NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (January 2025): Kino have transferred Melville Shavelson's Houseboat to Blu-ray. It is cited as being from a "Brand New HD Master by Paramount Pictures – From a 6K Scan of the 35mm VistaVision Original Camera Negative". Houseboat was shown theatrically in Technicolor and VistaVision. The 1080P image, on a dual-layered disc with a max'ed out bitrate, looks very consistent, blemish-free and colors are rendering appealingly. It's not the crispest image but looks, what I presume, to be very theatrically accurate.

NOTE: We have added 62 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Kino use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (24-bit) in the original English language. Houseboat has only one aggressive effect with a train... The score was by George Duning (Zombies of the Mora Tau. Two Rode Together, The Eddy Duchin Story, 3:10 to Yuma, Jeanne Eagels, The Shadow on the Window, My Sister Eileen, The Mob, Affair in Trinidad, Tight Spot, Johnny O'Clock, The Dark Past, Convicted, and Between Midnight and Dawn etc.) Houseboat is notable for also having music like Sam Cooke's Almost in Your Arms ( as the Love Song from Houseboat), Sophia Loren performing Bing! Bang! Bong! and Almost in Your Arms, Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4 in A-Major op. 90 and Harry Warren's That's Amore. The audio is clean and fairly unremarkable in the lossless transfer. Kino offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-ray.

The Kino Blu-ray offers a new commentary by Film Historian / Writer Julie Kirgo (author of Becoming John Ford) and Writer/Filmmaker Peter Hankoff (Producer of The Cold Blue.) She describes the film as "adorable" and talks about the back-story and quasi-dark history of the film with complex relationship issues - Grant's wife at the time, Betsy Drake, who wrote Houseboat, was to star in it with her husband, Cary Grant, but he had a torrid affair with Sophie Loren in Europe filing The Pride and the Passion. Things change. It's another good commentary by the pairing - worth the indulgence to fans who enjoy the film. There are also two theatrical trailers. 

Melville Shavelson's Houseboat is straightforward stuff - no hidden context, but is has two of the most visually appealing movie stars of their era; debonair Cary Grant and camera-magnet Sophia Loren -  both draped in jaw-dropping Edith Head garb. They are also fresh off an off-screen love affair. Like many films, Houseboat has positives and negatives but does the marquee make it worth a viewing? I'd say - absolutely. An estranged, ill-equipped father, with Grant's trademark double-takes, meets, Nanny/maid (not-really) babe-lonia Sophia Loren and the sparks fly with plenty of, damaged, kiddie-involvement to circumvent. Yeah, it's family-level cute with a certain degree of irresistibility. The Kino Blu-ray has a revealing commentary and you could go very wrong in another choice for a basic-eye-candy viewing of cinema's most attractive. To each their own.

Gary Tooze