Recently, I bought a four-disc box set at Goodwill. It promised me fifty war film "classics." Because I wasn't born yesterday and also because I'm cheap and have experience with doubtful bargains, I understand that discount box sets often include plenty of digitized filler, the equivalent of a handful of generic potato chips as a "side" for a lunch special. In the past, I've made the best of a set of fifty mysteries. These turned out to be 27% ersatz Thin Man private-detective junk, 14% Charlie Chan serials too culturally cringe-worthy to watch, two knock-offs of "Single White Female," plus "Abbott & Costello Meet the Invisible Man."
But this time around, when I got home with my thrift-store treasure, I looked at the title listings for each disc and I was like "Come onmann..." I got this box set because I'm doing background research for a history-based creative project set mostly in the 1940s. My project is centered on the years 1938 to 1952, so I would have been fine with some Korean conflict stuff among the fifty "classics." So I had a pretty wide band of acceptable topics and themes. And yet, the disappointment.
To start with, it was somewhat difficult to even figure out which films the undated, oft-misspelled titles in the menu referred to. For Heaven's Sake, the famous bomber plane was The Memphis Belle not The Memphis Bell. Argh.
But after some frowning and muttering, I figured out what I'd purchased. Here's just a sample:
David Janssen in a 1975 film that went to video in 1977. "Warhead" is about Islamic terrorists getting hold of... well, the spoiler's in the title, isn't it?
And if you thought that was awful, check out the trailer for this extremely-low-budget film, also called "Warhead," I found on YouTube while looking for the David Janssen one.
Back to the junk on this specific box set...
On the second disk I found "The KGB Connections," a weak 1981 documentary about Cuban intelligence and Communism, though we get parts 1 and 2
Apparently, all history collections must include Nazi stuff to attract buyers. This particular box set includes the sloppily-made 1958 documentary, "The Secret Life of Adolph Hitler." The opening sequence mixes swastika wreaths, aerial views of bombed German cities, and not-very-scandalous swimsuit pictures of various women.
By the time we get to the fourth disc, the people who made this set entirely stopped pretending they were doing anything except loading up the DVD up with whatever stuff was easiest to grab. I was displeased -- though unsurprised -- to encounter "Yellowneck," a Civil War themed Western sympathetic to the Confederate side. If only the director had the skills of, say, Ed Wood, but he simply wasn't up to Wood's production standard. One of the officers' uniform tunic looks like Jed Clampett's long underwear with a military belt cinching it in.
If you are a fan of blurry movies transferred from a film reel which wasn't centered on the projector spindles, you'll love "The Devil's Cavaliers."
The makers of the box set threw in several Westerns as "war classics." For instance, "Kansas Pacific" stars Sterling Hayden.
Next, another Western -- "The Bushwhackers," from 1952. It has Dorothy Malone in it but how does that help me research the era of the Second World War?
This movie, "The Mark of the Hawk," is of a little more value. It does not redeem the box set but it's of some cultural interest to me as the cast includes both Eartha Kitt and Sidney Poitier, This got me onto the internet to look up Poitier's filmography so this look-over of all the box set extras turned out to be somewhat helpful, emphasis on the "somewhat."
In a couple of weeks, I'll have two posts with trailers for the salvageable material I found on the four discs. But next week, an old book and an old LP in appreciation of June 14, Flag Day.
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