List Price: $19.97 Our Price: $17.97YOU SAVE $2!
Buy it
DVD Bad Day at Black Rock
One of the first Hollywood films to deal openly with white racism toward Japanese Americans during World War II, this drama directed by 1950s action maestro John Sturges (The Great Escape) stars Spencer Tracy as a one-armed stranger named MacReedy, who arrives in the tiny town of Black Rock on a hot day in 1945. Seeking a hotel room and the whereabouts of an ethnic Japanese farmer named Komoko, MacReedy runs smack into a wall of hostility that escalates into serious threats. In time it becomes apparent that Komoko has been murdered by a local, racist chieftain, Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), who also plans on dispensing with MacReedy. Tracy's hero is forced to fight his way past Smith's goons (among them Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin) and sundry allies (Anne Francis) to keep alive, setting the stage for memorable suspense crisply orchestrated by Sturges. Casting is the film's principal strength, however: Tracy, the indispensable icon of integrity, and Ryan, the indispensable noir image of spiritual blight, are as creatively unlikely a pairing as Sturges's shotgun marriage of Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven. --Tom Keogh
Director John Sturges' "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955) is the flip side of "High Noon," with one-armed Spencer Tracy defying a corrupt desert town and its ugly secret. A landmark drama that improves with age -- beautifully filmed in Cinemascope and highlighted by a powerhouse cast. Tracy and Robert Ryan, in particular, have rarely been better. One of the great American films.
Bad Day at Black Rock
One of the best suspense films ever, tension builds from very first scene. The inimitable Spence is backed by sterling support from Walter Brennan, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Dean Jagger, and a young Lee Marvin. Don't miss that fight in the diner.
A Tight, Well-Constructed Thriller About Justice
It's very satisfying to see a relatively small movie that was made efficiently by pros become so widely liked and respected. It's got just about everything...a gripping story that carries a message, vivid characters but a small cast, a dangerous setting, the plight of a brave loner on the side of justice who beats the odds. And it doesn't have dumb things...an extraneous love story, outraged citizens who meet in a church, excessive violence, time spent on flashbacks. It was a long wait for this one to come out on DVD, but it was worth it.
Among many elements I admire are the three character actors: Russell Collins as the weak, cowardly telegraph agent, Dean Jagger as the played-out sheriff (his humiliation at the hands of Robert Ryan is unpleasant), and, most of all, Walter Brennan as the doctor who tries to push things but isn't dumb enough to push too hard. I think this was one of Brennan's last, really good roles before he turned himself into the toothless old coot or cackling grampa of his later films. In his prime, he was a fine actor. And for vicious bullies I don't think anyone has topped Lee Marvin and Ernest Bognine in their roles. I'd even eat my catsup without any chili at all to avoid a confrontation with these guys.
I have a lot of respect for Robert Ryan but find it sad that, despite a number of opportunities, he never was able to break into the top rank of stardom. Maybe he didn't really want that. Maybe he was too willing to play bad guys. Maybe he lacked some element of charisma or just ambition. He was a fine actor and, from reports, a nice guy.
This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $8.98YOU SAVE $6!
Buy it
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
John Wayne personally produced many of his '50s films, which is why some of them have languished in corporate limbo following his death. The High and the Mighty was one of his most popular vehicles (no pun intended). This long, necessarily sedentary drama aboard an endangered airliner is a CinemaScope bridge between 1932's Grand Hotel and 1970s disaster movies. Despite Wayne's iconic presence as a pilot--now copilot--who survived the plane crash that wiped out his family, it's an ensemble movie with an impressive cast: Robert Stack sharing the cockpit, Oscar® nominees Claire Trevor and Jan Sterling, Laraine Day, Robert Newton, Paul Kelly, John Qualen, Regis Toomey, the ubiquitous Paul Fix, and director William A. Wellman's good-luck character actor Douglas Fowley.... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Wayne - Claire Trevor - Laraine Day Director(s): William A. Wellman DVD Release Date: Released the 02 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.99 Your Price: $14.99YOU SAVE $5!
Buy it
The postwar vogue for documentary-style realism, prompted by The March of Time and the critical success of Roberto Rossellini's Open City, cross bred with film noir to create a compelling strain of crime films; this is one of the most low-key and credible, based on the true story of a Chicago reporter (James Stewart) who became convinced of the innocence of a death-row inmate (Richard Conte). Director Henry Hathaway (whose Kiss of Death started the trend) stages the action on the actual Chicago locations, providing a fascinating documentary record of an underfilmed metropolis (the convict's mother is a washerwoman at the Wrigley Building), and leads his cast to appropriately restrained, naturalistic performances. Stewart is just beginning to explore his newfound,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): James Stewart - Richard Conte Director(s): Henry Hathaway 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
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
