House on Telegraph Hill (Fox Film Noir)
by Robert Wise
from 20th Century Fox
Victoria has survived Nazi concentration by assuming the identity of one who died there. She arrives in San Francisco to see her "son" just as the boy's great-aunt dies leaving a lot of money to be inherited. Victoria falls in love with the boy's trustee Alan Spender and they move into the mansion on Telegraph Hill. She then learns that Alan and his lover the boy's governess Margaret murdered an aunt and are planning the same for her.DVD Features: Available Subtitles: English Spanish Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 2.1 Stereo) English (Dolby Digital 2.1 Mono) Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.1 Mono) Audio Commentary with Film Noir Historian Eddie Muller Poster Gallery Production Stills Gallery Unit Photogrpahy Gallery Special Shoot Gallery Theatrical Trailer Fox Noir: Fallen Angel No Way Out if you liked these movies you may want to try....System Requirements:Running Time 93 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MYSTERY/SUSPENSE UPC: 024543227816 Manufacturer No: 2232781
The Sea Hawk
by Michael Curtiz
from Warner Home Video
Five years after Captain Blood made him a swashbuckling star, Errol Flynn returned to the high seas as privateer Captain Thorpe in The Sea Hawk. Flynn plays the dashing gentleman pirate as dedicated patriot, looting Spanish ships for English coffers with the private blessing of Queen Elizabeth (Flora Robson, reprising the role from Fire over England). The film opens with a rousing sea battle: broadside cannon fire sends masts falling and splinters a-flying before Flynn's men take their Spanish quarry in a furious shipboard cutlass battle. The fearless fighter becomes a stumbling schoolboy when he falls for the Spanish ambassador's niece, but he's back in his element when he sails to the New World for treasure and lands in the middle of a deadly conspiracy. Big-eyed beauty Brenda Marshall stands in for Flynn's usual love interest Olivia de Havilland, and the film misses the latter's sass and spirit, but it's a minor shortcoming. Claude Rains plays his usual smoothly conniving villain, and hearty Alan Hale returns as Flynn's loyal sidekick. Michael Curtiz proves once again why he was Warner Brothers' top director with a handsome, action-packed film that mixes intrigue and suspense with grand set pieces, concluding with a rousing series of escapes, chases, and a runaway sword fight. Classic Hollywood swashbuckling at its best. --Sean Axmaker
A British sea captain is given permission by Queen Elizabeth I to commit acts of piracy against the Spanish armada and colonies in the New World.Running Time: 127 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/CLASSIC UPC: 012569522923
Pinky
by Elia Kazan
from 20th Century Fox
It used to be called "miscegenation," and it hasn't been a scandalous or taboo subject for several decades now. (Every other prime-time TV series seems to have an interracial romance going, and nobody bats an eyelash.) These welcome social changes have stranded Elia Kazan's 1949 weepie about a light-skinned African American woman (played less than convincingly by lily-white Jeanne Crain) who tries to "pass"---and falls in love with a white man. Director Douglas Sirk mined similar territory, and got a lot more juice out of it, in Imitation of Life. To his credit, perhaps, the director of On the Waterfront just doesn't have cheap soapsuds in his blood, and he makes the fatal mistake of taking a solemn and high-minded approach to this overheated material. The picture isn't even a hoot. Ethel Waters is the aunt who raises Pinky, while concealing her true lineage; it's a strong performance with a simmering subtext of anger. David Chute
Pinky (Jeanne Crain), a black woman who works as a nurse in Boston, finds she is able to "pass for white." Afraid her true heritage will be discovered, she leaves her white fiancé (William Lundigan) and returns home to Mississippi. There, she helps her ailing grandmother (Ethel Waters) by caring for her employer (Ethel Barrymore), an imperious plantation owner. When she names Pinky heiress to her estate, the community rises in resentment, triggering a sensational court trial.
Subject of landmark Supreme Court case in film censorship, this story about a mulatto woman's rights against prejudice, became itself, a battle for civil rights.
The Way West
by Andrew V. McLaglen
from United Artists
Sally Field makes her film debut in this sumptuous epic tale of the brave men and women who left the comfort of the East for the promise of free land in the untamed West. Also stars Kirk Douglas Robert Mitchum and Lola Albright.System Requirements:Running Time: 122 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/CLASSICS Rating: NR UPC: 883904107156 Manufacturer No: M110715
From a year that produced such groundbreaking "New Hollywood" films as Bonnie & Clyde and The Graduate, Andrew V. McLaglen's The Way West is an old-fashioned western--grandly shot on location by William Clothier--that did for Oregon what John Ford did for Monument Valley. Based on A.B. Guthrie, Jr.'s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Way West stars a steely Kirk Douglas as widowed senator William J. Tadlock, who is determined to "plant a new Jerusalem in the Oregon wilderness." Robert Mitchum costars as Dick Summers, a weary and grieving scout whom Tadlock persuades to help him lead the disparate group of "greenhorn storekeepers and tenderfoot farmers." A lively Richard Widmark also stars as restless Pennsylvania farmer Lije Evans, who's "got to go where I've not been." Traditional western action, including disastrous river crossings and Indian encounters, takes a backseat to the sudsy human dramas. Tadlock is a stern taskmaster who drives the settlers as mercilessly as John Wayne drove those cattle in Red River. At one point, he even makes a play for Evans' wife (Lola Albright). Sally Field makes a memorable screen debut as sexually precocious Mercy, "all hellfire and sin," and who seduces a newly married man whose wife refuses to consummate their marriage. Throw in the accidental shooting of an Indian boy, plus such welcome faces as Jack Elam and Stubby Kaye, and you have an epic adventure that western buffs will follow all the Way. --Donald Liebenson
The Fighting 69th
by William Keighley
from Warner Home Video
You'd have to be the world's biggest grouch to dislike a movie like The Fighting 69th. For starters it's got James Cagney as a smart-aleck from Brooklyn--can't go wrong there, can you?--and then you've got Pat O'Brien second-billed in a sentimentally iconic role as Father Duffy, the beloved and much-decorated real-life chaplain of the legendary Irish-American army regiment of World War I. The time is 1918, on the battlefields of France, but this is a 1940 Warner Brothers production, so you can bet there's plenty of blarney, bravery, and roughneck action as the Fighting 69th prepares to engage German forces in WWI's final offensive, the Battle of the Argonne. Up to that point, Jimmy Plunkett (Cagney) has proven less than worthy of fighting in the fearsome 69th. He's a Brooklyn punk with plenty of false bravado, but when bullets are flying and grenades are falling, he's nothin' but a yellow-bellied crybaby, making the kind of mistakes that get people killed--in this case, many of his closest comrades. He's eventually forced to find his courage, and does so with honor to spare. In classic Warner Bros. fashion, the wartime sentiment is ladled on so heavily that cynics may gag or burst out laughing, but the supporting cast is fantastic (especially Alan Hale Sr. and George Brent as quintessential Fightin' Irish heroes), and William Keighley directs with such energetic enthusiasm toward the material that you can't help but be swept up in the action. It's flag-waving fun, and Cagney's a constant pleasure, even as he's quivering in his boots.
Available separately or as part of the James Cagney Signature Collection, The Fighting 69th has been given the red-carpet treatment by Warner Bros., with a bevy of "Warner Night at the Movies" DVD bonus features from 1940, including a vintage newsreel, short subjects, two cartoons (including "The Fighting 69½th"), movie trailers and an audio-only radio adaptation of The Fighting 69th starring Pat O'Brien, Robert Preston and Ralph Bellamy. With all this stuff on one DVD, what's not to like? --Jeff Shannon
A cocky recruit in the 69th Regiment during WWI becomes a hero and loses his life in the process.Running Time: 90 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE UPC: 012569796584 Manufacturer No: 79658
Dodge City
by Michael Curtiz
from Warner Home Video
This is the film that inspired the Mel Brook's classic 'Blazing Saddles.' Classic Warner Brothers Western about a cowboy out to tame the wild west. Famout for a great barroom brawl scene.Running Time: 104 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. UPC: 012569528024
Hedy Lamarr: Dishonored Lady/Strange Woman
from Vci Video
The first title on the double bill is one of the rare instances where "B" film director Ulmer was given a grade "A" cast to work with... and he doesn't disappoint. In The Strange Woman, screen vixen Lamarr gives one of her finest performances as a strong-willed young lady in 19th-Century Maine, who affects the lives of three very different men. In the second feature, Dishonored Lady, a taut little thriller, Lamarr plays a glamorous but neurotic art director for a leading women's magazine who finds herself under suspicion of murder. Bonus Features: Scene Selection| Trailers| Short Subject - "Made In USA." Specs: DVD9; Dolby Digital Mono; 182 minutes; B&W; 1.33:1 Aspect Ratio; MPAA - NR; Year - 1946-1947; SRP - $4.99.
Santa Fe Trail/Abilene Town
by Michael Curtiz
from Marengo Films
200 minute double feature film DVD.
Love Nest
by Joseph M. Newman
from 20th Century Fox
A post-war comedy about a serviceman (William Lundigan) who thinks he's returning home for a blissful reunion with his wife (June Haver). Instead he finds that she has bought a run-down apartment building, and along with it, a long list of expensive repairs and crazy tenants. Complicating matters, the husband wants his "old army buddy" to move into one of the apartments - but neglects to tell his wife that the "buddy" is a seductive ex-WAC plyed by none other than Marilyn Monroe! Then, a con-man who's wanted by the FBI moves into the building, ensuring that there isn't a moment of peace and quiet for anyone who lives there. When a series of hilarious domestic fights result over the unwelcome residents, there's absolutely no place like this home!
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