Rosenberg, Stuart

Cool Hand Luke

Paul Newman gives one of the defining performances of his career, and cemented his place as a beautiful-rebel screen icon playing the stubbornly tough and independent title character in Cool Hand Luke. And before he became familiar as a sidekick in 1970s disaster movies (Earthquake and the Airport movies), George Kennedy won an Oscar for playing Dragline, the brutal chain-gang boss who tries to beat loner Luke's cool out of him. It's a classic rebel-against-the-repressive-institution story in the line of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest or The Shawshank Redemption. Certain moments have become classics--particularly the hardboiled egg-eating contest, and the immortal line (drooled by Strother Martin, as a sadistic redneck prison officer), "What we have here is a failure to communicate." And don't forget, Luke is also the source of the oft-quoted driving ditty, "I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I have my plastic Jesus, right here on the dashboard of my car..." He is cool, all right. The digital video disc is in anamorphic widescreen and digital stereo. --Jim Emerson

A defiant chain-gang prisoner suffers a "failure to communicate" in this searing drama. Paul Newman Shines in the title role, George Kennedy as his sidekick won an Oscar(R). Year: 1967 Director: Stuart Rosenberg Starring: Paul Newman, George Kennedy, J.D. Cannon

DVD Features:
Production Notes
Theatrical Trailer

The Untouchables - Season Two, Vol. 1

In Billy Wilder's classic, The Apartment, a sleazy corporate exec tries to schedule an after-hours tryst with one of the company's switchboard operators. "Thursday?" she protests. "But that's The Untouchables with Bob Stack." "So we'll watch it at the apartment," the exec placates her. "Big deal." As Wilder's shout-out indicates, The Untouchables was a big deal. Hot off Robert Stack's Emmy-winning performance as Treasury Agent Elliot Ness, The Untouchables blasted its way into the Nielsen Top Ten in its second season, which begins in a blaze of glory with the episode, "The Rusty Heller Story," featuring Elizabeth Montgomery in her Emmy-nominated role as the "no good" showgirl who plays two mobsters and a corrupt lawyer against each other (Bewitched fans will note that the lawyer with whom she gets very chummy is portrayed by David White, the future Larry Tate!). More than four decades later, with its film noir sensibility, smart-writing, hard-boiled dialogue, and plenty of what Rusty Heller calls, "boom-boom action," The Untouchables is still as potent (but not as deadly) as a bottle of ginger jake. The 16 episodes contained on this four-disc set tell some great (albeit suspect) stories of the kingpins, criminals, and hoodlums who thought they had "the guts" to move in on Al Capone's tottering empire. Among the most arresting are "The Big Train," a gripping two-parter featuring Neville Brand reprising his role as Capone, who plots his escape while en route to Alcatraz, "Jamaica Ginger," featuring James Coburn and Brian Keith as a couple of "torpedoes" hired by a gangster to kill his rival, a plan complicated when one falls in love with a schoolteacher, and "The Purple Gang," about Detroit's feared gang that kidnaps an underling (Werner "Colonel Klink" Klemperer) with Capone ties. Joining Ness's incorruptible squad this season is Paul Picerni as Agent Lee Hobson, but it's Stack's show all the way. He gets to slap wiseguys around ("Answer the question, punk") and deliver the best lines. When one goon tells him he has no respect for the dead, Ness replies, "Sometimes, even less for the living." His relentless war against the underworld sometimes comes at a terrible price. When one innocent woman is gunned down, the killers taunt, "Satisfied, Mr. Ness?" But, of course, that just steels his resolve. As for this set, we're satisfied, even without any bonus features, and the now common (and criminal) practice of season splitting. --Donald Liebenson

The Untouchables chronicles the campaign of Eliot Ness (Robert Stack) the young U.S. Prohibition Bureau agent to smash the beer and booze empire of Al Capone in 1920s Chicago.System Requirements:Running Time: 806 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 097361319445 Manufacturer No: 131944

The Untouchables - Season 1, Vol. 1

Though certainly tame by The Shield standards, the inaugural 14 episodes from The Untouchables' 1959-60 season are still as potent as a shot of Al Capone's bootleg whiskey. Dames get slapped around. Mugs are mowed down in a hail of wall-pocking, mirror-shattering bullets. Upstanding citizens are brutally terrorized by thugs. Incorruptible Feds are brazenly rubbed out. Sometimes, criminals have the last laugh. It has the visceral kick of watching one of those pre-code Hollywood movies produced before the Hays Office stepped in to sanitize objectionable content. This set opens with the theatrically released version of the two-part pilot episode that set the noir sensibility of the series. Robert Stack (in his iconic and oft-parodied role) stars as Elliot Ness, a straight-arrow Federal agent who forms a special squad of "reliable, courageous, dedicated and honest" men who initially take on Al Capone's corrupt criminal empire in 1929 Chicago. Ness is "a real man," (as a "burly-q" stripper observes). He's just not exactly loaded with personality. Nor do any other of the squad members stand out, except perhaps for Martin Flahrety, and that's only because he's played by a pre-Dick Van Dyke Show Jerry Paris. But from Neville Brand's Al Capone and Claire Trevor's Ma Barker to an unbilled Harry Dean Stanton as a suspect blind newspaperman, it's the legendary criminals and their henchmen (and the great character actors who portray them) who give each episode considerable moxie.

Produced by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball's Desilu Studios, this groundbreaking series is based on the book The Untouchables: The Real Story by Ness and Oscar Fraley. Real? Not quite. Despite Walter Winchell's signature rat-a-tat narration that gives the proceedings a documentary-like tone, liberties were taken in retelling the sagas of Capone, Dutch Schultz, Lucky Luciano, "Bugs" Moran, "Mad Dog" Coll, and others. But the episodes are so pulpishly good that even if Ness was never really involved in a shootout with Barker (and he wasn't), more forgiving viewers will be of the opinion that he should have been. --Donald Liebenson

The Untouchables chronicles the campaign of Eliot Ness (Robert Stack) the young U.S. Prohibition Bureau agent to smash the beer and booze empire of Al Capone in 1920s Chicago.System Requirements:Run Time: 644 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 097361227740 Manufacturer No: 122774

The Pope of Greenwich Village

Picture if you will two cousins, Charlie (Mickey Rourke) and Paulie (Eric Roberts), prowling the mean streets of New York's Little Italy. Charlie is reasonably put-together, a maitre d' at a chic café who aspires to running his own restaurant someday. Paulie is an incurable flake who can't resist a temptation or a goofball scheme, couldn't tell the truth to save his soul, and keeps splashing Charlie with the street slop of his slewing trajectory through life. This includes drawing him into the circles of Mob crime, most especially Paulie's boss, that supreme sleazebag "Bedbug Eddie" (Burt Young).

Michael Cimino is said to have had a hand in this movie, though the credited director is Stuart Rosenberg--an impersonal craftsman often hired in midshoot after the star and a more volatile director had parted company. This helps account for the picture's overall lack of rhythm and its wavering between overemphatic, Ethnic-with-a-capital-E idiosyncrasy, and low-key befuddlement. Still, it has its charms, most of them deriving from a terrific cast. At the time it came out, in the summer of 1984, Rourke and Roberts were both exciting, unpredictable talents; Roberts in particular had an amazing talent for being somebody brand new--psychologically, even physically--in every film he made. But even though they're hitting on all cylinders, the boys are quietly upstaged by some redoubtable old pros: the great Kenneth McMillan, the ineffable M. Emmet Walsh, and--scoring her umpteenth Oscar® nomination as the mother of an ill-fated cop--Miss Geraldine Page. --Richard T. Jameson

Turn up the Sinatra, put on a leather jacket, and slip into a rollicking, high-voltage movie that produces tears of laughter (New York Daily News). Mickey Rourke (The Rainmaker), EricRoberts (National Security, Runaway Train) and Daryl Hannah (Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Splash) create emotion-charged characters who tingle with energy and play with conviction (The Hollywood Reporter) in this modern-day classic that's as robust and powerful as Italianespresso! In New York's Little Italy, smooth-talking hustler Charlie (Rourke) works in a restaurant and dreams of one day buying his own with his girlfriend Diane (Hannah). His wiry wheeler-dealer cousin Paulie (Roberts) waits tables, skims money off checks and is always scheming to score big. Butthey're all about to pull a scam on the wrong guyBed Bug Eddie (Burt Young, Rocky), the Mafia king of Greenwich Village! Now these small-time con men are in big-time troubletrouble so big that even their mobster uncle might not be able to save them!

Brubaker

Through solid dramatic impact and global exposure on cable TV, Brubaker gradually joined the ranks of all-time best prison movies. While preparing to direct Ordinary People, Robert Redford brought his considerable star power to bear on his title role as a prison reform warden, in an unnamed Southern state, who poses as an inmate to expose corruption, violence, and administrative abuse in Wakefield, a prison farm where trustee inmates are armed and encouraged to shoot at would-be escapees. Originally developed for director Bob Rafelson and ultimately filmed by Stuart Rosenberg, this rugged exercise in social commentary has undeniable power, even if some its characters--including Redford's--seem more like stick-figure ethicists than real human beings. It's also got a dynamite supporting cast including Yaphet Kotto, Jane Alexander, and Morgan Freeman in one of his earliest films. Bolstered by his Oscar-winning directorial debut, Redford didn't star in another film until The Natural ended his four-year hiatus. --Jeff Shannon

Robert Redford stars in this potent drama based on the real life story of Tom Murton, the prison superintendent who rocked Arkansas politics when he exposed scandalous abuses and murders in a state prison. Posing as a new prisoner, Brubaker discovers vast corruption in a state penitentiary before revealing himself to be the new warden. His personal crusade to bring reform puts him in grave danger, especially when he insists on exposing a series of secret murders that took place years earlier. Powerful and disturbing, Brubaker won acclaim for its gritty realism and Oscar nominated screenplay.

The Laughing Policeman

A san francsico detective and his new partner search for the man responsible for slaughtering the passengers on a city bus.

The Amityville Horror Collection (The Amityville Horror/ The Amityville Horror II: The Possession/ The Amityville Horror III: The Demon/ Bonus Disc - Amityville Confidential)

Blood drips from the walls. A terrifying chill rakes through the rooms. Menacing eyes glow from the upstairs windows. Inside the outwardly charming Long Island home an unspeakable evil lurks waiting to torment all who dare cross the threshold. Experience the ultimate house of horror with this 4-disc collector's set.System Requirements: Running Time 316 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: R UPC: 027616909138 Manufacturer No: 1006766

Murder, Inc.

Based on the true-life book of lawman Burton Turkus this movie chronicles the rise and fall of the organized crime syndicate known as Murder Incorporated. Focusing on powerful boss Lepke and violent hitman Reles.System Requirements:Running Time: 103 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 024543242727 Manufacturer No: 2234272

The Amityville Horror

There's no place like home...for bloodcurdling horror! James Brolin Margot Kidder and Academy Award® winner* Rod Steiger fall prey to the powers of darkness in this spine-tingling tale of a house possessed by unspeakable evil. One of the most talked-about haunted-house stories of all time The Amityville Horror will hit you where you live.For George and Kathy Lutz the colonial home on the river's edge seemed ideal: quaint spacious and amazingly affordable. Of course six brutal murders had taken place there just a year before but houses don't have memories...or do they? Soon the Lutz dream house becomes a hellish nightmare as walls begin to drip blood and satanic forces threaten to destroy them. Now the Lutzes must try to escape or forfeit their lives and their souls!System Requirements:Running Time 119 MinsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: R UPC: 027616909374 Manufacturer No: 1006790

Based on a bestselling, allegedly nonfiction book about haunted goings-on in a Long Island house (The Amityville Horror Conspiracy), this rather cheesy horror movie is more silly than unsettling. James Brolin and Margot Kidder star as newlyweds who move into the empty home and are gradually affected by the legacy of a murder committed on the premises. Rod Steiger is a priest who can tell what's up and gets dispatched in a rather ugly way. Director Stuart Rosenberg can't lift the action above a certain level of tawdriness, and the audience ends up watching the horror from a distance instead of feeling involved. In the wake of The Exorcist, this 1979 spooker seemed like a no-brainer knockoff--and still does. --Tom Keogh

Classic Crime Collection - Street Justice (Murder Inc., The French Connection, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, The Seven-Ups)

Episode Description: GiftSet Includes the Following Titles:

**St. Valentine's Day Massacre **Seven-Ups **Murder, Inc. **French Connection (Single Disc)