Hello everybody, and welcome back to another Thursday evening on the disc Connected.
We're here with somebody that I respect and admire quite a bit, mister Troy
Howard. Tonight, Troy, thanks for volunteering to do this. Thank you
for having me. Got Klaus over his shoulder and ready to hang out.
We're gonna be talking about Peter Cushing tonight, just a little bit of a
lean I I have found that I don't explain this before we get started enough,
So if it's somebody's first time here, just so you're aware, we're
gonna go over some you know, random hangout time for a little bit,
talk about some recent pickups, what we've watched, go into all of the
physical media announcements for the week, and then we have a long discussion tonight.
It's going to be a discussion on Peter Cushing. And like many of
you, probably I am on the lighter side of knowledge on Peter Cushing.
So I'm going to rely on Troy Tonight. Troy, are you ready to
be a tour guide for me? I'll just make it up and hope that
nobody calls me out for it. Well, I imagine, knowing what we
both know, that wouldn't be the first time. Well, true, we
have something to highlight for mister Cushing. He just recently had a pretty pretty
incredible look and release from seven that just came out called Cushing's Curiosities, and
I unfortunately don't have it yet. I'm dying to get this one. Same
with that Donza Macabre of all too, and they're doing a lot with some
of these box sets, so I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I don't have the Don's Macaber sets yet. I'm
sure I will at some point, but I do have Cushion Curiosities, and
very pleased I am with it. I am excited to hear more about it
and here all of the knowledge that you can impart on us. Speaking of
physical things, any recent pickups that you'd like to share with the group,
Well, there are a few, but I figured I would just grab and
show off this little toy here, the Coffin Joe box set from Arrow Collection
of Films by Jose Molhica Marines. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. If
I'm not, I apologize. I don't. I'm not conversant in the language,
but as far as I know, that's correct, and yeah, that's
a really amazing box set. These are films, some of which have never
really been presented properly on video before, as I'm sure I remember Synaps put
out some of the films in the US a long time ago on DVD,
so these are long overdue upgrades with all kinds of new special features. And
apparently I've not dug into it yet, but the remastering on the films is
pretty mind blowing, so good stuff. Uh, for those that haven't heard
yet, I haven't posted anything about it. We weren't going to talk about
it news, but should highlight here there's likely going to be a disc replacement
for one of the discs in this there's one of the films the caption stop
at thirty three minutes in and for some reason, they're just not existent for
the rest of the film. So I'm sure they'll they're they're going to have
to replace that. It's not in English, and uh, yeah, they'll
get that out to everybody shoon, I'm sure, and Aaron's usually pretty good
about that, so we will, we will. I'm I'm sure here in
the next you know, one or two weeks about that, since it's happening
for everybody. Well, it happens. Even Paramount put out a four K
of Rosemary's Baby recently and they had to do a replacement because there was a
line of dialogue that Ralph Bellamy says late in the film that I'm watching it.
I thought, wait a second, I know this movie very well,
where's that line? And then sure enough I saw there was a replacement program
which I already got my replacement, and the line is back. So that's
good. That's very fast for a studio to be honest. A couple things
for me. I finally got in Weird the Al Yankovic story on four K.
This is the shout release one of this since it got announced. Love
Weird Al been to one of its concerts. Have you ever been into Weird
Al? I'm sure somebody of your age were quite some time with him.
Yeah, yeah, a little bit. Not a fanatic, but I definitely
am familiar and have enjoyed some of it. Never never had the opportunity to
see him live, though. It is a blast and he puts on a
hell of a show. The other big one I got in Second Site's massive
release of Mean Streets. This is the four K box set that just came
out shows this over Criterion. I just generally prefer Second Sight's output and then
the big one for me suitable flesh. This is the newest one from Joe
Lynch, and should take the time here to tell everybody that's not in the
Patreon Patreon got the chance to input questions if they had it. But I
was able to interview the director, mister Joe Lynch himself this week and that'll
be up on the channel in the next few weeks. And this is a
really good one. The dude has some incredible talent and it felt like a
very passing of the Torch moment from the Lovecraft worship area of the mid eighties
to the early nineties with Stuart Gordon going over to Joe Lynch and really really
loved it. We got a question to show the spine of Mean Streets to
see how thick it is. A it's a pretty big release. It's not
as big as Drive or anything like that, but it's a big release for
sure. Any recent watches that are not part of your work that you want
to be able to talk about, Uh, well, I made my way
through the massive sensual world of Men Black Men. Well from several that one
which was yeah, yeah, it was quite the journey, and I have
to say it was a fascinating experience. I can't say I liked all the
films, but I liked most of them, and I was very happy to
have them all gathered together. I mean, there's you know, there are
only so many of them that are like quote unquote legitimate black menuil films,
and there's a bunch of kind of you know, adjacent titles. It was
fun to have them. H There were a couple that kind of had me,
you know, wanting to slit a wrist trying to make my way through
them, But by and large, I was very pleased. They are a
lot of fun to watch, and I would highly recommend that set to anybody
that's curious. You're you're gonna be sucked in for quite some time with that
one. I Yeah, I agree. I I still think this is one
of the easily, like the most ambitious box sets ever created. I mean,
the fact that we got that many, that many rights holders to negotiate
and be able to come together and something so ambitious like this is just impressive.
Seven like that there's something special happening there. Yeah, No, they
do. They do a lot of good work and well. Also I watched
their release of Delamorte de Lamori recently, and also their release of Last Horror
Film with Joe Spinel, and again, you know, fine releases. I
mean, I did kind of find myself wondering as I was watching Last Horror
Film, did this really need to be on four K? I'm not altogether
sure about that given the visual quality of the film, but it looks as
good as it ever can and it's got a lot of good stuff extras wise,
and it's lovingly produced, so that's nice and well. Dellamorte Delamoria was
was just gorgeous of course. Really finally find only caught the release that deserved
comments, I guess for you from Brendan, just want to say, while
you're here, thank you. Troy learned so much about genre film from your
books and staving into it a few years ago. Thank you. It's always
nice to hear that people are appreciating and enjoying my efforts, and there are
many, many efforts. If you have never checked out Troy stuff, please
go out there. Many of them are still available on Amazon, still fairly
inexpensive, and the amount of information in them can be overwhelming, so it
is very much worth worth your your pennies that you can throw at it.
Reason watches for me a couple things. For some projects that I'm working on.
I spent a lot of time with the one that mister Craig from Deaf
Crocodile announced here just a couple of weeks ago. kN ditsa ditza. I'm
gonna say on that way on purpose because Will and I have been joking about
the title for a little bit. We just did a visual essay for that
one, so I feel like I've been in Russia for last week. It
is a glorious film, and when that finally comes out, I think you
all will really appreciate it. That movie is magnificent. Let's see comment on
the last horror film. Watching that four K, I felt like I was
a physically transported to nineteen eighty one at the con Film Festival. Yeah,
it is the only horror film that Marcella Mostrani was ever in, and he
didn't even know he was in it. Derek says Scarecrow videos a mecca film.
Unbelievable selection. I've been there many times. Do support Scarecrow Buy a
shirt. Derek is talking about the fact that I'm wearing a Scarecrow video shirt
tonight in Seattle. Go support them please, They're amazing people. But yeah,
not many other recent watches for me tonight. The big thing I just
I want Troy to feel welcome tonight. So let's jump into some of these
announcements. My first one tonight. This is one of my favorite films in
the last decade. I'm eager to see if Troy has seen this one second
Sights Who he just showed the Mean Streets from They're putting out a four K
green Room, which came out in twenty fifteen. This is a very,
very incredible film in my opinion, with a punk rock band that is stuck
in a neo Nazi bar overnight and have to fight to survive the night.
Basically, we got a new audio commentary, some archival commentaries, new interviews
with a bunch of individuals involved, and this is really exciting for me.
Especially We've got new essays by a mutual friend of ours, Eugenio Eric Alanis
on this one, and then Alexandra Heller, Nicholas Josh Hurtado, Joline Richardson
and a few others, plus the standard second site art cards and all that
fun stuff that comes with it. Have you ever seen Green Room Troy?
Oh, yeah, No, it's a very good film. Patrick Stewart's great
and of course, and yeah, I definitely I'm glad to see that this
is getting a nice upgrade and always nice to see O Jennio involved in anything
that is a is he busy man by the way he is, His hands
are in everything. It seems like, Yeah, he's definitely got a full
plate. I'm there with him quite frequently, so I know, Yeah,
you guys have done a lot over over the last year together. It seems
like stepped up a little bit with you and Nathaniel and him working trio on
some of these. Yeah, commentary wise, I forget when we did our
first one together. It might have been it might have been twenty twenty two.
But yeah, there have been a bunch lately, and well we're going
to be recording another one next week as a matter of fact, and there's
lots of that, and we collaborate on book projects as well. So he's
he's good people and he's been a great, tremendous asset for me as far
as you know, helping to enrich my projects, my book projects. The
most odd thing about him when it comes to Italian cinema is you can name
seemingly anybody in Italian cinema history and he'll have some personal story attached to that
individual jewel somehow. Well, yeah, his mother worked in the Talian film
industry, and of course his grandfather was a great director. Julia Petroni directed
To Paper with Orson Wells and Tomas Millia and Death Rides a Horse with Lee
Van Cleef and John Philip Loss. So yeah, he's his roots run pretty
deep. And whenever I do commentaries with him, I don't even attempt to
say Italian titles because it's bad enough the way that I pronounced these things anyway.
But when I'm there with him, I just I let him do it,
because he knows what he's doing. I reached out to him a little
while ago to talk about some special features I have him working on for another
release, and I brought up this random film. I was like, Hey,
do you happen to know anybody from this? He goes, oh,
yeah, my mom dated the directors. What the hell? Yeah? Love
love that guy. Next one another one up from Second Side the film Possessor
from twenty twenty. This is the Brandon Kronenberg film. This is coming out
on four K on March eighteenth. This is going to be four K and
Blu ray discs in this and the special features and the main feature are on
both discs, So even if you are region A locked, you should be
able to get this and watch everything on the disc in your four K player.
So that's pretty damn cool. We've got a new audio commentary from Brandon
Kroneberg on this. We've got a double Dolby Vision. I forgot to say
that, but yeah, it'll be full four K and Dolby Vision HDR.
New interview with Brandon Kroneberg, new interview with a bunch of people from the
film. And again we've got you know, the art cards and all that
fun stuff that they put in this. And then we got a short film
please speak continuously and describe your experiences that they come to you. That's really
cool that they don't get to do that all that often. And then we've
got one hundred and twenty page book on this with new essays by Stacy Abbott,
Anton Btateel, John Towson, and Heather Wixon. I mean, it's
second side again, just incredible, incredible quality. What do you think of
Possessor? Troy very interesting film. I'm not entirely aboard the Brandon Cronenberg trading
just yet. I love his father, but between this and Infinity Pool,
he's definitely very interesting. I find the films more I let's say, I
appreciate them and I respect them more than I probably really enjoy them. But
they're definitely interesting. They're definitely original, and yeah, he's definitely somebody that
I'm interested to watch as he evolves. Did you ever get a chance to
see his first film, Anti Viral? I didn't see that one. Just
this to two I mentioned, and like I said, I thought they were
you know, they're definitely well worth seeing. They weren't the type of films
that made me say, oh, I can't wait to watch that again,
But you know, you never know. Sometimes you see him again later down
the line and they click with you more. So. They're not films that
I would write off by any means. I would agree there. I really
liked Possessor and for some reason still haven't want watched it since that first time.
It's nothing that super drew me back into it. But for especially for
a second film, it took some swings. It was not something that you
would expect from a second film. But then again, it's a Cronaberg,
so I mean it's kind of in his veins. Probably it runs into family
exactly. Next one up is one that we are gonna talk about for sure.
Unlawful Entry from nineteen ninety two that I just talked about on the channel
about six weeks ago or so is coming out as a site exclusive from Shout
Studios. And this sold out within forty eight or seventy two hours of being
announced something like that. And what's funny is it's a side exclusive that got
some new special features. It's got a retrospective interview with a director, it's
got an interview with the cinematographer, a retrospective interview with film music historian Daniel
Schweiger about the James Horner score on this. And it was announced as having
sixteen hundred and twenty copies, the most arbitrary that Shout could think of,
and out of nowhere. Today they said, oh, it sold very well.
How about now we announced that we can sell nine hundred and eighty more
of them. And so this limited edition copy is going now all the way
up to twenty six hundred titles, and those nine hundred and eighty will be
going back up for sale when they get to the warehouse, and they've already
shipped most of that first run that was ordered, So keep an eye on
that if you missed it and you want it, because this is in my
opinion. I'm gonna ask Troy if you've seen it, But I love this
movie. I think this is one of the better thrillers from the nineties and
it never should have been a side exclusive from Shout Troy Unlawful Entry. Have
you seen it not in so many years? I would hate to comment on
it. I have very fuzzy memories of seeing it many many years ago.
I'm not crazy about the whole side exclusive model. I don't really understand it.
I've heard people try to rationalize it as some kind of a licensing thing,
which doesn't really make sense to me. I don't think that's really the
rational I know that there have been some site exclusives that left a lot to
be desired, so I'm glad to see that this one, you know,
will hopefully be a nice addition. Hopefully the transfer is good and they put
some features on, so that's that's nice. Where they got this number from.
I don't know. You know, maybe they have they have a dark
board with numbers on it and they just hit it. I don't know,
but hey whatever, I mean, good for those who want it. But
I don't really understand that. I don't understand how you could argue that it
could be a contractual thing for the numbers when they can just pull out another
nine hundred and eighty because it sold. Well. No, it doesn't make
sense to me. I mean, what what license or I mean what what
would the advantage be. Well, we we'll give it to you for a
little bit cheaper if you only print eleven hundred copies. Okay, we'll do
it. I mean, I don't I don't understand that. That doesn't make
sense to me. So I think they kind of don't have faith in some
of these titles, and they figure, well, we don't want to do
a full run, so we'll just do a limited number and see how it
goes, and then if it does well enough, hey we'll print some more.
And uh yeah, I mean, well the next is these next nine
hundred sold, so well we'll print another thousand. Whatever, it's not my
place to say either way. This is It's a movie starring Kurt Russell and
Rayleiota. This should have been a regular collector's edition, wide release for everybody.
And the biggest thing that nobody ever says about these side exclusives is they
only ship to the US and sometimes Canada, so nobody else in the world
can get them. And a Lava entry doesn't have another Blu Ray release that's
legal. There's a couple bootlegs out there, but this is a big deal,
Like, this is a title that a lot of people have wanted for
a long time. Yeah, hopefully a UK label will pick it up or
something and even the playing field a little bit. That would be swell,
and honestly, with what Umbrella has been pumping out lately, I feel like
they could do a lot with this title. Yeah, yeah, Umbrella.
There's any number of different boutique labels that are either in the UK, Australia,
you know, Germany, but all kinds of places. I'm sure this
will turn up somewhere else. It's surprising every now and again the films that
kind of fall through the cracks for the longest time. I mean, we've
seen a lot of that films that you wouldn't think, not even necessarily huge
films, but movies that you'd think would have a release and they just don't.
I mean, one of the ones that I'm totally perplexed by it don't
know why it's not available. I'd love to get it is This Boy's Life
with De Niro and DiCaprio, and I can't. I mean, I've looked
around, and I guess it had Blu ray release at one point or another
in one country or other, but it's not in print right now as far
as I can tell. And that's a strange one, like that's that's a
movie with a big cast and has some name value to it. So but
who knows, Yeah, who knows? Indeed, all right, go into
the next one. That's enough about Unlawful Entry. The next title, coming
from Leon Eagle, who is associated with Cauldron, of course, is Ninja
Terminator from nineteen eighty four. Pre Orders went up for this last Friday,
and this is the first ever authorized disc release in North America. It's got
a four K scan of the OCN and includes the right aspect ratio for the
first time, includes the original source film too, which is called The Uninvited
Guest of the Star Fairy, and this is going to be in the limited
release. It's going to be two blu rays in their own case, housed
in a rigid slipcase with art by Justin Coffee and a forty page perfect bound
book with new writing on this, and it's going to be one of these.
The second disc is going to be in the limited edition only, so
there will be a standard for Ninja Terminator, but it will not have the
Uninvited Guest of the Star Fairy. So if you want this godfree ho gift
to humanity, you might want to jump on this soon. And I mean
this is this is a fun look and release it try. I think we
ever talked about stuff like this. Are you know any of the martial arts
titles that have been coming out recently. It's not really my thing as such.
I've seen this one, you know, in very blurry condition. Of
course it's somewhat infamous, but it's an interesting it's a fun movie. I
mean, what can you say. It's That's never really been my big thing,
though I've gotten a lot more into kind of South Korean films in recent
years, very interested in a lot of the films that have been coming out,
and not just a genre scene, but all kinds of different types of
films. It's been quite interesting to explore, but not so much into the
kung fu, you know, ninja kind of scene so much. Yeah,
I get that fully. Next up is a Sony Pictures Classics title coming on
February twentieth, and I don't know how to pronounce this myself, The Looten
Defense, The Losing Defense as it's from two thousand with John Turturou and I
have never seen this one. Is this one that you're familiar with? Troy
no nop, never heard of it, but it's Turturo and I've pretty much
always liked him and Terturo around two thousand was great, so I'd love to
check it out. And it's an interesting chess movies. There's there's some pretty
good chess movies out there. Next up from Keno coming soon as part of
their Kino Classics line, is Ten Men from nineteen eighteen. This is going
to be a pretty great look and release. I mean they as far as
I'm aworried, Kino has not done a whole lot with stuff this old in
a little bit, so this is pretty dang exciting coming from them, and
just another one of the silence they're adding to the Kino Classics line. Troy,
any silence that you've loved for a long time? Yeah, it's funny.
I saw the first silent film I ever saw was when I was a
child. I think it was Family the Opera, and you know, I've
been warned ahead of time because I wanted to see it so badly, and
my mom tried telling me, what, it's a silent movie. I said,
I don't care, I wouldn't see it, And of course I got
it home and I watched it, but well, I can't hear anything was
a movie. So it took me a while to kind of get into silent
films, but I'm happy to say eventually I did in a big way.
I love them. I mean, there are so many wonders. They were
some of the most innovative films were being made during that time, and there
was a tremendous kind of reset that happened when sound was brought in because of
the equipment and everything that you know, sort of changed the playing field.
All these incredibly, very visually dynamic movies that were made by directors like Paul
Lennie and Fritz Lang and Murnau. A lot of the German films in particular
were incredibly adventurous, and we kind of lost that for a while with the
early sound techniques and sound technology. So all the big time was obviously Nosferatu,
Caligari, The Goal and Katni Canary, which I believe is coming out
on Blu Ray sometime pretty soon. I'm excited about that. Yep, Faust,
you know the last laugh. I mean, it's just a list goes
on and on Sunrise lots of wonderful, wonderful, silent film. So I'm
always excited to see films of that vintage being kind of rescued and put out
there. It's very important because a lot of these films have never really been
available in really decent copies before. What's funny is we're about to talk about
The kat and Canary in just a couple of minutes, and we got a
question from Michael for you, speaking of movies missing from Blu Ray, Troy,
have you seen Mute Witness another one that I saw long ago and would
love to reacquaint myself with. I don't have a copy of it right now,
so yeah, I agree. It's strange. Again, it just seems
wholly arbitrary why certain things aren't available. I'm sure there are reasons for it,
but I'm not clear on what that is. I don't think they specified
physical release, but I believe Aero announced that they had acquired it. I
think they alluded to theatrical at the time, but a lot of people are
speculating that it's probably coming physical from them. Well, usually if they're going
to go that route, they'll put it out on a disc as well,
exactly. Next title up is The Triplets of Belleville, and for a lot
of people, man, was this a big announcement this week. There was
a previous blue release of this, but it was only a BDR, So
now it's going to be a proper press disc from Sony Pictures Classics. It's
got a lot of the special features from the previous releases. I think it
may be missing one. I believe there's a short documentary from one of the
previous releases. But animation. Animation is going to get talked about a lot
tonight, Troy, are you in an animation at all? I like it.
I can't say that it's a specialty of mine though, I kind of
lost track of animation when I got into my sort of adult years, But
obviously I grew up loving a variety Tom and Jerry cartoons and tunes and Disney
films that I saw as a child and so forth. So there's a lot
of them that I actually thought looked really good, but I was always kind
of embarrassed to go see them, so I didn't get proud to going,
Yeah, thankfully they are. People are seemingly coming around to respecting them quite
a bit, but it helps with people like Miyazaki putting out films in twenty
twenty three that are getting huge theatrical releases and people respecting them beyond a belief
because it's Miyazaki. Next up is another film noir box set from Kino.
This is number nineteen. This one is announced with no release date, but
it is coming soon. It will have Dark City from nineteen fifty, No
Man of her Own from nineteen fifty as well, and then Beware My Lovely
from nineteen fifty two. These are all getting twenty twenty or twenty twenty two
HG masters from Paramount. They are all four K scans, so they should
look pretty dang good. And these are supposed to be three pretty solid films
in this one, I've not. I don't think I've seen any of these.
I may have seen No Man of her Own. Yeah, I'm a
big noir fan. So this this made me very excited for one reason and
one reason only. And it's Beware My Lovely, which is a film another
film I've been saying for years, where is this movie? Along with The
Desperate Hours with Humphrey Bogart Frederick Marsh which finally came out. Beware My Lovely
is Idle the Pino being terrorized by Robert Ryan. It doesn't get much better
than that. Robert Ryan's one of my all time favorite actors. He could
play heroes, he could play villains. He could play villains that were oddly
kind of sympathetic and also just totally vile, like his biggot a character in
Oh God. I can't remember that Edward Demetrich film off the top of my
head that he was in the title is Escaping Me. But I mean he
could, he could do pretty much anything. I mean, an amazing,
amazing actor. So I'm so happy to see the film coming out in Blu
ray in the US. I think it had got an Australian release in one
of those really very steeply priced sets, so I'm glad I held off Dark
City is Also it's not bad as decent Charlton Heston. Actually it was Heston's
first film, if I remember correctly, that No Man of her Own.
I don't know that I've seen that one, but regardless, I'm gonna be
picking up this set for Beware, My Lovely Love. This Sivener in the
chat says, can only imagine the titles for the Dark Side of Cinema xxx.
Maybe it'll be erotic thriller neo noirs. That'd be nice. Next one
is The Wolf House from twenty eighteen is getting a Blu Ray on May twenty
first, from kim Stim themselves. This is also going to include a selection
of short films and a mutual friend of ours, Celeste Leacabra, just recently
spoke this out into the ether using this as a wishless item, please put
the sat on Blu ray. And it took literally less than I think sixty
days from monce Alessa that to the announcement. So that's pretty dang good odds.
And I know a lot of people are very excited about this. I've
not had a chance to catch up with this one, but it seems to
be pretty experimental and supposed to be pretty good. Yes, ce last only
has to mention the title. I have to buy it when it comes out
in a foreign edition that's overpriced, and then it'll come out over here in
a better version as much cheaper. Well keep it up, then, troy
I do, I do. I just ordered a four K of Mario Baba's
Black Sunday so to benefit Humanity Sweet. I'll be looking forward to that KEYNO
announcement any day it could happen. Next up, speaking of animation, Kung
Fu Panda on four K is coming on March twelfth. The big thing for
a lot of people that are into sound is this will have a Dolby atmost
sound set on this instead of the old five point one that it had previously.
So if you are really into Kung Fu Panda, which to be fair,
it's a pretty decent movie. It's not amazing, but it's pretty decent,
you might really want that. Next up is the one we just mentioned,
so Eureka. Last week we discussed that Eureka was coming to the US
under the MVD distribution model, and they announced their first two titles. The
big thing is that, as Troy alluded to, they are putting out The
Cat and the Canary from nineteen twenty seven, and they are also releasing Black
Mask, the Jetly film from nineteen ninety six. Both of those films will
come out in the US and the UK. It should be right around the
same time, probably same day, actually one day off, but yeah,
at the same time. And yeah, I mean Eureka coming out of the
gate with some pretty pretty big things. Yeah, Kat and Canary is wonderful.
I mean, it's one of the early old dark house thrillers. And
of course it's been remade numerous times. They did a version nineteen thirty nine
with Bob Hope and then Radley Mesker of all people, who was famous for
his kind of high, high gloss, hygien Eronica films. He made a
version in the late seventies with like Carol Linley and Daniel Massey and Edward Fox,
a lot of good actors. But the nineteen twenty seven version by Paul
Lennie's the best one. It's the gold standard and was a big influence on
one of my great favorite movies. James Wals The Old Dark House from nineteen
thirty two. I just watched that one for the first time last October and
loved that. That movie is remarkable. You are very lucky that you get
to see it now. The way it looks I remember the first version I
saw was taken from a bootleg VHS. That was just it was so dark,
It was sobody you couldn't see what was going on for chunks of it.
So, not surprisingly, I didn't much care for it when I first
saw it, also because it wasn't quite what I expected. It's not really
a straight horror film. It's it's very much a dark comedy, although it
does have some creepy stuff in it. But the way it looks now,
oh, it's just amazing. When I saw the Blu Ray release that came
out a few years ago, I just I couldn't believe that they were able
to make it look that good. That movie got me from the opening scene,
like the amount of rain pouring and the silliness of driving and what they
were driving in right then, Yeah, Raymond Massey complaining about the weather and
the big water trickling down his neck, and Melvin Douglas just being incredibly just
sort of cynical about everything. It's just a wonderful film. It's so perverse
too. I just deeply, deeply love that movie. I'm glad MVD rewind
they are putting out Sabotage from nineteen ninety six on May seventh. This is
the marked Cooscas film with Carrie on Moss, Graham Green, and Tony Todd.
This will have a new interview with Markdkoskas that is thirty two minutes long.
That's a long conversation to have about sabotage. And they also got a
new interview with Tony Todd. Like to get those two names for this.
That's that's pretty dann cool as usual the MVD rewind. It'll have that classy
MVD slipcover for the first print run. But I've never seen this one.
Is this the type movie that you were into in the nineties, Troy.
I like a good action movie, but I don't think I ever saw this
one. It doesn't ring any bells. But they're missing an opportunity not to
get William Shaantner to narrate a trailer for it so he can say sabotage.
There's still time MVD check it out next up March twelfth on four K and
Blu. Ray Warner Brothers is releasing the new iteration of the color Purple from
last year. I've heard pretty great things about this one. I've not been
able to check this one out yet, but it's got a lot of incredible
actors in this one. And yeah, it's a musical. Yeah, I'm
kind of allergic to musicals. I must confess. It's the one genre that
kind of eludes me. I don't understand it. I mean, it's no
more ridiculous than people turning into werewolves, I understand, but I've never understood
like the sound of music, they're running away from the Nazis, let's stop
and sing a song or West Side Story. You know we're gonna have a
fight, Let's let's sing. I don't know. I don't get it.
I've of course seen Spielberg's version, which I'm not crazy about. Honestly,
I think it's got I think it was very well intentioned and very nobly intentioned
film, but it kind of watered down the material too much for my tastes.
But you know, why not do if you're gonna do something different to
a musical version, And maybe it's maybe it's a wonderful film. I haven't
seen it, though. They're going very different, I think, so very
different. Next one, we got a bunch of Criterion announcements and big,
big month from them. The first thing really to point out is that almost
everything is a four K release this month from Criterion, which is a far
cry from Criterion of just a couple of years ago. So obviously this one
is a re release. But on April second, we are getting a hen
on four K. This is from nineteen ninety five, the Vincent Cassell film.
No new special features, of course, because it's Criterion and they're just
putting it on four K. I'm sure you've seen this one and have at
least something to say about it. Oh no, it's it's well, we're
checking out if you haven't seen this very powerful film. I mean again,
Criterion, you know it's it's I don't know. It's a controversial topic because
there are people that are just well, I guess it's true of any label.
They're they're kind of fetishists who just won't hear anything against against certain labels.
And I don't really understand that Criterion was indeed the gold standard for many
years and I think they've gotten rather lazy more recently, when when Night of
the Demons too is getting a stacked addition on on Blu Ray, and some
of the things they're putting out are just getting like a little featurette or a
trailer. Come on, you can do better than that. So I'm not
surprised that they haven't commissioned much in a way of new extras for these for
these re releases on four K. But you know, it's it's nice that
the titles are getting re released in new format, at least, if I
may strengthen your argument ever so slightly, Night of the Demons getting you know,
stacked releases for all of the films in the whole franchise in multiple territories
in Europe and the US like that is a huge, huge, huge deal
for those films. Yeah, and then they put out After Hours, which
is a great film, and they don't give it much. Yeah, it's
mostly poured it over from the Warner Brothers DVD release. They put a new
interview with Scorsese, which is always nice, but come on, you can
do better than that. There's some wonderful catalog titles that they've they went from
like DVD to Blue Raydom like Tunes of Glory with alec Innis and John Mills,
for example, And I was so you know, I was so disappointed
to see that the old version was bare bones and the new versions bar bones
too, Like, really, come on, you could do something with that.
Thankfully, the movie looked pretty spectacular. Yeah, that's the most important
thing. We shouldn't lose sight of that. But I don't know. I
think there's a lot of competition these days with BOUTI labels, and they really
need to kind of they want to reclaim the throne. They need to step
it up a little bit. I would agree there fully. Next one up
is a Bellatar film from April sixteenth, Verkmeister Harmonies. This is one that
a lot of people were beyond excited as getting released. This is coming on
four K and Blu ray on April sixteenth, new four K restoration, one
four K disc of the film and one Blu ray of the film and special
features will be in the four K release. Tar's first feature film, Family
Nest for nineteen seventy nine, is also in this. I think a lot
of people glossed over that there's a new interview with Belatar by Scott Foundus and
then new subtitles with an essay also by film programmer and critic Dennis Limb.
This is a big deal for a lot of Bellatar fans. Are you in
that camp, Troy? I must confess ignorance. So far, I've yet
to explore that filmography. As passionate as I am about a great many filmmakers
and have delved into everything they've ever done, there are some that have just
completely escaped me so far. So Belatar will cross my path one of these
days, but not thus far. Maybe one of these days you can spend
Belatars with Satan Tango for your first outing and spend all day with it.
There you go. Next title coming on four K and Blu Ray is I
Am Cuba. This is from nineteen sixty four and a landmark film that people
are very excited about. The response to this was overwhelmingly positive. You got
a four K disc of the movie and then the Blu ray with the film
and special features. There's a two thousand and four documentary on this film that
came out previously. There's an interview from two thousand and three with Martin Scorsese
talking about it. New appreciation of the film by cinematographer Bradford Young. But
that's it. The only thing they added is just a small appreciation of the
film piece. So yeah, this kind goes exactly with what you were just
saying. There's also an essay by film critic one Antonio Garcia Barrero on this.
But for such a big deal, like I feel like this film probably
could have used a little more context. It blows my mind because they surely
are in very good sort of financial position to be able to coordinate with any
number of different people who produce extras, to get some featurettes, maybe hire
somebody to do a commentary or whatever. But they just they don't seem particularly
interested in doing that, and I don't I don't know. Mine's not the
reason why. Mine's just to complain that they don't do more. Yeah,
And the crazy thing is there will still be literally thousands of people lining up
to buy these at the next sale, so oh yeah, of course they
always will. And you know, hey, what I think of them isn't
going to effect anything. I know, there are a lot of people who
just absolutely swear by them as the absolute gold stand, which, as I
say, I think they were. But these days not so much. Yeah,
and obviously they're still mostly choosing pretty great titles. I just wish they
put a little more into it. It's it's a stacked competition market now.
And I mean the hard part is they have a fan base that there's places
online with people literally saying, give me x title that already has a great
boutique release from somebody else, and they just want it from Criterion with the
sea on the cover. Yeah, that I've never understood. You know,
they put out a blue ray of David Lynch's The Elephant Man, where a
studio can now put out a four K, and you know, people were
losing their mind. Oh, Criterions putting out the studio Cannow did a better
version, it's nicer. You know, it doesn't matter. I mean it's
again, it's the label. It's this. This is true of so many
different things. It's like people get obsessed over, you know, labels on
shirts or shoes or anything else. That's that's all that matters. I mean,
for years, people which just kept saying, oh, I wish they
would put this movie out or Citizen King. You know, they finally did,
they put out a four K, And for years, you know they
had they had Blue Ray out, which was a perfectly nice special edition blue
ray I wanted, I wonder through Criterion. Well, I mean eventually they
got to it and they did a fine job with it. But you know,
I don't know. Like I said, it's it's a little bit mysterious
to me. It surely is. But either way, it'll be a good
release and I'm sure it'll look fantastic. Next title is one Again. Like
every single title this month, people went crazy for this one, notwithstanding April
thirtieth on Blu ray only, Criterion is releasing Dogfight from nineteen ninety one with
River Phoenix and Lily Taylor. And this is one that people have wanted for
quite some time. New two K digital restoration. On this we got an
audio commentary featuring Savoka and the producer Richard Gway, new interview with Siovoka and
actor Lily Taylor conducted by Mary Herron. It's pretty dang cool. New interviews
with a cinematographer, production designer, script supervisor, music supervisor, supervising sound
editor, and the editor. And you got an essay by film critic Christina
Newland on this one. And I mean, this is a pretty stacked release.
That's a lot of new stuff that I could be excited about. Yeah,
that's more like it's that's what that should be kind of the norm.
But it's obviously he's not, so you know, good for this particular film
that it got that kind of trade. This is you know somebody just a
moment ago in the chat and I lost it. I would highlight it right
now, but it just went by. They basically pointed out that if Criterion
can't get the director, they seem to just say, well, never mind,
we're just not going to put a whole lot on there. Well yeah,
yeah, I think so a lot of love for Dogfight in the chat
right now, love that River Phoenix at his finest. Nice. Yes,
this is one of their best months in a long time, Dallas, I
would agree. Next up, he used the last from Criterion Picnic it Hanging
Rock coming on April ninth on four K. We all probably could have guessed
this was coming after Second Site put out their four K. No updates to
the Criterion release, no new features or anything like this, but this movie
looks pretty great in four K. I believe it's the exact same scan a
Second Site. They may have done their own in house restoration work on something,
and there could be an ever so slight difference. Honestly, probably not,
though this is it's a killer movie. Though what do you think of
Picnic a Hanging Rock? What's a great film? But they're putting out the
shortened version, you know, that's the problem. I have the same issue
whenever they put out you know, they did the Fellini set for example,
which was a wonderful set in many respects, but they have this kind of
snobby attitude towards English dubs, and you know, I understand the whole sort
of purist thing and people think that, you know, these films should be
watching Italian, but that's not always necessarily true. In some of the cases,
some of the films had, you know, were shot English and had
the actual actors voices on the soundtracks, and that should have been included.
So in a case like this, unless there's something I'm missing, I don't
understand why they don't also include the full uncut version. It's friends of like
ten minutes longer as opposed to this shortened version, even if that's you know,
a preferred cut. I think if you're going to do it right,
you should put both edits on there. I'd say that's true of just about
anything. I mean, if there are multiple versions, you know, I'm
talking significant differences. Not necessarily you know, one version's missing a couple of
minutes and due to censorship or something, but like reconstructed versions, you know,
really alternate versions, they should be included. So that's kind of the
issue I have with this release. It's it's a great film, but it's
inherently flawed. This is true. That is it for Criterion this month,
No matter what we say. I gotta be honest. It is a pretty
fantastic month compared to what they've been doing. Five incredible releases. I'm sure
they're all going to look great, and eighty percent of them in four K.
That's a big deal for a company like Criterion that took so long to
come to that format. So I mean, that could be a sign of
things to come, That could be a sign of a tide change. It
could just be a really good month, and it could be back to square
one tomorrow. So we shall see. Next one is another four K release
that Troy is intimately familiar with. How about we talk about some burial ground.
So Severn just put out on their website that they are shipping Burial Ground
in four K in early February and this will be coming out widely shortly after
that. This is the nineteen eighty one film that is incredible. On this
one, we got an audio commentary with Nathaniel Thompson, the other Gentleman is
part of the stream tonight and au Jenny or Kalani, and we are looking
at a bunch of archival features on these and really solid release overall. Troy,
why don't you tell us about Burial Ground and the commentary that's on it?
Well, I mean, if you've seen Burial Ground, you know you
know what to expect. If you haven't seen it, if you have a
taste for the more kind of offbeat and over the top and outlandish and sleazy
side of European coat cinema, this is a really fine example of a film
that's just utterly bonkers and demented. You know, it has a slight,
almost kind of soft core vibe to it in a way, but also gets
into really sort of creepy atmospherics. But I mean, the characters are all
just sort of unlikable and unpleasant, and everybody's sort of screwing around, and
the living dead are broading, and you know, mayhem is ensuing. And
there's a little boy who looks like Dario Argento who is played by a short
person, a little person who is an adult, and they're trying to make
him look like a child for a good reason. There's a scene in the
film that there's a reason why this was done. The English dub is loaded
with infamous dialogue singers and terrifically over the top vocal performances from especially Carolyn Denvers
Diiffin Seka, who did the voice of Daria nickelodeon Phenomenon and Deep Red.
She voices Marie angelet jo Adano in this film. She plays the mother of
the little boy. The little boy that I was talking about before, played
by Peter Bark, who was interviewed on this disc. So that makes it
a must in and of itself. It's deranged fun. I love it.
I always have. I would not make great claims for it. I think
anybody who tries to take this movie too seriously is really missing the point.
It's just a deliriously sort of feverish, strange and just entertain movie. It's
one of those movies I saw when I was probably way too young. Back
in the eighties, the VHS you couldn't escape from it, and it was
so muddy, it was so dark, you could hardly see what was going
on. So now we're onto you know, we've had a four K release
from Mediate Films in the UK, which is where we recorded our commentary originally
for, and now Severn is putting out their version. I would imagine it
looked pretty comparable, and I'm glad to see that they recycled most of the
extras and kind of pulled their resources. So that's that's a nice thing.
Took me by surprise. I didn't know that was happening, so you know,
I'm glad to see that those who didn't get a chance to import the
eighty eight release will have this as an option. So good stuff. Yeah,
this is a big one. The entire time you were speaking at the
end there, I was trying to think of a way to use a Peters
bark is as bad as his bite because of that scene in the movie.
But probably shouldn't go there. We have a question, is this seven release
also fifty five dollars since it's a four K? I answered in the chat,
but really, wanted to highlight they did pretty well. I mean,
this one's thirty eight dollars on release day coming from them. That's that's a
lot better than what the big sale four ks have been recently. So it's
a big difference. Yeah, it is, And you know, eventually,
I don't know if the plans are to do kind of you know, slim
down sort of general release versions. Maybe I don't know that they might be
more more affordable. And I don't know if all these are available on Amazon
or not. But very often, even when something has a stiff price,
usually you can get it pretty cheap on there if you just have a little
bit of patience. So I understand when people gripe about the prices. I
get it. But you know, sometimes if you just have a little bit
of patience, you'll get what you want eventually without paying through the nose for
it. All of these ones will be available on Amazon, same with everything
from that Black Friday slate that they had, so all of those will be
available. I don't think they've had a true site exclusive or full the limited
edition that you can't buy again since the last horror film. Well that's good.
It's been a little bit of time. Next up as part of this
month's announcements from them is Blood Moon. This is from nineteen ninety and this
will have a Blu ray disc in This also shipping near the beginning of February
as well. This says, though it arrived near the end of the cycle,
it remains the most satisfyingly deprayed yet least seen old school slasher and odsplitation
history. And I've never seen this, but from what I've heard, this
is one that a lot of people really do not like. So I'd love
to hear Troy if you've seen this one. I haven't seen it. No,
I haven't seen it. Nineties horror is not really my favorite time.
There's a lot of stuff that went on in the nineties that I was not
a big fan of in terms of film, so I never did it around
to this one. Well, I mean, that's pretty late for a slasher
film, but it's pre screen, so I guess it'll at least be irony
for you. I would assume that is true. And also it's pretty late
for oz plitation. A lot of the stuff that they were really diving into
is done just a little bit before then. Yeah. Next title from them
is Dracula Prisoner of Frankenstein from nineteen seventy two. This is the North American
disc premiere for this Jess Franco film. I am I gonna, be honest,
dying to see this one. And thankfully the special features on this interview
with Stephen Thrower. He had to speak on this. He's the Master of
Franco in the Land of Franco Part ten and they just continue this long running
documentary basically of everything that's happened for Franco and Thrower doing whatever he could possibly
do to get the world to love Jess Franco. I've missed this one so
far. Have you seen this one, Troy Well? I mean, I
think the release could have used the commentary, but I won't go there.
I have and you know, most people who've seen this film in the US
of a certain age saw it under the title The Screaming Dead and it's one
of the most infamously awful pan and scan VHS releases of all time, because
this is a widescreen film two thirty five and it was just an absolute eye
sore. So I'm really curious to see what this looks like. This has
had a really checkered past on video. The first version I ever saw was
actually taken from a Japanese laser disc. It's virtually a silent film. But
if you take my advice, if you watch it, I would recommend watching
it in Spanish. Don't watch it in English because the English stub adds a
lot of voiceover, which it really kind of ruins the mood in the Spanish
version. A lot of it unfolds with just sort of sound effects and weird
kind of bird calls and things like that. It's not really a lot of
talking going on. You have Dennis Price, who's one of my favorite actors,
playing doctor Frankenstein. He's at death's door by the time he does this
film. He's, you know, he looks much older than he really is.
The drinking has taking his whole great actor, but in kind of,
you know, reduced in poverished circumstances doing this movie. And Howard Vernon,
another actor I love, playing Dracula, almost a kind of pantomime version of
Dracula with a sort of you know, weirdly colored face and fangs and the
top hat. And it's a very strange movie. It's Jess Franco. I
mean, if you like Franco, you probably will like it. If you
don't like Franco, this is not the movie that's gonna win you over.
I like it. I prefer the kind of sister production that he did with
the same cast called Erotic Rights of Frankenstein, which I think is a much
more, much more compellingly weird movie. But this is a really strange one
too, and I'm really excited to see this. I wasted no time putting
in an order for this one. Nice. Yeah, this is This is
a pretty fun month from them, and not only are we getting those three
titles, they also are doing some of their fun bundles, including this hilarious
Burial Ground pillowcase, and gotta ask, are you getting the pillowcase? Truly?
No, you don't want to sleep, We're just gonna let it go
it. No, No, I'm not doing the pillow case. No,
I will pass on that. But I'm glad that there are people out there
that want to have the toys and then the carry on bags and the flushies
and the cases. That's fun for those who want to, but that's not
so much my thing. I gotta admit the shirt for this is pretty nice
for Burial Ground when the nice turns red, the dead shall rise, and
it says the gates of Hell have opened at the bottom. But it's also
it's a Pall Bear Press shirt and they're always super high quality, very comfortable
shirts. I'm not getting the shirt, but man, it's a nice design.
They also have the JUSTICESE Bundle, which actually saves you some decent money
if you're getting all three. I gotta laugh a little bit because it is
literally one dollar below the free shipping threshold. They could have just made it
eighty and shipped it to you for free, but no, can't do that.
To draw the line somewhere. Uh. And then finally you can do
a bundle with all of the goodies this month, all three releases, teachert
and Pillowcase if you really want everything. Yeah, this is a this is
a fun month from seven and kind of came out of nowhere. I and
you know, we knew we were getting Burial Grand four K, but not
anytime soon, and not with these three films together. That's a it's a
fun package. Yeah. Yeah. Dracula, our prisioner frank Stein, was
the real surprise for me. I had no idea. Very glad that it's
happening. So you know, I'm a I'm a committed Franco fan. I'm
not one of the Franco fans that defends everything he ever made. He made
some lousy movies, but I do like this one. I think it's just
don't go in expecting a traditional classical kind of horror film. It's it's not
that type of film. You heard it here first, everybody dragon, It's
a classic exploitation driven grindhouse slasher from over other tropes I can throw at it.
No, it's gonna be off the wall. Yeah, let's see.
Next up is a little known film with Christopher Lee called The Whip in the
Body by Mario Bava, which I have a feeling that Troy has a lot
to say about this film. Well, it's one of Bova's best films.
Nathaniel Thompson and I did a commentary for the eighty eight Films release, which
also included a second commentary by Kim Newman and Sean Hogan, I believe,
as well as interviews with lambert A Bava, Mario's son Sergeo Martinez, who
worked on the film in the behind the scenes capacity, in Ernesta Costaldi,
who wrote the script, as well as a booklet, a nice thick booklet
with essays. This version is rather paired down by comparison, but it is
using the same scan that eighty eight was able to put together for their release.
And let me tell you, you know, if if you if you
want a more stacked version, then that's the one. Obviously you would want
the eighty eight one because it's got a lot more extra stuff on it.
But if you're not regent, be friendly, or if it's too expensive for
you, whatever this is, this is a good way to see it because
the previous high def versions of this movie looked horrible. They were way too
murky, they were way too dark, The colors were all wrong, the
characters look like Opalyumpa's colors were just completely wrong. This this isn't even a
matter of interpretation. I mean, it was just wrong. But now it
looks fantastic. I gather there were some people online that were trying to argue
that the German DVD looked better. I suggest they go get their eyes checked,
because that's simply not true. The the new scan that eighty eight put
together looks sensational. Kino's reusing it for this edition. They're reusing their timbler
commentary. And I don't know if there's anything else included on this or not,
but if you just want to get a look at the film the way
it really should look, this is a good way of finally seeing it the
way it should be. It's again, Twin of Bob is the very best
films. Yeah, and it's coming on March twelfth. It'll have the classic
thin Keno's slipcover and all that fun stuff, but I do wish it had
a couple of more of those special features. But it's also Keno who's going
to try to sell this probably on sale a couple months later for like nine
dollars, so it's they can't put a whole lot on there will be too
expensive for them. So yeah, totally get it. Either way, great
film. That eighty eight release looks stupendous. I just answered Brendan in the
chat if you've not seen that eighty eight film's release, this movie has never
looked better. And I mean, hands down, most people that know Boba
know this is one of the best. I love this movie and everybody should
have it. Next up, another from Keno cry The Beloved Country from nineteen
fifty one coming soon. We've got City Platier, Canada, Lee, Charles
Carson, Joyce Carey, Jeffrey Keene. I've never seen this one. It's
a nineteen fifty one film. Is this one that you're into? There?
Troy again years ago, I seem to recall catching on on American movie classics
when they used to run you know, old movies as opposed to what they're
running now. And yeah, I recall it being a good film. I
couldn't tell you much else beyond that, though, exactly about the same.
Next up is a big one after last year, especially A twenty four is
supposedly going to put up a pre sale for Stop Making Sense, the Talking
Heads film from nineteen eighty four. This will be a four K and Blu
ray release. It looks like it will be an A twenty four site exclusive,
one of their fancy releases. Not sure if it'll be the giant one
or the smaller release. If it follows the previous patterns, it should be
a regular size release from them, not the giant ones. And the date
of January twenty seventh is odd, but that's what Variety is reporting. January
twenty seventh is a Saturday, and I don't think most films are going to
get announced on a Saturday, unless you're keynot announcing that they're releasing something someday
that that really doesn't happen. That'll probably be the day before I'm guessing I'm
gonna throw out their next Friday, the twenty sixth is probably when this goes
live. If you've never seen it, highly recommend it. This is one
of the best music based films ever. I mean, Talking Heads are an
incredible group and this movie alone is legendary. And to see this in four
K I guarantee is going to be stupendous. You're nodding with it what you
have feelings on? Stop making sense? Oh no, it's up there with
The Last Waltz, you know, and that sort of venue of films,
you know, based around based around that type of music, not not a
musical as such, but sort of performance and so forth, you know,
documentary and so forth. Yeah, it's a it's a fantastic film, and
obviously that will be much appreciated after so many years. Everything I heard about
the theatrical run that this played just two and a half three months ago was
it looks better than ever and a legendary four K scan dying to see this
again, This will this will be mine soon. I cannot wait for this
today alone, we got a ton of announcements and everything else from here on
out was just announced today and there's there's a lot of them. First up
is March twenty fifth in the UK and March twenty sixth in the US for
this and the following two announcements. These are all coming from Indicator in March
in both territories. This first one is Santo Versus The Writers of Terror.
They are continuing with a four K restoration of this Santo film. This is
also coupled with Lepers and Sex, the recently rediscovered sexy reworking off Santo Versus
The Writers of Terror, which is basically a softcore version of it. Don't
expect like a full on adult film or anything with that. You got a
commentary with film and story in a Mexican cinema specialist David Wilt some never before
seen archival interviews on this. We've got a Lucha Libra specialist and filmmaker in
the Killer film, Elcritico and Mascarado, the masked critic assessing the film and
it's different versions. That's pretty damn cool. We've got alternative French credits,
We've got some other interviews and just some context giving extras on this film.
Indicator going all in on this release, including an eighty page book with a
new essay by Colin Gunkel and a bunch of archival essays. This will be
limited to eight thousand for the limited edition, and I'm sure this will get
a standard eventually. But this sounds like a really fun release. Any Santo
for you? Have you ever been into that stuff? No? No,
not to sound snobby, it's nothing, you know. I mean, everybody
likes what they like. That never really that never really pulled me in personally,
So I have no experience to speak of with regards to Santo and the
masked superhero genre. Nice Ian Miller in the chat says, Hi, Ryan
and Troy just bout a used copy of eighty eight s Whipping the Body.
Even though I'm not reaching free yet, I will buy the new keynot and
keep the eighty eight since it's one of my favorite Bava films. Nice on
all the bases covered, got a copy of it all. Next up is
the Batwoman from Indicator, Same thing, releasing in March in the US and
UK. I should mention two. All three of these are Renee Cardona titles
Renee Cardona Senior and this one will have an audio commentary by David Wilt as
well. This one will have a bunch of similar features, image galleries,
all kinds of archival information and again eighty page book with the new essay by
Dolores Ti with some archival essays. This one just looks fun. Love the
art on these two, they really did great. Greg is saying is it
DC licensed? I don't know. I mean, it's an interesting shout.
Have my doubts. I would have to say probably not. And then finally
is the panther woman and man. The art on this one is wild.
Love this art again, March in the Bolt the US and UK. This
one is from nineteen sixty seven two K restoration from the OCN. We have
an audio commentary with the publisher from Parts Unknown and screenwriter of Los Compagnonies de
la Luca Leedre Keith J. Rainville. We've got killer film doing fifteen minutes
on this. El Critico Mascarado, the Master critic, Luca liber specialist and
filmmaker behind the Monterey Female Wrestlers, documentary cat Fight twenty four minutes academic Latin
American horror specialists speaking on this. We've got another eighty page booklet with a
new essay by Robert Smith. They're just putting a lot of love into all
these which is pretty damn rare for films like this to get this kind of
treatment. Is really really great. No, I think that's wonderful. Chris
Silvestri says this will go great right next to Batpussy, and yes it will.
And then for the month of April in the UK and US, Indicator
also announced two genre lo on titles. The first April twenty second in the
UK twenty third in the US, is a four K release of Demoniacs.
This is going to be a great release. And if you've never read the
copy that Indicator put out for this this morning, tell me that just by
hearing this it doesn't make you want to buy this. A gang of ruthless
pirates known as the Wreckers rape two survivors of a shipwreck. The women,
now mute for some reason, are guided by a miss sterious clown to a
ruined castle, where they receive magical powers with which to exact through revenge on
the game. I mean though, that is a film. Indicator is a
gift to humanity, says Brandon. Yeah. So this one is a brand
new four K HDR restoration from the original negative by Indicator themselves. We've got
three presentations of the film, the original theatrical, the longer explicit export version,
and Curse of the Living Dead, the alternative English language cut. We
got an audio commentary by Tim Lucas that's brand new on this selected scenes commentary
with Genre Loan from two thousand and five. There is a Genre Lan introducing
the film from nineteen ninety eight. Then there's a new presentation of an interview
with the regular Rolan collaborator at Jean Pierre Boy, newly edited archival interview with
actor Willie Brake, and some other appreciation stuff like that. Plus we have
an eighty page book with by Alexandra Heller Nicholas on this. This will be
limited to ten thousand individually numbered titles six thousand and four K four thousand blu
ray for the four K in us and I have a feeling, just a
heads up, this one is probably going to sell very well. This is
one that people have wanted for a bit in a new release, and I
would probably pre order this sooner than later if you really are dying to have
this. It's a good film. It's definitely, I think one of his
most offbeat and interesting films, and yeah, very happy to see it get
an upgrade like this. I don't know, Roland is like Franco. He's
not for everybody, but if you can, if you can get into his
sort of mood and approach and so forth. But this is more of a
you know, it's sort of in a style of an old Cereal so it's
a little bit more action oriented and a little bit you know, quote unquote
livelier in some of his other movies, which tend to be a little bit
more sort of funereal and slow paced, So this one might have a broader
peel in some respects. Did you check out any of the Land four k's
from last year. I have a bunch of them setting on the pile to
be watched. But I did watch the four k's of I know, I
watched Shiver of the Vampires, which is my favorite Roman, and I was
absolutely thrilled with that because it's such a beautiful looking film and one of the
other vampire films I can't remember which one I watched, but yeah, I
was definitely pleased and long overdue to get nice releases like this for his films.
He's one of my favorites. It's been a blur of a year,
so I may be wrong, but if I remember, last year was the
first four K for Indicator, and they have wowed with every single one that
they put out, I think they've all looked just majestic. For a company
like Indicator, I wouldn't expect anything else, but they are genuinely looking like
special. They are putting a lot of work into them. And then finally
from Indicator April twenty second, UK April twenty third in the US again four
KM Blu Ray the Nude Vampire from John Milan. This one is going to
get a lot of similar features. We got a commentary with Kevin Lyons and
Jonathan Rigby who they both do great work. I believe both of them are
on the cushion curiosity set that we're going to talk about tonight. Right they
are, and I'm very very happy to see them involved in these because it's
nice to have some different voices represented on occasion and I'm very curious to hear
them tackle Roland because this is fresh terrain for them as far as commentaries go,
so that should be really interesting. And this is a really strange film
too. This is a sort of horror sci fi hybrid with the usual dashover
roticism on this. We also have an updated documentary by Daniel Goyette, who
was Rolan's personal assistant for a long time. We've got extracts from selected interviews
with Rolan conducted by Goette between ninety eight and two thousand and three. Interview
with the arkivist Lucas Balboks boring Roland's connection to the French Anarchist Union that sounds
fascinating, some other interviews and appreciations. And then another eighty page booklet with
a selection of new and archival writings. Again ten thousand, limited title.
But this is really cool that they're putting this much into role on Well,
there should be more. I'm sure it looks like they're working their way through
the catalog, so there should be some great ones look forward to. Yet,
I really wanted to highlight before we stepped away from Roland exactly what Craig
is saying in a night you know. On the show, we cover all
of the studio titles and most of the time the art on those. To
say they leave a lot to be desired is very under selling of how poor
those studio titles look on the cover. And man, they are really selling
those Roland titles with some beautiful commissioned artwork. Yeah well yeah, I mean
some of them are based also in the original poster art from the French French
releases. They look great, I mean really really fantastic, loyok, gorgeous.
I'm not a packaging fetishist as such, but I do appreciate it whenever
they put obviously a lot of love and care into something like that, they
look classy. They're also not misrepresenting them in a really tacky way. Yeah,
a lot of them very similar to the original art as well seem to
be inspired by them. Movie is releasing Priscilla on four K and Blu ray
in the UK and Germany, though should be coming very very soon. Right
now, it's only placeholder dates all across the internet, but I'm sure we'll
hear a final date on those. I don't think movie is going to have
it in the US, but if you really want the four K from movie,
they will probably have this orbit Eventually, they've been getting a lot of
the movie titles, so I would keep an eye on those. Then.
Man, this one, this was a big deal for me. February twenty
seven from a Warner Archive. We are getting a box set and also as
individual releases, and we'll talk about the individual ones in just a couple minutes.
This box set is Hannah Barbara Superstars ten and these are from nineteen eighty
seven and that year the legendary animation team of William Hannah and Joseph Barbara brought
forth a series of ten feature length animated features to television, all of which
would feature their most popular cartoon characters. These films were sold into syndication as
the Hannah Barbera Superstars ten, each providing irresistible entertainment. Yogi Bear and Scooby
Doo each star in three of the films on this box set, along with
a one time only meeting of the Flintstones and the Jetsons. Judy Jetson takes
the spotlight in their own adventure, while Huckleberry Hound heads up an exciting all
star Western and the level will Topcat and his gang star in a story set
in Beverly Hills. Also The Scooby Dew and The Reluctant Werewolf is going to
have a bonus feature for Scooby Goes to Hollywood, and Yogi in Invasion of
the Space Bears is going to include Yogi's arc Clark, which is an episode
from Yogi's Gang. I love these releases, and I feel like they've really
really killed it with this. When we talk about the individuals in just a
moment, I would I would love to see all of these on my shelf.
But man, this box set, you know, we'll talk about that
just second. With the with the single titles. Hold on on that thought.
Let's go to the next one. First, Cohen Media Group, who
put out The Old Dark House. We were just talking about Driving Madeline from
twenty twenty three. They are releasing this on Blu Ray on March nineteenth.
No special features, it looks like, but it's got pretty good reviews online
and it's supposed to be pretty good. I had never heard about this one
until today, though. Have you heard about this one? No? No,
I have not. Okay, So those ten individual titles from one of
archive. Here is the cover art for all ten of these. We got
the good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound, The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones,
Rocket with Judy Jetson, Scooby Doo and the Ghoul school Scooby Doo and
the Reluctant Werewolf Scooby Doo Meets the Boo Brothers, Top Cat and the Beverly
Hills Cats, Yogi An Invasion of the Space Bears, Yogi's Great Escape,
and Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose. So what's crazy
is all of these are gonna be up on Amazon for probably twenty one ninety
nine, but the box set right now you can pre order for I think
seventy dollars, So if you get the box that you are saving quite a
bit of money on all of those. So I would absolutely check this out
if you are super into it. Brendan said that I willed this into existence.
I've been crying for a lot of these for a long time. Love
me some animation. Were you a Hanna Barbara person at all? I know
we talked about animation a minute ago. I'm gonna sound very grinchy now.
I'm not a fan of Hannibar Bear, but I did watch a number of
the Anna Barbara. You know, obviously the flint Stones and the Jetson's and
Scooby Doo when I was a child, but they have not retained a place
in my heart into grinchy adulthood. I'm sorry to say, well, I
can't wait to have these. I will be I will be the who to
your grinch. No, I'm glad they're being I think everything should be made
available for people who like it, So that's good. I love that we
go to Yo from Yogi Bear the Spruce Gooset and Goodbye Uncle Tom in four
K. What a time to be alive? Yeah, this is this is
wild Blue Underground. On April twenty, Third is releasing a strictly limited edition
of Goodbye Uncle Tom in four K, or if you don't want the four
K, they are also releasing it on Blu Ray. Both of these will
be four disc limited editions. The copy I used here is about the same
for both of them. Just the four K disc will have two four k's
and two Blue rays. The Blu Ray set will have four Blu rays.
This is a world premiere new four K sixteen bit restoration of both the English
and Italian versions from the original negatives. First off, that's insane that in
twenty twenty four we are getting new four K restorations of Goodbye Uncle Tom,
and not just one, both versions of the film before we dive into some
special features, any thoughts on this one, Troy A doo Zo Tom.
Yes, part of the infamous sort of Mondo's cycle, you know that is
sort of infamous and revered in equal measure. This was out of left field.
I knew it was coming, I had heard about it. Yeah,
I mean again, it goes back to what I said when it's time to
be alive. I can certainly certainly say that I would not have imagined that
this would be a title that would reach four K before any number of other
titles. But I think it's wonderful that it's getting a release, and it's
obviously getting stacked release, And yeah, I mean this has caused for celebration.
If you like this movie, it's it's certainly it's one that once you
see it, you won't forget it. Chris Silvestri on Facebook says this release
will be fifty to sixty dollars, though most likely it is if you go
to the Blue Underground website. But I will happily shout from the rooftops,
go to Diabolic DVD right now and you can get this for I believe forty
six dollars on four K, which for a strictly limited title from Blue Underground
that has never released a bad four K. That's to me, that's a
pretty easy purchase, especially for a film like this that is really important and
one that needs a lot of context, and thankfully we are getting a lot
of context in these special features. Here. The first two discs if you
get the four K version, those are both four KS. We get the
English version which is one hundred and twenty three minutes, the Italian version which
is one hundred and thirty six minutes, and then the Blu ray discs.
We have the importance of Shocking, a future length documentary by the director Andrea
Bettinetti, which is ninety four minutes long, The Godfather's a Mondo, a
documentary by director David Gregory, which is eighty nine minutes long, Goodbye Cruel
Mondo, interviews with the writers and directors on this which is twenty minutes long,
Behind the Scenes which is fifty minutes long, Mondo Mercenaries, and the
interview with the academic Mark Goodall, which is probably going to be incredible.
That's twenty seven minutes interview with Professor Matthew J. Smith for twenty minutes.
That one is covering objection under authoritarianism. Incredible. And then after all of
that, you're also getting the original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD as a bonus,
plus a collectible booklet with the new essay by Dan Madigan. This is a
wildly stacked release for this. Yeah, I mean I understand that, I
understand that people are, you know, on budgets, and you know,
it's not always convenient to shell out a certain amount of money, But I
mean, this is pretty stacked. I mean, it's it's I don't think
that they can really be accused of overcharging in this context. And yeah,
like you said, there's going to be options to be able to get a
little bit cheaper too, So that's that's also a good thing. Man.
So many comments coming in about this one diabolic four K for forty six nine
or thirty two ninety nine on Blu Ray. That's not bad. They put
a lot in this release. They put a hell of a lot of this
release. So I agree, very glad this will be out there. It's
important. It's also just a heads up. A lot of the phrases being
thrown around about this are very accurate. It is shocking if you're If you're
not ready or willing to go into it, just keep in mind that the
most shocking thing about it is a lot of stuff that's in this was inspired
by actual events and the actual treatment of people. And yeah, just heads
up this this is an important one. Next release is The Book of Clarence
starring la Keith Stanfield, which I love everything he's done. That's coming out
soon on Blu Ray from Sony. This was last year's film, and I
have a feeling Troy has probably not seen this one either, just like me.
I have not seen it, but I do love thea Keith Stanf.
Stanfield based on Atlanta, which is a series I greatly enjoy. I was
gonna say, have you seen Atlanta, because man, he is he was
a revelation in that movie from episode one, or movie in that series from
episode one. Well, I can't remember the name of the character which you
may remember. I don't know, but there was an episode's one of the
creepiest things I've ever seen on television, and it's Teddy Perkins. Teddy Perkins,
Yes, if you haven't seen it Teddy Perkins, I always tell people,
you know, you don't have to have seen the whole series in order
to appreciate this episode. If you don't feel like watching the whole thing,
just find a Teddy Perkins episode, watch that and get back to me.
That is something I felt so bad for him in that episode. I was
just very uncomfortable to whole way through in the best sense of the term.
I loved that episode dearly. On the other one of the other podcasts that
I host, The Incinerator, we did an episode on Atlanta episodes, and
it was one of the most fun things to discuss the different amounts of the
way that episodes from Atlanta can affect people based on your own personal experiences or
just how you perceive an episode. That show I think is going to,
you know, be something people discover for the next ten or fifteen years and
go, holy shit, how did we not appreciate this more in the time
that it was coming out, because that thing is a masterpiece through and through.
Yeah. Next up is a book which we don't normally talk about a
lot, but this is a pretty important one coming this fall, and I
we don't have a date yet, although Amazon is saying ships in August.
We'll see if that is accurate. From PM Press, Revolution in thirty five
millimeters Political Violence and Resistance in Cinema from the Art House to the Grindhouse,
nineteen sixty to nineteen ninety. This is coming out, edited by Andrew Nett
and Sam Degan, a name that you've heard on here many many times.
On this we got twelve contributors, including Robert Scvarla, Andy Rose, melamet,
Ude Batia, Mike White, Christos Silakis I probably said that wrong,
Michael A. Gonzalez, Matthew Kowalski, Ema Westwood, Kimberly, Lindbergh,
Scott Anberg, Lee Broughton, and Charles Perks. This is a book that's
been in the works for a long time, literally a couple of years.
I immediately am going to be purchasing this soon. I cannot wait to get
this in. I had Sam on to talk about protest cinema as she was
working on this literally more than a year ago. It's been probably about eighteen
months at this point actually, and I can't imagine that this being anything other
than a masterpiece. This book is probably going to be incredible looks impressive.
Looks like it took a lot of work too, Sure it did. Next
up, February twenty seventh, another animation film that Troy will love on four
K and Blu Ray from Universal is Migration. I actually did see this late
last year and it was surprisingly good. I'll just say that much. It
looks like no special features, but a surprisingly funny movie. Next up is
one that I've not seen at all. Cult forty five, the complete series
is coming to Blu Ray from Warner Archive on March twelfth. It's going to
be a ten disc sixty seven episode sets. Were you ever a Cult forty
five person, sir? Now? Before my time? I kind of figured
let's just keep going. Then. Next up, we got some details on
some keynot releases. The first March twelfth, The President's Analyst from nineteen sixty
seven. This one's getting a new audio commentary by Julie Krugo and Peter Hancoff.
And there is a archival commentary by mister Tim Lucas on this one as
well. And we talked about this one the first time I got announced.
But since you weren't here, are you familiar with the President's Analyst? Oh?
Yeah, that's a wonderful film. It's a great sattire, well worth
seeing. James Coburn's always delightful and very happy to see Julie Krgo involved in
this and in more releases. She's a very sweet lady. She knows her
stuff, you know, somebody I'm very fond of on a personal level and
have a great deal of respect for her her work as well. So glad
that she's in on this release. Nice And then the next one, also
March twelfth, The Lincoln Conspiracy. This one has a new commentary by the
director James L. Conway, moderated by friend of mine Howard S. Berger.
Any thoughts on the Lincoln never seen it? Never seen it? Same
here Craig from Deaf Crocodile says, we could probably just have a show of
just Keno announcements. This is true. They announced a lot of movies next
one. Speaking of Keno, they are re releasing so nothing new on these
Death Rides, A Horse, the Line in Winter, A Fistful of Dynamite,
and the Long Riders. These are all coming on March twelfth, and
it heads up. If you did not hear the news, I think we
talked about it about a month ago, but a Fistful of Dynamite had been
announced as coming on four K that had to be canceled. They also canceled
the four K of Charlie Varick er Veric however you say it, there was
Varic, That's what I thought. There's some legal problem with that one that
they couldn't do it. But Fistful they've never said the reason for why they
had to cancel it, so I'm curious what happened there. But it is
coming back out on Blu Ray from Keno. Any of these four that you
want to give a special shit out too, Oh, they're all fine films.
I mean, I love fas. I prefer the title Duck you Sucker,
even though it's nonsensical. But fistball Dynamite is what they're calling. It
is a wonderful film. I wish I knew why the four K was canceled,
because we've been getting nice upgrades on Leon's other films, and this one
is probably his most underrated film. I don't tend to use that word too
much because it's used so much it doesn't mean anything, but that one I
think tends to really kind of get the short shrift by a lot of people.
I like it a lot. Death Ride's a Horse is a great Italian
western I mentioned before, direct by Julia Patroni, John Philip Law and Lee
van Cleef. It actually might be my favorite of Van Cleef's movies that he
did in Italy where he was the star, you know, as opposed to
being second fiddle. And Lion Winners is fantastic too. I mean, you
know, that's well, that's a great film to watch around Christmas time,
but it's also it's a great acting showcase. Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn at
their best. And then you have people like Anthony Hopkins and his first film,
and Timothy Dalton and either his first or one of his very first films.
And yeah, it's just a terrific film. And The Long Riders is
great too. I mean there's not a dun in that patch. Lots of
big names starring all four of these two. By the way, if you're
not paying attention, these are four big ones. Yeah. And then finally
this week January thirtieth, very very soon, Dcal and Neon are working together
to put out a BDR so a Burned Blu ray of Eileen from last year
from twenty twenty three. This is the one with Thomas and McKenzie and Anne
Hathaway. And I've heard this is a great film. I'm kind of surprised
it's only getting a BDR. I mean, I guess I could see it
probably will not sell super great, but so kind of sucks. It's a
good new movie. We should get a decent pressed release of it, you
would think so. And yet here we are. That's it for the week.
And after we go over those, we normally talk about what is coming
out next week, just in case you forgot, And next week starts some
big ones again. Keno with the four K of Kindergarten Cop, which I
watched Kindergarten Cop with my kids last night, and man was that movie crazier
than I remember. Thinner from Screen Factory releasing next week Jennifer eight, as
well the Chantelle Ackerman Masterpieces collection from Criterion. Following that, we've got a
standard release of Curse the Dog, God in the Inferno from Monto Micabro and
Triplets of Belleville. Already we've got the Indicator titles, including Jenna with Christopher
Lee, which was one that people were very excited to see announced, and
that's the big ones any of these first handful of titles that excite you there
at all? Troy, I don't know about excited, but you know,
Kindergarten cops a lot fun, of course. I mean you'd have to you'd
have to have a very cold hard not to not to have some enthusiasm for
that. And uh, Jenna is not much of a film, but it's
got a great performance. But Christopher Lee, it was one of the performances
he was really particularly proud of. There was a lot of controversy over a
uh, you know, a Anglo Saxon actor playing that part for obvious reasons,
but it's done with great reverence and he plays it beautifully, so it's
worth seeing. For him. I wouldn't go in expecting a great film because
I don't think it is, but I mean that was the like that was
a luck with him sometimes, you know, he was he was a great
resputant and a not very good movie about respute, and he was a great
Bond villain and a not very good Bond movie. So it didn't always have
the best of luck. But you know, it's worth seeing if you're a
fan of his. It's it's definitely worth seeing that he is exciting and one
that I believe has been fairly hard to find right for a while. Yeah,
it didn't get much of a release altogether, and you know then there
was a kind of a crappy overseas DVD as I recall, and yeah,
it's it's never really had a way of exposure. So that's nice. I'm
glad that they're putting it out and more people have an opportunity to see it
and appreciate how good he isn't it? And speaking of Christopher Len, now
that we're done with announcements, it's time to discuss a collaborator of mister Christopher
Lee, Peter Cushing, which I've seen some from but nowhere near enough.
So I'm eager to hold your hand and to dive into this filmography because I
you know, it's for actors like Cushing and Christopher Lee and some of the
other big ones that were kind of all over the map and got big,
big and lasted for quite some time. It's hard to be you know,
if you want to do it the right way and you know, really dive
in in a way where you're not turned off at first. It's hard to
know where to start, hard to know what were the big ones that were
appreciated, what are the fun ones that are underrated? So first off an
intro to mister Cushing. What can you share with this? Oh? Where
to begin? I mean, you know, he was an actor who got
his start in films actually in Hollywood. In nineteen thirty nine, he went
out to Hollywood in order to try and get a career going in films.
Very first film he was in was Man in the Iron Mask, directed by
James Whale, which is funny because you know, nearly twenty years later he
finds himself starring in a film Curse of Frankenstein, which is often described erroneously,
but you know, it was often described as the remake of James Wales's
Frankenstein from nineteen thirty one. It's very different interpretation of Mary Shelley's Book of
course, but funnily enough, yes, his very first job out the gate
was being directed by James Whale, who also directed him in another film and
I think it was actually Wales's last completed feature film called They Dare Not Love
A couple of years later. During this period of time, he also did
a small role in a Lauren Hardy comedy called Trump at Oxford, which is
certainly well worth seeing if you haven't seen it. I love Lauren Hardy myself.
I think they're kind of timeless. Their comedies are still very, very
funny seeing him acting opposite them. But you know, like a lot of
Englishmen abroad during that time, the war came about, he decided to go
back and try to pitch into the war effort to get anywhere with that,
because he had some injuries when he was a younger man, you know,
in playing football and so forth. So he got involved in the kind of
morale boosting the ensa part of the entertainment industry where they kind of get together
and entertain the troops with performances and so forth. Became a big star in
the nineteen fifties on television. He was a huge, huge star on British
television. I mean really impossible to overstate his popularity at that time. In
particular, did a version of nineteen eighty four which was adapted by Nigel Neil,
a name that might be familiar to some of you. Obviously, he
was the man responsible for writing the quator Mass story that were made originally as
TV plays for the BBC. Than Hammer made versions in the fifties and sixties
as well. He was also involved in the writing of Halloween three season of
the Witch, although he took his name off it because he wasn't happy with
the results. And he did this version for TV of nineteen eighty four that
was so shocking in its time it caused an incredible amount of controversy. It
has happily survived, not in the best version, because the original broadcast version
that was put out that Cushing always said was much better, was not the
version that was kept. It was not the version that was recorded. It
was a repeat performance. But we're lucky that we have it all together because
most of the TV stuff that was put out at that time, basically the
BBC would just take them over. Takes were expensive, it wasn't practical to
keep everything that was being broadcast, So there's huge chunks of television history that
were just taped over because nobody thought it was important. So unfortunately, a
lot of that stuff is gone on, including a lot of interesting stuff that
Cushing did even into the nineteen sixties. He didn't ask him off adaptation of
the Caves of Steel, for example, which doesn't exist anymore. Well,
I think there's like a clip that's floating around, which gives one hope that
maybe somewhere, maybe the full version exists. But he was getting a huge,
huge star in British television, and also he worked in big films but
in small parts. So he's in Mulin Rouge, for example, the John
Houston film I emphasize, not the one with Nicole Kidman and he played,
although that would have been that would have been fantastic to see Cushing in a
bond Lerman film. Well, not just Cushing, because Christopher Lee is also
in it. There there before they're even you know, connected in terms of
doing horror films together. They both appear in this movie by John Houston,
which is based on the real life story of Tulusla Trek, obviously made into
a very melodramatic kind of soap opera matter of respects, but a beautiful looking
movie. And he, you know, he's he's pretty much all over the
map doing all kinds of different films in the nineteen fifties. But then the
Curse of Frankenstein. He's offered the role of Baron Frankenstein in this new color
adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and in the process the movie becomes a huge
hit. It is enormously successful across the globe. It's the first kind of
color gothic horror film of its vintage, you know, after a break in
gothic horror, which had kind of fallen out of fashion, got into the
Abin and Costello type parodies, and then it was the era of science fiction,
big bug monster movies, things like that, Godzilla, all that sort
of thing was de rage for a period of time, but Curse of Frankenstein
proved that audiences could still be interested in and indeed drawn to, gothic horror.
So kicked off a whole new revolution, which ultimately, you know,
kind of expanded into other countries including Italy, France, etc. But Curs
Frankenstein was the big one that kind of got the ball rolling in and doing
that film, Cushing became identified very strongly with horror films, and for a
period of time, I think it's true to say he kind of bucked against
that a little bit. He was a little bit uncomfortable with that. He
didn't want to be typecast, but eventually settled into it and did a whole
slew of horror films throughout the sixties, seventies into the early eighties, you
know, So, I mean there's a lot to cover. I mean in
terms of, you know, which films are most interesting. I don't know
if you have any particular areas that you're more keen in talking about than others.
But that's kind of that's kind of the very generic initial overview of who
Cushing was. Let's not forget too also stage actor. He had worked with
Lawrence Olivier. He's in Lawrence Olivier's film of Hamlet, played the role of
Ostrich, which was played by Robin Williams in the Kenneth browna version many many
years later, Christopher Lee also in that film. Funnily enough, in an
unbuilt kind of stolen cameo appearance, he claimed that he sort of snuck onto
the set and downed some armor and played a character very much in the background,
so nobody even knew that he was there, including Olivia apparently. But
that was their first kind of film together, even though they didn't meet at
that time. But it's funny how often their careers kind of intersected and how
many times they ended up working together because they played off each other very very
well. My big Cushing is one that we could probably talk for links about
is the Christ of Frankenstein. It's already been talked about quite a bit,
but I love a lot of the Hammer titles, and that one obviously sticks
out as a really really important title, considering he was born in I think
nineteen thirteen or fourteen, somewhere around there, and then thirteen and then he
passed in what ninety five, ninety four? He died ninety four, which
I'll never forget for a couple of reasons. One is back in nineteen eighty
six on Turner what used to be called WTBS. It's not just called TBS.
They used to have a program on I don't know Saturday mornings or Sunday
mornings, probably Saturday mornings where a local kind of film critic named Bill Tush
hosted movies and they ran Frankenstein must be destroyed. And when the film was
over, you know, Bill Tush came back and said, you know that
this screening was dedicated to Peter Cushing, who had passed away earlier that year.
I was nine years old, and Peter Cushing was already one of my
favorites and one of my sort of childhood heroes, and I was very sad
to hear this. It was terrible, and only to realize then a couple
of years later, he's still alive. I had no idea so he was
back from the dead, only then to discover in nineteen ninety four in August,
I remember being it was a nice sunny day and I was getting ready
to go out with a friend and my dad called me into the living room
said hey, hey, Troy, come out and look. And as soon
as I came out, I knew it was bad because on the Channel four
news there was a clip of the end of the original Hammer Dracula, and
I thought, oh boy, one of them is dead. And it was
Peter Cushing that passed away finally, so I had to mourn him twice,
so to speak. That seems apt for somebody like Cushing, who had a
few comebacks and lots of different eras of his life dedicated to two different types
of films. Do you remember the first Cushing film that you got to see?
Fright? You were going to ask me that, you know, I
hear people sometimes talking about you know, I remember seeing this movie when I
was two years old or three years old, and I think I full of
shit. Nobody remembers that far back. I can go back at least in
nineteen eighty two when I was five years old, and I can remember being
excited to see certain films at that time. I can't swear to anything before
that. They're all kind of muddled together, and honest to God, I
can tell you that from the time I was just a very small child,
I have very vivid memories of being fan of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee,
Boris Karlov Ba Lego, see Basil Rathbone. I don't have a particular one
that I can say this was the one. I don't remember that I would
say it might have been maybe The Mummy. It might have been Dracula eighteen,
nineteen seventy two, it could have been Franken Sein must be destroyed.
I'm not entirely sure. I know I saw those ones when I was very
very young. Is there is there a film that you know, maybe not
one that he necessarily said was his best, but that you look at and
say, this is like the perfect Cushing performance. I think his finest film
work, Obviously, I can't assess his theater work. For obvious reasons,
and television is a different thing, and there's a lot of work there that's
gone we can't see. But I think his best film work was franken Stein
Must be Destroyed, largely because it takes to Cushing persona and subverts it in
such an interesting way, kind of similar to what Vincent Price does in witch
Finder Jenny, where you take this image of the perfect Victorian gentleman with impeccable
manners, very much a dandy, never hair out of place, immaculately dressed,
and everything else, and it just turns him into a thorough going bastard.
Now he is terrible, not terrible and his acting, but terrible as
a character in the Curse of Frankenstein as well. And it's funny because a
lot of people, because they love Pushing so much, they tend to act
as if, you know, he was always such a lovable character on screen,
actually played quite a few villains, and Cushing himself. I don't know
if he always said this or if it was in later years when he kind
of became very sort of spiritual and very religious. He always tried to act
as if Baron Frankenstein was this kind of progressive, you know, kind of
a medical pioneer, and he was in it for the good of humanity.
It really wasn't. I mean for the most part, and a couple of
the Frankenstein films try to regard these films as a continuity as impossible. They
don't link together for the most part. There are some that do, but
if you try and look at them all as a continuous it doesn't work at
all. So there are a couple where he's more heroic than others, but
another ones he's really nasty. He was nasty, and Curse of Frankenson he's
even nastier and Frankenstein must be destroyed. He is remarkably unpleasant in that movie.
But he has so many brilliant scenes in that especially there's a great scene
where he's he's in sort of disguise, he's changed his name, and he's
on the run from the authorities, and he overhears some stuffed shirts that are
staying in the same place that he's staying at the same boarding house talking about
him, not realizing he's in the room, and then he just proceeds to
eviscerate them verbally without even raising his voice. It's an amazing scene, very
very funny but also just you know, again an indicator of what an absolutely
brilliant actor he was. It's been you know, we've been talking about this
for almost fifteen minutes and nobody's said the word Star Wars yet, which is
a good thing. But it's obviously that's probably the film that he's been in
that's been seen by the most people, most likely other than Star Wars.
What do you think he made the biggest impact with? What do you think
is his output that the most people you know had something personal attached to it.
I mean, Star Wars is obviously the big one, which, funnily
enough, did nothing for his career. I think there are reasons for that,
but I mean, if you look at his filmography after that didn't do
anything for him. Yeah, honestly, which is kind of surprising in some
respects Cursa Frankensin. In terms of his film work, undoubtedly was the big
one, no question about that. And in terms of his just his reputation
in Great Britain as a number one TV draw Like seriously, people would leave
the pubs and go home early to watch TV. If they heard Peter Cushing
was in a play, we'd be nineteen eighty four, which was was a
very very big deal at that time. And one of the other things that
he was known for is he had a lot of great co stars. Obviously
we talked about with Christopher Lee and some other big names that he played with
multip times. Yeah, which which do you think was maybe his best pairing?
Was it Christopher Lee or is there somebody else that you love to see
him with? Oh? Lee, without a doubt. I mean he he
worked with Incent Price a couple of times, but no, no, Christopher
Lee was the perfect They just complimented each other beautifully because they're very different actors.
Pushing was very fussy, h He had a lot of mannerisms that you
know, you could always count on. You know, it's the finger and
slicking back his hair in moments of stress, rubbing his he did these.
He was a very busy actor. Christopher Lee was very still, very minimalist.
Christopher Lee was a pure film actor, which I think means that his
performances in general tend to be more naturalistic, whereas Cushing was was a theater
actor, so sometimes he needed to be rained in a little bit. He
could be slightly theatrical, but they just you know, He was very jittery,
very nervous, always constantly moving around, notorious for always fiddling with props,
you know, always bringing props into scenes, whereas Lee was very still.
But whenever he would leap into action, it had that much more impact
because he was kind of conserving it. So they work beautifully together. They
go along very well too. They were friends. They weren't you know,
they weren't best friends in the way that some people make it out to be,
like, oh they oh, they used to. They didn't go to
barbecues together, they didn't hang out in each other's you know, basements and
and and shoot the breeze. But they were friends. They had mutual respect
for each other, and certainly work together on a number of films. I
mean, you know, again going all the way back to a you know,
accidental pairings in things like Hamlet, Mulan Rouge, through all these films
that went through the well, really into the well technically, even the nineties,
because they The last thing that Cushing did was co recording a narration for
Flesh and Blood documentary about Hammer, which he and Christopher Lee narrated. It
was the last thing Cushing did. He was literally dying when he did that
in a very very bad shape. So you know, but in terms of
films, all the films at Hammer, all the stuff an things like The
House and Drip Blood, you know, oddball films like Scream and Scream Again,
which I'm very fond of, and you know, their their last kind
of big screen kind of jaunt. Also bringing in Vincent Price and John Carroty
House of Long Shadows. That was a House of Long Shadows. And one
more that I was going to bring up, what do you think of Horror
Express That's my favorite of the of their pairings. I don't think it's a
better film or even as good a film as like the original Dracula or The
Mummy, for example, but in terms of it's the best example of them
playing off each other. It's the only film that really gives them an opportunity
to hold way through, to really play off each other. Yes, it's
so much fun. They're on the same side, but they're kind of antagonistic
towards each other at first. It's again taking christ really's image is being sort
of slightly stuffy and pompous and humorless and everything, and turning it on his
head so that he's very sort of frigid and unapproachable and unsympathetic at first,
but then he becomes a full fledged like action hero at the end. He's
fantastic in that film, and Cushing is just so much fun with his impish
sense of humor and so forth. It's it's just it's tremendously entertaining. I
could watch that movie. I could watch that movie every year for the rest
of my life. I'm so glad you agree. This is one that I
wouldn't say it's like an exploited title on home video, but it's one.
Sh it's the photo about to die? What happened? Anyways, I'll continue
on in Horror Express while we try to find Troy again. I don't know
what just happened. Horror Express is one that's not been like exploited on home
video, but it has lots of releases, so I feel like a lot
of people have had a chance to be able to watch those. If you've
not seen Horror Express, you can get it. I believe Arrow even had
a release quite a few years ago, and then there was Scorpion or somebody
else to put it out in the US. It has it's definitely been out
there The big thing that Troy and I are going to talk about in just
a moment when we get Troy back is the recent Severn release of Cushing Curiosities.
This is a six disc box set that is now shipping. This one
just started coming out fairly recently. I think people have been getting the scene
for like a month now. I think this was shipping right after the Black
Friday sale. And there is a lot of this. There are five feature
films, six of the BBC teleplays that Troy is just talking about, a
two hundred page book, and sixteen plus hours of special features. There are
commentaries on almost everything. There is a lot of love in this with it.
Doesn't it look like Emmanuel is taking a photo Ryan Jeez, A lot
of love in this with Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby. That's the other name
I was looking for. And we also have the the Sherlock Holmes release in
This is supposed to be great. I don't have this one in yet,
but I'm eager to get it. There's Troy again. Hello. I apologize.
I was using my phone and I did not realize we were going to
have such a long pregame and my phone ended up dying on me, So
you're okay. It was really funny timing because I heard shit and then it
was like falling from your face and then it died. I know it was
coming, I just I had no way to prevent it from happening. Well,
Cushing curiosities in this, I just started talking about it to waste a
little time before you come back. In this, we've got ConA Silence from
nineteen sixty. We've got Suspect from nineteen sixty and The Man Who Finally Died
from sixty two. Three and four are Sherlock Holmes discs, and then five
is Bloodsuckers from nineteen seventy one, and then finally six is Tender Dracula from
seventy four. What can you tell us about any of these and anything else
about the Box that that you want to rave about? Well, I think
the big thing I'd like to rave about is the book. You can't even
call it a booklet. I mean, that's an accurate book that Jonathan Rigby
put together, which is fantastic, and I would say it's the best thing
that's been written about Peter Cushing thus far. Most of the biographies that have
well all of the biographies have been written about him fall into this trap of
kind of trying to make him into Saint Peter. He was, by all
accounts, you know, a lovely guy and extremely extremely professional and everything.
But he had his quirks and he had his flaws, and there were things
that, you know, kind of go against the image of his sort of
squeaky clean image. And Jonathan Rigby kind of wrestles with the peculiarities of his
personality in this book. And it's a man who many respects was kind of
a Peter Pan in many respects. He was a little bit of a child
in some regards, and not exactly not exactly always as squeaky clean as some
people make him out to be. Not to take anything away from him,
it's just reality what he is, and kind of trying to analyze, you
know, why his career went the way that it did, and why he
didn't have more success in certain areas, and you know, and so forth
and so on. So it's a wonderful, wonderful addition. I mean,
it could be released on its own, you know, and be fantastic.
I'd love to see a proper biography written of him by somebody like either Jonathan
Rigby or somebody who's willing to take it on seriously and honestly like that.
So that'd be the first thing I'd say. The other thing is that all
these films, you know, they're not on the same tier, they're not
all the same quality, but I'm just so glad to see them all released.
ConA Silence is a really good movie with a very good cast. You
bought George Sanders, Andre Morel, Michael Craig, Charles Tingwell, Noel Willman,
lots of really familiar faces, Especially if you're into the Ammer films,
You're going to recognize a lot of these actors. And I would say he
explores cushing curiosities, and it's it's a really good Bernard Lee too, who
was em in the James Bond films for many years. It's a really good
sort of suspense drama, and Cushing plays a thoroughly unpleasant character in it,
so another example of him not always being the nice guy on screen. Suspect
is a great movie. It's a it's a little B movie, a little
little sort of cheap thing that the Bolting brothers threw together, you know,
to sort of demonstrate the ability to make a low budget programmer with high quality.
So you've got Peter Cushing, Donald pleasants, Ian Bannon who steals the
show, and lots of really good actors in that film, and a really
gripping narrative, even as the British comedian Spike Milligan in it as well.
He has some amusing bits in that film. And Thoroley Walters, who's a
familiar face from a lot of Hammer films. He's in it too, So
that one I recommend very highly. The Man Who Finally Died is not as
good. It's a little bit. I think it's a little dry. It's
a little but it does have some good things and it's again a great cast
headed by Stanley Baker, who was a big star. He's a Welsh actor.
He's a big star back in the sixties. He's somewhat forgotten now,
I think, largely because he died rather young. But you know, people
were into genre films might remember him for playing the sarcastic police inspector in Luccio
Fulci's Lizard of Woman's Skin, amongst other things. But I mean obviously big
films like Zulu and Guns and Avaron and so forth. So film isn't quite
the sum of its parts, but it's worth looking at. The Sherlock Holmes
series is interesting because it's these are the surviving episodes, as well as excerpts
of some shows that haven't survived, but there are clips of them available famously.
Cushing, well, we should say, first of all, he played
Charlock Holmes in nineteen fifty eight for Hammer in a version of Hound of the
Baskervilles. It has often been said that the film is a commercial failure and
that this killed a series of Charlock Holmes film that Hammer was going to make.
That neither of these things are true. First of all, the film
was successful. It wasn't as successful as Curs of Frankenstein or Dracula or Avenge
of Frankenstein, but it made money. But they never intended to make a
series of Charlock Holmes films. That wasn't their part of their agenda. They
just thought, out of the Baskerville's Gothic this fits into what we're doing at
this time, will do one. I'm sure if it had been a bigger
hit, they might have looked into doing more, but it wasn't really up
to them because they didn't control the rights of the stories at that time,
and the estate was not happy with the film, apparently because they thought it
was too violent. So I think that was going to happen regardless anyway.
A decade later, he takes over from an actor named Douglas Wilmer, who
has been playing Charlock Holmes on TV back in nineteen sixty five. He had
a miserable experience making the series, and Cushing similarly had a miserable experience because
he'd been promised all kinds of rehearsal time and opportunities to do things properly,
and the whole thing was just chaos. It was a very you know,
ill prepared and Cushing always said, you know, I don't see myself doing
my best work in this series. I see an actor who's just desperately trying
to spit his lines out without screwing up. As a matter of fact,
he does flob a few which tells you something. He's an immaculate actor.
But given the way that the way that the series was put together, it's
not surprising that it's a little rough around the edges. If this were Cushings
only kind of go at Charlotte Holmes, I wouldn't say that he would rank
his one of my favorites in the character. He's fine in the series,
but it's not his best work. His work in The hellnd of the Basket
Rolls for Hammer, on the other hand, is fantastic. It really kind
of paves the way for what Jeremy Brett did later on in the eighties and
nineties with his portrayal of homes, which is fairly definitive. So these are
interesting curiosities. They're a little rough around the edges, but you know they're
well worth taking a look at. Speaking rough around the edges. Bloodsuckers,
Yeah, Tim in an orgy sequence, and Cushing's not in the orgy sequence.
I hate. The most shocking thing you're ever going to see Cushing do
on film isn't a movie he did from sixty Well, he's shot in sixty
seven. It came out sixty I Corruption, where there's a Continental version which
is on the Blu Ray versions, where he wrestles around with a naked prostitute
and spreads stage blood over her exposed breasts. You know, many Cushing fans
needed their fainting couches for that one. Gentlemen are doing such a thing.
Bloodsuckers is a really weird film. It's a mess. It's not surprising it's
a mess because it really wasn't finished. It was a troubled production. There
are a lot of stories about a lot of things have been said that the
you know that the money ran out, and other people have denied that this
is true. But ultimately what we've got is a movie that is in sorely
unfinished conditions. So the whole first the movies very choppy, makes it very
difficult to get into. It's an absolute mess upfront, but if you stick
with it, it gets better as it goes on. It's got some interesting
stuff and Cushing doesn't have a lot to do, but he's got a great
scene at the end which is definitely well worth seeing. And it's got a
great cameo by Edward Woodward, who is fantastic as a sort of expert on
vampirism. He's got some very funny lines and it's almost worth watching just for
him. It's an interesting film. It's never looked as good before. I
can tell you. The release that Severn put together for this is pretty extraordinary,
and it's got a great commentary by Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lynes, who
again, I aspire to that level of quality of what they do and what
they bring to these releases. So it's a great example of taking a movie
that has suffered a lot in terms of being badly regarded down through the years
and being put together now in an addition that at least makes it possible to
appreciate it and see what it was trying to do. I love that as
they introduce this they say it could be revaluated as the longest version ever assembled.
Obviously they skret around, is it complete? No, because it never
was, not really No, but it is the longest version because that orgy
scene I mentioned was cut, which, let's be honest, was for the
best. But you know it's there now and it does make it, I
believe, the only Peter Cushing film with full frontal nudity again with the coushing
finger, not from the man himself though. Tender Dracula. Yeah, that's
an oddball film too, which I appreciate more now actually having seen this beautiful
blu ray presentation. It's a movie that's it's a little misleading. There's a
question as to whether you know, is he actually even a vampire in the
film. It's unclear. We can interpret it as he's a real vampire,
or he may not be just crackpot horror film star who identifies too closely with
his role the film. Film has some interesting kind of meta kind of flourishes
which almost in a way kind of makes it comparable for him to say like
Theater of Blood for Vincent Price, where it's almost a little bit of celebration
of Cushing the actor in terms of, you know, we see the character
McGregor who he plays as a horror film star, and he's got scrap books
with photos. We can see pictures of Cushing at various different stages in his
career and so forth. He has some lovely scenes in the film with the
lead of Valley, wonderful Italian actress who had been in The Third Man but
also in things like Lisa and the Devil and Suspiria, and their scenes are
really really good. But there's also a lot of other sort of French farce
material with other actors which isn't nearly as interesting or engaging. But if you
watch the film, this is one of those ones where you kind of want
to toggle back and forth the Cushing Valley scenes watch them in English because it's
got their voices. But the other scenes with the French actors, you're probably
better off watching those scenes in French. There's still not for funny, but
at least they're better than the English language dubs on those actors. Interesting.
And again Troy just brought up Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons, but they are
literally all over the set. Jonathan Rigby especially is one that I always like
listening to, not to take away from Kevin Lyons, just something about Jonathan
Rigby is just magnetic and just so educational. I'm dying to see stuff from
the set. I definitely need to pick it up eventually. Yeah, it's
well worth buying. It's worth it. I mean again, why did they
haven't marked down to ninety five dollars. That's a good good deal for what
you're getting with all those films and plus that book. I mean, it's
it's really beautifully put together, so it has my highest recommendation. The crazy
thing is, I think the release from Amazon comes with the book as well,
and the link for that's in the description below. It's even cheaper on
Amazon. It's like seventy two right now. It's a that's a damn good
deal, so I would check that out. Link is in the description.
Kuching has done so much over the years too, like what if questions for
you? We talked about who is your favorite that he was with? Who
did he never start with that you would have loved to have seen him do
something with from around that time, Surprisingly, never cross paths professionally, and
I don't even know if personally with Boris Karloff. I would have liked to
have seen that Basil Rathbone very nearly happened, which would have been wonderful.
We would have had two of the very best Sherlock Holmes's, well, the
two best Sharlock holmes is of the big screen up until that time. They
were supposed to be in a movie together called The Blood Beast Terror, which
is the infamous killer moth movie Giant killer moth movie, which is better than
you might think based on that description, or maybe not as good either,
depending on your point of view. As a Rathbone was supposed to have played
the mad scientist in that film, but unfortunately he passed away. He had
just come back from doing a film, a very strange film in Mexico with
Cameron Mitchell and John Carodine called autopsy for a ghost. Apparently the altitude in
Mexico didn't agree with him, and he died of a heart attack quite suddenly.
I think he was seventy five, which is not you know, it's
not that old. So he was he was gearing up to do this movie
in England with Peter Cushing, and that would have been a joy to have
seen that. So either one of those guys, I would have loved to
have seen him sharing a screen with them other than characters. Is there a
role that he didn't ever get to play, or a type of role that
he never played that you you feel like he would have been really great at
I would have. I think he. I think it would have been interesting
to have seen him in the James Bond universe in some capacity. I think
he could have played a villain very effectively. If we look at the films,
what villain would he have been good for the only one that I can
think of that you know certainly he could have done and was you know,
took place during his time when he was still active and so forth. He
would have been good. As Stromberg in the Spy Who Loved Me. I
think he would have been good for that, not to take anything away from
Kurt Jurgen's he was great, but I think Cushing would have been or alternatively,
after Bernard Lee stepped down his m he would have been a good m
as well. So I think in something like that that would have been interesting.
I would have liked to have seen him doing something like that. It's
pretty well known that he turned out well. His agent turned down Halloween.
He was offered the role of Doctor Loomis. I only just saw this recently.
Somebody was saying, oh, he turned it down. He couldn't do
it because he was working on Star Wars. Star Wars was shot two years
before Halloween. He shot his scenes I believe in a week all the week
in May of nineteen seventy six. I believe Halloween was shot in the spring
of nineteen seventy eight, so I think he could have slotted it in,
but his agent thought that the film wasn't worthy of his time. I think
if Kushing would have gotten to offer directly, he probably we would have done
it, and he would have been good. I mean, you know,
I have no reason to doubt that he would have been good, but his
health would have only permitted him to have done the first film. In the
second film, he wouldn't have been available for the later ones. Christopher Lee
did turn it down because he really was trying to get away from that type
of film. He did apparently tell Debor Hill, the producer at a function
I think for Escape from New York, that it was a mistake, But
he may have just been saying that to be nice, because honestly, I
don't think he really wanted to get type cast again in horror films. And
that's exactly what happened to Donald Pleasant's after that. So the right guy got
the part, though. Yeah, Donald Pleasants certainly embraced it after that.
Well. I mean, you know, he was what the English call it
jobbing actor, as were Cushing in Lee. You know, if the opportunity
was there, if they could slot it into the schedule, they were happy
to do it. They just love to work and go places and work on
films. I mean, the thing about Cushing was how quintessentially English he was,
and that he was very much unlike Christopher Lee and indeed unlike Donald Pleasance.
He was, you know, reluctant to travel outside of England for years.
That changed after his wife died in nineteen seventy one, and you know,
he went into a complete sort of nervous breakdown, very publicly talked about
being suicidal and everything else, which didn't do his career any good. I
can assure you. I think that made a lot of people reluctant to hire
him. I think that connects into some of the issues he had later on
his career in terms of not you know, not getting bigger offers. I
mean, Jonathan Rigby's talked about this as well, and other people have as
well. I mean, this is pretty common knowledge that he he suffered terribly
after her death, and he kind of going into this real, kind of
deeply spiritual period and he was very religious and so forth, which he never
seemed to be prior to that, but during that period of time it seemed
as though because he wasn't he was just so desperately unhappy. He was willing
to go wherever. So he started doing films, and he did a horror
film in Florida called shock Waves, for example. He famously broke a tooth
on the flight on his way to do that film. Didn't want to do
anything about it until he got back to England, so he could see his
own dentist, and the only thing he was really concerned about was getting a
stack of buckwheats at the International House of Pancakes. So you know, he
was only too happy to go and do that. He did a film in
Greece with Donald Pleasants called Land of the Minotaur or the Devil's Men, was
a pretty terrible film, but he, you know, went to Germany in
all these different places. But before before his wife's death, he didn't really
do that too much. He tended to stick pretty close to home, and
so he made him the most I think quintessentially English of all the horror film
stars, and English proper. Indeed, a lot of his mannerisms, it
feels very like somebody that would be called lord or something back then. You
mentioned his hair earlier, The way that he always caressed it just screamed English
to be oh yeah, well, I mean, and of course it's it's
true to say too. And you know, obviously I speak from experience.
He wore a wig or a hair piece in a great many films going back
to the nineteenth as. Indeed, to Christopher Lee, Lee never acknowledged that
he tried to keep that secret. I think, but Cushing, you know,
would sometimes appear in films without his hair piece. So sometimes you'll see
him in movies where he has you know, big bufont of hair you know,
going on, and it's it's just a hair piece, whereas you see
him in certain other films where he's he's you know, old natural so to
speak. So a house of long shadows for example, we mentioned before,
he's not you know, augmented with anything. There you can see where his
hairline was really at. So he was always, you know, he was
always doing that sort of gesture of smoothing down the hair and so forth,
maybe sometimes making sure that it was still there. And yeah, I mean
he again, he was a very he very mannered, very fussy in some
respects. There were times when that could get a little carried away. Maybe
he needed to be sort of rained in ever so slightly. But he was
a very very versatile actor and extremely extremely gifted actor who unfortunately, if you
look at his filmography, you know, from the beginning to the end.
I think one of the reasons he was only too happy to stick with horror
films after a certain point anyway, was he realized that they were giving him
better parts because most of the other films that he did outside of the horror
genre, and I'm talking about films and not talking theater or television. He
had great opportunities in both of those, although he didn't like doing theater very
much. He didn't like the repetitious aspect of it. But in terms of
films, he didn't get very good film roles other than his horror films for
the most part. Like he's in some good movies, you know, Time
Without Time Without Pity, Joseph Losey Noir that he's in, he doesn't have
a very good part in it, and a lot of other things as well,
you know, with the exception of some things like Cash on Demand,
Cone of Silence and Suspect that we mentioned before, those were really good parts.
But for the most part, his real opportunities to shine came in these
horror films, and you know, obviously made the very best of it and
delivered some really fantastic performances. I mean, again is Baron Frankenstein. But
also on the other side of the coin, doctor Van helsing in various Hammer
films as well, and sometimes even just really adding a lot to characters that
didn't have a lot on the page. I mean, if you look at
a movie like The Mummy, there's not really a lot for him on the
page, I don't think, but he really brings that character life and does
a lot with it, so you know again, or a film like The
Skull, which really rests heavily on his shoulders because so much of that movie
is just following him around. It's a very thin movie in terms of plot,
but the mood, the atmosphere is really fantastic, and Pushing does a
beautiful job of carrying it. Are there We'll say, like two deep cuts
that maybe we've either mentioned or haven't mentioned at all, but something that you
know, most of us have probably never seen that you would say, these
are absolutely worth your time checking out. Even if you look at a couple
of his biggest titles, these are like the second wave of you absolutely should
follow up with a couple more. It's hard to say, I mean deep
cut. I don't know. You know, there's certainly films that aren't as
popular or performances I should say that don't get talked about as much. But
I wouldn't say that there are films that aren't very well known. I mean,
I think a really really interesting performance of his is an Asylum, which
is one of the Amicus anthologies he did. This was during this period and
Rigby talks about this in his book as well. This this period of really
intense, nakedly emotional performance he was giving after his wife died. Really sometimes
playing extremes of emotions, and in this character's case, he's playing a man
who's grieving, so he's bringing a lot of that grief that he's feeling in
his real life to the character. And it's a really oddly affecting performance.
In a segment that's not always spoken of terribly well, it's called the Weird
Tailor, where he commissions Barry Morse to make a suit out of this very
unusual fabric and it turns out that it's to be used to bring his dead
son back to life. Spoiler alert. But the movie is over fifty years
old, you know. It's a lovely performance from him in that in terms
of I mean, on a different end of the spectrum in terms of playing
again just a really nasty character. It's not that it's an unknown film.
I think it's fairly popular among people who like these films. But Twins of
Evil, where he plays a fanatical witch hunter who is extremely unsympathetic. And
again it's always funny to me, you know, again because people love pushing
so much, and for obvious reasons. I mean, there was a great
warmth to it, and a great warmth to him and a great humanity to
him. But you know, let's not confused the actor with the roles,
you know, and vice versa. He is he was capable of playing really
nasty, unpleasant characters. And I don't think it's necessary always to sort of
say, oh, but he was. He was doing it for a good
gun. No, he wasn't no nasty characters. So I like seeing him
and something like that or corruption I mentioned before is another one. I mean,
it's not a movie I'm that crazy about, but boy, is he
good in it. I would agree there that's a fun one for him.
Yeah. The seven set, it is by all accounts, everybody seems to
be raving about it. I cannot wait to have it. I'm so glad
that you wanted to advocate for it. And again, Rigby Allons clearly put
their all into the set. There's such a huge part of it and for
Severn to bring you know, we're just talking about deep cuts. Some of
those are very deep cuts, and just to get them out there for people
to be able to see, not to mention the rescued episodes. I mean,
that's that's a big deal. A lot of these would never get a
chance with any other label, So Severn just once again delivering things that are
I mean, to be fair, a lot of those are kind of risky,
and especially to put them in a bit of an expensive package. I
really hope some people discover those and go all in on them because they do
incredible work. So I mean, really, Troy, just thank you,
thank you for wanting to talk about Cushing. He's not somebody that gets a
ton of love, and it's perfect time after what Severn did, so glad
you suggested him. Yeah, I mean again, he's He's one of my
favorites, has been for literally for as long as I can remember, and
always a pleasure to get a chance to talk about him. As many commentaries
as I've done, I think I've only done one film that he was in,
and that's the House of Trip Blood. You know, obviously a movie
I love and have a great tale of affection for. But yeah, I
mean, he's he's somebody I never tire of watching. And it's interesting pop
culture has a very short memory. It's true to say that you know,
even big iconic actors and so forth, that you would think people, most
younger people and just the average person on the street, they don't. They
probably don't even know who Humphrey Bogart is, to be honest, they probably
don't. They probably don't know who Evererge Robinson is. You know, a
lot of these people, they certainly don't know who Peter Cushing is. And
if they do, they know him as the old guy in Star Wars,
which to an extent is what probably a lot of people would say about Christopher
Lee now as well. They know him for battling Yoda in one of the
later Star Wars movies, or for being Saramon in Lord of the Rings.
I mean, Lee was fortunate that he had this fantastic last act after a
pretty grim period in the eighties and nineties where he wasn't always getting great films,
So he had a great renaissance at the end. I think Kushing could
have had something similar had his health been better. But unfortunately, after doing
what became his last theatrical big screen film, a movie called Biggles Adventures and
time. Around about nineteen eighty five, he was diagnosed with cancer, and
you know, his health became too precarious for him to be in short so
he wanted to work. He kept, you know, he was Actually I
mentioned Jeremy Brett before he was going to do one of the episodes of the
Charlotte Holmes series that Jeremy Brett did, called The Last Vampire. He ended
up not being able to do it due to ill health, so you know,
there you go. Unfortunately, he didn't have an opportunity to continue on
acting into the nineteen nineties, and I can still remember it very vividly when
he passed away. It was, you know, certain celebrity deaths hit you
in a certain way. Cushing, Pleasance, Christopher Lee obviously, and a
few others definitely hit me hard because these are people I grew up really really
admiring and almost in a weirdser way, they almost sort of felt like family
to me growing up because they were they were just always there. Vincent Price
another one, big, big one. When Vincent Price died in ninety three,
I was really terribly depressed, you know, and I didn't know these
people. I didn't need them, you know, although I did manage to
cot Peter Cushing's autograph I sent away and he sent it to me not long
before he died. So I mean, that's that's that's really cool, that's
awesome. I don't always do this, but I gotta ask you, got
any book work happening? Is there anything else that you can hint that you
got coming up anytime soon? Uh? No? I mean I can talk
about a couple of things because I've already announced them. We talked before about
Eugenio Ercolani. He and I are working on a potential series we're planning to
make, you know, at least a few volumes of these. It's called
Unsung Heroes, which are going to focus on Italian filmmakers whose output wasn't especially
prolific. So we're writing about four different directors too, and to he's writing
about his grandfather, Julia Petroni, and the director named Franko Rossetti. I'm
writing about Massimo Dalamano and Vittorio Seleno. These are not household names, but
you know, it would be difficult to write a book about any of these
people, just them, because Massimo Dalamano, for example, only directed eleven
features. So that's that's difficult to sustain into a book, but if you
put them all together, you know, that's that's kind of the idea.
So that's being worked on. I've written a book which is in the process
of being edited about the German director Robert Siegel made called Lauren, which if
you haven't seen, I highly recommend. It's a really beautiful film, you
know, really, I think one of the best German horror films ever made.
Uh. And he's not had the career that he really deserved in many
respects, but he's he's done some other interesting stuff, so you know,
working with him, interviewing him very extensively, and so forth. You know,
I've done this book, and I'm planning a book on the Italian director
Alberto de Martino, who you may not be familiar with, but directed things
like Blazing Magnum with Stuart Whitman and John Saxon, and The Antichrist with Mel
Ferrer and Arthur Kennedy, A Holocaust two thousand with Kirk Douglas. So yeah,
I got that coming as well. Interesting. And then I mean fairly
recently, you just put out your last one. Was it last or not?
It was twenty twenty two or was that twenty twenty three? Time has
blurred so much time has blurred for me altogether. I'm lucky. I believe
it was twenty twenty two that Make Them Die Slowly came out, which Coromberta
Lenzi, which yeah, I was very, very pleased with the way that
that turned out, and I can talk about it here. I mean,
I have no reason not to. I haven't announced it yet, but it's
been a decade since I did these so deadly so perverse books was turned into
a trilogy, wasn't what was intended to be that way, but you know,
all these years later, I'm I'm mulling over the idea of doing another
book, not part of that series, but another kind of a broader overview
of the Jallo not an encyclopedia type of thing, but more kind of examining
different trends in different styles of the films and you know, assembling it slightly
differently. So that's something I'm thinking about doing as well. Hopefully that's not
going back to the same well too often, but I think it's it's been
enough time. Well, I I mean, after looking at the Make Them
Die Slowly, I have to admit and would say this to anybody. It's
not just because you're hearing anything. You're clearly just getting better and better with
time. That that book is astonishing and it's it's one that people should be
looking up. It's incredible. I had troyon right around when it was coming
out, and go back and watch that conversation. It's it's an incredible piece.
And Lindsey keeps getting a lot of love on home video lately, so
people that are falling for Lendsey, this is a good time to go pick
up a supplemental piece will fill some of that context around some of these films.
And just you know, if you've enjoyed Troy for the last hour talking
about Peter Cushing, there's a lot with Troy's work that you can dive into
from you know, commentaries and books and lots of things to support Troy,
So please go do that. I've enjoyed your work immensely, so it's an
honor to have you here again tonight, sir, Well, thank you.
I'm glad you said I'm getting better and better and not worse and worse,
although some might disagree, but yes, I appreciate it, and yeah,
there's more Lensy coming, by the way, as far as upgrades and things
are concerned, I can't tell you what or from whom, but there is
more coming that is not surprising. I'm really glad that that's happening. Troy
and everybody that's been hanging out tonight, thank you so much for taking the
time to be here. Craig from Deaf Crocodile, could you he wants you
to repeat that German film that you were talking about. It's called at l
a U r i N. It's from the nineteen eighties, was released in
eighty nine. There is a British blu ray at this point from second run.
It's a really really fine film. Lots of influences from many interesting sources,
heavy Polanski influence for example. You know, maybe maybe he's somebody will
talk about someday. If the public is prepared. We will try to get
the public prepared. Again. Everybody go check out Troy stuff. Thanks for
your time hanging out tonight. We will see you next Thursday, Troy,
if you'll if you'll come back, I would be thrilled to heavyback soon.
Just ask me. I'm not hard to get a hold of. Have a
good one. Everybody. We'll see you next week.