107 Footsteps in the Fog

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MichaelB
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107 Footsteps in the Fog

#1 Post by MichaelB » Thu May 03, 2018 5:35 am

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FOOTSTEPS IN THE FOG
(Arthur Lubin, 1955)
Release date: 23 July 2018
Limited Blu-ray Edition (World Blu-ray premiere)

Pre-order here

Shot in glorious Technicolor by award-winning cinematographer Christopher Challis (The Tales of Hoffmann, A Dandy in Aspic, Villain), this classic Gothic melodrama stars the then real-life husband and wife acting team of Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons in the tale of a murderous London businessman and the scheming housemaid who shares his dark secret.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION SPECIAL FEATURES:
• High Definition remaster
• Original mono audio
The Guardian Interview with Stewart Granger (1990): archival audio recording of a spellbinding one-man show in which the great Hollywood star discusses his career at London’s National Film Theatre
Belinda, Goddess of Devon (2018, 27 mins): a new appreciation of tragic star Belinda Lee by Steve Chibnall, author of British Horror Cinema
Something in the Air (2018, 27 mins): film expert and BFI curator Josephine Botting explores cinema's fascination with post-Victorian England
Gothic Imprints (2018, 17 mins): Diabolique magazine’s editor-in-chief Kat Ellinger explores the film's Gothic origins
• Original theatrical trailer
• Image gallery: on-set and promotional photography
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited Edition exclusive booklet containing a newly commissioned essay by professor Steve Chibnall, archival interviews, historic articles, an overview of contemporary critical responses and full film credits
• World premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited Edition of 3,000 copies

#PHILTD107
BBFC cert: PG
REGION FREE
EAN: 5037899071632

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domino harvey
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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#2 Post by domino harvey » Thu May 03, 2018 7:23 am

Great film. Here's my thumbnail from the Noir Thread:
Footsteps in the Fog (Arthur Lubin 1955) Another great color noir to add to the shortlist, this is a wonderfully mean-spirited and cynical tale of chambermaid Jean Simmons who suspects her employer Stewart Granger of killing his wife, proves it, and then uses this to leverage herself into a better position and romantic entanglement. Granger’s murderous impulse is not to be quelled though, and things get complicated when he savagely beats to death a woman he believes to be Simmons, only to discover it was instead the wife of a local constable. I admired the film’s dark and frank subject matter and its unapologetic tone, and the ending comeuppance is wonderfully perverse. Highly recommended.

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Lost Highway
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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#3 Post by Lost Highway » Thu May 03, 2018 7:49 am

Never heard of this one, sounds great and it will go on my to-buy-list. I simply can't resist a scheming housemaid. When it comes to Jean Simmons playing bad girls, I would love a release of Angel Face one day.

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#4 Post by Costa » Fri May 04, 2018 12:56 am

I have seen this, I don't remember anything, but I believe it was good.

here's my concern:
I know I may be jumping to conclusions, I just want to express my hope that Indicator won't become a horror/thriller label. We already have enough labels for that.
I know this genre sells but...
It's just that since we had the hammer box-set, i had hoped the other title would be in another genre.

Anyway, sorry again if I - i don't know what is the expression - put the cart before the horse(?), i just felt to say that..
Indicator does indeed seem a great label with great quality of its products.

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Lost Highway
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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#5 Post by Lost Highway » Fri May 04, 2018 3:02 am

Looks to me like their ratio of thrillers vs dramas, etc has remained constant. Obviously if you want to stay afloat as a label, you release some films more people are going to buy.

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#6 Post by MichaelB » Fri May 04, 2018 3:15 am

Since Powerhouse gets loads of complaints that Indicator isn't releasing enough horror films, I'm taking this as a sign that they're getting the balance more or less right.

Incidentally, which of 2018's releases really qualifies as a horror film? Even Never Take Sweets from a Stranger, The Stranglers of Bombay and The Terror of the Tongs are a bit of a stretch, and Suddenly, Last Summer even more of one.

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tenia
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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#7 Post by tenia » Fri May 04, 2018 5:10 am

MichaelB wrote:Since Powerhouse gets loads of complaints that Indicator isn't releasing enough horror films, I'm taking this as a sign that they're getting the balance more or less right.
I have the impression that some people thought Indicator would be mostly releasing horror movies, so I'm not sure if these complaints are measured in their expectations.

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#8 Post by MichaelB » Fri May 04, 2018 5:54 am

tenia wrote:I have the impression that some people thought Indicator would be mostly releasing horror movies, so I'm not sure if these complaints are measured in their expectations.
I suspect the fact that five out of the first seven releases fell broadly into that category (although even then, Ten Rillington Place doesn't really fit the "horror" label all that comfortably) might have given that impression, but this was never the gameplan - the fact that the third and fourth releases were Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? and To Sir With Love spelled that out. And Vampires and Ghosts of Mars were released a fair bit earlier than planned, thanks to the surprise sellout success of Christine.

But I'm cheered by the fact that there's no obvious pattern to the titles that have either sold out (Christine, Body Double, Ten Rillington Place, Hardcore, The New Centurions) or which are next on the OOP list (Bunny Lake is Missing, Charley Varrick, Eyes of Laura Mars, Mickey One, The Stone Killer, The Sinbad Trilogy). Yes, there's a slight weighting in favour of horror/suspense, which clearly can't be ignored, but it's not as pronounced as you might expect - and things like Mickey One are a very pleasant surprise.

But we don't really think in terms of genre when putting these packages together: the bottom line is "is this a good film, or at least interesting enough to deserve the curatorial attention?"

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#9 Post by Costa » Fri May 04, 2018 7:13 am

MichaelB wrote:Since Powerhouse gets loads of complaints that Indicator isn't releasing enough horror films, I'm taking this as a sign that they're getting the balance more or less right.
Ah, the horror fans are always so ardent!
They never have enough.
We don't have great classics on Bluray, but we have B(C, D etc. )-horror movies on wonderful restorations. (of course this isn't addressed to Indicator, but generally).

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Ribs
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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#10 Post by Ribs » Fri May 04, 2018 7:18 am

There are also plenty of B-tier other movies released, though. Blu-ray is not an empirically devised medium that is establishing which films deserve treatment first. But, really, I don’t see how you could percieve the second or third Hammer sets as Horror unless you’re just assuming based on the production company. I think Indicator probably gets the balance about perfectly, as somebody who admires Horror movies rather than it being a particular interest. But they probably help pay the bills!

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#11 Post by Costa » Fri May 04, 2018 7:21 am

Ribs wrote:I don’t see how you could percieve the second or third Hammer sets as Horror unless you’re just assuming based on the production company.

I said horror/thriller in my first post..
Anyway, it wasn't a complaint.
Just a concern.

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#12 Post by MichaelB » Fri May 04, 2018 7:50 am

Based on what's been released in the past few months (hell, over the label's entire lifespan), I genuinely don't understand where this "concern" is coming from.

Although I suspect your call for more "great classics" is more revealing than perhaps you intended it to be, because that really isn't Indicator's priority and never has been.

I've always seen Indicator as being a bit like Second Run, but with major studio catalogues - in other words, their priority isn't well-loved classics that have already had more than enough attention but outstanding or at least very interesting films that, for whatever reason, haven't been given their due. Three recent cases in point being Little Murders, Otley and Blue Collar - and indeed Footsteps in the Fog itself.

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domino harvey
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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#13 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 04, 2018 8:57 am

This movie isn't a horror movie, unless one considers all period noirs horrors, so this is a weird tangent from the outset. And as I said above, in the realm of color noirs, I'd say this one should be considered a "classic," regardless of whether it actually is accepted as one!

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#14 Post by MichaelB » Fri May 04, 2018 9:10 am

domino harvey wrote:This movie isn't a horror movie, unless one considers all period noirs horrors, so this is a weird tangent from the outset. And as I said above, in the realm of color noirs, I'd say this one should be considered a "classic," regardless of whether it actually is accepted as one!
It also doesn’t bear even the tiniest resemblance to any of the films in the third Hammer box.

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#15 Post by Costa » Fri May 04, 2018 12:16 pm

MichaelB wrote: Although I suspect your call for more "great classics" is more revealing than perhaps you intended it to be, because that really isn't Indicator's priority and never has been.
Again, i wasn't talking about Indicator, but generally..

edit:
Anyway, just out of curiosity, to see how accurate I was in my "concern", i counted approx. 28 out of 84 titles that fall in the horror OR thriller genre. (apologies if I have made any mistake in the numbers).
that's about 33,33%.

Don't you think that's a bit many when there are 10 or more genres?
Again, I'm NOT complaining.
Last edited by Costa on Fri May 04, 2018 12:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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domino harvey
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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#16 Post by domino harvey » Fri May 04, 2018 12:30 pm

Just stop

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#17 Post by What A Disgrace » Fri May 04, 2018 12:44 pm

I think its wonderful that Indicator's whole schtick is "we release English language films from the Sony catalogue", and it turns out that the Sony catalogue is so full of strange little gems in the English language that they can, indeed, be thought of as being akin to the likes of Second Run, only instead of releasing 6-8 films a year, they're releasing eight films every month or two, typically with plenty of extras. This looks like another film in that category, so I'm super pleased. I can count the number of Indicator titles released/ing this year that I am not buying on one hand (sorry, The Border, Ship of Fools, The Fortune).

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#18 Post by MichaelB » Fri May 04, 2018 1:01 pm

Well, it's not just the Sony catalogue now, but otherwise you're bang on the money. "Strange little gems" is very much where it's at - and I can thoroughly endorse Footsteps in the Fog, which I subtitled only yesterday. If you like florid Technicolor Gothic melodrama, step right up.

And of course, strange little gems often do tend to have an affinity with less reputable genres - although, as I said earlier, I simply don't think in terms of genre when contextualising these films, unless it's unavoidably overt as in the Boetticher westerns.

For instance, are The China Syndrome, 10 Rillington Place and Never Take Sweets from a Stranger among the 28? Technically they should be, and I'd be astonished if all three weren't - but of course their considerable historical interest lies entirely elsewhere. And does Little Murders count as a thriller or horror? It wouldn't be hard to make a case for it on that score - but if you did, you'd also have to take Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty into consideration.

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#19 Post by Costa » Fri May 04, 2018 1:05 pm

MichaelB wrote: For instance, are The China Syndrome, 10 Rillington Place and Never Take Sweets from a Stranger among the 28? Technically they should be, and I'd be astonished if all three weren't - but of course their considerable historical interest lies entirely elsewhere. And does Little Murders count as a thriller or horror? It wouldn't be hard to make a case for it on that score - but if you did, you'd also have to take Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty into consideration.
to tell you the truth, I'm afraid to continue this conversation.
I'll just stop as domino suggested.

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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#20 Post by MichaelB » Sun Jul 22, 2018 4:59 pm


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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#21 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jul 25, 2018 4:14 pm


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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#22 Post by MichaelB » Sun Jul 29, 2018 5:52 am


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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#23 Post by MichaelB » Tue Jul 31, 2018 5:19 pm


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Re: 107 Footsteps in the Fog

#24 Post by domino harvey » Fri Aug 24, 2018 10:00 am

I enjoyed the extra exploring all the post-Gaslight films, especially when Moss Rose popped up. I know it's not as high profile as the Brahm Fox movies, but I think it's far superior to those and I'd love to see Indicator rescue that one, especially since I'm not sure it's on any boutique label's radar and we know Indicator has started licensing Fox titles (or do a Peggy Cummins at Fox twofer with Mankiewicz' the Late George Apley even)

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