Blu-Ray News #323: Last Train From Gun Hill (1959).

Directed by John Sturges
Starring Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn, Carolyn Jones, Earl Holliman, Brian G. Hutton, Dabbs Greer

Here’s the one so many of us, mainly me, have been waiting for. Last Train From Gun Hill (1959) is coming to Blu-Ray from Paramount in June.

An excellent Western, with terrific VistaVision camerawork from Charles B. Lang Jr., this is one of the pictures that made me a 50s Westerns nut and set me on the path to this blog and the upcoming book. It remains one of my all-time favorite films.

If you’re a reader of this blog, this one’s essential.

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Blu-Ray News #320: Union Pacific (1939).

Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Akim Tamiroff, Robert Preston, Lynne Overman, Brian Donlevy, Anthony Quinn

Union Pacific (1939) is a great big Cecil B. DeMille picture about the building of the railroad. It’s got a great cast, some remarkable action sequences and the overall DeMille thing we all love so much.

Kino Lorber is bringing it to Blu-Ray this summer, which should really be something to see. Highly recommended.

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Blu-Ray News #312: Man From Del Rio (1956) And The Ride Back (1957).

Kino Lorber’s bringing a couple of underrated Anthony Quinn Westerns to Blu-Ray in early 2021 — Man From Del Rio (1956) and The Ride Back (1957). These two pictures illustrate all the riches that were turning up in theaters during the 50s. Major stars like Anthony Quinn were doing medium-budget Westerns like this, along with the stuff guys like George Montgomery and Guy Madison were doing.

Man From Del Rio (1956)
Directed by Harry Horner
Starring Anthony Quinn, Katy Jurado, Peter Whitney, Douglas Fowley, John Larch, Douglas Spencer, Guinn “Big Boy” Williams

Man From Del Rio has a great cast and has overlooked far too long. Hopefully, a nice widescreen HD transfer of Stanley Cortez’s cinematography will give it a bit of a reappraisal. Cortez, of course, shot a few films you might’ve heard of — The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Night Of The Hunter (1955) and The Naked Kiss (1964).

Wish Harry Horner had directed more. This and Beware, My Lovely (1952) show he really had the chops. His production design work is incredible. He did pictures like The Wonderful Country (1959), The Hustler (1961) and The Driver (1978).

The Ride Back (1957)
Directed by Allen H. Miner
Starring Anthony Quinn, William Conrad, Lita Milan

William Conrad produced and co-stars in this one. He’s a lawman who heads to Mexico to bring back outlaw Quinn. Director Allen H. Miner did the George Montgomery picture Black Patch the same year. Black Patch went a bit too far with the stylistics, but that’s not a problem here. Joseph Biroc shot The Ride Back, by the way. He’d just shot Attack (1956) for Robert Aldrich, who was a producer on The Ride Back. Biroc’s B&W cinematography is always a plus, and it’ll be stunning on Blu-Ray.

I love the tagline “It rides a trail no Western ever rode before!”

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The Anthony Quinn Public Library.

The L.A. Times reported the other day on the Anthony Quinn Public Library and its collection of the actor’s papers and personal items.

Built on the site of Quinn’s childhood home in East L.A., the library was recently awarded a National Endowment For The Humanities grant to help catalog and preserve the material. Some of it will one day be available to web researchers.

Quinn and Katy Jurado are seen above in Man From Del Rio (1956).

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Last Train From Gun Hill Heads To The Forgotten Filmcast.

I was a recent guest on Todd Liebenow’s excellent podcast Forgotten Filmcast, which features a film blogger covering a movie they consider under-appreciated. We focused on Last Train From Gun Hill (1959). Todd had never seen it, and I was so happy to hear he loved it. It’s a great 50s Western, one of my favorites, and I hope we did it justice.

The show’s now available from iTunes or the Forgotten Filmcast site.

The terrific illustration of Kirk Douglas in Last Train From Gun Hill was done by Roger Koch, who goes by the name Zombie Dad. Permission to use it is greatly appreciated.

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“Now he had the kid at the end of a shotgun…”

This ad appeared in the Tucson Daily in September 1959 to promote the upcoming Last Train From Gun Hill, one of my favorite 50s Westerns.

My wife’s been helping out with some web research — she’s better at it than I am — and came across this one. Another thing she unearthed, thanks to Hedda Hopper: Ziva Rodann, who’s plays Kirk Douglas’ wife, was Miss Israel.

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Hulu/Roku/Whatever Alert: Stream The Furies (1950) And Other Criterion Titles For Free This Weekend..

 

The word is that hundreds of Criterion titles will be available on Hulu for free over the weekend. There are some very, very great films in that list — from Wages Of Fear (1953) to Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) to Le Cercle Rouge (1970) and beyond.

One I’d particularly recommend is Anthony Mann’s The Furies (1950) starring Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston (in his last role).

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