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Yet another 3-D Blu-ray treat — the 3-D Film Archive restores a rare English production, an international crime tale in 3-D. Dennis O’Keefe’s T-Man helps Scotland Yard track down a gang of smugglers that kidnaps and murders to force an Atom scientist to perfect his manufacturing formula for synthetic diamonds. You know, just like the silicon chip business. The widescreen 3-D is excellent, especially in two action set pieces. Margaret Sheridan co-stars. It’s almost a premiere, as the movie was never publicly exhibited in 3-D. Kino also provides an anaglyphic encoding with a pair of red-cyan glasses as an alternate 3-D option. Plus good extras about the 3-D process.

The Diamond Wizard 3-D

3-D Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1954 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 83 min. / Street Date November 15, 2022 / Available at Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Dennis O’Keefe, Margaret Sheridan, Philip Friend, Alan Wheatley, Francis De Wolff, Eric Berry, Gudrun Ure, Paul Hardtmuth,...

What ought to be appreciated as one of the most prescient of 1950s suspense films holds a place among the best science fiction movies ever — and it formed a style template for a thousand paranoid spy thrillers to follow. Val Guest pares Nigel Kneale’s fantastic storyline down to its essentials, making his scientist-hero the perfect secret agent to confront a sinister techno-political conspiracy… from outer space.

Quatermass 2

Blu-ray

Scream Factory

1957 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 85 min. / Street Date July 30, 2019 / 29.95

Starring: Brian Donlevy, John Longdon, Sidney James, Bryan Forbes, William Franklyn, Vera Day, Charles Lloyd Pack, Tom Chatto, John Van Eyssen, Percy Herbert, Michael Ripper, John Rae, Michael Balfour.

Cinematography: Gerald Gibbs

Film Editor: James Needs

Makeup: Philip Leakey

Art Direction: Bernard Robinson

Original Music: James Bernard

Written by Val Guest, Nigel Kneale from his teleplay

Produced by Anthony Hinds

Directed by Val Guest

Here’s yet another fine 2019 Blu-ray release...

“You crazy rat you croaked him!” Yes, you’ve probably heard better hardboiled dialogue, but this British imitation of American gangster pictures takes the cake for screwy line deliveries. It’s derived from a book and play that’s already derived from a salacious William Faulkner story. Jack La Rue and Linden Travers try to make a kidnapper-rapist into a sympathetic, romantic figure, with marvelously awkward results. This Brit import comes with significant extras.

No Orchids for Miss Blandish

All-Region Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1948 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 103 min. / / Street Date May 27, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £17.00

Starring: Starring: Jack La Rue, Hugh McDermott, Linden Travers, Walter Crisham, MacDonald Parke, Danny Green, Lilli Molnar, Charles Goldner, Zoé Gail, Leslie Bradley, Richard Nielson, Michael Balfour, Frances Marsden, Sydney James.

Cinematography: Gerald Gibbs

Film Editor: Manuel del Campo

Original Music: George Melachrino

From the novel by James Hadley Chase

Written, Produced and Directed by St.

Devotees of crime and film noir will get a kick out of this Brit attempt to capture the American style, that now comes off as screamingly funny. It was both a huge hit and a big scandal in London, 1948, where the censors came down hard on the film’s flagrant immorality and over-the-top violence. Former pre-Code second-banana thug Jack La Rue tries hard to be Humphrey Bogart. Leading lady Linden Travers’ role is as non-pc now as it was then: an heiress falls in love with the gangster, who has raped her, because she likes it. But the film’s maladroit hardboiled dialogue is hilarious fun.

No Orchids for Miss Blandish

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 103 min. / Street Date March 20, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jack La Rue, Hugh McDermott, Linden Travers, Walter Crisham, MacDonald Parke, Danny Green, Lilli Molnar, Charles Goldner, Zoë Gail, Leslie Bradley, Richard Nielson,...

Scream favorites Vincent Price and Christopher Lee become tangled in an African curse, grave robbing, a premature burial and a clutch of throat-slashings -- yet the two stars have no real scenes together. Steve Haberman's well-researched and insightful commentary tells the story of Gordon Hessler's first production for the English arm of American-International Pictures, a movie planned to be directed by the mysterious Michael Reeves. The Oblong Box Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1969 / Color /1:85 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date October 20, 2015 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Rupert Davies, Uta Levka, Sally Geeson, Alister Williamson, Peter Arne. Cinematography John Coquillon Original Music Harry Robertson Written by Lawrence Huntington, Christopher Wicking Produced by Gordon Hessler, Louis M. Heyward Directed by Gordon Hessler  

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

I've been doing my best to warm up to the filmic output of producer-director Gordon Hessler. I agree that Hessler's three major A.

On an island “somewhere” off the English coast (but obviously Cornwall), farmer Gyles MacDonald opts for a spot of drunken bestiality with his goat, the end result being Billy- half man, half beast. Shunned as a freak by his own father, the goat-child turns feral, only to return much later to wreak his revenge on the family that turned against him.

Doing nothing for the image of Westcountry folk as dim-witted inbred’s, Revenge of Billy the Kid similarly upholds the British cinematic tradition of bawdy humour and self-deprecating mockery. With the British heritage of the gothic and anthology horror genres made famous by such institutions as Hammer and Amicus long gone, the 80’s and early 90’s dipped into the international move toward gross-out, in this instance heavily tinged with our own special brand of saucy mirth.

As a general rule of thumb you can pretty much rely on Medusa...