Film
Given the fact that ’80s nostalgia has never really seemed to die, the numerous film classics (and class-sicks) celebrating their 40th (or more) anniversaries are flexing all over the high-resolution formats lately. Re-Animator (Ignite Films Ultra HD/Blu-ray Disc) and Vice Squad (Kino Lorber UHD/BD) are leaps and bounds beyond some of their previous incarnations. The former, which includes both the standard unrated version (on 4K and Blu-ray) and the extended European version (Blu-ray only) and an impressive array of extras, serves its imaginative grue with the kind of textural resolution and visual oomph you want from the late, great Stuart Gordon’s classic take on H.P. Lovecraft. The latter, one of the great (if not the best) killer-pimp movies, serves the scuzzy streets of Reagan-era L.A. with tremendous care. Stanley Kubrick’s cinematographer John Alcott makes the neon slime scintillate in this stellar restoration, and stars Wings Hauser and Season Hubley give it everything.
Just as rough (an impressive feat for 1965) but looking gorgeous in a new restoration is Russ Meyer’s Motorpsycho (Severin UHD/BD), a remarkable turn for Barbarella “Haji” Catton as a bad-time girl stuck with a wronged man out for vengeance — and the trio of damaged dudes they’re gunning for have no idea what’s coming for them. This is essential grindhouse cinema, and absolutely my favorite Haji performance.
Re-Animator
One of this year’s best films, Carson Lund’s homegrown baseball epic Eephus (Music Box BD), surfaces in a lovingly packed edition that befits the film’s singular charms. The best baseball hangout flick since 2016’s Everybody Wants Some!!, it’s a subtle and sincere film about the passage of time (as well as one that benefits from multiple viewings), weird friends and the ways that traditions have to keep evolving to keep from dissipating into the dust.
One of the benefits of some of the indie studios recommitting to physical media is that you sometimes get something magical and unexpected — like the new edition of Alex Ross Perry’s 2015 psychodrama Queen of Earth (IFC Films/OCN BD). Equal parts Joseph Losey and Frank Perry (with just a splash of Cassavetes), this is one of those films where dynamic women (Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterston) have an actress kumite, and the audience wins every time. With a new commentary including actress/cultural theorist Hari Nef (as well as an interview with local legend Keegan DeWitt) and an impressive gathering of perspectives, this is perfect for anyone who wants to understand hard-hitting melodrama from the inside out.
When the list is made of the things that unbridled tariffs have killed for Americans, pour one out for the Turbine 3D series. The German company Turbine Media has been one of the few companies doing proper 3D discs for recent offerings from studios like Universal and Paramount, and they’ve made them region-free discs that can play anywhere. Their most recent releases (Scream VI, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Meltdown and a remastered Friday the 13th Part III with additional work done to fix some vertex issues) were essential for anyone who still enjoys 3D. Thanks to the punishing tariffs completely demolishing international commerce, they’ll be unavailable for domestic viewing.
Reading
New for your film-associated bookshelf are the following.
A new, expanded edition of Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali’s staggering history of kung fu cinema, These Fists Break Bricks (Running Press). This tome does all the work and puts you there in the complex international history of the cinema of kicking people in the face. It is deeply educational and an utter delight, and you’ll want to make a list of all the treasures Hendrix and Poggiali put forth in these pages.
Criss-Cross (Hachette). The man who literally wrote the books on the making of Psycho, Valley of the Dolls and On the Waterfront, Stephen Rebello, has done it again with this incredible dive into the making of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. Informative, incisive, as dishy as need be and socially complex, this is perfect for a vacation read or a grad school thesis.
John Malahy’s Rewinding the ’80s (Running Press), a coffee table compendium that covers a heroic amount of ’80s cinema. It’s equal parts guidebook and catalog, with attention to exploring something beyond the blockbusters and Brat Pack epics that make up so much of our cultural-visual shorthand for the Reagan Era.
Behind the Beaded Curtain
The Russ Meyer retrospectacle continues with 1976’s Up! (Severin UHD/BD), a madcap mesh of intrigue, conspiracies, bonkers body parts and the kind of mayhem nobody has ever been able to pull off quite like Russ did. It’s somehow more progressive and more shocking than it was at its late ’70s debut, and there’s nothing to compare it to. Similarly, Altered Innocence’s historical sublabel pushes several envelopes and serves up two classics of ’80s gentleman cinema with their Arthur Bressan Jr. double-feature disc of Juice and Daddy Dearest (Anus Films BD), both with commentaries from the Cruising the Movies Purchell/Shepherd crew and careful restorations.
Sadly, the history of naughty cinema is ill-served by whatever the hell is going on with StudioCanal, because the 4K restoration they did of Paul Verhoeven’s filth classic Basic Instinct (Lionsgate Limited UHD/BD) is hamstrung by the problem that’s plagued every extant 4K version of the film: The sound mix has no bass whatsoever, which, considering how the film defined the decadent nightclub sequence for cinema for decades to come, is simply criminal. The fact that no one has bothered to fix this for years is staggering, and it hurts to have to hate on a film so dear to my heart (especially with such a sleek package and abundance of extras, including the old Camille Paglia commentary from the DVD days). Basic Instinct needs bass like a coked-out heart, driving the heart of this perverse masterpiece.
