Volume 18 - Inside Llewyn Davis and the Fractured Folk Tale

It's been a long time since the ol' Double Feature Picture show had something new for y'all, and I'd love to tell you I have a super exciting and cool reason for that. The truth of the matter is, well, this time of year always makes me cranky and reminds me of death. And when I'm not thinking about my real world work - which, thankfully(?), takes up a lot of my time, that's what I've been thinking about lately. And no, it's not the cool kind of death, like we see in Friday the 13th movies or other films of their ilk. It's the kind of death and sadness that's inevitably coming for us all and ready to send our lives into turmoil at any given moment.

So, that's a cool story, right?  Sorry, I don't want to think about it either. It's just who I am.

The good thing about movies is that there's a movie for every feeling, and one day while I was angry at how cold and dreary and threatening the world around me was I started to think about a movie where the lead character feels the same way. It's one of my favorite movies of the last decade, and I was inspired to stop being stuck in my own head and to talk about it here.  It took me a while to make sense of everything, and I can't promise what follows will make sense or be fun to read, but I hope you'll take a trip into this film's world with me and see where this double feature ends up. It might not be a fun trip, but life isn't always a fun trip either.

Inside Llewyn Davis

2013, Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen

We meet Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac, on a night where he's playing folk music in a dark New York City club. The year is 1961, the song is "Hang Me, Oh Hang Me" - a pretty depressing tune that asks just what the title implies - and the singer's body language is enough to make us assume he's either half asleep or entirely defeated. The venue is dark enough that we can't see the faces of the small crowd gathered around him, and if you weren't looking closely you might assume he's playing to a bunch of mannequins. Llewyn is doing the best he can, he just doesn't seem to be connecting to his audience. The night ends on a worse note for Llewyn, with a man he doesn't know confronting him in the alley behind the bar and, for reasons we don't yet understand, handing the emotionally distraught singer a physical beating. 

It would be nice to think that this is just a bad night in the life of the man, who we can already tell is very good at what he does, but the rest of Joel & Ethan Coen's film confirms a simple truth - life is not going very well for Llewyn Davis. He's homeless, the woman he's closest to (Carey Mulligan) has moved on and become vicious toward him, and the winter that fills the world around him seems cruel and unyielding. We learn early in the week we spend with Llewyn that he was once part of a successful folk duo and that his partner has died, with Llewyn later revealing in a moment of frustration that this partner committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. We don't meet his band mate, only hearing others talk about "Mikey" in the past tense to Llewyn, and as we watch Llewyn stumble through a series of failures at times we lose focus on this part of his story.

Another thing that is repeatedly lost throughout the story is a cat. Llewyn, after spending the night on a couch at his friends' apartment, accidentally releases their pet cat into the city as he closes the locked door apartment door behind them. The cat becomes Llewyn's off-and-on traveling companion throughout the film, even riding along with him as he hitches a ride to Chicago to meet a producer that might be able to give him a paying gig. The ride to Chicago - shared with a rude jazz musician (Coen favorite John Goodman) and his gruff valet (Garrett Hedlund) - tests Llewyn's patience greatly. Llewyn goes from being quiet and disinterested early in the trip to lashing out in anger when pushed too far, and at this point in the film we've grown accustomed to seeing him react to stressors and questions in an abrupt, angry manner. We build up sympathy for the performer and the man as he moves from place to place, but what follows at the end of his trip is the film's most heartbreaking scene.

Llewyn gets a chance to meet with club owner & potential manager Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham), and is dejected to find that the man he's interviewing with did not receive the copy of his album, which shares its title with the film, that his agent sent ahead of him. Grossman decides that he will still give Llewyn a chance to perform for him - finally, the film gives Llewyn a break! - directly instructing him to "play something from Inside Llewyn Davis."

We know where Llewyn is mentally at this point. He's been insulted, beaten, and defeated for several days, and we can tell by his relationships with others that this is not a new trend. We've seen him lash out, we've seen him assume other people aren't as good as him, and we've seen him make mistakes - like turning down the chance at royalties on a comedy tune ("Please Mr. Kennedy," on which Isaac teams with co-stars Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver for the film's most humorous scene) because he needed cash in the moment. It's clear that Llewyn is committed to what he's doing, and it's obvious that he's really good at what he does. The issue, again, is that he's not connecting with anyone right now. 

Llewyn pulls out his guitar in the quiet club, sits down in front of Mr. Grossman, and plays and sings his heart out. The song he chooses is "The Death of Queen Jane," a variation of an old English ballad, and - as you might have guessed from the title - it's not the most uplifting choice. The song tells a fictionalized account of a Queen who begs for help to save her child during a difficult labor and, after being rebuked by her nurses and her King, dies during childbirth. Llewyn performs beautifully; we can hear the pain he's been through in every note. He belts out the final notes with his guitar silent, letting all of the emotion that's been trapped inside him, and waits a long moment for the first impression that he's made on Grossman.

Finally, the listener speaks.

"I don't see a lot of money here."

Anyone who's had a job interview knows that macabre tales about death aren't usually the best first impression, and it might be easy for viewers to wonder why the heck Llewyn would make that choice. But for Llewyn, this song is personal. He feels like he can't get help, he feels like the world is closing in on him, and he knows that if something doesn't change soon he's going to be gone and the music is going to be all he leaves behind. He's too proud for any of that. Llewyn and Grossman have a brief conversation, in which Llewyn is given a series of suggestions about doing more to connect with people including "stay out of the sun" and, most crushingly, getting back together with his partner. Llewyn is too far gone to tell Mr. Grossman why that's not an option at this point, he simply thanks him for his time and moves on. He's just given a beautiful performance that he put all of his energy into, he doesn't have the strength to talk about it anymore.

Despite everything that has gone wrong in his life and career, Llewyn continues to walk toward his next opportunity. The viewer might wonder if Llewyn still believes life has any value after a series of misfortunes and that's where his costar - the cat - comes back into play. No matter what is going on and how distant he seems from everyone else in his world, he keeps looking out for the cat that continues to get away from him. This simple act - trying to get the cat home safely - tells us a lot about where Llewyn is at. He wants to make things right and to be accepted, he just keeps getting knocked down as he tries.

Llewyn's first musical performance in the film makes him appear to be already worn out, and his performance for Bud Grossman pushes him closer to defeat. But when we get to his final performance of the film, an expanded version of the opening scene, we know more about the man.
After a full week of defeat and failure, we understand how little he has to show for his effort. The Coens frame the performance differently this time around and offer us a close up of the singer's face after the final note, so we see him wipe his nose and can see that his eyes are holding back tears. We've known for a while that the music is all he has, but here we can really see how much it means to him. He gets the same muted applause we saw in the opening scene as he jokes "You've probably heard that one before; 'cause it was never new and it never gets old and it's a folk song."

Then we see the part of his performance that was omitted from the opening scene. Llewyn turns back to the microphone and adds "Alright, one more before I go."

The song that follows, "Fare Thee Well," is one we partially heard earlier in the film; one that was abruptly cut short by another of his frustrated outbursts. His cat owning friends, the Gorfeins, ask him to play for them at dinner - Mrs. Gorfein even rebukes Llewyn's initial refusal by saying "I thought singing was a joyous expression of the soul?" - and the dejected singer does his best to belt out the tune before Mrs. Gorfein chimes in singing Mike's part, sending Llewyn over the edge. It's the angriest we see Llewyn throughout the film, and it's the moment we most understand how frustrated he is.

Now, safe from interruption on stage, Llewyn hurls himself into another performance of the song. While most of his performances in the film have been beautiful, this is the one that soars. What he's doing is far from being a joyous expression of the soul, what he's doing is a release of all the depression and loss that have been trapped inside. In this moment, Llewyn is done letting the troubles of the world, including the grief he feels after losing his partner, affect him. He is lost in the song, and his voice soars. I get goosebumps every time I watch Isaac perform this scene - which includes at least a dozen viewings of the scene in the last week - because it's a beautiful picture of a man who knows life is not going to take it easy on him; a man who is expressing himself and escaping the world in the only way he can.

Llewyn's moment might be short-lived - the performer that begins to sing after he leaves the stage appears to be a young Bob Dylan, singing a similarly themed song entitled "Fare The Well" - but it's impossible to miss how much being able to perform this song meant to Llewyn as a form of release. What follows is the second half of the opening scene, including the beating in the alley, but even in that moment we see Lllewyn differently than we did the first time around.

Llewyn isn't directly confronting his feelings about the world, but he's dealing with things the way he can. The people in Llewyn's life often think he's lost, and we can understand their reactions to seeing part of his life and part of his career. But we've spent the whole week with Llewyn Davis, and we can see things more clearly than we could during his first performance. We see that he's fighting to live through whatever the world throws at him, and that it's his music that's helping him deal with all the grief and loss in his life.

In short, we see that the heart of a survivor lives inside Llewyn Davis.

(One last note - I freakin' love this cat. Isaac gives one of my favorite performances ever here. And the cat, in true cat fashion, just looks at him like "Fuck you, I'm stealing all these scenes." And he does. You go, cat.)

I obviously wanted to say a lot about Inside Llewyn Davis (if you've read this far you must be sick of it by now), and when it became time to pick a double feature partner my mood changed quite a bit. Like Llewyn choosing "The Death of Queen Jane," the first impression I'm offering for this double feature might come off as a little morbid for some people.

• We'll start with the obvious here - music is the heart of this movie. 
• Considering the mood I've been in, the first instinct I had was to make this double feature about grief and loss. I thought about discussing a lot of my favorite dramatic films that make me feel the same emotions that Inside Llewyn Davis does.
• But then I stopped and thought about how I felt while writing about Inside Llewyn Davis. And that's when I started to realize that while I was already feeling down about life - I was also working myself into a deeper emotional frenzy by focusing entirely on the topic of grief and loss. And that's when I started to realize that I couldn't keep going in that direction and create a double feature that I - let alone anyone else - would really enjoy watching if I didn't shake things up a little.

Based on those simple factors, I did what the proverbs told me to do and checked myself before I wrecked myself. Well, Llewyn wrecked me a little - but it was a good wrecking. Still, it's a wrecking that needs to be medicated - and we all know what more traditional proverbs say is the best medicine.

A Mighty Wind

2003, Directed by Christopher Guest

A Mighty Wind is another film about folk music that's set in New York City in the wake of a death in the folk music world, and if that makes it sound like an ideal companion for Inside Llewyn Davis to you....you should know that that's where the similarities basically end.

The third mockumentary from star/writer/director/all-around genius Christopher Guest follows three folk music groups as they reunite for a concert to honor the promoter that brought them all to fame. If you were to consider this the same folk music universe that Llewyn lived in, it has been more than forty years since his attempts to make it big and, considering these three bands, you'd probably assume he didn't make it.  If you took the film seriously you might also probably think that's a good thing for Llewyn. But that's ok - because you really shouldn't take this film seriously.

So, I'm telling you not to think about A Mighty Wind the same way as Inside Llewyn Davis. Why, then, in the name of common sense, am I telling you to double feature this with that film? I'll allow two better men than me to describe my reasoning.

Frankenstein's monster once said:

"Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it."

I think Llewyn would agree with the big green monster on this point, though I doubt he would be willing to say it. (Again, he's too proud.) Llewyn is a man who is lost, but he doesn't give up. I've already made this point, but I need to repeat it, because it's the thing that keeps his film from being a total downer. That's good. But it might not be enough.

The second wise man I'd like to consult is Rod Kimble, the eponymous hero of the 2007 classic Hot Rod. He had a similar, but slightly different, take on life:

"Life is pain...and we've got to scrape the joy out of it every chance we get."

Like Llewyn, the characters in A Mighty Wind have been down and out. All three groups reached fame and lost it, and are now only back in the spotlight for a one-night only tribute concert. The Folksmen (Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer - reuniting in a band that's not quite Spinal Tap) were best known for one catchy song - "Eat at Joe's" - about a restaurant, and haven't made much of an impact on the folk scene since. They were replaced in the folk spotlight by The Main Street Singers, now reunited as The "New" Main Street Singers, whose aggressive cheerfulness makes them feel like a musical edition of The Brady Bunch. These two bands are informal rivals - they're not bitter against each other, they just don't exist on the same wavelength - and the difference between them is one of the film's most subtle jokes until it comes to a head during the concert.

The third group we meet is a duo, Mitch and Mickey (Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara), whose hit single "There's a Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" took over the music world as a symbol of true love. It's a sincerely great song (it even earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song that year), but unfortunately the performers had a severe falling out in the years that followed their success. Now, back together for one night, we get the treat of O'Hara's Mickey trying to pretend everything's fine while Levy presents Mitch as a man who's been through consistent emotional turmoil since the break up.  His performance is one of my favorite in comedy cinema, and the story arc that follows Mitch and Mickey is what pushes A Mighty Wind over the top as my favorite of Guest's comedies. (To be fair, it's a close race. Tomorrow I might say Waiting for Guffman is my favorite. The man is too good at what he does.)

Mickey is the closest comparison to Llewyn Davis that we find in this film, because he too is completely defeated by the world and seems to have lost connection with everyone around him. But again - that's where the comparisons stop. Because A Mighty Wind is not a film about the anguish of life, A Mighty Wind is a film that provides the joy we need to scrape out of life. It's a comedic tale about a lot of people that are down on their luck, presented primarily as a whimsical comedy with a few heartfelt moments where love and humanity triumph over pain. 

I was caught up in my own grief and sadness when I started writing this double feature, and that really helped me to appreciate Inside Llewyn Davis more. I watched it three times preparing this double feature and though it's always been a favorite it became almost medicinal this month. It means the world to me, and I love the reminders about life it provides. But it's also good to remember that life can make us laugh, that life can make us happy, and that life can provide us with love. And that's what A Mighty Wind, the second tale of defeated folk musicians we're talking about today, has to offer. 

I haven't said enough about A Mighty Wind, other than that I love it dearly for its heart and it's humor, but I also feel like saying how much heart and humor it has is enough to explain why it belongs in this double feature. It's important to understand loss and sadness, but it can't be the only thing we're focused on. That's no way to get through the day. We need people that make us smile and make us feel joy too. 

Maybe this double feature won't work for you, but it's the double feature I needed this month. Spending time with Llewyn Davis and Mitch & Mickey did a lot to remind me what I need to do to face the world. It got some good tunes stuck in my head, made me think about some great performances, and - like Frankenstein's monster and Rod Kimble - reminded me that life has some good in it. Sometimes that's exactly what we need.

Double Feature Picture Show Freestyle Party, Volume 2 - The Mike's Favorite Blu-Rays of 2017

The beginning of the new year is a time for lists, and if there's one thing I love as much as double features...it's lists. They're like longer double features with more features and more double, unless they have an odd number. Then it's like double and a half, I think. I'm not good at math. The point is this -  I think it's kind of fantastic that lists exist.

I will at some point make a list of my favorite movies released in 2017, but I'm not gonna do that yet. There's a simple reason for this: The Shape of Water isn't playing in my neck of the Iowa yet, and I'll be a monkey's uncle if I'm gonna make a list of movies I love without giving a movie that turns The Creature from the Black Lagoon into a noir love story a chance to get on that list.

The next idea I had was a list my favorite blu-ray releases of 2017, because blu-rays are a thing I buy a lot. A really cool thing about physical media in 2017 is that there are already a whole  lot of movies that are already on disc. Which means that companies really have to do some digging and work hard to find something collectors are going to go out of their way to find. Which means that a lot of one-of-a-kind blu-ray releases occurred this year, and that's a darn good thing.

As I was preparing this list, one of my favorite writers, Stephanie Crawford, tackled the same topic over at the delightful F This Movie! website. Because her list and mine would have overlapped a lot - Suspiria, His Girl Friday, Streets of Fire, Effects, Re-Animator, and Liquid Sky were all insta-buy-and-loves for me - I decided to link it here and let you see that list too. Her great list also allows me to focus on 10 films that didn't make that top 10, which means you all now have 20 movies you can buy.

I know! It's a list double feature! You are welcome.

As if that wasn't enough - and enough is never enough! - I'm also going to suggest double feature partners for each of the movies on my list. Yes, that's gonna be a lot of movies. If you don't like movies this list might not be for you.

The Mike's 10 Favorite Blu-Ray Releases of 2017

Honorable Mentions: Band of the Hand (Mill Creek Entertaiment), George A. Romero Between Night And Dawn (Arrow Video), Heat: Director's Definitive Edition (20th Century Fox), The Hidden (Warner Archive), Into the Night (Shout Factory), The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (Criterion Collection), The Old Dark House (The Cohen Film Collection), One Dark Night (Code Red/Kino Lorber), Slaughter High (Vestron Video), Snapshot (Vinegar Syndrome), The Vagrant (Scream Factory), The Valley of Gwangi (Warner Archive)

10 - Demon Wind (Vinegar Syndrome)

Vinegar Syndrome has been great at finding and restoring obscure genre flicks for a few years, and they might have been even better at finding and restoring adult titles in 2017. That's not to say they did a poor job of finding genre titles, because Demon Wind is the first of three movies they landed on this list. 

I didn't know Demon Wind before it was announced by Vinegar Syndrome this summer, but finding this low-budget Evil Dead 2 wannabe in 2017 was a real treat. It's a raw movie compared to Raimi's work, but it's a different kind of raw. The acting is a little goofier, the effects have some issues, and at times it seems more like a traditional demon/zombie flick than the inventive trilogy Raimi created. That's all fine and good - if we use the Evil Dead trilogy as a standard measuring stick for horror movies we're gonna be disappointed by most of 'em - because Demon Wind still feels charming and unique, and lands a few great in-jokes that poke fun at horror films of the era.

Double Feature it with: Demon Wind has some obvious connections to horror classics, and I even see some ties to John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. But the look and tone of the film remind me of another goofy demon flick from the same time frame, Highway to Hell. Get lost with some bubbly-faced demons for a night, you'll thank me later. 

9 - Slither (Scream Factory)

James Gunn brought the Guardians of the Galaxy to the big screen twice in the last five years, and with his current power position in one of Hollywood's biggest franchises it was the perfect time to revisit Slither, his 2006 horror comedy about a town and its residents being overtaken by alien slugs. If you've seen the movie, you know it's funnier than it sounds, thanks to an A-list cast and some incredibly sharp dialogue.

Since this is a relatively recent film, Scream Factory had plenty of bonus features available to choose from. It seems like they picked all of them. Fans of Gunn and his Troma roots will find a lot to love about how this movie was made, and casual horror fans should enjoy the film's gore and humor. It might seem too soon to look at Slither as a cult classic, but I think this movie's going to stick around for a long time - and this blu-ray is going to help make that happen.

Double Feature it with: Slither works best with the 1980s horror comedy that its creatures most resemble, Night of the Creeps. This is only one of the influences on Gunn's film, but I think a then and (almost) now double feature of the two films would be a blast.

8 - Kill, Baby...Kill! (Kino Lorber)

Kill, Baby...Kill! has long been a holy grail for me as a collector, as the only decent DVD edition of the film was part of a box set that went OOP and jumped in price many years ago. I had seen the film, one of Italian master of horror Mario Bava's best offerings, a few times on a public domain DVD set, but seeing it restored on Kino Lorber's US blu-ray release was a highlight of the year for me.

The Kino blu doesn't look perfect, but I think that's a good thing for a film from 1966. You can tell it was hard to get the film to look this good, but it's nice that the restoration didn't  tinker too much and make it feel inauthentic. There are a lot of good blu-rays of classic Italian horror out there (being able to type that just made me a little aroused), and though this isn't one of the best looking discs you'll find it is probably one of the most important we've seen in a while.

(P.S. - Yes, I know I'm cheating and this was an honorable mention on Stephanie's list that I said I wasn't gonna steal from. But I HAD to.)

Double Feature it with: Bava's Blood and Black Lace, made two years before Kill, Baby...Kill!, might be the best looking horror movie of all-time. It was one of 2016's best blu-ray releases, and I see no reason why we shouldn't put the two classics together as a double feature now that they're both on blu-ray. Get down with Italian horror!

7 - One Million Years B.C. (Kino Lorber)

"The lovely Raquel," as Morgan Freeman once described her, gets a 4K update on this stacked disc from Kino Lorber, which features both the European and American cuts of the Hammer Films produced dinosaur epic that's full of Ray Harryhausen's magical monsters. The two cuts are nothing new - 20th Century Fox had them together on a bargain DVD for years, but the new image transfer on this disc is absolutely stunning to anyone interested in fur-clad men and women or dinosaur destruction or any of the other treats this cult classic offers.

One Million Years B.C. isn't one of the most important films of the 1960s, and the fact that it gets this kind of a package in 2017 is a special treat for kids like me that grew up in awe of Harryhausen's creations. My only wish is that the film featured a version of Raquel that's taller than the dinosaurs, as featured on the film's cover, because THAT would be one hell of a movie to see. 

Double Feature it with: Warner Archive restored another old-fashioned dinosaur special effects classic, The Valley of Gwangi, this year. Since I already listed it as one of my honorable mentions, it makes perfect sense to bring it back here. If you know a kid who likes dinosaurs and hasn't been too tainted by modern special effects yet, get both of these movies and watch their eyes grow. 

Hmmm...that might be a good idea for later in this list too. (Hashtag: foreshadowing.)

6 - Willard (Scream Factory)

A killer rat film with a revenge twist, Willard is one of the few American horror hits of the 1970s that for some reason never made its way to DVD. So when Scream Factory announced that it - along with the sequel, Ben - would make its debut on blu-ray - that was a pretty big deal. I didn't know much about the film until Crispin Glover starred in a remake in 2003, and I'd been waiting to see what the fuss was all about for a long time.

When I got the chance to watch both of these films this year, I was very pleased with what I found in Willard. Young Bruce Davison - who grew up to be quite the character actor - wasn't quite compelling yet, but acting opposite the likes of Ernest Freakin' Borgnine and Elsa Freakin' Lancaster protects him from a lot of potential problems. The film's rat actors are well-trained and surprisingly sympathetic. The movie's dated and feels a little bit like it was made for TV, but there's a charm to be found in that. This one was worth the wait.

Double Feature it with: I mentioned that Willard feels a bit like a made for TV, and I think it might be fun to pair it with my favorite made for TV horror of the 1970s, The Initiation of Sarah.  You'll get a male lead for one, a female lead for the other, and nice doses of bullying and revenge via mind control in both.

5 - Red Mob (Vinegar Syndrome)

If I had been snatched at birth by Russians - they steal elections now, who knows what they were capable of in the 1980s! - and then allowed to make a movie when I was 12 and The A-Team had just premiered in Mother Russia, that movie would have looked almost exactly like Red Mob.

This is kind of a cheat pick - Red Mob was offered only briefly as a limited edition on Vinegar Syndrome's website, and is being released to the masses later this month - but for my money this is one of the most unique special edition releases we've seen released in a long time. I don't know who the person is who sits in a room somewhere and says "Hey, I've got an idea - let's dig up this Russian action epic from the early '90s and make it pretty!" but whoever that guy is deserves a raise. This movie is excessive in all the right ways, which makes it pure entertainment. And yeah, I'm bumping it up the list a lot just because it's so crazy to me that this blu-ray exists.

Double Feature it with: I'm not sure what the American equivalent to Red Mob might be. It's got a little bit of Commando and a little bit of Red Dawn and a little bit of every other '80s and early '90s action movie in it. I might go with a Rutger Hauer flick to give the double feature a European feel, so let's say we double feature Red Mob with the Hauer vehicle Wanted: Dead or Alive, which also could use a blu-ray update.

4 - The Unholy (Vestron Video)

Do you like horror films about priests losing their faith? What about tempting redheaded demonesses? If you answered yes to one or both of these questions, The Unholy might just be the '80s horror movie for you.

The reboot of the Vestron Video label has provided a lot of '80s cult hits on blu over the last two years, and The Unholy was met with less fanfare than a lot of their other titles, particularly this years releases of The Gate and Slaughter High. What lifts The Unholy above these other titles for me is how dreamlike and surreal this film is, especially in the final act. Cuban born director Camilo Vila's film shares a lot of style with some of the great Italian horror films of the '70s and '80s, and this visually impressive film benefits more from the upgrade to blu than some of the other titles from the label. It's not a tight film, but it's haunting and seductive. I'll take that in a demon vs. priest film every day.

Double Feature it with: William Peter Blatty's not-quite sequel to The Exorcist, The Ninth Configuration, ticks a lot of the same boxes that The Unholy does. It doesn't rely on sex appeal and temptation as much as The Unholy does, but it does a great job of making the characters question their faith while keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat with great visuals and a twisting plot. Watch it first, then end the night with The Unholy's smutty finale.

3 - My Chauffeur (Vinegar Syndrome)

Vinegar Syndrome brought a horror film, an action film, and now an R-rated '80s comedy to this list. My Chauffeur is led by some great '80s talent - Valley Girl's Deborah Foreman and Flash Gordon himself, Sam J. Jones - and features a bunch of unique and entertaining side performers including Howard Hesseman and Penn & Teller.

Stuck on bargain DVD megapacks for decades, My Chauffeur finally shines with all the brightness of Foreman's charming smile on this blu-ray disc. It's a raunchy little romp that allows Foreman to show off her comedic talents throughout, and it's hard to believe she wasn't a bigger star of the era based on the few films she did shine in. Plus it's got one hell of an incest joke. If that doesn't sell you on the flick - OK, you might be more normal than I am.

Double Feature it with: As a child of the 1980s, I have a great fondness for the comedies of this era. My Chauffeur falls into a different category than a lot of the family comedies I saw growing up, thanks to its R rating and adult humor, much like one of my favorite movies - Secret Admirer. These movies don't have a lot in common in plot, but both do a great job of finding juvenile humor in adult situations.

2 - House: Two Stories (Arrow Video)

We're staying in the '80s again, this time with a packed two-disc box set from Arrow Video, led by House - which I think holds its own against the best horror comedies of its era. This is a goofy haunted house film from Friday the 13th Part 2 director Steve Miner, with a witty script (co-written by the great Fred Dekker) and winning performances by the cast (Night Court's Richard Moll is having so much fun haunting this house). It's paired here with its sequel, House II: The Second Story, which takes the saga in a crazier direction and pulls no punches while mixing '80s teen horror with random Aztec curses.

Both of these films had been through some difficult times on DVD, and Arrow's restoration of them here makes me so happy. I never even bothered to see House II, due to the DVD release being pan and scan, so the opportunity to see it for the first time as a double feature with the original that I love so much was one of my favorite horror viewing moments of the year. Add in the fact that Arrow always goes all out with special features, booklets, and a beautiful box to hold the discs, and this was nearly my favorite thing I purchased this year.

Double Feature it with: This is already a double feature, so why don't we double feature it with another original horror of the time and its sequel. I see a lot of parallels between House and Fright Night. And Fright Night also has a zany sequel (Fright Night Part 2, which just landed on Amazon Prime after near a decade out of print on DVD!) that's worth seeing too. A House/Fright Night week should keep any '80s horror fan happy.

1 - The Lost World (Flicker Alley)

Nearly 70 years before Jurassic Park - not quite an era, but a good chunk of time - special effects master Willis O'Brien brought the first dinosaur epic I remember seeing as a child, The Lost World, to silent cinema screens. Teaming with director Harry Hoyt and a cast that included future Oscar winner Wallace Beery and his amazing beard, O'Brien brought hid stop-motion animation talents to the production and created iconic images that helped future generations fall in love with dinosaurs. (As they should.)

For more than ten years the best way to see this film was as a special feature on a disc featuring a big budget remake from the 1960s (which is pretty entertaining too), until Flicker Alley released this disgustingly cool restoration of the silent classic in September. The studio, whose purpose is to preserve film history, also does an amazing job of supplementing the film with information about O'Brien's work, including commentaries, deleted scenes, and short films he made before The Lost World. But the coolest extra on the disc might be the test footage from an unfinished follow up film - Creation - which inspired producers to hire him to create the title character for a little film called King Kong.

If we're looking at the most important blu-rays of the year from a film history standpoint, it's hard to argue against The Lost World. It brought back an important piece of visual effects history and made sure that future generations will always be able to see how Willis O'Brien made things happen in the early days of the movies.

Plus it's got dinosaurs. Really, really cool dinosaurs. And that's a good thing too.

Double Feature it with: This is kind of obvious, and I already said it. The dinosaur action here ties in beautifully with the undeniable magic of King Kong, and spending the night with these two classic monster movies from O'Brien sounds like a perfect double feature to me. It's like they say, sometimes the simplest answer is also the correct one.

I hope you find something great for your collection this year, whether it's a disc from this list or Stephanie's. (Seriously, you need that Suspiria disc!) It's still a great time to be a movie collector, and here's to all these studios and the great work they're doing to make sure that some of these obscure and unique titles will never be lost in time. They had a great year, and I'm sure they'll keep it up in 2018.