It’s always a pleasure when I find the new issue of Steven Puchalski’s Shock Cinema in the mailbox and I’m calling issue 41 an early Christmas gift this year. Because I write a lot about actors, directors, writers and what-have-you, I have to read a lot of interviews and so many of them are terrible – particularly current interviews with contemporary celebrities. The lag time between birth and fame seems to get shorter and shorter every year, which means that noted personalities (as the almanac used to call them) become progressively less interesting, less able to call upon pre-fame life experience, less likely to have anything to say to the world beyond “Here I am!”. Add to that the fact that so many people doing the interviews don’t have a thought in their (so very often) expensively-schooled heads and you’ve got a highly stultifying reading experience. For this reason, Shock Cinema is such a tonic, focusing as it does on actors, filmmakers, writers, stuntmen, make-up men, producers and sundry folks who worked in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, people who have weathered (and in some cases still do enjoy) 20, 30, 40 and even 50 year careers. The new issue of Shock Cinema boasts long and revealing talks with actress Nancy Allen (the bad girl in CARRIE, the hooker with the heart of gold in both DRESSED TO KILL and BLOW-OUT, and ROBOCOP‘s partner), Michael Beck (THE WARRIORS, XANADU) and smiley Burton Gilliam (who made his film debut in PAPER MOON and went on to hayseed glory in such films as BLAZING SADDLES, GATOR and HONEYMOON IN VEGAS). Once again, Steve’s interviewers do a great job of teasing the stories out of these performers. Also interviewed in this issue is Judy Pace, a familiar face on screens big and small during the late 1960s and early-t0-mid 1970s, whom you may remember from roles in COTTON COMES TO HARLEM, FROGS and THE SLAMS with Jim Brown (Cool trivia: one of her acting coaches was Thalmus Rasulala, from BLACULA. Hip!) and director Larry Yust, who made the black con artist film TRICK BABY, the senior citizen shocker HOMEBODIES and an educational adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery that many remember as a particularly chilling highlight of their primary educations. For some reason, it was Yust’s interview to which I most looked forward. Shining a light into the more obscure corners of cult cinema is one of the things Shock Cinema does best, illuminating the fact that even those movies you think you dreamed were planned, paid for, cast, directed, shot and acted, just like real movies. Think of that the next time you watch TERROR IN THE JUNGLE or MANOS: HANDS OF FIRE.

If it seems weird for me to be writing about a TV show rather than a movie, let me just preface my remarks regarding the new Shout!Factory release of the complete first season of POLICE STORY, which ran from 1973 until 1977 on NBC, by saying that for my money it’s better than a movie — or at least 99% of what passes for cinema these days. I’d been pining for a proper DVD release of this landmark procedural series, created by LAPD officer turned bestselling novelist turned producer Joseph Wambaugh, for years, warmed only by my memories of watching it during my formative years. The show amazed and damn near traumatized me as a kid, with its gritty depictions of life on the mean streets of Los Angeles in the early to mid 70s and its often downbeat endings. Truth be told many of my favorite episodes (“Captain Hook,” yo!, from season 2) are not included on this 6-disc set but there’s real gold here nonetheless. Among the 20 episodes plus the original 1973 pilot (“Slow Boy,” starring Vic Morrow, Ed Asner, Harry Guardino, Ralph Meeker – can you stand it already?! – and DeForest Kelly) are “Dangerous Games” with James Farentino as a cop who goes undercover as a flashy procurer to nail pimp Fred Williamson, “Line of Fire” with Cameron Mitchell as a SWAT captain in charge of Alex Cord and Jan-Michael Vincent, “The Gamble” with Angie Dickinson in a try-out for her later POLICE WOMAN series (with Burt Convy playing the Earl Holliman part here) and “Collision Course,” with Dean Stockwell and Jerry Lee Lewis as a pair of murderous hayseeds on an interstate kill spree. The unpredictability and depth of the casting choices is what made POLICE STORY such a joy back in the day and if you’re a fan of vintage cop shows you’ll really take to this initial offering, which I hope leads to the DVD release of the whole five season run. The set includes commentary by Joe Wambaugh. Good lookin’ out, Shout!Factory!

Morlock Kimberly already did a fine job of laying out the strengths of the mighty, mighty HORROR EXPRESS last month and I don’t have much to add to her assessment of this cult favorite. Nevertheless I have to say the Severin Films Blu-ray/DVD combopack was one of my most anticipated releases of 2011 and is now one of my post treasured possessions. I owned the passable Image Entertainment disc before this and a crap VHS tape of the film before that; in earlier years, I just parked my carcass in front of the TV any time I knew the 1972 English-Spanish coproduction was running on television. It’s probably the most satisfying onscreen pairing of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and I include in that comparison the otherwise excellent (and justifiably canonical) HORROR OF DRACULA. HORROR EXPRESS puts the longtime friends and Hammer stalwarts on more or less equal footing and they actually share screen time as rival archeologists bedeviled by a malevolent alien entity while traveling on the Orient Express. It’s just a neat movie, peopled by good actors. In addition to Cushing, Lee and Telly Savalas, you have a veritable who’s who of Spanish and Italian genre actors: Alberto De Mendoza (THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK), Julio Pena (WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN), Barta Barri (THE HORRIBLE SEXY VAMPIRE), Georges Rigaud (THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS), Angel del Pozo (ASSIGNMENT TERROR), Vic Israel (HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD) and Helga Line (THE VAMPIRE’S NIGHT ORGY). Severin has given the film a great digital send-off, backed by some must-see extras. My favorite ias an interview with composer John Cacavas, who discusses how he came aboard the HORROR EXPRESS.

Oh, but there’s so much more. I haven’t been able to do more than spot check Scorpio Releasing’s widescreen all region DVD of Harvey Hart’s 1973 Montreal-set horror film THE PYX (aka THE HOOKER CULT MURDERS)but I’m eager to jump on that. Based on the 1959 novel by John Buell, the Catholic-themed mystery chiller attends the seeming suicide of callgirl Karen Black (who also composed and sings the film’s ethereal, haunting songs) and the investigation by cops Christopher Plummer (who’s great) and Donald Pilon, which turns up a Satanic conspiracy extending (of course) up to the highest level of Canadian government. This movie just grabbed me the one and only time I saw it, via a a standard frame VHS dupe – there’s something about the mix of somber procedural set against a French-Canadian backdrop that makes every frame compelling; add to this the checked sports coats and lobster big width neckties and I’m in Canuck cop heaven. As stated, I’m really curious to have a second shot at it under more optimal conditions. Remastered from the original camera negatives, the transfer reveals an image that’s plenty grainy but satisfyingly chromatic and it’s great to see this in the intended 2.35:1 gauge, enhanced for 16×9 playback. Scorpio presents the film both as an “episode” of “Katarina’s Nightmare Theatre,” a line of DVDs hosted by a lady wrestler about whom I know nothing and as a stand-alone feature, without the wasteful prologgia. Even better, the DVD sleeve is reversible, so you can pretend this isn’t even an option.