Douglas, Gordon

Ultimate Flint Collection (Our Man Flint / In Like Flint)

There's really been only one rival to James Bond: Derek Flint. That's because of James Coburn's special brand of American cool. He's so cool, in fact, that he doesn't care to save the world. That is, until he's personally threatened. He's a true libertarian, with more gadgets and girls than Bond, but with none of his stress or responsibility. In Our Man Flint (1966), he's totally unflappable as he thwarts mad scientists who control the weather--and an island of pleasure drones. Lee J. Cobb costars as Flint's flustered superior, and Edward Mulhare plays a British nemesis with snob appeal. For fans of Austin Powers, incidentally, the funny-sounding phone comes from the Flint films. However, the best gadget remains the watch that enables Flint to feign death. There's a great Jerry Goldsmith score, too.

There was bound to be a Flint sequel, and In Like Flint (1967) delivers the same kind of zany fun as its predecessor. Flint is recruited once again by Lee J. Cobb to be the government's top secret agent, this time to solve a mishap involving the President. Turns out, the Chief Executive has been replaced by an evil duplicate. The new plan for world domination involves feminine aggression, and Flint, with his overpowering charisma, is just the man to turn the hostile forces around. In Like Flint is still over the top, but some of the novelty has worn off, and it doesn't have quite the same edge as the original. Even Jerry Goldsmith's score is a bit more subdued. But the film still has James Coburn and that funny phone. --Bill Desowitz

International spy Derek Flint saves the world with various gadgets and surrounded by beautiful women.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 7-NOV-2006
Media Type: DVD

Young at Heart

This 1954 musical remake of Four Daughters stars Doris Day as a well-bred New England woman who marries a chip-on-his-shoulder musician (Frank Sinatra). Lots of tears, yes, but this version of Fannie Hurst's novel is considerably cheered up from the 1938 tearjerker. Dorothy Malone and Elizabeth Fraser play Day's sisters (a fourth sister present in Four Daughters was written out), Robert Keith is the paterfamilias to a bunch of musical prodigies, and Gig Young is entertaining as the composer-boarder who tries deflecting the sisters' interest in him by bringing Sinatra home one day. Both Day and Sinatra really shine in this, and the songs include the Johnny Richards-Caroline Leigh title tune, which became part of Sinatra's standard repertoire. --Tom Keogh

Follow That Dream

Elvis Presley is at his dreamboat peak in this musical comedy that finds the sexy star crooning five original songs in an amusing and fast-paced (Variety) romp boasting a delightful mixture of songs romance humor and good old homespun warmth (Citizen-News)!When his scheming pop decides to homestead the family on a public beach Toby Kwimper (Presley) digs the exotic setting but hates the attention he is suddenly receiving. Though he just wants to play his guitar Toby finds himself up to his baby blues in trouble with government bureaucrats crime bosses and even two smitten kittens an adopted little sister who feels more than sisterly love for him and a social worker with more than his welfare on her mind!System Requirements: Running Time 109 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 027616903969 Manufacturer No: 1006194

Elvis hadn't dyed his hair a permanent midnight black yet in Follow That Dream, which is another way of saying this is still the point in his career when he was making movies, not just Elvis Presley vehicles. Elvis road-trips with his crabby, anti-government pop (Arthur O'Connell) and an adopted brood to a Florida beach, which by a legal quirk they can homestead. The authorities and some fairly unbelievable gangsters would like to stop them. The songs are undistinguished but not awful, the scenery is nice, and Elvis--looking well-fed and relaxed--shows off good comedic chops doing a dumb-guy shtick. Screenwriter Charles Lederer and director Gordon Douglas are a class act by Presley picture standards, keeping the sitcom-style plot moving along. No fancy clothes or cars in this one, just Elvis and some beachcombing and an old git-tar, and not a bad time-killer for all that. --Robert Horton

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms / Them! (Double Feature)

Humanity has split the atom unleashing a new era of science - an era that would also unleash monstrous celluloid rampages. An A-bomb test in the Arctic awakens The Beast from 20000 Fathoms and it makes New York City its stomping ground in the movie (based on a story by Ray Bradbury) that launched a string of Atomic Age creature features. One of the best of those cautionary yarns is Them! Radiation-mutated ants - 12 feet long and capable of lifting tons - become giant problems for James Whitmore Edmund Gwenn James Arness and all of Los Angeles. They're big. They're bad. They've got a serious attitude problem. You won't find a can of bug spray big enough to stop 'em!System Requirements:Run Time: 174 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: SCI-FI/FANTASY UPC: 012569731264 Manufacturer No: 73126

Them!

That ol' cinematic devil the A-bomb has spawned a colony of giant murderous ants bent on destroying humanity in this, the seminal big bug movie (an obvious and oft-credited influence for Alien among countless others). The special effects may be dated, but this brilliantly rational-sounding film has held up wonderfully in all other regards, including some starkly effective location work in the high Arizona desert, a genuinely inspired sound design guaranteed to bring on the creepy-crawlies, and an unexpectedly dry sense of humor (mainly personified by Grade-A egghead scientist Edmund Gwenn). This is essential viewing for all those who consider themselves science fiction or horror fans. Heroic hardcase James Arness previously played for the other team as the titular character in The Thing from Another World. --Andrew Wright

Radiation from bomb tests creates giant, mutant ants that descend upon a town.

Up Periscope

Anyone with a fondness for the conventions of the submarine picture will be content with the modest pleasures of Up Periscope, a World War II melodrama starring James Garner in one of his early Maverick-era roles. Pulled away from a week-long romance, Garner tags along with the sub to a Japanese-held island, where he will SCUBA ashore and copy a secret radio code. On top of the reliable suspense of a man alone behind enemy lines, the film also offers captain Edmond O'Brien, whose previous mission has his crew suspecting him of cowardice. Will he cut and run before Garner returns to the submarine? Director Gordon Douglas made a batch of entertaining pictures over the years (a bunch of Sinatra titles, the giant-bug classic Them!, In Like Flint) and he coolly finds some effective ways to photograph men in the close quarters of a sub. The main draw is James Garner in his youthful prime; even if the movie doesn't exploit his comic talent, it shows how effortlessly he connects with an audience. The supporting cast consists of the kind of actors who inevitably seem to people a WWII ship's crew: solid character actors (Alan Hale Jr., who performed similar undersea duties in Destination Tokyo), oddballs and one-offs (Frank Gifford, Edd "Kooky" Byrnes), and future names (Warren Oates). --Robert Horton

A navy lieutenant (James Garner "Maverick") during World War II is ordered aboard a submarine to get special photographs of a Japanese-controlled island.

DVD Features:
Featurette
Theatrical Trailer

Robin and the Seven Hoods

In prohibition-era Chicago the corrupt sheriff and Guy Gisborne a south-side racketeer knock off the boss Big Jim. Everyone falls in line behind Guy except Robbo who controls the north side. Although he's outgunned Robbo wants to keep his own territory. A pool-playing dude from Indiana and the director of a boys' orphanage join forces with Robbo; and when he gives some money to the orphanage he becomes the toast of the town as a hood like Robin Hood. Meanwhile Guy schemes to get rid of Robbo and Big Jim's heretofore unknown daughter Marian appears and goes from man to man trying to find an ally in her quest to run the whole show. Can Robbo hold things together?Running Time: 124 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/CLASSICS UPC: 883929007578 Manufacturer No: 1000036692

"My kind of town, Chicago is...." The last film venture by the Rat Pack finds Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. in an update of the Robin Hood legend, set in Chi-town in 1928. The boys play gangsters who become Jazz Age Merry Men; Bing Crosby is their eloquent spokesman. As usual, women are in short supply within the featured cast, but the film is colorful enough anyway with its period trappings. By the time this movie was released in 1964, the Zeitgeist was already shifting toward the Beatles, and Frank, Dean, and Sammy looked like your father's entertainment. But while this film is no knockout, director Gordon Douglas (Young at Heart) makes it a pleasant enough way to say good-bye to the Rat Pack's life together on film. --Tom Keogh

Chuka

Rod Taylor co-produced the 1967 Chuka and stars as the titular gunslinger whose lonely path leads to a U.S. Army outpost manned by foul-ups, degenerates, and a half-mad, alcoholic commander (John Mills). Surrounded by starving Arapaho Indians clearly getting ready to massacre the fort's inhabitants, Mills' character, Colonel Valois, refuses to yield to Chuka's demand that everyone clear out and allow the Arapaho to take provisions they need to survive. With Valois drunk and unbending, a creepy second-in-command (Louis Hayward) leading a mutiny, a two-fisted sergeant (Ernest Borgnine) defending Valois against any criticism, and the presence of two Mexican women (one of whom has a romantic past with Chuka) who will not be spared during a slaughter, Chuka does what he can to broker a peaceful way out of the dilemma. Directed by Gordon Douglas (The Detective), Chuka is self-consciously arty (camera angles turn up in the weirdest of places) yet dramatically enthralling. Very much an actor's vehicle that, on the one hand, allows the likes of James Whitmore to wallow in mannerisms, Chuka also features several startlingly emotional scenes. Among them is the aftermath of a brutal fight between Taylor and Borgnine, in which their bloodied characters--too exhausted to speak--communicate mutual respect by pawing at each other's heads, like infant brothers. --Tom Keogh

Throughout the West, one name means action: Chuka! Tension builds for soldiers guarding a besieged prairie fort against Indian attacks. Their nerves are frayed and their spirits are dying. But there's a glimmer of hope: the lone gunfighter who's come to help them is the man called Chuka!

Lady in Cement

When it was released in 1968, Lady in Cement was the perfect movie for "The Man Who Reads Playboy." It was tailor-made for middle-aged martini-and-poker men who enjoyed Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome a year earlier, and this slapdash sequel finds Ol' Blue Eyes in sun-soaked Miami, where his treasure-hunting discovery of a naked blonde (the ill-fated lady in cement, found dead underwater) gets him tangled up with a massive thug (Dan Blocker), a retired Mafioso (Martin Gabel) with an over-ambitious son, an ultra-sexy heiress (Raquel Welch, in her sexpot prime at age 27), and a variety of Floridian lowlifes who lent the film its R-rated appeal for the cocktail crowd. With its disposable mystery, rampant homophobia, go-go club lechery, peekaboo nudity, bursts of red-blooded violence, and swinging score by Hugo Montenegro, this not-so-lucky Lady bombed at the box office and tested Sinatra's legendary temper, but it's still raucously entertaining (it partially inspired the Austin Powers comedies), and there are plenty of in-jokes to be seen (and especially heard) for anyone steeped in '60s pop culture. Nestled between The Graduate and Easy Rider, Lady in Cement was a cinematic fossil even before the cameras rolled, but Frank's fans are sure to love it anyway. --Jeff Shannon

In this solid suspense drama, Frank Sinatra stars as detective Tony Rome who, while working on a case, discovers everybody he talks to winds up dead.

Tony Rome

The beautiful daughter of a wealthy industrialist turns up drunk and unconscious in a hotel room. To avoid a scandal the hotel house detective hires his former partner, private detective Tony Rome, to sober her up and escort her home. The next day, the girl's diamond pin is mysteriously missing. Arriving back at his houseboat, Tony is greeted by a pair of thugs who knock him out and tear his boat apart, desperate to find the pin. Tony's problems are just beginning, When he gets to his office he's in for a grisly surprise. His ex-partner is waiting for him with a bullet through his head.