A TIME FOR DYING: Budd Boetticher/Audie Murphy's final narrative film gets the remastered treatment on DVD

TrustMovies had never heard of  A TIME FOR DYING prior to receiving the announcement of its imminent appearance in remastered form on DVD from Corinth Films, a distribution company the output of which I've been particularly fond of over the years.

Turns out that this very odd little (it lasts only 76 minutes) western from 1969 -- the last narrative film directed by Budd Boetticher and featuring the final performance of Audie Murphy -- is very much one-of-a-kind.

It's no secret to film fans -- particularly those of westerns -- that Mr. Boetticher (pictured left) was one of the better directors in this once-popular genre. Boetticher was drawn to and had a knack for making the most of stories that highlighted moral questions, together with those oft-times gray areas between right and wrong, evil and good.

This interest gets full play in A Time for Dying, as we note early on a scene in which a sweet bunny rabbit is about to be attacked by a rattlesnake. After the movie's hero (Richard Lapp, shown two photos below) prevents this, he is interrupted by a young man who looks rather villainous (actor Bob Random, shown below and currently making news via the popular documentary, The Other Side of the Wind), who suggests to our hero that the rattler had a right to live, too. Hmmm...

A Time for Dying turns out to have been both directed and written by Boetticher -- his first and only try at screenwriting, although he did provide stories for a few films. His script may not have won any awards, but it still stands as a simply-constructed, nicely-written and very surprising piece of work. Its simplicity, in fact, is one of the reasons the film so easily draws us in and keeps us both amused and interested in just where this oddball story might be heading.

The movie possesses genuine charm, thanks to the work of actors Lapp (above, who looks amazingly like a young and fresh-faced Audie Murphy) and its heroine, a spunky and intelligent young woman played by Anne Randall, shown below. These two "youngins" combine sweetness and naivete in such perfect measure that it's difficult not to be charmed by the pair and the situation in which they find themselves.

Though the two have only just met -- they're both "new in town" -- only a day elapses before they've gotten themselves "hitched." At the point of a gun. The gunslinger is none other than a certain famous Judge Roy Bean (played with great relish and fun by Victor Jory, below), who takes a liking to these kids, even as he sentences another sweet-looking youngster to be hung by the neck until dead for possibly stealing a horse. ("Don't worry," my spouse noted, "he won't really be dead.") Hmmm again...

By the time you have reached the finale and denouement of what one of our more famous critics, Roger Ebert, called "the damndest and confoundingest western you can imagine" -- I suspect you'll have arrived at a notion that would have pleased the late Mr. Boetticher immensely: It really does not matter how charming or sweet or "good" you might be, people: 
Life is mostly shit.

Along the way, not only do we meet that hanging judge, but also Jesse James (played by Murphy, shown above, in his final screen role), Jesse's brother Frank, and their relative, also known (by a pompous-but-not-so-hot filmmaker) as "the coward Robert Ford." Boetticher's take on these famous folk, just as on Judge Bean, is every bit as unusual and enjoyable as is all else in this oddly sweet and darkly satisfying film.

From Corinth Films, A Time for Dying makes its DVD debut this coming Tuesday, February 5. Simultaneously -- already, actually -- the movie is available via Amazon Prime Video and free, for members of that popular streaming service.

Peter Jackson's World War One visual/verbal 3D amazement, THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD opens in South Florida -- and nationwide

I've never seen anything quite like new film this over my entire 77-year movie-going life. (TrustMovies saw his first film, or so he was told, before the age of one year; by the time he was 2-1/2, he had run away from home in order to go to the "picture show.") What filmmaker Peter Jackson has accomplished in THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD -- he dedicates his film to his New Zealand grandfather who fought in WWI -- is so truly surprising and unexpected (even if, oddly enough, you have already reads lots about the film itself) that it will leave you amazed and shaken. This is hands down the closest thing to being in war itself that the movie experience has given me.

Most filmgoers best know Jackson (shown, left) via his Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, though early fans will remember his bizarre and oh-so-tasteful Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and Dead Alive (my favorite of his -- besides this film -- still remains Heavenly Creatures).

Nothing he has done, however, could prepare you for this new documentary, in which archival photos and film shot during "The Great War" have been not simply restored but colorized, wide-screened and given the three-dimension effect, rendering them literally something heretofore unseen.

If this sounds like some mere stunt, the effect of actually viewing it on screen proves something else entirely. (We saw it in 3D, but it is also being shown in standard format.) This, combined with the film's narration -- which is nothing more or less than the actual recorded-during-interviews voices of the men who served in the war talking about the experience itself -- join forces to make what we see and hear seem like utter and unalloyed reality.

Very wisely and cleverly, Jackson begins with old, black-and-white small-screen footage, which continues for quite some time, as he first shows (and has the soldiers tell) of how the war began for England, along with all the rah-rah recruiting (often of boys as young as fourteen or fifteen), the training of the troops, and then the shipping of them all off to the war itself.

When, at last, one of those black-and-white photos suddenly changes to color, the effect is so startling, amazing and memorable that, for me, it outdoes any and every "special effect" I've had to sit through in our dismal array of current superhero schlock. Further, Jackson coordinates the visuals with the soldiers' narration extremely well.

Only once during the entire movie did I find the visuals amiss, due mostly to the overly repetitive use of one particular photo, of soldiers supposedly waiting for the battle to begin. Otherwise, the well-chosen combos of visual and narrative keeps us locked in, producing an immediacy that works like a charm. A deadly charm.

As amazing as the documentary is, They Shall Not Grow Old is not an easy watch. In fact, it is often grueling. But what else might we expect from a film that place us so squarely in the middle of wartime?  While the overt carnage is less than we often get from our usual slasher movie, the sense of fear, of odd isolation, of impending doom is so strong that (the acute and specific sounds effects are an enormous help here) that I found myself holding my breath and literally jumping slightly in my seat at numerous times throughout.

Particularly engulfing and horrendous was the trench warfare (and trench living) to which the soldiers were subjected. Their utter lack of cleanliness -- and their inability to do anything about this -- along with their decaying teeth and non-healing wounds will stagger you. At 99 minutes, the movie does not seem overlong, but by its end, as the war itself ceases, you will be more than ready to cry "enough!"

This is a fine and fitting way to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the end of World War I. Though the press audience with whom I watched the screening were made up mostly of the elderly or near so, I would hope that a few intrepid young people will take a chance on this one-of-a-kind movie.

Though it seems that most of our youthful population can barely understand or be aware of our current and seemingly endless middle eastern war(s), let alone differentiate between our War for Independence, WWI, WWII, or our unnecessary and destructive wars in Korea and Vietnam, one can only hope that some few of these will want to learn something new, while having the kind of movie experience they will not have encountered anywhere else.

From Warner Brothers Pictures, They Shall Not Grow Old, after opening in special screenings last December, will now hit theaters nationwide this Friday, February 1. Click here to find those nearest you.

Luchino Visconti's ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS: A classic masterpiece of neo-realism and family melodrama arrives on Blu-ray/DVD

TrustMovies first encountered ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS, the landmark movie from Italian master Luchino Visconti, in 1960 when he was in the midst of his college years. That year he also saw René Clément's Purple Noon for the first time and of course -- as did simultaneously half of the world's moviegoers, women and men -- fell in love with the star of both films, Alain Delon. These two movies, together with Ingmar Bergman's The Magician, which he had seen the year previously, changed his movie-going habits forever by demonstrating how much more powerful, involving, thought-provoking and entertaining international films could be when compared with so much of the drivel he had experienced via the output of the Hollywood studios.

From then and onwards, TM suspects that he has seen at least as many foreign films as domestic product. Rocco and His Brothers, making its DVD and Blu-ray debut next week in a glorious new 4K restoration via Milestone Films, also put him in touch with the work of the late Signore Visconti (shown at left), for which he is doubly grateful.

And while he must have seen this film at least ten or more times when he was much younger (and then again on videotape maybe two decades ago), he doesn't recall its ever looking any better than it does now, as Giuseppe Rotunno's magnificent black-and-white cinematography shimmers and glows, then dapples and darkens its way toward making this movie one of, if not the most beautifully filmed accomplishments of all time.

Given that the movie deals with a poor family from Italy's south that travels by train to the "big city" of Milan only to find itself living in continued near-poverty, with little of what might be called traditional beauty of sets, costumes or locations to be seen, makes Rotunno's accomplishment all that more special.

Some aficionados might bridle at my calling Rocco a melodrama. But it is. Melodrama was Visconti's forte, and this film is his best among many excellent ones, from Ossessione through Senso, Sandra and The Damned. What makes Rocco so great is that the melodrama is anchored to a tale that incorporates Visconti's major concerns: family, class and the impact of change upon tradition.

Working with a vast array of characters, in which each -- from smallest to most important -- is brought to impressive life, the protagonists, a mother (Katina Paxinou, above, left) and her five sons, come north and quickly fall into the somewhat decadent life of the city. From boxing gyms and hookers to a dry cleaning establishment, the military and a thoroughly bourgeois family into which one son will marry, family members brush up against (and sometimes embrace) everything from power and money to theft and murder.

The emotional stakes here are ultra-high, and Visconti, his writers and cast plunge in with utter abandon. (This is probably what made the movie so powerful for me as a very young man: I'd never experienced anything like it on screen.)

And while M. Delon (above), an actor of limited range and depth, will always remain for me the most beautiful man to ever grace the screen, watching the film again today only makes the marvelous work of actor Renato Salvatori (below, second from right), who plays the most wayward of the five brothers so very remarkable. An actor up-until-then known for light romantic comedy, his performance here would become the highlight of his career.

So, too, would the work of Annie Girardot (below, in the role of Nadia, the prostitute who becomes involved with two of the brothers) place this actress squarely and deservedly on the map of international stardom.

The movie is just three minutes short of three hours long, but it is never in the least slow-moving, let alone boring, thanks to Visconti's ability at pacing and at making the most of the melodrama's meat. Two scenes still hold the power to shock and scald: the rape and the murder.

And how wonderful it is to see the film once again uncut and containing the various segments (along with title cards) for each of the five brothers.

Revisiting a love from one's youth can sometimes be disappointing. I'm delighted to say that Rocco and His Brothers holds up in every way and in every detail.

From The Milestone Cinematheque, available as both DVD and Blu-ray, the film hits the street this coming Tuesday, July 10 -- for purchase and (I would hope) rental. The terrific Bonus Features include two that are definitely "don't miss": a video interview with Caterina d'Amico, daughter of one of Italy's most famous screenwriters, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, and another, earlier set of interviews by Caterina with Rocco cast and crew members, including her mother. These are so filled with fascinating, pertinent, enjoyable and funny stuff that I could watch them all over again. And probably will.

Rediscovered (again!) cult classic, Leslie Stevens' PRIVATE PROPERTY hits Blu-ray/DVD

Much is being made of the recent theatrical (and now available on DVD and Blu-ray) release of PRIVATE PROPERTY, the 1960 cult classic written and directed by Leslie Stevens, and starring his then-wife Kate Manx, in her movie debut, alongside two better-known actors Corey Allen (from Rebel Without a Cause) and Warren Oates (who was yet to come into full prominence). Supposedly lost and out of circulation for more than 50 years, the film was seen by TrustMovies when it was first released, and then again when it was re-released, either in theaters or maybe on videotape or DVD, at least decade or more back in time.

I cannot recall exactly how or when this earlier re-discovery happened, but I am certain that it did. (Might it have come from a European DVD brought to us via the now defunct Greencine?) Consequently, I greatly question the claim that this is the first time the film will have been seen in all those many years since its debut.

Mr. Stevens (shown at right), whose credits include even more writing than directing, was onto something -- several somethings, actually -- with this film, the first of these being how empty seems the wealthy lifestyle inhabited by the married couple we see here: he, forever trying to make a further buck, and she, so unsatisfied at his constant inattention and patronization. The movie also offers a look at the haves against the have-nots, some of the most voyeuristic scenes seen in a movie up to this time, as well as an enormous undercurrent of homoeroticism that keeping threatening to bubble over into overt homosexuality.

Into the lives of this "model" twosome comes another twosome, a couple of hunky and somewhat frightening drifter buddies -- Duke (Mr. Allen) and Boots (Mr. Oates), who first threaten a gas station attendant to get some free food and drink and then quietly highjack a car and its driver (very well-played by Jerome Cowan) in order to follow another car and its driver, Ann (the lovely Ms Manx) on whom the guys have designs.

For nearly a full hour of its hour-and-twenty-minute running time, Private Property is a slow burner full of longing and hesitation, as Duke comes on to Ann, supposedly setting her up for a sexual rendez-vous with Boots, but also seeming to want to her for himself. All the while, the two men appear awfully close to each other, with Duke joking about Boots just wanting a sugar daddy (which he may, in fact, have already found in Duke). All of this is handled extremely well by both Stevens and his excellent cast, which includes Robert Ward as Ann's thoughtless, thankless hubby.

Although three-quarters of the film is first-rate, the finale descends into full-blown melodramatic-thriller mode, with all the usual conventions and nonsense the genre often includes. While the ending offers a kind of release from what's been building up, it is hugely second-rate compared to the build-up itself. Still, the 4K restoration look great; the jazz score, very "of its time," is appropriate; and Ms Manx (above and further above) looks simply great in her fashions of the day and also does a creditable acting job. (The actress sadly ended her own life just four years later, after making one other movie and three TV appearances.)

The talented Mr. Allen (above) gave probably his best performance in this film -- sexy, scary, charming and even, at times, vulnerable and hopeful -- while Oates (below and on poster, top), in the smaller role, shows plenty of that understated charisma he would demonstrate in many movies to come. With Ted McCord as cinematographer and Conrad Hall on camera, the movie had plenty of talent behind that camera, as well as in front.

This re-release is yet another gift from Cineliciouspics and, having just completed its theatrical run as of tomorrow (you can click here and scroll down to see where it has played), the movie is available now on DVD and Blu-ray, for purchase and/or rental. There is a terrific extra here, too, in the form of a current-day interview with Alexander Singer, the movie's still photographer and technical consultant, who talks about the filming and what went on personally and professionally at the time. It's all fascinating stuff, as is the film itself.

HOLLOW TRIUMPH: Henreid/Bennett starrer from Fuchs/Sekely gets a spiffy, restored look

A film of which I'd never heard till now -- despite its good cast (Paul Henreid and Joan Bennett) and a screenwriter of several other excellent films (Daniel Fuchs) but a Hungarian director (István "Steve" Székely) whose main claim to fame would be The Day of the Triffids -- HOLLOW TRIUMPH, aka The Man Who Murdered Himself aka The Scar, looks today very much like a would-be hard-boiled noir that occasionally veers perilously close to unintentional camp.

The occasion for covering it comes from its release, via Film Chest, this coming Tuesday, March 11, in a new high-definition restoration from the original 35mm film elements. The restoration looks very good -- crisp black-and-white cinematog-raphy (by the great John Alton) with few moments in which that restoration loses luster.

This was one of only two films produced by its star, Mr. Henreid, shown above. The other -- For Men Only (which he also directed) -- about a college hazing death sounds much more worthwhile, as well as, of course, ever timely. The actor went on to direct a number of other films and television shows, as well as continuing to act until the late 1970s (he died in 1992). A somewhat wooden performer, he still managed to score well in several memorable movies, including Casablanca and Now, Voyager. With his rather thick Austrian accent, he came across as alternately classy or evil, as needed.

In Hollow Triumph, however, that accent seems odd at best, and the movie attempts no explanation for it. Henreid's character, John Muller, may have a Germanic sounding name, but he's only ever been a resident of the USA, so far as we know, and his brother (played by Eduard Franz, above, left) has no accent at all. If this were the movie's biggest problem, however, we'd be lucky.

It's clear from the outset that the movie wants to be a hard-boiled noir -- the opening is a scene in the warden's office of a prison, in which we're given reams of background exposition. The cinematography and camera angles are top-notch, but the story -- one of those "doppelganger" tales that have difficulty remaining credible at best and utterly defy credibility at worst -- keeps constantly veering between "Hmmm..." and "Oy!"

Fortunately Ms Bennett (above and below) is on hand to provide some beauty and sass. She becomes the heart of the film, and it is generally a pleasure to watch her work. She's particularly good at delivering some of the film's saucier dialog, which then allows her to slowly modulate into a kinder, gentler woman.

The film's twists and turns, often pretty unbelievable, do at least allow for some fun and irony, particularly as the finale approaches, in which Henreid's wooden delivery can more easily be mistaken for subtlety.

Among the little surprises is a funny, charming performance from the always dependable John Qualen (above, left) as the dentist who works in the same building as our doppelganger doctor. You may also notice a very young Jack Webb (of Dragnet fame), below, left, making his movie debut here. Webb has no dialog (that I caught, at least) but his several short scenes let us see him visually long enough to recognize that very noticeable (as they used to call it it) kisser.

You'll also get a gander at a truly gorgeous and glamorous blond actress named Leslie Brooks, shown below, who appeared in a number of movies during the 1940s (Hollow Triumph would be her penultimate--until a final film in 1971), without her ever quite making it to stardom.

Ms Brooks looks very good here, however, and provides yet another reason for checking out this little (and little-known) B movie.

The 1948 film, in its new restoration and running 82 minutes, hits the streets this coming Tuesday, March 11, on DVD only, with a suggested retail price of just $12. It will be available for pur-chase or rental via Amazon and I hope eventually on Netflix, where there's yet no word of this title.