Below are some hot February titles releasing on 4K UHD and Blu-ray…And two cinematic camp curiosities.
Cruising — Limited Edition 4K UHD – Arrow Release
In February of 1980, William Friedkin’s most controversial film, Cruising, opened to major gay rights protests and mostly damning reviews. The film was a moderate box office success and has been continuously reevaluated over the last 45 years.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the film. On an initial VHS viewing, some time I’d guess in the late ’80s, I dismissed it as homophobic crap. My opinion changed slightly when I saw it a couple of decades later: tantalizing trash. Now, watching Arrow’s pretty pristine–and much too clean–4K, I was much more intrigued by Friedkin’s perverse vision–a peek into a distinct gay subculture, but also a dive into the mind and soul of a closeted cop. If only Friedkin had the real balls to go all-in on the latter instead of continuously teasing us! Just one scene where Pacino actually kissed or screwed another guy would have been revolutionary.
I have never been a Friedkin fan. His only great film is The Exorcist. I find The French Connectionwell-made but overrated (Best Picture over A Clockwork Orange? I think not!) And his other foray into the gay world, The Boys in the Band, is both intriguing and grating.
Cruising follows rookie cop Steve Burns (Al Pacino) going undercover into NYC’s underground gay scene, specifically the S&M clubs, to search for a serial killer who enjoys sadistically stabbing his victims. As Burns immerses himself deeper and deeper into this compulsive world he appears to grow more fascinated by it, one could argue that it consumes him.
Thinking on the argument that the film was sanctioning the murder of gay men and funneling it through today’s loud social-media protests against, well, anything and everything that dares to even appear anti-LGBTQ, Cruising delivers several whiplash punches and raises eyebrows higher than Joan Crawford was ever able to.
Stripping all the noise away, it a messy but beguiling mindfuck of a movie with an annoying and obtrusive punk soundtrack. Based on a 1970 Gerald Walker book, inspired by a real series of murders, Cruising had the dubious distinction of being one of the first major studio films to show any kind of gay sexuality on the big screen. The ill-fated Making Love would attempt to do it in a more clean and soapy manner two years later.
Arrow is touting this as “the long-unavailable original theatrical version,” which is slightly deceptive. It is the version that was released, with some new tinkering from Friedkin, but the actual director’s cut is sadly lost forever (or until someone discovers the footage locked away somewhere.) The evil MPAA gave the movie an X rating and Friedkin claims he had to ultimately delete 40 minutes of footage to secure an R. The excised footage was supposedly of graphic sex shot in the S&M clubs. The director could not locate the scenes for the initial DVD release. The assumption is that United Artist destroyed it. But I find the idea that Friedkin, a helmer who had dealt with the MPAA on many occasions, would have included 40 minutes of hard-core gay sex scenes in a cut, expecting to get an R-rating, difficult to believe. Methinks there’s some exaggerating going.
There are a host of special features in this edition, most carried over from the Arrow Blu Ray, that include two audio commentaries by Friedkin, deleted scenes, alternate footage, censored material reels, a new interview with Karen Allen, chats with several cast members and crew including actor, consultant, and former police detective Randy Jurgensen, a new visual essay about the hanky codes, a Q&A with the director at BeyondFest 2022 and, most interesting, two docs, The History of Cruising and Exorcising Cruising.
The latter featurette breaks down the actors playing the murderers and victims in a way that both clarifies, confuses and confounds—which is what Friedkin probably wanted to do to his audience. The director died in August of 2023.
Friedkin’s endless obsession with gay life on both ends of the spectrum began and ended an important decade in gay history. Everything would change in the 1980s with AIDS. Both Cruising and The Boys in the Band are deeply flawed but transfixing cinematic representations of gay life at a time before the decimation of a generation of promising young men and the galvanizing of those that miraculously survived.
Cruising will be available on February 25, 2025.
https://www.arrowvideo.com/blu-ray/cruising-limited-edition-4k-uhd/15819816.html
Frances — Blu-ray — Kino Lorber Release
There has been a lot of debate over how much of Graeme Clifford’s titular bio-pic of the actress Frances Farmer is fictionalized since the film was not-so-loosely based on the book, Shadowland, by William Arnold. The controversy deepens with just how closely the screenplay parallels Arnold’s writings despite the fact that the producers (led by Mel Brooks) refused to option his work. A bizarre lawsuit ensued. One of the key, if horrific, elements of the book and film is that, while institutionalized, Farmer was lobotomized.
Clifford was predominately a film editor prior to helming Frances and worked with Robert Altman on M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Images and The Long Goodbye. Frances marked an uneven directorial debut, that works more than it doesn’t. His original cut ran three hours, and I wish we were privy to that version since the movie, as is, feels like there are chunks missing.
The one thing that cannot be debated is the intense ferocity of Jessica Lange’s performance and how this role instantly established her as a cinematic force. She may have won an Oscar for Tootsie that same year (one can argue as consolation), but it was her work in Frances that showed she had such tremendous range so far beyond the roles she played in her previous four films, King Kong, All That Jazz, How to Beat the High Cost of Living and The Postman Always Rings Twice. While she did manage to elevate each of those parts, her Frances was simply astonishing.
Frances Farmer was a stage and film actress who showed tremendous promise but, because of a series of betrayals and her refusal to capitulate to the Hollywood machine, she found herself in deeper and deeper trouble. And her non-conformity, and possible mental illness, landed her in nightmarish institutions where she was horrifically treated and repeatedly raped, culminating in the infamous transorbital lobotomy that may or may not have actually happened.
The Kino Lorber Blu-ray is stunning with László Kovács lush cinematography popping in the Hollywood scenes. The brownish, initially cozy suburban Seattle hometown look gives way to a more sinister appearance as the film progresses. The sound is terrific enhanced by John Barry’s haunting and underrated score.
The Blu-ray features a very informative and entertaining new audio commentary by film historian David Del Valle and film historian/producer Dan Marino as well as archival audio commentary by Clifford and David Gregory. There’s a 31-minute doc, A Hollywood Life: Remembering Frances, that delves slightly into some of the controversies but is way too careful not to mention Shadowland. I strongly suggest reading Arnold’s incredible account, which includes Kurt Cobain’s obsession with Farmer, when you have a full afternoon as it’s a lengthy but tantalizing read.
Lange was nominated for the 1982 Best Actress Oscar and had Meryl Streep not been in the running for Sophie’s Choice, would easily have won. Kim Stanley also received a nom for Supporting Actress as Frances’s complicated mother. The film also stars Sam Shepard, who Lange would live with for three decades. They had two children together.
Francis Farmer’s life remains a mystery, but this film keeps her memory alive, as well as the theories surrounding her tragic life.
Frances bows on Blu-ray February 18, 2025.
https://kinolorber.com/product/frances
Play It Again, Sam –- Blu-Ray — Kino Lorber Release
One can sense the genesis of the future Alvy Singer/Annie Hall relationship in Herbert Ross’s 1972 film adaptation of Woody Allen’s hit 1969 Broadway play, Play It Again, Sam. This is the Woody Allen movie not directed by Woody Allen. And it’s a gem.
Ross, who directed the play, was choreographer on William Wyler’s Funny Girl and directed three subsequent features (Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Owl and the Pussycat and T.R. Baskin) prior to this film, and he would go on to direct many beloved movies like, The Last of Shiela, The Sunshine Boys, Funny Lady, The Turning Point, The Goodbye Girl, California Suite, Pennies from Heaven, Footloose, Soapdish and Steel Magnolias.
Play It Again, Sam reunited all four lead actors, from the play, with their director.
The film opens in a movie house as Woody, enthralled, watches Casablanca—a scene he would later pay tribute to in his own masterpiece, The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), with Mia Farrow wide-eyed entranced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Allen is Allan, a cinephile (the glorious set decoration of his poster-filled home will have movie lovers using the pause button) with low self-esteem (imagine!) who sometimes hallucinates help from his cinematic hero, Humphrey Bogart, played by Jerry Lacy. Allan’s two best friends, Dick and Linda (Tony Roberts and Diane Keaton), are constantly trying to fix him up with different women. Alas, it’s always a disaster. Dick is always the phone giving his current location number to his service—a running gag that never got old. He neglects Linda, who begins spending a lot of time with Allan. Linda and Allan end up falling for each other and…I won’t go any further, except to say the climax pays homage to…Casablanca!
The Allen-Keaton sparks are off the charts. There’s a reason they would go onto highly successful ‘70s collaborations with Sleeper, Love and Death, Interiors, Manhattan and Annie Hall, the latter winning Academy Awards for Best Picture, Keaton as Best Actress and Allen for co-writing and directing.
No surprise, Keaton is the heart of the pic. Her magical comedic gifts help elevate the silliest moments. That same year she’d show off her dramatic chops in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic, The Godfather.
Play It Again, Sam was only available on DVD until now and Kino Lorber Studio Classics does a fab job via a new HD master of a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. The visuals are terrific. The disc features an interesting audio commentary from screenwriter/producer Alan Spencer and author/film historian Justin Humphreys.
https://kinolorber.com/product/play-it-again-sam
Alice Sweet Alice — Limited Edition 4K UHD — Arrow Release
I was shocked to learn that Alfred Sole’s 1977 film Alice, Sweet Alice, originally titled, Communion, is considered a horror classic in some circles. This confounds me since the writing is sub-par, most of the performances are campy bad (as opposed to campy good) and the scares are pretty minimal. I’m not even sure I get the cult status surrounding it. Sure, it was one of the first graphic slasher films and there are homages to truly great horror classics like, Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and Friedkin’sThe Exorcist, but this film pales in their shadows.
I can appreciate Sole’s condemnation of the Catholic Church’s rigidity, and, yes, the religious iconography and allusions are interesting, but the rest is just a slasher mess, which, I guess, are what fans love about it?
The basic plot has a super young teenager Brooke Shields viciously murdered in a church on the day of her first Communion and we are led to believe that her crazy sister, played by Jane Lowry, did it. From there, the plot goes haywire a cornucopia of crap acting. I was particularly disgusted by the exploitative treatment of a really overweight character played by Alphonso DeNoble. Only Rudolph Willrich as Father Tom delivers something close to a decent performance.
Interesting to note, after Brooke Shields caused a sensation in Louis Malle’s controversial film, Pretty Baby, in 1978, the film was rereleased under the title, Holy Terror, to capitalize on her success with her name billed first–despite the fact that she’s barely in the movie!
All of the above noted, Arrow has done an excellent job with their 4K restoration as the film looks stunning with colors popping. The monaural soundtrack is also impressive.
There are a bunch of special features that are carried over from the 2019 Blu-ray edition including deleted scenes, an alternate title sequence and a host of interviews, including Sole. Fans will be pleased.
Much more intriguing than this movie is the fact that Sole’s first foray into filmmaking, Deep Sleep(1972) caused quite a stir. He and others involved were brought up on trumped up obscenity charges (which pled out) and as a result he was excommunicated from the Church, which led him to collaborate with co-screenwriter, Rosemary Ritvo, and make Alice. Someone should make that film.
https://www.arrowvideo.com/blu-ray/alice-sweet-alice-limited-edition-4k-uhd/15819811.html
The Conqueror — Blu-ray — Kino Lorber Release
“’Death comes not easy to Termujin.” — this is just one of the many laughable lines spoken by John Wayne in the 1956 film, The Conqueror
Dick Powell’s misguided historical drama, produced by Howard Hughes, is considered one of the worst films ever made yet is most notorious for the principal photography taking place near a nuclear testing site in Utah, which likely caused many cases of terminal cancer among the cast and crew years later.
As inconceivable as it may seem, John Wayne plays Mongol ruler Temujin (later known as Genghis Khan) opposite Susan Hayward as Bortai, the Tartar’s leader’s daughter, who Termujin kidnaps. Hate, of course, turns to love against the backdrop of a wanna-be-epic story that makes absolutely no sense!
The film is loaded with acrobatic stunt horse scenes, ridiculous pretentious dialogue, anachronistic moments galore and a perpetually pissed-off Agnes Moorehead (Endora on Bewitched) as Termujin’s mamma. Oh, and the tableau pièce de résistance, Wayne being paraded around in a Christ-like pose!
In terms of the Blu-ray visuals, The Conqueror looks great boasting vibrant CinemaScope images. The sound is top notch, for the most part.
The film was the 11th highest-grossing film at the box office in North America in 1956 but still considered a financial failure.
Both Hayward and Wayne would easily recover from this debacle and go on to win Oscars for I Want To Live! (1958) and True Grit (I969) respectively. Hayward died of brain cancer in 1975 at the age of 57. Wayne fought lung cancer in 1964 only to succumb to stomach cancer in 1979 at 72.
The 2023 doc, The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout, about the filming controversy, makes an interesting companion piece to this cinematic curio—and is, sadly, far more compelling.
The Blu-Ray includes audio commentary by film historians David Del Valle and Dan Marino.
The Conqueror will be released on Blu-ray February 25, 2025.
https://kinolorber.com/product/the-conqueror
