Really, MGM? Really? You want $19.98...for this?

I'm frequently harsh on MGM when it comes to their line of manufactured-on-demand "Limited Edition Collection" titles, and for a variety of reasons: awful cover art intent on discouraging sales, up-res video transfers, full-frame transfers of widescreen movies, etc.

The movies themselves are another matter. While often obscure and/or terrible, they are nonetheless frequently of great interest to film buffs and movie historians like myself; personally, I'd love to see about 75% of what they've released so far.

But if I paid anything close to retail on Outlaw Trail (1944), a breezy, unassuming little B-Western, I doubt I'd take my chances on another "Limited Edition Collection" title ever again.

Unlike MOD rivals Sony (and their "Choice Collection") and Warner Home Video (Warner Archive), as well as Universal and now Fox, MG...Read the entire review

Even die-hard fans of '30s through '70s horror films like yours truly had barely heard of, let alone seen Pharaoh's Curse (1957) until MGM announced its release to DVD. There seems to be two reasons for its almost total obscurity. It has not one actor in the cast associated with horror films. There's no Lon Chaney, Jr., no Bela Lugosi, no Basil Rathbone or even a minor name like Tor Johnson, even though all of them appeared in The Black Sleep (1956), made by the same producers just the year before. The other reason is that while even the worst horror movies made by, say, Universal, were widely distributed to television and later released to VHS and DVD, indie productions for United Artists were much more spottily distributed in other media. The Black Sleep was widely known among horror fans (for cramming so many genre stars into one picture) yet it was still pretty hard to see unti...Read the entire review

With a title like Vice Raid (1960, also variously known as Pleasure Girl, The Blonde in 402, and Women Confidential, though those may have only been working titles) and Mamie Van Doren as its star, one might reasonably expect something enjoyably lurid and over-the-top if not necessarily good. Instead, this minor thriller is extremely tame both in terms of content and execution, resembling contemporaneous episodic television. It looks like the whole thing was shot on standing sets bordering on the claustrophobic, and within spitting distance of its studio. Van Doren however, as she often was, is fun to watch.

An MGM "Limited Edition Collection" manufactured-on-demand release, Vice Raid utilizes a full-frame transfer even though the movie clearly is meant for widescreen projection, probably 1.85:1. A trailer is tossed in as an extra feature.

<...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=55559 Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:54:50 PDT Rent It

The Movie:

"Suckers they be saying they can take out Adam Horovitz!" Yes, and with that seminal quote from the classic song Shake Your Rump from the now classic album Paul's Boutique (Beastie Boys) is Adam Horovitz' (King Adrock) debut alongside Donald Sutherland in Hugh Hudson's Lost Angels, a film that was released 1989 and earning just over a million dollars at the box office.

Tim "Chino" Doolan (Horovitz) comes from an upper class middle family of the broken home variety. After getting himself into lots of trouble his mother and stepfather trick him into a private psychiatric hospital in the San Fernando Valley where he is to be reintegrated back into society. Needless to say Tim doth protests and hijinx ensue, because Tim is deep in the streets. He belongs to a local street gang of preppy boys who have an ongoing rivalry with the local Latino gang. ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=55502 Sat, 07 Apr 2012 05:15:48 PDT Recommended

Intriguing but disappointing, The Wonderful Country (1959), is a peculiar, mildly confusing Western starring and executive-produced by Robert Mitchum. It's more interesting today for its singularly offbeat casting, excellent score and cinematography than as an adaptation of Tom Lea's well-regarded 1952 novel. (And despite the fact that playwright-anthropologist Robert Ardrey adapted it.) Robert Parrish directs a cast that includes singer Julie London, comedian Jack Oakie, John "Sgt. Schultz" Banner, and baseball great Leroy "Satchel" Paige.

An MGM "Limited Edition Collection" manufactured-on-demand release, The Wonderful Country gets a decent 1.66:1 widescreen transfer, 16:9 enhanced for widescreen TVs. No extras.

Mitchum plays Martin Brady, an Ame...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=55441 Wed, 04 Apr 2012 05:01:20 PDT Rent It

Talky with little action, Three Bad Sisters (1956) is an extremely dull film, its 72-plus minutes play much longer. It's so lacking in anything like thrills or interest one has to wonder why it was ever produced in the first place. Even the title is a misnomer. Only two of the three sisters are bad; the third is a standard B-movie ing nue and completely innocent, though the others try hard to make up for that deficit.

The movie itself is blandly produced, playing very much like an episode of Perry Mason minus Perry, Della Street and Paul Drake, though otherwise a lot like the first act of a typical episode. An MGM "Limited Edition Collection" manufactured-on-demand release, Three Bad Sisters utilizes an old full-frame transfer, even though the movie clearly is meant for widescreen projection, probably 1.85:1. No extras.

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54938 Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:29:55 PST Rent It

Zone Troopers:
These Manufactured On Demand Discs often serve the purpose of getting films out to the fans, films that wouldn't ordinarily merit a traditional DVD release. Such is not the case with MGM's M.O.D. Disc for Zone Troopers, a silly, forgotten VHS placeholder on the shelves of countless Mom 'n' Pop Video Stores. Though low-budget, goofy, and possibly tragically misguided, Zone Troopers represents a type of fun, sincere filmmaking that genre aficionados are obligated to appreciate if they check their attitudes at the door.

As a curious blend of World War II melodrama and alien sci-fi adventure, Zone Troopers would seem to be divisive enough to turn off both potential groups of fans. Writer/director Danny Bilson and co-scribe Paul De Meo may have been off their rockers when they concocted this mixture which doesn't exactly cow-tow to sci-fi fans, (who were wallo...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54876 Tue, 28 Feb 2012 06:03:14 PST Recommended

A mostly tepid courtroom meller starring and directed by Ray Milland, Hostile Witness (1968), based on a play, lacks flair and is unimaginatively cast. It's not terrible and has its moments, but Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution or your average episode of Rumpole of the Bailey is a lot more fun.

An MGM "Limited Edition Collection" manufactured-on-demand release, Hostile Witness is presented in 1.78:1 enhanced widescreen, approximating its original widescreen theatrical aspect ratio. The transfer is a bit dirty but otherwise fine. No extras.

Simon Crawford, Q.C. (Milland) is a successful barrister at the Old Bailey. A widower who lost his wife during the Blitz, he's cared for their only child, a daughter, since she was two. Mor...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54858 Sun, 26 Feb 2012 04:43:03 PST Recommended

An efficient little thriller from the team of producer Robert E. Kent, writer Orville Hampton, and director Edward L. Cahn (see You Have to Run Fast), Three Came to Kill (1960) offers a tautly-told, intriguing little story perfectly suited to its limited budget. Though a bit flamboyant, Cameron Mitchell is excellent in the leading role, and like other Kent/Hampton/Cahn collaborations the climax is violent and action-packed.

A "Limited Edition Collection" manufactured-on-demand title from MGM, Three Came to Kill sources what seems to be a comparatively recent transfer but it's in the wrong aspect ratio, 1.33:1 full frame when it should be 1.66:1 enhanced widescreen. Fortunately, unlike, say, MGM's concurrent (and also full-frame) Jungle HeatRead the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54843 Sat, 25 Feb 2012 06:09:33 PST Rent It

The story goes that Jungle Heat (1957) was shot in Hawaii immediately after Voodoo Island (1957), another Bel-Air production executive produced by Aubrey Schenck and Howard W. Koch, the latter serving as this film's director. Like Voodoo Island, a dull picture top-lining Boris Karloff, Jungle Heat has an interesting cast (actor Rhodes Reason appears in both, in fact) and Kauai, Hawaii locations but otherwise is quite lackluster. Characters mull about, talking to one another, but the story never seems to be going anywhere. With its undercurrent of Japanese fifth columnists threatening plantation owners in the days prior to Pearl Harbor, Jungle Heat at first seems promising but overall it's very disappointing.

A "Limited Edition Collection" manufactured-on-demand title from MGM, Jungle Heat sources an old, old transfer, complete with '80s era UA logo, that's ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54759 Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:43:11 PST Recommended

Undistinguished but not bad, You Have to Run Fast (1961) is a late-entry noir, produced on the cheap (probably in the $100,000 range) by that prolific triumvirate of producer Robert E. Kent, director Edward L. Cahn, and (usually) writer Orville H. Hampton. Though hardly classics, their dozens of films together during the late 1950s and early-'60s were usually efficient programmers, a few of which (It! The Terror from Beyond Space, Riot in Juvenile Prison) achieved some minor degree of fame.

Movies like these were the result of a product shortage that plagued the fifties. The big studios were making far fewer movies for various reasons, and while attendance dropped sharply after 1946, there were still thousands of movie theaters needing to change their programs every week. Low-budget companies like AIP learned to cater to teenagers and drive-ins, but most specializing in low-budg...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53424 Sun, 19 Feb 2012 07:08:10 PST Highly Recommended

Rebecca (1940) is one of three Alfred Hitchcock movies MGM/Fox has released to Blu-ray, the others being Spellbound (1945) and Notorious (1946). All are excellent, though Rebecca arguably bears more the personal stamp of its producer (and Hitch's boss/collaborator for much of the '40s), David O. Selznick, than Hitchcock himself. It was Hitch's first Hollywood film following an attention-grabbing string of commercial and critical successes in his native Britain. Undoubtedly eager to please his Hollywood employers, Hitchcock seems to have acquiesced to Selznick to a greater degree than he would on their later films, and there are comparatively few signature Hitchcock moments.

The Blu-ray is excellent, sporting a very impressive high-definition transfer with myriad little details and textures previously visible only on 35mm prints. The film had been released to DVD before, f...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53427 Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:39:27 PST Highly Recommended

For this reviewer, watching Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979) on Blu-ray was a curious viewing experience. I'd seen it when it was new, while I was in high school. And between 1979 and 1989 I must have watched it at least another 15 times, first in theaters and later in revival houses and on cable television beginning around 1984, where Manhattan may have been the first movie letterboxed beginning to end for television broadcast.

And yet, I hadn't seen it at all after that, certainly not in the last 20-plus years. I never saw the DVD, and in fact I had stopped going to Allen's new movies pretty much altogether, though I've since seen a few on DVD or Blu-ray recently.

The effect of all this is that, more than most, for me watching Manhattan again was a real time-trip. I felt like Rod Taylor in The Time Machine. The picture, certainly in Allen's top five or six, holds up. I...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54618 Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:50:26 PST Highly Recommended

The Movie:

I'm just going to warn you in advance: this is going to be one of those reviews where someone is going to be exposed to a famous film for the first time. Shoot, I had no idea The Apartment had been selected to the National Film Registry a few years ago for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" (and as an aside, that would be an intriguing viewing project for the film enthusiast). But it is nice to have finally witnessed The Apartment and been entranced with how many of the facets in it have remained timeless to this day.

The film was co-written by I.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder, and directed by Wilder in his first film since the much heralded Some Like It Hot. Jack Lemmon returned with Wilder and plays C.C. Baxter, a somewhat anonymous worker for an insurance compa...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54472 Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:23:30 PST Recommended

The Movie:

In 1953 producer Ivan Tors gave us the underrated SF film The MagneticMonsterwhich introduced the OSI, a government organization that was in chargeofall things scientific. The following year he made a sequel ofsorts,Gog. This film also featured an agent from the OSIinvestigatingsome mysterious occurrences but Tors was able to avoid the majormisstepof the first film: this one is much more visuallyinteresting. Too bad it's not nearly as exciting and way too talky. Evenso,this MGM Limited Edition MOD disc is great and goes well with Torsearlierfilm and they make a great pair.

At a top secret scientific research station, deep underground beneaththesouthwest desert soil, scien...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53425 Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:07:33 PST Highly Recommended

THE MOVIE:

I adore Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious for how it so consistently flummoxes all expectations. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman starring in a film together in 1946, at the height of their fame, should have been the romantic cinematic event of the year. Audiences even today have certain expectations when they hear of the coupling. Yet, for most of Notorious, Hitchcock spends the film doing an end run around those expectations. He knows what we want to believe, and he let's us know that he knows, but instead of gratifying our desires, he chooses to make us wait.

In the film, Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman. Alicia is a notorious woman. While that word probably makes us think of a criminal when heard today, when a woman was notorious in 194...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53550 Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:07:33 PST Highly Recommended

THE FILM:

Please Note: The screen captures used here are taken from the 2002 standard-definition DVD edition, not the Blu-ray edition under review.

1945's Spellbound is the second of three full-on collaborations between cinematic-genius director Alfred Hitchcock and his star Hollywood producer, Gone With the Wind mastermind David O. Selznick (whose contractual relationship with the British expat had him playing a more minor role in a handful of other Hitchcock films of the period that he didn't actually produce). Their partnership ended on a minor note in 1947 with The Paradine Case...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53426 Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:20:07 PST Highly Recommended

THE FILM:

Please Note: The screen captures used here are taken from the 1998 DVD, not the Blu-ray edition under review.

Annie Hall isn't Woody Allen's best film, but it is inarguably the one that definitively marked his transformation from cinema-savvy comedian whose comic persona could sustain a feature-length movie to full-blown, serious cin aste. Here, for the first time, the gags and one-liners are supplementary, even peripheral, to the main event; there's a more substantial vision to this film than would have seemed possible from Allen's prior efforts, a heart of cultured, fraught, modern-yet-nostalgic urban romance (romance in t...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54455 Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:38:19 PST Recommended

The Movie:

When people think of 50's sci-fi B-movies, they conjure up images ofreallypoor special effects and monsters that obviously look like a guy in acostumethat was created in someone's garage.&nbsp; That wasn't always the casethough,and one good counter example is The Magnetic Monster, a picturereleasedthrough United Artists that has recently seen the light of day onceagainthrough MGM's MOD program.&nbsp; This is a well scripted solid SF film,rumoredto have been a pitch for a TV series, about a group of scientists thattrackdown strange and unusual phenomena in the atomic age.&nbsp; Much betterthanthe typical 50's SF low-budget fare, the movie has ironically beenlargelyforgotten.&nbsp; Hopefully this release will remedy that situation.

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54454 Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:35:06 PST Recommended

In 10 Words or Less
Shocking cin mav rit , but not for the reasons you think

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: The Candid Cameraconcept
Likes: Allen Funt, Playboy's Candid Camera
Dislikes: So-called realityTV
Hates: Confronting our unenlightened past

The Movie
I remember, in my younger days, sneaking a peek atthe Playboy Channel whenever I could. In those days before the invention ofalways-on pornography, the late-night thrill of Hugh Hefner's TV offerings wasa filthy holy grail, full of airbrushed, heavily made-up goddesses who wanderedaround hazy settings in the nude to soft jazz or light rock, doing excitingthings like playing with hoses or stretching. But every now and then, there wassomething special, a s...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=52624 Mon, 16 Jan 2012 05:28:02 PST Recommended

THE MOVIE:

I don't know if it was coincidence or some kind of neighborly retaliation, but while I was watching Sid and Nancy today, the hippy in the apartment next door started blasting the Eagles' "Desperado" during one of the Sex Pistols concert scenes. Though he and I are of different generations, it appears the division between 1970s sissy rock and old school punk will never close. Were my life a movie, I'd have started shouting obscenities and banging on the wall. Instead, I just waited it out. I had 111 minutes of Chloe Webb's nasal yowl at my disposal. Don Henley could suck it.

I imagine the Sex Pistols still remain a rite of passage for most rebellious teens. I don't know if I had seen Alex Cox's biopic of the band's iconic bass player before o...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=51917 Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:16:04 PST Highly Recommended

THE MOVIE:

My first encounter with The Big Country was a couple of years ago. I wasn't familiar with William Wyler's 1958 film until George Clooney was talking about how he borrowed a scene from it for Leatherheads. When Clooney's character goes and gets John Krasinski in the middle of the night and takes him outside to settle their differences without anyone else spying in, that's a direct lift from The Big Country. Gregory Peck does the same with Charlton Heston. They need to fight, that's inevitable, but the score is between them, and there is no need for bragging or showboating.

It's a pretty impressive fist fight, with both men whaling on each other until neither of the...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53837 Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:11:09 PST Skip It

THE MOVIE:

Walter Gibson's pulp avenger, the Shadow, has survived the decades and adapted well to a variety of media, leaping from prose to radio and even starring in some pretty fantastic comics through the 1980s and 1990s. The Shadow is a masked crimefighter who is secretly rich do-gooder Lamont Cranston. He has mystical powers of hypnotism at his disposal and is known for his insidious laugh. It's his trademark.

All the more weird, then, that the Shadow never laughs in Phil Karlson's 1946 movie Behind the Mask. You won't laugh either, even though for all intents and purposes it appears you're supposed to. Behind the Mask is a light comedy adaptation of the Shadow story. It stars Kane Richmond as Lamont Cranston, a rich kid who spends his night...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53780 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 03:26:22 PST Rent It

Not much needs to be said of Counterplot (1959), a very minor B-movie notable only for its two leads, Forrest Tucker and gorgeous Allison Hayes, plus the fact that it seems to have been made entirely on location in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a very different place when this was made. Despite veteran talent behind the camera as well, the picture abounds in genre clich s and its second-half is dominated by a terrible performance by Gerald Milton, a Fred Clark-type unsuccessfully channeling Sydney Greenstreet.

MGM's "Limited Edition Collection" is presented in the wrong aspect ratio, 1.33:1 full frame instead of its proper 1.85:1, but the transfer is decent and zoomed-in reformats to 1.78:1 reasonably well. Karl Struss's compositions are infinitely better framed at this ratio. No extras.

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53767 Mon, 19 Dec 2011 06:05:24 PST Recommended

"Hello? Doctor Blood's office."

Most British horror films from the late 1950s through the early '60s fall into one of two categories: Hammer films and imitation Hammer films. A few, however, were bizarre throwbacks to an earlier age, most commonly to the low-budget mad scientist movies of the 1930s and '40s, particularly the threadbare offerings of Poverty Row studios. A couple of these mostly terrible British movies were entirely homegrown, such as the dreadful The Woman Eater (1958). Most, however, had American input, which probably accounts for their old-fashioned genre trappings. The gloriously loony The Man Without a Body (1957), for instance, was co-directed by Hollywood-based W. Lee Wilder (Billy's untalented brother), while the awesomely bad Konga was produced by Detroit-born Herman Cohen.

The story and screenplay for Doctor Blood's Coffin (1961) ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53680 Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:27:28 PST Highly Recommended

THE MOVIE:

If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. That must have been what David Landsberg and Lorin Dreyfuss were thinking when they sat down to write Detective School Dropouts, which would turn into a starring vehicle for themselves. The fact that the film turned out to be a commercial failure doesn't take away from the fact that Landsberg and Dreyfuss created an entertaining bit of silliness that makes me want to smack my head with one hand and clutch my gut with the other.

The 1986 film travels under the guise of a mob-mystery to deliver some of the broadest (and cleverest) slapstick I've seen in quite a while. Landsberg and Dreyfuss play the titular dropouts although to be fair, Landsberg is the only dropout since Dreyfuss is already a full-fledged detective...sort of. You see, Paul Miller (Dreyfuss, Richard's brother) runs his own detective agency ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53640 Sat, 10 Dec 2011 01:45:46 PST Recommended

In case you had any lingering suspicions, and thought that maybe, just maybe, Morey Amsterdam might have been the real brains behind The Dick Van Dyke Show, look no further than Amsterdam's magnum opus, the feature film in which he not only stars, but also produced and co-wrote: Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title (1966). Alarmingly bad yet fascinating, it may be a car wreck of a movie, but for various reasons it's absolutely a must-see along the lines of other cinematic atrocities such as Skidoo (1968) and Myra Breckenridge (1970).

And especially if you're a fan of The Dick Van Dyke Show. On that landmark sitcom, Amsterdam played Buddy Sorrell, human joke machine, and one of the writers on "The Alan Brady Show." Carl Reiner partly based the sitcom on his experiences as a writer on Your Show of Shows, with Buddy initially patterned after fellow writer...Read the entire review

]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=53457 Sat, 03 Dec 2011 05:18:58 PST DVD Talk Collector Series

West Side Story iswithout question one of the most iconic, undeniably powerful, andmemorablefilms ever released. The idea behind the production was an act ofgenius in andof itself: taking the tried and true formula of William Shakespeare'sprodigious work known as Romeo &amp; Juliet and adapting it into amodern daysetting. Jerome Robbins monumental musical brought forth enough flairin styleand heart of wonder to capture the imaginations of even the mostcynical ofmoviegoers and film critics upon the theatrical release in 1961 - now50 yearsago. There are few films that manage to be so awe...Read the entire review

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