MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1971) / THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970) (Blu-ray Review)

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1971) / THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970) 

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1971) 

Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 99 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 1.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: Gordon Hessler 
Cast: Christine Kaufmann, Herbert Lom, Jason Robards, Lilli Palmer, Maria Perschy, Michael Dunn, Adolfo Celi

Synopsis: Your first frightening film is 1971's Murders in the Rue Morgue. In early 20th-century Paris, a theatrical company with a specialty in Grand Guignol undertakes their most gruesome production yet. But when a madman with an axe to grind arrives on the scene, the stage is set for real mayhem and murder most foul. Will the backstage bloodshed be quelled – or is it curtains for the cast? Jason Robards and Herbert Lom star in this marvelously macabre mystery.

To say that this adaptation is loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue is a bit like saying that Donnie Darko is loosely based on The Evil Dead because the movie appears within it. The movie takes place during the Victorian era in Paris where members of a theatre troupe lead by director Cesar Charron (Jason Robards, Something Wicked This Way Comes) begin to die off in a series of acid murders. The crimes would seem to indicate the culprit is a dead man, stage actor Rene Marot (Herbert Lom, Mark of the Devil) who died years earlier after being disfigured during a production of Edgar Allen Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue after being doused with sulfuric acid. 

At the same time Charron's wife Madeline (Christine Kaufmann) is plagued by nightmares of an axe-murderer, in reality her own mother was killed by an ax murder, a death which has been attributed to Marot, who returns as a disfigured ghost of vengeance throughout the movie, which seems to owe more to The Phantom of the Opera than to Edgar Allen Poe's original short story, which is only featured in the fringes of the movie, though those scenes are some of my favorites. 

This one has always proven very hard for me to make it through, which I attribute to the underplayed performance from Jason Robards, a fine actor but just not right for the role of Charron, the man has no chemistry with his love interest whatsoever. Originally Vincent Price was slated in the role and I can only imagine that Price would have more suited to the role in my opinion, there wasn't much that Price couldn't make better. In my opinion the best parts of this movie are the Grand Guignol stage performances of Murders in the Rue Morgue, and Madeline's surreal ax-murderer nightmares, but this one is still a bit of a snoozer. 

Murders in the Rue Morgue arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, the sub par movie benefits from the HD bump with nicely managed grain, transferred from a good source with only the most minor of film flaws. The DTS-HD MA Mono 1.0 audio sounds good, with everything nicely balanced and clean. Scream have brought over the Stage Tricks and Screen Frights Featurette with director Gordon Hesseler and trailer from the MGM disc plus added an informative commentary from  author and film historian Steve Haberman.

Special Features: 
- NEW Audio Commentary With Author And Film Historian Steve Haberman
- Stage Tricks and Screen Frights Featurette (12 Mins) 
- Theatrical Trailer (3 Mins) 

THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970) 

Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 88 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 1.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1) 
Director: Daniel Haller 
Cast: Dean Stockwell, Ed Begley, Lloyd Bochner, Sam Jaffe, Sandra Dee, Talia Shire

Synopsis: From the City of Lights (and frights), our tour of terror moves on to a small New England town in 1970's The Dunwich Horror. When a beautiful student named Nancy catches the eye of the weird Wilbur Whateley, it's up to her professor, the good doctor and occult expert Dr. Henry Armitage, to warn her that no good will come of it. But as Armitage digs deeper into the Whateley family history, he uncovers a buried secret – and a plot intended to call forth an evil beyond imagination. A cult favorite that proves that The Old Ones are good ones, The Dunwich Horror stars Dean Stockwell, Ed Begley, and Sandra Dee.

The Dunwich Horror stars a very young Dean Stockwell (Blue Velvet) as the odd Wilbur Whateley, the descendant of a man who once tried to summon The Old Ones into this world. The elder Whateley was accused of sacrificing a young local girl during a pagan ritual at the time and was hanged afterward during an act of vigilante justice by local villagers. 


We meet Wilbur while he is attending a lecture at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts where Dr. Henry Armitage (Ed Begley) has spoken about some weird local history, including the Whateley family. In his possession is the ancient book of the dead, the infamous Necronomicon, which after the lecture he gives to his student Nancy Wagner (Sandra Dee) to return to the school museum. Wilbur follows Nancy to the museum and introduces himself, asking to have a closer look at the ancient book, which she reluctantly obliges. He is interrupted by Dr. Armitage who puts the book away, afterward Wilbur and Nancy get to chatting with Nancy offering to give weirdo Wilbur a ride home to his home in Dunwich. 

Nancy and Wilbur strike up a friendly flirtation and he convinces her to stay the weekend at the Whateley home, the two become close, but Dr. Armitage begins to worry about her safety and drives out to the country to check on her, despite his warning to stay away from Wilbur she stays on. Of course Wilbur is up to no good, he has been drugging Nancy's tea, and it seems that he has plans to continue his grandfather's pagan rituals, to bring forth The Old Ones, through a ceremony that calls for human sacrifice, which is where young naive Nancy comes into play. 

The story strays quite a bit from the source material with numerous changes in character and story, but the main arc of it remains intact. Dean Stockwell is super creepy with his corduroy jacket, moustache and tight perm, plus he has the crazy eyes, as if he is a magician attempting to hypnotize you - which is equal parts funny and eerie. Sandra Dee is decent as the naive Nancy who falls under the spell of Wilbur, only to be put on the altar of sacrifice during the final moments, raped by  some creature kept in the closet for the duration of the movie, which is a thing of b-movie nuttiness. Sandra also experiences some hallucinogenic nightmares which are fun stuff, AIP were definitely gong for a bit of a drug-movie with this one I think, forgoing the usual acid trips for weird Lovecraftian nightmares achieved through cheap optical effects. .

The Dunwich Horror arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory looking appropriately grainy, maybe a bit thick at times but a definite improvement over the MGM Midnite Movies disc, offering the usual advancement in fine detail, sharpness and clarity. The source material does have some minor white speckling but that is about all I can complain about. The English DTS-HD MA Mono 1.0 audio does the job quite nicely, the dialogue is clean and clear, the awesome Les Baxter score comes through quite nicely, this is one Baxter's AIP scores I would love to own. Extras on the disc include a new commentary from author and film Historian Steve Haberman, plus a theatrical trailer, not a lot of bonus material but the commentary is top notch. 

Special Features: 
- NEW Audio Commentary With Author And Film Historian Steve Haberman
- Theatrical Trailer

Scream Factory have once again raided the MGM vaults to plunder more of these American International Pictures  b-movie goodies from the seventies, this time emerging with a double fisted helping of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, the results are varied but this double-feature is worth a watch for fans of '70 horror who don't mind scraping near and around the bottom of the cinema barrel, for semi-tasty morsels of cinema fromage . 3/5

DVD Review: LIVE LIKE A COP DIE LIKE A MAN (1976)

LIVE LIKE A COP DIE LIKE A MAN (1976)

a.k.a. UOMINI SI NASCE POLIZIOTTI SI MUORE

LABEL: RaroVideo USA [RVDUSA 014]
REGION CODE: Region 1 NTSC
RATING: Unrated
DURATION: 94 mins
VIDEO: Anamorphic 1.85:1 Widescreen
AUDIO: English, Italian Dolby Digital Mono with English subtitles
DIRECTOR: Ruggero Deodato
CAST: Marc Porel, Ray Lovelock, Adolfo Celi, Silvia Dioniso

No stranger to disturbing exploitation cinema Ruggero Deodato's Euro-crime actioner LIVE LIKE A COP DIE LIKE A MAN (1976) opens with a horrendous  purse-snatching perpetrated by thieves on motorcycle. Unwilling to relinquish the bag they drag her for a distance until her head smashes against a lamp post. Still unable to wrench the bag from her deathgrip one of the thugs hop off the bike and savagely beats her. Abandoning their prize they speed off but unfortunately for them the commotion has caught the notice of the twisted Italian STARSKY AND HUTCH, the dark haired Fred (Marc Porel, Lucio Fulci's THE PSYCHIC) and sandy haired Tony (Ray Lovelock, LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE) whom give chase to the thieves on motorbikes in a stunning motorcycle chase throughout Rome, it's a wild ride. The dizzying pursuit takes them through cafes, over the tops of cars, up and down flights of stairs, whizzing in and out of traffic and taking the life of a seeing-eye dog leaving it's owner stranded in the middle of the street. Darkly funny, but funny nonetheless. The chase comes to a violent end when the thieves plow headlong into the back of a parked truck. The driver dies after being impaled while the passenger is thrown some distance, but survives, that is until Fred comes to assist. He helps the injured man to an upright position, cautiously removes his helmet and then discreetly snaps his neck. This was my bizarre and thrilling entry into Italian crime-action cinema and it definitely let me straight away that this wasn't going to be like any crime film I'd seen before, leave it to the Italians and Deodato in particular.

Obviously these two are not your average cops on the beat, these
crime-fighting anti-heroes are part of an elite task force called "Special Squad" run by The Boss (Adolfo Celi, THUNDERBALL). The task force is a secret arm of the law geared towards the apprehension of the city's most violent criminals by whatever means necessary. These two read perhaps too much into the "whatever means necessary" and the lengths to which their depravity extends is pretty scary. The film is a non-stop parade of sexual harassment, kinky sex, renegade justice, arson, torture, and the pre-emptive gunning down of would-be bank thieves, it's definitely a perverse form of justice, these guys just aren't fucking around. They're a mean-spirited, wise cracking duo but they're effortlessly charming characters who just happen to have a nasty sadistic streak, luckily there on the "good" side. The violence and the duo's brand of lethal justice is made a bit more palatable by the dark humor inherent in Fernando Di Leo's (CALIBER 9) script. It's a nasty bit of business that to me recalled some of the more demented morality seen in Nico Mastorakis' tasty slice of exploitation ISLAND OF DEATH (1976).

Special Squad's public enemy #1 is the elusive gangster Robert "Bibi" Pasquini (Renato Salvatori, Z) a notorious criminal who proves to be a formidable adversary. When one of the Squad's agents get too close for comfort he has him shotgunned in an elaborate set-up right outside headquarters in broad daylight. The duo taunt Pasquini at every turn, killing his henchmen, double-teaming his knock-out nympho sister Lina (Sofia Dionisio, I PROSSENETI) and setting fire to a fleet of expensive luxury cars outside of his social club.

Deodato's eye for action is as keen as his eye for disturbing violence, the set-pieces are well-staged and the action is exquisitely kinetic, everything looks pretty great with the notable exception of an insert shot featuring an exploding miniature. Porel and Lovelock's chemistry is paramount, they're as vile and reprehensible as the crooks they kill but their charisma and charm goes a long way towards endearing them to me. The film is violent but it's not overly gory, there's a lot of thick 70's-era red-paint styled bloodshed, it's nothing compared to what Deodato would offer in later films. The film has a nice swinging soundtrack courtesy of Unbaldo Continiello (MACABRE) as well as a few daydreamy folk ballads from co-star Ray Lovelocke, which nicely juxtapose the film's violence. As for on-screen beauties Deodato's then wife Silvia Dionisio (TERROR EXPRESS) appears as the Special Squad's sultry secretary Norma who always has a snappy comeback to the duo's strong sexist come-ons.

It's too bad this would be Deodato's lone entry in the Italian Euro-crime action genre, it's a fantastic watch with no small amount of violent action, spilt blood, gunplay and perverse justice. This is actually what I would consider his most entertaining film I've seen thus far.



DVD: RaroVideo's re-release of LIVE LIKE A COP DIE LIKE A MAN is presented in anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen with original Italian or dubbed English Dolby Digital mono audio. The image is quite remarkable, the brand new HD anamorphic transfer from the original 35mm negative surprised me, it's a near-pristine print. The colors are nicely saturated, the greens particularly pop, with good black levels and a crisp image with a satisfying amount of fine detail.  There's also a fine layer of natural film grain left intact, no abusive DNR scrubbing here. This would have made a stunning Blu-ray, perhaps at a later date. The Italian and dubbed English mono audio is quite strong, there is some hiss and pop throughout, particularly the English dub, but it's nothing too distracting other than for a brief moment when the score drops out. 

The supplemental materials include the 42 min documentary 'Poliziotti Violent' which features interviews with director Ruggero Deodato, star Ray Lovelock, and actor Al Cliver (WAVES OF LUST) who does not appear in the film but actually turned down a starring role much to his own regret following the film's commercial success. Deodato delves into the amount of freedom he was given during production, illegally filming the motorcycle sequences that opens the film without permits, working with Porel and Lovelock, and a never-filmed sequel. While Deodato does speak to Porel's competitive style of acting Lovelock is quick to dismiss any friction between the two on-set. The clips in the doc seem to be have been sourced from RaroVideo's previous non-anamorphic edition of the film and the clips serve as testament to how stunning the new anamorphic HD transfer is, it's really quite remarkable. There's also a 21 min commercial reel highlighting Deodato's Italian TV commercial work with optional commentary from Deodato whom speaks about it with great affection. Both the doc and the commercial reel are in Italian with English subtitles. Lastly is a 4 pg. booklet containing an overview of the film and a Deodato biography by writer Robert Firsching.


RaroVideo USA  is a partnership formed in 2010 when Stefano and Gianluca Curti, owners of Rarovideo Italy, teamed with Nico Bruinsma, owner of U.S. DVD label Cult Epics with the shared passion of producing high-quality DVD, Blu-ray and VOD releases for American audiences. This is my first viewing of any of their titles and I'm quite enamored, definitely a label I'm willing to pump some of my hard earned cash into.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
- Documentary: Poliziotti Violent (42mins)
- TV Advertisements directed by Ruggero Deodato with Commentary (20 mins)
- Illustrated Booklet


VERDICT: LIVE LIKE A COP DIE LIKE A MAN is an insanely fun and violent Euro-crime actioner. If all you know Deodato by are his more infamous offerings like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK definitely give this one a watch, it's still crazy violent but it's also darkly comedic and is a thrilling watch from start to finish. RaroVideo's gorgeous transfer and the 'Poliziotto Violent' doc makes this a must-have for fans of Euro-crime cinema, bloody action or just Deodato connoisseurs. As my introduction to Italian crime films it would seem that the benchmark has been set pretty high.

http://www.rarovideo.com/