Olive Films is fast becoming an essential force in home entertainment: they have bravely been unleashing a treasure trove of long-unavailable titles on DVD and Blu-ray, some of them I never thought would ever see the light of day. Last year and earlier this year, they released a handful of noir titles as well as three Otto Preminger titles, and now these films have been packaged into two new Blu-ray box sets.Film Noir Collection Volume One
This four-film box set comes with William Dieterle's Dark City (1950), starring Charlton Heston -- in his first lead role -- and Lizabeth Scott, and Rudolph Maté's Union Station (1950), starring William Holden and Nancy Olson.
The third title, Rope of Sand, is an awkwardly titled, inert adventure film that looks as if it were trying to cash in on the success of Casablanca seven years earlier. Paul Henreid, Claude Rains and Peter Lorre all return for another adventure/romance set in Africa, though this time at the opposite end of the continent, where all the diamonds are. (Even producer Hal Wallis is here.)
This time Burt Lancaster stars; he plays a diamond hunter who returns to South Africa some time after getting thrashed by Commandant Paul Vogel (Henreid); Vogel's job is to make sure that no diamonds are smuggled away from his domain. In one scene, he rips a bandage from a man's arm and digs a gemstone from his open wound. While Vogel is acting evil, Lancaster's Mike Davis spends most of the film hanging around, looking sullen and tough, and presumably waiting for his move. Lorre plays the aptly-named Toady, who haunts a cantina, looking crazy and talking about diamonds a lot.
There's a nasty femme fatale (Corinne Calvet), who tries to work a ridiculous scheme on Arthur Martingale (Claude Rains); she basically tears her own dress and tries to blackmail him for it. Instead Martingale hires her to get close to Davis and find out what he knows. Davis unleashes a flashback for her, and she falls in love with him (who knew a flashback could do that?). All of this boring stuff leads up to Mike's attempt to steal back some diamonds he hid years earlier, but suffice to say that the movie is lacking in excitement.
Director William Dieterle is in charge. He had his best successes with slightly supernatural tales, like The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), and Portrait of Jennie (1948), so perhaps he was bored. We do get one interesting, dirty fight between Lancaster and Henried, in the darkness and desert sand, although it seems hard to believe that Lancaster would struggle so long against the prissy Henreid.
Perhaps the movie would have benefited form more loony scenes with Lorre, but as it stands, it's a dud.
Directed by Lewis Allen (The Uninvited, Suddenly), Appointment with Danger -- the set's fourth and final film -- was Alan Ladd's final film noir. He plays Al Goddard, a postal inspector sent to Gary, Indiana to solve the murder of a fellow officer. The only witness to the murder is a scrappy nun, Sister Augustine (Phyllis Calvert), to whom Al feels especially protective. Unfortunately, he must go undercover to catch the bad guys, and finds himself going along with a plan to rob a million bucks from post office; each time he manages to risk his life to pass on any information to his colleagues, the bad guys change their plans again. Finally, of course, Sister Augustine comes into play for a tense showdown.
British-born director Allen will never achieve the ranks of the great directors, but he was pretty good at these sporadic genre films; they were sharp and fast, economic and entertaining. Perhaps Ladd is the real selling point here. He was a fairly big star at the time, and he seems to have been forgotten in recent years. It's good to see him in action here, playing a tough guy without trying too hard; he has a hint of a soft underbelly, as shown in the scenes with the nun.
Trivia nuts will notice that Jack Webb and Harry Morgan are both here as criminals, and they would both go on to fame as partner cops on the TV series "Dragnet."
The Otto Preminger Collection
This three-film set begins with Hurry Sundown (1967), starring Michael Caine and Jane Fonda, and Such Good Friends (1971), starring Dyan Cannon.
The third film, Skidoo (1968), was for years regarded as a cult classic, a hard-to-find rarity that was so bizarre, it was a badge of honor to have seen it. Today it can be seen for what it is: a stodgy old example of the establishment desperate attempt to cash in on an increasingly powerful youth counterculture movement.
Preminger was 63 at the time, and definitely the wrong man for this job. Preminger and the others that made this movie hadn't the faintest idea of what its youth audience wanted to see, and so they copied the images and ideas available to them at the time. (It has the effect of listening to your grandfather trying to use the latest slang.) At best, it's an embarrassment to the established stars that took part in it, and at worst, it's an ungodly mess.
Jackie Gleason stars as a gangster who comes out of retirement to infiltrate a prison and kill a notorious squealer (Mickey Rooney). Inside, he tries acid for the first time (complete with "psychedelic" special effects); he has a revelation and doesn't want to kill anymore. He escapes in a hot air balloon made of laundry bags and a trash can (a fitting metaphor). Meanwhile, his daughter (Alexandra Hall) falls in love with a hippie, and his wife (Carol Channing) invites all the hippies to live at their house. Later, Channing sings the nonsensical title song (a maddening experience). Someone else (Harry Nilsson?) sings the end credits to us.
Aside from all this nonsense, there's a huge selection of guest stars, starting with Groucho Marx -- in his final role -- as the mob boss known as "God." I suppose the movie has some historical value, but more as a way to learn from past mistakes.
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