Cinephiles can console themselves in these frequently upsetting times by marveling at the sheer quantity of wonderful movies and silent film rarities that are becoming available - some, a century after their original theatrical release - on Blu-ray and DVD. First and foremost, Undercrank Productions has announced that the Alice Howell Collection, 12 movies on 2 DVDs featuring the great silent movie comedienne, the wacky redhead 30 years before Lucille Ball, will be released on March 5th.
This blogmeister and classic comedy buff was proud to have contributed to the Kickstarter fundraiser last year that got the ball rolling on this release.
Star of her own series of ridiculously fast-paced slapstick 2-reelers after a stint as a supporting player at Mack Sennett's Keystone during the rough-and-ready days of silents, Alice was considered by no less than Stan Laurel among the top comediennes in motion pictures.
Even this briefest of clips from one of her many L-Ko (a.k.a. Lehrman Knock-Out) short subjects produced in 1916 demonstrates a flair for physical comedy.
The official press release elaborates:
The twelve slapstick shorts in this 2-disc collection star the largely forgotten silent-era comedy star Alice Howell, are newly restored, and have not been seen by or available to the public in nearly 100 years.
Alice Howell starred in her own very popular series of comedy shorts from 1915-1925 for studios like L-KO Komedies, Century Comedies, Reelcraft and Universal. Billed as the “Scream of the Screen” and “the Female Chaplin”, Howell’s screen persona was a working-class “scrub-woman” who expertly combined charm and personality with knockabout physical comedy, and was sort of a frizzy-haired silent movie forerunner of Lucille Ball.
Although she starred in over a hundred films, her comedy shorts and career are largely unknown as a majority of the one- and two-reelers she made are lost.
Fortunately, a dozen of them have been rounded up for this two-disc DVD set; most have been preserved by the Library of Congress, and a number of titles have been sourced from film archives in England, France, the Netherlands and Denmark.
Howell is also part of a Hollywood legacy. Her son-in-law was George Stevens, the Academy-Award-winning director of Giant, Shane, Gunga Din and Swing Time – he met Howell’s daughter Yvonne at a dinner at Oliver Hardy’s house. Alice’s grandson is George Stevens, Jr., Founding Director of the American Film Institute and creator of the Kennedy Center Honors, and himself an Oscar recipient for Lifetime Achievement.
“Alice Howell was the first slapstick queen – slapstick with a pretty face,” says Steve Massa, author of Slapstick Divas: The Women of Silent Comedy. “More than even Mabel Normand, Howell gave her all and risked life and limb in the pursuit of screen laughter. Unafraid to take the bumps and bruises that the boys did, she could match tumbles and falls with Al St. John or Billie Ritchie – but at the same time had comic timing and movements that were as clean and precise as Keaton and Chaplin’s.”
The films on the The Alice Howell Collection were digitally remastered in 2K from original film materials preserved by the Library of Congress, the BFI National Archive for the British Film Institute, the EYE Filmmuseum (Netherlands), the Danish Film Institute, Lobster Films (Paris) and the Blackhawk Films Collection. Each of the films feature new musical scores on piano and theatre organ by renowned silent film accompanist Ben Model.
Shifting gears from silents just a tad, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are big fans of the iconic Humphrey Bogart. While Bogie made his name as a screen tough guy in The Petrified Forest and later would be a marvelous Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, among the many movies he appeared in - surprise - are rather witty comedies.
Among the best and funniest from the lesser-known of his films, Stand-In, now out on Blu-ray, co-stars Bogie with stalwarts Joan Blondell and Leslie Howard.
The genre Bogie is generally associated with, film noir, will be represented in upcoming Blu-ray releases by Desert Fury, a delirious "crazy with the heat" opus shot in glorious Technicolor (but not breathtaking CinemaScope and stereophonic sound) in Ventura County, CA, and in Clarkdale, AZ.
A rather indescribable tale of casinos, racketeers and unabashed back-stabbers worthy of The O-Jays - and starring a fine cast including Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak, Burt Lancaster and Mary Astor - Desert Fury must be seen to be believed. Author James L. Neibaur reviews the 1947 drama here. At the 2016 Seattle Noir City fest, Czar Of Noir Eddie Muller introduces Desert Fury for a not unsuspecting audience thusly. . .
For the many devotees of B-movies and psychotronic cinema, there are new Blu-ray releases that will make the winter torrential rains, sub-zero temperatures and snowstorms a lot more bearable.
Fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Cinematic Titanic, Cinema Insomnia, Rifftrax and Creature Features will get a big kick out of the creative yet unintentionally humorous sci-fi monster movie The Mole People, now out on Blu-ray. It is tough not to love a flick that both uses such phrases as "from the bowels of the earth," and features both John Agar and Hugh Beaumont in the cast!
Easily one of the best and most entertaining "giant bugs on the rampage" movies is The Deadly Mantis. Many of us who collected films on 8mm and 16mm bought the Castle Films excerpt from this Universal-International opus, which also featured Craig Stevens, star of Peter Gunn, as well as William Hopper, who played Paul Drake in Perry Mason.
With a murderous insect loose among the populace, the question is "do we drop an H-bomb on The Deadly Mantis or just use a lot of Raid?"
Last weekend's post on Ron Hutchinson and The Vitaphone Project referred to The Jazz Singer Deluxe Edition. While the 3-DVD set, including Vitaphone Varieties, has been available since 2007, the latest version is a combination Blu-ray and DVD.
The Jazz Singer is also available as a single Blu-ray.
No comments:
Post a Comment