This week sees the Blu-ray release for one of the screen's most enduring cult classics: Re-Animator. Based on a story from author H.P. Lovecraft, this horror film takes a graphically perverse look at twisted medical student Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) and his attempts to bring the dead back to life. What really sets Re-Animator apart, however, isn't the gore (though it is plentiful) but rather the picture's irreverent sense of humor, a staple of director Stuart Gordon, who also brought the same blackly comic tone to From Beyond and Stuck. Credit must also go to Combs, whose fastidiously proper energy made Herbert West an unlikely horror icon.
Re-Animator is still a splatter film; it's just a frighteningly accomplished one that prompted Michael Reuben to write, "if Re-Animator were just an exceptionally gory film (which it is), it wouldn't have nearly the reputation it does. Director Stuart Gordon's debut feature shattered all conventions when it came to showing disgusting imagery, but there's been plenty more splatter where that came from, and very little has had Re-Animator's staying power...As a good theater director, Gordon insisted on rehearsing his cast for several weeks before production began, an almost unheard-of luxury in modern filmmaking. By the time the company arrived on their dilapidated set, everyone knew what story they were telling. They were ready to make the gore count for something. As Gordon says in his commentary, actors are 'the best special effect there is.'"
Another cult favorite is A New Leaf, which comes to Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films. The directorial debut of comedienne Elaine May, the picture ranks as one of the most cynical "romantic" comedies ever made; it stars the great Walter Matthau as feckless playboy Henry Graham, who is forced to marry a rich woman in order to maintain his decadent lifestyle. He settles on Henrietta Lowell (May), a daffy oddball whose beyond-eccentric demeanor would drive any husband insane....except that if Henry gets his way, Henrietta won't be around long enough to annoy him. May's film was the victim of some chaotic post-production maladies - the studio ultimately reedited it without May's input - yet it still remains inventively, wonderfully funny.
In his Blu-ray review, Jeffrey Kauffman praises A New Leaf, calling it "so charming so much of the time that it's easy to forgive some of its stumbles. Matthau is his usual winning (if curmudgeonly) self throughout the film, and while May might drive some viewers batty with her incredibly mannered performance, the two together make for a decidedly "odd couple" who are almost always a pleasure to watch...If May's writing outshines her direction, that's no wonder, as she was certainly one of the comic geniuses of her generation. A New Leaf isn't a perfect film, but it's gently humorous almost every step of the way and it also has a goofily manic energy that is quite unique in American comedy films of this era."
We end the week with two TV-on-Blu-ray titles. This week doesn't have the same variety of television releases that last week did, but some gems do arrive on Tuesday; most notable are Fringe: The Complete Fourth Season and Bored to Death: The Complete Third Season. Fringe's fourth season had to overcome a real challenge: the show's creative staff had to satisfy (Spoiler Alert) Season Three's twisty cliffhanger, which saw Joshua Jackson's Peter Bishop erased from time in order to unite two rival universes, and for the first half of Season Four, Fringe doesn't seem quite up to the challenge. The chemistry between the characters is off, and the uneasy tension between Earths One and Two isn't as dramatically propulsive as it should be. Yet the late-stage emergence of a classic Fringe villain galvanizes the second half, and the fourth season ultimately provides a satisfying lead-in to the fifth - and final - season.
The third season of Bored to Death proved to be the iconoclastic HBO comedy's last one, but the series could not have gone out on a stronger note. The daffy, unexpectedly touching relationship between best friends George Christopher (Ted Danson), Jonathan Ames (Jason Schwartzman), and Ray Hueston (Zach Galifianakis) still gives Bored to Death its off-center energy, but Season Three also includes quirkier mystery plots for its heroes to unravel and an understated - but very real - sense of menace complicating their lives. Coupled alongside terrific New York City location footage and wonderful guest spots from the likes of John Hodgman, Oliver Platt, Isla Fisher, Casey Wilson, Mary Steenburgen, and Stacy Keach, Bored to Death appears primed to become a beloved "cancelled too soon" favorite.