Lewis, Joseph H

Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 1 (The Asphalt Jungle / Gun Crazy / Murder My Sweet / Out of the Past / The Set-Up)

Some boxed sets claim to be definitive, but are haphazardly selected. Not this one. Four of the five titles here can legitimately lay claim to being essentials in the film noir canon, and the fifth, The Set-Up, is a terrific boxing picture with a strong noir atmosphere. If you're a fan of noir--or have no idea what it's all about--this collection is a treat.

Of course, none of these movies were made as "film noir." The term was coined later by French critics to describe the moody, anxious feel of postwar American movies, especially the genre that highlighted duplicitous dames and susceptible men lost in the criminal jungle. Indeed, the title The Asphalt Jungle conveys the edgy urban arena of these pictures. That film is John Huston's masterly 1950 account of a heist, with Sterling Hayden the disenchanted, noirish hero. Joseph H. Lewis's Gun Crazy (1949) is one of the most supercharged (and sexually perverse) of noir films, with John Dall and Peggy Cummins as young criminals in love. Murder, My Sweet (1944) is a straight adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel Farewell, My Lovely. Amid the film's shadowy chiaroscuro, former musical comedy star Dick Powell makes a career-changing transition as Chandler's private dick, Philip Marlowe. Out of the Past puts Robert Mitchum (perhaps the quintessential noir actor) in trouble with gangster Kirk Douglas, complicated by classic femme fatale Jane Greer. Jacques Tourneur provides the evocative direction. And The Set-Up plays out an ingenious boxing tale in "real time," superbly enacted by (former boxer) Robert Ryan. --Robert Horton

Asphalt Jungle (1950)- You have a lot of time to think when you're locked away seven years. So criminal mastermind Doc conceives what he believes is the perfect heist. John Huston explores the feverish grab for the big score and how it unravels in The Asphalt Jungle a renowned tale of dishonor among thieves whose cast includes. Gun Crazy (1949) - When gun fancier Bart Tare sees Annie Laurie Starr's sideshow sharpshooting act he's a dead-bang goner. The two become bank robbers on the run eluding roadblocks and roaring into movie history as one of the benchmark film-noir works. Murder My Sweet (1944)- They say crime doesn't pay. Private detective Philip Marlowe knows better. The fat wad of folding moneywarming his pocket is the kind of thing that keeps him going through thick and thicker as he wades chin deep into a mystery involving a missing necklace and a missing hoodlum's moll named Velma. Murder My Sweet is film at its most noir creating a moody sense moody sense of a world that never plays on the level. Out of the Past (1947)-Everything you want in a film noir you'll find in Out of the Past. A tenacious detective (Robert Mitchum) spinning his wheels to make good. A drop-dead beauty (Jane Greer) up to no good. A moneyed mobster (Kirk Douglas) with a shark's grin. Plus double-crosses and fall guys. Shadowy rooms and bleak souls. The Set-Up (1949)- Boxing Wednesdays. Wrestling on Fridays. Stoker Thompson is on Paradise City's Wednesday card fighting after the main event. He's been 20 years in the game and is sure he's just one punch away from big paydays. But there's one thing Stoker doesn't yet know: his manager wants him to take a dive tonight.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/CLASSIC UPC: 085393981228

Branded - The Complete First Season

In Branded, Chuck Connors plays the part of part of Captain Jason McCord, West Point graduate and decorated Cavalry officer. As the sole survivor of the Battle at Bitter Creek, an Apache Indian massacre, he is judged to have deserted the field of battle and is stripped of his rank. He is branded a coward and a disgrace in the eyes of the world. Branded is a true Western classic and Chuck Connors as Jason McCord is the epitome of the American spirit; rugged and courageous. He is unafraid to take on any task and through his strength and will, he is able to overcome whatever odds are placed before him.

Gun Crazy

One of the most vital of all film noir pictures, Gun Crazy has more cinematic gusto and sexual heat than almost any movie of its time. It's a variation on the Bonnie and Clyde story, but with a bizarre set-up: firearms enthusiasts John Dall and Peggy Cummins (neither of whom were ever this wild again) meet as sharpshooters in a carnival, then turn to crime. The direction, by Joseph H. Lewis, is like a spray of hot lead from a gun barrel, capped by an amazing sequence--shot in one long take--of a bank robbery seen from the backseat of the getaway car. (Billy Wilder himself called up Lewis to find out how he did it.) If most film noirs trace the anxieties of postwar America, Gun Crazy goes directly to sheer madness. Trivia note: the film had a title change, to Deadly Is the Female, for its original release, whereupon it was changed back. --Robert Horton

When gun fancier Bart Tare sees Annie Laurie Starr's sideshow sharpshooting act he's a dead-bang goner. He and she go together as Bart ultimately says "like guns and ammunition." The two become bank robbers on the run eluding roadblocks and roaring into movie history as one of the benchmark film-noir works. Joseph H. Lewis directs this ferocious thriller selected for the National Film Registry and often cited as a forerunner to Bonnie and Clyde. Peggy Cummins and John Dall star meeting in a sexually charged carny shooting contest and soon driven by impulses of violence and arousal they don't fully understand. They're young foolish doomed - and point blank in Gun Crazy's unforgiving sights.Running Time: 87 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE UPC: 085393197124

A Lawless Street

Randolph Scott stars as Marshal Coleen Wave a lawman who moves from town to town in the Colorado Territory ridding each of its outlaws. His dedication to his gob causes his wife played by Angela Lansbury (TV's "Murder She Wrote") to leave him. She will not come back to him until he has hung up his guns for good. But he is determined to clean up one last town run by bandits who don't want to see the territory become a state.System Requirements:Running Time: 77 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 043396091238 Manufacturer No: 09123

It would be nice to say that hiring Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy, The Big Combo) to direct A Lawless Street led to its becoming a classic Randolph Scott Western. Can't do it. At this point in his career, Randy was cutting corners as star-producer, scoping out his next oil well, and not worrying that a blind grandma could see he was being doubled in the fight scenes. Scott plays a town marshal who's had enough of "taming the beast," just when greedy men are conspiring to destroy him. One of them (Warner Anderson) is also a rival for Scott's onetime music-hall flame (Angela Lansbury). Director Lewis is stuck in a back-lot Western town with a juiceless cast (apart from Jeanette Nolan's frontier widow and Michael Pate's gloved assassin), but his rigorous eye keeps framing scenes as if they had some classical urgency. Every once in a while, through the fierce purity of his style, they do. --Richard T. Jameson

Terror in a Texas Town

Sterling Hayden (Dr. Strangelove) turns in "a brilliant performance" (The Hollywood Reporter) as a peace-loving Swedish seaman who's forced to take on an entire frontier town in this compelling and startlingly imaginative western.When George Hansen (Hayden) arrives in Prairie City Texas to help manage his family's fledgling farm he finds that his father has been mysteriously murdered and no one in town not even the sheriff plans to do anything about it! Determined to track down the killer himself Hansen learns that a ruthless oil prospector and his vicious group of hired guns have been forcing immigrant farmers to sell their mineral-rich land or pay for it with their lives. Despite crooked lawmen brutal ambushes and terrorized townsfolk Hansen tracks down his father's killer and faces off against the enemy in a remarkable showdown reminiscent of High Noon that's one of the most original and dramatic action sequences ever filmed.System Requirements:Running Time: 81 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 027616885852 Manufacturer No: 1004534

The Big Combo

A prime example of the American film noir style that flourished during the 1940s and '50s, The Big Combo is now highly regarded as a stylistic milestone for its innovative use of deep shadows and harsh, singular light sources to define its visual strategy. This look is largely credited to the rule-breaking brilliance of cinematographer John Alton, who turns a standard plot of the era into a richly atmospheric experiment in visual invention. Ignoring conventional approaches to lighting, Alton defines the screen in terms of blackness, often framing characters as silhouettes cast in ominous grays or thick, roiling fogs. Moving from clarity to abstraction with masterful grades in between, Alton's trend-setting style has been celebrated by cinematographers since the film's release in 1955.

The film's plot keeps brisk pace with the visuals, focusing on the obsessive efforts of a tenacious detective (Cornel Wilde) to destroy a sadistic mobster (Richard Conte) whose vicious influence has nearly ruined the life of the woman (Jean Wallace) he keeps under his dark wing. Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman are nicely cast as the villain's toady henchmen, and Brian Donlevy's usual limitations serve him well as the humbled, frustrated kingpin who's been stifled by Conte's ambition. Director Joseph H. Lewis previously demonstrated his raw, stylistic vigor with the earlier cult favorite Gun Crazy, and here he's in peak form with a perfect match of subject and sensibility. The result is hard-boiled entertainment that still packs a punch. --Jeff Shannon

The Rifleman (Vol. 1)

A widower rancher and single father ain't your typical TV Western hero. But put a Winchester in his hands and he becomes the Rifleman. Chuck Connors may have struck out as a major-league baseball player, but he was a hit as Lucas McCain in this classic 1958-1963 series that was reportedly Leonid Brezhnev's favorite American TV show. When the former Russian leader visited the U.S. in the early 1970s, he requested to meet Connors. This DVD contains the series' first four episodes, in which McCain and his idolizing son Mark make a fresh start in the "new and mighty fine country" of North Folk, New Mexico. The Wild Bunch director Sam Peckinpah wrote the first two episodes. In "Sharpshooter," McCain takes on the corrupt businessman who has rigged a turkey shoot (that's Dennis Hopper as McCain's competition). In "Home Ranch," henchmen of cattleman Oat Jackford drag McCain from a horse and burn his ranch to run him off his property. Peckinpah is at the reins of the episode "The Marshall," which introduced series regular Paul Fixx as redeemed sheriff Micah Torrance. The Peckinpah touch: one character is blown away with wind-tunnel force, and McCain himself is gunned down. "End of a Young Gun" guest-stars a pre-Bonanza Michael Landon as a bank robber who re-evaluates his life while recuperating from an injury at McCain's ranch. A bonus episode features veteran character actor Jack Elam as a local bully who is taught a lesson by a visiting Italian count. These episodes are surprisingly gritty and brutal. When McCain gets fired up, he goes ballistic. "I'll kill your stock and burn your barns," he threatens Jackford in "Home Ranch." But when things really get tough, he still takes time to teach Mark the story of Job. --Donald Liebenson

Grab your boots and saddle and get ready to ride. Lucas McCain (Chuck Conner) is a widower who guides his son Mark (Johnny Crawford) through the hardships of maintaining a ranch in New Mexico in the late 1880's. Courage, justice, fairness and a modified rifle are McCain's weapons. The Rifleman ranked as the #1 half hour program during its time slot on ABC for the duration of its run form 1958 - 1963.

Volume 1:
Sharpshooter - Starring Dennis Hopper, Leif Erickson and Sidney Blackmer
Home Ranch - Starring Harold J. Stone and Lee Farr
End of a Young Gun - Starring Michael Landon
The Marshall - Starring Paul Fix, Warren Oates and Robert Wilke Bonus Episode: Duel of Honor - Starring Cesare Danova and Jack Elam

Bombs Over Burma

Platform:  DVD MOVIE Publisher:  ALPHA VIDEO Packaging:  DVD STYLE BOX Anna May Wong began her career in silent films and quickly came to the attention of Douglas Fairbanks who cast her in a prominent role in The Thief of Baghdad. To escape type-casting after a series of concubine and slave girl roles she went to Europe where parts in film and on stage were better for the Chinese-American actress. Wong returned to the U.S. and continued to create strong portraits for directors Erich Von Stroheim Nicholas Ray and Ross Hunter. Before passing away in Santa Monica California in 1961 she appeared in numerous television shows and dramas and was the first Chinese-American to star in her own series "The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong" (1951). China. World War II. The bloody Burma Road must be kept open for Allied troop convoys at any cost by a brave but shorthanded crew. After a surprise attack the group suspects a traitor is amongst them. The beautiful Lin Yang - who teaches school by day and spies for the Allies by night - is assigned to find out who is responsible for leaking costly information to the Japanese. Driven by the horrifying memory of innocent villagers who were slaughtered by the enemy Lin Yang travels the treacherous road with an unlikely group of strangers. Englishman Sir Roger Howe and American Slim Jenkins aide her in a desperate race against time to stop the devastating bombs over Burma. With unflinching scenes of aerial assaults and battlefield brutality writer-director Joseph H. Lewis creates a taut suspenseful wartime adventure.Starring: Anna May Wong Leslie Denison & Nedrick YoungDirected by: Joseph H. Lewis DVD Details: Run Time: 65 minutesNumber of Discs: 1Originally Released in 1942Black & WhiteNo region encoding; For global distribution.

The Rifleman

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