SEBASTIAN BERGMAN Daniel Espinosa, director/Arrow Blu-ray The two-part crime series Sebastian Bergman: The Cursed One arrived with certain hard-to-meet expectations, in the wake of several groundbreaking Scandinavian crime series. The format of two 90 minute episodes went against the current trend for multi-part series (but is none the worse or that), and stars as the prickly (eponymous) profiler, one of Sweden’s most respected actors, Rolf Lassgård. The actor adopts an audacious tactic: he makes virtually no attempt to render the difficult, sexually predatory Bergman subtly likable – not even by a chink in the character’s armour (though we are aware of the vulnerable humanity beyond the uningratiating exterior). For UK viewers, Lassgård had latterly become familiar as the original television Kurt Wallander (albeit non-sequentially after both the Henriksson and Branagh incarnations). Police profiler Sebastian Bergman is shabby, unshaven, and displays a distinctly non-PC approach to women; but this is no attractively dangerous seducer; he is more of a sex pest. Bergman is also a damaged individual, attempting to deal with grief over the tragic deaths of his wife and daughter in the 2004 Thailand tsunami. Returning to his home town after the death of his mother, Bergman encounters his old police colleague, Torkel, who is looking into the savage killing of a teenage boy. Bergman also discovers a letter with revelations of a family secret. He inveigles himself (in the teeth of some opposition) onto Torkel’s team — with uncomfortable results for all concerned. The first episode is not just risk-taking in its refusal to elicit sympathy for its bear-like anti hero, but keeps its narrative focus deliberately vague, while the second episode displays another kind of audacity: outrageous borrowings from the oeuvre of the writer Thomas Harris. In the final analysis, Sebastian Bergman is not an easy series, but it’s unarguably one with the courage of its convictions.

KING OF NEW YORK Abel Ferrara, director/Arrow Blu-ray The first ever Blu-ray and Steelbook editions of Abel Ferrara’s cult gangster classic King of New York, this is a splendid rediscovery, looking better than any previous incarnation. The film is inspired by the crime classics of the 1930’s, and King of New York showcases a typically over-the-top performance by Christopher Walken as the violent mob boss Frank White. The star-filled cast now looks quite amazing (several careers were launched with the film) and Abel Ferrara’s delirious visuals positively leap off the screen.

THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY Lucio Fulci, director/Arrow No genre director divides opinions as much as the Italian shockmeister Lucio Fulci – but as one who can find much to admire in his films (with reservations!), it’s good to turn to one of his more interesting (if flawed) films. While the climactic sequence of The House by the Cemetery (Quella Villa Accanto al Cimitero, 1981) is brilliantly sustained, Fulci had no time for the importance of structure in genre films. Certainly he has few equals in delivering body-blows of untrammelled horror, and there’s a place for that in an industry overcrowded with no-talent hacks. But it isn’t enough to talk about pure, plotless film (as Fulci does) to excuse cipher-like characters and attenuated story-lines – and if he is going to shore up his film with quotes from Henry James, something more than just dripping entrails, ripped jugulars and decapitations will be needed to justify these aspirations. That said, grisly diversion is generously supplied.

HAWKS AND SPARROWS Pier Paolo Pasolini, director/Eureka Now here’s a real curiosity – a relatively early film by the late Italian master that is in some ways reminiscent of his other work, but also totally unlike it. The oddity here is Italy’s famous comic actor Totó, shoehorned into a bizarre comic narrative about a pair of Franciscan friars who follow Saint Francis’s edict that they should convert the birds of the air to Christianity. Needless to say, the results are ludicrous, and as an attack on the naivety of religion, the film is as cutting as anything in the Fellini canon – particularly surprising, given that Pasolini had just made The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Your response to the film may well be dictated by how much you can take of Totó (something of an acquired taste for British viewers) and also Pasolini’s eternal innocent, the non-actor Ninetto Davoli, giving precisely the same performance he gave in every film he ever made for Pasolini. However, for those interested in Italian cinema, it’s on the to-watch list.

DO NOT DISTURB Ralph Levy, Director/Second Sight Perhaps you are one of those who prefer Doris Day when she’s working for Alfred Hitchcock (as in The Man who Knew Too Much) and Rod Taylor when he is also working for the Master of Suspense (as in The Birds). But while those films may represent the actors at full stretch, there is some enjoyment to be had from them in this undemanding concoction which has an American couple relocating to London (or a backlot version thereof) for the husband’s job as a wool executive. Perhaps Day (as so often in her later films) is a touch too mature for the role (it’s one of the films she had to make to get out of the financial hole her husband had left her in), but it’s nice to see professionals carry slight material with the kind of skill on offer here. 

TRAPEZE Carol Reed, director/Second Sight This colourful melodrama is a very odd film, you might think, from the director of such classics as The Third Man and Odd Man Out. But as well as being a personal filmmaker, Carol Reed was a highly professional purveyor of polished studio product when the occasion demanded (think of his version of Lionel Bart’s Oliver!), and this vehicle for the barely-stretched talents of Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Gina Lollobrigida (a ménage a trois in a circus setting) is always diverting – even though it’s clear that of the three stars, the athletic Burt Lancaster is the one performing most of his own high-wire stunts. There is the bonus of a striking score by British composer Malcolm Arnold.

LESBIAN VAMPIRE WARRIORS Dennis Law, director/Arrow With a title that shrieks out ‘Don’t take me too seriously!’, Lesbian Vampire Warriors delivers the kind of lively fun that one might expect with its outrageous story of a twilight world in which human beings coexist alongside vampiric predators (mainly because the latter find sustenance from a diet of small animals). A cohabiting female couple at the centre of the narrative (one vampire, one not, are winningly played by Jiang Luxia and Chrissie Chau Sau-Na), but the two elements that win over the viewer here are the kinetic, ingeniously choreographed action sequences and the striking, poster-coloured visuals. Let’s face it, there are some viewers who will never pick up DVD with this particular title – but for those of us with less rarefied characters, good fun is promised.

THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE Luis Bunuel, director/Studio Canal There was a time when admirers of art cinema (such as this writer) would go to each new film (in his late period) by the Spanish master Luis Bunuel in the cinema, assured of something highly sardonic and original. It’s good to report that viewed in the 21st century, this cheeky and outrageous piece of social comedy remains as provocative as ever.