Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Public domain treasures, part 3

We've done three roundups of Mill Creek Entertainment's great public domain collections. They here, here and here. And as we continue to watch them, we find more interesting (and sometimes forgotten) films in them. Here's a run through of a few more:
Western Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection and Gunslingers 50 Movie Pack Collection: Yup, it's Westerns featured in these two sets, pardner. All Westerns and nothing but. Between the two of them, films by John Wayne are plentiful, and so are several by singing cowboys Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter and Gene Autry. But that's not all. "Western Classics" features additional films starring Jane Russell, Chill Wills, Buster Crabbe, Burt Lancaster, William Boyd, Will Rogers and Randolph Scott, while "Gunslinger Classics" features Joel McCrea, Leslie Nielsen, Fred Williamson, Dennis Hopper, Dale Robertson, Raymond Burr and Clint Walker. If you have to choose, I guess it would be "Western Classics," which includes Howard Hughes' steamy "The Outlaw," John Wayne's delightful "McLintock" co-starring Maureen O'Hara and the aforementioned "Santa Fe Trail." If you're going to buy them both, get Western Classics 100 Movie Pack, which combines the two sets into one big 100 movie set and saves you a little money in the process.
Tales of Terror 50 Movie Pack Collection: More scary films featuring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr. Vincent Price, Lyle Talbot, James Dunn, Dean Stockwell and Jack Pickford. Some of these are more funny than scary, as in Ken Utusi's "Evil Brain From Outer Space."
Dark Crimes Collection: 50 Movie Pack: The title of this one has a double meaning. Not only these all crime-related dramas, but they're all in black-and-white, with the latest one being from 1964 (the only one from that decade), the rest from the '30s to the '50s. It includes Edmund O'Brien's classic "D.O.A." (with more plot twists than a bag of pretzels), "The Last Mile," a downcast drama set on Death Row and the Oscar nominated "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers," starring Barbara Stanwyck, Kirk Douglas, Van Heflin and Judith Anderson about the mystery behind the death of a rich woman. Those starring in films here include DeForrest Kelley, Lee J. Cobb, Edward G. Robinson, Yul Brynner, Angela Lansbury, Hedy Lamarr, George Raft, Lloyd Bridges, Basil Rathbone, Erich Von Stroheim, Boris Karloff and Loretta Young. Outstanding. This box's a must.
Suspense Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection: An armload of nailbiters with stars such as Robert Vaughn, Cliff Robertson, Johnny Cash ("Five Minutes to Live," in which Cash plays a real cad), John Forsythe, Sondra Locke, Joe Don Baker, Robert DeNiro, Anthony Quinn, Kirk Douglas, Karl Malden, Telly Savalas and Rod Taylor.