Documentary
A Navajo boy stoically endures hardship, hunger and the death of his family. He is taken away to attend a white man boarding school and escapes but is pursued to the ancient Navajo caves. Filmed at majestic Canyon de Chelly and Nominated for two Academy Awards®.
Action/Adventure
Based on the story Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne, this epic action adventure follows a courageous courier of Tsar Alexander II as he struggles to deliver vital information to Russian troops fighting a losing battle against invading Tartar hordes in Siberia. It’s a straight ahead action film, adventurous, swiftly paced and blood-thirstily satisfying. This serial-like adventures of Strogoff and his friends battling a Tartar rebellion has captivated Verne fans for decades.
Crime & Thrillers
The Slasher (Cosh Boy): A swift moving, no punches pulled exposé set in London’s tenement district, with a ruthless teenager (James Kenney, reprising his stage role) blackjacking an old woman to get her purse, and “graduating” to gang leader whose young cutthroats spread terror over the entire city.
Twilight Women (Women of Twilight, Another Chance): Originating on the London stage, this hard-hitting tale is set at a boarding house-haven for unmarried mothers, owned by a woman whose outward show of upstanding character hides her true personality: a fiend who abuses the women and farms out their babies!
Unwed Mother: Betty (Norma Moore) moves from a farming community to Los Angeles. She falls into the clutches of a super-cad (Robert Vaughn) and ends up abandoned and pregnant. After visiting a drunken abortionist, she decides to give the baby up for adoption…but has a change of heart.
Too Soon to Love: Two teenage lovers from dysfunctional families go “all the way.” She becomes in the family way, flees from a wicked abortionist and later attempts suicide. He steals money to retain a “real” doctor!
Drama
Plus Co-Feature “The Rebel Son”
Uncle Vanya: Chekhov’s classic drama with a powerful performance by star Franchot Tone (who also co-directed), superb support by Mary Perry, Peggy McCay and George Voskovec in the title role, and music by multi-Oscar nominee Werner Janssen, this amazing artifact veritably puts you in a 1956 legit theater seat watching “probably the best work Tone has ever done” (Variety).
The Rebel Son: Based on the story by Gogol, a 16th Century Cossack, Taras Boulba (Harry Bauer) seeks to regain control of his Ukraine homeland by sending his son to secretly study under the occupying Poles.
Crime & Thrillers
A student who refuses to kill a dog as part of his “Hell Night” fraternity initiation is later hounded to his death, prompting college professor Paul Henreid to push for reforms. Henreid also produced and directed this hard-hitting expose on college hazing, which features early performances from Russell (Gilligan’s Island) Johnson and Vera (Psycho) Miles.
Drama
It’s a tale of power and passions when a Russian siren (Linda Darnell), who wants the finer things in life, sinks her hooks into a judge (George Sanders), a decadent aristocrat (Edward Everett Horton) and an estate superintendent (Hugo Haas), with surprising results. Fine direction by master auteur Douglas Sirk and an Oscar-nominated score highlight this adaptation of the Anton Chekhov drama “The Shooting Party.”
Crime & Thrillers
Plastic surgeon Paul Henreid molds the face of a woman (Lizabeth Scott) who rejected him onto the mug of a horribly scarred prison inmate (also played by Scott), and proceeds to wed the parolee despite her social-misfit status. Now, of course, the original gal reappears, and Henreid has one Scott too many–the “new” one dangerously psychotic!
After Six Days (1922): Touted at the time as a “$3,000,000 Entertainment for the Hundred Millions,” this 1920 Old Testament spectacle delivered what it promised…”from the creation of Adam and Eve to the parting of the Red Sea.”
Yesterday and Today: Veteran funnyman George Jessel is our host and narrator for this light-hearted look-back at the early and often humorously primitive days of motion pictures circa pre-1910. The majority of film sequences benefit from not having much exposure, if any, since their original release, and most are featured in longer excerpts unlike the usual compilations of this type.
6 movies/3 DVDs
- Delinquent Schoolgirls
- Mermaids of Tiburon – Director’s Cut
- Dream No Evil
- Mondo Keyhole
- The Raw Ones
- Yambao (Cry of the Bewitched)
- Plus: Many Special Features
Hell Harbor: A Caribbean island harbor is the exquisite backdrop for treachery and romance as Anita (Lupe Velez), a descendant of the infamous Morgan the Pirate, gets in the middle of a dispute between her father Harry (Gibson Gowland), who has killed a man, and grimy pearl trader Horngold (Jean Hersholt), who witnessed the crime and demands Anita’s hand (and more) in marriage in exchange for his silence!
Jungle Bride: Two women and two men are shipwrecked on an island off the African coast, and take up housekeeping and other forms of dilly-dally in this definite pre-code film. Charles Starrett has his way with Anita Page, or is it the other way around?
My Dog Shep: An orphan and a Spanish War veteran, become tramps, the former because he is abused by relatives, the latter because his family plans to put him in a Soldier’s Home. After the boy disappears, his relatives learn that he is heir to a fortune.
Shep Comes Home: A boy whose father died in WWII, runs away from home to keep from being separated from “Shep,” his father’s dog. In Arizona, he is befriended by a kindly Mexican. When his friend is suspected of crimes committed by local gangsters. “Shep” is instrumental in saving Ortiz from a lynching.
Sins of Jezebel: In 9th Century, B.C., in the city of Jezreel, the prophet Elijah warns Ahab, the King of Israel, against marrying Jezebel the beautiful but evil Phoenician. A series of biblical disasters befall everyone who crosses the path with one of the Old Testament’s original sinners!
Queen of the Amazons: A woman searches the Amazon jungle for her missing fiancé. The problem is not that she finds her husband alive and well, but that he has fallen in love with “Zeeda,” the Amazon Queen! Transferred from the original British release 35mm nitrate negative.
Action/Adventure
Shipwrecked on an uninhabited South Seas atoll, a Canadian nurse (Linda Darnell) and a young Marine (Tab Hunter) initially clash but, as the weeks turn into months, begin to see each other through different eyes and give in to their natural impulses. But when an RAF flyer (Donald Gray) crashes on the island, the tropical love story is complicated by that familiar bit of romantic geometry, the Eternal Triangle.
Drama
Intrigue and danger follow the International Police on their rounds in post-WWII Vienna in this suspenseful made-on-location drama. The city is divided between the U.S., England, France and Russia, and each Jeep patrol is comprised of one sergeant from each country. The beautiful Franziska wants to leave the Russian zone with her husband, an escapee from an interment camp. (Director’s Cut)
Drama
In 1950s Hollywood, a transvestite fools the world into believing he is a she – a glamorous movie diva. When he dies, the secret is out, and the film proceeds to tell this story of his relationships with friends and intimates, including a lesbian wardrobe designer, a gay matinee idol (whom he has an affair with), a protective lawyer and a washed up prize fighter who becomes her chauffeur!
Comedy
Some of legendary writer Ben Hecht’s best work comes to the screen in a two-in-one show business-themed comedy-drama that reveals what goes on when the greasepaint comes off. In “Actors Blood,” washed-up stage star Edward G. Robinson assembles all the suspects in the murder of his actress-daughter (Marsha Hunt); and in “Woman of Sin,” a Hollywood agent discovers to his chagrin that a highly sought-after script was written by a nine-year-old girl.