Corpse Bride 4K (2005)

"Stop Motion With Devilishly Excellent 4K Detail"

Warner Bros. are releasing Tim Burton's animated movie CORPSE BRIDE on 4K UHD in standard, steelbook, and a posh collectors' edition that has the steelbook, two double-sided posters, eight characters sketch cards, four storyboard sketches stickers, and a 'Corpse Bridge' zine.

Victor Van Dort (Johnny Depp) is due to be married to Victoria Everglot (Emily Watson) in the chapel of Pastor Galswells (Christopher Lee). But Victor fluffs his marriage vows and goes off to the nearby creepy Tim Burton forest to practice. Unfortunately when he does get them right the corpse of Emily (Helena Bonham Carter) rises from the dead, considers herself married to him, and drags him down to the underworld.

Meanwhile, as Victor has disappeared, the slimy Barkis Bitten (Richard E Grant) offers to marry Victoria himself, and of course he has a hidden agenda. Will Victor get back topside, possibly with aid of a skeleton with a Michael Gough voice? Are there plenty of songs? Does Victor get reunited with his deceased pet dog Sparky?

You can probably guess the answers. While CORPSE BRIDE isn't perhaps quite as good as NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS it's still a delightful, charming piece of Burton-style Gothic. Warners' new 4K transfer allows you to see a lot more detail on the puppets (and indeed their costumes) and the voice roles include, as well as the above, Tracey Ullman, Paul Whitehouse, Joanna Lumley and Jane Horrocks, with Danny Elfman  providing an excellent score and some memorable songs. 

The UHD disc comes with two new extras - The Minds Behind Corpse Bride (9 minutes) and Corpse Bride Reflections (6 minutes), both of which have screenwriter John August, producer Allison Abbate and co-director Mike Johnson discussing the film 20 years on. The rest of the extras are a bundle of ported over little featurettes from 2005 includingInside the Two Worlds of Corpse Bride (4 minutes), Making Puppets Tick (7 minutes), The Animators (7 minutes), Pre-Production Galleries (14 minutes and fascinating if you're into how the puppets went from metal frames to film), Tim Burton: Dark Vs Light (4 minutes) Danny Elfman Interprets the Two World (6 minutes) and two good pieces on the voice cast: Voices from the Underworld (6 minutes) and The Voices Behind the Voice (8 minutes).

Tim Burton's CORPSE BRIDE is out on 4K UHD and Digital from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in standard, steelbook and collectors' editions on Monday 22nd September 2025

 

Wrack and Ruin: The Rubble Film at DEFA (1946 - 1948)

Let's start with a couple of definitions. The 'Rubble' or 'Debris' film (from the German Trümmerfilm) is used to describe those films made by Germany immediately after the end of World War II. As their name implies, many of these feature bombed-out cities as their primary locations. DEFA stands for Deutsche-Film-Aktiengesellschaft. It was East Germany's state-owned film studio, founded in post-war Germany and authorised to make movies inside the Soviet occupation zone and overseen by the Soviet Military Administration. One of its main aims was to aid in the denazification of Germany. Eureka are now releasing five of DEFA's films in a box set with extras, so let's take a look at what we get:

Disc One

The Murderers are Among Us (1946)

The first-ever rubble film tells the story of Susanne (Hildegard Knef) who returns from a concentration camp to her Berlin apartment only to find a stranger living there. This is Han Mertens (Wilhem Borchert), a surgeon, who is carrying with him a terrible secret from the war, one which comes back to haunt him when he realises the commanding officer of the concentration camp in which he served is still alive. 

From the opening shot it's obvious that, as well as being well-made, THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US plans to pull no punches depicting the degree of devastation wrought by the bombing of Berlin. Director (and writer) Wolfgang Staudte manages some impressive camera setups (eg from on top of an overloaded train entering Berlin) and overall this is an excellent  film with a lot to say while also telling an engrossing story. 

Extras on disc one include a commentary track from Sergio Angelini which is very helpful if you've not encountered the rubble films before. From the Rubble is a 28 minute piece from Claire Knight about the founding of DEFA, Rebuilding Berlin is a 23 minute documentary from 1946 and to finish off there's newsreel footage from The Eyewitness from 1946 that includes material about the shooting of the film.

Disc Two

Somewhere in Berlin (1946)

The children (which basically means boys) who play on the rubble heaps are the main subject of this one, plus the adults they come into contact with. These include thief Waldemar (Fritz Rasp who would later appear in several Rialto Film Edgar Wallace krimis), a local artist, and a man who sells them stolen fireworks in exchange for food. When little Gustav's father returns from the war it signifies a change for all his family. 

The depiction of ordinary people taking advantage of the post-war situation must have been pretty unflinching for the period, and while that side of things is dealt with seriously, the film finishes with a note of tremendous optimism, suggesting Berlin will be rebuilt by its people, but it perhaps doesn't quite gel with what we've seen before.

Police Raid (1947)

A complete change of pace as we get a film that feels a lot more like the noir gangster pictures Hollywood was turning out at the time. Inspector Naumann (Paul Bildt) is determined to crack an organisation of black marketeers based at the Ali Baba club. A raid goes wrong and it turns out one of his men is an informant. The case is closed but Naumann carries on investigations on his own, with disastrous consequences.

Director Werner Klingler would go on to make 1962's THE TERROR OF DR MABUSE for Artur Brauner and here he demonstrates a keen ability for the police procedural, opening the film with scenes of crowds milling close to bombed out landmarks and contrasting these with the slick environs of the nightclub and those who profit from it.

Extras in disc two include commentary tracks on SOMEWHERE IN BERLIN from Elizabeth Ward and POLICE RAID by Sergio Angelini. Crimewave is a 20 minute visual essay by Sebastian Heiduschke which looks at plenty of imagery from the film. Rebuilding Potsdam is a 30 minute archival documentary from 1946 and we get another issue of The Eyewitness newsreel from 1946

Disc Three

Marriage in the Shadows (1947)

A change of pace again for this tale that begins in 1933. Elisabeth Maurer (Ilse Steppat) is a famous actress. Unfortunately she's Jewish and Nazism is on the rise. She marries fellow actor, the non-Jewish Hans (Paul Klinger) but their marriage is doomed to end in tragedy.

MARRIAGE IN THE SHADOWS is a remarkable film with a gut punch of an ending. Much of the dialogue in the earlier scenes will be terrifyingly prescient of events today as the proponents of Nazism face off against the more rational and tolerant. It's loosely based on the true story of the fate of the German actor Joachim Gottschalk and with its theatrical background the early scenes are reminiscent of some of the UK's output of the period.

The Blum Affair (1948)

Another film based on a true story, and another 'period piece' (it's set in 1926, during the Weimar republic). Dr Jakob Blum (Kurt Ehrhardt) is a Jewish industrialist who is accused of murdering his accountant, Wilhelm Platzer (Arno Paulsen). The actual murderer is a thief, Karlheinz Gabler (Hans Christian Blech) who is encouraged by the authorities to accuse Blum because Blum is a member of the current opposing political party. The courtroom drama that then ensues is riveting.

Again, like MARRIAGE IN THE SHADOWS, THE BLUM AFFAIR does a good job of contextualising the historical period in which its story takes place. Unemployment is high, people are desperate for work, and an advertisement for the position of a cashier in a remote bank is how Gabler goes about his crime. 

Extras on disc three include commentaries on MARRIAGE IN THE SHADOWS (by Sean Allan) and THE BLUM AFFAIR (by Rolland Man, written by David Melville Wingrove). Confronting the Past is 25 minutes from Sue Vice on DEFA and the Holocaust and there's a 37 minute archival documentary on 'Death Camp Sachsenhausen' with a warning at the beginning regarding its content that some may need to take heed of. There's also another issue of The Eyewitness, this time from 1947.

Finally, the set comes with a 60 page book featuring new writing on the films and a hardcase to keep everything in. This is a fascinating, educational and important set of films and full marks to Eureka for bringing them to a much wider audience in such an excellent package. 

Wrack and Ruin: The Rubble Film at DEFA is out from Eureka Entertainment in a three disc Blu-ray set on Monday 15th September 2025

The Man in Black (1950)

"All Rather Good Fun"

Hammer's latest posh 4K UHD and Blu-ray combo release is THE MAN IN BLACK, a crime thriller that will be of interest to anyone who loves the studio's later output (quite a lot of people), as well as enthusiasts of B movie big screen adaptations of radio properties (a rather smaller group of people).

The titular Man is 'our storyteller' (as he was on the radio show of the period) who, in the unmistakeable tones of Valentine Dyall (for an entire generation) introduces us to the characters and sets up for the story we are about to see, and which is to be told in flashback.

When rich yoga enthusiast Henry Clavering (Carry On's Sid James in one of the least typical roles of his career) dies, his evil new wife (Betty Ann Davies) and her equally evil daughter Janice (Sheila Burrell) conspire to drive Henry's daughter Joan (Hazel Penwarden) insane with the aid of 'opportunist' lounge lizard and frequent raider of the drinks cabinet Victor (Anthony Forwood). 

And why not? After all, Joan has just inherited Oakley Court (which fans will spot straight away) and pretty much all of her father's assets. However, when Victor seemingly kills the family manservant and in doing so discovers Henry's coffin to be empty, after which Victor himself disappears, what actually is going on?

A highly entertaining thriller in the vein of Hammer's later Jimmy Sangster written and produced pieces like TASTE OF FEAR (1961) or many of the British Merton Park Edgar Wallace adaptations of the early 1960s, THE MAN IN BLACK feels rather more 'Hammer' than their other recent 4K release BLOOD ORANGE. The settings are atmospheric, engendering a pleasing atmosphere of gothic lunacy, and Davies and Burrell are frequently electrifying as the scheming mother and sister.

Extras kick off with two new commentary tracks which do compliment each other although there's inevitably some repetition. The one with Will Fowler and Melanie Williams is slightly more formal whereas Paul Cornell and Lizbeth Miles' one is a little bit more chatty, plus Paul is the one who points out the framed photo of Jimmy Sangster on Janice's dresser so extra points for that.

There's a 28 minute piece on John Dickson Carr, the crime novelist who didn't write this one but was responsible for a lot of similar material that made it onto radio at the time. Panic Stations is an excellent 25 minutes on the history of post war genre radio that looks at both the US and UK output and how changes were sometimes made to the same material for broadcast on either side of the Atlantic.

Vic Pratt and Jonathan Rigby guide us expertly through Valentine Dyall's career in a 22 minute piece and there's a 20 minute excerpt from an audio interview with director Francis Searle from 1988. As well as the usual bits and pieces (image gallery and censor card) there are a few curious items. YOGA AND YOU is a 26 minute short film that begins with the promise of being a 'nudie cutie' but quickly turns into a serious look at yoga. Then there are three radio episodes of the the show Suspense from 1943, all hosted by The Man in Black (played by different people), and all running 30 minutes consisting of The Devil's Saint (starring Peter Lorre), The Customers Like Murder and Cabin B-13.

Finally, the package comes with a book featuring a decent amount of material including a making of, the radio show, the careers of Sid James, (in this case screenwriter) John Gilling and Anthony Hinds plus a tour of Oakley Court. Who would ever have thought a modest little B picture like THE MAN IN BLACK would be afforded such lavish treatment? And you know what? It's all quite excellent and, if you love this stuff, worth the investment of your time and money. 

Hammer's THE MAN IN BLACK is out from Hammer on Monday 8th September 2025 in a limited edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray package with all the trimmings