Allen, Lewis

The Fugitive - Season Two, Vol. 1

Dr. Richard Kimble is accused to be the murder of his wife. The night before his execution he escapes. The only chance to prove his innocence is to find the man who killed hi wife. Kimble persecuted by the Lt. Gerard risks his life several times when he shows his identity to help other people out of trouble.System Requirements:Running Time: 771 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 097361327648 Manufacturer No: 132764

The relentless Lt. Gerard (Barry Morse) has always insisted that capturing fugitive Richard Kimble (David Janssen) was just "unfinished business." But in "The Nemesis," an essential episode that is one of the highlights of this half-season set, it's personal. An unwitting Kimble has stolen Girard's car to make a getaway, not knowing that it contains Girard's young son, Phil, Jr. (Kurt Russell). Phil Jr. is a chip off the old block (he cleverly leaves a trail of his precious football cards to point his father in the right direction), but a selfless act by Kimble raises doubts in the boy's mind. "You and dad can't both be right," he questions. This is just one of the compelling human dramas at the heart of one of television's Most Wanted series. Now in his second year on the run after escaping from the Death Row-bound train, Kimble is "tired of looking over his shoulder… tired of running." In "Escape Into Black," he visits a small-town diner and loses his memory after the gas stove explodes. In "When the Bough Breaks," he hops a freight car that also carries a traumatized woman who has abducted a baby. Until he can find the one-armed man (Bill Raisch) he witnessed running from his home the night his wife was killed, he will have to endure "another shabby room, another lonely night." Not that Kimble doesn't have his champions. In the season-opener, "Man in a Chariot," a college law professor, argues Kimble's case before his students in a mock trial. In "World's End," the daughter (Suzanne Pleshette) of his former defense attorney contacts Kimble with potentially devastating news about the ever-elusive one-armed man and schemes to run away with him. In "Escape into Black," a compassionate hospital welfare caseworker (Betty Garrett) tries to find the one-armed man while Kimble recovers.

The episodes in this set maintain an unflagging pace, thanks to taut direction (the late Sydney Pollack directed "Man on a String," in which Kimble is a very reluctant witness in a murder case) and excellent scripts (George Eckstein, who wrote "Man in a Chariot" and "When the Bough Breaks" would co-write The Fugitive's final episode, a television benchmark). Among the great character actors who guest star in these episodes include Tuesday Weld as a manipulative and very twisted sister in "Dark Corner," Slim Pickens as a poacher in "Nemesis," and Ivan Dixon as a doctor who discovers Kimble's identity in "Escape Into Black." The Fugitive taps into the primal fear that was one of Hitchcock's favorite themes: What would you do if you were falsely accused? Janssen is unforgettable in his signature role as the man whose every instinct is to flee the scene and not get involved with the strangers whose paths he crosses. But we offer viewers the same advice the professor gives Kimble in "Chariot": "All I ask is that you stay around and see what happens." --Donald Liebenson

Cannon: Season One, Vol. 1

The weekly adventures of Frank Cannon an overweight balding ex-cop with a deep voice and expensive tastes in culinary pleasures who becomes a high-priced private investigator. Since Cannon's girth didn't allow for many fist-fights and gun battles (although there were many) the series substituted car chases and high production values in their place.System Requirements:Running Time: 615 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 097368924246 Manufacturer No: 892424

Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Act of Violence / Mystery Street / Crime Wave / Decoy / Illegal / The Big Steal / They Live By Night / Side Street / Where Danger Lives / Tension)

Ex-World War II pilot Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is a respected contractor and family man. Then his troubled gimp-legged bombardier (Robert Ryan) shows up with a gun and a score to settle. Perhaps neither man is what he seems to be as director Fred Zinnemann (The Day of the Jackal) guides a searing Act of Violence "the first postwar noir to take a challenging look at the ethics of men in combat" (Eddie Muller Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir). Murder lives on Mystery Street. John Sturges (The Great Escape) directs a revealing-for-the-era procedural about a Boston cop (Ricardo Montalban) solving a whodunit with the help of a Harvard forsensic expert (Bruce Bennett). Welcome to CSI Noir.Running Time: 833 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 085391150206 Manufacturer No: 115020

The fourth volume of Warner Video's Film Noir Classic Collection boasts ten titles on five double-feature discs--appropriate packaging for films that mostly run less than an hour-and-a-half and would have shared the marquee with another picture upon original release. It's a welcome set, with entries by top noir directors Anthony Mann and Nicholas Ray, several unheralded gems, and solid entertainment value in nearly every instance. But somebody (and it looks as if that's us) ought to mention that Warners is getting a mite cavalier with the label "film noir." You can have a '40s or '50s movie that's in black and white, involves criminal activity, and features stars like Robert Mitchum or Edward G. Robinson, and still not tap into the pungent atmosphere, perverse psychology, implacable fatalism, and jagged/voluptuous style that are the hallmarks of noir. Indeed, there are several such movies in this set--and in their non-noir ways, they're not bad.

Act of Violence (1948) is the real McCoy, albeit so meticulously directed by Fred Zinnemann in postwar-European style that it's virtually an art-film noir. Van Heflin plays a model small-town citizen suddenly confronted with a guilty WWII past, in the dark, limping, permanently trenchcoated figure of Robert Ryan. The film systematically dismantles the domestic security of Heflin's life till he's forced to flee his own home, which has become a trap, and escape into the nightworld of the big city. Mary Astor is superb as one of its few sympathetic denizens. Co-featured with Act of Violence is Mystery Street (1950), a hard-edged movie about a B-girl's murder and some of the proto-CSI techniques the police use to solve the crime. Directed by John Sturges, from a script by Richard Brooks and Sydney Boehm, the picture is enhanced by atmospheric Boston and Cape Cod settings and camerawork by Mr. Film Noir himself, John Alton.

For case-hardened noiristes, the disc holding Decoy and Crime Wave is the collection's prime catch. Decoy (1946), like Dillinger in Volume 2, is an ultra-low-budget offering from Monogram Pictures and a fascinatingly mixed bag of Poverty Row production values and flashes of directorial ambition (one night scene in a woods strongly suggests director Jack Bernhard had seen Sunrise). Its main attraction is a cold-hearted heroine who could pledge the same sorority as the dames from Double Indemnity, Gun Crazy, and The Lady from Shanghai. (Alas, British-born actress Jean Gillie appeared in only one subsequent film, dying at the age of 34.) Andre De Toth's Crime Wave (1954) places us in the awkward position of being grateful for the chance to see an exciting movie and obliged to disqualify it from the set: it's closer to the '50s police procedural (Dragnet et al.) than to film noir. Shot almost entirely on location, the picture virtually reeks of seedy L.A. nightlife and satisfyingly unreels without benefit of music score. Ted De Corsia, Nedrick Young, and Charles Buchinsky-soon-to-be-Bronson supply juicy villainy, with a characteristically unclean contribution late in the film from Timothy Carey. Gene Nelson plays an ex-con, resolved to go straight yet being forced to abet his newly escaped old cellmates, and the world-weary cop keeping tabs on all of them is Sterling Hayden.

The set's two stellar noir directors share a disc and costars, Farley Granger and the ethereal Cathy O'Donnell. They Live by Night (1948) was Nicholas Ray's maiden effort, and kinetically and emotionally the director found natural rapport with the spooked-animal vulnerability of his hero and heroine. This was the first film version of Edward Anderson's Depression-era novel Thieves Like Us (adapted again a quarter-century later by Robert Altman), and its tale of a young rural misfit drawn into more violent crime by older, harder fellow escapees from a prison farm anticipates the spirit of Ray's '50s teen classic Rebel Without a Cause. Side Street (1949) is fascinating as a bridge between Anthony Mann's great series of noirs shot by John Alton and the Western genre Mann would soon master. Working this time with a conventional MGM cameraman (Joseph Ruttenberg), the director demonstrates that the terrific "eye" that gave us T-Men, Border Incident, et al. was at least as much Mann's as Alton's, and he visualizes Manhattan as a collection of jagged skylines and deep, shadowed canyons. The script (by Sydney Boehm) involves a mail carrier (Granger) who, worried about taking proper care of his pregnant wife (O'Donnell), impulsively swipes an envelope full of money. Hard upon that "one false step," the family man finds himself caught up in a dark scheme involving blackmail and, several times over, murder.

Despite a screenplay by Hitchcock collaborator Charles Bennett and direction by John Farrow (The Big Clock), Where Danger Lives (1950) is easily the weakest entry in Vol. 4. Robert Mitchum plays a doctor who saves a would-be suicide, then falls for her without noticing she's crazy as a loon, and homicidal to boot. Soon they're on the run, sought by the law and at the mercy of every larcenous character between them and the Mexican border. Despite yeoman work by Mitchum and RKO shadowmaster Nicholas Musuraca, and the too-brief participation of Claude Rains, the film founders on the femme-fatale casting of Howard Hughes discovery Faith Domergue. A more memorably dodgy female complicates everybody's life in Tension (1950), the next-to-last Hollywood film for director John Berry before his blacklisting. This one's played by Audrey Totter--never a major star, but a delicious and definitive late-'40s dame (who also supplies sharp commentary on the auxiliary audio track). Her milquetoast husband, pharmacist Richard Basehart, sets up a second identity for himself under which to seek revenge for her numerous infidelities--till the new man he has become makes the acquaintance of neighbor Cyd Charisse. (No, Charisse does not dance, but those awesome legs are nevertheless put to creative use.) Eventually someone is dead, and cops Barry Sullivan and William Conrad enter the picture, contributing their own shades of gray to the noir palette. Another satisfying, little-known film that collections like this one lead us to discover.

There's also satisfaction to be had from our final pairing, Illegal and The Big Steal--even if both these titles have to be turned back at the noir border. Illegal (1955) is the third version of The Mouthpiece, a '30s play and film about an esteemed district attorney who falls from grace but rebounds as a spellbinding defense attorney much-sought-after by the criminal class. It was probably the best part Edward G. Robinson had in the '50s, and he's all the reason we need for watching. But the role and the story predated noir (the previous renditions came out in 1932 and 1940), and this movie, for all intents and purposes, postdates noir. In addition, sad to say, it's an artifact from that era when Warner Bros.' movies had started looking like the studio's TV shows. By contrast, The Big Steal (1949) springs from the heart of the classic noir era, was produced for perhaps the most noir-friendly of studios, RKO, and even boasts the costars and screenwriter of the sublime Out of the Past--which is to say, Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Daniel Mainwaring (a.k.a. "Geoffrey Homes"). The whirlwind first reel plops us right in the middle of several chases, with as many switcheroos of allegiance and direction, in pursuit of an "it" that won't be specified till some time later. All nimbly managed by director Don Siegel, on location in Mexico yet, and briskly over with in 72 minutes. But it's a comedy-adventure, not a film noir. Not even close.

Most of the films come accompanied by authoritative voiceover commentaries, including contributions by L.A. crime novelist James Ellroy (on Crime Wave) and surviving cast members Nina Foch (Illegal) and Audrey Totter (Tension). However, for a sporadic series of primers on noir style, which feature absurdly florid lighting of the talking heads and lesson-plan intertitles that belong on a blackboard, somebody at Warner Home Video should be taken for a ride. --Richard T. Jameson

Little House on the Prairie - The Pilot

Discover the television movie that started it all! Based on the best-selling books by Laura Ingalls Wilder this classic produced and directed by Michael Landon launched the Emmy Award-winning series. This movie takes us from the woods of Wisconsin to the plains of Kansas where the Ingalls struggle to build a new life. With indomitable courage that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit the Ingalls face endless challenges and experience countless adventures as they pursue their dream of a new home. This premiere movie is a "must-have" for all Little House fans!Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 069458111737 Manufacturer No: A021427

Best of Bonanza (34 episodes)

The Cartwright's thousand-square-mile Ponderosa Ranch is located near Virginia City Nevada site of the Comstock Silver Lode during and after the Civil War.

The Best of Bonanza, Vol. 1

Little House on the Prairie - Christmas

No Description Available.
Genre: Television
Rating: G
Release Date: 2-APR-2007
Media Type: DVD

Little House on the Prairie - I'll Be Waving as You Drive Away (TV Special)

In this dramatic two-hour episode Charles takes Mary to an eye specialist when she begins to experience difficulty seeing. He is devastated to learn that she will most certainly lose her sight and for a while cannot bring himself to tell her the truth about her condition. When Mary does go blind Charles and Caroline decide it would be best for her to attend a special school in Iowa. Although reluctant to participate and learn in the beginning Mary develops a special bond with her teacher Adam Kendall.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 069458111935 Manufacturer No: A021441

The Bonanza Collection

Take your boots off, put the feedbags on the horses, sit back, and enjoy a passel of mighty-fine episodes from television's most-beloved Western series: BONANZA!

Here is the vast Ponderosa Ranch and the entire Cartwright family: Ben, Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe (otherwise known as Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts, Dan Blocker, and Michael Landon). Using the Western TV show format, BONANZA wove morality tales around the Cartwrights, touching on such social issues as injustice and race prejudice, just one of the reasons this classic series still holds up strong today.

Among the guest stars included among the classic episodes in this compilation: Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek ; Lee Van Cleef, gunslinger in spaghetti Westerns; Ricardo Montalban of Fantasy Island ; Sebastian Cabot of Family Affair ; Vic Morrow of Combat ; Franchot Tone of Mutiny on the Bounty , Julie Adams of Creature from the Black Lagoon ; British `Scream Queen' Hazel Court, future game show host Bob Barker, and Everett Sloane of Citizen Kane ; as well as Hollywood reliables Dan Duryea, Patricia Medina, Lyle Talbot, Claude Akins and Philip Ahn.

With fifteen complete episodes of BONANZA on five discs, this DVD collection is perfect for fans of Westerns, classic TV shows, or just good old-fashioned entertainment.

735 minutes

DISC 1

"The Courtship"

Guest stars Julie Adams, Paul Dubov and Lyle Talbot

Going to the aid of a beautiful young widow, Hoss falls in love and becomes engaged to her, not knowing she has a serious gambling problem. Julie Adams, the damsel in distress in The Creature from the Black Lagoon, guest stars.

"Denver McKee"

Guest stars Franchot Tone, Natalie Trundy, Ken Mayer and Bob Barker

The Cartwrights ask former lawman hero Denver McKee (Franchot Tone) to lead a posse in search of an outlaw gang, unaware that he is the gang's leader. Complicating things is Little Joe having eyes for his daughter, just returned from the East and equally ignorant of her father's crimes.

"The Gunmen"

Guest stars George Mitchell, Ellen Corby & Jonathan Gilmore

In Texas to buy breeding stock for the Ponderosa, Hoss and Little Joe are mistaken for two gunslingers hired by one side in a feud between two families. Will they be able prove the mistaken identity before they are shot or hanged, and what will happen when their lookalikes show up?

DISC 2

"Avenger"

Guest stars Vic Morrow, Jean Allison

Convicted of murder, Ben and Adam Cartwright await hanging, with Hoss and Little Joe trying to exonerate them. Meanwhile, a stranger with a dark past (Vic Morrow) comes to town looking for someone and asking questions. Will he side with the Cartwrights?

"Last Trophy"

Guest stars Hazel Court , Edward Ashley

Adam guides a visiting British lord and lady on a mountain lion hunt, only to encounter more dangerous varmints in the form of lawless renegades who take the party hostage.

"Desert Justice"

Guest stars Claude Akins, Tom Greenway and Bud Osbourne

Claude Akins guest stars as a none-too-gentle U.S. marshall extraditing a friend of the Cartwrights back to California to stand trial for murder. Adam and Hoss go along to make sure their friend gets to court alive.

DISC 3

"The Ape"

Guest stars Leonard Nimoy, Karen Sharpe, Cal Bolder

Hoss attempts to help out a brawny but dimwitted and unstable drifter (Cal Bolder) who is infatuated with a callous saloon floozy (Karen Sharpe). Leonard Nimoy plays her bartender friend.

"The Blood Line"

Guest stars Jan Sterling, David Macklin, Lee Van Cleef, Allan "Rocky" Lane

After Ben shoots a man in self-defense, he and Hoss try to help out his vengeful teenage son (David Macklin). Movie bad girl Jan Sterling plays—what else? - a bad girl, and future spaghetti western star Lee Van Cleef plays- what else?—a gunslinger.

"Showdown"

Guest stars Ben Cooper, Jack Lambert, Ray Teal

A young bank robber hires on as a hand at the Ponderosa as lookout for his gang. Little Joe is suspicious of the stranger, who has his own misgivings as the Cartwrights treat him with kindness. Will he remain loyal to the gang of robbers?

DISC 4

"Blood on the Land"

A hardbitten sheep herder (Everett Sloane) aims to drive his herd over the Ponderosa, and Ben Cartwright is just as determined to stop him. Can Adam resolve the matter without bloodshed, or will there be a range war?

"Badge Without Honor"

Guest stars Dan Duryea, Fred Beir, Christine White, Wendell Holmes, Richard Warren

Dan Duryea plays a smooth talking lawman who likes killing a little too much, raising Adam's suspicions about his mission to take an unwilling witness back to California to testify.

"Death at Dawn"

Guest stars: Robert Middleton, Gregory Walcott, Morgan Woodward, Wendell Holmes

When Virginia City is overrun by a gang of bullies, the sheriff deputizes the Cartwrights to help restore order. Will the gang allow one of their own to be hanged? Character actor Robert Middleton guest stars as the leader of the gang.

DISC 5

"The Spanish Grant"

Guest stars Patricia Medina, Sebastian Cabot, Paul Picerni, Celia Lovsky

Holders of an original land grant ruthlessly evict homesteaders on their property. Are the Cartwrights next? Patricia Medina guest stars as the land heiress of dubious origin, with Sebastian Cabot as her conniving manipulator. Will Adam let his feelings for the senorita interfere with finding out the truth?

"Day of Reckoning"

Guest stars Ricardo Montalban, Madlyn Rhue, Anthony Caruso

Ricardo Montalban guest stars as an Indian caught between the traditional ways of his tribe and the new ways of the settlers. Even though he saves Ben Cartwright's life, will hostility of other whites and contempt from his fellow braves drive him on the warpath?

"The Fear Merchants"

Gene Evans, Helen Westcott, Frank Ferguson, Guy Lee, Philip Ahn

A candidate (Gene Evans) for the mayor of Virginia City stirs up hatred against Chinese immigrants, including Hop Sing. When one Chinese is accused of murder, mob violence brews. No need to state whom the Cartwrights support.

Suddenly

Directly in the wake of his Oscar-winning comeback in From Here to Eternity, Frank Sinatra took on the role of a psychopathic hit man in this taut, low-budget film noir. The choice shows how interested Sinatra was in serious acting during the mid- to late '50s; there's nothing remotely likable about this angular, neurotic assassin. He's in the small town of Suddenly to kill the president, who is passing through on a quick train stop. Sinatra makes hostages of a local family and sheriff Sterling Hayden, and the film is basically a countdown to the president's arrival, with Sinatra's patter getting loonier as the day goes on. Aside from the interest of Sinatra's performance (very focused and downright perverse at times), and the film's place in the American noir tradition, Suddenly is uncannily prophetic on the subject of assassination. It's clear that the killer is doing it for the fame as well as the money, a theme that would crop up in later confessions of real-life killers or would-be killers. Perhaps the 1954 film was too prophetic; like Sinatra's Manchurian Candidate, this movie was pulled from circulation for years after the JFK assassination. According to Kitty Kelley's bio of Sinatra, Lee Harvey Oswald saw this film a few days before he took rifle in hand. Now in the public domain, Suddenly is generally available in cheap, scratchy prints. --Robert Horton