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We haven’t had a lot of time to post new DVD reviews lately, so instead of our usual long-winded, pointless coverage of new releases we’re going to post short-winded, to-the-point coverage of whatever we find laying around. Brevity is not only the soul of wit, it’s a pretty darn good way to clear DVDs off your desk so you have room for important stuff, like an ice-cold beer, or one’s feet.

Stranger on Horseback (VCI, $14.95, to be released 9/16/08) This 1955 Jacques Tourneur film has been all but impossible to see for decades, particularly in its original “AnscoColor” beauty (AnscoColor being to Technicolor what ViewMaster slide projectors are to high-def plasma TVs). VCI and Kit Parker films located a copy in the British Film Institute vault, and here we are. One of a number of similar-themed post-High Noon “Lone Lawman vs. Vicious Killers in A Town Called Apathy” films, but it’s a good one. Joel McCrea is the Lone Lawman, John McIntire and Kevin McCarthy are the Vicious Killers, and John Carradine is the hapless city official in the villains’ pocket. Miroslava is the babe who longs to cross over from the wrong side of the street and get to where handsome Joel is a-standin’. I don’t know who she is, but she’s pretty and she’s the only member of the villainous family that spicks vith a strange assent. The disc, from a 35mm print, is presented in 1.66:1 anamorphic format, and looks wonderful considering the cheap color process that was used. Extras include radio shows with Joel McCrea and audio featurettes by Joel Blumberg, plus the original theatrical trailer.

In the early 1960s director Georges Franju (Eyes Without a Face) wanted to remake the classic silent serial Fantomas, but had to settle for remaking the 1913 serial Judex instead. In various interviews, he was harsh in his assessment of his own film, mainly because the “hero” of the piece is really a villain, but he was wrong: his 1963 French feature Judex is a rollicking piece of riveting entertainment, with the equivalent of 12 chapters of thrills crammed into 94 minutes of non-stop excitement and laughs. Judex (Latin for “Judge”) is a mysterious figure who runs an organization that punishes those the law can’t touch. When he orders a crooked banker to give half his fortune to charity, Judex sets in motion a grand scheme of larceny, blackmail, and murder. You’ll find a beautiful damsel in distress, caped villains who look just like the hero of The Spider’s Web, a magician dressed like a giant hawk, bouncy dancing, super-science that brings the dead back to life, stone crypts with secret passageways, and a lovely female acrobat risking death to rescue complete strangers. The perfect Saturday matinee feature; pop plenty of corn and have a great time. Judex, which stars Channing Pollock and Edith Scob, is available on a new DVD in the Masters of Cinema series from England (Region 2, £24.99). It’s paired with Nuits Rouges (a/k/a Shadowman, 1973) from the same director. The DVD is impeccable and includes a thick booklet with interviews and information. One of the best DVD releases of the year.

Our friends at Thunderbean Animation have a new disc out, which is always cause for cinematic celebration. This time, it’s Cartoon Commercials! Vol. 1, featuring nearly 2 hours worth of, well, you know. Compilations like this are usually hit or miss, but Thunderbean’s offering is superb, with clear picture and sound (although occasionally the color has faded). I had forgotten how many classic cartoon characters were brought out of retirement to hawk product, and I wish I had saved some of those Soaky toys from when I was kid (I didn’t have many; I suspect Mr. Bubble was cheaper, ‘cause that’s what Mom usually bought). I would've loved a breakfast cereal with a story book printed right on the box; where was THAT when I needed it? And forget the McCain vs. Obama contest; to this day, I've never been able to decide between Quisp and Quake. DVD extras include a special subtitle feature that gives you background information on each ad, and a couple of industrial shorts on how to make commercials.

Speaking of cartoons, Warners has just released a 2-disc set called, if the packaging is to be believed, The DC Comics Classic Collection Super Heroes The Filmation Adventures ($24.98). I would’ve dropped off at least one of those “The”s in the title, but you know me, I’m pretty frugal when it comes to article use. Anyway, when I was a kid, I watched the Superman-Aquaman Hour of Adventure on TV on Saturday mornings (while I ate cereal in plain ol' non-storybook boxes), a treat because in between trips to Metropolis and Atlantis we got cartoon shorts featuring Hawkman, Superman, the Flash, the Atom, the Teen Titans, and the Justice League. Those bonus shorts (18 in all) comprise this collection, and they’re not too good, although I still like the bombastic narration by Ted Knight (late of WJM TV). I also got a kick out of the menu screen (shown here) which somehow manages to substitute Birdman, a character from another company, for Filmation’s version of Hawkman. Whoops. Somebody needs to don an absorbascon and figure out what went wrong.

Grotesqueries (Blue Mouse Studios, $14.95) is a terrific find, a collection of oddball short subjects and cartoons with a general Halloween-type theme. Highlights include a live-action 1930 version of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice with Fritz Feld, a remarkable 1928 expressionistic take on The Fall of the House of Usher, a nightmare in which comic Billy Bletcher is pursued by a giant killer lobster, scary cartoons, and much more, a total of about 2½ hours worth of fun. You’ll play this one beginning to end.

Honey West (VCI, $39.99) is an anomaly; it ran only one year, 30 episodes, yet was popular in reruns and is still fondly remembered today, not least of all because it was so damn stylish in that supercool 1960s kinda way. Anne Francis is the gorgeous Beverly Hills P.I. who solves crime with the aid of boy toy Sam Bolt (John Ericson) and her pet ocelot (Bruce). Honey lives up to her name with slinky costumes and a battery of impressive secret agent-type gadgets; in the first episode alone, her handbag of tricks include a 2-way communicator in her compact, a bugging device in a swizzle stick, and of course the one item no woman should leave home without, teargas-filled earrings. Mostly, though, she defends herself through judo, although it’s her pale blue eyes that did me in (well, the show was in B&W, but I have nothing if not a vivid imagination). VCI’s four disc set includes all 30 episodes, including the promos for the following week’s show, and bonus commercials for other ABC shows and fine variety of essential products for home and office, plus a (pretty sparse) episode guide. This show exceeded all expectations, and I want a soundtrack CD!

Hey, we’re doing pretty well so far, eh? Let’s see what else we’ve got here!

The Fox Film Noir series of DVDs continues, but alas they’ve changed the packaging and stopped numbering the darn things, to Fox’s discredit. Three new releases include the previously-postponed Boomerang! (1947) with Dana Andrews, directed by Elia Kazan, Road House (1948), with Ida Lupino, and an earlier Lupino film, Moontide. In this 1942 drama directed by Archie Mayo after Fritz Lang got himself fired, Jean Gabin (in his American debut) is a French sailor who awakes from a drunken blackout wondering if he’s killed a man. Thomas Mitchell and Claude Rains are pals who help him sort it all out, and Miss Lupino is the “waif” who loves him. The film’s darkness and stylishness were probably beyond the ability of Mr. Mayo at that point, who was long time past his 1931 triumph Svengali (a year later he'd be stuck trying to direct Groucho, Chico and Harpo in A Night in Casablanca), so I’m giving a lot of the credit to Lang, who was never happy with a script that had to twist the story into knots to get past the censors. The DVD looks and sounds great, contains feature commentary by Noir expert Foster Hirsch, and a brief featurette on the making of the film, plus several Fox Noir trailers. The Fox Noir discs are $14.98 each.

One wonders if any of the censors ever bothered to complain about grown men slapping themselves around in Columbia Three Stooges shorts; probably not. Sony’s third volume of chronological shorts is now available (SRP $24.96); this one offers 23 beautifully restored shorts covering the calendar years 1940-1942, including the Stooges anti-Hitler classics You Nazty Spy and I’ll Never Heil Again. Congratulations to whoever at Sony decided that in these troubled times, America needs the Three Stooges. Just not in office, please. Check In The Balcony's Short Subjects department (link at top of page) for more info on the Stooges collections.

Facets/All Day Entertainment presents a second American Slapstick collection ($34.95), and Vol. 2 is another pip. Spread across the three discs are a series of comedic shorts starring Harold Lloyd and a bunch of lesser-known entertainers, including Harold’s brother Gaylord, Chaplin’s brother Syd, and Charley Chase’s brother Paul Parrott. There are a couple of delightful obscure talkies from the 1930s, too. Best of all is the complete 1925 feature version of the chestnut Charlie’s Aunt starring Syd Chaplin; the film is delightful and laugh-out-loud funny. Worth th' price of admission all by itself.

I don’t like the team of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis very much, but I never remember why until I try watching one of their films again. While they occasionally have their moments, the films are with rare exception simply terrible. Case in point: Money from Home (Legend, $14.95), supposedly based on stories by Damon Runyon. Uh-huh. I couldn’t even finish it. I like Dino well enough, but Jer? No comment. Mostly, though, I think that the team’s strength was the manic ad-libbing and craziness inherent in their live act, none of which is on display in their films. This is painful.

On the other end of the comedy team spectrum stands the greatest of all, Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy. After releasing a beautifully restored collection of the entire 1920-1940 output of the dimwitted duo, Kinowelt (Germany, Region 2) finally released the great oddity in the L&H canon, Hal Roach’s 1939 misfire Zenobia. Roach insisted on keeping Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy under separate contract, see, and our heroes finally decided that when Stan’s contract was up he was going to defer signing a new one until his rotund partner could join him, feeling that as a team they could negotiate a better deal. Maybe. In Stan’s absence, Roach paired Oliver Hardy with the way-past-his-prime Harry Langdon in a southern comedy of manners, with elephant. Stepin Fetchit provides what few laughs there are, and there are few indeed. At least the DVD includes three terrific Roach silents, Along Came Auntie (1927), The Nickel-Hopper (1926, with Boris Karloff), and Long Fliv the King (1926, with Charley Chase).

Sony’s Icons of Adventure pairs four obscure Hammer pirate-type movies, The Stranglers of Bombay, The Devil-Ship Pirates, The Pirates of Blood River, and The Terror of the Tongs. I don’t much like Hammer films, and so I skipped right to the one that is s’posed to be the best of the bunch, The Stranglers of Bombay, and sure 'nuff I didn’t much like it. The 2-disc set includes, however, some wonderful bonus material, including a 1936 Scrappy cartoon, The Merry Mutineers, with animated versions of Laurel & Hardy and the Three Stooges, the first episode of the fun 1953 serial The Great Adventures of Captain Kidd, King of the Pirates, and a wonderful Andy Clyde 2-reeler, Hot Paprika. So long as Sony keeps putting bonus shorts on their releases, whatever they are, I’ll keep buyin’ ‘em. Now if we could only get a few more complete serials...

Finally, our buddies at Restored Serial have released a new and improved version of the 1922 silent film The Man from Beyond, a science-fiction oddity starring Harry Houdini. It is indeed much better than Restored’s previous release, and includes, they tell us, scenes missing from other versions, each frame lovingly scrubbed and polished. The disc ($13.95) includes a PDF with more than 320 pages of Houdini scripts and other materials. You can order this  from restoredserials.com.

Hey! I can see my desk again!

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THE LOST SKELETON, PART 2

“THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN” IS FIRST PRODUCTION FOR BANTAM STREET

Entire Cast Of 2004 Cult Favorite Will Reunite For Sequel

BURBANK, CA (2/14/08)—Principal photography begins in March on The Lost Skeleton Returns Again, a sequel to the critically-acclaimed cult favorite The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra, which was released by Sony in 2004. The film is the first production for Bantam Street, the newly-formed company from artist-filmmaker Larry Blamire.

All eight of Cadavra’s principal actors will return for the new movie, with Blamire encoring as writer, director and star, as well as adding producing chores. The parody will be shot entirely in the Los Angeles area, and Sony will have first look at the completed picture.

Blamire launched Bantam Street in 2007 as a way of maintaining greater control over his work, especially in terms of spin-offs and merchandising. The company eventually hopes to make three or four films a year, most of them small-budget, but with an eye toward bigger pictures in the near future.

The original Cadavra delighted audiences and reviewers with its deadpan recreation of an ultra-cheap 1950s black-and-white sci-fi/horror film. Though Blamire hadn’t intended to make a sequel right away, he nevertheless decided to do so when the opportunity arose. “I thought it would be a while before I revisited Lost Skeleton, but it just started coming to me one day,” he explained. “And I’m so happy that the fans are clamoring for more from these wacky characters.”

Picking up two years after the original, Returns finds the government in dire need of a rare element called Jerranium-90, which is only known to exist in the Amazon jungle. Coincidentally, the only man capable of finding it, Dr. Paul Armstrong (Blamire), is also in the Amazon jungle, having become a bitter drunk because “science let him down.” With the help of his devoted wife Betty (Fay Masterson), an expedition is immediately sent to South America to locate him…unaware of the dangers that lie ahead.

Also returning for the hi-jinks are Brian Howe as Peter Fleming, twin brother of the first film’s baddie Dr. Roger Fleming; Andrew Parks and Susan McConnell as clueless aliens Kro-Bar and Lattis; Jennifer Blaire as slinky feline Animala; Dan Conroy as guide Jungle Brad, twin brother of the original’s Ranger Brad; Robert Deveau—the ill-fated farmer in the first film—as a shady importer, and of course the Lost Skeleton as himself.

(Among the newcomers to the adventures are Trish Geiger as the villainous Dr. Ellamy Royne; Daniel Roebuck as an evil dilettante; Alison Martin as Chinfa, Queen of the Cantaloupe People; Kevin Quinn as a small-time crook; Frank Dietz as a well-meaning government agent, and H.M. Wynant as a concerned general.

“We don’t want to simply repeat the first film,” noted Blamire. “This time, the original characters are tossed into a jungle adventure with lots of perils, mysterious lands, terrifying monsters, and some really stupid soul-searching and personal angst.”

Bill Bryn Russell will encore as editor, joined by Anthony Tremblay as production designer, John Rutland as cinematographer, and Kristina West as costume designer. The Chiodo Brothers are overseeing the special effects, with Frank Ippolito doing double-duty as make-up artist and supervising the new monster costumes (based on designs by Blamire). Sara Van Der Voort will be the line producer.

Like its predecessor, the film will be scored entirely with vintage library music and presented in glorious black-and-white, albeit this time in anamorphic widescreen. Cadavra’s PG rating helped make it a surprise favorite with kids, and the sequel will likewise appeal to all ages.

Michael Schlesinger, who acquired the original for Sony and is one of the producers, observed that “we’re treating this as though there were a learning curve for the filmmakers. The special effects will still be tacky and the dialogue still wooden, but the production will be larger, slicker and more fast-paced, as though it had been made at a studio with a B-level producer like Sam Katzman in charge. But don’t worry—it still will never be mistaken for Transformers.”

“We are really having fun here,” added Blamire. “That’s what we want Bantam Street films to be—pure fun. If we can raise the level of smart silliness in movie comedy, then our work here will be done.  Well, actually, no, it won’t, since we want to keep on doing it. You know what I mean.”