Hunter, Ian

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Dashing Errol Flynn is the definitive Robin Hood in the most gloriously swashbuckling version of the legendary story. Warner Brothers reunited Michael Curtiz, their top-action director, with the winning team of Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (Maid Marian) and perennial villain Basil Rathbone as the aristocratic Sir Guy of Gisbourne, and pulled out all stops for the production. It became their costliest film to date, a grandly handsome, glowing Technicolor adventure set to a stirring, Oscar-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The decadent Prince John (a smoothly conniving Claude Rains) takes advantage of King Richard's absence to tax the country into poverty but meets his match in the medieval guerrilla rebel Robin Hood and his Merry Men of Sherwood Forest, who rise up and, to quote a cliché coined by the film, "steal from the rich and give to the poor." Stocky Alan Hale Sr. plays Robin's loyal friend Little John (a part he played in Douglas Fairbanks's silent version), Eugene Palette the portly Friar Tuck, and Melville Cooper the bumbling Sheriff of Nottingham. Flynn's confidence and cocky charm makes for a perfect Robin Hood, and his easygoing manner is a marvelous counterpoint to Rathbone's regal bearing and courtly diction. The film climaxes in their rousing battle-to-the-finish sword fight, a magnificently choreographed scene highlighted by Curtiz's inventive use of shadows cast upon the castle walls. --Sean Axmaker

Dashing Errol Flynn is the definitive Robin Hood in the most gloriously swashbuckling version of the legendary story. Warner Brothers reunited Michael Curtiz, their top-action director, with the winning team of Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (Maid Marian) and perennial villain Basil Rathbone as the aristocratic Sir Guy of Gisbourne, and pulled out all stops for the production. It became their costliest film to date, a grandly handsome, glowing Technicolor adventure set to a stirring, Oscar-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The decadent Prince John (a smoothly conniving Claude Rains) takes advantage of King Richard's absence to tax the country into poverty but meets his match in the medieval guerrilla rebel Robin Hood and his Merry Men of Sherwood Forest, who rise up and, to quote a cliché coined by the film, "steal from the rich and give to the poor." Stocky Alan Hale Sr. plays Robin's loyal friend Little John (a part he played in Douglas Fairbanks's silent version), Eugene Palette the portly Friar Tuck, and Melville Cooper the bumbling Sheriff of Nottingham. Flynn's confidence and cocky charm makes for a perfect Robin Hood, and his easygoing manner is a marvelous counterpoint to Rathbone's regal bearing and courtly diction. The film climaxes in their rousing battle-to-the-finish sword fight, a magnificently choreographed scene highlighted by Curtiz's inventive use of shadows cast upon the castle walls. --Sean Axmaker

An evil usurper may rule england but robin hood and his merry men rule sherwood forest from which theyll battle for justice and overthrow the tyrant. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 04/05/2005 Starring: Errol Flynn Run time: 106 minutes Rating: Nr

The Little Princess

Studio: Gaiam Americas Release Date: 08/13/2002

Shirley Temple stars in this 1939 version of the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel about a little, motherless girl left in the care of a girls boarding school by her soldier father, and then made into a servant there when he's missing in action during World War I. The fine tear-jerking film is a good vehicle for the famous moppet, and director Walter Lang (The King and I) makes a memorably lavish production of the Victorian milieu. The final scene, in which our Shirley is helped by one of the most famous women in history, brings down the house. --Tom Keogh

Adventures of Robin Hood - Complete First Season

Studio: Digital1stop Release Date: 03/18/2008 Run time: 855 minutes Rating: Nr

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes - 10 Movies

Contains: dressed to kill sherlock holmes and the secret weapon terror by night the woman in green the sign of four murder at the baskervilles the triumph of sherlock holmes the speckeled band a study in scarlett sherlock holmes and the deadly necklace. Studio: St Clair Ent Grp Inc Release Date: 03/08/2005 Run time: 720 minutes Rating: Nr

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde Double Feature (1932/1941)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)
Fredric March won an Oscar® for playing the protagonist (and antagonist) of Robert Louis Stevenson's story. Dr. Henry Jekyll is an honorable man of science, albeit frustrated at the enforced celibacy of a delayed wedding date. Hyde is the fearsome creature he turns into after drinking a potion, and Hyde's appetites (mostly expressed with Miriam Hopkins's Cockney dance-hall wench) are decidedly unrestrained. March's performance is pretty theatrical, but it's fun to watch; his Hyde twitches and squawks and lopes around like an ape in a tuxedo. Rouben Mamoulian's direction has plenty of the brio of early-thirties Hollywood, and the transformations from Jekyll to Hyde are ingenious for the time. This film followed Dracula and Frankenstein into theaters by a few months, and it stands well with those horror classics--and it's a darn sight more fun (and much more down and dirty) than the 1941 MGM version of Stevenson's tale. --Robert Horton

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
Classy MGM was not the studio most likely to make a horror movie in 1941, and in fact its production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ended up looking more like a glossy costume drama than a B-movie frightfest. The mood of Robert Louis Stevenson's tale of a divided doctor is ably captured in Joseph Ruttenberg's Oscar-nominated cinematography--more so, perhaps, than in Spencer Tracy's lead performance. Tracy wasn't especially happy about playing the role, although his transformations from good Dr. Jekyll to evil Dr. Hyde are convincing enough. One of the main reasons to see this version of the story is the young, impossibly beautiful Ingrid Bergman, then still a year shy of Casablanca. Bergman was cast in the good-girl part, but proved a shrewd judge of material, even this early in her Hollywood career; she finagled her way into playing the floozy instead, thus securing a more colorful acting platform than Lana Turner, who ended up in the more respectable role. Director Victor Fleming's previous movie was a little number called Gone with the Wind, and the Big Picture approach to that project may have influenced his work here--this Dr. Jekyll is just a bit too stately, too polished to really engage. The picture is so dignified it never cuts loose with the kind of wild invention that marked the 1932 version of the story, which won Fredric March an Oscar. It's the tale as imagined by Jekyll, rather than Hyde. --Robert Horton

Broadway Melody of 1940

One of the most famous tap numbers in film history distinguishes Broadway Melody of 1940, the fourth and final installment in MGM's Broadway Melody series. When Clare Bennett (Eleanor Powell, who had appeared in Broadway Melody of 1936 and 1938) needs a new partner for her hit Broadway show, small-time hoofers Johnny Brett (Fred Astaire in his MGM debut) and King Shaw (George Murphy) get their big chance. But due to a case of mistaken identity, King, rather than the more talented Johnny, gets the job, and the girl. Astaire and Powell can't match the chemistry he had with Ginger Rogers at RKO, but she was the best technical dancer he was ever teamed with, and the sense of fun they share is infectious. Their above-mentioned tap duet to Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" is legendary, but there are other fine moments as well: Astaire and Murphy's duet "Please Don't Monkey with Broadway," Powell's athletic number with a chorus of sailors "I Am the Captain," Astaire playing the piano and singing "I've Got My Eyes on You," and his and Powell's high-velocity duet "Jukebox Dance." --David Horiuchi

Johnny brett and king shaw are an unsuccessful dance team in new york. A producer discovers brett as the new partner for clare bennett but brett who thinks he is one of the people they lent money to gives him the name of his partner. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 03/15/2005 Starring: Fred Astaire George Murphy Run time: 102 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Norman Taurog

A Midsummer Night's Dream

De havilland makes her screen debut in this performance of shakespeares classic play which includes ballets by nijinska & a score by mendolssohn. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 08/14/2007 Starring: Olivia De Havilland Joe E Brown Run time: 143 minutes Rating: Nr

James Cagney and Mickey Rooney romping in a Shakespearian fairyland? This could only be A Midsummer Night's Dream, Warner Bros.' 1935 attempt at classing up the proletarian studio. The legendary German stage director Max Reinhardt had produced the play at the Hollywood Bowl to enchanted, sold-out audiences, and Warners decided to hand Reinhardt the keys to the studio (along with fellow Germans William Dieterle, co-director, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who adapted Mendelssohn's music). Reinhardt created an eye-popping phantasmagoria, a movie laced with sparkling sequins, flying fairies, and moon-kissed forests. As for the words, Reinhardt had a collection of Warners studio players, notably James Cagney as Bottom, whose playing of "Pyramus and Thisby" with Joe E. Brown is perhaps the movie's comic high point. The other actors are decidedly varied, and they tend to be overwhelmed by the production design. Not so Mickey Rooney, whose performance as Puck is a feral, antic act of imagination (he was 14 during filming); picture a boy raised by wolves who somehow memorized Shakespeare. His Puck growls and screams and mocks the drama of the other characters, a little postmodern imp before his time. (Critic David Thomson called this Puck "truly inhuman, one of the cinema's most arresting pieces of magic"). The rest of the movie comes to earth with some regularity, but it's a one-of-a-kind production, and a reminder of the lavish, unreal possibilities within a movie studio. --Robert Horton

Ziegfeld Girl

About ziegfeld showgirls hoping for stardom in this glittering musical from busby berkeley. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 03/15/2005 Starring: Judy Garland Heddy Lamar Run time: 147 minutes Rating: Nr

The Boris Karloff Collection (Tower of London / The Black Castle / The Climax / The Strange Door / Night Key)

The gaunt face, the large eyes and elegant hands, the rich voice with a touch of menace (and more than a touch of lisp): Boris Karloff had the tools of a genuine movie star. He also had a deeply sensitive understanding of flawed creatures, which made his best roles--including the Frankenstein monster and the Mummy--weirdly sympathetic. His profitable employment in those Universal monster movies is filled out with the release of The Boris Karloff Collection, a grouping of non-classics from his Universal jobs.

These are the kind of movies that would show up with great promise on your local "Nightmare Theater" or "Creature Feature" late-show slot: Hey, Boris Karloff in something called Tower of London? Sounds scary! And you'd watch in bewilderment as the film would turn out to be a historical drama with a few grisly touches. Universal perpetuates this misunderstanding with this DVD release, which declares "The Master of Horror in His Most Frightening Roles!" Which is quite a stretch. (Some of Karloff's best horror stuff is on the Bela Lugosi Collection, a superior DVD package.)

Still, for fans, there's much to enjoy here. Tower of London is a thoroughly entertaining tale of Richard III's bloody rise to power, with Basil Rathbone as Richard and Karloff as his bald, beetle-browed executioner (definitely one of Boris's best looks). Two early-1950s films are great fun: The Strange Door has Charles Laughton doing one of his modern-Nero roles as a perverse nobleman with a really cool torture dungeon (Karloff is his servant), and The Black Castle lays on the wolf howls and creaking doors in a tale of revenge. Juicy performances by Richard Greene and Stephen McNally gives this oomph, even if Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr., are peripheral. McNally's castle is equipped with an excellent secret room with swarming alligators.

Night Key (1937) isn't horror, but a perfectly OK B-movie about inventor Karloff and his revenge on the businessman who stole his electrically charged idea. 1944's The Climax was made to capitalize on the lavish sets Universal made for The Phantom of the Opera, and director George Waggner (The Wolf Man) seems far too enamored of costumes and arias. Even when it's dull, which is frequently, the film has gorgeous Technicolor to look at, and Karloff is suitably obsessed as a doctor messing with a promising soprano. In short, the DVD set may disappoint the unwary, but Karloff devotees will enjoy the icon, and the occasional alligator pit. --Robert Horton

Includes:Night KeyTower Of LondonThe ClimaxThe Strange DoorThe Black CastleFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: NR UPC: 025193108623 Manufacturer No: 61031086

The Long Voyage Home

John fords direction is masterful in this marvelous adaptation of four one-act stage plays by eugene oneill. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 05/22/2007 Run time: 105 minutes

Eugene O'Neill loved this feature-length adaptation of his one-act sea plays, with intelligent bridging material written by Dudley Nichols and a final movement, both hellish and elegiac, appropriate to the onset of World War II. John Ford directed, in his more self-consciously arty vein (à la The Informer) but with no loss of power or passion. It's entirely fitting that the director shared his panel in the credits with cinematographer Gregg Toland, who had just shot The Grapes of Wrath for him in hard, dust-bowl sunlight and would next enter the labyrinth of Orson Welles's Citizen Kane; you'd be thrilled to have any frame of this film blown up and hanging on your wall.

The focus is on the working seamen aboard a merchant ship making its way from the Caribbean to New York harbor and then England, with dangerous cargo on the transatlantic leg. Thomas Mitchell (who had won a 1939 Oscar in Ford's Stagecoach) gives a career-best performance as Driscoll; Ian Hunter plays the enigmatic shipmate known only as "Smitty"; Ford regulars Barry Fitzgerald, John Qualen, Ward Bond, Arthur Shields, and Joseph Sawyer fill key roles; and the top-billed John Wayne contributes a surprisingly effective supporting performance as Ole, a gentle Swedish giant who really belongs on a farm somewhere. Although neglected in recent years--and seriously in need of restoration to do justice to its magnificent images--this movie has a permanent place of honor in one of the most amazing three-year creative streaks (throw in Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk, and How Green Was My Valley) any director ever had. --Richard T. Jameson