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A quintessential L.A. punk rock band that scorched through the Hollywood scene, they put their brand on the musical landscape with one letter: X . Founded in 1977 by vocalist/bassist John Doe and guitarist Billy Zoom, they were soon joined by Doe's then girlfriend Exene Cervenka, whose poetry and vocals sparked a chemical fire. Drummer DJ Bonebrake sealed the wax on the envelope. Ex-Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek helped deliver the whole package to a wider audience when he produced their debut album titled Los Angeles, in 1980 (Manzarek also produced the next two albums, Wild Gift and Under the Big Black Sun ). Around this time director W.T. Morgan gets involved and then spends five years working on a film, which is not just about the band, but also about an era. It is released in 1986 as X: The Unheard Music, an innovative documentary that would eventually get archived by Sundance into their UCLA collection. It also, recently, finally got the Blu-Ray treatment (the film had long been plagued by legal problems that had otherwise kept it from being easily seen). Several recent screenings of the film preceded live shows with the original lineup of X as they played at various stops in the U.S.

After the title sequence for the film we see a woman in a car, listening to a handheld radio, and reading The Power of Positive Thinking . She is narrating her own letter to the band, during which we cut to live scenes onstage of X as a clapboard is positioned in front of Cervenka's face. Scene: L.A. Take: 2. Sound: Sync. Angel City Prods. 7247 "Unheard Music" Dir: Morgan May 4 '81. Gentle guitar chords build up to something noisier as the musicians take their place. We cut back to the narrator as she leaves her parked car and walks off toward the L.A. cityscape in the background, and then we see X ripping into their song Los Angeles . As the song plays, we see footage of the band intercut with homeless gamblers, helicopters, flashing neon signs advertising "Bail Bonds," a shoeless drunk passed out in front of a Savings and Loan Hollywood branch, a Los Angeles Police Dept. van, and a blur of other images evoking the messy humanity of its time.

Not much has changed with that messy bit of humanity. The same scenes are with us now, if not more so. Unsurprising for any documentary shot during the early '80's, Reagan is referenced several times during the visual collages. To some of that time it was obvious that an auspicious new form of televised class warfare was being elevated to new levels that simultaneously glorified trickle-down-economics while demonizing a mythological welfare queen. Here we are now, almost 30 years later, and the complaints leveled against Reagan that the rich were getting richer while the poor were getting poorer are quaint by comparison.Thank God for music. It's what's left for the rest of us.

Guitarist Billy Zoom's life changed in '77 when he saw The Ramones at the Golden West Ballroom in an L.A. suburb. Soon thereafter he met John Doe via a want-ad in a local music rag. Doe, originally from Baltimore, but familiar with the CBGB's scene, connected with Zoom, and from there the ripple effects spread further.

B&W footage of a nuclear test bomb footage. Our protagonist returns, still in the car as she flips through her handheld radio. A collage of ads illustrate "Western Civilization at its most hideous." Cut to: Wolves. Then: more shots of L.A., and again the band. Interviews. A bit of history. This if followed by some home footage. We hear Exene's voice as she talks about meeting John at a poetry workshop in Venice. There's a scooter. Color. Could this bohemian vibe be an extension of the Beats? Close enough. The home movie footage continues and we suddenly see Zoom talking about how his dad was into jazz. Next up: drummer , whose roots go into both big band music and Captain Beefheart. Cut to: a live performance of X playing their song "Year One."

The band reminisces about playing at The Masque, alongside many others - The Plugz, the Germs, the Go-Gos, etc. Graffiti-covered walls give way to the song "We're Desperate," played over a quick montage of mostly black-and-white photos to chronicle the club's glory years, punctuated by strong colors, destitution, unexpected skulls, scenes from the mosh pit, 'zine covers, leather boots, and all of this hits your retina at a Bonebrake pace. We're only three songs in, with 13 more to go. It's not a chore. It's a thrill.

Coming up: <"Because I Do", "Beyond & Back", "Come Back to Me", "Soul Kitchen", "White Girl", "The Once Over Twice", "Motel Room in My Bed", "The Unheard Music", "Real Child of Hell", "Johny Hit & Run Paulene", "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts", "The World's a Mess"; "It's in my Kiss," and..."The Have Nots."

By now it should be clear that X: The Unheard Music will not be a straight-up doc with trained cameras only paying attention to either musicians or their audience. Morgan's film aims for something bigger. By mixing in photographs, found footage, news-clips, and much more, he is aiming for a cinematic form of cubism that captures more than the musicians themselves. He wants the time in which they lived, their scene, and their place within a fuller context as covered from as many angles as possible. X was more than a spot marked out in Los Angeles. It helped map a generation.

The "Xtras" on X: The Unheard Music include: "John & Exene Dialogue," "Interview with Angel City," "Some Other Time (Live Outtake)," "Original Theatrical Trailer," and "The Unheard Music Songbook."

To order X The Unheard Music, go to TCM Shopping.

by Pablo Kjolseth

Milestone Film has outdone themselves with their new Blu-ray of On the Bowery, a pioneering, wholly original independent docu-drama that earned an Oscar® nomination for Best Documentary of 1957. The picture has been claimed as a major inspiration by the greats of the American independent film, from documentarian Emile de Antonio to actor-turned director John Cassavetes. Milestone's 2-Blu-ray set is officially titled The Films of Lionel Rogosin, Volume 1, and contains other contents just as impressive.

In the 1950s many New York- based filmmakers talked about finding a more truthful path to cinematic virtuosity, but it was Rogosin who showed everyone the way. His On the Bowery takes us to a place where nobody wants to end up: skid row. Five minutes into the movie we're convinced that everything we see must be absolutely real, unrehearsed and unscripted. A few minutes later we realize that director Rogosin has somehow drawn performances from un-directable subjects, in a place where a camera crew would not possibly be tolerated -- the awful streets and miserable bars of The Bowery. This is one story about alcoholism not told in the Ken Burns documentary Prohibition.

Today we have "homeless people", who were perhaps always with us but rendered invisible by the media. On the Bowery deals with the pathetic denizens of a couple of really vile city blocks in lower Manhattan. Chronic, advanced alcoholics mill about on the sidewalks. They live in filthy clothes and survive from drink to drink, scrounging the money as they go along. Some of them apparently receive money from the outside, but we see others making "squeeze" from poisonous Sterno cooking fuel. If they have thirty cents they can sleep in a flophouse, and if they don't they collapse on the sidewalk. Many of these guys just get so wiped out that they fall down as soon as they exit the bars.

There is a story of sorts. A fairly young fellow (30? 35?) named Ray (Ray Salyer) arrives with a suitcase and some cash from a railroad job. He's soon chiseled and fleeced by Gorman (Gorman Hendricks), an elderly, sharp operator who befriends Ray, secretly steals his possessions and then arranges to play the hero by giving some of the cash back to him, as a gift. Ray finds a day's work unloading a truck, and almost joins a church mission that promises a clean room and food for a few weeks for those willing to cut out the booze. Ray instead goes on an even worse bender, and narrowly avoids being picked up in a police sweep.

What makes On the Bowery so special? First, the excellent cinematography is on a quality level with high-grade ethnographic still photography. There is no grainy footage and none of the catch-as-catch-can handheld work that became the standard five years later, with the advent of sync-sound 16mm cameras. Secondly, we can scarcely believe that Rogosin or anybody could get such candid, authentic, performances from these men. Some of the action on the streets may have been captured from hidden trucks but the scenes in the bars are phenomenal. Almost everyone we see is seriously inebriated. Many appear to have 'diminished capacities' and some may have been feeble-minded before they pickled themselves. Led by his two main characters, Rogosin has these rummies participating in absolutely convincing conversations, leaning on each other for handouts and drinking, always drinking. It's like a peek into a world you couldn't see unless you were a participant, which gives a clue as to director Rogosin's technique.

Many critics have commented on the film's parade of faces, which are both fascinating and frightening. We are confronted with scores of brutalized faces in every minute of film. Some have clearly been beaten bloody. Plenty sport untreated injuries, perhaps suffered when under the influence. They're all so close up and authentically human. Each must have a story yet we wonder how many can carry on a real conversation. The denizens of the Bowery seem like strange inhabitants of an existential asylum, living in plain sight but ignored (or mythologized) by society.

On the Bowery is one of the few non-narrative films that generates the same interest as a good drama. Gorman claims that he's broke but retreats every night to a semi-permanent "flop" he can call his own; he uses his congenial manner to steal but is human enough to still want to be liked. His good story about once being a doctor is so good, we almost believe it. In contrast Ray seems a sensible guy but is definitely addicted to the bottle. It's as if he just doesn't see any point to life beyond his next drink.

Milestone has previously given us an entry into masterpieces by great independent filmmakers: Kent McKenzie (The Exiles ) and Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep). These documentarians are all drawn to reveal aspects of the urban underclass in America. Rogosin's reputation is very much alive and the evidence presented in the The Films of Lionel Rogosin, Volume 1 can only enhance it. The first Blu-ray disc contains On The Bowery, which can be watched with an introduction by Martin Scorsese. The Perfect Team, a making-of docu by Rogosin's son Michael, answers many of the questions left open by the film itself. After experiencing WW2 Lionel Rogosin determined to use a camera to change society. He wanted to film in the Bowery but found that the only way he could was to spend months with the locals until he gained their friendship and trust. He and his cameraman were hard drinkers as well, and his two main actors were recruited from the street. Gorman Hendricks was on his last legs. He stayed sober (and alive) just long enough to finish the film. Rogosin believed that Kentucky man Ray Salyer had a future as an actor and claims that Ray had offers from Hollywood. We see Salyer appear on TV, cleaned up and in a suit, asserting that he likes to drink the way some men like to fish or play golf. His eventual response to the attention was to hop a freight train out of town, and disappear forever.

The first disc also contains a newer piece by Michael Rogosin called A Walk Through the Bowery, a 1972 docu (Bowery Men's Shelter), a 1933 newsreel (Street of Forgotten Men) and an On The Bowery trailer.

Disc two turns contains films just as powerful. With the experience of On the Bowery under his belt Rogosin turned toward the bigger themes of war and inhumanity that were his original motivation. 1964's Good Times, Wonderful Times belies its title to make a direct assault on complacent attitudes toward war -- its causes, its effects, its importance. Rogosin invents a docu scripting strategy that was soon abused by others: ironic contrast. His framing device is an English cocktail party. We hear a non-stop litany of trivial talk and small-minded observations. The central speakers are a gaggle of male admirers that congregate around a couple of "outgoing" young women that tease them with mild provocative talk. Some of the men are ex-soldiers. These party scenes are very convincing. Various pointed statements come out -- that war builds character, that war is a natural thing, that it controls the world population like floods or disease. Quite regularly Rogosin cuts to film footage culled from film archives around the world: England, Japan, the Soviet Union.

The footage is in mostly excellent condition, and when it isn't we're very aware that we're seeing 'rescued film' that somebody didn't want shown. Much of it is wholly unfamiliar, unseen in any war docus I've yet encountered. Rogosin starts with some disturbing scenes of Hiroshima bomb victims, including graphic shots clearly edited from of other docus. A cocktail party discussion about "who permits wars to take place?" is followed by segments devoted to the utter worship granted Adolf Hitler by the German citizenry. Admiring throngs throw flowers in his path; men are inspired and women enraptured, as if in the presence of a god. The atrocity footage that follows includes Russian footage of children murdered by German troops and some very disturbing, unfamiliar concentration camp footage. Film rescued from deterioration records a Ghetto packed with starving, horrifyingly emaciated people. Little kids caught gathering food on the outside are forced to dump it on the ground before re-entering the barbed wire. Other sequences advance the horror into the 1960s, including some Civil Rights violence and Ban The Bomb rallies. The news film ends on the then brand-new voice of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech -- before it became a default item in every socially conscious documentary. Good Times, Wonderful Times was widely shown when new and reportedly influenced students who would soon be protesting the Vietnam War, or resisting the draft. In 1964, our access to news of ongoing strife in Africa, Asia and South America was very limited, and the raw truth of Rogosin's film would certainly have served as a wake-up call.

Backing up GTWT is Rogosin's making of docu, Man's Peril which goes into the technical and philosophical reasoning behind his approach. Humanitarian Bertrand Russell was involved in the filmmaking process as well. Also included is another war-related Rogosin film, Out, which is about refugees from Hungary that fled into Austria in the wake of the revolution of 1956.

Both main features are in excellent shape, with On the Bowery exceptionally sharp and detailed in HD Blu-ray. Seen in close-up, some of those battered faces look like maps of the scarred and cratered moon. The B&W image quality on this disc is unsurpassed.

Lionel Rogosin's films may not attempt the intellectual complexity of later docus by people like Emile de Antonio, Chris Marker, Patricio Guzmán or Alain Resnais, but he succeeds beautifully in connecting with his audience. On the Bowery will make you feel differently about terminal alcoholics. Good Times, Wonderful Times will greatly lower your tolerance for the excuses of pampered materialists, who claim to be apolitical but in reality couldn't care less about the world beyond their personal comfort zones.

For more information about On the Bowery, visit Milestone Film.

by Glenn Erickson

The Missing Juror (1944) is a routine B mystery, a film that would likely be even more forgotten today than it already is were it not the work of a director -- Oscar Boetticher, Jr. -- who would go on to become, as Budd Boetticher, one of the finest and most influential directors of 1950s westerns. This little programmer was only Boetticher's second directing credit, and while there is little stylistically to tie the film to his later, more personal pictures, it does show a young filmmaker figuring things out and using the camera and lighting to create atmosphere that at some points elevates the all-too-obvious script -- not to the level of film noir, but at least up a few notches. Most of all, Boetticher's penchant for humor is on display as he emphasizes the comedy in several scenes and plays out bits of comic business, especially with the character played by Joseph Crehan, well beyond what is required. These little moments are quite enjoyable in much the same way that comic interludes steal the show in otherwise dramatic Boetticher westerns like Seven Men From Now (1956) or The Tall T (1957).

The Missing Juror casts Jim Bannon as a reporter who uncovers the existence of a serial killer. Several members of a jury that wrongfully convicted George Macready to death (a sentence that was overturned but still led Macready to insanity and presumably to his demise) have died in recent weeks, and for some reason that police haven't yet concluded that there's something fishy going on. Bannon gets a hunch, more jurors die, and soon enough the cops are on board and lovely blonde juror Janis Carter is next in line...

Boetticher first worked with Janis Carter on The Girl in the Case (1944), when Boetticher was assistant to director William Berke. While he had already worked as AD on other films, including The More the Merrier (1943) and Cover Girl (1944), the assignment of The Girl in the Case was meant by Columbia chief Harry Cohn to specifically prepare Boetticher to start directing his own features. Boetticher later wrote in his memoir that working with Berke was "a dream -- [he was] absolutely sensational with me. He didn't mind my nosing around on the set. And, he went out of his way to help me learn the art of making a full-length film in two short weeks. Believe me, it's not easy! But, a dreadful thing happened on that set. I developed a real crush on the leading lady."

That leading lady was Janis Carter, whom Boetticher described as "my first true love in the picture business. I'd never seen anyone that beautiful up close, not even Rita [Hayworth] or Linda [Darnell] from Blood and Sand. But, heck, almost everyone in Hollywood can fake looking great. It was more than that. She was just so darn nice and so much fun. And the fact that her legs made Betty Grable's legs look... Well, Miss Grable's legs just weren't as pretty."

It was an innocent infatuation -- Carter was married, and the two simply became good friends. In the meantime, Boetticher was assigned some uncredited directing work on Submarine Raider (1942) and U-Boat Prisoner (1944) before he finally got to direct his first full feature, One Mysterious Night (1944), and then The Missing Juror, both of which starred Janis Carter. Boetticher treated all these films simply as training. "Everything involved with my first five films at Columbia was a learning experience," he wrote. "These little black-and-white pictures were made in twelve days for one hundred thousand dollars. They were called 'fillers.' They filled the bill consisting of a major motion picture and a second feature... I suspect folks bought a lot of popcorn when my pictures came on.

"I really faked those first five [pictures] with a bundle of phony confidence," he added. Soon enough, the confidence would be genuine, and the movies would be much better. But The Missing Juror is not bad, and for fans of Boetticher, it's well worth a look. Sony's DVD-R, produced on demand, is a zero-frills but good-looking transfer.

To order The Missing Juror, go to TCM Shopping.

by Jeremy Arnold

Criterion's new Blu-ray release regards Ishiro Honda's original Godzilla as a major landmark of postwar atomic anxiety. Ten years ago the original Japanese Gojira drew a flurry of journalistic interest on its belated American theatrical release in America. Audiences were impressed by its overt references to Hiroshima and the utter destruction of Tokyo. A fine DVD from 2006 double-billed Gojira (the original Japanese title) with its highly successful American version, Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Criterion's Blu-ray gives us new HD transfers of both versions, along with commentaries and interview extras that address questions that have bothered film fans for fifty years. Why would the only country ever to suffer nuclear attacks produce such a masochistic fantasy about their national trauma?

This original Japanese-language Gojira balances its spectacular monster rampage against human issues and post-atomic moral questions. Japanese sailors are irradiated and their ship sunk by an unknown flash of light and heat that continues to destroy other vessels. Searching for the cause, scientist Dr. Yamane (Takashi Shimura) travels to a tiny fishing island, and is confronted by a colossal water dragon. It soon comes ashore to march through Tokyo, leaving a broad wake of utter destruction. Conventional weapons prove useless, which puts the mysterious, secretive Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) in a bind: he's invented a new device he calls an "Oxygen Destroyer" but refuses to use it against the monster. He feels morally compromised: if the device's existence is revealed, governments will rush to exploit it as another weapon of mass destruction. Serizawa's fiancée Emiko Yamane (Momoko Kôchi) begs the scientist to reconsider.

The scenes of Godzilla crushing Tokyo underfoot thrilled American youngsters of the 1950s. Toho would later expand and tame the franchise, adding new monsters and adapting the formula to create a series of increasingly juvenile epics. But every schoolchild of the late '50s knew that Godzilla was a symbolic substitute for The Bomb, and was curious why the Japanese would make such a movie. According to the esteemed Japanese critic Tadao Sato, the vision of Tokyo once again reduced to ashes allowed Japanese audiences to deal with the communal guilt still felt over the war. Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka did not copy the theme of Ray Harryhausen's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, a popular movie about a dinosaur revived by a bomb test. Godzilla is not a dinosaur but a new force of nature, a dragon that breathes Atomic fire.

Godzilla was made soon after the end of the American Army's occupation of Japan. Rather than address the wartime nuclear bombings, events still spoken of in hushed tones, producer Tanaka seized upon the topical Lucky Dragon 5 incident, in which a Japanese tuna boat defied warnings to stay clear of the Bikini Atoll, unaware that the U.S. was testing its new Hydrogen bomb. As critic David Kalat points out in his Criterion commentary, Gojira restages the event, substituting the radioactive monster for the nuclear blast. The horror-beast rising from the Pacific to threaten Tokyo is an enormous political statement: for much of the world, America will forever be seen as an Atomic aggressor.

Seen in this rejuvenated presentation, Eiji Tsuburaya's special effects look better than ever. Considering the limited technical means available in 1954, the resourceful Toho technicians found clever ways to combine their rubber Man-in-suit-a-saur with live action and impressive miniatures. Hand-rotoscoped mattes are employed to composite the beast into several shots. Stop-motion animation sees use in a couple of shots as well. What's most impressive is the depth of focus maintained on the miniatures, even with the camera rolling at four-times speed.

The "towering titan of terror" is unlike the giant monsters in American movies. Godzilla is not a dinosaur or giant animal, but a cultural fantasy. He rises from the sea not to eat or spawn, but for the express purpose of annihilating Tokyo. Godzilla is a post-modern version of a traditional Yokai demon, writ large. And that billowing, notably non-reptilian hide? He's meant to look like a walking atomic mushroom cloud!

Ishiro Honda's sober and respectful direction makes its anti-nuke statement without resorting to moralizing speeches. The specter of the bombings is always present, even if no spokesperson steps forward to deliver an overt author's message. Godzilla involves us in its human drama, even if the characters are orchestrated along familiar lines. The scientist has a beautiful daughter (Momoko Kochi, with her endearing, Gene Tierney-like overbite) who must choose between an eager young salvage operator and her fiancé, a morbidly-obsessed scientist who does bad things to goldfish in his Rotwang-like mad lab. All that is missing from the American formula is a representative of the military.

The Criterion Collection's Blu-ray of Godzilla improves substantially on all earlier video versions. The blizzards of dust specks that marred earlier releases have been all but eliminated. Many scenes still carry fine scratches, but all the major damage has been repaired.

Criterion disc producer Curtis Tsui is responsible for some of the label's best fantasy discs, including Georges Franju's Eyes without a Face. His extras for Godzilla are on the same level as those for any other great work of world cinema.

First up is the 1956 American re-cut, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, the version most commonly shown in other international markets. Director Terry Morse skillfully shoehorned additional scenes with Raymond Burr into the narrative. Burr's fly-on-the-wall reporter narrates the movie, aided by a newly imposed flashback structure. Rather than a pastiche, the American version is well written and cleverly assembled. This transfer is from pre-print film materials and looks far better than earlier videos. It includes the original Trans-World logo and closing credit crawl, albeit from a 16mm source. Author David Kalat provides an impassioned pair of commentaries for both feature versions. He explains what the original Godzilla represented to Japanese audiences, and examines the strange cultural re-mix of the American version.

Critic Tadao Sato explains some of the political context of the time in Japan, and offers his personal analysis of Japan's monster-who-became-a-friend. Other interviews give us input from the beloved composer Akira Ifukube, actors Akira Takarada and Haruo Nakajima, the man who played Godzilla inside the rubber suit. Two effects technicians also comment, but an effects-oriented featurette has only a few examples to offer. Much better is a piece about the terrible fate of the sailors of the Lucky Dragon 5. With last year's near nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, Godzilla's anti-nuke stance is more relevant than ever.

Trailers for both movies are included. The soundtrack for the King of the Monsters trailer throws an uninterrupted tirade of hyperbole at the audience, that must have left schoolboys in 1956 with their mouths hanging open:

Jean Rollin returned to the cradle of le fantastique with Fascination (1979) after an interval spent churning out pornography under the aliases Michel Gentil and Robert Xavier. The legitimization of hardcore porn worldwide by mid-decade had made redundant the erotisme of his earlier Pop Art horror films, from the comic book-inspired crazy quilt of The Rape of the Vampire in 1968 to the oneiric, epitaphic Lips of Blood in 1975. In 1978, Rollin signed on to direct The Grapes of Death, a bloody zombie movie (of sorts) with Gothic blandishments, set in French wine country. The production found the filmmaker working well outside of his comfort zone, incorporating graphic gore and an overall more naturalistic approach than that with which he had begun his feature filmmaking career a decade earlier; The Grapes of Death was at the time Rollin's most conventional production, tricked out with professional special effects and the beneficiary of a full budget.

In follow-up, Fascination had begun as a proposed sex film until Rollin suggested to his co-producer that they make instead a horror film combining violence and elements of fantasy. Assuring the money men that he would assume the burden of any budgetary overruns, Rollin was given the green light to write his own script. Limiting his locations for the most part to a single setting (as he had in his first films), Rollin spun the tale of Marc (Jean-Marie Lemaire), a brash young thief on the run from accomplices he has betrayed who takes refuge inside a seemingly deserted chateau in the French countryside. Killing time until nightfall, Marc encounters the residence's sole occupants: the lady-in-waiting (French porn star Brigitte Lahaie in her first straight role), and companion (Franca Mai) of an absent noblewoman. Armed with a revolver, Marc seems to have the upper hand until his hostages reveal themselves as all too up for the play of power and he begins to suspect that he is the one being held against his will.

Taking its title from the name of a French magazine, Fascination is a bit of a farmer's daughter story and recalls a number of earlier tales in which a cagey male finds himself at odds in a house full of designing women, from Réné Clement's Joy House (1964) to Don Siegel's The Beguiled (1971), with a hint of D. H. Lawrence's The Fox thrown in for good measure. Alliances are liquid within the walls of this chateau, with Eva (Lahaie) and Elizabeth (Mai) at first giggling and cooing over their new acquisition until Eva condescends to a sexual encounter with the stranger; Elizabeth's jealousy grows, stemming from unexpected feelings for Marc rather than Eva. When Elizabeth and Marc couple off at last, Eva turns in a fit of pique to his accomplices, who lie in wait outside the chateau. With the offer of their former partner's gold and her own body, Eva lures the criminals to a stable, dispatching every one of them with a scythe, and returning to the chateau with considerably more than a taste for blood. Though his cast is small and his setting contained, Rollin keeps the proceedings buoyant by never tipping his hand toward where the narrative is pointed. With Marc a standard issue cad whose comeuppance is as good as guaranteed (the film has the predetermined feel of one of EC Comics' "Jolting Tales of Tension"), it is Eva and Elizabeth who truly fascinate. (Rollin often twinned his female characters by dint of similar names - in Shiver of the Vampires, he filled the frame with Isle, Isolde and Isabelle and talk of the worship of Isis.) Possessed of an uneven acting ability but an undeniable screen presence, Brigitte Lahaie (whom Philip Kauffman would cast as Uma Thurman's doppelgänger in Henry and June a few years later) impresses from the outset with her uninhibited ferality. Lahaie's bit with the scythe (as she pads about nude under a cloak, no less) was immortalized in the posters and promotional art but it is the more demure Franca Mai who emerges as the precious find of Fascination. Introduced sipping ox blood as a remedy for anemia, Elizabeth evinces a quality of evil-in-innocence that lends to the fade-out a frisson on par with that of the "Wurdulak" episode of Mario Bava's Black Sabbath (I tre volti della paura, 1963).

Fascination first found its way to American home video consumers in 1996 via an authorized VHS dupe courtesy of Video Search of Miami (which included specific introductions by Rollin himself). Digital rights for the films were acquired after the advent of DVD by the American arm of the United Kingdom's Redemption Films - Redemption USA - who released this and several other titles through Image Entertainment. The Redemption/Image disc, sourced from positive film materials, reflected a quantum leap forward in times of resolution and color even though degradation of the materials was evident in scratches, stains and splices. Redemption's new deal with Kino Lorber marks another step up in quality for Fascination (and several other titles included in an initial retrospective rollout of Rollin's work), remastered as it has been in high definition from the 35mm negative. Though painted from a considerably more muted palette than Rollin's previous films, Fascination looks impressive and magisterial on this new DVD, which is framed at 1.66:1 (a more generous aspect ratio than the 1999 disc) and anamorphically-enhanced. Extras include two extended sex scenes (which, though hardly graphic, upped the soft core quotient) featuring Brigitte Lahaie, an original theatrical trailer, and a 24-minute episode of the 1999 British TV series Eurotika!, which offers an entertaining and informative thumbnail primer on Rollin's career. A 20-page booklet contains mini reviews of the first Redemption-Kino Lorber Rollin releases and a career overview by noted film critic Tim Lucas.

For more information about Fascination, visit Kino Lorber. To order Fascination, go to TCM Shopping.

by Richard Harland Smith

A quintessential L.A. punk rock band that scorched through the Hollywood scene, they put their brand on the musical landscape with one letter: X . Founded in 1977 by vocalist/bassist John Doe and guitarist Billy Zoom, they were soon joined by Doe's then girlfriend Exene Cervenka, whose poetry and vocals sparked a chemical fire. Drummer DJ Bonebrake sealed the wax on the envelope. Ex-Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek helped deliver the whole package to a wider audience when he produced their debut album titled Los Angeles, in 1980 (Manzarek also produced the next two albums, Wild Gift and Under the Big Black Sun ). Around this time director W.T. Morgan gets involved and then spends five years working on a film, which is not just about the band, but also about an era. It is released in 1986 as X: The Unheard Music, an innovative documentary that would eventually get archived by Sundance into their UCLA collection. It also, recently, finally got the Blu-Ray treatment (the film had long been plagued by legal problems that had otherwise kept it from being easily seen). Several recent screenings of the film preceded live shows with the original lineup of X as they played at various stops in the U.S.

After the title sequence for the film we see a woman in a car, listening to a handheld radio, and reading The Power of Positive Thinking . She is narrating her own letter to the band, during which we cut to live scenes onstage of X as a clapboard is positioned in front of Cervenka's face. Scene: L.A. Take: 2. Sound: Sync. Angel City Prods. 7247 "Unheard Music" Dir: Morgan May 4 '81. Gentle guitar chords build up to something noisier as the musicians take their place. We cut back to the narrator as she leaves her parked car and walks off toward the L.A. cityscape in the background, and then we see X ripping into their song Los Angeles . As the song plays, we see footage of the band intercut with homeless gamblers, helicopters, flashing neon signs advertising "Bail Bonds," a shoeless drunk passed out in front of a Savings and Loan Hollywood branch, a Los Angeles Police Dept. van, and a blur of other images evoking the messy humanity of its time.

Not much has changed with that messy bit of humanity. The same scenes are with us now, if not more so. Unsurprising for any documentary shot during the early '80's, Reagan is referenced several times during the visual collages. To some of that time it was obvious that an auspicious new form of televised class warfare was being elevated to new levels that simultaneously glorified trickle-down-economics while demonizing a mythological welfare queen. Here we are now, almost 30 years later, and the complaints leveled against Reagan that the rich were getting richer while the poor were getting poorer are quaint by comparison.Thank God for music. It's what's left for the rest of us.

Guitarist Billy Zoom's life changed in '77 when he saw The Ramones at the Golden West Ballroom in an L.A. suburb. Soon thereafter he met John Doe via a want-ad in a local music rag. Doe, originally from Baltimore, but familiar with the CBGB's scene, connected with Zoom, and from there the ripple effects spread further.

B&W footage of a nuclear test bomb footage. Our protagonist returns, still in the car as she flips through her handheld radio. A collage of ads illustrate "Western Civilization at its most hideous." Cut to: Wolves. Then: more shots of L.A., and again the band. Interviews. A bit of history. This if followed by some home footage. We hear Exene's voice as she talks about meeting John at a poetry workshop in Venice. There's a scooter. Color. Could this bohemian vibe be an extension of the Beats? Close enough. The home movie footage continues and we suddenly see Zoom talking about how his dad was into jazz. Next up: drummer , whose roots go into both big band music and Captain Beefheart. Cut to: a live performance of X playing their song "Year One."

The band reminisces about playing at The Masque, alongside many others - The Plugz, the Germs, the Go-Gos, etc. Graffiti-covered walls give way to the song "We're Desperate," played over a quick montage of mostly black-and-white photos to chronicle the club's glory years, punctuated by strong colors, destitution, unexpected skulls, scenes from the mosh pit, 'zine covers, leather boots, and all of this hits your retina at a Bonebrake pace. We're only three songs in, with 13 more to go. It's not a chore. It's a thrill.

Coming up: <"Because I Do", "Beyond & Back", "Come Back to Me", "Soul Kitchen", "White Girl", "The Once Over Twice", "Motel Room in My Bed", "The Unheard Music", "Real Child of Hell", "Johny Hit & Run Paulene", "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts", "The World's a Mess"; "It's in my Kiss," and..."The Have Nots."

By now it should be clear that X: The Unheard Music will not be a straight-up doc with trained cameras only paying attention to either musicians or their audience. Morgan's film aims for something bigger. By mixing in photographs, found footage, news-clips, and much more, he is aiming for a cinematic form of cubism that captures more than the musicians themselves. He wants the time in which they lived, their scene, and their place within a fuller context as covered from as many angles as possible. X was more than a spot marked out in Los Angeles. It helped map a generation.

The "Xtras" on X: The Unheard Music include: "John & Exene Dialogue," "Interview with Angel City," "Some Other Time (Live Outtake)," "Original Theatrical Trailer," and "The Unheard Music Songbook."

To order X The Unheard Music, go to TCM Shopping.

by Pablo Kjolseth

Milestone Film has outdone themselves with their new Blu-ray of On the Bowery, a pioneering, wholly original independent docu-drama that earned an Oscar® nomination for Best Documentary of 1957. The picture has been claimed as a major inspiration by the greats of the American independent film, from documentarian Emile de Antonio to actor-turned director John Cassavetes. Milestone's 2-Blu-ray set is officially titled The Films of Lionel Rogosin, Volume 1, and contains other contents just as impressive.

In the 1950s many New York- based filmmakers talked about finding a more truthful path to cinematic virtuosity, but it was Rogosin who showed everyone the way. His On the Bowery takes us to a place where nobody wants to end up: skid row. Five minutes into the movie we're convinced that everything we see must be absolutely real, unrehearsed and unscripted. A few minutes later we realize that director Rogosin has somehow drawn performances from un-directable subjects, in a place where a camera crew would not possibly be tolerated -- the awful streets and miserable bars of The Bowery. This is one story about alcoholism not told in the Ken Burns documentary Prohibition.

Today we have "homeless people", who were perhaps always with us but rendered invisible by the media. On the Bowery deals with the pathetic denizens of a couple of really vile city blocks in lower Manhattan. Chronic, advanced alcoholics mill about on the sidewalks. They live in filthy clothes and survive from drink to drink, scrounging the money as they go along. Some of them apparently receive money from the outside, but we see others making "squeeze" from poisonous Sterno cooking fuel. If they have thirty cents they can sleep in a flophouse, and if they don't they collapse on the sidewalk. Many of these guys just get so wiped out that they fall down as soon as they exit the bars.

There is a story of sorts. A fairly young fellow (30? 35?) named Ray (Ray Salyer) arrives with a suitcase and some cash from a railroad job. He's soon chiseled and fleeced by Gorman (Gorman Hendricks), an elderly, sharp operator who befriends Ray, secretly steals his possessions and then arranges to play the hero by giving some of the cash back to him, as a gift. Ray finds a day's work unloading a truck, and almost joins a church mission that promises a clean room and food for a few weeks for those willing to cut out the booze. Ray instead goes on an even worse bender, and narrowly avoids being picked up in a police sweep.

What makes On the Bowery so special? First, the excellent cinematography is on a quality level with high-grade ethnographic still photography. There is no grainy footage and none of the catch-as-catch-can handheld work that became the standard five years later, with the advent of sync-sound 16mm cameras. Secondly, we can scarcely believe that Rogosin or anybody could get such candid, authentic, performances from these men. Some of the action on the streets may have been captured from hidden trucks but the scenes in the bars are phenomenal. Almost everyone we see is seriously inebriated. Many appear to have 'diminished capacities' and some may have been feeble-minded before they pickled themselves. Led by his two main characters, Rogosin has these rummies participating in absolutely convincing conversations, leaning on each other for handouts and drinking, always drinking. It's like a peek into a world you couldn't see unless you were a participant, which gives a clue as to director Rogosin's technique.

Many critics have commented on the film's parade of faces, which are both fascinating and frightening. We are confronted with scores of brutalized faces in every minute of film. Some have clearly been beaten bloody. Plenty sport untreated injuries, perhaps suffered when under the influence. They're all so close up and authentically human. Each must have a story yet we wonder how many can carry on a real conversation. The denizens of the Bowery seem like strange inhabitants of an existential asylum, living in plain sight but ignored (or mythologized) by society.

On the Bowery is one of the few non-narrative films that generates the same interest as a good drama. Gorman claims that he's broke but retreats every night to a semi-permanent "flop" he can call his own; he uses his congenial manner to steal but is human enough to still want to be liked. His good story about once being a doctor is so good, we almost believe it. In contrast Ray seems a sensible guy but is definitely addicted to the bottle. It's as if he just doesn't see any point to life beyond his next drink.

Milestone has previously given us an entry into masterpieces by great independent filmmakers: Kent McKenzie (The Exiles ) and Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep). These documentarians are all drawn to reveal aspects of the urban underclass in America. Rogosin's reputation is very much alive and the evidence presented in the The Films of Lionel Rogosin, Volume 1 can only enhance it. The first Blu-ray disc contains On The Bowery, which can be watched with an introduction by Martin Scorsese. The Perfect Team, a making-of docu by Rogosin's son Michael, answers many of the questions left open by the film itself. After experiencing WW2 Lionel Rogosin determined to use a camera to change society. He wanted to film in the Bowery but found that the only way he could was to spend months with the locals until he gained their friendship and trust. He and his cameraman were hard drinkers as well, and his two main actors were recruited from the street. Gorman Hendricks was on his last legs. He stayed sober (and alive) just long enough to finish the film. Rogosin believed that Kentucky man Ray Salyer had a future as an actor and claims that Ray had offers from Hollywood. We see Salyer appear on TV, cleaned up and in a suit, asserting that he likes to drink the way some men like to fish or play golf. His eventual response to the attention was to hop a freight train out of town, and disappear forever.

The first disc also contains a newer piece by Michael Rogosin called A Walk Through the Bowery, a 1972 docu (Bowery Men's Shelter), a 1933 newsreel (Street of Forgotten Men) and an On The Bowery trailer.

Disc two turns contains films just as powerful. With the experience of On the Bowery under his belt Rogosin turned toward the bigger themes of war and inhumanity that were his original motivation. 1964's Good Times, Wonderful Times belies its title to make a direct assault on complacent attitudes toward war -- its causes, its effects, its importance. Rogosin invents a docu scripting strategy that was soon abused by others: ironic contrast. His framing device is an English cocktail party. We hear a non-stop litany of trivial talk and small-minded observations. The central speakers are a gaggle of male admirers that congregate around a couple of "outgoing" young women that tease them with mild provocative talk. Some of the men are ex-soldiers. These party scenes are very convincing. Various pointed statements come out -- that war builds character, that war is a natural thing, that it controls the world population like floods or disease. Quite regularly Rogosin cuts to film footage culled from film archives around the world: England, Japan, the Soviet Union.

The footage is in mostly excellent condition, and when it isn't we're very aware that we're seeing 'rescued film' that somebody didn't want shown. Much of it is wholly unfamiliar, unseen in any war docus I've yet encountered. Rogosin starts with some disturbing scenes of Hiroshima bomb victims, including graphic shots clearly edited from of other docus. A cocktail party discussion about "who permits wars to take place?" is followed by segments devoted to the utter worship granted Adolf Hitler by the German citizenry. Admiring throngs throw flowers in his path; men are inspired and women enraptured, as if in the presence of a god. The atrocity footage that follows includes Russian footage of children murdered by German troops and some very disturbing, unfamiliar concentration camp footage. Film rescued from deterioration records a Ghetto packed with starving, horrifyingly emaciated people. Little kids caught gathering food on the outside are forced to dump it on the ground before re-entering the barbed wire. Other sequences advance the horror into the 1960s, including some Civil Rights violence and Ban The Bomb rallies. The news film ends on the then brand-new voice of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech -- before it became a default item in every socially conscious documentary. Good Times, Wonderful Times was widely shown when new and reportedly influenced students who would soon be protesting the Vietnam War, or resisting the draft. In 1964, our access to news of ongoing strife in Africa, Asia and South America was very limited, and the raw truth of Rogosin's film would certainly have served as a wake-up call.

Backing up GTWT is Rogosin's making of docu, Man's Peril which goes into the technical and philosophical reasoning behind his approach. Humanitarian Bertrand Russell was involved in the filmmaking process as well. Also included is another war-related Rogosin film, Out, which is about refugees from Hungary that fled into Austria in the wake of the revolution of 1956.

Both main features are in excellent shape, with On the Bowery exceptionally sharp and detailed in HD Blu-ray. Seen in close-up, some of those battered faces look like maps of the scarred and cratered moon. The B&W image quality on this disc is unsurpassed.

Lionel Rogosin's films may not attempt the intellectual complexity of later docus by people like Emile de Antonio, Chris Marker, Patricio Guzmán or Alain Resnais, but he succeeds beautifully in connecting with his audience. On the Bowery will make you feel differently about terminal alcoholics. Good Times, Wonderful Times will greatly lower your tolerance for the excuses of pampered materialists, who claim to be apolitical but in reality couldn't care less about the world beyond their personal comfort zones.

For more information about On the Bowery, visit Milestone Film.

by Glenn Erickson

The Missing Juror (1944) is a routine B mystery, a film that would likely be even more forgotten today than it already is were it not the work of a director -- Oscar Boetticher, Jr. -- who would go on to become, as Budd Boetticher, one of the finest and most influential directors of 1950s westerns. This little programmer was only Boetticher's second directing credit, and while there is little stylistically to tie the film to his later, more personal pictures, it does show a young filmmaker figuring things out and using the camera and lighting to create atmosphere that at some points elevates the all-too-obvious script -- not to the level of film noir, but at least up a few notches. Most of all, Boetticher's penchant for humor is on display as he emphasizes the comedy in several scenes and plays out bits of comic business, especially with the character played by Joseph Crehan, well beyond what is required. These little moments are quite enjoyable in much the same way that comic interludes steal the show in otherwise dramatic Boetticher westerns like Seven Men From Now (1956) or The Tall T (1957).

The Missing Juror casts Jim Bannon as a reporter who uncovers the existence of a serial killer. Several members of a jury that wrongfully convicted George Macready to death (a sentence that was overturned but still led Macready to insanity and presumably to his demise) have died in recent weeks, and for some reason that police haven't yet concluded that there's something fishy going on. Bannon gets a hunch, more jurors die, and soon enough the cops are on board and lovely blonde juror Janis Carter is next in line...

Boetticher first worked with Janis Carter on The Girl in the Case (1944), when Boetticher was assistant to director William Berke. While he had already worked as AD on other films, including The More the Merrier (1943) and Cover Girl (1944), the assignment of The Girl in the Case was meant by Columbia chief Harry Cohn to specifically prepare Boetticher to start directing his own features. Boetticher later wrote in his memoir that working with Berke was "a dream -- [he was] absolutely sensational with me. He didn't mind my nosing around on the set. And, he went out of his way to help me learn the art of making a full-length film in two short weeks. Believe me, it's not easy! But, a dreadful thing happened on that set. I developed a real crush on the leading lady."

That leading lady was Janis Carter, whom Boetticher described as "my first true love in the picture business. I'd never seen anyone that beautiful up close, not even Rita [Hayworth] or Linda [Darnell] from Blood and Sand. But, heck, almost everyone in Hollywood can fake looking great. It was more than that. She was just so darn nice and so much fun. And the fact that her legs made Betty Grable's legs look... Well, Miss Grable's legs just weren't as pretty."

It was an innocent infatuation -- Carter was married, and the two simply became good friends. In the meantime, Boetticher was assigned some uncredited directing work on Submarine Raider (1942) and U-Boat Prisoner (1944) before he finally got to direct his first full feature, One Mysterious Night (1944), and then The Missing Juror, both of which starred Janis Carter. Boetticher treated all these films simply as training. "Everything involved with my first five films at Columbia was a learning experience," he wrote. "These little black-and-white pictures were made in twelve days for one hundred thousand dollars. They were called 'fillers.' They filled the bill consisting of a major motion picture and a second feature... I suspect folks bought a lot of popcorn when my pictures came on.

"I really faked those first five [pictures] with a bundle of phony confidence," he added. Soon enough, the confidence would be genuine, and the movies would be much better. But The Missing Juror is not bad, and for fans of Boetticher, it's well worth a look. Sony's DVD-R, produced on demand, is a zero-frills but good-looking transfer.

To order The Missing Juror, go to TCM Shopping.

by Jeremy Arnold

Criterion's new Blu-ray release regards Ishiro Honda's original Godzilla as a major landmark of postwar atomic anxiety. Ten years ago the original Japanese Gojira drew a flurry of journalistic interest on its belated American theatrical release in America. Audiences were impressed by its overt references to Hiroshima and the utter destruction of Tokyo. A fine DVD from 2006 double-billed Gojira (the original Japanese title) with its highly successful American version, Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Criterion's Blu-ray gives us new HD transfers of both versions, along with commentaries and interview extras that address questions that have bothered film fans for fifty years. Why would the only country ever to suffer nuclear attacks produce such a masochistic fantasy about their national trauma?

This original Japanese-language Gojira balances its spectacular monster rampage against human issues and post-atomic moral questions. Japanese sailors are irradiated and their ship sunk by an unknown flash of light and heat that continues to destroy other vessels. Searching for the cause, scientist Dr. Yamane (Takashi Shimura) travels to a tiny fishing island, and is confronted by a colossal water dragon. It soon comes ashore to march through Tokyo, leaving a broad wake of utter destruction. Conventional weapons prove useless, which puts the mysterious, secretive Dr. Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata) in a bind: he's invented a new device he calls an "Oxygen Destroyer" but refuses to use it against the monster. He feels morally compromised: if the device's existence is revealed, governments will rush to exploit it as another weapon of mass destruction. Serizawa's fiancée Emiko Yamane (Momoko Kôchi) begs the scientist to reconsider.

The scenes of Godzilla crushing Tokyo underfoot thrilled American youngsters of the 1950s. Toho would later expand and tame the franchise, adding new monsters and adapting the formula to create a series of increasingly juvenile epics. But every schoolchild of the late '50s knew that Godzilla was a symbolic substitute for The Bomb, and was curious why the Japanese would make such a movie. According to the esteemed Japanese critic Tadao Sato, the vision of Tokyo once again reduced to ashes allowed Japanese audiences to deal with the communal guilt still felt over the war. Producer Tomoyuki Tanaka did not copy the theme of Ray Harryhausen's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, a popular movie about a dinosaur revived by a bomb test. Godzilla is not a dinosaur but a new force of nature, a dragon that breathes Atomic fire.

Godzilla was made soon after the end of the American Army's occupation of Japan. Rather than address the wartime nuclear bombings, events still spoken of in hushed tones, producer Tanaka seized upon the topical Lucky Dragon 5 incident, in which a Japanese tuna boat defied warnings to stay clear of the Bikini Atoll, unaware that the U.S. was testing its new Hydrogen bomb. As critic David Kalat points out in his Criterion commentary, Gojira restages the event, substituting the radioactive monster for the nuclear blast. The horror-beast rising from the Pacific to threaten Tokyo is an enormous political statement: for much of the world, America will forever be seen as an Atomic aggressor.

Seen in this rejuvenated presentation, Eiji Tsuburaya's special effects look better than ever. Considering the limited technical means available in 1954, the resourceful Toho technicians found clever ways to combine their rubber Man-in-suit-a-saur with live action and impressive miniatures. Hand-rotoscoped mattes are employed to composite the beast into several shots. Stop-motion animation sees use in a couple of shots as well. What's most impressive is the depth of focus maintained on the miniatures, even with the camera rolling at four-times speed.

The "towering titan of terror" is unlike the giant monsters in American movies. Godzilla is not a dinosaur or giant animal, but a cultural fantasy. He rises from the sea not to eat or spawn, but for the express purpose of annihilating Tokyo. Godzilla is a post-modern version of a traditional Yokai demon, writ large. And that billowing, notably non-reptilian hide? He's meant to look like a walking atomic mushroom cloud!

Ishiro Honda's sober and respectful direction makes its anti-nuke statement without resorting to moralizing speeches. The specter of the bombings is always present, even if no spokesperson steps forward to deliver an overt author's message. Godzilla involves us in its human drama, even if the characters are orchestrated along familiar lines. The scientist has a beautiful daughter (Momoko Kochi, with her endearing, Gene Tierney-like overbite) who must choose between an eager young salvage operator and her fiancé, a morbidly-obsessed scientist who does bad things to goldfish in his Rotwang-like mad lab. All that is missing from the American formula is a representative of the military.

The Criterion Collection's Blu-ray of Godzilla improves substantially on all earlier video versions. The blizzards of dust specks that marred earlier releases have been all but eliminated. Many scenes still carry fine scratches, but all the major damage has been repaired.

Criterion disc producer Curtis Tsui is responsible for some of the label's best fantasy discs, including Georges Franju's Eyes without a Face. His extras for Godzilla are on the same level as those for any other great work of world cinema.

First up is the 1956 American re-cut, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, the version most commonly shown in other international markets. Director Terry Morse skillfully shoehorned additional scenes with Raymond Burr into the narrative. Burr's fly-on-the-wall reporter narrates the movie, aided by a newly imposed flashback structure. Rather than a pastiche, the American version is well written and cleverly assembled. This transfer is from pre-print film materials and looks far better than earlier videos. It includes the original Trans-World logo and closing credit crawl, albeit from a 16mm source. Author David Kalat provides an impassioned pair of commentaries for both feature versions. He explains what the original Godzilla represented to Japanese audiences, and examines the strange cultural re-mix of the American version.

Critic Tadao Sato explains some of the political context of the time in Japan, and offers his personal analysis of Japan's monster-who-became-a-friend. Other interviews give us input from the beloved composer Akira Ifukube, actors Akira Takarada and Haruo Nakajima, the man who played Godzilla inside the rubber suit. Two effects technicians also comment, but an effects-oriented featurette has only a few examples to offer. Much better is a piece about the terrible fate of the sailors of the Lucky Dragon 5. With last year's near nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, Godzilla's anti-nuke stance is more relevant than ever.

Trailers for both movies are included. The soundtrack for the King of the Monsters trailer throws an uninterrupted tirade of hyperbole at the audience, that must have left schoolboys in 1956 with their mouths hanging open:

Jean Rollin returned to the cradle of le fantastique with Fascination (1979) after an interval spent churning out pornography under the aliases Michel Gentil and Robert Xavier. The legitimization of hardcore porn worldwide by mid-decade had made redundant the erotisme of his earlier Pop Art horror films, from the comic book-inspired crazy quilt of The Rape of the Vampire in 1968 to the oneiric, epitaphic Lips of Blood in 1975. In 1978, Rollin signed on to direct The Grapes of Death, a bloody zombie movie (of sorts) with Gothic blandishments, set in French wine country. The production found the filmmaker working well outside of his comfort zone, incorporating graphic gore and an overall more naturalistic approach than that with which he had begun his feature filmmaking career a decade earlier; The Grapes of Death was at the time Rollin's most conventional production, tricked out with professional special effects and the beneficiary of a full budget.

In follow-up, Fascination had begun as a proposed sex film until Rollin suggested to his co-producer that they make instead a horror film combining violence and elements of fantasy. Assuring the money men that he would assume the burden of any budgetary overruns, Rollin was given the green light to write his own script. Limiting his locations for the most part to a single setting (as he had in his first films), Rollin spun the tale of Marc (Jean-Marie Lemaire), a brash young thief on the run from accomplices he has betrayed who takes refuge inside a seemingly deserted chateau in the French countryside. Killing time until nightfall, Marc encounters the residence's sole occupants: the lady-in-waiting (French porn star Brigitte Lahaie in her first straight role), and companion (Franca Mai) of an absent noblewoman. Armed with a revolver, Marc seems to have the upper hand until his hostages reveal themselves as all too up for the play of power and he begins to suspect that he is the one being held against his will.

Taking its title from the name of a French magazine, Fascination is a bit of a farmer's daughter story and recalls a number of earlier tales in which a cagey male finds himself at odds in a house full of designing women, from Réné Clement's Joy House (1964) to Don Siegel's The Beguiled (1971), with a hint of D. H. Lawrence's The Fox thrown in for good measure. Alliances are liquid within the walls of this chateau, with Eva (Lahaie) and Elizabeth (Mai) at first giggling and cooing over their new acquisition until Eva condescends to a sexual encounter with the stranger; Elizabeth's jealousy grows, stemming from unexpected feelings for Marc rather than Eva. When Elizabeth and Marc couple off at last, Eva turns in a fit of pique to his accomplices, who lie in wait outside the chateau. With the offer of their former partner's gold and her own body, Eva lures the criminals to a stable, dispatching every one of them with a scythe, and returning to the chateau with considerably more than a taste for blood. Though his cast is small and his setting contained, Rollin keeps the proceedings buoyant by never tipping his hand toward where the narrative is pointed. With Marc a standard issue cad whose comeuppance is as good as guaranteed (the film has the predetermined feel of one of EC Comics' "Jolting Tales of Tension"), it is Eva and Elizabeth who truly fascinate. (Rollin often twinned his female characters by dint of similar names - in Shiver of the Vampires, he filled the frame with Isle, Isolde and Isabelle and talk of the worship of Isis.) Possessed of an uneven acting ability but an undeniable screen presence, Brigitte Lahaie (whom Philip Kauffman would cast as Uma Thurman's doppelgänger in Henry and June a few years later) impresses from the outset with her uninhibited ferality. Lahaie's bit with the scythe (as she pads about nude under a cloak, no less) was immortalized in the posters and promotional art but it is the more demure Franca Mai who emerges as the precious find of Fascination. Introduced sipping ox blood as a remedy for anemia, Elizabeth evinces a quality of evil-in-innocence that lends to the fade-out a frisson on par with that of the "Wurdulak" episode of Mario Bava's Black Sabbath (I tre volti della paura, 1963).

Fascination first found its way to American home video consumers in 1996 via an authorized VHS dupe courtesy of Video Search of Miami (which included specific introductions by Rollin himself). Digital rights for the films were acquired after the advent of DVD by the American arm of the United Kingdom's Redemption Films - Redemption USA - who released this and several other titles through Image Entertainment. The Redemption/Image disc, sourced from positive film materials, reflected a quantum leap forward in times of resolution and color even though degradation of the materials was evident in scratches, stains and splices. Redemption's new deal with Kino Lorber marks another step up in quality for Fascination (and several other titles included in an initial retrospective rollout of Rollin's work), remastered as it has been in high definition from the 35mm negative. Though painted from a considerably more muted palette than Rollin's previous films, Fascination looks impressive and magisterial on this new DVD, which is framed at 1.66:1 (a more generous aspect ratio than the 1999 disc) and anamorphically-enhanced. Extras include two extended sex scenes (which, though hardly graphic, upped the soft core quotient) featuring Brigitte Lahaie, an original theatrical trailer, and a 24-minute episode of the 1999 British TV series Eurotika!, which offers an entertaining and informative thumbnail primer on Rollin's career. A 20-page booklet contains mini reviews of the first Redemption-Kino Lorber Rollin releases and a career overview by noted film critic Tim Lucas.

For more information about Fascination, visit Kino Lorber. To order Fascination, go to TCM Shopping.

by Richard Harland Smith