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Netflix may be the top streaming service on the planet but they’ve never been great at putting classic movies into the feeds of their subscribers. A quick glance at the streaming service at any given time will mostly assault your eyeballs with new originals and recent hits, with older movies from the 70s, 60s, 50s and earlier being almost completely absent from the service.

That’s why it’s great to hear that Netflix is currently celebrating the cinema of 1974, and it’s the first phase of their Milestone Movies: The Anniversary Collection initiative.

Netflix explains the project, “Starting this month on Netflix in the US, you can watch a robust roster of movies released in 1974 and turning the big 5-0 this year.”

Additionally, “More offerings from 1984 (turning 40), 1994 (turning 30), and 2004 will follow in April, July, and October, respectively.”

Netflix’s 1974 Collection is now streaming, and it includes Larry Cohen’s killer baby horror movie,...

Robert Aldrich promised no-holds barred rough-tough dramas, and his first two Associates & Aldrich productions certainly hit hard. This play adaptation shows its director’s strength (no-flinching full shock impact) and weakness (theatrical overplaying) in full measure, but the unrestrained performances of Jack Palance and Eddie Albert are unforgettable. The main event can’t have pleased the Pentagon: shooting one’s own officer in combat. Plus, Lee Marvin and Richard Jaeckel get in early innings for their future work in Aldrichs’s The Dirty Dozen.

Attack

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1956 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date December 1, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Jack Palance, Eddie Albert, Lee Marvin, William Smithers, Buddy Ebsen, Robert Strauss, Richard Jaeckel, Jon Shepodd, Peter van Eyck, Jimmy Goodwin, Steven Geray, Strother Martin.

Cinematography: Joseph Biroc

Film Editor: Michael Luciano

Original Music: Frank Devol

Written by James Poe from the play Fragile Fox by Norman Brooks...

Is this Samuel Fuller’s biggest production? He tries to convey the harrowing reality of a military campaign that tested the limits of endurance and punishment that troops could absorb. In his last movie, Jeff Chandler is the famed commander who must ask his special forces to march hundreds of miles in the unforgiving jungle, and then fight a pitched battle. Although Warners interfered with the final cut, it’s still a fine picture.

Merrill’s Marauders

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1962 / Color / 2:35 anamorphic widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date July 23, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Jeff Chandler, Ty Hardin, Peter Brown, Andrew Duggan, Will Hutchins, Claude Akins, Luz Valdez, John Hoyt, Pancho Magalona.

Cinematography: William Clothier

Film Editor: Folmar Blangsted

Original Music: Howard Jackson

Written by Milton Sperling, Sam Fuller from a book by Charlton Ogburn Jr.

Produced by Milton Sperling

Directed by Samuel Fuller

Writer/producer/director Samuel Fuller must...

Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” marks the director’s summary statement about the importance of the dream factory in countering life’s failure and disappointment. And, without hesitation, his go-to cinematographer, Robert Richardson, thinks that it’s Tarantino’s most emotional movie. The challenge was finding the right look for depicting 1969 at the end of the golden age and the rise of the counter culture in Hollywood.

“When Quentin goes, ‘I want to feel retro but I want to be contemporary,’ I tried to weave time periods,” said Richardson, the three-time Oscar winner who’s made half a dozen movies with Tarantino. That meant shooting in Kodak 35mm (mostly anamorphic) with Panavision cameras and lenses (including the new T Series for extreme close-ups and greater contrast and resolution). They discussed 65mm but that proved too difficult and costly with the use of zooms; they also shot...

Gregory Peck slips into vengeance mode full-tilt, riding down a quartet of blackhearted knaves: rapist Stephen Boyd, ambusher Albert Salmi, sneaky Lee Van Cleef and inscrutable Henry Silva. The action direction and scenery in this late ‘fifties Big Sky western are excellent; Joan Collins and Kathleen Gallant put in good performances as well.

The Bravados

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date September 18, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Gregory Peck, Joan Collins, Stephen Boyd, Albert Salmi, Henry Silva, Kathleen Gallant, Barry Coe, George Voskovec, Herbert Rudley, Lee Van Cleef, Joe DeRita, Andrew Duggan, Ken Scott, Gene Evans, Beulah Archuletta, Robert Adler.

Cinematography: Leon Shamroy

Film Editor: William Mace

Original Music: Lionel Newman

Written by Philip Yordan from a novel by Frank O’Rourke

Produced by Herbert B. Swope Jr.

Directed by Henry King

The Bravados is just the kind of western America liked in the late 1950s,...

A military coup in the U.S.? General Burt Lancaster’s scheme would be flawless if not for true blue Marine Kirk Douglas, who snitches to the White House. Now Burt’s whole expensive clandestine army might go to waste – Sad! John Frankenheimer and Rod Serling are behind this nifty paranoid conspiracy thriller.

Seven Days in May

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1964 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 118 min. / Street Date May 8, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien, Martin Balsam, Andrew Duggan, John Houseman, Hugh Marlowe, Whit Bissell, George Macready, Richard Anderson, Malcolm Atterbury, William Challee, Colette Jackson, John Larkin, Kent McCord, Tyler McVey, Jack Mullaney, Fredd Wayne, Ferris Webster.

Cinematography: Ellsworth Fredericks

Film Editor: Ferris Webster

Original Music: Jerry Goldsmith

Written by Rod Serling from the book by Fletcher Knebel, Charles W. Bailey II

Produced by Edward Lewis

Directed by John Frankenheimer...

By John M. Whalen

Back in the 1950s, before he became a legend, filmmaker Sam Peckinpah (“The Wild Bunch,” “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia,” and “The Killer Elite”) wrote scripts for TV westerns, including “Gunsmoke,” “The Rifleman,” and “Tombstone Territory.” His reputation grew and in 1957 he wrote his first screenplay entitled “The Glory Guys” which was based on Hoffman Birney’s novel, “The Dice of God.” The book was a fictional account of Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, with all names changed. The script went unproduced for almost eight years, and in the meantime Sam had moved on, directing features including “The Deadly Companions” (1960), “Ride the High Country” (1962) and “Major Dundee” (1965).

You would think that with that growing resume, Peckinpah would have been able to direct anything he wanted to, but such was far from the case. “Bloody Sam,” as he was called, affectionately by his fans,...

Robert Altman, Warren Beatty and Julie Christie join together for one of the great westerns, a poetic account of the founding of a town and the way big business preys on foolish little guys. Raw and cluttered, the show gives the genre a new look, with a dreamy mix of snowflakes, opium and the music of Leonard Cohen. McCabe & Mrs. Miller Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 827 1971 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 121 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 11, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane, John Schuck, Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, Michael Murphy, Antony Holland, . Cinematography Vilmos Zsigmond Production Designer Leon Ericksen Film Editing and Second Unit Director Louis Lombardo Original Music Leonard Cohen Written by Robert Altman, Brian McKay from the novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton Produced by Mitchell Brower, David Foster Directed by Robert Altman

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Robert Altman films run hot and cold for this reviewer.

Is this Rod Serling's best teleplay ever? Van Heflin, Everett Sloane and Ed Begley are at the center of a business power squeeze. Is it all about staying competitive, or is it corporate murder? With terrific early performances from Elizabeth Wilson and Beatrice Straight. Patterns Blu-ray The Film Detective 1956 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 83 min. / Street Date September 27, 2016 / 14.99 Starring Van Heflin, Everett Sloane, Ed Begley, Beatrice Straight, Elizabeth Wilson, Joanna Roos, Valerie Cossart, Eleni Kiamos, Ronnie Welsh, Shirley Standlee, Andrew Duggan, Jack Livesy, John Seymour, James Kelly, John Shelly, Victor Harrison, Sally Gracie, Sally Chamberlin, Edward Binns, Lauren Bacall, Ethel Britton, Michael Dreyfuss, Elaine Kaye, Adrienne Moore. Cinematography Boris Kaufman Film Editors Dave Kummis, Carl Lerner Art Direction Richard Sylbert Assistant Director Charles Maguire Written by Rod Serling Produced by Michael Myerberg Directed by Fielder Cook

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Let me roll off the titles of some 'fifties 'organization...

Do you like my choice of leading image?  'We're the Glory Guys! Eee-Yow!' What is surely the most generic cavalry western of all time is actually from a screenplay by Sam Peckinpah. Twilight Time's extras have a lot to say about that, and so does Savant. The Glory Guys Blu-ray Twilight Time 1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 113 min. / Street Date September 6, 2016 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95 Starring Tom Tryon, Harve Presnell, Senta Berger, James Caan, Andrew Duggan, Slim Pickens, Peter Breck, Jeanne Cooper, Michael Anderson Jr., Adam Williams, Wayne Rogers, Michael Forest, Paul Birch, Stephen Chase, Claudio Brook. Cinematography James Wong Howe Cinematography Ernst R. (Tom) Rolf, Melvin Shapiro Original Music Riz Ortolani Written by Sam Peckinpah from the novel by Hoffman Birney Produced by Arthur Gardner, Arnold Laven, Jules V. Levy Directed by Arnold Laven

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Glory Guys is as generic and standard-issue...

Jane Fonda: From ‘Vietnam Traitor’ to AFI Award and Screen Legend status (photo: Jason Bateman and Jane Fonda in ‘This Is Where I Leave You’) (See previous post: “Jane Fonda Movies: Anti-Establishment Heroine.”) Turner Classic Movies will also be showing the 2014 AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring Jane Fonda, the former “Vietnam Traitor” and Barbarella-style sex kitten who has become a living American screen legend (and healthy-living guru). Believe it or not, Fonda, who still looks disarmingly great, will be turning 77 years old next December 21; she’s actually older than her father Henry Fonda was while playing Katharine Hepburn’s ailing husband in Mark Rydell’s On Golden Pond. (Henry Fonda died at age 77 in August 1982.) Jane Fonda movies in 2014 and 2015 Following a 15-year absence (mostly during the time she was married to media mogul Ted Turner), Jane Fonda resumed her film acting career in 2005, playing Jennifer Lopez...

1964's The Incredible Mr. Limpet featured Don Knotts ("Three's Company"), and co-starred: Carole Cook, Jack Weston, Andrew Duggan, and Larry Keating. The story took place in 1941 just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. It focused on a timid bookkeeper Henry Limpet (Don Knotts) who had a deep love for fish. One day Henry decides to enlist in the Navy like his buddy George (Jack Weston), but is rejected for being "too small and too weak to be a soldier." This crushes his spirits and he heads off to Coney Island. There, he falls into the water and with no reason given turns into a fish. From that point on the film features Henry as an animated fish. He basks in this new world, even meeting a female fish that catches his eye. Kinky! He also realizes that he has a unique...

Elia Kazan Week! continues at Trailers from Hell, today with director Dan Ireland introducing Kazan's beloved teen romance "Splendor in the Grass," starring Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood as star-crossed lovers in 1920s Kansas. Actor Andrew Duggan was Warner Bros.' go-to guy for folksy 60s voiceovers, and he supplies a warm tone to this trailer for Elia Kazan's popular teen drama. Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood's Romeo and Juliet suffer nobly from living on different sides of the train tracks in William Inge's bittersweet reminiscence of his formative years growing up in 1920s Kansas. It won him an Oscar for best Screenplay. Screen debuts of Sandy Dennis, Gary Lockwood and Phyllis Diller. Remade for television in 1981.