The Night My Number Came Up (Blu-ray) by Stuart Galbraith IV Produced by Britain's Ealing Studios, The Night My Number Came Up (1955) is a supernatural thriller not nearly as well-remembered as it should be. Tense and intelligent, its story revolves around the premonition (in the form of a dream) of a plane crash, putting it in a kind of club of 50s airplane-in-distress films that include No Highway in the Sky (1951), The High and the Mighty (1954), Zero Hour! (1957), and Crash Landing (1958), all good-to-excellent. The movie plays like a particularly fine, extended episode of TV's One Step Beyond. Licensed from StudioCanal, The Night My Number Came Up boasts an excellent transfer, though it's incorrectly presented in 1.37:1 standard format, rather than its proper 1.66:1 widescreen. More about this below. Read the entire review »

The Chicken Chronicles (Blu-ray) by Jesse Skeen Kino Lorder Studio Classics digs up yet another obscure title on Blu-Ray. Previously available only on VHS, The Chicken Chronicles was made in 1977 but takes place in the bygone year 1969- a while eight years prior. At the time of this writing, that would be like releasing a new movie taking place in 2012. Being old enough to remember a bit of 1977 but not 1969, this movie still looks closer to 1977 to me. Then-newcomer Steven Guttenberg is David Kessler, the story's main character- he's in his last month of high school and lives with his rich parents in Beverly Hills, but his main concern is losing his virginity. He has a cheerleader girlfriend Margaret (Lisa Reeves) but she won't go to that level until he finds someplace safe and private where their parents aren't likely to walk in. Meanwhile he's also working at a take-out chicken joint (hence the title) managed by an old man named ...Read the entire review »