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Category:    Home > Reviews > Thriller > Mystery > Murder > Crime > Horror > Monster > Revenge > McBain (1991/Synapse/*all MVD Blu-rays)

Are You Lonesome Tonight? (2021/Film Movement DVD)/Catman Of Paris (1946/Republic/Imprint/Via Vision Region Free Import Blu-ray)/Fighting Back (1982/Paramount/Arrow*)/Game Trilogy (Most Dangerous Game (1978)/Killing Game (1978)/Execution Game (1979)/Arrow*)/McBain (1991/Synapse/*all MVD Blu-rays)



Picture: C/B-/B/B B- B/B Sound: C/B-/B-/B-/B- Extras: C/B/C+/B/C- Films: C+/B-/C/C+/C



PLEASE NOTE: The Catman Of Paris Import Blu-ray is now only available from our friends at Via Vision Entertainment in Australia, can play on all 4K and Blu-ray players and can be ordered from the link below.



Revenge is the theme of the following...



Wen Shipei's Are You Lonesome Tonight? (2021) has a young man (Eddie Peng) accidentally hitting and killing someone with his car. Making things worse, he feels so back, he goes out of his way to meet the now-widowed wife (Sylvia Chang) in his guilt and confusion. However, the body suddenly turns up, but now with a bunch of bullets in it and a detective (Wang Yanhui) trying to find out the truth.


Three long years later, all three are still upset about it all and no one knows the truth about anything, but that is all about to change.


The premise, concept, look and pace of all this is good, down to an interesting use of color, but despite some solid moments, we have seen too much of this before and the makers seem to keep missing a breakaway point where this would really take off. We rarely see ambitious productions in this genre almost-work, they either succeed or fail these days. At least this one tries, so those highly interested might want to take a look.


Extras include trailers and a short film, Shipei's own Killing Time, one of the more interesting shorts Film Movement have included on a DVD; a science fiction assassin tale.



Leslie Salander's The Catman Of Paris (1946) is a highly underrated horror/psychological thriller with some camp comedy and 77 years later, finally is getting the respect it deserves. Often written off as a Cat People (1942, see our Criterion review elsewhere on this site) knock off and coming from B-movie Western and serial chapter studio Republic, it is actually one of the best movies they ever made (along with High Noon, Johnny Guitar and some would add, It's A Wonderful Life) as a smarter and more complex film than it would first appear.


Taking place in 1896 Paris, a respected man (Carl Esmond) has returned from Asia and apparently has a 'rare' illness that is making him forget things, but at the time of his arrival, a mysterious killer has surfaced clawing and mutilating people to death. Some say it looks like the killer is a giant cat!


Though that also sounds like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the Asian trip has not made him into The Shadow either,) the screenplay (for a film running only 63 minutes, but it is tight and always moving) uses that all as a jumping-off point to come up with a more interesting film that has more interesting, funny, fun, suspenseful and well-done moments than you might expect and makes it worthy of the best B-level genre films from MGM, Warner Bros. and the like.


I also like how this is shot (slightly Noir at times), edited and how the shots are composed. Even the use of black and white is something unique as it does not look like any major studio, yet it is also professional and palpable. Thus, Catman Of Paris belongs on the same shelf as the Universal Horror classics, B-movie mystery series and German Expressionist silent classics. I like it that much and definitely recommend it. I just wish it ran longer.


The great extras, including a solid audio commentary, look at the film and at the Republic Studios, are listed at the order link and make this one of the best special editions of the year.



Lewis Teague's Fighting Back (1982) is the first of our two reactionary movies here, a cycle that was built out of the first Charles Bronson Death Wish, which slowly gained momentum over the last decade, spawned a few sequels and imitators, so now we have the point where name actors who would not have done a film like this start appearing in them. In this case, it is Tom Skerritt, who was just in the original Alien, a megahit in 1979, so he was a name with star power and that is how this film happened.


As usual for these formula films, people are living in fear as crime (murder, terrorism and robbery) have skyrocketed, but one man (and sometimes one woman, but not in this cinema much yet) 'can't take it anymore' and will go on a fighting spree and maybe even kill 'the bad guys' or the like. Casting likable actors (Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry films also set a precedent) make this more palatable as 'of course, he's a nice guy, so he would have never hurt anyone if it was not that bad' and that is how these films were made and sold.


Maybe that is not what was always being thought of when they were being produced, but they are all still B-movies and they knew it, just too violent and rough for broadcast TV of the time. This one dips into action genre conventions, but also shows its age and badly. It is a cycle that brought the 1980s and its worse side and now we know better decades too late.


This one is a time capsule of Philadelphia where it was shot and it does have an interesting supporting cast including Yaphet Kotto (Skerritt's Alien co-star,) Michael Sarrazin and Broadway legend Patti LuPone (also known for her many musicals, but no numbers here) as his wife!


Despite all that talent and a solid, additional supporting cast, it is more yelling and predictability than acting all the time and felt like watching bad NBC Network TV at the time (including the 'friendlier' Real People) going on and on for a few hours. True, people were dealing with crime and bad times then, but none of these films criticized the possible roots for all this, being too friendly to those with money and power. Not even a moderate fair critique is to be found. At best, this is a curio to be viewed with a grain of salt. It was so bad to mer then, I had forgotten it, then was not that happy to see it again. There is a reason it was forgotten for so many years. Oh well...


Extras include (per the press release) Enough is Enough!, a new interview with director Lewis Teague


  • Danny-Cam, a new interview with camera operator Daniele Nannuzzi


  • Trailer


  • TV Spot


  • Image gallery


  • Double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Luke Insect


  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Luke Insect


  • and an Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by critics Rob Skvarla and Walter Chaw, and a career-spanning interview with director Lewis Teague.



Next up, Toru Murakawa's The Game Trilogy (with The Most Dangerous Game (1978)/Killing Game (1978)/Execution Game (1979) has nothing to do with the Michael Douglas/David Fincher thriller or the first film with the RKO classic, but a comical yakuza action trilogy with Yusaku Matsuda as hitman Shohei Narumi, hired to kidnap someone for that famous mob organization, but his prisoner is killed while in his custody!


No problem! The Yakuza asks him to not worry and just kidnap someone else for them, but this is obviously wrong and he realizes something is very wrong, then all hell breaks loose in the first film, The Most Dangerous Game. First sequel The Killing Game has two women inspiring him to come out of hiding, only to face new gunfights, hand to hand combat and more, The Execution Game wraps it all up for better and worse, with the makers quitting while they were ahead, but these films were very popular in Japan and the lead would sadly die too young from cancer not long after a solid turn in Ridley Scott's Black Rain, a film that put Michael Douglas on the map worldwide as a superstar.


That makes this set a curio for those who like this kind of action/crime drama and is a very welcome restoration and release for big fans of the films. Arrow has delivered as well as they can, as usual, with another archival set worth looking into.


Extras are many and the LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS include (per the press release):

  • A reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella


  • Double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella


  • Illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the films by Hayley Scanlon and Dimitri Ianni


DISC 1: THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME


  • Brand new audio commentary by Chris Poggiali and Marc Walkow


  • The Action Man, a 30-minute interview with director Toru Murakawa


  • Original Japanese theatrical trailer


  • Image gallery


DISC 2: THE KILLING GAME & THE EXECUTION GAME


  • Brand new audio commentary on The Killing Game by Earl Jackson and Jasper Sharp


  • Brand new audio commentary on The Execution Game by Tom Mes


  • Remembering Yusaku Matsuda, an interview with Yutaka Oki, film critic and personal friend of Yusaku Matsuda


  • Game Changer, an interview with The Execution Game screenwriter Shoichi Maruyama


  • Original Japanese theatrical trailers for both films


  • and image galleries for both films



And we conclude with our other reactionary film, James Glickenhaus' McBain (1991) with Christoper Walken again cast in another film where he is on a one-man mission to avenge himself after being a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Flying in the face of his brilliant, Oscar-winning performance in Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978, now out in an excellent 4K release) and more of a match with is somewhat reactionary turn in John Irwin's The Dogs Of War (1980, reviewed elsewhere on this site) where is kidnapped and tortured in an African nation, only to survive and go back to kill the torturers at least shows Walken's range.


But here, he is against a Vietnam vet, but has not killed himself, but is saved by a man who he finds out has been killed later in Columbia eighteen years later. Maria Conchita Alonso, an ever-underrated actress, is the dead man's sister who joins him and with a small army, they are going to go to Columbia to overthrow its government (!?!?!?) as payback!


Of course, this is ridiculous, but by this time, the simple reactionary film of the 1970s and early 1980s were supplanted by war revenge films and this is a little-discussed hybrid of both, with some even saying having Alonzo in the film proves there is nothing remotely racist or racial about the film, though others could debate that to at least some extent. Michael Ironside leads the most unknown supporting cast, but he is solid here too. Unfortunately, this is mostly predictable, mostly fantasy and mostly bizarre, with even Walken unable to save it. Now all restored, you can see it for yourself and decide.


Extras include an Original Theatrical Trailer and feature-length audio commentary track with James Glickenhaus and film historian Chris Poggiali.



Now for playback performance. The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image on Catman transfer can show the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film. The flaws are not too bad and I like the look of the film. The PCM 2.0 Mono is as clean and clear as the old theatrical monophonic sound ever will be, so the combination is surprisingly solid.


The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on the Game films can sometimes show the age of the materials used, yet they also seem to have some flaws and issues that are just part of the way they were made and shot. With zero information on how they got their scope framing, it is hard to tell whether these are shot in 2-perf Techniscope/Chromoscope or (a little more likely) anamorphic lenses that were just not that great. Color and composition are better, so I will not fault the transfers for being what they are, with the final film being a little weaker than the first two. Yet, I cannot imagine these looking much better if I saw them on 35mm off of the original camera negatives, so I will not be able to penalize them for this. The first film at least has been sited as being shot on Fujicolor 35mm negative film. It looks like the sequels were too.


The Japanese PCM 1.0 Mono is from newly remastered elements, but not having this in 2.0 Mono is a mistake, limiting the quality of the film's original theatrical mono sound and all three films could have sounded much better. Sad.


The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Fighting Back can show the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film, the few it has had and the PCM 2.0 Mono sounds as good as it ever will.


The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on McBain can also show the age of the materials used, easily looking better than it ever has on video before. Sound is here in a brand new DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix and lossless PCM 2.0 Stereo mix, with the 5.1 upgrade just a bit better than the old stereo audio. The film was originally issued in Dolby's older Dolby System A-type noise reduction system, which had been succeeded by its newer, better SR (Spectral Recording) system with better noise reduction. There is only so much you can do with this older audio, but this is as good as it is going to get.



To order The Catman Of Paris Umbrella import Blu-ray, go to this link for it and many more great web-exclusive releases at:


https://viavision.com.au/shop/the-catman-of-paris-1946-imprint-collection-219/



- Nicholas Sheffo


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