The Postman Always Rings Twice
by Tay Garnett
from Warner Home Video
A hitchiker falls in love with a cafe waitress. Together they murder her husband and then their troubles begin.
Genre: Suspense
Rating: NR
Release Date: 6-JAN-2004
Media Type: DVD
Even under the heavy censorship of 1946 Hollywood, Lana Turner and John Garfield's libidinous desires burn up the screen in Tay Garnett's adaptation of James M. Cain's torrid crime melodrama. Platinum blond Turner is Cora, a restless sexpot stuck in a roadside diner married to mundane middle-aged fry cook Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway) when handsome drifter Frank (Garfield) blows her way. It's lust at first sight, a rapacious desire that neither can break off, and before long they're plotting his demise--but in the wicked world of Cain nothing is that easy. Garnett's visual approach is subdued compared to the more expressionistic film noir of the period, but he's at no loss when he films the luminous Turner in her milky-white wardrobe. She radiates repressed sexuality and uncontrollable passion while Garfield's smart-talking loner Frank mixes street-smart swagger and scrappy toughness with vulnerability and sincere intensity. Costar Hume Cronyn cuts a cold, calculating figure as their conniving lawyer, a chilly character that only increases our feelings for the murderous couple, victims of an all consuming amour fou that drives their passions to extremes. --Sean Axmaker
Bataan/Back to Bataan
by Edward Dmytryk
from Warner Home Video
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 12/12/2006 Rating: Nr
China Seas
by Reginald Le Borg
from Warner Home Video
The captain of a tramp steamer successfully negotiates a series of dangerous situations. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 06/20/2006 Starring: Clark Gable Rosalind Russell Run time: 87 minutes Rating: Nr
Sea captain Clark Gable has his hands full on the Hong Kong-Singapore route: secret gold hidden below decks, pirates, a typhoon. None of which truly matters, since the real action here is animal attraction: Gable can't believe the one classy lady (Rosalind Russell) he ever loved has come on board the same time as his bawdy mistress (Jean Harlow). Director Tay Garnett does well by the storm at sea and the marauding pirates, but he knows the real fun is when Gable and Harlow trade smoldering glances and caustic one-liners. And if more deliciously vulgar dialogue is needed, Wallace Beery is there to spray it around. However preposterous all this may seem, it's so spicily written (script by James Kevin McGuinness and the gifted Jules Furthman) and perfectly cast that it satisfies on pretty much every level. Gable was at his prime here, a bullheadedly confident example of machismos americanus in his natural habitat, and in Harlow he found his perfect unpretentious sparring partner. China Seas is essentially a rehash of their teaming in Red Dust, but absolutely nobody minded. --Robert Horton
Bataan
by Tay Garnett
from MGM
Tay Garnett was a hard-nosed, job-of-all-work director who moved from studio to studio and genre to genre throughout the golden age of Hollywood. He never achieved the status, let alone the distinctive signature, of a Howard Hawks or Raoul Walsh; still, with talent, brashness, and cojones to spare, he was responsible for a slew of cheerfully vulgar entertainments, and several genuinely fine films.
Bataan may well be the best. Certainly it's one of the strongest Hollywood salutes to the war effort while World War II was still raging. In his grittiest role to date, Robert Taylor (sans mustache) plays a U.S. Army sergeant fighting a rear-guard action in the Philippine jungle, covering Douglas MacArthur's retreat. His platoon is the usual wartime study in democratic motley: veterans (Lloyd Nolan, Thomas Mitchell, Tom Dugan) thrown together with green recruits (Robert Walker, Barry Nelson), a Latino (Desi Arnaz), a black (Kenneth Spencer), not to mention a couple of stalwart Filipinos (Roque Espiritu, J. Alex Havier), and several officer types (George Murphy, Lee Bowman) with sense enough to defer to the sergeant's judgment. As in John Ford's desert classic The Lost Patrol, the group is whittled down through misadventure, disease, and skirmishes with the ever-advancing Japanese, till only a handful remain for a still-shattering last stand.
Bataan was made at MGM, and the principal setting, a jungle clearing overlooking a strategic bridge, stinks of the soundstage. In other respects, however, Garnett manages to introduce shocking, un-Metro-like realism into the proceedings. In an early scene of bombardment, a GI, blinded, crawls out of the wreckage of a field hospital only to have a smoking roofbeam crush his bandaged skull. There's nothing cosmetic about the wounds in this movie; they hurt and they bleed, and people get them during the most gruesome hand-to-hand combat in any '40s war movie. --Richard T. Jameson
Japan has just invaded the phillipines and the us army attempts a desperate defence. Thirteen men are chosen to blow up a bridge on the bataan peninsula and keep the japanese from rebuilding it. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 02/14/2006 Starring: Robert Taylor George Murphy Run time: 114 minutes Rating: R Director: Tay Garnett
Naked City - Button in the Haystack
by David Lowell Rich
from Image Entertainment
Episodes: "A Hole in the City" (Ep. 52, February 1, 1961) - After holding up an armored car, gang leader Lewis Nunda (Robert Duvall) and his cronies hide out at the home of their leader's aunt (Sylvia Sidney), where Nunda painfully confronts his past. "Button in the Haystack" (Ep. 55, February 22, 1961) - When a service station owner (Albert Salmi) fears he'll be arrested for the murder of a man found nearby, he panics and gets rid of his gun, the only evidence that can save him. "Shoes for Vinnie Winford" (Ep. 56, March 1, 1961) - When a dance hostess is reported missing, a police investigation links the club's sadistic owner (Dennis Hopper) to her disappearance. "Vengeance Is a Wheel" (Ep. 58, March 15, 1961) - Mario Licosa (Paul Stevens) seeks vengeance when the family patriarch is killed, despite his brother's (Ben Piazza) pleas to stay out of it.
The Loretta Young Show - Christine's Children Series
by John Newland
from Vci Video
Few celebrities have enjoyed the professional longevity of the Hollywood actress Loretta Young, whose remarkable career stretched over seven decades - beginning as a child extra during the Silent Era of motion pictures, attaining star status as a romantic leading lady during Hollywood's Golden Age, and on into television as the host of her own popular dramatic series, The Loretta Young Show, on NBC. Following the long-running success of her NBC Dramatic Anthology series - the first "Loretta Young Show" - which ran for eight years, from 1953-1961, Miss Young switched networks to star in this series. Miss Young plays a New York magazine writer trying to raise seven children; James Philbrook played her boss, the magazine editor she eventually marries. Bonus Features: Scene Selection| Bios| Trailers| Photo Gallery| An interview with Sandy Schrier (fashion expert on Loretta Young)| Interviews with some of the cast: Celia Kaye (Milius), Sandra Descher, Beverly Washburn| Special interview with Loretta Young's 3 children. Specs: 4-DVD9s; Dolby Digital; 676 minutes; B&W; 1.33:1 Aspect Ratio; MPAA - NR; Year - 1962; SRP - $39.99.
Stand-In
by Tay Garnett
from Image Entertainment
Humphrey Bogart takes a rare stab at comedy in the show-biz screwball comedy Stand-In. But though Bogart demonstrates his effortless star power, Leslie Howard (best known as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind) turns in a marvelous comic performance as a finicky mathematical whiz named Atterbury Dodd, who's sent by a bank to decide whether a Hollywood studio should be salvaged or shut down. Assaulted by social parasites and stage mothers upon his arrival in Tinseltown, Dodd must take refuge in a flophouse filled with has-beens, never-weres, and a trained seal--among them a former child star (Joan Blondell) whose only job now is as a stand-in for an overrated glamour queen. Between Blondell and Bogart (playing a bitter producer), Dodd gets some lessons in show-biz economics. The movie's ending is dopey, but it's a lot of fun along the way. --Bret Fetzer
Stuffy, bookish Atterbury Dodd (Leslie Howard) goes from Wall Street's balance sheets to Hollywood's scandal sheets in this rollicking look at Tinseltown's heyday! Sent to take over the reins of floundering Colossal Studios, Dodd finds the film community eyeing him with thinly-veiled amusement. Uncovering a conspiracy to scuttle the studio, he enlists the aid of an unlikely pair of allies: cynical, gin-soaked, and big-hearted producer Douglas Quintain ("Casablanca's" Humphrey Bogart) and Lester Plum ("Grease's" Joan Blondell), the sexy stand-in for an incredibly untalented screen siren!
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