Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: The Addiction; The Big Country; I, Jane Doe.
The Addiction
Lili Taylor was well cast as Kathleen, the disgruntled philosophy major in Abel Ferrara’s disturbing vampire film, The Addiction (1995). Walking home, she’s attacked by a vampire seductress, leaving her with a taste for blood and heroin, sensitivity to sunlight and—she discovers under the tutelage of Peina (Christopher Walken)—membership in a secretive but growing fraternity of the undead. The shadowland of disorderly, dangerous pre-Rudy Giuliani New York is realized in elegant black-and-white cinematography.
In The Addiction, vampires embody the principle of predatory satisfaction: They are rapists, violators and killers. The screenplay by Ferrara’s longtime collaborator Nicholas St. John makes passing reference to AIDS, but is more concerned with fate, freedom and the reality of evil. The philosophy department setting provides a suitable backdrop of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. Surveying the university library, Kathleen sees only a charnel house of bad ideas. Edie Falco plays Kathleen’s best friend (and victim).
The Big Country
The Big Country must have looked magnificent on big screens upon its 1958 release. Even watched at home, the vastness of its American West setting is striking, almost overshadowing its characters. Gregory Peck stars as a newly arrived gentleman from back east who is forced to adjust to the rough and tumble frontier. The Blu-ray release includes many extras such as a documentary on director William Wyler and interviews with Peck and co-star Charlton Heston.
I, Jane Doe
“I don’t think you have enough nerve,” the cad taunts. She fires anyway, refuses to identify herself in court and is sentenced to die. But then she turns out to be pregnant and the widow of the cad, an attorney, appeals her sentence. The 1948 crime-war melodrama is historically interesting for the strong female attorney, played by Ruth Hussey in Katharine Hepburn mode. I, Jane Doe was produced by Republic Pictures, Hollywood’s biggest low-budget studio.
