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Mitchell Leisen’s great Christmas-time tale has a brilliant screenplay by Preston Sturges and letter-perfect performances by Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, threading the needle between light cynicism and well-earned sentiment. Sturges’ celebration of ‘country values’ is sincere and heartfelt, as is his affection for the supporting cast. The presentation includes two radio broadcasts plus a star-studded Paramount short subject for war bonds.

Remember the Night

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1940 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 94 min. / / Street Date December 19, 2022 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £18.99

Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Beulah Bondi, Elizabeth Patterson, Sterling Holloway, Julius Tannen, Virginia Brissac, Fred ‘Snowflake’ Toones, Charles Arnt, Paul Guilfoyle.

Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff

Art Directors: Hans Drier, Roland Anderson

Costumes: Edith Head

Film Editor: Doane Harrison

Original Music: Friedrich Hollander

Written by Preston Sturges

Produced by

Directed by Mitchell Leisen

The 1940 feature Remember the Night made its comeback a few years ago just as...

A genuine ‘sleeper’ hit, this ‘all in the family’ noir pits innocent childhood against cold blooded murderers. Little Bobby Driscoll witnesses Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman committing a murder, and can’t get Mom and Dad to believe him because of a habit of crying Wolf. But the killers believe him … and they live right upstairs. The beautifully made film evokes a rough, broken-down block in New York City in great detail. Rko’s new boss Howard Hughes did what he always did with a hot feature ready to release: he shelved it for more than a year. The Wac’s restoration is eye-opening.

The Window

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1949 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 73 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date September 21, 2021 / 21.99

Starring: Bobby Driscoll, Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart, Ruth Roman, Anthony Ross, Richard Benedict.

Cinematography: Robert De Grasse, William O. Steiner

Art Directors: Sam Corso, Albert D’Agostino,...

Hello, dear readers! November is officially upon us, as well as a new week of Blu-ray and DVD releases, which means it’s time to make some room for more horror and sci-fi to fill your home entertainment shelves. One of this writer’s favorite indie genre movies of the year, Come True, is getting released to both Blu and DVD this week courtesy of Scream Factory, and Kino Lorber is showing some love to a pair of classic thrillers as well: The Spider Woman Strikes Back and The Mad Doctor. Other releases for November 2nd include The Banishing, Pig featuring Nicolas Cage, and The Spore.

The Banishing

From acclaimed genre director Chris Smith (Creep) comes the true story of the most haunted house in England. A young reverend, his wife and daughter move into a manor with a horrifying secret. When a vengeful spirit haunts the little girl and...

When did murder thrillers become horror pix? This one is horror only by association, and star Basil Rathbone would be a suave leading man if he wasn’t slaying wives left and right. He sets his sights on the rich, conveniently suicidal Ellen Drew, yes (sigh) that Ellen Drew. This atypical Paramount thriller has glamour to spare and also some unexpected sideways sexuality with the sinister Martin Kosleck, who almost steals the movie. But not our hearts — in that department it’s Ellen Forever and Ever.

The Mad Doctor

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1940 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 90 min. / Street Date November 2, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Basil Rathbone, Ellen Drew, John Howard, Barbara Jo Allen aka Vera Vague, Ralph Morgan, Martin Kosleck, Kitty Kelly, Sheila Ryan, Norma Varden, Max Wagner.

Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff

Art Directors: Hans Dreier, Robert Usher

Film Editor: Archie Marshek

Original Music: Victor Young

Written by Howard J. Green...

Above: 1962 poster for The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer.The extraordinary German graphic designer Hans Hillmann (1925–2014) should need no introduction to readers of this column: I’ve written about him on a number of occasions and anyone who loves movie poster design should know his name. For a long time, however, it has been hard to find a lot of his work online, certainly not all in one place. For a while I had entertained the idea of trying to collect images of every single movie poster he ever designed and ranking them from best to least-best. But I knew that even if I could gather together his more than 160 posters that I would tie myself in knots trying to put them in any kind of order.Thankfully author and publisher Jens Müller has done half of the work for me. Müller had first met Hillmann when he curated...

Howard Hawks’ early sound picture is a worthy prison drama — with top performances from Walter Huston and Boris Karloff, both just as their film careers began to take off. Huston shows the screen how a stage actor can take command: his Da-turned warden character is corrupt yet retains his air of authority. Karloff’s convict seethes with raw menace, and Hawks uses him better than anyone except James Whale. That ‘other’ Code, the Production Code, found this show to be unbearably tense — even though all the brutality happens off-screen, violence is soaked into every scene.

The Criminal Code

Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1930 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 97 min. / Street Date March 22, 2021 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes, Constance Cummings, Boris Karloff, DeWitt Jennings, Mary Doran, Ethel Wales, Clark Marshall, Arthur Hoyt, John St. Polis, Paul Porcasi, Andy Devine.

Cinematography: James Wong Howe, Ted Tetzlaff

Film Editor: Edward Curtis...

Mill Creek and Kit Parker package nine mid-range Columbia features from the 1940s and 1950s, not all of them strictly noir but all with dark themes — crime, creepy politics, etc. None have been on Blu-ray, and all but one are in fine condition.

Noir Archive 9-Film Collection

Address Unknown, Escape in the Fog, The Guilt of Janet Ames, The Black Book, Johnny Allegro, 711 Ocean Drive, The Killer That Stalked New York, Assignment: Paris, The Miami Story

Blu-ray

Mill Creek / Kit Parker

1944 -1954 / B&W / 8 x 1:37 Academy; 1 x 1:85 widescreen / 734 min. / Street Date April 23, 2019 / 49.95

Starring: Paul Lukas, Nina Foch, Rosalind Russell, Robert Cummings, George Raft, Edmond O’Brien, Evelyn Keyes, Dana Andrews, Barry Sullivan.

Cinematography: Rudolph Maté, George Meehan, Joseph Walker, John Alton, Joseph Biroc, Franz Planer, Joseph Biroc, Burnett Guffey, Henry Freulich.

Written by Herbert Dalmas, Aubrey Wisberg, Louella MacFarlane, Philip Yordan, Karen DeWolf, Richard English, Harry Essex, William Bowers,...

The Road to Singapore, Zanzibar,

Morocco and Utopia

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1940, 41, 42, 43, 46 / 1:33:1 / 85, 91, 82, 90 Min. / Street Date – March 26, 2019

Starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour

Written by Frank Butler, Don Hartman, Melvin Frank

Cinematography by William C. Mellor, Ted Tetzlaff

Directed by Victor Schertzinger, David Butler, Hal Walker

Between 1940 and 1962, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby starred in seven “Road” pictures directed by such distinct talents as David Butler, Norman McLeod and Hope’s own gag-writer Norman Panama who would lead the comedian kicking and screaming into the sixties with How to Commit Marriage, a poison pen letter to the counterculture released in 1969.

Though produced during a World War, the first four Road films avoided the cynicism of that late 60’s farce – instead they were the essence of disposable fun – populist entertainments peppered with topical wisecracks, potshots at company brass and the occasional talking fish. Beginning with Road to Singapore, a...

Alfred Hitchcock’s nearly perfect romantic spy thriller teams Cary Grant with Ingrid Bergman to yield just what audiences wanted in 1946, an adult drama with menacing political themes… and an unusually adult approach to a perverse sex relationship!

Notorious

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 137

1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 101 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 15, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern, Madame Konstantin, Reinhold Schunzel.

Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff

Film Editor: Theron Warth

Original Music: Roy Webb

Written by Ben Hecht

Produced by Alfred Hitchcock, Barbara Keon

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Along with the best of Hollywood, Rko had a banner year in 1946, profiting from several films produced in conjunction with David O. Selznick, a super-agent who profited six ways to sundown by providing his personally contracted talent. Probably the best of the Selznick-owned Hitchcocks and still the most dramatically satisfying product of that producer-director arrangement,...

For my money this is the brightest, most endearing and wittiest ’30s comedy to be given the name ‘screwball.’ Everyone on screen is flawlessly magnificent — Carole Lombard, William Powell, Alice Brady, Gail Patrick, Jean Dixon, Eugene Pallette and Mischa Auer — and Gregory La Cava’s direction is so good, it’s invisible. No kidding, I’ve never watched this with a group or individual that didn’t immediately rank it among the best entertainments they’ve seen.

My Man Godfrey

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 114

1936 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 93 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 18, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: William Powell, Carole Lombard, Alice Brady, Gail Patrick, Eugene Pallette, Alan Mowbray, Jean Dixon, Mischa Auer.

Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff

Film Editors: Ted Kent, Russell Schoengarth

Original Music: Charles Previn

Written by Morrie Ryskind, Eric Hatch from his novel

Produced by Gregory La Cava, Charles R. Rogers

Directed by Gregory La Cava

Screwball...

At last, an adventure movie that does without action-epic superhero Bs. It's simply You Are There with a dozen likeable, determined climbers coping with calamity in a place that, for all the help that can be sent, 'might as well be on the moon.' The excellent depth effects all but nail us to the screen. Everest Blu-ray + DVD Universal Studios Home Entertainment 2015 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date January 19, 2016 / 49.98 Starring Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, Keira Knightley, Jake Gyllenhaal, Robin Wright, Martin Henderson, John Hawkes, Naoko Mori, Michael Kelly, Emily Watson, Sam Worthington. Cinematography Salvatore Totino Film Editor Mick Audsley Original Music Dario Marianelli Written by William Nicholson, Simon Beaufroy Produced by Nicky Kentish Barnes, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Baltasar Kormákur, Brian Oliver, Tyler Thompson. Directed by Baltasar Kormákur

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

I've heard no Oscar buzz surrounding Baltasar Kormákur's Everest, which makes sense. It isn't the kind of movie that courts awards,...

Batgirl Yvonne Craig. Batgirl Yvonne Craig dead at 78: Also featured in 'Star Trek' episode, Elvis Presley movies Yvonne Craig, best known as Batgirl in the 1960s television series Batman, died of complications from breast cancer on Monday, Aug. 17, '15, at her home in Pacific Palisades, in the Los Angeles Westside. Craig (born May 16, 1937, in Taylorville, Illinois), who had been undergoing chemotherapy for two years, was 78. Beginning (and ending) in the final season of Batman (1967-1968), Yvonne Craig played both Commissioner Gordon's librarian daughter Barbara Gordon and her alter ego, the spunky Batgirl – armed with a laser-beaming electric make-up kit “which will destroy anything.” Unlike semi-villainess Catwoman (Julie Newmar), Batgirl was wholly on the side of Righteousness, infusing new blood into the series' increasingly anemic Dynamic Duo: Batman aka Bruce Wayne (Adam West) and Boy Wonder Robin aka Bruce Wayne's beloved pal Dick Grayson (Burt Ward). “They chose...

Cinelinx punches its ticket for the classic thriller Terror on a Train, now on DVD from Warner Archive!

This Warner Archive release is a Manufacture-On-Demand (Mod) DVD. It is made to be played in "play only" DVD devices, and may not play in some DVD recorders or PC drives. This disc, however, played fine in the Toshiba DVD recorder used for this review. This title is available directly from WBShop.com by clicking here.

The Set-up

When a plot to bomb a British supply train is discovered, an American bomb disposal expert Peter Lyncort (Glenn Ford) is called upon to disarm it.

Directed by Ted Tetzlaff 

The Delivery

The 1952 film Terror on a Train (also released as Time Bomb) sounds like a Hitchcockian thriller, and with veteran actor Glenn Ford in the lead, the premise sounds promising. In World War II-era England, a German saboteur has planted a powerful bomb on a munitions train,...

Eleanor Parker: Palm Springs resident turns 91 today Eleanor Parker turns 91 today. The three-time Oscar nominee (Caged, 1950; Detective Story, 1951; Interrupted Melody, 1955) and Palm Springs resident is Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of June 2013. Earlier this month, TCM showed a few dozen Eleanor Parker movies, from her days at Warner Bros. in the ’40s to her later career as a top Hollywood supporting player. (Photo: Publicity shot of Eleanor Parker in An American Dream.) Missing from TCM’s movie series, however, was not only Eleanor Parker’s biggest box-office it — The Sound of Music, in which she steals the show from both Julie Andrews and the Alps — but also what according to several sources is her very first movie role: a bit part in Raoul Walsh’s They Died with Their Boots On, a 1941 Western starring Errol Flynn as a dashingly handsome and all-around-good-guy-ish General George Armstrong Custer. Olivia de Havilland...