Warner Archive - July Releases

[John Johnson]

Warner Archive has announced its July batch of Blu-ray releases. They are: Brainstorm (1965), The Cobweb (1955), Bright Leaf (1950), Melinda (1972), Knights of the Round Table (1953), Two Weeks with Love (1950), The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), and They Died with Their Boots On (1941).

Brainstorm

A railroad crossing. A stranded car. A beautiful blonde - unconscious. Moody scientist Jim Grayson (Jeff Hunter) rescues the lovely Lorrie (Anne Francis) only to learn that she's his boss' wife! She wants out of the marriage, but her cruel, controlling husband Curt (Dana Andrews) won't let her go. After Grayson and Lorrie embark on a torrid love affair, Grayson hatches the perfect plan. Kill Curt while faking insanity to avoid a murder rap! Grayson's convincing portrayal makes everyone believe he's gone mad. The judge, the psychiatrists and even himself. In this edgy psychological thriller directed by veteran character actor and thriller specialist William Conrad (My Blood Runs Cold, Two on a Guillotine), there's a method to one's madness, and you'd be crazy to miss it!

Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 4K RESTORATION FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE
Classic Cartoons:
THE HYPO-CHRONDI-CAT
WELL WORN DAFFY
Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
STREET DATE: JULY 29.

The Cobweb

Step inside "the Castle," a large private psychiatric facility. Here, Dr. Stewart McIver (Richard Widmark) devotes night and day to his profession while neglecting his pining, voluptuous wife (Gloria Grahame). A colleague (Charles Boyer) with a fondness for booze and a pretty face seeks to comfort the wife. Now add Lauren Bacall, Lillian Gish, John Kerr, Susan Strasberg, Oscar Levant and subplots of love, life and derangement and you have the entanglements of The Cobweb. Some critics gleefully skewered the film's labored storyline about patient involvement in the choice of library draperies, but pay no heed. With its top cast and Vincente Minnelli's command of color and melodrama, this film is popcorn for fans of soaps.

Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 4K RESTORATION FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE
CinemaScope short: SALUTE TO THE THEATERS
CinemaScope cartoon THE EGG AND JERRY
Original Theatrical Trailer
Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
STREET DATE: JULY 29.

Bright Leaf

Forget cotton. Tobacco is king in the American South of the 1890s. Brant Royle buys and sells tobacco - and plenty of it, building a cigarette-manufacturing empire. But his empire is starting to crumble. Gary Cooper gives iconic presence to the role of Royle, whose drive for wealth and power is fueled by a desire for revenge against the tycoon (Donald Crisp) who earlier brought ruin to his family. Another desire also enflames Royle's heart. He's romantically drawn to the magnate's imperious daughter (Patricia Neal)...and she may have an agenda of her own. Lauren Bacall plays an elegant Royle's inamorata. And Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) directs with a keen sense of style, place and timeless burning ambitions.

Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 4K RESTORATION FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE
Classic Cartoons:
BUNKER HILL BUNNY
HILLBILLY HARE
Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
STREET DATE: JULY 29.

Melinda

Blaxploitation superstars Calvin Lockhart, Rosalind Cash, Vonetta McGee and Jim Kelly take on the mob in this super-charged, action-packed thriller. When Melinda Lewis (McGee) is found brutally murdered in his L.A. apartment, smooth-talking disk jockey Frankie J. Parker (Lockhart) turns sleuth to clear his name. Chased and attacked by junkies, dealers and thugs, Frankie soon learns Melinda is the ex-mistress of a Chicago mobster and has evidence the gangster wants back. Enlisting the aid of a jealous ex-flame (Cash) and a karate master from the hood (Kelly, in his screen debut), Frankie sets out to track down the mob boss who framed him and avenge Melinda's death. A box-office success on its original release, Melinda was one of the few Blaxploitation films produced, written and directed by African-Americans and boasts a fantastic funk score by R&B legend Jerry Butler and Grammy-winner Jerry Peters.

Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 4K RESTORATION FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE
Original theatrical trailer
Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
STREET DATE: JULY 29.

Knights of the Round Table

Long live King Arthur and Camelot! Yet in all of ancient England's newfound peace there is "a fraying link in Arthur's chain:" the growing passion between heroic knight Sir Lancelot and beautiful Queen Guinevere. One of history's most beloved legends is vibrantly retold in an adaptation downplaying fantasy elements and giving 6th-century England a new kind of fantasy: a dazzling Hollywood sheen bursting with the CinemaScope-sized pageantry (this was M-G-M's first feature utilizing the new and popular widescreen process), with conflicts and imposing citadels of location-lensed 1950s spectaculars. Robert Taylor is Lancelot, sworn to serve his king (Mel Ferrer) but devoted to his queen (Ava Gardner). Richard Thorpe, who teamed with Taylor for eight films, directs this colorful epic of bravery and honor.

Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 4K RESTORATION FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE
Intro by MEL FERRER
Newsreel footage of GALA PREMIERE
CinemaScope short: MGM JUBILEE OVERTURE
CinemaScope cartoon ONE DROOPY KNIGHT
Original Theatrical Trailer
Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
STREET DATE: JULY 29.

Two Weeks with Love

Kittenish teens Patti (Jane Powell) and Melba (Debbie Reynolds) turn a 1900s family vacation in the Catskills into Two Weeks with Love, "a bright entertainment that may come as a surprise to those who think there is nothing new under the musical sun" (The Hollywood Reporter). Patti is fluttery over a suave older man (Ricardo Montalban) and thinks romance will bloom if her disapproving parents let her wear...a corset! With that longed-for garment, 18-year-old Patti is sure she'll look like a more mature woman. Meanwhile, Melba stalks a local boy (Carleton Carpenter) with lovestruck determination. In a sensational showstopper, Reynolds and Carpenter tear into a version of "Aba Daba Honeymoon," so frisky and charming it became a smash-hit record. Busby Berkeley staged all the numbers, including "Row, Row, Row" and a dream sequence that has corseted Powell wowing Montalban with, of all things, an aria from The Chocolate Soldier. Aba daba, what a delight!

Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 4K RESTORATION FROM THE ORIGINAL TECHNICOLOR NEGATIVES
REEL MEMORIES with Jane Powell (interview with Robert Osborne)
Classic short subjects:
CRASHING THE MOVIES
SCREEN ACTORS
Classic Tex Avery Cartoon: GARDEN GOPHER
Original Theatrical Trailer
Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
STREET DATE: JULY 29.

The Prisoner of Zenda

With spectacular Technicolor photography, and sumptuous production values, Stewart Granger stars in this 1952 second remake of the famous Anthony Hope novel as Rudolf, the would-be King of Ruritania, who on the eve of his coronation is kidnapped by the henchmen of his wicked half-brother the Duke of Streslau (Robert Douglas) as part of a conspiracy to usurp the throne. As fortune would have it, Rudolf Rassendyll (also played by Granger) appears on the scene. Rassendyll so strikingly resembles the King that loyal Colonel Zapt (Louis Calhern) enlists him to save the crown. Rassendyll's adventure leads him to romance with the beautiful Princess Flavia (Deborah Kerr) to a web of treachery which finally culminates in cloak-and-dagger combat with the villainous Rupert (James Mason).

Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 4K RESTORATION FROM THE ORIGINAL TECHNICOLOR NEGATIVES
Includes 1922 silent version with Lewis Stone and Alice Terry
Audio-only radio broadcasts
LUX RADIO THEATER with Ronald Colman and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
SCREEN DIRECTOR'S PLAYHOUSE with Colman and John Cromwell
Original Theatrical Trailer
Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
STREET DATE: JULY 29.

They Died with Their Boots On

The 7th Cavalry Regiment, Gen. George Armstrong Custer says, rides "to hell or to glory. It depends on one's point of view." The point of view of Raoul Walsh's spectacular They Died with Their Boots On decidedly favors glory. Errol Flynn portrays the famed cavalryman in this hoof-and-thunder chronicle tracing his career from dandyish West Point plebe to Civil War hero to frontier legend immortalized by the Battle of Little Big Horn. Olivia de Havilland, sharing the marquee with Flynn for the eighth and final time, plays Custer's devoted wife, Libby. And composer Max Steiner's stirring music trumpets gallantry and sacrifice. Seventh Regiment: Charge! This new remastered restoration includes additional footage not seen in theatrical release.

Special Features and Technical Specs:
NEW 4K RESTORATION FROM THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE
Leonard Maltin hosts "Warner Night at the Movies 1942" with Newsreel
Military short SOLDIERS IN WHITE
Cartoon A TALE OF TWO KITTIES
All Through The Night trailer
Featurette: THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON: TO HELL OR GLORY
Original Theatrical Trailer
Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
STREET DATE: JULY 29.

https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=36569

[Eric Paddon]

I gave a "Brainstorm" a look on Amazon Prime and I don't think I could handle a second viewing of the film even improved for Blu-Ray. Anne Francis did this during her "Honey West" phase and is at her physical peak but honestly, the end result of this film can be telegraphed from a mile off once the scheme is revealed and its mostly a matter of waiting for it to happen because no other ending is possible (strange that Jeffrey Hunter is billed as "Jeff Hunter" this time out).

I saw "Cobweb" once because I was trying to justify getting the FSM release of Rosenmann's score. All I remember about the film is the fixation on drapes and getting another reminder of how I have always found Gloria Grahame to be an annoying presence in just about anything I've seen her in.