Product Description

1. Dishonored Lady, 2. Road to Bali, 3. Tom Brown s School Days, 4. Second Chorus, 5. A Walk in the Sun, 6. The Most Dangerous Game, 7. Immortal Battalion, 8. The Bigamist, 9. Monsoon, 10. Borderline, 11. Indiscretion of an American, 12. The North Star, 13. Diamond Thieves, 14. Treasure of the Jamaica Reef, 15. The Klansman, 16. Rain, 17. Cheers for Miss Bishop, 18. Oh, Alfie, 19. Carnival Story, 20. Four Deuces, 21. Smash Up: The Story of a Woman, 22. The Big Wheel, 23. Killing Heat, 24. The Fat Spy, 25. Let s Live a Little, 26. Lady of Burlesque, 27. Love Affair, 28. Letter of Introduction, 29. The Town Went Wild, 30. The Man with the Golden, 31. High Voltage, 32. Hoosier Schoolboy, 33. I Cover the Waterfront, 34. Penny Serenade, 35. Dark Mountain, 36. The Big Show, 37. The Joyless Street, 38. Blood and Sand, 39. Gold, 40. Home Town Story, 41. Meet John Doe, 42. His Private Secretary, 43. Heartbeat, 44. He Found a Star, 45. Affair in Monte Carlo, 46. The Snows of Kilimanjaro, 47. Indiscreet, 48. Chandu on the Magic Island, 49. Hell s House, 50. The Evil Mind

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74057 in DVD
• Brand: TREELINE FILMS LTD
• Released on: 2004-09-28
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 12
• Dimensions: .80 pounds
• Running time: 4424 minutes

About the Actor
Included: 1. Affair in Monte Carlo 2. Big Show, The 3. Big Wheel, The 4. Bigamist, The 5. Blood and Sand 6. Borderline 7. Boy in the Plastic Bubble, The 8. Carnival Story 9. Chandu on the Magic Island 10. Dark Mountain 11. Diamond Thieves 12. Dishonored Lady 13. Evil Mind, The 14. Fat Spy, The 15. Four Deuces, The 16. He Found a Star 17. Heartbeat 18. Hell's House 19. High Voltage 20. His Private Secretary 21. Home Town Story 22. Hoosier Schoolboy 23. I Cover the Waterfront 24. Indiscreet 25. Indiscretion of an American Wife 26. Joyless Street 27. Killing Heat 28. Klansman, The 29. Lady of Burlesque 30. Let's Live a Little 31. Letter of Introduction 32. Lola 33. Love Affair 34. Man with the Golden Arm, The 35. Meet John Doe 36. Monsoon 37. Most Dangerous Game, The 38. North Star, The 39. Oh Alfie! 40. Penny Serenade 41. Pied Piper of Hamelin, The 42. Road to Bali 43. Second Chorus 44. Smash Up: The Story of a Woman 45. Snows of Kilimanjaro, The 46. Stars Look Down, The 47. Tom Brown's School Days 48. Town Went Wild, The 49. Treasure of the Jamaica Reef 50. Walk in the Sun, A

Customer Reviews

Great Collection, but edited prints
This is a great collection of films. Something for everyone and a lot of great films in the set.

The transfers are watchable, if not the greatest. Two to three films on a side on 12 double sided DVDs. Each in a cardboard sleeve. And the films aren't letterboxed, remastered, or cleaned up in any way. There are no extras.

Unfortunately, for the more recent ones, especially those that had a PG or R rating, they are the edited, TV versions of the films.

For around half of the films, I did a comparison of the running times of the actual films with the running time listed in Leonard Maltin's guide. Even the older ones, the running times were sometimes off by a few minutes. For some of the more recent ones (especially the ALFIE sequel OH, ALFIE) the running times were off by up to 30 minutes!!!! Why even include the films if they are cut by so much?

Although a few of the older films seemed to be complete and uncut.

Again, there are a lot of films here that make it worth the price. I found it in a retail store for $20 and, for that price, it is probably worth it.

Good Bargain for the Buck
I own a couple of these "50 movie pack" sets and this is my favorite of the lot, mainly because it has more mainstream movies and bigger stars than many of the other sets. As noted, the print quality is not particularly great but keep in mind you are paying well under a dollar per movie so you can't expect flawless reproduction. These are all apparently public domain movies; some of the titles can be bought individually elsewhere for $1-10 each but even if you don't watch half of the films you will probably save money buying this set than picking and choosing. (Also you might want to get this from one of Amazon's "new and used" sellers for substantial savings).

There are some rare titles in this set. I have never seen Hedy Lamarr's post-MGM films "Dishonored Lady" and "Let's Live A Little" before so I was glad to see them at last. Among the other hard-to-find titles are "Affair in Monte Carlo" with Merle Oberon (alas a B&W print of a color film), "High Voltage" with Carole Lombard (curiously the box totes William Boyd instead of Lombard), "Monsoon" with George Nader and Ursula Thiess, "The Most Dangerous Game" with Joel McCrea, "Smash Up" with Susan Hayward, and the 1970's "Treasure of the Jamica Reef" with Stephen Boyd and a young Cheryl Ladd.
I was glad to finally get to see "Hell's House" with Bette Davis and "Heartbeat" with Ginger Rogers, admittedly two lesser films in their filmographies. I haven't watched all the films but some of the prints here are significantly better than other companies public domain issues of the movies. I had earlier bought "The Snows of Killimanjaro" at a dollar store and this print is a vast improvement; I bought Gloria Swanson's "Indiscreet" on the net quite cheap but that copy was awful, this one is far better. The prints to the silents "The Joyless Street" (Greta Garbo) and "Blood and Sand" (Rudolph Valentino) are quite good. I was surprised to see June Allyson's "Good News" in this set; MGM films are rarely public domain, that one must have slipped through the cracks.

Caveat emptor (again...)
On paper, it sounds like a bargain. If the prints used were higher quality, my score would probably double. The noisy, scratchy, dense video and sound is not even the biggest problem here. I can write that stuff off since I grew up seeing films on TV that way. I justified picking this collection up mainly for two films, "The Man with the Golden Arm" and "The Klansman". The latter is unavailable on DVD - most likely due to the political incorrectness of it all. You'll do better buying this from a collector since here it's not in widescreen, but most importantly, it's cut HEAVILY for TV. This is a bad exploitation romp from a major studio (Paramount) and most of the exploitation (aside from frequent use of the "n" word) is on the cutting room floor. What's the point? Even still, at least it's actually here. On my copy (which was factory sealed), Frank Sinatra's "The Man with the Golden Arm" is not even included! The disk (Disk 8/Side A) that was supposed to have it and "The Town Went Wild", while labelled correctly on the disk itself, is a duplicate of Disk 11/Side A ("Heartbeat" and "He Found a Star"). What a gyp!

"The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" looks like the source used was a 6-hour speed VHS tape...probably worse, actually. A handful of the films suffer similar fate, or are taken from scratchy, thrashed old TV prints. Others are missing title music (replaced by new classical music), including some silent films with out-of-place newer music scores. I find it impossible to believe even the most ardent viewer is really going to sit through a lot of these movies. One disk even locked up on me when I tried to advance to the next chapter, forcing me to power down the machine.

There are some nice moments: "The Fat Spy" is a poor-man's beach party flick with Jayne Mansfield and Phyllis Diller (!) and "Meet John Doe" is priceless entertainment. The most money this collection is worth is about $10. Otherwise, buy at your own risk.