Four
Horsemen Of The Apocalypse
(1921/Metro Pictures*)/Hit
Man
(1972/MGM*)/Love
Hurts 4K
(2025/Universal 4K Blu-ray w/Blu-ray)/Monogram
Matinee, Volume 1: Mississippi Rhythm/Western
Renegades
(Johnny 'Mack' Brown)/Crashing
Thru
(Whip Wilson/all 1949)/*all Warner Archive Blu-rays)/Tale
Of Sorrow And Sadness
(1977/MVD/Shochiku/Radiance
Blu-ray)
4K
Ultra HD Picture: B+ Picture: B/B/B/B/B-/B-/B- Sound:
B-/B-/B+/B-/C+/C+/B- Extras: D/C-/C+/D/B Films:
B-/C+/C+/C+/B-
PLEASE
NOTE:
The
Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse,
Hit
Man
and Monogram
Matinee, Volume 1
Blu-rays are now only available from Warner Bros. through their
Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
Rex
Ingram's The
Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse
(1921) is a big hit silent film that helped put Rudolph Valentino on
the map as one of Hollywood's first huge superstars, playing the rich
son of a rich Frenchman, living a life of luxury in Argentina, then
falling for a married woman. All this is thrown into flux when WWI
breaks out, the woman goes to work for the Red Cross, he gets visited
by the title ghosts and then decides he has to forget his plush life
and sign up for the Army.
Action
and melodrama follow, the film often even to this day having some of
its footage and clips (especially of Valentino) still shown and not
identified, also making it one of the lucky minority of silent film
classics that have survived and this one in better shape than many
that have. Its impact as a early critical and commercial success
helped build Hollywood, its star system and Metro Pictures, which
would soon transform into the #1 studio of the Classical Hollywood
period, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
The
cast, crew and filming here hold up very well, are a bit ahead of
their time and that makes it a serious enough classic that all
serious film fans need to see it at least once. Glad it has arrived
on Blu-ray and was taken care of and saved.
There
are sadly no extras.
George
Armitage's Hit
Man
(1972) is MGM's attempt to score another Shaft-like
Blaxploitation hit movie, this time with an uncompromising Bernie
Casey in the title role, getting revenge on whomever killed his
brother and tried to make it look like he died otherwise. Tyrone
Tackett (Casey) quickly goes into action to track down the killers
and the truth. Pam Grier has an early appearance as one of the
leading ladies and this is actually an early remake of the Michael
Caine hit Get
Carter,
later remade badly with Sylvester Stallone and recycled a few other
times since.
Since
Grier became an icon soon after in a series of films where she was
the action star, this is a curio just based on that, but the film
offers more in the way of action, good pacing and reminding us how
underrated Casey is. Casey was in the Jim Brown hit Black
Gunn
the same year and Cleopatra
Jones
the next, soon followed by Dr.
Black, Mr. Hyde,
the Bowie Man
Who Fell To Earth
and beyond Blaxploitation films like Sharky's
Machine,
Bond film Never
Say Never Again,
Bill &
Ted's Excellent Adventure,
Another
48HRS,
Revenge
Of The Nerds
and plenty of key TV work before his passing. In one of his rare
lead roles, he can more than carry the film.
An
Original Theatrical Trailer is sadly the only extra.
Jonathan
Eusebio's Love Hurts 4K (2025) brings Academy Awards winner
and one-time child actor Ke Huy Quan back in front of the camera
doing martial arts as a real estate guy with a secret, dark past that
comes back to haunt him as an old love (Ariana DeBose, Kraven The
Hunter) comes back into his life from the past and all the
sudden, he's getting attacked just like the old days. Quan is good
here, juggling humor and absurdity, while still being able to do
martial arts.
A
slightly ultra-violent comedy from the producers of Nobody and
Violent Night, the film is well done, nicely cast and has some
amusing moments, but the screenplay is the real culprit here, with
too many cliches and predictability when one or two more rewrites
with some more ideas could have really delivered. That's a shame too
because they also got a good supporting cast including Cam Gigandet
(so good in Priest,) Lio Tipton, Mustafa Shakir, Daniel Wu and
Sean Astin are all a plus, so maybe if this gets a possible sequel,
they could do better next time. It is at least worth a look or what
does work.
Extras
include an Alternate Ending
Next
up are three films form 1949 from the successful B-movie company
Monogram Pictures, best known for their superior serials and some
other notable feature films. In what promises to be a new Blu-ray
series, Monogram
Matinee, Volume 1
offers a musical of sorts with Mississippi
Rhythm
(Dir: Derwin Abrahams) and two B-movies with a lead action star.
Rhythm
has real life singer Jimmie Davis as a man who inherits land from his
uncle, but others around him were already planning to steal it. Yet,
this is a musical with one of Monogram's larger (relatively speaking)
budgets and the music did not stay with me. It has a few good
moments, but deducts points for a moment of blackface.
Western
Renegades
(Dir: Wallace Fox) is another film in the long western action
filmography of Johnny 'Mack' Brown, whom we have covered before a few
times and you can read about those releases at this link:
https://fulvuedrive-in.com/new/viewer.cgi?search=mack+brown
This
time, brown is a U.S. Marshall out to clear the name of a friend
accused of murder and get the guys who framed him. That one runs 54
minutes.
And
Crashing
Thru
(Dir: Ray Taylor) has the lesser-known (save to fans of hero
westerns) Whip Wilson as a Wells Fargo agent undercover to stop a
series of stagecoach robberies and at any cost. It also runs 54
minutes and is not bad.
They
may all be lower-budget affairs, but at least they took that there
was an audience and actually cared to make films for them unlike
these really, really bad package deals we are seeing now. We'll see
what the next volumes offer.
There
are no extras, despite three films being included on a single disc.
Seijun
Suzuki's Tale
Of Sorrow And Sadness
(1977) is the director's comeback film that is actually based on a
Manga and is his look at and attack on fame and the machine that
makes it shallow, silly and even deadly.
Kuniko Ashihara
plats a female golfer (they were very popular in Japan, even when
they were just getting off the ground in the U.S. at the time this
film was made) who becomes a great success, but all the men around
her, from her manager to brother, keep manipulating her to her
detriment. Then she is in a car accident and an obsessed fan intends
to blackmail her!
Well,
that's a good bit for any film, but seems on the money for a film by
Suzuki, who is better at juggling all of this than most filmmakers
then and now. I
won't ruin anything more, but it is very well done, he makes his
points about the banality of fame and a male dominated society and
that holds up very well, including his original take
on such things before it was more common.
Though
some things are dated here and there, it also serves as a time
capsule from the analog TV era and the gaudiness of it all is sad
among all the events we experience here. The use of color is
interesting and the cast is really good too.
Extras
impress and include a Feature Length
Audio Commentary Track by critic and author Samm Deighan (2025) that
is outstanding
Now
for playback performance. The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 2.00 X 1, Dolby
Vision/HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition
image in Love
Hurts 4K
is the visual playback champ here and not just because all the other
films are 50 to 100 years old on the list, though more of them are
looking better than you might expect. Color, definition and detail
are mostly consistent with few flaws and better than most such
HD-shot genre films of late. The regular 1080p 2.00 X 1 Blu-ray also
holds up better than most of its competitors and the lossless Dolby
Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mixdown for older systems) mix
on both disc versions is a decent mix and more consistent and thought
out than most such genre films we've covered over the last few years.
Wish more such films looked and sounded this good, but guess there
is more sloppiness out there than there should be.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfer on Horsemen
can sometimes show the age of the materials used, but this is far
superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film on home
video and the restoration work done on the film years ago holds up
very, very well. The new music score is in a
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Stereo lossless mix that sounds good,
but can also sound a little forward. Otherwise, its fine.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on Hit
Man
looks good, well handled by the MetroColor labs and is as rich and
gritty as expected, while the DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix is as good as this film will
ever sound without trying to do a stereo upgrade, so the combination
is palpable, effective, authentic, organic and fine.
Future Fugitive
(with Harrison Ford) director Andrew Davis was Director of
Photography on the film.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfer on the three Monogram
films can show the age of the materials used, but Mississippi
Rhythm
holds up a little better and has more sharpness, clarity and detail
than the other films, which were treated like B-movies and are a
little softer. All three films are presented in DTS-HD MA (Master
Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mixes off of their original theatrical
monophonic releases and again, Mississippi
Rhythm
has sound that has survived and sounds better than the other films.
Monogram may have spent more money on the film since it is a musical
in part.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Sorrow
can show the age of the materials used and the older anamorphic
lenses have inherent flaws that cause softness and cut into the
fidelity of the frame, but the color is really good and the Japanese
PCM 2.0 Mono sound is as good as the film will ever sound. The
combination is good.
To
order either of the Warner Archive The
Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse,
Hit
Man
and/or Monogram
Matinee, Volume 1
Blu-rays, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive
releases at:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20
-
Nicholas Sheffo
