What to watch at home in December

Anton Bitel pro­vides a look at six titles head­ing to stream­ing and phys­i­cal media releas­es this month that you should add to the top of your view­ing list.

The true sto­ry of the 47 rōnin who took revenge for the death (by sep­puku) of their daimyō Lord Asano after he assault­ed the pow­er­ful court offi­cial Kira in response to an insult was regard­ed as an exem­plum for the samu­rai code of hon­our known as bushidō, and has been the sub­ject of many plays, tele­vi­sion shows and films. Indeed over his career, beloved actor Toshi­ro Mifu­ne appeared in three dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the sto­ry — Hiroshi Inagaki’s 1962 film Chūshin­gara, the 1971 TV series Daichūshin­gara, and this epic fea­ture from Kin­ji Fukasaku, where he plays Lord Tsuchiya Michinao.

The cli­max will even­tu­al­ly deliv­er on the promised vio­lence, includ­ing an intense, pro­longed sword duel between Fuwa Kazue­mon (Son­ny Chi­ba), body­guard to the rōnin’s leader Ōishi Kura­nosuke (Yorozuya Kin­no­suke), and Kobayashi Hei­hachi­ro (Tsune­hiko Watase), body­guard to Kira (Nobuo Kaneko). Yet for the most part Fukasaku plays a wait­ing game, focus­ing on the psy­cho­log­i­cal ten­sions of a revenge that took place some 14 months after Asano’s sui­cide, requir­ing extra­or­di­nary trust and for­bear­ance on the part of rōnin who were often as unsure as the author­i­ties what, if any­thing, Ōishi was plot­ting. Accord­ing­ly this plays like Sam Mendes’ Jar­head, drama­tis­ing men of action reduced to inaction.

The Fall of Ako Cas­tle is avail­able on Blu-ray from 4 Decem­ber via Eure­ka

After, cor­nered and dying, the ​‘Lakeshore Stran­gler’ Charles ​‘Chucky’ Lee Ray (Brad Dou­rif) uses a Voodoo spell to trans­fer his soul into a Good Guy doll, he hangs low in the ele­vat­ed brown­stone apart­ment of sin­gle moth­er Karen Bar­clay (Cather­ine Hicks) where he has become the beloved toy of her six-year-old son Andy (Alex Vin­cent). Even­tu­al­ly he reveals him­self, pur­su­ing a hor­rif­ic vendet­ta against his ene­mies, and seek­ing a more per­ma­nent home in the body of his inno­cent new owner.

They say Good Guys fin­ish last, but the Child’s Play fran­chise, far from end­ing, just keeps com­ing back, with its now icon­ic (and emi­nent­ly com­mod­i­fi­able) vil­lain, its mul­ti­ple sequels (plus 2019 reboot), and its TV-series spin­off. Key to this suc­cess, now span­ning over three-and-a-half decades, is its con­sis­ten­cy, with key per­son­nel (includ­ing Dou­rif and writer-turned-fran­chise-direc­tor Don Manci­ni) remain­ing in place, and its will­ing­ness to let the core mythol­o­gy evolve in increas­ing­ly unhinged directions.

Also cru­cial, though, is just how good Tom Holland’s orig­i­nal film is: a Hitch­cock­ian blend of high ten­sion and dark com­e­dy, with a rich seam of psy­cho­log­i­cal sub­text, as lit­tle Andy must decide between mater­nal influ­ence and peer pressure.

Child’s Play is avail­able as part of the Child’s Play boxset on 4K UHD/Blu-ray from 11 Dec via Arrow

In 1957, Ric­car­do Fre­da direct­ed I Vam­piri, Italy’s first hor­ror fea­ture with sound. Over three decades lat­er, towards the end of his career, he would make this hor­ror UFO – part late-entry gial­lo (com­plete with black-gloved killer), part mod­ern goth­ic, part Satan­ic thriller.

Actor Michael (Ste­fano Patrizi), who tends to get car­ried away in his roles as stran­glers, has an ​‘irre­sistible impulse’ to revis­it his moth­er Glen­da (Ani­ta Strind­berg) for the first time since, as a child, he was tak­en away and insti­tu­tion­alised for mur­der­ing his own con­duc­tor father. In Glenda’s remote wood­land pad (in Sur­rey!), togeth­er with his girl­friend Deb­o­rah (Sil­via Dion­i­sio) and some of the crew from his lat­est film (includ­ing his lead­ing lady Beryl, played by Lau­ra Black Emanuelle Gemser), Michael will find past trau­ma resur­fac­ing, as the peo­ple around him start meet­ing gris­ly deaths one by one.

“The rela­tion­ship between a moth­er and son is a mys­te­ri­ous one,” observes Glen­da, cut­ting to the Freudi­an core of Freda’s Psy­cho-dra­ma. For this who- and how-dun­nit comes with the irra­tional trap­pings of a night­mare, as mul­ti­ple nar­ra­tive strands, dark mag­ic and even metacin­e­mat­ic ele­ments all con­verge to trap the view­er in a mad­den­ing fog of meaning.

Mur­der Obses­sion is avail­able on Blu-ray from 18 Decem­ber via Radi­ance

Released in 1987, Paul Verhoeven’s Robo­Cop sold itself, from the title on down, as a scuzzy sci-fi action B movie, but it also pushed car­toon­ish on-screen vio­lence to new lev­els, while being both satire of the Rea­gan-era dri­ve towards cor­po­rate pri­vati­sa­tion, and, as Ver­ho­even him­self would insist, an all-Amer­i­can retelling of Jesus’ cru­ci­fix­ion and res­ur­rec­tion. East­wood Allen and Christo­pher Grif­fiths’ four-part, five-hour doc­u­men­tary mini-series traces the film’s gen­e­sis, its (some­times dif­fi­cult) pro­duc­tion, and its recep­tion and cul­tur­al impact.

All this is com­mu­ni­cat­ed through an impres­sive­ly exten­sive range of talk­ing heads — prac­ti­cal­ly the entire cast and crew apart from those who have since died — ensur­ing palat­able, often very fun­ny anec­dotes, as well as a mas­ter­class on every aspect of film­mak­ing. Along the way you will learn things: that all the cops in the film were named after ser­i­al killers; that Peter Weller was a ​“pussy hound” on set; that Robo­Cop pre­dict­ed both the DVD, and the mil­i­tari­sa­tion of the police force; and that real police repeat­ed­ly inter­rupt­ed the shoot because of alarm over the scale of explo­sions and fires on loca­tion. It is an exhil­a­rat­ing, exhaust­ing trib­ute to Verhoeven’s infec­tious movie-mak­ing mania.

RoboDoc: The Cre­ation of Robo­Cop is avail­able on Blu-ray from 18 Dec via Icon Film Channel

“Every­one here has some kind of past. Every­one used to be some­body else before they end­ed up here.”

The speak­er, old Dr Uchiya­ma (Isamu Kosu­gi), is not wrong. For he, though kind­ly, is a washed-up alco­holic, while restau­ra­teur Jōji Shi­ma­ki (Yujiro Ishi­hara) is an ex-box­er with blood on his hands, and inden­tured chanteuse Saeko (Mie Kita­hara) is ​“a canary that’s for­got­ten how to sing” — and all these char­ac­ters will find them­selves unit­ed by their lone­li­ness and despair, in a demi­monde of cabaret clubs, pool halls, love hotels and sleazy dives, as Jōji vain­ly pur­sues a dream that is long since over.

From its open­ing shot of a gut­ter-lev­el pud­dle that, once the rain has stopped falling in it, reflects the neon sign (in Eng­lish) for Jōji’s restau­rant, Koreyoshi Kurahara’s mono­chrome fea­ture is clear­ly one of sev­er­al Nikkat­su noirs pro­duced to fight it out with the Amer­i­can and French films that were doing so well at the Japan­ese box office. The shad­ows are long, Masaru Sato’s score is jazzy, and the crises that the play­ers must face, though crim­i­nal in nature, are also exis­ten­tial, with the past prov­ing as inescapable as the self, and love the only salve.

I Am Wait­ing is avail­able as part of the Blu-ray set World Noir 1 from 18 Decem­ber via Radi­ance

“You’ve seen the movies too,” Sandy (Har­ri­et Har­ris) says of the alien (Jade Quon) — lat­er var­i­ous­ly nick­named Jules or Gary — that has crash-land­ed into the back gar­den of her friend Mil­ton (Ben Kings­ley), ruin­ing his bird­house and aza­leas. ​“You know what hap­pens to these guys when they fall to Earth.”

The obvi­ous movie ref­er­ence point here is E.T., in which those who dis­cov­er and befriend the alien must also pro­tect it from gov­ern­ment agents — except that, unlike the sub­ur­ban chil­dren in Steven Spielberg’s film, Sandy and Mil­ton are in their Sev­en­ties. So while they do their best to clothe and feed this recent­ly arrived guest and to help him rebuild his dam­aged space­craft, one might nat­u­ral­ly also think of the geri­atric close encoun­ters of Ron Howard’s Cocoon. Mean­while the sim­i­lar­ly age­ing Joyce, to whom Sandy address­es her words about movie aliens, is played by Jane Curtin, her­self once a movie alien in Steve Barron’s SNL-spin­off Coneheads.

This is a gen­tle, some­what mawk­ish alle­go­ry of Milton’s encroach­ing twi­light years – for coin­cid­ing with Jules’ arrival is the ear­ly onset of the widower’s cog­ni­tive decline, so that he too is on a slow, dif­fi­cult jour­ney both home and heavenwards.

Jules in UK cin­e­mas and on dig­i­tal from 29 Decem­ber via Sig­na­ture Entertainment