Vincent, June

The Streets of San Francisco - Season 1, Vol. 2

These 13 chronological episodes that concluded season 1 were just the ticket to launching one of the 1970s' most arresting cop shows. The first season of The Streets of San Francisco was nominated for an Emmy for Best Drama Series and its stars, Karl Malden and Michael Douglas, were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. But as this inaugural season unfolded, the veteran cop/rookie cop dynamic that charged the first 14 episodes matured into a more paternal mentor/student relationship (Malden's Mike Stone refers to Douglas's Steve Keller, throughout as "the boy" and "buddy-boy"). These episodes are particularly engrossing, and provide Malden with some of his finest primetime hours. In "Trail of the Serpent," a street gang bent on freeing their captured leader takes Stone hostage. Stone plays it cool, appealing to the humanity of one of the more sensitive gang members, while the more hotheaded Keller almost jeopardizes his rescue. In "Legion of the Lost," Stone goes undercover on skid row to investigate the murders of three homeless men. In two episodes, Stone does not allow personal relationships to compromise his sense of duty. In "Deadline," a newspaper editor tries to cover up the murder of his mistress, and in the process, unwittingly implicates his own son, who was also the victim's lover. In "Shattered Image," a woman from Stone's old neighborhood is now the socialite wife of a murdered senatorial candidate. "Beyond Vengeance" echoes Cape Fear as a vengeful sociopath, freed on parole, seems to be stalking Stone's daughter.

Malden and Douglas are a terrific team, and they are aided and abetted by literate scripts ("Room with a View" alludes to Hemingway's story "The Killers"), with clever twists. In "The Albatross," a killer is freed when it turns out he wasn't wearing his hearing aid and did not hear Keller when he read him his rights. In the Emmy-nominated "The House on Hyde Street," an elderly recluse becomes the prime neighborhood suspect in the death of a young boy. Guest stars in these episodes read like a Hollywood's Most Wanted List, with veteran character actors (Joseph Cotten, Jack Albertson, Leslie Nielsen, Barbara Rush) and future TV Land favorites (Victor French from Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven, a pre-Cheers Nicholas "Coach" Colasanto, Jamie Farr, and Clint Howard). Of course, the real star is San Francisco, an intriguing backdrop with its roller coaster hills and funky neighborhoods. For series fans who left their hearts here, Streets still calls to you. --Donald Liebenson

Twenty year veteran Detective Lt. Mike Stone is partnered with young college educated Inspector Steve Keller who has a lot to learn about being a police detective on the Streets of San Francisco.System Requirements:TRT: 675 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 097361227641 Manufacturer No: 122764

In a Lonely Place

One of Humphrey Bogart's finest performances dominates this unusual 1950 film noir, which focuses less on the murder mystery at the center of its plot than on the investigation's devastating effect on a fragile romance. For Bogart, already a noir icon, the Andrew Solt script afforded an opportunity to explore a more complex and contradictory role--an antiheroic persona in line with the actor's most accomplished and absorbing triumphs throughout his career.

For maverick director Nicholas Ray, the film posed the challenge of taking crime dramas beyond their usual formulas and into a more mature realm, as well as a chance to cast a jaundiced eye on the film industry itself. Its protagonist is Dixon Steele, a Hollywood screenwriter with an acerbic wit and a violent temper. Tasked with adapting a bestseller, he meets a hatcheck girl who's read the book, hoping to glean its highlights before writing the script. When she's found murdered, Steele becomes the prime suspect, and a tightening knot of suspicion forms around the writer.

Steele's only, inconclusive witness is a pretty new neighbor, Laurel (Gloria Grahame), and the couple fall in love even as the pressure mounts. At first the new relationship is a tonic to the hard-boiled writer, who plunges into his script with a renewed vigor and discipline. But as the police continue to shadow him, Steele's own penchant for violence erupts against friends, strangers, and even Laurel herself, whose feelings are increasingly eclipsed by suspicion that her lover is a murderer, and fear that he'll harm her.

Bogart conveys Steele's world-weariness and underlying vulnerability, and manages the delicate task of making both his romantic yearning and sudden, murderous rages equally convincing. Ultimately, that performance and Grahame's sympathetic work elevate In a Lonely Place into what has been called "an existential love story" more than a crime drama. --Sam Sutherland

A hotheaded Hollywood screenwriter, questioned for murder, is drawn to his neighbor when she confirms his alibi, but his volatile nature eventually threatens to destroy their one last chance for real love.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: UN
Release Date: 1-JAN-2007
Media Type: DVD

Black Angel (Universal Noir Collection)

When a beautiful hard-boiled black-mailer is murdered in her swank apartment there are any number of men who might have done it. There's Martin Blair (Dan Duryea) the drunken husband she's dumped; there's shady nightclub owner Marko (Peter Lorre); and there's Kirk Bennett (John Phillips) who was cheating on his wife with her.It's Bennett who was spotted at the crime scene and it's his long-suffering wife Catherine (June Vincent). Who sets out to save him from being executed. Suspecting Marko she teams up with Blair to perform in Marko's club and investigate. Suspense and romance - follow this taut murder-mystery winds its way through a maze of clues to a first-rate surprise ending.Strong performances and stylish atmosphere result in edge-on-you-seat entertainment and one of "the 25 most memorable cult films" (Andrew Sarris Village Voice).System Requirements: Runing Time 71 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 025192549823 Manufacturer No: 25498

Colorado Sundown

Colorado Sundown/Marshal of Cedar Rock

In a Lonely Place [Region 2]

One of Humphrey Bogart's finest performances dominates this unusual 1950 film noir, which focuses less on the murder mystery at the center of its plot than on the investigation's devastating effect on a fragile romance. For Bogart, already a noir icon, the Andrew Solt script afforded an opportunity to explore a more complex and contradictory role--an antiheroic persona in line with the actor's most accomplished and absorbing triumphs throughout his career.

For maverick director Nicholas Ray, the film posed the challenge of taking crime dramas beyond their usual formulas and into a more mature realm, as well as a chance to cast a jaundiced eye on the film industry itself. Its protagonist is Dixon Steele, a Hollywood screenwriter with an acerbic wit and a violent temper. Tasked with adapting a bestseller, he meets a hatcheck girl who's read the book, hoping to glean its highlights before writing the script. When she's found murdered, Steele becomes the prime suspect, and a tightening knot of suspicion forms around the writer.

Steele's only, inconclusive witness is a pretty new neighbor, Laurel (Gloria Grahame), and the couple fall in love even as the pressure mounts. At first the new relationship is a tonic to the hard-boiled writer, who plunges into his script with a renewed vigor and discipline. But as the police continue to shadow him, Steele's own penchant for violence erupts against friends, strangers, and even Laurel herself, whose feelings are increasingly eclipsed by suspicion that her lover is a murderer, and fear that he'll harm her.

Bogart conveys Steele's world-weariness and underlying vulnerability, and manages the delicate task of making both his romantic yearning and sudden, murderous rages equally convincing. Ultimately, that performance and Grahame's sympathetic work elevate In a Lonely Place into what has been called "an existential love story" more than a crime drama. --Sam Sutherland

Can't Help Singing [Region 2]

Colorado Sundown

Slim Pickens' first pairing with singing cowboy Rex Allen came in Colorado Sundown, where the boys inherit a logging company. Trouble comes when brother and sister scoundrels (Fred Graham and June Vincent) try to seize control of the business. The sounds of the popular 50's vocal group Republic Rhythm Riders can be heard throughout this rollicking adventure.

Decades before Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, director William Witney (Zorro Rides Again, The Crimson Ghost) perfected a cinematic technique for increasing the intensity of onscreen violence, by overcranking the camera during fight scenes, so as to marginally speed up filming speed.

Typical of Republic productions in this genre, Colorado Sundown provides a great deal of furious fight footage, a runaway stagecoach corralled by trick riding, and several musical numbers, including the traditional folk song "Down by the Riverside."