In the vein of I'll See You in My Dreams and Hello, My Name is Doris, The Meddler is another take on what it might be like to be a lonely female baby boomer searching for a new live after the death of a loved one, trying to maneuver a new era, connecting with younger people in awkward ways, trying pot because, why not. There's definitely a strange genre starting here, or perhaps there always has been, I was just too young to notice it. But as this generation of actresses age, they e...Read the entire review

Pirates of Tripoli (1955), a slightly upscale swashbuckler from producer Sam Katzman's busy "B" unit at Columbia Pictures, isn't particularly good, but I'm betting children to whom movies like this were marketed 60 years ago were probably pleased. In just 70 minutes it packs an awful lot of colorful action, adventure, intrigue, and just enough romance to satisfy mothers dragged along for the ride. Paul Henreid, the Czech Resistance leader standing between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca (1942), stars along with exotic if typecast beauty Patricia Medina.

Sony's manufactured-on-demand "Choice Collection" release gives this widescreen (1.85:1) and color presentation, one of the last filmed in the three-strip Technicolor process, a decent video transfer, though it includes no extra features.

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62993 Fri, 31 Jan 2014 04:51:14 UTC Highly Recommended

Though B-Western icon Buck Jones is cast way against type, as a movie The Avenger (1931) is vastly superior to Sony's other concurrent Buck Jones release of Unknown Valley (1933). Unknown Valley has an admirably unusual story but directed in a style several years older than it was, like a crude early talkie. The Avenger, on the other hand, is atmospheric and lively with many imaginative touches. Almost certainly the credit for that belongs to its director, Roy William Neill, best remembered today for his gloriously moody Sherlock Holmes films for Universal during the 1940s.

Like Unknown Valley, The Avenger was one of eight B-Westerns Jones made for producer Sol Lesser's Beverly Productions, releasing through Columbia Pictures. They were Jones's first talkies, for which he was paid the princel...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62984 Tue, 28 Jan 2014 13:29:11 UTC Recommended

"Once upon a time, a junkman had a dream. So he put together a team: an ex-astronaut and a fuel expert. They built a rocket ship and they went to the moon. Who knows what they'll do next?" -- Salvage-1's opening narration

Though virtually forgotten today, Salvage-1 (1979) was the Rocky Balboa of televised science fantasy. A modest made-for-TV movie, it took an unpromising, outrageous premise - a junk dealer builds a spacecraft out of spare parts and flies to moon to retrieve gear abandoned by NASA - and somehow, some way, made it believable and charming.

Executives at the ABC network and production company Columbia Pictures apparently thought so, too. Partly based of the track record of its highly bankable TV star, Andy Griffith, partly because of the vogue for all things sci-fi in the wake of Star Wars, they decided to expand Salvage-1 into a regular series even be...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62972 Thu, 23 Jan 2014 21:09:27 UTC Rent It

The Movie:

The 1967 Italian comedy/would-be thriller Kill Me Quick, I'm Cold is about con artists played by Monica Vitti and Jean Sorel (who also both appear in the recent Sony MOD DVD release, Bambole, although they share no scenes in that one). At the start of the film, Vitti and Sorel meet at a resort and try to con each other, before they realize they are both in the same business. Having someone with whom they both can finally relate, they fall passionately in love and decide to work as a team. Pretending to be brother and sister, they roam a cruise ship looking for easy marks. They romance rich couples and then hit up both the husband and the wife for money. Direc...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62965 Wed, 22 Jan 2014 13:02:00 UTC Recommended

The Western is a comparatively narrow genre, limited as it generally is to a specific time and place, despite the occasional genre hybrid (e.g., 1983's Outland) and modern Western (e.g., Lonely Are the Brave). Writer Frank Gruber listed seven basic Western plots: The Union Pacific Story (encompassing all modern technologies and transportation), The Ranch Story, The Empire Story, The Revenge Story, The Cavalry and Indian Story, The Outlaw Story, and The Marshal story. I don't necessarily agree with that list, but it's true that 99% of Westerns have stories rooted in but a handful of basic conflicts.

Sometimes though, a truly oddball Western emerges out of nowhere. Unknown Valley (1933), an otherwise modest Buck Jones "B" produced by Columbia Pictures, has one of the strangest plots I've ever seen in a Western, and it's eccentric in other ways, though not really good. Still, where...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62961 Tue, 21 Jan 2014 20:37:42 UTC Recommended

The Movie:

Four gorgeous European actresses -- Gina Lollobrigida, Monica Vitti, Elke Sommer, and Virna Lisi -- are the glue that holds together the 1965 Italian sex-comedy anthology film Bambole (aka The Dolls or Four Kinds of Love), an entertaining hodgepodge of vignettes with only the vaguest of thematic similarities. Some might argue that Bambole's PG-rated approach to sex is a little quaint and dated, but the fact that the film frequently makes no attempt to cloak its characters' sexual desires under the guise of romantic love makes it a refreshingly frank bit of prurience.

The first vignette, ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62962 Tue, 21 Jan 2014 20:16:14 UTC Highly Recommended

The Shorts:

The short version of the review: Ifyou enjoyed the first collection, or comedy shorts from the 30's, runout and buy this... it's hilarious.

The long version: The SonyChoice Collection, that studio's MOD (Manufactured On Demand) program,releases the rest of one of the Columbia films staring a mastercomedian with Charley Chase ShortsVolume 2. It's a hilarious collection of 12 short subjects thatreally illustrates that Charley Chase is a terribly under-ratedperformer.

Background: James Parrott started out working for Al Christie's studioin 1912 and by 1915 moved up to Mack Sennett's outfit. There he honedhis skills, both in front of and behind the camera, taking the nameCharley Chase when he appeared in films. In 19...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/62954 Sat, 18 Jan 2014 17:40:11 UTC Recommended

TheMovie:

I love the MOD (Manufactured On Demand) programs that Sony, WarnerBrothers, and other studios have started.  Through these, manyquality films, often niche titles that don't have a wide appeal, arebeing released, including a fair number of movies from the silent daysof cinema.  Case in point: The Sony Choice Collection has justreleased The Belle of Broadway,a 1926 Betty Compson vehicle that has some ludicrous plot elements butis actually a very nice film.

In the Paris of 1896, Madame Adele was the t...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57140 Wed, 18 Jul 2012 11:49:21 UTC Rent It

Delayed last go-around for this now largely forgotten cable "improvicon." Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released 10 Items or Less: The Complete Third Season, an 8-episode collection of the TBS sitcom's 2009 season. I reviewed the Season One and Two release of 10 Items or Less way back at the beginning of '09, right when this third (and final) season was playing out, and I enjoyed the show very much...but why Sony would wait almost four years to release that last installment in this fun-but-minor series is beyond me. No extras this time for this bare-bones release.

Leslie Pool (John Lehr), a failed New York actor, has returned to Dayton, Ohio, to run his deceased father's grocery store, the Greens and Grains. Leslie, fighting the legacy of having a father who never thought his son would amount to anything, is intent on making the struggling store a success. T...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/55630 Sun, 24 Jun 2012 11:36:56 UTC Recommended

Ghost Story aka Circle of Fear:
The most difficult television to float is the type of program known as the horror anthology. God love those who try, since they face an uphill battle: there just aren't that many horror fans, most horror fans are tough critics, and the anthology format allows no characters to identify with from episode to episode. In other words, there's very little to keep the viewer coming back. Legendary producer William Castle's Ghost Story aka Circle of Fear (hereafter referred to as Ghost Story for brevity's sake) tried mightily to keep those viewers coming back. It lasted for one season, 23 episodes, from 1972 to '73, and having never seen syndication (to my knowledge) could be looked at as a holy grail for TV horror fans of the right age.This extras-free, 6-disc set does good by Ghost Story in presenting sharp looking transfers that look as solid to...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/56370 Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:17:46 UTC Rent It

The Series:

Emily's Reasons Why Not is one of those shows that got talked about for all the bad reasons. It's Heather Graham's television show that was canceled by the network after just ONE episode due to lackluster ratings, although the ratings were not all that bad if memory serves me correctly. It's funny, I thought the show was a pretty recent one, because I only heard of it a few months ago and thought that it was part of last year's slate. I was wrong. The one and only episode of Emily's Reasons Why Not aired way back in 2006 and we're only getting the first six episodes that were produced before it got scrapped.

Emily Sanders (Heather Graham) is a self-help publicist-editor at a publishing house where she's developed her very own personal rulebook called "reasons why not" in that she will no longer continue to make mistakes in her love life. Of course, she doesn't...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/55807 Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:53:17 UTC Highly Recommended

A decade before anti-Semitic rants derailed an already waning starring career, Mel Gibson produced this loving tribute to the decidedly Jewish comedy team that's the focus of The Three Stooges (2000), a fascinating, mostly accurate TV-biopic made in Australia. The actors playing Moe, Larry, and Curly (to say nothing of Shemp, Joes Besser and DeRita, and comedian Ted Healy) look almost nothing like their real-world counterparts and lack the clone-like exactness of the imposters appearing in the new Farrelly brothers movie, but the performances here are very good and, every now then, each captures the essence of the Stooge they're playing. Further, the recreations of scenes from the team's two-reel comedies are impressively accurate. The show has its share of inaccuracies, errors, and historical anachronisms, but in all the important ways The Three Stooges gets it right.

A manufactured-o...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/53121 Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:39:40 UTC Recommended

Neighbors:
Warner Archives is proving that there truly is something for everyone out there in movie land, and likely you have forgotten most of those somethings. Consider this movie from those second try, early days of Saturday Night Live alumni stretching out onto the big screen. You probably don't remember these movies too much since they're bizarre, hard to define, and not exactly successful. In the crowd with Modern Problems and Doctor Detroit is Neighbors, a John Belushi/ Dan Aykroyd vehicle that's both too broad and a little bit subtle, a dark comedy that's not always very funny and a little light on the darkness quotient, a call to anarchy that doesn't make either option look all that great - and yet it's smarter, funnier and edgier than much of what passes as comedy today.

Director John G. Avildsen leads us into a surreally obvious metaphorical situation,...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52600 Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:49:17 UTC Recommended

Despite courtroom drama clichés aplenty, Criminal Lawyer (1951) is moderately entertaining anyway, mainly because it's fun to watch its great cast of character actors, some playing against type. It also helps that while the movie is quite short (73 minutes), packing a lot into its unusually dense story, including three separate criminal trials, giving it the pacing of contemporary TV shows like Law & Order. It's certainly undeserving of the * 1/2 rating given it by the usually reliable Leonard Maltin.

A region-free "Sony Screen Classics by Request" title on DVD-R format, Criminal Lawyer is presented in its original 1.37:1 full-frame format, in a solid transfer typical of their fine releases. A trailer is tossed in as an unbilled extra feature.

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52444 Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:37:50 UTC Recommended

Solid reworking of the time-honored medico construct of new, uppity doctor clashing with crusty veteran. Sony, as part of their Screen Classics by Request line of M.O.D. (manufactured on demand) titles, has released The Incredible Journey of Doctor Meg Laurel, the 1979 made-for-television movie starring Lindsay Wagner and Miss Jane Wyman. With a superior supporting cast including Andrew Duggan, Gary Lockwood, Brock Peters, John Reilly, Dorothy McGuire, and James Woods, The Incredible Journey of Doctor Meg Laurel may pretty-up its sometimes over-the-top portrayal of the "mountain folk" of the Blue Ride Mountains of 1930s Appalachia, but scripters keep things agreeably even-handed, and the cast is top-flight. No extras for this okay transfer.

Boston, 1932. Medical/social crusader Dr. Meg Laurel (Lindsay Wagner) will not knuckle under to her husband's, Dr. Thom La...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52445 Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:37:50 UTC Rent It

A disappointing Hart to Hart reunion movie. Sony has released, as part of their M.O.D. (manufactured on demand) Screen Classics by Request service, Hart to Hart: Old Friends Never Die, the fourth of eight Hart to Hart reunion movies produced in the mid-90s. Starring Stefanie Powers, Robert Wagner, Lionel Stander, and an unimpressive supporting cast including Mike Farrell and David Rasche, Hart to Hart: Old Friends Never Die tries for Christie with its secluded setting, assortment of suspicious characters, and bodies piling up, but only the most die-hard Hart to Hart fan will take this trip. No extras, as expected.

When best-selling author Jennifer Hart (Stefanie Powers) is invited to the fabulous private Hawaiian island of powerful publisher Alfred Raine (David Leisure) for a three day party, she can't resist taking along her husband, wealthy indus...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52446 Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:37:50 UTC Recommended

"What do you think?"
"I think we're over-the-top."

Another entertaining Hart to Hart reunion movie. Sony has released, as part of their M.O.D. (manufactured on demand) Screen Classics by Request service, Hart to Hart: Crimes Of The Hart, the third of eight Hart to Hart reunion movies produced in the mid-90s. With gorgeous Stefanie Powers and charming Robert Wagner on board, along with Lionel Stander and an eclectic group of supporting players including Alan Rachins, Lew Ayres, Richard Belzer, John Stockwell, Alec Mapa, and Audra Lindley, Hart to Hart: Crimes Of The Hart has a nice wintry New York feel to its light take on The Phantom of the Opera, giving fans of the original series a nice change of pace from the show's usual sunny SoCal climes. No extras, unfortunately, for this good-looking release.

The Great White Way, Winter, 19...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52408 Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:52:42 UTC Rent It

The Movie:
If there's anything notable about the nostalgic 1950 comedy Father Was A Bachelor, it might be that it typifies the lightweight stuff that William Holden was assigned to before he graduated to meatier likes of Picnic, Stalag 17 and The Bridge on the River Kwai. Indeed, this "orphans play matchmaker" opus came out only a few months before Holden became a floating pool toy in Sunset Boulevard. Gloria Swanson would have to wait, however, for a brief bit of contrived Americana starring a bunch of apple-cheeked orphans.

In the film, Holden plays Johnny Rutledge, a turn-of-the-century singing...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52361 Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:45:58 UTC Recommended

A sweet, low-key little surprise. Sony has released, as part of their M.O.D. (manufactured on demand) Screen Classics by Request service, Hart to Hart: Home Is Where The Hart Is, the second of eight Hart to Hart reunion movies produced in the mid-90s. Starring the gorgeous Stefanie Powers and suave Robert Wagner―and of course Max's Lionel Stander plus some big-name Hollywood veterans like Maureen O'Sullivan, Alan Young, Howard Keel, and Roddy McDowall―Hart to Hart: Home Is Where The Hart Is has a very gentle, romantic vibe to its almost-sad mystery, with the glamour and glitz and one-liners of a typical Hart to Hart episode waylaid this time for a more tranquil, bucolic Murder, She Wrote feel. And that's just fine with this reviewer. No extras for this good-looking transfer.

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52225 Wed, 07 Sep 2011 11:32:05 UTC Highly Recommended

Goofily enjoyable, The Magic Carpet (1951) is a routine but notably lively and colorful Arabian Nights-type adventure remembered today as the ignominious final film of Lucille Ball before embarking upon that iconic sitcom of hers, I Love Lucy, that same year. The genre had been revitalized by Alexander Korda's superlative 1940 remake of The Thief of Bagdad, which inspired B-studio Universal to make a series of outrageous Technicolor extravaganzas, usually starring Jon Hall and Maria Montez, who died just weeks before this premiered. By the time Columbia made The Magic Carpet, in less than glorious SUPERCINECOLOR, the genre had pretty much totally pooped out.

Nevertheless, the film has a fine cast, decent production values, considering, and some interesting special effects. Ironically, its greatest weakness is Lucil...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52212 Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:19:45 UTC Rent It

Not long ago I stumbled upon a particularly strong B-Western, Across the Sierras, (1941), the fourth of 12 "Wild Bill Hickok" movies produced at Columbia Pictures during 1940-1942. It was quite ambitious for such a film with many surprises in its second-half, at least compared to other Bs. That in mind, I had high hopes for Hands Across the Rockies (also 1941), the sixth film of the series.

Unfortunately, while it's not terrible it's also in no way memorable. As with The Kid from Broken Gun, released to DVD at about the same time from the same label, a big chunk of Hands Across the Rockies' running time gets bogged-down in courtroom melodramatics, perhaps a cost- and time-saving measure - not unreasonable consid...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52211 Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:19:45 UTC Recommended

Abandoned and Deceived:
If you've ever wanted to see Lori Loughlin drive a Gremlin, you're in luck. The actress best known for playing John Stamos' girlfriend on Full House demonstrates wholly credible talent in this 1995 made-for-TV docudrama, the story of Gerri Jensen, an accidental hero fed up with her deadbeat ex-husband. While certainly sunnier than Ms. Jensen's real experiences, Abandoned nonetheless maintains a serious, matter-of-fact, bitter attitude. Combining that with solid direction, the movie deserves to find a new audience on this Sony M.O.D. disk.

When Gerri learns of her husband's multiple infidelities, it inspires viewers of a lower class to yell, "cut his dong off!" at the screen. Happily, Jensen takes the high road, opting to immediately file for divorce. Unhappily, her husband gets all butt-hurt, opting to skip town and quit paying child support. Gerri soo...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52105 Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:47:57 UTC Recommended

THE PROGRAM

For whatever reason, someone thought a "Hart to Hart" revival in the mid 90s would be a good idea. After a truly dismal start with 1993's "Hart to Hart Returns," series stars Robert Wagner, Stephanie Powers and Lionel Stander would adopt an almost relentless pace of subsequent TV-movies, including three in 1994 and two each in 1995 and 1996 subsequently. Obviously, someone was watching these shows as you just don't get eight TV-movies made if the fan base isn't there. 1995's first entry, "Secrets of the Hart" would be a bittersweet entry. While providing newcomers a glimpse at what made the Harts so watchable, it would also be the final entry in the series for Lionel Stander, who passed away in late '94. Chock full of recognizable bit players, "Secrets of the Hart" doesn't try to be an intelligent mystery; instead, it lays on the cheese and melodrama to strong effect.
<...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/52103 Sun, 28 Aug 2011 19:42:34 UTC Recommended

THE MOVIE:

Gary Stuart is a Broadway composer married to Connie, a former singer who retired from the stage when they tied the knot. Gary gets bored from time to time, and he takes extended musical vacations, inventing trips out of town but really going on a bender through jazz clubs around New York. He's enough of a star that folks all over town lie about his whereabouts to Connie, but on his most recent jaunt, he didn't cover his tracks well enough. He comes home to find Connie has been out all night, and with one of his rivals, no less. It's a game, she wants to give Gary a taste of his own medicine, but Gary overreacts and leaves her. Divorce papers are filed despite neither wanting the split, and now the two lovers have sixty days to convince the other to t...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51877 Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:28:02 UTC Highly Recommended

The Product:
The reasons films fall into obscurity is the material entire dissertations are based on. PhDs and other cinematic scholars spend a lifetime pawing over papers and documented explanations, trying to piece the OOP puzzle back together. Sometimes, it's an issue of rights, several producers and ancillary money men all fighting for the same slice of typically tiny pie. In other cases, the studio simply let the movie lapse, the lack of interest driving its desire to keep it cataloged. There are the stuffy star turns where actors demand a certain performance or picture be buried while, in other instances, a general malaise among moviegoers sees a once well known title slowly dissipate and die. However, when one comes across a superb bit of late '60s UK cynicism in the guise of the character "thriller" The Reckoning, all such explanations seem specious. This fascinating film, a w...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51157 Fri, 05 Aug 2011 20:58:17 UTC Recommended

THE MOVIE:

Three Hours to Kill is a tidy genre piece, a 75-minute western with its own time limit. Jim Guthrie has three hours to take care of business or get out of town. Period.

Guthrie is played by Dana Andrews, a reliable second-stringer from the studio days, helming a cast of similarly reliable character actors. Jim is returning home after several years on the run, looking for revenge and a little truth telling. As we learn in flashback, his life took a turn for the worse on a drunken night when his fiancée's brother ended up dead, he was accused of the killing, and Jim narrowly escaped his own lynching. Now he wants to prove once and for all who really killed the man and win back his lady love (Donna Reed). Just about everyone in his social circ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51154 Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:21:24 UTC Recommended

Meet the Stewarts:
Sony Classics on Demand satisfies your - in this case very specific itch - with this breezy but heartfelt romantic comedy from 1942. Starring a young William Holden and sassy Frances Dee, Meet the Stewarts is obviously dated in many ways, but feels oddly contemporary at the same time. Charming and often quite funny, The Stewarts offer light entertainment, a type of movie that you'd go to if you wanted to shut your brain off for a while, which I suppose people wanted to do even in those enlightened times of yesteryear.

A delightful premise - so old it feels new again, finds Holden as Mike Stewart, an average, good-hearted guy in love with Candace 'Candy' Goodwin, (Dee) heiress of a huge fortune. Mike, being a stand up fellow, refuses to marry Candy if money is involved, on the grounds that he doesn't wish her father Pierce (Grant Mitchell) to think he's a gol...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51146 Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:54:46 UTC Recommended

Locked uncomfortably between Carry On Nurse (1959) and The Hospital (1971), The National Health (1973) is a film version of an acclaimed British play subsequently adapted to equal acclaim though considerably less commercial success on Broadway. The movie version is usually described as a black comedy about the inadequacies of Britain's National Health Service. It's partly that, but works best as humanist drama. Moreover, a little less than a third of The National Health follows a film-within-a-film, with the same cast satirizing television hospital dramas. It's obviously intended as campy respite from grim "reality" of the depressing ward where most of the film takes place.

The picture is not quite a success, despite an excellent ensemble cast delivering memorable performances. Peter Nichols (A Day in the Death of Joe Egg) adapted his own material, but the resultan...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51137 Tue, 02 Aug 2011 21:08:46 UTC Recommended

I sat down to watch Conquest of Cochise (1953) with some trepidation, having just seen another Sam Katzman-William Castle collaboration, the lackluster Charge of the Lancers (1954), only the night before. But in every way this is a significant improvement. The story is more compelling, the characters interesting, and it's both better directed and much more polished. While no classic of the genre, it is entertaining and overall slightly above average.

The movie reflects changing attitudes in the depictions of Native Americans and their political and personal relationships with U.S. Cavalrymen and both white and Hispanic settlers. Delmer Daves' Broken Arrow (1950) started the trend, prominently featuring Jeff Chandler as Cochise. Soon there were movies and TV shows in which the perspective occasionally shifted from Cowboys to Indians. Conquest of Cochise is one of these, st...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51133 Mon, 01 Aug 2011 13:30:36 UTC Rent It

"Gypsies take what comes. But I do not like that Russian!" - Tanya the Gypsy (Paulette Goddard)

Despite the one-two punch of schlockmeisters Sam Katzman and William Castle, Charge of the Lancers (1954), a melodrama set during the Crimean war, is monumentally lackluster. And as history, well, putting producer Katzman and director Castle in charge of a movie like this is a little like asking Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall to give a lecture on the Theory of Relativity. Paulette Goddard, in her last American feature, and French import Jean-Pierre Aumont, are the mismatched stars.

The movie has very little to recommend it, though its origins are somewhat mysterious and mildly intriguing given when it was made and the less than impressive final results. A "Sony Screen Classics by Request" title on DVD-R format, Charge of the Lancers is presented in 16:9 enhanced widescreen. The Columbia log...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51130 Sun, 31 Jul 2011 12:52:27 UTC Rent It

THE PROGRAM

Nostalgia is a cruel mistress, offering one the chance to relive fond memories and try to recapture a sense of fun that has long passed us by. The television reunion movie is perhaps the cruelest mistress of them all, tantalizing viewers with the siren song of their favorite characters, back on the small screen after year of absence. In some cases, these departures were hasty, other times they were well deserved after years of good service, and often, many departures came well after the characters wore out their welcome. "Hart to Hart" a late 70s Aaron Spelling produced production entertained viewers for five seasons, never breaking the top ten and exiting far down the list. Its legacy is likely more coated in nostalgia and the charisma of its cast than true quality. For 110 episodes, Jonathan (Robert Wagner) and Jennifer (Stefanie Powers) mingled with the hoi polloi and a...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51124 Sat, 30 Jul 2011 12:42:44 UTC Recommended

Adequately entertaining but otherwise routine, Apache Territory (1958) was co-produced by and stars Rory Calhoun as a saddle tramp taking charge when various U.S. Cavalrymen and civilians are surrounded by bloodthirsty Apaches. Modestly produced, it offers some amusing performances by actors playing genre stereotypes.

A "Sony Screen Classics by Request" title on DVD-R format, Apache Territory is presented in 16:9 enhanced widescreen, approximating its original 1.85:1 release. The image is more than a little grainy and shows signs of severe color fading here and there, but it's a good presentation overall. Included, as an extra feature, is an original trailer, complete with text and narration.

The movie is based on Louis L'Amour's 1957 novel Last ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51122 Fri, 29 Jul 2011 21:21:52 UTC Rent It

THE MOVIE:

Charles Vidor's adaptation of the play Blind Alley is a lukewarm genre thriller, working typical plot points in a competent fashion but failing to incite much excitement or generate any meaningful suspense.

The story is of a familiar type: a dangerous killer, Hal Wilson (Chester Morris), breaks out of prison with the aid of his girlfriend (Ann Dvorak) and a couple of other hoods, and he takes people hostage and hides out in their house to plot his getaway. In this case, the house is owned by a psychologist, Dr. Shelby (Ralph Bellamy), who has some of his hoity-toity friends over for the evening. Amongst them are a rich couple (Joan Perry and Melville Cooper) with a big age difference, and the younger wife's "friend," a dandy writer (John Eld...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/51107 Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:52:33 UTC Highly Recommended

"It's supposed to pull your leg."

Lazy fun. Sony's Columbia Classics line of M.O.D. (manufactured on demand) discs, has released the British-French co-production, The Southern Star, the 1969 adventure comedy based on the Jules Verne novel L'Étoile du sud, starring George Segal, Ursula Andress (topless!), Harry Andrews, Ian Hendry, Johnny Sekka, and Orson Welles. The damnedest, most casual big-budget adventure film you ever saw, it's difficult to pin down the source of The Southern Star's breezy, sometimes inept approach. But then again...who cares? How many times have you seen this kind of A-list production with such a charmingly nonchalant attitude? A vintage trailer is included as a bonus to this okay-looking transfer.

Read the entire review

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