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Look out, it’s an X-Ray Death Ray! We rushed this review out, and it’s only 104 years late. One of the feature films on a new disc devoted to an unheralded woman filmmaker is The Intrigue, a nascent science-fiction thriller of the ‘deadly invention’ variety. It’s all from 1916, when WW1 was being fought. Julia Crawford Ivers’ adept screenplay offers good espionage twists and Frank Lloyd’s direction incorporates some interesting visual effects. The show stays smart until a ‘pacifist finale’ that will elicit justified jeers from the hawkish among us.

The Intrigue

Part of the Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers Series

Blu-ray

Kino Lorber Kino Classics

1916 / B&w with Tints / 1:33 Silent Ap. / 64 min. (197 minutes in all) / Street Date March 17, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Lenore Ulric, Cecil Van Auker, Howard Davies, Florence Vidor, Paul Weigel, Herbert Standing.

Cinematography: James Van Trees

Written by Julia Crawford Ivers

Directed by...

Veteran William Wellman directed this pre-Code thriller that puts an average New York family at odds with a pack of ruthless gangsters. It’s a 1931 tale of drive-by shootings, witness intimidation and child kidnapping — just one year later, movies about child kidnappings were banned, after the tragedy of the Lindbergh baby. Walter Huston is the rather ruthless District Attorney, and the ex-vaudeville funny man Chic Sale plays an old codger that shows his family what Good Americanism really means — the show could serve as a surly critique of what passes for law and order and good citizenship now.

The Star Witness

DVD

The Warner Archive Collection

1931 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 68 min. / Street Date March 12, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 19.99

Starring: Walter Huston, Charles ‘Chic’ Sale, Frances Starr, Grant Mitchell, Sally Blane, Edward J. Nugent, Dickie Moore, Nat Pendleton, George Ernest, Russell Hopton, Allan Lane.

Cinematography: James Van Trees

Film Editor:...

Depraved convicts ! Crazy Manhattan gin parties! Society dames poaching other women's husbands! A flimflam artist scamming the uptown sophisticates! All these forbidden attractions are here and more -- including Bette Davis's epochal seduction line about impulsive kissing versus good hair care. It's a 9th collection of racy pre-Code wonders. Forbidden Hollywood Volume 9 Big City Blues, Hell's Highway, The Cabin in the Cotton, When Ladies Meet, I Sell Anything DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1932-1934 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 63, 62, 78, 85, 70 min. / Street Date October 27, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 40.99 Starring Joan Blondell, Eric Linden, Humphrey Bogart; Richard Dix, Tom Brown; Richard Barthelmess, Bette Davis, Dorothy Jordan, Berton Churchill; Ann Harding, Robert Montgomery, Myrna Loy, Alice Brady, Frank Morgan; Pat O' Brien, Ann Dvorak, Claire Dodd, Roscoe Karns. Cinematography James Van Trees; Edward Cronjager; Barney McGill; Ray June Written by Lillie Hayward, Ward Morehouse, from his play; Samuel Ornitz, Robert Tasker, Rowland Brown...