Monday, March 19, 2018

Mill Creek Entertainment Selects May 1 For The Release Of The DVD Collection Titled The William Castle Western Collection: The Fastest Guns of the West


DVD & Blu-ray Release Report, Ralph TribbeyIf you say William Castle, you immediately think of horror films.  But before he became a producer and showman extraordinaire with such horror classics as House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, 13 Ghosts and Strait-Jacket, he learned the craft of movie-making at Columbia Pictures under the guidance of Harry Cohn and “Jungle Sam” Katzman.

Between 1943 and 1956 he directed 40 films … and not a single one of them was a horror film.  He did four films in The Whistler series (with Richard Dix), a trio of the Crime Doctor (Warner Baxter) movies and some gangster/crime films — Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949 with Howard Duff, Dan Duryea, Shelley Winters and newcomer Tony Curtis) and Undertow (also 1949 with Scott Brady, Johnny Hart, John Russell and another newcomer Roc Hudson … soon to be Rock Hudson).

He also did Westerns, really good Westerns, during this period and Mill Creek Entertainment let it be known this past week that on May 1 they will be releasing as a double-disc DVD set The William Castle Western Collection: The Fastest Guns of the West … collectors, film buffs and Western fans are already salivating at the thought of picking up this beauty at the bargain price of just $19.98 (and that’s before discounts at retail).

DVD & Blu-ray Release Report, Ralph Tribbey
Included in the mix is one of his first films at Columbia Pictures, the 1943 Western, Klondike Kate, starring Ann Savage and Tom Neal, who would make screen history together in 1945 with the film noir classic, Detour.

He then became very active in the genre during 1953 through 1955, delivering Conquest of Cochise (1953, in Technicolor with John Hodiak, Robert Stack and Joy Page), Masterson of Kansas (1954, in Technicolor with George Montgomery as Bat Masterson, James Griffith as Doc Holliday and Bruce Cowling as Wyatt Earp … with Nancy Gates and Jay Silverheels) and Jesse James vs The Daltons (1954, in Technicolor with Brett King as the “son” of Jesse James, Barbara Lawrence as woman he saves from the hangman and James Griffith, William Phipps, John Cliff and William Tannen as the Daltons … and Rory Mallinson as Bob Ford, the man who shot Jesse James).

DVD & Blu-ray Release Report, Ralph TribbeyKlondike Kate, Conquest of Cochise, Masterson of Kansas and Jesse James vs The Daltons make up half of the collection … you could quit right there and call this a “keeper,” but Mill Creek Entertainment has four more in The William Castle Western Collection: The Fastest Guns of the West set on May 1 to thrill fans.

These are: Battle of Rogue River (1954, in Technicolor and starring George Montgomery, Richard Denning and Martha Hyer) and The Gun That Won the West (1955, in Technicolor) starring Dennis Morgan as Jim Bridger with Paula Raymond and Richard Denning).

DVD & Blu-ray Release Report, Ralph TribbeyRounding out the collection, which are not really Westerns (in the truest sense) are Duel On The Mississippi (1956, in Technicolor … the action takes place in 1820, starring Lex Baxter, Warren Stevens and Patricia Medina as Lili Scarlet) and Uranium Boom (1956, black and white with Dennis Morgan, William Talman and Patricia Medina).

WOW, just WOW, that’s all you can say about these William Castle films that Mill Creek Entertainment has assembled for the May 1 DVD debut of The William Castle Western Collection: The Fastest Guns of the West.

Also announced this past week is the May 1 DVD release of director Lee Philips’ 1986 biopic, Barnum, starring four-time Oscar nominee Burt Lancaster (with a win for Elmer Gantry) as the legendary showman Phineas Taylor “P.T.” Barnum (of note, 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment’s The Greatest Showman arrives in the home entertainment marketplace on Apr. 10).






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