CARRIE 18

Moving stuff…

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Commentary, Featurettes, Visual essay, Alt TV opening, Gallery, Booklet, Poster, Postcards

1976 ★★★★★ OUT 22 JANUARY 4K UHD

It’s hard to believe now, but Carrie almost ended up in Stephen King’s rubbish bin. Instead, his wife Tabitha saved the pages and convinced him to keep writing. It became a smash hit – as did Brian De Palma’s Oscar-nominated adaptation. Re-released in glorious 4K almost 50 years after the fact, the film retains its power.

Like many of King’s strongest works, it’s a tale of child abuse. At its centre is telekinetic teen Carrie (Sissy Spacek) who’s tormented at home by her religious mother (the late Piper Laurie), taunted at school by the other kids, then horribly pranked at the prom - at which point all hell breaks loose. De Palma’s stylistic flourishes intensify the suffering, Pino Donaggio’s lush score adds a sense of doomed romance, and the talented young cast - including Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen and, in his first major role, John Travolta - really sell the drama.

But this is Spacek’s film. Allowing slivers of hope to show, heartbreakingly, through the damage, she’s incredible. Her commitment to the role shines through on the extras, whether she’s auditioning in character with grease in her hair, or getting buried alive to play Carrie’s hand for the Deliverance-inspired sucker-punch ending. This gorgeous package also includes a 40-page booklet, double-sided postcards and more. You’ll be glad once again that Tabitha intervened.

THE VERDICT Getting the treatment it fully deserves, the first Stephen King adaptation remains one of the very best.

SCROOGED 12 1988 ★★★★★ OUT NOW 4K UHD

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Commentary, Featurettes

There have been countless memorable screen versions of Dickens’ festive miser, but only one we can think of who gets kicked in the balls by a Christmas spirit. And boy, does he deserve it. Bill Murray’s TV exec Frank Cross is such a misanthrope he makes other cine-Scrooges look like Tiny Tim. He’s the cruel, shouty core of Richard Donner’s uneven but marvellously mean-spirited Yuletide comedy, which adds a dollop of Network-style showbiz satire to A Christmas Carol. A cracker of a film for all real-life Grinches. Donner’s commentary is the plum extra. ANTON VAN BEEK

BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE PG 1963 ★★★★★ OUT NOW BD, DIGITAL, BFI PLAYER

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Featurettes, Stills gallery, Booklet

Three years after the reactions to Peeping Tom effectively ended his career, Michael Powell made another serial-killer film for West German TV. An adaptation of Béla Bartók’s expressionist opera, it sees Norman Foster and Ana Raquel Satre ratcheting up the warbles as they glide from room to room. Unavailable for years but now with a 60th-anniversary restoration, Bluebeard’s Castle is a revelation, sure to make you swoon with its tracking shots, vivid colours and Hein Heckroth’s dazzling production design. JAMIE GRAHAM

TRADING PLACES 15 1983 ★★★★★ OUT NOW 4K UHD

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Featurettes, Deleted scene

John Landis’ Pygmalion-esque comedy stars Dan Aykroyd as a commodities trader and Eddie Murphy as a street hustler whose lives are swapped as part of an elaborate bet about nature versus nurture. While some aspects haven’t aged well, for the most part this is a LOL-filled update of the sort of social comedies Preston Sturges was making five decades earlier (Sullivan’s Travels, et al). In other words, bawdy comic brilliance that might just teach you something about the human condition. Extras are mostly old material, aside from a brief new Landis chat. ANTON VAN BEEK

THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER PG 1974 ★★★★★ OUT 19 JANUARY CINEMAS

A 50th-anniversary big-screen rerelease for one of Werner Herzog’s best films. Set in a Bavarian town and the surrounding countryside in the late 1820s, this richly allegorical fable of innocence lost centres on Kaspar (played by real-life Berlin street musician Bruno S.), a young man who has spent the first 16 years of his life locked in a cellar without human contact. Scenes of society’s efforts to ‘civilise’ this Christ-like outsider are endowed with a rare acuity - yet it’s the mysterious dream sequences that truly showcase the director’s visionary capabilities. TOM DAWSON ARROW, PARAMOUNT, BFI