Eyes
Without A Face
(1960/Gaumont/Criterion Blu-ray)/Maniac
(2012 remake/IFC Midnight/MPI DVD)/The
Hitch-Hiker (1953)/The
Stranger (1946/Kino
Blu-rays)
Picture:
B/C+/B-/B- Sound: B-/C+/B-/C+ Extras: B/C+/C/B Films:
B/B-/B+/B
Here
are three classics on Blu-ray, two of which are finally making their
debut in the format and a rare horror/thriller remake that works!
We
start with Georges Franju's Eyes
Without A Face
(1960) is one of the greatest films ever to come out of the
long-running French studio Gaumont and one of the creepiest French
films of all time. It starts with playful music (ala Lang's M)
with an older woman driving around alone at night. She is acting
suspicious and does not want to be seen. Then we see she has someone
in the back seat of her small Citroen, looking like a man whose face
is covered, but like so much in this film, what you see is never
simple. She is there to dump this person, who is dead!
Why?
We soon learn who the person might be, that something was taken from
them before death and that a mad surgeon (Pierre Brasseur) is trying
to do something to save someone else and will do this at any cost
because he feels it justifies any and all sacrifices. Then the story
gets more twisted as the terrific script takes more twists and turns
in a thriller as potent as the original French classic Diabolique and
Hitchcock's best.
To
say more would ruin the film, buy it is remarkable and I had not seen
it for a while, but was pleasantly surprised that it not only held
its power, suspense and chills, but remains one of the greta
underrated thrillers. Influenced by silent cinema and Film Noir, it
inspired more than a few films and TV shows itself and to see it get
top rate Criterion Blu-ray treatment is terrific. Any serious film
fans, especially of horror and thrillers,should put this on their
must see and must own list.
Extras
include another great booklet from Criterion featuring essays by
Patrick McGrath and David Kalat, while the Blu-ray disc adds a
vintage audio interview with director Franju, Original Theatrical
Trailers, new interview with co-star Edith Scob, except from a 1985
documentary about the men (Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac) who
write the film's screenplay and a restored HD version of Franju's
1949 film about Paris slaughterhouses entitled Blood
Of The Beasts.
Franck
Khalfoun's Maniac
(2012) is a remake of the still very controversial and graphic
William Lustig murder thriller that included a rare, classic
collaboration by Tom Savini and Rob Bottin, so when it was announced
it would be remade, I was on a long list of those who thought it
would be another package deal disaster that desecrated another
independent gem. When Elijah Wood was announced as the killer, a few
people had to scoff despite his killer turn in Sin
City,
but Alexandre Aja was announced as a producer, that added more
credibility.
Instead
of a larger man living and killing in New York City, the thinner Wood
would be killing his victims in Los Angeles and Hollywood. With an
unknown director, how did it turn out? Very well. It is a
graphically violent film, but all of the effects are in context to
the narrative and are never over or underdone. The rethinking and
updating is very thorough without wasting any opportunities and any
dumb humor or lame torture porn is totally absent, so it becomes more
and more intense throughout with plenty of suspense.
The
cast is solid all around, but the smartest thing to do was to hardly
show Wood as the character because almost all of the movie is from
his point of view throughout so his star persona and star appeal are
cleverly subtracted, laving his acting ability disembodied, creepier
and more dangerous and distrusting as a result. He gives a very
effective performance even fans would not expect and I bet this has
disturbed more than a few people. However, that is the point and it
allows Wood to stretch into new territory in one of the best
performances of his career to date.
It
also lives up to the original by actually respecting it. This 89
minutes version on DVD is the unrated version, so brace yourself, as
many will not be able to handle the content, but the work here is
among the best of the last few years in the genre and is highly
recommended otherwise.
For
more on the original, try our coverage of its release on Blu-ray ta
this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10468/Maniac
Extras
include part of a review on the film in a paper slip inside the DVD
case, while the DVD adds a Poster Gallery, Making Of featurette,
Original Theatrical Trailer, Deleted Scenes and a
feature length audio commentary track by
Wood, Khalfoun and Producer Alix Taylor.
Made
independently, The
Hitch-Hiker
(1946) is one of the toughest, best and most effective Film Noir
productions ever made, directed by actress Ida Lupino, who became one
of the few women in the Classical Hollywood establishment to have any
kind of directing career. Respected and beloved by Noir and film
fans for decades, it even had a limited edition 12' LaserDisc edition
that was a rare 24K Gold pressing in and for the format (by The Roan
Group) that was large, heavy, huge and thicker than its vinyl
LP counterpart.
As
I noted in a very rough, poor DVD copy we reviewed of the film many
years ago, it is “...one of the great Film Noirs, made at RKO
Studios and directed by one of their greatest stars, actress Ida
Lupino. Highly influential thematically and visually, Lupino was
already a star in the genre, just having come off of films like RKO's
Noir classic On
Dangerous Ground
[now reviewed elsewhere on this site] the year before. This was
groundbreaking for its delivery, pacing, great look, acting, feel,
and that a woman had directed one of the best films of the 1950s.
Too bad it is at the B-movie length of 71 minutes, but it is an
intense 71.”
Here,
a psychotic killer (William Talman) kidnaps two best friends on a
camping vacation (Frank Lovejoy & Edmond O'Brien) forcing them to
take him to Mexico. It gets quickly more complicated and dangerous,
more intense and twisted in what is one of the great early low-budget
films and one that has a great look and visual approach throughout
epitomizing the grittier side of 1950s cinema. Based on the real
life Billy Cook killing spree, it was too rough for studio standards
of the time, was groundbreaking in its time and its honestly makes it
as timely as ever. It is a real thrill for such a masterwork to
finally make it to Blu-ray.
An
Image Gallery with stills is the only extra.
Last
and absolutely not least is Orson Welles' The
Stranger
(1953), which we have seen in some awful copies, but two in
particular stood out as key that we also happened to review. There
is the MGM DVD version form a clean print that might come from their
restoration of what apparently is the original camera materials:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5901/The+Stranger+(1946/MGM+DVD
No
Blu-ray from them though, but then there is the Film Chest/HD Cinema
Classics Blu-ray that had its advantages over that version despite
being a little overly cleaned:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10780/The+Prowler+(1951/VCI+DVD)+++The+Stranger
With
a nice set of extras (finally for this film!!!) worthy of a Criterion
release, we get the best looking and sounding version on home video
yet with a more vivid picture and comparatively clearer sound. You
can read more about the tale of Welles as a new man in town marrying
a perfect 1950s suburban woman (Loretta Young) as his past is about
to catch up to him in the other reviews, then read about how much
better this looks and sounds below.
Those
great extras include a feature length audio commentary track by film
historian Bret Wood,
Original Theatrical Trailer, Image Gallery, 4 anti-Nazi wartime radio
dramas Welles produced and broadcast during WWII and Death
Mills
(1945, 21 minutes) which shows Nazi Death Camp atrocities and had
some of its footage used in The
Stranger.
The
1080p 1.66 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Eyes
is the visual winner here and of the three films, has had the most
restoration with several shots so demo-worth that they exceed my
rating and was scanned from the original negative. There are some
great shots and the composition is always impressive throughout.
This is miles ahead of all previous video releases of the film and
will impress fans and newcomers alike.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on the Maniac
remake is our only HD shoot here and looks good for the format, but
has some softness that is likely not part of the original shoot and
has also been issued on Blu-ray, which is the preferred way to see it
if you can play the format.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on Hiker
and Stranger
are also the best they have ever looked on home video, but show the
age of the materials used, which turns out to be 35mm prints form the
U.S. Library Of Congress. As is the case with Kino, they have not
touched up the prints at all and despite the dirt, specks or other
issues, I am like many purists who prefer this over bad clean-up and
it is like finding a real film print of each with real Film Black
(with proper silver content) and detail we have never seen before
outside of film footage. Both could use work, but these will do for
now and are at least accurate representations of the film that are
also very invovling and rich to watch despite these limits.
All
three Blu-rays offer PCM 2.0 Mono sound with Eyes
(off of a 35mm soundmaster) and Hiker
(where the sound holds up better than expected) managing to sound the
best of our releases. Stranger
sounds better than even in the earlier Blu-ray version, but could use
some work and maybe a second sound source to upgrade the sound
further (like a soundmaster MGM might have). That
leaves the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Maniac
well-recorded and sounding decent, but having its moments of silence
and not much of a soundfield, though we suspect it would sound better
in lossless playback on its Blu-ray.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
