Walsh, Raoul

Captain Horatio Hornblower

Screen legend Gregory Peck brings to life C.S. Forester's classic nautical hero Horatio Hornblower. Hornblower battles the French and the Spanish forces during the Napoleonic wars but also finds time for romance in this story from director Raoul Walsh.Running Time: 117 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE UPC: 085391108023 Manufacturer No: 110802

The much-loved novels of C.S. Forester come to life in Captain Horatio Hornblower, a solid, engrossing seafaring tale. Forester himself worked on the script for the 1951 film, which mines its plot from three Hornblower books. Set during the Napoleonic era, the movie kicks off by steering British captain Hornblower (Gregory Peck) into the middle of a nimble cat-and-mouse game with anti-Spanish rebels in the New World--only to find that in the months since he set sail from Old Blighty, national alliances have changed, causing a reversal in his original mission. The action later shifts to Europe, and throughout there is a love story involving a noblewoman (Virginia Mayo) who takes unexpected lodging aboard Hornblower's ship. The film has an intelligence that keeps it watchable, although it's definitely not one of the more buoyant films of the robust director Raoul Walsh. Perhaps the movie falls short of classic status because of the casting: its sober nature might stem from the personality of Gregory Peck, who looks marvelous but remains stolid throughout, while Virginia Mayo is, well, Virginia Mayo, a league away from British aristocracy. The sea battles don't have the technical dazzle of Master and Commander but they look acceptable for their time, and the movie's fondness for detail is gratifying. Forester's tales later became a series of British TV programs, with Ioan Gruffud as Hornblower. --Robert Horton

The Big Trail (Two-Disc Special Edition)

One of very few widescreen productions filmed at the dawn of the talkies, The Big Trail was dismissed by reviewers of the day, little seen, and soon shelved and forgotten--for more than half a century, as it turned out. For movie buffs, it became a sort of Holy Grail. After all, the esteemed Raoul Walsh had directed, the early 70mm angle was tantalizing, and wasn't this the movie that was intended to make a star of Duke Morrison, a 22-year-old former prop man whom Walsh had rechristened John Wayne for the occasion? For curiosity value alone, surely it rated a look.

Restored in the late 1980s and warmly embraced by film festival audiences, The Big Trail proved to be more than just a historical footnote. What were those 1930 reviewers thinking?! Wayne is fresh, exuberant, matinee-idol handsome, and irresistibly charming (only a little purple prose trips him up, and no one should have been asked to speak such early-talkie flapdoodle anyway). The scenario winds through epic settings from the banks of the Mississippi by way of the Grand Canyon to the snows of Oregon and the mountain vistas of Washington, marking both a wagon train's journey and the settling of a personal score between trail guide Wayne and Tyrone Power Sr. as a veritable ogre of a villain. (A villain off-camera, too: Legend holds that Walsh had the actor beaten nearly to death for attempting to force himself on leading lady Marguerite Churchill.) The Big Trail is now an authentic classic, and a swell movie. Probably always was. --Richard T. Jameson

The movie that made John Wayne a star Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail comes to DVD for the first time in its original 70 mm Widescreen version. This 2-disc Special Edition featuers both the 70 mm widescreen and the alternative standard fullscreen version plus three new docs. System Requirements:Running Time: 212 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: WAR/CLASSICS Rating: NR UPC: 024543519300 Manufacturer No: 2251930

White Heat

In his last role as a heartless gangster, James Cagney embarks on the prison break of a lifetime in this chilling tale that features one of the most riveting finales in movie history.

Distant Drums

Band of Angels

Sidney Poitier, in the beginning of his career, fires up the screen in the Civil-War-era bodice-ripper Band of Angels. The movie follows Amantha Starr (Yvonne De Carlo, later on The Munsters), a Southern belle whose fortunes fall when her father dies and family secrets come to light. She ends up under the protection of Hamish Bond (Clark Gable, close to the end of his long, remarkable career and still radiating an easy, charismatic masculinity), a plantation owner with secrets of his own. For much of the movie, slavery and the Civil War are just a colorful backdrop for a turgid romance--but just when you're ready to write the movie off, a scene unexpectedly digs into something more emotionally and politically complex. Poitier plays Bond's plantation foreman; every time he appears, Band of Angels turns into something fierce and promising. That promise never fully takes hold--Clark Gable is the movie's hero, not Poitier--but those crackling scenes (combined with a surprisingly sexual frankness in a 1957 feature) make Band of Angels more than just an embarrassing collection of manly swaggers, flashing eyes, and lugubrious spirituals. --Bret Fetzer

In an attempt to carry on in his great Rhett Butler tradition Gone With The Wind star Clark Gable once again flexes his muscular charms in another Civil War-era movie about the torrid romance between a plantation owner and a half-caste beauty. Directed by Raoul Walsh and also starring Yvonne De Carlo and Sidney Poitier the film is highlighted by a stunning musical score by Gone with the Wind composer Max Steiner.Running Time: 127 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 085391111993 Manufacturer No: 111199

They Died with Their Boots On

Bert Glennon, who shot Stagecoach and seven other John Ford classics, has given this Raoul Walsh biopic of George Armstrong Custer a burnished glow--an evocative interplay of raw sunlight and elegiac shadow like no other vintage Warner Bros. Western. Glennon's artistry and Walsh's trademark gusto sustain enthusiasm even as the screenplay beggars belief. The flamboyant Custer (Errol Flynn), rushed into Civil War service straight from West Point, did get promoted overnight to general and establish a spectacular record for "ride to the guns" leadership. However, Custer as defender of Indians' rights--to the point of willing his own Last Stand so he could accuse corrupt Indian Commissioners from the grave--is historical rewrite of such sweeping chutzpah as to shame DeMille. Flynn and Olivia de Havilland make an even more appealing couple than usual, and the big supporting cast is unflaggingly energetic above and beyond the call of duty. --Richard T. Jameson

Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland star in this rip-roaring account of General George Custer directed by Raoul Walsh and highlighted by a strong supporting cast that includes Arthur Kennedy and Anthony Quinn. Year: 1942Running Time: 140 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569518025

The Big Broadcast of 1938 / College Swing Double Feature

John Wayne: The Fox Westerns Collection (The Big Trail / North to Alaska / The Comancheros / The Undefeated)

Includes:Disc 1: THE BIG TRAIL WSDisc 2: THE BIG TRAIL P&SDisc 3: THE COMANCHEROSDisc 4: NORTH TO ALASKADisc 5: THE UNDEFEATEDFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: WESTERN/CLASSICS UPC: 024543529620 Manufacturer No: 2252962

The Enforcer

Humphrey Bogart stars as a crusading district attorney working against the clock to prosecute a mob boss in this suspenseful picture that should appeal to crime completists and fans of the iconic actor. Based on actual court cases, the plot unfolds largely in flashback as Bogart reviews his case against vicious racketeer Everett Sloane, who has killed off anyone that has threatened to testify against him. Capably directed by Bretaigne Windust (with uncredited help from Raoul Walsh, who shot most of the film's most suspenseful moments, including the nail-biting conclusion), The Enforcer's standard law vs. the mob plotline benefits greatly from its unusual structure, as well as Bogart's solid presence and a terrific supporting cast, which includes an early turn by Zero Mostel. The opening narration is provided by Estes Kefauver, who was chairing a Senate investigation into organized crime at the time of the picture's release. --Paul Gaita

Objective Burma

A paratroop captain (Errol Flynn) sets out with a platoon to attack a Japanese outpost in the jungle. The Americans reach their target, take out the enemy with almost balletic precision, then gear up to return home. This feels like the point when a conventional war movie would have reached its action-filled climax, but the journey has only begun. Ahead lies one of the most arduous and agonizing adventures any World War II film ever offered, brilliantly directed by that underrated old master Raoul Walsh and photographed with almost tactile realism by the great James Wong Howe.

The chief rap against Objective, Burma! (of concern mainly to British observers) is that it suggests that only U.S. forces contested the Japanese in the jungles of Burma. (OK, so it's not the most accurate history lesson.) But that's small beer in view of the movie's bone-chilling portrayal of pain, sacrifice, and endurance. The jungle atmosphere is so persuasive, you'd swear it was shot on the actual locations (though in fact Walsh effectively reworked many of the same situations in Distant Drums, a sort-of Western about the Seminole War, six years later). You'll never forget the terrifying last dark night on a mountainside--or the crocodiles.... Flynn is excellent (he had given his best performance ever in Walsh's Gentleman Jim three years earlier), and he's backed by a solid cast including Henry Hull (as an aging war correspondent), James Brown, William Prince, George Tobias, and Stephen Richards (soon to change his name to Mark Stevens). Incidentally, two of the writers, Alvah Bessie and Lester Cole, were later blacklisted; see if you can spot any Commie propaganda. --Richard T. Jameson

Mission accomplished! Errol Flynn who brought boyish bravado to The Adventures of Robin Hood Dodge City Gentleman Jim and other screen yarns turns in a mature acclaimed performance as the leader of a paratrooper patrol stranded in Burma. It's "one of the few features of which I am proud" Flynn later said. There's reason for pride. "This is one of the finest World War II films made during the war" The Movie Guide says. "One of the best war movies" Guide for the Film Fanatic's Danny Peary wrote "and among the grimmest." Raoul Walsh directs the hard-hitting action shot in rugged California locations so similar to Burma that veterans of that campaign refused to believe the crew hadn't somehow sneakedinto Asia.Running Time: 142 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE UPC: 012569525023 Manufacturer No: 65250