BY GENE TRIPLETT

“Wild Bill” Wellman’s first major movie mission was in danger of crashing numerous times before it finally landed at the first Academy Awards ceremony.

But “Wings” did make it to the 1929 Oscars, swooping up the very first best picture trophy and best engineering (special effects) honors to boot.

Now, with the 84th Academy shindig just weeks away, Paramount Pictures is celebrating its centennial year with the release of a newly restored version of the silent World War I epic on DVD and Blu-ray.

“It totally knocks me out,” said William Wellman Jr., son of the Oscar-winning “Wings” director who also helmed such classics as the 1937 version of “A Star is Born,” “The Public Enemy,” “The Ox-Bow Incident,” “Battleground” and “The High and the Mighty.”

“I mean, I have hosted the picture in five countries since 1993, and I’ve seen the picture many times,” Wellman Jr. said in a recent phone interview. “And when Paramount did this restoration and they showed me the final version I was speechless, how beautiful it is. It’s just incredible. … I couldn’t be happier.”

Andrea Kalas, vice president of archives at Paramount, said the restoration of “Wings” was accomplished in a meticulous frame-by-frame process, with state-of-the-art digital tools normally used to create special effects.

Before restoration

“It’s really just been in the last few years that digital restoration technology has evolved to a point where we could actually do what we did with this film,” Kalas said. “The element we restored from was compromised with things like printed-in nitrate deterioration, which literally softened the sides of the frame. And there were extreme vertical hairline scratches. To just bring the picture back to a basic viewable form involved major technology.”

On DVD and Blu-ray, the film now appears as sharp and clean as the freshly-struck prints shown in the first road show engagements of “Wings” in 1927, Kalas said.

The film stars Clara Bow — who was a superstar at the time — Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Richard Arlen in a story of two men and the woman they both leave behind as theygo off to become fighter pilots in the “Great War.” Gary Cooper also appears briefly — but memorably — in what was only his second screen role.

William Wellman — a former World War I flying ace himself — was a relative newcomer in the film business, having directed only a handful of B-movies when he received the “Wings” assignment.

After restoration

“Paramount was the number one ranked studio in Hollywood because they had the best directors under contract,” Wellman Jr. said. “Cecil B DeMille, Victor Fleming, Allan Dwan …”

Studio cofounder Jesse Lasky was trying to decide on a director for “Wings,” which would be most ambitious project ever undertaken by the studio, when production head B.P. Schulberg recommended his protégé, William Wellman. But Lasky didn’t relish the idea of putting his epic in the hands of a 29-year-old second-stringer.

“But my father had a couple of things going for him,” Wellman said. “First of all he was a decorated fighter pilot in the first world war, so he was the only director under contract at Paramount that had frontline battle experience. And they felt that that’s what the picture needed.”

Lasky reluctantly agreed to meet with Wellman.

“Lasky said, ‘Well, what makes you think you can direct my big road show picture better than my veteran staff of directors?’ And my father said, ‘My war record does. And I’ll make it the best goddamn picture this studio’s ever had.’”

The senior Wellman had earned the nickname “Wild Bill” for his willingness to volunteer for the most dangerous dawn patrols during the war. He would continue to live up to it on the set of “Wings.”

For example, to achieve ultimate realism in the film’s aerial battle sequences, Wellman required that his two leading men, Rogers and Arlen,  take flying lessons so they could go up in real planes and activate cameras mounted in front of them.

Arlen had had some flying experience but Rogers had none at all.

“Never before had actors been photographed in the air,” Wellman Jr. said. “They usually simulated it on the ground. My father did that too but he didn’t like the way it looked.

“Well, the studio figured that he was gonna kill their stars by making them take flying lessons. I mean it went on and on and on. And you can understand the studio’s position. But my father was not going to do anything that wasn’t in the best interest of ‘Wings.’

“Of course, they way they did it, there was a safety pilot. They went up in two-seaters and there was a safety pilot who would duck down. … Buddy Rogers said that he was the director, the cameraman, the actor and the pilot for 400 feet (of film) … the film rolls were 400-foot rolls.”

Wellman said Rogers would immediately “lose his lunch” each time he landed after an aerial sequence.

The filming was also running over schedule, because Wellman would only shoot the air battles when the sky was blue, with white, fluffy clouds.

“My father thought that the planes would all look like they were flies up in the sky if you didn’t have the clouds and the blue sky,” Wellman said. “So there was a lot of down time and this caused the studio to be, you know, let’s say anxious about where their money was going.”

But “Wings” eventually did get off the ground and into theaters, and now present-day audiences can thrill to the still-incredible flight scenes Wellman managed to engineer.

“It’s just incredible to watch,” Kalas said. “I think (film director) Kevin Brownlow said something like, ‘“Wings’ captures the romanticism that veterans remember about war.’ Which is a great way of summing up some of the real emotion that stays with you when you watch this film. I mean, when you get to the end of this film there’s very few dry eyes in the house.”

The upcoming release of Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse” calls to mind a long and storied bloodline of great horse movies in Hollywood history.

Generations of filmmakers have been drawn to the allure of horses and man’s long, close history with magnificent equine steeds. In fact some of the first moving images ever shot were of horses galloping.

In 1878 Eadweard Muybridge photographed a horse named Occident in fast motion using a series of 12 stereoscopic cameras. The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse’s, and each of the camera shutters was controlled by a trip wire that was triggered by the horse’s hooves.

So as we prepare to take a journey in the hoof prints of a horse named Joey in “War Horse,” we’ve dusted off 10 of our favorite equine epics from the movies:

“Into the West” (1993) – In this enchanting Irish tale from director Mike Newell, two young Dublin brothers get the gift of a white stallion named Tir na nOg from their grandfather. When authorities threaten to impound the animal and sell it, the lads set off into the west on a wild flight to save their horse.

“National Velvet” (1944) – Elizabeth Taylor was a blue-eyed, brunette ingénue when she played the spirited young girl, Velvet, who wins the feisty horse Pie in the town lottery and teams up with a rootless young trainer (Mickey Rooney) to prepare the horse for the Grand National – England’s greatest racing event.

“The Black Stallion” (1979) – In this post-World War II story, a 10-year-old boy becomes shipwrecked on an island with a spirited Arabian stallion and the two bond. Once they are rescued, the boy and horse team up with a trainer (Mickey Rooney again) to prepare for a daunting challenge match against the fastest racehorses in the world.

“Seabiscuit” (2003) – This true, Depression-era tale examines the life and times of Seabiscuit, the small, unconventional champion steed with a slight limp, and the horse’s inspirational, redemptive effect on the struggling nation and on two down-on-their-luck human partners – the man who trained him and the jockey who rode him.

“Phar Lap” (1978) – Another true story, this one follows the legendary racing career and the mysterious death of the Australian horse Phar Lap, who rose from obscurity with the help of a dedicated stable boy and left behind an intriguing “murder” mystery when he died suddenly just before an important and lucrative race in Mexico.

“Hidalgo” (2004) – An American cavalry dispatch rider (Viggo Mortensen) takes his plucky mustang, Hidalgo, around the world to race in the Ocean of Fire – a 3,000 mile survival race across the Arabian desert that pits cowpoke and pony against the world’s greatest Arabian horses and Bedouin riders.

“The Man From Snowy River” (1982) – A prized stallion and a decades-long feud between bickering twin brothers (both played by Kirk Douglas) animate this love story – based on a poem by Aussie legend A.B. “Banjo” Patterson – about a poor Australian farm boy and the girl he wants to marry.

“My Friend Flicka” (1943) – Roddy McDowall was a veteran teen actor when he took the role of young ne’er-do-well Ken, whose parents put him in charge of a sorrel chestnut filly, who becomes injured and tests the rebellious Ken’s abilities to stick to a task and nurse the horse back to health.

“A Day at the Races” (1937) – A horse named Hi-Hat figures prominently into the zany antics of the Marx Brothers in this chaotic comedy about veterinarian Hugo Hackenbush (Groucho), who is posing as a human doctor in a scheme to save Maureen O’Sullivan’s farm by winning a big race with her misfit horse.

“Buck” (2011) – This sensitive and inspirational documentary examines the life of acclaimed “horse whisperer” Buck Brannaman, a soft-spoken cowboy who recovered from years of child abuse and went on to master the Zen-like intricacies in the interactions between horses and people.

- Dennis King

In Hollywood’s Golden Age, Myrna Loy was a lovely paradox – a champagne-tippling sophisticate on-screen in her many roles opposite the dapper William Powell and a budding humanitarian off-screen with values that belied glittery show-business extravagance.

In “Myrna Loy: The Only Good Girl in Hollywood” (University of California Press, $34.95), biographer, poet and memoirist Emily W. Leider puts together an engaging and heartening portrait of the classic movie star who never let the glamour of her impossibly glamorous profession go to her head.

Always down-to-earth and sensible, although graced with exotic looks that led to her discovery by Rudolph Valentino during the silent era, Loy enjoyed an extraordinary career in movies that spanned six decades and that eventually lead her to a post-acting career as goodwill ambassador for the Red Cross, the United Nations and UNESCO.

Born in 1905 to a middle-class family in Montana, Loy lost her father to an influenza epidemic in 1918 and moved with her mother to Culver City, Calif. There, she took dance and ballet lessons, training that Leider says instilled in Loy a lifelong sense of grace and timing that became hallmarks of her acting style.

Soon, Loy landed a place in the chorus line at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre and found bit parts in several movies. Her discovery in the 1920s by Valentino and her exotic looks led to her various casting as the daughter of Fu Manchu, a gypsy seductress and a Mexican spitfire.

But once she signed with MGM and was teamed with William Powell (they would eventually do 14 movies together – six of them in “The Thin Man” series), Loy’s career kicked into high gear. As Nora Charles, the better half to Powell’s debonair, often tipsy detective Nick Charles, Loy set the standard – and a lasting screen image – as the perfect partner: good sport, stylish wife and a gal who could match her witty husband quip for quip and drink for drink.

Leider offers anecdotes giving insights into many of Loy’s finest roles (“The Best Years of Our Lives,” “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” “The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer”), her friendships with stars such as Joan Crawford, Cary Grant, Jean Harlow, Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable (Cable, the author relates, once made a pass at Loy and she pushed him into a hedge) and her collaborations with filmmakers such as David O. Selznick, Samuel Goldwyn and William Wyler.

But Loy didn’t allow herself to be defined by her stardom. Later in her life, she indulged her passion for activism and her notion of artists as ambassadors of peace. She served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and worked for other charitable causes and told friends that she got “more emotional satisfaction” from her charitable work than from her acting career. Loy died at age 88 in 1993; three years earlier she’d been awarded an honorary Oscar for career achievement.

- Dennis King

In his heyday Danny Kaye was a hugely popular, multi-threat performer – actor, singer, dancer, lithe mime, rubber-faced clown, limber-tongued monologist and charming raconteur.

As a performer from his early teens, he rose from the Borscht Belt vaudeville of Jewish resorts in the Catskills to international stardom and made his mark as a movie star in mild but enduring classics such as 1947’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” 1954’s “White Christmas” (opposite Bing Crosby) and 1956’s “The Court Jester.”

“The Inspector General,” a loose-limbed 1949 musical farce casually adapted from a play by Nikolai Gogol, is indicative of the best and worst of Kaye’s surprisingly slender big-screen resume. Directed by the versatile Henry Koster (“Harvey,” “The Bishop’s Wife”), it’s a film tailor-made for Kaye’s unique, wide-ranging and ingratiating gifts, but at its heart it’s essentially a silly bit of fluff without a hint of narrative or thematic heft.

“The Inspector General” features the red-haired dynamo Kaye as Georgi, an illiterate gypsy stooge who wonders into a quaint, unspecified European village and is quickly mistaken by corrupt local officials for the crime-busting Inspector General. Despite his clownish, bumbling ways, Georgi is thought to be in cunning, undercover mode, and the oily mayor (Gene Lockhart) and his buffoonish police henchman (Alan Hale, father of “Gilligan’s Island’s” beloved Skipper) plot devious ways to thwart Georgi, including several botched assassination attempts.

Meanwhile, the mayor’s wife (a comically ardent Elsa Lanchester of “The Bride of Frankenstein” fame) is smitten by the charmingly clueless Georgi, and the gentle townsfolk, overburdened by the mayor’s onerous taxes, rally to the supposed Inspector General’s aid.

While the film is loaded with corny jokes and pratfalls that give ample elbow room for Kaye’s over-the-top comic mugging and improvisational skills, there’s nothing terribly inspired here (certainly nothing measuring up to the star’s later routines in “The Court Jester” – remember “The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true?”).

The best sight gag involves Georgi at a military training school, and it allows Kaye to engage in a pretty funny acrobatic wrestling scene with a dummy. There are also a few catchy tunes (including “Gypsy Drinking Song” and “Soliloquy for Three Heads”) penned by Kaye’s longtime wife and occasional manager Sylvia Fine that show off the actor’s legendary vocal agility.

Depending on your esteem for Kaye, “The Inspector General” will likely seem a mid-level work by a great comic artist or a bland, outdated relic of a simpler cinematic era. Either way, it leaves no doubt of Danny Kaye’s comic virtuosity and his essential, good-hearted likability even with material that doesn’t quite live up to his talents.

“The Inspector General” (Collector’s Edition) is supposedly re-mastered for this DVD release, but the picture quality is seriously marred by dirt, scratches and cue marks and generally fuzzy resolution.

The disc does contain a couple of DVD bonus features of merit, including a 17-minute behind-the-scenes featurette that offers color home movies shot by Koster and commentary by the director’s son, Robert. There’s also an 18-minute short film from 1938, “Money on Your Life,” that features Kaye as a comic dupe in an insurance scam. It comes with an insightful commentary track by film historian Bruce Lawton.

- Dennis King

Some iconic movie directors’ off-screen lives seem so large, dramatic and event-packed that they threaten to overshadow their works on screen. Big, brawling, boozing, men’s-men directors such as Raoul Walsh, John Ford, Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks boast colorful, rousing, trouble-filled private biographies that seem positively Heminwayesque in competition with their creative lives.

Certainly, John Huston is a charter member of that macho fraternity, and his rich, raucous personal and professional experiences get a thorough, entertaining chronicling in “John Huston: Courage and Art” (Crown Archetype, $30), the first complete biography of the legendary filmmaker by prolific biographer Jeffrey Meyers, author of acclaimed studies of Ernest Hemingway, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper and many others.

Making ample use of original interviews with Huston’s Hollywood cronies and his children and relatives, as well as newly opened archival materials, the biographer offers up a vivid portrait of a truly great filmmaker (whose classics range through “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “The Asphalt Jungle” and “The African Queen”) and a larger-than-life adventurer and raconteur (at various times he was a champion boxer, a bullfighter, a big-game hunter and fisherman, a soldier, a gambler and a legendary womanizer).

Meyers colorfully details the Missouri-born Huston’s early life as a sickly child, son of famed actor Walter Huston, and how through sheer force of will young John one day rose from his sickbed, dove from a waterfall into a raging river and determined to pursue a strenuous life.

Though he dropped out of high school, Huston found success as an actor in the 1920s and a screenwriter in the 1930s, before making a dazzling debut behind the camera with 1941’s “The Maltese Falcon.” In a astoundingly productive directing career that yielded 37 feature films, 15 Oscar nominations and two Oscar wins (“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and Lifetime Achievement), plus directing turns that earned his father Walter (“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”) and daughter Anjelica Huston (“Prizzi’s Honor”) acting Oscars, Huston also managed to live a life off-screen that rivaled any adventures he captured on film.

In addition to his vigorous outdoors and sporting adventures, Huston directed plays on Broadway and operas at La Scalia and engaged in rigorous political causes (he was a staunch opponent of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist witch hunts in Hollywood). He was a serious painter and art collector, a connoisseur of wine, food and literature (many of his great films were adaptations of novels), and an unabashed womanizer (he married five times to successively younger wives, and all ended badly).
So it doesn’t sound like hyperbole when Meyers calls Huston “one of the most fascinating men who ever lived.”

Indeed, as this fine and literate biography points out, Huston’s life was as ambitious as his art, and his art is truly enduring.

Meyers neatly sums up the creative drive and grit to the very end that Huston maintained in his remarkable life:

“Huston’s most outstanding quality was personal courage: braving the waterfall as a childhood invalid in Arizona, filming under fire in the Aleutians and in Italy, opposing the Communist witch hunt in Washington, shooting ‘The African Queen’ and ‘The Roots of Heaven’ under dangerous conditions in Africa, hunting elephants in Africa and tigers in India, riding recklessly in fox hunts in Ireland, winning a camel race in Nevada, marrying for the fifth time, making ‘Under the Volcano,’ ‘Prizzi’s Honor’ and ‘The Dead’ while confined to a wheelchair, gasping for breath and supported by a tank of oxygen.”

- Dennis King

BY GENE TRIPLETT

When the last trick-or-treaters disappear into the dark with their sweet swag in tow, it’ll be time to turn the lights down low, pop your favorite fright film in the player and subject yourselves to a couple of hours of harrowing horror, or at least some nail-biting suspense.

Of course the master of that is Alfred Hitchcock, and if you’re planning a dusk-to-dawner, “Alfred Hitchcock: The Essentials Collection Limited Edition” (Universal) is just the ticket. This box contains five of the rotund one’s very best thrillers from what was arguably the director’s best decade, including his lessons in the dark consequences of voyeurism (“Rear Window,” 1954), falling for the wrong woman (“Vertigo,” 1958), being mistaken for someone else (“North by Northwest,” 1959), pissing off our feathered friends (“The Birds,” 1963), and, last but not least, taking a shower at the Bates Motel (“Psycho,” 1960).

Extras include original documentaries on “Rear Window” and “Vertigo,” script pages and stills from a deleted scene and storyboard drawings of the unfilmed alternate ending of “The Birds,” original trailers and production photographs.

If more graphic stabbings, impalings and decapitations are desired, Paramount’s “Friday the 13th: The Ultimate Collection Limited Edition” (only 50,000 manufactured, so hurry!) holds deluxe editions of all eight installments (1980-89), an eight-page booklet, two pairs of glasses for watching “Part 3 in 3-D,” AND a replica of the infamous hockey mask, so you can watch all the gratuitous gore from a Jason’s-eye-view.

Or if it’s unintentional hilarity you’re hankering for, the original, 1958 “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” is a towering hoot, one of those great, gosh-awful Allied Artists sci-fi/horror pictures of the period starring second-string scream queen Allison Hayes as hard-drinking rich woman Nancy Archer, fresh out of a psychiatric hospital with a philandering husband named Harry (William Hudson) keeping her constantly on edge. When an alien encounter on Route 66 causes Nancy to grow as tall as her temper, Harry and his girlfriend (Miss July 1959 Playboy Playmate Yvette Vickers) are in for a bad night. Nancy comes a-hunting, barely covered in the biggest damned sheets you’ve ever seen and crashes her giant rubber hand through the roof of the beer joint where Harry’s been making out with his gold-digging mistress, and colossal consequences are paid. This one’s available on demand from the Warner Archive Collection.

And if you really want to experience the worst of cinema’s simple-minded slop jobs, there is “‘Manos’ The Hands of Fate” (1966), but unless you’re totally masochistic, the only way to view this travesty of ineptitude is with the accompanying snarky commentary and ad-libbed dialogue embellishments of Satellite of Love captive Joel Robinson and his robot sidekicks Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot in the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” Special Edition from Shout Factory. We have fertilizer salesman turned filmmaker Harold P. Warren to thank for this mess. Really bad pacing, poor photography and lighting and inept dubbing come together with terrible acting to make this story of a family getting lost and stumbling onto the lair of a devil worshipping cult a legendary low point in cinematic history, and perfect fodder for some of the funniest riffing the SoL crew ever conjured up during the entire run of MST3K.

But while the half-man, half-goat and the evil guy in the cape are the obvious monsters of “Manos,” the evil in the classic chiller “The Bad Seed” (1956) comes packaged in the unlikely form of an overly well-mannered 8-year-old girl. Based on the Broadway hit by Maxwell Anderson and the novel by William March, this highly original horror piece from director Mervyn LeRoy tells the story of prissy, pigtailed little Rhoda (Patty McCormack) who butters up her elders with exaggerated sweetness, but turns unfeeling killer when she doesn’t get what she wants. Original stage cast members McCormack, Nancy Kelly as the torn, protective mother and Eileen Heckart as the grief-stricken mother of one of Rhoda’s victims all won Oscar nominations for their electric performances in this classic psychological thriller that’s now available in a Warner Bros. Blu-ray edition, just in time for Halloween viewing.

More high-quality horror is available from Lionsgate in the Blu-ray edition of “Mimic” (1997), which has Mira Sorvino and Jeremy Northam as married biotech scientists who concoct a cure for a plague that mutates into giant, subway-crawling cockroaches that can mimic — and kill — people. Director and co-writer Guillermo Del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth,“ “Hellboy”) mounts smart, visually stunning production with arresting special effects.

For haunted house enthusiasts there’s “The Others” (2001) from director Alejandro Amenabar, with Nicole Kidman as a mother of two small children living in a secluded island mansion behind locked doors and drawn curtains as she await’s the return of her husband from World War II. When three mysterious servants show up, it becomes disturbingly obvious that there is more to this house than meets the eye. Twists and turns keep the viewer guessing right up to the jolting surprise ending. Kidman is chillingly superb in this moody Gothic gem, available in Blu-ray from Lionsgate.

The supernatural reaches out again in “The Caller” (2011) when divorcee Mary Kee (Rachelle Lefevre, “Twilight“), already a nervous wreck thanks to a threatening ex-husband, moves into a modest apartment equipped with an old-fashioned rotary phone and starts getting weird calls from a woman who implies she’s calling from the past. The caller keeps asking to speak to someone named Bobby, and when the woman starts talking about murder, Mary tries to break off contact. But the caller doesn’t like being ignored, and so she seeks revenge in a deeply terrifying way. Available from Sony Home Entertainment, it’s a nifty little creepshow from director Matthew Parkhill that also stars Stephen Moyer (“True Blood”).

From the romping stomping thunder lizard category there’s “The Giant Behemoth,” one of the scarier features of the resurrected dinosaur variety to hit the drive-ins in 1958, starring Gene Evans as a heroic American scientist, playing opposite a ticked-off, radiation-breathing palaeosaurus that can turn people to piles of ash and cities such as London to mountains of rubble. Written and directed by Eugene Lourie (“The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms”), “Behemoth” features stop-motion effects by “King Kong’s” Willis O’Brien. Available from Warner Archives.

And finally, for fright fans who are also vintage television enthusiasts, the 1960-62 anthology showcase that Stephen King has called “the best horror series ever put on TV” is now available in “Thriller: The Complete Series,” a pricey 14-DVD set that holds all 67 episodes, hosted by Boris Karloff and featuring such stars and stars-to-be as William Shatner, Leslie Nielsen, Mary Tyler Moore, Elizabeth Montgomery, Rip Torn, Richard Chamberlain, Cloris Leachman, Robert Vaughn, John Carradine, Ursula Andress and Karloff himself, in stories ranging from not-so-scary, crime-based stuff to mostly the stuff that nightmares are made of, from the pens of such luminaries as Richard Matheson, Cornell Woolrich, Robert Bloch and Edgar Allan Poe himself.

Cocky city boy Ren McCormack is a rebel with a cause, and his cause is to defy the straight-laced prudes of a dusty little Bible-belt burg and restore rock ’n’ roll music and dancing to the town’s repressed teens, just in time for the prom.

That’s the essential storyline of the mini-classic 1984 musical teen saga “Footloose,” which made a star of Kevin Bacon, introduced a slew of ’80s pop hits and is now poised for a big-budget remake scheduled to hit the multiplexes on Friday.

For purists and skeptics of needless Hollywood recycling of perfectly good originals, the first “Footloose” is also dancing its way onto DVD shelves in a spiffy Blu-ray edition that features a fairly uninspired video transfer, crisp and sharply re-mastered audio tracks and a treasure trove of informative video extras.

Directed by veteran Herbert Ross (“The Goodbye Girl,” “Steel Magnolias”) from a solid if formulaic script by Dean Pitchford, “Footloose” is said to be loosely inspired by events that took place in 1978 in the rural, religious farming town of Elmore City, OK. Dancing reportedly had been banned in the community for nearly 90 years when a group of high school students rose up to challenge the taboo.

Pitchford’s version cast the story with the cool, Chicago hipster Ren (the relatively unknown Bacon, 24 at the time) as the new kid at school in the conservative little midwestern town of Bomont. The old fuddy-duddies of the town – led by well-meaning but seriously uptight preacher Shaw Moore (John Lithgow) – uphold a strict ban on pop music and dancing, seeing them as the devil’s enticements.

Ren, naturally, resists and predictably strikes up a romance with the good reverend’s cute, blond but deceptively dark-spirited daughter Ariel (Lori Singer). He has a confrontation with the school bully and eventually rallies his classmates to defy the old order, confront the pious preachments of Rev. Moore and push everyone toward a rousing, happy-feet musical climax.

The whole thing is fairly simplistic, but executed with high spirits, some pretty solid acting (especially from Lithgow) and that killer-diller soundtrack that highlighted such enduring hits as Kenny Loggins’ jaunty title track, Deniece Williams’ “Let’s Hear It For the Boy,” Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” and John Mellencamp’s “Hurt So Good.”

While the new Blu-ray’s visuals are nothing to boast about (they seem decidedly muddy in parts, and skin tones look unnatural), the crucial sound transfers are precise and clear-toned.

But it’s in the generous DVD extras that this disc earns its worth. There are two commentary tracks that offer a wealth of interesting background and perspective. One features Pitchford and producer Craig Zadan discussing the movie’s sustained popularity and staying power. They also talk about the process of refining the script and choosing music to accompany the story.

The other commentary feature has Bacon talking about the character of Ren, about his admiration for Ross and other cast members, about his dance moves and the film’s music and about some of the tensions and disagreements that arose on the set in Utah.

Additionally, there are featurettes focusing on Sarah Jessica Parker discussing the part she initially turned down, one offering a tribute to the late Chris Penn (who couldn’t dance when he took the role) and a long segment with cast and crew discussing the rigors of making the movie. Another featurette focuses on the soundtrack and the thought that went into choosing each song to be spotlighted in the film.

Finishing off the extras menu are the film’s original theatrical trailer, a montage of Bacon modeling his various costumes and Bacon’s four-minute screen test.

- Dennis King

Face it – “Footloose” is all about the music.

As with the movie version of the melodramatic teen-spirit saga, the most memorable aspect of the Broadway stage adaptation of “Footloose” was the musical score.

The stage show based on the 1984 movie opened on Broadway in 1998 and ran for 709 performances, a garnering lukewarm critical reception but earning Tony Award nominations for Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical. The original cast album received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Musical Show Album.

While that album has been out-of-print for several years, the apparent hoopla over a big new movie remake and the release of a Blu-ray edition of the original movie hasn’t been lost on marketing mavens. Call it synergy. This month, Ghostlight Records is resurrecting the cast album for the Broadway show and bringing it out in digital forums and on CD in updated and re-mastered versions.

“Footloose the Musical” became available from digital sources earlier this month, and the CD will be released in stores Oct. 25.

The Broadway show – co-written by screenwriter Dean Pitchford and stage veteran Walter Bobbie – features music by Tom Snow and lyrics by Pitchford. Additional music was provided by Sammy Hagar, Kenny Loggins, Eric Carmen and Jim Steinman.

The re-released “Footloose” album features new cover artwork by celebrated Broadway graphic artist Frank “Fraver” Verlizzo, and a new track, “Still Rockin,” a song cut from the Broadway show during previews.

The new album, press materials state, “now reflects changes made to the show by the original writers after their lengthy Broadway fun and countless productions all over the world – from Kyoto, Japan to Sydney, Australia to Cardiff, Wales.”

The track list for “Footloose the Musical” is:

1.“Footloose/On Any Sunday”
2. “The Girl Gets Around”
3. “I Can’t Stand Still”
4. “Somebody’s Eyes”
5. “Learning To Be Silent”
6. “Holding Out For A Hero”
7. “Heaven Help Me”
8. “I’m Free/Heaven Help Me”
9. “Still Rockin’”
10. “Let’s Hear It For The Boy”
11. “Can You Find It In Your Heart?”
12. “Mama Says (You Can’t Back Down)”
13. “Almost Paradise”
14. “Can You Find It In Your Heart?” (reprise)
15. “Footloose’ (finale).

- Dennis King


Listed on wimgo Movies under Drama

In keeping with the ultra-hardboiled detective tradition established by crime novelist Mickey Spillane, the 1957-59 version of “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer” was the most violent series on television, at least in the eyes of some of the TV critics of the day.

Certainly Spillane’s novels about the two-fisted New York private investigator were some of the most graphically violent and sex-charged thrillers on the bookshelves of the era, starting with the 1947 multimillion seller “I, the Jury,” and director Robert Aldrich’s 1955 movie version of “Kiss Me, Deadly,” starring Ralph Meeker as a hard-as-nails Hammer, still stands as the one film version that effectively matches the grittiness and brutality of the books.

The first TV version of Hammer had a lot to live up to when it debuted in syndication in the fall of ’57, and Revue Productions (aka Universal) did its dead-level, gut-pummeling best to measure up — within the limits of TV standards and practices. Darren McGavin — perhaps best known as Ralphie’s old man in “A Christmas Story” — was far more convincing as Spillane’s shoot-to-kill gumshoe than the comparatively kinder, gentler Stacy Keach version that would reach home screens more than two decades later.

But along with the rough edges, McGavin brought a tongue-in-cheek charm to the character that made him infinitely more likable and amusing than Spillane’s original printed creation or any other film version of Hammer. All 78 episodes of the show’s two-season run are available for the first time on any video format in a 12-DVD box set from A&E Networks.

Hammer is seen throwing people down flights of stairs, making passes at married women, kissing “dames” or killing them, and becoming embroiled in all kinds of slugfests, shootings and knifings, causing one fainthearted TV Guide scribe to declare the series “easily the worst show on TV.” Today, it’s a surprisingly entertaining classic from the boob tube’s golden age, featuring early appearances from future stars such as Angie Dickinson in “Letter Edged in Blackmail” and “Look at the Old Man Go,” Robert Vaughn in “The Living Dead,” Marion Ross in “Peace Bond,” Barbara Bain in “Accentuate the Negative,” DeForest Kelley in “I Ain’t Talkin’,” Ted Knight in “The Big Drop” and Lorne Greene in “Swing Low, Sweet Harriet.”

— Gene Triplett

BY GENE TRIPLETT

Ted Striker managed to “win one for the Zipper” in the final, funny-bone-shattering moments of “Airplane!”, but like a guy with a fear of flying, Robert Hays couldn’t stand to watch himself playing that character for years.

Named one of the American Film Institute’s “top 10 funniest movies ever made,” this outrageous 1980 spoof of air disaster flicks from writers-directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker starred Hays as a former fighter pilot traumatized by a very bad war experience who is forced to take over the controls of an airliner when the regular pilots (played by Peter Graves and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) succumb to food poisoning along with half of the passengers on board.

“I get to the point now where I really enjoy watching it,” Hays said in a phone interview from his Southern California home. “Before, I loved watching everything, but when I came up I was so critical, because I’ve always been the most critical of my own work. But now I’ve got enough distance to where I can enjoy it and think, ‘Oh well, hey, that wasn’t so bad. That was pretty good.’”

So now Hays can view the new Blu-ray edition of “Airplane!” — available exclusively at Best Buy stores — without breaking into a blinding sweat the way he did as Ted Striker trying to land that looney bin of an airliner.

“If you ever know people who are very critical of their own work, they’re quick to praise other people’s work, but when it comes to their own, it’s like, ‘Oh boy, I could’ve done that one a lot better. Oh shoot, why did I do that? Egh. God, why did I do that?’ Now that’s kind of gone,” Hays said. “Now I just realize that it worked out pretty good, and people seem to like it.”

Years of laughs

Indeed, 31 years after its initial release, the film’s string of zany gags still holds up, and people still walk up to Hays and quote its most memorable lines to him, such as the one from Graves as square-jawed Capt. Oveur, when he asks a little boy, “Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?”

Hays says it’s hard for him to pick a favorite bit of dialogue.

“There’s so many, I don’t know. I mean, when Lloyd Bridges says to Steve (Stucker), ‘Hey Johnny, how ’bout some coffee?’ And Johnny says, ‘No thanks.’ You know, he wanted Johnny to bring him some coffee. That one always gets me.”

Bridges plays McCroskey, the frayed air traffic control chief who says he picked the wrong week to quit smoking, sniffing glue and popping amphetamines.

Robert Stack is Rex Cramer, Striker’s former commanding officer who’s been called in to talk Striker down but only succeeds in panicking him.

And Leslie Nielsen does a memorable turn as the no-nonsense Dr. Rumack, a passenger, who utters some of the film’s most nonsensical lines:

Rumack: “Can you fly this plane, and land it?”

Ted Stricker: “Surely you can’t be serious.”

Rumack: “I am serious … and don’t call me Shirley.”

Submitting to silliness

One of the most appealing aspects of “Airplane!” was its cast full of well-known, serious actors, all willing to submit to the silliness and even poke fun at their own leading-man images.

“The guy that got it probably first more than anybody else I think might have been Bob Stack,” Hays recalled. “And then Leslie really embraced it and became the lunatic that we all

Robert Hays

came to know and love. But Lloyd and Peter both were like, ‘What the hell is this?’ But then they also got into it. And it was just great.”

Abrahams and the Zucker brothers, founders of the sketch comedy Kentucky Fried Theatre and script writers of 1977′s “Kentucky Fried Movie,” wrote “Airplane!” after viewing the dead-serious 1957 air disaster film “Zero Hour,” which was based on an Arthur Hailey teleplay.

On the set of “Airplane!” they were affectionately nicknamed “the boys” by cast and crew because of their boyish behavior and enthusiasm while shooting the film.

“They came running up to us the way they did, they ran up to you together, they’d all speak together, or they’d speak, like one would say part of one line, the other would finish off the rest of the line. It was just so funny, it was so great.”

“The boys” would go on to create “Top Secret!,” the “Police Squad” television series and its big-screen spinoff, “The Naked Gun” series.

Meanwhile, Hays would go on to star in several short-lived TV series, including “Starman” (1986-87) and “FM” (1989-90), and numerous theatrical films including “Take This Job and Shove It” (1981), “Airplane II: The Sequel” (1982), “Raw Justice” (1994), “Cyber Bandits” (1995), “Dr. T and the Women” (2000), “Freezerburn” (2005) and “Superhero Movie” (2008).

But making “Airplane!” still seems like only yesterday.

“You know, sometimes it seems like two or three years ago,” Hays said. “And other times it seems like it could’ve been maybe seven or maybe 10 years ago. But not 31.”