It's the creepy-crawliest time of year, when we're encouraged to dress up and face down our favorite demons — so what better time to curl up with Our Hitler, a seven-and-a-half-hour haunted house of a movie? And don't dare gloss over that Our in the title (added in the late '70s by Francis Ford Coppola, the film's American distributor) — this isn't a movie about Uncle Adolph so much as it's an epic meditation on humankind's ooky underbelly and our collective complicity in evil.
Like some particularly hellish Wagnerian opera reconfigured by alien ethnologists and beamed in from outer space, Hans Syberberg's Our Hitler opens on a pastoral scene that ruptures to reveal a field of stars and then a single luminous teardrop at the center of the cosmos. Both lyrical and hysterical, grandiose and crammed with kitsch, Our Hitler (full title: Our Hitler: A Film from Germany) combines performance art, puppetry, densely layered lecture-monologues and exquisitely baroque visuals to deconstruct not only Hitler but all preconceived notions of "madmen" and "geniuses" and "culture" itself. This is, after all, the film that famously declared, "Every time I hear the word 'art,' I reach for my revolver."
Against a backdrop of gloriously artificial sets that manage to find weird resonances and occasional profundities in Nazi folk art and cheap snow globes, Syberberg gives us Hitler as historical figure, pop icon and devil-made-flesh, depicting him as the child killer in Fritz Lang's M, as Rumplestiltskin rising out of Wagner's grave and rapping with the projectionist screening the movie that we're watching. The only bonus feature on Facets' new DVD of Our Hitler is a rough doc on the film's 1980 New York premiere, but who needs extras when the film itself is almost an embarrassment of riches? As Syberberg tells us at the outset, "Either give your audience a stunning show or stay home with your canary." Our Hitler leaves the canary at home and blows open the gates of perception.
Halloween fare of a far more traditional sort, Robert Rodiguez's Planet Terror blows open stuff more along the lines of skulls and soft human tissue. Originally paired with Tarantino's Death Proof as part of the Grindhouse feature, Planet Terror has now materialized solo on DVD in an extended and unrated version — and although the extra footage doesn't add anything crucial (even the "missing reel" is still nowhere to be found), there's some major schlocky fun to be had here.
Unabashedly violent and gleefully tasteless, Planet Terror is top-tier so-bad-it's-good fare, meticulously channeling the 42nd Street grindhouse flicks of yore, right down to the scratched, faded and badly spliced film stock. With a healthy disregard for logic or realism, Rodriguez gives us a Night of the Living Dead mash-up, with flesh-munching zombies complemented by absurd helpings of gore and the iconic image of Rose McGowan's machine-gun leg. The body parts explode willy-nilly, and the go-go frenzy is pretty much constant, making Planet Terror a worthy companion piece to the thoroughly nonsensical, id-driven commotion of Shark Boy and Lava Girl (written by the director's then-8-year-old kid).
Where the DVD really shines, however, is in the extras, which begin with a free-wheeling director's commentary and extend to six behind-the-scenes featurettes totaling well over an hour. Sadly, the fake trailers included in the theatrical version of Grindhouse are missing here, but the inclusion of an "audience reaction track," which simulates the experience of watching the movie in a theater full of howling fans, makes this a disc scream out to be played at your next Halloween party.
An even more exotic choice for trick-or-treating season is Robinson Crusoe on Mars, a one-of-a-kind science-fiction adventure now available as a lavish DVD edition from the Criterion Collection. Despite the outlandish title, this 1964 production goes light on the camp, coming across as surprisingly meaty and faithful to the essence of Daniel Defoe's famous 18th-century novel. Defoe's Crusoe becomes Kit, a human astronaut stranded on the red planet with no one to talk to but his pet monkey. An escaped alien slave (dubbed Friday, natch) eventually appears, and the film becomes a curiously engaging chronicle of isolated individuals struggling to survive in a hostile environment — one that, for my money, beats Cast Away hands down.
Bolstered by bold Technicolor cinematography and some surprisingly effective special effects by Byron Haskin (War of the Worlds, Outer Limits), Robinson Crusoe on Mars turns out to be a worthy addition to the sci-fi cannon, and Criterion's DVD edition gives it due respect. Beyond a stunning transfer of the film, the disc includes a first-rate commentary track featuring several key players from the movie, a featurette on the movie's scientific angle, excerpts from the original screenplay, a music video, stills gallery and a booklet including an insightful essay and a dictionary of the alien dialect devised for the film.
Robinson Crusoe on Mars turns out to be a movie that's every bit as cool as its title. The visuals are eye-popping; the monkey wears a diaper; and there's even a brief appearance by Adam West. Does it get any better than that?
This article appears in Oct 24-30, 2007.