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Chain Lightning - This
second-echelon Humphrey Bogart vehicle casts Bogie as a bomber
pilot who becomes a free-lance flyboy after the... war. Eleanor
Parker, Bogart's wartime love, is now the secretary of aircraft
manufacturer Raymond Massey. Partly out of an effort to link up
with Parker again, Bogart signs on as a test pilot for Massey's
firm. Richard Whorf, Massey's safety supervisor, dislikes
Bogart's grandstanding. When Whorf is killed, Bogart feels
responsible. He volunteers to test Whorf's experimental escape
device by flying at high-speed. The test is a success (though
it's nip and tuck for a while), and Bogart survives for a final
clinch with Parker. DVD Release Date: February 23rd, 2012
Eclipse 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave
- Of all the cinematic New Waves that broke over the world in
the 1960s, the one in Czechoslovakia was among the most
fruitful, fascinating, and radical. With a wicked sense of humor
and a healthy streak of surrealism, a group of fearless
directors—including eventual Oscar winners Miloš Forman and Ján
Kadár—began to use film to speak out about the hypocrisy and
absurdity of the Communist state. A defining work was the 1966
omnibus film Pearls of the Deep, which introduced five of
the movement’s essential voices: Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš,
Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, and Evald Schorm. This series presents
that title, along with five other crucial works that followed
close on its heels, one from each of those filmmakers—some
dazzlingly experimental, some arrestingly realistic, all
singular expressions from a remarkable time and place. DVD
Release Date: April 24th, 2012
Desperate Search - A
passenger flight out of Vancouver crashes in remote mountains.
On the ground, two lone survivors, a brother and sister perhaps
9 and 7 years old, gather food and blankets. In the air, bush
pilot Vince Heldon (Howard Keel), the children’s father, guides
his plane in a quest to find the downed aircraft. Meanwhile,
against this backdrop of search and survival, another drama
unfolds: pilot Nora Stead (Patricia Medina) arrives to join the
search. She’s the ex-Mrs. Heldon, and her presence brings
unresolved issues of that broken marriage to the surface while
also creating problems for Vince and his new wife (Jane Greer).
Joseph Lewis, who grabbed notice with his shoestring noir
Gun Crazy, here guides
another film admired for getting much from a small budget. Lee
Aakers, soon to be famed for his role on TV’s The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, portrays the boy whose survivalist adventure
includes confrontations with a mountain lion. DVD Release
Date: May 10th, 2012
The Case of the Black Parrot
- In this classic crime thriller, passengers start to die aboard
a transatlantic ship while a reporter (William Lundigan) races
against time to stop a notorious international criminal before
he kills again. After falling for a beautiful passenger (Maris
Wrixon), the reporter becomes intrigued by the mysterious
circumstances surrounding an antique chest her uncle recently
purchased. They suspect it's a master forgery by the infamous
Black Parrot, but before the couple can make any headway in
their investigation, her uncle is found dead. Based on Eleanor
Robeson Belmont and Harriet Ford's play and Burton E.
Stevenson's novel, this provocative mystery serves up perplexing
false clues, unexpected twists and a truly surprising
conclusion. DVD Release Date: May 3rd, 2012
Big City - Margaret O’Brien
sings, dances and keeps the faith in this heart-warming musical
drama costarring Robert Preston, Danny Thomas and George Murphy.
Midge (O’Brien) is the luckiest girl in New York. Found
abandoned as an infant, she’s adopted by a cantor (Thomas), a
reverend (Preston) and a Catholic cop (Murphy), who raise her
together as only three loving fathers can. But when the police
officer marries a saloon singer (Betty Garrett) and insists on
sole custody, the trio winds up in court, where Midge, with the
help of a kind-hearted judge (Edward Arnold), must decide what’s
best for her fathers as well as herself. Highlighted by opera
legend Lotte Lehmann in her only American film appearance and
featuring Broadway star Betty Garrett in her big-screen debut,
Big City is MGM at its musical best, packed with “good
production values, charming musical numbers and standout
performances” (The Motion Picture Guide). DVD Release Date:
May 2nd, 2012
Cinema Verite
BD - Decades before
housewives had screaming matches with each other on camera in
public, the Loud family became a television sensation of a new
kind when they appeared on the groundbreaking 1973 PBS
documentary series An American Family. Witness the birth of
reality television as Diane Lane, Tim Robbins and James
Gandolfini star in HBO Films' presentation of Cinema Verité.
Blu-ray Release date: April 24th,
2012
A Hollis Frampton Odyssey
BD - An icon of the American
avant-garde, Hollis Frampton made rigorous, audacious, brainy,
and downright thrilling films, leaving behind a body of work
that remains unparalleled. In the 1960s, having already been a
poet and a photographer, Frampton became fascinated with the
possibilities of 16 mm filmmaking. In such radically playful and
visually and sonically arresting works as Surface Tension, Zorns
Lemma, (nostalgia), Critical Mass, and the enormous, unfinished
Magellan cycle (cut short by his death at age forty-eight),
Frampton repurposes cinema itself, making it into something by
turns literary, mathematical, sculptural, and simply
beautiful—and always captivating. This collection of works by
the essential artist—the first release of its kind—includes
twenty-four films, dating from 1966 to 1979.
Blu-ray Release date: April 24th,
2012
Night of the Lepus - Giant
Flesh-Eating Rabbits Ravage American Southwest After Scientist
Slips Up! Such is the plot of this unintentionally campy horror
outing. The trouble begins when a researcher's experiment to use
hormone injections to control Arizona's burgeoning rabbit
population goes terribly awry, causing the cuddly rodents to
grow to enormous proportions. In order to facilitate their
growth, the rabbits need extra protein, and what better source
than the relatively slow-moving human population that surrounds
their huge subterranean lairs. DVD Release Date: November
10th, 2010
Camelot
BD - Joshua Logan directs
this lavish version of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe
Broadway success with Richard Harris,... Vanessa Redgrave, and
Franco Nero in the lead roles originally portrayed on Broadway
by Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet. The
musical, based on T.H. White's The Once and Future King,
chronicles the legend of King Arthur (Richard Harris) and his
tortured love affair with his queen Guenevere (Vanessa Redgrave).
Arthur first encounters Guenevere, on the day of their wedding,
in the enchanted forest surrounding Camelot. After the wedding,
Arthur's bliss at his marriage to the lovely Guenevere prompts
him to establish the Knights of the Round Table, a lofty order
of chivalry in which all the member knights are bound by a
desire the help the oppressed, keeping faith with trust and
honor. Blu-ray Release date:
April 24th, 2012
The Cats - In what would be
one of her final roles, Rita Hayworth (Gilda) plays the
alcoholic mother of two sons who are at war with each other over
a case of stolen jewels. When Jason (Giuliano Gemma) steals a
caseload of jewels and kills several men along the way, he feels
it is his pay for accomplishing the heist that his older brother
Adam (Klaus Kinski) arranged. But Adam feels differently and
soon brother is pitted against brother in a web of double and
triple crosses involving Jason's girlfriend. After Adam has the
family doctor sever the tendons in Jason's gun hand, Jason seeks
revenge. All of this is set to a groovy '60s soundtrack, fashion
and dubbing. Klaus Kinski is pure menace as the older brother
and Rita Hayworth chews up the scenery as a mother who cares
more about getting her whiskey than the well-being of her sons.
Ironically, she took the role after Joan Crawford turned it
down. DVD Release Date: April 26th, 2012
Reptilicus - A portion of
the tail of a prehistoric reptile is discovered in Denmark. It
regenerates into the entire reptile, which proceeds to destroy
buildings and property and generally make a nuisance of itself.
It can fly, swim, and walk, and has impenetrable scales, which
makes it difficult to kill. DVD Release Date: March 20th,
2009
Marquis de Sade's Justine
BD - The film follows two
sisters, Justine (Koo Stark) and Juliette (Lydia Lisle) Jerome,
whose parents die young and leave them alone and seemingly
helpless. They at first take shelter in an orphanage run by nuns
but when their inheritance dries up, the nuns send them on their
way. While Justine tires to abide by her moral upbringing and
live a pure, chaste life her sister is far more willing to
explore the ways of the flesh and indulge in all that the world
has to offer her. Blu-ray
Release date: April 24th, 2012
The Monster That Challenged the World
- The Monster That Challenged the World is the misleadingly
title for one of the more well-regarded second-echelon horror
films of the 1950s. An underwater earthquake in the Sargasso sea
yields up the eggs of a long-extinct sea monster. Once hatched,
the monster's offspring (which resemble huge snails) sustain
themselves by sucking the life forces of various unlucky human
land dwellers. Even worse, these horrendous creatures procreate
at an incredible rate, laying 3000 eggs per sitting. Eventually,
the monsters are neutralized by Modern Science, save for one
stray snail that very nearly lunches on a little girl. DVD
Release Date: December 28th, 2008
Badge 373
BD - Badge 373 is a crime
thriller in the tradition of "The
French Connection" and "Serpico".
Eddie Ryan (Robert Duvall), a tough, no-nonsense and abrasive
Irish cop, has to turn in his badge after scuffling with a
suspect who then falls to his death from a rooftop. But that
doesn't stop him from heading out on a one-man crusade to avenge
his partner's murder, all the while neglecting his new live-in
girlfriend, Maureen (Verna Bloom). Ryan's investigation leads
him to Puerto Rican drum kingpin, Sweet Willie (Henry Darrow),
and the shipment of guns for the Puerto Rican Crime Syndicate.
Real life policeman, Eddie Egan plays Duvall's Lieutenant.
Screenplay by journalist, Pete Hamill and directed by big-time
Hollywood producer, Howard W. Koch.
Blu-ray Release date: April 24th, 2012
Hit!
BD - A federal agent, Nick Allen (Billy Dee
Williams) whose daughter dies of a heroin overdose is determined
to destroy the drug ring that supplied her. He organizes a small
independent task force of mercenaries to travel to France in
order to kill the nine leaders of a Marseilles drug syndicate.
The motley crew of angry American citizens includes construction
worker, Mike Willmer (Richard Pryor); call-girl Sherry Nielson
(Gwen Welles); rogue cop, Dutch Schiller (Warren J. Kemmerling);
college professor Barry Strong (Paul Hampton) and the kindly old
Jewish couple, Ida (Janet Brandt) and Herman (Sid Melton), who
want to inflict Old Testament revenge upon the syndicate.
Photographed by legendary cinematographer, John A. Alonzo (Chinatown)
with a beautiful score by Lalo Schifrin (Dirty
Harry). Directed by Sidney J. Furie (The
Ipcress File).
Blu-ray Release date: April 24th, 2012
The Jayhawkers
BD - Set in the Kansas
territory during the middle of the 19th century, this is a
visually evocative but conventional western.... The story deals
with Darcy (Jeff Chandler), a ruthless man, one of the raiders
known as "Jayhawkers" who wants more than what life is willing
to offer. Starting out as anti-slavery activists, the
Jayhawkers' origins are barely mentioned in the story, as Darcy
uses them to support his growing power. Opposing his
unscrupulous bid for control of the region is Cam (Fess Parker,
of Davy Crockett fame on American TV) an ex-convict. Cam
knows that Darcy is responsible for the death of his wife while
he was in prison and he plans to bring him down.
Blu-ray Release date: April 24th,
2012
Killer Nun
BD - Anita Ekberg and Joe
Dallesandro star in this cult horror film about a demented nun
sliding through morphine addiction into madness, whilst
presiding over a regime of lesbianism, torture and death. Anita
plays the head nurse/nun in a general hospital, whose
increasingly psychotic behavior endangers the staff and patients
around her. Blu-ray Release
date: April 24th, 2012
Westworld
BD - Despite faults (chiefly
a dispersal of its energies), a wonderfully enjoyable fantasy
about a futuristic holiday resort offering robot worlds of
exotic sex, romance or violence amid the licence of ancient
Rome, the gallantries of a medieval chateau, or the gunslinging
frontier town. Best and most fully realised of these worlds is
the Western, with Brynner (brilliant) as the robot gunman
required to die, bloodily, every time a greenhorn tourist
challenges him to the draw. Until, that is, the robots begin to
malfunction - or rebel: only the computers that designed them
know exactly how they work - and the Brynner machine sets out,
now part mad killer and part Frankenstein monster, in quest of
revenge. Great stuff. Blu-ray
Release date: April 3rd, 2012
The Girl on the Motorcycle
BD - Director Jack Cardiff
also served as scripter and cinematographer of the Anglo-French
co-production Girl on a Motorcycle... (La Motocyclette)
The girl in question is played by leather-clad Marianne
Faithfull, who speeds through Alsace on her cycle, en route to a
tryst in Heidelberg with her ex-lover (Alain Delon). In a series
of flashbacks, she recalls the events leading up to the present
critical moment, including her desultory marriage. Based on a
novel by Andre de Pieyre, the R-rated Girl on a Motorcycle was
originally released in English-speaking countries in an X-rated
version titled Naked Under Leather. Based on the stage play by
Walter Melville. Blu-ray Release
date: April 24th, 2012
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