Here's a fun, new Shout Factory (or I guess, now, Gruv) exclusive: 'Larry Cohen: Mystery & Misdirection,' a 3-disc set of arguably lesser
Larry Cohen films, two of which are making their long-awaited HD debuts. Specifically, 1984's
Special Effects has been released on blu before, by Olive Films (now OOP, as Olive is sadly no more), in 2016, following a 2004 MGM DVD. But it's the first time for 1977's
The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover and 1989's
Wicked Stepmother, which hadn't even been available on DVD before, apart from two short-lived MOD MGM DVRs. And they're nicely packaged together in Scream Factory's slim set. Yes, this is under the Scream banner, despite only one of the films being halfway to a horror movie.
The biggest criticism of
Hoover would probably be that it
feels like Cohen produced a TV movie for the theatrical market. Cohen,
known for stealing high profile locations, pulls off some of his
greatest heists in this one, but much of it still looks flat and stagey. Cohen is determined to cover
Hoover's fifty-year legacy with the FBI, which means he has a ton of story to cover in under two hours. Full of short scenes and a massive, revolving door of characters, this movie flies by at a breakneck speed.
Rip Torn is more or less our point of view character, but he doesn't really enter the story until the second hour. Zip, zip, zip, major historical figures come in and go out. But this being Cohen, he still fins the space for quirky personal moments and presumably improved humor. He's helped by
Broderick Crawford's authentic performance, and a murderer's row of great character actors like
Andrew Duggan,
John Marley,
George Plimpton,
Jose Ferrer and of course
James Dixon, who's in all three of these. But Hoover's story is a fascinating one at heart, and Cohen's got all the angles on him.
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2011 MGM DVR top; 2025 Scream Factory BD bottom.
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This movie looking better than it ever has should help with its reputation nowadays. MGM's DVR was anamorphic widescreen, so I was fairly happy with it for its time. But while Scream's blu, which is a new 2k scan taken from the original negatives, is still 1.85:1, it pulls back to reveal more picture along all four sides. More importantly, it has deeper, richer colors, with less washed highlights and blacks. And MGM's disc was interlaced, which this new release corrects. It's just a nice, obvious improvement in every way.
And that includes the 2.0 audio, which has been boosted to DTS-HD. And Scream has included subtitles for the first time. Extras are slim, not entirely absent like they were on MGM's 100% barebones disc. Scream has got the original theatrical trailer, and more interestingly, an on-camera interview with historian
Daniel Schweiger about the impressive, bombastic score by Academy Award winner
Miklós Rózsa.
Next up is 1984's
Special Effects, a fun little murder story about a filmmaker, a sinisterly cold
Eric Bogosian,
obsessed with capturing the moment of real death in his next movie. He
starts off as a fairly stiff and tame thriller, hampered greatly by the
creative decision to completely re-dub leading actress
Zoë Lund (
Ms .45) with
an unconvincing Southern accent. Yeah, her character's supposed to be
from Texas, but they really should've gone with whatever was coming out
of her mouth on set, because the effect is so distancing. Anyway,
fortunately, Cohen packs in enough twists and clever ideas that the film
slowly succeeds at drawing you further and further in. Stick with it,
and you'll be hooked on this twisted little tale.
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| 2025 Scream Factory BD. |
This is the only disc in this set not to feature a new 2k scan. In fact, by all accounts, this is the same transfer as Olive's previous blu-ray, apart from any minor differences in encode. So fortunately it's a pretty good one, with a crisp 1.85:1 image and the soft focus grain always at least being hinted at. The colors are strong, contrast is attractive. It's presumably a master that was delivered to them from MGM, creating HD masters of their own archive. And like the previous BD, this one also includes 2.0 DTS-HD with optional English subtitles.
Unlike Olive's blu, though, this one's fairly barebones. It just has the trailer (which, for the record, was also on the MGM DVD and Olive BD). But Olive had an important special feature: an audio commentary by Cohen himself, along with the director of his documentary,
King Cohen. So in that respect, this is a disappointing step backwards. And I've heard it. Cohen always does good commentary tracks, but this was still one of his better ones, helped by the fact that this is one of his less discussed works, so it's not as familiar territory. So... oh well.
And speaking of "oh well," that feeling brings us to our final film... Ha ha No, no. Actually, 1989's
Wicked Stepmother, while clearly no masterpiece, is better than it would appear. In the tradition of silly comedies like
My Stepmother Is an Alien or
My Mom's a Werewolf, comes
Bettie Davis's final film, and Cohen's silliest ever. Yes, even more so than
Full Moon High, which is in the
ZAZ vein. This plays more like a sitcom. And it is packed with television stars, including
Tom Bosley from
Happy Days,
Richard Moll from
Night Court,
Lionel Stander from
Hart To Hart,
Barbara Carrera from
Dallas and
David Rasche from
Sledge Hammer! But it is packed with gags, some of which are genuinely funny, and silly special effects, some of which are admittedly wretched. And the spirit of this movie is to just walk right into and embrace the eye rolling aspects.
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| 2010 MGM DVR top; 2025 Scream Factory BD bottom. |
Wow, I forgot MGM's old
Wicked Stepmother was nonanamorphic. Yeah, it's a good thing we can replace it. Besides that, it's another new 2k scan that adjusts the aspect ratio from 1.87:1 to 1.85, fixes the problematic interlacing, corrects the drab colors, clears up the compression noise and sharpens up the detail of MGM's lower than usual resolution. The difference is vast and obvious. And again, the 2.0 audio is boosted to DTS-HD and optional English subtitles have been added. Plus, we get a couple nice extras. The DVR has nothing, but the blu has the theatrical trailer and an on-camera interview with the editor, who has some great memories of working with Cohen and is pretty candid about the conflicts behind the scenes.
The set itself is just one amary cased housed in a slim slipbox.
For diehard Larry Cohen aficionados, this is essential. Two HD
exclusives with a couple nice new extras. The
Special Effects
blu is more just a bonus disc for casual fans, since completists will
still need the Olive disc for the commentary anyway. And those folks
may be put off by the non-insubstantial price point. It depends how
interested you are on these particular, lesser known movies. But I'll
say, for my part: my appreciation has grown for each of them on every
revisit, and I'm glad to have added this set to my collection my it's
still available. Limited to just 2500 copies, the option may not be on
the table for long.
