Warner Archive has will add three new releases to its Blu-ray catalog: Fritz Lang's
While the City Sleeps (1956) and
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), and Edward Ludwig's
The Black Scorpion (1957). The three releases will be available for purchase this March.
While the City Sleeps
"Ask mother," says the message scrawled in lipstick at a murder scene, written by an unidentified serial killer who preys on women. It's a sensational story — if it bleeds, it leads — and a news conglomerate offers a big promotion to any high-level company exec who solves the case. So begins the wheeling, dealing and backstabbing of the competing media hotshots as they vie to unmask the so-called Lipstick Killer. Fritz Lang (The Big Heat), whose early career expressionist works would strongly influence the film-noir genre, directs this stylistically understated noir that features an abundance of starpower rare for the genre: Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, Vincent Price, Ida Lupino and other notables.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW REMASTER
- Original trailer
- Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
STREET DATE: MARCH 13.
The Black Scorpion
They're big. They're bad. They scuttle along in caverns miles beneath the Earth – until an earthquake opens paths to the surface. Now, these monsters of genus Arachnida are invading our world with deadly force! With top special effects co-designed by King Kong's Willis O'Brien, The Black Scorpion is horror with a sting more lethal than the king-sized ants that overran Los Angeles' sewers in the classic Them! Can humankind survive these invincible juggernauts? That fate rests on the shoulders of Hank Scott (1950s monster-movie stalwart Richard Denning) as the creatures rip a train from its track, snatch a helicopter from the sky and, in the film's most gripping sequence, battle each other in their subterranean lair. Watch out!
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW REMASTER
- "Stop Motion Masters" with Ray Harryhausen
- Las Vegas Monster and the Beetlemen test footage
- Harryhausen's Dinosaur sequence from "The Animal World"
- Giant Monsters Trailer Gallery
- Original trailer
- Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
STREET DATE: MARCH 20.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
After director Fritz Lang vaulted to prominence with such masterpieces of German cinema as Metropolis and M, he brought his art to Hollywood films, including Fury, Ministry of Fear, The Woman in the Window and more trenchant tales of innocents caught in a web of seeming guilt. His last U.S. movie is this intriguing film noir about a novelist (Dana Andrews) out to expose the injustices of capital punishment. Working with his fiancée's (Joan Fontaine) father, a newspaper publisher (Sidney Blackmer), he frames himself for murder, intending to produce exonerating evidence at the last moment.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- NEW REMASTER
- Original trailer
- Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
STREET DATE: MARCH 13.