DVD Reviews
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- By Loron Hays
From sea to shining sea! That’s the attempted reach of 1951’s The Raging Tide, yet another film noir offering highlighting the streets and alleys of San Francisco. With steely-eyed direction from prolific director George Sherman (Larceny, The Sleeping City) and ace cinematography from Russell Metty (The Stranger, Touch of ...
Read more: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema, Volume VI: The Raging Tide (1951) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Hard-boiled and crackling with stark intensity, Los Angeles after dark is always an exciting place. Especially with all the femme fatales walking the streets. Whether it be out on the street or gazing out the window of your home, the air of unpredictability is always lurking ...
Read more: Double Indemnity: Criterion Collection (1944) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Based around a single make-or-break heist, The Asphalt Jungle is known in the halls of film noir thrillers as the first ever caper flick and, honestly, this brilliantly scripted offering is more than deserving of its praise and its legacy, which is why the Criterion Collection has added it to their list of ...
Read more: The Asphalt Jungle: Criterion Collection (1950) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Emily Strong
Are there two sides to everyone? One good and simple. The other…bordering on evil perhaps. And does this “evil” side live in all of us just waiting to be unleashed? While attending church one morning, Dr. Jekyll (Spencer Tracy) witnesses a man - once a good, upstanding citizen – turn ...
Read more: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Warner Brothers Archive Collection (1941) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
"Ya wanna dance, Mike Doyle?!" The hills! The fog! The slick city streets! The atmosphere is on point as Johnny Stool Pigeon opens and that’s thanks to cinematographer Maury Gertsman, who shot Singapore, the first offering in this set from Kino Lorber ...
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- By Loron Hays
Pear smuggler Matt Gordon (played wonderfully by Fred MacMurray) has returned to the scene of his heartbreak: Singapore. Cue the lush heartstrings! The drama! The crimes! And, oh, the Casablanca influences as Singapore, with boat and schooner whistles blaring in the distance instead ...
Read more: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema, Volume VI: Singapore (1947)
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- By Emily Strong
“Why do people have to love people, anyway?” By the time the 1960’s rolled around in America, the infamous Production Code that was implemented in the 1930’s was clearly losing its grip in Hollywood. The years of filmmakers sliding in double-meaning lines of dialogue and skirting ...
Read more: The Apartment 4K Restoration (1960) - 4K UHD Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Want to watch some classic films for the first time again? Scoop up this release. Psychological. Shocking. Suspenseful. And downright BEAUTIFUL to look at. The Alfred Hitchcock Classics Collection release in Ultra 4K is a DEFINITIVE release for some of the most thrilling classics from the ...
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- By Loron Hays
“Orson Welles had a perception of everything in the film, including the music. He knew. He truly understood film scoring. …Touch of Evil was one of the best things I’ve ever done.” - Henry Mancini And it shows, too. From Mancini’s score to ...
Read more: Touch of Evil - Kino Lorber 4K UHD Blu-Ray Review (1958)
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- By Emily Strong
“The things we like best are either illegal, immoral or fattening.” It starts on a boat – an ocean liner headed to New York. Two strangers who enjoy a life of indulgences have a chance meeting when a telegram caught in the wind brings them together. Despite being engaged to their own respective ...
Read more: Love Affair: The Criterion Collection (1939) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Elwood P. Dood has a really BIG secret. No, it’s not his constant drinking, which might be a cause for alarm in and of itself. It’s his friend; his drinking buddy; and the only person who shares his innermost secrets with. His best friend in the whole wide world is invisible. He’s also 6-foot tall ...
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- By Loron Hays
We’re in the money! We’re in the money! Well, not everyone, but that doesn’t mean the star-studded comic song-and-dance spectacle of following the exploits of chorus girls Polly, Carol, and Trixie around New York City while they scratch about trying to land parts in the next BIG Broadway ...
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- By Emily Strong
“Talk to me later. I’m killing myself.” With a noose hanging around his neck, dramatically (and quite insincerely) calling out the name of the gorgeous chambermaid he is in love with, this is probably one of the most brilliantly understated ways of introducing Bob Hope’s title character in Monsieur ...
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- By Emily Strong
Cue the music and pull back the “safety curtain.” You are in for a fun one. It is one of the most over-looked projects in Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography, but Stage Fright, has no shortage of suspense from the master himself. In this piece of theater, virtually every character plays the roles of ...
Read more: Stage Fright: The Warner Archive Collection (1950) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Emily Strong
“I like being shipwrecked!” As far as Hitchcock romantic comedies go, well…you probably did not even know one existed! (I did not even know one existed). In fact, the whole idea that Alfred Hitchcock has quite a few comedies credited to his filmography seems more unnerving than any of his ...
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- By Loron Hays
Director Jack Arnold was Universal’s go-to guy when they wanted a quick hit. He proved himself mightily as he churned out classics like It Came from Outer Space (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Revenge of the Creature (1955), Tarantula (1955), and The Incredible Shrinking ...
Read more: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema, Volume V: Outside the Law (1956) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Emily Strong
“Immoral women shouldn't work in banks, you know. They might corrupt the young dollar bills.” Small towns can be so wonderful, can’t they? Everybody knows one another so well. It can be like having one giant family with the sense of comfort and love gushing from the community. Well, why ...
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- By Loron Hays
Think it’s just the rainy day blues that has this mind reader down in the dumps? Think again. Based on a Cornell Woolrich novel, Night Has A Thousand Eyes might be classic B-movie material (due to its supernatural sources), but the film is both poetic and engaging as one mind reader ...
Read more: Night Has A Thousand Eyes (1948) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan was, at one time, a place of filth and absolute poverty. Back then, it was known as one of the roughest neighborhoods in Manhattan; a better place to be from than to be in. Bordered by the Hudson River on the west, Eighth Avenue on the east, 59th Street on the ...
Read more: Angels with Dirty Faces: Warner Archive Collection (1938) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Loretta Young is a wholesome brunette no more! As a naive blonde bombshell, this one-time gangster’s moll finds herself with a deep, dark secret. Because of You is the film that launched Tony Bennett's career as the title song became his first Number 1 hit, but it is also progressive for its era ...
Read more: Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema, Volume V: Because of You (1952) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Sometimes the good country air can be harmful to your health. Such is the frightening territory of this atmospheric thriller which sees a small-town recluse turn murderer. The woman projects nothing but EVIL while, at the same time, being nothing but pleasant in conversation. She’s a ...
Read more: The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Emily Strong
“The mob doesn’t think. It has a mind of its own.” In 1933, some loud-mouthed man with a tiny mustache and a weird haircut rose to power in the country of Germany. His name, I believe, was Adolf Hitler. You may have heard of him, no? Well, he established a dictatorship to replace ...
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- By Loron Hays
When the “Yes” men start telling you “NO”, you are probably approaching the trash-lined gutters along Sunset Boulevard. Hollywood is clearly sending you a message. You are no longer needed . . . or are you?!?! Well, if Billy Wilder (director of The Seven Year Itch, Some Like It Hot, ...
Read more: Sunset Boulevard: 4K Restoration (1950) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
“You stinkin’ rat!” For crime flicks, High Sierra, directed by Raoul Walsh, is indeed a watershed moment as the gangster pictures of the 1930s gave way to the fatalism found in Film Noir, which would dominate the 1940s. Making spectacular use of its locations ...
Read more: High Sierra: Criterion Collection (1941) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Metallic hands and dark glasses! There can be only one Dr. Gogol! Maybe it is the warning that is issued as the film begins in total blackness or maybe it is the way that Peter Lorre is lit and filmed throughout this horror film, but Mad Love absolutely works its twisted ways in a modern viewing and ...
Read more: Mad Love: Warner Archive Collection (1935) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
Lon Chaney as Quasimodo. Need I say anymore? I don’t really think so, but I’ll flex. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a certified REEL CLASSIC of silent, cinematic horror and it begins right there with Chaney’s performance as the deaf, half-blind, hunchbacked bell-ringer of the famous Cathedral of ...
Read more: The Hunchback of Notre Dame: 4K Restoration (1923) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Emily Strong
It’s Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn. Are you sold on it yet? No? Alright, let’s talk: When you think about Tracey-Hepburn films, Frank Capra’s 1948 State of the Union is certainly not as revered or remembered in the way that Woman of the Year, Adam’s Rib, or even Guess Who’s ...
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- By Loron Hays
"I've got my head. I've lost my leopard!" As far as screwball comedies go, the pairing of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn was probably seen as an odd choice in 1938. She didn’t have a hit film and Grant, hitting his comedic stride, was just coming off of The Awful Truth to ...
Read more: Bringing Up Baby: The Criterion Collection (1938)
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- By Loron Hays
The comedic timing. The charisma of all involved. The breaking of the fourth wall. Hollywood’s definitive leading man! What’s not to love about Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House as Cary Grant takes his physical comedy and his mannerisms from the office to home construction woes ...
Read more: Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House: Warner Archive Collection (1948) - Blu-ray Review
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- By Loron Hays
A psychological thriller in which Boris Karloff does NOT play a creature of the night? Say it ain’t so?! But it’s true. Isle of the Dead, produced by the legendary Val Lewton, concerns itself with that which haunts Greek nightmares: the Vrykolakas and this female vampire is certainly NOT ...
Read more: Isle of the Dead: Warner Archive Collection (1945) - Blu-ray Review
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Movie Reviews
Morbidly Hollywood
- Colorado Street Suicide Bridge
- Death of a Princess - The Story of Grace Kelly's Fatal Car Crash
- Joaquin Phoenix 911 Call - River Phoenix - Viper Room
- Screen Legend Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79
- Suicide and the Hollywood Sign - The Girl Who Jumped from the Hollywood Sign
- The Amityville Horror House
- The Black Dahlia Murder - The Death of Elizabeth Short
- The Death of Actress Jane Russell
- The Death of Brandon Lee
- The Death of Chris Farley
- The Death of Dominique Dunne
- The Death of George Reeves - the Original Superman