Classic Stuff: Five to Buy From July

Five great classic releases on DVD and Blu-ray that you shouldn’t miss from July.


The Most Dangerous Game is the thrilling and much remade tale of shipwreck survivors who become prey for an island madman, a Russian aristocrat who’s hunted everything and finds humans the most fun to track. The twist this time is that Joel McCrea is himself a big game hunter and knows how to fight back. It’s a clear good versus evil-- and still horrifying-- story that was filmed with much of the same crew and using the same sets as King Kong, including the costar, the beautiful Fay Wray. Disc Comes with documentary Gow the Headhunter, a booklet and lots of bonus features.


Dangerous Game comes from that naughty, anything goes and decidedly adult phase of early filmdom before censorship clamped down, and whence also comes the five movie Columbia Pictures Pre-Code Collection from the TCM Vault. Arizona has John Wayne as a soldier who has to face the girl he jilted now that she’s the wife of his commanding officer. Ten Cents a Dance has Barbara Stanwyck as a dance hall girl stuck with a no-good man and the prospect of a great rich guy, but divorce was a big no-no back in this day. In Virtue, cabbie Pat O’Brien discovers that the sweet Carole Lombard he married used to be a prostitute. In Three Wise Girls Jean Harlow is a small town girl who wants to be a model, but has to face big city predators, pitfalls, desires and temptations. Shopworn sees Barbara Stanwyck falling for a high class dude whose mother frames her and gets her sent to prison. Joke’s on the upper crust though, when Barbara gets out and makes it big. Lots of extras in this set, including pictures and documents.

Singing in The Rain. This is a 60th-anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition of the popular musical, newly remastered and loaded with special features including loads of commentary from stars and experts, plus a documentary.

Two John Garfield noirs featuring meaty plots and Garfield’s always great acting. In Force of Evil Garfield is a mob lawyer involved in cornering the state lotteries and ends up on the opposite side of his brother whose honesty prevents him from playing along. This postwar picture of New York was a big favorite of and influence on Martin Scorsese. In Body and Soul Garfield plays a boxer who lets the wins go to his head.

In the sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, doctor Kevin McCarthy finds the paranoia of his small town patients hard to believe; they insist their friends and family are not at all normal or who they seem, and turns out there’s good reason for it, since the aliens are taking the form of the town’s denizens and replacing them. Directed by Don “Dirty Harry” Seigel, and widely taken as a metaphor for the insidiousness mind numbing and scary groupthink of collectivism and Communism, as witnessed and feared during the height of the Cold War. Also with Dana Wynter and Carolyn Jones, the first wife of TV king Aaron Spelling.

Not happy with any of those? In July there was also the western essential High Noon, Looney Tunes: Platinum Collection 1, and you can get way more precode action with the Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Volumes 4 and 5.

Find me at the Speakeasy for more classic entertainment.