Tab Hunter Confidential Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Tab Hunter Confidential Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson January 27, 2017

The career of Tab Hunter contains a rich and diverse output as an actor in more than forty feature films, various TV series (including his own), stints as a pop singer, a thespian on stage and in dinner theater productions, and several other ventures. Hunter's persona as an entertainer went through different phases and these are amply covered in Jeffrey Schwarz's wonderful documentary, Tab Hunter Confidential (2015). Based on the 2005 book, Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, written by Hunter in collaboration with film historian Eddie Muller, this doc features interviews with Hunter and more than thirty of his collaborators, friends, fans, and critics. Schwarz incorporates the standard talking heads and intercuts the clips with excerpts from over sixty theatrical movies, telefilms, and TV specials. The excerpted archival footage includes shows that Hunter not only appeared in but also works relevant to the cultural periods while he was a performer. Schwarz also breaks out of the static nature of documentary filmmaking by building collages and overlaying animation onto found footage. For example, he creates a three-dimensional image out of floating vinyl album covers bearing Hunter's name. In other shots, he forms a single image by juxtaposing stills, lobby cards, and movie posters. Kudos should also go to the art department's Grant Nellessen (graphic designer/main title creator) and Taryn Teigue (photo retoucher) for producing the Prezi-like cinematic presentations.

While Tab Hunter Confidential occasionally shuffles around time segments in the titular subject's life, it proceeds largely in chronological order. We learn about Hunter's strict upbringing, the difficult relationship he had with his father, his experience attending parochial schools, and how he acquired a passion for equestrianism. Fans of Hunter may be surprised to learn that the actor made his first breakthrough not on the silver screen but on stage in a performance of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. (Hunter's performances of musical and stage adaptations at dinner theaters later in his career is also a seldom-know fact that the doc covers.) Hunter reminisces bemusedly about his early 'B' movies which were pretty postcards but vapid in substance. As a lover of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel, Treasure Island, and an avid watcher of its film and TV adaptations, I was particularly interested in hearing Hunter discuss Ewald André Dupont's unofficial sequel to Victor Fleming's 1934 film, Return to Treasure Island (1954). Although the latter was ill-received and apparently rife with artifice, it features an early starring role by Hunter and may be worth checking out. Movie studio moguls and magazine editors sought to capitalize on Hunter's beefcake image, filming and photographing him shirtless on beaches and in tropical settings.

The legendary entertainer speaks in front of candid camera.

The title of this documentary refers to both the now defunct tabloid magazine, Confidential, and the (very) private life that Hunter tried to maintain. The film opens with stock of a police raid and Hunter's arrest for committing an infraction related to "disorderly conduct." Starting with the aftermath of Hunter in jail, Schwarz develops an editing rhythm whereby the later disclosed facts of the actor's personal life are juxtaposed with clips from his films. The terse one-liners uttered by his characters that Schwarz selects are meant to reflect, in one way or another, a façade of Hunter's or at least one's perception of his personal self. Hunter did not officially come out until his 2005 autobiography and managed to occupy a highly visible profile in the public limelight for over five decades. He addresses the strenuous difficulty in attempting to mask his closeted homosexuality amidst an intransigent heteronormative society in the fifties. Hunter proclaims that he enjoyed acting, even if all of his characters were heterosexual. This is how he became a star. As George Takei concisely puts it, Hunter was "the embodiment of youthful American masculinity." But as John Waters reminds the audience in the doc, Hunter's strikingly handsome figure appealed to both queers and straight people, irregardless if they believed he was gay or not. There is an underlying sadness beneath Hunter's outward affability, though. He enjoyed acting in front of the camera but he had to keep a "safe" public profile so as not to express fully the side of him only known to his most intimate friends.

Tab Hunter Confidential packs a lot of information throughout its ninety-five minutes. I wished that Schwarz had slowed the pace down when the doc focused on Hunter's boyhood and early teen years. There were moments, for example, that he could have asked Hunter a follow-up question or requested that he extrapolate more on a revealing point that he made. The first section could have been longer with the doc still clocking in at under two hours. These are minor quibbles to a valuable piece that offers a thorough examination of a multi-talented performer and an underrated actor.

Tab Hunter Confidential Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Tab Hunter Confidential makes its global debut on Blu-ray courtesy of indie label FilmRise. The documentary is presented in its theatrically projected ratio of 1.78:1 with a total video bitrate of 25.52 Mbps on this AVC-encoded BD-R 25. The best part of the transfer is the true-HD quality of the new interviews Schwarz conducted with Hunter and the many other people directly or indirectly involved in his career. The image is very clean with bright colors and a decent amount of detail.

Schwarz and his crew consulted a bevy of archives for the project and the interspersed footage is presented in their works' (presumed) original ratios. (The resolution on old photographs has been enhanced and blown up for theatrical/digital projection.) The quality on the old films and TV shows varies. None of the excerpted works from the analog era have been "cleaned up" and it also appears that none of the vintage movies are derived from a digital intermediate restoration. In addition to my regular Blu-ray player, I also played the doc on my laptop using CyberLink PowerDVD 16. I did freeze-frames of several scenes featuring the old footage and confirm that they derive from interlaced sources. (See the chroma noise and color bleeding in Screenshot #6 of a TV program, not to mention the mosquito noise on the name card's letters.) Upconverted for Blu-ray, the stock footage still appears generally watchable. Considering the costs that would have went into restoring all the individual scenes that Schwarz inserts (and especially considering the doc's ultra-low budget), it is at least a little surprising that they look at least in fair to good condition.

FilmRise has divided the feature doc into fourteen chapter stops.

Tab Hunter Confidential Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

FilmRise has provided the options of Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps) and Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 kbps) for the doc's sound track. While it would have been nice to have an uncompressed track, it wasn't entirely necessary since the speakers' voices in the contemporary interviews are nearly always lucid and intelligible. Dialogue from Hunter's old movies and telefilms is adequately clear and comprehensible. Michael Cudahy's original music represents the one area that the disc could have benefited from lossless audio. The comments from the doc's participants dominant the center and front channels (as they are supposed to in the recording) and Cudahy's cues are aptly employed as the "underscore." I thought that the surround channels could have used a boost to accent the musical moments that accompany pathos and poignancy on screen.

FilmRise has supplied optional English SDH for the main feature.

Tab Hunter Confidential Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Bonus Interviews (36:27, 1080p) - a montage of excised interviews and outtakes with title cards introducing each segment. Tab Hunter talks more about his mother, military school, movie star sightings, his early B-films, his relationships with Natalie Wood and Anthony Perkins, and many other topics. Other discarded interview snippets include additional remarks by Olympic medalist and trainer George Morris, longtime TCM host/film historian Robert Osbourne, and Lou Simon of Sirius XM Radio. We also hear more comments from actors Robert Wagner, Brett Halsey, Darryl Hickman, George Takei, Debbie Reynolds, Venetia Stevenson, Liz Torres, Lainie Kazan, Noah Wyle, John Waters, and William Wellman, Jr. In English, not subtitled.

• Trailer (2:01, 1080p) - a 1.78:1 trailer of Tab Hunter Confidential optimized for 16x9 displays. In English, not subtitled.

You can also purchase the HD version of Tab Hunter Confidential on iTunes and receive this exclusive bonus material:
Nine minutes of additional interviews featuring more insights into Tab's life, on topic such as James Dean, New York City, Damn Yankees, Method Acting, Ride the Wild Surf, Luchino Visconti, and Henry Willson.

My copy did not come with a redemption code.

Tab Hunter Confidential Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Tab Hunter Confidential provides an excellent overview of the eighty-five-year-old's career. One should gain multiple insights into Hunter's different personalities as well as respect and admiration to how he has closed one chapter of his life and began another one in his twilight years. Hopefully, this release will inspire the major studios and niche labels to put out more of Hunter's film and television work on Blu-ray. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.