Doris Day and Rock Hudson Romantic Comedy Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Doris Day and Rock Hudson Romantic Comedy Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 30, 2016

Despite their reputation as the “it” couple of late 50s and early 60s romantic comedies, it’s perhaps surprising to note that Doris Day and Rock Hudson actually only made three feature films together, the trio assembled in Doris Day and Rock Hudson Romantic Comedy Collection. Pillow Talk (which was released as a standalone Blu-ray in 2012 as a Digibook and then again almost exactly a year later in this edition) was one of the most overwhelming box office sensations of its era, ending up with an Academy Award for Best Screenplay and several other nominations (including, rather incredibly, the sole nomination for Best Actress that Doris Day received over her long and varied career). The film world moved slower back then, and it took a little over two years for a follow up of sorts to appear in the form of Lover Come Back, a film which pretty much simply retold large swaths of Pillow Talk’s tale of bickering folks who can’t see the clear truth that they’re actually madly in love with each other. Lover Come Back wasn’t anywhere near the smash that Pillow Talk had been, but it still raked in considerable dough and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. Three years after the second pairing of Hudson and Day, their final film together, Send Me No Flowers, came out. This one departed rather radically from the precedent set by the first two films, with Hudson and Day not contentious singles but instead a seemingly happily married couple who then get entangled in a farcical set of circumstances due to the Hudson character’s incipient hypochondria.

Reviews of the three films found in this set can be accessed by clicking on the following links:

Pillow Talk Blu-ray review

Lover Come Back Blu-ray review

Send Me No Flowers Blu-ray review

Doris Day and Rock Hudson Romantic Comedy Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Video quality for each film is assessed in the above linked reviews.

Doris Day and Rock Hudson Romantic Comedy Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Audio quality for each film is assessed in the above linked reviews.

Doris Day and Rock Hudson Romantic Comedy Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Supplements for each film are detailed in the above linked reviews.

Doris Day and Rock Hudson Romantic Comedy Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The law of diminshing returns ultimately catches up to the three films in this set, but fans of Hudson and Day will no doubt have a field day revisiting these outings. Pillow Talk still resonates as one of the progenitors of the modern rom-com, and its two follow ups offer at least occasional glimmers of the brilliance of the first Day-Hudson pairing. Recommended.