Garv’s Pick of the Week: The Grand Duel (Arrow Video)
For the release week of May 7th:
Garv’s Pick of the Week: The Grand Duel [Blu-ray / Arrow Video]: The best thing Lee Van Cleef did for his movie career was to move to Italy. While he had been relegated to bit parts in Hollywood, he was able to leverage his fantastic supporting roles in For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly to move to lead status in later Westerns such as The Grand Duel. The Grand Duel is one of the better Euro-Westerns not directed by Sergio Leone, and it has one of the most memorable Spaghetti soundtracks (which was later excerpted by Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill Vol. 1).
Additional Titles of Interest —
The Heiress [Blu-ray / Criterion]: Willam Wyler’s melodramatic film adaption of the Henry James’ novel Washington Square gets the Criterion treatment.
A Delicate Balance [Blu-ray / Kino Lorber]: Kino is releasing two more American Film Theatre films this week. First is Tony Richardson’s adaptation of the Edward Albee play A Delicate Balance.
Rhinoceros [Blu-ray / Kino Lorber]: In the other American Film Theatre release, Mel Brooks’ original The Producers stars, Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, re-team for a film adaptation of Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist play Rhinoceros.
Sex Madness Revealed [Blu-ray / Kino Lorber]: A fake movie podcast (hosted by Patton Oswalt) is added as an audio commentary to the 1938 sex scare “educational” film Sex Madness (think Reefer Madness) for this meta-mockumentary.
){kind=link}