Quote:
Spazio: 1999 was originally distributed by Variety Film, and debuted in Italian cinemas on January 14, 1975. This was seven months prior to the premiere broadcasts of the TV series Space: 1999 in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States.

The Movie is a compilation of three episode: “Breakaway”, “Ring Around the Moon” and “Another time, Another Place”. These three episodes were edited down, amounting to around an hour of footage ending on the cutting room floor.

The actor’s voices are different from those that were used to dub the Italian TV series and the score was composed by Ennio Morricone instead of Barry Gray.

Some of the dialogues were modified in an attempt to provide continuity between the episodes and often adds details not in the original script.

This remastered version, released by ITV in their “Super Space Theater” boxset, uses the audio of the Italian home video release and the HD transfer of the TV show for the video. Every effort has been made to improve the quality of the soundtrack but some edits and faults persist from the original source.

Spazio 1999 (1975) - HD Reconstruction.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 37mn
Size: 	3.13 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 306 kb/s
BPP: 	0.087
Audio
#1:  	Italian 1.0ch FLAC @ 288 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/DB7F6089857DD24/Spazio_1999_(1975)_-_HD_Reconstruction.mkv

Language(s):Italian
Subtitles:English

Many thanks to @Vincent for this copy

The post Lee H. Katzin, Ray Austin, David Tomblin – Spazio: 1999 (1975) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Jim Hawkins only dreamed of one thing: to go on a treasure hunt. After long listening to the accounts of an old boat captain, he decides to embark on the adventure.

Treasure Island.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 57 min
Size: 	2.05 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	956x576 
Aspect ratio:  	5:3
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 370 kb/s
BPP: 	0.172
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 128 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/E4E86925A70CDD5/Treasure_Island.mkv

Language(s):French, English
Subtitles:French (Hardcoded)

The post Raoul Ruiz – Treasure Island [2016 restoration] (1985) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

ımdb:
Earth’s Moon is the site of Moonbase Alpha, a scientific research colony nestled in the crater Plato. Staffed by over 300 men and women from Earth, it is the operations center for several space expeditions. It is also a watchdog for vast amounts of atomic waste from Earth stored in silos on the Moon’s far side. Magnetic radiation builds up and causes the wastes to explode with such force that the Earth’s centripetal pull on the Moon is overcome, and the Moon is broken free of Earth’s orbit to drift at incredible speed out of the Solar System off the plane of the ecliptic. The survivors on Moonbase Alpha are unable to return to Earth and must survive in unknown space on their wandering Moon. They encounter a planet whose advanced people project an illusion of a devastating attack on Moonbase.

Alien Attack (Charles Crichton & Lee H. Katzin, 1980).mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 49mn
Size:	1.39 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	704x528
Aspect ratio:	4:3
Frame rate:	25.000 fps
Bit rate:	1 631 kb/s
Audio
English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/5F8F429E64AD59B/Alien_Attack_(Charles_Crichton_&_Lee_H._Katzin,_1980).mkv

https://rapidgator.net/file/f7b01919b5a953e8595edc1ccaf98efa/Alien_Attack_(Charles_Crichton_&_Lee_H._Katzin,_1980).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Various – Alien Attack (1976) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Terrified of being buried alive by mistake, a woman puts a phone in her crypt to be able to call home if she needs help. She dies and nothing happens. One day, the phone suddenly rings. Paranormal investigator Nelson Orion (Martin Landau) is brought in…

2.04GB | 1h 20m | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/9F43F1BA5CDC7A1/The_Ghost_of_Sierra_de_Cobre_(1964)_–_Joseph_Stefano.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English (muxed)

The post Joseph Stefano – The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre [+commentary] (1964) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Woody Allen spent most of the 1980s and ’90s veering between comedy and drama, and he rarely combined the two with greater success than in Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which he weaved together two stories, one deadly serious, one often funny, both ending in sadness. Martin Landau plays Dr. Judah Rosenthal, a prominent ophthalmologist with a successful practice, a loving family, and a reputation for generous charity work. But Rosenthal also has a secret: his mistress, Dolores (Anjelica Huston). What began as a casual fling has become uncomfortably intimate, and as he tries to break off the relationship, Dolores threatens to expose his infidelity to his wife and some unorthodox financial arrangements to his colleagues. Fearful that Dolores will make good on her threats, Judah confesses his secret to his brother Jack (Jerry Orbach), who has ties to organized crime and offers to “make the problem go away.” Meanwhile, Cliff Stern (Woody Allen) is a filmmaker working on his pet project, a documentary about philosopher Prof. Louis Levy (Martin Bergmann). However, films about philosophers don’t pay the rent, so Cliff’s wife Wendy (Joanna Gleason) arranges for him to make a documentary for public television about her brother Lester (Alan Alda), a famous TV comedian whose vapidity is exceeded only by his arrogance. While Cliff tries to bite the bullet and finish the film, he finds himself falling in love with PBS producer Halley Reed (Mia Farrow).

2.93GB | 1h 46m | 1024×552 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/223ED874EB67C6B/Woody_Allen_-_(1989)_Crimes_and_Misdemeanors.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:English

The post Woody Allen – Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Storyline: An Ottawa police captain searches for the person who poisoned his sister, who was attending the university in Montreal. So desperate is he for revenge that he begin to use his own brutal methods to find the killer. Soon he discovers that not everything is what he thought it was.

3.69GB | 1h 39mn | 1344×720 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/522D98202365E42/Shadows.in.an.Empty.Room.1976.720p.BluRay.x264.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Alberto De Martino – Una Magnum Special per Tony Saitta AKA Shadows in an Empty Room (1976) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Ode to a Director Who Dared to Be Dreadful

“Ed Wood,” Tim Burton’s very good film about a very bad film maker, has a cheerful defiance that would surely have appealed to Orson Welles, who was Ed Wood’s hero. Late in the film, Welles appears (played deftly by Vincent d’Onofrio, who really looks like him) to advise Wood that independence is everything and that an artist’s visions are worth fighting for. Mr. Burton, currently Hollywood’s most irrepressible maverick, has taken that credo to heart.

So here is the Z-movie ethos of Edward D. Wood Jr., as filtered through the dark wit and visual brilliance of Mr. Burton. Two questions immediately present themselves: Who and why? To answer the first, Ed Wood was a director working on the outermost fringes of Hollywood in the 1950’s. He made the kind of science-fiction film that used Cadillac hubcaps for flying saucers.

He’s best remembered for the transcendent tackiness of “Plan 9 From Outer Space” and for “Glen or Glenda,” which achieved midnight movie notoriety for its story about a man who loved wearing angora sweaters. Ed Wood played that role himself, and he played it from the heart.

Even allowing for the special ineptitude of the Wood oeuvre, or for Wood’s habit of turning up in full drag to do his directing, it would take more to explain Mr. Burton’s fascination with this subject. Wood was also a dauntless guerrilla film maker, assembling his own band of outsiders as a stock company and using anything or anyone he could commandeer for the film-making process.

His daring deserves to be legendary: he made films on a shoestring, raised funds by hook or by crook, and really did steal a fake octopus for use in a scene with Bela Lugosi, who had to wrestle with the thing in a shallow pool of water (as depicted in “Ed Wood”). He also lovingly resurrected the aging Lugosi, rescuing him from oblivion just as Mr. Burton rescues Ed Wood today.

Ed Wood eventually descended into terminal sleaze, drinking himself to death, writing books with titles like “Death of a Transvestite Hooker” and making hard-core porn like “Necromania,” which depicts oral sex in a coffin. So the biggest surprise about “Ed Wood” is that it manages to be a sweet, sunny mainstream comedy, with its kinkiness reduced to the level of a joke. There is, for instance, the moment when Ed Wood’s girlfriend, Dolores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker), asks: “Where’s my pink sweater? I can never seem to find my clothes any more.” Angora-loving Ed Wood (Johnny Depp) says nothing but looks guiltily at the camera.

Mr. Depp isn’t best known as a comic actor, but he gives a witty and captivating performance, bringing wonderful buoyancy to this crazy role. He captures all the can-do optimism that kept Ed Wood going, thanks to an extremely funny ability to look at the silver lining of any cloud. ” ‘The soldiers’ costumes are very realistic,’ ” he exclaims early in the film, reading aloud the nicest line in a review of one of Wood’s plays. “That’s positive!”

“Ed Wood” has devilish fun revisiting the scenes of Wood’s many cinematic crimes, depicting with glee and accuracy the horrible conditions under which his films were made. George Weiss (Mike Starr), who distributed Wood’s films in extremely out-of-the-way places, gives the director a motto of sorts when he says: “Shoot whatever baloney you want. Just make sure it’s seven reels long.”

And Ed Wood himself, happily exclaiming, “That was perfect!” after any bad shot, is seen directing his cast in typical laissez-faire fashion. “You’re upset — no, no, you’re not that upset,” he tells an actor who accidentally walks into a door.

“Ed Wood” is in love with bad-movie high jinks, and with nutty, improvisatory film making as an antidote to the antiseptic slickness of today. But its real heart is in the Wood-Lugosi friendship. The aging vampire star, played with hilarious crankiness by an outstandingly fine Martin Landau, becomes a poignant figure even at his most bizarre. (Early in the film, Lugosi is seen at home in full cape and regalia, watching “Dracula” on television and holding a chihuahua in each hand.) Through all the humor about Lugosi’s histrionics, and through pathos about his drug addiction, Mr. Burton’s respect and admiration are unmistakable.

When it comes to respect, “Ed Wood” pays homage with loving re-enactments of authentic Wood movie scenes and with actors who look uncannily like members of Wood’s freakish troupe. (A closing credit notes that Tor Johnson, the bald, hulking wrestler played here by George “The Animal” Steele, achieved “greatest fame as a best-selling Halloween mask.”) Though the real Wood scenes looked starkly awful, “Ed Wood” is an unobtrusively gorgeous black-and-white film (expertly shot by Stefan Czapsky, Mr. Burton’s usual fine cinematographer) with a wide range of striking visual effects.

If “Ed Wood” has a major failing, it’s the lack of momentum. Wood’s career had nowhere to go, and to some extent the film (written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, based on Rudolph Grey’s enterprising biography of Wood) has the same problem. Still, Mr. Burton has no trouble holding his audience’s attention with incomparable Wood antics like the group baptism of his “Plan 9 From Outer Space” cast. That film’s financing came from the Baptist Church of Beverly Hills and church officials insisted on both baptism and the removal of “Grave Diggers” from the original title.

One cast member is John (Bunny) Breckinridge, played by a delightfully demure Bill Murray in a suit, lipstick and pearls. Mr. Murray’s slyest moment comes during the filming of “Plan 9,” when he wonders whether he ought to wear antennas on screen.

“No!” exclaims Ed Wood. “You’re the ruler of the galaxy! Show a little taste.”

“Ed Wood” is to be shown tomorrow at 9 P.M. and midnight as part of the New York Film Festival. It opens commercially in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Janet Maslin, NY Times, September 23, 1994

+Commentary with Director Tim Burton, Actor Martin Landau, Co-writers Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, Director of Photography Stefan Czapsky, and Costume Designer Colleen Atwood

4.67GB | 2h 06m | 1024×554 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/8A619A62D881CFB/Ed.Wood.1994.576p.BluRay.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:English,Spanish,French,Danish,German,Portuguese

The post Tim Burton – Ed Wood (1994) first appeared on Cinema of the World.