Lamont, Duncan

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

Stage and Spectacle - Three Films by Jean Renoir (The Golden Coach / French Cancan / Elena and Her Men) - Criterion Collection

These three Jean Renoir films were not conceived as a trilogy, but they fit beautifully together in this Criterion package: all luscious with theatrical color, wry in tone, and awestruck by beautiful women. When Renoir returned to Europe after his wartime exile in Hollywood, he first turned to The Golden Coach (1953), an international co-production shot in Rome. It contains all of Renoir's love of the theatrical life, as a traveling troupe of actors arrives in a colonial town in South America, and the leading lady (lightning-quick Anna Magnani) bewitches her many suitors--yet knows she is most brilliantly alive when she is on stage. The film was shot in multiple languages; this is the English, which Renoir preferred.

French Cancan is perhaps the greatest backstage movie ever made. Jean Gabin plays a stage impresario of the 1880s (surely a stand-in for Renoir himself), hatching a plan to revive the naughty can-can and school a young ingenue (Francoise Arnoul) in the rigors of art and life. With 1956's Elena and Her Men, Renoir relies on the effortless beauty of Ingrid Bergman, as a Polish princess juggling devotees (including Jean Marais as a smitten general, for whom love trumps politics every time). While not a woman of the theater, Elena understands the value of putting on a show.

The Criterion box is an authoritative pleasure (including the pretty packaging), featuring best-possible visual transfers. Excellent archival introductions to Elena and Golden Coach are delivered by Renoir himself, shot sometime in the 1960s; Peter Bogdanovich provides a solid 10-minute talk on Cancan. A one-hour-plus, three-part Renoir interview, conducted by New Wave filmmaker-critic Jacques Rivette, is spread across all three discs; Renoir is in fascinating, aphoristic form ("Intelligence is terrible. It makes us do stupid things"). Part of an informative BBC documentary, Jean Renoir: Hollywood and Beyond, is bundled with Elena. Essays by the likes of Andrew Sarris and Jonathan Rosenbaum provide context for Renoir's celebratory but unsparing look at the intersection of Art and Life. --Robert Horton

Near the end of his long and celebrated career, master filmmaker Jean Renoir indulged his lifelong obsession with life-as-theater and directed The Golden Coach (1953), French Cancan (1955), and Elena and Her Men (1956), three delirious films, infatuated with the past, love, and artifice. Awash in jubilant Technicolor, each film interweaves public display and private feelings through the talents of three immortal film icons#Anna Magnani, Jean Gabin, and Ingrid Bergman. The Criterion Collection is proud to present these three majestic films by Jean Renoir for the first time on DVD.

Frankenstein Created Woman/The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires

The Creeping Flesh

The Hammeresque Creeping Flesh is a creepy thriller mixing one part Cain and Abel, a dash of Frankenstein, and a pinch of the Re-Animator with the best elements that '70s U.K. horror has to offer. Is evil a sickness that mankind can be cured of? Dr. Emmanuel Hildern (Peter Cushing) seems to think so. After returning from New Guinea with the ultimate skeletal specimen of evil it becomes his life's obsession. While Dr. Hildern closes in on the serum, James (Christopher Lee), his half-brother and rival, looks on with envy from behind the mental asylum he runs. He too is dabbling in science to find the cure of madness. However, with less of a success rate. After Dr. Hildern tests his evil serum on his daughter Penelope, she of course goes mad, goes on a killing spree, and ends up in Uncle James's asylum. Immediately recognizing his new inmate, Uncle James brings Penelope back home, only to find his brother's work and progress. In a fit of jealousy he steals the valuable skeleton which, unbeknownst to him, is slowly growing flesh and developing into an evil, uncontrollable monster. --Rob Bracco

The Man in the White Suit

Ealing comedy--cozy, gentle, and whimsical, right? In this case, think again. Alexander Mackendrick was always the most politically aware of the Ealing directors, and in The Man in the White Suit (1952) he takes the studio's favorite theme of the little man up against the system and gives it a sharp satirical twist. Sidney Stratton (Alec Guinness at his most unworldly), a maverick scientist working in a textile mill, invents a fabric that never gets dirty and never wears out. He's hailed as a genius--until management and unions alike realize what his brainwave implies. Mackendrick's humor is exact and pointed, and the satire turns savage as a lynch mob of bosses and workers hunt Sidney down through dark, narrow streets. Mackendrick's disenchanted view of class-ridden British society still rings horribly true, and he draws note-perfect performances from the cream of British character actors: Cecil Parker as the liberal mill owner (based, it's said, on Ealing boss Michael Balcon); Ernest Thesiger as the evil old godfather of the industry; and, wittily sensual as Sidney's confidante, the ever-wonderful Joan Greenwood. Plus, listen out for the "voice" of Sidney's bizarre apparatus, the funniest and most unforgettable sound effect ever devised. --Philip Kemp

Quatermass and the Pit

We have met the enemy, and it is us: when a Martian spacecraft with a terrifying link to the origins of humanity is unearthed beneath a London tube station, only the esteemed Professor Bernard Quatermass (a very British--and possibly mad--precursor to Mulder and Scully) can save London's suddenly murderous population from itself. One of the most intelligently paranoid science fiction films ever produced, this pessimistic masterpiece functions as a dark flip side to the relatively optimistic alien-induced evolution theory presented in the later 2001: A Space Odyssey. Nigel Kneale's brilliant script (which posits a surprisingly plausible, otherworldly rationale for the existence of the supernatural) was later appropriated by acknowledged fan John Carpenter for his underrated Prince of Darkness. In addition to boasting a flawless widescreen print, this marvelous tape also features a hilariously overdone original U.S. trailer ("Women will be defiled by the invaders from outer space!" it erroneously shrieks). A must-see for horror and science fiction aficionados. This film is also known as Five Million Years to Earth. --Andrew Wright

Prehistoric Women/The Witches

Frankenstein Created Woman

The Dan Curtis Macabre Collection (Dracula (1973) / The Turn of the Screw (1974) / Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1968) / The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973))

A Tale of Two Cities (1958) [Region 2]