Video Dispatches: PLEDGE NIGHT, THE SET-UP & 3 By Von Sternberg

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

Pledge Night (1990) – Vinegar Syndrome

I’m not aware of any significant cult status, but it’s easy to imagine Pledge Night being a beloved VHS gem, despite Vinegar Sydnrome’s unbelievably crisp transfer. Paul Ziller takes a fairly popular comedy subgenre — the frat house and all its ceremonies — and turns it into a capably managed slasher. The premise is simple: it’s hell week but the pledges find out the house is haunted by a pledge-gone-wrong of yesteryear. Though not self-important, Pledge Night acts as an indictment on the regressive college custom.

In one of the disc’s supplements, Ziller actually cedes the film’s making to screenwriter Joyce Snyder, saying it was her baby. He also gives us some interesting background on the home video market, as well as Troma, as the former editor.

Snyder is also given a feature, and she gives some insight into her background as an X-Rated filmmaker and how Pledge Night was “the next logical step” for her, as well as her extensive research on the project. The ten-minute feature gives credence to director’s claim that it was her film more than it was his.

3 Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg (1927-1928) – Criterion

Before the seven landmark sound films Josef von Sternberg made with Marlene Dietrich, he made a handful of silent films, most of which are quite good (from those that survive) and immediately exposed a talent to cinema that approached the image with a distinct and lasting sense of poetics. Of those handful of films, Criterion have re-released three with a necessary Blu-ray upgrade: Underworld, The Last Command and The Docks of New York. These three are, by most accounts, the most substantial of his silent period, although you can hardly go very wrong with all those available.

Though I probably owe Underworld a second watch again soon, for my mileage, these films get increasingly better with each next picture, climaxing with the beautiful The Docks of New York, which feels like evidence of a style starting to gel from scene-to-scene. But George Bancroft’s proto-gangster in Underworld and Emil Janning’s ex-Russian general in the ahead-of-its-time The Last Command are very rich performances that Von Sternberg dresses in immaculately messy cinematography he perfected come The Docks of New York.

Criterion’s set comes with a thick and pretty 95-page book of essays, Ben Hect’s original text “Underworld” and an excerpt from Von Sternberg’s memoir regarding his thoughts on Emil Janning, whom he called “a veritable mountain of a man.” The excerpt is entertaining and details his respect and conflicted relationship with the actor.

Each disc contains a video supplement, two of which are informative essays, and Tag Gallagher’s (always a great Von Sternberg resource) is the standout supplement of Criterion’s lovely set. Gallagher goes into great depth about Von Sternberg’s early period in Hollywood, his relationship with Charlie Chaplin, and many adjacent facets of his life. Gallagher’s prose is often beautiful and he’s quite good at illustrating the director’s screen poetics. His passion for Von Sternberg’s filmography is always at the foreground of his scholastic additions to both this box set and Indicator’s recent set of Von Sternberg/Dietrich films.

The Set-Up (1949) – Warner Archive

Robert Wise’s boxing noir, The Set-Up, belongs in the pantheon of last-chance cinema. Stoker (Robert Ryan) is a 35-year-old washed-up boxer who still believes one last punch can save his career, relationship and life. Of course, this being a noir, we know no punch can save him. Mid-way through an out-matched fight with a younger opponent, Stoker finds out he’s part of a fix — a brutal realization that the fixer didn’t need him to “go down” because it was such a given.

Wise creates the 72-minute film in something approximating real time — between that and the film’s fixation on clocks, The Set-Up recalled the recently restored noir The Big Clock. Wise uses the real-time setting especially well during Stoker’s central match, which is as tense as any boxing scene filmed in its wake. The way he intersperses a handful of animated attendees is perfectly complementary to the actual fight and creates quite a tangible environment.

The black-and-white boxing, in the sweaty auditorium, quickly recalls, for modern audiences, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, so it’s no surprise that Warner Archive’s new Blu-ray has a commentary track featuring Scorsese and Wise. The track, which was recorded around 2004, is odd because both directors’ input is edited together from separate recordings, so they aren’t in the same room. The material is so sparse that it works, however, and Scorsese’s contributions are unsurprisingly very good — both smart and entertaining. And he talks at length about the boxing match (which he calls the best fight on film) and the influence it had on Raging Bull.

Between the film’s stellar quality, the commentary track and Warner’s top-shelf restoration, this disc comes highly recommended.