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List Price: $39.98 | | Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Salesrank: 90884
Released: October 23, 2007 |
| Our Price: $13.47 |
| Used Price: $7.25 |
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Disc 1: The Great Escape WS Disc 2: Rocky WS Disc 3: West Side Story P&S
Disc 4 Side A: Thomas Crown Affair (1968) WS Disc 4 Side B: Thomas Crown Affair (1968) P&S
Description of United Artist Cinema Greats Collection, Set 2 (The Great Escape/Rocky/West Side Story/The Thomas Crown Affair):
The Great Escape: The Great Escape image of Steve McQueen (as "The Cooler King") astride his motorcycle has entered silver-screen iconography, alongside Brando on his bike from The Wild One. Based on a true story about a group of POWs who mount a daring breakout from a supposedly inescapable Nazi prison camp, this rousing and suspenseful WWII epic features an all-star cast, including James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, and David McCallum. --Jim Emerson
Rocky: The only remaining evidence that Sylvester Stallone might have had a respectable career, this 1976 Oscar winner (for Best Picture, Director, and Editing) is still the quintessential ode to an underdog and one of the best boxing movies ever made. After writing the script about a two-bit boxer who gets a "million-to-one shot" against the world heavyweight champion, Stallone insisted that he star in the title role, and his equally unknown status helped to catapult him (and this rousing film) to overnight success. The story is familiar, but it has been handled with such vitality and emotional honesty that you can't help but leap and cheer for Rocky Balboa, the chump turned champ (despite his valiant defeat in the ring) who stuns the boxing world with the support of his timid girlfriend, Adrian (Talia Shire), and grizzled trainer, Gus (Burgess Meredith). Oscar nominations went to all the lead actors (including Burt Young as Adrian's hot-tempered brother), but five sequels could never top the universal appeal of this low-budget crowd pleaser. --Jeff Shannon
West Side Story: The winner of 10 Academy Awards, this 1961 musical by choreographer Jerome Robbins and director Robert Wise (The Sound of Music) remains irresistible. Based on a smash Broadway play updating Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to the 1950s era of juvenile delinquency, the film stars Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer as the star-crossed lovers from different neighborhoods--and ethnicities. The film's real selling points, however, are the highly charged and inventive song-and-dance numbers, the passionate ballads, the moody sets, colorful support from Rita Moreno, and the sheer accomplishment of Hollywood talent and technology producing a film so stirring. Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim wrote the score. --Tom Keogh
The Thomas Crown Affair: Millionaire businessman Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) is also a high-stakes thief; his latest caper is an elaborate heist at a Boston bank. Why does he do it? For the same reason he flies gliders, bets on golf strokes, and races dune buggies: he needs the thrill to feel alive. Insurance investigator Vicky Anderson (Faye Dunaway) gets her own thrills by busting crooks, and she's got Crown in her cross hairs. Naturally, these two will get it on, because they have a lot in common: they're not people, they're walking clothes racks. (McQueen looks like he'd rather be in jeans than Crown's natty three-piece suits.) The Thomas Crown Affair is a catalog of '60s conventions, from its clipped editing style to its photographic trickery (the inventive Haskell Wexler behind the camera) to its mod design. You can almost sense director Norman Jewison deciding to "tell his story visually," like those newfangled European films; this would explain the long passages of Michel Legrand's lounge jazz ladled over endless montages of the pretty Dunaway and McQueen at play. (The opening-credits song, "Windmills of Your Mind," won an Oscar.) It's like a "What Kind of Man Reads Playboy?" ad come to life, and much more interesting as a cultural snapshot than a piece of storytelling. --Robert Horton
United Artist Cinema Greats Collection, Set 2 (The Great Escape/Rocky/West Side Story/The Thomas Crown Affair) Reviews:
It's spooky and it's ookie 
2007-05-27 - this is a review of ASIN: B000VUNVVE Mark of the Vampire (1935)
Sir Karell Borotyn (Holmes Herbert) is found dead; he has been sucked dry of blood. There are rumors of the undead living near buy in the local castle. The daughter Irena (Elizabeth Allan) of the victim goes to live with her benevolent guardian Baron Otto von Zinden (Jean Hersholt of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award) next door. All is well until she hears daddy calling her. Will she and her fiancé Fedor Vincenté (Henry Wadsworth) become the next victims? Or is there more afoot than meets the eye?
At first this looks like any thirties vamp movie (a remake of "London After Midnight" 1927) we even have the obligatory Count Mora (Bela Lugosi). And the fly by night Luna Mora (Carol Borland) who does one of the best quasi-bat jobs I have seen to this day. Yet at first you say it is too formula and the focus leaves a dot to be desired. The almost absence of back ground music is spooky in its self. However soon you will be absorbed and naturally in the end you will want to watch it again for the obviously missed clues.
The drawback is with so many deleted scenes it is stilted and one must make constant mental leaps to keep up.
BELA LUGOSI CLASSIC FINALLY COMING TO DVD! 
2006-07-20 - Bela Lugosi classic, "Mark of the Vampire," finally makes it to dvd, with the release of "Hollywood's Legends of Horror Collection" featuring 6 horror classics on 3 discs. The collection is being released by Warner Bros and has an October 3, 2006 release date and will include, "Dr. X," "Mad Love" (Peter Lorre's performance is quite remarkable), "Mark of the Vampire" (my personal favorite of the bunch), "The Return of Dr. X," "The Devil Doll" (good performance by Lionel Barrymore) and "The Mask of Fu Manchu." Also of interest is Universal Studios September 19, 2006 release of "The Boris Karloff Collection," featuring 5 Karloff classics, "Night Key," "The Black Castle," "The Climax," "The Strange Door," and "Tower of London." With Warner Bros and Universal Studios releasing these classic collections, the production values should be very high and the dvd transfers should be at their best! Some of these films, I don't think I have seen before, but some I own on vhs video or have recorded from television. These films could never hold up against today's CGI and computer generated fair for "special effects." However, the acting talent and the incredible "atmosphere" of these films, as well as those released in the wonderful "Val Lewton Horror Collection," and the Universal Studios' "Legendary Monster" collections: "Dracula," "Frankenstein," "The Wolf Man," "The Invisible Man," "The Mummy," and "The Creature from the Black Lagoon," are far superior to today's artificial talents. Many of these "boxed sets" contain films that have been long overdue for a dvd release. It's nice to see them finally making it to dvd! Now if only we could have the 1960 b&w jungle voodoo classic "The Leech Woman," and another "Hammer Horror Collection" with more of their great films, including the ultra-creepy "The Gorgon" my expectations in classic horror will be somewhat met.
is this neglected classic EVER going to see a restored DVD release?
2006-01-29 - It would be stopping just short of a criminal act if this sinister gem were not preserved in a contemporary format for current and future generations, especially in light of the fact that the movie which is considered to be it's immediate inspiration, the legendary "London After Midnight" is a lost film.
One has to wonder why this title has been neglected in the race to commit so many vintage titles to dvd. Certainly, features with far less merit have found their way to this format.
Despite a script which feels muddled in places and a twist ending which leaves many viewers feeling cheated, "Mark of the Vampire" ranks among the greatest within the genre for stark, yet sumptuous, visual feasts and genuinely creepy atmosphere - it certainly meets and out-gruesomes the works which originated from powerhouse rival Universal at that time.
Best of all - it's brief, at least in it's current form. At only about an hour in running time, it's a quick and morbid morsel, just right on it's own, or for sandwiching between, say, a couple of those longer-running Universal monster classics. Still , it's a safe bet that fans of the movie and of it's stars want to see the nearly 20 minutes of missing footage discovered and restored.
Even though his role is a non-speaking one,(until the very end) Bela Lugosi still manages to out-vamp and out-menace even his own original Dracula screen performance. Carroll Borland (as Luna Mora) silently steals any scenes in which she appears; her unusual beauty and mute performance solidified the look and demeanor for several decades' worth of cinematic and TV undead females, and in no small way lives today in every goth girl.
Together Lugosi and Borland creeped the bejeezus out of me as a kid with their synchronized movements. Witness her amazing, all-too-brief flying scene (some of which was cut before the film's initial release), and then marvel that that image and the countless others in this film were all achieved in "real" life: all visual effects were made to occur in real time, in real life, and in 3 real dimensinons by artists and technicians for "real" in front of the camera, and in front of the actors, not simulated on some virtual set with the aid of a computer.
I can't recommend it enough.
I Liked This Movie! The Surprise Ending Was Original and Refreshing!
2005-12-12 - I don't know why most reviewers seem to hate this movie! but I guess it's because it's not the typical vampire movie or the typical horror movie and is actually more of a mystery and suspense movie but I actually thought that it was a good movie and I enjoyed the whole things aren't what they appear plotline and I thought the ending seemed very original. Seems like it would have been very original back then and also now! Not all of the actors are great but Bela Lugosi and Lionel Barrymore are great and I highly recommend this movie to fans of vampire horror movies who also like mystery and suspense!
Awesome movie! Totally 30's, but well done
2005-11-04 - SPOILERS, but I'm sure most people know about this movie already.....I suppose what would disappoint Bela Lagosi fans is that he is not a vampire, but is an vampire actor. What really makes this film shine through is not Bela, but "Luna"-a very beautiful gothic woman who does amazing vampire stares, and looks like pure goth. It's basically a detective movie but not a disappointing one..lots of women screaming, and the vampire scenes are done suprisingly well; even the bat props look real. It has bugs, rats, crawling spiders, and very well done fog.
The movie is only 60 minutes long :-( so I would consider this more of a "moviette" or mini-movie. I found it very satisfying. Too bad it's only available on VHS.
