Browse Westerns. Romance

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The Best of Abbott & Costello, Vol. 2 (Hit the Ice / In Society / Here Come the Co-Eds / The Naughty Nineties / Little Giant / The Time of Their Lives / Buck Privates Come Home / The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap)

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Marjorie Reynolds, Binnie Barnes, John Shelton
ASIN : B0001FGBZM
Sales Rank : 21721
Director : Charles Barton, Charles Lamont, Daniel Helfgott, Erle C. Kenton, Jean Yarbrough
Studio : Universal Studios
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Black & White, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9781417003426
ISBN : 1417003421
UPC : 025192499128
Release Date : December 04, 2004
Publisher : Universal Studios
Manufacturer : Universal Studios
Label : Universal Studios
Running Time : 654

Description

By popular demand, the legendary Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are back in eight brand-new-to-DVD comedy classics! Still one of the greatest comedy teams in the history of show business, their films continue to generate new legions of fans around the world.

Now some of their greatest gags and most stellar skits, including the complete version of their signature routine "Who's on First?", are available in this side-splitting collection. It's the boys at their very best and illustrates why Bud and Lou rightly deserve their place among the brightest stars of the silver screen!

Hit the Ice (1943)
Bud and Lou hit the slopes at the Sun Valley Resort after getting mixed up with gangsters.

In Society (1944)
The boys find themselves in hot water after a plumbing job goes wrong at a high society bash.

Here Come the Co-Eds (1945)
Bud and Lou head to campus and attempt to save Bixby College from closing down.

The Naughty Nineties (1945)
Set aboard the River Queen showboat, Bud and Lou perform their legendary "Who's on First?" routine.

Little Giant (1946)
Lou plays a little man with big dreams...and ends up selling vacuum cleaners!

The Time of Their Lives (1946)
Mistaken as a traitor, Lou's ghost is trapped in Danbury Mansion until his innocence is proven.

Buck Privates Come Home (1947)
Bud and Lou return to civilian life and get involved in midget car racing in the sequel to Buck Privates!

The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (1947)
Accused of murder, Lou is forced to take care of a widow and her children on a farm.

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Frank Sinatra - The Early Years Collection (It Happened in Brooklyn / Step Lively / The Kissing Bandit / Double Dynamite / Higher and Higher)

Actors: Michèle Morgan, Jack Haley, Frank Sinatra, Leon Errol, Marcy McGuire
ASIN : B0013LL2X4
Sales Rank : 35728
Director : Irving Cummings, Laslo Benedek, Richard Whorf, Tim Whelan
Brand : Warner Brothers
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0883929011520
UPC : 883929011520
Release Date : December 13, 2008
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 461

Description

FRANK SINATRA: THE EARLY YEARS COLLECTION DOUBLE DYNAMITE A racetrack tip puts bank clerk Sinatra in the green – and in hot water when a substantial amount of cash is missing from the bank. With Jane Russell and Groucho Marx. HIGHER AND HIGHER Starting out – the King of Swoon’s first credited feature-film role! A maid poses as a debutante in hopes of wooing wealthy bachelor Frank. With Mel Torme and Dooley Wilson. IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN Ex-G.I. Sinatra can’t find an apartment when he returns from World War II, but he does find romance in the old neighborhood. With Kathryn Grayson, Jimmy Durante and the signature hit Time After Time. THE KISSING BANDIT He’s also a singing bandit! Sinatra brings sly comic ease to the role of timid youth struggling to continue his family’s bandito tradition. With Kathryn Grayson, Ann Miller and Cyd Charisse. STEP LIVELY The kid from Jersey winningly steps into his first top billing. An antic backstage farce based on the Broadway hit that also inspired the Marx Brothers’ Room Service.

Amazon.com

The young, skinny Frank Sinatra was a big-band singer and the heartthrob of the bobby-soxers when he launched his movie career--a moment in time memorably captured by Frank Sinatra: The Early Years Collection. Five movies take the gangly kid from Hoboken through his hesitant first forays into the Hollywood game; everything here is in the minor-but-tuneful category, before he re-launched his career with From Here to Eternity. It's a fun set for Sinatra fans, not so essential for the casual viewer (and no extra features for vintage-movie mavens). Frankie's first feature, in 1943, was Higher and Higher, in which he plays--hmm--a young singer named Frank Sinatra. All right, it's not much of a stretch, but the kid fits quite comfortably into a madcap ensemble that includes Jack Haley, Mary Wickes, Dooley Wilson, and a youthful (practically unformed) Mel Torme. This is the kind of wacky universe in which a scullery maid has a French accent (it's Michele Morgan) and a British nobleman has a Danish accent (it's piano comedian Victor Borge). The film is completely insane, but fun. Step Lively (1944) has the same director, Tim Whelan, and a similarly over-heated farce in play: a theatrical producer (obnoxious George Murphy) tries to whip together a show while dodging hotel managers (Adolphe Menjou, deadpan Walter Slezak). Frankie's in there as a playwright who also sings. It's a version of the Broadway play that also served the Marx Brothers in Room Service, but the whole thing is really too labored to pay off. It Happened in Brooklyn (1947) doesn't offer much in the way of substance (Sinatra is a WWII vet returning to his beloved, but now less friendly, Brooklyn), but at least Frank is teamed with Jimmy Durante. Oh, and Kathryn Grayson and Gloria Grahame are in there too, even if the real love match is Sinatra and Durante singing together. Tunes are by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, including "Time After Time."

1948's The Kissing Bandit became for Sinatra what The Silver Chalice would be for Paul Newman: a source of self-mockery in later years. A truly bizarre concoction about the son of a Zorro-like bandit settling in Boston, the film has one specialty number featuring Cyd Charisse, Ann Miller, and Ricardo Montalban, and a lot of filler. Sinatra's career was sliding by the time Double Dynamite (1951) was released, and the movie did little to help. Frankie's a poor bank clerk who scores on a horse-racing bet but can't prove he didn't actually rob the bank. It isn't great, although Groucho Marx at least has one of his better solo roles, while Jane Russell is stuck in a dizzy-dame part (rather than her preferred sassy mode). For Sinatra, career resurgence would have to wait a while--this box set gives you the superstar-in-waiting. --Robert Horton

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Ford At Fox - The Collection

Actors: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara, Linda Darnell
ASIN : B000WMA6HI
Sales Rank : 47686
Director : Andrew Bennison, John Ford
Brand : FORD,JOHN
Studio : 20th Century Fox
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Color, NTSC, Closed-captioned
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0024543482864
UPC : 024543482864
Release Date : December 04, 2007
Publisher : 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer : 20th Century Fox
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : 20th Century Fox
Running Time : 2399

Description

John Ford is considered by many to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. His sphere of influence touched contemporaries such as Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles; as well as George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. For much of his early career, Ford's home was Twentieth Century Fox where he made more than 50 films for the studio from 1920 through 1952, including such classics as The Grapes of Wrath, My Darling Clementine, Drums Along the Mohawk and How Green Was My Valley. It was one of the most productive director/studio relationships in the history of American film. Celebrating the legacy of the collected works of John Ford and their part in the Studio's heritage and pedigree, Ford at Fox: The Collection features 24 films as well as the new documentary "Becoming John Ford" by Academy Award nominated documentary maker and Ford historian Nick Redman. The beautifully packaged collection also includes an exclusive hard-cover book which features rare, unpublished photographs from Ford's career, lobby card reproductions, production stills and an in-depth look at this maverick's work.

Disc 1: WHAT PRICE GLORY Disc 2: MY DARLING CLEMENTINE Disc 3: HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY Disc 4: TOBACCO ROAD Disc 5: GRAPES OF WRATH Disc 6: DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK Disc 7: WEE WILLIE WINKIE Disc 8: YOUNG MR. LINCOLN Disc 9: PRISONER ON SHARK ISLAND Disc 10: STEAMBOAT AROUND THE BEND Disc 11: WORLD MOVES ON Disc 12: PILGRIMAGE/BORN RECKLESS Disc 13: DOCTOR BULL/JUDGE PRIEST Disc 14: FOUR MEN AND A PRAYER/SEAS BENEATH Disc 15: WHEN WILLIE COMES HOME/UP THE RIVER Disc 16: FOUR SONS Disc 17: THREE BAD MEN/HANGMAN'S HOUSE Disc 18: JUST PALS Disc 19: BECOMING JOHN FORD DOCUMENTARY Disc 20: THE IRON HORSE SPECIAL EDITION UK VERSION DISC 1 Disc 21: THE IRON HORSE US VERSION: DISC 2

Amazon.com

For anyone with a passion for vintage American cinema, it's difficult to imagine a more spectacular or more deeply gratifying occasion than the DVD release of Ford at Fox: The Collection. This mega-box is like a film archive unto itself ... or maybe permanent browsing rights over a wing of the Library of Congress. To be sure, there have been plenty directorial boxed sets, including several devoted to John Ford; and Ford made quite a bit of film history--and many of his best movies--away from Fox Films and its post-1935 avatar, 20th Century–Fox. But this treasure trove of 21 discs, encompassing just about half of the 50 titles Ford directed for Fox between 1920 and 1952, is unparalleled.

It isn't just the career highlights, though those have been treated royally. The Iron Horse, the epic 1924 Western that became a breakout success for its 30-year-old director, is presented in two editions, a British release version and the American version. Three Bad Men (1926), Ford's even better, last silent Western, is here, as well as the two pictures that brought him back-to-back best director Oscars in 1940-41, The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley. The Grapes of Wrath has been newly restored, and you'll find three other towering collaborations with Henry Fonda: Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), and My Darling Clementine (1946)--both the director's preview cut and the release version.

Yet the real richness of Ford at Fox isn't limited to the known masterpieces. Some of it has to do with the dozen-and-a-half titles that are far from household words--the movies that put us in touch with the self-described "picture man" who did a "job of work" for the studio where he was under contract for much of the three decades beginning with Just Pals in 1920. Some of these are great films awaiting proper recognition. But even the least among them give off the ozone snap of discovery, affording simultaneous insights into the evolution of an artist, a medium, and a distinctive studio.

In this regard, the new feature-length documentary Becoming John Ford is an invaluable element of the set. Premier Ford biographer Joseph McBride, screenwriter Lem Dobbs, Peter Fonda, and others astutely testify about not only the life, artistry, and cantankerous personality of the director but also Fox studios and the mogul who served as a key Ford collaborator, Darryl F. Zanuck. Ford famously despised producers, but he respected Zanuck's movie sense and was content to leave the cutting of their films to him. (To the nighttime scene in The Grapes of Wrath when Tom Joad wanders outside the fruit-pickers' barracks and finds the strikers' encampment, Zanuck added the sound of crickets--a touch that made the superbly composed and lighted moment more "Fordian" than ever.)

Fox was the studio most identified with Americana, even before Zanuck--the favorite son of Wahoo, Nebraska--took charge. And so the legacy of Ford at Fox includes the three pictures he made with the beloved actor, comedian, and national political scold Will Rogers. Doctor Bull (1933) is a scrappy adaptation of a James Gould Cozzens novel, notable chiefly for its wintry New England atmosphere (Ford was a native Down Easter), but Judge Priest (1934) and Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) are luminous fables from the rural South. Judge Priest is especially remarkable for its subversive playing-off of Rogers' wily-rascal persona against the sly Stepin Fetchit in profoundly egalitarian comic scenes; the movie has been neglected because of Fetchit's infamous political incorrectness, but it has, and deserves, a place of honor here.

Also very fine is the 1936 The Prisoner of Shark Island, about the martyrdom of Dr. Samuel Mudd (Warner Baxter), who unwittingly set the leg John Wilkes Booth broke following his assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The moment of Lincoln's death, the president virtually passing into history before our eyes, is a mystical triumph by Ford and cinematographer Bert Glennon. Critic Joe McBride claims Pilgrimage (1933) as one of Ford's early masterpieces and likens the dark-hearted Hannah Jessop, played by stage actress Henrietta Crosman, to the similarly driven Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (not a Fox picture and not included in this set). The setting is again the rural South, and to break up her son's romance with a local girl, Hannah forces him to march off to war in France--where he is killed. The rest of the film becomes, spiritually and then literally, a redemptive journey for Hannah. This stark character study lacks marquee names but has Ford's heart and some of his most powerfully visualized sequences.

Pilgrimage, like the late silents Four Sons and Hangman's House (both 1928), displays evidence of how influenced Ford was in that period by German director F.W. Murnau, who had come to Fox in 1927 to make Sunrise; Four Sons, a mostly German-set story, was even shot on sets left over from the Murnau picture. The essential Ford style was based on dynamism defined within a fixed frame, but watching the director experiment here with elaborate camera movement is fascinating. Similarly, the gangster movies Up the River and Born Reckless (both 1930) and the WWI naval adventure Seas Beneath (1931) take their interest not from their slapdash scenarios but from Ford's crash course in accommodating the presence of sound. Seas Beneath is especially striking among early talkies for being filmed almost entirely in the open air, on the water and on picturesque Catalina Island, with astonishing long-take, real-time coverage of submarines surfacing and submerging, boats sinking, and a naval artillery duel nerve-wracking in its relentless slowness.

For much of his tenure at Fox, Ford had little to say about what films he'd be assigned, or who'd be cast in them. His response was to fill the backgrounds of his movies with his personal stock company of memorably ugly mugs (supremely, Jack Pennick), and to improvise passages of visual poetry or comedy (a baseball game amid the WWI section of Born Reckless!) to keep from getting bored. Apart from some anthology-worthy battlefield sequences, the 1934 The World Moves On is so diffuse and devoid of interest in its rambling family saga, we suspect it might have been the film that inspired one of the great Ford legends: how, advised by the front office that his current production was falling behind, he tore a handful of pages out of the script and said, "Now we're back on schedule."

Mostly, though, the picture man triumphed in spite of himself. Saddling John Ford with a Shirley Temple movie would seem to border on insult, but the director turned the Kipling-based Wee Willie Winkie (1937) into something enchanting instead of cloying. Also partly set on the Indian frontier, Four Men and a Prayer (1938)--a preposterous Boy's Own Adventure tale that hops from India to England to Latin America to Egypt as the titular quartet of British brothers try to clear their late father's name--was just about Ford's last obligatory assignment before embarking on the amazing 1939–41 streak of The Grapes of Wrath et al.; he disliked the story (and the British), but he turned an Indian saloon scene into a classic "Oirish" brawl, and invested a night of civil war in a Latin American town with a memorably surreal air of shock and terror.

How might Ford at Fox have evolved if WWII hadn't intervened? The director spent the war years shooting documentaries (several are included on the Becoming John Ford disc). Upon mustering out, his ambitions focused on developing personal productions for Argosy Pictures, the company he had formed with Merian C. (King Kong) Cooper before the war. Apart from My Darling Clementine, Ford directed only two more pictures for Fox, When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950) and an inferior remake of the silent Raoul Walsh classic What Price Glory (1952)--both semi-musicals featuring Fox's new star Dan Dailey. So, anticlimactically, Ford at Fox: The Collection ends there. But let's not dwell on that; this big box is very full. "There is no fence round time," the narrator says in How Green Was My Valley, "you can go back and have of it what you will." The films of John Ford are forever. --Richard T. Jameson

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The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vols. 1-3

Actors: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Jobyna Ralston, Adolphe Menjou, Verree Teasdale
ASIN : B000B5XORA
Sales Rank : 24541
Director : Harold Lloyd, Alfred J. Goulding, Clyde Bruckman, Fred C. Newmeyer, Hal Roach
Studio : New Line Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Box set, Black & White, DVD-Video, Original recording remastered, Restored, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780780652880
ISBN : 0780652886
UPC : 794043844522
Release Date : December 15, 2005
Publisher : New Line Home Video
Manufacturer : New Line Home Video
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : New Line Home Video

Description

Having appeared in more than 200 films and widely considered to be one of cinema's most respected comic geniuses, Harold Lloyd was one of Hollywood's first true movie stars. Now, entertainment enthusiasts of all ages can enjoy the work of the man who inspired generations of acting greats with The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Biographies
Comparison Scenes
Featurette
Interviews
Introduction
Other:*All feature films and shorts are full frame versions. **All content will have Spanish subtitles. Only the pictures with sound will have English subtitles and closed captions
Photo gallery:REMASTERED! RESTORED! RESCORED!

Amazon.com

The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection boxed set is the definitive account of one of the silent cinema's greatest comedians--and for a time, its most popular star. The seven discs included in this three-volume set have virtually all of Lloyd's 1920s features, most of his talking pictures, and a healthy collection of shorts. Because Lloyd--a canny businessman--retained control over much of his output, the films have remained under his (and his estate's) control through the decades, and the quality of the key titles is generally excellent.

Vol. 1 leads off with the most famous of Lloyd's pictures, the 1923 "thrill" comedy Safety Last. The bespectacled Mr. Lloyd found his spot in comedy by playing the persona seen here: an optimistic go-getter, energetic but not particularly remarkable, who perseveres as he moves up the ladder. In Safety Last, he really moves up: Harold is a department-store clerk who concocts a publicity scheme for his store, which results in a climactic, hair-raising ascent up the outside of the building (at one point hanging from the hands of a huge clock). There is at least one other masterpiece on Vol. 1, the wonderful Girl Shy (1924), in which Harold is a small-time tailor's apprentice who can't speak to women but nevertheless has penned a how-to book entitled "The Secret of Making Love." There's also the 1923 Why Worry?, which suffers just a bit with its odd milieu (tropical island beset by revolutionaries) but has some hilariously weird routines built around compact Harold and the giant John Aasen (8 feet, 9 inches). A trio of shorter films are included, plus two Paramount sound features, the oddball Cat's Paw and Leo McCarey's entertaining The Milky Way.

Vol. 2 has the brilliant The Freshman (1925), with Lloyd as a college plebe whose ridiculous ideas about making himself ingratiating to others (including hilariously inapt jig during a handshake) makes him the laughingstock of the campus. The movie concludes with a justifiably famous football sequence. The Kid Brother (1927) is Harold as the weak link in the tough Hickory family, while Dr. Jack (1922) casts him as a country doctor whose ordinary ways prove sharper than they seem (his co-star, as in some other films here, is future wife Mildred Davis). In Grandma's Boy (1922) Lloyd plays a small-town fellow who lives with his frisky grandmother; convinced of his own cowardice, he yearns to compete for the hand of a pretty girl. His courtly call to the girl's home is the occasion for uproarious battle with a ridiculous "formal" suit, mothballs, and a litter of kittens attracted by the goose grease on his shoes. The gem of the shorts here is High and Dizzy (1920), a warm-up for Safety Last, which has a great sequence with Lloyd tipsily navigating a ledge on a high building. Feet First (1930), Lloyd's second talking picture, has Harold as an upwardly-striving shoe salesman trying to finesse his way up the ladder. Some good shipboard sequences in the middle of this one, but the main drawing card is a throwback: Lloyd re-visiting the Safety Last hanging-from-a-building sequence, but this time working every variation known to slapstick.

Vol. 3 has Speedy, his last silent picture, which packs as many great gags per minute as any Lloyd film, and also has one of his sweetest love stories. But the film is also notable for its extensive location shooting in New York City. The sequences shot at Coney Island, with some wonderfully hair-raising (and understandably obsolete) rides, are gorgeous and historically valuable. Hot Water (1924) also goes into the time capsule of great Lloyd features, even if it feels like a handful of shorter films shoehorned together. This one gets its charm from basic domestic situations. Like Hot Water, For Heaven's Sake (1926) is an hour long; this funny one casts Lloyd as a rich twit who takes up with a girl whose father runs a homeless mission.

There's one talking picture, the somewhat routine Movie Crazy (1932), but the silent shorts, of which there are many here, are better. Check out Haunted Spooks from 1920, which has its share of good jokes but which is also fascinating for its place in Lloyd's career. He suffered an off-set accident midway through shooting, costing him the thumb and forefinger of his right hand; after a hiatus, he completed shooting with a prosthetic glove (which he used in films thereafter). A heartfelt 15-minute documentary on Lloyd's palatial L.A. estate, Greenacres, uses copious home-movie footage to show the marvelous place and give a hint of Lloyd's homey, likable personality (it's narrated by granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd). A bonus disc contains home movies, celebrity tributes, Lloyd's collection of 3-D photographs, and his honorary Oscar acceptance speech from 1953. --Robert Horton

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Along Came Jones

Actors: Gary Cooper, Loretta Young, William Demarest, Dan Duryea, Frank Sully
ASIN : B00005LOL6
Sales Rank : 29124
Director : Stuart Heisler
Studio : MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code : 1
Format : Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780792850793
ISBN : 0792850793
UPC : 027616865779
Release Date : December 04, 2001
Publisher : MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer : MGM (Video & DVD)
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : MGM (Video & DVD)
Running Time : 90

Description

Screen legends Gary Cooper (High Noon) and Loretta Young (Lady From Cheyenne) saddle up for an action-packed comedy-western that's "loaded with laughs" (Variety). With inspired performances and lively direction, Along Came Jones hits the bull's-eye for classic western entertainment. Melody Jones (Cooper) is a mild-mannered cowpoke who barely knows the difference between a six-shooter and a carbine rifle, but when he rides into Paynesville, he immediately commands the respect - and fear - of the entire town. The locals believe he's the notorious Monte Jarrad (Dan Duryea), a ruthless outlaw who's been terrorizing the frontier with his daring robberies and lightning-fast draw. At first, Jones enjoys his newfound fame, but that quickly ends when he finds himself the target of a bloodthirsty posse, a determined private investigator, Jarrad's double-crossed partners and the most dangerous enemy of all: Jarrad himself!

Amazon.com Review

Along Came Jones is one of the most oddball artifacts from Hollywood's golden age. Gary Cooper (who doubled as producer) plays Melody Jones, a "common ordinary useless bronc-stomper" who moseys into the town of Payneville--or is it Painful?--just after legendary bad ass Monte Jarrad has held up the stagecoach. The townsfolk eyeball the "MJ" on Melody's stirrup, leap to hysterically wrong conclusions, and start giving him a wide berth--in some cases, the better to lie in ambush for "Jarrad" while planning how to spend the bounty money. Now, as it happens--and as his crusty sidekick George (the insuperably irreverent William Demarest) keeps reminding him--Melody can barely get his gun out of the holster without blowing his own kneecap off. All that stands between him and extinction is the quick-thinking intervention of a local maiden, one Cherry de Longpre (Loretta Young). Melody, of course, promptly becomes hogtied with love, not suspecting Cherry's the childhood sweetheart of the real Monte Jarrad (Dan Duryea)....

Stylistically the film is a wild mix, with director Stuart Heisler paying close attention to down-the-gun-barrel point of view in several scenes, yet also sitting still for floaty back-projection photography so egregious that it may bring on motion sickness. Still, Nunnally Johnson's script is droll; Cooper clearly relished the chance to poke fun at his strong-silent stereotype; and he and Preston Sturges stalwart Demarest establish a sardonic comic rapport. --Richard T. Jameson

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Support Your Local Gunfighter

Actors: James Garner, Suzanne Pleshette, Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, Joan Blondell
ASIN : B000056H2E
Sales Rank : 39181
Director : Burt Kennedy
Studio : MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code : 1
Format : Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780792849261
ISBN : 0792849264
UPC : 027616859051
Release Date : December 20, 2001
Publisher : MGM (Video & DVD)
Manufacturer : MGM (Video & DVD)
Availability : Usually ships in 24 hours
Label : MGM (Video & DVD)
Running Time : 91

Description

The wild west just got wilder and a whole lot wackier! James Garner is back in the saddle again in Support Your Local Gunfighter, a powder keg of laughs in which the most dangerous gunslinger in the west isn't the fastest but the funniest! Gigolo con man Latigo Smith (Garner) needs to get something off his chestthe tattooed name of his most recent ex-fiancÃ(c)e. But while he's waiting for the local doctor to sober up and perform the operation, Smith overhears that local mining baron Taylor Barton (Harry Morgan) is looking to shut down his mining competition by hiring the notorious gunman, Swifty Morgan. Seizing the opportunity for an easy con, Smith passes off a reprobate cowhand (Jack Elam) as the dreaded Swifty and pockets the cash. Bankroll in hand, he plans to head for the hills until he falls for Barton's pistol-packin' daughter, Patience (Suzanne Pleshette). But when the real Swifty shows up looking for blood, Smith comes up with an outrageous scheme to save his hide, stop the mining feud and win over Patience and it might just work if it doesn't blow up the entire town!

Amazon.com

James Garner returns for this pseudosequel to Support Your Local Sheriff, this time as a gigolo con man mistaken for a legendary killer. Escaping matrimonial entanglements, he lands in the town of Purgatory in the midst of a raging war between gold miners racing for the mother lode. In a play right out of Maverick, he quickly casts drifter Jack Elam into the gunfighter role and names himself the man's agent, selling his services to the highest bidder and pocketing a sizable commission. Garner double-talks his way through one deal after another with a wink and a smile while Elam growls and swaggers and rolls his eyes, playacting the role of the cold-blooded gunslinger like a wild-eyed clown. Suzanne Pleshette shoots up the town as Garner's romantic interest, a tomboy in buckskin with an itchy trigger finger and lousy aim, and Chuck Conners walks tall as the real bald-as-a-billiard-ball killer. Apart from the tongue-in-cheek tone and returning cast members (Elam, Harry Morgan, Henry Jones, and Gene Evans are among the familiar faces joining Garner), the film has little in common with Sheriff and never quite recaptures the clever twists and low-key hilarity, but this is a cast who knows how to deliver a gag, and Kennedy's laid-back direction keeps an even, affectionately spoofing tone throughout. --Sean Axmaker

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Rio Bravo

Actors: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson, Walter Brennan
ASIN : B000059HB7
Sales Rank : 9480
Director : Howard Hawks
Studio : Warner Home Video
Region Code : 1
Format : Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Binding : DVD
EAN : 9780790738772
ISBN : 0790738775
UPC : 085391105022
Release Date : December 08, 2001
Publisher : Warner Home Video
Manufacturer : Warner Home Video
Label : Warner Home Video
Running Time : 141

Amazon.com essential video

When it comes down to naming the best Western of all time, the list usually narrows to three completely different pictures: John Ford's The Searchers, Howard Hawks's Red River, and Hawks's Rio Bravo. About the only thing they all have in common is that they all star John Wayne. But while The Searchers is an epic quest for revenge and Red River is a sweeping cattle-drive drama ("Take 'em to Missouri! Yeeee-hah!"), Rio Bravo is on a much more modest scale. Basically, it comes down to Sheriff John T. Chance (Wayne), his sobering-up alcoholic friend Dude (Dean Martin), the hotshot new kid Colorado (Ricky Nelson), and deputy-sidekick Stumpy (Walter Brennan), sittin' around in the town jail, drinkin' black cofee, shootin' the breeze, and occasionally, singin' a song. Hawks--who, like his pal Ernest Hemingway, lived by the code of "grace under pressure"--said he made Rio Bravo as a rebuke to High Noon, in which sheriff Gary Cooper begged for townspeople to help him. So, Hawks made Wayne's Sheriff Chance a consummate professional--he may be getting old and fat, but he knows how to do his job, and he doesn't want amateurs getting mixed up in his business; they could get hurt. This most entertaining of movies also achieved some notoriety in the '90s when Quentin Tarantino (director of Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, and Jackie Brown) revealed that he uses it as a litmus test for prospective girlfriends. Oh, and if the configuration of characters sounds familiar, it should: Hawks remade Rio Bravo two more times--as El Dorado in 1967, with Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and James Caan; and as Rio Lobo in 1970, with Wayne, Jack Elam, and Christopher Mitchum. --Jim Emerson

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