Are
You Lonesome Tonight? (2021/Film Movement DVD)/Catman Of Paris
(1946/Republic/Imprint/Via Vision Region Free Import
Blu-ray)/Fighting Back (1982/Paramount/Arrow*)/Game Trilogy
(Most Dangerous Game (1978)/Killing Game
(1978)/Execution Game (1979)/Arrow*)/McBain
(1991/Synapse/*all MVD Blu-rays)
Picture:
C/B-/B/B B- B/B Sound: C/B-/B-/B-/B- Extras: C/B/C+/B/C-
Films: C+/B-/C/C+/C
PLEASE
NOTE: The Catman Of Paris Import Blu-ray is now
only available from our friends at Via Vision Entertainment in
Australia, can play on all 4K and Blu-ray players and can be ordered
from the link below.
Revenge
is the theme of the following...
Wen
Shipei's Are
You Lonesome Tonight?
(2021) has a young man (Eddie Peng) accidentally hitting and killing
someone with his car. Making things worse, he feels so back, he goes
out of his way to meet the now-widowed wife (Sylvia Chang) in his
guilt and confusion. However, the body suddenly turns up, but now
with a bunch of bullets in it and a detective (Wang Yanhui) trying to
find out the truth.
Three
long years later, all three are still upset about it all and no one
knows the truth about anything, but that is all about to change.
The
premise, concept, look and pace of all this is good, down to an
interesting use of color, but despite some solid moments, we have
seen too much of this before and the makers seem to keep missing a
breakaway point where this would really take off. We rarely see
ambitious productions in this genre almost-work, they either succeed
or fail these days. At least this one tries, so those highly
interested might want to take a look.
Extras
include trailers and a short film, Shipei's own Killing
Time,
one of the more interesting shorts Film Movement have included on a
DVD; a science fiction assassin tale.
Leslie
Salander's The
Catman Of Paris
(1946) is a highly underrated horror/psychological thriller with some
camp comedy and 77 years later, finally is getting the respect it
deserves. Often written off as a Cat
People
(1942, see our Criterion review elsewhere on this site) knock off and
coming from B-movie Western and serial chapter studio Republic, it is
actually one of the best movies they ever made (along with High
Noon,
Johnny
Guitar
and some would add, It's
A Wonderful Life)
as a smarter and more complex film than it would first appear.
Taking
place in 1896 Paris, a respected man (Carl Esmond) has returned from
Asia and apparently has a 'rare' illness that is making him forget
things, but at the time of his arrival, a mysterious killer has
surfaced clawing and mutilating people to death. Some say it looks
like the killer is a giant cat!
Though
that also sounds like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the Asian trip has not
made him into The Shadow either,) the screenplay (for a film running
only 63 minutes, but it is tight and always moving) uses that all as
a jumping-off point to come up with a more interesting film that has
more interesting, funny, fun, suspenseful and well-done moments than
you might expect and makes it worthy of the best B-level genre films
from MGM, Warner Bros. and the like.
I
also like how this is shot (slightly Noir at times), edited and how
the shots are composed. Even the use of black and white is something
unique as it does not look like any major studio, yet it is also
professional and palpable. Thus, Catman
Of Paris
belongs on the same shelf as the Universal Horror classics, B-movie
mystery series and German Expressionist silent classics. I like it
that much and definitely recommend it. I just wish it ran longer.
The
great extras, including a solid audio commentary, look at the film
and at the Republic Studios, are listed at the order link and make
this one of the best special editions of the year.
Lewis
Teague's Fighting
Back
(1982) is the first of our two reactionary movies here, a cycle that
was built out of the first Charles Bronson Death
Wish,
which slowly gained momentum over the last decade, spawned a few
sequels and imitators, so now we have the point where name actors who
would not have done a film like this start appearing in them. In
this case, it is Tom Skerritt, who was just in the original Alien,
a megahit in 1979, so he was a name with star power and that is how
this film happened.
As
usual for these formula films, people are living in fear as crime
(murder, terrorism and robbery) have skyrocketed, but one man (and
sometimes one woman, but not in this cinema much yet) 'can't take it
anymore' and will go on a fighting spree and maybe even kill 'the bad
guys' or the like. Casting likable actors (Clint Eastwood in the
Dirty Harry films also set a precedent) make this more palatable as
'of course, he's a nice guy, so he would have never hurt anyone if it
was not that bad' and that is how these films were made and sold.
Maybe
that is not what was always being thought of when they were being
produced, but they are all still B-movies and they knew it, just too
violent and rough for broadcast TV of the time. This one dips into
action genre conventions, but also shows its age and badly. It is a
cycle that brought the 1980s and its worse side and now we know
better decades too late.
This
one is a time capsule of Philadelphia where it was shot and it does
have an interesting supporting cast including Yaphet Kotto
(Skerritt's Alien
co-star,) Michael Sarrazin and Broadway legend Patti LuPone (also
known for her many musicals, but no numbers here) as his wife!
Despite
all that talent and a solid, additional supporting cast, it is more
yelling and predictability than acting all the time and felt like
watching bad NBC Network TV at the time (including the 'friendlier'
Real
People)
going on and on for a few hours. True, people were dealing with
crime and bad times then, but none of these films criticized the
possible roots for all this, being too friendly to those with money
and power. Not even a moderate fair critique is to be found. At
best, this is a curio to be viewed with a grain of salt. It was so
bad to mer then, I had forgotten it, then was not that happy to see
it again. There is a reason it was forgotten for so many years. Oh
well...
Extras
include (per the press release) Enough
is Enough!,
a new interview with director Lewis Teague
Next
up, Toru Murakawa's The
Game Trilogy
(with The
Most Dangerous Game
(1978)/Killing
Game
(1978)/Execution
Game
(1979) has nothing to do with the Michael Douglas/David Fincher
thriller or the first film with the RKO classic, but a comical yakuza
action trilogy with Yusaku Matsuda as hitman Shohei Narumi, hired to
kidnap someone for that famous mob organization, but his prisoner is
killed while in his custody!
No
problem! The Yakuza asks him to not worry and just kidnap someone
else for them, but this is obviously wrong and he realizes something
is very wrong, then all hell breaks loose in the first film, The
Most Dangerous Game.
First sequel The
Killing Game
has two women inspiring him to come out of hiding, only to face new
gunfights, hand to hand combat and more, The
Execution Game
wraps it all up for better and worse, with the makers quitting while
they were ahead, but these films were very popular in Japan and the
lead would sadly die too young from cancer not long after a solid
turn in Ridley Scott's Black
Rain,
a film that put Michael Douglas on the map worldwide as a superstar.
That
makes this set a curio for those who like this kind of action/crime
drama and is a very welcome restoration and release for big fans of
the films. Arrow has delivered as well as they can, as usual, with
another archival set worth looking into.
Extras
are many and the LIMITED
EDITION CONTENTS include (per the press release):
DISC
1: THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME
DISC
2: THE KILLING GAME & THE EXECUTION GAME
And
we conclude with our other reactionary film, James Glickenhaus'
McBain
(1991) with Christoper Walken again cast in another film where he is
on a one-man mission to avenge himself after being a prisoner of war
in Vietnam. Flying in the face of his brilliant, Oscar-winning
performance in Cimino's The
Deer Hunter
(1978, now out in an excellent 4K release) and more of a match with
is somewhat reactionary turn in John Irwin's The
Dogs Of War
(1980, reviewed elsewhere on this site) where is kidnapped and
tortured in an African nation, only to survive and go back to kill
the torturers at least shows Walken's range.
But
here, he is against a Vietnam vet, but has not killed himself, but is
saved by a man who he finds out has been killed later in Columbia
eighteen years later. Maria Conchita Alonso, an ever-underrated
actress, is the dead man's sister who joins him and with a small
army, they are going to go to Columbia to overthrow its government
(!?!?!?) as payback!
Of
course, this is ridiculous, but by this time, the simple reactionary
film of the 1970s and early 1980s were supplanted by war revenge
films and this is a little-discussed hybrid of both, with some even
saying having Alonzo in the film proves there is nothing remotely
racist or racial about the film, though others could debate that to
at least some extent. Michael Ironside leads the most unknown
supporting cast, but he is solid here too. Unfortunately, this is
mostly predictable, mostly fantasy and mostly bizarre, with even
Walken unable to save it. Now all restored, you can see it for
yourself and decide.
Extras
include an Original Theatrical Trailer and feature-length audio
commentary track with James Glickenhaus and film historian Chris
Poggiali.
Now
for playback performance. The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white
digital High Definition image on Catman transfer can show the
age of the materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all
previous releases of the film. The flaws are not too bad and I like
the look of the film. The PCM 2.0 Mono is as clean and clear as the
old theatrical monophonic sound ever will be, so the combination is
surprisingly solid.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on the Game
films can sometimes show the age of the materials used, yet they also
seem to have some flaws and issues that are just part of the way they
were made and shot. With zero information on how they got their
scope framing, it is hard to tell whether these are shot in 2-perf
Techniscope/Chromoscope or (a little more likely) anamorphic lenses
that were just not that great. Color and composition are better, so
I will not fault the transfers for being what they are, with the
final film being a little weaker than the first two. Yet, I cannot
imagine these looking much better if I saw them on 35mm off of the
original camera negatives, so I will not be able to penalize them for
this. The first film at least has been sited as being shot on
Fujicolor 35mm negative film. It looks like the sequels were too.
The
Japanese PCM 1.0 Mono is from newly remastered elements, but not
having this in 2.0 Mono is a mistake, limiting the quality of the
film's original theatrical mono sound and all three films could have
sounded much better. Sad.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Fighting
Back can show the age of the materials used, but this is far
superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film, the few it
has had and the PCM 2.0 Mono sounds as good as it ever will.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on McBain
can also show the age of the materials used, easily
looking better than it ever has on video before. Sound is here in a
brand new DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix and lossless PCM
2.0 Stereo mix, with the 5.1 upgrade just a bit better than the old
stereo audio. The film was originally issued in Dolby's older Dolby
System A-type noise reduction system, which had been succeeded by its
newer, better SR (Spectral Recording) system with better noise
reduction. There is only so much you can do with this older audio,
but this is as good as it is going to get.
To
order The
Catman Of Paris
Umbrella import Blu-ray, go to this link for it and many more great
web-exclusive
releases at:
https://viavision.com.au/shop/the-catman-of-paris-1946-imprint-collection-219/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
