Warming To MEDIUM COOL

Robert Forster in MEDIUM COOL, 1969

I've always been only mildly enthusiastic about Haskell Wexler's seminal MEDIUM COOL, mostly because of the way it begins and ends, but Criterion's new Blu-ray knocked it into sharper focus for me. Influenced by the political Sixties cinema of Jean-Luc Godard and Norman Mailer's then-hot-off-the-presses "nonfiction novel" THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT, it features Robert Forster (JACKIE BROWN) as a Chicago TV news cameraman who becomes increasingly aware of how the US government and Big Business were using the media to distract and control an increasingly demonstrative public at the height of the Vietnam war, and who essentially finds his humanity in a relationship with an Appalachian woman (Verna Bloom) and her son (Harold Blankenship) at the time of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The actors are shown interacting with history on the convention floor and outside in Lincoln Park where hundreds of peaceful demonstrators were beaten back by police, armored vehicles and jeeps outfitted with barbed wire bumpers. Seen today, MEDIUM COOL resonates like an old bulletin that still carries surprising heat; it manages to be both firmly rooted in its time and awfully aware of what's just around the corner. It not only foresees Kent State but the ending of EASY RIDER, which followed it into theaters only one month later.

Criterion has given it a spectacular, razor-sharp presentation, with two illuminating commentaries and a host of supplements -- including two lengthy excerpts from two documentaries by editor Paul Cronin, one about the making of MEDIUM COOL and the other a heartbreaking 15m from a work-in-progress about the film's affecting young Appalachian actor Harold Blankenship. The soundtrack, credited to Mike Bloomfield (whose group The Electric Flag had previously scored Roger Corman's THE TRIP) and featuring Paul Butterfield, was tampered with on previous home video incarnations but is intact here. It includes some scattered early Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention  tracks, including slightly different acetates (you can hear the crackles) of two songs from the then-as-yet-unreleased WE'RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY, whose lyrical content shows that Wexler was not the only artist aware that the Summer of Love was on a collision course with reality.

MANEATER OF HYDRA: Finally Wide-ra

I first saw Mel Welles' botanical shocker MANEATER OF HYDRA (aka known as ISLAND OF THE DOOMED, LA ISLA DE LA MUERTE and LE BARON VAMPIRE) back in 1970 on Cincinnati's SCREAM-IN with the Cool Ghoul. I was transfixed. This movie had everything: Cameron Mitchell, Eurocult atmosphere, sexy Kay Fischer and blood-sucking plants with obscenely drippy tendrils! It also features a supporting role by Ricardo Valle, who played Morpho in THE AWFUL DR ORLOF. During the grand finale, a storm broke out and, as torrents of rain fell on Mitchell's dying plants, the whole screen looked awash in blood. But even then I could tell the picture was cropped to hell and back. People died only half-onscreen. People talked to other people you couldn't see. The end credits were so squeezed I couldn't tell what happened to Cameron Mitchell.

I knew Mel Welles in the last years of his life and we spoke more than once about our shared hopes that a widescreen copy would someday surface on DVD. He wanted to see it again. It didn't happen in his lifetime and it still hasn't happened... but I just found the next best thing on YouTube: a widescreen French-language copy in six installments! Not ideal quality, but it's more watchable than anything we've had before!

Click here for Part 1 of 6. Links to subsequent chapters should appear in YouTube's right-hand column.

Awful News About the German ORLOF

Over the past year, the German company Edition Tonfilm has issued a couple of wonderfully worthy Jess Franco titles, namely MIDNIGHT PARTY (as HEISSE BERUHRUNGHEN) and the first Franco Blu-ray, CELESTINE - AN ALL ROUND MAID (as CELESTINE - MADCHEN FUR INTIME STUNDEN). Unfortunately their latest release of Franco's THE AWFUL DR ORLOF (as SCHREIE DURCH DIE NACHT) marks the first disappointment in an otherwise exciting, and therefore promising, list.

The appeal of this single-disc offering is that it is the first to include both the Spanish and French versions of the film. The Spanish version (never released here in the States) is 11m longer than the French version we know, and it consists almost entirely of extended dialogue scenes between the police, the crime witnesses and their suspects that adds to the weirdly comic tone of the picture. Even though the extra footage doesn't help the film, it would be nice to have... especially in that it includes the surgery scene as Franco clearly intended it to be seen, without the sexing-up added to the French version. Alas, the Spanish version is presented by Tonfilm with the English dubbing track on all the footage shared with the French version, along with German subtitles, with the Spanish audio kicking in only when the footage exclusive to the Spanish version appears... and again, that footage is subtitled only in German. So the English-speaking viewer is cut off from the experience of seeing this version when it counts most, and it also compromises the integrity of the Spanish version for German viewers. The 1.33:1 image is cropped differently, more tightly, than the bonus 1.66:1 French version, which is non-anamorphic and, again, offers the film only in English with German subtitles, detracting from its authenticity as the French version. What is worse, the French version is incomplete, including only one of the nude inserts shot for the film. It lacks the crucial insert of Morpho ripping away the bodice of Diana Lorys' heart-embossed dress and grabbing the breasts of her stand-in.

I'm presently scripting an audio commentary for Redemption's upcoming Blu-ray release of THE AWFUL DR ORLOF. I wish I could tell you that it was going to right all these wrongs, but unfortunately it won't include the Spanish version, which I would love to see properly released here someday. On the other hand, it will present the French version complete and looking more lustrous than it has ever looked before, and I'm giving the commentary my best effort.