Kino

[jwd5275]

Schreck, I couldn't agree. Long a huge fan of Chaney, I have always maintained that he is much better with minimal/no makeup on so that we can actually see his face. It is a face that emotes like no other face.

If someone sees this and want some more, I highly recommend the TCM box. Warner Archive has put out quite a few others including films directed by Victor Sjostrom and Tod Browning.

[HerrSchreck]

Er, you "couldn't agree," or you "couldn't agree MORE"?

He has no makeup in The Penalty.

[jwd5275]

Couldn't agree MORE.

Sorry, typing too fast. Shows how meaning can be changed by the unintentinal omission of one word...
..and yes, I know he has no makeup in The Penalty.

[dwk]

Redemption is saying that they have the rights to Bava's The Whip and the Body

One of Mario Bava's finest and most gothic films, The Whip and the Body aka La frusta e il corpo, has just been signed to Redemption and will now be remastered from the original negative and released on Blu-ray. Starring horror legend Christopher Lee as a sadistic nobleman whose main pleasure in life is to whip his sister-in-law, played by the beautiful Daliah Lavi. When the nobleman is murdered his ghost returns and the beatings continue.

More details soon.

[JPJ]

Any idea what happened to their announced and never released Night Tide DVD and blu-ray? Amazon still has pages up with "May 22, 2012" release date...

Night Tide is not even mentioned on Kino's website,not a good sign.

[Stefan Andersson]

A restored Whip and the Body on Blu would be great.

VCI Entertainment posted on Facebook a while back that they had rights to this film, and that they would be preparing a Blu release. They also said they were trying to get Christopher Lee to dub his part, presumably for the English track. Wouldn´t it be a great idea if Redemption tried to get Lee to redub himself in both Italian and English?

[htshell]

So what happened to that big announcement last week?

[dwk]

They still haven't been granted permission to announce the big mystery title.

[AfterTheRain]

They still haven't been granted permission to announce the big mystery title.

And the plot REALLY thickens...wonder what mystery title is?

[onedimension]

Wonder if it's Stalker- a 'big' title, held up by rights issues, and lots of earnest young male Tarkovsky fans on the Internets will jump up and down.

[AlexHansen]

TIN MINH on Blu.

[Yojimbo]

. So other than the OTT story, is there much to recommend in this one? As far as silent directors go, can this guy compare to the best of them?

In my opinion, it's Chaney's best film. Elsewhere, I wrote:

To this day The Penalty is one of the most wicked, blackhearted, nasty films I've ever seen. . . featuring what is far over and above anything else my favorite performance by Lon Chaney Sr. The man delivers, in what is considered his first starring role, a positively ferocious performance as Blizzard, "Lord and master of the Underworld." In my opinion he never surpassed it.



In my opinion this is the first genuine Film Noir, in the true sense of the word. The film is gritty, nasty, filled with utterly vicious characters without even a touch of a hint of redeeming qualities, with a narrative heart that pumps black blood through the life of its thru-line fore and aft. Featuring onscreen nudity, drug-addiction, accidental amputation of an innocent pre-teen boy's (Blizzard's) legs by an inept idiotic doctor (who is protected by an even more idiotic older doctor who shields his young protoge by lying to the kid's parents and tells them that the uneccessary amputation was the only way the boy's life could've been saved), burlesque dancers shaking their tits, a female hustler robbing a mark she's conked out with knock-out drops in his beer, a slimy coke addict who glady stabs her, an undercover law enforcement agent who completely wilts in the face of the ferocious power of her target and becomes his willing plaything, this for starters... moving forward with satanistic flourishes and "underworld" metaphors it smokes along like a belch from a fumarole. The film was thusly described by a trade paper of the day who, while granting the excellence of its craft, croaked "Here is a picture about as cheerful as a hanging." Often confused as a Browning-Chaney film, owing to it's lurid nature and seedy subject matter, the film is far more sinister and dark than anything in the Chaney-Browning canon.



Here are some quotes, including the aforementioned:


Quote:

Here is a picture that is about as cheerful as a hanging---and as interesting. You can't, being an average human and normal as to your emotional reactions, really like THE PENALTY, any more than you could enjoy a hanging. But for all its gruesome detail you are quite certain to be interested in it...It is a remarkably good performance this actor (Chaney) gives." ---Photoplay

"One of the striking things about the picture is the remarkable characterization given by Lon Chaney, who has the leading character...Rarely has the screen seen a better piece of acting." - --Moving Picture World



I love this film and could go on and on. Chaney is truly unbelievable in the film. He plays Blizzard... the legless young boy who has grown up into a truly sinister head of the San Francisco underworld, hobbling around on stumps through the streets between HQ's with the aid of leather knee-cups and a pair of crutches. The film is devoted to Blizzards plan to wreak vengeance on the (now elder) doctor who destroyed him when a child. He lights on a plan to shatter the doctor's world by hitting him where it will hurt the most-- the doc's saughter. The daughter, an aspiring artist who wants to do something worthwhile with her life before going passively into a marriage, puts an ad in the papers for a model. . . and ad with Chaney answers with sinister glee.

Watch closely as Chaney hatches the plan in his head to pose for the daughter--a sculptress-- of the jerk doctor who ruined him and left him legless from the knees down as a boy... she has placed an ad in the paper for people who think they look appropriate to pose for a work called "Satan After The Fall." Watch his face run the gauntlet of expressions as he ruminates on his deviousness, picturing his ultimate ruination of the daughter, smiling, gritting his teeth with wide-eyed sinister exhultation, then suddenly subject to a torrent of agony as he recalls all the misery he has suffered and continues to suffer as a result of his (unneccessary) life as a double-amputee whereby he smashes a hand against his temple and drags a palm up and down his countenance almost unable to bear the pain... trying to get under control he throws a tightclenched fist out and grimaces sternly while regaining himself. . . study the screen-- a tear jumps out of his eye and runs down his face as a riot of subtle and conflicting emotions crash through his mind's eye.

It should also be noted that the director of The Penalty was Wallace Worsely, who directed Chaney in Hunchback (as well as The Ace of Hearts, included in the TCM Lon Chaney Vol 1 box).

I couldn't agree MORE regarding 'Penalty', and both Chaney's performance in the film and his rivetting, charismatic, screen presence here.
Chaney was actually one of my earliest favourite movie stars, because RTE used to screen a lot of classic silent movies in its early days (early to mid 1960s); Chaney was, of course, memorable because of his Phantom persona but he'd a cruelly handsome features, in the manner of Lawrence Tierney, which deserved more exposure

[knives]

Surprised to hear no discussion on their new Derek Jarman Blus. Only The Last of England's arrived for me so far and if it's any indication for the other two this is a massive improvement on the previous discs. The audio's really pristine and loud being the strongest aspect of the transfer. I'm not sure how much of this is deliberate on Jarman's part, but the video transfer starts a little rough though still better than the previous disc by a large margin with it improving as the film moves on. It's easily the best I've seen one of his films on home video. As to everything else Kino put together the cover's somehow worse in person with older Swinton's head awkwardly photoshopped on. Naturally there's no extras, not even a booklet, but the most horrifying thing is the total lack of subtitles. The front page looks like one of Olive's discs with just the play and chapter buttons. It's also Region A.

[MichaelB]

Wonder if it's Stalker- a 'big' title, held up by rights issues.

I hadn't heard of any rights issues affecting this title - surely it's 100% owned by Mosfilm?

Materials issues are a different matter, of course.

[eerik]

I hadn't heard of any rights issues affecting this title - surely it's 100% owned by Mosfilm?

Materials issues are a different matter, of course.

They did not have the rights to release it on Blu-ray, but they could have renewed their contract.

[swo17]

"We don't have the Blu-ray rights" could very well just be a diplomatic way of saying "We never purchased the Blu-ray rights." It doesn't necessarily mean the rights are all tangled up somewhere.

[onedimension]

Yeah, I meant the blu-ray rights for it, and I assumed Kino neglected to purchase them in the first place.. but perhaps negotiating for the blu rights became tricky, especially if the DVD sold well..

[MichaelB]

My understanding of the phrase "held up by rights issues" or "tricky rights issues" is that there's some complicated legal matter affecting the easy transfer of the rights - a contentious music track, for instance, or uncertainty about who the primary rights holder actually is thanks to a convoluted co-production deal involving multiple entities.

But in the case of Stalker the rightsholder is unarguably Mosfilm, and if it's simply a question of licensing fees... well, surely this is a financial issue rather than a rights one?

[onedimension]

Makes sense.. I always assumed 'rights' was a catch-all term- in this case, I'd guess that 'tricky negotiations' = reluctance on Kino's part to pay a high price.

[Feego]

Beaver on Les Vampires. The transfer looks stunning, although I know some will flip about the English intertitles. Too bad there aren't more (or any, really) extras, but I'll always have my AE edition for that.

[Feego]

[stagefright50]

I'm so excited for these. Does anyone know why Hatchet cover doesn't list "Mario Bava Collection" and just has the Redemption label. Possible box set? Weren't all of these announced under the Redemption banner?

[knives]

It's probably a matter of rights issues with it being licensed to them via Redemption while the other two have different handlers.

[triodelover]

Beaver on Les Vampires. Appears to be a stunning transfer, but the intertitles are in English and the English subs for French newspaper text and the like are burnt-in, so let the purist bitch-fest begin. Oh, and there are no extras which will give the, ahem, "cost-conscious" something to whinge about.

[HerrSchreck]

Holy awesome.