Welcome back to our quarterly check-in with what’s happening in the realm of physical media.
There’s a legitimate question about film restoration and remastering, but it never gets bandied about regarding the perennial classics. Seven Samurai, Psycho, Casablanca — these are films with which we welcome each new refinement, each new leap forward in technology. But when it comes to films less reputable, less beloved, very often you’ll hear voices flittering around on the internet asking, “Does this film really merit this kind of presentation?”
Thankfully, the boutique labels and assorted weirdos are paying such slander no mind, because the new Ultra HD of Italian maestro Lucio Fulci’s 1986 sleaze masterpiece The Devil’s Honey (UHD/Blu-ray from Severin) is something exquisite to behold. A master of eyeball trauma and nearly every genre he dipped a toe in, Fulci was on a bit of a downward spiral when he made this mesh of 9 ½ Weeks, Betty Blue, On Death and Dying and The Night Porter. Though Honey proved his final masterpiece, what Severin has done here with this film is extraordinary, with an interview with reclusive star Blanca Marsillach as well!
The first installment of our quarterly look at new and essential works of physical media
No one would dispute the classic status of Don Siegel’s 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (UHD/Blu-ray from Kino Lorber), one of the most enduring sci-fi classics of the 20th century. Kino has done a lot of work with the film, presenting it in its two theatrical aspect ratios (Siegel’s preferred traditional flat and the studio-mandated SuperScope) with contrast levels as exquisite as the dread unfolding on screen. There’s never been a time in American history when this film and its progeny haven’t been relevant, and here’s hoping that someday all four films will be preserved with transfers that approach the material with the respect it deserves. (Though with Warner Bros. controlling the later two entries, I cannot help but worry.) Also the supplement about the life of producer Walter Wanger is essential viewing, worth its own whole movie.
The best film of 2019, Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Daniel Isn’t Real (Blu-ray from Yellow Veil) still has never played Nashville. It was so badly handled by its theatrical distributor that it’s taken five years to even get a Blu-ray release, and thankfully, Yellow Veil Pictures has gone full Criterion on this remarkable psychological horror show — it finally is being treated like the majestic achievement that it is rather than an afterthought. There are so many special features it feels like one of those deeply cool electives that can drop into undergrad laps (there’s a slideshow presentation of Mortimer’s style and a visual guide for the script that is going to single-handedly guide a whole lot of the filmmakers of whatever future we have left), and it is a must for fans of Screaming Mad George or primal scream therapy.
Closed Circuit
As far as quality hooks go, a movie that kills an audience member every time it’s screened is a pretty great one. Giuliano Montaldo’s 1978 film Closed Circuit (Blu-ray from Severin), originally made for Italian TV, is a wild ride that manages to dip toes in horror, sci-fi, the Western and the police procedural. For years available only on a supremely shitty YouTube rip, this is everything for anyone who has suffered through a crappy version of something amazing just because it was doing something singular. Closed Circuit is now able to preside, like it always should have been able to.
And if you’ve been looking for some good and dishy summer reading, look no further than With Love, Mommie Dearest: The Making of an Unintentional Camp Classic by A. Ashley Hoff. Leaving no stone unturned and taking no prisoners, this look at the making of one of 1981’s most infamous offerings is fascinating, uproarious, sometimes melancholy and quite possibly one of the most democratic portrayals of how the collaborative nature of film can build bonds or sever them forever. Hoff does an impressive job keeping the Faye Dunaway drama in balance with the experiences of heaps of other cast and crew members, and if anything, the tonal balance he finds reflects perfectly the experience of watching Mommie Dearest with a crowd, humor and horror and slack-jawed amazement and visceral disgust all in perfect synthesis. τ
