeks to comfort you, but instead seeks to unnerve and as a result it very much qualifies as horror. Performances range from good to excellent (one moment in particular with Burgess Meredith where he just drops his gaze for a second is a masterclass in inhabiting the character internally onscreen). Hopkins has the hardest job to do and uncharacteristically struggles, but despite being one of his most awkward, difficult performances it doesn’t ultimately damage the film. Attenborough directs with restrained style and Victor Kemper’s cinematography becomes another character, ensuring you know there’s never a happy ending on the cards.

The print here is strong and detailed and for such a gloomy film there’s no loss of sharpness or detail. For extras, there’s a solid selection of archive material including a wonderful, bizarrely framed interview with Hopkins and, should you wish, a history of ventriloquism. There’s an interview with William Goldman (who also wrote the book he based his screenplay on) about how the inspiration for the story came about. Although nothing is essential, as a collection there’s plenty of context that should enhance your appreciation of what they worked to achieve here.

Magic is an unfriendly, unpleasant film but is never less than compelling. With a good package of supporting extras, for anyone interested it comes recommended.

VILLAIN (1971) / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: MICHAEL TUCHNER / SCREENPLAY: DICK CLEMENT, IAN LA FRENAIS / STARRING: RICHARD BURTON, IAN MCSHANE, NIGEL DAVENPORT, DONALD SINDEN / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 30TH

A delirious, actorly show business fantasy of a companion piece to the likes of Get Carter, Villain tells the sordid tale of Vic Dakin, a London gangster boss whose ambition and lust for thrills finally becomes his undoing. Dakin dotes on his elderly mother, making her cups of tea and taking Sunday drives down to Brighton. At the same time, he’s a thug who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on people and getting his hands dirty. When the opportunity comes up for a big score, Dakin can’t resist being in the thick of it, a decision that will ultimately destroy him.

Originally released in 1971, Villain initially seems part of a trend towards grittier presentations of crime that includes films like Caine’s classic thriller. Certainly, the violence remains strong stuff and there’s no attempt to make any of the characters particularly sympathetic. Burton throws himself into an atypical role for him, grunting and practically frothing at the mouth, most notably in the masochistic scenes with Ian McShane as Dakin’s unwilling boyfriend. It’s Burton that drives the film but also Burton that gives proceedings an air of heightened unreality. This doesn’t really harm the film, however, which is an enjoyably overwrought thriller tightly directed by Michael Tuchner and supported by a wryly amusing script from Porridge writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. There’s a lot to enjoy here, from Burton’s operatically intense performance to supporting turns from the likes of McShane, Donald Sinden, and Joss Ackland to a beautifully shot East End of London that’s unrecognisable today.

For this new release in the Vintage Classics collection, we get a generally good quality print that presents the mostly-brightly shot action with clarity and sharpness. Apart from a suitably over-the-top trailer and stills gallery, there are two main extras in the form of interviews. The first is with McShane who has a lot to say about his career at the time, with little tidbits of information about the acting community of the era, and as you might expect he is as ever charming company. There’s also a fascinating, comprehensive appreciation of Villain by cultural historian Matthew Sweet which goes into a huge amount of detail about the industry of the time, the careers of those involved and the movie itself. It’s an excellent companion to the film.

Villain foreshadows British television’s obsession with the seedy side of crime later in the decade (most notably The Sweeney) and is still uncomfortable in its character study of a truly unpleasant man. If you enjoy a good gangster film or just want to luxuriate in an arguably incongruous but never less than hypnotic performance, it comes recommended.

DVD, BLU-RAY, VOD | CERT: 15 | DIRECTOR: MIKE FLANAGAN | SCREENPLAY: MIKE FLANAGAN | STARRING: EWAN McGREGOR, REBECCA FERGUSON, KYLIEGH CURRAN | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Looking back, Doctor Sleep was never going to meet expectations. As a sequel to one of the most revered horror movies – not to mention novels – of all time, it faced an uphill battle that even the powerhouse duo of Stephen King and director Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) couldn’t pull off. Add to that an unusual story that only tangentially connects to its predecessor, and it’s little surprise that it under-performed on its initial release.

But here’s the thing. It’s good. Really good. Flanagan – who made Oculus, Hush and previous King adaptation Gerald’s Game (which, like this film, features a great hand-mangling scene) – is one of the best horror directors working today, and almost pulls off the impossible, making a sequel that will appeal both to fans of King’s original novel as well as Kubrick’s wildly different adaptation of the material.

The new director’s cut – included here alongside the theatrical version – has allowed Flanagan the chance to further expand his vision, adding in almost 30 minutes worth of new material to an already lengthy film (the theatrical cut runs at two and a half hours), as well as restructuring the movie slightly to more closely resemble Kubrick’s. And while there’s nothing earth-shattering here – the new additions mainly consist of small character moments and scenes – it makes for a richer, more fulfilling experience. Anyone not won over by the movie initially is unlikely to change their mind, but for fans, or anyone experiencing it for the first time, the director’s cut is the superior version. The Blu-ray is rounded out by three short but insightful featurettes (if you’ve ever wanted to see grown men gleefully riding a tricycle round the Overlook, now’s your chance).

For the most part sticking closely to the novel, the film initially picks up with the now-adult Danny Torrance (McGregor) 30 years after the events at the Overlook Hotel. Down on his luck, alcoholic and broke, he’s at a low ebb, literally and metaphorically haunted by the ghosts of his past. A chance encounter with a fellow addict gives him a chance to turn his life around and – flashforward to a few years later – he’s sober, and working in a nursing home where he uses his supernatural powers to help the residents to pass on peacefully when it’s their time, earning him the nickname Doctor Sleep.

His powers also lead him to establish a psychic connection to a young girl, Abra (impressive newcomer Kyliegh Curran) whose gifts exceed his own. But it’s not just Danny who becomes aware of Abra’s powers. She also attracts the attention of the True Knot – a group of wandering vampire-like creatures who travel the country feeding on children gifted with the shining. Under the leadership of Rebecca Ferguson’s Rose the Hat (far more attractive than an energy-sucking, child-murdering vampire has any right to be, plus she can rock a top hat like no one on Earth), Abra becomes their next target, and it’s up to Danny to save her.

So far, so not very like The Shining, but – like King – Flanagan intersperses his story with references to the original. Various characters reoccur (including a bizarrely cast Henry Thomas), scenes from the original movie are meticulously recreated, there’s plenty of RedruM (including a particularly shocking child murder), and given that, unlike the novel, the Overlook survived the film version, Flanagan gets to indulge himself, setting key sequences in the hotel itself (beautifully recreated from Kubrick’s original designs). And while it’s great to see the Overlook again, the scenes set here are probably the film’s weakest. Maybe it’s because they steer too far from the novel, or maybe because – for all his undoubted talents – Flanagan is no Kubrick (That’s no slight, even Spielberg tried and failed to recapture the dread of the Overlook).

Doctor Sleep is a superior King adaptation, and while it didn’t perform as well as other, lesser films based on his books (we’re looking at you Pennywise), it’s a classier film from one of the finest horror directors working today. Drop your preconceptions about what a Shining sequel should be and take a dive into King’s unmatched imagination.