Shoah: The Four Sisters, Lanzmann's Final Words

Claude Lanzmann was interviewed in 2013 for the release of The Last Of the Unjust, his fifth film returning to his seemingly endless collection of footage shot for what is surely the ultimate documentary on the Holocaust, Shoah.  He was asked if that would now be his final word on the subject, and he replied, "I don’t know.  Maybe I can make some other film."  It turned out, in 2018 - the last year of his life - he would make four more.  The Hippocratic Oath, The Merry Flea, Baluty and Noah's Ark, a themed quartet of women's survivor stories collectively titled Shoah: The Four Sisters, first aired on French television and have now been made available on DVD and blu in the UK from Eureka! Entertainment as part of their Masters of Cinema series.

Each of these films, which range in length from 55 minutes to 93, essentially consist of a single interview with a single female survivor.  Again, these interviews were filmed back in the 70s for Shoah, but only two of these women made the final cut of that film, and then, only briefly.  Paula Biren of Baluty appears in the first chapter of Shoah for just over one minute, and Ruth Elias of The Hippocratic Oath appears in the second chapter just over two.  Unlike The Last Of the Unjust, nothing new has been shot, only a handful of photographs have been added into two of the stories.  This is all, previously unseen Shoah material.  And yes, to be clear, it's completely unseen.  Even the brief clips of the two women who were in Shoah do not repeat here, although they're clearly from the same recorded sessions.  To really get into the weeds of it, there's a cut at 37.06 in The Hippocratic Oath where I believe Ruth's section from Shoah originates from.

Criterion's 2013 Shoah blu top; Eureka's 2019 Four Sisters blu bottom.

But these films are no less effective for being "deleted scenes" from the 1985 masterpiece.  In fact, they may be the most powerful of all of them, by virtue of being completely personal and undiluted recollections of their tragedies.  Where Lanzmann previously intercut between different subjects, mixed new footage and old, included outsiders and even Nazis, often focusing on establishing historical record by detailing dates and locations, here he just sits with each woman and we listen to their harrowing journeys from beginning to end.  And they're far from redundant.  One woman was the subject of medical experiments while another became a police officer in a Jewish ghetto.  So you'll be just as riveted by the fourth story as the first.

Criterion's 2013 Shoah blu top; Eureka's 2019 Four Sisters blu lower two.

Eureka presents Shoah: The Four Sisters in 1.33:1, a slight shift in aspect ratio from Criterion's 1.37:1, but I presume that discrepancy is less an inaccuracy of either disc and more a perfectly fair distinction between two entirely different movies.  Of course, it's highly unusual to compare two different films like this, but I think in this rare case, it could be useful.  More than the framing, you're probably noticing the extreme shift in color timing of the same footage in the two instances.  Is this the result of Criterion and Eureka taking two different approaches to the same footage, or more likely: a creative approach by the filmmakers forging new films from what just so happens to be the same source?  Fair enough; the two projects aren't obligated to look exactly alike, and Four Sisters includes a color grader and multiple post-production crew members in its closing credits.  So presumably, this film has crafted its own entirely deliberate look, and in fact the new timing looks both more natural and aesthetically pleasing.  I daresay you could call the colors here "corrected."  Eureka's not wrong for not matching Criterion's Shoah blu.  But now look at the third shot.  We see some serious ghosting... what looks like an attempt to correct some nasty interlacing.  And the thing is: the original film footage isn't interlaced.

Shoah left; Baluty right.

See, here's why I've dragged a Criterion comparison into this: that interlacing problem isn't present on their blu, and unlike the new color timing or slightly different AR, I feel comfortable saying this is a flaw that shouldn't be here.  I highly doubt Lanzmann said, "can you corrupt the digital image so it stutters whenever there's any motion?"  So, sure, I don't know if this is Eureka's error.  They seem to be taking a lot of care, in providing these relatively short film two dual-layered, 1080p discs despite this looking like a blu-ray/ DVD comparison.  It may well be that Lanzmann himself used an interlaced encode of his footage to edit Four Sisters with, one of those post production guys may've not known the finer points of his job, or perhaps Eureka had to use the television broadcast, which is typically interlaced, as their source.  Either way, it's unfortunate.  The footage here is also noticeably softer than Criterion's, which is presumably a result of the de-interlacing that somebody at some stage must've applied to this footage... Sometimes some pulldown software can cleanly remove interlacing from video situationally; but usually the only thing to be done is try to "smush" the frames together to hide the combing effect, which softens the image and still leaves the distracting ghosting and stuttering.  The above isn't an exact frame match - because again, the footage doesn't repeat across both films - but in this close-up, you can clearly see the sharpness and clean lines that have been smeared over in this new transfer.  Again, I suspect this isn't so much Eureka's fault, and might even be a perfectly accurate representation of the finished film after Lanzmann and co. presented it to the world.  But it's a shame.

Audio-wise, the news is simpler and happier.  All four films present the original mono in uncompressed LPCM 2.0, and provide optional English subtitles.  English is spoken in two of the four films, but even then, it's clearly not a first language, so viewers may welcome them in all cases.  Otherwise, there are no special features or anything.  An interview or two might've been nice, to talk about the decision to go back to these shelved interviews so many years later and the process involved, but Lanzmann is no longer with us, and these aren't exactly the kind of films you expect a lot of gimmicky bells and whistles with.  We do get a substantial, 48-page booklet, with insightful notes by Stuart Liebman, as well as reproduced statements from the director, producer and broadcaster.  And it comes in a nice slipcover.

Anyway, the issues with the picture quality are annoying, but they shouldn't be deal breaking.  Unfortunately, these are probably generally considered to be "TV movies," so nobody's likely to go back to the original negatives and give them another 4k scan.  Even if these do wind up coming out on blu in another part of the world, I'll be surprised if they get them looking any better.  And these are truly great and important films that more than earn their place in the Masters of Cinema series.  Honestly, it's a bit demented to divert the important subject matter on hand into questions of video quality and presentation at all.  Now we finally do have Lanzmann's final words on the Holocaust, and they should be heard no matter what.

A Pair of Vincent Prices #2: The Last Man On Earth

Now we come to the movie that made me spring for The Vincent Price Collection (Part 2) in the first place, a real horror gem: 1964's The Last Man On Earth.  Not to say that every other Vincent Price film in the set is junk or anything... The Comedy of Terrors is always amusing, and Dr. Phibes 2 would've been a much bigger draw if it was packaged with Part 1, but it's still pretty far out in its own right.  But The Last Man On Earth, now there's a film we all need in our horror collections.

Based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, Last Man On Earth is an obvious, very strong inspiration for George Romero's Night Of the Living Dead and its follow-ups.  Price is the titular last man, after the civilization has been brought down by monsters.  Technically, they're vampires, but as shambling, moaning, corpse-like shells of the people they once were, with limited intelligence and abilities, compulsorily drawn to consume the last remaining human life... they're basically Romero zombies with a handful of distinctions.  The most important of those, I suppose, is that these creatures only come out at night, because, as vampires, they shun the sunlight.  This means Price's nights are spent in classic NotLD-mode, boarded up in his house as the creatures lay clumsy siege, banging weakly at the doors and windows.  Then in the days, he's free to go out and explore the ravaged cities, pillage abandoned storefronts and homes for food and supplies, more along the lines of the later Dead films, Walking Dead, etc.

But this film doesn't just earn its credit by beating Romero to the punch of many of his key concepts and set pieces; it's a pretty great little sci-fi/ horror flick on its own terms.  Last Man is actually an Italian production, but thankfully, with Price doing his own voice and the bulk of the film centering on one man painfully alone in the world, it gets away with its dubbing except for a few, brief moments.  Honestly, it took me owning the film on various films for years to even realize it wasn't all-American, striking me instead as maybe just a little extra low budget.  But it got over any production value-related concerns by being a surprisingly faithful adaptation of a great little book (Matheson is an excellent genre writer, whose only fault might've been spreading himself a little too thin; and that's one trait that doesn't show in I Am Legend).  It's smart and surprisingly effective dramatically.  There have been much bigger, showier, major studio shots at the book, and this one remains the comfortably seated as the best.

1971's Omega Man, with Charlton Heston, takes some bold liberties with the story, making the vampires much more lucid and letting us into their point of view early on.  They have philosophical discussions with each other and concoct plans to get at Heston.  I'm willing to overlook the central conceit that an entire, fully intelligent society of people have spent years unable to roust one determined man out of his LA apartment; but you can't overlook how the second half of the film gives up on most of its ideas halfway through.  It slowly fizzles away into an excuse for big, doofy action sequences, like Heston riding around a football stadium in a stunt-filled motorcycle chase with everybody waving around machine guns and leaping over explosions.  We keep racking up the flat-out dumb moments (Rosalind Cash avoids capture by posing like a mannequin in a clothing store?  Is this Scooby Doo?) and eventually stall out in a silly, sappy conclusion that just fails to deliver on the messages of the original story.

Then, I used to have trouble putting my finger on what rubbed me the wrong way with 2007's I Am Legend starring Will Smith.  Sure, it made some pointless alterations and is plagued with unfortunate CGI of its time - and it has that shameless Shrek ad dumped into the middle of the film - but it's relatively faithful and ambitious.  I think lately I've decided that it just comes off as a lighter, more shallow retelling... sort of the typical post-apocalyptic teenlit flick that have come into vogue in the 2010s, except it just happens to star a grown man.  I'm sure when it started out, somebody had earnest intentions of finally crafting the perfect on-screen depiction of Matheson's novel; but it quickly Frankenstein'd into a star vehicle with alternate endings happily throwing away the story's ultimate irony in search of a crowd-pleasing, Hollywood conclusion.  It's like a Twilight Zone without the final twist to give it all its meaning.  "Audiences felt the guy's glasses breaking was a bummer, so now it's just a quick tale of a guy who gets to read a lot of books!"

So there isn't a bunch of Rifftrax DVDs this time around (although, yes, there is a Legend Films colorized edition out there), but otherwise its the same line-up of suspects as last time.  Like I've said, I've owned a couple previous editions of this film, including a VHS tape and an old Diamond double-feature.  But the first Mill Creek DVD from the Chilling 20 movie pack will give you a rough idea of what pretty much every old, gray market edition looked like.  Then we have Scream Factory's fancy, 2014 HD restoration from their Vincent Price Collection II boxes set.  And finally we have Mill Creek's most recent edition, from their own 2017 Vincent Price Collection.

1) 2005 Mill Creek DVD; 2) 2014 Scream Factory blu;
3) 2017 Mill Creek DVD.

Part of what's worked against The Last Man On Earth, especially in comparison to the other Legend adaptations, is how awful its typically looked on home video.  This is a very wide, 2.35:1 film (or technically 2.34:1 as it appears on Scream's blu), presented in a boxy, full frame transfer that doesn't open up the vertical mattes, but just hacks off the sides.  Specifically, the 2005 DVD chooses the unusual aspect ratio of 1.42:1, which hey, just add it to the endless list of flaws.  I mean, could a DVD transfer be any worse without intentional sabotage?  The framing is also non-anamorphic, interlaced (of course!), and even the non-interlaced frames are so heavily plagued with digitization and who knows what else that every moment is littered with noise and interference.  The film almost looks cross-hatched.  It's also washed and over exposed, giving it a pale, hard-to-look-at feel, and it's full of print damage, from constant flecks and spots to vertical lines running through entire scenes.  The opening credit scenes are also horizontally crushed to try and fit all the writing on screen, though amusingly it still fails and cuts off a lot of the text.  It's just ghastly.

Anyway, the new Mill Creek DVD has essentially the same widescreen transfer as the blu, just a bit worse.  It has a sliver less info on the right-hand side, and more importantly is vertically stretched to 2.22:1.  It's not interlaced, but it is heavily compressed, even for SD, which winds up scrubbing detail and adding a lot of jpg-style artifacting.  Also the darks are a bit light and everything's a bit greyer and flatter.  The blu-ray itself nicely retains film grain, and I have to say, finally seeing it in this condition has genuinely increased by appreciation of the movie as a whole.  Growing up with PQ like the old Mill Creek DVD really added to the feeling that this was a cheap, well intentioned but junky picture.  Seeing it restored to 2.35 (or okay, 2.34) with clearly high end 35mm detail, professional lighting and composition, etc, you suddenly realize no, this is a real movie.

But there's more than just the technical picture quality to consider.  There are slightly different running times, which I at first attributed to just alternate opening logos.  After all, only the 2005 DVD includes the original American International Television logo and music.  The 2017 DVD just starts with the fade-in after that, and Scream replaces it with a modern MGM lion logo.  The 2005 also ends with another AIT logo, and the blu with another from MGM.  But there's a much bigger difference.  The 2005 DVD also cuts out the final lines of the picture!  And if you're familiar wit the film, they're pretty key to the entire point of the story.  So that just makes the older disc even less desirable compared to later editions, except it's such a dramatic editorial change, I think you could say it's effectively a different cut of the film, and possibly also worth owning for serious fans, if only for a bit of novelty value.  But yes, for most of us, it's just one more very compelling reason to upgrade if you've just got one of the old editions.

Anyway, the sound quality on the 2005 DVD is about as abysmal as the picture.  Of course both DVDs just include the basic mono in 2.0 with no subtitles or any kind of options, but the 2005 is much noisier, with crackles, hiss and even the sound of reels turning embedded in the sound.  The 2017 DVD clears all that up.  It's a bit tinny, but generally fine.  Then Scream rounds that out even better, in lossless DTS-HD of course, with even more robust sound and more distinct dialogue.  Scream also adds optional English subtitles.

Naturally, the DVDs are just as unhelpful in terms of special features.  They have absolutely nothing.  But the blu-ray has a couple choice goodies that add some genuine value.  First up is an audio commentary by two critics.  They have a lot of good info, and the interplay between them keeps things lively.  They do have a habit of pointing out how unvampire-like the film's vampire's are, which actually speaks more to their ignorance of vampire lore than a flaw in the film, since what they call mistakes are sometimes actually rather thoughtful references.  But that's a real nitpick of an overall very worthwhile commentary.  Still, experts are one thing and the actual filmmakers are quite another, and to that end we get vintage interview with Matheson himself.  It's a bit short but tightly edited and rather candid.  Definitely worth the watch.  There's also a stills gallery of some nice, vintage promo shots and colorized lobby cards; and the set itself includes a nice, full-color, 32 page booklet, which touches on Last Man in addition to everything else.

So this disc isn't as impressive as Criterion's Night Of the Living Dead, but it feels almost as essential.  And as I said with The House On Haunted Hill, it's a shame you can't buy this edition on its own.  Also, as with House, this is also available in Umbrella's Vincent Price Collection; however, this time it is available separately.  So that might be an option, but it's barebones.  And the only other blu-rays seem to be a rather poorly reviewed German disc and a couple of those "fake" SD upconverts.  So Scream's the ideal choice, except you're forced to buy the whole collection.  And unfortunately, the end result of that seems to be more horror fans are just going without and this film isn't getting the contemporary recognition it really deserves.

Update 3/25/19: A brief addendum thanks to JB in the comments.  The Italian cut of the film was released on DVD by Ripley's Home Video, and it has some unique footage.  Movie-censorship breaks it all down, and most of the differences seem to just involve simple differences of insert shots for English/ Italian signage and minor adjustments you'd expect.  The Italian version's actually a bit shorter, but it has two extended scenes: one with Vincent and Virginia, and one with him and Ruth.  I'm not sure about the viability of trying to make an extended cut (on the Italian DVD, at least, one of said scenes doesn't even include English audio), but it's a shame Shout didn't at least include these as deleted scenes.

A Pair of Vincent Prices #1: House On Haunted Hill

Woo!  Only two label Pairs down, and I'm already breaking the rules.  What an outlaw, what a rebel!  Even other rebels can't believe how much I disregard the laws.  Alright, I'll stop.  But yeah, I thought I'd mix things up a little and do two classic Vincent Price vehicles.  And I'm starting with William Castle's most famous successful horror outing - well, unless you want to count Rosemary's Baby - the far sillier House On Haunted Hill.

Update 1/1/20: Just a l'il update today.  I've added the Rifftrax Live blu-ray to the mix.  Not a big deal, since the live versions aren't a viable way to watch the movie anyway (it's a whole stage show, that cuts away from the film to show the riffers on stage, etc.), but figured I'd throw it in since I got it.  Turns out the blu is interlaced when even the Live DVD wasn't - boo!

Update 8/19/24: It's Update Week 2024, and we've got not one, not two, not three, but... oh wait, yes, three.  We've got three additional DVD releases of House On Haunted Hill to add to the mix, including the original Warner Bros disc, a triple feature set from Dreamline and a pretty random public domain disc from a company called American Pop Classics.

Mind you, when I call this film silly, it's meant to be silly.  I'm not putting down a dead serious horror film that's failing to illicit drama or suspense.  House On Haunted Hill is a tongue-in-cheek lark.  Vincent Price is a millionaire married to his sixth wife who seems to want him dead even more than he wants her see her that way.  Still, he's invited an eclectic mix of six strangers to a party in her honor: a party in his famously haunted mansion (a distractingly strange looking Frank Lloyd Wright creation).  Each guest will receive ten thousand dollars if they agree to stay over night... and live to collect.  Does he plan to murder one or all of them?  Is one of them there to murder him?  Are there really ghosts?  Or should everyone really be wary of the ghoulish servants who lurk the corridors?

House is awfully short for a feature, clocking it at just under 75 minutes, no doubt taking its cue from Shakespeare: "brevity is the soul of wit."  If you're worried about this being an old, boring movie, have no fear of that.  The pacing is electric, zipping from plot twist to plot twist, especially when you consider this film is packed with main characters.  When the film does briefly pause to take a breath, its only to allow Price and his wife to trade sharp barbs in delectable camp fashion or build up suspense for one of its big scare set pieces.  Not that this film's genuinely scary at all; but it knows how to capture that haunted house thrill ride spirit.  In fact, being a William Castle film; House On Haunted Hill had a famous in-theater gimmick where a skeleton would fly over the audiences' heads during a key scene in the film.  Fortunately, this film entertains just as well when viewed at home without it.

I used to own a junky, old public domain DVD of this from Diamond.  But I've since chucked it, since I replaced it with other public domain versions, specifically in a 2005 Mill Creek 20 Movie Pack called Chilling, and in the various Rifftrax editions.  Those include the original Legend Films DVD, which featured a non-Rifftrax Mike Nelson commentary, and most notably colorized the film, the official Rifftrax DVD (which does allow the option of watching the film sans riffing) and their live show DVD.  Now, House has been out on blu a few times, as parts of classic horror sets, but those early releases were just "fakes," slapping basic SD transfers onto blu-ray discs.  House made its debut in genuine HD with Scream Factory's Vincent Price Collection II, the second of three blu-ray boxed sets of Price films.  Like the other films in those collections, it's not available separately, and is almost only available in that box... Umbrella has also issued it own barebones Vincent Price blu-ray collection in Australia, which also includes this film.  Either way, you're not getting this film on blu without purchasing a slew of other VP titles, too, which is frustrating if you just happen to like this one film.  Interestingly, the most recent release is another Mill Creek DVD, this time from 2017, so we can see how far they've come, if at all.

1) 1999 Warner Bros full DVD; 2) 1999 Warner Bros wide DVD; 3) 2005 Mill Creek DVD;
4) 2005 Legend B&W DVD; 5) 2005 Legend color DVD; 6) 2007 Dreamline DVD;
7) 2009 Rifftrax DVD; 8) 2009 American Pop DVD; 9) 2011 Rifftrax Live DVD;
10) 2011 Rifftrax Live BD; 11) 2014 Scream Factory BD; 12) 2017 Mill Creek DVD.

So, I was expecting Mill Creek to either have some SD transfer closer to Scream's remaster, or maybe still the same old one from 2005.  But I was sure surprised to see them actually move backwards.  Their first DVD is still non-anamorphic, soft and interlaced, but at least it was sort of widescreen, at the unusual ratio of 1.57:1.  Their 2017 is just as interlaced, possibly even softer, now murky yellow, and now framed at 1.31:1.  Well, I'm assuming this film is meant to be matted wide... that's certainly what Scream Factory did for their HD restoration, lowering it to 1.77:1.  Warner Bros started out with a flipper disc, giving us both, because I guess they didn't feel confident making the call.  The fullscreen versions are all open matte, though, so they're mostly shaving off vertical information... but they do reveal something new to the sides as well.

In between the polar extremes of American Pop (non-anamorphic widescreen, interlaced, washed) and Scream we have the Legend/ Rifftrax DVDs.  They all utilize the same transfer (apart from the B&W/ colorized distinction), are fullframe at 1.33:1 and happily aren't interlaced.  Well, except there is some jagged combing visible throughout the 2009 disc, but they don't have entirely interlaced frames.  I think they just made a mistake in the compression of the plain Rifftrax disc.  I wouldn't put it past them, since they also messed up and interlaced the Rifftrax Live blu.  Their DVD wasn't interlaced, but when they released the blu a couple months later, it was.  And not just the film footage, but everything, even the new footage of the gang on stage.  Anyway, the colorization isn't too bad for what it is (i.e. revisionist and undesirable), but it at least refrains from crazy, unnatural color choices like they did with Reefer Madness.

It was perhaps a bit silly of me to include the Rifftrax Live versions in this comparison, because unlike the other Legend/ Rifftrax discs, it doesn't offer you the option of watching the film with just the original audio.  It also, naturally, includes other segments of the live show, including two short films and occasionally pushes the picture to one side in order to show the guys performing.  It's really only watchable as an episode of Rifftrax.  But, to be clear, the other editions, including the official 2009 Rifftrax DVD, do allow you to watch the film "plain," without their interference, and so work as proper House On Haunted Hill DVDs if you so desire.  And since the 2009 one is the janky one visually, that makes the 2005 Legend DVD the preferable option.

Anyway, that Legend disc might've been one of the better ones back when all we had were mediocre DVDs of this public domain title.  That Dreamline disc looks just like the American Pop disc, except at least isn't interlaced.  But Scream's blu is playing on an entirely different level.  Questions about the AR aside, this is the first time House really looks like film.  Grain is rich and downright vibrant in motion, the contrast is bold and pleasing, image is sharp and detail is restored.  And, of course, none of these DVDs offer anything more than the rough mono audio, but Scream has boosted it to DTS-HD and killed most of the hiss of past editions.  Foley sounds crisp and naturalistic for once.  They've also included optional English subtitles for the first time.

In terms of special features, as you can imagine, those Mill Creek collections and the American Pop DVD are completely barren.  The Dreamline mostly is, too, except it features a weird, patriotic bonus music video, unrelated to any of the films, called "One Nation" by Devon Scott Dicker.  The Warner Bros disc at least has the trailer, in both full and widescreen depending which side of the disc you watch.

And the main extras on the Rifftrax discs are just the riff tracks themselves.  The 2005 one was made and released before Rifftrax was a thing, and is just described as a "hilarious audio commentary by Mike Nelson of TV's Mystery Science Theater 3000."  It's a bit more of Mike by himself going off the cuff, as opposed to the 2009 and 2011, which are properly written, and decidedly funnier, performances by the trio.  The 2005 DVD also has a short video of press book stills, the theatrical trailer, an insert, and an ad for their other colorized discs.  The live DVD also includes two comic Rifftrax commercials and the trivia track they would show before the show when it was broadcast in theaters.

Scream finally gives the film some real extras, though it's a little disappointing that, as a part of their Vincent Price Collection, it seems to be made from the perspective that we're all die-hard Price lovers rather than interested in the film in general.  By that I mean, we get a bunch of featurettes that really get into the weeds of Price's life and career, even delving into his private art collection and taste in wine, and none about the Castle, the film itself, or the rest of the cast and crew.  Introductory Price, Working With Vincent Price, Vincent Price: Renaissance Man...  Hey, I enjoy Price's work and am interested to learn more, but I don't need to root through his drawers, if you know what I mean.  So yeah, there's the four featurettes, the trailer, a bunch of other Price trailers, the stills gallery, and the one feature that dares to broaden the field, an audio commentary by film historian Steve Haberman.  Of course he talks about Price, too, but he's the only one here to get into all the other fun stuff about this film, Castle, other cast members and of course the flying skeleton.

So yeah, even the special features suggest this disc was never intended to be released on its own, outside of the Vincent Price collection.  But that's a shame, because thanks to its pacing if nothing else, this film stands the test of time, and has a broader appeal than many of the other films in this set.  You know, I don't see anyone but Price completists beating down the door for Return Of the Fly.  But there really ought to be a stand-alone option for House On Haunted Hill, and I mean one with the HD quality and audio commentary.  It's a great disc, and I think it's being blockaded off from some of its audience.