Cloudburst - Robert Preston

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S E A R C H D V D B e a v e r

directed by Francis Searle
UK 1952

A taut revenge potboiler from Great Britain and Hammer Studio, which is aimed at an American audience by starring the Hollywood actor Robert Preston. He plays as a Canadian ex-colonel in the resistance movement during the war, John Graham, and is currently a codebreaker expert for the British Foreign Office, whose motto is that there isn't a code that can't be broken.

John's loving wife Carol (Elizabeth Sellars) was in the resistance movement with him, and is expecting their first child. He is so elated that he has already dreamed about sending his child to an exclusive boarding school and buying a meadow so that the child can have room to play. At the field, a speeding car rushes by. John stops the car and realizes the man and woman in the getaway car were the killers of a night watchman in nearby Windsor a constable warned him to be on the watch for. While he's struggling with the man, the woman stabs him on the hand with a scissors and the guy floors the car. Carol, who got out of their car to join her husband looking at the field, stumbles as she tries to get away from the speeding car and is accidentally killed. In the last conversation John had with his wife, she said she feels so sorry for the guard's widow that if she were in her place she would do anything to get revenge on his killers.

Instead of reporting what he knows to the police, John decides to get revenge on the culprits by using the same commando tactics from the war.

Excerpt of review from Dennis Schwartz for Ozus' World Movie Reviews located HERE

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Theatrical Release: UK 1952

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DVD Review: MGM (MGM Limited Edition Collection) - Region 0 - NTSC

Big thanks to Gregory Meshman for the Review!

DVD Box Cover		CLICK to order from:
Distribution	MGM Region 0 - NTSC
Runtime	1:23:09
Video	1.33:1 Original Aspect Ratio Average Bitrate: 6.78 mb/s NTSC 720x480 29.97 f/s
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate
Audio	Dolby Digital Mono (English)
Subtitles	None
Features	Release Information: Studio: MGM Aspect Ratio: Fullscreen - 1.33:1 Edition Details: • None DVD Release Date: April 18th, 2011 Keep Case Chapters 10

Comments

Cloudburst became the first Hammer Studios production featuring a Hollywood star (this time, it's Robert Preston) coming to UK to film a quick crime drama to sell well in UK as well as in US. In 1950's this becase a standard with a number of Hammer-Lippert co-productions filmed in Britain - most of them are available on DVD from VCI, Stolen Face with Lizbeth Scott and Paul Henreid getting our highest recommendations.

Cloudburst was released by United Artists, hence the titles now comes from MGM, available on made-on-demand DVD. The progressive transfer looks decent, although there are a number of specs and damages on the print. The mono soundtrack is, likewise, has a number of pops and clicks, but they are not intrusive. The disc comes with no extras and no subtitles or closed captioning. This is still, one of the better brit-noirs and for the right price, we recommend this release.

WARNING: The first pressing from Amazon in 2011 included wrong movie (A Thousand Clowns) while all the packaging said "Cloudburst", but the issue has been fixed since.

- Gregory Meshman

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