MISERY (1990) (Scream Factory Collector's Edition Blu-ray review)

MISERY (1990)
Collector's Edition Blu-ray 

Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 108 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Surround 5.1, Stereo 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: Rob Reiner 
Cast: James Caan, Kathy Bates, Frances Sternhagen, Richard Farnsworth, Lauren Bacall

I remember going to the cinema to watch Misery (1990) on a date on a chilly fall night in upstate New York 1990, it was a nail-biter thriller then and it it still holds up now, the suspenseful tale of best-selling romance novelist Paul Sheldon (James Caan, Thief) who has just finished the final book in his series of novels about the character Misery Chastain. He hops in his car with the only manuscript of the book and begins the long drive from Silver Creek, Colorado to New York City to deliver the book to his literary agent Marcia (Lauren Bacall, Key Largo). However, before the trip can even really begin he gets caught up in a nasty blizzard, losing control of his car he goes off the road a down a steep embankment in mountainous terrain.

While unconscious he is rescued by a local woman named Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates, American Horror Story: Roanoke) who pulls  him from the wreckage and treats his wounds as best she can from her home, placing him in a bed, his legs and feet horribly crippled from the crash. When he comes to she claims to be his number one fan, which is big trouble for the best-selling author, she turns out to be a an obsessive, stalker-y super-fan, and when the author allows her to read his unpublished novel she goes completely metal when she discovers that Sheldon has killed-off her beloved Misery Chastain, that dirty bird!

This reality-rooted psychological thriller is in my opinion one of the strongest film adaptations of King's work, Caan and Bates are phenomenal playing off one another, the tension is palpable throughout, with Bates turning from kindly to homicidal at the turn of a page. The scene of Annie hobbling the author with a block of wood and a sledgehammer still makes me cringe with phantom ankle pain, it's right up there with any cinematic nightmare I can think of. Caan does a wonderful job as the author who slowly begins to realize that the lonely woman who saved his life is certifiable loony, begrudgingly acquiescing to her demands to burn his unpublished manuscript (lest he be burned alive in bed!) while being forced to re-write the novel to the twisted fantasies of his number one fan, leading to brain-smashing finale that holds up to repeat viewings. The movie looks great, shot by cinematographer Barry Sonnenfelid (Blood Simple), this is a terrific 90's thriller, and we also get a supporting role from the great Richard Farnsworth (The Straight Story) as a likable old timer Sheriff and Frances Sternhagen (The Mist) as his wife.  

Audio/Video: Misery (1990) arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory with a new 4K scan from original film elements, presented in 1.85:1 widescreen. I don't think this is coming from the original camera negative or it would be explicitly advertised as such, but probably coming from an interpretive, but I do not that for a fact. Regardless, the image looks fantastic, grain is nicely managed, colors are vibrant, and the black levels look solid. The previous MGM Blu-ray looked quite nice, but this is an upgrade to my eyes. Audio wise we get choice of English DTS-HD MA surround 5.1 and stereo 2.0  with optional English subtitles. everything seems to be in order, well-balanced and clean, the dialogue comes through crisp and the Marc Shaiman (The Addams Family) score sounds great, too. 

Onto the extras, Scream Factory carry-over all the cock-a-doodie extras from the MGM 2-disc special edition DVD, presented in standard definition but they are at least presented on the Blu-ray, MGM's Blu-ray disc was bare bones, but the release included the second disc of the 2-disc DVD set with the extras. Scream Factory have also included two new extras, a 37-minute interview with director Rob Reiner who discusses his early career, the beginning Castle Rock Entertainment, and developing this movie.. he also mentions being able to relate his own career to that of author Paul Sheldon's in the book, a man controlled and limited by his own success. He also goes into crafting the thriller and certain tricks he used, like using a "dutch tilt" which he seems particularly proud of. There's also a half-hour interview with Special Makeup Effects Artist Greg Nicotero who discusses his work on the film with KNB EFX Group, how that crew came together, how they came to the attention of Castle Rock Entertainment through his work with George A. Romero. There's also talk of creating the prosthetic legs, ankles and heads used in the film, with behind-the-scenes images, my favorite take away is Nicotero recalling meeting Kathy Bates who immediately quoted "lick my plate you dog dick!" from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2! 

This single-disc Collector's Edition Blu-ray comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork with a slipcover, the slipcover and a-side feature a new illustration from artist Joel Robinson, the b-side featuring the original John Alvin produced one-sheet. The disc features a shot of the Roy typewriter used in the film. If I had a wishlist of things not found on this release I would hoped for it would be deleted scenes, and interviews with the two stars, but I am still quite satisfied with the overall release.

Special Features:
- NEW 4K Restoration From The Original Film Elements
- NEW Interview With Director Rob Reiner (37 min) HD
- NEW Interview With Special Makeup Effects Artist Greg Nicotero (26 min) HD
- Audio Commentary With Rob Reiner
- Audio Commentary With Screenwriter William Goldman
- “Misery Loves Company” Featurette (30 min) SD
- “Marc Shaiman’s Musical Misery Tour” Featurette (15 min) SD
- “Diagnosing Annie Wilkes” Featurette (9 min) SD
- “Advice For The Stalked” Featurette (9 min) SD
- “Profile Of A Stalker” Featurette (6 min) SD
- “Celebrity Stalkers” Featurette (5 min) SD
- “Anti-Stalking Laws” Featurette (2 min) SD
- Trailers (5 min) HD

Misery (1990) gets a solid release from Scream Factory, the new

4K transfer looks fantastic, we get a few cool new extras and great new artwork, and they carry-over all the extras from the previous 2-disc special edition DVD release. If you're a fan and looking to upgrade from the bare bones MGM Blu-ray it's well-worth handing over your hard-earned Christ-ing money for this one. 

INTO THE NIGHT (1985) (Collector's Edition Blu-ray Review)

INTO THE NIGHT (1985)
Collector's Edition Blu-ray 

Label: Shout Factory/Shout Select
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 115 Minutes 
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0 with Optional English subtitles 
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1) 
Director: John Landis
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Pfeiffer, Richard Farnsworth, Irene Papas, Kathryn Harrold, Dan Aykroyd, Bruce McGill, David Bowie

In John Landis's insomnia-thriller Into the Night (1985) Jeff Goldblum (The Fly) stars as Ed Okin, a sleep deprived man deeply unsatisfied by his job as an aerospace engineer who has just discovered that his wife is having an affair with her co-worker. On the strange advice of his friend (Dan Aykroyd, Spies Like Us) he heads to LAX airport to try to get some shuteye, which is where he encounters the gorgeous jewel thief Diana (Michelle Pfeifer (Batman Returns) who literally lands on his car, and thus begins a surreal, all-night odyssey of quirky mystery and intrigue. 

This is a strange little all-night thriller that features our duo making their way through Los Angeles trying to survive the night, on the run from a British hitman played by David Bowie (The Hunger) and four Iranian henchmen, one of whom is a mute character played by director John Landis. The movie is simplistically convoluted in a Hitchcockian by way of the Coen Brothers (Blood Simple), with Goldblum as the everyday man caught up in a web of intrigue, and Pfeiffer as the gorgeous blond femme fatale, the story line involving emeralds stolen from the Shah of Iran and some shady real estate deals, but the emeralds are just the McGuffin of the story that set in motion a series of events, and this movie could easily be described in unfavorable terms as just a series of events, but I love it.

In typical Landis fashion there are a metric ton of director cameos in the movie, be on the lookout for David Cronenberg (Shivers), Paul Bartel (Eating Raul), Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemeont High), Lawrence Kasdan (Body Heat), and Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs)just to name a few. Also appearing in various roles are Bruce McGill (Animal House) as an Elvis impersonator, the lovable codger Richard Farnsworth (Barton Fink) as an old man on his deathbed, Vera Miles (Psycho), 80's celebrity body-builder Jake Steinfeld, and genre legend Clu Gulager (The Initiation) as an FBI agent, seriously half the fun of this movie is just cameo-spotting.

Where the movie arguably falters is that this thriller has no defined comeuppance or knot-tying finale, it's more about Goldblum's depressive and insomniac journey through the strangeness of L.A., a quiet but madcap thriller. Thankfully the chemistry between Goldblum and Pfeiffer is pretty great, for one she is stunning but also very funny, it's no wonder both went on to huge stardom soon afterward, they're both magnetic, Goldbum as the quirky every man and she as the alluring mystery woman. I myself would happily fall into her labyrinthine of intrigue if she landed on top of my car screaming for help, of that I have no doubt. 

Audio/Video: Into the Night (1985) arrives on Blu-ray from Shout Factory imprint Shout Select with a new HD scan framed in 1.85:1 widescreen  and it look simply wonderful. Colors are rich, black levels are deep, and the fine detail is lush, there's some really nice depth the image, too. Audio comes by way of an English DTS-HD MA Mono 2.0 Mono track with optional English subtitles, the track is clean and buoyant, dialogue is sharp, and the strange blues-licks/80's synth score from Ira Newborn (Innocent Blood) and B.B. King come through smoothly.  

Shout! compliment the film with a few new extras, brand new interviews with both director John Landis and star Jeff Goldbum! John Landis shows up for a great 26-minute interview recounting all the casting that didn't happen, beginning with flying to Aspen, Colorado to meet with Jack Nicholson whom he wanted to star in the film, obviously Nicholson turned him down, but it's a fun story. He also speaks about wanting Gene Hackman (Night Moves) for the film but the studio head balked at the idea, and more talk of Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween) who dropped out of the project to star in a film with Travolta, that movie was the jazzer-cising Perfect (1983), and it was awful! Landis also goes into how he came to appear in such a large role in the film as one of the Iranians, also addressing how hard it is to make David Bowie look unsightly in a movie, he just looked so good no matter what they did to ugly him up. He also address the B.B. King/Ira Newborn score and how that was composed, with B.B. King playing along to the movie and then Newborn went in and composed instrumentation around those guitar licks, resulting in the strange blues/synth hybrid we hear.  

Goldblum shows up for a fun 22-min interview, he's funny, self-deprecating, seemingly realizing in the moment that this is kind of an homage to Hitchcock's Vertigo. He observes that he wasn't quite an actor at this point in his career, feeling he didn't really capture the character's transformation they way he could have, describing his style as "primitive and unsophisticated". He also speaks about some of the locations then and now, and how Landis referred to the lines for the day as "the jokes", which he calls fun and "kooky". He pitches an idea for a sequel at the end, which I would love to see. 

Also on the disc is the B.B. King documentary 'B.B. King Into the Night' which was directed by Landis.  This one features a music video for King's song "Lucille", a video featuring Goldblum and Pfeifer, in addition to Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, and Steve Martin as performers in the band, it's a bit of a fluff piece but fun just the same and does relate to the film, and features fun performances of the aforementioned "My Lucille", "Into the Night", and "In the Midnight Hour", plus a great vintage live clip of King playing "The Thrill is Gone" from 1973. The disc is finished-up with a trailer for the film.  

This single-disc Collector's Edition Blu-ray comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with the a-side featuring the original movie poster artwork, the b-side featuring a scene from the flick.The disc itself features a purple washed background with Pfeiffer's character on it.  

Special Features: 
- NEW Restored Master
- NEW John Landis: “Back Into The Night” (26 min) HD 
- NEW Jeff Goldblum: “Requiem For An Insomniac” (23 min) HD 
- Award-Winning Documentary B.B. King Into The Night 926 min) SD
- Original Theatrical Trailer (2 min) SD

I'm kind of sad that this insomnia-fueled thriller got by me for so long, on the other I am happy that my first viewing was this gorgeous Blu-ray from Shout Select. If you're a John Landis fan like myself who missed out on this one for so long you need to seek it out, this is a great edition with wonderful A/V presentation and some excellent extras. It's been a great few months for Landis fans, with Innocent Blood (1992) on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive, and now Into the Night (1985) from Shout!, and this one has some great extras, unlike the former.