The Curtis Harrington Short Film Collection

Director Curtis Harrington (1926–2007) had an uneven Hollywood career, displaying promise in early efforts like Night Tide (1961) and Games (1967) before trailing off into horror movies and TV work. But he's regarded as a founding father of New Queer Cinema, and the five short films compiled here hailing from the 1940s and ‘50s (a sixth short from 2002 is also included) find Harrington at his most imaginative. Fragment of Seeking (1946) and Picnic (1948) are haunting black-and-white visual poems about a desperate longing for love that leads to destruction, while On the Edge (1949) is a darkly humorous piece set in a gloomy industrial wasteland. Harrington moved to color with The Assignation (1953), in which a masked figure prowls the canals of Venice, and The Wormwood Star (1955), a montage of the work of painter/occultist Marjorie Cameron. Usher (2002) is a modern retelling of an Edgar Allan Poe tale, but like Harrington's later features, comes across as heavy-handed. Actually, Harrington's earlier The Fall of the House of Usher, filmed on 8mm in his garage in 1942 when Harrington was a teenager, is far more engaging, and is happily included here as a bonus. Other extras on this Blu-ray/DVD Combo release include Harrington's Four Elements (1966), a visually elegant short documentary on American ingenuity made for the U.S. Information Agency; two archival interviews with the director; and an illustrated booklet. Recommended. (F. Swietek)