It will have taken slightly more than seven years, but before summer’s out all nine seasons of Perry Mason (1957-66) will at last be on DVD. (I do hope CBS/Paramount plan a release of the 26 later Perry Mason TV movies of 1985-1993, also starring Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale. Fans of the original series will surely want those, too.) By the 1965-66 season, the famous mystery/courtroom drama series starring Raymond Burr was quickly running out of steam after a whopping 250-plus episodes, of which Perry famously won them all. (Well, he sort of lost once, but that was a minor setback in the big scheme of things.)

The series, which had been the No. 5 prime-time series during Perry‘s fifth year, was not even in the top 30 during seasons eight and nine. Yet Perry Mason chugged along just the same, with no discernable drop in its (by television standards) quite lavish production values or top-flight guest stars. Like the later Batman, Perry Mason was, it seems, a show virtually everyone was eager to do, probably in part because of the camaraderie among Burr and his co-stars made it, by all accounts, a fun set.

But the show’s writing definitely suffered, or maybe Perry Mason was simply played out. In the second-half of its final year, there would be an all-color modern retelling of Oliver Twist, and another with Burr doing double duty as Perry’s doppelganger. The episodes included in Perry Mason – Final Season – Season 9, Volume 1 have its share of whoppers, too, including the series’ equivalent of Jet Pilot, with Perry battling commies in East Berlin.

Season 9, Volume 1, contains the first 15 episodes of the 1965-66 season, with “The Case of the Candy Queen,” and other cases involving Cheating Chancellors, Impetuous Imps, Carefree Coronaries, Baffling Bugs, and Bogus Buccaneers. (All Season 9, Volume 1 shows are new to DVD. None appeared on the compilation set from a few years back, Perry Mason – 50th Anniversary Edition.)

As noted in my sixteen (!) previous Perry Mason reviews, I’ve yet to see a truly terrible Perry Mason, though more than a few have put me to sleep. Nevertheless, the range between the best and worst episodes is so narrow I doubt even fans of the series could point to a particular favorite (or least-favorite) episode. That is, unless it was one of the very small handful of shows actually deviating from its established format. Though still fun, in this day of more sophisticated legal dramas like Law & Order, The Practice/Boston Legal, and Damages, watching the less believable and more formulaic Perry Mason requires a bit of an adjustment.

Really at the core of Perry Mason‘s appeal is its cast, and that’s hardly changed at all. Besides ingenious, resourceful Perry Mason (Burr), the famous Los Angeles attorney who never loses a case, there’s Perry’s loyal, tireless personal secretary, Della Street (Barbara Hale), and their worldly, slightly cynical pal/colleague, P.I. Paul Drake (William Hopper). Cases usually have them up against easily aggravated, perennial loser D.A. Hamilton Burger (William Talman).

Ray Collins, as doggedly determined Lt. Tragg, was ailing and absent from most of the later-season shows, and died during the summer reruns of 1965. Actor Wesley Lau stepped in to replace him, but without explanation for this final season Lau was himself replaced, this time by actor Richard Anderson. Anderson, later Oscar Goldman on both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman and who’d guest-starred on several Perry Masons prior to this, is introduced as Lt. Steve Drumm in the season-opener, “The Case of the Laughing Lady.”

Essentially a mystery show with a courtroom setting for its climax, Perry Mason‘s single flaw is that as a mystery it doesn’t really play fair with its audience, though the same could be said for B-movie mysteries of the 1930s and ’40s, radio mystery shows, and virtually all other TV whodunits. Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot (to name two examples) faced seemingly irresolvable cases with bizarre, inexplicable clues, yet the solutions were always quite simple and logical. The great literary detectives simply had powers of observation lost on us mere mortals, even though we’re armed with the same information as those protagonists.

On the other hand, Perry Mason, the Charlie Chan movies, Murder, She Wrote, etc. operate under a different set of rules. The resolutions to the mysteries don’t always make sense and audiences often don’t have access to the same clues the protagonists do, and they often leap to conclusions and solve crimes in ways that don’t hold up to scrutiny. Instead, these kinds of movies, TV and radio shows rely heavily on atmosphere, characterization and star power to entertain their audiences. One might guess who the real murderer is, but in most cases you won’t be able to solve the mystery on your own.

Fortunately Burr, Hale, and Hopper are just wonderful in their roles. Apparently they became close friends in real life, and this camaraderie very much extends to their scenes together on the show. They liked to joke around, and at least one of these is visible to sharp-eyed viewers. Apparently over the course of the show’s run the three would occasionally make little changes to the abstract painting in Perry’s office. I’ve never compared the painting from the first show to its appearance in the last episode of the series, but supposedly it changes quite a bit over time.

About the middle of season two, Talman’s Hamilton Burger started getting more shading, a welcome addition. Often regarded as television’s most thankless role, Hamilton Burger this season still is Perry’s weekly nemesis but now he’s more affable outside the courtroom and flexible in, especially when new evidence casts a shadow of a doubt over the guilt of Perry’s client.

As a series, Perry Mason‘s decline is most evident in episodes like “The Case of the Fraudulent Fraulein,” an absurd show that has Perry negotiating for the release of an expatriate German’s heretofore unknown granddaughter. (Chameleon Jeanette Nolan affects a flawless German accent as his wife.) Partly inspired by the mid-‘60s spy craze, the episode instead mostly recalls the hysterical anticommunist movies of the late 1940s and early ‘50s, particularly during its climax, set in a nightmarishly foreboding, utilitarian courtroom emblematic of those earlier movies.

Guest stars in this set include Constance Towers, John Abbott, Bernard Fox, Allison Hayes (in one of her last roles), Julie Adams, Jesse White, Ford Rainey, Nan Martin, Nora Marlowe, John Archer, Kitty Kelly, Louise Latham, Barry Atwater, Peter Hobbs, Lee Meriwether, Stu Erwin, Richard Webb, Michael Fox, Rand Brooks, Robert Emhardt, Bruce Bennett, White Bissell, David Lewis, Dan Seymour, William Woodson, Noah Beery Jr., K.T. Stevens, Hugh Marlowe, Cathy Downs, Strother Martin, Robert Colbert, Mona Freeman, Bill Williams, Karl Swenson, Robert Quarry, Roy Roberts, Tommy Farrell, Sue England, Jeanne Bal, Gene Lyons (Burr’s later Ironside co-star), Walter Brooke, Robert Easton, Anthony Caruso, Michael Constantine, Gavin MacLeod, Robert H. Harris, Paul Winfield, Skip Homeier, Virginia Gregg, Cyril Delevanti, Susan Cramer, Jeanette Nolan, Kevin Hagen (who’d marry Cramer soon after their appearance together), Grant Williams, Dee Hartford, Victoria Vetri (future Hammer ingénue), Paula Stewart, Bruce Glover, Rhodes Reason, Patricia Cutts, Richard Jaeckel, Leonard Stone, and Meg Wylie.

Willis Bouchey, S. John Launer, Kenneth MacDonald, John Gallaudet, and Grandon Rhodes are back as judges, with Frank Biro, William Keene, Byron Morrow, Stacey Keach, Sr. new to the bench.

Video & Audio

　 CBS DVD’s Perry Mason – Final Season – Season 9, Volume 1 presents 15 terrific-looking episodes spread over four single-sided, dual-layered DVDs. The black and white full-frame image is very sharp and detailed with strong blacks. The Dolby Digital English mono is generally quite good, too, and English SDH subtitles are offered. Episodes are not time-compressed, with some running up to 52 minutes. The music does not appear to have been altered, though the usual disclaimer warns, “some episodes may have been edited from their original network versions.” If so, I didn’t notice any obvious changes.

Extra Features

None

Parting Thoughts

Once again, Perry Mason‘s half-season sets continue at a brisk pace, and with high quality transfers always. It’s a fun show and if you’ve been buying them all along you won’t be disappointed here. Highly Recommended.

　

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes film history books, DVD and Blu-ray audio commentaries and special features. Visit Stuart’s Cine Blogarama here.

The Movie:

Long before the Elimination Chamber or Hell in a Cell, professional wrestling fans had War Games. While all three were variations of the steel cage match, when two wrestlers would be put in a ring with 20 feet of chain link fencing surrounding and dwarfing the ring, War Games was the double mint gum of steel cage matches. Two rings, two cages, and a ceiling of mesh to cover it at the time of its 1987 debut was surprising and the match itself added an additional element of brutality, and served as a good blow off (or final) match for hotly contested rivalries. To sum up the rules of a War Games match, within the two cages, two teams of 4-5 wrestlers would fight, starting as one man from each team and then a new member would enter every 2 minutes. The blood spilled was ample, as was the broken bones suffered in the match as we find out later on. And while WCW and War Games is no more, thankfully this production remains.

When World Wrestling Entertainment acquired the World Championship Wrestling library, they acquired the War Games library as well, and this set of matches is another in a long line of WWE-produced releases of WCW/National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) content. The feature is “hosted” by Dusty Rhodes, who was the NWA booker and created the idea of War Games for the organization. He discusses his inspirations for the idea and some of the early days of the match creation and its impact on the NWA, and some of the anecdotes on the times it was taken on the road in various locales. In between the interview segments, the War Games matches are sprinkled throughout the interviews and recollections, and spans over three discs.

As is the case with similar retrospective looks at matches in other territories from previous eras, it appears to be formidable, and the list is as follows:

The Road Warriors, Dusty Rhodes, Nikita Koloff & Paul Ellering vs. Ric Flair, Lex Luger, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard & J.J. Dillon (Great American Bash – July 4, 1987) The Road Warriors, Dusty Rhodes, Nikita Koloff & Paul Ellering vs. Ric Flair, Lex Luger, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard & The War Machine(Great American Bash – July 31, 1987) The Road Warriors, “Dr. Death” Steve Williams, Ron Garvin & Jimmy Garvin vs. Kevin Sullivan, Mike Rotunda, Al Perez, Russian Assassin & Ivan Koloff (Great American Bash – July 10, 1988) Dusty Rhodes, Lex Luger, Nikita Koloff, “Dr. Death” Steve Williams & Paul Ellering vs. Ric Flair, Barry Windham, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard & J.J. Dillon (Great American Bash – July 16, 1988) The Road Warriors, The Midnight Express & “Dr. Death” Steve Williams vs. The Fabulous Freebirds & The Samoan Swat Team (Great American Bash – July 23, 1989) Ric Flair, Sid Vicious, Barry Windham & Larry Zbysko vs. Sting, Brian Pillman & The Steiner Brothers (Wrestlewar – February 24, 1991) Sting, Nikita Koloff, Dustin Rhodes, Ricky Steamboat & Barry Windham vs. Arn Anderson, Bobby Eaton, Steve Austin, Larry Zbysko & Rick Rude (Wrestlewar – May 17, 1992) Sting, Davey Boy Smith, Dustin Rhodes & The Shockmaster vs. Sid Vicious, Vader & Harlem Heat (Fall Brawl – September 19, 1993) Dusty Rhodes, Dustin Rhodes & The Nasty Boys vs. Terry Funk, Arn Anderson, Bunkhouse Buck & Colonel Robert Parker (Fall Brawl – September 18, 1994) Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Lex Luger & Sting vs. Kamala, The Zodiac, The Shark & Meng (Fall Brawl – September 17, 1995) “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash & A Mystery Partner vs. Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Lex Luger & Sting (Fall Brawl – September 15, 1996) Kevin Nash, Buff Bagwell, Syxx & Konnan vs. Ric Flair, Steve McMichael, Chris Benoit & Curt Hennig (Fall Brawl – September 14, 1997) Diamond Dallas Page, Rowdy Roddy Piper & The Warrior vs. “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan, Stevie Ray & Bret Hart vs. Kevin Nash, Sting & Lex Luger (Fall Brawl – September 13, 1998) Sting, Booker T, Goldberg & Kronik vs. Kevin Nash, Jeff Jarrett, Scott Steiner & The Harris Brothers (Monday Nitro – September 4, 2000)

Two things strike me as to this release, albeit in varying degrees. The first is the main element holding back this feature from a clear eyed, full hearted endorsement is that is seems myopic in its vision. Rhodes is the de facto host for the film, but he is also the only interview subject. The feature would easily have been better served by interviews with other participants. Granted, some of the subjects work in smaller organizations, left the WWE on bad terms or are unfortunately no longer with us. But the film could have been bolstered by interviews with say, Anderson and Blanchard, or even newer participants like Hart or Austin, who no doubt saw the rise in popularity in War Games and their desire to be part of it at some point. You don’t look back at an influential album from a band and interview one member, particularly if there are other members you can try to reach out to, can you

A more under the radar thing on this set is the inclusion of the 1997 match. Chris Benoit has been quietly swept under the WWE rug as a result of the murder suicide he committed in 2007, and his excision is akin to Voldemort, with his DVD set quickly made out of print, and his name not spoken unless by longtime friend or colleague. I understand the WWE’s decision to avoid any bad publicity by association, though they certainly could not have anticipated what happened in his life. Perhaps a lifting this self-imposed moratorium would help the match quality of peripheral DVD sets in the future, and if they have done it, more power to them.

All in all, War Games is a nice stroll down memory lane of one of WCW’s more popular match concepts, and by extension a nice stroll down WCW period, as the match became “safer” (the early ones were flat out bloodbaths) and sanitized to the point where they would even show up on televised shows. The one-dimensional, modest approach to looking at it tends to hamper it, but the first few matches in the series are amazing to watch again and that all of the War Games matches are included is nice to see on this set.

The Discs:
Video:

The set is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, but also juggles a large bit of full frame video from the old matches to boot. The older matches are in good condition, and there does not appear to be anything in the way of image processing that would deter anyone from watching the matches. Edge enhancement and image haloing is virtually nil, and there are moments of crushing, but those would appear to be inherent in the source. The discs look as good as they are going to look.

Audio:

Dolby Digital 5.1 for the newer things, and two-channel stereo for the older material. No substantial complaint, other than the final mix for the interview sounds low and one has to compensate accordingly for it. The matches sound clear and fine, with little in the way of hissing or chirps in the material, and the subwoofer/rear channels are dormant through virtually all three discs. Nothing real special here.

Extras:

Nothing to speak of.

Final Thoughts:

Going through three discs of matches in War Games is a nice palate cleanser to the blood-free matches that mostly occur these days. Watching the matches from the beginning to the early ‘90s made me feel like I needed a Coumadin prescription at the end of them. It would have been nice to see some more ingredients in the final mix, but as it stands it is a solid set worth checking out.

The brainchild of L.A. producers Squeak E. Clean (Sam Spiegel, brother of Spike Jonze) and DJ Zegon, N.A.S.A. is a hip-hop group with influences from all over the world. Their name stands for “North America South America,” representing the roots of the two producers, and to celebrate the release of their first album, The Spirit of Apollo, they taped the sessions that helped give birth to said album and released it under the same title. This hour-long peek behind-the-scenes is short but sweet, offering a light-hearted, exciting, first-hand look into the collaborative process of making the record, as well as showing off snippets of the beautiful animated music videos created for each song.

Work on the album began in 2004, five years before the finished disc would arrive in stores. Spiegel clearly lays out the shifting, bubbling nature of creativity, with each specific track and its guest stars forming over time. The spirit of collaboration and invention in the recording studio is actually infectious, with Spiegel himself serving as a great cheerleader for the whole process. He’s got no qualms or ego about his awe, hearing what some of his fellow artists are contributing to his project, and his palpable glee at seeing his dreams realized makes the doc fun to watch. Spiegel and Zegon talk about their music influences and what led them to choose each contributing artist, and the documentary is edited in a way that helps show how those pieces were put together.

The range of guest stars on the album is pretty wild. Although he is not interviewed, sending his tracks in digitally, David Byrne guests on a couple of tracks. Tom Waits adds his unique vocals to another. The RZA drops by the studio to lay down some backing vocals for Barbie Hatch, who expresses her admiration for Spiegel’s inspired thinking. Spiegel is at his most starstruck when funk legend George Clinton shows up to tell a few jokes and record, and he bends over backwards to meet Kanye West’s creative demands, flying to Hawaii in the home stretch. Other artists featured in the doc include M.I.A., Santigold, Chuck D, and KRS-One, all of whom offer a few tidbits about why they were interested in working with N.A.S.A. on the album.

The behind-the-scenes footage is also intercut with footage from a whole gallery of 12 animated music videos, covering most of the album’s 17 tracks. Although it’d be a little unfair to give Spiegel’s doc too much credit for the gorgeous style and incredible artwork in these videos, he does provide some behind-the-scenes footage of the making of the videos, and the documentary is stylistically integrated with these videos with the use of animated credits and other little touches of animation laid in throughout the footage. Spiegel also opens with some fun fake talk show footage, in which he also plays the cheesy host. Although this 60-minute piece feels like it belongs packaged with the album itself in some sort of deluxe set, this is a great look at the collaborative process of making music, and a document of Spiegel’s own boundless energy and creativity.

The DVD
N.A.S.A.: The Spirit of Apollo has fantastic, eye-popping cover art depicting two astronauts, armed with a boombox, with a couple of rap stereotypes (money, women) in front of them, as well as a goose. From the style to the color scheme, this is a DVD cover that grabs the attention and feels like it fits with the film, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I pulled this disc from the screener pool based on the artwork. This DVD-R release comes in a standard cheap-o Amaray case, and there is no insert.

The Video and Audio
It seems like this documentary was just a little bonus, or side project, in comparison to the album. With that in mind, it’s not really surprising that this 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation is pretty rough, with the distinct look of consumer-grade digital. The image quality is extremely soft and covered in artifacts and noise. Whites are sometimes burned out and sometimes well-balanced, and contrast varies as well. Aliasing is frequently visible. It looks poor, but no more than expected. I’m more distracted by the fact that a doc about an album being recorded is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0, but the audio sounds fantastic, with the songs easily offering enough dynamic range and spread to fool one into thinking they’re presented in full 5.1 surround sound. No subtitles or captions are provided, which is kind of frustrating on this kind of production, because there will always be audio that is less than optimal (at one point, the camera’s reverb function is clearly on). Usually, art-style subtitles will cover the most garbled sections, but disc-based captions would still be nice.

The Extras
I think there’s probably an argument to be made that the full lineup of music videos is part of the feature presentation, or even that the documentary is the extra and the videos are the feature, the disc sets them up as bonus features. It probably goes without saying that each and every one of them is absolutely worth checking out — hell, they might be worth the price of the disc alone.

Two other short extras are included: a series of animation tests (2:05), which are very close to the finished animations, and a reel of deleted scenes (8:46), which is actually just a single extended scene, featuring the full rant that appears in the end credits of the documentary.

Conclusion
Even if you’re not aware of N.A.S.A., this gem of a documentary should provide all the information you need to know. I can’t guarantee you’ll like the music (I did), but the doc itself is a great peek into the process of cutting an album, and into the things that drive Spiegel as an artist. Highly recommended.

Please check out my other DVDTalk DVD, Blu-Ray and theatrical reviews and/or follow me on Twitter.

The Season (Series):

Better known as one of the writer/producers behind Dexter and the Twilight film adaptations, Melissa Rosenberg decided to get her hands dirty with yet another series built on a previously-done concept: Red Widow, a fish-outta-water crime drama about a “soccer mom” caught in a world of drug-dealing, double-crossing and mob warfare, adapted from a Dutch series, Penoza. Striking while the iron’s hot after the likes of Revenge, The Mob Doctor, and Breaking Bad generated some demand for similar content, this ABC vehicle showed promise by roping in an under-appreciated genre actress, Radha Mitchell, as an earnest mother caught in a high-stakes, out-of-control criminal situation. Moral relativism involving a family’s history and the debts they’re forced to pay becomes crucial to whether the show’s intensity might work, as well as an intriguing villain pulling the strings. Despite having the tools at their disposal, however, Red Widow fizzles out as an exaggerated, taxing misfire that lacks the subtlety and genuineness to spin a proper web of intrigue.

In the very first episode, it’s clear that shock-value will play a large role in Red Widow: we see a young boy pull a gun on a bully at his school, and, later on, witness his father’s gunned-down body bleed out before his very eyes. And that’s far from the last of the shocks. That murdered man would be Evan Walraven (Anson Mount), a marijuana smuggler in San Francisco with a charter-boat business as his cover, who was targeted because his operation stole a wealth of cocaine from one of the bay area’s prominent “entrepreneurs”, Nicholae Schiller (Goran Visnjic). With the cocaine lost in the shuffle, the debt then passed on to his surviving family to repay, namely to his wife, Marta (Mitchell), also the daughter of a well-known crime figure in the Russian mob. Whether Marta’s able to compensate for the debt in other ways or not doesn’t really matter, though, because Schiller instead wants her services in the smuggling racket as repayment, forcing her into a world that’s entirely out of her element. A mother of three children, whose brother, Irwin (Wil Traval), is caught in Evan’s business just as deeply, must adapt and rely on intuition to appease Schiller.

The premise of a housewife getting thrown into drug importation and fear of the mob is intriguing, but the drawn-out drama built around Marta’s situation — and the truth behind who caused her husband’s trouble — instead makes Red Widow overstated and tonally heavy. Writer/producer Rosenberg and her team struggle with this from the get-go, revealing who’s really responsible for changing the Walraven/Petrov family’s status quo and leaving Marta to, in fact, work off a debt that she’s not exclusively responsible for. Everything builds on top of that “hidden” issue, from her brother facing criminal charges to a diligent, probing FBI agent (Clifton Collins Jr.) staked out in front of her home, and it transforms what could be a meaningful foundation for the story into one of confused emotional intentions, framing Evan the drug smuggler into a loving father who wasn’t all that bad. The show  uses gray-area morality to its advantage by emphasizing a man’s desire to provide a bountiful life for his wife and kids, sure, but from his children’s posthumous discovery of his profession to how Marta handles the ongoing provocation from Schiller, its purpose gets lost.

Red Widow focuses on the tension of a housewife awaiting and adapting to her new duties as an illegal importer under the threats of an ominous crime boss, while trying to sustain her life at home in the wake of tragedy and, somehow, figure out the truth of her husband’s death. While her charismatic ferocity and modest sincerity fit in with horror films like Rogue and Silent Hill and in dramas like Mozart and the Whale and The Children of Huang Shi, Radha Mitchell often goes too intense and animated to accentuate the nuance of Marta’s turmoil — both her family concerns and her awkwardness as a criminal. The show forces this idea of a synergy between maternal and criminal instincts as a view into her acclimation, a fight-or-flee response that taps into her family’s history and her strength as a mother, but Mitchell’s presence struggles to embody that in a convincing, empathetic manner. Thankfully, she’s dealing with a compelling “antagonist” in Schiller, given an intimidating, layered presence and grasp on morality by Goran Visnjic. Essentially, their chemistry make Marta’s situation and responses far more intriguing than they should be, though it can’t justify why Schiller would continue to tolerate her unreliability in business deals.

What’s really frustrating about Red Widow are the foolish decisions the characters make that lead to the show’s cliche escalation of thrills and twists. From greedy, vindictive criminals to those caught in the chaos who are desperate for passion and instant gratification, the cast of personas here — few of whom are likable — play fast and loose with the situation in unlikely ways, giving it a soap-opera touch as bloated arguments ensue over poor choices. Schiller incorporating a housewife into a key role in his illegal, nerve-rattling business seems insignificant in comparison to the renegade  thievery, the taboo kisses in broad daylight, and the mentioning of sensitive information that occurs when the plot needs a beat. Frenzied performances and assertive music manufacture some tension on the surface — it’s a polished, clear-headed show on a technical level — yet a lack of common sense in what happens left me puzzled instead of wanting to know what’ll happen next. It plays like a guilty pleasure without the pleasure, where its solemn premise hinders whatever degree of indulgence it could muster.

Logic be damned, Red Widow commendably sticks it out through eight episodes of insistent tension built around Marta’s investigation and transformation into a “solver of problems”, following a chain of plot twists and revelations that, perhaps, would’ve been better spread out had the series received a longer lifespan. Instead, Melissa Rosenberg and her team tread a lot of ground as the plot quickly unravels, from predictable notes about how mob life impacts Marta’s family — namely her “business”-interested son, Gabriel — to some wilder bends in the road; flipped allegiances, red herrings, and impromptu deaths at least make the shock-value rush to the finish a fast-moving one. While the finale still leaves a few expected loose threads and closes on a cliffhanger of sorts, it does reach a semi-conclusive point in the overarching story, with an emphasis on emotional catharsis for the family and the mystery behind Evan’s death. Those drawn into the premise will land on enough of an end to justify the ride, I guess, but that doesn’t stop Red Widow from getting tangled in its own lack of sensibility.

The DVD:

 

Video and Audio:

While cancelled shows like Red Widow might not offer a lucrative-enough opportunity for a Blu-ray release, ABC/Disney’s DVD-only presentations — as seen with Revenge — have developed a reputation for typically being good enough to make those watching mostly forget about the lack of a HD treatment. This is another example: each disc holds four (4) 1.78:1-framed episodes that total nearly three hours of content, and they’re all exceptional in terms of their color palette, contrast, and detail clarity. Granted, the digitally-shot show lends itself to impressive visuals, with warm colors and tight close-ups, but the digital sturdiness and the appealing robustness of the photography come together into a rather impressive treatment. Skin tones are balanced and very fleshy, foliage and skies in exterior sequences are exceptionally robust, and darker nighttime sequences exhibit sturdy, deep black levels. There are moments where mosquito noise and garbled details in background present a few problems if blown up on a larger screen, but overall it’s quite nice.

Each episode also boasts a weighty 5-channel Dolby Digital track that makes the most of the sound design wherever it’s possible, though Red Widow does focus quite a bit of front-loaded dialogue. Clarity, then, becomes the chief element to enjoy in the treatment, and it’s … decent. There are some instances where dialogue becomes muffled, hollow, and coarse, yet other times exhibit very, very clear delivery with plenty of awareness of the environment. It’s never inaudible to a point where , but there are enough instances of patchiness for it to be noticeable. Certain effects do occasionally travel from the rear speakers to the front for an atmospheric effect, though, and the power of the score commands quite a presence that fills the surround space. Aggressive sound elements do arise, from fistfights to gun shots, and they’re typically supported by fine mid-range clarity and lower-frequency buoyancy. Overall, it’s an unexceptional but appropriate treatment that handles the nuance and assertiveness of the tracks well enough. Subtitles are available in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese alongside the sole English language option.

Special Features:

Outside of a series of eight Deleted Scenes (16×9) — a few of which actually felt pertinent enough to the plot that they should’ve been included — and some Bloopers (3:42, 16×9), the only substantial special feature available here is Red Widow: The Journey (13:47), which offers a glimpse into the creative and production process of assembling an episode of the series. Melissa Rosenberg offers her insights as a producer as she leads the brainstorm meeting for the season’s finale, revealing how they collaborate on ideas and deal with conflicts. She then shifts into how they coordinate with the actual studio in Vancouver (they use Skype for meetings!) before she sets off to do her thing on the set for the finale. Behind-the-scenes shots capture certain on-location scenes, as well as how they create the illusion of a boat out to see and how some of the actors got into their headspaces. And yeah, the piece certainly has a “this ended abruptly” vibe to it.

Final Thoughts:

Red Widow has the components at its disposal to work as an emotional, tense thriller about a mother who gets pulled into world of organized crime to get rid of her drug-smuggling husband’s post-mortem debt. A capable lead in Radha Mitchell and a compelling antagonist in Goran Visnjic’s Schiller could’ve progressed into an extended narrative based on their rapport and the moral gray-area where they tread. Unfortunately, the intentions behind Marta Walraven’s search for closure and forced obligation to a crime lord are undermined by the writing’s lack of finesse and believability, as well as an inability to properly harness Mitchell’s talents as the focal mother. What instead comes out of Red Widow‘s first and only season is a trite, overblown, yet ultimately watchable crescendo of suspense that can’t quite grasp what it sets out to do as a drama about the mob, the family bond, and the transition between parental instinct and street savvy. Rent It.

Thomas Spurlin, Staff Reviewer — DVDTalk Reviews | Personal Blog/Site

THE FILM 

The great British director Alan Clarke was an incidental, better-late-than-never discovery for this reviewer: I unfortunately had never heard of him until 2003, when Gus Van Sant’s Elephant — the languorously and objectively-told story of a horrific school shooting — was released, and Van Sant, in interviews published around that time, attributed the cryptic title of his film (a reference to a taboo-subject “elephant in the room” that recent events show is still very much with us) to Clarke’s use of the same title for a 1989 TV film, whose own version of an elephant in the room was the ever-escalating, violent “troubles” in Northern Ireland. A new look at an earlier Clarke film now being released to DVD, 1979’s Scum, reveals that the violence in Belfast wasn’t the first long-trunked mammal in the British Isles’ room that Clarke had set his sights on, and nor was Elephant his only work to display the formally rigorous, fluid, unblinkingly observant style that was so clear and primary an influence on Van Sant’s film. Scum caused a great deal of controversy in its time; the theatrical film was a nose-thumbing to the BBC, which had banned a separate but near-identical version also made by Clarke (from the same initial script by TV veteran Roy Minton), for broadcast two years earlier, and as an unsparing, highly critical exposé of the systematic treatment of the UK’s juvenile delinquents, it was intentionally inflammatory. But although Kino’s new North American re-distribution of the restored film is a gift, their newly-created packaging trumpeting it as a quasi-exploitative “cult classic” is a bit disingenuous; Scum‘s cool formalism and narrative symmetries actually put it more in the tough but thought-provoking league of something like A Clockwork Orange, and in certain respects it’s even more rigorous and clear-headed in its probing of governmental mishandling of the youth-criminal problem than Kubrick’s more easily (and surely more often) misunderstood film.

The pretext for Clarke’s and Minton’s bringing us into the borstals’ progressive circles of hell is the transfer of Carlin (Ray Winstone, Hugo‘s Uncle Claude, star of Quadrophenia, and a longstanding British Method Actor of the Tim Roth school), a miscreant with a reputation for elbowing his way to the top of the hierarchy in whatever group or toughs the system places him among. It’s because Carlin had become too dominant at his old delinquent hall that he’s being transferred to the particular institution that provides the film’s sole location, where he will have to start at the bottom. On his ruthlessly violent way back up, Carlin meets, among other various specimens, the more subtly and effectively deviant Archer (Mick Ford), who uses ostensible vegetarianism and planned conversion to Islam to get under the administration’s skin; the too-innocent and vulnerable Davis (Julian Firth), who as the weakest comes in for the most unspeakable violation and refusal of official sympathy; and Toyne (Herbert Norville), a black inmate driven insane by the literally institutionalized racism, not in the more jeering or violent forms it takes, but when the infantilizing, condescending attitude of the hypocritical borstal “matron”/counselor (Jo Kendall) reveals itself as she sardonically assumes a letter informing him about the death of his wife merely regards the passing of a family pet.

It’s only on the surface, however, that Clarke and Minton concern themselves with the rise to power of Carlin the charismatic, violent rebel. The narrative’s real purpose is to dissect all the diseased components of the juvenile-justice system, where the corrosive aura of dread and violence is circulated from the head/control center throughout the entire organism (the prim claim of the strict, religious, deluded old Governor/headmaster (Peter Howell) that “there is no violence here” is the film’s only laugh-out-loud line, coming as it does after we’ve seen the brutal physical and emotional violence inflicted by all the administrators and guards, and actively encouraged between the boys, as in one salient scene in which a race-baiting coach whips a tense dodgeball game into a black-vs.-white free-for-all fistfight). Through the film’s pressure-cooker structure, we see unmistakably, in unrelentingly realist (though not exactly “documentary”) terms, how the system, far from rehabilitating or even effectively punishing the boys, is a self-perpetuating monster that breeds, through regimented racism, humiliation, sadism, and nonstop punitive violence, much worse than the misguided youths that it’s pulled into its inescapable vortex. The toughest, like Carlin, are in cahoots with the equally amoral and unethical housemasters and guards; it’s only by chance that one group of thugs is the prisoner and the others are the enforcers, and punishment and neglect are generously but very carefully meted out in a seemingly indestructible pecking order that masterfully manipulates, divides, and conquers everyone within it, and whose every brutal step is followed in detail by Clarke’s camera; even the exhilarating final eruption of violence by the youths against their guards, a unified riot after the injustice becomes too much, is not the release it might seem, but just another excuse for the corrupt arms of the law o clamp the lid down even more tightly on their ultimately helpless charges (victims you will consider that possibility as you witness the film’s events) in the film’s razor-sharp, galvanizing conclusion.

Though he used it somewhat differently, to less scathing and more openly humanistic ends, the aesthetic strategy Van Sant was inspired to borrow from Clarke (and it is inspiring) is one of cool, unblinking apparent objectivity — a very precise but unemphatic way of framing and moving the camera that, while far from the rawness or spontaneity of real documentary footage, makes everything seem inevitable, claustrophobic (which, as a powerful paradox, creates an urgency to intervene in the nightmare playing out onscreen, even though we can’t). The borstal is an isolated vacuum, a cage/maze-like world unto itself, and Clarke (along with cinematographer Phil Meheux) brilliantly exploit that through regimented, symmetrical compositions; ice-cold, fluorescent-quality lighting inside and out (the film takes place in the winter) that seems perfectly natural in this context; and impressively choreographed, unbroken takes that let us see, feel, and experience not just the real-time immediacy of actions playing out in their entirety, but the awful possibilities and circumscribed physical limitations of this circumscribed space. Its vintage, subject matter, style, and even intentions practically beg the aforementioned comparison to A Clockwork Orange, but Scum is just as much of a contrast/opposite number; if Scum is less dazzling — more stylish than stylized — than Kubrick’s great provocation, it also runs less risk of being mistaken for snark or facileness. Its conclusion, an angering, literally bruised and bloodied, disheartened defeat, lacks any note of triumphalism and lets the onus rest squarely on us, and if Kubrick’s film openly codes itself as allegory, Scum is perhaps more relevant and applicable on more levels, equally effective as a cry of rage against this particular institution and an astute contemplation of the insidiousness of institutions — i.e., the organization of societal power relations — in general; its implacable surface never gives the game away, but a great deal of the film’s continued power to disturb and awaken comes from how recognizable, from “normal” society, is the organization and hierarchy of the abysmal borstal. Taken as that kind of allegory, one very possible but never overdetermined reading, it’s supremely restrained and subtle. Clarke doesn’t have to sledgehammer it home or have anyone in the film say it, because what he so skillfully shows us says it all: We meet and get to know the enemy, the various “monsters,” in Scum — the enraged, impotent, and/or corruptible delinquent underlings, the pettily but brutally sadistic overlords, and the deluded/detached masters of it all — and the way they are, the way they’ve hinged their relations on aggression, violent conquest, mutual suspicion/exclusion, and punitive hierarchy, bears a chilling resemblance to us.

 

THE DVD
Video:

The transfer, made from a 2012 restoration and presenting the film at its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.66:1, gets high marks: The film’s particular, unusually cool qualities of light and color are rendered solidly, vividly, and vibrantly; the lion’s share of celluloid-like texture and grain has been left intact for the appropriately cinematic look; and there’s virtually nothing in the way of aliasing, edge enhancement, or other compression artifacts.

Sound:

With an option of either Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo or Dolby Digital 5.1 surround tracks (either one equally high in quality, though the 2.0 sounds more natural, basically double-channeling the film’s original mono sound), the film’s sound as presented here is entirely up to snuff; everything from dialogue to the din of rioting to the slamming of those borstal doors is quite clear, resonant, and multi-layered, with no distortion, imbalance, or other audio flaws noted.

Extras:

—Feature audio commentary with star Ray Winstone, in which the actor is, as one might expect, very affable and down-to-earth (to the point of being blunt, though not unkind, about the experience of working with his late director/mentor, Alan Clarke, not once but two times on the two different versions of Scum. Equal credit should go to interviewer/critic Nigel Floyd, who helps keep the occasionally unfocused Winstone on track as the film goes by.

—“Cast memories” (16 min.), in which actors Phil Daniels, David Thelful (who only appeared in the banned 1977 TV version), Mick Ford (who played Thelful’s character from ’77 in the ’79 version seen here), and Julian Firth offer their recollections of making Scum and their opinions about its effectiveness as art and as social commentary.

–A handful of more recent interviews with various people involved in the film (totalling approximately 45 min.), including a conversation between producer Clive Parsons and writer Roy Minton, evidently from a 1999 home-video release, as well as separate 2005 interviews with Parsons (along with co-producer Davina Belling), Minton, and executive producer Don Boyd. Together, these reminiscences offer a prismatic (and occasionally even contradictory, as different participants remember events in different ways) view of the unusual path Scum took from TV to the censors to the big screen, through its production, reception, and continuing relevance.

–Both the censored and uncensored original theatrical trailers for the film, strange, forebodingly-narrated curiosities understandably but disproportionately dependent upon the “scandal” of Scum‘s outright banning in its TV version and its X rating as a remade theatrical release.

 

 

FINAL THOUGHTSA poker-faced, unblinking look at Britain’s system of borstals (juvenile-delinquent residences for criminal boys), Alan Clarke’s Scum — a 1979 feature remade after Clarke’s near-identical TV version had been banned two years earlier — must have been a mighty effective, inflammatory act of social protest in its day: Its depiction of the dehumanizing, crime-breeding, violent hothouse of the borstals, glimpsed as we follow the stint served by the tough, ambitious transfer Carlin (Ray Winstone), brutal, ugly, and damning. But the film’s impact hasn’t been lessened by temporal distance from its immediate social context; Clarke’s formal rigor and screenwriter Roy Minton’s laser-focused narrative — a veritable encyclopedia of the humiliation, pecking-order hierarchy, and amorality of the juvenile detention system — create a sort of vacuum-world, a closed-off arena that’s both accurate/realistic and a ripe opportunity to study the nature of human institutions and social organization themselves in stark, microcosmic, deeply disturbing terms. The film is, effectively, a cool, unsparing mirror held up by the filmmakers, showing us something all too troublingly recognizable, for a picture that, while it subtly affects us via its stoic, utterly unsentimental empathy, also chills in a way that rivals any horror movie. Highly Recommended.