For the week of September 23rd, the biggest – literally – Blu-ray release of the week is Shout/Scream Factory's massive, fifteen-disc Halloween: The Complete Collection. The Friday the 13th series and its lead baddie Jason Voorhees might have popularized the notion of the slasher movie icon, but Halloween introduced the concept to the world: with Michael Myers, director John Carpenter turned an unstoppable brute in a modified William Shatner mask into a movie monster for the time capsule. However, the similarities really stop there; the central hook might be the same (masked killers stalk and kill unsuspecting teenagers), but Halloween evinces a level of artistry that outpaces anything in the Friday the 13th movies. This was the first of five collaborations between Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey, and they bring the same sense of gliding menace that made The Fog and The Thing so enduring. It takes a long time for Michael to attack the first of the film's unlucky protagonists, but the wait is excruciating, thanks to the brilliant staging, nighttime photography, and Carpenter's uncanny synthesizer score. Halloween is a spare, clean masterpiece of horror - it and The Thing are the best two movies to come from Carpenter's very distinguished career. Unfortunately, this could-have-been-a-beautiful-one-off turned into a franchise that kept downplaying craft and emphasizing violence. Whereas Carpenter eschewed graphic bloodletting, creating terror through patience and suspense, most of the sequels (especially Halloween II, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, and the "We made this to stay relevant to the digital generation" awfulness that is Halloween: Resurrection) devolved into rote butchery, with Michael's affectless white mask seemingly employed as a sharp contrast to all the gore. The series became another slasher-movie staple (albeit one with an extremely auspicious start), and it helps to point out the deviations rather than the typical genre concessions. There's the inexplicable Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, which finds time for an early starring role for Paul Rudd and gives Michael a ridiculous Druid backstory. Or how about Rob Zombie's Halloween and Halloween II reboots, which dawdle in straight remake territory before going off the deep end into Rob Zombie Land, with all its gonzo violence, nightmare aesthetics, and Looney Tunes treatment of character and psychology? The 1998 chiller Halloween H20 deserves special mention, both because it tries to recapture the moody, suspense-over-gore milieu of the first Halloween and because of its "Before They Were Stars" roster, which places Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt alongside Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis. Best of all is probably 1982's inexplicable Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which ditches Michael Myers altogether in favor of a villainous corporate conspiracy intent on using its Halloween merchandise for bloody, nefarious purposes. Season of the Witch suffers from the lack of a strong authorial figure (director Tommy Lee Wallace is no John Carpenter), but it's a creepy, stylish little chiller that proves itself far more ambitious than Michael Myers' typical stalk-and-slash adventures.
In his Blu-ray review, Kenneth Brown remarked that "For better (the original film) or worse (does it get much worse than Season of the Witch?), the Halloween series is a treasure trove of proper tricks and treats, frights and laughs, genuinely scary installments, and guilty pleasures...So, question of the Halloween season: is it all worth the cost of admission? For diehard fans of the series, yes. For more casual horror aficionados, that depends entirely on how much value the new, previously unavailable supplemental content adds to the collection. (As one forum member so eloquently put it, it isn't a matter of, 'Will anything be wrong with the set?" but rather, What will be wrong with the set, and can I live with it?") For a Complete Collection set, this one isn't definitive by a long shot. It all feels a bit piecemeal, despite the wealth of new extras. Too many discs are simply repurposed from earlier releases (not always a bad thing, mind you), too many of the films desperately need newly restored and remastered presentations (from the original elements), and the set's bonus disc is largely a catchall for new material devoted to the fourth and fifth films."
Likewise, Warner Home Entertainment is dropping its own horror-movie franchise on Blu-ray this week with its The Exorcist: The Complete Anthology release. About the only thing that The Exorcist and Halloween have in common in their treatment of the macabre is that both series peak with their opening entry. The Exorcist remains one of the great films of all time, genre be dammed. In relaying the tale of a young girl (Linda Blair) beset by demonic forces, director William Friedkin brought in the same intensity of documentary-esque verisimilitude that made his The French Connection and Sorcerer so bracing. The subject matter might be supernatural, but Friedkin grounds it in urban grit and naturalism, thanks, in part, to Owen Roizman's desaturated, intimate cinematography and a cast that includes Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, and Jason Miller, who gives the film's best performance as Father Karras, a Jesuit Priest already struggling with his own faith when he's asked to help combat the evil inside Blair's character. This is how you make a horror movie: you pack it with relatable people and genuine emotions so that when the gooey stuff comes – and The Exorcist's infamous shock effects still retain a good deal of punch – you're already invested in the human drama on display. It's a shame no one could replicate the formula in any of the Exorcist sequels. The Exorcist II: The Heretic is one of the best Bad Movies ever made, a lurid, overheated piece of mysticism and psychobabble that places Blair's character at the service of director John Boorman, who cedes the screen to esoteric nonsense and a simultaneously logy and overacting Richard Burton. Compared to The Exorcist II, The Exorcist III, which finds The Exorcist author William Peter Blatty returning to the original film's locations and characters, couldn't help but look like a far stellar feature, and there are times when you think Blatty has cracked this threequel. The Exorcist III is often very funny (intentionally), and it conjures up some chilling scares, but despite these benefits and good performances from George C. Scott, Scott Wilson, and Brad Dourif, The Exorcist III reeks of studio interference, especially in its way-too-OTT finale. Still, you can't say "studio interference" in any context and not bring up the case of the fourth Exorcist feature. For this prequel, Warner first contracted John Frankenheimer to tell the story of how a brutal exorcism in East Africa shaped Father Merrin (von Sydow in The Exorcist, now played by Stellan Skarsgård) in the years shortly after World War II, but Frankheimer had to leave before production for health reasons. Warner replaced him with Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ scribe Paul Schrader, who made a Paul Schrader Movie: a challenging, solemn piece on the nature of sin and faith. Warner deemed this material commercially unacceptable, fired Schrader, and replaced him with Die Hard 2 and 12 Rounds helmer Renny Harlin. Using the same sets and much of the same cast and crew, Harlin delivered a bloodier and less introspective film, and this version premiered to generally savage critical responses in 2004 as Exorcist: The Beginning. Well, a year later, in an effort to reclaim some of the prestige that Harlin's junky, gory version lost, Warner allowed Schrader to complete his version and gave it a limited release as Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist. The two make for a fascinating study in opposites. The Beginning is stupid but propulsive, and Dominion, for all its intellectual ambitions, is poky and not terribly scary. Perhaps the better film is one that falls somewhere between the two, that merges intellect with genuine terror. Something like, say, William Friedkin's original picture...
From Lionsgate comes the post-apocalyptic drama The Rover. Director David Michôd made a big splash in 2010 with his striking Aussie gangster saga Animal Kingdom, but The Rover sees Michôd both expanding and contracting his vision. Whereas Animal Kingdom detailed the bloody travails of a degenerate crime family, The Rover covers the beginning of the end of the world, as an unspecified "collapse" sends the planet into dystopian chaos and mayhem. However, Michôd limits the global catastrophe to a particularly barren stretch of the Outback, following an unnamed drifter (Guy Pearce) who reluctantly partners up with an inept hoodlum (Robert Pattinson) after the hood's brother (Scoot McNairy) steals Pearce's car. While Michôd generates a little mystery from exactly what about the car motivates Pearce's single-minded focus, he's less interested in the potential for action-movie dynamics than he is in the curious bond that forms between Pearce and Pattinson's characters: think an iteration of Mad Max directed by Picnic at Hanging Rock-era Peter Weir, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect from The Rover. It's a spare, atmospheric tale with minimal violence (as in Animal Kingdom, Michôd downplays big setpieces – such as a military convoy's attack on Pattinson in a run-down motel or the final showdown with Pattinson's brother – in favor of highlighting sudden, bloody eruptions that are over as soon as they've started) and even less plot, and anyone expecting the energy of Animal Kingdom will be sorely disappointed – nothing here is as live-wire unpredictable as that earlier film's trio of unstable villains (Sullivan Stapleton, Jacki Weaver, and especially Ben Mendelsohn's chilling psychopath Pope). Yet in its depiction of utter nihilism, The Rover maintains a curious power. Michôd commits to a world without hope, and the results are often visually and aurally stirking, from Sam Petty's spooky, alien sound design to Natasha Braier's widescreen cinematography, which suggests the landscape of a Sergio Leone Western fallen into ever-greater decay and rot. Best of all are the leads, who turn in work that is hard and tough and utterly unsentimental. Pattinson is a minor revelation here, as he sheds any teenybopper affectations he might have had to play a beyond-dim thug whose loyalty might prove to be both his undoing and his salvation; he's always a step behind everyone else, and that delay proves unexpectedly touching. And Pearce is even better, giving one of his best performances as a man whose lack of remorse is his protection, his way of keeping any pre-collapse memories at bay. In a way, his Man Without A Name could be a spiritual sibling to his Charlie Burns from John Hillcoat's great The Proposition. Both men have fashioned themselves into travellers on a hard road through whatever means necessary, but they also never let you forget the moral cost of such a decision. The Rover isn't an ingratiating movie by any stretch of the imagination, though for some viewers, it'll hold a totemic charge.
Jeffrey Kauffman ponders "what is it about Australia that seems to make it such ripe territory for post-Apocalyptic dramas? When asked this question, many might instantly think of the Mad Max trilogy, but as far back as the 1950s novelist Nevil Shute was depicting a somewhat more staid Australian reaction to a nuclear holocaust in his still chilling On the Beach. Even the decidedly cheeky Tank Girl's source comic utilized the island nation as its locale, though the film didn't really emphasize that fact very much. Remote, mysterious, alternately barren and lush, and at least partially populated by the descendants of some of Britain's most notorious criminals, Australia has somehow become the 'go to' continent for post-Apocalyptic fiction, and it serves that purpose once again in...The Rover, an interesting if perhaps appropriately meandering film written and directed by David Michôd. An almost unrecognizable Guy Pearce portrays a...scraggly looking character who spends most of the film trying to chase down a trio of thieves who have made off with his car. Along the way, he hooks up with Rey, the wounded (and perhaps mentally deficient) brother of one of the thieves, utilizing the simple minded man child to help track down the bad guys. Robert Pattinson is about as equally unrecognizable in this role as Pearce is in his. The film is largely a so-called 'two hander,' though a number of tangential characters waft in and out at various times. Alternately strangely lyrical and almost grotesquely violent, The Rover at the very least offers a chance to both Pearce and Pattinson to break free of perceived typecasting and offer some really interesting, if occasionally bizarre, performances."
Finally, the Criterion Collection is bringing an even more despairing vision to Blu-ray with an HD upgrade of Roman Polanski's Macbeth. On its own, Macbeth ranks as one of the grimmest and most cynical of all William Shakespeare's tragedies. The story of a Scottish lord (played here by Frenzy's Jon Finch, in what is probably his finest screen appearance) whose lust for power sees him resorting to increasingly savage ends, Macbeth is like a sustained howl of pain that leaves few of its characters (even the children!) unscathed in its dramatization of the old adage, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely"; hell, the play gives off such a toxic charge that even today, theater folks call it "The Scottish Play" to avoid invoking its demons backstage. There's little catharsis in this one – the closest we get is a resigned acknowledgment of the world's horrors – but if anything, Polanski's version is even more spiritually crushing. Since his brilliant debut feature, the 1963 thriller Knife in the Water, Polanski had always evinced a rather jaundiced attitude towards humanity (and with good reason: it's hard to survive the Holocaust and come out the other end convinced of mankind's innate decency), but Macbeth feels comprehensively bleak in ways that make Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby look cheery. Shakespeare's language (given form by Polanski and the esteemed critic Kenneth Tynan) is about the only thing that's lyrical or poetic. Polanski's Scotland is a tangle of wind, rain, and mud, with characters either struggling to move through layers of cumbersome metal and heavy cloaks or letting the elements scour their distended, sagging frames (the three witches that plant bloody seeds of ambition in Macbeth's head are gnarled and dirty and frequently naked). And if the world itself isn't battering the characters, it's the frequent, horrifying violence, which maintains its grisly power even today. Polanski stages the many knifings and beatings and decapitations and maulings as raw nightmare material, and as a result, this Macbeth feels more like a pure horror film than any of the other movie versions. But, of course, to Polanski, his screen carnage couldn't top real life. Just two years before the release of his film, Polanski's wife Sharon Tate was brutally murdered by members of the Manson Family, lending Macbeth the uneasy air of a punishing psychotherapy session. You can sense Polanski pushing the envelope to try and prove to himself that it still exists, that you can still contain some tragedies, but like the film's doomed characters, he comes up short. Polanski added a bleak coda, which finds the brother of the newly crowned king (Paul Shelley) seeking out the witches to fuel his own terrible ambitions, and the message is clear: the world never runs out of ways to hurt us. A terrifying, mesmerizing look into the abyss.
Svet Atanasov noted in his Blu-ray review that "Macbeth has a dark heart whose beating is exceptionally easy to detect. Indeed, the film instantly draws one into its world and then repeatedly and unapologetically tests one's tolerance for graphic violence...Virtually all of the main characters in Macbeth are played by young actors, as intended by Polanski. Prior to his film other adaptations of Shakespeare plays were typically made with older, more experienced actors. For his film Polanski wanted a cast that would bring fresh energy and ultimately an entirely new organic atmosphere. When comparing Polanski's film to other adaptations of Shakespeare's play – most notably Orson Welles' Macbeth and Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood - it is quite clear that this is precisely what Finch, Shaw, Annis, and the rest of their colleagues accomplished. The film's most distinctive quality, however, is its visual style. Polanski and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor (Repulsion, Cul-De-Sac) chose spectacular locations in Wales and England which are chiefly responsible for its striking authentic appearance. Shooting there with the actors wasn't always easy or safe – for example, the atmospheric sequence where Macbeth and Banquo are seen galloping across a very narrow ridge was so risky that even the stunt coordinator was concerned about their safety - but it is precisely this remarkable attention to detail that makes Macbeth such a special film."