Thriller
Rod Lott
As if Warner Archive hasn’t re-released enough murder mysteries on MOD DVD lately, here’s another helping, pairing 1949’s The House Across the Street and Homicide on one disc overflowing with film noir. I gladly made room for it.

Drama
Rod Lott
From 1953, Knights of the Round Table proudly boasts the CinemaScope logo as it opens, trumpeting itself as an epic Hollywood costumed drama on a massive scale: no expense spared, no detail ignored. And no story engagement.

Action
Rod Lott
MGM's marketing campaign for 1972's Cool Breeze played up — if not centered around — a connection to Shaft. That connection? Both were blaxploitation films released by MGM. I guess audiences thought that wasn't enough of a lure, because Breeze is an obscure entry in the genre, just now seeing the light of DVD, courtesy of the Warner Archive archivists.

Action
Rod Lott
Swords and sandals: Once a matinee mainstay, the adventure subgenre is now all but extinct, kept alive by the occasional Conan movie or Titans clash. DVD helps, too, such as three new offerings from Warner Archive.

Comedy
Rod Lott
One of many spy flicks released amid the height of the 007 craze, 1965's The Liquidator may look and sound like a James Bond imitator — what with a winning animated credits sequence set to a Lalo Schifrin song belted out by Shirley Bassey — but it's actually a spoof, as quickly becomes clear.

Drama
Rod Lott
Judging by the 1962 portrayed by The Chapman Report, everybody smoked cigarettes, LPs of poetry readings were a hot commodity, and the female orgasm had yet to be invented. While this film from legendary old-Hollywood director George Cukor (My Fair Lady) was determined to be earnest and serious in its time, it's quite a hoot today.

Comedy
Rod Lott
All but dead, the drive-in movie once was at the forefront of entertainment, as American as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet. I can’t think of a film that bottles that nostalgia better than Drive-In, an obscure comedy worth hunting down.

Western
Rod Lott
What a kick it is to see Robert Mitchum biting into a stogie and laying waste to a room with a machine gun. Because, really, how often does a man of the cloth do that? No wonder the 1972 quasi-Western is titled The Wrath of God. The film takes place in a South American town so brutal and dismal that, as one character reasons, "If God had wanted to give the world an enema, he'd've stuck the nozzle in here."

Thriller
Rod Lott
I should have listened to Ron Backer. In his new book, Mystery Movie Series of 1930s Hollywood, he more or less warns would-be audiences away from trying any of the early 1930s’ half-dozen movies based on Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason character.

Western
Rod Lott
Perhaps to horn in on the expected Django Unchained action, Warner Archive has dug into its vaults to give a spaghetti Western a second helping of viewers. It found a unlikely offering in Dollar for the Dead, a 1988, made-for-cable effort starring Emilio Estevez. You could look at it like a Young Guns spin-off if you wish.