DVD releases - region 2 updates

GHOST HUNT
(2006, Japan TV)

At last, Ghost Hunt (2006) has been announced for a DVD release in the UK. One of the few anime series of recent years that I've enjoyed watching through to the end, it gets released on May 4th, by Manga DVD. A group of exorcists and psychics from all different religions and beliefs, team together to research a string of hauntings. More about Ghost Hunt here.

HANSEL & GRETEL
(2007, South Korea)

I recently reviewed the beautiful South Korean dark fairytale redux, Hansel & Gretel (2007). The UK gets its own DVD release on April 6th from Terracotta Distribution. See my review here.

PUFNSTUF
(1970, USA)

Good news for March 23rd, one of my oldest Not On DVD wishlist movies is finally getting released, on Metrodome DVD. Pufnstuf is the 1970 movie that launched the TV series, and boasts a couple of songs from Mama Cass. This is easily more enjoyable and adult-friendly than the series, which has been out on DVD for years. I talked about the movie here in 2005! No cover art yet, that's the CD soundtrack cover.

BAD BIOLOGY
(2008, USA)

I'm in the middle of reviewing my favourite Frank Henenlotter movies at the moment. The director of the outrageous Basket Case trilogy has a new movie out on DVD on March 2nd, from Revolver Entertainment. I'm looking forward to seeing this after I've revisited Frankenhooker ("she'll cost you an arm and a leg") and Brain Damage.

A BLOODY ARIA
(2006, South Korea)

Out on DVD in the UK this week, is another South Korean film concerned with the nature of violence. A merciless drama in the vein of Straw Dogs and Last House on the Left. As a music professor drives a young student down a long dead-end road, his plans to seduce her run aground as he fights for survival with a gang of unhinged outlaws.

STAR FLEET
(1980, Japanese TV)

Originally a Japanese series, this was dubbed into English and given a new theme tune by Queen's Brian May. It landed in the UK in 1982 and has remained an obscure cult item until now! The English version of the series has finally been released in one DVD boxset. This programme was Britain's first taste of Japanese giant transforming robots. Unusually, it series isn't an anime, the characters are played by Terrahawks-style puppets, with extensive modelwork for the duelling spaceships. Star Fleet has its followers, but I found the puppets less likeable than Thunderbirds and the modelwork far less careful - no slow-motion is used to disguise the tiny scale of the models, and fire, dust and smoke all completely give away the size. But as a TV show, this was more rewarding than the many Star Wars derived movies of the time.

THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE

(1976, Canada)

Gently weird thriller starring a 14-year old Jodie Foster. She plays a young teenager trying to live on her own, despite the law. Her problems multiply as she attracts the attentions of a predatory psychotic, played by Martin Sheen, when he was still being typecast as villains. This had a good run on double-bills in UK cinemas, following on from Foster's hits with Bugsy Malone, Freaky Friday and Taxi Driver.

THE RULING CLASS

(1970, UK)

Savage satire on Britain's upper classes, depicting the lord of the manor as completely insane. Peter O' Toole plays the aristocrat who thinks he's Christ and enjoys being crucifed every dinnertime. Dark, eccentric, funny and very long, it warranted inclusion in The Criterion Collection in the US. Peter Medak later directed wheelchair horror movie The Changeling (1980). A host of British character actors co-star, notably Arthur Lowe (if....), Carolyn Seymour (Survivors, 1975) and a barnstorming cameo from Nigel Green (The Ipcress File) in one of his final roles.

WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR?

(1965, USA)

A rare underground classic has made its DVD debut in the UK. This explicitly sexual psycho thriller, shot in black and white, features a realistically seedy nightclub full of suspicious low-lifes and plagued by murder. Among the cast are Broadway favourite Elaine Stritch, Daniel J. Travanti (Captain Furillo from Hill Street Blues) and Bruce Glover (Diamonds Are Forever). Sultry leading man Sal Mineo previously appeared alongside James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, but rarely got roles as good. This is one of his most interesting, daring even, certainly compared to the standard heroics of Krakatoa - East of Java or completely hidden in monkey make-up in Escape from the Planet of the Apes.

Twitter - micro-reviews from the Black Hole

OK, I'm going to give this new Twitter thing a try. Here's how and why...

Twitter is the online network that lists short bursts of text from every user - usually just a short word about what they're up to. If anyone else is interested, they can follow these 'micro-blogs', while publishing their own. This appears to be popular in the US and Japan and it's just taking off here in the UK.

In the Black Hole, I suck in a lot of movies that I think are going to be good. But I've stopped reviewing the bad and the boring, to bring you just recommendations of the good stuff.

So, a lot of what I watch never gets a mention. But to give you an idea of what I've seen that's been disqualified from Black Hole DVD Reviews, I'm going to post micro-reviews on Twitter.com as 'BlackHoleDVDs'.

I'll also mention mainstream stuff that I've enjoyed. I don't usually review heavily publicised releases on this site, because thousands of others already have. Instead, I'm writing about films and DVDs that haven't had tons of marketing, and have already been featured on every other movie blog.

So feel free to follow me over on Twitter. I'll also send out an alert for every new article on this site.

HORROR OF DRACULA (1958) - bloody good

HORROR OF DRACULA

(1958, UK, Dracula)

A compact classic Hammer Horror film, that's still working

Previously, Dracula was gothic, black and white, with a thick Eastern European accent, and no fangs. Hammer's Dracula starts with bright red Technicolor blood dripping over the titles, to signal that a new era had arrived, with a far scarier vampire. Out came the fangs, in went the stakes, and down went the necklines. The producers were fighting the censor along the way, especially after the savage critical reaction to Curse of Frankenstein which first teamed Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. What they offered was a little more sex and violence.

Lee's performance is still startling today. One minute he's a charming aristocrat, the next a wild-eyed animal - swift, strong, and single-mindedly hungry for blood. With no prosthetic make-up, his Dracula is scary because of the blood dripping from his lips, his bloodshot eyes and his demonic performance. When a crucifix comes out, he reacts like a cornered snake, and hisses in disgust. Here is a villain from Hell, clever, dangerous and evil. There's no moral dilemma - Dracula must be destroyed.

Although the film is fifty years old, Christopher Lee is still with us, still acting. While he's found a new fanbase as Saruman in Lord of the Rings and Count Dooku in the Star Wars franchise, he landed both roles because of the lasting impression of his Dracula films.

Lower down the cast, but also still with us is Geoffrey Bayldon. This actor often played far older characters. Here's he's a grey-haired porter, even though he was only 34! You may have seen him as the tour guide in Tales From The Crypt, creepy Max in Asylum and Theo the cloak-seller in The House that Dripped Blood. Like Lee, he's still working!

Likewise, the lovely Janina Faye as the little girl being pursued by the undead. Her scene with Van Helsing, as he protects her from the night's chill, is a lovely moment of calm amidst the horror. It's not easy finding talented child actors who act their age. I also enjoyed her roles in two Janette Scott movies The Day of the Triffids and The Beauty Jungle.

Christopher Lee starred as Dracula in six more Hammer films. They'd have used him more - but he was substituted by other actors when he put his foot down and avoided Brides of Dracula and The Legend of Seven Golden Vampires.

Horror of Dracula (as it was released in the USA) moved the character of Van Helsing into the spotlight, a character who's as virtuous as Dracula is evil. On the face of it, Van Helsing is an anti-hero, a man who digs up the dead and mutilates them, but played by Peter Cushing, he's not only pure, he's a polite and considerate gentleman as well. You couldn't find a better role model... who stakes vampires. It's a shame that modern audiences only know Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin in the first Star Wars, because it was such an atypical role for a versatile and compassionate actor - my very favourite in the horror genre.


After the prologue, where the unlucky Jonathan Harker arrives at Dracula's castle, the rest of the film is spent in the company of Lee or Cushing. If that wasn't enough of a treat, there's also the distinctive Michael Gough, temporarily upgraded from his schlocky (though very enjoyable) b-movie horrors.

The story is a heavily abridged version of the rambling book, omitting most of the supernatural elements. like Dracula's shape-shifting abilities, and instead focusing on blood-drinking and the transmission of evil, as his victims become other vampires. Jimmy sangster's best script for a Dracula film fast-forwards through much of the story and loses many characters, even Renfield. Gone are the sea crossings - Dracula's castle is now a short horseride across the border from a mythical English-speaking town in central Europe. This leaves a taut, tight story, unlike the other movie versions.

After fifty years, this is still a great introduction to the crux of a classic horror tale. The period setting, combined with the film's age make it almost look like it was filmed at the turn of the century when it was supposed to take place. The only annoyances are the brief but lame comedy relief.


A newly-restored print was shown recently in London and has reportedly been remastered in high-definition. But there's no blu-ray release in sight, which could also be the film's uncensored debut in digital. I watched my region 1 DVD (pictured at top), which crops the action fairly tightly into a 16:9 frame. It's a watchable transfer for now, and is only missing a little close-up staking, as far as I know.

Here's the original trailer

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES - three versions, all sad

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES
(1988, Japan, Hotaru no haka)

Most movies are for entertainment, but not all of them. Grave of the Fireflies is a grim history lesson, not as intense as say, Schindler’s List, but certainly upsetting enough. Surprisingly it was produced by Studio Ghibli, and even the look of the characters is consistent with the rest of their much more whimsical output. As usual, you get to know the characters and care about them and their plight - the main difference is that here, there’s no happy ending. It wasn’t made to depress the audience, but presumably to educate and commemorate the civilian casualties of war. The horror doesn’t always end when the bombing stops.

I’m slowly working my way through Studio Ghibli’s catalogue, and have little idea what each film is about. I only knew that Grave of the Fireflies was set in wartime, but had no idea how gruelling it was going to be - it’s not a film to go into blindly. The story is about a teenage boy, Seita, and his little sister Setsuko, aged 14 and 5 respectively. But the film opens with a stark scene where the boy dies of hunger and neglect while sleeping rough in a train station. His spirit then walks outside to see a cloud of fireflies and he meets his little sister. The film then flashes back to when they were both alive, though we have yet to learn how the little girl is going to die…


Set at the very end of the Second World War, the movie-length flashback starts just as they are hurriedly preparing for an imminent air raid on their hometown of Kobe. Seita is burying food and provisions in the ground. He then gives his little sister a piggyback and runs for his life as the American planes start dropping firebombs. Like Kobe, Tokyo and other Japanese cities, most buildings were primarily made of wood. After fiercely sustained bombing campaigns, the cities were burnt to the ground - only the occasional brick buildings remained. Separated from their Mother and with their home destroyed, they become too much of a burden for their relatives, and try and survive on their own…

The little girl looks much like the characters in My Neighbour Totoro, which was being produced at the same time. The two films were initially released in Japan as a double bill, Totoro being seen as more of a financial risk than Grave of the Fireflies. I’d assumed that Hiyao Miyazaki was the director, but it was Isao Takahata, who later made The Racoon War (Pom Poko, 1994), which was also strong on message, though not nearly as downbeat.

Grave of the Fireflies very much reminded me of the earlier Barefoot Gen (1983), which tells a similarly structured tale of a young boy and his younger brother who miraculously survive the Hiroshima atomic blast, only to try and survive the aftermath and the devastation. Also semi-autobiographical, the story of Barefoot Gen is more horrific in detail, but somehow more hopeful in tone. While Barefoot Gen was based on a manga, Grave of the Fireflies was based on a novel, both written by men who’d lived through wartime experiences.

This anime is recommended, powerfully representing life on the receiving end of bombing raids, and then strict rationing. But while I know it’s close to what must have happened, the story was frustrating by not knowing more about what prevented the children from rejoining their relatives. The recent TV adaption, made to mark the 60th anniversary of the war's end, had the luxury of being twice as long, and able to explain much more of the surrounding story.

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (2005, Japan, TV)

The TV adaption adds much-needed background featuring the other characters in the story, expanding the motivations of the rest of the family that lead to this tragedy. It's just as much from the perspective of the children as their relatives. It’s expensive and ambitious for a Japanese TV drama, though some early use of simple greenscreen compositing effects look unfortunately artificial in depicting a bombed-out Kobe. The rest of the programme is beautifully shot and the firebombing scenes are remarkably dramatic and frightening, even more than the anime. Performances are all very strong, especially that of the little girl. The climax is powerful, but not nearly as sustained and haunting as the animated version. A slushy rock song over the end titles helps deflate its final moments. It would be worth checking this out after seeing the anime version, but since 2005 there's been another remake.

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (2008, Japan)
Last year there was a movie adaption released in Japanese cinemas. It seems strange that two live-action versions have been made so close together. But the movie is presumably partially intended for an international audience, and a sign that this is a precious story for the Japanese, one that they are eager to share. At 100 mins long, and with publicity photos indicating that it sticks close to the vision of the anime, I guess it’s intended for those who don’t like watching anime. I’ve yet to see it, but there's not long to wait.


The anime is the most available form of the story, being on DVD in many countries. I can’t find a translated version of Akiyuki Nosaka’s original 1967 novel, and it doesn't look like it's been in print in English since 1978 (see here for a list of publications). Please beware that an American fantasy novel cheekily has exactly the same name. It’s here on Amazon but confusingly, it is nothing to do with this story.



The 2005 TV dramatisation is available on DVD in Japan (pictured), but has no English subtitles. The Malaysian DVD is supposed to have English subtitles, but they might not be very well translated.

The 2008 live-action movie version will have a subtitled release on DVD in Japan in March, but will hopefully eventually get a wider release.


There's more about the anime at this official site and more links at this fansite, including a page full of screenshots to get a better idea of what to expect.

Like a history lesson, you only need to learn it once. It’s very sad to watch, and I may never see it again. But I’m glad I’ve experienced the story.

THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE (1961) - global warning

THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE

(1961, UK)

Altogether an enjoyably adult sci-fi thriller, verging on apocalyptic and ringing remarkably true during our anxieties over global warming. This film shows us what it could all look like...

The day after watching this tale of an apocalyptic heatwave and its effects on London, we had the worst snowfall in the capital in 18 years. There was an eerie synchronicity between the movie's freak weather disasters, and the actual city in chaos.

Despite being in black and white, the movie still feels very modern, and far more believable than recent Hollywood disaster movies, like The Day After Tomorrow, where global catastrophes become a series of dramatic obstacle courses for the heroes.



The Day The Earth Caught Fire uses a more believable approach, showing the gradual effects of a world that keeps getting hotter, triggered by a series of nuclear tests. Currently it rings true with many modern anxieties about global warming and abnormal weather. When I saw this on TV in the 1970s, it just felt like pure science fiction, When it was made, the worry centred on the unknown side-effects of nuclear testing.

The film, is greatly helped by a snappy, unstereotypical cast of characters, mainly the staff at a London newspaper, hearing the news first and trying to uncover what's being withheld. The dialogue is even faster than modern films, to match the hectic environment of daily newspaper deadlines, but the boy/girl banter is just as fast and frequently witty. It's a telling sign that director Val Guest was balancing the doom with verbal parrying between the characters. Guest had previously written film scripts for a long line of British comedians, including Will Hay, Arthur Askey and The Crazy Gang. Though this is suitably more high-brow humour.


Besides a solid science-fiction premise, strongly defined characters, an endearing cast (with the exception of Edward Judd’s boozy, stroppy malcontent), it's a gritty and realistic look at the effects of a few months of non-stop global warming. There are many special effects to sell the cyclone, drought and freak fog hitting various London landmarks. Fairly tight on budget, Les Bowie and his team, which included future special effects wizard Brian Johnson, convincingly use matte paintings, blow-up photographs and crisp back projection, plus some spectacular stock footage.

Though the visual effects occasionally look impressionistic rather than real, the story is sold by the consistently sweaty cast. As temperatures soar, lawlessness breaks out and passions rise. I was surprised at how risque Janet Munro actually gets to look in this. Not revealingly nude, but very nearly almost… and complemented by subtly fruity dialogue.

Left to right: Edward Judd, Janet Munro and Leo McKern

You may have also seen leading man Edward Judd as the star of the Ray Harryhausen’s First Men In The Moon (1964), as well as the considerably lower budget Island of Terror. Leo McKern as a fellow reporter is a well-loved British comedian and actor, most famous as top TV barrister Rumpole of the Bailey. But I prefer to watch him in his zany comedy roles, such as the chief villain chasing Ringo and The Beatles in Help! (1965), and as Moriarty chasing Gene Wilder in The Aventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975). You’ve probably seen him in the first two films in 1970s The Omen series as Bugenhagen, the frazzled archaeologist, where he coincidentally appeared with Janet Munro’s second husband, Ian Hendry. Munro should have had many more good parts, but you may have seen her in Walt Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson, or singing with Sean Connery in Darby O’Gill and the Little People (hopefully you haven’t) or even battling crawling eyes in The Trollenberg Terror.

Keen eyes might even recognise a couple of the reporters, Michael Goodliffe also appeared in Hammer's The Gorgon and To The Devil A Daughter, and Edward Underdown starred in The Hand of Night. There's even a young Michael Caine in a bit part as a policeman, just before his movie career took off.

The only blot on this landscape is the casting of the real life editor of the Daily Express newspaper. No doubt this allowed the crew to shoot in and around the actual Fleet Street building and around the printing presses, but Arthur Christiansen is an editor and not an actor, which makes for a few bizarre scenes. Though the main set of the newsroom is a faithful studio replica of the actual thing.

This is also an example of the mini-genre of British apocalypse movies where everyone takes refuge in a pub, rather than a church (see also Devil Girl From Mars and The Earth Dies Screaming). Trivia fans take note that one of the main exterior shooting locations is London's Battersea Fun Fair, which was also central to the action during the story of the giant monster Gorgo (1960).

Director Val Guest of course masterfully directed the Hammer versions of The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2, as well as the recently released (on DVD) caveman vs dinosaur flick When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth.

I got the DVD in order to finally see this in 2.35 widescreen, an unusual experience in monochrome, but was surprised that it was a far better film than I’d remembered - repeated 1.33 'pan-and-scan' TV viewings certainly didn't do it any favours. The region 2 PAL DVD, from Network, has remastered this with a fine-looking picture and sharp audio, and also restores a hot red monochrome tint, that I’d never seen before, to some scenes. Together with the extras – a recent interview with Leo McKern, trailers, behind-the-scenes photos and background notes, plus a commentary track from the late director, this is a very welcome, well-rounded release. Looks like Australia also have a DVD out as well.



Here's the trailer on YouTube, complete with correct aspect ratio, tinting, and spoilers!

KONTROLL (2003) - offbeat Hungarian subway thriller

KONTROLL
(2003, Hungary)

After first seeing the Russian ‘vampire’ blockbuster Night Watch, I was hungry for more modern movies from Eastern Europe. Kontroll was shot in Hungary and if it'd been directed by someone like Guy Ritchie, would have been a huge hit. But it wasn’t. Kontroll certainly lead to the director, Nimrod Antal, getting a gig in Hollywood directing the horror thriller Vacancy (2007), and his next film Armored is a crime caper set in the world of armored car deliveries and should be out later this year.

In the meantime, I’m going to give Vacancy a go, but I doubt it’ll be as much fun as Kontroll which has everything – horror, drama, romance, thrills and grubby underground humour. Set entirely in the Metro subway in Hungary’s capital city Budapest, where the ticket inspectors (collectively called Control) travel the train system in teams. One lot in particular is about to cross paths with a hoodied figure who is passing off random murder as passenger suicides…


While most of the inspectors are disliked by the public, much like traffic wardens, within Control, there’s a team who are even disliked by their colleagues. Bulcsu is the leader of the pack, but sleeping on the subway platforms, wandering the system at night, what is his problem?


Director Nimrod Antal’s debut feature is instantly accessible, creating a castful of entertaining and diverse characters… Bulcsu’s team of Kontrollers include an old world-weary skinhead, a narcoleptic bully, a grubby sex pest, and the newest youngest who’s keen to learn and impress.

Besides helping with the serial murders, they have to battle public fare dodgers, a travelling gang of prostitutes, and a young parkour wannabe who loves to outrun the officials. This is all besides their rivalry with other Control teams. Bulcsu has a reputation to defend, the dangerous talent for outrunning Metro trains between stops. And of course, there’s the woman who rides around all day dressed up as a bear.


All the interlinking stories and characters make for a well-rounded film that’s alternately thrilling, chilling, funny, dark and even poetic. The kinetic cinematography regularly calms down to take in darkly beautiful tableaux in the weirdest corners of the underground, where most of the film was shot on location. The film, like Bulcsu’s character, never leaves the Metro system. The atmosphere of the unusual setting is complemented by the driving soundtrack by electro band Neo – a sort of cross between Massive Attack and The Chemical Brothers (see/hear the YouTube clips below).


As long as subtitles aren’t a problem for you, this is a very rewarding and repeatable film. Also, don’t let the introduction put you off, a five minute monologue by a Budapest Metro official pointing out rather patronisingly that the Hungarian transport system portrayed in the film is fictional and isn’t actually staffed by drunks and sex pests. Don’t expect a linear story, but more of an enthralling meandering experience that draws you into a world of eternal artificial night, perfect for viewing in the middle of the night.


Kontroll is out on DVD in the US and UK and all round Europe. I got the CD soundtrack by Neo from Amazon.de.

The official Hungarian movie website is still online here, much of it is translated into English.

I wrote about other subway films here.


Here's a promo video clip from Neo that just uses clips from the movie.

Here's another track from Neo. Both these tracks are from the movie soundtrack.

Meet British horror director Pete Walker

Seventies horror movie director Pete Walker is appearing for a Q & A session at London's BFI SouthBank on March 12th. You'll also get a chance to see one of his best films, Frightmare, which introduced psycho driller-killing years before Abel Ferrara.

Afterwards, there's a rare chance to see his last film, the not-on-DVD House of the Long Shadows, which teamed veteran horror stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and John Carradine with Walker's own discovery Sheila Keith.

So why not revisit Pete Walker's House of Whipcord, The Comeback and Schizo, so you've got some keen questions for him...

More details about the event and screenings here on the BFI website.

HANSEL & GRETEL (2007) - Korea updates Grimm's fairy tale

HANSEL & GRETEL
(2007, South Korea)

A dark, beautiful mystery...

I didn’t even know what genre this movie was going to be in when I started to watch it. I like knowing nothing about the story and was intrigued by which way this tale was going to twist. Of course, I won’t spoil it for you, but must at least describe to you what kind of film to expect. The filmmakers call Hansel and Gretel a dark fantasy, a new movie genre for South Korea.


A young man, Eun Soo (Jeong-myeong Cheon), is driving through a forest when he’s in a car crash. By the time he regains consciousness, night has fallen. A young girl finds him and leads him back to her house deep in the woods. There he meets her family, who look like they’re celebrating the most perfect Christmas ever. Colourful toys, fairy lights and cakes are everywhere. But after staying the night, he has trouble finding the way back to civilisation, or even contacting it… Why can’t he escape the forest?

I was bracing myself in case this mystery turned into an extreme horror, and as I was trying to work out what was going on. The result was simpler than I’d expected, but many minor questions raised along the way were left unanswered.


As usual, with the best of Korean cinema, it’s beautifully designed, with highly accomplished filmmaking and faultless acting, especially from the three children, one of whom is very young.

Before the answers come, it’s a wonderful mystery. The closing act could have been far shorter, a lot of momentum is lost towards the climax, but is eventually satisfying. Without giving too much away, this may be a new genre for Korea, but it appears to have drawn from a certain episode of The Twilight Zone and a little from Village of the Damned… Though thankfully this isn’t another horror about how evil children are - let's kill them!


It borders on being a horror film, but not one that will totally satisfy modern horror fans. Yet there are a few moments that are too tough for children to watch, so 'dark fantasy' will have to do. It's also quite Christmassy!

The film is playing in a couple of small London cinemas at the moment, so hopefully it will get a UK DVD release. If not, there’s a region 3 DVD from Malaysia which even has the extras subbed in English, though many of the features look quite low resolution. They start with director Phil-sung Yim (who previously made the chilly ghost story Antarctic Journal) explaining how he approached the story. The film itself looks good, with well translated subtitles and an anamorphic widescreen picture.

BASKET CASE (1982) - Frank Henenlotter’s world of wicker

BASKET CASE
(1982, USA)

This is a film that I was told I absolutely had to see when it came out. It was right up my alley and while it's not as essential now, it's still a hamper full of gory fun.

Duane Bradley carries his hideously deformed, psychotic brother around in a wicker basket, on a mission to track down and avenge the surgical team who separated them as Siamese twins…

Rental VHS cover art in the UK

Set in Manhattan's Times Square when it was more red light district than tourist trap, this low budget horror looks definitively grindhouse. At the time, it became a huge success on video, even though most of the gore had been censored out. Basket Case looked as grainy and low-budget as The Evil Dead, but was more like Evil Dead II with it’s mix of blood-letting and black humour.

Basket Case continues in the vein of sexual comedy horror that peaked in the 1970s with Andy Warhol’s Blood For Dracula and Flesh For Frankenstein (1973), and predates Stuart Gordon’s slicker Re-animator (1985). The extreme blood-letting was tempered by the over-the-top tongue-in-cheek approach, yet adult enough to include sexuality and nudity, which many American horrors shied away from.

The film features a wide mixture of good and bad acting talent, though Kevin Van Hentenryck as the amiable Duane holds the whole film together. The special effects are hit and miss, but take on a surreal charm - the evil twin Belial certainly has character and, for a lump of rubber, even delivers pathos. The wealth of ideas and humour in the script make it very watchable today. As do the women's bizarrely thick hairstyles, though they're no match for the sheer size of Duane's naturally curly perm.

Basket Case aimed to out-gore anything else around at the time. The murders are sometimes cheated off camera, but are amusingly inventive and usually ludicrous. Belial's revenge involved separating his victims, when though they're not Siamese twins...

The scalpels in the face scene is my favourite for delirious horror movie acting - revelling in excess, echoing the screaming women of old movie posters, rather than anything distressingly realistic. Gore can be fun! Diana Browne, as Dr Kutter, would have got my vote for ‘best performance in a death scene’ that year, if there was such a thing.

As Belial gets jealous of his relatively normal brother having a relationship, sex rears its ugly head. But Henenlotter keeps the sexual interests of his audiences fairly well balanced, featuring male and female nudity, and even male full frontal shots, rare in any film.

For a perilously low budget, Henenlotter wrote and directed a great film, making the most of the atmosphere of the down-at-heel locations. He became an essential director for a few years, keeping fans happy with two Basket Case sequels, Frankenhooker, and the marvellous Brain Damage (a title easily confused with Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead and Bad Taste).

It’s a shame he couldn’t keep it up – there’s a huge gap in his directorial career between Basket Case 3 and the recent Bad Biology, which I’ve yet to see, but it's out on DVD in February. Welcome back, Frank!


I watched this again on the Something Weird DVD which is presented 4:3 full-frame, hinting that it was framed as much for home video as cinemas. The extras include a commentary track, some great out-takes and a lively tour round the filming locations with the director. The picture looks far less grainy than I remembered it and the dialogue is clearly audible - it wasn't always easy to hear in cinemas and on VHS.

Go on, have a peek inside...

MILK (2008) - serious seventies flashbacks

MILK
(2008, USA)

Gus Van Sant's new film opens in UK cinemas this week. I don't normally plug new releases, but this one is exciting for me personally because it's a subject close to my heart - the gay rights movement. Some people may identify their teenage years with The Breakfast Club or some other John Hughes' movie. For others it might be Napoleon Dynamite. Back in the 1970s, I wanted to be someone in Quadrophenia (an anti-establishment punk rebel) or National Lampoon's Animal House, (a drunk but popular under-achiever). But in reality, I was far closer to several characters in Milk, being a closeted teenager at the time, and an out-and-proud politically-involved idealist of a few years later. But this was all in rural England rather than San Francisco, where it was all happening.

For a new audience to the story, Milk should prove an encouraging reminder of grass roots political activism. How the energies of an abused minority can even be diverted from the destruction of rioting and channelled into a positive force. In a time of murderous queerbashing and a hostile police force, it was very easy to get angry or keep very, very closeted.

I like Van Sant as a filmmaker, and when he gets weird and experimental with stories based on real-life, it can be fascinating. His takes on the death of Kurt Cobain (Last Days) and the Columbine High School murders (Elephant) were far from straightforward docu-dramas. But a film about Harvey Milk would be wrong to take such a chance with.


Van Sant tried for years to get this project made. The script by Dustin Lance Black (who's also worked on the Bill Paxton TV series Big Love), and the casting of Sean Penn, finally helped the film to get made. The story is of a gay-rights activist who successfully campaigned his way into San Francisco City Hall in the late 1970s against all the odds. Harvey's story was well-known in the gay press, and later in an Oscar-winning documentary (see below), but I can't imagine many people knowing about it now. So I was surprised when the film pre-empted the story's shock ending right at the start. I'd like to have seen an audience taken surprise by Milk's assassination, with the sense of foreboding building up suspense, rather than just being ironically insightful.

The recreation of the 1970s is as I remembered it, and was scrupulously reconstructed with the help of many who were around at the time. Using the actual locations of Harvey's camera shop on Castro Street, which became his campaign office, and the spectacular City Hall, where much of the story took place, make it all look totally convincing.


Sean Penn, as Harvey Milk, is an uncanny performance, not only reminding us totally of the person in the news footage, but also channelling his ideals and personality - a dedicated man fired up to make some positive changes - not in it for the money, and balancing the big issues with the plights of individuals. A charismatic speaker and not without a sense of humour. The sort of person who could give politicians a good name.


Seeing photos of Penn, Emile Hirsch and Josh Brolin in 1970s clothes and hairstyles makes each of them instantly recognisable compared to the original characters they play (whose photos are included in the end credits).

While gay rights were a hard sell in 1970s USA, things were about to get disastrously tougher. We really needed Harvey inside City Hall in California in the AIDS-blighted 1980s, making his death all the more tragic and untimely.

For a while, I thought he'd opened the doors to a more accepting government and society, and that things could only get better. But the long-established gay community of San Francisco still has a vocal anti-gay presence. On our last fleeting visit in 2007, we witnessed an impromptu sidewalk demonstration by vocal Christian moralists on a high-profile street corner in central San Francisco (see photo). Proof that once a battle is won, the fight is far from over.

The film's UK website is here and here's the YouTube trailer.

Timed to coincide with the UK cinema release is the welcome return of the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, newly remastered for DVD on its 20th anniversary. I look forward to seeing it again, a wonderful feature-length documentary with interviews and footage of the real life Harvey Milk and his adversaries. This was the first time the story won an Academy Award but not, I suspect, the last.

THUNDERBIRDS on Blu-Ray - looking fine in 16:9

4:3, or not 4:3, that is the question

One of my earliest TV memories, or earliest memories actually, was watching Thunderbirds on black and white TV in the 1960s. Another hazy childhood memory was a visit to the cinema and being frightened by a Martian rock snake during the first movie, Thunderbirds Are Go. One of the few survivors from my childhod toybox is a battered die-cast Thunderbird 2. Every week I'd get TV21, a tabloid-sized comic, full of Thunderbirds cartoons strips and impressive colour photos. All in all, Thunderbirds was a large part of my childhood and has survived as an oft-repeated pleasure on TV, VHS and DVD.

I'm still enthralled by the series, after forty years of watching it, and have been collecting books and memorabilia about it and similar shows (like Fireball XL5, Stingray and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons).

It's no surprise that for Christmas, I was given the new HD boxset of Thunderbirds on Blu-Ray, from ITV DVD (sic). So far, Blu-Ray releases have concentrated on movies and recent TV that were all originally produced in widescreen, perfect for the HD aspect ratio of 16:9. The problem is, that until recent years, all TV shows were made with an aspect of 4:3 (otherwise known as 1.33), presenting a dilemma for Blu-Ray - how should a widescreen format present old 'fullframe' images? Widescreen TVs can of course display the entire original 4:3 image, but only with black strips down both sides. This preserves all of the original image but leaves part of the screen unused. But in a few cases, there's another option...

Original 4:3 fullscreen aspect (from DVD)


New 16:9 widescreen aspect (from Blu-Ray)

These screengrabs (from an overly heated debate in the DVD Forums) illustrate how ITV DVD have released Thunderbirds on Blu-Ray. By going back to the original film negatives, the image has been re-framed, cropping off the top and bottom edges, but showing more at the sides. This way, the widescreen frame is filled, and the image is undistorted.

OK, part of the image has been cropped off and the visual composition is altered, (usually looking more cramped over each character's 'headroom'), but the advantage here is a slight gain in image (usually down the left hand side) and, importantly, a startling increase in the clarity of the image and the richness of the colours.

Thunderbirds looks like it has had the same treatment as the upcoming Space 1999 HD release. Both series were originally shot on 35mm film, the same format as most feature films. In both transfers, there only seems to be a slight increase in image width.

While FAB (the official Gerry Anderson fan magazine) gave a thorough and largely negative review of the Thunderbirds Blu-Ray boxset, to me it looks far better than I'd been lead to believe. I've not watched the whole set, but the new widescreen framing has been very carefully chosen so as not to miss any action - the lost image at the top of frame even advantageously disguises most of the puppet characters' supporting wires. The high definition transfer is the best we're going to see unless actual film restoration is done. The zooming in and cropping means that owners of widescreen TVs can get closer into the action, the tighter framing feels more like a movie.

The current need to fill up new HD TV channel schedules is probably the reason this series was remastered in HD in the first place, and the requirement would be for a 16:9 transfer, and not a 4:3 one. If fans still want a 4:3 Thunderbirds in High Definition, ITV DVD will have had to pay for a whole new transfer, meaning an even more pricey boxset. Given the choce of high definition Thunderbirds in 16:9 or not at all, I'd definitely vote for 16:9.

This approach for 16:9 remastering, won't work for the hundreds of other TV programmes that were shot on video, or on film formats such as 16mm (a budget-conscious move for 1970s TV meant that pictures suddenly got extremely grainy). Only series filmed (and edited) on 35mm film can benefit from Blu-Ray and HDTV transmissions. Batman, Land of the Giants and The Avengers are all series that spring to mind as being potentially spectacular in HD.

Before I saw Thunderbirds on Blu-Ray, I was a sceptic and a purist. My goal as a collector has always been to collect my favourites in their original aspect ratios, in the best possible quality. With this new home video format offering so much extra storage capacity, I'd ideally like to have the option when such important decisions are made about how a classic series should look and sound. When VHS ruled home video, there was a decade of waiting for movies to be released widescreen. Now the tables are turned, I'm wishing for TV to be released 1.33 full-frame! The only way to keep everyone happy is to offer a choice of aspect ratios - either as a menu option or by two separate releases, but both options are far more expensive to manufacture. High definition transfers, restoration of old materials, and Blu-Ray mastering are all very expensive - and a TV series such as Thunderbirds is 16 times longer than the average movie.

To enjoy something for thirty years and then, at the point where it could be enjoyed at the best quality ever, to have it drastically changed, is frustrating. But like the classic 1950s Ray Harryhausen films currently being presented on Blu-Ray, I've become more open-minded. If it works, it works. Thunderbirds has been carefully converted to work for widescreen presentation and I'm excited to watch it in this new incarnation, especially with the huge leap in picture quality.

Looking around the fan forums, Gerry Anderson's live-action UFO series has also been cropped for HDTV, but the screen grabs here make it look like the most obtrusive reformatting so far - the original compositions only seem to work in 4:3.

The same decisions will be made about many other classic TV shows, as well as vintage cinema (from the 1950s and earlier, roughly speaking). HD or otherwise, new TV sets are all widescreen. Recent movies look good on widescreen sets, but old TV can only fill the frame by being cropped. In most cases it's going to look worse, in terms of quality and composition. Thunderbirds, I think, is a rare exception.

I'll give the series itself a proper review when I've seen some more episodes, again...