News

Mark Goddard, known for playing Major Don West on the CBS series “Lost in Space,” died in Hingham, Mass. on Oct. 10 of pulmonary fibrosis. He was 87.

In statement posted to Facebook, Goddard’s wife, Evelyn Pezzulich, confirmed that the actor was hospitalized with pneumonia and then transferred to a rehabilitation center, where the doctors discovered he was in the final stages of pulmonary fibrosis.

Goddard’s “Lost in Space” costar Bill Mumy also confirmed his death in a Facebook statement: “R.I.P. to Mark Goddard. A truly beloved friend and brother to me for 59 years. I knew this was coming for the past few months. Shortly after a great phone chat he and I had on his 87th birthday in late July, I became aware that I would most likely never see or speak with him again. The last words we exchanged were ‘I love you.'”

“Lost in Space,...

Mark Goddard, who played Major Don West, the hot-tempered pilot of the Jupiter 2, on the 1960s CBS adventure series Lost in Space, has died. He was 87.

Goddard died Tuesday in Hingham, Massachusetts, his wife Evelyn Pezzulich told The Hollywood Reporter.

Goddard had worked as a regular on the Four Star Television series Johnny Ringo and The Detectives when he was approached by his agent about coming aboard the new Lost on Space, created and produced by Irwin Allen.

The sci-fi show revolved around the adventures of the Robinson family: Professor John Robinson (Guy Williams), his biochemist wife, Maureen (June Lockhart) and their children Judy, Penny and Will (Marta Kristen, Angela Cartwright and Billy Mumy).

Major West also was on board, as was a stowaway, Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris), and a robot (designed by Forbidden Planet‘s Robert Kinoshita, played by Bob May and voiced by Dick Tufeld). Their space colonization mission,...

“Star Wars” fans were greeted with a special surprise when they tuned in to the first episodes of “Obi-Wan Kenobi” last week on Disney+. This was not necessarily the “man on the run” story that had been teased in the marketing, and instead had a second main character that was unveiled alongside Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan: Young Leia.

Indeed, the daughter of Anakin Skywalker and Padme is 10 years old in the timeline of “Obi-Wan” and is in need of rescuing by the Jedi now going by “Ben” (McGregor). Writer Joby Harold told TheWrap that he delighted in keeping this a surprise, but confessed to feeling some anxiety that this present was about to be unwrapped, not knowing how fans might react.

“Credit to the way the show had been marketed and teased, which was something that I tried to build in, that it could exist as seemingly this kind of...

Bo Hopkins, who appeared in such memorable films as The Wild Bunch (1969), The Getaway (1972), American Graffiti (1973), The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973), Posse (1975), and Midnight Express (1978), has died at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys. He was 80 and had a heart attack.

Born William Hopkins in 1942 in Greenville, South Carolina, Hopkins appeared in more than 100 film and television roles in a career that spanned more than five decades.

He picked up the nickname “Bo” thanks to a character of the same name he played in Bus Stop, his first off-Broadway play.

Hopkins television appearances included The Phyllis Diller Show, The Virginian, Gunsmoke, The Wild Wild West and The Andy Griffith Show. His first shot at a regularly scheduled TV series came in 1973 in medical drama Doc Elliott, which lasted one season.

He also appeared in a number of made-for-television movies of the mid-1970s, including Judgment: The Court Martial of...

Exclusive: A feature documentary about the 1Mdb scandal and one of the fund’s alleged masterminds, international fugitive Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, has started production this week in London.

Man on the Run will chart how Low Taek Jho was born to a rich family from Penang Island, Malaysia, and educated at the elite Harrow School in London and the Wharton School of Business in the U.S. Before he was wanted for his role in the 1Mdb scandal, the 40-year-old businessman and financier led a glamorous life that included paying to party with celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and dating supermodel Miranda Kerr. He was involved in the financing of Martin Scorsese hit The Wolf of Wall Street and has been dubbed “the Asian Great Gatsby.”

But he has since faced charges of massive money laundering and a litany of other offences related to the multibillion-dollar...

The writer/director of The Love Witch talks about her favorite classic women’s pictures.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Love Witch (2016)

Baby Face (1933)

Stromboli (1950)

Europa ’51 (1951)

Fear (1951)

Duel In The Sun (1946)

The Scarlet Empress (1934)

Blonde Venus (1932)

Nora Prentiss (1947)

Woman On The Run (1950)

Wait Until Dark (1967)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Imitation of Life (1969)

Little Women (2019)

Emma (2020)

My Cousin Rachel (2017)

Sex and the City (2008)

Mamma Mia! (2008)

Mildred Pierce (1945)

The Reckless Moment (1949)

Sudden Fear (1952)

Torch Song (1953)

Captain Marvel (2019)

Other Notable Items

The Captain Trips virus in Stephen King’s novel The Stand (1978)

Marlene Dietrich

Mae West

Jennifer Jones

Joan Crawford

Joan Bennett

Gene Tierney

Barbara Stanwyck

The Hays Code

Cary Grant

Marilyn Monroe

Ingrid Bergman

Roberto Rossellini

The Academy Awards

Bette Davis

Jennifer Jones

Gregory Peck

Joseph Cotten

Travis Banton

Josef von Sternberg

Catherine the Great

The Criterion Collection

Kent Smith

Dan Duryea

Douglas Sirk

Jane Austen

Mildred Pierce TV miniseries...

Noir Nirvana isn’t found amid literary swells and hoity-toity art connoisseurs — but in the trenches of humble Eagle-Lion Films, where Richard Fleischer, Lloyd Bridges and a hotter-than-hot Barbara Payton steamed up the streets of Los Angeles circa 1949. The Film Noir Foundation experts give us an expertly curated slice of hardboiled crime — Eddie Muller dubs it ‘To Live and Die in L.A.,’ but in the year that the Reds took over mainland China, and the Ussr exploded its first Atom bomb.

Trapped

Blu-ray + DVD

Flicker Alley

1949 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 78 min. / Street Date December 17, 2019 / 39.98

Starring: Lloyd Bridges, Barbara Payton, John Hoyt, James Todd, Russ Conway, Robert Karnes, Stephen Chase, Tommy Noonan, Douglas Spencer.

Cinematography: Guy Roe

Film Editor: Alfred DeGaetano

Original Music: Sol Kaplan

Written by Earl Felton, George Zuckerman

Produced by Bryan Foy

Directed by Richard Fleischer

The Film Noir Foundation has done it again — the non-profit has...

The 1930s – more films about women, more films about working life. And often the two overlapped. You watch a film made today, it’s brutally clear that the people who made it rarely have to be anywhere In the ‘30s, at the height of the studio system, the entire creative force behind a picture worked 9-5 on the studio lot, just like anyone else. They had a workplace. And while many made a great deal more money than the characters they were depicting, they knew what it was to hold a job. That mindset, that constant awareness of money and office work and routine, bleeds into the pictures of the period.

Take a film like Rafter Romance, which played at TCM Classic Film Festival Friday morning. Ginger Rogers and Norman Foster star as two broke strangers living in the same apartment building (and they say people knew their neighbors back...

What are your three top noirs you'd love to see discussed this month? I mean besides the obvious choices like Gilda (a personal fav) and films we've discussed in the past few years already like Double Indemnity, Blood Simple, The Bigamist, and Woman in the Window.

Easy Access Fyi:

• Netflix has a paltry selection of Noir but they are offering Dressed to Kill, Don't Bother to Knock, Laura, and House on Telegraph Hill

• Amazon Prime is streaming The Killer is Loose, The Man in the Attic, The Hitchhiker, Shoot to Kill, Scarlett Street, Dark Passage, Strange Woman, Fear in the Night, The Stranger, Port of New York, Strange Illusion, Whistle Stop and Woman on the Run

• The new FilmStruck service has several foreign titles mostly from Japan and France...

There are two major sides to the film noir coin, as I see it – the psychological and the practical. Now, the practical noir is fairly straightforward; maybe a detective has to solve a crime, or someone gets themselves in over their head with some scheme gone wrong. There’s a problem to be solved, and the protagonist either overcomes or becomes consumed by it. Double Indemnity, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Night and the City, The Killing, and The Maltese Falcon fit into this section rather well. The psychological noir uses genre tropes to investigate someone’s soul, usually stemming from their nearness to sin and death. Scarlet Street, Laura, Female on the Beach, The Chase, Sunset Boulevard, and Kiss Me Deadly fit the bill. Obviously films in each use elements of the other to shade the characters or move the story along, but the texture and flavor is notably distinct,...

By Tim Greaves

(The following reviews pertain to the UK Region 2 releases)

When I'm in the right mood I adore bit of film noir. I admire the diversity of its storytelling, I love every facet, from the hardboiled private eyes, duplicitous dames and characters that seldom turn out to be what they first appear, to the alleyways bathed in inky shadows, ramshackle apartments and half-lit street corners they inhabit. How can you not get drawn in by the sheer delight of Edward G Robinson playing a second rate psychic trying to convince the authorities he can see the future in The Night Has a Thousand Eyes? Or amnesiac John Hodiak on a mission to discover his own identity, in the process getting embroiled in a 3-year-old murder case and the search for a missing $2 million in Somewhere in the Night? Yes, indeed, there's nothing quite like a hearty serving of...

A mad extortionist is blowing up rollercoaster rides. Put-upon George Segal must stop him because we all know that the time, the tide and roller coasters wait for no man. Producer Jennings Lang's by-the-numbers suspense thriller is light on suspense and thrills, but the cast is good and the screenplay at least partly intelligent. And hey -- it's got a teenage Helen Hunt! Rollercoaster Blu-ray Shout! Factory 1977 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 119 min. / Street Date June 21, 2016 / 19.99 Starring George Segal, Timothy Bottoms, Henry Fonda, Helen Hunt, Harry Guardino, Susan Strasberg, Craig Wasson, Robert Quarry, Quinn Redeker, Dick Wesson, Gary Franklin, Steve Guttenberg. Cinematography David M. Walsh Original Music Lalo Schifrin Written by Richard Levinson, William Link, Tommy Cook Produced by Jennings Lang Directed by James Goldstone

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Jaws inspired plenty of rip-off movies about sharks, bears, killer whales and monster octopi threatening beaches. Since it wasn't safe to go back to the water,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit the interwebs. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

45 Years (Andrew Haigh)

Andrew Haigh’s third feature as a director, 45 Years, is an excellent companion piece to its 2011 predecessor, Weekend. The latter examined the inception of a potential relationship between two men over the course of a weekend, whereas its successor considers the opposite extreme. Again sticking to a tight timeframe, the film chronicles the six days leading up to a couple’s 45th wedding anniversary.

In this episode of Off The Shelf, Ryan and Brian take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for Tuesday, June 14th, 2016.

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Follow-Up Brian’s tweet about The Thing News Twilight Time – September/October Titles Arrow Video – September titles The Deadly Trackers Blue Sunshine Kino Lorber – Moving Violations, The Park Is Mine The Transformers: The Movie Scream Factory Sale Raising Cain The Thing Invasion Of The Body Snatchers Links to Amazon Airport: The Complete Collection Black Dog La Chienne Edvard Munch (1974) (Masters of Cinema) Gold Here Comes Mr. Jordan (The Criterion Collection) Jaws 2 Jaws 3 Jaws: The Revenge Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Vol. 2 Star Trek XI Star Trek Into Darkness Too Late for Tears Woman on the Run X-Files: The Event Series The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) on Blu-ray Inserts (1975) on Blu-ray The Member of The Wedding (1952) on Blu-ray The Panic in Needle Park...

What in the world -- an A + top-rank film noir gem hiding under the radar, and rescued (most literally) by the Film Noir Foundation. Ann Sheridan and Dennis O'Keefe trade dialogue as good as any in a film from 1950 -- it's a thriller with a cynical worldview yet a sentimental personal outlook. Woman on the Run Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley / FIlm Noir Foundation 1950 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 79 min. / Street Date May 17, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Ann Sheridan, Dennis O'Keefe, Robert Keith, John Qualen, Frank Jenks, Ross Elliott, Jane Liddell, Joan Fulton, J. Farrell MacDonald, Steven Geray, Victor Sen Yung, Reiko Sato. Cinematography Hal Mohr Art Direction Boris Leven Film Editor Otto Ludwig Original Music Arthur Lange, Emil Newman Written by Alan Campbell, Norman Foster, Sylvia Tate Produced by Howard Welsch, Ann Sheridan Directed by Norman Foster

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Amazing! Just when one thinks one won't see another top-rank film noir, the...

Noir if I can help it! Sultry Lizabeth Scott out-'fatals' every femme we know in this wickedly ruthless tale of unadulterated female venality. Rough creep Dan Duryea meets his match, as do other unfortunate males that get between Liz and a plump bag of blackmail loot. The Film Noir Foundation's restoration is a valiant rescue job, for a worthy 'annihilating melodrama.' Too Late for Tears Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley / FIlm Noir Foundation 1949 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 102 min. / Street Date May 17, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Dan Duryea, Arthur Kennedy, Kristine Miller, Barry Kelley Cinematography William Mellor Art Direction James Sullivan Film Editor Harry Keller Original Music Dale Butts Written by Roy Huggins from his story Produced by Hunt Stromberg Directed by Byron Haskin

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Who's doing good work for film preservation? The Film Noir Foundation has racked up some impressive rescues and restorations in the last fifteen years or so,...

As a supplement to our Recommended Discs weekly feature, Peter Labuza regularly highlights notable recent home-video releases with expanded reviews. See this week’s selections below.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Two new restorations from the UCLA Film and Television Archive, in conjunction with the Film Noir Foundation, certainly speak to that ethos. First up, the piercing eyes of Lisabeth Scott explain everything one might need to know about this woman who wants it all. In Byron Haskin‘s Too Late for Tears, writer Roy Huggins stages a flipped gender perspective of Double Indemnity. Driving along with her dull husband (Arthur Kennedy at his most subdued), Scott’s Jane Palmer has a bag of $60,000 literally drop in her lap. Goody two-shoes husband wants to hand it to the authorities, but she sees this as the opportunity to finally lean in. Dp William C. Mellor lights Scott’s...

In this episode of Off The Shelf, Ryan and Brian take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for Tuesday, May 17th 2016.

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Follow-Up A History of Disney Television Animation: volume I Amazon purchases News Criterion August titles Kino Lorber: I The Jury, Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend, The Neptune Factor, Finders Keepers Code Red: Screams of a Winter Night, The Working Girls Scorpion Releasing: Don’t Go In The House, also – Go Tell the Spartans – through Screen Archives Links to Amazon Candy Cop Rock: The Complete Series Dark Passage FitzPatrick Traveltalks: Volume 1 For Men Only / School for Sex Hired To Kill I Saw What You Did Killer Force The Last Command (Masters of Cinema) The Naked Island Too Late for Tears (Flicker Alley) Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? The Witch...

An exercise in dizzy disorientation, this Cornell Woolrich crazy-house noir pulls the rug out from under us at least three times. You want delirium, you got it -- the secret words for today are "Obsessive" and "Perverse." Innocent Robert Cummings is no match for sicko psychos Peter Lorre and Steve Cochran. The Chase Blu-ray Kino Classics 1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 86 min. / Street Date May 24, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Robert Cummings, Michèle Morgan, Steve Cochran, Peter Lorre, Lloyd Corrigan, Jack Holt, Don Wilson, Alexis Minotis, Nina Koschetz, Yolanda Lacca, James Westerfield, Shirley O'Hara. Cinematography Frank F. Planer Film Editor Edward Mann Original Music Michel Michelet Written by Philip Yordan from the book The Black Path of Fear by Cornell Woolrich Produced by Seymour Nebenzal Directed by Arthur D. Ripley

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

As Guy Maddin says on his (recommended) commentary, the public domain copies of this show were...

In this special episode of Off The Shelf, Ryan and Brian take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for Tuesday, March 8th 2016.

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Follow-Up Chronicles Episode 1 Brian’s Zatoichi set News Disney: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Blu-ray Announced Criterion UK Kino Lorber: Taking of Pelham 123, Deadline USA, Buster Keaton Short Films Warner Archive: Hitchcock’s Suspicion (Warner Archive) Masters of Cinema: The Last Command (Masters of Cinema) Arrow Video: June titles: Return of the Killer Tomatoes, Suture, Ray Harryhausen, Nikkatsu Diamond Guys Volume 2 -also Too late For Tears and Woman on the Run. Olive Films: May titles Goodbye Gemini, Puppet on a Chain on Screen Archives (Scorpion Releasing) Kingdom of the Spiders (Code Red) Links to Amazon Batteries Not Included The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas Coming Home The Forbidden Room Howard the Duck Hogan’s Heroes: The Complete...

The fine folks at Flicker Alley have just announced two new Blu-rays coming in April 2016:

Flicker Alley, the Film Noir Foundation, and UCLA Film & Television Archive are proud to present two rediscovered gems of film noir, Too Late for Tears and Woman on the Run, both brilliantly restored in brand-new Blu-ray/DVD dual-format editions.

Here is a preview of Noir City, included in the supplements.

Here is the press release they’ve sent out:

Flicker Alley, the Film Noir Foundation, and UCLA Film & Television Archive are proud to present two rediscovered gems of film noir, Too Late for Tears and Woman on the Run, both brilliantly restored in brand-new Blu-ray/DVD dual-format editions.

Too Late For Tears

Finally! One of the great missing films of the classic noir era-resurrected! Rescued and preserved after a five-year crusade by the Film Noir Foundation, this 1949 classic is at long last available in a clean digital version,...

The Museum of Modern Art’s festival of film preservation, To Save and Project, "feels like a yearly miracle," writes R. Emmet Sweeney in an overview of this year's edition for Film Comment. Among the highlights: Otto Rippert's Homunculus, Norman Foster's Woman on the Run, Ewald André Dupont's Verieté, Michel Brault's Les Ordres, Helma Sanders-Brahm's Germany, Pale Mother, Mário Peixoto's Limite, William K. Howard's The Trial of Vivienne Ware, Chantal Akerman's I, You, He, She, Ebrahim Golestan's The Brick and the Mirror, Orson Welles's The Deep and Ahmed El Maanouni's Oh the Days!. » - David Hudson...

The Museum of Modern Art’s festival of film preservation, To Save and Project, "feels like a yearly miracle," writes R. Emmet Sweeney in an overview of this year's edition for Film Comment. Among the highlights: Otto Rippert's Homunculus, Norman Foster's Woman on the Run, Ewald André Dupont's Verieté, Michel Brault's Les Ordres, Helma Sanders-Brahm's Germany, Pale Mother, Mário Peixoto's Limite, William K. Howard's The Trial of Vivienne Ware, Chantal Akerman's I, You, He, She, Ebrahim Golestan's The Brick and the Mirror, Orson Welles's The Deep and Ahmed El Maanouni's Oh the Days!. » - David Hudson...

Noir City got well underway Friday night at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz after too long of a wait since last year's inaugural festival. The three-day fest features a dizzying collection of film noir lost treasures, almost all of which are unavailable anywhere else. Friday's selections included Woman on the Run and Street of Chance.

Eddie Muller, president of the Film Noir Foundation (my interview), was on hand once again to kick off the festival, introduce each movie and praise both the Drafthouse and the attendees.

"I'm a huge supporter of the Alamo Drafthouse and what they do to keep the moviegoing experience alive," said Muller. "Movies are essential to what happens in the culture and our efforts to preserve these films are helped enormously by those of you who continue to come to the movies."

read more...

This weekend, the Austin Film Society is bringing She's Lost Control back to town. Caitlin caught the film on opening night at SXSW 2014. She reported: "An intense and dark slice of life, the film focuses on a woman who works as a sex surrogate while she finishes a Master's degree in psychology in New York City. Often hard-hitting and true but sometimes a little frustrating, I can't fully call this a "must-see" but I know this movie will definitely stick with me..." It plays tonight and again on Sunday afternoon at the Marchesa.

On Sunday evening, Afs will be presenting the work of two master animators. Don Hertzfeldt's award-winning short World Of Tomorrow is being paired with Cheatin', the most recent feature film from Bill Plympton. Richard Linklater's schedule last week didn't allow him to be in attendance for the Sid & Nancy screening, so another screening has been...

After what seemed like an eternity of continuously refreshing calendars and Facebook pages for information, Noir City finally returns to Austin this week. Hosted by the Film Noir Foundation, the ten-film lineup full of shadow-soaked men and women who find themselves dallying in the darkness begins Friday, May 8 at 7:35 pm with a screening of the recently-restored Woman on the Run (1950).

Like last year, Fnf Founder and President Eddie Muller will be on hand to introduce each of the selected films, highlighting little-known production trivia and discussing each movie's long journey toward restoration.

Unlike last year's Noir City, which featured an eclectic assortment of titles, this year's festival focuses on the adapted works of screenwriter and novelist Cornell Woolrich, one of the genre's most prominent figures.

Recently, I had the chance to ask film noir expert Muller some questions about this year's festival, which included the focus on Woolrich, the...

What fun it is to attend the Noir City Festival at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood every spring. It’s hard to believe that it’s been seventeen years since Eddie Muller first programmed this exhilarating event with the American Cinematheque. He and his partner-in-noir Alan K. Rode host the screenings that bring a large and diverse audience to the Egyptian for classics, discoveries, and bread-and-butter pictures that otherwise wouldn’t get a chance to be projected in 35mm on the big screen. Last Friday’s opening bill paid tribute to Ann Sheridan with a double-bill: Woman on the Run (1950), recently restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Film Noir Foundation with funding...

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The American Cinematheque and the Film Noir Foundation present the 17th annual Noir City fest, running April 3-19 at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. Rarely seen gems, restorations, new 35mm prints, films unavailable on DVD and Oscar nominees abound in this journey of 12 nights and 26 films through the side streets and back alleys of film noir. This year, some true giants of the genre get a salute, including Humphrey Bogart in Delmer Daves' pitch-black 1947 "Dark Passage" opposite Lauren Bacall, Barbara Stanwyck in Roy Rowland's 1954 "Witness to Murder" (like Hitchcock's "Rear Window" through the eyes of a woman) and John Sturges' 1953 "Jeopardy" and French-American auteur Jacques Tourneur's "Circle of Danger" and "Berlin Express." Also check out the Film Noir Foundation's 35mm restoration of "Woman on the Run," which world-premiered earlier this year at San Francisco's Noir City. Directed by Norman...

I enjoyed myself tiptop, despite early feelings of disappointment with the lineup. Of the 25 films programmed, there were only two I hadn't seen before --  Ivy and The Guilty -- unlike last year's international lineup, much of which was new to me.  But, as usual, the combination of the perfect venue -- San Francisco's venerable 1922- vintage Castro Theatre -- with Eddie Muller's flair for the dramatic (not to mention comedic), the beyond-enthusiastic and attentive audiences, and a mezzanine where one can find tempting books and posters for purchase, as well as nightly pourings of free booze, enhances even the most familiar movie.  I saw Woman on the Run (the world premiere of the Film Noir Foundation 35mm restoration), Born to be Bad, The Set-Up, and Clash by Night with new eyes in screenings that it's hard to imagine could be bettered, erasing memories of battered old prints or viewings on tiny TV screens.

Woman on the Run

Written by Alan Campbell and Norman Foster

Directed by Norman Foster

U.S.A., 1950

It is a quaint evening as Frank Johnson (Ross Elliot) walks his dog in a San Francisco park. None too far away arrives a car with two occupants, one whose face seen and another the driver’s whose face is concealed from the viewer. The driver suddenly shoots and murders his companion and, upon noticing Frank’s presence, takes fire at the passerby before leaving the premise. Having taken refuge from the bullets, Frank security is short lived, as the police explain later on that the departed was none other but a key witness in a ongoing trial against a major local gangster. Frank is now an eyewitness to a murder and the new target of those who wish to see the infamous mobster walk away free. Perturbed by his predicament, the man flees the police,...

If you’ve hunted around for movie bargains, you’ve probably seen some of Mill Creek Entertainment’s 50-Movie Packs on DVD. Apart from other great releases by Mill Creek, these packs are phenomenal boons to cinephiles looking to collect older titles.

There are three new packs available, and I want to not only let you in on a discount code, but I have one of the packs available for you to win.

I know a lot of people may be quick to overlook these packs, and not every movie included stands out as a major value, but there are some great titles in each of them, and fans of the genres will be pleasantly surprised by what they get out of the deal. I have to admit that there is something about seeing a 50-movie pack, especially when it doesn’t cost a couple of hundred dollars, or more,...