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Yes, sometimes a producer could earn ‘auteur’ status making B pictures. A name that’s never going to be uttered in the same breath as Val Lewton is Sam Katzman, who for the 1950s settled into a profitable tenure making Columbia program pictures. They pretty much stayed in the category of ‘obvious junk’ yet include a number of endearing favorites. And Katzman deserved to slip through the pearly gates just for helping get Ray Harryhausen’s feature career into motion. Besides their minimal production outlay, Katzman’s horror/sci fi attractions have one strange thing in common: they don’t carry Columbia torch Lady logos. Part One of this review takes on two of the four features in Arrow’s gorgeously appointed boxed set; reviewer Charlie Largent will follow with a review of the second pair of creature features.

Cold War Creatures: Four Films from Sam Katzman

Part 1: Zombies of Mora Tau...

This is a big one, the restoration we long thought would never come. CineSavant tries to explain what makes Edgar G. Ulmer’s masterpiece uniquely memorable, how it works its Loser Noir magic, and why this particular restoration bodes well for a certain class of picture mired in murky rights issues. Meet Al Roberts, a hard luck case happy to bend your ear for an hour, explaining how Fate has Done Him Wrong. This Prc gem transcends Noir pessimism, because a sensible read forces us to conclude that Al is his own worst enemy, a self-made misery man. This hitch-hiking epic carries an extra added jolt: Ann Savage delivers what has to be the boldest, most caustic hell-to-pay performance of ‘forties Hollywood.

Detour

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 966

1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 69 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 19, 2019 / 39.95

Starring: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald,...

Known for his work in a wide array of film genres, Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Richard H. Kline died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 91.

Kline was known for his work for the 1967 movie musical Camelot starring Vanessa Redgrave and Richard Harris. He received his first Academy Award nomination for the Joshua Logan-directed film and earned his second nomination for the 1976 remake of King Kong starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange.

Born on Nov. 15, 1926, Kline was born into a family of cinematographers which included his father, Benjamin H. Kline, and two uncles, Sol Halperin and Philip Rosen. He had an affinity for surfing, but followed the cinematographer legacy of his family and got his start at Columbia Pictures as a slate boy in 1943 when working on the musical Cover Girl. He went on to serve in the Navy but returned to become a first assistant cameraman.

Throughout his 40 year career, Kline...

Forced March is a film about filmmaking in which an actor, Ben Kline (Chris Sarandon), portrays Miklos Radnoti, a famous Hungarian Jew, in an attempt to retrace and come to terms with his own family's traumatizing experiences with the Holocaust. It sounds like a mouthful because it is. Thankfully, director Rick King's elliptical editing weaves a captivating multigenerational story about guilt, family ties, and the power of forgiveness, one as timely now as it was upon its original release (to too little fanfare) in 1988. With scant media coverage here, Jobbik, a neo-fascist, ultra-conservative political "movement for a better Hungary," holds nearly 20 percent of the country's parliamentary control today, a historical déjà vu that would seem unbelievable if...