Olive Films has announced
a crowd-pleasing selection of seven new Blu-ray SKUs that are primed for
delivery to retail on Dec. 23 … just in time for Christmas!!!
To make the news even
sweeter, four of the seven planned Hi-Def releases are film noir treasures, while the other three are from auteur filmmaker Otto Preminger! So let’s get to the film noir first (in alphabetical order)!!!
Alan Ladd teams with
Phyllis Calvert, Paul Stewart, Jan Sterling and the future Dragnet team of Jack Webb
and Harry Morgan (who play the antithesis of their future selves here) in
director Lewis Allen’s 1951 film noir
thriller, Appointment with Danger.
Dark City, directed by William Dieterle and released in
October of 1950, is next up and it teams Charlton Heston with Lizabeth Scott
(and yes, Jack Webb and Harry Morgan are both included in the cast as “bad”
apples again). Heston runs a “sucker’s
game” with a group of thugs and Scott spends her time trying to get him to go
straight, but when one his marks (played by Don DeFore) kills himself things
take a dark turn as his brother (played by Mike Mazurki) sets out to avenge his
death.
Next in line we find another
entry from director William Dieterle, his 1949 noirish adventure Rope of Sand, which toplines Burt
Lancaster in one of his early screen roles (fresh from Criss Cross, Kiss
the Blood Off My Hands and Sorry, Wrong Number). Joining him are Casablanca veterans
Claude Rains, Paul Henreid, and Peter Lorre … Corinne Calvet (On
the Riviera, What Price Glory, etc.) is the femme fatale here.
The last of the film noir selections heading to Blu-ray
on Dec. 23 is the crime thriller/film
noir, Union Station. Directed
by Rudolph Maté, this gem opened theatrically two months after Sunset
Blvd. and between the two films William Holden went from just being a
leading man to the top of Hollywood’s A-list (he was nominated for the Best
Actor Oscar for Sunset Blvd.) … Nancy Olson, Barry Fitzgerald, Lyle Bettger (Gunfight
at the O.K. Corral, The Greatest Show on Earth, etc.)
and Jan Sterling join Holden as the key cast members.
The other three new
Blu-ray releases are all from director Otto Preminger: Hurry Sundown (1967,
starring Michael Caine, Jane Fonda, Diahann Carroll, Faye Dunaway, Burgess
Meredith and John Phillip Law), which has been remastered from original 35mm
source materials, the cult comedy Skidoo (1968, an all-star cast
topped off by none other than Groucho Marx as God!!!) and Such Good Friends (1971,
teaming Dyan Cannon with James Coco, Jennifer O'Neill, Ken Howard, Burgess
Meredith and Louise Lasser).
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