THE WOODY ALLEN COLLECTION

 

This box set of eight Blu-ray releases of films directed by Woody Allen between 1994 and 2003 is a welcome addition to my collection. I'm a big fan of Woody's films and own most of them on DVD. This release gave me a chance to fill in a few gaps in what I previously haven't been able to find. The package was released by Quiver Films on November 23, 2021.

The transfer quality is excellent. However, there are no extras on any of the Blu-rays. Not even theatrical trailers. This is somewhat disappointing, but not surprising. My DVDs of Woody's films don't have any extras beside the occasional trailer. This is one director who will most likely never do any audio commentaries on his movies. The discs do include the scene selection feature, something that quite a few new releases, including many from Kino-Lorber, don't have. The outer case is solidly made, and the inner case has nice still photographs from some of the films.

THE FILMS

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY (1994) 

Starring John Cusack, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Tilly, Chaz Palminteri, and Tracey Ullman. This is one of the films I hadn't seen before. Pure movie magic. One of Woody's very best. Cusack plays ambitious young playwright David Shayne, who uses mob money to get his first Broadway play produced in 1928. The catch is that he must cast the mobster's talentless girlfriend and also put up with her assigned bodyguard. The bodyguard begins offering ideas for the play, and they work so well that the play becomes his creation more than Shayne's. This film was a huge success and won several awards and other nominations. Dianne Wiest won her second Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She had won previously for another Woody Allen film, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (1986). 

MIGHTY APHRODITE (1995)

Starring Woody Allen, Mira Sorvino, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Rapaport, F. Murray Abraham, and Olympia Dukakis. Another very funny, well-written film. Woody plays Lenny Weinrib. He and his wife adopt a son, and Lenny becomes obsessed with finding the boy's real mother. She turns out to be a ditzy but good-hearted prostitute whom Lenny falls in love with. This film was also nominated for many awards. Mira Sorvino won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress as the prostitute.

EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU (1996)

Starring Woody Allen, Goldie Hawn, Alan Alda, Edward Norton, Julia Roberts, and Drew Barrymore. The lives and loves, trials and tribulations, of an upper middle-class New York family are played out with everyone in the movie breaking out into singing and dancing to old romantic standards. Incessantly. This is the film I was most excited about seeing again, as I loved it when it was first playing in theaters. But it turned out to be disappointing upon second watch. It's loaded with big stars but spends too much time with some uninteresting teenagers who manage to become irritating very quickly. It was not a box office success. 

CELEBRITY (1998)

Starring Kenneth Branagh, Judy Davis, Leonardo di Caprio, Winona Ryder, Melanie Griffith, and Charlize Theron. Woody makes a welcome return to Black & White cinematography with this very eccentric movie. Branagh, a writer, gets divorced from his wife, Davis, an English teacher. They both find success and loads of drama by finding careers in celebrity journalism. A fascinating film to watch, although not one of Woody's best screenplays. It was another box office failure.

SMALL TIME CROOKS (2000)

Starring Woody Allen, Tracey Ullman, Hugh Grant, Elaine May, George Grizzard, and Elaine Stritch. Woody returns to top form with this very funny story about the most insane idea for a bank robbery ever conceived. Loaded with great dialogue and sight gags. This one did well at the box office.

THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION (2001) Starring Woody Allen, Helen Hunt, Dan Akroyd, David Ogden Stiers, Wallace Shawn, Charlize Theron, and Elizabeth Berkley. Another movie I hadn't seen before. Woody plays an insurance investigator who gets into conflict with efficiency expert Helen Hunt, and the two dislike each other intensely. One night, while in a nightclub for an employee dinner, the two are called to take part in a stage act by hypnotist Voltan (Stiers). He gives each of them post-hypnotic trigger words to use them for jewel robberies. This was Woody's most expensive film to date, and it lost money. Woody considered it to be his worst film and said he should have gotten another actor to play his part. Personally, I loved the film. But what do I know?

HOLLYWOOD ENDING (2002)

Starring Woody Allen, Tea Leoni, George Hamilton, Treat Williams, Mark Rydell, and Debra Messing. This is another one of Woody's less successful movies that I nonetheless loved. In this one, he plays an anxiety-ridden filmmaker desperate for a comeback. He gets his big chance when his ex-wife (Leoni) and her boyfriend (Willaims) hire him to direct a big-budget blockbuster. Unfortunately, he develops psychosomatic blindness when the project starts. he tries to direct the movie without anyone knowing that he can't see a thing. Lots of great dialogue and sight (no pun intended) gags throughout.

ANYTHING ELSE (2003)

Starring Woody Allen, Jason Biggs, Christina Ricci, Stockard Channing, Danny DeVito, and Jimmy Fallon. This box set ends on a sour note with one of my least favorite of all the Allen films. Woody plays struggling artist David Dobel, who acts as a mentor to aspiring writer Jerry Falk (Biggs), coaching the younger man through his trials with love and relationships. Biggs is irritating beyond belief as he attempts to do a Woody Allen imitation throughout the entire movie. The characters are all unlikable and the situations and dialogue seem like they are parodied from other Allen films. Another failure at the box office. A real shame, considering that it featured Ricci, a talented and often poorly used actress. Stockard Channing is so bad, it's almost painful to watch her.

MONDO CANE (1962)

 

MONDO CANE (Dog World or Doggish World) is a notorious, groundbreaking documentary showing bizarre examples of human and animal behavior in various locations and societies of the world, the Western world included. Featured are mating practices among the natives of New Guinea, religious rituals involving snake handling and self-flagellation among Italian Catholics, and segments showing cruelty to animals which are very difficult to watch. 

Some of the segments are lighthearted and amusing. For example, there is an extended look at a group of elderly American tourists in Hawaii trying their best to learn how to dance the Hula. And there is a look inside a sophisticated New York restaurant where a number of very chic individuals are eating cooked insects and appear to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. The film takes a much darker turn with a look at several Germans staggering around the streets after a night of excessive drinking. And then, we are off to a village in Portugal, showing a yearly event where men try not to be killed when wild bulls are let loose in the town square. The film is making the point that so-called "civilized" Westerners haven't advanced all that much than the people of more remote cultures.

One of the saddest segments shows the effects of nuclear testing by the United States on the environment of the Bikini Atoll. The camera follows sea turtles going on to the land to lay their eggs. However, they are no longer able to find their way back to the sea and instead travel further inland where they will die. The film shows the beaches littered with their decaying skeletons. So much for the advancement of civilization.

These dark and sometimes grotesque are made all the more shocking by being interspersed among the lighter, more amusing parts. Then there is the beautiful music score composed by Ritz Ortolani and Nino Oliviero. It is so lovely that it almost seems inappropriate for such a strange and visceral film. The main theme became world-famous as the song "More". Romantic English lyrics were written for it by Norman Newell, and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

MONDO CANE is essential viewing for any student of film history, and for anyone interested in world cultures. Be forewarned, however. There are some instances of cruelty to animals that may be disturbing to many viewers, especially children. The film was written and directed by Paolo Cavara, Franco Prosperi, and Gualtiero Jacopetti. The film's title is sometimes translated as A DOG'S LIFE.

SWING HOSTESS (1944)

 

This is the kind of bright, funny, fast-moving movie musical I fell in love with during countless afternoons watching the "early show" after school in the 1960's. The rather thin plot has singer Judy Alvin (Martha Tilton) trying to break into the music business. She has real talent and gets a chance to make a record. However, because of a series of blunders and misunderstandings, a decidedly untalented rival, Phoebe Forbes (Betty Brodel), gets the credit for Judy's vocals and is signed to a record contract. Judy and Phoebe both live at the same theatrical boarding house. The other tenants, led by Judy's best friend, Marge O'Day (Iris Adrian), join forces to get Judy the recognition she deserves. All ends well at a swank nightclub where Judy gets to sing and becomes a star, not to mention winning the heart of handsome band leader Benny Jackson (Charles Collins).

This 76-minute gem was directed by Sam Newfield for Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), one of the most prolific "poverty row" studios of the period. The energetic cast was headed by Miss Tilton, an extremely gifted singer who was quite popular during the WW2 years. SWING HOSTESS gives her the opportunity to perform no less than six songs written by Jay Livingston, Ray Evans, and Lewis Bellin.

Miss Tilton is ably supported by Iris Adrian, the undisputed Queen of the fast-talking, wisecracking dames in countless movies of the 1930's-1960's. There were few actresses in movie history who were as adept at tossing off one-liner insults and zingers as Miss Adrian. Seeing her name in a cast list is always a guarantee of a good time.

Martha Tilton and Iris Adrian

The film also serves as an interesting time capsule. Part of the story has Judy working for a "telephone juke box" company. A Rock-ola juke box in a diner has a list of songs and a telephone number. Customers wishing to hear a song call the company's central location where an actual record will be played and heard over loudspeakers in the diner. I never even knew this type of juke box existed!

SWING HOSTESS may not have the same star power or production values of the big budget musicals of 1944, but it does have good music and a lot of heart. Consider it 76 minutes of your life put to good use.

DARKNESS (2002)

Another amazing (?) discovery at Big Lots.

Get out your modern horror movie checklist while attempting to sit through DARKNESS. It will give you something constructive to do and may also stop you from falling asleep. Truth be told, this movie is so wretched, you might fall into a coma.

Now let's get to that checklist.

1. Family moves into big, creepy old house: Check.

2. Strange things start happening to the youngest family member, an adorable little boy: Check

3. His intuitive teenage sister strongly senses there is something wrong with the house: Check.

4. Things begin moving for no reason: Check.

5. Mom and Dad start to lose it: Check.

6. Ghosts start showing up all over the property: Check.

The story, if one insists on calling it that, is a derivative, convoluted mess. You can try to make some kind of sense out of it, but to preserve your sanity, it's probably advisable not to. Here are the basics: The house was built by some weird satanic cult that practiced child sacrifice. These sacrifices can occur only every forty years during a total eclipse of the sun.

Got it? I hope so, because there's no way I'm going through that again. 

Anna Paquin plays the all-knowing teenager. As would be expected, she spends the majority of her screen time walking slowly down dark hallways, pensively approaching mysterious doorways (This is Number 7 on our checklist.), taking an eternity to turn the doorknob, while she and the audience wait in sheer, heart-stopping terror for SOMETHING HORRIFYING TO JUMP OUT AT HER. At other times, she's perusing old, musty manuscripts in the library to learn the history of the house and its evil, satanic past. When she's not studying the mysterious, musty volumes, she's finding mysterious, musty boxes hidden throughout the mysterious, musty house, the contents of which help her solve the big, musty mystery. In due time, our plucky heroine manages to drive out the pesky ghosts and rescue Mom, Dad, and her adorable little brother. Presumably, the family, once safe from their terrifying ordeal, will work as a team to clear out all of that nasty must and live happily ever after.

The cinematography fits the film's title. Everything is dark. All the time. There is a jump cut every four or five seconds. Some of the imagery is well done, but that in no way compensates for the ridiculous plot and the tired, by-the-numbers execution.

A logical question that might come up is: Why do filmmakers continue churning out mindless crap like this? Well, according to Wikipedia, that most trustworthy of sources, DARKNESS made a profit of over $24,000,000. There's your answer.