Hello!

It’s not difficult to get our attention about anything related to the upcoming genre restorations due soon on disc: Arrow’s Soylent Green and Forbidden Planet, Criterion’s The Elephant Man, Severin’s The War Game, Threads and Danza Macabra 5, Vinegar Syndrome’s Explorers, Radiance’s The Saragossa Manuscript.

The new Hammer people turned our heads the other day with this teaser for their new 4K remaster of the classic 1958 Dracula, known to us as Horror of Dracula. But some things never change. The teaser’s demo setup doesn’t compare their new color scheme with a previous transfer; it instead gives us what appears to be a raw scan of the movie, which of course looks nothing like a final colorized encoding.

We don’t mind too much. We will likely love whatever we get, if Hammer’s promised uncut / uncensored / remastered version comes through. If it turns out closer to the Technicolor prints we knew and loved in U.S. screenings, all the better.

And then there’s the great disc news for August from The Warner Archive Collection, at least as concerns fans of classic WB & MGM pix. As promised, the label’s monthly output has increased quite a bit. The list spreads a wide net but scores with Golden Age titles with name stars.

Montana with Errol Flynn and Alexis Smith
Torrid Zone with James Cagney, Pat O’Brien and Ann Sheridan
All Through the Night with Humphrey Bogart + William Demarest, Jackie Gleason & Phil Silvers
The Human Comedy with Mickey Rooney and Van Johnson
Broadway Melody of 1938 with Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor

Then we have the two John Ford pictures,
Sergeant Rutledge with Woody Strode and Jeffrey Hunter
The Wings of Eagles with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara
plus the popular
Auntie Mame with Rosalind Russell and Forrest Tucker
The Bad Seed with Patty McCormack and Nancy Kelly

and the now cult attraction
Pennies from Heaven with Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and Jessica Harper

That leaves the unknown quantity TV show Forever and the 90’s picture Wag the Dog.

… But …  the even bigger news is a WAC 4K announcement for September 2 — Jacques Tourneur’s prime film noir Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. This one ought to look sensational in 4K.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson