This is the first time in my occasional series where I have revisited a film. With more than 300 movies in my collection and the vast choices available by way of my three streaming services this is not a choice forced upon me by a lack of options.

The Wicker Man first hit theaters in 1973, but before the first drive-in audience sleepy discovered this film on the bottom of a double bill, it had already been tossed by a storm of drama. Forced into production early, it is film about springtime on a Scot island, that was filmed during a chilly Scot autumn. A challenging film about a clash of cultures, and what does it mean to be devout, it found itself measured as product and summarily sentenced to butchering before release. Tossed out to die an ignoble and forgotten death then film slowly built a following. From the strange images, the non-cinematic score, and the brutal inescapable ending, the film became legend.  Interest grew, interested in perhaps the director’s original vision, not subject to an executive’s callous command to cut fifteen minutes and he didn’t care which. The birth of conspiracy, when it was discovered that all the original negatives had somehow inadvertently been used as landfill in building a highway. All of this merged into a strange and almost unbelievable history for a simple low budget horror film.

I refer to it as a musical/art-house/horror film and from the first time in 1979 when I watched it on the very young HBO it captivated me. Home video made it possible for me to watch the film again, and a duplicate of an early cut, transferred to 1” videotape, granted us a glimpse at what might have been. Then last year, after new owners acquired the rights and initiated a world-wide search, a print was found, a print with the missing footage.

So in 2013, the directors vision, restored and repaired, was released to theaters, and last month to the glorious quality of Blu-ray. I saw this version in the theater with myself and two friends as the only patrons, and two weeks ago purchased the Blu-ray, making this the only film that I have three versions of in my library.

The Blu-ray is gorgeous, though a bit light on special features. (One reason I have three version, its to have the most complete set of documentaries about this most unusual movie.) While the picture was lovingly restored, the soundtrack was not upgraded to multichannel sound. That said the stereo is good and accurate to the time when the film was produced. Watching it I was drawn into the beauty of the frame, the lush images, and the off-balance story. The plot is simple. Sergeant Howie of Scot West Highland police force, on an anonymous tip, flies to an isolated Scot island to investigate the report of a little now missing for many months. Howie, a good Christian copper is deeply offended  by the locals and smells conspiracy. What follows is a story that on one level is simple thriller, a good man facing an faceless and hidden enemy with lives in the balance, but under that plot lurks a fascinating study into belief, and what it means to truly believe.

This is a film I would recommend to anyone with slightly off-kilter tastes.

There are films that are classics because of the artistry with which they are crafted, and there are films that are classics for having an outsized impact on our culture, but Death Wish is neither, it is a film that is important because it captures the mood of an age.

I have never watched the entire film. Not because of a stand to refuse to participate, but simply it never was around in a form for me to watch at the time and place where I had an interest. I had seen scenes and I had even seen the closer couple of shoots, but never the entire film, and certainly never in one go from front to back. It is an interesting experience, particularly from a position 40 years after it was released, and after it had spawned a franchise of its own.

Death Wish is at heart a political film buried in the national psyche of the United States during the 70’s. For those not around during that time, it was dreary and depressing for America. Vietnam had fallen, the Arab oil embargo had shocked the economic system, Watergate had destroyed faith in the government, and the idea that things were bad and only going to get worse ruled the day. The Stark motto from the Games of Thrones would fit perfectly the mood, ‘Winter is Coming.’ In addition to out of control inflation, energy storages, government corruption, terrorism, crime began surging during the decade.

Spoilers Ahead Continue reading →

Last night I was in a feel good kind of mood, so I avoided the more serious dramas and genre films for the much lighter, but highly entertaining 1990 movie Tremors.

Tremors is not a horror film; it is a monster movie. It is a monster movie that winks an eye at the long tradition of monster movies, gleefully ditching certain aspects, such as a tedious set-up that explains the monsters, and retains what made the best monster films work, a delightful lack of cynicism. Continue reading →