DVD Spin Doctor

DVD review: Fritz Lang's 'Man Hunt'

The filmmaker Fritz Lang found his way to Hollywood in the mid-1930s, having just fled Nazi Germany. After helming a few crime movies and westerns for Fox and MGM, he struck back at the Nazis with “Man Hunt,” a 1941 thriller/film noir that opens with Adolph Hitler in the crosshairs of a rifle.

“Man Hunt” flirted with violations of the U.S. Neutrality Act, portraying Nazis as thugs and warmongers. (In fact, a Senate panel was probing Hollywood’s violations of the Act right up to Pearl Harbor.)

Walter Pidgeon plays English big-game hunter Alan Thorndike, who decided to pursue Hitler in a “sporting stalk” -- meaning the trigger wasn’t actually pulled once the target was in the hunter’s sights. Or so he tells his German captors, who discovered the rifleman, locked and loaded, on a hillside outside the fuhrer’s headquarters.

The Nazis decide to cast Thorndike as an assassin sent by Britain, which would help excuse German aggression. The politically neutral adventurer is tortured but refuses to sign a confession. On to plan B, in which he’s thrown off a cliff, but survives. Thorndike steals aboard a ship headed for England, with the help of a chipper cabin boy (Roddy MacDowall).

Back in Britain, the fog-and-shadow streets are teeming with German agents, all of whom want Thorndike dead. The handsome man on the run gets help from a young Cockney woman (Joan Bennett), apparently a prostitute. Thorndike kills a German agent (John Carradine) in the Underground, adding city police to his pursuers. The manhunters -- and the shadows -- are closing in.

Fox Home Entertainment’s single-DVD release of "Man Hunt" features a fine restoration whose achievements are on display in the extra features. Worth every bit of effort, since Lang and master cameraman Arthur Miller pretty much re-created the seminal noir of the director’s “M.” At times, “Man Hunt” looks like a shadow play about menace.

The DVD featurette has various Lang experts telling the film’s compelling backstory, including the history of the source book, “Male Rogue,” and the long-suspected romance between Lang and young Bennett. 

Patrick McGilligan, author of a book on Fritz Lang, does the feature-length commentary, which is heavy on descriptions of what is happening onscreen. He appears to be reading from notes. Still, the biographer works in plenty of good material about Lang’s techniques and career.

Both McGilligan and the making-of docu present as fact the hotly contested story that "Metropolis" fan Hitler and his henchman Joseph Goebbels offered Lang the job as head Nazi filmmaker just hours before the director fled to France.

New on DVD: Criterion's 'Blast of Silence'

"Blast of Silence" was a latecomer to film noir, straggling into the naked city in 1961 -- 20 tough years after "The Maltese Falcon."

The Criterion Collection's revival of the hardboiled indie film -- a tense, bleak, stylish 77 minutes -- confirms star-director Allen Baron as a talented drive-by contributor to the genre. Anyone with a claim to film noir fanhood (or holding a French passport) needs to get his paws on this DVD.

Our antihero is "baby boy" Frank Bono, a hit man on assignment in Manhattan at the height of Christmas holidays. He's packing seasonal greetings for a midlevel mobster who ran afoul of the wrong guys. We follow the killer as he tries to get through the lonely holiday and take out his mark.

The magic of the big city at Christmas "was a fantastic contrast against a professional killer, out to do what he was out to do," the director notes.

Baron, who went on to a long career as a TV director, comes along for the ride with Criterion's single-disc DVD. He's a cool guy, pleased to be reliving his brief blast of glory.

Baron revisits his movie's New York locations in the hourlong film "Requiem for a Killer: The Making of 'Blast of Silence,' " whose footage mostly dates back to the movie's overdue rediscovery two decades ago. He's also featured in a contemporary slide show.

The city is a major character in the indie black-and-white feature -- a cliche, yeah, but it feels fresh here. "I knew the city wouldn't let me down," says Baron, who shot the film in many of the places he knew as a boy and youthful artist. As often as not, the cheap-o production "stole the scene" -- filmed without permits.

The tough as girders narration comes from character actor Lionel Stander, whose Bronx-accented rap addresses the hit man in second person: "They all hate the gun they hire," the voiceover says as the assassin goes about his prep work. "When they look at you ... they see Death over the counter."

The words come from Waldo Salt, like Stander a Blacklist target. Neither was credited by name.

When the killer tracks his prey, "You feel the hate shaping up at the back of your neck where the hair is short. That's a good sign," Stander says, in the role of the Greek chorus. Great stuff. Baron talks about the sexual rush the killer gets from silently observing his target and his lounge-lady girlfriend.

Here and there, the movie feels like an older sibling to "Who's That Knocking at My Door?" -- say, when the hit man mingles with an old pal and his attractive but unavailable sister, in an attempt to fend off the holiday blues. Fat chance.

(DVD Savant's review suggests: " 'Blast of Silence' would make an especially thoughtful double bill with 'Taxi Driver.' ")

Baron intended for Peter Falk to play his killer, but the actor bolted for Fox's "Murder, Incorporated." "I was the best actor available and the only one I could afford," Baron recalls. Then ... "The truth is, I did want to play the role."

Criterion's scrubbed-fresh rendering of "Blast of Silence" is a tad flat for my taste, but otherwise looks like a million bucks. Perhaps that's because "Blast" doesn't go in for the dramatic lighting and hard contrasts of most artsy noirs. The images (1.33:1) came from a composite 35mm master positive. No visible damage pollutes images of the cold gray city sky. The mono audio offers up the dialog straight and clear, mostly.

The DVD also comes with a four-page graphic-novel adaptation by Sean Phillips ("Criminal," "Sleeper"). The booklet's essay comes from critic Terrence Rafferty. There's a trailer from Universal, which gave the film a second-string release in first-run.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week: "Alien Nation: Ultimate Movie Collection," spun off from the old Fox series that humanized sci-fi TV in the 1980s; the previously reviewed "Juno"; the dolled-up "Lars and the Real Girl"; and ThinkFilm's hopeful African docu "War/Dance."

Pick of the week: Juno
Dog of the week: A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila

New and notable:
Alien Nation: Ultimate Movie Collection (Fox)
Alien vs. Predator -- Requiem (Fox)
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (ThinkFilm)
Blast of Silence (Criterion)
Diana: Queen of Hearts (Genius Products)
The Final Season (Fox)
I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With (Genius)
Lars and the Real Girl (MGM)
A Passage to India (Sony)
War/Dance (ThinkFilm)

Complete list of this week's releases on my pal Harley's site, onvideo.org

DVD review: 'Chinatown' special edition

Looking for the definitive DVD of Roman Polanski's classic detective movie with Jack Nicholson? Forget it, Jake -- it's "Chinatown."

Paramount Home Entertainment finally upgraded its so-so 1999 release of the neo-noir film, unveiling significantly better images, audio and extras on Chinatown: Special Collector's Edition. The 13-minute interview extra of the first DVD has been replaced by a solid Laurent Bouzereau documentary about the making of the film and its legacy.

For a film of this stature -- made by some of the top creative talent of modern cinema -- you'd expect an all-out effort from the studio. Say with Robert Towne's legendary screenplay as an extra. And a commentary or two -- Nicholson would do a great job, as he did on "The Passenger." Towne seems more than eager to talk about "Chinatown."

What about separate extras on Anthea Sylbert's costumes, Richard Sylbert's production design, John A. Alonzo's cinematography, Jerry Goldsmith's famous last-minute score. The locations (then and now). A look at the actual events that inspired this take on L.A.'s great water ripoff. Maybe a history of noir after the film noir era. Docus on any or all of the big guns that worked on "Chinatown"?

Want to experience that DVD? Don't we all.

To be fair, Bouzereau's hourlong "Chinatown" documentary does cover a lot of that ground, at least to some extent. The docu, broken into three chapters, has the cooperation of all the major players except for Faye Dunaway (She did turn out for the latest "Network" DVD.)

Polanski, Nicholson and Towne all roll out to praise each other and remember the (mostly) good times they had putting "Chinatown" together. Comments from their producer pal Robert Evans' appear to be recycled from the 1999 disc.

The inevitable clashes have long since been smoothed over. "Roman was right," screenwriter Towne says of some unwelcome help he got from the director in ending the detective story. "I'm glad he prevailed." Dunaway took no shit from Polanski when it came to the way her fashionable and exotic Mrs. Mulwray looked in every scene. There's a great tale of Polanski smashing Nicholson's portable TV because the actor disappeared to watch the Lakers during filming.

Towne's most famous screenplay was crafted for its star: Towne says he couldn't have written the part of adultery specialist J.J. "Jake" Gittes without having known Nicholson as a close friend and roommate. Nicholson's savory screen persona is as good as it gets here.

" 'Chinatown' stands for the futility of good intentions," Towne says. The story was intended as the first installment of a trilogy about L.A. from 1937 ("Chinatown") to 1953 (the year no-fault divorce came to California). The films were meant to run in real time, with the number of years between productions equal to time elapsed in the stories. (Instead, we got the half-hearted "The Two Jakes," which Paramount also revived on DVD this week. There's a two-fer DVD for Gittes completists.)

Polanski, who kicks off the "Chinatown" interviews, says he hadn't seen the movie in ages. After watching it in preparation for the DVD, he felt he'd rediscovered his own film. "Those people did a really good job," he says proudly, seeming a bit surprised at the quality of his classic.

"Chinatown" looks clean and sharp, with L.A.-bright colors and up-close-and-personal skin tones. You can almost feel Gittes sweating it out. For a film from that dicey film-stock era of the mid-1970s, there's little haze or unavoidable softness. The 5.1 audio is pretty good, nothing special, but the redone stereo doesn't seem worth the bother.

There's a crappy trailer from the theatrical release that pushes the action scenes, suggesting that Paramount didn't know what it had on its hands.

Second opinion: DVD Savant testifies about the "Chinatown" plot in his review.

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New DVDs: box of noir and the HK 'Hustle'

Pick of the week: Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 4
Dog of the week: Night Junkies

Now we're back to action-packed Tuesdays. A dozen or so cool DVDs just hit the retail shelves, ready to overheat your credit card.

From Warner we have "Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 4," which stretches the noir concept a bit too far but is still a fine continuation of this series. "The Big Steal," for example, is more of a romantic caper movie set in Mexico -- but almost anything with Robert Mitchum qualifies in my book. Except "Where Danger Lives," a dog that's also in the box. Don't worry: Noir fans will find lots of tough-guy existentialism spread across the other 8 films -- such as "Crime Wave." The movies look great and they all have commentaries.

Sony gives the delightful HK martial-arts film "Kung Fu Hustle" plenty of backup with the "Axe-Kickin' Edition." Highly recommended for, well, just about everybody. Extras include an interview with creator/star Stephen Chow along with some fun outtakes and bloopers.

Universal gives "Hot Fuzz" a great ride stateside with an extras-laden edition. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright ("Shaun of the Dead") do the commentary on their cop-buddy-film spoof. I found it OK for most of the way but ultimately tiresome. The combo HD DVD provided for review wouldn't work on the high def side in my machine; the DVD side was fine. Keep the remote handy for some crazy volume spikes. Includes the handy "Fuzz-O-Meter."

And I must mention Sony's effort to make Ray Harryhausen's "20 Million Miles to Earth" more accessible to a new generation via colorization. The effects master went along with this; guess it's his to vandalize contemporize. The b&w original is included, looking slightly better than before, and there are many extras about the making of this terrific touchstone film.

Also: "Popeye the Sailor 1933-1938 Vol. 1" from Warner ... "300" from Warner ... the seminal "Blue Water, White Death" from MGM ... and the Imax/Blu-ray stunner "Roving Mars" from Buena Vista.

New and notable:
The Archie Show: The Complete Series (Genius)
Blue Water, White Death (MGM)
The Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 4 (Warner)
Hawaii Five-O: The Second Season (Paramount)
Hot Fuzz (Universal)
Kung Fu Hustle Axe-Kickin' Edition (Sony)
Lonely Hearts (Sony)
Popeye The Sailor 1933-1938 Vol. 1 (Warner)
Roving Mars (Buena Vista)
300 (Warner)
20 Million Miles to Earth: 50th Anniversary Edition (Sony)

Complete list of today's releases on my pal Harley's site, onvideo.org

'Blade Runner' goes 'Final'; 'Star Trek' in HD

Hollywood made its annual trek to San Diego last week to kiss serious fan-boy butt at Comic-Con. Among the offerings appeasing the geek hordes were a preview of the long-awaited "Blade Runner: The Final Cut" and confirmation of an HD DVD rendition of the original "Star Trek's" first season.

Ridley Scott returned to post-production to create what he calls "my definitive director’s cut" of "Blade Runner," the dark classic about the grim rainy L.A. of 2019 overrun by "replicant" robots.

Scott previously offered up his original vision for the film in a 1992 "director's cut" that was a hit on laserdisc and became one of the first major DVD titles in the late 1990s. This replaced the original 1982 theatrical version, compromised by studio suits whose handiwork included Harrison Ford's tough-guy narration (which I always liked). Before 1992, a slightly extended international version was used for home video. Last September, Warner Home Video released a remastered limited edition of the 1992 cut as a teaser for this new stuff.

So now it's the director's cut final cut, or something like that. Definitive as in no more versions, please.

"The 'Final Cut' is the product of a process that began in early 2000 and continued off and on through seven years of intense research and meticulous restoration, technical challenges, amazing discoveries and new possibilities," Scott says. A new 3 1/2 hour docu, "Dangerous Days," keeps track of it all.

The set will come in three DVD editions: two-disc ($21), four-disc ($35) and five-disc ($79). The four- and five-disc sets include all of the versions mentioned above. The five-disc adds on a workprint "Blade Runner."

HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of the five-disc set will be released in "numbered, limited quantities." No price info.

Lots more detail available on these exciting sets; save me some late-night typing and read the Warner Home Video press release on "Blade Runner: The Final Cut."

The 10-disc "Star Trek" set reportedly will go for $218. It will be offered in the HD DVD "combo" format, which includes the regular DVD content on the discs' other sides. Some of the special effects have been upgraded, as well as the William Shatner recording of "Space ... the final frontier."

Paramount supports the Blu-ray format but there is nothing to report on that version.

Home Media magazine has the "Star Trek" session at Comic-Con for you.

Meanwhile, Anne Thompson kept the Comic-Con blog thing going all weekend for Variety. She reports, gamely: "Many geeks don't believe in deodorant." It gets worse. Check out her reports.

The big 'Payback' in Hollywood

Wiseguys: Director Brian Helgeland, left, and James Ellroy at the new "Payback" screening (courtesy Paramount Home Entertainment)

Just back from a one-off theatrical screening of "Payback: Straight Up: The Director's Cut."The audience rolled right along with the Mel Gibson flick, and had no trouble finding the humor jammed in there along with the violence. Great to have the movie on DVD, but it's too bad people won't get to see the resurrected film in theaters. This is one terrific, seriously hard-boiled movie.

Director Brian Helgeland showed up for a post-screening Q&A moderated by his pal James Ellroy, the crime novelist whose "L.A. Confidential" screenplay was written by Helgeland when he was a punk kid. Ellroy, a funny guy if you're into dry-gulch sarcasm, said he'd seen three movies that took a satirical approach to the hardboiled crime genre: "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill 2" and "Payback." He dismissed the two Quentin Tarantino movies as too smug, overly referential and just not smart enough, but gave Helgeland vague props for his effort of eight years ago.

At first, Helgeland didn't seem eager to talk about how Paramount (and Warner) took the movie away from him back in 1998, but spilled late in the talk. The suits expected and wanted a "Lethal Weapon," but blamed the decision to throw out the director's downbeat third act on low audience test scores (that apparently were higher than those for "Goodfellas"). In 2005, Gibson and the current regime at Paramount gave Helgeland another shot at the film. The old tapes turned up missing, so the director and his editor slowly recut the work using film.

The execs who hijacked the movie are no longer in the industry, Helgeland said with a wry grin, but "I'm still here."

Read the "Payback" DVD review
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More film noir from Warner

A few years back, Fox and Warner were cranking out high-quality versions of their legacy film noir titles. Rough-cut gems like "Gun Crazy," "I Wake Up Screaming," "Out of the Past," and "The Dark Corner." Most had commentary and a few extras. The digital remasters usually were done with care, like a dame patching up a busted tough guy. It was another golden era for noir, of sorts.

Warner's back on the case with "The Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 4," due July 31. The five discs are:

“Act of Violence”/”Mystery Street”; “Crime Wave"/"Decoy”; “Illegal"/"The Big Steal”; “They Live By Night"/"Side Street”; and “Where Danger Lives" (photo)/"Tension.” Stars include Robert Mitchum, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Ryan, Van Heflin, Ricardo Montalban, Claude Rains and Farley Grange. Commentators include James Ellroy, Glenn Erickson and Richard Schickel.

The box comes with a retail sticker of $59.92. It's $20.97 for individual titles (double features). Buy the box with confidence. Tell 'em Corky sent you.

Mel Gibson's lost kick-ass film

The best action movie I've seen this year isn't in theaters. You may think you've seen it, but probably haven't.

"Payback" is back, this time the way the director envisioned the film, not the suits. "You don't make pictures for the elite," producer/actor Mel Gibson says today, explaining why Paramount and Warner Bros. took the noirish gangland movie away from freshman director Brian Helgeland. After 10 days of reshoots, a new final (third) act was tacked on, narration was added a la "Blade Runner" and Kris Kristofferson walked on as a new major character designed to neaten things up. Audiences still were amazed how brutal the Gibson character was when they had to "Get ready to root for the bad guy," as the marketing had it. Critics wrote it off as another promising movie desperately in search of an ending.

Same old story about artists and Hollywood, but this time came a happier ending. In 2005, Paramount and Gibson gave Helgeland another shot at the film, eight years after its release. The tapes turned up missing, so Helgeland and his editor recut the film using film. And so we have "Payback: Straight Up -- the Director's Cut."

Now, this is one hard-boiled movie. Gibson plays Porter, a small-time robber who comes back to town looking for the partner who stole his loot and his wife. While collecting on his karmic debts, Porter takes on the syndicate and the Asian drug dealers, beats up a woman (a scene the studios wouldn't touch back then), and achieves a significant body count. Supporting actors Lucy Liu, Gregg Henry and Maria Bello all do fine work.

Paramount's release doesn't include the 1999 version for comparison, unfortunately. Extras include a polite director's commentary, but the one to catch is "Same Story -- Different Movie," which spends a half hour on the resurrection. The witnesses keep it civil, but you get a good feel for what was what.

On the DVD version of "Payback," the audio and video are suitably rousing. They're even stronger on the high definition discs although in places the contrasts and colors seem too jacked up for a gritty film that drifts in and out of bleach-bypass scenes. Extras are the same on all three versions.

Yeah, it's early, but I'm putting this into the best DVDs of the year category.

"Payback" comes from author Donald E. Westlake's crime novel "The Hunter," first filmed as "Point Blank" with Lee Marvin, an even better film from 1969.

Quick review: 'The Naked City'

Sometimes films seem cooler by association or via half-baked nostalgia than in reality. For me, the latest case is The Naked City (1948), a new Criterion Collection title. Sure, the TV series of the 1950s had its moments, but this film creaks all the way through. It's not really a film noir but a police procedural beset with stiff acting and wobbly narration by a columnist.

The filmmakers made non-stop use of New York locations, unheard of in talkies at the time. Today, the movie's tour of the big city's streets holds considerably more interest than the who-cares murder story. Architecture expert James Sanders says in the extras that almost 180 locations were used.

NYU prof Dana Polan explains the film as a product of the post-war period, made to speak to men who quietly struggled to find some shred of individuality in the big-brother corporations and bureaucracies of the period. To be fair, "Naked City" does pick up at the end with its justifyably famous high-anxiety finale.
I'll take another look one day, but for now I'm putting this one down as a significant relic, having next to no entertainment value in the new century. As always, your mileage may vary.

Recommended films of the period that walk the same beat (all in the Fox Film Noir series):

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)
Where the Sidewalk Ends (1945)
The Street with No Name (1948)
I Wake Up Screaming (1941)
Vicki (1953)

The single-disc "The Naked City" also includes a commentary by its screenwriter Malvin Wald. The black and white images have some flashing and slight, persistent vertical scratch marks in the left fifth of the picture but all in all it's a good presentation.

The DVD Savant sees it differently. Read his review.