The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 40th Anniversary

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the film's original theatrical release, Second Sight is proud to release The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Blu-ray in a stunning 4K restoration and 7.1 audio mix, making the film look and sound like never before.

The film is widely considered to be one of the finest horror films ever made and the infamy of the film's release, where it was banned in certain sections of America, has not diminished in recent years.

Directed by Tobe Hooper, who does so with great visual panache and integrity, it remains a wonder why Hooper did never become the bigger director this film promised, and instead became reliant upon working for people he influenced such as Steven Spielberg.

The film is the atypical horror movie sharing the generic conventions that was initiated by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in 1960 - the final girl, the remote location, fear of the unknown and unknowing stranger who thinks he is normal and audience intrigue, and dare we say empathy, for the villain.

Leatherface was quite probably the first iconic horror character, a forerunner for Michael Myers, Freddie Kruger, Pinhead and others. The iconography of this masked villain and the image of him twirling his trusted chainsaw in the setting Texas sun helped the film become a success; a success mirrored by a film released the previous year The Exorcist.

That film initiated the audiences apparent insatiable appetite for evil to appear on screen and the need to know more about evil intentions; the film like Psycho used supposed non-fiction material as basis for their screenplays. The legend of Ted Bundy is omnipresent over both pictures.

The film will be released as a two-disc limited edition Steelbook Blu-ray, with brand new artwork and stacked by brand new bonus features, a standard two-disc Blu-ray with reversible sleeve featuring new artwork and original US poster. All will be available from 17th November.

Features include new audio commentary with Tobe Hooper along with three other commentaries featuring among others Gunnar Hansen who played Leatherface. Numerous documentaries, deleted scenes, outtakes also feature.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre still maintains the power to shock, disturb and horrify. The chance to see it in the best restorated version ever is one not to be missed, not just for horror film aficionados but for those interested in the history and power of the motion picture.

Two disc Limited Edition Steelbook Blu-ray £22.99
Two disc Standard Edition Blu-ray £19.99

www.secondsightfilms.co.uk

Follow me @NextToTheAisle 

Les Enfants du Paradis

Originally released in 1945 at the tail end of the Second World War whilst Paris was still burning, Marcel Carne's film Les Enfants du Paradis is considered one of the greatest if not the most notable French film of all time, in the same vein and scale as Hollywood's Gone With The Wind from six years previously.

It is a rare slice of art house cinema from the French 1940s and tells the story of Parisian courtesan Garance (Arletty) and the four men who are in love with her - an aristocrat, a thief, an actor and a mime - based upon actual larger than life people from the 1820s and 1830s, where the film is based.

Carne originally released the film into two parts - beating Harry Potter and Twilight by 70 years - Boulevard du Crime and L'Homme Blanc.  As Paris was still under Nazi occupation, Carne attempted to get past censors by splitting the film in two, and then restore the film to its original length once the war was over.

It is important to understand and appreciate the lengths Carne went to in his production.  The sheer scale of the film in terms of extras, production, costume and art direction is immense and to consider that this film was done under enormous levels of oppression is all the more staggering when you see the final results.

The script written by Carne and in collaboration with Jacques Prevert, a surrealist poet is indicative of the input.  The film feels like one long poem visually and sonically due to the sumptuous score by Joseph Korma.  Carne's vision of Paris is a romantic notion of fonder times and persuasions.  The fact that the film was made shows the defiant French backbone which withstood the Nazi invasion.

Whilst the film is at times a bum-numbing 190 minutes, it does suffer from a pacing issue after all the main male characters are introduced; but the richness of the production wins out in the end, rewarding those who do stick it out.

Carne mixes all form of cinema and artistry; great soundtrack, wonderful acting with piercing dialogue and even mime performed by Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault), especially in one of the opening scenes when he performs a sequence to save Garance from a wrongful accusation of theft by a buffoon.  The scene is not rushed and allowed to gestate, to the benefit of all in view. We watch the mime, the audience in the square watch him, all are transfixed.

Carne would continue directing into the 1980s absorbing the bashing of La Nouvelle Vague, yet he would never hit the same heights of Les Enfants du Paradis - a wonderful and breathless love letter to Paris and France, when it most needed it.

Les Enfants du Paradis is released on two-disc DVD or Blu-ray by Second Sight Films on Monday 17th September.
My thanks to Aim Publicity for the check disc.

Endurance DVD review

Haile Gebrsellasie is heralded as one of the greatest athletes of all time.  Holder of 27 different world records, and hailed as the greatest long distance runner ever.  Haile hails from Ethiopia, one of the smaller African nations.

In contrast to the powerhouse of Kenyan running, with its amazing ability to have up to 8 different runners vying for just three places at major championships. Haile for a time seemed to be out on his own, one man racing for his nation against the might of another (Not too dissimilar to the race Mo Farah will face at the Olympics this summer).

Born as one of ten children, Haile had to run 10km to school every morning like most children in African countries to garner the better education.  Haile came to prominence with Gold at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart, he subsequently retained that title in the next 3 world championships coupled with his first Gold medal at the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996.

Haile was blessed by being born in a great era of long distance running; helped by great rivals such as Moses Kiptanui (Kenya) and Paul Tergat (Kenya) who he narrowly beat in Sydney to retain his 10,000m title - only the third man to do so.

Haile was blessed with having the ability to consistently run sub 60 second laps whilst also having an amazing kick in the last 200m which could overtake rivals or leave them for dust.

The film Endurance revolves around Gebreselassie upbringing in Ethiopia, what he means to people of the country and his triumph in Atlanta in attaining legendary status.

The film is beautifully shot showing the natural landscapes of Ethiopia as a mix of fairytale and harshness; it shows a young boy following in the footsteps of Gebreselassie on his way to school.  The film then intercuts footage of the legendary athlete in Atlanta as he overtakes rivals on the bend in the American heat; with native countrymen huddling round a television to witness history.

Whilst the film has a story that should be told and shared with future generations, it unfortunately does the mistake of attempting to mythologise Gebreselassie when the legend speaks for itself.

Quick sidenote, a producer is one Terence Malick who must have liked the mixture of nature with a man and how that nature makes the person who he becomes.

Endurance is directed by Leslie Woodhead, and is available from Second Sight Film on DVD from Monday 9th July

The Doom Generation

Released today on DVD is Gregg Araki's 1995 teenage road movie The Doom Generation starring Rose McGowan, James Duval and Jonathon Schaech.

Following in the footsteps of Natural Born Killers and Kalifornia, the film follows would be femme fatale Amy Blue (McGowan) with her doe-eyed boyfriend Jordan White (Duval), who get wound up with a psychopath Xavier Red (Schaech), who kills people and end up as accomplices on a road trip from hell across the Californian state highways.

Araki, is a huge film fan, but a director who in spite of his ability has never had the huge crossover hit, and watching this film you can see why.  Araki sometimes has too many ideas going on at one time, or he has too many influences running through his head and the wish to embrace and appraise said influences sometimes does a disservice to the film as a whole.

Not to say it is bad for end of the millenium directors to have influences, yet Araki does join Tarantino and Eli Roth as directors who cut and paste films based on their film viewing without having a distinctive authorial voice.  Whilst Tarantino has the uncanny ability to whip out five pages of memorable dialogue, this foregoes the lack of visual flair; and Roth falls back on the ability of shock and awe to enhance his failure to write good dialogue.

Araki has the ability to have his finger on the pulse of an ever-changing youth culture; when we first encounter Jordan and Amy it is whilst Jordan is in a moshpit and Amy is telling some guy to f off who asks her for some drugs. 

Yet you never get the impression that these drifters are apparently drifting, or they will eventually drift back to normality once Xavier is out of their lives.  Araki's penchant for a mixture of sexual exploration for the characters, combined with a healthy dose of gore does go hand in hand - in recent films post-Millenium, Araki has explored the notion of sexual politics in the youth culture from both hetero- and homosexual stances, as he did in Kaboom (2010).

This does not make the film Doom Generation, a bad one there are enough to keep you interested and it does have some great set pieces of violence in the vein of Stone's masterpiece, Natural Born Killers, yet it is very much a case of a director trying to do too much in a very short space of time.  Whereas those killers were very violent and knew that they were inherently evil, these ones are a little too reflexive and unaware of their actions.

The Doom Generation is out today from Second Sight Films courtesy of Aim Publicity

The Kingdom - DVD review

Following his outlandish outbursts at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and the prevailing awards for Kirsten Dunst, it seems almost fitting that Lars Von Trier cannot escape our conscious.  His most original television work The Kingdom (Riget) is released on Monday 4th July by Second Sight Films for the first time in DVD format, in a four disc set in their original broadcast version.

Based in the labyrinthe hospital and primarily the neurosurgical ward of Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet; the televison drama follows the buzz word chief of staff; a Swedish surgeon who bemoans the fact that in Denmark doctors and patients must share the same lift.  As the show progresses, staff and patients encounter more and more weird phenomena both physically and supernaturally, whilst two dishwashers with Down's syndrome discuss the proceedings like a modern day Greek chorus.

A few years back, Von Trier, probably the most overtly criticised director of this age, was labelled anti-American for his depiction of small town America in Dogville; after viewing The Kingdom it can be seen that Von Trier is indebted to strands of both American film and television from the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Influences ranging from Hill Street Blues, Homocide, St.Elsewhere, ER, Twin Peaks and most of the David Lynch oeuvre are all apparent in this production.

The oft-kilter angled camerawork is deliberate in disrupting the viewers equilibrium and hence makes it easier to catch the viewer off balance with the shock tactics.  Images are displayed in sepia tones, giving you a feel of a bygone age or a feel of a documentary programme.

The show was initially done in a four part series in 1994, with a later sequel in 1997, with the hope of a third part to complete the trilogy but unfortunately deaths to several key cast members especially Ernst-Hugo Järegård (who played Stig Helmer) in 1998 and the subsequent deaths of Kirsten Rolffes (Mrs Drusse) and Morten Rotne Leffers (one of the dishwashers) put those ideas on ice.  In America, the show was released as a 4 1/2 hour long film which makes the whole experience both gripping and compelling.  This DVD should not be confused with Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital which was both lamentable and labourious when broadcast in 2004, featuring a giant anteater (as you do).

The first episode does take a while to get going, as the office politics involving the high profile Helmer versus the staff who are combating him at every turn, make you feel like you are watching just another hospital drama, but the introduction of the deluded Mrs. Drusse soon starts things up and the supernatural occurences.  Von Trier (along with co-director Morten Arnfred) do not go out of their way to scare, instead the sinister edge and feel are indicative to building up suspense and save set pieces for the final episodes with powerful sequences featuring gory surgical procedures, a neurosurgeon being impregnated by a ghost, black market dealings for organs and an ambulance that appears day and night.

At times very scary and full of gore; at other times blackly comic in its humour - this DVD will be worth watching for aficionados and new fans, allowing the televisual work to be worthy of comparison to Von Trier's more illustrious and renowned cinematic work.

The special features include a portrait of Von Trier, a behind the scenes featurette, commericals directed by Von Trier and special commentaries.  With a running time of 537 minutes with English subtitles, available at £39.99RRP from Second Sight Films.

My thanks to Aim Publicity for the chance to review this title, follow them on twitter @AimPublicity