Abrahams & the Zuckers Week, Day 1: The Kentucky Fried Movie

The struggles physical media has been going through these days can be disheartening.  But there's been some really uplifting activity recently in the combined works of Jim Abrahams and the Zucker Brothers, David and Jerry.  So I thought I'd make a "Week" out of their best films and their current state on home video.  And what better place to begin than at the beginning: their first film together (or separately), The Kentucky Fried Movie?
Their debut is the only film the trio didn't film themselves.  They just wrote this one, with the one and only John Landis taking over the Kentucky Fried directorial duties.  That strange title, by the way, is easily explained; it comes from the filmmakers' origins with The Kentucky Fried Theater.  So while this film plays in some ways just like their better known later work - silly parody - it's unique in that it adheres to what they used to do on stage.  It's a sketch movie.  But there's a particularly long sketch that comes up in the middle of the film, a kung-fu parody with Evan C. Kim as their version of Bruce Lee in a send up of Enter the Dragon.  It takes up about half of the running time, giving this film a very unusual structure.  It's like: a bunch of quick sketches and then forget the sketches, here's a movie, until just when you've forgotten about the sketches at the beginning, here's some more.  They do link it all together with the loose premise that we're watching all of these otherwise disconnected scenes as programming broadcast on a local cable channel.  But after this, they realized their material plays stronger in a single, coherent narrative, which is the form all of their following films would take.
Besides being Abrahams and the Zucker's first film, it's only Landis's second, after his scrappy Schlock.  There is definitely the clumsy feel of creators finding their footing throughout this movie, and it doesn't play nearly as strongly as their more accomplished works afterwards.  But there's still song good laughs and more than enough amusing bits to make Kentucky Fried worth the watch, even if it's not a masterpiece.  Like any sketch show, there at least as many clunkers as successes, but some work, and others are at least cheerful.  And the kung-fu parody is the strongest piece, so it's actually a good thing that devoted so much of their running time to it, despite how out of balance it throws the film.  There are lots of fun cameos and appearances to look out for, including Abrahams and the Zuckers themselves, George Lazenby, Donald Sutherland as the quintessential clumsy waiter, Airplane's scene stealing Stephen Stucker, voice over by Shadoe Stevens, and beloved horror icon Forrest J. Ackerman
The Kentucky Fried Movie was released twice in America.  Anchor Bay gave it its DVD debut in 2000, with a combination widescreen/ fullscreen special edition.  There have been plenty of editions in other regions since, including a noteworthy 2-disc set by Arrow in the UK.  But it's been all standard def DVDs until Shout Factory brought it to blu-ray in 2013, which is pretty much the definitive edition; although it should be noted that a barebones German blu from Koch that came out in 2015 preserves the fullscreen framing, if for some reason you've grown attached to that version.
1) 2000 AB fullscreen DVD; 2) 2000 AB widescreen DVD; 3) 2013 SF BD.
So the fullscreen edition is 1.33:1 and largely open matte, but it also seems to shifting its framing a bit.  Note how the first shot is almost the same but with extra vertical information.  But the second set of shots is clearly panned further to the left.  Curious.  Still, it's decidedly boxier and the extra along the top and bottom seems to be a lot of excess space, so I can't imagine it's actually an AR worth preserving.  The widescreen editions are matted to 1.85:1 (technically, the DVD is 1.84) and appear much more pleasing and correct.  Aside from that, well, the blu is definitely a genuine HD boost.  Colors are mostly similar, though I picked that first set of shots to highlight that it does vary at times, too - the blu's consistently warmer with stronger colors, but there it's really extreme.  Grain is patchy and inconsistent... this is a 2013 blu, not a 2020 one, but it's definitely a sharper, clearer HD boost over the fuzzy DVD.  There's also a lot of artifacting on the DVD that the blu cleans up.  The movie itself seems to be comprised of film elements of varying quality, so it's hard to lay any particular fault on this blu's feet, but I bet a fresh scan of the original negatives, if possible, could yield some big, further improvements.  But as it is, it knocks the DVD out of the park.

The DVD just gives us the basic original mono in Dolby Digital with no subtitles on both the full and widescreen versions.  The blu bumps that mono up to DTS-HD and includes optional English subtitles, so again, another satisfying step forward.
Put now we take a step backwards.  Not a huge one, but it's annoying enough.  See, the DVD had some great extras.  There's a boisterous audio commentary by Landis, both Zuckers, Abrahams and producer Robert K. Weiss.  There's also the trailer, the stills gallery and most interestingly, almost 20 minutes of "home movies" showing us the filming on location.  The blu-ray keeps the commentary and the trailer, but loses the home movies (and the gallery).  Now, it does offer us something nice in its stead: an hour-long on-camera conversation with the Zucker brothers, which repeats some info from the commentary but is still fairly illuminating and entertaining.  That interview was originally created for the Arrow DVD, but Shout brought it here, which is nice.  It's just annoying that we had to lose one good extra to gain the other.  There's probably some complicated ugly licensing business tying it up behind the scenes, but it doesn't seem like too big an ask to not have lost any of the extras.  Oh well.
So hang onto your DVDs if you've got 'em.  But if not, the home movies aren't so compelling that it's worth retroactively double-dipping.  Again, a new 4k edition would be nice, but for this movie, which isn't really as well-loved or objectively good as the later films, I wouldn't expect anyone to tackle the project anytime soon.  This is probably the best we'll get, which happily, is pretty good.  And come back tomorrow for a new 4k comparison you're probably eager to see.

Ken Russell's Vestron Film The Rainbow: Import Or Lump It

1989's The Rainbow is the third in Ken Russell's three picture deal with Vestron, inked after their joint success with Gothic, and is based on the DH Lawrence's novel of the same name.  Film-wise, It's the prequel to 1969's Women In Love, which of course was one of Russell's most successful films.  Novel-wise, The Rainbow (1915) came first (WIL was 1920).  In both versions, characters carry through both stories.  Viewers should know, though, that The Rainbow novel is broken up into three parts, following three generations of a family.  The film only adapts the final third.
That third follows the story of Ursula, played by Sammi Davis, who you'll recognize of course from Lair Of the White Worm.  Ursula is the character played by Jennie Linden in Women In Love, but here she's just leaving her family home, yearning to strike out on her own as an independent woman, but given the times, faces constant push-back.  But she finds support from her White Worm Amanda Donohoe, who's so liberated, she's willing to go as far as a lesbian affair with her underage student while also courting a relationship with her uncle.  So as you can imagine, this is all about Lawrence pushing the envelope of his times, testing the boundaries of just how far society can and should go.  And if you know Russell, he's more than ready to give life to this young woman's sexual and emotional awakenings within the trappings of a nay-saying period England.
Naturally, Russell's not one to shy away from the sex, but he's also never about to let an important dramatic tale slide into softcore porn as often befell Lawrence's work in the 80's and 90's.  His film adaptations would alternatively be produced for Masterpiece Theater and the BBC or Skinemax and Showtime After Dark.  Russell uses the opportunity to give us a few colorful, ribald images, including some naked homosexual wrestling on a carpet in front of a fireplace as a cheeky nod to the most famous scene in Women In Love.  But he actually shows considerable restraint and never lets this film veer away from proper respectability and intelligent story-telling.  Glenda Jackson is back, this time playing the mother of her character from WIL, and other noteworthy cast members include David Hemmings, Russell stalwart Dudley Statton and Withnail and I's Paul McGann (he was I).
Through the entire DVD era, the only option for The Rainbow was a barebones 4:3 DVD from Columbia Tri-Star released in 2001, and reissued in 2007 by Lions Gate.  That was the whole story.  But fortunately, in the HD era, it was given a proper blu-ray, making it available in its proper widescreen format for the very first time.  But only in Italy.  Pulp Video (the same guys who did that Whore DVD I wrote about... these guys must be proper Russell fans) released it in 2014 as La Vita è un Arcobaleno, or Life Is a Rainbow.
1) 2001 Columbia Tri-Star UK DVD; 2) 2014 Pulp IT BD.
I've seen the DVDs 1.30:1 image described as open-matte online, but getting to compare it to the blu-ray's 1.78:1 now, it's obvious a lot was cut off the sides and very little was added vertically.  So restoring it a widescreen is a huge improvement, and that's just the composition.  Both discs seem to be sourced from the same film elements - note the same white fleck on the left-hand side of both transfers in the first set of shots.  But the DVD seems to be coming to us by way of a video tape transfer; it's very soft and murky.  Thankfully the blu is a proper scan of film elements, looking remarkably sharper, clearer and more detail.  We can finally see, for instance, the pattern on wallpaper behind them in the second shot.  Colors are corrected, too, getting rid of the dull hue that was cast over the DVD.  I mean, just look at those shots, it's an entirely different viewing experience.  Grain's a little uneven, this is no top-of-the-line 4k restoration, but it's a real, quality HD image, which is only welcome all the more considering how paltry our previous SD option was.

Said DVD features the original stereo mix and nothing more.  It's adequate, but feels its age.  That same stereo mix is carried over to the blu, and disappointingly, it's still lossy.  Besides that, the blu just adds alternative Italian language options, including an Italian stereo dub, a 5.1 remix and optional subtitles.  Neither disc has English subs, but hey, at least the blu doesn't force the Italian ones.
It's disappointing to find, especially when we know what wonderful commentaries Russell frequently gave his films, that both of these discs are essentially barebones.  The DVD included a full-frame trailer, at least.  The blu-ray even drops that, although they do add their own stills gallery.  But if it feels like we're splitting hairs, here, that's because we are.  Both discs are awfully barren.  Sure, I'd love to see Red Shirt and co. turn this into a superior special edition through the Vestron line, but somehow I don't see them tackling a non-genre film like The Rainbow in this lifetime.  I'll be delighted to be proved wrong, but I don't think we have any real choice but to import.

Remembering The Man With Two Brains

Carl Reiner has a long and storied body of work, from The Dick Van Dyke Show and the 2000 Year Old Man to Fatal Instinct.  And if you've never seen Where's Poppa?, you really should.  But the first thing that springs to my mind whenever I hear his name is his classic series of comedies with Steve Martin.  Four brilliant films in a row, each of which is represented to various degrees on home video...  The Jerk finally has a decent special edition by way of Shout Select, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is available on barebones MOD blu and sadly, All Of Me still only has a fullscreen DVD to its name.  And The Man With Two Brains?
"Two brains" is apt here, as the pair did their best work together.  Reiner's penchant for non-stop gags and parody combined with Martin's gifts with the absurd form a uniquely silly voice that hits brilliant peaks.  Even if they don't manage to quite sustain it the entire running time, they always keep things cheery and fast paced to hold your engagement the whole time, which is still more than you can say for most of the competition.  Honestly, the older I get, the fewer comedies I really feel like I need to keep in my collection... the same old jokes dipped in barely different contexts, different faces doing the same acts.  But every time I revisit once of these four, I'm freshly impressed and cracking up all over again.
This time, Martin plays a brain surgeon in their most madcap venture yet, about mad scientists, love, brain transplants and of course... murder.  They've assembled an impressive supporting cast including Kathleen Turner, horror legend David Warner, a disembodied Sissy Spacek, Merv Griffin and yes, that is Jeffrey Combs preparing to operate.  Production designer Polly Platt gives 1983's TMWTB a stylish look, too, which sticks with you like none of its peers have managed.  This film got knocked around pretty roughly by critics in its time, but I think they'd all sing another tune trying to find a comedy that delivers comparable laughs today.
In 1999, Warners first released TMWTB on DVD as a basic, barebones fullscreen release in an infamous snapper case.  And for almost a decade, that was pretty much our only option.  But in 2006, Warners quietly released it on the UK... with a remastered widescreen transfer!  I was psyched when I figured this out, and if DVDExotica existed back then, you'd've had a post all about it.  But since then, Warner Bros brought that widescreen transfer to the US, first as a 2014 MOD DVD in their Archives collection, and much more excitingly, as a proper blu-ray in 2017.
1) US 1999 WB DVD; 2) UK 2006 WB DVD; 3) 2017 US WB BD.
The one thing you can say about Warner's original DVD is that at least it was mostly open matte.  Their 1.33:1 transfer does trim a little off the sides, but it's mostly just revealing excess vertical information.  At 1.78:1, both the widescreen DVD and blu are probably revealing a bit of excess vertical information, too; but we're close enough.  The blu-ray corrects a little vertical stretching, though, bringing back a bit of that vertical image along the bottom.  Moving beyond the framing, the blu is clearly using an old master, so it's not the most perfectly captured fine detail, with grain often MIA.  But getting rid of all that smudgy compression weighing the DVDs down alone is a big improvement.

Each disc features the original English mono, but it's bumped up to DTS-HD on the blu.  The original DVD doesn't have any subs, but the import has a bunch of options, including the English, a second English HoH track, French, Icelandic, Italian and an Italian HoH track.  The blu-ray boils it down to just the one English HoH track, which is fine.
Unfortunately, no matter which edition you go with, this film is barebones.  The US DVD has nothing (and the same goes for that 2014 Archives DVD), while the UK DVD just has a random commercial for their James Dean Collection.  The 2017 blu-ray at least finally gives us the proper TMWTB trailer, but it's pretty paltry when you think about the kind of delightful special edition we could've had: Reiner's done some great commentaries, and this film has some cherished deleted scenes ("You've cooked her Z's!") that are being left woefully unavailable to the fans.
So I do recommend Warner's blu; it's unquestionably the best edition going of a movie everybody should own.  And while Warner Archives is great in that they get good, quality editions of a lot of films that've been in need of them, it's a bit of a curse, too, in that it means almost no WB titles will get licensed to the boutique levels that would really give them the special care they deserve.  So it's also the best this film's going to get in a very long time, if not forever.  R.I.P. Carl Reiner.