Archive 558

August 2025

Why Did Bette Davis Appear on Gunsmoke in 1967? – MSN Remind

...[Bruce] Dern admitted that he knew Davis was not sure about appearing on television at first. But she accepted the job because she was having trouble finding movie roles and this fell into her lap. Even so, Dern shared in a 2013 interview with CBS News, "[I went] to work on a Gunsmoke. And Walter Hill, who’s a wonderful, fabulous director — I’d go anywhere for Walter Hill to work for him; I’ve done three [films] for him — he comes up to me (it was [my] second Gunsmoke) [and] he says, ‘Wait ’til you see who your mom is today.’ And I walk in, and there’s Bette Davis sitting a chair. And I get tears in my eyes. She said, ‘And what’s the matter with you, Brucester?’ I said, ‘Bette, it’s a Gunsmoke.’ [She said] ‘Who’s gonna pay for my cigarettes? I took an ad out in the trades, [saying] ‘seven-time Oscar nominee looking for work.’ Nobody cares.'"

Fast Reviews

Sinners - 2025: Michael B. Jordan does double duty as a pair of twin brothers in this tale set in the Mississippi Delta. Sinners has a sociopolitical commentary running almost lengthwise through the story, with details about everything from racial politics to the dilemma of the meaning of music itself in the African American experience, and then there's, well, a lot of vampires.

More about Sinners - 2025

You buy a movie online, but do you own it? Class action against Amazon over misleading ownership issues for online streaming films – Hollywood Reporter

Consider the $4.99 director’s cut of Alien on Amazon Prime Video. Cheap, right? But if the tech giant loses the rights to that version, the movie can be replaced with a different cut, like the one for theaters. And if Amazon loses the rights to the film altogether, it’ll completely disappear from the viewer’s library...."

Fast Reviews:

Charlie Chan in Egypt - 1935: Chan (Warner Oland) arrives in Egypt investigating an archeological dig and comes across a strange phenomenon: an ancient mummy that under X-ray shows it has a very modern bullet in its chest. More about Charlie Chan in Egypt - 2015.

Fast Reviews:

Mr. Right - 2015: A highly skilled but now reformed hit man (Sam Rockwell) continues to shoot people, but only the ones who try to hire him, because, as he tells them before pulling the trigger "murder is wrong." More about Mr. Right – 2015.

Steven Spielberg purchased the Academy Awards of Bette Davis and Clark Gable, paying more than $1 million – Comic Basics

Davis’ Oscar went up for auction and sold for $578,000. The winning bidder was later revealed to be Spielberg, who immediately donated the award back to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to safeguard its legacy. Clark Gable’s Oscar followed a similar path. Spielberg placed an anonymous bid and paid $607,500 for the statuette, also returning it to the Academy for permanent preservation..."If not with the Clark Gable estate, I could think of no better sanctuary for Gabe’s only Oscar than the Motion Picture Academy. The Oscar statuette is the most personal recognition of good work our industry can ever bestow, and it strikes me as a sad sign of our times that this icon could be confused with a commercial treasure." Unlike some collectors who view Oscars as financial investments, Spielberg has made it clear that his goal is to protect the history of cinema..."

Fast Reviews:

The Time of Their Lives - 1946: Out of the ordinary Abbott & Costello comedy with Marjorie Reynolds which starts in the American Revolution and then speeds up to an (unmentioned) post-WW2 time frame - more about The Time of Their Lives

Blu Ray 1924 He Who Gets Slapped – Flicker Alley

The disk comes with a lot of extras, commentary, cartoon (Koko at the Circus, 1926) and other items.

He Who Gets Slapped makes its high definition debut through the generous support of the Sunrise Foundation for Education & the Arts. The film was restored by Blackhawk Films in 2024 from a first generation 35mm safety print and a 16mm dupe negative. It is presented with two different scores: an original piano composition by Antonio Coppola and an original orchestral score by Alloy Orchestra, recorded live in 2013."

Our review of the 1924 He Who Gets Slapped

Steelbook Sale – Shout Factory

Fast Reviews:

Daughter of Dr. Jekyll - 1957: Gloria Talbott and John Agar do what they can with the minimalist production of this story of Dr. Jekyll's daughter (Talbott) showing up at the family's gloomy estate to inherit and discover, previously unknown to her, that dad was the famous Hyde/Jekyll of legend. Arthur Shields plays a kindly family doctor who tries to help her through the turmoil of having the estate (and its wealth) dumped into her lap plus learning about the unwholesome "curse" that, with a full moon, she will have a propensity to become a monster like Jekyll did when becoming Mr. Hyde. John Agar is the girl's boyfriend and is (mostly) determined to dispel the "curse" as a faery tale, or, as the story proceeds, a psychological manipulation. Meanwhile, the daughter is becoming convinced something is horrifyingly happening to her that she can't remember or control.

The problem for this cast and the director, Edgar Ulmer, is that the lack of money is too evident, and the script is too bare of any subtleties. Like an already seen period TV drama you can tell where the plot twists are going long before they arrive, and the only real pleasure of the film is Ulmer's sometimes interesting visual work and Talbott and Agar trying to go the limit of their abilities to make their characters stick out from the mediocrity surrounding them. Arthur Shields is a high point of the production, but he nor the rest of the cast can perform any alchemy here.

Lemon Drop Kid - 1951: I read that Bob Hope, who stars in this film, wanted to make a Christmas movie with the staying power of other in-the-process-of-becoming-classic holiday films out of Hollywood, so he got together a Damon Runyon story with himself and Marilyn Maxwell about saving an old folks home in the middle of a plot which includes the tension of the "Lemon Drop Kid" (nicknamed this on account of his consuming lemon drops all the time) on a deadline to pay off some dangerous gangsters he owes $10K to. Sounds like a great list of ingredients, combining a Runyon tale about Christmas plus old ladies in need of help and Hope maneuvered into being the hero, but it just doesn't gel. The humor is announced in such a big way that you can almost see subliminal neon "applause" and "laughter" signs blinking. The construction of the tale is out of pace with itself and the laughs are too enunciated and seem to be exaggerated far beyond what any typical Runyon story would contain.

Here comes the Universal Legacy Dracula film collection: all in 4K – Collider

"The genius of ‘Sunset Boulevard’" – Washington Post

According to Lubin, D.W. Griffith

... was a living metaphor who probably influenced their script. After years at the top during the silent era, Griffith had fallen into intemperance and destitution. He was known for frequenting Los Angeles bars in his later years and haranguing people he had known during the good old days. Wilder had witnessed Griffith doing just that to movie producer Samuel Goldwyn in 1948. In the wake of Griffith’s death a few months later and the many contrived newspaper obituaries, Brackett saw a subject worth pursuing. As Lubin puts it, "Hollywood devours its own and has no respect for its past."

What's stored at "Iron Mountain"? – UK Far Out Magazine

The film and music world is still tethered to the physical archives of old analogue tapes and celluloid film. After years of subpar generation loss—the degradation of fidelity when media is transferred or copied to new mediums as technology evolves—the remastering boom of the last decade or so has demanded access to the source recordings to amplify the sonic character of our favourite albums and present the films we love in that beautiful 4K picture. The preciousness of such archives was once again made painfully apparent in 2008 when the music industry was struck with one of its worst accidents since the days of the nitrate explosions. Using a blowtorch to warm asphalt shingles on Universal Studios Hollywood’s backlot roofing, a worker had accidentally allowed a fire to sweep across three acres of the property, damaging the King Kong Encounter attraction and an estimated 50,000 archived digital video and film copies, including the original recordings of some of the biggest-selling artists of all time under Universal Music Group’s corporate umbrella...."

A short silent movie, made by Edison Studios, has been found in a brick outhouse in the north of England. More remarkable is the fact that the film has spent the last sixty years in this dank haven.

It is: 'The Actress' (1913) pic.twitter.com/iESXitKkFr

— filmisfabulous (@filmisfabulous) August 12, 2025

A 1915 silent film considered "lost" was found on Long Island – MSN New York Daily News

The short film is about Abraham Lincoln

Fast Reviews

Clark Gable and Doris Day butt heads then get friendly in this story of a veteran newsman who ends up back in school learning about his trade from university teacher (Day) with a little help from an unlikely ally (Gig Young.) More about Teacher's Pet - 1958

Fast Reviews - Champagne for Caesar, 1950

An unemployable genius (played by Ronald Colman) goes onto a TV Game Show that allows a winning participant to double their earnings each week by returning and maintaining an unbroken streak of correct answers, something that in Colman's case stretches into a hot streak where he may bankrupt the gameshow and it's corporate soap sponsor - more about Champagne for Caesar

Cohen Media titles at 50% off at Kino for next few days – Kinolorber

Mostly more modern titles, but does include Buster Keaton films, Douglas Fairbanks silent films, the 1932 James Whale Old Dark House, among others.

Fast Reviews

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken - 1966: Don Knotts goes from rattling fear to determination and back again in the funny The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

Fast Reviews

The Parent Trap - 1961: At summer camp ("Camp Inch," though it keeps coming across as "Camp Itch,") two girls meet and instantly dislike each other: Susan Evers (Hayley Mills) from Monterey, California, and Sharon McKendrick (also Hayley Mills), from Boston. Incredibly, everyone notices that except for their differing hair styles, the two look exactly like one another.

More about The Parent Trap, 1961

Errol Flynn 6-Film BluRay Collection coming from Warner Archives – Twitter

September 2, 2025 release of set containing The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, Adventures of Don Juan, Santa Fe Trail, Edge of Darkness, and Objective, Burma. Also includes Classic Shorts and trailers.

Criterion disks are on sale 50% off at Barnes and Noble - - online and in the retail stores. – Barnesandnoble

Fast Reviews

Something for the Boys - 1944: Cheerful Technicolor musical from World War II era that somehow is mostly about the military but somehow doesn't touch upon World War II at all.

More about Something for the Boys

4K edition of Old Dark House (Karloff version) releasing July 28 – Eurekavideo

The 1939 Midnight with Colbert, Ameche and John Barrymore released on Blu Ray – Criterion

The June and July Warner Archive releases – Blu Ray

• His Kind of Woman (1951)
• Splendor in the Grass (1961)
• Executive Suite (1954)
• The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
• A Date with Judy (1948)
• The Citadel (1938)

Hammer Films 14-Movie Bundle – Shout Factory

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