Obscure Cinema

More Blu-ray "exclusives" on HD DVD

Source: AV Science Forum

Courtesy of our friends at DeAPlaneta Home Entertainment and Filmax in Spain, several more titles that are Blu-ray exclusives in the US are due to be released on HD DVD between now and the first quarter of 2007. These include Underworld: Evolution, Saw and Saw II. The title that especially excites me, however, is Asterix and the Vikings - presumably the first ever high definition release of an Asterix film, not to mentioned the first 2D animated title. I'm practically soiling myself with excitement.

Oh, and for all you spaghetti western fans, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is also listed.

First Optimum HD DVDs announced

Source: DVD Times

The HD DVD cause has just been given another boost as Optimum Home Entertainment, holders of the rights to several key European and Asian titles, have leapt into the fray, announcing Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine and Roman Polanski's The Pianist for release on December 11th. Both films will of course be in 24 fps 1080p format, while audio will be comprised of a variety of DTS-HD options: French 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and German 5.1 DTS-HD Hi-Resolution Audio on La Haine, English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and French 5.1 DTS-HD Hi-Resolution Audio on The Pianist.

I can already think of several Optimum titles I would love to pick up in high definition. The entire Studio Ghibli catalogue, anyone?

Mulholland Dr. HD DVD confirmed for March 2007

Source: Resetmag

Studio Canal have announced their second wave of HD DVD releases. A slew of titles, including one of my favourite films ever, David Lynch's Mulholland Dr., have been confirmed for release in France with a street date of March 5th 2007. Other titles include Lynch's The Elephant Man, Akira Kurosawa's Ran, and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, a title that, in the US, is a Blu-ray exclusive. The RRP for each title should be around €25.

A word of warning, though: this will be a very limited release, with the first run being comprised of only 4,000 copies for the four countries included in the release plans (i.e. only 1,000 copies for France). If you want any of these titles, therefore, get your pre-orders in as soon as they're listed!

Site problems

If you've been having trouble accessing this site in the last few hours, it's because my host, Fuitadnet, are currently upgrading their service, and in doing so are transferring all of the data over to new servers. Depending on your web host, you may or may not be able to see the site.

Unfortunately, the backups Fuitadnet used were decidedly out of date - going back to around November 20th. Luckily, Movable Type managed to maintain an archive of all my news posts, so restoring them was a simple matter of hitting the "Rebuild Site" button. Unfortunately, it does mean that a number of the files uploaded to the site in the last couple of weeks have to be uploaded again, including my Profondo Rosso commentary. As such, the commentary is currently not accessible, but should be back online in the next hour or so (curse my slow upload speed!).

Update, December 4, 2006 09:12 PM: Everything should now be in its proper place once again, although a number of web hosts still seem to be unable to access the site.

Update #2, December 4, 2006 11:42 PM: A couple of comments seem to have been lost in the resulting chaos, including one may in the New Lizard DVD on its way (buy it!!!) thread.

Update #3, December 19, 2006 06:17 PM: Fixed dead link.

New Lizard DVD on its way (buy it!!!)

Over the past few days, I have been in correspondence with Richard York of Media Blasters, who is supervising the company's upcoming re-release of A Lizard in a Woman's Skin. Since I'm apparently "the most vocal critic" of their previous release (which both alarms and thrills me in equal measure), he wanted to give me the opportunity to ask any questions that I might have about the version they were putting together, and, having discussed the matter with him, I am now supremely confident that the upcoming release will not only blow away the existing Media Blasters version, but should finally be the definitive release of the film that fans have been waiting for for years.

First of all, this will not simply be a straight copy of the Italian release by Federal Video. Richard is aware of and has viewed this release, but instead Media Blasters have created their own transfer from the same film elements used for that DVD. In doing so, they have been able to identify and avoid a number of the problems affecting that release, including material missing from the opening sex scene and Julia Durer's party, as well as the mangled "rippled/unrippled" dream sequence and the dodgy splice where the same footage of Jean Sorel's character appears in two different places. The running time of the final version will be 103 minutes, making this a proper NTSC presentation rather than a PAL to NTSC standards conversion.

Currently, Richard feels that it is unlikely that the new DVD will be ready in time to hit its announced December 19th release date, expecting a late December/early January release instead, but an official statement should be forthcoming as soon as the entire package is assembled and the final specifications are known.

One thing's for sure, with this and One on Top of the Other (from Severin Films) on their way, early 2007 looks as if it will be an exciting time indeed for Fulci fans.

Dario Argento film rankings

Updated to include Pelts and to reflect my own personal changes in taste since I last did one of these.

• 1. Suspiria (1977) 10/10
• 2. Profondo Rosso (1975) 10/10
• 3. Opera (1987) 10/10
• 4. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) 9/10
• 5. Inferno (1980) 9/10
• 6. The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) 9/10
• 7. Tenebre (1982) 9/10
• 8. Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) 8/10
• 9. Phenomena (1985) 8/10
• 10. The Card Player (2004) 7/10
• 11. The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971) 7/10
• 12. Non Ho Sonno (2001) 7/10
• 13. Trauma (1993) 6/10
• 14. Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005, TV) 6/10
• 15. Door into Darkness: Eyewitness (1973) 6/10
• 16. Masters of Horror: Pelts (2006, TV) 5/10
• 17. Door into Darkness: The Tram (1973, TV) 4/10
• 18. The Phantom of the Opera (1998) 4/10
• 19. Masters of Horror: Jenifer (2005, TV) 3/10

Who knows where The Third Mother will end up?

Lovers, Liars and Lunatics: suburban dystopia

If Amber Benson is one thing, it's committed. During the production of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's fifth season, she juggled appearances on that show with work on her own independent project, an offbeat comedy called Chance, on which she served as lead actor, writer, producer and director. The film, shot on video with a budget of $25,000, was decidedly rough around the edges, but ultimately quite charming for all its eccentricities, and showed the multi-faceted Benson's talent for writing quirky yet believable characters.

Fast forward four years, and her second film, on which she returns as star, writer, producer and director, and also adds film editor to her roster of talents, has just been released on DVD, like Chance sold directly through her production company, Benson Entertainment. Exactly how much it cost to make is unclear, but it seems to have been funded, at least partially, through a series of fund-raisers, auctions of personal possessions and of a series of Willow and Tara action figures. From the first film, it's clear that a lot has changed. The source material is now 35mm film, and the camera setups are considerably more ambitious than those of its predecessor. It's not always successful - there are some instances of truly bizarre framing, a handful of shots in which the focus is on something other than the main point of attention, and some rather problematic moments that lack establishing shots, making it difficult to get a feeling for the geography and positions of the various characters - but by and large the film has a slicker, more professional feel than that of Chance. Jakobine Motz's cinematography is functional rather than particularly impressive (the lighting is rather flat), but, with the move from video to film, Benson has abandoned the hand-held, quasi-documentarian format of the previous film in favour of something more controlled. On the aural front, the dialogue recording is sometimes a little ropey, but the orchestral score, which kicks in occasionally but effectively, helps paper over the cracks.

The plot, meanwhile, is enough to sustain the 87-minute running time, but isn't hugely substantial. Essentially, two incompetent robbers break into a suburban household, but quickly find themselves caught up in the neurotic family's own dysfunctional relationships. Benson, this time, although given title billing, takes more of a back seat as far as acting goes, given that this is, for all intents and purposes, an ensemble piece, with eight main roles and a handful of secondary parts. The black humour of Chance, meanwhile, is maintained throughout, although the actors are at times hamstrung by a script that is very talky - Benson's other writing credits are primarily as a novelist, and it shows in what appears to be an intermittent reluctance to show things visually (characters will frequently mutters to themselves phrases like "Fucking bitch!" and "I hate him!", which should be self-evident to even the least attentive viewer).

The film also ends on something of a false note with a conclusion that seems intended partially to be blackly comedic and partially to be shocking: in a sense, the abrupt change of tone results in an ending that seems too dark to be successful given the film's otherwise light-hearted tone.

Despite these problems, though, it's hard not to admire the film for its bare-faced enthusiasm. Yes, it's considerably slicker than Chance and, to some extent, more market-friendly (the narrative is more conventionally linear, there are no monologues to the camera, no guitar-strumming troubadours entering the scene to narrate the plot, and Benson has reigned in her use of the word "cunt"), but it's still an odd and distinctive film with a decidedly hand-made feel to it. I'm not sure exactly how many people are going to end up seeing it, as the $30-33 (depending on whereabouts in the world you're located) price tag, plus the fact that the DVD can only be ordered from the official web site, will put a lot of people off, but it deserves an audience. 7/10.

DVDs I bought or received in the month of November

• Alias: The Complete Fifth Series (R2 UK, SD DVD)
• Astérix et les Vikings (R2 France, SD DVD)
• Cars (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Home Alone: Family Fun Edition (R1 USA, SD DVD)
• Lovers, Liars and Lunatics (R0 USA, SD DVD)
• Peep Show: Series Three (R2 UK, SD DVD)
• V for Vendetta (R0 USA, HD DVD)
• Veronica Mars: The Complete Second Season (R1 USA, SD DVD)

Some interesting titles this month, including my first ever British HD DVD. Although, given that it's actually just a US release relabelled, that probably doesn't count for much.

Giallo Fever!

He's a new blog that all you giallo obsessives will want to add to your bookmarks folder: Giallo Fever is run by Keith Brown, the webmaster of the excellent Kinocite and author of the dissertation Genre, Author and Excess: Dario Argento's Deep Red and Suspiria. The blog has been live for less than a fortnight, but already it contains a number of fascinating posts and observations on giallo cinema. The main focus is on Argento's films, which is absolutely fine as they are, in my opinion, the most fruitful from an analytical perspective. If you have any interest in these films, be sure to check this great site out!

Oops, I did it again - Profondo Rosso commentary

Well, it's finally done: all 126 minutes of Profondo Rosso (or thereabouts - there are a handful of brief blank spots) have now been commented on, and the files are ready to be downloaded. It took a little longer to get another commentary up and running than I would have liked (over a year, to be precise), but I'm very happy with this one, and think it's much better than its predecessor. On this track, I talk about everything from Jung to Michelangelo Antonioni to being scalded by espresso machines!

Once again, the commentary is split into two halves, to make it easier for people who want to burn audio CDs and not have to wrangle with chopping it in two to fit the 80-minute time limit themselves. Each half is accompanied by a "beep" sound to allow you to synchronise the track with the film. For Part 1, synchronise the beep with the first credit appearing on the screen; for Part 2, synchronise it with the first shot inside the police station (01:11:20 on the Anchor Bay DVD).

I would recommend running the film at a low level of volume in the background when you listen to this commentary.

• NTSC version
  (use this version if you have the US Anchor Bay or Italian Medusa Film release)
  Part One (24.2 MB, MP3 format)
  Part Two (18.7 MB, MP3 format)
  
  
• PAL version
  (use this version if you have the UK Platinum Media release)
  Part One (23.2 MB, MP3 format)
  Part Two (17.9 MB, MP3 format)

If you don't have one of the three versions listed above, you may have to try pot luck. Broadly speaking, if the running time of your copy is around 126 minutes, use the NTSC version; if it's closer to 122 minutes, go for PAL. Also, bear in mind that this commentary was intended to be listened to in conjunction with the full-length uncut version of the film rather than the shorter English export version.

Hopefully you'll find something in this to enjoy, even if I don't happen to come up with any wildly original interpretations or observations. I was inspired by a number of sources, including my own dissertation, from which I re-use a couple of passages (which, if you've read it, you'll probably be able to spot). This one is filled with a lot less "ums" and "ers" than my Suspiria's commentary, too, so it should be less of a headache to listen to.

Let me know what you think of it!

Warning: this track contains spoilers for The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Strip Nude For Your Killer! If you've not seen the former, you may wish to do so before listening to this track. If you've not seen the latter... well... don't bother.

Sorry America, we got your Potters!

Forgive me this moment of plagiarism, but I still think it's one of the funniest thread titles I've seen relating to this subject. As I laid out in an earlier post, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, still lacking an official date for its US released, came out on HD DVD in the UK on November 20th, and word quickly spread that, barring the inclusion on the cover of BBFC logos and the usual UK additionata (to borrow a phrase from Garth Marenghi), such as a quote from the Daily Mirror, this was actually just the as yet unannounced US release rebadged. Well, curiosity got the better of me and, despite only having a lukewarm reaction to the first two Potter films, I ended up ordering a copy from Play.com.

It arrived today, and the rumours are true: when you pop the disc in, you're greeted with an FBI warning screen, followed by the Warner logo and the same annoying and bombastic Warner HD DVD trailer that they've included on every single one of their releases so far, then an MPAA PG-13 logo, followed by the film itself. If the studios continue to follow this model of simply repackaging (and re-labelling) the US discs, this strikes me as being a good thing, for two reasons. First: it cuts down on costs, meaning that a single master can be prepared for both North America and the UK (and any other English-speaking territories, as well as other locations like France and Spain, provided the extras are comprehensively subtitles, given that these discs tend to include French and Spanish dubs). Second: it should help bury the horrible legacy of PAL speed-up in films and dodgy NTSC to PAL standards converted extras. At the moment, Potter is a rare beast indeed: a 24 fps film with 30 fps NTSC extras that you can pick up off a UK store shelf. Hopefully this trend will continue.

Anyway, enough of that - how's the disc? Superb, is the answer. In fact, it comes very close to toppling Serenity from its "best HD DVD transfer" throne. It's amazing that Warner can put out an edge enhanced, slightly filtered and noise reduced release like V for Vendetta one week, and then release something that, to my eyes, looks almost completely untampered the next. This is an amazing looking transfer, with excellent detail and a rich, smooth, film-like look, and the fact that there are no real problems with compression is a phenomenal achievement given the number of difficult moments in this film - crowd scenes, underwater chases, firework displays, not to mention dodgy CGI fire-breathing dragons. This is very much a 10 out of 10 affair, with my only concern being some prominent edge enhancement in a couple of background shots in an early scene, which is so much heavier than anything else in the film (or indeed the shots in question) that I'm pretty sure it was a result of some effects work rather than the encoding.

As for the film, I enjoyed it more than the first two Potters, although it is to my mind still heavily flawed, not to mention far too long. As has been something of a trend recently, it's also fairly clear that, rather than being a stand-alone film, it's merely a single part in a much larger story. This wouldn't have been a massive problem were it not for the fact that the film ends on a "to be continued" note in all but name: in the final half-hour, a hideous villain and arch-enemy of Harry's escapes from his prison and comes after him, but nothing is done about this and, as is usually the case, the film ends with the school year ending and the characters heading their separate ways. Harry might have said, "Gee willickers! There's a terrible villain who wants to kill me on the loose, but we'll deal with him next term." I did, however, appreciate the somewhat darker tone when compared to the first two films (I still need to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third film), and the child actors seem to be improving as they grow older.

Oh yeah, and I also finally received my long-awaited copy of Amber Benson's new film, Lovers, Liars and Lunatics, which she wrote, produced, edited, directed and starred in. The disc was posted to me by Ms Benson herself, judging by the fact that the signature on the customs declaration matches the signature on the front cover (she signed the first 500 copies). Full thoughts and impressions will follow as soon as I've had a chance to watch it, but, having taken a glance at a couple of minutes, I should probably warn you that the transfer is interlaced and non-anamorphic (although, unlike Amber's previous film, Chance, it's shot on 35mm film rather than video).

Update, December 19, 2006 05:54 PM: Fixed dead link.

La Dolce Morte: a brief review

I finished reading Mikel Koven's La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo last night, and thought I'd say a few words about it.

First of all, as I mentioned before, this is an excellent study, and nothing else like it exists. Academics, for the most part, tend to shun gialli anyway, assuming them to be unworthy of serious study, but, even when one looks at things from a less scholarly perspective, there is a real dearth of available books focusing on this genre, with perhaps the only English language title dedicated to the giallo being Adrian Luther Smith's Blood and Black Lace, a guide that is exhaustive in its breadth but, for that very reason, lacks depth.

Generally, it seems that most scholars ignore gialli because they don't consider them to be "good" cinema, lacking the sophistication and "art" of the more highly regarded Italian films by the likes of Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini. Even those who do study giallo films tend to be dismissive of the bulk of the genre, focusing on the films of Dario Argento or Mario Bava at the expense of all others. Maitland McDonagh, for example, who was the first scholar to seriously study Argento, in her book Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds claimed that the "outlandish titles" of the non-Argento gialli are "the only interesting things about them", effectively rejecting an entire genre, barring the output of one of its most prominent directors.

Koven's argument is that such scholars are looking at these films in the wrong way. He points out that they were originally intended to be played to a working class, non-critical audience who had little interest in sophistication and intelligent plotting, preferring instead to be entertained by a parade of sex and violence. Viewing these films instead in terms of "vernacular cinema", he therefore argues, removes the need to justify these films as being "artistic" (which, he claims, most are not), instead looking at them from the same perspective as their original intended audience. He builds a very convincing case for this over the course of ten chapters, establishing first the nature of the giallo and of its audience, before going on to dissect specific traits of these films - e.g. the role of the detective, attitudes towards modernity, the influence of the giallo on North American slashers. In doing so, he refers to a commendable number of titles, although there is, as usually tends to be the case, something of an over-reliance on Argento's films.

Koven's approach is, therefore, a perfectly valid one. The only problem is that I don't agree with it, and at times I found his continued refusal to view these films in anything other than vernacular terms to be something of a stumbling block. In a sense, I completely understand why he did this - anyone putting together a case study, no matter how broad the scope, must set certain parameters or run the risk of waffling - but it should be remembered that this book really only shows one side of the coin. Koven is, I'm sure, absolutely right when he argues that, say, The Case of the Bloody Iris (Giuliano Carnimeo, 1972) was only ever intended to be watched as trashy entertainment, and that applying the sort of analytical methods that academics also apply to the films of Fellini and Antonioni is ultimately a poor fit. At the same time, though, to pass off the entire giallo genre as being "only" vernacular cinema is, in my opinion, unwise. I've already written at length about the films of Argento and a few select others that I believe can be analysed, at least partially, as art cinema.

To tar the entire genre with the same brush is therefore, in my opinion, problematic. There are certain traits that constitute a "typical" giallo (e.g. lots of sex and violence, screaming women and gallant male rogues saving the day), but what applies to The Case of the Bloody Iris doesn't necessarily apply to Profondo Rosso (Argento, 1975). In looking at these films from a completely vernacular perspective, you run the risk of doing exactly what Koven accuses those who try to fit them into an art cinema context of doing. Yes, plenty of academics look down their noses at these films because they don't fit the framework of a Fellini, but, if you try to put them in their own little box and claim that we shouldn't even try to analyse them as art films, then you're essentially just playing into the hands of the snobs, becoming apologetic for their very existence. (It's a bit like what Stephen Thrower said in Beyond Cinema: The Films of Lucio Fulci: his argument was that talking about "justified" and "unjustified" violence was ludicrous, because, if a horror fan tries to defend his favourite gore scene in such terms, he is merely playing into the hands of the censors and automatically on the defensive.) By removing the need to justify them as "artistic", on some level you prevent them, and their study, from being considered respectable at all.

I don't want to give the wrong impression: I liked this book very much. It was an enjoyable read with a coherent argument maintained throughout, and I would like to think that it will pave the way for studies of the giallo from a variety of different perspectives. Ultimately, though, it only represents a single viewpoint, and one that, whatever the author's intentions, seems a little one-sided in its focus.

Update, December 19, 2006 05:58 PM: Fixed dead link.

New DVD image comparison

Sorry for the lack of updates over the past couple of days. I've been a little busy, mainly with working on my Profondo Rosso commentary (nearly an hour's worth of material in the can now!), as well as seeing my GP about my urination problem (I'm now on pills which are giving me an extremely dry throat, requiring me to drink a great deal, so, as you can probably imagine, it's something of a vicious circle).

Anyway, I have a new DVD image comparison for you today. A while back, my good friend Lee sent me a copy of the German Limited Edition release of Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace (my review of which earned this site its first ever heckler). As a result, I've compared it with the two US releases I own - the 2001 Special Edition and the 2005 Unslashed Collectors' Edition - both from VCI.

Take a look at the full comparison to learn the outcome of this investigation.

Update, December 19, 2006 05:59 PM: Fixed dead link.

Commentary update

As it currently stands, my Profondo Rosso commentary now runs for just under 41 minutes. I spent this afternoon compiling a semi-detailed outline of every scene that's left to run, and what I intend to say about each. The good news is that, barring a handful of moments, I think I'm going to have enough material to last for the duration of the film. The bad news is that, for the moments where I currently don't have any material, I really am not sure what I'm going to do. It shouldn't be too bad in the grand scheme of things, and if worst comes to worst, I may just leave them silent, but it's not an ideal situation.

Alan Jones on The Third Mother

Source: Dark Dreams

Straight from the Turin set of Dario Argento's concluding chapter in the Three Mothers trilogy, all-round Argento expert Alan Jones has provided a detailed report of what's going on. It's considerably less spoiler-intensive than his usual reports (Argento specifically asked him not to give too much away, because he wants audiences to be surprised), but a vast amount of new information has been conveyed, and I've decided to summarise what I consider to be the most important developments here.

• The title is definitely La Terza Madre/The Third Mother. "Mother of Tears" was the title Myriad Pictures wanted to use, but they are no longer involved with the project. Medusa is now funding the entire project themselves, having gone all-out due to fan anticipation.
• A lot of the information provided in Jones' May 2006 script review is no longer accurate, as, in typical Argento fashion, the script has been in a constant state of flux and major changes have been made to scenes right before being shot. This includes the ending, which will be completely different from what was originally conceived.
• Shooting is expected to be completed in mid-December.
• The colour scheme, unlike the previous two films, will begin cold and muted, and gradually become richer and redder as the film progresses.
• Confirmed cast and characters: Asia Argento (Sarah Mandy), Adam James (Michael Pierce), Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni (Giselle), Udo Kier (Padre Johannes), Daria Nicolodi (Elisa - presumably Elise Stallone Van Alder, Sarah's mother who appears to her as a ghost), Cristian Solimeno (Detective Enzo Marchi), Franco Leo (Monsignor Brusca), Tommaso Banfi (Padre Miseli), Valeria Cavalli (Marta), Silvia Rubino (Elga), Moran Atias (Mater Lachrymarum).
• Argento intends to have the film finished in time for the Cannes Film Festival 2007, and the UK premiere is expected to be at FrightFest 2007 later in the year.

A lot of exciting information to be sure. Exclusive set photos are expected to go online soon, and I'll link to them when they become available.

Update, November 18, 2006 04:43 PM: Pictures are now available. I've changed the link to go to the dedicated page for the report at Dark Dreams, which contains the photos and should be more permanent than the forum post. To see the discussion, follow this link.

Commentary update

I spent a considerable part of today working on my Profondo Rosso commentary, and I'm happy to report that just under 33 minutes of material are laid down. It's slow going, mainly because I want it to be as smooth and seamless as possible, so I'm going back over as many moments as possible that seem stilted or unnatural and re-recording them. This of course plays havoc with the synchronisation, given that, if the length of an early portion changes even very slightly, it'll throw the remainder of the track out of sync.

I'm terribly afraid that I'm going to dry up at some point half-way through the track - I am, after all, recording for a 126-minute film (Suspiria, at only 98 minutes, was tough enough), so I'm going to have to dig out as many essays and articles as possible for inspiration. So far, I've rubbished Marcia Landy's book Italian Film (according to her, the murder of the Jewish Helga is intended to make us draw comparisons between this and the Holocaust), slandered Strip Nude For Your Killer and spoken at length about the role of the supernatural in the film. Right now I'm just getting into the juicy stuff, namely women's rights and arm-wrestling contests. Wish me luck!

Blue Underground re-releasing select Italian horror titles in 2007

Source: Fangoria

Blue Underground has announced that it will reissue a slew of Italian horror titles previously released by Anchor Bay on February 27. Dario Argento's DEEP RED and INFERNO, Mario Bava's SHOCK, Lucio Fulci's CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD and DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING and Armando Crispino's AUTOPSY will come with the previous disc extras and be available for a limited time only, each priced at $14.95.

Hmm, could be good, could be not. The optimist in me would like to think that these releases will feature brand new transfers and rectify some of the problems with the earlier releases - e.g. the frozen end credits for Deep Red, the lack of original mono audio on Deep Red and Inferno, the lack of subtitles on all of them - but the pessimist suspects that these are just the same discs repackaged. The almost identical cover art, and the very low recommended retail price, certainly don't bode well.

Still, this might be a good opportunity for me to pick up a copy of the currently out of print Don't Torture a Duckling to replace my copy which disappeared in the post this summer. And, if it gets more people to watch these films, so much the better. You know, if Blue Underground (or does Anchor Bay still have the rights?) has any sense, they'll release a full blown 30th Anniversary Special Edition of Suspiria in 2007, to coincide with the release of Mother of Tears. And, while they're at it, they can include the original 4-channel audio mix instead of the bungled monstrosity on the current DVD.

Giallo whimsies

This morning I received a copy of La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film from Amazon.com. Billed as "the first academic study of the giallo film in English", this 196-page book is the work of Mikel J. Koven, a film and television studies lecturer at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, who was good enough to send me copies of two of his giallo-related essays back when I was writing my dissertation. These chapters, it would seem, have been appropriated into the book, which attempts to discuss these films from a vernacular perspective - in other words, studying them from the point of view of the audiences they were originally aimed at rather than getting all caught up in notions of "quality" and "art". (Most critics and academics tend to reject these films, and their study, because they don't consider them high-brow enough.) I've only read the first one and a half chapters, but so far it seems like excellent stuff, and is the sort of study that the giallo genre sorely needs.

Oh yeah, and yesterday, I recorded the first 10 minutes or so of my Profondo Rosso commentary. I did three passes at it, but eventually came to the conclusion that, without a precise script, it's very difficult for me to produce something that can actually be listened to (way too much "umming" and "awwing"). This morning, therefore, I rewrote what I'd recorded in script form, and will hopefully start recording from the start again tomorrow.

Yes, I will do another commentary

I'm going to record another audio commentary. I'm posting this now because I figure I've been stalling for far too long, and that if I've actually said I'm going to do it, then there is at least some chance that enough people will bug me about it to make sure I actually get it done. Then again, it didn't do much good the last few times I said I was going to do this...

Anyway, I've decided this time that I'm going to do Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso (Deep Red to all you Neanderthals out there!), for a few reasons. First of all, I wrote an essay on it earlier this year, so I have some existing material to work with. Second of all, I want to cover myself because I'm not sure I'll have enough material to talk through an entire film, so I've decided to go with a title that I feel is iconic enough that, if need be, I can turn it into a discussion of the giallo genre as a whole. Profondo Rosso is regarded by many as the ultimate giallo, and it's also one of the few titles that pretty much anyone with an interest in the genre will own, so I figure it's a safer bet than going with something pretty obscure like Death Laid an Egg or The Black Belly of the Tarantula.

I'd really like to make this one a little more freeform than before. I was listening to my Suspiria commentary (available here) recently, as well as the provisional material I recorded on Tenebre and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, and I found them far too stilted for my liking. It's obvious that I'm simply reading from a script, so my intention this time will be to have a selection of topics to cover, an attempt to basically pull a discussion out of my ass on the spot. How successful this will be remains to be seen - I'm not exactly a confident speaker, and my ability to improvise and come up with wacky anecdotes on the spot is not exactly great - but, having listened to a whole bunch of audio commentaries, including those by both filmmakers and critics, I've come to the conclusion that the non-scripted ones are the easiest to listen to.

Wish me luck! (And hope that I actually finish this one.)

Blood and Bava

Along with Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava is often considered to be part of the holy trinity of Italian horror cinema. In 1963, he wrote and directed The Girl Who Knew Too Much, which is widely considered to be the first ever giallo film, and his influence can be felt in virtually every American slasher film of the 1980s, with his Bay of Blood (also known as Twitch of the Death Nerve) having been ripped off wholesale by Sean S. Cunningham with Friday the 13th.

Despite this, however, I've never really been able to get into Bava's films in the way that I have with Argento, Fulci and other less immediately memorable giallo directors like Massimo Dallamano, Aldo Lado, Luciano Ercoli and Paolo Cavara. Bava is one of the finest visual craftsmen ever to have lived - that much, I think, is undeniable - and the minuscule budgets he had to work with only serves to make his achievements all the more remarkable. I think that he is often let down by his scripts, though. Bava was very much a "director for hire" in the traditional sense: he would turn his hand to anything in order to put food on the table, and, as such, he never claimed a genre as his own in the way that Argento did with giallo and Sergio Leone did with the Western. A lot of Bava's films, therefore, fail to engage me, because I often get the feeling that he wasn't truly invested in what he was doing. As visually awe-inspiring as his work is, he often seems to have found himself working with rather generic scripts, and while I don't think that an amazing screenplay is by any means the be-all and end-all of a film, most of the time I struggle to understand the big deal with his films.

If The Girl Who Knew Too Much was the film that started the giallo phenomenon, it was Blood and Black Lace, made a year later, that solidified many of the archetypes that would be adopted wholesale during the boom of the early 1970s: the masked, black-attired killer; the cast of nubile women being offed; the psychosexual nature of the murders; the parade of shifty suspects, all with something to hide. The narrative, as such, seems a bit derivative, although it must be remembered that this is the one that set the stage for what was to come. It's not a particularly remarkable plot, though, even taking into account its position as a forerunner to the genre: a series of murders are taking place, the victims all models from a prestigious agency. The usual shifty-looking characters are on the prowl, and, despite dropping like flies, none of the women are particularly eager to divulge what they know. I doubt that this would have been considered original stuff even at the time of its release. Rightly or wrongly, however, it has been retroactively identified as the first ever "body count movie".

What does stand out as remarkable, though, is the photography. Even by Bava's already high standards, this is one incredible-looking piece of work. He originally trained as a painter, and it shows: every frame is expertly composed, with a level of three-dimensionality that sucks you into the world, despite its obviously artificial appearance. It's obvious that Argento was heavily influenced by this when he did Suspiria 13 years later, and yet the comparisons are somewhat unjust. Whereas Suspiria's setting could never be mistaken for that of the real world, Blood and Black Lace's feels authentic despite its deliberate artifice.

In the final analysis, therefore, I can't claim to be as enamoured by Blood and Black Lace as some, but I appreciate it as a key film partially responsible for spawning one of the Italian film industry's most lucrative filoni, and as an outstanding achievement in a technical sense. This is definitely a film that deserves to be seen by a wider audience, so that people can appreciate not only where the giallo genre came from, but also the American slasher movement of the 1970s and 80s. Bava definitely doesn't get the recognition he deserves as a trendsetter.

PS. I'm incredibly grateful to Lee for his copy of the German DVD release of the film, which is vastly preferable to either of the two releases put out by VCI in the US.