Glenda Jackson in ‘House Calls,’ ‘The Return of the Pink Panther’ & ‘Death Ship’—Blu-ray/4K Kino Lorber Releases

Kino Lorber releases a new 4K-UHD/Blu-ray of a cult film and two 1970s films on Blu ray.

House Calls – Blu-ray – Kino Lorber

Howard Zieff’s silly but fun romantic comedy, House Calls, can be cringe-worthy today (I can imagine it must have been back in 1978, too). watching a then 58-year-old Walter Matthau play a Casanova romancing younger girls by the handful. I mean, Walter Matthau? Forget the fact that he was so old, it’s Walter Matthau—that’s like picturing your irascible, nose-haired Uncle as a lady magnet!

If you can get past that yucky bit, and good luck, there is the marvelous Glenda Jackson playing a less cutting version of her Oscar-winning, A Touch of Class character. Of course, the main issue is that it’s hard to believe she would be romantically interested in Matthau. Maybe I’m being too mean to the actor, but, ick!

Jackson brings her own touch of class to the underwritten role — speaking of, no less than four writers got credit for the underbaked script (story by Julius J. Epstein & Max Schulman, written by Alan Mandel and Charles Shyer).

They’re an odd pair, to say the least. But apparently audiences at the time bought it because it did well at the box office. It even earned a WGA nomination for Best Comedy Written Directly For the Screen.

The basic plot has recent widower Dr. Charley Nichols (Matthau), bedding every gal that will say yes (yuck, again)  until he meets Ann (Jackson), a recent divorcée with a teen son, played by Matthau’s real-life son Charley and not being given much to do. Ann demands fidelity. Charley doesn’t want to commit. But they fall for each other.

Director Zieff had an uneven career that hit its zenith with Private Benjamin in 1980. He also directed Barbra Streisand in The Main Event in 1979 so he should get some medal–I love Babs, but she was not easy to work with—according to most everyone she’s worked with! Here he basically lets the actors do their thing.

Art Carney, who didn’t deserve his Oscar for the slight and tedious Harry and Tonto, is quite funny here as an addled surgeon. Most of the rest of the cast play stereotypes.

Jackson was one of 1970s most eclectic, most awarded (including two Oscars), most venerated actors–male or female–who was never quite given her due, probably because she gave it all up to enter Parliament, only to triumphantly return to the stage and screen in her 80s, working right up to her death in 2023.

It’s nice to see Kino Lorber give House Calls a terrific Blu-ray treatment. What the company should do is seek out the rights to the too many Jackson titles that have been scarcely or NEVER available on any home video format like Peter Medak’s Negatives(1968), Trevor Nunn’s Hedda (1975), Richard Fleischer’s The Incredible Sarah (1976), Robert Ender’s Stevie (1978) and Robert Altman’s brilliant H.E.A.L.T.H. (1980), co-starring Lauren Bacall and Carol Burnett.

The only real Extra besides the trailer is a new audio commentary by authors Bryan Reesman and Max Evry.

House Calls is a 1970s film, which means it’s worth watching and owning, if only for Ms. Jackson.

https://kinolorber.com/product/house-calls

The Return of the Pink Panther — 4K-UHD/Blu-ray — Kino Lorber

After The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark, it took over a decade for writer-director Blake Edwards to re-team with Peter Sellers for the next installment of bumbling Inspector Clouseau’s madcap antics.

One could argue that both their careers needed a shot of adrenaline. Sellers was coming off of Peter Medak’s notorious Ghost in the Noonday Sun, filmed in 1973 but never theatrically released. Medak later called it, “the biggest disaster of my life.” Edwards’ 1974 pic, The Tamarind Seed, starring Mrs. Edwards (Julie Andrews) didn’t break any box office records.

Return of the Pink Panther proved an audience and critical triumph garnering Golden Globe nominations for Best Picture, Musical or Comedy and Best Actor (Sellers).

Set in the fictional country of Lugash, the film picks up with the actual Pink Panther diamond being stolen and a demoted Clouseau tapped to figure out the whereabouts as well as the thief’s identity. Of course, this pisses off the irascible Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) who is obsessed with taking Clouseau down. The wacky inspector is certain that the culprit is Sir Charles Litton (Christopher Plummer, a fine addition) and he stumbles and fumbles his way about investigating him. The pratfalls abound, some hilarious, some falling flat (pun intended?). One just needs to get past all the really offensive racist references–especially towards Burt Kwouk’s Cato, who returns to attempt to whip Clouseau’s butt.

It’s fun, escapist nonsense.

Kino Lorber presents a first-rate 4K—a brand new HDR/Dolby Vision Master – from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. Sound quality is excellent.

The Blu-ray boasts  an audio commentary by Jason Simos of The Peter Sellers Appreciation Society as well as an interesting 21-minute featurette, A Bit of Passion and Lots of Laughs with Catherine Schell, where the actress waxes about her experience working on the film. There is an awesome 28-minute conversation with production designer Peter Mullins on making the Pink Panther movies., and a 1975 promo short titled, The Return to Laughter as well as three trailers, tv and radio spots.

https://kinolorber.com/product/the-return-of-the-pink-panther-4kuhd

Death Ship — 4K-UHD/Blu-ray — Kino Lorber

Why certain films achieve cult status is a puzzlement as is why many of those films are given the 4K treatment before certain classics.

I’ve always been fond of saying that even the worst films of the 1970s are better than most movies made in other decades. Rarely, I’m proven wrong.

Barely released in the U.S. (it played in three states: Wisconsin, Texas and Florida) in 1980, Alvin Rakoff’s Death Ship, initially feels like an unintentional spoof of The Poseidon Adventure—or an intentional rip-off.

A pretty lame cast, with one standout performance, assemble on board a cruise ship that suddenly collides with a mysterious black freighter. The survivors appear on a raft after the super low-budget crash sequence and soon spot the rusty old behemoth of a vessel and find a way to board. What they don’t know is that the ship is possessed by evil forces—think Nazis—and that’s not a spoiler since we are constantly hearing German voices and there is Nazi paraphernalia strewn about. So, our cast of who-the-fuck-are-they C-actors must fight to survive.

Oscar-winner George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, Airport) gets top billing as the Captain on his final voyage who becomes bedeviled by the ship. It’s a get-me-the-hell-out-of-this-garbage performance. Richard Crenna (Wait Until Dark), Nick Mancuso (Nightwing, Ticket to Heaven), Saul Rubinek (TV’s Hunters), Sally Ann Howes (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) and Kate Reid (The Andromeda Strain) round out the cast. Oh, and there are two annoying children you wish would die fast!

Death Ship is 91 minutes of gratuitous and gruesome violence, laughable dialogue and senseless, painful misogyny–a ripoff Psycho shower sequence with lots of blood, although the director insists it was an homage—was included simply to show female nudity, at the producer’s insistence!

This is the kind of movie where spider webs are all over the sets, just to remind viewers that the ship has been around forever. There is little to no character development, no one to really root for and the least interesting folks end up surviving—those pesky kids! Oh, and the score, by Ivor Slaney, very rarely matches the action.

I will admit the movie is also occasionally fun to watch, just to see where it will go off the rails next. In the hands of a better filmmaker, more talented writers and better actors, it might have been a decent B-movie. Alas…

The only actor who fights to deliver a nuanced performance is Mancuso, whose facial expressions register more emotion than the film deserves. Mancuso is a talented thesp who never quite made the leading man leap he should have, but has consistently worked, mostly in Canadian film and TV, for the last four decades.

Fans will be happy with this Kino Lorber special edition 4K. Disc one contains the Theatrical Cut, a brand new HDR10 Master from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. KL do their best with the shoddy footage.

The Blu-ray disc boasts Stormy Seas – The Voyage from Bloodstar to Death Ship, a terrific 41-minute, 2007 doc that is more interesting than the film where the director and one of the writers diss each other (separately) and Kennedy and Mancuso discuss the difficulties on set. The Extended Cut is also featured, with three minutes more footage and an audio commentary by Rakoff.

There are two new audio commentaries by film historians on the Theatrical Cut as well and some other goodies on the Blu-ray.

https://kinolorber.com/product/death-ship-4kuhd