20th Century opens vault for vintage mystery noir

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A new trio of top vintage winners from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment ($14.98 each) keep noir fans happy as they make their digital debuts. They're our ...

DVD picks of the week

Lucille Ball proves her hard-boiled mettle as a shrewd receptionist determined to help her private-eye employer (and eventual romantic interest) Mark Stevens out of a complicated jam in the excellent 1946 mystery The Dark Corner. William Bendix lends memorable support as a white-suited thug on our troubled hero's trail, while director Henry Hathaway evocatively captures New York City life in a film that crosses the entire class spectrum.

While Mr. Hathaway's 1947 Kiss of Death offers a less complex plot (Victor Mature plays an ex-con who goes undercover to get the goods on the gang that framed him), the film boasts one of the genre's most menacing and enduring characters in snickering, psychotic hood Tommy Udo, etched by Richard Widmark with brutal brilliance. The notorious sequence in which Tommy pushes a wheelchair-bound woman down a flight of stairs still resonates in pop-culture mythology. (Even "The Daily Show" recently recycled the clip.)

Otto Preminger assumes the directorial reigns for 1950's Ben Hecht-scripted Where the Sidewalk Ends. A typically taciturn Dana Andrews stars as a violent cop who not only accidentally kills a suspect, but tumbles for his victim's widow, an ever-radiant Gene Tierney, in a noir as gritty as they come.

Each of Fox's essential black-and-white discs includes audio commentary by film historians, along with the original trailers.

The 'A' list

Comedy dominates the new theatrical-to-DVD slate, starting with the Steve Carell hit The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Universal Studios, $29.98), appearing in separate, equally bonus-stuffed R and unrated editions.

Billy Bob Thornton steps up to the plate as the cantankerous coach of the Bad News Bears (Paramount Home Entertainment, $29.99), sliding into vidstores in an extras-packed edition.

MGM Home Entertainment bows the romantic comedy-drama The Baxter ($24.96); Sony Pictures debuts the dark high school satire Pretty Persuasion ($24.96), starring Evan Rachel Wood; and 20th Century Fox presents the Bow Wow vehicle Roll Bounce ($27.98).