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The Val Lewton Horror Collection (Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People / I Walked with a Zombie / The Body Snatcher / Isle of the Dead / Bedlam / The Leopard Man / The Ghost Ship / The Seventh Victim / Shadows in the Dark)

Actors: Simone Simon, Tom Conway, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Frances Dee
ASIN : B000A0GOEQ
Sales Rank : 3571
Director : Gunther von Fritsch, Jacques Tourneur, Mark Robson, Robert Wise
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Turner Home Ent
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780780650800
ISBN : 0780650808
UPC : 053939727029
Release Date : December 04, 2005
Publisher : Turner Home Ent
Manufacturer : Turner Home Ent
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Turner Home Ent
Running Time : 646

Description

Val Lewton, a famous RKO Radio Pictures producer, redefined the horror genre with low-budget, high-box office films. Now available are nine of these horror classics on DVD in the all new Val Lewton Horror Collection. Exclusive to the collection are a new documentary on the producer and 3 of the 9 films.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Greg Mank with Simone Simon on Cat People and Curse of the Cat People, Kim Newman and Steve Jones on I Walked With a Zombie, Steve Haberman with Robert Wise on The Body Snatcher, Tom Weaver on Bedlam, and Steve Haberman on The Seventh Victim.
Documentaries:Shadows In The Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy
Theatrical Trailer

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Val Lewton's name is synonymous with the subtlest, most mysterious brand of horror filmmaking in Hollywood's golden age, and the nine horror classics he produced at RKO between 1942 and 1946 constitute the most remarkable cycle of creativity in B-movie history. (For the record, the Lewton/RKO legacy also includes two non-horror entries, Youth Runs Wild and Mademoiselle Fifi.)

Before becoming a film producer, the Russian-born Lewton was a prolific writer of pulp fiction, nonfiction, and a couple of pornographic novels. He also worked for years as assistant to David O. Selznick, a legendary producer with a distinctive personal signature--and a flair for grandiosity Lewton himself never emulated. It's ever so revealing that, on Selznick's Gone With the Wind, it was Lewton who came up with the idea for the famous rising shot of the Atlanta railyard filled with Southern wounded, with the Confederate flag streaming above--only he idly proposed it as a joke, never imagining that anyone would actually film such a spectacularly ambitious scene.

In 1942 Lewton left Selznick to undertake a series of horror films for RKO Radio Pictures. The studio would give him a budget around $200,000 per picture and a title RKO deemed to be grabby; Lewton would have a free hand as long as he stayed on budget, used the title, and gave the studio a salable movie of second-feature length (around 70 minutes). Over time, Lewton would increasingly have trouble with studio supervisors, but RKO was the right place for him. Although low in the pecking order among Hollywood majors, the studio made up for its lack of MGM-style glamour and Warner Bros. grit-and-gusto by working in a finely filigreed, almost miniaturist style. The art department under Van Nest Polglase and Albert S. D'Agostino was capable of exquisite artisanry, and in Nicholas Musuraca, a master of low-key cinematography and supple camerawork, Lewton found an invaluable collaborator in creating moody shadow-worlds where what you couldn't see was more disquieting than what you could.

He was also fortunate in having Jacques Tourneur to direct his first three efforts (they had teamed years earlier on the Bastille-storming sequence for Selznick's A Tale of Two Cities). They scored first time out of the gate with both a popular hit and a masterpiece: Cat People (1942). The story involves a pretty young Serbian woman in Manhattan (Simone Simon) convinced that her ancestors had practiced animal worship during the Middle Ages--and that she herself might shape-change into a lithe, ravening panther if her passions were aroused. The film is uncannily successful in keeping the viewer guessing whether this is a phobia borne of morbid obsession and sexual repression, or a genuine, horrific possibility. There are two sequences of matchless artistry and almost unbearable suspense--a lonely, echoing walk through pools of lamplight alongside Central Park, and a late-night swim in a deserted indoor pool--that build to throat-grabbing climaxes and remain milestones in the history of screen horror.

Many critics feel that the second Lewton-Tourneur endeavor, I Walked With a Zombie (1943), is both men's finest work. The title is so lurid that the heroine-narrator (Frances Dee) must shrug it off with her very first words, yet the movie is an amazingly delicate and poetic piece of spellbinding--nothing less than a reworking of Jane Eyre on a voodoo island in the Caribbean. Other horror aficionados prefer the more mainline ferocity of The Leopard Man (1943), an adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich story about a serial killer strewing corpses along the U.S.-Mexican border. Although on one level this is the Lewton film that veers closest to conventional mystery-suspense, there's no end of unsettling ambiguity (another black panther on the loose!) and hints of occultism and religious mania.

RKO promoted Tourneur to A-movies after this; Lewton would never again have so masterly a directorial partner. Yet in a weird sense (which is only appropriate), this underscores how much Lewton--with his wealth of arcane historical lore and storytelling archetypes, his quiet, patient attention to detail, and his taste for oblique narrative--was the essential auteur of all his films. Promoting first Mark Robson and then Robert Wise from the editing table, Lewton went on to make the deeply mysterious The Seventh Victim (1943) and The Ghost Ship (1943), two films in which such grotesque elements as Satan worship and murderous psychopathology are folded away inside eerily drifty, almost becalmed sleepwalks into eternal night. The Seventh Victim--a movie populated with more walking dead than Lewton's out-and-out zombie picture--is one of the cinema's supreme meditations on the ways lives brush against one another in the spaces of a great, impersonal city. And The Ghost Ship (the rarest of Lewton's films, owing to a ruinous copyright suit) is like a fever dream from which the viewer never awakens.

That's enough for a legacy, surely. Yet there remain The Curse of the Cat People (1944), a sequel that is not quite a sequel, a pretend-horror movie that's really a contemplation of the fragility of childhood; Isle of the Dead (1945), a doomed reverie about travelers who escape the Goya-esque chaos of a 19th-century war only to be beset with plague on a miasma-shrouded island; The Body Snatcher (1945), an atmospheric Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation that invokes the grisly history of graverobbers Burke and Hare, and supplies a together-again-for-the-last-time occasion for Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi; and Bedlam (1946), the Hogarth painting come to life to portray the real-life horrors of an 18th-century insane asylum. Bedlam's critical and box-office failure ended Lewton's quasi-independent status at RKO; he would live to make only three other, unsuccessful films.

James Agee, the premier American film critic of the 1940s, reckoned that Val Lewton was one of the three foremost creative figures in Hollywood--an assessment yet more impressive when we consider that the other two were Charles Chaplin and Walt Disney. His greatest films--Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Seventh Victim--are towering achievements, and even his half-realized projects are haunting experiences, the products of an utterly distinctive sensibility. This is an extraordinary collection. --Richard T. Jameson

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The Apple Dumpling Gang (Special Edition)

Actors: Bill Bixby, Susan Clark, Don Knotts, Tim Conway, Harry Morgan
ASIN : B00009YXAV
Sales Rank : 7295
Director : Jack Kinney, Norman Tokar
Studio : Walt Disney Home Entertainment
Region Code : 1
Format : Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780788838057
ISBN : 0788838059
UPC : 786936192421
Release Date : December 02, 2003
Publisher : Walt Disney Home Entertainment
Manufacturer : Walt Disney Home Entertainment
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Walt Disney Home Entertainment
Running Time : 100

Description

Head for cover! Don Knotts and Tim Conway are Wild West outlaws who can't hit the broad side of a barn -- but never miss when it comes to rounding up laughs! The hilarity begins when a roving bachelor (Bill Bixby) inherits three young orphans and a wealth of problems. When the youngsters stumble upon a huge golden nugget, they must fend off the greedy townspeople. So the kids join forces with the bumbling outlaws to stage a robbery of the gold. Little do they know a surly gang of sharpshooters plans to beat them to the draw! If you're aiming for fun, saddle up and head out with THE APPLE DUMPLING GANG!

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Bill Bixby plays a 19th-century gambler who inherits responsibility for three orphans, but the kids in turn have something of value: a huge gold nugget. This Disney film from 1975 is an enjoyable potboiler with its sentimentality under control and the accent on laughs, most of which are provided, not unexpectedly, by Tim Conway and Don Knotts as thieves who want to get their hands on the treasure. An easy, safe film for children. You can't go wrong with this. --Tom Keogh

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Shopgirl

Actors: Steve Martin, Claire Danes, Jason Schwartzman, Bridgette Wilson, Sam Bottoms
ASIN : B000EDWKX8
Sales Rank : 9228
Director : Anand Tucker
Brand : Buena Vista Home Video
Studio : Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
Region Code : 1
Format : AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0786936282986
UPC : 786936282986
Release Date : December 25, 2006
Publisher : Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
Manufacturer : Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
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Label : Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
Running Time : 106

Description

Based on Steve Martin's best-selling novella, and starring Golden Globe(R) winner Claire Danes (Best Actress In A TV Series, MY SO-CALLED LIFE, 1994), Golden Globe(R) nominee Steve Martin (Best Actor In A Motion Picture -- Comedy/Musical, FATHER OF THE BRIDE PART II, 1995), and Jason Schwartzman (BEWITCHED), SHOPGIRL is a disarmingly funny love story. Mirabelle, brilliantly played by Danes, is an aspiring artist working behind the glove counter at a Beverly Hills department store when she meets two very different men -- Jeremy (Schwartzman), a socially inept guy who doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and Ray (Martin) a wealthy entrepreneur who has the world at his feet. Filled with the mixed signals and missteps of a modern romance, SHOPGIRL is a fresh and witty, warm, and funny romantic comedy you can't help but fall in love with.

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Any fan of Steve Martin's 2000 novella will enjoy this pitch-perfect adaptation, which glowingly captures the bittersweet tones of a May-December romance. Martin wrote the screenplay and stars as Ray Porter, a button-down 50-something executive who reaches out to a much younger woman as a Los Angeles playmate. The book and movie, though, are both primarily about Mirabelle (Claire Danes), a 20-something with a pile of promises, debt, and depression, as she fades away into a slow corner of Saks selling unneeded formal gloves. She's a wisp of a person, with a cat who doesn’t love her, and when she finds a suitor, it's Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a scruffy artist who babbles on about speakers. When the gentlemanly Porter calls, his appearance in her life begins to make her whole. It also immediately sets her up for sadness--Ray thinks of Mirabella as a precious outlet for sex, while Mirabelle, very mistakenly, sees Ray as a potential lifelong mate. Martin deftly turns the novella's prose into dialogue, allowing the movie to feel full-bodied, and the film also works as a comedy, as we witness Jeremy's growth on the road with a rock band. Schwartzman would walk away with film if not for the perfectly cast leads: Martin does another smart turn away from his wild-and-crazy moniker, Danes has never been better in an Oscar-worthy performance, and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras aces her role as a hot-to-trot co-worker of Mirabelle's. Whoever's decision to have Martin be the omnipresent narrator, though, should be penalized, as it’s confusing to have him in two roles, and the information is pretty useless, even robbing the film of a final grace note. --Doug Thomas

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The Edge

Actors: Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Elle Macpherson, Harold Perrineau, Bart the Bear
ASIN : B000006IUQ
Sales Rank : 7434
Director : Lee Tamahori
Brand : Edge
Studio : 20th Century Fox
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Widescreen
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0086162104268
UPC : 086162104268
Release Date : December 04, 2002
Publisher : 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer : 20th Century Fox
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Label : 20th Century Fox
Running Time : 117

Description

A plane crash in the freezing Alaskan wilderness pits intellectual billionaire Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins) against self-satisfied fashion photographer Robert Green (Alec Baldwin) in a brutal struggle for survival. Each soon discovers that the greatest danger resides not in nature, but from human fear, treachery, and quite possibly murder.

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Writer David Mamet created two engrossing and memorable characters, played by Alec Baldwin as the urbane fashion photographer and Anthony Hopkins as a reserved and intellectual billionaire. They find themselves teamed up against a giant Kodiak bear, and their own inner demons, when lost together in the Alaskan wilderness. There is a lot going on in this picture, as the subject matter includes male rivalry, the isolationism of extreme wealth, and, most conspicuously, the survival of the fittest. Mamet's script, which sounds a little too arch in spots, is well served by New Zealand director Lee Tamahori, who knows how to capture beauty and brutality in one frame. Although the themes are enormous in scope, they are well balanced. One rarely overpowers the other, nor does the achingly beautiful scenery overshadow the acting. Even if you do not like the intellectualism of the dialogue, there are some great scenes with the bear. --Rochelle O'Gorman

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The Happiest Millionaire

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Tommy Steele, Greer Garson, Geraldine Page, Gladys Cooper
ASIN : B0001I5632
Sales Rank : 4782
Director : Norman Tokar
Studio : Walt Disney Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0786936233810
UPC : 786936233810
Release Date : December 01, 2004
Publisher : Walt Disney Video
Manufacturer : Walt Disney Video
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Label : Walt Disney Video
Running Time : 172

Description

Pet alligators roaming the conservatory, A Bible-and-boxing school in the stables, and a delightfully eccentric millionaire make for unrestrained pandemonium in this musical Disney extravaganza! Fred MacMurray presides over a Philadelphia mansion where just about anything can happen! Lovely Lesley Ann Warren and handsome John Davidson make their motion picture debuts in a delightful story brimming with sparkling songs and irresistible dances.

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Reportedly the last feature to be personally shepherded by Walt Disney himself, The Happiest Millionaire is a stubbornly old-fashioned musical intended to build on the success of Mary Poppins, relying on songs and score from Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, the studio's resident songwriting team responsible for the hits of Poppins. Despite that pedigree, and a cast headlined by Fred MacMurray, Greer Garson, Tommy Steele, Geraldine Page, and, in their screen debuts, Lesley Anne Warren and John Davidson, the would-be successor wound up a white elephant.

Released in 1967, a watershed year for youth culture and social upheaval, The Happiest Millionaire romanticizes Philadelphia's upper crust circa 1916. Its title character, Anthony J. Drexel Biddle (MacMurray), is a militant industrialist urging America's mobilization against Germany, and noteworthy for an eccentric lifestyle that includes his own bible study classes, martial arts training, and (in a lone nod toward any remotely modern social values) a readiness to empower his lovely, headstrong daughter, Cordelia (Warren).

Under Norman Tokar's busy but routine direction, the project does muster moments of charm, and packs its story line with enough twists to partly explain its excessive 144-minute length. But the unintended irony of paeans to capitalism and conservative politics in an era of Sgt. Pepper isn't masked by the Shermans' music, which is eminently forgettable, despite the game mugging of Tommy Steele as an immigrant Irish butler. Equally game is MacMurray, but as a singer, he's no Rex Harrison. --Sam Sutherland

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Beauty and the Beast - The Complete First Season

Actors: Ron Perlman, Linda Hamilton, Ren Woods, Jason Allen, Cory Danziger
ASIN : B000K7UBX4
Sales Rank : 6944
Director : Beth Hillshafer, Victor Lobl, Gabrielle Beaumont, Alan Cooke, Daniel Attias
Brand : Paramount
Studio : Paramount
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Color, Full Screen, Mono, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0097360382044
UPC : 097360382044
Release Date : December 13, 2007
Publisher : Paramount
Manufacturer : Paramount
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Paramount
Running Time : 1066

Description

The Beauty and the Beast TV show was a fantasy series about a man-beast (Vincent) and his love for a beautiful assistant district attorney (Catherine Chandler). Vincent lived in an underground world beneath New York City where his gruesome looks were less important to his peers than were his caring and benevolent personality. Together, Vincent and Catherine had many adventures both above and below ground level and their love for each other continued to grow.

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"Once upon a time... in the city of New York." So begins this unique fantasy-crime series. Catherine (Emmy nominee Linda Hamilton, The Terminator) is an assistant DA who's attacked one night by strangers. When she wakes up, her face is covered in bandages. Someone named Vincent (Golden Globe winner Ron Perlman) has been taking care of her in his home beneath the subway. When she removes the dressing, she finds that he's a man-beast, but fear turns to trust when she becomes convinced he has her best interests at heart. As she states in the introduction, "We have a bond stronger than friendship or love." As the season unfolds, Vincent frequently comes to Catherine's assistance. As an empath, he knows instinctively when she's in trouble. When he needs help, Vincent turns to Father (Roy Dotrice), the doctor who raised him after he was abandoned at the hospital after he was born. His origins are unknown. Together, Catherine and Vincent are like the detectives of Remington Steele, except no one knows she's part of a team, since they're only able to meet in secret. Vincent's underground companions, however, get to know Catherine well. Just as Vincent comes to her aid as needed, she does the same for his community.

Although Beauty and the Beast has little in common with the Jean Cocteau film or Disney animated picture, the appeal is similar. Cynics may find these do-gooders sentimental, especially when Catherine utters lines like, "And although we cannot be together, we will never, ever be apart." But romantics made the CBS drama successful--at least until Hamilton left in the second year--and launched the Emmy-nominated Perlman into cult favorites like The City of Lost Children. Oscar winner Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London) also deserves credit for his convincing make-up effects. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Beyond Beauty and The Beast

The Soundtrack
More ‘80s TV Series
More TV Series on DVD for the First Time

Stills from Beauty and The Beast: The Complete First Season (click for larger image)

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The Wild Wild West - The Complete First Season

Actors: Robert Conrad, Ross Martin, Michael Dunn, Jenie Jackson, Phoebe Dorin
ASIN : B000ERVJKO
Sales Rank : 7187
Director : Alan Crosland Jr., Alvin Ganzer, Bernard L. Kowalski, Don Taylor, Edward Dein
Brand : PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Studio : Paramount
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0097368881648
UPC : 097368881648
Release Date : December 06, 2006
Publisher : Paramount
Manufacturer : Paramount
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Paramount
Running Time : 1347

Product description

The first season of the WILD WILD WEST follows the adventures of James West (Robert Conrad) and his sidekick Artemus Gordon comes as an unlikely pair of Secret Service Agents who work to protect President Ulysses S. Grant and investigate federal crimes in the old west. The 7-disc set is packed with 28 digitally remastered episodes, rare footage, audio commentaries and a special introduction to each episode from Robert Conrad.

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CBS had an instant hit on their hands when The Wild Wild West made its network debut on September 17, 1965. While many of the popular TV Westerns were running out of steam, series creator Michael Garrison ripped a page from the Ian Fleming/Sean Connery playbook and conceived The Wild Wild West as a "James Bond Western," energizing the genre by combining a traditional Western setting (primarily the San Francisco region in the 1870s) with the accoutrements of the spy genre. It was a foolproof formula, further refined by producer Fred Frieberger (who later produced the third and final season of Star Trek), and TWWW held its popular time-slot (7:30-8:30 on Friday nights) for its entire four-season run. Smart casting proved to be another source of audience appeal: While Robert Conrad fit nicely into his role (and tight-fitting costume) as macho Secret Service agent James West, doing his own challenging stunts and charming each episode's obligatory beautiful female guest star, Ross Martin proved an equally excellent choice to play West's skillful sidekick Artemus Gordon, a debonair dandy whose mastery of disguises and dialects would prove essential as they tackled dangerous crime-fighting assignments from President Ulysses S. Grant.

The series' unique appeal arose from its clever and frequently bizarre plots. Every episode title began with a variation of "The Night of..." (including the pilot, "The Night of the Inferno," with more unusual titles thereafter), and as Jim and Arte plotted strategies from the comfort of their tricked-out custom railroad car, their exploits frequently led them into realms of the occult, mad science, bizarre inventions, and villains so eccentrically twisted that they became instant favorites among the show's growing legion of fans. Best of them all was the nefarious Miguelito Loveless, first appearing in "The Night the Wizard Shook the Earth" (original airdate 10/01/65) and played to perfection by dwarf actor Michael Dunn, a '60s TV regular familiar to Star Trek fans from his memorable role in the original series episode "Plato's Stepchildren." A gifted, intellectual renaissance man (like Ross Martin) with an angelic singing voice, Dunn was an overnight sensation, guest-starring in four of the first season's 28 episodes, with six more appearances in subsequent seasons. Dunn's gleeful malevolence (accompanied by his mute henchman Voltaire, played by giant actor Richard Kiel) was an essential addition to the series' sideshow esthetic; weirdness, humor, gorgeous women, and devious ingenuity (in plotting, action and gadgetry), became the trademarks that set TWWW apart from its more conventional TV Western competition. --Jeff Shannon

On the DVD
For this much-anticipated DVD release, Paramount has made above-average efforts to satisfy fans. Virtually every episode looks and sounds practically brand-new, and with TWWW expert Sue Kesler serving as DVD co-producer, this seven-disc set features a wealth of archival extras, many culled from Kesler's own research as author of the out-of-print guidebook The Wild Wild West: The Series. In addition to excerpts from audio-taped interviews with Frieberger, writer (and "Dr. Loveless" creator) John Kneubuhl (who tells a fascinating story of how Liberace almost guest-starred on the show), music composer Richard Markowitz, and special-effects technician Tim Smyth, each episode includes brief but informative audio introductions by Robert Conrad, who also appears (with Martin) discussing the show (and their subsequent TV-movie revival of TWWW) in a 1978 talk-show appearance. Excerpts from the original music-theme scoring sessions were found in UCLA's Film and Television archive, and other extras include a network series promo clip (from a later season, after TWWW switched to color), a sketch by Ross Martin, a photo gallery, and even one of Conrad's notorious Eveready Battery commercials from the late '70s. All in all, this 40th Anniversary package should give TWWW fans ample reason to celebrate, boding well for the other season-sets to follow. --Jeff Shannon

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Candleshoe

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The Val Lewton Horror Collection (Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People / I Walked with a Zombie / The Body Snatcher / Isle of the Dead / Bedlam / The Leopard Man / The Ghost Ship / The Seventh Victim / Shadows in the Dark)

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Magnum P.I. - The Complete Fifth Season

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The Apple Dumpling Gang (Special Edition)

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Shopgirl

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The Edge

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The Happiest Millionaire

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Beauty and the Beast - The Complete First Season

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The Wild Wild West - The Complete First Season

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Quantum Leap - The Complete Second Season

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