List Price: $9.98 Our Price: $9.98YOU SAVE $0!
Buy it
DVD The Boston Strangler
The unexpected casting of Tony Curtis as the presumed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, is only the first of the attractions of this hard-nosed suspense picture. Although the style of The Boston Strangler looks dated today, with its split-screen experiments and post-Bonnie and Clyde permissiveness, the film still has the clean, strong lines of a methodical policier. For the first hour, we don't focus on the Strangler, instead following the Beantown cops (led by Henry Fonda) as they track down leads; the best sequence is the near-accidental connection made between burglary suspect DeSalvo and the killings. Director Richard Fleischer had a forceful hand with true-crime material (Compulsion, 10 Rillington Place) and he takes an unblinking look into the then-taboo subject of sexual pathology. Curtis's physical transformation into a dumpy, dull-eyed brute is the best aspect of his performance; it's a role he lobbied hard for, but it did not lead to more challenging work. --Robert Horton
Why Did 13 Woman Willingly Open Their Doors To The Boston Strangler?
Boston is in a panic as a maniac stalks the streets, strangling women in their own homes. The first half of the film follows the police investigation, headed up by Henry Fonda and George Kennedy. A huge task force tracks down lead after lead, picks up suspect after suspect, all to no avail. The second half of the film shifts to Tony Curtis, who is the killer, only he doesn't know it: he suffers from a multiple personality disorder. The question, when he finally is caught, is whether Fonda can get him to realized what he has done.
The violence, while not completely unheard of in 1968, is still stronger than one is used to seeing in a film starring Henry Fonda and Tony Curtis. The latter turns in a very strong performance, and the police investigation is compelling. Where the film really shows its vintage, however, is through its use (and overuse, and misuse) of split-screen. The frame is constantly being broken up into multiple images, and sometimes the effect is very strong (such as when the technique is demonstrating how widespread the fear in the city is), while in other cases it is pure wanking. In either event, though, the film is unflaggingly interesting to watch.
The principle extra is a "Backstory" episode on the film, and in 20 minutes fills in a decent amount of background. The Movietone newsreel of the premiere is in poor condition, and missing a lot of the audio. The other extras are the theatrical trailer and teaser, and trailers for other thrillers and Henry Fonda movies. The menu's main screen is animated and scored.
Though dated, the film is still a gripping procedural, and Curtis' performance is one to see.
One of Tony Curtis better films
I thought for the times that it was made in that this is one of the better Crime Movies. It was a real ground breaker in dealing with sexual deviantancy and the Monster that was the Boston Strangler. A good solid effort that looks back to the dawn of our current sad state of society.
"Albert. Albert...ALBERT?"
"The Boston Strangler" is nowhere NEAR as exploitative as it could have been, and this could be good or bad, depending on your tastes. I myself like cop movies as well as horror/thrillers, so I didn't mind too much. But although it is usually stocked in the horror section (at the stores in MY one-horse town, anyway), hardcore genre-nuts may not find a lot to love in "The Boston Strangler".
Based to some degree on actual events, three-quarters of the film is about the cops who are trying to solve the mystery of the Strangler. George ("Just Before Dawn") Kennedy is one of the cops, and William ("Tales From The Darkside: The Movie") Hickey shows up as a creepy, REALLY weirded-out suspect.
Henry Fonda is the man in charge of the investigation, and legendary Tony Curtis is Albert DeSalvo, who we all know, was the real-life Boston Strangler. So no spoilers there.
The visual style of this movie helps the action, making what could have seemed like a snooze-fest police procedural into a lively series of public reactions regarding the murders. Once Albert is finally revealed, Curtis goes to work and gives a great serial-killer performance, full of believability, pathos, and some genuine sympathy. And the end, wherein Albert finally faces himself, is unexpectedly haunting and beautifully composed.
This is a pretty bloodless offering, and the murders we DO see are not really scary or suspenseful. This is based on reality, and although it is Hollywood-ized, it is never over the top or too sensational. The DVD features include some promo material and a decent documentary, which feels a little redundant, since the movie itself is a docu-drama. But it's well worth a couple of bucks for any fan of thrillers or 'true crime' stuff.
Walker (Lee Marvin) strides through Los Angeles with the steel-eyed stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting or return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel The Hunter (remade by Brian Helgeland as Payback), set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed, and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lee Marvin - Angie Dickinson Director(s): John Boorman DVD Release Date: Released the 05 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.97 Your Price: $14.98YOU SAVE $4.99!
Buy it
Nineteen thirty-nine is often proposed as the movies' halcyon year, and three reasons why were directed by John Ford: Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, and Drums Along the Mohawk. In that exalted company Drums... would have to be accounted "merely superb"--even if it's the best film ever made about the American Revolution and, oh, only about eighth-best picture of its year.
Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert play newlyweds in New York's Mohawk Valley at the time of the Revolutionary War. That war is more a distant rumor than a direct concern of people with cabins to raise, crops to harvest, and firstborn on the way. When it comes to their valley, in the form of hitherto-peaceable Indians whipped up by a gaunt Tory with an eyepatch (John Carradine), life changes... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Claudette Colbert - Henry Fonda - Edna May Oliver Director(s): John Ford DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $7.49YOU SAVE $7.49!
Buy it
An amazingly effective film noir action movie, shot on location in New Orleans in 1950, that has twists of plot and explosions of violence that can still make audiences gasp. Elia Kazan, of all people, directed this story of a public health worker (Richard Widmark) and a police detective (Paul Douglas) who have only a few hours in which to capture some fleeing felons who may be infected with the plague. The bad guys are played, with enormous relish, by Jack Palance and Zero Mostel, the latter only a few years before Kazan ratted him out to the House Un-American Activities Committee. In retrospect, this modest crime picture looks like a crucial turning point in the formation of Kazan's distinctive style, a clear precursor to the blistering location work of landmark films like On the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Richard Widmark - Paul Douglas - Barbara Bel Geddes - Jack Palance Director(s): Elia Kazan DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $13.48YOU SAVE $1.5!
Buy it
Samuel Fuller came up with one of his gutsiest "headline shots" for House of Bamboo: Mount Fuji, in CinemaScope, framed between the boots of a U.S. soldier lying murdered on a snowy Japanese embankment. Happily, the movie that follows is no letdown. This brutal gangster film was the first American production to shoot in Japan, and Fuller exploits his locations to the max, up to and including a climactic gun battle around a Tokyo rooftop facsimile of the turning Earth. Officially the screenplay is credited to Harry Kleiner, with Fuller cited for "additional dialogue"; in actuality, the 20th Century-Fox movie transplants the basic premise of the Kleiner-scripted Street with No Name (1948) from an American Midwest town to Tokyo, but otherwise the picture is unmistakably... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robert Ryan - Robert Stack Director(s): Samuel Fuller DVD Release Date: Released the 07 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $13.48YOU SAVE $1.5!
Buy it
"Warlock" is a great classic western with an amazing cast. I am sad to see Dolores Michaels not get billing on the DVD, as she did on the original moive posters. While she retired early from acting, she not only was beautiful, but a very solid actress. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Richard Widmark - Henry Fonda Director(s): Edward Dmytryk DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $7.49YOU SAVE $7.49!
Buy it
