With the holiday season fast approaching and some 50-million DVD players now firmly entrenched in America's homes, DVD movies are looking more than ever like the gift that keeps on giving this Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwaanza.
Provided your pockets are deep enough, there are tons of extravagant ways to put a big, fat smile on the face of that special movie lover in your life. The lavish, multi-disc box sets of The Godfather, The Sopranos or the upcoming Twin Peaks collection, to name just a few, will surely send almost any movie fan into ecstatic convulsions.
On the other hand, there are lots of gift ideas out there in DVD Land that are every bit as soul-satisfying as those mammoth and somewhat expensive box sets, and not quite as obvious (or pricey). Here are a few choice ideas to get you into the holiday spirit, DVD-style.
Notorious Regardless of how they're billed, virtually every DVD that The Criterion Collection releases is a Special Edition suitable as a holiday gift for even the most discriminating film buff. The company's most recent releases have included fabulous, fully loaded editions of Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, the legendary Brit cult oddity The Ruling Class and Bunuel's That Obscure Object of Desire, and Criterion just keeps cranking these babies out. The latest addition to the Criterion roster is one of their most beautifully produced DVDs yet, and the movie itself is no slouch either: Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious.
For the handful of those not on intimate terms with Hitch's masterpiece, Notorious is a cracking good thriller starring Cary Grant as an American agent who recruits Ingrid Bergman to infiltrate a Nazi spy ring by actually marrying one of the spies (Claude Rains, never better). Hitch's perversely romantic masterstroke here is that Grant, who is clearly in love with Bergman (and she with him), virtually demands that the reluctant Mata Hari become involved with Rains, and then finds himself filled with resentment and even disgust when she follows his instructions. The movie features some of the most striking photography of all Hitchcock's black-and-white films, and those dark pools of noirish shadow have never looked so deep and inviting as on the Criterion DVD. The image quality is a knockout — consistently crisp with pure, inky blacks and superbly defined contrasts.
The numerous, well chosen extras on the DVD are both informative and highly entertaining, beginning with the dueling commentaries by Hitchcock authorities Marian Keane and Rudy Behlmer. Also included is a complete broadcast of a 1948 radio adaptation starring Bergman and Joseph Cotten; an isolated music and effects track; script excerpts of deleted scenes and alternate endings; rare newsreel footage of Bergman and Hitchcock; excerpts from the short story Song of the Dragon (source material for Notorious); production correspondence; tons of publicity photos, posters, lobby cards and more. And if all this is making you drool, wait until you see what Criterion's done with Hitch's Rebecca.
Expresso Bongo Although it's not exactly what you'd call unsung, Expresso Bongo doesn't have nearly the reputation and fan base it deserves, at least in this country — a situation that we hope will begin righting itself with the release of the wonderful new DVD from Kino on Video. The story of a sleazy but inexplicably charming music agent (Laurence Harvey) and the overnight sensation he manufactures and manipulates (real life pop star Cliff Richard), Val Guest's 1959 film is a clever and sometimes scathing mix of social satire, absurdly melodramatic theatrics, rock music and attitude (it's a wonderful kitschfest too, with much made of the synthetically stylized decor of the coffeehouses where kids sit under plastic palm trees and "hatch and plot their teenage rebellion").
The movie's a treat just for the local color and great fashions on display, a vivid portrait of a London proto-hipster scene just scant moments away from being forever transformed by the Beatles and their ilk. Expresso Bongo doesn't fit comfortably into any single genre and defies simple description. It's an unlikely cross between the cynical and savage media expose of The Sweet Smell of Success, the stylized pop song and dance of Absolute Beginners and the dirty-dishes-in-the-sink Brit reality of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning — and, against all odds, most of it holds together and swings like mad.
The DVD is a bit light on the extras (all that's really included is a selection of pages from the movie's original pressbook) but the film itself looks smashing, with a blemish-free, finely detailed picture that presents Expresso Bongo in its original Dyaliscope (whatever that is) widescreen aspect ratio, enhanced for 16 x 9 TVs. The Kino DVD even goes the extra mile and restores a few topless dance routines that even the film's biggest fans have probably never seen.
The Indian Tomb and The Tiger of Eschnapur Harry Potter fans take note: If it's great action, adventure, mystery, fantasy and suspense you're after, look no further than Fritz Lang's double dose of pure cinema, The Indian Tomb and The Tiger of Eschnapur. Directed by Lang near the end of his career and back in his native Germany (where he returned after several lucrative but frustrating decades in Hollywood), the two films were blasted by the critics at the time of their release and have gone virtually unseen since. In America, the two movies were drastically cut and then recombined as one single, semi-coherent film re-titled Journey to the Lost City, which played the drive-in circuit briefly and was then banished to the odd spot on late-night television. In their original forms, though, the two movies are nothing short of fantastic and now, finally, they can be seen as Lang intended, thanks to sparkling new DVD editions from Fantoma Films. Both movies hark back to Lang's roots in the earliest days of the so-called silent cinema, offering a rousing vision of adolescent pulp so pure and sublimely confident it's practically raised to the level of poetry.
The plots revolve around the triangle created between a western architect, a seductive temple dancer and a proud Maharajah, but what the films are really about is the mythical world in which Lang revels — an exotic and visually astonishing world of heroes and villains, man-eating tigers, passionate seductresses, fairytale manors, underground tunnels, palace revolts and revolting lepers. Practically worth the proverbial price of admission all by its lonesome is the incredibly erotic dance performed by Debra Paget, barely clad in a gravity-defying wisp of tin foil and all the while engaged in a staring match with a wonderfully fake-looking rubber cobra. Each DVD features an English and German language version (both highly watchable) and pristine, razor-sharp versions of Lang's gloriously colorful films.
The Doll Squad Director Ted V. Mikels delivers what may just be the most boring audio commentary of all time on the new DVD edition of his 1973 cult classic, The Doll Squad. If you can survive the stultifying dullness of Mikels' "insights," however, you're in for a treat. The Doll Squad is prime action-exploitation trash (though it's far too good-natured to be considered prurient) about a team of beautiful, big-haired babes trying to save the world from a demented villain out to destroy civilization by contaminating us all with bubonic plague (timely, heh?). Our heroines all wear skin-tight jumpsuits and have names like Sabrina and Cat, and one of them is even played by the legendary and mightily endowed Tura Sultana of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! fame (who actually supplies an interesting little walk down mammary, er, memory lane, as one of the supplements on the DVD). The bright, crisp widescreen transfer here is far better than anyone might have expected this basically low-budget effort to look, and the DVD also includes a half dozen extremely entertaining, extended trailers for other Mikels films, including the infamous Corpse Grinders and a charming little ditty called Worm Eaters. As for The Doll Squad, grab it now — and Charlie's Angels, eat your hearts out.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs OK, so you already knew about this one. Still, Disney's new Platinum Edition DVD of Snow White is an absolute must-have. The film itself, even at the advanced age of some 60-plus years, looks every bit as good on DVD as many state-of-the-art 21st century digital animations. This is simply one of the most remarkable jobs of film restoration ever, and the results must be seen to be believed. Beyond that, the DVD contains so much supplemental material that you'll need an entire weekend to navigate through it all (and will probably find yourself returning to various bits and pieces for many years to come). There's a great commentary track that incorporates comments from Uncle Walt himself, as well as oodles of information about how the film was created and what it has come to mean. There are deleted scenes and songs, documentaries on the evolution of the Disney studio, enormous virtual galleries of concept art and finished products, behind-the-scenes footage, storyboard comparisons and so much more that we can only begin to touch the surface here. Still the fairest in the land, and proud of it.
Lance Goldenberg can be reached at lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888, ext. 157.
This article appears in Nov 29 – Dec 5, 2001.