DVD Releases That We Dig This Week (04.17.12)

This week's DVD releases have a good number of unsung gems and curios for those looking for something beyond the current fare. If you've already seen Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and Steve McQueen's Shame (which arrive on DVD today too), then here are some interesting choices from the vaults that are worthy of your attention.


Once again Shout! Factory has struck gold mining Roger Corman's New World vaults, with The Nurses Collection, featuring four of the five popular "Nurse" series of films from the early 1970's. These films generally featured a trio of nurses with various shenanigans involving action, comedy, sex and even some social commentary tucked in there somewhere! Curiously, the first instalment, The Student Nurses, is the missing title here, but no matter, this is a must-have, regardless. This set will certainly be a welcome respite from the very poor release of these and the "Student Teacher" cycle of films from Infinity Entertainment a couple of years ago.

And speaking of upgrades, The Rank Collection, released through VCI Entertainment, features another double-bill of the popular "Carry-On" series of films: Carry on Doctor and Carry on up the Khyber. Fans who were dissatisfied with the Wham! USA disks will no doubt want these!

For the horror fan, here are a couple of unsung gems this week. From Redemption Films, the terrific chiller The Asphyx (1973), which I first saw way back on Elvira's old "Movie Macabre" TV show. Time to upgrade from the Interglobal VHS!

Scorpion Releasing adds another to its series of "Katarina's Nightmare Theater" disks, which specialize in obscure chillers (usually from the 1970s and 80s).  This week, it's the 1981 Australian supernatural thriller The Survivor, about a lone survivor from a plane crash. 

Many people know that Tom Selleck was originally considered for the Indiana Jones role in Raiders of the Lost Ark (which eventually went to Harrison Ford). Ironically, Selleck appeared in one of the many pulpy adventure films in the early 1980s that were produced in the wake of Raider's success. I've never seen High Road To China, but remember that it played a LOT on Pay TV back in the day.  Henstooth Video is behind its release.

Also, Criterion continues its recent trend of unearthing many under-appreciated goodies. This week, Robert M. Young's acclaimed independent 1977 feature Alambrista!, about a migrant worker, makes its debut. Young's films seldom received the exposure they deserved, so this release is very exciting to see.

Happy viewing!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the CGI Monster

Is my Medicare paid up?

Oh sure, I rhapsodize about B-movies and underground cinema, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate a summer blockbuster once in a while. And in truth, I was really looking forward to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, heralding the return of Indiana Jones to the screen in almost 20 years. (1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is in my opinion the best of the series, not just for its non-stop adventure, but for the wisdom to subtly laugh at itself.) Let's face it, Harrison Ford is no spring chicken, but at first this movie wisely lets Jones act his own age, setting the film in the Cold War, so that the hero is indeed 20 years older, just like the actor who plays him. And it's great fun seeing him performing all this derring-do in an older man's body, as he properly miscalcuates a few moves and moans about his aches and pains. And since this is set in the 1950's during the Cold War, this time Indy is combating the Russians instead of the Nazis, there's no short supply of cartoonish over-the-top maniacal villains to outwit. Just when I thought Cate Blanchett was going to play Katharine Hepburn for the rest of her life, here she is in a Louise Brooks haircut as the cold villain. (It's not a stretch to imagine a dominatrix outfit underneath the gray uniform.)

And for the first half hour-- I was absolutely hooked. From the big fight in the warehouse and the atomic blast right up to the chase imploding the school library, I totally bought this popcorn entertainment. Like its predecessor in general, during this time, the movie is not only thrilling, but it pokes fun at itself. And it even appears this will continue to be a fun ride, once the plot kicks in, gamely attempting a revisionist history combining the Mayans with Roswell! But after that point it strictly becomes by-the-numbers, as the heroes become as rubbery as all the CGI effects thrown their way. Suddenly these people stop being human, and thereby the suspense goes out the window, and just becomes one setpiece after another, strung together to please those with attention deficiency disorder. It is great seeing Indy with a younger sidekick (Shia LaBoeuf), and Karen Allen returns as Marion Ravenwood (perhaps the only heroine to hold her own with Indy), but all that fanfare is for naught, as her screen time is given a big "So what?". Still the main culprit is the screenplay, which can't do a thing with such promising material and gives these characters little to do except grow rubber limbs and strangely remain impervious to every pitfall that comes along. Too bad.

It may sound ridiculous critiquing a summer blockbuster movie as it's made with a certain agenda, but this starts by promising something more than just by-the-numbers popcorn. For all the money they spent on this, they couldn't find a proper scenario to string it all together with. Ultimately Spielberg falls prey to the summer blockbuster formula that his string of films helped create, yet his films stood apart from their progeny because they didn't forsake good characterizations and storytelling. That's why this ultimately ends up as an amiable disappointment. Call this Indiana Jones in Search of a Script.