A humble offering of forgotten films

There are films the Hollywood studios haven't got around to releasing on DVD. Maybe they're bad movies. Maybe they're in poor shape and need expensive restoration. Maybe they're quirky or absorbing but market research suggests they wouldn't sell.

A California-based outfit called Legend Films (http://www.legendfilms.net) is trying its luck. For the past seven years, Legend has been restoring and colorizing such black-and-white films as "Miracle on 34th Street." It has just licensed almost 40 color films from Paramount Pictures and is testing the waters as a general distributor.

Why?

Because, Legend President Bob Pollack told iF Magazine recently, the company needed a critical mass of titles, "a much stronger catalogue to warrant an audience with retailers."

The DVD transfers look fine, but there are no bonus features, because creating them would have cost money and delayed the project for a year. "It's a huge financial commitment," Pollack said, "to acquire these rights and put these out."

Think of the result as a mid-range buffet: a few choice dishes, a fair amount of filler. If you've been waiting for a DVD of John Sayles' 1983 romantic drama "Baby, It's You," the wait is over. If your collection of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin has been incomplete without "Money from Home" (1953), the gap is filled. Ditto for those seeking "Some Kind of Hero" (1982), a drama with Richard Pryor as a veteran making an uneasy return after years as a prisoner of war; "Mandingo" (1975, with James Mason), a lurid sex-and-violence melodrama of slavery in the South; and "Houdini" (1953), with Tony Curtis as magician Harry Houdini.

One of the tastier items is the 1980 comedy "Serial," based on Cyra McFadden's satire of self-actualization movements and trend-speak in Marin County, Calif.

"I'd help you carry that stuff," a mellow guy says as Tuesday Weld's character carts packages up a steep staircase, "but, like, it would be sexist."

Martin Mull and Bill Macy (the husband on TV's "Maude") play skeptics in a world of love-bomb cults, new-age therapy and friends making it with each other's exes. Also in the cast: Sally Kellerman, Tom Smothers and, in a role that pays great dividends, Christopher Lee.

Even die-hard Peter Sellers fans may not recall the 1973 drama "The Optimists," with a score by Beatles producer George Martin and pastiches of music-hall songs by Lionel ("Oliver!") Bart. It's a sentimental, low-key and often rewarding drama about a down-and-out music-hall performer (Sellers, with fake nose) who busks on street corners and grudgingly befriends two children whose father is always absent. Anthony Simmons directs from his novel.

A similar curiosity is "The Pied Piper," a 1972 retelling of the legend about Hamelin and the rats. Director Jacques ("The Umbrellas of Cherbourg") Demy had tackled fairy tales a year earlier with the charming "Donkey Skin," but "The Pied Piper" is not a film for the kiddies. They will be alternately bored by the political discussions of dowries and horrified by the punishments inflicted by the Roman Catholic Church as the Black Death mows everyone down.

Imagine a Terry Gilliam universe with less squalor (though the rats pop up on cue) and an echo of the traveling players from Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal." The folk singer Donovan does a surprisingly good job as the piper. Michael Hordern and young Jack ("Oliver!" again) Wild are on the side of enlightenment. John Hurt, Roy Kinnear and Donald Pleasence are not.

"The Busy Body" (1967) has the virtue of being adapted from Donald E. Westlake's comic mystery novel of the same name. The movie follows his intricate plotting, but director William Castle too often lets the story descend into painful shtick. A mob flunky (Sid Caesar) with a nagging mom (Kay Medford) is promoted because the mob boss (Robert Ryan, in good, menacing form) likes the way he prepares his sandwiches.

Problems begin when a body Caesar inadvertently buried with $1 million in his suit is found to have disappeared. Cue the intrigues, the femme fatale (Anne Baxter), the henchmen (Godfrey Cambridge and Marty Ingels) and a police lieutenant played, in his first movie role, by Pryor, though the character is too dull to give him traction.

For all its flaws, "The Busy Body" is comic gold next to "Jekyll and Hyde ... Together Again" (1982), which tries to put an overlay of "Airplane!" on "The Nutty Professor" but hasn't the wit, invention or star (Mark Blankfield) to pull it off.

"Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies" (1969, also known as "Monte Carlo or Bust") wastes a great animated title sequence by Ronald Searle and a good cast (Terry-Thomas, Tony Curtis, Bourvil, Eric Sykes, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore) on excruciating vignettes built around a vintage-car race. Ken Annakin, who directed the superior "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines," lets scenes drag on so long you can hear them sputter.

"Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood" (1976) is similarly frantic in its homage to 1920s Hollywood, and lasts half an hour too long, but it's amusing to see the dozens of guest stars (Alice Faye, the Ritz Brothers, Cyd Charisse, Edgar Bergen) who show up for cameos alongside stars Madeline Kahn, Bruce Dern, Teri Garr and Art Carney.

(wclements(at)globeandmail.com)

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