* Playwright George Kaufmann famously defined satire as “what closes on Saturday night” and these days you might as well define political thrillers as “what doesn’t get greenlit unless a bunch of big stars really want to do it, and then bombs.”  “The Manchurian Candidate” is both political thriller and a satire and it didn’t fail at the box office, though it was kept out of circulation for nearly twenty years after its initial release for reasons that remain somewhat mysterious to this day.

I’m hardly alone in feeling this is probably the best political thriller ever made and possibly the second best political satire after “Dr. Strangelove.” Long after the end of the Cold War which spawned it, it’s continues to resonate with our political culture and it’s title still gives peoples the willies. Just ask John McCain.

Directed by John Frankenheimer and based on a novel by the mordantly comic suspense novelist Richard Condon of “Prizzi’s Honor” and “Winter Kills,”, you might know that it’s the story of what happens when a Soviet/Red Chinese brainwashing unit gets its hands on a group of captured soldiers, including Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey, who makes aloof bitterness very cool), the highly estranged step-son of a Joe McCarthy-like senator. Frank Sinatra does maybe his best acting work as a traumatized fellow soldier who realizes something might be up because of some very strange and very bad dreams he’s having — and the fact that he keeps calling the unpleasant Shaw “the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

It’s a brave blend of politics, off-the-wall black comedy (what was called “sick humor” back then), suspense, and borderline Jacobean classical tragedy. Frankenheimer had a knack for making political material work dramatically, and also for drawing out strong performances. Janet Leigh (“Psycho“) was perfect as the female love interest, who was written so oddly by Richard Condon and screenwriter/playwright George Axelrod that many have theorized she’s actually an operative of some sort — an idea capitalized on in Jonathan Demmes’ disappointingly morose 2004 remake. The greatest casting coup here, however, is Angela Lansbury’s absolutely chilling turn as Raymond Shaw’s hated extremist Washington-hostess mother. She wasn’t the only less-than-pleasant character Lansbury ever played, but there’s something about what happens when actors who make a career largely playing nice people play extremely not-nice people that can be electrifying.

I also can’t resist mentioning the fight scene between Sinatra and Henry Silva as a North Korean spy, which Frankenheimer was often proud to mention was the first use of martial arts fighting styles in an American film. Seeing it again, it’s not only more brutally effective than I remembered as Sinatra and Silva all but destroy Laurence Harvey’s Washington apartment, but — especially in the initial moments when Sinatra instinctively begins fighting the Silva character without even knowing who he is — it’s pretty obvious to me now that it had to be one of the main inspirations for the terrific first fight scene in “Kill Bill, Volume I,” in which Uma Thurman and Vivica A. Fox lay waste to a Pasadena living room.

The Blu-Ray is, by the way, not a deluxe restoration, but it includes all of the excellent features that earlier DVDs have included and the print has been kept in excellent enough shape that a new restoration isn’t really necessary. It looks great. Super highly recommended, though pricey.

* 1961’s “The Comancheros” is getting a deluxe-packaging with plenty of extras and a Blu-Ray presentation that is really nifty. This high-end Western starring John Wayne is another film that’s been kept in decent enough shape to look great in high-definition without a major restoration to-do.

In terms of film history, though, “The Comancheros” is probably best noted as the final directing credit for that somewhat under-valued if uneven craftsman, Michael Curtiz, whose credits included two absolutely classic examples of polished Hollywood entertainment at its greatest, “Casablanca” and “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”  Sadly, he fell ill and faltered during the production and John Wayne, by then a highly experienced hand around movie sets, completed the production.

Pairing Wayne with the then-rising young star Stuart Whitman in a part that might have once been filled by Clark Gable, this is essentially a buddy western in which grizzled Texas Ranger Jake Cutter (Wayne, of course) must escort courtly gambler and accused murderer Paul Regret (Whitman) to his not-so-just reward. As the two battle Comanche Indians and non-native gun-runners (the “Comancheros” of the title), they naturally forge one of those unlikely movie friendships we all love and Cutter starts to wonder whether or not Regret should really hang.

Some almost unconscious racism towards Indians aside, this is an effective enough big budget Western. On the downside, Stuart Whitman, who spent most of his career making television (8 appearances on “Fantasy Island”!), is really nowhere near the same acting ball park as Wayne. On the other hand leading lady, Ina Balin, who apparently angered Wayne with her Method acting ticks, does a rather fantastic job as an alluring and oddly flexible criminal heiress. Lee Marvin also pops up as a disfigured bad man, which is always good for a laugh.

* Coincidentally, “The Horse Soldiers” gets a less deluxe and slightly less gorgeous Blu-Ray treatment. Made two years earlier, this production also pairs John Wayne with a younger co-star in another story of adversaries who eventually become friends. Though directed by perhaps the greatest director in American cinema and co-starring one of my favorite classic era leading men, this John Ford directed Civil War drama starring Wayne as the leader of a Union cavalry division, who clashes with an heroic army doctor played by William Holden, never really takes off. Viewers should definitely check out Ford’s earlier grand entertainments around the cavalry, “Fort Apache” and “Rio Grande,” first — though neither film is yet available in high definition.

* Finally, I have an assortment of DVD-on-demand titles from MGM. The most interesting of these is another western, “Man from Del Rio” from 1956. It’s a not entirely successful but intriguing attempt at a noir-influenced, politically progressive low-budget “High Noon” of sorts. It stars the always entertaining Anthony Quinn as a galoot of a reluctant Mexican-American gunfighter trying to hang up his guns for the love of the vastly underused Katy Jurado.

Less succcessful is 1952’s “The Captive City,” a Robert Wise-directed semi-noir starring John Forsythe as a crusading reporter taking on small town organized crime. It’s not terrible but a bit clunky. It is interesting as it is a sort of anti-mobster propaganda film from the days when Senator Estes Kefauver, who appears in the film, was alerting the nation to the existence of organized crime even as FBI head J. Edgar Hoover was denying it.

Wise did a lot better in other noirs, but “Captive City” film is a masterpiece of disciplined cinema compared to the bizarre “Cop Hater,” a 1958 misfire which is maybe worth a look for nuts like me as it stars a very young Robert Loggia (“Big”) with much smaller parts for an even more wet-behind-the-ears Jerry Orbach (“Law & Order“) and Vincent Gardenia (“Moonstruck“). It’s also the first adaptation of one of Ed McBain/Evan Hunter’s 87th Precinct novels. A few great cast members notwithstanding, “High and Low” it ain’t.

During a period I personally consider Fellini’s creative prime, De Laurentiis co-produced two of the director’s most powerful films, the classic tearjerker “La Strada” with Anthony Quinn and the great Giulietta Masina, and “Nights of Cabiria” also with Masina, a great tragicomedy and a huge personal favorite of mine. He also produced two now somewhat obscure adaptations, a version of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” with Audrey Hepburn and “Ulysses.” Fortunately, the latter was not an adaptation of the James Joyce stream-of-consciousness meganovel, but Homer’s “The Odyssey,” and starred Kirk Douglas in the heroic title role.

No snob, De Laurentiis had a gift for commingling arthouse fare, quality middlebrow entertainment, and complete schlock — some of it fun, some it merely schlocky. Geeks cried foul when he eschewed stop-motion for an unworkable animatronic monstrosity and, mostly, Rick Baker in a monkey suit for his silly mega-blockbuster remake attempt, “King Kong,” but that movie was a classic when compared to something like the hugely regrettable killer-whale flick “Orca.”

Though “Flash Gordon,” directed by Mike Hodges (the original “Get Carter” and “Croupier”) with music by Queen, was declared DOA by audiences and most critics, it was praised by the great contrarian Pauline Kael and remains a fairly popular cult film. “The White Buffalo,” a sort of Western Moby Dick starring Charles Bronson, however, has no such cult. The potboiler, “Mandingo,” was dismissed as racially suspect garbage but also has been championed recently by more than one intelligent cinephile.

No stranger to financial problems, he even managed to produce commercial and critical disappointments with the greatest directors of his day. “The Serpent’s Egg” with David Carradine was Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman’s only Hollywood film and no one’s favorite. “Buffalo Bill and the Indians” with Paul Newman is not high on anyone’s list of the best of Robert Altman. Roman Polanski’s “Hurricane” is only remembered because of how it figured in Polanski’s rape case. The young David Lynch’s version of “Dune” has its fans today, but at the time…

On the other hand, De Laurentiis also produced some of the biggest American films of his day from top-flight directors, including Sidney Lumet’s “Serpico,” Sidney Pollack’s “Three Days of the Condor,” and David Cronenberg’s “The Dead Zone.” And then there two critically hated but immensely popular movies. One sold sex and fantasy — that would be “Barbarella” starring the very young Jane Fonda. The other sold violence and urban paranoia, “Death Wish” with Charles Bronson. Both films helped turned their leads into superstars. His involvement was more or less minimal, but De Laurentiis also was executive producer on “Army of Darkness” — I’m sure Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell are both grateful for that.

De Laurentiis last shrewd call was becoming involved with the film version of a little airport thriller called “Red Dragon.” That became the spiffy Michael Mann film, “Manhunter” and featured Brian Cox in a small role as a certain Dr. Hannibal Lecter. When a sequel to that novel became Jonathan Demme’s blockbuster, “The Silence of the Lambs.” several years later, he was well positioned to capitalize on with a Thomas Harris’s sequel adaptation, “Hannibal,” a remake/prequel, “Red Dragon,” and another prequel “Hannibal Rising.”

I can remember hearing directors who worked for him speak of him with a combination of affection, irritation, and awe, but whatever was true of Dino De Laurentiis, he sure could pick ’em.

As always, there is a lot more from David Hudson at MUBI.

The second collection of past Criterion releases – stripped of their DVD extras (and more than half their cost) – presents an even better, more accessible collection of films from the cinephile-sanctified vaults of legendary distributor Janus Films than the prior volume. This boxed set (the titles are also sold separately) is highlighted by three of the most entertaining and emotionally open films by three of the mid-20th century’s most revered filmmaking powerhouses: François Truffaut’s innovative 1959 coming-of-age drama, “The 400 Blows”, starring a 14-year-old Jean-Pierre Léaud, set the pattern for the genre worldwide, while also launching France’s iconoclastic New Wave of the 1960s; Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 “Ikiru” is a deeply moving and gently humorous film about a milquetoast bureaucrat (Takashi Shimura, the fish-faced badass leader of “The Seven Samurai”) facing certain death from stomach cancer without benefit of a billionaire buddy or bucket list; and 1954’s “La Strada” is a wondrous surefire tearjerker by the great Federico Fellini and starring his wife, the even greater Giulietta Masina, as a Chaplinesque waif, and America’s own Anthony Quinn as a very mean muscleman. England’s 1944 “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” starring Roger Livesay and Anton Walbrook – two great actors, too little remembered – and featuring an astonishing film debut by gorgeous 24-year-old A-lister-to-be, Deborah Kerr, is from the still-not-legendary-enough team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It’s one of the most enjoyable comedy-dramas ever made, as well as an eye-opening, Technicolor, quasi-wartime propaganda epic, and my current unofficial “all-time favorite movie,” if you really want me to name one.

Definitely worthwhile, but not anyway near the same category, is another British entry, George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion.” Co-directed by star Leslie Howard (“Gone with the Wind”) and stage-to-screen specialist Anthony Asquith, and with Wendy Hiller as the definitive Eliza Doolittle, it’s a solid but sometimes slow adaptation of the Shaw play, which you may know as “My Fair Lady,” but without the music or sentiment, or “Pretty Woman,” but without hookers and with actual wit. Finally, we have 1959’s “Black Orpheus”, Marcel Camus’ retelling of the myth of Orpheus, samba style. It’s a beautiful but slow ride that has millions of fans – just not me. All in all, there’s no faulting this collection. However, the absence of DVD extras makes a strong case for curious viewers to simply join Netflix and rent the original Criterion releases, great bonus features and all.

Click to buy “Essential Art House Vol. II”