This has been a pretty good year for fans of the lovely AND talented Raquel Welch. First 20th Century Fox released "The Raquel Welch Collection" box set, then Warner Home Video gave us "The Last Of Sheila" and now "The Wild Party", probably one of Miss Welch's best films! And thanks to the fine folks at MGM we have the ORIGINAL, UN-CUT version not the version originally released by AIP back in the 70s. And what a glorious film it is! Rocky is just great as Queenie, the mistress of Jolly Grimm (James Coco), a washed up silent movie comedian vainly attempting to make a comeback into pictures. She is endearing and sexy as his tender young lover, and the song she sings ("SINGAPORE SALLY") is a real treat!
Picture and sound are both quite good on this disc and the extra's include the original trailer and a short interview with the director, James Ivory.
So, if you like Miss Welch (and how can anyone not???), check this disc out. You'll love it! Now if only MGM will release "Kansas City Bomber" and Paramount put out "Hannie Caulder", I'd be a really happy camper! - George Bauch,
Incredible restoration!
I am giving "Wild Party" 5 stars for a few reasons. Most significantly is that this is the version that James Ivory had submitted to the studio, which then recut it for distribution through American International. I remember seeing WP when it was first released, and believe me that was an entirely different movie than is on this DVD. A.I. was known as the distributor that marketed exploitation flicks, so it purchased WP as it was cut to emphasize an orgy sequence. Ivory is not a sensationalist, if anything his films incorporate sex to advance the story, here the wildness of the party is just a by product of a much richer story. Raquel, Coco, Bolling and King are all terrific. The wonder of DVD is that this film makes sense, whereas the theatrical version and all the VHS versions do not. This is really an amazing movie that was never released as it was intended. Thumbs up to MGM for releasing this edition.
CHEERS!
THIS is one of those delightful, guilty, and dismissed treasures [alongside Glenda Jackson's 'Negatives', and what WAS the title of that vaguely soft-core porno type movie Richard Dreyfuss made???? "INSERTS!" Same period ....] HOWEVER, this Party is somewhat inspired by the Fatty Arbuckle event of the Roaring 20ties and fortunately does not follow the same route, but it is close, and naturally everyone associated or invited to the Party is affected by the outcome in one or another way .... you be the judge here.
Expertly directed - same goes for the Art and Costume design - makes a great companion piece to the rarely seen "SAVAGES" another Ivory gem!
We can safely call it one of the most notorious films in Hollywood history: Myra Breckenridge, the wild, tasteless, legendary disaster. Sprung from a novel by Gore Vidal, Myra tells the tender tale of a man (damply played by film critic Rex Reed) who has a sex-change operation and goes to Hollywood as a woman--played by Raquel Welch. Mae West creaked out of retirement to play a man-hungry agent (one of her meals is young Tom Selleck), and John Huston is an aging cowboy star, Myra's nemesis. To say the movie endorses the destruction of sex roles in modern society would be giving the rampant incoherence too much credit. Old film clips, plus footage (all too apt!) of atomic bomb tests are spliced into the action, to puerile effect. Almost everybody involved with the film... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Mae West - John Huston - Raquel Welch Director(s): Michael Sarne DVD Release Date: Released the 09 March 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The Last of Sheila is one of the great underrated films of the '70s: a bitchy Hollywood whodunit and a clever parlor game (cowritten by Anthony Perkins and Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim). Several celebrity chums are invited aboard prankster James Coburn's yacht for a cruel game of "guess the deep, dark secret." Everyone has one; but naturally some are more wicked than others. Richard Benjamin, James Mason, Dyan Cannon, Joan Hackett, Raquel Welch, and Ian McShane are the odd cast of participants. However, the stakes are unexpectedly raised when murder gets added to the not-so-fun agenda. Plenty of inside jokes and red herrings in this nasty and unforgettable film. It's just what you'd expect from the twisted minds of Perkins and Sondheim. --Bill DesowitzMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Richard Benjamin - James Coburn - James Mason Director(s): Herbert Ross DVD Release Date: Released the 20 April 2004 Usually ships within 24 hours
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Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust is by consensus the great Hollywood novel, a poison-pen letter aimed squarely at the tinsel heart of the movie biz. Only in the 1970s could Hollywood actually hazard a film of this story, and the result is suitably corrosive. William Atherton is the observer Tod, Karen Black the blond starlet Faye, and Donald Sutherland the hulking Homer--but they are easily out-acted by the colorful supporting cast. In particular, Burgess Meredith's exhausted showbizzy salesman and Billy Barty's strutting dwarf are superbly crafted gargoyles in this Hollywood wax museum. Director John Schlesinger piles on the rancid atmosphere and rampant hypocrisy until the movie fairly drowns in its own grotesque vision. Long before the climactic apocalyptic riot, the film... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Donald Sutherland - Karen Black Director(s): John Schlesinger DVD Release Date: Released the 08 June 2004 Usually ships within 24 hours
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With this magnificent Criterion DVD release, Luchino Visconti's 1963 historical drama The Leopard will finally earn widespread recognition as one of the most beautiful epics ever produced. In adapting the popular novel by Giuseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa (an Italian equivalent to Gone with the Wind, set during the tumultuous Garibaldi revolution of 1860-62), Visconti was initially reluctant to cast Burt Lancaster as the melancholy Prince of Salina--the aging aristocrat "leopard" of the title--who accepts change as inevitable during the struggle for a unified Italy. But Lancaster (even with his voice dubbed in the fully restored Italian release) delivered one of his finest performances, modeled after Visconti himself, and reacting to political and familial upheavals with the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Burt Lancaster DVD Release Date: Released the 08 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This 1966 masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni (The Passenger) is set in the heady atmosphere of Swinging London, and stars David Hemmings as an unsmiling fashion photographer hooked on ephemeral meaning attached to anything: art, sex, work, relationships, drugs, events. When a real mystery falls into his lap, he probes the evidence for some reliable truth, but finds it hard to reckon with. Vanessa Redgrave plays an enigmatic woman whose desperation to cover something up only seems like one more phenomenon in Hemmings's disinterested purview. This is one of the key films of the decade, and still an unsettling and lasting experience. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vanessa Redgrave - David Hemmings Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni DVD Release Date: Released the 17 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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