THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE (Kino Lorber)

The Bermuda Triangle
Kino Lorber

The Stats
Video: 1080p High Definition
Audio: 
Subtitles: English SDH

Buy it HERE from Diabolik

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

The Bermuda Triangle comes to Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. Sunn Classic Pictures, makers of niche educational documentaries on a number of subjects, adapted the best-selling book from Charles Berlitz for audiences in 1974. Though the disc's special features are quite slim, The Bermuda Triangle represents a subgenre of film that could easily disappear and is worth investigating for yourself.

The Movie: Good

With a higher production value than you might expect, The Bermuda Triangle (1974) is a true blast of nostalgia, even if it's your introduction to this type of edu-tainment. As a kid, I was glued to reruns of shows examining supernatural phenomena, like In Search of... and Sightings. I had copies of the The Unexplained: Mysteries of Mind, Space, and Time book series and in general, just could not get enough of this sort of thing.

I had never seen The Bermuda Triangle before, but I was sucked in immediately. The reenactments from various locations and eras--beginning with Christopher Columbus and the onscreen text "1492, off the coast of Bimini"--are bookended by segments with host and narrator Brad Crandall (who rules), first from his study and then from a number of relevant locations: a shuttered military base, the inside of a passenger jet, a military airfield. This makes it extremely engaging in short bursts before starting the whole sequence over.  This is a favorite format of mine for this kind or thing, which has largely evaporated from documentaries.

This does a fantastic job of asking questions, which I think is the most important thing a program or film like this--and covering these sorts of topics--can do, by explaining numerous strange historical phenomena. It's just so fun. It lights up your brain. Everybody who's into the Bermuda Triangle (a.k.a. The Sea of Fear) will know about the instances of UFO sightings, Edgar Cayce's Atlantis theories, the numerous occurrences of lost time, etc. But I, for one, had forgotten about Charles Wakely, whose strange experiences in the Triangle led him to dedicate his life to investigating it before his mysterious unsolved murder. Was it related to his search for the truth?

See what I mean about asking questions? Aren't you just the least bit intrigued? I find these sorts of mysteries, however improbable, truly fascinating. Could the collective armada of ships, of varying sizes, that have disappeared within the Bermuda Triangle (a.k.a. The Devil's Triangle) have been sucked down by changing sea pressures caused by a series of interconnected caves on the ocean floor? Maybe. But then how do you explain the planes? What about the planes?!

I'm sorry for yelling. I just get a legitimate, giddy thrill from these subjects and this format. They take me back to an era when my bedroom walls were bedecked with innumerable drawings of Bigfoots and Mothmans. A simpler time, when I would grin ear-to-ear when it became clear that the new episode of Unsolved Mysteries was gonna be, as I said, "a weird one".

The Packaging: Average

I love this cover image! A freighter and a passenger jet depicted half as stark, minimalist white silhouettes on a black background as they travel over, presumably, the Bermuda Triangle. They are being blasted by some undersea energy coming from a vortex on the seafloor, surrounded by ship and aircraft wreckage. I love how pulpy it is, aside from also being beautifully rendered.

The first pressing of this Kino release also includes a slipcover featuring this illustration.

The Video: Good

There is one huge caveat in my rating: a good amount of this film is composed of stock footage, compiled from various sources. I will cop to not fully understanding the restoration process for films and video, but it makes sense to me that the stock footage isn't nearly as clean or sharp as the rest of the film. I imagine it's that old "like making a copy of a copy of a copy" thing. Regardless, the result is that the occasional shot of aircraft taking off from a carrier, or ships on a stormy sea look a little more weathered, on a scale from "Somewhat" to "Wow, Very!"

The original footage shot for this film looks wonderful however. Things like the swarm of UFOs glowing with a shrimp-pink light seen by Columbus and crew in the opening scene, while obviously a special effect--rotoscoped, perhaps?--they still look excellent! I always say that I'd rather see the occasional slightly janky but deliberate effect than a bunch of aimless but technically "perfect" ones.

The Audio: Excellent

The sound here is fan-fucking-tastic. They're not reinventing the wheel, but everything sounds very good. Obviously, since we have Brad Crandall as our narrator, the mix is very important, and Crandall--who has done narration for everything from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) to a 1979 episode of WKRP in Cincinnati--sounds marvelous. His voice is sonorous and rich and he conveys authority.

Then there's the score from John Cameron & The New London Orchestra. This absolutely blew me away! The main theme is incredibly grandiose and dramatic when it's in full gear, with rolling drums and an exciting main melody full of brass (which hits immediately on the dic menu!). There are moments where the score switches tack, utilizing flutes when the scene is set on an old fashioned sailing ship, or mimicking a military march on the air force base that, without drawing attention to itself, really adds weight to the reality of what we're watching.

The Special Features: Average

The commentary track with producer James L. Conway was pretty enjoyable and informative, I just wish moderator Howard S. Berger let Conway talk more. I understand perhaps occasionally steering the discussion towards relevant topics and talking points, but Berger spends, I'm not kidding, the whole film constantly reiterating that he likes this film and doesn't think it's silly. Of course, I'm Monday morning quarterbacking here, and perhaps Conway didn't have very much to say, but I was fascinated by his dive into the company's history, which led to me watching The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972)--the trailer for which is included on the disc--immediately after finishing The Bermuda Triangle, and fully enjoying it.

• Audio commentary by producer James L. Conway, moderated by film historian Howard S. Berger
• TV spot (Low-res)
• Trailers
• The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972)
• The Questor Tapes (1974)
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
• The Boogens (1981)

In Summary: Snag a used copy

*Robert Stack voice* If you, or someone you know grew up watching The X-Files or had a tape of the two episode arc of The Six Million Dollar Man (s.3 e.16 & 17) where Col. Steve Austin befriends Bigfoot, this might be right up your street. And remember, this film is kid-friendly and was originally marketed to children, so if there's a young Gravity Falls fan in your life for instance, they might also dig on this.

As much as I loved watching this, and it should be clear to you that I really did, I can't pretend this is a must-watch for the average movie viewer. The Bermuda Triangle is niche in both subject matter and genre, but it's extremely well-made examples of both things. I loved this format as a kid and since it's now kind of fallen by the wayside, I really enjoyed seeing something of this ilk be restored intact. It even opens with the original Schick Sunn Classics logo!

THE EMPIRE (Kino Lorber)

The Empire
Kino Lorber

The Stats
Video: NTSC (720 × 480)
Audio: 5.1 Surround (w/ 2.0 Stereo available in Setup menu)
Subtitles: English SDH

Buy it HERE from Kino Lorber

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

The Empire comes to DVD from Kino Lorber. Writer / Director Bruno Dumont offers perhaps the most ambitious film of his career with this absurdist sci-fi epic that's more intriguing than it is satisfying. The mediocre video quality and extremely slim offerings on the DVD leave more questions than answers, like "Should I get the Blu-ray instead?"

The Movie: Fair

I co-host a movie discussion podcast and above all, we admire big swings, which The Empire definitely is, but it's also just a big old mess. Full disclosure, having perused the trailers included on this disc, I began to suspect that maybe The Empire is part of a larger series, or in any case that a viewer would benefit from having some familiarity with the previous works of writer / director Bruno Dumont, but I can't be totally sure.

In a sleepy, seaside French village, unbeknownst to most of the inhabitants, a war for the fate of humanity is taking place. Some of the locals have been possessed by alien beings who lack physical forms, the 0s--naturally jet black liquid blorbs floating in the air who represent the darker side of humanity--and the 1s--spears of white and blue light who embody humanity's nobler aspects--and a child of prophecy has been born, which both sides wish to control.

There's a lot of weird little detail that I kind of actually enjoyed. For instance, somehow, both the earthbound aliens can visit their respective ships in space via hidden portals--the 0s through a dense wood and the 1s via the ocean, like in Supergirl (1984). There are also a lot of interesting design elements. The respective heads of each side--the 1s have a Queen (Camille Cottin) and the 0s have Belzébuth (Fabrice Luchini), called Majesty in the film--wear costumes right out of Jodorowsky's Dune, and their spacecraft resemble huge cathedrals or sprawling estates in space, complete with trees! Does it make sense? No! But it doesn't have to. Arthur C. Clarke famously said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.", and I'm fine with that ...when it's serving some greater end.

The literal plot of The Empire is a by-the-numbers sci-fi story drowning in clichés, but for a while I could excuse it because the film seemed more concerned with (admittedly very basic) philosophical concepts. It seemed to be using the clichés as shorthand (which is what they are) to get everyone to a place where it could begin its more high-minded legwork. But that moment never comes. Tropes pile up, superficial relationships unfold, and by the time the credits roll, you realize that despite a climactic space battle, nothing has truly happened. It's a big nothing, and comparatively expensive-looking, but it's still narratively empty.

Listen. Movies are hard to make, and I don't lambaste them willy-nilly. While I'm sure Dumont had noble intentions when setting out to make The Empire, the result feels like a waste to me. Of time, of talent, of the passion and effort it takes to make even the most misguided film.

The Packaging: Average

The poster / cover image here is a digital collage of pretty much all the characters and some key features of the film. It certainly makes the film look interesting, with the science fiction decadence of some of the designs resembling the work of illustrator Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius) who did designs for the aforementioned, unproduced version of Dune that was to be directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.

The Video: Average

This being a DVD, the visual quality is never going to be as good as a Blu-ray or any higher quality format. I know that. But I still think this kind of looks bad for a DVD. There was a decent amount of visual noise and artifacting in shots with more substantive depth-of-field, or shots with a lot of detail. One sequence for example features Jane (Anamaria Vartolomei) walking through a field, with Jony (Brandon Vlieghe) following her on his horse, depicted with alternating shots of her feet and the horse's hooves. With a higher quality format, this shot might have come across as striking or even amusing, but the lower quality visuals made it just kind of distracting.

That said, the more effects-heavy shots are surprisingly good. The ships are very detailed and that detail translates very well. I was caught off guard because the earlier shots of just woods and fields were kind of pixel-noise heavy and I wasn't expecting the digitally created aspects to look as clean as they do.

The Audio: Good

I had no issues with the audio from a technical quality standpoint. My three-channel soundbar handled the mix very well, and though the film isn't exactly sonically dense, the balance was handled very well. There was, however, a fucking crazy bird sound that shows up throughout. I first noticed it after a car accident scene, in the relatively empty field where the car ends up. It was such a bizarre bird call that when we cut away to another location, I half convinced myself that it wasn't a bird at all but some kind of robotic noise coming from a character who, therefore, must be a robot (Arrested Development narrator voice: He wasn't).

The sound reoccurs in subsequent scenes in that field, but also occasionally throughout the rest of the film in other locations around this fishing village. It's very unpleasant and hard to ignore. I've never been to France, let alone to this particular coastal town: is this how France sounds?

The Special Features: Poor

In general, I don't think there's any less exciting "special feature" than a bunch of trailers. It just feels like advertising. Though sometimes, when a disc also has some kind of commentary track--which, to be clear, this does NOT, despite this being a project that could honestly benefit from hearing the creator explain his goals--these titles can be given a greater significance.

Here, the trailers are obviously for other offerings from writer/director Bruno Dumont, at least three of which are set in the same town as The Empire, two of which feature gendarmes (police) played by Bernard Pruvost and Philippe Jore, and one of them seeming to potentially be connected to The Empire through the inference of black goo aliens. It's unclear if these two members of the gendarmerie are through-lines, or just stock characters Dumont likes. Watch the trailers, and see for yourself, I guess? 

• Trailers
• Camille Claudel 1915 (2013)
• Coincoin and the Extra Humans (TV mini-series) (2018)
• The Empire (2024)
• France (2021)
• Li'l Quinquin (2014)
• Slack Bay (2016)

In Summary: Stream it instead

Putting aside the technical aspects--because there IS a Blu-ray available out there--and speaking just as a film: The Empire is kind of interesting at best and that's it. There are some great visuals, and a few fun gags, but none of it is enough to give this any kind of strong recommendation. The tone is distracting, and the bizarre and only vaguely explained world and rules, while interesting, could use a bit more elaboration. The fact that it all builds to a conflict we don't really understand the rules or stakes of, which ends in a very large anti-climax is just the last nail in the coffin for me.

If a science fiction story that's heavier on mundanity than it is on philosophy or story is your thing, grab The Empire at your earliest convenience. Otherwise, wait to check it out first.

FOUL PLAY (Kino Lorber)

Foul Play
Kino Lorber

The Stats
Video: Native 4K 2160p / 1080p High Definition
Audio: 5.0 with 2.0 option in the Audio menu
Subtitles: English SDH

Buy it HERE from Diabolik

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

Foul Play comes to Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. A loving pastiche of the mystery genre from Harold and Maude screenwriter Colin Higgins in his directorial debut, Foul Play turns numerous genre clichés on their heads. The Blu-ray release from Kino Lorber is a worthy upgrade for fans of the film, with engaging features giving insight into its place in film history.

The Movie: Average

When librarian Gloria Mundy (Goldie Hawn) picks up a hitchhiker on her way back to San Francisco, she unknowingly sets into motion a series of events that will find her life in danger, her sanity questioned, and put her directly in the path of tomcat detective Tony Carlson (Chevy Chase). The two then find themselves embroiled in a conspiracy to assassinate the Pope and after crossing paths with some colorful characters, notably Gloria's landlord Mr. Hennessey (Burgess Meredith) and horndog orchestra conductor Stanley (Dudley Moore), they might just save the day.

I like this cast a lot--in addition to those mentioned above, notable character actors Brian Dennehy and Billy Barty appear in minor roles--and I'm frequently in the pocket for films that blend genres, especially when they can play the serious stuff straight, while still allowing the comedy to work its way in organically. But nothing tickles me about Foul Play more than all the loving homages to Alfred Hitchcock. This was Colin Higgins directorial debut, but he had previously written the amazing Harold and Maude (1971) and Silver Streak (1976), which is another thematic love letter to Hitch.

Foul Play takes the Hitchcock Blonde (Hawn), the bumbling but charming, Cary Grant-ish male lead (Chase), and swaps them. Gloria and Detective Tony's roles are essentially reversed. She's the more competent one, repeatedly getting herself out of one spot of trouble, only to find her in a new, usually much worse one, while Tony for the most part just tags along. He's the arm candy. In fact during the finale, there's a fistfight between one of the conspirators and Mr. Hennessey--was Burgess Meredith really 71 when this came out?!?!--while Gloria and Det. Tony watch and cheer.

What I enjoyed most was the way Higgins lampooned the idea of MacGuffins. If you're unaware, a MacGuffin was Hitch's term for the thing that gets the characters involved in the plot that the audience doesn't really have to care about. Here we have the microfilm and the phrase "Beware the dwarf". Neither amounts to very much, being extremely tangentially related to the central conspiracy at best, but there's something kind of lovely about that. It gives the whole film a kind of "it's the journey, not the destination" feel.

Ultimately though, Foul Play didn't really blow my hair back. It's not bad by any means, and contains a lot of elements I generally like, but something just didn't fully connect for me. Despite now having watched the film multiple times, I just have a problem getting into the rhythm of it. The comedy and the thriller aspects never really gel for me and just feel like they're getting in each others' way.

The Packaging: Good

The cover here is a lively illustration of Gloria embracing Tony from behind with him firing a pistol from within his raincoat pocket. The illustration, from Birney Lettick (the artist responsible for the Valley Girl, Escape from Alcatraz, and Heaven Can Wait posters), is excellent and includes a fantastic logo that borders the two characters. It's just very fun.

The Kino release also includes a slipcover featuring that same illustration.

The Video: Good

This looks wonderful overall. The film grain is present, but not to a distracting degree and the shadows and colors are both incredibly rich. I particularly loved the exterior footage in the San Francisco area, especially at night. There are soft halos around the lights, and seeing the various hues of the buildings and clothing rising from the depths of the shadows is pure eye candy.

The interiors definitely have a certain flatness generally, and look like film sets, but that sort of added to the Hitchcock homage for me? His films contained such a degree of forethought with regards to shot composition that their artificiality, at times, became a positive facet and not a negative. At times, Foul Play feels like that--Stanley's "beaver trap" apartment for instance--and that actually works very well overall.

The Audio: (poor / fair / average / good / excellent)

I had no real issues with the audio in Foul Play aside from one general note: on the whole, the film seems to be balanced more towards the high and middle range, with less low-end. I have a three-channel sound bar (as much to preserve my built-in TV speakers as anything else) and, a few moments aside, I could crank it up reasonably high before I experienced any low-end rattling.

I have no way of proving this, but I wonder if they used Ready to Take a Chance Again, Barry Manilow's theme from the film, as a guide--the way engineers at a live venue will frequently use "perfectly mixed" albums like Steely Dan's Aja to adjust to the space--because the song, which plays a handful of times, sounds full and excellent.

The Special Features: (poor / fair / average / good / excellent)

Aside from what is becoming a repeat request--a Play All option for the trailers--the special features are really engrossing. The interview with sound designer Nicholas Eliopoulos is fascinating and really gave a proper context to Colin Higgins' career, though during the commentary track, Max Evry does repeat the information given by Eliopoulos in a few spots. That aside, both Evry and Bryan Reesman are very knowledgeable and likeable.

• Audio commentary by entertainment journalists / authors Bryan Reesman and Max Evry
• Fair Play: Remembering Colin Higgins
• Theatrical trailers, TV, and radio spots:
• Foul Play (HD)
• Foul Play (original)
• Bird on a Wire (1990)
• Deceived (1991)
• Fletch (1985)
• Fletch Lives (1989)
• The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)

In Summary: Snag a used copy

As mentioned in the special features, Colin Higgins' has a very interesting, if sadly abridged, filmography. That alone might be enough for someone to want to pick this up, and if so: you won't be disappointed on any of the technical merits. Likewise, if you already enjoy this film and are looking to add a modern quality copy to your library. From the standpoint of sheer technical quality, Foul Play is very solid.

If, however, you're unfamiliar with the film and are perhaps intrigued by the concept of Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase in a thriller / comedy, you might be a little underwhelmed. For me, the humor works on its own, but feels largely separate from the plot. Still, Foul Play is decently enjoyable, if a bit, as the kids say, mid overall.

POSSE (Kino Lorber)

Posse
Kino Lorber / Kino Classics

The Stats
Video: 1080p High Definition
Audio: 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH

Buy it HERE from Diabolik

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

Posse comes to Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. One of only two films directed by co-lead Kirk Douglas, the other being Peg Leg, Musket & Sabre (1973), Posse is an excellent example of revisionist western. The look and sound of the Kino Blu-ray do justice to a film with a chewy moral center, and the modest special features are still enough to make this worth a look.

The Movie: Good

I grew up watching westerns (and the 1960 Spartacus), so I like Kirk Douglas just fine, but man, do I love Bruce Dern and even though, intellectually I know that their careers overlapped a good amount, I just could not imagine them sharing screen space. Once that minor moment of cognitive dissonance was reconciled, Posse still had a lot of surprises for me. An ambitious, action packed, and morally complex film, Posse is an excellent example of the revisionist western.

After an opening nighttime shootout in a burning barn that ends with many train-robbing outlaws dead, and $40,000 turned to ash, we're introduced to U.S. Marshall Howard Nightingale (Douglas) riding a train with his titular posse, hot on the trail of outlaw leader Jack Strawhorn (Dern). Nightingale shows off the campaign posters for his upcoming senatorial bid, which he assures his men he'll be a shoe-in for after the capture of Strawhorn. Soon, they do just that, making short work of Strawhorn's remaining defenses, and taking him into custody, back on the train, headed to town to see him hanged.

This is where most westerns would be wrapping up: the lawman bringing a bandit to justice. But Posse has a lot more going on under the surface. Strawhorn, for instance, views the encroachment of trains on the small desert towns, and the people who live and work in them, as a negative; the modern equivalent being automation and megacorporations wiping out small businesses and workers in the name of modernity. Nightingale, for his part, is a born politician. He smiles, shakes hands and kisses babies--try to never get those two backwards, btw--while secretly all but champing at the bit to climb into the pocket of Big Train.

Amidst a steady stream of action sequences--a train explodes in this and keeps going!--Posse gives Douglas and Dern plenty of room to draw these men in all the shades of their equal but conflicting viewpoints. Neither of them, all told, is The Good Guy. "Honest men stay honest" Strawhorn says at one point, "only as long as it pays. That's why I'm a thief, and you're a liar."

This fascinating and thorny tone might be the doing of credited screenwriters William Roberts (The Magnificent Seven) and Christopher Knopf (Cimarron Strip), but I'm willing to bet it's more the product of an uncredited treatment from one of my favorite filmmakers, Larry Cohen. Cohen started in TV and westerns--he created Branded--before moving on to exploitation films like Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem (both released in 1973!) and horror films like The Stuff (1985), which I would end up finding him through. Most of his works have the same feelings of inevitability and doom, the healthy disapproval of capitalism, and are awash in a very similar moral ambiguity as Posse.

The Packaging: Average

This is, as The Simpsons would say, perfectly cromulent packaging. While most of the recent Kino releases I've covered have had a reversible cover, Posse unfortunately does not. The cover is quite striking however: an illustration of Nightingale above the titular posse on horseback with a train crossing being them; the whole thing on a weathered yellow background. The first pressing also comes with a cardboard slipcover of the same image.

The Video: Excellent

There's something I love about the look of Posse. The daylight scenes have a real, palpable sense of oppressive heat beating down on everything. The landscapes look beautiful, and occasionally lush, but that lushness feels in defiance of the atmosphere. Then there are the night scenes. Every nighttime scene in Posse looks like a velvet painting (complimentary). There is just something unusual to the depth of the shadows and the softness of the spotlights. The opening scene--the shootout at the burning barn--is completely arresting because of this intangible visual quality.

This is all obviously the product of the cinematography by Fred J. Koenekamp (The Towering Inferno), but the Kino release restores the film to how I imagine it must have looked the first time it was screened: sumptuous.

The Audio: Average

I noticed no issue at all with the audio on this release. I have a three-channel soundbar--purely to prevent my TV from vibrating apart over time--and Posse sounded full-bodied throughout. I was particularly impressed with the train scenes, of which there are quite a few, because usually big, rumbling engines like that tend to vibrate my soundbar something fierce. That DID happen, but not nearly as much as I was expecting it to.

Another audio high-point is that the dialogue was incredibly carefully mixed. There are a lot of wide open spaces in this, it being the west and all, and the dialogue in these locations, while most certainly recorded later, actually sounded appropriately distant. It's a small thing, but it helps maintain the verisimilitude of the film overall, which makes for a better, more immersive experience. I imagine this would sound even better with a more robust audio set-up.

The Special Features: Average

These are fairly bare-bones special features, but still enjoyable. The commentary track from filmmaker and historian Steve Mitchell was loaded with interesting tidbits, like Fred Koenekamp's tendency to light to the mood of the scene, and not to the picture--which makes those velvet painting sequences feel even more remarkable--or how director Kirk Douglas would forget to shoot coverage of himself. Charming. My one quibble is that there should be a Play All option for the trailers.

• Audio commentary by filmmaker / historian Steve Mitchell
• Trailers
• Posse (theatrical trailer)
• Man Without a Star (1955)
• Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
• The Last Sunset (1961)
• Lonely Are the Brave (1962)
• Will Penny (1967)
• Doc (1971)
• Chato's Land (1972)
• Joe Kidd (1972)
• Valdez is Coming (1971)

In Summary: Snag a used copy

Kirk Douglas--again, doing double duty in front of and behind the camera--and Bruce Dern are both excellent here, and the cinematography really took my breath away, but while I found a lot to enjoy about Posse, in both media and message, I don't think it's a bombastic enough film to be a universal recommend. 

Obviously if you are a westernhead, or specifically into revisionist westerns, then you will definitely want to snatch this up. But the average film-buyer may want to hold off just a bit. Posse is a different animal than most of its peers. As the tagline says "Posse begins like most westerns. It ends like none of them."