The newest addition to the stable of horror and sci-fi on Ultra HD is Dario Argento’s debut feature, the game-changer that launched the full-blown giallo thriller. Argento takes a few twists from the Hitchcock playbook but otherwise shapes his whodunnit with a new, slick style of his own. Cinematography by Vittorio Storaro and design by Dario Micheli emphasize visual texture and tactility — we contemplate soft skin, slippery plastic and sharp straight razors. The horrors embrace architecture and high fashion, exchanging visual fetishes for psychological depth. And don’t forget a typically eccentric Ennio Morricone music score. As always, Arrow includes a full menu of extra delights.
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Ultra HD + Blu-ray
Arrow Academy
1970 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date July 27, 2021 / L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo / Limited Edition
Starring: Starring: Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi, Umberto Raho, Raf Valenti, Giuseppe Castellano,...
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Ultra HD + Blu-ray
Arrow Academy
1970 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date July 27, 2021 / L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo / Limited Edition
Starring: Starring: Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi, Umberto Raho, Raf Valenti, Giuseppe Castellano,...
- 7/24/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Severin continues to impress with their incredible box set releases and their latest announcement was an instant pre-order for me: a collection of five remastered Christopher Lee movies and a rarely seen, Christopher Lee-hosted, anthology horror TV series:
(Los Angeles, CA) On May 25th, Severin Films is releasing a box set of buried gems from one of cinema’s most seminal figures - Sir Christopher Lee. He remains one of the most beloved horror/fantasy icons in US/UK pop culture history, but Christopher Lee delivered several of the most compelling, acclaimed and bizarre performances of his entire career in 1960s Europe. The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee brings together five of these Lee classics - the 1964 gothic shocker Crypt Of The Vampire; the 1964 cult hit Castle Of The Living Dead co-starring an unknown Donald Sutherland; 1962's celebrated Sherlock Holmes And The Deadly Necklace; 1967's lurid favorite The Torture Chamber Of Dr.
(Los Angeles, CA) On May 25th, Severin Films is releasing a box set of buried gems from one of cinema’s most seminal figures - Sir Christopher Lee. He remains one of the most beloved horror/fantasy icons in US/UK pop culture history, but Christopher Lee delivered several of the most compelling, acclaimed and bizarre performances of his entire career in 1960s Europe. The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee brings together five of these Lee classics - the 1964 gothic shocker Crypt Of The Vampire; the 1964 cult hit Castle Of The Living Dead co-starring an unknown Donald Sutherland; 1962's celebrated Sherlock Holmes And The Deadly Necklace; 1967's lurid favorite The Torture Chamber Of Dr.
- 2/12/2021
- by Jonathan James
- DailyDead
Fritz Lang’s final feature brings his career full circle to the core thriller concepts he pioneered back in 1922: superstitious human nature and sinister technological advances combine to make the 20th century an Age of Terror. Lang reboots his highly cinematic Weimar-era narrative tricks for a film that heralds the beginning of a brave new world where total surveillance and mind control are at the service of paranoid conspiracies. I could talk for hours about the directing/editing in this show — it’s so sophisticated, and yet so simple.
The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
Region B Blu-ray
Eureka Entertainment/Masters of Cinema
1960 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 103 min. / Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse / Street Date May 11, 2020 / £ 15.99
Starring: Dawn Addams, Peter van Eyck, Gert Fröbe, Wolfgang Preiss, Lupo Prezzo, Werner Peters, Andrea Checchi, Marielouise Nagel, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Howard Vernon, Nico Pepe, Jean-Jacques Delbo, Christiane Maybach.
Cinematography: Karl Löb
Film Editors: Walter Wischniewsky,...
The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
Region B Blu-ray
Eureka Entertainment/Masters of Cinema
1960 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 103 min. / Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse / Street Date May 11, 2020 / £ 15.99
Starring: Dawn Addams, Peter van Eyck, Gert Fröbe, Wolfgang Preiss, Lupo Prezzo, Werner Peters, Andrea Checchi, Marielouise Nagel, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Howard Vernon, Nico Pepe, Jean-Jacques Delbo, Christiane Maybach.
Cinematography: Karl Löb
Film Editors: Walter Wischniewsky,...
- 6/3/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Fritz Lang’s final feature is a mind-blowing culmination of the core thriller concepts he pioneered back in 1922: superstitious human nature and sinister technological advances combine to make the 20th century an Age of Terror. Lang reboots his highly cinematic Weimar-era narrative tricks for a film that heralds the beginning of a brave new world where total surveillance and mind control are at the service of paranoid conspiracies. I could talk for hours about the directing/editing in this show — it’s so sophisticated, and yet so simple.
The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
Region B Blu-ray
Eureka Entertainment/Masters of Cinema
1960 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 103 min. / Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse / Street Date May 11, 2020 / £ 15.99
Starring: Dawn Addams, Peter van Eyck, Gert Fröbe, Wolfgang Preiss, Lupo Prezzo, Werner Peters, Andrea Checchi, Marielouise Nagel, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Howard Vernon, Nico Pepe, Jean-Jacques Delbo, Christiane Maybach.
Cinematography: Karl Löb
Film Editors: Walter Wischniewsky,...
The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
Region B Blu-ray
Eureka Entertainment/Masters of Cinema
1960 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 103 min. / Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse / Street Date May 11, 2020 / £ 15.99
Starring: Dawn Addams, Peter van Eyck, Gert Fröbe, Wolfgang Preiss, Lupo Prezzo, Werner Peters, Andrea Checchi, Marielouise Nagel, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Howard Vernon, Nico Pepe, Jean-Jacques Delbo, Christiane Maybach.
Cinematography: Karl Löb
Film Editors: Walter Wischniewsky,...
- 6/2/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Director Agnieszka Holland pulls off a difficult task — her true-life Holocaust tale neither trivializes the horror nor glamorizes individualized victims at the expense of the big picture. Marco Hofschneider is the inexperienced German teenager who by strange quirks of fate becomes a staunch Stalinist in a Communist school, then a Nazi war hero and candidate for Hitler Youth honors and adoption by a Nazi officer… if he can avoid being uncovered as a Jew in hiding. It sounds tasteless but it’s not — the true story of Solomon Perel reveals the ‘fluidity’ of ideology when survival is on the line. Our young hero must keep ‘becoming’ what he pretends to be. With André Wilms, René Hofschneider and Julie Delpy as a rabid Hitlerite.
Europa Europa
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 985
1990 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 112 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 9, 2019 / 39.95
Starring: Marco Hofschneider, André Wilms, René Hofschneider, Julie Delpy,...
Europa Europa
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 985
1990 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 112 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 9, 2019 / 39.95
Starring: Marco Hofschneider, André Wilms, René Hofschneider, Julie Delpy,...
- 4/25/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
At the end of his career, Fritz Lang returned to Germany and a producer who gave him a big budget to remake a silent classic in color, with an international cast and locations in remote India, including a palace never seen in a movie before. The two-movie, 200-minute epic was chopped in half for America and dubbed in English. Seen in its full Eastmancolor glory, The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb form an old-fashioned storybook tale, with its special charm lying in our knowledge of Fritz Lang’s fixation on fatalism and intricate patterns of betrayal and intrigue. Plus the films contain the erotic highlight of the decade, the spectacle of star Debra Paget’s scorching ‘temple dances’ before an all-male audience of admirers.
Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic
The Tiger of Eschnapur
and The Indian Tomb
Blu-ray
Film Movement Classics
1959 / Color / 1:33 flat full frame / 203 min. / Street...
Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic
The Tiger of Eschnapur
and The Indian Tomb
Blu-ray
Film Movement Classics
1959 / Color / 1:33 flat full frame / 203 min. / Street...
- 12/3/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Often relegated to a cursory mention as one of the great filmmaker’s late-career trifles, Fritz Lang’s “Indian Epic”—comprising The Tiger of Eschnapur (Der Tiger von Eschnapur) and The Indian Tomb (Das Indische Grabmal), both from 1959—is more like a charming throwback to his earliest work than it is an indication of any waning productivity. Its supporting roots stretch from the early 1920s, when Lang and his soon-to-be-wife Thea von Harbou began drafting an adaptation of her 1918 novel, “The Indian Tomb.” Owing in part to Lang’s relative inexperience, though, the project was turned over to Joe May, who directed the subsequent two-part feature in 1921, which would itself be remade by Richard Eichberg in 1938. Lang bristled at the creative theft (as he saw it anyway) and went packing to Ufa, promptly flourishing as one of the preeminent filmmakers in the world. Later, after more than two decades in Hollywood,...
- 9/26/2019
- MUBI
Artur Brauner, the Polish-born Holocaust survivor who became one of Germany's most successful and acclaimed movie moguls, has died. He was 100.
Brauner was a producer who made box office hits — the Winnetou Western franchise and soft-core comedies with titles such as Vampire Lesbians and Sex Olympics — to finance serious movies about the Nazi dictatorship and the Shoah, including The White Rose (1982), Babij Jar (2003) and Europa Europa (1990), which won a Golden Globe and was an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film.
Brauner died early Sunday morning in Berlin following a short illness, his family confirmed to German ...
Brauner was a producer who made box office hits — the Winnetou Western franchise and soft-core comedies with titles such as Vampire Lesbians and Sex Olympics — to finance serious movies about the Nazi dictatorship and the Shoah, including The White Rose (1982), Babij Jar (2003) and Europa Europa (1990), which won a Golden Globe and was an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film.
Brauner died early Sunday morning in Berlin following a short illness, his family confirmed to German ...
Artur Brauner, the Polish-born Holocaust survivor who became one of Germany's most successful and acclaimed movie moguls, has died. He was 100.
Brauner was a producer who made box office hits — the Winnetou Western franchise and soft-core comedies with titles such as Vampire Lesbians and Sex Olympics — to finance serious movies about the Nazi dictatorship and the Shoah, including The White Rose (1982), Babij Jar (2003) and Europa Europa (1990), which won a Golden Globe and was an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film.
Brauner died early Sunday morning in Berlin following a short illness, his family confirmed to German ...
Brauner was a producer who made box office hits — the Winnetou Western franchise and soft-core comedies with titles such as Vampire Lesbians and Sex Olympics — to finance serious movies about the Nazi dictatorship and the Shoah, including The White Rose (1982), Babij Jar (2003) and Europa Europa (1990), which won a Golden Globe and was an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film.
Brauner died early Sunday morning in Berlin following a short illness, his family confirmed to German ...
Another animal-themed giallo in the wake of Dario Argento’s now-seminal The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) is Riccardo Freta’s The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (which doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the titular reptile). Released under the pseudonym Willy Pareto due to the director (and German co-producer Artur Brauner’s) overall unhappiness with the finished product, the end result is a camp classic peppered by rather aggressive, grisly bits of violence. Curiously, the title is set in Dublin, and its cast of Italians are dubbed with incredibly dubious voiceovers which fade in and out of laughable Irish lilts.…...
- 4/16/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
This time they may have gotten it right! If a knife or a straight razor won’t do, how about killing a victim with 500-pound metal artwork studded with spikes? Dario Argento distilled a new kind of slick, visually fetishistic horror who-dunnit thriller subgenre with this shocker, aided by the dreamy cinematography of Vittorio Storaro.
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Blu-ray + DVD
Arrow Video USA
1971 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date June 20, 2017 / L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo / Available from Arrow Video/ 49.95
/ 49.95
Starring: Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi, Umberto Raho, Raf Valenti, Giuseppe Castellano, Mario Adorf, Pino Patti, Gildo Di Marco, Rosita Torosh, Omar Bonaro, Fulvio Mingozzi, Werner Peters, Karen Valenti, Carla Mancini, Reggie Nalder.
Cinematography: Vittorio Storaro
Film Editor: Franco Fraticelli
Original Music: Ennio Morricone
Written by Dario Argento from a novel by Fredric Brown
Produced by Salvatore Argento, Artur Brauner
Directed by Dario Argento...
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Blu-ray + DVD
Arrow Video USA
1971 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date June 20, 2017 / L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo / Available from Arrow Video/ 49.95
/ 49.95
Starring: Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi, Umberto Raho, Raf Valenti, Giuseppe Castellano, Mario Adorf, Pino Patti, Gildo Di Marco, Rosita Torosh, Omar Bonaro, Fulvio Mingozzi, Werner Peters, Karen Valenti, Carla Mancini, Reggie Nalder.
Cinematography: Vittorio Storaro
Film Editor: Franco Fraticelli
Original Music: Ennio Morricone
Written by Dario Argento from a novel by Fredric Brown
Produced by Salvatore Argento, Artur Brauner
Directed by Dario Argento...
- 6/19/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Seth Holt is an odd figure. An editor at first, his career spans classic Ealing comedies (The Lavender Hill Mob, 1951) and gritty kitchen sink drama (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1960), while his overlapping career as producer saw him preside over the classic The Ladykillers (1955). On becoming a director, he worked mainly at Hammer, which made radically different content from Ealing but perhaps shared the same cozy atmosphere.Taste of Fear (a.k.a. Scream of Fear, 1961) is a zestful Diabolique knock-off, while The Nanny (1965) continued Bette Davis' career in horror. It's incredibly strong, beautifully made and quite ruthless: Bette referred to Holt as "a mountain of evil" and found him the most demanding director she'd encountered since William Wyler. During the daft but enjoyably peculiar Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971), Holt developed a persistent case of hiccups that turned the screening of rushes into hilarious occasions. Then he dropped dead of a heart attack,...
- 3/16/2017
- MUBI
Two days cut from festival, competition titles reduced and line-up almost halved in the face of tough economic circumstances.
Russia’s crumbling economy has forced the organisers of this year’s Moscow International Film Festival (Miff) to make swingeing cuts to the number of films shown and the festival’s duration.
Speaking to Russian daily newspaper Izvestiya, Miff programme director Kirill Razlogov revealed that the 37th edition will run from June 19-26, two days shorter than in 2014.
While Miff will retain its three competition sections for feature films, shorts and documentaries, the number of titles in the main international competition is likely to be reduced from 16 to 12, although the Free Spirit documentary competition will still have seven films in its line-up.
Razlogov suggested that the number of films invited to screen in Miff’s programme outside of the three competitive sections will be slashed by almost half - from 2014’s 250 to 150 at best.
Although the global...
Russia’s crumbling economy has forced the organisers of this year’s Moscow International Film Festival (Miff) to make swingeing cuts to the number of films shown and the festival’s duration.
Speaking to Russian daily newspaper Izvestiya, Miff programme director Kirill Razlogov revealed that the 37th edition will run from June 19-26, two days shorter than in 2014.
While Miff will retain its three competition sections for feature films, shorts and documentaries, the number of titles in the main international competition is likely to be reduced from 16 to 12, although the Free Spirit documentary competition will still have seven films in its line-up.
Razlogov suggested that the number of films invited to screen in Miff’s programme outside of the three competitive sections will be slashed by almost half - from 2014’s 250 to 150 at best.
Although the global...
- 3/23/2015
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
Death Occurred Last Night
Written by Artur Brauner, Biagio Proietti, Giorgio Scerbaneco, Duccio Tessari
Directed by Duccio Tessari
Italy, 1970
As a feature relatively hidden from mainstream film culture, Death Occurred Last Night’s only critical talk belongs to the hardcore giallo enthusiasts. Debate over whether the film fits into the strict classifications of giallo or perhaps the less-enthused poliziotteschi take prominence in these discussions, with something of a consensus drawn as “probably neither.” These insights from impassioned people looking through the lens of subgenre offer an interesting dissection that would escape those new to the club. That is, by evaluating the film purely in the context of it entering the genre canon, one must take its failures in the context of being campy, and therefore enjoyable in its own right. However, if outside the giallo realm, these camp elements are harder to defend and leave the film in a much messier position,...
Written by Artur Brauner, Biagio Proietti, Giorgio Scerbaneco, Duccio Tessari
Directed by Duccio Tessari
Italy, 1970
As a feature relatively hidden from mainstream film culture, Death Occurred Last Night’s only critical talk belongs to the hardcore giallo enthusiasts. Debate over whether the film fits into the strict classifications of giallo or perhaps the less-enthused poliziotteschi take prominence in these discussions, with something of a consensus drawn as “probably neither.” These insights from impassioned people looking through the lens of subgenre offer an interesting dissection that would escape those new to the club. That is, by evaluating the film purely in the context of it entering the genre canon, one must take its failures in the context of being campy, and therefore enjoyable in its own right. However, if outside the giallo realm, these camp elements are harder to defend and leave the film in a much messier position,...
- 5/7/2014
- by Zach Lewis
- SoundOnSight
Raro Video continues remastering rare and obscure Italian titles with the long unavailable 1970 curio from Duccio Tessari, Death Occurred Last Night. A rare hybrid of police thriller and giallo, this fascinating title is a definite highlight in the little known Tessari’s varied filmography. Most noted for his work in spaghetti westerns, those unfamiliar with his work will surely be interested in seeking out other available titles. As seedy and ridiculous as it is intriguing and unfailingly amusing, its attention to character and narrative development sets it apart from similar titles of the time period, preceding comparable American fare such as Paul Schrader’s 1979 Hardcore.
A self-controlled yet increasingly desperate father (Raf Vallone) informs Detective Duca Lamberti (Frank Wolff) at the police station in Milan that his girl is missing. As he answers a round of questions, we discover his girl is actually a mentally handicapped twenty five year old...
A self-controlled yet increasingly desperate father (Raf Vallone) informs Detective Duca Lamberti (Frank Wolff) at the police station in Milan that his girl is missing. As he answers a round of questions, we discover his girl is actually a mentally handicapped twenty five year old...
- 5/6/2014
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
At this year's 17th Annual Stony Brook Film Festival, Peter Miller and William Hechter's documentary about blues singer and songwriter Doc Pomus, "A.K.A. Doc Pomus," took home the Festival's highest honor. The festival ran from July 19th-28th and featured 33 full length and short films from around the world. Full list of Stony Brook Film Festival winners: Grand Prize Winner: "A.K.A Doc Pomus"- Directed by Peter Miller and William Hechter Audience Choice Award: "Wunderkinder"- Directed by Marcus O. Rosenmüller. Written by Stephen Glantz and Rolf Schübel from a story by Art Bernd Jury Award Best Feature: "Shuffle"- Written and directed by Kurt Kuenne "Taped"- Written by Marnie Blok and Diederik Van Rooijen Audience Choice Best Short: "Bordando La Frontera"- A Film by by René Rhi Jury Award Best Short: ...
- 8/17/2012
- by Dema Paxton Fofang
- Indiewire
"Often he [Fritz Lang] would sit there in the country's penetrating sunlight under the merciful protection, so to speak, of his physical handicap. He allowed the films that, to his regret, he had been unable to make, pass across his inner eye. He had lost a lot of time through emigrating from Germany to France and later to the USA and then in attempting to return to Germany. And now: waiting for death. Without any commissions. These significant periods of time he would have liked to fill with films he'd already planned. He could describe them scene by scene. For a short moment, still in Europe, Godard had listened to these descriptions. For an afternoon, Godard was determined to film one of these outlines. That never came to anything, however, because he was busy with his own projects." —Alexander Kluge, "The Blind Director"
During the late 1950s, Alexander Kluge served as an...
During the late 1950s, Alexander Kluge served as an...
- 7/25/2011
- MUBI
Surreal and repressive, Mädchen in Uniform (1958) is the Technicolor remake of the dramatic — and downright shocking — 1931 German lesbian film of the same name. The story of a young woman who falls deeply in love with her teacher, it’s at once quaint and stirring.
Manuela (Romy Schneider) is the girl in question. It’s 1910, Prussia, and she’s just lost her mother. Her strict aunt brings her to a boarding school/convent to “learn discipline,” and the free-spirited youth immediately finds it a cold, unfriendly place. Run by the tyrannical Senior Superior, it's billed as the place where girls are turned into women who will be “fit to be soldiers’ mothers” – tough and ready for anything.
Discipline and suffering are the rules of the day. The kids are yelled at for the tiniest offense, physically disciplined, and given little love or affection by their cold fraeuleins (teachers). It's a direct commentary on the country's hard,...
Manuela (Romy Schneider) is the girl in question. It’s 1910, Prussia, and she’s just lost her mother. Her strict aunt brings her to a boarding school/convent to “learn discipline,” and the free-spirited youth immediately finds it a cold, unfriendly place. Run by the tyrannical Senior Superior, it's billed as the place where girls are turned into women who will be “fit to be soldiers’ mothers” – tough and ready for anything.
Discipline and suffering are the rules of the day. The kids are yelled at for the tiniest offense, physically disciplined, and given little love or affection by their cold fraeuleins (teachers). It's a direct commentary on the country's hard,...
- 9/14/2010
- by Danielle Riendeau
- AfterEllen.com
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