The Stepford Wives (1975) * * *

Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross) is a young wife who moves with her lawyer husband Walter (Peter Masterson) and two children from NYC to the idyllic Connecticut suburb of Stepford. Walter has dreamed of moving to the suburbs in Fairfield County, Connecticut, but Joanna doesn't enjoy suburban life. Loneliness quickly sets in as Joanna, an aspiring photographer, finds the women in town all look great and are obsessed with housework, but have few intellectual interests. They behave like zombies, constantly cleaning their houses and cooking their husbands' dinner. The men all belong to the club Stepford Men's Association, which Walter joins to Joanna's dismay. Witnessing neighbor Carol Van Sant's (Nanette Newman) sexually submissive behavior to her husband Ted, as well as her odd, repetitive behavior after a car accident also strikes Joanna as unusual. Something is going on.

Carol Van Sant: I'll just die if I don't get this recipe. I'll just die if I don't get this recipe. I'll just die if I don't get this recipe.

Things start to look up when she makes friends with another newcomer to town, Bobbie Markowe (Paula Prentiss), a sassy woman who quickly becomes Kathy's best friend in town. Bobbie says, "It's like maids have been declared illegal and the housewife with the neatest place gets Robert Redford for Christmas." Stepford once had a women's group with a healthy membership, but that dissolved some years ago. So, along with trophy wife Charmaine Wimperis (Tina Louise), they organize a Women's Lib consciousness raising session, but the meeting is a failure when the other wives hijack the meeting with cleaning concerns.

Joanna is unimpressed by the boorish Men's Club members, including intimidating president Dale "Diz" Coba (Patrick O'Neal). The men stealthily collect information on Joanna, including artist's renderings of her face, recordings of her voice, and other personal details. When Charmaine turns overnight from a languid, self-concerned tennis fan into an industrious, devoted wife, Joanna and Bobbie start investigating the reason behind the submissive and bland behavior of the other wives, especially when they learn they were once quite supportive of liberal social policies. It soon becomes plain that the women of Stepford are being coerced, brainwashed, or otherwise altered.

Dale Coba: (Joanna is brewing coffee) I like to watch women doing little domestic chores.
Joanna Eberhart: Then you came to the right town. Why do they call you Diz?
Dale Coba: I used to work in Disneyland.
Joanna Eberhart: No, really!
Dale Coba: No. Really.
Joanna Eberhart: I don't believe you.
Dale Coba: Why not?
Joanna Eberhart: You don't seem to be the kind of person that likes to make other people happy.

Joanna and Bobbie investigate Stepford. They are depicted wearing casual clothing, unfussy hairstyles, and little or no makeup. In addition, they are not wearing bras, indicating they are "Liberated Women" of the 1970s. This is in contrast to the perfect Stepford Wives. Bobbie and Joanna start house hunting in other towns, and later, Joanna wins a prestigious contract with a photo gallery with some photographs of their children. When she excitedly tells Bobbie her good news, Joanna is shocked to find her freewheeling and liberal friend has abruptly changed into another clean, conservative housewife, with no intention to move from town.

Joanna Eberhart: It'll happen to me before then. When you come back, there will be a woman with my name and my face, she'll cook and clean like crazy, but she won't take pictures and she won't be me! She'll be... like the robots at Disneyland.

Joanna panics and at the insistence of Walter, visits a psychiatrist where she explains her belief that all the men in the town are behind a conspiracy of somehow changing the women. The psychiatrist recommends she leave town until she feels safe, but when Joanna returns home, the children are missing. The marriage turns into domestic violence when Joanna and Walter get into a physical scuffle. In an attempt to find her children, she thinks Bobbie may be caring for them. Desperate, Joanna stabs Bobbie with a kitchen knife trying to prove her humanity, but Bobbie doesn't bleed or suffer, instead she goes into a loop of odd mechanical behavior, thus confirming she is a robot.

Dr. Fancher: Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you a prescription that you get filled, then you get your children and get the hell out! Don't tell your husband, don't tell anybody, just get in your car and drive somewhere you feel safe.

Bobbie Markowe: (after being stabbed) Oh Joanna! My new dress! How could you do a thing like that? Just when I was going to give you coffee! How could you do a thing like that? I thought we were friends! Just when I was going to... how could you do a thing like that... just when I was going to give you coffee! Oh Joanna... I thought we were friends... I thought we were friends... friends... coffee... how could you do a thing like that? Like that? Like that? Like that? Friends... friends...

Knowing she will be the next victim, Joanna sneaks into the mansion which houses the Men's Association to find her children, but finds the mastermind of the whole operation, Dale "Diz" Coba, and eventually her own robot-duplicate. Joanna is shocked into paralysis when she witnesses its soulless, black empty eyes. It is then suggested that the Joanna-duplicate strangles the real Joanna. In the final scene, the duplicate is seen placidly purchasing groceries at the local supermarket, along with the other wives wearing similar long dresses, large hats and saying little more than "Hello" to each other. The final shot focuses on Joanna's now-finished eyes.

(last lines)
Joanna Eberhart: Hello, Bobbie.
Bobbie Markowe: Oh, hello, Joanna.
Joanna Eberhart: How are you?
Bobbie Markowe: I'm fine. How are you?
Joanna Eberhart: I'm fine. How are the children?
Bobbie Markowe: Fine.

THE STEPFORD WIVES is a great movie with a terrific premise, extremely watchable. It's a stylish triumph filled with POV shots, incredible production design, smart performances and a haunting score by Michael Small. This science fiction/horror film is based on the 1972 Ira Levin novel of the same name. To some extent it's a knockoff of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956), in that human beings are replaced with duplicates who look similar on the outside, but on the inside have lost their abilities to think and feel as individuals. One problem is the women actually seem more interesting after their transformation than before it, when they come across as whiny and petulant, and little else. The conclusion of THE STEPFORD WIVES is visible from a million miles away. If the men of Stepford are taking voice recordings and drawings of their women, there are only a few possibilities about their ultimate project. The film's tone is reminiscent of Levin's earlier work ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968), where it is unclear whether or not the film's protagonist is truly threatened or merely paranoid. In both cases, the films make the threat more concrete.

The shining star of the film is Katharine Ross. Although she was not the producer's first choice for the role of Joanna, it is hard to imagine that anyone else could have done a better job of bringing the character to life. The scene where Joanna seeks psychiatric advice about her fear of being changed by Stepford is very well acted. The worst thing for Joanna is that she knows how crazy her story sounds and she says so: "If I'm wrong then I'm crazy, but if I'm right then it's worse." Paula Prentiss is excellent as Bobbie, a fun character who is like Joanna, new to the town and just can't seem to work up that traditional Stepford cleaning spirit. The other characters are very well cast too, and Patrick O'Neal is particularly menacing as Diz, the head of the Stepford's Men's Association. He doesn't actually do a lot to be menacing, but nevertheless he exudes menace in his every scene. He is calm, cold and calculating, and from the first moment that you see him looking at Joanna you just know that whatever is on his mind isn't anything good.

The cast also includes: Carol Eve Rossen (Dr. Fancher), William Prince (Ike Mazzard), Carole Mallory (Kit Sunderson), Toni Reid (Marie Axhelm), Judith Baldwin (Patricia Cornell), Barbara Rucker (Mary Ann Stravros), George Coe (Claude Axhelm), Franklin Cover (Ed Wimpiris), Robert Fields (Raymond Chandler), Michael Higgins (Mr. Cornell), Josef Sommer (Ted Van Sant), Paula Trueman (Welcome Wagon Lady), Martha Greenhouse (Mrs. Kirgassa), Remak Ramsay (Mr. Atkinson), Mary Stuart Masterson (Kim Eberhart), Ronny Sullivan (Amy Eberhart), John Aprea (Young Cop), Matt Russo (Moving Man 1), Anthony Crupi (Moving Man 2), Kenneth McMillan (Market Manager), Dee Wallace (Nettie), Tom Spratley (Charlie the Doorman), Emma Forbes (Alison Van Sant), and Dennis Kear (Young Grocery Boy). Michael Small composed the incidental music. William Goldman wrote the screenplay from Ira Levin's novel of the same title. Bryan Forbes directed.

The original script by William Goldman was heavily revamped by director Brian Forbes. Tension developed between Forbes and Goldman over the casting of Nanette Newman. Goldman wanted the wives to be depicted as model-like women who dressed provocatively. But after casting Newman this was not to be, as Goldman stated he felt that Newman's physical appearance did not match the type of woman he imagined, and as a result this caused a change in appearance in costuming for all of the other wives. Goldman has said that he found Newman to be a perfectly good actress, but was unhappy with some rewrites that Forbes contributed. In particular, Forbes toned down Goldman's "horrific" ending. Actor Masterson, who was friends with Goldman, would secretly call Goldman for his input on scenes creating additional stress.

The film was shot in a variety of towns in western Connecticut, primarily in Darien, Westport, and Fairfield, with some location work in New York City. Forbes purposefully chose white and bright colors for the setting of the film, attempting to make a "thriller in sunlight". With the exception of the stormy night finale, the film is almost over-saturated with bright light and cheery settings. All the locations were actual places. No sets were built for the film.

THE STEPFORD WIVES debuted in theaters in February of 1975 and was only a moderate success at the time of release, but it has grown in stature as a cult film over the years. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote, "The actresses have absorbed enough TV, or have such an instinctive feeling for those phony, perfect women in the ads, that they manage all by themselves to bring a certain comic edge to their cooking, their cleaning, their gossiping and their living deaths."

The term "Stepford wife" is still used to describe a woman who is completely devoted to cooking, cleaning, and loving her man. Building upon the reputation of Levin's novel, the term "Stepford Wife" has become a popular science fiction concept and several made-for-TV sequels have been produced over the years including:

* REVENGE OF THE STEPFORD WIVES (1980) starring Don Johnson, Sharon Gless, and Julie Kavner.
* THE STEPFORD CHILDREN (1987) starring Barbara Eden.
* THE STEPFORD HUSBANDS (1996) starring Donna Mills and Michael Ontkean
* The remake of THE STEPFORD WIVES (2004) starring Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick

On the occasion of its 25th Anniversary, THE STEPFORD WIVES made its second DVD appearance thanks to Anchor Bay. The previous DVD was a non-anamorphic bare-bones disc. This is an improvement over that release if only because of the new anamorphic widescreen transfer. The 1.85:1 image is very grainy and shows its age. Colors seem a little washed out, but this could reflect the low budget of the film. It looks more like a movie-of-the-week than a theatrically released film. Presented with the original mono track, the disc performs adequately in the audio department. It will not wow your system, but maintains consistency with the original presentation. A 5.1 remix wouldn't have improved the experience very much, given the limited nature of the action in the film. The dialogue is crisp and clear, and the louder scored sequences are free of distortion. Also included is a French mono track.

There are some interesting supplements. First up is the 18-minute featurette "The Stepford Life" with interviews with Ross, Masterson, Prentiss and director Bryan Forbes. It's a very welcome supplement to fans of the film, as it chronicles the translation of the novel to a screenplay, the original casting of the lead role, and the film's continued cult popularity. It shows a surprising amount of bitchiness that went on behind the scenes. Co-star Peter Masterson comes across as very arrogant as he tells how he would go behind the director's back to discuss the script with William Goldman--who was no longer involved with the movie in any way. The original widescreen theatrical trailer is on hand, though it's in scratchy condition. Two 30 second radio spots shed some more light on how this film was marketed. Also included is a lengthy talent biography of Forbes. The disc probably would have benefited from an audio commentary by Forbes or the stars, but no such luck.

THE STEPFORD WIVES (2004)

When successful television executive Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman) is attacked and nearly killed by a disgruntled reality television show contestant, she is immediately fired and experiences a nervous breakdown. With her loving husband and work colleague Walter (Matthew Broderick) and their two children, they move from Manhattan to Stepford, a quiet Connecticut suburb for a change of scenery. Eberhart becomes friends with Bobbie Markowitz (Bette Midler), a writer and recovering alcoholic, and Roger Bannister (Roger Bart), who is homosexual and has moved to town with his longtime partner. The three of them are suspicious of the other women in the town, who are all placid and blissful and spend their days exclusively on domestic tasks.

After witnessing a quickly covered-up incident in which one of the Stepford wives, Sarah Sunderson (Faith Hill), violently malfunctions, and later, the increasingly bizarre behavior of their own spouses, Joanna, Bobbie, and Roger are moved to investigate the strange going-ons in Stepford. In the process, Roger and Bobbie are transformed into bland, unnatural, domestic versions of themselves. The inhuman nature of these new Stepford spouses is revealed to Joanna when she attempts to confront the newly-transformed Bobbie, who unknowingly places her hand on a lit stove, but does not react to the flame. Joanna attempts to flee, only to discover that her children have been taken hostage by the men of Stepford. She storms the Stepford Men's Club, angrily demanding her children to be returned, and is entrapped by the men who have been lying in wait for her. She is forced into the transformation room with her husband. Next, we see her calmly purchasing groceries alongside the rest of the Stepford wives, having apparently become one of them.

Soon after, Stepford hosts a formal ball to celebrate the full assimilation of the town, with Eberhart and her husband Walter as guests of honor. During the festivities, Joanna distracts Mike Wellington (Christopher Walken), the apparent leader of Stepford, and entices him into the garden while Walter slips away. Walter returns to the transformation room where it is revealed that the Stepford Wives are not robots after all, but cyborgs. The original human beings remained, but were put under the control of brain-implanted microchips. Walter destroys the software that controls the microchips, and all the Stepford Wives revert to their original personalities. When Walter returns to the ball, a crisis has broken out between the puzzled husbands and their vengeful wives.

Joanna and Walter reveal that Joanna had never been transformed but only pretended to be in order to assist in the destruction of Stepford. Mike threatens Walter, but before he can attack him, Joanna strikes him with a candlestick, decapitating him, and revealing that he is the only real and complete robot. Distraught over the loss of her Stepford husband, Mike's wife Claire Wellington (Glenn Close) reveals that she was the one who had created Stepford as a refuge from the evils of the world in a fit of despair after discovering the real Mike had been having an affair. Claire accidentally electrocutes herself using the remains of her Stepford husband, and the irate wives take over Stepford and force their husbands to atone for their crimes by becoming completely subject to the women's wills, placing them under house arrest, and making them complete many of the same banal domestic tasks they had forced the women to do previously. After 29 years, the Stepford wives finally have vengence.

Frank Oz brought his black comedy/science fiction remake to screens in 2004, a film that managed to waste the talents of Nicole Kidman and Bette Midler and made a mockery of both Levin’s original novel and Forbes' superior film. The first half is disappointing, but it does pick up nicely for the last half. Most of the film was shot in Darien, Connecticut and New Canaan, Connecticut. This film is notorious for the numerous production problems that occurred throughout its shooting schedule. The tension started when both John Cusack and Joan Cusack, originally slated to star in supporting roles, pulled out of the project and were replaced by Matthew Broderick and Bette Midler. After filming was initially completed, several changes were made to the new script, which created a number of plot holes, and the cast was called back for reshoots. Reports of problems onset between director Frank Oz and stars Nicole Kidman and Bette Midler were rampant in the press. Kidman was reportedly so dissatisfied with the new screenplay that she considered pulling out of the project. In recent interviews, Kidman, Matthew Broderick and producer Scott Rudin have all expressed regret for participating in this project.

In an interview with Ain't It Cool, Frank Oz's take on the film was: "I f**ked up... I had too much money, and I was too responsible and concerned for Paramount. I was too concerned for the producers. And I didn't follow my instincts."

The film was largely panned by critics. Rolling Stone wrote, "Buzz of troubles on the set... can't compare to the mess onscreen." Entertainment Weekly commented, "The remake is, in fact, marooned in a swamp of camp inconsequentiality." The New York Times wrote, "the movie never lives up to its satiric potential, collapsing at the end into incoherence and wishy-washy, have-it-all sentimentality." However, critic Roger Ebert called Paul Rudnick's screenplay "rich with zingers" and gave the film three stars. But in the "Worst Movies of 2004" episode of Ebert And Roeper, he admitted that he gave the film a "thumbs up," but said it wouldn't be "the first movie that I would defend."

The film was a commercial flop. The US opening weekend's gross was a respectable $21,406,781. However, sales fell off quickly and that one weekend would ultimately represent over a third of the film's domestic gross of $59,484,742. The film grossed $42,428,452 internationally. Its budget was an estimated $90,000,000.

Differences between the 2004 film and the 1975 version:

* The town's women were formerly successful and powerful figures in their industries--scientists, politicians, television moguls. In original film of 1975, when most women were only just beginning to attain power in the workforce equal to men's, and the feminist movement was in full swing, the men of Stepford husbands were trying to supress the freedoms feminism gave women.
* Among the couples who had recently moved to Stepford was a gay couple. In the original novel, the newest couple to move in after the protagonist is the town's first African American couple.
* Unlike previous versions, the head programmer of the wives, Mike Wellington is revealed to be a robot himself, a Stepford Husband (a nod to the changing times). The real programmer is his wife Claire.
* In the book and original movie, there is no happy ending: the town's husbands have murdered their wives and replaced them with look-alike robots. In the remake, the women are simply implanted with microchips whose effects are fully reversible.

The Doors: Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1987) * * *

THE DOORS: LIVE AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL (1987)

On July 5, 1968 the American rock band the Doors performed at the Hollywood Bowl. It is the only complete filmed concert of the band and shows singer Jim Morrison at his best. Their performance was captured by four cameras and recorded in 16-track audio, resulting in generally excellent stereo sound that is far better than most archive footage of this band. They play very well. Ray Manzarek's organ is haunting at times, but the drumming of John Densmore and guitar playing of Robby Krieger are good but sub-par. The Doors melded psychedelia, blues, hard-edged rock and poetry from the edge like no other band before or since.

On stage Jim Morrison has the aura of an intense and sexy artist, whose dark voice forms only a part of his complex persona. Guitarist and songwriter Robby Krieger, keyboard player Ray Manzarek, and drummer John Densmore complement Morrison's free-associative outpourings with improvisational, jazz-inspired interjections. Who else could segue effortlessly from Kurt Weill's "Alabama Song" to Willie Dixon's "Back Door Man"? "Moonlight Drive" and "Five To One", which is connected in medley with "Backdoor Man", are especially well-performed. Morrison also recites effective pieces of poetry. And just when he's in danger of becoming too pretentious, Morrison bursts any lurking self-importance with a wry smile, a joking aside, or even a belch. But the seriousness remains throughout as Morrison's sings "When the Music's Over", "The Unknown Soldier" and "The End". Morrison sings, dances, and screams like no one else. However, for all the frenzied activity, the simple and direct lines of his poetry echo softly through the years. Music by the Doors invites questions, daring the listeners to ask them. That's why they remain so fascinating decades later.

The filmed concert feels intimate, close up, and you can see the concentration. Performances are great, especially Morrison's theatrics with Densmore's cymbals on "The Unknown Soldier". Even when Morrison does his improptu poem about the grasshopper/moth the band improvise a seamless accompaniment. The DVD is worth buying just for "The End" and "Light my Fire". Both are fantastic songs, but twice as good when live and in surround sound. This video has stood the test of time and captures the event brilliantly. Audio and video restorer Michael Rubin's first project was for this concert film. There was an intermittent microphone cable fault in Morrison' track that ruined the entire concert. It could not be released until Rubin miraculously fixed it. This film is the second in the MCA 3 VHS tape Doors trilogy. DANCE ON FIRE is the first, and THE SOFT PARADE is the last.

Live at the Hollywood Bowl Track Listing:

1) When the Music's Over
2) Alabama Song
3) Back Door Man
4) 5 to 1
5) Moonlight Drive
6) Horse Latitudes
7) Celebration of the Lizard
8) Spanish Caravan
9) The Unknown Soldier
10) Light My Fire
11) The End

THE DOORS: DANCE ON FIRE (1985)

One of the best collections of Doors film material, DANCE ON FIRE contains some unique concert shots, and images of Jim Morrison and the legendary band The Doors. Former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek compiled and directed this video, which brings together a number of television performances and vintage promotional films of Jim Morrison and the group along with footage of the Doors in concert and previously unseen film of the band at work in the studio. Manzarek also directed a new video for the song "L.A. Woman," which is included in this collection. Other performances include "Break on Through, "Light My Fire", "People Are Strange", "Roadhouse Blues", "Riders on the Storm", and six more. The best one is for "Break On Through," stylish, exhilarating and just as good as any music video today. "Unknown Soldier" is also very interesting and surreal, like something Salvador Dali would have put together. "People Are Strange" is weird and nice. Certain segments such as the original Elektra promo of "Break on Through, and the musical video of "The Unknown Soldier", that was banned shortly after its release, are included.

However, though the music video Ray Manzareck directs for "L.A. Woman" is well-made, it's not very good at capturing the essence of the song. It looks nice, but the images look too modern sometimes for the aged recording. The live performance of "The End" is very good and we get a kick out of seeing Jim Morrison do his primitive shaman-like dance at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968. It's also fun to see a rare film clip of the band recording "Wild Child" in the studio. A performance of "The Crystal Ship" looks nice and dreamy. There's also the fantastic performance of "Light My Fire" on the Ed Sullivan Show.

But there is a lot of filler and not enough of Morrison in this collection of song clips, which are interspersed with voice-overs of Morrison reading his poetry, and images of related subjects, like Native American dancers shown while "Wild Child" is playing. Musically it is choppy and the sound often muddy. DANCE ON FIRE is basically a good collection of great Doors material and images of the band in their prime and how they made themselves musical legends. This is the first in the MCA Doors trilogy.

The Songs:

* "Break on Through", from an Elektra Records promo clip.
* "People are Strange", includes footage taken on the streets of New York City.
* "Light My Fire", from the Ed Sullivan Show telecast.
* "L.A. Woman" is labeled as "a new film directed by Ray Manzarek", but is actually random shots of the LA area and a few clips from the past with the song as "soundtrack".
* "The Unknown Soldier" was supposedly banned for a time. It shows Morrison being bound and "shot" on Santa Monica beach, and some stuff emerging from his mouth. It also includes a few war scenes.
* "Roadhouse Blues". Clips from the 1968 tour.
* "Texas Radio and the Big Beat/Love Me Two Times". Includes clips from a live performance for Danish television. This is one of the better selections.
* "Touch Me" is from a Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour telecast, where they have given Morrison a brushed hairdo and tanned pancake on his face, leaving his neck white. The Doors have a back-up band for this, giving it added interest.
* "Horse Latitudes/Moonlight Drive", from a Jonathan Winters Show telecast, with more of the overdone makeup on Morrison.
* "The End". This is a song that is shown in full and is focused on Morrison, and therefore probably the most substantial part of this video. It was filmed at a 1968 Hollywood Bowl concert.
* "Crystal Ship" is from American Bandstand, the early days.
* Tomasso Albinoni's "Adagio in G minor" theme is used as the music for some clips of the group sailing.
* "Riders on the Storm" is played during the end titles.

THE DOORS: LIVE IN EUROPE (1999)

This video features footage from The Doors' 1968 European tour through Stockholm, Frankfurt, and London. Paul Kantner and Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane, who shared this bill with The Doors on this tour, narrate this retrospective documentary. Fantastic live performances of the tour de force "When the Music's Over", the antiwar "Unknown Soldier", the revolution-inciting "Five to One", and many others are accompanied by firsthand anecdotes, making LIVE IN EUROPE an intriguing glimpse into the powerful, mysterious world of this seminal band. The onstage performances have a beautiful, timeless quality to them, and the musicianship of the band comes across very nicely. Any lack of polish in this production is pretty much due to the available video and film equipment of the day. That said, much of the old camerawork is quite creatively done. We are shown the band and fans showing their respects to Morrison at his burial site, though even Ray Manzareck believes the poet faked his death. To observe Ray Manzarek hunched over his keyboards, fingering some amazing riffs, is to see a rather amazing illustration of rock performances that were all about music. His organ will shake the walls with home theater.

Track Listing:

1) Light My Fire
2) Love Me Two Times
3) Back Door Man
4) Spanish Caravan
5) Hello, I Love You
6) When the Music's Over
7) Unknown Soldier
8) Light My Fire (2)
9) Five To One
10) Alabama Song

THE DOORS: THE SOFT PARADE (1991)

The Doors' final TV appearance in 1969 forms the centerpiece of this concert video tie in to the Oliver Stone film THE DOORS (1991). This very entertaining compilation was Ray Manzarek's retaliation to Stone's biopic debacle which effectively portrayed Jim Morrison's downward spiral, yet basically ignored his more human side. This video at least shows that Morrison cared about some people, and that there was a lot working in his mind before drugs and alcohol took their toll. This is one of the Doors calmer and more laid back performances, and yet it is stronger than the HOLLYWOOD BOWL. The final of the MCA Doors trilogy, it is not as good as DANCE ON FIRE. This video is a well assembled finale that sometimes feels like left-overs from the first two episodes. But they are good left-overs. The opening sequence cut together to "The Changeling" is an entertaining ensemble of Doors footage showing the wild side of Jim Morrison and how epic and crazy Doors concert footage can seem.

The PBS television appearance is very informative and it's interesting to see Jim Morrison give his thoughts on music and poetry. But the best part is seeing The Doors perform. Morrison is especially captivating while singing "The Soft Parade". The most entertaining piece of footage is the scene showing The Doors recording "Wild Child" in the studio. It features previously unreleased backstage interviews and notable versions of "The Unknown Soldier" and "Hello, I Love You". We hear the full version of "Build Me a Woman", which is excised on the "Absolutely Live" album. The video is much more potent because Morrison's heart, although it is obviously filled with sadness and devastation, is completely in it. His emotional connection to the music is so intense that "Wishful Sinful", which is basically a pop song, sounds like a Shakespearean ballad when he is singing it. Richard Goldstein of The Village Voice chats with the band about their music, poetry and improvisation. Morrison, with a beard and hiding behind sunglasses, smokes a cigar, and is commanding while speaking softly.

THE DOORS: THE BEST OF THE DOORS (1991)

THE BEST OF THE DOORS is basically a collage of videos featured in all three of the MCA Doors trilogy with a few new additions and editing changes. Rather than relying solely on the hits, this collection also mines the darker, and often richer, recesses of The Doors material resulting in a fairly representative statement. Compiled by former Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek, this home video collects rare live film, television appearances, unreleased footage of recording sessions, and little-seen promotional clips to provide visual documentation of 14 of the group's classic songs. The first video is "Strange Days", which is not in any of the other three. It is a surreal, Fellinisque sideshow to one of the band's darkest, most evocative songs. Doors fans will have a blast with the video's opening, which is the illusion that the cover to the "Strange Days" album has sprung to life. Ray Manzarek, the band's organist, makes a few appearances, most notably as a priest. This is followed by the video for "Break On Through", a publicity clip done for the band's debut album. It is Jim Morrison's first appearance in the video and he makes his presence known.

Next comes an interview clip from 1969 where an older-looking, bearded Morrison talks about poetry and how it is woven into the band's music. The video borrows clips also from LIVE AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL and we get footage of Morrison reciting "The Celebration Of The Lizard" and following it with a part of "Spanish Caravan". This is said to be one of The Doors' calmest, least-visceral concerts and aside from the great music, it shows. There is a well-assembled music video for "The Unknown Soldier" which skillfully mixes war footage with Doors concert sequences showing Morrison faking an execution and vomiting blood. "The Changeling" follows, showing the band in super-star mode as they walk through air-ports, perform concerts and talk to fans.

One of the more interesting pieces is footage of the band recording "Wild Child" in the studio. It's interesting to watch them put together the song and sometimes disagree on certain parts. Drummer John Densmore calls the song's ending "the stupidest thing I've ever heard". It's also fun to watch Robby Krieger play his trademark slide guitar for this song. Doors fans will especially want this video for the "Gloria" piece which was banned by MTV when first released but not anymore considering on the 30th anniversary of Morrison's death VH1 aired it. It's a fun, dirty video showing Morrison acting erotic on stage and clips of him with whom I suspect is Pamlera Courson getting intimate in a room. The video is never "pornographic" and it's a fun song. The medley of "Whiskey Bar", "Backdoor Man" and "Five To One" is one of the interesting concert moments, showing the band's ability for some good hard rock.

The "L.A. Woman" video Ray Manzarek directed never amounts to anything as interesting as the others. "Wishful Sinful" could have been left out. It's a good song by Robby Krieger, but not exactly a timeless Doors tune. However, the Ed Sullivan performance of "Light My Fire" is featured and truly evokes the Doors spirit, showing Morrison in black leather defying the Sullivan people and singing "higher" on network TV. Morrison was told backstage, "You'll never be on the Ed Sullivan Show again!" He replied, "Man, we just did the Ed Sullivan show." The real problem was that one of the band members shouted "F**k" at the end of the song. It is loud and very clear, but I AM THE ONLY ONE IN HISTORY WHO HAS EVER MENTIONED IT!

Morrison's last known interview is featured, conducted when he was getting ready to go to trial for supposedly exposing himself at a 1969 Miami concert. This is followed by an atmospheric, stylish and very recent music video done for a cut from "An American Prayer" titled "The Ghost Song". The band members, in their present aged form, perform the song to images of Morrison and dancing Indians. The ending is a fun rendition of "Hello I Love You" showing the band performing in London and a young woman dancing to the tune.

Track Listings:

1) Break On Through
2) Light My Fire
3) Crystal Ship
4) People Are Strange
5) Strange Days
6) Love Me Two Times
7) Five To One
8) Waiting For The Sun
9) Spanish Caravan
10) When The Music's Over
11) Hello I Love You
12) Roadhouse Blues
13) LA Woman
14) Riders On The Storm
15) Touch Me
16) Love Her Madly
17) Unknown Soldier
18.) The End

THE DOORS: INSIDE THE DOORS (2005)

This is the ultimate critical review of The Doors, on record, on film and live on stage. Drawing on rare film and television archive material, this independent and highly authoritative review revisits and critically reassesses the work of this band from their 1967 debut album "The Doors", to "Strange Days" and "Waiting for the Sun". A leading team of music critics, musicologists and working musicians considers and re-evaluates vintage performances by The Doors and traces the secrets of the bands success. Using archival footage of the band and examination of their music and image, the program's panel seeks to explain the group's success outside the realm of management and labels. Featured tracks include: "Light My Fire", "Break on Through", "The End", "Love Me Two Times", "People are Strange", "When the Musics Over", "Hello I Love You", "Back Door Man", and many more.

THE DOORS: DOORS OF THE 21st CENTURY: L.A. WOMAN LIVE (2004)

Jim Morrison supposedly passed away in 1971, not long after the release of the album "L.A. Woman". Ray Manzarek says on this DVD's liner notes, "This is the tour that never was." The music from "L.A. Woman" was never performed live by The Doors until now and this DVD gives fans small glimpse of what it might have been like to hear these songs live on stage. The Cult’s Ian Astbury was chosen to replace Jim Morrison as singer. The performance was recorded in Houston, Texas, during the band's 2003 world tour. It has a runtime of 102 minutes, which may seem a little short, but there are enough Doors classics like "Light My Fire" and "Riders on the Storm" for the casual fan and the more obscure but equally cool songs like "Hyacinth House" and "The Changeling" to keep the diehard Doors fans glued to every note.

However, this is not The Doors. The project with Astbury fronting the band is a kind of tribute band that they have dubbed The Doors of the 21st Century. They are very upfront about the fact that they are paying tribute to Morrison and this is not an attempt to revive the actual Doors band. Unfortunately missing from the lineup of The Doors of the 21st Century is drummer John Densmore. A very capable drummer named Ty Dennis was chosen to handle the drumming duties for the tour and Angelo Barbera is the bassist for project. Most people don't realize that the Doors did not include a bass player, although a bass player was usually hired for their studio recordings.

As the show kicks off with the gritty riff from "Roadhouse Blues", the adrenaline in the crowd and on stage starts flowing. Astbury, with his convincing Morrison haircut and clothes, takes his place at the microphone stand with two hands on the mic in the famous Morrison pose. His voice is not a dead-on impression of Morrison, but the moves and the look are so strikingly similar that anyone in the front seats at the show might think the ghost of Morrison had leapt into Astbury's body. The mannerisms, the yelps and screams coming from Astbury seem to be coming from somewhere beyond the grave.

As the night progresses and the band rolls through almost the entire L.A. Woman track list, throwing in a few classics from other Doors albums, Astbury's voice warms up and he begins to sound more and more like Morrison. Keyboardist Ray Manzarek, during the extended jam session solo of "Riders on the Storm", pours every once of soul and musical feeling he has into the keyboard and the crowd and band eats it up. As the song transitions, guitarist Robbie Krieger plays a shredding rendition on his signature Gibson SG guitar of one of the most famous solos in all of classic rock. Krieger started as a Flamenco guitarist and never recorded guitar with a pick. This fingerpicking style, combined with a lightly distorted tone, gives Krieger his signature sound that is unmistakable.

The songs "When the Music’s Over" or "The End" would have seemed like obvious choices for the closing song of the night, but the band opted for the tune "Soul Kitchen" from their self-titled debut CD. The lyrics of the songs are so fitting for the end of a show and its upbeat, jamming nature was so infectious that fans started flooding the stage to dance with the band in numbers so large that the security guards were overwhelmed and just let the people rock to the music. This was the ending on a magical evening and the audience was completely in the moment as they were transported back to the tour that should have been in 1972.

The video quality of the DVD is above average for this type of production. It's apparent from the menus and amount of extras on this DVD that it was done on a fairly small budget, but the music and the performance makes this disc a winner. Other than a few short interview clips with Astbury, Krieger and Manzarek, and a photo gallery, there aren't a whole lot of extras on the disc. There is a killer DTS 5.1 mix, as well as a Dolby digital mix that sounds pretty good, too. The performances by the band members are all great. There are a few musical blunders, but that is the nature of this kind of raw, emotional music. Although not a "jam band" by today’s standards, The Doors broke musical ground with their improvisational style that was inspired by jazz. They can go off on musical tangents and then bring things back in one fell swoop. Morrison was a poet first and a singer second. To have his words brought to a live audience again in the form of Ian Astbury is a treat. The set list contains over a dozen classic Doors numbers including "L.A. Woman", "Light My Fire", "Roadhouse Blues", "Love Me Tow Times", "Love Her Madly", and "Riders on the Storm".

THE DOORS: SOUNDSTAGE PERFORMANCES (2002)

This entry features live performances from three rare TV appearances during the height of The Doors' career. Material also includes personal commentary and perspectives by band members Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, John Densmore and manager Danny Sugarman. It includes 12 songs and extensive interview footage of the band. There are never before seen live TV performances from Canada, Europe, and the US, from 1967-69, including the epic show stoppers "The End" and "When The Music's Over", Brecht-Weill's "Alabama Song" and the Willie Dixon blues "Back Door Man" among others. Also included is one of Jim Morrison's only on-camera interviews, shot not long after the notorious March 1969 Miami concert where the charismatic front man was arrested for "lewd and lascivious behavior." Additionally, the film includes latter-day exclusive commentary from the surviving Doors. With their genre-colliding sound and boundary-breaking poetic exploration of psychological, sexual, and political frontiers, the Doors are a fascinating gem in the 1960s rock crown.

In the interview with Jim Morrison, not long after he was arrested in Miami, he has a full beard. The film includes footage from Toronto in 1967, Denmark in 1968, and New York City in 1979. Former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek compiled and directed this video, which brings together a number of television performances and vintage promotional films of Jim Morrison and the group along with footage of the Doors in concert and previously unseen film of the band at work in the studio. Manzarek also directed a new video for the song "L.A. Woman," which is included in this collection.

Tracks Listing:

1) Break On Through
2) People Are Strange
3) Light My Fire
4) Wild Child
5) L.A. Woman
6) Roadhouse Blues
7) Texas Radio And The Big Beat
8) Love Me Two Times
9) Horse Latitudes
10) Moonlight Drive
11) The End
12) Crystal Ship

THE DOORS: A TRIBUTE TO JIM MORRISON (1981)

This documentary of The Doors is less accessible to non-rock fans than the 1991 THE SOFT PARADE, but more reliable and coherent than Oliver Stone's self-indulgent THE DOORS. This hour long video is based on the Danny Sugerman/Jerry Hopkins biography "No One Here Gets Out Alive". The authors are interviewed extensively, as well as producer Paul Rothchild, and the other Doors: John Densmore, drums, Robbie Krieger, guitar, and Ray Manzarek, keyboards. They discuss the impact of their music and the influence of leader Jim Morrison. Interspersed throughout are rare glimpses of Doors concerts and TV appearances, including the notorious Ed Sullivan Show gig. Musical highlights include "The End", "Moonlight Drive", "Back Door Man", "Crawling Kingsnake", "People are Strange", and "Touch Me". THE DOORS: A TRIBUTE TO JIM MORRISON packs an awful lot into its brief 60 minutes. It's an exhausting trip backward, but a fascinating one.

John Densmore once called Jim Morrison a "Media God". It's too bad that this video is not currently available because it's a revealing look at the Media God. Densmore said that at first he wondered if Jim would be able to perform because he was so shy that he mumbled into the microphone. He also said that Jim would never pace himself. If he had a concert to do, he would show up after being up all night. Sometimes he would roam in the concert halls before a concert, talking to all the fans. After the concert, Jim was known to continue to party. He lived each moment like it was his last, and gave every performance like it was his last. This video also shows Francis Ford Coppolla's "Apocalypse Now" section of "The End," commenting that Jim would have loved how Coppolla used the song.

This is a rough sketch of Morrison's life, with many gaps, but nonetheless interesting. He comes across in the interviews as very intelligent, but somewhat spaced out and naively innocent. By contrast, the other three Doors seem down to earth, and serious, and while they were busy making music, Morrison was experimenting with life itself, even to go as far as sometimes messing up the performances. They reveal how difficult he was to live with: traveling to airports, tours, etc. He was always living on the edge, possessed with a vision of madness and fire and the road to self-destruction. He "packed 50 years of living" in 27 years, and left us a sizable musical and poetic legacy.

The video ends with this Morrison quote from 1969: "Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality. I was curious to see what would happen. That's all it was: Just curiosity".

THE DOORS: THE DOORS ARE OPEN (1991)

This 1968 concert at The Roundhouse in London's Chalk Farm by The Doors was filmed for a British television special and was released in 1991 as director John Sheppard's documentary and concert film THE DOORS ARE OPEN. The Doors are at their peak musically for this concert film, and don't even appear to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. It's just a straight forward G-rated set of killer tunes delivered with tight precision. The concert film is photographed in moody black & white which helps contribute to the bleak tone of the group’s compositions. Director John Sheppard integrates newsreel footage with the band’s political warnings. Some may find this irksome or distracting from the overall performance of the band.

Also interspersed between songs is interview footage with the band and the media blitz surrounding their arrival in London. Most of the songs on here contain extended jams especially on the sizzling opener "When The Music’s Over", which runs about twelve minutes. Jim Morrison and his haunting lyrics are always a treat, and watching the poetic frontman deliver his messages as only he can--with a wailing and violent anguish will send chills down your spine. Robby Krieger's guitar skills provide the impetus for the band. John Densmore's primal drumming fills out The Doors bottom end. And the band would not be the same were it not for Ray Manzarek, whose keyboard driven precision has become the signature of The Doors. The band plows through their fan favorites like "Five To One", "Spanish Caravan", and "Unknown Soldier", together with their hits "Light My Fire", "Back Door Man", "Hello I Love You", and "When the Music's Over".

THE DOORS ARE OPEN DVD is presented full frame (1.33.1) from a fairly worn print that exhibits an abundance of grain. It's obvious that Pioneer has performed absolutely no clean-up work to this decades old concert footage. The interspersing of the interview snippets and newsreel shots match well with the performance footage because it's all murky black & white. All in all, not a bad transfer given the age and recording technology, but you would think that a company like Pioneer would clean things up a bit. At least they went through the trouble of remastering the soundtrack to Dolby Digital 5.1. Though not quite true CD fidelity, this is quite an improvement over the original mono sound. The production is not overdone and still sounds quite raw and hollow at times. The drums are tinny, yet the bass guitar has plenty of depth. The Roundhouse supposedly has great acoustics and listening to the ambiance here it's easy to hear why. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio imaging allows for some separations effects but don't expect anything truly dynamic. Jim Morrison's vocals are clear and undistorted and well-placed in the mix. Overall a strong acoustic effort considering the 2 track recording originally used to capture the energy and aura of the band.

Despite the minimalisitic approach to THE DOORS ARE OPEN, this concert documentary is more of an accurate portrayal of the band than Oliver Stone’s motion picture. Too bad this performance does not have more classic Doors songs. The major disappointment with this timeless concert event, possibly The Doors best concert film, is that Pioneer didn't put up the cash to improve the visual aspects of the DVD transfer. Also missing are any extras. Thankfully, Pioneer’s audio Dolby Digital 5.1 remastering is superior to their visual presentation, which makes this disc worthy for fans of The Doors.

The Song Remains the Same (1976) * * ¾

THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME is a musical documentary of the hard rock band Led Zeppelin filmed over three nights at New York City's Madison Square Garden in July 1973, but not released theatrically until 1976. Born from the ashes of the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin combined loud blues with other music such as rock, folk and reggae, and drew upon mysticism and mythology for its material. Considered founders of the genre known as "heavy metal", Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham mesmerize with classic live performances of many of their great songs.

Captured during their tour to promote the "Houses of the Holy" album, they give many fine performances, and the film detours into the lives of the band members. There are clips of the band back stage, as well as interesting "dream sequences" that show the band members in either their real lives or in alternate fantasy worlds. Mostly it's garish and silly, but there are some nice elements, especially insights into John Bonham's life. It's amazing to see Robert Plant atop a galloping black stallion with his luxuriously long blond hair whipping in the breeze.

A cult classic of midnight movies and laser shows from the 1970s, the cinematography does not stick to straightforward images. Concert angles go from straight shots of the whole band, to Robert Plant singing from an under the stage perspective, to a close-up of Jimmy Page making magic. Arguably the best rock band in the world throughout their 12-year reign, they remain one of the most influential and innovative groups in music history. With over 200 million albums sold worldwide, their catalogue is one of the most enduring bodies of musical composition to come out of the 20th century. Led Zeppelin is one of only three artists/groups to have four releases go Diamond, or over 10 million records sold. Their debut album, recorded in less than 30 hours, hit the top ten and every other album since reached number one. The actually untitled "Led Zeppelin IV" is one of the biggest selling recordings of all time, with over 16 and a half million sales to date. Their total sales number over 80 million, second only to the Beatles.

Despite the group's road weariness after a long tour, their final three-night stand at Madison Square Garden in 1973 was full of energy and power. The band admitted to being tired, said that it wasn't nearly their best performance, and they didn't want to release this concert footage as part of the film, but were contractually obligated to. The songs performed are nonetheless terrific, but unfortunately we don't get an unbroken performance here. Viewers have to wade through a mishmash of documentary insight into the band members' lives.

The concert was shot as a psychedelic experience. Cameras shifted, spun, and turned. Virtually every visual effect possible during the age was used to further create a surreal experience. Lighting was usually colored, often multi-colored, as you might expect from a rock concert. Perhaps the best use of lighting was the golden halo given to singer Robert Plant during "Stairway to Heaven". Jimmy Page uses a violin bow with his guitar during a 23-minute-long version of "Dazed and Confused". John Bonham has a drum solo in "Moby Dick" where he uses his bare hands and fingertips for part of it, one of the most unusual and intricate drum solos ever recorded.

Fantasy sequences, shots in outdoor locations, and scenes of home and family were shot later. Interspersed with the concert footage, the home scenes are a bit distracting. Each band member, along with their manager Peter Grant, were given a fantasy sequence. They run the gambit from a confusing mob rub-out to a knight rescuing a damsel in distress, lots of horseback riding in beautiful locales, to pure psychedelic chaos. The first is of Peter Grant, dressed in a 1930s black gangster suit, who drives a black 1928 Pierce-Arrow to a house and blasts everyone with a machine gun. Behind the scenes dramatizations of events were also shot later, and included the fact that nearly a quarter million dollars in cash was stolen from the hotel safe the last night of the tour.

Since late 1969, Led Zeppelin had been planning to film one of their live performances for a projected movie documentary of the band. The group's manager, Peter Grant, believed that they would be better served by the big screen than by television, because he regarded the sound quality of the latter as unsatisfactory. The first attempt was the filming Led Zeppelin's Royal Albert Hall performance on 9 January 1970 by Peter Whitehead and Stanley Dorfman. But the lighting was judged to be mediocre, and the film was shelved. This footage was later remastered and featured on the 2003 release Led Zeppelin DVD.

On the morning of 20 July 1973, during the band's concert tour of the United States, Peter Grant made a contact with Joe Massot, who had previously directed George Harrison's WONDERWALL (1968). Massot was already known to Grant as he and his wife had moved into a house in Berkshire in 1970, where they made friends with their neighbors, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and his girlfriend Charlotte Martin. Grant had previously turned down offers by Massot to make a film of the band, but with the huge success of the band's current tour, Grant changed his mind and offered him the job of director. Grant recalled: "It all started in the Sheraton Hotel, Boston. We'd talked about a film for years and Jimmy had known Joe Massot was interested--so we called them and over they came. It was all very quickly arranged."

Joe Massot quickly assembled a crew in time for Led Zeppelin's last leg of the tour starting on 23 July 1973, in Baltimore. He subsequently filmed the group's three concert performances at Madison Square Garden on the nights of 27, 28, and 29 of July 1973. The film was entirely financed by the band and shot on 35mm with a 24-track quadraphonic sound recording. The live footage in the US alone cost $85,000. Plans to film the shows at Madison Square Garden were threatened when the local trades union tried to block the British film crew from working. The band's attorneys negotiated with the union and the crew was eventually allowed to film the concerts.

The footage of the band arriving at the airport in their private jet airliner, The Starship, and traveling in the motor cavalcade to the concert was filmed in Pittsburgh, before their show at Three Rivers Stadium on 24 July 1973. For their three NYC performances, the band members wore exactly the same clothes to facilitate seamless editing of the film, except for John Paul Jones who wore three different sets of attire on each of these nights, which created continuity problems. In an interview in 1997 Jones said that the reason he didn't wear the same stage clothes was that he asked the crew if they would be filming on those nights and was told no. He said, "I'd think not to worry, I'll save the shirt I wore the previous night for the next filming. Then what would happen is that I'd get onstage and see the cameras ready to roll."

Peter Grant was notorious for being protective of his band and their finances. THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME captures an exchange between him and a concert promoter. In the scene, Grant uses the words "f**k" and "c**t" eighteen times. When Warner Bros. approved the film they insisted that these words be 'bleeped' out. The words were inaudible on the submitted film and it was given an appropriate rating. However, on every other print the words were retained and were fully audible

In the scene where Peter Grant is driven to the police station to be questioned about the theft from the safe deposit box at the Drake Hotel, he has his arm outside the police car. According to an interview conducted in 1989, he explained the reason he wasn't handcuffed was that the policeman driving the car used to be a drummer in a semi-professional band which had supported The Yardbirds on one of its US college tours in the late 1960s. Grant was the manager of The Yardbirds at that time. The money stolen from the safe deposit box at the Drake Hotel was never recovered and no one has ever been charged.

The scenes of police chasing a half-naked intruder and of Grant berating the promoter for receiving kickbacks were both shot at the Baltimore Civic Center on 23 July 1973. Grant purportedly recommended the "Dazed and Confused" sequence where the camera zooms into Jimmy Page's eyes and cuts to the fantasy scene.

Unhappy with the progress of the film, Grant had Joe Massot removed from the project and Australian director Peter Clifton was hired in his place in early 1974. Massot was offered a few thousand pounds in compensation. Peter Grant later sent someone to Massot's house to collect the film. However, Massot had hidden the film elsewhere and so instead an expensive editing machine owned by Massot was taken as collateral. Massot served a writ, leading to a period of stalemate which was finally broken when Grant and Led Zeppelin's lawyer Steve Weiss agreed to pay Massot the money he was owed, after which he delivered the film to the band. Massot was not invited to attend the premiere of the film at New York but he attended anyway, buying a ticket from a scalper outside the theater.

Peter Clifton, in recognizing that there were crucial holes in the concert footage, suggested that the entire show be recreated at Shepperton Studios in August 1974, on a mock-up of the Madison Square Garden stage. Close-ups and distance footage of the band members could then be slipped into the live sequences, which made up the bulk of the concert footage seen in the film. The other reason for re-shooting some of the "live" concert was to improve the performances. Led Zeppelin was a great live band, but better in the studio. Robert Plant could only hit his high notes in a studio. Neither the performances nor the music in this film can be considered authentic, because everything has definitely been improved in the studio. When it was agreed that the band would meet at Shepperton Studios for filming, Jones had recently had his hair cut short, so he had to wear a wig. Robert Plant's teeth had also been fixed between the 1973 and 1974 filmings.

In the May 2008 issue of Uncut Magazine, Page recalled the events surrounding the shooting of additional footage at Shepperton Studios: "I'm sort of miming at Shepperton to what I'd played at Madison Square Garden, but of course, although I've got a rough approximation of what I was playing from night to night, it's not exact. So the film that came out in the '70s is a bit warts-and-all."

For both the film and accompanying soundtrack album, the songs were heavily edited, and until both the film and album were re-released in 2007, in some cases versions of a song appearing in the film were different from the one heard on the album. A comprehensive study of how the audio sources for each song were edited is available at The Garden Tapes. Songs performed by the group at the three Madison Square Garden concerts but not included in the original film include "Celebration Day", "The Ocean", "Misty Mountain Hop", "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "Thank You". Some of these songs were included on the soundtrack album of the film and, later, on the Led Zeppelin DVD.

Following the film's completion, the band experienced a major falling out with Peter Clifton. Suspecting that he had stolen negatives of the film, Peter Grant ordered that his house be searched. They did find some footage, but this turned out to be a collection of the best "home movie" footage which Clifton had intended to give to the band members as a gift. Clifton was also annoyed at the decision to remove from the film's credits the names of all the people who had worked on editing, make up and effects. Unlike Massot, however, Clifton was invited to both the New York and London premieres of the film.

In 1976 a midnight screening of the film was organized by Atlantic Records prior to its release, at which label president Ahmet Ertegün reportedly fell asleep. The film was finally completed by early 1976, 18 months behind schedule and over-budget. Peter Grant quipped, "It was the most expensive home movie ever made."

The film premiered on 20 October 1976, at Cinema I in New York and at Warner West End Cinema in London two weeks later. Reviews were lukewarm. Promotional materials stated that the film was "the band's special way of giving their millions of friends what they had been clamouring for--a personal and private tour of Led Zeppelin. For the first time the world has a front row seat on Led Zeppelin." The film was accompanied by the release of a soundtrack album of the same name.

The film performed well at the box office, grossing $200,000 in its first week, and an estimated $10 million by 1977. Despite this, the film received poor reviews from critics for its perceived amateurish production and self-indulgent content, with the fantasy sequences in particular coming in for some of the harshest criticism. The film was particularly unsuccessful in the UK, where the band had not performed live for over two years as a result of being in tax exile. The band were thus unable to promote themselves at home, leaving them out of the public spotlight. However, among fans the film has retained its popularity, largely because until the release of the Led Zeppelin DVD in 2003, THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME was the only official live visual document that followers of the band were able to access. It became a cult favorite at late-night movie houses, and its subsequent release on video and then DVD has ensured a growing base of fans.

Fantasy Sequences:

* Peter Grant and Richard Cole were filmed as hitmen driving towards Hammerwood Park estate in Sussex in a 1928 Pierce-Arrow car. Roy Harper makes an uncredited guest appearance as one of the greedy millionaires portrayed at a business meeting of multi-national corporations. Massot envisioned Grant and Cole in the hitman roles, as it symbolized the tough business decisions they made on behalf of the band. The female passenger wearing a scarf with Peter Grant driving on a country road is his wife, Gloria. Massot had originally shot Grant walking a cameraman around a collection of antique cars, but this footage was quickly abandoned.

* John Paul Jones was filmed first at home with his wife Mo, and reading "Jack and the Beanstalk" to his two daughters, Tamara and Jacinda, before receiving a call to join the band on their American concert. For his fantasy sequence, Jones initially wished to use footage from the DOCTOR SYN (1963) film, but was prevented from doing so as this film was owned by Disney. Instead, his fantasy sequence involved a reinterpretation of the film. Jones portrays a masked gentleman known as "The Scarecrow", who travels at night on horseback with three others and returns home to Sussex, an ordinary family man. The three other horsemen with him are a reference to the other band members. Jimmy Page's girlfriend, Charlotte Martin, and baby daughter Scarlet Page can be briefly seen during the closing moments of this sequence, which was filmed in October 1973. The fantasy accompanies the song "No Quarter".

* Robert Plant was captured relaxing on his Welsh country farm with his wife Maureen, and children Karac and Carmen. His fantasy sequence involves him being a knight rescuing a fair maiden, played by Virginia Parker, who is a symbolic representation for his vision of the ideal--his personal search for the Holy Grail. Scenes from the sword fight were filmed at Raglan Castle in Wales while the sailing, horseback riding and beach scenes were shot at Aberdovey then Merionethshire and now Gwynedd, in October 1973. The fantasy accompanies "The Song Remains the Same" and "The Rain Song".

* Jimmy Page is filmed sitting by a lake next to his 18th century manor at Plumpton, East Sussex, playing a hurdy gurdy. The tune played is called "Autumn Lake" and the scene was filmed in October 1973. Page's fantasy role involved climbing up the face of a snow capped mountain near Boleskine House, Loch Ness during the nights of a full moon on December 10 and 11, 1973.The act was meant to show Page on a quest of self enlightenment, and deep understanding, by seeking out the Hermit, a character featured in the Tarot deck. The mythological Hermit is seen on the summit of the mountain; Staff of wisdom in one hand, and in the other, the Lantern of Knowledge held out abreast over the world below. Being a Threshold Guardian, he represents an obstacle the seeker must overcome to achieve true enlightenment. At the final culmination of Page's quest, he reaches out to touch The Hermit only to discover paradoxically, that he himself is the Hermit.The Hermit features on the artwork or the untitled fourth album. The fantasy accompanies the song "Dazed and Confused".

* John Bonham was shot with his wife Pat and son Jason Bonham on their country estate, Old Hyde Farm in Worcestershire. It is interesting to note that part of his fantasy includes him spending time at home with his family. Bonham was known for falling into deep depressions while on tour away from his family. His heavy drinking, which ultimately resulted in his death, is partly attributed to his homesickness. The game of snooker was shot at The Old Hyde Hotel and the Harley-Davidson riding near Blackpool. His fantasy sequence is the most straightforward of all the members, with Bonham drag racing an AA Fueler at 260mph at Santa Pod Raceway, Wellingborough, Northants, UK, in October 1973. The fantasy accompanies "Moby Dick".

The cast includes: John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Peter Grant, Richard Cole, Derek Skilton, Colin Rigdon, Jason Bonham, Patricia Bonham, Roy Harper, Carmen Plant, Karac Plant, and Maureen Plant. Peter Clifton and Joe Massot directed.

Page stated: "THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME is not a great film, but there's no point in making excuses. It's just a reasonably honest statement of where we were at that particular time. It's very difficult for me to watch it now, but I'd like to see it in a year's time just to see how it stands up."

Page made good on his promise. When reviewing material for the Led Zeppelin DVD in 2003, he decided to include footage from this same series of concerts. However, other members of the band were less charitable, with Jones later admitting that the film was "a massive compromise" and Plant denouncing it as "a load of bollocks." For all of its technical faults, many today view the film as an interesting historical document that captured the band at a particular point in time when its popularity was about to peak, and, on a more general level, as an accurate representation of the excesses of the music and show-business industries in the 1970s.

The DVD of the film was released on December 31, 1999. It contains an anamorphic widescreen transfer with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. There is little dirt or nicks to mar the original film stock, and little pixelization or artifacts. Colors are bright and flesh tones are fine when the colored lighting hasn't turned them blue or red. Shadows are a bit of a problem. Seeing dark objects against a light background tend to be swallowed into one silhouette looking muddy mess. Otherwise black levels are deep and inky. Imaging ran the gambit from sharp and focused to soft and muddy, though overall was more than adequate.

Although it comes with several audio tracks, including Dolby Digital 2.0, 2.0 analog, PCM, and analog 6.0, reviews are very mixed. None of them gave the type of head-banging thunder you'd want to have watching a Zeppelin concert. I had high hopes for the 6.0 track, which I had to scrounge more cables to hear, but it was muddier than the 2.0 channels, with little use of surrounds. The best two were the PCM and Digital 2.0 tracks, which gave an adequate soundstage across the front, again with little for the surrounds. The subwoofer was utilized throughout but didn't have the punch I wanted. Even the mob rubout scene where machine guns are being fired was underwhelming. It took quite a bit of volume to give Bonham's drums the kick I wanted. There are also one or two dropouts of volume early in the concert footage. Extras are lacking. The disc actually lists the band members, without biography, as a special feature. The only other content is a British theatrical trailer. There are 26 chapter stops at least, which will get you close to whatever you want to see. Jimmy Page has stated that DVD is the format to use for unearthing their archives, and lets hope that better sounding recordings and concert footage will be forthcoming.

On November 20, 2007 Warner Home Video released a new DVD edition of THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME for the first time with all fifteen songs from the original Madison Square Garden concerts. This coincided with the reissue of the accompanying soundtrack to the film, available on CD. The DVD features newly remixed and remastered sound, 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound, and includes more than 40 minutes of added bonus material, including never-before-released performance footage of "Over the Hills and Far Away" and "Celebration Day", plus performances of "Misty Mountain Hop" and "The Ocean", a rare 1976 BBC interview with Robert Plant and Peter Grant, vintage TV footage from the Drake Hotel robbery during the New York concert stand, and a Cameron Crowe radio show. This version was released on standard DVDs as well as Blu-Ray and HD DVD.

A Collector's Edition box set including a T-shirt with the original album cover, placards from the New York shows, and several glossy photographs was released as well. Due to legal complications, the band decided not to change the video portion of the original movie for the re-release. Instead, sound engineer Kevin Shirley created an entirely new mix of the three 1973 Madison Square Garden concerts so that the audio portion of the film would better match the on-screen visuals. The audio on the new CD release is nearly identical to the soundtrack of the new DVD release. One difference is that the songs included on the CDs that were not featured in the original movie are included as bonus tracks on the DVD. The T-Shirt is what holds the DVDs and the extras in the box, which is very thin cardboard. Take the T-Shirt out and you have a large space in the box where the DVDs rattle around.

DISC 1 (Full Feature Concert Performances)

* "Bron-Yr-Aur"
* "Rock and Roll"
* "Black Dog"
* "Since I’ve Been Loving You"
* "No Quarter"
* "The Song Remains the Same"
* "The Rain Song"
* "Dazed and Confused"
* "Stairway to Heaven"
* "Moby Dick"
* "Heartbreaker"
* "Whole Lotta Love"

DISC 2

* Tampa News Report (Airplane Footage of the arrival of the band from the PULSE in Tampa Florida)
* "Over The Hills and Far Away" (never-before-released)
* Boating Down The Thames - Interview with Robert Plant & Peter Grant – BBC vintage footage
* "Celebration Day" (Cutting Copy; never-before-released)
* The Robbery (interview with Peter Grant- vintage footage)
* "Misty Mountain Hop"
* Original Film Trailer
* "The Ocean"
* Radio Profile Spotlight by Cameron Crowe (1976)

DVD Scene Listing:

1) Mob Rubout
2) Mob Town Credits
3) Country Life ("Autumn Lake")
4) "Bron-Yr-Aur"
5) "Rock and Roll"
6) "Black Dog"
7) "Since I've Been Loving You"
8) "No Quarter"
9) Who's Responsible?
10) "The Song Remains the Same"
11) "The Rain Song"
12) Fire and Sword
13) Capturing the Castle
14) Not Quite Backstage Pass
15) "Dazed and Confused"
16) Strung Out
17) Magic in the Night
18) Gate Crasher
19) No Comment
20) "Stairway to Heaven"
21) "Moby Dick"
22) Country Squire Bonham
23) "Heartbreaker"
24) Grand Theft
25) "Whole Lotta Love"
26) End Credits ("Stairway to Heaven")

GIMME SHELTER (1970) * * ¾

This musical documentary concerns the Rolling Stones and their tragic free concert at Altamont Speedway in the hills west of San Francisco on December 6, 1969. Over 300,000 people attended. The event known as "Woodstock West" was all but destroyed by violence that marked the end of the peace and love euphoria of the 1960s. Altamont degenerated into mayhem when drunken Hells Angels, hired to keep order in front of the stage for $500 of beer, beat concertgoers over their heads with leaded pool cues. The violence was capped by the murder of an 18 year old black man, Meredith Hunter. Captured on film, Hunter's murder cemented the festival's reputation as the official end of the 1960s counterculture. Three others also died that day. GIMME SHELTER showed that the counterculture was not going to redeem or change anything, especially human violence.

Hell's Angel: They told me, if I could sit on the stage so nobody climbed over me, I could drink beer till the show was over.

Brothers Albert and David Maysles with co-director Charlotte Zwerin constructed GIMME SHELTER to lead to the murder. They give away the ending at the beginning of the film, and don't adhere precisely to the chronology of events. The Flying Burrito Brothers played after the Jefferson Airplane. But in order to show the mounting tension and violence at the festival, the film puts the Jefferson Airplane's set before the Flying Burrito Brothers. Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin was knocked out by a Hells Angel when he jumped into the crowd to stop a fight. The film makes it appear that the Stones opened their set with "Sympathy for the Devil," which they did not. It also appears that the show concluded after Hunter's stabbing at the end of "Under My Thumb," which it did not. The New York Times, Variety, and Rolling Stone magazine criticized the Stones and the Maysles Brothers for exploiting the murder to their economic advantage. These accusations are as responsible for Altamont's notoriety as the murder itself.

The documentary begins with The Stones doing a bit of dressup spoofery, then cuts to Madison Square Garden for an energetic rendition of "Jumpin Jack Flash", which segues into Charlotte Zwerin's editing suite in London. A bemused Mick Jagger is watching himself on an editing screen. Next Charlie Watts is listening to Sonny Barger make excuses for the Hell's Angels: "I ain't no cop," he snarls, "They were messing with our bikes." Now jump to Jagger, looking very nervous as Barger says Jagger may be fingering the Hells Angels as the perpetrators, but that's not the way he sees it.

GIMME SHELTER depicts some of the Stones' Madison Square Garden concert, later featured on the live album "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! The Rolling Stones in Concert", as well as the photography session for the cover, featuring Charlie Watts and a donkey. It also shows the Stones at work in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, recording "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses". The film also includes footage of Ike and Tina Turner opening for the Stones at their Madison Square Garden concert, with Jagger commenting, "It's nice to have a chick occasionally."

The action then turns to the concert itself at the Altamont Speedway, with security provided by the Hells Angels armed with pool cues. From the moment the Stones arrive at Altamont, we know things are going to turn ugly. In fact, Jagger can't even get from the helicopter to his trailer before he is smacked in the mouth. As the day progresses, with drug-taking and drinking by the Hells Angels and members of the audience, the mood turns very bad. Fights break out during performances by The Flying Burrito Brothers and Jefferson Airplane. Grace Slick pleads with the crowd to settle down. At one point Jefferson Airplane lead singer Marty Balin is knocked out by a Hells Angel. Paul Kantner attempts to confront "the people who hit my lead singer" in response. Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh arrive, but The Grateful Dead opt not to play after learning of the incident with Balin. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young also performed at the concert but are not shown in the movie.

There is a brief exchange between a few members of the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia is offstage talking with another person about the violence transpiring in front of the stage. Weir rushes over with a brief report. Garcia's response is a druggie cliche: "Oh, bummer." To which Weir adds that Hells Angel's beating up musicians "doesn't seem right." In many ways, this movie created the myth of Altamont, just as the music and movie shaped the myth of Woodstock. Even before the violence starts mounting, the film depicts kids who are far from all right.

The night began smoothly with the Flying Burrito Brothers opening for the Rolling Stones and performing the truck-driving classic "Six Days on the Road" and Tina Turner giving a sensually charged performance. But on this particular evening, the Stones made the disastrous decision to hire the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang as bodyguards and bouncers. Halfway through the Stones' act, the Hells Angels stabbed to death one black spectator, and injured several others who were present, including Jefferson Airplane's lead singer Marty Balin.

By the time The Stones hit the stage, it is evening, and the crowd is especially restless. The Stones open with "Jumpin' Jack Flash". They are also shown performing "Sympathy for the Devil" as tension continues to build. It is during the next song, "Under My Thumb", that a member of the audience, 18 year old Meredith Hunter, pulls out a revolver in the course of a melee near the stage, and is stabbed to death by Alan Passaro, a member of the Hells Angels. Mick Jagger is reduced to standing on stage like a frightened child with his finger in his mouth in wake of the violence.

Mick Jagger: Who's fighting and what for?

Baird Bryant, one of the many cameramen at Altamont, caught Meredith Hunter's stabbing on film. The film sequence clearly shows the silhouette of a handgun in Hunter's hand as a member of the Hells Angels enters from the right, grabs and raises the gun hand, turning Hunter around and stabbing him at least twice in the back before pushing the victim off camera. We actually get to see Meredith Hunter being stabbed, zoomed right up close and in slow motion, and unlike the visually degraded Zapruder film, this is shot in glorious 16mm color by a professional cameraman. And it's real. The Maysles used 22 cameramen and 14 Nagra-toting soundmen. Among the camera operators for the Altamont concert was a young George Lucas, who went on to become a successful film director. At the concert his camera jammed after shooting about 100 feet of film, and none of his footage was used in the final cut.

First planned for Golden Gate Park, the free concert was moved to the Sears Point Raceway after its permit was withdrawn. The stage was all but ready at Sears Point when that venue fell through. The deal to perform at Altamont was struck at the last minute, with negotiations that the Maysles reveal to the film audience. In these scenes, the air of desperation to do something that no one can stop is palpable. The final shots of scattering silhouettes are among the most desolate ever put on a movie screen. The dream is over. This picture ends on a despairing note, with the Stones repeatedly watching a film of the murder. Celebrated documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles directed and Haskell Wexler shot the film, with heightened instinct and control. As a result, this film is considered one of the greatest rock documentaries ever made.

The film is named after "Gimme Shelter", the lead track from The Rolling Stones' 1969 album "Let It Bleed". It was screened at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition. This documentary is associated with the Direct Cinema movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Maysles Brothers, who directed it, are strong figures of the era. Direct Cinema revolves around the philosophy of being a "reactive" filmmaker. Rather than investigating a subject matter through such documentary techniques as interviews, reconstruction and voiceover, Direct Cinema simply records events as they unfold naturally and spontaneously--like a fly on the wall.

Much of the film chronicles the behind-the-scenes dealmaking that took place to make the free Altamont concert happen, including much footage of well-known attorney Melvin Belli negotiating by telephone with the management of the Altamont Speedway. The movie also includes a playback of Hells Angels motorcycle gang leader Ralph "Sonny" Barger's famous call-in to radio station KSAN-FM's "day after" program about the concert.

The Songs Performed:

The Rolling Stones

* "Jumpin' Jack Flash"
* "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"
* "You Gotta Move"
* "Wild Horses" (in studio at Muscle Shoals)
* "Brown Sugar"
* "Love in Vain"
* "Honky Tonk Women"
* "Street Fighting Man"
* "Sympathy for the Devil"
* "Under My Thumb"
* "Gimme Shelter" (live version, over closing credits)

Ike and Tina Turner: "I've Been Loving You Too Long" (at Madison Square Garden)

Jefferson Airplane: "The Other Side of This Life" (at Altamont)

Flying Burrito Brothers: "Six Days on the Road" (at Altamont)

Unlike C**KSUCKER BLUES (1972), the notorious film of the Stones' 1972 North American tour, GIMME SHELTER reeks of professional technique, clever ideas, and lots of cash. Director/Film Editor Charlotte Zwerin has to be given credit for the film's fascinating structure. She asked members of The Stones to drop round her editing suite and check out the raw footage. They agreed, and cameras were set up to catch their reactions. Suddenly the film changes from a documentary into something doubly voyeuristic. This double removal from the action means the film takes on a timeless feeling, as The Present in the film is forever locked to those moments when The Stones watch the rough cuts and watch The Stones watching the rough cuts. This reveals the story in a normal timeframe, but fragmented into flashbacks. This startling new structure means GIMME SHELTER is not a true documentary, but not really fiction. It's a powerful new combination of reality and fiction, told through action and reaction. This "time bounce" structure also takes advantage of the lack of filmed material Zwerin had to work with. GIMME SHELTER examines the Stones and Altamont with such a cold eye, it seems somehow to be examining itself.

Showing the Stones watching the footage enabled them to deflect charges that they were responsible for the Altamont disaster. "That's bulls**t," Jagger remarks to the onscreen Jagger, who has tried to be charming with a female reporter. Mick has nothing to say as he watches himself tell the media about the free concert, a concert that will show the world a large group of people can get together and behave like idealized hippies.

The cast includes: Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Keith Richards, Mick Taylor, Bill Wyman, Marty Balin, Sonny Barger, Melvin Belli, Dick Carter, Jack Casady, Mike Clarke, Sam Cutler, Spencer Dryden, Chris Hillman, John Jaymes, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, Pete Kleinow, Bernie Leadon, Gram Parsons, Ronald Schneider, Rock Scully, Grace Slick, Frank Terry, Ike Turner, Tina Turner, Jerry Garcia, Meredith Hunter, Michael Lang, Phil Lesh, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Alan Passaro, Michael Shrieve, Ian Stewart, and Bob Weir. Directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin.

There is a lot of music and performing in GIMME SHELTER, but it is not a concert film like WOODSTOCK (1970) which took place four months earlier. GIMME SHELTER was a part of the event it recorded, in fact a commissioned movie. The proceeds were meant to help the Stones pay the costs of the free concert, although they grossed a reported $1.5 million from the other non-free concerts on their tour. Mick Jagger did not attend the London School of Economics for no reason. Cynicism is the pervading force in this 1970 documentary.

The Criterion DVD is overpriced, but you do receive a fair number of extras on this single-sided, double-layered disc. Audio commentary by Albert Maysles (his brother David died in 1987), editor Zwerin, and production collaborator Stanley Goldstein has a wealth of information. For example, Goldstein gives a clear explanation as to how the Hells Angels ended up as the security team, and he debunks myths about why the band went on late. Maysles communicates how he views film composition and the images he and his team managed to capture here. Zwerin offers perhaps the most emotional and insightful dialogue about GIMME SHELTER as she explains how she painstakingly put the film together. All three also offer a great deal of detailed technical information. A brief restoration demonstration offers before-and-after examples of the image, color, and sound restoration used to create this beautiful high-definition release.

There is a full recording of the December 7, 1969 post-Altamont KSAN Radio program with a new introduction by former DJ Stefan Ponek, and an "Altamont Stills Gallery" with photos by Bill Owens and Beth Sunflower. Also there is never before seen footage of the Madison Square Garden show that includes Stones covers of "Little Queenie" and "Prodigal Son," along with backstage outtakes. Tina Turner and Jagger try to talk while Ike seems to be purposely playing his guitar so loud that they can barely hear each other. The original and re-release trailers are included as well as a 44-page booklet with essays by Jagger's former assistant Georgia Bergman, music writers Michael Lydon and Stanley Booth, ex-Oakland Hell's Angels Chapter Head Sonny Barger, and film critics Amy Taubin and Godfrey Cheshire. This film is presented in the original full-frame 1.33:1 and the audio restoration is so good that, in the Dolby Digital 5.1 remix, it sounds like it was recorded yesterday and not on equipment from decades ago.

The Kids Are Alright (1979) * * ¾

This musical documentary literally begins with a bang at The Who's only US variety show appearance. On September 15, 1967 the band appeared on THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR on CBS in LA following the end of their first US tour. They lip-synched the songs "I Can See For Miles" and "My Generation" and flustered host Tommy Smothers by refusing to follow the script as he tried to converse with them. Moon made the biggest impact when the destructive nature of his on-stage persona reached its highest level. After The Who's performance of "My Generation", they began smashing their instruments. Moon packed an explosive charge in his bass drum which set Townshend's hair on fire and made him temporarily deaf for 20 minutes, while cymbal shrapnel left a gash in Moon's arm. Townshend then took the acoustic guitar Smothers was holding and smashed it to bits on the ground. Smothers was completely frustrated, but the audience thought the whole performance was staged. Clips of a 1973 interview from London Weekend Television's RUSSEL HARTY PLUS appear six times throughout the film. While Harty delves into the background of the members' lives, Moon again steals the show as he rips off Townshend's shirt sleeve and then strips down to his underwear.

Tom Smothers: And you must be Roger.
Roger Daltrey: Well I must be.
Tom Smothers: Are you?
Roger Daltrey: Yes.
Tom Smothers: And where are you from?
Roger Daltrey: Oz.
Tom Smothers: Roger from Oz?
Roger Daltrey: Yes!

One of the TV interviews included in the film features Ken Russell, the director of the film TOMMY (1975), who makes his mark with his exaggeratedly passionate plea: "I think that Townshend, The Who, Roger Daltrey, Entwistle, Moon could rise this country out of its decadent ambient state better than Wilson or all of those crappy people could ever hope to achieve!"

An early performance from ABC television's SHINDIG! and one of only two surviving tapes from the group's many appearances on the British program READY STEADY GO!, both recorded in 1965, are included along with numerous interview clips from BBC Radio and Radio Bremen of Hamburg. Segments filmed in each of the band member's homes include several conversations between Moon and fellow drummer Ringo Starr.

Ringo Starr: (regarding Keith Moon) Well, I'm sure most of his friends have been on here, cos I'm only one of several, and they've told you about all the mad things he's done in life. Such as, breaking up rooms... driving his car into swimming pools... and driving his car into foyers. Well, I'm not gonna tell you about any of that. I'm just here to tell you about the Keith I know and love.

Keith Moon: (asked about previous jobs) I was a rust repairer. I was a rust repairer and full-time survivor. I survived all the major earthquakes, and the Titanic, and several air crashes. My friends call me Keith, but you can call me John.

Performances from three of the band's largest concert appearances bear witness to the band's progression from the British mod scene to global superstardom. They reluctantly performed at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair on 17 August 1969. It was not an artistic success in the eyes of the band, but it helped "Tommy" become a critical and financial success. The four clips that appear in the film, besides being a completely new cut of the Woodstock performance, without the "split-screen", include three tracks from "Tommy" and "My Generation", topped off by Townshend throwing his guitar into the crowd.

Pete Townshend: When I'm on the stage--let me try to explain--when I'm on the stage, I'm not in control of myself at all. I even don't know who I am. I'm not this rational person that can sit here and talk to you. If you walked on the stage in the middle of a concert for an interview, I'd probably come close to killing you--I have come close to killing people that walked on the stage. Abbie Hofmann walked on the stage at Woodstock and I nearly killed him with me guitar. A cameraman walked... a, a, a policeman came on when the bloody building of the Fillmore in New York was burning down--and I kicked him in the balls and sent him off. It's not like being possessed, you know, it's just--I do my job, and I know that I have to get into a certain state of mind to do it. What first made us want to go to America and..."conquer" it, was being English! It wasn't that we cared a monkey's about the American Dream, or the American drug situation, or the dollars or any of that. It's because we were English kids! And we wanted to go to America and be English!

John Entwistle: We became rich later than I expected. Now I'm too old to enjoy my money.

The Who's 1975 US tour reached its peak before a crowd of 75,962 at the Pontiac Silverdome on 6 December 6, 1975. The images in the film were broadcast to large screens in the stadium so those in the far reaches could actually see the band members on stage.

Pete Townshend: If you steer clear of quality, you're alright.
Interviewer: But wouldn't you say a group like The Beatles have a certain musical quality?
Pete Townshend: Oooh, that's a tough question. Alright, actually, this afternoon, John and I were listening to a stereo LP of The Beatles, in which the voices come out of the one side and the backing track came out of the other. And when you actually hear the backing tracks of The Beatles without their voices, they're flippin' lousy.

Near the end of the film, the band's appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival on June 18, 1967 brought about their first big media exposure in the United States. In the film, The Who's Monterey Pop appearance cuts away to footage from past concerts depicting the band destroying their equipment before returning to the destructive end of "My Generation".

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT is a documentary film about the English rock band The Who, including live performances, promotional films and interviews from 1964 to 1978. It chronicles the development of the Who from young British mods in their early R & B period to worldwide arena rock icons. The film begins with the band's American TV debut and continues through into the 1970s with QUADROPHENIA. Twenty-two classic Who tunes are featured, including a special version of the title track, "My Generation", "Magic Bus", "Happy Jack", and "Long Live Rock". Director Jeff Stein, who was just 21 at the time, was given unlimited access to archives of the Who, occasionally butting heads with strong-willed guitarist and songwriter Pete Townsend over the direction of the film. Stein had produced a book of photographs from the band's 1970 tour when he was just 17.

In 1975 he approached Pete Townshend and attempted to convince him of his feature length movie idea. Townshend initially rejected the idea, but was persuaded by the group's manager, Bill Curbishley, to give their cooperation. Then Stein showed the band the 17-minute reel of The Who television appearances he had cobbled together. The band laughed hysterically at the footage, and Stein said, "Townshend was on the floor, banging his head. He and Moon were hysterical. Daltrey's wife was laughing so hard she knocked over the coffee table in the screening room. Their reaction was unbelievable. They loved it. That's when they were really convinced that the movie was worth doing."

Pete Towshend: A definitive end? What do you want me to do? Go out there and fall asleep on stage? Maybe I should go out there and die during my last solo? Or maybe I should hit that motherf**ker who's been yelling for "Magic Bus" over the head with me guitar?" (response to Jeff Stein's request for an encore of "Won't Get Fooled Again")
Jeff Stein: Yeah, that'd be fine.

Stein attempted to create not a linear, chronological documentary, but "a celluloid rock 'n' roll revival meeting" and "a hair-raising rollercoaster ride" that was worthy of the band's reputation. The performances which comprise the body of the film are organized around a number of encounters by the band members with various variety and talk show hosts, Pete Townshend's playful relationship with his fans, admirers and critics, and the endless antics of Keith Moon. Manic drummer Moon, who provides numerous laughs in the film, died a year before the film was released. Singer Roger Daltry said, "Most rock films are pretentious. They're made for the sole purpose of making Robert Plant's dick look big. This is totally the opposite. Within the first half hour we're made to look like complete idiots."

The film was released to theaters in October 1979. When the film was originally released on video, two musical segments were cut, paring it down from 106 minutes to 99 minutes. The 2003 video release restores the film. The performances of "Baba O' Reilly" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" were Keith Moon's last with the band before his death on September 7, 1978. So the film became a sort of "time capsule" for the band, after Keith Moon died only one week after he'd seen the rough cut of the film with Roger Daltrey. After Moon's death, the rough cut didn't suffer a single change, since neither Jeff Stein nor the rest of the band wanted to turn the movie into an homage to remember Moon's passing, but to celebrate his life and career with The Who. They were determined not to change anything.

Sound editing was supervised by bassist John Entwistle and, with the exception of a 1965 performance of "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" where Entwistle had to replace a missing bass track, most of the music is authentic. Entwistle and Townshend overdubed their backing vocals on the Woodstock footage because Entwistle considered the original backup vocals "dire."

The film is raw, edgy and explosive but always professional and focused. It is aggressively loud and consistently unapologetic, and thoroughly committed to its audience, a document of a rock band embracing its successes without ever pandering to its critics or its culture. The film offers no voice-over or neat chronology. And while Pete Townshend is at times visibly tortured by self doubts about the contradictions of pop music, art, money, and authenticity, his band mates were fearless about The Who's mission. Nothing substantial from The Who's career as a live act has been omitted, and even the most obscure performances and most subtle moments contain revelations.

The cast includes: Roger Daltrey (Himself, singer), John Entwistle (Himself, bass), Keith Moon Himself, drummer), Pete Townshend (Himself, guitar and songwriter), Tom Smothers (Himself), Jimmy O'Neill (Himself), Russell Harty (Himself), Melvyn Bragg (Himself), Ringo Starr (Himself), Mary Ann Zabresky (Herself), Michael Leckebusch (Himself), Barry Fantoni (Himself), Jeremy Paxman (Himself), Bob Pridden (Himself), Keith Richards (Himself), Garry McDonald (Norman Gunston), Steve Martin (Himself), Rick Danko (Himself), and Ken Russell (Himself). Incidental music was composed by John Entwistle and Keith Moon. Jeff Stein wrote the script and directed.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 13 May 1979. The Who promoted the release of the film with some live performances with their new drummer Kenney Jones. THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT premiered in the US on 15 June 1979 in the middle of the disaster film era that featured films like EARTHQUAKE (1974), THE POSEIDEN ADVENTURE (1972), and THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974). In this environment, the original press kit for THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT drew on the band's destructive reputation and called it "the world's first rock 'n' roll disaster movie."

Critics generally liked the documentary. Michael Azerrad in Rolling Stone wrote, "Mind-boggling live footage and TV clips offer smashups, trenchant insights and hilarious pratfalls along with some of the most staggeringly powerful rock music you will ever see..." Simo wrote in Variety, "Best by far are the onstage sequences, and the older the footage, the more intriguing..." Mike Clark on USA Today said, "A storehouse of great clips, starting with the rock group's literally explosive performance on The Smothers Brothers Show..." And Janet Maslin of the New York Times wrote, "Wonderfully obscure and diverse footage of the group..."

An album was released as a soundtrack in June 1979 that included some songs and musical performances from the movie. The album reached # 26 in the UK, and fared better in the US where it peaked at # 8 on the Billboard album charts and went Platinum.

For many years the film was released on VHS in an edited 90-minute form. Several scenes were removed and the audio had several pitch problems and dropouts. In 2003, a DVD edition of the film was released. The strange thing about the DVD presentation is that it comes in two distinct and confusing packages that make you choose between a wealth of bonuses in the "Special Edition" or a standard, straightforward no-frills experience in the "Deluxe Edition". A pristine 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer melds many divergent elements (television, video, film, newsreels, and kinescopes) into a panoramic overview of the band's image and history.

The film had been transferred from the restored 35mm interpositive and the audio was extensively restored. In addition to the original film, with English subtitles, on-screen liner notes, commentary with Jeff Stein and DVD producer John Albarian, there is a 27-page booklet. This DVD was released by Pioneer Home Entertainment. Special features are extensive: 100 or so minutes of multiple-angle footage, an insightful interview with Roger Daltrey, a featurette about the film's restoration, and a mesmerizing, isolated John Entwistle audio track. The digitally-restored version of the film was premiered at the New York Film Festival in October 2003 with Daltrey, Lewis, Stein and Alberian in attendance. The DVD contains a bonus disc with over three hours of additional materials:

* "See My Way": Q & A with director Jeff Stein
* "Behind Blue Eyes": Q & A with Roger Daltrey
* "Miracle Cure": Documentary on the restoration of THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
* "Getting In Tune": Audio comparison of old vs. new)
* "Trick of the Light": Video comparison of old vs. new
* "The Who's London": A tour of Who locations in London
* "The Ox": Isolated tracks of John Entwistle for "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again"
* "Anytime You Want Me": Multi-angle feature for "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again"
* "Pure and Easy": Trivia game. The prize: A rare recording of Ringo Starr promoting "The Kids Are Alright"
* "It's Hard": Trivia game. The prize: A slide show to the "Who Are You" 5.1 studio mix

Edward Scissorhands (1990) * * *

(first lines)
Grandmother Kim: Snuggle in, sweetie. It's cold out there.

The movie opens with a snowy winter scene, as an elderly woman tells a story to her granddaughter (Gina Gallagher) about snow, and why it snows. There was a man with scissors for hands named Edward (Johnny Depp), the creation of an inventor (Vincent Price). The gentle inventor was inspired to make an artificial man due to the anthropomorphic appearance of his other inventions. He raised Edward as his son and tutored him in various subjects, but died while in the act of offering a pair of hands to Edward. He is left with only scissors for hands, an unfinished creation who now lives in a ruined Gothic mansion at the top of a hill, above a suburban town.

Many years later, local Avon saleswoman Peggy Boggs (Dianne West), after failing to make profits in her suburban neighborhood, visits the mansion on the hill. She finds Edward there and convinces him to move in with her family, then brings him to the town below. Her intentions are good, but she lacks wisdom in her actions. Edward's scissors initially are obstacles when it comes to eating at a table and sleeping in a waterbed. He befriends Peg's young son Kevin (Robert Oliveri), and after an initial misstep, her teenage daughter Kim (Winona Ryder). Covered with white make-up and with only a few words of dialogue, Edward is painfully shy and delicate.

Peggy: Why are you hiding back there? You don't have to hide from me. I'm Peg Boggs, your local Avon representative and I'm as harmless as cherry pie... (sees Edward come toward her) Oh--I can see that I've disturbed you. I'll just be going now...
Edward: Don't go.
Peg Boggs: (sees his scissor hands) Oh, my. What happened to you?
Edward: I'm not finished.

Peggy: The light concealing cream goes on first. Then you blend, and blend, and blend. Blending is the secret.

The neighborhood soon accepts Edward in a perverse way, as the people see him as a curiosity. His scissorhands are an obstacle which prevent him from being fully accepted as a member of society. But he soon becomes popular for his masterful gift of cutting hedges into pieces of beautiful topiary art and arousing the dormant passions of women with his skillful haircutting. However, two of the townspeople, a religious fanatic named Esmeralda (O-Lan Jones) and Kim's jock boyfriend Jim (Anthony Michael Hall), dislike him immediately. Joyce (Kathy Baker), a "lonely housewife", suggests that Edward open a haircutting salon with her. While examining a proposed site, she attempts to seduce him, confusing Edward, who escapes the room in a state of panic. Edward attempts to bring up the subject of her actions while the family is having dinner, but no one reacts to the news. At dinner Peggy's husband Bill (Alan Arkin) reminds Edward that in society money is all that matters. If one cannot earn money, then one is not acceptable, and Edward is taken to a bank for a loan, but they will not give him one without the proper official papers that go with being a member of the society.

Bill: So Edward, did you have a productive day?
Edward: Mrs Monroe showed me where the salon's going to be. (turns to Peg) You could have a cosmetics counter.
Peggy: Oh, wouldn't that be great!
Bill: Great.
Edward: And then she showed me the back room where she took all of her clothes off.

Esmerelda: He has been sent first to tempt you. But it's not too late. You must push him from you, expel him! Trample down the perversion of nature! It's not heaven he's from! It's straight from the stinking flames of hell! The power of Satan is in him, I can feel it. Can't you? Have you poor sheep strayed so far from the path?
Edward: We're not sheep.
Esmerelda: Don't come near me!

He secretly falls for Kim, but she is turned off by his ungainliness. She makes fun of Edward and soon uses him unwillingly to break into her obnoxious boyfriend Jim's house. Wanting money for a van, Jim fools the guileless Edward into helping burgle his parents' house. The burglar alarm sounds and all but Edward escape, despite Kim's angry insistence that they return for him. The police arrive, Edward is arrested, but released when a psychological examination reveals that his isolation allowed him to live without a traditional sense of ethics. The arresting officer, Allen (Dick Anthony Williams), befriends the timid Edward, sensing his intrinsic goodness. The neighbors start to question their opinions about Edward's personality. Meanwhile, infuriated by Edward's rejection, Joyce gets revenge on Edward by claiming that he tried to rape her. Many of the neighbors begin to gossip and slowly turn against Edward. Suddenly the people in the neighborhood begin to see Edward as an outcast and a freak. During Christmas, Edward is hated and feared by almost everyone around him except the Boggs family. His initial naivety changes to feelings of frustration, rejection and revolt at people's ways. Edward also comes to realize that he can be dangerous to others, that he is unable to touch others without harming them because of the sharpness of the blades he has instead of hands.

Kim: Hold me.
Edward: I can't.
Kim: You're here... They didn't hurt you, did they? (Edward shakes his head) Were you scared? I tried to make Jim go back, but, you can't make Jim do anything. Thank you for not telling them that we...
Edward: You're welcome.
Kim: It must have been awful when they told you whose house it was.
Edward: I knew it was Jim's house.
Kim: You... you did?
Edward: Yes.
Kim: ...Well, then why'd you do it?
Edward: Because you asked me to.

Officer Allen: Will he be OK, Doc?
Psychologist: The years spent in isolation have not equipped him with the tools necessary to judge right from wrong. He's had no context. He's been completely without guidance. Furthermore, his work--the garden sculptures, hairstyles and so forth--indicate that he's a highly imaginative... uh... character. It seems clear that his awareness of what we call reality is radically underdeveloped.
Officer Allen: But will he be all right out there?
Psychologist: Oh yeah, he'll be fine.

While the family is setting up Christmas decorations, Edward carves an ice sculpture from a block of ice. The ice shavings create the effect of falling snow, under which Kim dances. Jim catches Kim's attention, whereupon Edward accidentally cuts Kim's hand. Jim assumes that Edward deliberately harmed her, and uses this as a pretext to attack Edward in a jealous rage. The situation worsens when Kevin is almost run over by Jim's drunken friend. Edward pushes Kevin out of the way, accidentally cutting his face in the process. The neighbors misunderstand the situation, thinking Edward attacked Kevin. Edward flees back to his hill-top mansion. The neighbors form an angry mob and pursue him. Officer Allen unsuccessfully attempts to turn back the mob by giving them the impression that Edward is dead. He fires his gun a few times and tries to tell them that it's all over. They continue to the mansion, presumably to kill Edward themselves to verify Officer Allen's claims that Edward is dead.

Kim heads to the mansion before the mob can get there and reunites with Edward. Jim follows them and battles Edward, and is eventually killed by him. Kim professes her love for Edward and convinces the mob that Edward and Jim killed each other in the fight. All the neighbors return to their homes, while Joyce is seen guilty and ashamed for making up the rumor about Edward.

The elderly woman from the beginning reappears, as she finishes telling her granddaughter the story. It is revealed that Edward is still alive and "creating snow" from his ice sculptures, which fall upon the valley below. The elderly woman reveals to her granddaughter that she is Kim. She refuses to visit Edward because she wants Edward to remember her the way she was in her youth.

(last lines)
Kim: You see, before he came down here, it never snowed. And afterwards, it did. If he weren't up there now... I don't think it would be snowing. Sometimes you can still catch me dancing in it.

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is a 1990 comedy-drama fantasy film directed by Tim Burton. The film is filled with humorous scenes, yet within the humour there are always darker overtones. It captures the delicate flavor of a fable or fairy tale in a live-action movie. Most of Burton's movies are visual spectacles with elements of fantasy, but EDWARD SCISSORHANDS is more tender and personal than the others. Johnny Depp, making his first successful leap from TV to film, captures Edward's childlike vulnerability even while his physical posture evokes horror icons like the vampire in NOSFERATU (1922) and the sleepwalker in THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919). Classic horror films feel a deep sympathy for the monsters they portray.

Burton conceived the idea for EDWARD SCISSORHANDS from his childhood upbringing in suburban Burbank, California. He said that he was often alone, and had trouble retaining friendships: "I get the feeling people just got this urge to want to leave me alone for some reason, I don’t know exactly why". During pre-production of BEETLEJUICE (1988), Caroline Thompson was hired to adapt Burton's story into a screenplay, and the film began development at 20th Century Fox, after Warner Bros. passed on the project. At the time, the budget was projected to be around 8 to 9 million dollars. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS was then fast tracked after Burton's enormous success with BATMAN (1989). He was now an A-list director.

The film is also the fourth feature collaboration between Burton and film score composer Danny Elfman. The movie sounds like a Tim Burton producton, very much like PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (1985). There are many choirs, very reminiscent of the music score for Roman Polanski's THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (1967). Burton should get a new music composer, because Elfman's music makes Burton's movies sound all the same. Elfman's style is at times moving, soft, wild, silly, weird and crazy. He has worked on many musical soundtracks since, but this one is possibly the most beautiful he ever created. The orchestra consisted of 79 musicians. Elfman cites EDWARD SCISSORHANDS as epitomizing his most personal and favorite work. In addition to Elfman's music, three Tom Jones songs are also heard: "It's Not Unusual", "Delilah" and "With These Hands".

It's a wonderful tale about love and kindness, but also about rejection and estrangement. It shows the limits of people's tolerance for what is different and how those who stray from the norm, commonly named misfits, awake mockery or fear from a society which will use them and then reject them, thus breaking their innocence and goodness. Though a harsh satire of deceit, gossip, jealousy, hypocrisy, as well as a tragic witness to the pain of not being accepted by others, the tone is still one of constant sweetness, gentleness and innocence.

Johnyy Depp's performance as Edward is truly touching and full of gentleness. Winona Ryder is subdued and unconvincingly blonde as the love interest, but Alan Arkin and Dianne Weist both give perfectly deadpan performances. Vincent Price in his last screen appearance plays The Inventor with genteel charm. Their good-nature shows humanity at its best while some other characters show its least pleasant aspects. Photography is quite beautiful and is thematically based on a strong contrast between Edward's universe, the dark noiseless castle, with the town filled with bright colors and voices. The gloomy castle is in fact a shelter from the seemingly happy outside world, which is in fact much darker and sinister underneath its bright colors. Of all Burton’s films this is the one that feels the most honest and heartfelt.

The cast also includes: Conchata Ferrell (Helen), Caroline Aaron (Marge), Susan Blommaert (Tinka), Linda Perri (Cissy), John Davidson (TV host), Biff Yeager (George), Marti Greenberg (Suzanne), Bryan Larkin (Max), John McMahon (Denny), Victoria Price (TV Newswoman), Stuart Lancaster (Retired Man), Aaron Lustig (Psychologist), Alan Fudge (Loan Officer), Steven Brill (Dishwasher Man), Peter Palmer (Editor), Marc Macaulay (Reporter), Carmen J. Alexander (Reporter), Brett Rice (Reporter), Andrew B. Clark (Beefy Man), Kelli Crofton (Pink Girl), Linda Jean Hess (Older Woman / TV), Rosalyn Thomson (Young Woman / TV), Lee Ralls (Red-Haired Woman / TV), Eileen Meurer (Teenage Girl / TV), Bea Albano (Rich Widow / TV), Donna Pieroni (Blonde / TV), Ken DeVaul (Policeman), Michael Gaughan (Policeman), Tricia Lloyd (Teenage Girl), Kathy Dombo (Other Teen), Rex Fox (Police Sergeant), Sherry Ferguson (Max's Mother), Tabetha Thomas (Little Girl on Bike), Tammy Boalo, Jackie Carson, Carol Crumrine, Suzanne Chrosniak, Ellin Dennis, Kathy Fleming, Jalaine Gallion, Miriam Goodspeed, Dianne L. Green, Mary Jane Heath, Carol D. Klasek, Laura Nader, Doyle Anderson, Harvey Bellman, Michael Brown, Gary Clark, Roland Douville, Russell E. Green, Cecil Hawkins, Jack W. Kapfhamer, Bill Klein, Phil Olson, Joe Sheldon, James Spicer, Nick Carter, Tim Rerucha (Van Friend), and L.A. Rothman (Girl in Diner). Danny Elfman composed the music. Caroline Thompson wrote the screenplay from a story by her and Tim Burton, who also directed.

The production design work is quite stunning--from the beautifully gaping bare castle walls and antiquarian gardens to the amusingly color-toned suburbia where products are known by generic brand names, and most imaginatively the flashback tour of Vincent Price’s robot egg and cake beater inventions, all designed in a sort of L. Frank Baum steampunk. The houses were painted in faded pastel colors to represent the generic nature of American suburbia with which Edward finds himself at odds. Burton explained that his depiction of suburbia is "not a bad place. It's a weird place. I tried to walk the fine line of making it funny and strange without it being judgmental. It's a place where there's a lot of integrity."

Burton said, "Dianne, in particular, was wonderful. She was the first actress to read the script, supported it completely and, because she is so respected, once she had given in her stamp of approval, others soon got interested." When it came to cast the lead role of Edward, Fox was persistent to have Burton meet with Tom Cruise. "He certainly wasn't my ideal, but I talked to him," Burton remembered. "He was interesting, but I think it worked out for the best. A lot of questions came up." Cruise wanted the ending to be "happier". Michael Jackson then lobbied hard for the part, but was unsuccessful. Tom Hanks turned it down in favor of THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES (1990). William Hurt and Robert Downey, Jr. both expressed interest, and were considered. The Inventor was written specifically for Vincent Price.

Lutz, Florida and the Southgate Shopping Center of Lakeland were chosen for a three month shooting schedule. The production crew found, in the words of the production designer Bo Welch, "a kind of generic, plain-wrap suburb, which we made even more characterless by painting all the houses in faded pastels, and reducing the window sizes to make it look a little more paranoid." Rick Heinrichs worked as one of the art directors. The key element to unify the look of the neighborhood was Welch's decision to repaint each of the houses in one of four colors. He described them as "sea-foam green, dirty flesh, butter and dirty blue".

The facade of the Gothic mansion was built just outside of Dade City. Filming EDWARD SCISSORHANDS in the Tampa Bay Area created hundreds of temporary jobs and injected over $4 million into the local economy. Production then moved to a Fox Studios sound stage in Century City, California, where interiors of the mansion were filmed. To create Edward's scissor hands, Burton employed Stan Winston, who would later design Penguin's prosthetic makeup in BATMAN RETURNS (1992). Depp's wardrobe and prosthetic makeup took one hour and 45 minutes to apply.

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS was released with positive feedback from critics, and was a financial success. The movie had its limited release in the United States on December 7, 1990. The wide release came on December 14, and the film earned $6,325,249 in its opening weekend in 1,372 theaters. It eventually grossed $56,362,352 in North America, and $29,661,653 internationally, coming to a worldwide total of $86.02 million. With a budget of $20 million, the film was declared to be a box office success.

The film received numerous nominations at the Academy Awards, British Academy Film Awards, Saturn Awards, as well as winning the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Both Burton and Elfman consider Edward Scissorhands their most personal and favorite work. The New York Times wrote "The chemistry between Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder, who are both engaged in real life, gave the film teen idol potential, drawing younger audiences. In the case of Edward Scissorhands, it is a tale of misunderstood gentleness and stifled creativity, of civilization's power to corrupt innocence, of a heedless beauty and a kindhearted beast. The film, if scratched with something much less sharp than Edward's fingers, reveals proudly adolescent lessons for us all." Roger Ebert gave the film a negative review. He felt that "Burton has not yet found the storytelling and character-building strength to go along with his pictorial flair. The ending is so lame it's disheartening. Surely anyone clever enough to dream up Edward Scissorhands should be swift enough to think of a payoff that involves our imagination."

The DVD includes audio commentary by Burton and Elfman. Neither talk all the way through the film, and you may wonder when they will speak again. Burton probably speaks 12 to 15 times through most of the movie, but it sounds more like he's having little afterthoughts. Elfman's audio plays after certain music segments are done, and his background music plays over the dialogue so we hear outright how it sounds. Tim Burton's concept art is shown, about 7 pieces of art (5 concepts of Edward, 1 of The Inventor, and 1 of Edward's place in the mansion's attic). The featurette talking about the film is a letdown, as there is nothing notable. The only decent feature is the interactive menu, made like a pop-up book of the mansion Edward is found in. It's a great movie on this DVD, but the extra features leave much to be desired. In October 2008, the Hallmark Channel purchased the television rights.

Meet the Applegates (1990) * * ¾

The Applegates look like a typical suburban Ohio family. Richard "Dick" P. Applegate (Ed Begley, Jr.) and Jane (Stockard Channing) have two kids and a dog named Spot. Like most families, they also have secrets: Dick has an affair with his secretary while Jane has an affair with credit cards, their son Johnny (Robert Jayne) has a drug problem, and their daughter Sally (Camille Cooper) is pregnant. The Applegates, however, are hiding a much bigger secret: They are actually advanced Amazonian insects who are masters of disguise with the ability to mimic the appearance of other species. They may seem as American as apple pie, but these Brazilian bugs have a taste for human flesh and are on a mission: They plan to blow up the nuclear power station where Dick works in protest of the industrialization of their homeland, which threatens their existence.

The movie starts in a forest with a family being attacked by a family of huge Brazilian Cocorada bugs. The insects find a "Dick and Jane" book dropped by fleeing teachers. Not long after, the group of Cocoradas camouflage themselves as an ordinary human family and set up house in the well-off suburban neighborhood of Median, Ohio. They take on human form and meet every "normality" standard from the magazine Family Bazaar. Their neighbor is an exterminator as well as a bigot, and he frightens them. Dick gets a job at a nuclear power plant. He works there to one day cause an explosion as a warning against destruction of the Brazilian rain forest, and to rid the world of humans and let bugs rule. Like cockroaches, these bugs can survive anything, including radiation.

But after a while the family drifts from its normalities. The temptations of Western civilization prove to be too much for them, and the American way begins to make converts of them. Johnny, a drug free student, begins listening to Heavy metal music and becomes a bratty junkie. The husband and wife drift away from each other, and Sally becomes a cold pregnant militant lesbian feminist after being raped by a jock from the high school. They each show their true bug form at least once in the film. Johnny does while smoking marijuana with his metalhead buddies, and Sally while being raped by Vince Sampson (Adam Biesk). Her experience seems an appropriate punishment as the cute blonde morphs into a giant insect during the sex act. When one of the Applegates gets teed off, he can revert to his original insect self and stun the offending party into unconsciousness, trapping him in a giant cocoon. Soon, the house is filling up with mummified victims. Sexually frustrated Dick disappears into the washroom with a spread of insect photos in Scientific American and drools over bug pictures the way another man might look at Playboy. When her family congratulates her on the tastiness of their supper, Jane says, "I happened to find some rancid trash in a dumpster behind the 7-Eleven."

As they drift away from normality, and nearly are discovered by the neighbors, their Aunt Bea (Dabney Coleman) is sent to help. She becomes a nuisance and they decide she should be taken care of. Dick decides to not blow up the nuclear power plant, due to his growing fondness of life, and kills Aunt Bea. At the end of the movie they return to their lives in Brazil, and are visited by the townspeople who grew to love them. Although the plant did not blow up, enough radiation was released to remove the hair from much of the population of the town.

MEET THE APPLEGATES is a 1991 black comedy film directed by Michael Lehmann. It was filmed in 1989, but not released until 1991. The movie takes a dark, satirical look at the end of the world, nuclear holocausts, alienism and terrorism. This was Lehmann's followup to HEATHERS (1989). While not nearly as popular or memorable, THE APPLEGATES is still quite an entertaining film, and its current "Out of Print in any format, anywhere in the world" status is baffling. A surreal ecological and suburban satire, laden with weird, silly and wonderful gags, this film parodies suburban family life much as HEATHERS focused on the darker side of high school.

The movie is clever, funny, intelligent, poignant, and surprisingly shocking. It represents an old style of cinema and engulfs our social problems, idiosyncratic ways, and our hidden flaws with a flair that cannot be found in today's films. THE APPLEGATES has a good cast, a powerful blend of humor with satire, and lots of fun. It is considered a cult classic for three reasons: a strong cast, a powerful story, and moments you will always remember. The human elements that invade these bugs' lives are over-developed for this film, but they work very well. The Applegates prove to humans that even if they come to us, we will still destroy their sense of what is right or wrong.

THE APPLEGATES uses a powerful technique for keeping this film easy on the eyes. It uses the K.I.S.S. method so it can withstand repeated viewings. The "Keep It Simple Stupid" formula was applied to this film by merely saying that these bugs were going to nuke a small town in the United States. There wasn't a fear of technology, over-analyzing, or future consequences--and with a film like this, we didn't need it. It's a simple story with a clear message: There are problems in the US we cannot blame on outside influences. We have issues with underage pregnancies, drug use, over-spending, and adultery. Metaphors abound, and we feel sad for these Applegates as they begin to falter in their mission because we are causing the failure. Our lifestyles are killing these bugs, and this satire of American manners is a send up of the ineffectual environmentalists the Applegates represent. The film was released during a time when there was a fear of the destruction of the Amazon forests, while we battle today with the issue of Global Warming. In other words, it's a save the rain forests ecology movie presented as a comical horror and fantasy film.

The cast also includes: Glenn Shadix (Greg Samson), Susan Barnes (Opal Withers), Savannah Smith Bouchér (Dottie), Roger Aaron Brown (Sheriff Heidegger), Lee Garlington (Nita Samson), Philip Arthur Ross (Kevin), Steven Robert Ross (Kenny), Mark Bringleson (Rich Block, Family Bazaar Magazine), Chuck Lafont (Clem Shepherd), Allan David Fox (Peace Corps Volunteer), Sherrie Wills (Peace Corps Volunteer), Jerry Craig (Amazon Native), Joe VanStrike (Russell Withers), Mindy Bell (Coach Himler), Meg Weldon (Courtney), Chelsea Lee (Ingrid), Jessica Schwartz (Monica), Mike Rieden (Vince's Friend), Bob Fox (Junior Cartwright), Kathryn Garrison (Drone with Aunt Bea), Margaret Mazon (Drone with Aunt Bea), Gustavd Mellando (Drone with Aunt Bea), Sherry Narens (Relative), Michael Raysses (Durpre), Les Podewell (Mr. Goodpastor), Bradley Mott (Pastor Cooter), Patrick Donahue (Bed Bug), Barbara Lehmann (Cocktail Waitress), Lisa Sutton (Pregnant Woman), Kiki Huygelen (Gail the Dyke), Adrian Tafoya (Motorboat Captain), John Escobar (Jorge), Tony Cecere (Banana Boat Helmsman), Rick Snyder (Bank Officer), Joe Liss (Customs Official), Ivan H. Migel (Cashier), Dan Bradley (Power Plant Worker), Richard Barker (Power Plant Worker), Lisa Comshaw (Pregnant Woman), Mark Roberts (Screaming Guard in Plant), and Joe Van Slyke (Russell Withers). David Newman composed the original music. The screenplay was written by Redbeard Simmons and Michael Lehmann, who also directed.

The screenplay written by Redbeard Simmons and the director is sharp, witty, intelligent, and hysterical. Special makeup effects designed by Kevin Yagher were used to make the Applegates appear as bugs. The special effects are all done with plastic molding and firecracker explosions. MEET MEET THE APPLEGATES was filmed in Oshkosh and Neenah, Wisconsin. It has been rated R, has vulgar language and partial nudity. Why is it unavailable? One viewer commented: "There's a reason why this film has been forgotten. It is horrible. But it's compellingly horrible! I could not stop watching it. I felt like it should be revered as a bizarro cult-classic, because it's so bad in such an enjoyable way. It is so extraordinarily bad, and the characters are so unapologetically one-dimensional, and the dialogue is so ridiculously over-the-top, you may find yourself, like me, unable to stop watching." The VHS title is simply THE APPLEGATES, and hopefully this comedy will be released on DVD soon.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) * * *

Sir Oliver S. Lindenbrook (James Mason), a geology professor at the University of Edinburgh, is given a piece of volcanic rock by his admiring student Alexander "Alec" McEwen (Pat Boone). Deciding that the rock is unusually heavy and therefore must contain Icelandic peridotite, Lindenbrook, mostly thanks to the carelessness of his lab assistant Mr. Paisley (Ben Wright), discovers a plumb bob inside bearing a cryptic inscription. Lindenbrook and Alec conclude that it was left by an explorer by the name of Arne Saknussem, who had 300 years earlier found a passage to the center of the Earth. Lindenbrook transcribes the text on the plumb-bob and learns that it reveals the entrance to the world below, so he immediately sets off with Alec as his assistant to follow the example of the Icelandic pioneer.

The first obstacle of the journey is Professor Göteborg of Stockholm, because the University in Stockholm writes to let Lindenbrook know that Göteborg has disappeared. Lindenbrook estimates the date of Göteborg's disappearance as being approximately when the first letter would have arrived. It's a lot of set-up, but it goes by quickly and it's made enjoyable by Mason's suaveness and the boyish charm of Pat Boone.

Act One is fun, but Act Two is better when Lindenbrook and Alec rush off to Iceland to try to beat Göteborg to Saknussem's secret entrance. Once they are in Iceland, Göteborg with the help of his goon, manages to kidnap both of them and trap them in an underground cellar, from where they are freed by young athletic farmer Hans Belker (Peter Ronson). He and his duck Gertrude join their expedition, but he doesn't speak English. That necessitates including a translator in their party, so they also bring along Carla Göteborg (Arlene Dahl). They next go to the inn where Göteborg is staying and sneak in his room, where they find him dead. Lindenbrook, with the astuteness of a forensic scientist, combs the goatee of Göteborg and retrieves some potassium cyanide crystals. They conclude that he has been killed by some rival scientist.

Carla Göteborg: Whom were you taking besides this young man?
Sir Oliver Lindenbrook: The big Icelander.
Carla Göteborg: Then I'll be very useful. He doesn't understand a word of English.

Alec McKuen: (after discovering Professor Göteborg dead in his hotel room) Why didn't they tell us at the desk?
Oliver Lindenbrook: Hotels rarely advertise the fact that there are corpses lying around.
Carla Göteborg: Sir Oliver, you are not going to listen to a murderer?
Oliver Lindenbrook: Never interrupt a murderer, madam.
Carla Göteborg: Someone is walking up there. I heard footsteps, human footsteps.
Oliver Lindenbrook: Since the beginning of time all women have heard footsteps up there.

Finding him dead before his expedition even began, Lindenbrook and Alec are suddenly supplied with all the materials they need for their project. Göteborg's widow Carla, who at first vowed to destroy all her husband's supplies, agrees to lend them his valuable supplies, including the much sought after Ruhmkorff lamps, if they include her in their trip. Lindenbrook grudgingly agrees to take her along, and so four explorers and a duck are soon journeying to the center of the Earth. Along with Lindenbrook and Alec, the group includes Hans Belker, Gertrude, and Mrs. Göteborg.

Strange terrain, a deranged rival scientist named Count Arne Saknussem (Thayer David), breathtaking scenery and giant reptiles embellish the rest of their journey. Count Saknussem is the descendant of Saknussem, the famed scientist who tried to travel to the center of the earth 300 years ago and left many guiding marks along the path for the posterity. Count Saknussem thinks that the center of the earth is his territory and only he has a right to visit there, as it was his forefather who went there first. He trails the group secretly with a servant. During his independent travels, as he becomes separated from the rest of his group, Alec almost trips over Saknussem's dead servant. When Alec refuses to become his new servant, Saknussem shoots Alec in the arm. Lindenbrook is able to locate Saknussem from the reverberations of the sound of the guns' echo, and in a strange court hearing, sentences him to death. However no one has the nerve to kill him, and they grudgingly take him along.

Count Saknussem: I don't sleep. I hate those little slices of death.

They eventually encounter a subterranean ocean, and make a raft from the stems of giant mushrooms to cross it. Somewhere in the middle of the ocean, they pass through the center of the earth and their raft begins circling in a mid-ocean whirlpool. The professor deduces they must be at the center of the earth, because the magnetic forces from north and south meeting there are strong enough to snatch away even gold in the form of wedding rings and tooth fillings. They manage to cross the ocean, and reach the shore on the other side completely exhausted.

Hans Belker: (in Icelandic) There is a tunnel on this side.
Carla Göteborg: He says there's a tunnel on the other side.
Hans Belker: (in Icelandic) And they slant downhill, and we can walk them.
Carla Göteborg: Slanting downhill, but walkable.
Hans Belker: (in Icelandic) O, madam, will you all come down here where the boy fell. It is so wonderfully beautiful down there.
Sir Oliver Lindenbrook: What's happened now? What's he saying?
Carla Göteborg: He said we should go back to where Alec fell.
Hans Belker: (in Icelandic) He is guilty. Excuse me, madam, can you tell me, where do we go now, what do we do now?
Carla Göteborg: (in Icelandic) Hans, let him go.
Hans Belker: (in Icelandic) Madam, the tunnel lies straight upwards, but there is a big rock in the way and sadly we can't move it. Only a landslide could move it. (to his duck) My Gotrun, have you been lonely?

Despite the dangers of their journey, no one has died. That, however, soon changes. Gertrude, the duck, loses her life. But ironically it is not the difficult terrain that kills her, but Saknussem, who can't control his hunger and eats her. Nature delivers its justice immediately when soon after a mild earthquake occurs, and Saknussem is buried under a shower of heavy stones. Right behind the collapse, the group comes upon the sunken city of Atlantis. They are now faced with one question: How will they return to the surface?

Not far from the ruins of Atlantis, they see the remains of the scientist who went centuries before them with the hand of his skeleton pointing toward a passage to the surface. They decide that they have to create an artificial explosion to get out to the surface. They use the gunpowder in one of the sacks of their ancestor to create an explosion that awakens a giant lizard which tries to eat them--but is soon consumed by the lava that torrents down after the explosion. The same lava lifts them up out of the depths of the earth in a large sacrificial altar bowl. They are thrown out to the sea, emerging to the surface via a volcanic shaft. Three are retrieved from the sea by seafarers while the fourth, Alec, is thrown out of the altar bowl as it flies through the air and ends up naked in a tree in a nunnery orchard.

When the group returns to Edinburgh, the four travelers are greeted as national heroes. Alec has married Lindenbrook's niece Jenny Lindenbrook (Diane Baker), Hans announces his return to Iceland, and the result of previous tensions between Lindenbrook and Carla is two headstrong people in love. The film ends with Lindenbrook and Karla kissing each other and the crowd cheering them and joyously singing in chorus.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH is an adventure film adapted by Charles Brackett from the novel by Jules Verne. The film is also known as TRIP TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. Excitement comes from its sense of mystery and the drama between characters more than it does from giant monster attacks. It features solid character development, and the actors take their roles seriously, bringing them to vivid life. This is a long film at 132 minutes for a general release, family oriented project.

The film is notable for its special effects, which are excellent. Matte painting artists of the old Hollywood studio system could truly be called artists, and this film is a prime example of this art. However, the special effects on the dinosaurs look phony. Putting fake back-sails on live reptiles and calling them dimetrodons is cheesy. But the rest of the film is great and the movie requires dinosaurs. Bernard Hermann's atmospheric score is one of the stars of the picture. His music supports the film, like a character all its own. It complements the story rather than overpowering it, combining woodwinds, brass, a huge percussion section, and five organs for the film's original surround mix. The payoff is sublime, as Herrmann's music dips into subterranean registers, while a harp captures the travelers' wonder.

The cast also includes: Robert Adler (Groom), Alan Napier (Dean), Gertrude the Duck (Gertrude), Mary Brady (Kirsty), Alan Caillou (Rector), John Epper (Groom), Edith Evanson (Innkeeper), Alex Finlayson (Professor Bayle), Mollie Glessing (News Vendor), Frederick Halliday (Chancellor), Kendrick Huxham (Scots Newsman), Owen McGiveney (Shopkeeper), Molly Roden (Housekeeper), Ivan Triesault (Professor Peter Göteborg of Stockholm), Red West (Bearded Man at Newspaper Stand / University Student), and Peter Wright (Laird of Glendarick). Bernard Herrmann composed the music. Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett wrote the screenplay from Jules Verne's novel "Voyage au centre de la Terre". Henry Levin directed.

Derived from Jules Verne's 1864 novel, the movie "sexed up" the story compared to the original. In the book there is just a little romance between Axel and the professor's goddaughter, but Arlene Dahl's character (Professor Göteborg's widow), Arne Saknussemm's descendant and even Gertrude were additions made by the screenwriters. For the movie it definitely makes sense to add a romantic subplot as well as the intrigue with Saknussemm's descendant. The novel does not start in Edinburgh, but in Hamburg, the Professor's name is Otto Lidenbrock, Axel is his nephew, and Axel's sweetheart, Lidenbrock's goddaughter from the Vierlande is only known as Grauben. Lidenbrock, professor of geology and mineralogy at the Johanneum, is also a rather different character from Lindenbrook, perhaps an early example of the mad scientist and to some extent a caricature of a German academic as seen by a Frenchman who was heavily influenced by reading the strange tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann. James Mason's character is worldly and suave compared to the dry and irascible Lidenbrock of the novel. In the first chapter it is mentioned that his lectures are well-visited because people hope to witness his famous fits. In the novel, as in many of Jules Verne's Extraordinary Voyages, it's mainly about the journey and teaching young readers about as many geographic and scientific facts as possible. Famous and wealthy in his lifetime, Jules Verne predicted the future use of submarines, space-travel, and crustaceous exploration. Over 80 motion picture and TV productions around the world have heralded his work.

Location shots were filmed at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and wild sets were designed to show off the scope ratio as the Lindenbrook Expedition reaches the Earth's surprisingly solid center. Fox's anamorphic transfer was made from a restored print, and those who grew up watching the film in a faded TV version will be delighted to see the production's attractive lensing. Like some of Verne's more exotic ideas, the underground territories share a lot of fanciful ideas, and that's part of the film's charm. Even the giant dinosaurs are well intercut between the terrified explorers, and much like the film's sets and locations, the creatures make good use of the scope frame.

The DVD presents the film in its original CinemaScope aspect ratio. This brand new anamorphic (2.35:1) DVD is an excellent transfer. Fox found the original 1959 camera negative worn and faded. A search for viable film elements led to a black-and-white silver print. From this came a 35mm interpositive. Finally came digital restoration and video enhancement. The original 4-track MagOptical soundtrack is offered in Dolby Digital 4.0 surround. DVD extras include 40 chapter stops, 8 trailers, and a conclusive restoration documentary.

Jules Verne's novel has been adapted several times for the big screen: Juan Piquer Simon's 1976 Spanish version starring Kenneth More; a 1989 Cannon version glued together for a cheap video release; a 1993 TV film featuring Carel Struycken, Tim Russ and Jeffrey Nordling; a 1999 mini-series starring Treat Williams and Bryan Brown; a 2008 TV film featuring Rick Schroeder; and a 2008 direct-to-DVD film produced by The Asylum.

In 2008 JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH starring Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, and Anita Briem was released. It's also called JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH 3D or JOURNEY 3D. Probably it should be considered a 21st Century sequel to the 19th Century of Jules Verne's novel of the same name.

Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) is a Bostonian volcanologist whose 13-year-old nephew, Sean (Josh Hutcherson), is supposed to spend ten days with him. Trevor has forgotten that Sean is coming until he receives several messages from Sean's mother.

When Sean's mother drops him off, she leaves Trevor with a box of items that belonged to Max, Trevor's brother and Sean's father, who disappeared 10 years before. Sean suddenly takes interest in what Trevor has to say after he tells him about his father, whom he never really had a chance to know. Inside the box Trevor discovers Max's old baseball glove, a yo-yo, and the novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne. Inside the book Trevor finds notes written by his late brother. Trevor goes to his laboratory to find out more about the notes and realizes that he must go to Iceland to investigate for himself. He intends to have Sean flown back to Canada but relents at Sean's protest and brings him along for the adventure.

They start by looking for another volcanologist named Sigurbjörn Ásgeirsson and instead find his daughter Hannah (Anita Briem). The scientist died years earlier. It turns out that he and Trevor's brother Max were Vernians, a small group who believe the works of Jules Verne to be fact. Hannah offers to help them climb up to the Stag Mountain which has suddenly started sending data again.

While hiking the mountain, a lightning storm forces the three into a cave that collapses, leaving them trapped. The group then explores the cave looking for an exit, and they find it is an abandoned mine which was closed after an accident that killed 81 people. They venture deep into the mine until they reach the end of the tunnels and enter to the bottom of a volcanic tube which is full of precious gems. As they are admiring the gems they realize the floor they're standing on is actually muscovite, a very thin rock formation. Due to their weight, the muscovite breaks and the group falls thousands of miles through the volcanic tube to the center of the earth, surviving only because the volcanic tube eventually turns into something like a water slide which drops them into a lake. It is there that they find that the center of the Earth is actually another world contained within the Earth, "a world within our world", and they set out to explore the place.

Along the way they find evidence that someone was there 100 years previous. Trevor remarks that the instruments found are Lindenbrook's, hinting that his views of the events of the book being real are changing. They find some of Max's (Trevor's brother and Sean's father) things as well. While Trevor and Sean are going through what they've found, Hannah wanders off and unfortunately discovers Max's body. They bury him on the beach of the underground ocean and Trevor reads a letter to Sean found in Max's journal. They then say their goodbyes and embrace. Trevor then realizes that his brother died due to dehydration.

Trevor figures that they must find a geyser that can send them to the surface, which is located on the other side of the underground ocean, or otherwise the temperature will rise up to 200 degrees, making it impossible to survive. They must reach the geyser in 48 hours or all of the water to create the geyser will have evaporated. They also figure that they must get out before the temperature rises past 135 degrees, which is the limit that the human body can withstand. They begin by crossing the underground ocean, and then the two adults become separated from Sean. Sean's guide is now a little bird who has been present since the trio entered the center, and it takes him towards the river. After he goes through a path of floating magnetic rocks, he encounters a Giganotosaurus and Trevor--who has desperately been searching for him--finds him. The beast pursues them until they discovers that the ground beneath them is muscovite, the same type as earlier. The monster falls through the muscovite, creates a massive hole and dies in the process. When they arrive at the geyser, it is all dried up. But they find water on the other side of a wall.

Trevor uses a flare to ignite the magnesium in the wall and causes a geyser to shoot them through Mount Vesuvius in Italy. When they destroy the vineyard of an Italian man, Sean gives him a diamond which he found earlier. Trevor sees that he has many more in his backpack, and he uses them to fund his brother's laboratory. Throughout the adventure, Hannah and Trevor gradually become close and even share a kiss. The film ends on the final day of Sean's visit with Trevor and Hannah. As he is leaving their new home, which was purchased with some of the diamonds, Trevor hands Sean a copy of the book "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World" by Ignatius L. Donnelly, suggesting they might hang out during Sean's Christmas break, which suggests a possible sequel.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH grossed $21,018,141 in 2,811 theaters with an average of $7,477.57 percent of the opening gross was taken from theaters which showed the film in 3-D. It has since made just over $100 million domestically. As of May, 2009, the film has grossed $101,704,370 in the US and $139,157,146 foreign sales, with a total of $240,861,516 worldwide. Warner Bros. marketed the film like a theme park attraction. However, the studio had to change the ad campaign, including dropping "3D" from the title, when it became clear that the film would be shown in 3-D in far fewer theaters than anticipated.

The film has enjoyed strong DVD sales. It was released on Blu-ray and DVD on October 28, 2008 in standard 2-D format as well as a magenta/green anaglyph. Four pairs of 3-D glasses are available along with the two-disc edition of the movie.

From the Earth to the Moon (1958) * * ½

Shortly after the end of the American Civil War, munitions producer Victor Barbicane (Joseph Cotten) announces that he has invented Power X, a new explosive which he claims is much more powerful than any other explosive. Metallurgist Stuyvesant Nicholl (George Sanders) scoffs at Barbicane's claims and offers a wager of $100,000 that it cannot destroy his invention, an ultra-tough steel that is the hardest metal in existence. Barbicane stages a demonstration using a puny cannon and demolishes Nicholl's material and an area of the countryside.

With the backing of manufacturers, Barbicane plans to continue his experiments. He is denounced by Nicholl, and President Ulysses S. Grant (Morris Ankrum) requests that Barbicane cease development of his invention, as other countries warn that continuing work on Power X could be considered an act of war. Barbicane agrees, vilified by his backers and the public, but then comes up with a new scheme--to build a cannon that will fire a manned projectile to orbit The Moon. When he discovers that pieces of Nicholl's metal retrieved from the demonstration have somehow been converted into an extremely strong yet lightweight ceramic, he cannot resist the chance to construct a spaceship to travel to the Moon. He recruits Nicholl to help build the ship. Meanwhile, Nicholl's daughter Virginia (Debra Paget) and Barbicane's assistant Ben Sharpe (Don Dobbins) are attracted to each other.

When completed, Barbicane, Nicholl and Sharpe board the spaceship and blast off with much fanfare. Once in outer space, the strongly religious Nicholl reveals that he has sabotaged the vessel, believing that Barbicane has flouted God's laws. Nicholl does everything he can to ruin the expedition. However, when it is discovered that Virginia has stowed away, Nicholl cooperates with Barbicane in a desperate attempt to save her. Sharpe is knocked out, and he and Virginia are placed in the safest compartment of the ship. Barbicane and Nicholl then fire rockets that send the young couple on their way back to Earth, while the two scientists land on the Moon in another section, with no way off. However, they are able to signal to the young couple that they have managed to reach the Moon safely.

FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON (1958) is a science fiction and fantasy film adaptation of the 1865 Jules Verne novel of the same title. The resurgence of interest in Jules Verne following the release of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954) led to a brief fad of Verne-based films. There were the big-budget pictures: AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (1956), JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959), MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961) and IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS (1962). Then there were the low-budget films: FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON (1958), VALEY OF THE DRAGONS (1961) and MASTER OF THE WORLD (1961). Also produced were THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JUES VERNE (1958), FIVE WEEKS IN A BALLOON (1962) and JULES VERNE'S ROCKET TO THE MOON/THOSE FANTASTIC FLYING FOOLS (1967). These films tend to fall into silly buffoonery, but FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON is notably one of the few serious ones.

Produced in Mexico by Benedict Bogeaus, FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON stars Joseph Cotten as an eccentric scientist, and his bitter enemy George Sanders, who feels that the laws of God and nature are being violated. The romantic interest is handled by Debra Paget and Don Dubbins. Wandering in and out of the story is a mysterious bearded character known only as J.V. (Carl Esmond). The cast is probably the main reason to take a look at FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON. Cotten and Sanders are always worth watching, but also present are popular character actors Carl Esmond and Henry Daniell, both of whom excelled as suave, sinister villains in their careers. This film is one of the few ever produced with a positive view of war profiteers.

The film began as an RKO Pictures movie, but when RKO went into bankruptcy the film was released by Warner Brothers. This led to the film's budget being greatly slashed during production. The effects department suffered the greatest loss, and scenes on the moon were eliminated from the script. What remains once the rocket blasts off is a disappointingly verbose drama aboard the rocket with little in the way of special effects. It doesn't deliver the effects that its ad campaign implicitly promised, but the actors are convincing and the story is logically presented. Plus, the interior of the spaceship rocket comes with beautifully plush interiors in the retro-Victorian style that is de rigeur for Jules Verne films, as well as a series of Steampunk mechanical engine devices that one believes could almost work. The movie definitely has an antiquated feel to it and the technology shown is amusing.

FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON is almost a good film, but lacks the nerve of most 1950s science-fiction films. It builds up well through the fights and conciliations of the two rivals, played with fine charisma by Joseph Cotten and George Sanders. The rocket lifts off, but nothing happens. Just when we get into space and come to what promises to be the most interesting part of the story, FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON slows down and becomes a stage bound drama between the two rivals fighting one another. The dramatics are occasionally pumped up by a meteor shower and the emergency repair of an arcing engine gyro, but the sense of wonder that the film could have achieved is missing. Outer space scenes are quite unremarkable. There is almost nothing in the way of special effects--the rocket launch is limited to a series of exteriors of the capsule where the crane cable and arm holding it are clearly visible. Even the climactic Moon landing takes place off screen. This movie reuses some of Louis and Bebe Barron's electronic score and sound effects from MGM's FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956).

Furthermore, Verne’s story has also been changed by a need to add a topical theme about the nuclear arms race. In Verne's original 1865 novel, the Baltimore Gun Club set themselves the challenge of building a rocket to go to the Moon. Here club president Barbicane is a munitions industrialist and his scheme is that of firing a rocket to the Moon in order to demonstrate his powerful new explosive. It's a scheme that doesn't make much sense, and the film's desire to comment on the arms debate leaves us uncertain whether this is something that the film supports or condemns. In Verne's version, Barbicane and Nicholls are friendly academic rivals who spend most of their trip politely arguing over engineering issues. In the movie, this rivalry is beefed up to catastrophic proportions simply to add drama to the narrative. Of course a romance is included as well. Making matters worse, the science is both sloppily handled and inconsistent. For example, a centrifugal spinner is used during take-off to "counterbalance gravity", yet stowaway Debra Paget emerges perfectly fine from the space suit she hid out in.

The cast also includes: Patric Knowles (Josef Cartier), Carl Esmond (Jules Verne), Henry Daniell (Morgana), Melville Cooper (Bancroft), Ludwig Stössel (Von Metz), Robert Clarke (Narrator), and Les Tremayne (Countdown Announcer). Louis Forbes composed the incidental music. Some of Louis and Bebe Barron's "electronic tonalities" are used. Robert Blees and James Leicester wrote the screenplay derived from Jules Verne's novels "De la Terre à la Lune" and "Autour de la Lune". Byron Haskin directed.

FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON had been made into movies prior to 1958 and it would be again. A famous Georges Méliès short loosely based on the book appeared in 1902, and further screen versions appeared in 1914, 1967, and 1986 (French TV movie). The title was also used for a 1998 HBO mini-series hosted by Tom Hanks, documenting the Apollo space program. Twelve episodes were produced. Largely based on Andrew Chaikin's book "A Man on the Moon", the series is known for its accurate telling of the story of Apollo and its outstanding special effects. The last episode of the series begins with a look at the making of Georges Méliès' film based on Jules Verne's book.

Originally broadcast in April and May of 1998, the epic miniseries FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON was HBO's most expensive production to date, with a budget of $68 million. The miniseries tackles the daunting challenge of chronicling the entire history of NASA's Apollo space program from 1961 to 1972. It explores the ups and downs of space travel, beginning with President Kennedy's famous speech before Congress on May 25, 1961, and chronicling the journey to putting the first man on the moon. NASA's complete participation in the production lends to its total authenticity, right down to the use of NASA equipment, launch locations, and even spacecraft. The re-creation of the lunar landscape is almost as impressive as the real thing.

This highly acclaimed, Emmy-nominated, 12-episode series is available as a four-disc DVD set. The original series was shot in 1.33 aspect ratio, intended to be viewed on standard television sets. With the proliferation of widescreen flat-panel TV sets the series was remastered in 1.78 aspect ratio and rereleased in 2005 as a 5-disc DVD box set. New framing causes loss of top and bottom parts of the frames from the original movie. This is not always noticeable because of a careful transfer process, but in some scenes important details are lost. Some captions have also been compromised. Features include a behind-the-scenes featurette, a special effects featurette, President John F. Kennedy's historic speech, a tour outside our solar system, and 6 original promotional trailers as seen on HBO.

Il Ritorno di Zanna Bianca (1974) * * ½

In the Northwest Territories of Canada in 1899, Mitsa (Missaele) the young boy from the first ZANNA BIANCA movie is working with his hybrid wolf and two fur traders. Beauty Smith (John Steiner) and two henchmen appear, raid the traders camp, shoot all of them, then escape in a canoe with all their equipment. Several hours later, the wolf-dog is found by John Tarwater (Harry Carey Jr.) a grizzled old trader who buries Mitsa, and takes the hybid wolf back to a nearby town which is his home. The wolf-dog befriends another young boy, John's orphaned 10 year-old grandson Bill Tarwater (Renato Cestiè). Bill names him White Fang because of its ivory-white teeth. At a local saloon, White Fang helps John Tarwater win some money at a card game from a crooked card-shark, and a hilarious fistfight breaks out between the swindler and his victims as John casually counts his money, while White Fang and Bill take cover behind the bar. John then embarks on one of his periodic expeditions to discover gold.

Meanwhile, Beauty Smith is again exploiting the people in the town where John and Bill live. Smith uses the alias Charles Forth, pretends to be a businessman, and fakes a crippling injury by confining himself to a wheelchair with his two henchman always at his side. Sister Evangelina (Virna Lisi) is running a new mission hut in the town to convert into a hospital, and decides to ask Mr. Forth for funding to operate the hospital, despite warnings that Mr. Forth won't give her any money unless she will repay the loan with interest within 60 days or less. Sister Evangelina goes to meet him, and instantly recognizes the villain. She contacts novelist Jason Scott (Franco Nero) who's on a book tour down south and he agrees to come to her assistance. Scott also contacts his old friend Kurt Jansen (Raimund Harmstorf), now working as a local mines inspector to help out. Together, the three of them take their accusations to the town's corrupt police chief, Inspector Lt. Charles Leclerq (Renato de Carmine), who is actually on the payroll of Beauty Smith and claims to have known Mr. Forth for six years. Leclerq's wife Jane (Hannelore Elsner) is pressuring her husband to accommodate Smith's nefarious plans in return for more bribe money in exchange for protection, since Smith is now a wanted fugitive.

Jason Scott attempts to expose the illegal complicity between Mr. Forth and the police chief with the help of a local worker named Liverpool (Donald O'Brien), who agrees to write a statement in exchange for money. But Liverpool goes back on his word to help Scott by skipping town with the money that was given to him. Shortly afterwards, Scott encounters Bill and John Tarwater when White Fang drags them back to town after their sled dogs had run away leaving them stranded on a snowy plain. The animal shows affection for both Bill and Scott, remembing Scott from their previous adventure in Dawson City. Elsewhere, Kurt meets Liverpool's younger and attractive sister (Yanti Somer) and a romantic attraction develops between both of them.

The following day Liverpool returns to the town with two men, one dead and the other suffering from frostbite. They were selling insufficient and overpriced supplies from Beauty Smith. The survivor, Carter (Rolf Hartmann), has gangrene in both legs and Scott has to help Sister Evangelina perform the amputation at the mission hut. When Beauty Smith and his two henchmen see and recognize White Fang, they frame the wolf-dog for savaging Liverpool to death. An enraged posse attempts to kill White Fang, forcing Bill to drive the hybrid wolf out of town. When Bill looks for White Fang later in the woods, he gets attacked by a vicious eagle, but White Fang jumps in and saves him by fighting off the bird. Bill smuggles White Fang back into town and to Sister Evangelina's mission where the wolf-dog's injuries are tended to.

While visiting his grandson and White Fang at the mission, John learns from Carter about the location of a gold-stream in the mountains that he found. But Harvey (Werner Pochath), a mission employee and a secret associate of Beauty Smith, sees them discussing the location and reports it to his boss. Jane then fakes a sickness to lure Sister Evangelina away from the mission, leaving Carter alone in his sickbed. Beauty Smith visits and tortures Carter for the location of the gold stream, then kidnaps John Tarwater and has his two henchmen set fire to the mission hut. Carter is burned to death, while Bill, who walked in while Smith was torturing Carter, is trapped by the flames. When Sister Evangelina realizes that Jane is not sick, she races back to the burning mission and rushes in to save Bill, but she catches on fire and dies from the severity of her burns.

Hearing of her death, the townspeople start a riot after learning from Bill about the wanted Beauty Smith and of Inspector Leclerq's association with him. As the mob breaks through the Mounties into the police station, Leclerq shoots himself. Scott, Kurt, and Bill find Jane who tells them where Beauty Smith is heading. Scott and Kurt with White Fang organize a posse to give chase. Locating Smith and his henchmen, Scott leads the posse forward and a gun battle ensues. Smith manages to shoot a few posse members, but his two henchmen are killed. White Fang catches up to Smith and attacks him. Smith's gunshots miss the wolf-dog and instead triggers an avalanche. The villain finally dies, crushed to death under the falling snow and ice. Shortly afterwards, Scott, Kurt, and White Fang locate John Tarwater who was shot and left for dead. But before he dies, he asks Scott that his grandson be the beneficiary of the gold stream that he found right near him with Carter's advice. The two-faced Harvey suddenly shows his true colors and says that the owner will legally be the first one to register the claim in the town. He suggests a dog-sled race to settle the disputed claim.

In the climatic sled race, Harvey attempts dirty tricks to win the race, but the tables turn on him when he falls from his sled and dies when he gets accidentally run over by the sled-team headed by White Fang. Scott and White Fang arrive in the town first, and the writer enters Bill Tarwater's name in the ledger in place of his own.

In the final scene, Jason Scott says his goodbyes to Kurt who now has the job as the new police inspector, and he announces that he and Liverpool's sister will be getting married in the spring. Bill also stays to live with Kurt and his wife who have agreed to raise the boy and White Fang. Scott then returns to Vancouver with new stories to write, while White Fang is torn between running after him or staying with Bill. However, White Fang chooses to stay with his young master as he runs back to Bill and trots off with the boy.

IL RITORNO DI ZANNA BIANCA is the sequel to prolific director Lucio Fulci's ZANNA BIANCA (1973). The titles translate into English as "White Fang" and "The Return of White Fang" or "The Challenge of White Fang". The German title is "Die Teufelsschlucht der Wilden Wölfe" and the French titles are "Le Retour de Buck le Loup" and "Le Retour de Croc Blanc". This sequel is set a few years after ZANNA BIANCA, and White Fang once again faces the harsh reality of the increasingly cruel nature of men, but remains faithful to those who are kind. Horror film specialist Fulci does a fine job adapting a variation on Jack London's 1906 novel "White Fang" to the big screen

This light-hearted adventure is set in the harsh wilderness of northern Canada in 1899. It's a typical wintry adventure that should appeal to children, and adults might want to watch it for the cast and director. But if you have seen ZANNA BIANCA, this sequel will seem like more of the same to you, and ZANNA BIANCA isn't all that great a B movie. The sequel is somewhat sloppily written or translated, yet another story about a boy and his wolf-dog, with some gold rush-Western elements thrown in. There are surprisingly few movies about wolves. Most are adaptations or variations on Jack London's 1903 book "Call of the wild" or its 1906 sequel "White Fang". A German Shepherd dog plays White Fang in ZANNA BIANCA.

Lucio Fulci's ZANNA BIANCA movies are among the strangest films ever made. He has cooked up a populist entertainment that's too violent for children and too cute for adults, except when people aren't being tortured and burned alive. While missing the nudity and sex of exploitation films, these are not really all-age adventures, at least in their unedited forms. You might think this would be fun for the whole family until the town drunk is beaten senseless, the hapless Indian family is murdered in cold blood, and the child terrorized by bad guys who get a kick out of torturing cripples. The bullets fly, the bodies pile up, and White Fang gets to do clever things like figure out that someone is cheating at poker.

Both of Fulci's ZANNA BIANCA films were part of a fad by Italian film producers trying to squeeze some life out of their spaghetti western industry. There were maybe a dozen of these things made between 1973 and 1977 or so--Alpine adventures set in the gold rush era Klondike with plucky kids and an intelligent, resourceful wolf-dog as the star of the film. They usually bring in an action hero and a bad guy and come up with all sorts of fascinating adventures for the wolf-dog to have while the humans stand around cheering him on.

If there are any saving graces to this sequel it is that White Fang is not forced to fight any other animals for the benefit of the camera, though he does get chased around, kicked, beaten with axe handles and thrown out of burning buildings. He's also depicted as fighting off a golden eagle that attacks the young boy, leading to one of the most bizarre gore effects sequences ever staged where the canine performer is festooned with a truly twisted zombie makeup effect to have it appear as though the bird scratched his eyes out. Probably this was one of the scenes cut from prints exported to North America in the 1970s.

The film ends in a dog sled race finale that took a few cues from BEN HUR (1959), with the two sled riders battling it out as they hurtle across the wilderness. The credits include Canada as one of the filming locations, although IL RITORNO DI ZANNA BIANCA was filmed mostly in Austria. The whole thing is marvelously fake and tacky, which is half of the fun of this little sub-genre of spaghetti westerns. They are fascinating and this is probably one of the better examples with no apparent harm coming to the animal performers. But the people get battered around quite a bit. It looks like it was a tough, physical shoot under adverse conditions, and a minor miracle the film was even made at all.

The cast also includes: John Bartha (Mountie Sergeant), Paolo Magalotti (Smith's Henchman 1), Sergio Smacchi (Smith's Henchman 2), Ezio Marano (Gambler), Stanislaus Gunawan, Vittorio Fanfoni, Carla Mancini, Riccardo Petrazzi (Man in Saloon), Pietro Torrisi (Man in Saloon), and Goffredo Unger (Fighter in Saloon). Carlo Rustichelli composed the incidental music. Lucio Fulci, Roberto Gianviti, and Alberto Silvestri wrote the screenplay. Lucio Fulci directed.

Donald O'Brien who plays Liverpool said about John Steiner (Beauty Smith), "He was a good actor, but we didn't get along well. I am Irish, he is British, maybe that's why..." O'Brien said of Raimund Harmstorf who plays Kurt Jansen, "An incredibly good-looking guy. He used to be a Decathlon athlete, I think. These people have the best physiques because they have to do everything, run, jump, throw weights." When informed that director Lucio Fulci had died, O'Brien was shocked and said, "He was a great director. Many terrible things happened to him in his life. He was rather unlucky. I have always enjoyed working with him greatly, as he was a truly original human being with a great love for cinema."

Wolfen (1981) * * ¾

After attending the groundbreaking of a real estate development he's building in the impoverished South Bronx, wealthy industrialist Christopher Van Der Veer (Max M. Brown) stops off with his wife Pauline (Anne Marie Pohtamo) in Battery Park, where his ancestors built the first windmill in New York. Stalked by an unseen predator with four legs and highly acute senses, the couple are quickly attacked and killed. Their driver has his hand severed before he's able to shoot his gun.

Haggard NYPD Detective Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney) returns from a self-imposed retirement and is assigned to solve the bizarre violent murders in which it appears the victims were killed by animals. He is a chunky loner who lives on Staten Island and always seems to have drunk too much the night before. Wilson receives a page from his commanding officer Warren (Dick O’Neill) and is dispatched to the crime scene: "It's very weird and it's very strange, just like you." Coroner Whittington (Gregory Hines) gives him the grisly facts, like how long a severed head can remain conscious, and he found no trace of metal on the victims' wounds. The security firm that was protecting Van Der Veer pairs Dewey with their own expert, psychologist Rebecca Neff (Diane Venora).

Warren: I'm going to team you up with Dewey Wilson on this Christopher Van Der Veer thing.
Rebecca Neff: I didn't know he was back. I thought he retired, disabled, mental...?
Warren: He had a lot of family problems, he started to drink a little too much, police work... piled up on him. He's a good man, you'll like him.
Rebecca Neff: Okay, fine.

Counter-terrorism tactics fail to net a suspect, but when the predator attacks a vagrant in the South Bronx, hairs found at both crime scenes indicate the killer is the same. Dewey and Rebecca visit a zoologist named Ferguson (Tom Noonan) who reveals the hairs belong to "canis lupis", a wolf. Dewey's suspicions lead him to Eddie Holt (Edward James Olmos), a former member of the Native American Movement. Holt spends his time on top of bridges and claims to be able to shape shift into different animals. He is a construction worker who loves hanging out on the top of the Brooklyn Bridge. In his investigation, Wilson learns of an Indian legend about wolf spirits, and that there may be predatory shapeshifters living in the vicinity.

(Holt and Wilson are up on the top of a bridge)
Eddie Holt: Shape shifting. We do it for kicks. Turn yourself into a different animal. One night a deer, next night a salmon...
Dewey Wilson: Or a wolf?
Eddie Holt: Sure. (Eddie unhooks Dewey's safety line) Or an eagle. (Dewey looks down) C'mon Dewey, just flap your arms and jump, its easy. It's all in the head.
Dewey Wilson: That would be murder. You wouldn't kill anyone else, would you?
Eddie Holt: That's what they pay you to find out...

Old Indian: (about the wolves) They're shiftless. They might be gods!
Edddie Holt: It's not wolves, it's Wolfen. For 20,000 years Wilson--ten times your f**king Christian era--the skins and wolves, the great hunting nations, lived together, nature in balance. Then the slaughter came.
Edddie Holt: The smartest ones, they went underground into a new wilderness, your cities. You have your technology but you lost. You lost your senses
Old Indian: In their world, there can be no lies, no crimes.
Edddie Holt: No need for detectives.
Old Indian: In their eyes, you are the savage.
Dewey Wilson: They kill to protect family?
Old Indian: In the end, it's all for the hunting ground.
Dewey Wilson: They kill...
Old Indian: The sick. The abandoned. Those who will not be missed.
Dewey Wilson: More than that.
Old Indian: They kill to survive. They kill to protect.
Dewey Wilson: Family?
Old Indian: Man kills for less. But in the end, it is all for the hunting ground.
Eddie Holt: You've seen them, haven't you? You don't have the eyes of the Hunter. You have the eyes of the dead.

Ferguson maintains that wolves were wiped out in the east a century ago, along with the buffalo and Indians: "Wolves and Indians evolved and were destroyed simultaneously. They're both tribal, they look out for their own, they don't overpopulate and they’re both superb hunters." It becomes obvious that something out there is preying on New Yorkers. Dewey and Whittington arm themselves with night vision and go hunting in the South Bronx, but discover they're up against a pack of intelligent and savage wolf-like creatures that are stalking the city, the Wolfen. The Wolfen are not werewolves, but a more advanced version of a wolf which is above man on the food chain. They are eating the local bum population, as they are diseased and weak. Unfortunately, the Police Commissioner may be willing to sweep the Wolfen problem under the rug to convict some terrorists of the same crimes. There are a succession of hallucinatory sequences through the film that continue right up to the somewhat anticlimactic climax.

Wilson and Rebecca take an elevator to the top of a building, and the wolves follow. Things are settled when Wilson smashes a model of the building that was going to be built in the wolves' stomping grounds in the Bronx. The wolves are satisfied and disappear. The movie's point is that the Wolfen are just protecting their territory and that its businessmen and developers who are the real enemy. It also seems the underlying theme is that the Indians and wolves were both kicked both out of their native land by the white man, and the Wolfen are the result. At the end of the movie we learn that the Wolfen are really supernatural beings, which makes us wonder why they hang out in a ghetto.

WOLFEN is a thriller that doesn't fit easily into a specific genre. It is primarily a horror movie, but as the mystery of what is behind the killings unravels, thriller and fantasy elements start to take over. The film is engrossing, frightening and intelligent, with sensational special effects. Director Michael Wadleigh uses these effects to great advantage, frequently showing the movements of the characters through the eyes of the Wolfen. The use of a polarization effect and a steadicam to represent the wolves' point of view is quite stunning and eerie. Produced in the 1980's, when the werewolf film was being redefined with THE HOWLING (1981) and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981), this film truly set itself apart as the oddest and most socially conscious. It asks the question of what really is the true horror, the monster or the man. It's not a film that permits clinical distance, but which strives to create a tumult of ideas that crystallize into a grand finale.

Although the goriness of the film isn't excessive, mostly generated by graphic descriptions of the events, this does have the effect of making the movie a little more unnerving. There are a few shots of dismembered bodies and the like, but the more these are shown, the less convincing they become. In fact, that can be said of the film as a whole, which retains more interest as a mystery than after all the cards are shown. By the time it all clicks together, enough thrills and chills have been had to make it a worthwhile viewing experience. It features good performances from its cast, some ghoulish autopsy scenes, a weird mystery and incredibly vivid atmosphere.

With strong performances all around and interesting point of view special effects shots, reminiscent of the ones used later in PREDATOR (1987), WOLFEN is a different sort of horror-thriller that will probably please viewers tired of derivative schlock shock. The movie hints at werewolves but doesn’t really follow through with it. It eventually combines some Native American ideas of shape shifters and the wolf spirit. The whole camera effect of the audience seeing through the wolves' eyes can be cute and amusing when used sparingly such as in PREDATOR, but it used so often here that it starts to be aggravating. In fact, it takes a full 90 minutes to finally figure out we are dealing with wolves and not werewolves, causing disappointment.

Watch this movie for the cast, not for the story. This film is basically CUJO (1983) with a better director. It would have rocked at ninety-minutes, but at nearly two hours, WOLFEN goes on for too long. The opening moves rapidly, and the ending delivers the right amount of apocalyptic violence you expect, but in the center the spaces between the wolf attacks start feeling longer and longer. WOLFEN appears to justify the early murders of a rich, multinational tycoon and his beautiful, cocaine-sniffing wife on the grounds that the victims are not good people, but it also accepts without comment the murders of a number of other people who haven't done the Wolfen any harm.

WOLFEN sets up its mysteries with an admirable tenacity, though the resolution we're ultimately offered is mostly forgettable. It infuses a healthy respect for nature into its "change your ways or else" narrative and the message is a good one. The problem with most supernatural thrillers is that sooner or later they have to explain their supernaturalism, and then they fall apart. WOLFEN almost avoids this problem by sliding discreetly into its supernatural world. It's a thinking man's supernatural monster movie of extraordinary stylishness in looks and sounds as well as performances.

The performers are all fine, but it's the film's otherworldly look and sound that give WOLFEN the frequently stunning effect it has. It is so good-looking that one tends to ignore the real inner vacuity. This film is the screen debut of Gregory Hines, too exaggerated in his semi-comic role. The wolves look like mean German shepherds or renegade police attack dogs. Wadleigh, who directed the music festival documentary WOODSTOCK (1970), makes an auspicious debut here as the director of a fiction film.

The cast also includes: Dehl Berti (Old Indian), Peter Michael Goetz (Ross), Sam Gray (Mayor), Ralph Bell (Commissioner), Sarah Felder (Cicely Rensselaer), Reginald Vel Johnson (Morgue Attendant), James Tolkan (Baldy), John McCurry (Sayad Alve), Chris Manor (Janitor), Donald Symington (Lawyer), Jeffery Ware (Interrogation Operator), E. Brian Dean (Fouchek), Jeffery V. Thompson (Harrison), Victor Arnold (Roundenbush), Frank Adonis (Scola), Richard Minchenberg (Policeman), Raymond Serra (Detective), Thomas Ryan (Detective), Tony Latham (Victim), David Connell (Victim), Jery Hewitt (Victim), Roy Brocksmith (Fat Jogger in Park), Michael Wadleigh (Terrorist Informer), and many others. James Horner composed the incidental music. David Eyre, Michael Wadleigh, and Eric Roth wrote the screenplay from Whitley Strieber's novel "The Wolfen". Michael Wadleigh directed.

WOLFEN is based on the 1978 debut novel by Whitley Strieber. The book opens with the violent deaths of two police officers in a junk yard and focuses on the efforts of cranky detective George Wilson and his young partner Becky Neff to track down the killers. They discover a savage pack of highly intelligent wolves preying on the castoffs of society. The wolves are stalking the city and willing to kill to keep their existence secret. Streiber’s agent showed her husband, producer Rupert Hitzig, an advance copy of the book, which Hitzig bid on and won the screen rights to.

Dr. Obrero at Digital Retribution wrote, "A beautifully lensed picture, Wolfen captures the look and feel of New York circa late 70’s/early '80's in a way few other films have ever managed, and the effective camera-trickery that gives us 'Wolfen-Vision' is almost dream-like and effective in sustaining the atmospherics of the attack sequences … Wolfen is an essential choice for those who enjoy intelligent thrillers as opposed to blood-splattering slice and dice and braindead horror films." Vince Leo wrote, "It's an uneven experience, but does have its rewards, and the quirky nature of it can probably be attributed to the previous directorial experience of counter-culture director Michael Wadley." And Bill Chambers at Film Freak Central wrote, "Wolfen goes through the paces of a typical detective thriller, but I'll bet you’ve never seen anything like it … My mother calls Wolfen 'a werewolf movie from the werewolf’s point of view,' and that's not a bad take on it, since the homicidal title creatures are in essence the good guys of the piece."

In the film, the setting for the transient home of the wolves was shot in the South Bronx, at the intersection of Louis Nine Blvd & Boston Road. In the opening panorama shot, the church seen was located at the intersection of E 172nd & Seabury Pl. The decrepit site of ruined buildings was no special effect. Urban decay in the Bronx in the early 1980s was so widespread that it was the ideal production setting. Today, this community contains mostly suburban-style privately owned houses.

Selected premiere engagements of WOLFEN were presented in Megasound, a high-impact surround sound system similar to Sensurround created by Warner Bros. in the early 1980s. Director Wadleigh was unsatisfied with the final cut of the movie, but so far no director's cut of the film is available. The DVD has an extremely good transfer, which is surprising considering the film's age. The print looks almost pristine and is gorgeously formatted in widescreen. Warner Bros. usually doesn't put this much effort into back catalog movies like this. The Dolby Surround Stereo is adequate and a bit low in volume. The extras are skimpy: the trailer, a page listing the cast and crew, and a few screens of text on the history of werewolf movies. An interview or two, or even a short on the filmmaking would have been nice, but none of that is provided.

Never Cry Wolf (1983) * * *

Tyler (Charles Martin Smith) is a young government biologist and survival expert assigned to travel to the isolated frozen wilds of the Yukon in northern Canada to study the area's savage population of wolves. His orders are to gather proof of the wolves' ongoing destruction of caribou herds. It's a strange job to volunteer for--agreeing to spend six months all alone in the extreme Arctic environment attempting to observe wolves, but that is what the bespectacled scientist does. In the first half of the film the vast Arctic landscape is explored. Then in the second half, the film weakens as it resorts to formulaic devices and plots its protagonist against the civilized world.

Basically a one-character film, it's largely a straightforward record of Tyler's daily observations of the ways of the wolf. The biologist is an appealingly eccentric man who, at the beginning, is made to seem unbelievably incompetent for the sake of both comedy and drama. Later the movie treats him and his adventures without condescension. He is dumped unprepared in a snowstorm in the wilderness by hard drinking bush pilot Rosie (Brian Dennehy), who attempts to cure boredom with mid-air oil changes. When his character resurfaces near the end of the film, he is excessively obnoxious.

Rosie: We're all of us prospectors up here, eh, Tyler? Scratchin' for that... that one crack in the ground. Never have to scratch again. I'll let you in on a little secret, Tyler: the gold's not in the ground. The gold's not anywhere up here. The real gold is south of 60--sittin' in livin' rooms, stuck facin' the boob tube, bored to death. Bored to death, Tyler. Take the stick... Aaaaaaah!
Tyler: What's wrong?
Rosie: Boredom, Tyler. Boredom--that's what's wrong. And how do you beat boredom, Tyler?... Adventure. Adventure, Tyler.
Tyler: Where are you going, Rosie? Rosie, what are you doing? I can't fly this thing! What do I do?

When he lands, Tyler promptly gets out his typewriter and attempts to type up his initial reactions. A little later he walks across a frozen lake and falls through the ice. Aged Inuit Ootek (Zachary Ittimangnaq) saves his life and teaches him survival skills. He soon learns the rules of coexistence from a neighboring wolf. Contact with wolves comes quickly, as he discovers not a den of marauding killers, but a courageous family of skillful providers and devoted protectors of their young. Tyler learns that wolves, though carnivorous, live mostly on a diet of mice, mate for life and are loving parents to their cubs. Oolek and his friend Mike (Samson Jorah) drop by to keep Tyler company for awhile, sharing their observations on nature and life in an easy-going way. Mike reveals that he kills wolves to support his family and send his children to school. As Tyler learns more and more about the wolf world, he comes to fear, along with them, the onslaught of hunters (Tom Dahlgren and Walker Stuart) out to kill the wolves for their pelts and exploit the wilderness. He must now make a choice--should he return to the life he once knew or should he take a stand--defending this breathtaking new world.

Mike: To me a wolf means money. It's a way of making a living. One wolf pelt is about $350 dollars. And I've got to feed my family, my children. Buy a snowmobile, food, rifle, bullets whatever.
Tyler: You wouldn't ah... you wouldn't kill these wolves?
Mike: These ones... no. No I don't think so. Besides you would get mad if I killed one of them... and your gun is bigger than mine.
Tyler: Yeah.
Mike: I'd like to though.

Although Tyler gives names like George, Angeline and Uncle Albert to the wolves he observes, and though he attributes human attitudes to them, the wolves themselves always remain at a distance, most of the time ignoring the presence of the biologist who is studying them. The humor is as wholesome as it is instructive. In one sequence, there is a pissing contest as Tyler sets out to mark his territory in the same way the wolves do, by urinating on bushes and rocks on the perimeter of his land. He is amused to realize that what has taken him a half a day, plus huge quantities of tea to do, the wolf accomplishes in less than an hour, without stopping to drink water or tea.

Much fun is also made of Tyler's successful attempt to live on mice, in this way to prove that an animal as large as a wolf can subsist on small rodents, if enough of them are consumed. Tyler eats mice in soup, in stew and even en brochette, usually leaving the tail as the last thing to disappear down his throat. In what is perhaps an homage to earlier Walt Disney movies in which animals act like people, there is a scene in which mice are shown watching Tyler as he eats an all-mouse meal, and the living mice squeal in horror. These gross-out scenes are countered with the second half of the film, which has more nudity than it should.

Drunk: (warning Tyler about wolves) They'll come after you, son. Just for the ugly fun of tearing you apart.

When it appears that a group of angry hunters are going to ruthlessly murder any wolf that they see, he is forced to take a stance once and for all, endangering his own life in the process. Tyler's journey culminates in a majestic run with the wolf pack, an exhilarating sequence where for an instant he becomes one with the natural environment in the wilderness.

The last shot is an ad lib between Tyler and Oolek that is endearingly sweet, without being sappy. This is a film with sentiment, but it is not sentimental.

Tyler: In the end there were no simple answers. No heroes or villains. Only silence.
(last lines)
Tyler: I believe the wolves went off to a wild and distant place somewhere, although I don't really know... because I turned away, and didn't watch them go.

NEVER CRY WOLF is a screen adaptation of Farley Mowat's 1963 best-selling autobiographical book about his life among Arctic Wolves. This film dramatizes the true story of Farley Mowat, when he was sent to the Canadian tundra area to collect evidence of the serious harm the wolf population was allegedly doing to the caribou herds. In his struggle to survive in that difficult environment he studies the wolves, and realizes that the old beliefs about wolves and their supposed threat are almost totally false. Furthermore, he learns that humans represent a far greater threat to the land, and also to the wolves, a species which plays an important role in the ecosystem of the north. One of the book's more controversial points is that wolves and caribou exist in a symbiotic relationship. Wolves, according to Mr. Mowat, attack only weak and sick caribou, in this way helping to ensure that only the fittest caribou are around to re-create the species. In their turn, the caribou provide wolves with a certain number of tasty feasts. It is Mr. Mowat's conviction that hunters, not wolves, have been responsible for the drastic reduction in caribou herds in recent years. Unfortunately, the filmmakers are too faithful to the heavily jocular tone of Mr. Mowat's book, but they do avoid melodrama.

Director Carroll Ballard’s visual epic, gorgeously photographed by Hiro Narita, proves his great skill as a director. This is a follow up to Ballard's THE BLACK STALLION (1979). Once again, he chooses to rely on imagery to tell his story, rather than drowning out the visuals with unnecessary dialogue. Smith’s inspired performance allows the audience to slip inside his mind, resulting in a deeply personal viewing experience, and he does an excellent job at carrying a compelling story mostly by himself. It sounds romantic, but Ballard never sidesteps the ugliness of nature or the discomfort of loneliness. The result is a quirky, deceptively simple meditation on life. Shot on location in Alaska and the Yukon Territory, the astounding visual treatment captures the awesome natural magnificence of the Canadian wilderness with power and poignancy, revealing a world of hypnotic beauty with breathtaking cinematic imagery. NEVER CRY WOLF has been rated PG for some scenes near the end when wolves are shown attacking a caribou, but the carnage is discreet. The picture is also noteworthy for being the first Walt Disney film to show naked adult buttocks, those of actor Charles Martin Smith.

The film's fundamental premise is that life in the Arctic seems to be about dying: not only are the caribou and the wolves dying, but the indigenous Inuit people as well. The animals are losing their habitat and the Inuit are losing their land and their resources while their youth are being seduced by modernity. They are trading what is real, true, and their time-honored traditions for the perceived comforts of the modern world. NEVER CRY WOLF blends the documentary film style with the narrative elements of drama, resulting in a type of docudrama. It was originally written for the screen by Sam Hamm but the screenplay was altered over time and Hamm ended up sharing credit with Curtis Hanson and Richard Kletter.

The cast also includes: Hugh Webster (Drunk), and Martha Ittimangnaq (Woman). Charles Martin Smith, Eugene Corr, and Christina Luescher provide the narration--some of which was written by Ralph Furmaniak. Mark Isham composed the incidental music. Curtis Hanson, Sam Hamm, and Richard Kletter wrote the screenplay from Farley Mowat's book of the same title. Mark Isham directed.

Filming locations included Nome, Alaska, the Yukon Territory, and British Columbia, Canada. This drama was made during the 1980s when Walt Disney Productions, under the guidance of Walt Disney's son-in-law Ron W. Miller, was experimenting with more mature plot material in its films. The following year Miller would start the Touchstone Pictures label. Perhaps that's the reason Disney treats this film shabbily. It was made the year before Michael Eisner took over the studio. Eisner likes Big Event films. NEVER CRY WOLF is a small film. Eisner likes fantasy. It is based on a true story. Eisner likes stars. It has none. Studio chiefs rarely tout the work of their predecessors--if anything, they have an investment in making such work look as poor as possible.

The scenery is often spectacularly beautiful. Charles Smith is at his best when he is playing Tyler straight, without the comic exaggerations that suggest a small child showing off in front of adults. Perhaps the best thing about the film is that the wolves are never made to seem like strange but cuddly dogs. They look like wolves, not especially threatening but still remote and complete unto themselves. The wolves are well-trained performers.

Charles Martin Smith devoted almost three years to NEVER CRY WOLF. He wrote, "I was much more closely involved in that picture than I had been in any other film. Not only acting, but writing and the whole creative process." He also found the process difficult. "During much of the two-year shooting schedule in Canada's Yukon and in Nome, Alaska, I was the only actor present. It was the loneliest film I've ever worked on," Smith said.

A review in the Los Angeles Times called the film, "...subtle, complex and hypnotic...triumphant filmmaking!" Film critic Gene Siskel felt the film was "absolutely terrific" and Roger Ebert said "this is one of the best films I've ever seen about Man's relationship with the other animals on this planet". Both gave the film "Thumbs Up". Brendon Hanley of Allmovie also liked the film, especially Smith's performance, and wrote, "Wolf's protagonist is wonderfully played by the reliable character actor Charles Martin Smith." Ronald Holloway of Variety gave the film a mostly positive review, and wrote "For the masses out there who love nature films, and even those who don't, Carroll Ballard's more than fits the commercial bill and should score well too with critical suds on several counts."

Some critics found the premise of the film a bit hard to believe. Vincent Canby, film critic for The New York Times, wrote, "I find it difficult to accept the fact that the biologist, just after an airplane has left him in the middle of an icy wilderness, in a snowstorm, would promptly get out his typewriter and, wearing woolen gloves, attempt to type up his initial reactions. Canby added, the film was "a perfectly decent if unexceptional screen adaptation of Farley Mowat's best-selling book about the author's life among Arctic wolves."

The film opened in limited release October 7, 1983 and went into wide circulation January 20, 1984. It was in theaters for 27 weeks and the total US gross sales were $27,668,764. In its widest release the film appeared in 540 theaters.

There are several differences in the film compared to Mowat's book. In the book, Ootek and Mike's roles are reversed, Mike is actually Ootek's older brother (Ootek is a teenager) and Ootek speaks fluent English and communicates openly with Mowat while Mike is more reserved. The film adds a more spiritual element to the story while the book was a straight-forward story. In the film the characters are isolated, while in the book Mowat meets several people from different areas of the Arctic. Also in the book, the wolves are not killed and the bush pilot does not bring in investors to build a resort.

L. David Mech, an internationally recognized wolf expert who has researched wolves since 1958 in places such as Minnesota, Canada, Italy, Alaska, Yellowstone National Park, and on Isle Royale, criticized the work. He stated that Mowat is no scientist and that in all his studies, he had never encountered a wolf pack which regularly subsisted on small prey as shown in Mowat's book or the film adaptation.

On one DVD release, except for a small legal notice on the disc itself, you'd be hard-pressed to find proof this is Disney's product at all. The transfer to DVD was farmed out. Even the Disney studio logo at the film's start has been completely lobbed off and the logo of the company that transferred it to DVD replaces it. It's clear Disney wants nothing to do with this film today. Nothing in any of the studio's theme parks, collections of literature, or merchandizing even acknowledge its existence. The DVD has no extras--not even a theatrical trailer. The Internet Movie Database lists a TV documentary, "The Making of Never Cry Wolf," that surely could have been included. Most upsetting of all, the DVD is not enhanced or anamorphic. Comparing it to an old VHS copy, it appears the DVD was take from the same print of the film, meaning they may have just dubbed the VHS version to DVD.

NEVER CRY WOLF is now available in a number of different DVD releases. At least one is enhanced for 16:9 TVs. Although Disney finally released this in the enhanced picture format with better resolution, and although they now actually put their name on the front of both the box and the film, they still used the same crappy print, which looks like a run-of-the-mill theater print with many nicks and scratches, and which was used all the way back for the original VHS release in the 1980s. No extras, not even a trailer. There is a fullscreen DVD from Anchor Bay, re-released in two separate volumes. The film doesn't use audio much, since much of the film is about quiet solitude and isolation in nature, though the nature is under-represented aurally. The 2.0 soundtrack isn't too hot--the two native characters are often tough to understand, and a number of other characters are as well. Audio just hasn't been mixed very well, and though it probably wasn't the most high-tech audio track to begin with, it should sound better than this.

Since this movie appeared over twenty years ago, the public image of the wolf has greatly improved and wolves have been reintroduced to Yellowstone Park. Everybody in this fine production can take some credit for that. However, we must also keep in mind that this movie is about wolves in Canada, with the largest population of wolves in the world by far. Wolves have no protection whatsoever in Canada, and the country exports most of the world's wolf pelts. Only the American state of Alaska is as anti-wolf as Canada. Although Farley Mowat is Canadian and "Never Cry Wolf" is credited with shifting the mythology and fear of wolves, he has had zero impact on public opinion or government policies regarding wolves in Canada.

Teen Wolf (1985) * * ¾

High school student Scott Howard (Michael J. Fox) is 17 years old, sick of being an average small-town studious nerd, and wishes to be special. His father runs a local hardware store. Scott is a basketball player on a losing team, and the girl of his dreams, Pamela Wells (Lorie Griffin), is dating Mick McAllister (Mark Arnold), a jerk from an opposing team. After another of the team's losses, Scott begins to notice strange changes to his body. While at a party, Scott keeps undergoing changes and eventually he returns home and undergoes a complete change and turns into a wolf, while his father demands that he open the door. He tries to refuse, only to finally give in and obey, to find his father has also transformed into a werewolf.

Harold: (upon seeing each other as werewolves) An explanation is probably long overdue.
Scott: An explanation? Jesus Christ, dad! An explanation? Look at me! Look at you.
Harold: It's not as bad as it looks.
Scott: Wait a minute, wait a minute, dad. You mean you knew about this? You knew about this and you didn't tell me?
Harold: I was hoping I wouldn't have to. Sometimes it skips a generation. I was hoping it would pass you by.
Scott: Well, Dad it didn't pass me by. It landed on my face. What the hell am I gonna do?
Harold: (Scott slams his bedroom door behind him) Scott, we really need to talk about this.
Scott: Forget it, dad. I don't want to talk. Go away.

Harold Howard (James Hampton) never told his son about the hereditary condition because "sometimes it skips a generation" and he was hoping it wouldn't happen to Scott. The condition involves only excessive body hair and strength. Scott first reveals his transformation to the public at one of his basketball games, after getting pinned in a pile-up. After momentarily stunning the crowd with The Wolf, Scott goes on to wow them with his basketball skills and he finishes the game with a quadruple double. He realizes that his full-moon transformation bring him girls, glory and a conflict of values. Turning into a werewolf is an asset in his popularity at school. It seems very obvious that the hairy change in teenage Scott is a metaphor for puberty.

Scott: Hi. I'd like a keg of beer please?
Old man clerk: You don't say.
Scott: Yeah. How much is that?
Old man clerk: You little bastards just don't give up, do you? Listen, no I.D. no goddamn beer. Can't you get that through your thick skull?
Scott: (his eyes turn red and his voice changes) Give me, a keg, of beer. (the clerk steps back in fear and gets a keg, then Scott turns back to normal holding some licorice) And these.

Scott subsequently learns to use his family "curse" to gain popularity at school, becoming the team's star basketball player, and learns to transform at will between his normal self and The Wolf. His basketball team goes from last to first, and Scott begins spending most of his school time as The Wolf. He also wins the heart of Pamela while ignoring the affections of his best friend, Lisa "Boof" Marconi (Susan Ursitti), who has loved him since childhood.

Meanwhile, Scott's other best friend Rupert "Stiles" Stilinski (Jerry Levine), a party animal with an entrepreneurial streak, quickly cashes in on Scott's new-found popularity, selling Teen Wolf T-shirts and other merchandise. Stiles' "wolfmania" reaches such extremes that he trades in his own vehicle for a van he names the "Wolfmobile".

Scott: Listen, Stiles. Do you know anything about a rash that's going around?
Stiles: Why, you looking to catch something?
Scott: No, I'm serious.
Stiles: No... but I heard Mr. Murphy, you know, the shop teacher?
Scott: Yeah?
Stiles: Got his dick caught in a vacuum cleaner.
Scott: Styles, I got something to tell you. It's kind of hard, but...
Stiles: Look, are you gonna tell me you're a fag because if you're gonna tell me you're a fag, I don't think I can handle it.
Scott: I'm not a fag. I'm... a werewolf.

Coach Finstock: Look Scotty, I know what you're going through. Couple years back, a kid came to me much the same way you're coming to me now, saying the same thing that you're saying. He wanted to drop off the team. His mother was a widow, all crippled up. She was scrubbing floors. She had this pin in her hip. So he wanted to drop basketball and get a job. Now these were poor people, these were hungry people with real problems. Understand what I'm saying?
Scott: What happened to the kid?
Coach Finstock: I don't know. He quit. He was a third stringer, I didn't need him.

After a freak encounter with Mick at the Spring Dance that almost turns violent, Scott wishes to be himself. During the final basketball game, Scott refuses to "wolf out" and insists on winning the game on his own. Coach Bobby Finstock (Jay Tarses) tells Scott that the team is doomed to fail without The Wolf, but Scott is able to prove him wrong. In a dramatic ending, Scott is able to rally the team back to within a point as time is expiring. Scott is fouled by Mick on the final play and given two shots. In a clear violation of the rules, Mick is able to stand underneath the basket as Scott attempts his foul shots. Despite having to jump to complete the free throws, Scott makes them both and the Beavers win the game.

Stiles: Boof, how the hell are you?
Scott: Say no.
Boof: No!
Stiles: Great talking to you.

Pamela attempts to get Scott's attention after the game is over, but he passes her by to lift Boof in his arms, kissing her passionately.

TEEN WOLF is a campy variation of the horrific I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957), the Michael Landon classic. This version is given a 1980's spin with more emphasis on comedy and romance rather than horror. Lycanthropy makes Scott a big man on campus, more popular with his high school peers when he is a hairy athletic wolf. Although his werewolf makeup makes him look more like Bigfoot than Lon Chaney, Jr., Fox manages to convey his peppy personality even under all the hair. An otherwise routine teen comedy, this one works because of Michael J. Fox in one of his first leading roles. It was shot before BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985), sat on the shelf for some time, then given a major release on August 23, 1985 by by Atlantic Releasing Corporation. TEEN WOLF was a box-office success. With BACK TO THE FUTURE at number 1 and TEEN WOLF at number 2, a new teen star had been born.

The cast also includes: Matt Adler (Lewis), Jim McKrell (Vice Principal Rusty Thorne), Mark Holton (Chubby), Scott Paulin (Kirk Lolley), Elizabeth Gorcey (Tina), Melanie Manos (Dina), Doug Savant (Brad), Charles Zucker (Malcolm), Harvey Vernon (Old man clerk), Clare Peck (Miss Mott), Gregory Itzin (English teacher), Doris Hess (Science teacher), Troy Evans (Dragon basketball coach), Lynda Wiesmeier (Rhonda), Rodney Kageyama (Janitor), Carl Steven (Whistle boy), Richard Brooks (Lemonade), Richard Domeier (Linebacker), Brian Sheehan (Cadet 5), Jay Footlik (Student 1), Richard Baker (Referee), Fred Nelson (Meechum basketball coach), Tanna Herr (The Beaver), Kris Hagerty (Fan 2), Mark L. Flowers (Dragon bowler), Larry B. Daugherty (Basketball player), Tamara Carrera (Student), and Cort McCown (Teammate). Miles Goodman composed the incidental music. Matthew Weisman and Jeph Loeb wrote the screenplay. Rod Daniel directed.

The soundtrack has some memorable 1980's movie tunes, such as "Win In the End," "Shooting For the Moon", and "Way To Go". The humor and themes are still relevant today too. Be sure to check out a classic film flub during the end credits: an extra wearing a red sweater is seen walking down the grandstands after the big basketball game with his schlong exposed. He quickly zips up before the crew could catch on. It's an unintentional gag in this howlingly funny comedy.

The basic premise for TEEN WOLF comes from I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF with Michael Landon playing Tony Rivers, a teenager with an uncontrollable temper that leads him into the hands of devious Dr. Alfred Brandon (Whit Bissell) out to make a name for himself. The doctor uses Tony for an experiment, giving him an injection that regresses him so far back in time that he turns into a werewolf. An adult human turning into a beast was nothing new in movies, but in 1957 the idea of a teenager doing it was considered fresh. The film was a huge hit for American International Pictures, and immediately became a classic of pop culture history. Today, the film is regarded by most critics as a cult classic and a source of camp humor. An unsuccessful comedy on the teenage werewolf theme came out several years earlier with FULL MOON HIGH (1981). The trend continued in the sitcom BIG WOLF ON CAMPUS (1999), which was more inspired by the TEEN WOLF cartoon spin-off than by the live action film.

For its Italian release, Fox's character name was changed from Scott to Marty in order to capitalize on the success of the Universal film. In Brazil, the film was released with the title O GAROTO DO FUTURO, which roughly translates as "The Boy from the Future", in another move to associate the film with the success of BACK TO THE FUTURE.

The movie was followed by a cartoon spin-off in 1986, and a sequel in 1987 titled TEEN WOLF TOO, with Jason Bateman starring as Todd Howard, Scott's cousin. On August 27, 2002 both TEEN WOLF films were released on a single-disc DVD by MGM Home Entertainment, the current rights holders of the films. In June, 2009, MTV announced that they would be adapting TEEN WOLF into a television series "with a greater emphasis on romance, horror and werewolf mythology".

TEEN WOLF TOO (1987)

Todd Howard (Jason Bateman), the cousin of Scott Howard has recently been accepted into Hamilton University on a full athletic scholarship--a boxing scholarship, although he has never boxed before. It seems the coach knows the family secret, and before long Todd is turning into a wolf just the way his cousin did, with very few special effects. Todd's eyes turn red, his forehead bulges and suddenly there's a shot of some horrified onlooker. Cut back to Todd, now in full werewolf makeup. Having never been good at sports he soon realizes that he is there for one reason--because werewolves run in the family. In this outing, basketball is replaced by boxing and high school girls are replaced by sorority co-eds. At first Todd is certain that Coach Finstock (Paul Sand) has got the wrong guy, but at the first boxing match of the year the wolf in him emerges. His friend Stiles is played by Stuart Fratkin in this sequel.

Stiles: (after Todds first transformation into the Wolf) You seem a little upset...
Todd: Upset? Me Stiles? Upset? (Stiles nods) I just had a beard over every inch of my body... fingernails the size of french fries... teeth from here to Texas... and she called me a dog... A dog...
Stiles: So...?

With his new found fame comes girls, top grades and even the Dean's car. But as the year goes on, Todd realizes that he is losing his friends and self respect. His jilted girlfriend confronts him in biology class and says, ''They don't like you, only the wolf." The boxing scenes are so awful they make ROCKY V (1990) look like Oscar material. It also has one of the worst depictions of college life on film, and there is nothing realistic about any of it. The women are portrayed as ditzy and the guys are just as incompetent. No college in the world would let Todd on its boxing team, wolf or not. In fact, there are even high school-like hijinks taking place in college classrooms. Witness the frog dissection scene and you'll understand. The wolf-like tendencies start to take hold after Todd dances with a blonde girl. All of a sudden, he has amazing strength and the hairier he gets the better his boxing becomes. He is now big man on campus but he starts to annoy people and everybody begins to dislike him except for understanding Professor Tanya Brooks (Kim Darby) and over-achieving student Nicki (Estee Chandler).

In both the TEEN WOLF movies, Fox and Bateman do not look like werewolves but like PLANET OF THE APES (1968) rejects. One improvement over the original is that Bateman’s acting actually improves with the amount of fur covering him, whereas Michael J. Fox was much better without the makeup gimmickry. Todd is much more jaded than Scott. The sole bright spot is veteran actor Paul Sand as the boxing coach. Critics almost universally panned the film. Siskel and Ebert gave it two enthusiastic thumbs down, with Roger Ebert complaining that they had picked, along with DATE WITH AN ANGEL (1987), the two worst movies possible. Nevertheless, TEEN WOLF TOO was a success at the box office.

White Wolves (1993 - 2000) * * ¾

The three WHITE WOLVES movies are sequels to A CRY IN THE WILD, a 1990 film based on the 1987 book "Hatchet", written by Gary Paulsen. It features a bear and other animals, whereas wolves dominate the three sequels: WHITE WOLVES: A CRY IN THE WILD II, WHITE WOLVES II : LEGEND OF THE WILD, and WHITE WOLVES III: CRY OF THE WHITE WOLF.

In A CRY IN THE WILD, 13 year old Brian Robeson (Jared Rushton) is the sole survivor after a plane crashes in the woods of the Yukon, and with hatchet in hand, he must find his way out. He eventually finds some company in a pair of orphaned grizzly bear cubs. The obstacles that Brian faces are demonstrated in a realistic fashion and keep the viewer wondering what is going to happen next.

Brian Robeson: (sings to himself) Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. I'm gonna eat some worms.

The movie follows closely the plot of Gary Paulsen's book "Hatchet." It's quite realistic with the main characer Brian involved in a life and death struggle to survive in the wilds of Canada. The way Brian finds the will, creativity, and courage to stay the course keeps you glued to your seat. All the natural beauty of the forest is revealed in its glory and unforeseen danger. If you enjoy realistic, survival-type films, then definitely see this one. It's first-rate.

The cast also includes: Ned Beatty (Pilot Jake Holcomb), Pamela Sue Martin (June Robeson), Stephen Meadows (Brad Robeson), Terence H. Winkless (Boyfriend Steve), Louise Baker (Woman at Picnic), Deke Anderson (Store Clerk), John Jakes (Rescue Plane Pilot), Lois Mallory (Grandma), and Ollie Mann (Grandpa). Arthur Kempel composed the original music. Catherine Cyran and Gary Paulsen wrote the screenplay from Paulsen's novel. Mark Griffiths directed.

WHITE WOLVES: A CRY IN THE WILD II (1993)

The movie is set in the wilderness areas of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. As the film opens we see a school bus driving to the base camp and inside are two groups of teenagers and two teachers about to embark on a two week trek vacation. The teens have attitude problems and are assigned to stay at a camp that is trying to increase the wolf population. Cara (Amy Dolenz) is a campus queen who has a somewhat condescending attitude about the others. Adam (David Moscow) has a little bit of the class clown in him, but is also lacking in self-confidence. Pandra (Amy O'Neill) is Cara's naive younger sister, who was a last minute substitution on the trip, made to go by her parents so she could spend some "quality time" with Cara. Benny (Marc Riffon) is a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks, but asked to go on the trip by Jake (Matt McCoy), who has been mentoring him as his Big Brother. Naturally, poor Benny isn't treated well by the rest of the teens, and he has an attitude problem to boot.


Both groups split up when they reach base camp, with the idea that they will meet again in several days. One group is called The White Wolves, and their trip involves rafting down a mountain river, and then climbing up a very steep peak where there is an incredible view of the entire region. Their teacher Jake or Mr. B takes his group of five teenagers into the wilderness. WHITE WOLVES starts innocently enough, with a crew of rowdy teens embarking on a camping trip with woodsman and role model Mr. B as their guide. But after some mountaintop horseplay goes awry, Mr. B falls approximately twenty thousand feet to the ground below, and somehow survives.

The teens have to rescue Mr. B, and each has his or her own style, which leads to frequent clashes. When the teenagers find the teacher the next day, they have to put aside their differences and work together to save the life of their dying teacher. And the teenager who decides to go and fetch help is Benny. Scott (Zach Morris) is an authoritarian thug who almost murders Adam in a rage. Cara is distraught when Mr. B's accident seriously cuts into her flirting schedule. Benny is a malcontent delinquent who can hardly function without his father figure. And Pandra is the weirdest one of all, as demonstrated by a romantic scene in which she and Adam confess their attraction to each other. It's one of the strangest moments of teen love ever captured on film.

Just when you think this movie can't get any more weirdly, bizarrely entertaining, with ghostly white wolves appearing and disappearing, the kids get attacked by a bear. You should watch this scene in slow motion to see its fakeness and sheer absurdity. However, when a wolf they found recently is killed by a bear, the group must protect its pups. The film focuses on the group, The White Wolves, led by their enthusiastic teacher. Years before Mr. B was once lost in the wilderness, and tells a story about how he was assisted and saved by a white wolf.

Acting from the amateur cast ranges from good to mediocre throughout--sometimes in the same scene. We are treated to some nice scenery, with a white wolf and a savage bear. Curiously, you never see any of the characters in any of these animal shots, so it's probably recycled footage from the first film.

It's a formula movie produced by Julie Corman, Roger Corman's wife, and overall seems to be generic. While there are a lot of holes in the story, it has a 1980's feel with the clothing, hair styles and some lame special effects. It does have some wonderful scenery, good storyline and a strong message about taking on responsibility and challenges. There is a brief reference to a plane crash that leads one to believe this is a sequel to A CRY IN THE WILD. WHITE WOLVES certainly isn't the worst movie following this formula. But you've seen it before. It's so bad it's good.

WHITE WOLVES II: LEGEND OF THE WILD (1995)

As a plea-bargain to clear their school records, a group of misfit teens go into the majestic but unforgiving wilderness to help young wolf researcher Ben Harris (Corin Nemec) save the vanishing wolves. At the beginning of the film several teenagers are forced together through the Lupine Foundation which sends them out into the wilderness for a nature hike. They were all assigned to the Lupine Foundation in lieu of juvenile hall where they all would have been for various petty crimes. Beri Jones (Ele Keats) is the only one who won't confess her crime. Crystal Myers (Elizabeth Berkley) was arrested for petty theft and "Miami" Steve was arrested for tagging. Steve (Ernie Reyes Jr) has a difficult time in the woods because he still has the desire to tag. Ben Harris, who has had a lot of experience in the wilderness, is their leader and also involved in the Foundation's funding to save the wolves. He claims that sometime in the past, when he was out in the wilderness alone, a white wolf actually led him to safety, and saved his life.

After taking canoes across a lake, the foursome exit and start their hike up into the forest. Shortly after their trek begins, they see a mother wolf and her two baby cubs. The adorable cubs romp and wrestle in a meadow while the mother wolf looks on. The next day, our group meet Mason (Jeremy London) and Jeff (Justin Whalin), brothers who are up there parasailing. As the winds have changed, Mason and Jeff join the group on their hike.

Along the way, our group of now six, come across the mother wolf who has been killed by a mountain lion. It now becomes a quest to locate the baby cubs and make sure they are taken care of until another wolf family can take them. Miami Steve eventually finds the cubs and the group takes turns caring for them. They name the cubs Burt and Ernie. It is Crystal and Beri's turn to watch Burt and Ernie, who are now on leashes tied to a tree. As the cubs play, Mason and Jeff invite the girls to watch Mason parasail. Knowing the cubs should be okay for awhile, they agree to go. In the meantime, Burt and Ernie have exhausted themselves playing so fall asleep. When they awaken and are alone, they start whining as they try to pull on the leashes to escape. They eventually chew the leashes off and run off into the woods. Later, when Ben and Steve return, they find that Burt and Ernie are missing and realize that Crystal and Beri have left them alone. After lashing out at the girls for leaving the cubs alone, Steve takes off looking for them. He finds them nearby eating out of a ditch. As Steve calls them, they come bouncing over to him.

Throughout their trip, Ben has emphasized the necessity of burying food scraps at least 100 yards from the campsite. Miami Steve, annoyed about something that was said around the campfire, buries the scraps approximately 20 yards away. As a result, a bear, smelling the food, roars and comes charging into the campsite. The cubs are scooped up by one of the group and run into the tent. The bear, looking for food, tears the stuffing out of the sleeping bags. Steve, Jeff, Crystal and Beri grab Burt and Ernie, put them in an ice chest for protection, and run down to the river to the canoes. Our group jumps into the canoes and take off, leaving the bear roaring at them back on the river bank.

In the meantime, Ben and Mason, both injured, are further down the river, unconscious. Once again, the same white wolf saves Ben and Mason's life by dragging them from the river. In their search for Ben and Mason, Jeff and Beri see the white wolf on the riverbank. Remembering Ben's story about the white wolf saving his life, Jeff and Beri follow the wolf. When they get to a cave, they find a family of white mice huddled together. Meanwhile, back at the new campsite, Crystal supervises Ben and Ernie playing on the riverbank with a fish in one of their mouths. After Ben and Mason have been rescued, the white wolf stands majestically nearby. After seeing that, Steve releases Burt and Ernie who run to the white wolf, whom it seems will become the cubs' new guardian. The intent of this film is to display the resourcefulness of young people when confronted with life threatening situations, as well as the true good nature of wolves.

WHITE WOLVES III: CRY OF THE WHITE WOLF (2000)

In this outdoor adventure, three young people find themselves fighting for survival in a frozen wilderness. They are put to the test when the plane taking them to a wilderness boot camp for juvenile offenders crashes. Their Indian pilot, Quentin (Rodney A Grant), injured and ununable to make the dangerous journey, teaches them the ways of his ancient people and to have faith in the spirit of the white wolf as well as themselves. Pamela (Mercedes McNab) and Jack (Mick Cain) must call upon an ancient Native American spirit of a legendary white wolf to help them survive. This movie shows how different characters have to work together, trust each other and the white wolf to lead them to safety. They only have to walk 200 miles to find the tiny ranger station in the middle of nowhere. Forced to rely on their wits and their limited knowledge of fending for themselves in the arctic, they receive life-saving assistance from an unlikely source--a white wolf which seems to understand their predicament as he helps them find food and shelter and guides them back to civilization.

Jack's mom: (Watching Pamela and her family coming) You're daughter better watch out, my son's a real ladies man.
Jack: Yeah. Haven't you heard I'm a "real ladies man"?

Pamela: (trying to start a fire with two sticks) This is impossible!
Quentin: Keep going. It's how man first made fire.
Pamela: Well that just shows you how great men are. If a woman had created this, it would be a lot easier!

Silver Wolf (1999) * * ½

The movie opens by introducing us to 16 year old Jesse McLean (Shane Meier), his father, and uncle Roy McLean (Michael Biehn). Roy is a Park Ranger and helicopter pilot who drops the father and son off at the top of a beautiful mountain for snow boarding when a sudden storm hits. After some impressive skiing and snowboarding footage, a tragedy occurs when Dad tries to rescue Jesse in the wilderness, but plummets down the mountain to his death. Jesse finds a seriously wounded young gray wolf he names Silver. However, when Jesse is rescued, Silver disappears and Jesse is desperate to find him.

Since Jesse and his Mom don't get along very well, Uncle Roy invites him to stay with him in his Park Ranger log cabin up in the mountains of Washington. Almost immediately upon his arrival, Jesse clashes with the local bullies and meets a cute young girl named Lucinda "Lucy" Rockwell (Kimberley Warnat). His new peer group sees him as an urban wonder. Jesse soon finds Silver, which he promptly decides to adopt and nurse back to health. After some hair raising experiences, with Silver almost biting off a couple of Jesse's fingers, the wolf bonds with Jesse and becomes like a domesticated dog and best friend. Unfortunately, Lucy's father John Rockwell (Roy Scheider), is a wolf-hater who often takes to the woods with his son Clay (Jade Pawluk) to shoot wolves. It was Rockwell who shot Silver. Rockwell wears a baseball cap instead of a Stetson and worries about his two children. He also cooks dinner for them, but that is the extent of the film's biographical details.

Jesse is trying to put his life back together after the death of his father, and bonds with Silver. Uncle Roy understands the dangers of trying to tend to a wild animal, but he allows Jesse to keep him. He is in charge of the wildlife in cattle country and helps his nephew to understand wolves. Roy suggests that donating the wolf to a zoo might be a better idea, realizing that the enraged Rockwell will kill it. However, Jesse, who is fond of snowboarding, teaches Silver to be his partner in skijoring, a sport in which a dog is used to haul a man on skis. There are some great shots of snowboarding and the use of dog pulling on skis, and also a big dog skijoaring competition.

The cattlemen's association is definitely against wolves running wild in their territory. John Rockwell is president of the association, and the owner of a nearby ranch with plans for Jesse's wolf. He angrily sees it as a threat to his stock and is determined that the wolf be destroyed. Rockwell is shocked and in despair when Lucy becomes very friendly and accepted by Silver.

Silver is allowed to enter the annual cross-country skijoaring contest with Jesse. They win despite Clay tormenting the wolf by sticking a wooden whip in it's face, causing Silver to attack. The movie concludes with the race in which Jesse uses a snowboard instead of skis, and a wild wolf instead of the family pet dog. Then it is time for Silver to go home to his wolf family. It is sad to watch him leave, but to see a wild animal that was captive become free makes the movie better. One early morning Jesse and Lucy take Silver in Uncle Roy's van into the deep woods around the majestic Cypress Mountain. They let Silver loose to reunite with the wolf pack that he was separated from when Rockwell shot him at the beginning of the movie.

Much of the film deals with the burgeoning friendship between Jesse and the recuperating wolf. There are several opportunities for Jesse to run afoul of the anti-wolf bullies and prove his worth by staying loyal to Silver, while always finding time to do a little snowboarding and woo the lovely Lucy. It's a good coming of age story tied nicely together with outstanding snowboarding and skijoaring footage.

More or less an updated variation on Jack London's classic "White Fang", SILVER WOLF is an old fashioned boy and his wolf melodrama that manages to hit all the right buttons without being too manipulative. Roy Scheider's menacing wealthy rancher John Rockwell is so much a caricature of a small town villain he should be twirling a long mustache, and the identity of the father of young Jesse McLean's love interest Lucy is howlingly obvious. The outcome of the big dog sled race is never in doubt, although there's a twist. But there's an innocent charm in SILVER WOLF that overcomes the genre's inherent obstacles. With many ideas appropriated from other family movies, SILVER WOLF will never win any awards for originality. Although it doesn't offer much that's new, the film as a whole is worth a look for those who love animals in general and wolves specifically.

Performances are a mixed bag with Michael Biehn as Uncle Roy and Kimberley Warnat as Lucy faring the best. Kim Warnat shows a lot of charm and screen presence as Lucy--apparently the filmmakers felt the same way and dress the pretty 17 year old in costumes that show a lot of cleavage. As Jesse, Shane Meier shows some fairly strong chops in a blandly written lead role. Meier does a fine a job interacting with canines as well as with humans. For sheer camp value, Roy Scheider is worth the price of admission. In his few scenes, he chews the scenery recklessly and seems to truly enjoy playing this one-dimensional authority figure with holy fury. He's a real hoot here. Veteran character actor Biehn offers a solid, if unspectacular, performance. He's effective, if a little remote, as the cheerful back-country lawman. It's not the usual action type film that Biehn is known for. In fact he's quite subdued here, yet gives a good performance helping his nephew come to grips with his father's death and saving a young wolf in the process. The wolf actor playing Silver gives a dignified and believable performance. This is a good family movie about a troubled teen who just lost his father, and is exposed to the great outdoors and given a new outlook on life.

The cast also includes: Lynda Boyd (Anna McLean), Don MacKay (Sonny LaFrambois), Trevor Roberts (Buddy), Ron Sauvé (Sheriff), T.J. Shanks (Clay's Friend), Reg Tupper (Funeral guest), A. J. Bond (Chaz), Samaya Jarley (Mary Clifton), Shaun Johnson, Reg Tupper (Investor), Christine Willes (Mrs. Gaten), and John Hawkes (David). Robert Carli composed the original music. Michael Amo wrote the screenplay. Peter Svatek directed.

One third OLD YELLER (1957), one third ROCKY (1976) and one third stunning snowboarding footage, SILVER WOLF suffers in large part from a simple lack of originality. Yet there are enough strong components to watch it if you like wolf movies. It's a simple little film that probably won't challenge adult movie fans, but with its positive messages and somewhat trite presentation, SILVER WOLF is at the very least a film you won't mind your kids watching. Unfortunately, this movie is difficult to find on DVD or VHS, a tragedy because it is a good film with a lot of emotion.

SILVER WOLF premiered as a made-for-TV Fox Family Channel original on January 10, 1999. A review compared the film to the "made for TV wildlife stories that were the weekly mainstay of "the Wonderful World of Disney" in the 1970s", but the reviewer acknowledged there are "certain story and visual elements that give the boy-and-wolf yarn a 90s spin. Silver Wolf is a pretty straight-forward film, relatively free of sentiment." Vancouver Today wrote: "The chief villain is Rancher John (Roy Scheider). Family films usually make their villains simple and Scheider's character is all gruffness and macho posturing. Silver Wolf won't be collecting any best-picture Oscars, but as family films go, you could do a lot worse."

The movie has some strikingly magnificent cinematography and its choreographed snowboarding scenes are breathtaking and quick paced. This film has great intentions and is entertaining for kids and adult animal lovers. The relationship between Meier and the young wolf is endearing as they develop an honest friendship. SILVER WOLF was shot on location in the Vancouver area, and one noteworthy component is the outdoor photography. The Canadian Rockies, with the scenic mountains at Whistler and Blackcomb, British Columbia are displayed in gorgeous fashion.