20th Century opens vault for vintage mystery noir

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).

Walt Disney Home Entertainment contributes a pair of animated features, the high-flying family comedy Valiant and Kronk’s New Groove ($29.99 each). Both arrive with interactive games and other extras.

In the adventure arena, DreamWorks offers Michael Bay’s clone epic The Island ($29.99), while Universal Studios Home Entertainment packages the gala documentary set King Kong: Peter Jackson’s Production Diaries ($39.98), an exhaustive, double-disc exploration of all things Kong, 2005-style.

Collectors’ corner

Two genre heavyweights receive their digital due this week. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment salutes the eponymous special-effects pioneer via its Ray Harryhausen Gift Set (three-disc, $49.95), packaging the fantasy master’s 1953 giant-octopus scarefest, It Came From Beneath the Sea; the still-chilling 1956 alien invasion tale Earth vs. the Flying Saucers; and the 1957 Italy-set monster mash 20 Million Miles to Earth.

Buena Vista Home Entertainment issues a trio of cult-movie icon Roger Corman’s signature films in extras-enhanced special editions: Angie Dickinson as the gun-toting Big Bad Mama (1974), David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone in the model B flick Death Race 2000 (1975), and the 1979 Ramones showcase Rock ‘n’ Roll High School ($19.99 each).

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