'Killer Classics' film-noir primer offers rare extras

By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service

"Killer Classics" (Questar) is a six-disc set that serves as a crash course in the shadowy, morally ambiguous film-noir style.

All five films included are in the public domain, which is no reflection on their quality. From 1950, "D.O.A." is, with "High Noon," one of the great thrillers of its time, with Edmond O'Brien spending his final hours trying to find out who poisoned him and why.

"Detour," with Tom Neal as a hitchhiker who gets sucked into a murder scheme by a blackmailing woman (Ann Savage), was made on the cheap in 1945 by cult director Edgar G. Ulmer. It easily proved content could trump cost.

From 1946, "The Stranger" was Orson Welles' first, pre-"Touch of Evil" foray into noir. He cast himself as a Nazi war criminal hiding in plain sight, married to an unwitting woman (Loretta Young) and being hounded by a detective (Edward G. Robinson).

Robinson also has the lead in 1945's "Scarlet Street" in a rare turn as a henpecked husband who falls for a gold-digging blonde.

"Too Late For Tears," from 1949, was given the more lurid title "Killer Bait" in later runs, which better suits its tense, tough little tale of a mysterious bag of money that makes the bad marriage of Arthur Kennedy and Lizabeth Scott even worse.

The visual quality runs from only OK to pretty good, but compensation is found in the sixth disc, a film-noir primer with a documentary tracking noir from its origins in German expressionism and American pulp fiction to its current place of honor in the cinematic pantheon. Another doc covers the bad girls who drove men to distraction.

They are followed by one of the greatest noir trailer collections ever, including original previews for "The Postman Always Rings Twice," "Out of the Past" and three dozen more.

Male bonding

A gentler look at the male psyche gets a double-disc do-over to celebrate the 15th anniversary of "Field of Dreams" (Universal) — and, we can assume, Father's Day. In director Phil Alden Robinson's graceful and moving adaptation of the novel "Shoeless Joe," a farmer (Kevin Costner), on the direction of a mysterious voice, builds it — a cornfield baseball diamond — and they come.

Male relationships also loom large in one of last year's best films. "Mystic River" (Warner), Clint Eastwood's brilliant adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel about three men whose haunted past revisits them. The film is offered in both wide-screen and full-screen as well as a three-disc version that includes interviews with best-actor and supporting-actor Oscar winners Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. (Robbins also does commentary along with Kevin Bacon).