Tough guys win with wars, westerns out on DVD

By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service

Nicolas Cage searches for "National Treasure" in a tale involving an ancient mystery and secret societies, released this week on DVD. Advertiser library photo

Box-set-crazy Warner Bros. leads the charge with "John Wayne: Legendary Heroes Collection." Among those collected are 1955's "Blood Alley" with Wayne as a merchant marine captain trying to navigate a communist-controlled river with some Chinese refugees and Lauren Bacall; a decidedly different seafaring adventure from the same year, "The Sea Chase," with Wayne as a German freighter captain (anti-Nazi, of course), if you can imagine that, trying to get his passengers — including a spy played by Lana Turner — home without being blown up by the Brits; and 1974's "McQ," a pale imitation of a Clint Eastwood cop thriller with Wayne looking uncomfortable behind the wheel of a Firebird.

The Duke's in more familiar territory in the entertaining 1944 oater "Tall in the Saddle," playing a ranch foreman who turns up at his new job to find that the man who hired him is dead, and "The Train Robbers." The latter looked pretty dated when released in 1973, but now plays as a smart character-driven drama with a fine performance by Wayne as a gunslinger hired by Ann-Margret to recover some gold stolen by her late husband. All the titles are available individually, and all benefit from remastering, especially the wide-screen Technicolor "Sea Chase."

Warner has also commissioned a new batch of war titles, including 1965's "Battle of the Bulge," with Henry Fonda, Telly Zavalas and Charles Bronson trying to prevent Hitler from retaking France one bad line of dialogue at a time; and 1950's "Battleground," a far better treatment (with an Oscar-winning script) of the same subject, as Van Johnson keeps the 101st Airborne together in the cold Ardennes until the big showdown. From 1969, "Where Eagles Dare" adapts Alistair MacLean's novel of a secret agent charged with rescuing an American officer in the German mountains and thwarting a plot that could sabotage D-Day. Clint Eastwood plays an Army Ranger who has no idea why he's the only Yank on the team.

The big news, though, is "The Big Red One: The Reconstruction," film historian Richard Schickel's attempt to put Samuel Fuller's autobiographical account of the First Infantry's march to D-Day, with Lee Marvin trying to keep his squad of GIs (who include Mark Hamill and Robert Carradine) alive.

All the above, along with the previously issued "The Dirty Dozen" from 1967, are also collected in "WWII Collection: Battlefront Europe."

History mystery

American history is also the subject of last year's hit "National Treasure" (Disney), with fortune-hunting Nicolas Cage forced to steal a copy of the Declaration of Independence to solve a centuries-old family mystery involving the Knights Templar, Freemasons and a treasure of unthinkably glittering proportion. It's all hooey, but it's clean family fun (complete with a couple of interactive games) and also includes deleted scenes and an alternate ending.

For those who prefer their thrills real and on wheels, Columbia-TriStar has raised the stakes with a new deluxe edition of "Dogtown and Z-Boys," the 2001 documentary about the outlaw surfers from Santa Monica who turned skateboarding into an extreme sport/punk-rock lifestyle. It adds new commentaries and extra footage, plus, naturally, a preview of the fictional version, which opens theatrically next month.

Phantom treatment

Finally something for the ladies and the more sensitive among us. "The Best of Everything" (Fox) is trashy, guilty-pleasure soap opera — in CinemaScope, no less — exploring the lives of four women played by Hope Lange, model Suzy Parker, Martha Hyer and Diane Baker. Most of the fun, however, comes from a severely shoulder-padded Joan Crawford as a tough-as-nails boss having a secret affair with a married man.

Last year's long-awaited and then semi-ignored movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" (Warner) gets the double-disc Special Edition treatment including an extensive history of the book, play and production, along with featurettes and a deleted song.