'Pennies' gets heavenly new shine

By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service

Both go on sale this week on DVD and, rest assured, the six-hour series (Warner) is brilliant. The salesman is played by Bob Hoskins, and his abrasive Cockney qualities make for a darker character than the one played with Martin.

The miniseries' length allows it to dig deeper into the characters' frustrations and repressions and provides for more musical numbers. (The actors lip-sync to great tunes of the period.)

Abbreviated and polished though it may be, the film version is still deeply affecting and is a most un-Hollywood movie. That may explain why a confused public shunned it, even though Christopher Walken's amazing bar-walking striptease to "Let's Misbehave" became legend. It also gave the beautiful Bernadette Peters her finest screen role as the schoolteacher-turned-prostitute.

The three-disc DVD of the series contains commentaries by the producer and director on the opening and closing episodes; the movie version has an insightful and thorough examination and appreciation by New York magazine's Peter Rainer.

Chabrol's thrillers

Think of Home Vision Entertainment as the less-extravagant sibling of the great Criterion

Collection. It, too, is devoted to providing excellent transfers of important foreign and U.S. films, but without many of the historical add-ons we expect from Criterion.

Out today are three titles from Claude Chabrol, too often referred to as "the French Hitchcock." Chabrol has made many films that cannot be easily put in any genre, and his approach to psychological suspense, while obviously influenced by Hitch, is less methodical, and his plots are less airtight.

Chabrol does, however, have his own Grace Kelly in Isabelle Huppert, who stars in 1995's "La Ceremonie." Playing a friend of Sandrine Bonnaire, who works as Jacqueline Bisset's maid, Huppert involves her friend in a sinister plot. One of Chabrol's best.

Huppert is equally brilliant in 1988's "Story of Women," based on the true story of a World War II-era abortionist who was the last woman to be guillotined. Yet another great actor, Philippe Noiret, shines in 1987's "Masques," a witty cat-and-mouse thriller in which he plays a TV game show host whose would-be biographer may have more than than literature on his mind.

"La Ceremonie" is supplemented by a 20-minute making-of feature, while Chabrol contributes commentary to "Story of Women." No extras on "Masques," which was never released theatrically in the United States.

Disaster turns cult hit

"Showgirls" may not be the first truly terrible movie to get the deluxe DVD treatment — there's a multidisc version of "Pearl Harbor," remember — but the new "VIP Limited Edition" (MGM) celebrates its growing status as a "Rocky Horror"-type midnight movie.

The movie, starring Elizabeth Berkley and go-for-it Gina Gershon as employees of a swank strip club, seemed not only to be oblivious to how women really talk ("How do you like your breasts?" Gershon asks Berkley in one of the many, many lines of dialogue audiences have memorized) but also to human behavior, period.

The VIP edition includes a commentary track bestowing classic status on the film; a fairly funny pop-up factoid feature; a lap-dance lesson from dancers and a deck of illustrated "Showgirls" playing cards. Custom shot glasses are included with the caveat they be used with nonalcoholic beverages only. Right.

Ron Perlman stars as Hellboy, who battles evil forces that threaten the world, in the recent film and new DVD release. Columbia Pictures

When "Spider-Man 2" was universally acclaimed as the best comic-book movie ever, it overshadowed the deserved praise given to the spring release of "Hellboy." It's out now in a two-disc special edition (Columbia TriStar) that's loaded with special features, including a couple of the Gerald McBoing Boing cartoons so beloved by our cigar-chomping hero from Hades (who is played with exactly the right combo of snarl and snark by Ron Perlman).

The nimble hands of devoted director Guillermo del Toro are all over this package, as he introduces the film and prominently figures in what may be a record-setting 2à-hour making-of documentary. (That's 28 minutes longer than the movie itself.)