Not much going on this week, as the companies are still letting our wallets recover from the holidays.
The pick of the week is Retromedia’s The Dr. Mabuse Collection. Mabuse was an early prototype for the supervillain of the type James Bond made famous. The first Mabuse film was made back in the ’20s by German master filmmaker Fritz Lang. He made another before fleeing the country after the Nazis took power, and returned to Germany in 1960 to make another, The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse. These are all available on DVD, and in very nice editions with commentaries and such. These are great films, and any genre fan should give them a look.
Following 1,000 Eyes, they began cranking out a bunch of increasingly cheesy Mabuse movies. David Kalat, the established American authority on these films, says the German language originals are pretty much lost. (That’s right, films made in the ’60s are lost!) However, they were released to the States in the typically dubbed forms, and this latest collection offers three of these, dubbed and in full screen. If I thought there was a change that we’d get original language, widescreen editions of these, I’d say wait. Since that seems unlikely, however, you take what you can get, and at least here you get three short programmers for a single price.
Retromedia is also offering this week The Giant Majin, a set featuring two of the three Daimajin films. These were period movies made by Toho, and feature a giant war god statue that eventually comes to life at the end of the movies to punish that film’s featured tyrant. They are pretty much alike, but the fun is the big f/x sequences at the end when the feudal lords use primitive firearms and gunpowder bombs and such in their failed attempts to ward off Majin’s rather fierce justice.
As noted, there are three of these, not two, and they are already available in a set offering the original language tracks and gorgeous widescreen transfers. Here we get two movies, dubbed and in full screen. I was going to rail against this, but on second thought, nostalgia fans might well like to see and hear these films as they saw them on TV when they were kids. Personally, I’d advise getting the Daimajin set instead, but hey, whatever rocks your boat.
10 & Wolf is probably a lame DTV gangster flick, but look at the cast: James Marsden (Cyclops from the X-Men movies), Brian Dennehy, Dennis Hopper, Leo Rossi, Leslie Ann Warren, Piper Perabo, Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee (!) and several other b-movie actors. I’m sure several of these people are barely in the movie, but still.
Crank is the lame-looking, Michael Bay-esque action flick that came out last year.
Mr. Billion stars Terrance Hill (Super Fuzz, the Trinity movies) as a guy who inherits a billion dollars, and there’s crooks who want the money, and zaniness results. I don’t know, I saw the trailer several years ago, so I don’t know that much about it. I do know it’s attempt to pass itself off as taking place in American, ala Super Fuzz, was pretty unconvincing. Co-stars Valerie Perrine, Jackie Gleason, Slim Pickins, Chill Wills, R. G. Armstrong, Leo Rossi (again!), Dick Miller…OK, I’ve got to see this.
Pingback: FilmBuffStuff » Dr. Mabuse Collection()