All hail the lowly output of Hollywood’s Poverty Row, where mediocrity ruled and good work was rarely rewarded. This potboiler about an avaricious slayer of ‘inconvenient’ suitors is memorable for its low-rent charm and rather vague performances — although glamorous leading lady Leslie Brooks is quite capable with both gun and knife. We celebrate this…

After Hours Blu-ray Criterion 1985 / 1.85 : 1 Starring Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Linda Fiorentino Directed by Martin Scorsese “After hours” usually means a late night at the office, but it also portends the Witching Hour, a time of day when spells are cast and ordinary objects—like a set of house keys or a…

The Puppetoon Movie Volume 3 Blu-ray – Region Free Puppetoon™ Productions 1936-70 / 1.37:1 Starring Duke Ellington, Woody Herman Directed by George Pal Though separated by 73 years, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and George Pal’s Puppetoons were each created with stop-motion animation—an arcane process developed in the 19th century and requiring the obsessive dedication of…

They said ‘We’ll always have Paris,’ but for three weeks in 1944 the survival of the City of Light was in grave doubt. This gigantic all-star national epic didn’t please everyone yet will dazzle viewers willing to accept the city itself as the star. Working from a screenplay by two Americans, director René Clément shows…

Everyone’s favorite gun-down & sing-along John Wayne western is also Howard Hawks’ cagy comeback in an industry that had left him behind. Hawks stitched together favorite ‘pieces’ of his 1940s hits and imposed the structure of an impromptu TV sitcom. Accompanying the box office powerhouse Wayne is a comedian-crooner still proving his worth as an…

Abraham Polonsky’s ode to corruption in the American success story is one of film noir’s most artistic achievements as well as John Garfield’s best film. It’s realistic in tone, yet its dialogues are stylized almost to the level of poetry. A hotshot lawyer goes too far while lobbying for a ‘slightly illegal’ racket. Blinded by…

Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher.   “Pure western heaven” is the catchphrase for Budd Boetticher’s perfectly-scaled ruminations on ethics and actions in an imperfect wilderness. The five RANdolph-brOWN features here present Randolph Scott’s range rider as an icon of masculine nobility. The new 4K encodings transport home theaters to a lost era of horse-opera…

Sidney Lumet directs his first on-location New York crime picture, giving the escapist heist thriller a taste of paranoid cinema to come. Released after ten years in stir, thief Sean Connery launches into an immediate raid on a swank 5th Avenue apartment building, not realizing that a Brave New Surveillance World is watching and recording…

Those joyous School Days of intimidation, threats, and Murder!  The helpful extras on this new Blu release explain how this tale of cold-blooded malice in a British ‘public school’ ( = a private school with a steep tuition) is deeply rooted in UK culture. This film version brilliantly directed by John Mackenzie reflects a restrained,…

As his career wound down Akira Kurosawa found new champions among Hollywood’s young ‘film student’ generation, several of whom helped him secure financing for important film projects. Warner Brothers backed this utterly personal film of poetic expression, containing several ‘short stories’ illustrated with fanciful visuals. Kurosawa’s ‘dreams’ include a mythical fable, a haunted tale of…

William Wyler’s perennial charmer is 100% undiluted entertainment: Gregory Peck and the new star Audrey Hepburn share a Roman fairy tale that’s also a tourist’s dream. A runaway Princess takes in the town like a galavanting Cinderella, not realizing that she’s being set up for an image-damaging photojournalism exposé. The show is a hands-down joy…

Soundies: The Ultimate Collection Blu-ray Kino Lorber 1940-46 / 1.33:1 Starring Dorothy Dandridge, Hoagy Carmichael Directed by Josef Berne, William Forest Crouch, Reginald Le Borg In 1940, The Mills Novelty Company introduced their newest brainchild—a vending machine that served up Duke Ellington instead of  Coca-Cola. It was called the Panoram and resembled a jukebox the…

Robert Wise’s Italy-filmed epic looks better than ever on Blu, showcasing a fine cast and imaginative special effects. It’s a straight telling of Homer’s The Iliad with just a drop of Cold War attitude — this time the Greeks are the unreasonable aggressors. Neither Rossana Podestà nor Jacques Sernas excited the critics of ’56, but…

James Coburn’s starring film career began with projects he deemed ‘far-out’ — and writer-director Bernard Girard promptly hooked him on this eccentric thriller about an infallibly seductive con-man. It’s a low-key, non-violent puzzle picture about a perfect heist, and also a guessing game that skips from San Francisco to Denver to Boston to Los Angeles,…

Elia Kazan hits 4K with an extras-lean but visually stunning edition of this early CinemaScope feature, now rated ‘PG.’  It’s James Dean’s first and best starring role, and with Kazan in charge the actors push the ‘drama’ accelerator to the floor. It still holds up, with top-billed Julie Harris doing everything Dean does, but effortlessly…

The Pied Piper Blu-ray Deaf Crocodile 1989 / 53 Min. / 1.37:1 Starring Oldrich Kaiser, Jirí Lábus Written by Kamil Pixa Directed by Jiří Barta In 1897’s Dracula, Bram Stoker warned of a plague in human form, and it was Renfield who sounded the alarm: “Rats, rats, rats! Hundreds, thousands, millions of them, and every…

Terry Gilliam’s fantasy epic is back in the super 4K Ultra HD format, which makes his achievement look all the more spectacular. Two hours of unceasing visual miracles, delightful personalities and wickedly civilized humor begin when a pack of cosmic workers purloin a celestial map and become time-traveling thieves. A young hero joins them and…

King Solomon’s Mines Blu-ray Warner Archive 1950 / 1.37:1 Starring Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger, Richard Carlson Written by Helen Deutsch Directed by Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton Thanks to an extravagant imagination (described by some as “lurid”) and his own experience in the African outback, H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines could be enjoyed as…

‘Fate’ is a frequent player in classic noir, but this spooky 1948 charmer crosses noir atmosphere with a semi-supernatural vibe — enforced by a top performance from Edward G. Robinson, plus the eerie presence of Gail Russell,  She Who Possesses the Saddest Eyes in Hollywood. A showbiz mentalist suddenly experiences foreshadowings of deaths to come,…

Sky High + The Big Diamond Robbery.  The top cowboy star of the silent era and his wonder horse Tony were once the idol of a million kids — and now they’re back again in remastered editions. SKY HIGH is mostly filmed around, over and deep inside the Grand Canyon — in 1922. THE BIG…

A domestic Blu-ray arrives of Mark Robson’s Korean War rumination, from the pen of James Michener and fleshed out 100% by Paramount’s crack visual effects team. Superstar leads William Holden and Grace Kelly illustrate a hard lesson of modern warfare — even in ‘asymmetrical’ high-tech combat there is no guarantee of survival. Charles McGraw, Fredric…

We can hardly believe this — a nearly perfect 4K encoding of this all-time favorite monster epic has arrived, with only a few weeks’ notice. The sharp, brightly colored image finally reflects Freddie Young’s rich textures, returning the word ‘artful’ to writer-director-designer Eugène Lourié’s family-friendly yarn about a city-smashing ‘Irish sea fairie.’ Talk about childhood…

Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter shake up the notion of English propriety, as butler Dirk Bogarde ‘invades and subverts’ the life of his employer James Fox, through subtle psychological manipulation and the seductive power of his supposed ‘sister,’ a very young Sarah Miles. Wendy Craig is the confused fiancé in this serious, sinister and fascinating…

Howard Hawks presents ancient history as a lavish spectacle: tens of thousands of extras build a giant pyramid on the extra-wide CinemaScope screen, aided by the excitement and mysticism of Dimitri Tiomkin’s exotic music score. So convincing is the recreation, we almost believe the tomb-sealing sci-fi mechanics that shift stone blocks weighing tons, in just…

Roger Donaldson’s smartly scripted and produced 1984 remake of history’s most famous high-seas mutiny gets a lavish treatment on this two-disc Blu-ray set, with hours of extras about its filming and the shifting historical consensus about what took place down Tahiti-way in 1789. You just can’t keep the swabbies below decks eating hardtack, when they’re…

Are doors finally opening for the remaining hold-outs in classic Eurohorror?  All-Region fans can rejoice at the availability of Mario Bava’s La frusta e il corpo in a Blu-ray encoding that finally reflects il maestro’s fine color lighting design. Christopher Lee puts in a stellar appearance and the sleek & expressive Daliah Lavi brings a…