Twilight Time DVD Releases

[JMK]

Hi, all, Blu-ray.com reviewer Jeffrey Kauffman here. This will be a bit of an unusual post as it deals with SD-DVDs, but I received several inquiries from readers after my review of Twilight Time’s release of the BD of THE EGYPTIAN, asking what I thought of Twilight Time’s other titles. I’ve posted some thumbnail sketches below of the films released thus far, and you are welcome to add your thoughts:

THE KREMLIN LETTER. This relatively late film from John Huston’s directorial career is a bracing piece of international intrigue in a Ludlum-esque sort of way, though it is so convoluted and labyrinthine that the film can be hard to fathom at times. What inarguably works here is the frantic paranoid pace of the film, with some gorgeous cinematography by Edward Scaife. This is a film which is perhaps better the second time through, once the basic outline of the plot is at least minimally understood. Filled with Huston’s trademark cynicism combined with a nice bit of subterfuge and spy wheeling and dealing, The Kremlin Letter is certainly worth checking out, especially for Huston fans.

VIOLENT SATURDAY. Twilight Time is at the mercy of what they find in the Fox assets archives, and they realized that (perhaps not in a good way) when they released Violent Saturday from the 4x3 master (i.e., not anamorphically enhanced for widescreen televisions) which Fox provided. That’s especially too bad with this very visual film, one which makes the most of the widescreen potential of CinemaScope. This is an odd film, but a completely involving one, a film which reminded me in a way of a weird sort of mash up between Douglas Sirk and Samuel Fuller. Ostensibly a crime drama, the film also explores the life of the small western town where the signature heist in the film is planned to take place. If you can handle the windowboxed presentation, this is a really interesting film and one of director Richard Fleischer’s most invigorating noirs (especially interesting in that it’s widescreen—supposedly—and in color).

WOMAN OBSESSED. Speaking of Douglas Sirk, there’s a Sirkian melodramatic touch to Woman Obsessed, a film which (according to its breathless trailer anyway) sought to trade in on star Susan Hayward’s then recent Oscar for I Want to Live! by giving her another showcase role. The results are decidedly mixed, as she plays a widow trying to raise a rebellious son in the backwoods of Canada who hires tempestuous handyman Stephen Boyd to help around the place, so to speak. This is pretty turgid going at times, but it’s very scenic, with some nice location photography interspersed with the very obvious studio bound sets. Boyd and Hayward don’t exactly set off romantic fireworks, a lack of chemistry perhaps due to their difference in age.

FATE IS THE HUNTER. This is an exciting proto-disaster film that has the audacity to place the disaster pretty early on in the film and then spend the rest of the film deconstructing what caused it. Glenn Ford plays an airline executive seeking to clear the name of his buddy Rod Taylor, who crashed a jumbo jet killing most aboard. The twin dramas of what caused the crash and Taylor and Ford’s convoluted and intertwined backstories play out in a very entertaining film that also benefits from a gorgeous Jerry Goldsmith score. The cameo by Jane Russell is pretty lamentable.

All of these DVDs feature isolated scores as supplements. Twilight Time titles are available exclusively from ScreenArchives.com.