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Australia’s Imprint Films will release four limited edition Alfred Hitchcock Blu-ray collections — totaling 16 films plus a season of television — on August 27.

The Hitchcock Nine (1925-1929) collects the filmmaker’s nine surviving silent movies: The Pleasure Garden, The Lodger, The Ring, Downhill, The Farmer’s Wife, Easy Virtue, Champagne, The Manxman, and Blackmail.

Each film has been restored by the BFI National Archives. The feature documentary I Am Alfred Hitchcock is also included.

The 10-disc set is housed in hardbox packaging. Limited to 1,500, it costs $150.30.

Disc 1 – The Pleasure Garden (1925):

A selfish London chorus girl’s relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to a point where it nearly causes her death.

1080p High-definition presentation on Blu-ray Solo Piano Score by composer Neil Brand (new) Theater Organ Score by Lee Erwin Audio Commentary by editor of the Hitchcock Annual, Sidney Gottlieb (new) Introduction by film historian Charles Barr Interview with BFI silent film...

To the short list of ‘classic’ nuclear horror on Blu-ray we can now add the one that hits closest to home. Lynne Littman’s harrowing film stays small-scale and Big Emotion, enduring a slow extermination for an innocent family. A little California town loses contact with the rest of the world, and hope fades as the awful reality sinks in. Jane Alexander, Lukas Haas, and William Devane star in a TV movie so affecting that Paramount gave it a theatrical release. The disc has two commentaries and a selection of 20th anniversary features.

Testament

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 170

1983 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 90 min. / Street Date October 26, 2022 / Available from [Imprint] / au 34.95

Starring: Jane Alexander, William Devane, Ross Harris, Roxana Zal, Lukas Haas, Philip Anglim, Lilia Skala, Leon Ames, Lurene Tuttle, Rebecca De Mornay, Kevin Costner, Mako, Lila Kedrova.

Cinematography: Steven Poster

Production Designer: David Nichols

Art Director: Linda Pearl

Costume Design: Julie Weiss

Film...

Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s comeback comedy performed decently enough at the box office, but its real accomplishment is vaulting Walter Matthau into mainline stardom. Matthau embodies the most venal ambulance chaser alive: Whiplash Willie Gingrich. His sad insurance scam scramble for unearned, undeserved loot is more of an exposé of sagging American values than anything particularly satirical. Jack Lemmon is the straight man this time around. He spends much of the movie in a medical collar, being victimized to make a fast buck. But Matthau hits the laughs out of the park — it’s an inspired performance that won him a Best Supporting Oscar. “You know Willie. He could find a loophole in the Ten Commandments.”

The Fortune Cookie

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1966 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 125 min. / Meet Whiplash Willie / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ron Rich, Judi West, Cliff Osmond, Lurene Tuttle.

Cinematography:...

Legendary screenwriter and director Shane Black discusses some of his favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

High and Low (1963)

Hard Times (1975) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966) – Ernest Dickerson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Glenn Erickson’s 4K Blu-ray review

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Beguiled (1971) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Kino Lorber Blu-ray review, Glenn Erickson’s Twilight Time Blu-ray review

Convoy (1978) – Dennis Cozzalio’s review

8 Heads In A Duffel Bag (1997)

Diner (1982)

The Bodyguard (1992)

12 Angry Men (1957)

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

Fist of Fury a.k.a. The Chinese Connection (1972) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary...

Cary Grant and co-star/missus Betsy Drake do honor to the ‘family picture’ genre — with a filmic boost to child foster programs that offers a positive message, avoids most clichés and generates some sly fun too. What we see resembles real life, even if Cary Grant should never be shown washing dishes. Betsy Drake’s take-charge mother sets family policy as she opts to take in first one and then two foster children. It’s also the film debut of little George Winslow, before he picked up the ‘Foghorn’ nickname. Plus there’s a cute dog and some kittens that offer a sex education lesson. The recent biography of Cary Grant should renew interest in this entertaining and socially admirable show. It’s warm & fuzzy yet not at all saccharine.

Room for One More

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1952 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 95 98? min. / Street Date January 26, 2021 / available through the WBshop / 19.99

Starring: Cary Grant,...

Tom Lester, the actor who played the guileless, brighter-than-he-seemed farmhand Eb Dawson on CBS’ 1960s sitcom Green Acres, died Monday in Nashville of complications from Parkinson’s disease, his family announced. He was 81.

Born Thomas William Lester in Laurel, Mississippi, Lester set out for Hollywood after graduating from the University of Mississippi. He studied acting with teacher and Petticoat Junction actress Lurene Tuttle, soon coming to the attention of the show’s creator Paul Henning, who was casting another rural comedy within The Beverly Hillbillies-Petticoat Junction universe.

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The show was Green Acres, an alternately hokey and surreal comedy starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as a sophisticated...

“Wash your face, brush your teeth, and say your Prayers.” Marilyn Monroe’s first plunge into a dramatic starring role casts her as a dangerously unstable babysitter in a hotel-set suspense thriller co-starring Richard Widmark and Anne Bancroft. Ms. Monroe may not be Ethel Barrymore (thankfully) but the role suits her well — to play a woman unhinged by low self-esteem and melancholy romantic reveries, she may have tapped personal experience.

Don’t Bother to Knock

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1952 / B&W / 1.37 Academy / 76 min. / Street Date March 20, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe, Anne Bancroft, Donna Corcoran, Jeanne Cagney, Lurene Tuttle, Elisha Cook Jr., Jim Backus, Verna Felton, Willis Bouchey.

Cinematography: Lucien Ballard

Film Editor: George A. Gittens

Written by Daniel Taradash from a novel by Charlotte Armstrong

Produced by Julian Blaustein

Directed by Roy (Ward) Baker

Although she rates second billing below Richard Widmark,...

I guess Howard Hughes wanted to go easy on Minnesota Nazis. William Cameron Menzies directs a Cold War thriller about an insidious germ warfare conspiracy -- it's an early paranoid suspense tale with apocalyptic consequences. But the story behind the movie's making -- and then remaking -- is even more fantastic. The Whip Hand DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1951 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 82 min. / Street Date February 16, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 18.59 Starring Elliott Reid, Raymond Burr, Carla Balenda, Edgar Barrier, Otto Waldis, Michael Steele, Lurene Tuttle, Peter Brocco, Lewis Martin, Frank Darien, Olive Carey, George Chandler, Gregory Gaye. Cinematography Nicholas Musuraca Film Editor Robert Golden Original Music Music by Paul Sawtell Written by George Bricker, Frank L. Moss, Ray Hamilton Produced by Louis J. Rachmil Directed by William Cameron Menzies

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Film writers Bill Warren and Tom Weaver have reported extensively on the unusual production story...

The icon-establishing performances Marilyn Monroe gave in Howard Hawks’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) are ones for the ages, touchstone works that endure because of the undeniable comic energy and desperation that sparked them from within even as the ravenous public became ever more enraptured by the surface of Monroe’s seductive image of beauty and glamour. Several generations now probably know her only from these films, or perhaps 1955’s The Seven-Year Itch, a more famous probably for the skirt-swirling pose it generated than anything in the movie itself, one of director Wilder’s sourest pictures, or her final completed film, The Misfits (1961), directed by John Huston, written by Arthur Miller and costarring Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift.

But in Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) she delivers a powerful dramatic performance as Nell, a psychologically devastated, delusional, perhaps psychotic young woman apparently on...

Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett movies Below is a list of movies on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder worked together as screenwriters, including efforts for which they did not receive screen credit. The Wilder-Brackett screenwriting partnership lasted from 1938 to 1949. During that time, they shared two Academy Awards for their work on The Lost Weekend (1945) and, with D.M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Blvd. (1950). More detailed information further below. Post-split years Billy Wilder would later join forces with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond in movies such as the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), the Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), and One Two Three (1961), notable as James Cagney's last film (until a brief comeback in Milos Forman's Ragtime two decades later). Although some of these movies were quite well received, Wilder's later efforts – which also included The Seven Year Itch...

Cary Grant movies: 'An Affair to Remember' does justice to its title (photo: Cary Grant ca. late 1940s) Cary Grant excelled at playing Cary Grant. This evening, fans of the charming, sophisticated, debonair actor -- not to be confused with the Bristol-born Archibald Leach -- can rejoice, as no less than eight Cary Grant movies are being shown on Turner Classic Movies, including a handful of his most successful and best-remembered star vehicles from the late '30s to the late '50s. (See also: "Cary Grant Classic Movies" and "Cary Grant and Randolph Scott: Gay Lovers?") The evening begins with what may well be Cary Grant's best-known film, An Affair to Remember. This 1957 romantic comedy-melodrama is unusual in that it's an even more successful remake of a previous critical and box-office hit -- the Academy Award-nominated 1939 release Love Affair -- and that it was directed...

Ann Blyth movies: TCM schedule on August 16, 2013 (photo: ‘Our Very Own’ stars Ann Blyth and Farley Granger) See previous post: "Ann Blyth Today: Light Singing and Heavy Drama on TCM." 3:00 Am One Minute To Zero (1952). Director: Tay Garnett. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Ann Blyth, William Talman. Bw-106 mins. 5:00 Am All The Brothers Were Valiant (1953). Director: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Ann Blyth. C-95 mins. 6:45 Am The King’S Thief (1955). Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Cast: Ann Blyth, Edmund Purdom, David Niven. C-79 mins. Letterbox Format. 8:15 Am Rose Marie (1954). Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Cast: Ann Blyth, Howard Keel, Fernando Lamas. C-104 mins. Letterbox Format. 10:00 Am The Great Caruso (1951). Director: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Mario Lanza, Ann Blyth, Dorothy Kirsten, Jarmila Novotna, Richard Hageman, Carl Benton Reid, Eduard Franz, Ludwig Donath, Alan Napier, Pál Jávor, Carl Milletaire, Shepard Menken, Vincent Renno, Nestor Paiva, Peter Price, Mario Siletti, Angela Clarke,...

Billy Wilder movies, Johnny Carson interviews tonight on TCM Billy Wilder is Turner Classic Movies’ Director of the Evening tonight, July 8, 2013. But before Wilder Evening begins, TCM will be presenting a series of brief interviews from The Tonight Show, back in the old Johnny Carson days — or rather, nights. The Carson interviewees this evening are Doris Day, Charlton Heston, Tony Curtis, Chevy Chase, and Steve Martin. (See also: Doris Day today.) (Photo: Billy Wilder.) As for Billy Wilder, TCM will be showing the following: Some Like It Hot (1959), The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Spirit of St. Louis (1958), and The Seven Year Itch (1955). Of course, all of those have been shown before and are widely available. Some Like It Hot vs. The Major and the Minor: Subversive and subversiver Some Like It Hot is perhaps Billy Wilder’s best-known film. This broad comedy featuring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis...

By Lee Pfeiffer

I have always been a great admirer of Paul Henning, the crooner-turned-tv producer/writer of some of the best-loved shows of the 1960s. It was Henning who gave a voice to rural audiences by creating such classic TV series as The Beverly Hillbilllies, Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. If you revisit any of them today, they remain far superior to most contemporary sitcoms. Henning not only created shows that have timeless appeal, but he also brainstormed the concept of interweaving characters and plot devices between the series- a stroke of genius that brought cross-promotion marketing to new levels. Henning also prided himself on making his country characters eccentric, but never idiotic. They were simple people living simple lives and if they seemed to exist in a time warp, they were all honest, admirable folks. It was always the sophisticated city slickers who would get their comeuppance at...

Art loaned me this sweet photo of him with protean radio actress Lurene Tuttle taken in the late 1930s outside of CBS in Hollywood. For several decades, Art Gilmore was the voice of Hollywood—or so it seemed. He narrated so many coming-attractions trailers that it almost seemed as if he’d cornered the market. When a tribute to him was mounted at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theater some years ago the trailers ranged from Alfred Hitchcock classics to schlocky teen and sci-fi films of the 1950s. He always struck just the right note. In fact, reading these scripts came so quickly…...