Assignment
K (1968)/Dead
Heat On A Merry-Go-Round
(1966/both Sony/Columbia/Via Vision/Imprint Region Free Import
Blu-rays)/Devil's Partner
+ Creature From The
Haunted Sea (both
1961/Film Masters Blu-ray Set)/Tarzan
The Ape Man
(1932/MGM/Warner Archive Blu-ray)/Wolf
Pack (2022/Well Go
Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/B/B-/B-/B-/B- Sound: B- (Wolf: B) Extras:
D/D/B/C+/C- Films: B-/B-/C+/C/B-/C+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Assignment
K and
Dead
Heat...
Blu-rays are now only available from our friends at Via Vision
Entertainment in Australia and can play all 4K and Blu-ray players,
while Tarzan
The Ape Man
(1932) is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series. All can be ordered from the links below.
Here's
a group of action thrillers, mostly restored vintage films you should
all know more about...
Val
Guest's Assignment
K
(1968) is a lesser-known spy film by the legendary journeyman
director who has made several of them, including his participation in
the infamous, comical 1967 version of Casino
Royale,
where he wrote on the screenplay and was one of no less than five
directors who were credited for (trying?) to direct that semi-hit
James Bond spoof. Following that up one year later with this more
effective thriller about a spy (Steven Boyd) pretending to be a toy
manufacturer and buyer in the industry at large, but really running a
special, private, independently run spy unit.
He
takes on dealing with some murderous East Bloc agents in all this and
things start to become more entangled and problematic than expected,
then personal to boot. The fight sequences are not bad, but the cast
and locales make this worth revisiting. Camilla Sparv plays the
woman he gets too personally involved with as all this is going on,
with the film leaning more towards a Bond film than the likes of an
Ipcress
File,
yet it has its moments and she more than holds her own. The
supporting cast is also really good and strong, including Leo McKern
(associated with Patrick McGoohan's brilliant TV spy classic The
Prisoner
at the same time,) Michael Redgrave, Jeremy Kemp, Jane Merrow, Basil
Dignam, John Alderton, Robert Hoffman, Carl Mohner, Werner Peters,
David Healy, Geoffrey Bayldon and Joachim Hansen. You may not know
the names, but if you love movies or classic TV, you've likely seen
them even if you cannot name them. It is an amazing cast if you
know who they are.
Unfortunately,
the plot falls short, cuts into Boyd's lead and has some moments that
just do not work and are not believable, some of the characters doing
things that do not add up or make sense. Had such moments been
rewritten, this would have been a bigger, more memorable hit, but it
is still an authentic, ambitious entry into the spy movie cycle of
the 1960s and all serious movie and spy fans should see it at least
once. Glad to see it again after so many years, restored and all.
There
are sadly no extras, save the slipcase that comes with the Blu-ray
case.
Bernard
Girard's Dead Heat On A
Merry-Go-Round (1966) is
a fine heist thriller with James Coburn as a con artist who is just
getting out of prison and already has a big money job planned for a
bank at LAX (aka Los Angeles International Airport) planned in
advance, but what he and his partners did not know about or count on
is the arrival of a military official from the USSR (aka the former
Soviet Union, now paired down to just Russia) that is arranged later.
They skip abandoning the job.
Along
the way, he meets a lady (Camilla Sparv again) he becomes interested
in, but will he just use her too? What else can he expect, who else
will he have to deal with and what else unexpected will happen? The
screenplay is decent and has some interesting moments of humor,
suspense and is written by mature adults for mature adults with a
brain. Girard had started in feature films, only to do an amazing
amount of work on TV until this film, which began a nice stint of
feature films including The
Mad Room, Whatever
Happened To Aunt Alice?,
Mind Snatchers,
A Name For Evil
and Gone With The West,
while still making more TV. He was a capable journeyman filmmaker
and this is one of his best films.
The
great cast also includes Aldo Ray, Nina Wayne, Robert Armstrong, Todd
Armstrong, Severn Darden, Michael Strong, an uncredited Vic Tayback
and look for Harrison Ford as a bellboy in a hotel. They are all
good and up to the pace and energy of the film. Only a few small
parts are a little off, but otherwise, it is a film that holds up
better than one might expect and is worth rediscovering.
There
are sadly no extras, save the slipcase that comes with the Blu-ray
case.
Roger
Corman's The Devil's
Partner
and Creature From
The Haunted Sea (both
1961) are the latest double feature of Corman's work by the new Film
Masters label. From the Film Group era of Corman films that helped
him eventually break away from other studios and distributors, they
are low budget B-movies and shamelessly so with Partner
a would-be Satanic thriller where a gas station attendant (future
movie and TV star Ed Nelson) has been messing with the pitchforked
one more than anyone should have. Comedy legend Edgar Buchanan also
turns up being more dramatic than usual, but being so naturally funny
(and if anyone recognizes him from his many past film and TV
appearances, or role on the huge hit TV sitcom Petticoat
Junction) will be
laughing unintentionally at some of his work. That will go with the
other hoots you can get out of this one.
Creature
wants to be a knock-off
of the 1954 Universal classic Creature
From The Black Lagoon,
but to save money and show how little of it they had, the film begins
with some Cold War nonsense about Cubans visiting the U.S. and a
goofy spy plot that makes little sense, never adds up (as if one
would expect it to in this case) and comes with other odd side items.
By the time the monster shows up, he looks like a bad pre-Muppet
rough draft that never made it to Sesame
Street
and we are all the better for it. Instead of being so bad its good,
it is just usually bad with a few good moments, but they are few and
far between. See it when you are not too tired and you might enjoy
it a bit.
Extras
are many include a nicely illustrated booklet on the film including
informative text including a Tom Weaver essay, while the discs add a
feature length audio commentary track for The Devil's Partner
is by Larry Strothe, James Gonis, Shawn Sheridan and Matt Weinhold of
the Monster Party podcast; theatrical-length commentary for Creature
From the Haunted Sea is by fan favorite Tom Weaver, with
contributions from Roger Corman, Kinta Zertuche and Larry Blamire,
Ballyhoo Motion Pictures contributes Hollywood Intruders: The
Filmgroup Story with Part III of the story, as
well as their new interview with Roger Corman on the formation of The
Filmgroup; recut trailers, based on the original theatrical trailers,
an original Creature From the Haunted Sea Original Theatrical
Trailer, (from 16mm archival elements scanned in 4K) and a full essay
for The Devil's Partner by author Mark McGee.
W.S.
Van Dyke's Tarzan The Ape
Man (1932) finally gave
the insanely popular novel series a movie that was as big a hit as
the print hero had been. Edgar Rice Burroughs finally trusted the
character to a big studio after attempting to make the films all on
his own and MGM hit the bullseye when they cast Johnny Weissmuller in
the title role. Though he was dumbed down to limited English
speaking, he became the definitive Tarzan for decades since, even
with more modern attempts, with the character becoming more popular
than ever.
The
film was a huge hit and spawned a series of feature films and TV
series that finally ended at MGM in 1981 with the infamous Bo Derek
film. Weissmuller was around for a good while, cementing the
iconography, joined here by Maureen O'Sullivan as Jane and great
supporting work from the perennial actor C. Aubrey Smith and then-big
lead actor Neil Hamilton (Three
Week Ends, Studio
Murder Mystery, Dawn
Patrol, Cat
Creeps) as Harry Holt,
who later got a second wind in his career playing Commissioner Gordon
in the 1960s Adam West Batman
series.
Weissmuller
and O'Sullivan have chemistry and the makers keep coming up with the
goods, including some interesting fighting sequences, though it also
has more than a few moments that are condescending and even
(proto-)racist. Still, when the film sticks to the actual storyline,
it works well enough and that is why to this day, over nine decades
later, it has never been totally surpassed, no matter how many have
tried. MGM knew what they had and what they were doing.
The
new Warner Archive Blu-ray is a solid restoration the film needed and
goes well on the shelf with their other Tarzan Blu-ray releases and
all the Tarzan films made since, animated included. No, Tarzan was
smarter in the books, like Dr. Watson in the Basil Rathbone/Nigel
Bruce Sherlock Holmes films, et al. Still, it is a legendary film
that holds up more than you'd think and everyone should see it at
least once. Glad to revisit it, especially after seeing so many
other versions.
Extras
include an Original Theatrical Trailer, two classic animated cartoon
shorts in I Wish I Had Wings and Moonlight for Two and
documentary featurette Tarzan: Silver Screen King Of the Jungle.
We've also reviewed plenty of Tarzan releases over the years
including good and low-budget DVDs, but you can read about the best
releases to date besides this disc as follows, starting with The
Tarzan Vault Blu-ray set that covers a nice bit of his movie
appearances prior to this 1932 film...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/16169/The+Tarzan+Vault+(1918+-+1935/Film+Detective
The
1959 MGM remake of this film on Blu-ray, with the underrated,
animated 1970s Tarzan Lord Of The Jungle TV series on DVD:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/14253/Strawberry+Shortcake:+Campberry+Stories+(201
Tarzan's
Greatest Adventure (1959) Blu-ray
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/15320/Tarzan's+Greatest+Adventure+(1959/Paramount/b
Tarzan's
Goes To India (1962) + Tarzan's Three Challenges (1963)
Blu-rays
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/15403/Girls'+Last+Tour+(2017*)/Space+Runaway+Ideon
Greystoke:
The Legend Of Tarzan Lord Of The Apes (1983) Blu-ray
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12301/Antiviral+(2012/Brandon+Cronenberg/IFC+Midnigh
and
The Legend Of Tarzan
(2016) Blu-ray
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/14568/Doc+Savage:+The+Man+Of+Bronze+(1975/Warne
Lastly
we have Michael Chiang's Wolf
Pack (2022) has a
physician who once was in the military searching for what happened to
his father, only to uncover a deadly terrorist organization and then,
a plot to set off an event that could harm thousands. That turns
this action/revenge tale into a bigger actioner by the end of it all
and after plenty of martial arts action.
Unfortunately,
this has more cliches than punches and the action is not as well shot
and edited as it could be, trying for a different impact approach
that does not serve the film as well as much as the makers thought.
There is some money in this, but it was just not that memorable and
not able to compete with similar films of the last few years, as bad
as moist of them have been.
Max
Zhang, Aadif Lee and Jiang Luxia lead the cast.
A
trailer is the only extra.
And
now for playback performance. The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High
Definition image on Assignment K has some minor issues in a
few more spots than I would have liked, but it was shot in 2-perf
Techniscope and uses the wide frame very well and effectively. It
usually looks really good and the color is a plus, originally issued
in 35mm dye-transfer, three-strip
Technicolor like the actual Bond films of the time. In many cases,
you can see in many places how good it must have looked in such
copies.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Dead Heat just
manages to be the best looking transfer on the list, despite being a
total Eastman Color (Kodak) production and shoot, it is a very
consistent looking transfer with solid color, detail and depth. This
looks even better than I remembered and you even get a few demo
shots. Both films are here in lossless PCM 2.0 Mono sound from their
original theatrical monophonic releases and sound about as good as
they ever will.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 and 1.85 X 1 black & white digital High Definition
image transfers on the Corman Film Masters films can show the age of
the materials used, barely surviving and from the only existing
materials left on the film that somehow survived. The featurette on
Creature shows that some detail and richness in the Video
Black was lost on the transfers, but they are all very watchable,
with the 1.33 block style 'TV' versions showing the whole frame shot
and the 1.85 X 1 version giving you a closer look at some things
while losing other parts of the frame, as they were both shot in what
is called soft matte. That means shooting as if it would be shown on
old analog TVs, but leaving space at the top and bottom knowing it
would get widescreen projection. The Directors of Photography did a
good on on that too. The DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless sound mixes on both films do their
best with the surviving theatrical mono sound they had and have
restored it as best they could, but these were low budget films, so
only expect so much sonically.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfer on the 1932 Tarzan can obviously show the age of the
materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous
releases of the film and much work has been done to fix and save the
film. The rough stick footage is in worse shaper and we get plenty
of it, but the film looks as good as I have ever seen it and only a
mint condition film print (35mm or 16mm) could look any better. Some
shots with the actors really impress and the DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix has been restored as well as
possible, so this is the best this early sound film will ever play
back.
That
leaves the 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on
the only current production, the HD-shot Wolf
Pack,
but it is still a little softer than I would have liked throughout,
even when the CGI is not there. The actual look is consistent
enough, but not as much as it could or should be, but some might like
it. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) Mandarin 5.1 lossless mix has the best sound
here by default, being 54 years newer than the second-newest film on
the list, has a decent-if-competent-at-best sound mix with a
consistent soundfield and not much more. It has some punch at times,
but nothing too memorable. The combination is OK, but I wonder if a
4K version, especially with DTS: X or Dolby Atmos, be able to help
this one play better.
To
order either of the
Imprint import Blu-rays, Assignment
K and
Dead
Heat On A Merry-Go-Round,
try the following links for details and how to order:
Assignment
K
https://viavision.com.au/shop/assignment-k-1968-imprint-collection-270/
Dead
Heat On A Merry-Go-Round
https://viavision.com.au/shop/dead-heat-on-a-merry-go-round-1966-imprint-collection-271/
...and
to order the Tarzan
1932
Warner Archive Blu-ray, go to this link for it and many more great
web-exclusive
releases at:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20
-
Nicholas Sheffo
