Tamango (1958)
Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: An American Werewolf in London Limited Edition, Humble Pie: Life & Times of Steve Marriott + 1973 Complete Winterland Show, Un Flic, Tamango.
An American Werewolf in London Limited Edition (Arrow Video)
A pair of backpacking American students are hiking in England’s bleak northlands when attacked by a snarling beast. One is pronounced dead, the other awakens weeks later in a London hospital. He had bad dreams. Will nightmares come true? The new packaging of director John Landis’ 1981 film is a deluxe edition complete with full-size fold-out poster and an illustrated booklet, detailing how make-up artist Rich Baker transformed actors into hirsute beasts and decomposing corpses.
Humble Pie: Life & Times of Steve Marriott + 1973 Complete Winterland Show (Cleopatra Records)
As a member of ’60s mod group The Small Faces and ’70s hard-rock band Humble Pie, Steve Marriott was always on pitch and ready to hit the high notes. As the documentary included here reveals, Marriott began as a child actor in the original London production of Oliver! The documentary includes rare footage and interviews with Peter Frampton and other colleagues. The set also includes a DVD and CD of a 1973 Humble Pie concert.
Un Flic (Kino Lorber)
For his 1972 film Un Flic (A Cop), director Jean-Pierre Melville was indebted to America and France. Un Flic is two-parts Hollywood crime drama and one-part French New Wave. Working from a laconic screenplay, Melville tells his story of bank robbers (and the cop who goes to work when the city goes to sleep) visually—with sharp editing—and audibly through judicious touches of music. Un Flic stars Alain Delon and icily elegant Catherine Deneuve.
Tamango (Kino Lorber)
The first we see of Dorothy Dandridge is a glimpse of her leg. Exiled blacklisted director John Berry brought a touch of Hollywood into a film that catches some of the transactional and physical horror of the slave trade. Curt Jurgens plays the skipper of a slave ship as a profit-driven pragmatist in this 1958 production. Dandridge plays his mixed-race personal slave and adds requisite cinematic sex appeal. The complicity of West African rulers is depicted.
