Scheduled for July 26th is Almost Human (1974), one of the popular Italian gritty and extremely violent crime dramas of the early ’70s. Directed by Umberto Lenzi, the film stars Henri Silva and is presumably not for the faint of heart. A review of the upcoming DVD can be found here.
Also out on the 26th is the 1981 actioner The Amateur, starring John Savage as a CIA desk jockey who goes beee-serk after terrorists kill his fiancée. Co-stars Christopher Plummer and Ed Lauter and probably has a twist surprise where Savage learns that somebody he trusted has betrayed him.
July 26th also sees the release of Raging Sharks, the first DTV killer shark movie in, it must be, several weeks now. It stars Corey Nemic and Corbin Benson, so you know it has to be good. Plus it’s got a sci-fi angle involving spaceships (!).
August 9th brings us the short-lived but fondly remembered Fox TV series Profit, featuring a very disturbed capitalist. It was probably ahead of its time, and would quite possibly have been a very successful HBO series now.
September 6th sees the release of Guide for the Married Man, a typically strenuous ’60s Hollywood sex farce starting Walter Matteau and David Morse hashing over the best way to cheat on one’s wife and not get caught. Like Stanley Kramer’s overripe It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, this Gene Kelly (!) directed piece contains numerous cameos by old school comedy icons: Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Joey Bishop, Sid Caesar, Art Carney, Jayne Mansfield, Carl Reiner, Phil Silver, Louis Nye, Terry-Thomas, Marty Ingels and Star Trek’s Majel Barret (!). It’s probably most worth seeing as a time capsule piece, but if that’s your bag, here it is.
October 4th sees a box set (!) of those not very good but strangely hypnotic Inger Nilsson Pippi Longstocking films. The films have already been released separately.
October 18th will see the release of Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1994), one of his ‘experiment’ films, in that it was largely shot entirely upon the titular craft. Torpedoed by the Krauts, one of the survivors may be a Nazi spy, setting up a nice paranoid tableau. Good anecdote: Star Tallulah Bankhead was a Bohemian sort, and with the tight quarters, it was soon obvious to people on the set that she wasn’t wearing panties. Supposedly somebody on the set went to the director and asked that he remedy the situation, and Hitchcock replied, “I don’t know if that’s hair, wardrobe or make-up.””
October 25th sees (Yay!) the release of a third mega-set of 60 Warners Cartoons, the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 3.
