Don't
Torture A Duckling 4K
(1972/Arrow 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray*)/Fear
In The Philippines: The Complete Blood Island Films
(1959-1970/Severin Blu-ray Set)/Nosferatu
(2025/Universal Blu-ray)/Poverty
Row Classics: King Of the Zombies
(1941)/ Miss V From
Moscow (1942/VCI Blu-ray
w/DVD Set/*both MVD)
4K
Ultra HD Picture: B Picture: X/B (Mad: B-)/B-/B- C+ &
C Sound: C+/B- C+ C C-/B+/B- & C+ Extras: B- (Row:
C+) Films: C/C+/B-/C+
Now
for some B-movie horror, plus the second direct remake of one of the
most important horror films ever made...
Lucio
Fulci's Don't
Torture A Duckling 4K
(1972) has to do with a series of child killings, but also the town
where the are is not exactly innocent, so Fulci deals with politics
and religion in the face of serial murder, et al, to his credit.
While the film has its moments, I thought it was more uneven than my
fellow critic did when he recommended it at this link of Arrow's
older Blu-ray only release of the film:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/15122/Dario+Argento's+Opera+(1987/Music+Box/Scorpio
With
that said, I do not know if it is Fulci's best or greatest film, but
it is one of his boldest and the parts that do work are as relevant
as ever. The best way to put it is that it takes his pre-horror
sensibilities and tries to meld it with the genre, but it does nto
always meld well. Still, it is worth a good look and now, here's the
best way to see it. A
Lizard In A Woman's Skin,
The
Black Cat,
House
By The Cemetery,
Murder
Rock
and his Zombie
films have him more in his element. Too bad, because a combination
of his grasp of the genre with the politics of this film would have
been far more stunning, though this still remains controversial.
Extras
are the same as that Blu-ray edition.
Fear
In The Philippines: The Complete Blood Island Films
(1959 - 1970) has four films made on a low budget in the monster
genre that are not great, but are at least trying to do something
entertaining. That's more than I can say for most of their modern
equivalents, especially the high budget ones. We describe each film
before revealing their extras, staring with the first double feature
disc:
TERROR
IS A MAN (1957, a man becomes a monster, et al)
Man
Becomes Creature: Interview With Hemisphere Marketing Consultant
Samuel M. Sherman
Dawn
Of Blood Island: Interview With Co-Director Eddie Romero
Terror
Creature: Interview With Pete Tombs, Co-Author Of Immoral
Tales
When
The Bell Rings: Interview With Critic Mark Holcomb
Trailer
Poster
And Still Gallery
BRIDES
OF BLOOD (1968, nudity, sacrifices and other surprises await.)
Audio
Commentary With Hemisphere Marketing Consultant Samuel M. Sherman
Jungle
Fury: Interview With Co-Director Eddie Romero
Here
Comes The Bride: Interview With Hemisphere Marketing Consultant
Samuel M. Sherman
Beverly
Hills On Blood Island: Interview With Actress Beverly Powers
Alternate
BRIDES OF BLOOD ISLAND Title Sequence And JUNGLE FURY Title Card
Teaser
Trailer
Poster
And Still Gallery
DISC
2 Special Features:
MAD
DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND (1969, the title character is on the
loose.)
Audio
Commentary With Horror Film Historians Nathaniel Thompson And Howard
S. Berger
Audio
Commentary With Hemisphere Marketing Consultant Samuel M. Sherman
Tombs
Of The Living Dead: Interview with Pete Tombs, Co-Author Of
Immoral Tales
A
Taste Of Blood: Interview With Critic Mark Holcomb
The
Mad Director Of Blood Island: Interview With Co-Director Eddie
Romero
Trailer
Poster
And Still Gallery
BEAST
OF BLOOD (1970, the title killer monster is on the loose, no
matter the make-up effects and work.)
Audio
Commentary With Hemisphere Marketing Consultant Samuel M. Sherman
Celeste
And The Beast: Interview With Actress Celeste Yarnall
Dr.
Lorca's Blood Devils: Interview With Actor Eddie Garcia
Super
8mm film Digest Version
Trailer
Radio
Spot
and
a Poster & Still Gallery.
So
these are the kinds of films that hundreds of where made of at the
time and because of low costs, weather, sunlight and the like, the
Philippines
became very popular for production and this set's extras show just
how much. The peak of all this would be Coppola's Apocalypse
Now,
not a horror film, dark as it is, but all four films are ambitious,
wacky, bad in the wrong places, sometimes campy and at least
consistent in what they try despite their many limits. No, the
acting can be off, the writing unoriginal and all can get exploitive,
but they are key in the cycle of genre, production and where they
were made, so it makes for a great set and more than a few of you
older viewers have probably not seen these in decades. Don't be
surprised if you have, but do be surprised they have been saved as
much as they have. Cheers to Severin for pulling off another
important set release, giving these films more respect than anyone
making them at the time could have imagined.
Robert
Eggers'
Nosferatu
(2025) has been issued in an extended cut, though this release still
has some deleted scenes. The third version of the 1922 silent
classic, so much of this could have gone wrong and been a disaster,
but Eggers manages to really dig deep into the material and also come
up with some visually superior and haunting images that make it as
good as the 1979 remake and the Murnau classic's endless imitators.
Nicholas
Hoult (on a serious roll these days) is new employee of a real estate
company Thomas Hutter, that has just cut a deal to sell an old
mansion to a wealthy Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard, also in another
good horror role) who requires someone to visit him in his home
country to seal the deal, for which Thomas will get paid well. That
will help things out with his newlywed wife (Lily-Rose Depp) but
neither of them realize Orlok has a deadly fixation on her!
As
things grow darker and Thomas cannot escape
Orlok's current home very easily, he eventually breaks free, but not
well, which requires the services of Professor Albin Eberhart von
Franz (Willem Dafoe of
Shadow Of The Vampire
and The
Lighthouse
(also by Eggers) among so many others) to investigate and he soon
figures out what is really going on before anyone else involved.
Dracula
is one of the most filmed and imitated characters of all time,
especially in film history, but Nosferatu has not been used or
referenced quite as much. Coppola tried to cross the Bela Lugosi
Dracula with Nosferatu in his hit Dracula film and others have used
the image here and there. Like Coppola's film, Eggers goes for some
great silent-film inspired visuals and he is as successful here as
Coppola, yet not imitating him, the 1922 original or other silent
classics. The result is one of the better films of the year and
despite a little predictability (unavoidable, of course) makes this
among the best films of the year.
Extras
include Digital Code copy, while the disc (per the press release
roughly) adds...
BREATHING
LIFE INTO A DREAM - Filmmaker Robert Eggers' lifelong dream becomes
a startling cinematic nightmare as the actors collaborate on
transformative performances to make his Gothic vision an astonishing
reality.
BECOMING
COUNT ORLOK - Practical makeup FX seamlessly meld with Bill
Skarsgard's bold interpretation of Count Orlok to resurrect a
villain whose unsettling appearance is both creepy and captivating.
CAPTURING
THE MOOD - From sunlight, snowfall, and shadows to candlelight and
complicated camera moves, see how each visually rich detail
contributes to Nosferatu's incredibly eerie atmosphere.
RECREATING
1838 - Open a virtual time capsule with production designer Craig
Lathrop, whose intricately detailed sets immerse viewers in an
entirely authentic world.
DRESSING
THE PART - Whether accenting Count Orlok's otherworldliness or
telling background tales through clothing, watch costume designer
Linda Muir fashion distinct looks that extend each character's
story.
THE
END IS JUST THE BEGINNING - Visual effects supervisor Angela Barson
and composer Robin Carolan enhance Nosferatu's nightmarish
fantasy using stunning CGI and a breathtaking score.
For
more on
Nosferatu, try my essay on the subject here...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/222/Vampirism,+Sexuality+&+Death+-+The+Legacy+Of
Plus
a look at the 1979 Werner Herzog remake with Klaus Kinski here...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7464/Werner+Herzog/Klaus+Kinski+6+film+Box+Set+(Ag
And
a look at the little-seen 1988 sequel with Kinski called Nosferatu
In Venice
here...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/15871/Crazy+Samurai:+400+Vs.+1+(*)/Day+Of+The+Be
We
see so many bad, over-budgeted disasters lately that when you watch a
few B-movies, you wonder what went wrong. The new Poverty
Row Classics
set reminds us that even a B-movie can be decent and hold up in odd
ways when the makers are at least trying.
Jean
Yarborough's King
Of the Zombies
(1941, Monogram Studios) is a rare pre-Night
Of The Living Dead
(1968) zombie film and one that has a few interesting moments to go
with its stereotypes, but it also has a screenplay that knows it is
exploiting those stereotypes. Taking place during WWII, a crew of
three men (Dick Purcell (a few years before he became the first-ever
Captain America,) John Archer (Destination
Moon,
My
Favorite Spy)
and Mantan Moreland (later doing the 'comedy relief' in Monogram's
Charlie Chan films, a studio where he was actually a key player for
the studio, continuing that same kind of role in all kinds of genre
films and another series for them as well) have trouble with their
small aircraft and land up crash landing on an island. Little do
they know it will have zombies on it.
Turns
out these versions are being create by voodoo, et al, versus viruses,
alien or demonic possession, but led by a mysterious figure (Henry
Viktor in a role Monogram had hoped to have Bela Lugosi in) and only
the trio can stop it. That is if they do not get killed or zombified
first!
It
is interesting when it deals with then-little-know zombie myth and
some of the humor is funny, but some of it is also based on
Moreland's character being belittled to some extent, even when he is
in some kind of control of the situation and himself. Otherwise, it
is worth a good look, holding up a little better than I remembered
and all serious film fans and horror film fans (of course, big zombie
fans) should consider this a must-see, flaws and all.
By
the way, two years later, Moreland would appear in a film called
Revenge
Of The Zombies
for Monogram, but to was not a sequel and so cheap, it edited footage
from the 1932 Lugosi classic White
Zombie
(reviewed elsewhere on this site, including a VCI Blu-ray) into it to
save money!
Albert
Herman's Miss
V From Moscow
(1942, PRC Studios) is our only non-horror entry here, with a WWII
propaganda film with a female Soviet spy pretending (Lola Lane) to be
a dead Nazi woman spy, teaming up with a U.S. operative in England to
foil the Nazis. Can their messages to Moscow for the U.S. stop a
deadly Nazi attack? Not bad for the very brief, brief period when
the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Were allies.
Extras
include a feature length audio commentary track by Tom Weaver &
Gary D. Rhodes and the featurette Poverty Row Studios - A Brief
History.
Now
for playback performance. The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 2.35 X 1, Dolby
Vision/HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition
image on Don't
Torture A Duckling 4K
does look better than the regular Blu-ray, which was decent for a
Techniscope production, but the definition and color here are what
the film should pretty much look like. The only issues are some
grain and minor flaws that you would not find as much on similar
Techniscope shoots of its time, like Slaughterhouse
Five,
Four
Flies On Gray Velvet,
A
Fistful Of Dynamite
or Return
Of Sabata.
But at least the dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor you would
have seen at the time is like what you get here. The
Italian PCM 1.0 Mono lossless track is also limited and the same
track from the previously reviewed regular Blu-ray disc, but there
are a few more flaws in the surviving sound, so only so much could be
done and a 2.0 Mono track might have made those flaws worse.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image on the four Blood
Island Films are new 4K
scans of the best surviving materials, all in 4K scans with only Mad
Doctor Of Blood Island in
rougher condition. All are in color, save Terror
Is A Man in black and
white. Then all four are here in DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono
lossless mixes that are more varied, with Terror
sounding the best, Brides
Of Blood a bit rougher,
Mad Doctor
even rougher and Beast
Of Blood
in really poor shape. Until you get used to each, we suggest you be
careful of high playback volumes and volume switching.
The
1080p 1.66 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Nosferatu
looks good, is in color, but that color is often drained for many
scenes. Shot totally on 35mm film like the rest of the entries
covered here, some serious work was done in post production, but it
looks good. However, this format can only handle so much of the
picture quality, so I expect a 4K release of the film will be a
revelation. The lossless Dolby
Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mixdown for older systems) mix is easily the
best sound and sound mix here, well recorded and mixed throughout,
making it sonically a creepy as the visuals often.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfers on both Poverty Row films can show the age of the
materials used, but the source materials are not form the original
camera negatives and we're lucky they look as good as they do. The
PCM 2.0 Mono sound on both films also have issues, but not as bad as
the Blood Island Films
set gets, with Zombies
fairing a little better than Moscow.
The DVD includes has both films in anamorphically enhanced 1.33 X 1
image is bookended, with Zombies
again fairing a little better than Moscow,
but not as good as the Blu-ray versions and the lossy Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono weaker as well, but passable as is expected for the older
format.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
