Hard to Find Movies Available on Warner Home Video’s Archive Site
By: Ellis Nassour
Warner Archive’s site for Manufactured on Demand (MOD) discs is a cinephiles dream. These are titles, some remastered and some in HD, that you’ll only find at www.WarnerArchive.com, where currently $5-$30 discounts apply (dependent on the number ordered. The majority are priced at $18.95. Here are a few of the hundreds of titles available:
Among current product are the screen adaptation of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes (1956), starring Bing Crosby, Donald O’Connor, and Mitzi Gaynor.
The Cat & the Fiddle (1934, Newly remastered) – The silent screen’s Number Two (after Valentino) heartthrob Ramon Navarro makes time in Brussels with Jeanette MacDonald in Harbach and Kern operetta about star-crossed composers and a lothario impresario trying to drive them apart.
Jupiter’s Darling (1955, CinemaScope, Newly remastered) – Lavish color spectacle [one of M-G-M’s last big musicals] set against the second Punic War, starring Esther Williams as the wet but beautiful Amazonian adventuress who saves Rome from Hannibal (power-voiced Howard Keel), co-starring sizzling Marge and Gower Champion and, eating every piece of scenery not nailed down, the irrefutable George Sanders as Emperor Fabius Maximus. Songs by Burton Lane, choreography by Hermes Pan. Loosely, loosely based on 1927 Robert Sherwood anti-war play.
The Naked Jungle (1954), edge-of-the-seat thriller with Charleston Heston and beautiful Eleanor Parker finding it hard to keep their cool battling a several squadrons of relentless killer ants.
The Silver Chalice (1954, CinemaScope) -An artisan travels to Jerusalem and Rome on a commission to cast the Holy Grail, the silver cup of Christ with the faces of the disciples and Jesus, as an interloper is stating he’s the new Messiah, using magic and cheap parlor tricks. Virginia Mayo, Pier Angeli, Jack Palance, E.G. Marshall, Lorne Greene as Simon Peter, young Natalie Wood, and introducing [to the movies after several TV shows] Paul Newman. Throughout his career, Newman, perhaps a bit too smitten by method acting, badmouthed the film and his acting, but he needn’t have. He’s not Olivier, but he had traits Olivier would’ve killed for…and they’re on display. What better villain than Palance? He proves his mettle. A huge plus is the rich score by two-time Oscar winner (10 nominations) Franz Waxman, one of filmdom’s most prolific composers.
