NIGHTMARE ALLEY: 4K UHD Blu-ray (Searchlight/TSG/Double Dare You, 2021) 2oth Century Home Video

Simultaneously released theatrically in competing color and B&W versions, director, Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley (2021) is a fairly impressive reboot of Tyrone Power’s iconic ‘breakout’ performance as the carni-con, Stanton Carlisle, reduced to a drunken/deranged gimp. What the 1947 movie could only suggest, del Toro’s re-imagining takes on with the full breadth of uncensored freedom. The truly impressive part - del Toro’s restraint, coupled with some stunningly handsome and moody cinematography and a riveting central performance by Bradley Cooper as the corrupt illusionist. Thank God del Toro did not have his way, casting Leonardo Di Caprio in the lead. Not a fan. As early as 2017, del Toro – moving out of his comfort zone as a filmmaker - announced in the trades he was planning a to direct a film based on William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel. Indeed, del Toro had fallen in love with the book in 1992 before realizing the 2oth Century-Fox movie ever existed. Co-writing the screenplay with Kim Morgan, del Toro openly admitted the novel was too epic to be made verbatim into a movie. What appealed to him was its elemental horror and noir aspects – the epic darkness of peering into a soulless man, whose outward suave and sophisticated nature is reduced to rubble by his own vanity and greed. At this juncture, del Toro alumni, Dan Laustsen and Alexandre Desplat came on board as cinematographer and composer respectively. Unclear as to what transpired between 2019’s announcement of Di Caprio set for the title role, and the apocryphal story later to emerge about Bradley Cooper and del Toro ‘bonding’ at a house party, with the latter believing Cooper’s experiences behind the camera made for a better alliance in front of it this time around. Whatever the reason, shortly thereafter, Di Caprio was out and Cooper in. At approximately the same time, Cate Blanchett signed on to co-star, with Rooney Mara, Toni Collette and David Strathairn (replacing Michael Shannon). A month later, Willem Dafoe and Holt McCallany signed on. Rounding out the cast: Ron Perlman, Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen, Paul Anderson and Romina Power - Tyrone Power’s daughter in a thankless cameo.

Bucking the digital trend, Nightmare Alley was shot on actual film; principal photography commencing in Toronto, Canada before migrating to Buffalo, New York. Curiously, the dry winter necessitated artificial snow being trucked in to simulate the stark and wintery conditions. The production was fraught with complications, not the least, the Covid pandemic which del Toro preempted by electing to shut down his production a week before Hollywood passed its own executive order to do the same. Del Toro could take minor comfort none of his cast or crew contracted the virus, likely owing to his due diligence. He also wisely spent this ‘shut down’ editing together the footage he had already shot – totaling roughly half the finished movie. Bradley Cooper’s delay in joining the cast stemmed from his ‘then’ recent move to New York. As such, Nightmare Alley shot the latter half of its screenplay first, before going back to the beginning. Thus, when production resumed, Cate Blanchett did not return as all of her scenes had already been shot. Picking up the baton in 2020, del Toro found Toronto’s stringent Covid protocols a blessing – with crew entirely masked, and chronic hand-sanitizing the order of the day, leaving both cast and crew at ease about the possible spread of the virus. By December 2020, Nightmare Alley was officially in the can. Del Toro had shot roughly 4 hours of footage, of which only a mere 150-minutes would survive. Yet, if the elegant tragedy that unraveled on the screen at a staggering cost of $60 million proved del Toro’s formidable talents extended far beyond his comfort zone, the picture’s disgustingly anemic box office intake of barely $38 million, regrettably, did not bear this out. Like the ’47 original – this ‘nightmare’ was a flop!

Nightmare Alley is set in 1939, after drifter, Stan Carlisle (Cooper) gets work as a travelling carni. Part of this menagerie is a geek show in which a deranged man tears apart and devours a live chicken. Stan finds work with the clairvoyant - Madame Zeena Krumbein (Toni Collette) and her alcoholic husband, Pete (David Straithairn). Pete and Zeena use coded language and cold reading tricks guarded in Pete’s secret diary to flimflam the gullible audience into believing Zeena can see into their hidden thoughts. However, as Pete’s alcoholism gets the better of his abilities to carry on with the act, he teaches Stan to take over, though forewarning against the use of the gimmick to feign communicating with the dead. Stan discovers the carnival’s owner, Clement Hoatley (Willem Defoe) preys upon men with troubled pasts to become his geeks, lacing their booze with opium to keep them addicted and subservient. Stan falls for fellow performer, Mary Margaret ‘Molly’ Cahill (Rooney Mara) and tries to persuade her to leave the carnival with him. She, however, refuses.  Desperate for a fix, Pete asks Stan to procure him a bottle of booze, but later is found dead. Stan prevents the sheriff from closing down the carnival, employing his cold reading skills. Having had a change of heart, or perhaps, merely to realize the carnival is no life for her, Molly now agrees to leave with Stan, to whom Zeena has bequeathed Pete's diary of secrets.

We flash ahead two full years: Stan, with Molly as his partner in crime, are a renowned psychic act, preying on the elite in Buffalo. During one such performance, cynical psychologist, Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchette) interrupts, in an attempt to expose Stanton as a fraud by asking him to identify the contents of her handbag. Much to her chagrin, Stan rightfully guesses she is concealing a small pistol. Stan also cold reads Judge Charles Kimball (Peter MacNeill) and, owing to his success, is later approached by the judge for a follow-up private consultation. A grieving father, having lost his son in WWI, the judge pleads with Stan to allow him and his wife, Felicia (Mary Steenburgen) to commune with their child’s soul from beyond the grave. Molly is horrified Stan would entertain such a diabolical plan to deceive. But Stan agrees to the judge’s request. Alas, Ritter is not finished with Stan yet. She goads him into revealing the truth; that he possesses no psychic powers and will surely fail in his reading of the judge and his wife without her help. Ritter offers Stan access to her patient files on the judge, in exchange for his revealing to her secrets about his own past: that he came from abusive home and may, in fact, have murdered Pete with tainted alcohol. Cribbing from Ritter’s dossier on the judge, Stan convinces the Kimballs he has communicated with their late son. Grateful for the opportunity, the judge pays handsomely for the reading. But now, Ritter takes all of the profits, concealing them from Molly. Stan informs Ritter the judge wishes him to read for Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins) – another of Ritter’s patients.  Ritter shares with Stan how Ezra forced a young girl, Dorrie, whom he impregnated, into an abortion that proved fatal. Stan follows through by revealing as much to Ezra during their reading.

Not long thereafter, Ritter seduces Stan and he takes to drink to quell his nerves. Grindle demands Stan make Dorrie’s spirit materialize so he can make restitution for his sins. Inveigling Molly in his scheme to defraud, Stan is momentarily detoured by news the Kimballs have committed murder/suicide to be reunited with their son whom he had previously told was waiting for them on the other side. Although Molly wants no part in her husband’s plot, she agrees to fool Grindle in exchanged for Stan allowing her out of their marriage. Alas, the reading with Grindle goes horrifically awry when Grindle realizes he is being duped. Grindle assaults Molly, causing Stan to beat him to death before running over Grindle’s bodyguard with his car. Terrified by her complicity in these crimes, Molly runs out on Stan. Now, exceedingly desperate to cash out his chips and vanish to parts unknown, Stan arrives at Ritter's office to obtain his money. Alas, she betrays him and he attacks her. Stan barely escapes. But his life begins to unravel almost immediately. In no time, he has become horrifically dependent on alcohol just to get through the day. In a hallucinogenic flashback, Stan recalls murdering his father by exposing him to hypothermia; then, burning the house down to conceal the crime. In the present, Stan sculks off to a seedy travelling carnival, hoping to secure a new mentalist act. Instead, Stan is offered warm drink and temp work as the new geek. Realizing his future has evaporated before his very eyes, Stan acquiesces, thus completing his descent into madness.

Despite del Toro’s protestations, that he was aiming for a more literal adaptation of the original novel and not Fox’s 1947 movie, what develops in Nightmare Alley, circa 2021 is very much in line with the plot of the Ty’ Power original. The interrupted shoot would later be described by del Toro as ‘a blessing’ as it afforded him the opportunity to take a more critical look at the material already shot, plying the opportunity to rework and massage the rest of the movie once shooting resumed after their Covid hiatus.  In all, it took 2 ½ years for del Toro to realize his passion project – the results, arguably, worth the wait. And while critics were generally over the moon with the newly revised movie, consensus was not unanimous. Some criticized del Toro’s endeavor to will an artistic masterpiece from its pulp novel origins. Indeed, William Lindsay Gresham’s novel was pretty much trashed, and all but universally banned in 1946, for its X-rated prose, audacious sexuality, and austere and vicious view of human avarice. The ’47 Fox effort, directed by Edmund Goulding, but barred by Hollywood’s self-governing code of ethics, is a decidedly dark, yet otherwise stylish affair, purged of its most salacious bits.

But Gresham knew of whence he wrote – having endured the hellish Spanish Civil War before becoming Harry Houdini’s biographer. From this auspicious debut, Gresham’s own life, like that of the fictional Stanton Carlisle, would go into steep decline. Gresham’s dabbling in Marxism, psychoanalysis, Christianity and Zen Buddhism, was offset by his obsessive philandering and alcoholism. Indeed, his second wife, Joy Davidman, divorced him for Brit-wit, C.S. Lewis, the movie Shadowlands (1985) picking up this thread of Gresham’s ugly narrative. Gresham committed suicide in 1962. Del Toro could not have made Nightmare Alley without first considering Gresham’s incredibly flawed and complex life. The novel is as involved and, as del Toro referenced, an epic of its kind, at the core of which resides a fatally flawed anti-hero with a perverse and perplexing past. The last act of both the book and Gresham’s life are marred by the author’s own self-conceit pitted against the world’s acrimonious mockery of it. To their credit, del Toro and Bradley Cooper burrow deep into the lurid details of what makes Stanton Carlisle tick, ably abetted by Tamara Deverell’s art direction, Brandt Gordon’s art direction, Shane Vieau’s set decoration and Luis Sequeira’s costume design, indulging the book’s Gothic twilight landscape, complete with a terrific menagerie of aborted fetuses kept in bottles; one, a baby cyclops, reported to have murdered its own mother in its desire to be born.  What is problematic for Nightmare Alley, is Cooper’s age; at 47, waaay too old to be the twenty-something sexy schemer of Gresham’s novel. The other difficulty here comes from Rooney Mara, who is much too informed and edgy to play the ingenue. Cate Blanchett’s Ritter is an exquisitely diabolical foil, possessing the venom and verve of a vicious viper. Nominated for 4 Academy Awards (winning none), Nightmare Alley is a valiant attempt by del Toro and company to reintroduce audiences to Gresham’s masterpiece of the macabre. It’s not altogether successful, but it works on more than a handful of occasions and levels, and, should be seen on its own terms…if only to compare it to the 1947 Fox classic!

Nightmare Alley arrives on 4K UHD Blu-ray is a powerhouse transfer to capture all of the essential visual ingredients in Dan Laustens’ cinematography. Not much to add here: superb color saturation wed to an incredible sense of depth and razor-sharp clarity to mimic the scope of its theatrical presentation. Black levels are exquisite, natural and deep with zero crush. These reveal minute detail even in the darkest recesses of the screen which, at times, can be quite dark indeed. The stylized palette favors reds and greens, while the ambiance of fire, candle glow, and dimmed lights, is expertly reproduced with HDR. Flesh tones are startling, showing tight tonality, expertly revealed with precise detail never lacking. We are given a breathtaking Dolby Atmos track, in addition to a standard 5.1 DTS. The sonic ambiance of the visual space is creepily captured and feels indigenous to the action on the screen. The 4K contains no extras. Mercifully, the Blu-ray edition, also included, houses some promo junkets to explore, including nearly 12-minutes with cast and crew, almost 10-mins. detailing the visual design of the piece, and another 5-mins. with del Toro waxing about the production’s other virtues. Bottom line: Nightmare Alley owes its strengths to old school picture-making at its zenith and willed into existence by one of the foremost film-makers toiling in the biz today. The extras here are disappointingly second-rate. But the 4K transfer is flawless. Very highly recommended! But please note - the B&W theatrical version is not included herein. 

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

5++

EXTRAS

2.5