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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Teens > Pregnancy > Film Noir > Crime > Thriller > Mystery > Plastic Surgery > Murder > Western > Reve > Blue Denim (1959/Fox Archive DVD)/Dark Passage (1947/Warner Archive Blu-ray)/Garden Of Evil (1954/Fox/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/The Gift Of Love (1958/Fox Archive DVD)/Inside Out (1975/Wa

Blue Denim (1959/Fox Archive DVD)/Dark Passage (1947/Warner Archive Blu-ray)/Garden Of Evil (1954/Fox/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/The Gift Of Love (1958/Fox Archive DVD)/Inside Out (1975/Warner Archive DVD)/On The Threshold Of Space (1956/Fox Archive DVD)/Race For The Yankee Zephyr (1984 aka Treasure Of The Yankee Zephyr/MGM Limited Edition Collection DVD)/10 Rillington Place (1971/Sony/Columbia/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)



Picture: C+/B+/B/C-/C+/C-/C/B Sound: C+/B-/B-/C+/C/C+/C/B- Extras: C-/C/B/C-/D/C-/D/B- Films: C+/B-/C+/C/C/C/C/B-



PLEASE NOTE: The Garden Of Evil and 10 Rillington Place Blu-rays are now only available from our friends at Twilight Time, are limited to only 3,000 copies and can be ordered while supplies last, while the Dark Passage Blu-ray and Inside Out DVD are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series. All can be ordered from the links below, save the Fox and MGM limited edition DVDs, available online only; go to Amazon.com at the sidebar to purchase.



Up next are several dramatic genre films for you to know about including work by often well-known journeyman directors...



Philip Dunne's Blue Denim (1959) is a time capsule of a different time that the 1960s and 1970s ended, with a young Brandon De Wilde getting involved with an equally young Carol Lynley and getting her pregnant. What can they do? No legal abortion, birth control pills or a conformist world that is going to be unsympathetic to their plight. Thus, it is a portrait of a more relatively innocent time and reminds us of why things had to change. The script makes them both 'good family kids' and that shows there is 'still' troubles for them. Martha Hunt and MacDonald Carey lead the adult cast and the score by Bernard Herrmann is a plus. Yes, some things have dated and there re some odd moments, but at 89 minutes, it is efficient and smart for its time.



Delmer Daves' Dark Passage (1947) is not the most successful Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall film at Warner Bros., but it is something different, ambitious, fun and more energetic than you might expect from a film that is enough of a Noir to qualify. Bogart is a criminal who finds a way to break out of the famous San Quentin prison, with a plan to escape totally (pre-DNA era) and we see 'everything' form his point of view for the first hour of the film. We see what he looks like in a few pictures and when he gets ambitious plastic surgery so no one recognizes him, he looks like Bogart!


He gets serious, sympathetic help early on from a sexy young woman (Bacall) who takes him home (!) and hides him. She has a male friend and is know to live alone, but she also has a nosy friend (Agnes Moorehead) while our fugitive plots his next moves to make that change. It is also a fun film, but the makers just cannot make everything work, but it is fun to see them go for it and try no matter the results. This is as must see as anything on the list and worth your time. Bruce Bennett and Tom D'Andrea also star.



Henry Hathaway's Garden Of Evil (1954) is an elaborate quest/revenge western with Susan Hayward desperate to get her mine-trapped husband back, made worse by the mine being in 'hostile' Apache territory, so she hires three men (Gary Cooper, Cameron Mitchell and Richard Widmark) to save him. They run into Rita Moreno, Victor Manuel Mendoza and a decent cast along the way, but as was the case decades ago, I found the film to be very choppy when I first saw it despite some solid moments.


It cannot over come some stereotypes and cliches, but the actors are good and Bernard Herrmann's incredible music score keeps the film more relevant than had it been scored by someone else with less conviction. An early high profile CinemaScope release from Fox (it has the early wider aspect ratio and Technicolor before their own DeLuxe lab started doing color). You can see the ambition. I can see why the film has a devoted following, even if I am not a fan. Twilight Time has released an impressive special edition here and you can read more of the details on it below.



Jean Negulesco's The Gift Of Love (1958) is one of the sappiest melodramas of the time with Lauren Bacall (switching from Film Noir, which was wrapping up this very year) in what we now call a 'disease of the week' film, played out by TV but not uncommon to commercial cinema of the time. Bacall plays a mother/wife who only has weeks to live, but wishes her husband (Robert Stack) would not be alone without her, so the solution? A child!


Yes, toxic and a bit dysfunctional, the film veers into camp at times despite a solid director, really pushing it at 105 minutes. Lorne Green and Evelyn Rudie also star in this soapster you had better be very awake to deal with.



Peter Duffell's Inside Out (1975) is a British film with Telly Savalas, Robert Culp and James Mason look for $6 Million in Nazi gold (that would be over $26 Million now, but probably higher with gold beating the inflation index) that has fine potential, but the film has way too much talking and though I like the scenery, support cast that includes Aldo Ray and Cold War overtones with the two Germanys involved, it never really takes off. We've seen poorer variances of this tale (see Race For The Yankee Zephyr below), but I was a little disappointed. Again, if you like any of the actors or aspects of the story, see it at least once.


This is one of the last major films Savalas made before really becoming a TV icon with Kojak, but I give him credit for always being capable of holding his own on the big screen and always being a world class star. Mason could do no wrong and Culp was always underrated. Nice to have this in print.



Robert D. Webb's On The Threshold Of Space (1956) is part of an unrecognized cycle of pre space flight films (from dramas to B-movies) about brave men (and not women at the time) have to endure high stress to break the sound barrier, death barrier, gravity barrier and any other barrier that could kill them to create progress for America and its military. A few years before Sputnik began the space race, Guy Madison will do what he can to make a secret U.S. Air Force project (a few years later, it might have been NASA) work with the support of his boss (John Hodiak) and 'woman' (Virginia Leith) in another real time capsule that is dated and uneven at 96 minutes.


It is worth a look, but it is very dated, though there is some energy, ambition and money on the screen. Dean Jagger shows up in an early performance and those familiar with the original Six Million Dollar Man TV series will see the tentative connection between what goes on here and how Col. Steve Austin became bionic, though no such thing happens here.



David Hemming's Race For The Yankee Zephyr (1984) took three years to be released and was part of an odd series of genre films international movie star/producer Hemming was either appearing in himself or just making through his Hemdale Pictures shingle, now best know for James Cameron's original Terminator that arrived the same year. A young pre-TV Ken Wahl and Donal Pleasence play friends looking for Gold stolen by the Nazis (like Inside Out) to the then-tune of $50 Million (that would be over $130 Million now, but probably higher with gold beating the inflation index) and Leslie Ann Warren becomes Wahl's wild love interest.


However, George Peppard is the boo hiss villain who wants the gold himself, so as you can surmise, this is not unlike parts of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, which this film had zero chance of competing against back in 1981. Needless to say the delay did not help it and not just because a darker Indiana Jones sequel arrived by then. The film looks decent in the way its shot, but the actors are worth seeing once even if the 109 minutes go on a little longer than the time would suggest.



Richard Fleischer's 10 Rillington Place (1971) is our final film and happens to be another British production, despite a Hollywood director who usually knew what he was doing. Based on a true story, a couple (John Hurt and Judy Geeson) move into a so-so apartment with an old couple running it, but what they don't know is that the husband (Richard Attenborough in one of his greatest performance) is actually a serial killer named John Christie!


At first, we just see an old couple trying to get by when this new toxic couple always fighting moves in, but we've already seen Christie kill early on, so how he manages to hide in plain site is something in an era where his kind of killer was considerably rare and unknown. A dark-looking film, that becomes thematically dark quickly, there are a few moments where it does not take advantage of some of the suspense possibilities and wallows a bit much into its locales in a way that cuts off some ironic distance and some other possibilities, but it is a good film worth rediscovery and I would add that Attenborough's work here had some influence on Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter in the original Silence Of The Lambs. Twilight Time has also added some fine extra, so see more below...




Now for picture quality. Gift and Space were both originally CinemaScope widescreen releases, gut these are old 'analog TV safe' copies that are usually poor pan and scan 1.33 X 1 presentations with credits letterboxed, but very hard to watch just the same, so be aware. Denim is here in an anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 black and white image superior to the miscredited letterboxed note on the back of the DVD case, looking pretty good and as good as the anamorphically enhanced 1.77 X 1 image image on Inside, originally issued in 35mm dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor prints on both sides of the Atlantic. It looks pretty good throughout, you can see how good the color must have looked in those prints often enough and they tie as the best DVD presentations here.


Yankee is also mislabeled as letterboxed when it too is anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1, though the scope image is windowboxed until the credits are finished, but it was shot in real 35mm anamorphic Panavision by Director of Photography Vincent Monton (Newsfront, Road Games, Thirst) and this does not look bad. Yoo bad this is on the soft side throughout and deserves an HD upgrade.


Moving up to Blu-rays, the 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image transfer on Passage might show the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film showing a remarkable sense of sharpness and depth we have not seen in many 1940s films in the format. Add the extensive use of handheld cameras and how great the Mitchell Camera was and still is and you get the idea of how impressive this can be.


The final color entries tie for second place, with the 1080p 2.55 X 1 digital High Definition image on Garden with some age and minor color issues, but pretty impressive just the same enough and also a film originally issued in 35mm dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor prints. You can see how good that color looks in many scenes here too. The 1080p 1.66 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Place is darker as expected (in part being a British film and thriller) has its share of grain, but that is the way it is meant to look as it has in the best stills and footage I have seen of the film over the years. Here to you can see the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film and was a Kodak EastmanColor release developed by the great Rank Labs.


As for sound, the Blu-rays tie for first place despite the fact that Garden has been upgraded to DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 and 4.0 lossless mixes from its original 4-track magnetic sound with traveling dialogue and sound effects on the best 35mm scope presentations. We even get DTS-MA 2.0 Stereo, but I thought the 5.1 just squeezed by to be the best mix, but they all show their age, so the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) Mono lossless sound on Passage (2.0) and Place (1.0) were sounding overall as good, in part because they were surprisingly so.


As for the DVDs, the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Inside and lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Yankee (even with its Pro Logic surrounds) are weaker than expected and about even with each other, both disappointing and probably a generation down somehow. That leaves the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Denim, Gift and Space being the best-sounding of the DVDs despite the age of the films.


Extras are not available on the Inside or Yankee DVDs, though that would have been interesting, but the Denim, Gift and Space DVDs at least have Original Theatrical Trailers. The Evil and Place Blu-rays offer well-illustrated booklets on each respective film including informative text and more excellent, underrated essay by the great film scholar Julie Kirgo, while the Blu-rays add Original Theatrical Trailers, Isolated Music Scores and feature length audio commentary tracks. Evil has a remarkable track by scholar Nick Redman joined by music, film and Bernard Herrmann scholars John Morgan, Steven C. Smith & William T. Stromberg, Place has two. One with John Hurt solo, the other with Nick Redman joined by the film's co-star Judy Geeson & Lem Dobbs. Evil also adds TV Spots and three featurettes: Travels Of A Gunslinger: The Making Of Garden Of Evil, Susan Hayward: Hollywood's Straight Shooter and Henry Hathaway: When The Going Gets Tough....


That leaves Passage with an Original Theatrical Trailer, HD Technicolor Looney Tunes classic Slick Hare with Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and cartoon versions of Bogie & Bacall and the behind the scenes/making of featurette Hold Your Breath and Cross Your Fingers on the circumstances on the making of the film and its mixed release.



To order the Garden Of Evil and 10 Rillington Place limited edition Blu-rays, buy them and other great exclusives while supplies last at these links:


www.screenarchives.com


and


http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/


...and to order the Dark Passage Blu-ray or Inside Out DVD from Warner Archive, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:


https://www.warnerarchive.com/



- Nicholas Sheffo


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