'Bette Davis Collection' on DVD
Two have been on DVD for several years — "All About Eve" (1950), a comedy-drama that is one of the wittiest and most engaging movies of all time, and the solid 1964 horror-thriller "Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte"
The other three films here are making their DVD debuts, and all are good pictures that have been missing in action for far too long:
• "Phone Call from a Stranger" (1952) casts Davis in a supporting role as one of several people who have lost family members in an air crash and are visited by the lone survivor (Gary Merrill, Davis' real-life husband at the time).
• "The Virgin Queen" (1955), the only color film here, has Davis revisiting her role as Queen Elizabeth I, which she originally played in the 1939 classic "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex." This time the queen is charmed by Sir Walter Raleigh (played by Richard Todd, who is adequate, but no Errol Flynn).
Extras: widescreen/full frame, five films, audio commentaries, featurettes, newsreels, trailers, poster/photo galleries
• "Fox Film Noir: Black Widow" (Fox, 1954, color, $14.98).
• "Fox Film Noir: Daisy Kenyon" (Fox, 1947, b/w, $14.98).
• "Fox Film Noir: Dangerous Crossing" (Fox, 1953, b/w, $14.98). Three more films are added to this series, none of them classics, but all of them interesting, although one doesn't really belong here.
• "Black Widow" is the weakest of these, a stagey murder mystery, with Broadway producer Van Heflin helping out an aspiring young writer (Peggy Ann Garner) while his celebrity wife (Gene Tierney) is out of town ... When Garner's apparent suicide is ruled a murder, Heflin becomes the prime suspect. George Raft is the investigating cop and Ginger Rogers is the star of Heflin's play, and also his self-absorbed neighbor.
• "Daisy Kenyon" is the odd duck here, as it isn't film noir at all, but rather a melodrama about an independent woman (Joan Crawford) who loves a married jerk (Dana Andrews) but marries a downhome war veteran (Henry Fonda). Good performances by all three stars and a surprising subplot about Andrews' wife physically abusing their children. (Peggy Ann Garner is here, too, several years earlier when she was a child actress.)
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