CAPONE-icon3

This is not an easy time to be a fan of cult-ish movies on home video:  Warner Brothers has led the charge to release back-catalog films on DVD-R’s instead of pressed DVD’s and it looks like the other major stu­dios are slowly falling in line.  While it’s nice to be able to get rar­i­ties, it’s sad that they aren’t given the full archival treat­ment craved by the fans who will actu­ally buy them.  Thankfully, a few DVD com­pa­nies are still will­ing to take a gam­ble on the more cultish major stu­dio titles — and Shout! Factory has com­mit­ted them­selves to this approach by sign­ing on to reveal sev­eral over­looked items from the 20th Century Fox film catalog.

Capone is one of the early releases in this series: if it’s any indi­ca­tion of the over­all line’s qual­ity, things are off to a good start.  The anamor­phic trans­fer does a solid job of cap­tur­ing a dif­fi­cult film: there’s lots of Gordon Willis-inspired dark­ness and shadow to the cin­e­matog­ra­phy and the trans­fer avoids the kind of artifacting/grain pit­falls this style of film­mak­ing can lead to on video.  Outside of a few dark shots that would have a hard time look­ing good in any trans­fer, this disc looks quite nice.  In fact, it’s strong enough that the poorly blown-up stock footage used in one scene really leaps out at the viewer when com­pared with the mate­r­ial shot for the film.  The Dolby stereo sound­track has a basic but effec­tive mix, ensur­ing the viewer will get to hear every shouted line of dia­logue from Ben Gazzara dur­ing his fre­quent eye-popping rants.

Elsewhere, the disc offers a small but potent set of extras.  First up is a set of trail­ers — two the­atri­cal and two tele­vi­sion — for Capone.  Despite the film’s major stu­dio pedi­gree, these trail­ers are cut and nar­rated in the punchy, hard-sell style of Corman’s New World Pictures releases.  They’re great fun to watch and there are enough vari­a­tions between the trail­ers to make them all worth a look.  In a smart nod, the disc also includes the trailer for Corman’s The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, which Capone cribs a bit of stock footage from.

The other extra — and the most sub­stan­tial — is a com­men­tary track by direc­tor Steve Carver and mod­er­a­tor Nathaniel Thompson of Mondo Digital fame.  Carver cov­ers a lot of inter­est­ing mate­r­ial on the track, dis­cussing every­thing from his unex­pect­edly arty film­mak­ing influ­ences to the L.A. loca­tions and back­lot sets used to give the illu­sion of vin­tage East Coast loca­tions.  The best mate­r­ial here deals with the per­son­al­i­ties of the dif­fer­ent actors, includ­ing some hilar­i­ous tales about how Harry Guardino and Gazzara would use old act­ing tricks to upstage each other.  Thompson does a strong job as mod­er­a­tor, giv­ing Carver plenty of room to talk but pep­per­ing the track with ques­tions that keep the direc­tor focused and talk­ing.  It’s a fine track that any­one inter­ested in the film will want to check out.

In short, Shout! Factory has done a fine job with a cat­a­log title on this disc of Capone.  The com­pany has got some gems in the pipeline for this series (Your Humble Reviewer is par­tic­u­larly excited about the forth­com­ing disc of 99 And 44/100% Dead) so cult film fans should keep their fin­gers crossed that the com­pany con­tin­ues in this direc­tion with their 20th Century Fox releases.

Capone

Capone

From his hood roots in New York, to the St. Valentines Day Massacre and “king of rack­e­teer­ing” reign in Chicago, to the end of his days in Florida, Capone is the defin­i­tive biopic of the world’s most infa­mous gangster.Ben Gazzara (Road House, The Big Lebowski) is Al Capone, sub­merged in the bustling and boot­leg­ging under­belly of the 1920s. He’s sur­rounded by a gritty ensem­ble cast fea­tur­ing Sylvester Stallone (Rocky) as arch-criminal Frank Nitti, John Cassavetes (Rosemary’s Baby) as New York gang lord Frankie Yale, Susan Blakely as Capone’s flap­per love inter­est Iris Crawford, and Harry Guardino (Dirty Harry) as Chicago crime boss Johnny Torrio.Produced by Roger Corman, this fever­ishly paced and styl­is­tic crime drama in the spirit of The Godfather and a pre­cur­sor to Goodfellas holds no punches when it comes to por­tray­ing vio­lence and bru­tal­ity that came with the ter­ri­tory and the times.