Abrasive Grain Movie Reviews

One of the great cop shows of the 1970's- The pilot and first two seasons being the best. In the day, it was on everyone's lips- "Did you see Starsky and Hutch last nite?" Gritty police action, exciting car chases as never before seen on prime time tv, it also defined the 'buddy cop' genre. Please release the original pilot movie and at least the first 2 seasons on DVD, but don't rush this, please! Hear this Columbia, take the time to do a bang up job, amd give us pristine print transfers from the MASTER PRINTS, RESTORED and UNCUT- New commentary and interviews with the original stars, Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul, and the great composer of the original theme music- Lalo Schifrin! The DVD release of this great series is way overdue.

Agree with the reviewers here. I'd rather watch the DVDs of Starsky and Hutch's first two seasons (the other two not bad, but not as good) than what's on network TV today. Shows like S&H were the real predecessors of the "buddy-cop/partner shows" that still continue to this day. The chemistry between Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul was very good, and despite some predictable plot unfoldings they made the series a hit. Yes, the show should be ported to DVD in the near future.

My memories go back to the days when I used to watch this great show on the television. Never forget those excitements when I watched those movies. It would be a greatest thing to have this movies released on the DVD.

It's about time that the legendary series of The Dukes of Hazzard should be released on DVD (a box set of all the episodes). It is a show with which an entire generation grew up and is now seeking to relive those precious memories!
Yeeeeeeeeehhhaaaaaaaaaa!
Ari

Hello! I just want to ask that you please put the Dukes of Hazzard series onto DVD! It was a show that I watched all the time. But, now there is nowhere to watch the Dukes on television. I would really enjoy being able to have a DVD collection of the Dukes of Hazzard. Please release the show onto DVD's.
Thank you,
Jennifer

Please come out the the Dukes on DVD!!! This is one of my all time favorite series, it was one of the things that started my obsession with vintage Muscle cars, preferrably the '69 charger...(drool)....anyhoo...if you guys do not get Dukes on DVD I will be severely irate! Pleasseee?!!!

While there are good eposides on this dvd, there aren't many eposdes. While I think A BEST OF DVD is a good idea- season box sets would be expensive, and I like eposides from each season- including ones with the other characters after some left the show. Actually, they should have released (and I hope you still do) dvd(s) with eposides from EVERY season, and with many eposides- like 30-40 would be great.

This DVD is great! But, in a few months the all too typical DVD first season will be out---see what happened with "Married with Children" they put out a few "best of" DVDs, and then after you bought those---boom they came out with the box sets. Like I said the show is great, but the DVD makers and studios tricks to take our money SUCK!

When I was 21 Designing Women first aired on TV and I thought it was a very clever show with witty dialogue and interesting characters, Charlene, Julia, Suzanne, Mary Jo, Anthony and Bernice. I'm glad the show is on DVD but it only seems to be one DVD and it's just a best of DVD, I think the whole show should be on DVD in season sets. I have a lot of favorite episodes from this show but two of my favorites are the episoodes with Dub Taylor as Daddy Jones, the first one where they go to a cabin in the woods and go to the local bar and meet Daddy Jones and his crazy sons and they make the ladies dance with them to The Charlie Rich song Behind Closed Doors and Mary Jo gets a little tipsy and starts making fun of them thus making them pretty mad and I like the one where Daddy Jones shows up at Julia's place during a hurricane and hits it off with Bernice and gets the guy who played Les on WKRP drunk and he winds up running around the house in the underwear acting like he's a chippendale dancer, I would definitely love to have those episodes on DVD!

I see they have re-made "Cheaper By The Dozen" starring Steve Martin. I guess the Oldies are still the Goodies! I love this movie and I wish they would bring out a box set of this and "Bells on Their Toes". I will be interested to compare the original and the remake.

I have watched this movie several times a year since I was 8 or 9 years old, and love it just as much now as I did when I first saw it. As movies go this has no major outstanding qualities - but you fall in love with it. It is America; a pleasant though not idealized story of an American family. The characters are pretty realistic and the family is charming. It is a good solid slice of Americana. Don't think of this as just a movie for kids, it is a movie for all ages - we all are part of a family!

"Cheaper by the Dozen" is a tasteful and nostalgic classic film about the famous Gilbreath Family of industrial engineers who pioneered the field of time management. The setting is 1910-1920, when society and music were both more civil and tasteful. Just as in its equally classic cousin, "Life With Father," timeless tunes like "When You Wore A Tullip And I Wore A Big Red Rose," "Sweet Genevieve" and "Just A Song At Twilight" are highlighted. But most enjoyable is the acting of two Hollywood legends: the elegant and classy Myrna Loy and the vitriolic, pompous but loveable Clifton Webb. As the patriarch of the Gilbreath clan, Webb is his incomparably witty, acerbic self. Film fans should note that Hollywood tried to lure Webb back to Hollywood in the early talkie period (he had done some silents in the 1910s and 1920s) but he chose to remain the toast of the New York stage where he was America's greatest ballroom dancer twenty years before anyone ever heard of Fred Astaire. Webb returned to Hollywood in the early 1940s with his Academy Award nominated role of Waldo Lydecker in the classic "Laura." Webb was nominated again in his very next film for his superb portrayal of Elliot Templeton in "The Razor's Edge." His third talkie earned him a third consecutive Academy Award nomination-this time for Best Actor---in the hillarious comedy "Sitting Pretty," which introduced Webb's timeless Mr. Belvadere character. Webb was an American treasure of stage, ballroom, and screen. Among other things, Webb made ballroom dancing (along with his equally talented partner, Bonnie Glass)the rage of the World War I era, was a operatic prodigy, introduced the white dinner jacket, and introduced classic Tin Pan Alley tunes like "I'll Guess I'll Have To Change My Plan" twenty years before Sinatra sang them. "Cheaper By The Dozen" serves as a great work of family entertainment that also illuminates an appreciable fraction of Webb's extraordinary talents. A great film!

Unlike Jeanne Crain's, Vivian Blaine's singing voice is her own and she outclasses everyone in the film. Compare her magnetism and composure to her partner, Dick Haymes, in their duet "Isn't it Kinda Fun." Real talent shines through and Vivian's delivery of a song is the only thing in this movie that doesn't seem naive, contrived, and dated. And to the reviewer who told us to "listen for Harry Morgan's voice over as the barker," look closely: that's no voice over... that young face IS the young Harry (billed as Henry Morgan).

This movie is pure delight. Yes, it has some of the corniest moments ever put on film -- but isn't that part of the charm of these old movies? The music is lovely (I just can't agree with those critics who call it weak), and even though Jeanne Crain and Dick Haymes look far too worldly and sophisticated to be smalltown Iowa farm kids, the movie has a colorful and homey feeling to it. It is about a time when people got excited about spending three days at a county fair, riding on ferris wheels and eating candy apples. Our world may be a lot more sophisticated and technologically savvy nowadays, but I can't help thinking that we've lost a lot of the fun that our grandparents had. This movie brings it back. Enjoy!

This was the first movie I ever saw, at the age of four at the Victory Theatre in Wellston, Missouri (The Victory, a new name for the Mikado, dumped when World War II broke out for obvious reasons). During "It Might As Well Be Spring" I was horribly worried Jeanne Crain was going to fall out of the windowsill of her second story bedroom window. I was so relieved when the song was over. This is a colorful, sweet film, though it does demonstrate as so often was demonstrated that only M-G-M could make M-G-M musicals. Jeanne Crain, the mother of many, always seemed to be acting with her mind on what the kids would have for dinner that evening, but she was lovely, so totally natural (my favorite Jeanne Crain film is the totally forgotten "Take Care Of My Little Girl," about college sorority life). Poor Dick Haymes is totally out of his element, though a wonderful singer. Vivian Blaine pretty much steals the show. She should have enjoyed a much bigger movie career; it's Broadway that won her heart. I love the roller coaster scenes. The coaster in the closeups is not the coaster in the far shots. The studio had a limited budget and, because of World War II, even more limited resources to build the darned sets with. "State Fair" has a lot of pasted-together elements, consequently, but if you don't look close (so much doesn't match from shot to shot and the big, overall shots of the Fair clearly are shooting a miniature that if you think too much doesn't make any sense at all) you'll feel you are at the State Fair.

I had no idea I would like this movie so much. It's not the standard run of the mill film that everybody would like, but it's incredibly non-judgmental and sweet. I like that movies can show the best sides of human nature, and develop a male character who is so extremely non-judgmental of a woman and her human frailty, particularly for the time the film was produced.

In addition to the quality story line, the chemistry between the two lead characters is amazingly good. I have seen Cary Grant with his other onscreen ladies, and he does not always create a heat wave when he's in his romantic element. Oh, he's charming, al right. But he doesn't really appear to be interested in his leading ladies all that much. But in this movie, he seemed to be interested, and the chemistry was more than evident.

Good movie!

Dr. Noah Praetorius A doctor and teacher (Cary Grant) believes in holistic medicine. A fellow doctor and teacher (Hume Cronyn) has a nasty attitude and is jealous, so he plans to take Praetorius down a notch. Mean while back at the ranch Dr. Praetorious is getting romanticlay invalved with a young student that has a problem.

You think that Shunderson "the bat" is scary. This movie is a remake of Frauenarzt Dr. Prätorius (1950). Luckily it is much better than the original. Watching the train scene made me want to go "beep beep" or was that "beep beep beep?" This is one of those movies that just works. You can not pull it apart as each actor was excellent for his or her character. The music thy plaid was "Academic festival overture" (Brahms - The Greatest Hits ASIN: B000003QX4) what else for this sort of movie?

See Julia Dean "Old Woman" again as Julia Farren in "The Curse of the Cat People" ASIN: B00001W0G3

Plot: The plot, very briefly, begins with the investigation by one Professor Rodney Elwell (Hume Cronyn in a really waspy turn) into the life and career of the unorthodox - medically and philosophically - Dr. Noah Praetorius (Cary Grant), favorite teacher at a middle America medical school. (Whether intentional or coincidental, the investigation and eventual hearing of Noah conducted by the school board has a definite parallel to the HUAC hearings which were going on at the same time.) Noah's basic credo is that it is a doctor's duty "to make sick people well." He demonstrates this by, among other examples: lecturing his students on knowing the difference between the cold, lifeless human cadaver which was before death a warm, feeling human being; gently describing his own near death experience to an elderly lady who is convalescing in the progressive clinic he operates; and finally convincing Deborah, a young unwed mother-to-be (Jeanne Crain), to cry tears of joy and not sorrow at the advent of having a baby. Along with these lessons, talks, and acts of charity, Noah conducts the student orchestra and chorus with the same precision and spirit that he practices and teaches medicine. His colleagues include fellow Professor Barker (Walter Slezak), who can "name every neuron and electron", but cannot play the bass fiddle that accompanies the student band, and a gently spoken, towering giant named Shunderson (Finlay Currie), whom Noah fiercely protects, and who proves to have a major role in the doctor¹s early medical practice. Finally, Deborah's father (Sidney Blackmer), becomes Noah's friend, and, eventually, his father-in-law - when Deborah and Noah fall in love.

This film is a little known gem in the career of Cary Grant. Based on a play titled "Dr. Praetorius", it was adapted, produced, and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz. Interestingly, this film is not as famous as another Mankiewicz effort from the early 1950's, "All About Eve." Both are literate, cleverly written, and have interesting, in-depth, and even mysterious characters. While "All About Eve" has bordered on becoming a camp classic, with Bette Davis' now iconic "fasten your seatbelts...it's going to be a bumpy night" declaration, "People Will Talk" could have had the potential of becoming an underground cult favorite. It deals with heavy, at the time taboo subjects (premarital pregnancy, attempted suicide, unorthodox medical philosophies). Indeed, what other movie can boast of having its doctor hero being a gynecologist (which is actually mentioned!) It is perhaps because this film was so ahead of its time that it does not have the same popularity as "All About Eve." In spite of this, it is still a thought-provoking, interesting movie.

The film is full of ironies and paradoxes, Cary Grant's performance being the most notable. His Dr. Noah Praetorius is quietly confident, almost always reflective, even a bit detached - but always aware of the feelings, moods, and foibles of those around him. He will calmly and effortlessly ease the mindset of his distraught young love Debra, but, conversely (and comically), have a wildly passionate argument with Barker and his father-in-law about who is responsible for wrecking the formation pattern of his electric train set! It is this kind of irony which makes the film hard to classify, but also what makes it interestingly different. Whether it is a drama with dashes of comedy thrown in, or a comic drama, "People Will Talk" is definitely worth a look for any Grant fan who has yet to see it. It may be like an acquired taste, but definitely worth trying. Grant plays a role which has many different shadings and nuances, and it serves as another example of how adept he was at playing more dramatically complex characters. And as a demonstration of the Grant charisma, there is one scene where he is triumphantly conducting the student concert. Smiling proudly and openly, looking back into the audience and quickly giving Deborah the famous 'eyebrow arch', this concert moment should be included in any future Cary Grant 'famous scene' retrospective; right in between with being chased by the cropduster in "North by Northwest" and fuming at Katherine Hepburn as she destroys his golf clubs in "The Philadelphia Story."

Wonderfully theatric & entertaining "blaxploitation" vampire film from 1972 occupies a special place in the hearts of many horror aficionado's for William Marshall's grand performance as the first notable black vampire, Blacula / Prince Manuwalde ! Shakespearian trained Marshall adds prestige and style to this film with his towering stature, ( at six foot five inches tall, Marshall was the same height as one of the screen's other great vampires, Christopher Lee ) his magnificent, baritone voice and dominating on screen presence.

Cashing in on the huge popularity of "blaxploitation" cinema of the early 1970's ( kick started the previous year by Melvin van Peebles controversial "Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song" ), American International Pictures resurrected the vampire genre into contemporary Los Angelos complete with gay interior decorators, jive talking dudes in groovy threads and swarms of white LAPD officers being defeated by an African American hero !!

Although Marshall is the film's stand out, both as the lead character, and the glue holding the film from sliding into too many clichés & stereotypes, credit must be given to the other key cast members for their contribution. Thalmus Rasulala is excellent as the puzzled doctor thrust into the role of vampire hunter, spunky Vonetta McGee contributes the movie's love interest, firstly as Prince Manuwalde's ill fated wife, Luva, and then as her reincarnation, Tina. And sad faced character actor, and eternal fall guy, Elisha Cook Jnr playing a morgue attendant ends up on the sharp end of a set of vampire fangs ! Arguably, the funniest line of the movie is uttered by the undertaker Swenson ( Lance Talyor Sr ), after he meets with Dr Gordon Thomas ( Thalmus Rasulala ) at the funeral home. After the inquisitive doctor leaves, the undertaker sighs and remarks " That has got to be the rudest ****** I have ever met !".

"Blacula"was highly successful upon release, spawning an unfortunately inferior sequel the following year, "Scream, Blacula, Scream". Although the movie boasted William Marshall back in the cape and 1970's African American film heroine, Pam Grier, it just couldn't recreate the same formula. To gain a wonderful insight on "blaxploitation" movies, grab the fantastic book "What It Is.....What It Was ! The Black Film Explosion of the 1970's in Words & Pictures"...it includes a tremendous interview with William Marshall and his thoughts on the "Blacula" movies !!

One of my preferred vampire films, "Blacula" is a unique, intelligent & satisfying contribution to the vampire genre

The 1972 film "Blacula" is a much better example of the Blaxploitation period, which began with the success of "Shaft" the previous year, than it is as a vampire movie. William Marshall, with his booming voice, plays the title character and gives the film a sense of credibility that probably only James Earl Jones could have matched. Without Marshall's sense of dignity, "Blacula" would have been reduced to slapstick. The story is that interior decorates buy the coffin of Prince Manuwalde andbring it back to Los Angeles, unaware that the African prince had been bitten by Dracula (Charles Macaulay) centuries before and locked inside. While wandering the nights in his eternal search for human blood, the prince sees Tina (Vonetta McGee), a woman who looks like his dear departed wife, Luva, and he is convinced she is his beloved reincarnated. While Blacula woos Tina, her friend Dr. Gordon Thomas (Thalmus Rasulala) figures out that this guy is a blood-sucking fiend and tries to hunt the vampire down.

Today the racial humor of this film seems dated, but in 1972 this movie was hip in being self-conscious about its blackness, which was the whole point of the Blaxploitation movement: to black movies made by black casts and crews for black audiences, instead of leaving it to Hollywood to ignore and denigrate blacks in the films that had been produced up to that point. The horror scenes are hokey in the extreme, but since they are basically being done for fun by director William Crain, it is hard to complain. Some critics have bemoaned the miss opportunity to make a telling critique of sexual hypocrisy in society, the way Bram Stoker's original novel did for the Victorian era (if you are inclined to read it that way), but the social agenda here is clearly race and not sex, which is totally appropriate as far as I am concerned. In addition to the 1973 sequel, "Scream, Blacula, Scream," other Blaxploitation horror films that followed this one included "Blackenstein," "Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde," and "The House on Skull Mountain." However, none of them would enjoy the reputation of "Blacula," which remains the defining film of this particular genre.

The 1972 film "Blacula" is a much better example of the Blaxploitation period, which began with the success of "Shaft" the previous year, than it is as a vampire movie. William Marshall, with his booming voice, plays the title character and gives the film a sense of credibility that probably only James Earl Jones could have matched. Without Marshall's sense of dignity, "Blacula" would have been reduced to slapstick.

The story is that interior decorates buy the coffin of Prince Manuwalde andbring it back to Los Angeles, unaware that the African prince had been bitten by Dracula (Charles Macaulay) centuries before and locked inside. While wandering the nights in his eternal search for human blood, the prince sees Tina (Vonetta McGee), a woman who looks like his dear departed wife, Luva, and he is convinced she is his beloved reincarnated. While Blacula woos Tina, her friend Dr. Gordon Thomas (Thalmus Rasulala) figures out that this guy is a blood-sucking fiend and tries to hunt the vampire down.

Today the racial humor of this film seems dated, but in 1972 this movie was hip in being self-conscious about its blackness, which was the whole point of the Blaxploitation movement: to black movies made by black casts and crews for black audiences, instead of leaving it to Hollywood to ignore and denigrate blacks in the films that had been produced up to that point. The horror scenes are hokey in the extreme, but since they are basically being done for fun by director William Crain, it is hard to complain. Some critics have bemoaned the miss opportunity to make a telling critique of sexual hypocrisy in society, the way Bram Stoker's original novel did for the Victorian era (if you are inclined to read it that way), but the social agenda here is clearly race and not sex, which is totally appropriate as far as I am concerned.

In addition to the 1973 sequel, "Scream, Blacula, Scream," other Blaxploitation horror films that followed this one included "Blackenstein," "Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde," and "The House on Skull Mountain." However, none of them would enjoy the reputation of "Blacula," which remains the defining film of this particular genre.

I would rather have a root canal than have to watch this "dog" again. I have ALL "gay" movies and this is the worst! Sorry!

This indie film certainly sets the gay movement back about 30 years where all gay men are either sraight and confused or end up as a villian. When the two lead male characters got together I was looking forward to the growth of a relationship. Once the firework scene ended and the chase began I knew I was doomed. The ending clearly certified for me that this one has no gay pride.

The film's twist on the Huckleberry Finn/American West motif is well-done and commendable. Similarly, the burgeoning relationship between the two young men is initially well-dramatized. However, Minh's character lacks development, and potential dramatic use of his disenfranchisemnt (half-black, half-Vietnamese, gay, poor) is unexplored. Minh's character arc lands him the only place he could end up: risking what little he has to avenge his abandonment. Yet we are left wondering the complete reasoning behind his decision, and, in fact, we do not know Minh's name until the movie is almost over. Without due psychological exploration of Minh, the movie's pace is jerky and the film left being somewhat cryptic, which would be to the film's credit if it seemed intentional.