Movies That Should be on DVD Part II

Since a good percentage of my last list has ended up on DVD, I figured I’d work out another list. Unlike the last list, I have not seen the majority of these movies.


An American Family
The Loud family. This PBS documentary series is considered the first reality show. A milestone in American television. I’m shocked it’s not on DVD already.


The Bruce Conner Collection
When Criterion released a collection of Stan Brackage short films, it gave me hope that they might make a habit of releasing avant-garde short film collections. Alas, the Bruce Conner collection never materialized (or the George Kuchar collection for that matter). I would particularly like to see “Report” and “A Movie.” I’ve never seen “Report,” but I hear it’s a recutting of educational and government films for surreal comic effect, mocking the mystique of Civil Defense-era authority.


Corruption
This is not a woman's picture! No women will be allowed in alone!
Peter Cushing plays a creepy doctor who does creepy things with the dead bodies of women. Supposedly, Peter Cushing was creped out by his own movie. I must see it!


Day Break
Groundhog Day as a murder mystery. I saw all thirteen episodes – most of them online. And I believe they are available on iTunes, but for this sprawling, complex mystery, I really need to sit down and watch it in one magnificent sitting – just to keep up with all the red herrings, repeated daily events and how they evolve over the course of the mystery. My favorite part is how people begin reacting to Taye Diggs’ character differently as the series wears on – acknowledging that he is changing even though no one else is. Luckily, the mystery is solved by the last episode.
UPDATE: March 11th, this one season wonder hits DVD. I'm gonna watch it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and . . .


The Dybbuk
A film from an extinct culture. A Yiddish movie about a bride who is possessed by a Jewish Dybbuk just before her wedding. I saw this in college as a part of my World Cinema Class but have never seen it since. All I remember of it, is the eerie atmosphere – that and I liked it.


A Foreign Affair
Billy Wilder’s post-WWII dramedy about the rebuilding of Berlin by American G.I.s. Marlene Dietrich is hot as the German showgirl with a secret. And Jean Arthur is surprisingly tolerable as the stuck-up congress woman with an agenda. My favorite part is the G.I.s escorting Ms. Dietrich up the stairs.

High School
A documentary about high school kids from the late sixties. Pauine Kael describes it as an expose of the clever, duplicitous tactics teachers use to keep kids in line rather than teach them, though user comments on IMDB suggest the movie is more even handed. I’d like to see for myself.

Homebodies
I was thinking of Student Bodies when I wrote "Homebodies," but this movie sounds so goddamn weird, I have to see it now too!

Johnny Guitar
Nicholas Ray’s campy-looking western starring Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, and Mercedes McCambridge. I’ve never seen it, but I hear the movie is a Western turned inside-out. Supposedly full of sexual imagery and political allegory (aimed directly at McCarthyism). And look at Joan Crawford. Does she look butched out or what?


King of Alcatraz
A short B-thriller from 1938. Never seen it. Know very little about it. Has anybody seen it?

The Major and the Minor
Billy Wilder’s Hollywood directorial debut in which Ginger Rogers pretends to be a twelve-year-old girl in order to get half fare on a train and has to keep up the illusion when she gets Major Kirkeby (Ray Milland) in trouble with his fiancée. Ginger Rogers’ best performance by far. The young girls all smoke and the young cadets make moves on girls under the guise of illustrating tank maneuvers. The movie is elusively pro-pedophilia.
UPDATE: On April 22, Susu Applegate spits again.


The Mother and the Whore
A Special Jury Prize Winner at Cannes. I’ve seen it described as My Dinner with Andre filmed of the scale of Lawrence of Arabia. As I understand it, it’s mostly crazed coffee shop conversation between bullshit artiste extraordinaire Jean-Pierre Leaud and the chick he’s banging.


Neighbors
Originally panned by critics very harshly. I’m a bit torn here. One of my favorite critics listed it as his least favorite movie of 1981, while another said it was one of his favorites – particularly citing the performances of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Cathy Moriarty. They usually play nice. A pitch black comedy according to legend. The last performance from John Belushi. Directed by Academy Award-winning director John G. Avildsen.


Los Olividados
Heavy social drama by Louis Bunuel. Set in Mexican slums, the movie is about a group of juvenile delinquents. It is harsh and unsentimental and by far my favorite of all the Bunuel flicks I’ve seen – all five of them. It’s not sarcastic, it’s not smug, and it portends no easy answers. Shockingly violent – not just because of the time (1950), but because such terrible things are happening to kids. I have the ticket stub, just itching for a DVD case to call home.


Paperhouse
A creepy children’s movie I have never seen.


Skippy
Jackie Cooper was nominated for Best Actor at the ripe old age of nine for this movie. The director, Norman Taurog, holds the record for the youngest person to win Best Director at the Oscars. No doubt he got it for threatening to kill Cooper’s pet if he didn’t cry convincingly. I imagine it to be like the Little Rascals with slightly more substance. I don’t now if that’s better than plain old Little Rascals though.


Smith
The first canceled show of the 2006 fall season. Rumor has it, the show may have been canceled because it was too sinister for the conservative taste of CBS -- as opposed to mediocre ratings. A gang of thieves robbing everybody blind, with great performances from the entire cast. Evil, sociopathic, amoral fun.


Student Bodies
An absurd comedy I saw numerous times on HBO as a kid. I doubt it’s any good at all, but I saw it so many times, it would be more like a trip to my past rather than a real movie-watching experience. Kind of like when I rewatched Monster Squad recently. The number of “Yeah I remember that” moments far out-weighed the “Hey, that was funny” moments.
Update: The Breather breathes again on June 3rd. I just found out that Allen Smithee produced this movie. How can it not be a winner?


The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo
Between the 1984 and 1985 seasons of Scooby Doo, some major retooling went on. For one thing, all the characters changed clothes. Secondly, Daphne and Scrappy became really smart – well comparatively. The series then took a turn that was at once darker and sillier. The new plot itself is clever: 13 ghosts are released from the chest of demons and only those who released them (namely Shaggy and Scooby) can put them back, so says warlock Vincent Van Ghoul (who looks and sounds exactly like Vincent Price). They take on a fast-talking Hispanic kid named Flim Flam and set off to capture the demons with their post-modern asides and story-bending plot points. It was canceled half way thru the season, putting an end to seventeen consecutive years of Scooby Doo on Saturday mornings. By the way, they only caught eleven demons.

Zero for Conduct
A short film – forty-five minutes or so – about a group of kids in boarding school who get fed up with the overbearing, authoritative faculty and their repressive regimentation. Often mentioned as a companion piece with If . . . ., it features a full-on revolt by the kids against the teachers. I love me some subversive kids movies.