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 […]

This year would have been Jean Harlow’s 100th birthday (in March), so fans were hoping for some recognition in terms of a nice centennial DVD set. (The only significant release of her films on DVD previously was a TCM Greatest Classic Legends collection, but that was a repackaging of four movies previously available separately. While fine films, they weren’t her best-known or most significant to her career personally. And really, isn’t “Greatest Classic Legends” multiply redundant?) Now, Warner Archive has […]

Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? is another teen favorite of mine recaptured on disc by Warner Archive. I really shouldn’t have been watching this murder-comedy-romance at that age, but that’s part of the fun of rediscovering something you think you know — the nuances are all more visible to me now. And still timely! A large, blustery, self-centered Robert Morley is a London food critic and magazine editor whose doctor has told him that due to his […]

It’s 1938, and Rollo (Cork Hubbert) dreams of making it to Hollywood. The good-heartedness underlying the slapstick goofiness is summed up early on, as Rollo, when told his dreams of making it in Hollywood are “just too big”, responds, “There’s no dream too big, and no dreamer too small.” He gets a chance when he becomes one of 150 little people rounded up to play munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. Under the Rainbow purports to show what happens when […]

I enjoyed early-60s Jane Fonda in Sunday in New York so much that I figured I’d pick up another of her mainstream sex comedies when Warner Archive had a sale. Any Wednesday was made three years later (1966) than the previous, and accordingly, Fonda is now playing not a virgin, but a mistress. But first, she’s a kind of babysitter for art, a gallery employee sent to accompany paintings rented for ritzy parties. There she meets “business tycoon” John Cleves […]