New Releases for April 16 2024

HE WALKED BY NIGHT (1948)

Starring Richard Basehart (Time Limit), Scott Brady (Undertow) and Jack Webb (Appointment with Danger), this film noir classic was the inspiration not only for TV’s Dragnet (also with Webb) but for many other subsequent “ripped-from-the-headlines” crime dramas. Taken from actual case files, He Walked by Night is the suspenseful, action-packed tale of a manhunt for the most cunning criminal in the history of the LAPD. With a combination of ingenuity, state-of-the-art technology, sweat and sheer determination, the police painstakingly track down a brilliant, elusive thief and cop-killer (chillingly played by Basehart in only his third film) who seems to have the ability to vanish into thin air. But can they catch him before he murders again? This gritty, groundbreaking police procedural features direction by Alfred L. Werker (Shock) and an uncredited Anthony Mann (T-Men) with stunning cinematography by John Alton (Raw Deal). (BLU-RAY)

SINFONIA EROTICA (1980)

At the close of the ‘70s, eminent auteur Jess Franco (She Killed in Ecstasy) revisited the works of Marquis de Sade to create what EuroSleaze historians have called one of the most sexually daring and boldly creative films of his entire career: Sinfonia Erotica. When an unstable noblewoman (a fearless performance by Lina Romay) returns to her lavish estate, she will find herself – along with her libertine husband, his male lover, and a young nun with a craving for violation – trapped in a web of unholy hungers and decadent perversions. Susan Hemingway co-stars in this sonata of artsy depravity – featuring a score by Franco & Franz Liszt – now transferred in 4k from an uncut 35mm print donated by The Instituto de la Sexualidad Humana in Madrid. (BLU-RAY)

KING KONG (1976)

The Big Apple is again besieged by the monstrous King Kong. Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange star in this ambitious remake of the 1933 original, which adds a great deal of camp and good fun to the story, Again, the gargantuan ape battles attacking aircraft high above the streets of New York, this time plunging from the top of the World Trade Center to his death amidst thousands of horrified onlookers. King Kong won an Oscar for special effects, and the horror and the thrills are brought anew to another generation in this classy production. (BLU-RAY + 4KULTRAHD)

WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES (2000) (Criterion Collection)

This mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown time in an unnamed village, where, one day, a mysterious circus—complete with an enormous stuffed whale and a shadowy, demagogue-like figure known as the Prince—arrives and appears to awaken a kind of madness in the citizens that builds inexorably toward violence. In thirty-nine hypnotic long takes engraved in ghostly black and white, auteur Béla Tarr and codirector-editor Ágnes Hranitzky conjure an apocalyptic vision of dreamlike dread and fathomless beauty. (BLU-RAY, 4KULTRAHD and DVD)