The Alamo [Restored Original Director's Cut] [VHS] by John Wayne $29.98
John Wayne produces, directs and stars in this "bigger than life" (Life) chronicle of one ofthe most remarkable events in American history. At the Alamoa crumbling adobe mission185 exceptional men joined together in a sacred pact: they would stand firm against an army of 7,000 and willingly give their lives for freedom. Filmed entirely in Texas, only a few miles from the site of the actual...
The Harvey Girls [VHS] by Edmund Beloin $19.98
The Shakiest Gun in the West [VHS] by Andrew Jackson $14.98
Rose Marie [VHS] by Hunt Stromberg $19.98
Professionals [VHS] by Conrad L. Hall $9.99
Before The Wild Bunch, there was The Professionals, Richard Brooks's marvelous ode to friendship, loyalty, and disillusionment. It may not have the stylistic bravado or fatalistic doom of the legendary Sam Peckinpah film, but Brooks's storytelling is simple and steady and just as insightful. The difference is Brooks is a lot more optimistic. Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster are buddies who have...
True Grit [VHS] by Lucien Ballard $9.95
A wonderful/rueful running gag in El Dorado involves the Edgar Allan Poe line "Ride, boldly ride" being mangled by toupee-wearer Wayne into "Ride, baldy, ride." Two years later, in True Grit, Wayne put the joke in italics by donning an eyepatch and several inches of girth to play cantankerous territorial marshal Rooster Cogburn. Critics belatedly noticed that he could be a marvelously...
Branded [VHS] by Charles Lang $9.95
Sign of Zorro [VHS] by Norman Foster $9.99
My Little Chickadee [VHS] by Mae West $14.98
When Columbia Pictures sought to pair Mae West and W.C. Fields in a film, neither was thrilled, but since both stars' careers were on the skids, they agreed to the project. They fought about everything: script, billing, casting, philosophy, work habits, style. Onscreen, Fields is always the butt of his own jokes. West never is. He's all broad slapstick, she, all sly innuendo. In the film West...
Wild Bunch [VHS] by Lucien Ballard $19.98
Here's how director Sam Peckinpah described his motivation behind The Wild Bunch at the time of the film's 1969 release: "I was trying to tell a simple story about bad men in changing times. The Wild Bunch is simply what happens when killers go to Mexico. The strange thing is you feel a great sense of loss when these killers reach the end of the line." All of these statements are true, but they...