Mill Creek Entertainment Tabs Apr. 16 For A Six-Film Cold War Thrillers Promotion On DVD

Mill Creek Entertainment continues to provide some of the best collectible film bargains with a combination of attractive price-points and solid programming selections.

A case in point is the latest addition to its Apr. 16 release calendar, the six-film, double-disc DVD collection titled Cold War Thrillers.   Priced at just $14.98, and that before discounts at retail, genre-fans with a penchant for suspense, spies and action get a terrific selection of films produced during the Cold War, including a few that are hard to come by.

We kick off with director André De Toth’s 1960 film adaptation of the Boris Morros and Charles Samuels collaboration, “My Ten Years a My Counterspy,” which was renamed for its theatrical release as Man on a String.

Based on the true story of Russian-born composer and film producer Boris Morros (nominated for three Oscars for Best Music Score — Tropic Holiday, Souls at Sea, The General Died at Dawn), who portrayed by Ernest Borgnine (named changed to Boris Mitrov for the film).  Morros was recruited as a Soviet spy in the 1930s and flipped to become a counter-spy for the FBI in 1947 — Kerwin Mathews plays one of the F.B.I. agents who recruits him. 

Man on a String is an effective, edge-of-your-seat thriller, which is currently available on amazon.com as a DVD MOD for $24.95.   Do the math, for ten dollars less you get this gem of a movie from Mill Creek Entertainment and not one or two, but five “bonus” movies.  

As to the “bonus” movies — which are terrific in their own right — you get director Sidney Lumet’s 1967 film adaptation of the John le Carré’s debut spy novel, “Call For The Dead,” which was released theatrically as The Deadly Affair.

Here, James Mason plays Charles Dobbs, a British agent who suspects that a suicide was actually an assassination … and something is fishy about his colleagues being so willing to accept the “official” version and quickly move on.  Maximilian Schell, Simone Signoret and Lynn Redgrave co-star in this elaborate mystery.

Rounding out the selections we find two-time Oscar nominee Tom Courtenay in writer/director Dick Clement’s 1969 murder mystery, Otley, where he plays a London lay-about who gets drunk one night and awakes to find that he’s wanted for murder.   Courtenay also teams up with Laurence Harvey and Mia Farrow in filmmaker Anthony Mann’s film adaptation of the Derek Marlowe spy novel, A Dandy in Aspic.   

And then there’s director David Miller’s 1968 thriller Hammerhead, which stars Vince Edwards as an American agent out to stop international criminal “Hammerhead” (played by Peter Vaughan) — Judy Geeson, Diana Dors and Beverly Adams co-star — and finally, George Peppard stars in director Sam Wanamaker’s 1970 spy-vs-spy thriller, The Executioner … Judy Geeson, Joan Collins and Oscar Homolka are Peppard’s co-stars.