Category: Reviews

Joan Crawford Collection (Grand Hotel, The Damned Don’t Cry, Possessed, The Women) Blu-ray Review

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DVD collecting is a fun, but frustrating hobby. Frustrating because movies come in so many different cases. There are DVDs, Blu-rays, and 4K UHD formats. There are boxed sets, special editions, steelbooks, anniversary sets, and more. It is hard to keep up. I write a weekly column about new releases, and I can’t keep up with everything. 

I want to own a physical copy of my favorite films. That’s the first consideration. But then I want the best quality copy, so maybe I need to upgrade to Blu-ray or 4K. But as a collector, I also like fancy sets with gifts like posters, lobby cards, and boxes that I can show off.  Then I have to consider the special features like commentaries, interviews, etc. It can get overwhelming and expensive trying to get the best stuff. 

There is also shelf space to consider. I have half a dozen bookcases filled to the brim with DVDs and an increasingly large stack of unsorted things I don’t have the space for. I’ve come to love little boxed sets of several movies. You have to be careful with them because sometimes the quality is poor and all too often the cases are cheap, but a good set gives you lots of movies with good quality, lots of extras but keeps the space down to a minimum.

I really enjoyed this set of Joan Crawford movies, as you can see from my review over at Cinema Sentries.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 7-Film Collection 4K UHD Review

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The Nightmare on Elm Street series is one of the best horror series ever made. That’s faint praise considering most horror franchises eventually turn to crap. Certainly the Nightmare series has a few duds, but even the bad ones have moments that are worth watching. If nothing else, the kills are usually interesting. The original is one of the best horror movies of the 1980s. Last year they released it with a wonderful 4K UHD transfer, and now the original seven films are getting the works. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

The Hard Way (1943) Blu-ray Review

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You should never say no to Ida Lupino. I first discovered her playing a blind woman in On Dangerous Ground. It was a small role, but memorable. Soon after I learned what an incredible woman she was. She entered Hollywood at an early age, but was constantly getting in trouble for refusing roles she felt was beneath her.

As her star rose she formed her own production company and started directing her own films. She was only the second woman entered into the Director’s Guild of Hollywood. Like I say, I always watch her in anything I can get my hands on.

She stars with Joan Leslie in The Hard Way, a film that reminded me a lot of All About Eve. She plays a woman who pushes her sister into the life of an actress. Initially this is to get her out of the poor town poverty they grew up in, but that morphs into untethered ambition that destroys everything in its path.

I didn’t love the film, but I do think it is worth watching. You can read my full review here.

Last Known Address (1970) Blu-ray Review

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I love a good shoe leather movie. That’s a film that gets into the nuts and bolts of a job. Whether it is police work, newspaper reporting or any other thing, it is fascinating to watch people really do their jobs. Last Known Address has a lot of shoe leather. We watch our two cops knock on doors, meticulously dig through paperwork and do the type of policing most movies skip over.

There is a balance to that, you have to make the shoe leather interesting or audience will get bored and skip to something else. This movie keeps it interesting. I loved it.

You can read my full review here.

The Strange Woman (1946) Blu-ray Review

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Hedy Lamarr was a remarkable woman. Not only was she a great actress, but she was an inventor too. She helped design a torpedo navigation system that became the basis for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies.

Here she plays a woman who is considered strange, and perhaps evil because she has the audacity to act like a man. Not in any physical, sexual, or gendered way, but rather she recognizes that to get what she wants, she has to do what the men do around her – she has to take it.

It is a strange movie, and not a particularly great one, but it has a great performance from Lamarr. You can read my full review of the new Blu-ray over at Cinema Sentries.

The Rapacious Jailbreaker (1974) Blu-ray Review

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This Japanese drama is loosely based on a real guy who kept breaking out of jail only to be sent back shortly after (then he’d break out again.) In the film this becomes his entire identity. He cannot live in the hell that is prison, yet when he escapes he doesn’t know what to do with himself so he always gets caught and finds himself back in prison.

It is more of a character study than any type of thriller, but it is a good one. You can read my full review here.

31 Days of Horror: The Mummy (1959)

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I’ve talked about Hammer Horror numerous times in these pages. Their most famous, and arguably their best, films were when they essentially remade the classic Universal Monster Movies (Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy). Hammer updated the filmmaking to 1950-1970s standards, giving them lots more violence and sex appeal, while still keeping the stories interesting and familiar. They made a lot of sequels to the three main monsters, and I’ve seen most of them, but never in order. A few weeks ago I thought it would be fun to actually watch them in order. Unfortunately, I watched the first two (Dracula, The Revenge of Frankenstein) before I decided to start writing again, and it has been too long for me to reasonably be able to talk about them now. So we’ll just begin here.

The Mummy (1932) is my least favorite of the classic Universal Monster Movies (at least of the originals; some of the later sequels are pretty bad.) And so it is with Hammer’s attempt at making a Mummy movie (the only truly good Mummy film is that one with Brendan Fraser from the 1990s).

This one has its moments, but it gets bogged down in a rather dull backstory that completely destroys any momentum the film had going for it. The plot steals most of its details from several of the sequels to the Universal Mummy movie. A couple of archaeologists are searching for the tomb of Egyptian Ananka in 1885. The father finds it and accidentally awakens Kharis (Christopher Lee) the mummified guardian of Ananka. This sends the father into a catatonic state.

He awakens three years later and tells his tale to his son, John Banning (Peter Cushing.) The Mummy will now attack all those who desecrated Ananka’s tomb. But first, an overly long backstory. The film flashes back to tell us about Kharis and his secret relationship with Ananka. Honestly, it isn’t interesting enough to delve into, but the film seems to love it.

Actually, I feel like the costume and set designers worked really hard on this section (and probably spent a lot of money on it), so the filmmakers felt they needed to make all that time and money fill the screen for a while. There is literally a parade where extras in extravagant costumes, carrying ornate props, walk across the screen for several minutes. It completely kills the momentum of the film.

Eventually, we get back to the film proper and get some good Mummy action, and it is there that the film excels. Christopher Lee’s mummy costume looks great. He mostly just moans and walks awkwardly across the screen, so I can’t say much about his acting (he is unmummified in the flashbacks, which might be why that scene is so long – Lee wanted more time on screen unwrapped). Whenever the Mummy gets shot, holes blow right through him. The effect is pretty chilling (though sadly there is no scene like you see on the poster where a light shines straight through.

Peter Cushing is great as always and the scenes where he’s battling it out with the Mummy are the best parts of the movie. The rest of it is rather dull, I’m afraid.

Still, it is definitely worth watching if you are interested in Hammer Horror. But I’d recommend the Dracula films first.

Crime Scene Cleaner

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My wife and I have recently been enjoying a British series called Crime Scene Cleaner. It stars and is written by Greg Davies (who we also enjoy in Taskmaster). It is based on this German show of the same name. Honestly, I barely remember the German show other than I liked it a lot, but reading my review, I see that the first season of the British show took a lot of the plot points directly from the original.

I definitely recommend both shows if you can find them.