CRISS CROSS, Robert Siodmak, director/Eureka Entertainment Blu-ray Writing a booklet essay for Eureka’s splendidly spruced-up edition of a classic film noir has given me the chance to appreciate once again just how key this movie was in the history of the genre. The German director Robert Siodmak’s approach to this film — one of his best — is an exemplar of just how different he was from another expat director working in Hollywood: the Englishman Alfred Hitchcock. Although the latter often puts the audience on the side of criminals as much as the putative heroes of his films (in, for instance, Strangers on a Train (1951)), Hitchcock’s troubled protagonists were generally individuals on the right side of the law – even if the law was pursuing them. Not so Siodmak, who forces the viewer to identify with ill-fated, avowedly criminal protagonists — as in Criss Cross. We are taken into the world of Steve Thompson and ex-wife Anna (played by Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo) in the preliminary hours before a payroll robbery with which Lancaster’s character – who drives a security van – is criminally involved. In any selection of the most influential and fully achieved crime cinema, there are few aficionados of the genre who would not argue that Siodmak’s film is securely placed at the top. Any film that can boast the presence of Robert Siodmak, Burt Lancaster, cinematographer Franz Planer and composer Miklós Rózsa has a guaranteed place in crime film history. And thanks to the Blu-ray medium, a whole new audience can acquaint itself with this classic crime movie, now looking as fresh as paint in this new 4K restoration as part of The Masters of Cinema Series.
BLOOD TIDE, Richard Jefferies, director/Arrow Blu-Ray The problem with many a low-budget horror film is often the fact that there have been insufficient funds to hire the most impressive actors – hence the armies of (mostly) photogenic teenagers, usually dying while in the act of copulation. That’s not the case with Blood Tide as mature Academy Award-winning actors James Earl Jones, José Ferrer and Lila Kedrova add their considerable weight to this unlikely but entertaining smorgasbord of sea monsters and sacrificial virgins. The writer here is exploitation specialist Nico Mastorakis — best known for such lively outings as the notorious Island of Death, The Zero Boys, The Wind and many others — and the less celebrated director is Richard Jefferies (Scarecrows, Tron: Legacy). Blood Tide makes the most of its ageing stars, the less-than-respectable aspects of exploitation fare that still delight aficionados (e.g. nudity and bloody mayhem) are firmly in place here. Not, it goes without saying, for the squeamish.
THROW DOWN; Johnnie To, director/Eureka Entertainment Blu-Ray The ghost of the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa may be discerned behind these lively and inventive riffs on his themes. Judo fighter Szeto Bo (Louis Ko of Flash Point) plays a troubled man who give up martial arts to run a bar, sinking into a morass of gambling and alcoholism. But he soon finds himself obliged to take up the cudgels that he thought he had left behind. Johnnie To’s action drama appears on Blu-ray from a 4K restoration in its UK debut as part of The Masters of Cinema Series.
