List Price: $19.97 Our Price: $17.97YOU SAVE $2!
Buy it
DVD Blackboard Jungle
Novelist Evan Hunter burst America's postwar bubble when he described an inner-city school terrorized by switchblade-wielding juvenile delinquents. Director-screenwriter Richard Brooks's 1955 adaptation of Blackboard Jungle still packs a tremendous wallop (even if it was shot mostly on the back lot). A forerunner of Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story, this black-and-white classic--set to Bill Haley and His Comets' "Rock Around the Clock"--is part exposé, part melodrama, part public-service announcement. "It is the frankest, the toughest, the most realistic film since On the Waterfront," ballyhooed MGM at the time.
Glenn Ford, at his slow-to-rile best, plays Richard Dadier, an incoming English teacher at North Manual High School. An idealist who knows how to handle himself in a dark alley, Dadier stands his ground and earns the begrudging respect of school thugs led by Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier. Anne Francis plays Ford's especially vulnerable wife; Richard Kiley (later in Brooks's Looking for Mr. Goodbar) is the timid math teacher with the priceless jazz-record collection; Louis Calhern and John Hoyt are among the more cynical North Manual High veterans. See if you can ID Jamie Farr and director Paul Mazursky as gang members. The film was nominated for four Oscars. --Glenn Lovell
Often, it's necessary to take older movies with a grain of salt in order to enjoy them. This is to say that you often need to readjust your mindset to appreciate the historical context of the film. The amazing thing about Blackboard Jungle, however, is that it holds its own even today. This film is just as entertaining and its issues just as relevent now as in 1955. Great acting, compelling story - do not miss this film.
Down with authority
It opens with Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" and we know we're in for something dangerous, even nasty. Glenn Ford plays a novice English teacher in a ghetto trade high school, and most of the kids he runs up against are one step from the jailhouse. They are a nasty bunch - they beat him up, torment his wife, and almost send him packing, but he sticks it out and wins them over.
Sidney Poitier and Vic Morrow are standouts as the hoods, and in the most harrowing scene (for me), they smash another teacher's prized jazz record collection. It's a no-holds barred look at an inner-city school (circa 1955), and it doesn't succumb to the typical (for movies like this) "saved in the nick of time" conclusion. The movie is honest and unsentimental. Worth a watch.
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,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Spencer Tracy - Robert Ryan Director(s): John Sturges DVD Release Date: Released the 10 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.97 Your Price: $17.97YOU SAVE $2!
Buy it
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
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
Novelist James Clavell wrote, produced, and directed this 1967 British film (based on a novel by E.R. Braithwaite) about a rookie teacher who throws out stock lesson plans and really takes command of his unruly, adolescent students in a London school. Poitier is very good as a man struggling with the extent of his commitment to the job, and even more as a teacher whose commitment is to proffering life lessons instead of academics. The spirit of this movie can be found in such recent films as Dangerous Minds and Mr. Holland's Opus, but none is as moving as this one. Besides, the others don't have a title song performed by pop star Lulu. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sidney Poitier - Judy Geeson Director(s): James Clavell DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $24.95 Your Price: $19.96YOU SAVE $4.99!
Buy it
For a knock-out combination of timeless entertainment and vintage studio history, you can't do much better than The Warner Brothers Gangsters Collection. In the 1930s and '40s, Paramount specialized in glossy comedies, MGM popularized lavish musicals, Universal produced signature horror classics, and Fox scored hits with sophisticated dramas. But it was Warner Bros. that generated controversy--if not always box-office profits--with so-called "social problem" films, and that meant gangsters. When viewed in their pre- and post-Prohibition context and in chronological order (Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, 1931; The Petrified Forest, 1936; Angels With Dirty Faces, 1938; The Roaring Twenties, 1939; White Heat, 1949), these six films... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): James Cagney - Humphrey Bogart - Edward G. Robinson DVD Release Date: Released the 25 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $68.92 Your Price: $55.14YOU SAVE $13.78!
Buy it
