Review" 'The Bat' Special Edition Blu-ray

The Film Detective issued a blu-ray of The Bat in 2015, and though Crane Wilbur's comedic 1959 old dark house flick, based on a play by Mary Roberts Rinehart, remained a complete delight, the disc was not without issues. While I did note in my review that it was a vast improvement over the myriad DVD editions of this public domain picture, I also noted the myriad "specs and thin scratches" that invade the image regularly and the disc's crackly audio. It was also a pretty bare bones package.

Review: 'Nosferatu: 100th Anniversary Edition' Blu-ray

This year is the 100th anniversary of F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, certainly one of the most important horror films ever made for its status as the inaugural Dracula adaptation and its impressively enduring ability to unsettle, which is largely down to Murnau's unrelentingly Goth atmosphere and Max Schreck's still-scary bald-rat portrayal of the count in the days before the character became all urbane and sexy. Because of the anniversary's significance, you could bet there would be some low-budget video releases of this public-domain film to cash in on the occasion. As far as that sort of thing goes, you could do worse than Reel Vault's "100th Anniversary Edition" of Nosferatu. Compared with Kino Lorber's blu-ray from 2013, the one "official" U.S. release, some complaints can still be lodged. While both editions have their share of scratches and blotches, Kino's trounces Reel Vault's in the stability department. The grain of Reel Vault's squirms around the picture like an ant colony, and the intertitles vibrate.

Review: 'E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial- The Ultimate Visual History'

Because it didn't spawn an endless series of sequels and spin-offs, because its tie-in merchandise didn't dig itself into the ongoing pop-cultural consciousness with complete success, it's easy to forget what a phenomenon E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was upon its release in 1982. It outgrossed Steven Spielberg's own previous blockbusters and his buddy George Lucas's Star Wars films (which, needless to say, had no issues in the sequel, spin-off, or merch departments). "E.T. phone home" became a catch phrase of "May the force be with you" or "Where's the beef?" ubiquity. Most kids didn't completely kit out their bedrooms with E.T. stuff the way they did with Star Wars toys, posters, and bed sheets, but most of us had an E.T. doll or two. I know I did.

Review: 'Britmania: The British Invasion of the Sixties in Pop Culture'

That The Beatles changed the world is as widely known as how there's this fiery thingy in the sky called "the sun." The most obvious offshoot of the international success of four British lads was all the English groups that went global in their wake: not just critical dah-lings like the Stones, Who, Kinks, and Animals, but also cuddlier fave raves like Herman's Hermits, The Dave Clark Five, Peter and Gordon, and Petula Clark. But the influence went deeper, farther, and weirder than that, as shaggy, buck-toothed, often incongruously posh British characters began invading American sitcoms, comics, dopey beach movies, cartoons, bath products, and pretty much everything else an ad-man could imagine. The British Invasion was a siege fought and won in the record shops, but its aftershocks rattled everything everywhere. 

Review: 'Lost Highway' Blu-ray

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was such a tremendous (and underserved) critical and commercial flop that former golden boy David Lynch had a hard time following it up. Waiting for inspiration, he read a single line in a novel by Wild at Heart-scribe Barry Gifford that finally set off that old lightbulb above his quiff, and he knew he wanted to make a movie called Lost Highway and he wanted Gifford to co-write it. 

Review: 30th Anniversary Edition of 'ABBA Gold

ABBA should have been the squarest thing in the seventies pop universe: four toothpaste ads from Sweden singing gleamingly cheerful or earnestly distraught songs tailored for the top ten. Yet even the coolest of the cool wouldn't deny the quality of Benny Anderson and Björn Ulvaeus's songs and production or the flawless and emotive harmonies of Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. Elvis and the Attractions couldn't stop listening to them on the tour bus and consciously paid tribute to their style on songs such as "Oliver's Army". Pete Townshend praised their songcraft. A decade later, Nirvana not only made ABBA their own tour bus soundtrack, but also actually took an ABBA cover band on tour with them. Starstruck fandom or smirking irony? It was the nineties, so who could tell the difference?

Review: Matthew Sweet's 'Girlfriend' Vinyl Reissue on Intervention Records

The threshold between the last gasps of hair metal and the grunge revolution, 1991 saw a record not so easy to categorize as Mane Attraction or Nevermind. While Matthew Sweet was very much a rock and roll artist, his music existed states away from metal or grunge. 

Review: 'Charlie's Good Tonight: The Authorized Biography of Charlie Watts'

The Rolling Stones' reputation for being "bad boys" or whatever is not unearned considering all the abuse of women, drugs, and each other for which Mick, Keith, Brian, and Bill were known to indulge in to varying degrees (as far as I know, Keith was always pretty gentlemanly when it came to women and Bill never messed with drugs or his bandmates. Underage girls, however...). 

Review: 'Halloween Nuggets: Haunted Underground Classics'

If there were two things parents hated in the fifties it was rock and roll and scary stuff. A kid was liable to find his new copy of "Tutti Frutti" plopped in the trash next to a cherished issue of The Vault of Horror if he didn't keep a close eye on his stash! So the two genres have always been inseparably linked in many ways. In fact, you're reading one of those links right now, Hep-Cat!

Review: 'The Best of Roxy Music' Vinyl

To cap off Roxy Music's half-speed remaster campaign that began early this year, The Best of Roxy Music is now making its vinyl debut. The 2001 compilation pulls the slightly quirky trick of unfolding in reverse chronological order so that the extremely quirky Roxy Music gets rawer, weirder, and more vivacious as the collection slinks from the tuxedo-tidy title track of Roxy's final album to the electrifying kitchen-sink insanity of "Re-Make/Re-Model" from their eponymous debut. Avalon is actually a beautiful record, but it took Bryan Ferry and his group a little while to really figure out how to plug into MOR white-wine pop with sufficient imagination, so The Best of Roxy Music drifts off a bit from the glossy Lennon cover "Jealous Guy" to the post-hiatus pop hit "Dance Away". However, once "Both Ends Burning" kicks in at the very end of the first disc of this double-LP set, Roxy Music is at full power. You'd be hard pressed to find a more thrilling collection of seventies rock music than the second disc, which just throws punch after punch and lands square between the eyes each time.