Friday is here again - 4 more re-views of what's good to view:

Criterion's Throne of Blood presents one of Kurosawa's most famous in the best possible light. Toshiro Mifune takes a bloody path, and lives to regret it.

MGM's Terror in a Texas Town is an oddity, even among oddities. It's a cheap western with a weird script and a crazy ending - this is the one where Sterling Hayden goes up against a gunslinger - with a harpoon.

Robert Aldrich's Attack! has minor classic status as a combat film - perhaps a bit overcooked on the theatrical trimmings, it contains shocks worthy of a war horror comic. Jack Palance goes into the meat grinder, for real.

Jack Palance is back in Paramount's The Lonely Man, a wet noodle of a Western. Presented in great-looking VistaVision, this one is slack in all departments, despite the presence of young Anthony Perkins.

Up next, Elite's rediscovered Kiwi horror film from 1981, that caught Savant's fancy, plus a wrapup of Westerns and War pictures, and Polanski's latest and greatest. Glenn Erickson

Hello on a beautiful Memorial Day in Los Angeles, where the old flag is flying at Savant Headquarters. It's 110 degrees on the Arizona desert, and probably very cold elsewhere, but today is swimming weather for us ... And thanks to some very astute programming by the DVD companies, we have a bundle of great discs to review:

Taking the brass ring today is Anchor Bay's 2-disc set of Dead of Night and The Queen of Spades, an amazing duo of Horror/fantasy pictures from the 'refined' era of British production. In one film, a Russian social climber tries to profit from a sorcerer's curse, while the other show is a classic omnibus of ghost stories, including the famous ventriloquist's dummy tale that seems to be an earlier version of Psycho.

Not far behind is Criterion's snappy release of the rare French thriller Quai des Orfèvres. Henri-Georges Clouzot tones down his signature acid tone for this kinder, gentler tale of infidelity, murder, forbidden lust, and relentless police inquiry. It also has Criterion's first oo-la-la centerfold!

Fox's Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison arrives on the coat-tails of their Memorial Day war movies, but is a welcome addition. Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr shine under the direction of the impossible-to-overrate John Huston, and the South Seas location looks great in CinemaScope.

HVe's Louisiana Story is an impeccable presentation of one of Robert Flaherty's last semi-docu studies of humans living under primitive conditions. This bayou saga gets tangled up in its own artistic ideals - and comes off as propaganda for an oil company.

Summer a-creeps up on us: with High School proms and kids back all too briefly from college. The influx of genre titles is starting to ebb a tad, and Savant is turning to do justice to a few that slipped through the cracks. But June has some top draws coming in, like Fox's Flight of the Phoenix. Back in a couple of days! Glenn Erickson

We're in the midst of war films right now, but we lead off with a bizarre rarity from Denmark ...

Facets Video presents a Lars von Trier televison version of Euripides' Medea. Using typically von-Trier-ish visuals, the horror of the tale becomes a meditation on revenge and divorce.

Fox's The Blue Max is an epic, with thrilling WW1 aviation action in the air, and a not-bad soap opera on the ground. Starring George Peppard, James Mason, and Ursula Andress' bath towel.

Sidney Lumet's Family Business is a very satisfying light drama. Dustin Hoffman, Sean Connery and Matthew Broderick play three generations of crooks, who foolishly decide to commit a crime together. Very well done.

James Mason practically holds up The Desert Fox all on his own, but he's a pleasure to watch in this docudrama about the famous German general Rommel. With Jessica Tandy and Richard Boone.

And Robert Redford mades his screen debut as a reluctant GI in Denis Sanders' moody War Hunt. Psycho soldier John Saxon goes on personal creepy-crawly missions for the pleasure of knifing enemy soldiers, and Redford wants to know why. With an interesting and well-directed ensemble cast.

So, I guess we have the Memorial Day weekend & Father's Day to thank for all these Western, War, and so-called male-oriented releases we're getting. But I'm staying away from cable television this weekend, as I think the commercialization of Memorial Day, presenting Hollywood combat movies as a 'tribute' to our veterans, is in plain awful taste, a shameful promotion that presumes War is a proud heritage fathers hand off to sons. Memorial Day should honor the sacrifice of our veterans, not to worship the cult of Combat as if it were the national sport. End of editorial. Back this weekend with more reviews! Glenn Erickson

An exciting week for new releases ... with Captain Nemo hitting the shelves on Tuesday. Savant's trying to keep up, and leads with some good titles ...

Fox Home Entertainment's Sink the Bismarck! is an enormously satisfying epic of the pursuit of the giant German warship, just before America came into WW2. Kenneth More and Dana Wynter plot the strategies, while the battle is shown with a combination of stock footage and wonderfully-executed miniature ships.

Anchor Bay brings out a treasure with The Railway Children, actor-turned director Lionel Jeffries' 'family' masterpiece. Jenny Agutter is unforgettable as a teen coping with the mysterious disappearance of her father, in the English countryside of 1905. One of the very best of its kind.

Facets Video offers a rare European treat, Miklós Jancsó's Electra, My Love. More of an abstract dance film than a story, we watch hundreds of actors moving in rhythmic patterns in unbroken long takes of astounding complexity. A puzzling picture for story, that pays off in cinematic invention.

MGM's The Battle of Britain drops the ball as a drama, but compensates with two solid hours of aerial combat between real vintage aircraft from both sides of the conflict. The all-star cast mostly gets in the way, but is good for star-spotting.

MGM's The Indian Fighter is a square-but-vigorous wagon train western enlivened by sexy interludes with Indian Maid Elsa Martinelli, who makes her obligatory nude bathing scene more realistic than usually allowed in 50s films! With Walter Matthau as a villain. He keeps his clothes on.

DVD Savant is having a good time spinning these entertaining discs, with more to come ... with so many reviews coming out so fast, check out the entire main page before moving on .. Glenn Erickson

Savant has a barrage of reviews - two Westerns, two War films, and a famous nonfiction poetic documentary:

Home Vision Entertainment's Man of Aran is quite an experience, one of those pictures that teaches the meaning of backbreaking work. Robert Flaherty took his camera to the windswept island and shot for two years - developing his own film in a makeshift lab in a shack. The disc comes with a thorough docu that returns to Aran in 1976 to find out how things have changed, and how the islanders feel about their depiction in the earlier success.

MGM's The Unforgiven is a superior Western with a terrific widescreen look. John Huston directs an all-star cast in a gripping story of racial hatred on the frontier. With Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, John Saxon, Lillian Gish, Charles Bickford, and Albert Salmi.

John Farrow does his share of fancy directing in Columbia's wartime propaganda film Commandos Strike at Dawn. Fisherman Paul Muni witnesses his town ravaged by occupying Nazis, and heads for England to guide Commandos back to raid, and rescue his daughter. An interesting and fairly obscure War picture.

MGM gives single-disc status to a picture that surely never saw the top half of a double bill, Roger Corman's Five Guns West. You won't believe how minimal a Western can get until you see this, but it does have a good performance from Dorothy Malone. Written by one of its actors. In glorious Pathécolor.

And finally, producer Charles H. Schneer comes up with the only picture where Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis acted together, the gloppy and intelligence-challenged Hellcats of the Navy. No, Nancy doesn't play a hellcat, just a nurse in love with a sub captain, but Ronnie is a lone beacon of acting ability in a script engineered to make room for stock footage.

The reviews roll out, favoring the weighty War epics soon to come, along with some rare foreign gems from Criterion - Thanks for reading, and for all the positive email about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Glenn Erickson

Monday rolls around once again, and it's so nice outside it's a shame to be inside working. But there's a landmark DVD to be reviewed:

Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea doesn't seem to age, from its still-fresh special effects to its rather disturbing anti-colonial politics. James Mason's sublime Captain Nemo cruises the high seas, looking for criminal weapons of mass destruction to destroy. Only trouble is, he's himself a mad Terrorist. Kirk Douglas, Peter Lorre and a trained seal finish off a perfect picture.

Universal's Western surprise Destry Rides Again had audiences laughing out loud in 1939, and does exactly the same thing today, with James Stewart's gangly deputy winning over the heart of dance-hall girl Marlene Dietrich.This one's always been irresistable.

Fox extends its Studio Classics line with a classy soap set in Hong Kong, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing. William Holden and Jennifer Jones crank up too much romantic heat to call this one silly: even though the glossy story tries to be foolish, the emotions are infectious.

Less glamorously catching is Universal's ersatz Spaghetti Western, Two Mules for Sister Sara, which is not about Mother Superior taking a trip to Florsheim's. Shirley MacLaine and Clint Eastwood don't mix well in a crass tale with crass details ... starting with incessant rape-the-nun jokes. But there's always the great Ennio Morricone score, and the Gabriel Figueroa photography.

Pushing on into Spring, the various collections of War films are coming up, and there's a surprising number of winners among them. And Savant can report that the upcoming Flight of the Phoenix looks good in enhanced 16:9, and is not pan-scanned as some announcements read.

Another last-minute hint for Western fans: TCM is showing a Savant favorite, the letterboxed Man of the West tonight. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson.

Five fat (as opposed to fatuous) reviews from Savant tonight, with a trio of top Western titles from the Anthony Mann - James Stewart collaboration of the 1950s:

Anthony Mann traded Noirish G-Men for neurotic cowpokes with Winchester '73, his first in a series of highly successful teamings with profit-participant James Stewart. This first b&w entry has a clever story device that spins enough action for four westerns into a circular revenge tale, with a fancy show rifle at its center. Bend of the River is a Technicolor followup that is just as exciting, but adds a strange streak of kindergarten moralizing. Will ex-outlaw Stewart withstand a trail of violence in the Oregon territory, or will he succumb to becoming another bad apple in the barrel? Arthur Kennedy provides top support in this well-remembered Wagon Train saga. The Far Country caps the collaboration with an engaging duel between cynicism and civic duty on the snowy trail between Skagway and Dawson up Canada way. Stewart would like to be a normal guy, dang it, but scurvy hanging judge John McIntire and other crooks force him to steal his own cattle, shoot uncooperative drovers, and guide unsuspecting troublemakers into the path of an avalanche. It's tough being an independent frontiersman when there's so much Evil afoot. Walter Brennan & Ruth Roman enliven this entertaining thriller, beautifully shot on location.

Cary Grant 's farewell role is in the unheralded Walk, Don't Run, an unassuming and quiet little screwball comedy set in the Tokyo housing shortage during the 1964 Olympics. Samantha Eggar tries to resist Grant's romantic foisting upon her of Yank hunk Jim Hutton, but to no avail. It's charming just the same.

And finally, Bryan Forbes scores a hit with the cynical, incisive King Rat, a bleak prison tale where Black Marketeer George Segal's schemes and corruption get totally out of hand. A superior drama with a top cast: James Fox, Tom Courtenay, John Mills, etc.

Savant wishes to remind occasional readers that the turnover on the illustrated 'new reviews' below is pretty brisk these days, so please look lower on the page for recent titles - some get pushed off the top row after only a couple of days. And don't forget tomorrow night's AMC (remember that channel?) cable premiere of the restored, 3 hour The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, which I understand will be shown only once letterboxed without commercials. The details, if you missed them, are in this Savant article. More reviews coming! Thanks, Glenn Erickson

Hello from a bright and sunny Hollywood! A tip for cable viewers, today at 5PM Pacific time, TCM is showing the (presumably) Kino restoration of Metropolis. Three new reviews for you:

Home Vision Entertainment has a unique French farce called Drôle de drame, a convoluted comedy of manners set in 1900 London, where a society matron tells elaborate lies to avoid the scandal of their servants quitting, and causes no end of trouble. A mystery writer with a double identity is accused of murder by a nosy bishop, a randy milkman parks himself in the attic for days with an attractive young lady, and an insane serial killer takes a professional interest in the hero, while falling in love with his wife.

Universal's Night Passage shapes up like a grade AAA deluxe Western, with terrific landscapes, a great Dimitri Tiomkin score, and a good story that puts a lot of excitement and mystery behind James Stewart and Audie Murphy. But then Stewart pulls out that darn accordion again ...

A topflight cast and excellent production values highlight the PBS teleseries American Family: The First Season, a multigenerational comedy-drama that shapes up as a good Latino soap. But there's also some emphatic socially-conscious messages that can get in the way. Edward James Olmos, Sonia Braga, Esai Morales and Raquel Welch star.

Thanks for Reading, Glenn Erickson

Saturday rolls around once again, and it's raining cats and dogs in Los Angeles ... no beach today. Two musicals and a Region 2 from Lee Broughton tonight.

Broadway Melody of 1940 is a slick b&w teaming of Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell, the kind that movie dreams are made of. The rest of the picture may be a blur, but nobody ever forgot their dance to Cole Porter's music, on a gigantic mirrored black floor.

Silk Stockings has the stars (Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse), Cole Porter's music and a great director in Rouben Mamoulian, so Savant asks, 'What happened?' This sideways remake of Ninotchka by way of a Broadway adaptation is one of MGM's most popular musicals, which is a complete mystery to this reviewer.

Lee Broughton has written about the UK Region 2 PAL release of Donnie Darko, a mind-bending surreal adventure into the darkest corners of the mind of an American teenager. Jake Gyllenhall leads a remarkable cast in this unheralded sleeper of 2001.

Savant is up to his ears in Westerns and war pictures, and having a great time. Back on Monday with more ree-vyoos. Thanks for everything, Glenn Erickson

This is the 'it was late and I was tired' episode of DVD Savant ... let me cut to the chase ...

MGM scores with an explosively colorful disc of Julien Temple's Absolute Beginners, a musical that defies description, except to say that Savant likes it better than most anything musical done since. Patsy Kensit rocks out to the music of David Bowie and Ray Davies.

Paramount/CBS make an odd team on Arthur Penn's near-perfect Little Big Man, the adventures of Jack Crabb, who appears to have been present at just about every important thing that ever happened in the West. A very different kind of story that hasn't really been attempted since.

That's it for tonight ... I'll finish up the musicals on Saturday and get on to the Westerns! Glenn Erickson