Here we are again! In 2024 so many horrible, tragic
and cosmically idiotic things have happened around the globe, especially in the
US and South Korea. I have little reason
to believe that 2025 would somehow be a complete turnaround. Most likely, we will be forced to bear
witness to some devastating, or if we are lucky enough, merely ridiculous and
frustrating consequences of the “democratic decisions” by the complacent (especially
American) people made in the last year. And yet the fact remains that 2024 was
incontrovertibly one of the most bountiful years I have ever experienced as a
collector of films presented in physical media.
I am not willing to disclose actual numbers, but the
amount of Blu Rays and 4K UHD discs (I did acquire about a score of DVDs as
well, most of them donations, gifts and merchandise samples from the Korean
Film Archive, Korean filmmakers, production companies and friends) purchased
and otherwise procured in 2024 exceeded that from 2023 by some forty percent.
My guess is that this is a one-shot happenstance, unlikely to be repeated in
this or subsequent years, but who knows? It goes without saying that it was exponentially more difficult to
select twenty titles out of last year’s amazing roster.
Why so many titles for 2024 in particular is not a
question easy to answer, either. It might be that I have finished writing (at least the
first draft, although still some ways to go before I see it published as a
physical entity) my second book and was gearing up for watching more movies in
the coming months, but I doubt it. Watching cinema has never been affected by how “busy” I am with other
things. Nor it has really affected the
performance of my day job. If anything, the data shows that academic
productivity in terms of my quarter-century-spanning career had always been
enhanced, rather than negatively impacted, by intensification of my
movie-watching activities. Motion pictures, or K-pop music or manga for that
matter, have never been “distractions” in my life. Endless bureaucratic works we have to do as
(American) “academics” are far greater “distractions” from my job as a
researcher and a teacher than movie-watching could ever be.
For those who stumble onto my blog for the first time
somehow, this list
is exactly what it says it is, My Favorite Blu Rays and 4K UHD Blu Rays of 2024,
and the selection process is fundamentally, aggressively subjective, one might say self-centered. The list is not beholden to “objective”
assessments of the archival values of the items discussed herein, although the
latter are certainly factors for consideration.
Nor is it beholden to the critical consensus for “greatness” or
“excellence” of the films found in these discs.
There is no rule as to how “old” a motion picture
represented here should be. Still, as anyone who reads my blog would
immediately grasp, the majority of what I do here is examination, collection
and appreciation of “classic” cinema, or just plain old movies. As Djuna put it memorably and succinctly, all
movies are old movies. The moment you
have watched a pristine 2025 film it has become an “old” movie for you. So technically a film released in 2024 could
be included in the list, but only when it fits the most important criterion for
selection in this list, that is, giving me
the sense of (re)discovery, surprise or confirmation (of what I had suspected or anticipated). There are no etched-on-the-stone rules here,
other than the ones I make up as I please.
I should add, too, that this is also a collector’s
list, not a movie-watcher’s list. The production quality, the design, the
packaging, the commentaries, the supplements, the letterings and signages of the discs
all matter, perhaps not as much as the movies themselves, but they play
non-trivial roles in my appreciation of these titles. In short, please do not consider this
list as “the best Blu Rays” or “the best films” of 2023, however you construe
the term “best.” I am thoroughly not
interested in that kind of list.
I am delving into the list now. There will be a
Korean-language list, which mostly but not exactly replicates the English one,
uploaded at M’s Desk perhaps a week or two later. By the way, I have actually come to wonder
about why I keep Q Branch strictly English-only, so I might experiment by
uploading a Korean-language version here as well. What I am not going to do is posting a
bilingual version, since I never directly translate my Korean-language writings
into English or vice versa.
21. Sleep (2023, Curzon, Region B)
OK, right off the bat I am here including a
contemporary film, theatrically released just two years ago. Sleep seems
to be discussed in its country of origin as the last film featuring great
performances of the late actor Lee Sun-Kyun (best known to the foreign viewers
as the father of the wealthy family in Parasite). Directed by Jason Yu (Yu Jae-seon), a protégé
of Bong Joon-ho, Sleep is, on the most obvious level, a top-notch
psychological thriller sympathetically focused on a pregnant, young wife played
with gusto and knife-sharp tensions by Jung Yu-Mi (Kim Ji Young Born in 1982,
Train to Busan), one of the most interesting and talented actresses
working in South Korea today. The Curzon
Blu Ray of Sleep, along with Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (also
released in the UK in a deluxe boxset from Third Window Films), is a strong
testament that high-quality Korean horror/psychological thrillers now
constitute a mainstay of the global genre-oriented viewership, if anyone still
need any such reminder. It comes with
the two award-winning short films directed by Jason Yu, Video Message
(2015) and The Favor (2018).
20. Lips of Blood (1975, Powerhouse Indicator, 4K UHD
Blu Ray)
I think I had to include at least one title from a
plethora of 4K remastered erotic Euro-horror titles of Jean Rollin issued last
year from Indicator. As per usual with a Rollin opus, Lips of Blood
feature soft-lensed vistas of medieval and early modern European ruins, many
shots of nude women, skulking around draped in see-through blue and red sheer
scarfs, often sporting pointy canines ready to be sunk into the necks of their
(male) prey. Technically a vampire-themed horror film (By the way, Rollin was
perfectly capable of making a more conventional horror, a good example of which
is The Grapes of Death: yes, the movie in which a couple of French
beer-drinkers survive a wine-induced zombie epidemic because they hate
wine), Lips of Blood evokes a sense of wistful nostalgia, surprisingly
affective and melancholy. It reminds one
of later films dealing with vampirical preservation of eternal youth such as Let
the Right One In, but its strikingly poetic and, some might say,
somnambulist stylization is impossible to mimic by anybody else.
Indicator’s package includes a 77-page booklet with
critical essays by Maitland McDough and Jeff Billington, a text interview with
Annie Brilland (also known as Annie Belle, who had passed away just last year,
R. I. P.) and other archival source materials. The 4K UHD itself is also stacked with hours of staff and cast
interviews, and an audio commentary with the ubiquitous Stephen Jones and Kim
Newman.
19. Curse of the Dog God (1977, Mondo Macabro, Region
A).
A “dog god” (inugami) has been a source of more
than a few folk horror films hailing from Japan. This late-‘70s entry from
director Ito Shunya,
a Toei genre film veteran, best known to English-speaking
viewers as the mastermind behind The Female Convict 701: Scorpion series,
is a crazy melange of wildly diverse elements of the Japanese genre cinema,
from the ages-old trope
of an angry local
god’s curse whose shrine was sullied by
clueless city residents, a weirdly sincere environmentalist message, blatant sleaze assaulting
the viewers with permed-hairdo, disco pants and other features of ‘70s fashion,
economical but never-cheap-looking special effects, and capped with one of the
wackiest variations on The Exorcist-influenced possessed child plot
device. All this is filmed in a
jaw-droppingly majestic widescreen cinematography incorporating extensive
location shooting in Mie and Nara Prefectures.
Among numerous BD & 4K releases of lesser-known Japanese genre films
I have collected in 2024, Dog God was the most amazing discovery, partly
due to its utterly illogical amalgamation of seemingly incompatible genre
tropes, and possibly the most entertaining.
18. Over the Edge (1979, Shout! Factory, Region A).
One of those ‘70s socially critical genre films that I
had somehow missed out, I was finally able to catch up with Jonathan Kaplan’s Over
the Edge, issued from the Shout Select line. Now famous for the debut film for Matt
Dillon, the film is totally unlike its more glamorous, Hollywood-ish poster
prominently featuring the eventual star. Shout! Factory’s borderline-scary Blu Ray cover more accurately captures
its tone, almost a dystopian science fiction in its sharp focus on the
barrenness of culture and breakdown of American suburban communities, in which
teens are bored to the point of psychosis, living out their lives in a
fictional but familiar Western American town, New Granada.
The Blu Ray title is a bona fide special
edition with active participations from Kaplan, screenwriters Charlie Haas (Matinee)
and Tim Hunter (River’s Edge) and actors Michael Kramer, and a long-form
documentary on the making and meaning of the film, “Wild Streets + Narrow
Minds.” This release is a very welcome piece in the puzzle for me in
reconstructing the evolution of New American Cinema into ‘80s from its most
experimental and socially critical phase of early to mid-‘70s.
17. Devil Girl from Mars (1954, Studio Canal, Region
B).
I happened upon this title many decades ago, largely
due to the description of its big, hunkering tin-toy robot towering over its befuddled-looking
cast members. As far as I could tell
from the synopses available, it appeared to be a camp-fest of the lowest order,
a crummy British equivalent of, say, Mesa of Lost Women, made around the
same time. What I actually got in a
restored HD presentation from Studio Canal, turned out to be another example of
the British pulp sci-fi, professionally put together and pulsating with the
gender-conflict tensions, its alien antagonist Nyah essayed with a surprising
level of menace and dignity by Patricia Laffan (Quo Vadis). It is not a rediscovered masterpiece of
course, and it is blatantly pulpish if not juvenile compared to, say, It Came
from Outer Space (another potential candidate for this list), but I was
pleasantly taken aback by its quality as a low-rent sci-fi that nonetheless do
not condescend to its viewers. The
ubiquitous Kim Newman must be a huge fan of this film, as he contributes an
enthusiastic defense of Devil Girl as well as a commentary along with
Barry Forshaw.
16. Beijing Watermelon (1989, Kani Releasing, Region
A).
A surprise release as well, from the East Asian art
film specialty label Kani (“crab” in Japanese) Releasing, is another deeply
humanistic and liberal-minded Japanese comedy-drama from Obayashi Nobuhiko (House,
Sada). A Japanese vegetable shop
owner becomes a den father to a group of PRC students living in late ‘80s
Japan. The film traces his relationship with these young Chinese men and women,
and climaxes with his and his wife’s trip to China. Obayashi turned a real-life tragedy that
prevented him from location-shooting in Beijing, i.e. the Tiananmen Square
incident, into an expressionistic set piece, breaking the fourth wall and the
lead actor Bengal directly addressing the viewers. Gentle, clear-eyed and grounded in the life
rhythms of ordinary middle-class Japanese citizens, Beijing Watermelon
is an ode to the cinema of possibility, the power of motion pictures to dream a
better world, a world in which compassion and small gestures of friendship
ultimately triumph.
The Kani Blu Ray
includes an interview with Obayashi’s daughter Chigumi, and a booklet led by
Aaron Gerow’s critical analysis coupled with a fascinating reproduction of the
sequence meant to unfold in China in the original screenplay.
15. Lone Star (1996, Criterion Collection, 4K UHD Blu
Ray).
This
title hails from my old memories of being moved to tears in a theater watching
Elizabeth Pena and Chris Cooper’s bittersweet yet hopeful interaction at the
end of the film. Can a film like this be made today? Possibly, but it would
then presumably take the form of a multigenerational Netflix series, which has
its advantages but is not a panacea to the problems of having to tell “big
stories” in a limited time frame. Great theatrical feature films did the job
just fine. I am loathe to see screenwriters abandoning the format of shorter
films taking on large, multicharacter narratives in a tightly orchestrated
format without losing the scale of the perspective. John Sales is just the man to do this
properly, navigating the intertwined lives of Mexicans, Mexican Americans and
White Texans, with particularly memorable turns by Pena, Cooper and superbly
villainous Kris Kristofferson, a frighteningly racist cop whose smirk donned
during the acts of casual murder and violence seems so self-satisfied it
appears almost serene.
Criterion’s
4K UHD presentation does not gobsmack us the way some of its 4K titles have
done, but all the same its curation is impeccably respectful. The most important supplement is a John
Sales-Gregory Nava interview that, at 40 minutes, provides an excellent
overview of the position of Lone Star as a “borderland” film that engages with
the “Hispanic” side of the screenwriter’s fascinating career.
13-14. Godzilla
(1954, Criterion Collection, 4K UHD Blu Ray)/Godzilla Minus One (2023,
Toho Pictures, 4K UHD Blu Ray).
This year’s “cheat” is the pairing of these two films,
the one and only original Godzilla (Gojira), still occasionally assigned
to my undergraduates as an exemplary filmic representation of the atomic bomb
experience as well as of the socio-political milieu of the immediate postwar
Japan, and the 2023 Toho reincarnation of Godzilla, not the Americanized,
slightly anthropomorphic beastie deprived of its historical context, but a
faithful return to its source, resituating the narrative in the
alternative-universe postwar Japan where abject despair and cautious hope for
the future vied for dominance of the Zeitgeist.
The latter film went on to win the special effects for Oscar, but its
true merit can be appreciated, I would argue, only when it is properly positioned
in dialogue with the 1954 originator of the Big Godz mythology.
I have seen Gojira so many times that I lost
the count, but it was utterly worth it to purchase yet another iteration of the
classic film, this time Toho-supplied 4K UHD remaster, which does not change
its overall impression but adds tremendously to the viewing experience, bringing
as close as yet possible to watching it in a film theater projected from a
pristine print unmarred by passages of time.
As a practicing historian of modern Japan as well as a fan of Japanese kaiju
(a term, thanks to Guillermo Del Toro, bendito sea tu corazon, no longer
consigned to a generic English translation “monster”) -tokusatsu
(special effects) media products, no real justification was there for not
including these titles.
12. The Roaring Twenties (1939, Criterion Collection,
4K UHD Blu Ray).
Earlier in the last year, I had anticipated the new 4K
restoration of Howard Hawk’s Scarface, also from Criterion, to easily win
one of the top slots in this list. When
the lid was open, though, I was less impressed by it, even though it could
still have made its way into the My Favorite Thirty Blu Ray list. Instead, I was thoroughly galvanized by Raoul
Walsh’s unabashedly “pop” take on the Prohibition, the Great Depression and the
crime spree they inspired. The film’s
take is aggressively anti-Prohibitionist, almost celebrating the derring-dos of
the First World War-veteran gangsters played by James Cagney and Humphrey
Bogart. Outrageously entertaining, with
the dialogue so snazzy that you could cut papers with it and superbly aggressive,
witty and economical montage sequences, The Roaring Twenties is a beauty
to behold in Criterion’s 4K UHD presentation.
11. The Outcasts (1982, British Film Institute, Region
B).
Why this film was not included in the second volume of
All The Haunts be Ours (see below), I am not sure, although after having
seen it, I could see that it does not snugly fit in with the usual definition
of “folk horror” either. Robert-Wynn
Simmon’s Ireland-lensed Outcasts defies being pigeonholed into a box. On
one level, it is a rough-hewn dark folk tale about a bogeyman character Scarf
Michael, and an ostracized young woman Maura’s ability to communicate with him,
exploring her psychological isolation and sexuality (without being explicit
about it). On another level, The Outcasts is strikingly experimental, seemingly
letting the natural environment assert its organic authority over the narrative
development or characterization we would expect from a commercial film, culminating
in its haunting, unexpectedly bleak denouement.
The BFI Blu Ray presentation, while not exactly
remastered to a pristine quality as some of the titles here have been, is highly
respectful and comes with a new scholarly commentary by Diane Rodgers, a new
interview with Wynne-Simmons and his early (1964) short film
The Fugitive.
10. El Vampiro: Two Bloodsucking Films from Mexico
(1957-1958, Powerhouse Indicator, Region Free).
Following on the footsteps of Powerhouse Indicator’s
series of classic Mexican genre films (some of which used to be available as
DVDs released through the now regrettably defunct Casa Negra label), this pair
of films, starring vehicles for the now-familiar Abel Salazar (Brainiac)
but also featuring the striking, chiseled-statue-like German Robles as the
caped and tall vampire Count Lavud and uber-attractive Adriane Welter (also in
the almost-made-it-into-the-list Untouched with the great Ricardo
Montalban). Drawing upon the ‘30s
Universal Dracula films and paving way toward the more sensual, charismatic
Christopher Lee’s iteration in England, the two El Vampiro films are
fascinating slices of Gotica mexicana, beautifully photographed and
staged.
I cannot think of any other label than Indicator to do
justice to the classic Mexican genre films at this point. Could I entreat them to remaster and release
Arturo Ripstein’s Tiempo de morir (1966) and El castillo de la
pureza (1972) at some point?
9. Pharaoh (1966, Second Sight, Region Free)
An amazing example of cultural mediation and artistic
innovation that literally span the globe, Pharaoh (Faraon) is a 1966
Polish cinematic adaptation of one of the nation’s classic 19th century novels
by Boleslaw Prus, set under the reign of the fictional Pharaoh Ramses
XIII. Like perhaps a Vietnamese or
Korean modern writer making use out of the ancient histories of Chinese
dynasties, Prus’s novel reimagined the ancient Egypt into an almost abstract
canvas on which an archetypal narrative of the deterioration of a state, amid
its contestations with religious (ideological) authorities, forces of economic
transaction and appropriation as well as clashes of the personal ambitions and
frustrations of major political actors, men and women, could be writ large. The adaptation by Jerzy Kawalerowicz retains
this basic orientation, although I would not read too much into the parallel
between the Egypt depicted herein and the Eastern European political situations
of ‘60s. The film’s power overwhelmingly
comes from its distinctive visuals, isolated pools of darkness inside the
pyramids and palaces against the pale beige of the endless vistas of sand dunes
(many sequences were filmed in location at the actual Egyptian sites),
counterpointed by insidiously glossy golds, powerfully suggesting a world both
familiar and forbiddingly alien.
It is
borderline surreal that Pharaoh was made only three years after the
Hollywood extravaganza Cleopatra (which, by the way, is not a terrible
film by all means). Second Sight’s Region B Eastern European cinema
releases are another staple that perennially occupy a position in my year’s end
list, and this time Pharaoh takes the expected slot.
8. I Walked with a Zombie/The Seventh Victim (1943,
Criterion Collection, 4K UHD Blu Ray).
I must confess that, despite owning a complete DVD
boxset of Val Lewton thrillers put out by Warner Brothers many years ago, I had
not watched The Seventh Victim until Criterion released it as the other
pair to the much better-known I Walked with a Zombie. Perhaps it was just as good that I had to
experience it for the first time via the label’s sparkling 4K UHD
presentation. This is one of those
exceedingly rare films that completely defy description, demolish any
effort to figure out their “points,” and leave an utterly vexing series of
imprints in your brain: unforgettable and flummoxing. Needless to say, I Walked with a Zombie,
which also renders itself to a multiplicity of interpretations in relation to
colonialism, the “whiteness” and racial discourse, and gender dynamics, has
never been seen, at least by me, in such a resolutely majestic form.
Masterpieces both, yet as elusive to define and
categorize as trying to catch a catfish into a sake gourd, this pairing
showcases the impeccable sensibility and taste with which Criterion still
manages to grab the hearts (and purse-strings) of the classic movie
lovers.
7. J-Horror Rising (1999-2007, Arrow Video, Region A).
A package that I somehow had anticipated from Arrow,
given their commitment to the contemporary Japanese genre films such as
Tsukamoto Shin’ya’s complete oeuvre and the “official” Ring (Ringu)
trilogy, the J-Horror Rising collection is still a marvel to behold, given its
fidelity to the turn-of-the-century J-horror titles and its expert and
painstaking curation, with a 79-page booklet chock full of essays by Jasper
Sharp, Amber T, Eugene Thacker, Jim Harper, among others. It should not be an exaggeration to say that
most of the titles included here, primarily familiar to the viewers around the
world through the medium of VHS, have never been seen in these excellent conditions, with HD masters supplied by Kadokawa Pictures and additional
remastering done by UK’s The Engine House and R3Store (with the exception of Carved:
The Slit-Mouthed Woman, not surprisingly the only not-bad,
just-ordinary-looking title in the bunch).
The collection, comprehensive as it is, of course does
not exhaust the J-horror titles from late ‘90s/early aughts. I have my hopes up that Arrow would release
the second volume sooner than later, with such titles as Exte: Hair
Extensions, Marebito, Hypnosis, Infection, Black
House and of course, the cruel cinematic adventures of Tomie, the world’s
most famous regenerative epimorph.
6. Seven Samurai (1954, British Film Institute, 4K UHD
Blu Ray).
It might be somewhat ridiculous that Seven Samurai,
my choice for the greatest film ever made, has to sit at No. 6, but as I have
indicated above, this list is not about the historical significance or artistic
qualities of a particular film. Even
more so than Godzilla, I honestly did not expect Seven Samurai’s
4K UHD remaster would make a difference in my approach to this eternal
masterpiece, a motion picture that I ritually return to, several times every year, like a pilgrimage to a
very personal spiritual site. Well, I am
very happy to report that I was wrong.
Like other noteworthy top-tier 4K UHD presentations of classical cinema,
the BFI release let a watcher come close to re-experiencing the dazzle and
immersive power of a theatrical viewing experience, well beyond catching some
hitherto unnoticed details thanks to higher resolution.
The supplements are pretty much what we would have
expected, both archival academic contributions from the likes of Tony Rayns, the
“It is Wonderful to Create” docu and an audio commentary by Adrian Martin.
5. The Poetry of Lee Chang-dong: Four Films Collection
(1997-2010, Film Movement, Region A).
Another big surprise this year was a bundle of four
films by South Korea’s premier “literary” filmmaker Lee Chang-Dong, curated by Film
Movement label: Lee’s debut feature Green Fish (1997), Peppermint
Candy (1999), Oasis (2002) and Poetry (2010). While the latter three films are relatively
well represented in the physical media market in South Korea (nearly all South
Korean DVDs and Blu Rays are subtitled in English) but are hardly accessible in
North America. In fact, Green Fish,
presented in a jaw-droppingly resplendent remaster, is worth the price of
purchase by itself. I disclose that Green
Fish, along with Park Chan-wook’s early and nearly-forgotten film The
Trio, is one of the several South Korean films from ‘90s that I still have
stashed somewhere as VHS tapes (probably unplayable, given the conditions they
have been stored). This geopolitically
specific (set in the newly developed satellite city of Ilsan), beautifully acted
and strikingly elegiac piece of film noir would be a revelation for many
filmgoers, including but not limited to the connoisseurs of Korean cinema whose
familiarity with the latter’s flagship titles might not chronologically extend
back into ‘90s.
It is too bad that Film Movement could not fill this
package to brim with supplementary materials, but the James Marsh-Pierce Conran
commentary on Green Fish is most welcome.
4. Classic
Tokusatsu Collection (Shout! Factory, 1956-1966, Region A).
This
collection is a like a bubble bath of pleasure that I could wade into whenever
I wish. The presentations are not the most
pristine, with two movies paired into one disc (six titles on three discs, with
the English-dubbed Terror Beneath the Sea [1966] getting its own), and
the qualities of the films are, well, variable, to say the least. Yet this special collection of Toei-produced “special
effects” (tokusatsu in Japanese) programmers puts me right into the
heart of my nostalgic fandom of the juvenile SF-fantasy that traversed the
whole gamut of visual media, from manga, animation, feature films to TV series.
The
core title for me is The Golden Bat (a.k.a. Golden Ninja,
although the superhero has absolutely zero, nada, nothing to do with “ninja” of
any stripe), Sonny Chiba-starring feature adaptation of an old kami-shibai
(“picture theater”) character, a thoroughly unlikely superhero, a skull-faced,
gold-skinned, cape-draped Atlantean mummy (!) who employs a golden bat as his scout,
and battling an apparently alien mad scientist Nazo, who comes with a pincered,
detachable mechanical hand and four multi-colored eyes that shoot four
different kinds of death rays. And of
course, it comes with a brain-meltingly catchy pop tune that is etched forever on
the cerebral cortex of many Korean kids growing up watching the Japan-Korea
co-produced animated TV show version of The Golden Bat.
Added
to this outrageous ’60 example of a bizarre but cool-beyond-belief Japanese
superhero, we have other classics— a charming kaiju action-period piece hybrid Dragon
Showdown (1966), another Sonny Chiba superhero vehicle, Invasion of the
Neptune Men (1961) in which he flies around fighting alien invaders in a
supercar, and the fantastically psychedelic, almost Willy Wonka-like swashbuckler Watari
the Ninja Boy (1965) and so on—, all considered, an absolute joy from start to
finish.
3. All the Haunts Be Ours: Volume 2 (Severin,
1954-2019, Region Free/A).
I
mean, the first volume was already crazy enough, collecting the painstakingly
remastered (for the most part) and curated nineteen films, distributed into twelve discs, from all over the world referenced in Kier-La
Janisse’s documentary
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched (2021). Well okay, here is a sequel that truly
punches through the concrete wall of complacent expectations as if it were a
wet paper bag: the volume two, an even bigger and more comprehensive compendium
of folk horror, twenty-four films from eighteen countries, spread out to thirteen
(ooh, frisson!) discs with hours and hours of supplementary materials,
and oh yeah, a 251-page “storybook,” glossily bound and gold-embossed like a
turn-of-the-century pocketbook featuring contributions from the likes of Ramsay
Campbell, Sarah Gailey, Chandra Mayor, Steve Duffy, (of course) Kim Newman, and
more.
It would take weeks if not months
for us to properly even “sample” the titles and supplementary materials
included in this gargantuan collection.
Truthfully, a few titles produced chuckles of recognition (most
prominently the biker zombie romp Psychomania), but many have been
simply unknown to me, or never been presented in such an accessible and respectfully
curated manner as far as I could see.
The highlights of the collection for me include Ishikawa Yoshihiro’s Bakeneko:
A Vengeful Spirit (1968), one of the lesser known iterations of the vengeful cat demon
subgenre: Poland’s Demon (2015), a great example of a horror trope being
employed to explore a taboo historical subject (in this case, the Holocaust):
Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf (1973), an Argentinian werewolf tale which,
believe it or not, was a theatrical hit in South Korea (not to mention in its
native country), partly due to the popularity of its hauntingly attractive music
score: November (2017), based on an Estonian folk tale and essayed in sublime monochromatic palette: Scales (2019), a mermaid story hailing
from Saudi Arabia: and the last but not the least, South Korea's Io Island [Iodo]
(1977), a genuinely bonkers, indescribable classic from the maverick Korean genius
Kim Ki-young (The Housemaid).
As far as boxset curation goes,
I truly doubt that any label could best Severin’s incredible accomplishments,
two years in a row.
2. Hitchcock The Beginning: From Silent to Sound
(Studio Canal, 1927-1932, Region Free/B).
But, All
the Haunts be Ours vol. 2 is not the overwhelming winner! How could that be?! What can I say? There were two more boxsets which could not
beat it in terms of comprehensiveness or film-geekdom but won my heart nonetheless.
Hitchcock The Beginning is not the first time good ‘ol Alfred’s late ‘20s-early
‘30s silent films and early talkies were released on physical media, but Studio
Canal’s new Blu Ray collection is simply staggering not only in its scope but
also in terms of the impeccable quality of its presentation.
The majority of silent films, including the boxing drama The Ring
(1927), The Famer’s Wife (1928) and The Manxman (1928), had been restored by the BFI National Archive in 2012, but the blazing highlight here
surely is the brand-new 4K restoration performed on both the silent and early
talkie versions of Blackmail (1929), an absolutely stunning Cornell
Woolrich-style psycho-thriller that features an astonishing incident of sexual
violence, with all “Hitchcockian” elements fully formed extending its lineage
to the director’s later films such as Frenzy. Even
the only unrestored title in the whole mix, the aggressively pulpish Murder!
(1930), its casually racist attitude (replicated in a few other films in the
set such as Rich and Strange [1931]) notwithstanding, has a couple of unmistakable
Hitchcockian sequences which are a marvel to behold, including its climax
involving a trapeze artist captured from a precariously swinging camera.
More
than any other title I laid my hands on in 2024, Hitchcock: The Beginning
provided the sheer joy of discovering the cinematic gems previous unknown to me:
and this from a filmmaker Tom Ryall in his essay in the inserted booklet (62 pages)
rightly calls “probably the best-known film director in the history of cinema.”
1. Daiei Gothic Collection: Japanese Ghost Stories
(Radiance Films, 1959-1968, Region Free/B).
So finally now
to this year’s no. 1. The magnificent
collection of supernatural films from Daiei Studio, all remastered in 4K
to blinding resplendence by the current rights holder, Kadokawa Corporation. All are known to connoisseurs of Japanese
cinema at least by their titles, but they have never been seen outside Japan in
this form, elegantly colorful, beautifully composed by master cinematographers Makita
Yukimasa and Makiura Chishi.
The only
regret is that there are only three of these magnificent films included in this
collection, all strikingly individualistic despite the familiarity of the tropes
and subjects they tackle: The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959), one of the best known
classic ghost tales in Japan and in this version directed by the swordfight genre maestro Misumi
Kenji, puts the focus on the villain of the piece, Iemon, as an almost tragic
anti-hero: Socially conscious helmer Yamamoto Satsuo’s The Bride from Hades
(1966) is kabuki-inflected, with legless ghosts floating above the fences, with
a biting film noir flavor sprinkled on a haunting tale of romantic yearning and despair: Finally, Tanaka Tokuzo’s The Snow Woman (1968) is
stunningly modern in its sympathetic portrayal of a heartbreakingly beautiful titular demon, played by Fujimura Shiho whose love for her human spouse and child
is pitted against the uncomprehending and judgmental humans.
Whew, another list somehow successfully completed! As usual, my enormous thanks to Cinesavant, Mondo Digital, DVDBeaver, Digital Bits and other reviewers who still keep the torches burning for the physical media collectors, and to a growing phalanx of labels who continue to excavate and supply these amazing titles: Radiance Films (especially this year!), Arrow Video, Severin Films, British Film Institute, Vinegar Syndrome, Powerhouse Indicator, Kani Releasing, Kino Lorber, Film Movement, Shout! Factory, Second Sight Films, Criterion Collection, Studio Canal, Mondo Macabro, Eureka! Masters of Cinema, Curzon/Artificial Eye, Korean Film Archive and many more!
Here are additional nine titles that could have
made the final list: The Wages of
Fear (1953, BFI, 4K UHD Blu Ray). Untouched (1954, Powerhouse
Indicator, Region Free). Rolling Thunder (1977, Shout! Factory, 4K UHD
Blu Ray). It Came from Outer Space (1953, Universal, 4K UHD Blu Ray). Panic
in Year Zero (1962, Radiance Films, Region B). By A Man’s Face Shall You
Know Him (1966, Radiance Films, Region B). Cruel Britannia: Three
Thrillers from the UK (1971-1974, Vinegar Syndrome, Region Free). Death Machine (1994, Kino Lorber,
Region A). Scarface (1932, Criterion Collection, Region A).
