NEW RELEASES

Next Update: September 15, 2023  

 

SPYDER’S WEB: The Complete TV Series

Televised in 1972, the Arachnid Film Unit run by Lottie Dean (Patricia Cutts) is the cover for an obscure group of intelligence operatives who are licensed to kill. They manage to smash criminal organizations and some of the villains are truly bizarre and maniacal. Assisting Lottie Dean is Anthony Ainley and his secretary, played by Veronica Carlson. All 13 hour-long episodes are on this multi-disc set.

Sale Price $19.95

 

NO TIME FOR LOVE (1943)

Starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert. Sandhog Jim Ryan is suspended from his job helping to dig a tunnel beneath a river because of an incident while being photographed for a story by Katherine Grant. Feeling responsible, Katherine hires Ryan to assist her during his suspension. She is elegant and sophisticated, while he is outspoken and down-to-earth. This combination leads to conflicts, and ultimately romance.

 

THE GILDED LILY (1935)

Starrinf Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland and Claudette Colbert. New York stenographer Marilyn David meets Englishman Charles Gray and they fall in love. But Charles leaves town and Marilyn discovers that he is a duke's son and already engaged. Marilyn confides in her platonic friend, reporter Peter Dawes, who publicizes her as the 'No Girl' who refused nobility. So Marilyn cashes in on her unwelcome notoriety by becoming a cafe' entertainer, and in an unexpected way, she succeeds. But can she decide between her two loves?

 

MARJORIE BEEBEE COMEDIES

Before Thelma Todd there was Marjorie Beebee who, in the 1930s, was the star of her own series of comedy film shorts. This DVD contains the following comedies: He Trumped Her Ace (1930), Bride’s Mistake (1931), Hold ‘er Sheriff (1931), Rough Idea of Love (1930), Fat Wives for Thin (1930), One Yard to Go (1931), plus a bonus comedy short!

 

JOE COOK COMEDIES

A collection of film shorts starring Joe Cook, radio comedian who also made the transition to motion-pictures. Among the five comedy film shorts on this DVD: Mr. Widget (1935), At the Ball Game (1929), A Nose for News (1935), Penny Wise (1935), and The White Hope (1936).

 

THE COMPLETE RAY COOKE “TORCHY” COMEDIES 

All 12 comedy film shorts with comedian Ray Cooke playing the role of Torchy, the office boy who finds himself in hilarious situations. This two-disc set contains all 12 comedies! Torchy’s Night Cap (1932), Torchy’s Busy Day (1932), Torchy’s Two Toots (1932), Torchy Raises the Aunties (1932), Torchy Turns Turtle (1933), Torchy’s Kitty Coup (1933), Torchy (1931), Torchy Pass the Buck (1931), Torchy Rolls his Own (1932), Torchy’s Loud Speaker (1933), Trying Out Torchy (1933), and Torchy Turns the Trick (1932).

Sale $9.99

 

AMERICA APPLAUDS: AN EVENING FOR RICHARD ROGERS (1951)

Rodgers’ friends and colleagues pay tribute to him in this long-unseen television special produced by the Souvaine Corporation and broadcast on NBC. Among the original Broadway cast members reprising the songs they introduced are Vivienne Segal (“Bewitched” from “Pal Joey”) and Alfred Drake (“People Will Say We’re in Love” from “Oklahoma!”). Vera Zorina dances “Rodgers in Three Quarter Time,” a ballet created expressly for the show set to three Rodgers waltzes, and Mary Martin sings “Wonderful Guy” as Rodgers himself accompanies her on piano.

 

THE ILLUSTRATED ALFRED HITCHCOCK (1972)

Rarely-seen TV interview (and we thought we had seen them all!) Film director Alfred Hitchcock discusses his life and career in long talks with Pia Lindstrom (newscaster and daughter of Hitchcock star Ingrid Berman) and with film historian William Everson. Excerpts from several films illustrate these interviews. Discussion topics include: what is fear?, method acting vs. film acting, the difference between the usual “Who Done It” mystery and what he considers to be real suspense. His choice of leading ladies and why (Bergman, Baxter, Kelly, Marie Saint, Leigh, etc.). This hour-long telecast was on a program called CAMERA THREE. To round out the other hour we are providing another episode of the series, focusing on Claire Bloom, who reads poetry. Excerpts include selections from T.S. Eliot, Lord Byron, A.E. Housman, Sir Philip Sydney, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and medieval carols. 

 

AGON: THE ATOMIC DRAGON (1968)

All four half-hour episodes of this short-lived TV series that was a deliberate rip-off to Godzilla. A truck carrying uranium falls off a cliff into the ocean awakening a giant monster that wreaks havoc on Japan. Agon was a short-lived series in Japan, Agon being yet another giant monster who smashes buildings and leaves destruction all over. But this one is a lot of fun, the action starts pretty early and the monster destroys all the miniature buildings and sets with a lot of enthusiasm.

 

SUPERNATURAL: The Complete 1977 TV series

Chilling anthology series where membership to the secret society, The Club of the Damned, is granted through telling horror stories. There was at one time a tradition of late night horror that seemed to abound in the seventies in Britain.This is an episodic collection of tales linked together by the telling at a club of the damned.Ghosts,vampires and werewolves alongside other nightmarish scenarios (creepy Victorian dolls anyone?) and an interesting take on the Frankenstein story feature.This is what the BBC does best. Well written, intelligent and well acted stories.

Sale Price $19.95

 

LAKE OF DRACULA (1971)

A doctor investigates the murders of several women at a lakeside resort. His investigation leads him to believe that a vampire is responsible for the murders. He sets out to track the vampire down.

 

EVIL OF DRACULA (1974)

A teacher assumes a position at a school that's run by a vampire. Dracula, played by an uncredited caucasian, was shipwrecked in the 1600s in Japan, when Christianity was illegal. He was forced to spit on the cross and wander alone in the desert. Upon finding himself bleeding, he was so thirsty he drank the blood and acquired a taste for it, attacking local teenager Keiko. In present day, Professor Shiraki arrives at a girl's school where he was to be teaching, but now the principal, whose wife died in a car accident, wants Shiraki to take over for him. The principal is keeping his wife in the cellar for a week, supposedly according to local custom, to see if she might return to life. Immediately suspicious, Shiraki investigates and becomes entrenched in horror of the vampires. Three girls are caught up too, as one has already been bitten, and her roomates stay to care for her.

 

THE WILD RACERS (1968)

Starring Fabian, Dick Miller and Judy Cornwell. Promising young racing car driver Joe Joe Quillico leaves the stock car racing scene in the United States in order to pursue Grand Prix racing in Europe. After limited success he manages to win the Spanish Grand Prix. His love life however, is much less successful and his winning on the track only serves to alienate the woman he loves – with unhappy consequences.

 

THE ANDERSON TRIAL (1970)

Starring Richard Basehart, William Shatner, Cameron Mitchell, Buddy Ebsen, Martin Sheen and many others. The Andersonville Trial was a television adaptation of a 1959 hit Broadway play by Saul Levitt. The play was based on the actual 1865 trial of Henry Wirz, played by Richard Basehart, commander of the infamous Confederate Andersonville prison, where thousands of Union prisoners died of exposure, malnutrition, and disease.

 

LILY (1973)

In this comedy TV special, Lily Tomlin plays familiar characters such as young Edith Ann, housewife Judy Beasley, and telephone operator Ernestine, while debuting a new character, Wanda V. Wilford. Lily opens the show by talking about how there’s “more to life” than being a gifted actress, and how, as a youth, she dreamed of becoming “a big city waitress.” Features celebrity guests Alan Alda, Richard Pryor and Felix Silla.

 

THE TWO WORLDS OF CHARLIE GORDON (1961)

Staring Cliff Robertson and Mona Freeman. Charlie Gordon, a mentally challenged man who is eager to learn, is given an experimental operation to increase his intelligence to genius level. The experiment seems to work, until one of the lab animals the procedure was tested on begins to lose its intelligence.

 

THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY (1944)

Starring Lynn Bari, Francis Lederer, Akim Tamiroff and Louis Calhern. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey tells the story of a rickety bridge that has spanned a deep gorge for ages. When the bridge suddenly collapses–plunging five people to their deaths–the tragedy causes a wave of superstition to engulf the villagers as they believe they are destined for continued misfortune. Only a priest can find the connections to divine intervention that will quell the townspeople’s fears.

 

THE METAPHYSICS OF BUSTER KEATON (1970)

Rarely-seen television episode of CAMERA THREE. America’s great film director-actor Buster Keaton, discussed by film critic Andrew Sarris and Raymond Rohauer, cinema historian, with some unusual perspectives on his goals and motivations. Illustrated with many film excerpts from 1917 to 1928. Rohauer knew Keaton and was partly responsible from rescuing many of his old films from destruction. Sarris is a leading film critic who has often written about Keaton. Excerpts include portions of “The General”, “Cops”, “Frozen North”, “The Boat”, “Sherlock, Jr.” and others. Rohauer also describes rescuing Keaton’s films from a garage and talking with Keaton at the end of his life when he had been forgotten. To add to the other hour is another episode of CAMERA THREE, an interview with Francois Truffaut in a conversation from 1977 with Richard Roud, then Director of the New York Film Festival. Truffaut, director of “Jules and Jim,” “The Four Hundred Blows, etc. was in America for the premier of “The Man Who Loved Women” at the 15th NYFF. The film director speaks of his childhood, the moral challenge of World War Two, the real meaning of the “auteur theory”, how the conservative French film industry was forced to change, Truffaut as a “culture hero” in the US, making a film that is as personal as a novel, the difference between French and American approaches to cinema, and many other themes.

 

THREE OF A KIND  (1944)

Starring Billy Gilbert and Shemp Howard. Two vaudeville acrobats adopt the son of an actor friend.

 

GHOST CRAZY  (1944)

Starring Billy Gilbert and Shemp Howard. Three goofballs run up against ghosts and a giant gorilla in a haunted house.

 

CONFESSIONS OF A CO-ED (1931)

Starring Sylvia Sidney and Phillips Holmes. Watch for a very young Bing Crosby in this film! A young college student gets pregnant by the man she loves, but circumstances prevent their marrying, so she marries a classmate she doesn't love. Soon, however, her lover returns, and she finds herself in a dilemma as to who to choose.

  

ERNEST TRUEX COMEDIES 

A collection of comedies starring Ernest Truex including "Expectant Father" (1934), "His Lucky Day" (1934), "Doggone Babies" (1934), "Gentlemen of the Bar" (1934), and "Get That Venus" (1933).