THE SUBSTANCE (2024)- Is Your Spine Sturdy Enough to Give Birth to a More Glamorous Version of You?

The Substance (UK- France, 2024). A Working Title Films/A Good Story/Blacksmith Films Co-Production. Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat. Cinematography by Benjamin Kracun. Production Design by Gladys Garot, Stanislas Reydellet. Costume Design by Emmanuelle Youchnovski. Music by Raffertie. Special Makeup Effects Artists: Pierre Olivier Persin, Olivier Alfonso, Frédéric Balmer, Marison De, Sandrine Denis, Brian Kinney. 

I initially thought about writing a Korean-language review for this film, which I obviously liked a lot despite some misgivings (discussed below), but I decided to start with an English-language one.  

The French director Coralie Fargeat scored big with her sophomore picture Revenge (2017), an outrageously harrowing tale of a rape survivor turning the tables on the perpetrators. It was almost tailor-made to court controversy, utterly unafraid of the potential accusations of exploiting female sexuality as well as of overt misandry from both self-appointed custodians of “correct” feminism and misogynistic male viewers. Talk about a “divisive” movie that can make strange bedfellows out of the sworn enemies! The Substance, the winner of the best screenplay award at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, has received a similar type of response, allegedly triggering walkouts during the screenings.   

Make no mistake, this is a full-blown body horror film: geysers of blood are showered on dozens of its cast in one hilariously overdone scene and it is not shy to display horrifying prosthetic SFX makeup on its principals, the kind of what-have-I-just-seen body transformations so extreme that in most other movies, such as Troma’s Toxic Avenger series or a Frank Henenlotter film, they would only work as sick jokes. The great thing about Fargeat’s opus is that all these excesses are presented with neither a shock-jock (at heart masculinist) comic glee nor an intellectualized, winking irony. 

Despite infusing dollops of truly funny dark humor into the film— the best bit being the hideously deformed Elisabeth (Demi Moore) shouting down her lecherous neighbor (Gore Abrams)— she is quite sincere about the organic, corporeal ways in which she unfurls the film’s horrific premise. Fargeat does not shy away from slathering the big screen with gigantic close-ups of not only Margaret Qualley’s porcelain-skinned derrières but also a hypodermic needle stabbing an arm and a purple-grey wound leaking puss.

It is also one of those horror films from female helmers— there are quite a few of them receiving global attention at this point, including Jennifer Kent (Babadook), Natalie Erika James (The Relic, Apartment 7A), Arkasha Stevenson (The First Omen), Michelle Garza Cerbera (Huesera: The Bone Woman) and Rose Glass (Saint Maud, Love Lies Bleeding)— unafraid to skirt the boundaries of tasteless exploitation and yet never losing sight of the female subjectivity. The film is ruthlessly efficient in purging it of superfluous exposition or contextual description. For instance, we never find out the “motivation” or corporate pitch behind the Substance that allows Elisabeth Sparkle to transform into her “idealized” self, Sue: we are not even sure if there is a corporation behind it, or whether this is some kind of an alien social experiment. What we get instead is a sequence that explains how the transformation process works in BIG block letters that a four-year-old could comprehend. 

The “LA” Elisabeth’s inhabits is manifestly not a real location but a spot in an ultra-stylized, I am almost tempted to say, fairy tale universe (Fargeat apparently filmed all exteriors in France). You cannot also find many other recent movies in which male chauvinistic behavior is so openly and grotesquely displayed, summarized in a shot in which the unsubtly-named TV executive Harvey (Dennis Quaid) lights a cigarette and his puckered lips are filmed to exactly look like, well, another human organ at the opposite end of the body (in equal measure cringe-inducing and funny as hell). 

And yet, as Alexandra Heller-Nicholas points out in one of the more thoughtful defenses of the film, The Substance is so viscerally honest about the aging female body that it almost becomes a documentary in this regard. At heart of the film’s power lies the two bold performances by Moore and Qualley. Moore’s sheer level of commitment to her role is frankly jaw-dropping and itself provides, meta-textually speaking, a powerful critique of the view that the film objectifies woman’s body. At 61 at the time of filming, Moore is still extremely beautiful, but she is unafraid not only to expose her vulnerably naked body to the clinical scrutiny of the camera but also to envelope herself in a series of increasingly hideous prosthetic makeup that leave little to imagination in terms of a “deteriorating and mutating female body.” Is it just me or she appears almost liberated playing these progressively grotesque versions of herself, all with their physical hindrances (hunchbacked, huge knots of swellings on her fingers, etc.)?  Qualley’s surreally gorgeous body, again in full display in its nakedness, was apparently prosthetically enhanced but she is also good in projecting joyful callousness that suggests a mind gripped by substance addiction.

Ma Rong, my graduate student, pointed out that the Elisabeth-Sue relationship, in its graphic and sometimes unexpectedly touching details, reminds her of one between an ailing, deteriorating mother and the daughter who must care for the former (this is actually the pretext Sue uses to have regular seven-day reprieves from her new job as the hot star of a TV fitness show). The contests of wills, recriminations, deceptions and eventually (literally) mutually destructive behaviors between Elisabeth and Sue are squarely based on the fact that they share the same identity. In a mother-daughter relationship, the same gender between them could create a sense of identification in which the kind of qualities the mother rejects or hates in herself could also be projected onto the daughter. We see a similar dynamic played out between Elisabeth and Sue. As I was watching the film, I kept wondering why they both treat the other self with such lack of compassion or acceptance: after all they are the same person. And yet, this is probably more “realistic” among the human relationships than I would care to admit.  (I also agree with Ma's view that The Substance is more "hyperrealistic" than documentary-realistic if we were to most appropriately characterize Fargeat's approach)

For me, the film’s power was somewhat marred by its completely over-the-top climax, although I do not believe it deviates from its thematic focus and just becomes a “horror movie” even at this juncture. Since it is made in a punch-you-in-the-face sensory-assault style and with a laser-sharp focus on bodily manifestations, the parade of mutated organs and mismatched body parts in the last quarter feels in sync with the rest of the picture. And as I have mentioned, none of this is presented in a wink-wink, we-are-going-to-gross-you-out “self-aware” manner. Even the very ending of the movie, outrageous as it is, tied to the imaginative Sam Raimi-like opening sequence involving Elisabeth’s Hollywood Star of Fame, is resolutely focused on the latter’s subjectivity, so it never feels gratuitous or condescending. 

Still, the aforementioned geysers of blood go on for a tad too long, the mutated body makeup has one too many gross details like a flesh-embedded, half-formed denture or a jutting hand: it is a bit overwhelming. Something grotesque, yes, but also less messy and more aesthetically consistent with the theme of the dual-split personality of the protagonist might have worked better. 

To reiterate, The Substance is a great body horror film, but I would not hesitate to call it feminist, although certainly not in a usual way that gets a stamp of approval from the border police of the definition. It might be acutely uncomfortable to watch for both male and female viewers, but, like her previous work Revenge, it never goes the easier way of tidying up the narrative in a genre-mandated conventional way or teaching a moral “lesson” to its female protagonist. It is not exactly an uplifting drama of female empowerment, but in its almost ridiculously graphic depictions of the anxieties and societal expectations that all women face regarding their aging bodies, it is brutally honest and finally quite affecting, perhaps even touching. 

A note: Alexandra Heller-Nicholas in the essay quoted above cites two Asian horror films, Helter Skelter from Japan and The Yoga Academy from South Korea, both interesting and illuminating examples, but one Asian horror film that in my view most closely covers the same thematic grounds and subject matter is the animated film Beauty Water. I have reviewed it in a previous entry to this blog space, so interested parties might want to check it out if you are not familiar with the movie.

My Twenty Favorite Blu Ray-4K UHD Blu Ray Releases of 2023

Well, here I am again.  I keep saying it every year: I thought I would not be able to upload My Favorite Blu Ray/4K UHD List this year for sure, but my protestations have become just that, protestations. 

The truth is that as long as I have a functioning brain and/or optical-neural capacity to watch and comprehend a motion picture, and as long as they keep putting out physical media optic discs for classical cinema, I will continue to put together this list, or something approximating it, every year.  There is no real compelling reason not to, it seems.  Yes, yes, I am always busy, involved in some life-changing decisions or projects that makes a big difference in the scale of my income, or some such adult concerns.  Nonetheless these forces of “real life obligations” have never been powerful enough to derail my effort at list-making yet (I think it happened only once to my Korean-language list in the last twenty years?  But I could be mistaken).

The physical media may yet decline further in the coming years but it will never completely disappear, under most of the abject circumstances hypothesized by those busy prophesizing the deaths of older-generation media forms. Suppose the worldwide economic collapse takes place following a global environmental disaster.  What then?  The first thing to go would probably be streaming services, not optic discs.  In a situation like that, if history is any indication, concrete, you-can-put-your-hands-on artifacts become even more valuable and desirable. Their contents will acquire additional meanings beyond the disposable “entertainment” values assigned to them by the corporate entities: of course, this is already the world most of the collectors I know have been living in for many years, sometimes decades, upgrading from LPs to CDs, VHS tapes to laserdiscs to DVDs, and from Blu Rays to 4K UHD Blu Rays, through the thick and thin and through financial ups and downs.  

This evolution of physical media is not simply driven by corporate greed or technological advancement.  It is also a response on the part of many artists, technicians, consumers and aficionados over the years, based on our fervent wish to watch motion pictures— or any media content, really— in the best light possible, to be able to appreciate their qualities in the fullest way possible.  Such a desire is a real thing. While it might not be strong enough to always buckle the mindless corporate mandate that passes for “capitalism” in the United States (and rest of the world), it has sustained various forms of meaningful resistance against the latter.  

So much so that I can truthfully say I today have greater access to the bountiful cinematic treasures from all over the world— from Tunisia to Senegal, from Mongolia to Albania— and from all periods in the grand narrative of cinematic evolution, from the very beginning of the cinema to the latest experimental video, than any other time in my life. As far as a lover of classic, different, and interesting cinema (with sufficient resources, I hasten to add, but, on the other hand, you do not have to be crazy-rich to be a good collector) is concerned, life is good indeed.

As per every year, a word of caution to those stumbling on my list for the first time. This is exactly what it says it is, My Favorite Blu Rays and 4K UHD Blu Rays of 2023, and the selection process is fundamentally subjective. 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.  The most important criterion for selection is the sense of (re)discovery, surprise or confirmation that I derived out of owning these discs, not simply watching them.  The production quality, the design, the packaging, the commentaries, the supplements, the letterings and signages: they all matter, perhaps not as much as the movies themselves, but they play non-trivial roles in my appreciation of these titles.  

So 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.  Enough rantings. Let’s delve into them then.  There are twenty titles, and the “dating” is not laser-precise, as the repeat readers of my annual lists already know.  

20.  The Game Trilogy: Limited Edition (1978-79, Arrow Video, Region A). 

This release is mostly significant for allowing those outside Japan to finally access the star-making films of Matsuda Yūsaku (1949-1989), a half-Korean Japanese star of ‘80s who tragically died from bladder cancer at the age of 40, shortly after making an impressive Hollywood film debut as a vicious punk villain in Ridley Scott’sBlack Rain.  The reason it is relatively lower in my list is that I find the films— the so-called Game Trilogy, The Most Dangerous Game, The Killing Game (both 1978) and The Execution Game (1979)— entertaining enough but not quite likeable or genuinely inventive. Nonetheless, they are fascinating slices of nihilistic urban action genre done in the late ‘70s-early ‘80s Toei style, where a lot of gunshots are fired, not very realistically I must add, and nasty fistfights among colorfully dressed and coiffed thugs take place in narrow corridors or abandoned empty houses.

As for Matsuda, he is certainly an intriguing figure, emerging almost unscathed from the very loud period wardrobe and hairstyle doing their darnedest to render him laughable.  At times he improbably suggests a cross between Jacky Chan and Lee Marvin, at once hard-boiled and charismatic on the one hand, and goofily charming but lethally lithe, a Monkey King in shades and pantaloons, on the other.  Matsuda hints at his skills as an actor, especially in The Killing Game, probably the best in the trilogy, projecting intensity, inner conflict and even remorse, while intoning uber-pulpish, borderline ridiculous dialogue. Even though the films are not quite rediscovered masterpieces, Arrow Video’s expert husbandry of them cannot be faulted.  

 

19.  The Devil’s Game (1981, Severin Films, Region Free).

This title, too, might have been higher up in the list, had it been presented in the way some Anglo-American TV shows of ‘60s and ‘70s were remastered to the point of never-before-seen glory (see Columbo below).  Realistically, we should be simply grateful that Severin Films, following in the footsteps of the last year’s Tales to Keep You Awake, Narcisso Ibanez Serrador’s key Spanish TV horror, has unearthed and made available, with English subs, Italian RAI TV’s I giochi del diavolo, six-episode adaptations of nineteenth century literary classics.  The source novels and stories range from E.T.A. Hoffman’s The Sandman, Henry James’ Sir Edmund Orme, Robert L. Stevenson’s The Imp in a Bottle, Gerard de Nerval’s The Possessed Hand, H. G. Wells’ A Dream of Another, and Prosper Merimeé’s The Venus of Ille. Of course, the last episode will be of great interest to the horror film fans, as it is officially the last film directed by Mario Bava, assisted by his son Lamberto.

The episodes are collected here mostly as SD-grade tape masters, sometimes with the horizontal “fuzzes” visible and weak colors, but, despite the visual impairment and sometimes staid, talky presentations, the majority of them evince a classicist feel of the kind difficult to replicate in an Anglo-American setting, as if the video cameraman was directly capturing productions authentically taking place in nineteenth-century.  And of course, The Venus of Ille, scratched and damaged but scanned from a 16mm print rather than a video source, is a terrific little piece of suggestive terror, with a riveting performance by the exquisite Daria Nicolodi (The Deep Red, Bava’s Schock), well transcending its curiosity value.

18.   The Haunting of Julia (1977, Scream! Factory, 4K UHD Blu Ray).

A surprise title for a 4K UHD release, The Haunting of Julia, better known as Full Circle, features another woman-under-psychological-distress role for Mia Farrow in the wake of Rosemary’s Baby, based on Peter Straub’s (Ghost Story) first full-blown horror novel Julia. Featuring a very young Tom Conti and a cabal of British actresses including Jill Benett and Cathleen Nesbitt, Richard Loncraine’s (Breamstone and Treacle, Richard III with Ian McKellen) film is a monumental feel-bad show, especially for the female viewers with children, but there is certainly truth in advertising: it is a haunting film, all right, with Farrow delivering an achingly vulnerable performance.  The dual 4K UHD-Blu Ray collector’s edition has a new commentary with director Loncraine’s participation, a set of pleasant interviews with the veteran actor Conti (most recently seen in Chis Nolan’s Oppenheimer as Albert Einstein) and the then-child actress Samantha Gates. 

 

17.  Marathon Man (1976, Kino Lorber, 4K UHD Blu Ray).

 

William Goldman’s urban espionage thriller is really at heart a New York Jewish artist’s reflection on the inadequately addressed legacies of the Holocaust.  It is perhaps best known for the chilling turn by Laurence Olivier as the Nazi dentist Szell, who has turned his trade skills into torture techniques.  After nearly 50 years, it now has an added meaning as a deconstruction of the globe-trotting action thriller genre, in the sense that it is centered on a New York grad student’s extremely personal vendetta against the vast, global machinery of interconnected evil, ever banal and mundane and firmly rooted in the wartime “expediencies” carried out by global empires, including the good ol’ US of A.  What is it about ‘70s American movies that look the best on 4K UHD?  Kino Lorber’s presentation of Marathon Man, like Jaws, perfectly recreates the theatrical experience I have had in late ‘70s Korea, watching the film riveted along with a paying Korean audience and feeling the wave of collective frisson as Szell calmly walks over to poor Babe with a dental drill in his hand.

 

16.  Libido (1963, Severin Films, Blu Ray- Region A).

 

This low-budget little Italian programmer in black and white was an on-the-nose directorial effort by the insanely prolific screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi, responsible for many giallo classics with sometimes amusingly convoluted plot twists (and/or mouthful titles) such as The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key and Torso. Featuring a debut performance by Giancarlo Giannini and a welcome substantial role for the “Italian Peter Lorre” Luciano Pigozzi, Libido is a surprisingly effective chamber piece, compact and atmospheric, that anticipates many conventions and stylistics of the giallo genre.  Severin Film’s presentation of this nearly forgotten early ‘60s template for the Italian psychosexual thrillers, scanned in 2K from a dupe negative, is not perfect but probably presents it in the best possible behavior ever.  The disc also comes with another erudite commentary track from Kate Ellinger and a wry, aggressively candid long-form interview with Gastaldi.

 

15.  Dellamorte dellamore [a.k.a. Cemetery Man] (1993, Severin Films, 4K UHD Blu Ray)

 

Severin’s full-blown attack at horror film collectors near the end of 2023 came with a triptych of Italian horror classics remastered in 4K UHD, The Church, The Sect and Dellamore dellamorte. The last title, in particular, has been long time in coming, with only a German Blu Ray edition available previously. I should add that Dellamore is one of the few horror films made after 1980 I have seen that unambivalently deserves the designation “dark/horror fairy tale,” with its punkish-ly morbid but strangely affecting aura of romantic yearning.  Severin’s lovingly remastered 4K UHD iteration presents it swathed in rich, almost sensual, blackness as well as in the extra-moody Dolby Atmos five-channel soundscape. As for the supplements, the company managed to rope in almost all major participants, from director Michele Soavi to stars Rupert Everett, Ana Falchi, Stefano Masciarelli, cinematographer Mauro Marchetti, and special FX artist Sergio Stivaletti, plus a glossy, visually arresting booklet with an analytic essay by Claire Donner.  As if this is not enough, we also get a 72-minute CD soundtrack compiling the witty score by Manuel De Sica and Riccardo Biseo.

 

14.  The Questor Tapes (1974, Kino Lorber, Blu Ray- Region A).

The Anglo-American TV from ‘60s and ‘70s are one area for which the HD upgrade in physical media has done some truly amazing feats, rendering some TV movies and series episodes the kind of clarity and resplendence, entirely absent in their original airwave broadcasts.  This is the kind of “revisionism” that I heartily welcome.  As a stand-alone film, The Questor Tapes feels rather incomplete, given that it was one of the several unsold pilots from Gene Roddenberry. It has all the hallmarks of a Roddenberry project, again featuring a God-like alien intelligence that “benevolently” attempts to steer humankind out of its likely path for self-annihilation.  Like the original Star Trek, the movie’s— scripted by Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon— liberal sentiments and admittedly sophisticated SF trappings are contrasted to its condescending attitudes toward women and, well, the unwashed masses.  However, the movie is compelling, mainly due to a wonderful performance by Robert Foxworth as the self-constructing android Questor, who generates an excellent chemistry with Mike Farrell’s skeptical scientist.  Kino Lorber’s presentation includes a welcome commentary by Gary Gerani (I just realized that he produce-directed a documentary on the music of Billy Goldenberg, one of the great TV composers of ‘70s).

 

13.  Accion mutante (1992, Severin Films, 4K UHD Blu Ray)

 

OK, Alex de la Iglesia’s debut feature film is finally here in the glorious 4K UHD from our friends at Severin Films!  It is certainly a unique concoction, an ultra-grungy, hyper-sophomoric, sub-Star Wars SF/spaghetti Western hybrid with the most politically incorrect characters you could imagine (for one, the band of outlaws that cause all the mayhem are not mutants, but simply disabled people, including a Siamese twin brothers attached at their shoulders and a hulking brute identified as “a man with the lowest IQ in human history”). This is the kind of movie in which the head bad guy keeps a kidnap victim’s mouth shut with metal staples instead of duct tapes, and that detail is played for a joke later: you have been warned. 

But what really dropped my jaws was not all the “transgressive” (some are admittedly funny) satire and bad attitude in the film itself but just how good the movie looks in this 4K UHD presentation.  It lovingly restores its widescreen cinematography, including eye-opening vistas of Spanish mountain regions that pass for an alien desert landscape.  All directors should be so lucky to have their debut features presented in a glorious form like this.  

 

12.  Danza Macabra: The Italian Gothic Collection, Volume One (1964-71, Severin Films, Blu Ray- Region A/Free).

Severin’s curation of the more obscure but desirable Euro-horror titles continue with this collection of four films, Monster of the Opera, The Seventh Grave, Scream of a Demon Lover and Lady Frankenstein, the last title pretty well known and previously released in a decent Blu Ray from Nucleus Films.  All of them, with differing levels of genre pedigree, entertainment value and archival interest, are outfitted with individual commentaries and substantial supplements that greatly enhance our appreciation of these films.  None of them are masterpieces but, collected in a hefty box adorned with the newly commissioned beautiful illustration typical of Severin’s care and attention to the production values, they truly warm the heart of a collector. 

11.  The Giant Gilla Monster/The Killer Shrews (1959, Film Masters, Blu Ray- Region Free).

 

For some strange reason, I have never actually seen The Killer Shrews, neither on a late night creature feature program, nor via a VHS rented from a neighborhood video store, not ever. Well, I am glad I have not until Film Master’s Blu Ray.  No doubt about it, it is a badly acted, badly staged regional exploitation horror of the peculiarly US of A late ‘50s-early ‘60s kind, but guess what bro, I actually found some of its set pieces genuinely scary, the hilariously hideous, dentally exaggerated puppet heads standing for mutant shrews notwithstanding.  Oh, The Giant Gilla Monster is a total fluff, but it has its charms too.  Has my life improved in quality thanks to having watched The Killer Shrews through this special edition Blu Ray (presented with the option of watching the movies in the 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio or the 1.33:1 TV academy ratio)?  You bet your cheese crumbs.

 

10.  Monsieur Hire (1989, Kino Lorber-Cohen Media Group, Blu Ray- Region A).

 

One of the French films that I come back to multiple times in order to savor its dense texture and melancholy sensibilities, Patrice Laconte’s Monseiur Hire saunters into the room in an impeccable Blu Ray presentation from Cohen Media.  Particularly powerful in this iteration is Michael Nyman’s score that partially draws upon a spectacularly haunting arrangement of a Brahms piece.  This is one of those twisty dramas in which an initially unsympathetic and even repellent character (brilliantly essayed with great restraint by Michel Blanc) gradually transforms into an uncomfortably familiar, even a tragic one, without attempting to tug at our heartstrings.  The supplement includes a brand-new interview with Laconte and the female star Sandrine Bonnaire.

 

9.  eXistenZ (1999, Vinegar Syndrome, 4K UHD Blu Ray) 

I thought that the Region B 101 Films Blu Ray from some years ago was going to be the last word on this David Cronenberg outing: I was wrong, and I am now obliged to include the Vinegar Syndrome 4K UHD in the 2023 list.  The VS upgrade is mostly distinguished from the movie’s other iterations by its sense of depth and rich texture as well as the powerful ambience effect created by Howard Shore’s stealthily magnificent score.  Now only if Criterion or Arrow could do a similar update on M Butterfly (with a commentary by Professor Howard Chiang: you know, sometimes wishes do come true)!

 

8.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937, Disney, 4K UHD Blu Ray).

 

I have never expected to put a classic Disney animation in this list: for one, the company does not have a good track record of making its library titles accessible to the consumers, even its fan base.  But again, this 4K UHD Blu Ray release— which I obtained from Amazon UK— is a special item.  It really rehabilitates, as far as I can see, since I was obviously not there during the theatrical premier of this landmark feature-length animation, its three-dimensionality, emphasizing the astounding depths of background drawings and fluid mutability of the rotoscoped animated figures: it is one of the most astounding cinematic transfigurations of moving drawings I have ever seen.  By the way, this Snow White is surprisingly short and truncated, rather abruptly terminating the (great) villainy of the Evil Queen. It might not be quite as affecting as Dumbo or Fantasia, but it is still one of the genuine American treasures of popular culture.  It is amazing in and of itself to be able to appreciate its beauty in this manner, that I think will easily best a theatrical showing of a newly struck print.

 

7.  The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter (1935-1940, Powerhouse Indicator, Blu Ray- Region Free).

This was a pure surprise again, comparable to my first exposure to the films of Laird Cregar during the DVD era, but in a much bigger scale.  I was not even vaguely aware of Tod Slaughter (1885-1956), one of the first Anglo-American cinematic stars to specialize in playing villains that you love to hate (which differs from monstrous portrayals of the horror stars in the same period such as Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi) prior to Powerhouse Indicator’s boxset that collects eight films among Slaughter’s oeuvre.  The literary sources and cultural pedigrees of these programmers are by themselves intriguing and illuminating.  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is bookended by a vignette set in a location-shot barber shop in ‘30s London: Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror anticipates both a German crimini and a James Bond extravaganza, and it is fascinating to see how this template of a techno-thriller, replete with arresting but plot-wise near-nonsensical visuals was already fully formed: The Face at the Window is a Gothic melodrama with a powerful sense of underground perversity running beneath its narrative.  The other films are all endlessly fascinating as well.  Tod Slaughter himself is mesmerizing, his theatrical villainy intriguingly fairy-tale-like, sometimes with unmistakable glints in his eyes and chortles echoing down the corridors long after he had existed.

 

6.  Blood and Black Lace (1964, Arrow Video, Blu Ray- Region B).

The 88 Films restoration of Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body almost made the list. I just had to leave a designated spot in it for the stuffed-to-the-gills Arrow special edition of Blood and Black Lace, although I am not sure why Arrow did not go for a 4K UHD release. Still, their touted new 4K restoration is a marvel, blindingly aggressive reds and treacherously shaded greens all blazing and assaulting our senses.  The Carlo Rusticheli score in lossless mono soundtrack has never sounded better. Tim Lucas is the main authority in the supplements, which makes sense, but I found David Del Valle’s Sinister Image episode on Cameron Mitchell most interesting among numerous special features.  The 50-page-plus “booklet” has tons of attractive pictures and essays by the likes of Howard Hughes, Kate Ellinger, Rachael Nisbett, Joe Dante (interviewed by Alan Jones) and David Del Valle. 

 

5.  Samurai Wolf 1 & 2 (1966-67, Film Movement, Blu Ray- Region A).

This was also a nice surprise. Gosha Hideo is still not quite well represented in North America, considering some of his amazing but relatively scant output (what happened to Criterion Channel’s The Oil-Hell Murder? Is it ever going to come out? How about The Fireflies of North?).  Film Movement’s presentation of a lean and mean swordfight actioner Kiba Ōkaminosuke (roughly, “Mr. Fanged Wolfguy”) and its even better sequel is a terrific boon to any fan of the Japanese period pieces. Natsuyagi Isao is the unkempt, bearded and freewheeling ronin with the unlikely moniker, hired as a bodyguard against the antagonists Uchida Ryohei and Nishimura Ko, respectively. The best supplement is an affectionate and respectful recollection of Gosha’s innovative filmmaking techniques and interaction with his crew and cast by his daughter Tomoe, projecting a pride in her father’s legacy.

 

4.  Mexico Macabre (1959-63, Powerhouse Indicator, Blu Ray- Region Free).

This collection is a revival of the old (now defunct) Casa Negra DVD series of classic Mexican horror films, but since Powerhouse Indicator is the culprit behind the re-do, the collection, holding together Black Pit of Dr. M, The Witch’s Mirror, The Curse of the Crying Woman and the one-and-only, brain-slurping craziness entitled The Brainiac, is, conservatively put, overwhelming in its almost absurd level of comprehensiveness and imparted information.  And yes, the “booklet” again: this time it is 99 pages, and as is the custom with PI, includes a hefty amount of archival data, including a 1995 obituary of Abel Salazar— the star of The Brainiac— by David Wilt in Mexican Film Bulletin. 

3. Columbo: The 1970s- Seasons 1-7 (1968-1978, Kino Lorber, Blu Ray- Region A).

 

This landmark boxset has received some online criticism due to Kino Lorber’s failure to include previously announced commentaries by notable scholars and critics, but I could not really drop it from the list for this reason, disappointing as it might have been for core fans of the series.  Columbo is now proven to be simply one of the most intelligent and best-produced mystery TV series of all time.  It is absolutely wonderful to have these motion-picture length episodes on a remastered HD presentation that allows us to appreciate the distinctive, episode-specific looks of location cinematography, editing techniques (including a split-screen montage as busy and dense as those seen in theatrical films such as The Thomas Crown Affair) and inflections and turns of speech among great guest actors conveyed ever so clearly (My favorite guest appearance in this set is perhaps Johnny Cash’s slightly sweaty and melancholy turn as a country singer star-murder conspirator).  

However, for my money, the most mind-boggling thing was watching the first pilot film Prescription: Murder (1968) in this magnificently remastered HD version, with Gene Barry as a manipulative psychoanalyst.  Here, Lieutenant Columbo is equally manipulative and duplicitous.  It is almost a neo-noir in which your sympathies threaten to pivot toward the cold-hearted murderer played by Barry from an obviously sharp-minded police inspector whose skewed gaze and gravely voice barely seem to camouflage a ruthless and amoral core fully matching that of his wealthy opponent.   

 

2. Cushing Curiosities (1962-1974, Severin Films, Blu Ray- Region Free/A).

The “odds and ends” collection of Peter Cushing’s lesser-known or under-appreciated films, outside Hammer and staples of Euro-horror is nonetheless something only Severin Films at this stage could put together.  It includes a  very welcome Blu Ray presentation of The Man Who Finally Died, reviewed several years ago in this website, interesting British thrillers Suspicion and The Cone of Silence, six surviving episodes of the BBC ’64-’68 Sherlock Homes with Douglas Wilmer as Dr. Watson, Bloodsuckers which seems to receive zero respect anywhere, despite its weirdly respectable cast (including Edward Woodward as an anthropologist— or a psychologist?— specializing in sexual perversities in various cultures: Oh-kaay…) and at least some coherent critical viewpoint about vampirism as a metaphor for social exploitation, and Tender Dracula, a strangely affecting horror-comedy that actually features a genuinely sympathetic performance by Cushing.  

Maestro Cushing is front and center in all of these features: none of his roles here are glorified cameos (well, maybe Bloodsuckers, depending on how you read the film).  The collection confirms my conviction that Peter Cushing is completely watchable in any work he has a hand in: he and Christopher Lee still remain for me the standard-bearers for true film stars. 

 

1.  Borsalino (1970, Arrow Video, Blu Ray- Region A)

This has always been the pattern for My Favorite Lists: the number one spot has always been claimed by a totally unexpected title, never really favored in other estimable lists of similar kinds. The final choice has remained intensely personal, and this year is not an exception. 

I have missed Borsalino during its South Korean theatrical run (I was too young: from this era, however, I have vivid memories of watching all Jamese Bond films, even the farcical Casino Royale, in theaters) but since then were able to watch quite a few Alain Delon films, most memorably the directorial outputs of Duccio Tessari.  Borsalino is known in Korean language as bol-sarino, even though a Korean reading of the hat brand should have been boreu-salino: this was due to the limitation of the Japanese phonetic transliteration, rendered as borusarino, carried over directly to the Korean culture.  Ah, that was an era in which an European film actor who had become a big star in Japan also had to be a big star in Korea.  It took some decades for this pattern to break: Jacky Chan and Star Wars actually played their roles in this shift.

However, Borsalino, ably directed by Jacques Deray, did not turn out what it was supposed to be in my imagination, a commercially manufactured team-up designed to boost marquee values of its superstars, Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo.  Instead, I found myself utterly engrossed in the narrative, mis-en-scene, and most importantly, characters played by its two massively charismatic stars.  More than almost any film I have seen in 2023, Borsalino was the motion picture that took me back in time to my awareness of becoming a film enthusiast, yet coupled with the true appreciation of what these “old” films in fact are, seen again in its pristine, youthful countenance, capable of.  

The same list of labels, with gratitude and appreciation: Severin Films, Powerhouse Indicator, Arrow Video, Kino Lorber, Vinegar Syndrome, Scream! Factory, Cohen Media, Film Masters and many others who worked on the equally splendid discs that for various reasons did not make the list.  Additional showers of gratitude to ever-reliable online reviewers, again led by Cinesavant and Mondo Digital, and including DVD Beaver, Blu-ray.com, Digital Bits and other sites.  A special word of thanks to the Patreon-sponsored DVD Beaver collections of screenshots, that supplied a few of the screenshots I have employed above.    

What will 2024 going to bring?  It is already one and a half months into the new year and maybe the world is go down the (climate-change-caused) storm drain, but as I reiterate, the life of a classic cinema collector at this point is not bad at all.  It is, truthfully, wonderful.  May the Force— the Energy or Ether (ki) as Koreans call it, the Power of Principle (riryoku) as Japanese call it, or the Fundamental Power (yuanli) as Chinese call it— be with all collectors and connoisseurs of classic cinema!