Ireland, John

Red River

Any short list of the all-time greatest Westerns is bound to include this 1948 Howard Hawks classic about an epic cattle drive. Red River features one of John Wayne's greatest performances. Like his Ethan Edwards in John Ford's 1956 masterpiece The Searchers, the Duke plays an isolated and unsympathetic man who is possessed by bitterness. Wayne is Texas rancher Tom Dunson, who adopts a young boy orphaned in an Indian massacre. That boy, Matthew Garth (played as an adult by Montgomery Clift in his screen debut), becomes Dunson's assistant and heir apparent--until Dunson's temper gets out of control during a long cattle drive and Matt intervenes to stop him. From that moment on, Dunson swears he will kill Matt. Red River has everything a great Western ought to have: a sweeping sense of history, spectacular landscapes, stampedes, gunfights, Indian attacks, and, of course, Walter Brennan as Dunson's crusty old cook and comic sidekick, Nadine Groot. As a special bonus, the film also features the legendary Harry Carey (upon whom Wayne would base some of his gestures in The Searchers) and his son Harry Carey Jr., who became a fixture in Ford and Hawks Westerns. Red River is essential for anyone who loves Westerns, or movies in general. This one's a real beaut. --Jim Emerson

A cattle baron and his adopted son head the first drive over the Chisolm trail when he can't find a local market for his herd.
Genre: Westerns
Rating: NR
Release Date: 1-MAY-2001
Media Type: DVD

Spartacus

Stanley Kubrick was only 31 years old when Kirk Douglas (star of Kubrick's classic Paths of Glory) recruited the young director to pilot this epic saga, in which the rebellious slave Spartacus (played by Douglas) leads a freedom revolt against the decadent Roman Empire. Kubrick would later disown the film because it was not a personal project--he was merely a director-for-hire--but Spartacus remains one of the best of Hollywood's grand historical epics. With an intelligent screenplay by then-blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo (from a novel by Howard Fast), its message of moral integrity and courageous conviction is still quite powerful, and the all-star cast (including Charles Laughton in full toga) is full of entertaining surprises. Fully restored in 1991 to include scenes deleted from the original 1960 release, the full-length Spartacus is a grand-scale cinematic marvel, offering some of the most awesome battles ever filmed and a central performance by Douglas that's as sensitively emotional as it is intensely heroic. Jean Simmons plays the slave woman who becomes Spartacus's wife, and Peter Ustinov steals the show with his frequently hilarious, Oscar-winning performance as a slave trader who shamelessly curries favor with his Roman superiors. The restored version also includes a formerly deleted bathhouse scene in which Laurence Olivier plays a bisexual Roman senator (with restored dialogue dubbed by Anthony Hopkins) who gets hot and bothered over a slave servant played by Tony Curtis. These and other restored scenes expand the film to just over three hours in length. Despite some forgivable lulls, this is a rousing and substantial drama that grabs and holds your attention. Breaking tradition with sophisticated themes and a downbeat (yet eminently noble) conclusion, Spartacus is a thinking person's epic, rising above mere spectacle with a story as impressive as its widescreen action and Oscar-winning sets. --Jeff Shannon

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

Novelist Leon Uris wrote the script for this Western directed by John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven) and based on the life and times of Wyatt Earp (Burt Lancaster) and his sickly companion, Doc Holliday (Kirk Douglas). The action inevitably leads to the legendary battle between the two heroes and the villainous Clanton gang, but the film is also very much about the conflicts each man faces with women, with one another, and with their own destinies. Lancaster is terrific as the downbeat Earp, and Douglas has one of his best roles as the consumptive Holliday. The thoughtfulness of the tale is matched by Sturges's captivating way with the dramatic duel. All in all, the film appeals both as a solid action piece and as a fascinating, two-character study. --Tom Keogh

The Fall of the Roman Empire (The Miriam Collection - Three-Disc Limited Collector's Edition)

The second and last of Anthony Mann's historical epics is a smart, handsome spectacle of the decadence, corruption, and intrigue that tears apart the greatest empire the world has seen. The sprawling story spreads itself thin over a number of characters and stories. At the center are handsome but stiff Stephen Boyd as Livius, the loyal soldier and symbolic son of the aging emperor (Alec Guinness), and Christopher Plummer as Commodus, the corrupt heir to the throne--boyhood friends turned enemies when the latter accedes to the throne and sells out the values of his father for greed and hedonistic pleasures. The three-hour running time is filled out with the tales of Sophia Loren (as the beautiful Lucilla in love with Livius but coveted by greedy Commodus) and a gallery of heroes and villains that includes James Mason, Mel Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, John Ireland, Omar Sharif, and Eric Porter. The film is highlighted with spectacular scenes (a grandiose funeral fit for an emperor, brutal battles in the provinces as the barbarians threaten the empire, and a climactic duel to decide the destiny of Rome), which Mann weaves into the shadowy intrigue of the halls of power. Like his previous epic El Cid, The Fall of the Roman Empire remains one of the best of the 1960s epics: well written (and largely historically accurate) with strong performances and a consistently elegant style, but it lacks a central core and the magnetic hero of its superior predecessor. --Sean Axmaker

Anthony Mann directs this giant-size, three-hour, sweepingly pictorial entertainment (Daily Variety) that chronicles the peace-loving Caeser, Marcus Aurelius (Guinness) and his corrupt son, Commodus, (Plummer) who covets his throne. Featuring epic battles, breathtaking sets and locations, and a chariot race that easily rivals Ben Hur, Fall of the Roman Empire charts the greedy miscalculations that led to this civilization s collapse at the bloody hands of the Barbarians. DVD Special Features: Reproduction of Original 1964 Souvenir Program. Six Color Production Stills. Bonus Disc featuring A Collection of Historic Films about Ancient Rome, all Shot on the Film's Sets.

The Adventurers

Despite the tumultuous events in this sleek, handsome 1970 adaptation of Harold Robbins' bestselling novel, The Adventurers is arresting entertainment from the constantly inventive director of the original Alfie, Lewis Gilbert. Smoldering Yugoslavian actor Bekim Fehmiu stars as Dax Xenos, son of a revolutionary hero in an unnamed South American nation. As a child (played by Loris Loddi), Dax witnessed the murder of his mother and sisters by government goons, and he helped insurgent leader Rojo (Alan Badel) execute those responsible. As Dax grows up, his destiny is inexorably tied to the fate of his country and the whims of an increasingly despotic Rojo. But before he realizes that, the hunky gadabout chases women and races in the streets of Rome, spends some time as a gigolo (romancing a wealthy, heartbreakingly sympathetic Olivia de Havilland), marries and separates from a lovely heiress (Candice Bergen), and becomes a pawn in a terrible plot by Rojo to consolidate his power. The outstanding cast in this nearly three-hour film includes Fernando Rey, Charles Aznavour, Leigh Taylor-Young, and Ernest Borgnine. Gilbert's production is endlessly imaginative and exciting. Long before crowd scenes in movies could be computer-generated, directors such as Gilbert really did have to assemble thousands of extras for moments as spectacular as the battle sequences in The Adventurers. --Tom Keogh

THE ADVENTURERS is an irresistible mega-movie loaded with all the trappings and treacheries, power plays and passions, intrigues and in-fighting of the world's super-rich. At the center of the jet-setting story is troubled playboy Dax, raised far from his South American homeland of Corteguay. Amid the high society and political intrigue of Italy, Dax uses romance as a stepping stone to success... and all the while schemes to bring vengeance on those who once wronged him and his family.

My Darling Clementine

The most famous and sublime treatment of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, John Ford's My Darling Clementine is by any measure one of the most classically perfect Westerns ever made. Henry Fonda plays a hard, serious Wyatt Earp leading a cattle drive west with his brothers when a stopover in the wild town of Tombstone ends in the murder of his youngest brother. Wyatt takes up the badge he had turned down earlier and tames the wide-open town with his brothers (Ward Bond and Tim Holt), all the while waiting for the wild Clantons (led by Walter Brennan's ruthless Old Man Clanton) to make a mistake. Victor Mature delivers perhaps his finest performance as the tubercular gambler Doc Holliday, an alcoholic Eastern doctor escaping civilization in the Wild West. Ford takes great liberties with history, bending the story to fit his ideal of the West, a balance of social law and pioneer spirit. Though the film reaches its climax in the legendary gunfight between the Earps (with Doc Holliday) and the Clantons, the most powerful moment is the moving Sunday morning church social played out on the floor of the unfinished church. As Earp dances with Clementine (Cathy Downs)--Fonda's stiff, self-conscious movements showing a man unaccustomed to such social interaction--Ford's camera frames them against the open sky: the town and the wilderness merge into the new Eden of the West for a brief moment. --Sean Axmaker

Henry Fonda, Victor Mature and Walter Brennan star in John Ford's acclaimed film that climaxes with the famous gunfight at O.K. Corral. As Wyatt Earp (Fonda) and his brothers head for a peaceful life of ranching in 1880's California, tragedy moves Wyatt to pin on a badge once more. But when he becomes the law in Tombstone, home to Doc Holliday (Mature) and the Clanton boys, it's only a matter of time until the Earps and Doc face the Clantons in one of the most remembered battles of the Wild West. Featuring Linda Darnell and Ward Bond, My Darling Clementine is considered to be one of Ford's finest films.

Wild in the Country

Elvis plays a roughneck country boy, seething with hostility but gifted with literary talent. In the occasionally precious Clifford Odets script, this comes across as James Dean by way of a Thomas Wolfe novel--and not a bad shot at respectable acting by Elvis. His monologue about his dead mother, delivered to sympathetic shrink Hope Lange, is one of the most affecting things the King ever did in a movie. The songs are kept to a minimum, and Presley has some good, thrumming energy with the young Tuesday Weld (bad girl) and Millie Perkins (good girl), two uncommonly smart actresses. This is one of many Hollywood melodramas suggesting the angst brewing beneath the prosperity of the Eisenhower-Kennedy era, and it holds up decently, if not spectacularly. For Elvis fans, it's a poignant glimpse at a performer still in the young-buck stage of exciting possibilities. --Robert Horton

Possibly the sexiest of all of The King's movies, this film finds Elvis playing a backwoods delinquent blessed with great literary talents with Millie Perkins as his childhood sweetheart. Co-starring Tuesday Weld.

Waxwork / Waxwork II - Lost in Time

The main draw of these low-budget horror pictures is their unabashed affection for the great horror movies of the past. In Waxwork, Zach Galligan and his teen friends investigate a wax museum, where they are menaced by the re-animated tableaux. It's about as energetic as a wax dummy. The sequel is livelier, with Galligan now passing through a time portal that transports him to various classic film scenarios: Frankenstein, Dawn of the Dead, Alien, and, briefly and amusingly, Nosferatu (that's Drew Barrymore as one of the virgins cowering in bed). But why no parody of Vincent Price in House of Wax? It goes on too long, but there are weird celebrity guest stars aplenty (Bruce Campbell, David Carradine, Martin Kemp). Director Anthony Hickox helmed both offerings, without quite deciding how much humor was too much humor. In short, genre cultists are pretty much the exclusive audience here. --Robert Horton

Treasure of the Amazon

No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: 29-MAR-2005
Media Type: DVD

Raw Deal

In this film noir classic a revenge-seeking gangster (Dennis O'Keefe) is sent to prison after being framed for a crime he didn't commit. After seducing a beautiful young woman he uses her to help him carry out his plot for vengeance leading him to the crazy pyromaniac (Raymond Burr) who set him up.Run Time: 79 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: CHILDREN/FAMILY Rating: NR UPC: 796019797818 Manufacturer No: LVD52136

After the success of T-Men, ambitious poverty-row studio Eagle-Lion reunited director Anthony Mann with cinematographer John Alton and beefy star Dennis O'Keefe for this change of pace, a haunting revenge noir about an escaped criminal, his loyal girlfriend (Claire Trevor), and a lovely legal aide (Marsha Hunt) he drags along as a hostage... or perhaps something more. Raymond Burr is the sleazy, sadistic gangster who double-crossed O'Keefe; in the film's most memorable scene he lashes out at a clumsy party girl by tossing a tureen of flaming cherries jubilee on the hapless woman (the scene may well have inspired Fritz Lang in The Big Heat). Trevor narrates in a cold, deliberate, yet hauntingly effective tone, which matches the foggy mist that envelopes the characters from the initial escape (a brilliant exercise in minimalism), through the getaway down a wooded coastal highway, to the finale on the San Francisco docks. Mann provides his usual undercurrent of brutal violence (a fight in a taxidermy showroom in which the antlers of a mounted buck become a lethal weapon), but the film is pervaded by a sense of doomed romanticism not seen in Mann's films before or since, and the volatile romantic triangle adds a further edge to the moody tension. Rife with B movie dialogue, the film may come off stilted and campy to some viewers, but taken on its own stylized conventions it's a minor masterpiece of low-budget film noir. --Sean Axmaker