The Show:

The third season of Community found the viewer hearing about the increasing emergence of a character that perhaps not many people had been used to seeing or hearing about before, and that was the show’s creator/executive producer Dan Harmon. This is not to say that Harmon had become suddenly egomaniacal about the show; in fact he may have loved the show more than most and had a radical desire to see it through to its desired six seasons and a movie goal that many of its fans had expressed. It is that Harmon’s passion for the show and his accessibility to said fans had become something that would seemingly have been more prevalent than in prior seasons. Sometimes it was very good, such as the weekly comedy show (later turned podcast) Harmon is the center of. Sometimes not so much in other times, such as when Harmon played an angry voicemail from one of his show’s costars in one installment. Harmon was eventually relieved of his duties before the show’s fourth season , replaced by Moses Port and David Guarascio. It is at this point I recommend reading Lacey Rose’s fabulous interview with Harmon where he discusses said dismissal and much more to gain some additional perspective. But I think it could be unquestionably said that as far as Community goes, the show’s behind the scenes events were just as entertaining and impactful as those that occurred onscreen, perhaps more so.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of the show, it is set at the fictitious Greendale Community College, where a sextet of students hang out and attempt to matriculate. You have the smarmy lawyer Jeff Winger (Joel McHale, The Soup), the idealistic Britta (Gillian Jacobs, The Box), divorcee and single mother Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown, Repo Men), movie geek Abed (Danny Pudi) and his friend and former football player Troy (Donald Glover, The Muppets), and former geek Annie (Alison Brie, Mad Men). Aside from the group but also worth mentioning is Chang (Ken Jeong, The Hangover), the shamed former Spanish teacher and the school’s Dean (Jim Rash, who won an Oscar for co-writing The Descendants), who has a shameless crush on Winger. The last member of the group is the business magnate Pierce (Chevy Chase, Caddyshack), who appears sporadically in the show and eventually leaves it altogether midway through the production (as is Chase’s wont on popular shows I guess). The group finds itself on the verge of graduating from Greendale, with the exception of Jeff, who took some between semester classes to expedite his departure, and while the group tries to rectify this, they also go through some conflicts of their own.

It seems clear that what Port and Guarascio do with the fourth season is an attempt to take any existing story arcs or character motion and make them their own, along with trying to carve out a new foothold with the cast in something that has their voice to it. In the case of the former, using the “darkest timeline” (referred to by Abed in Season Three’s excellent “Remedial Chaos Theory”) as a means of character resolution in this season was familiar in its device, but when it came to execution, evolved into something that Harmon explained somewhat poorly on one podcast episode. To attempt to clear up, the show spends a lot of the fourth season nodding to its past lineage in various overt and subtle manners that it tends to feel a bit on the ‘nudge nudge, wink wink’ side of things. Look, we get it, the elephant in the room is gone but not forgotten, and some people may not like that, but we’ll go with it anyway. But Community’s fourth season does little to get past that point through its twelve-episode run.

There are times of tenderness in the fourth season that make for some nice moments, ones in fact that Harmon should consider extending in his own voice, if he can. The charming relationship that Abed strikes up with the coat check girl (played by a bespectacled Brie Larson, 21 Jump Street) in “Herstory of Dance” shows a side of Abed we do not get to see that often and one that I would like to see more of. Pudi does a fabulous job in the character for it to boot. Pudi and Glover also share some great moments in “Basic Human Anatomy,” when they switch bodies Freaky Friday style in order to deal with a daunting task. These two episodes in particular provide some interesting moments in a season which found itself lost and at times confused.

The decision to replace Harmon with Port and Guarascio seems like an understandable one considering the behavior of the former in the years prior to his dismissal. With the latter pair, both were longtime veterans of television comedy, and both were and are capable of telling stories in their own voice. But the stories in the fourth season of Community lacked a certain complexity that a Harmon-influenced writing team would have provided (perhaps specifically, the Zodiac-esque ‘story circle,’ a story and character evolution consisting of eight points Harmon that almost serves as Harmon’s “raison d’etre” for storytelling). That is the aspect that the show misses most of all in its fourth season, a season where it was different while trying to adhere to the show its fans and creator loved, and this schizophrenia is something that is the second thing that the fourth season is known for, whether Port and Guarascio like it or not.

The Discs:
Video:

The episodes are spread over two discs and are all presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. The episodes look good and juggle a variety of different elements in the source, which is to say the puppets, light animation and humans all look solid. The image does not possess much in the way of edge enhancement and haloing, and the color palette for the show is reproduced accurately and without oversaturation. It is pretty straightforward viewing material for both discs.

Audio:

Dolby Digital 5.1 surround for all episodes, with the results being as expected both compared to previous seasons and for a television show in general. Dialogue is consistent and balanced in the front of the theater and directional effects and channel panning are present and abundant through the season, making for an immersive experience on the whole. There are also moments of subwoofer activity that rounds the low end out nicely. Harmon may have left the show, but technically it continues to both look and sound good for a television comedy.

Extras:

The collective ear of pop culturedom turned its ear when Harmon said Sony approached him about doing a commentary of him watching this season and sharing his reactions but alas, no such feature is included here. So in case this was the only thing you wondered about when deciding to buy the discs, you can stop here I guess

For those still remaining, the extras on the set are ample and are in line with how previous seasons’ supplements have been. The discs all include a commentary track of some type, almost all of which include the cast (save Glover and Chase) and the writer and director of the respective episode. On Disc One, the commentaries include some friendly teasing of the track participants and raving about the guest stars who appear through the season, along with any specific production challenges on an episode or two. The disc also includes an outtake reel (6:28) which like the season itself is funny, though not as much as previous years. “Inspector Spacetime: Inspecticon” (9:43) looks at the Doctor Who-esque character Troy and Abed revere and the Comic-con inspired convention the production designers set up for it. Six deleted scenes (3:03) and three extended/alternate scenes (4:36) are nice but ultimately one could see the reasons for their excision.

Disc Two includes more commentaries, most of which cover most of the same material that previous tracks do with their episodes, but McHale includes a story about how McDowell mildly yelled at Chase in an unrelated episode. Moving along, the disc also includes “Adventures in Advanced Puppetry” (15:36), where Brown hosts a segment on said episode, and the writers discuss the origin of how it came about, and shows the table read with the puppets, how said puppets were built and how the puppeteers approached handling each individual character. This featurette also serves as a spot where the cast talks about their thoughts on the end of the season and who handles it best (or worst, as the case may be). The disc also has three deleted scenes (2:11) and an extended/alternate scene (:45), both of which are pretty forgettable.

Final Thoughts:

The fourth season of Community does have a moment or two when one can harken back and easily confuse a scene or episode with one in the Dan Harmon era. More of the season is spent with the show almost telling itself “Look, we’re doing things Dan Harmon used to do, isn’t it great!” while losing most of what made Dan Harmon-penned characters in the Greendale universe so charming, for better or worse. Technically and from a bonus material perspective the show is good and fairly in line with previous seasons, but from a content aspect is a little harder to pin down. It is certainly not as good as previous seasons, but not worthy of the hyperbole hurled towards it by those who hold it dear. Let us just not speak of it much again and look forward to the fifth season and a return to form by Harmon (minus the Ketel One marinade), okay

France, 1912. With the disappearance of a fifth young woman, the police commissioner puts pressure on his top man, Inspector Tanner (Conrado San Martín). His instructions: find the culprit, or find a new job. Although Tanner’s search is slow, the viewer already knows that the murderer is the twisted Dr. Orlof (Howard Vernon, would-be winner of a Boris Karloff look-alike contest), who is unsuccessfully trying to graft lovely ladies’ faces onto the body of his dying daughter, who was burned in a lab fire and is now kept in a glass case. Orlof is assisted in his goals by former Death Row inmate Morpho (Ricardo Valle), who is blind and mute, and Orlof’s one-time flame Arne (Perla Cristal), who hates the way Orlof treats Morpho and despises Orlof’s growing body count. While Tanner slowly sifts through the facts, his girlfriend, ballerina Wanda Bronsky (Diana Lorys) starts to crack the case.

If The Awful Dr. Orlof is indeed the first horror film produced in Spain, the country got off on the right foot. This black-and-white effort, clearly inspired by various Dracula and Frankenstein movies, is a witty, thrilling little movie, propelled by excellent performances and an intriguing feminine energy thanks to director Jess Franco, whose name would eventually become synonymous with sensual horror. Admittedly, Dr. Orlof endeavors to hit a wide range of tonal notes — only a few sequences are “horror,” in the traditional sense — but it’s hard to imagine anyone being disappointed with such an inspired, inventive picture.

With a protagonist like Tanner, whose snail-like pace of police work would bore anyone, Franco packs the movie with entertaining little details and characters that liven up the film without feeling extraneous. When Tanner returns to his office after a romantic trip with Wanda, the janitor’s cat has taken up residence in his office. An enthusiastic female eyewitness pops in to give her statement and can’t stop babbling. Later in the film, when sketches of Orlof and Morpho have been printed in the newspaper, a fame-hungry author bursts into Tanner’s office and proudly proclaims that he is the culprit, promising to write a book about his exploits. The best of these characters is Jean Rousseau (Venancio Muro), whose boozing always takes a backseat to his intelligence and wit; it’s lovely how Rousseau’s tips end up making him more valuable than Tanner’s disdainful right-hand man.

More importantly, the film is packed with interesting women, who feel real and developed even when their screen time is brief. Orlof looks down on them, because they’re harlots, but Franco gives each one a distinct and memorable personality. The viewer learns quite a bit about Dany (María Silva), Orloff’s first victim, just through her infectiously bubbly personality. Later, a different girl stumbles upon a dead body, but keeps her composure, realizing the killer might still be present. The main focus is Wanda, who practically takes over Tanner’s investigation, subtly keying him into important details (which Tanner assembles, and then basically ignores), then goes undercover without him in hopes of catching the killer herself. Lorys is wonderful in the role, more than capable of conveying self-confidence and fear at the same time.

Franco’s antagonists are also intriguing, adding another layer of complexity to the film. Vernon is perfect as Orlof, oozing class and sophistication as he wooes each woman into his trap, only for it to vanish into a state of cold emotionlessness once the victim is dead. Arne’s description of the person he used to be and his devotion to his daughter indicate that Orlof was once more than awful, but Vernon doesn’t play up any of that lost humanity, further emphasizing what he’s become. Although Morpho is behind most of the movie’s frightening moments, his physical handicap and life of servitude make him more sorrowful than aggressive.

Directorially, Franco is not showy, but the film has a specific signature all the same. In terms of the genre, he cribs from the best, with the looming shadows and gothic castle sets echoing the iconography of hundreds of classic horror movies, without being so specific as to pin down a single one. Elsewhere, Franco uses the cabaret and its dancers as a direct contrast to Dr. Orlof’s lair, with bright lights, a lively atmosphere, and lots of people to create the illusion of safety. Stand-out imagery includes Orlof’s eye caught in a beam of light reflecting off of a make-up mirror, and a shot of a diamond choker wrapped around a woman’s neck like a noose.

The DVD
The Awful Dr. Orlof arrives on DVD with Redemption’s standard cover style, complete with original Italian poster art. However, there are two different versions of this artwork — one may be more modern — and I prefer the other one, with more use of black-and-white and more defined lines. A minor, personal nitpick. The disc comes in a plastic-conserving eco-case (no holes), and there is no insert or booklet, just like the other two Franco titles in this wave.

The Video and AUdio
Framed at 1.66:1 anamorphic widescreen, this is a compromise of a transfer. As stated on the package, this was mastered from an archival 35mm print, not the original negative, so there is a considerable amount of wear and tear here. Nicks and scratches are common and constant, a vertical line or two is apparent, and the movie flickers throughout. However, the quality of the actual image taken from the print is excellent, with considerable detail apparent even amid other damage. Contrast is very nice, appearing accurate and balanced (something I can easily imagining not being true of older transfers of a film like this). Personally, print damage is not a big deal when considering the age of a film like this and the conditions it was stored under, so I rate this picture pretty highly, but those who are more sensitive to damage should be aware that this print is pretty worn. A Dolby Digital 2.0 track is clean and clear, without any distortion or popping / crackling that comes with the age of the film. An English 2.0 dub and English captions for the deaf and hard of hearing are also included.

The Extras
Kino has assembled a very nice package for Orlof on DVD. Three video featurettes are included. “The Horror of Orlof” (15:48) is a video interview with director / writer Jess Franco. This is a very nice little overview of how Franco very suddenly found himself making Orlof when another project fell through, his inspiration (Hammer!), the ideas he wanted to convey, the casting of Howard Vernon, and much more. Very enjoyable. Although the interview is in English, yellow subtitles are provided, to counter Franco’s thick accent and the poor sound quality. “The Young Dr. Orlof Chronicles” (18:41) makes for a strong companion piece, filling in the story of the film’s production with comments from several film historians, as well as the son of one of the producers. Considering the participants, it shouldn’t be too surprising to hear that this piece considers the context of Dr. Orlof among other films of the period and in Franco’s body of work. Finally, “Jess! What Are You Doing Now” (8:24) is a little tribute to the late director, with the same participants from the previous featurette commenting on what Franco is up to in the afterlife.

Under the set-up menu, there is also an audio commentary by Tim Lucas, editor of Video Watchdog and co-author of Obsession: The Films of Jess Franco. Lucas is a veritable wealth of information on not just the general history of the film, but all sorts of details about the characters, the script, the various cuts of the film, the genre, and of course, Franco, pointing out a number of connections between Orlof and Franco’s other work. This is a great track for film fans — Lucas is a true expert. The disc rounds out with a photo gallery, and a series of original theatrical trailers

Conclusion
The Awful Dr. Orlof is a minor gem, filled with all sorts of clever ideas, fully signifying Jess Franco’s arrival as a horror director of note. Kino’s DVD looks and sounds as good as can be expected, and is packed with wonderful bonus features. Highly recommended.

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