It was revealed this past week that Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will be closing out 2020 with a healthy slate of new Blu-ray releases lined up for delivery during the month of December.
We kick off the parade of film hits on Dec. 15 with director Terence Fisher’s 1957 landmark Hammer Films release of The Curse of Frankenstein, teaming Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in the first of a series of Hammer Films that would follow — The Horror of Dracula, The Mummy, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Gorgon, etc.
The film established both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as icons of horror and for the next two decades if their names were listed in the credits, especially together, it was a film well-worth seeing.
This is new 4K scan from various preserved film elements, and yes, it is the Blu-ray debut as well — a double-disc set (featuring three different viewing presentations: 1.85:1-16x9 widescreen, 1.66:1-16x9 widescreen and a 1.37:1 “open matte” version of the film).
Bonus features include a newly-prepared commentary featuring screenwriter and film historian Steve Haberman (he provided the screenplays for Mel Brooks’ Life Stinks and Dracula: Dead and Loving It … and is the author of “Chronicles of Terror: Silent Screams”), who is joined by filmmaker and film historian Constantine Nasr.
There are also five newly prepared featurettes — “The Resurrection Men: Hammer,” “Frankenstein and the Rebirth of the Horror Film,” “Hideous Progeny: The Curse of Frankenstein and the English Gothic Tradition,” “Torrents of Light: The Art of Jack Asher” and “Diabolus in Musica: James Bernard and the Sound of Hammer Horror.”
Also making their Blu-ray debuts on Dec. 15 are The Harvey Girls, Holiday Affair and Mister Roberts, plus 1946 Best Picture-winner, The Best Years of Our Lives is being re-issued.
Director George Sidney’s 1946 musical, The Harvey Girls, starring Judy Garland, features an archived commentary by filmmaker George Sidney, a trio of deleted musical numbers and stage session audio recording of “Hayride” and “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.”
Also making its Blu-ray debut on Dec. 15 is a new 4K scan from the original nitrate elements of director Michael Curtiz’s 1950 film biography, Young Man with a Horn, starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day and Hoagy Carmichael.
Bonus features include the Lux Radio Theatre broadcast featuring Kirk Douglas and Jo Stafford, plus three Warner Bros. theatrical cartoons from the period.
Rounding out this treasure trove of movie greats heading to Blu-ray from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in December are It Happened on Fifth Avenue and The Shop Around the Corner, which both street on the 22nd.
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