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By Lee Pfeiffer

"Young Billy Young" is the kind of film of which it can be said, "They don't make 'em like that anymore". Not because the movie is so exceptional. In fact, it isn't exceptional on any level whatsoever. Rather, it's the sheer ordinariness of the entire production that makes one pine away for an era in which top talent could be attracted to enjoyable, if unremarkable, fare such as this. Such films, especially Westerns, were churned out with workmanlike professionalism to play to undemanding audiences that didn't require mega-budget blockbusters to feel they got their money's worth at the boxoffice. Sadly, such movies have largely gone the way of the dodo bird. In today's film industry, bigger must always be better and mid-range flicks such as are no longer made. However, through home video releases such as Kino Lorber's Blu-ray of "Young Billy Young" and streaming services such as Amazon Prime,...

This week on Off The Shelf, Ryan is joined by Brian Saur to take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for the week of September 29th, 2015, and chat about some follow-up and home video news.

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Episode Links & Notes Follow-up Shirts Iron Giant Blu-ray Thunderbean’s Willie Whopper up for sale on Amazon News Agfa’s Something Weird Kickstarter Arrow Release Date Changes Hannibal Season 3 on December 8th Twilight Time October titles Up for Preorder Panic in the Year Zero (Kl Studio Classics) Dangerous Men (Drafthouse Films) X-Files Blu-ray Warner Archive’s October titles: Atom Ant, Wind Across The Everglades New Releases The Bear Black Coal, Thin Ice Christine The Connection Cinco De Mayo [Blu-ray] The Duke Of Burgundy Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films Five Films by Patricio Guzman Forbidden Zone Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid The Honeymoon Killers...

Let's hear it for the great westerns -- not the Ford and Hawks classics, but the fascinating marginal gems that see The West in a different way. Do you like Sam Peckinpah? Robert Parrish's evocation of Texas and Mexico in the 1880s will be pleasantly familiar -- a testing ground of personal codes and shifting loyalties in a treacherous land. The Wonderful Country Savant Blu-ray Review Kl Studio Classics 1959 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date September 29, 2015 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95  Starring Robert Mitchum, Julie London, Pedro Armendariz, Gary Merrill, Jack Oakie, Albert Dekker, Charles McGraw, Leroy "Satchel" Paige. Cinematography Floyd Crosby Film Editor Michael Luciano Production Design Harry Horner Original Music Alex North Written by Robert Ardrey from the book by Tom Lea Produced by Chester Erskine Directed by Robert Parrish

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

This gem is as individual a western as any made in the 1950s, and a...

The title of Lee Server’s acclaimed 2002 biography, Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don’t Care (MacMillan), offers a perfect encapsulization of the eponymous actor: a hard-partying Hollywood Bad Boy who didn’t give a damn what moralizing finger-waggers thought of him, or what his peers in the movie business thought, or the press, or even the public. He was going to go his own way and to hell with you, and anyone positioning themselves to make strong objection was just as likely to get a punch in the nose as shown the actor’s broad back. He worked hardest at conveying the idea that the thing he did for a living – acting – was also the thing he cared least about; an impression that may have been his most convincing performance.

The Bad Boy part of Mitchum’s reputation was honestly come by. As a youth, he’d been booted from more than one school,...