I don’t know that it’s really the DVD of the week, but I am very pleased that Honey West: The Complete Series has finally arrived on DVD. Anne Francis created TV’s sexist private eye as Honey West, the society babe who inherited her dad’s business and partner, Sam (John Ericson), a protective buddy and a flirtatious colleague. The show plays off her obvious assets (Francis was as curvy as they come) but also makes her a judo expert and a smart cookie. She’s the brains behind this outfit and Sam has no problem playing sidekick to the headstrong Honey. The half-hour P-I adventure show plays out in the high society glamour of the California sun, and the cool fashions and the swinging score create a groovy little series. Did I mention she has a pet ocelot?

The release is featured in the TV section of my MSN DVD column.

Also new this week are three new releases in the “Fox Film Noir” collection. My favorite of the three is Road House, a rural noir set in a rustic tavern with aspirations to class located near the Canadian border. What makes the film is the terrific cast: Ida Lupino as a throaty torch singer, Cornel Wilde as the manager and Richard Widmark as the unstable owner who hires Lupino and plans to marry her, little realizing she’s falling for his best friend, Wilde. Widmark gives one of his classic near portraits of a slide into revenge-fueled psychosis. My friend and colleague Kim Morgan teams up with Eddie Muller on the commentary for the disc. Also released this week are the moody but slack Moontide, Jean Gabin’s American film debut, and Elia Kazan’s realist noir Boomerang with Dana Andrews:

Elia Kazan’s true life drama of a murder in a small town belongs to the realist wave of American crime movies that newsreel producer Louis de Rochemont brought to Hollywood at the end of World War II. … This is not Kazan’s most gripping film and you can feel his straining to get out of the brightly-lit courtroom drama and back to the dramatic confrontations in backrooms and private dens and shadowy night-time streets, where the dirty business of politics favors power and money over justice. That’s where Kazan – and the film – works best.

Read the complete review here.

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