LAST UPDATE May 19, 2026

Review: Zarak, 1956: The British Empire of the 1800s is trying to keep the mail routes running smoothly in Afghanistan, but there is a problem: Zarak Khan and his Afghan bandits won't let it happen. They are devoted instead to the ancient and respected profession of banditry, and, of course, to turning a profit whenever possible. Completely at odds with this goal, the Empire dispatches Major Michael Ingram (Michael Wilding) to deal with the situation.

Meanwhile, Zarak Khan (Victor Mature), the bandit leader, has problems of his own. His banditry business is running smoothly, but unfortunately for him, he has a haunted past, that is, he's got a powerful yen for one of the young women among his father’s many wives, the dancer Salma (Anita Ekberg). When the two get near each other, Zarak looks like he's in great pain and Salma says that she wants to kill herself or have someone else kill her. In fact, getting caught smooching Salma is what got Zarak tossed out into the wilderness from his father's clan and from where Zarak began his current bandit operation.

This colorful film, directed by Terence Young, is a handsome Technicolor/CinemaScope adventure shot on location in India, Morocco, and Myanmar. When we see majestic, snow-covered mountains as Zarak rides across the peaks taunting the British, those are not matte paintings in the background. Finlay Currie, appearing as “The Mullah,” periodically enters the story to provide another of his familiar performances as the voice of mercy and seasoned wisdom in a grand adventure film (a role he also fulfilled in epics such as Ivanhoe and Ben Hur).

And, then there's Anita Ekberg, age 25, physically fit, to say the least, and probably the main special effect in this film. Except for Victor Mature's pained expressions from an uncomfortable moral sense stirring inside of Zarak's heart and clashing with the cruel demands of traditional bandit badness, Ekberg is showcased as the reason we're here. Watching her dancing around in a harem girl outfit (and apparently finding it sort of funny, judging by her expressions) it seems part burlesque and part a real effort to make it clear why Zarak, usually determined and in charge, is regularly getting discombobulated. But how a Swedish girl ended up in Afghanistan isn't addressed.

Review: Superman, 2025: This is, unfortunately, kind of a stupid movie. The special effects are often spectacular, though not always, and there are performances from the cast that are really quite good, but, again, not always. But, in the end the film is doomed by its script. Superhero films are not exactly renowned for adherence to reality, but even with the acceptance of the extraordinary physical powers of Superman, something easy enough to do after many decades of superhero movies (a cycle kicked off by the 1978 Superman with Christopher Reeves), it is the actions of the human cast that bogs down this movie into a Saturday morning cartoon level of storytelling. More about Superman, 2025

Review: Cat-Women of the Moon, 1953: Marie Windsor is having serious problems keeping her mind on her job as navigator on a rocketship traveling toward the moon. She keeps feeling compelling thoughts demanding she land the craft at a certain spot on the far side of the familiar space orb. Once landed, they disembark and Windsor deftly maneuvers the male crew (the ship's two leaders are both in love with her) toward a secret ruined city below the surface. There they discover a race of "cat-women" who run around in black leotard tights and who exercise a kind of mind-control skill that is at its most powerful when projected onto the female brain, that is, Windsor's. Meanwhile, the men are delighted to meet these beautiful denizens of an ancient space-empire, not suspecting the Cat-Woman have a master plan to swipe the rocketship and head to earth on a mission to conquor and repopulate their almost vanished species.

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The line-up of May releases from Warner Archive, quite a few titles with excellent new 4K scans from quality film elements.

Fast Review: The Return of Swamp Thing - 1989: This film doesn't have much ambition other than to play sequel to the original film of 1982 and to try to underline every character and story element with an alternative meaning that is pure camp humor. Louis Jourdan plays a villain that seems somehow bored no matter how much mayhem is happening in his immediate surroundings, and our main star, a young and pretty Heather Locklear, seems to happily grin bigger and bigger as the preposterousness of the story builds. The special effects, writing and side-characters are much better than a straight-to-VHS-tape movie of the 1980s, but somehow The Return of Swamp Thing seems like it was truly made to reside on the shelf of some eternal Blockbuster Video store where it is always ten-minutes before closing on a Friday night and you've already seen all the other "better" titles.

Fast Review: The Divorce of Lady X, 1938: Laurence Olivier is an attorney in London who is a jaded veteran of divorce trials. One evening he is forced by circumstances of weather to stay overnight at a hotel teeming with women who are also stuck there after an event at the hotel's dance hall. Mercilessly disregarding the plea of the hotel management to "double-up" on lodgings since there's not enough room for everyone, Olivier ends up being outsmarted by a clever Merle Oberon who practically steals his bed out from under him, an action that leaves him sleaping uncomfortably in an outer room and also quite smitten.

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Review: The Leech Woman, 1960: Colleen Gray spends part of this film under heavy age makeup, caught in a twisted variation on the “fountain of youth” story. In this case, a venal scientist (her husband!) is determined to make millions from an African tribe’s secret youth-restoring medicine. He pretends his efforts are meant to restore his much older wife’s health and beauty, but we can easily see this is merely a ploy to gain access to her wealth. When success comes, though, there's a price, one that catches the mendacious husband completely by surprise.

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The Marion Davies' film It's A Wise Child, 1931, Warner Archive Blu Ray, release coming May 26, 2026.

HD master from a new 4K scan of best preservation elements!" "...a witty portrait of small-town morality turned upside down – and a reminder of why she ranked among Hollywood’s most engaging stars. Out of general distribution for decades and never shown on television..."

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