Classic titles make leap to Blu-ray

It’s a huge day for classic titles with the arrival long-awaited, top-shelf digital restorations of “House of Wax” and “The Big Parade” from Warner Bros. (along with the 75th anniversary 3-D conversion of “The Wizard of Oz,” which I covered Monday) arriving on Blu-ray along with Sony’s beautiful restoration of “From Here to Eternity,” which is celebrating its 60th anniversary.

“House of Wax” is Warners’ second restoration of a 1950′s 3-D movie — converted from an analogue to digital 3-D format — and it’s a big improvement over the first, last year’s “Dial M for Murder.” As Warners’ vice-president for restoration, Ned Price, recently explained to me, that’s partly because the studio took such great care with its first 3-D movie, which Box Office Mojo says sold the modern-day equivalent of $412 million worth of tickets (more than “Spider-Man 3”).

No less an authority than Martin Scorsese is brought out to extoll the film’s virtues in a new 48-minute documentary included in the release. Marty says that he saw “House of Wax” as a youngster and showed it to his collaborators on “Hugo” as an example of how to use stereoscopic effects for a film with “high production values” (perhaps the first time that term has been applied to a film produced by Bryan Foy, who long oversaw B movies and programmers for WB).

The doc also wheels out the usual suspects among horror historians to explain the film’s importance in launching Vincent Price — a character actor specializing in period parts who had dabbled in shockers going back to 1939 — as a marquee name in the genre. There are also terrific archival interviews with Price himself, as well as one-eyed director Andre de Toth.

Looking better than ever, “House of Wax” remains a grand show, though I’d still rate it a notch or two behind the film it’s a remake of — Michael Curtiz’ “Mystery of the Wax Museum.” As it was on DVD, “Mystery” is offered as an extra — in the same standard-definition transfer that looked like an impressive example of two-color Technicolor back in the snap-box DVD era but now cries out for a high-def upgrade. The original, which is more effectively set largely in contemporary (1933) instead of turn-of-the-20th-century New York (like “House”) stars Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray, with comic relief (eliminated from the streamlined remake) provided by reporter Glenda Farrell and her editor, played by Frank McHugh. While the doc pays due tribute to “Mystery,’’ there’s nary a mention of WB’s 2005 “re-imaginging’’ of “House of Wax’’ with, uh, Paris Hilton – which was originally announced for 3-D but got released flat.

This restoration of “House of Wax” is only available as a Blu-ray combo pack that includes both the 2-D and 3-D versions. There is no DVD release for the 2-D edition at this point.

“The Big Parade” is the first silent film (not including the part-talking “The Jazz Singer”) that Warners has released on Blu-ray, and the first silent to receive a pricey digital restoration taken from a 4K scan of the (rediscovered) original camera negatives.This is the most beautiful looking silent that I’ve seen on video, a quantum leap over the photochemical restoration (from inferior elements) overseen by Kevin Brownlow that’s shown on TV for decades (not to mention the Blu-ray of “The Jazz Singer”). Most of “The Big Parade” in fact, now looks like it was shot yesterday. Of course, it’s in black-and-white and has an especially lovely sheen of grain.

Carl Davis’s excellent score, which has been adjusted to fit a slightly longer running time, has been carried over from the Brownlow edition. And Brownlow himself has endorsed the new restoration by contributing copious notes that are accompanied by rare archival images (and the film’s original souvenir program), all included in the DigiBook album packaging, also used for the corresponding DVD release.

Superbly directed by King Vidor from a trenchant script by Lawrence Stallings (“What Price Glory”), “The Big Parade” was, by some accounts, the top grossing of all silent films, running for more than a year in New York City. John Gilbert gave his best-remembered performance as a wealthy playboy who experiences the horrors of World War I in France. Even people who have never seen it will recognize icon scenes that have turned up in film-history documentaries (and MGM promotional films) for decades.

The release also includes a commentary track by film historian Mark Viera that includes lengthy excerpts from an oral history recorded by director Vidor. Hopefully, this will sell well enough that Warners will be encouraging to give the same treatment to Vidor’s other big silent classic, “The Crowd,” which like “The Big Parade,” has never appeared on DVD.

I saw Sony’s gorgeous restoration of “From Here to Eternity” at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered in a seaside screening. It’s finally arriving on Blu-ray to mark the 60th anniversary of the Oscar winning Best Picture, which also garnered statuettes for director Fred Zinnemann and supporting players Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed (both of whom were delivered from the brink of career oblivion by being cast against type).

Even a greatly toned down (by Oscar-winner Daniel Tarash) adaptation of James Jones’ controversial novel was strong stuff for 1953, what with unhappy married Deborah Kerr (whose powerful against-type performance lost to Audrey Hepburn for “Roman Holiday”) having an affair with Burt Lancaster, while Montgomery Clift (he and Lancaster lost Best Actor lost to William Holden for “Stalag 13”) hooks up with “hostess” Reed and Sinatra suffers mightily at the hands of sadistic Ernest Borgnine.

Plus a bit by George Reeves. A new making-of documentary debunks the legend that Reeves’ part was drastically cut because of his TV notoriety, but Jack Larson (his Jimmy Olson, also a friend of Clift’s) movingly recounts that audience members yelled “Superman!” when Reeves turned up onscreen during the film’s premiere. There’s lots of good dish here, served up by the likes of Kim Morgan. I only wish Sony offered an option of watching it separately instead of only as an annoying (to me, at least) graphics in picture track.

Today’s Warner Archive releases include Robert Florey’s long-awaited “The Beast With Five Fingers” (1946) starring Peter Lorre and Robert Alda as well as Volume 3 of “The Bowery Collection,” containing 12 titles. WAC is also taking pre-orders for the Oct. 8 Blu-ray debut of “Billy Rose’s Jumbo” (1962) with Doris Day, Stephen Boyd and Jimmy Durante.

The Fox Cinema Archives MOD program has released another pair of Cisco Kid B westerns starring Cesar Romero: Herbert Leeds’ “Cisco Kid and the Lady” (1939) with Majorie Weaver and Otto Brower’s “The Gay Caballero” (1940) with Shiela Ryan.

The Sony Pictures Choice Collection MOD program is planning to release its first silent title on Dec. 3: Harry Hoyt’s “The Belle of Broadway” (1926) starring Betty Compson.

Cohen Media has scheduled “The Vivien Leigh Anniversary Collection” for Dec. 3, a month after her 100th birthday. Released in both Blu-ray and DVD versions, it consists of four pre-”Gone With the Wind” British titles that circulated for years in public-domain releases before changes in U.S. copyright law. They are Victor Saville’s “Dark Journey” (1937) with Conrad Veidt, Ian Dalrymple’s “Storm in a Teacup”’ (1937), William K. Howard’s “Fire Over England” (1937) with Laurence Oliver and Tim Whelan’s “Sidewalks of London” (1938) with Charles Laughton and Harrison.