Diana Dors Double Feature: Is Your Honeymoon Really
Necessary?/My Wife Lodger
(1953/1952/BFI Region Zero/Free Blu-ray w/DVD) + An Alligator Named Daisy/Value For Money (1955/DVD) + Terry Thomas Comedy Double Feature DVD: Too
Many Crooks (1959)/Make Mine Mink
(1960) + To Paris With Love
(1954/DVD) + Upstairs & Downstairs
(1959/VCI DVDs)
Picture:
B (DVDs: C+) Sound: C+ Extras: C+ (DVDs: C-) Films: C+
PLEASE NOTE: The Diana Dors Double Feature is a Region Free import Blu-ray that can
be ordered directly from our friends at BFI at the link at the end of this
review and will play on all players worldwide.
There are
many quality British comedy films that never made it to the U.S for whatever
reasons, but they are now finding their way to Blu-ray and DVD on both sides of
the Atlantic.
We start
with three double feature singles. Two
feature then sex symbol Diana Dors, who is not known much to U.S. audiences
(unless you remember the heavy set Dors much later in the Adam Ant video for Prince Charming) though she did make it
to the States in some import Horror fare.
The two double features show her at her peak at two different times in
her career. The Diana Dors Double Feature: Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary?
(1953) and My Wife Lodger (1952) are
black and white comedies tat BFI has issued on Blu-ray (and DVDs included in
this Dual Format release, but we are only covering the Blu-ray) and are very
entertaining lite comedies that play on her sexiness and looks. They also share the same director, Maurice
Elvey, who knew what to do with her.
In Necessary, she (in only her third film)
is the ex-wife of U.S. Army airman Laurie Vining, showing up to announce that
the original marriage is not over despite the new one. I give Dors credit for knowing how attractive
she was and how to work with that on the big screen. Lodger
has Dominic Roche as another soldier coming home to find chaos, finding out
that Lodger (Leslie Dwyer) has betrayed him and grabbed his wife. Dors plays the daughter of Roche’s Willie Higginbottom. Both are entertaining comedies for their
time, historic to some extent and reflections of a 1950s Britain we have
not seen as much, worth visiting or revisiting if you ever saw them. The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black and white image on
the Blu-rays are excellent transfers with fine detail, depth and prints in
great shape typical of BFI Blu-ray releases.
The PCM 2.0 48/24 Mono tracks on both are really nice and clean, but
cannot help the age of the films, which have slight distortion form the time they
were recorded, but I doubt these could sound any better. The only extras is the great booklet included
in side the Blu-ray case that includes illustration, technical information and
seven essays that that cover the films and especially Dors rise as a star at
the time.
She was
so popular that Rank picked her up and had her star in two elaborate, big
screen VistaVision comedies in 1955: An
Alligator Named Daisy and Value For
Money. The format is now used mostly
for visual effects, but Paramount introduced it
and loaned it out occasionally, though only Olivier’s Richard III (also 1955) was a wide success on both sides of the Atlantic. As
entertaining and amusing as these films are, their U.S. release seems to have been
sadly limited.
Daisy (sadly presented here in a 1.33 X
1 narrow vision frame that loses the sides of the original presentation) has
Dors marrying a songwriter (Donald Sinden; love that record store) and he gets
the title animal as a gift he would rather loose. The underrated J. Lee Thompson helmed this
very pleasant film that is no Bringing
Up Baby, but is definitely worth seeing.
Money has a young man (John
Gregson) inheriting a small fortune and the woman he proposes to (Susan
Stephen) turning him down until he looses up and learns how to enjoy life. Her suggestion is more than fulfilled when he
meets sexy dancer Dors who her also proposes to. This is a little more original than the Daisy and the likes of Donald Plesence
and Joan Hickson also turn up.
Then we
have the Terry Thomas Comedy Double
Feature DVD: Too Many Crooks (1959) and Make Mine Mink (1960) are two hits black and white comedies for the
popular comic in his early peak, the latter of which was a particular worldwide
hit. Mario Zampi directed Crooks about Thomas as a man with much
money who does not trust banks, hiding his cash in unusual places, but
gangsters kidnap his daughter to get his loot.
Now he has a plan to get her and get rid of them. Mink
has Thomas and company stealing furs to donate money to charity, but this wacky
scheme is bound to backfire in this film partly spoofing The Third Man. Robert Asher
directed this comedy, both of which also come from Rank. Watch for a young Billie Whitelaw.
Robert
Hamer’s To Paris With Love (1954)
had Alec Guinness falling for a much younger Odile Versois in a Technicolor
comedy where Guinness is trying to help his son meet women when he gets
luckier. A classy comedy that is
entertaining, it is not the best romantic film set with a romanticized
backdrop, but is a smart one and Guinness steals several scenes. Rank made this one too.
Finally
we have Ralph Thomas’ Upstairs &
Downstairs (1959), another color comedy, but this time Michael Craig finds
plenty of French, Swedish and Italian beauties back in England. He is married to a great wife (Anne Heyward)
when her father (and his boss, played by James Robertson Justice) says they
should get some hired help, which results in Myléne Demongeot showing up as a
very sexy maid. Joan Sims, Claudia
Cardinale and Joan Hickson also show up and yes, Rank made this one too. Note the wacky theme song!
The 1.33
X 1 image on Daisy cuts up the
beautiful compositions, though color can be good, while the anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Money may
be more accurate, it has the same softness and aliasing issues as its butchered
counterpart. The 1.33 X 1 black and
white image on Mink and anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Crooks
also have softness issues, but come from good prints, something that is
repeated with the 1.33 X 1 color image on Paris and anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 color image on Downstairs,
lensed by the great Ernest Stewart.
The
Blu-ray is not the only title here with a PCM 2.0 Mono track, as Paris
has one at 16/48 and it is not bad, though is also shows the age of its
recording. The rest of the DVDs have Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono sound that is almost as good, but I wondered if the color Dors
films had stereo track somewhere in the vault.
All the DVDs include trailers of their respective films.
To order Diana Dors Double Feature, here is the
link:
http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_16722.html
- Nicholas Sheffo
