Warner Archive continues its trend of finding the most wonderful and amazing discoveries, movies and TV shows you didn’t know you wanted but once you hear about them sound terrific. Before the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman TV show took off, they tried a 1974 pilot starring Cathy Lee Crosby. It’s more similar to the white-suit, superspy version of Diana Prince than the star-spangled warrior we’re more familiar with. As it’s described, “with a sleek, seventies espionage superaction refit… Ricardo Montalban […]

The Warner Archive continues its impressive release schedule by releasing Born to Be Bad, a 1950 Nicholas Ray film about a naughty girl wrecking homes and destroying lives. As the site describes it, Joan Fontaine plays Christabel Caine, the anti-heroine who has the face of an angel and the heart of a savage. King of Noir Robert Ryan plays the rough-hewn writer who is good enough to share her bed, but not her hand, while Zachary Scott plays the aviator […]

It’s such a cliche to say “they just don’t make them like that any more”, but with The Last of Sheila, they didn’t make them like that then, either. That’s what makes this mystery puzzle film such a gem. Now, the DVD is back in print from Warner Archive, and bless them for doing so. When I went looking for a copy last year, it was regularly going for $40-80, but now, it’s yours for under $20. I recommend the […]

I’ve been looking forward to the relaunched Forbidden Hollywood line — now coming from the Warner Archive — for months now, and the actual product does not disappoint. These are 1932 movies, so they’re scratchy, at times, both visually and on the soundtrack, but oh, what fun they are! And how wonderful to watch 80-year-old movies so easily! Forbidden Hollywood Volume 4 consists of four discs, one per movie, in a single case. Each film is just over an hour […]

The third Blake Edwards movie returned to DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive is Victor/Victoria. (I covered the other two, S.O.B. and Skin Deep, last month.) It’s also the best of the three, with its bizarre plot — a soprano who can’t get work pretends to be a female impersonator in 1930s Paris — allowing for commentary on the economic struggles of entertainers, the civil rights of homosexuals (tolerated in the theater, not so much elsewhere), and gender roles and […]

“Forbidden Hollywood” is such a fun title, suggesting all kinds of naughtiness in film. Most recently, it was used for a three-volume line of TCM Archives DVD collections with some of the best pre-Code movies out there, including the one that sums it all up for me, Baby Face starring Barbara Stanwyck. Now comes news (link no longer available) that the Warner Archive is reviving the label, with six DVDs coming out June 26. The high point for me is […]

Along with S.O.B. and Victor/Victoria, a third Blake Edwards comedy has returned to DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive: Skin Deep (1989). This one, I admit, I knew nothing about, other than that it starred John Ritter and a lot of random women. Ritter (in his bearded phase) is an alcoholic writer and womanizer who, in the opening scene, is caught in bed with another woman by his mistress (Denise Crosby), who tries to shoot him, and then his wife […]

As part of their newest release wave, Warner Archive is offering a set of TV movies starring Elizabeth Montgomery, including The Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story. This one is a particular favorite for me, because I have a tenuous connection to the story. In addition to having one of those particularly Southern names, Blanche Taylor Moore was a serial killer in Alamance County, North Carolina, where I used to live. She was finally discovered to be poisoning […]