Did Olive Films license a number of titles from Paramount? - Page 4  

Universal has the rights to THE AFFAIRS OF SUSAN and THE SEARCHING WIND.  Not sure how these went to MCA and the others stayed with Paramount.  It was not a clear cut sale at the time.  They held on to THE BUCCANEERS since deMille had an interest in remaking it.

One film that Olive missed that I do not think has been mentioned yet is THE MATING SEASON with Gene Tierney, John Lund, Thelma Ritter, and M. Hopkins.  It is one of the best comedies of the era, but has never been released on home video in part probably because most of Tierney's films are at Fox and Paramount did not have anything to tie it in with.  Thelma Ritter is particularly good.  Leonard Maltin gave it three and one half stars and it is one of the most requested titles to be released on DVD by the TCM poll on TCM's website.

Joe,

I included The Mating Season in my list above. It is a great comedy and it surely deserves a proper dvd release. I hope this Oliver deal will be a great sucess and we will have a second list of releases next year.

My pocketbook and I are going to do everything we can to make this first wave a success. 
Edited by ahollis - 4/23/10 at 5:20pm

 I'm not a fan of Charlton Heston, though I am sorry he is dead, but I would love to see Secret of the Incas on DVD. I remember reading on an Internet Movie Database Message Board that Paramount sold the rights to Legend Films.

I second Waterloo and both versions of the Buccaneer on DVD

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I'm a fan of Charlton Heston. He earned my respect with his performances in many fine films including The Naked Jungle, The Greatest Show On Earth, The Big Country, Touch of Evil, Ben Hur, El Cid, The Agony and the Ecstasy, The Warlord, Will Penny, Planet of the Apes, and Julius Caeser, to name only a few. He earned my respect again when he wrote the autobiography In the Arena.

Secret of the Incas is an under-rated gem. Not really an action film, but in part an inspiration for Indiana Jones. Paramount should do everything they can to hasten Secret of the Incas and their other Heston films to DVD release.

I too would like to see "Waterloo" and the "Buccaneer" (though prefer them on blu-ray)

I have an import of "Waterloo" it looks great but the sound is out of sync

 One Charlton Heston Paramount title I would love to own on DVD would be  "PONY EXPRESS"

It's a highly enjoyable Technicolored Western romp.


p.s. For  those interested in color reference, my temporary avatar (as of today) features an original fifties 35mm film frame from PONY EXPRESS.

(Reading this post in the future, there maybe a different avatar in place)  
Edited by Doug Bull - 4/24/10 at 12:12am

CRACK IN THE WORLD and three noir titles are currently up for pre-order on Amazon.com.  These are the first releases from the Olive-Paramount package of titles.

Hannie Caulder -- I can't wait. 1/3 American western and 2/3 spaghetti western, shot in Spain with American stars and an American director helming a Spanish cast and crew. Written and directed by Burt Kennedy with a particularly nasty sense of humor. Ernest Borgnine, Strother Martin, and Jack Elam play the Clemens brothers as if they were the Three Stooges. Robert Culp in his best role ever as the gunfighter "Thomas ... Luther .. PRICE!" The western brings out the best in Culp. Christopher Lee eases himself into the genre gracefully as a Texas gunsmith with a beach house on the shores of the Mediterranean -- I mean the Gulf of Mexico. He should have made more westerns, too. Then there is Raquel Welch, who takes it all very seriously. Hannie Caulder came out right after The Man With No Name trilogy cleaned up in theaters as a triple-feature. Then Raquel poses as the female counterpart of Clint Eastwood. The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful, somebody called it. The one sheet showing Raquel wearnig nothing but a serape and a six-gun sold this western like hamburgers in 1971 and 1972. Personally, if it were a competition for who looks cooler or hotter in the serape, I vote for Raquel.

Later Paramount re-released Hannie Caulder as a double-feature with another fringe-western The Legend of Nigger Charley (1972), a Fred Williamson vehicle that is probably unreleasable today.

Like most of Kennedy's films, Hannie Caulder is lean, terse, tough, short and straight to the point just like the westerns he wrote for Randolph Scott and director Budd Boetticher in the late 1950s. If morals had been the same, it would have fit right in with the five films these three made together at Columbia. One can see Randolph Scott in the Robert Culp role. 

Bring it on, Olive Films.

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I second the motion for Pony Express on DVD. A solid western with an above-average story. Heston and Forest Tucker as Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill.

I'd also like to see Number One (1969) with Heston in one of his best roles as a quarterback who can't cut it anymore but refuses to give up the game. A forgotten film today, but one of Heston's very best performances. Warner Brothers or MGM must own it now.
Edited by Richard--W - 4/28/10 at 4:47am

According to IMDB, when shown on TV it was presented using the title "The Legend of Black Charley".

That adjustment in the title might help with a DVD release today, but there is still the matter of the content. The network must have cut and trimmed and over-dubbed considerably to make it acceptable for television audiences. I saw many blaxploitation films in the 1970s and quickly got over my shock at how casually and frequently the word was used by black film makers and stars in their films. Fred Williamson, who was a big star at the time, exploited it. Audiences in the 1970s understood when they heard the word that it was a racist term and was being used in a racist context to comment on racism. That was the 1960s and 1970s. Times change along with sensibilities, and this distinction would be hard to explain today. Still, if Paramount can release Mandingo through Legend Films, they can probably get away with releasing The Legend of Black Charley and its sequel The Soul of Black Charley through Olive Films. I don't see either in the list of 27 titles that Olive leased from Paramount, however.

I certainly hope if Olive films get the rights to release any blaxploitation films, that they will release them in their original content and original titles ie..(The Legend on Nigger Charley, The Soul of Nigger Charley) and not bow down to pressure from politically correct interest groups. Also, I hope when they release Riot, it is the unrated version. Below are a few more black films of interest.

Three Tough Guys
The Education of Sonny Carson
Charley One Eye
St. Louis Blues
Superfly TNT

Uptight!

Edited by flagbrothers - 5/10/10 at 4:23am

Just wanted to add my support for wanting more Charlton Heston films released. Some good films have been mentioned.

 Just got a release from amazon.ca that my three olive releases are being delayed until July 27... it's only one week but the notice is so early as to have me worrying about a summer release...

 put me down for CRACK IN THE WORLD and  HANNIE CAULDER

Hopefully Olive Films will release some of the Pine Thomas films released through

Paramount. Pine-Thomas headed up Paramounts "B" unit in the 1940s and were known as

"the dollar Bills" as their films always turned a profit;and their first names were both William.

In the fifties they were given bigger budgets and casts;until now only "The Far Horizons"

has made it to DVD.Here is my  wish list for some of their films to be released by Olive Films:

 

THE EAGLE & THE HAWK (1951) John Payne Rhonda Fleming,Dennis O Keefe

Big budget Western short on logic big on spectacular set pieces.Photographed by

James Wong Howe no less!

 

CROSSWINDS (1952) John Payne Rhonda Fleming Forrest Tucker.

Skipper Payne gets rooked out of his boat by crooked Tucker and also has to face

headhunters,crocodiles and a couple of really nasty Brits;despite all this he still has time

to find romance with Fleming.Loyall Griggs lovely location photography rises this one several notches more than it deserves

 

 

THE VANQUISHED (1953) John Payne Jan Sterling Coleen Gray Willard Parker

A gothic Western set in the South just after the Civil War.Payne (yet again) is up against

Yankee bad guys Lyle Betteger and Willard Parker

 

HELLS ISLAND (1955) John Payne Mary Murphy.

Interesting to see Phil Karlson moving up to bigger budget stuff though this film is way

below his two previous Film Noir classics that he made with Payne.Biggest surprise of the

film is Mary Murphy who makes a most memorable femme fatale.

 

RUN FOR COVER (19550 James Cagney John Derek

Though Cagney and Nick Ray liked working together they were both disappointed with the

outcome of this film.Having said that its a really decent Fifties Western and a must for a

DVD release.

 

 

 

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I've always heard they were called "the dollar bills" not because their movies made a profit but because they squeezed every dollar so tightly, no-one liked working for them!

 

The movies you mention are ones I'd like to see again but some of the Pine Thomas films are not worth watching..

The reason I like many of the Pine-Thomas films is that they always looked great.

They certainly employed top talent in the photographic department like Loyal Griggs,

James Wong Howe and Lionel Lindon.Its the fact that "Crosswinds" has beautiful location

work; as opposed to studio backdrops that makes it so appealing. The scripts were often

the weakest part of many of their productions.

Pity they didn't license out THE KEEP...for all it;s faults (ie, being largely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't read the book, and even those that have wonder what the hell happened, apparently F. Paul Wilson hates it!)...it has that amazing music by Tangerine Dream and some truly wonderful cinematography.

 

A DVD release of this would be brilliant, espescially if they managed to include the deleted scenes that have only ever been seen on one TV transmission.

I noticed on DVD EMPIRE that Lionsgate has licensed THE CONVERSATION from Paramount.  Perhaps they will release or re-release Paramount catalog titles also, along with Olive and the occasional Criterion. 

 

Lionsgate has already released quite a few Paramount on Blu ray, pity they did not choose to release THE CONVERSATION on Blu.

Apologies for all the multiple posts but I was trying to clear them but all the system is doing is multiple posts.

Instead of licensing product from other studios, Lionsgate would be well advised to release their own catalog product that they're sitting on like JOHNNY GUITAR, LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, PITFALL, BLOWING WILD, PRIVATE HELL 36 and DARK MIRROR to name but a few.

Lionsgate didn't get THE CONVERSATION from Paramount, they got it from Coppola's American Zoetrope.  Apparently Coppola's deal with Paramount expired and he licensed the American Zoetrope films (APOCALYPSE NOW, THE CONVERSATION, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, HAMMET, THE RAINMAKER, and ESCAPE ARTIST) to Lionsgate.

With Olive Films' initial wave of Paramount titles streeting on July 27 (and I have all five on pre-order), I wonder when the next batch is tentatively set to arrive, and which titles from the master list will they be... my fingers are crossed in hope that SANDS OF THE KALAHARI will be among them.

I did not know that.  So any Blu ray releases would be through Lionsgate instead.
 

Why would any true artist - like Coppola license his films to Lion's Gate.  I don't think that I own a single disc by them that I consider satsifactory.  They're basically a clip joint.

Lionsgate's output has been wildly inconsistent, but when they're good, they're good. Case in point: Coppola's Tetro.