New Spy DVDs Out This Week: The Unknown Saint of Monte Carlo

I was going to lead this week's new DVD roundup with Warner Bros.' Unknown, but then the studio trumped themselves at the last minute by announcing a new collection of long-awaited Saint movies via The Warner Archive!  The George Sanders Saint Movies Collection includes all five of the RKO Saint films Sanders starred in between 1939 and '41: The Saint Strikes Back, The Saint in London, The Saint's Double Trouble, The Saint Takes Over and The Saint in Palm Springs.  The trouble with collecting Sanders' Saint outings is that it means omitting the four films starring Luis Hayward (my favorite of the RKO Saints) and Hugh Sinclair. And Hayward starred in the first of the Leslie Charteris adaptations, The Saint in New York. But hopefully those films will see release in a future collection. There's plenty of good news here to focus on!  Warner representatives promised way back in 2007 that all of the RKO Saint films would see release in 2008. That didn't happen, and it was about that time that the bottom fell out of the catalog DVD market entirely, so it seemed as if it would never happen.  Then the studio began its Warner Archive MOD program, producing DVD-Rs of classic films on demand, which started a trend and salvaged the catalog business.  It seemed inevitable that the Saint movies would pop up eventually as MODs, but even then the studio dragged its feet.  And now that these five have arrived, it seems like fans are actually better off for the delay. Instead of releasing each title individually for twenty bucks apiece, as they did with the Tarzan series, Warner are bundling five movies together for just $29.95.  That's a much better bargain!  (Very reasonable, actually.) I really hope that we see the remaining Saint titles (including the elusive final film in the RKO cycle, The Saint's Girl Friday, which was co-produced by Britain's Hammer Studios and saw Hayward return to the role he originated more than a decade later) soon in another such collection.  But for now, I'm very content to have these ones at long last!  So far The George Sanders Saint Movies Collection is available only directly through The Warner Archive, but it will assuredly pop up on Amazon and Deep Discount in a couple of months.

Also out from Warner Home Video today, in much wider release on DVD and Blu-ray/DVD combo, is this year's Liam Neeson neo-Eurospy romp, Unknown. I never got around to reviewing Unknown when it was in theaters, but I really enjoyed it.  It's not just Taken in Berlin, as the advertising campaign tried so hard to make us believe.  That shorthand actually did the movie a disservice, because Unknown is a bit more cerebral than Taken.  (A bit!) It's not an out-and-out action movie, so those expecting Neeson to kick as much ass as he did in Taken were in for a bit of a letdown.  It is a pretty cool thriller in its own right, though!  The wintery Berlin locations are shown to maximum advantage, as is Diane Kruger, who ably makes the case that she deserves further consideration as a future Bond Girl.  There are also some cool car chases and crashes. The script, co-written by John Le Carré's son, Stephen Cornwell, plays fair with the audience, and I was surprised by a twist that was actually earned and managed quite well to explain a pretty preposterous set-up in a satisfying manner. (I have no idea how faithful it is to the novel by Didier van Cauwelaert upon which it's based.) Extras, unfortunately, are pretty scarce on both releases. The BD includes the featurettes "Unknown: What is Known?" and "Liam Neeson: Known Action Hero" as well as a digital copy of the film; to the undoubted ire of those without Blu-ray players, the DVD includes only the first featurette.  DVD buyers shouldn't worry, though.  They're really not missing out on anything.  Both EPK featurettes are extremely brief, and despite that brevity still manage to cover some of the same ground. Still, this movie is worthwhile even without good bonus material. If you missed Unknown in theaters, definitely give it a try on disc. I'll be posting a full review shortly. Own it on Blu-ray for $35.99 (or just $22.99 currently from Amazon) or DVD for $28.99 (or just $14.99 from Amazon right now).

Finally, Olive Films, who have licensed a lot of cool catalog titles from Paramount, bring us the 1986 WWII spy miniseries Monte Carlo on DVD today. Based on the novel by Stephen Sheppard, Monte Carlo follows the rich and famous as they mingle with international spies in the glamorous titular city during the months leading up to the second World War. Joan Collins stars as a cabaret singer who moonlights for British Intelligence; Peter Vaughn plays her German rival (rival spy, that is; not rival cabaret performer), Malcolm McDowell is no doubt someone shady, and George Hamilton is the American playboy novelist mixed up in the middle of it all. I have a secret soft spot for Eighties miniseries and an even more secret (and guilty) soft spot for the ageless Joan Collins, so I'm intrigued by this one. Retail for the 2-disc set is $39.99, but of course it can be had for slightly less on Amazon.

In addition to Monte Carlo, Olive has one more Joan Collins miniseries out today that might interest spy fans, though it's not itself a spy story. Sins, based on a Judith Gould novel, is notable here because it co-stars Timothy Dalton (immediately prior to becoming Bond) as Collins' unstable brother who's spent half his life in mental institutions. Lauren Hutton (who's also in Monte Carlo) and Gene Kelly (yes, Gene Kelly) also appear. Sins is also a 2-disc set with the same SRP of $39.99.

More New Spy DVDs Out Last Week
On Sale Today Only!

In addition to the sets that I wrote about on Tuesday, there were some other very exciting new spy releases last week. The Warner Archive splurged on spy titles in a nearly all-spy week, including a couple of great Eurospy titles.  And some of them are on sale through tonight (Monday)!

The Double Man
This cool, dark Eurospy entry finds Yul Brynner playing a double role as a tough, cold-blooded CIA agent and his potential doppelganger.  Future Bond Girl Britt Ekland is also on board, though her loyalties are questionable.  The Cold War intrigue unfolds in one of my favorite spy locations: the Swiss Alps.  It's a bit darker than a lot of Eurospy fare, but still delivers just about everything you could hope for from the genre.  The Double Man is available to pre-order from Amazon, and available now directly through The Warner Archive. (At a substantial discount if you act fast!)

Assignment To Kill
Spies get assigned to kill all the time. After all, they've got licenses for that.  But how often do insurance investigators receive an Assignment To Kill?  Quite often, actually, if you've dabbled a bit in the Eurospy genre!  Longtime readers will be aware that I'm a big fan of this particularly curious sub-genre.  For some reason, insurance investigators were so glamorized in the Sixties that European filmmakers tended to use them as proxy spies.  The best Eurospy movie of all, Deadlier Than the Male (review here), isn't about a spy at all, but an insurance investigator.  Other movies in this mold include Ring Around the World (review here) and 1968's Assignment To Kill, though the latter has been rather elusive until now.  Patrick O'Neal plays ultra-cool insurance investigator Richard Cutter, and a globe-trotting probe into big-time fraud takes him into contact with such spy movie regulars as Herbert Lom, John Gielgud, Peter van Eyck, Eric Portman and Oscar Homolka. The action unfolds against the same great Swiss backdrop as The Double Man.  Assignment To Kill is available now from The Warner Archive, and available to pre-order on Amazon.

Avalanche Express
I've never seen Avalanche Express (1979), but I do love spy movies on trains, so I'm eager to give it a go!  Lee Marvin plays CIA agent Harry Wargrave, whose assignment is to escort a Soviet defector (played by Robert Shaw, a seasoned veteran of train-based espionage!) on Europe’s Milan-to-Rotterdam express, then cross the Atlantic and deliver his charge to Washington. But enemy agents are out to stop him–and won't think twice about causing a devastating avalanche to do so! Other passengers on the train (some of whom are bound to be foreign spies) include such nefarious types as Maximilian Schell, Mike Connors, Horst Buchholz and the ubiquitous Vladek Sheybal. Avalanche Express is available for pre-order from Amazon at $18.99 or available now directly.

24 Hours To Kill
24 Hours To Kill doesn't have former Tarzan and Eurospy dabbler Lex Barker playing an actual spy, but as an international thriller set primarily in that favorite Eurospy location, the "Paris of the Middle East," Beirut, it's essentially part of the genre. The plot concerns smuggling, and the cast includes Mickey Rooney and Walter Slezak. 24 Hours To Kill has been available before on a dubious grey market label, but the Warner Archive edition marks its widescreen debut.  This MOD edition is available to pre-order from Amazon and available now directly.

Two more titles in this wave aren't quite spy titles, but they're Sixties adventures with guns and beautiful women, and that puts them close enough in my book.  Dark of the Sun is a 1968 men-on-a-mission movie in which Rod Taylor (The Liquidator) and Jim Brown lead a group of elite commandos on a perilous train journey across the Congo out to rescue endangered civilians and recover a huge cache of diamonds.  And just look at that cover art!  Kona Coast was an unsold pilot for a Hawaiian action series based on a book by John D. Macdonald. The Kremlin Letter's Richard Boone plays a charter boat captain who turns vigilante to avenge the death of his daughter. Finally, Once Before I Die is a war movie and not a spy movie in any sense, but it does star Bond Girl Ursula Andress...

Whew!  Quite a week!  How on earth are we spy fans to keep up with so many releases at once, you might ask?  Well, fortunately The Warner Archive is having a very nice Father's Day sale lasting through the end of the day today (Monday, June 13), in which all of these titles (and many other action movies) are available at a five dollar discount.  To me, that $5 makes all the difference in the world.  The regular Warner Archive retail price of $19.95 always strikes me as prohibitive for a made-on-demand DVD, but $14.95 sounds entirely reasonable–especially with free shipping on orders of two or more!  That's the way to go if you're buying these today, but if you miss the sale or want to hold off, they're all also available to pre-order on Amazon (where they won't be available until July) for $18.99 apiece.  Other titles in the sale that might interest spy fans include Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (a bona fide Tarzan spy movie - review here), Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (co-starring Sean Connery - review here), Brass Bancroft of the Secret Service, The Sell-Out and many, many more.

Upcoming Spy DVDs From MGM's Limited Edition Collection

Including Works From Broccoli and Saltzman, Diana Rigg, Edward Woodward, Richard Johnson and More!

The next monthly wave of titles from MGM's MOD program, the Limited Edition Collection, includes some real spy gems!  Most exciting is the spy movie that Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman collaborated on between Dr. No and From Russia With Love: 1963's Call Me Bwana, starring Bob Hope and Anita Ekberg. Long unavailable on home video and never before released in widescreen (though it's run that way on TCM), this title is probably best known to Bond fans for the in-joke in Sean Connery's second 007 outing. Bond's ally Kerim Bey uses 007's Q-issued sniper rifle to shoot the Bulgarian KGB stooge Krilencu as he attempts to escape his safe house through a secret exit in the mouth of Anita Ekberg on a poster for Call Me Bwana painted on the side of his building. (In Ian Fleming's novel, it was Marilyn Monroe.)  But Bwana is notable for more than that; it's a spy movie in its own right.  When an unmanned American space capsule crash-lands in the African veldt, the CIA sends self-professed African expert Bob Hope (The Road to Hong Kong) to retrieve it.  The other side sends beautiful secret agent Anita Ekberg (The Cobra) and scientist Lionel Jeffries (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), and soon all the interested parties find themselves on safari together.  In typical Bob Hope fashion, hilarity ensues.  Much of the Bond team established on Dr. No remains in place here, including editor Peter Hunt, production designer Syd Cain, composer Monty Norman, D.P. Ted Moore, title designer Maurice Binder and scribe Johanna Harwood.

The 1969 Eurospy movie The File of the Golden Goose doesn't quite live up to the promise of its all-star cast (which includes Edward Woodward, Charles Grey, Yul Brynner, Walter Gotell, Ivor Dean, John Barrie and Adrienne Corri), but it's still a welcome release on DVD. American Secret Service agent Brynner is sent to England where he teams up with Scotland Yard detective Woodward to go undercover to bust a brutal counterfeit gang known as the Golden Goose. All the double-crossing expected of the spy genre ensues, but the stodgy movie feels more like a generic Forties or Fifties noir (thanks in part to some unnecessary narration), belying its origins as a remake of 1947's T-Men. Director Sam Wanamaker made a much better Eurospy movie the following year, The Executioner, which has already been issued on MOD from Columbia.

Don Sharp's 1975 political thriller Hennessy is a real surprise! Based on a story conceived by Deadlier Than the Male star Richard Johnson, its contriversial subject matter ensured an extremely limited release in Seventies Britain, and it's never been very widely available since.  Fans have long demanded it on DVD, but probably never thought it would actually happen. Rod Steiger plays Hennessy, a peaceful Irishman driven to extremism after his wife and child are killed during violence in Belfast. As retribution he plots to assassinate the Queen of England by bombing the British Parliament when the Royal Family is in attendance. Johnson plays the Special Branch operative out to stop him, and Eric Porter plays an IRA thug out to stop him as well, out of fear of British reprisals in Ireland for such a horrific act. Trevor Howard, Lee Remick, Patrick Stewart and Queen Elizabeth II herself (via stock footage) co-star.

Diana Rigg fans will be pleased to note that this wave of titles also includes Peter Hall's 1968 version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream starring Rigg (between The Avengers and Bond) as Helena. Judi Dench, decades prior to playing M, also appears, as Titania.  Impossibly young versions of Ian Holm (Game Set Match), Helen Mirren (RED), Michael Jayston (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and Barbara Jefford (who lent her voice to Daniella Bianchi's Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love) round out the dream cast.

Though there are no pre-order links up yet, all of these titles will be available soon from online outlets like Amazon and Screen Archives Entertainment.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week: Probe (1972)

In this week's batch of new Warner Archive made-on-demand titles is the rare Seventies TV pilot Probe, which led to the slightly re-formatted series Search.  Probe stars Hugh O'Brian as Hugh Lockwood, agent of a secret international private spy agency called... Probe.  Coming from Outer Limits producer Leslie Stevens, Probe was considered a science fiction series at the time due to the fantastic gadgets Lockwood had at his fingertips... but today they don't seem all that fantastic.  In fact, things like tiny transistor radios implanted in an agent's ear to maintain constant contact with headquarters and miniaturized cameras hidden in rings and biometric scanners are pretty much de rigueur in today's spy shows.  (The pilot for Exit Strategy, a possible Fox series for this fall, features all three pretty heavily with no hint of sci-fi.)  In Probe, they were still considered a gimmick, one which let technicians at Probe Control (like Burgess Meredith) feed their agent in the field all sorts of information as he needed it in real time.  The Macguffin in the telefilm is a cache of stolen diamonds with a Nazi connection, and among the mysterious figures involved with the loot is sexy femme fatale Elke Sommer, well known to Eurospy fans from movies like the great, great Deadlier Than the Male (review here).  Regular readers will know that Sommer's presence always sparks my own interest in a movie, so I'm eager to seek out Probe!  This being the Warner Archive, retail for this DVD-R is a frustratingly inflated $19.95, so if you want Probe at a reasonable price you'll have to wait for it to become available on Deep Discount, or to get it as part of Warner Archive's occasional bulk sales. 

There's also another classic Seventies TV pilot in this wave, but it's less spyish: Smile Jenny, You're Dead, the second of two pilot films for the David Janssen private eye series Harry O.  Now if only Warner Archive would release those series themselves...

Upcoming Spy DVDs: More Spies and Spy Stars on MGM MOD

According to pre-order listings on Screen Archives Entertainment, MGM's next wave of MOD titles will include the spy movies The Fearmakers (1958) and The Ambassador (1984), along with the 1973 James Coburn pick-pocket movie Harry In Your Pocket (the only feature from Mission: Impossible mastermind Bruce Geller) and the rare 1962 horror film Burn, Witch, Burn!, one of the few theatrical star vehicles for eccentric TV spy hero Peter Wyngarde (Jason King).

Robert Mitchum, Ellen Burstyn and Rock Hudson (in his final role) star in The Ambassador, in which "an American ambassador, his wife, and her Arab lover are caught up in a dangerous game of intrigue, extortion, and murder, in the explosive Middle East." Jacques Tourneur's The Fearmakers prefigures The Manchurian Candidate, with Dana Andrews starring as a Korean War veteran who may have been brainwashed ostensibly helping the government ferret out Communist subversives. These made-to-order DVD-Rs should all be available around May 3. The last batch of MGM Limited Edition Collection titles, meanwhile (including The Destructors and Cloudburst), is now available for purchase on Amazon as well as SAE. No doubt these ones will be, too, come mid-May.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: The Destructors and Cloudburst

MGM's latest wave of MOD titles in their "Limited Edition Collection" will include two not-quite spy movies that will nonetheless be of interest to readers here. Currently available to pre-order from Screen Archives Entertainment, The Destructors is not the 1968 Richard Egan Bond knock-off (which I'll get around to reviewing here one of these days), but the 1974 Michael Caine movie also known as The Marseille Contract.  Though Anthony Quinn plays some sort of American agent, it's really more of a crime movie than a spy movie. Quinn hires a professional hitman played by Caine to take out an untouchable drug lord played by James Mason.  The action all unfolds in the south of France, and as I recall, the locations (shot beautifully by my favorite DP, Douglas Slocombe)are really the film's highlights.  I haven't seen this movie in about ten years, and honestly I remember very little of it.  My recollection is that it's not very good, but does offer up one great car chase, alone worth the price of admission. The chase, coordinated by frequent Bond car chase guru Rémy Julienne, prefigures his 1995 Aston Martin/Ferrari rally in GoldenEye, playing out over the same twisty Côte d'Azur roads. All in all, I'm looking forward to seeing this one again. 

Additionally, this MOD wave also includes the rare 1951 title Cloudburst, one of famed British horror studio Hammer's rare flirtations with espionage (along with Passport to China, Shatter and their Dick Barton series). Robert Preston plays an American WWII vet working as a codebreaker for a secret division of the British government... but that's as far as the movie goes into spy territory. Despite his job, the movie is considered a more standard noir mystery about the hunt for a killer. Still, rare Hammer movies always catch my eye, and I'm excited to finally have a chance to watch this.

Sony MOD Titles in Great Deep Discount Sale

Deep Discount is having an amazing sale this month on Sony's made-on-demand 
DVD-Rs, the "Columbia Classics" series.  (Their version of the Warner Archive.) That includes such Sixties spy essentials as Otley, Duffy, The Executioner and The Deadly Affair, along with earlier spy titles like Assignment Paris and Man On a String.  It doesn't seem to include this week's new release of Hammerhead, unfortunately. But the titles on sale are just $11.96, as opposed to the regular twenty bucks! It's a really good opportunity to stock up... which is just what I'm going to do!  The sale lasts all month, until noon on March 31.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week

Wow, there is a deluge of new spy titles available this week!  An embarrassment of riches sure to make spy fans poor... but satisfied.  And a lot of it is really essential stuff, too.

MI-5: Volume 8
It feels like it's been forever since we had the last volume of MI-5 (known as Spooks in its native Britain), but I guess it's really only been a year. It always seems so long between these releases, but the next volume always arrives just in time to quench my thirst for this compelling, addictive and consistently solid UK spy series.  (We actually won't have to wait so long for Volume 9, however; BBC has already announced that they'll release it this summer putting America somewhat more on track with the UK release schedule.) MI-5: Volume 8 sees the usual threats to British security and (I hear) the usual high fatality rate amongst the regulars. But it also sees the rare return of someone who left the show: Ruth Evershed. The 3-disc set is happily somewhat cheaper than previous volumes, with an SRP of $39.98, though it can currently be found on Amazon for just $27.99.

Man in a Suitcase: Set 1
Man, any single one of these titles would make this a good week for spy releases! Acorn treats American spy fans to this ITC classic for the first time. The titular Man in a Suitcase, McGill (Richard Bradford) is a spy disavowed by American Intelligence after being set up, forced to take jobs as a freelancer operating out of London. (When you're burned, you're burned!) Man in a Suitcase has a reputation as being darker and grittier than other popular ITC series like The Saint and Danger Man, and it is... but it's still not as dark and certainly not as bleak as something like Callan. In fact, it strikes a happy medium likely to appeal in equal measure to fans of Callan and The Saint. Acorn's Set 1 (in a very attractive four-disc flipper case) contains the show's first fifteen episodes, amounting to half of its entire first season. It doesn't include any of the extras found on the Region 4 or Region 2 releases, but it does look amazing–better than I've ever seen it look before. The weird thing is the order that the episodes are presented in. I guess it must be the original broadcast order, though it's not production order. The upshot is that the first episode produced, "Man From the Dead," which serves wonderfully as a pilot and sets up the show's premise, doesn't come until Disc 2. Acorn's set instead begins with "Brainwash," which is certainly a flashier episode less bogged down by exposition, but not really a great one to start with. I'd recommend watching "Man From the Dead" first. Also among the fifteen episodes in this set are "Variation on a Million Bucks, Part 1" and "Variation on a Million Bucks, Part 2," notable because they were edited together into the feature film To Chase a Million for theatrical release in Europe, making this the first official Region 1 release of that Eurospy movie, albeit in two parts. Retail is $59.99, but Amazon's got it for $44.99.

Wish Me Luck: Series 2
Acorn alone is spoiling spy fans today. In addition to Man in a Suitcase, the company also releases Wish Me Luck: Series 2. While Series 1 of this fact-based, wartime espionage drama about the women who worked for Britain's Special Operations Executive and parachuted into occupied France to risk their lives for their country had seen a Region 1 release prior to Acorn's reissue, Series 2 has never before been available on DVD in the U.S. Spy favorite Julian Glover co-stars with Kate Buffery, Lynn Farleigh, Jane Snowden and Jane Asher. Retail is $39.99, but it's currently ten bucks cheaper on Amazon.

RED
One of last year's most entertaining spy movies, RED, is out today from Summit Entertainment as a Special Edition DVD, a Special Edition Blu-ray and a movie-only Blu-ray. Some of the intriguing extras on the DVD include deleted and extended scenes and an audio commentary with Retired (but presumably not Extremely Dangerous) CIA field officer Robert Baer (the model for George Clooney's character in Syriana, who also recently contributed to a featurette on the From Paris With Love DVD). The Blu-ray contains all that as well as an "Access: RED" feature boasting "a variety of scene-specific features including interviews with cast members, animated documentary shorts on controversial CIA operations, and more." Sounds cool! RED stars Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Karl Urban, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Mary Louise Parker, Richard Dreyfuss and Brian Cox. Read my full review here.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Music Box Films releases the final Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson's international phenomenon The Millennium Trilogy today on both DVD and Blu-ray. (Daniel Craig stars in an American take on the material filming now.) The series started as a very, very dark sort of Agatha Christie-type mystery with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, then ventured into Robert Ludlum territory in its second installment, The Girl Who Played With Fire and finally blossoms into a full-fledged spy thriller in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I've only seen the first movie so far (which was quite good), but I loved the books and I'm eager to see the others. If you haven't gotten any of them yet, though, and think you'll want them all, you might want to hold off for The Stieg Larsson Trilogy, which will collect all three films, along with an exclusive bonus disc, available on both DVD and Blu-ray next month.

Operation C.I.A.

From the Warner Archive comes their first foray in quite a while into Sixties spydom... Operation C.I.A. starring a young, mustacheless Burt Reynolds. Their website promises "An exploding motorbike. Air-conditioning ducts spewing cyanide gas. Terrorists, beautiful women, lethal snakes, butt-kicking action and a young Burt Reynolds: Operation C.I.A. has ’em all!" Well, yes, technically I guess it does. (Though the action really isn't that "butt-kicking.") But you can kind of tell from that copy that they're grasping at straws to make this rather dull 1965 entry in the global spy sweepstakes sparked by the success of 007 sound more interesting than it really is. But maybe Operation C.I.A. (which is kind of a bad name for a clandestine spy operation, if you think about it) is one of those movies that takes on a whole new life when you finally see a high-quality version instead of the shoddy transfer that's been circulating for years. I'm probably going to find out. Because while the copy doesn't sell me on it... I have to admit, that cover art does. That's the kind of poster that will have me shelling out hard-earned cash for a movie I know is a bit of a stinker! As I'm sure everyone knows, Warner Archive titles are made to order, burnt on demand on DVD-Rs.

The Kremlin Letter

John Huston's all-star spy drama The Kremlin Letter, long conspicuously absent on DVD despite frequent airings on the Fox Movie Channel, finally makes it to disc today as the first title in Fox's new limited edition specialty line, Twilight Time. Adapted from the novel by Noel Behn, The Kremlin Letter follows a young Naval Intelligence officer (Patrick O'Neal) recruited by a network of aging spies to retrieve a letter critical to American Intelligence from Moscow. The impressive cast includes Orson Welles, George Sanders, Dean Jagger, Nigel Green, Max von Sydow, Richard Boone, Raf Vallone and Huston himself. Twilight Time is intended as Fox's answer to the MOD programs at Columbia, Warner Bros. and other companies, with one major difference: these are factory-pressed DVDs, not burnt DVD-Rs. In the interest of keeping things classy and giving consumers their money's worth, Fox also plans to include special features on these discs. They're supposed to be available exclusively through Screen Archives Entertainment, and The Kremlin Letter is supposed to be available today... but I can't find any sign of it so far. Keep your eyes peeled! In the meantime, read more about Twilight Time and The Kremlin Letter here.

Basil Dearden's London Underground

Finally, The Criterion Collection issues another one of its feature-free but still high-quality Eclipses Series sets, Eclipse Series 25: Basil Dearden's London Underground. There is no spy movie in this collection, but there are a lot of elements that will appeal to spy fans among these Sixties classics. Foremost among them is the Region 1 DVD debut of a rare Patrick McGoohan movie, All Night Long.  All Night Long is basically a jazz Othello, casting McGoohan in the Iago role. Real-life jazz legends like Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck, and Avengers composer Johnny Dankworth also appear. Besides this McGoohan rarity, spy fans might want to look out for genre stalwart Dirk Bogarde (Modesty Blaise, Hot Enough For June) giving a stellar performance in Victim, and Richard Attenborough and Bryan Forbes in The League of Gentlemen, the movie that set the template for dozens of heist movies to follow. (And in many ways Mission: Impossible.) Retail for the 4-disc set is $59.95, but after seven other titles, surely you know the drill: cheaper online!

So... enough spy DVDs for you this week? Cripes, that was nearly as much work as the Holiday Shopping Guide! Hopefully we won't all have to wait until next Christmas to get all these titles...

Upcoming Spy DVDs: The Satan Bug (1965)

If you ever see a headline these days about any vintage catalog title coming out from a major studio that isn't The Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind, you can bet it's probably an MOD (Manufactured On Demand) title, ala the Warner Archive.  I've weighed the pros and cons of this trend plenty in the past, but despite enabling the studios to charge twice what we paid before for a cheaper product with no special features, the upside is that the MOD format means we're at least getting some catalog releases, which isn't gonna happen any other way in this pitiful market.  (I've said it before and I'll say it again: I blame Blu-ray as much as I blame the economy for this sorry state of affairs.)  At least MGM is sweetening the deal on MOD titles a bit.  They're now expanding their titles' availability to more retailers (they were previously available only through Amazon), possibly even to brick and mortar stores who are interested.  (That bit's a little unclear from the press release, but it seems like physical retailers who have websites, like Borders and Barnes & Noble, will definitely be part of the equation.)  Furthermore, they're including theatrical trailers on their titles when they have the elements available.  I know, it's not much in terms of special features, but at least it's something.  And a pretty important something at that; I always like watching the trailer when I get a new DVD.  Anyway, MGM has announced an aggressive expansion of their "MGM Limited Edition Collection" of MOD titles.  The studio plans to release over 400 new-to-DVD titles in the next 18 months.  Among those in the first wave, available in December, is the 1965 Alistair Maclean spy movie The Satan Bug (review here). John Sturges directed what the studio describes as a "sizzling suspenser about a nerve-racking chase to recover flasks of a lethal virus which were stolen from a government lab by a deranged and dangerous scientist, who has decided that now it is his turn 'to play God'..."  Read my review to discover that I found it anything but sizzling, but I know that the movie has its fans, and you won't find me arguing with the release of more Sixties spy movies on DVD! The first-rate score, by Jerry Goldsmith, has been available for a while from FSM.

Tons Of New Spy DVDs Out This Week: Otley, Iron Man, Danger Man And More

Woo-whee! (As Sheriff J.W. Pepper might exclaim.)  There are a lot of new spy movies out today!  It's an embarrassment of riches that makes me embarrassed by my lack of riches, because I want them all but my poor wallet just can't handle it.  It's time to start making my Christmas list...  The flashiest new spy title is Iron Man 2, featuring Marvel's two top superspies, Nick Fury and Black Widow, but the best is Otley (1968), one of my very favorite spy movies of all time.  (And yes, as I've often threatened, I will eventually get around to writing a "My Favorite Spy Movies" piece about it, and now I can hopefully illustrate that with screencaps from a lovely new transfer.)  But Otley, unfortunately, isn't a straightforward DVD, and you can't buy it in stores.

With the market for catalog titles on DVD apparently and lamentably dead (thanks as much to the advent of Blu-ray as to the downturn in the economy if you ask me), more and more studios are noticing the success of Warner Brothers' burn-on-demand DVD-R program, the Warner Archive, and emulating it.  We've seen Universal and MGM launch similar (if far less extensive) programs through Amazon, offering movies on DVD-R burnt to order. There are a lot of drawbacks to the formula: while they do generally look pretty good (with the occasional exception, like MGM's pitiful House of Long Shadows), most of the catalog titles released this way are not remastered with anywhere near the precision that a studio puts into a regular DVD catalog release, and they never offer any of the special features like making-ofs or commentary tracks that consumers became accustomed to in the heyday of the DVD format. Then there's the little matter that they're on DVD-R, and not real DVDs. And, worst of all, there's the price point, which remains awfully high for a featureless, sometimes un-remastered DVD-R. But the upside is a big one: programs like the Warner Archive mean that we get to see titles released that might never even have made the cut in the halcyon days of deep catalog releases. And while the quality might not be up to the standards of the few big prestige catalog titles that still come out (like The African Queen earlier this year), it's generally a far sight better than the gray market alternatives.  These DVD-Rs are like legitimate bootlegs, using the best available elements. Overall, they're a good thing in this marketplace, and I'm glad that more studios are jumping on the bandwagon.  Sure, I miss the past, when even obscure catalog titles would get the Special Edition treatment, but the realist in me knows those days aren't coming back, so fans of classic films have no choice but to embrace the DVD-R programs.  Well, there is a choice, but it amounts to those titles never coming out at all, and that's not acceptable. 

The latest studio to launch a Warner Archive-like program is Sony.  A little over a month ago, pre-order listings quietly started turning up on Critic's Choice Video and (more cheaply) their sister site, Deep Discount. (Sadly this post has existed in some unfinished form since then, when it was an "Upcoming Spy DVDs" post!) A press release finally materialized a few weeks later announcing "Screen Classics by Request" from the website Columbia-Classics.com.  (Listings for some of them finally materialized on Amazon as well, although Deep Discount seems to remain the best bargain.) The first batch officially becomes available today, and included in the hundred-odd titles are several spy movies!

Foremost among them is Otley. The great Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (who would later become Sean Connery's go-to script doctors, making uncredited but integral contributions to the scripts for Never Say Never Again and The Rock) wrote this 1968 counter-culture comedic spy caper starring Tom Courtenay and a host of faces familiar to Sixties spy fans, including James Villiers, Leonard Rossiter, Romy Schneider and Ronald Lacey.  This is a fresh take on the classic "wrong man" subgenre of spy movie, starring Courtenay as Otley, a drifter adrift in Swinging London who (thanks in part to a beautiful woman) becomes accidentally embroiled in complex espionage plot and finds himself relentlessly pursued by eccentric characters representing several different mysterious groups with different goals.  The standout scene is a driving exam that turns into a wild chase through busy streets and even the green of the Goldfinger golf club.  It's absolutely essential spy viewing, especially for fans of that era.  (And who isn't?) 

Other spy titles available from the Columbia Classics website include The Executioner, Man on a String and Duffy.  Duffy (also '68)is another incredible document of the late Sixties, again embracing the counter-culture.  James Coburn is the title character in this one, and the setting is the French Riviera.  The Executioner, starring George Peppard, Joan Collins and Charles Grey, represents the more serious side of the Eurospy genre.  It's a gritty and violent tale of double agents, double crosses and flawed heroes.  1960's Man on a String stars a pre-OSS 117 Kerwin Mathews in his first major spy role, as the handler of a real-life double agent played by Ernest Borgnine.  Borgnine's character is called Boris Mitrov in the film, but the real story is that of film producer and musical director (and spy) Boris Morros, whose extensive credits included a number of Bulldog Drummond movies in the 30s. 

Other Screen Classics by Request that excite me and are likely to excite most fans of Sixties spy stuff include Fragment of Fear, a mod psychological horror film written by Goldfinger and The Spy Who Came In From the Cold scribe Paul Dehn, the awesome Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper movie A Study in Terror and the campiest, craziest, trashiest American vehicle for Diabolik star John Phillip Law, The Love Machine.

But not all the spy titles out this week are made to order.  Iron Man 2 is not only available everywhere as a regular DVD, but also as a Blu-ray and in a confounding number of configurations on each format (single discs, double discs, combo discs, digital copies, etc). Spy fans will want to opt for the 2-disc Special Edition DVD or the 3-disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo (also available in special metal packaging exclusively from Target), which include the special features "Spotlight on Nick Fury" and "Spotlight on Black Widow," as well as "S.H.I.E.L.D. Files," whatever those are. 

Finally, A&E is re-releasing Secret Agent AKA Danger Man: The Complete Collection.  This seminal Sixties spy series starring Patrick McGoohan (really the cornerstone of the genre on television) has been available before, but now A&E has shrunk the price and shrunk the size of the box, both welcome changes.  The previous set housed each disc in its own slim case; I haven't seen the new one but I'm presuming that it fits two discs per slimline, like TV shows from most other companies.  This set is excellent, and you can read all about it in my review of the its last incarnation here.  (The content has not changed.)  Suffice it to say, Danger Man has gotten lost in the shadow of McGoohan's less successful (at its time) but more enduring follow-up, The Prisoner.  It's much more than just a potential prequel to the later show; Danger Man is the first serious espionage drama of the modern era, and set the template for just about everything to follow. Retail is $99.95, but as with many A&E titles you can find this 18-disc set (containing every single episode from both the half-hour and hour-long series) for nearly half that at a number of online retailers.

New Spy DVDs Out This Week And Last: Emma Peel Remastered, George Raft Vs. Nazis

The latest Avengers Special Edition release from UK company Optimum came out last week: The Avengers: The Complete Series 4. (It's only the third set, though, because only two and a half episodes survive from the first series, and they were included with Series 2.) Anyway, Series 4 (or Season 4, as we say in the US) is the first Diana Rigg season, introducing the leather-clad character of Emma Peel.  For many, this is the beginning of the definitive era of The Avengers.  (I'm a Rigg nut, but I actually love every era of the show.)  These releases are amazing.  I could only conclude that from afar until recently, by reading about the mouthwatering extras, but I just finally picked up the first set (Series 2) this week, and I can now confirm that they are, indeed, amazing. The remastered episodes look far better than they ever have before, and are a definite improvement over the now out-of-print A&E versions that were available in America.  (I'm praying that some US company picks up the license and makes a deal with Optimum to port over their transfers and extras so that all Region 1 Avengers fans can enjoy this stuff!)  But even better than the vastly improved picture quality is the copious extras.  Foremost among them on The Complete Series 4 is an early Rigg performance on Armchair Theatre–supposedly the role that got her the Avengers gig.  Now that we've finally got her episode of The Sentimental Agent on Network's release of that series, the inclusion of "The Hothouse" from Armchair Theatre makes this a banner year for Rigg fans!  (All we need now is the ITV Play of the Week "Women Beware Women" for a complete picture of Dame Diana's early, pre-Avengers television career.)  However, that's only one of many, many special features (over six hours' worth!) on this set, including multiple audio commentaries (from the likes of Brian Clemens and Roger Marshall), an interview with the original Mrs. Peel, Elizabeth Shepherd (whose own strange show, The Corridor People, comes out from Network next week), alternate tag scenes, alternate credits sequences, various test footage, promotional pieces, trailers, newsreel footage, script PDFs and more of the Series 1 episode reconstructions that have been sprinkled throughout Optimum's output, giving fans an idea of what we're missing in the infamous wiped episodes.  That's just an overview, though!  For the full details, check out The Avengers Declassified.  The site also has some amazing screen captures clearly comparing these new Optimum digital restorations with the murkier transfers on the old DVDs.  You'll find the difference plainly visible!  This 8-disc PAL Region 2 set containing all the black and white Emma Peel episodes retails for £59.99, but can currently be found on Amazon.co.uk for £42.99.

On the homefront, meanwhile, we have a new Warner Archive title ofnote this week: Background to Danger, starring George Raft and Sydney Greenstreet.  I've never seen this rare Turkish-set wartime spy thriller (based on a novel by Eric Ambler), but here's Waners' description:

The studio that put Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca also sent fellow film tough guy George Raft to Ankara for a World War II thriller featuring intrigue, romance and Casablanca’s Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. The danger starts when a beautiful brunette hands American Joe Barton (Raft) some securities for safekeeping. The brunette turns up dead, the securities turn out to be explosive intel and Joe is #1 on the Most Wanted list of both Nazi henchmen and Soviet spies. Director Raoul Walsh (High Sierra, White Heat) ratchets up the tension of a gripping screenplay by W. R. Burnett (High Sierra) based on a novel by Eric Ambler, whose other page-turner-to-screen works include Journey into Fear, The Mask of Dimitrios and Topkapi.

Sounds great!  As of now, Background to Danger is available exclusively from Warner Archive, although most Archive titles do turn up on Amazon and Deep Discount (which generally has the best prices) down the road.