Three Silent Classics by Josef Von Sternberg (Criterion)

Josef von Sternberg is the great stylist of the thirties, a Hollywood maverick with a taste for visual exoticism and baroque flourishes (which prompted David Thomson to dub him “the first poet of underground cinema”). That’s the cliché, anyway, based largely on his collaborations with Marlene Dietrich, a tremendous body of work that charts the evolution of the director into increasing narrative abstraction and emotional dislocation. But step back into his silent work and you’ll find a storyteller of unparalleled talent and one of the great directors of silent cinema. The three films in Criterion’s magnificent box set Three Silent Classics by Josef Von Sternberg may be all the evidence we have to this era (most of his silent films are lost and his directorial debut, the 1925 The Salvation Hunters, is unavailable on home video, though clips are included in the set supplements) but they are more than enough to show his mastery of the medium and the rapid evolution of his style, both a visual sculptor and as a cinematic storyteller. The “von” of his name (an affectation that didn’t originate with him but one he embraced who-heartedly) suggests an a European émigré and technically that’s accurate—he was born in Vienna and came the United State an early age—but Sternberg is an American, with European tastes perhaps but an American storytelling sensibility.

These films also showcase his often overlooked genius as a director of actors. While Sternberg fills the frame with light and shadow and layers of texture, he strips the performances down to the elemental base, their entire approach to life in their faces, their walk, the way they lean in for a comment or drop their eyes when they catch another’s gaze. In such carefully orchestrated performances, the smallest gestures, a lift of an eyebrow, a shift in body language communicates everything.

Underworld (1927), his third feature, has been called both the original gangster film and the proto-gangster film. And while it doesn’t look or play much like the films that blasted through the throes of the early sound era—Bull Weed (George Bancroft), the (anti-)hero of this piece, is no gangleader but a solo artist pulling heists with nothing but brazen confidence—this atmospheric classic certainly created some of the conventions and even images that were taken up in the sound era. Bull Weed staring up at the neon sign “The City Is Yours” and the gangland ball in the middle of the film, with thugs in tuxedos and streamers coating the floor, are echoed in Howard Hawks’ Scarface (1932), which was also scripted by Ben Hecht (Sternberg rewrote Hecht’s story to the point that Hecht disavowed the script… until it won an Oscar). That’s where it really anticipates the classic gangster story: the underworld network of criminals, the attitude, and especially the cast of street thugs in society dress, appropriating the dress of the upper class while twisting the manners and mores into a warped reflection of high society.

But Underworld is no rise and fall tale of a street hood with Tommy gun and a Shakespearean story arc but a nocturnal fantasy of the urban criminal underworld, in part informed by Hecht’s references to real Chicago crime history (the murder of a rival gangster in a flower shop is right out of Capone’s rise) but transformed into a tale of loyalty and love in a violent world. Bancroft plays Bull as a self-made criminal legend and his street thug manners are on display throughout, crude and rough (you can practically hear the guffaws as he opens his mouth to laugh like a braying donkey) but also staunchly protective of his friends and a man with the courage of his convictions. The film opens in the middle of heist, which Sternberg presents in a montage so precise and informative and efficient that it communicates everything we need to know about the crime and Bull’s talents as a robber. His character is outlined in the next few scenes when he grabs a street drunk who witnesses his escape and takes him up to his hide-out. Clive Brook (later to reappear in Sternberg’s Shanghai Express) is all soused elegance and rumpled dignity as Rolls Royce Wensel, who may be a bum but is no squealer. It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship—Bull’s confidence in this drop-out inspires him to clean up and dry out and Wensel returns the favor by with his unflagging loyalty, to the point that he denies his attraction to Bull’s girl, the elegant jazz baby Feathers (Evelyn Brent).

Aside from the quintessentially Sternbergian textures of the party scene—the streamers littering the tables and floors and filling the screen like nets—it’s a film that strips detail from the imagery in most scenes. The opening nighttime robbery is on a street swept clear of crowds, cars and debris, with two figures are alone in a deserted set that carries the silence of the night in its imagery. There’s not an extraneous object in Bull’s apartment or a prop that isn’t used in the basement bar, where the stray feather that floats down from the entrance, announcing the arrival of Feathers, commands all the attention on the screen. The performances are similarly stripped down to the essentials, even Bancroft, whose rowdy play in public is contrasted by his control in private. By contrast, Brook is reserved, a man who has seen most everything and gotten drunk to forget but can’t. Where Bancroft’s emotions pour out of his entire body, Brook holds himself in check at all times, his every move deliberate and measured. He bows ever so simply to offer his thanks and his respect and he just barely cracks a smile to signal his affirmation and appreciation. And then there is Evelyn Brent as Feathers, a woman whose outward being is as much a performance as any Dietrich character, but in her case it’s a carefully constructed show of nonchalant confidence and apathy. In this world, to let your emotions slip is to make yourself vulnerable and these are all survivors. So much is communicated in the gazes (both direct and averted) from one character or another but it’s the austerity of the performances and the mask-like faces that conceal emotions behind a stony resolve that gives them such power.

Evelyn Brent was a veteran of dozens of low-budget features but no star when she was cast. Sternberg brought out a strength and a poise (not to mention a bumped-around beauty that starts out hard and brassy and softens over the course of her story) that would make any modern audience think she’s a top-rank star of the era. On the strength of this and of The Last Command (1928), she should have been.

The Last Command was Sternberg’s promotion, in light of the unanticipated success of Underworld and his uncredited assignments “salvaging” such troubled productions as It (1927) and Children of Divorce (1927), on which he reportedly reshot a significant part of the picture, and editing down the work of another obsessive maverick, Erich von Stroheim’s The Wedding March (1928). It came with a bigger budget and a bona-fide international superstar, German actor Emil Jannings, cast as a frail, broken old émigré with a palsied nod reduced to extra work in Hollywood but once the proud and arrogant leader of the Czar’s armies. In the conventions of Hollywood melodrama, it wasn’t the loss to the Bolsheviks that broke Sergius Alexander. It was love, as the flashbacks reveal.

In classic Sternberg style, the entire film appears to be created in the studio, exteriors and interiors. Sergius at the studio gates shows only throngs of desperate men pushing against the bars of a gate, as much of an establishing shot as we’re going to get. Sternberg and his set designer, the great art director Hans Drier, present the dream factory of Hollywood as just another assembly line in sets that suggest realism in carefully controlled details. For the scenes in Russia, however, this backstage “realism” gives way to expressionist exaggeration and exotic flourish: a snow-covered town created at what must be half-scale, the better to make the lines of soldiers marching down streets and pouring out of arriving trains look like armies massing at the frontier.

Down this street (really no wider than an alley) arrives Grand Duke Sergius Alexander in a command car that looks like a millionaire’s limousine, Jannings is all aristocratic dignity and privilege, impeccably dressed and groomed, his appearance as carefully sculpted as his manner. He gives off an arrogance of power in his very carriage, a sharp contrast to the broken, humiliated old man in the framing sequence that he’s channeled from The Last Laugh. It’s a commanding and very effective theatricality that earned Jannings the first Academy Award for Best Actor and ostentatious a performance you’ll find in these silents, standing in contrast to the restraint, the masked glances and still stares of William Powell and especially Evelyn Brent, but it’s more than just old school skills versus modern film acting. Sternberg uses the contrast to differentiate the sides of the battle, emphasize the class difference and create a dynamic of old Europe and new. When we first see Powell, he’s the director in the framing sequence choosing his ideal face for the Russian General and finding it in Jannings’ Sergius Alexander, and he’s as dapper and crisply American as can be, with changes of expression writ small and body language intimate. Even Brent feels more American than European in her scenes in 1917 Russia, concealing all her feelings and emotions behind a hard mask.

Sternberg doesn’t deify or sentimentalize Czarist Russia (the Czar himself is presented as a capricious fool, oblivious to the demands and realities of war while he struts through meaningless inspections playing commander in chief) but the film has little respect for the “revolutionists,” who are portrayed either drunken mobs or scheming backroom plotters. Yet in Powell and Brent Sterberg finds dignity and drive, people motivated by a cause. And in Brent, Sternberg offers a sleek, modern actress, her tragedy radiating from within rather than worn like a costume, her emotional truth communicated in what she doesn’t show, in the way she doesn’t do follow expectations. When those glaring eyes that have witnessed so much suffering drop, it’s not just the softening of resolve in the face of unexpected affection for her enemy, it’s guilt in her betrayal of her mission. The jewels and furs and lavish wardrobe that adorn her in the company of Sergius are like the scarlet letter of her treason. Love doesn’t conquer all here, it conquers the lovers.

The Docks of New York (1928) is the simplest, most delicately visualized and most perfect film of the set, a turn-of-the-century bowery answer to Sunrise, with a romantic idealism fighting its way out of hard-scrabble lives and resigned characters of the waterfront culture. Where Sunrise is a European inflected American fairy tale, Docks is an American romance of bruised lives told with exquisite grace from a script as simple as a fable and as resonant as a novel.

The first image of Bill (George Bancroft), a brawny stoker shoveling coal in the bowels of a steam ship, is a veritable painting in action: the eternal laborer at work, outlined by the fires of the furnace like some abstract portrait of muscle and effort blackened with soot and sweat. The film follows his escape brief escape from this state, a night of shore leave where he plans to add to the gallery of beauties tattooed across his body and scribbled in chalk across the commons, and the hope he brings to rumpled beauty Mae (Betty Compson), who he saves from drowning (suicide attempt most likely, though never explicitly confirmed) and coaxes back to life by the sheer force of his will and his live-for-the-day philosophy, which is what allows him to marry her in the barroom where he shows her how he lives.

No one takes the marriage seriously, Bill least of all (he has no marriage license and his promise to get one “First thing in the morning” is accepted with the same conviction with which he gave it), but waterfront missionary Hymn Book Harry (Gustav von Seyffertitz) looks at the hurt and need in Mae’s eyes and brings a dignity and gravity to what was a parody of a sacred ceremony, hushing the rowdy bar and even bringing a shuffling discomfort to Bill as he repeats vows he never intended to keep. O’Brien moves like he owns the world, deliberate, strong and direct, worrying about no one but himself, but in this moment he is acutely aware of just how much his actions will reverberate in the life of this girl.

But Mae is no naïf. Both pessimistic and the biggest optimist in the film, her belief in this fantasy is willful and temporary, using this game to escape her sorrow at least for the moment. When Mae promise “I’ll be a good wife, Bill,” it’s not out of belief that this is a real marriage, but an offer made without any real expectations. The dissolve to morning, with Bill quietly getting dressed to sidle out before Mae wakes up, is perhaps the least hidden announcement of sex in silent movie history, and his final gesture—leaving a chunk of his pay on her table like a he’s paying off a hooker—should be the final blow of reality upon the fantasy marriage. But circumstances, including a beautifully staged murder seen (signaled by startled pigeons and two puffs of smoke that drift over the window), bring them back for the morning after talk Bill tried to avoid, a beautifully modulated scene with another lovely and evocative effect (a POV shot that clouds over as the viewer tears up), and that tender scene sets up the perfect end of the film.

This the film where Sternberg really perfected his sculpting of screen space in depth through light, shadow, scrims, smoke and fog, but it’s also his most evocative direction of actors. Bancroft is more measured and restrained than in Underworld but no less direct; his Bill is a man who acts upon his impulses with no reflection or restraint. He’ll grab a beer from a nearby patron because he’s thirsty, knock the guy flat when he makes a fuss, and then pick him up with brotherly concern and hand the beer back without blinking. Betty Compson makes Mae yet another of Sternberg’s magnificent women, a bruised romantic who has learned not to give in to her dreams, but continues to dream regardless, and under her rag doll looks is a young woman who has been kicked around, body and soul, so long that she hasn’t much hope left. It’s another performance in the eyes and body language, from the resigned posture recovering from her near-drowning to the bar girl affectation she puts on to distract Bill from yet another fight and play his date. Watching Compson’s Mae slip back and forth from the practiced poses of fawning bar girl and adoring date to little girl lost both afraid and eager to give in to Bill’s sweet talk and put her hope on line once more is what gives the film its heart. Watching them blur together gives it its soul.

The three-disc box set presents each disc in a separate paperboard digipak and each film is offered with two scores. Robert Israel contributes dramatic compilation scores for small combo and small orchestra, very satisfying and the closest to an “authentic” score that the set offers (the original scores no longer exist but Israel consulted cue sheets) for each film. The Alloy Orchestra offers original compositions for Underworld (both moodier and jauntier than Israel’s) and The Last Command, and Donald Sosin creates a lovely score for piano and voice (soprano Joanna Seaton) for The Docks of New York, including an original lyric that serves as Mae’s theme.

Visual essays, a relatively recent form of DVD supplement that combines lecture, documentary and commentary (the earliest I recall was Janet Bergstrom on Murnau’s lost film Four Devils, presented on the Sunrise DVD), have become some of the most interesting and richly informative contributions to DVDs. The two essays on this collection are of the same high caliber we’ve come to expect, and far more interesting and informative than the large majority of documentaries and featurettes that are regularly attached to such special editions. Janet Bergstrom’s 36-minute “Underworld: How It Came to Be” chronicles Sternberg’s early career and explores the way he shaped Underworld through production details (film clips, production stills and art) and film analysis. If Bergsrtom is the creator and grand dame of the visual essay, Tag Gallagher is the master poet of the form. His 35-minute “Von Sternberg till ‘29″ explores his visual style through all three films with perceptive observations and a critical analyses that are as poetic as they are probing. “Smoke photographs wonderfully and brings alive the dense space between the camera and the model,” he remarks in a sequence that conpares the meaning of cigarettes through each film. “Life itself seems passing. Similarly, light and shadow wakes up the meaningless blankness of walls and doors. So does mist.”

Also features an archival 40-minute interview with Josef von Sternberg conducted in 1968 for Swedish television, where the director is articulate and intent, very relaxed and seemingly forthcoming about his early career. Also includes a 96-page booklet with essays on each film, Ben Hecht’s original story for “Underworld” and an excerpt from Sternberg’s autobiography on working with Emil Jannings.

Originally published on seanax.com and Parallax View, republished by permission of the author.

Each film is available for rent under its title in the New Release section. We also have the collection for sale in the store and online. And to see more movies by Josef Von Sternberg, visit his shelf in our Director’s section.

Spencer & John then move on to Centurion’s writer/director Neil Marshall.  He’s also responsible for Dog Soliders (a great werewolf movie made when they were considered scary and not hot) and horrific cave claustrophobia of  The Descent (which Spencer would prefer be on our Best of the Decade list). Apparently in the future he’ll be working on a film with Sam Raimi called Burst 3-D, in which “something is causing people to explode.”  Count us in.

They end the episode with their powerhouse DVD picks of the week:

Look for Spencer & John filming up in our Action/Adventure/War enclave.

To make a long story short, in 1979, Monty Python was a few days away from starting to shoot Life Of Brian when the original producers (EMI) got scared of pissing off the religious establishment and pulled the plug on funding. Eric Idle was friends with George Harrison and asked him to help. Harrison said yes, and he & his business manager founded HandMade films, initially for that reason alone. But then, another charity case came along. John Mackenzie’s electrifying gangster saga The Long Good Friday had completed production when the backers of that film got cold feet for all kinds of reasons (violence, the IRA, Bob Hoskins’ awesome Cockney accent) and decided they didn’t want to release the film. Harrison and HandMade bought the rights and released the film to critical acclaim. It also put Hoskins on the map, and if you’ve ever seen the film you’ll understand why immediately.

The Long Good Friday, in my mind, exists in the same universe as Dreyer’s Passion Of Joan Of Arc. A stretch? Maybe, but honestly, the thing I remember about this movie more than anything else is Bob Hoskins’ face (Joan is composed in large part in close-ups of faces, primarily Renee Falconetti’s).  Just watch Bob’s for 114 minutes and you will experience giddiness and amazement at the myriad of expressions one face can make.

And that’s not to take one iota away from the intensely plotted and paced narrative. It’s just that you experience it all through the actions and reactions of Bob Hoskins, whose star rose greatly after his bravura performance. One would be greatly remiss to not mention the lovely Helen Mirren, who, as Hoskins’ wife, shines as the voice of reason and sensibility in an otherwise chaotic world.

For HandMade’s next venture, Harrison not only produced, but contributed songs to Terry Gilliam’s first original screenplay and third as a director: Time Bandits.  It was the first in a long line of Gilliam films that would explore the need to escape authoritarian society into a world of fantasy, which is never as pretty as one hopes. It also features terrific performances by Craig Warnock, David Rappaport, and Kenny Baker (whose birthday shared the Blu-ray release date!) as well as standout bit parts by Ralph Richardson, Sean Connery, John Cleese, and Ian Holm.

Five years later in 1986, HandMade again collaborated with Bob Hoskins and gave him a role that made the rest of the world take note of this fine British actor’s amazing energy and range. Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa gave Hoskins arguably his finest role as a tough-as-nails underworld chauffeur who, just out of prison, is handed the task of caring for an enigmatic call girl by former boss Michael Caine. Caine is absolutely chilling, Cathy Tyson’s great too, but Hoskins owns this film. Wire fans take note: Clarke Peters (The Wire’s Lester Freamon) plays a very nasty pimp here. Also, cinematographically, this is the star of the bunch. Roger Pratt, fresh off of shooting Gilliam’s Brazil (which wasn’t a HandMade film but probably should have been) films the seedy underworld and high-toned hotels of call girls and power-mongers with exquisite detail.

A year later, HandMade produced what for many is one of the most beloved films in contemporary British cinema: Withnail & I. Based on an unfinished autobiographical novel by writer/director Bruce Robinson, it chronicles the friendship and odyssey of two friends & out of work actors in the London of 1969 and their attempt to escape their shabby surroundings by venturing to an uncle’s house in the country. Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann are the respective title characters, and Grant’s portrayal of the insufferable, liquor-swilling, anxiety-ridden Withnail put him on the map with film audiences everywhere. With the help of friend Danny The Drug Dealer (memorably portrayed by Ralph Brown,) the two main characters spend much of the film drunk, stoned, and generally fumbling through life. While a good deal of the film’s appeal and renown seems to give great credence to that aspect, I find it a more melancholy venture of self-discovery.

HandMade is still around, albeit several iterations removed from George Harrison, and  through Image Entertainment they have released budget-priced Blu-rays of these four films. And while there’s very little in the way of extra features, they’ve never looked or sounded better. Plus, when was the last time you could buy a bitchin’ Blu-ray for the same price as its DVD counterpart? The aforementioned Roger Pratt’s work on Mona Lisa is something to behold in hi-def, as are the lush countrysides that Withnail and I escape to. The creepy synth score of Long Good Friday blasts your senses and appropriately frays your nerves in glorious 5.1 uncompressed audio, and Time Bandits is a treat all around, aurally and visually, just as a Terry Gilliam movie in hi-def should be.

When I first got my Blu-ray player last year, I found it real easy to rediscover things I hadn’t seen in over a decade. In essence, I felt that I was seeing each film again for the first time since my initial theatrical experience. This, I told myself, is the reason for Blu-ray’s existence. I hope that this quartet of HandMade releases on Blu-ray encourages you to do the same and rediscover these masterpieces one more time.

We have the new HandMade Films Blu-rays from Image Entertainment for rent in the store and on sale for $14.95 each. They are available in our store or online by clicking the images below.

Series’ themes are including but not limited to: Teachers who: are aliens, ex-Yakuza, look (/are) 11 years old, a man in drag, a spy, insane. Fellow classmates who: use hand puppets to talk, love ping pong, are a robot gangster, are Freddie Mercury, will fight you at any time, carry machine guns, are rich host club men, are dressed in drag, are psychic, fight aliens, search for time travelers.

Maybe actual school will be a lot easier once you sympathize with any of the characters in these anime series.

My personal Recommendations as a lover of fantastic anime:
G.T.O. Which stands for “Great Teacher Onizuka”! a 22 year old ex-Yakuza who wants so badly to right his wrongs by teaching students and being the BEST TEACHER EVVVEERRR!! This guy is so passionate wanting to teach, but ends up facing the worst unteachable class ever (think Dangerous Minds, anime style) and of course with his bad-ass Yakuza ways, he shapes the minds of these unteachable students and slowly but surely wins their trust. Fantastic. There is also a super popular Live-Action series based off this anime/manga.

Here is Greenwood Is one of my new favorites that is underrated and lesser known. A 6 episode OVA from 1991, I loved it immediately. It’s only a snapshot into the main character’s life where he leaves home due to being in love with his brother’s wife and ends up in the “weirdest” dorm on campus with the oddest (I think they’re cool!) characters. I wish it was a full series, I think they could have done a lot with it. It’s my favorite style of animation and done well. Entertaining, original and under the radar. Check it out!!

Project A-ko is a wonderful OVA series from 1986. Nearly anything from the 80s to mid 90s wins my heart. Love the style, love the over the top ridiculous plot and cherished every moment Project A-ko threw at me. A-ko is the strongest, fastest girl alive. Her best friend C-ko is a cute little blonde girl who she feels she must protect. Crazy smart B-ko sees their friendship and envies it. So B-ko builds a giant mecha to steal C-ko away. A-ko must fight! AWESOME. and goofy. love it!

Last but never ever least:
like it, love it, GOTTA HAVE IT: Ouran High School Host Club is my favorite anime of all time. I made up a drinking game to it, held huge parties with friends who didn’t even like anime, and they ended up loving it (maybe it was all the drinking that helped). It’s not hard to love. It’s fantastic, funny, heartfelt, well made, oh and hilarious. I always recommend this show as often as possible. A poor but smart girl gets into Ouran (super rich school) and accidentally stumbles upon the host club. She breaks an expensive vase after flubbing around and then has to cross dress to stay in the club to pay off her debt. HILARITY ALL AROUND ALWAYS.

the previous Anime Spotlight section featured GUN ANIME! All guns, all blasting, all the time! You should have had ample time to explore that section, as it was up since March (sorry about that). If you missed it (because you went on a 4 month vacation) I highly recommend Mad Bull 34, City Hunter, & Golgo 13!!

Piranha (1978) (Shout! Factory) – “Lost River Lake: Terror, horror, death. Film at 11.” Roger Corman produced this shameless Jaws rip-off at the height of the “nature gone wild” boom of American cinema and struck B movie gold. Scripted by John Sayles (recruited by producer Roger Corman to make his feature film writing debut) and directed by Joe Dante (in his solo debut, after co-directing Hollywood Boulevard and cutting scores of Coming Attractions in the New World trailer department), the shamelessly exploitative tale of mutant piranha released in a Texas river becomes an energetic and inventive tongue-in-cheek thriller. Bradford Dillman does his best Rip Torn impression as anti-social mountain man Paul Grogan and Heather Menzies is rookie skip tracer Maggie, looking for missing hikers and finding a long forgotten secret military lab where mutant piranha are being bred… which are, naturally, released into the river system. They race the little biters downstream while Dante and Sayles provide the requisite blood and gore for the drive-in meat-market: a kid’s summer camp and a waterfront amusement park await the little beasties.

The script is full of contrivances to slow the race down the mountain—a wrecked jeep, a log raft nibbled to driftwood (so to speak) by the fish, an arrest by an overzealous deputy—and they feel like contrivances. Yet Menzies has a bubbly charm and spunky sense of humor as junior detective Maggie and Dillman is perfectly sardonic as the alcoholic hermit roused from his isolation when he realizes that the piranha are headed right toward the summer camp where his daughter is vacationing. And finally, what differentiates this B-movie gem from the legion of similar knock-offs are the satirical swipes at military arrogance and crass commercialism, Dante’s energetic enthusiasm, and the bursts of black humor (“Sir, the Piranhas.” “What about the goddamm piranhas?!” “They’re eating the guests.”). And my favorite aside is a stop motion lizard creature creeping through the laboratory as Maggie and Paul investigate the army base. It’s just there as a flourish, an added detail that is never paid off narratively but who cares? It’s this kind of personality, a nod to the Harryhausen creature features that Dante loves so much, that makes it so much fun.

The culty cast also includes Invasion of the Body Snatchers’s Kevin McCarthy as the hysterical scientist guarding the creatures, horror diva Barbara Steele as a devious government researcher, Paul Bartel is the killjoy camp director and longtime Corman regular and Dante favorite Dick Miller as an unscrupulous entrepreneur whose Texas twang turns urban wise guy once he’s out of the public eye. Watch for John Sayles as a dopey-looking MP.

Features good humored commentary by director Joe Dante and producer Jon Davidson from previous DVD releases plus an all-new 20-minute featurette (with Corman and Dante, actors Melody Thomas, Belinda Balaski and an aging Dick Miller, plus the effects crew, including future effects superstars Phil Tippet and Chris Walas) among the supplements. There is also ten minutes of good quality home movie footage shot by Davidson, six minutes of outtakes, and galleries of stills and ad art among the supplements.

It’s another of the Corman New World classics rereleased on DVD and debuting on Blu-ray in newly mastered editions, and the 1980 Humanoids from Deep (Shout! Factory) joins it this week. And making its DVD debut is the double feature of Deathsport / Battletruck (Shout! Factory), which is not getting the Blu-ray treatment, and for good reason. I’m not referring to the quality of the film (it’s terrible, sure, but why let that stop a release?) but the quality of the materials. Simply put, Deathsport is in bad shape with surface scuffs, major vertical scratches and lots of splices and tears and missing chunks of soundtrack.

Deathsport (1978), imagined by Corman as another (but cheaper) Death Race 2000, is essentially a sci-fi Roman gladiator movie in a post-apocalyptic fantasy future with motorcycles, a mad dictator and David Carradine as a mystic desert warrior captured and tossed into the bread-and-circuses arena where political prisoners are served up to the spectacle-hungry population. Claudia Jennings co-stars as a tracker who is tossed naked into the psychedelic hippie lounge of a torture chamber before she’s sent into the killing fields of the arena (which looks like the old Death Race grandstand matte painting, re-used in classic Corman fashion). The matte effects and stunt work scenes are awkward at best (director Henry Suso, aka Nicholas Niciphor, is not a natural at zero-budget spectacle) and the budget appears to be spent on the exploding motorcycle and exploding tunnel effects. Which apparently left so little money for the mutant cave detour that they were left with nothing better than weird guys with ping-pong ball eyes skulking around, grunting and making animal sounds. Carradine’s pseudo-mystical dialogue isn’t much more articulate: “Taste my blade.” It’s stilted, cheap and takes itself awfully seriously for such a bad script.

Features commentary with co-director Allan Arkush and editor Larry Bock and an interview with actor Jesse Vint, plus co-feature Battletruck (1982), Corman’s answer to The Road Warrior, which features commentary with director Harley Cokliss.

Originally published on seanax.com and Parallax View, republished by permission of the author.