Hudson, Rock

The Doris Day and Rock Hudson Comedy Collection (Pillow Talk / Lover Come Back / Send Me No Flowers)

Hollywood screen couple Doris Day and Rock Hudson light up the screen with laughter in three delightful comedy gems! Join them as they fall in, out, and back in love again in a series of misadventures including Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers. Co-starring the hilarious Tony Randall, The Doris Day and Rock Hudson Comedy Collection captures one of cinema's most popular and enduring couples at their very best!

Giant (Two-Disc Special Edition) (Keepcase)

Giant is a movie of huge scale and grandeur in which three generations of land-rich Texans love swagger connive and clash in a saga of family strife racial bigotry and conflict between cattle barons and newly rich oil tycoons. It's also one of the most beloved works of director George Stevens who won an Academy AwardO* for this film one of 10 Oscar nominations** the film earned.Running Time: 201 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569706903

They call it Giant because everything in this picture is big, from the generous running time (more than 200 minutes) to the sprawling ranch location (a horizon-to-horizon plain with a lonely, modest mansion dropped in the middle) to the high-powered stars. Stocky Rock Hudson stars as the confident, stubborn young ranch baron Bick Benedict, who woos and wins the hand of Southern belle Elizabeth Taylor, a seemingly demure young beauty who proves to be Hudson's match after she settles into the family homestead. For many the film is chiefly remembered for James Dean's final performance, as poor former ranch hand Jett Rink, who strikes oil and transforms himself into a flamboyant millionaire playboy. Director George Stevens won his second Oscar for this ambitious, grandly realized (if sometimes slow moving) epic of the changing socioeconomic (and physical) landscape of modern Texas, based on Edna Ferber's bestselling novel. The talented supporting cast includes Mercedes McCambridge as Bick's frustrated sister, put out by the new "woman of the house"; Chill Wills as the Benedicts' garrulous rancher neighbor; Carroll Baker and Dennis Hopper as the Benedicts' rebellious children; and Earl Holliman and Sal Mineo as dedicated ranch hands. --Sean Axmaker

The Martian Chronicles

From the mind of science-fiction giant Ray Bradbury springs what is perhaps his most epic vision. Capturing mankind s first venture into the colonization of another planet and its tragic first contact with another species The Martian Chronicles is a stunning achievement that will take you from the edge of your seat to the stars.Earth is on the verge of extinction. To survive mankind must find another place to live. But when three expeditions to Mars headed by Col. John Wilder (Oscar®-nominee* Rock Hudson) find suitable conditions for relocation humans pour in by the shipload bringing the old evils of Earth with them! As Wilder begins to heed the lessons of the dying Martian civilization can he save humanity from repeating its doom?System Requirements: Running Time 293 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: SCI-FI/FANTASY Rating: NR UPC: 027616911278 Manufacturer No: 1006989

With each passing year, this 1980 miniseries becomes more for those who have read Ray Bradbury's landmark novel. The three-part, nearly five-hour series keeps its brainy science fiction roots; this story (and the 1940s novel) is not about laser battles and exciting action pieces. Bradbury's novel is galvanized by the cold war nightmare: at the end of the 20th century, an earth teetering on world war begins to colonize Mars without much knowledge of the new world. Hard science is left for other stories, and director Michael Anderson (Logan's Run) keeps this retrofitting: for example, astronauts arrive on a breathable Mars in leisure suits. The space travel effects are clunky, but the action on Mars--with Assheton Gorton's geometric sets and simple props--are far more effective. There are Martians there, as the unprepared first Earthlings learn. Later, as the planet is quickly colonized, the remaining Martians are near specters--bringing awe and fear to those they encounter. Master sci-fi writer Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) smartly streamlines Bradbury's episodic stories, giving a central role to Col. John Wilder (played by Rock Huston, leading a plethora of solid, yet B-list actors). For those in love with cerebral science fiction, they can enjoy this dated but curious sci-fi miniseries; for those of think sci-fi began with Star Wars, beware. --Doug Thomas

Man's Favorite Sport?

No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: NR
Release Date: 1-JUL-2003
Media Type: DVD

All That Heaven Allows - Criterion Collection

Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman were so successful in Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession that they reteamed for this, his first melodrama masterpiece. Young hunk Rock is a strapping son of mother nature, a gardener who woos middle-aged, middle class widow Wyman to the snooty disapproval of her conservative social circle and embarrassment of her self-centered children. Wyman discovers a new life with his open-armed friends and back-to-nature lifestyle, but struggles with life-changing decisions in the face of social pressure and vicious gossip. Living the Henry Thoreau dream, Rock inhabits his personal Walden in a rustic country cabin by a bubbling brook, a dream house lit by a giant picture window overlooking an idyllic countryside where deer pose just outside the window. Wyman's elegant but sterile suburban home transforms into a tomb when she sacrifices her love for the "good name" of her children, and the lonely widow sees her future in the pale, colorless reflection of her TV screen. But don't despair just yet: Sirk's heroines are dynamic and resourceful and no Sirk melodrama ends without a heart-tugging, over-the-top twist. German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who championed Sirk as a master and a mentor, remade the film as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul decades later. --Sean Axmaker

Jane Wyman is a repressed wealthy widow and Rock Hudson is the hunky Thoreau-following gardener who loves her in Douglas Sirk's heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s small-town America. Sirk utilizes expressionist colors, reflective surfaces, and frames-within-frames to convey the loneliness and isolation of a matriarch trapped by the snobbery of her children and the gossip of her social-climbing country club chums. Criterion is proud to present this subversive Hollywood tearjerker in a new Special Edition.

Come September

Hanging out at an Italian villa with Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida sounds like a painless way to kill a vacation--and Come September is a pretty painless movie, too. Rock is a millionaire who spends a month at his home on the Riviera every year, except this year he's come early and surprised his staff, who've been running the place as a paying hotel. This is one of those comedies of sexual frustration--Rock can't get alone with Gina, because the "hotel" is overrun with American teenagers (chief among them Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin, who married after meeting on the shoot). The plot is labored, and director Robert Mulligan shows little feel for farce (he would shortly hit his stride with To Kill a Mockingbird). At least the location shooting has a nice summer breeze to it, and Darin sings "Multiplication" in a nightclub, complete with hepcat moves. --Robert Horton

James Stewart - The Western Collection (Destry Rides Again / Winchester ‘73 / Bend of the River / The Far Country / Night Passage / The Rare Breed)

Hollywood legend James Stewart takes the law into his own hands with 6 action-packed adventures in James Stewart: The Western Collection. Celebrate this Academy Award®-winning screen icon's 100th Anniversary with some of his most daring roles ever in Destry Rides Again Winchester '73 Bend of the River The Far Country Night Passage and The Rare Breed. Co-starring silver screen favorites Marlene Dietrich Rock Hudson Tony Curtis Maureen O'Hara and Shelley Winters this essential collection showcases one of Hollywood's most versatile actors at his best.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/CLASSICS UPC: 025195018456 Manufacturer No: 61102373

Written on the Wind - Criterion Collection

Douglas Sirk puts the opera back into soap opera in this exquisitely baroque melodrama, the epitome of Technicolor gloss. Rock Hudson (as wonderfully wooden as ever) and Lauren Bacall play stalwart examples of altruism, clean living, and good old American ambition, but Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone steal the film as white trash millionaire siblings stewing in self-pity. The plot reads like an episode of Dallas: Texas oil-baron playboy Stack steals good girl Bacall from best friend Hudson while Stack's sister Malone puts her slinky moves on Hudson, the strapping poor boy made good. Toss in impotence, jealousy, alcoholic binges, emotional blackmail, and backstabbing nastiness, mix vigorously with high style and expressionist flourishes, and you've got the most potent melodrama cocktail of the 1950s. Stack twists his arch delivery into the practiced bravado of a boozing womanizer nursing an inferiority complex while Malone sashays and flirts her way through an Oscar-winning performance as a slutty, sassy good-time girl. It's so over the top that it might seem kitschy at first glance, but former theater director Sirk subtly shades his vision in the shadows of film noir and uses the portentous angles and gaudy color to create a vivid, vivacious world of glossy surfaces and social masks cracking under the pressure of responsibility and the pain of lost love. --Sean Axmaker

Bathed in lurid Technicolor, melodrama maestro Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind is the stylishly debauched tale of a Texas oil magnate brought down by the excesses of his spoiled offspring. Features an all-star quartet that includes Robert Stack as a pistol-packin' alcoholic playboy; Lauren Bacall as his long-suffering wife; Rock Hudson as his earthy best friend; and Dorothy Malone (who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar© for her performance) as his nymphomaniac sister.

Pillow Talk

No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: NR
Release Date: 6-APR-2004
Media Type: DVD

Jan Morrow (Doris Day) and Brad Allen (Rock Hudson) have never met, but they're sworn enemies because of one small appliance in their lives: the telephone. The two share a party line, and Jan is outraged over the amount of time Bill spends wooing women over the phone. A convenient triangle emerges when a client (Tony Randall) of Jan's--she's an interior decorator--falls in love with her and happens to be Brad's old college chum. When Brad makes the connection, he decides to try to court Jan himself, to make her more sympathetic to his phone woes. Of course, she'd never go for such a heel, so he passes himself off as Rex Stetson, a Texas rancher visiting New York. The ensuing tale, albeit predictable, is lots of fun, with some quick-witted dialogue and some clever use of split-screens for the phone calls. Thelma Ritter is hilarious as Jan's always-hung-over maid, Alma; and the pairing of Rock and Doris works beautifully, as always. --Jenny Brown

Ice Station Zebra

Out of step with the public mood when it was released in 1968, Ice Station Zebra has held up decently as a Guy's Movie. Based on an Alistair MacLean novel, the film is half submarine picture and half spy puzzler, short on action but long on military chatter and espionage gamesmanship. Rock Hudson, looking seasoned and just a little miffed, gives one of his better performances as the captain of a nuclear sub, ordered to the Arctic to check out a disturbance at a research station on the floating ice. He doesn't know the mission, but he's stuck with mysterious passengers: haughty British agent Patrick McGoohan, back-slapping Russian operative Ernest Borgnine, and hostile Marine captain Jim Brown. McGoohan gets the film's best lines and finest fur jacket, but Brown is pretty cool in a smaller role.

John Sturges directs, with customary deliberateness; at times the movie seems to be suffering from iron-poor blood. Much of the dialogue is pretty sharp, especially in the submarine half, enough to keep you engrossed if you're in the mood for this kind of thing. When the action shifts to the ice, the studio-bound sets inevitably take their toll. It's not hard to see how this large, old-fashioned project misfired in the era of Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, but the more tantalizing question is: Why did this movie become an obsessive favorite of Howard Hughes? Maybe he liked how clean it all looks. --Robert Horton