What to watch at home in February

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.

Recent­ly arrest­ed for armed rob­bery, long-haired, doe-eyed Baron (Joe Keery) tells his life sto­ry to cell­mate Otis (Ald­is Hodge), hop­ing to con­vince this career crim­i­nal to help him escape and be reunit­ed with his girl­friend Mar­malade (Cami­la Mor­rone). Yet it is clear from the sto­ry that this man­ic pix­ie dream girl has been tak­ing ​‘dumb­er than a box of crayons’ mama’s boy Baron for a ride — and not just in the con­vert­ible she blew in on. She even nick­names him ​‘Pup­pet’, while manip­u­lat­ing the besot­ted naïf into being her part­ner in crime. Otis too, as he lis­tens to this one-sided love sto­ry, has his eye on a dif­fer­ent prize, and out-of-his-depth Baron looks set to be played once again, inside and out.

Yet as Mar­malade seduces her lovesick beau into don­ning a grotesque three-faced mask and aid­ing and abet­ting her vio­lent heist, some­thing in this Bon­nie and Clyde mas­quer­ade does not quite add up. Baron insists to Otis of his sto­ry, ​“It’s all about them details” — and sure enough half the fun of in writer/​director Keir O’Donnell’s genre-twist­ing roman­tic noir/​escapist road movie is puz­zling out where and how exact­ly the truth lies.

Mar­malade is avail­able on dig­i­tal from 12 Feb via Sig­na­ture Entertainment

Even the most famil­iar of hor­ror tropes can be giv­en an unex­pect­ed spin by a ​‘what if’. What if the zom­bies were actu­al­ly zomb­i­fied beavers? what if the mad sci­en­tist were sur­gi­cal­ly trans­form­ing lines of peo­ple into a cen­tipede? Or in the case of Matthew Goodhue’s improb­a­ble fol­low-up to his sen­si­tive, ambigu­ous indie Woe, what if the slash­er in the soror­i­ty house were actu­al­ly a three-toed Pana­man­ian sloth? and not just that, but an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly fast one, able to text, take self­ies, post on social media, read a map, dri­ve a car, and fight with a sword — and to sur­vive being bit­ten by a croc­o­dile, beat­en, thrown out a win­dow, stabbed and shot.

In oth­er words, as one char­ac­ter puts it, this she-sloth is ​“like a cute Chucky… an adorable lit­tle killing machine”. Ani­mat­ed with old-school prac­ti­cal pup­petry, she enters Sig­ma Lamb­da Theta (get it!) as a house mas­cot, and with Emi­ly (Lisa Ambal­a­va­nar) and Bri­an­na (Syd­ney Craven) vicious­ly vying for pop­u­lar­i­ty and the soror­i­ty pres­i­den­cy, the killer crea­ture embod­ies all the ten­sions and aggres­sions in a hyper-com­pet­i­tive sce­nario that is part Mean Girls, part Elec­tion. This com­mits to its absurd­ly dumb bit, while sly­ly pro­mot­ing sisterhood.

Slother­house is avail­able on dig­i­tal from 12 Feb via Plaion Pic­tures

In 1956, direc­tor Don Siegel adapt­ed Jack Finney’s alien inva­sion nov­el The Body Snatch­ers into an alle­go­ry of McCarthy­ism, although whether it was pre­sent­ing a takeover by insid­i­ous com­mu­nism, or by a fear of com­mu­nism, remained ambiguous.

In 1978, Philip Kauf­man revis­it­ed these mate­ri­als with sim­i­lar ambi­gu­i­ty (and with a brief cameo from Siegel as a treach­er­ous cab­bie), as San Fran­cis­co Health Inspec­tors Matthew Ben­nell (Don­ald Suther­land) and Eliz­a­beth Driscoll (Brooke Adams), and their friends Jack and Nan­cy Bel­licec (Jeff Gold­blum, Veron­i­ca Cartwright) and the psy­chi­a­trist David Kib­n­er (Leonard Nimoy) wit­ness the pop­u­la­tion of San Fran­cis­co being replaced in a mat­ter of days by near-iden­ti­cal (but emo­tion­less) ​‘pod people’.

Kaufman’s inva­sion tracks the encroach­ment of con­sumerist con­for­mi­ty upon the lib­er­at­ed indi­vid­u­al­ism of Six­ties Frisco – and would acquire new, unin­tend­ed res­o­nance when its the­atri­cal release was imme­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ed by the col­lec­tive mad­ness of Jon­estown. In truth, though, this is a high­ly flex­i­ble myth, play­ing on the fear of the self being ced­ed to out­side (alien) influ­ence – and were it made today, it might just as read­i­ly flirt with anx­i­eties about the Great Replace­ment the­o­ry or con­verse­ly America’s infil­tra­tion by QAnon and MAGA. Still, Kaufman’s para­noid Sev­en­ties noir brings a spe­cial sense of doom.

Inva­sion of the Body Snatch­ers is avail­able on 4K UHD and Blu-ray from 12 Feb via Arrow

This sets out its stall in the open­ing scene, as the cam­era leers in close-up at a man and a woman cop­u­lat­ing sweati­ly, only for both of them to be blood­i­ly pen­e­trat­ed by an assassin’s blade. Sex and death are the two poles between which Ryûichi Takamori’s sen­sa­tion­al­ist fea­ture oper­ates, as Gosuke Himuro (Son­ny Chi­ba) returns to avenge the gang­land slay­ing of his estranged father and the abduc­tion and rape of his sis­ter Kyoko (Yay­oi Watanabe).

This no-non­sense badass will pit three local rival gangs against one anoth­er, fol­low­ing a strat­e­gy first laid out by Aki­ra Kurosawa’s jidaege­ki Yojim­bo, and then bor­rowed by Ser­gio Corbucci’s Djan­go and count­less oth­er spaghet­ti west­erns — and the debt is open­ly acknowl­edged by the way that our relent­less anti­hero sports a cow­boy hat and cloak, and engages in a series of show­downs shot at cant­ed angles and accom­pa­nied by a score of jew’s harp and harmonica.

With the police hap­py to let him to do their work for them, Gosuke dogged­ly pur­sues the yakuza, prov­ing so effec­tive in the task that he takes on the big boss and his men despite the hand­i­cap of hav­ing both hands crip­pled. Lean genre good­ness ensues.

Yakuza Wolf 1 is avail­able in Spe­cial Edi­tion Blu-ray boxset togeth­er with Buichi Saitô’s Yakuza Wolf 2 (1972) from 19 Feb via Eure­ka Video

Stan­ley Kubrick’s iron­i­cal­ly titled mono­chrome anti-war fea­ture is set in the killing fields of the Great War, focus­ing on the French 701^st reg­i­ment, under con­stant bom­bard­ment in their trench and giv­en orders to car­ry out a sui­cide mis­sion to seize a well-for­ti­fied hill nearby.

There is lit­tle glo­ry here. The Ger­man ene­my remains unseen — although we cer­tain­ly wit­ness the dead­ly impact of their artillery — but the real ene­my here is the French offi­cer class who, from their opu­lent­ly appoint­ed château, use infantry as pawns in pur­suit of per­son­al pro­mo­tion and in cov­er­ing up of their own high­ly con­se­quen­tial fail­ures. When orders lead to mas­sive French casu­al­ties, three sol­diers are select­ed for (kan­ga­roo) court mar­tial and exe­cut­ed for ​‘cow­ardice in the face of the ene­my.’ As the odi­ous Gen­er­al Paul Mireau (George Macready) puts it, ​“If those lit­tle sweet­hearts won’t face Ger­man bul­lets, they’ll face French ones.”

Rep­re­sent­ing the accused is the gen­uine­ly brave and eth­i­cal for­mer crim­i­nal lawyer Colonel Dax (Kirk Dou­glas), whose grow­ing out­rage and indig­na­tion at what is hap­pen­ing mod­u­late the view­ers’. He and his men are just like the Ger­man singing girl seen at the end (Kubrick’s future wife Susanne Chris­t­ian, and the only female char­ac­ter): cap­tive, mired and long­ing for home.

Paths of Glo­ry is avail­able on 4K UD from 26 Feb via Eure­ka Video

“It’s lurid,” are the last words Nor­man Bates will ever utter to his moth­er (Olivia Hussey) while she is alive. He is describ­ing her kimono, but those words apply equal­ly to Mick Gar­ris’ made-for-TV film, which serves as both pre­quel and sequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 Psy­cho (while ignor­ing the two sub­se­quent sequels).

Under the pseu­do­nym ​‘Ed’ (as in Gein, the real-life, moth­er-obsessed ser­i­al killer whose sto­ry inspired Hitchcock’s film), Nor­man (Antho­ny Perkins, two years before his death), now released from an asy­lum and mar­ried to psy­chol­o­gist Con­nie (Don­na Mitchell), calls in to a radio talk show on ​‘boys who kill their moth­ers’, and tells the sto­ry of his unhealthy rela­tion­ship as a teenag­er (Hen­ry Thomas) with his unhinged moth­er, and how this led him to poi­son her and her bul­ly­ing new boyfriend Chet (Thomas Schus­ter), and to mur­der var­i­ous oth­er women. He also promis­es he will kill again this very night.

Even as it goes back to Norman’s trau­mat­ic ado­les­cence, this ​‘begin­ning’ is also a puta­tive end­ing, as Nor­man seeks to ensure that the ​‘bad seed’ he has inher­it­ed is nev­er passed on. It is a goth­ic melo­dra­ma of twist­ed redemp­tion, and (per­haps) also a new beginning.

Psy­cho IV: The Begin­ning is avail­able along­side Richard Franklin’s Psy­cho II (1983) and Antho­ny Perkins’ Psy­cho III (1986) as part of 4k UHD/Blu-ray Psy­cho – The Sto­ry Con­tin­ues boxset from 26 Feb via Arrow