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Hello, dear readers! To paraphrase a popular movie, “We’re in the Endgame now,” as Halloween is now merely only a few days away. If you’re looking for some last-minute viewing ideas to get you to the spooky season finish line, we definitely have a great array of choices heading home on Tuesday. The biggest recommendation that I can personally make in regard to perfect Halloween movie experiences is the Wnuf Halloween Special, which is getting a killer Blu-ray release tomorrow. Arrow Films is giving Dario Argento’s Deep Red a 4K upgrade this week, too, and Severin Films is showing love to both An Angel for Satan and Beyond Darkness.

Other releases for October 26th include Don’t Breathe 2, The Amazing Mr. X, Boardinghouse, Eye of the Devil, Skull: The Mask, Frankenstein’s Daughter, and Underworld: Limited Edition 5-Movie Collection.

The Amazing Mr. X: Special Edition

An atmospheric masterpiece,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: David Fincher and Gary Oldman on the set of Mank (2020). David Fincher's Mank leads this year's nominations for the Academy Awards. A complete list of all nominations can be found here.Legendary actor Yaphet Kotto, best known for his charismatic presence in films like Alien, Blue Collar, and Live and Let Die has died.Spike Lee will be leading the 2021 Cannes Film Festival Jury, promising to return after the cancellation of last year's festival: "Book my flight now, my wife and I are coming!" After a months-long hiatus, Film Comment has announced its return, marked by a new weekly letter and two new episodes of the Film Comment podcast. Recommended VIEWINGAbove: Mark Rappaport's The Stendhal Syndrome or My Dinner with Turhan Bey. Today's the last day to watch two new essay films...

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1944/ 87 min.

Starring Maria Montez, Jon Hall

Cinematography by George Robinson

Directed by Arthur Lubin

Thanks to George Robinson’s Technicolor photography and Vera West’s kaleidoscopic costumes, death and destruction look pretty as a picture in 1944’s Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Director Arthur Lubin’s action fantasy is no patch on the Fleischer brothers’ Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves but this Universal Pictures release is a cheerfully unassuming time-killer.

This Arabian Nights fable about a caliph’s son who grows up to lead a band of robbers contains a few nuggets of actual history; the movie’s bloodthirsty villain, Hulagu Khan, was indeed the grandson of the infamous Genghis. Hulagu was a thug who didn’t fall far from the tree; he conquered Baghdad and then decimated it, sending the then storybook city into a spiral.

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“Technicolor Sabers”

By Raymond Benson

Was this really a movie sub-genre? Colorful “Middle Eastern” action-comedy-adventures loosely derived from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights? Full of harem girls, saber-wielding swashbucklers, epic set pieces with beautifully designed sets and “Arabian” costumes, camels and horses and tigers, and… comedians?

The answer is, ahem, yes. During the war years of the early 1940s, Universal Pictures made several of these “exotic adventure” pictures that capitalized on the success of Britain’s Thief of Bagdad (1940). Hollywood quickly got into this act, but like the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope “Road to…” pictures, these movies set in the world of ancient Arabia were filmed on sound stages in southern California… and it shows.

The films were hugely popular at the time, but they have not aged well. We shall examine two of the more successful entries of...

The 2016 blu ray release of the Frankenstein and Wolf Man Legacy Collections was a moment of celebration for movie and monster lovers everywhere, bringing together all the golden age appearances of Frankenstein’s misbegotten creation and Larry Talbot’s hairy alter-ego. Universal Studios treated those dusty creature features to luminous restorations; from Bride of Frankenstein to She Wolf of London, these essential artifacts never looked less than impeccable and, at times, even ravishing. Colin Clive’s frenzied declaration, “It’s Alive!”, never felt more appropriate.

Now Universal has turned their attention to their other legendary franchise players, Dracula, the sharp-dressed but undead ladies’ man and Im-ho-tep, the cursed Egyptian priest who loved not wisely but too well.

Dracula: Complete Legacy Collection

Blu-ray

Universal Studios Home Entertainment

1931, ’36, ’43, ’44, ’45, ’48 / 449 min. / B&W / 1:33 / Street Date May 16, 2017

Starring: Actors: Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. , Boris Karloff, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello

Cinematography: Karl Freund,...

Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers, is calling it a career this weekend after 67 years in the booth. If you will indulge me, I’d like to tell you about one of my favorite moments from Scully behind the microphone, and about one night at Dodger Stadium that will make me miss him even more.

But first, a little background. I was never a big baseball guy growing up, even though I played a couple of seasons on a local Little League team. (Our squad was called the Firemen.) During those days, when I wasn’t playing the game, either in Little League or somewhere on my grandma’s farm with my cousins, the presence of a baseball broadcast usually meant that something I’d rather have been watching on TV was unavailable to see because someone else wanted to watch the damn game. (I tried to sit down,...

Parole Inc.

Written by Sherman L. Lowe

Directed by Alfred Zeisler

U.S.A. 1948

Undercover FBI agent Richard Hendricks (Michael O’Shea) starts the film very much undercover, covered in bandages whilst resting in a hospital bed that is. He narrates into a recorder his most recent assignment, taking viewers back to when he was convened to a meeting by police commissioner Huges (Lyle Talbot) and the governor of California in preparation for a harrowing case that aims to shed light on presumed corruption within the parole board in prison. As it presently stands, an alarmingly high number of parole hearings conclude with obviously dangerous individuals being sent out into to roam the streets freely. Hendricks begins his investigation at a nearby restaurant owned by Jojo Dumont (Evelyn Ankers), who uses the establishment as a front for her dealings with the criminal underworld as well as corrupt, higher-ranking lawyers and officials.

The Amazing Mr. X (a.k.a. The Spiritualist)

Written by Crane Wilbur and Muriel Roy Bolton

Directed by Bernard Vorhaus

USA, 1948

Christine (Lynn Bari), widowed for two years, steps out one night on her bedroom balcony overlooking the nearby rocky cliffs and ocean. Something compels her towards the violent waters,, a voice, that of her late husband Paul. Her younger sister Janet (Cathy O’Donnell) gently reminds Christine that more than enough time has elapsed for her to rebuild her life, especially with Martin (Richard Carlson), affable and loving, trying to win her heart. A few nights later, Christine even makes the trek down to the beach where a raspy voice unmistakably calls out her name. To her surprise, a lone gentleman named Alexis (Turhan Bey) is lurking the premises and introduces himself as a spiritualist interested in her case. Tempted by the idea of contacting her dead husband,...

Deanna Durbin in the 1940s: From wholesome musicals to film noir sex worker (photo: Gene Kelly and Deanna Durbin cast against type in the un-Christmas-y Christmas Holiday) [See previous post: "Deanna Durbin Without Joe Pasternak: Adrift at Universal."] The Deanna Durbin vs. Universal dispute was settled in early 1942, when the actress was supposedly granted director and story approval. But things didn’t go all that smoothly from then on. There would be no loan-outs to the more opulent MGM, and Durbin would later complain that Universal refused to abide by her requests. Also, for the first time since her career skyrocketed in 1936, Durbin was absent from the screen for a whole year. The key reason there were no 1942 Deanna Durbin movies was the troubled production of her next star vehicle, The Amazing Mrs. Holliday, in which Durbin tries to smuggle Chinese orphans into the U.S., and which underwent not only various title changes, but also various directors and various script...

Reel Important People is a monthly column that highlights those individuals in or related to the movies who have left us in recent weeks. It is unfortunate that we lose so many great film contributors, on-screen and off, that it's impossible to pay extensive tribute to every one. But I think it's important to recognize them at least in this monthly digest, not to mourn but to remember their work. Below you'll find names big and small and from all areas of the industry, though each was significant to the movies in their own way.   Turhan Bey (1922-2012) - Actor, known by his fans as "The Turkish Delight," who was a prominent player at Universal in the 1940s. He can be seen as the title monster's minion in The Mummy's Tomb, and he...

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Successful 1940s film actor whose exotic roles led fan magazines to dub him 'the Turkish Delight'

"Exotic" is the epithet most frequently used to describe the series of Technicolored escapist movies produced by Universal Pictures in the 1940s. These profitable films, often set in a North African or Arabian desert recreated on the studio backlot, featured the Dominican actor Maria Montez; Sabu, the Indian teenage boy; Jon Hall (son of a Swiss actor and a Tahitian princess); and Turhan Bey, who has died aged 90. Bey was often cast as wily, "foreign" villains, or romantic leads in thrillers and Arabian Nights fantasies, for which he was dubbed by fan magazines "the Turkish Delight".

Son of a Turkish diplomat father and a Czech industrialist mother, he was born Turhan Gilbert Selahattin Sahultavy in Vienna, but emigrated to the Us with his mother and grandmother shortly before Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938. In California,...

A-Lad-In His Lamp was a 1948 Warner Brothers Bugs Bunny cartoon that had showed an aerial map depicting two bodies of water named Veronica Lake and Turhan Bay. This probably seemed clever 64 years ago but later generations of kids catching it on TV most likely missed the joke. Born Turhan Gilbert Selahattin Sahultavy in Austria in 1922, Turhan Bey was dubbed “The Turkish Delight” by his fans and the movie mags. He costarred with exotic Dominican-born actress Maria Montez in seven films including Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves and Sudan. His is an especially sad passing for monster kids as Bey was just about the last living link to The Golden Age of Universal’s Horror films, having starred in The Mad Ghoul, Captive Wild Woman, and opposite Lon Chaney in The Mummy’S Tomb. Bey left Hollywood in 1949 to return to his native Vienna, working as a photographer. However, he...

Vienna -- Turhan Bey, an actor whose exotic good looks earned him the nickname of "Turkish Delight" in films with Errol Flynn and Katherine Hepburn before he left Hollywood for a quieter life in Vienna, has died. He was 90.

Marita Ruiter, who exhibited Bey's photos in her Luxembourg gallery, told the Austria Press Agency on Tuesday that Bey died in the Austrian capital on Sept. 30 after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease and was cremated on Monday.

While celebrated for supporting roles alongside Flynn, Hepburn, John Wayne, Peter Lorre and other film greats of the 1940s, friends described Bey as a modest, unassuming man who never bragged of his ties with the stars of the era.

"He was a man brimming with humor, with plenty of aplomb and self-irony, and was very popular," Ruiter was quoted as saying. "He wasn't the kind who cared a lot about honors."

Born in Austria as Gilbert Selahettin Schultavey,...

Turhan Bey starred in '40s Technicolor fantasy / adventure movies Bey (closeup photo, right), best remembered for his roles opposite Maria Montez and Jon Hall in a number of Technicolor exotic "Easterns" at Universal in the '40s, died in Vienna on September 30. Bey, who had been suffering from Parkinson's Disease, was 90 years old. He was born as Gilbert Selahettin Schultavey on March 30, 1922, in the Austrian capital. His father was a Turkish diplomat; his mother was Czech Jew. According to reports, in 1940 Bey and his family fled the Nazis to the United States, eventually settling in Los Angeles. Not long thereafter, he was discovered by a Warner Bros. talent scout. Bey Hollywood movies Bey's Warners stint didn't last long, as he began appearing in Universal productions shortly after his Hollywood career kicked off in 1941. Though never a star, he was a popular player in the '40s, in escapist Technicolor...

Turner Classic Movies' look at Arabs in Hollywood movies continues this evening with six movies. Why exactly Gabriel Pascal's film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) is one of the six, I don't know. Caesar was a Roman-born emperor; Cleopatra, a descendant of Greek royalty, was an Egyptian queen long before the Arab conquest of Egypt. Now, I may be puzzled about its inclusion, but Caesar and Cleopatra is very much worth watching chiefly thanks to Claude Rains' brilliant performance as the first half of the title role and Vivien Leigh's highly theatrical but enjoyable star turn as the second half of the title role. Kismet (1944) would have been more enjoyable had it been directed by Henry Hathaway, Michael Curtiz, Frank Lloyd, or even Lloyd Bacon. William Dieterle, best known for several ponderous Warner Bros. biopics of the '30s, had a heavy hand...

Paul Muni, Luise Rainer in The Good Earth The ethnic controversy surrounding the casting of Gérard Depardieu as Alexandre Dumas in Safy Nebbou’s The Other Dumas reminded me of Arthur Dong’s 2007 documentary Hollywood Chinese, which discusses how Caucasian actors usually played major Chinese roles in American movies up to the not-too-distant past. Among those featured in Hollywood Chinese, whether in clips or as talking heads or both, are Paul Muni, Peter Sellers, Nancy Kwan, Luise Rainer, Katharine Hepburn, Turhan Bey, Joan Chen, Ang Lee, Christopher Lee, Sidney Toler, and, inevitably, Warner Oland, the most famous Dr. Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan (for those who know their film history). At a panel discussion held after the Los Angeles’ [...]...

Here’s a list of some of the new DVD and Blu-ray releases this week. Plus, some old favorites coming out this week on Blu-Ray.

New Movies:

• Knowing ~ Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne (DVD and Blu-ray)

• Push ~ Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning (DVD and Blu-ray)

• The Unborn ~ Odette Yustman (DVD and Blu-Ray)

• Night Train ~ Danny Glover, Leelee Sobieski, Steve Zahn (DVD and Blu-ray)

• Five Fingers ~ Laurence Fishburne, Colm Meaney, Antonie Kamerling, Saïd Taghmaoui (DVD and Blu-ray)

• A Day in the Life ~ Omar Epps, Faizon Love, Michael Rapaport, Tyrin Turner (DVD)

• Flying By ~ Billy Ray Cyrus, Heather Locklear, Olesya Rulin, Patricia Neal (DVD)

• Applause for Miss E ~ Vanessa Bell Calloway, Roger Guenveur Smith, Gina Torres (DVD)

• Power Rangers Rpm, Vol. 1: Start Your Engines ~ Eka Darville, Ari Boyland, Rose McIver, Milo Cawthorne (DVD)

• Flight 666 ~ Iron Maiden (Blu-ray)

Previously Released and Classic Movies:

• Lonely are the Brave ~ Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau, George Kennedy...