Although only one of these 1950s B&w thrillers falls within a mile of a hard definition of film noir, all give us glamorous actresses in interesting roles. Claudette Colbert takes her turn at playing a nun, Merle Oberon tries a femme fatale role on for size and Hedy Lamarr does very well for herself as a man-hungry movie star. Kino gives all three excellent transfers, and one comes with an appropriately gossipy audio commentary.
Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema II
Thunder on the Hill, The Price of Fear, The Female Animal
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1951-58 / B&w / 1:37 Academy, 1:85 widescreen / 84,79,82 min. / Street Date May 12, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 49.95
Starring: Claudette Colbert, Ann Blyth, Robert Douglas, Anne Crawford, Connie Gilchrist, Gladys Cooper, Michael Pate, Phillip Friend; Merle Oberon, Lex Barker, Charles Drake, Gia Scala, Warren Stevens, Phillip Pine, Konstantin Shayne, Stafford Repp; Hedy Lamarr, Jane Powell,...
Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema II
Thunder on the Hill, The Price of Fear, The Female Animal
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1951-58 / B&w / 1:37 Academy, 1:85 widescreen / 84,79,82 min. / Street Date May 12, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 49.95
Starring: Claudette Colbert, Ann Blyth, Robert Douglas, Anne Crawford, Connie Gilchrist, Gladys Cooper, Michael Pate, Phillip Friend; Merle Oberon, Lex Barker, Charles Drake, Gia Scala, Warren Stevens, Phillip Pine, Konstantin Shayne, Stafford Repp; Hedy Lamarr, Jane Powell,...
- 5/25/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.***"Would you recognize Milton Berle without his mother? No!" So says the man himself, Milton Berle, in Over My Dead Body (1942), a fairly shoddy reminder that Berle was, for now-inexplicable reasons, a movie star in the early forties. But while some talent from radio and vaudeville slid into cinema with the ease of the proverbial buttered eel, Berle somehow got lodged halfway down cinema's throat, for reasons which may tell us something about classical Hollywood filmmaking, and something about this particular clown.Fox tested Berle on...
- 4/14/2020
- MUBI
This classy Fox production was considered the epitome of sick film subject matter in the pre- Psycho year of 1959, the true story of jazz-age thrill killers Leopold & Loeb. Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman are the nihilistic child murderers; Orson Welles stops the show with his portrayal of Clarence Darrow, going under a different name.
Compulsion
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1959 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 103 min. / Street Date March 7, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell, Diane Varsi, Bradford Dillman, E.G. Marshall, Richard Anderson, Robert F. Simon, Edward Binns, Gavid McLeod, Russ Bender, Peter Brocco.
Cinematography: William C. Mellor
Film Editor: William Reynolds
Original Music: Lionel Newman
Written by Richard Murphy from a novel by Meyer Levin
Produced by Richard D. Zanuck
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Movies about serial killers and psychos with exotic agendas were much different before Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which hit America in 1960 like a thrown brick.
Compulsion
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1959 / B&W / 2:35 widescreen / 103 min. / Street Date March 7, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell, Diane Varsi, Bradford Dillman, E.G. Marshall, Richard Anderson, Robert F. Simon, Edward Binns, Gavid McLeod, Russ Bender, Peter Brocco.
Cinematography: William C. Mellor
Film Editor: William Reynolds
Original Music: Lionel Newman
Written by Richard Murphy from a novel by Meyer Levin
Produced by Richard D. Zanuck
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Movies about serial killers and psychos with exotic agendas were much different before Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which hit America in 1960 like a thrown brick.
- 3/12/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The restoration of a newly rediscovered director’s cut of the 1931 The Front Page prompts this two-feature comedy disc — Lewis Milestone’s early talkie plus the sublime Howard Hawks remake, which plays a major gender switch on the main characters of Hecht & MacArthur’s original play.
His Girl Friday / The Front Page
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 849
Available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 10, 2017 / 39.96
His Girl Friday:
1940 / B&W /1:37 flat Academy / 92 min.
Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Alma Kruger, Billy Gilbert, Marion Martin.
Cinematography Joseph Walker
Film Editor Gene Havelick
Original Music Sidney Cutner, Felix Mills
Written by Charles Lederer from the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
Produced and Directed by Howard Hawks
The Front Page:...
His Girl Friday / The Front Page
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 849
Available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 10, 2017 / 39.96
His Girl Friday:
1940 / B&W /1:37 flat Academy / 92 min.
Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Alma Kruger, Billy Gilbert, Marion Martin.
Cinematography Joseph Walker
Film Editor Gene Havelick
Original Music Sidney Cutner, Felix Mills
Written by Charles Lederer from the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
Produced and Directed by Howard Hawks
The Front Page:...
- 1/3/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ca. 1935. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was never as popular as his father, silent film superstar Douglas Fairbanks, who starred in one action-adventure blockbuster after another in the 1920s (The Mark of Zorro, Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad) and whose stardom dates back to the mid-1910s, when Fairbanks toplined a series of light, modern-day comedies in which he was cast as the embodiment of the enterprising, 20th century “all-American.” What this particular go-getter got was screen queen Mary Pickford as his wife and United Artists as his studio, which he co-founded with Pickford, D.W. Griffith, and Charles Chaplin. Now, although Jr. never had the following of Sr., he did enjoy a solid two-decade-plus movie career. In fact, he was one of the few children of major film stars – e.g., Jane Fonda, Liza Minnelli, Angelina Jolie, Michael Douglas, Jamie Lee Curtis – who had successful film careers of their own.
- 8/16/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Cary Grant films on TCM: Gender-bending 'I Was a Male War Bride' (photo: Cary Grant not gay at all in 'I Was a Male War Bride') More Cary Grant films will be shown tonight, as Turner Classic Movies continues with its Star of the Month presentations. On TCM right now is the World War II action-drama Destination Tokyo (1943), in which Grant finds himself aboard a U.S. submarine, alongside John Garfield, Dane Clark, Robert Hutton, and Tom Tully, among others. The directorial debut of screenwriter Delmer Daves (The Petrified Forest, Love Affair) -- who, in the following decade, would direct a series of classy Westerns, e.g., 3:10 to Yuma, The Hanging Tree -- Destination Tokyo is pure flag-waving propaganda, plodding its way through the dangerous waters of Hollywood war-movie stereotypes and speechifying banalities. The film's key point of interest, in fact, is Grant himself -- not because he's any good,...
- 12/16/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Joan Fontaine movies: ‘This Above All,’ ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ (photo: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine in ‘Suspicion’ publicity image) (See previous post: “Joan Fontaine Today.”) Also tonight on Turner Classic Movies, Joan Fontaine can be seen in today’s lone TCM premiere, the flag-waving 20th Century Fox release The Above All (1942), with Fontaine as an aristocratic (but socially conscious) English Rose named Prudence Cathaway (Fontaine was born to British parents in Japan) and Fox’s top male star, Tyrone Power, as her Awol romantic interest. This Above All was directed by Anatole Litvak, who would guide Olivia de Havilland in the major box-office hit The Snake Pit (1948), which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nod. In Max Ophüls’ darkly romantic Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Fontaine delivers not only what is probably the greatest performance of her career, but also one of the greatest movie performances ever. Letter from an Unknown Woman...
- 8/6/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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