Lynley, Carol

The Night Stalker/The Night Strangler (Double Feature)

The Night Stalker
Wisecracking Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) is a rumpled news hound plucked from the fast-talking newspaper flicks of the 1940s and dropped into the swinging '70s. What makes the eccentric Kolchak even more unique, however, is his nose for the supernatural, a trait that leaves his editor (Simon Oakland) exasperated and the police less than amused. When he insists that a late-night Las Vegas serial killer (who leaves his victims drained of blood and sporting twin holes in the neck) is a modern-day vampire, he's practically run out of town by the local authorities. Naturally, he stalks the vampire himself, an unlikely Van Helsing armed with a silver cross, a wooden stake, and his ever-present tape recorder and flashbulb camera. Carol Lynley is his understanding girlfriend, and Ralph Meeker, Claude Akins, Kent Smith, and Charles McGraw costar as the Vegas cops and politicians Kolchak systematically alienates with his abrasive charm and smart mouth. Directed by Dan Curtis from a witty script by Richard Matheson, the quirky mix of horror and humor turned The Night Stalker into a ratings sensation that inspired a sequel (The Night Strangler) and a short-lived TV series (Kolchak: The Night Stalker). The X-Files creator Chris Carter acknowledges the show as a major inspiration, and has cast McGavin in a recurring role as a retired X-Files veteran with an acerbic personality and a familiar rumpled wardrobe. Kolchak lives! --Sean Axmaker

The Night Strangler
The Night Strangler finds down-on-his-luck investigator Carl Kolchak in Seattle, hot on the trail of a serial killer hiding in the underground city beneath the streets, a gas-lit fantasy world frozen in time (L.A.'s famous Bradbury Building--which has also appeared in Blade Runner and DOA--becomes the spooky city's architectural centerpiece). Exotic dancer and medical student Jo Ann Pflug tags along as partner and bait, and the exasperated Simon Oakland returns as Kolchak's harried editor. Genre fans will enjoy the appearances of popular character actors John Carradine, Margaret Hamilton, Wally Cox, and Al Lewis. Noted horror and science fiction author Richard Matheson scripted this meandering, low-key thriller with plenty of humor, which McGavin delivers with deadpan delight. --Sean Axmaker

This unforgettable first entry in the Night Stalker series introduced the world to the quirky reporter with a penchant for the paranormal and became one of the top-rated TV movies of all time (Chicago Tribune)! Investigating a series of Las Vegas murders Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) discovers that each victim has been bitten in the neck and drained of blood. Though Kolchak s outlandish theory about the murders gets him nowhere with the police his initiative to apprehend the killer himself gets him into hot water with a modern-day vampire!System Requirements: Running Time 74 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: NR UPC: 027616909152 Manufacturer No: 1006768

The Cardinal

Youthful pride. Yearnings of the flesh. Moments of doubt. The courage of conviction. All enter into a dedicated American's decades-long rise from priesthood to the leadership elite of the College of Cardinals. Otto Preminger presents The Cardinal winner of a Golden Globe Best Picture Award and nominated for six 1963 Academy Awards including Best Director. Typical of Preminger's films The Cardinal is packed with stars and issues. Tom Tryon Carol Lynley Ossie Davis Burgess Meredith and Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winner John Huston are players in a rich storyline embracing interfaith marriage abortion racism and war.Running Time: 175 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569724273

The Poseidon Adventure (Special Edition)

Hands down, this is the best movie (and was one of the first) to come out of the seemingly endless cycle of disaster movies that dominated box offices during the 1970s. It could even be argued that Titanic owes some of its success to the precedent set by this 1972 blockbuster starring Gene Hackman as a priest who leads a small group of survivors to safety from the bowels of a capsized luxury liner. From its stellar cast to its cheesy, Oscar-winning theme song, The Morning After, the movie has all the ingredients of a popular classic, beginning with a New Year's Eve celebration aboard the ill-fated Poseidon and ending as a pop allegory when the Hackman character becomes a Christ-like martyr. Filmed on spectacular sets where everything down is up and the ship's thick hull points in the direction of salvation, this is "a waterlogged Grand Hotel" (in the words of New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael) that is as entertaining as it is unabashedly brainless. The Poseidon Adventure is filled with performances that rise above the limits of the screenplay. It's also the only movie--unless you count her underwater corpse in Night of the Hunter--that lets Shelley Winters strut her stuff as an aquatic heroine. Who could ask for anything more? --Jeff Shannon

Ten survivors struggle to reach safety after an ocean liner capsizes in mid sea.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: PG
Release Date: 9-MAY-2006
Media Type: DVD

The Poseidon Adventure

Hands down, this is the best movie (and was one of the first) to come out of the seemingly endless cycle of disaster movies that dominated box offices during the 1970s. It could even be argued that Titanic owes some of its success to the precedent set by this 1972 blockbuster starring Gene Hackman as a priest who leads a small group of survivors to safety from the bowels of a capsized luxury liner. From its stellar cast to its cheesy, Oscar-winning theme song, The Morning After, the movie has all the ingredients of a popular classic, beginning with a New Year's Eve celebration aboard the ill-fated Poseidon and ending as a pop allegory when the Hackman character becomes a Christ-like martyr. Filmed on spectacular sets where everything down is up and the ship's thick hull points in the direction of salvation, this is "a waterlogged Grand Hotel" (in the words of New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael) that is as entertaining as it is unabashedly brainless. The Poseidon Adventure is filled with performances that rise above the limits of the screenplay. It's also the only movie--unless you count her underwater corpse in Night of the Hunter--that lets Shelley Winters strut her stuff as an aquatic heroine. Who could ask for anything more? --Jeff Shannon

Return to Peyton Place

The residents of Peyton Place Mass. are not happy when its most famous resident Alison Mackenzie writes a "shocking" novel detailing the sinful secrets of the town. Most outraged is malicious Roberta Carter who wants the book banned from the school library. Roberta's other mission is to destroy her son Ted's marriage to his Italian bride. Theirs however isn't the only marriage in trouble: Alison's book is causing a rift between her mother and stepfather who is also the school principal and one of the book's few defendants.System Requirements:Running Time: 123 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 024543162704 Manufacturer No: 2226270

Flypaper

Flypaper is a curious name for this shaggy-dog film about characters who continually cross paths as their lives careen out of control. Craig Sheffer is the ostensible lead, though his hotheaded, gun-toting criminal is hardly the picture's hero. He kick-starts the story by kidnapping meth lab chemist Lucy Liu, and then hunts down his junkie girlfriend, Sadie Frost, who is now under the care of her crotchety real estate mogul guardian (Robert Loggia). In the very next room is John C. McGinley, cheating on his jealous future bride, Illeana Douglas, with Talisa Soto, a dominatrix in tight leather. The film plays out these threads as if they are destined to intertwine in some improbable climax, but instead they merely crisscross in passing, finally fraying in a soft, anticlimactic conclusion. The performers try to have some fun with their familiar parts, and writer-director Klaus Hoch tosses in a few curve balls (my favorite is the knife sticking out of Sheffer's skull like a topknot, turning the homicidal heist man into a punch-drunk pussycat), but for all his offbeat humor and funky twists, nothing in Flypaper ever sticks. --Sean Axmaker

Bunny Lake Is Missing

When Ann Lake (Carol Lynley The Poseidon Adventure) goes to pick up four-year-old Bunny at her new preschool in London she s told that no child by that name is enrolled there! Superintendent Newhouse (Lawrence Olivier Hamlet Academy Award® Best Actor of 1948The Boys From Brazil) of Scotland Yard is assigned to the case. His suspects include: Steven Lake (Keir Dullea 2001: A Space Odyssey) the child s protective uncle; Horatio Wilson (Noel Coward The Italian Job 1969) the Lake s decadent landlord; and Aida Ford (Martita Hunt Anastasia) the school s eccentric ex-headmistress but he soon learns that no one has actually seen the child and there is absolutely no proof that Bunny ever existed! Ann maintains the child s been kidnapped but Newhouse begins to suspect that the hysterical young woman may just be insane.System Requirements:Running Time: 107 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MYSTERY/SUSPENSE Rating: NR UPC: 043396094666 Manufacturer No: 09466

The Cardinal

At once sprawling and intimate, Otto Preminger's coolly observed story of the education of a Catholic cardinal (Tom Tryon) spans 25 years of 20th-century social history, hops from Rome to Boston to Vienna, and confronts abortion, celibacy, and racism along the way. If those issues seem tame today, Preminger turns them into vivid drama in his hero's crisis and triumph of faith. Tryon is rather stolid and stiff, but the supporting cast helps liven scenes: Romy Schneider as a tempting Fräulein, Ossie Davis as an American priest who requests the Vatican take a stand against racism, John Huston's Oscar®-nominated performance as an irascible archbishop. It's a religious epic unlike any other of its time: thoughtful and serious, with a magnificent yet austere sense of composition and a graceful elegance. --Sean Axmaker

Drowning on Dry Land

With only a handful of films, director Carl-Jan Colpaert has established himself as an original--undisciplined and overly whimsical, perhaps, but possessed of playful irony, a fondness for quirky development, and a fine eye for how figures look best silhouetted against an unvaried patch of nature. Previously he made comical neo-noirs that spun the genre's conventions every which way but straight; here, working from a romantic and melodramatic screenplay written by others, he perhaps unfortunately sobers up. Barbara Hershey stars as Kate, a successful Manhattanite fed up with her cycle of abusive boyfriends, who one night hails a taxi and demands that the driver Darshan (Naveen Andrews) take her away. Out of that place, out of this town, out as far as the Arizona desert. After brief negotiations, he surprisingly agrees, and soon Kate is lying in the back seat with dark glasses on while behind the wheel Darshan squints against the broiling sun. Between the two there are of course antagonistic debates, glimmerings of mutual respect, self-righteous declarations that each couldn't possibly understand where the other is coming from, and a brief, angry coupling on the car hood. Hershey does what she always does, pitting her intelligence and sexuality against one another; Andrews has been cast as idealized fantasy object before and comfortably slouches through this not-too-demanding role. Colpaert delivers some nice visuals but seems uninspired to do much more. An interesting and slightly offbeat film, but still a disappointment from such a wildly offbeat director. --Bruce Reid

The Cat and the Canary

When an elderly man dies, some of his relatives gather to hear the reading of the will. When his attorney reads it, it is revealed how much the old man despised and loathed his worthless kin. In an intriguing twist his will is structured in such a way a