Okay crime drama until that bogus, anti-climactic ending. Sony's fun Choice Collection vault of hard-to-find library and cult titles, has released 5 Against the House, the 1955 heist suspenser from Columbia Pictures, co-written by Stirling Silliphant (from a Jack Finney short story), directed by Phil Karlson, and starring Guy Madison, Kim Novak, Brian Keith, Alvy Moore, Kerwin Mathews, and William Conrad. An early prototype for the kind of heist pictures that would prove to be so popular in Hollywood from the 1960s on, 5 Against the House suffers today by comparison, with a few creaky performances (I'm looking at you, Madison and Mathews), some unfortunate musical interludes, the rather tame, late-arriving heist leading nowhere...and an evocative backstory that was frankly more interesting than the crime itself. No need to double-dip if you already own this title from the 200...Read the entire review

Violent, unsettling, still-creepy noir classic. Sony's increasingly valuable Choice Collection vault of hard-to-find library and cult titles, has released The Lineup, the 1958 crime meller/actioner from director Don Siegel and screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, starring Eli Wallach, Robert Keith, Warner Anderson, Emile Meyer, Richard Jaeckel, and Vaughn Taylor. A cult favorite for fans of the genre and of the director, The Lineup doesn't bear too close scrutiny when it comes to logical exposition―why, exactly, does "The Man" need these psychos from Miami?―but those bumps are quickly forgotten as Siegel moves relentlessly through his beautifully-staged set-pieces. Buyers of 2009's Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics I boxed set, in which The Lineup previously appeared, won't need to double-dip here. However, regular patrons of t...Read the entire review

I have very little to say about A Matter of Wife ... and Death, a TV-movie starring Rod Taylor that first aired on the NBC network the evening of April 10, 1976. Taylor plays private detective Shamus McCoy, the same character Burt Reynolds portrayed in Shamus (1973), a moderately popular theatrical film, though its $3.3 million in domestic rentals pales compared to that year's big hits, movies like The Sting ($159 million) and American Graffiti ($140 million). A Matter of Wife ... and Death was also a pilot film for an intended Shamus TV series.

That it didn't sell is hardly surprising. I requested this title primarily after seeing Rod Taylor (The Time Machine, The Birds) and Joe Santos (The Rockford Files) on the cover art, two actors I've always liked. Both are likeable here, too, but the material they have to work with is resolutely or...Read the entire review

"I think we all have our place in life."
"We don't have our given place in life...we make our own."

Fascinating, particularly in the beginning...until a rather unfortunate (and obvious) third act. Sony's increasingly interesting, valuable Choice Collection vault of hard-to-find cult and library titles, has released The Hireling, the 1973 British period drama from Columbia Pictures, starring Robert Shaw, Sarah Miles, Peter Egan, and Elizabeth Sellars. Scripted by Wolf Mankowitz and directed by Alan Bridges, The Hireling managed to score a co-Grand Prix du Festival (along with Jerry Schatzberg's Scarecrow) at the Cannes Film Festival. Based on a novel by L.P. Hartley (whose novel, The Go-Between, had provided the basis for another Grand Prix du Festival winner in 1970), The Hireling's (familiar) exploration of isolation and in...Read the entire review

"Anyone who doesn't enter into the spirit of free discussion will be severely punished!" - North Korean POW camp announcement

"Ya dirty cruds!" - Pvt. Pike (Leo Gordon)

It's no surprise that The Bamboo Prison (1954) had the working title I Was a Prisoner in Korea. The film is classically, hysterically anticommunist, though unlike most such pictures this one is fairly well made, its naivet and political extremism notwithstanding. The picture also boasts an exceptionally good cast of future stars and character actors, and it's the third of just four movies featuring young leading man Robert Francis (The Caine Mutiny), who died in a plane crash just seven months after this was released.

Part of Sony's manufactured-on-demand Choice Collection, The Bamboo Prison is a rare case of Sony mucking up the video transfer. The movie is clearly shot for 1.85:1 widesc...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

David Mamet loves games: the games that he plays with words and the games that his characters play with each other. This is especially evident in his affection for movies featuring con men. His directorial debut House of Games is a shining example of the genre done right and Heist is a minor masterpiece featuring some of his most quotable lines ("Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money" and "I'm as quiet as an ant pissing on cotton" being two of my personal favorites).

With that said, I have a real soft spot for his 1997 thriller The Spanish Prisoner. Perhaps it's partly due to nostalgia because the film was my first true exposure to Mamet (which sparked an enduring fascination) but I...Read the entire review

A funny thing happened on the way to the DVD player: In response to a press release from Sony about upcoming Choice Collection titles, I requested a movie called Ambush at Tomahawk Gap (1953) while my colleague Paul Mavis requested one called Apache Ambush (1955). However, when Paul opened his shrink-wrapped copy of Apache Ambush, the disc inside was actually Ambush at Tomahawk Gap and, sure enough, a week or so later when my shrink-wrapped copy of Ambush at Tomahawk Gap arrived, the DVD inside it was Apache Ambush. The reason I point this out is to remark with some amazement that, apparently, such titles truly are manufactured-on-demand, one at a time. Clearly whoever packaged these screeners up saw the word "Ambush" in these similar titles and got them mixed-up.

It all worked out in the end anyway, as Apache Ambush turns out to be a nifty, action-pa...Read the entire review

Flight Into Nowhere (1938) is a strange little B-movie. Its story revolves around the actions of a singularly unpleasant character, whom others try to help to no good end. One wonders why it was made in the first place, or why Sony selected it for its manufactured-on-demand "Choice Collection." It does star Jack Holt, a popular leading man whose long association at Columbia peaked in a trio of early-talkie action films directed by Frank Capra, but he has little to do here.

The movie, partly about pilots in the tradition of movies like Night Flight (1933) and Flight from Glory (1937), a sub-genre climaxing with Only Angels Have Wings (1939), segues into a standard jungle movie plot: the search for a downed aircraft and its pilot.

Flight Into Nowhere's full-frame, black and white video transfer is excellent, and for its age also boasts exceptionally good audio. Read the entire review

I live for these kinds of Bs--British noir, shot in widescreen black & white, and with those leads...how can it miss? Sony's increasingly valuable Choice Collection vault of hard-to-find cult and library titles has released The Long Haul, the 1957 British-made noir programmer released by Columbia Pictures, directed by Ken Hughes, and starring Victor Mature, Diana Dors, Patrick Allen, Gene Anderson, Peter Reynolds, and Liam Redmond. Nothing particularly new when it comes to story, The Long Haul makes up time with no-nonsense, energetic direction, evocative location shooting in England and Scotland, and typically enjoyable performances from those always-welcome pros. An original trailer (a nice bonus for these usually bare-bones Choice Collection outings) is included in this super-sharp anamorphic widescreen transfer (are you listening, Fox Cinema Ar...Read the entire review

One usually associates anticommunist melodramas and thrillers of the late 1940s and early '50s with such hysterical, paranoid examples such as Jet Pilot (1952, release delayed until 1957), Red Planet Mars (1952), and Big Jim McLain (1952), movies so cartoonish and politically na ve they've evolved into enormously entertaining high camp. Although Target Hong Kong (1953) has a similarly outrageous premise, by B picture standards it's simply too well made to be so easily dismissed. In recent years I've developed quite an appreciation of B movie actor-turned-B movie-director Fred F. Sears. While no great, unheralded auteur, Sears knew his way around such pictures and how to maximize their potential despite modest budgets and absurdly...Read the entire review

An unremarkable World War II meller, Ghost of the China Sea (1958) is of interest more for the talent involved than for the movie itself. The film combines personnel culled from Columbia's B-picture unit with artists usually associated with producer-director Roger Corman, notably writer-producer Charles B. Griffith (It Conquered the World, Little Shop of Horrors) and actor Jonathan Haze. At the time Griffith was anxious to move on to bigger and better things, and Ghost of the China Sea was supposed to be the first of five movies he was to make for Columbia. However, Griffith ended up making just one more picture for Columbia, Forbidden Island (1959), before returning to the Corman fold. Like Ghost of the China Sea, it was filmed entirely on location in Hawaii and co-starred Haze. Fred F. Sears directed Ghost of the China Sea while Griffith directed F...Read the entire review

There's Always a Woman (1938) follows the "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" rulebook. The success of the Thin Man series in the '30s brought about a slew of competing series featuring lovers exchanging witty repartee while solving crimes. Warner Bros. jumped into the fray with its Torchy Blane series, while MGM supplemented their own Thin Man films with a short-lived series following a pair of married book dealers who sleuth on the side. What, you never heard of the Joel and Garda Sloane movies? Perhaps Warner Archive will remedy that, someday.

Columbia's effort at a Thin Man franchise kicked off with There's Always a Woman, starring solid Melvyn Douglas and vivacious Joan Blondell as a p...Read the entire review

Cute, pallie. Sony's Choice Collection vault of hard-to-find library and cult titles has released How to Save a Marriage -- And Ruin Your Life, the 1968 sex comedy starring Dean Martin, Stella Stevens, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson that isn't all that "hard-to-find"...because Sony already released it back in '06 as part of The Dean Martin Double Feature disc (along with Who Was That Lady?). Anyone owning that disc won't need to double-dip here; it looks to be the same transfer, and there are no extras, new or otherwise. A silly, dated, but well-tempoed battle of the sexes farce, How to Save a Marriage -- And Ruin Your Life still generates laughs with its often amusing script and its superlative cast. Looks terrific in this anamorphically-enhanced widescreen release.

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59977 Thu, 28 Feb 2013 04:16:34 PST Highly Recommended

THE MOVIE:

The Vertical Ray of the Sun, the 2000 drama from Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung (Norwegian Wood), is an artfully conceived, beautifully realized cinematic poem, a story of life that could be compared to Wong Kar-Wai or Hou Hsiao-hsien, both masters of the blithe rhythms that Hung so effortlessly dances to. Yet, The Vertical Ray of the Sun is also very much representative of a singular voice, of a tone that indicates the artist's assurance of his own perceptions and his willingness to trust his instincts. ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59974 Wed, 27 Feb 2013 04:01:37 PST Rent It

THE MOVIE:

First of, there is really no boogieman in The Boogie Man Will Get You. Only the slightest hint of one. Which just goes to show you how slapdash this would-be slapstick comedy from 1942 really is.

Frankenstein-star Boris Karloff stars as mad scientist Professor Billings, owner of a historical homestead and a pile of debt owed to small-tow con man Dr. Arthur Lorencz (Peter Lorre, The Maltese Falcon). When a na ve young woman (Jeff Donnell, In a Lonely Place) decides to...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59965 Wed, 20 Feb 2013 03:47:12 PST Recommended

Undeniably striking at first...but far, far too long. Sony's Choice Collection vault of hard-to-find cult and library titles has released Experiment in Terror, the 1962 thriller from Columbia Pictures, directed by Blake Edwards, and starring Glenn Ford, Lee Remick, Stefanie Powers, Ned Glass, Anita Loo, Patricia Huston, Clifton James, and another actor I'll name later (but whom I'm sure you already know). An at-times hypnotic suspenser from comedy director Blake Edwards, Experiment in Terror is probably better known today for its Henry Mancini soundtrack and for its influence on director David Lynch, rather than for its own glossy-but-minor, protracted achievements. A vintage trailer is included in this sharp-looking anamorphic black and white transfer.

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59959 Fri, 15 Feb 2013 05:22:17 PST Recommended

Though today Hammer Films is remembered primarily for its Gothic horror pictures, back in the late-1950s the company was producing nearly as many war movies, both comedy and drama, as horror films. Don't Panic Chaps (1959) is one such example, a minor but pleasant little farce about British and German soldiers sharing an idyllic little island in the Adriatic in 1943. Based on an apparently one-off radio play by Michael Corston and Ronald Holroyd, the picture wisely confines its story to a small cast and a limited scale in keeping with its small ( 75,000) budget.

A manufactured-on-demand, Sony "Choice Collection" release, Don't Panic Chaps ("Don't Panic Chaps!" in some of the ads but not on the film itself) is presented in a very crisp, enhanced widescreen black and white transfer bereft of extra features or even menu screens.

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59949 Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:15:25 PST Rent It

The "K" stands for krap, dummkopf. Sony's Choice Collection vault of hard-to-find cult and library titles has released Assignment K, the 1968 espionage thriller from Columbia Pictures, written and directed by Val Guest, and starring Stephen Boyd, Camilla Sparv, Michael Redgrave for a couple of minutes, Leo McKern, Jeremy Kemp, Robert Hoffmann, Jane Merrow, Werner Peters for a few seconds, John Alderton, and Geoffrey Bayldon for one scene. A disconcertingly languid, tepid outing, Assignment K's top-flight cast, energetic writer/director, and solid production values would seem to suggest, at the minimum, an entertaining entry in the overcrowded late-60s spy genre. However, an obvious, empty, overly-familiar script, a bland leading performance by Boyd, and worst of all no action, make this spy programmer one majorly failed assignment. No extras for this good-looki...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59948 Sun, 10 Feb 2013 07:04:35 PST Recommended

Ultra-cheap but amusing juvenile adventure. Sony's Choice Collection vault of hard-to-find cult and library titles has released East of Sudan, the 1964 historical thick-ear released by Columbia, directed by Nathan Juran, and starring Anthony Quayle, Sylvia Syms, Derek Fowlds, Johnny Sekka, and little Jenny Agutter in her movie debut. Crafted largely out of meager studio mock-ups, laughable rear projection, and a whole lot of stock footage from Korda's The Four Feathers, East of Sudan certainly doesn't entertain on a grand scale like its contemporary big-star, big-budget epics...but it's plucky as hell, and best of all, it doesn't take itself seriously for a moment. No extras for this great-looking anamorphic widescreen transfer.

<...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59947 Sat, 09 Feb 2013 17:09:59 PST Recommended

Charles Starrett is back as The Durango Kid (along with his alter-ego, Steve Reynolds) in The Fighting Frontiersman (1946), the 18th of more than five dozen series B-Westerns churned out like sausages from Columbia Pictures, this being the tenth such film in 1946 alone. (Reader Sergei Hasenecz notes, "Starrett did an amazing 131 B-westerns for Columbia from 1935 to 1952, of which 65 were in the Durango Kid series. He did nothing but Durango Kid movies from 1945 to 1952. Columbia did churn them out, but that's because they were so popular.")

As B-Westerns go, this one is truly ordinary and brimming with genre clich s, though it's not unpleasant. Sony's "Choice Collection" has mostly been a true delight, their video transfers especially being consistently good. Thanks to this program, a great many long-forgotten B's are being made available for reappraisal, and this has produced some really ple...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59858 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 03:56:13 PST Skip It

A "sinker" indeed, if you know what I mean. Sony's Choice Collection vault of hard-to-find cult and library titles has released Hook, Line & Sinker, the 1969 comedy from Columbia Pictures, directed by 77-year-old George Marshall ("Mr. Marshall...Mr. Marshall? Wake up, Mr. Marshall...we're ready for a take,"), and starring Jerry Lewis, Peter Lawford, and Anne Francis. A woefully unfunny outing that finds a terminally bored Monsieur Jerry playing a terminally ill suburbanite, Hook, Line & Sinker was just one more nail in the coffin of Jerry's fast-fizzling leading man movie career...and it hasn't aged any better 40+ years later. No extras for this nice-looking widescreen transfer.

Granite Life and Casualty insurance agent Peter J. ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59851 Sun, 03 Feb 2013 10:36:20 PST Recommended

The Show:

Debuting in April of 2011, Breaking In was a sitcom staring ChristianSlater as the eccentric owner of a security firm that specializes inbreakinginto their clients companies to highlight weaknesses in their systems. As a mid-season replacement, there were only 7episodes that first year, which earned the show... a cancellation. Yep, it was axed. Itwas a pretty good show that was on Fox, sonaturally they had to cut it. Then threemonths later, apparently coming to their senses, the network broughtthe showback from the dead for a 13-episode season. Unfortunately, there were a lot of changes made in the show andin thatsecond year the show was a shadow of its former self. Now ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=59850 Sun, 03 Feb 2013 05:02:16 PST Recommended

Typically minor Sam Katzman production: speedy, pulpy, thoroughly familiar entertainment...and that's good enough. Sony's Choice Collection vault of hard-to-find cult and library titles has released The Houston Story, the 1956 gangster/noir programmer from Columbia Pictures, directed by soon-to-be horror meister William Castle, and starring Gene Barry, Barbara Hale (even better looking as a platinum blonde), Edward Arnold, Paul Richards, Jeanne Cooper, and Frank Jenks. No noir masterpiece, that's for sure, The Houston Story sticks to its fast-moving, primitive storyline while leaving some intriguing thematic elements in the dust&#8213;but that doesn't mean you won't enjoy this nasty-edged little B. No extras for this pristine, anamorphically-enhanced black and white transfer.

Read the entire review

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