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The gimmick of this energetic Brit-com is that the action switches, approximately halfway through, from comic crime drama to comic splatter movie. The main problem, then, is that The Cottage, against the odds, makes a better caper movie than gore flick. The first half-hour or so is an engaging and amusing farce about kidnappers David (Andy Serkis) and Peter (Reece Shearsmith), who drive to a secluded house with their hostage, Tracey (Jennifer Ellison) bound and gagged in the trunk. It's not the best plan -- the outrageously busty Tracey may be the daughter of a gangster, but she's a terrible hostage, strong-willed and foul-mouthed. She knows David on sight. And their inside man, Tracey's brother Andrew, is a dimwit who brings the whole scheme tumbling down on top of them. About the time the car pulls up outside with a couple of Chinese hit men out for blood, The Cottage has established itself as a credibly tense comedy.
Image nicked from Tim Lucas's excellent Video Watchblog entry on Night of the Werewolf.
It's surely convenience, or just coincidence--rather than any nods to quality or pent-up demand--that these are the first two Euro-horror titles to arrive in high definition on Blu-ray Disc. This double-feature package from BCI and Deimos entertainment pairs two films starring the well-loved (and prolific) Spanish horror actor Paul Naschy. Vengeance of the Zombies (La Rebelion de las Muertas, 1972) is a potboiler from cult director Leon Klimovsky involving a charismatic Indian cult leader (Naschy), his less-attractive brother (also Naschy), and a beautiful redhead (Romy) from a cursed English family. And Night of the Werewolf (La Retorno del Hombre Lobo, 1980) is a genre mash-up directed by Naschy in which he stars as the wolfman Waldemar Daninsky and faces off against a bevy of vampire women led by Elizabeth Bathory herself. (Scroll way down to read about some problems with these discs.)
Whatever happened to the red-meat, teens-in-trouble, blood-and-breasts American horror film? On the
evidence here, it’s been driven nearly underground. To be clear, The Lost,
which played the festival circuit and got a handful of theatrical showings in
4 by Agnes Varda (Criterion)
Among the most important female directors* in film history, Agnes Varda may best be remembered for crashing the boys' club that was the Nouvelle Vague with Cleo from 5 to 7, her 1962 study in real-time anxiousness — the title character hangs around in Paris, awaiting the results of a cancer biopsy. But she was already on the scene in 1956, when she made La Pointe Courte, a film-school standby and an important precursor to the French New Wave. This boxed set collects both of those high-water marks along with Le Bonheur (1965), the well-regarded Vagabond (1985) and a full load of extras. I haven't seen it myself, but it's on my list.
* No, there aren't many of them. Another good reason to investigate the great ones.
Buy it from Amazon.com: 4 by Agnès Varda (La Pointe Courte, Cléo from 5 to 7, Le bonheur, Vagabond) - Criterion Collection
Monty Python's Life of Brian (Sony)
How many times do you have to buy Life of Brian, anyway? If you already own a DVD version, this latest iteration — the "Immaculate Edition" — may be missable. But if you're like me, you haven't watched this since the Criterion laserdisc came out and need an upgrade. (You could also ask why you spent big money on a Criterion laserdisc that you would only play once, and why you would compound that fiscal error by sinking even more money into a DVD that you're likely to only play once — but then you wouldn't be like me.) My copy (Blu-ray) hasn't arrived from Amazon.com yet, but it looks like this one contains the same five deleted scenes and the same twin commentary tracks as the Criterion version, which means I can thrill again to the sound of distinguished Python Terry Gilliam griping about how much better this film would have been if the group had let him direct. (He's probably right, of course.) As Python goes, I honestly prefer the more madcap Holy Grail — but this one has the distinction of being perhaps the least offensive film ever to get a worldwide reputation for blasphemy. Here's a recent interview with John Cleese on the subject.
Buy it from Amazon.com: Monty Python's Life Of Brian - The Immaculate Edition
or Monty Python's Life Of Brian - Collector's Edition [Blu-ray] (Note: Amazon.com says the Blu-ray version is two discs, but apparently it's just one.)
If you ever felt, as I did, there was some missing backstory associated with the smartly amusing Shaun of the Dead and its somewhat-less-brilliant follow-up, Hot Fuzz, you may be excited to make the acquaintance of Spaced, the consistently ingenious British TV show where director Edgar Wright and actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost cut their comic teeth. Storywise, it’s no relation to Shaun of the Dead, even though it feels somewhat like a prequel — and it’s a bit thrilling to think of Tim Bisley, the videogame-addicted comic-book artist Pegg plays in Spaced finally given a chance to face the zombies who populate his dreams in a real-world post-apocalyptic showdown.
On the commentary track that accompanies the Criterion Collection's new DVD version of RoboCop, director Paul Verhoeven kicks things off by admitting that, on a first read of the film's script, he declined the project, mistaking it for just another "B-level science fiction movie" from the Hollywood crap factories. Verhoeven's comments are closely followed by those of producer Jon Davison, who imagines Verhoeven simply reading the first 20 pages of the script by Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner and then throwing the damn thing across the room. (From RoboCop, Verhoeven advanced to the far more swollen melodrama of Basic Instinct and Showgirls -- his active philosophy where Hollywood crap is concerned seems to be "if you can't beat them, join them.")
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