THE STEWARDESSES (1969) - Kino Lorber / Kino Cult

The Stewardesses
Kino Lorber / Kino Cult

Original Release Date July 15th, 1969
Written by Allan Silliphant
Directed by Allan Silliphant
Starring Christina Hart, Ronald South, William Condos, Anita de Moulin, Paula Erikson
Language English

Purchase yours HERE from Kino Lorber

by "Doc" Hunter Bush,
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast

The Movie: Average

The Stewardesses is an odd bird. It's mostly a cheeky soft core flick with no plot, but then what's been tucked into the middle of that? A separate short film with a plot! And it's all shot in 3-D! So why does this deserve the physical release treatment, and maybe even a spot on your shelf? Because, for such a seemingly innocuous collection of cheap thrills, it actually has a few moments of historical cinematic importance. More on that in a moment.

We're introduced to some of the titular stewardesses aboard a flight in-bound to L.A. Once they land, everyone heads off to enjoy their down time. In the cheesecake-ier plot line, we have things like Tina (Paula Erikson) dropping acid and making out with a lamp, or a bunch of the gals heading to a local bar to play pool, or Wendy (Janet Wass) heading home with a soldier (Andy Roth) who's set to redeploy soon, or Jo (Anita de Moulin) and Cathy (Kathy Ferrick) having a little lesbian dalliance.

In between, we follow the dramatic anchor of the piece, Samantha (Christina Hart) as she meets advertising executive Colin (Ronald South) on the flight and agrees to have dinner with him. Their storyline is essentially a straight-up drama, and builds to a truly w-i-l-d climax which I will NOT spoil here. The interesting thing is that this dramatic storyline was added two years AFTER The Stewardesses was released! Allan Silliphant (directing under the pseudonym Alf Silliman Jr.) saw that, for whatever reason, his little non-explicit adult film was doing numbers in theaters, and thought that he could extend its longevity by adding a "serious" plot to the middle to attract "normal" audiences.

So The Stewardesses was re-edited while still actively available to public screenings! Wild stuff, but that combination of drama, casual nudity, and perhaps most importantly, the 3-D, led to The Stewardesses playing in theaters consistently for years! It ended up having a little something for everyone, so word of mouth meant it was a staple of the midnight movie scene. That alone makes it a remarkable footnote in cinema history, but don't forget: the 3-D. Typically, shooting in 3-D was a prohibitively complicated and expensive process. Allan Silliphant was the co-creator of StereoVision, the new 3-D process used in the film that, in brief, recorded both images needed for the 3-D effect onto a single strip of film, meaning it was impossible for them to go out of sync. StereoVision would go on to be utilized in 3-D films going forward, and is credited in large part with reigniting the 3-D craze.

The Stewardesses is half softcore titillation, half romantic melodrama, has a wild production history, and helped revitalize 3-D in the film industry by making it faster, cheaper, and easier to shoot, while also resulting in a more reliable end product. Do any or all of these facets earn it a place in your media library?

The Packaging: Excellent

The Stewardesses comes in a slightly sturdier blu-ray case, with a sleeve and a reversible cover. The cover image that also appears on the sleeve is a simple, high contrast, black and white illustration of six women in striped short-sleeved shift dresses, posed in a small huddle with some sitting, and some leaning in, as though for a group photo. A seventh woman looks back over her shoulder, dressed the same but with a pillbox hat and purse over her shoulder. Above them is the image of an airliner landing, rendered in the same style. The background is a series of concentric rings colored in vivid yellow, orange, and red with a white center. Off to one side, the stylized text "3D" zooms out from the background, with the StereoVision logo beneath it.

The reverse side depicts the same basic illustration, minus the plane and the seventh woman, but plus one couch for the group to pose on. This one has a plain white background with some additional text above the logo: "Now at last on the wide-screen--the most talked about girls in America--the one, the only..." Below the image and title is where the text gets interesting: "The unpublished novel is now America's most controversial film!" I didn't mention above that The Stewardesses was based on a novel of any kind, published or not, because: it isn't! This angle, along with releasing the original, softcore version with a self-imposed X rating, were attempts by Allan Silliphant to generate interest (the X rating was in vogue at the moment due to the recent, very respectable X-rated feature Midnight Cowboy). They're talking points. Fake ones, but talking points nonetheless.

The Audio + Video: Good

If you're approaching The Stewardesses from a place of seeking pristine visual or audio quality, I don't think it will meet your standards. It both looks and sounds like an older picture that has been, overall, admirably restored, but there are still flaws. There are some scratches and other artifacts on some footage; the sound has a mildly muffled quality where, no matter how much restoration is done, you can't make it sound like it was recorded on more modern equipment than it was. These imperfections did not bother me at all, however. How could they, when I was so firmly under the thrall of the third dimension!

The Stewardesses shines in 3-D. Like all films made with 3-D intentionality, the excuses to push objects into the foreground, and thus the audience's perceived personal space, are kind of always hilarious. Whether it's a shark swimming right into your face in JAWS 3-D (1983), or someone yo-yoing right at you in Friday the 13th: Part III (1982), it's just too fun for minor faults to dampen my enjoyment. Watching the gals shoot pool (legs, cues, and pool balls coming right at you), or a wildly canted angle shot of Colin with an amazing chandelier dominating the frame behind him, all of the 3-D was chosen with such a sense of purpose. It grabs your attention over and over again. It's a bit of a rollercoaster.

The audio mix is pretty quiet overall, but I will give it props in that it's all basically the same level of quiet, so no jump scares when I'd navigate to the menu or anything like that. The score was nice, but largely overshadowed by the visuals and the constant tonal whiplash of the narrative. It has some nice tropicália vibes at times, but the one stand out moment is during the culmination of Samantha and Colin's arc. Still, no spoilers, but I will say: we know it's a bad time because of the woozy, discordant music playing underneath. It's very effective, instantly adding a sickening gravity to a film that has otherwise been consistently flying the friendlier skies.

Special Features: Excellent

Much like the film itself, this Kino release has a little something for everyone, but before I detail any of that, I want to start with my one knock against Kino's release. The Stewardesses comes on two discs; one for the film in three versions: 2-D, "BD3D" (traditional stereoscopic), and anaglyph 3-D (the red/blue variety), and the other disc for the bonus features, with all applicable features likewise available in all three visual formats. This is great, no complaints here. My, admittedly minor, issue is that while both 3-D format options are clearly identified on the disc menus, locating the 2-D isn't. Turns out it's only an option in the "BD3D" sub-menu. Like I said, a minor issue.

Content-wise, this is a dynamite release. There's a really informative commentary track from author and film historian David Del Valle and producer / archivist Miles Hunter, a 21 minute documentary on the film's production and theatrical run, and two semi-related short films. Experiments in Love (1977) is an erotic 3-D short with a much sillier, more heightened tone and much more vivid hallucinatory imagery than The Stewardesses, while Parisienne Life (1953) (a.k.a. Murder in Paris, a.k.a. Paris After Midnight, a.k.a. French Life) is a stereoscopic 3-D short that MIGHT have been directed by Ed Wood! It's basically just two ladies dancing; the kind of thing that passed for erotic in a more chaste, more sexually repressed time.

These shorts, aside from being cultural oddities that might otherwise vanish as there is no real outlet for short films, (especially older films, and especially featuring any kind of erotic content) demonstrate the evolution of what The Stewardesses is. These types of films (which would once be considered pornography in the most pearl-clutching way, and are now almost quaint) have a lineage and with its strange, evolving theatrical release, The Stewardesses is a very interesting inclusion in that history.

• A pair of 3-D glasses
• Audio Commentary by David Del Valle and Miles Hunter
• Experiments in Love (1977) (28:25)
• Parisienne Life (1953) (11:10)
• Alternate Opening Title Sequence (1:17)
• Outtakes and Lens Test Footage (15:58)
• How The Stewardesses Took Off (21:37)
• Theatrical Trailer (2:42)
• Radio Spot (0:52)

In Summary: Buy it on Sale

I think the strongest argument that can be made on behalf of The Stewardesses is one of film preservation. As a film, a narrative, or even just a time capsule of the era in which it was made, The Stewardesses is pretty thin. But as a novelty, it's honestly hard to top. Samantha and Colin's storyline is straight out of an exploitation film. Here, in an abridged form, the story simmers and quickly boils over without much warning, and it's hard to appreciate the simmer because in between is all this very silly, light and stagey footage that's barely narrative at all; almost like stag film vignettes.

The juxtaposition is bananas but still pretty entertaining, but doesn't garner much as far as rewatchability until you take into account the 3-D of it all, when it suddenly becomes a much more enticing possibility. Add to that the incredibly unique backstory and I think this release becomes pretty fascinating. The Stewardesses is a frivolous Frankenstein's monster of a picture; one of a kind and tempting for lovers of the weird and unique.

A NIGHT IN THE LIFE OF JIMMY REARDON (1988) - Kino Lorber

A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon
Kino Lorber

Original Release Date Feb. 26th, 1988
Written by William Richert, based on his novel "Aren't You Even Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye?"
Directed by William Richert
Starring River Phoenix, Ann Magnuson, Meredith Salenger, Ione Skye, Louanne, Matthew Perry
Language English

Purchase yours HERE from Kino Lorber

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, 
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast

The Movie: Bad

From a technical standpoint, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon is perfectly fine. The direction is competent, action is clear, and on all technical fronts (lighting, blocking, etc.) the production is solid. Its story is an insufferable mess however. Ostensibly, the film is about Jimmy (River Phoenix) spending one night racing around late '50s / early '60s Chicago trying to raise $80 (which would be around $900 today) for a plane ticket to Hawai'i, to follow "the love of his life" Lisa (Meredith Salenger) to college. That's essentially what the plot blurb on the packaging says, but the film itself would have you believe that it's actually about a young man trying to earn mutual respect from his father (Paul Koslo).

The problem is that: it's not actually about that. Jimmy's relationship with his father, while definitely an issue, is just part of the white noise of Jimmy's constant complaining. Jimmy complains about his parents, his friends, rich people in general (note: his friends, including Lisa, are all wealthy and Jimmy's family seem to be doing just fine), and especially women. If I was in the business of pithy, one sentence Letterboxd reviews (I am not), I would say A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon is Dirty Dancing (1987) meets The Catcher in the Rye, with Jimmy Reardon being the same flavor of insufferable little shit as Holden Caulfield.

Jimmy fancies himself a poet, psychoanalyzes his friends to the tune of Sigmund Freud (ever heard of him?) and claims to be "in love" with Lisa, but still sleeps with anyone who'll lay down. Now before you break out the pitchforks and torches, I understand the concept of an unlikeable protagonist. I enjoy plenty of them, because the work around them, be it a film, a novel, or what-have-you, isn't as nakedly in love with them as this flick is. Writer / director William Richert, adapting his own novel "Aren't You Even Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye?", looks at Jimmy the way Milhouse looks at Bart Simpson: he's a bad boy, and that's oh so cool.

Now back to daddy: I'm technically about to spoil the end of the film, which I never do, but I have two justifications: 1) the film is not actually about this relationship, and 2) it opens with an internal monologue from Jimmy that tells you where the two stand at the end of the film, before flashing back, so you kind of already know. And away we go: Jimmy learns a secret (which I won't spoil) about his father in the penultimate scene, one which his father would rather nobody get wise to. So, when Jimmy calls Dad to come pick him up, and they end up riding the train home together, they reach their seeming mutual respect.

It goes like this: Dad says that he thinks maybe Hawai'i is the right choice for Jimmy after all, and Jimmy responds that he was actually thinking of going to Dad's alma mater. They're each, outwardly choosing to be the bigger man, to the point that Jimmy's internal monologue picks up again to pat them on the back with the actual quote "Now we are men together." Except they aren't. Both of these decisions are not motivated by respect, never mind love, but fear. Dad is afraid that Jimmy will spill the beans if he stays, and Jimmy is afraid that he'll run into Lisa if he goes. A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon is a fascinating examination of toxic masculinity and misanthropy, but I honestly don't think it knows that.

The Packaging: Good

The packaging here is fine. The case is Kino Lorber's standard, slightly sturdier Blu-ray case with a cardboard sleeve depicting the same image as the cover, a promotional photo of River Phoenix surrounded by costars Meredith Salenger, Ione Skye, and the enigmatically mononymed Louanne. Weirdly, the cover image looks more like a magazine ad for Beverly Hills 90210 or Melrose Place than from a film set in the era A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon takes place. That aside, it's a perfectly cromulent image, it just feels entirely disconnected from the movie within.

The Audio + Video: Good

I honestly think A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon looks and sounds really great. The colors have a nice saturation, the light balance is solid (most of the back half of the film takes place at night) with soft haloing around the lights and plenty of depth to the shadows. There's a comfortable level of film grain, but it never dominated my attention, even in the scenes with the lowest light. Sonically, the film is mixed and balanced well.

There's a hilarious moment where, having learned that Lisa's other suitor (Jason Court) is also a poet, but has a career plan, and future prospects in addition to already coming from money, Jimmy feels so insecure that he leaps up on stage at the dance to perform an improvised slam poem of his own. It ends with him intentionally alienating the room, before noticing that Lisa is leaving. When he shouts "Lisa!" and jumps off the stage, they added dramatic echo, which was not present at all during his or anyone else's previous time at the mic.

Special Features: Average

This release has a commentary track with film historians Paul Anthony Nelson and Perri Cummings, which, with their easygoing rapport, was a good listen and well as being very informative. Beyond that, all that's included here is a bunch of trailers. Most of them are for similar high school / college romantic something or others (I'm sure some lean more dramatic while others tend more towards comedy) and then, at the bottom of the list a conspiracy thriller called Winter Kills (1979). This threw me for a moment before I realized Winter Kills, which I've never seen, was also written and directed by Richert. It looks interesting and also seems pretty well-regarded, so I've actually added it to my watch list. Just because I don't think the man made a good coming-of-age movie, doesn't mean I believe he doesn't have something worthwhile in him.

• TRAILERS:
• A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988)
• Sneakers (1992)
• The Wild Life (1984)
• Gotcha! (1985)
• The Secret of My Success (1987)
• The Allnighter (1987)
• Secret Admirer (1985)
• Winter Kills (1979)

 

In Summary: Borrow it from the library

Listen, I know I came down hard on this film and, if you're a fan, that's cool. I mean no ill will, I just bounced off of this immediately. River Phoenix, and honestly the majority of the cast, are great and deliver what I think the screenplay demands of them, I just cannot get on the wavelength of William Richert's loving depiction of this bratty, pretentious fuckboi. But I kept with it because I wanted to see if he would change, or learn, or if the film would in any way condemn his character.

If I was feeling charitable, I think perhaps you could make the argument that all of this is intentional; that Jimmy's grousing about problems entirely created in his head is akin to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000); a glimpse into a diseased mind. But my allergies have been giving me hell and I don't feel like being at all charitable. A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon never approaches the heightened levels of that other film, never even hints that there is any level to read it on beyond the surface. I think it might be worth watching to see a very thorough performance from a talented actor gone too soon, but I don't think it deserves a spot on anyone's shelf. So, support your local library if you want to give it a go.

FRIGHTMARE (1974) - Kino Lorber

Frightmare
Kino Lorber / Kino Cult

Original Release Date November 6th, 1974 (UK)
Written by David McGillivray, based on a story by Pete Walker
Directed by Pete Walker
Starring Paul Greenwood, Kim Butcher, Deborah Fairfax, Sheila Keith, Rupert Davies
Language English

Purchase your copy HERE from Kino Lorber

by "Doc" Hunter Bush,
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast

The Movie: Average

Frightmare (1974) opens in black and white, in 1957, with a prologue set in a British carnival that's shuttered for the winter and ends with an unseen couple being sentenced to a very long stint in a mental institution. It promptly jumps forward nearly twenty years where we're introduced to some young miscreants causing trouble in a local pub. After being denied alcohol by the barman, Debbie (Kim Butcher) blows the interaction out of proportion to her boyfriend and after being ejected from the establishment, they wait for the barman to leave, then jump him. The coppers are called and when the dust settles, they're all in the wind and the injured barman can't be found.

We're also introduced to young psychiatrist Graham (Paul Greenwood) at a dinner party where he's been set-up to meet the lovely Jackie (Deborah Fairfax). It's when Jackie returns home that night when we realize that Jackie is Debbie's older sister and caretaker. Some track is laid about how their parents are dead and Debbie was raised in a convent until Jackie was old enough to take care of her. It is at this point that I started to suspect I knew where Frightmare was headed.

This is the film's biggest hurdle. Before much of the run time has passed, any savvy filmgoer or horror hound is going to start getting excited for what's coming. Especially when we find out that Jackie is making clandestine late-night trips to a lonely farmhouse outside the city with packages of meats for her very much alive father Edmund (Rupert Davies) and equally not dead stepmother Dorothy (the great Sheila Keith) whom, tying back into the film's cold open, were the couple once sentenced to that mental institution for (drum roll, please) cannibalism!

By the time the film has dropped the cannibalism hammer on the audience, you're practically salivating to see where this goes. But anyone expecting something akin to the pacing of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (another cannibal film released in 1974) will be disappointed. The bulk of Frightmare is spent with various characters getting caught up to what the audience has known for an increasingly long time. It's a frustrating viewing experience, though there are thrills and chills along the way.

Frightmare plays with what would become the slasher formula codified over the next decade: unlikeable youths, and the occasional innocent, meeting violent ends. Though they avoid gore, there's an absolutely dynamite pitchfork kill that feels incredibly brutal thanks entirely to the editing (by Robert C. Dearberg, who also edited one of my favorite movies, 1972's Horror Express!). There's also a lot of incidental fun to be had with the stiff-upper-lip British accents, as when someone explains to Graham about Dorothy's past: "She et people."

The Packaging: Good

This is a pretty standard Blu-ray case, but it does come with a cardboard slipcover. Both the slip and regular cover feature an updated version of the most prevalent Frightmare poster: a wild-eyed Dorothy pointing a bloody drill directly at the viewer! It's a striking image, and this version, with all the negative space left empty (where the original poster had review quotes) makes it actually more eye-catching.

It's currently VHSeptember, a time of year when all of us who maintain VHS collections of any sort get to show them off on various social media. Frightmare, and other assorted titles in Kino Lorber’s Kino Cult label, with their slip covers recreating the pulse-raising poster imagery, really comes very close to the aesthetic appeal of a shelf full of scandalous VHS covers looking back at you.

The Audio + Video: Good

Frightmare looks great throughout. Director Pete Walker isn't showy, but the guy sure knows how to handle a scene. Frightmare is, at times, filled with deep shadow, but everything important is always very clear and easy to follow. There are some very striking visual compositions, and it's all supported by the transfer. There is film grain present, as there should be, but even in lower light scenes and sequences, I never really noticed it much. Even in the higher contrast opening flashback sequence (in black and white), the blacks were crisp and deep without feeling flat and, aside from obvious artifacts from originally being on film from fifty years ago (meaning the occasional small scratch or mark) it looks fresh.

The audio I similarly had no issues with. There's a certain kind of compression that exists in older films' audio, where it frankly just sounds like an older film. That is, of course, present here, but there is no muffling or distortion; all the dialogue, sound effects, and score come in nice and clear. Composer Stanley Myers, who also worked with director Pete Walker on Schizo (1976) and House of Whipcord (1974), and would go on to score such films as The Deer Hunter (1978) and The Witches (1990), crafts a score for Frightmare that evokes a seasick feeling of dread throughout.

Special Features: Average

I always value bonus content that provides me with context, and I would have liked to see a little bit more of that here. For example, director Pete Walker is a bit of a cult figure with whom I am only vaguely familiar. I know that he began his career in so-called sexploitation films, before transitioning to horror and has a pretty positive reputation among genre film fans. One of the commentary tracks features Steve Chibnall, author of the book Making Mischief: The Cult Films of Pete Walker, and while the commentary track is full of interesting tidbits about Walker, most of them center around Frightmare. I'd have loved a little bit of a career overview from Chibnall to give me a better idea of who Walker is.

Beyond that admittedly minor quibble, I found the rest of the features to be very informative and overall really pleasant. Everyone seems to have had a blast making this film which, for the era, was seen as quite vulgar.

• Commentary by Stephen R. Bissette
• Commentary by Pete Walker, director of photography Peter Jessop, and Steve Chibnall
• For the Sake of Cannibalism (11:56)
• Sheila Keith: A Nice Old Lady? (13:53)
• Interview with editor Robert C. Dearborn (8:02)
• Interview with actor Paul Greenwood (8:57)
• Theatrical Trailer (1:16)

In Summary: Buy it on sale

I wouldn't say Frightmare is a must-see film. It's good, don't get me wrong, but the issue of getting so far ahead of the plot so early means you spend a lot of the runtime mostly waiting for things to coalesce. Occasionally you are pleasantly distracted by small moments; some character interactions, or interesting shots, or the kills. But by and large the pacing is a little pokey.

The highlight for me was Sheila Keith's performance as Dorothy. She seems genuinely unhinged (to the point that it calls into question how anyone thought she was fit to return to polite society) and, according to numerous comments across the various bonus features, as well as the one dedicated to her specifically, called A Nice Old Lady?, she was someone who was the exact opposite and really enjoyed playing such a w-i-l-d character. The film might be worth seeing for her performance alone.

DEATH WISH Collection - Kino Lorber

Death Wish Collection
Kino Lorber

Directed by Michael Winner (1-3), J. Lee Thompson (4), Allan A. Goldstein (5)
Starring Charles Bronson, Jeff Goldblum, Laurence Fishburne, Alex Winter, Danny Trejo, Michael Parks
Language English

Purchase your copy HERE from Kino Lorber

by "Doc" Hunter Bush
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast

The Collection: Excellent

Released over the course of 20 years, the five Death Wish films follow Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) and his many doomed loved ones and friends. Beginning in New York with 1974's Death Wish, Kersey's wife and daughter are attacked during a robbery, leaving his wife dead and daughter catatonic. Paul spirals into paranoia and violence, becoming known in the papers as “The Vigilante”. This is the most introspective film, and seems to actually be trying to address the corrupting effect of violence on a person's humanity. At the film's end, Paul has nearly died and is forced to leave town, and has lost a lot of his humanity, but importantly, not his job as an architect (which is perhaps the ultimate "movie job").

As a franchise, it's pretty inconsistent overall. The sequels can't even decide whether they're using Arabic or Roman numerals (I will exclusively be using Arabic numerals for clarity). Their settings bounce back and forth from New York to L.A. with very little explanation, aside from Paul's company having branches in a number of cities, and find Paul regularly romancing a beautiful blonde woman and sometimes taking on the responsibilities of a surrogate dad. These folks almost always meet a horrible fate, which is almost always the inciting incident that brings the Vigilante back and allows him an excuse to go on another vengeance rampage. 

There are exceptions to these truisms. Death Wish 5: The Face of Death's love interest is the lovely brunette Lesley-Anne Down, playing a former model and head of a high-fashion empire. Death Wish 2's Geri (played by Jill Ireland, Bronson's real-life partner) manages to escape Paul's romantic orbit with her life, merely realizing that her dude is a maniac and leaving him. In Death Wish 3, the inciting incident is actually Paul arriving at an old Army buddy's apartment to find he has just been murdered by a local gang. Don't worry though, they all meet much the same fate as anyone who crosses Kersey's path while he's in one of these increasingly frequent blood fugues.

The Death Wish films have a very strange relationship to violence. Star Charles Bronson seemed largely to be against the graphic depictions of it in these films, and often clashed with Michael Winner who directed the first three. Winner apparently had a habit of writing in changes to the script to include more instances of violence with an eye on making that violence more brutal. In the first film, there is a sexual assault that is depicted with restraint and discretion towards the audience. The second film however, seems to revel in another such assault, the scene going on for minutes. But at the very least, each of these incidents serves a narrative purpose (as thin a justification as that is) by motivating Kersey's vengeance. In Death Wish 3, there is yet another assault that, while shot with greater discretion than the sequence in Death Wish 2, doesn't even serve any narrative purpose. It takes the franchise's depiction of violence from being merely brutal into actively being cruel.

It's a sour note in a film that should otherwise have been a big, dumb, 1980's action movie power fantasy. The finale of Death Wish 3 is an elaborate shootout between Kersey and other tenants of the besieged apartment block against the local gang, and both sides are armed with military grade weapons! The movie has a Chekov's rocket launcher, for Pete's sake! It should be a big violent fantasy but is ultimately tainted in my eyes by the unnecessary cruelty.

I'm pointing all of this out in case, like I was, you aren't fully familiar with the franchise as a whole, so much as with its cultural footprint. The Death Wish films veer wildly across lines of taste and logic with Kersey at times showing regret and being depicted as a human being, while at other times seeming like a serial killer akin to Michael Myers (but with guns, rocket launchers, and at one point an exploding, radio controlled soccer ball!) It's a mixed bag but there is genuine fun of the "big, dumb" variety to be had at points.

The Packaging: Excellent

When taken as a whole, as one object, the collection is modest, but perfect: the cover is a very unsubtle illustration of Charles Bronson's catcher's mitt face (complimentary) and a hand gun against a stark white background with bold black text reading 'BRONSON' and bold red text reading 'DEATH WISH', and then smaller text blocks listing the titles. It's blunt and direct and no nonsense which fits the vibe of the franchise overall (even if the individual films waver a bit from this pseudo mission statement).

Inside the sleeve are two of the sturdier Blu-ray cases and that's where things get just a little odd. One case holds the Michael Winner Death Wish installments and the cover for that one looks like the kind of bootleg you'd buy off of a blanket on the street in Kersey’s New York: three cropped images of Bronson from the posters, next to the appropriate logo. I don't mind this, like at all, but it strikes me as odd. The other case contains the latter two films, but as far as I can tell just features the artwork for Death Wish 4: The Crackdown, and aside from including both logos, makes no allusion to the final film. That's especially odd, and weirdly discordant in style from the other included disc, but not so much that I would knock this release for it. It just struck me as an odd choice(s).

Both cases feature slim booklets with essays about the appropriate films from film historian Paul Talbot, author of the Bronson’s Loose! series of books, one of which is dedicated exclusively to the Death Wish films. He also provides a commentary track for each film, so if the essays are anything to go by, those should be well researched and highly informative (but in the interest of full transparency, I haven't gotten to any of them yet).

The Audio + Video: Good

This is a situation where the less you notice the transfer the better it inherently is. The only times I actively thought about it was when something was off. There are a few bumps in the road but honestly not many for a five film franchise. Death Wish 2 for instance, has a few moments with a distracting amount of film grain. They are all extremely short, and all when Paul goes to various safe houses to either pick up guns or make a fake I.D. I'm guessing these sections of the original film must have been damaged, since other similarly low-light sequences look great. Beyond those, I never had issues with the look of the films at all.

Sonically, I again largely had no problems. The one huge exception was Death Wish 4: The Crackdown which just has an awful balance. The dialogue varies in base volume from scene to scene, and all the action is dialed up WAY louder, meaning I spent my entire viewing riding the volume button on my remote, and constantly being pulled out of the film because I'm too busy not hearing the first sentence of a conversation, then anticipating that the next story movement might get painfully loud again. Beyond that, I never thought about the mix at all. In some of the other installments, there is some obvious disparity occasionally between bits of dialogue that had obviously been recorded later and weren't perfectly replicating the sound of the scene they had been placed in, but nothing egregious.

Personally, I never mind film grain until it becomes a distraction, by which I mean it looks like the drugs just kicked in and you can see every atom dancing. Similarly, I'm not bothered by older audio not being crystal clear. The audio for the original Death Wish was recorded a half century ago; a little fuzziness or barely audible hiss is to be expected. These things, while maybe not ideal, are certainly understandable and make the film feel more real and human. So-called “perfection” is boring.

Special Features: Good

There aren't really very many special features aside from commentary tracks (seven of them spread across five films) and trailers for other Bronson films (a whopping sixteen films, with a few duplicate titles on multiple discs), but what's here is enjoyable. There are interviews with supporting actors John Herzfeld (a subway mugger in Death Wish) and Kirk Taylor (The Giggler in Death Wish 3), both theatrical and unrated cuts for Death Wish 2, and the alternate ending for Death Wish 3 with optional commentary.

Would I have liked more features talking about the evolution of the franchise, from installment to installment? Sure, but I'm guessing the aforementioned commentary tracks from Paul Talbot will be able to scratch that intellectual itch for me, when I finally dive into them.

• Commentaries on all five Death Wish films from Paul Talbot
• Commentary on Death Wish 2 with film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson
• Commentary on Death Wish 3 with film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson
• Interview with actor John Hertzfeld (18:24)
• Interview with actor Kirk Taylor (8:27)
• Death Wish radio spots (1:31)
• Death Wish TV spot (1:04)
• Death Wish 3 alternate ending (11:01)
• TRAILERS:
• Death Wish (1974) (2:21)
• Death Wish 2 (1982) (1:55)
• Death Wish 3 (1985) (1:41)
• Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987) (1:35)
• Death Wish 5: The Face of Death (1994) (1:01)
• Violent City (1970) (3:54)
• Cold Sweat (1970) (2:36)
• Chato's Land (1972) (2:10)
• The Valachi Papers (1972) (3:24)
• Mr. Majestyk (1974) (1:34)
• Breakout (1975) (1:34)
• Breakheart Pass (1975) (3:07)
• The White Buffalo (1977) (1:52)
• Caboblanco (1980) (2:50)
• Murphy's Law (1986) (1:31)
• Assassination (1987) (1:58)

In Summary: Buy it on sale

I'm rating the collection as a whole very highly because Kino has done a very thorough job with it, but obviously each individual film's content and quality varies, as mentioned above. If you're a Death Wish fan or Charles Bronson completist looking to acquire nice transfers of the franchise in one handsome package, this is your chance. If you've seen one or two and are curious about the rest, I'd still recommend it, but it really depends on how flexible your enjoyment-o-meter is.

I think the first film is the best one as a film, even if I feel like it misses its own point in the end. Death Wish 2 is the worst overall, with very little showcasing Paul Kersey as anything resembling a human being. Death Wish 3 is fun in an over-the-top way, but does feature that one moment of unnecessary cruelty, which is a bummer. Death Wish 4: The Crackdown feels so much like an anti-drug PSA mixed into a Death Wish movie, which is so odd that it actually becomes enjoyable. Finally, Death Wish 5: The Face of Death embraces a cartoonish quality in both the villains and Paul's methods of dispatching them that it really ends up being entertaining (hot take: if the villains from 5 were in the drug storyline from 4, you'd have the best sequel by a mile). I'd love to know your rankings.

RADIOLAND MURDERS (1994) - Kino Lorber

Radioland Murders
Kino Lorber

Original Release Date Oct. 21st, 1994
Written by Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz, Jeff Reno, Ron Osborn, story by George Lucas
Directed by Mel Smith
Starring Brian Benben, Mary Stuart Masterson, Ned Beatty, Michael McKean, Larry Miller
Language English

Purchase your copy HERE from Kino Lorber

by "Doc" Hunter Bush
MovieJawn Podcast Director & Staff Writer, cohost of the Hate Watch / Great Watch Podcast

The Movie: Good

Radioland Murders is an interesting beast. Half relationship on the rocks drama, and half classic Hollywood whodunnit romp complete with mile-a-minute repartee, pithy rejoinders, and wacky shenanigans. Allegedly the original version of the script was balanced more on the relationship side with the radio station storyline as the backdrop, before overcorrecting the other way and finally ending up somewhere in the middle. But along the way, we're given a whirlwind look at what putting on an old school variety radio show might have looked like under some very specific circumstances.

It's the night of the maiden broadcast of upstart radio station WBN in Chicago and everything is in a madcap state of chaos, and that's before the murders begin. When the station's number one sponsor demands last-minute script changes, assistant director Penny (Mary Stuart Masterson) has to wrangle her soon-to-be ex-husband Roger (Brian Benben) and the rest of the writers to rework a whole night's worth of entertainment! As every department makes their last minute preparations and the show's broadcast time creeps steadily closer, no one is expecting that a murderer may be in their midst, but shortly after the curtain rises, the bodies begin to fall.

I love murder mysteries and whodunnits, but this isn't really much of one. Even setting aside the sheer number of theoretical suspects, I don't think there's ever really any clues set out for the audience to follow, yet the movie spends a lot of its run time following that thread, to the detriment of the relationship story between Penny and Roger. We never really get a great idea what their issues were, they just seem vaguely exasperated by each other. While that is very much in keeping with the film's inspiration, and is very cute, it really just means that the main obstacle keeping them apart is that Roger pretty quickly becomes the police lieutenant (Michael Lerner)'s prime suspect. This leads to perhaps the film's strongest facet: the screwball comedy of it all. There are outlandish costume changes, police chases through the hallways, even some gunplay for comedic effect! Roger even ends up climbing the enormous letters on the exterior of the building and later holds off the cops with a firehose! It is genuinely quite zany.

Competing with these plots is the radio broadcast itself. We keep cutting away from the film's dueling focal points (the murder and the romance) to the booth, to the writers' room, to the foley dept., to the various bands and orchestras performing on the stage, to backstage as folks quickly change sets on the enormous rotating turntable preparing for the next number. Maybe it's just me, but I was almost more interested with those, perfectly ordinary, comings and goings than I was with the more bombastic storylines.

Like I said, an interesting beast. I don't think there's really a "bad" aspect to the film. All the performances are fun and memorable and attention-grabbing, the murders are creative and varied enough to keep your interest, and Masterson and Benben have a real livewire chemistry that makes their relationship fun to track. But at some point it becomes impossible to keep caring equally about ALL these disparate elements. About halfway through, the film narrows its focus more to follow the wrongfully accused Roger as he tries to prove his innocence, but it still doesn't ever give you room to breathe. As good as it is, I found it hard to stay engaged as things went on.

The Packaging: Good

This is your typical slim, blue plastic Blu-ray case with a cover image that feels like a throwback to the posters of yesteryear: Penny and Roger peeking around the stage curtain at someone collapsed, presumably dead, in the spotlight onstage. All this is lacking from those old Hollywood posters are the inset illustrations of other notable stars and, usually, quite a lot of text. This cover is recreated on the cardboard sleeve as well. It's nothing remarkable, but it is quietly very appealing.

The Audio + Video: Excellent

This looks and sounds fantastic, but isn't showy about it. The film as a whole is very, not dark exactly, but muted. The overall color scheme of the film is composed of deep, velvety blue tones, and peachy ambers, with pops of a cherry red dress here, or the purple curtain behind Claudette Katsenback (Anita Morris), the station' "Va Va Voom Girl". The lighting is very soft in a lot of the film, like the bounce lighting in the booth, and instead of looking dim, everything feels really warm, intimate and comforting.

Likewise, the sound mix isn't showy, but is just really solid. I mentioned the mile-a-minute dialogue up above, and underneath that, there's always a lot going on sonically. People backstage are always yelling or talking over each other, there is frequently music coming from the stage, or a performance, and the folks in the booth are using the headset mics to communicate to certain characters almost constantly. But you're always perfectly able to clearly hear all the dialogue and appreciate how witty it is.

Special Features: Average

The bonus features here are a little thin, though I will say I really enjoyed the Brian Benben interview, which is where I got that tidbit about the script's original focus that I mentioned above. He also states that apparently this film, which was the brainchild of George Lucas, is in a shared universe with American Graffiti (1973), with the parents of Richard Dreyfuss' character in that film also being named Penny and Roger Henderson. Georgie boy was really all about that cinematic universe business right from the jump, hunh?

Be forewarned: for some reason, the trailer for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is incredibly loud. Why?

• Audio commentary by entertainment journalists / authors Bryan Reesman and Max Evry
• Brian Benben's Radioland Murders Memories: Interview (17:32)
• TRAILERS
• Radioland Murders (1994) (2:05)
• The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) (1:28)
• Brain Donors (1992) (1:30)
• Cry-Baby (1990) (1:58)
• Kingpin (1996) ( (1:28)
• MouseHunt (1997) (2:05)

In Summary: Snag it at a yard sale

Radioland Murders isn't bad by any means, but it can't commit to being any one of the things it's paying homage to, which makes it just okay across several genres. While I think all the individual pieces are very well done from the writing, to the performances, to the look, the tone, and the gags; somehow it fails to cohere into a unified-feeling whole. It just feels very scattered. However, if you're big into the style of old Hollywood films, or whip crack back-and-forth dialogue I would definitely recommend checking it out.

There's one last aspect of Radioland Murders worth mentioning: the incredible cast. George Burns, Michael McKean, Stephen Tobolowski, Christopher Lloyd, Corbin Bernsen, Rosemary Clooney, Bobcat Goldthwait, Dylan Baker, Billy Barty, Harvey Korman, Joey Lawrence; Radioland Murders is worth a watch for the murderer's row (no pun intended) of supporting cast members alone, and maybe you'll find the rest of it hooks you as well. At the very least, you'll be much better at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

THE PHANTOM (1996) - Kino Lorber

The Phantom
Kino Lorber

Original Release Date June 7th, 1996
Written by Jeffrey Boam, based on the comics by Lee Falk
Directed by Simon Wincer
Starring Billy Zane, Kristy Swanson, Treat Williams, Catherine Zeta-Jones, James Remar
Language English (subtitles available)

Buy your copy HERE from Diabolik, or HERE from Orbit

by "Doc" Hunter Bush
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast 

The Movie: Good

For those who came in late... The Phantom is widely regarded as the first costumed comic book hero! Inspired by swashbuckling, globetrotting serial adventure stories, Lee Falk created The Phantom in 1936. Also known as The Ghost Who Walks, The Phantom defends the fictional jungle nation of Bengalla from pirates, poachers, and other ne'er-do-wells with the help of his two pistols, his peak physical conditioning, assorted assistants, both human and animal, and perhaps strongest of all: generational wealth!

In the wake of Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, Hollywood raced to find other super heroes to plaster on the big screen. Presumably, as more high-profile characters would be prohibitively expensive, the suits chose lesser-known indie characters like The Crow, The Mask, or the Rocketeer, or older ones like Dick Tracy, The Shadow, and ...The Phantom. Director Simon Wincer's film picks up with the same words I used to open this review; a call-back to the adventure serials that partially inspired the character. In a fun parallel, Superman (2025) also opens with a similar trick, designed to reproduce the feeling of picking up a story in the middle, as used to happen quite often. The difference is that Superman is a character that has consistently been in the public consciousness for decades, while The Phantom was a very obscure character in the U.S. in the mid-'90s.

Billy Zane might be the perfect casting here as The Phantom, in that he not only has leading man charisma, but a real vintage Hollywood marquee look to him. Fun fact: in a previous attempt to adapt this character, which was to be driven by Joe Dante (Gremlins, The 'Burbs), The Phantom was to be played by Bruce Campbell who has a similar classical action hero look. The rest of the cast includes Kristy Swanson as Diana, a spunky debutante adventurer working with her newspaper-owner uncle to investigate the film's villain, wealthy industrialist Xander Drax, played by a gleefully scenery-chewing Treat Willaims.

Drax's plan is to collect three mysterious artifacts: the Skulls of Touganda which, when combined, yadda yadda yadda absolute power; you get the idea. Drax is aided in his quest by mercenary Quill, played with a globe-trotting gravitas by the always great James Remar, and Sala (Catherine Zeta-Jones), the captain of an airborne all-girl gang of pilots. The flick is also almost overflowing with character actors including Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, John Capodice, and Patrick McGoohan, just to name a few.

As the film bounces from Bengalla, to New York, to a mysterious unmarked third location gathering the Skulls, and our heroes survive one dynamic action sequence after another, I fell in love with this character all over again. Zane plays The Phantom with all of his natural charm, he and Swanson banter well and Diana is an incredibly capable female co-lead. Yes, she gets captured and held captive, but then again so does The Phantom. Treat Williams is an incredible sleazebag, with a penchant for reminding you that he's the Bad Guy in the best, most creatively fatal ways. Even though such broad-strokes white hat heroics and black hat villainy can feel a little outdated, The Phantom overcomes these stylistic hurdles to make a truly entertaining adventure yarn!

The Packaging: Good

There's nothing wildly special about the packaging here. It's just very much in line with the traditionally high quality that Kino Lorber puts out. There is a slip cover and a reversible insert with two of the film's posters recreated in the correct 4K Blu-ray dimensions. One is The Phantom punching into the camera with light shining from his skull ring and the tagline SLAM EVIL! at the top, which is also the image on the sleeve. The reverse shows The Phantom sitting on the carved stone throne (did I not mention he had one of those?) inside his skull cave lair (oh, I didn't mention that either?), with a shaft of cold light illuminating the tagline, his sobriquet "The Ghost Who Walks".

It might not be anything overly elaborate, but it's a solid and handsome addition to any physical media library shelf.

The Audio + Video: Excellent

This is where Kino's release of The Phantom really takes the cake. This film looks incredible! As it happens, I had watched the DVD transfer of the film earlier in the week to prepare for an upcoming episode of my podcast, Hate Watch/Great Watch (look for episode 190 if you're so inclined), so I am perhaps uniquely qualified to tell you that this is a definite upgrade. The colors are better; deeper and smartly adjusted. For instance, in most of the film, the deep blacks of the shadows add to the comic book graphic design quality (think of something like Sin City, but not nearly as stark) while in some later sequences in caves, the color has been tweaked to where the shadows are a deep brown, which avoids these darker locations becoming too one-note or flat.

A minor downside to this video upgrade is that some of the CGI assets look worse in comparison. For example, in an opening scene (perhaps a nod to the bridge sequence from 1977's Sorcerer?), one of the cables on a rickety bridge over a steep drop snaps and the CGI dust hit as it goes looks pretty rough. On the plus side, there are actually pretty few such inclusions, and off the top of my head, the other really notable one (involving sparks added to an elevator shaft sequence) looks pretty great, as do the sparks that occur FOR SOME REASON when bullets hit trees during a police chase.

The sound has been restored to the same level of quality. I didn't notice any specific deficiencies in my initial watch of the previously-available Phantom, but in paying attention to review this disc, I found that everything was extremely clear and well-balanced. My three-channel soundbar didn't have any issues; no vibrations, no muddiness, etc., and I never had to pump up the volume in between action scenes. There's also a neat bonus feature interview with composer David Newman, where he describes how little time he had to work on it, that made me really appreciate the score in a new light.

Special Features: Good

Speaking of the bonus features: I'm not mad at them, but I wouldn't have minded more. I almost never would. What I personally really enjoy are interviews or features that give greater context. I would love, for instance, a deep dive into The Phantom's journey to the screen because there were allegedly a number of ultimately less fruitful attempts and I'd love to know more about that. But as I mentioned above, the David Newman interview was very illuminating, as was the one with Billy Zane.

• Commentary track by director Simon Wincer, moderated by filmmaker Douglas Hosdale
• Kismet in the Jungle - interview with Billy Zane (27:08)
• Slam Evil: Scoring The Phantom - interview with composer David Newman (14:49)
• Trailers
• The Phantom (1996) (1:24)
• Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983) 2:01)
• Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985) (2:18)
• Hudson Hawk (1991) (2:05)
• Mystery Men (1999) (2:24)

In Summary: Must Own

If you're at all a '90s kid at heart, OR a scholar of comic book movies, OR action films, OR you have kids who might fall into one or more of those categories, I not only recommend The Phantom as a film, but I heartily stan for this specific release which, it cannot be overstated, restores The Phantom to a visual and audio quality that it has been impossible to find for decades.

I don't mean to sound hyperbolic. It's not as though The Phantom is some lost masterpiece; it's a fun Saturday morning with a bowl of cereal movie that's been consistently available since it made the jump from VHS to DVD. BUT. That DVD-era version is muddy, dull, and thoroughly underwhelming, which does the movie a sincere disservice. I'm glad to see The Phantom making the leap to an upgraded format, and hopefully finding a new audience because of it. This Kino Lorber release really Slams the Evil of underwhelming physical media presentation, so why not add it to your library?

BODY PUZZLE (1992) - Kino Lorber

Body Puzzle
Kino Lorber / Kino Raro

Original Release Date: March 20th, 1992 (Italy)
Written by Lamberto Bava, Teodoro Corrà, Bruce Martin, Domenico Paolella
Directed by Lamberto Bava
Starring Joanna Pacula, Tomas Arana, François Montagut
Language English (English and Italian subtitles available)

Get your copy HERE from Kino Lorber, or HERE from Diabolik

by "Doc" Hunter Bush,
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast

The Movie: Average

I enjoy the Giallo genre quite a bit. I'm no expert, just a fan, but the emphasis on style always appealed to me. The clothes, the kills, the locations, the direction, and the motivations were all usually equally unique and stylish; at least in the best examples. But Giallo peaked around the late '60s / early '70s and though there are viable examples across the 1980s, perhaps by 1992, it would be unfair to look at Body Puzzle through that lens. But it feels right, so I'm gonna.

Body Puzzle is, super appropriately, a puzzle of a film. It begins with a scene of a man (François Montagut) playing the piano before flashing back to a motorcycle accident. Through the language of film, we believe we are being told who this person is and why they do what they do: murders. But are we? As the film rolls on and we see the man committing numerous murders, taking grisly trophies with which to taunt a beautiful young woman (Joanna Pacula), we believe we understand why. Even if we don't have all the details, we seem to understand the shape of events. The film is then playing catch-up to what we have seen, as Det. Mike (Tomas Arana) comes to Tracy Grant (Pacula)'s aid and begins trying to put together the pieces of this particular puzzle.

As a film, Body Puzzle feels caught between two genres. It loses many of the Giallo trademarks I listed above, but doesn't replace them with anything. The only truly interesting location is Tracy's apartment which has huge blue glass pyramids on the walls composed of smaller, triangular panels, and a swimming pool flanked by black and white pinstriped pillars. The one moment that feels like the kind of cheap, nasty thrills you'd expect from a Giallo film is one kill in a public bathroom stall where the camera is briefly looking up, out of the toilet as the killer descends upon his victim. For a film where a guy is going around collecting disparate body parts, there's hardly even much blood.

I didn't have a bad time with Body Puzzle necessarily, in fact the ending pretty much saves the whole experience with just how bonkers it is, but the journey to get there is at times tedious. It also has a lot of fun small moments like a mortician (Sebastiano Lo Monaco) eating sliced apples immediately after performing an autopsy, a w-i-l-d scene in a classroom for blind children, and the revelation that the killer has been eating an un-sliced personal pizza from the edges inward, the way a rat would. Whether these sound like enough to tip this into Must Watch territory is entirely up to you.

The Packaging: Average

This is a pretty barebones release, all things considered. You've got your standard Blu-ray case, nothing wrong with that, and a pretty cool cover featuring Joanna Pacula's face divided into several slices in the process of being either disassembled or reassembled, depending on your point of view (maybe it's a glass half full or glass empty thing?) So, overall, nothing fancy, but still a handsome addition to your collection that would look very nice lined up with some of Kino Lorber's other Raro releases.

The Audio + Video: Good

I'm not in love with the look of Body Puzzle as a whole, which surprised me since cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller has lensed films like Lucio Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971), Paul Morrisey's Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974), and Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975); all films with much stronger imagery. Overall, a lot of the film is a little desaturated and washed out. BUT, from a technical standpoint, the transfer is very clear and when things do occasionally pick up visually, they look very nice. There's a little light haloing in exterior shots, and a little extra visual noise in the darker interiors, but nothing unusual. 

What I did really enjoy was the sound in Body Puzzle. Composer Carlo Maria Cordio plays with a lot of tinkly synths and deep drum sounds that all slowly build at just the right moments. There's also repeated use of Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, which you may know from the scariest part of Disney's Fantasia (1940), which essentially functions as the killer's psych-up music and is actually a pretty fun bit. An interesting fact I learned from the commentary track is that director Lamberto Bava initially used Carl Orff's O Fortuna, which you may know from such films as John Boorman's Excalibur (1981), Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994), or Steve Carr's Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009). Unfortunately, he wasn't able to actually use it for these sequences and chose the Mussorgsky piece as a fall-back.

Special Features: Average

There's not a lot of meat on the bone here, if I'm being honest. Aside from the commentary track (the release's saving grace for me), the only special features are trailers for The .44 Specialist (1976), and Body Puzzle itself. The commentary track, from film historians and hosts of Wild, Wild Podcast Adrian Smith and Rod Barnett, is very informative and the two have a fun, easygoing rapport that makes it actively fun to listen to.

• Commentary track from Adrian Smith and Rod Barnett
• Trailers
• Body Puzzle (1992) (1:12)
• The .44 Specialist (1976) (3:22)

In Summary: Borrow from the library

Obviously, if you're deep in the paint for Giallo films and looking to snatch up the last few stragglers to cap off your collection, absolutely scoop this one at your earliest convenience. But for the general public (like me) who are just interested in a fun trip to Giallo country, this doesn't fully satisfy. Without the expected stylish, memorable visuals, all you are left holding on to is a plot that's designed to make you believe you're well ahead of what's going on.

You aren't. Or at least not as much as you think you are, which is ultimately really pretty fun and crazy when all's said and done, but it's not a great time all the way through. So maybe check this one out first and decide if it's worth the space on your shelf.

THE .44 SPECIALIST (1976) - Kino Lorber / Kino Raro

The .44 Specialist (a.k.a. Mark Strikes Back)
Kino Lorber / Kino Raro

Original Release Date Oct. 26th, 1976 (Italy)
Written by Dardano Sacchetti story by Lucio De Caro
Directed by Stelvio Massi
Starring Franco Gasparri, John Steiner, Marcella Michelangeli, John Saxon
Language Italian (English subtitles available)

Buy it HERE from Kino Lorber, or HERE from Diabolik

by "Doc" Hunter Bush,
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast

The Movie: Average

I am by no means an expert in Italy's Poliziotteschi crime subgenre. I really only discovered it on a previous Disc Dispatch (1976's Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man) and I was cautiously optimistic. I mention this only to say that The .44 Specialist didn't really blow me away like that previous film did, and to couch this in: maybe there's something about it that is intrinsically Poliziotteschi that I'm just not getting.

We're introduced to undercover cop Mark (Franco Gasparri) hanging around a cafe, acting as bait to infiltrate the criminal underworld. He provokes a fake arrest in order to come in for a debriefing without blowing his cover. Luckily, this false arrest brings him to the attention of just the people he was debriefed about: terrorists Paul (John Steiner) and Olga (Marcella Michelangeli). In the film's opening scene, we witness them, along with sniper Hans (Claudio Zucchet), execute some dignitary while riding in his car, despite a police escort. They managed to escape, though Hans was gravely injured.

This is where Mark comes in. Initially brought on by Paul and Olga to care for the obviously dying Hans while they conduct other illicit business around the city, before long Mark is hired as Hans' replacement, a decision underlined by Paul unceremoniously executing Hans (which itself leads to an hilarious bit of Weekend at Bernie's-esque shenanigans a full 13 years before Bernie's hit theaters!). Then we're off on an international terror spree.

My issues are manifold: first, and maybe it's just that I missed something, but I had NO IDEA this was the third film in what is known as the Mark the Narc Trilogy (after Mark the Policeman a.k.a. Blood, Sweat, and Fear and Mark the Policeman Shoots First, both from 1975). This technically doesn't matter, as the story is stand-alone, but I never felt like I had any idea who Mark was as a character. Perhaps there is more to him established in the first two films or perhaps not, but importantly: I just can't know.

Relatedly, stuff just seems to happen to/for Mark that doesn't have anything to do with his police prowess or any notable skills. In one instance, he's picked up by hot lady stranger Isa (Malisa Longo) while trying to hail a cab and taken back to her apartment for casual sex. This delay means he is not in his hotel and thus avoids being killed in some vague ambush bloodbath. Similarly, he sees his car being towed just before he enters a clandestine meeting, and again narrowly avoids being murdered along with everyone else, both times purely through chance.

None of this is any fault of Gasparri's. He's incredibly naturally charismatic in the role, but the character is a cipher, and a phenomenally lucky cipher at that. Now, if that was a trait of Mark's that was previously established in the two earlier films, then so be it. I might still be somewhat annoyed by it, but maybe it would have grown on me. Here, it just means I have no real reason to care about what's happening because Mark will be fine and without even engaging with the danger in any meaningful way. Like a virile, laid-back Mr. Magoo.

The Packaging: Average

This is a bare-bones Blu-ray through-and-through. It's the usual slim, blue case, includes no booklet or anything, and features a single-sided cover. The illustration features Mark with his era-appropriately large hair and larger bell-bottoms, falling backwards firing his gun on the tarmac of an airport (a moment that, unless I missed it, does not happen).

It's fine, but not especially attention-grabbing.

The Audio + Video: Good

On a technical quality level, The .44 Specialist is more than adequate. Though it's obviously a product of its era, with regards to film grain and sonic fidelity, I always find that those minor "imperfections" add to a film's charm unless they're so egregious that they distract from the finished product. That's not the case here at all. Aside from arguably looking a little overcast visually sometimes, I had no issues with the look.

From an audio standpoint, my only complaint is that the film's main bit of score largely doesn't work. It sounds very reminiscent of the theme from TV's Taxi (1978-1983) and works perfectly well for when Mark arrives in a new location and we're treated to some casual sightseeing. It does not, and in fact could not, also work when Mark goes for a meeting with his handler Altman (the great John Saxon) whom Mark thinks might be setting him up. The tones of these two scenes are just too different for one piece of music to work equally well in both. Composer Stelvio Cipriani (Piranha II: The Spawning [1982]) is incredibly prolific, and he did a fine job on this piece of music, but it should not be used in all of the places that it is.

Special Features: Bad

The only special features aside from the commentary track from film historian Rachael Nisbet are two movie trailers, one of which is for this very movie, and neither of which is for any other films in the trilogy. While Rachael Nisbet delivers a very informative commentary track, as she normally does, I was pretty underwhelmed with these features.

• Trailers
• The .44 Specialist (3:22)
• Body Puzzle (1:12)

In Summary: Snag it at a yard sale

As a film The .44 Specialist is fine but not especially memorable. As a disc, it feels incomplete. This should really have been packaged and released with the other two Mark the Narc films, had a couple of special features exploring the franchise, its crew and its cast (Franco Gasparri's story for instance, is akin to a Poliziotteschi Behind the Music) and really just given the fans or any curious parties their money's worth. The film may stand on its own without any direct ties to the previous two, but the disc most definitely does not.

NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER (Kino Lorber)

Night of the Juggler

Kino Classics
June 6, 1980
Written by William W. Norton, Rick Natkin, based on a novel by William P. McGivern
Directed by Robert Butler, Sidney J. Furie (uncredited)
Starring James Brolin, Cliff Gorman, Julie Carmen, Abby Bluestone, Dan Hedaya
Language English

Buy it HERE from Kino Lorber, or HERE from Diabolik

by "Doc" Hunter Bush,
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast

The Movie: Excellent

Holy Toledo, gang! I originally saw this restoration in July as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival--at least, I think so. It was AN restoration, I'm not 100% certain it was THIS restoration--and I was jaw-on-the-floor riveted the whole time. Full of style that was for the time quite revolutionary, and awash in tension, Night of the Juggler hits the ground running and never really lets up.

Sean Boyd (James Brolin) is an ex-NYPD cop turned trucker who's on the outs with his wife but is still trying to show up in a meaningful way for his daughter Kathy (Abby Bluestone). When a local loon, Cliff Gorman as Gus Soltic the titular Juggler, mistakes Abby for a higher-profile child and kidnaps her, he sets off an exhaustive chase across the city of New York that takes Sean and other interested parties from high society brownstones to the actual sewers and everywhere in between.

A few things set this apart from the myriad of films and television involving a parent unrelentingly chasing down a kidnapper, and only some of them are obvious on a first viewing, while the rest were made clear after checking out the special features. First of all, the pacing. While I absolutely responded to it, as mentioned above, I wasn't conscious of how completely the film emphasized it until Julie Carmen mentioned in an interview how she felt the presence of jogging early on mirrors the unrelenting forward motion of the rest of the film. Relatedly, original director Sidney J. Furie's pioneering use of long lenses to add a claustrophobia to all shots, interior or exterior, by cramming the frames full of foreground and background detail. The result is a film that actively feels like desperately trying to push your way through a crowd going the other direction.

Brolin sells all of it. He has an easygoing but no-nonsense quality that tells the audience from the jump that the Juggler absolutely grabbed the wrong guy's kid (and not just because he actually did think she was a different kid). Once Sean is on the move, he pretty much never slows down and certainly not of his own accord, even though in real life, Brolin broke his foot filming an early chase scene and production had to halt temporarily, but more on that later.

I'd be remiss not to mention the rest of the cast, because they're all fantastic. Richard S. Castellano and Dan Hedaya as cops, with Hedaya becoming an especially dangerous thorn in Sean's side; Cliff Gorman giving a truly unhinged and dangerous performance as the Juggler; Julie Carmen as the sweet Maria who takes pity on Sean and helps him out; and a pre-breakout Mandy Patinkin doing a version of the accent that he would use in The Princess Bride as Allesandro the cab driver. And then there's New York itself. We're all well familiar with the old "the city is a character" adage, but I'd say that here NYC is almost a performer. Sidney Furie allegedly said that in New York, even the extras are great actors, and I'm inclined to agree with him. They add a level of reality to the film that makes the world feel so much more real and visceral.

The Packaging: Good

Talk about the type of case, if there’s a booklet, essays, etc. Talk about what stood out to you as someone who values owning physical media!

This comes in a standard Kino Lorber black 4K/Ultra HD case, which looks sharp, but the real one-two punch for me is the slip and the reversible cover art. One side offers the more colorful of the two illustrations which depicts a visibly shaken Sean in high contrast blue lighting above an image of the Juggler dragging Kathy through a sewer tunnel with the tagline "Somewhere out there his little girl is crying for help." This one is also the image on the slipcover, and it's a great one. The deep blue and teal green of the tunnel below work really well with the stark black background and white-and-blue title.

But, the reverse side, while less colorful, is my favorite. Above a narrow collage of imagery from the film is a depiction of a wild-eyed Sean tearing an image of New York City apart with his bare hands! It's all in black and white with the tagline "In the heart of every victim is a hero and he'll tear apart a city to prove it." at the top. The effect reminds me a little of the pop art collage work I first encountered in comic books from the 1960s and '70s and it's just an incredibly arresting image. I have limited wall-space, but I'm seriously considering tracking down a full-size poster.

The Audio + Video: Excellent

I love the look of this film. As I mentioned above, Sidney J. Furie's concept for using the long lenses is fantastic. It crowds the frame with visual obstacles--fences, subterranean pipes, the people of the city--in a way that makes you almost desperate to keep your eyes on the action. After production halted due to James Brolin's broken foot, producers wanted Furie to make changes to the script that would see his character Sean spend less time being active onscreen. Seeing as how Furie had constructed the whole film to feel like a desperate chase, he disagreed which led to his being replaced by credited director Robert Butler. Luckily Butler and cinematographer Victor J. Kemper kept the long lenses, ensuring a cohesive vision for the film as a whole--and one that Butler would adapt to the Hill Street Blues pilot the next year, helping to establish a look for street-level crime stories that persists to this day.

The transfer really works incredibly well with this style of filmmaking. Taken from a 4k scan of the original camera negative, there's film grain present, but the images themselves are very sharp, which you really need with the cluttered depth of frame achieved by the long lenses. On a lesser transfer, Sean and Sgt. Barnes (Hedaya) having a conversation with a chainlink fence between them and the camera could easily be muddy, or the third act descent into sewers and subterranean utility corridors, with all their pipes, steam, and other visual obstacles, could be a dark mess of blurry shapes. Here, everything feels tactile and real, which adds to the immersion. I felt like I had to actively keep my eyes on what was happening, lest the movie get away from me.

The audio mix adds to that effect as well. As I type this, I can't think of any score, though I know there had to be some. All I can recall is the sounds of the city swallowing everything at every turn. Obviously, you can't run down a busy street in New York without drawing the ire and car horns of numerous drivers, but also people passing on the street and general atmospheric sounds were all mixed very well in my three-channel soundbar.

Special Features: Excellent

What I always want most from special features is context. I like to know the clime and conditions in which the film I've watched was made. The features on this Kino release are dynamite for context! There are the two interviews, the Pandemonium Reflex inquest segment, and a very informative commentary track, all of which added to my understanding of this film as an object. Even the trailers help give me an idea of similar films of the era (though as always, I think trailers need a 'Play All' option).

The inquest feature especially, really stands out for me. In addition to elucidating a lot of the information about the filmmaking style that I've mentioned above--which I appreciated because I didn't even realize I was responding to it until it was brought to my attention!--it also really brought Sidney J. Furie into sharper focus for me and added a bunch of his (to me) lesser-known films to my watchlist.

• Commentary from film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson
• Summer of '78, an interview with James Brolin (13:51)
• The Sweet Maria, an interview with Julie Carmen (14:22)
• Pandemonium Reflex: An Inquest into Sidney J. Furie’s Night of the Juggler (14:02)
• Trailers
• Night of the Juggler (1980) (1:53)
• Hardcore (1979) (1:23)
• Vice Squad (1982) (0:59)
• The Hunter (1980) (3:15)
• Stick (1985) (1:22)
• Death Wish 3 (1985) (1:41)

In Summary: Must Own

There's a certain relentless determination in a film that audiences respond to. It's part of what made the John Wick series pop for so many people. Few films really support that tone as well as Night of the Juggler. From the moment Kathy is taken, the film rarely loses momentum, and even when it does it more than makes up for it when the pace picks back up. The densely packed frames add a desperation and anxiety to the chase that, as I mentioned, was adopted shortly after this and remains part of the genre's visual DNA. It's because it works.

Thrillers are called thrillers for a reason. You want your audience tense, and excited, and Night of the Juggler delivers, as a film, hugely. On top of that, this release allows for a tremendously satisfying, high quality viewing experience with plenty of satellite materials for deep-divers to explore. 

Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (Kino Raro)

Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man

Kino Raro

The Stats
Video: 1080p High Definition
Audio: DTS-HD Master 2.0 mono (on both the original Italian and English dub tracks)
Subtitles: SDH

Buy it HERE from Diabolik or HERE from Kino Lorber

by "Doc" Hunter Bush,
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast

Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man comes to Blu-ray from Kino Raro. Directed by the occasionally controversial Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust), the film is a blast of juvenile impulse without a thought for consequence. The excellent visual and audio transfers on this Kino release more than make up for the slightly underwhelming array of special features.

The Movie: Excellent / 4.5 star

Let me just say that the title Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man is one of the craziest, best titles I've heard and it's been rattling around in my head all week. With that out of the way, we can get down to business: this flick is nuts (complimentary)! Gleefully violent and oddly lighthearted in equal measure, LLACDLAM feels like an afternoon playing cops 'n' robbers in the imaginations of two children.

Alfredo (Marc Porel) and Antonio (Ray Lovelock) are two slender, casually stylish, devastatingly handsome Special Force cops in Rome who spend their time riding around on one motorcycle together, sexually harassing the Special Force secretary Norma (Silvia Dionisio), and casually killing anyone and anything that gets in their way. Director Ruggero Deodato's (Cannibal Holocaust) dark sense of humor is present throughout, adding to the dizzy, pleasantly chaotic feel of events. There is an overarching plot about the culmination of a three-year sting operation to bring down a crime boss known as Bibi (Renato Salvatori), but it's honestly barely a concern beyond acting as a framing device for the shenanigans of Alfredo and Antonio, or as I think of them: The Crime Bois!

This isn't a unique structure. Most people remember the action sequences from their favorite films over the actual plots, and with LLACDLAM, it's easy to see why. The production really makes the most of its modest budget. One of the most famous aspects of the film was its opening motorcycle chase through Rome, which famously they did not acquire permits for (à la The French Connection), and features one of if not the first instance of a motorcycle popping a wheelie in a feature film! The chase crosses the city, with our Crime Bois riding individual motorcycles, weaving through traffic to capture two purse snatchers who inevitably end up dead. According to the supplemental materials, obtaining permission would have cost $3-4 million, plus two weeks' worth of insurance costs, so they did it guerrilla style, and anytime the cops showed up, they would all simply move to a new location, which ends up giving the chase a wide variety of locales that I suppose they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Porel and Lovelock make for a fantastic and fascinating on-screen pair. Though they're both in almost every scene, they remain ciphers. At some point in the commentary track from film historian Rachael Nisbet, she mentions that supposedly one of them was playing the hot-head and the other the more reserved one, but even she seems skeptical about these supposed archetypes. As depicted, they're foppish goofballs who dump copious amounts of sugar in their coffee, roll around in a loose dirt culvert shooting target-practice at each other, and sexually tag-team the (I should emphasize: very willing) crime boss' daughter Lina (Sofia Dionisio) when they go to her place for information.

This film falls into the Italian Poliziotteschi subgenre, which I was only intellectually familiar with before now, and is written by one of its giants: Fernando Di Leo, whose shadow looms large across the special features. But I have no idea if this is a good entry point to the genre or not. It was well received, there were even talks of a sequel but Porel's on-set behavior made Lovelock hesitant to be put in a situation where he would have to rely on Porel, which amongst other factors like a producer deciding he would direct it instead of having Deodato return, lead to a sequel never materializing. That said, I can't imagine the silliness present here to be indicative of the genre as a whole, can it? If so, I might have found my new hyperfixation.

The Packaging: Average / 3 star

In the film, Antonio's bedside table has three items: an alarm clock, an ashtray, and a full-size silver skull. This release is a little like that: minimalist, but a perfect indicator of what you’re getting into bed with. The cover is an illustration of Alfredo and Antonio posed as they do on their shared motorcycle, both pointing guns, with a smaller illustration of the pair of fleeing purse-snatchers on their own motorcycle. It also advertises that this is the 4K restoration, and that it's from Ruggero Deodato above the original Italian translation of the title: Uomini Si Nasce, Poliziotti Si Muore (which more literally translates to Men Are Born, Cops Die). There's nothing especially noteworthy about the packaging here, but that's perfectly fine.

The Video: Good / 4.5 star

From what little I knew about this film, I was expecting it to be much rougher-looking than it is. I knew that most of the Poliziotteschi films were shot sort of on-the-fly, and I knew Ruggero Deodato's background of having perfected his craft under Roberto Rossellini. I figured that the resulting film would have a real run-and-gun quality to it that might very well extend to the visual fidelity. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be a fair assessment.

To start with, there is some film grain present here, but not nearly as much as I'd have expected. The colors are well-balanced enough, if maybe a touch washed out, except for the fire, which really calls into contrast how cool-toned the rest of the visuals are. Turquoise, blues, blacks and tans monopolize the film's palette, but even the Coke machine visible in a late scene isn't as candy-red as I know it should be. None of this detracts from the film's overall quality, to be clear, instead working in a way similar to sepia tone, to cast Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man as something from a bygone era.

The Audio: Good / 4.5 star

Famously, Italian productions from this era didn't really record live sound often, which lead to the whole 'Spaghetti Western' phenomenon, at least as far as it allowed for the casting of recognizable actors from multiple markets and countries, regardless of how well they all spoke any given language, since they'd all have to be dubbed anyway. As a result, LLACDLAM has that ADR sound to it overall; the quality of having been recorded in a studio divorced from the various locations and moments. Like certain aspects of the visuals mentioned above, this doesn't detract from the experience for me.

Quality wise, my soundbar is of the three-channel variety and this stereo mix sounded perfectly fine. If your ideal audio experience involves multidirectional sonic immersion, this probably won't cut the mustard for you, but you will be able to hear and appreciate everything easily.

One fun thing is comparing the Italian and English dubs: They're not drastically different viewing experiences, plot and tone-wise, but the language is sometimes very different in really interesting and amusing ways. For instance, when the Crime Bois show up for their usual playful harassment of Norma, in the Italian language version she greets them by calling them "Hotshots!" while in the English dub she says "My dear cocksmen!" Wild stuff. Gotta love it.

The Special Features: Good / 4 star

I would like there to have been more about the writer, and perhaps godfather of Poliziotteschi (is that fair to say?) Fernando Di Leo since the trailers are for some of his other works. There's a nice chunk of the commentary about him, but I'd like to have come away from this with a more concise idea of where this sits in both his oeuvre and Poliziotteschi as a genre and maybe a fuller watchlist? But that's just spitting into the wind.

As for what's here, the commentary by Rachael Nisbet was very informative and helpful. For instance, I was initially a bit put off by the sexism with regards to how the Crime Bois treat Norma, but Nisbet seems to feel that the movie is laughing WITH Norma and not AT her, which eases my conscience a bit. I also really dug the included documentary, which gives great insight to the production of the film. Deodato's included commercial spots are interesting as well, but could ideally have been placed in a wider context.

• Audio commentary with film historian Rachael Nisbet
• Archival documentary Violent Police
• TV spots directed by and with commentary from Ruggero Deodato
• Trailers
• Milieu Trilogy rerelease trailer
• Caliber 9 (1972)
• The Italian Connection (1972)

In Summary: Grab it on sale / 4 star

Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man is a giddy sugar-high of a crime film. The pacing, characters, and filmmaking all present the indelible energy of youth and an equally immature outlook: these Crime Bois are impervious to harm either physical or emotional, and beyond consequence for their actions. They kill with a casualness that would be chilling if this felt like a real world. Luckily, for us as much as for them, it does not.

I won't spoil the finale for you, but trust me when I say LLACDLAM ends with a gloriously violent shrug from our leads that left my jaw on the floor. If you compare Alfredo and Antonio to other so-called "loose-cannons" from similar cops and criminals films, the Crime Bois come out, as they always do, on top. A trail of bodies and numerous exploded vehicles in their wake, without a scratch on them. Fans of action and genre cinema will want to make space for this release on their bedside table. Right between the ashtray and the life-size silver skull.