Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

"B Movie Psycho Thriller - Robert Aldrich-Style"

Eureka continue their praiseworthy work of bringing us more Robert Aldrich films on Blu-ray with the release of the 1964 Southern Gothic he made just before THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (also available on Blu-ray from the same label).

It's 1927 and plantation owner 'Big" Sam Hollis (Victor Buono) is giving John Mayhew (Bruce Dern) a telling off, and with good reason. The already married Mayhew has been planning to run off with Sam's daughter Charlotte. Now he has to break it off or Sam will break him. John gives the news to a Charlotte that looks as if she's played by Bette Davis but lit with considerable chiaroscuro. 

Understandably upset, Charlotte runs off. The party at which all this is happening carries on and John gets meat cleavered to death by an unseen assailant in a manner soon to become beloved of Italian film-makers. Many years later, Charlotte (Bette Davis now without the chiaroscuro), considered to be responsible for the murder but not in prison due to 'Family Influence' lives in the now crumbling mansion pretty much by herself. And the council want to build a bypass. Instead of lying down in front of the bulldozer Arthur Dent-style she shoots at the workmen. But they're only going to stay away for so long, and when cousin Miriam (Olivia De Havilland) comes to visit Charlotte thinks it's the end of her worries. But the real horrors might just be starting. 

Clocking in at 133 minutes, HUSH...HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE is actually rather overlong for the story it wants to tell. Often spoken of in the same breath as Aldrich's superior WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962), HUSH...HUSH is actually more the kind of over the top psycho thriller that by 1964 both Hammer Films and William Castle (with the help of Jimmy Sangster and Robert Bloch) had proven themselves to be rather more adept at making. That's not to say HUSH...HUSH isn't worth watching - the photography and production design are memorable, and Frank deVol's music score doubtless influenced 'horror' composers like Ronald Stein. It's also fun to see Hollywood heavyweights like Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland and Joseph Cotton playing out this kind of lurid melodrama, just don't expect something with the depth of BABY JANE.

Eureka's Blu-ray comes with two commentary tracks, including a brand new one from Kat Ellinger and another from Glenn Erickson. I'm not going to steal their thunder but the shooting history of this one is almost as good a story as the one on screen, especially as the movie was intended to co-star Joan Crawford - and footage had been shot - before things began to go horribly wrong. There's also a 22 minute making of, a 13 minute talking head piece from Bruce Dern, and five minutes of behing the scenes archival footage narrated by Joseph Cotton. Finally, there's a trailer, TV spots and a booklet featuring a new essay by Lee Gambin. 

Robert Aldrich's HUSH...HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE is out on Blu-ray from Eureka on Monday 21st January 2019

Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)

“Classic Robert Aldrich”

Robert Aldrich’s brutally cynical American political thriller gets a UK dual format Blu-ray and DVD release from Eureka.

Former Air Force general Laurence Dell (Burt Lancaster) escapes from a Montana prison with three death row inmates (Paul Winfield, Burt Young and William Smith) and takes control of Silo 3, an American base home to nine nuclear missiles. His ransom apart from the usual cash and safe passage - for the current US president (Charles Durning) to tell the American public the truth about the Vietnam war. 

The president’s advisors (including William Marshall, Joseph Cotton, Leif Ericson and Melvyn Douglas) all tell him it’s impossible. General MacKenzie (Richard Widmark) is convinced Dell is bluffing and sets about a daring plan to blow up Dell and his group. Then the silos open and the missiles start to emerge...

From a director fascinated by how groups of men behave under pressure (Eureka brought out FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX a while back), TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING manages to be both a searingly cynical commentary of American politics of the era, as well as a nail-biting suspense thriller that will have you wondering right up until the end how it’s all going to turn out. The movie probably boasts the best use of split-screen to heighten rather than dilute the suspense that I’ve ever seen, and the cast is uniformly excellent.

Filmed in Bavaria, TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING boasts, as well as its all-star cast, a range of familiar ‘British American’ faces including Ed Bishop, Shane Rimmer, David Healy and William Hootkins. Clocking in at 144 minutes it’s another long Aldrich picture but the running time just flies by. Eureka’s disc contains a detailed 70 minute making of as an extra. 

Robert Aldrich's TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING is out in a dual format edition from Eureka on Monday 31st October 2016

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

Robert Aldrich’s classic ‘up the creek without a paddle’ character study gets a UK Blu-ray release courtesy of Eureka.

En route to Bengazi, a cargo plane encounters a sand storm and is forced to crash land in the Sahara desert. The survivors are  mainly a mixture of oilmen and military personnel, as well as pilot Frank Towns (James Stewart) who blames himself for the crash, and his recovering alcoholic associate Lew Moran (Richard Attenborough) who may have been responsible for the engine failure in the first place.

They are stuck there. Hope soon begins to fade that they will be found by a search party. At least a hundred miles from anywhere, aeroplane designer Heinrich Dorfmann’s (Hardy Kruger) claims that they can build a new aeroplane from the wreckage of the old are initially met by ridicule and finally with the kind of desperate acceptance you get when the only alternative is certain death. As they begin to take the plane to pieces and construct something new, the water begins to run out, people begin to die, and there are still more surprises to come.

Belonging to a genre that includes Herzog’s AGUIRRE (1972), Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW, and others where a group of people are dropped into a hostile environment and we get to watch how they manage, Aldrich’s film copes with its ‘up the creek without a paddle’ setting (as I like to call this subgenre) by suggesting that sometimes the only way out is to build a new paddle, even if the one person who can be trusted with its design may not necessarily be trustworthy themselves. Making Dorfmann German is a bit of a masterstroke in this respect, and making him blissfully unaware that the source of his experience in design might have implications is genius. 

There’s plenty of other genius on display here as well. A collection of great performances, all working from a screenplay (by Lukas Heller) that allows, with Aldrich’s careful direction, for plenty of character development, meaning that the movie’s 142 minute running time feels nothing like it, and by the time you get to the end you feel absolutely invested in the fate of these characters. Disaster picture, desert movie, patrol film (Aldrich’s favoured term for it, apparently), THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX is more than anything great and complex character film-making.

Eureka’s Blu-ray gives us a 25 minute talking head piece from Sheldon Hall that’s well worth a look. Well worth a read (before the movie if you’ve seen it before, otherwise wait until afterwards) is the little booklet essay by Neil Sinyard that gives you much more background on the film. An essential addition to any film classics library. 

Robert Aldrich's THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX is out on 

Blu-ray on 12th September 2016