Classic Movies that are still unreleased or deserve another SE (1 Viewer)

[Stan Rozenfeld]

I also would like to see African Queen, but have no clue what's holding it up.

Some other movies that I would like to see:

Dodsworth (better version)
The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand's Love Letters with Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten
The Robe (rereleased as flat and cinemascope version)
The Blue Lagoon (original with Jean Simmons!)
Abel Gance's Napoleon
Things To Come (Extended British Version)
Edge of Darkness (Errol Flynn)
Ninotchka (Greta Garbo)
The Longest Day (anamorphic edition)
Jane Eyre (Joan Fontaine)
Pride And Prejudice (Greer Garson)
Mrs. Parkington (Greer Garson)
Cash McCall (James Garner)
Executive Suite (William Holden)

and

Seventeen Moments of Spring (the great Russian miniseries about a highly placed spy in Nazi Germany. It's legendary in Russia, but mostly unknown in the West)... sorry, but I had to sneak this one in.

 

[Jing_B]

WHICH STUDIO EVEN OWNS THE AFRICAN QUEEN?!?!? EVEN MORE FRUSTRATING, WHAT'S HOLDING IT UP?!?!?! I MEAN IT'S A CLASSIC AND WAS VOTED #17 ON THE AFI LIST!!!

 

[Chuck L]

CAGED

Wuthering Heights

 

[Charles Ellis]

I'm pretty sure Paramount owns African Queen. I remember it being mentioned in that Wall Street Journal article last month about Paramount's DVD plans for 2005-06.

 

[Valerie]

I saved this little tidbit from the Digital Bits website over a year ago:

Paramount has also confirmed that it holds the DVD rights to John Huston's The African Queen (1951, with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn). The film is apparently a candidate for a full-blown restoration, so we aren't likely to see anything soon.

I've always loved this movie and I'm eager to see it on DVD, but if it needs to be restored I'm willing to wait.

Just to add my 2 cents worth...

Movies I Would Like To See Released On DVD:

-The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944/Paramount)
-The Unfinished Dance
-Margie
-Blood And Sand
-Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
-McLintock!
-The Pirate
-Three Little Words
-Strategic Air Command
-Gallant Bess
-Gypsy Colt
-That's Dancing (Wish this had been a part of the That's Entertainment set from WB)
-The Three Godfathers (a little known John Wayne film that is one of his best westerns)
- Neptune's Daughter (Hopefully WB will release this in the near future along with other Esther Williams films.)
- Branded (A little known Alan Ladd western that was only released on VHS in EP mode - yuck!)
- Flower Drum Song (I believe Universal owns the rights to this film, but they don't seem to be in a big hurry in releasing their older films.)
- Swing Time

I just got Easter Parade and Jumbo is coming soon. Thank you Warner Brothers!

"The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek" and "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" were hinted as releases 1 or 2 years ago...whatever happened to them? "Margie", "The Unfinished Dance", and "Gallant Bess" were never even put on VHS, but I hope that the studios will eventually get to them anyway.

 

[Jing_B]

And Double Indemnity SE. Wuthering Heights (1939) definetly should be released by MGM.

 

[Craig Beam]

What film deserves another SE DVD release? Why... Vertigo, of course.

 

[Greg O' Connel]

Never on DVD:

Becket
The African Queen
Becket
The Magnifecent Ambersons
Becket

Needs SE:

John Boorman's Excalibur

 

[Neil Regitz]

Stan,

I understand Universal is releasing to Gary Cooper films in 2006. Sgt. York and Fountainhead. Check out Richard Harris' last post on Digital Bits.

Neil

 

[Charles Ellis]

Neil, those films are owned by Warner Brothers. You must be thinking of Coop's Paramount films, which are owned by Universal. That studio owns most of Paramount's pre- 1949 films.

 

[Jing_B]

Is Double Indemnity SE really coming out in 2007???

 

[Nick Eden]

I think we would all accept that not every film ever made will come to DVD, regardless of the lifespan of DVD. With this in mind (and assuming most classics will eventually surface) what titles (cinema or TV) do members think will NEVER make it out for whatever reason (legal, no workable print, lack of interest by a significant minority to justify cost or just plain forgotten about)?
A couple of TV titles spring to mind: Run a Crooked Mile with Mary Tyler Moore and Louis Jourdan and Outrage with Robert Culp. These 2 have been missing from screens in the UK for decades. Also A Cold Night's Death with Robert Culp and the series A.D. Anno Domini with Anthony Andrews, Ava Gardner and James Mason among others. These last 2 I am fortunate to own on tape (recorded many years ago) and I just don't see them surfacing on DVD.

 

[Dave Castle]

A couple I'd like to see with better soundtracks:

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
(currently DD mono!) At least stereo! (It DID exist in 1969!) What good is a THX certified Mono soundtrack?

The Sting (similar request). Considering the Scott Joplin score at least a better sound treatment.

Neither of these need to be in 5.1, just better!

 

[Frank*C]

Here's a few that have been on my list:

RAISE THE RED LANTERN (Yimou Zhang, 1991)
THE CONFORMIST (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
CHRISTMAS IN JULY (Preston Sturges, 1940)
CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
PHANTOM LADY (Robert Siodmak, 1944)
CITY OF SADNESS (Hsiao-hsien Hou, 1989)
MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (Leo McCarey, 1937)
VIRIDIANA (Luis Buñuel, 1961)
MINISTRY OF FEAR (Fritz Lang, 1944)
NINOTCHKA (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
SATANTANGO (Bela Tarr, 1994)
WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS (Otto Preminger, 1950)
GREED (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
OUT 1 (Jacques Rivette, 1971)
THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE... (Max Ophüls, 1953)
1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976)
HUMANITY AND PAPER BALLOONS (Sadao Yamanaka, 1937)
DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE (Kieslowski, 1992)
MACAO (Josef von Sternberg, 1952)
LA CIOCIARA (Vittorio De Sica, 1960)
WHIRLPOOL (Otto Preminger, 1949)
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (Fritz Lang, 1945)
HIS KIND OF WOMAN (John Farrow, 1951)
LE JOUR SE LEVE (Marcel Carné, 1939)
CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT (Peter Godfrey, 1945)
THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (Orson Welles, 1942)
THE BIG STEAL (Don Siegel, 1949)
ANGEL FACE (Otto Preminger, 1952)

Everything by Kenji Mizoguchi
Everything by Robert Bresson
Everything by Yasujiro Ozu

 

[Jing_B]

I hope Double Life of Veronique, Celine and Julie Go Boating< Le Jour Se Leve, The Earrings Of Madame De..., The Conformist and Viridiana get a Criterion release. As for Greed, when does the next WB/TCm DVD Desicion take place?

 

[Fred_C]

A Matter of life and death.

 

[DouglasBr]

I almost can't believe I've seen my favorite made-for-TV movie mentioned here on HTF.

I saw Run a Crooked Mile a couple times as a teenager in the early-mid '70s, probably on one of the Canadian channels we got across Lake Erie, and thought it was stylish and engrossing. But then again, many TV movies back then (especially ABC Movie of the Week ones) were very classy productions.

I often wish there was as much effort to resurrect onto DVD TV movies from that era as there is for TV shows.

And while we're on Louis Jourdan, I'd like to see his Count Dracula get a release as well (it had a brief release a couple years ago from an educational division of the BBC but was quickly discontinued).

 

[Nick Eden]

DouglasBr,

Yes Run A Crooked Mile is very much missing in action as far as I am concerned. There were some very good TV movies made in the 1970s, but this particular film I seem to remember was way above average: it was an extremely sharp and enjoyable thriller shot largely in Europe.

Louis Jourdan's Count Dracula: it was released as you mention, but blink and you will have missed it!

 

[John Nelson]

The Man Who Would Be King-- John Huston presents the only onscreen pairing of Sean Connery and Michael Caine, who achieve a chemistry that easily matches that of Redford and Newman. Wonderful movie, hideous DVD. A flipper with a soundtrack so horrible that the wonderful dialogue is difficult even to hear while some is just plain missing. I'll take a mediocre DVD, let alone an SE.

Grand Prix-- John Frankenheimer directs what many afficionados still feel is the best racing film ever made, featuring gorgeous period footage of the cars and drivers of probably the most romantic and dangerous time of any sport in history. Nearly forty per cent of the drivers taking the grid in 1967 would eventually die behind the wheel. Not on DVD at all at this time.

Strategic Air Command-- Real-life Air Force pilot Jimmy Stewart stars in this wide screen technicolor film boasting some of the most beautiful in flight footage of the monstrous B-36 bomber soaring high above the clouds. Powered by six massive prop and four jet engines, this beast briefly was the United State's frontline defensive weapon before disappearing into obscurity. Not yet on DVD.

 

[Alan_H]

Some classic movies that still need to be released on DVD:

David Copperfield (Bartholomew, '35)
Captain's Courageous (Tracy, '37)
Young Mr. Lincoln (Fonda, '39)
Julius Caesar (Brando, '53)
Mutiny on the Bounty (Brando, '62)


TV movies I'd like to see on DVD:

I Never Sang for my Father (Hackman, '70)
Legend of Lizzie Borden (Montgomery, '75)
Who is the Black Dahlia? (Zimbalist Jr, '75)
Jericho Mile (Strauss '79)
The Executioner's Song (Tommy Lee Jones, '82)
Go Toward the Light (Linda Hamilton, '88)


TV Documentary Series I want on DVD:

The Farmer's Wife (1998)