Ohanlon, George

Kronos

Astronomer and all-around scientific hero Jeff Morrow (he of the stone face, Cro-Magnon brow, and heavy voice of dire intonation) discovers a new celestial body that suddenly changes course and slams into the Pacific Ocean off the Mexican coast. Meanwhile a mysterious white light takes over the body of lab director John Emery, who becomes the eyes and ears of the UFO when it emerges days later as a skyscraper-sized robot. Morrow and his crew--including his beauty-with-brains girlfriend, Barbara Lawrence; wisecracking sidekick, George O'Hanlan; and computer, SUSIE, which whirs and blinks but offers little real help--leap to the rescue, but not before the Mexican air force takes on the giant in a scene reminiscent of King Kong. Director Kurt Neumann, best known for the original The Fly, gives this low-budget sci-fi thriller an impressive scope, sending the striking, austerely designed giant robot (a walking battery with piledriver legs) marching across a B&W widescreen frame like a relentless tank and punctuating the drama with an impressively chilling A-bomb blast. Though hardly a classic, this is one of the more interesting alien invasion movies of the paranoid 1950s. --Sean Axmaker

Scientists at a "Top Secret" atomic research laboratory are taken over by strange fantastic control devices launched from an orbiting space ship inhabited by a hostile super-intelligence from beyond the stars. Simultaneously, a gigantic flying saucer crashes in the Gulf of Mexico and Kronos, a giant metallic monolith monster, emerges. Unstoppable, it slashes across the countryside, draining the earth of all it's electrical energy and beaming it into space. Kronos, a weapon so perfect in design it absorbs a direct hit by a Hydrogen bomb and becomes that much more powerful! Atomic age excitement! Atomic age thrills! All in out-of-this-world "Regalscope" format for the first time on DVD.

The Spirit of St. Louis

Two Hollywood giants came together for The Spirit of St. Louis: James Stewart and director Billy Wilder. Both were slightly miscast for the material, an account of Charles Lindbergh's galvanizing solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927. Stewart was at least 20 years too old to play the young pilot, and his enormous personal warmth was at odds with the rather frosty real-life demeanor of the Lone Eagle. Wilder was better known for his sardonic critiques of man's lesser instincts, which makes the choice of this flat-out study of heroism somewhat peculiar. The mismatch shows in the movie, which is arranged around Lindy's historic puddle jump but is also checkerboarded together by a series of awkward flashbacks showing his background. Once the flight begins, in a thrilling sequence of the plane's near-miss takeoff, the film settles into a generally engrossing study of man against the elements. In a great Wilder touch, Stewart spends part of the journey conversing with a stowaway house fly. The aerial photography is stunning, and it's impossible to resist the unalloyed joy of Stewart's realization that he's spotted the Irish coast after a very long night over the ocean. Not unlike the pilot himself, this movie is happiest and most secure when it's in the seat of the plane, unencumbered by anything but forward motion and a goal. --Robert Horton

On May 21, 1927, the world changed. "Lucky Lindy" landed outside Paris. And people who previously talked about the limitations of air travel suddenly dreamed of its limitless possibilities. The Spirit of St. Louis is six-time Academy Award? winner* Billy Wilder's recreation of the struggles and success of Charles A. Lindbergh, the pioneering flyboy who, like test pilots and astronauts to follow later, had the "right stuff" of aviation heroism. Lindbergh fan James Stewart, himself a pilot, sought the role ? and was initially turned down. But his persistence paid off, as Stewart added Lindy to his gallery of indelible portrayals of American heroes. He and Wilder together manned the cockpit of a stirring epic entertainment. Director: Billy Wilder Starring: James Stewart, Patricia Smith, Murray Hamilton

The Errol Flynn Signature Collection, Vol. 2 (The Charge of the Light Brigade / Gentleman Jim / The Adventures of Don Juan / The Dawn Patrol / Dive Bomber)

Includes:The Adventures of Don JuanCharge of the Light Brigade (WB) (1936)The Dawn PatrolDive BomberGentleman JimFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/CLASSIC UPC: 012569796270 Manufacturer No: 79627

The best-known of Errol Flynn's movies are already out there on DVD, so surely there can't be much left over to keep the second volume of the Errol Flynn Signature Collection from being an anticlimax. Except it's not. The new boxed set includes a splendid historical adventure, two aviation movies impressive in different ways, and a late swashbuckler that operates as a droll gloss on the star's persona. Plus (wait for it...) it also contains the best movie Errol Flynn ever made, and very likely his best performance as well.

Let's take that last one first. Raoul Walsh's Gentleman Jim (1942) is a great, boisterous gift box of a movie, a high-spirited biopic of late-19th-century prizefighter James J. Corbett. The setting is San Francisco in the Gay '90s, with Flynn/Corbett starting out as a brash, egotistical bank teller fast with his mouth and light on his feet. Given a chance to crash high society, he becomes a pugilist for the amusement of the nabobs, then sets out on a boxing career that will bring him glove-to-glove with the Great John L. ... Sullivan, that is, and portrayed with Walshian gusto by Ward Bond. Gentleman Jim is fragrant with period atmosphere, exhilarating in its feeling for space and back-slapping human contact, and so big-hearted and exuberant that it finally invites the audience right into the film. Alexis Smith--as a socialite who ribs Corbett mercilessly--and Flynn conduct a strikingly egalitarian mating duel. The supporting cast includes Jack Carson, Alan Hale, and the epically grumpy William Frawley, and the whirlwind montages are by future director Don Siegel. This is great fun--and a masterpiece to boot.

The adventure movie is The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Flynn's second star vehicle in Hollywood. A step up in scale and gloss from Captain Blood, this Michael Curtiz picture is historical poppycock but thrilling spectacle, with exotic doings in India and Asia Minor building to the horrendous siege of Chukoti, then a lateral move to the Crimea for the big Tennyson finish every perennial schoolboy in the audience has been waiting for. The Flynn of this swashbuckler-one-step-removed isn't the buoyant and boyish fellow we expect; he even comes in second to fellow Bengal Lancer (and dull brother) Patric Knowles for the heart of Olivia De Havilland. But he wears nobility well, and there's genuine tenderness in his performance. The camerawork and editing of the Charge will lift your heart rate, and the large supporting cast includes Donald Crisp, Nigel Bruce, Spring Byington, C. Henry Gordon, and Flynn pal David Niven.

Niven and Flynn are together again in The Dawn Patrol (1938), a memorable WWI tale of British airmen flying perilous missions in flimsy planes, and the flight commanders who have to send them out to do it. Basil Rathbone (in a rare departure from villainy in a Flynn movie) plays the tortured commandant whom hotshot Flynn will be obliged to succeed. Although this is the Dawn Patrol most people know, it's actually the remake of a 1930 Howard Hawks classic. The original has a starker feel (inseparable from its early-talkie creakiness), as if its airbase were at the edge of the known world. The more up-to-date Flynn version, directed by Edmund Goulding, is smoother entertainment, with a stronger supporting cast--but all the flying footage is from Hawks's movie.

The other aviation drama is Dive Bomber (1941), a big hit just before America's entry into WWII. Flynn plays it more sober than usual (no pun intended) as a Navy flight surgeon helping to lick the challenge of high-altitude sickness. There's no good reason for the movie to last 132 minutes, and both the macho griping of aviator Fred MacMurray and the garish treatment of the peripheral females (including Alexis Smith in her first featured role) get tiresome. But these are worth enduring for the breathtaking flight scenes in vivid Technicolor--which looks every bit as great as it must have in 1941. Director Michael Curtiz, in what would be his last film with Flynn, even sets up the ground scenes to include low-altitude flyovers.

The Adventures of Don Juan (1948), made near the end of Flynn's Warner years, is a footnote to the star's swashbuckling legacy and a not-very-inside joke on his reputation as real-life Don Juan; the picture is at least as interested in eliciting chuckles as serving up thrills. Director Vincent Sherman lacked the brio of Curtiz and the gusto of Walsh, but he ably steers the actor past self-parody to a reasonably graceful performance. Again, the real excitement is the ultra-radiant Technicolor--a perhaps inadvertent result of veteran film noir cameraman Woody Bredell lighting the movie as though he were still working that black-and-white territory. Viveca Lindfors supplies urbane love interest as the Queen of Spain, and Robert Douglas stands in for Basil Rathbone as villain-in-chief.

Consistent with previous Warner practice, all but one of the features in Volume 2 come packaged with a "Warner Night at the Movies" set of shorts: cartoons, comedy shorts, trailers for contemporaneous WB movies, and sometimes newsreels. The disc of Gentleman Jim also includes an audio-only bonus, a radio reenactment featuring Flynn and costars Alexis Smith and Ward Bond. Probably because of its two-hour-plus running time, Dive Bomber is accompanied only by its trailer and a brief documentary, in which historian Rudy Behlmer shares a choice anecdote about Mike Curtiz attempting to direct airplanes. Unfortunately, of Flynn and his various directors, only Vincent Sherman was still available to do a commentary track (on Adventures of Don Juan, which also includes Behlmer commentary); Sherman passed away in 2006 at the age of 99. --Richard T. Jameson

White Heat

The Man Who Came to Dinner

A legendary Broadway tour de force comes to the screen with Monty Woolley's central performance in The Man Who Came to Dinner. And it's a turn well worth immortalizing. All goatish beard, snapping teeth, and plummy-voiced put-downs, Woolley fully inhabits the role of Sheridan Whiteside, a celebrated author and radio celebrity who gets waylaid by a cracked hip during a visit to small-town Ohio. Bossing the helpless homeowners and bewildered staff from his wheelchair, he quickly fills his hosts' house with his projects (including four penguins) and famous visitors (Ann Sheridan as a self-centered diva, Jimmy Durante as a comedian based on Harpo Marx). Bette Davis goes for a quieter role than usual as Whiteside's assistant; she falls for a local newspaperman, drippily played by Richard Travis. They all revolve around the seated figure of Woolley, his hands drumming on his armrests, his teeth bared as though ready to devour his inferiors. He's delicious. The script is larded with topical references and Broadway-style repartee, not all of which has aged well, and director William Keighley doesn't have a clear grasp of how to shoot jokes. But the basic situation is so durable, and Whiteside's character (based on famed Algonquin Round Table wit Alexander Woollcott) so unusual and nasty, that the movie remains great fun. --Robert Horton

A pompous lecturer is forced to spend the winter inside a prominent Ohio family's home due to injury and proceeds to meddle with the lives of everyone in the household.

The Golden Age of Cartoons: Cartoons for Victory!

These World War II era shorts, produced in the United States and around the world, were never meant to survive past wartime, and understandably many have been shelved, lost or forgotten since the mid-1940s. Fortunately, these films still exist and serve as an interesting social document of the attitudes prevalent at the time; some imposed by the government in the form of propaganda and some by the filmmakers. This great collection is mastered from original 16mm and 35mm film prints, many from the only surviving material

Million Dollar Duck

Disney's classic 1971 comedy about the goose that lay the golden eggs returns in digital format, retaining its old-style family-friendliness, slapstick silliness, and good-natured predictability. Dean Jones plays professor Albert Dooley, a lab worker down on his luck, who lives in suburbia with his earnest yet scatterbrained wife Katie (played deliciously by Sandy Duncan). When an under-performing lab duck's life is in jeopardy, Dooley rescues him to become a family pet and soon discovers that some earlier exposure to radiation has turned the duck's eggs into gold. The Dooley's newfound wealth brings its share of pandemonium as they try to keep their proverbial "nest egg" under wraps, especially from nosy neighbor Finley Hooper (Joe Flynn), a government Treasury man. Such low-tech fare is not without touches of brilliance: Duncan gets to deliver the best lines and does so with great panache. If Million Dollar Duck falls short in inventiveness, this small serving of comfort food satisfies with ample amounts of warmhearted cheer. (Ages 4 and older) --Lynn Gibson

Bring home surefire Disney fun starring classic comedians Dean Jones, Sandy Duncan, and Joe Flynn. Research professor Albert Dooley (Jones) is stuck with past-due bills and one downy, dense lab duck. But an ordinary bird turns extraordinary when he is accidentally zapped with radiation and casually starts laying the proverbial "golden eggs." Cashing in on newfound riches becomes a sidesplitting scramble as the secret gets out and friends, neighbors, and government T-men mount an all-out quack attack to capture the rare bird. It's heartwarming hilarity that will keep the whole family in stitches!

Now You See Him, Now You Don't

Bumbling college student Dexter Riley (Kurt Russell) develops a mysterious liquid that actually makes objects disappear. Further experimentation reveals that it works amazingly well on humans too! Riley's startling discovery takes some hilarious new twists when a gang of crooks headed by the notorious A.J. Arno (Cesar Romero) steal the formula and attempt to use it for their less-than-legal activities. Dazzling special effects and a fast-paced story make this lively film a textbook case of college comedy!

Adventures of Don Juan

Errol Flynn's farewell to big-budget swashbuckling has him playing the legendary Don Juan the Spanish lover who fights to save the Queen Margaret and her King from the treacherous machinations of her minister Duke de Lorca.Running Time: 111 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/CLASSIC Rating: NR UPC: 012569796225 Manufacturer No: 79622

The Adventures of Don Juan is more fun than its reputation suggests, but it inescapably plays as a footnote to Errol Flynn's swashbuckling career. The heroic, athletic figure that lunged, leapt, and sashayed through Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk had thickened a bit thanks to middle age and, not to mince words, booze. Accordingly, and with an eye toward the star's real-life aptness to the role of Don Juan, the picture is at least as interested in eliciting chuckles as serving up thrills.

Flynn's creative partnerships with top action directors Michael Curtiz and Raoul Walsh were history. Vincent Sherman lacked their finesse and gusto, but he ably steers the actor past self-parody to a reasonably graceful performance. On the commentary track, Sherman (who died in 2006 at age 99) recollects that only once did Flynn arrive on set the worse for alcoholic wear; Flynn couldn't stand, so the director reblocked the scene with Don Juan seated while his bête noire, the Duke de Lorca (Robert Douglas in the Basil Rathbone part), strode around him deploying insults and rapier flicks. It's the best scene in the film.

For latterday viewers, the real excitement is the vivid Technicolor. Part of the reason is that cinematographer Woody Bredell, who shot such pungent noirs as The Killers and Phantom Lady, lit the movie as though he were still working that black-and-white territory. The effulgent hues of the Oscar-winning costumes reinforce the effect. In a footnote to a footnote, the film was edited by Alan Crosland Jr., whose father directed the landmark 1926 silent Don Juan--and that film's action climax on an outsized palace staircase is echoed here. --Richard T. Jameson

London Voodoo

Special Features:

Making of Documentary
Interview with a Voodoo Priest
Director Commentary
10 Deleted Scenes
Theatrical Trailer
Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound