Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow / Drunken Master (Twilight Time) Boyish, baby-faced Jackie Chan trained at the famed Peking Opera Academy, had an early career as a stunt man, supporting player and fight choreographer in scores of Hong Kong films, and was unexpectedly chosen as “the next Bruce Lee” in a series of stiff, serious […]
Here are some notes on a few Twilight Time releases I’ve enjoyed but not had time to write up feature reviews. I’ll be listing all the supplements but know that each disc also features Twilight Time’s trademark isolated score, the original trailer, and an accompanying 8-page booklet with an essay by Julie Kirgo. Each disc […]
Summer Lovers (Twilight Time, Blu-ray), the sexy 1982 tale of Americans in Greece learning to shed their inhibitions, is not your usual eighties sex romp. Written and directed by Randall Kleiser, riding high after Grease (1978) and The Blue Lagoon (1980), the film takes an adult look at love, sex, and modern romance in the […]
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) (Twilight Time, Blu-ray) – Hammer Films had just launched their full color revivals of the classic movie monsters when they tackled Sherlock Holmes, giving him the Gothic treatment in a mix mystery and supernatural horror. Peter Cushing is perfectly cast as the great detective, the very embodiment of science […]
Support Your Local Sheriff / Support Your Local Gunfighter (Twilight Time, Blu-ray) – James Garner established himself as a natural for the comic western with the TV series Maverick, playing the reluctant hero who avoided conflict and gunplay with charm, wit, and a con-man’s knack for keeping his opponents off balance. The brought that sensibility […]
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Twilight Time, Blu-Ray), one of Sam Peckinpah’s personal favorites of his films (and the rare Peckinpah film not to get reworked by the studio), opens on an idyllic river scene with a pregnant girl soaking her feet in the lazy current with a beatific smile on her face. […]
The Killer Elite / Noon Wine (1966) (Twilight Time, Blu-ray) – By even the most generous measure, The Killer Elite (1975) is one of Sam Peckinpah’s weakest film. Which, by Peckinpah standards, is still a cut above a great many films. He manages to get his own sensibility into the tale of black ops mercenaries […]
Our Man in Havana (1959) (Twilight Time, Blu-ray) is the third and final collaboration between director Carol Reed and writer Graham Greene. In some ways it plays like a sardonic post-script to their great success, The Third Man, in others a transition film between the gritty but heroic espionage thrillers of the forties and fifties […]
I Want To Live! (Twilight Time, Blu-ray), the 1958 drama based on the true story of Barbara Graham, the first woman sent to the gas chamber at San Quentin, gave Susan Hayward the greatest role of her career. Though the film was made under the strictures of the production code, it makes clear exactly what […]
Pretty Poison (Twilight Time, Blu-ray) (1968) begins as a kind of Walter Mitty or Billy Liar, with Anthony Perkins as a mentally unstable young man released from psychiatric confinement and let loose into society where he plays spy games like a big kid in an adult world. While he’s not entirely harmless (his fantasies already […]
