Charles Bronson Collection [DVD] [2009] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Despite being packaged like any one of a dozen cheap Public Domain compilations (you know, the ones that usually include The Valdez Horses/Chino and an episode of Man with a Camera they're trying to pass off as a movie), this release is a legitimate one from Warner Home Video bringing together a couple of Bronson's 70s output just before his fame began to wane.

Although little loved by fans of Ross Thomas' novel, St. Ives is an entertaining thriller with largely unrealised aspirations to being seen as a throwback to Warners' 1940s detective movies. Charles Bronson's the heavy gambling retired crime writer and would-be novelist of the title, hired by John Houseman's gentleman crook to act as go-between for a series of incriminating volumes only to stumble across dead bodies in tumble dryers and burglars who've taken the shortcut to the sidewalk via the window. It's not an action film, an elevator shaft fight and a climactic shootout notwithstanding. Instead it's a slightly quirky number full of neat little touches, be it Houseman watching The Big Parade and Birth of a Nation because, as his analyst Maximilian Schell explains, "Films really are dreams, especially old movies, and Abner loves them. They're good dreams for Abner. They're splendid, splendid therapy," Elisha Cook (no longer billed as Jr.) turning up as a hotel clerk who can even sleep through a shootout in the lobby or an amusing scene where a drop-off in the toilets in Union Station turns into a quirky discussion of restroom quirks. With some surprising faces popping up in the cast (Daniel J. Travanti, Jeff Goldblum, Robert Englund among them), it's an enjoyable 90 minutes that aims to be nothing more than a good night out at the pictures, and in this case that's enough.

Warner's DVD offers a good widescreen transfer with original trailer and brief behind the scenes short as extras.

By the end of the 70s, world politics presented an increasing credibility problem to producers: how do you make a Cold War thriller in the age of détente? By having a good Russian trying to stop a bad Russian starting WW3 by activating several suicidal sleeper agents planted all over America during the Stalin era and long forgotten by the new management was the solution 1977's Telefon offered. Charles Bronson's the good Russian chasing fellow Great Escaper Donald Pleasance's bad Russian with the help of Lee Remick before the renegade Stalinist can write his name across the United States by triggering a series of pointless suicide bombings on out-of-date targets. A workable enough premise, but it's a film that never goes quite as far as it could. It's fun that a couple of the suicidal sleepers are a priest and an All-American pancake-making mom, but that's as far at stereotype subverting as it goes with the rest an anonymous bunch. The film's never quite as cold-blooded as it needs to be either: when he's unable to stop one reactivated sleeper, Bronson strangles him instead, yet it's a rather polite and bloodless scene that sheepishly cuts away. While it provides plenty of explosions it rarely kicks into full gear. There's one good chase in a San Francisco hotel familiar to anyone who's seen The Towering Inferno or High Anxiety that comes to a satisfyingly explosive end in an underground car park, but the film's climax seems more adequate than inspired. There's not even the remotest flicker of sexual chemistry between Bronson and Remick to carry the film between things blowing up.

It wasn't exactly an untroubled shoot, with original director and co-writer Peter Hyams being replaced by Don Siegel (Hyams also found himself fired from Steve McQueen's last film, The Hunter - obviously he didn't endear himself to the Magnificent Seven), although some of his typically quirky dialogue survives in lines like Tyne Daly's CIA computer analyst's comment "That's exactly the kind of attitude that led to the downfall of the Hittite Empire." The change in directors occasionally makes itself felt in wild changes in cinematography from pin-sharp to that irritatingly over-diffused soft focus that ran rampant in the late-70s, but the over-riding impression is of an average movie but not a particularly unlikeable one.

Unfortunately, as with the TV prints, the picture quality on this widescren NTSC transfer is pretty inconsistent: sharp in some scenes, grainy in others. The only extra is the original trailer.

This is a good way to catch up on two rather forgotten Bronson films from the mid 70s when he was still heading mainline films from the big studios, as against the rubbish he later did with Cannon in the 80s.

Telefon is a solidly wriiten and directed thriller helmed by Don Seigal - just about his last decent picture alas. A good cast gives this film a good helping hand which is just as well as Bronson delays his arrival for 20 mins into the running time. Look out for a little cameo from the late great Sheree North who is only on screen for about 5 mins but has to hold the film for that period as the camera remains just on her for the whole time, barring a few cut-aways to Pleasance and some running workmen. Lee Remick's performance doesn't quite come off but this doesn't mess the film up. An oddly weak ending but at least they get to blow up a building by the look of things for real.
The DVD transfer is wide screen if a bit soft in places but baring the odd bit of film damage the print is OK.

St Ives is, in my opinion, a really good detective film which deserves to be better known - I cannot remember ever seeing this on TV although I saw it twice in the cinema. Well made with - again - good performances all the way thru. DVD transfer seems better here.

Not much in the way of extras but at least you get to see these two films at last. The dvd is a flipper with a film on each side as is meant to be region one, but my copy seems to be region free!