Ouspenskaya, Maria

The Wolf Man - The Legacy Collection (The Wolf Man / Werewolf of London / Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man / She-Wolf of London)

For the first time ever the original The Wolf Man film comes to DVD in this extraordinary Legacy Collection. Included in the collection is the original classic starring the renowned Lon Chaney Jr. and three timeless sequels featuring legendary actor Bela Lugosi and others. These are the landmark films that inspired an entire genre of movies and continue to be major influences on motion pictures to this day. System Requirements: Running Time 281 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/CLASSIC Rating: NR UPC: 025192445828 Manufacturer No: 61024458

Dodsworth

One of the finest films of the 1930s, this classic Samuel Goldwyn production was based upon the hit Broadway play written by Sidney Howard, which had in turn been adapted from the 1929 novel by Sinclair Lewis. Ahead of its time in dramatizing the disintegration of a marriage, the story centers on the title character (superbly played by Walter Huston, who originated his role onstage), a wealthy automobile manufacturer whose wife (Ruth Chatterton, in her final American film role) desperately craves an aristocratic lifestyle in Europe. Dodsworth indulges her fancies to a degree, but their clashing desires--compounded by her affair with a European baron and his affection for a sympathetic widow (Mary Astor)--create further tension and mutual rancor. Dodsworth was perhaps the first Hollywood drama of the sound era that maturely addressed the complexity of a failing marriage and impending divorce, made especially compelling since Dodsworth is such an admirable and upstanding character who means well and upholds the ideal of marital commitment. Sharply directed by William Wyler, the film is as relevant today as it was when released in 1936. --Jeff Shannon

The Wolf Man

Even a man who is pure in heart,
And says his prayers by night,
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright.

If you haven't heard this piece of horror-movie doggerel before, you'll never forget it after seeing The Wolf Man for two reasons: it's a spooky piece of rhyme and nearly everybody in the picture recites it at one time or another. Set in a fog-bound studio-built Wales, The Wolf Man tells the doom-laden tale of Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), who returns to the estate of his wealthy father (Claude Rains). (Yes, Chaney's American, but the movie explains this, awkwardly.) Bitten by a werewolf, Talbot suffers the classic fate of the victims of lycanthropy: at the full moon, he turns into a werewolf, a transformation ingeniously devised by makeup maestro Jack Pierce. Pierce was the man who turned Boris Karloff into the Frankenstein monster, and his werewolf makeup became equally famous, with its canine snout and bushy hairdo--and, of course, seriously sharp dental work. The Wolf Man was a smash hit, giving Universal Pictures a new monster for their already crowded stable, and Chaney found himself following in the footsteps (or paw prints) of his father, who had essayed a monster or two in the silent era. This is a classy horror outing, with strong atmosphere and a thoughtful script by Curt Siodmak--well, except for the stiff romantic bits between Chaney and Evelyn Ankers. It's also got Bela Lugosi (briefly) and Maria Ouspenskaya, the prunelike Russian actress who foretells doom like nobody's business. --Robert Horton

he original horror classic that introduced one of the screen's most infamous monsters! Lon Chaney, Jr. portrays Larry Talbot, who returns to his father's (Claude Rains) castle in Wales and meets a beautiful woman (Evelyn Ankers). One fateful night, Talbot escorts her to a local carnival where Jenny's fate is revealed by a mysterious gypsy fortune teller. The dreamlike atmospheres and elaborate settings combined with a chilling musical score make The World Man a masterpiece not only of the genre, but for all time!

Love Affair

The Rains Came

A trio of great performances and Academy Award-winning special effects recommend this saga of sin, scandal, and redemption based on Louis Bromfield's novel. George Brent stars as Tom Ransome, the reputation-tarnished son of an English earl who has found refuge from the world's ills in Ranchupur, India. Myrna Loy, cast against type, costars as his former lover, now the Lady Edwina Esketh, whose elderly husband (Nigel "Dr. Watson" Bruce) is more interested in the Maharaja's horses and money than her. "Dying of galloping boredom," she sets her sights on Major Rama Safti (Tyrone Power), a dedicated and selfless doctor, but nature calls with a devastating earthquake and flood that will open her jaded eyes. Drenched with atmosphere, The Rains Came further benefits from such venerable character actors as Maria Ouspenskaya (The Wolf Man) as the Maharani, Jane Darwell (The Grapes of Wrath) as Tom's missionary aunt, and Henry Travers (Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life) as his uncle. The Rains Came was released in 1939, considered by some to be the movies' best-ever year. While it is not in the same class as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or Stagecoach, this is a stellar example of old-school Hollywood. --Donald Liebenson

In the town of Ranchipur, four people find their lives become entwined by unexpected feelings and events they cannot control. Tom Ransome (George Brent), son of an English earl, is living a painter's life. He is pursed by Brenda Joyce, a flirtatious young English girl who adores him. Lady Esketh (Myrna Loy) is a beautiful bored sophisticated and Tom's former girlfriend. And Major Rama (Tyrone Power) is the dedicated Hindu surgeon who captures her heart. When a catastrophic earthquake and flood bring disaster to India, all their lives are forever transformed by the striking clash between good and evil, duty and forbidden love.

Kings Row

Mid 1950's TV series.Running Time: 127 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569522428 Manufacturer No: 65224

Shanghai Gesture

Josef von Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture is one of the most perverse portraits of decadence to squeak past Hollywood censors. Set in a Shanghai of crowded, claustrophobic, and gloriously phony street sets, Sternberg tells the tale of the criminals and aristocrats who inhabit "Mother Gin Sling's," a gambling house of seedy opulence where the bored rich and desperate poor congregate to lose their money and possibly their souls. Into this world wanders the thrill-seeking Poppy (the elegant Gene Tierney), a haughty girl infatuated with the club's sleepy-eyed gigolo-poet, Omar (Victor Mature, at his lazy best). "We buy and sell everything in the most honorable manner," he purrs to Poppy while luring her further into debt. When Gin Sling (Ona Munson) discovers the girl's secret, she uses her as part of an elaborate revenge against millionaire Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston), a Shanghai businessman with his own dark secrets. Though this came out a year before Casablanca, it plays like a twisted, fun-house mirror reflection of that film, a corrupt paradise in world of meaningless bustle, empty gestures, and easy virtue. Sternberg's languid pacing gives the film a stuck-out-of-time quality, with a story that slows and eddies while the film lingers on the sleazy decadence (suggested, rather than shown, in sly, subversive flourishes.)

Unfortunately the source print is substandard, splotchy, and full of speckles, with a soundtrack layered in hiss. At times it's like looking at the film through the veils Sternberg was so fond of. --Sean Axmaker

"The Shanghai Gesture" is a lavishly baroque melodrama set in an international gambling house in Asia featuring a cast of characters with less-than-reputable pasts.Mother Gin-Sling the doyenne of the house controls everyone and everything in her domain. Mother is told by the authorities to close down the establishment because her former lover Sir Guy has just bought the real estate it sits on. Mother seeks revenge by setting up his beautiful daughter Poppy with Dr. Omar a Eurasian of dubious background. Sir Guy fiercely disapproves of Poppy's affair and lifestyle. More murky secrets bubble to the surface before Mother and Sir Guy reach the final blow-out.System Requirements:Running Time 99 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 014381537529 Manufacturer No: ID5375FWDVD

Dance, Girl, Dance

If you only know Lucille Ball from her phenomenal success as a TV comedienne, Dance, Girl, Dance will be a surprising revelation. Not only can Lucy dance and sing with the best of them (after all, she spent part of the 1930s playing a glamorous showgirl in various Goldwyn musicals), but she handily steals the spotlight from Maureen O'Hara in this good-looking RKO production from 1940. Lucy's big break had come only three years earlier (in Stage Door), but she'd been working in Hollywood for seven years when this enjoyable movie demonstrated the potential for movie stardom that Lucy deserved but never fully achieved. She's a bit brassy and a bit sassy, but she's got a heart of gold as Bubbles, a struggling ballet dancer who takes a skin-baring job in a burlesque club (under the man-teasing stage name of "Tiger Lily White") to boost her chances of show-biz success. She's a saucy gold-digger compared to the modestly forthright Judy (O'Hara), but their friendship sees them through as they share a dangerous dalliance with a millionaire playboy (Louis Hayward) before Judy discovers true love with Steve (Ralph Bellamy) the gentlemanly leader of a ballet company.

It's not a classic by any means, but Dance, Girl, Dance is still briskly entertaining, and there's a touch of surprising melodrama involving O'Hara's ballet mentor (played by Maria Ouspenskaya). This movie also has the greater distinction of being directed by Dorothy Arzner, one of the only women (along with Ida Lupino) to break into the male-dominated profession of directing in golden-age Hollywood. Working from a savvy screenplay by Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis, Arzner gives Dance, Girl, Dance a feminist sensibility that was ahead of its time, later embraced by fans and critics as one of this movie's most enduring qualities. Also included in The Lucille Ball Film Collection, this DVD includes two short subjects from 1940: The 20-minute Vitaphone "two-reeler" "Just a Cute Kid," from a story by Damon Runyon and featuring comedy star Frank Faylen, and "Malibu Beach Party," a pun-filled Merrie Melodies cartoon hosted by "Jack Bunny" and featuring a variety of sun-tanned cameos from animated Hollywood stars. --Jeff Shannon

In possibly her most explicitly feminist film director Arzner pairs O'Hara as an idealistic young woman who dreams of becoming a ballerina with Ball the tough-as-leather show girl who doesn't take any shit from her leering drunken audience. Ball convinces O'Hara to become partners in a burlesque troupe in this entertaining "the vamp and the virgin" comedy-drama. As "Bubbles" Ball is in great form.Runtime: 90 minFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/CLASSIC Rating: NR UPC: 053939782226 Manufacturer No: T7822

Irene Dunne Romance Classics

Beyond Christmas (1940)

No Description Available.
Genre: Christmas
Rating: NR
Release Date: 12-OCT-2004
Media Type: DVD