The Long, Long Trailer
from Warner Home Video
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz live slaphappily ever after as newlyweds honeymooning in The Long Long Trailer breezily directed by Vincente Minnelli. They quickly find that the interior of a moving trailer is ideal for tossing a Caesar salad - and everything else. That backing up their 40-foot three-ton home is only a little more difficult than threading a needle wearing boxing gloves. And that trailer-park folks are neighborly sorts who turn the lovebirds' rig into the wrong wrong trailer by crashing the wedding night. Co-starring comedy pros Marjorie Main and Keenan Wynn (Ball's frequent co-star in her MGM days) this smash was filmed at the height of the I Love Lucy craze and is packed with the inventive sight gags and physical humor that made the series a TV landmark. If you like the Trailer you're going to love the movie!Running Time: 96 min.System Requirements:Run Time: 96 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 012569679757 Manufacturer No: 67975
The War of the Worlds (Special Collector's Edition)
by Byron Haskin
from Paramount Pictures
After the success of 1950's Destination Moon and 1951's When Worlds Collide, visionary producer George Pal brought the classic H.G. Wells story of a Martian invasion to the big screen, and it instantly became a science fiction classic and winner of the 1953 Academy Award for Best Special Effects. It's a work of frightening imagination, with its manta-ray spaceships armed with cobra-like probes that shoot a white-hot disintegration ray. As formations of alien ships continue to wreak destruction around the globe, the military is helpless to stop this enemy while scientists race to find an effective weapon. Gene Barry and Ann Robinson play the hero and heroine roles that were de rigueur for movies like this in the '50s, and their encounter with one of the Martians is as creepy today as it was in '53. It finally takes an unseen threat--simple Earth bacteria--to conquer the alien invaders, but not before War of the Worlds has provided a dazzling display of impressive special effects. As memorable for its sound effects as for its spectacular visions of destruction, this is a movie for the ages--the kind of spectacular that inspired little kids such as Steven Spielberg (not to mention Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, whose Independence Day cribs liberally from the plot) and still packs a punch. --Jeff Shannon
H.G. Wells' chilling novel of a Martian invasion of Earth becomes even more frightening in this 1952 film adaptation that's widely regarded as one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time. An Oscar. winner for Best Special Effects, The War of the Worlds delivers eye-popping thrills, laser-hot action and unrelenting, edge-of-your-seat suspense. No one who has seen the film's depiction of the swan-shaped Martian machines-ticking and hissing menacingly as they cut their path of destruction-will ever forget their ominous impact.
McLintock! (Authentic Collector's Edition)
by Andrew V. McLaglen
from Paramount
John Wayne's most popular vehicle of the 1960s is a broad, boisterous comedy-Western and a family movie in every sense--in subject matter, casting, personnel, and the audience it aims to bear-hug. Wayne and his Quiet Man partner Maureen O'Hara reprise their large-boned lovers' quarrel in a Wild West variation on The Taming of the Shrew, while a cast of familiar supporting players do their best to avoid becoming collateral damage.
The picture is fascinating as an attempt to adjust and update the Duke as all-American icon. Rancher George Washington McLintock owns most of the town that bears his name, but James Edward Grant's screenplay is at didactic pains to establish the benevolence and socio-political enlightenment of his reign. G.W.'s former Indian foes have become his pals, he enjoys nothing so much as playing chess with his Jewish merchant buddy (Jack Kruschen), and he's tolerant--as his fellow landowners are not--of the homesteaders crowding into the territory. In what now seems like prescience about where things were headed in the 1960s, he even does his best to achieve rapport with (gasp!) impatient youth.
McLintock! was the first movie produced by eldest son Michael Wayne, and the first major assignment for director Andrew V. McLaglen (son of Quiet Man costar Victor). It steals like a bandit from a host of much better movies, but the Duke's great good humor and professionalism redoubtably anchor the proceedings. --Richard T. Jameson
Where the Boys Are
by Henry Levin
from Warner Home Video
The movie that put the Break into Spring, Where the Boys Are inspired thousands of college kids to seek sun, surf, and even s-e-x on the beaches of Florida. A bevy of co-eds (including foxy Yvette Mimieux and delightful Paula Prentiss, in her film debut) make for Fort Lauderdale, finding fun but also quite a bit of heavy-breathing drama. It's a little like a dressier, glossed-up version of the Problems with Today's Youth movies that were filling up the drive-ins of the era. The movie's actually pretty frank for 1960, although these days the lightweight stuff with Prentiss and Jim Hutton holds up best. There's also Connie Francis, who plays one of the college girls and croons the great title tune (which belongs on anybody's mix tape of classic teen-beach music). The film was remade, with vague Orwellian overtones, as Where the Boys Are 84, a truly dismal effort. --Robert Horton
A group of Midwest girls head down to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for spring break.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
by Charles Walters
from Warner Home Video
Not only was Molly Brown unsinkable, so is the musical based on her amazing life. Released in 1964, The Unsinkable Molly Brown gave Debbie Reynolds one of her most memorable roles and earned her an Academy Award nomination (she lost to Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins). Paired with Harve Presnell, fresh from the Broadway version, Reynolds and Presnell sparkle as Molly and Johnny Brown, well-meaning but gauche nouveau millionaires who take on stuffy Denver society (who are loathe to admit that they are nouveau riche as well). During their Molly-guided quest for "respectability," the pair learns that old adage--all the money in the world can't buy happiness or contentment.
From her beginnings as a foundling floating down the Colorado River to her fateful trip on the Titanic, Molly Brown aims upward, swearing "I Ain't Down Yet." Reynolds imbues her Molly with energy, determination, and poignancy. Molly feels every slight keenly and is convinced that more and bigger will make her place in society. Husband Johnny, who promised "I'll Never Say No," finds it harder and harder to keep his promise as he watches his wife's single-mindedness bury her effervescent personality. In the songs by Meredith Willson (The Music Man), Presnell's rich baritone soars on "Colorado, My Home" and begins a rousing "He's My Friend," while "Belly Up to the Bar, Boys" is a bawdy, catchy romp during which Reynolds shines--rollicking across the dance floor, she's a red-headed dynamo in a gauzy green dress. --Dana Van Nest
The Apartment (Collector's Edition)
by Billy Wilder
from MGM (Video & DVD)
Romance at its most anti-romantic--that is the Billy Wilder stamp of genius, and this Best Picture Academy Award winner from 1960 is no exception. Set in a decidedly unsavory world of corporate climbing and philandering, the great filmmaker's trenchant, witty satire-melodrama takes the office politics of a corporation and plays them out in the apartment of lonely clerk C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon). By lending out his digs to the higher-ups for nightly extramarital flings with their secretaries, Baxter has managed to ascend the business ladder faster than even he imagined. The story turns even uglier, though, when Baxter's crush on the building's melancholy elevator operator (Shirley MacLaine) runs up against her long-standing affair with the big boss (a superbly smarmy Fred MacMurray). The situation comes to a head when she tries to commit suicide in Baxter's apartment. Not the happiest or cleanest of scenarios, and one that earned the famously caustic and cynically humored Wilder his share of outraged responses, but looking at it now, it is a funny, startlingly clear-eyed vision of urban emptiness and is unfailingly understanding of the crazy decisions our hearts sometimes make. Lemmon and MacLaine are ideally matched, and while everyone cites Wilder's Some Like It Hot closing line "Nobody's perfect" as his best, MacLaine's no-nonsense final words--"Shut up and deal"--are every bit as memorable. Wilder won three Oscars for The Apartment, for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay (cowritten with longtime collaborator I.A.L. Diamond). --Robert Abele
Winner* of five 1960 Academy Awards® including Best Picture The Apartment is legendary writer/director Billy Wilder at his scathing satirical best and one of "the finest comedies Hollywood has turned out" (Newsweek). C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) knows the way to success in business... it's through the door of his apartment! By providing a perfect hide away for philandering bosses the ambitious young employee reaps a series of undeserved promotions. But when Bud lends the key to big boss J.D. Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) he not only advances his career but his own love life as well. For Sheldrake's mistress is the lovely Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) elevator girl and angel of Bud's dreams. Convinced that he is the only man for Fran Bud must make the most important executive decision of his career: lose the girl... or his job.System Requirements:Running Time: 125 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/ROMANTIC COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 883904100805 Manufacturer No: M110080
Money From Home
by George Marshall
from Legend Films
A hilarious laugh-a-minute comedy starring the legendary comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. When Honey Talk Nelson's (Dean Martin) gambling debts start to mount, he enlists his veterinarian cousin Virgil (Jerry Lewis) to help him fix a race. Along the way, the boys find plenty of time for gags, music and for Honey Talk, a romance with the gorgeous Phyllis (Marjie Millar). Features their now classic take on Cyrano de Bergerac!
The Angry Red Planet
by Ib Melchior
from MGM (Video & DVD)
Although widely admired among longtime science fiction fans, The Angry Red Planet is merely a substandard entry from the genre's 1950s heyday. With wooden performances, atrocious dialogue, and some monsters that would scare only very young kids, it's perfect fodder for a rainy- day marathon of cheesy movies, as long as you keep your expectations low. Following the standard plot of its day, the movie tells (in flashback) the story of four astronauts who land Rocket M-1 on Mars, only to find the "angry red planet" lives up to its nickname. The plants are carnivorous, there's a gigantic "bat-rat-spider-crab" that can snap humans in half with its pincers, and a slithering Jello-beast with a rotating eyeball that threatens to dissolve the rocket ship into a pile of digested goo.
Naturally, there's an onboard flirtation between shapely space-gal Nora Hayden and astro-hunk Gerald Mohr (who inexplicably spends the last half-hour with his hairy chest exposed), while Les Tremayne and Jack Kruschen play the stock characters (respectively) of elder scientist and blue-collar engineer--the latter toting an "ultrasonic freezer gun" that forces attacking monsters to chill out. If that's not enough to whet your schlock-movie appetite, the scenes on Mars were filmed in a gimmicky pink-hued process called "Cinemagic," which resembles a negative image covered in Pepto-Bismol. Is this any way to spend 83 precious minutes? Look at it this way: When an angry Martian warns humans to stay away ("you are technological adults, but spiritual and emotional infants"), you may be laughing enough to make it all worthwhile. --Jeff Shannon
The Benny Goodman Story
by Valentine Davies
from Universal Studios
No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 4-MAR-2003
Media Type: DVD
It lacks the tragic ending of The Glenn Miller Story, a smash hit released a year earlier, but this enjoyable musical biopic does a nice job of blending Benny Goodman's sweet swinging clarinet with a healthy dose of Hollywood hokum. The emphasis is on Goodman's struggle to get "hot music" into the mainstream, and his shy wooing of a socialite (Donna Reed). With Steve Allen cast as the bespectacled Goodman, there's a comic undertone to the bandleader's somewhat geeky demeanor, and Allen (a musician himself) is believable fronting the orchestra. Real-life swing figures, including Goodman Quartet players Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, and Lionel Hampton, lend verisimilitude. The climax comes with Goodman's legendary 1938 jazz concert at Carnegie Hall, a turning point in American popular music--and the sight of a mild-mannered man in a tuxedo leading his band through the glorious frenzy of "Sing, Sing, Sing" remains a delight. --Robert Horton
Cape Fear
by J. Lee Thompson
from Universal Studios
An ex-convict blames a lawyer for his sentence and tries to wreak bloody revenge on the lawyer and his family.
Genre: Suspense
Rating: NR
Release Date: 2-SEP-2003
Media Type: DVD
Superior to Martin Scorsese's punishing 1991 remake, this 1962 thriller directed by J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone) stars Robert Mitchum as a creepy ex-con angry at the attorney (Gregory Peck) whom he believes is responsible for his incarceration. After Mitchum makes clear his plans to harm Peck's family, a fascinating game of crisscrossing ethics and morality takes place. Where the more recent version seemed trapped in its explicitness, Thompson's film accomplishes a lot with a more economical and telling use of violence. The result is a richer character study with some Hitchcockian overtones regarding the nature of guilt. --Tom Keogh
+++
