- Gary Tooze

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ON THE MOVIES UNLIMITED DVDs: After suffering through unwatchable and unauthorized DVD of M (1951) from Retro Flix purchased at Movies Unlimited, I decided to check other alternatives for this movie available on-line or through collector-to-collector traders. While still not pristine like an authorized release would be, at least this film is now watchable and not distorted. There is still damage and cue marks, but I wasn't charged $19.99 from what I thought a respectable on-line store, especially being associated with Turner Classic Movies web site. At least the DVD was removed from TCM's own store (it was listed there before), but it is still listed at Movies Unlimited, although with a different artwork. You'll be better off downloading this film from torrents or obtaining it in some other way; Columbia/Sony no longer have rights for this film, so there is little chance we will see authorized copy of it any time soon.

In 1950, a producer Seymour Nebenzal who, in 1931, produced the original Fritz Lang's M HERE decided to remake that classic film and update it to American setting. Filmed in and around Los Angeles by director Joseph Losey and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo, the film was made in at a wrong time with HUAC paranoia at its peak. Losey would eventually be forced to get out of US to make movies first in Italy and eventually in U.K. The film had a small distribution by Columbia, but the rights to the film were eventually returned to Nebenzal. Thus, the film never received an official video release. When I saw a DVD being sold at Movies Unlimited website HERE I got very excited since I wanted to see it and compare to the Lang's original. Unfortunately it is the same murky video transfer made from 16mm that has been around and sold on the net from various bootleg companies. The pressed DVD comes from some elusive company RetroFlix and is only available at Movies Unlimited. The transfer, while watchable, is not by any acceptable standard.

It has all the limitations of a tape transfer, even at one point the video and sound started skipping for a few frames like in a broken VCR. There are no menus and the film starts playing as soon as you insert the disc. Here's the blurb about the film from the back cover: "Remake of the 1931 original. Someone is murdering children in a German [sic] city. The Police search is so intense, it is disturbing the 'normal' criminals, and the local hoods decide to help find the murderer as quickly as possible."

 - Gregory Meshman