Charles Bronson on Blu-ray

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by drush9999

If you're region free and can handle 50hz with your setup, there's a nice looking 1080i release from Italy. Even has English subs for the Italian only segments.

Thanks, I already have it. But I'd prefer a U.S. release, as it's a darn good movie!

[DMRI2006]

Originally Posted by seagal

Don´t buy this blu-ray because according to some Germans the picture quality has VHS level.

https://www.amazon.de/Captain-Seewol...1MAA7993QA3CXS

I had already preordered it and received it yesterday. Truly looks like it was mastered off Youtube or at the worst a VHS tape.

Even better? It's on a burned BD-R disc that barely takes up half the space.

The Amazon.de system gave me a refund automatically and I didn't have to ship it back -- suffice to say, a MUST TO AVOID.

[Tom Sharky]

Alright, it's that time of year: Dirty Santa/White Elephant time at work places all over the country (and I assume all over the world as well) and I am tempted to give a lesser Bronson release as a Dirty Santa present.

So, below is a list of probably less-desirable Bronson movies. How would you rank these movies going from the best (or least bad) to the absolute worst?

CaboBlanco
Murphy's Law
Assassination
Messenger of Death
Kinjite

[Tom Sharky]

Originally Posted by Aclea

There are so many bad reasons to see films that seeing CaboBlanco simply because it has one of Jerry Goldsmith's most obscure scores doesn't seem quite such a stupid one, especially since the score is pretty good. Although it never matches its magnificent Ravelesque opening, let alone the extraordinary work Goldsmith was doing at the same period (Star Trek, The Boys From Brazil, The First Great Train Robbery, Magic, The Swarm, Masada, Poltergeist), it's another case of a composer being inspired by a bad film to turn out a good score that's still head and shoulders over 99% of film scoring today.

The film itself is certainly an oddity, an attempt to do a Casablanca in post-war Peru, but Charles Bronson, Dominique Sanda, Simon MacCorkindale, Fernando Rey and Jason Robards were never likely to offer much competition to Bogie, Bergman, Heinreid, Rains and Veidt even had the script been better. (There's no Dooley Wilson or As Time Goes By, but Nat King Cole is playing on the jukebox singing The Very Thought of You.) Sanda in particular, as usual in her English language work, is so staggeringly awful you half-expect her to bump into the furniture, although she gets strong competition from MacCorkindale in the who-can-give-the-worse-performance stakes, but an easygoing Bronson at least is good value.

Feeling more like one of RKO's mid 50s SuperScope South of the Border treasure hunt movies than anything from Warner Bros.' golden age, the film at times shows the scars of last-minute editing, jumping into some scenes apparently midway while some characters are never introduced properly (prominently billed Clifton James never appears at all), and the ending - involving a parrot, a secret code, a stuck record on a jukebox and a cyanide pill - is one of the most absurd endings in screen history. Still, there's some fluid and impressively composed Scope camerawork and the scenery's nice, although this is the shorter version of the film. It's an unlikely candidate for restoration and Kino couldn't find the longer version that originally played in France, so this is probably the best we'll get.

The Region A-locked US Blu-ray from Kino Lorber isn't going to knock anyone out with the picture quality, which is pretty much decent DVD quality (though still leaps and bounds ahead of the non-German Public domain DVD releases) and has the same problematic soundtrack as the German BD/DVD release. It carries over the same extras from the German edition (trailer, 25-minute making of) and adds one of Paul Talbot's everything you could ever want to know about a Charles Bronson film and more commentaries and an entertaining and frank interview with producer Lance Hool that covers its lavish sales pitch at Cannes, development and brief flirtations with the project from Paul Newman and an ailing Steve McQueen before Charles Bronson got involved after his agent got his own son added to the film as co-producer, to the film's horrendously botched under the radar release and resulting lawsuits.

So, I looked on the Cabo Blanco IMDB page and the original release schedule has a large gap of almost a year in between it's release in some European countries and when it was released in the U.S., Mexico, Japan and certain other countries.

I assume that the more than 1 year delay in it's release in the U.S. (compared to the earliest release date - 1/23/80 in France) was due to either lawsuits or possibly due to re-editing the film after poor reviews? I have considered the latter as a possibility, since some had mentioned that a longer cut of CaboBlanco was shown in Europe. It could also explain why a previous poster mentioned seeing ads in magazines for CaboBlanco for more than a year before it's release.

Release schedule:

France: January 23, 1980
Portugal: February 28, 1980
Netherlands: March 13, 1980
Finland: March 14, 1980
Denmark: April 18, 1980
Turkey: September 22, 1980
Japan: January 24, 1981
USA: February 1, 1981
Norway:February 20, 1981
Mexico: August 20, 1981
Australia: November 19, 1981
West Germany: October 14, 1983

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080485...?ref_=tt_dt_dt

[seagal]

Originally Posted by Tom Sharky

Alright, it's that time of year: Dirty Santa/White Elephant time at work places all over the country (and I assume all over the world as well) and I am tempted to give a lesser Bronson release as a Dirty Santa present.

So, below is a list of probably less-desirable Bronson movies. How would you rank these movies going from the best (or least bad) to the absolute worst?

CaboBlanco
Murphy's Law
Assassination
Messenger of Death
Kinjite

Best: Murphy´s Law

Worst: CaboBlanco

[drush9999]

^ Same as me

Murphy's Law
Messenger of Death
Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects
Assassination
CaboBlanco

[seagal]

Originally Posted by drush9999

^ Same as me

Murphy's Law
Messenger of Death
Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects
Assassination
CaboBlanco

But not 100%

"Assassination" is nr.2 to me. I found it much more entertaining than "Messenger of Death" and "Kinjite".

It´s strange that "Assassination" had the same theme music as the Norris classic "Invasion USA" while the Norris film was shot first.

[Franz Propp]

Originally Posted by Tom Sharky

Alright, it's that time of year: Dirty Santa/White Elephant time at work places all over the country (and I assume all over the world as well) and I am tempted to give a lesser Bronson release as a Dirty Santa present.

So, below is a list of probably less-desirable Bronson movies. How would you rank these movies going from the best (or least bad) to the absolute worst?

CaboBlanco
Murphy's Law
Assassination
Messenger of Death
Kinjite

Murphy's Law
Assassination
Messenger of Death
Kinjite
CaboBlanco

[sb5]

Murphy’s Law
Kinjite
Messenger of Death
Assassination
CaboBlanco

Feel like Murphy’s Law doesn’t quite belong on the list of “less desirable”. I always liked it and thought it was one of his better Cannon movies. Probably depends on how you feel about Kathleen Wilhoite.

[Crimson King]

Can anyone comment on the quality of Mill Creeks "Man With a Camera" DVD set?
That show had some cool guest stars!
I believe it was Bronson's only TV series as the main star.

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by Tom Sharky

So, I looked on the Cabo Blanco IMDB page and the original release schedule has a large gap of almost a year in between it's release in some European countries and when it was released in the U.S., Mexico, Japan and certain other countries.

I assume that the more than 1 year delay in it's release in the U.S. (compared to the earliest release date - 1/23/80 in France) was due to either lawsuits or possibly due to re-editing the film after poor reviews? I have considered the latter as a possibility, since some had mentioned that a longer cut of CaboBlanco was shown in Europe. It could also explain why a previous poster mentioned seeing ads in magazines for CaboBlanco for more than a year before it's release.

It's gone into in some detail in the interviews and commentary. The film was heavily advertised in the trades at film markets for a year to drum up financing and distribution pre-sales before there was even a script but the producers fell out over a US distribution deal with Warner Bros. that ended in ruinous lawsuits. By the time they were resolved the film had come and gone in France and was re-edited so Clifton James role as a would-be property developer was cut. The shorter version was barely distributed, with many international distributors like Lew Grade's ITC dropping their option on the film, but the longer French cut couldn't be located.

[mja345]

FYI, "Donato and Daughter" is available on BD from Germany. I got it in today. Not sure if that's been brought up in this thread.

Of the five films mentioned above, I put them in different categories. "Murphy's Law" and "Kinjite" are both entertaining pieces of sleaze, so they're 1 and 2 for me. "Messenger of Death" is kind of a standard Bronson actioner that could have used more sleaze, but it's number 3. "Assassination" is watered-down PG-13 Bronson, so it is easily #4. And "Cabo Blanco" is just relentlessly dull, a total misfire and one of Bronson's worst IMO, so it goes #5 comfortably.

[GKintz]

If it's been mentioned somewhere in the 51 pages already, apologies, but looking at the first page, noticed that MISS SADIE THOMPSON (1954) wasn't listed.

The very young Charles Buchinsky plays a good quasi-supporting role with the ever lovely Rita Hayworth.

This had a nice 3-D bluray release a few years back.

[gates70]

Originally Posted by GKintz

If it's been mentioned somewhere in the 51 pages already, apologies, but looking at the first page, noticed that MISS SADIE THOMPSON (1954) wasn't listed.

The very young Charles Buchinsky plays a good quasi-supporting role with the ever lovely Rita Hayworth.

This had a nice 3-D bluray release a few years back.

Never seen it, so how much screen time does he have in that? I would imagine not much?

[Markgway]

Kinjite - the last decent Bronson movie, sleazy and violent, with Charlie improperly using a dildo on a suspect!

Messenger of Death - I actually found this quite interesting, although most think it's boring. The finale is a damp squib, though.

Murphy's Law - OK thriller, but Kathleen Wilhoite is annoying as f**k.

Assassination - Bronson does comedy. Not as bad as it sounds. Violent for a PG-13 - some bugger gets shot in the face!

CaboBlanco - I don't remember much about this. Pretty bland, methinks.

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by Markgway

Kinjite - the last decent Bronson movie, sleazy and violent, with Charlie improperly using a dildo on a suspect!

Messenger of Death - I actually found this quite interesting, although most think it's boring. The finale is a damp squib, though.

Murphy's Law - OK thriller, but Kathleen Wilhoite is annoying as f**k.

Assassination - Bronson does comedy. Not as bad as it sounds. Violent for a PG-13 - some bugger gets shot in the face!

CaboBlanco - I don't remember much about this. Pretty bland, methinks.

Okay, well then... despite the "Dirty Santa" moniker, I'm going to go ahead and suggest that Tom Sharky NOT pick this title as the one to gift to a co-worker.

[Franz Propp]

Originally Posted by gates70

Never seen it, so how much screen time does he have in that? I would imagine not much?

He has very little screen time and his role is not important at all, nothing like house of wax, riding shotgun or target zero.

[seagal]

https://www.movieside.de/index.php?a...032-png.24933/

https://www.movieside.de/index.php?a...797-png.24931/

https://www.movieside.de/index.php?a...361-png.24928/

https://www.movieside.de/index.php?a...846-png.24930/


I told you all that the blu-ray of "Cold Sweat" looks quite bad in comparison to the HD version shown on German TV.
Click on the link if you´re interested in some screenshots from the excellent German HD version.
Then you can see how great the master look in comparison to the crappy master used for the blu-ray(Japanese, French, US or Spanish blu-ray).

I hate screenshots as a matter of fact because it´s much more impressive if you watch this HD version on your Oled TV.

As I told you all Bronson´s T-shirt has to be navy blue and not like the blu-ray master black.

By the way, Koch Media will release a blu-ray of that movie in Germany in March.

We try to email Koch Media that they´ll release the blu-ray(Mediabook) with the master shown on the German channel ARD HD.

But I guess the chance will be slim.

[agenda]

Originally Posted by seagal

I hate screenshots as a matter of fact because it´s much more impressive if you watch this HD version on your Oled TV.

Well, I don't own 'OLED TV'. I guess I won't be able to enjoy it just watching it from 2K LED-TV.

[seagal]

Originally Posted by agenda

Well, I don't own 'OLED TV'. I guess I won't be able to enjoy it just watching it from 2K LED-TV.

You don´t need to watch ist on an Oled TV. You will see the big difference on every TV screen, even on a computer screen because the HD TV master is superior in every way and that clearly.