Video Dispatches: THE JUNIPER TREE, BERSERKER & THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL

Video Dispatches is a regular column covering recent home video releases.

The Juniper Tree (1990) – Arbelos Films

Arbelos is a new film restoration and distribution company that splashed onto the scene last year with boutique releases of Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie and Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation. Currently, their exciting new restoration of Bela Tarr’s Satantago is touring cinemas and set for a forthcoming home release. But their third release was Nietzchka Keene’s The Juniper Tree, starring Björk, the brilliant Icelandic popstar.

Björk’s acting career is usually only defined by her incredible performance in Lars von Trier’s miserable, cynical Dancer in the Dark, but a decade earlier, she had a major role in Keene’s small folklore art house film. The Juniper Tree is a strange and sometimes hypnotic piece that fares better when it leans on atmosphere and Björk’s incredible face.

Arbelos lovely set includes three of Keene’s short films, Still, Hinterland and Ares, which date back to 1978 and each unique, isolated films, with the latter, an experimental stop-motion film being my favorite. Also included are interviews with Keene and cinematographer Randolph Sellars. Keene gets into depth about the film’s many inspirations, relationship to witchcraft, production and casting Björk.

Besides what’s on the disc, it should be stated that this is also just a beautiful artifact, with a dense booklet and postcard included. I’m excited to see what they’ll do with Tarr’s film, needless to say.

Berserker (1987) – Vinegar Syndrome

Out from Vinegar Syndrome is Jefferson Richard’s Berserker, a horror tale about a group of young people who go into the woods on a camping trip, to spend a night or two drinking, having sex, splashing around in the creek and listening to rock n’ roll. Of course, their trip only goes according to plan for so long before their interrupted by a man-bear beast that plucks them from life one by one.

Richard’s film, while it might have a bit of trouble sustaining the back half of its runtime, is a good deal of fun. The characterizations are over the top, as well as the explicit attempts to lear at the beautiful young actresses, which plays sillier now than it does nefarious — and were mostly inclusions out of Richard’s control. And the filmmaker is smart enough to let some of the fun non-diegetic rock tunes play out long enough.

Berserker probably won’t surprise you, but more importantly, it won’t let down connoisseurs of long-dormant 80s cult horror about rocking youths doomed to a monstrous death — the type of stuff Vinegar Syndrome is so good at revitalizing. Here, as always, the transfer looks incredible, and they’ve tracked down some of the cast to do new interviews to relive their experiences. Of most interest, a new 25-minute interview with Richard, though he’s clearly not a raconteur, holds plenty of nuggets about what it was like to make tiny picture like this in the late 80s.

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) – Warner Archive

Warner Archive recently released Vincente Minnelli’s much-loved Hollywood melodrama The Bad and the Beautiful, a film about making films during the studio era. This was my first time with the film, which lives up to its reputation — both a very sad and entertaining picture anchored by a wonderful Kirk Douglas as the emotionally unpredictable Jonathan Shields.

Andrew Sarris, who called the film a masterpiece in his book on American directors, said if Minnelli had a fatal flaw, “it is his naive belief that style can invariably transcend substance and that our way of looking at the world is more important than the world itself.” He ends the passage by saying that “Minnelli believes more in beauty than in art.” I’m guessing this more of a reaction to his musicals than The Bad and the Beautiful (and its sequel Two Weeks in Another Town), which I found to be full of quietly ornate compositions and I look forward to rediscovering its many corners in the future.

The disc’s best supplement is a good one: a feature-length TCM-produced (therefore Robert Wagner-narrated) documentary on Lana Turner. It’s fairly exhaustive and doesn’t waste too much time on clips and building unnecessary drama in order to pad out its runtime.