SeverinFilms Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Is 'Hardware' Worthy of the Term "Cult Classic?"
Filed under: Horror », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Home Entertainment »
All of which brings us to Hardware, one of the company's latest releases. Though I hadn't seen it since it was first released on home video in the early 1990s, Richard Stanley's science fiction-horror film has been celebrated over the last two-plus decades as a modest masterpiece and a true cult classic, thanks in no small part to its small budget, even smaller distribution and minuscule but fervent fan base. Unfortunately, with mainstream "cult" movies like Paranormal Activity and District 9 occupying the head-space of contemporary genre fans, not to mention a great wealth of superior films throughout movie history that explore the same ideas, Hardware is a worthy film to revisit primarily to see how well it fueled our feverish imaginations before it fell to the wayside.
Castellari's Bastards Bow on Blu-ray Before Tarantino's Basterds Hit Theaters
Filed under: Fandom », Home Entertainment »
One month before Quentin Tarantino's spelling-impaired opus Inglourious Basterds hits theaters, Severin Films will release the film that inspired it, Enzo Castellari's Inglorious Bastards, on Blu-ray. Previously released on DVD July 29, 2008, Castellari's largely forgotten masterpiece will be available in glorious high-definition in July, just in time to reintroduce folks to its (literally) war-torn landscape before Tarantino put its title, its plot and its characters in that mental meat grinder of his and makes some of the sweetest cinematic sausage of 2009.
I reviewed Severin's original three-disc DVD last year, and in addition to already having a terrific transfer, the set features extended conversations between Castellari and Tarantino, a terrific commentary track, and a collection of the music used on the soundtrack. Despite the fact that so much of Tarantino's source material seems to come from the dregs of cinema history, Inglorious Bastards is actually a genuinely terrific film that would easily have stood up against the war movies of the 1960s and '70s as a classic were it not made and released primarily for Italian audiences.
Tarantino and the Original 'Inglorious Bastards' on DVD
Filed under: Action », Fandom », New on DVD », Quentin Tarantino », Home Entertainment », War »
Men on a mission! Naked women shooting machine guns! Wildly inappropriate hair styles! The recent arrival of Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards on DVD makes clear that the movie is an entertaining, stylish adventure in its own right, justly deserving its reputation as a Eurocult genre gem. Inevitably, it also prompts speculation about what exactly Quentin Tarantino will do with his upcoming version, especially since the DVD features an extended conversation between Tarantino and Castellari about their respective visions.
The 1978 original doesn't have a "bat-wielding Nazi hunter," as one character has been recently described in casting talks for Tarantino's version, though it is set in World War II France. Miscreant Bo Svenson and murderer Fred Williamson are headed to military jail when their convoy is attacked by the Germans. The handful of surviving deserters plan to escape to neutral Switzerland before they end up on a suicide mission for the Allies under the command of Colonel Bruckner (Ian Bannen).
The men take a jaunty trip through a cartoon wonderland constructed out of Hollywood fantasy and Italian wish fulfillment. The film only rarely intersects with real life, instead inhabiting a world of wisecracks and world-weary warriors whose guns never run out of bullets. Castellari is such a brilliant director, though, that The Inglorious Bastards fairly pops off the screen with energetic fervor in nearly every sequence.
As such, it serves as a fabulous blueprint that Tarantino has probably drawn upon, ripped apart, and reassembled.
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