THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Argento Debut on Arrow

The birth of a horror master, and it was a good birth.

The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970)
Dir. Dario Argento
Starring: Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi, Reggie Nalder

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Why do beautiful women insist upon walking home alone at night, especially when the city's been plagued by a serial killer targeting beautiful women walking home alone at night? Well, in the movies, the answer is simple. So we get to watch a potential victim furtively step into occasional pockets of light, surrounded mostly by pitch-black shadows whilst being spied upon and followed by a butcher-knife-wielding psychopath adorned in black leather and an oh-so-stylish wide-brimmed hat until eventually, she's followed home and then, once resting easy in her see-through nightie, the whack-job stalker enters her boudoir and exacts some vicious handiwork.

Why, you ask?

That's why!

And so it is that the entire aforementioned stalk-and-slash sequence is accompanied by the following bon bons:

- a creepy Ennio Morricone score that veers from off-kilter nursery-rhyme tones to discordant jazz riffs;

- the sumptuously scintillating incandesce of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and;

- in his debut feature as a director, the gloriously fetishistic mise-en-scène of Dario (Suspiria) Argento.

Add to all of this, a gorgeous smash cut from the first appearance of the killer to an extreme closeup of the insides of the victim's moist screaming maw as the camera then pulls out of its intimate perch, the lens like some penis withdrawing from a delectable orifice of penetration.

Oh yes, we are most definitely in Argento Land!

The Bird With The Crystal Plumage is a first-rate giallo classic of the highest order and though it's a bit light on Argento's later trademark cerebral qualities in favour of more standard mystery thriller tropes, there's plenty of dazzling visual nuttiness on display to signal the arrival of one of horror cinema's true masters. (And, there are plenty of fetishistic Argento closeups of the psycho's black-leather-gloved hands, cradling steely implements of death and performing divinely appetizing acts of violence.)

Loosely based, and oddly uncredited, upon "The Screaming Mimi", a lurid 1949 pulp novel by Fredric Brown, Argento's screenplay details the adventures of American writer Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) who's been residing in Rome with his gorgeous squeeze Julia (Suzy Kendall). When he witnesses the attempted murder of Monica (Eva Renzi), a beautiful (naturally) redheaded art gallery employee, homicide detective Morosini (Enrico Maria Salerno) scoops Sam's passport, preventing him from leaving the country, not because he suspects any nefarious activities, but because he's convinced our hero might hold a key to the investigation, buried (of course) in his psyche. For his part, Sam's having some troubles in the manly-performance department and thinks he'll be able to get "it" back up again if the murders can be solved. Needless to say, he begins to play detective all on his lonesome. Conveniently, for the film, this places both him and his dazzlingly gorgeous girlfriend in peril.

These are characteristically delightful giallo twists and turns, all served-up marvellously by the tasty side-dishes of Argento's baroque crazy-ass styling. The suspense set pieces are genuinely scary and the whole affair not only signals what was eventually to come from the great auteur, but works perfectly well as a dazzling, horror thriller all on its own. The absurdity of the narrative doesn't disappoint and even offers up some wonderful red-herrings to spice up a few surprising revelations that most of us should see coming from a mile away. (And even if you do, you won't quite spot them coming exactly the way they do.)

Any movie with Reggie Nalder is worth its weight in gold.

As a tasty side note, any film that features the magnificent character actor Reggie Nalder as a yellow-jacket-adorned hired killer who disappears within a convention of former prize-fighters after a scary stalk-and-chase sequence, is almost, in and of itself, worth the price of admission.

Luckily, the movie itself has a lot more to offer.

My first taste of The Bird With The Crystal Plumage was on film during a dusk-to-dawn show at a drive-in movie theatre in the late 70s and my memories were fond enough of the picture that I was eventually disappointed and disgusted by the poor video transfer I eventually caught up with on VHS in the 80s.

Now, my life is complete

The Arrow Films Blu-Ray deluxe edition not only serves up a lovely 4K digital restoration, but comes complete with a bevy of superb extra features including a Gold Standard audio commentary from Troy Howarth who jams his sprightly presentation with everything you always wanted to know about the making of this film, and then some - his delightful delineation of every arcane piece of Italian giallo lore is a genre geek's wet dream. It's really a pleasure to listen to someone who knows his shit and displays his "wares" with intelligence and passion.

THE FILM CORNER RATING:
**** 4-Stars (for the film)
***** 5-Stars for the Arrow Films Blu-Ray.

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Russ Meyer Goes Criterion!!!

THIS IS MY HAPPENING!!!
AND IT FREAKS ME OUT!!!

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
Dir. Russ Meyer
Scr. Roger Ebert
Starring: Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, Edy Williams,
John LaZar, Henry Rowland, David Gurian, Charles Napier, Pam Grier

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"This is my happening and it freaks me out," declares rock impresario Ronnie ‘Z-Man’ Barzell (John LaZar) during his berserker Hollywood party replete with live performances by The Strawberry Alarm Clark, a bevy of boobilicious babes, all manner of fornication and bucket-loads of booze/drug consumption.

Z-Man wasn’t the only one freaking out. When Russ Meyer (Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, Motor Psycho, Supervixens, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens, Up!), the king of big-boob cinema extravaganzas, unleashed his first major studio picture Beyond the Valley of the Dolls upon an unsuspecting public, audiences, critics and the film’s major backer, Twentieth Century Fox, were freaked out to the max.

For good reason.

The opening few minutes of Meyer’s Roger Ebert-scripted dive into L.A. sleaze pits proceed to bash us in the face with Z-Man and Martin Bormann (Henry Rowland), Z’s loyal bartender, right-hand man and resident Nazi (nom-de-plumed as "Otto"), whilst the nutty pair malevolently chase scantily clad babes within a seaside mansion estate. In a climactic moment to end all climactic moments, we cut to a Luger sensually stroking the supple lips of a beauteous-sleeping-big-bosomed-babe until the deadly firearm is inserted erect-penis-like into her mouth, the wet maw eagerly – nay, greedily – accepting the cold-steel schwance-of-death as our dozing dame proceeds to suck it dry. Under the circumstances, who wouldn’t? Be freaked out to the max, that is.

(Oh, okay, and suck it dry, too.)

When Meyer and young film critic Ebert were hired by Fox to concoct a vague semi-sequel reboot to Mark Robson’s through-the-roof sex-and-soap-suds adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s bestselling novel Valley of the Dolls, the artistic pursuits of these perfectly matched reprobates flew under the radar of studio executives during the delightful beginnings of the oft-envied, late lamented and much-revered "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" days of American Cinema. The film was so low-budget by studio standards, nobody in the front office paid it much mind, but for Meyer, the budget might as well have been as large as Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra.

He did not waste one cent.

The Carrie Nations are united in SIN!!!

Plot wise, things are relatively simple and perfectly in keeping with Susann’s moronically simplistic rags-to-riches-to-rags soap opera. However, the incorrigible lads dole out a cinematic masterpiece of flagrant filth that’s anything but moronic and in its own strangely perverse way is rooted (so to speak) in a queer miasma of morality. If anything the film celebrates perversion to such a deliciously over-the-top degree that the tale cannot help but become a morality play. (That said, the film brilliantly manages to make the morality seem as old-fashioned as it deserves to be – it’s even vaguely derisive.)

So, the film focuses on the buxom Carrie Nations, an all-girl rock band comprised of Kelly MacNamara (Dolly Read), Casey Anderson (Cynthia Myers) and Petronella "Pet" Danforth (Marcia McBroom). At first they’re infused with the down-home, corn-fed morals of the mid-western US of A, but in no time, they’re turfing their regular squeezes for a series of libidinous adventures with a variety of partners. One of the cuckolded beaus (David Gurian) even takes up with a porn starlet (Edy Williams) who drains him to such a degree that he eventually can’t even get it up.

Fun and games, for one and all – especially the audience – but as this epic of sin continues, the freedom of youth increasingly morphs beyond the "summer of love" antics, and the evils of both L.A. and show business in general give way to an unholy Walpurgisnacht that unravels during the film’s deeply dark finale.

The Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten proclaimed that the film was "true to life".

Who are we to argue with this?

Well, you don't see something like this everyday.

Ebert and Meyer created a work that’s drenched in lurid colour and the colours of sleaze, slime and scum, and we’re allowed to revel in the kaleidoscopic picture with all the giddy laughs it wrenches from us from beginning to end, along with the trademark Meyer montages of rapid-fire cuts – a chiaroscuro of madness and freakishness at its finest. This is sheer sex-drenched melodrama; as a director, Meyer might as well be Douglas Sirk on crack cocaine.

Besides, what other movie features (again, from the highly quotable Z-Man) one of the greatest lines of dialogue in movie history: ‘You will drink the black sperm of my vengeance!’

Black sperm, indeed.

Years ago, I met Ebert as a young lad and proceeded to geek him out with my love for the film. He took me for donuts and we spent an hour together talking about it. His final words to me were thus: "Never, ever feel ashamed to admit how much you love Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

And if you’re listening up there, Mr Ebert, I am not ashamed.

I’m infused with pride to declare my utter, deep passion.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** Five Stars

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls gets the full Criterion Collection treatment on Blu-Ray and (if you must) DVD with a high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, 2003 audio commentary featuring screenwriter Roger Ebert, 2006 audio commentary featuring actors Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Harrison Page, John LaZar, and Erica Gavin, a new interview with filmmaker John Waters, 1988 episode from "The Incredibly Strange Film Show" on director Russ Meyer, a Q&A about the film from 1992 featuring Meyer, Ebert, LaZar, Read and actors David Gurian, Charles Napier, Michael Blodgett, and Edy Williams, a 2005 interview with cast members, five 2006 about the making of the film, featuring the cast and crew, screen tests, trailers, a booklet featuring an essay by film critic Glenn Kenny and excerpts from a 1970 account in the UCLA Daily Bruin of a visit to the film’s set, plus gorgeous new cover art by Jim Rugg.

This review of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls originally appeared at Electric Sheep.

Read my review of Valley of the Dolls HERE.

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Haunting De Sica Holocaust Drama in Digital Restoration at TIFF Bell Lightbox Series, "More Than Life Itself"

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970)
Dir. Vittorio De Sica
Starring: Dominique Sanda, Helmut Berger,
Lino Capolicchio, Fabio Testi, Romolo Valli

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The grandly sprawling walled estate of the wealthy, powerful and aristocratic Finzi-Continis family in Ferrara, Italy has always been a world unto itself, but with the rise of Fascism in the 30s, it becomes a hermetically sealed paradise, a refuge from the madness of a country turning topsy turvy with prejudice, hatred and on the brink of world war. The Finzi-Continis are no ordinary family. They're Jewish in a country rapidly embracing virulent Antisemitism, but even amongst the Jews of Ferrara, they've always been set apart, living upon a pedestal of great intellect and seemingly high above those Jews amongst the middle and working class.

As always, though, prejudice and class seem to be the domain of older generations and the youth have always held the highest regard and friendship for each other, so that even when the wealthiest, most aristocratic Jews have been banned from the elite tennis clubs of Ferrara, its youngest, both Jew and Gentile, secret themselves away within the walls of the Finzi-Continis gardens to carry-on their traditions of weekly tennis matches and friendship.

Based on the novel by Ferrara's own Giorgio Bassani, one of Italy's great authors, it made perfect sense that one of Italy's great filmmakers, Vittoria De Sica would craft a movie adaptation of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. One of De Sica's last films, it was not only honoured with one of a multitude of Academy Awards his work garnered, but was indeed a triumph of the style and sensitivity he'd become known for with such great works as Bicycle Thieves, Shoeshine, The Children Are Watching Us and amongst so many others, the immortal Umberto D.

Bassani was a Jew who managed to survive the Holocaust and continued to teach, write (pseudonymously, of course) and fight the fascist movement as a member of the Italian underground. Many of his books, like this one, dealt with life under Fascism for the Jews of Italy, but thematically, he found himself drawn to the notion of memory and its ability to act as both a balm and a force of great sadness and danger.

This is what De Sica so beautifully captures in this simple love story between childhood lovers, the aristocratic Micol Finzi-Contini (Dominique Sanda) and Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio), the son of Jewish family of the middle class. Though they're love is deep, Micol looks upon Giorgio as a brother-figure and breaks his heart when she takes up with the ruggedly handsome gentile Bruno Malnate (Fabio Testi). For Micol, the memories of childhood should not be tarnished by "romance" and instead she believes she must instead court the sexy socialist who is her opposite in every way, but as such, provides the kind of spark she can't get from her pea-in-the-pod Giorgio.

De Sica places considerable emphasis on the romantic entanglements and yearnings of this triangle, as well as Micol's deep love for her own brother, the sickly Alberto (Helmut Berger). Though every so often, the realities of fascism and Antisemitism creep in (the young intellectuals are terrified they'll not be allowed to graduate from the universities they're enrolled in), the Finzi-Continis. especially Micol, drive themselves deeper within the walls of their estate. Giorgio's father (Romolo Valli) attempts to ease his son's sorrow by suggesting that the Finzi-Continis have always lived in such an elevated station that he never even considered them Jewish.

He's certainly right about the family's elevated station since their garden seems to not only be a physical enclosure from the rest of the world, but that the entire family, especially Micol, live in a garden that exists in their minds. This is, of course one of De Sica's greatest triumphs as a filmmaker. He so indelibly captures a sense of enclosure that we, as an audience are lulled by it as well.

When Fascism in Ferrara explodes, it comes with such a fury and so swiftly that we, as viewers, seem as unprepared for the film's final, devastating minutes as the Finzi-Continis family are. As Jews are rounded up and separated for deportation to the death camps, we can't help but feel a horrendous catch in our throats, especially as Micol and her aged grandmother huddle together in a cramped classroom converted into a waiting room for death. Memory rears both its beautiful and ugly heads as Micol realizes she's in the classroom of her childhood.

Looking out the hazy windows upon the grey, grim world, De Sica fills his soundtrack with "Kel Maleh Rachamim", the Jewish prayer of mercy for the souls of the departed.

And yes, we weep for the departed and their memories of a world that once seemed so innocent, so beautiful.

De Sica was and still is one of the greatest. Even in his last years as an artist, he continued to make us weep for the disenfranchised, the exploited and the hated, but all the while, still managing to infuse us with humanity and with love itself.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

The digital restoration of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis plays at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. For Tix, times and dates, visit the TIFF website HERE. For those unable to attend this screening, one assumes the restored film will soon be available on Blu-Ray. In the meantime, there is a Sony Pictures Classics DVD out there with a passable transfer until this new one is released more widely.

LA DOLCE VITA, THE CONFORMIST, UMBERTO D. - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - The TIFF Cinematheque presents the "Summer in Italy" series at TIFF Bell Lightbox. These 3 titles are also available on sumptuous Criterion & Kino-Lorber Blu-Ray/DVD Editions.

It's that time of the year again. The Toronto International Film Festival's Cinematheque at the TIFF Bell LightBox in Toronto presents a whole whack o' classics with a pasta theme, programmed by the illustrious James Quandt with the popular "Summer in Italy" series running June 27 to September 5, 2015 and a great new series entitled: "More Than Life Itself: Rediscovering the Films of Vittorio de Sica" running June 26 to September 6, 2015. Here are 3 important titles in both series that are happening in August. MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!! Those who don't live in Toronto and/or can't get to Toronto and/or are agoraphobic can choose the sumptuous Blu-Ray/DVD editions from the Criterion Collection and Kino-Lorber. Buy your advance tickets to these great TIFF Bell Lightbox presentations (they sell out, don'cha know) by clicking HERE.

Saturday Aug. 1, 2015 @ 5:30pm @ TIFF Bell Lightbox and/or Criterion Blu-Ray

La Dolce Vita (1960)
dir. Federico Fellini
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Yvonne Furneaux, Anouk Aimee,
Anita Ekberg, Alain Cuny, Walter Santesso, Nico, Alain Dijon, Lex Barker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It has been said that in death we all end up alone. If we are alone in life, bereft of love, is existence itself then, not a living death? For me, this is the central theme of La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini’s great classic of cinema – a film that never ceases to thrill, tantalize and finally, force its audience to look deep into a mirror and search for answers to questions about themselves. This is what makes for great movies that live beyond the ephemeral qualities far too many filmmakers and audiences prefer to settle for - especially in the current Dark Ages of cinema we find ourselves in. It’s the reason why the picture continues to live forever. What makes La Dolce Vita especially great is that Fellini – as he was so often able to achieve – got to have his cake and eat it too. He created art that entertained AND challenged audiences the world over.

Most of all, though, La Dolce Vita is cool – cooler than cool, to be frank.

READ THE FULL REVIEW OF "La Dolce Vita" HERE

Thursday Aug. 7, 2015 @ 9:00pm @ TIFF Bell Lightbox
and/or Kino-Lorber/RaroVideo Blu-Ray

The Conformist (1970)
Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda

Review By Greg Klymkiw

You're never going to see a more gorgeous movie about fascism than Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist.

He was only in his late 20s when he made this 1970 adaptation of Alberto Moravia's novel and the picture still crackles with urgency, dread and horror. It's furthermore infused with a winning combination of political/historical smarts, deeply considered intellectual rigour and an eye for heart-aching, stunning and dazzling visual artistry.

Working with ace cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now), there isn't a single composition, lighting scheme or camera move in the entire photoplay that's anything less than gorgeous. The sheer physical beauty in interior decor, architecture and the natural world is an effective and complex juxtaposition within the story of a man driven by pure ambition.

READ THE FULL REVIEW OF "The Conformist" HERE

Sunday Aug. 16, 2015 @ 6:00pm @ TIFF Bell Lightbox
and/or on The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray

Umberto D. (1952)
dir. Vittorio De Sica
Starring: Carlo Battisti, Maria-Pia Casilio, Lina Gennari, Flike

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The old man Umberto (Carlo Battisti) must bid goodbye to the only thing he genuinely loves in the whole wide world, a tiny dog called Flike. He's so poor he must check himself into a hospital to treat a simple case of Tonsillitis. This allows him to get free meals for a few days so he can save enough money to avoid eviction. De Sica takes us on the road of this one man's life - a life that could belong to any one of us. This man's journey is harrowing, to be sure, but we're all the better for taking it with him.

READ THE FULL REVIEW OF "Umberto D" HERE

BARQUERO - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lee Van Cleef & Warren Oates MAN 2 MAN!!!

Barquero (1970)
Dir. Gordon Douglas
Starring: Lee Van Cleef, Warren Oates, Forrest Tucker, Mariette Hartley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Who is Gordon Douglas? Good question. Well, he's nobody's idea of an auteur, but the man directed 70+ feature films in a career that began in the Dirty 30s, grinding out comedies for Hal Roach, then as a studio contract director for the likes of RKO, Columbia and Warner Brothers until his retirement in the late 70s.

Did he make any stinkers? Plenty!

He also directed some of the best genre pictures with good, solid, two-fisted panache including San Quentin starring Lawrence Tierney, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye with James Cagney, the sizzling McCarthy era I Was a Communist for the FBI, the truly great 50s science fiction big bug (Gigantic Ants, no less) classic Them, The Fiend Who Walked The West, the utterly insane western remake of the noir classic Kiss of Death, the supremely entertaining Elvis Presley Vs. the Mob musical Follow That Dream, the nutty Rat Pack comedy Robin and the Seven Hoods and one of the dirtiest, grittiest, nastiest crime pictures of the 60s, The Detective starring Frank Sinatra, the terrific Jim Brown Blaxsploitation picture Slaughter's Big Rip-Off (with Ed McMahon - YES! Ed McMahon as a villainous mob boss) and lest we forget, one of the funniest (and most offensive) Bob Hope comedies Call Me Bwana (wherein Bob goes on an African Safari to retrieve a valuable talisman from a "backwards" tribe in the jungle, but not before playing a round of gold with the great Arnold Palmer).

And then there's Douglas's greatest triumph, the all but forgotten western Barquero, a film which did double duty in the homage department, conjuring the disparate styles of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and those of Sergio Leone.

And what a rip-snorting western this is!

The always brilliant Warren Oates chews the scenery magnificently as a psychotic bandit who leads the wholesale slaughter of a western town to steal as many guns, ammo and bank money as humanly possible. His plan is to hijack a barge and destroy it after crossing a mighty river in order to thwart the posse hot on his ass.

Unfortunately, he doesn't reckon on having to square off against the tough-as-nails ferry owner, the mysterious, laconic gunfighter played by none other than Lee Van Cleef ("the Bad" of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly). Van Cleef partners with the kill-happy mountain man played by Forrest Tucker (in a hugely entertaining burly bear of a performance) and the two of then single-hsndedly wipe out Oates's entire mini-army of thugs.

The action and gunplay is first-rate and the movie even manages to settle into some casual character development on both sides of the fence due to a decent screenplay by George Schenck and William Marks.

The stunningly gorgeous Mariette Hartley made her motion picture debut in Sam Peckinpah's Ride The High Country in which, as a child-bride-to-be is married to a grizzled cowpoke inbred who plans to share her on their wedding night with his even more repulsive inbred brothers and pappy. Here, some seven years later, she's forced to spend a night of unbridled passion with the manly Van Cleef after she begs him to save her husband's life. "I'll do anything," she weeps. And anything is what she does.

Tucker delivers the performance of his career as a recluse who can only really hack the company of one man, Lee Van Cleef naturally. He always seems to show up when Van Cleef needs him most. Thank God, too (for Van Cleef and us) since he's an expert at quiet, vicious kills. A special bonus is that he's a supremely friendly fellow and bestows considerable kindness upon his victims before torturing and/or dispatching them.

And Warren Oates! What can be said about one of America's greatest actors that hasn't already been said? Oates is completely, utterly and deliciously over-the-top as the psychotic villain who refuses to acquiesce to the mighty river blocking his way to freedom. At one point, his character, increasingly under the influence of mood-altering weed, crazily looks at the deep, roiling currents, pulls his six-shooters and begins madly emptying the chambers into the river. Bravo, Warren! He might be completely overblown here, but there isn't a moment we don't believe him.

A western classic? Yes and no. Its homages seem studio-influenced, but the fact remains that director Gordon Douglas pulls them off with considerable skill and the movie is never less than engaging. It may not be a bonafide classic, but Good God Damn, it comes mighty close and it's certainly one supremely decent ass-kicker of a western.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***

Barquero is available on a Kino-Lorber BluRay.

MARK OF THE DEVIL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Arrow Video Restores Deliciously Vile 70s Witchfinding Torture Shocker to its Original Glory on a sumptuous Blu-Ray equivalent to Criterion Collection standards

Mark of the Devil (1970)
Dir. Michael Armstrong
Starring: Udo Kier, Herbert Lom, Reggie Nalder,
Olivera Katarina aka Olivera Vuco, Herbert Fux, Gaby Fuchs

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Translated from Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält into the Queen's English from German, the exquisitely Teutonic appellation of this classic 1970 shocker is Witches Tortured Until They Bleed.

Our ultra-Catholic friends in Italy affixed an equally tantalizing monicker: La Tortura Delle Vergini, or, in lingua inglese, The Torture of Virgins.

We, of course, know and love the picture as the far more genteel Mark of the Devil, but ultimately, whichever way one comes to appreciate this infamously vile shot-in-Bavaria German-UK co-production, it's guaranteed to bring joy to all eyes bearing witness to it. Well, "all" eyes with a clear path to that tainted chunk o' brain matter which can truly appreciate this sickeningly effective answer to Michael Reeves' 1968 cult masterpiece Witchfinder General -- those lucky souls will be the true beneficiaries of the delights found within the fully restored Arrow Video edition of it.

Though it might not have the borderline art-house credibility of Witchfinder General, Mark of the Devil is, in its own right, a fine addition to all the magnificently entertaining Euro-Trash witch torture exploitation items from the 60s and 70s. Not only is the torture of the highest standards, but the movie is damn compelling from a story standpoint.

Count Christian von Meruh (a character with a name like this could only be played by Udo Kier), a handsome young apprentice witch finder, accompanies his learned experienced mentor, the dastardly Lord Cumberland (Herbert Lom) to clean up the corruption in a small town, not so much to stop torture and executions, but to make sure the proper guilty parties are rooted out. The Count falls for the comely barmaid Vanessa (played by the famous Serbian acting and singing sensation known alternately as Olivera Katarina and Olivera Vuco).

Unfortunately, the vicious local witchfinder, the Albino (the brilliant Reggie Nalder whose grotesque appearance was a result of massive burns to his face), has designs upon her (as he does with most women in the town) and when she refuses to put out, she's accused of witchcraft (as are most of the gals who don't put out). A family of innocent travelling puppeteers are also singled out as witches, especially the gorgeous blonde daughter (Gaby Fuchs, German star of numerous horror and sex films).

A whole whack of sickening tortures and executions are carried out until the handsome Count realizes the insidiously corrupt nature of the whole affair and leads a revolt against the witchfinders.

Due to considerable friction twixt director Michael Armstrong and producer Adrian Hoven (who also acts in the film), a considerable portion of the movie includes added sequences directed by the latter. In spite of this, the film has a relatively smooth mise-en-scene and ultimately works as a genuinely fine addition to this sub-genre of 70s exploitation. The performances, especially by Kier, Lom and Nalder are top of the line and the movie, even in its longer unexpurgated form, moves along at a speedy clip.

Though ultimately an exploitation film meant to capitalize on the success of the aforementioned Witchfinder General, Mark of the Devil holds its own very nicely and due to its superb locations and attention to certain historical details, it feels as disgustingly representative of this horrendous period of history as one could/would want.

Have I mentioned yet that the movie opens with nuns being raped? I thought not.

Look, there's just no getting around how foul this picture is, but aficionados of vile Euro-Trash will find themselves in a constant state of orgasm.

One cannot deny such pleasures to anyone.

Can one?

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ (film) & ***** (Blu-Ray/DVD)

Mark of the Devil is available on a sumptuous Arrow Video Blu-Ray. In addition to the restoration of the full version and superb transfer from existing elements, the added treat are the bountiful extras. Arrow continues to be the gold standard for genre films in the home entertainment market and this particular package is on par with any fully loaded Criterion Collection release. Extras include a wonderful commentary track with Michael Armstrong, expertly moderated by Calum Waddell. Exclusive to this package is Mark of the Times a one-hour documentary on the British new wave of genre directors during the 60s and 70s. Hallmark of the Devil is an amazing little 12-minute doc about Hallmark Releasing (of Hallmark greeting cards fame) and their vile brilliant marketing campaign which ensured a huge return when the film played theatrically in the USA. There are a whack of great interviews with composer Michael Holm, actors Udo Kier, Herbert Fux, Gaby Fuchs, Ingeborg Schöner and even an audio only chat with Herbert Lom. A very entertaining short entitled Mark of the Devil: Now and Then takes us on a then-and-now tour of the film's locations. Additionally, one will find the usual bevy of outtakes, picture galleries, trailers and Arrow's impeccably high standards in package design and supplements with reversible sleeve and a lovely booklet featuring wonderful articles including David Del Valle's interview with the immortal Reggie Nalder.

This one is a keeper, folks

In Canada - BUY Mark of the Devil HERE, eh!

In the USA and the rest of the world BUY Mark of the Devil HERE

In UK BUY Mark of the Devil HERE

THE CONFORMIST - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Bertolucci Dazzles: Deluxe KinoLorber BluRay

Emptiness
Interruptus

The Conformist (1970)
Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda

Review By Greg Klymkiw

You're never going to see a more gorgeous movie about fascism than Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist.

He was only in his late 20s when he made this 1970 adaptation of Alberto Moravia's novel and the picture still crackles with urgency, dread and horror. It's furthermore infused with a winning combination of political/historical smarts, deeply considered intellectual rigour and an eye for heart-aching, stunning and dazzling visual artistry.

Working with ace cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now), there isn't a single composition, lighting scheme or camera move in the entire photoplay that's anything less than gorgeous. The sheer physical beauty in interior decor, architecture and the natural world is an effective and complex juxtaposition within the story of a man driven by pure ambition.

Ambitious or not, though, the main character Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) seems completely without a bone of real genuine passion in his body and is certainly bereft of such in his soul. His notions of passion seem rooted in a false construct of what he believes to be truly rapturous. He believes he must marry and "love" Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli) because she herself is a lovely, politically clueless member of his "class" and as such, is going to be an ideal appendage to him as he attempts to scale the heights within the government of Italian totalitarian leader Benito Mussolini.

Working as a secret field operative for the secret police, Marcello's ambition is the kind of petty, small-minded desire for advancement that would plague any loathsomely tweedy bureaucrat in public or private life and bravely, That said, Jean-Louis Trintignant is Jean-Louis Trintignant, and as such, is always cool, no matter how big a scumbag he's playing and Bertolucci's screenplay and direction, by way of Moravia's novel, works overtime to transform Trintignant into a character who is totally and pathetically bereft of an inner life. The first big job Marcello happily accepts is to ingratiate himself upon a former university philosophy professor, one whom he was especially fond of as a youth, and set the old anti-fascist up for a political assassination.

Adding insult to injury (in terms of presenting a character seemingly bereft of any positive warmth or humanity), we learn that Marcello is a young man who comes from considerable money and breeding, yet his impetus always seems to hover at the lowest rung of the ladder of the bourgeoisie. That both Bertolucci and Trintignant manage to create a character that we're always on the verge of wanting to admire and/or root for is a testament to both men's gifts as director and actor respectively since Marcello is a preeminent symbol of shallow desires.

Bertolucci structures the story so that timelines are often blended twixt flashbacks, flash forwards and a current perspective. None of this is flashy, trick-pony nonsense, nor even confusing, but is, in fact, a canny way to keep us on our toes in terms of both the advancement of narrative as well as the slow, almost creepy crawly dread that infiltrates our own perspective upon Marcello's gradual descent which, is the very thing that reaches a nadir even within Marcello so that he begins to question both his motives and the morality of his actions.

The trappings of class masking the horrors of Fascism

It is, in fact, love - real passion - which consumes Marcello. He doesn't even appear to have much passion for fascism, all that drives him is petty ambition, something he eventually realizes when he begins to fall madly in love with his old professor's wife, Anna (Dominique Sanda of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis fame), a stunningly ethereal beauty. Granted, it's her gossamer physical seductiveness that first attracts him rather than her intellect and inner life, which is virtually parallel to the aesthetically sumptuous trappings of upper class Italian society masking the evils of fascism.

Anna's beauty masks her inner life

Class, or at least the perceptions of class, clearly affect the carefully planted flashback of a much younger Marcello killing a family chauffeur who attempts to rape him. We even begin to doubt the perceived sexual exploitation between domestic "help" and the young man of means. It seems real enough, and perhaps even Marcello's murderous actions are justified, but Bertolucci plants enough doubt in our minds so that we respond to Marcello as someone swayed, if not exploited by class and perceptions of class, as opposed to any malevolence inherent in the chauffeur's attraction to him.

Even more powerful is the strange sense of redemption the film appears to work its way towards. When events converge to a point in the narrative when all seems dire, deeply sickening and outright horrific during the film's harrowing climax, it's finally not love which affects Marcello, but rather, recognizing a deep, real and eternal love within two other people. This is finally so profoundly moving that one can't help but shudder over a reality that could, given the circumstances, overtake any of us.

The Conformist finally leaves you completely winded. A film that presents a central figure who allows fascism to suck him dry of humanity is indeed the true horror Bertolucci lays bare for us to contemplate and feel. It's also what contributes to the picture's inherent qualities as a genuine masterpiece. Its exploration of fascism is ultimately as deeply felt and relevant today as it was when Bertolucci first made the film. We connect as individuals living in our own version of a totalitarian state masked as democracy and what finally moves us is following the inevitability of character who could well be any of us - No! Is us! Now and forever.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

The Conformist is available on a gorgeously transferred Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber (Raro Video) which includes Adriano Aprá's illuminating one-hour documentary In the Shade of the Conformist. In Canada, VSC (Video Services Corp.) distributes this Kino Lorber/ Raro Video title.

COTTON COMES TO HARLEM - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ossie-Davis does Blaxploitation like nobody ever did in this extremely entertaining adaptation of the Chester Himes novel with super dicks Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, now on Kino Lorber Blu-Ray

Cotton Comes To Harlem (1970)
Dir. Ossie Davis
Starring: Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Calvin Lockhart, Redd Foxx, Judy Pace, Lou Jacobi, Eugene Roche, J.D. Cannon, Cleavon Little

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"We may have broken some heads,
but we've never broken any promises." - Coffin Ed Johnson

Coffin Ed (Raymond St. Jacques) and Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) do what great cops do best; they always get their man and if THE MAN says, "Don't bust heads," they sure as hell make sure to bust all the heads that need busting to clean the scum off the streets of Harlem in glorious NYC.

And, they're cool.

Coffin Ed suavely serves up a sardonic wit, whilst Gravedigger Jones favours a more broad approach to inspiring yucks. As drawn by novelist Chester Himes, these cats have been immortalized in one of the ultimate Blaxploitation pictures of the 70s by none other than screenwriter-director Ossie Davis, one of the greatest African-American actors of all time (lovers of Spike Lee will never forget Davis as the philosophizing old man in Do The Right Thing and genre fans have long admired Davis as JFK - YES! - JFK in Don Coscarelli's immortal Bubba Ho-Tep).

Ed and Jones were perfect heroes for helmer Davis to march through their action-comedy paces. These two guys, as penned by Himes and immortalized onscreen by Davis, seem practically born with crime-fighting in their blood and they do the citizenry proud by never kowtowing to the rules imposed upon them by those uptight honkies running the NYPD and the city at large. No job is too big, small or untouchable. The People love 'em to death.

And, they're damn funny.

Call them an ebony Abbot and Costello if you must, but for whatever laughs they wrench consistently from us, they're mean buggers with lightning fists and sharp-shooting pistols, always ready for action.

Now, every good cop picture has a mystery to be solved, but the one which plagues Cotton Comes To Harlem is a doozy. The primary question that drives the picture is thus:

"Now what in the hell would a bale of cotton be doing in Harlem?"

Not just any cotton. We're talking raw, untreated and oh-so pure fluff, straight off the fields in the deep south. Buried within it is the quarry of Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. A sleazy slime ball common criminal, the "good" Reverend Deke O'Malley (a deliciously ooze-dripping Calvin Lockhart) has been running what our boys know is a scam. The slick-talking man of the cloth has been running a major scam (or so our super dicks are convinced) to secure oodles of money from the good, poor, hard-working folks of Harlem in order to transplant them back to their roots in Africa and out of the mire of America which snatched up their forefathers in the first place.

Coffin and Gravedigger know better. They're convinced O'Malley, always adorned in fine clothes, jewels and living with a hot babe in a slinky pad, is going to take the money and run, run, run. Hunches, however, are not evidence and this is something our boys are going to have to beat out of a few heads. O'Malley, you see, has just collected a huge whack of dough during a rally which, has conveniently been hit by deadly, armed marauders in masks.

And the secret's in the cotton.

Damn, where's that cotton?

Davis generates a fun, slam-bang cops and robbers steam engine replete with a breakneck pace, plenty of babes, oodles of action and one of the best damn car chases on the streets old NYC - ever.

Replete with a great soundtrack, loads of laughs and sheer dogged detective work, Ossie Davis plunges us into a grand, two-fisted crime picture.

St. Jacques and Cambridge acquit themselves with aplomb and the rest of the cast is jam-packed with a who's who of African-American comic talent like Redd Foxx (Sanford and Son) and Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles), plus a stalwart team of grizzled character actors including Lou Jacobi, Eugene Roche and J.D. Cannon.

And then, there are the babes, the most luscious being Judy Pace, as O'Malley's wily, sharp-tongued mistress.

This great working actress should have been a much bigger star than Hollywood let her be, though as Vicki Fletcher in the famous TV nighttime soap opera Peyton Place and the one of three beauties who "love" a philanderer to death in Three in the Attic, let her prove to be no slouch in the popularity and talent department.

Blaxploitation was a long and popular sub-genre in the movies, but Cotton Comes to Harlem manages to transcend that label by being one of the best cop pictures of the 70s - period. Sadly, Ossie Davis only directed five feature films and one TV movie. He clearly had a great command of the camera and could easily dance rings round most studio hacks of the period and certainly held his own with the period's better filmmakers.

Davis delivered a lovely, but little seen drama called Black Girl and Gordon's War, a magnificently nasty action film with Paul Winfield leading a charge of Vietnam Veterans against scumbag drug dealers, pimps and other assorted miscreants. Still, Davis left behind an amazing legacy of legendary performances and with Cotton Comes To Harlem, he delivered an absolute must-see.

And, of course, there's Judy Pace.

Damn, she is fine!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Cotton Comes To Harlem is available on a gorgeously Blu-Ray that captures all the grain, grit and colour of the 70s from Kino Lorber. In Canada, the title is distributed by VSC (Video Services Corp).

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS ABOVE OR BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

AMAZON.CA

AMAZON.COM

AMAZON.UK

GETTING STRAIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Important 70s examination of academia, civil unrest from Richard Rush, director of The Stunt Man, featuring a truly GREAT performance by Elliot Gould. This movie demands a proper Criterion or Kino Lorber edition featuring my dream commentary w/ Gould & Rush moderated by critic Kim Morgan!

Every kid growing up in the 70s wanted to be Elliot Gould because he was (and still is) so FUCKING COOL!

ELLIOT GOULD
with preppie/druggie
HARRISON FORD

Getting Straight (1970)
dir. Richard Rush
Starring: Elliot Gould, Candice Bergen, Harrison Ford, Brenda Sykes

Review By Greg Klymkiw

During the general 60s/70s American mayhem of the civil rights movement, Vietnam, protests, the draft and the JFK/RFK/King assassinations, one event still stands apart from the rest.

The Kent State University Massacre in Ohio of 1970 continues to send shudders through us all - that horrific moment when American National Guardsmen fired off live rounds of ammunition into throngs of innocent student protesters. As horrific as anything imaginable, this was a case where a government turned its fascist guns against its own people - its hope for the future, its youth.

Dissent would NOT be tolerated and Big Daddy Establishment was steadfastly unable to spare the rod against its seemingly spoiled, stubbornly non-compliant progeny.

During this period, the unrest was mirrored and examined in the popular culture – especially the movies, where filmmakers like Robert Altman, Arthur Penn, Sam Peckinpah and many others sought to expose the violence and hypocrisy of American life. Many of these films were not only boxoffice hits in their day, but continue to be revered and recognized to this day. And then, there’s all the rest.

While there are several worthy forgotten pictures from this era, one in particular stands out – Richard Rush’s fascinating and entertaining Getting Straight, a counter culture drama based on Ken Kolb’s novel (with Robert Kaufman's screenplay adaptation) about post-secondary academic hypocrisy. Rush is a great, but hardly prolific filmmaker. His biggest claim to fame is The Stunt Man, a wonky, obsessive and utterly anarchic look at the blurry lines between fantasy and reality in the movie business starring a completely and deliciously over-the-top Peter O’Toole whose thespian excess in the picture is rivaled only by Rush’s controlled manic directorial style.

Looking at Getting Straight 45 years years since its release (during the very year of the aforementioned Kent State Massacre) and in the context of The Stunt Man, one is immediately taken with Rush’s fascination with the blurring of borders. In Getting Straight, the divides are simply and clearly between old and new.

Harry Bailey (Elliot Gould) is the mustachioed, side-burned and amiably rumpled protagonist of Getting Straight – a Vietnam veteran returned from the war and in the last year of his English Literature Masters degree and a sessional lecturer. Harry is a man without (so to speak) a country. He wants to teach – desperately, but is, alas, faced with the dilemma of being too world wise to be a true part of the youth movement he so desperately craves to reach and too hip to embrace the staid complacency of the established order of academia.

He wanders through the picture, not so much torn between both worlds, but observing them and wondering how he can be a part of both. This noble effort, on the part of the character makes for fascinating viewing as we take on his perspective, but it’s also probably the main reason why Getting Straight has disappeared into the ether.

Rush bravely chooses to maintain the perspective of a man divided to lead us through the narrative – a worthwhile goal and certainly not flawed, but over the decades, audiences have become so bludgeoned into needing a character with firm coattails to grab onto in order to - ugh! - root for him/her, that part of the picture's relative obscurity has probably been affected by this the most. Like Gould’s Harry Bailey, we, the audience, wander through a world where students protest the outmoded academic ideals of the institution and Gould himself tries to utilize new methods to reach his students, but he also craves to play the game of an establishment he wants to change. This, of course, is what makes the film so fascinating.

Two Harry Baileys.
Both went to war.
One Harry won
the Congressional
Medal of Honor,
The Other Harry
got screwed
by The Man.

Harry Bailey’s namesake is, of course, a character from Frank Capra’s stunning post-WWII classic It’s A Wonderful Life. The difference between the two characters is especially intriguing since Capra’s Harry is anything but indecisive. As Harry Bailey's big brother George (in the form of James Stewart) declares, “Harry Bailey went to war, he won the Congressional Medal of Honor, he saved the lives of every man” under his command. And when Capra’s Harry returns from the war, he knows EXACTLY what he wants.

Rush’s Harry is probably closer to Capra’s big brother figure, George. He wants to join the establishment in order to change it. In Capra’s post-war fantasy, George Bailey gets to do exactly that, but in Rush’s world, with roles clearly reversed, Harry learns that straddling the fencepost can never yield true change – it instead equals stasis.

Getting Straight falls a bit short of greatness, but in many ways, it's one of the few pictures that comes closest to capturing the complexity of the period in which it’s set. In this sense, it has NOT dated. It is genuinely a project of its time – perfectly reflective of the complexities of the blurred lines on both sides of the old and new world orders. The two main things that work against the picture’s bid for the kind of immortality it probably craved are as follows: the aforementioned passivity of Gould’s character – it’s right for the movie and right for the world of the movie, but at the same time, fights against what mainstream movie drama is MOSTLY made of – a clear goal, clear stakes and a satisfyingly wrought conclusion.

Rush does not achieve this, though in all fairness, it’s clearly not his intent to do so. The second roadblock facing the picture's grab for greatness, and it is (and must have been) insurmountable, is the utterly dreadful performance of its leading lady Candice Bergen as the Ice Goddess grad student who is in love with Harry. Bergen is horrendous. Her lines are delivered with the kind of soullessness, which goes well beyond that of the character’s cold shiksa-like station. Bergen’s deliveries are flat and so is her face. Though this movie was made well before the Botox revolution, Bergen wanders through the picture like a poster-child for the toxic protein of choice to render the flesh immovable and wrinkle-free.

That said, there’s just so goddamn much to admire in the film. Elliot Gould works boundlessly with his character's passivity, indecision, confusion, complexity and manages to always maintain a fun, funny, sexy and amiable screen presence. When Harry Bailey is called upon to be active, especially during a brilliant thesis-defense sequence, one can see precisely how and why Gould was such a big star during this period and why he hit such a responsive chord with audiences. He's a laconic wiseacre who saves his best explosions of force for when he needs them. HE IS SO FUCKING COOL you just WANT to BE Elliot Gould. (At least I did as a kid and probably still do.)

The film's supporting cast is marvelous, especially a very young Harrison Ford as a wide-eyed preppie-druggie. It's also great seeing sexy Brenda (Mandingo) Sykes and counter-culture star of Zachariah, John Rubinstein.

Rush’s direction is suitably obsessive and detailed. There is a protest scene that is as breathtaking and chilling as anything you’re likely to see and the numerous party scenes are all infused with the kind of immediacy that allows you to observe AND participate.

At the end of the day, Getting Straight accomplishes much of what it set out to achieve and is, finally, an evocative window into a time and place that seems so distant, and at the same time, so current.

Look around. Innocent people are being killed indiscriminately by The Man everyday.

In that sense, things never really change that much, do they?

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Getting Straight is available on Sony Pictures’ inexplicably titled and oddly programmed DVD label “Martini Movies”. This movie is begging for a proper Blu-Ray release, transfer and special edition via Criterion or Kino Lorber. I also dream of a commentary track featuring Gould and Rush and, most importantly, moderated by Kim Morgan (whose piece on California Split for the L.A. Review of Books is a poster-child for WHY SHE'D BE PERFECT).

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS ABOVE OR BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

AMAZON.CA

AMAZON.COM

AMAZON.UK

INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION - Petri's Classic 70s Thriller - TIFF CINEMATHEQUE SPECIAL SCREENINGS: SPRING 2014 - 1 SHOW ONLY: APRIL 17 @ 9:30pm @ TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX - Review By Greg Klymkiw

THIS MAN IS A SCUMBAG, BUT WHAT A MAN,
WHAT A SCUMBAG!

Here's a treat for Torontonians. See the Oscar-Winning thriller on a big screen from the 4K digital restoration used for the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray. SEE IT ON A BIG SCREEN @TIFF CINEMATHEQUE SPECIAL SCREENINGS SPRING 2014 - 1 SHOW ONLY, APRIL 17, 9:30pm, TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX. THEN BUY THE MOVIE ON BRD WITH ALL THE DELECTABLE CRITERION COLLECTION TRIMMINGS TO ENJOY FOREVER.

Fetishes Galore! Sex, Murder and Vinyl. Always, Vinyl.

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) ****
Dir. Elio Petri
Starring: Gian Maria Volonté, Florinda Bolkan

Review By
Greg Klymkiw

A homicide detective on the eve of his promotion to head the department of domestic terrorism plays one final fetishistic sex-and-death-game with the sexy mistress who gets off on the morbid rituals as intensely as he does. Things go according to his perverse plan, but when part of the thrill is to commit a ghastly crime and load up as many clues as possible pointing in his own direction, nobody will presume he's guilty. Class will ALWAYS shield the sinful and he is, after all, a citizen of distinction and hence, above suspicion...so much of what occurs in this film - just a few years shy of being half a century old - has the kind of resonance so many cinematic post-9/11 indictments approach with mere kid gloves in comparison...In any age, this would have proven to be a deeply disturbing film, but now, somehow, it's beyond that which is merely unsettling. We could well be watching a movie set in the here and now and realize that what we're watching is not far at all from the terrible truth of the world we live in.

READ MY FULL REVIEW FROM DECEMBER 8, 2013 HERE.

For further info and tickets, visit the TIFF website HERE.

Here's some info on the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray. You can order it directly from the links below and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

"Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion" is currently available in a first-rate dual format (Blu-Ray and DVD) edition from the Criterion Collection. The film not only looks and sounds great, but the added value extra features are so bountiful and illuminating that this is definitely a must-own title for all true aficionados and collectors of fine cinema. The package is replete with all the bells and whistles including a 4K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural sound, a revealing archival interview with director Elio Petri, a tremendous feature length documentary entitled "Elio Petri: Notes About a Filmmaker", an interview with scholar Camilla Zamboni, a fifty-minute doc on the star of Petri's film "Investigation of a Citizen Named Volonté" and a superb interview with composer Ennio Morricone. Add to this the requisite trailers, new English subtitle translation, a lovely booklet packed with great written material and one Blu-ray and two DVDs all in attractive packaging.