The Olive Films, The Non-Westerns Checklist.

A few days ago, over on 50 Westerns From The 50s, I posted a list of the Westerns released on DVD and Blu-Rays by Olive Films. Turns out a number of us are looking to fill some gaps in our collections — before they’re either gone or going for crazy collectors’ prices. And now, here’s a list of some of their other titles. This is by no means everything — just the stuff that falls within the scope of this blog.

Some of these titles have already been re-issued (or are on the way) by other companies. But some may never see the light of day again, given the current state of physical media. From a couple of Republic serials to a handful of Regalscope pictures, there are some real jewels here.

As very special thanks (again) to Laura from Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, who was a HUGE help with bringing this together. 

Betty Boop, Vols. 1-4
Sabotage (1939)
S.O.S. Tidal Wave (1939)
Lady From Louisiana (1941)
A Man Betrayed (1941)
One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942)
Flying Tigers (1942)
Lady For A Night (1942)
Johnny Come Lately (1943)
Strangers In The Night (1944)
Voodoo Man (1944)
Fighting Seabees (1944)

The Return Of The Ape Man (1944)
The Strange Affair Of Uncle Harry (1945)
Flame Of Barbary Coast (1945)
The Vampire’s Ghost (1945)
The Dark Mirror (1946)
The Private Affairs Of Bel Ami (1946)
Appointment With Crime (1946)
Copacabana (1947)
Ruthless (1948)
So This Is New York (1948)
Force Of Evil (1948)
Mr. Peabody And The Mermaid (1948)
Wake Of The Red Witch (1948)
Sands Of Iwo Jima (1949)
The Red Menace (1949)
The Kid From Cleveland (1949)
Love Happy (1949)
The File On Thelma Jordon (1950)
Appointment With Danger (1950)
No Man of Her Own (1950)
The Lawless (1950)
Captain Carey U.S.A. (1950)
Union Station (1950)
Three Secrets (1950)
Dark City (1950)

Flying Disc Man From Mars (1950, serial)
The Invisible Monster (1950)
Cry Danger (1951)
My Favorite Spy (1951)
Flat Top (1952)
Hoodlum Empire (1952)
The Atomic City (1952)
The Quiet Man (1952)
Retreat, Hell! (1952)
City That Never Sleeps (1953)
Commando Cody: Sky Marshal Of The Universe (1953, serial)
The Sun Shines Bright (1953)
Hell’s Half Acre (1954)
Private Hell 36 (1954)
Panther Girl Of The Kongo (1954, serial)
The Shanghai Story (1954)
Cry Vengeance (1954)
Dragonfly Squadron (1954)
Young At Heart (1955)
The Big Combo (1955)
Shack Out On 101 (1955)
The Eternal Sea (1955)
No Man’s Woman (1955)
The Americano (1955)
Strategic Air Command (1955)
The Weapon (1956)
Fire Maidens Of Outer Space (1956)
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956)
China Gate (1957)
Plunder Road (1957)
She Devil (1957)

High School Confidential! (1958)
Indiscreet (1958)
Hell’s Five Hours (1958)
The Colossus Of New York (1958)
The Space Children (1958)
It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958)
The Return Of Dracula (1958)
The Beat Generation (1959)
Operation Petticoat (1959)
Pork Chop Hill (1959)
The Big Operator (1959)
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
The Monster Of Piedras Blancas (1959)
A Bucket Of Blood (1959)

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962)
That Touch Of Mink (1962)
Father Goose (1964)
Muscle Beach Party (1964)
Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)
How To Stuff A Wild Bikini (1965)
Crack In The World (1965)
Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors (1965)
The Wild Angels (1966)
The Trip (1967)
Cauldron Of Blood (1967)
The Spirit Is Willing (1967)
Project X (1968)
Little Fauss And Big Halsey (1970)
Badge 373 (1973)

Take a glance at this list. Olive Films put some terrific movies in our hot little hands. It’s a shame they didn’t make it. This proves the point that’s been made over and over on this blog — if we don’t support the companies that put these things out, they won’t be putting them out anymore. Okay, now I’ll climb down from my soapbox and put The Return Of Dracula back on.

Blu-Ray News #328: Columbia Noir #3 (1947-59).

Indicator’s got a third Columbia Noir Blu-Ray box on the way, and it’s gonna be another good one.

Johnny O’Clock (1947)
Written and directed by Robert Rossen
Starring Dick Powell, Evelyn Keyes, Lee J. Cobb, Jeff Chandler
Dick Powell is cool in his second noir picture, Burnett Guffey’s cinematography is often stunning. Robert Rossen does a good job guiding us through the rather complex plot.

The Dark Past (1948)
Directed by Rudolph Maté
Starring William Holden, Nina Foch, Lee J. Cobb
William Holden is an escaped convict in this remake of 1939’s Blind Alley. Lee J. Cobb is a psychologist who’s held hostage and analyzes his captor along the way.

Convicted (1950)
Directed by Henry Levin
Starring Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford, Millard Mitchell, Dorothy Malone, Carl Benton Reid, Frank Faylen
Another remake of The Criminal Code, with Glenn Ford an inmate and Broderick Crawford the warden. Burnett Guffey shot this one, too, which is always a good thing.

Between Midnight And Dawn (1950)
Directed by Gordon Douglas
Starring Mark Stevens, Edmond O’Brien, Gale Storm, Madge Blake
A prototype for the buddy cop movies, with Edmond O’Brien and Mark Stevens  childhood friends who end up cops. Gale Storm is the dispatcher they talk to throughout their shift.

The Sniper (1952)
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
Starring Adolphe Menjou, Arthur Franz, Gerald Mohr, Marie Windsor, Frank Faylen
Arthur Franz plays a freak with a rifle before the freak-with-a-rifle sub-genre even existed. Dmytryk does a terrific job, as does DP Burnett Guffey. Essential.

City Of Fear (1959)
Directed by Irving Lerner
Starring Vince Edwards, Lyle Talbot, John Archer
Vince Edwards escapes from San Quentin and has what he thinks is a vial of heroin. Turns out it’s the ultra-dangerous Cobalt-60, which could wipe out LA. Edwards gets sicker as the movie plays out — and time runs out. A very cool little movie.

The set comes with the kind of extras — commentaries, video essays, shorts (including six from The Three Stooges!), trailers, galleries and more. You don’t wanna miss this one.

Double Deal (1950) — The Marie Windsor Blogathon.

Directed by Abby Berlin
Produced by James T. Vaughn
Screen play by Lee Berman & Charles S. Belden
Story by Don McGuire
Director Of Photography: Frank Redman
Film Editor: Robert Swink
Music by Michel Michelet

Cast: Marie Windsor (Terry Miller), Richard Denning (Buzz Doyle), Taylor Holmes (Corpus Mills), Fay Baker (Lilli Sebastian), James Griffith (Walter Karns), Carleton Young (Reno Sebastian), Tom Browne Henry (Sheriff L.G. Morelli), Paul E. Burns, Walter Burke, Frank Felton

This is an entry in The Marie Windsor Blogathon, a celebration of the actress’s life and work.

Bel-Air Productions cranked out some terrific little movies in the 1950s, such as the B crime pictures Big House U.S.A. (1955) and Hot Cars (1956). The very first Bel-Air film was Double Deal (1950), released by RKO Radio Pictures. It was the first time Marie Windsor received top billing.

Double Deal concerns oil wells, the extremely dysfunctional Sebastian family, gambling, a monkey and murder.

Richard Denning is Buzz Doyle, an engineer who steps off the bus just as the Sebastian family squabble turns deadly. (Have you noticed how many noir pictures open with a guy getting off a bus in some strange town?) Marie Windsor is Terry Miller, a nice girl who takes a shine to Buzz, inherits an oil well and ends up a murder suspect. Fay Baker is a conniving hag who doesn’t care who gets hurt as long as she gets what she wants. Taylor Holmes is an attorney and “walking gin mill.” And James Griffith is a slimeball who runs a crooked dice table.

Double Deal is a cheap little mini-noir that gets almost everything right. It was shot in nine days on the RKO lot, and the completed picture runs just 65 minutes. There’s a whole lot of story packed into that 65 minutes, from a couple murders, lots of wildcatting for oil and a truckload of double crosses. 

Throughout the picture, Fay Baker and James Griffith are perfectly despicable, while Richard Denning is completely likable (at one point, Kevin McCarthy was up for the part, which would’ve been his movie debut).

Marie Windsor is charming, cool and beautiful — whether she’s all dolled up for a night on the town or wearing jeans, t-shirt, baseball cap and a smudge of oil on her cheek. 1950 was a busy year for Windsor: Dakota Lil, The Showdown, Frenchie and Double Deal. Each was for a different studio — Fox, Republic, Universal International and RKO, respectively.

Director Abby Berlin was on Broadway and vaudeville as half of a comedy team with Ken Brown. He headed to Hollywood and worked as an assistant director, until he got the chance to direct with Leave It To Blondie (1945). He directed a number of the Blondie movies and quite a bit of TV before passing away in 1954.

The story for Double Deal came from Don McQuire. He had an interesting career, from acting in Armored Car Robbery (1950, the same year as Double Deal) to directing The Delicate Delinquent (1957) to supplying the story for Tootsie (1982). Screenwriter Charles S. Belden has a story credit on both Mystery Of The Wax Museum (1933) and House Of Wax (1953). He also wrote some Charlie Chan and Hopalong Cassidy pictures.

Director Of Photography Frank Redman spent the 40s and early 50s at RKO. He shot a lot of Falcon, Saint and Dick Tracy pictures. Leaving RKO, he went to TV, where he stayed plenty busy. He shot over a hundred episodes of Perry Mason, among other things. His work on Double Deal is nothing flashy, looking like so many other RKO pictures from the period.

Double Deal is not classic film noir. It’s no Narrow Margin (1952). And it was certainly done on the cheap — the crew on the oil well is limited to Denning, Windsor and Paul Burns. But I wish there were a hundred movies around just like it — cheap, short and cool.

Coming Soon: The Marie Windsor Blogathon.

Some of us have been going back and forth about this for over a year. Well, now’s the time to make it official. Marie Windsor, my all-time favorite actress, gets a blogathon. It kicks off on her birthday, December 11, over at fiftieswesterns.com.

If you’re interested in playing along, email me at fiftieswesterns@gmail.com with the Marie Windsor movie you want to cover. I’ll be keeping a list to try to avoid too much duplication. More info will come as the event gets closer.

Dialogue Of The Day: The Killing (1956).

Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor): You don’t understand me, Johnny. You don’t know me very well.

Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden): I know you like a book. You’re a no good, nosy little tramp. You’d sell out your own mother for a piece of fudge. But you’re smart along with it. Smart enough to know when to sail and when to sit tight, and you know you better sit tight in this case.

Sherry Peatty: I do?

Johnny Clay: You heard me. You like money. You got a great big dollar sign, there, where most women have a heart.

Blu-Ray News #250: Abbott & Costello – The Complete Universal Pictures Collection (1940-1955).

The Abbott & Costello movies offer up some of the great joys to be had in this world. Their “Who’s On First?” routine (found in The Naughty Nineties) is timeless — and runs constantly in the Baseball Hall Of Fame. Me, I simply cannot be down if Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) is on.

Shout Factory has announced The Complete Universal Pictures Collection, that puts their 28 Universal pictures (they say they saved the studio from bankruptcy) on 15 Blu-ray Discs, packed with hours of extras and a collectible book. It’s coming in November. What a great big box of Wonderful this will be!

Reno, Nevada, November 1973.

In the fall of 1973, there was evidently a wave of UFO sightings all across the US. There were a couple in the Reno, Nevada, area. The Granada Theatre acted quickly, booking a couple of sci-fi pictures for a midnight show — The Day Mars Invaded The Earth (1962) and The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951).

Fun local bookings are something I really miss, whether they’re Halloween marathons at the drive-in or something more topical like this one. Going to the movies used to be so much fun.

Blu-Ray News #192: The Mamie Van Doren Film Noir Collection.

Three lurid Mamie Van Doren pictures (did she make any other kind?) in one high-definition package. How cool is that?

The Girl In Black Stockings (1957)
Directed by Howard W. Koch
​Starring Lex Barker, Anne Bancroft, Mamie Van Doren​, John Dehner​, ​Marie Windsor​,​ Stuart Whitman​, ​Dan Blocker

A girl is brutally murdered at a Utah hotel and everybody seems to have some sort of motive. Look at that cast!

Guns, Girls And Gangsters (1959)
Directed by Edward L. Cahn
Starring Mamie Van Doren, Gerald Mohr, Lee Van Cleef, Paul Fix

Edward L. Cahn directs an armored car robbery picture that has both Mamie Van Doren and Lee Van Cleef in it. How could it miss? It doesn’t.

Vice Raid (1960)
Directed by Edward L. Cahn
Starring Mame Van Doren, Richard Coogan, Brad Dexter, Carol Nugent

Mamie’s a call girl sent to New York to get an un-corruptible cop in hot water. But when her sister is raped, Mamie has to turn to the framed cop for help.

Due in November, the longest of these movies is 75 minutes. Perfect.

Blu-Ray News #188: Universal Classic Monsters – Complete 30-Film Collection (1931-1956).

If in its glory days, Universal made a movie about Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man or The Creature From The Black Lagoon, it’s in this box — in high definition. What more do I have to tell you?

Here’s what you get: Dracula / Drácula (Spanish version) / Frankenstein / The Mummy / The Invisible Man / Werewolf Of London / Bride Of Frankenstein / Dracula’s Daughter / Son Of Frankenstein / The Invisible Man Returns / The Mummy’s Hand / The Invisible Woman / The Wolf Man / The Mummy’s Tomb / Ghost Of Frankenstein / Invisible Agent / Son Of Dracula / Phantom Of The Opera / Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man / The Mummy’s Ghost / House Of Frankenstein / The Mummy’s Curse / The Invisible Man’s Revenge / House Of Dracula / She-Wolf Of London / Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein / Abbott & Costello Meet The Invisible Man / Creature From The Black Lagoon / Abbott & Costello Meet The Mummy / Revenge Of The Creature / The Creature Walks Among Us

Thirty movies in all, and only one in color (Phantom Of The Opera). The Creature movies and Abbott & Costello Meet The Mummy are 1.85.

Just wondering: where’s Abbott & Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1953)? Guess Jekyll/Hyde’s outside their normal monster cycle.

This is a great thing, and it’s coming next week.

Blu-Ray News #137: Abbott & Costello Meet The Mummy (1955).

Directed by Charles Lamont
Starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Marie Windsor, Michael Ansara

Another day, another Abbott & Costello movie on Blu-Ray. This time, it’s Abbott & Costello Meet The Mummy (1955), their last picture for Universal (and their last monster meeting). It’s already available in hi-def as part of Universal’s The Mummy Complete Legacy Collection.

Meet The Mummy features Marie Windsor, my all-time favorite actress. Eddie Parker, Lon Chaney’s double on the three previous Mummy movies, plays Klaris throughout this one. The scene where Costello eats a hamburger with an ancient medallion hidden in it had me in hysterics as a kid.

The 1.85 transfer, which I’m sure will be the same one in the Legacy set, splendidly shows off the picture’s backlot and soundstage version of Egypt. Nowhere near the team’s best, but highly recommended anyway.