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Heroes for Sale is a fantastic portrait of the era and pretty brutal at times. I'm blinded by my love of Wellman and young Stanwyck but still, keep 'em! To use that argument that's often tossed about here: these may be the only legitimate physical (pressed) releases these films ever see.

Which volumes of the Forbidden Hollywood are DVD-Rs, or am I mistaking this for another series perhaps?

I think from Vol. 4 onward the releases would have a limited pressed run and then revert to DVDR.

^ Thanks for that.

And if you order any of the volumes from four on from Amazon, your copy will be burned since Amazon fulfills their own copies of all Archive titles

^ Thank you as well. Guess volumes 1-3 to go then, not a fan of DVD-Rs.

The latest volume (nine) just came out, you'd almost surely get a pressed copy if ordering from DeepDiscount or Warners direct

I ordered both volumes 8 and 9 recently from Deep Discount and both were pressed.

Ashirg wrote:I ordered both volumes 8 and 9 recently from Deep Discount and both were pressed.

How can we tell if a DVD is pressed?
(If this has already been asked, please forgive me, and point to a proper link.)

Look at the bottom where the disc is read. If it is blue it is not pressed.

I was able to find Volume 1 at my university library, so I watched Waterloo Bridge without having to break the shrink-wrap on my copy. I enjoyed it quite a bit, especially the relationship between Mae Clarke and her mother's boyfriend (whose response when she learns that Clarke is a prostitute is surprisingly, and touchingly, forgiving). This seemed to me one of the most daring decisions in the film and a good example of how pre-Code films are not always just about being "naughty."

Anyway, I'm glad I checked it out but I'll probably still end up selling these sets. Like I said, my collection is badly in need of paring down and interesting as these films are I can't really afford to keep anything that's not absolutely essential.

ianthemovie wrote:I was able to find Volume 1 at my university library, so I watched Waterloo Bridge without having to break the shrink-wrap on my copy. I enjoyed it quite a bit, especially the relationship between Mae Clarke and her mother's boyfriend (whose response when she learns that Clarke is a prostitute is surprisingly, and touchingly, forgiving). This seemed to me one of the most daring decisions in the film and a good example of how pre-Code films are not always just about being "naughty."

Anyway, I'm glad I checked it out but I'll probably still end up selling these sets. Like I said, my collection is badly in need of paring down and interesting as these films are I can't really afford to keep anything that's not absolutely essential.

So then why did you choose to watch only one film in that first set? Nearly everyone here has been praising Baby Face, and rightly so--it's one of my very favorite films of the era.

And since it seems like you'd already made up your mind on the matter, why did you go to the trouble of asking on a forum if you should sell this set? It's not like a single person here told you to sell it, and the one movie you watched from it you liked.

domino harvey wrote:Night Flight (1933) (Warners, pressed)

This is a really nice thread, and while reading the earlier posts I remembered that I had this but still haven't watched it. Now that has been corrected.

Really enjoyed this. Really nice aviation shooting, especially

Spoiler

the plane flying in the canyons under heavy fog

was quite exciting. Great cast too.

I also liked the short documentary Swing High (1932) about the trapeze artists The Codonas. The circus acts filmed from different angles and one in slow motion were spectatular. A nice 8-minute cartoon When the Cat's Away (1935) is also included.

I understand this remained unseen for many decades. Fortunately this didn't get dumped in the MOD-line but Warner gave it a proper release instead. Great disc.

Raymond Marble wrote:So then why did you choose to watch only one film in that first set? Nearly everyone here has been praising Baby Face, and rightly so--it's one of my very favorite films of the era.

And since it seems like you'd already made up your mind on the matter, why did you go to the trouble of asking on a forum if you should sell this set? It's not like a single person here told you to sell it, and the one movie you watched from it you liked.

I asked because I knew others here would know more about these films than I do, and I'm grateful to everyone for weighing in. I was totally willing to keep the set if I had been bowled over by Waterloo Bridge, which everyone here seemed to praise effusively but as I said I wasn't blown away by it. Had I world enough and time I would have liked to check out Baby Face too.

Just watched the 1933 pre-code the Little Giant, a frustrating comedy that squanders a great idea-- Chicago bootlegger tries to go legit in society after Roosevelt's election and ends up taking a "from the streets" revenge on the hoity toities and enacts vengeance on crooked bankers-- by barely exploring the comic or social commentary possibilities. But I was legit surprised to hear Edward G Robinson refer to his upperclass targets as "fags with handkerchiefs up their sleeves." I don't recall ever hearing "fag" used in this manner in any film from this period-- is this one of the first films to use it? Certainly it would be one of the last Hollywood films to do so for a while!

I've done research on portrayals of male homosexuality in pre-code films, and that's a new one to me. "Pansy" or "cream puff" were used, but not commonly.

Searching Screened Out on Google Books, it appears to be the only instance from the period documented by the author, though apparently Blood Money, made the same year, had a line using the word that was cut from the final film

How many of these are considered lost?

One of the most famous/notorious ones is Convention City. Joan Blondell remembered it as "the raunchiest there has ever been" and would sometimes screen it for her guests. Surprising that it would be completely lost, as there were hundreds of prints made, and it was hardly some obscure B picture. If one ever did turn up, it'd likely be fairly heavily censored.

The board will be discussing and tabulating Pre-Code Films for a Mini-List Project through December 13th. You do not need to participate in the discussion in order to submit a list, but I do encourage you to weigh in on any and all eligible films via the linked thread, though!

Due to my massive back catalog of physical media and digital files, I haven’t done any virtual cinema stuff since COVID-19 became a reality, but I’ll be trying it for the next time next Thursday as UCLA Film and Television Archive will be playing one of their recent Poverty Row restorations, False Faces. And it’s free!

For those with Max, the TCM section is hosting a restored version of I Cover the Waterfront for some reason, and it’s a real pre-code hoot. From the lead putting Claudette Colbert in a quasi-BDSM torture device and stealing kisses from her to the highly sympathetic treatment of a mass murderer of “chinks” (and get used to hearing that slur, and others), this is a pip so far out of step with today’s mores that I can’t imagine what exec snuck it into the streaming programming, but you def get a lot of “pre code” bang for your buck out of it

domino harvey wrote: Sun Feb 04, 2024 8:53 pm For those with Max, the TCM section is hosting a restored version of I Cover the Waterfront for some reason, and it’s a real pre-code hoot. From the lead putting Claudette Colbert in a quasi-BDSM torture device and stealing kisses from her to the highly sympathetic treatment of a mass murderer of “chinks” (and get used to hearing that slur, and others), this is a pip so far out of step with today’s mores that I can’t imagine what exec snuck it into the streaming programming, but you def get a lot of “pre code” bang for your buck out of it

I watched a lot of unrestored PD films on my iPad during a recent international trip, and I Cover the Waterfront was one of them. Yeah, that was really something else.