Having a Wild Weekend (Warner Archive), the Dave Clark Five’s answer to “A Hard Day’s Night,” has a title that suggests the knock-about fun and goofy banter of The Beatles on film. To some extent you’ll find that here. The five boys live in what appears to be, at various times, an old church, an abandoned farmhouse, a run-down manor, and a rummage sale in a school gymnasium (thus the trampoline in the middle of the room), but instead of playing music, they play stunt men and extras in a beef industry ad campaign branded “Meat for Go,” which are conspicuously absent of any actual meat in the ads. What the ads seem to sell is the blond charm of poster girl Dinah (Barbara Ferris) and the puckish spirit of five mod young men leaping goofily around her.

Dave Clark is the ostensible lead as Steve, one of the stunt men and the only member of quintet to get something approaching a distinctive character (the other four boys goof around the margins), and he kicks off the story by driving off the commercial in a sports car with a willing Dinah. She’s the bubbly starlet as free spirit next to Clark’s brooding would-be rebel Steve, but Clark has, shall we say, a deficit of screen presence, let alone personality or charisma. Ferris effortlessly dominates by sheer personality and energy. Maybe that’s why Dave Clark never made another film.

Or maybe it’s because “Having a Wild Weekend” is not the happy-go-lucky romp the gag-laden opening promises.

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All in the Family: The Complete Series (Shout! Factory) collects all nine seasons Norman Lear’s taboo-breaking, trend-setting sitcom, a genre that even at its best avoided ruffling any feathers back in the day. Lear had no such inhibitions. Adapting the British sitcom “Till Death Do Us Part” into the American vernacular of the 1970s, he turned American TV and the family sitcom format on its ear, tackling politics, racism, chauvinism, hypocrisy, and the American Dream with a vengeance, and creating Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), America’s favorite bigot. In this dysfunctional family, blue collar conservative father didn’t know best, mother is a daffy but goodhearted dingbat (Jean Stapleton), and their little girl Gloria (Sally Struthers) is a liberated liberal married to a college intellectual (Rob Reiner) constantly bickering with dear old dad, who not-so-affectionatel​y refers to him as Meathead.

Later season introduced Edith’s Cousin Maude (Beatrice Arthur) and next-door neighbor George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley), both of whom spun-off into their own Lear-created sitcoms, brought in Sammy Davis Jr. as a guest star (in an Emmy-winning episode), added former blacklisted actress Betty Garrett to the cast, and tacked such issues as interracial romance (“Lionel Steps Out”), hate crimes (“Archie Is Branded”), sexual assault (“Gloria the Victim”), and breast cancer scare (“Edith’s Christmas Story”), among others. By the ninth season, Archie Bunker had mellowed as America’s favorite bigot and he and Edith essentially adopted the nine-year-old daughter of Edith’s cousin, which in the parlance of TV culture is the “jump the shark” moment of the series, but the show still tackled serious issues, including the separation of Mike and Gloria (in a one-hour special). The final season also features the 90-minute “200th Episode Special,” a retrospective hosted by Norman Lear.

213 episodes on 28 discs in a box set of five-disc box set, plus a bonus disc with a new interview with Norman Lear, the documentaries “Those Were the Days: The Birth of All in the Family” and “The Television Revolution Begins: All in the Family is On the Air,” the two original unaired pilots, plus the pilots to spin-off  shows “Gloria,” “Archie Bunker’s Place,” and “704 Hauser,” and a 40-page booklet with essays by Pulitzer Prize–winning TV critic Tom Shales and USC Media Professor Marty Kaplan and a complete episode guide.

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The Canadian fantasy series “Lost Girl: Season One” (Funimation) debuted up north in 2010 and only recently arrived stateside on SyFy, where it joined another (and better) shot-in-Toronto series of supernatural beings in the modern world, “Being Human.” This one falls into more familiar genre conventions. The lost girl of the title is Bo (Anna Silk), a beautiful succubus who feeds on humans — not blood, but energy, life force, chi, whatever you want to call it — but only discovers the truth of her legacy in the first episode, when the Fae world tries to bring her into the fold. The Fae live hidden among the humans, divided between light and dark and keeping an uneasy détente with a strict set of rules. Bo refuses to choose sides. Instead, she partners with a young human thief named Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) and becomes an independent operator, a kind of private detective for the magical world.

The show follows a familiar formula, borrowing from such shows as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel,” “True Blood,” and Canada’s own “Forever Knight,” without adding anything distinctive of its own. Anna Silk makes for a striking and charismatic leading lady and her playful partnership with Kenzi provides the show’s defining relationship (their loyalty contrasts with the politics and conflicts within the Fae community). The rest plays like a police procedural / detective show with magical creatures and supernatural conspiracies, something the “Grimm” does much more creatively, on a budget that makes it look quite generic.

13 episodes on Blu-ray and DVD, with extended versions featuring footage not seen on American TV, plus brief interview and behind-the-scenes clips (some running under 30 seconds, which makes it quite inconvenient to manually go through them all; hey guys, ever heard of editing?).

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“Rosemary’s Baby” (Criterion), Roman Polanski’s American directing debut and one of the most celebrated American horror films of all time, debuts in a newly remastered, director approved edition form Criterion.

But horror isn’t really the right description for this film. Yes, it is about a cabal of devil worshippers in modern day (circa late 1960s) and an innocent served up to bear Satan’s child, but Polanski is less interested in terror and shock than in creating a mood of paranoia and instability.

He finds the eerie in the mundane, often just by unsettling viewers with images slightly out of off-balance or framing characters just outside of our vision, or by distorting the soundtrack in conversations, phone calls, or simply the muffled sounds from the other side of the wall. Polanksi also wrote the screenplay, faithfully adapting Ira Levin’s novel, and he proves to have a great ear for American dialogue that is at once banal, blackly comic, and intimidating.

Polanski’s casting and direction of actors is superb. Mia Farrow is frail and pixie-ish as Rosemary, deteriorating into a ghoulish pallor as her pregnancy progresses, while John Cassavetes becomes uncomfortably hectoring, dominating, and dismissive of her growing anxiety. Ruth Gordon earned an Oscar playing a caricature of a nosy old lady with a curdled soul behind her motherly façade.

But for all the bleary, drug-smeared visions of the beast, the most terrifying monsters here are human. He finds the banal face of evil in the eccentric American gargoyles that populate the funky old apartment building (the real-life New York landmark The Dakota stood in for the exteriors), hiding their brutal conspiracy behind a mask of neighborly affection.

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“Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection” (Universal)

It is a Hitchcock Renaissance!

“Vertigo” was anointed the Greatest Film Ever Made by the Sight and Sound poll this summer. “The Birds” was remastered and rereleased nationwide in both digital and 35mm screenings. “The Girl,” about Hitchcock’s obsessive, domineering relationship with actress Tippi Hedren, premiered on HBO a couple of weeks ago, and “Hitchcock” a big screen drama about the making of “Psycho” with Anthony Hopkins as Hitch, Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh, and Helen Mirren as Hitch’s wife and longtime collaborator Alma Reville, opens on Thanksgiving weekend.

Whether it’s cagey planning or kismet (or a combination of both), it’s perfect timing for Universal to release its Blu-ray box of 15 Hitchcock films, 13 of them in their HD debut. They’re not all masterpieces in “The Masterpiece Collection,” but as they are all from the Master of Suspense, they all  have their merits, and all are packed with supplements carried over from previous DVD releases. Here’s the line-up, which is almost identical to the earlier DVD set of the same name:

“Saboteur” (1942), a coast-to-coast chase with Robert Cummings; “Shadow Of A Doubt” (1943), Hitch’s personal favorite, with Joseph Cotten as the charming “Merry Widow Killer”; “Rope” (1948), Hitch’s bold long take experiment; “Rear Window” (1954), with James Stewart and Grace Kelly; “The Trouble With Harry” (1955), a cheeky autumnal comedy; “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1956), a remake of his early British hit; “Vertigo” (1958); “North by Northwest” (1959), the smoothest of Hitch’s romantic thrillers; “Psycho” (1961), once notorious, now celebrated; “The Birds” (1963), his memorable contribution to the “animals attack” genre; “Marnie” (1964), a chilly vision of psychosis and domination; “Torn Curtain” (1966) is chilly look at cold war espionage; “Topaz” (1969), his attempt at a modern international espionage thriller; “Frenzy” (1972), his return to England; and his final film “Family Plot” (1976) is an easy, breezy thriller. Only “North by Northwest” and “Psycho” have been previously available on Blu-ray. Details on each film are below, after some initial notes.

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The Penalty (Kino), a 1920 crime thriller with elements of horror, presents Lon Chaney as San Francisco underworld despot Blizzard, an embittered criminal mastermind driven to vengeance after incompetent doctor amputates his legs as a youth. Chaney strapped his legs into a painful leather harness to play a double-amputee and he scrambles through the city on stubs of legs and crutches like a human spider, weaving his criminal web across San Francisco. The busy plot involves the doctor’s daughter, a young sculptress who hires Blizzard as her model for a statue of Satan, and an undercover female police agent who infiltrates the gang and falls in love with Blizzard. Meanwhile he terrorizes his underlings, murders traitors, and concocts a double-barreled plot that will bring both the city and the doctor (now an honored physician) to their knees.

Director Wallace Worsley (who later directed Chaney in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”) drives the film with rapid pace and an energetic crosscutting style and creates a wicked atmosphere of corruption and murder with his bizarre touches of sexual menace and sadism. But it’s Lon Chaney who contributes the most to the atmosphere with his defining physical incarnation of Blizzard, scrambling up walls and down secret tunnels on elaborate handholds and chains and leering at potential victims with the vicious grin of a human demon.

Previously available on DVD, the Blu-ray features a newly-remastered edition of the film from a 35mm restoration by the George Eastman House with terrific sharpness and detail, with tints (which are a little too rich, but that’s a minor quibble) and a new compilation score by Rodney Sauer performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

Supplements include the 1914 one reel western “The Miracle Man,” surviving footage of Chaney’s lost 1919 film “The Miracle Man,” a video tour of Chaney’s makeup case and the “double amputee” costume worn in “The Penalty,” and trailers from Chaney’s “The Big City” and “While the City Sleeps.”

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Sunday Bloody Sunday (Criterion) was John Schlesinger’s first film after “Midnight Cowboy” and the most personal film of his career, an intimate, compassionate story of a romantic triangle with two middle-aged divorcees (Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch) sharing a handsome young artist (Murray Head) who flits between them. It’s a quiet and powerful film and, despite the provocative language of the title, one without explosive sparks. This is about the slow, internal smolder of love and anxious yearning and the compromises we all make for love and companionship, physical and emotional.

Glenda Jackson is superb as the seemingly modern career woman with a sharp intelligence and a tart sense of humor and Finch even more touching as a gay man in early seventies London, a culture still very hostile to homosexuality. The film’s presentation of a loving romantic and sexual relationship between two men in the same naturalistic terms as a heterosexual romance was unprecedented for its time, at least in a mainstream movie. Finch’s quiet performance makes Bob a man first and a gay man second, a defining feature of the character without becoming the defining feature, and the physical and emotional intimacy between Finch and Head is presented with the same easy natural quality as the relationship between Jackson and Head: an enormous accomplishment for the time. The film earned Academy Award nominations for Schlesinger’s direction, Gilliat’s screenplay, and actors Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson, and it won five BAFTA awards, including Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Direction, and Best Film.

Criterion releases the Oscar-nominated film on Blu-ray and DVD in a newly remastered edition supervised by cinematographer Billy Williams. It features the 23-minute video essay “On Sunday Bloody Sunday” by Schlesinger biographer William J. Mann, new interviews by co-star Murray Head (7 minutes), cinematographer Billy Williams (13 minutes), production designer Luciana Arrighi (9 minutes), and Michael Childers, Schlesinger’s partner of many years (7 minutes), and an archival audio interview with Schlesinger from 1975. The accompanying booklet features a new essay by cultural historian Ian Buruma and an archival essay by Penelope Gilliatt.

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Blade Runner 30th Anniversary Collector’s Edition (Warner) – In 2007, 25 years after Ridley Scott’s visionary reworking of Philip K. Dick’s novel flopped at the box office (and was subsequently reborn as one of the preeminent cult movies of the past three decades), Scott delivered what he promises is his final take on the compromised classic.

The setting is the near future, where the only escape from a planet-wide urban blight is the promise of the off-world frontier advertised on ever-present floating billboards, but five Replicants (slave clones with genetically stamped short shelf lives) have returned to Earth in search of themselves. Harrison Ford is a throwback to the classic Hollywood P-I in a futuristic film noir, a rumpled loner detective sent to hunt down escaped Replicants in the polyglot cultural stew of the rain-slicked streets in the ground-level slums. Much of PKD’s original story is discarded, but the densely realized street subculture looks more prescient than ever, and Scott’s sensibility turns the pulp story into a dystopian odyssey.

The original release featured dreary voice-over narration and a happy ending that made hash of the whole polluted planet premise, and the original VHS home video release featured the longer, international cut of the film. A workprint discovered in 1990 (and briefly released before Scott pulled it back) inspired a 1991 “Director’s Cut” version, sans the narration and happy ending and featuring a unicorn dream. But that was still a compromise version, as far as Scott was concerned, and he came back one more time for “The Final Cut,” a definitive version full of minor adjustments (with subtle reverberations) and major corrections (Scott reshot the death of Zhora to get rid of a glaringly unconvincing body double), and the digital enhancements both refine the special effects and deliver a sparkling image. The remixed sound adds more density to the experience.

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Law & Order: Criminal Intent – The Eighth Year (Universal) opens like pretty much any other season, with Vincent D’Onofrio’s Detective Goren and Kathryn Erbe’s Detective Eames following a murder case to a political family with dirty little secrets, but the second episode brings in a new player and a whole new chemistry.

Jeff Goldblum wanders into episode two like an alien, arriving to a crime scene with a big smile on his face, bags full of food in his hands, and a breezy attitude that immediately puts off Detective Wheeler (Julianne Nicholson), a veteran of the squad (and the show) who is a little low on trust, thanks to losing her old partner (farewell, Mike Logan, we’ll miss you) and her fiancé in the previous season.

Detective Zach Nichols is a terrific Goldblum creation, entering every conversation with a banter that bounces around like a bebop solo and veers off in sudden zig-zags before circling back to the case, keeping his subjects off balance while he lobs them with questions. He’s the son of psychiatrist parents (unseen this season but keep an eye out for a guest shot in season nine) and he has his own style, which makes him an interesting contrast to the more intense and obsessive Goren. And, frankly, more fun. Nichols seems to enjoy his work, even as he keeps frustrating Wheeler with his unconventional methods. It’s not just the suspects he manages keep of balance with his methods.

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The Crowd Roars (1932) (Warner Archive), a car racing drama directed by Howard Hawks (who had raced cars himself) and starring James Cagney as racing champion Joe Greer, is as rip-roaring a speed drama as you get in 1932. Hawks, who also wrote the original story, tells you exactly what the film is about in the opening shots: a spectacular wreck on a dirt track, the animated response of the spectators leaping up to get a better view, and then the title. We know exactly why The Crowd Roars. The rest turns on sibling bonds broken in rivalry (Eric Linden is his talented kid brother) and romance and a spiral into defeat after the fiery death of a teammate on the track. (The Tom Cruise race picture Days of Thunder borrows a lot form this film.)

Cagney is the most extreme version of the Hawks hero, whose callous dismissal of his long-suffering girl (poor, hopelessly obsessed Ann Dvorak) borders on abusive, but he’s also more hotheaded and less disciplined than the usual self-contained Hawks man: a hypocrite, a drinker, a risk-taker whose impatience and anger kills his best friend. Joan Blondell gets second billing as Dvorak’s best friend, who seduces Linden in revenge and ends up falling in love with the kid, and Hawks puts real-life driving champs in the pits and sidelines. You may not recognize them by face or even name today, but they’re easy to spot – they’re the ones who can’t act. But don’t worry, they don’t slow down the film.

Hawks fills the film with real racing footage, including some dramatic crashes, interspersed with his staged scenes, and he drives it with an energy to match the onscreen speed. The film was originally released at 85 minutes, then cut for rerelease. The original cut is apparently lost so this is the 70-minute version, which also may contribute to the film’s headlong momentum.

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