John Wick Reloaded

I'm not a Keanu fan. But I loved John Wick and the surreal, ultraviolent comic book-like world the filmmakers created. I can't wait to see the sequel. By the way, this is a hell of a cool poster, ain't it?

New Blu-rays!

So, I picked up a few Blu-rays last night, and with store credit, it only cost about $7 for the bunch.

The new Scream Factory special edition of John Carpenter's The Thing is stunning, and the supplemental material is damn-near exhaustive. Hopefully, I'll never have to buy this one again.

Batman: The Return Of The Caped Crusaders is a lot of fun, though I found the actual animation to be underwhelming and kinda TV-cheap-looking.

Cat's Eye is a nostalgic 80s favorite and looks great on Blu.

Kino-Lorber's Blu-ray of I, The Jury is a bit of a disappointment, though. It looks like it was sourced from the same material as the manufactured-on-demand DVD from a few years ago. There's a marginal uptick visually from the SD version, but it really should have been re-scanned and remastered.

Statham is a WILD CARD

I was just thinking that it was time for another Jason Statham actioner, and, sure enough, here are a couple of posters for his latest: Wild Card. Directed by Simon West (The Mechanic), this is a remake of the troubled 1986 Burt Reynolds vehicle, Heat, written by William Goldman. Should be interesting.

Indeed!

I was watching Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943) on DVD the other night, and thought this bit with Dr. Watson enjoying the American funny pages was genuinely amusing. For the record, I couldn't agree with the good doctor more!

It occurred to me that Universal might have been cleverly plugging their own Flash Gordon serials, but Sherlock Holmes in Washington came out three years after their last Gordon serial, Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe, so it seems a bit late.

The Return of Charlie Chan

It's been about three years since the last DVD release, but four more late-period Charlie Chan mysteries from Monogram Studios are coming to DVD in a couple of weeks (August 6th), courtesy of Warner Home Entertainment's latest Charlie Chan Collection. 

I've never seen any of these four particular crime capers - Shadows Over Chinatown, Docks Of New Orleans, Shanghai Chest and The Golden Eye - which were produced on a shoestring by the legendary Poverty Row studio, but as an unrepentant B-mystery & Chan fan, I'm looking forward to adding them to my collection. (Even if three of them star the somnambulant Roland Winters, by far the least-interesting of the actors who portrayed the Honolulu detective.)

They're arriving right in the nick of time, too, as I've just finished watching the last of the Falcon mysteries, starring Tom Conway, and produced by RKO, and I'll be needing some fresh material for my nightly Late Movies.

Pre-order from Amazon: Charlie Chan: Collection

Dennis Farina R.I.P.

I am saddened today to hear of the passing of actor Dennis Farina. Farina died Monday morning in a Scottsdale, Ariz., hospital after suffering a blood clot in his lung, according to his publicist. He was 69.

Like just about everyone else, I first witnessed his talent and screen presence when he played hardboiled police Lieutenant Mike Torello on Michael Mann's seminal period police drama, Crime Story series back in 1986. A true-life ex-Chicago cop, Farina brought hard-earned verisimilitude to his mob-busting, tough guy role.

Farina went on to play a wide variety of tough cops and criminals - sometimes comically (as in Get Shorty) - in dozens of television shows and films, including Code Of Silence, Manhunter, Snatch, and Midnight Run. He was well known for his recurring role on Law and Order, but I most fondly remember him as the titular character in Mark Frost's short-lived 1998 private eye series, Buddy Faro.

I'm definitely going to miss the guy. Rest in peace, sir.

The First PARKER Trailer

I have mixed feelings about this preview trailer for the upcoming film, Parker, based on the Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) books. I've been a bit wary about Jason Statham's casting ever since I first heard about the project - we all know that I love Statham as an action star, but I suspected from the beginning that the filmmakers would end up adapting the character to his established film persona, rather than get him to play the Parker of the books.

Based on this trailer, it appears that I was right.

The opening scenes of the heist and double-cross certainly have a Stark/Westlake flavor, but the rest of the trailer plays out like every other Statham star vehicle. Which means I'll probably enjoy it as an action movie... but as an adaptation of Stark/Westlake? Probably not so much.

Still, it's only the first trailer, and it may simply be a marketing choice (and probably the correct one) to try and make it appeal to the legions of Statham fans who probably don't have the foggiest idea of who the character Parker is.

I'll try and keep an open mind....

I do love the poster, though. Nice, clean, striking design.

Robert Conrad Double Feature

Two 70's exploitation films starring the great Robert Conrad, Live A Little, Steal A Lot (a/k/a Murph The Surf) and Sudden Death, will be hitting DVD in October as a double-feature disc from Inception Media. I've never seen either movie, but I have seen the trailers for both films, and they look like great B-movie fun!

Here's the full press release from Inception Media Group:

Prepare to go retro for a double dose of action, mayhem and intrigue with the Robert Conrad Double Feature, breaking onto DVD Oct. 16 from Inception Media Group.

Classic TV icon of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, Robert Conrad (Black Sheep Squadron, The Wild Wild West, Hawaiian Eye) – and frequent sidekick Don Stroud (License to Kill, The Amityville Horror, The Buddy Holly Story, Joe Kidd) – are at their macho best in these action-packed feature films from the mod ’70s.

Live a Little, Steal A Lot aka Murph the Surf (1975): Based on the true story of the daring 1964 theft of the J.P. Morgan jewel collection from New York’s American Museum of Natural History.  Called the “Greatest Jewel Heist of the 20th Century,” the robbers nabbed 22 precious gems, including the 563.35-carat Star of India sapphire, the 100.32-carat de Long ruby and the 16.25-carat Eagle diamond (never recovered) … stones so famous they would be impossible to sell. Directed by Marvin Chomsky (Evel Knievel and TV’s The Wild Wild West, Star Trek, Gunsmoke, Roots), with one of the original thieves serving as a film advisor. Also stars Burt Young (the Rocky movies) and Donna Mills (TV’s Knots Landing).

Sudden Death (1977):  When Ed Neilson’s entire family is viciously murdered, he pleads with retired CIA operative Duke Smith (Conrad) to investigate. He refuses, but relents after Neilson too meets an explosive death. Deception, international intrigue and a ruthless “syndicate of businessmen” intent on raping a South Pacific Islands nation of its resources keep the pace fast. But when the executives hire a treacherous assassin (Stroud), the two are thrown head-to-head in a predestined match of cunning, wit and brute force. Only one will survive. For the other … it’s Sudden Death. Directed by Eddie Romero (The Twilight People) on location in the Philippines.

Robert Conrad Double Feature is presented in widescreen with an aspect ratio of 16x9 (1.85:1) and digital stereo 2.0. 

THE PUNISHER: DIRTY LAUNDRY

Has anything like this been done before? The star of 2004 Lionsgate feature film version of Marvel's The Punisher, Thomas Jane, reprises the role in a self-financed Punisher fan film. And... it's pretty damned good. Check it out (also starring Ron "Hellboy" Perlman!)

El Gringo!

I actually rather enjoyed Ninja, the 2009 flick that headlined British kickboxer Scott Adkins. I thought it was a fun callback to the Cannon Films of the Eighties like Enter The Ninja & Revenge of The Ninja, and thought that Adkins was quite decent in the lead role. I have since seen him in the passable DTV action flick, Assassination Games, with Jean-Claude Van Damme, and am looking forward to his appearance in the forthcoming Expendables 2.  As I said in my review of Ninja, I believe Adkins has "all the qualities generally required of an action star - he's good looking, muscular, athletic and doesn't talk too much."

Anyway, I've since started following him on Twitter and Facebook. A couple days ago he posted a link to te trailer for his next starring vehicle, El Gringo. From the the trailer posted above, it looks like a wannabe Desperado, but it also looks like it could be fun.

Directed by Dolph

It's funny, but I never really thought of myself as much of a fan of  Swedish action star Dolph Lundgren  until just recently. Sure, I respected the guy - it's difficult not to respect a 6'5' authentic genius (reported IQ of 160) with a master's degree in chemical engineering and a 3rd-degree black belt in karate - and I certainly enjoyed his screen work in the early 90s, like Red Scorpion, I Come In Peace (a/k/a Dark Angel), Showdown In Little Tokyo, and Universal Soldier, but I didn't keep up with his filmography past '93/'94. In fact, I only rediscovered Dolph when I was sent some of his later movies for review at my DVD Late Show site. It was then that I noticed that his DTV movies were generally more entertaining than those starring most of his contemporaries (like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal, for instance.).

Part of the reason for that, I think, is that starting around 2004, Dolph started personally directing some of his direct-to-video flicks, starting with The Defender. Now, I haven't seen all of his self-directed efforts, but I did enjoy The Killing Machine (a/k/a Icarus), Missionary Man, and, in particular, Command Performance.

I'm about to go sit down and watch his second film as director, The Russian Specialist, a/k/a The Mechanik. I've read some favorable reviews of the flick, and found a very inexpensive copy of the DVD for sale online (less than $5, including S&H). It sounds like a fun revenge flick, and I'm looking forward to it....

Nine B-Movies I (Still) Want On DVD

Here's one of my periodic lists of B-movies and cult films that I still want on DVD (or even Manufactured-On-Demand DVD-R) for my video collection. Most of these are favorites from my days haunting mom & pop video stores in the Eighties.

As far as I know (and I hope someone will let me know if I'm mistaken), none of these titles are currently available on authorized, Region 1, DVDs or Blu-ray. (Don't talk to me about R2 or other foreign editions. I know it's difficult to believe, movie buff that I am, but I don't own a region-free player and couldn't afford import discs even if I did).

This was originally a list of ten movies, but I just found out that the 1984 Tom Selleck film Lassiter is due out on DVD later this month. 

Arena (1989)

Avenging Force (1986)

Eliminators (1986)

Force: Five (1981)

Godzilla (1985)

I, The Jury (1982)

Ninja III - The Domination (1984)

PeaceMaker (1990)

The Soldier (1982)

I have about half of these titles on VHS, but aside from the fact that they're all pan & scan versions, they're all so old that the tapes are starting to demagnetize (is that a word?) and the image quality is significantly degraded....

Weekend Double Feature: The Perfect Match To Set The Screen On Fire!

Is It SAFE?

From LionsGate: A second-rate cage fighter on the mixed martial arts circuit, Luke Wright lives a numbing life of routine beatings and chump change...until the day he blows a rigged fight. Wanting to make an example of him, the Russian Mafia murders his family and banishes him from his life forever, leaving Luke to wander the streets of New York destitute, haunted by guilt, and tormented by the knowledge that he will always be watched, and anyone he develops a relationship with will also be killed. 

 But when he witnesses a frightened twelve-year-old Chinese girl, Mei, being pursued by the same gangsters who killed his wife, Luke impulsively jumps to action...and straight into the heart of a deadly high-stakes war. Mei, he discovers, is no ordinary girl, but an orphaned math prodigy forced to work for the Triads as a "counter." He discovers she holds in her memory a priceless numerical code that the Triads, the Russian mob and a corrupt faction of the NYPD will kill for. 

Realizing he's the only person Mei can trust, Luke tears a swath through the city's brutal underworld to save an innocent girl's life...and perhaps even redeem his own.

The Falcon Has Landed

Today I received the Falcon Mystery Movie Collection, Vol. 1, from Warner Archives, containing the first seven films in RKO's "Falcon" series. The films - which starred George Sanders and then his real-life brother, Tom Conway - are tight little B-mysteries in the vein of the studio's "Saint" programmers.

I guess I know what my next seven midnight movies are going to be...

The Reboot of Mr. Wong

It's interesting that so many people - including myself, on occasion, complain so much about Hollywood's seeming obsession with sequels, remakes and "reboots." The thing is, none of this is new. As I like to point out, John Huston's classic The Maltese Falcon was a remake of a movie made ten years earlier. Reboots - as we call it when filmmakers take an established franchise character, and start over with a new actor, pretending that the previous film installments never occurred - like Batman Begins and Casino Royale, aren't exactly a new phenomenon, either.

Karloff as James Lee Wong

Over the two years of 1939 and 1940, Poverty Row film studio, Monogram Pictures, produced six movies about a Chinese detective living in San Francisco named James Lee Wong. These films were based on some magazine short stories by pulpster Hugh Wiley, and were intended as the low budget "answer" to Fox Studios' popular Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto film series. In the first five films, James Wong was portrayed by Caucasian screen bogeyman Boris Karloff, under some light makeup, as a sly, somewhat sedate, consulting criminologist. His police contact was Lieutenant Street of the SFPD, portrayed by burly character actor Grant Withers, and they were frequently aided/irritated by a pretty young reporter played by Marjorie Reynolds.

These first five entries - Mr. Wong, Detective, The Mystery Of Mr. Wong, Mr. Wong In Chinatown, The Fatal Hour and Doomed To Die - were decent enough B-mysteries, a little lethargically-paced, perhaps, but okay time-wasters. When Monogram began production on their sixth Mr. Wong mystery - Phantom Of Chinatown - Karloff was, for some reason, unavailable. But, instead of casting another Caucasian actor (like Roland Winters, for example), Monogram actually hired Keye Luke - probably best known as "Number One Son," Lee Chan, in the 20th Century Fox Charlie Chan films - to take over the role.

Keye Luke as Jimmy Wong

And, according to most sources, that bold casting choice made Phantom Of Chinatown the first American-made movie since the Silent Era to have an Asian actor in the lead role. Top-billed, no less.

Of course, Luke was in his early 30s at the time, and Karloff was in his 50s, so it seemed unreasonable to expect audiences to believe that Luke's Wong was the same Wong as Karloff's, so the characters call him "Jimmy" and Withers' Lieutenant Street acts as if he's meeting Mr. Wong for the first time. Now, for some reason unknown to me, Phantom was the last Mr. Wong film at Monogram (although the scripts would all be recycled when the studio got their hands on the Chan character a few years later), but it's pretty clear that they were setting things up to continue with Keye Luke in the lead.

Now, there were other film mystery series that replaced lead actors during the 30s-40s - Sidney Toler replaced Warner Oland as Chan at Fox, a couple of suave British actors took turns playing The Saint at RKO before and after George Sanders, Ralph Byrd took over for Morgan Conway as RKO's Dick Tracy after a couple of films, etc. - but there was generally no acknowledgement of the change, and, as far as I can recall, in no cases did they ever just act like they were starting over from the beginning!

Nowadays, "reboots" may be annoyingly trendy and way too common (a Spider-Man reboot? Already?) -- but the idea certainly isn't new.

At Last! Culp & Cosby, P.I.s

Finally! Never before legally released on home video (although there was/is a really awful unauthorized DVD floating around), Robert Culp's 1972 P.I. flick Hickey & Boggs, which reunited him with his I Spy co-star Bill Cosby, with a script by Walter Hill, is officially coming to DVD later this month, courtesy of MGM's "Limited Edition Collection" of Manufactured-On-Demand discs.

I've only seen about the last 5 minutes of it on cable TV in the mid-90s, and I've wanted to see the whole thing ever since. It's generally well-regarded by P.I. movie/noir fans, even though it was apparently a bit too grim and dark for audiences in 1972. I'm eager to get my hands on the movie - hopefully, it won't disappoint.

Tarantino on Blu-ray

I like Quentin Tarantino's movies. Pretty much all of them, in fact, although I thought Death Proof and Inglourious Basterds were poorly-structured, narratively. Still... from Reservoir Dogs through the Kill Bill films, I've found Tarantino's movies to be a lot of fun. When I got into laserdisc in the 90s, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were among the first platters I bought. Yes, I know it's not considered cool to like QT nowadays, and yes, I know that his movies tend to be patchwork cinematic creations comprised of thinly-disguised homages and/or outright swipes from dozens of other films - but I actually like that. Part of the pleasure I derive from something like Kill Bill or Basterds is recognizing QT's influences and inspirations from my own obsessive movie-watching.

In the last year, as I've been compiling my Blu-ray collection, I've been rather surprised that probably his best-known film (after Dogs), Pulp Fiction, was not available on the format. Neither was Jackie Brown, which I think is a fine Elmore Leonard adaptation and probably Tarantino's most under-appreciated film. Apparently, it all has to do with the breakup of the Miramax label at Disney, and the redistribution of the various Miramax titles to different companies. (Including the unfortunate acquisition of many of the Miramax/Dimension Films sub-label's genre films by the crap merchants Echo Bridge Entertainment.)

Well, anyway, it's finally been announced that Lionsgate will be releasing Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown on Blu-ray on October 2nd, with transfers supervised by QT himself. Obviously, I'm eager to add these flicks to my HD library.

DRESSED TO KILL Double Feature

Tonight's late night double feature - two 40s series mysteries with the same title! Lloyd Nolan is private eye Michael Shayne in 1941's Dressed to Kill from 20th Century Fox and Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce co-star in the 1946 Universal Sherlock Holmes mystery of the same name. Movie mysteries until dawn!

RKO's Saint

I just received the George Sanders Saint Movie Collection from Warners Archive. The two-disc, manufactured-to-order DVD set includes all five of the Saint movies that George Sanders starred in for RKO - The Saint Strikes Back, The Saint In London, The Saint's Double Trouble, The Saint Takes Over and The Saint In Palm Springs (Louis Hayward and Hugh Sinclair also played Simon Templar in RKO films, but it's the five with Sanders that are the best-remembered. 

These are not remastered or restored in any way. The source prints used for the transfers all show significant age-related wear and tear, but they're still pretty decent, and certainly watchable.

So far, I'm really enjoying them. I love these old hour-long B-mystery series detective flix, whether they feature Sherlock Holmes (the Universal series), Charlie Chan, Mike Shayne, Mr. Moto, or Mr. Wong, and these are right in there with those esteemed series. I had a copy of The Saint Strikes Back on VHS years ago (pictured at left), so I was pretty familiar with that one, but they're all a lot of fun. I particularly enjoyed The Saint's Double Trouble, in which Sanders plays both Templar and his criminal double, even though the great Bela Lugosi is terribly underused in the flick. Later tonight, I plan on checking out The Saint Takes Over.

I loved Roger Moore in the 60s Saint TV series, and liked Ian Ogilvy in the 70s revival, The Return Of The Saint (great theme music, too). But I'm beginning to think Sanders is my favorite Simon of all.

So, thanks, Warner Archive, for bringing these to DVD at last. Would it be too much to hope that The Falcon series might be on the way? Or am I being greedy?