Flash-forward to 1952 and the second wave of 3D moviemaking caught filmmaker’s fancy. For the next couple of years films of all genres were made in 3D, from John Wayne movies (Hondo) to killer robots. The latter subject was main plot of Gog, made at the end of the ‘50s 3D cycle and basically buried upon release and not seen in its pristine 3D form until now.

Gog 3D (3/1, Kino Lorber) was produced by Ivan Tors who was known for his sense of scientific accuracy in his productions. Of course even the most fastidious modern sci-fiers like Apollo 13 or Gravity or The Martian will have detractors that point out how this or that couldn’t happen. Previously Tors had made similarly themed atomic generation tales of wonder The Magnetic Monster (1953) and Riders to the Stars (1954) and all three films constitute a trilogy known as the Office of Scientific Investigation. During this period Tors also was the showrunner for the television series Science Fiction Theatre.

The 3D process gives Gog a very deep look. Every scene has its layers and the bright colors used for costumes only add to the sense that things are popping out of the screen and into your eyes. The cameras used for the 3D effects are different that one used for contemporary films and subsequently the look is divergent. Watching Gog I never felt that sense of staring into a forced perspective like modern 3D so much as being thrust into the space that the characters, and robots, inhabit.

A group of scientists are planning space travel research from an underground laboratory. When an accident occurs the investigators come up against the mind of a supercomputer (NOVAC) and its robots Gog and Magog that really seem to run the secret base. Destruction with a camp sensibility ensues. Richard Egan and Constance Dowling (who later married Tors) star. Themes are played out that would become a staple in later sci-fi movies from Colossus: The Forbin Project to The Andromeda Strain to The Terminator.

Extras are superb and include audio commentary by film historians Tom Weaver, Bob Furmanek and David Schecter. At one point they mention that actor William Shallert makes his first appearance in a sci-fi film here but Shallert also co-stared in The Man From Planet X, a cult classic helmed by Edgar G. Ulmer from 1951. There’s also an excellent interview with the director Herbert Strock as well as a 20-minute featurette with Natural Vision 3D co-creator (also the director of photography on Gog) Lothrop Worth that contains as much lore about Hollywood as you can cram into a reel.

As for Gog the robot, the mechanical fury moves around more like one of those automated vacuum cleaners than a humanoid C-3PO. And that fact alone moves Gog a few notches up on the essential viewing list.

— Michael Bergeron

The Wild Bunch thrills fans of hyper violent actioners. Ride the High Country (1962) and his television show The Westerner (1960), both westerns, embrace conventions of another era and are classics in their own right. The Getaway unleashes high-octane crime drama that never feels tired. The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a lyrical art film in search of an audience. Films like Straw Dogs and Cross of Iron would be hard projects to get funded today, the recent remake of Straw Dogs being a pale copy of the original. Which brings us to the lighter side of Peckinpah.

Convoy (Kino Lorber, 4/28) was a film based on a hit country song, and even when it erupts into a rather ugly depiction of police discrimination of minorities it comes across like a comic carnival ride, more intent on capturing beautiful imagery of trucks on the road and providing its audience with laughs. A nearly Shakespearean cast of misfits and archetypes meets on the highways of New Mexico and Arizona (and Texas). Led by Rubber Duck (Kris Kristofferson’s CB handle) an illegal mile-long convoy races across the interstate in hot pursuit by Sheriff Lyle Cottonmouth Wallace. It’s a thin plotline that’s pushed to the side for character development, social satire of the media and gorgeous cinematography.

When Convoy was released the country was in the midst of a Citizen’s Band Radio craze. Surely a younger audience member might wonder where the phrase “10-4 good buddy,” came from. And while comedies lampooning media coverage of news events are ever abundant nowadays they were few and far between in 1978, perhaps the best example being Network.

Those are real 18-wheelers in a climatic scene, not CGI vehicles. The amount of time and coordination to get a single shot took hours if not all day. Imagine having to wait while everybody turned around and got into their original positions. One sequence shot in White Sands, NM just brilliantly melds the world of art film beauty with mindless action shots. The trucks appear to be floating on a layer of snow captured with long lenses. Another sequence, with many shots and editing in slo-mo, shows the 18-wheelers literally destroying a small town by driving through all the buildings. It’s a crazy but well choreographed scene that makes the trucks the main characters and glories in destruction in a manner that recalls the ending explosion of Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point.

Convoy appears late in Peckinpah’s filmography, and as such it’s no secret that he was often stoned or drunk to such an extent that critics dismiss his later films as flawed. Convoy is a delight to watch from start to finish, which in a way seems to suggest that a half pint of Peckinpah equals other directors operating at full-bore.

Convoy has previously been available on disc in far from desirable transfers. This Blu-ray release gives the film a chance to be seen in the glorious color and scope that it deserves. Ali MacGraw, Burt Young, Cassie Yates, Seymour Cassel, and Franklyn Ajaye co-star.

The disc is loaded with extras including a 73-minute doc on the film. A commentary track with Peckinpah biographers and scholars, including Garner Simmons who wrote “Peckinpah: A Portrait of Montage,” seems to damn the film with faint praise. A better choice would have been David Weddle, the author of “If They Move Kill ‘Em!: The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah.” To date it’s the best book written about the iconic director.

“I never met a duck that couldn’t swim.”

— Michael Bergeron

When asked what the best comedy movie ever made is I usually default to Sullivan’s Travels (1941) as a way to jumpstart the conversation. Perhaps not oddly, if I don’t say Sullivan’s Travels I say The Lady Eve, another 1941 release. Both films are the brainchild of writer/director Preston Sturges.

Sullivan’s Travels (Criterion Collection Blu-ray, 4/14) has the kind of laughs derived from clever and intelligent dialogue, but it also has slapstick guffaws created from wacky situations and stock characterizations. Before all is said and done the film takes on a tragic twist and yet characters with no hope and no future find themselves laughing at a Disney cartoon.

A big time Hollywood director (Joel McCrea as John L. Sullivan) has become bored of making inane comedy successes, the silly love songs of his era. Some of his hit titles include: So Long, Sarong; Hey-Hey in the Hayloft; and Ants in Your Pants 1939. Sullivan wants to make a socially relevant film however, like Stanley Kramer in the ‘50s and ’60 only this is a film made before American entered the Second World War. Sullivan’s vision is a film titled O Brother, Where Art Thou. Sullivan plans to travel undercover like a hobo using railroad cars as his flying carpet. A hobo is parlance for the homeless only the tramps of Sullivan’s time are glorified by their proximity to the Depression.

Veronica Lake plays a disillusioned actress who tags along. Those familiar with Sturges’ movies will recognize many of his stock company of character actors like William Demarest, Eric Blare, and Franklin Pangborn among others. As in any Sturges script some of the best lines are from supporting characters, like when Sullivan’s butler tells him “The poor know all about poverty, and only the morbid rich find the subject glamorous.”

Sullivan’s Travels has this uncanny ability to change atmosphere drastically and still keep the viewer zeroed in on the film. When the joke of Sullivan’s quest for the cause of human suffering gets flipped on its head, and he finds himself incarcerated on a chain gang with temporary amnesia the film becomes dark in a way that few comedies can navigate. Low angles and unremitting cruelty dominate the image. “If ever a movie needed a good plot twist this is it,” says Sullivan. The way Sturges backs himself out of the corner he has painted himself into proves what a movie genius he was. By the way in addition to making a series of remarkable films in the 1940s, Sturges invented kiss proof lipstick.

The Blu-ray transfer makes the black-and-white images pop from the screen with just the right amount of grain. The image is presents in the proper boxy 1.37:1 aspect ratio. The great extras include celebrity commentary (Noah Baumbach, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean), a PBS documentary on Sturges, a few others, and of note a new extra for this edition a video essay of the movie that features director Bill Forsyth and critic David Cairns.

Mysteries of the Unseen World (Virgil Films and Entertainment, 4/21) presents a variety of invisible phenomenon that surround humans and their environment. Originally an IMAX film produced by National Geographic, the release comes in a Blu-ray 3D and DVD 2D combo pack. The 40-minute film maintains its 3D allure on a high def television screen, while a 20-minute behind the scenes explains the technique of rendering information from an electron microscope into three dimensions.

The unseen world takes in high-speed photography and time-lapse photography to see images too fast for the eye to detect. A couple of shots include slow motion of a rattlesnake biting at the camera as well as an owl flying directly at your point-of-view. Then there’s ultraviolet, infra-red and x-ray vision that allows us to see the insides of a person drinking a glass of milk or the heat vision of a mosquito.

Unseen World really takes off when it goes microscopic. We go layer by layer into the inside of a single strand of a spider’s web. Carbon nanotubes will be used to build an elevator to outer space. There are eight-legged mites living on our eyebrows and we get to see them up close and personal. The doc informs us that the average human has more microscopic creatures living on their body than the total population of the Earth. Think about that when you’re going to sleep tonight.

— Michael Bergeron

Both film feature Lucinda Dickey (awesome performer who unfortunately made only a handful of films before retiring) as Kelly, Adolfo Quinones (a major choreographer of his time) as Ozone and Michael Chambers as Turbo. While the sequel Electric Boogaloo towers above most films of the dance genre, each film has moments of spectacularly designed breakdance sequences that merge that world with the world of jazz and classical dance moves. This is no danse macabre. These films are shot and edited with the finesses of the best Hollywood films.

Electric Boogaloo has one sequence where Turbo dances in a room that is mounted on a gimbal, with the camera locked into place and capturing the spinning of the room – even though the room doesn’t appear to move. Turbo walks up the sides of walls and dances on the ceiling. His girlfriend enters the room and stands there while Turbo does his slick moves upside down. Only in the two-shot she is tied into place upside down and Turbo is upright. If that sounds familiar it is because it’s a nod to a similar sequence expertly executed by Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding. Only Electric Boogaloo takes this conceit and rocks it to the boundary of cinematic coolness.

Electric Boogaloo is a movie in motion. The dance scenes, and they occur ever ten minutes or so, are so well done. The arm, leg and body moves are action incarnate – you feel like you’re watching a Walter Hill film from the 1980s.

I dare say that these two films would appeal to action fans that don’t usually watch dance films. The kinetic energy on display propels the Breakin’ films like rockets. You don’t have time to notice the thinly stitched plots. Many of the dance sequences are captured in wide shots that give the viewer a feeling for the groove, as opposed to many current dance films (like Step Up) that are quick and choppy in their editing.

Keep on eye in the background too. Ice-T (Tracy Marrow) appears in his first movie roles, and that shaking guy from the Michael Jackson “Beat It” video is doing his thing in a hospital scene.

Also on:

• Class of 1984 (4/14, Scream Factory) proffers an exploitation bent to a story about violence in high school. Director Mark Lester (Commando, Roller Boogie) presents a dark vision of teenagers that’s a cross of Blackboard Jungle and A Clockwork Orange. Perry King and Roddy McDowall arm themselves against their students. Bullets don’t merely fly. It’s all out war. One teacher uses the resources of shop class to saw off the arm of a crazed student.
• Joe 90: The Complete Series (4/14, Timeless Media) continues the release of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson Supermarionation television shows. These puppet adventures are characterized by superb sets and intriguing sci-fi plotlines. At the same time it’s kid stuff. Joe in particular is the son of a scientist. In a weird experimental device that transfers intelligence and skills from a machine to the human brain (hello Matrix) Joe becomes a kind of superhuman. The lad is then recruited by British intelligence as a secret agent. At the end of most eps, Joe is just sitting there, with his father and operator, acting like a bemused kid about to be sent to bed while they drink cognac.
• That Man From Rio and Up To His Ears (4/14, Cohen Media Group) are back-to-back Jean-Paul Belmondo/Philippe de Broca vehicles loaded with extras and in gorgeous Blu-ray transfers. de Broca had been involved with a live action adaption of Hergé’s Tin Tin but the project never materialized. Instead he found a way to channel that kind of intensive stunt driven plot in the story of an on-leave soldier (Belmondo) who gets involved in a globetrotting adventure involving his g.f. (Françoise Dorléac) and a stolen Amazonian statue. Rio de Janeiro of course appears as a character but so does the amazing architecture of Brasília (a pre-planned city then only a few years old). The movie itself is the template for Raiders of the Lost Ark, not to mention Romancing the Stone. Up to His Ears, while based on a Jules Verne story and with exotic foreign locales, is only a shadow of That Man From Rio.

— Michael Bergeron

Willow Creek (Dark Sky Films, 9/9) makes me want to return to the filmmaking oeuvre of Bobcat Goldthwait. Each film Goldthwait makes just cements his reputation as one of the great iconoclastic film directors. Movies like The World’s Greatest Dad (with the scripts odd parallel to its star Robin Williams and his suicide) and God Bless America are as stand alone in their satire of American society as a movie like Network. Actually Willow Creek is pretty normal compared to everything else Goldthwait has helmed. Nowhere to be found are drunken clowns, suicide, sex with animals, or platonic spree killers.

Willow Creek, California is the gateway to Bigfoot territory. The film Willow Creek takes the conceit of a found footage genre exercise and finds a way to make comments about the actual area and its obsession with a Sasquatch tourist economy while also maintaining the requisite amount of actual suspense. A commentary track with Goldthwait and stars Alexie Gilmore and Bryce Johnson contains equal amounts of humor and behind the scenes stories.

The Midnight Special (Time Life/ 9/9) was a late night concert series that aired on NBC on Fridays starting in 1972. This 6-disc release contains an incredible amount of rock music being performed with as much gusto as some of the bands ever mustered. There’s also an 11-disc a well as a single disc edition.

The hosts range from Wolfman Jack to Little Richard to Helen Reddy. Somehow watching Golden Earring perform “Radar Love” or Aerosmith playing “Train Kept a Rollin’” has an energy that makes you realize that rock music had a golden era (and it’s long gone). Featurettes are solid especially the Alice Cooper interview. With over 500 minutes spanning the show’s nine-year run you’re bound to find multiple favorite moments.

Hangman Also Die! (Cohen Media Group, 9/9) finds Fritz Lang doing what he does best. Creating a compelling mystery thriller while weaving the tale together with moody lighting. Hangman Also Die! chronicles the assassination of a Nazi despot in Czechoslovakia and the subsequent Gestapo reprisals, all based on then current events. There are betrayals, double agents, and underground patriots all against the backdrop of WWII.

Lang specialized in World War II set stories at the actual time of said conflicts; movies like Man Hunt and Ministry of Fear. Hangman Also Die! comes off more serious than the others. The cast includes Brian Donlevy, Anna Lee, and Walter Brennan (who had by then already won three Oscars for acting and yet turns in an incredible performance as a scholar sentenced to death by the Nazis). The script is the only time Bertolt Brecht, who like Lang had fled Germany, wrote an original adaptation for Hollywood. The good guys are heroic and the bad guys are flamboyant (think Inglourious Basterds). The Hays Code is gracefully swept under the rug.

The Czech people face a constant threat as the occupying forces play a cat and mouse game with the populace. Until the assassin turns himself in they will kill civilians on a daily basis. Extras include commentary and a featurette that examines the time during which the story unfolds.

— Michael Bergeron

The Blu-ray transfer is sharp, if not a long time coming. Brian De Palma’s film fit so well into the musical zeitgeist of the mid-70s mixing genres that included doo-wop, surf rock, and death metal. De Palma has always worked with certain actors, while discovering others (like De Niro who appeared in more than one early De Palma flick). Here De Palma regulars Gerrit Graham and William Finley provide two of their best roles, Graham as Beef, an egotistical rocker, and Finley in the titular role.

Paul Williams also stars and composes the music. Jessica Harper owns the show while she’s singing. Williams it should be noted was already a hit songwriter and this film rebooted his film career (he was a child star) and was the first of many great soundtracks he created (Others that would follow include Bugsy Malone, A Star is Born, “The Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie, and Ishtar.) The Blu-ray disc includes newly recorded interviews and commentary with the principals.

A second DVD disc contains a doc on the making of the film, which was hampered by four lawsuits before it could be released. There’s also an amazing 72-minute interview with Williams conducted by Guillermo Del Toro that goes in-depth into Williams’ career in the manner of the recent documentary Paul Williams Still Alive. All in all, an excellent addition to the classic movie shelf.

Queen Margot (Cohen Media Group, 8/24) has been restored in 4K resolution from the original 35mm negative. This version also adds about 20-minutes of footage that was cut from the American release in 1994. Director Patrice Chéreau, and Danièle Thompson, adapt the story from the novel by Alexandre Dumas père. The historical characters include Charles IX, Catherine de Médicis, Henri de Navarre, and Margaret of Anjou among others, all played to perfection by an international cast featuring Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil, Jean-Hughes Anglade, Virna Lisi, Jean-Claude Brialy, Thomas Kretschmann, and Asia Argento.

The story was made into films previously in the early silent era, and with Jeanne Moreau in the early 1950s. Contemporary viewers will recognize the machinations of power and religious persecution set in Medieval and Renaissance times from cable series like Game of Thrones or The Tudors. Make no mistake though; Queen Margo is like The Godfather of historical dramas, mixing historic carnage and histrionic exposition in equal measure. Thousands of Huguenots were killed after the marriage Margot and Henri. Queen Margot revels in the costumes and manners of its characters; it’s really a grand epic that blends established fact with fictionalized versions of same.

In particular the death of one character occurs after they read a book the pages of which have been treated with arsenic. That plot point will also be familiar to fans of the novel and film The Name of the Rose. The victim literally dies sweating blood, drenching their bed sheet red. Also the way the characters look and move just feels authentic to the era. Many of the men including the king of France sport long hair while others have a habit of wearing a style of collar called ruffs that lend a sense of credulity to their fashion.

The Blu-ray includes commentary by film scholar Richard Peña that points out the historical bullet points, like how The Louvre was the then royal palace. Accompanying booklet contains a couple of interviews with Chéreau.

— Michael Bergeron

Herzog is so prolific you could box a set of an equal number of films he’s done in the new century. In fact his latest feature, Queen of the Desert, premieres this fall starring Robert Pattison, Nicole Kidman and James Franco. Another film, Rescue Dawn, which Herzog made in 2024, is a narrative version of his earlier doc Little Dieter Needs to Fly.

In the commentary for Little Dieter, Herzog explains how he’d originally wanted to do the fictional version but was only able to raise funds for the documentary. The commentary tracks in and of themselves provide hours of listening pleasure and fill in a lot of blanks. Most of the films feature commentary, some with different German and English tracks. The commentary for Dwarfs and Fata Morgana teams up Crispin Glover with Herzog. There’s also extras like the German television doc Herzog in Africa, which accompanies Cobra Verde, itself an indictment of the slave trade with a blazing lead turn by Klaus Kinski.

Kinski figures prominently in six of the films. My Best Fiend chronicles their turbulent relationship that starts with Aguirre. In Best Fiend Herzog admits that the South American Indian extras seriously offered to kill Kinski as a favor to the director. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) was a perennial favorite at repertory houses and I must have seen it a dozen times in the ‘70s and ‘80s, at which time such theaters were pushed aside by VHS rental stores and cable television. But I hadn’t seen it in over 20 years, and the Blu-ray transfer brought back all the great memories of this epic journey up the Amazon by crazy conquistadors searching for gold in the 1500s flick. Taking atmospheric cues from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, we witness Aguirre (Kinski) mutiny against the expedition’s leader and his subsequent journey up the river of no return. Coppola’s journey in Apocalypse Now bears more than one similar scene.

Back in 1992, I was invited by the local Goethe Institute to have lunch with Herzog (along with Chronicle film critic Jeff Millar) at Little Pappasito’s on Richmond. Herzog was in town showing his then new Iraq war doc Lessons of Darkness at the Rice Media Center. In Lessons, Herzog’s free-floating camera wanders over the vast landscape dotted with fires and oil rivers. Herzog spoke of the time his mentor Lotte Eisner (who also narrates Fata Morgana) had a stroke and instead of flying from Berlin to Paris he walked the distance in a straight line over a period of four weeks, knowing that she would not die during that time. And she didn’t. Herzog also talks about this incident on the Fata Morgana commentary.

Herzog also talked about a film that at the time he had recently wrapped, but is not on this set and is rarely screened, and in fact is a bit of a mountain-climbing potboiler. Herzog has all but disowned the film. Cerro Torre: Schrei aus Stein (Scream of Stone) feature a cast that includes Mathilda May, Brad Dourif and Donald Sutherland. Herzog recounted how he and members of the crew were caught in an avalanche and dug themselves into the snow and waited over 50-hours before they were rescued. Herzog is a filmmaker that talks the talk and walks the walk.

— Michael Bergeron

The Beatles only have an oeuvre of five films in which they appeared together: A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Yellow Submarine, Magical Mystery Tour (a British television movie), and Let It Be. With the exception of the latter all of their films are available in authorized Blu-ray editions.

Let It Be is a sort of curiosity in the manner in which it’s treated, almost pariah like. That documentary which chronicles the last release the Beatles recorded has already been released on VHS (back in the day) and is available on bootleg DVD copies. Perhaps the fact that it shows them in the heat of breaking up prevents it current trajectory. Perhaps one day Let It Be will see its Fear and Desire release. The common conception is that Yoko Ono broke up The Beatles. That couldn’t be any further from the truth. The Beatles broke up because after manager Brian Epstein died John, George and Ringo wanted to go with Allen Klein as their new money manager and Paul wanted to go with his father-in-law from his relation with Linda Eastman, whose dad was an entertainment lawyer. The only way the lads from Liverpool could get the royalties they deserved was to disband, liquidate The Beatles assets, and start anew on their separate career paths. Let It Be captures the quartet in the midst of this quandary.

Paul McCartney would go on to direct Magical Mystery Tour with Ringo Starr as the Director of Photography. In A Hard Day’s Night Ringo can be seen holding a 16mm camera. There are supplemental films, not directly Beatles projects, which for the moptop maven should be checked out. That would include the fictional narratives Backbeat (about Stu Sutcliffe and the Hamburg days) and The Hours and Times, a one-hour film that theorizes about the relation between Lennon and Epstein. There’s also the 1964 documentary What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. helmed by Albert and David Maysles and concentrating on their initial American tour.

A Hard Day’s Night burst onto the scene by depicting a musical group in a way they’d seldom been seen. Sure, movies from the beginning of the cave man days exist that depict musical acts in their own plotline, but the mainstay of musical performers was as cameo appearances in films like The Girl Can’t Help It (1956, featuring Julie London, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, among others).

AHDN is The Beatles on their own terms. They crack wise and they run from screaming mobs of fans. Maybe Frank Sinatra had screaming fans a generation previously and who’s to say that some mad medieval monk didn’t have a horde of leaping ladies hanging on to his verse.

A Hard Day’s Night features several new songs (at the time) that were specifically written for the soundtrack. AHDN may be the ultimate cowbell Beatles song. Curiously one track was shot but left out of the film, a track that also features predominant cowbell – “You Can’t Do That.” That song in its outtake version is included in the new Criterion Collection release of A Hard Day’s Night (6/24).

The Criterion release comes in a dual-format Blu-ray and DVD package and a regular DVD release; included are three sound mixes, 5.1 and Stereo and Mono that will test the limits of your particular sound systems. There’s also a doc on the making of the film chock full of news footage of the Fab Four that’s hosted by Phil Collins who was, as a young lad, an extra in AHDN.

One of the most interesting aspects of AHDN is how the individual members of the band are introduced. George gets one song. But it’s Ringo who takes center stage when the movie actually goes from docu-drama to narrative. Starr’s making the rounds of quaint mod clothing stores when he finds himself besieged by fans. He ducks out in an overcoat but subsequently gets arrested, a mere hour before The Beatles are to perform before studio cameras. The whole rest of the film revolves around getting Ringo to the freedom of the soundstage.

Compare the excitement seen in A Hard Day’s Night to the exultation of watching bootleg copies of The Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show. The best versions are Japanese.

There’s plenty of surreal satire bounding forth from AHDN, especially in a scene where Harrison auditions for a magazine ad and totally destroys the project manager’s conception of hipness. I’ve been told that the MFAH intends to play this film loud.

–Michael Bergeron