haineshisway
Senior HTF Member
Last night, I watched one of the all-time wacky movies on a brand new Twilight Time Blu-ray - La Bambola di Satana (Satan’s Doll), an Italian film from Italy that is kind of mind-bogglingly awful in a very entertaining way. It’s thought of as a kind of giallo but it really isn’t. It’s more like Gaslightiallo and a who’s doing itiallo. It's one of those films that seemingly exists solely because the producers were able to rent a kind of castle on a hill. The plot is fairly incomprehensible, other than some bad person wants to buy the castle and will stop at nothing to make that happen – I think that’s the plot. The whole show is post-synched so that the words issuing forth from the actors’ mouths rarely match what they’re actually saying and this gives the film a hallucinatory quality that’s mesmerizing and occasionally laugh out loud funny. Dario Argento this isn’t. In fact, it’s the director’s one and only film. It’s a spectacular debut if you want to see a director who never knows the correct place to put the camera and who has no idea how to put a motion picture together. And the cameraman is right there with him. The lighting in this film is the funniest you’ll ever see. My favorite is when the heroine of the film (I think she’s the heroine) turns off the light in her bedroom at night, and yet the bedroom basically stays fully lit only you don’t know where any of that light is coming from. That’s basically true of all the indoor scenes. And I think they couldn’t afford a focus-puller on this movie – frequently the camera will move in to a closer shot, which, because no one’s adjusting the focus on the move, renders the rest of the shot completely out of focus – and no that’s not a transfer problem. The transfer’s pretty excellent, actually, with nice, garish color and those moments when it's in focus there is quite nice detail. The musical score adds yet another element of high comedy, and I’m just here to tell you you need to see this movie – just buy it and thank me later.
I also watched the first forty minutes of another new Twilight Time title, this one entitled Cowboy, starring Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon (and a host of great character actors), and directed by the always underrated and wonderful Delmer Daves. I’ve only seen it once before, quite some time ago, but this is a seriously great movie, with fantastic dialogue (apparently courtesy of Dalton Trumbo), great performances, gorgeous cinematography, and a brilliant score by composer George Duning. And the transfer is spectacular. Highly recommended by the likes of me.
I also watched the first forty minutes of another new Twilight Time title, this one entitled Cowboy, starring Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon (and a host of great character actors), and directed by the always underrated and wonderful Delmer Daves. I’ve only seen it once before, quite some time ago, but this is a seriously great movie, with fantastic dialogue (apparently courtesy of Dalton Trumbo), great performances, gorgeous cinematography, and a brilliant score by composer George Duning. And the transfer is spectacular. Highly recommended by the likes of me.
