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A bigger and brighter film debut couldn’t be imagined … Doris Day became America’s sweetheart in Michael Curtiz’s peppy production, graced with a witty script and several catchy, radio-ready song hits. And the color is better than new in this impressive Blu-ray remastering job — Woody Bredell’s Technicolor hues are literally eye-popping. It’s great fun seeing Ms. Day invent her natural, fresh-faced screen persona right before our eyes.

Romance on the High Seas

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1948 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 99 min. / It’s Magic / Street Date June 16, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Doris Day, Jack Carson, Janis Paige, Don DeFore, Oscar Levant, S.Z. Sakall, Fortunio Bonanova, Eric Blore, Franklin Pangborn, Sir Lancelot, Barbara Bates, George N. Neise, Maila Nurmi, Grady Sutton.

Cinematography: Elwood Bredell

Film Editor: Rudi Fehr

Art Direction: Anton Grot

Special Effects: Robert Burks, Wilfrid M. Cline, David Curtiz

Original Music: Ray Heindorf, Oscar Levant

Written by Julius J. Epstein,...

Universal Horror Collection: Vol. 1

Blu ray

Shout! Factory

1934, ’35, ’36, ’40 / 1.33 : 1 / 66 / 61 / 79 / 70 min.

Starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi

Cinematography by John J. Mescall, Charles Stumar, George Robinson, Elwood Bredell

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, Lew Landers, Lambert Hillyer, Arthur Lubin

Like the cat who swallowed the canary, Boris Karloff made for a serenely sinister antagonist. Even when portraying bloodthirsty devils like the vampire Gorca in The Three Faces of Fear or a debauched satanist looking for trouble in The Black Cat, “Dear Boris” was the very model of a well-mannered monster.

Bela Lugosi, Karloff’s unofficial rival on the Universal lot, showed similar restraint in his star-making turn as Dracula – but the same halting, imperious manner that gave otherworldly dignity to the Count would typecast Lugosi as a kind of oddball antihero – the cultivated eccentric driven to madness or worse. He approached each of those roles with a manic intensity that might net...

The 2016 blu ray release of the Frankenstein and Wolf Man Legacy Collections was a moment of celebration for movie and monster lovers everywhere, bringing together all the golden age appearances of Frankenstein’s misbegotten creation and Larry Talbot’s hairy alter-ego. Universal Studios treated those dusty creature features to luminous restorations; from Bride of Frankenstein to She Wolf of London, these essential artifacts never looked less than impeccable and, at times, even ravishing. Colin Clive’s frenzied declaration, “It’s Alive!”, never felt more appropriate.

Now Universal has turned their attention to their other legendary franchise players, Dracula, the sharp-dressed but undead ladies’ man and Im-ho-tep, the cursed Egyptian priest who loved not wisely but too well.

Dracula: Complete Legacy Collection

Blu-ray

Universal Studios Home Entertainment

1931, ’36, ’43, ’44, ’45, ’48 / 449 min. / B&W / 1:33 / Street Date May 16, 2017

Starring: Actors: Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. , Boris Karloff, Bud Abbott, Lou Costello

Cinematography: Karl Freund,...

Criterion digitally restores this earlier release, a combination offering of Robert Siodmak’s 1946 film noir masterpiece The Killers paired with Don Siegel’s retro 1964 remake. Famed adaptations of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, both filmmakers take liberties with the original material to create aggressively different products. Siodmak’s version is not only the German ex-pat’s enduring masterpiece, it’s a definite cornerstone of classic American film noir. Though Siegel’s 60s rehash is considered tacky pastiche of the era, it’s brutal, hard boiled B-grade pulp, notable for its own significant instances.

Siodmak’s version arrived during a golden era of noir, premiering a year after WWII officially ended, with cinematic masculine representation on the eve of an overhaul as method acting would soon reign supreme. Hemingway’s spare story gets a face life from Anthony Veiller (The Stranger; Night of the Iguana), using the murder as a jumping...

The Killers

Written by Anthony Veiller

Directed by Robert Siodmak

USA, 1946

Written by Gene L. Coon

Directed by Don Siegel

USA, 1964

Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 short story, “The Killers,” inspired to varying degrees the 1946 and the 1964 screen versions of the same name. To varying degrees because the story is less than 3,000 words and essentially only covers the opening of the two films. A man—Ole “The Swede” Anderson (Burt Lancaster) in the first film, Johnny North (John Cassavetes) in the remake—is hunted down by two hired killers. Right before they shoot him, Ole and Johnny do something strange, or rather, they don’t do something they should: they don’t run, they don’t really move, they don’t even seem to care. Before Ole is killed, he admits he “did something wrong, once” (in film noir, that’s all it takes), and when Johnny is told two men are...

In 2009 the ex Mr Madonna (otherwise known as Guy Ritchie) called upon the unlikely pairing of Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law to bring back to the screen two of crime fiction’s greatest heroes – Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.

The pair are up there amongst the most filmed literary characters, Holmes has been sticking his nose into other people’s business since the earliest days of the cinema with one of the first versions being a Danish short from 1908 pitting him against his arch nemesis Moriarty and Raffles, the Victorian gentleman thief – now that really would have been a showdown worth seeing.

So, as Ritchie prepares to throw Downey and Law together again, we decided to do some sleuthing ourselves and find six of the pipe smoking detective’s best screen adventures. The results have proved anything but elementary!

6) Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)

By the mid 1980’s there were few...

Burt Lancaster on TCM: The Leopard, Scorpio, The Killers I haven't watched Michael Winner's Scorpio (1973), an unflattering portrayal of Us foreign policy and the CIA that reunited Lancaster with his The Leopard co-star Alain Delon. As per the TCM synopsis, "a CIA hit man [Lancaster] is stalked by a former partner [Delon] when the agency turns on him." A Man for All Seasons' Best Actor Oscar winner Paul Scofield and Gayle Hunnicutt are also in the cast. Robert Siodmak's 1946 film noir The Killers is one of the best-looking efforts in the genre thanks to Elwood Bredell's glistening black-and-white cinematography. Although The Killers turned newcomer Lancaster into a major star, as far as I'm concerned this adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story belongs to Ava Gardner; in fact, The Killers could just as easily have been called "The Leopardess (La gattaparda)." Edmond O'Brien co-stars. For The Killers, Siodmak...

Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner in Robert Siodmak's The Killers Ava Gardner is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month of November. The Gardner film series begins tonight with a presentation of about a dozen movies in which the sultry actress can be seen in starring and supporting roles, and in lots of bit parts as well. I'm not a fan of Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946), a well-regarded film noir that earned the director an Academy Award nomination, but Gardner is excellent in a star-making turn and so is Elwood Bredell's black-and-white cinematography. Albert Lewin's generally dismissed Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) I find quite affecting, chiefly because of Gardner's performance as a woman who finds love in death. Though not as gripping or atmospheric, Pandora reminds me of William Dieterle's Portrait of Jennie, released three years earlier. Ava Gardner, in a role intended for Judy Garland...

Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946), the film noir that catapulted Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner (above) to stardom, will be screened as the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Oscar Noir: 1940s Writing Nominees from Hollywood’s Dark Side.” The Killers will be shown on Monday, June 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Screenwriter Billy Ray (Shattered Glass, State of Play) will introduce the screening. (The Killers is sold out. More info below.) Screenwriter Anthony Veiller turned Ernest Hemingway’s classic short story into a classic film noir. The Killers, about a former boxer and the men out to get him, isn’t one of my favorites noirs, but it’s great to look at thanks to Ava Gardner and cinematographer Elwood Bredell. Also in the cast: Edmond O’Brien, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, Virginia Christine,...