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To Catch a Thief (Special Collector's Edition)

Actors: John Alderson, Georgette Anys, Brigitte Auber, Martha Bamattre, René Blancard
ASIN : B000MX7V5M
Sales Rank : 1029
Brand : Paramount
Studio : Paramount
Region Code : 1
Format : Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0097361207346
UPC : 097361207346
Release Date : December 08, 2007
Publisher : Paramount
Manufacturer : Paramount
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Paramount
Running Time : 106

Product Description

Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 05/08/2007 Run time: 106 minutes

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One of the creamiest of all of Alfred Hitchcock's films, To Catch a Thief is something like pure pleasure. Begin ticking off the ingredients of this 1955 movie and you'll get the picture: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, the French Riviera, champagne, fireworks, cat burglary. Mmm, it already feels good. Grant plays a retired thief who becomes a suspect when valuable things begin disappearing along the Cote d'Azur. The diamonds hanging from the well-sculpted neck of Grace Kelly would appear to be the newest target, but it's just possible that actual romance might also be wafting through the Mediterranean air. The lightness of the story keeps To Catch a Thief from being one of the masterpieces of Hitchcock's great run in the 1950s, but it is very difficult to cavil about the sunny locations, Grant's elegant aplomb, and Kelly's shrewd withholding of her sexual interest beneath the ice-queen exterior. John Michael Hayes provided the amusing script (which stretches double entendres to their limit, especially in a romantic discussion of fried chicken), Edith Head the splendid costumes. If the movie has any weight at all, it's in proving that at this point in his career Hitchcock was consumed with charting the tricky terrain of male-female courtship; if issues of trust are treated here with a light touch, they nevertheless matter as much as the mechanical working-out of Mr. H's suspense stories. --Robert Horton

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North By Northwest

Actors: Ed Binns, Leo G. Carroll, Bill Catching, Philip Coolidge, Lawrence Dobkin
ASIN : B0002IQEHI
Sales Rank : 1287
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Region Code : 1
Format : AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780790799933
ISBN : 0790799936
UPC : 012569670990
Release Date : December 07, 2004
Publisher : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Manufacturer : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Availability : Usually ships in 9 to 11 days
Label : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Running Time : 136

Product Description

Cary Grant teams with director Alfred Hitchcock for the fourth and final time in this superlative espionage caper judged one of the American Film Institute's Top-100 American Films and spruced up with a new digital transfer and remixed Dolby Digital Stereo. Grant plays a Manhattan advertising executive plunged into a realm of spy (James Mason) and counterspy (Eva Marie Saint) and variously abducted framed for murder chased and in another signature set piece crop-dusted. He also holds on for dear life from the facial features of the Presidents on Mount Rushmore (backlot sets were used). But don't expect the Master of Suspense to leave star or audience hanging.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569670990

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A strong candidate for the most sheerly entertaining and enjoyable movie ever made by a Hollywood studio (with Citizen Kane, Only Angels Have Wings and Trouble in Paradise running neck and neck). Positioned between the much heavier and more profoundly disturbing Vertigo (1958) and the stark horror of Psycho (1960), North by Northwest (1959) is Alfred Hitchcock at his most effervescent in a romantic comedy-thriller that also features one of the definitive Cary Grant performances. Which is not to say that this is just "Hitchcock Lite"; seminal Hitchcock critic Robin Wood (in his book Hitchcock's Films Revisited) makes an airtight case for this glossy MGM production as one of The Master's "unbroken series of masterpieces from Vertigo to Marnie." It's a classic Hitchcock Wrong Man scenario: Grant is Roger O. Thornhill (initials ROT), an advertising executive who is mistaken by enemy spies for a U.S. undercover agent named George Kaplan. Convinced these sinister fellows (James Mason as the boss, and Martin Landau as his henchman) are trying to kill him, Roger flees and meets a sexy Stranger on a Train (Eva Marie Saint), with whom he engages in one of the longest, most convolutedly choreographed kisses in screen history. And, of course, there are the famous set pieces: the stabbing at the United Nations, the crop-duster plane attack in the cornfield (where a pedestrian has no place to hide), and the cliffhanger finale atop the stone faces of Mount Rushmore. Plus a sparkling Ernest Lehman script and that pulse-quickening Bernard Herrmann score. What more could a moviegoer possibly desire? --Jim Emerson

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The Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection (Strangers on a Train Two-Disc Edition / North by Northwest / Dial M for Murder / Foreign Correspondent / Suspicion / The Wrong Man / Stage Fright / I Confess / Mr. and Mrs. Smith)

Actors: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ray Milland
ASIN : B0002HOES0
Sales Rank : 1034
Director : Alfred Hitchcock
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, NTSC, Closed-captioned
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780790797151
ISBN : 0790797151
UPC : 085393981426
Release Date : December 07, 2004
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 965

Description

The Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection contains the DVD debut of 8 Hitchcock classics including "Strangers on a Train Two-Disc Special Edition," and the following 7 new single-disc DVDs: "Dial M For Murder," "Foreign Correspondent" "Suspicion," "The Wrong Man," "Stage Fright," "I Confess" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." The previously released "North by Northwest" is also included in the 10-disc Signature Collection. Each of the 9 films in the collection shows why Hitchcock is regarded as one of Hollywood's most esteemed and important directors, and also brings legendary stars to the digital front including Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, Montgomery Clift and many others.

Strangers on a Train - En route from Washington, D.C., champion tennis player Guy Haines (Farley Granger) meets pushy playboy Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker). What begins as a chance encounter turns into a series of morbid confrontations, as Bruno manipulates his way into Guy's life. Bruno is eager to kill his father and knows Guy wants to marry a senator's daughter (Ruth Roman) but can't get a divorce from his wife. So Bruno suggests the men swap murders, which would leave no traceable clues or possible motives. Though Guy refuses, it won't be easy to rid himself of the psychopathic Bruno. Hitchcock's daughter Patricia appears in this film. The extra features included on the DVD are: Alternate 'preview' version of the film; Commentary by director Peter Bogdanovich, Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stephano, Strangers on a Train author Patricia Highsmith and biographer Andrew Wilson; New making-of documentary Strangers on a Train: A Hitchcock Classic, with Farley Granger, film historian Richard Schickel, Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell and other Hitchcock family members and colleagues recalling the making of this suspense landmark; Three intriguing featurettes: The Hitchcocks on Hitch, Strangers on a Train: The Victim's P.O.V., Strangers on a Train by M. Night Shyamalan; Alfred Hitchcock's Historical Meeting, a vintage newsreel.

Each DVD will be presented in a format preserving the aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition and will include the original theatrical trailer, and subtitles in English, French and Spanish.

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Rear Window (Universal Legacy Series)

Actors: Bennie Bartlett, Sara Berner, Raymond Burr, Frank Cady, Iphigenie Castiglioni
ASIN : B001CC7PPI
Sales Rank : 1299
Brand : Universal
Studio : Universal Studios
Region Code : 1
Format : Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0025195018258
UPC : 025195018258
Release Date : December 07, 2008
Publisher : Universal Studios
Manufacturer : Universal Studios
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Universal Studios
Running Time : 115

Description

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s most suspenseful screen achievements, Rear Window, is now available in a new 2-disc Special Edition DVD! When a professional photographer (James Stewart) suspects his neighbor of murdering his nagging wife, he enlists his socialite girlfriend (Grace Kelly) to help investigate the suspicious chain of events.

Honored in AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies for excellence in film, Rear Window has also been hailed as “one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most stylish thrillers” (Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide). With in-depth bonus features and a digitally remastered picture, this set showcases a cinematic masterpiece that continues to entertain audiences around the world.

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Like the Greenwich Village courtyard view from its titular portal, Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is both confined and multileveled: both its story and visual perspective are dictated by its protagonist's imprisonment in his apartment, convalescing in a wheelchair, from which both he and the audience observe the lives of his neighbors. Cheerful voyeurism, as well as the behavior glimpsed among the various tenants, affords a droll comic atmosphere that gradually darkens when he sees clues to what may be a murder.

Photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is, in fact, a voyeur by trade, a professional photographer sidelined by an accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama (and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom, underlined by the disapproval of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), and a wisecracking visiting nurse (Thelma Ritter). Yet when the invalid wife of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) disappears, Jeff enlists the two women to help him to determine whether she's really left town, as Thorwald insists, or been murdered.

Hitchcock scholar Donald Spoto convincingly argues that the crime at the center of this mystery is the MacGuffin--a mere pretext--in a film that's more interested in the implications of Jeff's sentinel perspective. We actually learn more about the lives of the other neighbors (given generic names by Jeff, even as he's drawn into their lives) he, and we, watch undetected than we do the putative murderer and his victim. Jeff's evident fear of intimacy and commitment with the elegant, adoring Lisa provides the other vital thread to the script, one woven not only into the couple's own relationship, but reflected and even commented upon through the various neighbors' lives.

At minimum, Hitchcock's skill at making us accomplices to Jeff's spying, coupled with an ingenious escalation of suspense as the teasingly vague evidence coalesces into ominous proof, deliver a superb thriller spiked with droll humor, right up to its nail-biting, nightmarish climax. At deeper levels, however, Rear Window plumbs issues of moral responsibility and emotional honesty, while offering further proof (were any needed) of the director's brilliance as a visual storyteller. --Sam Sutherland

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Notorious

Actors: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Fay Baker, Charles D. Brown, Wally Brown
ASIN : B001D8W7EK
Sales Rank : 939
Studio : MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code : 1
Format : Black & White, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Restored, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0883904109877
UPC : 883904109877
Release Date : December 14, 2008
Publisher : MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer : MGM (Video & DVD)
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : MGM (Video & DVD)
Running Time : 102

Product Description

The daughter of a traitor is coerced by a handsome governemnt agent into renewing an old friendship with a suspected nazi sympathizer in south america during wwii. Studio: Tcfhe/mgm Release Date: 10/14/2008 Starring: Cary Grant Claude Rains Run time: 130 minutes Director: Alfred Hitchcock

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One of Alfred Hitchcock's classics, this romantic thriller features a cast to kill for: Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, and Claude Rains. Bergman plays the daughter of a disgraced father who is recruited by American agents to infiltrate a post-World War II spy ring in Brazil. Her control agent is Grant, who treats her with disdain while developing a deep romantic bond with her. Her assignment: to marry the suspected head of the ring (Rains) and get the goods on everyone involved. Danger, deceit, betrayal--and, yes, romance--all come together in a nearly perfect blend as the film builds to a terrific (and surprising) climax. Grant and Bergman rarely have been better. --Marshall Fine

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Vertigo (Universal Legacy Series)

Actors: James Stewart, Kim Novak, John Benson, Margaret Brayton, Paul Bryar
ASIN : B001CC7PPS
Sales Rank : 2002
Brand : Universal
Studio : Universal Studios
Region Code : 1
Format : AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Original recording remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0025195018357
UPC : 025195018357
Release Date : December 07, 2008
Publisher : Universal Studios
Manufacturer : Universal Studios
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Universal Studios
Running Time : 130

Description

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest cinematic achievements, Vertigo, celebrates its 50th anniversary with an all-new 2-disc Special Edition DVD! Set in San Francisco, Vertigo creates a dizzying web of mistaken identity, passion and murder after an acrophobic detective (James Stewart) rescues a mysterious blonde (Kim Novak) from the bay. Recognized for excellence in AFI’s 100 Years...100 Movies, this dreamlike thriller from the Master of Suspense is as entertaining today as it was 50 years ago. Featuring revealing bonus features and a digitally remastered picture, Vertigo is a “great motion picture that demands multiple viewings” (Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide).

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Although it wasn't a box-office success when originally released in 1958, Vertigo has since taken its deserved place as Alfred Hitchcock's greatest, most spellbinding, most deeply personal achievement. In fact, it consistently ranks among the top 10 movies ever made in the once-a-decade Sight & Sound international critics poll, placing at number 4 in the most recent survey. (Universal Pictures' spectacularly gorgeous 1996 restoration and rerelease of this 1958 Paramount production was a tremendous success with the public, too.) James Stewart plays a retired police detective who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife (a superb Kim Novak, in what becomes a double role), whom he suspects of being possessed by the spirit of a dead madwoman. The detective and the disturbed woman fall ("fall" is indeed the operative word) in love and...well, to give away any more of the story would be criminal. Shot around San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of the Legion of Honor are significant locations) and elsewhere in Northern California (the redwoods, Mission San Juan Batista) in rapturous Technicolor, Vertigo is as lovely as it is haunting. --Jim Emerson

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Witness For the Prosecution

Actors: Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, John Williams
ASIN : B00005PJ6Z
Sales Rank : 2519
Director : Billy Wilder
Studio : MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code : 1
Format : Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780792851660
ISBN : 0792851668
UPC : 276168694256
Release Date : December 11, 2001
Publisher : MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer : MGM (Video & DVD)
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : MGM (Video & DVD)
Running Time : 116

Description

Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton star in this brilliantly made courtroom drama (The Film Daily) that left audiences reeling from its surprise twists and shocking climax. Directed by Billy Wilder, scripted by Wilder and Harry Kurnitz and based on Agatha Christie's hit London play, this splendid, six-time Oscar-nominated* classic crackles with emotional electricity (The New York Times) and continues to keep movie lovers riveted until the final, mesmerizing frame. When a wealthy widow is found murdered, her married suitor, Leonard Vole (Power), is accused of the crime. Vole's only hope for acquittal is the testimony of his wife (Dietrich) but his airtightalibi shatters when she reveals some shocking secrets of her own! *1957: Best Picture, Actor (Laughton), Supporting Actress (Elsa Lanchester), Director, Sound, Film Editing

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Billy Wilder cowrote and directed this brilliant 1957 mystery based on Agatha Christie's celebrated play about an aging London barrister (Charles Laughton) who's preparing to retire when he takes the defense in the most vexing murder case of his distinguished career. In his final completed film (he died of a heart attack less than a year later), Tyrone Power plays the prime suspect in the murder of a wealthy widow, and Marlene Dietrich plays the wife of the accused, whose testimony--and true identity--holds the key to solving the case. A classic of courtroom suspense, Witness for the Prosecution is one of those movies with enough double-crossing twists to keep the viewer guessing right up to the very end, when yet another surprise is deftly revealed. This being a Billy Wilder film, the dialogue is first-rate and the acting superb, with both Laughton and his offscreen wife Elsa Lanchester (playing the barrister's pesty nurse) winning Academy Awards for their performances. Although later films would concoct even more complicated courtroom scenarios, this remains one of the best films of its kind and a model for all those films that followed its lead. --Jeff Shannon

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Dial M for Murder

Actors: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams, Anthony Dawson
ASIN : B0002HOEQ2
Sales Rank : 3713
Director : Alfred Hitchcock, Laurent Bouzereau
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780790765396
ISBN : 079076539X
UPC : 085391115625
Release Date : December 07, 2004
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 105

Product Description

Ex-tennis pro tony wendice decides to murder his wife for her money and because she had an affair the year before. He blackmails an old college associate to strangle her but when things go wrong he sees a way to turn events to his advantage. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 08/29/2006 Starring: Ray Milland John Williams Run time: 105 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Alfred Hitchcock

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A suave tennis player (Ray Milland) plots the perfect murder, the dispatching of his wealthy wife (Grace Kelly), who is having an affair with a writer (Robert Cummings). Amazingly, the wife manages to stave off her attacker, a twist of fate that challenges the hubby's talent for improvisation. Alfred Hitchcock wisely stuck to the stage origins of Dial M for Murder, ignoring the temptation to "open up" the material from the home of the unhappy couple. The result may not be one of Hitchcock's deepest films, but it's a thoroughly engaging chamber movie. It also features Grace Kelly at her loveliest, the same year she made Rear Window with Hitchcock. Dial M for Murder was filmed in the briefly trendy 3-D process, and Hitchcock shot some scenes to bring out the depth of the 3-D field; it's especially good for the nail-biting attempted murder of Kelly, and her desperate reach for a pair of scissors that seems to be just outside her grasp. However, the film was rarely shown with the proper 3-D projection, going out "flat" instead (a 1980 reissue restored the process for a limited theatrical release). Dial M was remade in 1998 as A Perfect Murder, a film that changed and expanded the material, with no improvement on the clean, witty original. --Robert Horton

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Sorry, Wrong Number

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Ann Richards, Wendell Corey, Harold Vermilyea
ASIN : B000063URD
Sales Rank : 2816
Director : Anatole Litvak
Studio : Paramount
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Black & White, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780792179221
ISBN : 0792179226
UPC : 097360480146
Release Date : December 28, 2002
Publisher : Paramount
Manufacturer : Paramount
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Paramount
Running Time : 88

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Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster star in Sorry, Wrong Number, an odd telephonic thriller that starts off with a bang. Stanwyck, playing a shrill invalid, is at home alone and phoning around to find her husband. Thanks to a crossed wire, she overhears a murder plot, but she can barely get anyone to pay attention to her, let alone believe her. The rest of the film is played out in telephone conversations and flashbacks as our increasingly frightened heroine tries to find her husband and unravel the murder. Stanwyck, as always, gives a terrific performance, managing to make her character both unlikeable and compelling at the same time. Lancaster, as her kept husband, is handsome, virile, and trapped all at once. The plot, expanded to a film from a tight, dark little radio play, wanders at times but gathers itself back together for a corker of an ending. --Ali Davis

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The Agatha Christie Miss Marple Movie Collection (Murder at the Gallop / Murder Ahoy / Murder Most Foul / Murder She Said)

Actors: Margaret Rutherford, Arthur Kennedy, Lionel Jeffries, Ron Moody, Muriel Pavlow
ASIN : B000CRR374
Sales Rank : 3887
Director : George Pollock
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0012569679764
UPC : 012569679764
Release Date : December 14, 2006
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
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Label : Warner Home Video

Description

Murder She Said (1961): Margaret Rutherford's debut as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple Murder at the Gallop (1963): Murder and mystery start with a funeral Murder Most Foul (1964): Miss Marple joins a theatrical troupe whose specialty is death scenes. Murder Ahoy (1964): Miss Marple takes the helm in a seagoing whodunit

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Never mind purists who bemoan Margaret Rutherford's incarnation of Agatha Christie's celebrated spinster sleuth. These four British films, produced between 1961 and 64, are jolly good, regardless of their tenuous connection with Miss Marple as written, or with Christie herself. One of the films, in fact, Murder Ahoy, is an original screenplay credited as "an interpretation of Miss Marple." And two others, Murder at the Gallop and Murder Most Foul were based on books featuring Christie's other famed detective, Hercule Poirot." But no matter. The redoubtable Rutherford indelibly makes Marple her very own, or, as she proclaims to Inspector Craddock (Charles Tingwell), with whom she locks horns throughout all four films, "I am always myself." Rutherford makes a formidable first impression in Murder She Said, based on Christie's 4:50 from Paddington, in which the armchair sleuth goes undercover as a servant after witnessing a murder on a train. In Murder at the Gallop, based on After the Funeral, where there's a will, there's murder. In Murder Ahoy, Marple discovers a ship of thieves. In Murder Most Foul, Marple deadlocks a jury and joins a theatrical troupe to prove the defendant's innocence.

The Marple films are endearingly modest productions, redeemed by peerless performances and mostly sharp scripts. Ron Goodwin's theme music used in all four films is an irresistible piece of '60s symphonic pop that's a classical gas. None of the actors are suspect. Rutherford gets able support from her real-life husband, Stringer Davis, who portrays Marple's Watson-esque sidekick. Venerable character actors Robert Morley and Ron Moody enliven Gallop and Foul, respectively. And in Murder She Said, that's Joan Hickson, who would go on to acclaim as Miss Marple in the celebrated BBC series (also available on DVD). But it's tough to steal a scene from Rutherford, whose Marple displays a keen mind, and, in Ahoy, surprising prowess with a sword! --Donald Liebenson