Sherlock Jr. 1924

A film projectionist longs to be a detective, and puts his meagre skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend's father's pocketwatch.

There ought to be a theater that shows nothing but perfectly preserved prints of the silent comedies of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon. There ought to be a lot of things, I guess. But anyone who thinks that silent film is nothing more than a crude and unskilled ancestor of today's motion picture need only spend some time on these great comedies to realize that, in this genre at least, the peak was reached in the 20s. Yes, there are funny movies with dialogue, but the humor is generally IN the dialogue...nobody--not the Marx Brothers, or W.C. Fields, or Abbot and Costello or the Three Stooges and nobody since--has achieved the sublime mastery of physical comedy these geniuses did. And the best of them all for pure comedy, to my mind, is Keaton. And the best of his movies is Sherlock, Jr. The dream sequence in which he becomes an actor in the film he's projecting is astonishing; the way in which this movie is a sort of window into a different and appealing age is charming--and the ending of this movie takes the breath away. Keaton made some of the great endings in film, I think. Check out "College" some time--just for the last minute or so. If you ever have the chance to see this film in a good print at the right speed with appropriate music, and you don't take that opportunity, shame shame shame. This is one I'd like to own.

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Comedy, Romance,

Death Smiles on a Murderer 1973

You have to see this movie more than once to understand and figure out what's going on.In short,after being reanimated from the dead,Greta Von Holstein(Ewa Aulin)seeks revenge on a lover who jilted her by faking a carriage accident and causing the death of its driver on the estate of the son of the man who impregnated her.She is in cahoots with the butler of the estate,who helps with a lot of her dirty work(then meets his end after she uses him).A doctor(Klaus Kinski)finds out her secret after ministering to her after the buggy accident and copies an Incan formula off of her gold pendant for his own use and fame.The pendant was made for her by her brother(with whom she had an incestuous relationship with)who brought her back from the grave after a miscarriage and inscribed her name,the year of her rebirth,and a mathematical formula for reanimation on the pendant.Greta causes the death of almost everyone in the cast,but you won't really understand anything until about halfway through the movie.And she makes sure no one is left to tell her tale!Surrealistic sound track by Berto Pisano keeps the movie on it's feet in the tradition of Phantasm.Definitely a must see!

When it comes to the giallo genre, fans can be just as obsessive in their pursuit of obscure titles as the hyper-violent, sexually deviant killers that feature in them so prominently. Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973) actually straddles the line between a typical over-the-top giallo mystery and a supernatural story straight out of the Italian Gothic tradition. Arriving with no memory at the home of a pair of wealthy landowners, Greta (Ewa Aulin) seems content to bounce between affairs with both husband and wife, covering her mysterious backstory with a trail of dead bodies, including an overly curious doctor (Klaus Kinski) convinced she holds the key to his scientific research.

Directed by sleaze-maestro Joe D'Amato (using his real name for the first time) the film is a kitchen-sink conglomeration of incest, murder, sex and super-science crafted with a sloppy sort of style. The period setting makes the film feel like a better-made cousin to some of Jess Franco's output from the era, but D'Amato's go-for-broke script holds your attention...even as you're trying to sort out just what the hell is going on! Lifting from Poe, Argento and even a dash of Warhol, the fact that Death Smiles on a Murderer attempts to inject some class into its overall crassness is what makes it so intriguing.


Arrow Video's Blu-ray transfer comes form a 2K restoration of the original camera negative, looking every bit as good as that description suggests. But the extras really seal the deal, including a fascinating peek into D'Amato's exploitation career, a lengthy interview with star Ewa Aulin, another spot-on commentary from Tim Lucas plus stills, trailers and a collector's booklet.

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Horror, Mystery, Romance,

Titanic 1997

84 years later, a 100 year-old woman named Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story to her granddaughter Lizzy Calvert, Brock Lovett, Lewis Bodine, Bobby Buell and Anatoly Mikailavich on the Keldysh about her life set in April 10th 1912, on a ship called Titanic when young Rose boards the departing ship with the upper-class passengers and her mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater, and her fiancé, Caledon Hockley. Meanwhile, a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson and his best friend Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets to the ship in a game. And she explains the whole story from departure until the death of Titanic on its first and last voyage April 15th, 1912 at 2:20 in the morning.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Oscar-nominatee Kate Winslet light up the screen as Jack and Rose, the young lovers who find one another on the maiden voyage of the "unsinkable" R.M.S. Titanic. But when the doomed luxury liner collides with an iceberg in the frigid North Atlantic, their passionate love affair becomes a thrilling race for survival. From acclaimed filmmaker James Cameron comes a tale of forbidden love and courage in the face of disaster that triumphs as a true cinematic masterpiece.

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Drama, History, Romance,