Pink Flamingos (1972)

Celebrating 50 Years of 'Joyous Obscenity'

Yes it's 50 years since John Waters' first colour feature film premiered in the director's hometown of Baltimore, Maryland and, while it took some time to gain its following on the midnight movie circuit courtesy of New Line Cinema, the world has never been quite the same since. To celebrate, Criterion are bringing out an anniversary Blu-ray (the film itself has been on the Criterion label since the US laserdisc release of 1997) that has, some might say miraculously considering some of the material in here, been passed uncut with a BBFC 18 certificate.

  Most people reading this review will have likely already seen it but if you haven't, be aware that, much like Sam Raimi's original EVIL DEAD, the intention of Waters to create an act of 'comedy terrorism' combined with the inexperience of all concerned, resulted in a film that's much more disturbing than was perhaps the intention.

Divine (Divine) is hiding out in a trailer in the middle of nowhere (actually a freezing Baltimore forest) with her bizarre 'family': Crackers (Danny Mills), Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce) and Edie (Edith Massey) who is obsessed with eggs and spends most of her time confined to a playpen. Meanwhile newspaper headlines trumpet Divine as the 'Filthiest Person Alive'.

Extremely unhappy about this pronouncement are Connie and Raymond Marble (Mink Stole and David Lochary) who run a business abducting women, keeping them in a pit, artificially inseminating them by the most grungy and obscene method possible, and then selling the babies to lesbian couples. They feel they deserve the 'Filthiest' title and plan to put an end to Divine's reign. But Divine hasn't earned that title for nothing.

'We were the hate generation' says Waters in the second of two commentary tracks on Criterion's disc and perhaps that's why, amateurish as it is, PINK FLAMINGOS still works, if you can stomach it. Despite its intention to be a comedy it's difficult to ignore all the screaming and ranting, all the obscene behaviour, and all that taboo-breaking as a symptom of a very disaffected society indeed. Perhaps that's why it still feels relevant now.

Criterion's disc features a new 30 minute conversation between Waters and film director Jim Jarmusch, as well as a new 22 minute featurette of Waters visiting the movie's locations. Archival material includes the two Waters commentaries (from 1997 and 2001), '25th Anniversary Footage' which is 13 minutes of deleted scenes with a Waters linking commentary from 1997, as well as 25 minutes of outtake footage. Finally, there's DIVINE TRASH, Steve Yeager's 1998 feature length documentary about the film that features interviews and archive footage of many of the cast and crew. The package also comes with a booklet (not supplied for review) that includes an essay by Howard Hampton and an excerpt from Cookie Mueller's book Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black.

John Waters' PINK FLAMINGOS is out from Criterion on 

Blu-ray in its 50th Anniversary Edition on Monday 25th July 2022

Giallo Essentials: Black Edition (1972, 1974)

Arrow follow up their previous Giallo Essentials: Red Edition (which contained THE PYJAMA GIRL CASE, THE FIFTH CORD and THE POSSESSED) and Giallo Essentials Yellow Edition (US only and featuring STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER, WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS and TORSO) with this latest set containing three more Italian movies from the heyday of the genre. None of the films are especially well known and all have been rescued from obscurity in 2K restorations with collectors booklets and a nice box to keep them all in. So what do we have this time around?

Smile Before Death (1972)

After the apparent (to the police, anyway) suicide of her mother Dorothy, teenager Nancy Thompson (!) returns from her English boarding school to her home and the company of her stepfather Marco and her 'mother's best friend' Gianna (Rosalba Neri). It quickly becomes apparent (to us) that Marco and Gianna bumped Dorothy off and now they have the same plans for Nancy. But things don't go anywhere near according to plan.

A C-grade giallo at best, with enough twists and turns that it eventually becomes amusing, culminating in an unintentionally hilarious ending that's almost worth watching the entire film for, SMILE BEFORE DEATH is one for Italian film (and Rosalba Neri) completists only. It's blessed / cursed with an excruciating music score that include a fair bit of Hammond organ insanity, and with its essentially three-hander storyline and copious nudity this one very quickly begins to feel like a Jess Franco-style erotic thriller (Lina Romay would have either played the daughter or Neri's role depending on when it was made). 

Extras include a commentary by Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson who love the music so maybe it's just me. There's also a 23 minute interview with the son of director Silvio Amadio. It's in Italian and my copy had no subtitles so hopefully Arrow will get that fixed before release. Other than that there's an image gallery and three minutes of extended nude scenes which were shot for the film but never included.

The Weapon, The Hour, The Motive (1972)

The title makes this one sound like a poliziotteschi and in fact it is more of a police procedural in which Inspector Franco Boito (Renzo Montagnani) investigates the stabbing to death of naughty sexy priest Don Giorgio (Maurizio Bonuglia) in his church. Was the killer one of the ladies he was sleeping with? Or their jealous husbands / lovers? Or perhaps one of the nuns at the local convent who wear just a bit too much eyeliner?

THE WEAPON THE HOUR THE MOTIVE was the only directorial effort from Francesco Mazzei and that's a shame because there are some delightfully creepy sequences in this one, as well as at least one quite bizarre scene in a crypt that suggests if he'd been encouraged to go full tilt with a horror project he might have delivered something really worth watching. As it is THE WEAPON THE HOUR THE MOTIVE isn't terribly memorable but fans will find it a reasonable timewaster.

Extras include a 13 minute interview with Salvatore Puntillo who plays the inspector's sidekick, English title sequences and an image gallery. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas provides the commentary track which is more an overall chat about gialli in general rather than dealing with the film in question in depth

The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (1974)

A welcome English-friendly Blu-ray release for this supernaturally-enhanced giallo. A mysterious man invites nine aristocratic fur coat-wearing partygoers to an old theatre and after the usual bickering about infidelities and inheritances they start to be bumped off by a mysterious killer wearing black gloves and a mask that resembles any number of obscure British television comics. Despite the stunning location (the Gentile de Fabriano theatre) and a host of over the top characters, this is a fairly bland affair that only really comes to life at its denouement, one which is a fair bit dafter than most of the movies in this genre.

Extras include two interviews ported over from the 2013 Camera Obscura release. Hanging With Howard is 8 minutes of reminiscence about the film with actor Howard Ross, while the second is 28 minutes with co-screenwriter Biagio Proietti. Anyone expecting any detail about the writing of this film in particular will be disappointed as this is very much a career overview, but his insights into the part of the industry in which he worked are still interesting.There's also a Kat Ellinger commentary in which amongst other things she argues the case for the validity of THE KILLER as a giallo film. 

Giallo Essentials: Black Edition is out from Arrow Films in a limited edition Blu-ray box set on Monday 1st August 2022

The Witch (2015)

"First Class Presentation of a Modern Classic"

Robert Eggers' tale of folk horror and insanity in seventeenth century New England is gets a thoroughly deserved whistles and bells 4K UHD and Blu-ray release from Second Sight.

1630. Following what seems to be a religious disagreement, former Yorkshire farmer William (Ralph Ineson) and his family face banishment by the church and is forced to leave the community in which they have been living to relocate to the middle of nowhere. Scarcely have they had time to build a small compound and plant crops than disaster strikes in the form of the disappearance of Samuel, the youngest of their four children.

But that's only the beginning. As food becomes scarce, the corn they are growing becomes diseased, and pressures augmented by severe religious convictions become unbearable, there's rumour of a witch that lives in the woods, and is the family's black goat beginning to behave strangely?

Back in 2015 THE WITCH was one of my top ten of the year, where I called it 'Ken Loach makes THE CRUCIBLE' and indeed, in one of the extras on Second Sight's packed disc Robert Eggers says he wanted a film that was as if Mr Loach had gone back to the 17th century to direct a film. It's a claustrophobic, grim and unrelenting tale of an isolated family torn apart as much by their own religious beliefs as anything that may or may not be lurking in the cold damp woods and can be read in many levels, all of them pretty devastating, and all of them with the message that no matter how bad a situation might seem, having religion can make it ten times worse.

Second Sight's double disc set comes stacked with new interviews. A Puritan Nightmare is 26 minutes with Robert Eggers who amongst other things discusses writing the film, location scouting and casting. Embracing Darkness is 13 minutes with Anya Taylor-Joy whose first film this was and who still feels she hasn't come down from the experience ("I went to Sundance and never came home").

Ralph Ineson's 21 minute interview includes some entertaining stories about Charlie the goat 'actor' and who would have thought it was his role as Finchie in The Office that made Robert Eggers want him for the role? If Ineson has the goat tales, Kate Dickie has plenty to say about her scene with the raven while Harvey Scrimshaw rounds things out with seven minutes of memories about making the movie.

Also on the disc are the BFI Q&A from when the film premiered at the LFF. Taing part are Eggers, Ineson, Taylor-Joy and producer Jan Van Hoy, an archival featurette with on-set interviews, and Robert Eggers' ten minute short BROTHERS which he was encouraged to make to show investors he could 'do scary forests'.

The package also includes a 150 page hardback book (not provided for review) and collectors' art cards all housed in a rigid slipcase. More sterling work from Second Sight.

Robert Eggers' THE WITCH is out in a special limited edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray edition from Second Sight on 

Monday 25th July 2022

Universal Terror: Karloff In...(1937, 1944, 1952)

Following on from their sets devoted to Bela Lugosi and Karloff at Columbia, Eureka are bringing out three more movies featuring Boris Karloff. From the title and artwork you'd think you were buying a set of horror movies, but actually none of what's included here is what one might consider typical horror product of the period. That said if you're a fan of crime thrillers, swashbucklers and light opera with a sinister edge these might be just the ticket. Here's what you get:

Night Key (1937)

How NIGHT KEY came to be considered a horror film is one of the many things covered in the accompanying commentary track by Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby, one which also discusses the careers of many of the actors (including pointing out bit part players!), the situation Universal was in at the time the film was made, and about how and why Universal's classic monster movies ended up being re-released by RealArt in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

As for NIGHT KEY itself, it's a very enjoyable crime melodrama in which Boris Karloff has been cheated out of the profits of a security system he's invented by (now very rich) Samuel S Hinds. But Boris has now invented a new one that threatens to supercede the old and put Hinds out of business. So Hinds swindles him again and Boris becomes 'Night Key', breaking into properties 'protected' by Hinds' old system and leaving the message 'What I Create I Can Also Destroy'. Of course it's not long before local gangsters become aware of Boris & his device and they're keen to get their hands on it. Don't go into this one expecting horror and you'll have a brisk, breezy and highly entertaining time with it. As well as the commentary the disc also includes still galleries and a trailer.

The Climax (1944)

It takes a bit of effort to get worked up over THE CLIMAX, Universal's follow-up to their sumptuous 1943 production of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (the one with Claude Rains) and shot on the sets of that film to help recover some of the cost of it. On the plus side we have Boris Karloff top-lining as a doctor who has murdered his opera diva wife ten years before, keeping her body preserved in the kind of situation we'd see multiple times over in the Corman/Poe pictures of twenty years hence. When a young singer (Susanna Foster) reminds him of his dead wife, he becomes obsessed with having her sing only for him. 

On the minus side (depending on your tastes) we have a lot of singing. If you're a fan of light opera then this may be right up your street but if you're not then you'll be finding your finger straying to the fast forward button. Otherwise the Technicolor photography is glorious and we also get to see Turhan THE MUMMY'S TOMB Bey pretending to play the piano, but in the end THE CLIMAX is one for forgiving fans of the period. Messrs Lyons and Rigby return for commentary duties and turn the film into one that's more worth watching with the commentary on than off as the running time passes somewhat faster with their aid.

The Black Castle (1952)

Less a horror film and more a swashbuckling Boys' Own Adventure (as these kinds of stories used to be known), THE BLACK CASTLE gives us dashing hero Richard Greene, off to investigate the dastardly doings of an evil count in the depths of the Black Forest. Director Nathan Juran manages a nicely atmospheric opening with this one, and Joseph Gershenson makes sure there's lots of familiar Universal library music on the soundtrack. Even so, you'd be hard pushed to call this a horror film, even with the presence of Karloff as the Count's physician and a rather demeaning minor role for Lon Chaney, Jr. On the other hand if you're a fan of sword fights, panther wrestling and a pit filled with alligators this will pass the time very nicely indeed.

Stephen Jones and Kim Newman provide the commentary for this one and, like all their commentaries, not a second is wasted and at points they almost talk over each other in their enthusiasm to share as much information and opinion as possible. As with THE CLIMAX, I found THE BLACK CASTLE to be a more enjoyable watch with the commentary switched on than off so it's good to have it on here.

Universal Terror: Karloff In... is out as a two-disc Blu-ray set from Eureka on Monday 18th July 2022

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

"CageTastic!"

If there is one movie star capable of playing themselves in a metatextual comedy thriller where that particular star's filmography is a significant part of the story, then there really is only one living actor that could fit the bill. Fortunately director Tom Gornican was able to get him and, after a cinema release earlier this year Lionsgate are now releasing THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT on digital and on all disc formats.

The life and career of actor Nicolas Cage (Nicolas Cage) is in a downward spiral. After his latest audition is unsuccessful and he massively embarrasses himself at his teenaged daughter's birthday party he decides to give up acting. However his agent (Neil Patrick Harris) reminds him that he owes the hotel in which he is currently resident over $600 000 and advises him to take the million dollar offer of superfan Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) who wants Cage to attend his birthday party. What our hero doesn't know is that, as well as owning a massive collection of Cage memorabilia, Javi may actually be a dangerous gang boss and the CIA have plans to get Cage to help them bring him down.

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT is frequently funny, more charming than you might expect, and will quite likely be the most meta movie to come out this year, and possibly any year. You can just about see it working as a tale of a fictional film star who gets embroiled in a kidnap plot that ends up like one of his own action films, but the casting of Nicolas Cage (and the volume of movie references we then get as a consequence) is the masterstroke that elevates this, resulting in a unique piece of cinema that works delightfully.

Lionsgate's disc comes with a commentary track from director and co-writer Tom Gornican and co-writer and executive producer Kevin Etten. It makes for good listening, pointing out some of the visual homages to Cage's movies as well as providing behind the scenes stories. There's also a 15 minute SXSW Q&A with Cage resplendent in a Tartan suit he says he's wearing because he loves shortbread. There's 25 minutes' worth of 'Making Of' split over five featurettes that include interviews with Gornican, Etten, Cage and Pascal. Make sure you watch Cages 5 And Up in which small children deliver iconic Cage lines of dialogue, appropriately attired of course. Here's the trailer:

THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT is out from Lionsgate on Digital on Friday 8th July 2022 and on Steelbook, 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on Monday 11th July 2022

The Appointment (1981)

Lindsey C Vickers' British horror film THE APPOINTMENT is one of those movies that deserves the appellation obscure. Unable to secure a cinema release after it was made, the film found itself relegated to the purgatory of minor VHS labels and occasional late night TV screenings. As such it's gained quite the reputation as an almost 'lost' film, something which has now been put right by the BFI who are releasing it on Blu-ray with plenty of extras. So, for those who haven't seen it in one of its bootleg versions, has THE APPOINTMENT been worth the wait?

A deliciously creeping opening depicts the abduction of a twelve year old girl on her way home from school by supernatural forces, her violin crumpled by something invisible. We then move to three years later and it looks as if Joanne (Samantha Weysom), a pupil at the same school, has replaced the victim as the institution's premier violinist and she's got a concert coming up.

Unfortunately her father, Ian (Edward Woodward) isn't able to go as he has to testify at an industrial tribunal and Joanne isn't happy about it. The night before he's due to leave both Ian and his wife Diana (Jane Merrow) have a dream about Ian being involved in a car accident and once he's on his way it looks as if the dream might be coming true.

THE APPOINTMENT has an excellent opening and an even better ending which alone is worth sitting through the film for. Unfortunately there's not quite enough substance in between to sustain the 89 minute running time, with the result that the film feels like a short padded out (and what a short it would have made). As such, it's easy to see why distributors in the early 1980s turned it down, especially as the explanation for what happens is oblique verging on making no sense at all. However, one cannot deny director Vickers' skill at conjuring atmosphere from sound design and camera angles, and the climactic disaster is a feat of skill both in terms of location shooting and in the editing room. 

The BFI's Blu-ray comes with a commentary track from the director moderated by Vic Pratt. It's excellent, with Pratt asking all the right questions to get the most information out of Mr Vickers, who even admits that the opening of the film doesn't make a lot of sense in relation to what follows.

There are plenty of interviews including Vickers on Vickers which is 41 minutes of the director giving us his life story. Vickers is joined by his wife Jan in Appointments Shared in which Christopher Lee's Dracula wig (which Jan provided) is among the items discussed. 1st AD Gregory Dark reminisces for ten minutes in Remember the Appointment, and in Framing the Appointment Lindsey Vickers goes through a number of still images handed to him by Vic Pratt.

The other major extra on here is THE LAKE, Vickers' 33 minute short film from 1977. It was included in Volume One of the BFI's SHORT SHARP SHOCKS collection but here there's an added Pratt / Vickers commentary which is again excellent and well worth checking out. Julie Peasgood's 18 minute interview about THE LAKE is also included.  The disc also comes with a booklet featuring new writing on the film by Vickers, Pratt and William Fowler.

As always with the BFI's flipside series this is an excellent presentation and package of an obscure British film. The print is in 4:3 and apparently had to be been restored from a video recording as a print of the film was not available. It certainly looks better than previous bootlegs but don't expect a top quality image. Despite it being not entirely perfect, if you're a fan of obscure British Horror, or of obscure weird cinema in general, THE APPOINTMENT is going to be a must-see.

Lindsey C Vickers' THE APPOINTMENT is out on Blu-ray on the BFI Flipside label on Monday 11th July 2022, and also on iTunes and Amazon Prime on Monday 25th July 2022

Ultrasound (2021)

"Ambitious, Thought-Provoking Science Fiction "

Director Rob Schroeder's movie of screenwriter Conor Steechschulte's adaptation of his own graphic novel Generous Bosom, which premiered at last year's London Frightfest, gets a digital release from Blue Finch.

On his way home from a friend's wedding, Glen (Vincent Kartheiser) drives over some strategically-placed nails and finds himself making his way through the dark and the pouring rain to the house of Arthur (Bob Stephenson) and Arthur's wife Cyndi (Chelsea Lopez). Almost immediately things get weird as Arthur asks Glen to sleep with Cyndi, something Glen either does or at least believes that he does. Months later Arthur turns up at Glen's house and shows him video footage of a pregnant Cyndi. Now what's to be done about that? 

Meanwhile we are being introduced to a senatorial candidate who has his possibly pregnant lover holed up in a remote hideaway, and a research laboratory looking into the effects of sound on behaviour. Does it all tie together? It surely does and an early shot of breakfast things seemingly left out in the rain suggests that what Glen is experiencing at that early point in the story might not be what's actually happening. 

ULTRASOUND is the kind of film that's difficult to talk about too much without spoiling it. Rest assured that everything does pretty much fit together and, perhaps more importantly, the viewer is left to work out, and ruminate upon, all that has happened. It's thoughtful and ambitious and is perhaps more of a commentary on the times we live in than is first apparent. Here's the trailer:

ULTRASOUND is out on digital platforms from Blue Finch on Monday 20th June 2022