What’s the current status of Ray on DVD/Blu-ray? A recent R2 DVD of Born to Be Bad came out from Odeon. It can be had quite cheaply from online retailers. Only Bigger Than Life and King of Kings are available on Blu-ray at the moment but one would imagine that Rebel Without a Cause might see a release sooner rather than later from the reissue-obsessed WB. Johnny Guitar still, inexplicably, is not available in R1, though can be had on DVD in pretty much every country in Europe. I even picked up a steelbook for it in Spain last year. Hot Blood has a made-on-demand disc via the Columbia Classics service but is also available in the UK on proper DVD. Knock on Any Door has been released in a few countries but not yet the U.S. The Lusty Men, Born to Be Bad, A Woman’s Secret and Wind Across the Everglades should all be Warner Bros. properties and likely destined for the Warner Archive treatment, where they would join Party Girl. Run for Cover is also missing from the marketplace but can be streamed from Netflix. The DVD essentials in R1 are still In a Lonely Place, On Dangerous Ground, Bitter Victory, They Live By Night, and Rebel.

The MGM LE Collection has already been hugely hit or miss both in terms of technical quality and the strength of the films released. I’ve seen ten discs thus far, with three more here for review, and the only certified winner is the long-awaited DVD debut of Samuel Fuller’s Park Row. It’s a great, important film in the career of one of the best directors of the 1950s and the transfer quality is even better than expected (or feared, I suppose). There are a few inconsistencies, but this is overall a disc worth purchasing until something better comes along (and that might or might not happen).

I’ve reviewed it in a piece that is now live at The Digital Fix (click here to read it). In the review, I’ve tried to convey why I love Fuller’s films. They tend to feel so incredibly pure and cinematic and, vitally, different. There’s some pulp but you can get past that if you want. And when you do, the angels sing and the sun (or, if you prefer, the darkness) arrives.

Susan Slept Here is a glorious bath of Technicolor about a 35-year-old Oscar-winning screenwriter (played by Dick Powell) whose Christmas Eve includes a couple of cops delivering him a 17-year-old delinquent (Debbie Reynolds). She’s the Susan of the title, she does indeed sleep there, and they even end up driving over to Las Vegas on Christmas day for an elopement. It’s almost curious that Hollywood in the 1950s is considered to have been a conservative period for the movies, yet here was director Frank Tashlin slyly making a film that repeatedly alludes to the idea of Powell, who was actually about 49 during filming what turned out to be his last movie, having sex with the underage Reynolds, who would have been 21 in real life.

It’s easy to marvel at Tashlin’s audacity but perhaps the more salient point is that Susan Slept Here resists the temptation to take on any sort of overtly naughty or salacious tone. There are winks, as there must be, but many of these actually defuse the situation. The film is really not a traditional sex comedy despite the idea, or the potential, of sex propelling a good deal of what’s going on in the plot and among the characters. In this regard, it’s similar to Tashlin’s Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, where the notion of Tony Randall and Jayne Mansfield ever physically coupling seems not only absurd but perverse, and yet somehow still possible in the fantasy world created by the movie. The contrast of appearances between Randall and Mansfield makes their supposed romance that much more intriguing to the public and, in turn, viewers of the film. In Susan Slept Here, it’s less the age difference that creates the suspension of disbelief giggles than the fact that Reynolds’ Susan is a minor.

It would seem, too, that Powell’s Mark Christopher would have little reason to become so attached to Susan. He’s marriage-phobic but does have a girlfriend in Anne Francis who looks like a Barbie doll and is the daughter of a senator. One of those many potentially risque (or maybe it’s just me) lines in the film has Powell confirming that Francis’ character Isabella is a natural blonde. “We’re very good friends. (pause) She told me.” He seems to initially feel sorry for Susan since she’s potentially looking at spending six months on a prison farm. Hence their eloping and the planned annulment which he conveniently keeps from her. So while he’s off writing a screenplay based on her situation as a delinquent in a snowy cabin at an undisclosed location, she’s living in his apartment and bettering herself for two months. It’s horse riding in the morning and golf in the afternoon for Susan, who has sincerely fallen for Mark and now wants to show she can do everything that Isabella can.

In the process, Reynolds seems to transform from a cute kid to a rather alluring and even sexy young woman. Susan’s choice of dress changes, as do parts of her personality. When she learns of the annulment and its basic conditions, her resolve is maybe more than a little shocking. Tashlin mixes this in as smoothly as possible and seems to trust his audience at all times. What could the censors have thought about this? A sequence later where it’s made clear, though cleverly so, that Mark’s lawyer believes Susan to be pregnant is handled about as well, and with as much humor, as one could possibly imagine given the situation. The film’s final, meaningful scene again returns the topic to sex, but in a rather smart, adult way. It’s not difficult to find the deeply unrealistic male fantasy element here, also serving as potential garlic to staunch feminists. That’s representative of Tashlin, though, and many a director and many an animator. Regardless of any potential chauvinistic quality, the various sight gags and verbal jokes employed across Tashlin’s career are immeasurably smarter and more enjoyable now than the current policy of simply showing all of those things that were forbidden during his time by the censors.

Cleaner comedy, too, was offered up by Tashlin. In a stroke of wicked genius by someone, whether it was the director or the film’s credited screenwriter Alex Gottlieb or his co-author of the source play Steve Fisher, an Academy Award statuette narrates the film. Oscar, as he’s called, doesn’t burden the movie with excess chitchat but he does very humorously set up the warmly mocking tone aimed at Hollywood from the beginning. He also serves as a hilarious prop for the clueless Susan to try to crack open a nut. What part of the award does she use? Its head, of course. Mark’s secretary Maude, played by Glenda Farrell (the former Torchy Blane hardly looking like her most famous character) is also good for a few alcohol-soaked laughs and doses of common sense. She’s joined late in the film by Red Skelton, in a silent cameo, that prefigures a similar bit in Rock Hunter involving Groucho Marx.

Though Tashlin wasn’t yet working in Scope on this film, his mastery of color and the general visual impact within the frame is evident here much as it would be on Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? three years later. The former animator included less purely visual gags on Susan Slept Here but what he did come up with, like the placement of the Navy anchor on Mark’s friend Virgil (Alvy Moore), is typically brilliant, if subtle. The hues are dazzling also, throughout the movie but especially in a strange musical dream sequence that, despite the presence of two great stars of the genre in Powell and Reynolds, comes out of nowhere in terms of the plot. Vincente Minnelli deservedly gets a lot of credit for his use of color but Tashlin is right there too. His star is simply not as high, and his career was much shorter. Frank Tashlin was one of the best of the fifties Hollywood directors both at working with color and at directing comedy. His smart but zany style of the latter plays today like a natural continuation of the screwball comedies of the thirties and forties.

Susan Slept Here is not strictly a Christmas movie, playing well at any time of the year, but parts of it do take place then so it made sense for the Warner Archive to trot out its DVD-R this past holiday season. Of note, the picture was made for RKO so Warner Bros. does not control the rights to the film in every country, leaving open the possibility for a pressed disc in R2.

The Archive’s single-layered disc sports a progressive transfer in the 1.66:1 aspect ratio. It’s enhanced for widescreen televisions. The colors are generally tight enough to avoid quibbling and really quite nice to look at on the whole. Good marks for that. The “Remastered” label attached to this release makes me wonder what criteria Warner Home Video was using because plenty of speckles, an instance of a visible scratch going the length of the frame, and a few other damage marks are all clearly still here. Maybe these are simply indicative of a lack of significant restoration. Regardless, I do want to emphasize that Susan Slept Here looks more than fine for my standards. It’s slightly soft, with definite grain, but I was happy with the presentation.

Audio is, as expected, an English mono track spread across two channels. I heard a few pops and some crackle and hiss. This isn’t perfect but it too allows the film to be enjoyed at one’s leisure. The somewhat painful reality of most made-on-demand discs is that we’re paying for convenience more than ever. Rather than the studios fixing up product and adding enticing bonus material the newest model is to offer varying degrees of quality with far less care overall, from a technical standpoint. Alas, no subtitles.

There is a trailer at least. It’s in 1.33:1 and looks far worse than the film, with smeared colors.

A country blonde Kansas girl retains California private detective Philip Marlowe for $50, hoping he can find her brother. When Marlowe instead comes across a fresh kill accomplished via ice pick, he returns the girl’s money and bows out of the case. But our Marlowe can’t stay away from a female in peril and he ultimately finds some incriminating photographs that smell of blackmail. It soon becomes clear that things aren’t exactly as they seem. Another ice pick murder, a gangster and his group of thugs, a night club dancer, and a popular television actress all figure prominently in the quest to make sense of the whole mess.

There’s so much baggage attached to the character of Philip Marlowe that it’s almost a wonder he’s been portrayed as frequently as he has on film. Ten different actors have tried their hand playing Raymond Chandler’s signature creation in the movies and a couple more on series television. The interpretations have varied a good deal, leaving fans of the page version of the character seemingly always ready to snipe. Humphrey Bogart in Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep is an easy favorite but Dick Powell got there first, in Murder, My Sweet. The subjective-angled Marlowe from Robert Montgomery’s Lady in the Lake has only a small handful of fans, among whom I count myself. That same year George Montgomery (no relation) did the private detective in the hard-to-find John Brahm-directed picture The Brasher Doubloon. The New Hollywood of the late ’60s and 1970s rediscovered Marlowe in quite varied ways. Robert Mitchum got the character rather late in life in two films while Elliott Gould pissed off the faithful in Robert Altman’s subversively brilliant The Long Goodbye.

Potentially the most apt incarnation of Philip Marlowe occurred with the simply titled Marlowe, a 1969 feature directed by Paul Bogart. Its star is James Garner, in proto-Rockford mode, and the Chandler book being adapted (by Sterling Siliphant) is The Little Sister. Garner was adept at playing characters who were casual, smart and tough without being invulnerable. In virtually every other performance of Marlowe on film you can see aspects of Garner’s signature style. He would seem to have been a perfect fit to play Chandler’s private eye. The unfortunate comedown is that things didn’t exactly mesh as planned or hoped, and Garner’s version turned out to be as uneven as he is affable. Still here, at times, are the classic Marlowe ethics, the quips, and the knack for connecting A to B to C. But, perhaps as a result of the film’s overall bumpiness, the character manages to feel underdeveloped. It’s this lack of distinction that holds Marlowe back from the success gained by previous Chandler adaptations.

If you can remove any hard-boiled expectations, the film proves to have a number of smaller pleasures. Chandler’s dense plotting remains, and the story elements come together like a beautifully intricate puzzle. Otherwise, it really might be best seen as a James Garner vehicle instead of a Marlowe one. Garner is deeply in his element here, playing a character conspicuously like the one he played in The Rockford Files. His Marlowe is very much in the vein of that usually broke California private detective who was prone to coming out on the losing end of fisticuffs. Philip Marlowe is a better dresser than Jim Rockford, and there are obviously other differences, but it’s not much of a stretch to see the similarities. Aside from a risqué dancing number by Rita Moreno and an instance or two of mild profanity, Marlowe even resembles a television production over a theatrical one. Indeed, with the unimaginative framing and direction by TV veteran Bogart, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a movie actually made for the small screen.

Before even sort of starting to dismiss Marlowe, it needs to be asserted that the film is hardly a dud. It’s a solid watch - reasonably involving and enjoyable aside from a sometimes sagging section midway through to late in the movie. The reliably charismatic Garner is joined by three forgettable female co-stars (Gayle Hunnicutt, Sharon Farrell, Corinne Camacho) and the far more vivacious Rita Moreno, playing a night club dancer. Hunnicutt somehow got above-title billing. Strangely enough, the Texas-born Hunnicutt seems to be suppressing an English accent here. She was married to the actor David Hemmings at the time but only moved to England after filming Marlowe. Other notable cast members include Carroll O’Connor as a police lieutenant, William Daniels (whose namesake was the director of photography), and Jackie Coogan. A big draw for certain modern viewers will be the two appearances by Bruce Lee. They come and go but both are fun scenes. Dig the character name Winslow Wong.

It’s also pretty easy to have fun with a movie where seemingly random insertions like Marlowe enjoying a Greta Garbo performance on a television monitor instead of watching the live filming of a popular show on a soundstage or Garner asserting “impertinent…even baroque” in sly reference to something in Gore Vidal’s novel Myra Breckinridge occur. The film even has a theme song which plays over its colorful opening credits. The track, named after Chandler’s source novel, is performed by the band Orpheus and repeats in part at the end of the film. As can be seen during that title sequence, Marlowe at times seems to want to align itself with the groovy era in which it was made rather than the postwar setting found in the book. This doesn’t make for the smoothest or most successful of transitions. Suddenly the character of Marlowe is a square and the little psychedelic touches come off as mere pandering. Now as an artifact, it further distances the film from the classic Philip Marlowe of Chandler’s novels (though in a much different way than Altman’s version). It’s also probably illustrative of the difficult transition the film can’t quite accomplish successfully from one era and medium to the next.

The Warner Archive Collection, a made-on-demand service from Warner Bros. that is now at around 1,000 titles deep, has made some real strides in improving its product. There are the many titles being categorized as “Remastered” (including Marlowe). There’s also a far more attractive approach to cover art, typically using the film’s original poster as a basis, than the uniformly ugly blue fronts that originally adorned Warner Archive releases. Recently, there’s even been disc art added to these purple-underbellied DVD-Rs. A few extra features have also been tacked on to some of the most recent releases. Now if we could just get lower prices, subtitles, wider availability, and a format that doesn’t have questions about stability…

Marlowe has a nice color transfer in the 1.78:1 aspect ratio (listed incorrectly on the back of the case as 1.85:1). It’s enhanced for widescreen displays and has been progressively transferred. Some dirt and debris remain, though it’s minimal. Close-ups look reasonably clear and acceptable, with longer shots appearing a bit softer. Colors are quite warm, bathed in California sun. You probably can’t watch this disc and discern any real difference between it being a single-layered DVD-R and if it was a DVD. Though I’d still prefer the latter, this is a more than decent-looking image.

Audio is English mono with no problems such as hiss or crackle. And no subtitles.

An included trailer (2:12) is, for some reason, in letterboxed 1.33:1.

Just up, my review of Arrow’s Region B release of Rififi. The UK Blu-ray is a gem. Folks locked to Region A can hope for the Criterion Collection to upgrade its DVD edition in the near future.

It’s MOD baby, and (almost) everyone’s doin’ it. Of the major Hollywood studios only Paramount doesn’t yet have its tentacles involved somehow in the recent made-on-demand scheme. The Warner Archive Collection seems to have proven that, believe it or not, there’s a profit to be made upon charging around $20 for a burned DVD-R to some of your most loyal consumers. I believe the WB honcho largely responsible for the Archive recently revealed that his service only needs to sell 70 copies before starting to turn a profit. And where do those black pennies go? Pockets, son, pockets. Certainly not back to the consumer. Remember when the Warner Archive began and the same honcho who likes to be quoted in news articles as he basks in such success said that the burn-on-demand service wouldn’t mark an end to regular retail releases from Warner Bros.? I sure do, and I’ve also noticed that exactly two new-to-DVD titles have emerged this year (Keeper of the Flame and The Sea of Grass, in a Tracy-Hepburn set) with one more (Night Flight) due soon.

I have some plans for the Warner Archive later, fingers crossed, but right now the focus is more on MGM’s recent version, called the Limited Edition Collection. Isn’t everything sort of limited in its own way? Regardless, I was offered the chance to review some of these titles for The Digital Fix and I jumped at it. Not quite to the moon, mind you, but a good jump nonetheless. Last week I reviewed Cop Hater, a solid adaptation of Ed McBain’s first 87th precinct novel that stars a young Robert Loggia, and The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday, a reasonably fun comedic western that pairs Lee Marvin and Oliver Reed. This week it’s the stellar cast of Stanley Kramer’s Not As a Stranger, which has five Oscar winners including Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin and the great Robert Mitchum, and a solid though somewhat preachy noir directed by Robert Wise called The Captive City. Still left to review is a strong psychological thriller I caught on TCM last year called Return from the Ashes.

I have even more requested and hopefully on the way so maybe this relationship will continue. I’ll report and review and do it with minimal mincing of words.

What is this? Why can they not be confident enough in their own opinions so as to forgo the need for universal confirmation. And, further, why do they tend to use the argument that x film is okay because y and z and many other films are bad? So we’re judging on a scale now, are we? How ridiculous. There are thousands upon thousands of films out there. Just because one mainstream, big-budgeted blockbuster wannabe is slightly superior to another doesn’t make it worthwhile or notable or even good. It simply makes it a potentially better diversion for those unwilling or incapable of digging deeper. Ho hum.

So, we soldier on. We do our little reviews and we peck out little posts here from time to time. It’s never as often as ideal or as insightful as hoped. That it’s all done rather anonymously complicates matters a tiny bit. No one would buy that it’s performance art but it almost is, at times.

What’s nice is simplification, of breaking a film down in a few sentences and then, while acknowledging the additional complexities involved, leaving the reader/viewer on his or her own to finish the job. Writing about movies is such a cathartic experience but it’s nearly impossible not to wonder if you’re being heard or understood. I sometimes think the internet has created more people who want to write about film than those who want to read about it, and then I wonder if I’m guilty of that very infraction.

More reviews, more posts coming later.