366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 38

The Date: November 7

The Movie: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

What Is It?: Paul Newman and Robert Redford play the real-life outlaws as a couple of lovable dreamboats. The fact that they really are lovable and dreamy makes it all OK. Great final shot too.

Why Today?: On this day in 1908, the not quite as lovable or dreamy real Butch and Sundance had their final shoot out

Review: 'The Bat' Blu-ray

Vincent Price is a shady doctor who ices shady banker Harvey Stephens to get to the money Stephens stole from his own bank and hid in the house he’s leasing to mystery writer Agnes Moorehead. Meanwhile, Moorehead’s neighborhood is being terrorized by a masked, clawed serial killer who takes the novel approach of releasing rabid bats on his victims—hence his nickname and the title of The Bat. Based on Mary Roberts Rinehart’s play of the same name (based on her own novel The Circular Staircase), Crane Wilbur’s The Bat is not exactly unpredictable as a mystery, but it is simply oodles of fun as an old dark house picture with shadowy, stormy atmosphere. The script is sometimes corny, sometimes genuinely witty, and always breezy fun. Most significantly, this picture is a fab vehicle for Moorehead and Lenita Lane, who plays her companion. It is particularly refreshing as it doesn’t limit Moorehead and Lane to the usual “helpless female” roles. They take an active role in solving the mystery, always support and love each other, and are often more on the ball than the ineffectual cops in charge of protecting them. Moorehead even refers to the dynamic duo as “two strong women” at one point. Price does his patented menacing routine, which means he’s a blast to watch too (also, be sure to look out for little rascal Darla Hood in her final role).

The Film Detective’s new blu-ray of The Bat is a very appealing antidote to all the crummy versions of this public domain movie floating around. There are a lot of white specs, and thin scratches appear with some regularity, but the picture beneath the flaws is handsome, indeed, with natural grain, nice detail, and bold contrast. Audio suffers from occasional crackling, but it’s also strong overall, showing off Louis Forbes’s smashing score well—I love his use of slide guitar to signal the killer!

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 37

The Date: November 6

The Movie: Lost Highway (1997)

What Is It?: The first film in David Lynch’s unofficial fugue-state trilogy features Bill Pullman as a sax player who transforms into Balthazar Getty after axe-murdering wife Patricia Arquette. It’s Lynch’s most dated and heartless film, but it’s also quite scary and the scene where Mr. Eddy chases down a reckless driver is masterful and hilarious.

Why Today?: Today is national saxophone day.

Review 'A Bucket of Blood' Blu-ray

Because of their chintzy budgets and on-the-fly productions, early Roger Corman efforts like Attack of the Crab Monsters came off more like parodies than the director probably intended them to be. With A Bucket of Blood, Corman and screenwriter Charles B. Griffith embraced the goofiness and transformed what could have been a serious low-budget horror about an artist who incorporates corpses into his work into the first great Corman/Griffith horror comedy. With the wonderfully sympathetic Dick Miller as Walter Paisley, a nebbish who aspires to be as much of an “artist” as the pretentious beatniks who frequent the coffee bar where he waits tables, A Bucket of Blood isn’t as outrageous as The Little Shop of Horrors, the film in which the Corman/Griffith magic fully blossomed (a-hem), but it is amusing and sometimes fairly horrifying. Its plot could have been ripped right from the pages of The Vault of Horror (in fact, it shares quite a few similarities to “Easel Kill Ya” from The Vault), and its cartoonish approach to dialogue, characterization, and design also has the feel of a live-action E.C. comic without the color. 

The Film Detective’s new blu-ray presents that comic aesthetic quite well. Like so many of Corman’s early films, A Bucket of Blood is in the public domain and has been subjected to a lot of lousy home video releases. The Film Detective should be commended for going to the original 35mm source, especially in light of all the ninth-generation crap out there. Appearances of tiny white specks are fairly regular, but they aren’t especially intrusive and there are no major scratches to speak of. No edge enhancement has been applied to sharpen the naturally soft look. The film looks its best when there are strong blacks on screen to contrast the more washed-out whites. The mono audio is clear, which is especially complimentary to the cool jazz score, though there is a constant buzzing undercurrent noticeable during the music-less passages. There are no bonuses, but considering that A Bucket of Blood probably wasn’t high on any other home video company’s to-do lists, it’s groovy that it has received an HD release at all.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 36

The Date: November 5

The Movie: Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

What Is It?: Stanley Kubrick’s epic of unrequited infidelity in an imaginary NYC and orgies on a Long Island much more interesting than it actually is (trust me; I grew up there) is the master’s final film and a lot funnier than you remember.

Why Today?: On this day in 1955, the Vienna State Opera reopened after being bombed in WWII with a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio… the title of which is the password to get into a certain orgy in a certain film.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 35

The Date: November 4

The Movie: The Mummy (1933)

What Is It?: Universal’s first major monster movie not based on classic lit was inspired by the recent wave of Egypt-mania sparked by the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. Boris Karloff plays an unlikely romantic lead and goes for a little walk.

Why Today?: On this day in 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter discovers the entrance to King Tut’s tomb.

Review: 'Elton John from Tin Pan Alley to the Yellow Brick Road'

Say what you will about the Donald Duck costumes and his lame MTV-era hits, but Elton John was one of the very best pop hit machines of the seventies. Not everything has aged well for various reasons (“Crocodile Rock”, “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”, and “Candle in the Wind” come to mind), but blockbusters such as “Rocket Man”, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”, “Levon”, and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, and a net-full of album tracks such as “Where to Now St. Peter”, “Blues for My Baby and Me”, “Harmony”, and “Madman Across the Water”, rate among the best pop released in the first half of the decade. So the fact that Keith Hayward’s Elton John from Tin Pan Alley to the Yellow Brick Road focuses almost exclusively on this period isn’t too much of an issue in itself. In fact, this book is actually a sequel to one that detailed the pre-stardom phase of Reg’s career. As Hayward suggests in his introduction, you won’t exactly be lost if you read volume two without reading volume one first, but a few important aspects—most notably John’s relationship with lyricist Bernie Taupin—will remain a bit hazy.

Nevertheless, we still get a fairly clear idea of who this unlikely superstar is just from these scant 200 pages. Elton John was a guy who used outrageous antics and attire to fight through his shyness and uncertainty about what kind of career he should pursue. While Hayward’s preface kind of frames his book as a tale of the music business in the seventies with John as the main reference point, this really is more of a biography than that, though certain limitations keep it from being definitive and may account for why Hayward chose to not represent his book as a biography. The people he interviewed often steer this story, and because they aren’t always the most integral characters in the core Elton John story, they sometimes steer it down tangential roads. For example, we get a lot more about the casting of Tina Turner in Tommy— a movie in which Elton John plays a very minor role— than is probably necessary because Hayward happened to interview the movie’s producer, Beryl Virtue. It’s an interesting story—I certainly cannot call any part of From Tin Pan Alley to the Yellow Brick Road anything less than interesting—but it is off-topic, and since this is a pretty short book, that is an issue worth mentioning. Discussions of John’s work and play with John Lennon, Rod Stewart, Kiki Dee, and Brian Wilson manage to fold other stars into the story without leaving out its main man.

Review: 'Beatles 1+'

From the very beginning of their career, The Beatles were a multi-media project. Sure, Elvis’s hips rattled small screen variety shows and corny matinee features and The Monkees had their own weekly series and starred in a fabulously avant garde big screen flop, but The Beatles not only appeared on TV with great regularity and variety (let’s not forget their charmingly cheesy cartoon alter-egos that mesmerized kids every Saturday morning from 1965 to 1967), but they made their own promo videos even before The Monkees went on the air, appeared in live action and animated feature films, often allowed cameras to capture their concert and studio work, and even recorded on live TV for an international audience. With so much material, nearly every one of the whopping 28 number one hits they scored in the UK and US has its very own visual document.

The Beatles’ latest multi-media project groups those videos—and more on a limited deluxe edition—with Giles’s Martin’s stereo remix of the 2000 compilation Beatles 1. The videos provide a nifty and swift romp through the Beatlestory, as we see them shake stages and rooftops, mime in absurd circumstances that find Ringo working an exercise bike instead of a set of Ludwigs and George pretending to sing into a punching bag, float through London on an acid cloud, transform into cartoon characters adrift on a yellow submarine, and make goo goo eyes at their wives.

Most of this material has already been available to anyone who owns the old Beatles Anthology DVD or has bookmarked YouTube, so the big news is the new HD restoration. Quite a bit of expectation management is necessary to appreciate the visual quality since a lot of these clips are upscaled from video. The filmed clips are the ones captured at their native frame rates, and some of them are excessively grainy and soft. However, if you A/B them against the versions that appeared on The Beatles Anthology discs, you can see how much improvement went into each clip, and some of them are genuinely dazzling, particularly the McCartney-directed “Hello, Goodbye” video in which the guys’ Sgt. Pepper’s costumes are so vivid you’ll think a tab of acid was included as a blu-ray bonus. I noticed neither scratches nor blemishes— neither irritating NR nor edge enhancement.

Giles Martin’s remixes won’t necessarily box your ears either. Don’t expect to hear new sounds not present in the original mixes or the 1999 Yellow Submarine Songtrack remix. However, playing these remixes against the originals does reveal better balance and more forceful sound without excessive loudness.  Martin clearly approached these old recordings with a light hand out of respect for recordings that really didn’t need to be monkeyed with.

Bonuses on the video discs include introductions for “Penny Lane”, “Hello, Goodbye”, “Hey Jude”, and “Get Back” (and “Strawberry Fields Forever” on the limited edition disc) from Ringo that mostly consist of laughing, goofy descriptions of what’s happening on screen, and peace-sign flashing. He provides the most details about the rooftop concert. Paul McCartney’s commentaries over all those videos (except “Get Back”) are considerably more detailed. He doesn’t spill anything revelatory. The extra disc included in the limited deluxe edition, however, is far more than a nifty bonus. With clips for such essential tracks as “Strawberry Fields Forever” (perhaps the most beautiful restoration of all), “Revolution”, “A Day in the Life”, and “Rain”, and relative oddities such as “Hey Bulldog”, this disc really rounds out the story with some of the very, very best Beatles songs. It also provides opportunities to see the band working in the studio, getting really weird, and hanging out with Mike Nesmith that the main disc does not.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 34

The Date: November 3

The Movie: Day of the Dead (1985)

What Is It?: The villain in the last installment of George Romero’s original “living dead” trilogy is the military; the most likable character is a sweet zombie named Bub. Tom Savini’s gory makeup jobs go above, beyond, and above the beyond.

Why Today?: On this day in 1946, Tom Savini is born.

Review: 'The Rolling Stones Live at the Tokyo Dome 1990'

The Stones had only been “retired” for three years between the releases of the dud Dirty Work in 1986 and Steel Wheels in 1989, but in those days, that was a pretty long period of inactivity for the band, especially since they’d been off the road for a lot longer than three years. When they got back on it for an international, big production tour, they were in danger of playing back up to the giant sets, fireworks, and inflatable monster hookers that dwarfed them onstage. Of course, Mick Jagger is not a performer who’d allow himself to be upstaged by a balloon, and though the new material was hardly the return-to-form that a lot of critics cried it was at the time, he still managed to put on a hell of a show (I was lucky enough to catch one at Shea Stadium). Sure, the act had essentially become cabaret, but it was some very crowd-pleasing cabaret, and the resurrection of long-dormant sixties chestnuts like “Paint It Black”, “Ruby Tuesday”, and “2000 Light Years from Home” (performed on stage for the first time ever) were wonderful surprises

Fairly early in their tour, the Stones visited Japan, and their reinvigorated state is well captured on the new Live at the Tokyo Dome Blu-ray Audio/CD combo pack. Without the images of props, stage set, and guys in their forties, the CD presents a pretty nice illusion of a band in their prime ripping through nasty stuff like “Sympathy for the Devil”, “Tumbling Dice”, “Happy”, “Midnight Rambler”, and even “Harlem Shuffle”, which sounds a hell of a lot more vital here than it did on Dirty Work. Although dated synth sounds sometimes get in its way (ugh…those “pan pipes” scurrying all over “Ruby Tuesday”), the poppy and psychedelic material also contributes to the feeling that these guys are younger than they were at the time.

Actually, the video incarnation of Live at the Tokyo Dome works its illusions pretty well too since 47-year old Mick and Keith look so much younger in this movie than they do today. Jagger’s act is relatively reserved compared to some of his more cartoonish antics, though you might want to do yourself a favor and look away from the screen when he starts doing a naff version of tai chi during “2000 Light Years from Home” and stick your fingers in your ears when he starts doing his misogynistic asshole routine during the bridge of “It’s Only Rock and Roll”.

The SD video presentation also erases some wrinkles. All things considered, the picture looks good despite the inherent softness of video. The colors really pop, particularly Mick’s green blouse and Ronnie’s red blazer. The picture only becomes a problem when the stage and video presentations clash. During “Almost Hear You Sigh”, the mood lighting on stage turns the picture into a crimson blob. The HD audio, however, is consistently fine, completing the illusion with the sound of a band that could still hit hard despite the synthesizers, balloons, tendency to finish songs with a show bizzy flourish, and Jagger’s occasional embarrassing pose.