​October-themed obscurities on outstanding Blu-rays

October is well-known as the Halloween season, inspiring numerous screenings of horror films or films with horror-fantasy elements. Last week I reviewed “Chandu the Magician” (1932), a kind of off-beat semi-horror film with Bela Lugosi, new to Blu-ray. This week I’ll continue the horror theme with a low-budget obscurity from the late 1950s that deserves a second look.

But October is more than horror movie month. It’s also the end of the major league baseball season and the beginning of the World Series. I’ll also be looking at a Blu-ray released earlier this year of a little-known film with a baseball theme, whose cast includes the entire winning team of the 1948 World Series as well as a 14-year-old Russ Tamblyn (“Twin Peaks,” “Django Unchained,” “West Side Story”) when he was still known as “Rusty” Tamblyn.

The title of “Curse of the Faceless Man” (1958) may sound like a cheesy no-budget horror film, but this 67-minute suspense-fantasy produced by the independent Vogue Pictures for release through United Artists is a good step above the average genre picture. It has a surprisingly literate if rather talky script, taut, effective direction, and competent acting.

These help make up for its minimal budget and for the annoying overuse of voice-over narration that explains things we can already see on screen or easily figure out from what’s going on.

The screenplay by Jerome Bixby, whose later work included a major “Twilight Zone” episode and four episodes of the original “Star Trek” TV series, could have become a minor classic at a major studio with enough resources to produce the parallel story in ancient Pompeii that results in the modern-day action, which plugs easily into a standard horror formula.

The finished film provides tantalizing hints at what might have been, done through dialogue explanations and some grainy stock footage flashbacks of a volcanic eruption and miniature Roman-era sets. It’s not so much a straight horror-monster movie as it is a supernatural romantic thriller.

The film is strongly reminiscent of the classic Boris Karloff version of “The Mummy.” It opens with an archaeological excavation in Pompeii discovering the solidified body of a lava-encased gladiator. It turns out he had a forbidden love affair with a Senator’s daughter and both died in the conflagration. By some fateful coincidence he has been preserved alive due to contact with ancient Egyptian embalming fluid and volcanic radiation. She, on the other hand, has been reincarnated in the body of an attractive young artist (Elaine Edwards) who is the fiancée of an American doctor (Richard Anderson) working at an Italian museum. There’s plenty of backstory between them that the film also doesn’t have time to flesh out. Of course the “monster” is revived after he is unearthed, has superhuman strength, and tries relentlessly to reunite with his long-lost love, who is unconsciously drawn to him against her will.

Kino’s Blu-ray has a fine HD scan with good audio. The picture is so crisp that besides the softer and grainier stock-footage shots, it is easy to notice a number of out-of-focus shots that likely were used because the low budget did not permit retakes.

Bonus features include trailers to two other late fifties sci-fi horror films that would make great co-features, “Invisible Invaders” (1959), also directed by Edward L. Cahn, and “The Monster That Challenged the World” (1957), both of which I reviewed earlier this year. There’s also an okay but disappointing audio commentary track by Chris Alexander.

CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN on Blu-ray – Movie: B / Video: A / Audio: A- / Extras: C

“The Kid From Cleveland” (1949) is a relatively ambitious production for Republic Pictures, a small studio better-known for B-westerns and serials. The basic story is a juvenile delinquent social melodrama about a troubled teen named Johnny Barrows (Russ Tamblyn in his first starring role) who hates his stepfather and has been hanging out with local hoodlums to avoid his home life.

One day he sneaks into the Cleveland Indians baseball stadium and strikes up a friendship with broadcaster Mike Jackson (veteran character actor George Brent), as well as players on the team, claiming that he is an orphan. Of course they all want to help the boy. Jackson and his wife (Lynn Bari) even consider adopting him to help reform him and keep him off the streets.

As events progress, things become more complicated when they learn the truth about his home life, the death of his real father in World War II, and the struggles of his mother to protect him. Johnny eventually rebels against the help he’s offered and drifts back to his unsavory friends until he’s on the verge of being sentenced to a reformatory.

The story is a fairly standard formula, but is very well-mounted with good acting and overall production values. It’s a must for fans of historic baseball, with its featuring of the entire Cleveland team in actual speaking roles playing themselves, not just sports footage (including Bill Veeck, Tris Speaker, Bob Feller, and Leroy “Satchel” Paige).

It’s also an above-average example of dramas about delinquent teens, with an obvious but touching family message, especially for step-parents trying to take the place of a lost parent and family communication in general.

Picture quality on the Blu-ray from Olive Films is very good indeed, particularly in the scenes with low-key lighting that give an edgy, film-noir feeling to certain points of the plot. The only scenes that are slightly soft and grainier are the actual newsreel shots of the 1948 World Series. Scenes of the 1949 baseball season must have been taken especially for this film, as they are as crisp and clear as the rest of the movie. Audio is fine throughout.

Unfortunately, as with most Olive releases, there are no bonus features other than a main and chapter menu.

THE KID FROM CLEVELAND on Blu-ray – Movie: B / Video: A / Audio: A- / Extras: F