{"id":5162,"date":"2012-07-04T01:32:51","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T05:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5162"},"modified":"2012-07-04T01:32:51","modified_gmt":"2012-07-04T05:32:51","slug":"dvd-blade-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5162","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Blade (1973)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>B<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Weak\/ DVD Transfer: Weak\/ DVD Extras: Standard<\/p>\n

Label: Code Red\/ Region: 0 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: August 23, 2011<\/p>\n

Genre: Crime \/ Serial Killer<\/p>\n

Synopsis: A soon-to-be-retired detective must solve the murder of a Senator’s daughter.<\/p>\n

Special Features: Bonus Code Red Trailers<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

With an Oscar nomination for \u201cThe Violinist\u201d (1959) and an Oscar win for \u201cThe Critic\u201d (1963), short film animator Ernest Pintoff parlayed his career as a writer-producer-director-composer into feature films, initially staying within his preferred realm of comedy and satire with Harvey Middleman, Foreman<\/strong> (1965) and the spoof-film Dynamite Chicken<\/strong> (1971) before directing a pair of crime films \u2013 Who Killed Mary Whats\u2019ername?<\/strong> (1971), and Blade<\/strong> (1973).<\/p>\n

Most of Pintoff\u2019s film work has vanished from wide circulation (although his short films are available on YouTube<\/a>), leaving Blade<\/strong> as a rare example of his work \u2013 ambitious for the time, but deeply flawed. Pintoff apparently wanted to create a hybrid of the detective and documentary genres, and the script \u2013 co-credited to Jeff Lieberman (Blue Sunshine<\/strong>) \u2013 is a fairly by-the-numbers thriller involving an aged, near-to-retirement cop named Tommy Blade (rumpled character actor John Marley) who\u2019s called in to solve a problem case involving the brutal murder of a congressman\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n

The writers drew from contemporary issues of political corruption, media handlers, ageism, and mentally corrupted servicemen (chiefly, killer Petersen, played by an imposing, lithe Jon Cypher), but there isn\u2019t anything new in the material, except for Blade\u2019s intriguing relationship with a popular crime novelist (Kathryn Walker), and being (presumably) a divorced father to a troubled teen. Marley underplays his role, which mostly works, but his best scenes are the quiet domestic moments with girlfriend Maggie in their well-worn apartment.<\/p>\n

To boost the realism of the story, Pintoff apparently shot the film on location \u2013 ugly apartments, dirty police stations, inside cars, roofs, parks, and dimly lit shacks \u2013 and hired David Hoffman, a documentary cameraman, as his cinematographer, and the intended style seems to have been a fly-on-the-shoulder, with pre-NYPD Blue<\/strong> shakycam zooms, push-ins, and whip-pans, all edited together in a collage that often compresses time to create the illusion of an ongoing police investigation (not dissimilar to Richard Brooks\u2019 docu-drama In Cold Blood<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

The lighting is bare bones, the film stock fast and grimy, and while it all works with the film\u2019s content, the camerawork is absolutely horrendous, and it\u2019s a tough call as to whether the blame lies in Pintoff\u2019s hands (assuming he directed Hoffman to mimic a shaky news camera style), or Hoffman simply had no clue where to place the camera, and filmed a series of takes using differing angles with zooms and push-ins galore. Editor David Ray (Scarface<\/strong>, The Bonfire of the Vanities<\/strong>) managed a small miracle in assembling the footage into a coherent and occasionally impressionistic narrative, but Hoffman\u2019s chosen angles and unsupported camera are disastrous, be it simple in-car montages, interior conversations, or the climactic park fight between Blade and Petersen which is terribly choreographed, and gave Ray little material with which to construct a dynamic battle.<\/p>\n

Code Red\u2019s print is uncut \u2013 the killer\u2019s assaults on his female victims are particularly nasty, specifically due to the doc-style camerawork \u2013 but the 1.78:1 transfer looks unnatural; either Hoffman deliberately let the actors\u2019 heads and signage pass close to \/ disappear past the frame line, or the film was matted for exhibition from a 1.33:1 negative. (A murky, Italian-dubbed full screen print features less information on the right side, so the only way to verify its shooting ratio is to examine the camera negative. Given the film\u2019s wonky artistic merits, it\u2019s fair to assume this may be the film\u2019s best presentation.)<\/p>\n

If one can get past the visual headaches, Blade<\/strong> does offer an amazing list of character actors and up & coming stars who occasionally succeed in playing ordinary citizens in a big, grimy, corrupt city. Easily recognizable are Morgan Freeman in one of his earliest credited appearances, Rue McClanahan (The Golden Girls<\/strong>) in a bit part, Steven Landesberg (Barney Miller<\/strong>) as a porn director, Ted Lange (The Love Boat<\/strong>) as a wrongly accused, Joe Santos (The Rockford Files<\/strong>) as Blade\u2019s colleague, and prolific character actor William Price (Network<\/strong>, Rollercoaster<\/strong>) as the politician who seems more concerned with his career than the death of his pretty daughter.<\/p>\n

The locations capture the misery of working class stiffs in a city whose scale seems to smother everything in sight, and John Cacavas\u2019 score ranks as one of his best \u2013 initially providing twisted irony in the film\u2019s opening (and very ugly) killing, and later supporting Blade\u2019s own emotional turmoil as his career within the force is becoming wobbly.<\/p>\n

Whether or not the film was a success is unknown, but Pintoff returned to TV, where had had been involved in tandem with his prior film work, and directed a slew of conventional crime, drama, mystery, and action shows, with just a handful of theatrical efforts \u2013 Jaguar Lives!<\/strong> (1979), Lunch Wagon<\/strong> (1981), and St. Helens<\/strong> (1981).<\/p>\n

Co-writer Jeff Lieberman later wrote and directed the cult classics Squirm<\/strong> (1976), Blue Sunshine<\/strong> (1978), and Just Before Dawn<\/strong> (1981). John Marley\u2019s career spanned more than a hundred TV appearances, plus small roles in films such as America America<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (1963), Cat Ballou <\/strong>(1965), The Etruscans Kills Again <\/strong>(1972), Deathdream<\/strong> (1974), and Mother Lode<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (1982).<\/p>\n

Note: this titleis part of Code Red\u2019s Detective Double Bill series, and includes vintage trailers and the Franco Nero thriller Ring of Death <\/a><\/strong>\/ Detective Belli<\/strong> \/ Un detective<\/strong><\/a> [M<\/a>] (1969).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2012 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— \u00a0Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0B<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ B . Film: Weak\/ DVD Transfer: Weak\/ DVD Extras: Standard Label: Code Red\/ Region: 0 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: August 23, 2011 Genre: Crime \/ Serial Killer Synopsis: A soon-to-be-retired detective must solve the murder of a Senator’s daughter. Special Features: Bonus Code Red Trailers . . Review: With […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[1392,1393,1394,1395],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1lg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5162"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5189,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162\/revisions\/5189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}