General

Man of a Thousand Faces

Lon Chaney earned his nickname "The Man of a Thousand Faces" with a gallery of grotesque, misshapen characters created through a combination of elaborate makeup, contorted postures, and sensitive performances. After a rich silent-movie career starring in such classics as He Who Gets Slapped, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Phantom of the Opera, he died after completing his first and only sound film, a remake of his silent crime picture The Unholy Three. James Cagney plays Chaney in this glossy Hollywood biography, a reverent, melodramatic tribute that focuses on his turbulent private life and rise from vaudeville clown to hard-working Hollywood extra to movie star. Dorothy Malone costars as his unstable first wife, who flees her husband and their young son after a failed suicide attempt, Jane Greer is the loving showgirl who fills her void, and future real-life superproducer Robert Evans plays legendary MGM producer Irving Thalberg. Cagney is a short, thick pug of an actor where Chaney is tall and lean, but he oddly resembles the star in his craggy face, and his rarely tapped dancing skills are put to good use in the early vaudeville scenes and contorted recreations of twisted Chaney characters. But most importantly, Cagney brings to the role passion and compassion that burn through the indifferent direction and show-biz clichés to create a vivid, energetic portrait of the enigmatic cult star who rarely let audiences see his true face. --Sean Axmaker

Academy Award winner James Cagney gives an unforgettable performance as Lon Chaney in this fascinating true story that follows the life of one of the most iconic and mysterious stars in Hollywood history!Known as the "Man of a Thousand Faces" silent film star Lon Chaney captured the imagination of the world through his incredibly expressive and transformative roles such as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Phantom from the original Phantom of the Opera. Behind the scenes however this long-suffering talented genius' life was filled with trials and tribulations that helped shape some of his most groundbreaking roles.The Academy Award -nominated Man of a Thousand Faces captures the dramatic private life of a humble vaudeville clown who rose to become one of the biggest stars the world has ever seen!System Requirements:Running Time: 122 minutes Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/SILENT Rating: NR UPC: 025195032582 Manufacturer No: 61104080

Icons of Adventure Collection (The Pirates of Blood River / The Devil-Ship Pirates / The Stranglers of Bombay / The Terror of the Tongs)

HAMMER WASN'T JUST HORROR...The legendary British studio is justly reverred for its classic horror movies but they actually made all kinds of pictures and this first Sony collection of their best films presents four pulse-pounding adventures - all new to DVD - three of them starring Hammer icon Christopher Lee. He's at his snarling best as blood-thirsty buccaneers in the rousing swashbuckers The Pirates of Blood River and The Devil-Ship Pirates. Then he warms up for his famed Fu Manchu series by playing an evil Chinese crime lord in The Terror of the Tongs. Rounding out the set is the rarely-seen The Stranglers of Bombay based on the chilling true story of how the British attempted to vanquish the Thuggees the notorious death cult that terrorized India for centuries. So strap yourself in for the most rip-roaring group of movies since Errol Flynn laid down his sword!System Requirements:Running Time: 332 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR/CLASSICS UPC: 043396243156 Manufacturer No: 24315

Icons of Adventure is a terrific quartet of picaresque features from Britain's Hammer studios, best known for such unique horror films as The Curse of Frankenstein and the 1958 Dracula, both starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Lee was also the star of three of the films in the Icons set, two of those colorful pirate adventures. The 1962 The Pirates of Blood River finds Lee playing a deceptively docile buccaneer, one-eyed Captain LaRoche, who convinces a fugitive from a penal colony to help him locate a Huguenot colony on a large island. The runaway prisoner (Kerwin Matthews) is actually the son of a colony founder, sentenced to hard labor for challenging the establishment's tight grip on personal freedom. When the hero discovers that LaRoche simply intends to overwhelm the colony and use it as a new base of operation, he leads the fight to protect the authorities who previously threw him into hell. The more elegant and engaging The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964) is a 16th century tale of a Spanish pirate, Captain Robeles (Lee), who convinces a small village on the British coast that Spain has won its Spanish Armada battle against England. Pretending to be an official, occupying force instead of a bunch of swashbucklers, Robeles rules the village with an iron fist while being hectored by a real Spanish naval officer who doesn't agree with his methods.

Lee turns up again as the imperious leader of a cutthroat tong--a secretive, organized criminal society--in the exotic 1961 Terror of the Tongs. Geoffrey Toone plays the captain of a British passenger ship whose daughter is murdered by the Red Dragon Tong during the latter's attempt to find incriminating papers smuggled (against her knowledge) within her possessions. As the captain seeks vengeance, he gets close to the dangerous heart of the tong, which exacts punishment over anyone who does not cooperate by hacking off his or her fingers. The fourth feature in Icons of Adventure is very different from the others and doesn't involve Lee. The Stranglers of Bombay (1960) stars Guy Rolfe as Captain Harry Lewis, a career soldier helping to protect the interests of exporters the British East India Company. Stationed in India for years, Lewis has conducted a thorough study of a rash of disappearances and anticipates a military assignment to solve the long-running mystery. When the job goes to an outsider who knows nothing about India, Lewis works independently and discovers a religious cult called the Stranglers, who waylay travelers and steal their possessions. A tense thriller involving crazed rituals of bloodletting, torture, wild-eyed sacraments and poisonous snakes, The Stranglers of Bombay looks like an influence on Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. --Tom Keogh

Vampyr - Criterion Collection

With Vampyr Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere profoundly unsettling imagery (as in The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath) was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result-concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers at an inn outside Paris-is nearly unclassifiable a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs ominous scythes and foreboding echoes Vampyr is one of cinema's great nightmares.SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:New restored high-definition digital transfer of the 1998 film restoration by Martin Koerber and the Cineteca di BolognaOptional all-new English-text version of the filmAudio commentary featuring film scholar Tony RaynsCarl Th. Dreyer (1966) a documentary by Jorgen Roos chronicling Dreyer's careerVisual essay by scholar Casper Tybjerg on Dreyer's influences in creating VampyrA 19TK radio broadcast of Dreyer reading an essay about filmmakingNew and improved English subtitle translationPLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by Mark Le Fanu and Kim Newman Martin Koerber on the restoration and an archival interview with producer and star Nicolas de Gunzburg as well as a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul's original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu 1871 story "Carmilla" a source for the filmSystem Requirements:Running Time: 75 minutes Language: German Subtitles: English Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR/VAMPIRES Rating: NR UPC: 715515030427 Manufacturer No: CC1757DDVD

The Skull

The Skull teams up horror legends Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in a chilling, supernatural tale of murder from beyond the grave. Based on a short story by Robert Bloch (Psycho), The Skull introduces us to Dr. Christopher Maitland (Cushing), a collector of the occult. When he is given the opportunity to purchase one of the infamous Marquis de Sade, he leaps at the chance. What he doesn't know is that his friend, Matthew Phillips (Lee) is the former owner of the skull - and quite happy to be rid of it. Possession of The Skull leads to a terrifying series of nightmarish events for Dr. Maitland as he tries to keep control of his life, the forces of unspeakable evil bear down upon him.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Something's wrong in the town of Santa Mira, California. At first, Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) is unconcerned when the townsfolk accuse their loved ones of acting like emotionless imposters. But soon the evidence is overwhelming--Santa Mira has been invaded by alien "pods" that are capable of replicating humans and taking possession of their identities. It's up to McCarthy to spread the word of warning, battling the alien invasion at the risk of his own life. Considered one of the best science fiction films of the 1950s and '60s, this classic paranoid thriller was widely interpreted as a criticism of the McCarthy era (that's Senator Joseph, not actor Kevin), which was characterized by anticommunist witch-hunts and fear of the dreaded blacklist. Some hailed it as an attack on the oppressive power of government as Big Brother. However viewers interpret it, this original 1956 version of Invaders of the Body Snatchers (based on Jack Finney's serialized novel The Body Snatchers) remains a milestone movie in its genre, directed by Don Siegel with an inventive intensity that continues to pack an entertaining wallop. Look closely and you'll find future director Sam Peckinpah (an uncredited cowriter of this film) making a cameo appearance as a meter reader! The DVD release includes an interview with Kevin McCarthy, and for the first time on home video the film is presented in its original 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio. --Jeff Shannon

Rosemary's Baby

A loving New York couple is expecting their first baby, however Rosemary's husband makes a pact with the devil to send his career skyward.
No Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: FARROW/CASSAVETES
Title: ROSEMARY'S BABY
Street Release Date: 10/03/2000
Domestic
Genre: HORROR

Psychological terrorism and supernatural horror have rarely been dramatized as effectively as in this classic 1968 thriller, masterfully adapted and directed by Roman Polanski from the chilling novel by Ira Levin. Rosemary (Mia Farrow) is a young, trusting housewife in New York whose actor husband (John Cassavetes), unbeknownst to her, has literally made a deal with the devil. In the thrall of a witches' coven headquartered in their apartment building, the young husband arranges to have his wife impregnated by Satan in exchange for success in a Broadway play. To Rosemary, the pregnancy seems like a normal and happy one--that is, until she grows increasingly suspicious of her neighbors' evil influence. Polanski establishes this seemingly benevolent situation and then introduces each fiendish little detail with such unsettling subtlety that the film escalates to a palpable level of dread and paranoia. By the time Rosemary discovers that her infant son "has his father's eyes" ... well, let's just say the urge to scream along with her is unbearably intense! One of the few modern horror films that can claim to be genuinely terrifying, Rosemary's Baby is an unforgettable movie experience, guaranteed to send chills up your spine. --Jeff Shannon

The Thing from Another World

With its modest special effects, lean plot, and small cast of lesser stars, this 1951 thriller remains a sturdy blueprint for fusing horror and science fiction. The formula has been employed countless times since, fleshed out with more extensive and elaborate production values, and manned by higher profiled marquee names, but the results have yet to improve on The Thing from Another World, Howard Hawks's lone foray into sci-fi.

The story begins as military airmen are dispatched to a remote Arctic research station where scientists have detected the crash of a spacecraft. An effort to retrieve the saucer-shaped vehicle fails, but the team returns to the station with the frozen body of its sole occupant. When the extraterrestrial pilot is accidentally thawed, the crew, headed by a tough-talking pilot (Kenneth Tobey), grapples with a massive, chlorophyll-based humanoid (James Arness) thirsty for blood and in no mood for galactic diplomacy.

Hawks takes only a production credit for this low-budget exercise, but his filmmaking style transcends Christian Nyby's nominal direction: rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue, an ensemble of comrades whose professionalism is tempered by wisecracks, and unsentimental female characters (embodied by feisty romantic interest Margaret Sheridan) recall Hawks's signature works, while propelling the plot over any potential gaps in credibility. It's hardly surprising, then, that The Thing from Another World remains among the most influential science fiction movies ever shot, or that it remains exciting entertainment a half century later. --Sam Sutherland

Members of an Antarctic research team are killed off by a frozen alien they uncover.

The Birds (Collector's Edition)

Vacationing in northern California, Alfred Hitchcock was struck by a story in a Santa Cruz newspaper: "Seabird Invasion Hits Coastal Homes." From this peculiar incident, and his memory of a short story by Daphne du Maurier, the master of suspense created one of his strangest and most terrifying films. The Birds follows a chic blonde, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), as she travels to the coastal town of Bodega Bay to hook up with a rugged fellow (Rod Taylor) she's only just met. Before long the town is attacked by marauding birds, and Hitchcock's skill at staging action is brought to the fore. Beyond the superb effects, however, The Birds is also one of Hitchcock's most psychologically complicated scenarios, a tense study of violence, loneliness, and complacency. What really gets under your skin are not the bird skirmishes but the anxiety and the eerie quiet between attacks. The director elevated an unknown model, Tippi Hedren (mother of Melanie Griffith), to being his latest cool, blond leading lady, an experience that was not always easy on the much-pecked Ms. Hedren. Still, she returned for the next Hitchcock picture, the underrated Marnie. Treated with scant attention by serious critics in 1963, The Birds has grown into a classic and--despite the sci-fi trappings--one of Hitchcock's most serious films. --Robert Horton

Wait Until Dark

Audrey Hepburn's last Oscar nomination was for this adaptation of Frederick Knott's famed stage thriller about a blind woman, a con man (Alan Arkin), and a doll full of heroin. Thanks to Hepburn's husband, a photographer who does a good deal of traveling, she's unknowingly come into possession of said doll, which was given to him on a plane by a comely young drug runner who winds up dead. The murderous Arkin, aided by sympathetic henchman Richard Crenna, will let nothing stand in the way of his obtaining it, even if it comes down to assaying multiple "personalities" in order to visit and terrorize Hepburn; Crenna is unwillingly enlisted to help. However, the "world's champion blind lady" (as Hepburn sardonically states) is more than up to the task of defending herself in her basement Manhattan apartment in a heart-stopping climax that to this day still defines the way horror movies with jack-in-the-box psychos are made. Despite the obvious staginess of it all (the entire action takes place in Hepburn's apartment), it still works magnificently, thanks to Hepburn's steely will and Arkin's deadly, sadistic madman. A helpful hint: turn out all the lights when you watch it; theaters back in 1967 did so, killing the guiding lights during the film's last 15 minutes. We can't tell you why, but trust us, it's worth it. --Mark Englehart

A photographer's blind wife, trapped in her New York apartment by an evil trio who are ready to murder to retrieve a heroin-filled doll hidden in her apartment, cleverly outwits them. Music by Henry Mancini. Based on the long running Broadway play by Frederick Knott.

The Lost World (Special Edition) - 1960 & 1925 versions

The Lost World (Special Edition) is a terrific two-fer that includes Irwin Allen's glossy, 1960 adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's novel as well as the fantastic, 1925 silent version of the same story. In essence, The Lost World is Doyle's tale of an expedition to a mysterious plateau deep in the Amazon rainforest, where cantankerous adventurer Professor Challenger leads an expedition to prove the existence of prehistoric creatures living far from the civilized world. Allen's film, as with his many movie and television productions focusing on disasters (The Poseidon Adventure) and science fiction (Land of the Giants), is full of relationship complications within a large ensemble of characters, creating drama and tension even before terror strikes. An attractive cast including Claude Rains as Challenger, Michael Rennie, David Hedison, Jill St. John, and Fernando Lamas makes Allen's The Lost World fun to watch, especially if one self-consciously overlooks the cast's persistently clean and pressed wardrobe (and perfect hair) despite the jungle heat and assaults by cannibals.

Part of the film's charm is also its most ludicrous element: "dinosaurs" played by various, wriggling tropical lizards, a far cry from the stop-motion animation creatures--that actually look like dinosaurs--in Harry O. Hoyt's amazing take on The Lost World 35 years before Allen's. An impressive spectacle that conveys a certain beautiful wildness, the film stars Wallace Beery as an imposing Challenger, trapped with his team on the aforementioned plateau. In constant danger from carnivorous monsters (as well as flesh-eating monkey-men), the group's relationship strains have greater poignancy and the stakes seem higher all around. Where Allen's film is lulling, Hoyt's is galvanizing, but each is unique and well worth a visit. --Tom Keogh

An eccentric scientist (Claude Rains) returns from the Amazon with news of a distant plateau where creatures from the dawn of time still prowl the jungle. To prove his story, he gathers a team of explorers, including a journalist (David Hedison), a playboy-adventurer )Michael Rennie), a beautiful socialite (Jill St. John), and a pilot (Fernando Lamas) with a secret plan of revenge. But an unexpected attack on their camp leaves the group stranded in a world of dinosaurs and other exotic creatures, where humans are no longer the lords of the earth¿they are helpless prey.