Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are

New over at the Trailers From Hell website, John Landis takes us through the lengthy coming attraction reel for Psycho, the one that features Alfred Hitchcock. Trailers from Hell is putting up three new trailers a week now.

A note from Dick Dinman, of the DVD Classics Corner site: "Hi Glenn -- My weekly half-hour WMPGFM radio show DVD CLASSICS CORNER ON THE AIR will broadcast a Miklos Rozsa 100th Birthday Tribute for three consecutive weeks. My guest for all the shows will be Juliet Rozsa and there'll be generous selections from many of the great Rozsa film scores, some of which are very rare. The third show will feature the "premiere" of a ten minute suite I put together from a top-flight Rozsa film score that to date has never been commercially released in any format. The dates are October 3, October 10 and October 17 at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The show can be accessed "live" by going to This URL, after which it will be placed in the archives at that website. I hope the above is of interest to your readers. Cheers, Dick Dinman"

Thanks for reading, and for the corrections -- Glenn Erickson.

Savant's four new reviews today are

Greetings! Another good week gone ... but the rain gave us a beautiful Sunday in Los Angeles -- blue skies, clear light. Even the seedier parts of Hollywood looked downright lovely.

Last weekend I noted a U-Tube excerpt of Boris Karloff singing on television; this week Savant correspondent Robert Graham alerted me to this even better old TV clip, Boris Karloff hosting and singing a "Shiverolet" skit (Mama Look a Boo Boo) on The Dinah Shore Show with Art Carney and Betty Hutton. What happened to entertainment like this? Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson.

Savant's new reviews today are

Hello again. Three reviews today of very good movies; Black Book was my favorite from last year. All writing and no play is making Savant a dull boy (or a duller boy), but Gary Teetzel sent over this U-Tube clip of Boris Karloff singing on the Carol Burnett Show. You have to sit through Burnett & Chita Rivera singing dressed up as Vampira clones, but the bit we see of Karloff is worth the wait.

Gary also interprets Criterion's upcoming mystery movie clue correctly, I think. The verbal part of the clue is "We're just Wilde about loincloths." I kept thinking of Oscar Wilde, while Gary figured out that it must be Cornel Wilde, meaning that the film is the much-desired The Naked Prey. It's a Paramount release, so it all makes sense. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson.

Hello! Savant's new reviews today are

Hello again, a pleasant week here. Check the TCM Website every once in a while, for some of the desired Savant reviews will be showing up there before they appear here. It's a long story. I just got in the massive Treasures III Social Issues in American Film 1900-1934 box set, and will be looking into it fairly quickly ... it would appear to be a regular Colonel Copius of unusual social documents. (click the box that says 'DVD Collections'.)

Out in Kansas, Savant correspondent Bill Shaffer informs me that the annual Buster Keaton Celebration in Iola, Kansas will be happening on September 28-29. This time they'll be saluting Douglas Fairbanks Sr. with showings of The Black Pirate and The Saphead (a Keaton feature) with the Mont Alto Orchestra providing the music. The free event takes place all day Friday and Saturday at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center in Iola (about ten miles from Buster's birthplace - Piqua, Kansas). Most important will be the world premiere of a restored version of the 1917 Fairbanks pre-swashbuckler, A Modern Musketeer, assembled by three different archives with the help of David Shepard. Although the best mental image I can muster of Iola Kansas is a town where Bonnie & Clyde might have robbed a bank, the celebration sounds like fun to me! Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are

Well, Savant is pretty much back in business, with a new stack of desired titles to fuss over. In hand are The Lost World, The Vincent Price Scream Legends Collection (with Witchfinder General), Black Book, The Fly Trilogy, and Alligator. I've rushed out the Universal set today -- carefully rushed, that is -- and expect clear sailing through the weekend.

Savant pal Wayne Schmidt found this interesting website, Paleo Future, about past extrapolations of the future. It has some fascinating, wonderful 1910 predictions of 2000, complete with colorful illustrations. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson

Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are

Hello! The Los Angeles heat wave finally broke -- no more Arizona style mornings, feeling the sun rays burning through the windows! I've been writing like crazy and prepping for the no-show genre discs expected today. Very few are in circulation so far, a situation I hope is caused by end-of-summer vacations at the DVD companies.

So far, the only disc on the way is MGM's Vincent Price Scream Legends Collection, which contains the notable Witchfinder General (The Conqueror Worm). Restoring that film and convincing MGM to take it seriously was a long haul for some dedicated MGM Tech Services personnel, a process that started more than ten years ago.

I had no idea that Gumby would be so popular. Two friends wrote in with amusing web pages: A U-Tube Robot Rumpus and a version of Pete Kleinow's Gumby song, done in a Sinatra-like lounge style! Enjoy. Glenn Erickson

Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are

Savant cleared the decks this week to make way for a number of screeners that haven't yet materialized -- mostly Sci-Fi and horror offerings from MGM/Fox and Universal. This is why I have only two reviews to offer today, for good discs but not the ones Savant readers are expecting. Many apologies. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are

Hello again! Savant labors away as he does every Labor Day, which is the curse of writers everywhere, at least the ones with deadlines.

Mel Martin, an author preparing a book on the legendary producer Samuel Bronston, sent me this link yesterday. It's a nicely encoded ten-minute color featurette promoting Bronston's epic The Fall of the Roman Empire, narrated by James Mason and filmed in widescreen 35mm. It looks great, although so far I've only been able to see about nine minutes of it before it locks up. Perhaps there's a secret. Thanks for reading -- Glenn Erickson