Armchair Commentary

DVDs from the Vault: Forgotten Noir, Jungle Thrills - Plus! Rock, Doris, Popeye, Penrod and Sam (and More!)

Let's begin this week's feast of vintage features on DVD with a newly remastered quintet of lessr-known noir, all culled from the Warner acquisitions library and released via their manufacture on demand imprint, Warner Archives. Monogram's The Fall Guy (1947) benefits greatly from its source material - the short story "Cocaine," by Cornell Woolrich,, whose doom-laden work also served as the inspiration for The Leopard Man (1943), Phantom Lady (1944), Rear Window (1954), The Bride Wore Black (1968) and countless other films. The Fall Guy draws from one of Woolrich's favorite tropes - the crime commited in the wake of an alcohol- or drug-fueled blackout (see also Black Angel and The Guilty, both 1947) - with actor/director Leo Penn (father of Sean, Chris and Michael Penn, and here billed as Clifford Penn) discovering that he may have murdered a woman while in the grip of a bender. The left-field upbeat ending and budget-driven is balanced by the presence of Robert Armstrong (King Kong, 1933) as Penn's cop brother-in-law and Elisha Cook, Jr., in full ferret mode as a highly suspicious stranger. 

DVDs from the Vault: Vintage Hollywood! Classic TV! Multi-Disc Mania! Westerns Aplenty! And More!

Independent distributors Olive Films continue to underscore their status as a dream label for cinephiles and collectors with its current batch of titles, all culled from the vaults of Republic Pictures and available in both DVD and Blu-ray formats. Chief among the current lineup is Mark Robson's Champion (1949), a scabrous, violent profile of a ruthless boxer (Kirk Douglas, who received an Oscar nod for his performance) whose desperate drive to rise above his bottom-floor social standing results in the ruination of his closest relationships (brother Arthur Kennedy, manager Paul Stewart and desire object Marilyn Maxwell) and ultimately, his own self-respect. The darker corners of the soul are also the focus of The Enforcer (1951), with Humphrey Bogart (in his final role for Warner Bros., which distributed the film for United States Pictures) as an assistant district attorney trying to bring down mobster Everett Sloane, who runs a Murder, Inc. style ring of contract killers, and Fred Zinneman's The Men (1950), with Marlon Brando as a former GI struggling with a wartime injury that has left him a paraplegic and Sloane, Jack Webb and Teresa Wright as the doctor, fellow patient and fiancee who aid in his recovery. Both The Men and Champion were early producer credits for director Stanley Kramer and penned by Carl Foreman (High Noon), who received Oscar nominations for both efforts.

DVDs from the Vault: Bowery Boys Volume 2, Jackie Chan, Repo Man, Eddie Cantor and More!

Warner Archives has issued The Bowery Boys: Volume 2, a four-disc collection featuring twelve titles from the impossibly long-running comedy series. The dozen pictures collected in the set roughly cover the first decade of the team's stint under the Bowery Boys' moniker after two previous decades as the Dead End Kids, Little Tough Guys and East Side Kids. The tone of the Bowery movies is decidedly more slapstick than in previous incarnations (thanks in part to the behind-the-camera presence of Three Stooges vet Edward Bernds and Jean Yarbrough, who directed numerous Abbott and Costello features and TV shows), and as the series progressed, swiftly moved into psychotronic territory: in Spook Busters (1946), a mad scientist wants to put the brain of Sach (Huntz Hall) into a gorilla, while a spate of candy consumption in Master Minds (1949) gives Sach psychic abilities, which attracts the attention of another mad scientist (Alan Napier from the TV Batman) with noggin-swapping designs for his monster (Glenn Strange). Bernds' The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1955) goes all-out in its grab for the horror-kid crowd, offering up mad scientist John Dehner a gorilla, robot, vampire and a man-eating tree (maintained by The Waltons' Ellen Corby). The other Boys' adventures included in the set are only moderately less weird - they develop a vitamin drink that makes Hall an unstoppable football champ in Hold That Line (1952), tangle with outlaws in Bowery Buckaroos (1947), faux spiritualists (Hard Boiled Mahoney, 1947) and con artist Amanda Blake in High Society (1955), which was accidentally offered up by the Academy for a Best Story Oscar. The Bowery Boys' titles are definitely an acquired taste, but for former Saturday afternoon matinee habitues of a certain age, their antics are comfort-food-level pleasures, dependably broad and daffy and entirely predictable; the WA set features pressed discs and widescreen presentations on Meet the Monsters and two other titles.

DVDs from the Vault: Code Breakers, Killers, Cronenberg, Screwball Comedy and More

Warner Archives presents Volume 6 of the exemplary Forbidden Hollywood series, which unearths remastered editions of long unavailable titles from the Pre-Code era (late 1920s to 1934). As with many pictures from this storied period, the quartet of films included in Volume 6 address a number of "hot" topics which, while handled in a manner that would be considered quaint today, were decidedly mature subject matter in their day, including alcoholism (The Wet Parade, 1932), racism (Massacre, 1934) and a heady bouillabaisse of criminal and moral peccadillos (Michael Curtiz's Mandalay, 1934). There's also John Gilbert as a sexually voracious cad who upends a well-to-do household in the dark comedy Downstairs (1932), a proposed comeback feature conceived and co-written by the former silent film star. There's star power to spare in all four films, from Walter Huston, Myrna Loy, Wallace Ford and Jimmy Durante buffeting stars Robert Young and Dorothy Jordan in their fight against the evils of liquor in Victor Fleming's The Wet Parade to Ricardo Cortez, Warner Oland and Lyle Talbot doing their best Tex Avery wolf imitations at the sight of "hostess" Kay Francis in Mandalay. And while Richard Barthlemess and Ann Dvorak in tan makeup as Sioux in Massacre might strike modern-day viewers as camp (at best) or offensive (at worst, and the depiction of black characters in the film isn't much better), the film takes a remarkably sober and sympathetic look at the wholesale indignities heaped upon reservation dwellers by white government and religious representatives. Forbidden Hollywood Volume 6 is again a treasure trove for aficionados of Hollywood's Golden Age and its more eyebrow-raising efforts.

DVDs from the Vault, Short and Sweet Edition: Gable, Stewart, Ford, Bakshi, Hanna-Barbera and More

There's a great deal of ground to cover this week, so let's dive right in, shall we? Sony Pictures Choice Collection's new edition of Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959) is, to date, the fifth presentation of this Oscar-nominated legal drama on DVD and Blu-ray, but it's also reportedly the first to be offered in its correct aspect ration (1.85 widescreen standard). That may or may not affect your appreciation for this stellar picture,with James Stewart and George C. Scott as lawyers facing off over an Army officer (Ben Gazzara) accused of murdering a bartender who assaulted his seductive wife (Lee Remick) and its groundbreaking jazz score by Duke Ellington.

Meanwhile, Warner Archives offers three titles starring Clark Gable that span his tenure as a leading man at MGM. Gable co-stars with Marion Davies in the light 1932 comedy-drama Polly of the Circus as a small town reverend who falls in love with Davies' circus aerialist, much to the consternation of his flock. He's then reteamed with his Call of the Wild (1935) co-star Loretta Young for the fizzy romantic comedy Key to the City (1950), which pits rough-and-tumble Gable against Young's well-heeled Maine mayor, with the expected fireworks. The Gable three-fer concludes with Never Let Me Go (1953), a sudsy Delmar Daves effort with Gene Tierney as the Russian ballerina and Gable as the American news reporter determined to get her out of the hands of the Soviets. No real classics here, but all three pics underscore Gable's magnetic screen presence and enduring popularity.

Also on the vintage Hollywood front: John Ford's Rising of the Moon (1957; Warner Archives), an anthology of Irish stories introduced by Tyrone Power and featuring a stellar cast of Emerald Isle players, including Cyril Cusack, Jack MacGowran, Donal Donnelly and Dennis O'Day. The trio of stories, culled fromg the fiction of Frank O'Connor and a controversial one-act play from 1907, hew towards the precious at times (and apparently earned the enmity of the Northern Irish, who banned the film over alleged revolutionary overtones), but Ford aficionados will appreciate this opportunity to see one of the director's more obscure and personal projects. The Hireling (Sony) has also been out of circulation for many years, despite having shared the Grand Prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival with Scarecrow. The class drama stars Sarah Miles as a bereaved aristocrat who forms a relationship with her chauffeur (Robert Shaw); the stars are better than the material, which takes a curious and heavy-handed offramp into anarchy for its conclusion.

For those seeking lighter fare, Warner has a trio of offbeat comedies, some more successful than others, but all with something to recommend a viewing. The political comedy First Family (1980) carries an exceptional pedigree, with script and direction by Buck Henry and a cast featuring (among others) Bob Newhart as the President of the United States, Madeleine Kahn as his wife, Gilda Radner as their hapless daughter, and a staff populated by Rip Torn, Fred Willard, Bob Dishy, Harvey Korman and Austin Pendleton. Despite this lineup, the movie is almost universally loathed, most likely for its broad slapstick tone, which wastes its cast, and a subplot involving slavery (!). Also on the nice-try front: Whiffs (1975), with Elliott Gould as a former guinea pig for Army chemical engineers who uses his first-hand knowledge of harmful gases to launch a series of bank robberies. Gould's presence was a clear indication that the filmmakers were aiming for a M*A*S*H-styled military farce, but what's delivered is a truly oddball mix of slapstick and counterculture gags. Again, it's the supporting cast that encourages a commitment to sit through the whole picture: aiding and abetting Gould is Harry Guardino, Eddie Albert, Godfrey Cambridge (as Gould's co-conspirator), Howard Hesseman, Richard Masur and Jennifer O'Neill. Eagle-eyed movie trainspotters will also note the presence of B-Western stars Don "Red" Barry and James Brown (not the Godfather of Soul). Nice one-sheet art by the prolific illustrator Robert Grossman, too.

There are a lot of interesting ideas floating around in Ralph Bakshi's Hey Good Lookin' (1982; Warner Archives), which looks at the Brooklyn of his youth and a pair of neighborhood ne'er-do-wells (voiced by Richard Romanus and David Proval) based on his childhood friends. Begun in 1975 as a mix of live action and animation that also featured the New York Dolls and Yaphet Kotto, it was held from release in the wake of the uproar following Bakshi's Coonskin and revised in 1982 as an all-animated feature at the insistence of Warner Bros. president Frank Wells. The end result is a mishmash of Bakshi's pointed satire and adult themes, as well as some striking visual elements, but probably best appreciated by the animator's diehard fans. 

One wonders what Ralph Bakshi might have made of Help!... it's the Hair Bear Bunch (Warner), a short-lived Saturday morning animated series from Hanna-Barbera circa 1971 about a trio of ursine semi-hippies and their constant attempts to escape the Wonderland Zoo and its uptight director Mr. Peevly (voiced by John Stephenson). As it stands, the series, which features voice work by cartoon vets Daws Butler, Paul Winchell, Don Messick and Joe E. Ross, doing his ooh-ooh bit as Peevly's assistant, has the not-unpleasant patina of weird that clings to most Nixon-era H-B efforts (see also The Funky Phantom, the recently released Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids and CB Bears) that also manages to be curiously comforting, especially for those who remember wolfing down their Quake and Quisp in front of such shows. Can Where's Huddles? be far behind? 

MODs of the Week: A Colossal Collection of Cowboy and Crime Pictures!

This week, there's plenty of action on the dark streets and the high plains in MODs from all three of the major MOD players - Warner Archives, Sony Choice Collection and Fox Cinema Archives. Sony Choice offers two terrific '50s-era thrillers, both previously released as part of their brick-and-mortar Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics series. Five Against the House (1955) is a taunt action-drama with Guy Madison and Brian Keith as Korean war vets attending college on the GI Bill and Kerwin Mathews (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) as their smart-guy pal who hatches a scheme to rob a casino in Reno, Nevada. Since director Phil Karlson, a specialist in dark, taut B-crime (Kansas City Confidential, The Phenix City Story) is in the driver's seat here, you can expect the heist to go awry, thanks in part to a shellshocked Keith and William Conrad as a nervous casino worker. A pre-stardom Kim Novak also figures in the mix as a nightclub singer who gets mixed up with Madison.

MODs of the Week: Tarzan! The Falcon! Hudsucker on Blu-Ray! And More!

Hot on the heels of Warner Archives' three-disc Philo Vance Murder Case Collection comes another set of vintage screen mysteries, this time devoted to The Falcon, who was originally envisioned as a shadowy freelance crime fighter in stories by the pseudonymous Drexel Drake (or Michael Arlen, depending on which story you follow). In 1941, the character was refashioned for the screen by RKO as a roguish swell in the vein of Leslie Charteris' The Saint, whose own popular series for the studio, starring George Sanders had wrapped that same year. Sanders was quickly snapped up to play the Falcon for three pictures before bowing out of the franchise, which was then assumed by his real-life brother, Tom Conway (Cat People, 1942) who was made the original Falcon's sibling (before taking the whole thing full circle by voicing the Saint on radio in 1951). Conway's Falcon was suitably urbane, if lacking Sanders' charmingly droll self-amusement, and acquitted himself well to nine pictures between 1943 and 1946, six of which are collected in the remastered Falcon Mystery Movie Collection, Volume 2 (the first three Falcon films with Conway, along with Sanders' efforts, are featured in WA's Falcon Mystery Movie Collection, Volume 1). For those who remember whiling away a Saturday afternoon with pics like these on UHF broadcasts (or in theaters), the Falcon films virtually define the term "programmer": fat-free, no-nonsense crime thrillers anchored by a pre-ordained amount of suspense, light comedy (courtesy Edward Brophy and several other actors as the Falcon's rough-hewn sidekick, Goldie Locke), a glitzy location and a dash of sex appeal in the form of Barbara Hale, Rita Corday, Martha Vickers and other second-string starlets. There are flashes of bargain ingenuity along the way - Gordon Douglas and Joseph H. (Gun Crazy) Lewis, who helm The Falcon in Hollywood (1944) and The Falcon in San Francisco (1945), respectively, work their signature brand of under-the-radar sleight of hand, and Elisha Cook Jr. steals the show (again) in The Falcon's Alibi (1946) as a nervous hotel DJ trying to rein in his torch singer wife (Jane Greer). The other three movies in the set - The Falcon Out West (1944), The Falcon in Mexico (1944) and the last film in the series with Conway, The Falcon's Adventure (1946) - offer equally suave-on-a-budget pleasures.

MODs of the Week: Big Stars on the Small Screen, B-Adventure and More

Warner Archives' recent slate of releases features major Hollywood stars working in the made-for-television field with two very different projects from the 1970s. Tony Curtis and Kim Novak made their TV-movie debuts in Peter Medak's The Third Girl from the Left (1973), about a fading Las Vegas chorus dancer (Novak) whose career and romance with a second-string comic (Curtis) have reached a terminal point, which spurs her to take up with a younger man (Michael Brandon). Written by Andre Previn's former spouse and lyricist Dory Previn, the drama, produced by Playboy's motion picture division (which explains the presence of Barbi Benton) occasionally takes on a sudsy tone, but is rescued by its cast of old pros, which includes support by George Furth, Michael Conrad and Larry Bishop. Curtis also gets to sing an original tune written by Previn.

MODs of the Week: Mysteries for Valentine's Day with William Powell, Steve Martin, Harry-O and more

Mysteries for Valentine's Day? Well, the ways of the human heart have always been a bit of a puzzle, whether in regards to romance or malice, and both Warner Archives and Columbia Choice Collection have a slew of crime cases for you and your beloved (or intended) to deduce over a Whitman's sampler or two. The best of the lot is David Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner (1997), a swell Chinese box of a thriller with Campbell Scott (The Amazing Spider-Man) as a naive developer whose priceless but unpatented industrial process makes him the target for an array of nefarious upscale types, including his own boss (Ben Gazzara), a tart-tongued secretary (Mamet's wife, actress Rebecca Pidgeon) and a wealthy stranger (Steve Martin, playing well against type). Though Mamet's dialogue strikes an odd balance between a sort of meta-hardboiled grit and the distinctive language of his stage work, the picture's key appeal is the intricate curves and hard corners of the plot, which enfold and entrap Scott, placing both his invention and life at risk. The cast is also top-notch (though Pidgeon remains an acquired taste), with the great magician/author/actor Ricky Jay, Ed O'Neil and Felicity Huffman all offering quality support.

MODs of the Week: Gildersleeve, Hawks and Grimley, Ltd.

For those that believe that they don't make pictures like they used to, Warner Archives has a slate of vintage titles to underscore that notion. Sweepings (1933) stars Lionel Barrymore as a self-made man who rises from a meager beginning in the wake of the 1871 Chicago fire to the owner of a successful department store. Having reached the end of his life, he turns to his children (Gloria Stuart, Eric Linden, William Gargan and George Meeker) to carry on the family business, only to find that his wealth has turned them callous, petty and entirely uninterested in notions of tradition and commitment. A sort of American take on King Lear, the film, directed by John Cromwell (Of Human Bondage, 1934) and co-written by Lester W. Cohen, who adapted his own (somewhat racy) 1926 novel, walks the line between drama and sudsy family soap opera, but Oscar winner Barrymore anchors the picture with a powerful turn as a man who struggles to balance his commitment to business with his dedication to a family that fails to return the effort in kind. For those who revel in the details, Sweepings is the last film on which David O. Selznick would receive a producer's credit at RKO before his departure for MGM (where he would make Dinner at Eight, also released in '33, among many other titles) and then even greater success as an independent producer with A Star is Born (1937), Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940). Among the bit players who receive no credit for their appearance in the film is Franklin Pangborn, a charter member of Preston Sturges' stock company of character types, as well as Mary Gordon (Mrs. Hudson in the Sherlock Holmes series with Basil Rathbone) as infamous cow owner Mrs. O'Leary, comic Chick Chandler and silent film star Carl Stockdale, who famously defended actress Charlotte Shelby against accusations that she had murdered director William Desmond Taylor. The gentleman playing the Indian sans credit is Olympic hero Jim Thorpe, who by 1933, was reduced to taking walk-ons, among other menial tasks, to support his family after being stripped of his medals in 1909.