Sergeant York (Two-Disc Special Edition)
by Howard Hawks
from Warner Home Video
Gary Cooper plays Alvin York, the real-life country lad and sharpshooter drafted to fight during World War I but blocked from killing by his pacifist sentiments. Howard Hawks makes a rousing, heroic film out of the tale, and Cooper gives one of his best performances (for which he won an Oscar). The 1941 feature seems as much a valentine to wartime America (and a not-so-subtle piece of propaganda) as anything, with Hawks capturing splendidly shot scenes of life in York's home state of Tennessee, which in turn provide a striking contrast to the battlefield. A key scene in the film, in which York is presented with an argument in favor of killing in war, is still thought provoking. --Tom Keogh
Story of World War I hero who captured German position single-handedly. Film also portrays York's earlier life in the mountains of Tennessee.Running Time: 134 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569793750 Manufacturer No: 79375
Hammer Horror Series (Brides of Dracula / Curse of the Werewolf / Phantom of the Opera (1962) / Paranoiac / Kiss of the Vampire / Nightmare / Night Creatures / Evil of Frankenstein)
by Don Sharp
from Universal Studios
Hammer Films one of the most celebrated horror studios in the history of cinema presents 8 classic horror films in one collection. From Dracula to Frankenstein werewolves to phantoms the Hammer Horror Series showcases some of the most terrifying monsters in the history of cinema and features legendary performances by Peter Cushing Oliver Reed and Janette Scott.System Requirements:Running Time 86 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: NR UPC: 025192833328 Manufacturer No: 28333
The Dawn Patrol
by Robert Clampett
from Warner Home Video
The Dawn Patrol is a beautiful title for two very good movies Warner Bros. made eight years apart, in 1930 and 1938. Both tell the same World War I story (which won a 1930 Academy Award for John Monk Saunders), about a succession of flight commanders at a British air base in France. Each officer in turn has to keep sending pilots out on dangerous, often insane missions in flimsy, patched-up planes, then pray that even half get back alive. The job is soul-killing for the commandants and deadly for their comrades and friends. Make that former friends.
It's the later, Errol Flynn version of The Dawn Patrol that's won DVD release. The original is rarely shown because, despite direction by Howard Hawks, it suffers from the stiffness and some overly declamatory acting characteristic of the early talkie era. Perhaps more to the point, the remake's cast has greater marquee value: Flynn and David Niven as hotshots Courtney and Scott; Basil Rathbone as Major Brand, the tortured commander whom Flynn will be obliged to succeed; Donald Crisp, Melville Cooper, and Barry Fitzgerald as staff officers and noncoms. Edmund Goulding's direction is proficient, if also impersonal.
So the remake has the edge as smooth entertainment, though not the original's raw power (or Griffith veteran Richard Barthelmess's tender, anguished performance as Courtney). And the best parts of the 1938 version are the original film: all the aerial footage--bombings, crashes, breathtaking low-level flying, and wobbly takeoffs in the glow of early morning--is Hawks's. Ideally, Warner Video should have issued both films, and in one box. --Richard T. Jameson
Errol Flynn and David Niven star as roustabout French Corp fighter pilots who come face-to-face with the harsh realities of war. Basil Rathbone is outstanding as the Squadron Commander.Running Time: 103 min.System Requirements:Run Time: 103 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/MILITARY & WAR Rating: NR UPC: 012569796249 Manufacturer No: 79624
Morituri
by Bernhard Wicki
from 20th Century Fox
No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 25-MAY-2004
Media Type: DVD
Marlon Brando plays a world-weary, conscientious objector to all wars in the tense, thoughtful Morituri, an adult drama about wartime ethics and the price of commitment to a cause. Brando plays Robert Crain, a German deserter who escaped the Nazis with his fortune intact, happy to be sitting out the battle in British-governed India. His comfort is challenged when an intelligence official (Trevor Howard) essentially blackmails him into going undercover, posing as an SS officer taking passage on a German ship carrying tons of rubber for munitions. Crain's mission is to deliver the ship into Allied hands, but once he's aboard, he becomes a target of derision by the proud, anti-Nazi captain (Yul Brynner) and suspicion by a handful of Resistance members planning to scuttle the voyage. The dramatic irony in this film by German actor-director Bernhard Wicki is that Crain, who claims to take no sides and believes in nothing worth killing for, becomes a catalyst for a great deal of sacrifice and the underscoring of others' convictions with bloodshed. Janet Margolin has a memorable role as a half-mad, Jewish doctor who puts her life on the line to help Crain, and Brynner nearly steals the show in a tremendous performance as a man who has lost faith in everything. Some spectacular scenes give Morituri a certain electricity, including a complicated, unbroken shot taken (one presumes) from a helicopter that swoops in on the ship from a distance to catch a few lines of dialogue and a bit of action. --Tom Keogh
Sundown
by Henry Hathaway
from VCI Entertainment
Dangerous! Intriguing! Fascinating! Gene Tierney plays beautiful native girl who assists British troops in Africa during WWII. A grand adventure, gorgeously photographed, and adapted from Barre Lyndon's book. Restored and digitally mastered. Bonus Features: Bonus Featurette "A String of Pearls" starring Ronald Colman & Angela Landsbury, Actor Bios, Scene Selection, Photo Gallery,Trailer. Specs: DVD5; Dolby Digital Mono; 91 minutes; B&W; 1.33:1 Aspect Ratio; MPAA - NR; Year - 1941.
Lola Montes
by Max Ophüls
from Fox Lorber
Max Ophüls explores the scandalous life of dancer and courtesan Lola Montes with a bittersweet empathy that turns melodrama into a tragic melancholy masterpiece. Using the theatrical re-creation of Lola's life in a big-top pageant as a framing device, Ophüls contrasts the outrageous sensationalism of her reputation with poignant, poetic flashbacks that explore her many affairs, most notably with Franz Liszt (Will Quadflieg) and King Ludwig of Bavaria (Anton Walbrook). Lola's greatest tragedy is that she loved well, if not too wisely. If Martine Carol's central performance is lacking passion, as many critics have argued, her quiet, at times seemingly passive demeanor makes her a veritable prisoner of her society and her reputation. Swept along by Ophüls's sweeping camerawork, which glides through the film in a balance of intimacy and contemplative remove as if on the wings of angels, her life becomes like a cinematic ballet with Ophüls the choreographer and conductor. Peter Ustinov costars as the jaded circus ringmaster, who nightly narrates her exploits to a throng of scandal-hungry spectators, while she performs with a face hardened in indifference, resigned to her empty role as a figure of spectacle in a garish gilded cage. Shot in delicate color and impeccably composed widescreen compositions throughout by Ophüls's regular cinematographer Christian Matras, Lola Montes is his most beautiful and restrained film, a fitting swan song for one of the cinema's most sensitive directors. --Sean Axmaker
Kiss of the Vampire
by Don Sharp
from Image Entertainment
Don Sharp's moody if workmanlike horror film suffers from the absence of Christopher Lee, whose intense, almost feral presence in The Horror of Dracula made him one of the most memorable bloodsuckers in film history. In his place is a veritable undead cabal led by the vampire patriarch Ravna (Noel Willman), a nobleman whose family literally holds a tiny Eastern European village hostage. When a young honeymooning couple wanders into this terror-gripped crossroads, Ravna decides to make the innocent bride his own, and the dizzy groom can only turn to the dark eyed, wild-bearded Prof. Zimmer (Clifford Evans) for help. It's an unusual chapter in the vampire legend, as these undead are more like a cult interested in adding to their numbers, complete with formal ceremonies. Sharp creates a thick cloud of dread from the empty streets, the mourning peasants, and the fog that seems to carpet the doomed town every night, but has less success with his cast. Only Zimmer emerges as a memorable figure, an almost demonic-looking vampire hunter who comes off as a shadowy alter ego of Van Helsing. Christopher Lee returned in Hammer's next vampire picture, Dracula, Prince of Darkness. --Sean Axmaker
Lost on the way to their honeymoon, a young couple are lured into the castle of hypnotic Dr. Ravna, plunging them into a nightmare of horror and deception from which there may be no escape.
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