Berlin Alexanderplatz (Criterion Collection): It’s a landmark day for uber-cineastes as Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s legendary 15-hour epic, originally filmed for German television, gets a lavish and anticipated Criterion edition treatment. No longer will film geeks have to shuttle around shabby VHS copies a friend of their uncle’s college roommate taped off The Z Channel back in ’81; the ambitious between-world-wars saga of one man’s downfall to the vices of the city arrives completely restored and, if you can believe it, a half-hour longer thanks to the PAL to NTSC frame rate conversion. Still, if you are up for devoting an entire waking day to one film, this is the way to do it. Extras on the seven-disc set include several documentaries and a 1931 adaptation of the novel that runs a paltry 90 minutes.
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Let’s cut right to the chase, shall we? - Help! gets a bad rap. Sure, upon its arrival in 1965, it may not have seemed as groundbreaking, as fresh and revolutionary as Richard Lester’s first collaboration with The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night. And no, it doesn’t capture quite the same pure distillation of the Fab Four’s charm as was crystallized in the earlier black-and-white, “fictionalized documentary” which received a lavish restoration and DVD treatment from Miramax five years ago. Still, sophomore status and lack of interventions from the Weinsteins notwithstanding, Help! is a thoroughly enjoyable romp with an equally impressive soundtrack that should never have taken this long to make it to disc.
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It arrived – unbeknownst to much of the viewing public, after over a year on the shelf – as a breath of fresh air, a serious series about teens with minimal flair and predilection for high hairdos and jokey teenspeak. As per their standard for groundbreaking shows at the time, ABC – who between Max Headroom, Twin Peaks and this, were champions of killing off quality shows too soon before having that title aggressively wrestled from them by Fox – didn’t quite know how to market a series to an audience which wasn’t made up of thirtysomethings who watched… er, thirtysomething. Ironic, considering My So Called Life came from the same exec producers, Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick; twenty years later, DVD releases of it are heralded events while thirtysomething has yet to see the light of disc.
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Cutting Class
By Jessica Dwyer

To get into the Halloween spirit we’re heading back the vaults for this aged slice of 80’s cheese which is getting ready to be released on DVD later this month for the first time in…ever. Cutting Class was one of those flicks that popped up all over VHS in the late 80’s, early 90’s. Rip offs of earlier slasher films, it was in the vein of April Fool’s Day, Prom Night, and Return to Horror High. It’s sometimes whispered about and vaguely remembered by those chosen few who actually watched it when it was first released, before being lost to the ether. Some would say they wish it had stayed lost.
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Back in 1999 when Warner Bros. released the first DVD set of Stanley Kubrick’s legendary film canon, there was a definite buzz amongst the film geek crowd of covetous delight. My buddy Mark, fresh out of film school, was one of the first to run out and snap up the set; me, I was surprisingly indifferent. “You’re gonna regret it later,” Mark would taunt, “You know you want it!” Of course I wanted it! – who wouldn’t want a petite library of movie history, of one of cinema’s true masters? But even then the possibility of the medium meant there were superior examples of discs with commentaries, hours of bonus footage… none of which appeared on that first Kubrick box. Though the bare-bones package was tempting, and later went out of print, I resisted… and I get the last laugh.
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I’ve previously made my thoughts clear on the Siamese-twin-separation of Planet Terror from its Grindhouse sister, Death Proof, in a previous pick, so I’ll spare you the bitch-rant this time. Truth be told, both films are enough fun to recommend outside their original intended context… Robert Rodriguez’s no-holds-barred zombie bloodbath perhaps even more than Tarantino’s slasher pic. While the latter adheres to then upends the conventions of its chosen genre, Planet Terror dives straight into the night-in-hell apocalypse of your horror-loving dreams and delivers a nonstop thrill ride.
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Poltergeist: Special Edition: Now here’s a special edition that isn’t, and a lack of extras that it is much harder to excuse. Without question one of the finest American horror films ever made, the Tobe Hooper-directed, Spielberg-penned and produced yarn about a typical suburban family terrorized by unruly spirits who abduct their daughter deserves better – a commentary with stars Craig T. Nelson and Jo Beth Williams, maybe, one or two of the production featurettes that ARE out there (you can check YouTube!)? Hell, I’d even excuse a feature on the much-ballyhooed “Poltergeist Curse” surrounding all the actors who subsequently died. All we get on this purported special edition is a mini-doc on poltergeist phenomenon that has nothing to do with the film. Abysmal… still, it’s my second favorite movie of all time, so I can’t not recommend it. At least there’s a restored anamorphic transfer.
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I’m beginning to feel as though I’m too often feasting on my own words with regard to double-dipping; a number of my picks over the past several months have been re-releases of stuff that’s already out in non-vanilla editions with decent extras. Sometimes, though, when the circumstances are right you just can’t deny the value in an upgrade, and this week’s triple-disc reissue of Caligula is a prime example.
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By Jessica Dwyer

With approach of Halloween and the recent influx of vampire shows on TV this year, I thought I’d go back to an oldie but goodie bloodsucker series that’s available on DVD. And no, I’m not talking about Dark Shadows. Back in 1996 White Wolf, the role playing company, was running strong with its Vampire The Masquerade game. Its popularity is still pretty strong, but back then it was hitting its stride…becoming for some a way of life.

The stories and mythos were amazing and have led to many of the new popular films and takes on the vampire and werewolf legends. But back then, Fox decided to give it a go and capitalize on the new love of this form of entertainment with an hour long drama based off it called Kindred: The Embraced.
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