Episode One: Classic Entertainment Triple & Quadruple Bills
© James Beswick Whitehead, 2004, 2007
revised and expanded version, 20th July, 2006
slightly expanded 16th December, 2006
revised and expanded version, 2nd January, 2007
This piece originated in posts I submitted to the Fortean Times Message Board between September 2004 and November 2005, when an avalanche of old Hollywood movies started to appear in UK bargain outlets. The Classic Entertainment triple bills were typically available for £1 each on the High Street, even though they were also sold online for a rather less appealing four or five quid. It became a challenge to try to track down and document the whole series and comment on the prints used. It was also quite an education in the poverty-row studios fare which usually gets only a passing mention in the history books.
What do you want for a quid?
What sort of a DVD do you expect to get for a quid? Anyone glancing through the often terrrifying wares available in UK Pound Stores may at some point have pondered the wisdom of picking up things which look too good to be true. Most of the time you will see frowsy made-for-tv movies, cheap cartoons and laughable Ninja video schlock. All these have their fans - except those terrible cheap cartoons, which will just make your kiddies feel unloved. I can resist all of them since low-grade drivel is piped into my home via an aerial, when I can be bothered plugging the thing in. However, I am a sucker for cobwebby stuff, films from Hollywood's poverty row, musty old Westerns, creaky old Lugosis or ancient classics that our grandparents may have seen: Chaplin, Valentino, Lucille Ball. I kid myself that a taste for this kind of retro-schlock is a form of social history. So when the shops filled up with a series of Triple Bill DVDs offering a tranche of the stuff, I turned up with my shovel to dig through the badly-organized displays to see just what was on offer. I was about to enter the mad, bad, sad world of the Public Domain.
What is Public Domain?
Wearing my film anorak, I gather that at one time US Copyright in movies was not automatic and needed to be renewed at twenty-eight year intervals, otherwise they lapsed into the Public Domain. Then, like old books, anyone could copy them without paying a copyright fee. Understandably, most studios protected their rights jealously so PD status affected mainly independently-produced or orphaned films. Work as recent as the zombie flicks of George Romero has accidentally landed in the PD and some films never seem to have been registered. On the Web you can find the sites of companies which sell libraries of PD material to anyone who wishes to exploit it. There is a one-off fee so if you can get the packaging right, you may turn a fast buck. In recent years, copyright laws have been tightened so that unregistered works qualify for protection. Generally speaking, however, once a work has turned into a Public Domain weed, it stays that way, proliferating in cheap forms which may be many generations away from the original prints or negatives. I'm afraid that means that a lot of PD material has come off someone's VCR. Others have come from worn tv prints which have suffered rough handling and-or cuts. Many film enthusiasts deplore these objects and see them as a disincentive for anyone to take the trouble to produce proper versions.
If such things are spotted in HMV at twelve pounds each - and they are - I think bargepoles are called for. At a pound, however, I thought these objects were a lot better value than my television licence, now that I watch probably half a dozen shows in a year. Even if I went mad and bought the whole series of nearly seventy triple bills, I would have acquired some 144 feature films, 70 television shows and about 50 cartoons. So I went mad and tracked them down. This took a lot of patience. If you are piling stuff high and selling cheap, you can't be finicking about with inventories and customer orders. You pay your wholesale price of around 59p per disc and wait for your pallet to arrive. You get an assortment of sorts, it is true, but packed straight off the production-line in boxes of a single title. They go on the shelves like that, relying on the odd impulse purchaser rather than the mad anorak who wants to complete his precious set. It took about a year to get the series and I was fortunate in living near Central Manchester with a selection of outlets within reach. Any town I visited, I would check out the Poundland or Poundworld or Superpound or - in Rochdale, for some reason, the 88p shops. At first they would come in armfuls but as time wore on, the last few numbers on my wants list seemed elusive. Then, just when I was giving up, about a year into the quest, most of the remaining gaps were filled at one fowl swoop.
Donning the Body Armour
Body armour was suggested as the proper wear for such down-market adventures but I survived and it was gratifying to come back from an expedition to darkest Oldham or Bolton with a bagful of these cellophane-wrapped goodies. It would be cruel to say that really the best part of the adventure was unwrapping them and checking with Movie Guides or online sources as to what species of film these actually were. Often, even the biggest Guides were stumped but luckily the online oracles knew of these things as they had been on the American market for some time. Then there was the mystery of what version had made it onto the disc: some hacked to shreds television version perhaps, or maybe a rare complete print from a good source. The game was on. Even at their frowsy worst, these entertainments knocked seven bells out of "reality tv."
The quality varies considerably and none of it is exactly Demonstration material. The discs are nearly all dual-layer with running times of three to three and a half hours. There are a lot of B pictures here as well as a few Z pictures. When you have the time, it is tempting to recreate the full programmes that cinema-goers once took for granted: cartoons, supporting-feature and main film.
I had hoped that this enterprising range of Triple bills would be expanded in Autumn 2005 - they first appeared in the Pound Stores about September 2004. For a while, the series seemed to have stalled at around 70 issues and the Poundstore slush-piles reverted to less interesting fare. Numbers in the series actually continue up to around CE 082 but the later numbers were applied either to the Boxed Sets of existing material or to a number of recouplings - notably of the John Wayne material, so that convenient boxed collections could be issued. It seems highly unlikely that any of this material was remastered so I have not acquired the sets to check. The label is now distributed by a company called The Lace Group, who seem to be concentrating on boxed sets, gift-packages with CDs and Books included and some low-rent modern acquisitions. See the notes added below the listing of CE 069.
Caveats
Nearly all the films are conversions from NTSC masters, which means that running times are equal to the cinema length not 4% faster as with PAL. The method used duplicates one frame each second and this can cause some noticable unevenness on tracking shots. However, in the light of all the other flaws in Public Domain prints, this is rarely a major problem. Quavery soundtracks are more horrible, I find, also one film here has had stock music superimposed to obscure a copyright score to create a horrible cacophony. That film is The Santa Fe Trail. Oddly enough, that picture was originally issued with an early form of spacialized sound but that is not the culprit here.
Some of these titles were on the streets long before the certificates were confirmed by the bbfc. A number of the westerns feature material that was subject to compulsory cuts - notably cruel horse falls. Some discs seem to have been reissued to conform with these cuts but other horses had bolted before the stable door was shut. I am no fan of animal cruelty but the protection of long-dead animals has always seemed to me an eccentric British pastime. Ironically, though the bbfc point to legislation from the 1930s, there seems to have been no attempt to cut these films when they have appeared before the board in the past.
Now, for the first time properly organized and somewhat expanded, here is the catalogue of the Classic Entertainment Triple or Quadruple Bills. Click on any of the titles below to go straight down to the page to the comments section.
CE 001: 3 John Wayne Westerns, vol. I: Blue Steel; Winds of the Wastelands; The Trail Beyond.
CE 002: 3 John Wayne Westerns, vol. II: Paradise Canyon; The Dawn Rider; The Desert Trail.
CE 003: 3 Tough Guys of the Silver Screen, vol. I: Call it Murder; Great Guy; The Lucky Texan.
CE 011: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. V: Blood on the Sun; Lawless Frontier; Lawless Range.
CE 013: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. VII: Our Town; The Star Packer; Rocket Ship XM.
CE 027: Krazy Kartoons: 16 classic cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig etc.
CE 028: Popeye 75th Anniversary: 2 hours of classic cartoons.
CE 034: 3 Classic Westerns of the Silver Screen, vol. VIII: Abilene Town; Kansas Pacific; Colorado.
CE 038: 3 Classic Horrors of the Silver Screen, vol. VI: Dementia 13; Shock; Black Dragons.
CE 042: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. X: Road to Bali; Basin Street Revue; Forbidden Music.
CE 043: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, vol. XI: Duel of the Champions; Trapped; The Big Chance.
CE 044: 3 Leading Ladies of the Silver Screen, vol. III: Bigamist; Hell's House; High Voltage.
CE 045: 3 Leading Ladies of the Silver Screen, vol. IV: Rain; The Racketeer; Shriek in the Night.
CE 046: 3 Classic Boris Karloff Films of the Silver Screen: The Ape; The Fatal Hour; Doomed to Die.
CE 047: 3 Mickey Rooney Films of the Silver Screen: Quicksand; My Outlaw Brother; Mickey the Great.
CE 060: 4 Classic Episodes of The Lucy Show, vol. II: L. & Pat Collins; L. & the Monkey; L. & Phil Silvers; L. the Baby Sitter.
CE 061: 4 Classic Episodes of The Lucy Show, vol. III: L. Flies to London; L. Gets Trapped; L. gets Jack Benny's Account; Little Old Lady.
Added 02.01.2007
With 069, the main wave of pound-store fare seems to have ended. Logic suggested that CE 070 would be a second volume of the Cisco Kid - since CE 069 had been labelled Volume 1. That seems never to have been issued. Instead, the company decided to concentrate on repackaging its catalogue as boxed sets of three DVDs, a move which involved some regrouping of previously issued material. Oddly, the catalogue numbers for the sets kept the CE prefix, so boxed sets now appear along with discs which simply regroup old material and a few discs which add new material. With this move to boxed sets, the company seems temporarily at least to have stopped supplying vast print-runs of material to the pound-stores and the boxes have shown up in high-street dealers such as HMV and Music Zone, usually for around £10. Distribution of the label has passed to a company called The Lace Group.
CE 070 - The Classic Horror Box Set, Vol.1: Consists of CE 016, 017 & 018
CE 071 - The Classic Western Box Set, Vol.1: Consists of CE 001, 056 & 063
CE 072 - The Classic Sherlock Holmes Box Set Vol.1: Consists of CE 023, 054 & 055. NB: This set is listed elsewhere as CE 075.
CE 073 - The Classic Beverly Hillbillies Box Set: Consists of CE 026, 052 & 053
CE 074 - The Classic Bonanza Box Set: Consists of CE 056, 057 & 058
CE 075 - The Classic Sherlock Holmes Box Set Vol.1: Consists of CE 023, 054 & 055. NB: This set is listed elsewhere as CE 072.
CE 076 - The Classic John Wayne Box Set Vol.1: Consists of CE 001, 002 & 078
CE 077 - The Classic John Wayne Box Set Vol.2: Consists of CE 079, CE 080 & CE 081
CE 078 - 3 John Wayne Classic Westerns Vol.3: McLintock! (1963); Lawless Frontier (1934); The Star Packer (1934)
CE 079 - 3 John Wayne Classic Westerns Vol.4: Angel and the Badman (1947); Hell Town (1937); Sagebrush Trail (1933)
CE 080 - 3 John Wayne Classic Westerns Vol.5: The Man from Utah (1934); Lawless Range (1935); Riders of Destiny (1933)
CE 081 - 3 John Wayne Classic Westerns Vol.6: Texas Terror (1935); West of the Divide (1934); Randy Rides Alone (1934)
CE 082 - The Classic Lone Ranger Box Set: Consists of CE 062, 063 & 064.
CE 083 - Classic Horror Box Set Vol.2: Consists of CE 019, 037 & 038.
CE 084 - 2 Sex-Horror Films: Wolfhound& Club Vampire, see below
CE 085 - Lugosi Box Set: Consists of CE 022, 087 & 088.
CE 086 - Leading Ladies Box Set: Consists of CE 005, 006 & 044.
CE 087 - 3 Lugosi Films, Vol.2: The Corpse Vanishes; The Ape Man; Bride of the Monster.
CE 088 - 3 Lugosi Films, Vol.3: Spooks Run Wild; The Devil Bat; Black Dragons.
CE 089 - 3 Abbot & Costello Comedies: Jack & The Beanstalk; Africa Screams; A & C Comedy Hour.
CE 090 - 3 Hope & Crosby Films: Road to Bali; Road to Hollywood; My Favorite Brunette.
CE 091 - 3 Laurel & Hardy Comedies: Utopia; Flying Deuces; Stolen Jools.
CE 092 - 3 Classic Musicals, Vol.3: Basin Street Review; Forbidden Music; Something to Sing About.
CE 093 - 3 Classic Double Acts, Box Set: Consists of CE 089, 090 & 091.
CE 094 - Classic Musicals Box Set: Consists of CE 049, 050 & 092
CE 095 - The Classic Sherlock Holmes Box Set Vol.2: Consists of CE 035, 096 & 097.
CE 096 - 3 Sherlock Holmes Films, Vol.2: The Woman in Green; A Study in Scarlet, Reginald Owen; The Speckled Band, Raymond Massey.
CE 097 - 3 Sherlock Holmes Films, Vol.3: Silver Blaze, 1937; The Sign of Four, 1932; The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes, 1935.
CE 098 - Pirates Box Set: Consists of CE 099, 100 & 101.
CE 099 - 4 Adventures of Long John Silver, Vol.1: The Necklace; Pieces of Eight; The Orphan's Christmas; Execution Dock.
CE 100 - 4 Adventures of Long John Silver, Vol.2: The Eviction; The Pink Pearl; The Tale of a Tooth; Ship o' the Dead.
CE 101 - 2 Classic Pirate Films: Captain Kidd, 1945; Return to Treasure Island, 1954.
CE 102 - Classic Western Box Set, Vol.2: Consists of CE 033, 034 & 069.
CE 103 - Classic Tough Guys Box Set: Consists of CE 003, 004 & 041.
CE 104 - Classic Horror - 7 disc set: Consists of CE 016, 017, 018, 019, 037, 038 & 039.
CE 105 - John Wayne 100th Anniversary - 6 disc set: Consists of CE 001, 002, 078, 079, 080 & 081 ( sets 076 & 077 in single package form)
CE 106 - Classic TV Comedy Collection, 7 disc set: Consists of CE 026, 052, 053, 059, 060, 061 & 068.
The ND Prefix is used to designate DVD & Book Packages which seem poor value:
ND 002 - Sherlock Holmes Book & DVD Collection: The Sign of Four on DVD packaged with the book.
ND 004 - Sherlock Holmes Book & DVD Collection: The Speckled Band on DVD packaged with the book.
ND 006 - Treasure Island Premiere Collection: Consists of Return to Treasure Island DVD packaged with book of Stevenson's classic novel.
ND 010 - Sherlock Holmes Double Book & DVD Collection: Consists of The Speckled Band & The Sign of Four on 2 separate DVDs with the books.
(Since the print of The Speckled Band is heavily abridged and both books are novella length, this is a meagre package which is bound to disappoint!)
The HD Prefix is used for some packs which mix DVDs with CDs:
HD 001: The Frank Sinatra Premiere Collection, Vol.1: Consists of DVD of 3 hour-long tv shows packaged with CD featuring 20 songs.
HD 002: The Frank Sinatra Premiere Collection, Vol.2: Consists of DVD of 3 hour-long tv shows packaged with CD featuring 20 songs.
HD 003: The Frank Sinatra Premiere Collection, Vol.3: Consists of DVD of 3 hour-long tv shows packaged with CD featuring 20 songs.
HD 010: The Frank Sinatra Premiere Complete Collection: Consists of 3 DVDs featuring 9 hour-long tv shows packaged with 3 CDs featuring 60 songs.
HD 011: The Dean Martin Premiere Collection, Vol.1: Consists of DVD of 3 hour-long tv shows packaged with CD featuring 20 songs.
The VFD Prefix is used for a modern Brit Flick:
VFD 001: Wedding Tackle, 2000, directed by one Rami Dvir, rated 3.4 out of 10 on imdb
Summary of new material in CE series issued after CE 069:
CE 084. Wolfhound & Club Vampire. Departs from three old films per disc format:
Wolfhound, a sex-horror directed by one Donovan Kelly, 2002, rates 3.1 out of 10 on imdb& Club Vampire, directed by one Andy Ruben, 1998, rates 1.2 out of 10 on imdb.
CE 091. Adds Stolen Jools, a Laurel & Hardy short.
CE 096. Adds Reginald Owen in A Study in Scarlet.
CE 097. Adds two new Arthur Wontner Sherlock Holmes titles: The Sign of Four & The Triumph of S. H.
CE 099, 100, 101. All the pirates boxed set is new, presumably added to trade on popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean.
001: Blue Steel. Winds Of The Wastelands. The Trail Beyond. Vol.1 John Wayne
002: Paradise Canyon. The Dawn Rider. The Desert Trail. Vol.2 John Wayne
Fifteen of the sixteen John Wayne Lone Star B-Westerns feature in the series. The exception is a film called Rainbow Valley made in 1935. They date from 1933 - 35 and were independently produced by Paul Malvern and distributed by poverty-row outfit Monogram. These are widely available in other compilations, usually with added synthesizer music which is dreadful. I have been able to compare all of these prints with those in the John Wayne Most Wanted triple bills from IVL and these Classic Entertainment versions are usually superior. Other Lone Star Westerns are sprinkled throughout the series but the first two discs are entirely devoted to them. Later some of the others were recoupled so that a John Wayne Collection could be offered.
Some of the films actually run longer than the versions on the IVL discs. The Star Packer is 1.5 minutes longer, Lawless Frontier some three minutes longer and Riders of Destiny go on riding for an extra five minutes in this version. More important, however, is the fact that the prints are generally superior and the appalling synthesized music from the 1988 Fox-Lorber cable tv prints isn't always used. That leaves long action sequences with nothing but sound effects. Even the fisticuffs do not get loudly amplified blows as we are used to - so the pulled punches tend to be noticed. Judging from my memories of seeing this type of fare in chidren's matinees many years ago, the soundtracks were totally drowned out in the action sequences by a concerted stamping of feet. They lose more than a little when watched on the small screen with respectful nostalgia.
Blue Steel - don't look for relevance in the titles - is the first movie on the first of these discs. Quality wise it sets a pretty high standard for this is about as good as seventy-year-old B-Westerns ever look. The cinematography is often strikingly good with some bold compositions in the chase sequences. I loved this one. This print runs 54 mins - the same as the version in The Most Wanted Collection. The allmovie guide gives an rt of 59 minutes. I sure do hate to lose even a minute or two of these darn horsey operas! Good to report that this is free of any synthesized soundtrack.
Winds of the Wasteland is a slightly later1935 John Wayne Western made for Republic. They spent a bit more money on this than on the Lone Star series - it even has a lush symphonic score from stock music. When the telegraph puts Pony Express riders out or work, Wayne with his partner, buys a franchise for a stagecoach line to a ghost town. He has been suckered. However, bit by bit he revives the town and vanquishes the baddies in a stagecoach race to gain the mail subsidy. Good fun. The print runs three minutes longer than some in circulation - mainly extra footage of the race. A line of ceefax-type dots at the top of the screen - visible if viewing on a computer - suggest a telly source for this.
The Trail Beyond ends with an exciting siege at a Canadian trading post, where some wicked French Canadians with dodgy accents have stolen the ammunition. Throw in a treasure map, a pair of skeletons, canoes and two Noah Beerys and we have a busy fifty-five minutes for John Wayne. On the grounds of waste-not, want-not even a failed stunt was left in the finished print, to show that not even Big John could transfer from horse to wagon first time every time, even when he was doubled by Yakima Canutt.
003: Call It Murder. Great Guy. The Lucky Texan. Vol.1 Tough Guys
Call it Murder was an early Bogart movie - this is the retitled re-release print which promotes him to the star in the titles, though he was really just a supporting player in 1934. Call it Murder is not strictly a Hollywood movie at all - it was independently produced in New York from a successful play called Midnight, its alternative title. Its stage origins are obvious but the first half is very gripping. After the midnight deadline passes, the tension slackens and we see the end coming way before they finish. This print is not a thing of beauty with some moments of lost sound and jumps. However, I'd guess that it was only Bogart's subsequent fame and the movie's reissue which assured its survival in any form.
Great Guy features Jimmy Cagney as a Deputy Weights & Measures Inspector in one of the unsuccessful movies produced by Cagney's own company. So not much chance of him turning yellow on the way to chair, alas! Probably the best scenes are those in which he exposes the daily small-time scams of the High Street. It is all quite watchable and Cagney is fine. This picture seems to have been hacked about quite a bit during its lifetime. Maltin gives 75 minutes but the Allmovie Guide says it is just 50 minutes. This Poundland cut runs the promised 66 minutes on PAL. Take that to Weights & Measures to work out!
The Lucky Texan is a Lone Star Western. In this one, Big John with his old-timer step-daddy George Hayes strike gold. Some slicker types cheat them with false contracts out of their property. The solution turns out to be a man donning a dress! Oh Lordy!
004: Vengeance Valley. The Big Trees. The Man fron Utah. Vol.2 Tough Guys
Man from Utah is another Lone Star picture made up mainly from old rodeo footage but the other two are lush colour pictures from the early fifties.
Paternity and illegitimacy were not issues which Hollywood liked to tackle head on in a contemporary setting. The Western genre had a long history of exploring issues of masculinity and survival but also by implication their opposites. This handsome Technicolor picture was thought very daring in its day and is still very watchable. Vengeance Valley has its soapy moments and Burt Lancaster was the star but Robert Walker steals the show as his camply wicked brother - from the same year as his famous rôle as the nutty Bruno in Strangers on a Train.
The Big Trees is an example of fifties mainstream weirdness - a Technicolor adventure which throws a heap of exotic ingredients into the pot and still emerges tasting of a wet Saturday afternoon. Land-grabbing Kirk Douglas gets involved with a tree-hugging Quaker widow. A history lesson spoken over the cross-section of a giant redwood was lifted by Hitchcock for Vertigo. The colour print is in a reasonable state but the transfer suffers the same kind of pitch-waver on the soundtrack as on Behave Yourself. As there is a lush soundtrack, this is very uncomfortable.
005: Fathers Little Dividend. Nothing Sacred. Ghosts On The Loose. Vol.1 Leading Ladies
The ladies concerned are Liz Taylor, Carole Lombard & Ava Gardner.
Father's Little Dividend. In his sequel to Father of the Bride, mad Hollywood director Albert Q. Fegg decided to change a few things. Grouchy Spencer Tracy's mood swings are attributed to cocaine and we gather that he has impregnated his daughter - a skinny Liz Taylor. She keeps assuring herself that having bitten the pillow, she cannot be pregnant. In the notorious glass toilet scene, filmed on closed sets, we see the hideous anal birth of a monster-child. The husband, played by Charles Hawtrey, knows he cannot be the father of this monstrosity so he lures Tracy to a dockside tavern and pays some thugs to emasculate him. Cunningly, his father-in-law has turned up in a dress and seduces the three assassins, before murdering them in cruel and unusual ways. Meanwhile, Liz cannot face the screaming little alien and has hallucinations of a fat-cheeked woman in her radiator - surely not her future self! As the face of Spencer Tracy begins to appear on the back of the child's head, she saws the poor little mite in two. Her father then arrives with the famous freeze-frame line, his bloodstained hand on the bannister as he climbs the stairs, "Honey, I'm home!"
Needless to say, MGM had their doubts about this version of the movie and hired husband-of-Dorothy Vincente Minelli to remake it. Sadly that is the version usually seen today and on this disc. It retains much of the horror of the Fegg version but is a tad short of its lightness of touch.
Now a classic Ben Hecht comedy: Nothing Sacred is in very bad taste throughout. Carole Lombard is determined to enjoy a free trip to New York courtesy of a newspaper. They think she is dying so she becomes the sentimental toast of the city. As the truth threatens to unfold, she decides on suicide. Meanwhile reporter Frederick March has fallen for her. They end up slugging it out in a very incorrect finale. This print is slightly hazy but for 1937 Technicolor not so bad. A few local bursts of scratching occur but mostly the picture does not look too distressed. Deliciously wicked fun this one and worth far more than the measly sum asked!
Ghosts on the Loose is a turkey from William One-Shot Beaudine: here sold as starring Ava Gardner but neither she nor Lugosi are on screen long. The full horror is revealed in its alternative title: The Eastside Boys Meet Bela Lugosi. Oh dear, the unlovely boys had started as a touch of social realism in pictures such as Dead End and Angels with Dirty Faces but by this time they had sunk into empty farcial comedy. This weak film has Nazi spies but no spooks. Even so, it is useful to be made aware of some of the workaday fare to which audiences of the time were subjected. It wasn't Maltese Falcon on the menu every day!
006: Of Human Bondage. Behave Yourself. Home Town Story. Vol.2 Leading Ladies
Home Town Story was a pro-business lecture funded by General Motors wrapped in a thin fictional coat. It would have been forgotten years ago if Marilyn Monroe hadn't featured in an early supporting rôle. Her assets are quite outstanding though her accent is very odd - she is on-screen for a couple of minutes only. The theme music suffers from terrible pitch waver. A pinko Senator is thrown out of office and continues his anti-business campaigns from the editorial desk of the local paper. When his kid sister is rescued by big machines, he rethinks his attitude and is welcomed back into mainstream with the love of a good woman and a puppy. Citizen Kane it is not and I suppose everyone took the GM money and ran, before they could view the finished product, which resembles an episode of Thunderbirds without such convincing puppets!
Behave Yourself is a surprisingly black comedy to come out of fifties Hollywood. The print is badly affected by vile pitch-waver on the music soundtrack - there is a lot of music. This kind of pitch-black comedy requires a more subtle touch but this is a handsomely-mounted production, with top cinematography from James Wong Howe. Maybe Billy Wilder could have done something more with it. The plot is a complicated one - advertisements for a lost dog lead to an increasing pile of corpses. An unlikely pairing of Shelley Winters and Farley Grainger is upstaged by a formidable mother-in-law.
The real gem here is John Cromwell's 1934 version of Somerset Maugham's grim romance. This was the first major rôle of Bette Davis. She plays the sluttish Cockney waitress who makes poor crippled Leslie Howard's life a misery. This is a dork fillum indeed with a startlingly pessimistic view of sexual relations as inevitably blighted by power-games. What adds to the film's curiosity value is that it was long-thought to be lost: the negatives having been destroyed when a new and lesser version was made in the forties. So DVDs are all from surviving 16mm prints and not of top quality. Both this DVD and that on GMVS feature an 83 minute version but some sources speak of a running time of 90 minutes. There is nothing to choose between the prints on offer, which look identical. Howard and Davis are both brilliant however so this is a real bargain.
007: His Private Secretary. His Girl Friday. The Amazing Adventure. Vol. 1 Silver Screen
Two of these films are Depression-era Cinderella tales in which a millionaire enters the real world of work and finds a bride. His Private Secretary stars the youthful John Wayne, miscast as a dissipated playboy. Some sources give a running time of 68 minutes for this, so this 60 minute print may well be abridged. This 1930 movie is among the earliest on these discs and the print is not in good condition.
The Amazing Adventure is a young Cary Grant as another millionaire trying to survive in the real world of work as a bet. It has its moments but this UK-made movie was drastically trimmed for the US and runs only just over an hour with a very abrupt ending. Even so, the young Grant is worth seeing - he seems to arrived in movies with a full bag of tricks which held him in good stead for several decades.
One of Grant's best films makes this DVD seem attractive: His Girl Friday is the Howard Hawks comedy in which Ben Hecht rewrote The Front Page for Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant. The fast-paced dialogue is here scored in a near-musical way and the comedy is pitch black with a death-row prisoner's fate in the balance. Many different prints of this classic are on the market and this is alas a very poor one. Probably the safest bet is the genuine Columbia item but the cheap Delta-Laserlight version, which comes with a short featurette on Cary Grant is miles better than the one on this Triple Bill, where some lines are inaudible on the ropiest of soundtracks.
008: My Favourite Brunette. Crosby-The Road To Hollywood. Suddenly. Vol.2 Silver Screen
The Road to Hollywood was a cash-in movie, reissuing early Bing Crosby shorts in a compilation with a title designed to confuse audiences who had flocked to the successful series of comedies he made with Bob Hope & Dorothy Lamour. Crosby's film career was essentially based on his phenomenal success as a radio and recording artist. The films promoted his laid-back persona, which now can seem complacent and dull. The plots revolve around his celebrity or his being mistaken for someone without it. There are some inventive routines here - I enjoyed the lion! The black-face stuff will raise eyebrows today though.
Crosby puts in a brief guest appearance at the end of My Favourite Brunette. This is a film noir spoof, starring Bob Hope as a baby-photographer with aspirations to be a detective. When mysterious Dorothy Lamour hires him, can Peter Lorre be far behind? You could count the Fortean pre-echoes of Hitchcock in this one. It is well made but neither very funny nor very thrilling. Films with a hyphen in their genre never are.
Suddenly was withdrawn by television companies after the Kennedy assassination. A tense siege-type thriller, it stars Frank Sinatra as the unbalanced war veteran who has been hired to shoot the President. Eerie prefigurings of the LHO case abound, including the shooting of a policeman. Some sort of confused message about the need for guns is implied but the film works very well and makes this particular triple bill well worth having.
009: The Woman In Green. Young and Innocent. The Man Who knew Too Much.Vol.3 Silver Screen
The Woman in Green is one of the Basil Rathbone Holmes series. The other two are both UK Hitchcocks from the thirties.
This 1934 version of The Man who Knew Too Much is wonderful entertainment, though I always boggle at the occult prediction of a Temple of the Sun in Wapping, later the home of the dim Murdoch newspaper. Take a look at the user comments on the IMDB to see how this one divides the sheep from the goats. Anyone who thinks this a routine thirties movie or technically unsophisticated should be forced to watch Star Wars until their eyes bleed.
It is fast-moving and very subtle. Compare the dysfunctional family here with the fifties remake which featured Jimmy Stewart & Doris Day. The languid style of Leslie Banks, tucking into cheese and pickles with his daughter's kidnappers has to be seen as a comment on the complacency of the International Set in the face of the rise of Nazism. I also find the final scene of the distressed Nova Pilbeam carries quite a charge. The emotions are mainly masked in this film but when they burst out it is very telling. The final siege, based on the Sydney Street siege of 1912, caused the censors a great many headaches as the script had originally featured the police with guns. It began life as a Bulldog Drummond story.
This print is rather tired-looking. The version on Carlton Silver Collection is much better, though it has some scratches. This cheap version has a longer running time but that is due entirely to its being a conversion from NTSC. There is no extra footage.
Young & Innocent is less often seen. The innocent man on the run with a girl who believes in him makes it a classic Hitchcock situation. The only scene usually praised is the showy shot near the end where the camera homes in on the black-face drummer in a dance band. In fact there are many pleasures in the movie and some interesting social comment. Highlights included a strange children's party, a sudden landfall and the joys of motoring 1930s style. This version is a conversion from NTSC so runs a little longer than the Carlton version. Neither version is very good and it is a film badly in need of restoration.
010: A Farewell To Arms. The Groom Wore Spurs. Indiscretion Of An American Wife Vol.4 Silver Screen
A strange medley of movies on this disc! Gary Cooper in Lewis Milestone's 1934 version of Hemingway's 1929 novel. This version is a reissue print which was trimmed by some ten minutes. It is an impressive film, once you get past some dodgy table-top trucks near the start.
A forgettable Ginger Rogers comedy is the centre of the sandwich. At one point she wonders out loud why she is sharing a bed-sit with a crypto-lesbian chum. The rationale seems to have been that Ms. Rogers was getting a little long in the tooth by 1951 so they should pair her off with an ageing and paunchy Hollywood cowboy. The jokes revolve around such revelations as the fact he doesn't do his own stunts or sing his own songs. Ginger is meant to be a smart city lawyer, hired to dig him out of a poker-game debt. You can tell things were desperate when the director resorts to speeding up the film for an aeroplane sequence finale. Neither movie nor 'plane ever get off the ground.
Finally a real curio: Montgomery Clift in a 1954 movie directed by Vittorio di Sica, no less! Well a bit less - the movie was re-edited by David Selznick to remove the other story lines to focus on the central couple - Jennifer Jones is the straying wife. The result is said to use footage which does not appear in the Director's own version, called Terminal Station. What we get on the disc, needless to say, is that Selznick cut, running a mere 64 minutes. I have since learned that though Selznick and di Sica did fall out during the filming, it had always been planned to produce two versions - source David Thomson's biography of Selznick.
011: Blood on The Sun. Lawless Frontier. Lawless Range . Vol. 5 Silver Screen
Blood on the Sun is a Cagney vehicle set in prewar Japan, where he plays an honest newspaperman seeking to inform the world about Japanese expansionist plans. Sylvia Sydney is the half-Chinese love interest. This must have been in production during the last year of the war so it isn't too surprising to find a full range of evil Jap. stereotypes. It isn't exactly a deep film but its surfaces are very alluring with some fine sets and cinematography. Cagney and Sydney are each excellent, though there is a lack of any real chemistry between them. So it isn't quite Casablanca. The score is by Miklos Rozsa. Though Cagney always denied uttering the line, "You dirty rats!" in a gangster context, he uses the line "The dirty rats!" here to refer to the Imperialist faction in the Japanese government.
The other two titles are John Wayne cowboy pictures. Lawless Frontier runs about three minutes longer than that in John Wayne The Most Wanted collection. Most of the missing minutes occur early on when there is a nocturnal cattle-rustling scene. I guess this was excised for being too murky. Neither of my prints of this curious movie are very good - but it is a wonderfully strange film!
012: Pot O' Gold. Something To Sing About. Riders of Destiny Vol.6 Silver Screen
Described by James Stewart as his worst movie, Pot o'Gold is the only film I know which was produced by the son of an American President. Yup, this was the first and last film produced by James Roosevelt. I have seen some very favourable User Comments from viewers online who have enjoyed this feel-good picture alot. But there is no reasoning with people who like musicals. It all concerns a lot of noisy hateful people who set out to convert a grouchy music-hating tycoon. You'll be rooting for the music-hater way before the end of this one! The print is adequate and the soundtrack mainly loud and clear - alas!
Something to Sing About is Cagney in song and dance mode - though he gets to throw a punch or two. It was another self-produced Cagney vehicle, this time a musical, made when he had fallen out with Warner Brothers. The best sequence is a bizarre dance routine on the deck of a ship. This is a Hollywood behind-the-scenes story with a glitch in Cagney's true romance caused by a gossip-writer. That is all the plot. It is never seriously boring, however and the print here is reasonably good - even the high notes of the loud female singer don't distort. This was originally issued at 93 mins in 1936 or 1937 but was reissued at 82 or 84 minutes (depending who you read) at the height of Cagney's fame in 1947. This Poundland DVD claims a running time of 82 mins on the case. In fact it runs nearly five minutes longer than that, so we have something near to the complete version.
Riders of Destiny is another John Wayne Lone Star Western.
013: Our Town The Star Packer. Rocket Ship XM Vol.7 Silver Screen
The print of Our Town is less dire than I had imagined from viewing just the start. What is bad is the soundtrack which is hissy and unpleasant. There are a number of good historical reasons for seeing this but it is very slow. About an hour in, things lurch into much darker territory and for several minutes a woman haunts her own life. This is a brilliant sequence and the play ends that way. The happy Hollywood ending here spoils the effect almost completely. Our Town was adapted by Thornton Wilder from his successful play. The production was designed by William Cameron Menzies and the score was by Aaron Copland.
The Star Packer is not nearly so gay as it sounds - the only rusty sheriff's badge on display is John Marion Wayne's.
Rocket Ship XM is a low-key sci-fi from 1950. Slow and talky by today's standards, the special effects are pretty simple. Even so, it has a real pioneering feel and it takes us on a journey to Mars with a glacial Nordic maiden melting on the way. There are Martians to see and a message to take home as well as a startling ending. This print seems to be the authentic original version, without special effects which were added for a video release in 1976. It was pleasant to find that this print preserves the red tinting which was used for the scenes on Mars.
014: Gung Ho. West Of The Divide. 'Neath The Arizona Skies. Vol.8 Silver Screen
Gung Ho! we are told comes from two Chinese words meaning working together. It's the patriotic story of an elite company of Marines who volunteer for a special duty after Pearl Harbour. Their task turns out to be the taking of Makim Island from the Japs with six against one against. It isn't exactly subtle - the war was still raging in 1943. However dubious the heroics, it is a very professional piece of work and holds the attention from first to last. The young Bob Mitchum has a supporting rôle. Randolph Scott is the Colonel.
The other two movies are Lone Star Westerns with Big John.
015: The Flying Deuces. Africa Screams. The Abbot & Costello Show. Classic Comedies
Laurel & Hardy only take to the air in the final minutes of this episodic Foreign Legion romp. It has its moments - I like the laundry sequence which contains some very expensive-looking shots of miles of clothes-lines!
Africa Screams contains much that is now thought politically incorrect. Yes, they do get to spend some time in cooking pots. The ending has some mythic resonances: Costello ends up inside a penthouse with a gorilla - an inversion of King Kong who stayed outside on the ledge - while Abbott drifts down river on a raft, attacked by chimps, anticipating the fate of Herzog's Aguirre! A shame they never got to meet Klaus Kinski.
Finally the Abbott & Costello Colgate Comedy Hour from 18th April 1954. Effectively a very weird variety show hung on the weakest of South American hooks. Hard sells for Ajax and Colgate toothpaste come as something of a relief at fifteen minute intervals. Between the ads we get a magic sketch from the stars, a sickly medley of Christian songs, a dwarfish percussionist-dancer and an evil six-year-old xylophonist in Mozartean dress who plays the Poet & Peasant Overture. Not for the faint hearted!
016: Horror Hotel. The Terror. The Corpse Vanishes. Vol.1 Classic Horror
Horror Hotel was made in the UK but is set in New England. As in Psycho, the heroine seems to be bumped off early on. Here the horror genre requirements prove reactionary. Still, there is some atmospheric photography and two classic scenes of Phantom Hitch-hiking, Worth a look. Valentyne Dyall was Britain's answer to Vincent Price. His name was synonymous with ghostly matters for early tv audiences, where he played a character called The Man in Black and he edited a volume of Unsolved Mysteries, or at least allowed his name to go on the cover. Horror Hotel is presented on this DVD in 1.85:1 non-anamorphic widescreen. It was filmed in b & w.
The Corpse Vanishes is a weird and wonderful offering about a wisecracking female journalist on the trail of Lugosi who is poisoning brides on their wedding day to obtain their body fluids. A wicked dwarf is also involved. This one is good fun.
The Terror matches a very young Jack Nicholson with a very old Boris Karloff. Filmed in colour, on the set of The Raven, it was Directed by Roger Corman and Produced by Francis Ford Coppola. Here Corman abandons home ground for an imagined and colourful European setting. As much a fairy-tale as a horror, this features a witch in the wood, a water-spirit and a dried-up Baron in his castle on the hill. The young Jack Nicholson is miscast as a Napoleonic soldier while the Polish servant is played by Jonathan Haze with the same accent he used as Seymour in The Little Shop of Horrors! Some striking moments and some glaring continuity lapses make this a curious three-day wonder. The location photography on the beach is quite poetic. The colour print is bearable but scanned and panned with some curious framing anomalies early on.
You could, I suppose, watch Edward D. Wood's Bride of the Monster in a double-bill with Lugosi's earlier The Corpse Vanishes. Wood seems to have known this one well - he lifts a few scenes of monster-flagellation and hair-fetishism from the 1942 Monogram picture. Only in Wood's version the brute takes a fancy to a girl's angora beret! This earlier picture is amusing high camp throughout. The mad Doctor is under the strange impression that the best place to look for virgins is at the altar on their wedding days. So he sends them poisoned orchids and steals their corpses. Somewhere behind it all is the story of the Bathori woman who bathed in virgin's blood. Dreadful but very funny in places - intentionally so, I guess.
017: A Bucket Of Blood. House On Haunted Hill. The Ghoul. Vol.2 Classic Horror
Roger Corman's Bucket of Blood is an amusing satire on the artistic beatnik culture of 1960. A dead cat is encased in plaster and accidentally becomes a celebrated art-work. The newly-acclaimed and hungry artist has to top his achievement, whatever the cost.
The House on Haunted Hill is the one with the acid vat in the cellar. The outside shots are of Frank Lloyd Wright's striking Mayan House but the interiors are more mundane with Vincent Price chewing every curtain in sight. The cast are largely wasted as the Director William Castle placed his faith in Emergo - a 1958 technology which featured a skeleton on a string! This is not included on the DVD but you could make your own I suppose - it will be something to do while the film is running. Incidentally the print - for those who care about such things - is in 1.77:1 widescreen.
The Ghoul turns out to be a fully restored version by MGM. It runs over eighty minutes and offers the opportunity to see a lavishly-mounted British horror from 1933. Never mind the often stilted drama, just soak in the amazing Production Design - seen here in splendid detail. Touches of expressionism enliven the solid craftsmanlike sets. Karloff stars but I rather think Ernst Thesiger steals the show as a dour Scots retainer. Incidentally this picture was long thought to have been lost - another victim of commercial suppression in favour of a later and inferior version. It turned up in rough Eastern European prints during the nineteen seventies but this complete print derives from a complete archive version which turned up in the bfi library. This is one of the best surprises in the collection.
018: Little Shop Of Horrors. The Bat. Bride Of The Monster. Vol.3 Classic Horror
The Little Shop of Horrors is good fun and played throughout with straight faces. True, there is a lot of overlap here with the earlier Bucket of Blood - the final chase seems to lead to the same junk-yard! Neither the print nor the soundtrack sound too healthy but somehow that seems appropriate. This famous talking plant movie was remade later as a musical. This original version features a lot of Jewish humour. Jack Nicholson has a bit part as a masochist addicted to dental work.
The Bat was a 1959 remake of the The Bat Whispers, directed by Crane Wilbur. The print is 1.77:1 but suffers from a form of ghosting - not multi-path but a sort of pixellated trail which follows any rapid moving character. The print also has synchronisation problems which get better or worse during the movie, without ever being solved. An unfortunate fault as the image itself is very clean and clear. I should say that the Bat in question is the killer and not an unflattering reference to Agnes Moosehead.
Bride of the Monster aka Bride of the Atom is a 1955 specimen of the work of Edward D. Wood, starring Lugosi. This is said to be the only film for which he had something like a normal B-picture budget. I don't get the Edward Wood thing at all. His stupidity could have been an advantage, had he possessed any visual sense. He didn't so it's a sad thing to sit through his movies as wholes. I think this is where Republic's giant squid ended up - referred to above. The actors here have still to animate its tentacles themselves. Bride of the Monster is a thrill-free laugh-free zone. A number of features were from Lugosi's earlier The Corpse Vanishes, where they are better enjoyed.
019: Carnival Of Souls. The Ape Man. Mesa of Lost Women. Vol 4 Classic Horror
Herk Harvey's 1962 independent Carnival of Souls has become a cult classic. Rightly so, though its zombies have not worn well. There is, however, something off-kilter about everything in this movie - and the man across the hall is terrifying! It owes quite a lot to Psycho, but Janet Leigh never got to play the organ. This is a superior print to the other I had, whch suffered from a muffled and distorted sound-track. There will never be a fully clean reproduction of that weird organ music - but maybe that adds to the atmosphere. The film was inspired by the abandoned carnival which features.
The Ape Man was directed by William Beaudine and starred Lugosi. It is generally regarded as a complete lame duck. It has nothing to do with Tarzan and is more of a loose variation on Jekyll & Hyde. Lugosi is a mad Doctor trapped in his ape-like form who needs glandular secretions to restore him to normal. Medical ethics prevent his colleague from murdering donors so the ape goes bananas. No one seems to have taken the film very seriously at Monogram. It has a bizarre figure loping about who finally identifies himself as the author of the story, "Screwy, isn't it?" is his parting, direct-to-camera shot.
Mesa of Lost Women is another film which features on lists of the world's worst pictures. It was cobbled together from an abandoned film called Tarantula and features some ridulously portentous voice-overs. A case could be made that such black holes of film-making have nothing to do but illustrate their own emptiness. Here there are several minutes of footage in which the entire cast wander around in a dark forest, linked in a chain, the blind leading the blind. There are times when sheer incompetence can mimic expressionism and I sometimes wonder if these mad films could have worked better as silents. Jackie Coogan plays the mad professor here. He had been The Kid, for Chaplin and would be Uncle Fester in television's Addams Family. The other name-check here is even sadder: cinematographer Karl Struss had won an Oscar for his work on Murnau's silent classic Sunrise! To be involved in what some regard as the greatest movie of all time and one of the very worst is quite an achievement!
020: Fighting Caravans. Randy Rides Alone. Man Of The Frontier. Vol.1 Classic Westerns
The fighting in Fighting Caravans is between the sexes chiefly. Gary Cooper is the love-object split between the masculine Old West - represented by two gay, old scouts - they die with their arms around each other - and the "civilising" feminine influence of Lila Damita as Felice. For those who think we read too much into the gender issues in those old movies, it is interesting to note that a woman - Agnes Brand Leahy - contributed to the screenplay of this 1930 Zane Grey adaptation. It has a rather striking Red Indian war dance in the title sequence.
Randy Rides Alone is probably the most famous of John Wayne's Lone Star Westerns. The opening scene in which Wayne arrives at a saloon full of corpses with the pianola playing away, a pair of eyes watching from a portrait on the wall, is celebrated. Thankfully this print, though far from perfect, is a great improvement on the dire one in The John Wayne Collection. Now whenever people ask what's so good about old John Wayne movies, I can only answer that at least he wasn't Gene Autry. This squat, pasty-faced, fussily preening little cowboy was you might suppose cut out to be a villain. Not a bit of it! We were supposed to cheer him on. Oh there is something else you should be warned about - he sings.
There were any number of singing cowboys in the nineteen thirties - incredibly, Gene Autry was Republic's most popular star and cinema managers bought that studio's movie packages just in order to obtain his movies! Even non-singer John Wayne was billed as Singing Sandy in some of his Lone Star releases. For the sake of authenticity, presumably, his singing voice was dubbed by another non-singer. Sample the baleful ditty at the start of Man from Utah - a very strange film made up mainly of old rodeo footage. I suppose the idea was to vary the pace and tone of movies which were otherwise all action. The plots did not require much dialogue so the song was brought in - if Gene Autry wrote his own songs, so much the cheaper. You will have gathered that Man of the Frontier aka Red River Valley stars Gene Autry. You have been warned. Some references say that he sings five songs in this picture but I think he seems to sing the same title song several times. Be afraid.
021: Painted Desert. Texas Terror. Hell Town. Vol.2 Classic Westerns
Painted Desert is a painfully slow 1931 Western in which the actors say their lines like something in Dreyer. There is an absence of music on the soundtrack which seems to slow things further. The plot begins with two old cowboys falling out over who should care for an abandoned baby - incredibly they both want the job! This was an early Clark Gable movie. It improves somewhat as it goes on with some spectacular shot of a mine being blown up but it is no masterpiece. An informative review of this film has appeared on the internet movie database, imdb.com. The lack of action is explained by the fact that the studio raided the action sequences for use as stock footage. Four sequences were physically removed from the print and may still exist in stock libraries or in other movies. It has never however inspired anyone to reconstruct the complete movie.
The other two movies on this triple bill are also John Wayne Westerns. Texas Terror is one of the Lone Star variety but Hell Town is a bit later.
022: Invisible Ghost. Scared To Death. White Zombie. 3 Bela Lugosi
The Invisible Ghost stars Bela Lugosi in relatively subdued mode as he has repeated visions of his dead wife. The most remarkable thing about the film is the unusually grave and serious black servant played by Clarence Muse. It was directed by Joseph H. Lewis, famous for the innovative and compelling Gun Crazy but this is a stage-bound affair.
Scared to Death, made for the poverty row Golden Gate Films, is a real turkey. It appears to have been scripted by a disturbed and not very bright child. Much of the film is taken up with the unfunny antics of a dense cop and a shrill maid. However the repeated appearances of a green mask have a touch of the surreal about them, especially in the distorted cheap two-strip colour process used. There are signs of strong multi-path ghosting on the titles in both the versions I have seen, suggesting a common source.
For a quality horror, we go back to 1932 and Victor Halperin's White Zombie. Much admired and less often seen than I Walked with a Zombie. This is far from being a perfect print but it is not so bad. I wish this had been a silent picture. Try to see this one. Ignore the script and bathe in the poetic visuals. Yes I know they could be better but this version is costing you 33p dammit!
023: Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon Terror By Night. Dressed To Kill. 3 Classic Sherlock Holmes
These are all Basil Rathbone pictures from the Sherlock Holmes franchise. The setting was contemporary rather than Victorian so the villains in the Secret Weapon can be Nazis. It has a scene in which Holmes is drained of his blood. These used to show up occasionally as fillers on television.
I was astounded to see that HMV Manchester were selling a tranche of the Basil Rathbone Holmes films at a knock-down £15.99 each. Some of them the same titles as on these bargain DVDs. Yup that's a full sixty to seventy minutes on each DVD. Even if restoration work has been done, it is hard to justify such a price for these hour-long B-movies Besides, the bargain versions here at three for a quid are not at all bad. I think I'll give HMV a miss for most titles, except when there's a sale.
024: Dick Tracy's Dilemma. Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome. Dick Tracy V. Cueball. 3 Dick Tracy
The Dick Tracy disc is a curate's egg. It may be hard to resist a movie with a Filthy Flora among the screen names but Dick Tracy vs. Cueball is resistable comic-strip stuff. Fair enough, you may think, given the source. However take a look at Dick Tracy's Dilemma, where the hook-handed villain is invested with surprising emotional depth by Jack Lambert. The persuit of the blind man is classic noir movie-making. True, this film is only half good but the best parts are brilliant. I also enjoyed DT Meets Gruesome. Karloff is a mad gasser who paralyses bank-staff. This entry benefits from the absence of the dreadful effete actor side-kick. DT himself is merely a man in a macintosh as ever.
025: Bulldog Drummond's Bride. Bulldog Drummond Comes Back. Bulldog Drummond Escapes. 3 Bulldog Drummond
"Sapper's" snobbery-with-violence tales were set in the UK but the series was filmed in the States with American actors. The production values were surprisingly high - some expensive looking sets in Bulldog Drummond's Bride must surely have been built for another movie. It climaxes in a rooftop chase. Prints are sometimes rough and may have come from 16mm versions.
026: The Beverly Hillbillies. 4 Classic Episodes of the tv series, 1962 - 63, Vol.1
Home for Christmas; No Place Like Home; Jed Rescues Pearl; Back to Californay.
The corny comedy of the sixties will be a nostalgia trip for many, though these episodes don't include the Ballad of Jeff Clampett which ritually opened the show: this is still in copyright. These are four Christmas-themed shows, which first went out Xmas & New Year 1962 - 63 in the US. I guess we got them a year or so later. Ellie May gets to share her bed with Grannie and a skunk - among other things. All good fun with lots of blatant product placement - witness Grannie's demonstration of her swanky new gas hob - the gas company thanked for their cooperation in the end titles. As were TWA who subsidised the production costs for the sake of showcasing their airline. Otherwise it is innocent enough fun and when the comedy gets dull you can play Spot-the-Lesbian. Of course she was!
027: Krazy Kartoons. 2 Hours of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig
Now here is a real curio and one that might cause a few raised eyebrows, despite the U Certificate on the spine. These Looney Toons have fallen into the Public Domain for a reason - they were pulled by the studios in the sixties when their political incorrectness became an embarrassment. Some were trimmed of racial stereotypes and others lost some of their crueller and more dangerous moments, such as Bugs Bunny kicking a dog in the jaw. At least one of the cartoons on this disc was totally withdrawn by United Artists in 1968, when they acquired the Warner Brothers catalogue. It is the Bugs Bunny cartoon All This And Rabbit Stew, directed by Tex Avery in 1941, one of eleven cartoons which were regarded as beyond redemption but seen here complete. Bugs is stalked by a grotesque and stupid black man. Other bad taste moments to relish include Bugs in lingerie in The Wabbit Who Came To Supper. The man-eating lion in Who's who in the Zoo. Probably as startling as the black caricatures are the Arabs in Ali Baba Bound. This features a suicide bomber - a dense Arab with a shell strapped to his head. Oh to add further insult to Arab sensibilities it's a Porkie Pig cartoon. I wonder how many Black or Muslim parents will buy this brightly-packaged little treat for their sprogs?
I suspect that each and every one of these cartoons has something to offend somebody somewhere, though what made my jaw drop was a Bugs Bunny cartoon from 1943 called Falling Hare. It's a wartime story in which Bugs battles an evil Gremlin at an airfield. Naturally they take to the skies. Where do they head for but futuristic twin skyscapers, the Gremlin in charge. At the last moment, the plane tilts on its side and passes in a tiny gap between the towers. Maybe it's the first time that history is farce.
028: Popeye 75th. Anniversary 2 Hours.
There are just thirteen cartoons on this disc but three of them are substantial two-reelers. The Fleischer Brothers produced three of these showcase animations in 1936, 1937 and 1939, using a new process which employed miniature sets to give a 3-D effect. Much admired by cartoon buffs, at least one of these received an Oscar nomination. The remainder of the cartoons are from the nineteen-fifties are were directed by I. Sparber & Seymour Kneitel. These are rather more routine. All are in Technicolor. Prints are mainly of passable quality but have not, needless to say, been remastered.
029: Mclintock! Robin Hood of the Pecos; Public Cowboy No.1. Vol.3, 3 Classic Westerns
The second and third are Roy Rogers & Gene Autry programmers but the first is the two hour colour and scope Wayne epic. Shown here panned & scanned in a version which has been re-edited for television.
030: Angel & The Badman; Cowboy & The Señorita; The Old Corral. Vol.4, 3 Classic Westerns
The first has been described as a "mystical" Western, produced by Wayne himself in 1947. Second and third are Rogers & Autry programmers again.
031: Hurricane Express; Rage at Dawn; Young Bill Hickok. Vol.5, 3 Classic Westerns
The first is a curio, being boiled down from a 12-part Mascot serial of 1933. Wayne is out to identify a mysterious masked railway saboteur. I think this condensed version was done for television in the sixties. The second is a 1955 Technicolor western with an ageing Randolph Scott. It has a touch of the sunset about it. The last is a Roy Rogers entry.
032: Santa Fe Trail; Sagebrush Trail; Billy the Kid Returns. Vol.6, 3 Classic Westerns
Santa Fe Trail is a soft transfer, which sould be just acceptable, were it not for the horrid state of the soundtrack. I think Franz Waxman's score must still be in copyright, so some attempt has been made here to overlay it with stock music. The result is a horrid cacophony at the key music cues. The film was originally issued in an early experimental spacial sound process but I doubt if that alone is responsible fot the mess on this print. The others on this disc are routine Roy Rogers and John Wayne B-Westerns, unaffected by this problem. Unusually, in Billy the Kid Returns, Roy Rogers gets to play a bad man.
033: Apache Rifles; Days of Jesse James; Riders of the Whistling Pines. Vol.7, 3 Classic Westerns
A late film starring Audie Murphy, Apache Rifles shows signs of having been trimmed somewhat on account of a hanging scene. Murphy, the most decorated American soldier in World War Two is probably best remembered as the young soldier in Huston's Red Badge of Courage. His other films tended to struggle to use his limitations to their advantage. This is a slightly grim picture in what looks like an old telly print. The Days of Jesse James comes in the context of a television show featuring the elderly Roy Rodgers with his blue-haired wife Dale Evans. They had devoted their later days to Christian evangelism and preserving their own mythology of the wholesome old West. Also on display is the portly Roy Junior who still appears to be traumatised by the commercialisation of his childhood. This fascinating psycho-drama is really a lot more interesting than the slightly edited old movie they top and tail. Riders of the Whistling Pines is a late and moderately interesting Autry film, made by Columbia in 1949. There are some early and unusual ecological overtones to the story, which features a rather grim suicide. It is the longest of the Autry films and one of the least musical.
034: Abilene Town; Kansas Pacific; Colorado. Vol.8, 3 Classic Westerns
Abilene Town features Randolph Scott caught between sacred and profane women. Surprisingly for 1946, Miss Naughty wins. It's a grubby old print to be sure but this is one of the most entertaining films of its kind. Kansas Pacific, despite or maybe because of the colour, looks hardly any better. This is gritty old Sterling Haydn manfully driving a railroad through dubious physical and moral terrain. Toys for boys stuff, a dash of romance, all very fifties but it mainly stays on the rails for its seventy odd minutes. Colorado is another Roy Rodgers vehicle featuring the ever-watchable George Gabby Hayes in a typically grizzled and cantankerous rôle.
035: 3 Classic Crime Films of the Silver Screen:
The Speckled Band, 1931 - abridged print; Silver Blaze aka Murder at the Baskervilles, 1938; Blake of Scotland Yard, 1936.
The first two are Sherlock Holmes but not Rathbone. Raymond Massey stars in the first - a cut US version of a UK film. Just how cut is not revealed by the sleeve, which cites a running time of 66 minutes. In fact this tv print runs under 50! Maybe no great loss, given the tendency of these early talkies to be very talkie but it typifies the way the makers of this series rely on published sources to tell them what they are publishing. Arthur Wontner stars as Holmes in the second movie here and the third is a 15 episode serial cut down to just 70 minutes. The hero has to tackle a death-ray fiend called The Scorpion. Poor worn-looking print. These episodic serials often presented serious problems for editors since the individual parts were all diversions from what was often only a wisp of a Maguffin-type plot. So not much overall story or character development. Supporting characters would come and go so it was hard to redub new story-lines and hope to make any sense. The makers of this one just seem to have thrown up their hands in horror and used a few lengthy but murky nocturnal chases. A slightly dull but surreal experience.
036: Jack & The Beanstalk; Utopia; Spooks Run Wild. 3 Classic Comedies, Vol.2
The first is an Abbot & Costello fairy tale, modelled on The Wizard of Oz. It opens in sepia tones and turns on the colours for the fable. Utopia aka Atoll K was the French-made final feature of Laurel & Hardy. Usually regarded as a turkey, the US version is mercifully shorter than the original. The last movie here is another encounter between Bela Lugosi & The East Side Kids. The stuff of nightmares indeed!
037: 3 Classic Horrors of the Silver Screen, Vol.5
The Creature from the Haunted Seas, 1961; The Devil Bat, 1940; Vampire Bat, 1933.
Note that Vampire Bat is given here in an hour-long print - the complete version runs seventy minutes. Though some question whether a full print still exists, I have read descriptions of scenes which do not appear in this version. There is an awkward patch of dubbed dialogue, which seems to been added to cover some missing plot scenes. It stars Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray. The Devil Bat is a camp variation on the theme, where Lugosi has made a wicked bat-attractive perfume to polish off his enemies. For relaxation he hangs upside down in his cape. The Creature Feature is one of those Corman romps which seem to have been made up as they went along. I'm told it can be hilarious after a few drinks, a precaution which, for once, I omitted.
038: 3 Classic Horrors of the Silver Screen, Vol.6
Dementia 13; Shock; Black Dragons.
Francis Ford Coppola's early and quite bloody axe-murderer tale, filmed in Ireland, is supplemented by Vincent Price in a noirish asylum-based melodrama from 1946. The last movie involves Lugosi with evil Nazi surgeons in Japan in 1942. Fully down to Monogram expectations, this always looks better on paper.
039: 3 Classic Horrors of the Silver Screen, Vol.7
Attack of the Giant Leeches; The Amazing Transparent Man; Revolt of the Zombies.
The first two are drive-in fare from 1959 - 60. Corman produced the Giant Leeches and the second was directed by Edgar Ulmer. The leeches have become iconic as schlocky horror and they make some nicely horrid noises as they feast on human flesh. The second is is shown surpringly in its original aspect ratio. It boasts of being a Roadshow Presentation but it was a pretty cheap attraction. Ulmer is celebrated as a cultivated man who stayed in B-pictures and worse in order to maintain a degree of independence. His most celebrated picture is of course the baleful Detour and this routine sci-fi story doesn't match that. Revolt of the Zombies was Halperin's 1936 follow-up to White Zombie. Slow and talky, its most striking shot - Lugosi's eyes - is lifted from the earlier picture.
040: 3 Classic Sci-Fi films of the silver screen:
Missile to the Moon, 1959; Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, 1956; Planet Outlaws, 1939.
The first is a remake. The Allmovie Guide says "Woefully cheap and naïve, this remake of 1953's Cat Women of the Moon makes that notorious sci-fi cheapie seem like a paragon of logic and talent by comparison." The package promises 68 minutes of this. Instead we get the full 78 minute version. I hate to be ungrateful but it's not The Magnificent Ambersons after all . . .
That same Guide is much kinder to Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, regarding it as "done with enough spunk, good humor, and solid craft to remind you how much fun a B-picture can be." Despite what it says on the box, this picture is given in 16:9 non-anamorphic widescreen - a good print too, by the look of it, though there is a line of digital information at the top of the screen and a bad burst of interference at one point early on.
Planet Outlaws is one of two features cobbled together from the 1939 Buck Rogers serial with Buster Crabbe. The date given on the package is 1953, which was when this was re-edited. The old footage was pasted into a new story consisting of a voice-over commentary and some cheaply-filmed scenes of reporters etc. In those days, space ships were envisaged as looking a little like flying irons. All rather sleepy and nostalgic now.
041: 3 Classics of the Silver Screen, Vol.9
Gangster Story, 1960; Beat the Devil, 1953; British Intelligence, 1940.
The first is the only movie directed by Walter Matthau and it isn't a comedy. Beat the Devil saw John Huston making merry with the genre he had helped define. This noir spoof reunited Bogart and Lorre in a comedy so dry that many can't detect it. The last picture stars Karloff in an espionage thriller with a very complicated plot and featuring the rare sight of a Zeppelin raid on London.
042: Road to Bali; Basin Street Revue; Forbidden Music.
The only one of the Hope-Crosby-Lamour comedy vehicles to have been made in Technicolor has lapsed into the public domain. It features a host of unbilled guest appearances from Bogart, Martin & Lewis etc. Made in 1952. The second picture here is a 41 minute compilation of musical numbers from black jazz performers including Sarah Vaughan, Cab Calloway, Lionel Hampton etc. Made - or at least assembled in 1955. If you like the material you should enjoy this.
The last picture was British made and was known here in a longer version as Land Without Music. The cover - and the screen credits - feature Jimmy Durante but this was a filmed operetta with music by Oscar Straus. The real star - unmentioned here - was the great tenor Richard Tauber. It dates from 1938 but could be from another century or another planet. The plot is ruritanian, though it claims to be based on a real case of a tyrant's ban on music to make his subjects more productive. Did it have political satire in mind? Possibly but it is very mild in its view of a musical reistance meeting in a cave.
043: Duel of the Champions; Trapped; The Big Chance.
First up is a sword and sandals epic from Italy, starring Alan Ladd very late in his career. The running time is given as 85' - some twenty minutes short of what the Italians suffered. Or so I thought! Actually this print runs over 89 minutes and thereby hangs a tale - or tail. Though saddled with only a PG certificate, this package almost certainly contains a version of the film banned by the bbfc. Banned entirely and without hope of reprieve but widely available for a quid. I wouldn't get too excited, though. The forbidden material is not in any Roman orgies but illegal horse-falls. Ladd looks old and bored throughout and this television print does not try to make sense of the scope framing, often lopping off what should have been important details.
Trapped is a quasi-documentary-style Richard Fleischer film from 1949 starring Lloyd Bridges. Filmed on the streets, it climaxes in a tram-shed. The last is a 1933 boxing programmer featuring the juvenile Mickey Rooney. It is very pedestrian and sentimental.
044: Bigamist; Hell's House; High Voltage.
First Joan Fontaine stars in a 1953 drama from the Queen of the Bs, Ida Lupino. This has attracted some admiring comments so may be worth a look. The second is a 1932 juvenile reformatory tale best known because the young Bette Davis has a minor rôle. It is most striking for its fairly direct and sympathetic depiction of a homo-emotional relationship. Pat O'Brian is the bad guy but he is turning good by the end in preparation for the rest of his working life in which he would seldom be out of a dog-collar for long. The last is a very early Carole Lombard talkie from 1929. Based on a stage-play, when snow closes the roads, a busload of motley characters find themselves stranded in a remote chapel. Howard Higgin was a prolific director of early talkies and he seems to have followed the received wisdom that things needed to be taken very slowly so that viewers and listeners could make out all the dialogue. It would take the likes of Cagney to liven things up in that respect.
045: Rain; The Racketeer; Shriek in the Night.
In the early thirties, Somerset Maugham's novels were thought to be hot stuff and two leading ladies had their first starring rôles in movies of his work. Bette Davis was wonderfully horrid in Of Human Bondage, mentioned above. Now we get the young Joan Crawford looking quite shocking as prostitute Sadie Thompson in this sultry Samoa-set tale. The photo on the cover is a camp classic. The Racketeer is a very early talkie featuring Carole Lombard. It dates from 1929 and is said to have been handicapped by the clumsy early technology. An unusually civilized gangster rescues a selfish young violinist in this morally curious tale. The last is a Ginger Rogers vehicle from 1933. The opening scene is quite something but the rest is average.
046: Three Boris Karloff Films of the Silver Screen.
The Ape, 1940; The Fatal Hour, 1940; Doomed to Die, 1940.
All three are Monogram programmers directed by William Nigh. The last two feature Karloff as Chinese detective Mister Wong. The first was later remade with Lugosi as The Ape Man. Considered very dull all three but Doomed to Die does rather morbidly feature reality footage of a real stricken ship. The Ape I find has a strange poetry lurking beneath its absurdist surfaces, alas, this is an abridged print and in pretty awful condition.
047: Three Mickey Rooney Films of the Silver Screen
Quicksand; My Outlaw Brother; Mickey the Great.
Rooney could act but his long stint as MGM's perennial juvenile was not the best preparation for a serious career. Shown the door he turned to darker material in a bid for credibility and Quicksand is probably the nearest he came to success. A basically decent young man errs from the strait and narrow and before you know it he is in the clutches of Peter Lorre. Well worth a look. As is My Outlaw Brother, a Western filmed entirely in Mexico but with some often surprisingly high production values; one interior is especially imaginatively lit. The last is a forties compilation of some of Rooney's earliest shorts, made when he was still billed as Mickey McGuire. I doubt if the censors would look kindly today on kids pranks which involve electricity. But otherwise this is chiefly of antiquarian interest only.
048: Three Classic Racing Films of the Silver Screen.
The Wild Ride; The Fast & The Furious; The Big Wheel.
Fans of Jack Nicholson will probably already have the first movie here - a 1960 Corman-produced exploitation flick. Corman also wrote the second movie here, which reads like an updated version of Hitchcock's Young & Innnocent. Well updated to 1954 anyway. The leads are a trifle heavy for these juvenile rôles and the economical use of stock racing footage becomes tiring long before the end. The Big Wheel dates from 1949 and was another of Rooney's darker projects: he cast himself as an obsessive boy-racer. There is some slightly ambiguous gender-play with a tom-boy of a girl but this fizzles out as she becomes feminized during the course of the plot.
049: Second Chorus; The Duke is Tops; Private Buckaroo. 3 Classic Musicals of the Silver Screen, Vol.1
Three musicals. The first is a 1949 Fred Astaire. Next the young Lena Horne stars in a musical made for the often segregated black cinemas in 1938. Finally the Andrews Sisters feature in a short morale-boosting musical from 1942.
050: Royal Wedding, 1951; The Fabulous Dorseys, 1947; Black & Tan, 1929. 3 Classic Musicals of the Silver Screen, Vol.2
The first is a major Fred Astaire picture directed by Stanley Donen and rates four stars in some guides. If you can abide dancing movies, this is said to have some classic sequences. Filmed in colour. The second is a biopic of the jazz brothers playing themselves. The last is a real curio. Ignore the package which gives the reissue date of 1942, for this is a nineteen minute short starring Duke Ellington in 1929. It uses his musical background to tell a fictional and tragic tale. The print used here is very rough with a distorted soundtrack. Maybe it only survives that way.
051: 3 Classic Tarzan films of the Silver Screen
Tarzan and the Trappers; The New Adventures of Tarzan; Tarzan the Fearless.
It took three attempts to sit through Tarzan & The Trappers. This feature was cobbled together from three half-hour television pilots. It relies a great deal on stock footage. The all-American Jane and Boy add a surreal touch to proceedings. The others on this disc date from the thirties and one was financed by Rice-Burroughs himself. The New Adventures of Tarzan is a seventy minute feature adapted from a twelve-part serial. The plot, such as it is, comes in short parcels of action strung out between long sequences of wildlife footage. A case could be made for it as a true journey into the Heart of Darkness which is the movie - but it would be stretching the point to make it sound mildly interesting. The sound is poor and the titles apologise for it - the script, acting and direction are sorry too.
052: 4 Classic Episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies, 1962, volume II
The Clampetts Strike Oil; Getting Settled; Meanwhile Back at the Cabin; The Servants.
The only one of these discs so far to elude me. Did it ever hit the streets as an individual disc? I have only seen it as part of the three disc set. Anyway, the same titles - the first four shows from the first black and white series are easily available on various other labels.
053: 4 Classic Episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies, c 1963, volume III
Jed's Dilemma; Jed Saves Drysdale's Marriage; Elly's Animals; Jed Plays Solomon.
054: 4 Classic Episodes of Sherlock Holmes, 1954, volume I
The Case of the Night Train Riddle; The Case of Lady Beryl; The Mother Hubbard Case; The Case of the Gravestone Inscription.
055: 4 Classic Episodes of Sherlock Holmes, volume II
The Case of Harry Crocker; The Case of the Unlucky Gambler; The Case of the Jolly Hangman; The Case of the Christmas Pudding.
These Sherlock Holmes entries were half hour television films from 1954. Featuring Ronald Howard, they were made in Paris - hence the number of unexplained French accents in bit parts.
056: Bonanza: 4 Episodes of the television Western series. 200 minutes, colour, 1960, volume I
The Gunman; The Spanish Grant; Blood on the Land; The Stranger.
057: Bonanza: 4 Episodes of the television Western series. 200 minutes, colour, 1960, volume II
Desert Justice; Escape to the Ponderosa; The Avenger; San Francisco.
058: Bonanza: 4 Episodes of the television Western series. 200 minutes, colour, 1960, volume III
Feet of Clay; Bitter Water; Dark Star; Silent Thunder.
A tad soapy for my taste - I gather that in some circles it was known as Beau-Nancies. An all-male household - supposedly Pa and three sons - offer a vision of sober, hard-working prosperity on their model ranch. This means trouble has to come to them - and so it did every week for donkey's years. To be fair, the stories are moderately interesting and usually involve a degree of moral ambiguity. I guess the comic Chinese cook would raise eyebrows today. An area of mush at the bottom of the screen suggests imperfect transfer from a US video source and the picture has been digitally sharpened. Worth a look though - one episode here was directed by Robert Altman no less! That is Silent Thunder on volume III. Since each episode runs for fifty minutes, the discs certainly are not mean on quantity. There are a number of other episodes from this period which have also fallen into the Public Domain and are issued by various labels.
059: 4 Classic Episodes of The Lucy Show, volume I - 4 sit-coms from the Lucille Ball colour series of 1965.
Lucy and Paul Winchell; Lucy and the Ring a Ding Ding; Lucy Gets a Roommate; Lucy and Carol in Palm Springs.
060: 4 Classic Episodes of The Lucy Show, volume II - 4 more sit-coms from the Lucille Ball colour series of 1965.
Lucy and Pat Collins; Lucy and the Monkey; Lucy and Phil Silvers; Lucy, the Baby Sitter.
061: 4 Classic Episodes of The Lucy Show, volume III- 4 more sit-coms from the Lucille Ball colour series of 1965.
Lucy Flies to London; Lucy Gets Trapped; Lucy gets Jack Benny's Account; Little Old Lady.
It took me a while to place the peculiar out-of-it look which Lucy gives in the credits to all these shows. Then it dawned on me - it's Father Dougal!
Are they any good? Well, at times. Lucille Ball was a good physical comedienne and the scripts allow her to appear drugged, hypnotized and as a ventriloquist's dummy. She is also good with a family of real chimps in one episode. Not the sort of thing you will see done today. Prints are a bit like her smeared lipstick but bearable, though there are some ugly cuts as sponsors' messages are edited out. The style does tend to the raucous, especially when Lucy is pitted against the bullying bank manager Mr. Mooney, played by Gale Gordon. When these were made, Lucy was already in her fifties and playing a rôle that seems to be intended for someone of half that age. Looking at her painfully thin legs, we may think she had an eating disorder or was maybe just ahead of her time.
062: 4 Classic episodes of The Lone Ranger, 1949 - 50, volume I
Enter the Lone Ranger; The Lone Ranger Fights On; The Lone Ranger's Triumph; War Horse.
063: 4 Classic episodes of The Lone Ranger, 1949 - 50, volume II
Pete and Pedro; The Renegades; High Heels; Six Guns Legacy.
064: 4 Classic episodes of The Lone Ranger, 1949 - 50, volume III
Finders Keepers; Rustlers' Hideout; Old Joe's Sister; Cannonball McKay.
The first four of these stories on volume one are a series within a series as they tell the back story of how the masked man came back, as it were, from the dead to fight injustice. In one or two of the episodes the levels of violence seem quite startling, especially when an Indian gets whipped across the face. The prints are mainly in reasonable condition. Everyone will remember the William Tell Overture as theme tune but the soundtracks draw on classical music throughout with bits of Mendelssohn and Beethoven popping up to support chases and gun battles. In retrospect the series - derived from a thirties radio success - seems like a forerunner of the campy Batman of the sixties. Students of ethnicity in the movies will delight in the opportunities to analyse the curious relationship between Native American Tonto and the mysterious master he serves. Gender issues are explored in the episode which features the stage-coach driving female Cannonball McKay, though it opts for the safe route of a late marriage to bring her down to earth with a bang.
065: Flash Gordon - 4 Episodes of the television version of the sci-fi series from the 1950s
The Claim Jumpers; Akim the Terrible; The Breath of Death; Deadline at Noon.
These were filmed in the ruins of Berlin for about four and ninepence. The special effects make The Clangers look lavish. There are three or four American actors but the rest of the cast was recruited locally and speak with thick German accents. Most episodes are just boring but the second episode which features characters tortured in a machine made out of old bed-springs and fog-lamps by a campy Space Dictator is utterly hilarious. The last episode features a lot of footage of the ruins of the city, still uncleared in the fifties.
066: Dragnet: 4 Episodes of the original B & W detective series. 1954 - 55, volume I
Big Porn; Big Shoplift; Car Thieves; Doctor Slugged in Waiting Room.
067: Dragnet: 4 Episodes of the original B & W detective series. 1954 - 55, volume II
Drug Pushing Teenager; Assault and Robbery; Big Betty; Big Number.
Concentrating on what was then the novel arena of procedural detection of petty crime, these are often very dull, though the focus on urban anxieties was a natural arena for the new home entertainment medium. Week after week Joe Friday would come into your own sitting room. At the same time, he would be featured on-screen penetrating the houses of ordinary Americans who shared with him their dreadful suspicions about their neighbours. Lonely souls, many of them, with just the television for company. A case could be made for the reflexive nature of this series: The Big Porn - originally called The Big Producer is a little gem and a swipe at Hollywood. An old producer on a ruined lot relives the days when he made Westerns and the camera follows a ghostly scenario as the saloon doors open and shut. But the police are not there to listen to his nostalgic ramblings; they are there to arrest him for his more recent productions - porn films, which he sells through a network of schoolkids. It is a tiny, sad little masterpiece and it is good to find it available in this series, which has often celebrated the kind of Westerns which came from Poverty Row.
068: The Dick Van Dyke Show: 4 episodes of the television sit-com. 1964 c.
Never Name a Duck; Bank Book 6565696; Hustling the Hustler; The Night the Roof Fell In.
The Van Dyke show offered a WASPish domestic home-life for the star but his job as a television script-writer took him into a working environment of wise-cracking Jews. The lurches into the supposedly serious are dangerously sentimental but this was hugely popular in its day and I remember it from my childhood, right down to the theme-tune and the ritual trip over the stool. Honey, I'm home! Shame about the horrible kid. Mary Tyler Moore was a sort of Jackie Kennedy with humourous aspirations.
069: The Cisco Kid: 4 episodes of the early syndicated television Western series. Vol.1
Confession for Money; Freight Line Feud; Buried Treasure; Lost Identity.
Made on film in 1950 - 56 in a cheap colour process and shown as such here. Poor quality sound and vision but certainly a curio. Really terrible stuff this!
Though identified as Volume 1, there does not appear to have been a Volume 2.
©James Beswick Whitehead, 2007