Tough Guys of Action 20 Movie Pack - Blockbuster New Releases Information

By 

Annie Van Auken (Planet Earth) –

  

  

  

TOUGH GUYS OF ACTION might be better described as “Action Stars in Other Genres,” for only half of these 20 titles are legitimate action movies.

The two based on Hemingway stories (“Farewell to Arms and “Snows of Kilimanjaro”) are melodrama/romances. The Bogart film (“Beat the Devil”) fits just about every category BUT action. “Death Sentence” is a courtroom drama, “They Made Me a Criminal” a crime story. The DeNiro film’s a drama, as are the Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier movies. Jack Palance appears in a horror/mystery story.

In spite of a technical misnomer, this DVD box set offers literally dozens of fine performers in mostly lesser-known films. The price for over 31 hours of entertainment is quite fair and BCI’s audio and video transfers of these unrestored movies uniformly decent.

For action film fans, Rule of the Gun 20 Movie Pack (from MILL CREEK ENTERTAINMENT) would complement this collection nicely.

.
Parenthetical numbers preceding titles are 1 to 10 viewer poll ratings found at a film resource website.

(5.2) Agency (Canada-1980) – Robert Mitchum/Lee Majors/Valerie Perrine/Saul Rubinek
(6.5) Beat the Devil (UK/USA/Italy-1953) – Humphrey Bogart/Jennifer Jones/Gina Lollobrigida/Robert Morley/Peter Lorre
(6.3) Blood on the Sun (1945) – James Cagney/Sylvia Sidney/Robert Armstrong/Wallace Ford/Rosemary DeCamp/Hugh Beaumont (uncredited)
(5.0) Border Cop (“The Border”) (UK-1979) – Telly Savalas/Eddie Albert/Michael V. Gazzo
(3.6) Border Shootout (1990) – Charlene Tilton (Glenn Ford/Michael Ansara in bit parts)
(4.4) The Boxer (Italy-1972) – Robert Blake/Ernest Borgnine
(4.8) Death Rage (Italy-1976) – Yul Brynner/Martin Balsam
(5.2) Death Sentence (TV-1974) – Nick Nolte/Cloris Leachman/Laurence Luckinbill/Alan Oppenheimer/William Schallert
(6.5) A Farewell to Arms (1932) – Gary Cooper/Helen Hayes/Adolphe Menjou
(5.5) Gold (UK-1974) – Roger Moore/Susannah York/Ray Milland/Bradford Dillman/John Gielgud
(4.3) The Klansman (1974) – Lee Marvin/Richard Burton/Cameron Mitchell/O.J. Simpson/Lola Falana/Linda Evans
(6.0) Man in the Attic (1953) – Jack Palance/Constance Smith/Frances Bavier/Rhys Williams
(6.3) Marie Galante (1934) – Spencer Tracy/Ned Sparks/Helen Morgan/Sig Ruman
(4.3) The Mark of the Hawk (USA/UK-1957) – Sidney Poitier/Eartha Kitt/John McIntire
(6.5) Quicksand (1950) – Mickey Rooney/Jeanne Cagney/Peter Lorre/Minerva Urecal/Jimmie Dodds
(6.9) Rogue Male (TV-UK-1976) – Peter O’Toole/John Standing/Alastair Sim/Harold Pinter
(6.3) The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) – Gregory Peck/Susan Hayward/Ava Gardner/Leo G. Carroll
(3.5) The Swap (“Sam’s Song”) (1969) – Robert DeNiro/Jennifer Warren
(7.0) They Made Me a Criminal (1939) – John Garfield/Dead End Kids/Claude Rains/Ann Sheridan
(4.9) Thieves of Fortune (USA/S Africa-1990) – Lee Van Cleef/Liz Torres/Michael Nouri

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comment

Given the fact that there are 20 movies in this box I won’t be going into detail about every one of them, just my personal favorites both good and bad. Besides, there’s a lot of crappy made for T.V films in the set that aren’t worth watching.

‘Agency’- Robert Mitchum plays a shady political adviser who’s just taken over an ad agency. Two of his employees (Lee Majors and Saul Rubinek) suspect that he’s splicing subliminal messages for his preferred candidate into their commercials. The two try to prove their theory but end up fighting for their lives after Mitchum gets wind of their snooping around. Mitchum is quite good in his small role but the film belongs to veteran character actor Rubinek (‘True Romance’). His manic energy livens up the proceedings when things get too silly, which is often. For example, if you’re trying to brainwash people into voting for your candidate would you really bury the message in an over-the-top deodorant commercial set in, of all places, Hell?

‘Thieves Of Fortune’- With the exception of his 80s T.V series ‘The Master’, this is easily the most embarrassing thing Lee Van Cleef has ever appeared in. To add more insult to injury this was his last film. Luckily he’s spared further humiliation by dying in the first 10 minutes (although his death is humiliating as well). The movie then becomes about an attractive woman who’s forced to dress like a man and compete in death defying obstacles in order to inherit Van Cleef’s fortune.

‘Death Rage’- Yul Brynner plays a hitman coaxed out of retirement after learning that his latest assignment is the assassination of the man who killed his brother. Martin Balsam plays the detective who tries to stop him. The beautiful Barbara Bouchet plays Brynner’s love interest. This film is the first of many in the box that are heavily edited which is a major disappointment. As a result this film, and plenty of the others, leave a majority of the “action” scenes on the cutting room floor.

‘Rogue Male’- Peter O’Toole stars in this BBC film as a wealthy aristocrat who attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He is eventually hunted, captured and tortured by the Germans but manages to escape and hide out underground.

‘A Farewell To Arms’- The first of two Hemingway adaptations in the box. Gary Cooper plays a soldier who falls in love with a nurse during the war. However, both the war and Cooper’s best friend (a delightfully evil Adolphe Menjou) conspire to keep the lovers apart.

‘The Snows Of Kilimanjaro’- Presented in beautiful Technicolor the film tells the story of a gravely wounded author (Gregory Peck) on an African safari with his wife (Susan Hayward). Given hours to live the man bitterly recounts his life’s many failures both professionally and romantically. The luscious Ava Gardner plays one of Peck’s former lovers.

‘Gold’- This sounds like an awesome Roger Moore movie but, though advertised, you won’t find it in this set. Instead you get another movie called ‘Gold’ made in the 30s. How do you like that?

‘The Klansman’- A very interesting film for many reasons. The first being that it was originally going to be written and directed by the legendary Samuel Fuller who eventually walked off the project over creative differences. Star Lee Marvin, a Fuller regular, wanted to quit as well but couldn’t get out of his contract. James Bond director Terence Young was eventually brought in to replace Fuller. After a white woman is raped, presumably by a black man (O.J. Simpson), the white townsfolk of this segregated Southern town want revenge. The KKK launches an all out race war and it’s up to the town sheriff (Marvin) and pacifist (Richard Burton) to stop the violence and keep the peace. Unfortunately this film is the most heavily edited out of the whole box so the movie doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since you never get to see the rape, the racial slurs and the violence that occurs. The brilliant Cameron Mitchell co-stars as Marvin’s racist deputy.

‘The Swap’- Hey look it’s Robert DeNiro! This is one of the legend’s early pictures and let’s just say it’s a little embarrassing. I’m not just talking about his mustache either. DeNiro plays a porno film editor who is murdered because one of his movies features a public figure who doesn’t want it to get out. After DeNiro’s brother is released from prison he goes looking for revenge. DeNiro’s role, shown mostly in flashbacks, is limited but it’s more entertaining than later career choices such as ‘Analyze That’.

‘Beat The Devil’- This John Huston classic made Ebert’s list of Great Movies despite being a huge flop when originally released. Written by Huston and Truman Capote the film stars Humphrey Bogart, Gina Lollobrigida, Jennifer Jones and Peter Lorre in a darkly comic, witty spoof of mystery films like ‘The Maltese Falcon’. With reliably strong direction from Huston, acting from…

Read more

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comment

By 

Robert Taylor Brewer –

  

Beat The Devil
Humphrey Bogart famously panned this film. Either he was too close to the action, or simply ruing the money he put up to have it made. In either case, he falls in with a motley crew of bandits led by Peterson (Robert Morley) and Julius (Peter Lorre) who along with Gina Lollibrigida as Bogart’s wife, Maria Dannreuther, are themselves captured by other bandits as they come ashore in British East Africa in search of a uranium find. Bogart’s character, Billy Dannreuther, is grilled about, of all things, his relationship with Rita Hayworth. After an interrogation like that, it’s clear nothing is to be taken seriously. The screenplay is by Truman Capote, direction by John Huston; the film was shot on location in Italy. Nobody made a nickel on this movie, it exists solely as a work of art and a monument to what can happen when quality actors, a great director and committed cinematographers assemble merely to have a ball.

The Swap
This early Robert De Niro film has authentic pretensions to drama as De Niro plays Sammy, a budding moviemaker who made the mistake of capturing a politician’s indiscretions on film and pays the price. Most viewers will, however, make mental notes about De Niro then and De Niro now. One thing will be clear: how hard he worked at controlling his body to respond to being shot, falling, dying. Upon release from prison, Sammy’s brother Vito reopens his own investigation into Sammy’s death. The flashbacks are effective but the ending lacks suspense.

Blood On The Sun
Nick Condon (James Cagney) is a reporter for the Tokyo Chronicle who comes into possession of a document outlining plans for world domination by the Empire of Japan in this 1945 political thriller. The Japanese government moves heaven and earth to retrieve the document, and Condon is alternately framed, beat up, even shot while delivering hard licks of his own. Iris Hilliard (Sylvia Sidney) is slippery playing both sides against the middle. Instead of being fully developed in their own right, some of the Japanese characters merely play into popular stereotypes in place at the time of the filming. Film audio is fine, but the print is contrasty and overexposed; viewers will need to adjust the brightness control on their sets to make the movie viewable.

The Boxer
Robert Blake is fighter Teddy Wilcox in the second movie of the set depicting boxers and the ills they fall prey to. They Made Me A Criminal features a fight manager who committed murder, here the manager is murdered and the boxer takes the rap. In both films, the fighters wind up in places looking suspiciously like Arizona. Catherine Spaak’s emotionless delivery is hard to make sense of . It’s called for when she won’t pick Teddy out of a police lineup and is threatened with perjury, but it’s inappropriate when she talks to her father’s killer, an unaccredited actor who might be Phil Mead as a glib psychopath who “settles the accounts”. One final similarity: in both fight films, the boxer gets the girl.

The Klansman
Lee Marvin is Alabama sheriff Track Bascomb, but Richard Burton is not Southern, doesn’t have a Southern accent or a Southern name. What his character, Breck Stancil, does have is arrogance aided and abetted in the extreme by righteousness – an above the fray quality that makes it difficult to take his side, or even keep him alive. Sheriff Bascomb explains this several times but Burton’s slurred alcoholic inspired mumble yields only stubbornness. He is seen walking into town ripping down posters whose politics he disagrees with and we’re left with the impression what he’s really after isn’t persuasion, but humiliation of the townspeople in his Southern hamlet already inflamed by brutal rape and racial intolerance. In a way, his incoherence is perfectly attuned to his conflicted vision. “You’ve voted down every project these people want,” Bascomb says. When the Klan attacks, Stancil says, “Why can’t I get help?” “I asked every man in the county,” the sheriff replies. Like Stancil himself, this film is public domain for a reason. Nobody wanted it.

They Made Me A Criminal
John Garfield of The Postman Always Rings Twice fame stars in this 1939 film as middleweight boxer Johnny Bradfield who is framed for a murder he didn’t commit. He goes underground, re-emerging in the Depression era Arizona countryside, at a home for wayward youth. He becomes a role model for the teenagers, although past and present merge when suspicious New York gumshoe Monty Phalan (Claude Rains) turns up at a local boxing event, and has it in mind to bring Johnny back to New York to stand trial for murder. Academy Award winning cameraman James Wong Howe (The Rose Tattoo, Hud) did the cinematography and made the film notable for its authentic depiction of Depression era road scenes.

Gold
This disc should have contained the…

Read more

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comment